Total War shenanigans

I was going to play Thrones of Britannia, but it ended up just annoying me. No matter the faction I started with I always got assaulted by an enemy army more than twice the size of anything I could even manage financially at that point. Lost more than one of the few zones I had in the very beginning (again no matter the faction). All this basically due to the fact that the game had already decided who your allies and vassals and enemies were before you even started. And after that it just became a game of playing catch-up to an AI that seemed to have played halfway through the game already whereas I was just getting started. 

I like to take my time. I want to start out just building things. Build my towns. Build my armies. Build my coffers. Take a couple of rebel settlements along my borders. And then bam! launch my armies in every direction at the same time and come upon every faction like a wave and disintegrate them. But in this game I had no chance to do any building. Not only because the enemy armies came and stole half of my zones, but also because the timer for recruiting and building was too damn long. Everything took way longer than it needed to for no obvious reason. 

Instead of immediately dropping it I decided to mod it. I went to the Steam workshop, which was admittedly pretty inadequate. But I found a few mods that seemed to be what I was looking for. A few balancing things, without being a total overhaul. 

I gave the game two more attempts as two different factions and noticed the mods didn't do much of a difference. 

At this point I had installed the latest main game; Three Kingdoms, but I was so annoyed with Thrones of Britannia that I decided to just go fuck it.

And so I returned to my favourite ever Total War game; Medieval 2. I've completed campaigns as Venice, Milan, France, England and Holy Roman Empire before. But since I hadn't yet completed a campaign on this version of the game I didn't have all the factions available to me. So I decided to go with England. 

Medieval 2 is one of the few Total War games that has a cheat console. One of my favourite things to do is to recruit a shitload of diplomats and send them out into the world and with my unlimited money (cheat code) I'd let them buy settlements and bribe generals until a faction was left with nothing but their capital, faction leader and faction heir. Those that can't be bought or bribed. 

Of course I'd also do the traditional fighting and beseiging with my own armies and generals. The most nerve-wrecking wars of the campaign this time was my last war against Hungary (when it was pretty much just me, Sicily, The Papal States and Hungary left on the map). Those poor cities were beseiged so many times and switched hands every couple rounds (Budapest/Vienna/Bucharest/Constantinople). No wonder the people rioted, revolted and threw us out *cough* Budapest *cough* (once Hungary, once me); and my war against the Timurids. When they showed up late in the game I had taken over most of the middle eastern parts of the map and was slowly working my way up into Russia and was just waiting for the Byzantine Empire to backstab me so I could devour them. The Timurids showed up much like the Mongols and started to just sack settlements without settling in them. I sent a horde of diplomats and assassins after their nomadic group of armies and the generals I didn't bribe into joining me I killed with my assassins. When the Timurids finally settled we were in full out war due to all my assassins and I was hard pressed to keep my settlements in Russia and Ukraine/Moldova. 

Hungary killed the most of my generals. I had two fleets on the way from Europe to the Middle East transporting seven generals because I had way too many generals in Europe and not enough in the Middle East. Hungarian fleets attacked and attacked and attacked my poor fleets and finally sank them before I even reached Greece. Killing seven generals in almost one fell sweep. Middle East had to keep managing without generals. And I bought three of Hungary's settlements as revenge. 

I always keep playing this game even after I've technically won the campaign. I still have turns left to use. So I play until I run out of turns. When I finished my turns in this campaign the Mongols had one settlement, the Timurids had two, Russia had one, the Moors had one, Sicily had two, Hungary had six, the Papal States had five, and the rest belonged to me :3

After I had finished the campaign on Medieval 2 I was leaning towards starting Three Kingdoms, but instead I downloaded and modded Medieval 2 with a complete overhaul mod that I first heard about a couple years ago. The Elder Scrolls: Total War. Since it's modded on Medieval 2 it's an engine I'm 100% familiar with and when I managed to load it up and start playing I was just giddy

I decided to go with the Aldmeri Dominion as my faction and the 3rd Era as my time and holy shit this mod is so well done. So much going on! So many things possible! If you take over Rimmen and build a specific building you can recruit the Tsaesci left there by the Akavir. If you take over all of Valenwood and build an altar in either Falinesti, Elden Root or Silvenar you can start the Wild Hunt and ally yourself with Hircine. Mannimarco shows up pretty early on and you can choose  to ally with him which will give you the option to dig up graves in every settlement and use them for necromancy to bolster your ranks with skeletons, liches, draugr etc. If you build a specific building in a port in Summerset, Valenwood or Elsweyr you can ally yourself with the Maormer. I did all of those things.

I even allied myself with Hircine so hard that he was adopted into my royal family, got married and had babies xD

The winning conditions for the long campaign in this game are pretty extensive, but I was well on my way there. I had taken over all of Valenwood, Anequina, and Pelletine. I had the Empire on the run and had taken over all their settlements, but the Emperor was on the run and couldn't be found so couldn't end the Empire, and I was slowly working my way into Skyrim and also taking over settlements from the Clan of Forebears. I was allied with the Clans of Black Marsh and the House of Dagoth, and then...

The Oblivion Crisis happened. You can choose before the game starts whether you want the Oblivion Crisis to happen or not. I decided I wanted it, but I thought I'd have more time. Out of seemingly nowhere I was suddenly thrown out of Kvatch, which became a Hordes of Oblivion settlement, and armies from Oblivion showed up on several of my doorsteps. They took Shimmerene and started to go from Kvatch towards the Imperial City, Anvil and Arenthia. They also showed up in Morrowind next to the Velothi mountains, among the forts on the Empire side of the same mountains, and in the middle of Elsweyr. Suddenly all my armies were hard pressed to repel the invaders. I managed to get Shimmerene back (but lost royal family member Ancano in the process) and assassinated and bribed my way through a bunch of armies, and yet I couldn't get Kvatch back no matter how many armies I threw at it. Martin and the Champion of Cyrodiil showed up as fully decked out generals outside Cloud Ruler Temple, but they were no help at all as they just stood there doing nothing. And in the midst of all this the Nerevarine prophecy was fulfilled xD Messed up timeline!

I got pretty sick of throwing all my guys at Kvatch so decided to take a break and play something else. It was only during that break that I realised I may have shot myself in the foot. The notification you get when the Oblivion Crisis starts says to defeat Mehrunes Dagon and repel the invaders. I was working hard at repelling them... But I also managed to bribe Dagon to join my side. Which means I can't defeat him. I may have to use him as the general of my repeated attempts to take back Kvatch and maybe he will be killed by his own hordes...

But that's a problem for when I come back to Elder Scrolls :) I'm nowhere near done with this mod, but I had to take a break.