Since I first picked up Shogun Total War I’ve bought and played every single Total War game in the series. From the lovely siege battles of Medieval to the simple yet insanely replayable Rome and Medieval 2 all the way through to Attila, 3 Kingdoms and Warhammer 3.
Throughout my experience of the series I’ve witnessed huge improvement in areas like graphics, pathfinding or faction variety, as well as the unfortunate removal of features of course like city viewing or visually upgrading your units.
Total War games have definitely come a long way in some respects but in today’s video I want to talk about one major element of the games that has been on the whole neglected and in some games this particular feature can get just incredibly frustrating, and that is the constantly reused Warscape Engine + the constantly unbalanced & frustrating AI.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this video and found it informative. If you did give it a like and drop any thoughts or questions in the comments section below. Subscribe to the channel for future updates, news & videos. Thanks for watching guys!
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44 comments
Obviously its not a very clear cut area. Some campaigns you have decent AI, some you don't. But throughout the series we've consistently seen the Warscape engine's limitations in battles and the AI's inability to be responsive enough to the player in a thematic, immersive and strategic way. I hope Warhammer 3 AI gets fixed soon because it's in particularly a not so great place, and I hope Pharaoh sees some improvement in the series too. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed CA finally develops a new game with a brand new engine that does all the bread and butter battles of Total War justice.
3:05 Well you say that about Rome 2… and all I get is horrendous flashbacks of campaing in Rome Total War 1 where the AI would do just the same…
Given the crap and non-evolving AI, what are you paying $50 for each time? A reskin. And that's a reskin of a game that doesn't even work in the way folks believe it should do.
It's garbage. It's the same thing, over and over. And it's boring because the AI isn't capable of putting up a decent or appropriate fight. Saver your money and give it to someone more deserving.
Battle AI is ok, the big problem is campaning AI, the further you go, the more it seems to be dead.
Unit collision should affect how armies fight in formation. Cant believe they haven't figured it out yet
The funny thing is in Warhammer 3 the modder Hecleas fixed a lot of the AI until the 15.0 patch which broke everything for it to the point that Hecleas says he can't work on it till CA fixes it.
One total war i played where the AI made semi- decent moves was napoleon. The AI would usually try to encircle me and would react to my attempts to flank their units. They didnt really pull off any amazing strategies but they were not terrible.
Preach bro. I loved the series up until Medieval II but once you get fairly decent battle AI has got nothing to offer thus single player mode gets repetitive and pointless.
Shit Ai shame that CA still uses same shit ai what makes campaign stale and dull when you only see orc boys and goblins. You being most feared largest nation and some small shit declare war and get wiped out. Again and again orc boy goblins more orc boys and goblins
Well maybe you should be using Bran Mac Born campaign Ai mods.
campaign and battle ai…so ai
sad truth is…total war is a stagnant series. they refuse to innovate and make new engines with next gen capabilities of AI. Haven't purchased a game since Atilla and I wont until they invest in their engine.
Lots of great ideas, often poorly executed. After MTW2, they kept releasing broken games and I lost patience. The GW series is a cash in and they have let the old player base down.
Anti-player bias has just ruined the game for me. Plus in Warhammer III, as soon as someone becomes my ally, they drop 100IQ points and refuse to defend themselves from enemies, forcing me to leave a standing army in their territory to ensure they don't get taken over, when they have more than enough resources to do it themselves. Making alliances should be a way to extend your influence without committing to a full expansion before you're ready. Instead, allies become nothing but a detriment, weighing you down with massive upkeep costs to the point where it would have just been better to conquer them.
Like at its core, the AI just does not understand self preservation. If it's an ally, they allow your enemies to wipe them out with no fight whatsoever. If it's an enemy, they will devote literally every resource at their disposal to an all out assault on you even if they are clearly losing. Any actual ruler in that situation would stop attacking me, knowing they are going to force me into wiping them out just to stop the massive draw on resources they are causing. They are guaranteeing their own destruction by attacking me, and yet they just WILL. NOT. STOP.
And when I look this stuff up online to see if I'm just missing something, everyone just says "Well the game has to have anti-player bias or it would be too easy." And sorry, I simply don't believe this is the only way to run it. The devs should design more competent enemies so those enemies don't rely on having an unofficial alliance with EVERY SINGLE OTHER AI ARMY just to stop me from annihilating them. And they should design more competent allies so that effective diplomacy is actually rewarded, instead of effective diplomacy being an objective punishment for the player. No talking! Attack! Bruh.
"B-but… the game's called TOTAL WAR!" Shut up.
The mere existence of enemy factions and the fact that they can attack you is not the problem. All of the above is the problem.
i did not learn anything from this video
It's basically the same game with better graphics, new skins and a few mechanics. They will never fix the ai as long as people buy
we had better AI in command and conquer.. 25 years ago…… Pathetic and greedy CA
I have played most of the total war games and quite honestly the AI for these very popular games is probably the worst of any RTS game I have played. Just amazing to me how many people continue to play these games. Why would a dev spend what would be an insane amount of time and money to fix something THEY DON'T NEED TO FIX, because morons keep buying these horrible games. I guess all the stupids out there care more about graphics then anything else but to me a game can look great but if it sucks with its AI I will not be playing it. Its the consumer refusing to punish these devs for being cheap/lazy fucks that means the AI will probably never be fixed.
AI and games did a great video about total war ai. Campaign ai has actually improved a lot. Empire had a big jump but it came with a downside of taking ages to compute the more complex strategy map ai, which only really got fixed in the Warhammer 2 update that decreased end turn loading times.
However battle ai has used the same fundamental system since Rome 1. It has gotten stuff added to it ofc, but tis still using basic decision trees and they honestly need a scrapping and redone ai system instead of continuing to add on top of the 2 decade old codebase.
Melee combat has gone backwards in the series. Rome and Medieval 2 being the pinicle. Newer games are blob attacks blob, with attack and defend animations for individual combat. The units don't get forced back and thier lines don't bow.
Go back to Rome and ME2, the weaker unit will get forced backwards. If they're in a thin line the line could break in 2. Bridge battles could be won by sending a strong unit to litterally push the opposing unit off the bridge. In Rome 2 and beyond, they'd stand in lines while individuals would step out and have individual combat.
The Campaign AI might not have changed, but when melee combat is significantly worse surely that has to be the biggest issue. People are calling for the release of ME3 next, it would be an absolute travesty if they introduced a melee combat prominant series with the current combat mechanics.
Hard disagree on this. Its easy to look at the past with rose tinted glasses. AI in MTW was terrible – especially sieges and suiciding generals, AI in RTW was terrible (eg phalanxes facing the wrong way and/or just standing still when attacked) and suiciding generals, AI in M2TW was terrible, easy win for player with any army that contained a couple of family member bodyguard units and path finding in sieges was appalling also suiciding generals, AI in Empire was literally the worst, so many units just standing around on defence but changed to all out zerg rush on attack. There are definitely still problems with it now – but compared to how it used to be there have been big improvements IMO. Shogun 2 was the best because it was a much simpler game and suited more aggressive tactics so much easier to code. Warhammer has largely solved the suiciding general problem by making them super tanky, but that isnt realistic for historical games, so expect to see that issue recur in future.
Mods have improved things more than you think. eg Divide and Conquer has buffed generals hit points, increased morale across the board and massively simplified siege battles – so, many of the worst problems are somewhat masked if you play older modded games today.
In the end it was irrelevant because almost no one bought Pharaoh.
But yeah, the battle ai was always predictable. Without the ability to pull rabbits out of it's hat tactically, the battles turn into a chore.
I have only played Warhammer 1 and I find it to be a very well made game. In the campaign it often uses "march" to get out of trouble and "ambush" to appear or even disappear before your eyes. Chaos armies do this and also they gang up together and are hard to defeat. Yesterday I was Bretonnia next to a Norsca city and an Empire army invaded the city so I played the battle as reinforcements to the computer haha (I was the "reinforcements have arrived" army haha). After about 200 hours in the game, this entertained me quite a bit. I know the campaign can be boring, but generally not too much, it's Ok and I have played 4 so far (Empire, Bretonnia, Orcs (failed), Bretonnia).
Brittania's battle AI isn't bad, but nobody knows that because nobody played it.
The guys who made Ultimate general made 10x more better AI than all CA's games combined!
I am always puzzled why people claim Shogun 2 has good AI. They are either hipper-agressive, or static. That was my first Total War back in 2017, it was for me good enough to try games I was actually interested which are Empire/Napoleon that are infamous for poor AI. Truth is however that those games forced me to actually use proper battle tactics. I had to position artillery properly, I couldn't just circle around with cavalry like in every Shogun 2 battle, I had to watch out what is an actual attack and what is a diversion/raid. I was forced to give up on Finland on Russia which due to Swedish raids. AI actuall fight and captures trade roots. Don't get me wrong, AI in those games was prone to stupid mistakes, but it was far less then in Shogun 2 where AI would simply attack army and either go all in, on the attack or would stay still and be picked from affar. And don't even get me started on how after you grow powerful enough all factions arbitrery delcare war on you. That's not smart, that's artificial diffculty at its worst. Hell in Rome 2/Attila, AI would form grand alliances organically of which you can be part of, which is especially fun in Atilla where you carve Roman Empire and plan how to backstab your partners only to find out they were planing the same thing, but it doesn't matter because Huns come to butcher you all. Even AI will ocationally try to do something new like, forming defensive square, burning buildings, bring in the artillery. Even in Medieval 2 AI will try to surround your army, wait for your borders to be left open to attack, etc.
Haven't played anything after Attila, but honestly Shogun 2 is for me a big let down and the fact I am not facinated by Japan and Samurai culture in general didn't help. I've heard that Fall of the Samurai is much better and has more in common with Empire/Napoleon. I may try it, but my hopes aren't very high.
Does anyone know what's the game mod at 2:26? Looks like… Attila?
They realised that they don't need to make a good game. They just need to make it good enough to make you play it for at least 2 hours so you can't ask for a steam refund.
Empire signified the end of great sieges. Empire is only playable to me with a no siege mod.
I distinctly remember playing a game of Lizardmen in Warhammer 3, having so much fun with my armies of dinosaurs. Then I go against some vampire counts, loading into the battle, then hit with a line of zombies/skeletons that span the entire map, and that also refuse to move forward. So I have to march up there with my dinosaurs and kill them. Now I'd win the fight, but god it was so boring I just quit half way through.
This happens often with other factions, such as Skaven. Where instead of creating intricate or interesting formations, they just create giant lines of enemies that don't engage. Even the Dwarves, who are great at defence and SHOULDN'T move forward, don't turtle. Instead they also create a giant line and shoot into their teammates with their artillery, if they even have it. They should definitely work on making the AI interesting and innovative, instead of making giant lines of enemies so every battle just plays out the same.
Edit: The most fun I had in a battle was when I was getting ambushed by the Vampire Counts as a Dwarf faction. Zombies and Skeletons coming out of the trees to attack my army as it rapidly tried to reform. Winning the battle by having some units stall, as my artillery set up on low ground to fire on the steep-ish hill the undead were pouring down from as my units fell back to defensive positions. It was the most fun I had in a Total War battle ever. Even if the AI was the same, it was a rare moment where the AI did something that the brainless hordes of undead would actually do. It felt very in character and I had a lot of fun doing it.
Honestly, I don't see CA making it through this decade. I find it ironic how they keep giving us cheap and terrible new releases, and then wonder why they're not selling like hotcakes (even with DLCs, too), even though the fanbase has been practically SCREAMING what we've been wanting for YEARS!!! Why are these companies so stupid and so determined to drive themselves aground for the sake of the Nullmighty Dollar?!
The battle really improved with Warhammer. But i still miss the battle mechanics of Medieval Total War. Long time ago we didn't had something like that in a total war.
Brittania is maybe my favorite of the series. I would love to see it less complicated to play.
What i dislike the most is the fact than AI is cheating to beat you. You see big armies popping up for no reason.
And the fact than diplomacy is impossible to play, AI finish to hate you and break alliance.
You talk about shogun 2, but it's the worse about those points, AI is cheating and AI diplomacy is broken.
the problem is there is no real alternative so CA will never be pushed to create a more compelling product.
AI is pretty much the main reason I've stopped play TW games
Shogun 2 is the only modern Total War game where I play battles. They work and are enjoyable. All the rest since Empire suck and I opt always to autoresolve them.
It honestly feels to me that Shogun 2 had whole different team making it. They made the melee work perfectly almost with the engine known for only working fine in ranged combat. They mostly nailed the naval combat as well in FOTS. The campaign AI is challenging as well and doesn't starve or lose units to attrition too much. It knows when to naval invade and when not to.
Oh and the sieges are enjoyable in Shogun 2 too. No unit blobbing and single gate fights. It's all around attacks. Ofc you can exploit the AI with ranged units in sieges, but why do that and then complain?
I think Total War AI peaked in Shogun 2 and has been downhill ever since. That goes for basically every other feature too. It all peaked in Shogun 2. I don't think any Total War game since Shogun 2 has had enjoyable sieges. You either have to bumrush the fort/city or cheese the AI by sitting out of range and just bombarding them with some sort of massed artillery, then walk in when you've killed 90% of their troops.
Every game since Shogun 2 has had infuriating and totally un-fun campaign map AI, where enemy factions always stay 1 movement point ahead of your own armies and do nothing but hit your undefended cities from the sea, then retreat. This is even more infuriating when factions that shouldn't even be able to have a navy – LANDLOCKED BARBARIANS! – just walk their army into the sea and spawn an instant magic navy, then sail like they were born to the water, covering half the map in one single turn.
Every game since Shogun 2 has had boring generals, boring tech trees and boring agents.
Empire and Napoleon's AI sucked and the ai mods that are currently out such as Bran's make the ai hit or miss. The Great War for Napoleon on custom battle is effectively unplayable because of the dogshit ai. Sometimes it's competent, sometimes it isn't. Shogun2-Atilla's is pretty capable and doesn't suicide rush you provided you have equal amounts of artillery or the opposing force has more than you. I don't know why Warscape was used for Rome 2 onwards since the engine was designed for musket + bayonet warfare.
one of the things that pisses me off when u need to click 20000 times for the units to move away because one enemy unit model has touched my unit. While the ai just ram across my units and ignore them.
Sieges and flanks. Sieges and flanks. It's always the same story. Almost 20 years since Rome 1 came out and the AI still derps out in front of the city walls, or loses its mind when you send cavalry to flank it from the rear. CA is a useless company. They had one good game concept two decades ago and then never had another.
They should just contract Paradox to make their next campaign and use the time they’d have wasted to fix the battle AI. I think that’s the total war everyone has secretly wanted for years anyway. There’s too many good grand campaign strategy games out there to justify playing total war once you realize the battles are a chore now.
AI What we know today are just scripts, and scripts can't improve during a fight or a campaign, what CA should be developing is a learning AI that can adapt the difficulty to the player, i've seem videos of ppl testing reinforcement learning with starcraft, maybe this could be the future for this game
broken ai isn't fun but how they "fixed" it by removing naval combat altogether is just bad. I'm looking at Pharaoh with mild interest even if it seems a bit too much like another total war: troy. I wasn't interested in that, didn't play it even though the game was free from epic games for a time. I love historical total wars like rome 2, shogun 2.. would love medieval 2 but it's old and crashes, troy's problem was the mythological hero stuff that just broke the whole immersion for me. I keep playing rome 2, recently went back to attila. It looks like they have the skill to make new games engaging if they just chose to do something interesting instead of diving into fantasy and other bs. And yeah, improve the ai instead of removing features from the games.
Three words. Snipe and Unspottable. So long as you're far enough away the AI in TW will stand there pathetically confused about why it's people keep dying. And I get it, those traits mean that they have no idea where the shot came from, but they still know they're getting killed. Move! Do literally anything! It's sad to watch.
Three Kingdoms Total War has the best diplomacy mechanics, best campaign AI and best Battle AI. Shogun 2 ,Rome 2 and Attila had some decent battle AI as well but still not as advanced as Three Kingdoms.
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