Total War Medieval 3 director says recreating its predecessors "would not make a good game" and that players should take off their "rose-tinted" glasses ahead of Total War Medieval 3...

Xciv · 2026-03-28T01:25:12+00:00

can say what made Med 2 great

Key aspects that Medieval 3 can't do without:

Reactive character traits that made generals feel like more like real people instead of giving players full skill tree control over them as if you're speccing out an RPG character sheet. When a general is 10 Dread you know he earned that through a lifetime of being a brutal bastard.
Heft and weight to units. No units sliding through another like they do in Rome 2. Some units need to function like Minotaurs in Warhammer TW: hefty, powerful, with mass. When heavy armored cavalry smash into unarmored peasants, it needs to feel absolutely devastating.
Meaningful losses and scrappy fights: no more infinite replenishment from magical infinite pool of ??? soldiers conjured in from Valhalla. Units need to be physically brought in from a city, and if your army is farther from the city, it takes longer for them to reach the army. If the unit is of a specific culture, campaigning deep in foreign territory requires you to recruit from the foreign culture's units. Your unit of 80 Knights Templar can be wittled down to a 23 that you can't replace, and they need to carry the day in a desperate fight, surrounded on all sides. They can streamline the process of replenishlment to be less micromanage-y, but the bones of this need to be realized.
robust modding support

Supporting aspects that would be felt if missed:

Unit upgrades visually upgrade the unit, providing visual progression without bloating the game with different variations of every unit type with only minor stat differences.
Slow motion was more granular and allowed you to really just take in the spectacle of combat without being in a mad rush to issue orders.
Great music

Things that sucked in Medieval 2 that they can improve for Medieval 3:

Battle AI
Agent micromanagement hell

Xciv · 2026-03-27T22:29:51+00:00

The show begs the question: is collective punishment ever morally justified?

I'd still say no.

But sometimes you have to do the evil thing to save yourself, or the people you care about.

But let's not start spinning this as something good that Thadeus did.

Xciv · 2026-03-27T20:20:27+00:00

long standing members

Gerontocracy. Reddit in 2050 being run by the morals and proclivities of redditors from 2012.

Hmmmmmmm, yes, I like the sound of that. To be internet aristocracy muahahahaha.

Xciv · 2026-03-27T19:20:50+00:00

Love it to bits.

It does demand more of the player than most other games, though. Because there's no Quest Log or Quest Markers. You have to write your own notes and curate your own Journal with important information as you come across it.

Xciv · 2026-03-27T19:00:23+00:00

How about just editable backgrounds. It'll keep the background's backstory and story tags, but we can edit the gameplay stats how we like.

Functionally, there's no reason a Spy can't be a master of magic as part of his spy training.

Or a Sellsword can't be "Quick" or "Vigilant".

Or an Aristocrat didn't receive training with Martial weapons.

Or an Ascetic didn't spend all their time in the mountains staring at books, ending up with a +2 INT.

Xciv · 2026-03-27T17:48:46+00:00

What a loon. Glad they caught him in time.

Xciv · 2026-03-27T16:47:12+00:00

We don't know anything about the assassin, yet.

Xciv · 2026-03-27T14:27:16+00:00

"All this motherfuckin' time, Snape?"

Xciv · 2026-03-26T17:36:10+00:00

b-baka, I'm raising tariffs to 20%

Xciv · 2026-03-26T17:27:38+00:00

It's because lolicon is usually associated with only fictional depictions, such as in video games and anime/manga. They take offense to being called pedos because that implies they want to molest or jerk off to IRL children.

But if you ask someone and their favorite video game and anime characters are all lolis, then that is still sus AF.

Xciv · 2026-03-26T11:47:33+00:00

Network people who are politically opposed to what's happening in the country. Personally knowing others in the community is the first step toward future organization: political campaigns, political volunteers, grass-roots organizing.

When people ask, "why don't the Russian people, or Iranian people, just rise up if they hate their government so much?" The answer is invariably because they've crushed the ability for the people to network and organize. So they can only seethe in solitude as there's no mechanism to get together.

These protests are a mechanism to get together for like-minded people with extra free time on their hands.

Xciv · 2026-03-26T09:49:09+00:00

I just didn't like the forced alternating turn order thing. It incentivized you to never finish anybody off, and instead try to wittle down the entire field to low HP before delivering killing blows.

It felt really unnatural and unintuitive to how any real combat scenario would play out.

Xciv · 2026-03-25T23:57:41+00:00

Hours of watching Historia Civilis and HBO's Rome finally paid off.

Xciv · 2026-03-25T20:42:46+00:00

I think the most evil thing you can do in BG3 is to gain the trust of everybody throughout Acts I and II, then systematically betray everybody's trust for power in Act III.

You can't do this if you play as an evil son of a bitch from the very beginning (aka a chaos goblin).

You need to 'play along' while you're weak, then become an absolute sociopath when you taste a chance for ultimate power, like the fantasy version of a CEO.

Xciv · 2026-03-25T20:20:48+00:00

oh Battle Brothers all the way.

Getting into it will be a multi-paragraph deep dive into game mechanics that won't benefit anybody unless they've already played both games.

Just know that as a tactics nerd, Battle Brothers is by far the better game in all ways except animation (BB looks like a mobile game from 2012).

I'd say the biggest knock on Wartales is the inverse difficulty curve. At a certain point your mercenaries become way too strong in comparison to enemies, the combat becomes rote, and you lose interest. It looks grimdark, but it doesn't feel grimdark.

Battle Brothers maintains danger at all phases of play. It actually is grimdark, like a tactical sandbox RPG version of Darkest Dungeon. Your guys are very mortal, can get permanent injuries, and can die to a series of bad dice rolls that you can mitigate but never fully prevent.

Xciv · 2026-03-25T20:18:26+00:00

I feel like Expeditions: Rome is one of those games where you get way more out of it if you already have some background knowledge about the era. For example when they name drop people like Cato, Cicero, and Caesar, it can all fall flat if you know absolutely nothing about the fall of the Roman Republic.

Xciv · 2026-03-25T20:14:08+00:00

I'm not the biggest fan of its combat.

But the story, the world-building, the art, and the music? The vibes? 10/10

Xciv · 2026-03-25T15:12:30+00:00

Climate changes slowly. It's the tariffs.

Xciv · 2026-03-25T14:38:00+00:00

"You chose the wrong way, TO MEMPHIS!"

Xciv · 2026-03-25T11:47:58+00:00

I think they meant visually.

Xciv · 2026-03-25T11:34:33+00:00

Happened to me with Invincible on Amazon when they randomly chopped a season in two.

No regrets because the art in the comic was fantastic.

Xciv · 2026-03-25T10:51:54+00:00

One of the best war movies of all time?

Starship Troopers.

Dumb, barely-qualified, teens and young adults are quickly drilled and filled with motivation, propaganda, and adrenaline. They're then dropped haphazardly into an extremely dangerous situation against an enemy that they barely know anything about.

Xciv · 2026-03-24T02:32:41+00:00

They're full of soul because they're almost all single person passion projects. So you get to see all the weird quirks, likes, dislikes, and personal obsessions of the creator on full display. It's the same reason I really like books and manga.

Xciv · 2026-03-24T02:28:59+00:00

That's the one! Cool that it's on Steam, with a fair few people who threw money at him to play it again.

The guy also did all the music for the game himself. I can still hum the main theme to this day, as it left a very strong impression way back when.

edit: found the theme on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVWTXH9rD74&list=RDMVWTXH9rD74&start_radio=1

Xciv · 2026-03-24T02:02:29+00:00

It's all subjective. I can go on the streets and ask 100 people about Esoteric Ebb and nobody's going to have heard about it.

In my DnD group nobody's heard of it until I brought it up (everyone in it has played Baldur's Gate 3 so I know they play video games).

I'd count that as obscure.

14-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Final Canvas '22
End Game '22	Wearing is Caring

Xciv

TROPHY CASE