@@saltedllama2759 ? Did you watch the video? I've got 126 hours as of writing this and the easy battle difficulty fights legend was showing looked like I'd perform worse than the autoresolve. Easy battle difficulty should, ideally, be an ego boost for new players, not an ego killer. That's how you entice more players to play the game and stuff. As is, I'm sure that there are many people who would have liked total warhammer but got put off with the current easy battle difficulty stuff.
@@saltedllama2759 the fact that he's making this video means that the difficulty descriptions aren't helping people understand what they actually mean
Something my dad said about automated driving was that it would work in good conditions but probably force you to drive in bad conditions, like storms and blizzards, because the machine wouldn't be able to handle those. Resulting in drivers who do not have the day to day driving experience that gives them confidence and expertise to operate the vehicle, only ever called on to drive on the absolute worst days. I think the same is also true here. The mechanics of the system are the main culprits as you say, and they also lead to players who are doing the basic familiarization with their controls, units and abilities while Vlad is marching down on them in the worst situation possible.
It's actually the opposite, you would want the machine to take over in bad conditions. Planes largely use automated landing functions and well trained professional pilots intentionally let the computer land during the worst conditions because it's better at it.
@@ispear6337 You're describing how it should work vs how the OP said how they actually work in reality as things stand now. But even in optimum conditions in cities on sunny days you can find videos where they try drive off the road.
@rainyvideos3684 I'm describing how it currently works for a much more complex piece of machinery, to demonstrate the power of computing technology, as his post suggests a misconception that humans are largely better at complex tasks than computers.
@@ispear6337 Not for automonous driving right now. Otherwise why do we have videos of them not reading the markings of the road properly and trying to drive off the road in ideal conditions? How would you even expect them to it in somethiing more complicated like a storm or blizzard? Or even in cases where it ran over someone and then parked on top of them. Yes you can find a article about that which I think was last year. The answer is you can't yet and it also highlights a different problem and that is overreliance on the technology. When, not if, but when because the law of averages says it will happen at some point, when the technology does fail because people have relied on the technology to drive for them they will also not have the requisite experience to take over. After all, they used the conveniance of the computer to do it for them and now when it fails they don't have the experience they need to take over. And that wouldn't matter if you have the coding we have for automonous driving now or much more improved coding for it in the future.
Right? Like, I imagine when he first started the channel name would seem edgy and pretentious, but actually he showed that it was completely appropiate. The first video I watched in this channel was about playing West Rome in Attila. He declared war in all the factions and instead of turtling down at the start like other youtubers he went on the OFFENSIVE!
Bro. I've been playing Total War since Medieval 2 came out. I got "good" at what units are good at what, and where, but if a battle was too hard, I ended up reloading or restarting. I just changed my settings to your recommendation, and started playing with the tactics you had in mind, and my god, the combat is actually fun to play! I used to dread "close victory" autoresolve because I knew I couldn't win on the field. My tactics were always too weak, and there were too many units to focus on, and it was too much for my brain. I now enjoy the fuck out of battles with your setup! Thank you so much!!
Only halfway through so maybe addressed, but it's also important to remember that the AI looks at auto-resolve strength when determening your player strength, meaning that if something declares war on you in Easy battle difficulty, it means they are confident to take on x3 your current standing power, meaning you're going to get fucking S M A S H E D
It also means you have to play like a complete goober and not build an economy or any armies, for the AI to dec on you in the first place. tldr the issue isnt the manual battles being difficult or autoresolve being too strong, but people making bad decisions for 30 turns in a row leading to them losing the campaign.
I'm not sure the AI fully accounts for that multiplier, even without easy campaign difficulty (which explicitly says that enemies are more likely to attack despite being at a disadvantage), I've often seen them attack into decisive defeat auto-resolves.
@@TheSuperappelflap A new player with barely any experience sucks at managing the economy in a grand strategy game, the genre that has one of the steepest learning curves?? OMG they just have to git gud then amirite, completely missing the point of this video where these new players should also have fun while learning the game
@@hentielover idk my first total war game was recommended to me by a friend, it was the third age mod for medieval 2. that mod has pretty insane enemy unit stats, very good battle ai that actually makes smart decisions most of the time, and enemy factions just spam several full stacks at you every turn. i won my first two campaigns in that mod with a lot of effort, often having to replay a battle several times, or reload a save because i made mistakes on the campaign map. and had a bunch of fun. then warhammer total war came out and i played some campaigns. due to the campaign mechanics like being able to force march for free, free replishment on the map, no internal trade, and insanely strong single entities, and magic, the game was so easy that i honestly dont get how even a complete noob would be able to lose a campaign. it is fun to go on a power trip and snowball in like 20 turns but it isnt any challenge after that. and its not like managing the economy is difficult, you just spam growth buildings in every settlement and then get the money building on tier 2 and then the third slot is for a port, a special resource building, or if you cant get any economy then you build a tech building there to save a building slot in the major settlement of that province. its all very shallow. just pick one tech line per province at the front and then you can recruit new armies quickly on the border of those regions and send them at the enemy. a little kid could do it.
@@TheSuperappelflap nothing you say is in any way relevant for new players. Yes, you are good, good for you, not everyone plays games like you do, okey? Let people who know how to tutor starting players teach new players how to have fun.
5:40 "...they end up not enjoying the game, they uninstall the game, and go and install a paradox game." I feel personally attacked lol but this is actually what happened to me, LoTW definitely just convinced me to play again, such a good video! Thank you for this, this issue definitely affected me a lot more than I realized
Hey nothing wrong with a paradox game if your having fun. It's the only purpose of a game. Skill isn't a requirement to enjoy a game, just to "win" it.
@@DBExplorer TW has very bad diplomatic features compared to many of paradox's games (and other features too, like from an administrative standpoint), and altough the battles of TW are far superior because you can move every unit in a real time battle, paradox's battles are beautiful BUT in a sense of semplicity. many say that battles in paradox's games arent very good but i beg to differ, i think that battles are good enough as they are since those arent battle focused games such as TW. For example, if you see EU4 battles you can see that they are VERY simple but, at the same time, very hard if you really want to master them! Having played both for an extensive amount of time i can say that the only big problem in TWW3 compared to paradox's is the preposterous amount of bugs...
Total war: Epic battles where it feels so sweet to get that "Heroic Victory" against all odds. Paradox: Several hours of planning to deliver encirclements, be these in the battlefield or your family tree.
This actually makes so much sense. When I first started playing I thought I was just dogshit when the Close Victory I got from Auto Resolve turned into Pyrrhic Victory when fought manually.
I see it a lot in normal difficulty with chaos, where a garrison with 3l2 units of warriors and 3 marauders destroy full stacks of attacking ai that has ranged weapons, and you see units of warriors getting 400+ kills, which simply won't happen in a real battle.
it may be true or not... it depends on what you actually do in battle.... do you just throw units at enemy? or do you apply a tactic e.g. flanking being the most common? if the former, well... you might be dogshit anyway :-)
This is exactly how my first battle in Warhammer 2 went. Put it on Easy at the recommendation of a friend, decided I wanted to fight the battle manually to learn the mechanics, got absolutely destroyed by an opening Skaven army despite the auto-resolve telling me it was a Decisive Victory with low casualties. Has this been an issue with Easy battle difficulty the whole time? Lucky for me, I stuck with it and found a lot of help through videos like your and others, and I've even started introducing other people to the game over time. Thanks for all you do Legend.
I'm also playing WH2 and found myself in a similar situation my first campaigns. I eventually started playing on Hard, because I was just curious how harder it could get and found myself actually performing better lmao, video is still helpful. even for WH2
@@rafaelrubio4443 Do you know which difficulty effects auto resolve? Because I see multiple people saying it's battle and multiple saying it's campaign difficulty
Same here. I even went so far as to uninstall the game thinking "Oh, this kind of game must not be the kind for me since I can't seem to understand it even after watching literally 10s of hours of youtube on it." Glad to know I wasn't the only one struggling.
As someone who mainly plays on Normal/Normal, this is fascinating. I can do pretty well for most battles, but there have been a few times where the autoresolve wins where I cannot. I'll try these difficulty settings for my next playthrough. Thanks Legend!
Holy shit, this was a level of wholesome I was not expecting from Legend at all. Recognized the difference between a systemic issue and personal failings and demonstrated the issues vs how to adapt and how to overcome them all while reassuring people that not only are they NOT the problem, but also the road to personal growth and satisfaction. That's gonna be one lucky kid to have a dad like that :')
This. Compare this to other TW RUclipsrs (not naming them, one of the names that comes to my mind begins with "Z"). They immediately tell you to ramp up the difficulty to Normal or Hard and never ever play with easy stat modifiers, because "You won't learn it otherwise", not taking the actual skill level and the self-esteem of a beginner into consideration. What Legend did here is WAY better advice for actual beginners.
I honestly needed to see this. I’ve been playing for a pretty long time with the historical total wars, but the fantasy and newer ones always messed with me. This helped me reevaluate how I play since I normally was playing very hard campaign difficulty and normal battle difficulty. THANKS LEGEND!
I tried so hard to explain this to a new player recently, but struggled to communicate the idea concisely. I couldn't confirm it, really, but it was just a hunch. Thanks so much for this one -- it's to the point and helpful. I'll be sending it down the line.
Not to mention that despite being considered a "beginner" campaign (which thankfully CA removed the recomended icon from it) playing as Karl Franz is extremely hard at the moment due to the fact that so many mechanics work against you. Imperial Authority at the moment is a mechanic that provides marginal benefits when positive and heavily punishes you when it's negative. And if you're a new player and don't know what to do or what to prioritize, it's very easy to lose Imperial Authority quickly, with Festus, Kahzrak, Drycha and Vlad stomping down on your Elector Counts.
@@vahlen5281As someone new to the Total War I want to Play Chaos Dwarfs because Elves are icky. Would I be good? I think on playing the Astragoth on his mobility scooter.
Wow, this is actually insane. The part starting around 3:30 sounds like you took the internal monologue out of my head for the past week and put it in a video. I just started TW3 doing immortal empires as Vampire Coast, and I knew there was no way I was that horrible at the game (i.e. barely winning "decisive victories"). It bothered me so much that I actually looked into all of this yesterday because I knew something had to be wrong. Turned up my battle difficulty to normal and things felt way better. I'll change it to hard after watching this video. Crazy to me that you made a video just as I was going through this crisis myself. It's honestly sad how this issue probably affects so many new players, but many of them will never realize that it isn't really their fault. I hope CA addresses this in the future, because this is honestly one of the biggest barriers of entry I've seen so far, and the only thing that truly bothered me as a new player.
Thank you, Legend. I'm one of the players that needed to hear this info. This makes things make so much sense now. I think I'll go play a new campaign today and see how I do. Cheers!
This game does a really good job at lying to new player lol. Like when they put karl Franz as recommend for new player, i got my friend into the game and have to carry him as Carcassonne when he try the empire. Like the amount of shit they throw at reikland is way too much for new player. A campaign i highly recommend if you want to learn how to use heroes and infantry/cavalry army is Vlad or Manfred. The vampire count infantry are dirt cheap and their raise dead mechanic leave a lot of margin for error. Plus their cavalry are very solid and you're most likely going up against very beatable foes (I'm sorry empire)
"they install a Paradox game." shots fucking fired lol. As someone who plays a lot of Paradox I laughed hard. Actually thank you for posting the video. While I never had this particular problem, I had a much lighter version of it. I never got to the stage I was losing, but I was auto-resolving most battles because the results were better then what I could do. Im going to take your suggestion next time I play for sure.
Legendary video. Times like this remind me why I'm a member. When CA does their jobs and makes an actually fun game, or improves things that suck, Legend specs into the "Encouragement" skill tree instead of the "Warpath" and the results are somehow even better.
The part about not getting the same result from a manual fight as an auto resolve hit me like a truck. I love playing strategy games on easy mode, but I was really struggling to get the same results as the auto resolve chances. This really clears that up!
This is 100% me. I found your channel and thought "Yeah, let's watch how he is playing, maybe I learn a thing or two" and truth is - I knew the basics quite well, I just had a complete misunderstanding of the strengh-composition of different armies because of this.
I can honestly relate to this as a new player, auto-resolve saying Decisive Victory only to get a Pyrrhic Victory in manual is a massive kick to the balls when you have my level of experience with the game.
Took you advice, started a tomb kings (favorite) campaign on both hard, and won a decisive victory that was supposed to be a pyrrhic one, thank you legend
Jokes aside in case people new to the game are watching this. Legend won several 0 defeat campaign because he did the best job possible on the campaign map to avoid "unwinable situation". For example the "Vlad coming at your capital with 3 full stack" situation he mentioned in the video will never happen in his campaign because he usually go smash Vlad first or just garrison his territory properly. If any new player want to improve at the game then battle is only one aspect, reading the situation on the campaign map and make good decision is also very important.
Well he avoids the "surprise AI with full stack in the middle of your empire sacking an undefended minor settlement." those are 95% of my losses because I am just not that good at keeping track of where the enemy might come from :D
@@davidthane9002 THATS a skill issue ! Frankly I beeline any LL I am at war with to avoid those situation. I dont care paying 3k gold to Vlad just to not declare war when I am dealing with Festus. You'll get there I'm sure
Wow man thank you for the break down on what you suggest not only as a new player but as you continue to get better. I am probably a victum of this and didnt know. THANK YOU SO MUCH! This is going to help so much when i go to play my next campaign!
Campaign difficulty: ai economic and army fielding cheats Battle difficulty: autoresolve weighing, set highish Ai stats modifier: in game battle difficulty, modifiers to troops, set to appropriate level (Im commenting this cause I look at this vid every time I need to figure out wtf these sliders mean, so I dont have to rewatch)
I needed this years ago. This has been my experience… I have all 3 games (and other total war games) and love the concept but felt that I never could get the hang of battles in this one. I love the campaign… going to try again now!
Looks like the best thing CA could do here is to rename/separate the slider to something like 'Auto-Resolve Result' - have it scale from Very Easy to Fair. This way people understand what is actually happening and know that the reason they are getting such good results in auto-resolve vs manual is specifically because they have chosen to have auto-resolve cheats (rather than the battle actually being easier by moving that slider). Not sure whether it would be worth having a separate slider for the AI Difficulty; as Legend pointed out, other than the auto-resolve part it barely does anything. I guess since it already is in place it wouldn't hurt... The real battle difficult increase is in the Realism mode.
Autoresolve shouldn't be affected by difficulty at all. Nu-CA totally misunderstood why autoresolve exists in the fist place so they're using it wrong. They're trying to use it as a game incentive, "oh you'll be forced to fight more battles on hard and on easy you can just autoresolve anything", but that's wrong, autoresolve is there so you don't have to fight every little skirmish or boring battles where the outcome is already known. Autoresolve should always reflect the outcome as closely as it can without bias. If a new player plays on easy, the buffs they get from the difficulty is only going to help them so much since they don't know the tactics yet, and if someone plays on hard they probably know how to turn the odds in their favor, so adjusting the outcome based on difficulty makes no sense.
This was SO helpful. I pretty much only play on Normal, and I’ve been feeling like crap because I cannot outperform autoresolve like I could in 2. I’ve been fighting fewer battles and having less fun. Thank you. I’m going to start a new campaign now.
Great video, important topic. Something to add: For some Campaigns 'easy campaign' difficulty is a detriment. When the AI is less agressive and you get less fights, you get less money and more importantly less xp. Characters are the single strongest things in Warhammer total war, and not getting the neccecary fights in to level characters up, makes the later stages way harder. Its even worse for some campaigns where important faction mechanics are bound to resourses you get from battle, Khorne, Beastmen and so on. That makes those races far harder to actually progress with, than when you have more battles to gain from.
@@dimitrisskar4174 the ai without the boosts from harder diff settings won't have that many and that big armies. you can declare war all you want but the enemy will still have 1 meh army.
@@dimitrisskar4174 If the AI doesnt make armies and you're only taking settlements, you will have significantly less battles. And even though you might get more income and better public order, and you therefore can expand quicker, it doesnt scale out to the same amount of battles at all.
@@dimitrisskar4174 Not in the long run, short term maybe. I think the worst part would probably be that after a short time, all battles would just be sieges...
I love this video. It doesn't scold people for playing on easy. It doesn't just tell people to not autoresolve. It actually explains how to play easy in a way that it forces you to play the game while still having not too much of a challenge. That is honestly a great mix of empathy and understanding you don't see often in difficulty debates
Very good analysis Legend. I've been playing a CD campaign on my usual difficulty Hard/Hard and as always I try to fight majority of my battles. I often had game show me Pyrrhic or Close victories that I managed to turn around into Decisive Victories and it was rewarding enough to keep me going.
Been playing total war for a long time and this is the best feeling I’ve ever had and it happened all the time. To the point I just assumed that the auto resolver just gave me worse odds automatically to force me to play manual battles I had no idea about all the calculations that went into auto resolve odds.
Cheers for this. Explains the issue I was having as a new player perfectly. Went to the settings you suggested (was on normal/normal) and immediately hit a motivation boost on the first battle of a fresh campaign, getting slightly better than the autoresolve on the first fight.
This is wild to me. I have only ever played on Normal difficulty and I was still often confused at my inability to get results manually similar to what the auto-resolve was showing me...I've mostly played Warhammer 1 and 2 but this video is kind of a mind blower. Makes me want to try a campaign with the settings you were showing.
Really appreciate you going out of your way to explain stuff like this - very useful for someone like me who's considering getting one or more TW games, and I imagine there are people who don't know this despite having 100+ hours in the game. From the point of view of someone who's never played the game, the UI in Total Warhammer 3 seems... weird. Like the AI stats modifier will give you exact information on what effects it has, but the battle difficulty won't? It's like the descriptions were written by different people with different instructions...
I have close to 2 000 hours in the game now and I had no clue this was a thing. Mind i did start out playing on Normal difficulty, but still, that is a very wierd way to design a Easy difficulty.
I think the AI stats slider is a rather new feature. For a while, there were only campaign/battle difficulty sliders, and before that, there was only a single difficulty choice that you made at the start of the campaign and couldn't change. I didn't even know that AI stats slider existed before this video. To your point though, yeah there are definitely some questionable decisions in the UI and systems design process.
Honestly this was super helpful, most experienced players don't really care to understand new players struggles or think it's just because they're bad. This was a nice video to help reassure newer player. Thanks legend, really earning your name today homie.
Wow thanks this actually is really relatable Always thought i was very bad so i started to play on very easy and just auto resolve every battle which kinda takes the fun out of it but i almost always got a worse result fighting the battle myself Its really frustrating
To underscore what he said about not being intimidated by harder battle difficulties: The main thing you will notice changing in the AI's behaviour moving from Easy to Very Hard is that it will attempt to move out of the way of your AoE spells (easily countered by getting their units stuck on lords or heroes, who are largely unaffected by AoE spells), it will not try shooting at things it doesn't think it can hit, and it will try and seek out favourable match-ups (for instance armoured cavalry vs archers) a little more. Within that seemingly gaping chasm, that is honestly just about it. It's in the separate statboost bar that the AI gets its real advantage, because at its very smartest it's just not that smart. It only knows to match rock with scissors, and that's a behaviour you can exploit.
In addition of course (being a computer and all) having perfect reflexes and knowledge of flight paths at dodging spells and artillery projectiles so especially in Very Hard if the unit is not bogged down by something and is able to move out of the way of the spell/artillery shot during the casting/flight time, it _will_ dodge it. So before making contact with the AI you should only use spells/shots that are impossible to dodge entirely.
considering how hard it usually is to hit them with spells while they are moving, its not even that big of an effect there (unless you can sneak the caster close enough without them reacting). Its more impactful for artillery and I guess maybe army abilities like cannon barrages.
Couldn’t of said it better myself. Once you’ve learned the Rock Paper Scissors, you can take on so much more. Then when you know the strength of individual units, especially the different LLs, monsters, gunpowder weapons and SEMs, you’ve basically mastered battle.
The rock paper scissors behavior can also be found on easy difficulty. They're just very slow to react on everything. Your mortar can fire at em from 10km away and they still wont walk away from their initial position
Watching Legend back in covid 2020 helped me get from easy to jumping to Legendary within a month. Still remember my first legendary win was with Louen! Play a couple campaigns on easy-to-understand mechanics and who is who on the map then just jump straight in. Watch first 10 turn guides as well they really help.
Legend - it's like you read my mind! I was literally spending yesterday evening working out the differences the campaign/battle difficulties make, and where I should go to now I have normal difficulty pretty much covered. This has been really useful!
Insightful video that highlights a massive oversight in the game design, if Easy gave you as strong cheats in manual as it did in autoresolve it wouldn't be a problem I guess. But the self-esteem hit of getting rekt whilst playing on Easy difficulty by a battle the game says you should comfortably win would actually be crazy.
I kinda get the idea (especially when some factions just fare poorly in AR for some reasons), but it should definitely be made more clear. Or maybe give players some other information to help estimate how hard a manual battle could be. Improving the accuracy of auto-resolve calculations would obviously be preferable in general and lessen the need to make it this strong, but thats easier said than done.
Can not thank you enough for this video. You're spot on with the demoralizing element of playing on easy and not being able to match what auto resolve says is possible. Truly appreciate all your content, but this hit home in a big way.
Legend you might just be what saves these games outside of disaster battles. I'm glad to see you still providing good solutions to the average gamer to enjoy this series after so many years.
Ya know Legend, I haven't always seen eye-to-eye with you on your opinions re: TW and CA in the past, but I do appreciate how much you seemingly care for this franchise and its community. It was a pleasant surprise to hear you take time out of your schedule to make this video and help others out with their TW woes.
Thank you very much for this video, as someone who has experienced this quite some times it, this might be the most most personally uplifting video I've seen on the subject and has definelty inspired me, again thank you
I hope this video gets more attention than most of his normal videos, I'm sure there are a lot of players than need to hear this. Keep playing guys don't give up practice makes perfect.
Love this video. As someone who 'only has 250 hours' into TW:WH3 (as my first TW title to boot), this is very much where I started and I ended up doing the same thing - putting the game on Hard/Hard and just getting stuck in. I'm still not the best player but I've learned a lot about what I can work with. The only thing I can think of that didn't get a mention (and correct me if I'm wrong about this, please) is that on the easier battle difficulties, the AI will be more likely to shoot at single-entity lords/heroes when they approach alone, vs on harder diffs they tend to not use up their ammo on a small target
So u can sense yourself in safe, getting close with your mage in the radius of enemy archers fire - and cast spells in their face lol, they wouldn't fire for the first 1-3 casts anyway lol))
That is because of the "wasting ammunition cheese" some experience player did before which is using a fast character and just run around to waste all enemy ammunition shooting that character. Would not recommend doing that tho, very tedious.
The world needs more of these kinds of videos. I'm so sick and tired of people looking for help in a game and only getting back the retort, "git good." with no explanation about _how_ one gets good or what they're doing wrong.
This is the most precious piece of advice of your entire career. Intelligent, well put and with the goal to bring new players in. Perfect. My hat to you, sir.
I really enjoyed this video, even as someone who's alright at the game, becvause it's easy to forget how differently some people can experience the game, adn that answering skill issue often doesn't fix their issues and turns them away from it
With all the videos you have made, the impossible battles you have won and the insider experiences you have exposed, this is by far your greatest video. Thank you.
Honestly the most helpful video on TWWH3 I have seen. I have so many hours playing thinking I am great at Campaign but terrible at Battles because of the Auto-Resolve on Easy battle difficulty. You have totally transformed my next 1,000 hours on the game.
Thanks for this vid! As an aside, there is a mod called "More Difficult Autoresolver Mod" which makes your campaign difficulty setting play a role in the auto resolve outcomes if you'd rather not boost the battle AI's performance for whatever reason
What an absolutely bizarre issue. Thanks for making this video, that definitely should help me, because I’m pretty sure I fell in to this trap and that might be part of the reason I stopped playing.
wow, this is a super helpful video, I'd even noticed this on normal difficulty, doing a bit worse than auto-resolve consistently, and being discouraged from playing battles manually
Definitely one of the most educating video on TW system... There are lots of videos on stats and strategies which helped me understand the game 'faster', but I dont think I would ever understood this without watching this video! Explains so much weird moment in my TW experience... Big shoutout form south korea!
Yeah, u need LOTS of game expiration to kinda "feel" the outcome and have your own auto resolve calculator in your head - to see that misconception of game auto resolve. I've reached that inner calculator only after 600+ hours, and with now 3000+ hours just didn't take autoresolve in consideration at all. Every attack order or endturn defence I literally know, would I pick fight by hands or just can skip it with low casualties autoresolve lol - before the battle engage))
I haven't tried a Warhammer legendary yet, but my shogun 2 campaigns that I've completed on legendary were by far the most satisfying and by far the best way to learn and get better at the game
@@BloodyArchangelus Went to shogun 2 to fight daimyos, ended up fighting a bunch of magicians that conjure samurai armies with a single 800 koku income province.
@@StanHowse didn't know according to military strategy Japanese people reproduce through spores like Orks and can indefinitely spam hundreds of soldiers out of tiny hamlets
A brilliantly easy to understand explanation. I found this video by accident but it has made it possible for me to understand my frustrations. Thank you, I'm going to share this with my friends as well
Speaking of things that don't feel good when playing, I find cav to be far more tedious then they are actually worth microing and that steers me a way from using them. That tile could be a dragon, archers, artillery, or a hero. Sure a slam in the back of the battle line can be very effective but so can all of the other things I mentioned and they need FAR less microing and they don't get stopped because 1 horse got hung up on a couple of routed artillery dudes through 18 attempts to get them to move where I want them. Cav needs a serious buff not only in stats but pathfinding/AI because holy crap. Cav should be DANGEROUS, not merely a nuisance for both sides.
Cav wont be fixed as long as CA use this engine. Cav has been shit since Empire came out and they arent going to fix it. If you want cav just play rome or medieval 2
I’d argue cav is arguably some of the most dangerous units in the game if used right, they just get overshadowed in you know, the fantasy game with monsters, but as long as you can micro they can be so much more valuable than quite a few units, that being said I will never mostly use cav unless I’m brettonia, because most of my battles aren’t even on plain fields, but siege battles
This was eye opening. I haven't played in months for the exact reasons you've described. Been playing Normal/Normal and felt shit because I didn't think I was good enough to increase either difficulty. Thanks for the video.
Great video Legend, anything that helps more people enjoy this game is a great thing to be sure. Theres only one thing youre dead wrong about; you are in fact a god at this game.
Thanks for this video Legend, it really helped me enjoy the game. I have been terrified of embarassing myself and autoresolve my campaigns to death. I will be taking more risks and I will be linking this everywhere I can. You are a treasure to the community
Unexpected good guy legend. As a normal battle difficulty player, this makes sense now. My strategy was always to just fight the big decisive battles manually to have fun, then reload and take the autoresolve because it was always better than my result.
i used to play every game on easy mode for about 9 years of my life (im 19 this year) and i only really started coming out of my shell after playing elden ring. it taught me that failure is ok and can act as a great learning opportunity. coincidentally i've been playing total war games on easy battle and campaign difficulty for around 3 years now and had this exact issue. turning the battle difficulty from easy to normal was probably the best decision i've ever made and even if i never go higher than normal then thats ok. because now im fighting battles and getting better results than the auto resolve. normal is the new easy
So many more people need to hear this. Something I figured out on my own but never really thought fully through to a level that I could explain it to people and get them into the game. Honest is the best policy comes back again.
Thank you very much for making this video. I wanted so badly to enjoy this game but I just couldn’t, until I tried your suggested campaign settings. I’ve gotten the furthest into a campaign ever and having a blast! :)
The reasons I use autoresolve (I play on normal and can usually do better playing the battle manualy than the atuoresolve, even if I'm not that great): 1: To save time 2: So the entire enemy army disappears and I don't have to chase the survivors around. 3: Laziness
As someone who started playing this game, or any total war game for that matter, a couple weeks ago I didn't run into this issue much tbh. If anything, playing on Hard Campaign/ Normal Battle Diff, I often run into the situation where the predicted outcome is a definite loss but I'm like "I'll just fight it and see if i can do some damage too the army for the next battle" and end up creaming all over em. The main thing that felt super off for me was figuring out how the DLC system works. Having too buy warhammer 1 and 2 (plus all the dlc for those O.o!) just too play some basic races like Empire/ wood elves ect is a filthy flavour of greed i hadn't seen before in gaming.
The whole DLC situation / multiple games in one is kinda' messed up. It's even worse when you realize that the campaign/map we initially paid money for in Warhammer 3 (eg. Realm of Chaos) is also pretty awful. The only reason Warhammer 3 works as a product is because of Immortal Empires *which was a free update*, meaning Warhammer 3 was pretty much just a €60 race pack with Kislev, demons and Cathay for Warhammer 1/2 (which, to be fair, is a pretty decent price considering CA's DLC pricing scheme).
he's not really talking about normal difficulty, why are there so many comments saying 'omg i played on normal/hard and i didn't have this issue' when the entire video is only talking about a specific problem with easy difficulty's autoresolve modifier being too high
@@kristianjensen5877 It's honostly ridiculous how much stuff is locked behind that purple "DLC" banner when you just bought Warhammer 3. And then you're like "Ok, whatever, ill get Warhammer 1/2 on sale for not too much and can atleast play the basic stuff", you start a high elf campaign, get a T4 building and then you are like "wait...where are those sisters of avalorn i heard so much about?". And then you find out YOU GOTTA BUY MORE DLC. Actually rage inducing.
Normal Battle Diff is where it starts being fine, especially if you're decent at strategy; even for those who aren't, at least you won't always be worse than auto-resolve. Easy is where you'll find it's impossible to even match auto-resolve results, which is where the issues are really bad. But yeah, the DLC is expensive af and on top of that, you have to go digging through each one to figure out which ones you need for the full experience of a particular faction. They need to at least organize out for the player "if I want to play X what are the relevant DLCs and what do each of them offer" and give better discounts on older DLCs/games. Or heck, just hand them out with the base game once they're *really* old.
Watching tutorial videos when you first get into always helps,i started twwarhammer on normal/normal,now i only play on legendary camp difficulty/very hard battle difficulty,stick with it,you will get the hang of it.
I knew Legend was a very skilled Skaven. I didn't know he also was a very skilled therapist.
he is theRAPIST, if u play on easy he will build a skaven tunnel under ur house and nuke it
@@tamastorok6066 the world's second analrapist
One can only imagine the amount of therapy a skaven must require. It's job security.
He’s got really good takes on mental health and mindset stuff, especially compared to his old self from a couple years ago.
Need Zoloft yes yes
“I’m not a god at this game”
The Lisan Al Gaib is too humble to reveal himself in public
As written
MAHDI!
This Is The Way!!!
The messiah!
@@Kellethornno clown, no.
Easy battle difficultly is KILLING your gains!
maybe the true gains where the battles we fought along the way...
Gonna have to do another set of face pulls
I cannot escape that man
LegendX
It's just bro science
Legend: "You can do this Man-Thing. The game Lies - Deceives you."
This is definitely the most bizarre problem with difficulties I've seen in any game.
It isn't a "problem." People need to simply read and manage their expectations.
@@saltedllama2759it is a problem, because it’s not obvious. If you see “Easy” difficulty it should actually be easy with no extra hoops.
@@saltedllama2759 ? Did you watch the video? I've got 126 hours as of writing this and the easy battle difficulty fights legend was showing looked like I'd perform worse than the autoresolve. Easy battle difficulty should, ideally, be an ego boost for new players, not an ego killer. That's how you entice more players to play the game and stuff. As is, I'm sure that there are many people who would have liked total warhammer but got put off with the current easy battle difficulty stuff.
@@saltedllama2759 the fact that he's making this video means that the difficulty descriptions aren't helping people understand what they actually mean
@@saltedllama2759 watch the video man
Something my dad said about automated driving was that it would work in good conditions but probably force you to drive in bad conditions, like storms and blizzards, because the machine wouldn't be able to handle those. Resulting in drivers who do not have the day to day driving experience that gives them confidence and expertise to operate the vehicle, only ever called on to drive on the absolute worst days.
I think the same is also true here. The mechanics of the system are the main culprits as you say, and they also lead to players who are doing the basic familiarization with their controls, units and abilities while Vlad is marching down on them in the worst situation possible.
I cannot believe the autoresolve in the video. I know my garrisons are sacrifices to Khorne, they don't win, just fight valiantly!
It's actually the opposite, you would want the machine to take over in bad conditions. Planes largely use automated landing functions and well trained professional pilots intentionally let the computer land during the worst conditions because it's better at it.
@@ispear6337 You're describing how it should work vs how the OP said how they actually work in reality as things stand now. But even in optimum conditions in cities on sunny days you can find videos where they try drive off the road.
@rainyvideos3684 I'm describing how it currently works for a much more complex piece of machinery, to demonstrate the power of computing technology, as his post suggests a misconception that humans are largely better at complex tasks than computers.
@@ispear6337 Not for automonous driving right now. Otherwise why do we have videos of them not reading the markings of the road properly and trying to drive off the road in ideal conditions? How would you even expect them to it in somethiing more complicated like a storm or blizzard? Or even in cases where it ran over someone and then parked on top of them. Yes you can find a article about that which I think was last year.
The answer is you can't yet and it also highlights a different problem and that is overreliance on the technology. When, not if, but when because the law of averages says it will happen at some point, when the technology does fail because people have relied on the technology to drive for them they will also not have the requisite experience to take over. After all, they used the conveniance of the computer to do it for them and now when it fails they don't have the experience they need to take over. And that wouldn't matter if you have the coding we have for automonous driving now or much more improved coding for it in the future.
For those people that are new to this channel, this is why Legend has earned his title and why it's objectively true.
Well he gave himself the title and earned it afterwards but yeah.
@@MilliardaereMiamMiamMiam Haha idk why but this image of CA anointing Legend with his title at some church just popped in my head.
It is not titles that honour men, but men that honour titles. - M2TW loading screen
Right? Like, I imagine when he first started the channel name would seem edgy and pretentious, but actually he showed that it was completely appropiate.
The first video I watched in this channel was about playing West Rome in Attila. He declared war in all the factions and instead of turtling down at the start like other youtubers he went on the OFFENSIVE!
@@gabrielmontenegro9476 Legend insists...nay...demands, we respect the depth of his skill at Total War games.
Bro. I've been playing Total War since Medieval 2 came out. I got "good" at what units are good at what, and where, but if a battle was too hard, I ended up reloading or restarting. I just changed my settings to your recommendation, and started playing with the tactics you had in mind, and my god, the combat is actually fun to play! I used to dread "close victory" autoresolve because I knew I couldn't win on the field. My tactics were always too weak, and there were too many units to focus on, and it was too much for my brain. I now enjoy the fuck out of battles with your setup! Thank you so much!!
Mage with 800 Kills go brrrrr
Please link his tips/setup
@@travisj8091 could be watching the full video before asking, you know
Only halfway through so maybe addressed, but it's also important to remember that the AI looks at auto-resolve strength when determening your player strength, meaning that if something declares war on you in Easy battle difficulty, it means they are confident to take on x3 your current standing power, meaning you're going to get fucking S M A S H E D
It also means you have to play like a complete goober and not build an economy or any armies, for the AI to dec on you in the first place.
tldr the issue isnt the manual battles being difficult or autoresolve being too strong, but people making bad decisions for 30 turns in a row leading to them losing the campaign.
I'm not sure the AI fully accounts for that multiplier, even without easy campaign difficulty (which explicitly says that enemies are more likely to attack despite being at a disadvantage), I've often seen them attack into decisive defeat auto-resolves.
@@TheSuperappelflap A new player with barely any experience sucks at managing the economy in a grand strategy game, the genre that has one of the steepest learning curves?? OMG they just have to git gud then amirite, completely missing the point of this video where these new players should also have fun while learning the game
@@hentielover idk my first total war game was recommended to me by a friend, it was the third age mod for medieval 2. that mod has pretty insane enemy unit stats, very good battle ai that actually makes smart decisions most of the time, and enemy factions just spam several full stacks at you every turn.
i won my first two campaigns in that mod with a lot of effort, often having to replay a battle several times, or reload a save because i made mistakes on the campaign map. and had a bunch of fun.
then warhammer total war came out and i played some campaigns. due to the campaign mechanics like being able to force march for free, free replishment on the map, no internal trade, and insanely strong single entities, and magic, the game was so easy that i honestly dont get how even a complete noob would be able to lose a campaign. it is fun to go on a power trip and snowball in like 20 turns but it isnt any challenge after that.
and its not like managing the economy is difficult, you just spam growth buildings in every settlement and then get the money building on tier 2 and then the third slot is for a port, a special resource building, or if you cant get any economy then you build a tech building there to save a building slot in the major settlement of that province. its all very shallow. just pick one tech line per province at the front and then you can recruit new armies quickly on the border of those regions and send them at the enemy. a little kid could do it.
@@TheSuperappelflap nothing you say is in any way relevant for new players. Yes, you are good, good for you, not everyone plays games like you do, okey? Let people who know how to tutor starting players teach new players how to have fun.
5:40 "...they end up not enjoying the game, they uninstall the game, and go and install a paradox game." I feel personally attacked lol but this is actually what happened to me, LoTW definitely just convinced me to play again, such a good video! Thank you for this, this issue definitely affected me a lot more than I realized
Hey nothing wrong with a paradox game if your having fun. It's the only purpose of a game. Skill isn't a requirement to enjoy a game, just to "win" it.
I mean, paradox games are great. But I hope you're enjoying getting back into total war, just play what you find fun.
total war for more tacticsl shenanigans, paradox for sweeping strategic manuvers...
@@DBExplorer TW has very bad diplomatic features compared to many of paradox's games (and other features too, like from an administrative standpoint), and altough the battles of TW are far superior because you can move every unit in a real time battle, paradox's battles are beautiful BUT in a sense of semplicity. many say that battles in paradox's games arent very good but i beg to differ, i think that battles are good enough as they are since those arent battle focused games such as TW. For example, if you see EU4 battles you can see that they are VERY simple but, at the same time, very hard if you really want to master them! Having played both for an extensive amount of time i can say that the only big problem in TWW3 compared to paradox's is the preposterous amount of bugs...
Total war: Epic battles where it feels so sweet to get that "Heroic Victory" against all odds.
Paradox: Several hours of planning to deliver encirclements, be these in the battlefield or your family tree.
This actually makes so much sense. When I first started playing I thought I was just dogshit when the Close Victory I got from Auto Resolve turned into Pyrrhic Victory when fought manually.
With this info pulling a Pyrrhic Victory in that situation is actually quite an achievement
Yeah this kept happening to me unless I was stacking artillery vs melee armies
I see it a lot in normal difficulty with chaos, where a garrison with 3l2 units of warriors and 3 marauders destroy full stacks of attacking ai that has ranged weapons, and you see units of warriors getting 400+ kills, which simply won't happen in a real battle.
it may be true or not... it depends on what you actually do in battle.... do you just throw units at enemy? or do you apply a tactic e.g. flanking being the most common? if the former, well... you might be dogshit anyway :-)
@@szmike Damn, bro, that's wild cus nobody fuckin asked
This is exactly how my first battle in Warhammer 2 went. Put it on Easy at the recommendation of a friend, decided I wanted to fight the battle manually to learn the mechanics, got absolutely destroyed by an opening Skaven army despite the auto-resolve telling me it was a Decisive Victory with low casualties. Has this been an issue with Easy battle difficulty the whole time?
Lucky for me, I stuck with it and found a lot of help through videos like your and others, and I've even started introducing other people to the game over time. Thanks for all you do Legend.
I'm also playing WH2 and found myself in a similar situation my first campaigns.
I eventually started playing on Hard, because I was just curious how harder it could get and found myself actually performing better lmao, video is still helpful. even for WH2
@@rafaelrubio4443 Do you know which difficulty effects auto resolve? Because I see multiple people saying it's battle and multiple saying it's campaign difficulty
@@KhrisWithK Minute 12-14
@@EinFelsbrocken I meant in warhammer 2
thank you so much im one of the struggling ones, this explained everything. thanks so much time to go play again :D:D:D:D
ye same i've been struggling aswell and i have like 1300 hours across all three installments
Much the same for me, but I have the luck that I have had the game for 5 days so I get to immediately correct this issue (kinda)
I know right!? Struggling on normal was always a bit of a shock to me, but Hard is perfect. I know what mess I'm getting into xD
Same here. I even went so far as to uninstall the game thinking "Oh, this kind of game must not be the kind for me since I can't seem to understand it even after watching literally 10s of hours of youtube on it." Glad to know I wasn't the only one struggling.
As someone who mainly plays on Normal/Normal, this is fascinating. I can do pretty well for most battles, but there have been a few times where the autoresolve wins where I cannot. I'll try these difficulty settings for my next playthrough. Thanks Legend!
Holy shit, this was a level of wholesome I was not expecting from Legend at all. Recognized the difference between a systemic issue and personal failings and demonstrated the issues vs how to adapt and how to overcome them all while reassuring people that not only are they NOT the problem, but also the road to personal growth and satisfaction. That's gonna be one lucky kid to have a dad like that :')
wholesome shit
This. Compare this to other TW RUclipsrs (not naming them, one of the names that comes to my mind begins with "Z"). They immediately tell you to ramp up the difficulty to Normal or Hard and never ever play with easy stat modifiers, because "You won't learn it otherwise", not taking the actual skill level and the self-esteem of a beginner into consideration. What Legend did here is WAY better advice for actual beginners.
I honestly needed to see this. I’ve been playing for a pretty long time with the historical total wars, but the fantasy and newer ones always messed with me. This helped me reevaluate how I play since I normally was playing very hard campaign difficulty and normal battle difficulty. THANKS LEGEND!
Now I feel better about myself regarding the game
Don't let a game make you feel bad anyway, mate.
@@1986tessieImagine not requiring outside validation. Couldn’t be me…
Everyone needs outside validation. :) and yeah. Good that video helped you!
@@davidthane9002 I think everyone is different, sure its always nice to be heard and validated but needing it some people might disagree.
@@alpharius2omegaboogaloo384 not requiring outside validation is basically the definition of insanity, mate.
I tried so hard to explain this to a new player recently, but struggled to communicate the idea concisely. I couldn't confirm it, really, but it was just a hunch. Thanks so much for this one -- it's to the point and helpful. I'll be sending it down the line.
Not to mention that despite being considered a "beginner" campaign (which thankfully CA removed the recomended icon from it) playing as Karl Franz is extremely hard at the moment due to the fact that so many mechanics work against you.
Imperial Authority at the moment is a mechanic that provides marginal benefits when positive and heavily punishes you when it's negative.
And if you're a new player and don't know what to do or what to prioritize, it's very easy to lose Imperial Authority quickly, with Festus, Kahzrak, Drycha and Vlad stomping down on your Elector Counts.
Luckily, most of his current issues will be solved in ToD :D
The only truly beginner friendly campaign currently is Tyrion. Every other suggestion is just a case of CA not playing their own game.
@@vahlen5281As someone new to the Total War I want to Play Chaos Dwarfs because Elves are icky. Would I be good? I think on playing the Astragoth on his mobility scooter.
@@AzraelSoulHunter Chaos dwarves are kinda hard, I just had to restart the campaign (as veteran) on turn 15 because I was struggling.
@@vahlen5281 What about Lizardmen? Mazdamundi?
Wow, this is actually insane. The part starting around 3:30 sounds like you took the internal monologue out of my head for the past week and put it in a video. I just started TW3 doing immortal empires as Vampire Coast, and I knew there was no way I was that horrible at the game (i.e. barely winning "decisive victories"). It bothered me so much that I actually looked into all of this yesterday because I knew something had to be wrong. Turned up my battle difficulty to normal and things felt way better. I'll change it to hard after watching this video. Crazy to me that you made a video just as I was going through this crisis myself. It's honestly sad how this issue probably affects so many new players, but many of them will never realize that it isn't really their fault. I hope CA addresses this in the future, because this is honestly one of the biggest barriers of entry I've seen so far, and the only thing that truly bothered me as a new player.
Forgot to say - thanks for this video chief. You're doing a lot of good to encourage new players to get into the game. Keep up that positive attitude!
Thank you, Legend. I'm one of the players that needed to hear this info. This makes things make so much sense now. I think I'll go play a new campaign today and see how I do. Cheers!
If u want to ensure not that tempo start with common tactics, to train basics - play Tyrion. Probably the most based experience for learning things ;)
This game does a really good job at lying to new player lol. Like when they put karl Franz as recommend for new player, i got my friend into the game and have to carry him as Carcassonne when he try the empire. Like the amount of shit they throw at reikland is way too much for new player. A campaign i highly recommend if you want to learn how to use heroes and infantry/cavalry army is Vlad or Manfred. The vampire count infantry are dirt cheap and their raise dead mechanic leave a lot of margin for error. Plus their cavalry are very solid and you're most likely going up against very beatable foes (I'm sorry empire)
Thanks for making this video. Like truly, thank you! I was in the "I suck at this game" camp, but didn't realize why.
"they install a Paradox game." shots fucking fired lol.
As someone who plays a lot of Paradox I laughed hard.
Actually thank you for posting the video. While I never had this particular problem, I had a much lighter version of it. I never got to the stage I was losing, but I was auto-resolving most battles because the results were better then what I could do.
Im going to take your suggestion next time I play for sure.
Dude I got 5k hoi4 hours. Yeah made me laugh.
From TWW3 straight to EU4 Anbennar mod
At least they load faster
@@1986tessieI got the same on Stellaris. I'm a pro at war crimes.
To me, this shows that neither set of games (I play a lot of eu4, vicky and hoi4) are really good at explaining why you lost.
Legendary video. Times like this remind me why I'm a member. When CA does their jobs and makes an actually fun game, or improves things that suck, Legend specs into the "Encouragement" skill tree instead of the "Warpath" and the results are somehow even better.
Damn, that is some pretty wild swing in power
Go back to hoi4
@@Sol-cf3zw no
My guy Bittersteel role playing MacArthur as Balthasar Gelt: "People of Averland, I have returned!" Lol
@@Bitt3rSteel based
@@Bitt3rSteelBased on
The part about not getting the same result from a manual fight as an auto resolve hit me like a truck. I love playing strategy games on easy mode, but I was really struggling to get the same results as the auto resolve chances. This really clears that up!
This is 100% me. I found your channel and thought "Yeah, let's watch how he is playing, maybe I learn a thing or two" and truth is - I knew the basics quite well, I just had a complete misunderstanding of the strengh-composition of different armies because of this.
Glad he made this video then
I can honestly relate to this as a new player, auto-resolve saying Decisive Victory only to get a Pyrrhic Victory in manual is a massive kick to the balls when you have my level of experience with the game.
Took you advice, started a tomb kings (favorite) campaign on both hard, and won a decisive victory that was supposed to be a pyrrhic one, thank you legend
Once you understand their mechanics, they are very fun. TK are one of my favorites to play.
@@IllustriousCrocoduck oh I know their mechanics n shit, I just only played on easy
This video literally saved this game for me.
Thank you!
19:01 "Everybody loses battle, including me"
*Says the guy who won several 0 defeat legendary campaign*
Jokes aside in case people new to the game are watching this. Legend won several 0 defeat campaign because he did the best job possible on the campaign map to avoid "unwinable situation". For example the "Vlad coming at your capital with 3 full stack" situation he mentioned in the video will never happen in his campaign because he usually go smash Vlad first or just garrison his territory properly. If any new player want to improve at the game then battle is only one aspect, reading the situation on the campaign map and make good decision is also very important.
@@rency1803 exactly the game become harder , if you let them
Was that Legend who never lost, or was it KARL FRANZ, PRINCE AND EMPEROR!
Well he avoids the "surprise AI with full stack in the middle of your empire sacking an undefended minor settlement." those are 95% of my losses because I am just not that good at keeping track of where the enemy might come from :D
@@davidthane9002 THATS a skill issue !
Frankly I beeline any LL I am at war with to avoid those situation. I dont care paying 3k gold to Vlad just to not declare war when I am dealing with Festus. You'll get there I'm sure
Never really gave it much thought but you nailed it. Very well structured video and expertly explained!
Legend of uplifting bros. Good words dude.
Wow man thank you for the break down on what you suggest not only as a new player but as you continue to get better. I am probably a victum of this and didnt know. THANK YOU SO MUCH! This is going to help so much when i go to play my next campaign!
Just started using this method with thrones of decay and my confidence and enjoyment are way up thank you!
This was awesome, love the focus on positivity. When the dlc comes out I will definitely try upping the difficulty like this
Campaign difficulty: ai economic and army fielding cheats
Battle difficulty: autoresolve weighing, set highish
Ai stats modifier: in game battle difficulty, modifiers to troops, set to appropriate level
(Im commenting this cause I look at this vid every time I need to figure out wtf these sliders mean, so I dont have to rewatch)
Fantastic video, thanks legend!
I needed this years ago. This has been my experience… I have all 3 games (and other total war games) and love the concept but felt that I never could get the hang of battles in this one. I love the campaign… going to try again now!
Looks like the best thing CA could do here is to rename/separate the slider to something like 'Auto-Resolve Result' - have it scale from Very Easy to Fair. This way people understand what is actually happening and know that the reason they are getting such good results in auto-resolve vs manual is specifically because they have chosen to have auto-resolve cheats (rather than the battle actually being easier by moving that slider).
Not sure whether it would be worth having a separate slider for the AI Difficulty; as Legend pointed out, other than the auto-resolve part it barely does anything. I guess since it already is in place it wouldn't hurt... The real battle difficult increase is in the Realism mode.
Autoresolve shouldn't be affected by difficulty at all. Nu-CA totally misunderstood why autoresolve exists in the fist place so they're using it wrong. They're trying to use it as a game incentive, "oh you'll be forced to fight more battles on hard and on easy you can just autoresolve anything", but that's wrong, autoresolve is there so you don't have to fight every little skirmish or boring battles where the outcome is already known. Autoresolve should always reflect the outcome as closely as it can without bias. If a new player plays on easy, the buffs they get from the difficulty is only going to help them so much since they don't know the tactics yet, and if someone plays on hard they probably know how to turn the odds in their favor, so adjusting the outcome based on difficulty makes no sense.
This was SO helpful. I pretty much only play on Normal, and I’ve been feeling like crap because I cannot outperform autoresolve like I could in 2. I’ve been fighting fewer battles and having less fun. Thank you. I’m going to start a new campaign now.
You do a great job of explaining things to both the people struggling and the people who don't understand the struggle
He smart
I don't even play this game and I watched this. Huge respect for your understanding, supportive, and informative video
Great video, important topic. Something to add:
For some Campaigns 'easy campaign' difficulty is a detriment. When the AI is less agressive and you get less fights, you get less money and more importantly less xp. Characters are the single strongest things in Warhammer total war, and not getting the neccecary fights in to level characters up, makes the later stages way harder. Its even worse for some campaigns where important faction mechanics are bound to resourses you get from battle, Khorne, Beastmen and so on. That makes those races far harder to actually progress with, than when you have more battles to gain from.
@@dimitrisskar4174 the ai without the boosts from harder diff settings won't have that many and that big armies.
you can declare war all you want but the enemy will still have 1 meh army.
@@dimitrisskar4174 If the AI doesnt make armies and you're only taking settlements, you will have significantly less battles. And even though you might get more income and better public order, and you therefore can expand quicker, it doesnt scale out to the same amount of battles at all.
@@christoffereilskov5006 so being aggressive doesnt balance it out? dam
@@dimitrisskar4174 Not in the long run, short term maybe. I think the worst part would probably be that after a short time, all battles would just be sieges...
Similar to playing with smaller unit sizes. A lot of things don't scale well if I recall.
I love this video. It doesn't scold people for playing on easy. It doesn't just tell people to not autoresolve.
It actually explains how to play easy in a way that it forces you to play the game while still having not too much of a challenge.
That is honestly a great mix of empathy and understanding you don't see often in difficulty debates
this is not a difficulty debate lol, its pointing out a problem in the game
Very good analysis Legend. I've been playing a CD campaign on my usual difficulty Hard/Hard and as always I try to fight majority of my battles. I often had game show me Pyrrhic or Close victories that I managed to turn around into Decisive Victories and it was rewarding enough to keep me going.
Been playing total war for a long time and this is the best feeling I’ve ever had and it happened all the time. To the point I just assumed that the auto resolver just gave me worse odds automatically to force me to play manual battles I had no idea about all the calculations that went into auto resolve odds.
Cheers for this. Explains the issue I was having as a new player perfectly. Went to the settings you suggested (was on normal/normal) and immediately hit a motivation boost on the first battle of a fresh campaign, getting slightly better than the autoresolve on the first fight.
This is wild to me. I have only ever played on Normal difficulty and I was still often confused at my inability to get results manually similar to what the auto-resolve was showing me...I've mostly played Warhammer 1 and 2 but this video is kind of a mind blower. Makes me want to try a campaign with the settings you were showing.
The most polite "get good" I've ever heard, and it's honestly enlightening. I love it, and I'll give your suggestions a shot.
Are you dumb? He didn't say that at all, in fact he chastised those comments which said that for misunderstanding the problem.
Really appreciate you going out of your way to explain stuff like this - very useful for someone like me who's considering getting one or more TW games, and I imagine there are people who don't know this despite having 100+ hours in the game.
From the point of view of someone who's never played the game, the UI in Total Warhammer 3 seems... weird. Like the AI stats modifier will give you exact information on what effects it has, but the battle difficulty won't? It's like the descriptions were written by different people with different instructions...
I have close to 2 000 hours in the game now and I had no clue this was a thing. Mind i did start out playing on Normal difficulty, but still, that is a very wierd way to design a Easy difficulty.
I think the AI stats slider is a rather new feature. For a while, there were only campaign/battle difficulty sliders, and before that, there was only a single difficulty choice that you made at the start of the campaign and couldn't change. I didn't even know that AI stats slider existed before this video. To your point though, yeah there are definitely some questionable decisions in the UI and systems design process.
I was going to say that 100 hours is hardly anything in this franchise. There's tons you won't know yet.
Honestly this was super helpful, most experienced players don't really care to understand new players struggles or think it's just because they're bad. This was a nice video to help reassure newer player. Thanks legend, really earning your name today homie.
Other guys: I'm so bad at battles! 🥺🥺
Me: Ctrl+a, right click something 😎😎
Not only viable, but recommended on some LLs with their preferred doomstacks (Grimgor, Ghorst, Noctilus come to mind).
@@robertsprankle6127 or any khorne factions
Ah, The Orcy way!
The actual optimal way to play Greenskins and Khorne.
@@robertsprankle6127 not moving at all is ghorsts strength, don't even need to go to the bother of right clicking anything
Wow thanks this actually is really relatable
Always thought i was very bad so i started to play on very easy and just auto resolve every battle which kinda takes the fun out of it but i almost always got a worse result fighting the battle myself
Its really frustrating
To underscore what he said about not being intimidated by harder battle difficulties:
The main thing you will notice changing in the AI's behaviour moving from Easy to Very Hard is that it will attempt to move out of the way of your AoE spells (easily countered by getting their units stuck on lords or heroes, who are largely unaffected by AoE spells), it will not try shooting at things it doesn't think it can hit, and it will try and seek out favourable match-ups (for instance armoured cavalry vs archers) a little more. Within that seemingly gaping chasm, that is honestly just about it.
It's in the separate statboost bar that the AI gets its real advantage, because at its very smartest it's just not that smart. It only knows to match rock with scissors, and that's a behaviour you can exploit.
In addition of course (being a computer and all) having perfect reflexes and knowledge of flight paths at dodging spells and artillery projectiles so especially in Very Hard if the unit is not bogged down by something and is able to move out of the way of the spell/artillery shot during the casting/flight time, it _will_ dodge it. So before making contact with the AI you should only use spells/shots that are impossible to dodge entirely.
considering how hard it usually is to hit them with spells while they are moving, its not even that big of an effect there (unless you can sneak the caster close enough without them reacting). Its more impactful for artillery and I guess maybe army abilities like cannon barrages.
Couldn’t of said it better myself. Once you’ve learned the Rock Paper Scissors, you can take on so much more. Then when you know the strength of individual units, especially the different LLs, monsters, gunpowder weapons and SEMs, you’ve basically mastered battle.
@@Nirual86 That and magic heavy armies.
The rock paper scissors behavior can also be found on easy difficulty. They're just very slow to react on everything. Your mortar can fire at em from 10km away and they still wont walk away from their initial position
Watching Legend back in covid 2020 helped me get from easy to jumping to Legendary within a month. Still remember my first legendary win was with Louen! Play a couple campaigns on easy-to-understand mechanics and who is who on the map then just jump straight in. Watch first 10 turn guides as well they really help.
Legend - it's like you read my mind! I was literally spending yesterday evening working out the differences the campaign/battle difficulties make, and where I should go to now I have normal difficulty pretty much covered. This has been really useful!
this is your best video in a long time, 10/10
Insightful video that highlights a massive oversight in the game design, if Easy gave you as strong cheats in manual as it did in autoresolve it wouldn't be a problem I guess. But the self-esteem hit of getting rekt whilst playing on Easy difficulty by a battle the game says you should comfortably win would actually be crazy.
I kinda get the idea (especially when some factions just fare poorly in AR for some reasons), but it should definitely be made more clear. Or maybe give players some other information to help estimate how hard a manual battle could be. Improving the accuracy of auto-resolve calculations would obviously be preferable in general and lessen the need to make it this strong, but thats easier said than done.
out of all the videos you've made, this one has been the most impactful. I am enjoying the game so much more now
Fantastic overview of the sliders Legend, it's always been something folks are (rightly) confused about.
Can not thank you enough for this video. You're spot on with the demoralizing element of playing on easy and not being able to match what auto resolve says is possible. Truly appreciate all your content, but this hit home in a big way.
I really hope that ca add an Ironman mode cause I can’t stop my save scumming habits
Ironman has been confirmed as a feature in 5.0
Ironman Mode is being added as an option in 5.0, though it's always been a part of legendary for 10 years.
Crashing will take away that feeling fast
@@countdoekoe3495hell yeah
nothing wrong with reloading - esp when playing casual - I do it on VH/H which I favour
Legend you might just be what saves these games outside of disaster battles. I'm glad to see you still providing good solutions to the average gamer to enjoy this series after so many years.
The most useful video of LegengOfTotalWar after the campaign rating series of videos. Thank you for your work Legend
Ya know Legend, I haven't always seen eye-to-eye with you on your opinions re: TW and CA in the past, but I do appreciate how much you seemingly care for this franchise and its community. It was a pleasant surprise to hear you take time out of your schedule to make this video and help others out with their TW woes.
Thank you very much for this video, as someone who has experienced this quite some times it, this might be the most most personally uplifting video I've seen on the subject and has definelty inspired me, again thank you
I hope this video gets more attention than most of his normal videos, I'm sure there are a lot of players than need to hear this. Keep playing guys don't give up practice makes perfect.
Love this video. As someone who 'only has 250 hours' into TW:WH3 (as my first TW title to boot), this is very much where I started and I ended up doing the same thing - putting the game on Hard/Hard and just getting stuck in. I'm still not the best player but I've learned a lot about what I can work with. The only thing I can think of that didn't get a mention (and correct me if I'm wrong about this, please) is that on the easier battle difficulties, the AI will be more likely to shoot at single-entity lords/heroes when they approach alone, vs on harder diffs they tend to not use up their ammo on a small target
So u can sense yourself in safe, getting close with your mage in the radius of enemy archers fire - and cast spells in their face lol, they wouldn't fire for the first 1-3 casts anyway lol))
That is because of the "wasting ammunition cheese" some experience player did before which is using a fast character and just run around to waste all enemy ammunition shooting that character. Would not recommend doing that tho, very tedious.
The world needs more of these kinds of videos. I'm so sick and tired of people looking for help in a game and only getting back the retort, "git good." with no explanation about _how_ one gets good or what they're doing wrong.
I love how insanely accurate this was
This is the most precious piece of advice of your entire career. Intelligent, well put and with the goal to bring new players in. Perfect. My hat to you, sir.
I really enjoyed this video, even as someone who's alright at the game, becvause it's easy to forget how differently some people can experience the game, adn that answering skill issue often doesn't fix their issues and turns them away from it
With all the videos you have made, the impossible battles you have won and the insider experiences you have exposed, this is by far your greatest video. Thank you.
Really nice to see this positive and helpful explanation from you Legend.
Honestly the most helpful video on TWWH3 I have seen. I have so many hours playing thinking I am great at Campaign but terrible at Battles because of the Auto-Resolve on Easy battle difficulty. You have totally transformed my next 1,000 hours on the game.
Actually a really interesting video. I had no idea about this, being a total war veteran. Thanks for spreading the knowledge and love Legend.
Thanks for this vid! As an aside, there is a mod called "More Difficult Autoresolver Mod" which makes your campaign difficulty setting play a role in the auto resolve outcomes if you'd rather not boost the battle AI's performance for whatever reason
What an absolutely bizarre issue. Thanks for making this video, that definitely should help me, because I’m pretty sure I fell in to this trap and that might be part of the reason I stopped playing.
wow, this is a super helpful video, I'd even noticed this on normal difficulty, doing a bit worse than auto-resolve consistently, and being discouraged from playing battles manually
Definitely one of the most educating video on TW system... There are lots of videos on stats and strategies which helped me understand the game 'faster', but I dont think I would ever understood this without watching this video! Explains so much weird moment in my TW experience... Big shoutout form south korea!
Yeah, u need LOTS of game expiration to kinda "feel" the outcome and have your own auto resolve calculator in your head - to see that misconception of game auto resolve.
I've reached that inner calculator only after 600+ hours, and with now 3000+ hours just didn't take autoresolve in consideration at all. Every attack order or endturn defence I literally know, would I pick fight by hands or just can skip it with low casualties autoresolve lol - before the battle engage))
Thank you SO MUCH for this video!
Following your advice, my latest playthrough has been going so well, unlike all my previous attempts.
I haven't tried a Warhammer legendary yet, but my shogun 2 campaigns that I've completed on legendary were by far the most satisfying and by far the best way to learn and get better at the game
Shogun 2 is Dope.... One of the few games that you can go-in with actual Military Strategy and kick that games' ass.
@@StanHowse lmao no
They would just create army out of thin air and samurais would crush you by formula
You just cheesed
@@BloodyArchangelus Went to shogun 2 to fight daimyos, ended up fighting a bunch of magicians that conjure samurai armies with a single 800 koku income province.
@@StanHowse didn't know according to military strategy Japanese people reproduce through spores like Orks and can indefinitely spam hundreds of soldiers out of tiny hamlets
@@fedyx1544 learn history, this is all exactly the reasons why USA used that nuke stuff
A brilliantly easy to understand explanation. I found this video by accident but it has made it possible for me to understand my frustrations. Thank you, I'm going to share this with my friends as well
Speaking of things that don't feel good when playing, I find cav to be far more tedious then they are actually worth microing and that steers me a way from using them. That tile could be a dragon, archers, artillery, or a hero. Sure a slam in the back of the battle line can be very effective but so can all of the other things I mentioned and they need FAR less microing and they don't get stopped because 1 horse got hung up on a couple of routed artillery dudes through 18 attempts to get them to move where I want them. Cav needs a serious buff not only in stats but pathfinding/AI because holy crap. Cav should be DANGEROUS, not merely a nuisance for both sides.
Cav wont be fixed as long as CA use this engine. Cav has been shit since Empire came out and they arent going to fix it. If you want cav just play rome or medieval 2
I’d argue cav is arguably some of the most dangerous units in the game if used right, they just get overshadowed in you know, the fantasy game with monsters, but as long as you can micro they can be so much more valuable than quite a few units, that being said I will never mostly use cav unless I’m brettonia, because most of my battles aren’t even on plain fields, but siege battles
old engine problem
IN 3k cav is a god-send which can move like gods
Cavs are very meh to bad I feel like, they're cool for charging in the back of archers or artillery but fliers can do it much easier
@@TheSuperappelflap or Attila, cavalry is practically a requirement to use in that game and most of it is absolutely phenomenal when used well
This was eye opening. I haven't played in months for the exact reasons you've described. Been playing Normal/Normal and felt shit because I didn't think I was good enough to increase either difficulty. Thanks for the video.
First campaign settings 15:20
Such a great wholesome vid about how to enjoy the game when still learning.
Great video Legend, anything that helps more people enjoy this game is a great thing to be sure.
Theres only one thing youre dead wrong about; you are in fact a god at this game.
Thanks for this video Legend, it really helped me enjoy the game. I have been terrified of embarassing myself and autoresolve my campaigns to death. I will be taking more risks and I will be linking this everywhere I can. You are a treasure to the community
saw title -> boot up new game on hard / very hard -> fight every battle.
its gaming time 😼
Gg wp. Hf.
See title -> boot game on very hard / very hard -> win the first scripted battle -> declare war on neighbour -> lose every battle -> cry -> close game
Who asked
@@fedyx1544 Pyrrhus grindset
boot up new game -> it's updating -> it take too long minimize it -> forget it completely
my body is a machine that turns pyrrhic victories into crushing defeats
So normal is easy hard is hard but easy is Stockholm syndrome
Unexpected good guy legend. As a normal battle difficulty player, this makes sense now. My strategy was always to just fight the big decisive battles manually to have fun, then reload and take the autoresolve because it was always better than my result.
i used to play every game on easy mode for about 9 years of my life (im 19 this year) and i only really started coming out of my shell after playing elden ring. it taught me that failure is ok and can act as a great learning opportunity. coincidentally i've been playing total war games on easy battle and campaign difficulty for around 3 years now and had this exact issue. turning the battle difficulty from easy to normal was probably the best decision i've ever made and even if i never go higher than normal then thats ok. because now im fighting battles and getting better results than the auto resolve. normal is the new easy
So many more people need to hear this. Something I figured out on my own but never really thought fully through to a level that I could explain it to people and get them into the game. Honest is the best policy comes back again.
thank you. I finally know why i loose the few battles I try to fight.
Thank you very much for making this video. I wanted so badly to enjoy this game but I just couldn’t, until I tried your suggested campaign settings. I’ve gotten the furthest into a campaign ever and having a blast! :)
The reasons I use autoresolve (I play on normal and can usually do better playing the battle manualy than the atuoresolve, even if I'm not that great):
1: To save time
2: So the entire enemy army disappears and I don't have to chase the survivors around.
3: Laziness
Thank you friend, i appreciate it a lot! So glad i found your channel! I love total war so much, but my motivation got destroyed
As someone who started playing this game, or any total war game for that matter, a couple weeks ago I didn't run into this issue much tbh. If anything, playing on Hard Campaign/ Normal Battle Diff, I often run into the situation where the predicted outcome is a definite loss but I'm like "I'll just fight it and see if i can do some damage too the army for the next battle" and end up creaming all over em.
The main thing that felt super off for me was figuring out how the DLC system works. Having too buy warhammer 1 and 2 (plus all the dlc for those O.o!) just too play some basic races like Empire/ wood elves ect is a filthy flavour of greed i hadn't seen before in gaming.
The whole DLC situation / multiple games in one is kinda' messed up. It's even worse when you realize that the campaign/map we initially paid money for in Warhammer 3 (eg. Realm of Chaos) is also pretty awful.
The only reason Warhammer 3 works as a product is because of Immortal Empires *which was a free update*, meaning Warhammer 3 was pretty much just a €60 race pack with Kislev, demons and Cathay for Warhammer 1/2 (which, to be fair, is a pretty decent price considering CA's DLC pricing scheme).
he's not really talking about normal difficulty, why are there so many comments saying 'omg i played on normal/hard and i didn't have this issue' when the entire video is only talking about a specific problem with easy difficulty's autoresolve modifier being too high
@@kristianjensen5877 It's honostly ridiculous how much stuff is locked behind that purple "DLC" banner when you just bought Warhammer 3.
And then you're like "Ok, whatever, ill get Warhammer 1/2 on sale for not too much and can atleast play the basic stuff", you start a high elf campaign, get a T4 building and then you are like "wait...where are those sisters of avalorn i heard so much about?". And then you find out YOU GOTTA BUY MORE DLC. Actually rage inducing.
Normal Battle Diff is where it starts being fine, especially if you're decent at strategy; even for those who aren't, at least you won't always be worse than auto-resolve. Easy is where you'll find it's impossible to even match auto-resolve results, which is where the issues are really bad.
But yeah, the DLC is expensive af and on top of that, you have to go digging through each one to figure out which ones you need for the full experience of a particular faction. They need to at least organize out for the player "if I want to play X what are the relevant DLCs and what do each of them offer" and give better discounts on older DLCs/games. Or heck, just hand them out with the base game once they're *really* old.
You ended up doing what now 😅😅
Watching tutorial videos when you first get into always helps,i started twwarhammer on normal/normal,now i only play on legendary camp difficulty/very hard battle difficulty,stick with it,you will get the hang of it.