Bobthehero wrote: Outriders are terrible in my experience, I would much rather have a mix of handgunners and crossbowmen. I personally keep a few Reiksguard with KF, because they're meant to be his bodyguard.
Handgunners and crossbowmen are perform a different role to outriders. The damage output by crossbowmen and handgunners is good, way better than outriders. They're good static shooting units. But when you get steam tanks and luminarks then you have way better static shooting units.
The one thing handgunners and crossbows can do that steam tanks and luminarks can't is kill flying stuff. Luminarks can do it but you don't want them shooting at bats when there's varghulfs on the ground. I find outriders better for that job than crossbowmen or handgunners because the outriders are more mobile, which means they can move to where the flying target is and control where the attackk takes place. So you can make sure your outriders are well protected in case the flying unit charges.
On top of that Outriders give some scouting and nuisance value. Not as good at kiting as pistoliers because they lack the 360 range of fire, but they have better range and firepower than pisoliers, which means they control the engagement better against other missile cav units. What you want them for is to lure out enemy cavalry in to places where your own heavy cav can counter charge. If the enemy has no cav or you kill it early then outriders do a good job of lower enemy morale because being under fire from flanks stacks morale penalties.
But that's just me. One thing I really like about this game is how different players can find value in different units.
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AllSeeingSkink wrote: It's funny how WE play like I feel many other armies SHOULD play (Orcs for example).
I lost interest in orcs fairly early on. Nothing wrong with how orcs played, I just felt guilty stomping on the dwarves so completely.
But with their settlement restrictions, wouldn't orcs play a horde style razing game once they get out of the dwarf strongholds?
Ok so vessels of chaos the enemy chaos faction that only attacked me is now destroyed. Strigoi kingdoms were taking some of my territories but i managed to take some back as well as fortify my position and retake ruins left by chaos. Back up to 12 territories and strigoi are busy killing one of my dwarf allies which is almost dead now. That said i'm using that bought time to wreck the strigoi territories while the dwarfs hold on. I suppose that's kinda lore friendly but to be fair they're kinda useless right now anyway.
Dwarfs sadly confederated my best ally taking away like 1k gold income. I'm in considerably better terms with dwarfs now as well as lizardmen (once again lore breaking). I even have a trade deal going on with lizardmen which is beyond strange.
I find this game funny. My very first game of TWW1 i basically played a nice vampire counts guy that i think ended up making the empire angry despite being super nice. Funny how these days i don't even really have to butter up potential allies or trade partners with gifts of free cash to make em happy anymore. As long as you kill their enemies they tend to love you for life.
It's a bit late for a patch in my Dwarf campaign, a daring preemptive strike against Chaos forces in my southern territories failed (by the end of the fight I had Grombrindal and half a unit of crossbows trying to run across the entire length of the battlefield to kill their last unit, one stupid hellcannon but they didn't make it)
The Badlands are now a smouldering ruin as each city is assaulted by four stacks and I have no armies nearby to counter them. Meanwhile the border princes, my military allies won't even lend a hand as they aren't even at war with the Chaos armies...
I don't think I will get wiped out completely as my best cities are still remaining and I am pulling my forces back on the defensive but it's gonna be close.
I feel like the Chaos invasion maybe isn't the best way to deal with Mortal Empires. Surely it's just going to be a nightmare to balance, sending in waves of Chaos tough enough to make the player care is going to crush a lot of the AI factions.
Given the huge amount of effort CA has put in to producing TWW1 and TWW2 I think they need to spend some time (maybe employ some new people) to work on somewhat compelling campaigns for each faction rather than just having "beat stuff up and then Chaos shows up and tries to beat you up".
Well, the chaos invasion wasn't exactly end game even in TW1- it was something annoying midgame that you had to turn and deal with.
In mortal empires it isn't even that- you generally won't be even close to grabbing all the random capitals you need when the invasion kicks off.
I do feel it's out of place, though. It's fine if someone is playing them, but it just feels like a bad fit for the grand campaign of ME. with no real goals beyond resetting regions for new colonization.
Yeah sorry, I should have said "beat stuff up and then Chaos shows up and tries to beat you up and then you go back to beating stuff up".
Some factions did have somewhat interesting campaigns, like Bretonnia with their errantry war, but it was way too easy to get chivalry. Wood Elves have their Oak of Ages but the amount of Amber you need to upgrade it it basically comes down to wiping out half the other players on the map to build outposts for amber.
But I imagine if the Chaos invasion in ME just attacks everyone then you'll probably end up with continents wiped out before you ever discover them, but maybe CA has done a better job of balancing them this time. In TWW1 the Chaos invasions would just wipe out AI factions until the player went and dealt with them.
EDIT: Anyone played Norsca much? I'm struggling with them economy wise, sacking isn't giving me enough to keep me going well. It seems like they play like a less efficient version of Wood Elves, where wood elves raze rather than sacking but make a lot more money out of it. I'm wondering if maybe I'm taking the wrong approach, I have 2 moderately powerful armies (certainly not doomstacks) and trying to go after high value settlements, maybe it's better to go for lots of small weak armies and just troll sack on weak low value settlements ignoring the higher value ones and just running away from any roving armies that might want to beat me up.
A couple times with Norsca. My second time I turned just about all of Norsca into pure economic buildings except the starting province. Their economy isn't great, but can be forced.
But I focused on Norsca first, largely with a single stack, once it was entirely under my control and building up, the southerners were fat enough to sack for lots of money- it helps not to be competing with the chaos invasion. Being able to force a confederation once you've beaten a factions primary lord really helps.
Getting a maintaining the first tier of favor with Slaanesh is also helpful (upkeep reduction)
My main problem was the starter units are really terrible. Once the weres or frost trolls are unlocked, it becomes much easier.
Yeah I conquered all of Norsca pretty easily because of the confederation mechanic (find their leader, beat leader, confed immediately), but I don't even have enough money to upgrade the buildings, lol. I'm now ranging south in to Kislev with both Wulfrik and Throgg (who I got via confederation) but I can barely afford their upkeep even though their armies are mostly made from low tier marauders and aren't even full stacks, I'm barely able to beat the Empire full stacks I'm coming up against.
I didn't go down the Slaanesh route which is probably hurting a bit and probably need to be more aggressive with several smaller armies until I can save up for an army big enough to actually conquer the larger settlements. Probably in a weird middle ground where my 2 armies are too expensive to be sustained from raiding small settlements but too small to be going after major settlements or settlements that are defended by a lord.
Norsca is a bit of a struggle, partly perhaps due to lack of walls. You just need to leave a stack at home running around to kill off invading armies such as Brets who love to come up north and sack and raze. The distances involved and the need to range further out is quite oppressive. I feel like Norsca has the worst part of a horde faction, the lack of a decent economy with the weakness of the WE of only having outposts. While WE have a strong internal economy to support stacks, Norsca really hurts for money which makes it pretty hard to pull armies of the front line to upgrade. Add that to the fact you're almost always outnumbered and you can't afford to lose units in battle as that means sitting around recruiting while it drains all your funds. Its a slog imo.
Ok so not long after i last commented strigoi kingdoms were sort even militarily with me and i was doing ok. Then the 2nd invasion of chaos comes to which i'm like "Seriously?!"
So vessels of chaos came back from oblivion and being destroyed as a faction to have 7 army stacks starting in my strigoi kingdom enemy's territory but raiding till they got to mine (which was probably 2k to 2.5k gold in raiding and horribly ruined my economy yet again). Meanwhile my enemy thought it was cool and just allowed them to raid from him. Of course considering it's 7 armies i might not specifically declare war on them if they'd left me out of it either. My vampire enemy has so far been attacking most of the weaker territories with his 3 armies. He's taken anywhere from 2-3 of my previously owned territories while i was busy holding back the flood of chaos.
I've lost 6 territories in 7 turns so far and managed to push back and mostly destroy one of them (making it mostly worthless). Some others got considerably hurt but are still viable to do some strong attacks. I also managed to kill 2 of their 7 original lords so far at least.
Luckily there's at least 2 armies of they have in a bad spot with little support nearby and my main army close to them. I managed to block army on one of them so that he can't get away so that army should be completely destroyed once my turn comes around. That said before that i have to deal with another attack on some city somewhere (probably Khemri). If it is Khemri it's sadly guarded by at least 2 armies of vampire counts and 2 of the chaos armies with chaos assaulting first. It's fairly heavily fortified and seems only one army will be present in the fight he wishes to fight so i could probably win a fight or two one at a time. I highly doubt vs all 4 armies however that i'll manage to not get the city completely sacked and burnt to the ground. If nothing else it'll do a good job holding back the tide a lot more.
All this aside i have walls being constructed to their highest upgrade which is pretty freaking helpful esp. since armies require upkeep but walls don't.
Anyway it's a tough situation and is definitely going to cause me problems when i get back tomorrow. I really wish vamps weren't becoming stronger by taking my territory while i get slightly hurt by him and mostly hurt by the god beasts of chaos armies.
I mentioned earlier in this thread that I was getting occasional crashes when trying to alt+tab out of mortal empires.
I cleared some space on my SSD and transferred the game files from my HDD to the SSD and it seems to have fixed the alt+tab crashing.
Not the greatest solution for those who don't already own an SSD, but if you can clear some space on an SSD maybe it'll help other people too. The load times are also a bit better on the SSD but to be honest not a huge amount better, unfortunately I didn't time them before moving the files so I can't compare quantitatively but they don't feel a hell of a lot faster.
Originally I didn't install it on the SSD just because the game is bloody huge at 40+GB and my SSD is only 240GB.
EDIT: Actually it does seem to still be crashing, just less frequently.
Anyone finding that with the patch the Chaos invasion is now deliberately avoiding them?
I started a new campaign as Queek (oh my, I love playing as Skaven!) And I am not sure if it is the fact that Chaos forces cannot see my cities due to them showing up as ruins or they are just being suspiciously nice, about 12 stacks have wandered through most of my provinces and the only time I fought them was when I ambushed one of their armies.
Commander Cain wrote: Anyone finding that with the patch the Chaos invasion is now deliberately avoiding them?
I started a new campaign as Queek (oh my, I love playing as Skaven!) And I am not sure if it is the fact that Chaos forces cannot see my cities due to them showing up as ruins or they are just being suspiciously nice, about 12 stacks have wandered through most of my provinces and the only time I fought them was when I ambushed one of their armies.
Probably just the AI treating them as ruins.
The AI is very stupid in how thorough it is to not use its knowledge of everything to cheat, sometimes. Such as walking up to an enemy army, entering ambush, and they just pretend you were never there and walk right into it.
Ashiraya wrote: Such as walking up to an enemy army, entering ambush, and they just pretend you were never there and walk right into it.
I'm glad they're stupid enough to do that otherwise I'd never even bother with the ambush stance.
Really? Ambush works well in TWW1. Of course this is more in wooded areas and roads and any chokepoints where one might cross a river at. In TWW2 there aren't nearly as many paths and a lot more open spaces or at least in the desert sections.
Had to restart my last mortal empires campaign with queek. I'm pretty sure A.I. allies are absolute morons. They don't really attack in some cases even when you fight the same enemies. Perhaps some sub-factions just concentrate on defense and don't really do anything besides be fodder.
Anyway i was going for a lot of undead alliances in this game. I cleared the paths of the canyons you start in and took out the greenskins and dwarfs down there. From there i got undead buddies and fought lizardmen which i'm once again being reminded just how badly clanrats suck against them. I had 2-3 armies with 2 being clanrats (with gutter runner throwing star support) and one being slaves and it was still rough to face lizardmen and in some cases i lost esp. vs kroq gar. Went back with 2 armies (one of stormvermin, gutter runners and warp lightning cannons and the other of clanrats with shields of both types). It seems to be doing well but the upkeep reduction skill for skaven lords is seeming very needed right now. Only two armies and they don't really get a lot out of raiding sadly. Would be nice to get the upkeep reductions and such so i can get more armies and just spam raid some provinces. Might have to just leave some enemies with one province like last time and just feed off them via raiding for a good long while. Guess we'll see.
I find that as a player when I've AI Allies I will rarely join them in wars that they get into unless it seriously benefits me to do so. I suspect the AI is of a like-mind in that "yeah we are allies and yeah I'll attack that opponent, but I'm not really going to march my armies over there to do this thing that you want cause I've got other plans".
Overread wrote: I find that as a player when I've AI Allies I will rarely join them in wars that they get into unless it seriously benefits me to do so. I suspect the AI is of a like-mind in that "yeah we are allies and yeah I'll attack that opponent, but I'm not really going to march my armies over there to do this thing that you want cause I've got other plans".
That'd be all well and good if these enemies weren't the only enemies this guy had and were on his border territories taking his land before i intervened and prevented him from getting wiped out. Now he won't even really attack the enemies regardless of how big his forces get.
Ashiraya wrote: Such as walking up to an enemy army, entering ambush, and they just pretend you were never there and walk right into it.
I'm glad they're stupid enough to do that otherwise I'd never even bother with the ambush stance.
Really? Ambush works well in TWW1. Of course this is more in wooded areas and roads and any chokepoints where one might cross a river at. In TWW2 there aren't nearly as many paths and a lot more open spaces or at least in the desert sections.
Yeah Ambush works, but it largely relies on the stupid AI seeing your army disappear and then wandering over your ambush point anyway, which is why I said I wouldn't use it much if it weren't for the stupid AI
If the AI was smart it'd be much harder to lay successful ambushes which would in turn make it less worthwhile taking up an ambush stance in the first place.
The other issue I find with ambushes is that it essentially requires you to leave an army inactive. Unless you use the trick as you outline above; you basically need to ambush set a unit in a choke point but also leave it not doing anything for a while. In general I find that its hard to leave armies inactive because there's always a threat that requires tackling; a settlement that would benefit from the order bonus of a resting army; the lord loyalty system wants you to do something with the army etc...
Yeah, the AI can afford to have armies sitting around doing nothing waiting for an ambush because they cheat on their economy, not quite as easy for the player to do.
Use two armies, one main super strong army and one really weak backup army.
Whenever you encounter a super strong army garrisoning a strong city or something similarly strong, make the strong army enter ambush stance and have the weak army stand idle right behind.
We should get the Foundation update (and some extra stuff) this year, at least as an opt-in beta. 30th anniversary Regiments of Renown, Norsca and unique start positions for old world Lords that share one next year.
November has been announcemageddon for CA, to be sure. With the Empire Divided Campaign Pack for ROME II plus our first Total War Saga title Thrones of Britannia both in the works, it would be easy to think we’re in some way sidelining WARHAMMER II, but nothing could be further from the truth.
As we’ve said many times before, we have different teams working on different games, plus the updates and content packs for those games. The core WARHAMMER II team is currently working hard on the Reprisal Update, which will integrate the content changes from the Foundation Update for WARHAMMER 1 into Mortal Empires, and more besides.
This work is nearly complete, and we expect to offer the update as an opt-in open beta very soon. Here’s what you can expect to get with the Reprisal Update: Warriors of Chaos design changes (see original Foundation Update notes for details) Wood Elf followers Empire Startpos overhaul (full province ownership at start of campaign) New skill trees and campaign effects for Old World Legendary Lords
Over and above the Foundation Update changes, you can also expect: 5 New skill-tree skills for Helman Ghorst Immortality skill added to Old World characters Bordeleaux now begins at war with Mousillon (yay!) Plus a handful of bugfixes
This means more content changes for Old-Worlders than the original update, which should be welcome news for your Mortal Empires campaigns. We’ll bring you more news on the open beta timing in the coming days, so keep an eye on the forums, the TW subreddit and our social media channels.
There’s plenty more to come beyond the Reprisal Update of course. Wulfrik, Throgg and the Norscans will also be raiding southwards into Mortal Empires in a future update. This in itself is proving a Troll-sized task, hence the fact we’re doing it separately from the Reprisal Update – but we figured everybody would prefer those changes first, as they affect so many of the Legendary Lords already in the game. Also still to come for Mortal Empires are the 30th Anniversary Regiments of Renown of course, and we’re also looking into giving all the Old World Legendary Lords their own unique start-positions.
We’re not ready to put dates on any changes beyond the Reprisal Update – they’ll be done when they’re good and ready – so we’ll talk more about them closer to the time, likely sometime in the new year. So that’s it for now, other than to reassure you that just as we did WARHAMMER 1, we’re hugely committed to evolving, improving and adding new content to WARHAMMER II and Mortal Empires as time goes by.
I started a new Isabella campaign after the patch and once again buttered up Mannfred as best I could, after turn 92 it paid off and he finally accepted confederation even though he wasn't on the ropes, so now I have...
Vlad, Isabella, Mannfred, Ghorst and, Heinrich Kemmler
...all working together. Time to let the steamrolling begin I hold pretty much all of the Empire except a small group of Ostlandians in the middle. Confederating obviously bumped up my power level enough because Chaos turned up the very next turn. We'll see how well the patch worked, hopefully I can fend them off then it's time to set sail and conquer the new world!
The Dwarfs have been hounding me with full stack after full stack for the past 20 turns or so, I think with the Quintet of the Dead they should fall pretty quickly now.
But damn, the AI sucks at picking skills. The characters I've inherited have little to no synergy in their skills and many have just picked up damned near useless ones (like a level 11 Necromancer who put 3 points in to Vanhel's Danse, 0 points in to any other spells, not even "Raise Dead ).
Has anyone ever tried an "evil" Bretonnian game where you just ignore Chivalry and instead build crusades which loot and sack rather than being all goody goody? Was wondering if that was something that would be interesting but I can't remember the negative effects of low Chivalry.
It goes no lower than -10 Leadership and -5 control. That is pretty bad, but survivable and the control penalty can be milked by rebellion farming for gold and exp. However character penalties will stackm on top of that, abnd are likely to be ugly.
it would definitely be a challenge game. Start as Bordeleau, conquer most of Bretonnia and get all friendly with your best buddy, the Red Duke. It would be interesting.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: But damn, the AI sucks at picking skills. The characters I've inherited have little to no synergy in their skills and many have just picked up damned near useless ones (like a level 11 Necromancer who put 3 points in to Vanhel's Danse, 0 points in to any other spells, not even "Raise Dead ).
Yeah, even if they're not terribly picked skills, they are never the skills that help run the character the way I want. Any witch hunter that isn't maxxed out in assassination is gonna get fired ASAP.
It really sucks when you confederate to get a new legendary lord added, and then you get him and the AI has totally screwed his skills up.
There really should be an option to reset the skill picks for any character just acquired under confederation.
Reprisal update is in open beta. This includes what was in the Foundation update for Mortal Empires.
People have pointed out that there's quite a few issues with race specific skills, for example the Dwarf grudge for bonuses against Wood Elves wasn't updated to Elves in general, nor were specific grudges added against High Elves, Dark Elves, Lizardmen or Skaven.
Reprisal will be released properly in December. As well as a new game mode (the 'experiment' they've been hinting at).
Tomb Kings will be January (were meant to be December but slipped due to issues with Norsca).
Norsca implementation into Mortal Empires will be in May. Essentially, they fethed up, and rather than port over the content for Norsca they need to completely re-implement them from scratch into the Warhammer 2 engine. They made too many changes to how the race functions to make them a unique experience that it's causing way too many problems once inserted into the Warhammer 2 engine.
Dev Update wrote:Because the content in Norsca didn’t exist in WARHAMMER II, even though a long time had passed, the merge should have been quick and easy.
Eh? Are computer years like dog years? Because the gap between TW1 and TW2 isn't anything close to 'long' (one went right into the other), let alone the gap between Norsca specifically and TW2.
No question that it's a complex task, but this piece of the explanation just bugs me.
On the other hand:
We also wanted to make Norsca really interesting and unique to play as, so there was also more in the way of bespoke code for Norsca than we originally intended. The first attempt to integrate Norsca in the routine way caused an immediate tsunami of bugs.
This, on the other hand, makes more sense. It sounds like the TW1 team for Norsca was a bit... sloppy... when it came to code. Too many non-standard approaches.
Thing is Warhammer in itself is a huge experiment for them and they are trying a LOT of new things with it. Heck the combat in itself is a vast departure from the styles that they've worked with in all their previous games.
So its no shock to me that they are still learning a lot of things or finding that the code throws up oddities with how they change things around.
Voss wrote: This, on the other hand, makes more sense. It sounds like the TW1 team for Norsca was a bit... sloppy... when it came to code. Too many non-standard approaches.
I would imagine that they were busily figuring out just how far they could twist the Warhammer I engine, and assumed that their changes would be compatible with Mortal Empires.
And you know what they say about assuming.
Oops...
I do find it amusing that the race that's causing them fits is the one that was essentially offered as the inducement to pre-order the second game.
The delay is a shame for fans of Norsca. But on the positive side, it's not one of the tabletop races, so the fallout with fans will be more limited. I, on the other hand, am overjoyed that we'll finally get my Tomb Kings in January.
Overread wrote: Thing is Warhammer in itself is a huge experiment for them and they are trying a LOT of new things with it. Heck the combat in itself is a vast departure from the styles that they've worked with in all their previous games.
So its no shock to me that they are still learning a lot of things or finding that the code throws up oddities with how they change things around.
Oddities are one thing, this sounds like a different problem. Since they transitioned so quickly from 1 to 2, the idea that the last DLC for 1 would be fundamentally incompatible with 2 on a data storage level is... weird.
Especially since TW1 to TW2 isn't a vast departure, at least on the surface- it's mostly graphics tweaks and a UI functionality layer for rites. Character trees are slightly different, but still function in the same way, armies are built the same way, cities have a different number of slots, but that was true of some races in TW1 as well
I think this is a drawback for their isolated team strategy. Having the TW1 team not be the Norsca team not be the TW2 team allows for faster output of products, but they should be communicating far more often on the basics of their approach if their code is diverging this much.
The Laboratory (or, as you may know it from the free-LC array, The Experiment) is a free brand new game mode for Total War: WARHAMMER II, designed with Intel. It introduces a custom battle playground with 16 different sliders to push your battles to new and ridiculous levels of mayhem. The Laboratory game mode will be available in a free update for Total War: WARHAMMER II on the 14th of December. It will automatically be added into the game in an update on that day, and you can access it from the main menu, under ‘Battles’.
IMPORTANT: While all players will be able to play in The Laboratory, it is entirely free of any minimum or recommended specification guidance. As a result, sliders that effect GPU or CPU performance can easily override your main performance settings unless you have a very high-powered PC. This can negatively impact your frame rate or likely cause gameplay behaviours you won’t see in the main game.
So... uh... be careful not to melt your video card when you're experimenting with it.
I really love the idea of it! Sure I'd need a new PC to run some of the stuff (or turn everything to low) but seeing SWARMS of skaven is great.
From CA's point of view this is a great way to stress-test their engine and also the average home computer and see how the results tally up. I'd love to see CA move the TW series toward those real swarmy sized groups. Having thousands upon thousands of units on the map would make for some epic games.
Heck it could see the return of the old larger siege maps since with vastly more units attacking more than one side at a time would be viable.
Eh. Seems like a waste of time and resources for a mildly entertaining video clip. They've got real stuff to do- a formal system for enabling cheat codes isn't exactly compelling.
It's very likely they had this in place anyway. Sliders for things like unit sizes, model sizes, spell radius and damage, ranged damage, explosions, etc are all super useful for testing and balancing. Things like gravity can easily be thrown in for fun.
It's not a whole lot of resources to just take their testing system and build a UI around it.
The ability to mess around with this stuff has been in the game engine for quite a while. For instance, back when Napoleon was the big Total War game, someone went in and figured out how to edit some values in a file to increase the manpower count in each unit enough to make the game sort of resemble a real battlefield (albeit a small one). So the ability to do this stuff has always been there, even for the players. It appears that all CA has done here is make it easy and intuitive for the players to get access to that.
-Loki- wrote: It's very likely they had this in place anyway. Sliders for things like unit sizes, model sizes, spell radius and damage, ranged damage, explosions, etc are all super useful for testing and balancing. Things like gravity can easily be thrown in for fun.
It's not a whole lot of resources to just take their testing system and build a UI around it.
No, but it is resources (for the UI, for the new build, for the patch) when they've recently posted they're behind on... everything.
So... finally broke down and got some mods. There are just some things about the campaign that are frustrating. Got rid of the bonus upkeep for multiple army restriction, and the Great Power diplomacy negative.
Tired of being unable to deal with a stronger non-great power faction, because of that stupid negative.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I kind of wish there was a better indicator for the possibility of confederation.
Asides from the big bright green "I want to confederate" thing? Not trying to be snarky, just not sure what you're looking for.
Far too often if just seems like an on and off switch. For a hundred turns I can be mates with another faction and they just never give any hint of wanting to confederate, then one turn suddenly the indicator will turn green and they'll accept it.
There must be some level of granularity behind the scenes that leads to the thing eventually turning green, but more often than not it just seems totally inexplicable. It'd be nice to have some sort of bar that actually relates to likelihood of confederating, even more awesome if it actually included reasons why they do or do not want to confederate.
I know there's the attitude bar, and supposedly their attitude combined with relative strength levels factors in to confederation.... but more often than not it just seems completely bloody random. Like my current game I have Karak Norn just sitting there being a thorn in my bloody side, they're weak, they're good friends and they're sitting there holding 1 settlement that's blocking a bunch of trade routes (they ninja'd it off me after a horde rolled through and razed it) and another settlement that's stopping me from having complete control over a province.
But the bastards just show no sign of confederating. It'd be awesome to know why and how far away they are from it.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I kind of wish there was a better indicator for the possibility of confederation.
Asides from the big bright green "I want to confederate" thing? Not trying to be snarky, just not sure what you're looking for.
Far too often if just seems like an on and off switch. For a hundred turns I can be mates with another faction and they just never give any hint of wanting to confederate, then one turn suddenly the indicator will turn green and they'll accept it.
There must be some level of granularity behind the scenes that leads to the thing eventually turning green, but more often than not it just seems totally inexplicable. It'd be nice to have some sort of bar that actually relates to likelihood of confederating, even more awesome if it actually included reasons why they do or do not want to confederate.
I know there's the attitude bar, and supposedly their attitude combined with relative strength levels factors in to confederation.... but more often than not it just seems completely bloody random.
Yeah. I would like it if CA would give us a clearer break down of the mechanics.
-Loki- wrote: It's very likely they had this in place anyway. Sliders for things like unit sizes, model sizes, spell radius and damage, ranged damage, explosions, etc are all super useful for testing and balancing. Things like gravity can easily be thrown in for fun.
It's not a whole lot of resources to just take their testing system and build a UI around it.
No, but it is resources (for the UI, for the new build, for the patch) when they've recently posted they're behind on... everything.
Quite possible what they're behind on didn't need the UI guys.
Plus this has been on the FLC list from Warhammer 2s release. It's not a surprise release.
In other news it seems the earlier patch to reduce the video rendering teams desire to slaughter high elves has worked! Though now they are fixated with dark elves!
Can anyone tell me if there's a point in a mortal empires campaign where it gets fun again? I'm playing as Queek. The start was a lot of fun. I now own almost the whole of the badlands, southern worlds edge mountains, araby and the southlands.
The game seemed determined to hammer me into submission with Dwarfs and Crooked Moon mutinous gits constantly attacking me. I finally got fed up of that crap and made it my mission to wipe them out.
It has been a terrible slog to get here and now I have no battles to fight, only boring, boring sieges (they truly are an awful aspect of the game). I've had plenty of sieges but no battles for about 20 turns. I'm stuck for food. Stuck for gold as all my provinces are at -30% due to having to produce the food.
I can only maintain 3 real armies plus a small gunline army (to basically cheat my way past those frigging boring sieges). The whole experience is becoming a grind.
Does it pick up at any point or is this it? Am I now stuck with the grind to victory?
You have entered the "Giant blob" stage. Most grand strategy games, at that point, become an auto resolve fest until you win or get bored to start again.
The trailer features an animated unit (Hierotitan) that GW never released a model for.
NICE!
I am *so* looking forward to this expansion.
Favorite comment from the YouTube comments section for the trailer -
"Tomb kings are looking more and more like Necron"
LOL
As for the hapless Dark Elves, they probably make the most sense out of the Warhammer 2 races since they're the most inclined to go poking into places that they shouldn't for magical power. Of course, the most appropriate would probably be Vamps (the Tomb Kings' natural enemies) or Orcs (who frequently raid the tombs - one named king, Pharr, has a flail made out of warboss skulls). But those are in the first game, not the second.
Galas wrote: You have entered the "Giant blob" stage. Most grand strategy games, at that point, become an auto resolve fest until you win or get bored to start again.
I always hit this problem with Total War campaigns. Usually I just start over.
Tomb Kings are looking nice. It's too bad they couldn't get them out earlier, they're coming out at what is basically the end of holiday season in these parts.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Tomb Kings are looking nice. It's too bad they couldn't get them out earlier, they're coming out at what is basically the end of holiday season in these parts.
Very few games release during the holiday season. I'm not sure why the timing of a DLC would matter in that regard- pretty sure you won't be able to wander out to a store and buy it as a gift anyway.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Tomb Kings are looking nice. It's too bad they couldn't get them out earlier, they're coming out at what is basically the end of holiday season in these parts.
Very few games release during the holiday season.
They probably mean to but get delayed Isn't Oct and Nov a pretty busy release period so that games come out and kids have time to nag their parents for them?
I'm not sure why the timing of a DLC would matter in that regard- pretty sure you won't be able to wander out to a store and buy it as a gift anyway.
To be honest I hadn't even considered gift giving, my family doesn't really do gifts at Christmas anymore except for the little kids who are bit too young to be playing a Total War game anyway I was just thinking if it'd come out a few weeks earlier I would have actually had the free time to play it.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Tomb Kings are looking nice. It's too bad they couldn't get them out earlier, they're coming out at what is basically the end of holiday season in these parts.
Very few games release during the holiday season.
They probably mean to but get delayed Isn't Oct and Nov a pretty busy release period so that games come out and kids have time to nag their parents for them?
For computer games? Not really. The beginning of fall (or... spring, if you prefer) tends to be pretty big (at least partially for all the dates that have slipped from earlier in the year), but usually November is drying up, and things are definitely dead once December rolls around.
Its actively confusing to research at this point, because of re-releases, 'gold' or 'complete' editions, and system migrations (Skyrim just released for the... 4th time?). Plus all the indie stuff which doesn't necessarily follow industry patterns (and may not be able to afford people to be around during holiday time). Which is another factor- a holiday release means keeping people on site for hot fixes and patches. And a bobbled release means pretty immediate backlash.
It might be more true for console games, but they get the benefits of a somewhat tighter development schedule, and better predictions on when a game will actually be out.
Yeah I wouldn't really expect a December release would be a typical thing, I'm just saying it would have been nice so I actually had time to play it Late Jan is close to the worst time for a game or DLC to release from my perspective because it's when work is starting to pick up again after the January lull.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Yeah I wouldn't really expect a December release would be a typical thing, I'm just saying it would have been nice so I actually had time to play it Late Jan is close to the worst time for a game or DLC to release from my perspective because it's when work is starting to pick up again after the January lull.
However from a business perspective it brings money in during the post Christmas lull (as people pay back their credit cards etc).
Eh? From a sales perspective (in general, not the computer game industry specifically) post Santa day isn't a lull. People are out and about in force throwing away gift money and buying the crap they actually wanted and didn't get.
Voss wrote: Eh? From a sales perspective (in general, not the computer game industry specifically) post Santa day isn't a lull. People are out and about in force throwing away gift money and buying the crap they actually wanted and didn't get.
This is a fantastic reason not to release new games. People are going to blow money on older titles they wanted. When the frenzy dies down, then you release new titles that they're still going to buy.
Voss wrote: Eh? From a sales perspective (in general, not the computer game industry specifically) post Santa day isn't a lull. People are out and about in force throwing away gift money and buying the crap they actually wanted and didn't get.
Sorry the lull I was talking about was the lull in work, not a lull in sales.
At least over here, early January is a slow month because a lot of people take holidays. Thus work is slow and I have lots of free time to play games. late Jan and February is usually a nightmare because everyone gets back from their holidays and so work really takes off and I no longer have free time to play games.
From a sales perspective my understanding is Dec after Christmas is usually really busy as people return the junk they didn't want and buy the stuff they did want Also post-Chrissy sales. Then January is a bit on the slow side, but I guess it depends what you're selling.
Thing is if lots of staff are taking holidays that means developer staff are also likely on holiday too - as is the marketing department, the managers, the support etc.... So chances are if you want to launch a new title or big content then late December/early January is not the best time from the business perspective.
I think it has more to do with them screwing up with the estimates on the amount of effort it'd be to combine the work from different development streams and also underestimating how immature Mortal Empires would be when they planned to release it.
So people have been data mining and it seems the Skaven free lord is going to be Tretch Craventail and High Elves will be getting Shadow Warriors at some point.
Kinda disappointed, I wanted Ikit Claw. Hopefully there's a paid DLC like Grim and the Grave/King and the Warlord and we get Ikit Claw in that.
There's also a long form writeup over on RPS giving an overview of how the faction works. It sounds excellent and right up my alley("omg stop turtling *****" was practically my nickname when I actually used to bother playing strategy games online ).
From what I've heard Arkhan starts with Vampire units. Looks like he starts with a unit of Crypt Ghouls, and his faction video also shows Dire Wolves and Fell Bats.
About 15 minutes of Tomb Kings. Faction overviews and starting locations, brief looks at skill trees, the very intricate research tree and rites. And the Mortuary Cult crafting system. Wow.
I did not expect Grand Hierophant whoever to start all the way over on the west edge of Dark Elf land. Not sure how that translates into Mortal Empires.
Or Khalida on the island below Lustria (though she goes home for Mortal Empires). It makes for some variety, but seems a little strange. The changes to upkeep and recruitment limitations are really interesting.
Hierotitans look amazing, animation wise.
Apparently Arkhan's ability to recruit vampire units comes from starting with one of the nine books of Nagash. So theoretically, one of the other lords can take it...
Somewhat annoyingly I finished my first vortex campaign last night, which gives me a few days where it's not worth starting anything new because the Tomb Kings are next week. 1st world problems.
I have a very specific question I hope someone can help with:
I don't fully understand how the maths works for this game so couldn't work out which is a better counter to enemy cavalry; Horned Ones or Cold Ones with spears. How much difference does the anti-large make?
I don't use cavalry for flank and rear charges much with the lizards, I just use them to intercept enemy cavalry.
Moosatronic Warrior wrote: I don't fully understand how the maths works for this game so couldn't work out which is a better counter to enemy cavalry; Horned Ones or Cold Ones with spears. How much difference does the anti-large make?
I don't know about the specific match up, but if you hover your mouse over the damage stat it'll tell you how much additional damage gets done to large targets, so you can figure out how much damage will be done vs various targets.
Moosatronic Warrior wrote: I don't fully understand how the maths works for this game so couldn't work out which is a better counter to enemy cavalry; Horned Ones or Cold Ones with spears. How much difference does the anti-large make?
I don't know about the specific match up, but if you hover your mouse over the damage stat it'll tell you how much additional damage gets done to large targets, so you can figure out how much damage will be done vs various targets.
I don't think I ever tried that! Sounds like it will be very handy, thanks. I'll probably have to test things in custom battles as the armor piercing difference and defensive stats will also have an effect. I was hoping someone would make my life easy and say "Horned ones obviously dumbass!" lol.
Bonus vs large/infantry gives a bonus to damage (distributed between armour piercing and non armour piercing damage at the same ratio as the unit's base weapon strength) and melee attack.
Melee attack is effectively weapon skill right? As in it's how likely you are to hit. I basically know nothing about the stats in this game despite putting hundreds of hours into TWW 1.
The base chance to hit is 40%, assuming equal weapon skill. Each point of melee attack is +1%, and each point of melee defense on the target is -1%.
So a Lord with melee attack 65 attacks a swordsman with melee defense 30, he gets a 40 + 65 - 30 = 75% chance to hit.
Some other info you might find useful:
Shields only work in a 60 degree front arc, not 180 like is commonly believed.
Armour works by reducing any incoming non-AP damage by a random percentage between your full and half your full armour value. If an attack dealing no AP damage (such as Tyrion's Sunfang ability) hits a Chaos Warrior with 100 armor, the damage is reduced by 50-100%, 75% on average. Accordingly it is not possible to have armour higher than 200 (which would offer immunity to non-AP damage) and using non-AP attacks against high armour targets like steam tanks is essentially pointless. Almost all attacks deal some degree of AP damage as well, though, which ignore the armor reduction entirely and just applies the damage.
I could go on and on about how charge bonus and exhaustion works, and so on, but that would make this post very long.
Here's a couple of practical tips though:
Use siege towers if you can. Ladders have an absurdly massive vigour cost which basically gaurantees instant exhaustion.
Rear charges not only hurt morale but a unit has -75% melee defense against attacks coming from behind them. Don't get rear charged.
The J button (IIRC) automatically pulls a unit backwards, out of melee. Useful for charging in again.
Using CTRL (again, IIRC - might have been ALT) for artillery orders them to attack an area rather than a unit, which actually improves accuracy.
Apologies for the late reply. That is all very useful information thank you!
The attack ground with artillery sounds like it could be a nice trick with Solar Enigines on netted units.
Edit: Having looked at the stats with a better understanding of what they mean it seems that horned ones do the same damage vs large as Cold ones with spears. Then its a choice between better defense on horned ones vs their increased cost and rampage.
Remember that bonus vs X improves melee attack, not just damage.
This is particularly relevant on Lords. Kholek, with his 500+ weapon strength, doesn't really care about 30ish extra damage on top of that. But the 30ish extra melee attack makes him maul giants and treemen all day long.
So, with Tomb Kings coming tomorrow, some tips based on various videos floating around:
1) Your first (free) hero in the early turns should almost always be a Necrotect. Not only do they support the constructs (which are pretty much locked as the best units in the roster), but popping one in the army (or taking a shot at a percentage chance for other actions, like damaging walls) unlocks the rite for the character Necrotect which colonizes ruins at level 3 for 'free' (other the 4K gold for the rite itself).
Considering the slow growth rates and limited income, this is vital. It may even be worth razing cities and starting over when you can cast the rite again, if it means getting a tier 3 rather than a tier 2 city.
2) Trade goods are a big deal for tomb kings, as you need them for awakening legendary units and crafting items. Don't neglect them (and take advantage of newly spawned level 3 cities...)
3) Getting an additional army quickly is vital, and putting them out to sea is probably the best way to gain gold, with constant fighting coming a close second. Just because you don't need cash for armies doesn't mean you don't have uses for it. Rites, mortuary cult and city building all depend on lots of gold rolling in. A couple skull islands will be necessary to fund growth and power.
4) Don't neglect rank and file units. They're terrible, but they're useful to tank damage and pop the various tiers of souls, triggering regen and the free ushabti unit. You always will want some. With too few, something else is going to take the damage, and even the constructs aren't invulnerable. Disbanding and replacing them may well be quite necessary, even if it costs skill ranks.
5) Pick your dynasty research based on what you're using or plan to use in the near future. First dynasty will help the rank and file units. Combine with the red skill line on lords, and you can get them up to the point of not completely trash.
This DLC is making realise why I abandoned Warhammer after AOS, Tomb Kings were my favourite race and they just vanished, feels great to play as them again!
If I understand correctly, Tomb Kings can raise and maintain units for free, but unit caps are tied to buildings. That's really cool, and I think its how most armies should work. Not the bit about free units and no maintenance, but the part about capping unit totals to buildings should definitely be something for all armies. It'd stop the thing where you just build a single region with Phoenix Guard, Swordmaster and Star Dragon factories and then just continually spam all those units to build one mega army after the next, while the rest of your empire just works as a gold farm.
On the flipside it cuts down their building diversity somewhat since now they do have to spam certain building types. Interestingly it makes expansion cities more important for them; they are not just a stop-gap on the way to expansion but an actual part of your army management.
With most other factions you'd retain a core of key production settlements; if you lose outer ones you could at least rebuild fresh high tier armies and move them out - whilst with Tomb Kings if you start losing settlements you start reducing the number of higher tier units you can retain.
Overread wrote: On the flipside it cuts down their building diversity somewhat since now they do have to spam certain building types. Interestingly it makes expansion cities more important for them; they are not just a stop-gap on the way to expansion but an actual part of your army management.
With most other factions you'd retain a core of key production settlements; if you lose outer ones you could at least rebuild fresh high tier armies and move them out - whilst with Tomb Kings if you start losing settlements you start reducing the number of higher tier units you can retain.
Expansion has other benefits besides building slots as well tied to TK mechanics. Cities and towns increase your research by 3-5%. So staying small and researching multiple dynasties will cripple your research rate if you don't expand. Gathering resources from expansion gives you more crafting options too. It makes for a very strategically offensive oriented faction. I like it so far, unit caps don't feel too restrictive because there is always some space to build an additional barracks. But like Sebster says, the factory provinces for armies make you focus the other on gold production, I always ran out of building options for gold farm provinces, here that's not a problem.
I started with Setra on normal. It's a bit too easy but still fun. I went east and south and then swept around to Arkhan. I just wiped him out and now I've sent 4 armies to Lustria to get the two books there. I'm getting involved in some bigger wars now but it doesn't batter because I have a huge empire so I can keep pumping out stacks. It's certainly an interesting campaign because you really don't care about losing units. I'm really liking the chariots too. They feel very rewarding to use. My only regret has been that I don't have any big constructs yet. I keep spending my gold on leveling up all the new settlements I get. I should probably save 3 turns and get some.
Aye I really love using the chariots as well, a unit you have to micro to get the best out of it; but so rewarding when they sweep behind the enemy lines and tear into their archers.
I think its also one of the few factions with a very early fast archer/siege hunting unit in the default line-up of purchase choices. Many other factions you have to wait a fair bit to get hold of fast moving units in order to chase archers.
Every video I watch of TK gameplay makes me excited to try them. I just hope that by the time I get around to picking up the expansion someone has managed to mod in a lore-friendly version of the Black Pyramid, instead of the weird Stargate/AoS-style floating space ship Creative Assembly went for.
Overread wrote: On the flipside it cuts down their building diversity somewhat since now they do have to spam certain building types. Interestingly it makes expansion cities more important for them; they are not just a stop-gap on the way to expansion but an actual part of your army management.
That's a fair point, but I never had any building diversity as it was. In my key province I had the full set of military buildings. Every other city everywhere else I had walls, buildings that gave me gold. If a specific province had a specific problem, like happiness or corruption, then I might build something to address that.
I don't know if other people did it differently, but I felt the game was always pushing me to playing this way. Building a single star dragon facility and then just spamming a constant stream of star dragons, supplemented by a stream of swordmasters and phoenix guard. It meant the late stage game got boring - I've now played with every single faction (other than Tomb Kings), but have only actually completed the game once. The early and mid-game is loads of fun, but once you have the ability to crank out high tier units only, then either you spam all powerful armies or you deliberately handicap youself.
Unit caps that increase as you expand and build more high tier cities seem the best answer to that issue. Its interesting that right now its just a way to make the Tomb Kings different, but I can see it massively improving the overall game if something similar was applied to all armies (though they would still have production costs and upkeep).
Overread wrote: On the flipside it cuts down their building diversity somewhat since now they do have to spam certain building types. Interestingly it makes expansion cities more important for them; they are not just a stop-gap on the way to expansion but an actual part of your army management.
That's a fair point, but I never had any building diversity as it was. In my key province I had the full set of military buildings. Every other city everywhere else I had walls, buildings that gave me gold. If a specific province had a specific problem, like happiness or corruption, then I might build something to address that.
I don't know if other people did it differently, but I felt the game was always pushing me to playing this way. Building a single star dragon facility and then just spamming a constant stream of star dragons, supplemented by a stream of swordmasters and phoenix guard. It meant the late stage game got boring - I've now played with every single faction (other than Tomb Kings), but have only actually completed the game once. The early and mid-game is loads of fun, but once you have the ability to crank out high tier units only, then either you spam all powerful armies or you deliberately handicap youself.
Unit caps that increase as you expand and build more high tier cities seem the best answer to that issue. Its interesting that right now its just a way to make the Tomb Kings different, but I can see it massively improving the overall game if something similar was applied to all armies (though they would still have production costs and upkeep).
That's more or less how I played it, too. When the empire got large enough I'd set up training bases in more convenient locations, or if a settlement had a resource that buffed certain units enough to bother, but still not much outside the general idea of "core region surrounded by numbers of comparatively ablative money-making and roadblock regions".
Every time I've deviated from that it's been more of a struggle, but not really in a difficult way, more just an annoying one that's tolerable, but noticeably more inefficient to my playstyle.
Hard to play Vampire Counts that way since they can only recruit locally. Kind of annoying when you need to slog your whole army back to Drakenhof (or wherever your military city is) to recruit anything better than Skeletons.
Voss wrote: VC can get a lot of surprisingly high tier units from battlefield sites. Even vargheist and varghulf.
I ran into this issue one of my TWW1 campaigns a while back. Streamrolled through to the VC area as Empire fairly early in the game, and suddenly they started pulling Terrorgheists and the like out of their arse from battlefield site recruitment.
Update: The base chance to hit was changed to 35% in TWH2, down from 40%, and the charge bonus duration was increased to 17 seconds (up from 15), fading linearly over its duration.
So my Arkhan campaign is winding down. It's been... sorta fun?
Building up the multiple cities to build multiple expensive high tier unit buildings is... rather a pain in the pelvic bone. Especially with the nerf to ocean treasure (at least for TK- skull islands are down to 3k from 10k), and the crappiness of the low tier units really slows things down in the mid game.
Arkhan's vampire units are... eh. Hexwraiths are fine, ghouls are OK (at least better than warriors/spears, and really good at specific targets). Dogs and bats are worse versions of TK units. But the big thing is they have no bonuses whatsoever. No research, no lord traits, and hexwraiths are 1 per tier 3 building.
As a hybrid lord, getting him to point of really useful is difficult, doubly so since he has no TK buff spells, and several of the Death spells are not very useful against undead (but great against the Brets and Empire you have to deal with starting out- his start is actually pretty easy, but ramps up quickly)
The big problem is the final battle. Books aren't a problem at all, his battle for the staff of nagash (which combos absurdly well with the tomb blade) is fun, but puzzling (Settra gives the staff of nagash to...skaven?). But the final battle is a full stack (including 2 hierotitans) lead by Khatep, a pair of divided stack lead by Khalida and a liche priest with 6 necro-knights) And then a full stack lead by Settra with three sphinxes, 2 catapults and a bunch of chariots and ushabti that start at the far end of the map after you've dealt with two armies. Yeah you get a couple reinforcements in the form of bats, ghouls and crypt horrors, and a few special powers but settra's fresh army of amazing stuff stacked up after a full battle is... rough. And both times I fought settra he seemed... fairly immune to damage. And just wandered out of combat with impunity.
I just don't have much of urge to pass 20-30 turns to build up cash to raise the cap for the good stuff.
Because the other side of the TK campaign is, well, a pretty big disconnect to everything else. No one cares about what's going on in the desert and the TK don't have much reason to care about things outside it. My wars were immediate neighbors, book based, or being dragged into trivial stuff by allies of convenience, with no follow up from the enemies I was at war with. They just peaced out after awhile without actually coming to fight. I secured the desert fairly early on and just wandered around for books and the quest battles - the tomb blade wasn't far (and near a book) and the staff and final battle are right around the Black Tower and Black Pyramid.
Rogue armies with Books also behave oddly. Two never moved, and the third just wandered near the vampire coast, but they don't seem to engage or attack anyone, just wait for you to come kill them. I think some AI coding protects them from being killed off (I expected they'd be passed off to whomever killed them).
Short version: They're fine to start, and once you've built up with a LOT of money and unlocked multiple high tier buildings, they're fine. But there is a huge hill to climb to get to that point, made of upwards of 100,000 gold minimum. (Tomb scorpion building is 6K, The two Sphinxes and Titan are individual 10K buildings, plus the cost of upgrading the city tiers, multiplied by 2-3 capital cities minimum, plus the growth time.
Interesting note- killing the dwarves early on was necessary- the capital I sieged down to attrition, the village (just the garrison) I fought outright, and that was rough. Catapult, 4 crossbow units, and a map with a single landbridge guarded by warriors and miners. No way to outflank, just chop through. Rough, and I can't imagine it going well at all later on.
A chaos/dark elf rogue army showed up, and I thought about attacking them. I've never seen an almost entirely red bar on the resolution estimate before. Against another hybrid chaos army (with a book) I just... bounced. That was ~turn 50, so I had very little beyond a single titan, but I did almost nothing to that army, even fighting manually. Though a low level lord and no magic didn't help.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I bought the campaign pack but have been struggling to get in to it. I think I've already played myself out on TW.
Was doing pretty well with Khalida in a mortal empires campaign. Smacked around everyone on my side of the mountains, ran over the orcs, karak zorn, and finally Queek and vassalized the Dune Kingdoms. Did her quest battle (which was fun) and... crash on the post-battle screen. May try the battle again tomorrow, but didn't feel like redoing it immediately (fun but long, and a little too easy).
Poked at Tretch in ME. Weird start position (Hotek's Column, smack in the middle of dark elf territory), and his bonuses are kind of... meh. But interesting skill tree and some great voice lines. Food is even more of a problem than it is for queek. There is one city down the coast that I can see that can actually produce food, and I'm already at zero. I hate this food mechanic so much.
The truly odd things the ME campaign seems a lot more optimized than the vortex campaign. Yeah, more factions so longer turn timer, but loading a save or going to or from battles/campaign map is a bit less beastly. I was hoping they'd improve load times with the dlc.
Been running various tests with a friend and the results are as always interesting. For some highlights: Tomb guard are about on par with stormvermin; skaven win the sword and shield fight, whereas tomb kings win the halberd fight a bit more decisively (but still slowly). Dragon princes firmly beat necropolis knights, and phoenix guard vs halberd TG is a fight the elves win without a single loss on large unit size! Biggest blowout seen in our testing so far. Durthu annihilates settra 1v1 - when on his sphinx settra can spam knockdown Durthu but he still loses by a very large margin, and even magic won't let him win.
I'm loving the Tomb King campaign structure, but man am I struggling to get my head around how Tomb Kings work in battles. I had assumed there'd be a resurrection spell in there somewhere and I'd be combining that with mass numbers to tank out enemies, but it doesn't play like that at all. There's all sorts of passive regen, but no direct regen spell that I can find anywhere. So instead I spam buffs and debuffs, to keep that regen running as much as possible. And the result isn't so much tanking the enemy as mutual attrition, where they run out of bodies before I do.
It's very different and I'm sure I'm doing it really badly right now, but maybe not? Maybe unlike other armies I'm just supposed to lose a bunch of guys in every battle and still call that a solid win?
-Loki- wrote: Hard to play Vampire Counts that way since they can only recruit locally. Kind of annoying when you need to slog your whole army back to Drakenhof (or wherever your military city is) to recruit anything better than Skeletons.
You don't take your best general back home to replenish a couple of elite units. You have a secondary general raise the troops back home, and march him out to your best commander to transfer the troops.
At least that's how I've done it.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ashiraya wrote: Update: The base chance to hit was changed to 35% in TWH2, down from 40%, and the charge bonus duration was increased to 17 seconds (up from 15), fading linearly over its duration.
Sorry for outdated info.
That's been really helpful, thanks. Particularly the bit about charge bonus. I was never sure exactly when I was supposed to pull my cavalry out when cycle charging, because I didn't know how long the charge bonus lasted.
sebster wrote: And the result isn't so much tanking the enemy as mutual attrition, where they run out of bodies before I do.
It's very different and I'm sure I'm doing it really badly right now, but maybe not? Maybe unlike other armies I'm just supposed to lose a bunch of guys in every battle and still call that a solid win?
Pretty much yes. Your baseline skeleton units exist pretty much only to pin enemies in place and die off in droves to fuel the Realm of Souls bar for your better units. If you chuck five blocks of Spearmen at the enemy and most of them die off, so what? Consolidate the survivors, disband any leftovers, and recruit the units back for free. Really everything that isn't Tomb Guard, a construct, a character, or one of the special regiments is utterly disposable.
It's actually quite impressive that the mechanics of the faction effectively require you to "roleplay" the uncaring and arrogant Tomb King that cares nothing for their servants to succeed
-Loki- wrote: Hard to play Vampire Counts that way since they can only recruit locally. Kind of annoying when you need to slog your whole army back to Drakenhof (or wherever your military city is) to recruit anything better than Skeletons.
You don't take your best general back home to replenish a couple of elite units. You have a secondary general raise the troops back home, and march him out to your best commander to transfer the troops.
At least that's how I've done it.
For most factions I just have multiple armies out on crusade and the "lesser" ones become recruitment armies, using global recruitment to get high tier units as they become available. I find it takes too many turns to send an army from "home" to the front line to be useful.
Vampire Counts I just find myself building new armies and my older armies end up low tier until a battlefield resurrection lets me build up some high tier units, it can be useful to intentionally have lots of battles in the same province to build up a nice raise dead pool. Though it's not too bad if you play VC and just start off by conquering the Empire because the distances you have to travel across the Empire aren't huge, it only takes a few turns to send an army from their start location out to the rest of the Empire. If you decide to venture further afield (south in to the Badlands or across the oceans) you can end up with armies 10+ turns worth of movement away from home from very early on.
Conquering the Empire as VC makes life so much easier though, because of the need to keep vampiric corruption high venturing in to areas where you can't build quickly and expand in to adjacent provinces quickly means you'll be fighting uprisings constantly.
sebster wrote: And the result isn't so much tanking the enemy as mutual attrition, where they run out of bodies before I do.
It's very different and I'm sure I'm doing it really badly right now, but maybe not? Maybe unlike other armies I'm just supposed to lose a bunch of guys in every battle and still call that a solid win?
Pretty much yes. Your baseline skeleton units exist pretty much only to pin enemies in place and die off in droves to fuel the Realm of Souls bar for your better units. If you chuck five blocks of Spearmen at the enemy and most of them die off, so what? Consolidate the survivors, disband any leftovers, and recruit the units back for free. Really everything that isn't Tomb Guard, a construct, a character, or one of the special regiments is utterly disposable.
It's actually quite impressive that the mechanics of the faction effectively require you to "roleplay" the uncaring and arrogant Tomb King that cares nothing for their servants to succeed
To add, the passive regen from the Nehekhara magic tree by itself is pretty useless. I tested it a bit but the regen on casting a spell is about 4 hitpoints per tick for a total of 60 hitpoints over 7 seconds. So you basically have to constantly keep spamming spells to make the passive regen worth it, as 60 hitpoints by themselves don't even tend to make up for the hitpoints lost in those 7 seconds alone.
Yodhrin wrote: Pretty much yes. Your baseline skeleton units exist pretty much only to pin enemies in place and die off in droves to fuel the Realm of Souls bar for your better units. If you chuck five blocks of Spearmen at the enemy and most of them die off, so what? Consolidate the survivors, disband any leftovers, and recruit the units back for free. Really everything that isn't Tomb Guard, a construct, a character, or one of the special regiments is utterly disposable.
It's actually quite impressive that the mechanics of the faction effectively require you to "roleplay" the uncaring and arrogant Tomb King that cares nothing for their servants to succeed
Yeah, I really like how different Tomb Kings feel in that sense. I just came from a High Elves campaign where any unit wiped out really hurt, and the game didn't have to tell me it happened because I was acutely aware of any unit was risking losing entirely. With Tomb Kings the game tells me a unit has been wiped, and my first thought is wondering where that happened, in case it means my line might be weak somewhere. The actual unit... meh
Disciple of Fate wrote: To add, the passive regen from the Nehekhara magic tree by itself is pretty useless. I tested it a bit but the regen on casting a spell is about 4 hitpoints per tick for a total of 60 hitpoints over 7 seconds. So you basically have to constantly keep spamming spells to make the passive regen worth it, as 60 hitpoints by themselves don't even tend to make up for the hitpoints lost in those 7 seconds alone.
That's what I'm doing now - spamming spells. Having learnt a bit about how Tomb Kings play and figuring out how I wanted to play them I restarted my campaign. This time I only took the low level buff spells with Settra, and in battle I spam those spells over and over again. They're good buffs, especially for their low cost, and it means the army keeps up a constant low level regen about half the time. It isn't much, but its really just an added benefit to those very nice buff spells.
In my other army I've got a liche lord with death, so they just run with the army wide regen and rely on direct damage spells. I like how it makes Settra's army play so differently to my other army.
That's actually the thing I'm really liking about Tomb Kings overall - my armies have real diversity. In every other army after some playing around it becomes clear what mix of high tier units makes for the best overall stack. Then I spam that stack over and over. With Tomb Kings the overall caps on unit types means if I want a lot of a certain unit in one army then I have to find something else to put in my other armies.
So right now I've got my infantry slogging army supported by archers, and I've got my cavalry army, both playing very differently. It's really cool.
Disciple of Fate wrote: To add, the passive regen from the Nehekhara magic tree by itself is pretty useless. I tested it a bit but the regen on casting a spell is about 4 hitpoints per tick for a total of 60 hitpoints over 7 seconds. So you basically have to constantly keep spamming spells to make the passive regen worth it, as 60 hitpoints by themselves don't even tend to make up for the hitpoints lost in those 7 seconds alone.
That's what I'm doing now - spamming spells. Having learnt a bit about how Tomb Kings play and figuring out how I wanted to play them I restarted my campaign. This time I only took the low level buff spells with Settra, and in battle I spam those spells over and over again. They're good buffs, especially for their low cost, and it means the army keeps up a constant low level regen about half the time. It isn't much, but its really just an added benefit to those very nice buff spells.
In my other army I've got a liche lord with death, so they just run with the army wide regen and rely on direct damage spells. I like how it makes Settra's army play so differently to my other army.
That's actually the thing I'm really liking about Tomb Kings overall - my armies have real diversity. In every other army after some playing around it becomes clear what mix of high tier units makes for the best overall stack. Then I spam that stack over and over. With Tomb Kings the overall caps on unit types means if I want a lot of a certain unit in one army then I have to find something else to put in my other armies.
So right now I've got my infantry slogging army supported by archers, and I've got my cavalry army, both playing very differently. It's really cool.
True, the spells are good, but you would barely notice if the passive regen was gone. On that note, the Tomb King lord resurrection skill at the end of the red line is a lot better for regeneration, it is pretty powerful as it provides a core group of units around the Tomb King that can stand and fight for a much longer time. Kind of strange that the TK has more powerful regeneration 'magic' than the Lich Priests as its the other way around lore wise.
I agree, the army diversity is amazing. Besides a core of Tomb Guard and Skeleton Archers I always run a diverse amount of units in each army, which makes battles a joy to play as its all different and not another clone war army. My dream would be that they implement the unit caps for other races, although with higher caps per building as you still need gold buildings, so the diversity gets pushed to others too. I think Tomb Kings are my favorite army to play mechanically by far, Lizardmen just edging out overall because it was my primary TT army, but TK have been done so much better.
I've been playing with a mod in my Mortal Realms campaign as Empire that carries over the unit limitations per buildings that the Tomb Kings had baked in upon release. Divided by the familiar(to WHFB fans) as Core/Special/Rare. Its adds a fun dynamic, in that the truly elite units are exceedingly rare and only get pride of place in my LL's armies. Everyone else has an army that are very much balanced combined arms forces, with a small spread of elite units amongst them. They look true to the lore as well. The AI seems to have the same limitations as well, although they still get spammy because thats what Total War AI does.
Its been the most fun I've had since Mortal Realms came out, because even deep into the campaign, as the majority of my armies are on the same level as lesser factions, it really makes you have to choose your battles.
Speaking of Mortal Realms, I think the campaign system should get a serious rework. It is fun, but it really lacks focus. An extra incentive to going exploring or conquering on other continents should be encouraged, much like the Norsca Monster Hunts from WH1. Every faction should get that mechanic in some fashion, whether it be an Errantry War, an ancient Grudge, or just colonialism, there should be something other than just doing it for kicks. Maybe even scripted events like the Chaos Invasions, but instead maybe a trade dispute with an Elf faction breaks out into war, or Dark Elf raids that can only be stopped by sailing up north and kicking some butt, a Waagh thats about to pour through Black Fire Pass. There are all sorts of possibilities that could add hours of gameplay and really make use of the expanded map.
I restarted the Tomb Kings campaign a few times but now I am finally almost done it. I ended up sticking with Khatep just because it was the most interesting in terms of gameplay. I won the final battle and now I need to march across the ocean and take the Black Pyramid.
nels1031 wrote: I've been playing with a mod in my Mortal Realms campaign as Empire that carries over the unit limitations per buildings that the Tomb Kings had baked in upon release. Divided by the familiar(to WHFB fans) as Core/Special/Rare. Its adds a fun dynamic, in that the truly elite units are exceedingly rare and only get pride of place in my LL's armies. Everyone else has an army that are very much balanced combined arms forces, with a small spread of elite units amongst them. They look true to the lore as well. The AI seems to have the same limitations as well, although they still get spammy because thats what Total War AI does.
Neat. What mod? I've wanted something like that for years since I found it odd having armies of knights and such or having early tier units become redundant and almost extinct in your fighting armies in each total war game. The mod probably wouldn't do it how I'd want but I'd still like a look at it.
SFO is trash. It buffs Chaos into the high heavens, which is cool and all, but then proceeds to nerf the factions that would otherwise give them a good fight (especially lizards are nerfed rather egregiously for no apparent reason) so chaos just becomes uncontested. In the latest patch they had to put a limit on the chaos high tier units, which you know, wouldn't be a problem if they just balanced the bloody things properly to begin with.
The devs seem far more obsessed with giving everyone access to 10-soldiers-or-smaller units of uber super saiyan ultra elites than making the core framework make sense. It all just smells of fanwank.
Tomb kings do seem to suffer rather heavily under SFO, I could have sworn the initial limit for armies in vanilla was 3, but in SFO they get... 1. Good luck defending and expanding with that!
Even Skaven with their cheap units can't get to 3 armies that fast. And even if they are all grunt troops, 3 TK armies in the first few turns would let them either strike out in two or three directions or use all three at once to overwhelm a good few settlements before any nation could get enough power together to counter.
I've been playing this game a bit and i started to notice if you have a good bunch of heroes, tooled up ambush for skaven lords and several armies to ambush on the move you can do fairly well in fights. Even if it's 3 armies vs your 3 armies you just lower mobility with warlocks and then just put all your armies near one of their's or even 3 when the time comes and then ambush attack one of them. Skaven can ambush attack enemies on the move and ambush skills can be boosted pretty high and seem to work even for ambush attack. Lightning strike seems to suck with skaven since each skaven army is a bit inferior to enemy armies but ambush attack move is like lightning strike +1 or +2 because the enemy is force deployed in a bad position and only with the army that got ambushed and it allows all your supporting armies to fight so you can basically fight 3 of your armies against one of theirs even if they had 3 armies in base to base with each other and would normally support each other. Not only that but if you don't move much when attacking an army you can retreat and attack move till you can ambush attack move the army so that's a thing.
Anyway it's not a sure fire thing as high level lords can just brush off your heroes but it's really helpful vs the lower level lord led armies.
I realize i may be considerably behind all of you but it's helped me sometimes so far and i thought i'd share some helpful tips with skaven. My game is still a slow game but it's going fairly well considering i'm facing 2 super powered enemies with increasingly irrelevant allies (power-wise) with the exception of warriors of chaos allies which are doing fairly well. Then there's the wood elf frenemy i have which mostly hurts high elves but has sometimes gotten on my nerves. I'm fighting the near entirety of the lizardmen armies on my own, chaos is just attacking and destroying settlements with no resistance and high elves are split fighting me and wood elves. It's funny because warriors of chaos even sent an army to sack cities around ulthuan and the high elves don't give a flying **** about it to even send an army after em.
So the new dlc reveal is coming up. Its pretty clear by now that its a lord pack with Alarielle and Hellebron, but its kinda a downer in content in units if the leaks are correct. 1 hero (handmaiden) and 2 infantry units (shadow warriors and the new female hybrid archer unit that was added before the end times) for HE and 1 lord (sorc lord), 1 infantry unit (sisters of slaughter) and 1 cav unit (doomfire warlocks) for DE. Some RoR too, but seemingly not the amount that game 1 got. Have to say, pretty sad to see a LP that is more barebones than either of the two we got for game 1 after waiting for almost 6 months.
Makes me worried for my Lizardmen if they only do 2 units, as they are missing at least 4 units, 3 which are quite different from what they have now.
Dark Elves get a Pegasus unit. Only one, but I am pretty impressed.
A have a sneaky suspicion that Helebron will get to summon an Avatar of Khaine in a similar fashion to the Ubshabti summon Tomb Kings get... well, it is more of a hope than a suspicion.
A have a sneaky suspicion that Helebron will get to summon an Avatar of Khaine in a similar fashion to the Ubshabti summon Tomb Kings get... well, it is more of a hope than a suspicion.
The chained secret thing is almost gauranteed to either be bloodwrack medusas (blood and chains? Sounds right) or kharibdyss (hydra reskin, very efficient).
I think the secret DE monster coming for DLC is a pretty cheap marketing ploy. Why not just tell people what they're buying. Lootbox roulette isn't a good color for CA. Rest looks decent, just sad that Lizardmen are going to end up waiting almost a full year for even a new flc lord.
I feel its poor sport trying to get people to pre order the dlc by dangling something in front of them that might be a unit. Knowing that the original response to the dlc was bad, the promise was added very late, as it wasn't included in the leak.
When they first let people know they did not say if it was part of the dlc or even a unit. Why not just let people know what they are buying instead of having them take a gamble?
So wait to see what it is if it’s a deal breaker? I don’t see why it’s worth getting worked up about. ‘People thought the pack was a bit light, lets add something to it as a surprise’. *gamers get torches and pitchforks over the surprise addition*
Well call me cynical, but its the kind of thing I think they should let people know before they put up a pre order. I am waiting it out, but I feel its bad practice and point out it is. People doing that is exactly why they had to add something in the first place.
It's doing exactly what its intended to do - got you all talking about it. A mystery generates far more discussion than actual knowing. So in the run up to launch its an ideal option!
You can bet that near launch the lets-play early birds will reveal it (or enough hints) and at launch itself it will be revealed
Evidently it is less than the focus of the pack, if you like the revealed contents you can know there is an additional feature you will be getting as 'bonus'.
It is a valid marketing tool, and nt dishonest.
It just behooves us to add up what we can see add blank for what we cannot and judge if we want to buy.
So long as you understood from day one that you are likely to need to drop the best part of £200 or equivalent on this game by the time its done.
It has been clear this game will be multi volume with additional DLC, right from the pre release of the first game. We know it was going to be big and CA wanted to cover pretty much all the published lore and likely more.
Commit yourself to pay up for the whole lot or give up ASAP and save your money, this game as broad as it is intended is getting more and more expensive as it gets bigger and more diverse, only you can decide if it is worth it.
Overread wrote: It's doing exactly what its intended to do - got you all talking about it. A mystery generates far more discussion than actual knowing. So in the run up to launch its an ideal option!
You can bet that near launch the lets-play early birds will reveal it (or enough hints) and at launch itself it will be revealed
I assume it won't be ready at launch. 2 weeks is an awfully short time to implement a whole new unit. More likely we will get a reveal with a later implementation date.
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Orlanth wrote: Evidently it is less than the focus of the pack, if you like the revealed contents you can know there is an additional feature you will be getting as 'bonus'.
It is a valid marketing tool, and nt dishonest.
I'm judging it based on the contents of the previous lord packs. Based on pricing its not a 'bonus' but a requirement to get it up to the level of the asking price. I lile the series and love warhammer, but I wasn't going the buy the dlc without this, because less content for the same price is not very consumer friendly imo.
They haven't used this tool before. Half of me thinks they kept it a mystery because they themselves wanted to keep their options open for whichever DE monster is easier to make with what is in game.
I suspect its made and ready go to they are just hiding it - keeping it secret for marketing purposes. Trying to shoe-horn in a new unit in a two weeks up to launch wouldn't be the best of ideas nor would it be to release a DLC with future content coming later.
Instead it will likely appear at launch its just a mystery now. If you trust CA then you can pre order without worry; if not then just wait for the launch. Pre order discounts normally run fairly well during a launch week also (esp on many 3rd party sites like Fanatical) and asides the discount on most lower end DLC is very minor (often only a few pennies not even a whole pound).
Overread wrote: I suspect its made and ready go to they are just hiding it - keeping it secret for marketing purposes. Trying to shoe-horn in a new unit in a two weeks up to launch wouldn't be the best of ideas nor would it be to release a DLC with future content coming later.
Instead it will likely appear at launch its just a mystery now. If you trust CA then you can pre order without worry; if not then just wait for the launch. Pre order discounts normally run fairly well during a launch week also (esp on many 3rd party sites like Fanatical) and asides the discount on most lower end DLC is very minor (often only a few pennies not even a whole pound).
I mean the fact that they call it post release content and don't include it in the info on what will release on the 31st says a bit. There is no confirmation of it being a unit or releasing on the 31st. In fact, the community manager Grace stated the secret won't come on the 31st.
Grace_CA
it's definitely after the 31st. it's not on release day
Grey Templar wrote: i just wanna know when the freaking Ogres are gonna get added?
Third game. They're way off the eastern edge of the map for the ME campaign, and no place at all in the vortex campaign.
Rather than a lot of dlc for this one, I'd rather they got right on three, which will hopefully focus on Daemons, ogres and chaos dwarves. (Maybe Kislev to round things out?)
And hopefully daemons as four separate god themed armies rather than the large chunk approach for daemons of chaos, the 'universal army but not' we saw in army books.
No idea how they'll get a coherent campaign out of that, though. The way they sliced up the factions is a little odd, and there isnt a major protagonist/victim faction leftover for game three.
But the ME equivalent could easily stretch to the ogres' mountains.
Ogre tribes occasionally migrate to the old world. They could be like chaos and have no settlements. There is plenty of ability for them to be in the game right now.
They could of course. But its incredibly unlikely they add them now as game 3 is going to add their homeland. They could have added Lizardmen or Dark Elves to game 1 with lore justification.
Also I hope they add Kislev. It would be nice to play the first bulwark against chaos instead of elector count daycare for a change.
The chatter in the period between two's official announcement and when it was released was that the third game would focus on the four Chaos Powers. I'm not sure where that leaves the Ogres, though. And of course that chatter is public chatter, so it's not necessarily endorsed by CA.
There is a big chunk of land off the eastern edge of the map. It's questionable how much is actually out there, but it does exist. The Ogres, Chaos Dwarves, and some Skaven settlements fill the area out. And adding it would put in a huge new complication for the Dwarves (who currently start the game secure in the knowledge that no one will attack them from the east).
I don't if anybody remembers Medieval Total War2, but anybody who does might recall the Mongol and Timurid factions. They didn't start the game in play, instead they showed up at random times on the eastern edge of the map with massive armies.
Ogres could be a similar thing, and if you chose them as a player faction you just start the game having shown up. And they could use the Horde mechanic that Chaos uses, with maybe the option to settle in settlements if desired. Which is how Horde mechanics worked in Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion where the Horde mechanic was first introduced into the game system. Certain factions could choose to abandon their last settlement and become a horde, or would be forced to if they lost their last settlement, and if they conquered a new settlement they had the option to settle and revert to normal mechanics or just sack the place and continue on.
I don't if this would really complicate things for the Dwarf faction though. They're already facing enemies on 3 sides pretty much to begin with, especially on the new map.
Eumerin wrote: The chatter in the period between two's official announcement and when it was released was that the third game would focus on the four Chaos Powers. I'm not sure where that leaves the Ogres, though. And of course that chatter is public chatter, so it's not necessarily endorsed by CA.
That early Russian leak of the world map was accurate. If you look at ME the eastern part seems to already exist, just blocked off. Its unlikely CA will go further north. Plus if it is 4 chaos factions they still need around 2 race packs so Ogres are certainly coming at some point.
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Grey Templar wrote: I don't if anybody remembers Medieval Total War2, but anybody who does might recall the Mongol and Timurid factions. They didn't start the game in play, instead they showed up at random times on the eastern edge of the map with massive armies.
Ogres could be a similar thing, and if you chose them as a player faction you just start the game having shown up. And they could use the Horde mechanic that Chaos uses, with maybe the option to settle in settlements if desired. Which is how Horde mechanics worked in Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion where the Horde mechanic was first introduced into the game system. Certain factions could choose to abandon their last settlement and become a horde, or would be forced to if they lost their last settlement, and if they conquered a new settlement they had the option to settle and revert to normal mechanics or just sack the place and continue on.
I don't if this would really complicate things for the Dwarf faction though. They're already facing enemies on 3 sides pretty much to begin with, especially on the new map.
You could have said like the Warriors of Chaos They use the same Timurid/Mongol delay mechanic until around turn 100.
As for Ogres, the horde and settled approach would be great for their semi nomadic lifestyle. But they would probably have some penalty build in to force you to use it if they go for that. I don't know if they are going for that though. It would have been perfect for Orcs too.
As for Dwarfs, they will be fine, their troops are good enough to fight off eastern factions by the time they can realistically reach them.
I seriously doubt they'd add ogres to TW2 though, as they're way off the map for the vortex campaign.
They're adding norsca out of obligation (despite the programing nightmare they created for themselves) as the promised to bring over all the tw1 races, but their focus is not the mortal empires mode.
Norsca isn't just out of obligation; the whole structure of the Warhammer TW games is that each content you buy carries over. IT's what's allowed them to split the game in an effective main game and then two stand alone releases thereafter.
They've got to have Norsca along with the other races otherwise it would demolish potential sales of Warhammer 3; esp as TW Warhammer 3 should, in theory, have more sales since its the final chapter and any who have sat out of buying Warhammer 2 would be more likely to jump in then and get Warhammer 3 (and pick up 2 at discount - esp if 2goes the same way as 1 and gets into humble bundle and the like).
Norsca was a mistake in how they added them into the first game; but then again they've never done game to game DLC cross-overs like this before; so there's likely been a learning curve of things they didn't expect going on. If anything its probably helped them in preparation for Warhammer 3
That sounds exactly like obligation to me. (Though i doubt it would have terribly ruinous effects on three)
The lesson was to have more communication between parallel development teams. The norsca team made a lot of weird work arounds to get norsca to function, and the TW2 scrapped and created an entirely new database structure. The two sets of changes couldn't be reconciled.
Hopefully three will focus on optimization rather than reworking the software at the base level , so whatever remaining dlc for 2 doesnt run into the same problem.
Ogre are a core army so they will be implemented, somehow.
Game 3 will be focused on daemons, and likely as four factions, but also at marked mortal units, also likely segregated.
Factional infighting will need to be central to daemon play as the greatest threats to the four chaos gods are each other, not the mortal factions.
Ogres may be central to the third game along with the eastern map, or they may be DLC. Chaos Dwarfs are likely because they are inbetween.
Kislev and Araby are maybes at best, though I would like to see both.
Should Ca and SEGA want even more money they could extend the map further include Cathay, Ind and Nippon and the Chaos horse tribes. This could go as far as a fourth main game, this way with much of the work done already by adding skulls at al to historical and quasi historical units.
I would love to see four main games done in this manner, the game would then cover the entire Warhammer world, they could even have the west an eastern map edges meet. We have no scale of the not-Pacific, there is no Oz, Nippon might be close to Lustria, allowing for clan Eshins travels this might even be likely.
The big question is how can they go on from 3. Whilst they could do a 4th with the same engine or do more DLC factions and add in the Amazon, Nippon and others that GW never really developed (or in the case of Araby, only in Warmaster).
After that I'd expect their name game to be Sigmar. It fits with the "end of the world" type message they've got in their own game and it also ties in nicely with what GW is doing now. For all the love of the old world it makes sense to follow through and come into Sigmar. It also means that they can redo the game engine and restart the pattern of armies being released bit by bit - otherwise they'd have more trouble doing a Warhammer Total War MK2 with less armies in the first version (gamers have this irrational expectation that each game in a series will always have more than the previous even if the new game reworks things in such a way that each army added is a lot more work to achieve)
A total warhammer 4 would involve a new license agreement. A reboot would be more likely, and unless they magic up really strong data from... somewhere, from a GW perspective linking it to AoS with a new Total Sigmar game is a better business decision.
Walk the TW fan base to sigmar through a new game, and hook them up to the current product line. Yes, they would lose people. But continually referencing their ex-product line makes little marketing sense.
Nippon and Cathay (and Araby) are really unlikely as GW owns basically nothing. Its all pure historical expies that they currently avoid like the plague, as they can't put meaningful IP claims on any of it.
Using existing assets from CA's historical titles makes this worse from GW's perspective, not better. These are licensed titles after all
Overread wrote: The big question is how can they go on from 3. Whilst they could do a 4th with the same engine or do more DLC factions and add in the Amazon, Nippon and others that GW never really developed (or in the case of Araby, only in Warmaster).
After that I'd expect their name game to be Sigmar. It fits with the "end of the world" type message they've got in their own game and it also ties in nicely with what GW is doing now. For all the love of the old world it makes sense to follow through and come into Sigmar. It also means that they can redo the game engine and restart the pattern of armies being released bit by bit - otherwise they'd have more trouble doing a Warhammer Total War MK2 with less armies in the first version (gamers have this irrational expectation that each game in a series will always have more than the previous even if the new game reworks things in such a way that each army added is a lot more work to achieve)
They could release another full trilogy just detailing the parts of the world that GW barely touched - Araby, Ind, Kuresh, Cathay, Nippon, Elithis, and the Dragon Isles all have room for at least one and in most cases several factions. Also, for a company until now largely focused on historical games, Sigmar makes a lot less sense to me than doing Time of Legends stuff, maybe in the style of their "more focused" format like the new Thrones of Britannia game - Rise of Nagash in pre-mummified Nehekara, the proper "Age of Sigmar" ie Warhammer Fantasy: Dark Ages, the War of Vengeance for a non-human-centric storyline, the Black Plague in 1111-IC. If they do decide to carry on making TWWH games, there's a couple of decades worth of material there easy.
Also, Age of Sigmar as an IP seems like a poor fit with the Total War formula. Its deliberate lack of meaningful boundaries & borders and nebulous factions as opposed to a defined map on a human-comprehensible scale and strongly characterised nation states mean they would essentially have to create all the specific subfactions and places themselves from scratch in the same way ordinary fans have to if they want WHF-esque levels of detail, or else radically depart from the things that make Total War games Total War games. AoS seems like an IP much better suited to Dawn of War 2-style RPG/RTS hybrids where your dudes can be the Big Damn Heroes, rather than a low-complexity grand strategy overlay feeding into pseudo-medieval huge army-clashing tactical battles.
That said, I don't expect they'd be allowed to continue after the third game anyway unless they were willing to AoS-ify things. GW may be completely uncoordinated when it comes to cross-promotion, but even they can't have failed to notice how successful the TWWH games have been, and given the attitudes on display from their writers and full-tilt backing of AoS with the 2.0 update, they won't want WHF squatting at the side providing an alternative.
Sigmar also works to CA's benefit; the rejuggling of all the factions means that they've got a lot more potential to re-release the armies for the game without the "OMG why does this AoS 1 game have only 4 factions - the original game had like 50 I should have 50 in this gme at full price" backlash (sure it will still happen but it will mostly be limited to just hte trolls).
Even if Sigma as a game isn't trying to do rank and file the setting still has rank and file armies; just like how Warhammer 40K doesn't have legions on the table even though the setting has them in most wars. So they can still keep rank and file and the overall asthetic.
Heck who knows GW could be smart and bundle it with a "Sigmar Rank and File" expansion rules set with movement trays with round slots in them for putting the models in
Why would they need to re-release existing factions though? Make a new self-contained trilogy in the eastern hemisphere, Grand Cathay as the Empire-style "baseline" humans and then go hog-wild with all the crazy stuff hinted at here & there in the background; feral Lizardmen tribes from the Dragon Isles, the blood-gorged Naga Queens of Kuresh and their legions of Snakemen, the fabled myriad beastmen of Ind, the Elvish nation on the Lost Isles of Elithis(tap the old Sea Elf lore?), replace the Norsca concept with that faction of Marauders I forget the name of that are basically the Mongols, etc etc.
If people accepted the format the first time around, I don't see why they wouldn't a second, given it would again be a whole new campaign map that would grow over the course of the three games and could have its own Mortal Empires mode. Hell you never know, by the time they were done with a second trilogy it might even be possible for desktop PCs to handle a campaign with the entire Warhammer World map without melting into slag
The thing with AoS isn't so much that "rank & file" battles don't happen, and more that the impression I keep getting from it is they're essentially just backdrops for whatever the Big Damn Hero protagonists are doing, much moreso than WHF. Like with the "game world" itself, the focus seems to be either much narrower ie on the BDH's specifically, or much broader ie on the grand strategy/pronouncements of gods kind of scale. That works fine when the whole point is to leave a big empty space in the middle that the players can fill up themselves with their own personal army backgrounds and campaign maps, but less so for a videogame series which mechanically fits right into that relatively undefined middle space.
Doing the parts of the world GW barely touched (and that was decades ago) doesn't make any sense for licensed product.
total warhammer not!Japan and not!China has no value as a licensed product. GW would be 'licensing' basically nothing and CA would be doing all the work themselves- they'd be better off doing their own non-IP eastern fantasy game. The total war franchise sells enough on its own merits.
Voss wrote: Doing the parts of the world GW barely touched (and that was decades ago) doesn't make any sense for licensed product.
total warhammer not!Japan and not!China has no value as a licensed product. GW would be 'licensing' basically nothing and CA would be doing all the work themselves- they'd be better off doing their own non-IP eastern fantasy game. The total war franchise sells enough on its own merits.
That'll be why they did their own fantasy wargame rather than licensing one? They're paying for the license for two reasons - to appeal to hardcore fans of WHF present or lapsed, and to tap the name recognition for extremely casual past fans and folk who've heard of "the warhammers" in passing. The first group would be overjoyed to see the parts of the setting GW neglected fleshed out and explored, and the latter are attracted to the name, tone, and aesthetic cues not specific factions or locations. Would it sell as many copies as the "play the army you used to collect" first trilogy? Probably not, but the idea it wouldn't sell enough to justify the license - and recall that GW licenses seem to be cheap enough that any shovelware dev who wants one can get it - is a complete nonsense.
Orlanth wrote: I really hope Alith Anar is a warband lord, it would make a fun addition and make him very special.
It makes sense for that character. Alith Anar should not have a starting settlement, he should have no settlements at all, that is for other Asur.
Did you read End Times: Khaine?
Alith Anar apparently had a massive encampment/settlement in the Shadowlands. Soldiers, families, the whole shebang.
Encampment yes. Look what happens when you upgrade a Chaos Lord to level 5 encampment.
Lots of infrastructure but entirely mobile.
In game terms, I don't know what that means. I just saw the bit about Alith Anar and wanted to make something clear.
He revealed his 'domain' to Teclis during the events of Khaine.
End Times: Khaine pg 115 wrote: 'Nagarythe was ever the least populous of the Ten Kingdoms' said Alith Anar. 'Now look at it.' The Shadow King swept his hand across the valley below, and the mist parted. To Teclis' surprise, it was thick with campfires and tents. They stretched as far as the eye could see, nestling in old ruins and tangled gorse. 'I had no idea.'
The Shadow King was a major power, but he kept it hidden from prying eyes. The various warbands of Shadow Warriors were the only thing he ever provided to others or that they saw.
Voss wrote: Doing the parts of the world GW barely touched (and that was decades ago) doesn't make any sense for licensed product.
total warhammer not!Japan and not!China has no value as a licensed product. GW would be 'licensing' basically nothing and CA would be doing all the work themselves- they'd be better off doing their own non-IP eastern fantasy game. The total war franchise sells enough on its own merits.
That'll be why they did their own fantasy wargame rather than licensing one? They're paying for the license for two reasons - to appeal to hardcore fans of WHF present or lapsed, and to tap the name recognition for extremely casual past fans and folk who've heard of "the warhammers" in passing. The first group would be overjoyed to see the parts of the setting GW neglected fleshed out and explored, and the latter are attracted to the name, tone, and aesthetic cues not specific factions or locations. Would it sell as many copies as the "play the army you used to collect" first trilogy? Probably not, but the idea it wouldn't sell enough to justify the license - and recall that GW licenses seem to be cheap enough that any shovelware dev who wants one can get it - is a complete nonsense.
Not sure what you're on about. They did total warhammer because it made sense to them and GW financially. But they did it for actual warhammer stuff- empire and vampire counts and high elves and all that established and detailed stuff. Plus a bit of a weird kuldge for norsca.
You are suddenly talking about areas and armies GW never developed - Cathay and Nippon and etc. There is no reason for a license agreement for CA to develop those factions from scratch, because other than a couple throw away lines in Ogre Kingdoms or some really terrible and dated 3rd edition ally lists, that's what they would have to do. *That* makes no sense- developing the background, the art, the themes, the unit designs, the way units work, what they look like, and all that would cost them money and time (also known as 'more money'). Plus it's 2018. They can't do what GW did in 1987 and just churn out some vaguely racist stereotypes for a handful of units and call it a day (huzzah for kamikaze suicide bombers).
As much as I would love to see CA continue working on Warhammer games for another trilogy I'm not sure it would ever happen. Chances are that once the third game is done they will start shopping around for another IP to try out, maybe Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings? Sure the IP would cost a lot more to acquire but they would be expanding their customer base even further.
That is what I would do in their case anyway just from observing how often other video game franchises tend to stagnate and become dull after the fourth or fifth instalment unless they drastically change something about it.
Lord of the Rings has missed its sweet spot and its sad that CA never got the Battle for Middle Earth* licence - those game were nice but never on the same scale as TW. Right now I think that Middle Earth would be very expensive to buy and won't have the film-tie-in bonus of huge free marketing for the company.
Game of Thrones is also approaching that point of diminishing returns, though if CA could get the contract and release during the last season they'd be ok. Game of Thrones would be interesting as it would be a very low fantasy game compared to Warhammer
The other name thrown around is Malazan, which is even more magically nuts than Warhammer - but at the same time is less well known (its well known in fantasy circles but not to the same degree as Warhammer or Game of Thrones to the casual market).
I still don't forgive EA basically advertising the first game as being TW scale for ages and ages and ages and then releasing something that was not only far smaller, but had the cheek to have resource points shared by all factions so on an 8 player map you ahd fewer units than on a 2 player map per side!)
So what factions are actually left at this stage that aren't part of the Nippon/Cathay end of things to add? Just off the top of my head, there's:-
-Ogre Kingdoms
-Daemons of all flavours
-Luthor Harkon and the Vampire Coast Zombies
-Chaos Dwarfs
-potentially an expanded Kislev
-Dogs of War/Border Princes/Southern Realms (good old Borgio the Besieger and so on)
-Pirates of Sartosa
-Hungs and Kurgan
If that's the case, it would make sense for the next big expansion to focus on Harkon/Sartosa/Dogs of War, to keep it relatively Vortex centred. Then they can head east to do up the Chaos Dwarves, Daemons and Ogre Kingdoms, and finish off with an expansion covering a few more Northland Marauder tribes.That would cover everything bar the odd one out Amazonia/Cathay/other stuff never really expanded on (and which most people don't really know or care about).
CA doesn't really have the toolkit to make a GoT game. Most of what made GoT interesting wasn't the endless huge battles which is what TW boils down to, which fits LotR and WH. The AI doesn't do diplomacy at all really, how many times haven't mortal enemies in the WH lore teamed up to fight the player? LotR has a great Medieval 2 mod that still holds up relatively well.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kanluwen wrote: The Southlands stuff for Lizardmen; they didn't have Saurus if I remember correctly but had phalanxes of more warlike Skinks.
Yes there are more red crested Skinks because Saurus are quite rare there. But for gane 3 they could include the Dragon Isles, feral Skinks and Kroxigors without Slann or Saurus leadership. Unlikely they will include anything like that though. Best hope is that the Lizardmen lordpack will bring the Prophet of Sotek and Skink Oracles for a Skink focussed armies. Like what Skarsnik did for Goblins in game 1.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ketara wrote: So what factions are actually left at this stage that aren't part of the Nippon/Cathay end of things to add? Just off the top of my head, there's:-
-Ogre Kingdoms
-Daemons of all flavours
-Luthor Harkon and the Vampire Coast Zombies
-Chaos Dwarfs
-potentially an expanded Kislev
-Dogs of War/Border Princes/Southern Realms (good old Borgio the Besieger and so on)
-Pirates of Sartosa
-Hungs and Kurgan
Meh, its only the best because they cut out a lot of things and reduced terrible mechanics like realm divide and the inevitable AI world team up. No more marriage, region trading or even vassals besides some specific factions. Its pretty barebones, not on the level for a GoT style campaign.
Even so, Empire factions still rather die than confederate with the player faction.
True, but in the end there is just a limit to how far CA can take a mechanic bolted on to facilitate the tactical battle mode (one which basically shuts down when you get too big or play on higher difficulties). What GoT would need is CK2 and the tactical side of TW to combine.
A GoT total war game is mostly going to be about humans beating up other humans on a fantasy land mass. The easiest way would probably be just to develop Medieval 3 and build a GoT standalone on top of that.
The upcoming Three Kingdoms game might be a good indication on them improving the political side of TW. Curious to see what they do.
I think the key is that Total War is about the battles and war. The games have never had strong diplomatic options like Crusader Kings series games have, because TW really shines when you're getting into war, rather than spending ages in the overveiw map.
Crusader Kings is the total opposite; battles are actually dead boring because they are purely a number crunch, but the poltiical scene is where the complexity and action is.
To my mind the two games approach the same concept of nation ruling from different ends. I think to pair the two together might sound fantastic, but in practical reality it might end up just too complicated to be fun. Having to balance your politics, family breeding, war goals, army conscription and building, army deployment and battles etc..... I think it would overwhelm many players and push the game very much into a niche of its own.
In addition it runs a higher risk of making a game where winning becomes a very complex goal and you either have to juggle lots of things or keep things simple and often play many games similar to get to a stable position.
It would be nice to see TW expand on diplomacy a little more, but honestly not vast amounts. More complex doesn't always mean more fun.
Orlanth wrote: I really hope Alith Anar is a warband lord, it would make a fun addition and make him very special.
It makes sense for that character. Alith Anar should not have a starting settlement, he should have no settlements at all, that is for other Asur.
Did you read End Times: Khaine?
Alith Anar apparently had a massive encampment/settlement in the Shadowlands. Soldiers, families, the whole shebang.
Encampment yes. Look what happens when you upgrade a Chaos Lord to level 5 encampment.
Lots of infrastructure but entirely mobile.
In game terms, I don't know what that means. I just saw the bit about Alith Anar and wanted to make something clear.
He revealed his 'domain' to Teclis during the events of Khaine.
End Times: Khaine pg 115 wrote:
'Nagarythe was ever the least populous of the Ten Kingdoms' said Alith Anar. 'Now look at it.'
The Shadow King swept his hand across the valley below, and the mist parted. To Teclis' surprise, it was thick with campfires and tents. They stretched as far as the eye could see, nestling in old ruins and tangled gorse.
'I had no idea.'
The Shadow King was a major power, but he kept it hidden from prying eyes. The various warbands of Shadow Warriors were the only thing he ever provided to others or that they saw.
Yes. Alith Anar was worthy of having a major game faction built around him. It is entirely justifiable in the fluff for players to have 'stacks' of Naggarythe warbands with developed 'settlement' infrastructure similar in its way to what Archaon & Co can enjoy.
Overread wrote: I think the key is that Total War is about the battles and war. The games have never had strong diplomatic options like Crusader Kings series games have, because TW really shines when you're getting into war, rather than spending ages in the overveiw map.
Crusader Kings is the total opposite; battles are actually dead boring because they are purely a number crunch, but the poltiical scene is where the complexity and action is.
To my mind the two games approach the same concept of nation ruling from different ends. I think to pair the two together might sound fantastic, but in practical reality it might end up just too complicated to be fun. Having to balance your politics, family breeding, war goals, army conscription and building, army deployment and battles etc..... I think it would overwhelm many players and push the game very much into a niche of its own.
In addition it runs a higher risk of making a game where winning becomes a very complex goal and you either have to juggle lots of things or keep things simple and often play many games similar to get to a stable position.
It would be nice to see TW expand on diplomacy a little more, but honestly not vast amounts. More complex doesn't always mean more fun.
Yes, CK2 would possibly make it to complex. But you can still take a good amount of inspiration for a GoT version. With the current system it wouldn't be GoT as much as mild fantasy Middle Ages TW.
Automatically Appended Next Post: So, some more leaks? If legit it looks like the TK are getting the Bone Giant with a bow at least. As a TK fan I'm happy if its true because its a pretty classic unit, but the TK roster is already pretty complete, wouldn't there have been other races more in need of another unit?
There's a few notes on other fixes in there so it might just be optimizing wasn't on the cards for this specific release. Remembering that all the Regiments and Norsca had to be remade its quite a lot of content in this update already.
It might also be that the team for optimising is now looking forward and working on Warhammer 3
Knight wrote: It's out! The sword of Khaine is no joke.
Maybe. I'm on turn 24 of a Norsca campaign, and it's already changed hands 4 or 5 times. No idea what's going on over there, but it seems pretty funny.
I'm also the last Norscan tribe standing already, except for the Mung (which amuses me that they're considered 'Norscan,' but whatever)
I'm really enjoying playing a Vortex campaign with Alith Anar, starting in the middle of DE territory makes for quite an intense start and I also have Queek razing all my towns as he is too fast to catch up to!
It makes a nice change having a ranged legendary lord and my army consists mostly of Lothern Sea Guard and archers so the enemy army is usually shredded to pieces before they even reach me.
There seems to be a lot of new content for Vampire Coast – how did all this come about? We’ve been fascinated with the Vampire Coast ever since our research into Lustria for the Eye of the Vortex campaign which included reading through old Warhammer Chronicles books and White Dwarfs.
As with all the Races from the Warhammer Fantasy Battles world that we translate into digital form for Total War: WARHAMMER, we start off by constructing what the unit roster should look like and how they will play differently to others in the game. For this we used those original references, along with some exciting creatures and characters from the Monstrous Arcanum book and Dreadfleet game, to create the core building blocks. Working closely with Games Workshop, we fleshed out the roster to include a host of ghoulish creatures and monsters that we would be reanimating from the depths of the Warhammer Fantasy seas.
We also took a similar approach with designing the campaign mechanics for the race, leaning on the resource material that we had and taking inspiration from other Warhammer army books, Dreadfleet and novels which spoke about the nautical elements of the Warhammer Fantasy Battles world. We were of course inspired by the real-world history of piracy too, dipping into its themes throughout the campaign when developing the nautical features and content, but always dialling it up, adapting it and making sure to remain true to the lore and the Vampire Coasts vampiric undead origins.
Looks amazing! Seems like we will be getting a different type of quest mechanic like the Tomb Kings as well which is good, I like the idea of sailing round looking for trinkets.
I wonder how Sartosa will fit into this? Surely it is no coincidence that they added the city to Mortal Empires, maybe they will get a smaller roster of units based off the Vampire Coast, if not it should make it a lot easier for modders now!
It is a shame we won't get to see any naval battles however, granted the only one I tried in a TW game (Rome 2) was awful but it still seems like something a pirate faction would really need.
Love all the unique units they have created, as a fan of lots of artillery I think I will be getting quite a few of those massive cannons...
Looks fantastic and notice we can now do land style fights on Black Ark ships! (even if you don't own the dlc). In addition its amazing to see CA get such a big creative free-hand with this faction. I don't recall seeing anything that has been shown besides the half undead monster thing from Forgeworld that makes an appearance. The rest appears totally home-grown by CA (although likely based on GW material that never made it into production).
A big surprise and great to see they look like they are going to be a REALLY fun faction to play with!
The army looks really fun to play. A few re-skins it seems for things such as the giant crab, but a lot of it seems to feel fresh. I like how this can kind of make sense in the fluff as well.
A bit apprehensive though. It's awesome that CA is adding more toys and can possibly circumvent a lack of new factions by making their own, but I wonder if this might get out of hand if they continue down this road.
The ship golem thing looks like a Necrofex Colossus from Monstrous Arcanum and to quote part of the text
"...from the wreckage of the "Iron Fetter", a great galleas hulk used as a floating prison, after it sank in a terrible storm he had summoned, and articulated it with the bodies of the drowned."
The Curse of the Vampire Coast Campaign Pack contains:
4 new Legendary Lords
New Lore of Magic: The Lore of the Deep
New roster: command towering constructs, ghastly pincered sea-beasts, ghoulish horrors and musket-wielding piratical zombie hordes in battle!
A suite of all-new campaign mechanics:
Treasure Maps: Find treasure maps and dig for booty
Ship Building: Upgrade each Legendary Lord’s unique ship
Infamy: Rule the waves to become the most infamous pirate of all
Pirate Coves: Establish hidden enclaves in your enemies settlements
Fleet Offices: Reward your undead Admirals with positions of power to improve their loyalty
Pieces of Eight: Sail the seas to unlock eight new Regiments of Renown
New battle mechanics:
More Powder: Use your Heroes to keep your gun-lines topped up with ammo
Extra Powder: While black powder is plentiful, each unit will benefit from a variety of missile-related buffs
Also, a form of naval combat has been added, though it's not the real thing. You'll have the option of disembarking your armies on a nearby island, and fighting there. Or if one of the ships is a black ark, you can fight on the black ark itself. By a strange coincidence, a mod was apparently released just last week which more or less does the same thing, and CA included a link to the mod in the FAQ.
SkavenLord wrote: A bit apprehensive though. It's awesome that CA is adding more toys and can possibly circumvent a lack of new factions by making their own, but I wonder if this might get out of hand if they continue down this road.
What exactly do you mean by this? I for one am most excited for the factions that never saw the light of day in miniature form (interested to see if they ever flesh out an Araby faction). CA seem to take the lore pretty seriously and probably run everything by GW before they make anything.
The Curse of the Vampire Coast Campaign Pack contains: 4 new Legendary Lords New Lore of Magic: The Lore of the Deep New roster: command towering constructs, ghastly pincered sea-beasts, ghoulish horrors and musket-wielding piratical zombie hordes in battle! A suite of all-new campaign mechanics: Treasure Maps: Find treasure maps and dig for booty Ship Building: Upgrade each Legendary Lord’s unique ship Infamy: Rule the waves to become the most infamous pirate of all Pirate Coves: Establish hidden enclaves in your enemies settlements Fleet Offices: Reward your undead Admirals with positions of power to improve their loyalty Pieces of Eight: Sail the seas to unlock eight new Regiments of Renown New battle mechanics: More Powder: Use your Heroes to keep your gun-lines topped up with ammo Extra Powder: While black powder is plentiful, each unit will benefit from a variety of missile-related buffs
Also, a form of naval combat has been added, though it's not the real thing. You'll have the option of disembarking your armies on a nearby island, and fighting there. Or if one of the ships is a black ark, you can fight on the black ark itself. By a strange coincidence, a mod was apparently released just last week which more or less does the same thing, and CA included a link to the mod in the FAQ.
Sorry, four legendary lords? Do you suppose these might all be vampires, or other Old World pirates? The FAQ mentions that the team took some inspiration from Dreadfleet, so perhaps Count Noctilus might make an appearance?
A bit apprehensive though. It's awesome that CA is adding more toys and can possibly circumvent a lack of new factions by making their own, but I wonder if this might get out of hand if they continue down this road.
Who knows, perhaps GW is giving them a massive sneak peak at a future AoS faction - now THAT would be a huge marketing move because when it hits in AoS it could spark a huge amount of interest in both games.
Though I think its more that they can flesh out some of the smaller factions that never got to see the light of day. One last big party before the lights go out and AoS moves in for good (as I fully expect to see Warhammer 3 end the world and then the next TWGW title to be TW Age of Sigmar
Everything related to Total War: Warhammer from both games - including games and DLC - is discounted until the 8th, with the exception of the Blood for the Blood God DLC (which just adds gore to the battle animations).
The first game is 75% off, and all of its paid DLC (aside from Blood) are 33% off. The second game is 33% off, and both of its paid DLC (again, not including Blood) are 25% off.
Great time to leap on in! If any are on the fence get the first game and see how you like it - if you hate it fine its not a huge amount lost. If you love it then you can buy DLC and buy into the second game and ALL the content you buy for the first game carries over into the second (including the Blood DLC). So your investment in the first game is never wasted.
The Curse of the Vampire Coast Campaign Pack contains:
4 new Legendary Lords
New Lore of Magic: The Lore of the Deep
New roster: command towering constructs, ghastly pincered sea-beasts, ghoulish horrors and musket-wielding piratical zombie hordes in battle!
A suite of all-new campaign mechanics:
Treasure Maps: Find treasure maps and dig for booty
Ship Building: Upgrade each Legendary Lord’s unique ship
Infamy: Rule the waves to become the most infamous pirate of all
Pirate Coves: Establish hidden enclaves in your enemies settlements
Fleet Offices: Reward your undead Admirals with positions of power to improve their loyalty
Pieces of Eight: Sail the seas to unlock eight new Regiments of Renown
New battle mechanics:
More Powder: Use your Heroes to keep your gun-lines topped up with ammo
Extra Powder: While black powder is plentiful, each unit will benefit from a variety of missile-related buffs
Also, a form of naval combat has been added, though it's not the real thing. You'll have the option of disembarking your armies on a nearby island, and fighting there. Or if one of the ships is a black ark, you can fight on the black ark itself. By a strange coincidence, a mod was apparently released just last week which more or less does the same thing, and CA included a link to the mod in the FAQ.
Sorry, four legendary lords? Do you suppose these might all be vampires, or other Old World pirates? The FAQ mentions that the team took some inspiration from Dreadfleet, so perhaps Count Noctilus might make an appearance?
I imagine that Harkons second in command Captain Drekla is going to be a LL, and maybe we'll get a Ghost Pirate to capitalize on the spooky.
SkavenLord wrote: A bit apprehensive though. It's awesome that CA is adding more toys and can possibly circumvent a lack of new factions by making their own, but I wonder if this might get out of hand if they continue down this road.
What exactly do you mean by this? I for one am most excited for the factions that never saw the light of day in miniature form (interested to see if they ever flesh out an Araby faction). CA seem to take the lore pretty seriously and probably run everything by GW before they make anything.
,
At this point, given other licensed games and that this is a dead property, I have zero doubt that CA takes the lore more seriously than GW does. Though I suspect this is to avoid poking a volatile and picky customer base more than out of obligation to GW.
While this looks pretty interesting, I'd honestly rather than shunt more of the TW2 team to TW3 and get on with it. There's far more of interest to me with daemons ogres and chaos dwarves than the forgotten, undescribed and abandoned factions off beyond the Old World.
While this looks pretty interesting, I'd honestly rather than shunt more of the TW2 team to TW3 and get on with it. There's far more of interest to me with daemons ogres and chaos dwarves than the forgotten, undescribed and abandoned factions off beyond the Old World.
Based on the mess with the Norsca release, it's likely that the team doing DLC releases for Warhammer 2, and the team working on the Warhammer 3 core game are separate and distinct.
While this looks pretty interesting, I'd honestly rather than shunt more of the TW2 team to TW3 and get on with it. There's far more of interest to me with daemons ogres and chaos dwarves than the forgotten, undescribed and abandoned factions off beyond the Old World.
Based on the mess with the Norsca release, it's likely that the team doing DLC releases for Warhammer 2, and the team working on the Warhammer 3 core game are separate and distinct.
Well, that would be stupid, since that was part of the problem. The Norsca team worked out a kludge and work arounds, and the TW2 just changed to a different database set up. and made enough changes they had to redo a lot of the Norsca stuff completely. The DLC team and new game team need to be in close contact to avoid making that same mess. It doesn't matter for three kingdoms, but these games overlap and build on each other.
Honestly, CA's process baffles me a little. Their statements about DLC and patches (that working on one interferes with progress on the other) seems to affect no one else In the entire industry. Something is seriously wrong with their workflow and communication.
It's one of the other reasons I'd like to see WH3 prioritized and WH2 brought to a 'finished' state content wise: to avoid the utter fiasco that was Norsca. We already saw a little bit of it with Tomb Kings, where it broke a couple unique settlements (like Hell pit) because they couldn't produce skeletal warriors or some such thing.
That looks damned impressive. Walking pirate ship giant golem thingies with multi-canon arms! That's insane!
Also means that CA aren't above making units up for the game. Gives me faith that they will do Araby, as it's hard to ignore, being a nation that's almost kinda in the middle of the map and in between a but of other factions.
I just want to check - GW DID convert those walking golem ships at one time didn't they- and put it all in a white dwarf issue. I'm not going insane here?
Araby did have an official GW army too - it was just only in Warmaster
SkavenLord wrote: A bit apprehensive though. It's awesome that CA is adding more toys and can possibly circumvent a lack of new factions by making their own, but I wonder if this might get out of hand if they continue down this road.
What exactly do you mean by this? I for one am most excited for the factions that never saw the light of day in miniature form (interested to see if they ever flesh out an Araby faction). CA seem to take the lore pretty seriously and probably run everything by GW before they make anything.
I was thinking more about how far CA might try to take creative liberties (assuming this is one of them) into their armies. We’ve gone through most of the current main armies already, except Ogres. Small and distinct armies such as Vampire Coast and Norsca might be the norm if they run out of main factions to introduce, but my concerns lie in whether CA’s creative liberties to flesh out these lesser-known armies will feel out of place in the Old World.
I agree with your point though. The factions have been quite accurate so far, and many of the units and spells translate fairly well to the game. Even Vampire Coast looks consistent. Seeing these minor factions in the game is pretty cool too. I’m personally hoping Kislev gets thrown in at some point.
Overread wrote:I just want to check - GW DID convert those walking golem ships at one time didn't they- and put it all in a white dwarf issue. I'm not going insane here?
Araby did have an official GW army too - it was just only in Warmaster
According to the FAQ, the team took some inspiration from Man’O’War and Dreadfleet. It might not be entirely made up stuff. I recall seeing a few trailer analysis videos that implied that the Vampire Coast was established a while back, though in bits and pieces.
Overread wrote: I just want to check - GW DID convert those walking golem ships at one time didn't they- and put it all in a white dwarf issue. I'm not going insane here?
Araby did have an official GW army too - it was just only in Warmaster
You're not going insane. Those are a version of the necrofex Colossus from monstrous Arcanum
Overread wrote: I just want to check - GW DID convert those walking golem ships at one time didn't they- and put it all in a white dwarf issue. I'm not going insane here?
You're not--but it was a staffer that did it for their personal army for the Lustria Campaign if I'm remembering correctly.
I recall a Bone Giant being the basis....but this might be a shared delusion moment.
SkavenLord wrote: [
I was thinking more about how far CA might try to take creative liberties (assuming this is one of them) into their armies. We’ve gone through most of the current main armies already, except Ogres.
And Chaos Dwarves, depending on whether you consider them a "main" army or not. But both of those groups are located east of the Old World, which is opposite where the action for the second game takes place.
Knight wrote: Seems fun, not sure Teclics needs a harder start.
Teclis had one of the most challenging but now he has even the hardest ones now which is great, I love his start. He's powerful enough with his magics.
SkavenLord wrote: [
I was thinking more about how far CA might try to take creative liberties (assuming this is one of them) into their armies. We’ve gone through most of the current main armies already, except Ogres.
And Chaos Dwarves, depending on whether you consider them a "main" army or not. But both of those groups are located east of the Old World, which is opposite where the action for the second game takes place.
SkavenLord wrote: [
I was thinking more about how far CA might try to take creative liberties (assuming this is one of them) into their armies. We’ve gone through most of the current main armies already, except Ogres.
And Chaos Dwarves, depending on whether you consider them a "main" army or not. But both of those groups are located east of the Old World, which is opposite where the action for the second game takes place.
Ogres are semi-nomadic by nature. And the last bits of fluff were about how dozens and dozens of ogre tribes were moving west in another Great Migration. That was always the justification for the occasional Ogre tribe stomping around the Old World.
Which again, the mechanics that were used for the Mongols and Timurids in Medieval TW2 would be perfect. If they're not the player's faction you'll randomly have an Ogre faction show up every 50-100 turns or so. Use the same Horde mechanics the Chaos Warriors use for their settlements in each army.
And that might have had some weight if they were working on dlc for the Old World and TW1. But for TW2, it still doesn't have much relevence.
Daemons, ogres, and maybe chaos dwarves are going to be a thing for TW3.
-----
What really surprises me for the vampire coast pack is cramming in 4 legendary lords. Main factions from either game still come up short for that, and personally I have no ideas who they'd be beyond Harkon.
SkavenLord wrote: [
I was thinking more about how far CA might try to take creative liberties (assuming this is one of them) into their armies. We’ve gone through most of the current main armies already, except Ogres.
And Chaos Dwarves, depending on whether you consider them a "main" army or not. But both of those groups are located east of the Old World, which is opposite where the action for the second game takes place.
Ogres are semi-nomadic by nature. And the last bits of fluff were about how dozens and dozens of ogre tribes were moving west in another Great Migration. That was always the justification for the occasional Ogre tribe stomping around the Old World.
Which again, the mechanics that were used for the Mongols and Timurids in Medieval TW2 would be perfect. If they're not the player's faction you'll randomly have an Ogre faction show up every 50-100 turns or so. Use the same Horde mechanics the Chaos Warriors use for their settlements in each army.
While accurate to their situation, the game already seems to get overrun with the periodic full strength stack of unaffiliated beastmen or greenskins randomly showing up every fifteen turns or so in the middle of your empire and razing a settlement or three before you can pull one of your armies off the front lines to deal with it. The most annoying part about the Empire game pre-Chaos invasion is dealing with this problem, which seems to happen pretty much whenever I'm about to start an important push on the front lines.
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What really surprises me for the vampire coast pack is cramming in 4 legendary lords. Main factions from either game still come up short for that, and personally I have no ideas who they'd be beyond Harkon.
Count Noctilus and Captain Vangheist of Dreadfleet fame could possibly be LLs.
Voss wrote: What really surprises me for the vampire coast pack is cramming in 4 legendary lords. Main factions from either game still come up short for that, and personally I have no ideas who they'd be beyond Harkon.
Four LL's is the new norm for DLC factions now since the Tomb Kings. I seem to remember CA saying that they would start doing that instead of the mini campaigns that they tried with Beastmen and Wood Elves that weren't as well received. Hopefully they will all be as unique as the Tomb Kings, I am currently playing as Khatep and having a blast, so far I've managed to wipe out all the Dark Elves and I'm already carving my way through Lothern
There is also a new LL for one of the main factions being released at the same time as Vampire Coast for free as well, no word on who it is yet though...
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be Lord Admiral Squidmask for the dark elves. It would fit with the theme and the island/black ark battles.
I'd like a Corsair-focussed LL like Lokhir Fellheart. Corsairs are one of the DE roster units that feel a bit too middle-ground, and unless you happen to get the exalted title that buffs them in the Lord's army, they're not all that great at anything except wall defence.
Early on they cost too much in recruitment and upkeep to really bother with having more than two of as a flanking unit, but later on those roles are better filled by Witch Elves and Shades; even the handbows don't really pull as much weight as Shade bows, lacking their armour penetration as well as the redline buffs Shades can get that help make them super elite.
My experience--such as it is--with them in custom battles and MP is that they're still a bit too expensive, and their armour doesn't mitigate as much ranged fire as I'd like. I'd rather have more Dreadspears or Darkshards with Shields.
In campaign, I often have a unit or two in my first army just to fill the few turns or so gap between getting Shades, Witch Elves, and Sisters of Slaughter out, and to make battles a bit quicker. They don't really help me win at all, they're just quicker at getting the job done. After that I never use them again.
It's a bit of a shame, because they're cool and thematic, and I'd like to have a strategic reason to use them more. I want a reason to use Corsair Handbows above flanking Shades or even walking Darkshards arounds the sides. I want a reason to use Dual Weapon Corsairs more than Witch Elves for flanking. I want a reason to have some Corsairs in my frontline so it isn't just Dreadspears that get steadily phased out in favour of Sisters and Black Guard.
lord marcus wrote: 4th legendary Lord is a creation from creative assembly. An ethereal bretonnian opera singer/ witch
Quite an interesting design. Fluff is a bit 'meh,' but a (hopefully) posh lord sounds like fun. With 3 lords coming from Old World lore and this last one being an original creation, I'm quite happy with how this DLC is shaping up.
I get dread fleet sorta even though it was a huge failure. I get maybe luthor harkon considering he had vampire coast. The other 2 i never even heard of.
If they wanted more vampire women couldn't they just add neferata or something. They even have a whole book series on ulrika the vampire. I'm not sure of her story but she had like 3 books.
I realize the theme is pirates but most of whfb lore didn't really deal with that and without naval battles what's the point?
StygianBeach wrote: The opera singer looks great, but the best thing i heard about her is that she summons undead bretonian knights.
Maybe this is hinting at the Red Duke becoming playable in campaign and getting an update.
Nothing wrong with Saltspite considering she is Warhammers little Mermaid.
Out of all the factions, VC need another LL the least. Though admittedly the RD is already in the game and it'd be an interesting start position.
As for little mermaid, I'm not sure what you mean. Does she have transformations between fins and legs, get pregnant or simply die in the end?
@flaming- the point is to sell another DLC, and the vampire coast is a good spot for a new faction (good distance from other factions, list variety for tw2, etc. also, CA seems to just really like vampires. Which is how tw1 ended up with 6 LLs and two factions,
Luthor and Noctilus sound... pretty bad.
The first is a Vampire lord with no spell casting, indifferent armor and doesn't seem to have any real strengths.
The second.. 'slow' is an immediate turn-off. He might get in and help eventually, but... eh. Fine against the AI, I guess.
The ladies sound better, especially since Saltspite is clearly on a mount. And Direfinn has me at buff and control.
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The unit roster sounds amazing. They have pretty much every unit role covered except shielded infantry, even though their 'cav' is weird.
Voss wrote: Luthor and Noctilus sound... pretty bad.
The first is a Vampire lord with no spell casting, indifferent armor and doesn't seem to have any real strengths.
The second.. 'slow' is an immediate turn-off. He might get in and help eventually, but... eh. Fine against the AI, I guess.
The ladies sound better, especially since Saltspite is clearly on a mount. And Direfinn has me at buff and control.
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The unit roster sounds amazing. They have pretty much every unit role covered except shielded infantry, even though their 'cav' is weird.
After watching the Roster Reveal they had me with the Depth Guard and the Necrolith Colossi.
And as someome from Galicia I can't not buy a faction with a ton of crabs.
With the launch of the Curse of the Vampire Coast campaign pack comes a new update for Total War: WARHAMMER II. This will be applied automatically to the game when you log into Steam.
The Aye-Aye! Patch introduces some significant changes for the traditional Vampire Counts factions in Mortal Empires, the chief of which is the new Bloodlines mechanic. It also grants Heinrich Kemmler a faction of his own, a new campaign start-position, and extra bonuses.
New Free-LC content is also available in the shape of Legendary Lord Lokhir Fellheart, the Krakenlord. A Dark Elf of noble birth, he is a terror of the sea-lanes and rightly feared for fielding many dread Black Arks. Fellheart can be downloaded from his own Steam Page, here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/835671
The Aye Aye! Patch also brings a plethora of balance changes to factions, Legendary Lords, and units, along with numerous tweaks, fixes, and improvements to a great many areas of the game – full patch notes coming soon.
New Vampire Counts mechanic: Bloodlines
Vampire Counts factions in Mortal Empires can now awaken powerful Lords of the five ancient Vampire Bloodlines: the Lahmians, the Von Carsteins, the Blood Dragons, the Necrarchs, and the Strigoi.
Up to three of these Arch-Lords may be awoken from each Bloodline, and with each awakening a new wave of powerful faction-wide bonuses reflecting the character and focus of their Bloodline is unlocked. These Lords also have unique skill trees designed around their Bloodline’s nature.
These Lords are not easily awoken, however, exacting an increasingly heavy price in Blood Kisses. These unique new tokens are granted by vassalising other factions, slaying faction leaders, and wounding or assassinating characters through Hero actions. For each Lord awoken, the Blood Kiss toll for the next Lord in the same Bloodline rises. Unleash the Banshees!
All Legendary Lords (including Vampire Counts Legendary Lords) have also undergone balance changes and tweaks.
Heinrich Kemmler
Heinrich Kemmler has left the service of the Vampire Counts at long last. Bidding Sylvania adieu, He strikes out west to pursue his destiny! Now a faction leader in his own right in Mortal Empires, he commands the Barrow Legion from Blackstone Post, the new Province Capital of the Northern Grey Mountains bordering Bretonnia.
Kemmler now gains a mount for the first time (Barded Nightmare) and his army is now immune to the attrition usually caused to Vampire Counts armies by Untainted territory. He can also use the new Bloodlines mechanic to awaken the fabled Vampire Lords of yore.
Free-LC: Lokhir Fellheart
The Druchii sea-scourge Lokhir Fellheart leads the faction of The Blessed Dread, and is now playable in the Mortal Empire and Eye of the Vortex campaigns (in which he follows the Vortex storyline). He begins play with ownership of the island of Chupayotl, just south of the Star Tower of Arch Mage Teclis in Lustria.
The Krakenlord does not need to perform Rites in order to raise Black Arks. He can recruit one for each major port settlement he captures, ultimately amassing a fleet of them with which to terrorise the Lustrian coastline and beyond. In addition, his armies enjoy a 50% upkeep cost-reduction for any Black Ark Corsairs they recruit. In place of the usual Black Ark rite, he can perform a sacrifice to Anath Raema, granting Black Ark Corsairs the Cause Fear and Stalk traits, plus bonus AP missile damage, and conferring bonus armour for Kharibdysses.
Commander Cain wrote: Nice! I needed a good excuse to start another VC playthrough and this seems like the perfect time to do so.
Ya, that area of the map is going to be crazy.
As I was reading the notes and saw that Kemmler would get a mount, I immediately thought of the weird spider made of bone or some such that Kemmler rode briefly before his demise in End Times: Nagash. Hopes were promptly dashed when I got to the "(Barded Nightmare)" part.
Although I will miss marching out of Sylvania in every direction with all the legendary lords, after biding my time and building up my economy and forces.
A bit surprised about the changes to Kemmler. Heard he doesn't quite stack up to Mannfred or Ghorst in the campaign at the moment, so it's nice to see some tweaks to him.
Glad the FLC is a Dark Elf as well. I guess this makes the pirate lord count 2 vampires, one Sartosan, one Bretonnian(-ish), and one Dark Elf.
Lokhir fits the theme of the DLC, but they really need to give Lizards some love. Any kind of love, at this point.
Truthfully, after Queen & Crone, I don't have much urge to play DE yet again, and obviously the Coast will have priority anyway.
Anyway, here's the important bits from the steam page description for Lokhir:
(Releases the 8th, alongside the Vampire DLC)
The Dark Elf sea-scourge leads his own faction, The Blessed Dread, will be playable in Mortal Empires and Eye of the Vortex campaigns (in which he follows the Vortex storyline). He begins play with ownership of the island of Chupayotl, just south of the Star Tower in Lustria.
The Krakenlord does not need to perform Rites in order to raise Black Arks. He can recruit one for each major port settlement he captures, ultimately amassing a fleet of them with which to terrorise the Lustrian coastline and beyond. In addition, he gains a 50% income boost from Slave Pens and Slave Markets, and his armies enjoy a 50% upkeep cost-reduction for any Black Ark Corsairs they recruit.
In place of the usual Dark Elf Black Ark rite, he can perform a sacrifice to Anath Raema, granting Black Ark Corsairs the Cause Fear and Stalk traits plus bonus AP missile damage, and conferring bonus armour for Kharibdysses.
More slaves, more arks, cost reduction and buffs for corsairs, and a slight buff for Kharbidyss.
The next joint DLC is supposed to be Skaven & Lizardmen, so it's a matter of holding out until whenever that drops.
I personally wouldn't mind Wood Elves getting something more at some point. I really like the faction, but having only two LLs and being hamstrung by amber means that every playthrough goes more or less the same.
Clear out Skarsnik and the Dwarves, maybe go after Angrund if you feel like it, befriend the Bretonnian factions and the Empire for Military Alliance amber to upgrade the tree to level 3, confederate the other WE factions--making sure you've got enough stockpiled amber to facilitate their level 4-5 capital buildings, because the AI Wood Elves obviously cheat with amber--then go murderhobo on the entire world with your significant wine-based income and all the buffs you can get to -siege holdout time and the cash you get for razing.
There's really not much room for manoeuvre; even a small dearth of amber is a significant debuff, so you really need to manage it carefully, and by the time you've enough to start striking out in earnest you're already at the point where you have to consciously feth up to lose.
Avatar 720 wrote: The next joint DLC is supposed to be Skaven & Lizardmen, so it's a matter of holding out until whenever that drops.
Next year sometime, which is why having a FLC lord to bring it up to 4/3/3/3 would have been preferred to being stuck at 4/4/3/2.
I suspect the campaign pack for Lizards and Skaven will probably revolve around Itza, Sotek and maybe Kroak, but they could have easily stuck someone in the Southlands on the western coast below Araby and above Queek (as Lustria is getting rather packed at this point, especially in ME).
They have confirmed on the stream that next old-world factions to get some love will be Greenskins and the Empire.
If they give the Empire two starting points so I can play it with my friend then that would be awesome. Bretonia-Empire campaing is fun too... but sometimes you just want a double empire campaing.
Lizardmen need two more LL. One will be probably the Propeth of Sothek in the pack vs the Skaven, and the other one should be from a FLC, just like has happened with skaven, high elves and now Dark Elves.
So they're giving overhauls for the older factions? Sounds like a cool idea. Glad they're not limiting updates to Vamps anyway.
Wonder how they will update them though. I've heard Grimgor is pretty bad, so I imagine there will be buffs for him. Maybe starting Azhag somewhere else too? Drawing blanks on the Empire however. Maybe Kislev, or something to do with Ulric?
They started with the Dwarves. Between them and the Vamps, it seems like they started with the factions that needed it the least, though moving a lord to a new (more appropriate) location is good..
The vamp changes are pretty minimal to existing lords and units. The big thing is getting additional immortal Lords fairly easily and huge buffs to research and casualty replenishment (through the Van Carstein and Necrach bloodlines, the latter also gives an upkeep discount with enough investment).
Watching the lore and coverage videos was pretty interesting.
But despite saying they (and GW) didn't want a third dreadfleet lord to make it a 'dreadfleet DLC' instead of a 'Vampire Coast DLC,' it totally feels like exactly that. The sum total of the Vampire Coast is Luthor himself; the spells call on Dreadfleet things, Noctilus and Saltspite are Dreadfleet things, and the campaign emphasis is apparently tooling around in ships and the starting locations are... Sartosa, south of Ulthuan, north of Ulthuan, and VC only for Luthor.
One other thing they mentioned in passing is the Ancient Merwyrm will be wandering about in the Vortex campaign, apparently bothering everybody. I'm curious to see how it's handled, since killing it is the focus of the pirate campaign.
So, the Everchosen Invitation is going on this weekend, apparently mostly as an excuse to show off (and finish testing) Vampire Coast stuff. As a bonus surprise, Lokhir Fellheart showed up in a match.
The VC is doing fairly well (Luthor on his terrorgheist is pretty effective for his debuffs and his pistol), but Noctilus and the opera singer have real problems on their mounts- she loses ethereal when on her abomination, and on the necrofex, he is just such a ridiculously big target- he dies very fast to cannons and guns.
Lokhir didn't last too long in his match, but looked fairly interesting and has most of his toys. The color scheme for his forces is a fairly nice blue. He can get a dragon mount, has regen, gets a duellist ability and has access to a debuff ability that they compared to one of the Van Carsteins (didn't actually see it in the match).
They also had a black ark map for Lokhir's battle. eh? It was a new map. The Ark itself is mostly background, the battlefield itself was a fairly featureless grey slope with a few (three) blocky squares disrupting line of sight and movement. Looked uninspired to me. There was another new map earlier, bit chaos themed with several streams running through it that looked a lot more interesting.
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The matches are on a break and they're currently showing off the starting positions. Cylostra is in Grey Rock Point, that spit of land below morathi and above Mazdamundi.
Noctilus is off in the ocean in a new location.
Saltspite... I'm not sure if she actually starts in Sartosa, the screens they're showing off have her in SE Ulthuan.
Their discussion of using the ships as bases (hordes or black arks?) is somewhat confusing.
hmm. Vampire Coast additional lords are saddled with loyalty, which has been reworked a bit.
Infamy is a resource, and apparently they can get 'legendary' additional lords through the tech tree (like tomb kings) if I understood them right, which includes 'names you might recognize'
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Ah. Random lizard adjustments:
a few stat adjustments (particularly cold one cav)
'Cold blood' ability on characters doesn't heal anymore, it ends rampages. (So if a feral carnosaur starts rampaging in the wrong direction, you can stop it).
The devs made a point to emphasize its 7 total units if you drop three 'awakenings' into Von Carsteins.
A nice nod to the Storm of Chaos list, anyway.
That said, I don't see much point in not exclusively using Von Carsteins and Necrachs, particularly the latter unless you really want to play with some ranged support (though Casualty replenishment is nice).
Magic AND Research AND Upkeep is ridiculous.
So the Vampire Coast achievements have been added in steam.
Some are the usual 'play for 2 hours' achievements (find a piece of eight, gain infamy), but it does give the faction names and their quirkier goals:
Vampire Coast: restore Harkon's mind by opening the Ancient Vault
Dreadfleet: scavenge the wreck of the Heldenhammer in the Galleon's Graveyard.
Drowned: construct Cylostra's Opera House in Lothern
Pirates of Sartosa: recruit 10 Sartosa Free Company.
(one of these is not like the others)
The most interesting one for all of the VC factions is defeat 'seven infamous pirates,' which implies others are wandering around the map (or maybe counts generic lords as well?)
The most interesting one for all of the VC factions is defeat 'seven infamous pirates,' which implies others are wandering around the map (or maybe counts generic lords as well?)
Probably going to be wandering factions, like the rogue armies that wander around the map.
That seems to be the case. I'm watching the Live team's Lokhir playthrough, and they've got full stack pirate armies romaming around even in the early game (turn 11), and a few more in the turn order bar.
Its particularly bad for Lokhir, as the army can turn around and wreck his black ark at will. Though after declaring war on the players, what they actually do is wander off. Apparently they don't attack cities in general, just fleets. But this one also ignored a vulnerable black ark.
But fair warning, its a complete mess. 45 minutes of dead air, and they fail to sort out their technical problems for a good fifteen minutes after that, and things go very poorly in general. Not exactly a good way to show off the new FLC lord.
I'll be very glad when their media blitz is over and they stop trying for the terrible pirate accents.
The VC playthrough has a view of infamy rankings. Getting to #1 takes 20,000, and the player-available factions seem to start <1000, as they're at turn 19, and they're ranked #10 (2189), 12(1493),13 (789), 14 (676)-> which is where the actual player is.
Killing enemies in battle, razing, assassinating and pirate coves all raise infamy.
Post battle options:
Assimilate captives: (bolster the strength of tyour army by introducing your captives to the dark arts): Unit Replenishment
Share the Loot: (Share the spoils with your Lord, improving their loyalty). Infamy -50, Arm gains the following effects (3 turns) Loyalty +1, Unit experience gain per turn +50 (lords army). [Doesn't matter too much for the main character, but will for additional lords]
Ransom captives (Earn some extra loot by ransoming your captives for cold hard loot [Treasury: extra gold]
Missed opportunity in using 'loot' instead of 'booty' there, I feel
Also featured (in the Harkon video): Ship improvement (functions like a black ark/Horde), and the research tree. Which is rather big with few dependencies.
There are four areas, which each require a starting tech [Command, Firepower, Salvage and Legendary Admirals]. After that you can apparently research in any order.
There are 16 techs under command, 12 each under firepower and salvage and 4 under legendary admirals. The latter are the only ones that have a cost, which is 1000 infamy each.
The intro tech to the admirals also makes you immune to reef and storm attrition.
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Also rites, of course:
Curse of the Bountiful Treasure (free, 15 turn cooldown). Gain 500 gold per building from 'Buried Treasure' chain. So cash in extra money on a regular basis.
Curse of the Sea Mist: (3500 gold, 30 turn cooldown, 5 turn duration) All owned regions cause attrition to foreign armies, monster units gain vanguard deployment, all your armies gain immunity to Cursed Mist attrition.
Curse of Eternal Service (2000 gold, 20 turn cooldown, 5 turn duration): Start of turn: lords have 50% chance to gain loyalty, loyalty won't decline, Public order +5 in all provinces.
Curse of the Queen's Cannon (3000 gold, 25 turn cooldown, 10 turn duration) A 'Queen Bess' becomes available for recruitment, Casualty replenishment +15% (all armies).
Eh. Except for the free gold rite, all of these are pretty familiar, with some extra bonuses. I'm vaguely disappointed the Queen Bess isn't Unique.
So.. Noctilus' initial enemies are Caledor High Elves, who have a small fleet outside his starting area for an initial battle.
Which is fine... but they don't have any ports, so it doesn't make much sense that either side cares about each other.
Would have gone with one of the Araby Bretonnian Knight factions, personally.
The Vampirates vs. High Elves vibe is really strong with everyone but Luthor, and it feels weird, especially since it can VERY quickly result in southern Ulthuan ravaged by vampiric corruption in the early game.
On the other hand, it looks like a united Ulthuan by gobbling up the small starter factions is a lot more difficult.
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And Vampire Coast do get Raise Dead, which I actually hadn't seen or heard about until now.
Probably going to do a Kemmler campaign first, to be honest. Always loved that character and his "sidekick" Krell. Or a Crooked Moon campaign, just to see how Kemmlers presence north of Skarsniks starting locale will impact his playthrough. Will probably roll over the dwarf faction that is immediately north now that Blackstone Pass is the province capital. I also want to check out the changes to Vampire Counts.
Once I give them a go, I'll give the Vampire Coast factions a good old college try.
My download took no more than 15 minutes or are you downloading the whole game?
2 hours to go - and naw but its 6.7GB total at around 5-600kbps download speed.
Welcome to the countryside - although last month they DID put the new box down the road, but we've not yet adapted to superhighspeedultra broadband
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