Shogun 2: Total War

[Al B. Sure!]

Case in point, look how big APM is in Starcraft but in Total War, not so much.

I just got Empire off Steam and played my first game (I played a little of the demo months ago). I'm playing with a mod called Darthmod. I did a battle and used the default army compositions. I had a heroic victory on hard difficulty with around a 2:1 kill/casualty ratio. I used the standard hammer and anvil strategy and wiped the floor with the CPU.

I wish I had a way to show just how little clicking was involved (way less than SC2). Maybe I'll make a screen capture video and let you see how it doesn't take much clicking.

[Al B. Sure!]

So you're comparing ladder Starcraft to Shogun vs. the AI? How could you think that's valid?

You ever play random map SC2 against the AI? That AI is brutal. I can't beat it on anything but the lowest difficulty.

[Felch]

WE GET IT. You're a fanboy who's played a lot of Total War, but who sucks at Starcraft. You've proven your point.

[Al B. Sure!]

WE GET IT. You're a fanboy who's played a lot of Total War, but who sucks at Starcraft. You've proven your point.

That's not true at all. I've played far more Starcraft. Until Shogun 2, I hadn't bought a Total War game since the first Medieval. Fortunately, Steam keeps track of hours played.

Shogun 2: 43 hours played
Medieval 2 (which I got last week): 8 hours played
Empire (got today): 114 minutes (most of which was reading about the units)

And I was actually in Platinum league for 1v1 in SC2 last season.


It's not about the difficulty really. My point is about micromanaging. I just don't see where all the supposed microing is in Total War games. Maybe I'm not playing it right? Maybe you are making superfluous moves? SC2 is a clickfest compared to Total War. Hell, I think most of my activity in Total War is zooming in and panning the camera to admire the graphics.

I click the units, tell them where to go. Admire graphics while I wait for contact. Make a few adjustments. Admire graphics. Make a few adjustments. Admire graphics. Send general after fleeing enemy. Victory.

[Al B. Sure!]

All I know is Starcraft is the only game I have ever played where (excluding custom games), I am always sitting up at the edge of my seat, crouched over the keyboard, heart racing, damn near sweating, feeling like I'm taking a freaking test trying to click and type as fast as I possibly can, my eyes darting around the screen like crazy, freaking out when I have 200 minerals stockpiled and units in ****ing queue. Otherwise, you flat out will not win. There is no room for error in SC2.

The game is way too ****ing stressful. Go google "Starcraft is too stressful" and you'll see a ****load of hits. The game is beyond intense.

[Proteus_MST]

As we are also talking about E:TW now...
I love it that the enemy troops/generals talk in their native langauge (or at least in a language that belongs to the correct language group)...
but maybe they should have paid more attention to which person should be allowed to say which sentences.

It is really strange when my prussian troops siege vienna and, when the austrians try to break the siege, my general announces it with:
"Feindliche Segel gesichtet! Alle Mann an Deck." (Enemy sails sighted! All hands on deck)

I can only rationalize it this way:
My general always wanted to become an admiral. But the job center only had a position as general available. So, everytime he leads his troops he now fantasizes about being an admiral, who leads a fleet

[Al B. Sure!]

You know, now that I've played a few hours of every Total War, I can say that I'm the opposite of Oerdin. I like the battles (in fact, I've been playing custom battles), but the turn-based campaign is difficult to get into.

One thing that bothers me is that armies barely get anywhere via land in a turn. Like in Shogun, it really takes an army a freaking year to get from one end of Kyushu to the other? Are they traveling a quarter mile a day?