Total War

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Total War is a wargame franchise based on movement of groups of units on a battlefield map, and maneuvering armies in an overlay map. In many ways the series is reminiscent of tabletop wargames, which has made it a popular subject for discussion on /tg/.

Note that due to being a huge participant in the DLC craze, as well as the...lackluster, let's say, quality of some entries in the franchise the game has become quite Skubby in many circles, although when detractions are brought up others are quick to claim modding makes up for it, others say any game you have to mod is shit, which prompts references to games like Fallout and Vampire: The Masquerade, which results in the reply that those games are bad as well and since Medieval II is a better game that means Total War is by default objectively bad, which is when the conversation devolves into namecalling and Warhammer 40k reaction images. Yeah...

Gameplay

Total War has two main features: Turn-Based on the campaign map, and Real-Time on the battle map.

In the campaign map, you must manage your economy, keep the peace among your subjects, ally, trade, or war with other nations for vital resources, assassinate your rivals, and crush brigands and pirates as soon as they show their filthy hides. In other words, your pretty much playing Game of Thrones, without the ice demons or dragons.

In the battle map, you must prove yourself a genius of tactics. The rules pretty much work like this throughout most of the titles save for Empire, Napoleon, and Shogun:

• Spear Infantry: Great for bracing and taking down charging cavalry, but only do OK against melee infantry. Usually best if placed on the flanks. (Which, of course, is strange, considering the fact that the spear was the mainstay of most ancient and medieval armies, as moderately trained blokes armed with spear, shield, a helm, and inexpensive padded jacks/gambesons usually made up the biggest portion of most armies.)

• Melee Infantry: The hard heart of your strength. These are used to form the main line most of the time, as well as the reserves, and are absolutely vital in siege assaults. Usually tanky with decent defensive stats to grind down the enemy and pin them in place for whatever shenanigans you have planned. Good against spear infantry, can hold it's own against most cavalry except when charged by shock cavalry or withered down by archers. Usually pretty useless vs horse archers except as pincushions.

• Shock Infantry: The big blokes with big weapons. Typically armed with huge axes, poleaxes or two handed swords. But can also have other weapons such as sword n board but being bat shit crazy enough to be considered shock infantry regardless. Work as a foot version of shock cavalry and will usually be charging around flanks or bashing their way through infantry lines. Will usually destroy the things they charge and take less micro than shock cavalry since they'll have the numbers to smash through other infantry with a flanking attack, but with high attack and less defense they are especially vulnerable to archers and Cavalry charges themselves.

• Ranged Infantry: Your slingers, archers, javelins, and crossbowmen. These guys are extremely useful for softening up an enemy force or clearing out a wall of defenders. Be warned, however, that they are very vulnerable to most forms of cavalry. Place them behind your main line if you value them.

• Pike Infantry: A virtual wall of death for anyone foolish enough to charge head on. The best thing to use for defending a narrow choke-point or holding a battle-line. Immune to cavalry from the front but very scared of archers and generally are only barely better than ranged infantry when flanked.

• Ranged Cavalry: Your horse archers, primarily. These guys are great for flanking shots, ambushes, and harassing the enemy. They are vulnerable to the faster light cavalry and will get shredded by foot archers however.

• Light Cavalry: Primarily the scouts and vanguard of the army. Useful for quick movement around the map harassing and killing soft targets like skirmishers, artillery and horse archers, or chasing down routing foes. Not great for direct charges but can be great at rear ramming.

• Melee Cavalry: The jack of all trades of cavalry. Can charge units decently enough but preferably in the flanks or rear unless they are light. Will beat most shock cavalry in a melee fight.

• Shock Cavalry: Your knights, cataphracts, and mounted men-at-arms. These are the hammers to your melee infantry's anvil, breaking a foe like water upon rock. Used primarily for exploiting gaps in enemy lines, charging into the rear of an unsuspecting foe, or flanking attacks. Depending on the game, they can also go straight at anything without a spear and watch them die beneath lances and hooves on their charge, but probably then have to withdraw for another go or they'll get grinded down by any serious infantry unit (even without spears).

• Artillery: Ballistae, Scorpions, Onagers/Mangonels, and Trebuchets, mostly, with the odd cannon here or there. Used mostly for smashing down some poor chap's walls, though it is also useful for flinging hate at an enemy during a field battle, And possibly killing their leader in one shot, completely ruining the battle.

• Siege Engines: Ladders, battering rams, and siege towers, used for getting through those pesky things called battlements.

• Special Units: Any number of units not in the aforementioned lists, such as war dogs, incendiary pigs, and most importantly, elephants. Hilariously, elephants make for excellent distractions.

Players can use any number of tactics from actual battles of yore, such as hammer and anvil, forcing an enemy to turn his flank to you, Mongol-style shenanigans, etc.

With the release of Total War: WARHAMMER, it introduced even more special units with even more specialty (being a fantasy setting and all). These are:

• Monsters: often 12 models or less in a units. They are generally taller and bigger than an average human infantry, having high health pool per models and most of them deal great armor piercing damage meaning, they are fucking dangerous and they tend to be the number one priority and are targeted by the likes of range units like crossbows. Having a larger models meaning they can be targeted by even more enemy models in melee combat. But having the ability to hurt armored units as well as having a lot of health meaning they are good against high tier armored units like the Empire great swords. They gets countered hard by units with Anti-large trait like Calvary so it is best to have them fight side by side with high model count units like a low tier infantry. It's also noted that some monsters tend to be very dumb and cowardly like trolls which results in them routing most of the time, but they have regeneration ability so it's actually a good way for them to heal back up. Most monster also has fear and terror trait, which helps them rout enemy units as well as not to be terrified of enemy units with the same traits.

• Flying Monster/Infantry: The newest addition to the Total War franchise available only in Total War: WARHAMMER. They have the ability to fly so they are safe from the feel of cold steels shoved into their spleen, but are vulnerable to the likes of range units, especially the fast projectile range units like hand gunners. Due to their ability to ignore terrains and melee units, they are often tasked with raiding enemies artillery line or range units. The fell bats of the Vampire Counts are designed for this purposes. Since they are not obstructed from anything, it is easy for them to charge into enemy line like Calvary, especially for the likes of dragons and wyvern(an orc boss mount) who possessed fear and terror trait. The newest edition of WARHAMMER 2 gave dragons breathe attack and it can dealt a fuck ton of damage from up in the air to anyone that is blob up.

• Casters/Heroes/Lord: Every army has a lord. But in likes of Warhammer, they are single unit with the health equals to a units with 90 models or so . Some of your agents from the campaign map can be embedded into your army and served as models killing machines. These special single units can cause a shock wave of aoe damage every time they attack and are much powerful than a regular infantry unit. Although they are a single units, meaning that can be easily surrounded and hit by many other enemy models if there's no proper back up. Caster are mage who cast the lore of magic from the tabletop games. They are single modeled too but some of them are not suited for melee combat due to low health and low melee attack.

Games

Shogun

The first, more obscure game in the series, and for good reason, but set a good standard for the series to come. Difficult as fuck, as early rebellions spawned enough forces to overrun even major clans, and an assassin unit called Geisha was so overpowered, legendary Geishas could off entire Dynasties giving the Ordo Assassinarium a hardon.

Medieval

Much large strategy map and benefited from better graphics for 2002. Improved politics and strategy. Truth be told, the cleanest, lowest system requiring, simplest and most user friendly interface in strategic management screen of the series.

Rome

Rome: Total War takes place in the era of Classical Antiquity, just before the beginning of the First Punic War. The campaign setting is that of the Ancient Euro-Mediterranean world, with its borders stretching from the coast of Portugal to the West, just past the Caspian Sea to the Northeast, and the edge of the Sahara to the South.

Players have the choice to take control of a variety of factions, from the Elephant-riding Carthaginians, to the fierce and savage Barbarians of Iron Age Europe (Celts, Germans, steppe nomads, etc.), the pike phalanxes of the Hellenic States and Egypt, the superb cavalry of the Parthians, and finally the wrecking ball legions of Rome herself.

Interestingly enough in the campaign, Rome is actually divided into four factions; the House of Julii, who focus on the northern barbarians and securing Western Europe for Rome, the House of Brutii, whom primarily are concerned with expanding Rome Eastward and thus are in conflict with Macedon, the Greek city-states, and the Eastern kingdoms, the House of Scipii, whom vie with Carthage and Egypt for control of the Mediterranean and are focused on securing Africa for Rome, and finally the Senate itself, whom directly control Rome and thus boss around the Three Houses into doing their bidding (and unfortunately no, you can't play the Senate faction and boss people around). The advantage to this is that you only have to worry about attacks from a single direction, as the other Romans quite literally have your backs. The disadvantage is that if one House becomes too popular and decides to march to Rome to declare himself Imperator, then a huge civil war breaks out among the families, with a huge player determined battle taking place near Rome, usually.

The game was also very historically inaccurate with Gaul, Germania, Britannia, Scythia, and the Greek Cities all being one unified faction (from a gameplay perspective, this is a game balance to ensure that each faction has at least more than one province to start out with so that they don't immediately get steamrolled). The Egyptian units are all based on New Kingdom Egypt when by the year 272 B.C, the Greco-Macedonian Ptolemy's were ruling Egypt, Rome's lands being divided into 3(though Rome being a Republic with decentralized rule makes sense), Greek Hoplites wielding fucking pikes like Macedonian phalangites (to be fair, many Greeks at this time did adopt Macedonian tactics, but the models and formations are still closer to pre-Alexander hoplites), and the Parthians looking like they were ripped off of Miller's depiction of Achaemenid Persia even though Parthians were more central Asiatic than Iranian around that time.

Also of note are the two expansion packs; Alexander (takes place during Alexander the Great's conquest of the Middle East and Central Asia and sadly only lets you play as Alexander.), and Barbarian Invasion (takes place during the Germanic Migrations). The latter was an incredible update around the time of Hunnic invasions and all factions were polished to perfection, including the new Horde system: meaning desperate Iron Age clans of Europe fleeing before the Huns and dogpiling the Romans who had fuck-all armies to contend with. Notable for the Sassanids, Parthians' grandchildren being monstrously overpowered in the strategic screen: fertile and stable middle east, Germanic Migrations ruining your enemies, Clibinarii cavalry who are basically Iranian Mongols who wore armor fit for a Dreadnought, wielded maces AND composite bows, and a safe Map edge to expand.

This game is either: The best Total War game ever and no other Total War game will ever supersede it because it was the first I played and all the current games suck because its not a remake of it.

OR

It is a great game. In 2004. But now its just a mess that hasn't aged well and literally every aspect of it sucks compared to all games released after it and the only people who like it are a bunch of nostalgic neckbeards who still wish it were the early 2000s.

OR

With mods such as Europa Barbarorum and Roma Surrectum, it is still a fantastic game both in terms of graphics and gameplay.

N.B.. The game is so simple from a graphical point of view that is had been ported to the I Pad, making it light years ahead of most of the competitors on the platform.

Medieval II

Continuing on the success of it's predecessor, Rome, Medieval 2 is probably just as good as the previous title. The setting is that of the Old World in the aftermath of William's conquest of England, with the Americas showing up near the campaign's end as the Age of Discovery begins in earnest.

Each turn took 2 years sucking hard, but the plague was an interesting new event.

Heavy cavalry is also pure unadulterated broken lulz, with a general's bodyguard being able to handle half of an early, poor-quality army by itself (and if the general's Dread is high, they might be able to handle it all by itself), with only good quality spears, pikes and kiting horse archers being able to hope to deal with them. Oh, and expect Milan to backstab you, which is a bit of a meme to this day.

Out of all the Total War titles, this one spawned the most mods, including several highly valued ones such as Third Age: Total War (a mod that transforms the setting into that of Middle-Earth on the outbreak of the War of the Ring) and Call of Warhammer: Beginning of the End Times (a mod that turns the game into as close a recreation of Warhammer Fantasy as possible given the game engine's capabilities), the latter serving as a pretty viable alternative if your PC is too old or weak to run CA's official, well-made adaptation (see below). However, some will take a controversial attitude and consider the official adaption to be piss poor, and the CoW gameplay to be far superior. Everything after MTWII bar Shogun tends to be seen as having serious flaws to many grognards.

It also includes the kingdoms expansion which adds a bunch of new campaigns to the the game as well as new factions and units, including the eternally bad ass Teutonic knights.

The downside to this game is that even though the Mongols are featured in the campaign map, they are: A) an absolute bitch to fight (as it should be),and B) Not available as a playable campaign faction, only as a custom battle faction. C) MOTHERFUCKING TIMURIDS. Yes, a second wave of Mongols arrived with cannon-mounted elephants. ELEPHANT TANKS MAN. SERIOUSLY.

Empire

Good old Enlightenment Era and Revolutions with authentic voice acting for nations.

Here marks the descent of CA into darkness, as minor issues with playability, a lackluster musical score, and the beginnings of infamous DLC craze that would be cranked up to eleven with later titles such as Rome 2, all start to crop up during the game. This is probably the least popular entry in the series by modern eyes (not considering the even older titles that probably the majority of Total War players at this point haven't even played), and even its fans are probably going to say "The game's great, but only with mods."

The setting itself is during the Age of Colonialism, during the 18th and early 19th Century before the rise of repeating firearms. Unlike in previous titles, emphasis is less on melee combat and more on 'shooting the fuck out of the other guys until they die', city management, industry, and research, making decaying martial empires like Ottomans need dire reforms to get back on track. Also the game had a crude, but entertaining commercial, colonial and societal system, changing to a new order with industrialization.

The societal evolutions of the era were played well: modernization, factories and research for new technology made lower class citizens want extra entertainment, and republics rather than kingdoms. Upper class populations just want to stay in power and low taxes. Either social strata revolting meant a choice: one could side with loyalists or rebels in a do-or-die mini campaign, winners changing the government and leadership. Research buildings would also bring modernization demands AND new researcher characters. You *could* stay a totalitarian kingdom with few technologies but have fun being ran over with Dreyse needle guns.

A special campaign called "The Road to Independence" unlocks the United States as a playable faction, finally giving Amerifags their long awaited chance to spread freedom to the unwashed masses all over the world. Manifest Destiny, bitches!

Crunch-wise: FUCKING MARATHA AND MOTHERFUCKING MORTARS WITH PERCUSSION CAPS DAMNIT.

Napoleon

Take everything about Empire, get rid of the bad stuff, and make better the good. That is Napoleon: Total War in a nutshell (though Empire definitely still has the advantage of a much larger map if you're really into that).

Even though the title should be self explanatory, the game takes place during the Napoleonic Wars that tore Europe apart for 12 years.

Shogun II

Shogun II takes place in Medieval Japan during the Sengoku period, although an expansion called Fall of the Samurai places players in the era of the Meiji Restoration.

Many see Shogun 2 as the last subjectively good Total War title. Complaints were mostly focused on the long load times and the fact there's very little variation between the factions you can play other than their bonuses and start location, although given the period to do anything radically different would have been unfitting. Particularly an event called Realm Divide turned the violence up to eleven: After a certain amount of player expansion, *every* other clan would unify against you just to deny victory by any means necessary. Put as a method to prevent a snowballing victory, it became a Skub matter amongst gamers for arbitrarily having pretty much all of the AI gang up on you to stop you and rather invalidating diplomacy or bothering to make vassals of anyone, though it has some basis in reality with the Sengoku period being full of political backstabbing (though probably not literally everyone else against one clan...) and can be easily worked around with the prior knowledge by getting almost enough territory to trigger Realm Divide and sitting around building up your armies and stockpiling cash to deal with losing significant territory to the inevitable doomsticks before you place the straw to break the camel's back.

Notably, the game received a second life from the modding community and Steam Workshop support.

A tabletop game quite similar to Shogun 2 is Kensei.

The game had 2 expansions, the first being Rise of the Samurai which was basically the vanilla campaign with a 500 years prior flavor, and the second being Fall of the Samurai which is considered to be one of the best expansions for a total war game to date, with many fans of the expansion pack calling it the better-version of the Empire entry of the series. It is essentially that one movie where Tom cruise becomes a samurai the game but is much more accurate than the film as all sides possess modern (by 1870's standards) weaponry including gatling guns, which when added to a game automatically increase its inherent quality because gatling guns are awesome. Icing on the cake is that *you* can control gatling guns and artillery units, giving the game an extra, unbalanced but fun feature.

Also you can fire across the map using ships and calling artillery strikes to shred entire armies if the timing is right, preventing turtling by a huge margin and forcing both sides to close in and get slugging as soon as possible. Also Realm Divide is fairer now: Pro-Shogunate and Pro-Imperial sides would ally *together* into two huge blocs to combat each other when it happens, and the player's choice would make him the "Shogunate/Imperial Vanguard" Faction and make every clan on his allegiance unbreakable allies...unless you want to declare yourself as an independent republic to get the old "absolutely everyone wants to murder you" treatment.

Does have a bit of a problem with being unplayable even today if you have the 'wrong' video card. This issue was never patched or fixed, probably a foreshadow to the poor quality control latter down the line.

Rome II

Rome 2 was announced and everyone was hyped, but then it was released apparently in a broken state with DLC. Cue rage. Now, 2 years later...is the game good?. Yes. it is or maybe its still absolutely horrible it just no longer has any bugs. The campaign was noted to be horrible, but at least multiplayer is better than base game Attila. Newfags and Oldfags are fighting over it like they do in every other game series. A better question to ask is: did Creative Assembly really "fall into darkness" with this game? The game was presumably rushed with the number of bugs it had but those have mostly been fixed though it did take 2 years. And DLC, the game had 4 culture packs which added 3 factions each, the quality of those seem to vary from pack to pack. And a bunch of useless unit packs which were blatant money grabs, there was also 3 campaign packs which each added a mini-campaign that focused on a specific conflict and (save for Wrath of Sparta) added cultures pack worth of factions to the main campaign. There were also 6 Free-LC factions added while the game was being fixed, and a free campaign pack (Imperator Augustus) so maybe Creative Assembly has not become an evil corporation that cuts games to sell more DLC since one of those would not give free stuff. Pre-order factions are still scummy as hell. And even after all the bugs were fixed, snowballing is still probably among its worst out of the Total War games because Rome 2 doesn't really have a way to hope to challenge after you've gotten big, unlike Shogun 2's Realm Divide or Attila's...Attila. Unless another faction got really lucky or you've gotten extremely powerful politically among your faction which you'll generally kinda have to try to do by avoiding letting any other political factions' men become generals and gaining any influence (and with that's civil wars causing an army to spawn inside your borders and try to take your capital, why would you want to?) - looking for mods that improve AI's late-game power is advisable.

On a more positive note, Rome 2 does get the history of Classical Antiquity more correct, namely that:

• The Roman Republic is now a unified, patriotic entity controlling most of Italia, though the wheeling and dealing between the Gens still exists

• The Greek city-states and European tribes are now independent of each other.

• The hoplites are actually hoplites now, and not phalangites (Granted, the city-states still use some pike units in the game, but this is now due to Macedonia's influence than anything)

• Mostly, the Egyptian faction now looks like it actually belongs in the Ptolemaic period, although some of their more crappy units still look like they belong with Ramses II than Cleopatra Philoraptor.

• Individual soldiers now look varied, as the concept of a modern uniform didn't really come into being until the late 17th Century

There are five expansions to the game: Caesar in Gaul (Gallic War), Hannibal at the Gates (Second Punic War), Imperator Augustus (Antony's Civil War), Wrath of Sparta (Peloponnesian War), and Empire Divided (3rd Century Crisis).

CA recently released the patch that changed most of the generals to women, POC or POC women. In response to a rather reasonable “how the fuck a POC woman could ever become a general in Ancient Rome?” fan outcry they stated “if you don’t like it, don’t play it”. Seriously.

Attila

Like Napoleon before it, in regards to Empire, it ironed out many of the flaws found in Rome 2, and is considered a good entry into the series, albeit with the difficulty cranked up to eleven, due to the fact that the game is less focused on building and maintaining an empire and more on surviving the wrath of Attila the Hun, Daemon Prince of Khorne, and rebuilding your cities and economy after the Apocalypse passes, but your civilisation are permanently diminished by the changing weather and religious climate, with only the mythical relics of it's founders left. The main criticism being the ridiculously aggressive DLC policies Sega's been doing. The DLC is generally all over the place, ranging from mediocre - celtic tribes culture pack - to downright great in terms of gameplay offered -empires of the sand or the slavic cultures pack- CA also releases a free to play faction in the same culture group for the DLC they release, with the exception of the celts. And again, though the title should be self explanatory, the game takes place during the Fall of the Western Roman Empire (hence the apocalyptic feel of the campaign), with one expansion taking place during Belisarius' campaign to reclaim Italy( In all honesty, it's kind of a 'meh' DLC.), and the other taking place during Charlemagne's conquest of Western Europe 400 years after the events of the base game, in the Early Medieval Period.(This one was noted to be quite good, with good balance to actual battle mechanics, more reasonable AI behavior, great multiplayer, and a setting perfect for those yearning for Medieval 3.) A "Saga" game based on Attila's engine named Thrones of Britannia was also made, set during the Viking Age on the British Isles soon after Danelaw start fighting against Wessex again. With a large variety of changes to the series' formula in recent years and a bit of a rough release even in its supporters' eyes, it is very, very, very Skub.

Also reintroduced and remade the Horde play-style from Rome: Barbarian Invasion. Now instead of a faction just spawning a bunch of stacks out of nowhere when their last settlement is taken. Horde factions can switch between in encamped stance where they set up camp to build migratory buildings and a regular army stance. Playing as a horde is also completely different since you do not have any home territories and are constantly moving from place to place. This will inevitably make people around you like you less since you crash on their couch and eat all the food in their fridge, unless you vassalise them. It is one of the major features of the expansion, and it provides the player with a new way to play a faction instead of settling down like in previous game.

Cavalry is also only slightly less nutso than in Medieval 2, with even ranged cavalry standing a very good chance of beating actual spear/melee infantry if successfully charging them while they're not braced/in the flanks or rear, though the game's flanking penalties are so severe that even cavalry will probably take significant losses from breaking off from a successful rear charge.

However, the game DOES have its flaws, namely in that the base game, the AI has a ridiculous tendency to default to the "Raze" option when capturing new settlements, meaning that by 300 or so turns into the game, three-quarters of the map is already desolate wastelands,(although it was toned down a lot by the end of the game's product cycle) and the stupidly high required specs to run Attila smoothly on even average settings. CA has stated that the game was designed for future graphics cards (If you want a game with amazing graphics, be prepared to fork over several thousand dollars for a high-end gaming computer) The game's actual visual design itself is also a bit Skub with some finding it utterly brown, drab and boring, unlike, say, Shogun 2 where the entire game still looks beautiful years after and only people that don't care for it in that regard just don't care for its setting in general.

Total War: WARHAMMER

A Warhammer Fantasy Total War game (nicknamed Total Warhammer by fans, even before the game was officially announced, and probably bemoaned by a few to this day that it wasn't the official title). Due to the debacle and shitstorm that was and is End Times and Age of Sigmar, many Fantasy fans heralded the game as the last great stand of Warhammer Fantasy. Then they heard of the Chaos faction was announced to be DLC, and the reveal that the pre-order was full of Dorf goods. Cue butthurt on the part of Chaos fans, and triumphant glee from the long-suffering Dwarf fans who were soon joined by Bretonnian players as their faction was announced as a free DLC (soothing the pain of being entirely squatted in Age of Sigmar somewhat). Chaos was later made free to anyone who pre-ordered the game or bought it in the first week of release.

Besides being the first game based entirely on a fictional setting, this is also the first time it will feature air units, tanks, magic, and so on.

The game was met with almost unanimous praise both from Warhammer Fantasy fans and the /v/irgins video gaming community with many saying it is the most entertaining, or at least unique, Total War game to date. Campaign was extremely well received, known to be fun, and challenging at the same time, as this time, the horde has more realistic behaviors, unlike Attila who raped everyone with the armies appearing from thin air. Instead, Archeaon would just spank you with the armies that spawned out of nowhere. but CA managed to fuck up the multiplayer balance yet again. Games Workshop rushed to put a link to sites to purchase the game on their main page along with a link to the models featured in the game...which consisted of only nine models thanks to massive Squatting of the Fantasy range only months before, almost all in the $50-$90 range, and the named character now simply called generic names with absolutely no realization that any fans of the game visiting the section would be wanting the tools and paints as well. Warhammer Fantasy fans on /tg/ were quick to explain to inquisitive cross-board visitors how the tabletop of Fantasy was destroyed in favor of a...vastly different game and were pointed towards early editions/The 9th Age and alternative companies to buy similar looking models from.

Total War: WARHAMMER was announced to going to be a trilogy, an entirely logical decision for CA since its first game was definitely their most popular. The announcement of the sequel caused massive butthurt in fans of more historical settings, even after CA stated and teased a bit about how they've got separate teams working on expansions for their previous historical titles and a whole new one.

Total War: Three Kingdoms

LU BU BITCHES

The first total war game takes place in the infamous three kingdom period in China, as well as the second game that takes place in Asia (Shogun total war series being the first). The initial reaction of this game's sudden teaser is so popular that it made even the total war warhammer fans to forget about the upcoming tomb kings expansions for total war warhammer 2. Sorry Settra. SETTRA IS NOT TO BE IGNORED!! SETRRA. DEMANDS. ATTENTION!!. Turns out there will be a dueling system for lord to shank each other in melee without being interrupted. Losing the duel grants penalty while winning grants benefit. The gameplay is also character focused, where the player gets to control many special character at one with many units served under each of them. Another cool new feature is revamping the spying system; instead of generic NPCs being sent to investigate enemy armies and cities, your own army generals are now all potential spies. Even better, if you discover a spy, you can potentially turn them into a double agent to feed false information to the enemy.

Interestingly, the game will offer two different modes; one that’s based more on the historical period, and one based on the book Romance of the Three Kingdoms. One of the differences is that your lords will be able to buff your armies and wipe the floor with any mooks who come after them, much like how it works in Total Warhammer. While the game has yet to truly happen, it's been discovered; to the Rage of many fellows knowledgeable about the three kingdoms' period; that naval battles are not going to be a mechanic within the game.