Even more Total War (2/3)!

Transcript

Speaker: Hello listeners and welcome to Fog of Warcast. Today we have an exciting new episode when we continue talking about the Total War games. So this is going to be a episode number two. So if you haven't listened to episode number one yet, please do.

Speaker: Your host today is going to be me, Andreas Eriksson, and my co-hosts Magnus and Johan. Cheers, guys. Cheers, man. Happy to be here. So, are you feeling excited about even more Total War?

Speaker: Always. Always excited for Total War. As we know, I have views. And today, I think well my views are finally going to clash with Andreas' views. And we're going to have, hopefully, ah finally get to the takedown of Trons of Britannia.

Speaker: Yes, this is this is the um England versus the rest of the world. yeah that That episode. So, today we have... the um but Particularly, we're going to talk about a set of games in the Total War series or in Creative Assembly's history, which are...

Speaker: Maybe not the most famous ones. Definitely not not the biggest ones. um But very important for why they arrived at the point they are today. Why the games they are releasing today look the way they do.

Speaker: And how they sort of moved away from a style of game which we were more accustomed to with Medieval 2, Rome, Shogun, Empire. so History is essentially this. Where we last ended off with the um Total War Empire and and Napoleon.

Speaker: Well, the creative assembly, the guys said doing and the Total of War games, they were not entirely happy with reception from these games. They didn't go that well, and they really wanted a new break.

Speaker: And they arrived at a brilliant idea that the Hollywood has done a bunch of times, and that is to just... um do a reboot. So they started off with Rome 2, which yeah they themselves described as essentially reimagining and redoing in their most successful game, Rome.

Speaker: So it's not a continuation of Rome 1. It's not the direct history of Rome 1, because that would be barbarian invasion. And after that, you have a little bit too little Rome left to play with.

Speaker: So they did Roam once again and tried to build it up bigger and better and more beautiful and also a lot more streamlined. The reason they wanted to do it more streamlined is because in between... um Empire and Napoleon and Room 2.

Speaker: They had a good success with a smaller game, Shogun 2. So Shogun 2 was a really well-received game and they were really impressed with like the reception it got and they wanted to do this this sort of new take ah with Room 2. But Room 2 was intended to be this massive flagship game.

Speaker: Unfortunately, it flopped a little bit, or it flopped massively. They had to patch it for two years before it really was well-received with audiences. And at that point, they were almost ready to release the another game, that is Total War Attila.

Speaker: Now, Total War Attila is very similar in in a sort of story it to the older game, Barbarian Invasion. But they also wanted to introduce a bunch of new mechanics. They wanted to get a sort of decline in the game, where instead of building up the way you do in almost all Total War games, you're going to get torn down by hordes, by diseases, by events.

Speaker: And this is essentially what they built. And... After that, we get something a little bit weird, because after that, they release the Total War Warhammer games, and we are going to talk to about them.

Speaker: But they also release a game that is called um Total War Sagas Thrones of Britannia. And his here is where things get a little bit messy, because... Just based on when it was released, the Thrones of Britannia game is not sort of part of the same continuation as Rome and Attila.

Speaker: And it doesn't come in the sequence, Shogun, Rome, Attila, because there would be two Warhammer games before Thrones of Britannia. But the teamwork in Frozen of Britannia and the code that they used is very influenced by Attila.

Speaker: And it is in many ways a continuation of the game Total War Attila, which in turn is a continuation of the game Rome, which is why we sort of talk about them in a series.

Speaker: Now, if you look at these games, one of them was really well-received, Shogun. Let's just say the Total War Rome was not that well-loved at release.

Speaker: Attila got some decent or even critical acclaim, but mostly from Total War fans, and it went a little bit under the radar for ah regular players. And Front of Britannia was, let's just say it didn't have yeah it didn't have such a great reception as it deserved.

Speaker: so We're going to go into all of these games today. And the reason we're doing these and then next episode, we're going to, or maybe later on, we're going to go with say the games in between. It's just because these games really, they they sort of stick together in a very logical way.

Speaker: So guys, let's start off with the first one. Let's start off with Shogun 2. have any Has anyone of you been playing it recently? Yes, I've played it recently and...

Speaker: It is, in my opinion, one of the best games in the franchise. It is unbelievably good. i I love it with all my heart. I love the DLCs.

Speaker: i have i have some complaints towards it, but as a Total War game, I think it's as near perfection you can come with it, with Shogun 2.

Speaker: i I think it's up there with the greatest games that the Total War series have produced. I love it.

Speaker: I haven't played it as much as well some of the games, for example, that's loud and I think that i this really... I mean, the problem is with me. I'm a bit of a Romaboo. I really love them going back to antiquity and late antiquity. ah But I haven't played Shogun 2 as much.

Speaker: But I have to agree with you on this. I mean, for me, it's one of the the most solid Total War games. It's not my favorite. It doesn't you know spark the same joy as some of the others, but it's... for this series, quite a you know solid game. And they've done some true and tested things. It really feels that this the the game series is it maturing ah when they get to Shogun 2 because they've gone off in a few different tangents by and now and they've been making games for decades at this point.

Speaker: And you can see that they're kind of picking and choosing what functions to have within the game. And I think they they hit it off very pretty well here. They're going to... they're gonna fall off the wagon again and later on in the game series and we'll be getting to that but they are ah a solid game and if you haven't played it if you're more into medieval Japan than I am then it's a hard recommend ah yes I agree I wanna add some ah bad things about Shogun or rather I love Shogun 2 but before you can't you go into a bit more depth about like what what sparks of joy for you in Shogun 2

Speaker: but What sparks the joy? First, since you're the one who loves it, you get to slightly shortly describe what is happening in it. Then you get to go to the good parts. Well, not looking at the DLCs that and takes place 400 years before and 400 years after Shogun 2, you have the Shogunate War era where we have the historical figures fighting for and the Shogunate of Japan. I mean, I am not a huge... and

Speaker: and huge lover of ah Japanese medieval history. I'm not set in, could samurai beat a knight? They were the greatest warriors ever roaming there, all those things.

Speaker: But the game in itself, with the series it takes and the atmosphere it takes with all these different rivaling clans vying for the shogunate, which is...

Speaker: basically the war advisor to the emperor, but more powerful than the emperor. It is a really interesting dynamic and setting, and you also get the the Europeans coming, yeah the...

Speaker: trying to Christian Japan. The gunpowder is introduced into this feudal medieval society. It is just a great setting. And to summarize it shortly, you play what one of the great clans, you want to become shogun, no one else is going to become shogun.

Speaker: That's basically it for the game. Yes. And it also means that you are playing... On Japan. your Your map is Japan and it's only Japan.

Speaker: It's a small map. It's a small map. And that is probably to be one of my criticisms or at least one of the things I want to discuss later on. But just for people who haven't played it, this is ah a a Japan game. It's not like wider Asian game.

Speaker: It's just Japan. and Yeah, and it's worth to note that the two DLCs that you get, it's also only just Japan. you You will play on the Japanese islands.

Speaker: yeah But it's still a great game, even though the map is kind one of the smaller maps, I think, for Total War games. but It is such a great immersion in it. And when it came out, seeing what it did... and It upped the naval battles, it upped the diplomacy, it upped the difficulty of the AI, it had a better tech tree, and also general skills than we had seen in previous Total War games.

Speaker: And also a lot of streamlined mechanics with religion, loyalty, and special agents like Ninja and Geishas, etc. And you can say whatever you want about the Realm Divided mechanic. I am not a fan of the Realm Divided. I don't think Andreas is either, and we're probably going to criticize that moving on. But it was a mechanic that when it came out was quite new and it...

Speaker: it gave a certain spark and flavor to the end game that you hadn't seen before. and So yeah, it's it's just a lovely game. i would have it up there on my probably top two. I can't decide if this is my favorite Total War game or if another game is, but it's definitely up there.

Speaker: you You are allowed to name check the Warhammer games. I'm not going to start swearing just because you do. Yeah, but it's so hard. I mean, they're they're two completely different games. And if I have to choose a Total War game, Shogun 2 is my favorite.

Speaker: Yes. So I want to butt in now. but But before I do, I want to add something very important when we talk about this generation of Total War games. They are total war games.

Speaker: Like this creativity assembly are one of the best makers of strategy games probably the ever. They are one of the biggest in the world. I am going to have a lot of criticism, system but you need to take this as sort of criticism of the best.

Speaker: um So this is slightly going to be like me as a hobby footballer having strong opinions about the elite teams and their plays. Like my opinions are valid.

Speaker: I could not do it better. i I don't like this fair and balanced turn ah this podcast is taking. But it needs to happen with these games because even the ones I think are making a lot of mistakes are still doing something. Most new developers are just making a strategy game from scratch.

Speaker: Couldn't even... I mean, they couldn't even get close to. This is still a... very solid good base concept which they are tweaking in different ways no no no no no you can do this about shogun 2 the rest of the games on this list we don't have to be fair in our opinions with because they have problems a lot of big problems i'm gonna be very nice about the next games here and i mean it's totally in the podcast to say but i think and excluding thrones of britannia we might have yeah i mean ah bit For me, a bit of a golden age for for the studios. I don't know that not all of these games were smash hits.

Speaker: ah but Still good games. Yeah, still three very solid games. I mean, I put a lot of hours into these three games. Even Shogun 2 that I haven't played as much. I mean, you can get, if not hundreds, tens of hours out of it and have a really good time.

Speaker: This is fun because I love Shogun. Shogun 2 is great. The rest of the games are going to be the one that sort of kicks me out of the series. But I'm going to go deeper into it when we get to Rome.

Speaker: First of all, I want to say a few things about Shogun. First of all, it's amazing. It takes sort of the engine and most of the code and most of the sort of design decisions from Empire and Napoleon.

Speaker: And it just makes them better. I mean, streamline them, make them more balanced, less buggy, just make them work better. And by getting out of the, which I talked about last episode, we're getting away from the sort of line infantry shot period, um they also get to have a slightly more dynamic paddles.

Speaker: ah The the sort of battle engine of Total War, the battle style of Total War has never really been perfect for line battle, line infantry firing, stuff like that. So they move back to a period which is better for what they're trying to do.

Speaker: So Shogun is an amazing game. That said, it has a few drawbacks which I want to mention. ah The first of all is, of course, the small map.

Speaker: And this is actually sort of a first. I mean, Napoleon did it to some extent, but mostly the Total War games have had these huge maps. You play vast areas of the world,

Speaker: Or if you play small area like Europe, they make it big by just going deeper in, having smaller provinces, stuff like that. So they make the big game very big. yeah And this it has an implication for how you play it, because this is this is sort of a game you sink hours into painting the map.

Speaker: um Japan just isn't that big and you get some sad consequences from that sort of on the map you have various choke points where the only way to progress to another area ah yeahl ah area of the map is essentially through and this small mountain pass and stuff like that And that I dislike that a little bit ah because it it is essentially just means I can't play the massive Total War game I want to play when i am doing a when I'm playing a Total War game I really like.

Speaker: So I guess the first criticism is essentially I want more of it, which isn't really a criticism. it's just sort of a missed opportunity. Mm-hmm. They also have introduced this new mechanism, which you once mentioned, Realm Divide.

Speaker: So all of the Total War games have a I don't know if we want to call it a problem, but but something that happened in the whole game was essentially that after a certain point, you get too big.

Speaker: You can't fail anymore. yeah you you You are just too strong for the AI player to actually defeat you. So what they do in this game is that at a certain point, when you get big enough,

Speaker: everyone declares war on you. And they call this event Realm Divide. And it's cool in some ways. It's a really interesting idea to balance the game. I also hate playing it.

Speaker: Because it ruins all my diplomacy. If I went for a trade economy rather than than a farm economy, it ruins the trade economy because there's no one left to trade with. I can't really manipulate the AI out of it using diplomacy. they They really hate me to a point where it's almost impossible to get them on my side.

Speaker: And I just have to play a large number of big defensive battles. I can't attack because I can't maintain enough armies because they've introduced a food supply system in the game that limits how many armies I can have in the field.

Speaker: I can't, even if I'm rich, feel so many armies that can both attack and defend against every other player at once. And this is a very small mechanicalnic mechanical change that just middle of the game just breaks the game pace a bit for me.

Speaker: And these criticisms are essentially the same criticism. I can't play Shogun the way I wanted to play Rome or Medieval. I can't play it as a just a big progressive map painting game where the world is whittled down to fewer and fewer massive powers who just butt heads across the game.

Speaker: ah Instead, I have to prep for almost a doomsday scenario when everyone wants to crush me. Yeah, I mean... I agree with your criticism of Realm Divided.

Speaker: I wouldn't be as critical of Realm Divided if it could happen to the AI. But the AI doesn't suffer from... Firstly, it doesn't suffer for from the supply lines. It doesn't suffer from Realm Divided, which kind makes the game that it's out to get to you And yeah, I don't really know how to code that.

Speaker: But in some instances, it can be really fun depending on which clan you choose. If you chose, for example, the Oda clan who is centered in the middle of Japan, your game will be a lot harder when Realm Divided comes in because you will be be attacked from the yeah right and left.

Speaker: If you've taken Satsuma or Nondachi, Nondachi are up north and Satsuma are down in the south. you would probably have secured those areas and then you can still maintain and push forward.

Speaker: So it's also a bit of... It's not weighted in, oh, it's going to be bad for everyone because now you have to defend against everyone. If you're solidly coming from one place, you know that I can hold, move forward, hold, move forward. If you're the other clan or Takeda or Hojo something like that in the middle...

Speaker: you have to fight two front wars against everyone. And then Andrea said, it's hard to push out. Yes. um I want to say two more things about about Shogun and then I think we are almost done with it.

Speaker: ah The first thing is Realm Divide. I would have loved it as a specific campaign mode. Something I can either choose or not choose. And this is something they do start with in the later games having not just the grand campaign but actually having specific sub-campaigns.

Speaker: And I think you're learning a little bit from this. The other thing is that you can see sort of the limitations that the game is suffering under after being built so um with a lot of similar code to Empire. And it's the ah city or castle battles.

Speaker: ah The castles are, i mean I mean, I know that people like them because they are sort of tiered castle, get higher and higher and higher and you can fight castle tier for castle tier.

Speaker: They're also entirely empty. You get no pretty buildings, you get no street battles, you get nothing like that. It's just, everything is just pretty basic naked fortifications.

Speaker: And this is so sad because one of the coolest things I think about the old games, both about Rome and about medieval, was the massive, but beautiful cities where you had your battles amongst Roman architecture or in these ridiculously overscaled castles.

Speaker: I missed that, but I know we're going to get it again in later games. We are, but just something. It's a solid game. It's a lovely, when it came out, lovely map.

Speaker: And also have to give it up too. The soundtrack is so, so good for it. So if you haven't played it, I mean, it's from 2011, but it still runs smoothly. It's still a great game.

Speaker: Give it a try. yeah so Just two things before we wrap up. at the It's also maybe the most beautiful. Yeah. to hands down and I don't know. what we This comes down to taste, but i think I think they pretty much nailed this. The next one we're talking about is not but the most beautiful. It's not the prettiest.

Speaker: ah But I kind of like this. They they have tried to go go for what feels like a Japanese aesthetic, at least to a Westerner like me. And I think they... Maybe nailed it, but I think it works.

Speaker: yeah They are also doing something, or rather they are not doing a certain thing, which shows up in the next game. So when we move over to Rome, one of the first things I am going to have to talk about in Rome and all the following games is that they...

Speaker: they made a new decision about how the game looks. They wanted to introduce more realism. like if you look at the armies, people are wearing more, ah guess, realistic clothing, which means that everyone is wearing the same sort of drab colors.

Speaker: ah the On the map, it's less stylized and even more just trying to then introduce ah like real vegetation in the battle maps, especially. you have ah Well, they just wanted to update three d graphics a lot.

Speaker: So Empire and then Shogun are still in the sort of very stylized style, which makes everything very visually clear, but it also means that they can play around a lot more with art rather than than with having things look the way they actually look.

Speaker: But now you're talking about the battle map. Most of the battle map, also the overworld. The overworld is still more of a sort of a painting stylized thing in Shogun than you get Rome or Attila. I know France and Britannia plays around with the idea, but only until you sort of remove the fog of war and then it just gets vegetated and and and messy.

Speaker: Yeah. Was that us moving over to Rome too? or That is also us moving over to Rome too. Do you want me to take a quick introduction to the game?

Speaker: I've sunk a lot of hours into Rome 2, and I do think that it's it may maybe one of the more basic Total War games. so And I think it covers a lot of bases. I mean yeah i said that I think the studio kind of becomes more mature here, and shows in certain ways and they're trying to experiment in others, but ah basically what they're done they've done, returned to Rome, which is Perhaps their most i mean successful game, critically acclaimed game.

Speaker: And it's a straight up Rome 2. It's like a rework, but with a very different feel to the old game. So and they've gone for a much larger map, both in the number of regions and the era of the world it covers. So it's centered on Europe ah and Western Asia and northern ah and North Africa.

Speaker: ah So it stretches from kind of Ireland Spain, Portugal, the Iberian Peninsula, ah over to Bactria and almost all the way to India. um So you do have like the Hindu Kush and Bactria in this game, which is really cool compared to Rome, ah because Rome was very Eurocentric, very focused on on Europe. ah The Persians were kind of...

Speaker: ah the parthians were it almost a side note. And now you get all of Iran and the Seleucid Empire and, as I said, Bactria and these Persian little kingdoms and kinglets.

Speaker: And that makes it just a much bigger game, which is not just cool, it also does something with the mechanic. ah Because so we named it one of the problems in Total War Games scaling. Wait a minute. ahta's been cut Sorry, had a cat trying to escape. I'm sorry, Andreas.

Speaker: Um... which means But in Rome too, it means that as you your blob starts to form, because we're back to painting the map. This is a very good game for painting the map.

Speaker: ah While you're painting the map in Bactra, you can actually have quite strong states that coalesce on the other side of the map. So in Gaul or France, and it means that once you've kind of taken your Hellenistic kingdom and you're starting getting ready to conquer Western Europe, you might actually have a pretty strong Rome.

Speaker: ah We're still suffering from, you know... We're getting to a point of the game where you just paint a map and the AI can't really compete. But it's better in Rome 2 than in most other Total War games. ah Stylistically, I think they've gone for a bit more i mean bit more of a cartoony feel. When you look at your units in the overworld or in the strategic map, they aren't, as in Rome 1, they're not represented lifelike.

Speaker: They're of painted. at bit of a cartoony feel. And i think that this is also an aesthetic that is starting to come into the game series here. And you see that blossom out and when they move over to Total War Games later on, or Warhammer games later on.

Speaker: ah But other than that, it's it's very classical early antiquity or mid antiquity. So you start at the cusp of the Punic Wars or the second Punic War. So Hannibal is almost on the scene.

Speaker: The first Punic War, sorry. um And Rome is just starting out. It's conquered kind of like Latium in the middle of Italy. and and starting out But you also get a lot more factions than you do in the old to old Rome Total War.

Speaker: ah So you don't just have to play it as as the Romans. You can go for ah small barbarian states. You can play it as Bactria or a Hellenistic kingdom. You can go for Persians.

Speaker: And they also did quite a lot of DLCs, so they made five, if I'm not mistaken, ah where they branched out backwards into kind of the war between Sparta and Athens and forward in time. it this game they where they have Charlemagne?

Speaker: I'll have to look that up. No. No, that's the Matilda. That's in Attila, but they do and go back to the formation of the Republic, and they go forwards in time to and the third century crisis.

Speaker: So we're getting more of Roman history, we're getting a bigger world map, we're getting just more of everything. But still, you know, and I think very few people have this as their favorite Total War game, but I'd say it's a decent... I called Shogun 2 a solid game.

Speaker: And this is maybe more of like ah a bit basic, right? Well, that's very funny because it it didn't start off as basic. yeah It started off as Empire Overstretch. and This is sort of ba why I introduced it as the d really want to go really big and not really succeeding.

Speaker: It's because the game started off incredibly ambitious. A lot of the system seems to have worked incredibly poorly. And they patched it and patched it and patched it and streamlined it and streamlined it. But the way I understand it, at least based on how they continued with Atela, they also sort of scaled down a few things that just didn't work.

Speaker: they couldn't do all the things they had promised or intended. they do however also introduce a few new mechanics right I think this is where you start to see sort of an internal court system where you actually have to manage the sort of the top level people in your empire a little bit more and this is both good and bad I think I mean it's ah it lets you it gives you more control than the previous just have your general out in the world and they learn stuff system that but it also is one more slider you need to fiddle with

Speaker: Thank you. It's actually two systems. it's A, it's kind of managing your your family and your court. And then ah almost all factions have kind of like a Senate. For the Romans, it's very easy. It's the Senate.

Speaker: But you have some kind of rivalry between factions. And they really work with civil wars. um In Rome 1, you kind of had like the big civil war. And here you're at almost a constant, especially later in the game, at almost a constant risk of civil war, which just means that if you've managed your sliders correctly...

Speaker: yeah It means that, okay, so a third of my faction just jumped ship, but they only kind of control one province. So basically I lost an army and I lost a province, but it's it's manageable. But you're just going to have to fight civil wars.

Speaker: it's There's no way of getting around it. You're going to fight civil wars. um I get why they're doing this. It's also kind of one more thing to A, mimic history and B,

Speaker: Introducing something that. um More of a threat-like game. you just You can't just focus on external threat. You also always have and internal threats. think they learned a lesson. Or rather. think they took a lesson.

Speaker: From a Paradox. so So we have talked in a previous episode about how in Europa Universalis and vsha listen similar games, you can't just keep expanding. You're going to break apart sooner or later.

Speaker: And the way i understood it from doing a little bit of research before this episode is that the Total War team They really felt that there was a weakness in the game and where you once you have taken over about one third of the world, you just keep painting your map slowly.

Speaker: You don't really have a challenge. And this is something they've been trying to solve in different ways. They tried to solve it with the Realm Divide in Shogun. They've tried to solve it with more internal strife, bigger breakout factions rather than just a rebelling city.

Speaker: In Attila they're just flipping the script and the the entire game is about just taking a massive beating for a long time and and so on.

Speaker: But this is they seem to have found an issue with the game which they really want to solve. And I think this is also something that splits the player base sort of because a lot of players like the map painting.

Speaker: It's hard. And it's also fun that, I mean, compared to earlier games in the series, I think they're they're trying to solve one more thing. We talked about this with Napoleon Empire, that kind of the factions are too similar.

Speaker: ah And in Shogun, they have a lot of flair with the different factions. They can't work exactly the same way around, but you have just you just have more units. ah You have and at least more unique buildings. They're trying to go for different types of government that actually, i mean, it which makes it... ah Mark difference if you're playing the Swaby, a German tribe, or if playing Rome.

Speaker: Rome is just less overpowered in this game because it it it was laughably overpowered and in the first Rome. I mean, Roman units were a nightmare. If you're if if you're playing like Germans, you have light spear-armed infantry and you're meeting these kind of like juggernauts.

Speaker: Yeah. ah especially when you're facing down the Senate. ah And I mean, the Romans are still kind of overpowered, but it's not laughably so in this game. And there are ways to counter kind of Roman Hemingway infantry with phalanxes or lighter units.

Speaker: Yeah. yeah Just take javelins and outer resolve. That's ah the only thing you have to do.

Speaker: You're also putting a finger on it. The game had some massive bugs and massive and balancing issues. Yeah, but but then again, listen, this is my thing here. I could trash them for being unbalanced and buggy on release.

Speaker: I'm not going to do that because they solved it. One thing they didn't solve is the outro solve. and It's still buggy and messy as hell, which annoys the crap out of me.

Speaker: So hence, I don't use it. But as Magnus said, i mean, if Shogun was a good game, this is this is not a bad game. It's a decent game. It's a big game.

Speaker: But i I also feel like it's the first Total War game that takes time, you know. A turn takes time, especially when you start to get the diplomacy and you, as Rome, you you you find the Swabians, you find the gold.

Speaker: And in turn can take a lot of time. and But other than that, I mean, the flair is there. It's not as good Rome 1. It's probably better mechanically, but it doesn't give me the same feel as as Rome 1 did and compared to...

Speaker: Shogun 2, it's not as good of a game. We have better games coming up. I understand what we want to do with it. I understand the factions, the Senate, the civil war, trying to emulate history with nothing is really stable. You can get civil wars. so it And that's good, but just the things with some bad AI pathfinding when you tell them to go one way and they, no, we track away here and your movement's gone. and the

Speaker: The order is solved. Those kind of things for me is...

Speaker: They're big on the negative side, but I do love the game. I like the game. I think it's a fun game to play, especially now when I've gone back to it after being disappointed when it came out.

Speaker: It's still an enjoyable game. It's not as good as Shogun 2. I don't think it's as good as some future titles, but especially for for what comes next, I think. you

Speaker: Yeah, but one other thing is, is it in Shogun 2 or in Rome 2 that they changed the garrison ah dynamic? ah Because it's not the same as in Empire or Napoleon, where you'd be like, yeah, some shery milia shitty local militia. It wouldn't be Rome...

Speaker: I think in Shogun, you get sort of a garrison, but it's sort of like, it's it's actually weird. Because in Empire, you got got a shitty militia. In Shogun, you get a tiny elite militia.

Speaker: But still the militia system, it's still very much the same system. no no It's not the same as in Rome, where you actually get the real army. No, no. In Shogun, you get, it depends on the level tier of your castle. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, but even the smallest one is better than Yashugari. No, you get Yashugaris and you get some Samurais. and Yeah, the sixty sixty soldier Samurai unit is... That's a big game that changes how the game is played. I mean, you you can actually move your field army away and have...

Speaker: a decent confidence that your your town can hold out and you can get some really good quality garrison. You get some really good garrison units, especially if you're in a promised capital. and They're also working with Regents, which is a new thing in these games. so So kind of the gameplay is changing a lot with these games.

Speaker: yeah And I like that. It's it's a marked difference between Rome 2 and Adelaide, where it's just... it's it's easier on you. But it's also, it's depicting empires that are kind of rising. And this rising Roman Empire, healthy Roman Empire, that's the the main the main player here. And you can play different factions, but it's it's kind of sunny. ah But I think that you guys kind of honed in on what But the big problem is with Rome 2, it's just not as cool some of the other games in in this series.

Speaker: yeah But if you do life you haven't played it, I mean, give it a try. And if you like it, you have a lot of hours here because you can get quite a lot of content out of this game. We talked about Napoleon last time, which is ah ah a game I really like, but it's just too small.

Speaker: And they don't have that problem here. ah There are a lot of different factions, and especially with the DLC, it's just a lot of content. And I think that should be a lot content. But if it's not for you, it's not for you.

Speaker: Yeah. We could put a pin in it and go through it in the end of the episode after talking about the other games, but you mentioned something here, Magnus, with the province system. So in the earlier Total War game, every province was a town. Every town could be...

Speaker: s great as they as great as Rome, essentially, if you just built it correctly. And in Empire, they introduce a system where every every province has a few villages and stuff producing things, so you can raid the them. They keep that through Shogun.

Speaker: But in Rome, they introduce these, well, essentially linked provinces. Regions. Yeah. So you have ah one sort of province capital that has all the cool buildings and they have a few one smaller ones which work sort of as sort of like the villages, but also sort of like provinces. You can conquer them. You can have them as your base of operations, but you can't build anything massive in them.

Speaker: And this changes the entire sort of strategy part of this strategy game. And it's doing it forever, I think. yeah This is sort of kept for most of the later games they to some ah to some extent. I played the Three Kingdoms today and they still keep this system.

Speaker: But maybe we talk about more about that system at the end and move over to what is unique and new about Attila.

Speaker: My favorite game. Because i love this. you' You've said that it it's kind of the sequel to Barbarian Invasion or the remake of Barbarian Invasion. And in some ways, absolutely. It's set in the same time period. So you start in 395, just after and the Romans have lost a big battle to the Goths. So the the Visigoths are inside the Roman Empire. ah Rome is split in two. um And...

Speaker: they Both halves of the Roman Empire are actually depicted as different factions. Allied, very kind of like favorable towards each other, but still different factions. And outside of that, you have this i mean swarm of smaller barbarian states ah and a number of hordes.

Speaker: And here's where the horde mechanic, I think, comes into the Toad War game, of course, because you're depicting, I mean, the Huns and this kind of Volkwanderung situation. age of the Roman Empire.

Speaker: and So Rome is still far from falling. and Most regions are still under Roman control, but Rome is sick. And this is really a game about decline. And it's declined economically, socially, militarily, technologically.

Speaker: So where previous games have a tech tree, ah one of the big new things and in Attila is that, I mean, the tech tree is, yeah, you're you're progressing, but you're also declining. So when you research the higher levels of technology,

Speaker: you're going to lose the ability to build some buildings or you're going to lose technologies as well. as you start with kind of legacy technologies as the Roman Empire, which you're going to lose if you want the latest issue of technology.

Speaker: It's also depicting, i mean, the complete Christianization of the Roman Empire. And that's also a mechanic in this. Religion plays a big game. And i looked it up. There are 13 different religions over the factions in this game.

Speaker: So it's quite a lot. And it means that, yeah, you're kind of Catholic. If you're Western Roman Empire, you're Orthodox, even though that split hadn't happened yet really in history. um But you also have Aryan Christians who have yeah different varieties of pagans.

Speaker: And the big thing you're playing out, whether you're playing as kind of in quotes, a barbarian faction, if you're playing as the Romans, if you're playing as the Persians, or if you're playing as the Huns, is the fall of the Roman Empire and seeing what will happen after.

Speaker: If you don't want to play as Rome and try to keep the Roman Empire together. And that means that it's it's a very different feel depending on which faction you're playing. If you're playing as kind of the Persians or the Romans, you're playing, trying to keep this big empire together, trying to keep the threats out of your border, trying to squash civil wars and separatists.

Speaker: ah Or if you're playing as one of the barbarian factions, which want to come in and smash the place up, then you're then have the same problem as the Romans, mean, keeping everyone else out of your borders. ah But that means that the whole feel of the game is is quite different. And I think it's... ah update um I thought it was cool, very cool from the first moment I played it. ah It's a cool era of history, which, at least up to this game, wasn't... I mean, Late Antiquity is kind of cool now. It wasn't when ATLA came out. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, this is the dark pay part of the Dark Ages in many ways. And you can feel that. I mean, there must be ancient children get revved up about this because it really feels like that yeah we're depicting a dark, dark, dark, dark age. I mean, yeah more plagues, more natural disasters, more civil unrest.

Speaker: And the whole game is visually very dark. It's like they took the night setting from Rome. Just yeah this is the whole game now. as So nothing is ever sunny or fun or cool. And you're going and headed into a little ice age.

Speaker: But it's also very cool when you manage to keep the Roman Empire together. Yeah. And if you're ah true Roman boo, you'll love the kind of the feeling of, yeah, I'm saving the empire here. I can go on about like the the contents of this game, but it does feel like they're trying a new hand, especially after, rome i mean, I said that Rome 2 was kind of basic.

Speaker: It feels like, okay, we just want to make a classic game. We want everyone to like it. They're going a bit more out on edge here and taking absolutely a lot of mechanics from from Rome. But also, as you said, on DS, they're they're scaling it down a bit.

Speaker: and They're concentrating on what they they do good. And in both Rome 2 and Attila, I think that... Trade and diplomacy are good for the Total War series. It's still crap. It's still very hard to kind of keep someone friendly. And they have the thing, which I know you hate you on, where you can make a peace deal and the sodding AI just keeps breaking the peace deal.

Speaker: So you bribe them, you get a peace, they attack you, rinse and repeat. It's like playing against Donald Trump. Yeah. I'll stop there, and I'll come back for what I think is really negative about this game. want to ask you a question immediately, because the Horde mechanic has been around for a while in my two favorite games, in Medieval 2 and in the Barbarian Invasion expansion, but it doesn't work the same way.

Speaker: ah So in Barbarian Invasion, you have two major Horde factions, the Huns and the... um Oh god, I can't remember what the other one is... um It's not a conflict faction.

Speaker: But you you get two sort of factions. They start with a nomadic army and just move into Europe. And you also have a bunch of barbarian factions, which if they lose their final city...

Speaker: become a horde and just get a large army and then just move on. This is really annoying because if they if you try to kill them and they only have one city left and they lose that city, they turn into a horde just get a massive army.

Speaker: um And in Medieval 2, you have the Mongols and the Tamarids who just spawn out from like the end of the map with one massive army each. I think one of them gets a double respawn or something like that.

Speaker: And then you just have to defend against it. But then it's over. So this is what like early tries with the horde mechanic. And they seem to have liked it. But the way i understand it, it still works different ah in Attila. It's not just one big horde spawns and once you kill it, it's over.

Speaker: Well, the thing is, the horde mechanic... The horde basically functions like... yeah if you're a horde or if you go horde, your army becomes a city. and So it's kind of like, it's it's the same mechanic as if you're building buildings in a city or training units in a city, but you have to kind of like, when you're encamped, the army kind of becomes a city.

Speaker: ah And then you have moved out. I don't really like playing the horse. I think it's a bit repetitive and...

Speaker: i don't I don't really like the feel. But you start with a bunch of Hordes. So it's not just the Huns. It's also like the Allens and a bunch of others. and The Goths both start as Horde and then kind of settle down sooner or later.

Speaker: ah But if you defeat the Horde, you defeat the Horde. That's the baseline rule. ah Except for the Huns, because the game is named Attila. And it starts in 395 before Attila is alive. but ah So kind of like, i mean, the first missions you get is just survive until the year 400, survive until the year 420, which tells you a lot about the game.

Speaker: It's just about, yeah, if you survive, good on you. But of course, it would be kind of boring if you ah defeat and race and kill all the Huns before Attila is born. Which opens up one of the major problems with this game is that the Huns are basically undefeatable.

Speaker: ah you You defeat their armies, you kill the hordes, and they just respawn in the steps. So they just keep coming. So if you're playing as the Western or the Eastern Roman Empire, you have to kind of like factor on, okay, every like three or four turns, there's going to be a massive horde coming in from hung from Hungary.

Speaker: down into the Balkans. And you basically have to have one or two standing armies standing there just repeatedly defeating the Huns. And that gets kind of old when you fight your 30th battle against the Hunnicarp. It's also, once again, one of the auto-resolved problems. You can absolutely beat. These armies are defeatable.

Speaker: But the auto-resolved thing seems to think that, yeah, you should lose this game, which means you fight a lot. You defend the same city over and over and over and over. I think they might have done something better than that mechanic.

Speaker: I was going to say, think this is why the slogan of the Eastern Roman Empire let's get down to business. Yeah, I think so. But but I think you touch on something. I mean, I think this is a decent game, but you touch on the rinse and repeat action of the game. It becomes repetitive quite fast.

Speaker: Also, I think for Barbarian Invasion, I think it's the Vandals who are the other horde. Oh, yes, yes, yes, that's correct. Yeah. But I mean, I like the game. with If Rome 2 is kind of the sandbox empire building shiny, we have hope.

Speaker: it Attila is the emo cousin of Rome 2. ah Everything is dark. Nothing is fun. Let's just listen to Nine Inch Nails and cry in my room.

Speaker: Yeah. But it is... ah think it's a ah harder game than Rome 2. ah Even though with the rinse and repeat, it's not a game... If I had a new player who would have which of these should I play? Attila or Rome 2?

Speaker: I would say, play Rome 2. And then when you have some hours in Rome 2, get into Attila. Because Attila is punishing you. It's a punishing game. And as you say, it's a lot of rinse and repeat. Yes, the diplomacy is quite broken, but then again, show me a Total of War game that isn't broken in diplomacy, and I'll give you a hundred bucks.

Speaker: But all in all, like the kind of aesthetic of Ye who hear enter, let all hope yeah lose. I mean, it's it's a hard game and it's a dark game and it should be.

Speaker: it's It's a good game. It has but has its flaws. I haven't played it as much as other games, but the little I've played, I've enjoyed it for the most part. Yeah, and here I want to drop my first criticism, and then Magnus is probably going to refute it.

Speaker: um I do not like Attila that much. And this is weird, because ah this is the game I should like. I love Barbarian Invasion.

Speaker: I love the sort of um having infection in the world and just build it up to something meaningful, which you can do. And I, well, in general, I just like this style of game and I also like Nine Inch Nails.

Speaker: The problem which starts, I think it starts happening here rather in than in Rome or Shogun, is that this is the game where things start to go really slow.

Speaker: um I played a game well I played a game today and the time it generally takes me in medieval to like maybe not beat the game but get to the point where I know that my empire is going to be supreme I had gotten my first extra province.

Speaker: And one of the things that marks this is that if you want to siege down even a really shitty small town early on, it can take you like four to five turns just to reach the point where the garrison doesn't have supply and then another two or three turns until they surrender.

Speaker: Like it can take you 10 to 12 turns just to siege down a small town. And this is, I think, deliberate. They really wanted to slow the game down.

Speaker: And this is a problem for me because i um have a slight tendency to work overtime. I do not have as much free time as I used to. I need my Total War games to let me blitz through them a little bit.

Speaker: And this game just doesn't allow that anymore. No, but I mean, you're describing one of things that makes it a good Total War game and better than a lot of the others. so ah We talk a lot about the problem that the game stops being fun when he gets too big.

Speaker: And this is actually game where you if you started as the Romans, you are big. You're there. The empire is formed. You have like a third of the map. Yeah. And it's really hard. And it's all about kind of stabilizing your country.

Speaker: Uh, and it's not just, it's a, the Huns it's be all the other little barbarian kingdoms on your frontiers. It's getting the economy working, making sure that, okay, I actually have a surplus of food, uh, because this game really punishes you.

Speaker: Uh, if you get like, uh, shortage food and starvation, uh, not just your armies, but your, your settlements as well. Uh,

Speaker: And I think that solves one of the big problems that which a lot of other Total War games have. ah And whether you like it or not, well, I think that's a matter of taste. I really do.

Speaker: yeah And I do think that one of the reasons why it works is because it does something that the Warhammer games don't do. The Horde mechanic is so... but We're not going to talk about the Warhammer games. I'm sorry for triggering you, Johan.

Speaker: But the Horde mechanic is so stupid in those games. It's so hard on the map to kind of get this stable region because you what you want to do in Atelier is really secure the frontiers so that the rest of the regions can kind of chug along.

Speaker: And you're still going to get maybe a civil war. You might still get an insurrection or separatists. But basically, you get kind of stable regions. And then you're trying to form a frontier.

Speaker: And then maybe if you want to expand that frontier. ah And that works in this game. You can actually get your economy running and get stable regions. And then you just have to defend or expand the frontiers.

Speaker: ah But it makes that a challenge. It's also so punishing that you actually... Because they they have a raise mechanic in this that they don't have in Rome. One or two. And that also does things the game. a you can't just... You can't let a barbarian faction just take one of your small cities because they might fucking raise it.

Speaker: And then it takes 15 turns to rebuild it and it costs a lot of money and your whole frontier might be destabilized. So you actually have to fight for kind of like the small towns on your frontier as well. ah But it also means that you might not want to expand. For example, you might not want to get bogged down in Germania pacifying that.

Speaker: I've actually... The game has forced me to... go all full de popular and really kind of go full Roman and just raise all of Germania because it's better if it's a desert than it's a staging ground for evasions in my frontier.

Speaker: And that says something about the game. it actually It actually challenges you. um Is it a nice Palakmancer? Not necessarily. Do you want to really use the save function and maybe come back to a long campaign? Absolutely.

Speaker: ah But that's also what's good about it. It is a bigger game. It manages what Napoleon and, to be fair, even Medieval didn't really manage. wow And I think it's not just a good game, but it's an interesting Total War game because of that.

Speaker: And most of the base mechanic works. I mean, the economy, yeah, you get the hang of it. and Trade is not... good but yeah the trading mechanic isn't that good but it still rewards you for doing good things they're kind of trying to keep at least some factions friendly and trading with you the diplomacy is weird ah but it's functioning it's it's not completely broken and for total war game that's pretty decent

Speaker: Yeah, think one of the games I think this is one of the games where you can't just make a deal so bad that the AI think it's good again. Just because the sort of the the number it calculates on how much minus goes over the last there amount of zeros you can have in it number and just pops out it on the other end, and which is a weird coding error they had in a lot of the early games.

Speaker: I did not know that, actually. yeah know a bunch of the this is some This is a very famous error from one of the... I think it's from 2 or 3, but they also have it in a bunch of the early Total War game, actually. yeah It's not that fun to exploit, but it exists.

Speaker: It's the same error that makes Gandhi go full-on Warlord in the early Civ games because Zero tips over and he gains a lot of that. Also, Warhammer has race mechanics because everyone is a different race. I won't go into the race with a Z.

Speaker: app Yeah, they do that do that in Warhammer 2. I mean, I erased all of Naggaron because I didn't want those pesky dark elves up there having it as a staging ground. But, I mean, ah i get why you like this game, but it's not for me.

Speaker: That's the end of that. We will come back to the Horde mechanic and the Warhammer games when we talk about the Warhammer games. It's not good. Know that stop there there is a difference here. And it's ah ah one of the basic things which fucks it up is just that at least at least in this game, though I mean, the Hordes aren't completely random. You can't just have them pop up somewhere.

Speaker: ah Which, at least the first Warhammer game, you... you get the problem there's that yeah these are my stable regions they're far from the frontier and all of a sudden no you have a horde here bra heard how was i supposed to prepare for this you're not now these are with the roll of the dice yeah and i don't like that i don't like that at all i get that we'll get back to that because there's improvements that needs to be done to the horde mechanic in going from a device of probably device that people have had these arguments as i tell it came out is it brilliant or is it crap but

Speaker: But going from a like ah ah divisive war game that still day did do things good to a game that tries to pretty much use the same mechanic and screw everything up.

Speaker: Yes. So I played Attila today. And one of the most annoying things that happened to me was that every new turn I got a pop-up about how one of my nobles weren't loyal enough.

Speaker: But in Attila, that's mostly a pop-up. In France of Britannia, it is a problem. So France of Britannia is in many ways just a continuation of the Attila.

Speaker: You could call it sort of the wannabe medieval free if it wasn't because they really wanted to make a smaller game. They didn't want to keep scaling after Room 2. Well, they didn't do so well.

Speaker: So they opted for the UK. And this is something they have done. There were is actually an expansion pack to Medieval 2 where you only play in in the UK or in in Great Britain or in um england England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. which They actually did that for the first Medieval game. So this is old stuff. yeah This is classic Total War Round. So this is where they opt to play.

Speaker: And in many ways, it works from the exact same mechanics as so Attila and mostly Rome. And the the reason I bring up the loyalty system is...

Speaker: First, I want to say I like, I really like France of Britannia. But one of the reasons a lot of people don't like it is because things just feel a little bit off. One of things that feel a little bit off is the loyalty mechanics.

Speaker: Because all of a sudden, you don't just have um nobles in your clan. You have nobles in your clan who wants to have specific provinces. And only by balancing these provinces do you avoid a rebellion.

Speaker: So they introduce another slider scale. and which you need to manage. And this is essentially, in many ways, what this game is. It is a fairly big game, but not nearly as big as Rome or Attila.

Speaker: It uses almost the same army and mechanics, but only with the unit types you could imagine if you wanted to be in medieval, early medieval Britain. So this is a game that takes place essentially after Alfred, I think it's called, sort of Christianized the southern part of of Britain.

Speaker: Let me just stop you there. It's a bit of a wrong, but essentially it's after sort of this... ah um Alfred did not Christianize Britain. Don't add us, English people. No, that's true. I should know this, actually. it's after the great heathen army.

Speaker: So it is it during Alfred's time. ah He was king in Wessex. And then you have the Dane law. So two. yeah viking Yeah. I should probably say re-Christianize in the sense that this is the point where we have had sort of a Viking invasion and sort of in English history, sort of the formation of England as a reaction to um um Vikings essentially taking over like half of the island. And the um this is sort of still the dark, dark ages, but of the sort of foundation myth of of England.

Speaker: and the so in the... eight eight hundred um And you essentially play as say one of a bunch of either Viking, Scottish, Irish, or English, or actually Cornish factions.

Speaker: you get to play Cornish. That's very important for me. And it's only important... and No, I love it. But it's like one of the only like small, ah specific cultural factions.

Speaker: And you essentially play over the unification of, the um well, the British Isles. And it is a game which is in many ways smaller in scope than Attila.

Speaker: Not just because you don't play across the entire world, but also because they sort of just cut you down to these few factions and the unit types. And well, in many ways, you get to play just the unit types from Attila, which hung around in ah Northern Europe.

Speaker: So it limits you in many ways in scale. And it fiddles with essentially all of the mechanics from Attila. It keeps them, but it fiddles with all of them. And this, I think, is where it has to split the player base a bit because people don't always love the way they fiddle with it.

Speaker: Personally, I like a lot of them, but I have am previously received criticism for and for this is and like, so to speak.

Speaker: And um heading that criticism might be Magnus. Yeah, because I ah downloaded the game again. I, of course, played it when it came out. at Didn't really love it.

Speaker: ah What I remember was, okay, this feels that a bit too small, a bit too fiddly. It's all about just managing your... It's too much managing your nobles and not enough managing everything else.

Speaker: But, I mean, I, as most other people, like this time period. I think it's cool. It's obvious that... Creative Assembly likes this period, thinks it's cool. It's their third attempt, I think, to go into this period of history, ah excluding Vikings that you can play in some other games. You can play the kind of like proto-Vikings in Romezum and in Adela in the DLCs.

Speaker: But My honest-to-God reaction when playing it this week was after 45 minutes, this is unplayable. It is just unplayable.

Speaker: And I closed the game down. I went back and played Medieval 2 just to not be pissed at the entire game series. And it was just a palate cleanser going back in time to that game.

Speaker: But it's just it's like they've taken every mechanic from Adelaide. And just fiddled with it. Precisely as you say, Andreas. And they've just ruined everything. it' it's It's so counterintuitive. It's so fiddly. It's just, aha, I got a rebellion. Why did I get a rebellion?

Speaker: Why did I not know that I was getting a rebellion? Why is everyone starving? And why does it take so many turns to build a farm? And it's just, they they've tried to push too many mechanics into this and too many i mean dimensions of it.

Speaker: And it means that it's really hard painting the map. They've taken the region's mechanic and just really nerfed the small settlements. So they're basically undefendable. and They've screwed up the recruitment system.

Speaker: function so that yeah you recruit a unit and then you have to spend like five terms waiting for it to fill up kind of like your mustering and i get why they want to have a more mustard mechanic for this period of history but it's so annoying and it means that it takes like it it can take honest to god fifteen turns early game just to get your full stack going Yeah, because when you recruit it, shouldn't you be mustering it when you recruit it? that That should be the thing. that One might think so.

Speaker: One might think so. one and That might be ah a really logic thing for a game to do. But no, no, no. They don't. see this way i they have somethingmon yeah not i'm knocking I'm not finished with my Because they had the opportunity to do something really cool there. I really love what they've done with the factions. You could play Strathclyde and you're regularly seeing kind of this this welsh ah this Welsh legacy outside of modern-day Welsh, which is so rarely well depicted.

Speaker: And I think that's really cool. You get these different kind of Irish factions and get they portray the links between the Scottish and Ireland culturally, linguistically different.

Speaker: ah But it's just it's just too much. it's like, no, everything cannot be all important all at once. Managing your family, managing your nobles, managing your food, managing your ah kind of like resupply, which is also fudged up in this game.

Speaker: So it's basically they had... They had something that was tried and tested with Adelaide. Because as you say, the base functions are are similar.

Speaker: And they decided to screw everything

Speaker: And they've taken some horrible inspiration from the Warhammer series as well. So you get more towards kind of like hero units and more towards that kind of mechanic. It's not fully blossomed out. But you can see that they're taking inspiration from some successful games.

Speaker: And just using it to screw up another existing game. And I think that this is maybe the truest bomb. And I'm not sure. It put me off all of the Saga games. So I haven't even played the other Saga games.

Speaker: They might be worse. But this is the first time they did it. They are worse. It is horrible. You won. and You want to pile in? Piling and piling. I mean, the biggest thing for me is... You talk a lot about they've taken mechanics and tweaked everything.

Speaker: I don't agree with you there. They've taken some mechanics and tweaked them. And some they have just plainly removed from the game. Like, you cannot force march. You cannot ambush.

Speaker: Which is tried and tested things, which are good things. That's just removed. They also went... The biggest pet peeve for me with this game is... Now we're back to unlocking technologies by building buildings or recruiting units. We have the tech tree.

Speaker: it It's gone. And I mean, this game, I see what they wanted to do. I can see the culture flavor with it. That's good. They had a good thing going. But they in my personal view, they F it up.

Speaker: I do not like Thrones of Britannia, hands down. If if Shogun 2 is a good game, Rome 2 is a decent game, this is, for me at least, as close as unplayable as I can get it.

Speaker: I hate this game. um I like this game and I think one of the main reasons is unfortunately related to the fact that you guys are technically correct. um So I actually played Thrones of Britannia before I played Attila.

Speaker: So I learned the faction mechanics. I learned the new food mechanic. I learned all this stuff. I mean, food existed in Ashok as well. It just worked at a different... But like I learned all of these mechanisms. mechanism um I played Rome as well, but I played it back when it was so buggy. I just didn't learn anything wrong. We should say, sorry. Yeah.

Speaker: But like I learned all of these mechanisms through France of Britannia. So I learned them this way. And then it was actually quite annoying to get into Rome 2 again and into Attila again because they just moved everything around.

Speaker: Because the system works. Yeah. They sort of work. Everything ah apart from the loyalty system actually works in France of Britannia as well. It just well works slightly differently.

Speaker: And just to add the onto it, they also moved all the menus a little bit so you can't find anything. yeah But it also means that if you start with Britannia and learn it from there, you can't find anything in Attila instead.

Speaker: ah this is not just This is not really a defense since this game came out several years later. They should probably just kept it the way it was in Attila if they wanted to keep their player base.

Speaker: Um... But in some ways, it works if you haven't been trained on the previous games. It's not that different. It's just sufficiently different to get give you this sort of Uncanny Valley experience of it all the time.

Speaker: um I also think it's very funny with the master mechanics because it's ah it's incredibly realistic. That is how the British government works. First you pay for everything and then you get to pay for it again when you actually do it. It's just, yeah.

Speaker: No, but, I mean, we talked about how kind of like they wanted to do really shaped Adelaide. And I think the problem with Toros Petralia is kind of the same thing. I mean, with Adelaide, they wanted to go from this kind of like rising Roman Empire to a falling Roman Empire.

Speaker: So you take this this structured empire and you portray how all of the problems kind of breaks it apart. And they might have overcooked it a bit because Rome tends to fall way too soon in that game.

Speaker: But that's what it I think that they're doing a similar thing with Thrones of Batania. They're just like, yeah, we want to portray how much chaos there is in the British Isles through this period.

Speaker: And that just goes through the whole game. So it's it's so hard just to just kind of have us have stable regions because there's just too much screwing it up. And it goes from being like challenging to just breaking the whole gameplay.

Speaker: yeah And it it's it's as I mentioned, it's really hard to kind of keep control of regions. You have a thousand neighbors. You have... And you also have a lot of kind of, there's much more of a mechanic where you have, or an integral part of the game is your and vassal states.

Speaker: And these vassal states keep dragging into wars because they're small than weak and people declare war on them So you get pulled into, well i mean, it's just conflict all around and and the economy is very...

Speaker: it's It's weirdly structured if you compare it to Adelaide and Rome, the game kind games like this one that preceded it. And it all just lends together to this unplayable character, which isn't helped by the fact that they've also gotten this weird aesthetic approach with the saga game where they've leaned even more heavily into kind of the cartoonish characters. So each card for your for your units is just a guy screaming.

Speaker: And then they put different beards and different but weapons in their hands. But it's more cartoonish, which doesn't help with this kind of unstructured feel of the game. Yeah, I'm going to hand hand over to you, Juan, soon. I need to break in something here because we talk of about this as cartoonish. Cartoonish is a sort of a weird word in the and English language.

Speaker: ah that is Especially if you talk American English, cartoonish is essentially like yeah morning cartoons. What we are talking about is this very sort of painted, artful, painted, medieval painting style, which is from Shogun.

Speaker: No, and I mean... It is a problem because it it ah so it doesn't look like... colorful and cartoonish in that sense. Instead it just... The problem is if you have looked at medieval art for some reason...

Speaker: you sort of have it It can be sort of hard to distinguish people painted in the 2D medieval art style. And this is definitely a problem in all of these games. And it culminates in Thrones of Britannia that the unit cards are very similar because it's the same screaming Viking.

Speaker: Yeah. Hannah, stand by. Cartoonish. Yeah. i I actually want to defend Thrones of Britannia here. but Yeah. the In one way, i want to defend it.

Speaker: It is a bad game, but it is not the worst saga game, and it's not the worst Total War game, but it's still bad. I think it's the best saga game, and this is actually kind of important. Which is saying nothing. yeah but It's the best saga game. I'm the best footballer I don't know, Greenland.

Speaker: yeah have some decent I've seen football in Greenland. Sorry to fuck down on you folks. yeah You should have gone with Nepal. I think they have decent footballers there too, but it's like me saying I'm the best footballer between me and my cat, basically.

Speaker: No, but um the Saga games are actually two different things here. So, Frustopritania is essentially a Rome 2 or Attila game, just smaller.

Speaker: Whereas the Saga series is based around the idea that let let's not make a big yeah sort of continent-wide game. just Let's just take a small geographical area and a small snippet of history.

Speaker: And this seems to be sort of a safing it strategy where we can't fail if we go small enough. And the First Up Attorney is a saga game in the sense that it takes a small snippet of history, much like the um the expansion pack is to Medieval 2.

Speaker: But it's not a saga game in the sense that it it's built on the same engine or the same code as the other saga games. It's still built on the Attila code, mostly. And think that might be another part of the problem here is that they had to fiddle with so many mechanics from Adela because if they hadn't, it would just felt like a DLC. they had to They had to kind of get it far enough away from the earlier games.

Speaker: And sadly, they screwed up. them They might have been better off actually doing a ah bigger game, even though it would have been more similar to Adela. um um ja It's just speculation, but that would explain a lot about this game.

Speaker: yes And for those of you who haven't listened before, Andreas has claimed that this is ah kind of like the best Total War game, I think you said. and It's a very good Total War game. I like it. yeah Two-thirds of the podcast can give you a clear and concise recommendation.

Speaker: Do not play this game. Do not play this game. But as I said, this game is sort of a continuation of Rome and Attila. And it means that it also sort of ends an era of Total War games.

Speaker: Because there is going to be a new era later on based more around partly lessons they learned from the failure of some of these games. And partly lessons they learned from um the Warhammer games.

Speaker: We're going to talk about it in a further episode. But this also sort of this is sort of the end of the remake era in some ways. And it's also sort of a continuation of game code from Rome all the way to Thrones.

Speaker: Shogun is sort of a continuation of the code from um Empire through Napoleon. And this changes how the Total War game works and feels for a player.

Speaker: ah these games feel differently from Rome and the Medieval 2. And the upcoming set of games are going to feel different from these games. What do you guys think are like the so the main conclusion? What are the good things from these games that should be kept? And what are the bad things in these games that should be burned to the ground and razed?

Speaker: I think something that we touched on on Thrones of Britannia, if you have a system that actually works, do not go in and tweet that system. Do not make it complex for the sake of trying to do something new. Do not remove things that...

Speaker: that are proven, like force march, like ambushes, like agents, but for example. I think those are some some of the good things. But I also want to say that during the era of Shogun 2 and Rome 2, those are kind of the, if we exclude the Warhammer setting...

Speaker: Total War games are perfect to relive a part of history in a strategy and battle sense. And I think and I hope that Creative Assembly will move away from the kind of saga, Three Kingdoms, Pharaoh, where Troy, that to go back to doing...

Speaker: maybe medieval three or some other part in history, because that's what they're good at when they start to stray away from it, which we'll see in later episodes, so they are declining ah in my point of view.

Speaker: Yeah. Well, as an early total war fan, I, I feel that, yeah, they're declining after this. And I think it's more interesting to talk of this after we've talked about the Warhammer games, because I think,

Speaker: It's and very understandable why they get inspired by those and why the success of the Warhammer games influences what they do apart from the Warhammer games. I'm not just not sure that they did struck the right conclusion.

Speaker: ah But we'll get back to that. We'll leave that as a cliffhanger for the next episode. What I like about kind of this era of Total War game is that they're really coming into their own in a sense. I mean, these are these are bigger, more complex games. You get more out it. There's just more content in them. than There's more variety.

Speaker: and They are trying to kind of solve some of the big scale problems they have. i mean, you don't want to blob out too soon. And they do that in different ways in all and all the games we've been talking about. but ah But I think that...

Speaker: the It's more or less successful. And the three of us seem to have different views on what what worked and what didn't work. We're trying to solve that. But there's no denial that they're kind of moving.

Speaker: They're really taking a huge leap from the early games in the series. and It is getting more complex. It is getting more thought through. It is getting more innovative in one sense and more kind of comfortable in one Yeah.

Speaker: um But overall, these are quite these are solid games. These are yeah very playable games. There's a lot of content here. And if you haven't tried it, I can highly recommend it, apart from Thrones of Britannia.

Speaker: Just forget that one. ah

Speaker: But if yeah, ah it it feels like this is a very much its own era. And I'm kind of glad that we you split the game series up into kind of the early games, these games, and later on the Warhammer games and the Saga games, because I think that it does have some credence to it.

Speaker: um

Speaker: what should they keep and what What should they keep from these games, or if they're trying to go back to this? I mean... I'd say try and go big. um Yeah, you're not going to, maybe not going to succeed 100%, but it i do I do like where they try to go a bit bigger as in Rome 2, and I do think it works. i'm I'm really sorry that it wasn't more of a successful game because I think it's a really, it is a good game. It's a solid game, as I said.

Speaker: uh the same for showing even though it's it's smaller it's still really uh it's a very competent game uh and i as i've said repeatedly i i love attila uh it's far from a perfect game uh you need to tinker with a horn mechanic for god's sake uh you can't have unkillable factions uh it's just not a good idea um what did they should they throw away well thrones of britannia we could yeah thrones of britannia uh we could have a diplomacy where people don't either love you or hate you some yeah something in between might be good because that is a problem in both rome and ottila there's some factions you just hate your guts and you can't really change it

Speaker: In general, I think yeah the Total War games are the games that should... um I would love if they listened, if Creative Assembly listened to our episode on diplomacy and politics and just sort of tried to build that their diplomacy mechanism or engine from the idea that factions want things and try to get things rather than factions exist on a like-to-hate-you scale.

Speaker: The world shouldn't revolve around you. It should revolve around what they want to achieve. yeah And the goal of faction might not in every waking moment be total power. yeah ah Which is a problem with at least Rome 2 and Atla.

Speaker: ah That the factions want to kind of like topple you. And it's not it's not ah a sure thing that they want to topple you each and every moment. They might actually be okay with the status quo. um but yeah and or Or just dump the factions.

Speaker: i know I mean, Thrones thrones would be an eminently more playable game if they ditched that mechanic to scale it down. um Yeah. I guess I have some concluding remarks as well. um The first one is there are two things that happening which which are happening in this era which I am sort of uncomfortable with. The first one is just the game getting longer.

Speaker: And it's related to the second one, which is, i am I think they got competitive, or I think they looked at the Paradox and realized, oh shit, there is another studio apart from us and Firaxis, who are also doing grand strategy games and are also so successful. We need to compete with them.

Speaker: I think Total War works better when it's Total War rather than a empire diplomatic internal politics building game.

Speaker: um I think they may have gone a little bit wrong with all the loyalty, faction mechanics, internal court mechanics, stuff like that.

Speaker: Because it makes you pause. so It makes you stop and look at more levers and scales and sliders and the fiddle with stuff. Which means you can't really just rush through the things you want to do. You can't you can't really play the game. i think this is my sort of smooth RTS player game gamer brain. You just can't comprehend having to take a break just to check if my wife still loves me.

Speaker: In-game, I might add.

Speaker: But I think this might have been a little bit of a mistake. And I would love them to build a game where I can focus on essentially as being this, yeah, I have some city building or some economy to do to fiddle with, but not too much because I want to go out and have wars.

Speaker: Mm-hmm. um It would actually be really interesting to just to know, because in these games you have the opportunity to go for an economic or cultural victory. How many times do people do that?

Speaker: Never. um I think never. I'm not sure, but it feels like yeah most of the time you're going for the military victory, right? You're just painting map.

Speaker: But it's still there, and I'm not sure that it really needs to be.

Speaker: And I think that we're just about heading to wrapping up. um You want to do say that what you want to keep from these games.

Speaker: But I think ah think what I want to keep is what I want to keep from this time and era. I mean, Shogun 2 is from 2011, I think, and Rome Total War is from 2013. The mechanics they had there worked for that timeline. I would like to see see them build on something new. I would like to see them have ah better trading system, a better diplomacy system.

Speaker: Yeah. But what I want to keep is kind of the feel and the immersion and the aesthetics we get from Rome 2, from Shogun 2, and in some ways from Attila also.

Speaker: That is what I want to keep. ah But I think we can do everything better now. They have been better in some of the games. Warhammer, for example, le and they removed some of the the mechanics that take a long time.

Speaker: but I would like to see them come out and announce a good, big title coming up. Some historical period where they, yeah, this is all in. This is going to be our new Rome or medieval or shogun. This is our new Warhammer for that point.

Speaker: case this is going to be our flagship now this this is what we're going for and I pray to god they're not going for American Civil War some drab period of history that nobody cares about unless you're American yeah let let let me let me yeah let me just throw in a drab period of history that no one cares about I mean something set in the early modern period before empire yeah I mean like Italian Wars or 30 Years War 30 Years War would be so interesting really cool yeah ah

Speaker: We should say there are i mean there are some... i mean The forts in Nutella are quite stupid. ah as There's always a conveniently placed hole in a city wall or something like that. ah It's just stupid.

Speaker: yeah they get it It adds also to the repetition in that game. so i mean Everything isn't perfect in these games either. Far from it. I get why they wanted to... they wanted to kind of like do a Thrones and just tweak things because these games deserve to be tweaked.

Speaker: ah But they screwed it up. But I think that's, um the yes this is really your job, but I think that's quite a good way to end. And we yeah before and we have to, sorry, you air it, look forward to it. Sorry, I just want to end with something. I actually checked now. 1.3% of total war players have gone for culture or economic victory.

Speaker: okay why did they keep this for so many games the game is called Total War yeah I know I know it's not Total Culture or Total Economy oh I feel validated is a game I would love by the way I would love that Total Culture Total Economy coming now with new interest rates DLC isn't that just Vicky I think that's Vicky basically yeah And on that bombshell.

Speaker: Exactly. Yeah, no. Let's round off. There's one thing I want them to keep because there there is a lot of talks right now about a medieval free being in the makings.

Speaker: The only thing I really want to emphasize is scale. Big is beautiful in those games. yeah yeah You can make it simple. You can simplify it down to the war mechanics. You can make it the sort of retro in many ways just to keep it big.

Speaker: Yeah, and if you if you want to tell shorter stories, that's what DLCs are for. I mean, they did this with me at Medieval 2. You get a smaller a smaller map for the Crusades, for example. Perfectly fine. And just look the Paradox game. People are willing to pay.

Speaker: yep Or being dragged kicking and screaming to pay. I don't know. wow

Speaker: um But on that note, no, I want to one short final thing. For this era of Total War game, do you in general give them a thumbs up or a thumbs down?

Speaker: Or a thumbs in between?

Speaker: Thumbs up, I think, even though Thrones of Britannia is in this era. I mean, thumbs up Shogun 2, Rome 2, and also Atelier is a good game. But basically, Shogun 2, I can't do anything else than give it a thumbs up.

Speaker: enthusiastic thumbs up and I'm kicking thrones out of this hair yeah no for me it's also a thumbs up but they get sort of a minus for ah a for effort and sort of a minus somewhere on how they carry it out but then this is they were trying to make the game I really wanted they didn't really get all the way there but they were really trying And on those words, um stick around for our next episode when we talk about the rest of the Total War games.

Speaker: That is going to be exciting. There's going to be even more fighting. yeah So have a good one, folks. Have a good one.