Which total war title has the best battle engine?

[K-tel Records]

I am thinking of loading one of my many TW games. I intend to play only battles. What is the best TW title for battles not counting warhammer or other fantasy titles. I post on this forum because in my mind, Attila or Rome2 might be the best candidates. Please tell me if I am wrong and why.

[Preacher]

m2, rome 1

[LeeFu]

M2,W3

[Conny Von H.]

Preacher lähetti viestin:

m2, rome 1

Yeah M2 I'd say, best unit collision

[tonebarone]

Medieval 2 but I would like to see an updated version with better graphics

[Dani Mcfly]

Rome 2 Runs Flawless, for Battles 1100 AD and DEI (Divide Et Impera) are Epic.

[shogunsmurf]

Rome 2 is horrible since it's the reworked engine of Empire which was based upon ranged combat and lacked unit collision because of the god awful kill move system between individual soldiers that can't be interrupted. Even to this day you notice that they have to force a formation. The only time they seemed to have notice this and effectively polished this issue out was with Shogun 2

Rome 1 / Medival 2 had the best engine hands down. It had actual unit collision built in and not forced afterwards. This allowed several units to attack 1 unit, instead of animation trading like in Rome 2.

Sure the animation / kill move system looks more impressive, but the far more simple swings that can be interupted even system from Rome 1 and Medival 2 is far more realistic and allows you to actually us something called "local force superiority", you know, something pretty much in every military manual.

[kam2150]

From under the hood perspective, Three Kingdoms and this is not even up to debate once you get familiar with how much stuff is possible there.

Only issue is that base game does not use it to full potential but CA added A LOT of stuff for modding, likely many variables to mass pushing like in older games but also you can have mixed units (like infantry and cavalry in same unit) or even place soldiers in a unit based on their armor (so you can make first ranks be heavily hoplites, middle made of medium hoplites and rear made of light hoplites). Modding wise, Three Kingdoms has just crazy amount of stuff you can do there.

shogunsmurf lähetti viestin:

Sure the animation / kill move system looks more impressive, but the far more simple swings that can be interupted even system from Rome 1 and Medival 2 is far more realistic and allows you to actually us something called "local force superiority", you know, something pretty much in every military manual.

This is also a thing in Rome 2, just not really used well by base game. For example Rome 2 allows you to have 1:1 copy of how attacks and animations worked in Med 2, in other words non lethal attacks can be made but multiple attackers and only actual kills trigger kill animation.

[Kanovskiy]

m2 battle is just awful, the units are like floating on the ground and move very very bad, too sluggish. When a unit charges vs another unit they just intermingle plus the battle mode has many bugs; I gave it a couple of chances even playing mods but the battle just frustrates me, not to mention the horrible unit skelletons or whatever that make the soldiers always crouching when fighting, they look retdarded.

Nothing like Rome 1 where units feel like they have weight and power and can actually push back and the enemies go flying when charged etc... A charge of Graal Knights vs barbarians... it's very satisfying. Not to mention the soldiers look fully bipedal when fighting not like neanderthals as in med2. The problem with Rome 1 is the clone soldiers, outdated graphics and if given enough time all cities will be the same. Mods aleviate some of that though.

In Rome 2 I feel the combat is...acceptable. I don't zoom-in much in this game I don't know why, in Rome 1 I was constantly zooming in. The combat results feel accurate according to the stats and morale etc. when you say that "combat can't be interrupted" what does that even mean? I can retreat units from fighting just fine, I don't know what are you expecting.

I haven't tried the R1:Remaster or three kingdoms but want to.

[Emperor Zero]

shogunsmurf lähetti viestin:

Rome 2 is horrible since it's the reworked engine of Empire which was based upon ranged combat and lacked unit collision because of the god awful kill move system between individual soldiers that can't be interrupted. Even to this day you notice that they have to force a formation. The only time they seemed to have notice this and effectively polished this issue out was with Shogun 2

Rome 1 / Medival 2 had the best engine hands down. It had actual unit collision built in and not forced afterwards. This allowed several units to attack 1 unit, instead of animation trading like in Rome 2.

Sure the animation / kill move system looks more impressive, but the far more simple swings that can be interupted even system from Rome 1 and Medival 2 is far more realistic and allows you to actually us something called "local force superiority", you know, something pretty much in every military manual.

it has far better collision then m2 and r1 and the units actually stay in formation instead of mixing together, m2 and r1 aren't bad when compared to todays titles where its even worse where units just turn into a big blob with no formation or collision but rome 2 is still far superior, its why the game has the most popular competitive multiplayer other then warhammer which only has a bigger one due to popularity rather then the game actually being good for it.

[Stix_09]

Hotwire lähetti viestin:

I am thinking of loading one of my many TW games. I intend to play only battles. What is the best TW title for battles not counting warhammer or other fantasy titles. I post on this forum because in my mind, Attila or Rome2 might be the best candidates. Please tell me if I am wrong and why.

IMO Attila is the best of the 32bit warscape engines (the TW Engine 3 ) for combat.
It was the last game to use the 32bit engine, but has the best battle interface for games up to this date. (unit and camera control)

For a list of the games vs what TW engines they use see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_War_(video_game_series)
there are 3 main game engines , with the warscape (TW engine 3 , having a 32 bit and 64bit version , so really its 2 dif engines, but 64 bit one is based off the Attila's engine)
(with each successive game using a modified version of these 3)

Personally i can't play TW game on the engines pre TW Engine 3 (32 bit warscape) as graphics are very dated and they breaks immersion for me.
The Warscape 32 bit engine came into being with Empire TW -> Attila and was improved (in terms of combat and camera , unit control and graphics with each game)

R1 remastered uses a recompiled and updated 64bit TW Engine 2, but as its based on the original code has its advantages and limitations still.

Mods are also to a degree able to alter combat , so thats a factor also. DEI for example for R2 improves on vanilla, but R2 still has a unit blobbing issue.

[kam2150]

I find Attila to be the worst combat engine so far in TW games, from games released in last 10 years.

Stuff like units dying from 1 hit if caught while moving (no matter how much armor and HP they have) its like a cheat mod since AI loves to disengage from 1v1 combat and then your inferior unit routs better AI units as your guys not only 1 hit kill them but also gain charge bonus for as long as that AI unit will be moving away from them. I can't imagine losing a cav battle to AI in Attila due to that.

Cavalry also can't deal collision damage to other cavalry in Attila, hence why some units have weird stats there like some cataphract tier horse unit but with spears having only 50-60 charge bonus and then some medium lancers having 200+ charge (which was to way to fix lack of collision damage for cav on cav charges).

There are more issues there but above two automatically make it difficult to enjoy and to mod as you can't toy much with combat speed or that 1 hit kill will catch up to you.

[Stix_09]

kam2150 lähetti viestin:

I find Attila to be the worst combat engine so far in TW games, from games released in last 10 years.

Stuff like units dying from 1 hit if caught while moving (no matter how much armor and HP they have) its like a cheat mod since AI loves to disengage from 1v1 combat and then your inferior unit routs better AI units as your guys not only 1 hit kill them but also gain charge bonus for as long as that AI unit will be moving away from them. I can't imagine losing a cav battle to AI in Attila due to that.

Cavalry also can't deal collision damage to other cavalry in Attila, hence why some units have weird stats there like some cataphract tier horse unit but with spears having only 50-60 charge bonus and then some medium lancers having 200+ charge (which was to way to fix lack of collision damage for cav on cav charges).

There are more issues there but above two automatically make it difficult to enjoy and to mod as you can't toy much with combat speed or that 1 hit kill will catch up to you.

Is that not moddable though, or is it the engine limitation?

[Jesus]

I havent played often - only a few games
but with every time I start a campaign, I find myself scumsaving and redoing battles multiple times because of game breaking bugs
ships simply stay in the middle of the ocean, unmoving - forcing me to surrender, just to leave the battle
units completely bug out and stay put, sometimes in formation, sometimes completely sprawled on the map
absolute braindead battle AI and map AI
on top of that comes the absolutely braindead city building ... I mean, its astoundingly simplified - to the point that I feel insulted

yeah no - its purdy, ill give it that; but other than that, its a downgrade in almost every aspect (except for the doubling of unit counts in battles - thats good, but thats the least I would expect with hardware advancement and such)

[Stix_09]

Jesus lähetti viestin:

I havent played often - only a few games
but with every time I start a campaign, I find myself scumsaving and redoing battles multiple times because of game breaking bugs

naval combat is broken in R2 , ATTILA, its why they stopped using it in later games, the engine was made for gunpowder navy combat. so works fine in Empire and Napoleon.
but not melee combat.

It was even worse on game release , R2 was a mess. I tend to avoid Navy as much as possible, also I only play modded games, fix/improves some of the bs. But the OP question was about which game?

BUT imo u also need to take into account the interface , not just the combat itself and mods. For example Attila has better unit control than R2 and R1, R2 is also one of the most modded tw games out there some of which impact combat and have fixes.

I own almost all the tw games so have played most of them.,

[kam2150]

Stix_09 lähetti viestin:

kam2150 lähetti viestin:

I find Attila to be the worst combat engine so far in TW games, from games released in last 10 years.

Stuff like units dying from 1 hit if caught while moving (no matter how much armor and HP they have) its like a cheat mod since AI loves to disengage from 1v1 combat and then your inferior unit routs better AI units as your guys not only 1 hit kill them but also gain charge bonus for as long as that AI unit will be moving away from them. I can't imagine losing a cav battle to AI in Attila due to that.

Cavalry also can't deal collision damage to other cavalry in Attila, hence why some units have weird stats there like some cataphract tier horse unit but with spears having only 50-60 charge bonus and then some medium lancers having 200+ charge (which was to way to fix lack of collision damage for cav on cav charges).

There are more issues there but above two automatically make it difficult to enjoy and to mod as you can't toy much with combat speed or that 1 hit kill will catch up to you.

Is that not moddable though, or is it the engine limitation?

That is sadly not moddable, at least not in a way that does not mess up most of other stuff in the process (like making unit charge speed lower than running speed so that units that break off, have chance to do it).

I do agree with your other post that Attila has better naval battles than Rome 2. Probably of all TW games that do include naval battles, Rome 2 ones are least fun and most buggy.