How realistic are the total war games?

>pom
Lololol

On top of all that:
>Army is organized into 'units' of soldiers
>Who are all the same
>And only carry one, maybe two weapons
>Which are all the same
>And can be switched to immediately at any time
>Repeatedly, no matter how cumbersome like a lance or pike

Also most victories in a typical TW battle involve ridiculous casualties even for the victor that would have realistically crippled that army from any further battles.

oh stop dudes been around whooping ass for a decade.
He's a faggot elite who refuses to play anything other than rome era. i get it but he still good.

Not really realistic without mods but it's still enjoyable.

Even with mods it's not very realistic. Mods are mostly just cosmetic and balancing changes, but they can't actually change the hard-coded mechanics that make the entire system inherently unrealistic.

Things like DEI and TROM can at least make it a little more historical though.

More accurate units, better balancing, more capable AI, more realistic battle times and casualties, etc. etc.

Of course there's an extent, they're not miracle cures, but it's still far and away better than the released product most of the time.

Better illusions, but illusions all the same.

How about Napoleon: Total War?

Are they fun? Yes, with mods. Stay away from vanilla, most of the time it's too buggy and pretty basic. The only Vanilla version that I've enjoyed was Napoleon (because it's too scripted and not much can go wrong) or Shogun 2 because it's actually a good game and not meant to be realistic in any way.
You're not going to be executing any complex tactics since Hammer&Anvil works 99% of the time and just enjoy watching your toy soldiers hacking at each other until one side routs.
P.s. Mods that I'd recommend are Stainless Steel (for M2TW), LME4 (for Napoleon) and EB (for Rome).

There's not any real-life tactic that works for Total War, which is why the multiplayer meta resembles RTS more than a military college. Even hammer-and-anvil doesn't resemble the actual way that tactic worked, but instead is just a historical idea used as a coat of paint on game mechanics expanded from the RTS genre.

It's a facsimile, which is what makes the series popular to begin with. They were never battle simulations to begin with, but movie-like experiences where atmosphere and graphics made up for essentially a reenactment from your favorite period war movies.

Napoleon total war is possibly the most realistic total war out there.

Since it was a fairly easy period to research compared to shit like Medieval Europe, Classical World, or Feudal Japan.

I think Napoleon total war is the least realistic of them all. The AI never attacks in column, lines of communication aren't even touched upon and more often than not a bayonet charge will turn into a lengthy melee with the other side when in reality one battalion would likely break and run before the other battalion reached them with their charge. There's also hardly any skirmishing between the light infantry in front of the lines. But like the other posts said, mods can make up for most of these problems

>1:2 ratio of horse archers and cavalry
Literally unbeatable

>Shogun 2 ForS
>a war which had around 7000 casualties I think
>you can have that many in a single battle

>How realistic are the total war games?
They're quite arcade, but there are mods which go for realism, I am a Total War modder and we're trying to create the most realistic mod yet.
>Could someone with a good knowledge of real life, era appropriate formations and tactics jump into the game and dominate?
Against the AI you don't need much tactics, even though it's quite competent in the latest games, it's still easy, it's like playing against a 10 year old. You can tell theres a plan behind what its doing, and attempts to counter your actions, but they're pretty basic moves.

The fact that you have God powers is the main thing that makes Total War so easy, you could beat Caesar or Alexander if you could control your army from the air and move them with a single click instantly. It also doesn't help that the maps are usually huge with no protected flanks, making flanking very easy. Historically armies would cover their flanks with natural obstacles which rarely happens in Total War so you can Always go around the rear with ease.

However try playing against another player. Then it becomes more much strategic and fun. OF course its still about flanking and getting behind, or punching through their lines, but that is how most battles were won.

What mod are you working on?

I used to in a S2 multiplayer battle. Just before contact i pulled my centre back a bit and then surrounded him.

1-0 retired undefeated in TW multiplayer battles.

Ancient Empires

It's sort of a spiritual successor to Roma Surrectum 2. Heavy focus on historical accuracy and realism.

>Ancient Empires
Nice! Very much looking forward to your mod.

TW+mods (DEI, Hellenica, Fall of Eagles) have exactly as much realism as you can have in a video game without making it not fun and unplayable.
> Ancient Empires
Can't wait for it.

Realistic battles are just not possible in Total War. The best you can do are graphical edits and balancing "units" to be better or worse than others using arbitrary stats.

A realistic battle sim needs the logistical complexity of a Paradox or RotTK game while simultaneously expanding the concept of the battle beyond the usual scope of the 5 minute battlefield.

What's the best TW game? Roman Empire is one of my favourite time periods but I've heard Rome 2 sucks cok.

EU4 :^)

Incredibly unrealistic, they're basically fantasy games loosely based on reality.

Real life, era appropriate strategy and tactics can work, but it's usually suboptimal.

ROMA INVICTA

The numbers are typically less than 10% of what they actually were and you get a birdseye view.

Imagine a battle line stretching for 3 kilometers and only being able to view it from first person and it becomes a different matter.

Rome 2 is pretty good in it's current state.
It was shit at launch, but now it's pretty fun.

Attila or Shogun 2

Napoleonic war is the most unrealistic, but if they showed how they actually fought, no one would buy it.

They fixed R2 by now and DEI made it even better.

Europa Barbarorum is very realistic. It's the most authentic experience of the world 270 BC you'll ever have.

>you have an overview over the battlefield

You can lock the camera to your General unit for more realism, so this point is wrong.

Why?

>How realistic are the total war games?}

I've only played Rome and Medieval 2, but not very. Battles are very short, often the entire action being decided after an inital clash and some flanking maneuvers, and often end with entire armies being obliterated. While this very occasionally happened in real life, most of the time, you'd be lucky if you got more than 20% of your enemy's forces.

This in turn makes it too quick and easy to gobble up entire nations after a few huge battles.

>Could someone with a good knowledge of real life, era appropriate formations and tactics jump into the game and dominate?

It's pretty easy to dominate without that crap.

Yes.

I'm pretty sure OP isn't talking about AI or battle realism but more about the actual era realism, the name of buildings, troops, important cities, etc...

>Could someone with a good knowledge of real life, era appropriate formations and tactics jump into the game and dominate?

Spaghetti lines confirmed for not working well in Total Warhammer

I agree with everyone else here about the TW series unrealism, but one thing I would say in their defense is that they're a big step up. If you look at what was around before them, probably the closest analogue would be the Lords of the Realm series, which had that same turn based building game, real time tactical combat.

And in Lords.... oh boy. No morale, all fights are to the death, minimal bonuses for flanking/surrounding, you have 7-8 unit types which you can build weapons for at your blacksmith, 0 customizeability: For instance, Bowmen don't wear armor, hence costing no iron. You get a lot of bowmen, especially early in the game. Later on, you want some bowmen with armor to protect them from the enemy shooting back? Fuck you, we don't do that in this game.

Not to mention the feudal economy is vastly simplified, consisting of "How do you want to allocate your serfs in this province" and "How big is the castle here"?

So don't knock the Total Wars that bad, it's hard to make a game that's simultaneously a good simulation and a good game.

>Medieval 2 stainless steel
>Get 4 units of lancers plus a boatload of cheap pikes.
>1 unit of lancers left flank other three right flank
>Open battle with a massive rush
>3 units of lancers wipe out any and all flank protection the enemy has
>Proceed to charge whats left of the infantry with my lancers before the left flank falters.

And that is how you can win a tons of battle with little thought.

youtube.com/watch?v=bfFNNLyAWGE&index=3&list=PLVw-VZKIsafvckLHXeu-qk096yKAOmeVP
I prefer this guy. his videos are concise and good like jelly beans so you can watch one and move onto the other quickly compared to the 30 minute long videos by others

Isn't that pretty historically accurate? I know that generals in the 1600's talked about the cavalry on the flanks winning or losing the rest of the battle.

How would one design a better simulation/game building off the lessons of both Lords and Total War?

Two biggest problems:

Units are willing to take far too many casualties before routing. It should be unusual for a unit to keep fighting past 50% casualties, including not only deaths but also wounds.

Ranged weapons are far too accurate. Historically something like 1 in 200 projectiles or less would actually hit the enemy. Especially in the Warscape game the soldiers are like snipers when you get the enemy down to their last few guys. Archers can even accurately hit units that they can't see because of terrain and walls.

>Pikes in a line formation

Disgusting.

Well, I have 0 design experience whatsoever, so take this with a grain of salt: But especially if you want to simulate say, something in medieval times:

Battles should be less lethal and easier to escape from. I'm not sure how you could do this, maybe make it harder to issue orders, as well as making pursuit tougher. Probably a lowering of lethality in melee combat, although this will make battles last longer.

You should also make routing much more frequent, and "less intense". Unless and until you have hyper-professional troops, you're more likely to see a pattern of fight-rout-reform-fight-rout-reform several times before a battle is decided.

Armies should be much more expensive relative to the economy. Something like 3/4 of the Roman empire's budget at its height would be going to maintaining 25-30 legions, with the wealth of most of Europe to draw upon. Armies should be relatively small, and often raised for campaigns, disbanded when they're over, something you pretty much never see in TW games.

Probably some more stuff besides, but that's just what's coming up off the top of my head.

>Europa Barbarorum

I remember the first time playing the mod and getting rekt.... i was so fucking mad

Now its all i still play

this no one wants to watch you spend 20 minutes setting up your formations and a lecture about sonic the hedgehog

nice, yeah i can see why you like him,

man i miss the old days 1vs1

Apologies

I especially agree with the point of raising and dissolving armies as needed. That was the standard of every civilization with the exception of Rome under Marius and onwards.

Unless you have a fucking ridiculous economy, you shouldn't have standing armies.

I would like to see aggression checked on the campaign map. war weariness was a good addition to Attila. But very rarily were people at war for huge lengths of time, nor did they just bounce for war to war in ancient times.

>Unless you have a fucking ridiculous economy, you shouldn't have standing armies.

It wasn't just the economy, you also had enormous political troubles with keeping a standing army, the pressures of which caused quite a bit of trouble for the Republic, and probably precipitated the transformation into Empire; and throughout the entirety of the empire, Imperators were always trying to balance this general against that one, to prevent any from unseating him.

Yea but trying to accomplish that in a game tends to just get tedious rather than making it interesting.

I'm not so sure: I don't think it would be that hard to implement something where the longer your army is in the field, the higher your rate of rebel spawning and the lower your generals loyalties sink.

The trick is to finally move outside of the scope of both real-time strategy combat and the massive spreadsheet mechanics of Paradox style games. The former is inherently limited by the need to create an RTS unit like a halberdier, scale up his numbers a hundred fold, then group them together and hope the engine can keep up. The latter has too huge a scope with too much going on to spare enough memory for much else. The trouble is most people expect a certain level of scale these days, like a map the size of Europe with dozens of factions all making their moves in turns.

It might be time to take a step back and come at the problem from an entirely different angle. Maybe limit the scope of a game to a campaign season, or series of campaign seasons.

you could probably add tactical battles into something like CK2. It'd be very dull early game though, just a cripple fight between a couple of hundred peasants with a tiny group of mounted retainers.

>prince of mindanao

War in the napoleonic era was based on shock action. Read Paddy Griffith and de Piq

Gee... I wonder who's behind this post

kek

There are autism mods that make Rome 2 battles last like an hour in real time because battles were said to last days, and other things like that. Its pretty fun, and it looks decent.

For a youtuber, bring any member of RTK or HoS and they whoop his ass so hard he refuses to talk about it, if you want a decent tourny player and youtuber, prince of prussia is good.

Isn't that a DEI submod?

Attila by far, it is simply the most refined and in-depth installment of the series.

The politic/diplomatic system of Attila is great.

No that was done as a proof of concept in Rome 2.

Ancient Empires is going to be a total conversion for Attila.

We have a submod for DeI which uses the Imperator Augustus campaign map but with the 272BC setting.

But the main mod however is for Attila, changing the setting to 202BC.

>just a cripple fight between a couple of hundred peasants with a tiny group of mounted retainers
This is also an issue with the design philosophy of most war games. The assumption is that you start with peasant shitters and must survive long enough to build up your economy to 'progress' from there. It's a very RTS idea that's not any different from starting out with cavemen with clubs and researching tech and gathering resources to then churn out better units.

Holy shit. AE when?

This is the design we're going for in Ancient Empires. Units rout fairly easily but not off the field and usually come back under control, better trained units have a disciplined trait which further increases their chance of returning to control after routing. Routing is more like simply escaping the current fight to come back fresh, but of course this is a good time to take advantage of them with their backs turned. We're managed to make it so that a lot of men survive a battle even if they were the defeated army, which is because most victories are won by causing a mass route of your enemies army rather than annihilating him.
This is a battle i just fought, i won, decisively, my pikemen held long enough to cause the enemy to get exhausted and flee, with a little help from my thorakitai flanking and my Cretan archers persistent fire. I didn't have much cavalry, if i did i would have chased down more of the routing enemies, but even so you can see that a 15 minute battle (long for TW) which is a decisive battle still leaves a large enemy force that could regroup on the next turn.

Summer

H Y P E
Y
P
E

>realism
>female models
dropped

They look like Scythians

Do you do anything with rally points to create things like camps and banners under which reforming units can gather? I always thought it'd be cool if a battle was about having two command points that the other side needs to scatter or control to scatter an enemy force, but in Vanilla R2TW it didn't quite work out very well.

They're Scythians, the only faction with female troops, and its only on the commoner units.

No, each division ~150-200 men, van have its own weapons

Not in land battles, there's things like that in sieges i guess. Land battles are about routing your enemy though not holding certain points.

Why aren't the Egyptians black?

Why would they be?

Nice bullshit

Crusader Kings 2 is more realistic and even then you can play as the Byzantines and world conquest.

No combat and glitchy as shit though.

Plus Paradox likes to remove shit from the game that you have to buy back in DLC

Reminder that /gsg/ can get you all DLC for free, and it's just a simple megadownload and copying files into your DLC folder.
Also, reset your edition to pre-Conclave to get rid of that shit.

>shock action
Meaningless buzzword

Oh I already have CK2 with all dlc minus conclave.

I just don't think it's comparable to the TW series. They're two different directions.

Also, if it is Pontic Egypt, the elite units would have been Macedonians.

It varies. Infantry fights can get interesting.

This.

Three Byzantines vs mongols, papal guard, hungarians.

Ealy era,no armor upgrades.

HUngary cheated, upgraded his guys and bought chivalric knight and fucking pavise crossbows.

Pope and mongols both marches on the guy on our right.

I Send my cavalry to fuck up the hungarians and marched my infantry to save our right flank.

Shit got chaotic really fast. Luring the knights out with my horse archers sop my lancers sould flank charge them was fucking satisfying.

So was hammering my infantry into the mongol/papal lines flanks and routing most of them before reforming to kill the last 30% of them.

Because they weren't. Our Kushites are black though. The Kushite civilisation gets its proper respect and representation in AE.
You mean Ptolemaic.

>Warhammer is what we always wanted on our list but not in warhammer universe
Speak for yourself, I've wanted this since playing the shitty Russian mod 5 years ago

I remember when Napoleon released there was some guy who uploaded MP videos of himself exclusively using tactics that Nappy himself did (at least within the confines of what was allowed in TW) I can't remember at all what his name was or what the titles were but it was pretty interesting.

Are the city/town maps going to be changed, or is that impossible to do for the campaign? Main thing I'm worried about is that city "progression" was better in R2 imo than Attila.