In fact if they were going for full accuracy its way too easy, imagine at just Random Your Emperor dies because the Army Hated him even with great public order and the reason they hated him was that he was just too sturn or too Degenerate, suddenly a Civil War breaks out for no reason, or Half your Germanic units just disappeared and switch to some barbarian faction because they declared war on you ect.
In fact you would want Attila to be alive so you can keep your Germanic elite troops from rebelling and joining or worse Resurrecting an already destroyed German faction. And that is on top of the Corruption and the Public order problems.
@@forickgrimaldus8301 Facts. If we're talking about Rome, sometimes they also hated him because he was too good of a general, or tried to rein in their corruption
@@giacomoromano8842If you abandone half of your territory by destroying it for money then disbanding all those armies and you hold spain africa and italy you'll be fine just tech up and basically upgrade everything especially food production
The 'Slave & Rebels' campaign from Rome 1, is interesting, limited recuitment, at war with everyone, win or die every field battle with no withdraw option, no starting Generals , random reinforcements map wide.
I'll add one: late game as rebels is really hard cause you still get early game units whereas the AI gets endgame units (you have to use a stack of hastati and velite against praetorians) Howevee Legend wouldn't count it as technically you can never lose as rebels even if you lose all towns
@@frituurpan31 Jelle Brouwer It's not a mod it just moving the faction from unplayable to playable in the files. (just cut and paste) but as the Senate (S.P.Q.R.) and the Rebels aren't meant to be played like really not meant. It will crash a lot so check out some videos about it first, there should be a couple who will explain it in debt and tell you what to do and what not. Beside there might be a Rebel mod that makes them a faction and makes it possible to recruit all those units but I haven't heard of it. (but then again there are so many RTW and MedII mods. Beside you can unlock all factions by just deleting them from unplayable (in notepad) and putting them under playable and it will be no problem at all with the exception of the Senate and Rebels. Just type Play Rebels/S.P.Q.R. Rome total war And unlock factions Rome total war
Attila will always be my favourite total war game, and taking 100% of the map will always be my greatest TW achievment, it was actually your total war atilla huns series that introduced me to this channel, and the power of horse archers.
Shogun II is the last Total War game where the AI actually has Fog of War on the campaign map so they don't see you when you're out of their line of sight. You can stumble across random AI army scouting the map. However, starting from Rome II the AI has 'god vision' so they never waste any movement points and can escape from your chasing armies every time. The more I mod the recent Total War games the more new AI cheats I can find. And this is one of those that actually affects not just the balance of the game, but the fundamental gameplay mechanics as the AI can always anticipate your troops.
At least in Rome 1 the ai isn't quite to bloody minded, so if you're losing it's viable to turtle up and rebuild. In Attila every random one town faction on the map marches across the world just to screw you over, even if you're failing anyway
True af. You got like 4-5 hordes, rebellions, and an wild Byzantine Empire that tries to kill you from the start. Also doesn't help that the comitatenses is not a very good unit
I had a very swift victory as Western Rome. I realised they're nearly big enough at start to win the game, just need a little more growth. I don't remember exactly how I did it, but I planned which were the best settlements to take and I do remember pulling all those useless generals out of their towns and onto the battlefield where they'd be far more useful. Packs of Roman generals can do a ton of damage, that's the most memorable part of it for me, packs of generals on the rampage. I would have grabbed as many troops as possible and probably bought as many as possible on turn one, maybe even demolished buildings to finance more. Ruined settlements and spiralling debt don't matter if your forces can take the few settlements required to win. :)
This is very subjective. I actually love Britania. I'd play it 1000 hours before thinking about installing one of the Warhammers... But to each their own.
Napolean Total War is difficult because it's bad to charge a pike formation with your cavalry... Dammit, I knew I've been doing something wrong this entire time!
Attila is my favorite total war game! It took me hundreds of hours before being actually good enough to finish a campaign at legendary difficulty with WRE but the satisfaction you get after that it's indescribable. Congratulations for you top 5 videos and your gameplayes anyway, I really enjoy watching them. Keep it up
Legendary Difficulty is for Masochists It is only there to add padding due to shitty AI and game mechanics. No substance I wish CA had real competition
Bogdan Leshenko yeah, because losing to stat bonuses for the ai, where my armor piercing anti large units get beaten by a frontal charge from cav is fair and feels good. Their sword infantry beating my full, fear and terror causing surround is fair feels good. Their rank one hero beating my level 40 legendary lord is fair and feels good. All while their one settlement chan support 2 full stacks, while i am actually bound by an actual budget. Legendary is the bad kind of difficulty, where they made it harder in the wrong way, by making the ai more powerfull, whilst completely crippling you. The ai gets more than enough unfair bonuses on normal to pose a challenge, especially in the endgame. I think Legendary is a nice addition for people, who can‘t get challenged in another way, but saying it is the only true difficulty is wrong. And incase your gonna bring the „oh thats because you suck“ argument: i already beat a Bretonia campaign on legendary. Never doing this broken stuff again. Oh yeah, i‘m also a souls veteran, thereby you lose the „you suck“ debate by default.
I sometimes like to play with normal battles but with very hard campaign AI. So that they spam armies at me, but their Ashigaru are not inexplicable a match for my Samurai for no good reason.
I enjoy the no save outside of automatic saves and the no slowdown/orders while paused. All the other debuffs just make the game more tedious or annoying imo
Dwarf grudge thrower is one of the best IMO, can get em super early on and they are accurate and kill all types of infantry well. Fire rockets also, just insanely powerful
Completely agree about the difficulty for the diplomacy for Napoleon Total War but I think that does actually represent the Era pretty well. Immediately following this was the Concert of Europe specifically designed to make sure that no one could expand inside the continent to any level that might change the balance of power. Before this was the 7 years war and the 30 years war which both featured major decisions based almost entirely on limiting the power of potential rivals.
Isn't it a little bit weird to base this list on a new player experience, like you go out of your way to mention in the napoleon section, but also base the order on playing on legendary difficulty, which nobody who hasn't played several hundred hours or more does?
Callum Mckay on total war warhammer 2 I played legendary after about 70 hours, with little to no experience playing total war, and it's honestly not that hard.
I bought Shogun Total 1 about 18 years ago from a thrift shop for like $5. I’ve been hooked ever since. I’m a noob tho and only play the game on easy and use cheat codes
Try on m2tw or rtw the challenge no conquer. You can just bride or buy region, I think it's harder. Especially when you put automanage of your country. That very challenging
I just started a new campaign as Athens in RTW2, and the seleucids came at me round 10 asking to become my vassal state. WHAT ? I shouldn't have agreed though, now pretty much the entire East is hostile towards me :')
While there probably won't be a video on it, I'd say that the cheapest chaff units tend to be much better multiplayer, where your funds are severely limited, than they are in campaign, and on the flip side, the most expensive, elite units are great in campaign, but don't always live up to their high cost in multiplayer.
12:00 one thing I found with Shogun 2 during realm divide is that ALL of your vassals turn on you which really screwed my first shimazu campaign 😂 Needless to say I didn’t create any vassals in my second shimazu play through 🤣
Much as I love most TW games I have no respect for difficulty mechanics that only translate to unfair bonuses and debufs. I expect higher difficulty to equal smarter moves from the AI. Sadly this is where TW fails to deliver.
I actually completely disagree. While I do think Total War games utilize the wrong kind of buffs, being far too overwhelming, Paradox Games typically feature the right kind, making small but calculated changes that have a domino effect down the line. By making the AI intentionally worse on a lower difficulty, you're artificially gimping them, opening the game up for abuse and cheese, rather than playing as intended (the reverse of the difficulty to cheese ratio seen in TW right now). The only time you would want to make the AI worse is if the game is pure logic based, and it's been "solved", like chess.
The western roman empire is a rough one. Ive stabilized the empire from southern gaul south. The eastern empire is easier i was auctually able to expand into southern dacia and Mesopotamia. My only problem with attila is how in the family tree ur sons have randomized names snd dont keep the family name
The concept of a family name isn't really older than 100 years for nobles and 500 years for "normal" citizens. Lastames and family names just don't exist in roman, Greek or Persian culture.
@@dershogun6396 wait what about the Iulii, Claudii, Aemilii, Decii and other gentes? The Romans even had additional names for different branches of the family and even for the previous family if adopted, which is no longer common in western cultures (except the Spanish).
ancient naming conventions for nobility or people of status are a bit complex to program like that, especially in a game that's so macro-focused as Total War, since they were more of a status symbol than an actual family name as it is nowadays, and based on social norms, specific period, the family you were born into, the families your family was interacting with, etc. i guess just randomizing them was the easy way out, since having the whole family have the same name would be basically just as inaccurate.
And Legend's WRE Attila Total War campaign is the shit that made him a legend, more than his title :) Withever how many faults the game had, it clearly gave us a lot to love.
What a terrible game to start with. I got it after playing Rome 1 and Medieval 2 religiously and immediately stopped after I realized that every enemy faction is just going to blatantly cheat the entire game
@@thekillers1stfan I started with R1 the year it came out too, and I was most upset about the lack of mods in any of the newer titles to rival the old ones, like Third Age, because the mod tools are still not out for things like mapping. Yet this was a post that highlighted that yes - we did get some good content from it. And it even had some enjoyable campaigns. The slavic archers when they released though... Hilariously campaign breaking.
@@michaelklein6420 Rome1's Scythiian horse archers did that for me. The first 'doom stack' I learned to use in any Total War, back when I wasn't familiar with much of the counters to horse archery spam. The ability to just sit back and take no casualties at range made melee, seem just so much more inefficient to me :)
I was playing Attila once as Eastern Roman Empire, I managed to peace out and then ally hunns. This lead to both me and western empire doing quite well.
I always wanted historic games to implement some of the famous generals tactics that would be really cool although it can be quite daunting to actually be used
I love how often Legend usually mentions Attila on this list. I mean, I really enjoy the game, its my favourite game in the franchise, mostly because its different. Anyway, great video!
WRE legendary dificulty on Atila is hard even with thousands of hours of total war experience, i could win a very hard game with no issues but it was a nightmare on legendary.
I haven't beat it on very hard or even legendary but i have beat it on normal. Say what you will about beating it on normal but it is a hard campaign to start with. Once you get armies and income then its gets much less difficult. But I dont like doing campaigns on very hard in TW games as I dont like the AI getting stupid bonus and unrealistic buffs. It isnt supposed to be realistic, I get that. But normal is good for me.
WRE on legendary isnt very hard as long as you know your strategy from the beginning and execute it decisively. I abandoned Britannia and the Balkans. Destroy all religious buildings immediately and try to convert to paganism gives you more allies. From there it's 1 army in hispania 3 in Africa and the rest between France and Italy. Max all settlements in your new Eastern border as soon as possible to prepare for Huns/other tribes. Settlement defenses are Rome's best thing as you can annihilate thousands more troops than you lose in a decent chokepoint. From there consolidate build Italy Spain and Africa to high public order so you no longer need to Garrison them(not counting Africa is it's not safe from the other factions) re expand outward and you've pretty much won.(also choke point the Huns into Austria/Venetia with all level 4 settlements and as many armies as possible
@@UnholyWrath3277 well said! also barbarian armies rely too much on their generals so kill them quickly. Pd: i only managed to finished the WRE and the ERE campaign on very hard. I plan to do the wre again in legendary
I played as the ERE at one point on Normal (I don't really like super difficult settings because of all the massive cheats the AI gets over the player), and I managed to assemble 8 armies in the Bulkans. This allowed me to easily fight off the Huns who were led by Attila at this time. They tried constantly to get past the Danube, but they never could. The next thing they did surprised me; they asked me for peace and settled in a territory away from all of mine and even became another factions vassel which surprised me even more. The Huns were not a problem for me in that game, it was actually the Sassanid Empire that was the real trouble for me. I even had to stop playing that game because they just got too scary for me to handle.
Not a base game campaign, but playing as Persia in the Age of Cyrus mod for Rome 2 was probably one of the hardest campaigns I have ever played. You basically start with one settlement, Pasagardae, and two armies. One full army led by Harpagus and a half stack led by Cyrus. You also start off at war with the Median Empire. In addition, the three other biggest empires, the Chaldeans, Egyptians and Lydians are all allies with the Medians and they WILL join the war against you. At the same time. One single misstep can end your campaign right there. You can't stay on the defensive because your armies are hopelessly outnumbered and if you wait at Pasagardae (which by the way is not a walled settlement), the Medians and Chaldeans will bring their full force down on you. So you need to blitz immediately, capture as many settlements as you can so you can start raising money to finance more armies. But those first 50 or so turns are absolutely nerve wracking. Advance too far ahead, fight the wrong battle, siege the wrong city, run afoul of the wrong agent, and your entire campaign is basically over.
I'd like to throw the Elder Scrolls and D&D in there as well, partly because it would be so fundamentally different from anything else in the setting. I think it would be pretty neat to get a new perspective on those universes.
@@lokenontherange Several. Depending on when this guy played, he probably refers to Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms, but there are a lot of official settings over the years.
Maybe Top 5 missing game mechanics. We had tabletop wargaming in university (wasn't as funny as predicted) but one mechanic that excelled was Reactive actions. For example , if army A approaches army B, the latter can either a) reactively attack or b) reactively evade. That mechanic could come in handy i.e. in a situation where you get besieged by a commander-only-army and don't get replenishment for the next round.
Playing TT with all rules takes time, unlike on PC nothing will happen if you dont know the rules precisely. TT is like crusader kings 2 extreme in regard of the learning curve.
On my second attempt at Western Rome in Attila I found that deleting everything except Italia and Britannia forced negative public order to max out overall, denied other factions my settlements, and allowed me to consolidate my main provinces and armies early on to crush rebellions and get my eco up fast.
This made me feel better about not being able to beat Rise of the Samurai on shogun 2. Even if it wasnt mentioned lol. I have so much trouble with that campaign still
I don't mind difficult campaigns and the ai getting free stacks as long as there are no ridiculous battle buffs. I do like how WH2 lets you change the campaign and battle difficulties separately.
Thats what makes Shogun 2 so good for me. Its a challenging game on a solid basis. There is no giga cheesy stuff like the Huns in Attila. Every single AI lord just has a strong army and puts up a hard fight. There are only few occasions where you can be the laughing third because they also act carefully. And realm divided is a great mechanic to put up a challenge for the late game where you otherwise would be a behemoth already who steamrolls all remaining factions one by one with ease. If it werent be for my huge nostalgia for Medieval 2 id rate Shogun 2 as the best TW game ever. Its just the essence of what a TW game needs to be.
Man I remember first time I hit realm divide watching my whole wee Shimazu empire collapse and having to fight for every region on Shikoku second time I was Takeda and allied with Hojo right at the start and they stayed with me even through the realm divide
I remember my WRE playthrough: torched half the empire, only kept Africa and Italia, used money to raise armies and quell revolts. Huns arrive, face two stacks of my troops vs 3 stack of their troops, led by my emperor and Attila respectively, managed to kill Attila Proceeds to find out he's not actually dead, all Hun armies come gunning for me. I did win, but oh dear god the devastation to Italy, oh the devastation
I was very proud when I won total war atilla campaigns on legendary did both Eastern and western Romans empires. Never nuked my own lands or any of the semi cheese strategies just did the best I could til I stabilized and was able to repush and take what I had lost. Western empire almost became somewhat easy after turn 20 lucked out and got Attila dead within 3 turns of his arrival based on where he spawned.
Love shogun war 2 so much but I havent played in a while, the online is almost dead and my legendary Takeda campaign has a disaster battle... I might have to send it in...
I'd say Attilla is the hardest for me. I've played hundreds of hours of Total War across the other games and I still have a damn hard time playing even the easy start factions in Attilla.
Attila is where the boys become men, watch as the Western Romans as your grand empire burns, and THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO OTHER THAN ACCEPT YOUR FATE!
Shogun 2 AI confuses me a bit because you see clans like the Chosokabe with a built up city and they have public order problems... but then you get clans like the Takeda just conquering provinces over and over and they seem to get no resistance to invaders or public order issues, don't have to leave any troops in the settlements and can just expand so quickly and become strong so fast.
Big thing I find with shogun 2 is the agent spam, later on in a campahine I've noticed the a.i send so many agents at you it doesn't even seem to matter if you kill or convert them a bunch more pop up to replace the one you just took out
Shogun 2 with Expanded Japan mod (more than doubling the number of factions) is brutal on legendary. 5 wars for most factions from game start, then everyone piles on once you meet/border them.
I was very excited to play Attila because of the time period and yeah, I felt completely, totally overwhelmed by it. So many mechanics, so many building options with no idea how valuable any of them are or are not or how urgently I should be building versus hiring units... where to put my governors, who to give promotions, how to handle diplomacy.... exhausting. I felt like there was no chance of me ever being good at the game without many, many hours and many, many beatings.
Came into Attila straight from Shogun 2. Expanded fast to try and snatch up a good productive territory. Got slapped so hard I rage quit and went back to Shogun for a month. Came back paid a bit more attention and was able to win my second outing. I learned the lesson that being a total war veteran does not ensure victory in the next game.
@@marcus4046 Ostrogoth if I remember correctly. I wanted to play the migrating mechanic though I wasn't sure how well I could handle never having cities so I didn't play the Huns. I just remember after getting set up and going fairly strong the food production mechanic hit me and I faced what at the time I believed was an infinite resource Hun army. I didn't know about horde management and just wiped the first few armies. Each victory took a toll though. By the time the fourth or fifth army engaged my units were mostly half strength or lower. That army was wiped out due to financial constraints was unable to fully replace it. Lost the territory it was helping secure. The financial strain on my economy was high enough that I began suffering public order issues. That began the tumble that resulted in me basically getting picked off piece by piece until I knew I couldn't win and raged out.
Napoleon Total War on Hardest difficulty: I'm gonna start my turn and....all my allies have declared war on me, my ports are blockaded, and there's revolution in the street.
In Rome 1 it seems like the AI is much more likely to avoid crossing a bridge and instead try to find a way around. Shogun 2 AI is pretty good, but in my experience it will always chose to attack a secured bridge, stack after stack getting eaten by it, and on the battlefield rarely pays attention to the extra fords on the battlefield. In Shogun 2 with Darth Mod Slow Mode it does seem to even it out a lot because your peasant troops, while not very good, can just form into a shield wall and hold a line for a long time. Having a large backbone of spearmen with just a few high end units to perform flanking attacks usually has good results, since you don't have to deal with the Vanilla problem of the soldiers not being capable of defending themselves in line. The most challenge I ever had in Total War was going to war against the Greeks in Roma Surrectum mod for Rome 1. You literally cannot get close enough to them to do damage, you have to micro manage formations that stand off from the front of a formation of pikes until you can disrupt them enough to get your guys individually mingled in with the enemy, and/or have them shocked with a surprise flank.
One time in Rome1, I was playing Legendary/Germania and Rome sent a army I've never seen. It was early in the game, and they sent an full stack of 3 silver chevron legionaries, accompanied by 4 thracian mercenaries, with matching (3) silver experience. It had a fancy name, which I've forgot. Anyone ever get that script?
Yep and it’s my favorite game of the franchise, followed by medieval 2. From empire total war and beyond is what I meant by “newer” total war games. Should’ve clarified that. But to answer your original question, I do think I know what army you’re talking about. I’ll try to find some info about it.
Top 5 Toughest Faction Due To Starting Point Mine in no particular order: 1. Turks in MTW 1 Early Era - master the horse archer or get wiped out either by Byz, Crusades or the dreaded Mongols 2. Ottomans in ETW - rubbish tech (except artillery) and rubbish units until you unlock late Nizam 3. Numidians in RTW - sandwiched between 3 superpowers, and will face the mighty Scipii. But the scope to grow is fun 4. Russia in MTW 2 - 1 province miles away from anywhere, then the horde come. 5. HRE in MTW 1 Early - meddling Pope, war with neighbours, generic early units and crusaders sponging your best units on the way to the Holy Lands. Constant war!
Russia in M2TW is one of the easiest because there are no other major factions near them so they get free rebel territory well into the game. The hardest is Scotland or the Byzantines.
Roman expedition (belisarius) independent campaign is insanely difficult too. The moment you revolt you have to face down 5 full stacks of romans and depending on where you set up other stacks of barbarians all with the shittiest economy imaginable, like you can't even afford a full stack under belisarius. There are ways to cheese but they require you setting up far away in the corner of the map.
Shogun 2 is my favorite one outside of Warhammer...it can be super unforgiving but I didn't find it as much as others depending on your faction. I played as the Date when I won the campaign but I tried two others (one before and one after) and just got pretty stuck.
Haven't played them all but Shogun 2 and Attila at the end have to agree with. I absolutely love Shogun 2, the challenge feels about right, completed every clan campaign. Attila haven't managed to finish at all yet, I played it breifly at launch got multiple rebellions/disloyal generals, i've only decided to give it another go recently.
I played Shogun 2 as my first Total war game... I deleted the game and sold the installation disc after my first realm divide. I eventually picked it up 3 years after that and had my first 1000 hours after finishing my secondary studies. When my friends asked me about Shogun 2, I told them to be ready to rage quit after realm divide. It is no suprise that Shogun 2 is 2nd at this list. However, nowadays, after countless hours playing this game, It seems that Legendary difficulty is like a walk in a park for me.
I have thousands of hours sunk into Total War, across most of their titles. I can't do it at triple speed, but I can get similar battle results as Legend in Medieval II and Rome. I finally picked up Shogun two a few days ago, jumped straight into hard difficulty (because I know what I'm doing) and got absolutely dunked on. I took two settlements in two turns, and my neighbor with a 'friendly' attitude declared war on me. I took one of their two settlements (how tf do they already have Samurai armies? Like I'm not sure there have been enough total turns for that), but had to peace out and move on because 5 other factions had already declared war on me
the huns can be dealt with by getting them to sign a treaty with your faction and being their ally until attila comes around at which point the areas you control if they have been used to shield a few other factions enable you to start stacking up armies in them that when you have enough you break the alliance with the huns and get as many of the other factions that are left to go to war with them first your armies only act as backup in battles until they are really beaten down by this point attila himself should be on his last legs and when this happens fully commit to battle with the faction if you have to get as many client states as you can this helps in that you can force other factions into war alot easier when he finally dies the rest is just easy
I have more time in Medieval 2 than I have in Napoleon. I beat Napoleon in the first try with all 5 powers. The AI can't fight with rifles to save it's life, so you literally just ride them down after they waddle into your shotguns. Also the economy being tuned for "buildings only" makes it super easy to get big money fast (and infinite btw), and your armies auto refilling is HEAVEN. My best Medieval campaign had 15 provinces by turn 400, medieval is an impossible game, cause you spend the entire game fighting off migrating armies from the other side of the map. My current campaign is turn 30 Spain, and scotland got 8 regiments of mailed knights in Toledo that I'm sieging out currently, and Milan has a full stack in my land too. Medieval is the hardest by far.
Play Shogun 2 on Very Hard/Legendary Low tier Ashigaru goes full berserker John Cena style agaist you and almost dont broke Aaaaaa gotta love this s###
I remember the first time I played WRE in Attila on Easy and I still had a rough time.. Lost a 5th of my territory before I was finely able to rebound. Still have that save too. I reconquered all of Rome with it, but by the time I got to that point, the ERE was barely hanging on. I later played WRE on legendary and I was sucking my thumb after I ran away..
Attila is the best total war. I love that its more a survival game. Holding back the torrents on all fronts is quite thrilling not to mention fairly accurate to its chosen time period. It really was an apocalypse of the old world and the coming of the new dark ages.
As a man who played shogun 2, on basic difficulty, i would get realm divide from just playing how i would normally... I wouldn't really ever declare war on the ai factions, and in fact im confident they've declared war on me more than i ever them, but once they did i would war them till they didnt exist and now that i think about it, i guess i shouldnt have taken war goals and left them alone more, but i did come up with the strategy to make more vassals and so i would make a lot mror vassals and i noticed that was able to push more expansion for it... So i never really knew that you could just wait out the ai and they wouldnt realm divide, but at the same time like i said i would always be declared war on and most of the time barely had peace so i would have to learn to no completely kill my enemies off
I won every campaign you listed. Atilla was really hard but I spammed them and won in attrition war. Shogun 2 Is hard one too. Depends wich clan you play. You just need good armor upgrade and then you will win every battle
Shogun 2 is one of my Favorit Total war. I wished they would go a bit back. I also liked, for atmosphäre case, that soldiers were, after defeated, suffering on the floor. It looked realistic.
Realm Divide occurs as soon as your faction renown turns to legendary, which is shown in your faction overview screen and is gauged by how many battles you've won and how many provinces you've conquered. Conquering provinces seems to increase the renown a lot more than battle victories.
Outstanding list. Love it. Kudos, and as I continue to build me channel. I will keep coming back to this list. I don't want to give too much away for those reading the comments to decide whether to watch the whole video or not. The answer is yes. haha.
I like the apocalyptic feeling Attila gives you. Really goes well with Rome dying
In fact if they were going for full accuracy its way too easy, imagine at just Random Your Emperor dies because the Army Hated him even with great public order and the reason they hated him was that he was just too sturn or too Degenerate, suddenly a Civil War breaks out for no reason, or Half your Germanic units just disappeared and switch to some barbarian faction because they declared war on you ect.
In fact you would want Attila to be alive so you can keep your Germanic elite troops from rebelling and joining or worse Resurrecting an already destroyed German faction. And that is on top of the Corruption and the Public order problems.
@@forickgrimaldus8301 I think you created hell
@@shadowwolf2122 thats because Western Rome is basically hell, there is a good reason why it collapsed
@@forickgrimaldus8301
Facts.
If we're talking about Rome, sometimes they also hated him because he was too good of a general, or tried to rein in their corruption
Atilla was my first total war game and my baptism of fire
bad luck
Damn did any one try to talk you out of it
Raging Buffalo actually no, I picked up a copy at GameStop on sale and played it on a cheap pc.
This is my second TW game and I almost quit on the 2nd hour limit.
Cyber Diver I’m actually thankful for how hard it is because it made me a better TW player right from the beginning
I’m commenting just so the yt algorithm knows how good your content is. Much love brotha
It's hasn't been picked yet, but I'll keep trying...
Top 5 mercenary units in Total War
Yes please
1. Cretan Archers
Elefants
Spartans for sure
Mounted Jedi Knights
actually expected this to be about specific campaigns in games rather than the games themselves.
The top one would have still been Western Roman Empire, because come on, it was created to be that specifically. XD
@@giacomoromano8842 that or throg because he really hates that troll :P
@@giacomoromano8842If you abandone half of your territory by destroying it for money then disbanding all those armies and you hold spain africa and italy you'll be fine just tech up and basically upgrade everything especially food production
Top 5 Most Awsome-looking Units in Total war.
Ngormlings ironbreakers
I second this!
1. Mirror Guard
2. All Chaos units
3. Chaos
4. Chaos
5. CHAOS
I supose it all depends on who you are asking, it's very subjective
Blessed Saurus. They look like they have lava flowing over there back.
The 'Slave & Rebels' campaign from Rome 1, is interesting, limited recuitment, at war with everyone, win or die every field battle with no withdraw option, no starting Generals , random reinforcements map wide.
I'll add one: late game as rebels is really hard cause you still get early game units whereas the AI gets endgame units (you have to use a stack of hastati and velite against praetorians)
Howevee Legend wouldn't count it as technically you can never lose as rebels even if you lose all towns
How do you play it, is it a mod?
@@frituurpan31 Jelle Brouwer It's not a mod it just moving the faction from unplayable to playable in the files. (just cut and paste) but as the Senate (S.P.Q.R.) and the Rebels aren't meant to be played like really not meant. It will crash a lot so check out some videos about it first, there should be a couple who will explain it in debt and tell you what to do and what not.
Beside there might be a Rebel mod that makes them a faction and makes it possible to recruit all those units but I haven't heard of it. (but then again there are so many RTW and MedII mods. Beside you can unlock all factions by just deleting them from unplayable (in notepad) and putting them under playable and it will be no problem at all with the exception of the Senate and Rebels.
Just type Play Rebels/S.P.Q.R. Rome total war
And unlock factions Rome total war
"the most challenging total war campaign is total war attila" i've pretty much never been less surprised to hear something like that in my life
😆👍 Attila is the only Total War game I've ever played, and it's hard, but I love it.
The only time a Total War game actually felt like it was trying to murder me in stead of live and let live
So challenging that I even failed the prologue and was like fuck it and jumped into the ERE
@@sejfzlrrhman would reccomend Rome 1 and Med 2. Really enjoyable games
Attila will always be my favourite total war game, and taking 100% of the map will always be my greatest TW achievment, it was actually your total war atilla huns series that introduced me to this channel, and the power of horse archers.
In Total War Attila you don't paint the map, you paint your body.
What if Silent Hill is an RTS 4x Game? The answer is Attila Total War
Shogun II is the last Total War game where the AI actually has Fog of War on the campaign map so they don't see you when you're out of their line of sight. You can stumble across random AI army scouting the map. However, starting from Rome II the AI has 'god vision' so they never waste any movement points and can escape from your chasing armies every time. The more I mod the recent Total War games the more new AI cheats I can find. And this is one of those that actually affects not just the balance of the game, but the fundamental gameplay mechanics as the AI can always anticipate your troops.
Total War Rome Barbarian Invasion Western Empire.
Enough said
At least in Rome 1 the ai isn't quite to bloody minded, so if you're losing it's viable to turtle up and rebuild. In Attila every random one town faction on the map marches across the world just to screw you over, even if you're failing anyway
@@willdbeast1523 true man, don't you just love it when this strange duck faction from ireland or scotland sails all the way to africa to attack you?
True af. You got like 4-5 hordes, rebellions, and an wild Byzantine Empire that tries to kill you from the start. Also doesn't help that the comitatenses is not a very good unit
@@RomanHistoryFan476AD As seen in Many a True Nerd channel
I had a very swift victory as Western Rome. I realised they're nearly big enough at start to win the game, just need a little more growth. I don't remember exactly how I did it, but I planned which were the best settlements to take and I do remember pulling all those useless generals out of their towns and onto the battlefield where they'd be far more useful. Packs of Roman generals can do a ton of damage, that's the most memorable part of it for me, packs of generals on the rampage. I would have grabbed as many troops as possible and probably bought as many as possible on turn one, maybe even demolished buildings to finance more. Ruined settlements and spiralling debt don't matter if your forces can take the few settlements required to win. :)
Number 1: Thrones of Britania: The campaign is so bad and boring to where it is almost impossible to beat the game before uninstalling the game.
This is very subjective. I actually love Britania. I'd play it 1000 hours before thinking about installing one of the Warhammers... But to each their own.
@@MonteKristof subjective yes... But you would be in the minority in the grand scheme of things.
Jean-Kristof Bouton everyone can have their own opinion even if yours is wrong you can have it
ToB is great game, especially with mods.
@@MonteKristof Why the dislike for games that you haven't played?
Napolean Total War is difficult because it's bad to charge a pike formation with your cavalry...
Dammit, I knew I've been doing something wrong this entire time!
Lol
My friend plays Napoleon TTW.
AI use the square formation.
My friend: my cuirassiers are strong enough to penetrate.
Me: ...
@@Monika-ok6lp ..... Cavalry squares are going to slaughter those poor Curaisiiers
You first need to get to the musketeers but don't play the game as if it's medieval 2 cav is way weaker in napoleon
TW Attila - when Total War meets Dark Souls
Total war is way harder than dark souls imo
Attila is my favorite total war game! It took me hundreds of hours before being actually good enough to finish a campaign at legendary difficulty with WRE but the satisfaction you get after that it's indescribable.
Congratulations for you top 5 videos and your gameplayes anyway, I really enjoy watching them. Keep it up
5 Good Units that belong to a faction or unit type that are generally weak.
1.Gothic Knights
@@tomh4754 ikr. That's why I only play stainless steel which fixes this issue.
Thracian Nobles, maybe.
Dvor cavalry
the Mamluks from Egypt.
i'll never forget Sassanids and their vassals spamming armies and agents (which are harder to deal with) like a crazy :(
Legendary Difficulty is for Masochists
It is only there to add padding due to shitty AI and game mechanics. No substance
I wish CA had real competition
@@bogdanleshenko7149 "I play only on Legendary so it means absolutely no one else should play their game that they bought the way they want to."
Bogdan Leshenko yeah, because losing to stat bonuses for the ai, where my armor piercing anti large units get beaten by a frontal charge from cav is fair and feels good. Their sword infantry beating my full, fear and terror causing surround is fair feels good. Their rank one hero beating my level 40 legendary lord is fair and feels good. All while their one settlement chan support 2 full stacks, while i am actually bound by an actual budget. Legendary is the bad kind of difficulty, where they made it harder in the wrong way, by making the ai more powerfull, whilst completely crippling you. The ai gets more than enough unfair bonuses on normal to pose a challenge, especially in the endgame. I think Legendary is a nice addition for people, who can‘t get challenged in another way, but saying it is the only true difficulty is wrong. And incase your gonna bring the „oh thats because you suck“ argument: i already beat a Bretonia campaign on legendary. Never doing this broken stuff again. Oh yeah, i‘m also a souls veteran, thereby you lose the „you suck“ debate by default.
@@ragnerschwarzmane3412 Provided what you say is truth.
I sometimes like to play with normal battles but with very hard campaign AI. So that they spam armies at me, but their Ashigaru are not inexplicable a match for my Samurai for no good reason.
I enjoy the no save outside of automatic saves and the no slowdown/orders while paused. All the other debuffs just make the game more tedious or annoying imo
Top 5 artillery units
AYE AYE seconded
Armstrong guns lol
Top 5 Armstrong Guns :D
Dwarf grudge thrower is one of the best IMO, can get em super early on and they are accurate and kill all types of infantry well. Fire rockets also, just insanely powerful
Great Bombard > everything else.
:P
Shogun Total War, where "Bingo Bitchu!" is an appropriate response to what your plans are.
Completely agree about the difficulty for the diplomacy for Napoleon Total War but I think that does actually represent the Era pretty well. Immediately following this was the Concert of Europe specifically designed to make sure that no one could expand inside the continent to any level that might change the balance of power. Before this was the 7 years war and the 30 years war which both featured major decisions based almost entirely on limiting the power of potential rivals.
Isn't it a little bit weird to base this list on a new player experience, like you go out of your way to mention in the napoleon section, but also base the order on playing on legendary difficulty, which nobody who hasn't played several hundred hours or more does?
Callum Mckay on total war warhammer 2 I played legendary after about 70 hours, with little to no experience playing total war, and it's honestly not that hard.
frog do that with WRE then I’ll be impressed !
Rob the rogue ?
@@frog7763 he meant Western Roman Empire legendary difficulty in TW Attila which Legend mentioned as most challenging in the video.
"Several hundred hours" lmao. It was like my third campaign after normal and very hard in Shogun 2.
Top 5 features you didn't know about / hidden features
I bought Shogun Total 1 about 18 years ago from a thrift shop for like $5. I’ve been hooked ever since. I’m a noob tho and only play the game on easy and use cheat codes
Top 5 Most Challenging This Is Total War Total War campaigns (where you declare war on everyone from the start)
Try on m2tw or rtw the challenge no conquer. You can just bride or buy region, I think it's harder. Especially when you put automanage of your country. That very challenging
Well probably not WRE it was normal to fight everybody
Rome 2 Seluecid's would be on the list. With them knowing of the 20+ factions from Greece to India, egypt to the black sea.
I just started a new campaign as Athens in RTW2, and the seleucids came at me round 10 asking to become my vassal state. WHAT ?
I shouldn't have agreed though, now pretty much the entire East is hostile towards me :')
rise of the samourai is holy what the fuck difficult
Ever thought about doing a top 5 units that are good in campaign but bad in multiplayer or vice versa
While there probably won't be a video on it, I'd say that the cheapest chaff units tend to be much better multiplayer, where your funds are severely limited, than they are in campaign, and on the flip side, the most expensive, elite units are great in campaign, but don't always live up to their high cost in multiplayer.
Basically elite units. For example, why would you get swords masters when they can be melted by one spell or dragon breath
12:00 one thing I found with Shogun 2 during realm divide is that ALL of your vassals turn on you which really screwed my first shimazu campaign 😂
Needless to say I didn’t create any vassals in my second shimazu play through 🤣
Love the throw back to original shogun
Much as I love most TW games I have no respect for difficulty mechanics that only translate to unfair bonuses and debufs. I expect higher difficulty to equal smarter moves from the AI. Sadly this is where TW fails to deliver.
I actually completely disagree. While I do think Total War games utilize the wrong kind of buffs, being far too overwhelming, Paradox Games typically feature the right kind, making small but calculated changes that have a domino effect down the line. By making the AI intentionally worse on a lower difficulty, you're artificially gimping them, opening the game up for abuse and cheese, rather than playing as intended (the reverse of the difficulty to cheese ratio seen in TW right now). The only time you would want to make the AI worse is if the game is pure logic based, and it's been "solved", like chess.
4:40 "It could be your head on the chopping block"
Well since it's Napoleon TW, then it's your head on a guillotine.
The western roman empire is a rough one. Ive stabilized the empire from southern gaul south. The eastern empire is easier i was auctually able to expand into southern dacia and Mesopotamia. My only problem with attila is how in the family tree ur sons have randomized names snd dont keep the family name
The concept of a family name isn't really older than 100 years for nobles and 500 years for "normal" citizens. Lastames and family names just don't exist in roman, Greek or Persian culture.
@@dershogun6396 wait what about the Iulii, Claudii, Aemilii, Decii and other gentes? The Romans even had additional names for different branches of the family and even for the previous family if adopted, which is no longer common in western cultures (except the Spanish).
ancient naming conventions for nobility or people of status are a bit complex to program like that, especially in a game that's so macro-focused as Total War, since they were more of a status symbol than an actual family name as it is nowadays, and based on social norms, specific period, the family you were born into, the families your family was interacting with, etc. i guess just randomizing them was the easy way out, since having the whole family have the same name would be basically just as inaccurate.
Actually Attila was my first total war game... After that bullshit warhammer 2 is so easy
And Legend's WRE Attila Total War campaign is the shit that made him a legend, more than his title :)
Withever how many faults the game had, it clearly gave us a lot to love.
What a terrible game to start with. I got it after playing Rome 1 and Medieval 2 religiously and immediately stopped after I realized that every enemy faction is just going to blatantly cheat the entire game
@@thekillers1stfan I started with R1 the year it came out too, and I was most upset about the lack of mods in any of the newer titles to rival the old ones, like Third Age, because the mod tools are still not out for things like mapping.
Yet this was a post that highlighted that yes - we did get some good content from it. And it even had some enjoyable campaigns. The slavic archers when they released though... Hilariously campaign breaking.
I started with Napoleon, gave me a love of ranged troops
@@michaelklein6420 Rome1's Scythiian horse archers did that for me. The first 'doom stack' I learned to use in any Total War, back when I wasn't familiar with much of the counters to horse archery spam. The ability to just sit back and take no casualties at range made melee, seem just so much more inefficient to me :)
attila is my favourite TW game. I really enjoy the “end of the world” atmosphere
I was playing Attila once as Eastern Roman Empire, I managed to peace out and then ally hunns. This lead to both me and western empire doing quite well.
"Shogun 2 has the best ai"
Me every battle: ai sits on defensive despite attacking me and having a way larger army
Same. Also, they don't even use formations.
Battle AI is always bad, but the campaign AI is definitely very good.
@Reunite The British Empire I meant decision making. They are not messing around like they do in other total war games
I always wanted historic games to implement some of the famous generals tactics that would be really cool although it can be quite daunting to actually be used
Takeda campaign ai is really good
I love how often Legend usually mentions Attila on this list. I mean, I really enjoy the game, its my favourite game in the franchise, mostly because its different.
Anyway, great video!
Second favourite. Brutal, but makes you work hard and get better. Cheers fellow Attila fan.
I like how you say its from a new player perspective but also on legendary difficulty
WRE legendary dificulty on Atila is hard even with thousands of hours of total war experience, i could win a very hard game with no issues but it was a nightmare on legendary.
I haven't beat it on very hard or even legendary but i have beat it on normal. Say what you will about beating it on normal but it is a hard campaign to start with. Once you get armies and income then its gets much less difficult. But I dont like doing campaigns on very hard in TW games as I dont like the AI getting stupid bonus and unrealistic buffs. It isnt supposed to be realistic, I get that. But normal is good for me.
I haven't even tried wre, I just love ere units too much
Testudo is love, testudo is life. That's what pulled me through the game, kicking and screaming.
WRE on legendary isnt very hard as long as you know your strategy from the beginning and execute it decisively. I abandoned Britannia and the Balkans. Destroy all religious buildings immediately and try to convert to paganism gives you more allies. From there it's 1 army in hispania 3 in Africa and the rest between France and Italy. Max all settlements in your new Eastern border as soon as possible to prepare for Huns/other tribes. Settlement defenses are Rome's best thing as you can annihilate thousands more troops than you lose in a decent chokepoint. From there consolidate build Italy Spain and Africa to high public order so you no longer need to Garrison them(not counting Africa is it's not safe from the other factions) re expand outward and you've pretty much won.(also choke point the Huns into Austria/Venetia with all level 4 settlements and as many armies as possible
@@UnholyWrath3277 well said! also barbarian armies rely too much on their generals so kill them quickly. Pd: i only managed to finished the WRE and the ERE campaign on very hard. I plan to do the wre again in legendary
I played as the ERE at one point on Normal (I don't really like super difficult settings because of all the massive cheats the AI gets over the player), and I managed to assemble 8 armies in the Bulkans. This allowed me to easily fight off the Huns who were led by Attila at this time. They tried constantly to get past the Danube, but they never could. The next thing they did surprised me; they asked me for peace and settled in a territory away from all of mine and even became another factions vassel which surprised me even more. The Huns were not a problem for me in that game, it was actually the Sassanid Empire that was the real trouble for me. I even had to stop playing that game because they just got too scary for me to handle.
Not a base game campaign, but playing as Persia in the Age of Cyrus mod for Rome 2 was probably one of the hardest campaigns I have ever played. You basically start with one settlement, Pasagardae, and two armies. One full army led by Harpagus and a half stack led by Cyrus. You also start off at war with the Median Empire. In addition, the three other biggest empires, the Chaldeans, Egyptians and Lydians are all allies with the Medians and they WILL join the war against you. At the same time. One single misstep can end your campaign right there. You can't stay on the defensive because your armies are hopelessly outnumbered and if you wait at Pasagardae (which by the way is not a walled settlement), the Medians and Chaldeans will bring their full force down on you. So you need to blitz immediately, capture as many settlements as you can so you can start raising money to finance more armies. But those first 50 or so turns are absolutely nerve wracking. Advance too far ahead, fight the wrong battle, siege the wrong city, run afoul of the wrong agent, and your entire campaign is basically over.
Realm divide makes Shogun 2 the hardest IMO
Top 5 desired settings for future fantasy titles, possible candidates being Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and World of Warcraft.
I'd like to throw the Elder Scrolls and D&D in there as well, partly because it would be so fundamentally different from anything else in the setting. I think it would be pretty neat to get a new perspective on those universes.
@@screamingcactus1753 D&D has a setting? Like an actual world?
@@lokenontherange Several. Depending on when this guy played, he probably refers to Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms, but there are a lot of official settings over the years.
@@Sivart343 My only experience with D&D is with player created worlds or with Warhammer set-ups. But that's neat.
@@Sivart343 Forgotten Realms is what I'm most familiar with. I never actually got into the tabletop or the CRPGs, but I've read a lot of the books.
Great content! Started playing the series back on medieval 1. Wish I found this channel sooner!
Maybe Top 5 missing game mechanics. We had tabletop wargaming in university (wasn't as funny as predicted) but one mechanic that excelled was Reactive actions. For example , if army A approaches army B, the latter can either a) reactively attack or b) reactively evade.
That mechanic could come in handy i.e. in a situation where you get besieged by a commander-only-army and don't get replenishment for the next round.
Playing TT with all rules takes time, unlike on PC nothing will happen if you dont know the rules precisely. TT is like crusader kings 2 extreme in regard of the learning curve.
On my second attempt at Western Rome in Attila I found that deleting everything except Italia and Britannia forced negative public order to max out overall, denied other factions my settlements, and allowed me to consolidate my main provinces and armies early on to crush rebellions and get my eco up fast.
Why keep Brittania?
@@mickethegoblin7167 presumably he did it because its very defensible, the AI doesn’t do naval invasions a lot
Also stonehenge
This made me feel better about not being able to beat Rise of the Samurai on shogun 2.
Even if it wasnt mentioned lol. I have so much trouble with that campaign still
What about Alexander? I've heard that described as the hardest due to the time constraint and the fact you are outnumbered to an insane degree.
I really enjoy these list videos, I don't agree with all points in each one, but that's what I enjoy about them. Thanks for doing these
I don't mind difficult campaigns and the ai getting free stacks as long as there are no ridiculous battle buffs. I do like how WH2 lets you change the campaign and battle difficulties separately.
Thats what makes Shogun 2 so good for me. Its a challenging game on a solid basis. There is no giga cheesy stuff like the Huns in Attila. Every single AI lord just has a strong army and puts up a hard fight. There are only few occasions where you can be the laughing third because they also act carefully. And realm divided is a great mechanic to put up a challenge for the late game where you otherwise would be a behemoth already who steamrolls all remaining factions one by one with ease.
If it werent be for my huge nostalgia for Medieval 2 id rate Shogun 2 as the best TW game ever. Its just the essence of what a TW game needs to be.
Man I remember first time I hit realm divide watching my whole wee Shimazu empire collapse and having to fight for every region on Shikoku second time I was Takeda and allied with Hojo right at the start and they stayed with me even through the realm divide
“Your elite troops can die to Militia”
*laughs in Old Guard with full experience*
Gets rekted by landwehr
Top 5 Best 'This Is Total War' factions. Spread over all the games.
1. Dong
2.Dong
3.Dong
4.Dong
5.Dong
Thanks for the consistent posts and high standards brother
I remember my WRE playthrough: torched half the empire, only kept Africa and Italia, used money to raise armies and quell revolts.
Huns arrive, face two stacks of my troops vs 3 stack of their troops, led by my emperor and Attila respectively, managed to kill Attila
Proceeds to find out he's not actually dead, all Hun armies come gunning for me.
I did win, but oh dear god the devastation to Italy, oh the devastation
I was very proud when I won total war atilla campaigns on legendary did both Eastern and western Romans empires. Never nuked my own lands or any of the semi cheese strategies just did the best I could til I stabilized and was able to repush and take what I had lost. Western empire almost became somewhat easy after turn 20 lucked out and got Attila dead within 3 turns of his arrival based on where he spawned.
Shogun 2 has good AI? The game where the enemy solo charged his general into my spear line in a historical battle?
Me seeing attila at the top knowing im addicted to it.
Hope you'll make some top5 again. Love these. I understand they take a lot of time but still, they're amazing and educational.
Love shogun war 2 so much but I havent played in a while, the online is almost dead and my legendary Takeda campaign has a disaster battle... I might have to send it in...
I’m commenting just so the yt algorithm knows how good your content is. Much love brotha EDIT: I stol this comment from @Stringbean219
13:30
You have a lot of revolts even on medium difficulty
Never played atilla, but sounds like hell even on medium difficulty
@@rumelingecristescu6046 you'll fight your own people on revolts more than foreign armies
Attila is literally my favorite total war game.
ERE only .
I'd say Attilla is the hardest for me. I've played hundreds of hours of Total War across the other games and I still have a damn hard time playing even the easy start factions in Attilla.
Attila is where the boys become men, watch as the Western Romans as your grand empire burns, and THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO OTHER THAN ACCEPT YOUR FATE!
Attila is a beautiful bitch
Shogun 2 AI confuses me a bit because you see clans like the Chosokabe with a built up city and they have public order problems... but then you get clans like the Takeda just conquering provinces over and over and they seem to get no resistance to invaders or public order issues, don't have to leave any troops in the settlements and can just expand so quickly and become strong so fast.
Agree in empire Austria ends up rolling in and Poland plus trying to expand becomes a thorn in the side.
Big thing I find with shogun 2 is the agent spam, later on in a campahine I've noticed the a.i send so many agents at you it doesn't even seem to matter if you kill or convert them a bunch more pop up to replace the one you just took out
Has 2000 hours in ntw3 just now finds out why all my allies hate me
Shogun 2 with Expanded Japan mod (more than doubling the number of factions) is brutal on legendary. 5 wars for most factions from game start, then everyone piles on once you meet/border them.
I was very excited to play Attila because of the time period and yeah, I felt completely, totally overwhelmed by it. So many mechanics, so many building options with no idea how valuable any of them are or are not or how urgently I should be building versus hiring units... where to put my governors, who to give promotions, how to handle diplomacy.... exhausting. I felt like there was no chance of me ever being good at the game without many, many hours and many, many beatings.
Love your videos man. Keep up the posts.
Came into Attila straight from Shogun 2. Expanded fast to try and snatch up a good productive territory. Got slapped so hard I rage quit and went back to Shogun for a month. Came back paid a bit more attention and was able to win my second outing. I learned the lesson that being a total war veteran does not ensure victory in the next game.
gotta ask who did you play as first?
@@marcus4046 Ostrogoth if I remember correctly. I wanted to play the migrating mechanic though I wasn't sure how well I could handle never having cities so I didn't play the Huns. I just remember after getting set up and going fairly strong the food production mechanic hit me and I faced what at the time I believed was an infinite resource Hun army. I didn't know about horde management and just wiped the first few armies. Each victory took a toll though. By the time the fourth or fifth army engaged my units were mostly half strength or lower. That army was wiped out due to financial constraints was unable to fully replace it. Lost the territory it was helping secure. The financial strain on my economy was high enough that I began suffering public order issues. That began the tumble that resulted in me basically getting picked off piece by piece until I knew I couldn't win and raged out.
Napoleon Total War on Hardest difficulty: I'm gonna start my turn and....all my allies have declared war on me, my ports are blockaded, and there's revolution in the street.
In Rome 1 it seems like the AI is much more likely to avoid crossing a bridge and instead try to find a way around. Shogun 2 AI is pretty good, but in my experience it will always chose to attack a secured bridge, stack after stack getting eaten by it, and on the battlefield rarely pays attention to the extra fords on the battlefield.
In Shogun 2 with Darth Mod Slow Mode it does seem to even it out a lot because your peasant troops, while not very good, can just form into a shield wall and hold a line for a long time. Having a large backbone of spearmen with just a few high end units to perform flanking attacks usually has good results, since you don't have to deal with the Vanilla problem of the soldiers not being capable of defending themselves in line.
The most challenge I ever had in Total War was going to war against the Greeks in Roma Surrectum mod for Rome 1. You literally cannot get close enough to them to do damage, you have to micro manage formations that stand off from the front of a formation of pikes until you can disrupt them enough to get your guys individually mingled in with the enemy, and/or have them shocked with a surprise flank.
One time in Rome1, I was playing Legendary/Germania and Rome sent a army I've never seen. It was early in the game, and they sent an full stack of 3 silver chevron legionaries, accompanied by 4 thracian mercenaries, with matching (3) silver experience. It had a fancy name, which I've forgot. Anyone ever get that script?
JaronZ by legendary do you mean very hard difficulty? Sorry I don’t play any newer total war titles.
@@chiefvercingetorix3662 Rome 1 is one of the earliest games in the franchise.
@@chiefvercingetorix3662 yes, very hard. Rome 1 is almost 15 years old
Yep and it’s my favorite game of the franchise, followed by medieval 2. From empire total war and beyond is what I meant by “newer” total war games. Should’ve clarified that. But to answer your original question, I do think I know what army you’re talking about. I’ll try to find some info about it.
It makes a bit more sense how I felt overwhelmed when I got Attila as my first TW game, lol
Late to say this but in Shogun 2 if you quickly turn Christian and seize the trade nodes with any clan you get alot of headway to winning.
Top 5 Toughest Faction Due To Starting Point
Mine in no particular order:
1. Turks in MTW 1 Early Era - master the horse archer or get wiped out either by Byz, Crusades or the dreaded Mongols
2. Ottomans in ETW - rubbish tech (except artillery) and rubbish units until you unlock late Nizam
3. Numidians in RTW - sandwiched between 3 superpowers, and will face the mighty Scipii. But the scope to grow is fun
4. Russia in MTW 2 - 1 province miles away from anywhere, then the horde come.
5. HRE in MTW 1 Early - meddling Pope, war with neighbours, generic early units and crusaders sponging your best units on the way to the Holy Lands. Constant war!
Russia in M2TW is one of the easiest because there are no other major factions near them so they get free rebel territory well into the game. The hardest is Scotland or the Byzantines.
Roman expedition (belisarius) independent campaign is insanely difficult too. The moment you revolt you have to face down 5 full stacks of romans and depending on where you set up other stacks of barbarians all with the shittiest economy imaginable, like you can't even afford a full stack under belisarius. There are ways to cheese but they require you setting up far away in the corner of the map.
Shogun 2 is my favorite one outside of Warhammer...it can be super unforgiving but I didn't find it as much as others depending on your faction. I played as the Date when I won the campaign but I tried two others (one before and one after) and just got pretty stuck.
I played alot of medieval 2 before Attila... Holy crap was it hard for me. I was playing the Visigoths I believe.
Haven't played them all but Shogun 2 and Attila at the end have to agree with. I absolutely love Shogun 2, the challenge feels about right, completed every clan campaign. Attila haven't managed to finish at all yet, I played it breifly at launch got multiple rebellions/disloyal generals, i've only decided to give it another go recently.
Top 5 strongest non playable factions
I played Shogun 2 as my first Total war game... I deleted the game and sold the installation disc after my first realm divide. I eventually picked it up 3 years after that and had my first 1000 hours after finishing my secondary studies. When my friends asked me about Shogun 2, I told them to be ready to rage quit after realm divide. It is no suprise that Shogun 2 is 2nd at this list. However, nowadays, after countless hours playing this game, It seems that Legendary difficulty is like a walk in a park for me.
I have thousands of hours sunk into Total War, across most of their titles. I can't do it at triple speed, but I can get similar battle results as Legend in Medieval II and Rome. I finally picked up Shogun two a few days ago, jumped straight into hard difficulty (because I know what I'm doing) and got absolutely dunked on. I took two settlements in two turns, and my neighbor with a 'friendly' attitude declared war on me. I took one of their two settlements (how tf do they already have Samurai armies? Like I'm not sure there have been enough total turns for that), but had to peace out and move on because 5 other factions had already declared war on me
the huns can be dealt with by getting them to sign a treaty with your faction and being their ally until attila comes around at which point the areas you control if they have been used to shield a few other factions enable you to start stacking up armies in them that when you have enough you break the alliance with the huns and get as many of the other factions that are left to go to war with them first your armies only act as backup in battles until they are really beaten down by this point attila himself should be on his last legs and when this happens fully commit to battle with the faction if you have to get as many client states as you can this helps in that you can force other factions into war alot easier when he finally dies the rest is just easy
Nice and PROFESSIONAL advice!
I have more time in Medieval 2 than I have in Napoleon.
I beat Napoleon in the first try with all 5 powers. The AI can't fight with rifles to save it's life, so you literally just ride them down after they waddle into your shotguns. Also the economy being tuned for "buildings only" makes it super easy to get big money fast (and infinite btw), and your armies auto refilling is HEAVEN.
My best Medieval campaign had 15 provinces by turn 400, medieval is an impossible game, cause you spend the entire game fighting off migrating armies from the other side of the map. My current campaign is turn 30 Spain, and scotland got 8 regiments of mailed knights in Toledo that I'm sieging out currently, and Milan has a full stack in my land too.
Medieval is the hardest by far.
Play Shogun 2 on Very Hard/Legendary
Low tier Ashigaru goes full berserker John Cena style agaist you and almost dont broke
Aaaaaa gotta love this s###
I remember the first time I played WRE in Attila on Easy and I still had a rough time.. Lost a 5th of my territory before I was finely able to rebound. Still have that save too. I reconquered all of Rome with it, but by the time I got to that point, the ERE was barely hanging on. I later played WRE on legendary and I was sucking my thumb after I ran away..
Prussia: Takes one territory from France
Austria and Russia: Prussia your ambitions have grown too large you are worse than Napoleon
Attila is the best total war. I love that its more a survival game. Holding back the torrents on all fronts is quite thrilling not to mention fairly accurate to its chosen time period. It really was an apocalypse of the old world and the coming of the new dark ages.
As a man who played shogun 2, on basic difficulty, i would get realm divide from just playing how i would normally... I wouldn't really ever declare war on the ai factions, and in fact im confident they've declared war on me more than i ever them, but once they did i would war them till they didnt exist and now that i think about it, i guess i shouldnt have taken war goals and left them alone more, but i did come up with the strategy to make more vassals and so i would make a lot mror vassals and i noticed that was able to push more expansion for it... So i never really knew that you could just wait out the ai and they wouldnt realm divide, but at the same time like i said i would always be declared war on and most of the time barely had peace so i would have to learn to no completely kill my enemies off
I won every campaign you listed. Atilla was really hard but I spammed them and won in attrition war.
Shogun 2 Is hard one too. Depends wich clan you play. You just need good armor upgrade and then you will win every battle
Definitely agree on Attila - I've just played it. Game just wants to see you suffer. And survival is very stressful.
Nice this makes me want to download some new total war games
Shogun 2 is one of my Favorit Total war. I wished they would go a bit back.
I also liked, for atmosphäre case, that soldiers were, after defeated, suffering on the floor. It looked realistic.
In Shogun 2, is teh realm divide about conquering too much, too soon, or just too much....?
Realm Divide occurs as soon as your faction renown turns to legendary, which is shown in your faction overview screen and is gauged by how many battles you've won and how many provinces you've conquered. Conquering provinces seems to increase the renown a lot more than battle victories.
Outstanding list. Love it. Kudos, and as I continue to build me channel. I will keep coming back to this list. I don't want to give too much away for those reading the comments to decide whether to watch the whole video or not. The answer is yes. haha.