What’s the real difference between Total War and RTS games like CoH or Dawn of War?
I've seen a lot of discussions around this that tbh, don't make a lot of sense to me.
Here’s a quick breakdown for anyone wondering how these two styles of strategy games actually differ.
First focusing only about the battle maps
Total War
* Huge battles with hundreds or thousands of units on the field.
* You move big formations around, not individual soldiers or small squads.
* Positioning and flanking matter way more than micro.
* Battles move at a slower pace, more about managing your lines than spamming abilities or again micro.
* No resources, economy, tech upgrades, or base building during the fight. In RTS terms there's no traditional Macro during batles.
RTS (focus on CoH, DoW style)
* Smaller, more intense tactical fights usually with small squads or insividual units.
* You gather resources during the battle by holding points.
* Base building, tech upgrades, and unit production all happen mid-match.
* Heavy micro. Cover, suppression, grenade timing, unit abilities, all that matters.
* Camera is closer because you’re controlling way fewer units but making way more decisions per second.
And about the campaign map/structure:
Total War
* Big turn-based map where you run an entire faction with cities and armies, politics, money, building stuff, diplomacy, all that.
* Armies move around as single stacks with limited movement per turn.
* You only drop into real-time battles when two armies touch.
* Long-term planning actually matters a ton. Mess up your economy or piss off a neighbour and it’ll bite you later.
* Overall pacing is slower and more “grand strategy” or 4x feeling.
RTS (CoH, DoW, etc.)
* Usually no big world map. You just jump from mission to mission.
* If there is a meta-map (like DoW: Dark Crusade), it’s super light and nowhere near TW levels of depth.
* No empire building, minimal long-term management, mostly just story progression or territory unlocking.
* Way more focused on the individual missions themselves rather than the grand strategy layer.
Relax guys, this is going to be a Total War game and Dawn of War 4 is going to be a DoW game.
The gameplay looked very TW both the battle map and the campaign.