Do Total War campaign MECHANICS even matter?

I'll be the first to admit I am a lazy Total War player I often forget to use half the mechanics or simply ignore them for example I pretty much never look at my character's items so whatever gets Auto assigned there first is going to be there for the rest of the campaign and hell I did this car brand campaign video where I tried to survive with no settlements and I completely forgot to use this button at the top I forgot it existed it kind of Blends into the UI so I went this entire run without using the supposedly incredibly important mechanic so that got me wondering how important are any of these mechanics really from summoning the elect accounts to nurgle cauldrons to high elf political Intrigue does any of it really matter so that's what I'm gonna look to find out by doing a campaign where I use no unique faction mechanics no Army buffing skill points no items and I research no technology I'm going Bare Bones Total War now when deciding affection to do this with I tried to pick one that had a unique mechanic that was quite seemingly essential to them that they'd be quite disadvantaging themselves by not using so I went with the Vampire counts and your boy Stone Cold Steve Manfred but before I do this mechanicless campaign I need something to compare it to so I'm gonna do a normal version using all the mechanics and all the usual stuff and we'll see how far we can get and how well it goes in maybe about 50 turns so let's skim through that first of all so old many starts down in the Sandy Lands we'll proceed to take out this little first Army I do fight that battle to get the best results and then proceed on to take the first settlement and then on to the first Province and before you know it I'm breathing down Old volkmar's Neck he's the first big enemy we have to deal with and he's on his way to having two full Stacks so I do what any great general of History does and I raise an army of zombies using the pretty essential feeling vampire counts mechanic of Rey's dead which allows me to build a nice big army of zombies very quickly which is gonna let me push on volkmar even though I still am apparently going to lose but I can't fight it to get the win although it's not going to be completely dairy free I did use my zombie army to distract and draw the enemy Army to the farthest side of the settlement while my other Army went in and stole the victory of objective this allowed me to take out one of volkmar's armies nice and easily while the other one was just up north which left the plane of tusca's settlement to the South free for the taking and it's around this time that tomb cetra came and declared war on us so we've now got him to worry about while still trying to deal with volkmar he pretty much straight away came and besieged my main settlement of casabar but I said Manfred all the way back over there to get him thankfully before he decided to attack this allowed us to get a victory although I did have to fight it so that it wasn't a complete disaster and at this point manfred's army is all right I got some okay units got some Crypt Horrors got the fire guys got a couple of grave guard got my white king hero and then otherwise it's just bogging everything down with the chap needless to say we beat away citra's bone boys and kasabar was saved back on the other side of the Kingdom volkmar wasn't up to much he didn't seem to be retaliating so I just kind of played it safe on that side for now and as Manfred was already over in the Tomb King's land and we just took out one of their big armies I decided to push on them taking one of their settlements and then pushing on kenri itself I was gonna try and get them done quick another vampire mechanic I made use of here the bloodline system I'm gonna get this one that increases replenishment as that's something I've been trying to improve with skill points and Technology get my replenishment as good as possible manfred's plan comes to a halt though as there is a big Camry Army now sat there they can obviously raise armies very quickly so I need to fall back and replenish and why not recruit myself some crossbowmen back over in the west volkmar is finally looking like he might do something but this is where good old Ray's Dead comes in handy as we can get units nice and quick and nice and cheap I've got the reduction cost to zombies so they're very very cheap but you see me bringing Manfred back over here I decided to abandon my push on Camry for now to focus on one target rather than trying to do both at the same time I need both of my armies on one target really to get rid of them so I'm going after volkmar first he tried to attack my striggoy zombie army which I left outside the settlement trying to Ambush I don't let my chances here though so I tried to retreat and see what happens and luckily he doesn't pursue me any further and thus he's now stood in my vampire corrupted lands taking attrition and he's now kinda separated from his other Army freeing me up to come after him on the next turn with both of my armies and he's in force March so it's worked out Beauty beautifully here I'm able to take out volkmar's big boy Army nice and easy I then try to pursue his second Army but it does a runner into the desert leaving his settlement undefended which I do go and take and that other Army does eventually get killed by his other enemy up there the rakaf dynasty those other tomb King boys and thus volkmar and the cult of Sigma are no more so one big enemy down one to go that other big enemy though is of course coming and taking back the settlement I took from it but that's fine that was expected when I ran away and left those settlements undefended of course as long as they're not taking any of my first Province we're all good I then rushed my two armies back over to this side before the Camry start causing problems I do catch them with an Army in a settlement with a small Garrison though push on it with my two armies and we take care of that Army in that settlement that's now ours once again the other Army though is just stood in the middle of nowhere but it is potentially going to attack one of my less defended settlements so once again good old raised Dead comes in handy as I'm able to quickly raise a force there to try and help defend it I'm gonna grab as much as I can to hopefully allow it to protect it maybe to get in order result win but alas it doesn't really help that much gives me a close defeat which I don't think I'd be able to win if I fight it they got some nehekara Warriors they got a lot of spearmen don't think I really have the manpower to do this so I'm just gonna take the close defeat on the chin and if they take it they take it I'll deal with it but luckily they've only sacked it which then leaves their army stood in the open in force March somehow not quite sure how they ended up in force much after attacking a settlement but whatever they're dead now we took care of them two big tomb King's armies out the way nice we're now free to claim the land that they owe us but we're not entirely done with tomb Kings yet apparently as the rakaf Dynasty is now declared war on us fun I'm gonna ignore that for now though and keep pushing on the Camry to get rid of them otherwise they're just going to come back strong again so I take back Camry I come and take out numas to the north and that's three of the four settlements in this province taken just one more left but in this time the recap Dynasty have made their move and they're now besieging sudenberg which means I need to bring money back to come and sort that out but I trust in my strigoy boy to be able to finish the Camry off and then we should be looking good sadly though there were calf bastards besieged my settlement before Manfred arrives luckily though again they only sack it and run away so we're able to keep the settlement thankfully and after a little bit of faff with some small toon Kings Camry armies maestrogue Army is able to go and take out the final settlement of the Camry although I am just going to sack it this time around because I kinda need the money I've got like 400 in the bank because I spent it all on Ray's Dead trying to win the fights over this side but on the next turn I'm gonna take it out and finally get rid of the goddamn kimri so that's the two big starting enemies we had to deal with finally taken out word about turn 35 we got a pretty nice little Empire three provinces although they're not terribly well developed I have expanded very quickly and thus money has been a bit of a problem but I'm gonna keep going to turn 50 and see how much land we can take with this normal style playthrough so next I set my sights on those damn dirty recap Dynasty bone boys and well quite frankly they didn't put up much of a fight and we were able to take them out fairly comfortably fairly easily and expanded Our Kingdom that little bit more I noticed now though that the French were becoming a bit of a problem with non-stop rioting all over this area and I kind of become friendly with archon as well who's on that West Coast there so I worked together with him to get rid of the britonians from this area there's two factions one of them being rapunz of course and you can see now in Miami I've got some grave Guard Great weapons I've got some Cavalry some blood Knights some hex wraiths that's all from Rey's dead so I've got those powerful units because as I say my provinces aren't terribly developed and I can't recruit those units yet it's all been raised dead but I sacked that place just there and ended up in a fight with rapunza herself who decided to come after me but she was no match for my massive zombies which I'd been putting quite a lot into in terms of tech and skill points and stuff they got that 20 physical resistance they're really cheap they got some extra melee attack melee defense and that sort of thing so for crappy zombies they're not too shabby but from here I then claimed this settlement and cleaned up the rest of that rapunz Army I'm now at turn 50 so we're nearly at the end of our run just want to see if I can get a few more settlements from this though as I just took out one of the big brittonian armies they're not going to have too many defense is left there's one fairly big army there but we're gonna come up on that they're gonna bring another Army over but it's no use I'm still gonna give them a Swift bunking on the head and take one of their strongest settlements I think it may be where raponce starts there perhaps or maybe she starts in Sandy but it's one of her first provinces I think after this on turn 49 I make a play to get the great desert of Arabi while sending my strigoi zombie army North to capture fyrus and while I did have to fight this battle it was actually quite fun just massively enveloping a bunch of protonians with zombies and scaring the out of them their low leadership coupled with our fear and Terror plus all the flanking made them go away pretty quick and then on turn 50 we capture that great desert of Arabi and there we go that'll do it turn 50. we managed to get all of this land five or six provinces there managed to get some of the victory objectives done as well taking out those two big factions that we did at the start gotta take the Black Pyramid as well that's easy enough to do it's right there we could overrun that with our two stacks but to take a look at Manfred himself here's all his skill points I haven't put a ton into the army anyway only really to buff up the cheap crappy stuff I do have that replenishment in the blue line as well but otherwise trying to buff up Manfred which I am going to allow myself to do in the other playthrough here's all the items as well these again I haven't done anything with these they're just the ones that have gone on but I don't have anything terribly amazing and here's the technology I've researched a lot of stuff for those zombies to try and get those stronger and then other bits and Bobs that I thought might be helpful as I went along and then of course there's the raised dead mechanic which you've seen me use a bunch of times to get those zombies on mass to get the stronger units that I otherwise couldn't get we'll see how much of an effect it has not using that in the next run for the Bloodlines I ended up with two points from the Von car Stones which gave me the extra replenishment which is mostly what I took them for I tried to get my replenishment really good so it was something that I would potentially miss in the other playthrough I didn't bother with any of the books of nagesh but there we go that's how far I got up to turn 50 playing normally on very hard hard by the way now let's try again but ignoring half of the mechanics of the game so we start out the same taking the first Province Bish bash a bitly Bosch as mentioned I am going to allow myself to upgrade my characters themselves just so I can make use of my magic and such and it's only going to be the Single Character which might help a little bit with auto resolve and stuff but shouldn't make much of a difference but here I am recruiting my units like a pleb unable to use Rey's dead in this playthrough I also out of habit keep opening the tech tree because I can see that exclamation mark there but now once again I breathed down volkmar's neck and it's worth pointing out that this is going to be my second playthrough of The Campaign which means I have some experience in it and what works and what doesn't as I found last time splitting up my armies was a bad idea so I'm not going to do that this time but of course it's worthwhile factoring that into the result of this playthrough but once again I raise my straight away zombie army although it can't go up as quick this time because of no raised dead but I still have managed to get some good units through my buildings I've got some Crypt Horrors got a corpse card and now not only can I not get as many zombies as I had before but they're not going to be as strong because I'm not researching the Technologies to buff them so they're not going to get 20 physical resistance any extra melee attack or melee defense they're more expensive as well because I don't have that 35 reduction to upkeep but this early in the campaign is not going to make a huge difference anyway but as we move through the turn the code of Sigma comes at us with an army that's not too crazy scary even though it's apparently going to crushingly defeat us but we have a big numbers Advantage even though our units are half dead although they're already dead so double half dead 1.5 times dead either way we overrun them disrupt their missiles they do nothing we crush them lovely over the next turn something different happens this turn though as the ogres have declared war on me they didn't do that last time so that's an extra threat to worry about from the West this time but funnily enough the same thing that happened in the last playthrough happened in this one where they come to attack my strigoi Army I Retreat it leaves them stood in my attrition and then free to attack which when I do try to attack them they both run off in different directions separating themselves making them easy pickings for the rest of my armies to separate them divide and conquer I'm then free to move on to sudenberg and capture this area to try and finish of the cult of Sigma but it's never that easy of course because now the Camry have declared war on me and it's the same thing again they come after casaba so I've got to try and finish up here quickly so I can get back over into the East before I start losing my settlements over there so I get that done and start rushing Manfred back over towards casabar which is being besieged by the Camry once again but this time around ogres me Lord there's ogres to be North on me borders so that's a bit of a worry and something you're gonna have to deal with I don't really have a great Army here to defend against it because I've mostly got zombies that aren't buffed in any way so it's not a great situation if only I had a mechanic that let me raise large numbers of troops very quickly price and things go from bad to worse as the tomb Kings do attack me before I'm able to get back there it's predicted a decisive defeat which means I'll do no Auto resolve damage pretty much so I'm gonna fight it to get a better result and hopefully wipe out some of their units making the Army smaller which is going to be easier for Manfred to deal with and to prevent them from steamrolling onto any other of my settlements and because they broke their army up into loads of small parts it allowed me to pick apart a lot of those small parts and actually kill off quite a few of their units I got rid of most of their ranged units some of their melee units and ultimately gave them a pyrrhic victory rather than a decisive one I think but it was still a defeat and they did decide to take casaba which means I lost my main starting settlement which means I lost one of my recruitment buildings and some other useful stuff so so far things are a little bit worse than the first playthrough I think but nothing to do with the fact that I'm not using any of the mechanics really just some bad luck but at this point I realize hold up I'm doing it again I'm splitting up my forces when I should just be focusing on one I've already lost casaba so it doesn't really matter if the Doom kings were over there for a bit let's just get rid of these ogres nice and quick and then I can head over to get the Camry so that's what I did they were besieging us we bonked them on the head now they're out of the way for now we can rebuild the Army and the Garrison and big men can go over and deal with the Camry once we get back over there we find the Camry probably on their way to attack another one of my settlements so we caught them before they do thankfully they've got a big Chariot heavy Army and I could get a pirate Victory but I want to be able to carry on and take back casabar after this so I'm gonna fight it try and use all my strategy of taking The High Ground so the Chariots can't be as good here they're very slowly gonna have to go up the hill they won't be able to charge us as well they're gonna have to fight uphill too so lots of disadvantages that we can give them then it's just a case of flanking and overwhelming and just enveloping them as much as possible Cryptor as being a key unit here as they can stop those chariots charging around with the heavy mass and Bash them with their armor-piercing damage and that allows us to get rid of that Camry Army pretty comfortably we lose a few skeletons but that's no huge deal we got our Crypt Horrors and stuff still in good health enough to carry on and reclaim at casabar at least but of course the tomb Kings raise another massive stack and get it there before I can attack it so I have to bring my zombie army over as well but it's still not enough and I start to notice something about this campaign different from the other one is that I'm having to fight a lot more of my battles whereas before I could get decent Auto resolve results and use that to get through the battles I do end up fighting this Siege though so that Miami's aren't completely destroyed afterwards I say fight what I really mean is cheese the victory objective because the enemy's too stupid to come and take it back but hey maybe if they made sieges fine I would actually want to play them so I reclaimed casabar turned 21 I've got rid of the cult to Sigma I now want to make my move to get rid of the chemreach last time I got this done by round turn 36 so we'll see if we can get it done at least before then that gives us a good bit of time so I move on to take the spring of eternal life which also gets rid of a nearby Army as well so hopefully we can take these first two settlements with Little Resistance and just to give you a man for an update to show you I'm not using any of the items although occasionally they do sneak on like so but I remove them as quickly as I see them no skill points in the blue or red line other than the increase to campaign movement range because you know not take taking the increase to replenishment though which would be really handy here anyway on to Camry we go which does have the gold mine a very nice place to take that extra money boost is very nice but once again we notice an unfavorable Auto resolve so I'm going to take a turn or two of just wearing them down a bit and this Elite then gets me a close Victory allowing me to take Camry very nice I can just chill out now and replenish before I push on to take the last two settlements I could use the money here but I'm just gonna take it I don't feel like I have the time before another Camry Army arrives and what do you know there they are about to go and take back one of the settlements I just took so I rushed back there tried to get rid of this Army it's in force March as well so it's free for the taking get a close Victory here this is cetra himself once again I'm gonna fight it to not lose too many units which I do lose a couple of zombies but that's no big deal I then send my strugoi Army on to Qatar to try and take that by himself which he just about can with a pyrrhic victory he's got that extra hero in there probably helping that but once again I decide to only sack this place because it's worth a nice little bit of money and I don't have a ton of it so that's gonna help me out I'll go for the sack and finish it up on the next turn hopefully there is a big army nearby but I've got my other stack ready said big army makes its moves towards Camry or maybe he's trying to get past Camry but either way it's their enforce March it doesn't have a terribly good army mostly crappy Spearman and some nehekara Warriors so you know I got to go after it and I'm able to get a close victory in the auto resolve which is nice they're not going to lose anything as well so gotta do that and that should set up the end of the Camry in this run I push Manfred on to take no match but because I only sacked the other settlement it allowed the tomb Kings to raise a little Army in the turn and my struggle Army wasn't able to deal with it so I've got this little army here to deal with my sugar boy has got to run away for now but we'll come back with Manfred sort the Camry out and then that's them done for Camry destroyed so here we are at turn 30 at the same point we were at at turn 36 before but as I said before important to note that I did kind of know what I was doing on this playthrough a bit more than the first one so we'll call it about even I decide now though to head over and try to get after britonia because scar brand is all up in this area yeah now which he wasn't before and I kind of don't want to get into a war with scar brand right now so I'm going to avoid this area and actually start sailing out to try and get round britonia down the southern coast but the rakoff dynasty then declares war on me and I'm worried they're gonna come after me so I start to head back to deal with them instead luckily for me they're also at war with scar brand at this same time and they're besieging him with one of their armies which leaves me free to go and swoop in and try to take one of their settlements they do have a big army next to the settlement so I do the old classic of besieging the settlement with the crappier Army which leaves the Army outside the settlement vulnerable to being attacked and not reinforced by their settlement so I attack it with my bigger Army scare them off and then I'm able to take the settlement right there after a little Switcheroo of my armies of course but that takes away one of their settlements they've only got two so it's looking Bleak for the rakath dynasty it's almost like they shouldn't have declared war on me a big large faction when they were at war with another big large faction in scarbrand and what do you know scarbrand has actually raised their other settlement up so that's free real estate for me now at turn 45 near the end I aim to try I get roughly the same as what I got before so I'm going after the bretonians rapunz occupies the nearby City we're going to besiege that and give it the old Chase off of a nearby small army but alas it's still predicted as a close defeat which is no good so you know what to come in good old zombie army distracts one man for it sneaks in and takes the point just like in history where once you've taken a small courtyard you've got the entire city really nice I then on turn 50 itself push on to take fyrus and that is gonna get me roughly to where I was in the first playthrough so here we go let's compare what I've achieved and what I have and what I don't have manfred's Army probably not as good as it was the first time but it hasn't seemed to matter too much no items on Manfred I've been taking them off all the time no skill points spent in the blue and red lines only on Manfred himself no Technologies researched at all so no gains from any of that no Bloodlines have been used no replenishment gained this time and of course I haven't used any raised dead which is why I don't have the better units like graveguard great weapons and blood Knights and hex Ray States and in terms of actual land mass taken it's about the same a little bit less because scar brand came in and I didn't want to mess with him the great desert of Arabi also a big piece of land which maybe makes it look like I've taken way more than I actually have with that and I don't have that this time as I am friendly with archon and he currently has that money-wise I have six grand of income 23 in the bank that's probably because I don't have some of those better more expensive units but otherwise pretty much the same as I had before my province is overall though are pretty underdeveloped to be honest because I expanded so quickly and it was kind of rushed that was the same for both playthroughs and I was able to achieve the same stuff in terms of Victory objectives and I felt like I could most definitely go on to win this campaign although the long Victory objectives are pretty ridiculous because you're supposed to go and take the entirety of the Empire lands which is nowhere near you so that's probably just kind of dumb to do but there we go seemingly total war mechanics make no difference at least up to turn 50. now you could make the point here that well it's only turned 50 as the campaign gets on like to turn 100 150 you're gonna not have as many Buffs the AI is going to have loads of Buffs it may get harder and harder you'd start to feel the difference more of not using the mechanics much later into the campaign but to be honest usually if you think about it when you reach turn 100 150 you usually kind of overpowered and start steamrolling everything anyway and the campaign becomes boring because it's too easy maybe you would actually be more on the level that you should be if you didn't use any of the mechanics by turn 150 who knows I certainly I'm not going to try it but it's an interesting thing to look at I think but my main point here is not to encourage you not to use the total war mechanics because obviously you should but if you don't understand them or you don't use them all the time or you forget stuff it doesn't really matter don't worry about it as I said I'm the laziest Total War player of them all you can still win campaigns and win the game without all the fluffy mechanics maybe on legendary it would be a bit of a different story and it might be a bit more essential but there we go I hope you've enjoyed this thanks for watching thanks to all the patrons who support this Channel and hey you ever wondered what would happen if you merged Carl Franz with Genghis Khan well let's find out I'll see you in the future

Channel: Zerkovich

Views: 39,763

Keywords: warhammer 3, total war, guide, tutorial, how to, tips and tricks, pro, campaign, mechanics, playthrough, mannfred, vampires

Id: 0OhLYSpDV9Y

Length: 21min 25sec (1285 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 08 2023