Ironically watching your video it cut to a ad that said the following " Smaller scale titles, giving players................wet cat food" Actually between you and the ad I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head!
126 hours played of Pharaoh now and its the best TW title i've played. Everybody is kinda looking like that guy who gave elden ring a 0/10 rating without having played it, and refusing to do so.
@@zarahandrahilde9554I guess it reminds me of a Google Review I submitted for a hotel I ran a conference out of for a number of years..The review was really poor and after four years we/I had enough.. to which the manager wrote back how things "had changed" and they looked forward to welcoming us back the following year. Needless to say we haven't returned. The bottomline is every company/experience has a level of "goodwill" once that is used up you are in a really bad place. It seems to me that CA are in that place right now and they will need to do something special to get themselves out of this hole, I very much doubt it will help them there will be a large number of former employees very shortly who aren't themselves likely to feel much "goodwill" towards them.
@@zarahandrahilde9554 all these videos whinging about Pharoah all have the same content and similar titles lol. I've not watched this because it'll be just like the discussions in Steam, with countless amounts of waaaaah and demands for a new Total War Medieval 2 and claims that fans have not had a historical TW game in centuries whilst ignoring 3K, Troy and ToB 🤣😂
@ailediablo79 I think they've really missed a good opportunity so far by not doing a War of the Roses style TW, but could also have DLCs that cover other similar wars in other countries (or vice versa) and instead of turns being an entire season or year, have it be months (as we're on a smaller scale than the world map) so while you're waiting a couple of turns for a few units to be trained, you can deal with a lot of spying, diplomacy, financing etc even bring in a raiding mechanic that actually contains content than just clicking to change stance of your army. I mean dealing with raiding in your lands should be important and not every fight was some huge battle. At least it would allow players to even issue a few orders then sit back and watch the carnage unfold.
Simply, they gave up and stopped trying. No more innovating. They chose the easy path over push for more and more greatness. The engine has barely changed from Rome 2 TW and it shows. They could have allowed for Bannerlord depth of unit control, combining or splitting units mid battle. Camp forts, circumventions surrounding an entire city, raiding parties/skirmishes, supplies&scorched earth tactics, and so much more. But the engine either doesn’t let them or they don’t care. Hopefully another studio takes off in their place
@@MsSirAndy The recent investors communication from SEGA paints a pretty bleak picture. People will get fired in order to reduced fixed costs, and the language used implies severe cuts to the structures within CA. If said cuts are done purely by the "cost" metric, a lot of talented people will loose their jobs, and it won't leave the studio in a good position to innovate or even get a decent game out. Combine that with what's mentioned in the corporate speech from SEGA, that a number of games CA has worked on will be canceled just like Hyenas? Looks pretty bad if you ask me 🙁
@@MsSirAndy I just want the best TW or similar strategy game there can be without being buried under corporate meddling or apathetic dev leads. TW still has a lot of potential like a Viking Age Med 3, Islamic Golden Age, Qing dynasty, or even expanded maps for a Med 3 or Shogun 3. We can only hope they turn it around
@@MrQwertyman111 This. Especially with the leaked information, that Total War is basically made with impenetrable, draconian tools, "cost cutting" fires will leave the company with nobody who knows how to use the damn things, on a shorter leash than ever to actually do it. It's like they sidestepped the game development pitfall, hiring short term contractors to make your game development tools, that you then fire, and have a toolbox nobody knows how to use, only to back up and hurl themselves down it even more aggressively to send a message.
But *hurr durr* we separate blood pack so our game can have lower age requirements *hurr durr* We only have good intentions, we swear. Sometimes we even pair up new animations/units with the bloodpack so the pricetag is justifiable. Aight. -Some CA Executive, probably-
I would like to add that they almost never drop the prices even on the older titles. Which is crazy. It's pretty obvious they don't care about us players.
The pricing is because we all buy the old games more. This year Rome 2 reached 800,000 copies sold just in this last year so not bringing the price down specially in sight of their recent failure it makes sense
@Warrior1990L I don't disagree. I never said I didn't understand why. It's just greedy. I waited forever for empire to be $15 on steam. Got it on sale cause I'm not a sucker.
@@ohsam5954 To be fair, that's not on CA. That's something we need to blame SEGA, as with the "regular" releases of "smaller scale games" mentioned in the vid. Sure, CA is not free of guilt here, but we need to remember they are owned by none other than SEGA. A publisher who has a track record as bad as some of the worst in the industry. I mean, took them a painfully long time to release a decent Sonic game, and I guess same will happen here. Or... Total War is put on ice for a while. Who knows?
@MrQwertyman111 I mean, I'm not really blaming anyone. I just wish the older titles were cheaper. That's really all I'm getting at. I totally understand why they do it. It just hurts them in the long run because people like me simply will not buy it even though I want it.
In summary, the finance team took over. It's not recent. Even in Rome 2 you could see it. The early release even though it was bugged as hell. There is less attention to details in Rome 2 than in Rome 1... I Mean in Rome 1 units spread around to allow others to pass through the ranks and didnt do it when enemies were near. Rome 2 does not even bother.
Rome 2 is where many Total War RUclips channels started to get big, being invited into the insider program and not once saying anything bad about the game. And they're all still "insiders" and never criticise CA.
Took 17 major patches to make the game look normal ! not improve what we should have received at launch and those channels that promoted it are still around promoting games like Pharaoh. @@goldenkro
@@kapitankapital6580 The scale is different, but It has some real time battles, resource management, territorial expansion and the controls already seam better than anything CA has made. Imagine when retreating without turning the whole unit can be done by a single guy, but not by a decades old full studio.
@@kapitankapital6580 it is true what you say, but there are some overlaps in some areas as well and it seems like the game got postponed to flesh out combat aspect even more. The question though is also what happens if it becomes a smashing success, what direction will the sequels or expansions take. At the same time Ultimate General American Revolution is about to enter into early access and that one also has a chance of clawing some market parts from CA, especially if the sandbox campaign is open enough but as always time will tell what will happen.
@@MsSirAndyof the six people in CAs leadership team, only two have a background in the gaming industry. They are a bunch of delusional businessmen who see gaming as a means of pure profit. The irony is they are running CA into financial ruin, spunking 100m on hyenas because they were deluded enough to think they could emulate the success of Apex and Overwatch despite being a RTS studio. They have also been on a tax break for years. I’m sure they will be used as an example to anyone studying game design or business for things to avoid doing. They had a monopoly on the battle sim/turn based strategy market and still fucked it up. All they had to do was make medieval 3 or another empire but blew it all on a game no one asked for that they didn’t even release. this is a bit of an essay but it’s genuinely impressive that they are this incompetent and just straight up complete idiots.
I'm wondering who told them to keep going in that direction ? Those who bought every game and DLC and the youtubers encouraging us to do so pushed them to keep going.
@@mathieumercier7936 Who? Some young, highly educated economists who are no fans of Total War franchise (only fans of another dime in their pocket) told them to keep going in that direction. Thats what happens when people like that have all the power in the corporation instead of those who understand fans and gamers.
Man, it's crazy to think that a game like Total War Rome 2 which came out in 2013, still has 6.000 players on a day, whereas Troy only has 300 players on a day
@@itsmarmaladegood, because that means that people who loved that game didnt abandon it for newer titles. They mod the game so that others who love the game can keep loving it.
Warhammer 2 was genuinely fun but with the historic titles I agree, it was usually one step forward (3 kings diplomacy is great for instance) and two steps back.
@@MsSirAndy I liked Attila a bunch but I wish it was better optimized and got more support. 3K and RTW2, I liked elements but felt they sabotaged themselves heavily in a lot of ways. That's not to say I didn't enjoy them! I got my money's worth. But I don't feel the same draw to play them more that I did with some of the older games. Countless hours!
@@MsSirAndy Solid maybe, but that was the starting point for the decline for the historic fans. I still don´t like the temporary stat boost skills etc.. Combat for me was one of the main reasons why I disliked Rome 2 and Attila, though modding kind of improved it. I am not into Warhammer and the small scale saga stuff felt like cheap dlcs with the same graphics and mechanics as Rome 2. Haven´t bought a single total war game since Attila and wasn´t really interested in anything they released since as a result.
@@scipiovp921 I agree that Rome 2 and Atilla already felt arcadish in comparison to the previous installments but I wouldn't rate them as completely unrealistic at the level Three Kingdoms, Troy, Thrones, Pharaoh were. They may be more accessible, but not that antistorical or unfaithful at all if compared with the latter. Things actually went downhill with Troy and worsened with Warhammer III and Pharaoh bad launches. Three Kingdoms, altough arcadish and a half baked pseudofantastic game, still shown that CA can make good and enjoyable games. Again, the true decline started with Troy.
Being someone who knows how hard LegendofTW worked to become repartnered around the WH2 era a few years ago, its very dissapointing to see CA drop him again due to their lack of ability to own up to their own mistakes and poor decisions when it comes to the franchise. The opinions of the fans and creators are clearly the correct ones in this situation, and the sooner CA gets of their high horse and starts delivering worthwhile content, it will be better for all parties. CA really trying to contest Blizzard and EA in my mind for terrible company choices, that have a negative impact on my desire to purchase their games.
Drop him? Dude CA censored him. CA didnt wanna hear no non-positive reviews from him and several other ytbers so CA blacklisted them. Leaving only ytbers with only good reviews of the game.
What? You're agreeing with me indifferent words? Yes its wrong they censored him. If you ask me, we shouldnt allow companies to be so "in control" of partner content. But hey, Ig we only need to be bit in the ass a million times before it changes.@@Tomo_mo
I am just hoping the axe Sega is taking to the company cuts out the right people. They really only have one free money printer left which is a re-release of Medieval II remastered, and they really murdered the good will of their fans with their recent acts. The fact they were calling content creators they disliked assholes really showed out of touch CA is, and unlike companies like Stardock, they can't possibly claim their mistakes were out of incompetency and be taken in good faith. If the Sega axe doesn't fix the company, then it is another example of a company wasting money on greed and virtue signalling instead of making good products.
What`s unnoticed is, how simple the strategic maps have become. They removed population, politics, religion, building depth and decision making on how to set up your province. All love has gone from the campaign map and game design. If you take the WH3 map, nothing special about it. A simple try to pack as much regions together to build a large map, but it feels small as basically there`s nothing to do. They made it easier for newer players, but they lost the base because there`s no depth and no challenge. Most WH3 campaigns are shallow AF and turn into all the same battles after and after. Turn 50 and it`s over. Total War has all the ingredients together to be a great game, but somehow many good features have been droped and the technical debt is outstanding. The AI, they have never been able to fix that.
I think the big thing with total war is that it’s become character focused which goes away from the big tactical battles. Also the quality of battles have not been great sense Rome 2 and they have only gotten worse. They really need to create a new engine to make battles be better.
I think what you said about character focus is both true and false at the same time. Sure, the legendary lords have a lot of focus put on them, often with mechanics unique to them. But the non-legendary lords lack character. Every character has the same skill tree, that you will often fill in on autopilot. In contrast, with older games like Rome and Medieval II, there was no real difference between historical characters and generic ones, and there were no skill trees. But there were traits that they would collect throughout their lifetime. I think that system, for its time, did give the various generals a lot of character. They were people, with their own weaknesses, strengths and quirks. Not just tools you personally built for a purpose.
@@FlyingFox86 I agree, i liked the older games generals because they are important and have differences and some were better or worse than others. The main thing I don’t like with new games is that it feels like your playing a character based game not an army based one.
@@srdjan455 the big thing is that collision is non existent. Rome 2 was the first game to use a different engine to the older games. The new engine does not have good collision so units can slide past each other most famously in Rome 2. the battle AI is also horrible and difficultly only makes the enemy units stronger not the AI smarter. Also damage plays a big part then morale and damage is calculated differently. It easier to see or experience if you play newer and older total war
One element to consider is that, at this point, CA may not have the technical know-how to actually create ambitious projects. I remember hearing somewhere that a lot of their games were, to put it simply, badly coded. They seem to be maintaining the same structures more than anything else. A lot of the guys that made these structures are probably long gone, so you get a lot of tweaking of the formula - everyone knows they've been more or less releasing the same game for twenty years. In the end the kind of change that is required here would, well, probably hurt them a lot. I don't think they'd survive it, they don't know how to start from nothing anymore, and they don't know how to innovate. It's not a question of just not being nice or whatever, at this point as a long-time fan I don't care much for a Rome 3 that would be an interface make-over with minor changes. What we need is some game company that isn't so corporate, which would try the TW formula. The monopoly needs to be broken.
Its kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. CA didnt innovate and their best games are 20 years old. So the market for this genre of game is small. So other companies dont step in to innovate.
@@darth-hellhound6534 They won't collapse because they will learn from their mistakes and their reaction to Pharaoh's backlash clearly shows that. It's a step in the right direction since bad games that flop lead to better games into the future.
@@MsSirAndy That's too optimistic. If CA really were the type to learn from their mistakes and plan accordingly, we wouldn't have had another terrible Total War launch after Empire.
@@supersardonic1179 Well, they can mess it up once or twicely but now that the bar tollerance of the fanbase is low they won't repeat the same mistakes again because if they did so then they would truly risk to collapse, especially giving Pharaoh's low player count and poor sales. That's an obvious alarm bell for them. They would be stupid to do otherwise and I highly doubt they are. That being said, I remain cautiously optimistic that it is gonna be a renaissance of actual main TW historical games.
The underlying problem, and something evident with Hyenas, is that CA wants to be mainstream, they are not going to play to their strengths, and, if you believe the internal leaks from Volund, they have some of the older devs are reluctant to even introduce improvements, when you look at it the biggest improvements are on the art and setting departments, which in most dev studios are the ones where innovations are made. My guess is that they will be sold or disbanded soon, unless some exec comes and set realistic expectations: CA produces niche games for a very loyal niche fanbase, maybe take a page out of the paradox book, as greedy it may seem from the outside, stellaris nowadays is like stellaris 3, everytime I buy a DLC y know I will be getting new mechanics and hours of fun.
Stellaris is not a good example and I personally won't buy PDS games any more specifically because of stellaris. It was a good example for a while but the past 1 - 2 years have been mired in bad design decisions that have strayed far from the original point of the game and greedy practices designed to milk players. More and more people are becoming disgruntled with the state of that game and whilst the model can be done well, paradox are not doing it well any more.
I just wish that ca could understand how we feel... like they just need to listen, its not like the community hasn't been telling them what we want...I fear management is going to look at pharoah and say people dont want historical anymore.
I hope we can still play M2TW for a long time...like tens of years yet before modern computers no longer agree to run it. I mean M2TW has lots of splendid total conversion mods such as TATW DAC which is even better than vanilla game.
Sadly this is the trend with all these studios in the last years. They do not listen to their fans and only go after profit. Sad reality since a lot of us have really good memories with earlier titles.
Nowadays, game studios are terribly out of touch with their player base sadly.... They just won't listen and only care about what gives them the most amount of money. It's just another clear example of corporate greed.
It is particularly egregious to them when we criticize the products of their diversity pets, in their minds it makes us the bad people who need to be ignored.
I must disagree VERY strongly with you. WH3 and its first DLC broke every records of the company as most expensive, worst quality and most bought contents. People kept buying and the shittier it got, the more it sold. Until the last DLC. So, yeah, CA is entirely responsible for the Hyenas catastrophe, but for the TW franchise, you can add as guilty everyone who bought WH3 DLCs, Troy, Pharaoh etc.
I have 126.1hrs on the original Rome: Total War (excluding the many hours I played it before steam existed) and 149.7hrs on the remaster, I still play it often because those were the days I fell in love with the Total war games. None of their games now bring that same feeling anymore. I can maybe enjoy them for a few hours spread over a couple weeks, but then rarely ever return to them. It just feels like the games have no soul or love like they used to.
If I remember right, that was due to UK implementing censorship laws they couldn't realistically implement. Not really a fault of the company as so much as their government deciding adults can't handle scary words on the internet. I can't imagine how humanity survived beforehand.
@@bewawolf19 no . They did that the moment the game was available on epic game store. Supposedly with crossplay enabled. That was the reason why they did that to tww2.
Honestly the fall of total war started with Rome 2...has everyone forgotten what they promised vs what was delivered? Rome 2 is terrible the battle mechanics and unit collisions are miles off the original Rome 1 and Med 2.
Dude I remember the launch of Rome 2 and it was fking awful mate. FPS all over the place and bugs and crashes everywhere. Literally could not play the game in the first week.
it even started back in empire, the american factions have almost no roster and its all the same, its buggy too and sieges feel painful still similar to moving units in medieval 2 in sieges, and no unlimited buildings, but it also innovated a lot with the map, research, towns, and gunpowder weaponry was cool, then rome 2 pulled the same thing but took more steps back and less steps forward, I still would play medieval 2 or rome 1 with mods and just how good the games are but even while replaying medieval 2 I haven't played rome 2 again, and I am still playing vanilla medieval 2 aswell as mods so I think that says something, waiting for CA to die out and somebody to replace them (ultimate general american revolution might?)
@@gavinsepicgaming9835 I agree, but at least empire was fun. Warscape was just good enough for empire and they somehow pulled off nap shogun and FOTS with it to, but it was never a very good engine.
Total war is dying, and here's why : 13:52 , pikemen outnumbered, outmatched, attacked from the rear, "steady". They should have a speed malus from the balls of steel they're carrying
For me the recruitment system of medieval 2 was the best. Since Rome 2 doom stacking in become the norm In addition now mechanics are split into "unique" mechanics for each faction. No roleplay as s cunning king in Denmark using plots and assassin's or the brutal warlord from Venice
@@HanSolo1 If it was going to be sold as a Troy DLC at half price then it would be okay, but at that price as an unofficial saga game it's clearly insulting.... Look, I don't think Pharaoh it's a bad game, it is not.. the point is that it is just overpriced and marketed for what is not and calling it 'a fully historical game' is a joke. Furthermore, that is not what fans wanted from the start. People are asking for a Medieval 3 or an Empire 2, not a bronze age game.
I am a long time gamer in my 50s. Total War has always been a joy. The Warhammer first one I bought reluctantly having been a miniature gamer my whole life and how money grabby GW has been. I stopped GW games years ago and when the Warhammer 2 came out, I was like "I'm out". Total War Shogun and Roman series and Empire still my favorites.
I think this could have been a good game if they invested time into making an engine that works better for this kind of era, and could hopefully then take that engine and use it for something like medieval 3. I think the problem arose when they threw tons of money into HYENAS, it got canceled effectively burning like 100 million and they had to force something out for investors, so we got Pharoah.
I'm surprised this video didn't talk about how CA has been attacking the community itself, whether it's them trying to take down steam reviews, mass banning from the community hubs, or or threatening to stop producing content for Warhammer if fans keep complaining.
Most of these 'criticisms' are a lot nicer than they ought to be, and in some cases are not really criticisms at all. This guy said people enjoyed thrones of Britannia in the vid. Bullshit. That's some major cock sucking on his part . If you want an actual critical review of the current state of affairs of CA, go to Legend of total war. He's been booted twice now for being honest about the shit games they pump out.
Im in my 30s and i grew up with TW games, ever since the orginal shogun. It hurts to see this once beloved licence die out this way. The last game I enjoyed was Attila, Thrones was a huge disappointement, Troy uninteresting, but i'm still very mixed about 3K. Never tried the warhammers because of the setting. Now I only wish to see competition or see TW die for good.
@@jregju I am similar to you: I internalize what is a Roman Legion. I internalize what is Persian Clibinari. I internalize what is a knight. But a horde of rats harassing noblewomen....what is that?
Imo warhammers combat sucks anyways. Superficial complexity and single entity spam. Nothing interesting in watching two nearly invincible hero units kill entire armies with not a single neuron activated. The actually tactics that made TW great started dying after Shogun 2. Getting worse with each iteration of making the combat less and less about actually tactics.
For me, TW went downhill with Rome 2. The dumb way they changed everything.. Making every nation with its own "tech tree" was just a lame excuse to nickel and dime everyone, and I saw it from the very beginning but nobody believed me. Now look where we are... 30$ for 2 new "leaders" and their faction... Almost the price of a whole damn game... hated the changes they made to it all too.. Way smaller maps, stupid limitations on building in provinces, dumbing down of mechanics, idiotic changes to the morale system, making it way too easy to just avalanche the morale breaks, its all just a shit show mess.
I hated when they started adding trailing effects on arrow loose. Arrows in shogun 2 used to be much more realistic, just arrows and soldiers dying in a realistic way. That completely changed afterward.
Boy do I agree with this... I actually played a ton of Shogun 2, Rome 1 and even Empire Total War. My favorite by far from ANY game they EVER released was Shogun 2 and I believe that after this release they just started rolling their franchise downhill, Rome 2 was stupid in many ways, tried to give a shot to Britannia, Atilla etc but just wasn't feeling any of it.. I am interested in giving Three Kingdoms a shot but Shogun 2 for me was, is and will be the BEST they ever made...
I am actually a partisan of the Saga style game, but they should be priced accordingly then. And perhaps explore new settings, like the American Civil War or the 1870 French-Germany war idk
IF they released Pharaoh as a sort of standalone/DLC for Troy with a combined map, like what WH2 was for WH1 with (im)mortal empires it would probably have made them more money than this. You can clearly see it was developed with this intent because the maps of the 2 games literally fit together exactly
Could be an exception here, but Troy not having the dark gritty vibe was what caught me Or at least in the trailers. lol. I Have to mod the hell out of Attila and Rome so they dont look like its always damn dark because "Muh grim dark times of war.". If its sunny, its sunny!. I dont want a red or brownwish sunlight when its supposed to be Midday. The mod Orbis Terrarium did wonders with that. Now i dont play the game without it. Troy is a strange case now that i played it. Even if i tone down the colors, it still has a cartoonish-Warhammer feel to it.
The romance take for TK was very very odd. Their decision had much more to do with the fact history surroudning ROTK - there has always been a fantasy side and a historical side, and the ROTK fanbase would have been disappointed to not have both represented. It was an era of duels between generals, as well, so the individual characters had to be represented in an individual enough way.
To be fair, hero units made perfect sense in 3 kingdoms and Troy, this part of history is ALL about these legendary mens clashing with each other and beating entire armies.
Great video, total war was once upon a time my very favorite strategy franchise. I've been playing since the first medieval. I've enjoyed nearly all of the historical titles up to and including Rome 2 and Atilla. When they started releasing games like three kingdoms and Warhammer with fantasy and fantastical elements I figured it was a phase and something like Medieval 3 was right around the corner. Instead what happened was the unfortunate success in capturing the mass audience of people who think history is lame but wizards and elves are not. Fast forward to where we are today and after seeing Warhammer be the only series to get a full trilogy I'm now certain that the golden age of total war has come and gone. And considering what thrones of Britannia turned out to be I no longer have faith in CA to make a historical title with the passion they had when creating the classics. Total war has sadly become the call of duty of strategy games.
i wouldnt mind all that. but they way games like attila which i really enjoyed got released are a joke. also the game is still so unbalanced, buggy and has some stupid mechanics. its so depressing if the ai gets such absurd stat buffs that you cant hold the line for 5sec. dont start an anbush on a plain. makte the ai do smart shit no just try to fix everything with plain buffs or debuffs. also i want the option to play as a little empire or a large one. some hard and some easy campaigns. the issue with medieval 3 is the setting has such a huge potential and expectations if they fck that up again no one will buy a historical total war anymore.
I hope the rumors about Paradox making a total war game are true. Paradox knows how to make an in depth strategy game that gives several thousand hours worth of playtime. If they can get the battles down and just mix CK2-3's customization and character depth, it'd literally be the best Rts ever
Why the f* are people still riding paradoxes d*. Their recent offerings and behaviour have been rather poor to say the least. I have liked paradox in the past but there are worrying signs for the direction of the company lately. I would not rely on them to be the ones to bring you the total war killer. I had hope for that in the past, but not now.
It got significantly better after the atrocious release. It's certainly one of the better modern TW titles. Still introduced many of the issues that plague current TW.
It's a pretty good game with the DEI mod. Even vanilla though you can absolutely play it for more than a few hours. Sure I still prefer games like Shogun 2 or Medieval 2 but it's a decent TW title. it has the big advantage over Rome 1 of actually being remotely authentic. @@DillsyYourDaddy67
The fact that a multi million dollar company like CA is failing to compete with the preview of Major Lords which is for the most part being made by ONE GUY
And that is exactly the reason why Rockstar is one of the very few great game companies who have had what it takes to **STAY** great. I mean look at CA. Look at Bethesda. Look at many others. Even Bethesda has had its first dumpster fire already (I mean Fallout 76).
I have a dream, that they go back to simple, effective UI, historical and deep accuracies, gritty realistic/cinematic graphics, expand on economic mechanics like trade/resource management and perhaps add to the games foundational mechanics to be able to switch from 3rd person macro battle commander (classic TW experience) to 1st person fighting like in mount and blade. This would truly revolutionize the game and bring in new and old fans alike. It would be a serious win. I think they should do all of this in Medieval 3. Someone send me to CA board room.
I liked both, sadly we got the FIFA like ‘improvement’ in TWW Sadly i think also historical fans are in for a dispointment if ME3 is realized if the CA leadership is as out of touch as today, i would not be suprised
What you mean they can't take criticism, they hate people talking in general! They went back and removed text chat from all their old games to shut us up.
A lot of great points here in the comments. But what I am missing is the fantasy behind the games. I started playing total war games to get this feel of epicness, feeling like a general or soldier in the great battles we've seen in Movies and imagined in our brains. I still remember how I first watched Lotr two towers and then go to play Total War for the same epic feeling. And on top of that were always the sieges. Not that they have been particularly good, but they made up for EPIC last stands and Climaxes. Played a lot of Attila in Coop with a good friend of mine and we had great nights defending our cities (or small camps!), slowly falling to the core and apart but changing our fate with some great last cavalry charges. That completely made up for the lacking tactical possibilities, so at least give us attila Sieges back! Same for the "build up your empire"-style of feeling. Slowly improve your russian countries infrastracture and economy in Empire TW, fighting on all borders, having to find the balance between army and economy, or the looming threats on all fronts while playing the roman factions in Attila. Such a great time and memories. Warhammer in a way already had this lacking for me, but I still played a shitton of Warhammer 2 and honestly also warhammer 3, I still love them. It's not that cineastic epic feel, but the pure scale of the campaign that breathed that spirit. And the Immersion I got, playing the completeley unique factions and lords, all having their own distinct feel was great and unmatched. The problem for me seems to be that the newer small-scaled Sagatype games dont get either of those. To small for big Empires and economy building, to small battles for the epic movie feeling, missing variety in units makes battles feel lame and repetitive, constantly trying to fix sieges but making them worse each iteration. As a lot of you mentioned, give us back the Scale of your old historicals and warhammer. ANd personally i'd say, give us back the old flaws at least, instead of creating new ones ontop! Empire 2 in a modern look, with the same idea of economies but expanded on, and battle scale like before (including naval!) would be my alltime favorite, followed directly by a med3. The only thing i liked saga-titles for was the possibility to try new things on a small scale, before making them into a huge epic experience. Thinking of some experiments with WW1-Era, Warhammer 40k setting (I honestly still have to play CoH3, that could on paper be a good prototype for this?), 30 years war (with some interesting new mercenary mechanis and a combination of Empire/Medieval battles) etc. There's so much potential for new ideas with the strengths of the old titles. But all we got are the same takes and experiments in different eras (thinking of Troy, pharaoh and Thrones) while it's already shown that those slow-paced melee skirmishes are lacking. Although I appreciate that they tried ONCE. Not thrice. I hope my ideas are understandable, as english isnt my main language but I wanted to give my points. I grew up with Total war, began playing it with shogun 1 when I was 13 and being hyped for every single title until the recent pharaoh, which was the first title I couldnt get into from the beginning on. But that may also have to do with CA's behaviour, giving us players one punch in the face after another. I dont wanna go into details, as their behaviour still hurt my longtime Fanboyfeelings. It's like finding out one of your best friend or idol is a fucking Nazi or something comparable. Disgustinly ignorant to their customers.
Ok, I started with Shogun, bought all games and DLC full price and I can say: Rome 2 (and its great mods), then Fartilla, throne of Fartannia, 3 Fartdoms, Farthammer 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. And then Fartroy and now Phartaoh! Wont buy a fart more from these people. Creative Fartsembly is dead!
I enjoyed Thrones, because I saw it as a useful outlet to experiment with different mechanics, while creating a cheap gap between actual titles. As for Troy and Pharaoh? They're a poor excuse for an actual Bronze Age Total War. I tend to go back to it every once in awhile, but I mainly play Atilla, since mods have largely integrated what I enjoyed about Thrones into the game. I wish they would return to civilian/slave populations from city to city. Same with giving far less health to individual units in battle. Scrap the individual immortal rulers as well. Sure, it works for WH, but not for much else.
You completely miss the point here imo. First of all there is not really a fantasy vs historical fanbase. The vast majority of "historical players" have played Warhammer. The most popular TW mod is third age total war. And while there are a good number of Warhammer players that have not played any "historical" title that it mostly down to a lot of new players coming in with Warhammer. Are there people that only play one or the other out of some actual preference for purely historical or purely fantasy gameplay? Sure. But they are a negligable minority as we can see by the stats. Also the idea of a "fantasy TW" is quite strange in the first place as it consists of basically one game with two big expansions. You might as well say Warhammer. But that is also why imo you blame entirely the wrong thing for TWs troubles. It's both simpler and more complex. Fundamentally recent TW basically since Rome 2 but arguably starting with Empire have been half baked. They have been pushing out a game a year pretty much with the huge quantity of DLC since Rome 2 only making things worse. Nothing gets fixed anymore. No fundamental improvements are made. Games like 3K make some fixes but those don't carry over. Why? Well the leaks told us. Noone has time to fix shit. Or even merge different branches when fixes have been made. The code base is a complete mess and they are not given time to make it better. Their dev tools suck and they are not given time to fix them. Which all leads to no real improvements being made. They make some new features but they are of course barebones because again no time. Just enough to advertise them as new features. And players grow tired of it. Warhammer did not help matters either. It has become very clear that it's success was almost entirely down to the setting. Many of it's features were just terrible design directions like the completely symmetrical starting positions. But due to it's success it is clear they concluded that those features had to be good and decided to make them standard. The second part is better but I am not sure what it really has to do with anything. Ok some youtubers are pissed. Yes there was outrage at the DLC. But really what we saw with Pharaoh was not outrage. It was not a boycott. People just could not give a shit about it. It was apathy not anger and that is arguably a much worse sign for the future of TW. Only the final bit about the release schedule I can really agree on.
After the infamous launch of Rome 2, most traditional fans left the franchise. Then, a new generation of fans, more fantasy oriented, arrived with Warhammer and 3 Kingdoms. Now, even the new generation of fans is abandoning the ship... CA no longer releases quality and we all know it. Do not worry. There are many other options in the market for RTS games.
Watching videos like this really hammers home just how gullible the TW RUclipsrs have been. Like genuinely believing the creator programme is supposed to be some reward for being a big RUclipsr and not just a marketing strategy. I know YTers in general are very susceptible to having their egos massaged, but this has got to be a new low.
Most of them are shit. I like Total War back then, but even before, never liked it's RUclipsrs. Like Paradox RUclipsrs, most of them are crap. The ones like Koifish, Simo, and other more comedic/unhinged ones are great. The others...
They know its a marketing strategy. The problem is CA cant even get that right. Good marketing would be, give youtubers early access, insider information, invite them to launch parties, conventions, etc, to make videos about that that are free marketing for CA. The only thing they would need to do for these youtubers in return is actually listen to feedback and bug reports, which would be even more good marketing for them, showing the community they care. Instead of that, they did the exact opposite, ignoring or banning people who give good feedback and not using their community on youtube as an effective marketing tool. They are just bad at marketing, straight up, and thats one of the reasons Rob got fired.
The issues with the community started when warhammer 3 launched. but there were to many simps and shills accepting to mutch. funny that a minor price increase woke people up from the shit they have been plling for 12 years
CA have never made a game that I didn't like, I just miss the MTW2 feel of how infantry formations interacted with alot of 'weight' since then it's gotten very 'light' with infantry jumping, horses throwing dudes 40 meters, its just a bit much. Empire total war wierdly portrayed musket lines better than NTW once u researched the firing drills. Its wierd how they made battles feel less real, and also gave the commander less agency. So much good stuff in TW, its seriously one of the best games I've ever played since the days of MTW1, but I felt they forgot the aim of the exercise.
It's gotten to the point where I don't want to see Empire 2 or Mediebal 3 anymore, not if they were like Rome 2 and everything that came out after that. I'd rather see Empire Remastered, Medeival 2 Remastered as well as Shogun 2 Remastered and I'd rather they do a remaster for those games than play trash sequels.
Perhaps the only big con Paradox games have typically had is lack of tactical map: If you want to win battles, your only hope is to have a general with some competence points.
Wait. TOB was the best Saga yet due to the high level of player interest in the age of the Vikings and Uthred. We are still making mods for this and it is more playable than ever. It is said that CA cut out a number of key strategy elements from the campaign, but it is still very replayable due to it being central to European history.
It's a beautiful looking game, pisses me off that CA killed it off at launch day. Literally the 1st and only TW that never had any support ( blood DLC and 1 hotfix doesn't count ) afaik .
I dunno why but I feel like unit spacing is off in the newer games, big blocks of units were packed tighter into formation in the games before three kingdoms
sub units should be a thing, disengagement should split into sub units, reflecting the difficulty that ensues with re organising a force in active combat, aka as you disengage and re-engage units it cascades the difficulty of micro.
The worst part about the "historical characters" is... That they don't NEED to make them S-E units like in warhammer. In old TW games, like Rome, Medieval 2... And even Shogun 2 and Rome 2 for a more recent one... Generals were absolute BEASTS with the right perks, even as just a single model inside a bodyguard unit. Perks that increase HP, bonus to armor, defense, melee attack, etc... Old mods like "Third Age" total war makes full use of this, turning unique characters into absolute killing machines by adding traits and abilities to boost them. They didn't need to copy-paste Warhammer, the groundwork was already there >
would love to see Medieval 3, Empire 2 just like everyone else 💚Atilla was the one ive spend most hours in, such a joy to play the campaign with a friend and just chat for hours while taking over the world good times good times.
Try out Rome 2 divide er impera mod! I play a lot of versus campaigns with a mate and we loved Attila. Divide er impera gives you even a better complexity on the campaign.
A few months back they removed chat from ETW/NTW not sure if they removed it from Shogun 2 onwards but i think they were planning to. I only reinstalled Attila a few months back but haven't had time to play.@@Trollseatkittens
Everything after 14:00 is exactly how I've felt about the Assassin's Creed franchise. "They need to stop with these yearly releases ... spend a few years". Unfortunate that the type of game I once loved aren't going to be made anymore because it's been turned into something else entirely.
The ultimate problem with the Saga games, and similar spin offs for any major franchise, is the idea of making smaller cheaper games just doesn't fit in with ballooning complexity and costs of game development. The idea of creating a smaller focused and experimental Total War sounds great but for the developers it must be a nightmare. And this then feeds back in to costing the company who just want the game out asap so it comes out half baked. I actually wonder if the saga games would best be done on the updated TW2 Engine they used the Rome Remaster. It isn't as complex, the updates help it be more modern and they could make a cheaper game on it. You've got modders making what feel like brand new games on it in their spare time. Imagine what a team of professionals with actual resources could accomplish.
Pretty good summary of what is going on but I think you could have also mentioned SEGA's responsibility as a publisher. They are providing the cash for past and future developments and wanted these annual releases and higher cashflow. Between a rock and a hard place CA imitated other studios' DLC poliy and squeezed everything possible out of existing resources. My suspicion is that bad communication and missaligned expectations between CA and SEGA are the root problem. Being familiar with Japanese business culture and knowing that CA is competing with profitable Pachinko machines, I can only imagine their bad negotiating position. Pitching polished historical titles with 2 years of development or the necessity of a new, improved engine must have been next to impossible.
There's not really any evidence for this though as far as I am aware, it's just guessing, trying to shift blame from the studio people like to the big bad evil publisher because that's more comfortable than accepting the fact that CA have fallen far from their glory days. From what I've heard, Sega have been very hands off with CA for a long time and from what I have seen there has been a pretty fundamental problem with management at CA for a long time now. I won't say that Sega has nothing to do with it, maybe they absolutely are putting big expectations on CA and have meddled in some areas but at the same time CA management has not handled those expectations well and have not done their job competently. I don't believe that Sega has been stepping in directly to tell them that they can't make a new engine or they have to do this and that. That doesn't line up with what I have seen and heard.
Three Kingdoms' romance mode, imo, is less attributed to the success of hero units in Warhammer and more attributed to the actual source material, which depicts these various characters in such strength as shown in the game. For Tw3k, it may be less "oh look how successful hero units are, lets make it into the next game too" and more "Oh look, the source material has similar things to our already made hero units, lets just import that over!" After all, I think the game would be incredibly incomplete without the hero unit design, since thats just following the source material as well as the style of Three Kingdoms games across the rest of it's history.
Because we don't want arcade looking game. Troy is good for 30 to 40 hours, for the settings and map. Other than that it's bad. The battles are lame and doesn't feel like a war at all. The health system is stupid too. The algorithms they're using for battles are bad. İ played empire up to 500+ hours and Napoleon up to 800+hours attla 260+hours. Because each battle has its own value. And you have more control over you soldiers and troops. A lot of details were removed which made the games look childish.
@@silversoul2785 That's a lot of points that have nothing to do with the look. As to it looking arcade, I agree when it comes to the battle UI and some of the character designs, but not when it comes to color.
I don't like Attila's gritty (read: edgy) palette, but I don't like the cartoony feel of Troy either. There might be a better balance that could be struck
@@FlyingFox86oh sorry ,i forgot to mention that . Bro throughout the years of developing this series the graphics abd colors where getting more and more realistic. Which is the reason they were successful. People loved the game because ut makes them dive in the time period. When Warhammer came. İt was arcade looking which is understandable. The game is about a fictional land and based on a game. İt was successful because it was not realistic. But when returning to the historical games. They missed up and completed on the arcade style. You might not hate the colors and lighting of these new games but did you really feel like being in troy era? Did you feel the weight of soldiers? When i play Napoleon or empire i feel like the ottoman and hardships and difficulties they have.and be sad when I lose some units. Because units have weight to them. And the biggest reason to this is coloring and lightning. I can give you a clearer example. Look at battlefield 1and battlefield 2042 one is realistic and the other is arcade. The difference in feelings toward the game is completely different.
@@silversoul2785 Yes, I really do feel like I'm in the Troy era when it comes to color and lightning. I don't understand why you are equating realism with "less color".
Same brother. They forgot what made them great and now they reap what they sow. Dumb managers with money signs in their eyes destroyed this company and now 40% off the employees has been fired.
@@toddblankenship7164 a pure historic game could be really good (we haven't gotten gunpowder for a while or ww1 or ww2 could work) but they won't make enough changes to make it worth it and they will probably die anyways due to lack of sales before they ever will and can choose to make a better game
I love this game series... They need to get their shit together... This is why I refuse to buy a new game from them or Sega until this title gets the respect it deserves...
No, actually the whiny, selfish babies that are infuriatingly the loudest are ignorant of the romance of the three kingdoms. Romance of the three kingsoms is an epic FANTASY novel. It is a pseudohistorical and fantastical retelling of the unification of China. Epic history with fantastic elements. It is not hisorical scholarship, it is not objective fact since it doesnt even try to be, it is openly amd unashamedly fictional. If you dont know anything about the romance of the three kingdoms, the most culturally important work of fiction in the Chinese language, then thats on you. Thats on all the ignorant fans who want to whine and bitch all day. Thats shameful but it does not reflect a move on CAs part to add fantasy elements to their historical games and abandon their old fans. It does not represent a move away from realism, they just did three kingdoms and if you want three kingdoms thats what you get. Its a book about fantastic duels by larger than life historical icons. 80% of the book is heroic duels. All the rest of the rather obnoxious noise surrounding this subject is pure ignorance and a reflection of only that: the ignorance and childishness of their fans. Shameful. Nothing wrong with the game on that measure, anyway, something wrong with the loudest fans? Yes. Is it an attempt to court the chinese market? Yes. Are you allowed to not like that? Yes. But is the problem with CAs interpretation of the novel or with the fans complete lack of any knowledge about the novel? Its the fans, obviously.
I mean, it's literally called the ROMANCE of the three kingdoms. The romanticisation of history. Its the name of the book, ffs. Can Internet gamer kiddies even read at this point? Will the next complaint be a lack of voice acting? Oh poor, ignorant, Internet gamer kiddies had to read a subtitle. You poor souls. Fs.
You'd think that in a game series specifically about the rise and fall of empires they'd see some of this coming and know better than to ignore public order issues.
The internet is a crazy place full of mob mentality. I keep seeing this Total War is "dead" rhetoric popping up online - and now because a couple of videos on RUclips claim this as fact now all these people online think its true. I'll be the first to admit that Total War can do a heck of a lot more to improve their flawed core gameplay systems, particularly on their campaign map, but claiming that Total War is "dead" is ridiculous and you'd be talking in extremes. They're still fresh off of Warhammer 3 which was, all things considered, a success and a great release for CA. It culminated years of hard work in one of the most complete and best renditions of the Warhammer franchise ever. You guys are blowing everything out of proportion. If I were to look at this situation rationally, sure I'd say that total war needs to make some adjustments following the release of Pharaoh - but give CA some time to respond before you start bringing out your pitchforks. Chill out community geez.
They are "dead" because they can't create any new game that isn't Warhammer and will be successful. So they can keep making WH series but for how long that will work? Every game they released after Attila that wasn't WH failed (except 3K) and people still play Rome, Med 2 etc. So, for the fanbase CA is practically "dead".
2024 Medieval III with some DLC 2025 Empire II with some DLC 2026 Shogun III with some DLC 2027 Rome III with some DLC 2028 Atilla III with some DLC 2029 Viking Invasion II with some DLC How hard can it be ???
Complacency is the biggest killer of game franchises/studios, and CA has got to be one of the biggest offenders in the industries history to be honest.
I went to an event hosted by CA just before the release of Rome II. It wasn't for 'influencers' or anything like that, my friend somehow found out about it and let me know, I think you just had to pay like £20 or something. Heir Of Carthage was there though, I was pretty starstruck lol. It was somewhere around Soho if I recall, they rented out some kind of commercial space and had perhaps a dozen computers for people to play for 10 minutes or so. I played a skirmish battle while a developer was sitting next to me, it was cool! I could feel the enthusiasm as he chuckled at my reactions to artillery, elephants etc. It felt very cozy and wholesome. Better times.
Ironically watching your video it cut to a ad that said the following " Smaller scale titles, giving players................wet cat food" Actually between you and the ad I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head!
126 hours played of Pharaoh now and its the best TW title i've played.
Everybody is kinda looking like that guy who gave elden ring a 0/10 rating without having played it, and refusing to do so.
@@zarahandrahilde9554I guess it reminds me of a Google Review I submitted for a hotel I ran a conference out of for a number of years..The review was really poor and after four years we/I had enough.. to which the manager wrote back how things "had changed" and they looked forward to welcoming us back the following year. Needless to say we haven't returned.
The bottomline is every company/experience has a level of "goodwill" once that is used up you are in a really bad place. It seems to me that CA are in that place right now and they will need to do something special to get themselves out of this hole, I very much doubt it will help them there will be a large number of former employees very shortly who aren't themselves likely to feel much "goodwill" towards them.
@@zarahandrahilde9554 all these videos whinging about Pharoah all have the same content and similar titles lol. I've not watched this because it'll be just like the discussions in Steam, with countless amounts of waaaaah and demands for a new Total War Medieval 2 and claims that fans have not had a historical TW game in centuries whilst ignoring 3K, Troy and ToB 🤣😂
@ailediablo79 I think they've really missed a good opportunity so far by not doing a War of the Roses style TW, but could also have DLCs that cover other similar wars in other countries (or vice versa) and instead of turns being an entire season or year, have it be months (as we're on a smaller scale than the world map) so while you're waiting a couple of turns for a few units to be trained, you can deal with a lot of spying, diplomacy, financing etc even bring in a raiding mechanic that actually contains content than just clicking to change stance of your army. I mean dealing with raiding in your lands should be important and not every fight was some huge battle. At least it would allow players to even issue a few orders then sit back and watch the carnage unfold.
@@zarahandrahilde9554 you must not have played troy then. oh....and it was FREE.
Simply, they gave up and stopped trying. No more innovating. They chose the easy path over push for more and more greatness. The engine has barely changed from Rome 2 TW and it shows. They could have allowed for Bannerlord depth of unit control, combining or splitting units mid battle. Camp forts, circumventions surrounding an entire city, raiding parties/skirmishes, supplies&scorched earth tactics, and so much more. But the engine either doesn’t let them or they don’t care. Hopefully another studio takes off in their place
I wouldn't be that pessimistic if I was in your place
@@MsSirAndy The recent investors communication from SEGA paints a pretty bleak picture. People will get fired in order to reduced fixed costs, and the language used implies severe cuts to the structures within CA. If said cuts are done purely by the "cost" metric, a lot of talented people will loose their jobs, and it won't leave the studio in a good position to innovate or even get a decent game out. Combine that with what's mentioned in the corporate speech from SEGA, that a number of games CA has worked on will be canceled just like Hyenas? Looks pretty bad if you ask me 🙁
@@MsSirAndy I just want the best TW or similar strategy game there can be without being buried under corporate meddling or apathetic dev leads. TW still has a lot of potential like a Viking Age Med 3, Islamic Golden Age, Qing dynasty, or even expanded maps for a Med 3 or Shogun 3. We can only hope they turn it around
@@Mustang-wt1se Yep, finger crossed mate!
@@MrQwertyman111
This.
Especially with the leaked information, that Total War is basically made with impenetrable, draconian tools, "cost cutting" fires will leave the company with nobody who knows how to use the damn things, on a shorter leash than ever to actually do it.
It's like they sidestepped the game development pitfall, hiring short term contractors to make your game development tools, that you then fire, and have a toolbox nobody knows how to use, only to back up and hurl themselves down it even more aggressively to send a message.
notice theres no blood in the cinematics, because u have to pay for the blood dlc to unlock the video with blood in it
Nah, "not ready yet" 😉
Paying for it feels shit. I paid once.
But *hurr durr* we separate blood pack so our game can have lower age requirements *hurr durr*
We only have good intentions, we swear. Sometimes we even pair up new animations/units with the bloodpack so the pricetag is justifiable. Aight.
-Some CA Executive, probably-
You've got to be kidding.
@@BriarLeaf00They are not kidding.
I would like to add that they almost never drop the prices even on the older titles. Which is crazy. It's pretty obvious they don't care about us players.
Thats because the old ones are still worth more than the new ones XD
The pricing is because we all buy the old games more. This year Rome 2 reached 800,000 copies sold just in this last year so not bringing the price down specially in sight of their recent failure it makes sense
@Warrior1990L I don't disagree. I never said I didn't understand why. It's just greedy. I waited forever for empire to be $15 on steam. Got it on sale cause I'm not a sucker.
@@ohsam5954 To be fair, that's not on CA. That's something we need to blame SEGA, as with the "regular" releases of "smaller scale games" mentioned in the vid. Sure, CA is not free of guilt here, but we need to remember they are owned by none other than SEGA. A publisher who has a track record as bad as some of the worst in the industry. I mean, took them a painfully long time to release a decent Sonic game, and I guess same will happen here. Or... Total War is put on ice for a while. Who knows?
@MrQwertyman111 I mean, I'm not really blaming anyone. I just wish the older titles were cheaper. That's really all I'm getting at. I totally understand why they do it. It just hurts them in the long run because people like me simply will not buy it even though I want it.
In summary, the finance team took over. It's not recent. Even in Rome 2 you could see it. The early release even though it was bugged as hell. There is less attention to details in Rome 2 than in Rome 1... I Mean in Rome 1 units spread around to allow others to pass through the ranks and didnt do it when enemies were near. Rome 2 does not even bother.
Rome 2 is where many Total War RUclips channels started to get big, being invited into the insider program and not once saying anything bad about the game. And they're all still "insiders" and never criticise CA.
Hell the unit AI in the Battle for Middle Earth series from two thousand-freaking-four was better
Yup, people forget rome 2 was broke at launch.
Took 17 major patches to make the game look normal ! not improve what we should have received at launch and those channels that promoted it are still around promoting games like Pharaoh. @@goldenkro
@@LordSluggo Im just playing Battle for middle earth , and its awesome !
My only hope is for Manor Lords to be as good as it is looking to be. Not the same thing, but is enough
that and UG: AR
Manor Lords is a completely different type of game.
Same, especially since Bannerlord was such a disappointment
@@kapitankapital6580 The scale is different, but It has some real time battles, resource management, territorial expansion and the controls already seam better than anything CA has made.
Imagine when retreating without turning the whole unit can be done by a single guy, but not by a decades old full studio.
@@kapitankapital6580 it is true what you say, but there are some overlaps in some areas as well and it seems like the game got postponed to flesh out combat aspect even more. The question though is also what happens if it becomes a smashing success, what direction will the sequels or expansions take. At the same time Ultimate General American Revolution is about to enter into early access and that one also has a chance of clawing some market parts from CA, especially if the sandbox campaign is open enough but as always time will tell what will happen.
Makes me so sad but it really was their own fault. So many easily avoidable bad decisions
Facts. Let's hope they're gonna get their shit together.
@@MsSirAndyit's Ca. They won't. Arrogant woke censorship greedy and lazy fucks. Haven't made a quality product since 2006
@@MsSirAndyof the six people in CAs leadership team, only two have a background in the gaming industry. They are a bunch of delusional businessmen who see gaming as a means of pure profit.
The irony is they are running CA into financial ruin, spunking 100m on hyenas because they were deluded enough to think they could emulate the success of Apex and Overwatch despite being a RTS studio. They have also been on a tax break for years. I’m sure they will be used as an example to anyone studying game design or business for things to avoid doing. They had a monopoly on the battle sim/turn based strategy market and still fucked it up. All they had to do was make medieval 3 or another empire but blew it all on a game no one asked for that they didn’t even release.
this is a bit of an essay but it’s genuinely impressive that they are this incompetent and just straight up complete idiots.
I'm wondering who told them to keep going in that direction ?
Those who bought every game and DLC and the youtubers encouraging us to do so pushed them to keep going.
@@mathieumercier7936 Who? Some young, highly educated economists who are no fans of Total War franchise (only fans of another dime in their pocket) told them to keep going in that direction. Thats what happens when people like that have all the power in the corporation instead of those who understand fans and gamers.
historical total war player: "what? first time ever getting burnt by CA?"
Man, it's crazy to think that a game like Total War Rome 2 which came out in 2013, still has 6.000 players on a day, whereas Troy only has 300 players on a day
Willing to bet most of those 6000 are only playing because of mods as well.
It doesn't change the fact that r 2 is the better entertainment option
You don't see how much med 2 have...
@@jimmyngo2191 i still play med2 the mods are excellent
@@itsmarmaladegood, because that means that people who loved that game didnt abandon it for newer titles. They mod the game so that others who love the game can keep loving it.
Sadly they went backwards with each game after Shogun 2. Selling reskins for 40 euro prices as "dlc"
Warhammer 2 was genuinely fun but with the historic titles I agree, it was usually one step forward (3 kings diplomacy is great for instance) and two steps back.
@@JB-xl2jc Rome 2, Attila and Three Kingdoms were pretty solid, tbh.
@@MsSirAndy I liked Attila a bunch but I wish it was better optimized and got more support. 3K and RTW2, I liked elements but felt they sabotaged themselves heavily in a lot of ways. That's not to say I didn't enjoy them! I got my money's worth. But I don't feel the same draw to play them more that I did with some of the older games. Countless hours!
@@MsSirAndy Solid maybe, but that was the starting point for the decline for the historic fans. I still don´t like the temporary stat boost skills etc.. Combat for me was one of the main reasons why I disliked Rome 2 and Attila, though modding kind of improved it.
I am not into Warhammer and the small scale saga stuff felt like cheap dlcs with the same graphics and mechanics as Rome 2. Haven´t bought a single total war game since Attila and wasn´t really interested in anything they released since as a result.
@@scipiovp921 I agree that Rome 2 and Atilla already felt arcadish in comparison to the previous installments but I wouldn't rate them as completely unrealistic at the level Three Kingdoms, Troy, Thrones, Pharaoh were. They may be more accessible, but not that antistorical or unfaithful at all if compared with the latter. Things actually went downhill with Troy and worsened with Warhammer III and Pharaoh bad launches. Three Kingdoms, altough arcadish and a half baked pseudofantastic game, still shown that CA can make good and enjoyable games. Again, the true decline started with Troy.
Being someone who knows how hard LegendofTW worked to become repartnered around the WH2 era a few years ago, its very dissapointing to see CA drop him again due to their lack of ability to own up to their own mistakes and poor decisions when it comes to the franchise. The opinions of the fans and creators are clearly the correct ones in this situation, and the sooner CA gets of their high horse and starts delivering worthwhile content, it will be better for all parties. CA really trying to contest Blizzard and EA in my mind for terrible company choices, that have a negative impact on my desire to purchase their games.
Drop him? Dude CA censored him. CA didnt wanna hear no non-positive reviews from him and several other ytbers so CA blacklisted them. Leaving only ytbers with only good reviews of the game.
What? You're agreeing with me indifferent words? Yes its wrong they censored him. If you ask me, we shouldnt allow companies to be so "in control" of partner content. But hey, Ig we only need to be bit in the ass a million times before it changes.@@Tomo_mo
CA's kneejerk response to criticism is to put their hands over their ears and say "lalalala i cant hear you" like your average 4 year old kid
I am just hoping the axe Sega is taking to the company cuts out the right people. They really only have one free money printer left which is a re-release of Medieval II remastered, and they really murdered the good will of their fans with their recent acts. The fact they were calling content creators they disliked assholes really showed out of touch CA is, and unlike companies like Stardock, they can't possibly claim their mistakes were out of incompetency and be taken in good faith. If the Sega axe doesn't fix the company, then it is another example of a company wasting money on greed and virtue signalling instead of making good products.
You mean lie the Forum bans? @@TheSuperappelflap
What`s unnoticed is, how simple the strategic maps have become. They removed population, politics, religion, building depth and decision making on how to set up your province. All love has gone from the campaign map and game design. If you take the WH3 map, nothing special about it. A simple try to pack as much regions together to build a large map, but it feels small as basically there`s nothing to do.
They made it easier for newer players, but they lost the base because there`s no depth and no challenge. Most WH3 campaigns are shallow AF and turn into all the same battles after and after. Turn 50 and it`s over.
Total War has all the ingredients together to be a great game, but somehow many good features have been droped and the technical debt is outstanding. The AI, they have never been able to fix that.
Don't forget the absolute stupid AI
It’s crazy they dumbed the map part down so hard and the campaign AI is still the worst part of the game m
I think the big thing with total war is that it’s become character focused which goes away from the big tactical battles. Also the quality of battles have not been great sense Rome 2 and they have only gotten worse. They really need to create a new engine to make battles be better.
Main reason for me as well. Art style for the units wasn´t to my liking either in Rome 2 and the following.
I think what you said about character focus is both true and false at the same time. Sure, the legendary lords have a lot of focus put on them, often with mechanics unique to them. But the non-legendary lords lack character. Every character has the same skill tree, that you will often fill in on autopilot.
In contrast, with older games like Rome and Medieval II, there was no real difference between historical characters and generic ones, and there were no skill trees. But there were traits that they would collect throughout their lifetime. I think that system, for its time, did give the various generals a lot of character. They were people, with their own weaknesses, strengths and quirks. Not just tools you personally built for a purpose.
@@FlyingFox86 I agree, i liked the older games generals because they are important and have differences and some were better or worse than others. The main thing I don’t like with new games is that it feels like your playing a character based game not an army based one.
Explain how the quality of battle has not been great, what the hell does that even mean
@@srdjan455 the big thing is that collision is non existent. Rome 2 was the first game to use a different engine to the older games. The new engine does not have good collision so units can slide past each other most famously in Rome 2. the battle AI is also horrible and difficultly only makes the enemy units stronger not the AI smarter. Also damage plays a big part then morale and damage is calculated differently. It easier to see or experience if you play newer and older total war
One element to consider is that, at this point, CA may not have the technical know-how to actually create ambitious projects. I remember hearing somewhere that a lot of their games were, to put it simply, badly coded. They seem to be maintaining the same structures more than anything else. A lot of the guys that made these structures are probably long gone, so you get a lot of tweaking of the formula - everyone knows they've been more or less releasing the same game for twenty years. In the end the kind of change that is required here would, well, probably hurt them a lot. I don't think they'd survive it, they don't know how to start from nothing anymore, and they don't know how to innovate. It's not a question of just not being nice or whatever, at this point as a long-time fan I don't care much for a Rome 3 that would be an interface make-over with minor changes. What we need is some game company that isn't so corporate, which would try the TW formula. The monopoly needs to be broken.
"... at this point, CA may not have the technical know-how to actually create ..."
If the leaks and rumors are true, THIS is absolutely the case!
Its kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. CA didnt innovate and their best games are 20 years old. So the market for this genre of game is small. So other companies dont step in to innovate.
Maybe they start with playing rome tw and med 2 tw
It sucks to see the series fall from grace. Last game I played total war Troy and Warhammer 2. Hopefully they adjust for future games
They can adjust after they collapse and get resurrected in 20 years by people who actually care.
@@darth-hellhound6534 They won't collapse because they will learn from their mistakes and their reaction to Pharaoh's backlash clearly shows that. It's a step in the right direction since bad games that flop lead to better games into the future.
@@MsSirAndy That's too optimistic. If CA really were the type to learn from their mistakes and plan accordingly, we wouldn't have had another terrible Total War launch after Empire.
@@supersardonic1179 Well, they can mess it up once or twicely but now that the bar tollerance of the fanbase is low they won't repeat the same mistakes again because if they did so then they would truly risk to collapse, especially giving Pharaoh's low player count and poor sales. That's an obvious alarm bell for them. They would be stupid to do otherwise and I highly doubt they are. That being said, I remain cautiously optimistic that it is gonna be a renaissance of actual main TW historical games.
The underlying problem, and something evident with Hyenas, is that CA wants to be mainstream, they are not going to play to their strengths, and, if you believe the internal leaks from Volund, they have some of the older devs are reluctant to even introduce improvements, when you look at it the biggest improvements are on the art and setting departments, which in most dev studios are the ones where innovations are made.
My guess is that they will be sold or disbanded soon, unless some exec comes and set realistic expectations: CA produces niche games for a very loyal niche fanbase, maybe take a page out of the paradox book, as greedy it may seem from the outside, stellaris nowadays is like stellaris 3, everytime I buy a DLC y know I will be getting new mechanics and hours of fun.
I find it hilarious how a game dev get grumpy and soil themself once they get feedback, ‘just shutup and buy our games’ is their motto
Stellaris is not a good example and I personally won't buy PDS games any more specifically because of stellaris. It was a good example for a while but the past 1 - 2 years have been mired in bad design decisions that have strayed far from the original point of the game and greedy practices designed to milk players. More and more people are becoming disgruntled with the state of that game and whilst the model can be done well, paradox are not doing it well any more.
I just wish that ca could understand how we feel... like they just need to listen, its not like the community hasn't been telling them what we want...I fear management is going to look at pharoah and say people dont want historical anymore.
They're just idiots if they think that. All they need to do is look at the feedback
Last “new” TW I purchased was Attila. Historical fan only. Now I mostly go back to Rome remastered and Med2 definitive. Great video!
Can't go wrong with either game and there's still so many new mods coming out for both.
I hope we can still play M2TW for a long time...like tens of years yet before modern computers no longer agree to run it. I mean M2TW has lots of splendid total conversion mods such as TATW DAC which is even better than vanilla game.
Sadly this is the trend with all these studios in the last years. They do not listen to their fans and only go after profit. Sad reality since a lot of us have really good memories with earlier titles.
Nowadays, game studios are terribly out of touch with their player base sadly.... They just won't listen and only care about what gives them the most amount of money. It's just another clear example of corporate greed.
It is particularly egregious to them when we criticize the products of their diversity pets, in their minds it makes us the bad people who need to be ignored.
Not studio, but upper management.
I must disagree VERY strongly with you.
WH3 and its first DLC broke every records of the company as most expensive, worst quality and most bought contents. People kept buying and the shittier it got, the more it sold. Until the last DLC.
So, yeah, CA is entirely responsible for the Hyenas catastrophe, but for the TW franchise, you can add as guilty everyone who bought WH3 DLCs, Troy, Pharaoh etc.
I have 126.1hrs on the original Rome: Total War (excluding the many hours I played it before steam existed) and 149.7hrs on the remaster, I still play it often because those were the days I fell in love with the Total war games. None of their games now bring that same feeling anymore. I can maybe enjoy them for a few hours spread over a couple weeks, but then rarely ever return to them. It just feels like the games have no soul or love like they used to.
Don't forget, Creative Assembly removed the multiplayer chat function for NTW and Empire Total this year...
And shogun2
They did the same with twwh2&3...
If I remember right, that was due to UK implementing censorship laws they couldn't realistically implement. Not really a fault of the company as so much as their government deciding adults can't handle scary words on the internet. I can't imagine how humanity survived beforehand.
@bewawolf19 this is not correct. The law isn't even in place yet. The person putting the bill forward is my local MP.
@@bewawolf19 no . They did that the moment the game was available on epic game store. Supposedly with crossplay enabled. That was the reason why they did that to tww2.
Honestly the fall of total war started with Rome 2...has everyone forgotten what they promised vs what was delivered? Rome 2 is terrible the battle mechanics and unit collisions are miles off the original Rome 1 and Med 2.
Dude I remember the launch of Rome 2 and it was fking awful mate. FPS all over the place and bugs and crashes everywhere. Literally could not play the game in the first week.
@@HabboCoolcattim Exactly! it was the most disappointed I have ever been with a game.
it even started back in empire, the american factions have almost no roster and its all the same, its buggy too and sieges feel painful still similar to moving units in medieval 2 in sieges, and no unlimited buildings, but it also innovated a lot with the map, research, towns, and gunpowder weaponry was cool, then rome 2 pulled the same thing but took more steps back and less steps forward, I still would play medieval 2 or rome 1 with mods and just how good the games are but even while replaying medieval 2 I haven't played rome 2 again, and I am still playing vanilla medieval 2 aswell as mods so I think that says something, waiting for CA to die out and somebody to replace them (ultimate general american revolution might?)
@@gavinsepicgaming9835 I agree, but at least empire was fun. Warscape was just good enough for empire and they somehow pulled off nap shogun and FOTS with it to, but it was never a very good engine.
@@HanSolo1 it was also the first and last time I pre ordered a game btw.
I would love a modern Empire, it’s probably the ONLY total war I need
Keep an eye on Ultimate General American Revolution. Looks great.
Total war is dying, and here's why : 13:52 , pikemen outnumbered, outmatched, attacked from the rear, "steady". They should have a speed malus from the balls of steel they're carrying
That gameplay was pure horror to watch
LMAO IKR
For me the recruitment system of medieval 2 was the best. Since Rome 2 doom stacking in become the norm
In addition now mechanics are split into "unique" mechanics for each faction.
No roleplay as s cunning king in Denmark using plots and assassin's or the brutal warlord from Venice
The price for Pharaoh was absurd. Lazy copy paste game in a setting nobody asked for
It was originally going to be a Troy dlc.....still is just without the price
@@HanSolo1 My little tidbit of trivia to add to this is that there is no credible proof of this claim.
@BaronVonEntenteich leaked from CA employees. Also just look at the game....
@@HanSolo1 Leaked to who? Volound? An incredibly toxic person who has had one of his supposed leaks proven to be false?
@@HanSolo1 If it was going to be sold as a Troy DLC at half price then it would be okay, but at that price as an unofficial saga game it's clearly insulting.... Look, I don't think Pharaoh it's a bad game, it is not.. the point is that it is just overpriced and marketed for what is not and calling it 'a fully historical game' is a joke. Furthermore, that is not what fans wanted from the start. People are asking for a Medieval 3 or an Empire 2, not a bronze age game.
Not fantasy vs historical. It was gone shit after shogun 2. It was all fantasy because your playthrough is not real history.
If they had called Pharaoh say "Bronze Age Total War" and included Mesopotamia, Greece, the Mediterranean it could have been a good game.
Weep not dear Total War players , manor lord's release date has been announced!
Manor lords is a city builder its not the same game as total war and if people go in thinking its a “replacement” to TW youre going to be disappointed
@@Pepper462 you speak as if you have tried manor lord's, how was it ?
@@Insomnia97PC there was a free demo a while ago, go watch gameplay for the game its not a 4x strategy game like tw, its a city builder with battles
The Age of Mythology soundtrack in the background... The nostalgia ❤
The fact they haven’t tried to make sure hits like Empire 2 or Medieval 3 is perplexing
I am a long time gamer in my 50s. Total War has always been a joy. The Warhammer first one I bought reluctantly having been a miniature gamer my whole life and how money grabby GW has been. I stopped GW games years ago and when the Warhammer 2 came out, I was like "I'm out". Total War Shogun and Roman series and Empire still my favorites.
12:35 wasnt on his discord. it was a DM to me that i asked if he would mind me posting on my subreddit etc. and he gave me permission.
and congratulations on noticing that CA is shit.
I think this could have been a good game if they invested time into making an engine that works better for this kind of era, and could hopefully then take that engine and use it for something like medieval 3. I think the problem arose when they threw tons of money into HYENAS, it got canceled effectively burning like 100 million and they had to force something out for investors, so we got Pharoah.
Management should take their trash hyenas and shove it up their **s.
I'm surprised this video didn't talk about how CA has been attacking the community itself, whether it's them trying to take down steam reviews, mass banning from the community hubs, or or threatening to stop producing content for Warhammer if fans keep complaining.
Most of these 'criticisms' are a lot nicer than they ought to be, and in some cases are not really criticisms at all. This guy said people enjoyed thrones of Britannia in the vid. Bullshit. That's some major cock sucking on his part . If you want an actual critical review of the current state of affairs of CA, go to Legend of total war. He's been booted twice now for being honest about the shit games they pump out.
I hope they do stop producing WH content.
Im in my 30s and i grew up with TW games, ever since the orginal shogun. It hurts to see this once beloved licence die out this way.
The last game I enjoyed was Attila, Thrones was a huge disappointement, Troy uninteresting, but i'm still very mixed about 3K. Never tried the warhammers because of the setting.
Now I only wish to see competition or see TW die for good.
Setting?
@@heitorpedrodegodoi5646 I prefer historical setting. Dragons, undeads and whatnots didn’t appeal to me.
@@jregju Okay
@@jregju I am similar to you: I internalize what is a Roman Legion. I internalize what is Persian Clibinari. I internalize what is a knight. But a horde of rats harassing noblewomen....what is that?
Imo warhammers combat sucks anyways. Superficial complexity and single entity spam. Nothing interesting in watching two nearly invincible hero units kill entire armies with not a single neuron activated.
The actually tactics that made TW great started dying after Shogun 2. Getting worse with each iteration of making the combat less and less about actually tactics.
For me, TW went downhill with Rome 2. The dumb way they changed everything.. Making every nation with its own "tech tree" was just a lame excuse to nickel and dime everyone, and I saw it from the very beginning but nobody believed me. Now look where we are... 30$ for 2 new "leaders" and their faction... Almost the price of a whole damn game...
hated the changes they made to it all too.. Way smaller maps, stupid limitations on building in provinces, dumbing down of mechanics, idiotic changes to the morale system, making it way too easy to just avalanche the morale breaks, its all just a shit show mess.
I hated when they started adding trailing effects on arrow loose. Arrows in shogun 2 used to be much more realistic, just arrows and soldiers dying in a realistic way. That completely changed afterward.
yeah shogun 2s laser accurate slow falling arrows were realistic i guess
Boy do I agree with this... I actually played a ton of Shogun 2, Rome 1 and even Empire Total War. My favorite by far from ANY game they EVER released was Shogun 2 and I believe that after this release they just started rolling their franchise downhill, Rome 2 was stupid in many ways, tried to give a shot to Britannia, Atilla etc but just wasn't feeling any of it.. I am interested in giving Three Kingdoms a shot but Shogun 2 for me was, is and will be the BEST they ever made...
I 100% agree. It's sad to think total war peaked over a decade ago...
I am actually a partisan of the Saga style game, but they should be priced accordingly then. And perhaps explore new settings, like the American Civil War or the 1870 French-Germany war idk
IF they released Pharaoh as a sort of standalone/DLC for Troy with a combined map, like what WH2 was for WH1 with (im)mortal empires it would probably have made them more money than this. You can clearly see it was developed with this intent because the maps of the 2 games literally fit together exactly
Could be an exception here, but Troy not having the dark gritty vibe was what caught me Or at least in the trailers. lol.
I Have to mod the hell out of Attila and Rome so they dont look like its always damn dark because "Muh grim dark times of war.". If its sunny, its sunny!. I dont want a red or brownwish sunlight when its supposed to be Midday. The mod Orbis Terrarium did wonders with that. Now i dont play the game without it.
Troy is a strange case now that i played it. Even if i tone down the colors, it still has a cartoonish-Warhammer feel to it.
The romance take for TK was very very odd. Their decision had much more to do with the fact history surroudning ROTK - there has always been a fantasy side and a historical side, and the ROTK fanbase would have been disappointed to not have both represented. It was an era of duels between generals, as well, so the individual characters had to be represented in an individual enough way.
100% shits Kratos in China
i hope it does: the old talent left ages ago and whats left is an insult to the legacy they have left.
Can I just say as a sidenote, love the Age of Mythology backround music 😂
To be fair, hero units made perfect sense in 3 kingdoms and Troy, this part of history is ALL about these legendary mens clashing with each other and beating entire armies.
Great video, total war was once upon a time my very favorite strategy franchise. I've been playing since the first medieval. I've enjoyed nearly all of the historical titles up to and including Rome 2 and Atilla. When they started releasing games like three kingdoms and Warhammer with fantasy and fantastical elements I figured it was a phase and something like Medieval 3 was right around the corner. Instead what happened was the unfortunate success in capturing the mass audience of people who think history is lame but wizards and elves are not. Fast forward to where we are today and after seeing Warhammer be the only series to get a full trilogy I'm now certain that the golden age of total war has come and gone. And considering what thrones of Britannia turned out to be I no longer have faith in CA to make a historical title with the passion they had when creating the classics. Total war has sadly become the call of duty of strategy games.
i wouldnt mind all that. but they way games like attila which i really enjoyed got released are a joke. also the game is still so unbalanced, buggy and has some stupid mechanics. its so depressing if the ai gets such absurd stat buffs that you cant hold the line for 5sec. dont start an anbush on a plain. makte the ai do smart shit no just try to fix everything with plain buffs or debuffs. also i want the option to play as a little empire or a large one. some hard and some easy campaigns. the issue with medieval 3 is the setting has such a huge potential and expectations if they fck that up again no one will buy a historical total war anymore.
Total war has been dead and buried for 10 years. The last game that wasn't trash was Shogun 2.
I hope the rumors about Paradox making a total war game are true. Paradox knows how to make an in depth strategy game that gives several thousand hours worth of playtime. If they can get the battles down and just mix CK2-3's customization and character depth, it'd literally be the best Rts ever
Why the f* are people still riding paradoxes d*. Their recent offerings and behaviour have been rather poor to say the least. I have liked paradox in the past but there are worrying signs for the direction of the company lately. I would not rely on them to be the ones to bring you the total war killer. I had hope for that in the past, but not now.
Considering how Paradox have handled Cities Skylines 2 I wouldn't want them anywhere near it.
CA loaths its player base. They have taken zero feedback on board. They deserve to go bankrupt.
Man's pulling up the Age Of Mythology soundtrack and I am here for it
Wait, people liked Rome 2? I distinctly remember it being a disaster, and Volund ragging on it to no end.
People did rag on but after the Empire update, it got better.
It got significantly better after the atrocious release. It's certainly one of the better modern TW titles. Still introduced many of the issues that plague current TW.
It's a pretty good game with the DEI mod. Even vanilla though you can absolutely play it for more than a few hours. Sure I still prefer games like Shogun 2 or Medieval 2 but it's a decent TW title.
it has the big advantage over Rome 1 of actually being remotely authentic. @@DillsyYourDaddy67
They did not, most of the praise comes from people who were not there during release.
The fact that a multi million dollar company like CA is failing to compete with the preview of Major Lords which is for the most part being made by ONE GUY
Imagine if they acted more like Rockstar where each game is a major event that is polished and deep
And that is exactly the reason why Rockstar is one of the very few great game companies who have had what it takes to **STAY** great. I mean look at CA. Look at Bethesda. Look at many others. Even Bethesda has had its first dumpster fire already (I mean Fallout 76).
This video is awesome but I absolutely love the fact that you used music from age of mythology :D
"Discount Warhammer games masquerading as historical total war"
CA releases in a nutshell.
I have a dream, that they go back to simple, effective UI, historical and deep accuracies, gritty realistic/cinematic graphics, expand on economic mechanics like trade/resource management and perhaps add to the games foundational mechanics to be able to switch from 3rd person macro battle commander (classic TW experience) to 1st person fighting like in mount and blade. This would truly revolutionize the game and bring in new and old fans alike. It would be a serious win. I think they should do all of this in Medieval 3. Someone send me to CA board room.
If for one am not in the “both fantasy and history” camp. I’m in the history purist camp. I haven’t touched any of the fantasy TW titles yet
It’s just a blatant degrade in battle mechanics for more ability clicking and monsters
I hate ability clicking with timers. I didn't play any Total War game after Shogun 2. @@roguewasbanned4746
@@roguewasbanned4746 We could have both, its just simple for devs to make one or another.
I've played more Field of Glory than TW in recent years.
I liked both, sadly we got the FIFA like ‘improvement’ in TWW
Sadly i think also historical fans are in for a dispointment if ME3 is realized if the CA leadership is as out of touch as today, i would not be suprised
What you mean they can't take criticism, they hate people talking in general! They went back and removed text chat from all their old games to shut us up.
A lot of great points here in the comments. But what I am missing is the fantasy behind the games. I started playing total war games to get this feel of epicness, feeling like a general or soldier in the great battles we've seen in Movies and imagined in our brains. I still remember how I first watched Lotr two towers and then go to play Total War for the same epic feeling. And on top of that were always the sieges. Not that they have been particularly good, but they made up for EPIC last stands and Climaxes. Played a lot of Attila in Coop with a good friend of mine and we had great nights defending our cities (or small camps!), slowly falling to the core and apart but changing our fate with some great last cavalry charges. That completely made up for the lacking tactical possibilities, so at least give us attila Sieges back!
Same for the "build up your empire"-style of feeling. Slowly improve your russian countries infrastracture and economy in Empire TW, fighting on all borders, having to find the balance between army and economy, or the looming threats on all fronts while playing the roman factions in Attila. Such a great time and memories.
Warhammer in a way already had this lacking for me, but I still played a shitton of Warhammer 2 and honestly also warhammer 3, I still love them. It's not that cineastic epic feel, but the pure scale of the campaign that breathed that spirit. And the Immersion I got, playing the completeley unique factions and lords, all having their own distinct feel was great and unmatched.
The problem for me seems to be that the newer small-scaled Sagatype games dont get either of those. To small for big Empires and economy building, to small battles for the epic movie feeling, missing variety in units makes battles feel lame and repetitive, constantly trying to fix sieges but making them worse each iteration. As a lot of you mentioned, give us back the Scale of your old historicals and warhammer. ANd personally i'd say, give us back the old flaws at least, instead of creating new ones ontop! Empire 2 in a modern look, with the same idea of economies but expanded on, and battle scale like before (including naval!) would be my alltime favorite, followed directly by a med3.
The only thing i liked saga-titles for was the possibility to try new things on a small scale, before making them into a huge epic experience. Thinking of some experiments with WW1-Era, Warhammer 40k setting (I honestly still have to play CoH3, that could on paper be a good prototype for this?), 30 years war (with some interesting new mercenary mechanis and a combination of Empire/Medieval battles) etc. There's so much potential for new ideas with the strengths of the old titles. But all we got are the same takes and experiments in different eras (thinking of Troy, pharaoh and Thrones) while it's already shown that those slow-paced melee skirmishes are lacking. Although I appreciate that they tried ONCE. Not thrice.
I hope my ideas are understandable, as english isnt my main language but I wanted to give my points. I grew up with Total war, began playing it with shogun 1 when I was 13 and being hyped for every single title until the recent pharaoh, which was the first title I couldnt get into from the beginning on. But that may also have to do with CA's behaviour, giving us players one punch in the face after another. I dont wanna go into details, as their behaviour still hurt my longtime Fanboyfeelings. It's like finding out one of your best friend or idol is a fucking Nazi or something comparable. Disgustinly ignorant to their customers.
Share a lot of these feelings.
Ok, I started with Shogun, bought all games and DLC full price and I can say: Rome 2 (and its great mods), then Fartilla, throne of Fartannia, 3 Fartdoms, Farthammer 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. And then Fartroy and now Phartaoh! Wont buy a fart more from these people. Creative Fartsembly is dead!
I enjoyed Thrones, because I saw it as a useful outlet to experiment with different mechanics, while creating a cheap gap between actual titles. As for Troy and Pharaoh? They're a poor excuse for an actual Bronze Age Total War.
I tend to go back to it every once in awhile, but I mainly play Atilla, since mods have largely integrated what I enjoyed about Thrones into the game.
I wish they would return to civilian/slave populations from city to city. Same with giving far less health to individual units in battle.
Scrap the individual immortal rulers as well. Sure, it works for WH, but not for much else.
Age of Mythology ost spotted in he background.
You completely miss the point here imo.
First of all there is not really a fantasy vs historical fanbase. The vast majority of "historical players" have played Warhammer. The most popular TW mod is third age total war. And while there are a good number of Warhammer players that have not played any "historical" title that it mostly down to a lot of new players coming in with Warhammer. Are there people that only play one or the other out of some actual preference for purely historical or purely fantasy gameplay? Sure. But they are a negligable minority as we can see by the stats. Also the idea of a "fantasy TW" is quite strange in the first place as it consists of basically one game with two big expansions. You might as well say Warhammer.
But that is also why imo you blame entirely the wrong thing for TWs troubles. It's both simpler and more complex. Fundamentally recent TW basically since Rome 2 but arguably starting with Empire have been half baked. They have been pushing out a game a year pretty much with the huge quantity of DLC since Rome 2 only making things worse. Nothing gets fixed anymore. No fundamental improvements are made. Games like 3K make some fixes but those don't carry over. Why? Well the leaks told us. Noone has time to fix shit. Or even merge different branches when fixes have been made. The code base is a complete mess and they are not given time to make it better. Their dev tools suck and they are not given time to fix them.
Which all leads to no real improvements being made. They make some new features but they are of course barebones because again no time. Just enough to advertise them as new features. And players grow tired of it.
Warhammer did not help matters either. It has become very clear that it's success was almost entirely down to the setting. Many of it's features were just terrible design directions like the completely symmetrical starting positions. But due to it's success it is clear they concluded that those features had to be good and decided to make them standard.
The second part is better but I am not sure what it really has to do with anything. Ok some youtubers are pissed. Yes there was outrage at the DLC. But really what we saw with Pharaoh was not outrage. It was not a boycott. People just could not give a shit about it. It was apathy not anger and that is arguably a much worse sign for the future of TW. Only the final bit about the release schedule I can really agree on.
After the infamous launch of Rome 2, most traditional fans left the franchise. Then, a new generation of fans, more fantasy oriented, arrived with Warhammer and 3 Kingdoms.
Now, even the new generation of fans is abandoning the ship... CA no longer releases quality and we all know it.
Do not worry. There are many other options in the market for RTS games.
Watching videos like this really hammers home just how gullible the TW RUclipsrs have been. Like genuinely believing the creator programme is supposed to be some reward for being a big RUclipsr and not just a marketing strategy. I know YTers in general are very susceptible to having their egos massaged, but this has got to be a new low.
Most of them are shit. I like Total War back then, but even before, never liked it's RUclipsrs. Like Paradox RUclipsrs, most of them are crap. The ones like Koifish, Simo, and other more comedic/unhinged ones are great. The others...
They know its a marketing strategy. The problem is CA cant even get that right. Good marketing would be, give youtubers early access, insider information, invite them to launch parties, conventions, etc, to make videos about that that are free marketing for CA. The only thing they would need to do for these youtubers in return is actually listen to feedback and bug reports, which would be even more good marketing for them, showing the community they care.
Instead of that, they did the exact opposite, ignoring or banning people who give good feedback and not using their community on youtube as an effective marketing tool.
They are just bad at marketing, straight up, and thats one of the reasons Rob got fired.
@@TheSuperappelflap do you have any proof Rob has been fired?
The issues with the community started when warhammer 3 launched. but there were to many simps and shills accepting to mutch.
funny that a minor price increase woke people up from the shit they have been plling for 12 years
Most of them on reddit.
CA have never made a game that I didn't like, I just miss the MTW2 feel of how infantry formations interacted with alot of 'weight' since then it's gotten very 'light' with infantry jumping, horses throwing dudes 40 meters, its just a bit much.
Empire total war wierdly portrayed musket lines better than NTW once u researched the firing drills. Its wierd how they made battles feel less real, and also gave the commander less agency.
So much good stuff in TW, its seriously one of the best games I've ever played since the days of MTW1, but I felt they forgot the aim of the exercise.
It's gotten to the point where I don't want to see Empire 2 or Mediebal 3 anymore, not if they were like Rome 2 and everything that came out after that. I'd rather see Empire Remastered, Medeival 2 Remastered as well as Shogun 2 Remastered and I'd rather they do a remaster for those games than play trash sequels.
I hope Paradox will try and rival Total war series, they do great deep strategy games(besides a few bad once lately).
Perhaps the only big con Paradox games have typically had is lack of tactical map: If you want to win battles, your only hope is to have a general with some competence points.
@@Cybernaut76 Yeah only tactical have been is composition of the army and in what terrain(which I guess is more strategical) the army fights in
It's 2023 and we are still using Age of Mythology soundtracks. Someday, someday, we'll get a good AoM 2.
Wait. TOB was the best Saga yet due to the high level of player interest in the age of the Vikings and Uthred. We are still making mods for this and it is more playable than ever. It is said that CA cut out a number of key strategy elements from the campaign, but it is still very replayable due to it being central to European history.
It's a beautiful looking game, pisses me off that CA killed it off at launch day. Literally the 1st and only TW that never had any support ( blood DLC and 1 hotfix doesn't count ) afaik .
I love that the Pharaoh promo video opens with a bug rolling a piece of crap. Sums this game up perfectly.
I dunno why but I feel like unit spacing is off in the newer games, big blocks of units were packed tighter into formation in the games before three kingdoms
Well it depends the period, units and the faction, high tier units would made a solid block, low tier would do a loose block, this is pretty realisti
@@heitorpedrodegodoi5646 it does vary yes but I mean in general. Something looks different
The only Total War game I've ever bought and played was Three Kingdoms. I will never buy another CA game ever again.
sub units should be a thing, disengagement should split into sub units, reflecting the difficulty that ensues with re organising a force in active combat, aka as you disengage and re-engage units it cascades the difficulty of micro.
The worst part about the "historical characters" is... That they don't NEED to make them S-E units like in warhammer.
In old TW games, like Rome, Medieval 2... And even Shogun 2 and Rome 2 for a more recent one... Generals were absolute BEASTS with the right perks, even as just a single model inside a bodyguard unit.
Perks that increase HP, bonus to armor, defense, melee attack, etc...
Old mods like "Third Age" total war makes full use of this, turning unique characters into absolute killing machines by adding traits and abilities to boost them.
They didn't need to copy-paste Warhammer, the groundwork was already there >
would love to see Medieval 3, Empire 2 just like everyone else 💚Atilla was the one ive spend most hours in, such a joy to play the campaign with a friend and just chat for hours while taking over the world good times good times.
Did they remove the chat feature from Attila ?
Try out Rome 2 divide er impera mod! I play a lot of versus campaigns with a mate and we loved Attila. Divide er impera gives you even a better complexity on the campaign.
No idea havnt played it in years@@IceniTotalWar
A few months back they removed chat from ETW/NTW not sure if they removed it from Shogun 2 onwards but i think they were planning to.
I only reinstalled Attila a few months back but haven't had time to play.@@Trollseatkittens
Everything after 14:00 is exactly how I've felt about the Assassin's Creed franchise. "They need to stop with these yearly releases ... spend a few years". Unfortunate that the type of game I once loved aren't going to be made anymore because it's been turned into something else entirely.
The ultimate problem with the Saga games, and similar spin offs for any major franchise, is the idea of making smaller cheaper games just doesn't fit in with ballooning complexity and costs of game development.
The idea of creating a smaller focused and experimental Total War sounds great but for the developers it must be a nightmare. And this then feeds back in to costing the company who just want the game out asap so it comes out half baked. I actually wonder if the saga games would best be done on the updated TW2 Engine they used the Rome Remaster. It isn't as complex, the updates help it be more modern and they could make a cheaper game on it. You've got modders making what feel like brand new games on it in their spare time. Imagine what a team of professionals with actual resources could accomplish.
the age of mythology music in the background is killer !!!
total war died when they released rome 2
Funny thing is it's the mods that have kept these games alive. So modders can produce a better game than these guys.
Pretty good summary of what is going on but I think you could have also mentioned SEGA's responsibility as a publisher. They are providing the cash for past and future developments and wanted these annual releases and higher cashflow. Between a rock and a hard place CA imitated other studios' DLC poliy and squeezed everything possible out of existing resources.
My suspicion is that bad communication and missaligned expectations between CA and SEGA are the root problem. Being familiar with Japanese business culture and knowing that CA is competing with profitable Pachinko machines, I can only imagine their bad negotiating position. Pitching polished historical titles with 2 years of development or the necessity of a new, improved engine must have been next to impossible.
There's not really any evidence for this though as far as I am aware, it's just guessing, trying to shift blame from the studio people like to the big bad evil publisher because that's more comfortable than accepting the fact that CA have fallen far from their glory days.
From what I've heard, Sega have been very hands off with CA for a long time and from what I have seen there has been a pretty fundamental problem with management at CA for a long time now. I won't say that Sega has nothing to do with it, maybe they absolutely are putting big expectations on CA and have meddled in some areas but at the same time CA management has not handled those expectations well and have not done their job competently. I don't believe that Sega has been stepping in directly to tell them that they can't make a new engine or they have to do this and that. That doesn't line up with what I have seen and heard.
3:09 the age of mythology background music😂
Three Kingdoms' romance mode, imo, is less attributed to the success of hero units in Warhammer and more attributed to the actual source material, which depicts these various characters in such strength as shown in the game. For Tw3k, it may be less "oh look how successful hero units are, lets make it into the next game too" and more "Oh look, the source material has similar things to our already made hero units, lets just import that over!" After all, I think the game would be incredibly incomplete without the hero unit design, since thats just following the source material as well as the style of Three Kingdoms games across the rest of it's history.
Total War: Empire 2 - only way to save the series.
I actually really like the more vibrant look of Troy. I see no reason why the medieval period or antiquity needs to look dark, gritty and muddy.
Because we don't want arcade looking game. Troy is good for 30 to 40 hours, for the settings and map. Other than that it's bad. The battles are lame and doesn't feel like a war at all. The health system is stupid too. The algorithms they're using for battles are bad. İ played empire up to 500+ hours and Napoleon up to 800+hours attla 260+hours. Because each battle has its own value. And you have more control over you soldiers and troops. A lot of details were removed which made the games look childish.
@@silversoul2785 That's a lot of points that have nothing to do with the look.
As to it looking arcade, I agree when it comes to the battle UI and some of the character designs, but not when it comes to color.
I don't like Attila's gritty (read: edgy) palette, but I don't like the cartoony feel of Troy either. There might be a better balance that could be struck
@@FlyingFox86oh sorry ,i forgot to mention that . Bro throughout the years of developing this series the graphics abd colors where getting more and more realistic. Which is the reason they were successful. People loved the game because ut makes them dive in the time period. When Warhammer came. İt was arcade looking which is understandable. The game is about a fictional land and based on a game. İt was successful because it was not realistic. But when returning to the historical games. They missed up and completed on the arcade style. You might not hate the colors and lighting of these new games but did you really feel like being in troy era? Did you feel the weight of soldiers? When i play Napoleon or empire i feel like the ottoman and hardships and difficulties they have.and be sad when I lose some units. Because units have weight to them. And the biggest reason to this is coloring and lightning. I can give you a clearer example. Look at battlefield 1and battlefield 2042 one is realistic and the other is arcade. The difference in feelings toward the game is completely different.
@@silversoul2785 Yes, I really do feel like I'm in the Troy era when it comes to color and lightning. I don't understand why you are equating realism with "less color".
11:20 good on you for including that clip of the enemy accidentally rolling over their own troops.
Sorry to tell you but the fantasy theme got to go i want a pure historic game.
Same brother. They forgot what made them great and now they reap what they sow. Dumb managers with money signs in their eyes destroyed this company and now 40% off the employees has been fired.
Won't happen warhammer sells real good the historical are too limited in comparison
@@toddblankenship7164 a pure historic game could be really good (we haven't gotten gunpowder for a while or ww1 or ww2 could work) but they won't make enough changes to make it worth it and they will probably die anyways due to lack of sales before they ever will and can choose to make a better game
I think fantasy and historical have their places, sometimes someone want to charge a dragon sometimes the same someome wants to lead Rome to victory
First of all nobody cares what you want, second, historical shit makes no money, deal with it
I love this game series... They need to get their shit together... This is why I refuse to buy a new game from them or Sega until this title gets the respect it deserves...
No, actually the whiny, selfish babies that are infuriatingly the loudest are ignorant of the romance of the three kingdoms. Romance of the three kingsoms is an epic FANTASY novel. It is a pseudohistorical and fantastical retelling of the unification of China. Epic history with fantastic elements. It is not hisorical scholarship, it is not objective fact since it doesnt even try to be, it is openly amd unashamedly fictional. If you dont know anything about the romance of the three kingdoms, the most culturally important work of fiction in the Chinese language, then thats on you. Thats on all the ignorant fans who want to whine and bitch all day. Thats shameful but it does not reflect a move on CAs part to add fantasy elements to their historical games and abandon their old fans. It does not represent a move away from realism, they just did three kingdoms and if you want three kingdoms thats what you get. Its a book about fantastic duels by larger than life historical icons. 80% of the book is heroic duels. All the rest of the rather obnoxious noise surrounding this subject is pure ignorance and a reflection of only that: the ignorance and childishness of their fans. Shameful. Nothing wrong with the game on that measure, anyway, something wrong with the loudest fans? Yes. Is it an attempt to court the chinese market? Yes. Are you allowed to not like that? Yes. But is the problem with CAs interpretation of the novel or with the fans complete lack of any knowledge about the novel? Its the fans, obviously.
I mean, it's literally called the ROMANCE of the three kingdoms. The romanticisation of history. Its the name of the book, ffs. Can Internet gamer kiddies even read at this point? Will the next complaint be a lack of voice acting? Oh poor, ignorant, Internet gamer kiddies had to read a subtitle. You poor souls. Fs.
You'd think that in a game series specifically about the rise and fall of empires they'd see some of this coming and know better than to ignore public order issues.
omg they raised the price and said deal with it. That's like going "very high tax rate" on a town in medieval 2 that had 40% public order already.
Well it certainly was a bold move, let's see if it pays off for them... Nope !@@riolkin
@@IceniTotalWar Props to you for the dodgeball reference, I love it
I left out part as it might confuse some people but it still is a bold Cotton 😁😁@@riolkin
The internet is a crazy place full of mob mentality. I keep seeing this Total War is "dead" rhetoric popping up online - and now because a couple of videos on RUclips claim this as fact now all these people online think its true. I'll be the first to admit that Total War can do a heck of a lot more to improve their flawed core gameplay systems, particularly on their campaign map, but claiming that Total War is "dead" is ridiculous and you'd be talking in extremes. They're still fresh off of Warhammer 3 which was, all things considered, a success and a great release for CA. It culminated years of hard work in one of the most complete and best renditions of the Warhammer franchise ever. You guys are blowing everything out of proportion. If I were to look at this situation rationally, sure I'd say that total war needs to make some adjustments following the release of Pharaoh - but give CA some time to respond before you start bringing out your pitchforks. Chill out community geez.
Well said, people were praising them not so long ago with the release of the chaos dwarf dlc
NGL, I think channels like this Resonant dude and Apollo dude only bitching about TW games, cuz they only care about playing historical titles.
They are "dead" because they can't create any new game that isn't Warhammer and will be successful. So they can keep making WH series but for how long that will work? Every game they released after Attila that wasn't WH failed (except 3K) and people still play Rome, Med 2 etc. So, for the fanbase CA is practically "dead".
2024 Medieval III with some DLC
2025 Empire II with some DLC
2026 Shogun III with some DLC
2027 Rome III with some DLC
2028 Atilla III with some DLC
2029 Viking Invasion II with some DLC
How hard can it be ???
Age of mythology soundtrack in the background 🙌
Complacency is the biggest killer of game franchises/studios, and CA has got to be one of the biggest offenders in the industries history to be honest.
I went to an event hosted by CA just before the release of Rome II.
It wasn't for 'influencers' or anything like that, my friend somehow found out about it and let me know, I think you just had to pay like £20 or something. Heir Of Carthage was there though, I was pretty starstruck lol.
It was somewhere around Soho if I recall, they rented out some kind of commercial space and had perhaps a dozen computers for people to play for 10 minutes or so. I played a skirmish battle while a developer was sitting next to me, it was cool! I could feel the enthusiasm as he chuckled at my reactions to artillery, elephants etc.
It felt very cozy and wholesome. Better times.
Could you please not use the Age of mythology music when talking about Total war Troy? :(
This type of management should be criminalized at this point