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** Played straight with the Roman factions in ''Rome'', due to being able to use the testudo formation after the Marian Reforms event. This will allow your legionaries to march around unimpeded by arrows unless they're from the back, allowing you to approach walls with impunity. Roman legions in general tend to be tough to take down with missiles from the front anyway.
** The Naginata Samurai in ''Shogun 2'' have a lot of armor that prevents arrows from getting almost any kills against them. Most other units avert it to different degrees.
* [[Another Side, Another Story]]: Most factions you encounter in the game are playable, but are only unlocked if you defeat them at least once in the Grand Campaign. Other nations are unlocked only by beating the Grand Campaign.
* [[Antagonist Title]]: ''Napoleon'' and ''Attila''.
* [[Anti-Cavalry]]: Comes in various forms across the games. In order of game release:
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** ''Shogun 2'': Spears (''especially'' [[Cannon Fodder|Yari Ashigaru]] in Yari Wall formation), archers and guns will cause chaos amongst cavalry units, who aren't nearly as powerful as in ''Medieval II'' and are far more vulnerable to missile fire. If you're a swordsman, on the other hand... cavalry, while not as capable, are still formidable on the frontal charge against the right unit type, making anti-cavalry more relevant.
* [[Anticlimax Boss]]: The Mongols are scary as hell in the open field, and are hard to beat back. However, once they hit your cities or a defended bridge, their horse archers are just cannon fodder for your spearmen, archers, and crossbows. The Timurids on the other hand... there are a couple ways to defeat them at their own game in the field, but all require locking down their archers. And cavalry. Lots and lots of cavalry.
** For the ''Britannia'' expansion, William Wallace's army is presented as an enormous and impressively badass army, with fully-armed and armored and high experience troops. In a straight fight, they'd be tough to beat....except that Wallace himself is an infantry general in an otherwise normal unit of Highland Nobles. That means is that all it takes is one well-timed heavy cavalry charge to rout/kill Wallace, [[Decapitated Army|cutting the head off the snake]] in the process.
* [[Armor-Piercing Attack]]: Longbows, crossbows, axes... in ''Medieval I'' and ''II'', it may be a good idea to keep a few unarmoured units around specifically because of the vast range of units who ''actually get a bonus'' fighting heavily armoured troopers. This is particularly problematic for nations who invested heavily in upgrading their soldiers armour via the various armoury buildings, as even their militia may be armoured in heavy mail.
* [[Armor-Piercing Question]]: From ''Rome 2'', which is partially directed at ''you'':
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** While the AI suffers in attacking cities, they are ''very'' good at ''defending'' them; it will ruthlessly exploit both fighting on the walls (and is very good at flanking your troops if they try to climb the walls) and the perfect morale boost from holding the square. Almost all city assaults end with a prolonged bloodbath as your men slowly hack and stab their way through the defenders. In most city fights, you're lucky if you end up killing the enemy at a roughly 1 to 1 ratio because of that.
* [[Artifact Title]]: The ''Alexander'' expansion for ''Rome'' historically takes place before Rome comes to power.
* [[Artificial Stupidity]]: Total War's AI is prone to [[Wallbanger|wallbanging]] stupidity.
** You've built an empire spanning most of Europe, the Pope is firmly on your side (and in your pocket), the Middle Eastern powers are currently dealing with the Timurids and are in no position to oppose you, and next turn your armies will be in position to deliver the final blow to Russia...and then Spain, who is currently being thrashed by the Moors, is down to its last territory, and has exactly five military units, declares war on you.
** In an extreme example, England in ''Empire'' is effectively invincible due to the AI's inability to transport armies by ship, though England's "invincibility" has been fixed with patch work and is now vulnerable to AI sea invasions.
** In siege battles, attackers have a habit of standing right in front of your towers doing entirely nothing as they get shot to pieces, leading to easy, if rather uneventful battles. Sometimes said attackers are archers or javelin throwers who are hurling shit up at your wall defenders or even over the walls at your defenders on the ground, but melee units share the same tendencies, which is an incredibly stupid move even by units that have a chance of dealing some minimal damage before getting annihilated. It's ''extremely'' easy to exploit this; the AI seems to assume that you'll never actually try to disrupt the attack once the siege transitions to an assault; if you can hit the troops manning the siege equipment, if even for a moment, they'll drop their rams/ladders/siege towers to fight. Then usually forget all about the equipment even after the fight is over. It's possible to suck a large army into a brutal, costly entryway fight by destroying/disrupting their ladders and towers and forcing them to ram the gate, and then let them run inside. A good player can kill and possibly even disband a two-thousand man army with only a few hundred spearmen by just holding them like that and pummeling them with flaming arrows or catapults.
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* [[Asskicking Equals Authority]]: If you're lucky, captains of armies not lead by officers can be promoted out of the ranks into the royal family after battle for their good work at kicking ass. (And [[Rags to Riches|become Emperor of Rome!!!)]] Unfortunately this costs a lot of money post-''Empire''.
* [[Attack! Attack! Attack!]]: Units with high morale don't balk at charging the entire enemy army unsupported. Impetuous units occasionally do this without being asked! This is less common in ''Shogun II'', completely outmatched units (particularly those that have already taken casualties in a previous battle) will flee before contact under the right circumstances.
** AI armies will generally just keep charging against the most invulnerable positions (directly into a pikewall up a mountainside while under arrow fire, say) until they're routed. Commonly, they'll often do this even with their general unit, often resulting in the AI army's general biting the dust, which makes the rest of the fight easier.
* [[Authority Equals Asskicking]]: Played straight with Alexander, who comes with a 60-man strong unit of what might be the best cavalry in the entire series.
* [[Awesome but Impractical]]: Berserkers in ''Rome''. They're extremely powerful units with high stamina, however, they easily become enraged which makes them uncontrollable (similar to elephants). They also don't have shields which makes them highly vulnerable to missile units, and to recruit these units you have to build a specific shrine in a city, one that doesn't give you many other benefits.
* [[Badass]]: Berserkers in ''Rome'' are so ridiculously strong that they prove a match against ''elephants''.
* [[Badass Beard]]/[[Beard of Evil]]: When a general gets older, they'll start to go gray, but during middle age their character portrait may show them sprouting a beard.
* [[Badass Boast]]: The intro of ''Napoleon'':
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* [[Blood Knight]]: A small number of units are explicitly this, including Slavic ''Peasants''.
** Your generals as well, with the right traits and/or a high enough Dread rating.
** Berserkers in ''Rome: Total War''.
* [[Bonus Boss]]: The Aztecs in ''Medieval II'' could count as such. Their continent shows up late in the game, and they have several full stacks of units to guard their territory.
** And unlike real life, those huge armies don't crumble as soon as you get a few horses and guns on the field with them.
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** In ''Shogun 2'', in an army without a general or daimyo leading it will have the highest ranking unit in the army take on their role. It will even say "our general is in grave danger!" when they are attacked, and killing them, just like killing a real general, is vital to destroying an army's morale.
*** Not to mention that hero units are fully capable of taking on multiple units by themselves.
* [[Bow and Sword
** The Bow Samurai have this as their personal operating philosophy in ''Shogun 2''. Switching to melee mode leaves you at least with a chance against charging melee units.
*** Taken [[Up to Eleven]] with the samurai units in ''Rise of the Samurai'', which are equally highly skilled with bow and sword. They're some of the best units at range ''and'' in melee.
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* [[Cyberpunk with a Chance of Rain]]: The original ''Shogun'' had such a near-future Japan as its victory cinematic.
* [[Dark Is Not Evil]]: Wallachia (in one mod) can still have Chivalrous generals and family members, despite their [[Dracula|reputation]] and iconography.
* [[Darker and Edgier]]:
** ''Medieval 2'' is this to the original ''Medieval'', due to the more graphic detail.
** ''Napoleon'' serves as this to ''Empire'', in part to highlight both Napoleon Bonaparte's power and the nature of the Napoleonic Wars.
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** In ''Medieval II'', nearly anything your generals do can earn them one form of trait or another. Have a general visit or become governor to a town with a brothel? He might pick up a trait about becoming a womanizer. Leave a general between cities at the end of a turn? Might gain a trait regarding logistics. Have a general regularly fight armies of a particular faction, and they'll earn a trait that has them ''hate'' that particular faction and get a bonus commanding against them. Hire mercenaries and get a mercenary captain in the retinue, visit a town with an artist's studio and the general becomes a patron of the arts, visit a region with high Pagan religion and get a pagan astrologer or magician in your retinue, and so on. This even applies to agents; for example, a diplomat from an area with majority of one particular religion will be religiously intolerant, while ones from mixed-religion regions will be religiously tolerant.
** If you're trying to get your cavalry back behind your front line, don't charge them through your bracing pikemen in shieldwall formation. They'll kill your cavalry just as easily as they kill the enemy.
* [[Distinctive Appearances]]: ''Medieval II'' introduced enhancements allowing specially upgraded and veteran units to look visibly distinctive from their "standard" variants.
* [[Distracted by the Sexy]]: In ''Shogun II'', one geisha assassination involves this.
* [[Downloadable Content]]: Beginning with ''Rome: Total War: Alexander''. By ''Total War: Rome 2,'' full expansion packs have become this as well.
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*** ''Rise of the Samurai'' is set at the tail end of the classical Heian period of Japanese history.
*** The main game's campaign, set during the Sengoku period, starts off towards the latter part of it, as what's left of the Ashikaga Shogunate struggles to survive.
*** ''Fall of the Samurai'' starts off at the end of the Edo period in the 19th Century, as Japan begins opening up to the world and the Tokugawa Shogunate is on the brink of collapse.
** The ''Imperator Augustus'' campaign for ''Rome 2'' follows the last gasps of the old Roman Republic as a young Octavian asserts himself as Rome's first true Emperor.
** For ''Attila'':
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** And if you do it too often you start to lose dread. The best way can be the rather schizophrenic tactic of letting all of them go, then killing them all the next time. This only applies to ''Medieval I''; in ''II'' you get Chivalry as a reward for releasing captives.
* [[Military Mashup Machine]]: For a Middle Ages variant, there is the Timurid rocket elephant, an armored war elephant with a hwacha in the howdah. The description for it runs along the lines of "what sort of sick person would add a rocket launcher to an elephant?!" The Timurids also have cannon elephants. Who would do such a thing? [http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Ditzie/meta Ditzamer Spofulam would.] Though if you want sick, look at Rome's ''incendiary pigs''; the pigs are pointed at enemy units and then set on fire! Stand well back.
* [[Mission Pack Sequel]]: Fans disagree as to whether ''Napoleon'' was this in regards to ''Empire'', or simply a stand-alone expansion. The Creative Assembly's silence on the issue just makes things more complicated.
* [[More Dakka]]: Canister shot turns an ordinary cannon into an enormous shotgun that rips [[Mighty Glacier]]s to bloody shreds. Shrapnel shot does this at long range, meaning you can subject your enemy to an unending hail of buckshot.
* [[Multi Melee Master]]: Phalanxes in ''Rome'' and pikemen in ''Medieval II'' and ''Empire'' caught out of formation or at extreme close range will down spears (or, apparently, [[Hammerspace|stash pikes taller than they are in their trousers]]) and haul out short swords. Only the Spartans and a few really tough pike units (like Swiss pikemen or Spanish Tercios) truly fit the mastery of both weapons part of the trope however. For others, its an [[Emergency Weapon]].
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** Wonderfully averted in ''Empire'': even individual bullets from infantry volleys receive realistic arcs. This aversion is also the point of using howitzers, although their different ammunition from foot and horse artillery (cannons) can be a nice, nasty touch. It's also the only safe way to use cannons behind one's own units, if said cannons are also overhead.
* [[Not Playing Fair with Resources]]: The AI in ''Shogun II'' gets discounts on unit recruitment on Hard, Very Hard and Legendary, allowing it to assemble larger armies than the player.
* [[Nothing Is the Same Anymore]]:
** The ''Americas'' campaign for ''Medieval 2: Total War: Kingdoms''. Even if you manage to fight off the Europeans as a native faction, there is no going back to the way things were before the introduction of guns and horses.
** ''Fall of the Samurai'' is this in a nutshell. Even if your clan manages to hold fast as a traditionalist, the arrival of railroads, rifle infantry and Gatling guns mean that there's no returning to the past for Japan.
** It's still possible - [[Harder Than Hard|if difficult]] - to save and reinvigorate the Western Roman Empire in ''Attila''. But the very technologies and developments you need in order to make it so encourage decentralization and have elements reminiscent of medieval feudalism.
** The Eastern Roman Empire in ''Attila'' meanwhile, is directed such that it gradually develops its own Byzantine identity. One that while still Roman, is more evidently embracing Greek and Eastern Christian influences; by ''The Last Roman,'' its late-game units are tellingly in Greek rather than Latin.
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* [[Stuff Blowing Up]]: Once you acquire gunpowder, this is your assassins' favorite method of either killing or sabotaging.
* [[Suicidal Overconfidence]]: The strategic AI tends to gravely overestimate its chances and will gleefully attack an empire five times its size and three times as powerful. They'll also refuse terms if you try to reason with them, somehow still confident that they can destroy you with one city. On the tactical level, however, the AI will form a defensive block or flee outright if you clearly outmatch it.
** Taken further in ''Rome Total War''. The general is a powerful heavy cavalry unit, but committing it to the fight is still a gamble since your general could end up getting killed. [[Attack! Attack! Attack!|The AI doesn't seem to care, however, and will usually throw its general unit into the fray of battle as soon as it gets the chance to]] (usually not even attempting a flanking maneuver). This often results in you killing the enemy general early in the battle, [[Decapitated Army|which makes the rest of the fight easier]].
* [[Suspiciously Small Army]]: Despite being one of the most realistic representations of battlefield tactics in the gaming industry, Total War does this, or at least the earlier games do. A unit's standard size in ''Rome'' is between 40 and 60 men, and even at the huge unit size, where unit sizes can reach a massive 240 men, armies can't exceed 4800 men. The actual Roman army, meanwhile, could number tens of thousands in single battles. Naturally this is due to graphical limitations, a 10,000 man army would break all but the most advanced computers. Every faction bringing that many or more to the field would make the game impossible to run. There is however a mod for empire that increases unit size to about 500 man for each unit making a full stack grow close to 10 000 man.
** ''Shogun 2'' is set to expand this, though, with each side being capable of fielding up to ''sixty-four thousand men'' in a battle.
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* [[The Thirty-Six Stratagems]]: Well, obviously in a series like this they're going to come in. #16 is most obvious, though - a surrounded enemy who would otherwise be 'broken' will 'fight to the death' if there is no avenue for escape. As soon as you ''create'' one (by ordering a unit to break off), they'll down tools and leg it, allowing you to butcher whatever's left of them with zero losses.
* [[Thieves' Guild]]: Building one enhances your spies and assassins. Conditions have to be right for it to appear however.
* [[Time Skip]]:
** For ''Shogun 2'' it happens twice.
*** ''Rise of the Samurai'' turns the clock ''back'' to the end of the Heian period of Japanese history, during the Genpei Wars that signified the Samurai's [[Title Drop|rise to power]].
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* [[Word Salad Lyrics]]: The lyrics to the "map view" music in Rome are just a disconnected series of Latin nouns. Which is, admittedly, characteristic of some Roman poetry.
* [[You All Look Familiar]]: Especially in the early games. In ''Medieval II'' the series added more randomization to soldiers' faces and uniforms, but made them all have the same face again in ''Empire''. Fixed in ''Napoleon'', where there's differing (though often similar or reused) appearances for individual soldiers, but named historical generals will have their their distinct looks. For example, Thomas Picton appears in a long red coat and top hat (his luggage having not arrived to Waterloo in time), while Napoleon wears a long gray overcoat and distinctive hat.
* [[Zerg Rush]]: Expect the AI in ''Rome Total War'' to commit its entire army to the fight at once, especially during bridge battles or other bottlenack scenarios. This either ends up causing a massive chain rout in ''their'' ranks, or it'll overwhelm ''your'' units due to the massive army likely breaking through your formations eventually. It's an ugly brawl when it happens, and annoyingly, this zerg rush tactic the AI uses which contains no strategy whatsoever, can actually work out for them.
** The favored tactic of peasant rebellions is to create huge armies of peasants with a few archers mixed in for variety, and charge you. However because they all run away if their general dies and their general is usually in a peasant unit like the rest, 20 knights can send hundreds of peasants running. [[Truth in Television|Which has actually happened in real life before.]]
** Zerging is a viable strategy against the Mongols and Timurids, too. When they first appear, they're just unsupported armies with no cities backing them up, which means that any Mongol or Timurid warrior you kill ''stays'' dead and cannot be replaced. Since by the time the Mongols show up you'll already have a strong empire that can take some losses, it's possible to simply keep sending waves of suicide armies against the Mongols and the Timurids to batter them down. You can replace your losses; ''they'' can't.
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