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Total war games,boring gameplay?

BlackAdderBG

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Do you still have to activate the script? I played last week and never saw the prompt to activate it and I remember it been there last time I tried EBII a year ago.

I've been playing early Total War games recently and the difference between the first two and later ones is night and day. Getting rid of the simple risk-style strategic map was the worst mistake Creative Assembly ever made with the series. It went from something quick and simple that existed to contextualise the battles to this incredibly dull waste of time that takes forever and only throws battles at you occasionally. Which is a real shame, because the actual battles in Rome and Medieval 2 aren't bad at all. However, there isn't just more time between battles in the later games but the battles themselves are very negatively impacted by the strategic map redesign, because they are less likely to be somewhat even or take place in interesting locations. If for example in Shogun you have a region with a bridge then you know it will be a pain to take over and rather easy to defend. But what are the odds of you having to cross a bridge in Medieval 2 or Rome? It almost never happens.


MTW is better than Shogun in some regards, it was more stable and had more varied units and maps. There's something to be said for the minimalism of the Sengoku era of Japan though, it makes the game extremely balanced and it had an elegance to it.

100% agree, going to 3d map was biggest decline and root to 90% of the problems with all post Medieval games. One cool feature would have been to choose from 3 different battle maps when attacking a region if your general had better command or something like that. With 2d map there is so much more potential for better campaign play. Kings Crusade have a system where you can pick different plans before battle that changes them dramatically (to bad the game crash like crazy). It's a shame Neocore Games don't have a budget or interest to make more strategy games in the vein of Kings Crusade.
And most importantly the AI can actually play on the map, something it has never done since moving to 3d, even in Shogun 2 where the map was designed with choke points been all over the map it had to cheat and create armies in the fog. The battle AI is actually way better, as the CAI can't play the game at all.
 

attackfighter

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I played Medieval 2 for the first time last year and found it dull because easy. The AI was extremely exploitable and I felt like a campaign was nothing more than an inexorable parade of victories that went by and were not fun because there was no question in obtaining them, no risk of defeat. I would carve out a modest-sized territory on the map as my own, then I would look around at what potential obstacles would face me in the near-to-far future, and I would see nothing but a long line of cookie-cutter sieges extending to my ultimate victory and offering me nothing but drudgery. Then I would also take into account the monstrously flawed balance that made two-handed infantry UTTERLY worthless compared to sword-and-board, and had never been fixed.
 

aris

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Ok guys,do you feel that most total war have really slow and boring gameplay in the campaign? It really gets fucked up by all the stupidity like agents,shit diplomacy,being able to build one building for 2-5 years or the retarded siege waiting. I am just playing the last roman attila and get bored fast because of all that shit. I have to wait three years for my glorious army to build ladders because it can't take it with them before the siege,but it can pull a whole catapult. The whole idea of the games is pretty cool,but the implementation is really bad. All it could be easily fixed but the devs are ether too stupid or too lazy.
It is a problem that really all grand strategy games suffer from. And I would even go so far as to say any turn based strategy game. They are cool in the beginning, but as the game reaches a certain stage, usual towards the end, it becomes really boring and a chore to finish it. The only strategy games that do not suffer from this are RTS.
 

attackfighter

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I agree, Gaudaost, but I see two discrete reasons for why this is, and they are applicable to different games and genres. In 4x games, the early game is a time where you explore and expand by finding the perfects spots to build cities. There is so much variance in what resources you will find, who your neighbors will be; every early game is its own mystery. Then comes the first age of drudgery, where your borders expand until they reach your neighbors' and then there is no more room. This age isn't as bad as the age to come, as your realm is still a modestly sized one and so is no chore to operate. But then you reach the second age of drudgery, which is where you start expanding INTO the AIs' territory, and you begin to acquire cities that were improperly placed to begin with and so no fun to work with, and you become overloaded with management tasks, tending to let things slide for the sake of expedience. At some point, usually near the beginning of the second age of drudgery, the scales of power slide so dramatically that there is no longer any AI realm powerful enough to pose a threat to yours, and even if you are fortunate to be playing a game where multiple AI realms will band together in attempt to challenge yours, it's likely that they are unable to coordinate together, just flinging their units at you haphazardly one at a time. So the game requires lots of grunt work, offers little challenge, and there's no surprise lurking behind exploration and expansion.

That is one type of game. Then there is the other type of game, which I will term the Total War style of game. In Total War style games, the AI is so shitty, so abusable, that even at the start you are practically in the second age of drudgery. There is also an intense focus on sieges because no AI can challenge you in the field, and sieges might cause you casualties but they will never come at your loss, as you are assured, destined, even, of winning them all. Some games outside the Total War franchise have qualities reminiscent of this franchise. For instance, in Mount and Blade you have the dominance of sieges in the late game, and the sieges fucking suck. But as far as I know only the Total War games bring both of these qualities into a single package.
 

IHaveHugeNick

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The real issue with Total War franchise is it suffers from feature oversaturation and lacks focus.

You can have great 4x strategy or you can have great RTS battlegame. You can't have both things in one game, it just becomes bloated. At first you're impressed with the epic scale of things, but eventually it just becomes boring and slows into a crawl.
 

attackfighter

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I liked the gist behind the Lords of the Realm II game I played recently. It suffered from the 'Total War' flaws of having shitty AI and quotidian grunt work, but there was one really neat thing about it: the farming mechanics. You had to decide whether to utilize grain crops or livestock in the fields you controlled, and the seasons would change. It was really weird and quite different from what we're accustomed to now, now that there is no longer much innovation or variation in genres, except for in rare instances.

The sieges weren't so bad, either; although, as usual, they took up like 90% of the game.
 

vota DC

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Ok guys,do you feel that most total war have really slow and boring gameplay in the campaign? It really gets fucked up by all the stupidity like agents,shit diplomacy,being able to build one building for 2-5 years or the retarded siege waiting. I am just playing the last roman attila and get bored fast because of all that shit. I have to wait three years for my glorious army to build ladders because it can't take it with them before the siege,but it can pull a whole catapult. The whole idea of the games is pretty cool,but the implementation is really bad. All it could be easily fixed but the devs are ether too stupid or too lazy.
Turn based part is boring compared to birthright or romance of three kingdoms.
Tactical part can be very funny, was one of the first games were cavalry was trampling enemies unlike age of kings or warcraft.
Total war tactic + birthright strategy and adventure could be a great combo.
 

Beastro

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Just came to this thread to say that ships are fucking boring and naval battles bore me to tears. Medieval 2 was the last TW w/o naval battles. Coincidence? I think not.

The only problem I had with naval battles in ETW (I quit TW games after it) was a bug where everything would stop (ships stoped sailed like the wind died, crews stopped firing guns like they'd falle into a daze) but the game would take like 5 minutes to eventually ctd.

Drove me nuts constantly worrying about it, as the longer a battle went on and more likely it was to hit, which would make huge, half or hour long battles drive me nuts when they'd get fucked up.
 
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Raghar

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I used Empire 1.6 pirated edition, and it was fine. (With exception of trojan in fake installer, in case someone would mistake that file for real installer.) But otherwise, no crashing, and all DLCs. Only problem was the unlimited gun ammunition, which forced me to use 20 minute battle timer to give AI chance in defense.
 

Axioms

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I've never understood games that want overworld and tactical battle. Not only do you have the scope issue but you have the imbalance issue.
 
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I've been enjoying total war warhammer 2 a lot lately. However, i will say there definitely could be improvements. More fleshed out diplomacy, better designed difficulty curve, and improved AI will almost make the game perfect for me.

I love the variety of factions and races. I do notice that they play out pretty differently, both on battle and the campaign (played the dark elves, high elves, tomb kings, and lizardmen so far). The sandbox experience - the fact that you can plan out and play however you want (mostly) has been a large source of enjoyment for me.
 
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Wyatt_Derp

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At least with the older TW games you can LARP a bit with dynasty ties, family management, and some limited diplomacy. Newer TW games have gutted the family tree system, nerfed diplomacy and turned the battles in saturday morning cartoon shit with superpowers, unique abilities and near-demi-god level skills for units. If I remember about history, most historical battles have been between two armies filled with scared peasants, paid mercs, and inbred royals all fighting each other with wooden sticks and primitive bows. Siege weapons were extremely expensive and time consuming to build, and I don't remember anyone in ancient Greece or Japan riding into battle on a flying dragon or having 10,000 HP.

If they ever go back and do another Medieval, Rome, or Greece TW game, CA needs to learn from SPQR/Roma Surrectum/EB/Stainless Steel mods and at least TRY to instill some historical accuracy into their game. And a functional AI wouldn't hurt either.
 

Orobis

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I fired up Europa Barbarorum II for the first time yesterday :feelsgoodman: Let's see how long before I get bored or it starts crashing on AI turns.
Until you play for 300 turns and forget to activate the script upon loading a save and can say goodbye to any military reforms or anything that makes EB fun really
That's only for EB I, there's no script activation for EB II, it's automatic.

How the fuck can you go for 300 turns without clicking on a settlement?
 
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JarlFrank

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The real issue with Total War franchise is it suffers from feature oversaturation and lacks focus.

You can have great 4x strategy or you can have great RTS battlegame. You can't have both things in one game, it just becomes bloated. At first you're impressed with the epic scale of things, but eventually it just becomes boring and slows into a crawl.

Yes you can have both things in one game.

They almost did it right with Rome and Medieval 2, they just needed to improve the AI.

And then they started dumbing down the core gameplay and adding superfluous features, and made their engine harder to mod on top of it.
 

JarlFrank

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I've never understood games that want overworld and tactical battle. Not only do you have the scope issue but you have the imbalance issue.

It's the best type of strategy game for me.

In a pure 4X where you have no tactical layer, battles are boring auto-resolve affairs. In a pure tactical battle game, the battles aren't tied together well enough.

In Civ 4, combat is the lamest shit possible. You just throw hordes of units at the enemy's horde of units. Yawn. Civ 4 with Total War style battles would be fucking awesome.

In games like Ultimate General: Civil War and Field of Glory 2, there's not much of a connection between battles. Sure, these games have "campaigns" which are essentially just series of historical or randomized battles through which you carry your army, with your soldiers gaining XP in each battle, so you got some form of continuity. But each battle starts with a blank slate for the enemy and you don't get to pick the battle's location.

Meanwhile, in a Total War game, you get to have the strategic empire management component combined with the tactical battles. You get to build armies in your provinces, send them on conquests against enemies who also build their armies in their provinces, etc. It's the perfect combination.

My favorite 4X games are those that have tactical battles of some sort. Master of Magic, Master of Orion, Age of Wonders 3. They're a lot more fun than those that only have autoresolve battles.
 

Axioms

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I've never understood games that want overworld and tactical battle. Not only do you have the scope issue but you have the imbalance issue.

It's the best type of strategy game for me.

In a pure 4X where you have no tactical layer, battles are boring auto-resolve affairs. In a pure tactical battle game, the battles aren't tied together well enough.

In Civ 4, combat is the lamest shit possible. You just throw hordes of units at the enemy's horde of units. Yawn. Civ 4 with Total War style battles would be fucking awesome.

In games like Ultimate General: Civil War and Field of Glory 2, there's not much of a connection between battles. Sure, these games have "campaigns" which are essentially just series of historical or randomized battles through which you carry your army, with your soldiers gaining XP in each battle, so you got some form of continuity. But each battle starts with a blank slate for the enemy and you don't get to pick the battle's location.

Meanwhile, in a Total War game, you get to have the strategic empire management component combined with the tactical battles. You get to build armies in your provinces, send them on conquests against enemies who also build their armies in their provinces, etc. It's the perfect combination.

My favorite 4X games are those that have tactical battles of some sort. Master of Magic, Master of Orion, Age of Wonders 3. They're a lot more fun than those that only have autoresolve battles.

But both of those halves of the gameplay nullify each other. Its the same way with FoGE which is why I ended up swapping to the in-game auto-resolve. The battles aren't balanced and the strategic layer is trivialized by easy battle wins.
 

IHaveHugeNick

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The real issue with Total War franchise is it suffers from feature oversaturation and lacks focus.

You can have great 4x strategy or you can have great RTS battlegame. You can't have both things in one game, it just becomes bloated. At first you're impressed with the epic scale of things, but eventually it just becomes boring and slows into a crawl.

Yes you can have both things in one game.

They almost did it right with Rome and Medieval 2, they just needed to improve the AI.

"Just improve the AI", aka, improve something almost every strategy game gets horribly wrong. And the bigger the scope and complexity, the harder it gets.

We're not talking about combination of 4x strategy layer with small-scale tactical combat. You can definitely pull of and it has been done before. But 4x with real time combat on gigantic maps with thousand of units? I'll doubt it will ever happen.
 

Maggot

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I've never understood games that want overworld and tactical battle. Not only do you have the scope issue but you have the imbalance issue.

It's the best type of strategy game for me.

In a pure 4X where you have no tactical layer, battles are boring auto-resolve affairs. In a pure tactical battle game, the battles aren't tied together well enough.

In Civ 4, combat is the lamest shit possible. You just throw hordes of units at the enemy's horde of units. Yawn. Civ 4 with Total War style battles would be fucking awesome.

In games like Ultimate General: Civil War and Field of Glory 2, there's not much of a connection between battles. Sure, these games have "campaigns" which are essentially just series of historical or randomized battles through which you carry your army, with your soldiers gaining XP in each battle, so you got some form of continuity. But each battle starts with a blank slate for the enemy and you don't get to pick the battle's location.

Meanwhile, in a Total War game, you get to have the strategic empire management component combined with the tactical battles. You get to build armies in your provinces, send them on conquests against enemies who also build their armies in their provinces, etc. It's the perfect combination.

My favorite 4X games are those that have tactical battles of some sort. Master of Magic, Master of Orion, Age of Wonders 3. They're a lot more fun than those that only have autoresolve battles.
Every game you listed is miles better than Total War where you have to LARP to have fun and can get away with using the same tactic in every game.
 

thesheeep

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Every game you listed is miles better than Total War where you have to LARP to have fun and can get away with using the same tactic in every game.
But that is due to the Total War games having an incredibly weak and weird overworld part, with a great amount of various problems. Not that its combat is without flaws, but it is MUCH better than the empire management part.

It's a specific problem with the Total War games, not some kind of proof that overworld + tactical battles wouldn't work.
 

Raghar

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Well there are two reasons for problems with TW strategic maps.

1. They are hating the idea that stuff would be too complicated and people would not pay money, because the game would require think about stuff, or gosh do some planning.
2. They are touching very unpopular topic. Population removal of original population by immigration, and MURDERING original population by warfare. In old Rome TW, the population size was a MAJOR limiting factor, and barbarian factions couldn't lose many soldiers. Rome on the other hand... they'd breed another one.

But well, money talks, and reviewers are not willing to give low ratings to CA games for massive simplifications.
 

attackfighter

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Lords of the Realm 2 had a unique and well-made strategic map aspect. There were little plots of land that you had to decide whether to turn into grazeland, cropland, or fallow land. These were important for growing food to feed your people. Maps were organized into territories like Risk maps and if a territory was flourishing little villages would spring up on it denoting population centers. There were also mines, quarries, lumber mills, and smithies, vital for putting your population to work. If an enemy army came by, they could destroy your cropland to deny food, destroy villages to reduce population directly, or raze your industries to temporarily put them out of use. Or they could just lay siege to your castle. This was a remarkable way to do things, as it allowed you to harm your enemy's economy even if their fortifications were too powerful to assault directly. In time their territories would be reduced to an ashen wasteland.
 

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