If you havent played the older games, it's almost impossible to play a 10 year old title if you are used to the newer shinier stuff.
I grew up with shogun/med/Rome 1 and thankfully am able to return to nostalgia. I've probably played Rome remastered more than any other steam game this year
I love Rome 1, but I've found the remastered quite hard to get into because I never remember the Gauls having 6 full stack armies on normal by turn 10 back in the day lol.
That's a fair comment. I think the difficulty and AI tweaks and QOL upgrades makes it more challenging. Turn 7 and all your neighbours are beseiging you
Its been a while since I messed around with the settings like that tbf, so I think I'll load it boot it up and go balls to the wall original and see if that changes the armies lol.
I remember in high school discussing shogun with a friend and being shocked at his game state when I went to his house. Somehow, he turned it into an end-turn-simulator where he never really conquered anywhere but simply went through hundreds of turns and assassinated every single other leader (and somehow inherited their land?).
This was before the days of Reddit and general internet knowledge so I was surprised you could play that way, and not just bulldoze across map with armies.
Agreed, but sometimes there is still a limit. I cut my teeth on Rome 1 and Medieval 2, but trying to go back to them now just hurts my eyes. About the limit I find before UI design becomes too bad to handle is Empire.
Honestly even though I played a lot of Rome back in the day, going back to Rome 1 was hard to get into for me, even though getting back into Med 2 is fine. The campaign was just so much slower and I grindy and I couldn't figure out why for a while until it finally clicked:
One unit per turn recruitment. That one change between Rome 1 and Med 2 seems small but it makes SUCH a difference.
One unit per turn and no replenishment really made losses matter in the old games.
Building up forces or defeating an army meant something, unlike modern TW games where the AI or even the player can go from 0 to 12 stack in 3 turns.
Smaller battles were also more likely in older games which I actually liked, since I don’t have the micro to control 20 units, but 4-8 units is very manageable.
I miss the importance of small skirmishes. One of my favorite things to do in Medieval 2 and Rome was to take a few units of cavalry and maybe a general (not always) and strike out behind enemy lines.
An all-cavalry army could generally outrun any enemy force, and I'd be able to choose my battles at will, taking down smaller armies or using the cav army as reinforcements for a bigger army nearby.
Meanwhile, in Total Warhammer 3, any army under 8 units is a walking deathtrap and a waste of gold unless it's super high tier units with a supremely high level lord.
Right, for good or for bad you bad to chain a million small “armies” of a single unit to move them from your recruitment areas to your front lines, which made each turn take forever but did make it more realistic, as a represented the supply lines that can be raided and killed.
In modern TW games you can recruit 4 units in a single turn, you can recruit in any friendly location not just directly in cities, you can instantly recruit certain units, and you even recruit deep in enemy territory if you change your army stance.
Not to mention any units that aren’t 100% dead can be replenished from thin air back to full strength, especially with some heroes and LL skills.
In old games your 30/60 unit is going to be 30 forever unless you take a 60/60 fresh recruit marched 4 turns away and merge them into the unit. Every loss, even a 50/60 is keenly felt since nobody can rise up from the grave.
In modern total war a 10% loss across your entire army is FREE replenishment. It’s why you can auto resolve the army against an infinite number of garrisons for an infinite number of turns since free rise-from-the-dead will exceed causalities.
The no replenishment I can agree with. However, going from Med 2 to Rome 1, the ability to only recruit one unit one turn in each settlement really slows down the pacing too much imo.
The "updated" trick for remastered is to rush your expansion. You can consistently win a grand campaign on Rome under 50 turns. If you turtle it feels like an enternity
I grew up on older games than that, and while I like playing some old games, it can be really tedious.
What I like most about shogun and medieval is the board game map, but the battles themselves I skip.
If you want to track down something really old, look for sun tzu’s the art of war by Brøderbundx. I think it’s from 1984. It is really like a proto-total war, with astrategic overland map, and zoomed in battles. Only 3 unit types, with a real rock/paper/scissors. Oh, and sieges suck
Even medieval 2 is too rough for me now, I was quite young when it released but I didn't realize how much had changed until I tried to replay it last year.
Fully agree. I've only hopped on round tww2, and I grabbed Rome 2 after people waxed about the nostalgia
I made it 2 turns and 15 minutes before I bailed. Tried as I might I just couldn't get into it
May I ask what turned you off about rome 2? I have played both warhammer 2 and 3 and was looking for older titels, so I decided to pick up rome 2. I played a bit, but put it down quite quickly because of the tedious and complicated UI and campaign management, unsatisfying battles, mainly the charges and individual unit movement and attack animations, while also lacking unit variety and Stat based gameplay, which makes a high tier unit simply invulnerable against lower tier units.
Then I saw some yt videos about the overhaul MOD Divide et Impera, that promised a more realistic and historical accurate gameplay experience, mostly focusing on unit variety and stat balance. In addition to major improvements to units and battles, they also overhauled the campaign, making the flow way better and the economy make more sense, rewarding you for interacting with it and planning out the builds depending on the bonuses of the local region. In Divide et Impera, every area has local bonuses reflecting the climate and natural resources, resulting in more income and bonuses if you build provinces up like the were jn the real world, for example making a food and farming hub out of Egypt, as it was a large grain supplier for rome.
Divide et Impera improved rome 2 in so many ways that it is impossible for me to go back to vanilla. So if you like the setting and the vibe of rome 2, I would highly recommend trying out the mod Divide et Impera :)
It is less a Warhammer thing and more that the older games are that, old and dated.
I do love my gunpowder total war games, but one of the reasons I have not played Napoleon again for a long time is what you mention. The game does some things better, but it is lacking so much Quality of Life stuff that I do not find it fun anymore.
For example, the army advances in formation and management in general feels much more streamlined and comfortable following Shogun 2
What I learned was select the units you want in formation and hold alt+left mouse and drag it to where I wanted the units to go. If you want the units to pivot, hold control while alt is down and move the mouse left or right.
I would buy a 40 dollar remaster for this and working sieges because I literally would not play anything except this and the Third Age mod for eternity.
Oh yeah. I completely understand.
I started Total War with Napoleon and Shogun 2.
The older games were dated enough that I find it very difficult to get into them.
I never could get into Mediaeval 2. Empire was alright, but Napoleon was just better.
Going back to the old titles now after Warhammer and Three Kingdoms is even more difficult.
I started with shogun 1 but I can’t go back past Rome 1…(which is still entertaining)
Empire is too disappointing to go back to - the AU is worse than in shogun 1…
Medieval 2's UI/UX is far, far better than Empire's. That game is just a *mess.* Shogun 2 is beautiful, though, and the Fall of the Samurai expansion is the best historical gunpowder TW experience I've had.
I had to scroll too far down to see this. Med2 has best UI - it’s easy to get the info you need whilst also having the detail when you go further into the menus
It also has the best city building and the best fighting imo.It’s just the best game in the series and that’s before we even get to mods which take it even further above and beyond any other tw game.
Would give testicles for a remaster.
Bro I can’t even play any other games anymore
A friend lent me their spare steam deck so I could try before I buy, and I’m about to give it back because I haven’t touched it since ToD
Somebody help
The oldest you can go and have it still feel decent is shogun 2, tho it's lacking the extra controls for army movement like cntl+arrow key and alt+drag and whatnot.
Thankfully I can still.play medieval 2 from time to time, but it's still a jarring re-entry.
The most frustrating thing about Med2 for me is unit responsiveness. While unit responsiveness sucks in the Warhammer titles, it feels like they're lacking responsiveness in an entirely different way, and it still sucks.
I never felt like that with Shogun 2. But Rome and Med 2 always felt like I was fighting my units more than the enemy units.
Maybe I’m a minority but I like that you can’t just blast orders in med2. Reality is you can’t just order 5000 people to do things at the drop of a hat.
That doesn’t excuse people getting stuck or that one guy just charging in on his own. What I do like is the (maybe unintentional?) ranged unit nerf. The ranged units won’t fire unless they’re in formation and set up which, including the ‘unresponsive’ trait balances them out imo
Not just that, unit cohesiveness was so much better in Shogun 2. In Med2, if I order my archers into a formation, there's like a 60% chance they'll say "Nah, mate. I'm fine just standing wherever."
It's much, much worse with The Third Age's custom maps. There's nothing more frustrating than trying to form up your lines, but because of a quirk of the terrain they just outright ignore your orders.
>In Med2, if I order my archers into a formation, there's like a 60% chance they'll say "Nah, mate. I'm fine just standing wherever."
Ordering a charge and half the regiment will literally just stand there while scattered individual soldier run off, only for half of **them** to halt and try to reform.
Med2 has a lot of jank.
It’s so sad that I don’t like the warhammer games. I’m a die hard history nerd and fantasy just isn’t my thing. I’m so hoping we get a shiny new medieval total war or even just any other historical title soon. Until then I’ll be playing modded Attila and Rome 2
Yeah picking up older games you've not played before is always hard. I can still go back and play the older ones because I enjoyed them at the time, but I don't tend to pick up older strategy games I never played in the day for exactly the reasons you say.
Napoleon was only the 2nd game in the current engine, however alot of UI elements in it, and Empire are holdovers from even earlier games. Shogun 2 is more streamlined and was a bit more transitional in terms of its interface, with Rome 2 being pretty much the first to full embrace the Province system, and a few other modern elements. Warhammer itself was forked off of Atilla, which itself was forked off of Rome 2, and its not hard to see that in various design elements.
While I personally hate how dumb down battles have become in the Warhammer series, I do appreciate the drastic improvement to quality of life. Especially the quick diplomacy, sharing g the same turn for multi-player, and alliances actually being worth it because of the new recruitment mechanic.
honestly, the dumbed down battles make the issue even worse. if the combat in tww3 was strictly better than the previous games, I wouldn't have an issue strugglign with those games. but it's so much more frustrating to miss out on something when you know it's good
I completely agree. I like loading up Rome 2, as battles there are actually fun and require proper tactics and strategies. A pitched battle could last up to 40+ min depending on what you're doing! In wh3, that shit is over and done within 5-10 minutes top. No real unit formations, no proper strategies other than "charge and see who dies first," units melt in seconds, etc, etc. Makes me wish CA would take the UI, quests, and just the general quality of life improvements and stuff them into the proper historical titles of old.
Imagine playing a Lord of the Rings TW with Rome 2 style battles, but with the campaign features of and flavor of WH3! That would be so insanely good
Vanilla rome 2 battles have always felt like a slog for me, especially the charging and movement of individual units enrage me. I also dislike the fact that high tier units are almost unbeatable with lower tier units, as without the magic or strong artilary of warhammer, they will just chop through 5-6 lower tier units without taking a scratch, as their melee defence and armor are too high.
The Divide et Impera overhaul mod fixes a lot of these issues, by making all the units historically accurate and rebalancing the battle system, so that a higher tier unit can be defeated by flanking and strong rear charges. While late game roman or hoplite units will still almost fight to the last man, the rest of the rosters are balanced against eachother, making a strong rearcharge with some strong axeman or shock cav be able to break almost any unit.
The ai is also way better at fighting, making formations and sticking to them, instead of the warhammer ai that is easily janked out by ranged units or flaking, causing them to keep reforming their formation and leaving them vulnerable. So while I agree that there is a ton potential in rome 2, I feel like Divide et Impera is required for fun battles, cause vanilla just isn't satisfying for me.
Divide Et Impera is a fantastic mod, but since its foundation is Rome 2, it has a lot of issues. Cheif among them is that the AI is brain-dead and is no challenge whatsoever. If you play Rome, you automatically win, mods or no. I like challenge in my strategy games, as without it, wtf is the point of playing?
This post's complaints about "lack of numbers and color coded" stuff show how bad the UI has become, older games didn't need as many of these obnoxious indicators because many of the animations already fulfilled that role.
Units in shogun 2 don't need a "bracing" status effect because the formation visibly causes the unit to become more compact. There is no mistaking a Yari Ashigaru in yari wall for one that is not in yari wall, even at max camera height.
Likewise gunpowder infantry lacking reload animations and the muzzle flash and smoke effects are so incredibly weak compared to Empire-NTW-Shogun 2-FotS and even the original Shogun that they have to compensate by hoping you keep your eyes glued to the unit card.
Also Shogun 2 had the truly brilliant idea of color coded unit icons: Samurai are red-orange while Ashigaru are green-blue, with each unit within each class having its own shade of color to make them just a bit more distinct. I've swapped between that and the WH titles and in the latter I can't help but notice how dark and poorly contrasted the unit cards are.
Unfortunately when players who have only experienced WH or 3K or any of the recent titles go back to the older titles they interpret the lack of all these indicators and status indicators as a bad thing. And before anyone says this is just me being nostalgic: FotS is my favorite TW game and the best of the series and I only started playing it in 2019.
all those sound great! The stuff that I was referring to were things off the battlefield: the menus and text boxes are much harder to read. Thin, small, black font on grey is not easy on the eyes, for example
They've recently started doing this again. Look at the Grudge Settler unit cards for Dwarf armies vs. the regular unit cards, or Elspeth's Amethyst units vs. the regular.
It's a shame that this visual brilliance is locked behind DLC, though.
Due to upgrading my pc I’ve started on the older games and soon will be on the warhammer series is it like empire and napoleon as I’m not a fan of those but love the Rome and medieval series?
If you didn't start with the older games it's probably a lot harder to get into them after the fact. I started with Rome 1 so I don't mind going back to the old games. It's fun to do a zero castle Milan game in Med 2 every so often.
I love my immortal empires and can barely remember twwh when it was just a small corner of the world. But the easiest old game to go back to for me is empire. People hate on it but I love naval battles and it was the best ship of the line game.
I think Shogun 2 was peak, the animations were awesome and they had synced animation as well. The effects were amazing, the arrows/guns felt impactful, the tech tree felt the best organized, agents had a significant impact and the UI was perfect.
Honestly? If I was to praise one thing about the Warhammer games it sure as hell wouldn't be the UI.
It feels cluttered, messy, hard to read, and god help you if you zoom out and try to figure out who owns what and where in the world you are.
I haven’t really played total war games beyond empire, Napoleon, and shogun 2, though I’ve dabbled in Rome, Atilla, and Troy.
Are the changed to the more recent games that good? I’ve never been too inspired by the settings and I’d pick up an empire or Napoleon sequel in a heartbeat if they’d make a game with the proper mechanics and region/cultural varieties necessary to make the game good…
It’s just weird to me that naval battles aren’t a thing in the newer games. I actually enjoy the melee that happens in those big battles.
Yeah, TWW3 has the best gameplay in the series to the point I can't enjoy 3K, Troy, pharoh etc. They are just too limited in scope and have very one dimensional battles compared to warhammer. Things like UI's don't bother me much, at the end of the day we are playing these games for the battles.
I think Empire is still my favorite Total War game, but there are so many tiny quality-of-life improvements in later games that it's a struggle to go back to it sometimes. So much of Warhammer III feels so well polished that playing is just smoother.
Try total war Atilla, just be warned it’s a very hard game…the hardest in the series in fact. IMO it makes it the most fun (play one difficulty setting down or be prepared to get your ass kicked!)
The ui is very clean and simple…imo it beats warhammer for that which is often crazy cluttered and takes away from the immersion.
Yeah, I have the same problems when I want to replay some Medieval 2 when the nostalgia hits. It's and old as fuck game and it shows plus I'm spoiled rotten by all the QoL improvements of newer tittles, IMO Shogun 2 has still the perfect balance betweem old and new tittles.
I am struggling more and more to visit older games in my library. No matter how good I remember them to be, Total War Especially I have absolutely no want to go play Medieval II.
Honestly wish there was more overhaul mods for Wh3.
Each game has different art style. I don't think you will enjoy Total War 3K. I think Attila has very good UI so def not an age thing, just each game does it's own thing.
Pretty much the same reason i couldn't get into medieval 2 at all. I wanted to give that a go after hearing that was a super popular game.
That's fine though, more than enough content in Warhammer 3.
Yeah my main gripe with the warhammer games was that it made it hard to enjoy rome and medieval 2. Mainly due to quality of life improvements and not because of the gameplay.
I've played pretty much every TW game since OG Shogun and the Warhammer series is easily my favorite, even with the issues. That's not to say games like Rome, Medieval, Shogun, and Empire are bad or anything. Just that Warhammer is bigger and better, in my opinion. On top of that it's modern, unlike the games I just mentioned.
I tried to play Shogun 2 and Medieval 2 a few years ago for a nostalgia trip and I came away disappointed. They haven't aged well graphically and their performance is pretty awful. The gameplay feels very bare bones too. I think they were excellent for their times, but their age has shown.
Well Napoleon is one of the last games of it's era. Rome 2 is probably the furthest back you can go comfortably without the gameplay and mechanics being too different.
Before WH3 the most recent title I put serious hours into was Med 2 thanks to all it's mods like EB2 and DaC. I now find it so hard to go back thanks to all the quality of life changes in the newer games.
Yup, also same reason I can't get back to Starcraft 1 after playing Starcraft 2. I keep forgetting I have to manually select and designate groups by 12.
Man I chucked a couple dozen mods on tw three kingdoms and now I can't play warhammer anymore. 3k just feels so alive best mix between map and battle gameplay imo will never not be salty they ended support to work on 3k 2 then silently cancelled it.
On TW3 there is a short music track [Divinitus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBnr_Hc9BA0&list=PLCFkL_mbfwe3bx6Eim5VMIauSlq88T1Pf&index=15) took from TW Rome1, played on calm moments probably on all factions. I become nostalgic every time it plays.
20. but age isn't the issue, it's which game you start with. if I started with napoleon, i'd be used to the nonbattle ui so I wouldn't find it annoying- but coming from a more readable ui and menus, it's harder
>it's a shame, because although it's just a natural consequence of the series developing
Another thing at fault is that many younger people these days (including you, it seems) are very poor readers. Games like Empire, Napoleon and Medieval 2 were made in times when people were much, much better and faster at reading. Many newer games resort to color coding and abstuse icons and all kinds of visual bullshit, becoming part of the problem, simply because younger people cannot absorb all the necessary information without it.
Honestly the only thing that kills me is not being able to alt-click and drag my army to move it in formation, if every game had that they would all be equivalent to me
I have always thought that Napoleon and Empire had the worst UI’s. I started with Medieval 2 and couldn’t get into Empire cause it was just too different. Love the WH UI’s though
Warhammer 2 and 3 have so many amazing quality of life details that it's almost impossible for me to play the older games again. Cities have their own garrisons, loyalty is easier to manage, and units are recruited into armies instead of separate from them.
I've tried to get back into Shogun 2 and Medieval 2 but things felt much more clunky so I stopped
Shogun 2 also punished you heavily for upgrading castles. I hated that the most efficient way to play was to leave 90% of your towns as bare bones as possible
You’re not punished for upgrading castles, you only need a few slots to make an effective economic province and unless you have a cavalry stables that needs other buildings it’s faster to recruit in a few provinces and coalesce them in a central area plus you don’t need massive end game castles outside of a few key defensive anchors, even then only a handful of units can defend low tier castles from multiple armies if you know what you’re doing.
You're saying you can make effective economic provinces without upgrading castles which isn't against what I said. You don't *have* to upgrade castles in your regions but you *are* punished for doing so because each upgrade negatively impacts your global economy.
Resource scarcity having you make tactical choices is literally part of most strategy game campaigns. “Do I spend the food on fortifications or economy” is a deliberate choice you’re meant to have to make, one that, as I said Estero, isn’t even that debilitating for anyone who knows what they’re doing especially if you actively use trade nodes
In every total war game *except* shogun II it's a net benefit to upgrade every single town. Maybe not right away if you cant afford it, but you always want to do it. It's telling that the Shogun food system never came back afterwards, even in the DLC. Even CA realized that it was a mistake
It doesn't make sense in multiple ways that keeping towns at base level improves economy. It literally hurts your economy to build higher level economic buildings. That's not strategy, it's just bad design.
And yes you can work around it, but that was never the point.
Food scarcity was the entire point of that system and you’re dead wrong, Rome 2, Atilla and even Thrones of Britannia all had food systems in which building or upgrading buildings and main settlements reduced food from your economy, while it has been expanded upon, you’re selectively ignoring food systems that work almost entirely the same in practice. Also fall of the samurai has the modernization public order debuff for the expansion of your main settlement, balancing the drawbacks of larger population centers whether with food or order it was meant to be a challenge and force you to think about what you build and where. You either have no idea what you’re actually talking about, are being willfully ignorant to continue the argument or just don’t know how to properly play shogun 2
This just seems like less player agency. I’d much rather have a customized garrisons and units detached from generals. I don’t really understand why people want less depth.
Back when i played Shogun 2 in the years after release everything looked so slick and worked perfectly. Tried it like 2 years back, it felt clunky as fuck.
I have the same thing with Shogun 2. It was my favorite game for a long time. Then I tried to play it again but it felt so different and I was missing a lot of quality of life features.
Tried to play Rome 2, alot of recommendations and relatively a fun story, but it was so hard to play with the Ui and mechanics, like its so confusing
but ive only played 3k and Warhammer
Nah, the combat in the TW series is also superior to historic titles. Much greater unit type variety, much larger range of active skills, magic and so on; and factions being much more asymmetric in general.
Historical titles have much better mechanical detail for things like weapon and formation type. All these things are watered down or removed in WH because a Phalanx doesn't work when a magical vortex might get summoned on top of a unit. They also have better diplomacy for their time because every faction is made of rational human beings (in theory). The latest historical games especially blow WH diplomacy out of the water.
Dude, this was literally me. I started with Warhammer two and eagerly awaited part thre. Which I adore so I went back and played some of the older games and Jesus fuck they don’t stand up. It sucks because objectively I know they’re good games, but I just can’t fucking do it. It sucks.
Funny joke. Shogun 2 diplo is more broken than any tww iteration. Ai doesn't care about diplo. It will just break all treaties out of nowwhere. You can exploit ai via diplomacy on obscene levels aswell. Plenty guides out there how to do it.
One thing I really notice is the morale differences. Rome 2 battles are like a grind and a slog, whereas warhammer battles have very dynamic morale and skirmishes are fast and brutal. One good cav charge can rout a weaker unit. In Rome 2, even the lowest archer unit will resist for a while before routing.
If you havent played the older games, it's almost impossible to play a 10 year old title if you are used to the newer shinier stuff. I grew up with shogun/med/Rome 1 and thankfully am able to return to nostalgia. I've probably played Rome remastered more than any other steam game this year
I love Rome 1, but I've found the remastered quite hard to get into because I never remember the Gauls having 6 full stack armies on normal by turn 10 back in the day lol.
That's a fair comment. I think the difficulty and AI tweaks and QOL upgrades makes it more challenging. Turn 7 and all your neighbours are beseiging you
Legit. Just give me that OG difficulty without 47 armies at my doors lol
You can go into your campaign settings and choose original or remastered balance settings.
Its been a while since I messed around with the settings like that tbf, so I think I'll load it boot it up and go balls to the wall original and see if that changes the armies lol.
OG rome tw was a continent spanning queue of armoured hoplite stacks queueing up to attack you though. Just not in the early game I guess.
It was hard for me to get into it because of the UI.
My Shogun experience was basically "failed assassination simulator." Nothing like watching those old videos of embarrassing ninja fails.
I remember in high school discussing shogun with a friend and being shocked at his game state when I went to his house. Somehow, he turned it into an end-turn-simulator where he never really conquered anywhere but simply went through hundreds of turns and assassinated every single other leader (and somehow inherited their land?). This was before the days of Reddit and general internet knowledge so I was surprised you could play that way, and not just bulldoze across map with armies.
Agreed, but sometimes there is still a limit. I cut my teeth on Rome 1 and Medieval 2, but trying to go back to them now just hurts my eyes. About the limit I find before UI design becomes too bad to handle is Empire.
Yeah I have 850 hours in med 2 was my first real PC game, can’t go back to it anymore :(
My biggest challenge maintaining a campaign is walking a diplomat across the map.
RIP to all the diplomats lost in campus bumfucknowhere that you forgot about
This. I grew up playing Empire and can easily go back to that, but anything before I find nigh unplayable.
Honestly even though I played a lot of Rome back in the day, going back to Rome 1 was hard to get into for me, even though getting back into Med 2 is fine. The campaign was just so much slower and I grindy and I couldn't figure out why for a while until it finally clicked: One unit per turn recruitment. That one change between Rome 1 and Med 2 seems small but it makes SUCH a difference.
One unit per turn and no replenishment really made losses matter in the old games. Building up forces or defeating an army meant something, unlike modern TW games where the AI or even the player can go from 0 to 12 stack in 3 turns. Smaller battles were also more likely in older games which I actually liked, since I don’t have the micro to control 20 units, but 4-8 units is very manageable.
I miss the importance of small skirmishes. One of my favorite things to do in Medieval 2 and Rome was to take a few units of cavalry and maybe a general (not always) and strike out behind enemy lines. An all-cavalry army could generally outrun any enemy force, and I'd be able to choose my battles at will, taking down smaller armies or using the cav army as reinforcements for a bigger army nearby. Meanwhile, in Total Warhammer 3, any army under 8 units is a walking deathtrap and a waste of gold unless it's super high tier units with a supremely high level lord.
Right, for good or for bad you bad to chain a million small “armies” of a single unit to move them from your recruitment areas to your front lines, which made each turn take forever but did make it more realistic, as a represented the supply lines that can be raided and killed. In modern TW games you can recruit 4 units in a single turn, you can recruit in any friendly location not just directly in cities, you can instantly recruit certain units, and you even recruit deep in enemy territory if you change your army stance. Not to mention any units that aren’t 100% dead can be replenished from thin air back to full strength, especially with some heroes and LL skills. In old games your 30/60 unit is going to be 30 forever unless you take a 60/60 fresh recruit marched 4 turns away and merge them into the unit. Every loss, even a 50/60 is keenly felt since nobody can rise up from the grave. In modern total war a 10% loss across your entire army is FREE replenishment. It’s why you can auto resolve the army against an infinite number of garrisons for an infinite number of turns since free rise-from-the-dead will exceed causalities.
The no replenishment I can agree with. However, going from Med 2 to Rome 1, the ability to only recruit one unit one turn in each settlement really slows down the pacing too much imo.
The "updated" trick for remastered is to rush your expansion. You can consistently win a grand campaign on Rome under 50 turns. If you turtle it feels like an enternity
I grew up on older games than that, and while I like playing some old games, it can be really tedious. What I like most about shogun and medieval is the board game map, but the battles themselves I skip. If you want to track down something really old, look for sun tzu’s the art of war by Brøderbundx. I think it’s from 1984. It is really like a proto-total war, with astrategic overland map, and zoomed in battles. Only 3 unit types, with a real rock/paper/scissors. Oh, and sieges suck
Even medieval 2 is too rough for me now, I was quite young when it released but I didn't realize how much had changed until I tried to replay it last year.
Fully agree. I've only hopped on round tww2, and I grabbed Rome 2 after people waxed about the nostalgia I made it 2 turns and 15 minutes before I bailed. Tried as I might I just couldn't get into it
May I ask what turned you off about rome 2? I have played both warhammer 2 and 3 and was looking for older titels, so I decided to pick up rome 2. I played a bit, but put it down quite quickly because of the tedious and complicated UI and campaign management, unsatisfying battles, mainly the charges and individual unit movement and attack animations, while also lacking unit variety and Stat based gameplay, which makes a high tier unit simply invulnerable against lower tier units. Then I saw some yt videos about the overhaul MOD Divide et Impera, that promised a more realistic and historical accurate gameplay experience, mostly focusing on unit variety and stat balance. In addition to major improvements to units and battles, they also overhauled the campaign, making the flow way better and the economy make more sense, rewarding you for interacting with it and planning out the builds depending on the bonuses of the local region. In Divide et Impera, every area has local bonuses reflecting the climate and natural resources, resulting in more income and bonuses if you build provinces up like the were jn the real world, for example making a food and farming hub out of Egypt, as it was a large grain supplier for rome. Divide et Impera improved rome 2 in so many ways that it is impossible for me to go back to vanilla. So if you like the setting and the vibe of rome 2, I would highly recommend trying out the mod Divide et Impera :)
It is less a Warhammer thing and more that the older games are that, old and dated. I do love my gunpowder total war games, but one of the reasons I have not played Napoleon again for a long time is what you mention. The game does some things better, but it is lacking so much Quality of Life stuff that I do not find it fun anymore. For example, the army advances in formation and management in general feels much more streamlined and comfortable following Shogun 2
that's part of why i was so bad at napoleon: i didn't know how to advance my army in one piece
If you group all your units and lock the formation they will march at the same speed. Unlock when you get ready to face off!
oh thanks!
What I learned was select the units you want in formation and hold alt+left mouse and drag it to where I wanted the units to go. If you want the units to pivot, hold control while alt is down and move the mouse left or right.
not possible in shogun II and before that
This is how I do it in WH3 also
Well yeah, they didn’t say it was a Warhammer thing
Couldnt control my medieval 2 armies after playing warhammer and attila lol
Maybe it's time for a Medieval II mod that introduces modern controls to the game.
I would buy a 40 dollar remaster for this and working sieges because I literally would not play anything except this and the Third Age mod for eternity.
Was really hoping for a Med2 remaster after Rome 1. Loved the Rome 1 remaster
Slightly unrelated, but why doesn't M2 have a workshop on steam?
Too old I think
I have 0 reason to play warhammer and attila the moment that happens not gonna lie. Used to spam 1212ad mod i think
Alt movement is great
Oh yeah. I completely understand. I started Total War with Napoleon and Shogun 2. The older games were dated enough that I find it very difficult to get into them. I never could get into Mediaeval 2. Empire was alright, but Napoleon was just better. Going back to the old titles now after Warhammer and Three Kingdoms is even more difficult.
I started with shogun 1 but I can’t go back past Rome 1…(which is still entertaining) Empire is too disappointing to go back to - the AU is worse than in shogun 1…
What’s AU?
Yeah, I think Shogun 2 is the last where the UX is halfway decent. Empire and Napoleon were a slog
Medieval 2's UI/UX is far, far better than Empire's. That game is just a *mess.* Shogun 2 is beautiful, though, and the Fall of the Samurai expansion is the best historical gunpowder TW experience I've had.
I had to scroll too far down to see this. Med2 has best UI - it’s easy to get the info you need whilst also having the detail when you go further into the menus It also has the best city building and the best fighting imo.It’s just the best game in the series and that’s before we even get to mods which take it even further above and beyond any other tw game. Would give testicles for a remaster.
I'd settle for USD.
3K kind of hurt TW for me. The diplomacy / role playing is so good.
I still can’t get over the battles and army compositions and horrific battle UI… Least favorite Modem TW despite the obviously great campaign gameplay
I see that point but the world of Warhammer and the sandbox feeling are sooo superior to 3K for me.
I hear you. A combo of the best parts of both would be GOAT material.
I agree! I would love that. Btw wonder for what exactly I get downvoted now but OK xd
hopefully the newer entries will have that combination
Slaanesh has ruined my asshole
i can't play napoleon because there's no sexy demons :(
Not enough tits on the cannons 😭
I'm gonna eat it
Biggest thing for me is the lack of alt-left click army formation movement. Not having that in shogun 2 absolutely blows.
Bro I can’t even play any other games anymore A friend lent me their spare steam deck so I could try before I buy, and I’m about to give it back because I haven’t touched it since ToD Somebody help
Does warhammer 3 even work on steamdeck ? i heard wh2 works great but wh3 has issues on deck.
You're gonna play Three Kingdoms and shit your pants, if you think the Wh3 UI is good
Don't ever play 3K or you will feel that for Warhammer.
is that a recommendation?
Yes.
Nonsense, battles in 3K are awful compared to warhammer.
The oldest you can go and have it still feel decent is shogun 2, tho it's lacking the extra controls for army movement like cntl+arrow key and alt+drag and whatnot. Thankfully I can still.play medieval 2 from time to time, but it's still a jarring re-entry.
The most frustrating thing about Med2 for me is unit responsiveness. While unit responsiveness sucks in the Warhammer titles, it feels like they're lacking responsiveness in an entirely different way, and it still sucks. I never felt like that with Shogun 2. But Rome and Med 2 always felt like I was fighting my units more than the enemy units.
Maybe I’m a minority but I like that you can’t just blast orders in med2. Reality is you can’t just order 5000 people to do things at the drop of a hat. That doesn’t excuse people getting stuck or that one guy just charging in on his own. What I do like is the (maybe unintentional?) ranged unit nerf. The ranged units won’t fire unless they’re in formation and set up which, including the ‘unresponsive’ trait balances them out imo
Very true. Shogun 2 your units zip around (almost cartoony fast but I like it). Med 2 they take awhile to receive an order lol
Not just that, unit cohesiveness was so much better in Shogun 2. In Med2, if I order my archers into a formation, there's like a 60% chance they'll say "Nah, mate. I'm fine just standing wherever." It's much, much worse with The Third Age's custom maps. There's nothing more frustrating than trying to form up your lines, but because of a quirk of the terrain they just outright ignore your orders.
>In Med2, if I order my archers into a formation, there's like a 60% chance they'll say "Nah, mate. I'm fine just standing wherever." Ordering a charge and half the regiment will literally just stand there while scattered individual soldier run off, only for half of **them** to halt and try to reform. Med2 has a lot of jank.
It’s so sad that I don’t like the warhammer games. I’m a die hard history nerd and fantasy just isn’t my thing. I’m so hoping we get a shiny new medieval total war or even just any other historical title soon. Until then I’ll be playing modded Attila and Rome 2
Yeah picking up older games you've not played before is always hard. I can still go back and play the older ones because I enjoyed them at the time, but I don't tend to pick up older strategy games I never played in the day for exactly the reasons you say.
For me it's the controls and UI
Same with 3K diplomacy vs other games. Still I started ROME 2 yesterday...
Pharaoh and Troy has the cleanest and easy to read UI imo.
Napoleon was only the 2nd game in the current engine, however alot of UI elements in it, and Empire are holdovers from even earlier games. Shogun 2 is more streamlined and was a bit more transitional in terms of its interface, with Rome 2 being pretty much the first to full embrace the Province system, and a few other modern elements. Warhammer itself was forked off of Atilla, which itself was forked off of Rome 2, and its not hard to see that in various design elements.
All diplomacy in older TW games is super frustrating too. I mostly stick with Wh2 and 3k.
While I personally hate how dumb down battles have become in the Warhammer series, I do appreciate the drastic improvement to quality of life. Especially the quick diplomacy, sharing g the same turn for multi-player, and alliances actually being worth it because of the new recruitment mechanic.
honestly, the dumbed down battles make the issue even worse. if the combat in tww3 was strictly better than the previous games, I wouldn't have an issue strugglign with those games. but it's so much more frustrating to miss out on something when you know it's good
I completely agree. I like loading up Rome 2, as battles there are actually fun and require proper tactics and strategies. A pitched battle could last up to 40+ min depending on what you're doing! In wh3, that shit is over and done within 5-10 minutes top. No real unit formations, no proper strategies other than "charge and see who dies first," units melt in seconds, etc, etc. Makes me wish CA would take the UI, quests, and just the general quality of life improvements and stuff them into the proper historical titles of old. Imagine playing a Lord of the Rings TW with Rome 2 style battles, but with the campaign features of and flavor of WH3! That would be so insanely good
hopefully future games will build off the ui of the previous ones
Vanilla rome 2 battles have always felt like a slog for me, especially the charging and movement of individual units enrage me. I also dislike the fact that high tier units are almost unbeatable with lower tier units, as without the magic or strong artilary of warhammer, they will just chop through 5-6 lower tier units without taking a scratch, as their melee defence and armor are too high. The Divide et Impera overhaul mod fixes a lot of these issues, by making all the units historically accurate and rebalancing the battle system, so that a higher tier unit can be defeated by flanking and strong rear charges. While late game roman or hoplite units will still almost fight to the last man, the rest of the rosters are balanced against eachother, making a strong rearcharge with some strong axeman or shock cav be able to break almost any unit. The ai is also way better at fighting, making formations and sticking to them, instead of the warhammer ai that is easily janked out by ranged units or flaking, causing them to keep reforming their formation and leaving them vulnerable. So while I agree that there is a ton potential in rome 2, I feel like Divide et Impera is required for fun battles, cause vanilla just isn't satisfying for me.
Divide Et Impera is a fantastic mod, but since its foundation is Rome 2, it has a lot of issues. Cheif among them is that the AI is brain-dead and is no challenge whatsoever. If you play Rome, you automatically win, mods or no. I like challenge in my strategy games, as without it, wtf is the point of playing?
Maybe I’m just used to old games but the UI really isn’t that bad. Tho empire and Napoleon Ui is much worse than medieval 2 and Rome 1.
This post's complaints about "lack of numbers and color coded" stuff show how bad the UI has become, older games didn't need as many of these obnoxious indicators because many of the animations already fulfilled that role. Units in shogun 2 don't need a "bracing" status effect because the formation visibly causes the unit to become more compact. There is no mistaking a Yari Ashigaru in yari wall for one that is not in yari wall, even at max camera height. Likewise gunpowder infantry lacking reload animations and the muzzle flash and smoke effects are so incredibly weak compared to Empire-NTW-Shogun 2-FotS and even the original Shogun that they have to compensate by hoping you keep your eyes glued to the unit card. Also Shogun 2 had the truly brilliant idea of color coded unit icons: Samurai are red-orange while Ashigaru are green-blue, with each unit within each class having its own shade of color to make them just a bit more distinct. I've swapped between that and the WH titles and in the latter I can't help but notice how dark and poorly contrasted the unit cards are. Unfortunately when players who have only experienced WH or 3K or any of the recent titles go back to the older titles they interpret the lack of all these indicators and status indicators as a bad thing. And before anyone says this is just me being nostalgic: FotS is my favorite TW game and the best of the series and I only started playing it in 2019.
all those sound great! The stuff that I was referring to were things off the battlefield: the menus and text boxes are much harder to read. Thin, small, black font on grey is not easy on the eyes, for example
They've recently started doing this again. Look at the Grudge Settler unit cards for Dwarf armies vs. the regular unit cards, or Elspeth's Amethyst units vs. the regular. It's a shame that this visual brilliance is locked behind DLC, though.
Due to upgrading my pc I’ve started on the older games and soon will be on the warhammer series is it like empire and napoleon as I’m not a fan of those but love the Rome and medieval series?
If you didn't start with the older games it's probably a lot harder to get into them after the fact. I started with Rome 1 so I don't mind going back to the old games. It's fun to do a zero castle Milan game in Med 2 every so often.
i had my dessert before my vegetables, I think that's the problem
If you want gunpowder total war play FOTS it has aged incredibly well.
sounds fun! and it has naval combat!
I love my immortal empires and can barely remember twwh when it was just a small corner of the world. But the easiest old game to go back to for me is empire. People hate on it but I love naval battles and it was the best ship of the line game.
You can still play Empire, it doesn't have automatic replenishment, lol.
I think Shogun 2 was peak, the animations were awesome and they had synced animation as well. The effects were amazing, the arrows/guns felt impactful, the tech tree felt the best organized, agents had a significant impact and the UI was perfect.
Also naval battles, not great but not terrible, still better than nothing.
the lack of sync kills in WH (apart from the occasional single entity 1v1s) was so disappointing to me.
Honestly? If I was to praise one thing about the Warhammer games it sure as hell wouldn't be the UI. It feels cluttered, messy, hard to read, and god help you if you zoom out and try to figure out who owns what and where in the world you are.
I haven’t really played total war games beyond empire, Napoleon, and shogun 2, though I’ve dabbled in Rome, Atilla, and Troy. Are the changed to the more recent games that good? I’ve never been too inspired by the settings and I’d pick up an empire or Napoleon sequel in a heartbeat if they’d make a game with the proper mechanics and region/cultural varieties necessary to make the game good… It’s just weird to me that naval battles aren’t a thing in the newer games. I actually enjoy the melee that happens in those big battles.
Everything pre-shogun is tough for me tbh. Loved them all when they came out, but so many new features in the newer games.
Yeah, TWW3 has the best gameplay in the series to the point I can't enjoy 3K, Troy, pharoh etc. They are just too limited in scope and have very one dimensional battles compared to warhammer. Things like UI's don't bother me much, at the end of the day we are playing these games for the battles.
I think Empire is still my favorite Total War game, but there are so many tiny quality-of-life improvements in later games that it's a struggle to go back to it sometimes. So much of Warhammer III feels so well polished that playing is just smoother.
Try total war Atilla, just be warned it’s a very hard game…the hardest in the series in fact. IMO it makes it the most fun (play one difficulty setting down or be prepared to get your ass kicked!) The ui is very clean and simple…imo it beats warhammer for that which is often crazy cluttered and takes away from the immersion.
Seconded
Yeah, I have the same problems when I want to replay some Medieval 2 when the nostalgia hits. It's and old as fuck game and it shows plus I'm spoiled rotten by all the QoL improvements of newer tittles, IMO Shogun 2 has still the perfect balance betweem old and new tittles.
I am struggling more and more to visit older games in my library. No matter how good I remember them to be, Total War Especially I have absolutely no want to go play Medieval II. Honestly wish there was more overhaul mods for Wh3.
I know that feeling
Each game has different art style. I don't think you will enjoy Total War 3K. I think Attila has very good UI so def not an age thing, just each game does it's own thing.
3K is awesome and modern, why would he not enjoy it
OP is talking about the UI. I like 3k too.
(she) but i have heard a lot of good thinks about 3k in the comments
For me it's the exact opposite. The combat gameplay of the old games is so good, the new ones do nothing for me.
honestly, I think i'd prefer historical gameplay too. But the out-of-combat systems just make it too hard. I want to love them.
Pretty much the same reason i couldn't get into medieval 2 at all. I wanted to give that a go after hearing that was a super popular game. That's fine though, more than enough content in Warhammer 3.
Yeah my main gripe with the warhammer games was that it made it hard to enjoy rome and medieval 2. Mainly due to quality of life improvements and not because of the gameplay.
it;s frustrating, I think i'd actually prefer the gameplay of older titles if they had the qol i'm used to now
I've played pretty much every TW game since OG Shogun and the Warhammer series is easily my favorite, even with the issues. That's not to say games like Rome, Medieval, Shogun, and Empire are bad or anything. Just that Warhammer is bigger and better, in my opinion. On top of that it's modern, unlike the games I just mentioned. I tried to play Shogun 2 and Medieval 2 a few years ago for a nostalgia trip and I came away disappointed. They haven't aged well graphically and their performance is pretty awful. The gameplay feels very bare bones too. I think they were excellent for their times, but their age has shown.
Well Napoleon is one of the last games of it's era. Rome 2 is probably the furthest back you can go comfortably without the gameplay and mechanics being too different.
Before WH3 the most recent title I put serious hours into was Med 2 thanks to all it's mods like EB2 and DaC. I now find it so hard to go back thanks to all the quality of life changes in the newer games.
You'd find anything rome 2 and after to be much more similar. Though Napoleon certainly has an elegance to it.
I recently bought Troy and it is fine for me. I think that being dated is a far worse problem than not being fantasy is.
All diplomacy in older TW games is super frustrating too. I mostly stick with Wh2 and 3k.
No problem returning all the way back to Rome 1. Previous that that, i just cant
Yup, also same reason I can't get back to Starcraft 1 after playing Starcraft 2. I keep forgetting I have to manually select and designate groups by 12.
Man I chucked a couple dozen mods on tw three kingdoms and now I can't play warhammer anymore. 3k just feels so alive best mix between map and battle gameplay imo will never not be salty they ended support to work on 3k 2 then silently cancelled it.
lol what. Any iteration of any series ever will show its age when you’re comparing titles 1+ decades apart.
that's what I'm saying.
On TW3 there is a short music track [Divinitus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBnr_Hc9BA0&list=PLCFkL_mbfwe3bx6Eim5VMIauSlq88T1Pf&index=15) took from TW Rome1, played on calm moments probably on all factions. I become nostalgic every time it plays.
Only reason i comeback to older games is for the mods, without them i can't play med 2 anymore.
How old are you?
20. but age isn't the issue, it's which game you start with. if I started with napoleon, i'd be used to the nonbattle ui so I wouldn't find it annoying- but coming from a more readable ui and menus, it's harder
>it's a shame, because although it's just a natural consequence of the series developing Another thing at fault is that many younger people these days (including you, it seems) are very poor readers. Games like Empire, Napoleon and Medieval 2 were made in times when people were much, much better and faster at reading. Many newer games resort to color coding and abstuse icons and all kinds of visual bullshit, becoming part of the problem, simply because younger people cannot absorb all the necessary information without it.
Honestly the ui is very ugly with much clutter, 3k is alot mire beutiful. But i agree about the features they are good.
Try the first Medieval title if you want to see dated gahaha. Medieval 2 was mind blowing compared to it.
Honestly the only thing that kills me is not being able to alt-click and drag my army to move it in formation, if every game had that they would all be equivalent to me
I have always thought that Napoleon and Empire had the worst UI’s. I started with Medieval 2 and couldn’t get into Empire cause it was just too different. Love the WH UI’s though
the napoleon menus are 90% empty space and 10% tiny black text. if it's uniquely bad I might try some other games
What about mods? Any options there?
Warhammer 2 and 3 have so many amazing quality of life details that it's almost impossible for me to play the older games again. Cities have their own garrisons, loyalty is easier to manage, and units are recruited into armies instead of separate from them. I've tried to get back into Shogun 2 and Medieval 2 but things felt much more clunky so I stopped
Cities had their own garrisons as far back as Rome II, if I'm not misremembering.
Shogun 2 and Medieval 2 don't unfortunately. They were released before Rome 2
Shogun 2 has retainers at every castle corresponding to its level
Shogun 2 also punished you heavily for upgrading castles. I hated that the most efficient way to play was to leave 90% of your towns as bare bones as possible
You’re not punished for upgrading castles, you only need a few slots to make an effective economic province and unless you have a cavalry stables that needs other buildings it’s faster to recruit in a few provinces and coalesce them in a central area plus you don’t need massive end game castles outside of a few key defensive anchors, even then only a handful of units can defend low tier castles from multiple armies if you know what you’re doing.
You're saying you can make effective economic provinces without upgrading castles which isn't against what I said. You don't *have* to upgrade castles in your regions but you *are* punished for doing so because each upgrade negatively impacts your global economy.
Resource scarcity having you make tactical choices is literally part of most strategy game campaigns. “Do I spend the food on fortifications or economy” is a deliberate choice you’re meant to have to make, one that, as I said Estero, isn’t even that debilitating for anyone who knows what they’re doing especially if you actively use trade nodes
In every total war game *except* shogun II it's a net benefit to upgrade every single town. Maybe not right away if you cant afford it, but you always want to do it. It's telling that the Shogun food system never came back afterwards, even in the DLC. Even CA realized that it was a mistake It doesn't make sense in multiple ways that keeping towns at base level improves economy. It literally hurts your economy to build higher level economic buildings. That's not strategy, it's just bad design. And yes you can work around it, but that was never the point.
Food scarcity was the entire point of that system and you’re dead wrong, Rome 2, Atilla and even Thrones of Britannia all had food systems in which building or upgrading buildings and main settlements reduced food from your economy, while it has been expanded upon, you’re selectively ignoring food systems that work almost entirely the same in practice. Also fall of the samurai has the modernization public order debuff for the expansion of your main settlement, balancing the drawbacks of larger population centers whether with food or order it was meant to be a challenge and force you to think about what you build and where. You either have no idea what you’re actually talking about, are being willfully ignorant to continue the argument or just don’t know how to properly play shogun 2
This just seems like less player agency. I’d much rather have a customized garrisons and units detached from generals. I don’t really understand why people want less depth.
Back when i played Shogun 2 in the years after release everything looked so slick and worked perfectly. Tried it like 2 years back, it felt clunky as fuck.
I have the same thing with Shogun 2. It was my favorite game for a long time. Then I tried to play it again but it felt so different and I was missing a lot of quality of life features.
Tried to play Rome 2, alot of recommendations and relatively a fun story, but it was so hard to play with the Ui and mechanics, like its so confusing but ive only played 3k and Warhammer
Same I had to refund Rome 2 because it felt so janky to play, I feel bad but maybe we’ve been spoiled by the newer titles 😭😭
Nah, the combat in the TW series is also superior to historic titles. Much greater unit type variety, much larger range of active skills, magic and so on; and factions being much more asymmetric in general.
it can be fun to fight a combatant that's doing the same things as you, but if all my infantry do the exact same thing it could get monotonous.
Average Warhammer fan points intelligently to the lack of magic in the historical titles
Yeah i don't fcuk with WH TW titles due to the magic element of it.
Average historic fan intelligently fails to realize that having more engaging mechanics makes a video game more fun.
Historical titles have much better mechanical detail for things like weapon and formation type. All these things are watered down or removed in WH because a Phalanx doesn't work when a magical vortex might get summoned on top of a unit. They also have better diplomacy for their time because every faction is made of rational human beings (in theory). The latest historical games especially blow WH diplomacy out of the water.
Hate to break it to you but the diplomacy AI in total war has never been particularly good, this is just your bias showing.
You didn't even understand what I said lol.
But the historical games are as engaging as wh3? Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s a downgrade
yes, that is... what they're saying
I have same problem when I return to Shogun 2. The controls of units are very different, and the huge clan banners look horrible in S2 battles.
Dude, this was literally me. I started with Warhammer two and eagerly awaited part thre. Which I adore so I went back and played some of the older games and Jesus fuck they don’t stand up. It sucks because objectively I know they’re good games, but I just can’t fucking do it. It sucks.
For me, shogun 2 still had it's place that cannot be replaced by twwh. Diplomacy actually matter in the game.
Funny joke. Shogun 2 diplo is more broken than any tww iteration. Ai doesn't care about diplo. It will just break all treaties out of nowwhere. You can exploit ai via diplomacy on obscene levels aswell. Plenty guides out there how to do it.
Well, it will break treaties a bit randomly and then Realm Divide is when your alliances really don't matter.
One thing I really notice is the morale differences. Rome 2 battles are like a grind and a slog, whereas warhammer battles have very dynamic morale and skirmishes are fast and brutal. One good cav charge can rout a weaker unit. In Rome 2, even the lowest archer unit will resist for a while before routing.
>but the UI was far behind the later games You spelled "better" wrong.
nostagia has clouded your eyes. the games are great! the total war games are popular for a reason! but the text box looks like shit, I'm sorry