I love the Total War games. I missed out on Shogun 1, but after that I've played almost all of them from Medieval onwards. I still figure Rome 1 and Medieval 2 as the best overall versions of the game.
Rome 1: Playing the Romans was amazing, all the way to the corner where you could try expanding with the Egyptians and running into the Roman might.
They basically perfected the simple gameplay loop in this title. Later on they would make changes to make managing cities less onerous (good), but would introduce the concept of Generals to rally armies with (terrible). In later games you would need to move your General back to a city (and even later just in the province) to recruit, then you could set out again to fight. In Rome you you'd usually want your General on the frontlines in enemy territory to fight and you would create units in your cities back home and then send them out to join up to the army in small groups.
What this caused is that often you would have random small numbers of units fighting other enemy groups, so you'd have to finely decide if you could win a 3v4 battle, or if you needed to delay to get a few more units there. This added a randomness to both fights and how the maps played out. Today all of the TW's play exactly the same. They give you an initial fight you're meant to win, then you have to build more units until you can go and capture the next city, rinse and repeat. Eventually you have enough support and you create a second army. While you're expanding, because there are a lot more opponents now, you will get stabbed in the back and have to move your single army back. With Rome 1 you could decide to have a percentage of your units in front busy conquering, while roaming non-General group(s) could be back at home to defend.
Medieval 2: The generic starting European factions were less fun for me, so I switched to the Egyptians (with whom I had also conquered the world with in Rome). Playing them wasn't too hard until the Mongols showed up. Due to unit compositions it would take about 2 of your full armies to beat 1 of theirs without suffering too many losses, and they would show up with at least 3 armies who would roam and burn everything. It took some serious strategy to out-maneuver and beat them. Overall strategy wise this is still the best Total War game.
I remember when I was a kid and shogun 1 was announced. I spent many hours in excitement, reading over and over gaming magazines reviewing the game announced features.
The game concept was simply mindblowing at the time. I was used to RTS like AoE and the likes, and always felt like I wanted more realism. Shogun 1 felt like a dream come true.
Ah nice, I didn't have a graphics card that could run it but I visited a friend who had bought a new Riva TNT and saw it a few times.
Yeah, coming off of normal RTS games with only a few units to squads in a realistic setting was great (even though the sprites looked pretty terrible up close).
Rome 1: Playing the Romans was amazing, all the way to the corner where you could try expanding with the Egyptians and running into the Roman might.
They basically perfected the simple gameplay loop in this title. Later on they would make changes to make managing cities less onerous (good), but would introduce the concept of Generals to rally armies with (terrible). In later games you would need to move your General back to a city (and even later just in the province) to recruit, then you could set out again to fight. In Rome you you'd usually want your General on the frontlines in enemy territory to fight and you would create units in your cities back home and then send them out to join up to the army in small groups.
What this caused is that often you would have random small numbers of units fighting other enemy groups, so you'd have to finely decide if you could win a 3v4 battle, or if you needed to delay to get a few more units there. This added a randomness to both fights and how the maps played out. Today all of the TW's play exactly the same. They give you an initial fight you're meant to win, then you have to build more units until you can go and capture the next city, rinse and repeat. Eventually you have enough support and you create a second army. While you're expanding, because there are a lot more opponents now, you will get stabbed in the back and have to move your single army back. With Rome 1 you could decide to have a percentage of your units in front busy conquering, while roaming non-General group(s) could be back at home to defend.
Medieval 2: The generic starting European factions were less fun for me, so I switched to the Egyptians (with whom I had also conquered the world with in Rome). Playing them wasn't too hard until the Mongols showed up. Due to unit compositions it would take about 2 of your full armies to beat 1 of theirs without suffering too many losses, and they would show up with at least 3 armies who would roam and burn everything. It took some serious strategy to out-maneuver and beat them. Overall strategy wise this is still the best Total War game.