Best and worst factions to play as?

Oh yeah and the fucking AI losing half of their units during a siege while trying to climb the wall because it doesn't know how to siege properly.

Bullshit

It actually is.

t.poster of the screenshot

Well the siege AI are pretty shit in all the games.

It's true actually, go ask /twg/.

have you played the game? it's not THAT rare. venice once had a doge in my campaign nicknamed cuckold that had maximum authority and command level

Is that a 'have a gay ol time' phrase? Where cuck meant something different back then?

No, it means the same thing

It means the husband of an adulteress wife, which is still what it means, but it's gotten a new meaning because of a fringe sexual fetish, and because a brazilian shilled a load of cuckold porn on /pol/ and forced a meme

>He doesn't play as the Irish and take back Britannia from the English

How do I git gud with English?

It feels like my yeomans are a shit and doesn't make much of a difference in battles when I have 4 stacks of bowman when swordsman rape

Also how should I position artillery and cannons?

STANDARD

OF

MILAN

>Want to be glorious Orthodox bastion and true successor to Rome
>Ally with Russia to unite the faith
>Triple war with Hungary, Venice, and Turks
>Weakass Russia does fuckall and HRE is now assassinating my agents for no raisins
Fuck Venice. They're hanging on to one settlement now and they're still expecting me to become their vassal.

Be sure to play with large units from the options menu on if you want a larger ranged advantage. The larger the unit, the more firepower it has.

Also, archers aren't any good against armored units. For that, you need swordsmen to engage and cavalry to flank. Better to use them against enemy archers and light infantry. I prefer unlit arrows.

Artillery aren't very useful in field battles (at least not early artillery, and by the time you get late artillery the game is over), so keep them in the rear and ideally at a defensible high point on the map if the enemy is coming to you. If they get more than a few shots off before the forces engage, consider yourself lucky.

This. It's much more satisfying to subjugate them and watch them bring you tribute than it is to wipe them out and turn them into another part of your homogeneous empire.

>finish some quests just in time to get a new army to defend your capital city
>get only ballistas and carroccios

Every fucking time.

...

b-b-but muh agincourt

Arrows did nothing against armoured cavalry in real life at agincourt

>>Milan
Fuck those nigger faggots. Every fucking time they snake their way up into northern europe like a big green penis and it makes the map look so fucking bad. Fighting them can be a bitch too with all those fucking crossbows the pricks love to spam like it's going out of style.

Fuck milan.

They do in M2TW though. English longbowmen get armor piercing arrows for that very reason.

That user is having trouble with shields, not armor. He just needs to learn to shoot into the unshielded side and rear of an enemy unit for maximum effectiveness.

Alright niggers I've settled down to play this game after I did Shogun 2. What faction should I play as first?

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I can't play M2 because the economy is so unintuitive compared to Rome. It seems impossible to balance a budget and have a military capable of supporting your land

Have you tried not being retarded?

Venice. Dont conquer, just build up merchants and send them everywhere to make you rich bb

xD

>telling someone to go to /twg/

Shogun is the best total war.

I agree that Rome is second best.
I mean, the game came out in 2003?

Siege AI in every other game are mentally retarded.

Something about walls makes AI flip their shit.

Get the Darthmod for Shogun. It fixes a lot of these problems and makes the AI not be completely retarded.

Attila would like a word with you

English longbowmen literally rape everything to bits.

Horse archers are also OP on all units.

They do not. Stop spreading misinformation, are you trying to get my men killed?

Unironically the worst Total War

Well maybe Empire with its vanilla glitches takes the cake.

>Best
England, objectively best start pos. Scots get knocked out easily in the first few turns if you get them after they take their first settlement.
Just pay France to fuck off for a few turns till you conquer the islands.
I usually sail Baltic afterwords and fuck Russia, the mongols hand my ass to me after that though, there was one time where I had a castle literally full of English knights and nothing else and they dominated the entire Mongol horde, their leader got the "afraid of english" trait.
>worst
Turks, shit infantry, shit cavalry, Byzantines fuck you almost every time, Pope always calls a crusade on byzantium when I take it.

It's the same as Rome 2
>put infantry in front
>missile units behind them
>artillery behind them
>cavalry on sides
>win

English longbowmen are the most versatile and effective unit in the game.

Only horse archers in the open fields are more effective.

What the fuck went wrong with Rome 2?

someone has never played Attila

>Heavy lancers in front
>horse archers skirmishing around the sides and rear

are you kidding? its a far better game than med 2. some niggers need to take the nostalgia goggles off, med 2 has the least responsive units out of all of the total war games. Something as simple as a charge is still fucked after all these years.

What misinformation?

There was one time some siege weapon fired one shot and it killed my general instantly from full health, who I think was my ruler as well.

I was so butthurt. It was like a fucking sniper.

Mid 2 guaranteed victory tactic

Hammer and anvil

Spam Italian crossbow militia with armor upgrades. Cities cannot be taken if you have 4-5 of them in the city, and they are free upkeep in cities.

40% spearmen
20% heavy inf
20% xbowmen
20% knights/heavy calvary
20% horse archers

Even on Very Hard Battle and Campaign the AI is too stupid to ever beat these tactics.

83 hours according to Steam
Still haven't lost one battle.

Atilla was better than Empire/Napoleon/Rome 2

But it is not better than circa 2006 MTW2.

Medieval 1 is mechanically better in every way

>ISIS versus French.webm

You never played M2TW circa 2006 you piece of shit. The game was broken on launch.

as someone who has over 320 hours let me tell you, there is nothing more powerful in the game than high XP horsearchers/lancers.
its the critical flaw with the game, well micro'd horse archers can outrun or outshoot anything in the game, and elite lancers can easily kill any swordsmen and often spearmen if they can catch them out of spearwall.

wiki.totalwar.com/w/Longbowmen_(M2TW_unit)

They totally do.

camel gunners are better

>The game was broken on launch.

Nigga my game was bought in the Best Buy on Nov 16 2006.

Never handed it back in so the game was either fine or I've been playing a glitchy version (most likely.)

Now fuck off.

Atilla was not as well-made as MTW 2.

>Be Byzantines
>Almost instantly in a war with a new faction every couple turns, never room for a breather
>Be Russia
>Get curbstomped by poland or hungary before you even get the chance of uniting the rebels
It is impossible to have Orthodox fun in this game

Turks have a poor early game, though Turkish HA and Sipahis are pretty good. But late game they're an absolute powerhouse. Super heavy cavalry with maces, JHI, muskets, Saracen and ME halberd militia, and Dismounted Sipahi Lancers are dope.

Too slow

But have you lost a battle?

It's simple.

The guys at Total War decided to take literally everything bad about previous games and make it worse. All while introducing excellent elements like
>unreadable unit cards
>a grand total of 4 maps for small settlements and 3 for large
>DLC packs selling content from the first trailers literally years after release

Seriously, after the abortion that was Rome II I don't trust anything that company releases. At least DEI makes it playable.

Russia can be won by goading them into attacking castles.

>its the critical flaw with the game, well micro'd horse archers can outrun or outshoot anything in the game
What a surprise. They didn't bother to fix a broken gameplay element from the original Rome. I've literally conquered everything south of the Mediterranean in Rome I was Parthia by just micromanaging the everloving fuck out of stacks of horse archers. Worst case, I "lose" a battle with

That is the perfect gif

Western Roman Empire on Very Hard is probably the most difficult faction to win with in the TW series.

It's not really THAT hard. All you have to do is be willing to gut your overextended hemorraging empire, cut back to about 7-8 core provinces in and around Northern Italy that you will cling to for dear life, and demolish all the other buildings everywhere else.

They revolt away, you pull back your armies to a defensible perimeter, and you rebuild and reconquer. It takes a a while, but it's not that hard to do.

> liking medieval 2
> not refusing to play anything beyond medieval 1

...If I see one post on here complaining that the combat needs to be... 'fasterer'

HRE is bretty gud

>you can be actually >holy >roman >empire
>top tier unit roster
>pretty much perpetual war on every front, yet still manageable

Seriously. HRE is one of my favourite TW factions of all time, alongside the KoJ.

the english were pretty neat when you spammed some longbowmen
but i usually just played with portugal since the unit roster was pretty much the same (unless you used mods where you could get some extra shit that added a lot of variety)

it's objectively the best total war to date

it may even be getting a mod that sets the game in the 13th century

Are gun units shit in M2TW?
I never got to successfully play with them and i am a veteran player. They take years to form and start firing and another years for the next row to start firing and the casuallities they make are not that great.
Plus they are useless in a siege.

Go to your manchild board.

eat a dick

Best: France or England. Ridiculously easy to expand, and get pretty neat units so you're not spamming "Dismounted Knights" and "Crossbow Militia".

Worst: Sicily. Almost no units, nowhere worthwhile to expand unless you want to sail around the seas.

Rome. I just like the feel of the campaign better, especially that in Medieval there are two worlds (excluding Aztecs), the Christian and the European, but in Rome you have barbarians. Romans (Carthage kinda plays like them), Greeks, and Easterners, all with different playstyles.

For the same reason I spent more time playing the Americas campaign than the actual game.

I heard they'll take it more often if you have the diplomat in a big army.

>when you keep getting stacks of 4 sergeants and you don't have anything for them to do and they vacuum up money

You literally cannot lose as England.

>start game as Denmark
>abandon my capital to get fucked by the HRE
>take all my units and sail down to the island of Crete
>establish a comfy base there
>always the first to conquer whatever city was designated for a crusade
>play the entire game holding out against the Turks, Egyptians, and Mongols
Truly the comfiest campaign I've ever played. I might have to give that another shot. If you're an absolute madman, you can do that with Lithuania as well if you have the Stainless Steel mod.

Is this more fun than Rome (the original)? I loved putting Gauls and other uncivilized peoples to the sword but 50 hours in I feel burned out

Best: France, or HRE. France has the best crossbowmen, the best heavy cavalry, good infantry, pikemen, mounted archers. HRE has good heavy cavalry, heavy infantry, and Reiters. Both have best gunpowder technology.

Worst: Egypt. Barely any roster variety, roster is shit.

They're both fun but I like Medieval II a bit more. MII is a lot harder. England is the best starter nation.

General's bodyguard is good but not as good as the fucking wrecking ball bulldozer Rome generals.

>Easiest
Literally any of the starting nations except the >H>R>E
>Hardest
Russia, by the time you grow powerful Mingoria is gonna rape yah.
>Shittiest/Most ignored
Hungary and Sicily. Pretty boring, not much room for expansion outside of North Africa and Corsica/Sardinia as Sicily and then you just go to war with the Moors (also just boring aside from their Norman knights which apparently England can't recruit for some idiotic reason). Hungary is just 100% shit. Boring roster, dog shot expansion facing a fight with Ve ice, Byzantium, Poland, or the >H>R>E

In all honesty this is my moat played TW game besides perhaps Rome. Even had the Kingdoms expansion and played the hotseat campaigns w/friends.
All in all an extremely bland and uninteresting vanilla campaign that no matter what the difficulty has an easily defeatable AI. I literally took over the whole map by the 1300s as Scotland and just waited to annihilate the Aztecs and take the new world.

The game is only decent w/mods.
Expansion was alright, although the Americas campaign was shit tier

>tfw I like Med2 and Empire a lot and, for some reason, just couldn't like Attila or FotS
I like more rifles and artillery, but all the factions were just different colored Japanese men in pajamas. The Fall of Rome is my favorite time period, but I can't seem to have fun with the gave, and I really dislike the general aesthetic and color tones they use.
I'm playing Austrians on Hard and I managed to take Warsaw, Berlin, and Dresden, as my allies in Prussia formed a great distraction (and lost their capitol to the Saxons). I love the roar of cracking guns, fields of uniformed cavalry, the drums and fifes, and the cries of commands as men enter rank fire.

Nice try, but every total war game sucks

There is no best faction.

It deepends on money, time period, game rules, map, and siege/field.

In vanilla m2, a few nations stand out for standard/high florins in any situation.

SPAIN- 3 types of dismounted knights for 12 heavy inf. Wew. Has pavaise x bows which are the gold standard of archers.

TURKS- I love turks for siege battles. Naffa/hash spam is absolutely brutal, but need to be used in conjunction with heavy western armies.

VENICE- my favorite. Warhammers have a brutal charge. They hit like 2h buy with no 2h glitch. Strats are overrated except for running down fleeing enemy and flanking engaged units in charges. Mortars.

t. Played M2 since release, 10k+ hours easy, maybe twice that. Hardly play anymore, so I'm happy to give advice

>archers behind infantry
>not spreading archers in loose formation in the front rank with infantry positioned well behind

You must not play online.

>all these people caring about campaign.

Even with mods on vh/vh it's literally impossible to lose as any faction.

I don't know why, but I can't play these games anymore, even with all the best mods that get praised to hell and back. My interest in history has grown exponentially since I first got into the series, but whenever I try to get back into these games I end up just wanting to auto-resolve everything, and giving up a quarter or half of the way to the campaign objectives.

>Worst: Egypt or Byzantines because EVERY FUCKER declares war on you when you're just peacefully trying to build an economy.
Isn't that just a problem for everybody because pre Empire TW diplomacy is completely fucked?

Spain is meant to be OP, it's for new players.

Favorite faction is Milan.

Best faction is really the Turks. It's so much more fun to play with them compared to anyone else.

First: Invasions, both invasions come directly aimed at Turks, meaning you always have to fight outnumbered, sieges and crossings while being threatened by Byzantine.

Second: Early game units are terrible, making it even harder and more fun. I, for example spam spear militia and Turkish archers against Mongols and create Medieval version of pike square.

Third: As bad as early units are, the middle and late units are really awesome. Janissary musketeers are probably the best gunpowder unit. Janissary heavy infantry goes through any heavy infantry Europeans throw really easily. And Ottoman infantry is awesome with only thing lacking is good stamina.

Fourth: There's just so much more to do when playing with Turks instead of establishing boundaries and waiting for the whole world to be conquered by like two nations.

Fifth: Good horse archery + good late units are really interesting combinations Europeans and pretty much any other nations lack.

To be honest after playing with Turks, any other nation feels like dull.

Total War: 30 Years War when?

I never got the appeal of Spain in that game.
Yeah, late game you have some cool units, but no cool enough to make up for lack of units in the beggining.

The appeal of Spain is that you can build your empire without a lot of interference with any other nation. So it appeals to people who play it for building a state and maintaining it. Once you plug two passages in the north, you are basically isolated.

1648 mod

>tfw no Bohemia

Normies can't understand 1500's-1600's tactics.
>Game devs cant either.

Fucking awesome that game.

I disagree.

Best: moors. The peasant crossbowmen are op as fuck and christian guard are basically cheaper conquistodors

Worst: Probably the aztecs. If you mean ones you can play, russia since boyar sons are massively overpriced and the rest of the army is shit.

Pike and shotte exists, thats great. Also, the ECW mod is great too.