>>2324264
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/InYsZtD5jLo
For all these years, I didn't know you could do this.

>Check out EB2 since its one of the most popular mods
>Earraping didgeridoo "music"
>No combat advisor either so you hear nothing but the didgeridoos
>Sieges are an absolute slog with units hacking forever at each other without anyone dying
>Everything takes forever to build
>Enemy turns take a long time
I can't believe anyone pretends that this is more fun than vanilla RTW.

>>2324299
I recently tried it as well and I liked it overall. I really like historical accuracy visually, not meme shit like bronze age Egypt of vanilla games. But I don't always care about extra mechanics these autistic mods introduce. It's not like all those mechanics make it all that more accurate anyway. But visual accuracy is important to me.
That said, I am thinking about trying out DEI for Rome 2 now.
>didgeridoo
It's not that. It's Carnyx.

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>>2324264
I play a lot of Rome 2 DEI. Recently played an Imperator Augustus campaign that I got bored of after I defeated Antony, giving it a break for now before I play Empire Divided.

>>2324299
it's a slog to play, the mod is popular because of the units

>>2324547
Yeah, i want to play DEI too. I have more ideas on what to play than time for it.

will med 3 have actually good mod support?

>>2324945
Yes. They explicitly said the new engine has added oldschool style mod support. Meaning that we can be cautiously optimistic that no matter how much they want to lowball the release product in order to milk DLC it will be fine because we can just get mods to do it better.
The question is whether the 3rd worlders who typically make mods will actually get to work on it. They still haven't maximised Rome: Remastered's potential all these years later.

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>>2324299
yeah, I used to play EB 1 but seriously prefer vanilla plus mods

>>2324953
rtwr dont work on win7, why bother

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>>2324931
Rome 2 is a pretty good classical history simulator. there is something for everyone. The vanilla game already has quite a few campaigns while DEI adds new ones like Alexander, the Makedonian Wars, and Sulla. 600 years of history and yes I played most of them in succession, I only skipped the Peloponnesian War and the Makedonian War because I don't have the Wrath of Sparta DLC. I have 500 hours in Rome 2 DEI and only have Empire Divided left to do then I can consider Rome 2 finished and uninstall it forever.
>now we are free

>>2324264
Rome 2 killed historical total war

Historicals have been expelled out of 109 generals so far... when the persecution end!?

>>2324953
>The question is whether the 3rd worlders who typically make mods will actually get to work on it. They still haven't maximised Rome: Remastered's potential all these years later.
thats a big issue with newer games. to make a mod, you basically have to treat it like a full time job and already have the skills of a full blown professional 3D artist, scripter etc. whereas before, you could more easily make simpler textures and shit with lower-end hardware but now, that is not true anymore and so only those with the skills and beefy computers can mod properly mod.

>>2325026
It isn’t 2010 retard, nobody cares about win7

>>2325406
Doesn’t seem to be an issue for all the good looking skyrim mods. I think Total War is just cursed with a thirdie fanbase.

>>2325406
Counter-Strike was made by two dudes in a dorm room.

>>2325441
splitting user base is never smart move
fucking wh3 work on win7, if rtwr worked on win7 I would transfer my mods to it, it don't so I don't bother
is it simple enough for you to understand you illiterate mongrel?

>>2324299
A big reason anybody played EB2 is because people started running into performance issues with modern hardware in RTW1. It's not really an issue anymore thanks to the dxvk method on the pcgamingwiki page for the game.

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I need to resume my WF&S2 Austria campaign from 2024 but the Janissaryspam is a real slog

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>>2324264
How do folks here defend CA's decision to make Nottingham the 3rd city of England?
According to estimates, Nottingham's population in 1086 was between 0.8 and 2K people, making it the 26th largest city in England.
Realistically, they should have probably picked Winchester or Norwich as the third city, but if they really needed a city between York and London, they should have picked Lincoln, which was the 5th largest city and right next to Nottingham.
The real reason why they picked Nottingham was "muh, normies know about Robinhood", which is fucking retarded reasoning.

>>2326128
This is the same studio who made a 1000 year out of date Egypt in Rome 1 and the entire of France a single province in Empire. Although Empire was the first TW game that tried to have some semblance of historical accuracy.

>>2324264
>Since /twg/ is mostly about Warhammer now
>now
Been that way for years, doesn't help that we haven't got a good historical title in a long time.

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>>2326137
>the entire of France a single province in Empire.
Funnily, I read some old Steam threads last week where people actually defended that design choice, because:
>muh, it represents Sun King's centralization
Regardless, it's lame because imagine you are playing as Spain, and you want to kick France out of the Med. To do so, your only choice is to conquer all of France, even if you really don't care for northern France.
The Napoleonic map is a bit better, but I still don't like the main France region being so big.

>>2326128
You answered your own question. Remember that at the time historical games were fighting for any mainstream visibility. Med2 also has fucking ‘Russia’ as a faction. The rise of the internet in the mainstream has unironically done a lot for history knowledge, and you can have a game like Kingdom Come Deliverance be a big hit now whereas back in the day it was hammy aoe2 braveheart references.

>>2326128
Yes, it's because they wanted to have Sherwood Archer units and call back to Robin Hood. They weren't trying to make games that were full-on historical autism simulators, they were trying to make games that were fun. And it worked, because it is fun to use things like Sherwood archers in Med 2 and Amazonian women and Roman ninjas etc in Rome 1. Extensive moddability meant autismos like yourself could play the many different historical mods out there to get their fix, it was win/win.

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>>2326150
>They weren't trying to make games that were full-on historical autism simulators, they were trying to make games that were fun

>>2326149
>Med2 also has fucking ‘Russia’ as a faction
They called Kievan Rus', Russia, this bad?

>>2326158
Yes, it's very bad.
Can't have this realm whose name means the land of the Russians be confused with the modern state whose name also means the land of the Russians, because of a border conflict in Eastern Europe.

>>2326153
That's absolutely true, and it's been known since Rome 1 when CA themselves explained why the Egyptian faction was designed the way it was instead of being yet another Hellenic faction.

>>2326158
The 'Russia' faction not the Kievan Rus'. It's
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novgorod_Republic

You start with Novgorod as the capital while Kiev starts as a Rebel city.

>>2326169
Well, that's dumb.

>>2326158
>>2326169
>Kievan Rus
Most credible publications now use Kyivan, "kievan" is outdated and not recognized in serious historical discussions anymore.

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>>2326169
They were pretty loose on factions, especially with regards to attempts to game balance and province density

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>>2326267
Wykipedia had a heated debate over changing it to Kyivan Rus but the s*ycucks lost, and it stayed Kievan Rus

>>2326273
I still use Anno Domini and not "current ear" despite what wikipedia says. Wikipedia's policies have literally nothing to do with historical discussion.

>>2326267
>Most credible publications now use Kyivan
No one had ever heard of Kyiv until four years ago

>>2326282
Same with Iran until the 1930s but today there are few people who make a fuss about how we should still call it Persia despite Iran being what it was known as by the locals. And the Istanbul/Constantinople thing, Czechia, Myanmar etc.

>>2326358
>Istanbul/Constantinople
This is completely different, it was always the Turkish spelling of Constantinople until the nationalists renamed it to a different name.
>Czechia
The english language word for the country wasn't a country name for some reason but the full formal name always was weird. Czechen would sound too close to chicken in english, and I geuss they could've went with Czechland but Czechia is fine in english and sounds similar to the native name.
>Persia/Iran Burma/Myanmar
Lot of people do the latter actually but these are valid to Kiev/Kyiv unlike the rest which are gross misunderstandings or simplifications. Ultimately this only matters because English became so dominant and normally no one cares about these historical oddities in national names such as UK is still being called England in (common) German.

>>2326367
>Czechia is fine in english and sounds similar to the native name.

Čekia (Czechia) doesn't really sound all that similar to Česko (Chessko).
Ironically the name is actually spelled in a proper English way in Chekhov of Chekhov's Gun fame. That guy's surname is literally "a Czech".

I'm personally in favor of Kyivan Rus'. Not because of any politics but to highlight the invented nature of the name.
Kinda like how the old convention of Japanese era names:
>Straw-rope Pattern Pottery Period
>Yayoi-style Pottery Period
>Tumulus Period
>Asuka Period
Compared to the modern one which hides it behind Japanese ability (they still say the same thing, but a random Anglophone amateur has no idea):
>Jomon Period
>Yayoi Period
>Kofun Period
>Asuka Period

>>2326413
>>Asuka Period
Reifags BTFO

>>2326419
You're living in the Reiwa period right now.

>>2326427
For me, it’s The Year Of Our Lord

>>2326429
Actually it is CE (Christian Era).

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>CE is still the Christian calendar and years are counted from the birth of Jesus they just changed the names
where did academia go so wrong?

>>2326444
Jesus wasn't actually born on year 1 so it doesn't really matter

>>2326444
>they just changed the name
Amerifat Wokeness.

>>2326267
I support ukraine against jewtin or whatever but I’m not changing the common name of Kiev over this shit, fuck off.

>>2326444
Yeah this is lame. Just change the calendar as a whole. Liberalism is just christianity underneath and dishonesty above.

>>2326492
France tried that during the Revolution. It did not go over so well

Rome II emperor edition is so good. If naval wasn't so buggy and had larger maps it would also have been great. People dog on Rome II because they are trannies. It's that simple. Shogun 2 + Rome II carrying the entire series.

>>2326495
The calendar change was the least problematic part of the french revolution

>>2326153
that is true tho
t. started series with Shogun 1

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>>2326551
>tfw people aren't Rome 2 respecters

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>>2326551
By biggest problem with Rome 2 is the siege pathfinding. Most of the time I just deal with it but often units become stuck on corners of buildings or just become completely unresponsive. Trying to get units down off walls if there are even just a few routing enemies on them takes forever because the entire 200 man unit stops whatever they're doing if they encounter just one enemy soldier.

Other than that I love the game with DEI. I haven't actually played vanilla Rome 2 since the original disaster launch.

>>2326551
>People dog on Rome II because
the combat is shite, the campaign map province system is rubbish, limited building slots per city is daft, armies being tied to generals is abhorrent

>>2326833
you can't just tell the truth to his face like that dude

>>2324264
Somebody explain why CA was so cheap about the number of regions in the Empire?
Was it a technical limitation?

>>2326554
I disagree. For all the beheadings, decimalizing the calendar was objectively one of the worst decisions in the history of mankind.

>>2326128
It was a different time...

I, for once, miss the time when there was actually a devoted community of men with interest in historical accuracy.

shogun 2 is so ebin, yari mazing hahaha!!!!

>>2326271
To be fair, a lot of them are name related (And the rebel province are ARGUABLY a attempt to replicate feudalism). Biggest issue I have with the game overall is the lack of Persia, frankly

At least unlike Medieval 1 it didn't have a unified kingdom of North Italy.

>>2324299
it's for people with severe autism. Shame there's not many good middle ground mods for people with only mild autism.

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>>2328009
It barely existed in the first place.
You're remembering the very few occasions when people would bitch that the sandals were inaccurate, but you forget that the rest of the time was nothing but Greek nationalists whining there weren't enough playable Hellenistic factions (zero of which actually mattered in the long run).

>>2328290
>Game set in the Hellenistic age
>NOOOO YOU CANT JUST HAVE HELLENISTIC FACTIONS IN YOUR HELLENISTIC GAME

>>2328285
I don't care as much about gameplay autism, because it's all abstracted and game engine itself won't allow you for the game to be very accurate to real life, but I do want visual accuracy, right weapons and armor, clothes, buildings, basically historical aesthetics. Because we can have eye candy that way, at least.

>>2326128
>t. resident of Derby

>>2328290
Fuck I spent so much time on that forum

>>2328290
>there weren't enough playable Hellenistic factions (zero of which actually mattered in the long run)
They matter because without a bunch of greeklings, who's gonna serve as your punching bag?

>>2328290
God, the seethe over Pontus being revealed before the sillykids was fucking delicious. Sometimes I'll just sit there and think about all those hellenaboo underatanderers of strategy raging about "western movie barbarian britons" and screeching about how they don't want to play fucking Pontus, the loss of the silver super elite hoplite elephants (seleukids ONLY), and when I do think about it all I'll not need to eat the whole day for it. It was so goddamn hilarious that it almost made up for Rome 2 being such dogshit.

I had a rather annoying experience in Attila recently.
Playing as WRE, I had 3 Hunnic hordes hanging around a frontier city, 1 of which was besieging said city. Now I had a legion in there already, and I pulled up 2 more to reinforce.
So the next turn, one of the non-besieging Hunnic hordes attacks my two legions standing outside the city. Now I understand why the legion inside the city cannot reinforce it’s brethren, but for some reason the horde besieging the city was able to reinforce its comrades without breaking the siege, turning the situation into a very grim 2v3.
I did end up losing the battle, but only just. And had the Huns not possessed and entire other stack of horse archers I definitely would’ve won handily.
I am rebuilding the two destroyed legions, and I shall have my vengeance upon those Hunnic hordes within the in-game year, but the whole thing that threw a wrench into my efforts (the besieging army being able to reinforce) feels like bullshit.
Also, should I try to make crossbows work and exploit WRE’s strengths with them, or just get regular archers so I don’t have to worry about the line of sight problems? I know I need some real missile infantry (non-javelin) to screen out the horse archers, but I’m unsure of which to use.

>>2326267
dont you have a trench to fight in?

>>2326141
The endless dilemma with settlement volume is too little and political conflict is too easily resolved, too much and battlefield experience is too greatly damaged. I don't know of a single perfect answer for it. What I am partial to is having more settlements rather than less, keeping the field-engagement 'bias', but having a gradient to territorial conquest. I could wall of text about that but the jist is:
>Make cities be willing to surrender depending on certain variables. This can be contagious or snowball, but certain cities can also be made more patriotic/stubborn and refuse to do so
>Make vassalage more appealing, less of an AI:"ID RATHER FUCKING DIE" proposition. Could be there's a more strict vassalage and a more generous one.

>>2328290
I was there in the ancient times. I think the medium is one issue (or rather, that is an issue with youtube, reddit, 4chan, ect). It is far easier to shoot off some random bullshit than to post and wait for a reply. It's also that the dunning kruger access to low information weaponized for trying to win arguments is much worse now with wikipedia being quaint of an issue compared to LLMs and e-celebs regurgitating knowledge.

We had the issue of third world ultranationalists for either the greeks or obscure Eastern european factions. I remember the mod I was working on having Russian and Georgian fans in 2008, but there wasn't enough of them back then to cause a critical mass of shitposting/feuding. Like imagine how bad M3 modding shit would be with the Russo-Ukraine war.

>>2330530
The solution to me is to increase settlement count for accuracy's sake but streamline territorial expansion. You shouldn't have to personally fight every siege battle to expand against a cowardly AI that likes to turtle and run from your army because that's monotonous and time consuming, plus siege battles are usually awful compared to land ones. The AI should be more open about giving away territory on peace negotiations to preserve itself instead of being suicidal and fighting to the last.
Another interesting thing would be having minor unwalled settlements automatically turn over to the player if they take a major walled settlement nearby as a way to abstract the player sending minor detachments to negotiate and demand surrender. If anyone here played Imperator: Rome, you probably know what I mean.

>>2326444
Originally CE stood for Christian Era (since that's what it is lmao)

>>2326833
This it should be like old total war where every city could have everything so management is pointless busywork akin to cookie clicker, not anything that requires thinking

>>2332149
How is 2026 the Christian era?

>>2332380
Modern TW already has enough pointless busywork with all the shallow minigames they pass off as faction and system mechanics

>>2332391
>2026

>>2332380
>nu total war
>natch colors to each other to max bonuses
>thinking

>>2332501
What is Christian about the current year AD?

>>2332581
Can you and your tranny friends go back to the warhammer thread? It's been 2,026 years since the birth of the Nazarene Jew, it'll always be spelled Kiev, not Kyev. And it'll always, always be Turkey, not Turkìÿè or whatever barbarian bullshit letters they use.

>>2332596
You need Jesus, son.

>>2332596
Wasn't Christ born in like 4 AC/AD?

Total War? For me, It's Rome 1 (not the demastered version)

>>2326153
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that statement. They were going for pop-history, not total accuracy.

I'm in a Napoleonic wars mood
Thoughts on NapoopaN: TotaliatoT

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Had a fun campaign as the Selucids recently. Getting tired of vanilla Rome 2 though, most of the random 1 province minor factions continually exist into the late game and make it a slog of auto resolving through stacks of eastern spearmen or spear levy. Is Divide Et Impera all it is cracked up to be? I'm just looking for something Vanilla+ that makes the AI competent enough to expand beyond its starting territory.

>>2334468
If I played successors then I would play Macedon or Egypt desu.

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DEI Parthia (classified as "hard" difficulty in the campaign menu):
>Dahae buddies as back-up
>Just toss Saka Rauka some paltry coins to attack Xvarazm on turn 1, and your northern flank will be secure for dozens of turns because they can never seem to defeat each other
>Persoids chimp out out against Seleucids in ~5 turns, so either exploit that or focus on your north east without worrying about a multi-front war. Easy victory either way!
>Fortifications? The historical bane of horse-archers? Not a problem, the AI will just helpfully put all their units on the walls for you to snipe on their shield-less side and do nothing as you rout them.
>Even better when you upgrade your armies and generals for higher missile range so you comfortably outrange whatever archers there are on the walls. Take 20-unit-garrison walled settlements without a single casualty, no problemo.

DEI Ptolemaic Egypt (classified as "normal" difficulty in the campaign menu):
>Get double-teamed by Cyrenaica and Seleucids + Sardeis at the start, when you can't field more than two full-stacks without going into financial red.
>Dual culture to make Public Order even more of a pain until you build a bunch of temples and theaters. Have to constantly spend money on organizing games.
>Shit starting roster. Klerouch Phalangites and Galatian mercs are your only halfway-good infantry units. No decent cav until you first research the relevant tech and then build tier 2 barracks, while your Seleucid rivals get Companion Cavalry on turn 1.
>Oh, and all the pirate factions in the game decide to regularly spawn just off your shores, including in the red sea so you need *two* separate navies just to deal with them all, which are a huge fucking money sink in the early game.

>>2336078
Don't take those suggested difficulties too seriously.

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Post screenshots, anons.

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>>2334468
DEI is really good, it's hard though. Even at 300 hours of playing it I am still learning things about it. If you don't properly manage things like supply and food early on it will really screw you much later in the campaign as your Imperium penalties get worse.
>>2338831
Started Empire Divided.

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>>2339983
>Started Empire Divided.
>uploaded the wrong screenshot

>>2334468
It's better than vanilla, though it has a jagged quality to it in that it does some things really well and others less so. Start with an easy faction on your first run (Seleucids aren't it), so you get a good hang of the new systems such as supplies without it fucking you over too much.

Just having cavalry feel like actual cavalry made it completely replace vanilla Rome 2 for me, where even fucking elite cataphracts hit like wet spaghettis.

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>missile units in front, they shoot
>expendable spear units then march forward to attack the enemy
>then I send cavalry around to attack from behind
The no-nonsense 'Brexit means Brexit' tactic

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>>2340036
>marching units through other units

>>2340039
I said they're expendable

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>>2340042
You can't hammer and anvil if your anvil is cottage cheese

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>>2340045
Eh they held pretty well ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

>>2324264

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These battle maps are so ass.

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Funny how in pop culture nowadays Aurelian is always seen as wearing this mask+helmet just because of this Rome 2 DLC but there's no actual source for him ever wearing anything like it.
>Source: I saw it in a video game

>>2341782
>Funny how in pop culture nowadays Aurelian is always seen as wearing this mask+helmet just because of this Rome 2 DLC
Show three examples.

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>>2341812
Simply google image search Aurelian. Or look at any youtube video about Aurelian where comments are quoting the intro. Even search Aurelian on r*ddit

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>>2341782
Same with Baldwin and the silver mask from kingdom of heaven, face masks are cool and slightly edgy.

>>2341782
because it's a fucking cool ass helmet

>>2341815
>Simply google image search Aurelian.
No.
>Or look at any youtube video about Aurelian where comments are quoting the intro.
No.
>Even search Aurelian on r*ddit
No.

>>2340045
Wish TW dropped the whole "your archers shoot your troops that are 1 meter in front of them en masse". Especially annoying when you have over a dozen horse archers running around the battlefield and they inevitably get into each other's spaces. I get that allowing them to shoot without a problem when packed among other troops opens the door to weird ahistorical tactics such as packing archers in a phalanx to safely shoot the enemy in the face and that's undesirable, but there has to be a more elegant way to do it. Such as allowing archers to draw but not fire while there are friendlies in their space.

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>>2338831

>>2341782
This is actually how most historical inaccuracies start. Consider Viking helmets. You have one Viking opera singer with a distinctive hat, and now that's all Vikings wear.

Playing the Romans would be so much more interesting if legionaries also depended on keeping formation for maximum combat efficiency like hoplites and pikemen instead of blobbing the moment they make contact with the enemy.

>>2341782
Nobody cared who he was until he put on the mask.

>>2342847
Ironic that Rome's real life advantage was smooth responsive "gameplay", and then in Rome 2 it's completely absent.

It's been years since EOP came out but to my knowledge it's only really the latest DAC release that uses it
I guess it's probably a bit too late to expect brand new M2 mods to pop up at this point in time. Kind of hoping that someone eventually will use it just to create some manner of expanded Vanilla+ campaign with additional factions since the original hardcoded limit was the main reason this wasn't possible

>>2342847
use defensive fighting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMB3qLdwOps

>>2342847
There's a lot of ways for them to up the appeal of historical gameplay and shit like that would have been nice to see. An intentional conscious effort to make it so something like a hoplite/pikemen lose formation in irregular terrain and so on.

>>2341782
That's the way shit happens, both game and movie. We had the Halstatt scabbard for ~120 years or more, yet as late as 2010 right before Rome 2 fucking nobody ever heard of celts wearing linothoraxes of leather. Now that Rome 2 has them doing it, while some french re-enactors had it beforehand and even Angus McBride drew it in the 80s, you'll always see that going forwards.

Any hittite search on youtube and now it's saturated with Pharaoh, since we have dick all for them but old osprey-y art.

>>2343825
>Pharaoh
Don't people still use the bronze age mod for Rome II? A lot of Pharaoh's units look more fantasy than historical

>>2341682
kek

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>>2344030
>A lot of Pharaoh's units look more fantasy than historical
Do they? They seem to match up pretty well with historical murals and actual archeological finds. Maybe there's too many standard infantry running around with fancy equipment, but I didn't see anything to outrageous (except sea peoples with hollywood leather armor).

>>2345748
The low and mid tier units mostly look fine, it's the high tier ones that look out of fantasy, as well as some of the faction leaders. It's been a while since I touched the game but I remember some units use overly designed gold and silver armour and I'm pretty sure the Maryannu chariots or some other high tier chariot straight up shoots magic fire arrows.

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>>2344030
The bronze age mod came out in like 2020, around the time of Troy. Also because they could not edit the map I never was interested just because you'd be dealing with 75% or more of the map being terra incognita, and Canaan being two provinces or whatever. As to your observation, I get it but I also understand the necessity of doing so given even with fantastical units it had a reputation of nakedmanii.

There's an inevitability of exaggerating armor, something CA even admitted in some interview with regards to Troy where it was "Yes we know the Dendra panoply wasn't used in large volume like this or even at all by the Trojan war possibly, but it's so iconic and flavorful people would be mad if we didn't include it & it's cool".

It's the same way that if you look at something like DEI (let alone Rome 2) they likely exaggerate the volume of armor to where entire units of men all have muscled cuirasses. In Total war games it's not like bannerlord where you can have a heterodox warband kind of army. In this you have to have -a unit-, so either you limit those blinged up guys to just officers or you make a unit to denote the elites.

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>>2346008
With regards to the faction leaders it's actually accurate for the Iliad to quite a noticable degree, and if anything I think the issue is a lack of ornamentation rather than too much.

Consistently when I come across helmets I'll find quite ornate designs, or I'll find Urartian belts with complex decorations on it. We can't think of being impoverished as entirely meaning devoid of decoration or swag. Think about in a modern context how conspicuous consumption can be among the poor. Likewise the colorful (biblical 'coat of many colors') among po-ass dusty Shasu and the like is reflected in the very colorful cultural wear of your Balkan, Assyrian, Chaldean, German sheep-herders or the colorful dress of tribal Africans. You won't wear that stooping in the fields cutting wheat but you'll wear it to battle since you want to look your best in your most heroic and maybe last moments.

http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/armour5.htm
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Iliad11.php - first paragraph for Agamenon (Atreides).

The unimaginably BIGᵍᵘʸ ᶠᵒʳ ʸᵒᵘ mistake CA did is the overabundance of bronze armor relative to the scarcity of rawhide. As an example the loot from Meggido for Egypt was 2 suits of bronze armor and 200 suits of rawhide armor (out of 924 chariots). There are some rawhide armors, but in retexturing I was struck by how overrepresented bronze is and how underrepresented rawhide is.

The big issue here isn't accuracy - like I said, every total war (maybe save Shogun) exaggerates the amount of armor. The issue is verisimilitude and the illusion of accuracy.

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>>2346021
Interestingly for a gross in size and gross in disgusting inaccuracy look at the chariots >>2345748 posted. Ratchet-ass Garamantine desert chariots with a built-ford-tough floorbed. Google Egyptian Chariots and you see how cutely tight and tiny they are, literally 40-50% the size of those chariots.

I'm kind of meandering so to try and tighten it up - I give a lot more allowance to interpretative or more 'dubious' armor than I used to, because I've been finding that my preconceived notions of how certain cultures warriors should look has gotten challenged as I've come across more obscure (relative to pop culture) artifacts that shine a light on possibilities. Case in point >>2346008 this guy might suggest the Hittites (I don't buy Salimbeti thinking this is Mycenaean, no evidence of it) used quilted armor. Or there's a 2000BC(!) Armenian cup which while the authors interpret against a quilted cuirass is still depicting Zagros highlanders in a totally different way to the popular understanding of them - which is Mesopotamian art depicting them as wooly ooga-booga savages.

But because the Mesopotamian depictions of mohawked fur-clad apes is what is commonly known, this would seem like fantasy art.

Purists oppose that generosity in interpretation. And I get that, the trauma of Hollywood's biker leather and all. But I look around at indigenous cultures and I see very unique and weird armor. And I can consider something like the Chalbyians of Xenophon who are some Armenian hillbilly nobodies yet who use quilted armor and ask "Who taught them that?" And think about Pacific islanders with their own armor and realize maybe more ersatz armor was used than we thought. Honestly seeing the Arab Spring meme with Egyptian protestors having all these ridiculous ersatz helmets put me on the path to this thinking.


I'll see if I can find the PHD thesis I mentioned.

>>2346038
https://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1006/ It's an autistic read (But better coordinated than my posts here) but if you want an exhaustive dissertation on late bronze age armor it's great. He actually does run with the leather sea people armor theory, though I see Salimbeti's site contending it might be quilted linen instead. I can see it being either, as while I get our allergy to leather armor given Hollywood's shitty costuming there's already been a turnaround (Somewhat excessive even with some purists now going "linothoraxes were only leather" but they're idiots) in recognizing a tube and yoke cuirass could be linen or leather. I'd also seen some David Nicolle reported on medieval Syrian leather armor relics that has me thinking the anti-leather view was a bit excessive.

At the end of the day it's verisimilitude though, and when banded armor has been seen in bronze age art as white (I think), red and blue (I know), and yellowish bronze (I know) I can buy a possibility they were also rawhide.

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>>2346058
If you just google david nicolle syrian leather armor you'll find the page, but since it's a slightly sketchy hosting site I am averse to browsing arund it. However from https://www.patreon.com/posts/leather-armor-in-90079903 they touch on it, and seem to go into detail. I haven't actually read it since it's too late, though.

http://millitarch.ru/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/David_Nikol_Kozhanye_dospekhi_v_islamskom_mire.pdf if you want to browse it yourself.

In retrospect it looks like all of Nicolle's stuff has lamellar at play (Just sandwiched extremely tight), so I was wrong. But it is utilized in a laminated fashion of row on row, and the lames are uniquely tight compared to the standard cuirass sort. So maybe if the sea people had laminated leather corselets they were just 'scales' sewn very tight and arranged like that.

>>2346008
>>2346021
>The bronze age mod came out in like 2020, around the time of Troy.
Yeah, and every video I have seen on youtube uses footage from that mod instead of Troy and Pharaoh. Probably out of convenience since they don't have to pay full price for two underwhelming games where half of the units look ahistorical. Although, to be fair, I don't think there's any TW or mod that gets the look of the period right, so far.
>reputation of nakedmanii
Yeah but that's all of history outside of professional armies, it's not a big deal. People need to get over it.
>The issue is verisimilitude and the illusion of accuracy
That's my point. TW presents itself as pop-history for pseuds and the argument that "it's ok if it's fun" doesn't fly anymore when their games have been anything but fun for over a decade. They need to start really digging in and get the look and feel of whatever period they're covering as authentically as possible, so no more tank chariots and rows of identically equipped guys carrying solid bronze slabs as shields.

>>2346075
It's a difference in philosophy I guess. I come from the EB1 era but I've come around to a view of
>Leave the autistic perfectionism for mods, make the baseline experience worthwhile

Speaking of tank chariots though that's my bigger issue than the aesthetics in pharaoh. They didn't bother to try and make chariots behave more like a chariot. They're clunky and shitty and miserable to use. Funnily enough my favorite fucking chariot experience in total war was Kislev light war sleds, so I am going to have to find a way to replicate those stats. Even if a rickety wicker one shouldn't be as heavy as a bear sled, one can imagine the mass being the desire of infantry to move out of the way rather than get ridden down (given the game doesn't depict it).

What I'd have liked is a 'melee skirmish' mode where the unit constantly is in motion and avoids being bogged down, and which you can charge/direct to move through an enemy line and it auto-counts the charge instead of being reskinned cavalry. In terms of authenticity at all costs that works well for periods with enough of a market for that - Napoleonic, WW1, WW2, maybe medieval. It doesn't for other periods, not least one that is already working at a severe handicap like the bronze age is. So I don't think more authenticity was key - if anything they should have just gone fully mythos for Troy and Pharaoh, then done some DLC campaigns that made them purely historical.

Agreed on the shields, I hate the giant bronze slabs they went with.

>>2346087
It doesn't have to be autistically accurate down to the smallest detail, they just need to get the authenticity down. Troy and Pharaoh did not feel authentic in many aspects.
>Even if a rickety wicker one shouldn't be as heavy as a bear sled, one can imagine the mass being the desire of infantry to move out of the way rather than get ridden down (given the game doesn't depict it).
Bronze age chariots were primarily very fast skirmishers. If anything charging into infantry should get the chariots killed unless the infantry is disorganized. Early cavalry should be filling the melee role instead but even then they were not equipped for massed charges in the way that we think of, anyway.
I think the mass for mounted units in modern TW is just way too overtuned relative to how they would have realistically interacted with organized infantry formations, even in later periods charging was a risky maneuver.

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Empire Divided is rough. It was going pretty well until I took back most of Italy from Quintillus' usurper faction, which prompted a massive 5 stack invasion through Cisalpine Gaul from the Gallic empire. Meanwhile the Palmyran empire was slowly gobbling up my client states in Asia minor, the usurpers were still throwing legions at me from Sicily, and Hispania kept raiding my north African provinces across the sea.

I thought my campaign was fucked and left the game for a few days to decide what to do. I was able to get the Sassanids to declare war on Palmyra for a 10k bribe which took a lot of pressure off the eastern front. Then I decided to abandon Africa (which my client state Numidia is now defending for me) and peeled my legions away to Sicily to conquer the rest of the usurpers. The Gallic empire had retaken northern Italy all the way to Florence but the AI is dumb so I was able to slowly divide and conquer and beat them back and even managed to take the entire province of Raetia et Noricum. I left the northern front in a stalemate for a while because my only army with ballistae was busy fighting the usurpers in the south. Now that's done I can start pushing north again.

All the while I have -180% empire maintenance and constant banditry events. I need to start properly focusing my provinces more but it's hard because I need to pay for the army and politics to stave off another civil war. Overall I'd say this is the second hardest DEI campaign after Alexander but even then it's not too bad, it is difficult but I never felt completely hopeless and out of options like I constantly did playing Alexander.

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How would you approach this battle /htw/? I know it's not a disaster or whatever but I'm still learning so I'm curious as to how other people would approach it. This is on Hard. The supporting army is just a general and that's it.

>>2346593
>Naginata on Flanks
>cavalry behind Naginata, use them to hit and run enemy cavalry
>might also use them to assassinate the generals if there is a opportunity
>typical YARI ASHIGARU wall with bow infantry behind them but use them more offensively since the enemy has less melee infantry

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>Oda vs Takeda in defensive siege battle
Ok, this is kino

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>>2346058
Thanks, anon. While I am resigned to total war's spotty historical accuracy, I do appreciate learning about the real thing. Still enjoy pharaoh, despite its shortcomings.

>>2346684
I am glad my late night autistic rambling was useful. I've been having a lot of fun going on safari into esoteric iron age (and late bronze age) material, since there's a fun puzzle/mystery uncovering to it. Like I was able to roughly clock the mystery crested horse archers on an Urartian belt being sold by Christies to 'probably' Zagros, given it is a near match to a Hasanlu helmet. Or finding Phoenician bowls that give an idea of how Egyptian cavalry might have looked.

It is still an agony how threadbare the material is, but again to my thesis earlier the little bits and pieces I have found that was more vivid or went against the mainstream conceptions of something has me a lot more amenable to unorthodox interpretations/depictions.

My big sadness is the game did not do well enough that they cancelled their planned campaign DLC - assuming the DLC was going to be Iron age rather than India (given they had Indus_ tagged bodies). I can almost pull it off with the map as is, but it would have been nice to have one more province thickness to the Zagros to about Ectabana and 1-2 more provinces for above Tushpa so you can have Urartu's hinterlands. But I really think ~740 BC to ~600 or the 500s was a great option for a campaign.

I hope to try and mod that in, though it may just be as a "The campaign map is as Homer's Iliadic world circa 1200, but the units are more like what existed circa Homer.", depending on how hard it is to edit the campaign map once I am done editing textures and models.

I'm somewhat saved by Medieval 3 being god knows when because short of shifting to bannerlord, there's nothing to sate my tinkering modding autism but to stick with Pharaoh.


The fuck is this spur.us blocking shit. Now I have to turn off adblock? Jesus christ.

>>2346326
Huh. In my run Palmyra completely shat the bed and got gobbled up by my governors and Sassanids, to the point I never even faced them in battle.

Balancing multiple fronts is challenging at first, too bad the AI seems completely unable to properly manage its provinces in the long run and any land that saw fighting would turn into a burnt-out shithole filled with plagues, starvation, banditry, unrest and slums forever.

>>2346087
>they should have just gone fully mythos for Troy and Pharaoh
nah fuck that i want my proper antiquity kino not some lame warhammer reskin

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>>2346087
>Agreed on the shields, I hate the giant bronze slabs they went with.
I'm surprised they got the wicker shields of Assyria right.

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>>2346868
I found shrinking the width of the Assyrian bronze block shields to be helpful, but unfortunately with the wicker tower shields for Assyria it's so damn big when they are in combat they're completely blind behind it. Which is kind of accurate if I look at the shields in the pdf I am linking you but just looks silly to me. Actually, since you like Assyria and know your shit: https://www.eltereader.hu/media/2014/02/Assyrian_Army_I_1.pdf
Really good thesis that has a shit load of clear line art drawings of various Assyrian relief pictures, as well as great info


Early draft of Iron age Assyrians. Need to work on the shields , make them have varied beards, another undertunic set, and probably another stockings set for more color variety. Am using a reshade so it's a bit darker. Need to change the bronze weapons but that's a last minute thing.

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>>2346741
Did you play it with DEI? Palmyra is actually taking Sassanid territory now, I suspect because Roman troops in DEI are god tier compared to any other faction's units. I have a single stack in Nicomedia to defend the Bosporus strait while I focus on the west but it looks like I'm going to have a huge Palmyran empire to contend with by the time I have the west secured. Also pretty funny that the Caledonians have completely conquered Britannia and even started pushing into Gaul even though their units are absolutely shit tier, just barbarians taking advantage of Roman civil wars like real history.

>any land that saw fighting would turn into a burnt-out shithole filled with plagues, starvation, banditry, unrest and slums forever
I haven't seen this, only problem I've had is the AI can't manage sanitation. When I captured Massilia it had negative sanitation which immediately caused a massive plague to spread all over northern Italy and my armies. Completely stalled my campaign for the rest of the year.

>>2346068
I get a lot of conflicting leather armor info, to the point that I am not sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQVy7J5ecCA
Recently seen this video about a recipe for leather armor from medieval Islamic source.
But they use cow skin, not camel, like source suggests, but in any case, it seemed like it was somewhat useful against cuts, but then I have to ask why not just use gambeson, as it would likely be cheaper compared to glue materials mentioned in the source.
So I am not sure if this specific type of leather armor was used or not.

I find it so difficult to play a slow campaign in Shogun 2. When another clan attacks me I feel like I have to take their cities, because why wouldn't I do that? I always need to become stronger, and taking a city brings in more wealth and expansion potential. So then what happens is Realm Divide hits in 1560 and I have the campaign finished by 1570 at the latest. I'm never able to research any of the more advanced levels of technology.
THIS time though I will play a slow campaign. The only rule: no Realm Divide until after 1575. I WILL turtle, and not rush.

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>>2346969
Thanks, anon. Modern search engines are absolute garbage, so finding exactly what I'm looking for is pretty much reliant on people already knowing where the information is. When it comes to historical stuff I mostly stick to published books, usually the best translations of primary sources I can find.

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>>2346969
Also, godspeed with your mod.

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>>2347408
It takes a lot of ferreting around. If I am bored and on the phone with nothing to do I'll just try another esoteric search after another. Eventually you can stumble across shit you didn't pick up on a first pass that is really revelatory. Shit that would seem silly to be enthusiastic for but in the grander scheme of research it starts to link stuff together. Or you just discover novel things you'd not seen disseminated in the wider mainstream culture. Like mail coifs by the late Romans, aketon-y quilted vests by the Late Romans (on their gravestones, meaning it's as iconic to them as having a helmet or sword) and so on.

And thanks. I'll post it workshop link wise once I do. My plan was
>Do a reskin of the vanilla units in case I lose enthusiasm and go to the corner store for milk never to return (as I often do with mods)
>If that works, then change the rosters to match the 8th century
>if that works, then change the campaign map
But I'm reaching a thought of just skipping on units I won't carry over (No tausret in 8th century), and the mod just being a free asset for anyone wanting to edit the vanilla game.

>>2347177
That's real neat, especially with how fucking asphault-y it looks. At post length so I'll reply in a sec

>>2347177
My hunch would be that armor gets used for those laminated cuirasses the Muslims start to use around the 1200s after the Mongols come through. Where one row is covered, then the next is uncovered.

>>2347281
I agree, it's a major problem of modern TW in general. You have zero incentive to fight field battles, you gain nothing from them other than destroying enemy armies. But the actual source of enemy armies are cities, so they're the better target. You'll lose an attritional war in the field.

>>2347526
and yet siege battles fucking suck
at a glance the maps look beautiful but have extremely bad pathfinding, and with the small army sizes most of the fighting takes place in a very small wall segment which makes it barely feel like a real siege
the ai also has no clue on how to attack or defend and the game has to compensate by overtuning towers and turning them into machine guns that are extremely annoying to deal with
but the worst part to me is just how fucking long it takes to build siege engines, which just encourages people to skip the battles entirely with autoresolve unless they're okay with cheesing the ai, which isn't a fun way to play

I've been playing some of the Medieval 2 campaign overhauls and something that bothers me a tiny bit is how every single one of them insists on having provincial titles if a named character governs a settlement because the modders just can't help themselves but to add shit like +3 command, +20% public order and other bonuses for the ancillaries
The result is the campaign is filled with random 25 year old generals who run around with 10 command after having fought like 3 battles because half of the mods also make the stars easier to obtain
It kind of takes away the special feeling of encountering characters with sky high stats

>>2347526
True, that's why in Warhammer 2 I liked that minor settlements that didn't have walls built were open field battles, essentially.

>>2347597
Yea, M2TW wasn't built for that title giving mechanic. It's super borked

I've just acquired Shogun 2, Three Kingdoms, and Pharaoh Dynasties. Which is your favorite and which one should I play first?

I haven't played a TW game in almost 20 years.

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>>2348045
My favorite (of those three) is Dynasties, but most will tell you to play Shogun 2 first.

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>>2347408
Oy wake up nyuggah I just came across another good pdf, and I don't mean epstein.

https://www.academia.edu/430954/E_KONAK%C3%87I_and_M_B_BA%C5%9ET%C3%9CRK_Military_and_Militia_in_the_Urartian_State_

https://files.catbox.moe/fxcqzm.pdf If you don't have a login there. There's some interesting Urartu depictions I hadn't seen before - one with a novel case of two archers on one chariot cab, which is something I'd never seen before. I am glad there's at least Tuspa their capital on the map even if I wish there was more hinterlands. I have some ideas for how I might be able to reflect the idea of a greater off-map dominion though the ideas might require the dreaded vibe coding as I don't know shit about LUAs. Should be simple if-then modifiers though. Alternatively just making Tuspa a larger settlement size like Troy and having some building representing off-map dominion (more money and maybe resources but also an unrest -X% to reflect the need to control said territory, so you have to put more effort into garrisoning a home army) may work.

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>General Vettius Praetexatus, leader of my I legion which was besieged in >>2330134 is forced to stand by helplessly while his comrades in the X and XXX legions were routed and slaughtered in the foothills of the alps
>Breaks out of the siege the next turn, as the army keeping his legion hemmed in was far too damaged by the prior battle to present a threat anymore
>Chases down and kills the other 2 Hunnic armies who participated in the previous battle, killing them to a man
>3rd army flees eastwards
>420 hits, and they're joined by Attila himself
>Attila lays siege to Siscia in Dalmatia, defended by the XXII Legion
>The XXII had already beaten Huns away from here twice before, but it's looking a little dodgy this time
>Only Vettius can reach them in time to help, the other legions are either too far away or still being rebuilt
>Vettius attacks that tattered Hunnic army from the north, with Attila reinforcing
>I lost the battle thanks to sheer numbers, but I do bleed the Huns dry, massacre the 3rd army, and wound Attila for the first time, one turn after he even showed up on the map
>Vettius manages to retreat without dying or losing the Legion entirely, and his efforts made them weak enough for Publius Eutychianus to utterly thrash Attila and deal him his 2nd wound, saving Siscia in the process
>Vettius is now struck with blindness and has to be relieved of command
I love the little stories this game can tell. Vettius had fought alongside the XXX and it's commander Flavius for years against the Germans. I like to imagine these turns were his vengeful crusade to honor the memory of his friend, and that only after he had gotten this revenge at the cost of so may of his men did the lord strike him blind as punishment for his careless wrath.

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>>2348140
>Oy wake up nyuggah
Funny; I wanted to check out this thread before turning in. I'll gladly grab another pdf, and if it's free to sign up, I'll do that too.

>There's some interesting Urartu depictions I hadn't seen before - one with a novel case of two archers on one chariot cab
It is pretty neat. To my knowledge it was mostly driver/archer combination. Either they made their chariots a little wider or just packed them in. Pretty cool seeing a lion hunt in art, and the bottom figure spearing a lion. The depiction of cavalry is surprising to me, given it's not common to the era. Definitely no organized cavalry, but it was definitely on the way. No depiction of stirrups, which tracks with what we know, but I always wondered if we didn't find archaeological evidence because the earliest examples were made from a material that just couldn't survive to present day. It's complete absence in art is pretty telling. They made sure to show the dick and balls though.

>I have some ideas for how I might be able to reflect the idea of a greater off-map dominion though the ideas might require the dreaded vibe coding as I don't know shit about LUAs. Should be simple if-then modifiers though. Alternatively just making Tuspa a larger settlement size like Troy and having some building representing off-map dominion (more money and maybe resources but also an unrest -X% to reflect the need to control said territory, so you have to put more effort into garrisoning a home army) may work.
I don't have any coding background either, so can't point in a good direction to go. It'll definitely need some testing, because I can just imagine tweaking a few small data points and the faction just explodes on the campaign map.

>>2348045
Shogun 2>Three Kingdoms>Dynasties

>>2348209
>Definitely no organized cavalry
In what way do you mean? Horses were expensive to raise so I doubt they'd be unorganized, even if they did not have the elite status of charioteers.

>>2348209
Yeah, I'm not looking forward to the campaign stuff. It's more fun to tinker and texture. There is a real chance I just go "Fuck it" and quit and leave it unfinished but the process is the fun for me. I compare it to how people like to paint miniatures only mine don't cost anything and I can let other people run and have fun with them. It's always nice seeing my work in various Attila or DEI pictures.

Urartu really comes across as the cavalry's domain given the numbers that start showing up for their own inscriptions are obscene. Qarqar and Assyria claimed 12k which is a bit hard to believe but their enemies had reasonably stacked 1.2k horses to 20k infantry or 700 horse to 10k infantry. Then you get Urartu and in the two inscriptions in this PDF I See:
>106 chariots, 2704 footmen, nine fucking thousand one hundred seventy four horsemen
>66 chariots, ?460 horsemen (some thousand quantity, unclear what), and 15,760 footmen.
The usual Middle Eastern braggart king doesn't feel likely to go down to a number like ?174 instead of just saying nine thousand.

With stirrups, I think they're more a crutch than a necessity given the performance of someone like the Numidians. I have a whole theory with my search into the emergence of cavalry - or not my theory, an author's one I found compelling. Which is the total bullshit on the "Horses were too small to carry riders" claim most have. Instead it's that metal bits only appear at the end of the bronze age, and metal bits can be made in such a way that a horse cannot break them (bone/wood/leather) and also the nature of these bits means you can control the horse much more confidently than with the older bits. Since when you see Assyria doing the battle-buddy 'chariot with no cab' trick with 2 horses that's not the horse being too weak, that's them being too scared and inexperienced. Something Urartu, the Zagrossi and the Syrians were more confident in.

>>2348209
>the interior of the wall is also painted for some reason

>>2350005
Of course! So when we're besieged we don't look untidy like a bunch of, may Thoth forgive me for uttering these words,
>man-making-echo-call-hieroglyphic
>man-making-echo-call-hieroglyphic
Canaanites
>man-making-echo-call-hieroglyphic
>man-making-echo-call-hieroglyphic
now are we?

>>2350176
now don't we*

I didn't pay attention in scribe school

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I am a total pro with Shogun 2 but a total noob with Attila and I'm playing as Visigoths on Easy difficulty. Travelled straight westward, declared war on WRE along the way and sacked every city in my path, and then settled in the three settlements in pic which is in the northwest corner of Iberia.
Two questions, should I convert to Latin Christianity and should I continue to conquer all of Iberia or just continue to sack

>>2350628
>Should I convert to Latin Christianity?Depends on how confident you are in your ability to convert your lands to Germanic Paganism/Arian Christianity (I forget what the Visigoths start with). Deep in Spain converting to Latin may be easier. I stuck with Arian Christianity in my Vandals playthrough and converted Africa pretty easily though.
Here’s a steam post that compares the religions if you wanted to judge which one seems best to you.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=400449944
>should I continue to conquer all of Iberia or just continue to sack?
I’d keep conquering. Gallaecia (where you settled) is one of the more mediocre provinces food-wise, you’ll probably want to strike south and east where the climate is better for agriculture. Lusitania at least, so you can get the whole west coast there.

>>2350644
Whoops I accidentally made my first response part of the Greentext, but you get the gist.
Do also keep in mind that as a Christian faction, constructing your higher-level churches will require access to Lead, which is not particularly common as a resource.

>>2350644
>>2350647
Thanks matey. Attila is awesome with its super dark mood

>>2326141
>the entire of France a single province in Empire.
ah shit i remember this retardation. it also starts with like 20m people and with a few farms/fisheries can easily end up with 100m+ that can't even be displayed

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>>2325027
Why is everyone a different race there?
Are they not all recruited from the same region?
I thought that was a selling point of Rome II?
In fact I'm noticing anyone of the same race appears to be a repeated head, as if, ironically, there is no diversity.
>check internet
>all attempts at asking about race/ethnicity redirect to the factions
>reddit: "I love that when I recruit in (northern) Africa I get black legionaries!", "I do too, people don't understand Rome wasn't Upper Class White English actors but every kind of indo-european! See my source: ["Rome was always mixed because Italy is mixed today when I went on holiday there"]"

>>2326128
Historical video games used to be rule of cool rather than historically accurate.
Now they're uncool and still historically inaccurate.

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>>2350660
Yeah, the apocalyptic feeling of the game is fuckin sick. My Vandals game had the benefit of being separated from the Hunnic hordes by the Mediterranean once I had gotten to Africa, but watching Europe get burned down across the sea was really spooky. Pic related was the worst it got, with basically everything north of the alps utterly gutted. I recolonized some of it after finally killing off the Huns (Attila died his scripted 445 death so it was just a matter of killing what was left), but it really felt like rebuilding a world that had only just barely survived Armageddon.
What year is it in your Visigoth campaign if I might ask?

>>2350644
You know, despite posting that guide, it had been quite some time since I had read it myself, and rereading it now has given me an intriguing thought.
Manichaeism’s church building line apparently reduces public order penalties from immigration. Given that WRE has constant immigration, I wonder if Manichaeism would have any synergy with that through directly counteracting that disadvantage? It’s pretty much entirely theoretical of course, as in the average playthrough converting to Manichaeism as the WRE is borderline impossible afaik.

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>>2350811
Ethnicity is per unit in Rome 2. So if you recruit a unit of generic legionaries in Egypt and the same unit in Britannia, they will look the same. You are possibly thinking of DEI's AOR auxiliary units which do look different depending on where they are recruited from. I honestly couldn't tell you a single thing about vanilla Rome 2 though, I haven't played it since the original disaster launch in 2013. At least in DEI, post-Marian legionary units start to look a lot more diverse than earlier homogenous societies, as you can see in pic related of Seleukos' argyraspides from my Alexander campaign around 330 BC.

It is a matter of fact that Rome was a huge multi-ethnic empire and from the Social War to the Edict of Caracalla citizenship was slowly expanded to include all Roman subjects. That was a screenshot I took of Sulla's bodyguards around 80 BC, so after the Social War when citizenship and the right to military service had already been extended to all of Italy. The ethnic makeup of Rome at that time was probably already like a much smaller scale version of modern London or Paris. And they had no concept of race like we do, so there would have been even less barriers regarding ethnicity there. Many famous "Romans" we think of as Roman weren't even Roman at all, like Cicero who was born outside Rome. But by that time "Roman" was no longer an ethnonym, it had become a civic term.

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>>2350938
>What year is it in your Visigoth campaign if I might ask?
400AD, Attila has just been born now. I'm just taking all of Iberia slowly. Liberated Hispania in Pompaelo though for some reason, wish I didn't do that but oh well. Map looks pretty normal at the moment, Western Roman Separatists have taken Genoa though lol. I've converted to Latin Christianity though from looking at the guide you shared I'm not sure if it's the best strategy for me lol. But it's all about learning along the way through experience of course

>>2350938
>Franks getting kicked out of their starting zone and then backcapping eastern Europe with no one else anywhere near them
I love the shit that happens in a long campaign

>>2350938
I like how ERE's borders turned our very Byzantine here. Anatolia secure but control ends more or less around the Taurus. Constantinople kept but Thrace beyond it has fallen. Some chunks of Greece preserved. Very 8th-9th century.

>>2351101
>The ethnic makeup of Rome at that time was probably already like a much smaller scale version of modern London or Paris
Did all the niggers die when the Empire collapsed or something? Did the barbarians kill them all?

>>2351469
NTA, but following the 2nd Punic war and all the way into the imperial period, the Italian peninsula underwent a significant genetic shift towards the east. Not niggers, but primarily Greeks, Anatolians and Levantines.

With the collapse of the western empire, the genetics shifted towards northern Europe again. Obviously in part because of direct contributions from Germanic migrations, but greater still was that the collapse wiped out urban populations that would have been the most "diverse" without them managing to reproduce, while the ruralites fared considerably better. Add to that the newcomers from beyond the Alps, and...

So yeah, Imperial Rome was diverse but that diversity was disproportionately concentrated in urban population sinks that were dependent on the trade networks and supply chains enabling such heavy agglomeration, and when the system that facilitated this collapsed, they starved and died and left a much smaller long-term genetic imprint compared to their share of the population at the time.

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Playing Shogun 2 as Otomo on Legendary. Oda is kicking my ass, raiding my trade routes with their many ships and forcing me in and out of bankruptcy each turn. I waited too long to build Nanban Trade Ships and Nobuhide is punishing me for it.
But then they offer a peace treaty out of nowhere, with no further demands. They haven't taken any provinces. It just seems like they've been at war with me for an eternity since they've been raiding my shit so much.
Fair enough. Thank you Nobuhide for allowing me to breathe for a little while

>>2351469
Look up australian mulatto on google images and you should see a pic of how rapidly, if you aren't interbreeding with mixed populations on successive generations, the unaided race disappears. Half-aboriginal is clearly mixed, 1/4th aboriginal looks mulatto or latina, 1/8th aboriginal looks like a dutch or norwegian child.

Italy had a population estimate from 4-6 million up to I think 14 million. If you had 50,000 black-ass-bantus then they would be around 1.25% to sub 0.5% of the entire population, and unless they only bred with themselves a'la the Jews (To maintain the population) or only bred with mulatto populations, they would vanish by 3-5 generations. It'd most likely take longer because not everyone would mix outside, some would mix inside. Even if Rome had a large population, even if the other big cities did, they would remain a drop in the bucket compared to the rural majority and cities were epicenters of disease. Estimates are ~10-20% urban in the empire and 80-90% rural. Italy wouldn't be as rural as Spain, Gaul, Illyria, I'd wager North Africa too, but it wouldn't be as urbanized as Greece, Western Anatolia, Syria/Levant.

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>>2351226
I think you're getting the Franks confused with the Burgundians. However funnily enough, by the time I actually won the game in 458 (pic related), the Franks actually DID come back to life in their homeland.
>>2351466
Unfortunately that didn't last forever, as by the time I wrapped things up the Sassanids were knocking on the gates of Constaninople.
Also shoutout to the WRE basically crashing on their brother's couch in Cyprus and Cilicia. I think they got fully destroyed at one point but then ended up resurrecting over there somehow.

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>>2351469
Real life isn't like Middle Earth.

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>>2351101
>It is a matter of fact that Rome was a huge multi-ethnic empire
>The ethnic makeup of Rome at that time was probably already like a much smaller scale version of modern London or Paris.
>And they had no concept of race like we do, so there would have been even less barriers regarding ethnicity there.
I don't think you know what ethnicity is, nor what the word scale means (i.e. the same thing but at a different size).
I also don't think you're using the right comparison. London and Paris are the way they are for nation-wide migration/permanent resettlement requirements, which would be more akin to the Lombards moving in permanently, which changed who is there to this day, which is not Rome's military service pledge.

I'm also not convinced an 80BC Rome (not particularly large) would suddenly have all European tribes in its high ranking bodyguards, or at least the tribes of sickly pale, yellow, red and traveller, which is ironically much less diversity chungus that you're implying Rome should be.

>>2352331
>One province Britannia breakaway faction that stays put in Britannia Superior for the ENTIRE FUCKING GAME
>Julius Nepos lookin' motherfucker in Southern Dalmatia too terrified to expand
>Aksum taking Upper Egypt and Libya and fucking off
>ARMENIA smuggly taking Sarmatia Asiatica only after the Hunnic menace is gone
This map is so fucking cursed.

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OPINION: Total War games should not only have population mechanics, but warhorse population mechanics as well.

OPINION: The first rank of experience should be a relatively more significant boost to separate green units that have only ever done military drills from ones that have seen actual battle.

>>2352841
This would be rather difficult to implement in a way that doesn’t make the player feel extremely limited. Maybe tie it to the growth stat of cities?
If you implemented it right this would totally revolutionize the campaign experience of Attila and Pharaoh. You could far more easily model the Population issues of the WRE that forced their reliance upon Foederati.

>>2326169
>You start with Novgorod as the capital while Kiev starts as a Rebel city.

Zelenskyy sistas…….

>>2326444
I would unironically take the CE/BCE shit more seriously and actually use it if they went full globhomo pozzed and just straight up made 1945 or 1492 year one of the “common era.” Otherwise it’s just literal dishonest propaganda shit and I can’t lie to myself by using fake bullshit centered around the birth of Christ but too pussy to recognize that.

>>2326551
It was worse on launch and people in 2013 weren’t yet accustomed to strategy games taking 10 years post-launch to actually be finished.

https://6abc.com/post/shipment-bronze-age-era-swords-arrowheads-seized-port-philadelphia/18658107/

One of the many ways the bronze age is lost for us is that Luristan shit, and I mean SHIT out bronze swords. Some no-name spit of the Zagros and it's just vomiting out swords. They're apparently cheap and common as fuck. Though now I am seeing this is from the Caspian so Mazandaran/Daylam (in many centuries later). Still, it's painful that you have clear civilization east of the Zagros and West of the Hindu Kush (to say nothing of Europe and them discovering possible writing, or the LIDAR of jungle metropolises) and we can't know jack shit about it. If I was a billionaire and it wouldn't run afoul of geopolitical shit I'd just be canvassing LIDAR left and right.

>>2352841
Warhorse but not horse. Have it be like bronze where you can have the lower quality stuff but the real good shit requires more. Frankly I have optimism for M3 in that I think they are finally going the GSG lite direction they should have for years. That's a good way to remedy the invariable issue that real life doesn't allow as much as fantasy/sci-fi on the battlefield, but generally allows much more (or can emphasize much more) off the battlefield. If you can get environmental/procedural storytelling of new developments in your campaign like say a Martin Luther style schism emerging in the 1300s or dynastic bullshit then that'll also motivate people to play past the first 50 turns

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I beat DEI Empire Divided. Took me 60 hours.

>>2353016
Why'd you go for near-immaculate borders and then just decide to include central Arabia?

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>>2353042
Fucking Palmyra conquered half the Sassanid empire so I reclaimed it all and then let rebels take over. But I couldn't get that one city in Arabia to rebel because the AI had upgraded the garrison to max level so it just stomped any rebels that spawned. I just said fuck it and quit since I already beat the campaign.

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HOLY SHIT I HATE DISCORD SO FUCKING MUCH.

Discord is such a cancer for the modding community.

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>>2353323
>Searching for info on the discord
Oh the misery
I don't know the rest of that song I hate imagine dragon.

That said, do I use TWC like I should? No.

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How do I kill enemy agents in Attila? I'm Visigoths

I really enjoyed Thrones of Britannia

>>2353547
It's been a hot minute and I might be getting some of the games mixed up, but either the agents have a way to convert foreign agents to your faction or the champions/spies have a way to assassinate them

>>2353547
Other agents, mostly. You may have to get your agents leveled up a bit more before you can unlock the abilities that let them attack enemy agents, and for priests that’s actually pretty far down the line. Spies and champions can get it pretty quickly though.

>>2352667
Also Western Rome is also more eastern than the ERE (because CA left the Insulae Orientalis rebels as the WRE) kek

>>2353679
I bought it but haven’t installed. How’s it compare to Attila? I would guess that the recruitment system would slow campaigns down significantly.

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>>2353679
I would be interested in a smaller scale viking age Total War, but I have no faith in modern CA so I haven't even bothered checking out ToB.

>>2354150
Oh God I can hear the music.