If I could combine EU4 or Imperator Rome with TW's battles, it would be awesome. Which TW gets me the closest to something like that? I know it won't be remotely close to those paradox titles, but I'm just curious which TW, if any, nudges the bar a little further towards the in depth strategy.
Posted Sep 3, 2020, 3:39 PM UTC
Three Kingdoms is character driven, so more akin to CK than EU, but it also has by far the deepest strategic campaign of the series. Diplomacy matters and wars/campaigns can be won on the campaign map moreso than on the battle map.
I recently did a campaign where I barely fought any battles as I vandalised, allied and spied my way to Emperor.
I guess the main difference however, is in these games you always have the option to fall back on superior tactics and army composition. You can win a battle against overwhelming odds which just isn't doable (or manipulable) in the strategy games with less involved battles. And, once you become good, you can consistently beat those death defying odds.
Awesome, its going on my wishlist!
Attila, playing as Romans. For example, the WRE start off with something like 65 settlements - it's almost like a 4x game, juggling the various constraints: the economy, public order, sanitation, religion, internal politics etc. All while endless waves of barbarian hordes are migrating deep into your lands and sacking your border settlements.
Forget the release day guides saying abandon provinces and retreat to Italy - what's the point, just play Rome 2 if you are going to do that. Fight for every last outpost. Diplomacy is a big way to do that. Everyone hates you. OK. But still, perhaps they could be persuaded to attack their neighbour. At least it will delay them turning their attentions to you. Faction leaders have real personality, like in at least some Civilization games - the passive, defensive, reliable ones you can leave alone or even ally with. The unreliable, opportunistic ones are going to turn on you, sooner or later. Keep on eye out of the passing of an old reliable king: his successor might turn that neighbour towards war.
There is a nice family tree. You start off with two family members to run a massive empire. You need to adopt some promising young generals, find royal marriages and build up your emperor through brave deads in battle, so that by the time Attila spawns, you have a batch of brave young sons to lead your armies into battle.
Attila gives you a lot of grand strategic freedom over who you fight and where. For example, while the Romans initially have their hands full defending their starting lands, with time, they can consolidate and become superpowers again. My favorite thing is to effectively play both WRE and ERE together - i.e. play one Roman faction but dedicate yourself to also protecting your AI brother. It's a real challenge as WRE to spare the expeditionary forces to conquer the Sassanids. It's even more of a riot as ERE trying to restore the empire from the patchwork quilt of barbarian invaders and secessionist Roman splinter groups that take over the lands of the hopeless AI controlled WRE.
The campaign is so in-depth, tt's about the only TW game I could have a blast playing if I just autoresolved every battle. And I love TW battles. The strategic maneouvring of armies on the campaign map is much more important for victory than clever tactics on the battlefield. Especially as Rome, you have so much territory to defend, with so little men at the start, you have to fight smart - the art is prioritising where to send your field armies, and deciding when the limitanei must standalone. Agents - especially spies - are crucial here: detecting threats, the delaying raiding armies so you can catch them before they escape back into the wilds. Army stances are also very useful. You will have to force march everywhere to have a chance to win at whack a mole. But ambush stance also helps you get the drop on invaders. Even more usefully, fortification stance is the great leveler against powerful cavalry-heavy armies such as the Huns and Sassanids.
The other plus is that Attila has amazing battles. When three Hun armies try to force their way through a walled city, you fret as you start to run out of infantry as the arrows keep coming - knowing that should the city fall, it will be razed to the ground. The most tense fights are where you recklessly leave an army alone commanded by your favorite general and it gets jumped, not once, not twice but three times in the same turn by different invading armies. Sure you will win the first battle. The second battle should be fine too, but you'll be breathing heavily. But by the third battle, your men will be so depleted, heaven help you if the attackers bring a serious force like the Huns.
I wouldnt recommend many people to play WRE first tho
I started with WRE first and it was fine. If you have played TW before, I don't think it is a problem so long as you want to manage a big empire in a survival type game. It seems most players don't want to do that - they prefer the normal TW dynamic of starting with a small faction and expanding out - in which case it is more that they are not recommended to play WRE at all, rather than not play it first.
I suspect most players perception of WRE is based on how it was at launch, when it was a bit for masochists only. But it's much easier now than on launch and more like a normal (or merely hard) campaign start, rather than a "legendary" difficulty one. Specifically, a patch reduced the corruption from 80% to 60%, which basically doubles your income. On launch, you were really scraping to get any kind of income and conquering more settlements didn't really help as it pushed up the corruption on your existing settlements. Once, I had an emperor who got a bad vice that increased corruption throughout the faction. I had taken a few settlements, so the vice put me at 100% corruption - I got no income from my settlements and my only money was from trade. (That reinforced my predilection to always keep the alliance and protect ERE - trade with them was most of of my income).
The other thing that alleviates the "legendary" campaign difficulty is demolishing churches on turn 1 and 2. Just like in Barbarian Invasion, if you immediately demolish all churches (but one, for priests), you get a massive lump sum to invest, as well as increase your income a lot by reducing the gold cost per turn of churches. I use it to get all provinces self-sufficient in food and adequate sanitation. If you do that, your economic situation is much easier and disease not a problem. Nonetheless, I do find I spend the next 60 turns building basically just public order buildings, to free up my armies to defend the borders rather than put down rebellions. They do pay off economically, as arenas give cultural wealth but it's a bit hand to mouth.
One reddit poster said WRE is not hard, just tedious. For maximum efficiency, you have to manually fight constant incursions and rebellions with just tiny garrisons alone. Its very time consuming, repetitive and a little demoralising. I find the premise sufficiently gripping that I am up for it, but I appreciate it's probably a niche part of the player base that would like it. I do find the "breakout" phase, when you have stabilised your empire a blast. ERE get there quicker, if you want to skip most of the drudgery but it feels less earned - they are basically top dog all the time.
Tedious is a good word, unfortunately
Attila and Three Kingdoms
3 Kingdoms, and To a lesser extent, Empire and Medieval 2. Empire had a really elaborate trade resource system with you actually being able to effect the global economic worth of materials, and Medieval had merchants and extortions and shit. 3K has great diplomatic functions and the whole spy mechanic, though I'm still trying to figure out how it's actually useful to the player since you can't do jack shit with spies most of time.
The bit about Empire is a myth. The price was rising or declining in a completely random manner. Coffee, for example, was extremely rare, but only 1/8 was the most precious resource.
Empire total war
The closest is probably three kingdoms
Rome 2 with DeI for best 'domestic affairs' strategy depth, Three Kingdoms for best 'foreign affairs' campaign depth (both are good overall).
Oh wow, I have Rome II so I need to check out that mod, looks awesome
Medieval 2 with mods, Three Kingdoms vanilla
Rome I, especially Barbarian Invasion, followed by Medieval II. There existed campaign mechanics that have since been either curtailed or evaporated (distance to capital, not automatic replenishment, individual taxation and etc.) and your generals actually had a character and didn't level and ameliorate like puppets.
Cool, thanks!
3k total war for sure
Or if you want mod, Rome 2 DEI, it’s population mod is just insane.
If you can play older games, Medieval 2 with its mod is just fantastic.
Which Medieval 2 mod?
Broken Steel is the most popular one, it’s been awhile so I forgot most of them :(
Ah okay thanks, I'll look around
Stainless Steel, or Broken Crescent lol ;)
Both excellent mods!
Troy hands down. You will get punished if you're not playing strategically. It doesn't mean you will lose the game. Just that the ai in this game is on another level from any other. So the more poorly you play, the more the other factions will become a nightmare for you. And turn your game into a fustercluck. You absolutely need to play intelligently, and strategically. I've seen users trying to complain about this game as if it's a problem with the game that the ai is behaving in certain ways "out of nowhere". Yet there is nothing the ai does out of nowhere. You will always see very clearly their attitudes from the very first time you encounter any single one.
how do you ever get punished in Troy? the battle AI is the worst, and as soon as you start to become untrustworthy you can just create more armies since you get a ridiculous amount of food for winning (any) battle. Troy is by far the easiest game on legendary so far
Creating more armies doesn't mean the ai is treating you the same as if trustworthy. Food has nothing to do with how the ai acts. There's no need to depend on food or creating more armies if the ai isn't getting overwhelming.
3 kingdoms by far