Did You Know?! The ENTIRE History of Total War - 2000-2022

For the next historical Total War game, i would love to see a Medieval 3, but preferablya a realy good Empire 2. If Medieval 3 they need to update the way campaign and battlemaps meet. Take knights and armies for example. They shouldnt be Units you buy for Money in most cases, but rather units that you foster through the realms internal relationship with its people and nobility.

As someone who has been playing sense MTW as a young child and now am playing Medieval Kingdoms 1212 mod for Atilla at 30, i love this video.

What I miss most in the recent games is city zoom. The graphics are so much better than in the beginning, but you have hardly time to admire the cities while fighting a siege. In the first Rome game you could actually have a look at your cities that you were building.

This is one of the best series, I am a bit older and I remember when Shogun launched. It was stunning in that it was one of the first RTS titles ion which if you lost a battle you did not get a "Game Over" screen. And a few favourites of mine in the series: Medieval 2, Shogun 2 and the teo Warhammer games are superb RTS/TBT games. great video, thank for the recap!

Remember, Total War has not been completely unchallenged. Mark of Chaos was one game that was somewhat relateable to Total War in a sense of battles. However, it felt clunky and overall Total War just won the day. It is hard to compete with the big set stages, just look at FIFA, NHL and Total War. I do wish that there would be more pushing for greatness than there is by competition, but hey - What can you do.

Recently started playing Rome 2 again. I have fallen in love all over again! I remember playing the original Rome on my uncles computer when I was a kid. Total War will always be one of my favorite series’ in gaming!

All these games have the same problem (in my mind), that being: there comes a point where victory is inevitable, and you're just stuck cleaning up the map in order to get your victory achievement.

Awesome video man. Shogun 2, Rome, and Medieval 2 will always be my favorite Total War games. Glad you gave every title a fair chance. I like Napoleon, but nothing like my favorite Total War games. Thanks for the video man. Subbed.

That first time you initiate a battle in RTW and that music hit and the camera zoomed in was like a religious experience.

gotta say that music in old total wars were absolute banger. not that they got worse but I love hearing them soundtracks using various mods.but speeches from medieval 2 is simply top :D probably still my favorite game from series.

After i watched the Video i saw the amount of views and i was shocked that it didnt have more. This was a really good rundown of the series. Rome 1 blew my kid brain at the time and Medieval 2 is probably my most played game of all time but i dont know since there was no way of tracking hours played back in the day. But i dont play vanilla today, because i feel like Stainless Steel does everything that vanilla does, but better. I bought a new PC just so i could play Empire when it came out and i went back to medieval 2 pretty much right after. After that i wasnt a big Fan of any other Total War for quite some time, and i own most of them. I definitely enjoyed Shogun 2 but it grew stale for me pretty quick with every faction fielding the same units. I also never really got into Fall of the Samurai, i just felt like the battles were way too quick with everything dying so fast. Rome 2 was a massive letdown, and even today after being patched up pretty well, it is still outclassed by classic Rome mods like Europa Barbarorum or Roma Surrectum. In Attila i had the most fun just fielding whole cavalry armies and crushing all spearman armies because cav was so broken in this game. But i dont like the time period and the AI consistently looses all provinces as Rome before Attila is even born so yeah... Also i know that this happens in every total war, but the cheats the AI gets in campaign were at their most noticeable in Attila. I remember settling in southern Italy as Alans in a campaign, having that and sicily and parts of northern Africa and being barely able to maintain 1 1/2 stacks, while being constantly being harassed by some tribe that settled on sardinia with one settlement, who maintained 3 full stacks at all times on the island. Also the "feature" that better and more expensive units replace your older units was incredibly shit. I bought Warhammer 1 and 2 together and i gotta say that the mortal Empires Campaign is great. At this point there is no debate that if you own all dlc for Warhammer 1 and 2, it is by far the most diverse, complex and largest total war to date, with all factions having their own identity. But the problem is, you gotta have the dlc and 2 games to get the full experience which leaves you at a 200€ price tag. And with Warhammer 3 and its dlc this will get even larger. The Addition of Magic, Monsters and flying units works well but the overall balance of the game is pretty bad with melee infantry basically being useless in the campaign and Monsters, missiles and magic ruling supreme. If you want to be the most efficient in campaign, which you have to be on higher difficulties, you will have to win battles with your flying mage alone, which is unbelievably boring. I know these kind of AI exploiting for efficiency was also possible in Medieval 2 and Rome 1, but it has never been as ridicolous as in Warhammer. In most cases you are sabotaging yourself if you build a balanced army like you would do in classic total wars and this irritates me as it breaks the immersion. I always dreamed of a Total war like rome or medieval that includes the whole world map, with many distinct cultures. Modders could never make this as the engines of Medieval 2 and Rome only allowed a certain map size, which turned any attempt at a World Map into an eye cancer inducingly squished mess. With Warhammer 1 2 and 3 they are doing it now, but in a fantasy world. If they can only realize such a massive project over the course of 5 years, several games with dlc and a 300€ Price tag, then so be it. But i really hope they make it happen. I want to expand the holy roman empire up to the malacca strait.

Andy: 35:14 „and maturity“ The entire Warhammer fanbase: Listen Here You Little Shi...

This might be the story of my childhood. I'm from Venezuela and I used to travel to the UK over the summer to visit my family. My first time there my mom bought me Rome Total War and the Medieval Kingdoms expansion (We didn't even know that wasn't the base game ) at the GAME store in Colchester. As soon as we got to my uncle's house I installed the game and I was blown away. The next day we were back at GAME buying the original Medieval Total War 2. Then every summer I went to the UK with the expectation of getting my hands on a new Total War game or expansion ( I still have the original boxes in my drawer ) in 2012 I got Empire and in 2014 Rome Total War 2. Then at some point around 2013-5 my PC wasn't strong enough to handle the newer games and the Medieval 2 and Rome DVD's had become so degraded I couldn't install them anymore. Imagine my surprise when I realized I could use the pre Steam activation codes to redeem the games on Steam. I even used the original games to simulate battles for my High School's model UN Rome committee ( It was the Attila expansion). Then on my first job I bought a proper gaming PC in 2018 and I bought every single Total War I didn't already own. If I ever go back to the UK I need to visit that store. It was the place where I was introduced to Total War and the Paradox franchises. I might even shed a little tear if I'm honest.

Thanks for this great overview! A well done video :)

Excellent video! Sadly it is criminally under viewed, it deserves so much more.

The funniest thing about this video is having it on the other monitor, busy with something else while listening in and at 32:00 mishearing you as saying "... even facing a rising Sassanid empire, REDDITORS strike from the ancient sands of Persia"

I completely agree, as a Chinese total war shogun 2 is the game that got me first playing total war games and over the years I’ve bought empire Napoleon Rome 2 but none of them ever came close to shogun, three kingdoms is my second fav, although it’s far from perfect but is that familiarity in the history that really make you enjoy the game, and that’s something really hard to do when you are not familiar or really care about history of other places that makes you really hard to like others.

18:50 A unit of 160 men with muskets only shooting 3 dudes in one salvo was actually quite realistic, it's not a flaw but historical accuracy

Love the video man keep up the good work

I was a young boy entering my teenage years when I found Rome total war while browsing gamestop. The box art caught my eye and the little description and images made me wanna play so I begged my mom to buy it for me and I'm so glad she did. I've since played every game but I always came back to Rome 1. Rome remastered was a bit clunky om release but at the time of this its gotten a lot of patches and modding capabilities have been unleashed so I am probably going to jump to that!