I’d guess it means how the Total War series has become more about “ok, if I get this research I can get +50% missile resistance” rather than actually focusing on the tactics within the battles. Horizontal versus vertical progression. Like in Shogun 2, you know the advantages and disadvantages of using muskets, and how to properly utilize them in a battle with infantry holding the enemy in place while your muskets drop the enemy infantry. Nowadays, as you’ve pointed out in Three Kingdoms, you can just get 100% magical missile resistance to where no projectiles will drop anyone within a unit. Instead of terrain, unit specific strengths and weaknesses, and real world tactics, it’s instead all about how high you can get certain numbers.
Pure stat crunching meta builds. With warhammer obviously being the worst offender. Watching people spreadsheet craft and build a single legendary lord (with the right items, skills and traits) who can take down 7,000 enemies plus three legendary lords BY HIS LONESOME?! It tells me that total war is fundamentally broken and moving into a MOBA style gameplay where you just pop abilities to win.
The fact that it's nearly impossible to win against higher tier units with lower-tier units even with better positioning, such as a high ground advantage, or tiring of the enemy in higher difficulties. Like, in Rome Remastered, hate all you want on the game, at least if I tire out those urban cohorts, at least I know I can destroy them when I flank them with a levy pikemen sandwich as the Seleukids, or I can hastati sandwich those Bull Warriors. In 3K, if I surround pearl dragons with four spear guard, they'll fight to the bloody end even if I tire them out and do all that. Or I just play Records mode where the AI literally routs in a second bc they don't know how to walk their troops and making troops exhausted lowers their morale, attack and defence
Yeah when I play warhammer I have to have the mouse-over spreadsheet active at all times because unit functionality is often not very intuitive and there are so many units. If you don't use the spreadsheet constantly you risk taking bad fights because of arbitrary stat choices.
It's just when only stats become to matter, and their breakdown, that kills all intuitive behaviour in battle. In S2, no matter the stats when a unit is charging into a yari wall, or when it faces musketeers, they'd be dead meat anyways. In Modern TW physics, placement, tactics, lethality... these are not much relevant anymore, it's been all about stats since.
I re-made the Empire units from Total War Warhammer 2 in Totally Accurate Battle Simulator and got a better experience. At least in TABS every unit is an individual, the guns and arrows and crossbows are all distinct, and all the silly jank is on purpose rather than an accident.
I appreciate how in Shogun 2 and FotS, in gunpowder units only the soldiers with a direct line of fire will shoot, making pike and shot formations and other tactics possible. If they made Shogun 3 today they would either stop the whole unit from firing if just one man's view is obstructed, or have all of them fire and butcher your unit with friendly fire (or phase through them). I also appreciate the intricacies of Yari Wall; you can stretch it out as far as possible but that increased the chances of enemy soldiers breaking through, or you could make a deeper formation that acts like a brick wall at the cost of covering less space. All without the game explaining it.
But spreadshitting is so much easier and cheaper than modeling units. Why spend time and money, when you could copy-paste, number tweak, and sell a shity game. I've noticed this a lot of developers nowadays; all that matters is you buy the game, or buy the new DLC.
The "spreadsheeting" problem also happens heavily on the campaign map. Most buildings only give stats bonuses, like +5 to public order, +200 income, +10% income from peasantry, +10% replenishment rate, +25% food production, etc. Very few buildings have some actual impact on gameplay, presenting something new to the way you play the game.
To be fair, I do take those things into consideration, at least in the early game. The choice of whether to build towards a new unit's building or secure my food supply is always good, imo.
@@Nicator_ In Shogun 2, you could only trade overseas if you improved your harbour to a trading port. You also needed the Nanban Trade Port to recruit gunpowder units. Most military buildings add new units you can recruit. Some buildings add new agents. In Warhammer you could build walls around a settlement. I think you should also be able to build forts, trenches and other small defensive structures around the map to defend strategic positions, like Julius Caesar did a lot before a battle, instead of it being just an optional "stance" in your army. You could build bridges to cross rivers, that would be fun. You could build watchtowers to have line of sight in some important areas. You could build caravans or trade ships and manage your commerce on the campaign map instead of just signing a "trade agreement" with another faction. You could build farms and cattle herds to keep your armies fed, instead of it providing a static food number to your faction. You could build granaries to store food from previous turns. You could build hospitals to prevent some plague event. You could build iron mines and weapons workshops to keep give your armies better equipment, different from what they have, instead of just being a stat boost. I don't know, these are just some ideas.
@@Nicator_ Also, roads. In Shogun 2 you could improve your roads to make your armies move a lot faster, and if you moved off roads you would move very slowly
This video doesn't even go into how stat-stacking is such a problem in everything from Rome 2 through Troy. Rome 2's endgame was a joke because you could stack +experience on generals and +sword melee attack+defense on generals and get the already ludicrously overpowered elite units to even crazier heights. Warhammer 2 works the same way, to the point where an objective a player wants to pursue on Warhammer 2 on the highest difficulty is to grind pointless, challengeless battles for experience points on generals to get stat boosts from general skills, and to make the general, itself an overpowered single entity, even more broken. This is because killing a half rebel stack produces the same experience as killing a full enemy army stack, much like it did in Shogun 2, but in Shogun 2 you didn't really "farm" rebellions this way because the campaign was active enough that you didn't have time to engage in that kind of frivolity. Just more and more evidence that the campaign of Total War is a completely fucking broken mess, too. And that matters because it translates into battle imbalances as well. As for the actual video itself, I think it's an interesting debate to interrogate whether simulator gameplay vs abstracted gameplay is better and when one is appropriate over the other. On a strategy layer I often get pushback about the idea that better resource management and more intense economic gameplay and diplomacy would make for a better single player Total War experience, yet this isn't true for all players all the time: a lot of TW players prefer to have the streamlined economy because the TW campaign is an excuse to fight battles. So even if a more advanced economic is a better simulation, that doesn't necessarily translate to better gameplay as experienced by the player. That said, it is painfully obvious that Total War has regressed from trying unique systems available only to 3D game engines, to functionally going back and playing Pen and Paper RPGs or tabletop Wargames. It is a regression, it takes no advantage of the unique possibilities in a 3D game engine. Just look at how modern flight simulators have innovated compared to earlier ones. And if that is how Total War wants to work, I may as well play games that haven't tried to innovate, but have instead improved upon and refined that old style, the Civilizations and XCOMs of the world, or in RTT, the Steel Divisions and Ultimate Generals, because even if it isn't innovative, it at least is good at what it's supposed to be, because modern TW is a failure at even being the type of game that it is, let alone the ambitious battle simulation it wanted to be in its infancy.
Yeah, behold LegendofTotalWar's recent videos on 'rating doomstacks' and the most ridiculous one I've seen so far is using loads of Dwarf Engineers to buff the damage and reload speed of Thunderers. The stacked stats produce a result that would not be possible if the mechanics were being simulated.
Granular simulation tends to be more accurate on the small scale and short term, but due to emergent chaos is liable to produce nonsense with enough time. That said total war campaign maps are not that large scale, and evsn granular simulation rarely allows for positive feedback loops that the nonsense is usually the result of.
Total War in it's current state fails as a simulation. It no longer attempts to accurately depict battle; I'm not even talking about historically I just mean logically. Physics, formations, positioning, terrain etc and how the player interacts with them is now secondary in importance and effectiveness to the numbers on the unit card. It is antithetical to the very core of what once was total war gameplay and design philosophy. When the outcome of events is predetermined by the "spreadsheeting" effect and not by emergent gameplay the game is stripped of any thought provoking interaction. Total War post shogun 2 functions as a dopamine drip to the uninitiated. Anyone who was there pre shogun 2 that still advocates on behalf of these games is a weasel. I can't even count the amount of people I've seen in the comments over the last year say something along the lines of: "I got into total war after shogun 2 and was unaware of how bad things had gotten, I'm glad I found this channel". They say it like they've been saved and it's because they have been. They've avoided sinking hundreds more hours into a vapid experience. Once they realize how shallow the game has become they lose interest. Their dopamine drip loses it's luster once the facade has been broken for them.
Funny thing is when I was discussing Total War with some friends at work another guy had no idea what we were talking about when we started to talk about different ways to put tactics that were not hammer and anvil on different types of terrain, but this other guy only wanted to talk about warhammer figurines, unit models and "customizing colors". We were like "how is this related to Total War?", but it seems that the average Total War player from nowadays only know about warhammer and nothing else.
@@JarlFrank its pretty much a just another WH forum these days. i unsubbed ages ago. don't even hate WH itself but it's weird how it kind of took over the TW community.
That's right, Warhammer is the root of all evil and will end Total War. Of course you can't blame mismanagement and CA throwing their Devs off and pissing up the Dev time. No it's obviously the WarHam fanboys.
I’m just amazed how terrain seems to make virtually zero difference in any of the TW’s I play. There’s so many things they could do with it like the ground getting muddy when it rains and completely preventing cavalry charges. But I guess the average TW player only cares about cool heroes and shit these days.
They only care about how ut looks not how it plays and that's why the quality has gotten down, just like in new star wars content why bother writing good movies when you can make Luke Skywalker arrive and everyone goes crazy ? Why bother qorking on it if minimum effort gives you a good reward, thank god for the Med2 kingdomes overhaul mods
@op which ones are you playing as it has being a staple for some time just not always shown. Even the spreadsheet fest of WH has it with for forest and water. It was nice to see some extra in Troy though the AI seems to have no concept of it and it was easy to cheese ambushes with light infantry and take out a Paris or Hector elite stack.
“I’ll keep making these videos as long as I keep getting comments like this” so your gonna make these videos forever? Lol keep making good shit and keep calling out CA, love your videos.
Its been a breath of fresh air finding your videos. The last Total War game I bought was Rome 2 and the last one I played with any seriousness was Shogun 2. My "must buy and play the newest, shinest game" friends poke fun that I would rather play modded Medieval 2 than Warhammer Total War or that I keep coming back to Empire, despite its flaws. But I don't play these games to be spoon fed dopamine. I play to fulfill my autistic desire to roleplay a warlord. Thank you for the videos you make and your passion for this series.
thanks for being aware of yourself and being willing to face the situation honestly. everyone eventually does, you just were quicker on the uptake. always really appreciate these kinds of comments, every single time.
@@Volound I admit, That's a very optimistic (but I guess in a way too: good since it does provide some hope) viewpoint to have; But I doubt that and I don't really share that same sentiment to be honest with you Voulound here: My personal experience dealing with The average coooonsumer Is: that they will never wake themselves up from their own crippling dopamine addictions, no matter what nor how hard you may try to do so, you could even make the greatest Thesis or Treaties know to man. Explaining why it is so with the truest (and with the most very 'tistic in-depth) Awe-stricken of details at that and was or also has ever been conceived in human history. Always to be just denied fanatically by them, because in a way, this problem stems even deeper into a more serious issue, from what I've noticed with my dealings with them: That many of the average consumer of today, has replaced Religion and even morality to an extent, with blatant and baselessness consumerism and replaced religious worship with corporate Idolism (or idolatry of corporations), I know on your time on Reddit or even on here on YT you've probably seen those types who have said "I agree with you here" *but* (while completely disregarding what you have said and endlessly making up non-sensicale excuses) or white knight senseless for them even when they are in the completely and most blantantly wrong on something.....I believe that all of this is rooted by that issue and the fact that in a way these companies knowingly (or by accident) exploit that (the human need of religiousness or belief of or in *a* power) by "emulating" that to these people and in the process also make those same people become stockholmed due to the cultic mind-set that is present in many of the communities that were spawned from corporate products that gave them a "rush of a good time or feeling" in their entire life...... Sorry for the Reddit-sized essay here, if this just seems pure-nonsensical Schizo ramblings or if this was just pure shite because I'm not a very good writer, like at all.....
Playing barbs in Rome 1: the roman Infantry is stronger than mine. I must use hit and run tactics and attack from multiple angles to secure an advantage. Playing barbs in modern tw: imma charge in a straight line and spam shield Wall and head hunter Gg get rekt caeser
@@pastorofmuppets9346 Germanys late game roster is specifically designed to allow them to fight the romans with half decent chances. This is true for all of the periphery factions (britania, germania, scythia, armenia, selucia, parthia, and even egypt to an extent.) The ones closer to rome are more geared around pre marian units and quickly get crushed by marian reforms in general (gauls chosen swordsmen can go about even with early cohorts but get rolled by proper legions)
The boii in Rome 2 were absurdly overpowered. Ridiculous to have my best heavy infantry losing to theirs on a head to head pitch battle fight. Completely stupid.
42:31 I had something similar to this in a Rome 2 campaign. during an ambush I managed to cut a Gallic general unit off from the rest of it's army and managed to charge it with 4 hoplite units. I managed to time the charge perfectly so that each unit hit the enemy at the same time with one unit attacking each side of the enemy simultaneously, instantly surrounding the enemy unit off the bat. The enemy general unit, despite being charged on all sides, in the disadvantage of being ambushed, and surrounded still managed to kill 200 hoplites (almost two WHOLE UNITS) before finally breaking, oro could not be more correct, no matter what strategies you use "bad" units simply cannot beat "good" units, at least without taking massive casualties.
I am one for making elite units truly be elite, but Rome II is ridiculous with this. I have literally lost a battle or two in Rome II because the enemy general unit, despite being utterly surrounded and cycle-charged by cavalry in the rear, still made my units retreat (it was a close battle before this point, so my units were a bit beaten up, but not near breaking). The Spartans would have won the Battle of Thermopylae if it was in Rome II since apparently if you are good enough flanking does not matter.
You know what was really cool about med 2s gameplay? The cavalry had to get a good run up to get their lances down for the best charge possible. No button to push, just good gameplay
Everytime I see clips of Rome 2 where they discuss "Saving private Ryan" It really annoys me. Landings were basically NEVER opposed in the ancient world because you would need an entire army to be at the beach where the enemy was landing in order to fight and IF that was the case, the attacker could just sail up the sea and land his troops somewhere else. The reason landings in modern battlefields are oppossed is because with a couple of guys, a few machine guns and Anti-Tank launchers, you can do a LOT of damage to an approaching army. It goes without saying the MG42 was not available to the common Roman soldier.... It may have been available to some high ranking officers though.
Thanks to your wedge formation video I've actually started implementing katana cav frontal charges followed up by melee infantry/musket volleys in my avatar conquest battles. Nobody expects you to charge your cavalry into their yari wall... and even fewer expect your cav to actually survive.
perfect example. and yeah its amazing how a unit of katana cavalry can charge straight through a yari wall and shred some archers while infantry follow up and the yari wall is flanked/breaking. the engagement actually goes favourably and its fascinating.
@@Volound Shogun 2 was really the last "simulation' total war. Just look at how the MP has evolved... given enough time it's become pike and shot. Just like real life... People that go in w/ just katana sam cores get shredded.
@@MasonDixonAutistic Katana cav is especially reliable at wedge charging. When wedge-charging a yari-wall head-on, your katana cav will take 25% casualties on impact, and deal about the same to the yari wall. So not a very favorable trade on the surface. But you want to immediately charge w/ your melee infantry b/c the yari wall's cohesion has been completely wrecked.
@@cole8834 Ah right, so it's a one-off desperate move in the event that you absolutely have to break the enemy line then; you have to make your follow-up action worth losing about 15-20 horseback samurai.
I feel like the newer games of CA are more based on power increase and magical abilities, while the older ones you actually need to strategize, plan and use tactics. While in the older games the hills, forests, positioning, formation, directions, all of these details make a huge impact on the outcome of the battle, and expands the options and the strategizing, while in the newer games its more like pressing buttons that do weird stuff and increasing percentage numbers, and the formation of the unit or the situation itself makes nearly no impact.
This is the fundamental flaw of the design philosophy of the newer games. Instead of fewer factors you can greatly impact in many ways, you now have many factors you can only impact in small ways. -10 morale for killing the general in Warhammer is simply not enough.
@@sandrothenecromancer6810 formations were fairly limited (played 5th edition mostly) There was mostly just skirmish (loose) formation and standard rectangle. Some factions had their own formations. Bretonnia had wedge formation for knights and archers. Lizardmen could mix koroxigors and skinks together into one unit, where each koroxigor was encircled by skinks. Buildings could be placed, but I don't remember to what degree they could be garrisoned. There were also walls/hedges, light/dense forest, steep/non steep hills etc., having impact on movement and combat.
@@sandrothenecromancer6810 Ranks effected combat scores after a combat round, so thin lines were bad for most infantry units conversely archers could only fire in 2 ranks rather than the WHTW where it's best to fire in column to maximise focus of firepower. Also winners could increase frontage or lap around if frontage equal and once you had 4 or more models on side it counted as flanking giving further bonus to combat score. So large units of bad troops such as goblins were fielded in large units and used to either hold up better units or as combined arms to provide a large combat score bonus to another unit like cav or monstorous infantry which would be more exensive to field in larger numbers to get said bonus. It's funny that Warhammer TT often nicknamed herohammer heroes have less effect on the TT battlefield than WHTW and could be slotted by a regular trooper with a bit of luck or maybe even one shoted by a war machine. It was enough of a threat that there was a 'look out sir' rule that allow a model of equal size to take the fatal hit for the hero (1in6 chance). In WHTW if your combat heroes fall to regular troops you have either right royally screwed up or you are facing silly odds vs silly buff troops. Even then legend of total war has being doing a rate my lord doomstack highlighting how absurd a single buffed character can be. I think 1 beating 5 full stacks is the best so far , the others did not turn up and army losses kicked in making it instant victory.
That is genuinely true I play Attila and shogun and I had to strategize, like when I was outnumbered I put my men into a square formation and positioned my cavalry in the nearest hill or forest to obscure them. Then when the enemy attacked and were caught in the thick of there melee my general sprang forth and attacked them in the rear winning the battle
I got an email from Total War while watching this, right near the start too, with the title of the email being "Ah, I see you're a man of culture..." Fucking brilliant timing
Shogun 2 also relied on physics which made it absolutely beautiful. You could dodge arrows or projectiles (not muskets) by moving after they were fired and not take damage at all. Ashigaru archers will miss more against moving targets than compared to stationary targets. Cavalry charge is greatly impacted if u're running up hill or downhill. And when the modders increased the mass of the cavalry to make cavalry charges, particularly katana cavalry more devastating, they also noticed that now horses were more slower at going uphill because it was the indirect consequence of increasing the mass to improve the cavalry charge because the game uses a physics based system. Mangonels firing out of forests or archers firing into the forests hit the trees and wastes their ammo not because the game decides x% of the projectiles must hit trees but because the arrows themselves hit the trees while moving. You can block the enemy archers, towers and your own archers with terrain because it uses a physics system where the arrows have a limited arc flexibility instead of firing anywhere in range that it pleases and gets kills and losses from its stats. Yes, Shogun 2 had stats; accuracy, reload rate, attack and defense skill but none of them were as abysmal or horrendous as modern total war games. Also by experimenting with a wedge formation, light cavalry can punch through a non yari wall yari ashigaru with only 16 losses as opposed to no wedge formation which easily loses over 30 out of 60 men and may not even punch through a non yari wall at all. The punching through ability comes from the horses in the rear pushing against the same spot the horses in the front pushed causing a gap in the enemy line as well as the horses dying less because the horses in the middle and rear were not exposed to spears, just the horses in the front which proves the absolute merit of a physics based system. When I experimented with this and discovered this in custom match, it immediately reminded me of how a school of fish bunches up into a huge ball to protect themselves. It will not save the fishes at the exterior but because the fishes at the interior is not exposed to the predator, they will not die and all that matters is that the interior survives while the fishes swim as a group to a safer spot. This is literally how a non predatory herbivorous fishes has been surviving for millions of years. So yay physics! And the dopamine hit I got from realizing this connection.
So basically loose formation used to be the simple fact that there was more empty space for missiles to miss, and now it gives a numerical missile defense bonus, somehow making the arrows hurt less.
wouldnt surprise me. you could probably actually test this by overlapping loads of loose formation units and totalling up the damage to see if arrows do less damage when they hit units in loose. i would seriously not be surprised at all.
This is such a well thought out video that can be applied across so many modern genres. You really hit the nail on the head with many abilities being nothing more than APM tax having no real tactical reason to be used other than a pure number buff. It really highlights a problem pointed out in a previous video where it seems developers want to pigeon hole players into a "correct" way of playing rather than simply providing the tools for players to tackle a situation how they see fit, good or bad. I don't think streamlining is inherently a bad thing, and many times its a welcome improvement, but it seems with each iteration of streamlining a game or genre seems to lose depth, number of options, and overall freedom in general. Games are leaning more towards cutscene simulators rather than something you feel you are in control of or have any real input on the direction.
I think that a good comparison is actually to pen-and-paper RPGs. It's always been the case that one of the major distinction between a good GM (Game Master) and a bad GM is whether or not they let the 'rules as written' trump common sense or (most importantly) player agency. For example: Player: "My character uses his 'Experienced Sniper' ability to grant a +5 bonus to accuracy, which cancels out the -5 accuracy from shooting through a smoke cloud. Therefore, he hits the enemy as if the smoke weren't there." Bad GM: "Okay. That's what the rules say." Good GM: "...there's an opaque cloud of smoke. You can't see through it, so you get no bonus, regardless of what the rules say." I get the same feeling with (using Volund's example) the Wedge ability in TW games. Player: "My cavalry uses their 'Wedge' ability to enhance their charge!" Good game: "...but they haven't formed *into* a wedge by the time of contact, so no bonus is applied."
This is essentially a miscommunication problem stemming from the fact that the company didn't think that simunlationist gameplay was an important element of the appeal of the brand, so they let it go in favour of, well, ease of design for the most part. . Interestingly this is a similar scenario to table top Warhammer over the past decade or so. Both the space fantasy and medieval fantasy wargames used to be much more simulationist in the way they played (never remotely realistic ofc, but significantly more grounded in the fundamental interaction of the physical pieces between each other, and less so, if at all, on abstract bonuses meant to vaguely represent some intangible benefit). Modern Warhammer, as opposed to its older iterations, has this pervasive concept of "detachments" or "formations" - understood in this context as pre-determined ways to build your army list, which then confer to it a set of bonuses on the battlefield. The bonuses are meant to be an abstract representation of such a "formation" making tactical sense on the battlefield. It's this similar, sort of "forced results" design mentality. . It's easy to see why it's convenient for the designer. If he wants to make a unit be good at a task, he doesn't need to make it good at the task inherently (which would require of him a deep understanding of the way his game will actually play) he just gives it a bonus when it does that one thing he thought should be its "intended use". From the designer's perspective this is a really convenient solution: all of his game pieces can be easily categorised and their strengths and weaknesses set in stone at the pre-production step. This gives the designer far more space to implement whatever he, in his mind, thinks would be #cool. And it WILL work as intended, because it has inbuilt magical properties that will make it work as intended. This makes the designer feel in control of the end product, to the detriment of the player's ability to explore the game's possibilities and thus master the game. Because the possibilities were predetermined from the get go, and there is nothing for the player to actually find or master (and if there is, it's blatantly silly cheese, like TW:WH archer spam against harder AIs). . I suspect this problem, and this is wild speculation tbh, might have something to do with demographics. Not consumer demographics, but designer demographics. In the past couple of decades or so, we've had an influx of people formally trained to be game designers coming out of game designer schools. For this first time, well, ever. Before them, the people who designed TW (or Warhammer, or whatever), tended to be enthusiasts of the thing their game was trying to capture - be it through gameplay, tone, aesthetics etc. - not game designers hired to "gamify" that thing. Basically I suspect we're suffering from the problem of the industry trying to be professional, and thus creating an army of dimwit, mindless design monkeys, with a formal education in "game design"TM, rather than an interest, or breath of knowledge about, the given topic of the game they are supposed to design. So they just produce what they were told to produce at game designer "university", and put the coat of paint du jour on it. But I guess this is just a theory... A game theory... (Kill me.)
I just wanna make one note on artillery in Warhammer 2: the great cannons you showed have fairly solid physics models and effects for their cannonballs. Shots bounce and ricochet and deal damage in lines. Because they only aim at the center of the unit, are not very effective when said unit is coming in a line towards them, but when cannons fire from the side along the line they become devastating. That creates incentive for player to attempt to get the cannons in position on the flanks which creates other problems and lets your creativity and imagination work with different tactics and formations.
hate to break it to you king, but volound has never played warhammer total war in his life, and probably never will. Despite the fact he owns all the games and dlc, he refuses to play it because hes already made up his mind on the game. He only cares when his precious shogun 2 looks better
@@Volound normally I wouldnt mind someone having an opinion on something without playing/trying it, but with how much you shit on nu-total war, when you havent even played half of it, makes you look ignorant at best and entitled at worst. Dont get me wrong, med 2 and rome 1 are the peak of the series, but I gotta call bull when I see it
@@gabbo7101 ignorance is a lack of knowledge, but you havent tried to demonstrate any. the arguments stand and fall on their own merits. i could get hit by a bus tomorrow and my arguments would all stand just as tall as they were when i made them. you dont understand how reason and argumentation works. its weird that you would want me to play shit games but dont want to take a perfect opportunity to demonstrate any ignorance. just seems like a really stupid series of comments to be engaged in.
@@gabbo7101 yeah I have played both warhammers and some of the older total war games. His points make sense and stand. Not to mention warhammer had such an issue with balance that it's not fair to be called a strategy game. Seriously death stacking should not be a valid way of playing.
This is similar to, for me, the worst offender on NTW and ETW. The square formation. You don't even need to be in a square for the bonuses to apply. See cavalry charge, it is in your best interest to wait for the last second and press square. Plus, square's frontage is too big so they end up being "thin" squares so the natural counter (artillery) doesn't work. In fact, in some situations, it is better to be in a square vs artillery as it will hit less than vs a line formation. It also removes most of the cavalry dynamics that were eseencial in the period.
yeah thats a great example from the sound of it. theyre cheating with bullshit scripting instead of actually implementing the property properly. sad. didnt play empire long enough to experience it myself.
"There are no crossbows in Three Kingdoms. There are no slingers in Troy. There are no guns in Warhammer. There is no wedge in Three Kingdoms." There is no Testudo in Rome 2. There is no Roman Empire in Attila. There is no gameplay in Thrones of Britannia. There is no control of controls in Rome Remastered.
@@Volound Thanks for keeping my enthusiasm for Shogun 2 alive. It's one of those games that is not just great but beyond that, especially for the time it came out.
I really really was hoping on the Rome Remaster, and still, have some hope for the mods but seeing my general unit get stuck celebrating after wiping out a unit mid-battle with no way to get him to move killed it for me. How the pathfinding got worse is beyond me, and I was playing on the large unit scale, not even the newer, larger one either just sad. I pray for manor lords to save us from this depressing saga.
I know that it's not been the main point of Total War but can you talk about the removal of decent campaign mechanics such as population, infinite building slots so that you had to actually priorities buildings, the removal of the recruitment pool mechanic in Medieval 2 that forced army variation (this would have worked well in Warhammer), the fact that agents can't be used to spread disease to other cities.
I don't think planned obsolescence of units is necessarily a bad thing. You can have a cheap and easy to recruit unit that is later replaced with something better and only used again in desperate situations. But there is a caveat - this can only work in a game with a well-made and engaging economy/technology simulation. Something Total War has notoriously always been bad at
Man, this reflects modern game development so hard it hurts. Take any popular franchise and compare older iterations to the modern ones. Physics has become another casualty in the race to see the hairs up a character's nostrils. You end up getting lumbered with an oversized snowglobe, a beautiful world that you can't interact with in any meaningful way.
@Pro Tengu I think I've got outdated info on that actually, but Remastered includes classic Homeworld 1 along with updates to let it play well with modern systems.
Don't worry, most people playing newer Far Cries (everything after 2) did also not notice that much of the physics simulation was gone. I mean, aside from most of the weather simulation, proper Stealth and so on.
Thanks for putting into words what I've felt for a long time - it's like a generation of gamers (and developers it seems) have had their brains fried by games like WoW and other number-driven RPGs where everything is balanced by tweaking numbers and pressing buttons, "APM burden" is precisely the term to use. I remember getting into these arguments years ago before quitting WoW, it's a 3D action game and trying to look at it through a 2D spreadsheet will never give you the full picture.
I think one of the best examples of non-spreadsheet effects working magic in Total War is the phalanx in Rome 1, it isnt powerful because it boosts numbers magically, it is powerful because of the inherent skills of the unit. It also does not hurt the unit in flank combat because of a de-buff on your unit spreadsheet, but because the unit is actually trying to hold the phalanx formation and therefore the flanks are vulnerable and only defended by a smaller line of men with swords instead of their pikes/spears. In Rome 2 IIRC the hoplite phalanx is basically no different than the spear wall or shield wall abilities, in that they stand slightly closer together. I think you put it brilliantly in this video how total war has basically become the art of balancing excel spreadsheets, rather than mastering tactics and knowing the small niches of your units. The way I had always put it to myself was that in the original games (Rome 1 and med 2) what was happening on the screen was actually tied to what was happening in the game, in modern ones, it is not in many ways. in modern TW's units can be in "shield wall" and get all the buffs without any visual representation on the screen. They do not get the advantages of shield wall because they ARE IN a shield wall but because I can click a stupid button . In medieval 2 handgunners and cannons had detailed reloading and fireing animations (kingdoms expansion even added the volley fire effect that you described in Shogun 1, also putting musketeers in skirmish mode made them fire by file rather than rank; that is what made med 2 so amazing, all these small minute details to master in the game that can be applied tacitly at different times), Warhammer does not have any of these animations, the cannons do not fire because the soldiers have finished relaoding them and the officer gave the order, but because they magically do every x number of seconds. At this point I think CA had completely lost the ability to make any games of substance, I see no reason to purchase anything they make until they get back to actually making me feel like a historical general, rather than a video editor and spreadhseet balancer.
In Rome 1 I was pleasantry suprised when my unit of greek archers wasted half of their ammo on a militia hoplite on top of a hill and did not cause one single loss, in fact the animation of the the shield being hit by the arrows was interesting to say the least.
@@sandrothenecromancer6810 Shields even work when they're at people's side. Hit them when they're running sideways on the side with their shield, and it does less damage than the other side with no shield.
hoplite phalanx in rome 2 is more historically accurate despite its flaws. hoplites didnt use 3 metre long pikes like in rome 1. in reality they were basically greek triarii.
@@stephenhartley2853 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dory_(spear) I think the truth is in between. a greek phalanx was more than a spear wall but less than a short pike phalanx. The idea of the dori was to be longer than tradtional spears, but not a pike
There will never be another wedge formation like in shogun 2 in the new total war games. The hp system makes this impossible. It is entirely possible that an attack on charge from cavalry against an infantry soldier hits, damages, and does not kill. The infantry soldier will then be knocked back. Then when the soldier is on the ground, it can't be hurt, because units that are on the ground can't be injured (at least in warhammer). This means that the cavalry unit will get stuck when trying to push through. If you want to push through a unit in warhammer, the unit you are charging better be close to dead (or you're using a fresh heavy chariot against an unbraced unit).
Problem with total war is that it connects the worst parts of rng and physics, all the physics do is make the formations bug out, soldiers get stuck etc.
I had no idea wedge had those bonuses in Three Kingdoms. I never used it because even with the bonuses it affords in Rome 2, you got better rear charges by lining up he cavalry perfectly in a rectangle matching the width of the units you wanted to kill. It kinda pisses me off that that's part of the reason why I was having such a terrible time. There are so many units that just didn't seem to work in Three Kingdoms and I was instead using generals to do almost everything, and now I find out there was a cavalry win button?
This has been the best video so far. It’s absolutely the core of the issue, the move from physics based simulation to stat based simulation is why the quality of battles in TW has declined. It’s fun to watch the spectacle in a game like Warhammer, but ultimately it’s little more than a game of top trumps actually playing out in front of you
yep i really knew i was addressing something fundamental to the problem with these games with this one. i came back to TW in 2019 with a fresh attitude (5 year hiatus where i never launched a TW game), and immediately noticed that in 3k, magic buttons were most of the source of my success. no point in positioning or tactics or timing. just click buttons. get numbers. win. bad game.
@@Volound It’s part of the issue with special abilities and 1-clicks in general really. You get a trade off, cool in game event that makes your units effective or kills a load of the enemy but at a loss of the simulation aspect. Guess it’s one or the other in game design these days!
39:03 It's also because the devs "agree" that HW1 was/is better than 2. CA is unwilling to accept that their newer products are worse than their older products. Why? Probably because of the hordes of people that have thousands of hours in WH1 and WH2 and have bought every DLC. The first #spreadshite I was aware of was in 3K. Owning all of the horse pastures basically gave you cav units with 0 upkeep. I mean, it makes sense that owning a horse pasture would make your horses better in some capacity. But horses are big, important, and expensive creatures. I don't care how many pastures you own, a horse is never going to be free. I was playing Atilla recently and I had a city defense. I put my artillery in the town center (on one of those massive hills). The enemy artillery, that was lower than mine, was able to hit my artillery because they were targeting either the wall, or the unit I had on the wall, and they were missing. That's not a #spreadshite but, it still makes 0 sense logically, or physically. I guess it was the AI being accidentally smart.
oh man, the horse pastures were one hell of a big steaming pile of #spreadshite indeed. i remember noticing that and being put off the game immensely. and yeah the devs of homeworld admit it. CA can only make half-hearted jokes in their video about the rome remaster campaign map marketing video.
Suggestion for a mechanic to cover in this series: Morale/Leadership. It literally doesn't work in modern games, and you actually brushed up against the issue in this video where you showed that one unit enveloped in four of your units but still fighting. But it's so much worse than that. In Total Warhammer in particular, morale is self-sustaining for all sorts of units, and certain factions have such high morale that they're effectively unbreakable despite not having the Unbreakable trait. This makes any and all tactics aimed at routing enemies completely useless. So you have a mechanic that's implemented with the purpose of simulating the morale of soldiers on the battlefield, but it ends up being utterly dysfunctional in every tactical scenario you could imagine. Units rout when they shouldn't and stand their ground when they shouldn't. And of course, with single-entity units, the problem is made even worse, since they completely ignore all of the leadership penalties you can apply to units with flanking and other tactics, which further destroys the mechanic itself.
Just had an epiphany: one of the main reasons for the spreadsheeting is the following: the *armour-piercing mechanics of post-Rome2* By having some "armour-piercing" damage on every unit, this essentially *disables the concept of "hard-counter"* Hard-counter being defined as having units that can't defeat others because of intrinsic properties The result of this is that *DPS becomes* *the primary* *unit property* , instead of role on the battlefield This means essentially a serious *reduction* *of* *"orthogonality"* : defined as unit roles not overlapping on the battlefield In summary: *having "armour-piercing" on every unit leads to loss of orthogonality, which itself means reductions of layers (to just the "DPS" layer) on which units can be evaluated, which it turn means a hierarchy of utility can be established easily, hence leading to single-unit strategies, and loss of gameplay depth.*
i remember one of my biggest turn off while playing warhammer is the moment the spearman breaks formation to twirl around when the enemy charged at them. i closed the game in disgust immediately after that. also, wtf did they make it a passive brace function? i want my button back for telling them to hold the line. i still remember my yari ashigaru couldnt get in formation quick enough and get destroyed cuz i wasnt paying attention in Shogun 2 and they never stepped out of line to twirl like a balled dancer when in formation. also units actually hit each other to kill, not just the air around them.
When I first played Rome back in 2004, I was amazed at the realistic-feeling battles in full 3D with proper physics any everything. Shields actually block missiles! Formations get disrupted by impact! Dudes fall off walls when they die near the edge, or the wall collapses! I thought that years later, as computing power improves, we'd get even more physics-based mechanics with everything being simulated in detail. Stuff like more detailed armor penetration mechanics, kinda like in the Men of War games with tanks, except with armored infantry. Fully destructible cities and fire spreading (Attila came close there). But instead of getting more simulationism, we got less... it's all about making stuff look cool (but even that has been cut down, musketeers don't even visibly reload anymore lol), and instead of thinking about tactics in a natural way it's all just about numbers.
My biggest problem with 3K is that, even in records mode, the generals themselves are too strong. Not the bodyguard units, they're fine. But there should always be a risk that your general gets killed. It's not the case in 3K. An unbreakable general will be the last man standing in all cases - on his horse, surrounded by spearmen, all of his bodyguards dead and all of his allies shattered 4 minutes ago. That kind of stupid shit shouldn't be in records mode.
That is something I miss about the older games. Yeah, you’ve spent time making the general into a beast, but if you get reckless and lose him, he’s gone. All that effort and hard work is down the drain because you weren’t careful with your asset. I haven’t played 3K, but in Warhammer it’s the same. Build a general, and then lose him? Oh well, he’ll be back in a few turns.
I actually find it funny that ranged units in TW Warhammer act worse than in tabletop Warhammer. As you shown in many instances, all men in a ranged unit fire regardless of whether or not all of them have range. On tabletop a whole unit (usually 10 or 20 models) can't shoot if all of them are not in range and only the units that can reach will fire. That's because each unit has his own stats in the game that say one model has a range of 32" or less meaning if I put them in a line only the ones in front would fire. It's funny to me how they couldn't even replicate this from the tabletop game.
I belief that the hp system ruins any chance of tactics to develop, and only limits the game with its basic rock papers scissors gameplay. the old system gives players more opportunity to improvise and come up with their own strategy.
Proper wedges are so useful they keep cavalry speed up when you break their lines with it and keep moving like cavalry should...if you don't use wedge you'd get a decent charge but soon get bogged down and shredded realistically
In my favourite Total War experience of all time is Fall of the Samurai. The game does an absurdly great job where it can, failing only due to technical problems with Shogun 2 (big sieges screwing unit movement, inability to chase down enemy units in multiplayer, etc.) and my one gripe with Shogun 2, making artillery too strong and giving them limited ammo instead of the Napoleon design. My favourite upgrade in the game to get in the tech tree is the one which enables "kneel fire". Arguably maybe that should have been a feature of the units from the very beginning, and upgrades should unlock fancier tactics like firing advance, but either way I think this contributes to your point about simulation vs. spreadsheeting. This upgrade effectively doubles the firing rate of your units instantly, and is a complete paradigm shift for your armies rendering melee units far more useless than they were at the start of the game. When previously yari levies might manage to collide with your line infantry and tear them a new one, now those melee units can't get close unless they use serious hit guerilla tactics. This all comes down to a change in unit behaviour with absolutely no statistical buffs whatsoever. A unit of Royal Marines in kneel fire will annihilate any melee unit that charges at it, no problem. The cost is that units can't move while in kneel fire, which isn't so much of a problem seeing as your units aren't moving while firing anyway, but it does mean you can't respond to an envelopment as easily. What is really key about this is that the inability to move while kneeling down is not a stat nerf, it's simply part of the simulation. You *can't* run around when one of your knees is on the ground to let people shoot over your head. It's just amazing how an upgrade in Shogun 2 which changes behaviour only, doesn't touch stats in the slightest, is a complete paradigm shift for gameplay and can catapult you into the most powerful army in the game, no matter how shitty your line infantry units are, for as long as you have that advantage over your enemy.
man, the FotS siege pathing stopping during big battles is terrible. so bad. youre onto something with kneel fire and firing advance. someone left a comment further down describing how empire apparently had loads of these kinds of formations/behaviours. actual formations and actual behaviour modification that changes how the unit functions in terms of movement/firing/space etc. these things involve game systems and introduce gameplay possibility. im sure you could talk about kneel fire all day just like i could talk about wedge all day. these things arent even fully explored, just like the blink of dishonored will probably never be fully explored.
@@Volound There is a lot of intricacy to napoleonic tactics certainly. March columns, assault collumns firing lines, bayonet boxes, fire by rank, advance and fire countermar h, fire a at will, hold fire to recieve charge, brace to recieve charge, bayonnette charge, skirmish line, skirmish pairs, prone fire. And these are just formations for lime infantry. Being able to control all of this in an ellegaint manner is already a large challange.
Tetsudo was not used much, not in field battles. It's main use was in sieges approaching city walls... that cavalry wedge also looked more real for the period if you tried something so silly - charging full pelt into the front of a disciplined infantry unit would have been stupid. Dangerous not only to the horses coming behind you in the rear once the front rank stops, but also because you're charging a block of organized infantry. If anything, it looks like it's getting more historically correct! :P How does the wedge do against light infantry and cavalry? I see the wedge working in Shogun two but they're charging thin lines of men, not a bulk of shield infantry...
One thing I have always appreciated about game design is that if you make an ability too powerful, you shouldn't jump right to nerfing it- you should add a mechanic to balance it, and if need be tweak the origional mechanic and it's counter accordingly once both are implemented. Sometimes, ya gotta adjust the numbers (IE a lot of FPS's like warzone), but I always appreciate a game that creates powerful mechanics, and then creates other powerful mechanics you can exploit to counter those mechanics, and so on and so forth. Your dishonored example reminds me a bit of Witcher 3 in that regard- the basic magic you can cast all can get different upgrades but each comes at a cost, and not every ability is going to be effective against all enemies so you have to pick and choose how you want to interact with the sandbox and recognize that you'll never have an invincible build.
36:02 In all honesty, i'm sceptical about this explanation. At any given time, you would have MAXIMUM 2-3 times as many units on screen in HW2, compared to HW1. Now, i know computers weren't as potent back then as they are now (duh), but physics calculations for what we see in hw1 - i can't imagine them being all too complex even for those machines. Think about it - we have mass, velocity, and vector for physical calculations. Plus, health and armour. Maybe, penetration chance for some weapons. AFAIK, Homeworld 1 isn't like Children of a Dead Earth, which takes an absurd amount of parameters to calculate effect of each projectile for the sake of realism. At no point there should be any calculations in hw1 that are more complex that basic vector math, as far as physics is concerned. Hell, they could have even optimised the process by "spreadsheeting" some of the results, if not all of them, considering how mass and projectile speed is constant (as far as i remember), so you could just precalculate them and put them in a table to just read from as needed. And it's not that hard to program either. UPD: I have forgotten about such thing as raycasting/collision detection. Depending on how it's implemented, it can make calculation exponentially more expensive in relation to the amount of simulated objects on screen. "Fatebound to hit" projectiles would allow to shave off a significant fraction of that. UPD2: 42:48 Bloody hell, this guy, Fusilier, again. Why do i keep seeing him everywhere?
Hw1 and 2 had about the same number of units on screen, an upper limit of about 150 in your fleet. Both games have fully physically simulated projectiles. HW2 might use raycasting for fighter machineguns, but heavy artillery and missiles are dodgable.
Games used to be the domain of the nerd. By and for nerds. Devs expected a little more of a playerbase, and the player base expected and appreciated realistic details because realism was an object in and of itself. Modern games are more focused around being flashy and overtly competitive.
I'm watching your series "Total Decline: A Total War Analysis" and it's great. Your comparison between Thief 2014 rope arrow and 3K wedge ability is really good 24:00 I was also baffled by the mediocrity of this reboot
cheers man. and yeah i had these ideas for years, had lots of time to put them into words with good examples. glad youre appreciating the work. this video in particular ended up being very influential and the term "spreadsheeting" is now commonplace. people know exactly what it means.
@@Volound I grew up with Homeworld 1 (what a masterpiece) and I didn't even know that they replaced a physical system with numbers/RNG in the remaster but also in the nu-Total War 34:00 I'm a casual player so most of people like me couldn't notice the sacrifice of such crucial element of gameplay (I completely forgotten you could use ships as kamikaze, it's amazing). Your videos are extremely helpful
This is concretely explaining something that bothered me for years yet I couldn't pin it down. How most of the gameplay boils to "better units beat worse units" instead of units having roles and uses. How the numbers game underneath it all turn battles into a slugfest of stacking modifiers. If you went into battle with a high enough set of numbers, no ammount of tactics will change the final result, it levels the gameplay by limiting the possible results. A pike phalanx in a bottleneck, legionaires in testudo advancing and shock cavalry charging an unbraced light skirmish unit, all of these are supposed to be the perfect roles for these units. Yet we cannot trust this to work, because what we see is just the result of the calculations going underneath it. Instead of trying to mitigate and solve it, TW and other RTS simply show us the numbers and go all in. The game becomes about getting the higher numbers and the supposed tactics are a sideshow to it.
I know you haven't played it, but the unit mass and collision problems have always been an issue with Warscape, going back to (and painfully obvious in) Empire. It's a wonder to me that Shogun 2 doesn't suffer the same issues, as it appears to be literally the only game after Medieval 2 that isn't an absolute mess in melee combat, and I have no idea how.
Moshpitting is less incentivised, so there is less chance for models to overlap. Unit collision is still not very good in shogun, units will slide around like skaters to phase out of other units, or get into position for sync kills. You can see it rather clearly in sieges when the last umits get dogpiled.
I haven't bought a single Total War game more recent than Rome 2 thanks to its release fiasco making me lose trust with CA, but I have enjoyed watching the series go sideways and trip backwards more than it has gone forwards and gotten bigger and better.
For any Shogun 2 noobs that see this (like me), since you mentioned Yari Wall in the intro, just today I did a battle in which I was caught off guard, the whole enemy army was charging my undefended archers (the army being about 7 yari and 2 archers of ashigarus and two generals), I barely got my 5 ashigaru in front of my 4 archers and managed to put only the first two units in wall formation. A minute later, the enemies which attacked the yari walls were routing, I turned my spears around and flanked the remaining enemies.
Did you watch the new TWW3 gameplay where your units can teleport through the barricades to attack enemy units on the other side? This is similar to how units now teleport up walls in the siege battles. I noticed too that artillery animations in Shogun 2 show a complete reload animation, whereas Warhammer titles merely have artillery gunners move at the cannon with no reload. Why is it that Creative Assembly can’t implement that level of detail again? Why is the act of climbing stairs on the defending side of a siege battle too complicated for the largest gaming company in the U.K.? I wish they would go back to Shogun 2’s level of detail.
I'm slowly but surely coming around to new TW but I want to point out that you're nailing everything I still have a problem with in everything from Rome 2 (which initially flat out killed the series for me) onward I've played and really hope that the complaints of the old guard gets us something a little closer to the Shogun 2 and previous era at some point.
@Pro Tengu i don't know about that, reddit is a pretty bad dumpster fire itself. then again i have stopped useing both, for the most part, as i don't like the smell of burning trash (to continue with the metaphor)
@@Volound after your exposés of CA and the way they manipulate public opinion I didn't think their failures (and a corresponding lack of callouts) could surprise me anymore but this one is truly special.
Imagine being on a battlefield, and your side has bows,and the enemy brought a tank, and your commander tells you "Don't worry son, keep pepering that tank with shortbow fire, we will get it eventually." And then that plan WORKS.
Volound, I would like to see a video in this series about the modding community. What can/should mods change in your opinion, and to what extent can mods "save" the new titles?
Honestly, I'm skeptical about Manorlords. It's being developed by a studio that doesn't have any track records yet. Just wait and see. And remember, no pre-order...
As I recall it , there was a period of time in shogun 2 , when the AI broke the wedge . Your lead unit would contact the enemy and the formation would stop and kinda filter into combat . This is likely why players stopped using it , and possibly why CA switched to easy buffs rather than the difficult job of fixing AI .
people seem to be much happier with it now. still cant kamikaze ships in quite the same way, and theres no fuel (not a big deal), but 99% of people would go to the remaster over the original, now. remaster succeeded.
I almost forgot how stupid it looks to shoot accurate artillery in WHTW. Right in the center of the squad. Although in Med2, ballistas also suffered from this disease.
Just for another point of view, i played total war when i was much smaller the games like mediavel 1 and mediavel 2, now i never felt i was interested in going back until Three Kingdoms after Shogun 2. Something about both the campaign gameplay and the setting really made me interested the real time battles also feel great. Now i have played it even more than i played Shogun 2. They are clearly doing something right for a person like me.
33:35 The worst part is they weren’t even some far off alien. They were either straight up your species or species with a close common ancestor. The way they operate and how driven to violence they are really makes you better able to imagine the massive empire your species once had, and the reason that even after all this time what little scraps of that empire remain are still hunted to the ends of the galaxy for their crimes however many millennia back. On top of this they are a perfect example of a culture created from trauma, that is the trauma of being left to die in the nebula. Sorry I know this video isn’t about the fluff of home world but I think it has surprisingly good story elements for such a mechanics space game.
I just wonder when Total war is just going to start having power up items on the battlefield for your units to pick up to get boosts or abilities, just like Super Mario.
First of all I fking love your accent man! Good job on this video, spot on. I have so many things to say to express my frustration with the current state of TW but can't fit it all here so I will try to be as short as possible. The graphics of the TW games have evolved but pretty much everything else devolved. I don't play a single TW game without mods. Prime example being the Rome 2 and DEI (imo best mod for any TW game ever). I played every single game since Rome 1 and have been a faithful fan for years. I tried playing 3K but I simply couldn't. Tried 3 times and pretty much gave up right after 2 or 3 turns and one single battle. It's quite horrible really, it's so arcadish, so streamlined that it's unbelievable. UI all over the fucking place both in campaign and in battle. The whole game is screaming at you that it is a game like those cringy ones on mobile platforms. I mean ofc it is a game but I want to immerse myself like I could back in the day watching the whole volleys from the soldier pov in Napoleon or Empire or melee combat in Medieval 2 and Shogun 2. I want to feel like I am there. Is it such a big thing to ask? It is because we care for these games that we complain and discuss things like this. It's not because we are haters like all the kids these days would say. Pretty much every time I tried saying things like this I get silenced. It seems we are not the majority any more. People these days seem to like things as simple as fking possible so a 2yo can play on the same level as 40yo. The success of 3K speaks volumes in these terms. Don't even get me started on Troy. My childhood dream, being a huge fan of history and mythology , especially Greek, came true. Or so I thought. I got the game for free on Epic and I will only say no wonder they gave it for free. Wouldn't pay 10 bucks for it. Hell not even 5. As for the Warhammer games I have mixed feeling. At first I didn't want to even try them out but when the second game came out I bought the both games and most of the DLCs. I decided I had to try it out, else I couldn't call myself a faithful fan of TW games. I really don't know what to think about those. I like some of the mechanics, the graphics but they also seemed to streamline and arcade stuff quite a lot. I mean just look at the sieges. Hell, look at the new game mode in WH3. Lol. A fucking mobile game like I said. Not a fking TW any more, imo. But, again, I seem to be in minority as most people like this stuff. I guess sales show that and sales are the only things that CA cares about no matter what the devs say. Again, good job on this video mate and I hope you make more of these video and raise attention to this, imo huge problem for TW. We really need to speak up.
troy and 3k both being shit were what did it for me. and it was obviously warhammers fault. theyre just mods for warhammer. every total war game to come out in the past 3 years has been fucking warhammer 1 derivatives.
@@Volound I haven't looked at it that way but now that I think about it I must say I agree completely. I can't really express how sad I feel about all this. I grew up with these games and seeing the franchise slowly crumble does bother me. I want to see WH3 come out so that we will be done with that franchise at least. I hope they can focus on history more but then again they will most likely ruin it for me. I don't want to see Medieval 3 or Empire 2 that look and play like 3K or Troy. Now that would be a fking disaster. They will continue this route for sure. I don't have the facts but I bet 3K and WH games tramped the sales of all other games before. Which ofc means they will continue to simplify the wedge formation.
yep same here. its not something you usually think about or stumble upon. its really obvious when you look at coverage of the upcoming warhammer 3. the amount of recycling is extreme. even with almost all of the game already there, they still engage in recycling to save time and money.
@@Volound do you think that we have a chance for an Empire 2 after they are done with WH3? Or maybe Medieval 3. Is there any indication on what they plan to do after they are done with WH3 (I mean all the DLCs and all)?
Will I ever get a Date campaign with badass nodachi maneuvers 🥺👉👈 Also what's your opinion on Rise of the Samurai compared to the other Shogun 2 campaigns? Would you/have you ever played it?
the one thing tha makes the shogun 2 gameplay truly difficult stuff is not the fact that there are 37 different battle mechanics trowed at the same time at you from the very beginning of the game without much context or information,but more from having 37 mechanics that interconnect with one another,creating infinite possibilities and choices of gameplay,20 or so viable options of style,7 actually good builds and 2 optimal ones,but to create a single ''build'' you need to known(information) and test(performance) and refine(improvement,competency) so much shiet in so many levels that goes from micro choices and trade offs and move the camera move a bunch of units to macro planing to exploring/discovering new information,from toughs and logic to feel of a mechanic ,from making a decision tanking one singular idea in mind to principles with take multi variable stuff into account,etc, etc,you get the gist of it. having said that, its funny to think that, this way i described the unique property that makes this game interesting and challeging,is the exact same way that volound boy is describing the problems with new total war game gameplay,its just that evething after ''mechanics interconnected with one another'' become one distorted,twisted mess with mediocre assessment ,mediocre ideas and mediocre execution.all that big brain energy spent in old games that compounds a very unique intesting experience now dedicated to monkey brain addict dopamine experience,its like going from real life to facebook,except that facebook shitshow is intended by design(i guess).
Or that I do not have the reaction speed that is quick enough to handle chain routes. I loved the slower Napoelonic and Empire era line battles. The principle behind those are more simple, more focus is on how well you read and react to circumstances, and how well you took advantage of the opportunity when they arrived. Shogun 2 reward making quick decisions, Napoleon reward making calculations. Three Kingdoms and Warhammer took what I dislike about previous total war and increased them. The battles are much shorters, the stats played more roles, historical accuracy be damned and the cavalry in which actions are more limited but useful, suddenly become the main force.
i can understand and tolerate the use of RNG and spreadsheet elements in games, there is a limitation to what can be simulated with physics engines on compter processing/etc. however, these games should be increasing elements simulated by physics rather than RNG and spreadsheets as technology gets better, not losing it (which is what makes me mad about modern total war), at least in real-time games (turnbased games [and grand strat] will always be somewhat abstract and thus physics engines won't necessarily be the best way to represent them everthing) also you are really selling the homeworld series to me, gonna get my hands on it after my exams this semester.
can you think of aspects of these games that have become spreadsheeted? can you infer what that would even mean just from the word alone?
I’d guess it means how the Total War series has become more about “ok, if I get this research I can get +50% missile resistance” rather than actually focusing on the tactics within the battles. Horizontal versus vertical progression. Like in Shogun 2, you know the advantages and disadvantages of using muskets, and how to properly utilize them in a battle with infantry holding the enemy in place while your muskets drop the enemy infantry. Nowadays, as you’ve pointed out in Three Kingdoms, you can just get 100% magical missile resistance to where no projectiles will drop anyone within a unit. Instead of terrain, unit specific strengths and weaknesses, and real world tactics, it’s instead all about how high you can get certain numbers.
Pure stat crunching meta builds. With warhammer obviously being the worst offender.
Watching people spreadsheet craft and build a single legendary lord (with the right items, skills and traits) who can take down 7,000 enemies plus three legendary lords BY HIS LONESOME?! It tells me that total war is fundamentally broken and moving into a MOBA style gameplay where you just pop abilities to win.
The fact that it's nearly impossible to win against higher tier units with lower-tier units even with better positioning, such as a high ground advantage, or tiring of the enemy in higher difficulties. Like, in Rome Remastered, hate all you want on the game, at least if I tire out those urban cohorts, at least I know I can destroy them when I flank them with a levy pikemen sandwich as the Seleukids, or I can hastati sandwich those Bull Warriors. In 3K, if I surround pearl dragons with four spear guard, they'll fight to the bloody end even if I tire them out and do all that.
Or I just play Records mode where the AI literally routs in a second bc they don't know how to walk their troops and making troops exhausted lowers their morale, attack and defence
Yeah when I play warhammer I have to have the mouse-over spreadsheet active at all times because unit functionality is often not very intuitive and there are so many units. If you don't use the spreadsheet constantly you risk taking bad fights because of arbitrary stat choices.
It's just when only stats become to matter, and their breakdown, that kills all intuitive behaviour in battle. In S2, no matter the stats when a unit is charging into a yari wall, or when it faces musketeers, they'd be dead meat anyways. In Modern TW physics, placement, tactics, lethality... these are not much relevant anymore, it's been all about stats since.
Damn, the US commander at Omaha beach forgot to click the testudo button for missile resistance.
LOL, never even crossed my mind to make this joke.
Military incompetence at its worst man...
That's a good one
If i strap some heavy spearmen onto the outside of my ship and click testudo do I suddenly become invincible to battleship missiles?
@@BobMcBobJr No but you'll get a +15 bonus vs large.
imaging playing chess and a rule is that when you press a button pawns can move like queens
@Pro Tengu woah, i didnt know replies could be hearted
You can if you reach the back of the board.
I re-made the Empire units from Total War Warhammer 2 in Totally Accurate Battle Simulator and got a better experience. At least in TABS every unit is an individual, the guns and arrows and crossbows are all distinct, and all the silly jank is on purpose rather than an accident.
It says a lot about the state of TW games when something intentionally goofy like TABS has more realistic battle tactics.
Wait, there is unit creator in tabs already?
Yes! TABS has so much potencial. The game has very few systems, but they are really deep and elegant
I appreciate how in Shogun 2 and FotS, in gunpowder units only the soldiers with a direct line of fire will shoot, making pike and shot formations and other tactics possible. If they made Shogun 3 today they would either stop the whole unit from firing if just one man's view is obstructed, or have all of them fire and butcher your unit with friendly fire (or phase through them). I also appreciate the intricacies of Yari Wall; you can stretch it out as far as possible but that increased the chances of enemy soldiers breaking through, or you could make a deeper formation that acts like a brick wall at the cost of covering less space. All without the game explaining it.
also the depth of the unit affects its morale. spaghetti lines have low morale and break easily, too.
But spreadshitting is so much easier and cheaper than modeling units.
Why spend time and money, when you could copy-paste, number tweak, and sell a shity game.
I've noticed this a lot of developers nowadays; all that matters is you buy the game, or buy the new DLC.
way bigger margins, way more often. thats the unresisted trend.
The "spreadsheeting" problem also happens heavily on the campaign map. Most buildings only give stats bonuses, like +5 to public order, +200 income, +10% income from peasantry, +10% replenishment rate, +25% food production, etc. Very few buildings have some actual impact on gameplay, presenting something new to the way you play the game.
Like what? What new game aspect could a building possibly bring, and when have they ever in any older Total War games either?
To be fair, I do take those things into consideration, at least in the early game. The choice of whether to build towards a new unit's building or secure my food supply is always good, imo.
@@Nicator_ In Shogun 2, you could only trade overseas if you improved your harbour to a trading port. You also needed the Nanban Trade Port to recruit gunpowder units. Most military buildings add new units you can recruit. Some buildings add new agents. In Warhammer you could build walls around a settlement.
I think you should also be able to build forts, trenches and other small defensive structures around the map to defend strategic positions, like Julius Caesar did a lot before a battle, instead of it being just an optional "stance" in your army. You could build bridges to cross rivers, that would be fun. You could build watchtowers to have line of sight in some important areas. You could build caravans or trade ships and manage your commerce on the campaign map instead of just signing a "trade agreement" with another faction.
You could build farms and cattle herds to keep your armies fed, instead of it providing a static food number to your faction. You could build granaries to store food from previous turns. You could build hospitals to prevent some plague event. You could build iron mines and weapons workshops to keep give your armies better equipment, different from what they have, instead of just being a stat boost. I don't know, these are just some ideas.
@@Nicator_ Also, roads. In Shogun 2 you could improve your roads to make your armies move a lot faster, and if you moved off roads you would move very slowly
@@ivellos I never this was a thing. Shows me how much I paid attention. lol
This video doesn't even go into how stat-stacking is such a problem in everything from Rome 2 through Troy. Rome 2's endgame was a joke because you could stack +experience on generals and +sword melee attack+defense on generals and get the already ludicrously overpowered elite units to even crazier heights. Warhammer 2 works the same way, to the point where an objective a player wants to pursue on Warhammer 2 on the highest difficulty is to grind pointless, challengeless battles for experience points on generals to get stat boosts from general skills, and to make the general, itself an overpowered single entity, even more broken. This is because killing a half rebel stack produces the same experience as killing a full enemy army stack, much like it did in Shogun 2, but in Shogun 2 you didn't really "farm" rebellions this way because the campaign was active enough that you didn't have time to engage in that kind of frivolity.
Just more and more evidence that the campaign of Total War is a completely fucking broken mess, too. And that matters because it translates into battle imbalances as well.
As for the actual video itself, I think it's an interesting debate to interrogate whether simulator gameplay vs abstracted gameplay is better and when one is appropriate over the other. On a strategy layer I often get pushback about the idea that better resource management and more intense economic gameplay and diplomacy would make for a better single player Total War experience, yet this isn't true for all players all the time: a lot of TW players prefer to have the streamlined economy because the TW campaign is an excuse to fight battles. So even if a more advanced economic is a better simulation, that doesn't necessarily translate to better gameplay as experienced by the player.
That said, it is painfully obvious that Total War has regressed from trying unique systems available only to 3D game engines, to functionally going back and playing Pen and Paper RPGs or tabletop Wargames. It is a regression, it takes no advantage of the unique possibilities in a 3D game engine. Just look at how modern flight simulators have innovated compared to earlier ones. And if that is how Total War wants to work, I may as well play games that haven't tried to innovate, but have instead improved upon and refined that old style, the Civilizations and XCOMs of the world, or in RTT, the Steel Divisions and Ultimate Generals, because even if it isn't innovative, it at least is good at what it's supposed to be, because modern TW is a failure at even being the type of game that it is, let alone the ambitious battle simulation it wanted to be in its infancy.
Yeah, behold LegendofTotalWar's recent videos on 'rating doomstacks' and the most ridiculous one I've seen so far is using loads of Dwarf Engineers to buff the damage and reload speed of Thunderers. The stacked stats produce a result that would not be possible if the mechanics were being simulated.
weren't you the guy who used to make eu4 guides
@@joestalin8723 that's me
Granular simulation tends to be more accurate on the small scale and short term, but due to emergent chaos is liable to produce nonsense with enough time. That said total war campaign maps are not that large scale, and evsn granular simulation rarely allows for positive feedback loops that the nonsense is usually the result of.
Total War in it's current state fails as a simulation. It no longer attempts to accurately depict battle; I'm not even talking about historically I just mean logically. Physics, formations, positioning, terrain etc and how the player interacts with them is now secondary in importance and effectiveness to the numbers on the unit card.
It is antithetical to the very core of what once was total war gameplay and design philosophy. When the outcome of events is predetermined by the "spreadsheeting" effect and not by emergent gameplay the game is stripped of any thought provoking interaction.
Total War post shogun 2 functions as a dopamine drip to the uninitiated. Anyone who was there pre shogun 2 that still advocates on behalf of these games is a weasel.
I can't even count the amount of people I've seen in the comments over the last year say something along the lines of: "I got into total war after shogun 2 and was unaware of how bad things had gotten, I'm glad I found this channel". They say it like they've been saved and it's because they have been. They've avoided sinking hundreds more hours into a vapid experience. Once they realize how shallow the game has become they lose interest. Their dopamine drip loses it's luster once the facade has been broken for them.
Funny thing is when I was discussing Total War with some friends at work another guy had no idea what we were talking about when we started to talk about different ways to put tactics that were not hammer and anvil on different types of terrain, but this other guy only wanted to talk about warhammer figurines, unit models and "customizing colors". We were like "how is this related to Total War?", but it seems that the average Total War player from nowadays only know about warhammer and nothing else.
I occasionally look at the TW reddit and it's 90% about Warhammer. Some posts are even purely Warhammer related, not even the WH:TW games.
I started with Warhammer and have nearly a thousand hours combined with Warhammer 2. I went back and played Shogun 2. It's so much better.
Warhammer fans can be the absolute worst of bottom feeders.
And I speak as someone who loves warhammer.
The "community" is a trashfire
@@JarlFrank its pretty much a just another WH forum these days. i unsubbed ages ago. don't even hate WH itself but it's weird how it kind of took over the TW community.
That's right, Warhammer is the root of all evil and will end Total War. Of course you can't blame mismanagement and CA throwing their Devs off and pissing up the Dev time. No it's obviously the WarHam fanboys.
I’m just amazed how terrain seems to make virtually zero difference in any of the TW’s I play. There’s so many things they could do with it like the ground getting muddy when it rains and completely preventing cavalry charges. But I guess the average TW player only cares about cool heroes and shit these days.
Agree. If CA wants to add buffs and nerfs, they should put it on terrain
@@reybladen3068 They already do
@@DaleWrecker it's not enough IMO.
They only care about how ut looks not how it plays and that's why the quality has gotten down, just like in new star wars content why bother writing good movies when you can make Luke Skywalker arrive and everyone goes crazy ? Why bother qorking on it if minimum effort gives you a good reward, thank god for the Med2 kingdomes overhaul mods
@op which ones are you playing as it has being a staple for some time just not always shown. Even the spreadsheet fest of WH has it with for forest and water. It was nice to see some extra in Troy though the AI seems to have no concept of it and it was easy to cheese ambushes with light infantry and take out a Paris or Hector elite stack.
“I’ll keep making these videos as long as I keep getting comments like this” so your gonna make these videos forever? Lol keep making good shit and keep calling out CA, love your videos.
Its been a breath of fresh air finding your videos. The last Total War game I bought was Rome 2 and the last one I played with any seriousness was Shogun 2. My "must buy and play the newest, shinest game" friends poke fun that I would rather play modded Medieval 2 than Warhammer Total War or that I keep coming back to Empire, despite its flaws. But I don't play these games to be spoon fed dopamine. I play to fulfill my autistic desire to roleplay a warlord. Thank you for the videos you make and your passion for this series.
thanks for being aware of yourself and being willing to face the situation honestly. everyone eventually does, you just were quicker on the uptake. always really appreciate these kinds of comments, every single time.
Based'n'tist pilled; The Chad 'tistic Warlord roleplayer versus the Virgin Spreadsheeting-Dopamine coooonsumer addict.
@@Volound I admit, That's a very optimistic (but I guess in a way too: good since it does provide some hope) viewpoint to have; But I doubt that and I don't really share that same sentiment to be honest with you Voulound here: My personal experience dealing with The average coooonsumer Is: that they will never wake themselves up from their own crippling dopamine addictions, no matter what nor how hard you may try to do so, you could even make the greatest Thesis or Treaties know to man. Explaining why it is so with the truest (and with the most very 'tistic in-depth) Awe-stricken of details at that and was or also has ever been conceived in human history. Always to be just denied fanatically by them, because in a way, this problem stems even deeper into a more serious issue, from what I've noticed with my dealings with them: That many of the average consumer of today, has replaced Religion and even morality to an extent, with blatant and baselessness consumerism and replaced religious worship with corporate Idolism (or idolatry of corporations), I know on your time on Reddit or even on here on YT you've probably seen those types who have said "I agree with you here" *but* (while completely disregarding what you have said and endlessly making up non-sensicale excuses) or white knight senseless for them even when they are in the completely and most blantantly wrong on something.....I believe that all of this is rooted by that issue and the fact that in a way these companies knowingly (or by accident) exploit that (the human need of religiousness or belief of or in *a* power) by "emulating" that to these people and in the process also make those same people become stockholmed due to the cultic mind-set that is present in many of the communities that were spawned from corporate products that gave them a "rush of a good time or feeling" in their entire life...... Sorry for the Reddit-sized essay here, if this just seems pure-nonsensical Schizo ramblings or if this was just pure shite because I'm not a very good writer, like at all.....
Playing barbs in Rome 1: the roman Infantry is stronger than mine. I must use hit and run tactics and attack from multiple angles to secure an advantage.
Playing barbs in modern tw: imma charge in a straight line and spam shield Wall and head hunter
Gg get rekt caeser
To CA's credit, the Barbarian factions were far better represented in Rome 2, but the mechanics really failed to flesh them out properly.
@@JA-lr5ix CA mostly copypasted from Europa Barbarorum.
@@pastorofmuppets9346 or berserkers or gothic cav or chosen archer warband (from range obviously)
@@pastorofmuppets9346 Germanys late game roster is specifically designed to allow them to fight the romans with half decent chances. This is true for all of the periphery factions (britania, germania, scythia, armenia, selucia, parthia, and even egypt to an extent.) The ones closer to rome are more geared around pre marian units and quickly get crushed by marian reforms in general (gauls chosen swordsmen can go about even with early cohorts but get rolled by proper legions)
The boii in Rome 2 were absurdly overpowered. Ridiculous to have my best heavy infantry losing to theirs on a head to head pitch battle fight. Completely stupid.
42:31 I had something similar to this in a Rome 2 campaign. during an ambush I managed to cut a Gallic general unit off from the rest of it's army and managed to charge it with 4 hoplite units. I managed to time the charge perfectly so that each unit hit the enemy at the same time with one unit attacking each side of the enemy simultaneously, instantly surrounding the enemy unit off the bat. The enemy general unit, despite being charged on all sides, in the disadvantage of being ambushed, and surrounded still managed to kill 200 hoplites (almost two WHOLE UNITS) before finally breaking, oro could not be more correct, no matter what strategies you use "bad" units simply cannot beat "good" units, at least without taking massive casualties.
Melee after Empire TW is essentially a glorified autoresolve where you just lead your troops to roll dices with the enemy.
I am one for making elite units truly be elite, but Rome II is ridiculous with this. I have literally lost a battle or two in Rome II because the enemy general unit, despite being utterly surrounded and cycle-charged by cavalry in the rear, still made my units retreat (it was a close battle before this point, so my units were a bit beaten up, but not near breaking). The Spartans would have won the Battle of Thermopylae if it was in Rome II since apparently if you are good enough flanking does not matter.
You know what was really cool about med 2s gameplay? The cavalry had to get a good run up to get their lances down for the best charge possible. No button to push, just good gameplay
the boi is back at it again with the fire that brings the ire
Everytime I see clips of Rome 2 where they discuss "Saving private Ryan" It really annoys me. Landings were basically NEVER opposed in the ancient world because you would need an entire army to be at the beach where the enemy was landing in order to fight and IF that was the case, the attacker could just sail up the sea and land his troops somewhere else. The reason landings in modern battlefields are oppossed is because with a couple of guys, a few machine guns and Anti-Tank launchers, you can do a LOT of damage to an approaching army.
It goes without saying the MG42 was not available to the common Roman soldier.... It may have been available to some high ranking officers though.
in the video they attack the city
You must have loved the bit in the new Indiana Jones movie where we get MG's used against Roman soldiers
Landings were still opposed though lol. Caesars invasion of Britain was an opposed landing twice. Sorry but it happened dude
@@thedonkey6704 That's an exception, not the norm.
@@NoobTamer exception or not it still proves that it happened. This guy being annoyed that something that happened is in a game is just sad
Thanks to your wedge formation video I've actually started implementing katana cav frontal charges followed up by melee infantry/musket volleys in my avatar conquest battles. Nobody expects you to charge your cavalry into their yari wall... and even fewer expect your cav to actually survive.
perfect example. and yeah its amazing how a unit of katana cavalry can charge straight through a yari wall and shred some archers while infantry follow up and the yari wall is flanked/breaking. the engagement actually goes favourably and its fascinating.
@@Volound Shogun 2 was really the last "simulation' total war. Just look at how the MP has evolved... given enough time it's become pike and shot. Just like real life... People that go in w/ just katana sam cores get shredded.
Oh, I thought the Yari-wall was impenetrable to melee from the front in all cases? I've made an error that's lasted nine years.
@@MasonDixonAutistic Katana cav is especially reliable at wedge charging. When wedge-charging a yari-wall head-on, your katana cav will take 25% casualties on impact, and deal about the same to the yari wall. So not a very favorable trade on the surface. But you want to immediately charge w/ your melee infantry b/c the yari wall's cohesion has been completely wrecked.
@@cole8834 Ah right, so it's a one-off desperate move in the event that you absolutely have to break the enemy line then; you have to make your follow-up action worth losing about 15-20 horseback samurai.
I feel like the newer games of CA are more based on power increase and magical abilities, while the older ones you actually need to strategize, plan and use tactics.
While in the older games the hills, forests, positioning, formation, directions, all of these details make a huge impact on the outcome of the battle, and expands the options and the strategizing, while in the newer games its more like pressing buttons that do weird stuff and increasing percentage numbers, and the formation of the unit or the situation itself makes nearly no impact.
This is the fundamental flaw of the design philosophy of the newer games.
Instead of fewer factors you can greatly impact in many ways, you now have many factors you can only impact in small ways.
-10 morale for killing the general in Warhammer is simply not enough.
@@the_honma6472 If I do remember the tabletop game of warhammer has formations and even madeshift building in the battlefield
@@sandrothenecromancer6810
formations were fairly limited (played 5th edition mostly)
There was mostly just skirmish (loose) formation and standard rectangle. Some factions had their own formations. Bretonnia had wedge formation for knights and archers. Lizardmen could mix koroxigors and skinks together into one unit, where each koroxigor was encircled by skinks.
Buildings could be placed, but I don't remember to what degree they could be garrisoned. There were also walls/hedges, light/dense forest, steep/non steep hills etc., having impact on movement and combat.
@@sandrothenecromancer6810 Ranks effected combat scores after a combat round, so thin lines were bad for most infantry units conversely archers could only fire in 2 ranks rather than the WHTW where it's best to fire in column to maximise focus of firepower. Also winners could increase frontage or lap around if frontage equal and once you had 4 or more models on side it counted as flanking giving further bonus to combat score.
So large units of bad troops such as goblins were fielded in large units and used to either hold up better units or as combined arms to provide a large combat score bonus to another unit like cav or monstorous infantry which would be more exensive to field in larger numbers to get said bonus. It's funny that Warhammer TT often nicknamed herohammer heroes have less effect on the TT battlefield than WHTW and could be slotted by a regular trooper with a bit of luck or maybe even one shoted by a war machine. It was enough of a threat that there was a 'look out sir' rule that allow a model of equal size to take the fatal hit for the hero (1in6 chance).
In WHTW if your combat heroes fall to regular troops you have either right royally screwed up or you are facing silly odds vs silly buff troops. Even then legend of total war has being doing a rate my lord doomstack highlighting how absurd a single buffed character can be. I think 1 beating 5 full stacks is the best so far , the others did not turn up and army losses kicked in making it instant victory.
That is genuinely true I play Attila and shogun and I had to strategize, like when I was outnumbered I put my men into a square formation and positioned my cavalry in the nearest hill or forest to obscure them. Then when the enemy attacked and were caught in the thick of there melee my general sprang forth and attacked them in the rear winning the battle
Please cover the flaccidification of the combat animations.
Rome 2 animation between armies fighting was so completely embarrassingly bad... Units swinging at each other's shields.. You paid for this mocap?
Total war cat did it recently
@@MrKYT-gb8gs Warhammer unit are just... SPIIIIIIIIN!
I got an email from Total War while watching this, right near the start too, with the title of the email being "Ah, I see you're a man of culture..."
Fucking brilliant timing
TW is sending u mails? I must not be on some mailing list
What you said about the wedge formation and formations in general made me feel complete.
Shogun 2 also relied on physics which made it absolutely beautiful. You could dodge arrows or projectiles (not muskets) by moving after they were fired and not take damage at all. Ashigaru archers will miss more against moving targets than compared to stationary targets. Cavalry charge is greatly impacted if u're running up hill or downhill. And when the modders increased the mass of the cavalry to make cavalry charges, particularly katana cavalry more devastating, they also noticed that now horses were more slower at going uphill because it was the indirect consequence of increasing the mass to improve the cavalry charge because the game uses a physics based system. Mangonels firing out of forests or archers firing into the forests hit the trees and wastes their ammo not because the game decides x% of the projectiles must hit trees but because the arrows themselves hit the trees while moving. You can block the enemy archers, towers and your own archers with terrain because it uses a physics system where the arrows have a limited arc flexibility instead of firing anywhere in range that it pleases and gets kills and losses from its stats. Yes, Shogun 2 had stats; accuracy, reload rate, attack and defense skill but none of them were as abysmal or horrendous as modern total war games.
Also by experimenting with a wedge formation, light cavalry can punch through a non yari wall yari ashigaru with only 16 losses as opposed to no wedge formation which easily loses over 30 out of 60 men and may not even punch through a non yari wall at all. The punching through ability comes from the horses in the rear pushing against the same spot the horses in the front pushed causing a gap in the enemy line as well as the horses dying less because the horses in the middle and rear were not exposed to spears, just the horses in the front which proves the absolute merit of a physics based system. When I experimented with this and discovered this in custom match, it immediately reminded me of how a school of fish bunches up into a huge ball to protect themselves. It will not save the fishes at the exterior but because the fishes at the interior is not exposed to the predator, they will not die and all that matters is that the interior survives while the fishes swim as a group to a safer spot. This is literally how a non predatory herbivorous fishes has been surviving for millions of years. So yay physics! And the dopamine hit I got from realizing this connection.
So basically loose formation used to be the simple fact that there was more empty space for missiles to miss, and now it gives a numerical missile defense bonus, somehow making the arrows hurt less.
wouldnt surprise me. you could probably actually test this by overlapping loads of loose formation units and totalling up the damage to see if arrows do less damage when they hit units in loose. i would seriously not be surprised at all.
It's ironic because the engine was gutted in the first place to accomodate ranged combat in Empire.
This is such a well thought out video that can be applied across so many modern genres. You really hit the nail on the head with many abilities being nothing more than APM tax having no real tactical reason to be used other than a pure number buff. It really highlights a problem pointed out in a previous video where it seems developers want to pigeon hole players into a "correct" way of playing rather than simply providing the tools for players to tackle a situation how they see fit, good or bad. I don't think streamlining is inherently a bad thing, and many times its a welcome improvement, but it seems with each iteration of streamlining a game or genre seems to lose depth, number of options, and overall freedom in general. Games are leaning more towards cutscene simulators rather than something you feel you are in control of or have any real input on the direction.
I think that a good comparison is actually to pen-and-paper RPGs. It's always been the case that one of the major distinction between a good GM (Game Master) and a bad GM is whether or not they let the 'rules as written' trump common sense or (most importantly) player agency.
For example:
Player: "My character uses his 'Experienced Sniper' ability to grant a +5 bonus to accuracy, which cancels out the -5 accuracy from shooting through a smoke cloud. Therefore, he hits the enemy as if the smoke weren't there."
Bad GM: "Okay. That's what the rules say."
Good GM: "...there's an opaque cloud of smoke. You can't see through it, so you get no bonus, regardless of what the rules say."
I get the same feeling with (using Volund's example) the Wedge ability in TW games.
Player: "My cavalry uses their 'Wedge' ability to enhance their charge!"
Good game: "...but they haven't formed *into* a wedge by the time of contact, so no bonus is applied."
This is essentially a miscommunication problem stemming from the fact that the company didn't think that simunlationist gameplay was an important element of the appeal of the brand, so they let it go in favour of, well, ease of design for the most part.
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Interestingly this is a similar scenario to table top Warhammer over the past decade or so. Both the space fantasy and medieval fantasy wargames used to be much more simulationist in the way they played (never remotely realistic ofc, but significantly more grounded in the fundamental interaction of the physical pieces between each other, and less so, if at all, on abstract bonuses meant to vaguely represent some intangible benefit). Modern Warhammer, as opposed to its older iterations, has this pervasive concept of "detachments" or "formations" - understood in this context as pre-determined ways to build your army list, which then confer to it a set of bonuses on the battlefield. The bonuses are meant to be an abstract representation of such a "formation" making tactical sense on the battlefield. It's this similar, sort of "forced results" design mentality.
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It's easy to see why it's convenient for the designer. If he wants to make a unit be good at a task, he doesn't need to make it good at the task inherently (which would require of him a deep understanding of the way his game will actually play) he just gives it a bonus when it does that one thing he thought should be its "intended use". From the designer's perspective this is a really convenient solution: all of his game pieces can be easily categorised and their strengths and weaknesses set in stone at the pre-production step. This gives the designer far more space to implement whatever he, in his mind, thinks would be #cool. And it WILL work as intended, because it has inbuilt magical properties that will make it work as intended. This makes the designer feel in control of the end product, to the detriment of the player's ability to explore the game's possibilities and thus master the game. Because the possibilities were predetermined from the get go, and there is nothing for the player to actually find or master (and if there is, it's blatantly silly cheese, like TW:WH archer spam against harder AIs).
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I suspect this problem, and this is wild speculation tbh, might have something to do with demographics. Not consumer demographics, but designer demographics. In the past couple of decades or so, we've had an influx of people formally trained to be game designers coming out of game designer schools. For this first time, well, ever. Before them, the people who designed TW (or Warhammer, or whatever), tended to be enthusiasts of the thing their game was trying to capture - be it through gameplay, tone, aesthetics etc. - not game designers hired to "gamify" that thing. Basically I suspect we're suffering from the problem of the industry trying to be professional, and thus creating an army of dimwit, mindless design monkeys, with a formal education in "game design"TM, rather than an interest, or breath of knowledge about, the given topic of the game they are supposed to design. So they just produce what they were told to produce at game designer "university", and put the coat of paint du jour on it. But I guess this is just a theory... A game theory... (Kill me.)
I just wanna make one note on artillery in Warhammer 2: the great cannons you showed have fairly solid physics models and effects for their cannonballs. Shots bounce and ricochet and deal damage in lines. Because they only aim at the center of the unit, are not very effective when said unit is coming in a line towards them, but when cannons fire from the side along the line they become devastating. That creates incentive for player to attempt to get the cannons in position on the flanks which creates other problems and lets your creativity and imagination work with different tactics and formations.
hate to break it to you king, but volound has never played warhammer total war in his life, and probably never will. Despite the fact he owns all the games and dlc, he refuses to play it because hes already made up his mind on the game. He only cares when his precious shogun 2 looks better
@@gabbo7101 yep this is all true. everything you said is correct.
@@Volound normally I wouldnt mind someone having an opinion on something without playing/trying it, but with how much you shit on nu-total war, when you havent even played half of it, makes you look ignorant at best and entitled at worst.
Dont get me wrong, med 2 and rome 1 are the peak of the series, but I gotta call bull when I see it
@@gabbo7101 ignorance is a lack of knowledge, but you havent tried to demonstrate any. the arguments stand and fall on their own merits. i could get hit by a bus tomorrow and my arguments would all stand just as tall as they were when i made them. you dont understand how reason and argumentation works. its weird that you would want me to play shit games but dont want to take a perfect opportunity to demonstrate any ignorance. just seems like a really stupid series of comments to be engaged in.
@@gabbo7101 yeah I have played both warhammers and some of the older total war games. His points make sense and stand. Not to mention warhammer had such an issue with balance that it's not fair to be called a strategy game. Seriously death stacking should not be a valid way of playing.
This is similar to, for me, the worst offender on NTW and ETW. The square formation. You don't even need to be in a square for the bonuses to apply. See cavalry charge, it is in your best interest to wait for the last second and press square. Plus, square's frontage is too big so they end up being "thin" squares so the natural counter (artillery) doesn't work. In fact, in some situations, it is better to be in a square vs artillery as it will hit less than vs a line formation. It also removes most of the cavalry dynamics that were eseencial in the period.
yeah thats a great example from the sound of it. theyre cheating with bullshit scripting instead of actually implementing the property properly. sad. didnt play empire long enough to experience it myself.
"There are no crossbows in Three Kingdoms. There are no slingers in Troy. There are no guns in Warhammer. There is no wedge in Three Kingdoms."
There is no Testudo in Rome 2. There is no Roman Empire in Attila. There is no gameplay in Thrones of Britannia. There is no control of controls in Rome Remastered.
Nerd
@@k311liike2 Well i dint knew being a nerd was a good thing.
There are guns in warhammer and the other stuff you said. I don’t get it?
no there arent. watch my ranged combat critique.
@@Volound Thanks for keeping my enthusiasm for Shogun 2 alive. It's one of those games that is not just great but beyond that, especially for the time it came out.
Thanks Volound. As always, really appreciate your efforts, criticism borne of love for these games, and hope for what they could be in future.
I really really was hoping on the Rome Remaster, and still, have some hope for the mods but seeing my general unit get stuck celebrating after wiping out a unit mid-battle with no way to get him to move killed it for me. How the pathfinding got worse is beyond me, and I was playing on the large unit scale, not even the newer, larger one either just sad. I pray for manor lords to save us from this depressing saga.
You are right total war needs some competition to steer it into a more tactical and less casual oriented gameplay
Yo I thought I was the only one that noticed that the pathfinding got worse
I know that it's not been the main point of Total War but can you talk about the removal of decent campaign mechanics such as population, infinite building slots so that you had to actually priorities buildings, the removal of the recruitment pool mechanic in Medieval 2 that forced army variation (this would have worked well in Warhammer), the fact that agents can't be used to spread disease to other cities.
I don't think planned obsolescence of units is necessarily a bad thing. You can have a cheap and easy to recruit unit that is later replaced with something better and only used again in desperate situations. But there is a caveat - this can only work in a game with a well-made and engaging economy/technology simulation. Something Total War has notoriously always been bad at
Man, this reflects modern game development so hard it hurts. Take any popular franchise and compare older iterations to the modern ones. Physics has become another casualty in the race to see the hairs up a character's nostrils. You end up getting lumbered with an oversized snowglobe, a beautiful world that you can't interact with in any meaningful way.
Damn, I had no idea Homeworld had that kind of physics simulation. Super interested in getting it now.
Remember it's only Homeworld 1 Classic that does, 1 Remastered is basically just Homeworld 2 with the classic units.
@Pro Tengu I think I've got outdated info on that actually, but Remastered includes classic Homeworld 1 along with updates to let it play well with modern systems.
Volund's video straight up says they added physics back to the Remaster.
Don't worry, most people playing newer Far Cries (everything after 2) did also not notice that much of the physics simulation was gone. I mean, aside from most of the weather simulation, proper Stealth and so on.
Wake up honey new Volound theory dropped
Thanks for putting into words what I've felt for a long time - it's like a generation of gamers (and developers it seems) have had their brains fried by games like WoW and other number-driven RPGs where everything is balanced by tweaking numbers and pressing buttons, "APM burden" is precisely the term to use. I remember getting into these arguments years ago before quitting WoW, it's a 3D action game and trying to look at it through a 2D spreadsheet will never give you the full picture.
wow was still great.. in pvp too, you just dranj too much raidiing coolaid
I think one of the best examples of non-spreadsheet effects working magic in Total War is the phalanx in Rome 1, it isnt powerful because it boosts numbers magically, it is powerful because of the inherent skills of the unit. It also does not hurt the unit in flank combat because of a de-buff on your unit spreadsheet, but because the unit is actually trying to hold the phalanx formation and therefore the flanks are vulnerable and only defended by a smaller line of men with swords instead of their pikes/spears. In Rome 2 IIRC the hoplite phalanx is basically no different than the spear wall or shield wall abilities, in that they stand slightly closer together.
I think you put it brilliantly in this video how total war has basically become the art of balancing excel spreadsheets, rather than mastering tactics and knowing the small niches of your units. The way I had always put it to myself was that in the original games (Rome 1 and med 2) what was happening on the screen was actually tied to what was happening in the game, in modern ones, it is not in many ways. in modern TW's units can be in "shield wall" and get all the buffs without any visual representation on the screen. They do not get the advantages of shield wall because they ARE IN a shield wall but because I can click a stupid button . In medieval 2 handgunners and cannons had detailed reloading and fireing animations (kingdoms expansion even added the volley fire effect that you described in Shogun 1, also putting musketeers in skirmish mode made them fire by file rather than rank; that is what made med 2 so amazing, all these small minute details to master in the game that can be applied tacitly at different times), Warhammer does not have any of these animations, the cannons do not fire because the soldiers have finished relaoding them and the officer gave the order, but because they magically do every x number of seconds.
At this point I think CA had completely lost the ability to make any games of substance, I see no reason to purchase anything they make until they get back to actually making me feel like a historical general, rather than a video editor and spreadhseet balancer.
In Rome 1 I was pleasantry suprised when my unit of greek archers wasted half of their ammo on a militia hoplite on top of a hill and did not cause one single loss, in fact the animation of the the shield being hit by the arrows was interesting to say the least.
@@sandrothenecromancer6810 Shields even work when they're at people's side. Hit them when they're running sideways on the side with their shield, and it does less damage than the other side with no shield.
Phalanx in Rome1 actually gives some boost to shield attribute.
hoplite phalanx in rome 2 is more historically accurate despite its flaws. hoplites didnt use 3 metre long pikes like in rome 1. in reality they were basically greek triarii.
@@stephenhartley2853 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dory_(spear)
I think the truth is in between. a greek phalanx was more than a spear wall but less than a short pike phalanx. The idea of the dori was to be longer than tradtional spears, but not a pike
There will never be another wedge formation like in shogun 2 in the new total war games. The hp system makes this impossible. It is entirely possible that an attack on charge from cavalry against an infantry soldier hits, damages, and does not kill. The infantry soldier will then be knocked back. Then when the soldier is on the ground, it can't be hurt, because units that are on the ground can't be injured (at least in warhammer). This means that the cavalry unit will get stuck when trying to push through. If you want to push through a unit in warhammer, the unit you are charging better be close to dead (or you're using a fresh heavy chariot against an unbraced unit).
Problem with total war is that it connects the worst parts of rng and physics, all the physics do is make the formations bug out, soldiers get stuck etc.
I had no idea wedge had those bonuses in Three Kingdoms. I never used it because even with the bonuses it affords in Rome 2, you got better rear charges by lining up he cavalry perfectly in a rectangle matching the width of the units you wanted to kill. It kinda pisses me off that that's part of the reason why I was having such a terrible time. There are so many units that just didn't seem to work in Three Kingdoms and I was instead using generals to do almost everything, and now I find out there was a cavalry win button?
Really enjoyed the cuts to saving private ryan to demonstrate how absurd their rome 2 promotional pablum was.
This has been the best video so far. It’s absolutely the core of the issue, the move from physics based simulation to stat based simulation is why the quality of battles in TW has declined.
It’s fun to watch the spectacle in a game like Warhammer, but ultimately it’s little more than a game of top trumps actually playing out in front of you
yep i really knew i was addressing something fundamental to the problem with these games with this one. i came back to TW in 2019 with a fresh attitude (5 year hiatus where i never launched a TW game), and immediately noticed that in 3k, magic buttons were most of the source of my success. no point in positioning or tactics or timing. just click buttons. get numbers. win. bad game.
@@Volound It’s part of the issue with special abilities and 1-clicks in general really. You get a trade off, cool in game event that makes your units effective or kills a load of the enemy but at a loss of the simulation aspect. Guess it’s one or the other in game design these days!
As a game developer, I watch your videos religiously. Such good insight.
39:03 It's also because the devs "agree" that HW1 was/is better than 2.
CA is unwilling to accept that their newer products are worse than their older products. Why? Probably because of the hordes of people that have thousands of hours in WH1 and WH2 and have bought every DLC.
The first #spreadshite I was aware of was in 3K. Owning all of the horse pastures basically gave you cav units with 0 upkeep. I mean, it makes sense that owning a horse pasture would make your horses better in some capacity. But horses are big, important, and expensive creatures. I don't care how many pastures you own, a horse is never going to be free.
I was playing Atilla recently and I had a city defense. I put my artillery in the town center (on one of those massive hills). The enemy artillery, that was lower than mine, was able to hit my artillery because they were targeting either the wall, or the unit I had on the wall, and they were missing. That's not a #spreadshite but, it still makes 0 sense logically, or physically. I guess it was the AI being accidentally smart.
oh man, the horse pastures were one hell of a big steaming pile of #spreadshite indeed. i remember noticing that and being put off the game immensely.
and yeah the devs of homeworld admit it. CA can only make half-hearted jokes in their video about the rome remaster campaign map marketing video.
Played each since M1. This vid helped me understand my frusteration with the newer releases
Suggestion for a mechanic to cover in this series: Morale/Leadership.
It literally doesn't work in modern games, and you actually brushed up against the issue in this video where you showed that one unit enveloped in four of your units but still fighting. But it's so much worse than that. In Total Warhammer in particular, morale is self-sustaining for all sorts of units, and certain factions have such high morale that they're effectively unbreakable despite not having the Unbreakable trait. This makes any and all tactics aimed at routing enemies completely useless.
So you have a mechanic that's implemented with the purpose of simulating the morale of soldiers on the battlefield, but it ends up being utterly dysfunctional in every tactical scenario you could imagine. Units rout when they shouldn't and stand their ground when they shouldn't. And of course, with single-entity units, the problem is made even worse, since they completely ignore all of the leadership penalties you can apply to units with flanking and other tactics, which further destroys the mechanic itself.
Just had an epiphany: one of the main reasons for the spreadsheeting is the following: the *armour-piercing mechanics of post-Rome2*
By having some "armour-piercing" damage on every unit, this essentially *disables the concept of "hard-counter"*
Hard-counter being defined as having units that can't defeat others because of intrinsic properties
The result of this is that *DPS becomes* *the primary* *unit property* , instead of role on the battlefield
This means essentially a serious *reduction* *of* *"orthogonality"* : defined as unit roles not overlapping on the battlefield
In summary: *having "armour-piercing" on every unit leads to loss of orthogonality, which itself means reductions of layers (to just the "DPS" layer) on which units can be evaluated, which it turn means a hierarchy of utility can be established easily, hence leading to single-unit strategies, and loss of gameplay depth.*
i remember one of my biggest turn off while playing warhammer is the moment the spearman breaks formation to twirl around when the enemy charged at them. i closed the game in disgust immediately after that. also, wtf did they make it a passive brace function? i want my button back for telling them to hold the line. i still remember my yari ashigaru couldnt get in formation quick enough and get destroyed cuz i wasnt paying attention in Shogun 2 and they never stepped out of line to twirl like a balled dancer when in formation. also units actually hit each other to kill, not just the air around them.
they abandoned the matched animations (the animation fidelity) after attila i think. warhammer/3k/troy is all just men stabbing the air.
@@Volound After thrones of Britannia actually ;) not that it’s worth mentioning
Men of War Assault Squad 2 is my favorite tactics simulation. true physics system and tactical gameplay. No magic buttons!
When I first played Rome back in 2004, I was amazed at the realistic-feeling battles in full 3D with proper physics any everything. Shields actually block missiles! Formations get disrupted by impact! Dudes fall off walls when they die near the edge, or the wall collapses! I thought that years later, as computing power improves, we'd get even more physics-based mechanics with everything being simulated in detail. Stuff like more detailed armor penetration mechanics, kinda like in the Men of War games with tanks, except with armored infantry. Fully destructible cities and fire spreading (Attila came close there). But instead of getting more simulationism, we got less... it's all about making stuff look cool (but even that has been cut down, musketeers don't even visibly reload anymore lol), and instead of thinking about tactics in a natural way it's all just about numbers.
Excellent vid. Clear arguments, great examples. Very convincing.
My biggest problem with 3K is that, even in records mode, the generals themselves are too strong. Not the bodyguard units, they're fine. But there should always be a risk that your general gets killed. It's not the case in 3K. An unbreakable general will be the last man standing in all cases - on his horse, surrounded by spearmen, all of his bodyguards dead and all of his allies shattered 4 minutes ago. That kind of stupid shit shouldn't be in records mode.
theyre immortal on the field. they die and get injured and respawn. boring game with no tension.
That is something I miss about the older games. Yeah, you’ve spent time making the general into a beast, but if you get reckless and lose him, he’s gone. All that effort and hard work is down the drain because you weren’t careful with your asset.
I haven’t played 3K, but in Warhammer it’s the same. Build a general, and then lose him? Oh well, he’ll be back in a few turns.
I actually find it funny that ranged units in TW Warhammer act worse than in tabletop Warhammer. As you shown in many instances, all men in a ranged unit fire regardless of whether or not all of them have range. On tabletop a whole unit (usually 10 or 20 models) can't shoot if all of them are not in range and only the units that can reach will fire. That's because each unit has his own stats in the game that say one model has a range of 32" or less meaning if I put them in a line only the ones in front would fire. It's funny to me how they couldn't even replicate this from the tabletop game.
I belief that the hp system ruins any chance of tactics to develop, and only limits the game with its basic rock papers scissors gameplay. the old system gives players more opportunity to improvise and come up with their own strategy.
Granular hp system + lacking physics engine.
Proper wedges are so useful they keep cavalry speed up when you break their lines with it and keep moving like cavalry should...if you don't use wedge you'd get a decent charge but soon get bogged down and shredded realistically
In my favourite Total War experience of all time is Fall of the Samurai. The game does an absurdly great job where it can, failing only due to technical problems with Shogun 2 (big sieges screwing unit movement, inability to chase down enemy units in multiplayer, etc.) and my one gripe with Shogun 2, making artillery too strong and giving them limited ammo instead of the Napoleon design. My favourite upgrade in the game to get in the tech tree is the one which enables "kneel fire". Arguably maybe that should have been a feature of the units from the very beginning, and upgrades should unlock fancier tactics like firing advance, but either way I think this contributes to your point about simulation vs. spreadsheeting. This upgrade effectively doubles the firing rate of your units instantly, and is a complete paradigm shift for your armies rendering melee units far more useless than they were at the start of the game. When previously yari levies might manage to collide with your line infantry and tear them a new one, now those melee units can't get close unless they use serious hit guerilla tactics. This all comes down to a change in unit behaviour with absolutely no statistical buffs whatsoever. A unit of Royal Marines in kneel fire will annihilate any melee unit that charges at it, no problem. The cost is that units can't move while in kneel fire, which isn't so much of a problem seeing as your units aren't moving while firing anyway, but it does mean you can't respond to an envelopment as easily. What is really key about this is that the inability to move while kneeling down is not a stat nerf, it's simply part of the simulation. You *can't* run around when one of your knees is on the ground to let people shoot over your head.
It's just amazing how an upgrade in Shogun 2 which changes behaviour only, doesn't touch stats in the slightest, is a complete paradigm shift for gameplay and can catapult you into the most powerful army in the game, no matter how shitty your line infantry units are, for as long as you have that advantage over your enemy.
man, the FotS siege pathing stopping during big battles is terrible. so bad.
youre onto something with kneel fire and firing advance. someone left a comment further down describing how empire apparently had loads of these kinds of formations/behaviours. actual formations and actual behaviour modification that changes how the unit functions in terms of movement/firing/space etc. these things involve game systems and introduce gameplay possibility. im sure you could talk about kneel fire all day just like i could talk about wedge all day. these things arent even fully explored, just like the blink of dishonored will probably never be fully explored.
@@Volound There is a lot of intricacy to napoleonic tactics certainly.
March columns, assault collumns firing lines, bayonet boxes, fire by rank, advance and fire countermar h, fire a at will, hold fire to recieve charge, brace to recieve charge, bayonnette charge, skirmish line, skirmish pairs, prone fire.
And these are just formations for lime infantry. Being able to control all of this in an ellegaint manner is already a large challange.
Tetsudo was not used much, not in field battles. It's main use was in sieges approaching city walls... that cavalry wedge also looked more real for the period if you tried something so silly - charging full pelt into the front of a disciplined infantry unit would have been stupid. Dangerous not only to the horses coming behind you in the rear once the front rank stops, but also because you're charging a block of organized infantry. If anything, it looks like it's getting more historically correct! :P
How does the wedge do against light infantry and cavalry? I see the wedge working in Shogun two but they're charging thin lines of men, not a bulk of shield infantry...
One thing I have always appreciated about game design is that if you make an ability too powerful, you shouldn't jump right to nerfing it- you should add a mechanic to balance it, and if need be tweak the origional mechanic and it's counter accordingly once both are implemented.
Sometimes, ya gotta adjust the numbers (IE a lot of FPS's like warzone), but I always appreciate a game that creates powerful mechanics, and then creates other powerful mechanics you can exploit to counter those mechanics, and so on and so forth.
Your dishonored example reminds me a bit of Witcher 3 in that regard- the basic magic you can cast all can get different upgrades but each comes at a cost, and not every ability is going to be effective against all enemies so you have to pick and choose how you want to interact with the sandbox and recognize that you'll never have an invincible build.
I have a strange attraction to Volound's voice.
It's because he's from Skellige.
I stated sound like him.. I think my parents are going to paying for speech therapy. I live in the midwest
hah.. gaaaaaaaaaay
@Pro Tengu Comment got deleted wtf volund?
@Pro Tengu Or one of those tools at the creator program on TH-cam.
I've had Shogun 2 since release year; haven't played it much.
You've inspired me to give it another try.
36:02
In all honesty, i'm sceptical about this explanation. At any given time, you would have MAXIMUM 2-3 times as many units on screen in HW2, compared to HW1. Now, i know computers weren't as potent back then as they are now (duh), but physics calculations for what we see in hw1 - i can't imagine them being all too complex even for those machines. Think about it - we have mass, velocity, and vector for physical calculations. Plus, health and armour. Maybe, penetration chance for some weapons. AFAIK, Homeworld 1 isn't like Children of a Dead Earth, which takes an absurd amount of parameters to calculate effect of each projectile for the sake of realism. At no point there should be any calculations in hw1 that are more complex that basic vector math, as far as physics is concerned. Hell, they could have even optimised the process by "spreadsheeting" some of the results, if not all of them, considering how mass and projectile speed is constant (as far as i remember), so you could just precalculate them and put them in a table to just read from as needed. And it's not that hard to program either.
UPD: I have forgotten about such thing as raycasting/collision detection. Depending on how it's implemented, it can make calculation exponentially more expensive in relation to the amount of simulated objects on screen. "Fatebound to hit" projectiles would allow to shave off a significant fraction of that.
UPD2: 42:48 Bloody hell, this guy, Fusilier, again. Why do i keep seeing him everywhere?
Hw1 and 2 had about the same number of units on screen, an upper limit of about 150 in your fleet.
Both games have fully physically simulated projectiles. HW2 might use raycasting for fighter machineguns, but heavy artillery and missiles are dodgable.
Games used to be the domain of the nerd. By and for nerds. Devs expected a little more of a playerbase, and the player base expected and appreciated realistic details because realism was an object in and of itself. Modern games are more focused around being flashy and overtly competitive.
I'm watching your series "Total Decline: A Total War Analysis" and it's great. Your comparison between Thief 2014 rope arrow and 3K wedge ability is really good 24:00 I was also baffled by the mediocrity of this reboot
cheers man. and yeah i had these ideas for years, had lots of time to put them into words with good examples. glad youre appreciating the work. this video in particular ended up being very influential and the term "spreadsheeting" is now commonplace. people know exactly what it means.
@@Volound I grew up with Homeworld 1 (what a masterpiece) and I didn't even know that they replaced a physical system with numbers/RNG in the remaster but also in the nu-Total War 34:00 I'm a casual player so most of people like me couldn't notice the sacrifice of such crucial element of gameplay (I completely forgotten you could use ships as kamikaze, it's amazing). Your videos are extremely helpful
This is concretely explaining something that bothered me for years yet I couldn't pin it down. How most of the gameplay boils to "better units beat worse units" instead of units having roles and uses. How the numbers game underneath it all turn battles into a slugfest of stacking modifiers. If you went into battle with a high enough set of numbers, no ammount of tactics will change the final result, it levels the gameplay by limiting the possible results.
A pike phalanx in a bottleneck, legionaires in testudo advancing and shock cavalry charging an unbraced light skirmish unit, all of these are supposed to be the perfect roles for these units. Yet we cannot trust this to work, because what we see is just the result of the calculations going underneath it. Instead of trying to mitigate and solve it, TW and other RTS simply show us the numbers and go all in. The game becomes about getting the higher numbers and the supposed tactics are a sideshow to it.
Its a slide back to the high level abstraction of tabletop strategy from the granular simulation combuiters afford us.
Its unfortunate.
physics is hard and expensive... spreadsheets are easy and cheap! Can not wait until Excel Total War gets ported into my T89 calculator!
I know you haven't played it, but the unit mass and collision problems have always been an issue with Warscape, going back to (and painfully obvious in) Empire. It's a wonder to me that Shogun 2 doesn't suffer the same issues, as it appears to be literally the only game after Medieval 2 that isn't an absolute mess in melee combat, and I have no idea how.
Moshpitting is less incentivised, so there is less chance for models to overlap.
Unit collision is still not very good in shogun, units will slide around like skaters to phase out of other units, or get into position for sync kills.
You can see it rather clearly in sieges when the last umits get dogpiled.
I haven't bought a single Total War game more recent than Rome 2 thanks to its release fiasco making me lose trust with CA, but I have enjoyed watching the series go sideways and trip backwards more than it has gone forwards and gotten bigger and better.
making the best out of it.
For any Shogun 2 noobs that see this (like me), since you mentioned Yari Wall in the intro, just today I did a battle in which I was caught off guard, the whole enemy army was charging my undefended archers (the army being about 7 yari and 2 archers of ashigarus and two generals), I barely got my 5 ashigaru in front of my 4 archers and managed to put only the first two units in wall formation. A minute later, the enemies which attacked the yari walls were routing, I turned my spears around and flanked the remaining enemies.
Did you watch the new TWW3 gameplay where your units can teleport through the barricades to attack enemy units on the other side? This is similar to how units now teleport up walls in the siege battles. I noticed too that artillery animations in Shogun 2 show a complete reload animation, whereas Warhammer titles merely have artillery gunners move at the cannon with no reload. Why is it that Creative Assembly can’t implement that level of detail again? Why is the act of climbing stairs on the defending side of a siege battle too complicated for the largest gaming company in the U.K.? I wish they would go back to Shogun 2’s level of detail.
I'm slowly but surely coming around to new TW but I want to point out that you're nailing everything I still have a problem with in everything from Rome 2 (which initially flat out killed the series for me) onward I've played and really hope that the complaints of the old guard gets us something a little closer to the Shogun 2 and previous era at some point.
I like the guy who was like "Nice 4chan terminology" As if being a mouth agape Redditor is better.
@Pro Tengu i don't know about that, reddit is a pretty bad dumpster fire itself. then again i have stopped useing both, for the most part, as i don't like the smell of burning trash (to continue with the metaphor)
LOL the saving private ryan vs rome 2 beach landing side by side is too savage even for you volound
im kinda surprised that apparently nobody ever did the side-by-side already.
@@Volound after your exposés of CA and the way they manipulate public opinion I didn't think their failures (and a corresponding lack of callouts) could surprise me anymore but this one is truly special.
Imagine being on a battlefield, and your side has bows,and the enemy brought a tank, and your commander tells you "Don't worry son, keep pepering that tank with shortbow fire, we will get it eventually."
And then that plan WORKS.
Volound, I would like to see a video in this series about the modding community. What can/should mods change in your opinion, and to what extent can mods "save" the new titles?
Mods are just add-ons, they don't save games (except maybe Darthmod which added some bugfixes)
@@yugatrasclart4439not in Rome1 and Med2 tho...
Hope more competition like Manorlords will pop up and be successful so CA would actually start making their games have better quality
Honestly, I'm skeptical about Manorlords. It's being developed by a studio that doesn't have any track records yet. Just wait and see. And remember, no pre-order...
@@addochandra4745 it's pretty far from completion yet. That's why I'm hoping for more competition to pop up not just manorlords
As I recall it , there was a period of time in shogun 2 , when the AI broke the wedge . Your lead unit would contact the enemy and the formation would stop and kinda filter into combat . This is likely why players stopped using it , and possibly why CA switched to easy buffs rather than the difficult job of fixing AI .
HOLD UP HOMEWORLD: REMASTERED HAS SHITTY- oh they fixed it thank god...
Keep up the good work, I love these games but want them to be better. You're vids point out things that should be talked about!
This guy speaks the unspoken (but thought upon) truth
You primarily focus on the battle map, but the province system from Rome 2 and onwards is very limiting and spreadsheet
yep this is true. theres just so much to cover. maybe eventually.
the take away from this video is i need to reinstall home world 1 remaster then. that left a bad taste in my mouth on release.
people seem to be much happier with it now. still cant kamikaze ships in quite the same way, and theres no fuel (not a big deal), but 99% of people would go to the remaster over the original, now. remaster succeeded.
Well. This sure gave me a deeper insight into gameplay mechanics.
I almost forgot how stupid it looks to shoot accurate artillery in WHTW. Right in the center of the squad. Although in Med2, ballistas also suffered from this disease.
17:00 your subliminal messaging worked. Now I shall forever associate this with Clash of Kingdom's commercials, and even Raid Shadow Legends.
:v
wtf
Just for another point of view, i played total war when i was much smaller the games like mediavel 1 and mediavel 2, now i never felt i was interested in going back until Three Kingdoms after Shogun 2. Something about both the campaign gameplay and the setting really made me interested the real time battles also feel great. Now i have played it even more than i played Shogun 2. They are clearly doing something right for a person like me.
i thought the same way. about 100 hours and the end of a campaign later, the reality hit.
Sir, you are doing sterling work. I hope somebody at CA is listening.
33:35 The worst part is they weren’t even some far off alien. They were either straight up your species or species with a close common ancestor. The way they operate and how driven to violence they are really makes you better able to imagine the massive empire your species once had, and the reason that even after all this time what little scraps of that empire remain are still hunted to the ends of the galaxy for their crimes however many millennia back. On top of this they are a perfect example of a culture created from trauma, that is the trauma of being left to die in the nebula. Sorry I know this video isn’t about the fluff of home world but I think it has surprisingly good story elements for such a mechanics space game.
As a wargame red dragon player, I take pride in memorizing excel spreadsheets to only get helo rushed online.
I just wonder when Total war is just going to start having power up items on the battlefield for your units to pick up to get boosts or abilities, just like Super Mario.
LOL i wouldbt mind it too much, it just needs tk be acrually good, if it was fantasy total war
First of all I fking love your accent man! Good job on this video, spot on. I have so many things to say to express my frustration with the current state of TW but can't fit it all here so I will try to be as short as possible.
The graphics of the TW games have evolved but pretty much everything else devolved. I don't play a single TW game without mods. Prime example being the Rome 2 and DEI (imo best mod for any TW game ever). I played every single game since Rome 1 and have been a faithful fan for years. I tried playing 3K but I simply couldn't. Tried 3 times and pretty much gave up right after 2 or 3 turns and one single battle. It's quite horrible really, it's so arcadish, so streamlined that it's unbelievable. UI all over the fucking place both in campaign and in battle. The whole game is screaming at you that it is a game like those cringy ones on mobile platforms. I mean ofc it is a game but I want to immerse myself like I could back in the day watching the whole volleys from the soldier pov in Napoleon or Empire or melee combat in Medieval 2 and Shogun 2. I want to feel like I am there. Is it such a big thing to ask?
It is because we care for these games that we complain and discuss things like this. It's not because we are haters like all the kids these days would say. Pretty much every time I tried saying things like this I get silenced. It seems we are not the majority any more. People these days seem to like things as simple as fking possible so a 2yo can play on the same level as 40yo. The success of 3K speaks volumes in these terms. Don't even get me started on Troy. My childhood dream, being a huge fan of history and mythology , especially Greek, came true. Or so I thought. I got the game for free on Epic and I will only say no wonder they gave it for free. Wouldn't pay 10 bucks for it. Hell not even 5. As for the Warhammer games I have mixed feeling. At first I didn't want to even try them out but when the second game came out I bought the both games and most of the DLCs. I decided I had to try it out, else I couldn't call myself a faithful fan of TW games. I really don't know what to think about those. I like some of the mechanics, the graphics but they also seemed to streamline and arcade stuff quite a lot. I mean just look at the sieges. Hell, look at the new game mode in WH3. Lol. A fucking mobile game like I said. Not a fking TW any more, imo. But, again, I seem to be in minority as most people like this stuff. I guess sales show that and sales are the only things that CA cares about no matter what the devs say.
Again, good job on this video mate and I hope you make more of these video and raise attention to this, imo huge problem for TW. We really need to speak up.
@Volound liked and subbed brother. Gonna check more of your videos.
troy and 3k both being shit were what did it for me. and it was obviously warhammers fault. theyre just mods for warhammer. every total war game to come out in the past 3 years has been fucking warhammer 1 derivatives.
@@Volound I haven't looked at it that way but now that I think about it I must say I agree completely. I can't really express how sad I feel about all this. I grew up with these games and seeing the franchise slowly crumble does bother me. I want to see WH3 come out so that we will be done with that franchise at least. I hope they can focus on history more but then again they will most likely ruin it for me. I don't want to see Medieval 3 or Empire 2 that look and play like 3K or Troy. Now that would be a fking disaster. They will continue this route for sure. I don't have the facts but I bet 3K and WH games tramped the sales of all other games before. Which ofc means they will continue to simplify the wedge formation.
yep same here. its not something you usually think about or stumble upon.
its really obvious when you look at coverage of the upcoming warhammer 3. the amount of recycling is extreme. even with almost all of the game already there, they still engage in recycling to save time and money.
@@Volound do you think that we have a chance for an Empire 2 after they are done with WH3? Or maybe Medieval 3. Is there any indication on what they plan to do after they are done with WH3 (I mean all the DLCs and all)?
Will I ever get a Date campaign with badass nodachi maneuvers 🥺👉👈
Also what's your opinion on Rise of the Samurai compared to the other Shogun 2 campaigns? Would you/have you ever played it?
the one thing tha makes the shogun 2 gameplay truly difficult stuff is not the fact that there are 37 different battle mechanics trowed at the same time at you from the very beginning of the game without much context or information,but more from having 37 mechanics that interconnect with one another,creating infinite possibilities and choices of gameplay,20 or so viable options of style,7 actually good builds and 2 optimal ones,but to create a single ''build'' you need to known(information) and test(performance) and refine(improvement,competency) so much shiet in so many levels that goes from micro choices and trade offs and move the camera move a bunch of units to macro planing to exploring/discovering new information,from toughs and logic to feel of a mechanic ,from making a decision tanking one singular idea in mind to principles with take multi variable stuff into account,etc, etc,you get the gist of it.
having said that, its funny to think that, this way i described the unique property that makes this game interesting and challeging,is the exact same way that volound boy is describing the problems with new total war game gameplay,its just that evething after ''mechanics interconnected with one another'' become one distorted,twisted mess with mediocre assessment ,mediocre ideas and mediocre execution.all that big brain energy spent in old games that compounds a very unique intesting experience now dedicated to monkey brain addict dopamine experience,its like going from real life to facebook,except that facebook shitshow is intended by design(i guess).
Or that I do not have the reaction speed that is quick enough to handle chain routes. I loved the slower Napoelonic and Empire era line battles. The principle behind those are more simple, more focus is on how well you read and react to circumstances, and how well you took advantage of the opportunity when they arrived. Shogun 2 reward making quick decisions, Napoleon reward making calculations. Three Kingdoms and Warhammer took what I dislike about previous total war and increased them. The battles are much shorters, the stats played more roles, historical accuracy be damned and the cavalry in which actions are more limited but useful, suddenly become the main force.
If the next game after warhammer 3 isn't any good, i will never touch this series again.
boshmi at 46:23 has good taste in profile pics lol. great vid
It amazes me that even with the shitty warscape engine. Shogun 2, with the wedge atleast, manages to simulate mass rather well.
i can understand and tolerate the use of RNG and spreadsheet elements in games, there is a limitation to what can be simulated with physics engines on compter processing/etc. however, these games should be increasing elements simulated by physics rather than RNG and spreadsheets as technology gets better, not losing it (which is what makes me mad about modern total war), at least in real-time games (turnbased games [and grand strat] will always be somewhat abstract and thus physics engines won't necessarily be the best way to represent them everthing)
also you are really selling the homeworld series to me, gonna get my hands on it after my exams this semester.