The Total War series

[fishman279]

I'll always remember being attacked by the entire Hunnic horde in Barbarian Invasion. I only had about 5 units garrisoned and was getting prepared to be stomped but for some reason all the Hun army did was position all their troops about 20 meters from my walls, which were ridiculously overpowered in that game (as well as the siege towwers now I think about it), and got decimated without me losing a single man. I just sat there laughing the whole time. One of the only times the AI in the Total War games has been stupid when I've played.

 

[Undead Dragon King]

Two of my proudest moments:

Medieval: Total War

Playing as the Italians, from the Early start, I had managed to completely conquer the Middle East by the 1250's. It was right about that time that the Mongols decided to show up. The entire Mongol Horde, with the Khan at its head, descended on one of my border keeps with a garrison of only about 300, mostly Militia Sergeants and the like, nothing professional. They immediately decide to storm the castle. I know that my 300 men have no hope against 5000 Mongol horsemen, so I decide to try to make their end as glorious as possible. Milita Sergeants worked doubly well against the Mongols' armor and horses, and killed 3 horsemen for evey one of them that fell, easily.

My general's unit of sergeants also personally fought against the Khan and his bodyguard, and the Khan was killed in battle, along with his heirs. Eventually my men were overrun, but not before they killed an entire stack of Mongols, as well as the entire royal family! With no faction leader, the Mongols splintered into large rebel armies, and were no longer a legitimate threat to Europe. Not a bad showing for a bunch of Italian merchants with poleaxes.

Medieval 2: Total War

During the Britannia campaign, I was playing as Ireland. I had an alliance with Scotland and had just finished overrunning England and Wales. The Scots, however, decided to stab me in the back and sent 2 stacks worth of angry highlanders of all varieties against the stone fort that guarded the northern borders of Irish England. My garrison was only about 150, but the majority of those men were the Irish super-soldiers, the Muire. For those who don't remember, they essentially function like Armored Swordsmen, but they have 2 hp, insane morale and stamina, and frighten enemy infantry.

I placed 3 of my Muire squads (90 men overall) in my "siege box" formation, with the purpose of allowing the enemy to breach the gate and then attacking the blob of troops pouring in on three sides. I also put my remaining Muire squad on the walls with an additional unit of spearmen.

The Scots focused most of their attention on the gate, but threw a siege tower and some ladders my way also. Even though there were only 90 Muire, they simply would not break simply didn't get tired, even though there were over a thousand kilts in front of them. As more Scots were crowding to get through the gate, my spearmen managed to hold the gatehouse, and boiling oil just kept pouring on the Scottish crowd- not to mention the high toll that the arrow towers wer inflicting.

Eventually, one unit of the Scots couldn't take the punishment they were receiving in the courtyard anymore, and the beloved morale failure chain reaction began in earnest.I had kept a squad of light cavalry in back, so they gleefulyl rode out and captured hundreds of Scots. After the battle, the Scots refused to pay ransom, so the prisoners were killed, effectively killing off both armies-over 2000 men. I only lost about 30 Muires in that fight. I've never seen better soldiers in any other Total War game.

 

[SckizoBoy]

A few days into my new RTW: Roma Surrectum II campaign and I've started to expand west, with the aim of capturing Iberia (Spain) from the native Gallaeci and driving out Carthage. The mini map shows my progress so far (in red)...

Always meant to ask about RTW mods (because I've only done the minor mods that have slight gameplay changes - unit/faction availability, with the exception of RTR)...

Does RSII... *looks it up*

...

SECOND PUNIC WAR?!?!

So gotta get me this... Looks like I'll have to dust my disc... again!

Anyway, does it go with unlockable factions or is everyone playable from the off?

 

[SwishiestB0g]

So this is a little bit off topic, but I cant think of a better place to ask this. So, I've played every total war game except Empire and Napoleon,right now I'm playing Shogun 2 but I'm getting a little tired of looking at samurai, so which of those two would you recommend and why?

Empire is bigger, like a lot bigger and is more of a classic TW game.

Napoleon is much more story driven for the campaign. It's still fun but to me Empire was better simply because you could rule the ENTIRE world.

Thats a big plus, I love the grand campaigns, and I'm not sure how well something like total war would work as a story driven game.

edit: What do you think about all the DLC for Empire by the way?

Well story driven is a bad way to explain it but it kinda is, the campaign is huge but much quicker I suppose and smaller too, you're in a part of Europe, part of Africa or in only Europe.

DLC is unnecessary really, just adds some units. If you like flavor for your units by all means get it, but didn't really change much for me.

OT: Medieval 2: I just took a few strategies from here, and simply spread my influence, had 15+ allies and easily 10 of them were paying me 200 a turn for like 50 turns then when war came around as I had the Pope in my back pocket and tons of spies and merchants and tons of money I simply steam-rolled, this was as England by the way. I made Scotland a vassal and took half the continent and sat back and smiled. Then gunpowder came in and I stopped playing. I despise gunpowder in that game.

 

[Sir Boss]

Playing as Venice, doing my normal thing of being The Papal States' hound dog, I came under attack by a power block made up of Hungary and the Byzantines, I lost all my holdings in Italy after the Second Battle of Venice left me somewhat undermanned, Hungary demanded vassaldom, I accepted, by the Byzantines kept attacking, so Hungary mobilised to defend their vassal, spreading the Byzantine Empire way too thin, so Dodge Jacopo the Wrathful and Councilor Vitaliano the Lewd took their militia army and marched on Constantinople, after barely escapng the BYzantine's anatolian army, with the Byzantine's old allies to back us up in the attack the battle was about 4000 soldiers aside, Jacopo died in the assault, Vitaliano became Dodge and moved the capital to the newly wrested Constantinople.
Vitaliano got word that the Mongols were on route to constantinople, but he went after the Byzantine remnants instead, the mongols came, destroyed half the venetian economy, half the royal family and exterminated Constantinople, Vitaliano was forced to break off leave the Byzantine front to re-take the capital. The mongols were completley destroyed, but at the cost of Vitaliano's life, Venice now had three generals left, the new leader and his last generals sequestered themselves on the isle of Rhodes and in the city of Corinth, the last one hiding in the Crimea. We were on the brink of destruction, then a plucky young inventor gave us gunpowder, with this new invention the current dodge re-invented himself as a dread lord. Castle walls are no match for Venetian ingenuity. the Byzantines fell, as a new enemies made themselves known, the Egyptians and the Timurids. but that's a tale for another day.

 

[spartandude]

In napoleon, i was russia and as such allied with asutria, austria got their asses kicked and lost vienna, i took it back for them in a bloody series of battles (was won and lost about 4 times) but i won it, rebuilt it and such and tried to give it back to the austrians, they would not accept it unless i gave them moscow as well (i was their allies). after this is was so anoyed i made peace with france and annexed austria with almost no effort

and to further highlight the amazing diplomatic AI, in Empire as prussia poland declared war on me and i wasnt in a state to fight tbh so i offered a peace treaty and threatened to attack if they didnt accept it (THEY declared war on me remember) and they accepted it. 2 turns later the same thing happens again. did they not understand that in a war id fight them?

 

[dickywebster]

Ended up setting fire to so much of japan/wiping out larger forces for the loss of my smaller ones that most of the place ended up in chaos so i hid in my fortified area until everyone else was slightly on the dead side.
It kinda went wrong when everyone decided to try to invade me, but i made it work in my favour

 

[Sumner Turner]

Conquered Rome with about 1000 Spartans, Conquered Medieval Europe as Milan, spread plague to every settlement in Rome: Total War in one turn. Total War took up so much of my life it's not even funny.

 

[AnkaraTheFallen]

My last battle was Defending Rome with 600 Spearmen against the Hun hoard of over 5000

Sounds better than it is since they attacked with one siege tower and almost no infantry units, so I won by default pretty much XD

 

[srm79]

A few days into my new RTW: Roma Surrectum II campaign and I've started to expand west, with the aim of capturing Iberia (Spain) from the native Gallaeci and driving out Carthage. The mini map shows my progress so far (in red)...

Always meant to ask about RTW mods (because I've only done the minor mods that have slight gameplay changes - unit/faction availability, with the exception of RTR)...

Does RSII... *looks it up*

...

SECOND PUNIC WAR?!?!

So gotta get me this... Looks like I'll have to dust my disc... again!

Anyway, does it go with unlockable factions or is everyone playable from the off?

All factions are playable from the start, although the whole thing is written with Rome in mind. Be sure to also grab the "coward trait hotfix", otherwise there's an annoying bug that gives practically every general this trait if you use auto resolve.

 

[SckizoBoy]

All factions are playable from the start, although the whole thing is written with Rome in mind. Be sure to also grab the "coward trait hotfix", otherwise there's an annoying bug that gives practically every general this trait if you use auto resolve.

Noted (though I'll definitely start as Rome seeing as it's the PBS!).

Regarding the hotfix... is the bug one that basically makes them unkillable from auto-resolve battles or something or does it actually give them a trait from the result?

 

[Whyso]

i had 3 milita phalanx units and the enemy had about 5 infantry units and a general and 3 cavalry and they decided it would be awesome to charge every one of their cavalry at the front of phalanx witht their general at the head, there general was killed instantly and the battle was over only 2 minutes later.

 

[F'Angus]

Got a bunch of Assassins and just keep killing their generals...and the ones I can't kill I use my diplomats to buy them.

 

[StevenSuffern]

Rome: Total War. Had my army face off against against another army and two troops of reinforcements. After smashing most of the enemy forces, I had my battered and bloodied troops flee the field, all except a unit of archers, who faced off against the three units of spearmen who were marching towards my men. I made my archers run from high ground to high ground, whittling down the enemies until they fled the field. Saved me tons of troops, and secured great victory.

 

[srm79]

All factions are playable from the start, although the whole thing is written with Rome in mind. Be sure to also grab the "coward trait hotfix", otherwise there's an annoying bug that gives practically every general this trait if you use auto resolve.

Noted (though I'll definitely start as Rome seeing as it's the PBS!).

Regarding the hotfix... is the bug one that basically makes them unkillable from auto-resolve battles or something or does it actually give them a trait from the result?

It gives your General the Coward trait after a battle if the General did not personally get into the fight. In a huge pitched battle this is unlikely, but in smaller actions or against small bands of enemies it's entirely possible. It's bloody annoying, and does affect the characters abilities to lead and manage settlements.

RSII does become a bit of a stackspam-fest at times, especially if you are playing the "zero turn" mode and it's designed so that you will use auto-resolve more than you would in vanilla. I usually only take personal command of key battles, or ones I have no confidence in the CPU winning for me (for instance if I'm heavily outnumbered but think it might be winnable - city defence or a terrain tile where the enemy has to cross a bridge are good examples of where you can beat a vastly superior force). Not having to worry about the coward trait does make auto resolve a bit more reliable.

 

[Hawk eye1466]

Empire total war: I had just lost my world war and all my footholds in Europe the only reason I survived was that none of them had boats to get to America, but I managed to use one of my allies that was neutral to Spain to help them recover, once they had recovered years before anyone else I offered them a deal, they would attack all their enemies that were still rebuilding with my funding and I get Great Britain. Spain is finishing off the final parts of Europe and I'm about to launch my surprise attack on Spain's capital and sweep through their lightly defended rear.

 

[SckizoBoy]

It gives your General the Coward trait after a battle if the General did not personally get into the fight. In a huge pitched battle this is unlikely, but in smaller actions or against small bands of enemies it's entirely possible. It's bloody annoying, and does affect the characters abilities to lead and manage settlements.

RSII does become a bit of a stackspam-fest at times, especially if you are playing the "zero turn" mode and it's designed so that you will use auto-resolve more than you would in vanilla. I usually only take personal command of key battles, or ones I have no confidence in the CPU winning for me (for instance if I'm heavily outnumbered but think it might be winnable - city defence or a terrain tile where the enemy has to cross a bridge are good examples of where you can beat a vastly superior force). Not having to worry about the coward trait does make auto resolve a bit more reliable.

'zero turn' mode?

Still, it shouldn't be too much of a problem, I fight all the battles myself (on principle and I generally distrust the auto-resolve result anyway!).

 

[red dragon 52]

Playing as Scotland with Kingdoms Grand Campaign mod (has special characters which appear for every faction with a lot of other improvements, check it out) Had William Wallace and his son commanding a siege of London. Decided to attack a 2nd English army and try to defeat the London garrison in the same battle, despite English numerical superiority. Did not go well. Wallace's son was killed by a trebuchet, Wallace died fighting when he and his body guard were surrounded at the end of the very bloody battle. I took over 90% casualties and lost my greatest general and his only male heir, English lost probably 80% of their men and would lose London a few years later.

 

[WolfThomas]

I managed to completely annihilate the Mongols when they invaded in Medieval total war, I was the Turks so after securing my country and a largish portion of the middle east, I set about fortifying it for their attack. I built the largest walls on all my cities and garrison large armys in the cities that bordered asia and in camps around there.

When the mongols came I sent out an army of 1400 men to meet them in the mountains, the mongols had several thousand, I fought three battles, the first two where using phenonmenally advantageous terrain I beat them. It was basically a mountain with vast cliffs and a tiny narrow path up there, which I block with spikes that my jannissary archers could deploy and Jannissary halberdmen to stop anything that got past, then I had at least 10 groups of archers, many ottoman archers who can double as decent foot soldiers, I had one cannon to draw the enemy to me (AI would attack if you bombarded them). In two battles I destroyed five thousand of them with minimal casulaties.

But in the third battle I had less advantagous terrain, I still had a high ridge, but there was two paths to it and they were wider, so I had to split my troops, as my archers ran out of arrows I'd desperately throw them on to the lines of fighting on either side, I'd swing my general between each flank to try and keep my mens moral. We killed 2000 mongols before my remaining 1100 men died to a man (it was impossible to retreat off map).

Then the remaining hordes descended on my nation, they were unable to take any of my cities by siege so they all headed toward Antioch, I had three armies of about a thousand who by holding two spots, a bridge and a river crossing were able to stop the mongols. I'd use wooden stakes in the ground around the bridge or crossing and withdraw out of arrow range, they'd lose the bulk of their cavalry on that and my men would mop up the rest.

Eventually the entire nation was defeated...then the Timurids arrived.