Total War Series.

[Rosbjerg]

I've noticed that a substantial amount of people here have been playing the Total War Games. So I decided to make a thread where we can share some Mod finds, advice, tactics and experiences.

 

In case you haven't found it yet - TWCenter is the place to go for Mods.

 

Rome:

 

Troy Total War doesn't need explaining, you get to play out the old saga yourself.

 

Ancient Empires is still under development. Remodelling of almost every unit in the Vanilla game and adding alot of content.

 

Fall of the Republic - Rise of the Empire - I haven't played this yet, but I heard it's amazing - anyone played it?

 

Medieval Total War II (+ Kingdoms)

 

Broken Crescent (MTW2) - My favorite faction in the vanilla campaign is Egypt, here I get to expand into the middle east instead. I've yet to try it, but it looks really promising!

 

Kingdoms Grand Campaign Mod (Kingdoms) - I love this mod, I played Retrofit alot, because I wanted the new features of Kingdoms in the original MTW2, this also adds the factions, the units, a huge map, permanent forts and units are now a little more expensive to train and maintain.

 

- I'll add some more tomorrow - feel free to post your own finds!

[mrmud]

I havent played Rome or Medieval 2 in a while so im not up to date on the mods but I do know one thing.

 

If you want to play any of these games without using a total conversion or scenario changing mod, you have to get some form of mod that makes the AI better.

Without mods total war is stupidly easy. From what I remember the mods dont actually change the AI scripts but they supply the AI with enough stuff that they actually end up doing things.

[Moatilliatta]

Most large mods tend to include an AI enhancement mod of some kind.

 

I like Deus Lo Vult (DLV) with a few tweaks to remove the absolutely annoying design decisions of making just about everything cost $texas.

Edited August 29, 2008 by Moatilliatta

[Monte Carlo]

I play vanilla MTW2, like most fans, on VH/ VH (non-TW people - very hard strategy and very hard battles).

 

I breezily set the Total War: Kingdoms mod to Hard / Very Hard and set up a game as England. Twenty turns later I was totally check-mated by a boundlessly wealthy Scotland, a resurgent Ireland, a Pope that clearly hated me and French sniping. I gave up. I like a challenge but this was silly.

 

I've discovered that Medium Strategy and Hard Battles is a good challenge, unless you are one of those people who open an Excel spreadsheet for your resources and do the maths every turn to see if you can afford that squadron of hobilars. Crusades are now what they should be - a major drain on resources, a politically charged chore undertaken only when well-prepared and resourced. In vanilla MTW2 you could just kick one off for sh*t and giggles and loot your way across the near-East.

 

Am currently playing the Mod as the Teutonic Order, sweeping all before me with flying columns of armour, awaiting a high medieval uber-showdown wirth the Horde, prior to conquering the Americas.

 

Cheers

MC

[Calax]

two things, one I can't find where Kingdoms Grand Campaign is (found 3.4b but not 3.0) and two, why has nobody mentioned Rome total Realism?

[Musopticon?]

Total Realism can bite my behind until it's finally finished. Last time I looked(albeit a year ago), it was fairly boring blizfest through an undoubtedly revamped and expansive Europe, but needed mods like the Platinum Edition and Metro and Naval mods to be interesting. Those completely redo the economy and make historically fertile areas profitable, trade doesn't rule the map anymore and even backwaters have a chance against Egypt and Makedonia.

 

Anyways, for truly the best mod ever, try Europa Barbarorum version 1.1. It's one of the few truly finished and bug-tested total conversions for Rome:Total War and BI. Last time I looked, there wasn't any of the original R:TW assets left in the game. It's a true conversion, a game that every history nut has to play.

 

It's funny, their art is cool, their music is an interesting mix of historical and hollywoodian, UI art looks like it came from BfME 2, but everything is as historical as can be. There's like 8 archeologists in the original team, forgodssakes. They even added a faction based on Southern Arabia, where every other mod has stopped to Egypt. There's a faction which borders touch China, Rome has hstorical military rank and political progression, they created faction leader images based on the old coinage and...well, just play it.

 

Perhaps a testament to the team's genius, while there's blocks of text in every unit description and everything is named and translated to original languages, they even dug up a proto-Germanic expert to help with the various tribal units in Eastern Europe, the game still has pics like this:

 

 

Go download the install file. Yeah, a freaking install file.

[Pidesco]

What is the equivalent of Europa Barbarorum for Medieval 2?

[Musopticon?]

Can anyone answer that?

 

I still haven't played MTW 2, mainly because I hear it's a medieval revamp of R:TW, but also because my rig cries blood.

 

I'd like to know potential good mods for the game once I get around to it.

[Xard]

Ehh, the expansion pack is winrar

 

Main game is better version of R:TW but too similar to make it exciting to play after Rome.

[Moatilliatta]

There is no such thing as a EB of Medieval 2 as it is still too young for that. I do believe though that the EB team (or possibly the realism team) is working on making a version for Med2.

[Musopticon?]

I've wanted to play the Gothic crusade campaign ever since I wrote a paper on the history of Liivinmaa, but I really need an upgrade to play the darn thing. Or maybe just the demo was horribly slow and slidehow-tastic, huh? Not likely.

[Moatilliatta]

Med 2 does eat a lot of resources. I could play it on my old computer 512 MB, 2.x GHz and a decent graphics card untill I met a heavily defended castle which made my computer cry.

[Musopticon?]

So, would an old Athlon 1,8 gigs, Geforce 6600 and 1 gig of ram run it at least decently on low-medium?

Edited August 29, 2008 by Musopticon?

[Xard]

I'd say memory is important for game like MTW2, so maybe 1 gig over 512 mb would make world of difference.

[Moatilliatta]

Hard to say.

 

Is it possible to play large battles in the demo? Perhaps even large battles over large castles.

 

The 6600 would graphics card ram-wise be part of the minimum specifications so I'm not sure.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Any one else think that battles in MTW1 were a lot better than in RTW?

[Moatilliatta]

Not really. Could you explain why you think so?

 

I mostly played the viking invasion campaign because defeating the vikings were a bitch and that increased the fun.

[Wrath of Dagon]

The battles seemed a lot more tactical. The battlefield was bigger compared to your army, and there were lots of terrain features you could exploit to maneuver your forces and gain an advantage. Usually the battles lasted longer thus allowing for more tactical battles. Also I've experienced a lot of different situations during the battles and had to adapt my tactics. In RTW the battlefields seemed smaller and more featureless, and battles usually came down to the armies rushing each other and battles being over very quickly. I could pretty much just pin the enemy in the center with my heavy units and hit him in the flanks with fast units and do that in almost every battle.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Any one else think that battles in MTW1 were a lot better than in RTW?

 

Nope.

Also, thanks for the mod tip Musopticon? - I had not tried that yet and am now downloading it. As for M:TW 2, I think it should be playable on the system you posted, albeit at lower settings.

[Leferd]

The noteworthy mods have already been mentioned for Rome and M2.

 

I'll add the XL mod to the list for the original Medieval.

[mrmud]

I intend to start playing Europa Barborum today and Im wondering which difficulty settings I should use.

I play vanilla RTW and M2TW on VH/VH but as mods often change the difficulty of the game should I select another setting for EB?

[Rosbjerg]

I always take my first playthrough in Medium/Medium to get a feel .. from there I can usually figure out how to proceed.

 

Most mods crank up the difficulty and complexity enough for me to have the most fun in Hard though. I haven't met an exception for that yet.

 

That being said, you can probably beat Europa Barborum in VH/VH, since the core problem of the Total War series is yet to be completly solved in a mod. Stupid AI.

[Moatilliatta]

Aren't most mods designed specifically for the vh/vh difficulty? I would choose that one personally.

[Tigranes]

The thing is that the game would be very balanced in normal or hard if the AI was halfway decent. As it stands right now, most solutions to difficulty means that your own empire is a logistical nightmare and the challenge is more in organising everything and pooling your funds against ridiculous odds. Which is a fun challenge, but it gets too much, and even then the horrible AI lets you down.

 

I don't know. I'm told that RTW/MTW2's plague of idiotic army compositions/movements in campaign map and its total retardation on the battlefield has been somewhat improved by mods the last year. But throughout the entire lifespan of RTW and for the first ~6 months of MTW2, it was sure gamebreaking.

[Moatilliatta]

Stuff like the diplomacy AI and everything that can be changed in the files have been improved but it still does suck obviously, just less than before.

 

The Empire TW AI is supposed to be better if I remember correctly.