Which Total War game might be best for a newbie?

[Cheezy the Wiz]

LOL, I didn't realize they were referring to the Thureophoroi. I knew I had a man-crush on those guys for a reason.

 

[atheotes]

though Medieval I is the better game, RTW is easier on the eye and good to pick up play if you dont mind the creative liberties they have taken with history. RTW has some awesome mods as well.

 

[thecougarbear]

though Medieval I is the better game, RTW is easier on the eye and good to pick up play if you dont mind the creative liberties they have taken with history. RTW has some awesome mods as well.

You're right about the mods. Rome's core game is passable, but the mods are great, and the community over at twcenter still actively supports their development. For no other reason than modability, I disagree with your statement regarding which game is better.

The best mods, though, may be on Medieval II. Third Age Total War and Stainless Steel are out of this world. It's too bad the game has not supported the mod community since MII (a little like CiV, really).

Go with the original as an intro. You'll be able to find it on the cheap somewhere, but check out the mod community too, it'll blow your mind.

 

[Ajidica]

Bah, Fourth Age Total War, even in its beta stage, trounces Third Age Total War.
And I have yet to see a mod as inventive as 'With Fire and Sword' (Rennaisance in Eastern Europe) for Medieval II.

 

[PhilBowles]

I'd actually recommend Shogun 2, although it's not in your list. It has been mechanically simplified a lot compared with earlier instalments (automatic diplomacy with largely preset outcomes, no effect of diplomats' experience etc., automatic teching and a more simplified tech tree than Empire/Napoleon, everything is upgradeable with gold without a 'growth' resource needed to take you to the next tech level, simplified happiness management and limited building trees), which is newbie-friendly without losing much of the game's character or depth (although I hate the fact that Diablo character tech trees have almost wholly replaced organic character development - now your characters occasionally gain attributes but there's a limited pool to develop from, they seem to be assigned randomly and there's no "Man of the Hour" advancement).

Beyond that, with its expansions it's as fully-'rounded' a TW experience as you'll find - like Empire and Napoleon, and unlike previous instalments, it has tech trees for research, and naval warfare. Like Medieval, its main time period focuses on swords, spears and bows, with some guns and artillery introduced as the game progresses. Like Rome, it has a fully pre-gunpowder setting; and at the other end of the scale Fall of the Samurai plays more like Empire or Napoleon (though still with more of an emphasis on melee troops than these games).

 

[Atticus]

One of my favourite things in TRW was how the characters evolved. The later TWs weren't as consistent on that. At first you didn't notice any patterns they followed, so it looked even better. One thing I most hoped they'd do was that you could read their bios after the deaths. They could've include battle history and their personality traits. Plus maybe something about how important they were considered among the family/society.

 

[PhilBowles]

One of my favourite things in TRW was how the characters evolved. The later TWs weren't as consistent on that. At first you didn't notice any patterns they followed, so it looked even better. One thing I most hoped they'd do was that you could read their bios after the deaths. They could've include battle history and their personality traits. Plus maybe something about how important they were considered among the family/society.

I found that in Empire most of my characters developed traits consistent with their experience - Medieval II less so (seemed like all my characters ultimately ended up with foreign fruitcakes for some reason), but Man of the Hour promotions were common. I do loathe the way that evolution has been essentially removed in Shogun 2, though.

 

[LightSpectra]

Medieval II plus Kingdoms is like $2.50 on Steam right now. Get it and download Stainless Steel 6.4, which makes it the best game in the franchise by far.

All of the Total War games take a few hours to "break into" before they're good. The first five or six battles I played in M2TW (my first strategy game that I put real effort into learning) I lost miserably, but once you understand the quirks of the battle engine it's quite fun.

 

[GoodGame]

I found that in Shogun 2 it's harder to make head-way and the grand strategy is very nuanced. Time is the greatest enemy so you have to rehearse a perfect strategy in the grand strategy shell. So I'd not recommend that for a newbie, unless you have a thick skin about losing again and again.

Rome 1 is very much like Civ3 where you might just spam city buildings with the only negative being that it lets the enemy rebuild their forces. It's very easy to gain momentum and win several battles. That's not to say that there's no strategy in vanilla Rome1, because there is in balancing the happiness, wealth, and unit bonuses. However it's pretty forgiving.

 

[Joecoolyo]

I found that in Shogun 2 it's harder to make head-way and the grand strategy is very nuanced. Time is the greatest enemy so you have to rehearse a perfect strategy in the grand strategy shell. So I'd not recommend that for a newbie, unless you have a thick skin about losing again and again.

Rome 1 is very much like Civ3 where you might just spam city buildings with the only negative being that it lets the enemy rebuild their forces. It's very easy to gain momentum and win several battles. That's not to say that there's no strategy in vanilla Rome1, because there is in balancing the happiness, wealth, and unit bonuses. However it's pretty forgiving.

That's actually a pretty good way to describe most Total War's before Shogun 2. If you played your cards right in the beginning, you'd most likely get a snowball going and nothing can stop you.

Shogun 2 and Fall of the Samurai on the other hand, you don't really get the snowball effect until very late game. Its very easy (especially on hard difficulty) to make one mistake and watch your entire empire collapse right before your eyes. The A.I. are much more aggressive, and any weakness they spot they'll go for it. I find it makes a harder, but more enjoyable game overall. I almost never finished my games in the older Total War's because I would get bored before it ended, with Shogun 2 and Fall, I find I don't finish games because the A.I. managed to form a coalition and blitz me before I had the chance

 

[scheva007]

Thats true. In all the previous total war's,there was a point were you got so big one moment you just started to steamroll everything, and you could take any province you want, and the fun was out of the game (i almost never finished a medieval 2 campaign because of that).

In shogun 2 thats has changed. once you hit a number of provinces, all clans get together and will declare war on you. only your allies will stick with you, and they too will eventually declare war on you unless you give them money to keep fighting. this is known as "realm divide". they harder the difficulty, the sooner it hits. It provides a real challenge for mid to endgame, and can sometimes make everything fall apart in 5 turns if you're not properly prepared.

The AI is a lot more aggresive and will attempt naval invasions sometimes. so its probably the hardest TW to date. But it will also be the TW where the succesors will be based on (especially upcoming Rome 2).
I would advice Napoleon TW. its generally considered the least hard TW, but the seperate campaigns introduce you to the game elements of things like research. And some game features that are n S2 made their first appareance in Napoleon (like attiration, seasons and replenishment)

 

[PhilBowles]

I found that in Shogun 2 it's harder to make head-way and the grand strategy is very nuanced. Time is the greatest enemy so you have to rehearse a perfect strategy in the grand strategy shell. So I'd not recommend that for a newbie, unless you have a thick skin about losing again and again.

I don't think people will often win their first campaign anyway, and Shogun 2 gets you familiar with many of the basic mechanics (and often in simplified form). I agree though that it's very much harder to win within the time limit - I can have enough provinces in Empire in certain of the easier campaigns (such as the Marathra) well before the half time mark.

 

[sophie]

That's not to say that there's no strategy in vanilla Rome1, because there is in balancing the happiness, wealth, and unit bonuses. However it's pretty forgiving.

No. This is it pretty much. The "strategy" of RTW vanilla was stay alive until you could get a full stack army with halfway-decent troops. Once you got this the game was essentially over. The "difficulty" of the game (if you want to call it that) was in the staying alive part for a select few factions (scythians and parthians, WRE in BI, perhaps. Even 'hard' factions like the seleucids were a walk in the park). This concept is essentially the same in M2 and M1. M2 was, in my opinion, an even easier game than RTW was. Now EB, that was a different matter entirely.

Another reason I really like MTW1 was that the staying alive part of the game was a bit more drawn out than it was in the other games, and M1 added a legitimate blobbed threat at the end of the game as a final boss. (RTW had the Romans, but the broken strategic map ai all but mitigated the boss)

 

[LightSpectra]

Ironically, the "easiness" of the unmodded main campaign in all of the games starting with Rome is part of a standard progression that every TW fan goes through: learn the basics with the main campaign, maybe beat it again on VH/VH, and then download a total overhaul mod that makes it infinitely better and more difficult (EB, SS, that one mod for Napoleon).

 

[Gath_Stormer]

The older games are simpler I suppose. I didn't have much trouble learning RTW.