Since this doubles as the general Total War thread, I wanted to post some musings I had about the series after stumbling on some old Ultimate General: Civil War screencaps. For those who don't know, Ultimate General was created by DarthMod, and was an attempt to create a series that could compete with Total War. I've only played Civil War, and while I had fun and I'd say it was worth the price, I think it also highlights why a lot of Total War competitors have failed to break out and also one of Volound's dumber comments.
I remember back in one of his better, c.2021 videos, when talking about Shogun 2 modding, Volound said something to the effect that the most desirable challenge in Total War is in absurd numerical disparities rather than a better AI. UG
W agreed years prior, and the result was an unsatisfying campaign for me. You see, UG
W campaigns are on rails; you don't really interact with the map, you just create a character, bounce from major historical battle to battle, with time to manage your army and engage in optional minor battles in-between. The challenge is all tactical instead; the game will scale the amount of reinforcements the enemy receives (and thus brigades it fields and their size) to the amount of casualties you inflicted. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but the problems quickly manifest when you figure out how to break the game and all suspension of disbelief is thrown out the window. This is especially bad for the side fighting against gay incest. For example:
Had Shiloh turned out this way, the entire war would have been butterflied. Grant would have been sacked, Tennessee would have remained firmly in CSA hands, and the entire western theater would have been reduced to fighting in Appalachian hills instead of along the whole of the Mississippi.
Of course, the game focuses on the eastern front, the western front is a sideshow and it following history can just be explained away as Davis moving more troops and officers east afterwards which results in a historical outcome. Well, that means more scrutiny needs to be applied to the eastern front. How does 2nd Bull Run play out?
Ah, well 2nd Bull Run was also a decisive Confederate victory, so it can't really be expected that you can just defy history and cross the Potomac despite achieving a 10:1 KD ratio, but surely the game will acknowledge the political consequences of an even more crushing defeat for the Union? Ah, no onto Sharpsburg as if nothing differed.
Well, surely the game will acknowledge this decisive victory at Sharpsburg and allow history to diverge? That's one of the most common PoDs used for any Confederate victory scenario after all.
No, somehow the Union magics another 30k troops out of their ass with zero consequence and pushes you back to Fredericksburg.
Surely this time-
And so on, until the end when history diverges last minute in 1865 to let you get to Washington. FFS Kessen 1 did this better.
Now, what does this have to do with Total War? Its campaign isn't on rails after all. The answer is that this is the perfect distillation of the experience of Legendary difficulty on Shogun 2, which Volound fetishizes, and subsequent games, where you just face endless horde after horde of enemy armies that get magically generated, where your decisive battles never reward you and bear no political or economic consequences for your enemies, and the real struggle is one against your own exhaustion as any immersion or suspension of disbelief is lost.
In the period that Shogun 2 covers, a decisive outcome in a pitched battle usually signaled the beginning of collapse for the loser. Sometimes it could take a few years, sometimes it would happen rapidly after, sometimes the loser could rally, but the loss of a daimyo or a large number of his vassals in a battle was usually enough to shake a clan to its foundations and immediately result in defections and revolts, while the death of large numbers of veteran warriors would leave a gap that could not be filled by new recruits.
Ironically, the Medieval 2 modding scene has gone the opposite direction of Volound in recognizing the need for this. Old mods like Broken Crescent tried to do the sort of dynamic tower defense with the Mongols, and it's by far the least liked aspect. Meanwhile something like Divide and Conquer still has numerical disparity - even unfair numerical disparity - but also recognizes the need to have some sort of immersion and consequence. If you are, say, Gondor or Dol Amroth and lose some of your elite units, even in a victory, that can be devastating; Harad and Mordor can send another horde at you in six or seven turns, but it'll take 10+ to get some more Swan Knights. The economic and political reality encourages you to play smarter, tactically and strategically.
I think this is also the reason why there hasn't been a breakout game that can really compete with Total War, and not just the advertising budget/Geedubs boost that CA has. There are actually very good tactical competitors to Total War, both real time and pausable. UG, Grand Tactician, Field of Glory, Knights of Honor, Nobunaga's Ambition, etc. - Master of Command has also been very solid and Strategos looks great too. But none of them try doing a Total War style campaign better; either they're on rails, the tactics are in service to the grand strategy instead of the other way around, or the grand strategy simply lacks the depth that Total War has. I don't think there'll be a Total War killer (that isn't just CA's own incompetence and/or malice) until we see something that can do that, because Total War's campaigns strike a very particular itch that unfortunately no one seems to be able to fill.
I should caveat this by saying that Ultimate General seems to have come close with American Revolution, but because they doubled down on 'line must go up' for challenge and had worse QA than CA, nevermind Darth's own shortcomings as a dev, it was abandoned shortly after launch in a very unfinished state
