Total War is riddled with Player Traps

Summary

Highlights

• Legend explains the concept of player traps using real gameplay examples. 🎮
• Discusses how certain game mechanics intended to help can hurt instead, like siege walls. 🏰
• Player traps aren't intentional; they arise from complex game mechanics. 🎲
• Total War games often have hidden traps across different titles. ⚔️
• Identifies Shogun 2's 'Realm Divide' as a significant player trap. ⚠️

Key Takeaways

• Player traps are mechanics that usually harm players rather than help; watch out! 🎮
• Walls in sieges may seem helpful but often turn out to be a liability in Total War games. 🏰
• Player traps exist across various Total War games, from Warhammer to Shogun. ⚔️
• Better to hit enemy settlements aggressively than to defend and wait. 🚀
• Utilize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of your armies to avoid traps. 🔍

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction and Initial Situation The chapter titled 'Introduction and Initial Situation' introduces a challenging scenario in the game 'Legend of Total War'. The player is controlling the Disciples of Hashut, who are about to be attacked by the forces of Wiland. The player's forces are severely depleted with almost no garrison, multiple breaches in the fortifications, and minimal Winds of Magic available for usage. Additionally, enemy forces in the vicinity are recruiting and gathering, implying that the impending attack may be even more substantial than it appears. The setting is a precarious and intense situation, laying the groundwork for a strategic gameplay chapter.
• 03:00 - 09:00: Explaining Player Traps This chapter focuses on the concept of "player traps." The narrator explains that they have learned to avoid these traps through experience, especially after falling for them in early gameplay and early access campaigns. The term is not often discussed by the narrator, as they typically tend to avoid such traps in their campaigns. The chapter begins with the narrator planning to read an email and explain what a player trap is and provide an example of someone who has fallen for one.
• 09:00 - 23:00: Examples of Player Traps in Total War Games The chapter 'Examples of Player Traps in Total War Games' discusses common pitfalls players encounter in Total War games. It begins with an anecdote from a player seeking help from the author, referred to as Legend, to navigate a tricky situation in the game. The player was in the process of eliminating an enemy faction but faced a surprise war declaration from another faction. Following some strategic missteps, such as using a city (zbar) against incoming attacks, the player finds themselves overwhelmed in a difficult battle, seeking advice on how to proceed. The chapter highlights these kinds of strategic traps and errors that players may fall into and provides insights into how they might be resolved.
• 23:00 - 34:00: Specific Strategy for The Siege Situation The chapter discusses a strategy for a siege situation in a game-like scenario. A war has been ongoing between parties, and one has captured a settlement to use as a defensive position to hold the opponent back. However, the opponent falls into a player trap, making a strategic mistake. The analogy is made to a basic game where the objective is simply to walk from one end of a hallway to the other, but the player is distracted as they progress.
• 34:00 - 43:00: Demonstrating the Strategy and Explaining the AI Behavior The chapter discusses a scenario in a game where the player is close to victory and encounters a button on a wall. Although the path to victory is clear and unobstructed, curiosity leads the player to press the button, causing the entire area to blow up and force a restart from the beginning. This incident is used to illustrate a point about decision-making in games, highlighting how sometimes players are not warned about the consequences of their actions, emphasizing the unpredictability of AI behavior and strategic thinking in gaming.
• 43:00 - 54:30: Conclusion - Understanding Player Traps The concluding chapter focuses on the concept of 'player traps' in video games, specifically within the Total War series. Player traps are mechanics or features that, when utilized by players, inadvertently place them in disadvantageous situations, more so than if the player did not engage with them. These traps are unique challenges for players, as the AI opponents in the games are unaffected by them. The chapter hints at providing examples from other Total War games to illustrate these traps, emphasizing the design complexity where players must discern beneficial features from potential pitfalls.

Total War is riddled with Player Traps Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Legend of Total War here and today we've got a saving and disaster situation playing as the Disciples of hashut going up against the forces of wiland and N that are going to attack zbar over the end turn but our forces are in complete disarray you know very worn out we've got next to no Garrison in here seven breaches on the wall and also next to no Winds of magic and they're recruiting over here so it's going to be a little bit bigger than what we current seez it
• 00:30 - 01:00 doesn't look like it's that much right now these units here won't get recruited so this video here I really want to focus in on a term that I like to call player traps I really don't talk about it very often because when I'm doing my own campaigns I don't talk about what I'm not going to do because I I usually just avoid these player traps CU I'm just like aware of them CU I've fallen for them in my early gameplay uh early campaigns which were probably an early access and then I just never did them again um but first thing I going to do is read out the email and then explain to you guys what a player trap is and how this guy has has fallen for one of
• 01:00 - 01:30 those player traps a very common one as well I'm not trying to have a go at him for it okay so he says Hey Legend hopefully you can save this one for me we uh was almost done wiping out angram when wiland and N declared war on me I attacked zbar my next turn to use it to defend from maybe not my wisest decision a couple of turns later I am beat to all hell but have won my fight so far the next turn they attack with what should be their last Army in the area and it is too much can you see what you can do okay so
• 01:30 - 02:00 just to summarize that he's been at war with him a few turns he captured this settlement to use as a defensive position to hold them back and he has fallen for a player trap he's made a mistake so what is a player trap think of it like this imagine the most basic game you can think of right I'm just using it as an analogy all you have to do is walk from one end of the hallway to the other you get to the other end of the hallway and you win the game Super basic right but as you're walking through the hallway you're just pressing
• 02:00 - 02:30 forward and you're H you're almost at the victory right halfway there you see a button on the wall you don't have to press it the way is completely unobstructed you can just keep walking if you want to but there's a button on the wall and so out of curiosity you press the button and the blows up the whole area and you have to start again from scratch right there was nothing requiring you to actually press that button the game wasn't telling you what it was going to do um gave you no warning that it was going to happen and it blew up in your face that's basically like a really a dumb way to expl or
• 02:30 - 03:00 really basic way to explain what a player trap is now obviously it's not that like overt in Total War games but that's just to give you a bit of an example basically mechanics or tools in the game that are presented to the player that if you utilize them will actually [ __ ] you harder than if you don't do them at all so player traps like and that's things that will only affect the player so the AI can't fall for the same traps as as it does the player so I'm going to give you some examples of other total war games that
• 03:00 - 03:30 have player traps in them because like I play a lot of other strategy games and I don't notice player traps as overtly as I do in Total War games and I don't think that they're done deliberately I think that because Total War games are typically a bit more complex and other strategy games just due to the real time battles with um um uh turnbas strategy um that just due to I guess not realizing all the ways that certain mechanics can operate uh they create a mechanic that is actually detri Al for
• 03:30 - 04:00 the player to actually utilize and it would be um better for the player a better player experiences If the mechanic actually didn't exist at all think of it like this any time that a person may have lost a campaign wasn't because the AI beat them but because the player stepped on a trip wire and fell over that they didn't see coming because it was a player trap and then the AI who's still brain dead um managed to just stand on the players back basically after they had tripped on on a player trap right so give some examples of
• 04:00 - 04:30 player traps in other Total War games I'm to spend too long on this but I think this is important to understand what exactly is a [ __ ] player trap right so Total War Warhammer 2 real basic example of that melee infantry right melee infantry was a player trap in Total War Warhammer 2 because well only if you're playing on like very hard battle difficulty specifically so if you played on very hard battle difficulty on Warhammer 2 this isn't so much a problem in warmer 3 cuz the cheats have been toned down by at least half and that makes a huge difference so if if you were playing on very hard battle
• 04:30 - 05:00 difficulty the AI would get 20% extra melee attack 20% extra melee defense extra weapon strength extra leadership all this kind of stuff now all of those stats boosts will massively improve how melee units perform so if you recruit melee infantry in in Warhammer 2 especially basic melee infantry so let's just say you were playing as the Empire and you recruited a swordsman unit and then you went up against a or or boy unit um your sword boy a sword boy swordman unit would never under any
• 05:00 - 05:30 circumstance be able to deliver their own value in worth of damage to that unit that or Boy will always smash you if you go up against the exact same unit at the exact same skill level like exact same experience with the exact same Buffs you will lose 100% of the time it is a situation where the player loses every single time there is no way around it because there is nothing you can do that's like there's no amount of high ground that you can choose there's no amount of like hide in the forest there's no abilities for the units the
• 05:30 - 06:00 only way that you can make that unit perform is to buff them using your lord skills or whatever so heavily so they've actually got an even match you know just to overcome those cheats you know rather than using tactics and so it's it's a player trap because it's something that you recruit cuz it's in the game and you think it's going to be of some use and then just it ends up being of absolutely no use whatsoever and so there are many units in the game that have that don't have that problem and so the way to solve it is to Simply not recruit the
• 06:00 - 06:30 player trap units and only recruit the units that basically the difficulty didn't punish to such an extreme degree that they were useless to use and so this is why in Warhammer 2 you would see homogeneous armies of Archer spams and artillery and single entity spams and that kind of stuff and doom Stacks basically because the player trap existed within the game um especially within the early stage of the campaign it's less of a problem when you get to higher tier units but lower tier units was definitely present so in Warhammer 3 that's less of a problem cuz the AI
• 06:30 - 07:00 cheats have been toned down quite significantly even in the highest difficulty now that's not super overt I'll give you an example of a really overt uh player trap and that's in one of the most widely considered to be one of the best Total War Games Shogun 2 Shogun 2 has one of the most egregious player traps in any game I've ever seen ever and that is the realm divide system so in Shogun 2 pretty early on in your campaign you've captured maybe 13 settlements and a mechanic will Trier called realm
• 07:00 - 07:30 divide now there is no turning back from this and if it's your first campaign you're not aware of this is going to happen it can completely [ __ ] your campaign up because the game doesn't warn you that this shit's going to happen um it just you know just says what your Fame is and then when it fills to full realm divide happens and what happens is that every Alliance that you have every trade agreement every vassel that you have immediately turn on you they stop whatever they're doing and they look towards you and they just send all their their armies at you now you don't own half the map at this point you you're still kind of quite weak and so having like a bazillion armies just
• 07:30 - 08:00 swarm at you in the early stages of the campaign can derail a campaign completely turn a campaign from being on like normal difficulty into legendary plus now the thing is U you know really experienced players they'll be able to handle it they'll trigger the early um realm divide and they'll be able to manage it but let's just say for the average Joe they're not aware of what's going to happen they get [ __ ] by it right but here's the thing if you are aware of it and you are not looking to get totally [ __ ] by the a
• 08:00 - 08:30 with like swarms of of of armies for the rest of your campaign the longer you leave the realm divide the easier it gets based on numbers of factors so here's the thing the the longer you play the campaign the more of your research or your Tech Trier I guess that you'll you'll unlock which will unlock new buildings which will allow you to build up your provinces more build up your economy and the thing is as you build up your economy that doesn't affect your realm divide it what matters is the number of settlements not the quality of those settlements so rather than having
• 08:30 - 09:00 uh 13 trash settlements it's actually better to have 10 really built up settlements and and really build up your um your economy and get your trade sorted and all that kind of stuff like trade resources sorted I mean you going to lose all your trade agreements eventually once you trigger real Divine but you know you can sell that stuff in internally so you build up your stuff first but also there's another thing is that in every single Total War Game by like maybe Rome Total War every faction in the game whether be a major faction
• 09:00 - 09:30 or minor faction has a base income that's not tied to their settlements it's like a 2,000 to 5,000 gold that they just get out of nowhere right so the more factions that there are in the game the more armies will be present on the campaign map so the earlier you trigger realm divide the more of these minor factions still exist because the game the other AI factions are still playing against each other right and when they immediately turn their attention to you there's hordes of armies coming at you from loads of different
• 09:30 - 10:00 factions but if you wait until the other major factions absorb all the minor factions so instead of going up against 50 small factions you instead go up against four big factions you will actually find that the enemy will send significantly fewer armies at you because when an AI faction absorbs another AI faction they don't get that base income they just get the income that was from the settlement and that that income is never going to be anywhere near as high as what that base income was going to be so the longer you
• 10:00 - 10:30 leave it the easier it becomes it's a player trap something that you have to trigger at some point but the longer you leave it the easier it gets so that's a really overt example of it okay now in Total War Warhammer 3 the player trap that we're talking about here are world city sieges now if you've ever watched my live streams or see me play like a a um a really long disaster campaign one thing that I'm pretty sure everyone can agree on is that I barely ever play a wall settlement defensive Siege I
• 10:30 - 11:00 don't let them happen so if a if an army besieges one of my my wall cities I almost always Sally out to stop them I don't wait for them to launch the assault because it's a player trap and I'll explain why because of the way that that it's been very poorly designed and I don't think they've realized exactly how how badly designed it's been but it's been it like this way since day one but basically this it's a way that the sieges work in comparison to how the AI
• 11:00 - 11:30 Works in comparison to how the order resolve works the three work together to [ __ ] the player and it only applies to the player it doesn't apply to the AI right so when you have a settlement right and you build up its defenses and build up its Garrison the AI will either walk around the settlement and attack your minor settlements how how many times have you guys like built up a big defensive Fort right and the AI is just gone around it and attack like an undefended minor settlement right what they'll do is they'll they'll only ever attack that settlement
• 11:30 - 12:00 if they feel like their forces are going to be able to beat it in order resolve now the thing is when they calculate the order resolve they take into consideration an order resolve bonus that the defender is going to get because the game says oh this guy has a wall defending the settlement uto resolve boost for it but the problem is is that the walls on the battlefield don't actually provide much value especially when they're [ __ ] smashed like this and so this guy here has taken a defensive position where they have been able to utilize over overwhelming Force so just grind him down and the
• 12:00 - 12:30 thing is there was a way better solution like his army is actually way better to fight on the field than it is to fight a defensive Siege and this is usually the case when you have a particularly powerful legendary Lord so when you've got a very powerful legendary Lord that isn't like a flying Lord and able to like fly around the map really quickly you're going to get limited amount of value from this guy because they're not going to focus on trying to kill him they're instead going to focus on the other victory condition which is to just
• 12:30 - 13:00 capture all the points they'll capture all the points they can just ignore him and they don't blob up as much in these W City sieges and so you don't get a chance to use your limited amounts of magic and so you've fallen into a trap taking a defensive position that actually provides you no defensive Advantage whatsoever like what good is the wall when they're like 5 M from the wall to begin with and they start off with cannons you know I'm pretty sure one of these yeah they've got cannons there right they're just going to destroy your stuff right away so no defensive advantage whatever so what I'm going to do here now is we're going to
• 13:00 - 13:30 hit the end turn and show you guys what this guy was dealing with and then I'll show you what the simple simple solution was which he could have done several turns ago and probably have actually captured um Sylvania by now I'm not trying to ever go at him or creative assembly it's just want to be aware of this kind of stuff that's all so they're threatening us we'll just accept it cuz like I said I'm going to load back to this point so that that doesn't matter
• 13:30 - 14:00 cuz the thing is when they besiege the settlement if they feel like they can win they'll assaulted but if they don't feel like they can win they'll starve it out okay so you can see here what we have to deal with it's quite a lot and um there is no way look this may be possible to win but this is not the right way to go about it okay so I just wanted to show what we're dealing with first there so we just go back to the auto say so yeah when they besiege a settlement and they don't feel like it's a slam dunk WI like a decisive defeat
• 14:00 - 14:30 for the player what the AI will usually do and this is across all difficulty levels is that they will try to starve out the player so you've just built up this big ass Garrison you know you built up the walls and everything like that and then the AI they've besieged the settlement and starved you out for five turns and your Garrison has gone from full strength to half strength and then they launched the assault and what you would have been able to win if they had attacked on the first turn you now can't win because they've starved you out for that long this is why whenever you see
• 14:30 - 15:00 me play My campaigns I always try to Sally out on the first turn because I know that they're just going to starve me out um and if they do that I'm not going to win anyway so I might as well give it a shot on the first trke cuz sometimes you can actually lose the Sally out battle but lose by such a small degree that you actually cause the AI to back off from The Siege because they're so badly damaged because the smaller the amount of force assaulting a settlement the easier it is to actually overcome it so as you build up as you
• 15:00 - 15:30 build up bigger and bigger garrisons the AI will send larger and larger armies in order to beat them and the larger the Army the less effective your walls and defenses actually become so it is a [ __ ] player trap don't build up your garrisons unless it's a scaven that's a different story but that's because you get War Bomb in the area but yeah don't build up your garrisons keep your garrisons quite small because that way it'll it'll have the AI underestimate you you can't um fathom how valuable it is to have the AI underestimate you
• 15:30 - 16:00 because the way that this game functions is that the better it perceives that the player is doing the more the more [ __ ] the game will actually throw at you so here's how we solve the situation right okay we take we don't want any of those recruits and see all these units here just get rid of them don't want them just get rid of them okay and I've just solved the situation by doing this okay so what we've done here is that now they can't get to zofar anymore
• 16:00 - 16:30 and I've also pre presented to them a weak Target I got rid of all of those units because they actually didn't provide any value to the Army whatsoever you've got astrogo iron hand as I said he's no good inside of the settlement because they'll just avoid him and just Camp the Town Square but if it's a field battle they can't do that they have to deal with him now if we had those other Goblin units what they could do is just ignore astr goth iron hand and just find where those Goblin units are and kill the hob goblins and cause
• 16:30 - 17:00 the Army losses maybe um and by removing them from the Army we've disable them from that action they're not going to do that anymore now obviously we don't want to lose the bull centor renders because those are actually good units those aren't a player trap here so now with that and everything is on the highest difficulty now we press ENT turn and we go through the defense which will be trivial so accept that fine whatever
• 17:00 - 17:30 they did ask for more that's fine I think they asked for more because we had more actually you know what let's let's do a little test actually let's do a test I'm going to go back again you saw how much that they charged right and it went up from the first time we hit end turn because the amount that they charge you or threaten you with is based on how much money you've actually got you see another thing is that the AI will largely declare war on you if they like make ridiculous War declarations on you
• 17:30 - 18:00 if your campaign is going really well but there's ways of hiding how well your campaign is doing for one thing and this is something you might notice with me do is keep your armies at a minimum okay if you keep your armies at a minimum the AI doesn't perceive you as as much of a threat and uh and then they just don't declare war as often but that being said that doesn't mean have no armies they'll they'll declare war on you if they sense any weakness but you know keep the bare minimum basically that really does come
• 18:00 - 18:30 down to how you want to interpret that so just be careful about it I'm not telling you oh Legend said to recruit no Army and then suddenly everyone invaded me that's not what I'm [ __ ] saying all right okay I'm saying you recruit only what's necessary okay so now what we're going to do here is I'm just going to spend this money no you know what I'm going to hide the money don't recruit this I'm going to hide the money by globally recruiting stuff that take two turns to recruit and just bankrupt ourselves and we're just going to hide the money so that yeah none of the stuff is going to get
• 18:30 - 19:00 done right and we'll see if he even threatens us this [Laughter] time can't ask for something I don't have this is why you should always end the turn with no money in your in your coffers I guess also another thing is that when you have a smaller Army the AI will
• 19:00 - 19:30 underestimate you notice that they're not sending as much as they sent in the um in The Siege situation because we're not getting an order resolve boost so they they see this as being able to easily overcome this which they're right look at that decisive defeat in order resolve but here's the thing the game has got some fundamental flaws in how certain units behave there are some units in the game there quite a lot of them actually especially with certain Lords that are able to completely trivialize battles if they don't have an army attached to them and um AST goth
• 19:30 - 20:00 iron hand is one of them because let's face it he is a small Target he has a lot of resistance what are these guys going to do the only thing that astr goth iron hand truly fears is single entities with magical attacks that are anti-infantry and the Empire has none of them it's sort of like KL France which is not here or maybe um um eleth who again is not
• 20:00 - 20:30 here so now we go up against a much smaller Army we can see what the bounce of power is you know against us they're still going to shoot at us but as soon as we go into melee they can't shoot us anymore because they don't want to shoot their own troops the legend you're going to get him killed no no you'll see this this is absolutely trivial now and even with low
• 20:30 - 21:00 Winds of magic is fine because one thing that wasn't going to happen in the world city Siege is the AI blobbing up now because as I said the Goblins aren't here and because that's not worth that much balance of power they're not necessarily going to dedicate much force if any to go and search for us and all I have to do here is wait because all like 80% of our balance of power is right here and that's the only thing the AI sees they don't see things in terms of of units and whatever they see like
• 21:00 - 21:30 concentration of force and they see 80% of our concentration right here and they're like okay he's sending 80% of his Force there I need to send 80% of my Force there and when they do that you [ __ ] them your AI trap them but Legend surely it's okay to play a trap but being abusing to the AI That's not cool why not the game does it to you do it back to them
• 21:30 - 22:00 and there's plenty of like Quest battles as well where that where like the text will say oh we need to hold that position over there because it's a high ground but if you do that that's where their reinforcements come from like gree's goldtooth um Quest battle it's [ __ ] player trap like I remember the first time I played that I think it was on stream as well um the the text came up and said oh we need to hold this High Ground here because we've got the advantage and I was like oh [ __ ] I'm know creative assembly too well and I
• 22:00 - 22:30 I'd never played the quest battle before and I was like we got to get off this hill immediately we're just going to rush at them defeat them because I reckon enemy reinforcements are coming from our rear and that's exactly what [ __ ] happened they don't tell you what's happening they they try to trick you because what would have happened if I had St up on that hill in that battle is by the time that the first Force got to us the second Force [ __ ] arrives and pinces our forces
• 22:30 - 23:00 so play a trap and there's plenty of other examples of the game doing this kind of stuff you know basically pushing you to use a mechanic that is actually bad for you to use um it's not too bad in Total War Warhammer three compared to other Total War games like for example Shogun 2 that's that's a pretty big example um another example of player trap is like the politics system in Rome 2 although they've really made it now that you kind of have to interact it but
• 23:00 - 23:30 every interaction that you do with the um the politics in Rome 2 should be to try to make it so that you don't have to interact with it anymore it's like the more you interact with it the worse it is either that or I just don't really understand it very well but I I hate that mechanic Atilla is full of um of player traps as well it could go on and on and on but there's loads and loads of player traps in all the total war games even even or like like the favorite ones
• 23:30 - 24:00 like I said one 3 is my favorite so that's that's got player traps in it like this one here sieges are overtly a huge problem it actually wasn't as bad in Warhammer 2 as it is in three because in Warhammer 2 there was like a degree of like um Grace that well was it number of turns that the AI had to or does anyone had to besiege you before you actually started taking attrition and so the
• 24:00 - 24:30 reason that you would build walls is not necessarily to um be able to repel the defend uh the attacker but to buy time for your forces to arrive you would always have to go and lift The Siege but giving yourself four or five time uh turns of the AI just sitting there starving you out gave you time to do other things elsewhere but of course they've removed that in Warhammer 3 and you start taking attrition immediately which in my opinion was a bad call now I also said that this stuff doesn't
• 24:30 - 25:00 affect the AI and why I mean by that is because as the player you shouldn't sit there and starve out the enemy because the rules don't apply to them the same way it does to you if you sit there and starve out the enemy what are they going to do they're going to send an army to come and deal with you because the AI will usually have a lot of armies just sitting around doing nothing until they encounter the player so y another one coming in but no no big deal we're actually in better
• 25:00 - 25:30 position now than we were before and so we in terms of playing the game optimally it is always better to launch the assault on the settlement immediately as opposed to starving the settlement out and that's been the case for every single total war game ever unless of course your forces are completely incapable of of actually capturing the settlement in which which case you shouldn't have besieged it in the first
• 25:30 - 26:00 place so boun of powers like even without their reinforcements though that's just cuz he's worth so much in the bounce of power though but yeah you can see how there's certain things that only trigger when you're doing well like we had a decent amount of money in the treasury and so um what's his face threatened us to get that money so I spend the or hid the money you know send it off into my
• 26:00 - 26:30 offshore bank account spend it next turn and um it doesn't threaten us anymore didn't declare war cuz he just yeah just it's like oh well they don't have money so we're not going to threaten them okay we're suffering a bit of damage in this one but he's got regen thanks to the um the crown of I coming called but that item that you get from
• 26:30 - 27:00 the um the convoys still got the uh potion of healing just that we're dishing out fire damage to ourselves when we do this which will limit the amount of healing we get so we just wait until the battle's over to use it we also got this but usually try to wait until the biggest blob actually shows up this should actually think yeah they do try to dodge it but it's it's not going to work entirely
• 27:00 - 27:30 yeah if there's a bunch of units in your army as well that that is actually not providing you any real advantage on the battlefield then you know why keep them you don't have to build a full stack all the time but at the end of the day build whatever you want to build that's the most important thing just just be aware of the things that could happen that's all I'm trying to say here I'm not trying to say you should play in the cheesiest way possible and if you don't do it you're a fool I'm not saying that
• 27:30 - 28:00 at all I'm saying play whoever you want but at least be aware of the of like this the things that the AI will do to you if you are inefficient another example I guess of player traps as well is like in some cases the starting enemy that you go up
• 28:00 - 28:30 against is actually not the ideal enemy for you to go and fight like you could just walk away from that initial fight and go and fight the person that was otherwise going to be a massive threat but they're not a threat to you at that moment in time cuz if you attack the starting Army you're going in the opposite direction that you need to go not every campaign is like that but there are a few that have what I've called in the past trick starts you going to send any more so instead instead of fighting one really
• 28:30 - 29:00 tough battle we just fought two absolutely pushover fights that were just nothing yep saved your money and just wasn't an issue and now your defenses here are getting a chance to rebuild so it's going to be a lot harder for them to capture that now and over here you know I'm assuming you didn't want to recruit all that stuff there's your money just make sure
• 29:00 - 29:30 you spend it over the next turn because you know they do want to threaten you and I think you could very easily attack this here draw out all these forces and defeat them with um with as actually why don't I just do it just do it what's going on here why is a like got no movement okay just to those things so if we come over here and attack this now yep yep easy no
• 29:30 - 30:00 problem no sweat they can't do anything about it now again this isn't something you should do in every single situation you got to be very careful about these sort of blanket generalizations oh did you see legend use AST goth our own hand to uh to just by himself to kill off that entire Army anyway I so I sent AST goth iron hand to go and fight [ __ ] Aron and I I lost Legends for the [ __ ] no
• 30:00 - 30:30 okay you got you got to know know your enemy right it's not going to work against Aron Aron will beat the [ __ ] out of you you know why it's okay to use it against the empire is cu they they don't have a roster that can deal with this kind of unit very well um in terms of the AI like they've got like the player will use guns but you can see here they had one volley in there and then they've already [ __ ] it up
• 30:30 - 31:00 yeah as an example opposite example I guess uh using Aron like you don't want to do this on turn one don't just like disband his army and use him as a oneman doomstack because he hasn't got all these skills yet like if we have a look at him he's level 36 all of his core skills have been have been developed so archon's another one right where you can build him a an army if you want but once he's like rank 30 you can totally just dis B all of his units or even just transfer
• 31:00 - 31:30 his units into other armies and have him roll around with like a couple of units maybe like a couple of Heroes maybe another spell cter just as a Winds of magic battery and be walking around with just a really small army especially if you go into places like Empire and Kev and they just don't know what to do about it because the game doesn't expect you to do this kind of [ __ ] it never expects you to just send a lord against them and so when you do that they they blob up like this allowing you to use your magic so in the case of Aron you just use searing Doom over and over
• 31:30 - 32:00 again on on the huge blob that gets formed up you know they're not going to shoot you whether you're on dooro or not because you're too small of a Target but at the same time if you try to do that with say chyos fate Weaver he's too big that's not going to work you're not going to be able to do that so basically characters that are really small heavily armored with lots of resistance and some kind of regeneration
• 32:00 - 32:30 you don't even need to give them oh God they actually found us too late though that we just replenished don't want to lose any more of them and look at that they did actually go looking for us a little bit but it's okay if we absolutely need to we just withdraw these guys from the
• 32:30 - 33:00 battlefield before before they take any additional damage they've kind of already done their worth because they're very badly damaged no casualties there oh but Legend you've finally got one man left it's going to be a ping Victory who cares haven't used up my um potion of healing yet oh that one there is shooting at us maybe that's we should stop that how much damage is doing oh [ __ ] we are actually starting to run low on Regen there's not much of them left if I just
• 33:00 - 33:30 get rid of their Heroes should there we go fine that that was maybe a little bit closer than I would have liked so you know you can do this a bit but you know don't go up against too much but as I was saying if you make your armies fairly small and appear fairly weak the AI will underestimate you especially if you build nothing but strength in your army like a unit that just has so few weaknesses and the game
• 33:30 - 34:00 is full of them and just about every single faction has got a unit that has like no weaknesses but ultimately if you recruit armies that have units that are just so filled with weaknesses all over the place you're going to struggle with a lot of these situations where the AI will send a little bit more Force than what you're sending cuz the AI is not programmed to treat you fairly they're not going to be like okay you've got a full stack we'll only send a full stack oh you've only got a Half Stack we'll only send a Half Stack no they're like oh you've got a Half Stack I'm going to send you three
• 34:00 - 34:30 stacks you know they're always going to try to make sure that they get a decisive victory in order resolve if it's possible for them to do so cuz this is the big thing but a lot of people don't realize is that the AI believe it or not they're trying to kill you okay and you should easily be a to I'm not going to do this one but you get the just a it so hopefully with this video here um I've helped you guys to
• 34:30 - 35:00 understand what a player trap is and how you can sort of look at a situation and and and think about it a little bit differently and not think oh but walls are always better defensive positions well think to yourself why are they better defensive positions because they're they're actually not um you know getting starved out for several turns is not really a great idea because when the AI does that usually what happens is they besieges settlement they assault the settlement and then once they lose
• 35:00 - 35:30 they just send another Army to go and besiege it straight away giving you absolutely no time to recover and so all you're doing is buying time so being aggressive not giving the AI the the chance to to build up War momentum which is not a mechanic I'm just saying that that just like a philosophy thing not giving them a chance to build momentum you can screw them like when you've defeated most of a factions armies like not in this case here that is the best time to go and capture their territory so quick
• 35:30 - 36:00 advances upon the enemies is going to be much better than if you like go up against one of their armies and get like a puck Victory and get so smashed that you have to go back and recover your army and by the time you do that they've got another one or two ready to go deal with you you need to be able to crush their army and then Advance on them before they've had a chance to recover anyway I think we've gone over enough of the stuff here I hope that um it helps you out with player traps in the future Total War games are filled with them I don't know if they're bu built that way by Design or by accident it's really
• 36:00 - 36:30 hard to say but every single total war game has got traps in them and you just need to be aware of all the things that the AI or the game is going to do to screw you over by utilizing certain mechanics and if you identify those ones and just avoid using those mechanics and find your campaigns easier you'll know that you found a player trap anyway it's end this one appreciate you guys and we'll see you next time there it guys