I personally loved how the map in the older games changed depending on the buildings you built. Like the mines, the fields, the paved roads. It gave so much character to the map and was a cool visual indicator of how developed a province is. Same with the buildable forts, towers etc. Or how if your soldiers stayed in one place for a long time, the ground around them became charred and burned as if they've been foraging for supplies. I just love that level of interaction with the campaign map that we really just don't have anymore.
@@TheRealKiRBEYYeah and I really like the corruption especially in WH3. Playing as the VC and seeing the map getting corrupted is so cool. I guess I just really love being able to interact and change the campaign map.
You missed a HUGE one for me. While defending sieges in MTW2 and most of the older TW's your troops would route and fall back to inner layer or the center of the city for awesome last stands. It makes ZEROOO sense that a unit holding the walls or gate, then breaks to then try to run through the people the were just fighting to run outside the city where the enemies entire army is. They basically impale themselves onto the enemies swords. Also when a unit was surrounded it would enact this fight to the death symbol where they would lose but still fight since there was no path to retreat. It breaks so much immersion when units and soldiers do not act anything like they would once Phobos overtook them. They should run away from the enemy they were in contact in. They could have took the feature further and show some surrender, some run, some fight a futile last stand etc. Always falling back to inner layers of defense. But for them to mindlessly impale themselves on their enemies swords is the stupidest thing ever!
This actually also applies to the campaign map. If you lost a battle the suvivors would flee to the nearest city. In new total war losing a battle always means losing you whole army and your general dying, while in the older titles you could actually reatreat on the battlefield and have your army regroup in the nearest city.
I think Shogun 2 had that too. Except your units have to be at the very inner walls near the zone. If they were routed outside or near the outer gates, they flee outside away from any enemy units. Units that will fight to the last will have Skull emblems above them.
Another note about Rome and Med2 TW: when you construct a building in your city, and then have to defend it in a siege battle, you can see that building ON THE BATTLE MAP as part of your city. That building can then take boulder hits, and thus get damaged, thus explaining why you have to repair some of your town's constructions after the battle.
It was also cool to be able to view your city in peacetime in villager mode. You could even see your buildings under construction! It made Rome 1 feel even more immersive.
@zubbworks i was blown away when i found out about it while exploring the settlement menu. I don't think the feature carried over to Medieval 2 sadly, which sucks considering Medieval 2 in my opinion had a lot more impressive looking buildings
That was a great feature that added to the immersion. I’m optimistic Pharaoh may take steps back to the older games and yet give us new traits as well. This new game has our collective anxiety levels rising. And why shouldn’t it because this series for over 20 years has become such a hobby for me and it seems many others.
Can't believe you missed the single greatest feature that was removed! Battlemaps that represent exactly their geographic location of the strategic map. If you found a little hill on the campaign map, a chokepoint, or any other terrain feature that was tactically useful, you could place your army there and fight the battle there. Its 1000 times better than the random and repetitive battlemaps of warhammer (haven't played 3K or Troy so idk if they added it back)
And BAD (battlemaps of Warhammer). They are entirely designed to deny any strategic use because CA wants battle to be massive moshpits where APM and unit matching reign king. So instead of having wide open maps so that cavalry can be useful, with elevated areas to use artillery, buildings and low walls to protect infantry, a few forests or bushes to hide units and skirmish, ... In Warhammer you have a tiny map, with a massive hill in the middle to cut all line of sight and small forest patches every few hundred meters to make sure that you can't shoot the enemy, but not continuous either so the enemy can't sneak on you. At the end of the day, you either corner camp (when you can), or you just spam single entity units that will outperform anything in the moshpit. That's why I don't believe for a second that CA will have a change of heart and improve. It's not that they can't do it, it's not even that they won't do it, it's that everything they've been doing in the past 10-15 years is to actively reject and move away from those old mechanics. They know avout those criticism, they just don't gaf. CA wants to pump out half-assed, completely bugged out, micro-transaction ridden products to be bought by whales. They completely abandoned any attempt at providing mechanical depths to their players, just more ""content""", endless skins and OP new copy-pasted factions to keep their whales happy.
Played Troy, if I remember correctly, only cities have customized maps, the rest are random maps, the worst thing are the battles on the sea, they literally search for a random generated island.
Ah, indeed! 'm always disappointed when I can't see any tacticool advantage due to terrain in the Warhammer series. I liked defending on these dangerous river crossovers and the likes with a puny army and take out a huge force.
@@nehylen5738 So true! I actually tried positioning my army near a river on the Warhammer map to block an enemy army, hoping to get an advantage by defending the bridge or ford. Yet the armies were dropped in an open plain...
I hate how in the newer titles only one port has a trade route via the capital. It just led to empty roads and seas. Med 2 did so much right I don't understand why they ditched so many features rather than building on them.
THIS! I hate that there's so often just one trade route via the capital as well. Your realm feels so barren and just lifeless without trade coming in from everywhere, wherever you had a trader or a port, just like it should!
lazyness and incompetence. most people don't understand gw fanboys. i have been a 40k player and fan since the mid 90s and i can tell you there is no fanbase more pathetic and blind to the company abusing their own fans as gw fanboys. these people will play anything if it has warhammer in the name. there is a reason why 90% of games made with gw ips are shit. they migrated to tw and destroyed a whole franchise with their consumerist mind set.
@@AndysTakelocal trade was of massive importance historically. Trade doesn't just flow to a capital. The Dutch didn't build their massive merchant navy without importing a LOT of Wood from the states of the baltic. The total war games could be expanded by adding a new layer of warfare: economics and trade. Merchants do this a little bit. It can be done better with time effort and patience.
One detail I love about med 2 trade is that 2 bordering provinces will trade as long as they arent at war, even if you dont have a tradding agreement with the other faction. Of course having it means more money, but a little income is always there.
You want the short answer? Because it's cheaper. Think about what happened with Rome 2 for instance, that was the last game that had any real depth to it and it was a fucking clusterfuck, I think that game alone absolutely destroyed CA's work ethic, made them think less is good and easier to handle, because honestly I stopped playing after Napoleon Total War came out and every new shitty Warhammer releases just keeps proving to me I made the right decision. I mean God, remember how the map ACTIVELY changed over time Medieval 2? Like when you built roads, walls, and different buildings? And then you SAW those same buildings actually in game in a siege? And the fucking MODS, MY GOD! THE MODS! Faction unit expansion, minor factions like Burgundy and such being added, literal complete conversions like with Third Age TW like, it's insane how far CA have fallen from grace. When a developer stops doing the small details like map changes and unit appearance changes, that's when it's made evident they have settled for the easy money approach. And the sad part? Its working. And it's just sad that it's working.
All those temporary unit buffs must go. One that was striking for some spearmen units in R2 was "anti-cav tactics". Like if spearmen wouldn't fight in a way adapted against cavalry when facing some, and needed an order to do so...
just the fact that reload animations are gone is so disheartening... I LOVE artillery and in BotET for MW2 I always watched my empire gunners reload their guns, slowly but surely, competently trained soldiers of NULN!!!! Now its just... hollow with Warhammer TW. I want the games to make my models feel alive! I mean what do they remove next? Aiming? Running? Just gonna have them T-Pose? sigh
It was those little things and nuances that made old TW games fun even though they are largely lacking in some areas. The drop in city viewer in rome, the funny general/commander speeches, unrestricted settlement buildings slots, fort buildings, a variety of agents with roles, the cavalry charge that sends those tiny beings flying or a LARGELY MODDABLE game. Man, those were the wild days.
@@AndysTake oh yeah, armies in rome has a devastation effect on the map when they stayed there too long without moving. the speeches were correlated with the general/commanders traits too.
Another feature from Empire/Napoleon is that town growth and even economic growth was impacted by your tax rate, so you could lower your taxes in peace time and actually benefit from more settlements emerging and your taxable income growing, while high taxes would cause your economy and population to shrink over time. While it was never as impactful as I would like, it was a fantastic idea in principle.
Indeed! I also loved that you could tax both the nobility and the common people which would affect them differently - they've never attempted this level of tax complexity (just one level above) again!
YES! It's one of the reasons I friggin loved Prussia on harder difficulty. You were almost always at war with bigger nations stronger than you, so you'd have high taxes allot, and you'd have to deal with never quite having that population you want until the mid game.
Watching this video was absolutely heartbreaking. As someone who began with Shogun when it first came out, this video list was basically a list of why I haven't bought a new Total War in almost a decade. The series lost its heart and soul.
I love that you're emphasizing the soul of the game being centric to what's lacking. Soul is what a lot of things lack in our present day productions, and why everything feels so depressingly shallow. It's made to appeal to your baser nature and not stimulate any deeper thoughts or emotions. Not a strategy that will endure the test of time.
i miss the feature were if you were moving one unit though a stationary unit(with a tight formation) then the stationary unit would create paths in its formation to allow the moving unit through by moving along these paths instead of just pushing their way through the stationary unit as they do in the newer games. I really liked this feature because 1. it just looked better than a blob of men just pushing through we have now, and 2. the units that moved along these paths moved almost as fast as a unit running without any obstructions meaning skirmishers could get behind the infantry line so much faster.
One of the things I liked from the original Shogun was that you could just click and get an nice summary of the province , including it's farming output , strategic importance and geographical features .
I remember I always hated trying to to take Paris in campaigns due to how it was a single giant province. It did result in needing to think how you attacked, you couldn’t just march for the capital and call it a day, you had to occupy towns, farms, bridges. It did make it feel like you had to work secondary objectives to take the main city.
Good idea , you missed two important features from medieval 2 Taking actual number of prisoners and the tier based price And taking a general or family member as a prisoner in battle that is one of the most missed features that I want back
As an old-fashioned PC gamer who loves depth and long playthroughs, I can relate. He forgot to add one more extremely important point to his list: the epic, immersive battles that can last hours. Not just the sieges. And the mods, of course. Medieval 2 and the Third Age (D&C) mod is still my no 1 game to this day. Loved Empire for the naval battles, the rest was meh.
Not to forget the gigantic and still active modding scene. Probably the biggest in Total War, probably comparable to the modding scenes of Paradox games.
The music!!! Everyone fails to mention the music!!! What made Shogun 2 and Medieval 2 for me was the music, which added big time to the immersion. That composer was amazing.
I think everyone knows this, and it's been said to death, plus, it's not really a game mechanic, and it's hard for CA to specifically due anything about this unless they're lucky with a great composer I feel. But I absolutely want Jeff back!
I still listen to Jeff’s soundtracks all the time while I’m doing work. Richard Beddow is fantastic at making ambient music, but sometimes his battle tracks aren’t dramatic and energetic enough. Empire TW is a great example, but he seems to have gotten better with his recent work. Attila’s battle tracks are fantastic. Jeff’s battle tracks are just epic, even if they’re more synthetic-sounding than Beddow’s orchestral approach.
Medieval 2 also had a unique system for garrisons. A certain number of units of specific types had 0 upkeep when stationed in the city, effectively functioning as the cities garrison. Thus, garrisons were not only customizable but had the additional advantage of being able to leave the city and deal with enemy units in your territory.
I really miss the armour and weapon upgrades showing up on the units in combat, loved seeing my unit's level and their equipment improve after retraining them at my cities. Also being able to see the gear of your opponents and how well-equipped they were compared to your own forces. Its the little touches *chefs kiss*
I actually agreed with all your points and with some of them I didn’t even think about. But now I realize that those reasons are what made the older games so great
The thing i loved most were that in medieval 2 when your units got upgraded armour, their armour would change in units from nothing to some metal chestplates and helmets.
I missed how in the pre empire placing your range units on higher terrain increased their range making elevation worth considering to be part your battle tactics. Ever since Empire however they forced range units to have fixed range distance meaning there is no longer real advantage to have ranged units on elevation
The same goes for accuracy and direct line of sight. in M2TW if crossbows and archers had a direct line of sight on the target they would hit significantly more shots. If they had an arcing shot over a wall it was basically a crapshoot to hit anything. In the later titles, archers can shoot like 80 degrees up and still land within the 3 meters of the target like it was a direct shot.
@@AlexTSilver It's not an engine limitation; you can easily implement it into newer TW games just by setting the "range" stat of projectiles to (near) infinite and having the max range be decided by projectile speed and gravity; the AI will still only fire when it knows the projectile can hit the target and now altitude makes a difference. for gunpowder units the max range system makes more sense; guns don't get a range advantge for being on a hill; instead their effective range is limited by their accuracy. and honestly; for archers it also makes some sense that they wouldn't fire past certain ranges; heavy warbows theoretically can reach out to 300m or more, but they aren't effective at those ranges, though altitude does give a pretty significant advantage to them still (as they can be more accurate out to long distance and hit harder) and having the lowgound with bows is much more of a disavantage. (for similar reasons) The reason CA got rid of range advantage based on altitude for archers is simply that the range visualiser (the line that shows the range of your archers) would not be helpful when it doesn't show the actual range of the unit. (it's for this exact reason the range visualisaton in RTW remastered is such garbage)
One little thing I missed sorely after Shogun 2 (having played the original Rome in my childhood) were the speeches by generals before a battle. This was one of the most immersive experiences for me, who likes to stage custom battles more than playing the campaign. But it's a feature I miss dearly ever since...
I can't believe that nobody is talking about the battlefields that represented exactly the map terrain. Unlimited battlefields were something that I miss a lot, same for the meaningfull character traits in rome and medieval II
One feature which I am missing is just a small detail. In M2 TW units which were in the way of another marching unit would create gaps in the unit so the other unit could pass. It looks so good if your archers finished there job moved back behind the infantry and instead of creating a massive bulk they move move the the created gaps.
The BIGGEST #1 thing they removed was how your children shared most traits of their father in Medieval 1. Have a father with full piety? You can expect their offspring to start with 3-5 piety and pro piety traits. It was so fun breeding the perfect blood lines during entire campaign.
Napoleon was the game that really got me into strategy games. I can still remember how blown away I felt when I discovered that placing your infantry in front of your artillery would send soldier flying with each volley because the game actually simulated fired rounds as physical objects in the game. Or how using the right formations and some clever maneuvering could turn the tides of a losing battle. I'll never forget that one time the enemy attacked one of my smaller towns. The town was completely undefended and only had a few handfuls of militia and they were going up against a slightly greater number of line infantry. It was so much fun desperately maneuvering and using the terrain to slowly whittle down the enemy army. I still lost the battle, but the enemy army had been so degraded that it was no longer a threat to any of my other towns in that area. I can only speculate, but I believe the reason these features are no longer present in modern TW games is because the people who developed and understood these features are no longer working for CA. CA simply lost the talent necessary to implement such features.And even though the people currently working there might be technically capable of implementing these features, if they don't understand why the game needs these features then they won't spend time and resources on making that stuff.
Things we need in Total War games: 1) Jeff Van Dyke as a soundtrack guy 2) Walled artillery, burning oil at the gates, spies opening the gates, sappers that destroy walls 3) General speeches (faction throwing insults at other factions, stating that they are outnumbered, etc..) 4) Units swimming across the river as in Barbarian Invasion, or climbing smaller walls when possible as in Shogun 2 5) Weather that affects the battlefield 6) Excellent unit response and path finding 7) Sally forth battles - being able to sally forth in order to destroy enemy's deployed siege engines ( you can completely destroy them or delay their building phase in campaign) 8) Pre-deployable traps and walled artillery (as in Rome 2, you can place traps anywhere you want) 9) Matched combat and killing animations - horses killing enemies with hoofs, dogs slaying the necks of enemies, etc. 10) Raiding - raiding mode destroys local economy and food. You can attack and defend in raiding battles, and control attack/defense on the battlefield. For instance, during a battle, you can choose to raid the fields and force the enemy to get out of the city. If the enemy does not come out to defend the fields, it will get affected by starvation and attrition. The more you raid, the more food you get from the enemy at his own expense, resulting in famine and mass death of armies and population. Also, raiding should affect morale of the city's population. On the other hand, if the raider has too much loot, it affects its movement. 11) Food carts should be on the battlefield with armies. If your food supplies get raided or destroyed, your army suffers attrition. 12) Bring back forts and watch towers!
I miss the Rome 1 Testudo formation where they slowly moved with shields up over their heads and front to give total missile protection. also miss, the flaming pigs, poison arrows, boiling oil etc.
Personally, i would like to see a mix of Empire and Medieval 2s building system. Something where your taverns, baracks, forts, teamsters, etc would be in the city. But where your woodcutters, miners, farms, etc are outside of the city. Itd help make it feel more real. Heck if CA stopped being CA maybe we'd have some system where certain resources are required for certain things. It could encourage both the A.I and the player to trade with each other. And potentially cause wars and alliances over resources and trade.
I said it many times when talking bout the good old times of Total War, but one of the big main reasons why 5 year old me got hooked on Medieval 1, was the BEAUTIFUL art style. For every unit, building, events and even the credits, they had such good drawing of all those things. Black and white, lots of character in every line. I loved it so much. And in general, the first Medival TW is my fav game and a work of art as well as amazing gameplay. CA put so much effort into their game series, kept them simple, yet detailed at the same time. Now the new ones are just....too much information and complicatet crap no one cares for :')
As someone who bought a hard copy of MTW when I was still at school, I 100% agree. I want an M2TW remake / remaster more than anything (and Empire being a close second), I’d love for them to do this with the original MTW as well.. Also there were some nice features in MTW than we never saw afterwards too. Firstly in battles there were separate “hold position” and “hold formation” buttons (which, had they kept this, maybe future titles would’ve had less issues with getting phalanx, pikemen and halberd units to function properly). Also these same kind of units would benefit from an encoded “rank bonus”, given if the formation was deep enough (5 ranks deep iirc), it received a mild combat bonus (especially useful for fighting enemy cav and defensive situations). Also I liked the idea of being able to build an Inn, and “hire” mercs at the city level, as opposed to merely recruiting them to an army in the field as happens with RTW / M2TW (not that I want one system over the other, they could synergise nicely together!).
@@Marcoz588 Totally agree, they had some super neat features on the world map as well as on the battle field! I especially loved the option to let certain cavarly units dismount pre battle, which made them their own infantry unit with new stats and all. Ofc this was kinda brought back in Empires, but only for some dragoons. What I extremly loved in Mtw were the many events like an destroyed faction returning with a new leader, entirely new factions rising like the Swiss or Burgundy (yes, a medieval Burgundy faction was a thing back then and I only managed to trigger that event one time. Idk how, but it was awsome) or the many historical events they included like the child crusade that impactet your gameplay. I am sure there are still so many little neat details about that old game I prob still dont know, so I keep playing! Sadly, my hard copy doesnt work on my newer pc, so I play the steam version, which often crashes tho :/ I really hope they will realese the og MTW properly or even as a remake, tho I couldnt think of anything to improve
Its taken me a really long time to figure out why i don't have fun in the battles in the post Napoleon games. I think its the fact that its now more and more about countering enemy unit types than logical positioning. This combined with the speed that a unit disintegrates makes it hard to enjoy the battle, I'm constantly plugging holes, making sure I've got the best matchups instead of trying to manuver for advantage. I used to love full stack battles, now they just feel like a chore.
Shogun 2 is a great game imo but it really suffers from to things: 1. The battles are often over extremely fast once the battle lines meet. (A unit of Yari Ashigaru will completely desintegrate in less than 30 seconds if it meets a unit of Katana Samurai, and then the chain rout usually does the rest. 2. Too many units rely on timer based active abilities to be valuable. (Rapid Advance, Banzai, Warcry, Rally, Inspire etc. often just feel unneccessary; just slightly buff the base stats of Nodachi Samurai instead of giving them that button click ability; or give fatigue resistance to Yari Samurai) Also, guns being unlockd so late in the campaign is a bit of a shame imo; they're a lot of fun to use but you need to spend way too long researching them (and thus, not researching all the other useful technologies) for them to even be worth getting on the shorter campaigns.
I certainly prefer it over encampment stance. If a turn is 6 months to a year why do I only get some tents and a pallisade. Especially in Rome Total War 2 where the Romans were literally renowned for their siege works and fortifications.
Attila is 8 years old?! Time flies... Great video! Yeah we have lost a lot. I loved the old unit artistic unit cards, especially in Shogun 2 and Rome 2.
Thank you, my friend! :D Time flies for sure, it's scary :( And especially sad when thinking we could've had like... 3-6 historical titles in that time if not for a certain series lol
I agree that the limitation of armies, and the fact that you could have small armies led by captain was awesome, but the badside of it was clearly seen in Total War Empire : a single unit could just keep on roaming your lands to damage the different buildings outside your cities. And in certain campaigns I played, a had lot of single ennemy units going everywhere, making hard to destroy them. Total War would have to find a balance to bring that back. Anyways, Keep up the good work Andy!
yeah there were def some bugs with it. How about AI moving one unit at a time and had like 50 of them and sometimes they would just merge with the same unit from where they both started but each unit moved individually so it was super annoying to watch and wait during the turn simulation
That was because they added "raidable" elements to the map, which they made because they tried to descentralize the war mechanics. They programmed the AI to attack those points, but my guess is they never expected that level of "micro" and to be honest, many players would do it in a multiplayer game. Instead of a better implementation by limiting the AI, they scrapped the entire captains mechanic.
@@MrlspPrt Why would they limit the AI? I swear to God, people don't know what they want. If they limit the AI, people would complain about the AI not using X mechanic and being so easy because of that
While the problem with single units in Empire wasn't that bad on its own imo, what made it horrible to deal with was a) the broken autoresolve meant you could send like 3 units against one enemy and you'd somehow lose half your guys without wiping them out (and so they'd just keep breaking your buildings), b) even the 5 survivors of a unit were enough to stop your port from functioning and cut your whole empire off from trade somehow, and c) how bloody expensive it was to repair the buildings. But for me it was mostly a). Having to manually fight every battle to lose ridiculous amounts of troops turned the game boring real fast :(
Why would that be a bad thing? It's guerilla warfare and punishes players that focus their forces in one spot instead of building smaller, more mobile forces that can deal with enemy raids. An entire war can be decided by a series of small skirmished and not just large battles.
You know what I like about Medieval 2 building system is that whenever you build some of the highest level of building. You will get a little cutscene highlighting your faction achievement
I feel like for each thing Empire removed, it added 3 more. It was insanely ambitious and frankly it would be the irrefutably best game today of not for the bugs. Heck, even with the bugs its still my favorite.
Same! The map is just so alive and big that I'd just stare it sometimes. Not to mention the vast variety of factions you could fight, the extra theatres that were solely naval ports exclusively for trade. And the pirates! They could either be a massive thorn in your side or if you devoted resources to them, you could get some really rich settlements. In Warhammer thier just a couple of "fleets" that are easy avoided and really don't play any meaningful role except for a certain few factions. It all made it feel more lively and dynamic. The new world could take a lot of work to develop but payed out massively. While the old world was already somewhat developed but could be made ridiculous with massive palaces. Not to mention you could institute a whole new playstyle and flag and nation by instigating rebellions and reenacting the french revolution going from a monarchy to democracy. NOTHING in Warhammer has near the same level of depth. Now it's just mostly army and gold. You can just recruit about anything from global anyways so it becomes pointless to build more than a few of the same recruitment building. After awhile it kind of just turns into an automation simulator, building the same buildings over and over to maximize profit with very little variety between provinces. I just get disinstered and stop building altogether and just skip that notification. Whereas building in empire felt so tailor-made like in Montreal where actually getting good gunpowder units in the new world felt awesome in a land where so many units are just axe and bow units it really gave each theatre and province its own unique conditions. Not to mention before you got those units you had to rely on whatever the hell you could get there: whether that be natives or pirates or just the lowely local militia: it was this lack of uniformity that makes it so special. No two provinces were the same. Every army and province was unique. That made the factions more unique too. Like you were leading an actual nation with all its advantages and disadvantages rather than a roaming band of murder hobos that just kinda chooses a pin on the Map and goes yup we'll invade here and gets a couple strong units and whatever they want is for the taking. It took planning, time, and investment and you were rewarded for that. Which to me is the hallmark of a great strategy game.
Building every building in every province is something I miss so hard. I mean: whats the point in limiting building spots? The big cities have a lot of space for many building, not just 8
Battlefield fortifications is another thing i miss from older titles, like entrenching (empire had the artillery battery sandbag entrenching and infantry entrenching to give cover against projectiles for example), barricading, anti cav traps like stakes and caltrops, spike pits and flaming tar pits to hurt infantry. You even got big balls you had to set on fire and a unit could give them a push so if you were on top of a slope they would roll down and kill enemies. Devastating if you got your timing correct. Only thing I disagree with is the seiges. I dont think sieges should end because siege equipment was destroyed. Nothing wrong with units being able to set fire to doors or hack them down with their melee weapons. It took much longer than a bit of siege equipment, different weapons did more or less damage (axes best, spears worst) and it’s realistic.
I really miss "Rebels". When you walk through your lands and faced a brigand army crippling your economy that ambushes you and have to fight an unexpected battle, that was wild.
The thing about army limits is that it's just another form of holding the player's hand. Before you didn't have any official limit, that being said if you spent too much on military and neglected your economy, you would pay for it severely. This is their artificial way of regulating that, all it does is limit a player's agency.
The ship transport system could be massively improved over the old system, limiting how many units can each ship transport, instead of just needing 1 to move the entire army. A possibility inspired from CK2, which is mobilising merchant ships for the war (would be at the expense of trade income and happyness of the town so long that they are mobilised) to get extra transport ships, would work well.
YES! I just told my wife that they should implement a system inspired by CK2. I didn't think of the trade income or happiness reduction though. Great idea.
@@Duke_of_Lorraine he refers to the decision that is in the base game to mobilise 50 ships in wartime it was ridiculously expensive though, but still useful
I really miss being able to have armies without a general. It gave me many more tactical options on how I could expand. Shogun 2 did it right - garrison system but you could still add units if you saw that an attack was coming in 2 or 3 turns
Provinces instead of independent cities and armies tied to generals was such a downgrade, they remove cooler features but this they decided to maintain in all the tittles since rome 2 🙄
and to think they removed it to prevent a tiny percentage of players to abuse a bug that allowed turn 1 world conquest i suppose it does make sense with the game turning a more multiplayer direction, but instead of fixing the bug they removed the feature
Okay now I want to get Medieval 2 for that visual armor upgrade feature alone. I been avoiding it since graphic-wise (yeah I know) it was just a bit too old school looking but man those are some cool gameplay features.
Just try customized battles, if I remember correctly, you can't always have entirely upgraded soldiers, and having them requires a lot of time playing. If you can tolerate the "old school" graphics, then try the full campaign. Wow, it's 15-16 years old 😨
@MrlspPrt When I mean old school, I guess I'm talking more aesthetics. Maybe the UI? I don't know to be honest, kind of hard to pin down. Shogun 2, for example, is my favorite Total War game and appearance wise, it still stands up to the modern stuff imo.
You should definitely play Medieval 2, but play it with mods if you want the ultimate experience :) and yes, that upgrade feature is superb - especially mid-tier units like the spearmen see an intense improvement from no upgrade at all to max upgrade!
You'll also want to go into the controls and edit keybinds (And be sure to save the keybind in case the game resets them like mine likes doing), the old school keybinds are annoying.
Excellent points. I'm adding a few from the waaaay past. Medieval Total War had that gritty, no nonsense feeling in it in terms of art, sound and music. It really had that visceral feeling of dark, bloody medieval times. It's war, after all. In the campaign you had some differing missions with historical takes. I.e. build a high level cathedral in Constantinople as the Byzantium (Hagia Sophia) and you could get like 5 stars on that. It made the victory conditions and factions more personal and differing. I'd also add that it really felt different if you played a Central European faction over say, Arab faction in terms of what the units were etc. It was also increasingly interesting that some factions had very weak early game in terms of units, but if you managed to get to the later ages you'd get insanely good troops (Janissaries and Lancers, eh). Really felt the progression of your faction. Especially if you coupled this with the extremely long building times of some buildings in order to get some excellent troops. Last but not least, the generals and agents really had some persona on them. If you left them too long to the city they'd get attributes such as lazy or drinker. If you killed prisoners constantly, you'd get reputation that started to lower the morale of your enemies at first, but after a certain point might lower even the morale of your troops! Also it was hilarious if one of your princes suddenly turned out to be gay and it meant you couldn't really get any successors from him. Damn. Need to install Medieval Total War again..
fantastic video, couldnt agree more! loved the forts, watch towers etc, and the Empire's 'living' map that created settlements over time... so many sensible and immersing features stripped away and hollowing the gameplay:(
I agree with all points, but one extra point from me would be adding back in the avatar conquest that was in Shogun 2. Had such fun playing that, unlocking new armour for your general, upgrading your army etc...
One of my best RTW2 memories is a campaign playing as the Spartans I got attacked by Rome while my armies were off east. The one army that was across was a pain, but my fleet massacred 4 legions one after the other as they tried to cross the Adriatic giving me time to raise a new army and recall some from the east. Then I was able to recapture my territory and push into Italy since all their armies were busy being fish food. The admiral got adopted into the fam and I gave him some political office or other. I miss naval battles and immersion lol
I think another important element in old Total War Games were these insane General speeches, I love them so much in Rome Total War. They included important aspects for the battles or the war itself.
I really miss the burning hay rolling down a hill towards the enemy. Also in rome 1 if you had a general that you let to battle in germania all his life he would be called germanicus (if you played with rome).
100% AGREE. You actually covered pretty much /everything/ that is missing and has been robbed from us. I'm genuinely impressed. I play Rome 2 constantly with mods, I love Atilla, I love the strategic map of Empire. I too demand the depth and soul of old.
There is one feature from Medieval 1 that was really fun...Regional units. If you conquered ireland you could recruit a special irish unit no matter what faction you played. Same with scottland, switzerland and so on. They should bring that back. I always tried to take switzerland because their pikeman were awesome
I totally agree with your claims beside one point. Small Armies without a General and no Restriction in the number of armies made it to easy to trick the or confuss the IA and break the immersion of a strategic military campaign. In TW Empire the AI spammed to often pointless multiple small armies without really knowing who to use them proper and more important it was much to easy to lure out whol AI Armies outside of their ortified cities with just one cavalry unit. Probably this was one reason why CA dismissed this feature after Empire
I think Three Kingdoms is the best TW title since Shogun 2. It has a lot of features that got ripped from the game after Shogun 2. It has even some new inovative features in the campaign, beautiful art and the battles feel better than any Warhammer game. Sieges take a lot of time, which is realistic, wars are actually strategic and the armies aren’t just hopping from city to city since the map in’t so cluttered. The SFO mod makes the battles on extreme unit size feel surprisingly realistic on historical mode. Huge lines of infantry actually fight for dozens of minutes holding the line, letting you outthink and outmaneuver the enemy. Too bad they stupidly marketed it as a fantasy game, the UI is a mess and the China setting isn’t appealing to more people.
Man this just kinda puts words to why i still play the older games more than the newer ones, specifically rome 1. They have done some atuff in streamlining their games that makes them more fun in some areas and worse in others. Like replenishment. It was more inconvenient to have to retrain in cities with applicable facilities and population rather than waiting a couple turns in the field. But it felt more immersive to me. Ah man i miss the older games direction
Replenishment kind of sucks becasue it makes you value your units less; in RTW if you had a unit of gold armor Praetorians (which you can only recruit in Rome) in your army that's fighting all the way in Bactria you do your best to keep that unit as healthy as possible; but if it just replenishes between turns you stop caring about those elite units; they can lose half their men and it won't matter. It streamlines the campaign and makes everything more convenient but it also removes the ability to become truly immersed with the value attached to your men and their wellbeing. Global recruitment and the baility to recruit generals are to more things that give convenience but devalue your armies in the process; it is a really harmful rend that CA has fallen for where everythhing must be more convenient to the player even if it akes the game less fun over-all.
The city view would be so easy to implement too. Even in TW3K, there were civilians in the battle map doing civilian things and running away from soldiers. And the settlements already included models for the buildings built in it. All they needed to do was include a button to initiate the battle map but without any battle. And maybe increase the number of civilians that spawn. But they would need to add these for TWWH. Also likewise for civilians and buildings in the campaign map. Bring some life back into the campaign map by showing people doing things on the map and trade routes and roads actually being used. This was another feature retained in TW3K but not in TWWH.
100 percent agree with all of this! Ughh it makes me almost cry thinking how much we lost!!!! I can close my eyes to many of these features missing, but my top that hurts more are the population mechanic, City construction and cities on battle map, cities of Rome 2 and Attila makes me sick... Oh how beautiful and diverse were the cities in Rome 1 and Medieval 2! The golden age of Total War was then!
Couldn't agree more. Funnily enough the population mechanic from the earlier games would pair well with the food supplies from later titles (If they were actually realistic and mattered throughout the whole game).
Placing archers higher up would give them range advantage. Placing archers on the sword-holding side of the enemies would cause more damage, due to shield no longer blocking the shots.
The range thing wasn't too bad imo as archers would rarely fire from their "max range" irl; but rather fired from "effective range" but it was stil sad to lose it bc it was a nice advantage gained by good positioning. Archeers placed to the side dealing more damage was reintrodced for Rome 2 and Attilla iirc, but was once again removed after that.
2:30 The population thing is nice, but to make it realistic in the Roman context you have to allow mass slavery and divide this population into ethnical groups: after Caesar's conquests in Gaul many soldiers settled down in the North, sure, but it was nothing compared to the number of Gauls brought as slaves in Rome and sold everywhere
There's so much to miss about the older games. They were immersive, dynamic and you could absolutely put yourself into a bind. I just can't get into the modern Total Wars. Sure they fixed some bugs like the movement bug but i'd rather leave that in and simply not use it than be forced to limit my armies. Not every force in reality was lead by a general, I loved sending a few units of Ashigaru or line infantry over to reak havock or capture an enemy settlement.
I've never stopped playing Med2, honestly. The graphics still look good even after 15 years, the game mecanics are very confortable and with the amount of mods the game has it's an endless stream of content to play around with ^^
The cool thing about most of these missing features is that they were early versions that could have been constantly updated with each new release or at least experimented on. Wanna have forts and watchtower sure but now they need at least 1 unit to garrison it for the map illumination to work. And now that garrisons wages go down by half so you don't spend all your income on just small garrisons on the map. What's this garrisons will now go out of the fort on their own (unless otherwise toggled) to scout the surrounding area to further show the map to the player? Amazing how any of these ideas can be taken very far with small ideas. But instead ca simplifies the games and copies and pastes mechanics and calls it depth
Tech Tree isn’t inherently bad. It makes a lot of sense for Empire total war (where it was first introduced) because that was a period that saw major technological advancement. And they way they intertwined that with the college and revolution system was an interesting idea.
I think empire total war has the best tech tree in the franchise, almost all the techs unlock something like a new building, new formation, new unit... Nowadays is just "+10 armor to your melee infantry units", which doesnt even come with a visual change to see the supposed better armor your soldiers are using.
@@PoorManatee6197Shogun 2 also had units and buildings locked behind a tech tree, as well as a few formations. Annoyingly the gunpowder units were so deeply buried that you really had to hard focus to get them lest the campaign be already over (And even then you'd already have 2-3 doomstacks and half the campaign done).
ETW was really good with the tech trees by als having building upgrades require technology and vice versa; and then many of the things you unlocked with the technology were actually meaningful; be they buildings, firing drills or new ammunition types for your cannons; there were the "+5%" type technologies mixed in as well but you were geenerally working towards unlocing genuinely new stuff.
It seems total war games offer less and less but you have to pay more to actually play them with all those dlcs which should be included in the main game. And their customers for the most part seem ok with it so we can't expect them to get any better.
I more than anything else miss the infinite armies without generals. It just gave you so much more flexibilty on how to wage your war. Scouting, raiding, just garrisoning, sending reinfocements... Now you need a whole army for all of that. And probably the only reason is because CA was too stupid to code a campaign AI that didnt send piece meal regiments into their deaths
Honestly What I want from the new games is a way to declare a skirmish or raid victory. Instead of every battle being a forced large mash. I love to role with missile units especially on calvary and I'm still surprised I can't do a battle where my horses with bows/guns can simply kill as many units as they can before they run out of ammo, retreat out of the map safely and then come back and harass them all over again. I pretty much want a battle that doesn't have to be all or nothing. Like in ambushes you can escape if you can get your troops to the escape zone. Something like that but for the actual battles and sieges especially
Yep, there's a reason I have 1000 hours on Med2 and less than 100 on anything post-Empire. Modders kept Med2 and even Rome 1 perfectly playable compared to modern games.
I never played the older Total Wars, wow now I see what is missing. I really hope CA watches this, the reason I play TW is to immerse myself in the history and war of the time. It’s so gamified now that it just doesn’t feel like I’m living in the same place that I read about in history books. The ancient world is much more complex, international trade, development of cities… They need to be reminded that a major major reason of playing a Total War game was to transport you to a world and empires of a different time. I really am fine for the most part with the actual battles except for more realistic cities and sieges but the campaign map part of the game which I spend 80% of the time in needs to feel like a representation of the real world.
The other features that I miss are: 1. General's speeches before battles. The speech mirrors the General's personal traits, the composition of your unit army, the enemy faction, and the composition of their army. Plus points that the General's barbs and insults against the enemy were funny as hell. 2. General and agent traits and ancillaries. All the Total War games until Medieval 2 had A LOT of traits for the characters. These were funny and would flesh out throughout the campaign. This made some Generals more likeable for me (and me wanting that general to live long and have an awesome career). 3. Units actually feel solid or have weight. Starting with Rome 2, moving units in the battlefield feel so easy. In Medieval 2 and Rome, it feels like moving units actually have weight.
That's the reasons I have 30h in Rome 2 and 200h in Rome 1, Rome one just has soo much soul to it while I hate the simplified UI in Rome 2 and lifeless charachters. You forgot to mention the feture I absolutley adored in Rome 1 and Medival 2 and that General development and trait. I loved just spent hours in a late game reading about every trait my general gained over the years in game, it made the game so much more immrsive.
All of that and for me personally in mtw2 the mark on the map for when a great war had happened. U know for the entire game play it would stay as symbol of pride or grief. I think if they made it more interactive with other mechanics of the game it would have been a great opportunity.
This is a great list, with a few details I never even knew about from Rome 1, like the population thing. Some of them I personally do not miss, though, like the single unit armies. I didn't find it fun when the AI sieged 13 different cities simultaneously with one unit each, robbing all my income when that would never have worked in real life. A decent meta strategy perhaps, but pretty immersion-breaking. I was also never a fan of the old embarkation system. Total War has never really had a good answer for this mechanic, but I prefer auto-generating transports to the old way, where one ship can transport a full-stack army anyway. That said, I really miss naval battles. They were pretty poorly executed for Rome and Attila, which is why I assume they gave up, but Empire/Napoleon were magnificent, and Shogun 2 had a pretty decent dynamic (especially Fall of the Samurai). My favorite element of the old games was the many diverse types of agents. They really helped make the game world feel alive, and I haven't felt satisfied with the scope or diversity of agents in any game since Medieval 2. I wouldn't be surprised if visual upgrades on troops returned at some point. They've already taken the first step in that direction with Pharaoh, with the leader's weapons and equipment. Unfortunately, so far Pharaoh doesn't appear to feature any agents at all, so heaven knows what they're thinking over there.
Another thing on unlimited building is that early game I would have recruitment settlements and infantry settlements and trade settlements because it takes so long to get every building to max level, but in the end should be possible. Also adding back towns as well as more buildings from generals to go with forts maybe even a small building tree for forts would make developing your provinces so much more interesting. More taxation options and maybe even taxing specific resourcesj, which would also work well with troy I hope CA sees this video and readds these features in the new games aswell as more features, I like the resources as currency in troy and new effect for factions in troy and warhammer but we need more of the complexity in the old games to go with it. Also thanks for convincing me to play rome and med 2 again and can somebody please tell me what song is playing at 14:12
The part about siege weapons was also realistic. Building siege weapons was awfully expensive and time consuming. You are feeding and paying an entire army while waiting on the siege. Which means that, if the siege tower goes down, it is not worth waiting to build another one again.
@@AndysTake There's a lot of stuff you mentioned that I miss dearly. And I always tell my TW newcomer friends: "guys you have no idea the amount of cool stuff they have removed."
@@AndysTake i know that when they tried to do a overhaul of the orcs in Warhammer 2, where you could upgrade the armor and weapons of each unit, they wanted to have a system like in Med 2 back again. But in a video on that Warhammer 2 update, they said they didnt have the time or ressorces to do it. Which is strange to me as CA is a bigger company by now than when they made Medival 2. Something have shifted in their priorites.
@@AndysTake i really feel that it could have worked quite well in wh, as you could have say empire swords start off in just padded gambason and as you go threw that game and level up then they end in say half plate. making them still useful later in the game
There is some hope to bring back some of these features with mods, but only some of them. Personally I also miss replenishment from Medieval 2 where you had to go on your territory to recruit missing guys instead of todays regenerating units. In these days loses dont matter unless you will lose whole unit, as it will just regenerate for no cost in few turns.
CA don't care what you demand. They want to employ the techniques which will earn them the most money. An arcade game that appeals to one whale will get them more money than a deep game that appeals to 100 people who openly say they don't want over monetisation.
Another thing missing to do with research is how in Empire it was linked to actual physical locations on the map - your schools/universities. You could speed up research by upgrading your schools or placing your Gentlemen in the schools, and your research would be stopped if an enemy raided your school. The technologies themselves were also much more impactful than in newer games, you were researching specific formations or weaponry that made sense, things like bayonets or steam engines. These then had actual impact on the battlefield - if your unit has bayonets and the enemy doesn't, you have a big advantage in melee, but if you don't have ring bayonets you give up shooting to charge. Comparing that with current tech trees where it's all "+5 to this stat" or "-5% upkeep" is depressing as what difference does +5 melee defence really make.
Something I'm surprised you haven't mentioned is MUSIC. Medieval II had some of the best music for a strategy game ! Empire music was disappointing, Rome II was surprisingly nice, but the music in Medieval II was memorable, and it would change based on both who you were and where you were fighting. There's nothing more awe-inspiring and epic than your army marching on a capital city with Solenka playing in the background, or seeing your Teutonic army marching to Hymn of War (seriously though, these two songs are the absolute best). It's kinda sad that Wharhammer's music is so forgettable when it had the potential to be even more epic. Also, a small underrated detail from Rome 2 that I would like to have again is the campaign animation. What I mean is that at the end of a battle or auto-resolve, an animation would play where your general on the campaign map would kill the other general. What was really nice is that the animation would depend on the type of victory you got. So, if you had a decisive victory, your general would just stab the enemy general, but if you got a close victory, your guy would actually struggle to kill the other. It's a small detail, but thought it was much better than in Warhammer where the guy that wins just raises his weapon and the other stumbles and dies.
I personally loved how the map in the older games changed depending on the buildings you built. Like the mines, the fields, the paved roads. It gave so much character to the map and was a cool visual indicator of how developed a province is. Same with the buildable forts, towers etc. Or how if your soldiers stayed in one place for a long time, the ground around them became charred and burned as if they've been foraging for supplies. I just love that level of interaction with the campaign map that we really just don't have anymore.
I guess warhammer had corruption but thats really it
@@TheRealKiRBEYYeah and I really like the corruption especially in WH3. Playing as the VC and seeing the map getting corrupted is so cool. I guess I just really love being able to interact and change the campaign map.
Yes
@@siryassenius1783 but the border doesn't look good with corruption
Yes ❤
You missed a HUGE one for me. While defending sieges in MTW2 and most of the older TW's your troops would route and fall back to inner layer or the center of the city for awesome last stands. It makes ZEROOO sense that a unit holding the walls or gate, then breaks to then try to run through the people the were just fighting to run outside the city where the enemies entire army is. They basically impale themselves onto the enemies swords. Also when a unit was surrounded it would enact this fight to the death symbol where they would lose but still fight since there was no path to retreat.
It breaks so much immersion when units and soldiers do not act anything like they would once Phobos overtook them. They should run away from the enemy they were in contact in. They could have took the feature further and show some surrender, some run, some fight a futile last stand etc. Always falling back to inner layers of defense. But for them to mindlessly impale themselves on their enemies swords is the stupidest thing ever!
Absolutely, this is a great feature!
This actually also applies to the campaign map. If you lost a battle the suvivors would flee to the nearest city. In new total war losing a battle always means losing you whole army and your general dying, while in the older titles you could actually reatreat on the battlefield and have your army regroup in the nearest city.
In Warhammer it's even worse. If an ENEMY unit breaks, it can run INSIDE the city and escape the battlefield that way.
@@makeromaniagreatagain9697 Or worse RALLY inside your city lmao
I think Shogun 2 had that too. Except your units have to be at the very inner walls near the zone. If they were routed outside or near the outer gates, they flee outside away from any enemy units. Units that will fight to the last will have Skull emblems above them.
Another note about Rome and Med2 TW: when you construct a building in your city, and then have to defend it in a siege battle, you can see that building ON THE BATTLE MAP as part of your city. That building can then take boulder hits, and thus get damaged, thus explaining why you have to repair some of your town's constructions after the battle.
It was also cool to be able to view your city in peacetime in villager mode. You could even see your buildings under construction! It made Rome 1 feel even more immersive.
@@michaelstein7510 I did not know you could do that.
@zubbworks i was blown away when i found out about it while exploring the settlement menu. I don't think the feature carried over to Medieval 2 sadly, which sucks considering Medieval 2 in my opinion had a lot more impressive looking buildings
That was a great feature that added to the immersion. I’m optimistic Pharaoh may take steps back to the older games and yet give us new traits as well. This new game has our collective anxiety levels rising. And why shouldn’t it because this series for over 20 years has become such a hobby for me and it seems many others.
@@zafrel You'd be pleasantly surprised to learn that Feral added that feature to the mobile version.
Can't believe you missed the single greatest feature that was removed! Battlemaps that represent exactly their geographic location of the strategic map. If you found a little hill on the campaign map, a chokepoint, or any other terrain feature that was tactically useful, you could place your army there and fight the battle there.
Its 1000 times better than the random and repetitive battlemaps of warhammer (haven't played 3K or Troy so idk if they added it back)
And BAD (battlemaps of Warhammer). They are entirely designed to deny any strategic use because CA wants battle to be massive moshpits where APM and unit matching reign king. So instead of having wide open maps so that cavalry can be useful, with elevated areas to use artillery, buildings and low walls to protect infantry, a few forests or bushes to hide units and skirmish, ...
In Warhammer you have a tiny map, with a massive hill in the middle to cut all line of sight and small forest patches every few hundred meters to make sure that you can't shoot the enemy, but not continuous either so the enemy can't sneak on you. At the end of the day, you either corner camp (when you can), or you just spam single entity units that will outperform anything in the moshpit.
That's why I don't believe for a second that CA will have a change of heart and improve. It's not that they can't do it, it's not even that they won't do it, it's that everything they've been doing in the past 10-15 years is to actively reject and move away from those old mechanics. They know avout those criticism, they just don't gaf.
CA wants to pump out half-assed, completely bugged out, micro-transaction ridden products to be bought by whales. They completely abandoned any attempt at providing mechanical depths to their players, just more ""content""", endless skins and OP new copy-pasted factions to keep their whales happy.
@@karisvenner3892I love warhammer but that's true sadly
Played Troy, if I remember correctly, only cities have customized maps, the rest are random maps, the worst thing are the battles on the sea, they literally search for a random generated island.
Ah, indeed! 'm always disappointed when I can't see any tacticool advantage due to terrain in the Warhammer series. I liked defending on these dangerous river crossovers and the likes with a puny army and take out a huge force.
@@nehylen5738 So true! I actually tried positioning my army near a river on the Warhammer map to block an enemy army, hoping to get an advantage by defending the bridge or ford. Yet the armies were dropped in an open plain...
I hate how in the newer titles only one port has a trade route via the capital. It just led to empty roads and seas. Med 2 did so much right I don't understand why they ditched so many features rather than building on them.
THIS! I hate that there's so often just one trade route via the capital as well. Your realm feels so barren and just lifeless without trade coming in from everywhere, wherever you had a trader or a port, just like it should!
lazyness and incompetence. most people don't understand gw fanboys. i have been a 40k player and fan since the mid 90s and i can tell you there is no fanbase more pathetic and blind to the company abusing their own fans as gw fanboys. these people will play anything if it has warhammer in the name. there is a reason why 90% of games made with gw ips are shit. they migrated to tw and destroyed a whole franchise with their consumerist mind set.
@@AndysTakelocal trade was of massive importance historically. Trade doesn't just flow to a capital. The Dutch didn't build their massive merchant navy without importing a LOT of Wood from the states of the baltic.
The total war games could be expanded by adding a new layer of warfare: economics and trade. Merchants do this a little bit. It can be done better with time effort and patience.
One detail I love about med 2 trade is that 2 bordering provinces will trade as long as they arent at war, even if you dont have a tradding agreement with the other faction. Of course having it means more money, but a little income is always there.
You want the short answer? Because it's cheaper. Think about what happened with Rome 2 for instance, that was the last game that had any real depth to it and it was a fucking clusterfuck, I think that game alone absolutely destroyed CA's work ethic, made them think less is good and easier to handle, because honestly I stopped playing after Napoleon Total War came out and every new shitty Warhammer releases just keeps proving to me I made the right decision. I mean God, remember how the map ACTIVELY changed over time Medieval 2? Like when you built roads, walls, and different buildings? And then you SAW those same buildings actually in game in a siege?
And the fucking MODS, MY GOD! THE MODS! Faction unit expansion, minor factions like Burgundy and such being added, literal complete conversions like with Third Age TW like, it's insane how far CA have fallen from grace. When a developer stops doing the small details like map changes and unit appearance changes, that's when it's made evident they have settled for the easy money approach. And the sad part? Its working. And it's just sad that it's working.
Also I miss battlefield fortifications, dismounting cavalry or reload animations. TW battles simply feel more and more arcade.
Yeah, it made it feel like they were actual people, on horses. Not a "unit entity with a rider + horse model"
All those temporary unit buffs must go. One that was striking for some spearmen units in R2 was "anti-cav tactics". Like if spearmen wouldn't fight in a way adapted against cavalry when facing some, and needed an order to do so...
Yes
@@sonofthebearking3335 They even removed reload animations? LMAO
just the fact that reload animations are gone is so disheartening...
I LOVE artillery and in BotET for MW2 I always watched my empire gunners reload their guns, slowly but surely, competently trained soldiers of NULN!!!!
Now its just... hollow with Warhammer TW. I want the games to make my models feel alive! I mean what do they remove next? Aiming? Running? Just gonna have them T-Pose? sigh
You forgot to mention one of the most important thing - the sound design. Seriously, listening how your missile trrops shoot was so satisfying
and also man, in Rome, where you just heard the awesomeness of arrows or javelins hitting their targets!
One thing I hate is that when you speed up time all the sound effects dissapear, what a way to kill the ambient.
It was those little things and nuances that made old TW games fun even though they are largely lacking in some areas. The drop in city viewer in rome, the funny general/commander speeches, unrestricted settlement buildings slots, fort buildings, a variety of agents with roles, the cavalry charge that sends those tiny beings flying or a LARGELY MODDABLE game. Man, those were the wild days.
Absolutely, everything felt possible!
@@AndysTake oh yeah, armies in rome has a devastation effect on the map when they stayed there too long without moving. the speeches were correlated with the general/commanders traits too.
@@NativeLanguage02it was also there in medieval 2
Another feature from Empire/Napoleon is that town growth and even economic growth was impacted by your tax rate, so you could lower your taxes in peace time and actually benefit from more settlements emerging and your taxable income growing, while high taxes would cause your economy and population to shrink over time. While it was never as impactful as I would like, it was a fantastic idea in principle.
Indeed! I also loved that you could tax both the nobility and the common people which would affect them differently - they've never attempted this level of tax complexity (just one level above) again!
YES! It's one of the reasons I friggin loved Prussia on harder difficulty. You were almost always at war with bigger nations stronger than you, so you'd have high taxes allot, and you'd have to deal with never quite having that population you want until the mid game.
Watching this video was absolutely heartbreaking. As someone who began with Shogun when it first came out, this video list was basically a list of why I haven't bought a new Total War in almost a decade. The series lost its heart and soul.
In Napoleon you could raid roads, towns and blockade the city with one ship. Fun times 😅
I love that you're emphasizing the soul of the game being centric to what's lacking. Soul is what a lot of things lack in our present day productions, and why everything feels so depressingly shallow. It's made to appeal to your baser nature and not stimulate any deeper thoughts or emotions. Not a strategy that will endure the test of time.
Agree Warhammer seemed totally soulless despite the fantastical battles.
So true! I find this in everything from the food to movies.
Games are being dumbed down to cater to dumb gamers.....
i miss the feature were if you were moving one unit though a stationary unit(with a tight formation) then the stationary unit would create paths in its formation to allow the moving unit through by moving along these paths instead of just pushing their way through the stationary unit as they do in the newer games. I really liked this feature because 1. it just looked better than a blob of men just pushing through we have now, and 2. the units that moved along these paths moved almost as fast as a unit running without any obstructions meaning skirmishers could get behind the infantry line so much faster.
Great point! It is a tiny thing that most people miss including myself until very recently.
Personally I love that as well but I believe it was only available for disciplined units which makes so much sense!
I used to think i was just being nostalgic looking back at the old total war games but my God they really were better than todays total wars so sad☹️
Yes for real :'(
One of the things I liked from the original Shogun was that you could just click and get an nice summary of the province , including it's farming output , strategic importance and geographical features .
I remember I always hated trying to to take Paris in campaigns due to how it was a single giant province. It did result in needing to think how you attacked, you couldn’t just march for the capital and call it a day, you had to occupy towns, farms, bridges. It did make it feel like you had to work secondary objectives to take the main city.
Good idea , you missed two important features from medieval 2
Taking actual number of prisoners and the tier based price
And taking a general or family member as a prisoner in battle that is one of the most missed features that I want back
No one can wonder why medieval 2 is still so popular after seeing this video
fact
@@AndysTakeindividual model healthbar 💪💪💪💪
As an old-fashioned PC gamer who loves depth and long playthroughs, I can relate. He forgot to add one more extremely important point to his list: the epic, immersive battles that can last hours. Not just the sieges. And the mods, of course. Medieval 2 and the Third Age (D&C) mod is still my no 1 game to this day. Loved Empire for the naval battles, the rest was meh.
@@JustARandomFioRome, medieval 2, Atilla, Empire Total War, & Shogun 2 were awesome are the best in my perspective.
Not to forget the gigantic and still active modding scene. Probably the biggest in Total War, probably comparable to the modding scenes of Paradox games.
The music!!! Everyone fails to mention the music!!! What made Shogun 2 and Medieval 2 for me was the music, which added big time to the immersion. That composer was amazing.
I think everyone knows this, and it's been said to death, plus, it's not really a game mechanic, and it's hard for CA to specifically due anything about this unless they're lucky with a great composer I feel. But I absolutely want Jeff back!
I still listen to Jeff’s soundtracks all the time while I’m doing work. Richard Beddow is fantastic at making ambient music, but sometimes his battle tracks aren’t dramatic and energetic enough.
Empire TW is a great example, but he seems to have gotten better with his recent work. Attila’s battle tracks are fantastic. Jeff’s battle tracks are just epic, even if they’re more synthetic-sounding than Beddow’s orchestral approach.
I still listen to the music of Rome1, it’s a masterpiece of soundtrack!
Hey, I didn't know about that feature in Rome where you can go to your cities in peace time. That is sooo great.
Yes it really is!
Medieval 2 also had a unique system for garrisons. A certain number of units of specific types had 0 upkeep when stationed in the city, effectively functioning as the cities garrison. Thus, garrisons were not only customizable but had the additional advantage of being able to leave the city and deal with enemy units in your territory.
I really miss the armour and weapon upgrades showing up on the units in combat, loved seeing my unit's level and their equipment improve after retraining them at my cities. Also being able to see the gear of your opponents and how well-equipped they were compared to your own forces. Its the little touches *chefs kiss*
I actually agreed with all your points and with some of them I didn’t even think about. But now I realize that those reasons are what made the older games so great
It’s all the little details that in the end make a game feel like it’s got soul!
The thing i loved most were that in medieval 2 when your units got upgraded armour, their armour would change in units from nothing to some metal chestplates and helmets.
Truly old total War actually felt like tactics and strategy and skill mattered.
I missed how in the pre empire placing your range units on higher terrain increased their range making elevation worth considering to be part your battle tactics. Ever since Empire however they forced range units to have fixed range distance meaning there is no longer real advantage to have ranged units on elevation
apparently thats an engine limitation. They compensated for it by increasing the damage of units based on elevation
The same goes for accuracy and direct line of sight. in M2TW if crossbows and archers had a direct line of sight on the target they would hit significantly more shots. If they had an arcing shot over a wall it was basically a crapshoot to hit anything. In the later titles, archers can shoot like 80 degrees up and still land within the 3 meters of the target like it was a direct shot.
@@emperorofthegreatunknown4394 An now there no reason to have archers out front of spear men an run back before the cavalry reach them.
@@AlexTSilver It's not an engine limitation; you can easily implement it into newer TW games just by setting the "range" stat of projectiles to (near) infinite and having the max range be decided by projectile speed and gravity; the AI will still only fire when it knows the projectile can hit the target and now altitude makes a difference.
for gunpowder units the max range system makes more sense; guns don't get a range advantge for being on a hill; instead their effective range is limited by their accuracy.
and honestly; for archers it also makes some sense that they wouldn't fire past certain ranges; heavy warbows theoretically can reach out to 300m or more, but they aren't effective at those ranges, though altitude does give a pretty significant advantage to them still (as they can be more accurate out to long distance and hit harder) and having the lowgound with bows is much more of a disavantage. (for similar reasons)
The reason CA got rid of range advantage based on altitude for archers is simply that the range visualiser (the line that shows the range of your archers) would not be helpful when it doesn't show the actual range of the unit. (it's for this exact reason the range visualisaton in RTW remastered is such garbage)
One little thing I missed sorely after Shogun 2 (having played the original Rome in my childhood) were the speeches by generals before a battle. This was one of the most immersive experiences for me, who likes to stage custom battles more than playing the campaign. But it's a feature I miss dearly ever since...
The guilds in medieval 2. Unlocked after building many of a certain unit. Each settlement was potentially unique.
this is so true!
I can't believe that nobody is talking about the battlefields that represented exactly the map terrain. Unlimited battlefields were something that I miss a lot, same for the meaningfull character traits in rome and medieval II
One feature which I am missing is just a small detail. In M2 TW units which were in the way of another marching unit would create gaps in the unit so the other unit could pass. It looks so good if your archers finished there job moved back behind the infantry and instead of creating a massive bulk they move move the the created gaps.
All of these features need to come back in Total: Renaissance (both figuratively and literally, Renaissance would be an amazing setting)
The BIGGEST #1 thing they removed was how your children shared most traits of their father in Medieval 1. Have a father with full piety? You can expect their offspring to start with 3-5 piety and pro piety traits. It was so fun breeding the perfect blood lines during entire campaign.
Napoleon was the game that really got me into strategy games.
I can still remember how blown away I felt when I discovered that placing your infantry in front of your artillery would send soldier flying with each volley because the game actually simulated fired rounds as physical objects in the game. Or how using the right formations and some clever maneuvering could turn the tides of a losing battle.
I'll never forget that one time the enemy attacked one of my smaller towns. The town was completely undefended and only had a few handfuls of militia and they were going up against a slightly greater number of line infantry. It was so much fun desperately maneuvering and using the terrain to slowly whittle down the enemy army. I still lost the battle, but the enemy army had been so degraded that it was no longer a threat to any of my other towns in that area.
I can only speculate, but I believe the reason these features are no longer present in modern TW games is because the people who developed and understood these features are no longer working for CA. CA simply lost the talent necessary to implement such features.And even though the people currently working there might be technically capable of implementing these features, if they don't understand why the game needs these features then they won't spend time and resources on making that stuff.
Things we need in Total War games:
1) Jeff Van Dyke as a soundtrack guy
2) Walled artillery, burning oil at the gates, spies opening the gates, sappers that destroy walls
3) General speeches (faction throwing insults at other factions, stating that they are outnumbered, etc..)
4) Units swimming across the river as in Barbarian Invasion, or climbing smaller walls when possible as in Shogun 2
5) Weather that affects the battlefield
6) Excellent unit response and path finding
7) Sally forth battles - being able to sally forth in order to destroy enemy's deployed siege engines ( you can completely destroy them or delay their building phase in campaign)
8) Pre-deployable traps and walled artillery (as in Rome 2, you can place traps anywhere you want)
9) Matched combat and killing animations - horses killing enemies with hoofs, dogs slaying the necks of enemies, etc.
10) Raiding - raiding mode destroys local economy and food. You can attack and defend in raiding battles, and control attack/defense on the battlefield. For instance, during a battle, you can choose to raid the fields and force the enemy to get out of the city. If the enemy does not come out to defend the fields, it will get affected by starvation and attrition. The more you raid, the more food you get from the enemy at his own expense, resulting in famine and mass death of armies and population. Also, raiding should affect morale of the city's population. On the other hand, if the raider has too much loot, it affects its movement.
11) Food carts should be on the battlefield with armies. If your food supplies get raided or destroyed, your army suffers attrition.
12) Bring back forts and watch towers!
I miss the Rome 1 Testudo formation where they slowly moved with shields up over their heads and front to give total missile protection. also miss, the flaming pigs, poison arrows, boiling oil etc.
Boiling oil was the MVP of siege defence maps :D
Boiling oil gave me PTSD.
fire pig ftw
you're so positive, I bet if CA looked at this they would be like "nah that would confuse the casuals which give us money"
Personally, i would like to see a mix of Empire and Medieval 2s building system. Something where your taverns, baracks, forts, teamsters, etc would be in the city. But where your woodcutters, miners, farms, etc are outside of the city. Itd help make it feel more real.
Heck if CA stopped being CA maybe we'd have some system where certain resources are required for certain things. It could encourage both the A.I and the player to trade with each other. And potentially cause wars and alliances over resources and trade.
I said it many times when talking bout the good old times of Total War, but one of the big main reasons why 5 year old me got hooked on Medieval 1, was the BEAUTIFUL art style. For every unit, building, events and even the credits, they had such good drawing of all those things. Black and white, lots of character in every line. I loved it so much. And in general, the first Medival TW is my fav game and a work of art as well as amazing gameplay. CA put so much effort into their game series, kept them simple, yet detailed at the same time. Now the new ones are just....too much information and complicatet crap no one cares for :')
As someone who bought a hard copy of MTW when I was still at school, I 100% agree. I want an M2TW remake / remaster more than anything (and Empire being a close second), I’d love for them to do this with the original MTW as well..
Also there were some nice features in MTW than we never saw afterwards too. Firstly in battles there were separate “hold position” and “hold formation” buttons (which, had they kept this, maybe future titles would’ve had less issues with getting phalanx, pikemen and halberd units to function properly). Also these same kind of units would benefit from an encoded “rank bonus”, given if the formation was deep enough (5 ranks deep iirc), it received a mild combat bonus (especially useful for fighting enemy cav and defensive situations).
Also I liked the idea of being able to build an Inn, and “hire” mercs at the city level, as opposed to merely recruiting them to an army in the field as happens with RTW / M2TW (not that I want one system over the other, they could synergise nicely together!).
@@Marcoz588 Totally agree, they had some super neat features on the world map as well as on the battle field! I especially loved the option to let certain cavarly units dismount pre battle, which made them their own infantry unit with new stats and all. Ofc this was kinda brought back in Empires, but only for some dragoons.
What I extremly loved in Mtw were the many events like an destroyed faction returning with a new leader, entirely new factions rising like the Swiss or Burgundy (yes, a medieval Burgundy faction was a thing back then and I only managed to trigger that event one time. Idk how, but it was awsome) or the many historical events they included like the child crusade that impactet your gameplay.
I am sure there are still so many little neat details about that old game I prob still dont know, so I keep playing! Sadly, my hard copy doesnt work on my newer pc, so I play the steam version, which often crashes tho :/
I really hope they will realese the og MTW properly or even as a remake, tho I couldnt think of anything to improve
Its taken me a really long time to figure out why i don't have fun in the battles in the post Napoleon games. I think its the fact that its now more and more about countering enemy unit types than logical positioning. This combined with the speed that a unit disintegrates makes it hard to enjoy the battle, I'm constantly plugging holes, making sure I've got the best matchups instead of trying to manuver for advantage.
I used to love full stack battles, now they just feel like a chore.
Shogun 2 is a great game imo but it really suffers from to things:
1. The battles are often over extremely fast once the battle lines meet. (A unit of Yari Ashigaru will completely desintegrate in less than 30 seconds if it meets a unit of Katana Samurai, and then the chain rout usually does the rest.
2. Too many units rely on timer based active abilities to be valuable. (Rapid Advance, Banzai, Warcry, Rally, Inspire etc. often just feel unneccessary; just slightly buff the base stats of Nodachi Samurai instead of giving them that button click ability; or give fatigue resistance to Yari Samurai)
Also, guns being unlockd so late in the campaign is a bit of a shame imo; they're a lot of fun to use but you need to spend way too long researching them (and thus, not researching all the other useful technologies) for them to even be worth getting on the shorter campaigns.
I really miss the forts and watchtowers mechanic... Hope they bring them back at some point
Me too :'(
I certainly prefer it over encampment stance. If a turn is 6 months to a year why do I only get some tents and a pallisade. Especially in Rome Total War 2 where the Romans were literally renowned for their siege works and fortifications.
Attila is 8 years old?! Time flies... Great video! Yeah we have lost a lot. I loved the old unit artistic unit cards, especially in Shogun 2 and Rome 2.
Bring them back in pharoah
Bringing*
That is good news. Hopefully they stick with it
Thank you, my friend! :D Time flies for sure, it's scary :( And especially sad when thinking we could've had like... 3-6 historical titles in that time if not for a certain series lol
@@AndysTake Indeed... Those titles brought a lot of joy for many, so that is great, but yeah, us history fans have been left out in the cold 🥶
I agree that the limitation of armies, and the fact that you could have small armies led by captain was awesome, but the badside of it was clearly seen in Total War Empire : a single unit could just keep on roaming your lands to damage the different buildings outside your cities. And in certain campaigns I played, a had lot of single ennemy units going everywhere, making hard to destroy them. Total War would have to find a balance to bring that back.
Anyways, Keep up the good work Andy!
yeah there were def some bugs with it. How about AI moving one unit at a time and had like 50 of them and sometimes they would just merge with the same unit from where they both started but each unit moved individually so it was super annoying to watch and wait during the turn simulation
That was because they added "raidable" elements to the map, which they made because they tried to descentralize the war mechanics. They programmed the AI to attack those points, but my guess is they never expected that level of "micro" and to be honest, many players would do it in a multiplayer game.
Instead of a better implementation by limiting the AI, they scrapped the entire captains mechanic.
@@MrlspPrt Why would they limit the AI? I swear to God, people don't know what they want. If they limit the AI, people would complain about the AI not using X mechanic and being so easy because of that
While the problem with single units in Empire wasn't that bad on its own imo, what made it horrible to deal with was a) the broken autoresolve meant you could send like 3 units against one enemy and you'd somehow lose half your guys without wiping them out (and so they'd just keep breaking your buildings), b) even the 5 survivors of a unit were enough to stop your port from functioning and cut your whole empire off from trade somehow, and c) how bloody expensive it was to repair the buildings.
But for me it was mostly a). Having to manually fight every battle to lose ridiculous amounts of troops turned the game boring real fast :(
Why would that be a bad thing?
It's guerilla warfare and punishes players that focus their forces in one spot instead of building smaller, more mobile forces that can deal with enemy raids. An entire war can be decided by a series of small skirmished and not just large battles.
Great Content! I relate with 99% of your arguments, not just here but in all of your videos about older TW. CA dropped ball after ball :/
Thanks for the kind words :)
Right now the campaign map feels more like a lobby you hang around between tactical battles, rather than a place you actually do stuff.
You know what I like about Medieval 2 building system is that whenever you build some of the highest level of building. You will get a little cutscene highlighting your faction achievement
I feel like for each thing Empire removed, it added 3 more. It was insanely ambitious and frankly it would be the irrefutably best game today of not for the bugs.
Heck, even with the bugs its still my favorite.
Same! The map is just so alive and big that I'd just stare it sometimes. Not to mention the vast variety of factions you could fight, the extra theatres that were solely naval ports exclusively for trade. And the pirates! They could either be a massive thorn in your side or if you devoted resources to them, you could get some really rich settlements. In Warhammer thier just a couple of "fleets" that are easy avoided and really don't play any meaningful role except for a certain few factions. It all made it feel more lively and dynamic. The new world could take a lot of work to develop but payed out massively. While the old world was already somewhat developed but could be made ridiculous with massive palaces. Not to mention you could institute a whole new playstyle and flag and nation by instigating rebellions and reenacting the french revolution going from a monarchy to democracy. NOTHING in Warhammer has near the same level of depth. Now it's just mostly army and gold. You can just recruit about anything from global anyways so it becomes pointless to build more than a few of the same recruitment building. After awhile it kind of just turns into an automation simulator, building the same buildings over and over to maximize profit with very little variety between provinces. I just get disinstered and stop building altogether and just skip that notification. Whereas building in empire felt so tailor-made like in Montreal where actually getting good gunpowder units in the new world felt awesome in a land where so many units are just axe and bow units it really gave each theatre and province its own unique conditions. Not to mention before you got those units you had to rely on whatever the hell you could get there: whether that be natives or pirates or just the lowely local militia: it was this lack of uniformity that makes it so special. No two provinces were the same. Every army and province was unique. That made the factions more unique too. Like you were leading an actual nation with all its advantages and disadvantages rather than a roaming band of murder hobos that just kinda chooses a pin on the Map and goes yup we'll invade here and gets a couple strong units and whatever they want is for the taking. It took planning, time, and investment and you were rewarded for that. Which to me is the hallmark of a great strategy game.
Building every building in every province is something I miss so hard. I mean: whats the point in limiting building spots? The big cities have a lot of space for many building, not just 8
Yup, it makes no sense to have like 8 buildings in a city. It's just an unimmersive gamification of everything
Battlefield fortifications is another thing i miss from older titles, like entrenching (empire had the artillery battery sandbag entrenching and infantry entrenching to give cover against projectiles for example), barricading, anti cav traps like stakes and caltrops, spike pits and flaming tar pits to hurt infantry. You even got big balls you had to set on fire and a unit could give them a push so if you were on top of a slope they would roll down and kill enemies. Devastating if you got your timing correct.
Only thing I disagree with is the seiges. I dont think sieges should end because siege equipment was destroyed. Nothing wrong with units being able to set fire to doors or hack them down with their melee weapons. It took much longer than a bit of siege equipment, different weapons did more or less damage (axes best, spears worst) and it’s realistic.
the assault for that turn should end, but the seige continues
I really miss "Rebels". When you walk through your lands and faced a brigand army crippling your economy that ambushes you and have to fight an unexpected battle, that was wild.
Yeah, goddamn freikorps. They always have good units and some chevrons with them.
The thing about army limits is that it's just another form of holding the player's hand. Before you didn't have any official limit, that being said if you spent too much on military and neglected your economy, you would pay for it severely. This is their artificial way of regulating that, all it does is limit a player's agency.
The ship transport system could be massively improved over the old system, limiting how many units can each ship transport, instead of just needing 1 to move the entire army.
A possibility inspired from CK2, which is mobilising merchant ships for the war (would be at the expense of trade income and happyness of the town so long that they are mobilised) to get extra transport ships, would work well.
YES! I just told my wife that they should implement a system inspired by CK2. I didn't think of the trade income or happiness reduction though. Great idea.
@@WolfLykaios in CK2 mobilising your vassals' ships decrease their loyalty so the effects would be similar.
@@Duke_of_Lorraine I think that apply to the levies rule, where the more levies you raise, it increases the negative opinion of your vassal of you.
@@Duke_of_Lorraine he refers to the decision that is in the base game to mobilise 50 ships in wartime
it was ridiculously expensive though, but still useful
It’s my head cannon that in the older titles your fleet protects the transport ships hence why you can transport an entire army with one ship.
I really miss being able to have armies without a general. It gave me many more tactical options on how I could expand. Shogun 2 did it right - garrison system but you could still add units if you saw that an attack was coming in 2 or 3 turns
Provinces instead of independent cities and armies tied to generals was such a downgrade, they remove cooler features but this they decided to maintain in all the tittles since rome 2 🙄
and to think they removed it to prevent a tiny percentage of players to abuse a bug that allowed turn 1 world conquest
i suppose it does make sense with the game turning a more multiplayer direction, but instead of fixing the bug they removed the feature
Okay now I want to get Medieval 2 for that visual armor upgrade feature alone. I been avoiding it since graphic-wise (yeah I know) it was just a bit too old school looking but man those are some cool gameplay features.
Just try customized battles, if I remember correctly, you can't always have entirely upgraded soldiers, and having them requires a lot of time playing. If you can tolerate the "old school" graphics, then try the full campaign.
Wow, it's 15-16 years old 😨
@MrlspPrt When I mean old school, I guess I'm talking more aesthetics. Maybe the UI? I don't know to be honest, kind of hard to pin down. Shogun 2, for example, is my favorite Total War game and appearance wise, it still stands up to the modern stuff imo.
You should definitely play Medieval 2, but play it with mods if you want the ultimate experience :) and yes, that upgrade feature is superb - especially mid-tier units like the spearmen see an intense improvement from no upgrade at all to max upgrade!
Play mods like Divide and Conquer (LoTR), Broken Crescent (Crusades) or Stainless Steel. Thank me later.
You'll also want to go into the controls and edit keybinds (And be sure to save the keybind in case the game resets them like mine likes doing), the old school keybinds are annoying.
Excellent points. I'm adding a few from the waaaay past. Medieval Total War had that gritty, no nonsense feeling in it in terms of art, sound and music. It really had that visceral feeling of dark, bloody medieval times. It's war, after all. In the campaign you had some differing missions with historical takes. I.e. build a high level cathedral in Constantinople as the Byzantium (Hagia Sophia) and you could get like 5 stars on that. It made the victory conditions and factions more personal and differing.
I'd also add that it really felt different if you played a Central European faction over say, Arab faction in terms of what the units were etc. It was also increasingly interesting that some factions had very weak early game in terms of units, but if you managed to get to the later ages you'd get insanely good troops (Janissaries and Lancers, eh). Really felt the progression of your faction. Especially if you coupled this with the extremely long building times of some buildings in order to get some excellent troops.
Last but not least, the generals and agents really had some persona on them. If you left them too long to the city they'd get attributes such as lazy or drinker. If you killed prisoners constantly, you'd get reputation that started to lower the morale of your enemies at first, but after a certain point might lower even the morale of your troops! Also it was hilarious if one of your princes suddenly turned out to be gay and it meant you couldn't really get any successors from him.
Damn. Need to install Medieval Total War again..
fantastic video, couldnt agree more! loved the forts, watch towers etc, and the Empire's 'living' map that created settlements over time... so many sensible and immersing features stripped away and hollowing the gameplay:(
I agree with all points, but one extra point from me would be adding back in the avatar conquest that was in Shogun 2. Had such fun playing that, unlocking new armour for your general, upgrading your army etc...
One of my best RTW2 memories is a campaign playing as the Spartans I got attacked by Rome while my armies were off east. The one army that was across was a pain, but my fleet massacred 4 legions one after the other as they tried to cross the Adriatic giving me time to raise a new army and recall some from the east. Then I was able to recapture my territory and push into Italy since all their armies were busy being fish food.
The admiral got adopted into the fam and I gave him some political office or other. I miss naval battles and immersion lol
Whoever you are Andy, its so nice to meet somebody else who loves these games as much as I do. These are great points.
Glad to hear it, my friend, thank you for watching and leaving a kind comment :)
I think another important element in old Total War Games were these insane General speeches, I love them so much in Rome Total War. They included important aspects for the battles or the war itself.
Shogun 2 reintroduced them but they would never again be as good as they were in Rome and Medieval 2
I really miss the burning hay rolling down a hill towards the enemy. Also in rome 1 if you had a general that you let to battle in germania all his life he would be called germanicus (if you played with rome).
100% AGREE. You actually covered pretty much /everything/ that is missing and has been robbed from us. I'm genuinely impressed. I play Rome 2 constantly with mods, I love Atilla, I love the strategic map of Empire. I too demand the depth and soul of old.
There is one feature from Medieval 1 that was really fun...Regional units. If you conquered ireland you could recruit a special irish unit no matter what faction you played. Same with scottland, switzerland and so on. They should bring that back. I always tried to take switzerland because their pikeman were awesome
I totally agree with your claims beside one point. Small Armies without a General and no Restriction in the number of armies made it to easy to trick the or confuss the IA and break the immersion of a strategic military campaign. In TW Empire the AI spammed to often pointless multiple small armies without really knowing who to use them proper and more important it was much to easy to lure out whol AI Armies outside of their ortified cities with just one cavalry unit. Probably this was one reason why CA dismissed this feature after Empire
I think Three Kingdoms is the best TW title since Shogun 2. It has a lot of features that got ripped from the game after Shogun 2. It has even some new inovative features in the campaign, beautiful art and the battles feel better than any Warhammer game. Sieges take a lot of time, which is realistic, wars are actually strategic and the armies aren’t just hopping from city to city since the map in’t so cluttered. The SFO mod makes the battles on extreme unit size feel surprisingly realistic on historical mode. Huge lines of infantry actually fight for dozens of minutes holding the line, letting you outthink and outmaneuver the enemy. Too bad they stupidly marketed it as a fantasy game, the UI is a mess and the China setting isn’t appealing to more people.
the UI in that game is truly is something else; it's like they tried with all their might to make everything as obtuse and unintuitive as possible.
Great video! The population and 1 unit armies are the 2 I miss the most 😭
Man this just kinda puts words to why i still play the older games more than the newer ones, specifically rome 1.
They have done some atuff in streamlining their games that makes them more fun in some areas and worse in others. Like replenishment. It was more inconvenient to have to retrain in cities with applicable facilities and population rather than waiting a couple turns in the field. But it felt more immersive to me.
Ah man i miss the older games direction
Replenishment kind of sucks becasue it makes you value your units less; in RTW if you had a unit of gold armor Praetorians (which you can only recruit in Rome) in your army that's fighting all the way in Bactria you do your best to keep that unit as healthy as possible; but if it just replenishes between turns you stop caring about those elite units; they can lose half their men and it won't matter.
It streamlines the campaign and makes everything more convenient but it also removes the ability to become truly immersed with the value attached to your men and their wellbeing.
Global recruitment and the baility to recruit generals are to more things that give convenience but devalue your armies in the process; it is a really harmful rend that CA has fallen for where everythhing must be more convenient to the player even if it akes the game less fun over-all.
The city view would be so easy to implement too. Even in TW3K, there were civilians in the battle map doing civilian things and running away from soldiers. And the settlements already included models for the buildings built in it. All they needed to do was include a button to initiate the battle map but without any battle. And maybe increase the number of civilians that spawn. But they would need to add these for TWWH. Also likewise for civilians and buildings in the campaign map. Bring some life back into the campaign map by showing people doing things on the map and trade routes and roads actually being used. This was another feature retained in TW3K but not in TWWH.
100 percent agree with all of this! Ughh it makes me almost cry thinking how much we lost!!!! I can close my eyes to many of these features missing, but my top that hurts more are the population mechanic, City construction and cities on battle map, cities of Rome 2 and Attila makes me sick... Oh how beautiful and diverse were the cities in Rome 1 and Medieval 2! The golden age of Total War was then!
Sea battles! The single greatest addition of Empire TW and they ditched it and instead we now get a land battle in the middle of the ocean.
I feel like the TW Games peaked with Medieval 2 tbh. I STILL play that game all the time!
I loved the ability to fortify naval ports in FoTS, along with the off map naval bombardment if you were fighting on the coast.
Couldn't agree more.
Funnily enough the population mechanic from the earlier games would pair well with the food supplies from later titles (If they were actually realistic and mattered throughout the whole game).
Exactly
Placing archers higher up would give them range advantage.
Placing archers on the sword-holding side of the enemies would cause more damage, due to shield no longer blocking the shots.
The range thing wasn't too bad imo as archers would rarely fire from their "max range" irl; but rather fired from "effective range" but it was stil sad to lose it bc it was a nice advantage gained by good positioning.
Archeers placed to the side dealing more damage was reintrodced for Rome 2 and Attilla iirc, but was once again removed after that.
2:30 The population thing is nice, but to make it realistic in the Roman context you have to allow mass slavery and divide this population into ethnical groups: after Caesar's conquests in Gaul many soldiers settled down in the North, sure, but it was nothing compared to the number of Gauls brought as slaves in Rome and sold everywhere
There's so much to miss about the older games. They were immersive, dynamic and you could absolutely put yourself into a bind.
I just can't get into the modern Total Wars. Sure they fixed some bugs like the movement bug but i'd rather leave that in and simply not use it than be forced to limit my armies. Not every force in reality was lead by a general, I loved sending a few units of Ashigaru or line infantry over to reak havock or capture an enemy settlement.
I would like to see old building system back from Rome 1 and Medieval 2. Loved the icons, straight understandable etc.
I've never stopped playing Med2, honestly.
The graphics still look good even after 15 years, the game mecanics are very confortable and with the amount of mods the game has it's an endless stream of content to play around with ^^
The cool thing about most of these missing features is that they were early versions that could have been constantly updated with each new release or at least experimented on. Wanna have forts and watchtower sure but now they need at least 1 unit to garrison it for the map illumination to work. And now that garrisons wages go down by half so you don't spend all your income on just small garrisons on the map. What's this garrisons will now go out of the fort on their own (unless otherwise toggled) to scout the surrounding area to further show the map to the player? Amazing how any of these ideas can be taken very far with small ideas. But instead ca simplifies the games and copies and pastes mechanics and calls it depth
the worst part is that these are all features that exsted in old games, meaning that total war should already have had all of these and then some.
Tech Tree isn’t inherently bad. It makes a lot of sense for Empire total war (where it was first introduced) because that was a period that saw major technological advancement. And they way they intertwined that with the college and revolution system was an interesting idea.
I felt Empire total war should have started 1650
I think empire total war has the best tech tree in the franchise, almost all the techs unlock something like a new building, new formation, new unit...
Nowadays is just "+10 armor to your melee infantry units", which doesnt even come with a visual change to see the supposed better armor your soldiers are using.
@@PoorManatee6197Shogun 2 also had units and buildings locked behind a tech tree, as well as a few formations. Annoyingly the gunpowder units were so deeply buried that you really had to hard focus to get them lest the campaign be already over (And even then you'd already have 2-3 doomstacks and half the campaign done).
ETW was really good with the tech trees by als having building upgrades require technology and vice versa; and then many of the things you unlocked with the technology were actually meaningful; be they buildings, firing drills or new ammunition types for your cannons; there were the "+5%" type technologies mixed in as well but you were geenerally working towards unlocing genuinely new stuff.
Very spot on! I totally miss having a captain becoming Man of the Hour (or something like that), and get promoted to a full general.
It seems total war games offer less and less but you have to pay more to actually play them with all those dlcs which should be included in the main game. And their customers for the most part seem ok with it so we can't expect them to get any better.
I more than anything else miss the infinite armies without generals. It just gave you so much more flexibilty on how to wage your war. Scouting, raiding, just garrisoning, sending reinfocements... Now you need a whole army for all of that.
And probably the only reason is because CA was too stupid to code a campaign AI that didnt send piece meal regiments into their deaths
Honestly What I want from the new games is a way to declare a skirmish or raid victory. Instead of every battle being a forced large mash. I love to role with missile units especially on calvary and I'm still surprised I can't do a battle where my horses with bows/guns can simply kill as many units as they can before they run out of ammo, retreat out of the map safely and then come back and harass them all over again. I pretty much want a battle that doesn't have to be all or nothing. Like in ambushes you can escape if you can get your troops to the escape zone. Something like that but for the actual battles and sieges especially
Yep, there's a reason I have 1000 hours on Med2 and less than 100 on anything post-Empire. Modders kept Med2 and even Rome 1 perfectly playable compared to modern games.
I never played the older Total Wars, wow now I see what is missing. I really hope CA watches this, the reason I play TW is to immerse myself in the history and war of the time. It’s so gamified now that it just doesn’t feel like I’m living in the same place that I read about in history books. The ancient world is much more complex, international trade, development of cities… They need to be reminded that a major major reason of playing a Total War game was to transport you to a world and empires of a different time. I really am fine for the most part with the actual battles except for more realistic cities and sieges but the campaign map part of the game which I spend 80% of the time in needs to feel like a representation of the real world.
Removal of cinematic cutscenes is a big loss for total war 😢
I enjoyed the video. Total War is approaching twenty-five years, so there's a lot of ground to cover for topics like this.
The other features that I miss are:
1. General's speeches before battles. The speech mirrors the General's personal traits, the composition of your unit army, the enemy faction, and the composition of their army. Plus points that the General's barbs and insults against the enemy were funny as hell.
2. General and agent traits and ancillaries. All the Total War games until Medieval 2 had A LOT of traits for the characters. These were funny and would flesh out throughout the campaign. This made some Generals more likeable for me (and me wanting that general to live long and have an awesome career).
3. Units actually feel solid or have weight. Starting with Rome 2, moving units in the battlefield feel so easy. In Medieval 2 and Rome, it feels like moving units actually have weight.
That's the reasons I have 30h in Rome 2 and 200h in Rome 1, Rome one just has soo much soul to it while I hate the simplified UI in Rome 2 and lifeless charachters. You forgot to mention the feture I absolutley adored in Rome 1 and Medival 2 and that General development and trait. I loved just spent hours in a late game reading about every trait my general gained over the years in game, it made the game so much more immrsive.
Yes, this feature should be added in the list
All of that and for me personally in mtw2 the mark on the map for when a great war had happened. U know for the entire game play it would stay as symbol of pride or grief. I think if they made it more interactive with other mechanics of the game it would have been a great opportunity.
I agree on every point, and this is the reason i mostly play the older games.
Keep fighting for our cause Andy!
This is a great list, with a few details I never even knew about from Rome 1, like the population thing. Some of them I personally do not miss, though, like the single unit armies. I didn't find it fun when the AI sieged 13 different cities simultaneously with one unit each, robbing all my income when that would never have worked in real life. A decent meta strategy perhaps, but pretty immersion-breaking. I was also never a fan of the old embarkation system. Total War has never really had a good answer for this mechanic, but I prefer auto-generating transports to the old way, where one ship can transport a full-stack army anyway.
That said, I really miss naval battles. They were pretty poorly executed for Rome and Attila, which is why I assume they gave up, but Empire/Napoleon were magnificent, and Shogun 2 had a pretty decent dynamic (especially Fall of the Samurai). My favorite element of the old games was the many diverse types of agents. They really helped make the game world feel alive, and I haven't felt satisfied with the scope or diversity of agents in any game since Medieval 2.
I wouldn't be surprised if visual upgrades on troops returned at some point. They've already taken the first step in that direction with Pharaoh, with the leader's weapons and equipment. Unfortunately, so far Pharaoh doesn't appear to feature any agents at all, so heaven knows what they're thinking over there.
Another thing on unlimited building is that early game I would have recruitment settlements and infantry settlements and trade settlements because it takes so long to get every building to max level, but in the end should be possible.
Also adding back towns as well as more buildings from generals to go with forts maybe even a small building tree for forts would make developing your provinces so much more interesting.
More taxation options and maybe even taxing specific resourcesj, which would also work well with troy
I hope CA sees this video and readds these features in the new games aswell as more features, I like the resources as currency in troy and new effect for factions in troy and warhammer but we need more of the complexity in the old games to go with it.
Also thanks for convincing me to play rome and med 2 again and can somebody please tell me what song is playing at 14:12
The part about siege weapons was also realistic. Building siege weapons was awfully expensive and time consuming. You are feeding and paying an entire army while waiting on the siege. Which means that, if the siege tower goes down, it is not worth waiting to build another one again.
That Armor mechanic in Medieval 2, man... The single greatest thing a dev has done IMO, and yet poof. Just gone like that.
I have no idea why they didn't implement this in other games, man, it was such an amazing feature
@@AndysTake There's a lot of stuff you mentioned that I miss dearly. And I always tell my TW newcomer friends: "guys you have no idea the amount of cool stuff they have removed."
@@AndysTake i know that when they tried to do a overhaul of the orcs in Warhammer 2, where you could upgrade the armor and weapons of each unit, they wanted to have a system like in Med 2 back again. But in a video on that Warhammer 2 update, they said they didnt have the time or ressorces to do it. Which is strange to me as CA is a bigger company by now than when they made Medival 2. Something have shifted in their priorites.
@@AndysTake i really feel that it could have worked quite well in wh, as you could have say empire swords start off in just padded gambason and as you go threw that game and level up then they end in say half plate. making them still useful later in the game
There is some hope to bring back some of these features with mods, but only some of them.
Personally I also miss replenishment from Medieval 2 where you had to go on your territory to recruit missing guys instead of todays regenerating units. In these days loses dont matter unless you will lose whole unit, as it will just regenerate for no cost in few turns.
My god man you've absolutely nailed it. Haven't played a TW game for years. Thought I was the only one who felt this way. Spot on
CA don't care what you demand. They want to employ the techniques which will earn them the most money. An arcade game that appeals to one whale will get them more money than a deep game that appeals to 100 people who openly say they don't want over monetisation.
Another thing missing to do with research is how in Empire it was linked to actual physical locations on the map - your schools/universities. You could speed up research by upgrading your schools or placing your Gentlemen in the schools, and your research would be stopped if an enemy raided your school.
The technologies themselves were also much more impactful than in newer games, you were researching specific formations or weaponry that made sense, things like bayonets or steam engines. These then had actual impact on the battlefield - if your unit has bayonets and the enemy doesn't, you have a big advantage in melee, but if you don't have ring bayonets you give up shooting to charge. Comparing that with current tech trees where it's all "+5 to this stat" or "-5% upkeep" is depressing as what difference does +5 melee defence really make.
Something I'm surprised you haven't mentioned is MUSIC. Medieval II had some of the best music for a strategy game ! Empire music was disappointing, Rome II was surprisingly nice, but the music in Medieval II was memorable, and it would change based on both who you were and where you were fighting. There's nothing more awe-inspiring and epic than your army marching on a capital city with Solenka playing in the background, or seeing your Teutonic army marching to Hymn of War (seriously though, these two songs are the absolute best). It's kinda sad that Wharhammer's music is so forgettable when it had the potential to be even more epic.
Also, a small underrated detail from Rome 2 that I would like to have again is the campaign animation. What I mean is that at the end of a battle or auto-resolve, an animation would play where your general on the campaign map would kill the other general. What was really nice is that the animation would depend on the type of victory you got. So, if you had a decisive victory, your general would just stab the enemy general, but if you got a close victory, your guy would actually struggle to kill the other. It's a small detail, but thought it was much better than in Warhammer where the guy that wins just raises his weapon and the other stumbles and dies.