BudgieMania

@BudgieMania@kbin.social

Gets carried away in overly rambly rants about unimportant bullshit, uses fancy words without understanding their meaning, has a complete lack of self awareness.
Likes budgies.

Total War: Warhammer III a good starting point for a strategy beginner?

Hey PCGaming folks! I don't know what happened this year, maybe reaching my mid-thirties finally unlocked the "dad game" part of my brain, and I started to all of a sudden get super into tactics games, after only having a passing interest in them my entire life....

BudgieMania, (edited )

Any Total War game is excellent if you want a balance between real time tactics and grand strategy elements. They separate the gameplay between a turn-based campaign map that is somewhat reminiscent of a more simplified version of 4x games; and real time battles with good tactical depth. So it can scratch both itches while never getting you tired of either.

With that said, you might want to take a look at the whole catalog of the series in case you find the historical-based entries more appealing than the Warhammer ones. And if you are more interested in Warhammer, of course keep in mind that 3 is the latest one and you might be able to find the previous ones cheaper/easier to get into.

Ultimately, the Total War games that you end up more interested about will come down to how modern you want the game to be and what setting you find most interesting. In case you need a summary of the choices:

Oldest/Earliest Total Wars - The ones that are partially 2D (Early 2000s)

  • Shogun Total War - Feudal Japan
  • Medieval Total War - Medieval Ages

Early Full 3D Total Wars (Mid 2000s)

  • Rome Total War - Roman Republic/Roman Empire - This has a great remaster called Rome Total War Remastered
  • Medieval 2 Total War - Mid to Late Medieval Ages - One of my personal favorites

Modern Total Wars (from late 2000s onwards)

  • Empire Total War - The 1700s
  • Napoleon Total War - The early 1800s
  • Shogun 2 Total War - Feudal Japan
  • Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai - The early 1800s in Japan
  • Rome 2 Total War - Roman Republic/Roman Empire - My personal favorite
  • Attila Total War - Fall of the western Roman Empire/Hun invasion
  • Thrones of Britannia - Late 800s in the British Isles
  • Total War Warhammer - Warhammer Fantasy
  • Total War Warhammer 2 - Warhammer Fantasy
  • Total War Three Kingdoms - 200s in China
  • Total War Troy - Greek mythology
  • Total War Warhammer 3 - Warhammer Fantasy

As you can see there's a miriad of choices but you can't go wrong with most of them, and most will provide 100s of hours of game.

One last thing, if you go with Warhammer, you should know that by acquiring 1 and 2, you can play an expanded version in 3 that includes the maps and factions of 1 and 2. So if you get the third one and find yourself liking it, know that you can get even more content for it.

BudgieMania,

Man so true, as decent of a game as it is, it hurts playing DS2 because of the untapped potential. It says something about the "bones" of the game that even with all of its issues it is still a memorable experience.

There is supposed to be some modder developing a total conversion that tries to deliver on that potential but as with any total conversion mod you never know whether it will release or not. But I hope it does so that the potential can finally be done justice.

BudgieMania,

Make sure to check the Nucleus Coop App if you haven't already!

https://nucleus-coop.github.io/

It turns games that don't have a native local coop mode into local coop by simulating a LAN and running two instances of the game communicating exclusively with each other. It works really well, especially if you have a multi-monitor setup.

I have played multiple games in local coop with my brother with this, including Elden Ring. It's been a blast.

BudgieMania,

Yes, you only need one copy of the game for most of the games supported by Nucleus Coop. It creates its own simulated Steam users/accounts for the game in the background.

BudgieMania,

Nucleus coop is one of the best things to happen to the PC space in recent years, I'm happy to spread the word!

I just wish more games were supported.

BudgieMania,

Ooooh that looks sick! Crazy what a perspective change can do for inmersion.

BudgieMania,

Probably Rome: Total War in 2006... After being used to normal RTSs, the scale and complexity of the battles in RTW blew my mind, I couldn't understand how it was technically possible.
Still a fan of the series so many years later, so great.

BudgieMania,

don't forget about Teams - Microsoft Discord

BudgieMania,

The only redeemable thing about Teams is that it serves as an example of how you can be worst-in-class for everything, but still succeed somehow

BudgieMania,

Aah the ranged-based faction, can't have a total war without one...

I hope they release some gameplay of this faction too so that we can see how distinct the factions of the same culture will be between them.

BudgieMania,

Yeaaah unfortunately it looks like it's gonna have the same problem that I felt Shogun had... That most factions will just be little more than recolorings of each other. I wish they would have expanded the scope a little bit more to prevent that, but that is easy for me to say when I'm not the one paying to make the game.

I'm staying hopeful until we have seen a bit more of every faction though, who knows, maybe it will have more to offer than we think.

maximum_bird, to random

BudgieMania,

what a handsome boy :D

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