by Mr. Frozen » Sat Sep 30, 2017 3:30 am
I "brought" total war: warhammer II yesterday. I never liked the fantasy warhammer setting, but gave this one a try and I am warming up to it. The introduction of magic and fantasy units makes every battle epic. Your lord/commander literally cleaves through enemy units, making them a really strong unit in battle. In the more "realistic" total war games, the commander would just have a bodyguard and is as vulnerable as any other unit on the field. Nope, not in this game. If you have a melee lord you put him/her on the front lines and absolutely destroy enemy units. The different fantasy setting really allowed the developers to get creative with the unit setup to make for somewhat unique scenarios.
I chose to be the ultra privileged high elves, and I love using the pheonix that was gifted to me. If you use the pheonix's special ability that apparently makes his swoop down from the skies with extra flames, the enemy units run away scared if there is no other unit around. Pretty easy way to get rid of ranged units that are terrorizing your spearmen or swordsmen. Like I said, stuff like this wouldn't be possible with the historical total war games. A similar effect could be achieved in the historical games with siege weapons and mounted units, though.
I also like how they made the different factions feel different through their behavior. The elves are highly disciplined and will fight to the last man if you keep their leader close by. Pretty amazing because it reminds me of roman tactics where the enemy lost morale because of the discipline of the roman troops. With the elves I almost always just position them in a superior position wait for the enemy to approach. The infantry almost never runs away even though they are assaulted by arrows, while my archers pick away at the advancing enemy (I do wish that I could do a shield formation so people wouldn't have to needlessly die, though. Testudo formation in Rome was the shit). Won a few battles this way without moving cause of how the enemy confidence is programmed in the game. The beast races will waver as soon as they start losing, but this isn't really that bad of a thing. Units do run away when they are scared, but they usually regroup after a while (in Rome II I think your units were 100% lost after they decided to route). If you are playing as a beast race you can use this to scatter your enemy and pick them off one by one. my strategy for that is to just let them run away while I put my troops back into formation, which is something I think any intermediate player of the game would do.