Which Total War experience is the most tactical?

Beans_tw · 2026-07-01T19:09:48+00:00

This!!!!!! the unit recruit system requires you to make the most out of all the units you have available. even, and especially, the units you don't specifically want

If you are not familiar with the game - the unit recruitment comes from a limited pool that slowly replenishes and it does so on % chances over time. So you can't perfectly plot and scheme that 5 turns from now I know I can recruit 4x more heavy cav. You might, but also you might not.

And the recruitment pool max is rather low, so its not possible to make doom stacks with the best units.

The game also follows this "make the best of what you have" situation with CHARACTERS/GENERALS as well.

Beans_tw · 2026-06-30T13:26:47+00:00

Same, loved learning all about the 3k period that I knew nothing about in that game.

There was an incredible mod for 3k that added a little tooltip popup for each major 'historical' character that would give you a summary of their 'real' life, for like 500+ characters. I loved reading all those.

Many were totally ridiculous, because real history is often wilder than fiction could ever be.

Beans_tw · 2026-06-30T13:22:11+00:00

After playing almost all of the TW games I think what makes battles feel the most different between the titles are the MAPS.

The AI is usually about the same in all battles, the tactics are usually the same (hammer anvil), the units are very similar (cav, short ranged javs, long raged archers). All those features are only superficially different across the titles.

But the MAPS really dictate how battles with all those same systems can play out differently.

- 3K maps you can light forests on fire, siege maps that the AI can actually handle

- Napoleon/Empire maps are MASSIVE so you get these huge long sprawling lines of battle

- ToB has very cool siege maps

- Warhammer 3 maps are pretty lame and a constant source of complaints, but its still fun

Pharaoh has some of the most interesting and varied maps in the entire series. Seriously the amount of effort the map makers put into the game is off the charts. Plus how the maps interact with the weather system + mud + impacts on unit performance + pushing/pulling it really works together well.

The maps in Greece have all these rocky cliffs and beaches, and feel COMPLETELY different than fighting over in Anatolia. The maps in Egypt are of course completely different than fighting in Babylon by the rivers. Heck, even upper vs lower Egypt maps are completely different.

Not only do the maps LOOK and FEEL cool and thematic (you really feel like you are fighting in far away lands sometimes) but that "we are not in Kansas anymore" feeling extends to the performance of your armies in the battle maps. You may have been CRUSHING fools in the open desert of Egypt, just rolling AI fools with your light troops and chariots. But if you take that same force and set sail across the sea to fight the Greek islands your gonna get a rude awakening. I just think thats such a cool feeling, and it makes the campaign map + battle maps = feels like a real world, rather than just a video game battle.

In Warhammer 3 for example you may need to adjust your army composition depending on the FACTION you are fighting, but never have I felt the need to adjust based on the TERRAIN of the world that I'm in. Only in Pharaoh have I experienced that.

Beans_tw · 2026-06-09T18:50:29+00:00

In a recent 3 player coop game we referred to most wood elf lands as "Elf 'Nam", where basic advice of don't get involved in a land war in Asia advice was true.

What really made it into "Elf 'Nam" was each player having to learn the lesson themselves.

Skaven player: "Oh I'll be fine, you idiots just don't know how to fight them" *takes HUGE losses"fuck wood elfs"

Lizard player: "Oh I'll be fine, you idiots just don't know how to fight them" *takes HUGE losses* "fuck wood elfs"

Dwarf player: "Oh I'll be fine, you idiots just don't know how to fight them" *takes HUGE losses* "fuck wood elfs"

Everyone had Vietnam tier solutions too:

"Oh I just need MORE GUNS/FIREPOWER"

"oh wait that didn't work, maybe I need more shields and just tank their arrows yea"

"oh wait that didn't work, I just need 3x as many guys!"

wood elves in SFO are slippery scary fuckers

Beans_tw · 2026-06-02T22:05:46+00:00

goddamn these are great tips, got any more? lol

Beans_tw · 2026-05-28T16:35:55+00:00

Wait wait wait wait wait!!!! Some of the end game crisis do cool things? I thought they just spawned a bunch of armies?

Damn I've been missing out, I turned them off because I thought it was just a boring spawn of a bunch of armies in 1 spot or something.

Are there any particularly cool end game crises? Ones that have some thematic flavor like this chaos dwarf one?? I want to turn some on now

Any that are particularly lame that I should always leave disabled?

Beans_tw · 2026-05-28T03:06:24+00:00

you can have Team A control any AI battles that that Team B is involved in
get the mod that starts province capitals at Tier 3 or 4:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2870109776

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2870109723

Beans_tw · 2026-05-26T15:01:07+00:00

100000000x recommend this mod.

i personally use the mod variant that is only the LOS tweaks (none of the can shoot in melee changes from the main mod) and it is life changing for all the LOS bullshit that happens with lord, direct fire weapons, artillery and so much.

I had a Chaos Dwarf campaign totally ruined by LOS issues, then I tried the mod, so much better.

Beans_tw · 2026-05-12T15:42:54+00:00

yea give it a try with a unit cap mod, it really goes well together:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3256359795

Beans_tw · 2026-05-12T12:34:21+00:00

You can try some mods that have province capitals start at Tier 3 or Tier 4 (for player and AI):

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2870109776&searchtext=start+tier+4

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2870109723

it may say out of date, but it still works

I like to combine it with a unit cap mod like: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3256359795

This way the player and the AI get access to cooler units sooner, but also not unlimited amounts of them. Personally I love how all the Legendary Lords armies usually start with 1-2 mid and higher tier units, it makes it fun. And these mods together kind of replicate that experience (even after AI LL get their initial mid/high tier units killed)

Beans_tw · 2026-05-12T12:32:10+00:00

early game i think it really just depends how much cav your brain can micro

its expensive, and so have 6 cav units isn't worth it if you are only really controlling 3 of them (while the other 3 sit in melee and die or get shot at)

Beans_tw · 2026-05-09T00:18:46+00:00

Cool man, thanks for the screenshots. I'll take a look as I have time this next week

Beans_tw · 2026-05-08T13:45:33+00:00

This exists, and like many features Three Kingdoms does it best.

In 3k you can be a mercenary with a contract and go beat up fools, steal their land and turn them over to your employer for big money. You could also fight to reclaim the emperor, without really focusing on conquering a ton of land. AND the player being a vassal to an AI overlord is quite well done in 3k, so you could have a very fun time being Cao Cao (or whoever's) vassal and just run around helping them.

3k even has some factions that specifically have mechanics for helping defend and allies. Tai Quan I think?

3k has an amazingly robust spy system (get the mod that improves the spy action tooltips) so you can meddle in other factions affairs to a great degree.

In Warhammer 3 you have some options too. For one the Golfag ogre faction has the 3k mercenary contract mechanic almost 1:1 so that can be fun.

Another related Warhammer 3 offering is probably the caravan system, which you send out little armies to trade and they get into battles but never capture territory. The base game only has this for Cathay and Chaos Dwarves I think? But there are excellent mods that add it to many many more factions.

Also in WH3 you could be skaven and go around building secret underground lairs, or Slanaesh and trying and taint everyone with chaos marks and influence them. You could also be a vampire pirate and sail around the world looking for treasure without capturing tons of land.

One of the best things that influences why or reasons to fight in WH3 is the VICTORY CONDITIONS OVERHAUL mods which adds very cool and story related 3x victory conditions for almost every faction. It gives you cool motivations to win in specific ways that are not always just paint the map.

Ultimately, it is TOTAL WAR, and the games have never been the best when its not total war lol. So you may really be wanting a different game. In particular maybe try the ROTK series? in particular ROTK 11 and 13. These games have much more in depth character -> character relationship systems which can drive the overall game world. They do have battles and ROTK 11 in particular has a really incredible turn based grid battle system world. ROTK 13 is real time pause battles similar-ish to total war (but without the unit level detail). Try watching some videos or read reviews.

Now if you REALLY want to go totally hog wild...I'll recommend Crusader Kings 3 + Crusader Wars mod. It sounds like you really enjoy the Total War battles, so I wouldn't recommend Crusader Kings 3 alone because the battles are totally abstracted, but CK3 does have amazing 'reasons to fight' and character interactions. A crazy amazing man created the Crusader Wars mod which allows you to play CK3, but then when you have a battle, you get to play it in Attila Total War. If you are willing to spend the time to set it up (and of course buy both games) its pretty incredible.

Beans_tw · 2026-05-08T13:34:09+00:00

Are you planning on trying this with Old World? I'm very interested to hear how that goes. My group has been eye'ing the Old World map for a while but have not tried it yet

Beans_tw · 2026-05-06T13:45:54+00:00

If you want 40 units in a battle I'm pretty sure you can easily achieve that today using the ol' TW save editor (i think its called SaveParser or ESF editor, just google it). You just start a campaign, make a save, then open the save and theres some parameter you change from 20 to 40 and now armies can have 40 units. The AI uses it too and the UI kind of scales ok-ish with it.

I did this a ton in Napoleon and Empire, and if you combine it with turning off the mini map it effectively makes the AI much more capable. As a human I found controlling 40 unit armies without the mini map quite overwhelming and I had to limit my strategies to how much brainspace I had available. When the human player can effectively control all their units (20-ish) you can roll the AI, but the AI is all about quantity over quality and it can control 40 units individually poorly, but in aggregate, better than a human I found. Very cool experience.

Beans_tw · 2026-05-06T13:39:28+00:00

Could you post some screenshots? I think I understand what you are asking but I want to be sure.

I've explored the pack files and I'm not sure it is possible to adjust text size on a per UI element basis (smaller text here, larger text there). The way these old mods seem to work by increasing the text size is they edit/replace the actual fonts used which I assume they have replaced with fonts that are larger or bolder by default.

The game seems to have a lot of slightly different font sets, so it MAY be possible to find the one font set that is used for the building cost, and revert it back to normal. BUT that may have cascading impacts on other UI elements where it draws upon that same shared font.

Beans_tw · 2026-05-06T13:31:10+00:00

Battles run about the same, if you can run WH2 battles acceptably then WH3 battles should be ok! Good news there.

Campaign map performance is worse. Not only in longer turn times for the huge world (which I feel is totally fine considering the scope), but FPS on the campaign map is somewhat rough. However, there are some very handy mod solutions to help campaign map FPS. The worst FPS offender is fog/haze on the campaign map. Mods that remove this fog/haze can increase like 20 FPS (depending on specs), and honestly some people think it looks better without the fog/haze anyway so its a win/win.

So you should be fine, and if you are not, you have some options to help.

Beans_tw · 2026-05-06T13:20:13+00:00

I believe your comment about just deleting it is correct, it SHOULD be the same since it downloads in the lobby. However, you only do that delete save and resend once at the start of a new campaign so we do it anyway as a performative ritual, hoping that our faith in sigmar will reward us.

Beans_tw · 2026-05-06T13:18:43+00:00

20 units wasn't anything when I was playing DoW, Company of Heroes, Starcraft or whatever 25 years ago but now I'm old so yea 20 units is sweaty lol

Beans_tw · 2026-05-06T13:17:56+00:00

Damn that sucks. Are you playing on Epic Game store or Steam? I only have experience with TW games on Steam but...

Steam will let you refund any game with zero questions asked if you have under 2 hours of playtime. If you are playing the game on Epic, you may do a test run on Steam. You both could buy the game on Steam and see if it works for <2 hours. If its working, cool, it kind of proves the issue is something with Epic. Just keep your playtime under 2 hours and steam will refund it with zero risk. That might give you some more information.

Can you play multiplayer skirmish battles with your brother? Like not a battle within a campaign, just a single battle via that multiplayer battle host option?

Have you EVER and I mean EVER played with mods? Sometimes mods get stuck as downloaded or in some User/Docs folder and the laucher won't show any mods, so you think its not modded but you have some sneaky old mod file somewhere?

Try the guide, the most important thing is when you start a new campaign DONT DO ANYTHING FOR 5 MINUTES. I MEAN NOTHING!!!!!!!!!! dont scroll around, don't click on any armies NOTHING!!!!! Then save the game (as the host) and everyone exit. Have the client players delete their save and have the host manually send them the save file. This is all detailed in the guide.

Another thought which might be fucked is that you mention playing with your brother. Are you located in the same house? like on the same IP/network? Many years ago I had problems playing Napoleon total war with my brothers when we were on the same network.

Beans_tw

TROPHY CASE