I can understand adding new areas at the edge of the map, though adding stuff to the Western edge seems rather pointless (the focus of the game right now is the north and the east). But adding new territories in the middle - The Witch's Wood, for example - seems rather odd. The only reason I could see to add something like that would be to shoehorn a starting point for a new lord, or a new quest location. But the roadmap didn't have any new lords this year.
A patch, a patch. And quite some patch. No sign of Immortal Empires yet , but nevertheless, it is several steps in the right direction. Enough, I feel, for me to crack open the sealed box I put TWW3 in and give it a shot again. I don't think anyone was expecting them to say "aye we've ditched the main campaign, we knew it was bollocks" so that will still be a slog. But it is clear they're working through the right things to make what we currently have, a better game to play. Hopefully by the time of Immortal Empires everything else will be functioning merrily.
Sucky patch, and crap update protocols. I've never seen a patch (let alone a 315 MB patch, that somehow requires updating all 56.4 GB of the installed game) tell me its going to take days or months to finish updating. Currently its fluctuating between 8-12 hours and 2 days. The estimate will shrink as more gets updated, but CA is so consistently awful at this.
It is convincing me not to uninstall it, because reinstalling it once IE comes out will apparently require leaving for a while and coming back the next day.
The patch is fine. It doesn't make playing the game anymore worthwhile, but it will eventually be positive when Immortal Empires comes out.
Changing Greater Daemons to bound spells seems like a no brainer; why wasn't it that way to begin with?
Not sure how their changes will Screamers any less junk. They don't appear to go far enough.
No skill points on mounts is a positive thing. Now you don't have to have no mount until you get the good one, or waste points on lesser mounts on the way to the good one. Now you just get them at unlock levels, and can switch back and forth as need be.
Voss wrote: Sucky patch, and crap update protocols. I've never seen a patch (let alone a 315 MB patch, that somehow requires updating all 56.4 GB of the installed game) tell me its going to take days or months to finish updating. Currently its fluctuating between 8-12 hours and 2 days. The estimate will shrink as more gets updated, but CA is so consistently awful at this.
It is convincing me not to uninstall it, because reinstalling it once IE comes out will apparently require leaving for a while and coming back the next day.
It only took 1 minute to download and 7 minutes to update.
It does something weird after downloading and for the first minute or so of updating, the network usage went to zero because obviously it's finished downloading, but the disk usage dropped to almost nothing, like, maybe 1MB/s or less. If it continued at that rate it would have taken days to update... but after the first minute or so it jumped back up to 180-ish MB/s and finished off download and update in 8 minutes total.
Even though it has 56GB worth of files to update, it seems like it's just reading and writing some large archives because it goes pretty fast (aside from that first minute).
This is on an SSD mind you, I imagine it'll be a bit slower on a spinning disk.
...
Auto-resolve fixes for key Campaign issues identified over the first months of WARHAMMER III
...
Numerous improvements to Unit Responsiveness during Battles
I'm curious about these updates, as they were definitely some of my complaints. Dunno if I can be arsed playing it again to find out, at this point I mostly just want immortal empires, these other changes are important but also a bit "who cares..." if immortal empires isn't out.
Voss wrote: Sucky patch, and crap update protocols. I've never seen a patch (let alone a 315 MB patch, that somehow requires updating all 56.4 GB of the installed game) tell me its going to take days or months to finish updating. Currently its fluctuating between 8-12 hours and 2 days. The estimate will shrink as more gets updated, but CA is so consistently awful at this.
It is convincing me not to uninstall it, because reinstalling it once IE comes out will apparently require leaving for a while and coming back the next day.
It only took 1 minute to download and 7 minutes to update.
It does something weird after downloading and for the first minute or so of updating, the network usage went to zero because obviously it's finished downloading, but the disk usage dropped to almost nothing, like, maybe 1MB/s or less. If it continued at that rate it would have taken days to update... but after the first minute or so it jumped back up to 180-ish MB/s and finished off download and update in 8 minutes total.
Even though it has 56GB worth of files to update, it seems like it's just reading and writing some large archives because it goes pretty fast (aside from that first minute).
This is on an SSD mind you, I imagine it'll be a bit slower on a spinning disk.
Probably. In the end it took about half an hour, but I'm afraid my irritation and bitterness with CA was spilling over (and my update experiences with them is legitimately worse than any other company or game).
I'm definitely on the 'who cares without immortal empires' end of things. For a big '1.2' patch, I'm thoroughly underwhelmed.
It's important to remember that the game mirrors the game files during the downloading process and steam reports on this/gets confused at times. So it can appear that the download is vast when that's actually the files being copied and checked on the drive rather than the actual amount being downloaded.
It's done to help minimise errors during the download process so that you've less chance of having to actually download the whole game again.
Overread wrote: It's important to remember that the game mirrors the game files during the downloading process and steam reports on this/gets confused at times. So it can appear that the download is vast when that's actually the files being copied and checked on the drive rather than the actual amount being downloaded.
It's done to help minimise errors during the download process so that you've less chance of having to actually download the whole game again.
I don't think this game mirrors things during downloads, and I don't think the practice of mirroring is as common these days as it used to be (probably as SSDs became more popular and requiring much more space than is actually required by the game became less acceptable of a practice).
The download was only 315MB but needed to update 56GB worth of files. Check out your TWW3 install folder, notice in the "data" folder there's several huge files, it seems the way CA approached the game was to bundle things into very large "pack" files, 61GB worth of the game is contained (roughly half) in only 10 files and that is likely why a small patch download results in a large "install", it's having to write small amounts of data to some massive files.
I have it on xbox game pass and that was like a 56gb one as well. But then I've not touched the game in several months.
I should also point out that is why I don't mind so much about the state of the game. I got it for free on gamepass, I certainly would be more irritated if I'd had to pay any money.
Hmm Warhammer 1 and 2 both did mirroring - hence why they always needed something like 30-40 odd GB of free space even if the patch was only a few 100mb
Overread wrote: Hmm Warhammer 1 and 2 both did mirroring - hence why they always needed something like 30-40 odd GB of free space even if the patch was only a few 100mb
I don't think that's mirroring, I think it's just the size of the files that are being updated, but I didn't check my SSD's usage while it was downloading, so I guess maybe, perhaps on the next one I'll check my drive usage as it installs.
But the drive usage was very constant except for the first minute of the update where it dropped to nearly zero, I think if it were mirroring it wouldn't just be pegged at 180MB/s drive usage for 50GB constantly.
Even if it were mirroring, that still means a 315mb file was taking installing to 28GB of files assuming it's the dumbest mirroring in the world (just mirroring every updated file instead of only mirroring the one or two being currently updated).
It was suggested that file mirroring was being used during the initial game download, but it didn't turn out to be true, or if was it was only mirroring file by file rather than the full install. These days it's quite common for games to be installed in almost-full secondary SSDs so mirroring such big files can be problematic.
The game is also 10% off on Steam right now, because of something called Skull Week (of course). Every other Warhammer game is also discounted, some of them quite heavily. That includes both TWWH1 and 2, along with all of their DLC.
From a much larger post on Steam talking about Immortal Empires -
8-player multiplayer campaigns. And as a bonus, only the host of an Immortal Empires multiplayer campaign needs to own all three games. Friends who only own WARHAMMER III will still be able to join the campaign, though their Legendary Lord choices will (naturally) be limited to the ones they own.
I don't know how many people this will apply to. I imagine - particularly given the bad word of mouth the game has received so far - that the majority of people who own the third game already own the first two, and the pool of people who only own the third game is quite small (though for a while I was seeing ads for it in some very surprising places). But if there's someone out there who's avoided it thus far but might be tempted by the prospect of a multi-player game with friends as one of the servants of the ruinous powers, this would be of interest.
Again, though, that's probably a pretty small pool of people.
I imagine the pool of people who own TWW3 is still quite large. It's how many of those that are playing it (READ: not many) that is the major factor at the moment.
Eumerin wrote: From a much larger post on Steam talking about Immortal Empires -
8-player multiplayer campaigns. And as a bonus, only the host of an Immortal Empires multiplayer campaign needs to own all three games. Friends who only own WARHAMMER III will still be able to join the campaign, though their Legendary Lord choices will (naturally) be limited to the ones they own.
I don't know how many people this will apply to. I imagine - particularly given the bad word of mouth the game has received so far - that the majority of people who own the third game already own the first two, and the pool of people who only own the third game is quite small (though for a while I was seeing ads for it in some very surprising places). But if there's someone out there who's avoided it thus far but might be tempted by the prospect of a multi-player game with friends as one of the servants of the ruinous powers, this would be of interest.
Again, though, that's probably a pretty small pool of people.
The popularity will likely pick up. But how many people play multiplayer campaigns? I've seen YTbers doing it, but do normal people have the wherewithal to set up a multiplayer campaign, let alone with 7 other people?
The popularity will likely pick up. But how many people play multiplayer campaigns? I've seen YTbers doing it, but do normal people have the wherewithal to set up a multiplayer campaign, let alone with 7 other people?
Seven others is the maximum, and one of the multi-player campaigns that comes with the game currently allows that. However, there's nothing that says that you need seven other people to play a multi-player game. Among friends, at least, playing with just one or two other players is much easier to do and probably more likely. And I know people who do that with Mortal Empires. I think we might have even had some people posting here who've done it. In such a situation, if two people owned all three games, and a third player didn't own any, the third player could join the other two after only purchasing only the third game instead of being required to purchase all three.
And since it will occur to at least one person, note that while not explicitly spelling it out, the article mentions some changes between the second and third games that likely make it impossible for CA to create a way for someone who owns only the first to games to join an Immortal Empires game hosted by someone else.
I suppose there is still one relevant question, though - if someone owns the first game (which gets fairly cheap when it goes on sale) and the third game, but not the second game, can they use the first game's starting lords in an Immortal Empires game hosted by someone else?
H.B.M.C. wrote: I imagine the pool of people who own TWW3 is still quite large. It's how many of those that are playing it (READ: not many) that is the major factor at the moment.
A complete IE will help with this though.
I've put in 100+ hours in WH2 since WH3 came out. :/
I have to be honest, unless its a buggy, unplayable mess, I'm going to forgive/forget(mostly forget) all my grievances about the WH3 campaign once I boot up and launch a campaign as one of my favorite factions on that world map.
This is a sandbox mode first and foremost, so mechanics such as the Eye of the Vortex and Realms of Chaos invasion also won’t be present here.
Oh, happy, happy day.
Huh. The purple boat means the (northern) dark elves can go bother Mazdamundi right off the bat.
I'm surprised to see provinces in the southern chaos wastes. I can't think of any information on people living down there (unlike the northern tribes). I suspect one or more of the daemon factions are getting a southern vacation.
Also, I'm puzzled by the southern islands east of the southlands (near the orange sea lane, not the dragon isles to the north). Aren't those the elven islands that were in TW2? It seems odd to blank them out since those factions already exist.
I'm surprised to see provinces in the southern chaos wastes. I can't think of any information on people living down there (unlike the northern tribes). I suspect one or more of the daemon factions are getting a southern vacation.
Also, I'm puzzled by the southern islands east of the southlands (near the orange sea lane, not the dragon isles to the north). Aren't those the elven islands that were in TW2? It seems odd to blank them out since those factions already exist.
Archaon heads to the Southern Wastes in that book and there's weird part daemon Khornate beastmen there, so maybe Khorne starts there.
As for the Elves, perhaps it's down to the fact that they will turn up later when they introduce Ind and Khuresh.
I'm surprised to see provinces in the southern chaos wastes. I can't think of any information on people living down there (unlike the northern tribes). I suspect one or more of the daemon factions are getting a southern vacation.
Also, I'm puzzled by the southern islands east of the southlands (near the orange sea lane, not the dragon isles to the north). Aren't those the elven islands that were in TW2? It seems odd to blank them out since those factions already exist.
Archaon heads to the Southern Wastes in that book and there's weird part daemon Khornate beastmen there, so maybe Khorne starts there.
What book?
As for the Elves, perhaps it's down to the fact that they will turn up later when they introduce Ind and Khuresh.
That... isn't a fact though. They already exist, so I can't figure out why you're tying them to an eventual Ind/Khuresh release.
(Assuming they do indeed get to that, which I doubt given a) how behind they already are (they aren't going to support the game indefinitely- internally there has to be a budget and end date) and b) how they burnt out on race packs for TW2)
"So... what's to the south of The Broken Lands of Tian Li?"
"Nothing. Absolutely nothing."
"And to the south of The Great Canal?"
"Also nothing."
"And to the east of the Plains of Xe-"
"Still nothing. Pay attention!"
That... isn't a fact though. They already exist, so I can't figure out why you're tying them to an eventual Ind/Khuresh release.
(Assuming they do indeed get to that, which I doubt given a) how behind they already are (they aren't going to support the game indefinitely- internally there has to be a budget and end date) and b) how they burnt out on race packs for TW2)
No idea son, just suggesting They've got the space on the map, I don't see why they'd completely shelve it once they've done immortal empires. Plenty of scope for DLC further down the line. The release was a bit of a bum do, so perhaps they will try and make up for that with some bigger DLC.
First, I'm going to be as polite about this as I possibly can: do not call me that.
We had a guy in our office this morning staring at one of our staff for an hour, then demanded to speak to 'the FBI agent,' (we are not a federal or other government agency of any kind) and you just creeped me out more than he did.
Second: fact, suggestion or no idea? I'm completely confused where you're going with these high elves at this point.
Well that's me telt eh? In my wee neck of the woods, "sonna" isn't pejorative, but I totally appreciate that seems weird out of no where. International and all that.
What I was trying to say, was that perhaps they are going to do Ind/Khuresh in the future.
You are questioning why they leave out a faction on the arse end of the map, I'm saying perhaps there's a nice future DLC reason for it instead of them deciding to bin them.
The reason they have left out the High Elves of Tor Elasor is perhaps they will re-add them later when they expand that part of the map. They don't particularly need them now and perhaps they're cutting down on a few in favour of the new factions. 500 odd factions can't do any PCs any favours can it?
In that region of the Sea of Dread you also have Chaos Dwarves. They have a big port at mouth of the River Ruin. So again, purely speculatory, perhaps later DLC might include them as they have done with other DLCs in the past. One thing people are certainly expecting is Chaos Dwarves, if not Ind and Khuresh.
If you remember from TWW1 and other Total War games of the same franchise, sometimes they open up new areas or update them with mini "focused" campaigns. Who knows?
The latest in CA's attempts to keep people thinking about TWWH3 by talking about Immortal Empires is an announcement that every week they'll be revealing the starting positions of the playable races on the Immortal Empires map. Today, we get the Empire and the Ruinous Powers. The Empire is largely the same as always. The exception is Volkmar, who's wandered off quite a ways. Meanwhile, with the Chaos Wastes largely missing, the four Greater Daemons all have entirely new starting locations.
Eumerin wrote: The latest in CA's attempts to keep people thinking about TWWH3 by talking about Immortal Empires is an announcement that every day for a week they'll be revealing the starting positions of the playable races on the Immortal Empires map. Today, we get the Empire and the Ruinous Powers. The Empire is largely the same as always. The exception is Volkmar, who's wandered off quite a ways. Meanwhile, with the Chaos Wastes largely missing, the four Greater Daemons all have entirely new starting locations.
Figured they'd want to put Volkmar further up north, considering a few of his quests send him that way to beef with Kislev from what I remember.
Yeah, his quest chains will _suck_. He has to raze settlements in Kislev. And I think he has some of the usual stuff sending agents to gianthome or world's edge mountains.
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On the daemon positions (especially if they keep the auto-war with non-chaos):
Daemon Prince- positive change. No more instant order tide. Maybe too positive, allowing for a massive safe empire.
Kugath- also likely too safe. Kugath is basically playing risk and starting with Australia. But not a great faction to start with, and if they're nerfing plagues, a defensive starting position may be necessary.
N'kari- this will suck. So many elf factions, and maybe even Brets just swarming at you. Good luck keeping your fragile troops intact after wave after wave of archers.
Skarbrand- totally surrounded, but in Skarbrand's case, he loves it. Has a pile of NPC factions to gorge himself on. No worries.
Kairos- physically not bad. Not sure about the tzeentch vs lizards matchup, could get quite tedious or frustrating.
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Not happy with Nkari or Volkmar. The latter is too cut off, and I just don't expect to see Nkari at all past turn 40 or so.
Curious what this means for Cathay, given their primary enemy is a world away, and their caravans now have a long journey west rather than a double handful of turns 'south.'
I assume Eshin is over here, at the very least.
Kugath- also likely too safe. Kugath is basically playing risk and starting with Australia. But not a great faction to start with, and if they're nerfing plagues, a defensive starting position may be necessary.
I wonder where they'll stick Malus as the Dragon Isles was his original ME starting spot.
Curious what this means for Cathay, given their primary enemy is a world away, and their caravans now have a long journey west rather than a double handful of turns 'south.'
I assume Eshin is over here, at the very least.
Rumor is that The Changeling will start near Cathay. Presumably this means that it'll be introduced to the game soon.
Kugath- also likely too safe. Kugath is basically playing risk and starting with Australia. But not a great faction to start with, and if they're nerfing plagues, a defensive starting position may be necessary.
I wonder where they'll stick Malus as the Dragon Isles was his original ME starting spot.
Ironically with the mass daemon exodus, I think they'll lean into his 'daemon side' and put him near one of the chaos wastes.
I guess the Eastern Colonies are on the map after all? So sticking him in the 'Daemonium hills' at the corner of the Southern wastes and pointing him toward those high elves could work. Or just dropping him on a minor settlement in the colonies. It would keep the 'distanced' feel of the TW2 start, and shake up the lizard vs skaven feel of the southlands, especially with Kairos down at the bottom as well. It also helps keep him out of Naggarond, which is looking very squished.
Dunno if the 'dynamic starts' they put into TW2 will come back. That could change things as well.
Huh. Interesting note- its Northern and Southern Sylvania now rather than Eastern and Western. Looks like Vlad's old starting location got added to the province.
nels1031 wrote: Figured they'd want to put Volkmar further up north, considering a few of his quests send him that way to beef with Kislev from what I remember.
Voss wrote: Yeah, his quest chains will _suck_. He has to raze settlements in Kislev. And I think he has some of the usual stuff sending agents to gianthome or world's edge mountains.
Why would you assume that his campaign would stay the same?
The blog post even says:
"His starting settlement will be Sudenberg, where rumour has it that he’s hellbent on finding certain dark artefacts…"
That tends to imply that they've reworked his mechanics so that he interacts with the area he's been moved to, right?
nels1031 wrote: Figured they'd want to put Volkmar further up north, considering a few of his quests send him that way to beef with Kislev from what I remember.
Voss wrote: Yeah, his quest chains will _suck_. He has to raze settlements in Kislev. And I think he has some of the usual stuff sending agents to gianthome or world's edge mountains.
Why would you assume that his campaign would stay the same?
The blog post even says:
"His starting settlement will be Sudenberg, where rumour has it that he’s hellbent on finding certain dark artefacts…"
That tends to imply that they've reworked his mechanics so that he interacts with the area he's been moved to, right?
I don't assume that they're going to make major changes to old characters' quests and quest battles, no. There's 86 LLs at this point, even with just 29 moving, that's a lot of work. They're still playing catch-up getting the fundamentals of IE done after months of basic bug-fixes, so... no. When it comes down to it, I don't believe they have the capability or desire to rework mechanics for game 1 or even game 2 lords being bounced around the map.
I just figured it was a random bit of off-the-cuff pseudo-fluff justification for this placement.
It would be quite odd if they didn't change the quest battles if they're moving the LLs about. Must be he's getting after some Tomb Kings.
I gotta say, moving N'kari to Ulthuan is a bold move to say the least. It makes sense in it's way and I suppose you are reliant on the early civil war to make sure the Elves don't unite to wipe you out.
I'm looking forward to playing as Eshin in Cathay, that will be a fun campaign. I wonder if we will see some lizards moved up to the Wastes edge?
EDIT: Lizardmen released just now: I was right. Oxyotl is right on the southern wastes below Tehenhauin. Nakai is alllll the way to the bottom East corner of the map. Everyone else seems to be the same.
Eumerin wrote: Where are you seeing the Lizard man starts? The blog still only has the Empire and the greater daemons.
Their Twitty bird account, unfortunately. They're going to do daily drops (maybe including weekends) of starting positions, but apparently its going to be twits rather than the blog they used for the first one.
At least there is a link at the top of their blog page
The blog promised Belakor next week, and weekly updates. So I don't think it's been abandoned yet. Still, the unannounced switch to apparently daily updates on Twitter is a bit annoying (though I do like the idea of having them all announced within roughly two weeks).
Yeah makes perfect sense. Twitter and such thrive on regular content. You put small snippets of daily info there to swell interest and then put a chunky article at the start and end on the blog with more details and such.
Considering the massive scale I doubt CA would want to abandon this game; esp since when Immortal Empires lands that will likely lead to a big shift in userbase. Plus lets not forget there are likely several factions in the works for DLC along with lord packs and more.
Not really sure how many more factions they can do outside of Chaos Dwarfs and Dogs of War. They can add in hybrid factions like Nagash, and then introduce a lot of new Lords like Thanquol and more Daemons/Kislev/Cathay/Ogre Lords... but what other races?
I just find the idea of them getting to do Ind or Kuresh far fetched, as it would require GW to make those first. And they're not doing Araby, as much as I want it, and as much as it makes sense to do. Hell, they even shrunk all Arabyan territories in the IE map.
In other news, friendship may be magic, but ponies have no place in The Old World:
It's a real shame they aren't doing Araby. I'd love them to do a campaign similar to the wood elf one from TWW1 / other TW games that focused on smaller areas. Much as I'd like it I can't see Ind happening either. Still, shifting things about with new starting areas was a good idea to mix things up.
Considering Araby actually had a whole Warmaster army its surprising they aren't doing them. I can't think that they feel the need to hold armies back for a re-run of this game. I'd not expect to see Old World revisited for a VERY long time - unless they do an Araby focused only version, like they've done their small games in the past.
If CA keep the GW licence I'd fully expect their next project from them to be, at least the next big one, Age of Sigmar.
Overread wrote: Considering Araby actually had a whole Warmaster army its surprising they aren't doing them. I can't think that they feel the need to hold armies back for a re-run of this game. I'd not expect to see Old World revisited for a VERY long time - unless they do an Araby focused only version, like they've done their small games in the past.
Yes that's what surprised me too, although (I think) Andy Chambers said they weren't. Funny that they went for Cathay which had absolutely zero models and barely any lore but left Araby untouched. I expect that reason was solely down to trying to get a Chinese fan base.
No shockers. With Wulfrik a bit further north and to the left from his previous spot and Throgg in what looks to be the same spot. Norsca should really have another LL, but I struggle to think of who it could be. Valkia, with a sprinkling of Khornate units?
With that said, Wulfrik should be a Vampire Coast/Beastmen mobile type of faction, since “Wandering” is literally his modus operandi. Or some type of “Underway” movement to simulate getting around by his ship. Throgg had the traditional empire building mindset, so footslogging seems right by him.
Also, how are they doing the RoRs this time? Haven't even booted the game since before the last patch.
Are they just adding them directly to the game, or is it another dance through the TW account sign-in and download and start game and quit and check they downloaded and finally they work?
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Norsca is... fine. No real surprise. A little less early pressure for Wulfrik from Brets and Empire (and presumably Kislev).
Alright, another easy one. Boris is at Bloodfire Falls, in the wastes (a bit further north than I'd expect, but not too far out of line), almost directly east of the DP and Throgg (though across the water from Throgg).
Good early opponent for the DP, but from a lore perspective, building a Kislev army up there under the thumb of chaos is... really wonky. This is how you get Chaos Lord Boris and his mutated flying monkey men.
That just leaves Cathay and the Ogres from the third game. But with only two lords each, I can't imagine they'll be too far from their normal starting spots.
The real trick is when they start parceling out the elves. There's a lot of the gits, and then tend to stack on top of each other.
I'd probably put the Beastmaster out in Cathay, rather than Albion, and find some reason to shove one of the high elves out that way, too.
Wouldn't say no to the liche priest LL getting a bit more room than that tiny corner of Naggaroth, either.
At least one of the O&G LLs should be sent a bit eastward, along with the White Dwarf.
The interesting part will be the expansions to the game three races.
Now with Daemons they can kinda go anywhere, and we know about the other Dragons and their areas of influence, but what about Kislev?
If they introduce a new Kislev LL - which seems all but inevitable - where do they go? Kislev is a small place, and Boris has already been sent north to avoid it being too cramped.
Are we going to get Kislev Expedition to the New World?
As far as Ogres go, other than Golgfag, who else would be good choices to add to the game?
H.B.M.C. wrote: The interesting part will be the expansions to the game three races.
Now with Daemons they can kinda go anywhere, and we know about the other Dragons and their areas of influence, but what about Kislev?
If they introduce a new Kislev LL - which seems all but inevitable - where do they go? Kislev is a small place, and Boris has already been sent north to avoid it being too cramped.
Are we going to get Kislev Expedition to the New World?
As far as Ogres go, other than Golgfag, who else would be good choices to add to the game?
Kislev just feels complete, imo. I'd welcome new stuff for sure though.
If memory serves: For Ogres, in the lore there was a sickly redheaded Ogre who was abandoned by his father and thrown in with either the Gorgers or Frost Sabres. He survived and ended up leading his new "tribe" to kill his father and take over. Never had a mini though.
Also, there was a limited edition Ogre miniature named Braugh Slavelord who had enchanted chains or some such that gave him some form of Necromantic powers.
By the end of the second game's life, all of the non-DLC races had at least four LLs. So there's a good chance Kislev will get at least one more. In fact, most of the DLC races were also brought up to that standard, with iirc only Warriors and Norsca having fewer. And there's a high degree of confidence that both of those races will be getting overhauls along the lines of what was done with the Wood Elves and Beastmen. That would give them more LLs.
So leaving Kislev with three would put them as odd nation out.
H.B.M.C. wrote: The interesting part will be the expansions to the game three races.
Now with Daemons they can kinda go anywhere, and we know about the other Dragons and their areas of influence, but what about Kislev?
If they introduce a new Kislev LL - which seems all but inevitable - where do they go? Kislev is a small place, and Boris has already been sent north to avoid it being too cramped.
Are we going to get Kislev Expedition to the New World?
As far as Ogres go, other than Golgfag, who else would be good choices to add to the game?
H.B.M.C. wrote: The interesting part will be the expansions to the game three races.
Now with Daemons they can kinda go anywhere, and we know about the other Dragons and their areas of influence, but what about Kislev?
If they introduce a new Kislev LL - which seems all but inevitable - where do they go? Kislev is a small place, and Boris has already been sent north to avoid it being too cramped.
Are we going to get Kislev Expedition to the New World?
As far as Ogres go, other than Golgfag, who else would be good choices to add to the game?
Kislev just feels complete, imo. I'd welcome new stuff for sure though.
If memory serves: For Ogres, in the lore there was a sickly redheaded Ogre who was abandoned by his father and thrown in with either the Gorgers or Frost Sabres. He survived and ended up leading his new "tribe" to kill his father and take over. Never had a mini though.
Also, there was a limited edition Ogre miniature named Braugh Slavelord who had enchanted chains or some such that gave him some form of Necromantic powers.
The sickly ogre is already ingame. It's Skrag the Slaughterer.
The other choices could be Ghark Ironskin of the Ironskin Tribe. Had a giant mechanical mount and was obsessed with iron weapons, iron everything and slapping all his enemies armor onto himself when he defeats them. He's also a major trader with the Chaos Dwarfs.
Ah I hadn't seen that one before. When you mentioned Gorgers it's what came immediately to mind.. That and having another monster hunt character would be cool.
Interesting that Teclis has been moved to the Southlands, I wonder if there's something that will take his place. Eltharion has Tor Yvresse and a place in the Badlands. Is that the same as current? I believe I've only played his vortex campaign and I seem to recall just having the start in Ulthuan.
Teclis vs Fateweaver feels like getting it out of the way early. I actually think that conflict would be more interesting later, after some time to build up. But early on, I think that's too much in favor of Fateweaver.
The northeast corner of the map is looking awfully empty. They'll probably put Greasus and both Cathay LLs at or near their usual starting positions. And Clan Eshin will probably be hidden away somewhere in there, too (as it is in Warhammer 3, albeit non-playable). But all four of those lords will be near the right-hand side of the map, near Cathay. There's a large open area between Cathay and Kislev that's likely empty. The Chaos Dwarves will eventually fill part of that. But we won't see them until next year at the earliest. And I doubt they'll fill the whole thing. Who else is likely to go in there?
On the other hand, Update 2.0 is supposed to include Immortal Empires, the start of the Warriors of Chaos rework, and the first Lords pack (which will have "four champions"). I could see Warriors of Chaos getting a new lord as part of the rework (bringing them up to the standard four). So we'll likely see four - and possibly even five - new lords at the same time as Immortal Empires. Some of them might fill up that space.
Finally got around to actually finishing the campaign as Ice Court on VH. Never again. It's not hard, but good lord the Chaos Realms grind is atrocious even with min/maxed stacks.
Oh, I rather like that one. It fits his sea focus and with the Teclis move, I didn't really like the straight line of lizardmen confederations facing off against Skrolk, the Huntsman and crazy vampirate.
Keeps the enemy variety going in that part of the world (I presume there's still savage orcs, spine of sotek dwarfs and some stray non-playable skaven)
Also makes some space in Bretonnia itself.
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I'm real puzzled by people making daily videos for a map snapshot. That's a bit desperate for youtube ad money.
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I'm real puzzled by people making daily videos for a map snapshot. That's a bit desperate for youtube ad money.
It is, however, how a lot of algorithms and such work. Basically a lot of social media codes and such work on regular content. Posting daily videos and content is just what those systems want. They directly encourage the creation of lots of short sharp quick articles over fewer bigger more detailed ones.
So this kind of marketing is something the youtube crowd will feed into directly. Plus each one has their own fanbase who turn to them for information at least first or second hand. So their own fans will want this kind of information.
It's not an Eltharion-style dual start, slight mix up on our end. Alberic starts in Bregonne, without any lands in Bretonnia proper. The region Bordeleaux will start under the stewardship of Aquitaine, who can be confederated by tech in the usual way - though personally I like to hold off on doing that until I've completed Alberic's Grail Vow for a bit of roleplaying.
EDIT: similarly, Imrik is not a dual start, but will retain his mission allowing for confederation of Caledor.
Cathay is... not surprising at all, except that they're adjacent.
I'm curious to see how active the AI will be on the sea lanes, otherwise that's a pretty hefty enclave for those two. (Eshin isn't that hard to crush early on).
But I'm not sure that the lizardmen (most likely to be dominant near the sea lane entrances) have a lot of coded levers to go west.
Voss wrote: Cathay is... not surprising at all, except that they're adjacent.
I'm curious to see how active the AI will be on the sea lanes, otherwise that's a pretty hefty enclave for those two. (Eshin isn't that hard to crush early on).
But I'm not sure that the lizardmen (most likely to be dominant near the sea lane entrances) have a lot of coded levers to go west.
Greasus Goldtooth will likely be close as well, though he and Zhao Ming are hard coded with diplomacy bonuses toward each other. And as I mentioned before, it's rumored that The Changeling will get the old Tzeentch starting point. That would imply it will be one of the four lords added when 2.0 arrives. So five lords in that approximate area (including the Deathmaster). I'm also curious whether the "horde" mechanic from the base game will be used in IE.
The area is a bit isolated, though. Part of that is likely that room is being left for the Chaos Dwarves, who will be west of Cathay.
One other item worth noting - the two Cathay lords appear to be hard-coded to reject confederation with each other. Will this carry over to IE?
I'll be surprised if we get the Monkey King. The small amount of information available about him indicates that he resembles a giant monkey or ape (varying on the source), and leads an army of large primates. That would require an entirely new army. Not out of the question of course. But unlikely imo given how very localized they would be.
Be'lakor starting on the Isle of Wights in Albion is interesting. But I'm far more interested in Grombrindal starting in Naggaroth. That could be a great campaign to play.
Snikch in Cathay is as expected. There's one directly adjacent to Skarbrand, with a second a couple of territories over. And another is up next to Kislev.
On another note, it sounds as if Volkmar is out competing with the Tomb Kings.
If you choose Vlad as your Legendary Lord, Isabella will be automatically unlocked as a hero and vice versa.
Wait, Isabella and Vlad now have a lord-hero relationship instead of a lord-lord relationship?
Makes their synergy bonus easier to get. IIRC, in the very early days of TW1, wasn't she a hero instead of a LL?
Glad to see Tretch someplace interesting (other skaven are where I'd expect, more or less).
Grombrindal just puzzles me. Feels like a move to fill in a hole left by moving someone else (Tretch in this case). While I like the Alberic move, he also feels like compensation for shifting teclis.
Like Belakor on Albion (there's a obscure campaign reference), but I'm surprised he's a Warriors of Chaos choice with daemons on top.
Sigvald is also getting slaanesh daemons, but it doesn't sound like Kholek is getting much.(if anything) in his roster.
Ghorst is still a non-entity. Wish they were less vague about these locations.
Volkmar still feels weird. Abandoning the empire to chase down rumors on another continent is not what I expect the Arch-Lector's campaign to be about.
As for the Monkey King: completely indifferent. The art and animation wouldn't be worthwhile, not for a reference to 'Cathayan lore' that's maybe a year old and mostly still un-shared in a design doc somewhere..
As for the Monkey King: completely indifferent. The art and animation wouldn't be worthwhile, not for a reference to 'Cathayan lore' that's maybe a year old and mostly still un-shared in a design doc somewhere..
The Monkey King has been a part of Warhammer lore since at least the early 2000s?
If you choose Vlad as your Legendary Lord, Isabella will be automatically unlocked as a hero and vice versa.
Wait, Isabella and Vlad now have a lord-hero relationship instead of a lord-lord relationship?
Makes their synergy bonus easier to get. IIRC, in the very early days of TW1, wasn't she a hero instead of a LL?
Was she? I dunno, I didn't play much TWW1 as I only bought it on sale shortly before TWW2 came out, in my memory they've always been Lords. Seems downgrading them to heroes will either have the effect of creating deathstar armies, or else their power level would need to be heavily reduced.
It's a surprising change, mechanics-wise. But given the nature of their relationship, and how close they were to each other in the lore, they really ought to be in the same army. And currently the only way to allow that is to make one of them a hero.
The only problem that I can see is whether it's possible to permanently kill the hero. Currently, I don't think that there are any heroes that can't be killed. But then again, I can't think of any other non-generic heroes off the top of my head. The alternative, I suppose, would be to combine them into a two-character lord, similar to the Sisters of Twilight. But making that sort of change to a lord from the first game might be considered problematic.
Eumerin wrote: It's a surprising change, mechanics-wise. But given the nature of their relationship, and how close they were to each other in the lore, they really ought to be in the same army. And currently the only way to allow that is to make one of them a hero.
The only problem that I can see is whether it's possible to permanently kill the hero. Currently, I don't think that there are any heroes that can't be killed. But then again, I can't think of any other non-generic heroes off the top of my head. The alternative, I suppose, would be to combine them into a two-character lord, similar to the Sisters of Twilight. But making that sort of change to a lord from the first game might be considered problematic.
Kroak is a hero. I assume he's immortal from level 1? It's been so long since I played campaign with him in it I can't remember.
I though there were some other unique heroes, but my mind is drawing a blank.
nels1031 wrote: Moving Skarsnik closer to Eight Peaks is a welcome change!
Getting hyped.
Queek is a little closer as well (he's north of that weird little pass and the long windabout to the Badlands). He's likely to get to Eight Peaks first, in fact.
Assuming he survives the gore-splosion that Skarbrand's presence will bring. But then, Skarsnik has the dwarves in the way. It going to be a real bloodbath down there.
With Skarsnik shifting, I presume Skrag will keep that mountain territory between the Empire and Athel Loren.
Grimgor's campaign is going to be almost brand new. Probably worth waiting until chaos dwarves, though.
Skrag moved to the southern edge of the Border Princes is a head scratcher. His campaign will probably be easy going and able to build a sizeable empire pretty fast.
Kind of weird to not start Greasus in the settlement that's named for him. But I guess reclaiming that would be his campaigns initial focus.
Yup. I was wrong about Skrag, but confused as to why he moved. Maybe they found he was eating Karl Franz (despite the objections) in the early game.
I forget what defeat bonus Wurrzag gives. Might be worth it to jump the channel and duff him over.
He's also probably still has dwarf ghosts and peg-leg mermaids to deal with. Though the dwarf might move closer to Eight Peaks like the other contenders.
nels1031 wrote: Nice of Morghur to switch positions with Khazrak. He's such a pleasant fellow!
Malagor starts pretty damn close to the center of a hornets nest though. If his army gets caught in the open he's going to have a bad time.
Somewhat. Yes, Settra is also going to be close, but on the plus side, as a chaos faction he shouldn't be automatically-at-war with Skarbrand. That helps a lot. Going after someone he is in contact/at war with will help push that relationship pretty high as well. (It also helps that I played him in ME after beastmen rework. He face-rolled everything in that area. Just crushed it).
You know, looking at the map, I think they screwed up with the Empire and Bretonnia. Reorienting the Norsca starts to the north coast, moving Skarsnik AND Skrag, and the map reorientation so Azhag is in contact with Kislev and not really Ostermark really changes things.
Manfred and Drycha are threats in the eastern Empire. Khazrak is occupied in Middenland. Reikland and the Golden Order really don't have immediate threats, at least not for a while. Louen might, but it depends on how Belakor moves off Albion. I really want to see where they stick Vlad now that his starting location is part of Southern Sylvania (ie, in Mannfred's territory).
It also doesn't help that the Empire simply looks bigger now. Its a huge place to build up in comparative peace, unless they get really weird with remaining factions.
If you choose Vlad as your Legendary Lord, Isabella will be automatically unlocked as a hero and vice versa.
Wait, Isabella and Vlad now have a lord-hero relationship instead of a lord-lord relationship?
Makes their synergy bonus easier to get. IIRC, in the very early days of TW1, wasn't she a hero instead of a LL?
Was she? I dunno, I didn't play much TWW1 as I only bought it on sale shortly before TWW2 came out, in my memory they've always been Lords. Seems downgrading them to heroes will either have the effect of creating deathstar armies, or else their power level would need to be heavily reduced.
I believe she was a lord. Which is why their synergy bonuses kinda sucked because to get them you had to have your two main LLs stick together. They couldn't spread out.
Which is another reason I wish they would go back to the Medieval 2 army comp rules where you didn't HAVE to have a lord leading an army and could just let your armies not have a leader. Split off a couple units by themselves from time to time, etc... And you could have 2 "lords" in the same army.
Then I wouldn't have to dedicate a lord to act as a reaction force to hunt down small armies of annoying raiders. I could just have some cav units do that.
Yeah, the inability to grab a few units, not bother with a general, and stick them somewhere needed is one of the things I miss about the older Total War games. I think it was Rome 2 that did away with that. By all means put limits on what an army without a general can do. But make it an option
I found the set-up in Three Kingdoms (a general can lead up to six units, and three generals can fit in one stack) a decent compromise. But I miss the option to buy a few extra units and stick them in a garrison on a quiet border just in case that neighbor decides to try something.
Olthannon wrote: Once all the LLs are set for immortal empires, I'd like them to set the game away without the player and let it see who comes out as the victor.
That's pretty standard process for strategy game development. Every new game build (should) involve at least a few machines just running the campaign over and over again without a player to check for over-achieving AI factions.
That should be week one of every build cycle, while the team looks for things that broke in the new version.
LL starts don't really matter for the player IMO. I haven't had an issue on VH in WH2/3 with anyone so far, except for with mods added. Tomb Kings Extended sent four factions after me ASAP as Lyonesse. I have yet to see that happen in the base game.
trexmeyer wrote: LL starts don't really matter for the player IMO. I haven't had an issue on VH in WH2/3 with anyone so far, except for with mods added. Tomb Kings Extended sent four factions after me ASAP as Lyonesse. I have yet to see that happen in the base game.
That's... not the issue.
Its for picking up aberrant behavior (Vlad running to the village south of Nuln, getting wrecked by attrition and destroyed by other AIs, which is something I saw over and over again), factions getting consistently destroyed early in the game (Nakai the Wanderer, and I expect N'kari to be much the same) or entire regions just getting painted as a single faction empire (with 90%+ consistency), which was a problem with dwarves and then orcs in the Badlands depending on the patch. Or Manfred building a huge swath all the way to Praag and then just getting steamrolled and losing everything to Empire doom stacks once turns 70+ roll around. That indicates a huge faction imbalance in early and late game units.
Its about the backdrop for the player, not necessarily results being 'too hard' for the player. If faction diversity goes way down, or there are factions the player never sees because they suck, that leads to a worse play experience. Its ok if it happens sometimes; in different games if different factions form huge Badlands empires, it can make make for fun games, but less so if its Grimgor every time all the time, and you've got to slog through every. single. corner. of all those mountains.
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Tomb Kings are exactly where you'd expect. /shrug
I'd hoped they would move Khatep, but really someone needs to be over there for variety's sake. I hope someone gets dropped in the dark elves northern frontier. Its a tight part of the map, but it doesn't look particularly interesting right now.
Its bizarre that the Southlands are the place to be, despite being one of the most neglected parts of the world.
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Tomb Kings are exactly where you'd expect. /shrug
I'd hoped they would move Khatep, but really someone needs to be over there for variety's sake. I hope someone gets dropped in the dark elves northern frontier. Its a tight part of the map, but it doesn't look particularly interesting right now.
Its bizarre that the Southlands are the place to be, despite being one of the most neglected parts of the world.
Not really a surprise with the Tomb Kings, of course, since they're one of the more regional groups - unless you decide that Settra's located another stolen coin. When that happens, all bets are off. Also, there's only four Tomb Kings lords, and one of them's hostile to the others. So there's really only two "loyal" Tomb Kings LLs in the Tomb King homeland. It's an odd situation, to be sure.
I expect that one of the future Cathay LLs (the sea dragon, Yin Yin) is going to end up in the Southlands eventually, as well. Apparently she once launched a large-scale expeditionary force to invade the Southlands, but it was completely wiped out with only a single survivor returning to Cathay alive. I figure the devs will announce that she's decided to make another attempt.
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Tomb Kings are exactly where you'd expect. /shrug
I'd hoped they would move Khatep, but really someone needs to be over there for variety's sake. I hope someone gets dropped in the dark elves northern frontier. Its a tight part of the map, but it doesn't look particularly interesting right now.
Its bizarre that the Southlands are the place to be, despite being one of the most neglected parts of the world.
Not really a surprise with the Tomb Kings, of course, since they're one of the more regional groups - unless you decide that Settra's located another stolen coin. When that happens, all bets are off. Also, there's only four Tomb Kings lords, and one of them's hostile to the others. So there's really only two "loyal" Tomb Kings LLs in the Tomb King homeland. It's an odd situation, to be sure.
I expected Settra to be at home. I largely expected Khalida to be where she is, despite her weird position in the Vortex campaign. Arkhan was a little up in the air- he could go be villainous anywhere (had the article mentioning Ghorst not happened, up near Nagashizzar would have been my guess). Khatep doesn't have any real reason to be where he is. He could have been dropped anywhere on the map away from Khemri itself (I was half expecting near Cathay, just to fill the empty space at that end of the map, and add some enemy variety to what the dragons face).
Their picks are reasonable, just not much to talk about. I expect vampirates to be much the same. Aside from a question mark on Durthu, I expect WE to be the same. Dwarves might shift the runemaster (or just keep him in the Southland Scrum), and we know Grombrindal's gone walkabout.
Vlad/Isabella are displaced, but kicking them out of the Empire would feel weird, doubly so since the Empire has so few threats (unless they add an unprotected path eastwards from the Northern grey mountains, Kemmler has a long path around to threaten the Empire, but that makes the mountain castles pointless.
Dark elves are going to be the real game changers. I expect Malekith, Morathi and the Hag Queen will pack out the homeland (as will Grombrindal and the wood elf twins) The Admiral will either keep his current seat or be moved into either of Teclis' old spots (the turtle isles would actually be more interesting, as it gives access to Cathay and the backside of Lustria is pretty empty), while Malus and Rakarth are displaced from their current starts by Kugath and Belakor respectively. That's the announcement I'm looking forward to the most.
Well... and Archaeon (and somewhat Sigvald, NW chaos wastes was a weird description in the dedicated factions video. Does that mean the Shard Lands? Or even Ironfrost Glacier?). But they could very well drop Archaeon on the Skull Road and have him deal with Azhag and Grimgor (which is an amusing reference to Storm of Chaos). I think Kholek is in the Ancient Giant Lands, it seems appropriate and fits the description of 'north of the Mountains of Mourn).
trexmeyer wrote: LL starts don't really matter for the player IMO. I haven't had an issue on VH in WH2/3 with anyone so far, except for with mods added. Tomb Kings Extended sent four factions after me ASAP as Lyonesse. I have yet to see that happen in the base game.
That's... not the issue.
Its for picking up aberrant behavior (Vlad running to the village south of Nuln, getting wrecked by attrition and destroyed by other AIs, which is something I saw over and over again), factions getting consistently destroyed early in the game (Nakai the Wanderer, and I expect N'kari to be much the same) or entire regions just getting painted as a single faction empire (with 90%+ consistency), which was a problem with dwarves and then orcs in the Badlands depending on the patch. Or Manfred building a huge swath all the way to Praag and then just getting steamrolled and losing everything to Empire doom stacks once turns 70+ roll around. That indicates a huge faction imbalance in early and late game units.
AI performance has to do with player's faction choice, aggressiveness (certain factions have next to no aggressiveness in the base game), autoresolve, whether or not their starting settlement is major or minor, and of course, how many enemies they have around them. It's more complex than just location. Vampire Counts should typically underperform right now because they're built around heroes and magic and the AI doesn't use those effectively . They could have no significant enemies next to them and they would still underperform. Vlad gets curbstomped because he starts in a minor settlement in particular. Even on VH Hemmler sits on his butt the entire game unless the player takes nearby settlements.
trexmeyer wrote: LL starts don't really matter for the player IMO. I haven't had an issue on VH in WH2/3 with anyone so far, except for with mods added. Tomb Kings Extended sent four factions after me ASAP as Lyonesse. I have yet to see that happen in the base game.
That's... not the issue.
Its for picking up aberrant behavior (Vlad running to the village south of Nuln, getting wrecked by attrition and destroyed by other AIs, which is something I saw over and over again), factions getting consistently destroyed early in the game (Nakai the Wanderer, and I expect N'kari to be much the same) or entire regions just getting painted as a single faction empire (with 90%+ consistency), which was a problem with dwarves and then orcs in the Badlands depending on the patch. Or Manfred building a huge swath all the way to Praag and then just getting steamrolled and losing everything to Empire doom stacks once turns 70+ roll around. That indicates a huge faction imbalance in early and late game units.
AI performance has to do with player's faction choice, aggressiveness (certain factions have next to no aggressiveness in the base game), autoresolve, whether or not their starting settlement is major or minor, and of course, how many enemies they have around them. It's more complex than just location. Vampire Counts should typically underperform right now because they're built around heroes and magic and the AI doesn't use those effectively . They could have no significant enemies next to them and they would still underperform. Vlad gets curbstomped because he starts in a minor settlement in particular. Even on VH Hemmler sits on his butt the entire game unless the player takes nearby settlements.
Yes, its more complex than location. The point is, its something they need to test every build cycle so they can find out how the various factions are performing baseline, try to figure out what's wrong and why so they can adjust them if stupid behavior turns up. For ME, they really obviously failed to do that with several factions. Other companies talk about this sort of testing as a standard thing, even for crap-AI games like Civ 6. TW2 had consistent faction issues that should have been addressed as part of their standard process.
But no, Vlad gets consistently got curbstomped because he runs far outside vampiric corruption and offers hostile forces an easy fight after taking turn after turn of attrition. He could easily take Western sylvania and have a major settlement, for a while would quite often take Averheim, but then would simply derp out and hang around south of Nuln taking attrition for no reason whatsoever. Then he loses his stack and Averheim and the Moot get recaptured. Its weird and consistent in game after game- an obvious problem.
Well, I think the Vampires problem is partly due to undead instability being such a massive downside, even when the AI makes massive doomstacks of trash units. Which is kinda odd since Total War's auto-resolve really skews in favor of trash units. The instability must be heavily coded into the auto-resolve mechanic as a negative.
Even in normal battles, it is so easy to disintegrate any undead force that has a massive advantage on paper.
I think its because Undead Instability works exactly like moral, just instead of fleeing the units disintegrate, and undead have terrible moral stats. Really, you just need to get stuck in and even with buffs the skeletons will begin disintegrating eventually. And once 1 unit starts to go the whole army will go. They're basically the only army that, if you win a manual battle the entire army will be destroyed guaranteed the first time.
In Cathay, no, but there are at least 4 forests that they could have used- Laurelorn, the one in the Border Princes near the dwarves, the Heart of the Forest down in the Southlands, and the one next to the dragon isles. I think there is also one in lustria, but don't know if it made it to the tw3 map.
For all that they said they were moving 29 start positions in the blog, a lot of their choices have been... underwhelming.
If CA keep the GW licence I'd fully expect their next project from them to be, at least the next big one, Age of Sigmar.
As has been discussed in the past (elsewhere, though possibly somewhere in this thread too), Frontier Developments (Planet Coaster, Elite Dangerous, Jurassic World Evolution, Planet Zoo) has an exclusive license to publish Age of Sigmar RTS games on PC and console. CA isn't doing Age of Sigmar, its outside of their license and would violate Frontiers exclusivity.
If CA keep the GW licence I'd fully expect their next project from them to be, at least the next big one, Age of Sigmar.
As has been discussed in the past (elsewhere, though possibly somewhere in this thread too), Frontier Developments (Planet Coaster, Elite Dangerous, Jurassic World Evolution, Planet Zoo) has an exclusive license to publish Age of Sigmar RTS games on PC and console. CA isn't doing Age of Sigmar, its outside of their license and would violate Frontiers exclusivity.
Yes but Frontier don't have a perpetual licence for exclusivity.
I'd also not expect CA to work on the next big GW licence game for quite some time after Warhammer 3 ceases development. I'd more likely expect them to move onto another major historical game (Medieval 3?) and perhaps do an Old World game as one of their Saga releases. Eg they could do Araby or Amazons or any one of a number of factions. They could even do the Empire with the Boarder Princes or a multitude of other saga style titles.
So chances are there's a good 5+years from the end of Warhammer 3 before CA would be looking to do another big project in the setting. That's more than enough time for the Frontier licence to end or lose exclusivity.
In Cathay, no, but there are at least 4 forests that they could have used- Laurelorn, the one in the Border Princes near the dwarves, the Heart of the Forest down in the Southlands, and the one next to the dragon isles. I think there is also one in lustria, but don't know if it made it to the tw3 map.
For all that they said they were moving 29 start positions in the blog, a lot of their choices have been... underwhelming.
Mmm I wasn't being serious
They didn't need to do anything whacky, just a few changes is fine. Of all of them, Wood Elves can't really move about.
As for what CA are doing next, I heard it's a Warhammer Fantasy game in 3rd person.
In Cathay, no, but there are at least 4 forests that they could have used- Laurelorn, the one in the Border Princes near the dwarves, the Heart of the Forest down in the Southlands, and the one next to the dragon isles. I think there is also one in lustria, but don't know if it made it to the tw3 map.
For all that they said they were moving 29 start positions in the blog, a lot of their choices have been... underwhelming.
Mmm I wasn't being serious
They didn't need to do anything whacky, just a few changes is fine. Of all of them, Wood Elves can't really move about.
?? Their campaign mechanic in the TW2 DLC is WEmoving about. Its why the twins are in Naggarond and Drycha is off in the eastern Empire.
Faffing about with the other 'magical forests' (and their neighboring provinces) on other continents is genuinely part of the campaign, so they absolutely could have spread them out more.
Though I think its an awful starting position, protecting the haunted forest from the plagues of Kugath and greed of Greasus could have been an easy way to kick off any WE campaign in IE.
Which is my point. The campaign mechanics of the Wood Elves means you don't need to move them about when they will go to the other areas anyway. Might as well keep them in their usual starting places.
Olthannon wrote: Which is my point. The campaign mechanics of the Wood Elves means you don't need to move them about when they will go to the other areas anyway. Might as well keep them in their usual starting places.
Ah. I didn't realize that when you said 'they can't really move about' you meant they were hyper-mobile.
Though a different starting location affects both their current area and the new area fairly dramatically, so I'm not convinced that keeping them where they are doesn't change much.
I wouldn't say Wood Elves are hyper mobile. You teleport to the forests yes, but you don't rapidly expand outwards past what you need for the heath. You're predominantly playing a defensive, locked down campaign. You don't really move about beyond what is required. At least, not how I've played through the wood elf campaigns.
I just don't see how of all races, not shifting the Wood Elves was underwhelming? The only possible switch would have been the Sisters but they are a much needed thorn in Malekith's side.
I would say Wood Elves are actually one of the faster expanding races. They can move pretty quick across the campaign map sacking, razing and setting up their outposts.
Olthannon wrote: I wouldn't say Wood Elves are hyper mobile. You teleport to the forests yes, but you don't rapidly expand outwards past what you need for the heath. You're predominantly playing a defensive, locked down campaign. You don't really move about beyond what is required. At least, not how I've played through the wood elf campaigns.
They're the only faction that can jump continents in a single turn. That's pretty big.
For the twin's DLC campaign, sure. You largely can turtle and just win it (seriously, it was the lowest effort campaign I played in the entirety of TW 1 and 2), but that isn't generally how ME/IE works.
I just don't see how of all races, not shifting the Wood Elves was underwhelming?
It... wasn't.
Its why I explicitly mentioned their blog entry where they talk about changing 29 start positions. Beastmen they just swapped two. Tic-tac-toe, they just pushed him to the other side of the Gulf of Medes. Wulfrik got shifted slightly to a safer start on the north coast (no immediate wars with the empire provinces. Bretonnia is a maybe, depending on starting vision range). Alith Anar shifted from the southern DE hinterlands to the northern DE hinterlands. Woo.
Nakai is lol!random. Khatep stayed in his pointless location.
Skarbrand and Kugath have interesting places, but lore-wise, they're both in areas of the world where the winds of magic are at or close to their weakest (and thus can't support armies of daemons).
Boris is on the outskirts of hell, where you can't possibly expect an army and settlements of unmutated Kislevites (east of the World's edge mountains as an outrider army chasing some goal would've worked, same as his TW3 starting position)
Skrag and Skarsnik suddenly shifted (and Skarsnik is likely to fail horribly. early game goblins vs early game dwarves just isn't fair on the AI), and now the Empire factions have basically no immediate threats at all (Khazrak and Mannfred can mess about with AI factions while they consolidate), while Volkmar has abandoned his people to bother the stay-at-home undead that generally don't bother anyone.
Its just such a weird map setup. Kislev will have a lot of struggles, and the Southlands will pop off and basically never stop, but the Empire, Bretonnia, Ulthuan, Lustria and Cathay look like easy starts to build massive empires. Lustria will have some action, but unless they made major changes, Hexoatl usually gets along well enough with humans and the 3! southern lizard factions should pop Skrolk like a zit, then turn to their local vampirate and the Dread Admiral (if he's still there). N'kari will shock me if he survives 25 turns against an instant Order-tide. Eshin won't last against both dragons, and they can just consolidate while holding off invaders.
Naggarond will likely consolidate. Grombrindal may shake things up a little (but will be less annoying than Tretch), but the dark elves tend to go nuts and then confederate into a massive horror.
The only possible switch would have been the Sisters but they are a much needed thorn in Malekith's side.
No, as several of us discussed, they could have easily moved Durthu to any of the other magical forests. Or Drycha. Or even Orion, but he's probably the best one to start in Athel Loren (though depending on the season, I could think of reasons he wouldn't be there).
Honestly Drycha is going to be a problem. Azhag's route into Ostermark is harder (he's basically facing off with the Tsarina now), and Drycha tends to raze cities, which Mannfred will just occupy. Odds are good she'll just get into pointless wars and free territory for vampires or kislev to expand into. Or alternate taking as they weaken each other continually.
In Cathay, no, but there are at least 4 forests that they could have used- Laurelorn, the one in the Border Princes near the dwarves, the Heart of the Forest down in the Southlands, and the one next to the dragon isles. I think there is also one in lustria, but don't know if it made it to the tw3 map.
For all that they said they were moving 29 start positions in the blog, a lot of their choices have been... underwhelming.
Agred although lorewise Laurelorn is somewhat different to the other Wood Elves retaining a substantial urban population with a major city. It would have been cool to have a forest in Cathay certainly.
Been much happier with things like Vlad and Izzy changes
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I would say Wood Elves are actually one of the faster expanding races. They can move pretty quick across the campaign map sacking, razing and setting up their outposts.
That might change in TWW3.
Must be I play them wrong , my last playthrough as Orion, I just took the places I needed to win. I've yet to try Drycha though, that looks a lot of fun.
Check, check, check, uh...
OK. I guess Malekith and Morathi need a literal wall of LLs between them, but wanted ghost opera one province further away from Morathi. (another grand sweeping change )
Meanwhile, I guess Hexoatl has a quiet buildup into neighboring regions without contest.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I would say Wood Elves are actually one of the faster expanding races. They can move pretty quick across the campaign map sacking, razing and setting up their outposts.
That might change in TWW3.
Must be I play them wrong , my last playthrough as Orion, I just took the places I needed to win. I've yet to try Drycha though, that looks a lot of fun.
Maybe the different sub factions play differently? I played as Sisters of Twilight. The combination of the campaign movement buffs, the fact you have outposts instead of settlements, and the battle style meaning you don't take many casualties in all but the toughest battles meant, to me at least, the most natural way to play was just to go conquering. Rapidly sweeping across the map and not worrying too much if an enemy faction starts gnawing on your outposts since they don't have much value.
H.B.M.C. wrote:More meat for the Badlands Brawl? And Belegar not near Eight Peaks like the other two?
Yeah but his whole campaign is the quest to retake Karak Eight Peaks and there's all the upkeep debuffs associated and yadda yadda. So it makes sense that he isn't closer. Grombindal looks like a fun one.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I would say Wood Elves are actually one of the faster expanding races. They can move pretty quick across the campaign map sacking, razing and setting up their outposts.
That might change in TWW3.
Must be I play them wrong , my last playthrough as Orion, I just took the places I needed to win. I've yet to try Drycha though, that looks a lot of fun.
Maybe the different sub factions play differently? I played as Sisters of Twilight. The combination of the campaign movement buffs, the fact you have outposts instead of settlements, and the battle style meaning you don't take many casualties in all but the toughest battles meant, to me at least, the most natural way to play was just to go conquering. Rapidly sweeping across the map and not worrying too much if an enemy faction starts gnawing on your outposts since they don't have much value.
I don't really remember my Sisters campaign. I played it through before they patched that missile spell that all your warhawk units had 3 of. It was over and done with in less than 40 turns or something mental. I don't quite recall when that came out, I mainly remember sacking and razing a bunch of Dark Elf settlements into oblivion. I suppose that was pretty mobile
H.B.M.C. wrote:More meat for the Badlands Brawl? And Belegar not near Eight Peaks like the other two?
Yeah but his whole campaign is the quest to retake Karak Eight Peaks and there's all the upkeep debuffs associated and yadda yadda. So it makes sense that he isn't closer.
Its also the campaign quest with Queek and Skarsnik (though their debuffs are different), and they are both closer.
It doesn't look like it as much with Queek with the big icons on the map, but the march from the pass around the mountains into Bleakwater was really long in TW2. That's all gone, and now he's just a couple provinces away.
I always felt that Skarsnik's campaign was the hardest of the 3 Karak 8 Peaks lords, though my experience with Queek is limited. He seemed the most "vanilla" of the Skaven LLs so I didn't give him much time.
Belegar, you could build up 2 solid stacks and march ASAP to 8 Peaks and I never really had a problem. Once the upkeep penalty is gone, it got even easier. Skarsnik seemed surrounded from the start with less quality troops until higher tiers buildings and had longer to travel, through quite a few outright hostile or leaned hostile factions.
My playthroughs are heavily modded though, to be fair.
Belegar is "easy" now, but mainly because he's a tank, his heroes are tanks, and now he can get Rune of Spite really quickly and just Mortis Engine enemies down, especially Skaven. You can rush Ikit thanks to RoS and take out a major enemy early. Skarsnik AI isn't a threat.
Skarsnik's troops are fine. Not having access to orcs is borderline meaningless. The only good orcs are really Black Orcs and Savage Orcs and they're extremely expensive. Night Goblin Fanatics are the best point for point infantry the Greenskins have access to aside from if you play Grom and can boost basic Goblins. The bigger problem for is that he can't cast spells, he doesn't get a mount, and he's mediocre in melee, so unlike other Greenskin LLs he can't carry battles on his own ever.
Hmm. Figured one would end up in Cathay. There definitely needed some competition out there.
The Lokhir/Rakarth swap seems... ok.
It does fit with Rakarth big monster theme, and I like the turtle isles better than the other coast (and it spaces out threats to the lizards)
I feel like they dropped the ball on Malus, though. He seems both isolated and too close- I was hoping for somewhere off the Sea of Dread like his old start location (either the southern wastes or the elven colonies), just to break up the monotony a bit. As is, invading Naggarond from the north is going to be chewing on a great dark elf mass as they confederate and glom together.
It does work but it is massive I usually just copy paste from twitter.
This is the first one I find a bit odd, I thought the Southlands was looking a bit full two reveals ago. But hey, it's something different. Be interesting to see how it plays.
Man, if we didn't already know the Chaos Dwarves were on the way, that giant hole where they are would be a dead giveaway
Chaos Ponies are no more. They're now huge horse riders, bigger than Empire cav. Tzeentch Knights now have unique models. Dorghar is even bigger than the Knights. Archaon now has mixed magic. All new graphics for Lore of Death and Lore of Metal. New darker scheme for Chaos Undivided. Chosen are now big, but still not monstrous, and are much better/new animations and so on.
We have the new Warriors of Chaos faction names:
That's: The Ecstatic Legions, the Fecundites, Legion of the Gorequeen, and Puppets of Misrule
So, Festus, Valkia, I'm guessing Vilitch and I'm not sure who Slaanesh gets...
So I made the mistake of wandering over the TW forums to find out more details what's going on (is this DLC? they seem to insist so), and the 'fans' over there are completely losing their minds with much ranting about monogods.
I'm hoping for a straightforward blog post at some point, I don't want to dig through a pile of youtube videos (most 3rd party) to figure out what's going on.
Though I am glad the 'Chaos Invasion' is gone as a mechanic.
And Norscan 'outposts' are gone. They have normal settlements everywhere.
Voss wrote: So I made the mistake of wandering over the TW forums to find out more details what's going on (is this DLC? they seem to insist so), and the 'fans' over there are completely losing their minds with much ranting about monogods.
They don't seem to understand that in WFB there are three Chaos factions: Warriors of Chaos, Beasts of Chaos, and Daemons of Chaos.
They're under the impression that TWW3 shipped with 8 Factions, when really it shipped with 4 (DoC, Cathay, Kislev & Ogres).
Its bizarre and vaguely fascinating for all the wrong reasons with 20 (21 with release date) questions from fans.
The questions fall into three categories, with basically all the same answers:
Q: Are you going to do cool stuff with... <Dark Elf watchtowers along the chaos wastes/ Sea lane encounters/ new Norscan monster hunts/ music improvements for various TW1 races>?
A: No.
Q: Are you going to... <keep expanding the map/fix the late game/keep updating skill trees/update <faction>>
A: maybe eventually (though some skill trees and Vampires and Empire got some reworks already apparently, including the vampire tech tree.
Q: Ind/Khuresh
A: "At the moment no plans," but look at the man's face and tell me there is even a remote possibility of a yes answer to this question. Oh no wait, they cut back to the map so you couldn't see any more of his complete exhaustion with this topic.
Misc. stuff that aren't really questions, just little PR bits on landmarks and unique settlements and victory conditions.
Bonus weirdness:
the interview backdrop is a cabinet of painted miniatures (Nurgle, Khorne, Tzeentch and Beastmen) with a lower cabinet of... still shrink-wrapped boxes of minis.
Enticity wrote:13:35 Dragons got an increase to HP and Mass. Later at 29:45 "Dragons got almost 75% more mass" Mentions them being at 3500 or 4000 mass. HP increase of plus 500-1000 HP.
16:45 Lord Kroak got some significant but unspecified buffs. Seems that he still has the same spells from WH2, while most other magic got nerfed, making him relatively more powerful.
17:30 Razordon hunting pack's projectiles penetrate multiple units/models more like artillery shots.
17:50 Broken/Busted Spells: Ruination of Cities, Seafang, Dark Elf's Power in Darkness
18:00 Dwarf Buffs - Rune of Wrath and Ruin does a *little* bit more damage
19:00 Nakai got some significant buffs, but was very vague about it.
21:20 More details on Seafang - basically deletes / one shots infantry. It's on stats on the unit card seem to be the same as what TWW Stats report the Wh2 Seafang as being, so I'm assuming it might be something on the mechanical level?
27:50 "Skaven are one of the most unchanged factions right now" & "About the same as the Warhammer 2 incarnation"
28:15 Lizardmen Dinos got buffed. Revification Crystal heals a lot more than it used to - mentions healcapping a Dread Saurian in a matter of minutes. @31:30 "Revification Crystals heal 20% HP per cast"
34:50 "Wind of Death got nerfed so hard, Wind of Death got annihilated! It does like less than Burning Head now." Later "We've [Content Creators] all told CA that Wind of Death got nerfed [too much], it should be fixed by immortal empires, I'm not CA though, so if it's not fixed, blame them not me."
40:15 Question from chat: "How is the balancing so far?" E: "Balancing is good. Balancing is fairly good, outside of a few spells that are super busted, er, nothing has been too bad I would say." Says he thinks there's <10 major balance issues, and CA apparently knows about them.
40:35 He says that while Aspiring Champions got buffed significantly, they're still pretty terrible in MP.
40:40 "Archaon does like a million damage now" Implies he's pretty good.
51:30 High Elves aren't meta, and are still a bit weak in MP, but they have been buffed a bit through the changes to dragons. (Background footage is Enticity's Slaanesh completely rolling up a HE army in land battle.)
1:06:30 In regards to the Dawi in Domination battles: "They're basically Cathay, but worse, and that puts you in High Elf territory - that's not a comfortable place to be at all."
1:07:20 Mentions Khorne non-demonic infantry getting a buff - overall Chaos factions are pretty strong atm.
1:09:20 "Immortal Empires - I will say - the state of multiplayer is actually pretty good." "I would say general unit and faction balance are pretty good."
1:11:00 Burning Head has been been buffed from it's state in the currently available WH3 patch. Says it is roughly equal in overall damage to the (post nerf) penumbral pendulum. Says he would "highly recommend" using it, but it's not quite as good as pit of shades.
1:25:30 Soulstealer has been nerfed to do less damage
1:57:25 Expendable units have 25% less capture weight
1:59:30 With the changes to regeneration, Trolls are apparently pretty good now, but they still suffer from low leadership.
1:59:30 Varghulf's now no longer have regeneration, instead they have the Hunger, which is regen that is twice as fast, but only active in melee.
Belakor is on Albion as stated.
Sigvald in the Shard lands near the dark elves
Archaeon and Kholek are a bit further north than I expected, but largely fine, except...
Grimgor vs Kholek early game is ugly. I think that's one of the closest starts in the game, unless there are some mountains to block them off from each other. Don't know how the AI will handle it, but player starts should prioritize eliminating the other (which I suspect is much easier as Kholek in the early game)
Kholek near Grimgor is a good thing, as without the Chorfs he was isolated and would likely snowball very easily. Now he has someone who can conceivably challenge him in the early game.
In the Facebook feed, they posted what appears to be the Q&A video (I haven't watched it), and a comment about watching it to the end for an important tidbit of information. And then they added, SPOILER: It's August 23.
While I'm not 100% certain, and not in a position to check, it appears that August 23 is the IE release date.
Eumerin wrote: In the Facebook feed, they posted what appears to be the Q&A video (I haven't watched it), and a comment about watching it to the end for an important tidbit of information. And then they added, SPOILER: It's August 23.
While I'm not 100% certain, and not in a position to check, it appears that August 23 is the IE release date.
Love the Gorequeen quote. Back when Khorne was more than just axe-idiots. The idea of Valkia as a hunting bird of prey to be feared by travelers is lovely.
Official Azazel reveal is tomorrow, per their FB post:
You might have seen the mysterious intel shared in our recent newsletter. A new champion approaches! He knows your inner desires… Tune in tomorrow for full reveal
There's a lot of stuff. Sorting it out is a bit of a mess to be honest:
Also coming with the Champions of Chaos Lords Pack is a new unit lineup! These new/unique units will be available to the Warriors of Chaos and relevant Chaos God factions in both the Campaign and custom Battles, while a smaller contingent will also be available to the Daemon Prince during his Campaign.
Also Warriors of Chaos are getting the Gifts, Dark Fortresses, Warbands (unit pool, I think? And upgrading units?) and Path to Glory (non-named lords can get marked and upgrade to DPs).
---
I think this will make more sense in game, but the explanation seems fuzzy to me. Lots of different parts (and work is distracting atm)
The other 3 lords will be revealed once per week over the next 3 weeks. Yay.
Also sounds like there's no Slaughterbrute/Mutalith.
No Nurgle and Slaanesh equivalents to make things 'fair'
So they're in the RoC campaign, but don't interact with the Ursunn thing (not unusual for DLC factions). I wonder if they still have to deal with rifts and the quest for random Forge World city takes them to the various god realms? If they don't have to deal with that crap, it might be worth playing once while CA irons out the major bugs of the IE beta.
Also sounds like there's no Slaughterbrute/Mutalith.
No Nurgle and Slaanesh equivalents to make things 'fair'
So they're in the RoC campaign, but don't interact with the Ursunn thing (not unusual for DLC factions). I wonder if they still have to deal with rifts and the quest for random Forge World city takes them to the various god realms? If they don't have to deal with that crap, it might be worth playing once while CA irons out the major bugs of the IE beta.
CoC campaign takes place after RoC campaign and involves them reaching the city from Tamurkhan: Throne of Chaos where the first major battle took place.
What makes you think its after the campaign? That would be awkward, as it would involve a consolidated winner with a enslaved Belakor and a lot of wiped-out factions.
Is it just the 'Ursun's roar' bit? Because he does that several times, first rather notably when Prince Idiot shoots him in the head and goes full Daemon Prince.
The way I read it was like its concurrent to the RoC campaign, like how Tomb Kings and Vampire Pirates had their own campaign mechanics outside of the Vortex campaign in Warhams2.
The ROC campaign is just a script that kicks off for that specific campaign. It's not hard to have a COC specific script that disables ROC mechanics at the start and runs the COC scripts.
The ROC campaign is just a script that kicks off for that specific campaign. It's not hard to have a COC specific script that disables ROC mechanics at the start and runs the COC scripts.
Right, but that isn't 'after.' That's just starting fresh at the beginning (with everybody in their starting positions) but disabling some of the stupid events. (which, going to be honest, would be what it would take to play on that map again)
'After the RoC campaign' means somebody has won, did whatever they where going to do to the bear god, and now belakor is on somebody's leash out in the world.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Kislev won. It's a box that comes up at the start.
The campaign is set after the RoC campaign.
Huh. Where's this info coming from?
I was expecting more like Tomb Kings and the Vortex, not simply burying the original campaign. So does that mean facing down a united Kislev (and Cathay?) and fewer factions on the map overall?
The ROC campaign is just a script that kicks off for that specific campaign. It's not hard to have a COC specific script that disables ROC mechanics at the start and runs the COC scripts.
Right, but that isn't 'after.' That's just starting fresh at the beginning (with everybody in their starting positions) but disabling some of the stupid events. (which, going to be honest, would be what it would take to play on that map again)
'After the RoC campaign' means somebody has won, did whatever they where going to do to the bear god, and now belakor is on somebody's leash out in the world.
You're confusing gameplay mechanics with story. The story is set after Kislev-Ice Court won. That is canon. As it is using the same campaign map as ROC so far as we know, COC will just have different lua scripts running at the start of the campaign. Belakor is likely banished in the canon.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Kislev won. It's a box that comes up at the start.
The campaign is set after the RoC campaign.
That's cool.
Actually much better than it being concurrent to the RoC campaign.
Sounds like its similar to Three Kingdoms and its option to pick different seminal moments in the saga as jumping off points. Same map, different start positions(for some) and new campaign objectives and mechanics.
The ROC campaign is just a script that kicks off for that specific campaign. It's not hard to have a COC specific script that disables ROC mechanics at the start and runs the COC scripts.
Right, but that isn't 'after.' That's just starting fresh at the beginning (with everybody in their starting positions) but disabling some of the stupid events. (which, going to be honest, would be what it would take to play on that map again)
'After the RoC campaign' means somebody has won, did whatever they where going to do to the bear god, and now belakor is on somebody's leash out in the world.
You're confusing gameplay mechanics with story. The story is set after Kislev-Ice Court won. That is canon. As it is using the same campaign map as ROC so far as we know, COC will just have different lua scripts running at the start of the campaign. Belakor is likely banished in the canon.
I'm not confusing anything, just responding to what little you posted. 'Canon' isn't an issue (its not even something I'd vaguely consider real for something like this, to be honest). A little pop-up isn't an issue.
All you claimed was that it was after the RoC campaign, then said it was 'just a script.' Those aren't the same thing.
Since CA posted a short Let's play of Azazel's campaign (which is all anyone really needed to say) (Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s69LkNPqZEE Its clear from the video that they buried the RoC campaign and just reused the map. Cathay is re-factionalized (so it doesn't matter what happened in the RoC campaign), its not clear if Fateweaver (or the other monogods) or the Realms of Chaos are on the map. (The video has the player claiming a rift spawned by gathering enough souls, but beyond traversing them and using them as a teleport network for the end game fight, it isn't clear if they do anything else.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Kislev won. It's a box that comes up at the start.
The campaign is set after the RoC campaign.
That's cool.
Actually much better than it being concurrent to the RoC campaign.
Sounds like its similar to Three Kingdoms and its option to pick different seminal moments in the saga as jumping off points. Same map, different start positions(for some) and new campaign objectives and mechanics.
Well, aside from the fact that Three Kingdoms let you use the same leaders across the different campaigns (assuming they were still alive). For example, if you liked Cao Cao, you could play him in every campaign except Eight Princes.
No such option here. Not that Miao Ying would have much reason to try and seize power for one of the Chaos Gods. But it might be fun to be able to play as a spoiler attempting to block this attempt by the four Chaos Champions.
Right from the game itself, which I can see from below you've now seen.
Voss wrote: I was expecting more like Tomb Kings and the Vortex, not simply burying the original campaign. So does that mean facing down a united Kislev (and Cathay?) and fewer factions on the map overall?
That would require a lot of effort, and their efforts are almost entirely focused on IE, because they know that's what people want to play.
I'd imagine that this new campaign just turns off the Realms of Chaos, but is otherwise the same.
Yeah, I went looking for it. It does tend to be easier if people link things in the first place (or just mention blog, twitter or whatever)
Not sure its 100% the same, though. There was a brief look at the map, and I didn't see Kairos (but it was a pretty quick jump-edit in the video). So the daemon factions might be moved or cut.
Don't agree on a lot of effort, however. Letting the normal campaign play out as is and just having different goals would've been less effort (though also more obnoxious). Khemri & vampirates had their own goals running without issue with the vortex campaign running as normal, rather than taking the time to rip that code out.
Welcome back, Total War: WARHAMMER fans, to another instalment of the Immortal Empires blog series. This week, we’re taking a closer look at some of the most significant race updates you’ll experience come this August when the Immortal Empires BETA finally arrives—specifically to the Vampire Counts, Lizardmen, Dark Elves, and Norsca.
Before we explore those juicy details, it’s important to recognize that importing races from Total War: WARHAMMER I and II into Immortal Empires is no simple task; it’s *far* more complex than a simple copy and paste from game to game. WARHAMMER III introduced significant updates to the series—in the form of new mechanics, overhauled game systems, and a host of new foes to face—meaning that many races required substantial adaptations to survive in a fresh new world of war and politics. As such, while these updates won’t be quite to the same scale as what you’ll see with the Warriors of Chaos, they will nonetheless evolve their play styles in important (and meaningful) ways.
VAMPIRE COUNTS
Everyone’s favourite bloodsuckers were in a difficult place coming out of WARHAMMER II: mainly relying on a devastating two-punch combo of free skeleton armies and the evisceration of their enemy with Winds of Death. While it was a real power-trip at times, it did eventually get a bit dry… (Bone-dry, you might say.)
On top of that, changes to systems like the Winds of Magic in WARHAMMER III have a heavy impact on the race, so the team spent time enhancing them in ways that help them stay fresh…as fresh as an exhumed corpse can be, at least.
So, the headline: free skeletons are GONE. You’ll still have ways to make them (grave)dirt cheap, but not to the same extent as before. We know this is a big change—one that might disappoint some people—but it not only distorted the Vampire Counts’ gameplay too much, but made much of the roster obsolete, particularly in conjunction with the reduced supply line penalties in WARHAMMER III.
To make up for the loss, we’ve made a whole host of other changes that we hope will more than make amends for it. Here’s a look at some of the key changes:
Across-the-board balance changes to the roster: leadership increases to most units, adjustments to Ethereal units, and the ability to recruit Mournguls (in a Campaign) if you own the Vampire Coast DLC.
Improvements to Raise Dead pools: which now offer better units by default and scale up with Vampiric corruption—making them less reliant on battle sites.
Reshuffle of recruitment buildings, with many units now available earlier and more easily.
Revamped tech tree, skill trees, and Bloodline effects to give the race access to powerful new effects: such as increased healing caps and extra Winds of Magic.
As for individual Lords, we’ve already highlighted some of the changes coming to the undead power couple—Vlad and Isabella Von Carstein—in our Dedicated Factions blog, but don’t worry: Mannfred and the Necromancer Lords will have their time in the sun moon too.
Mannfred Von Carstein has moved to the Southlands where he seeks the unholy Books of Nagash. As the most magically gifted of the Vampire Lords, he has also received increased magic reserves, and his Master of the Black Arts ability now boosts his spell mastery by 25%.
To complement his new starting position in The Haunted Forest, Helman Ghorst now starts the campaign mounted on his Corpse Cart, and can acquire skills that enhance his aura abilities—granting powerful faction-wide buffs to Zombies. If you want to drown the world in rotting flesh while watching from the back of your sweet ride, he’s the Legendary Lord for you!
Not to be outdone by this young upstart, Kemmler has also upped his game. His best bud, Krell, will now be a permanent summon by default, while Kemmler’s skill tree serves to super-charge Krell’s combat stats.
LIZARDMEN
We know that “Lizardmen” and “update” together might generate some excitement, so we’ll get the bad news out of the way first: the Geomantic Web is still pretty much the same—other than a few adjustments to reward you for fulfilling the Great Plan. We fully recognize that it’s ripe for a more substantial update and hope to find an opportunity to do so in the future.
With that said, there’s still a load of other changes coming for our scaly friends…
We’ll start with the humble Skinks! As has long been requested, Tehenhauin now unlocks Regiments of Renown units by levelling up, and will be able to use his sacrificial pyramid to generate extra Blessed Spawning units. His chameleonic comrade, Oxyotl, will be receiving new missions to hunt down and eliminate the new Daemonic enemies who recently arrived on the Immortal Empires map, and his mission durations will now scale with campaign difficulty, making it much harder to thwart Chaos if you choose to player at harder levels.
The stalwart Saurus will also benefit from changes that help them take on the Daemonic hordes in battle! Their innate “Primal Instincts” ability kicks in earlier: granting them greater bonuses and no longer triggering their Rampage. Both Saurus characters also get revamped lord and faction effects to account for this in addition to helping them develop their own play styles. Kroq’gar will focus on creating a coterie of elite Saurus characters—with major buffs for Old-Bloods and Scar-Veterans—while Gor’rok will enjoy new effects that lean into his defensive nature; while his unique rite no longer makes Saurus’ Unbreakable, it now grants them Barrier as well as immunity to hostile weapon effects like poison—a perfect boon for taking on a certain pestilential rodent…!
As the premier magic-wielders of the setting, the Slann—including Lord Kroak—are getting skill tree tweaks to fit the new magic system in WARHAMMER III while gaining access to powerful effects like Barrier and increases to their Winds of Magic capacity. On top of that, Mazdamundi will also receive a whopping +50% range increase to all his spells—befitting for a frog of such continent-shifting power.
Finally, Nakai will enjoy a variety of balance changes: including tech tree updates to boost his economy, as well as new and improved benefits upon constructing Temples to the Old Ones. He’ll also benefit from some of the fundamental improvements to diplomacy that were introduced in WARHAMMER III—notably improving how the AI interacts with vassal factions.
DARK ELVES
Next, let’s turn to the Druchii, who—in addition to being in a prime position to benefit from the new Sea Lanes—have seen big changes to their slaves mechanic.
Previously, this was a feature that resulted in insane late-game economic performance with relatively little interaction from the player. As such, in WARHAMMER III, slaves are now considered a faction-level resource rather than something you stow in a province. Slaves can now be “spent” at numerous buildings to generate income, or invested in three powerful “Slave Diktats” to benefit a specific province.
For a long while, the Druchii have had a…complicated relationship with Chaos, so the influx of Daemonic factions has led to a few notable changes. Morathi now gets unique interactions with Slaanesh corruption and can even recruit Daemonettes, while Malus’ Possession ability now allows for more frequent use of Tz’arkan and interacts differently with the new corruption types.
Last of all, Rakarth can now capture and tame a host of new beasts: including Sabretusks and Feral Bears. (Rakarth even got an in-depth spotlight in our recent Q&A with the development team!)
NORSCA
Let’s talk cold, angry, and primed to raid! Norsca had a somewhat tumultuous entry into the series with their unique ability to construct outposts instead of regular settlements. Built on the foundation of the climate-locked occupations of WARHAMMER I, this design did not make a graceful transition into WARHAMMER II; where it was originally designed to grant them unparalleled flexibility, it instead became their greatest weakness.
So, if you take one thing home when you’re done raiding these shores, it’s the fact that Norsca is now a regular occupation faction—with access to their complete building tree anywhere in the world.
While that is the big one, there are additional smaller changes coming to freshen up the race:
⬥ ⬥ ⬥
DEVOTION TO THE GODS
Like before, players can dedicate the ruins of their enemies to one of the four Dark Gods in order to gain their favour, but there was always a massive disparity in the rewards given. As such, we’ve evened things out a bit.
Full dedication to the Crow no longer causes a (admittedly mostly impotent) global plague. Rather, you will be joined by Burplesmirk Spewpit, the Exalted Great Unclean One.
Full dedication to the Hound no longer gives you access to The Ice-Forged Legion. Rather, you will be joined by Killgore Slaymaim, An Exalted Hero of Khorne.
All reward characters grant their army an incredibly powerful boon that twists their battle profile to align closer to the Dark God’s ideal forces. For example, Azrik’s forces enjoy access to Barriers, magical weapons, and global Winds of Magic generation benefits.
If you just had the terrifying realization that we didn’t say where the Ice-Forged Legion went, don’t worry; your favourite Hellcannon Battery has become a regular Regiment Of Renown unit that unlocks once you reach the appropriate level.
COMMANDMENTS
Being fully settled and capable of holding complete provinces all over the world, Norsca has a full set of commandments to enact over them and solidify their new holdings.
RESOURCES
Wine, furs, and everything in-between, Norsca can now construct buildings to exploit almost all resources for local or global bonuses.
CAPITAL TARGETS
With new forces of Order come new cities to raze for unique benefits. The Kurgan hordes have never taken Wei-Jin, but perhaps they only lacked a unifying iron fist…?
⬥ ⬥ ⬥
To tie us off, let’s head off the question on everyone’s minds: no, this is not the “Norsca rework.”
These changes are about freeing Norsca from the shackles of their outposts and giving them a taste of the fresh new powers of the Dark Gods in WARHAMMER III. Like the rest of Immortal Empires, this is just the beginning: the foundation upon which to build and make future tweaks to the different factions.
Before we explore those juicy details, it’s important to recognize that importing races from Total War: WARHAMMER I and II into Immortal Empires is no simple task; it’s *far* more complex than a simple copy and paste from game to game. WARHAMMER III introduced significant updates to the series—in the form of new mechanics, overhauled game systems, and a host of new foes to face
Paraphrasing:
'Despite having done year after year of total war games, and despite knowing this was a trilogy, we didn't do any future proofing or design planning in TW1. Instead our programmers wrote spaghetti code. We got really caught out with Norsca in the transition from TW1 to 2. But despite that, we did it again in TW2, and unfething everything a second time for TW3 has been a real problem.'
Norsca were made differently enough that the content that they tried to port from Warhammer 1 to 2 totally broke. The faction came out late because they basically had to rebuild everything to make them fit. Most of the other factions were ported over as a core and then content adjusted and updated for Warhammer 2.
This is the same as for 3. Whilst there is a lot of work and its not as simple as a copy-paste; they don't have to rebuild the factions (or shouldn't at least). Instead its more respecting the fact that Warhammer 3 introduced new things and thus the Warhammer 2 armies, after the content is ported over, have to be updated and adjusted to fit with those new content elements.
The factions are future proofed in that they don't have to rebuild them. They can import the factions as a whole from the 2nd into the 3rd game. Then they have to perform a tweaking pass over them as they add in the new mechanics, change the balance of the forces; test things and then adjust after that testing.
The 3rd game introduces new mechanics and ideas; it adjusts existing ones as well. They couldn't be future proofed in unless they'd designed them back when they made the 2nd and 1st games. At which point they'd have just put them into those games.
The only army that wasn't future proofed was Norsca because they adjusted some elements of how they worked as a faction which broke with the importer from 1 to 2. Every other army is "future proofed" enough to move game to game.
nels1031 wrote: Looks like Festus the Leechlord is getting a reveal soon.
They said weekly, or at least over the next 3 weeks. I'd assume previews on the 26th, 2nd and 9th, short lets play the next day or so, then something 'big' for the 16th followed by release on the 23rd.
A teaser pic like the vague pink thing they did with Azazel wouldn't be a surprise, though.
nels1031 wrote: Looks like Festus the Leechlord is getting a reveal soon.
They said weekly, or at least over the next 3 weeks. I'd assume previews on the 26th, 2nd and 9th, short lets play the next day or so, then something 'big' for the 16th followed by release on the 23rd.
A teaser pic like the vague pink thing they did with Azazel wouldn't be a surprise, though.
That's what I'm referring to. They sent an e-mail with a video teaser. "He will cure all your ailments".
Work blocked so can't post it. Not up on their youtube page yet either
Norsca were made differently enough that the content that they tried to port from Warhammer 1 to 2 totally broke. The faction came out late because they basically had to rebuild everything to make them fit. Most of the other factions were ported over as a core and then content adjusted and updated for Warhammer 2.
This is the same as for 3. Whilst there is a lot of work and its not as simple as a copy-paste; they don't have to rebuild the factions (or shouldn't at least). Instead its more respecting the fact that Warhammer 3 introduced new things and thus the Warhammer 2 armies, after the content is ported over, have to be updated and adjusted to fit with those new content elements.
From memory, I read a blog post that basically said the Norsca design team was a separate team to the WH2 design team and they weren't communicating enough such that the Norsca team was diverging from what would allow it to be plugged straight into WH2, and they realised too late and so Norsca ended up getting delayed.
I would guess that while the WH2 team was busy porting over the WH1 armies, the Norsca team was busy writing Norsca for WH1, so that too close to the release date they had to start from scratch porting Norsca over when all the other armies were already approaching their completion.
Norsca were made differently enough that the content that they tried to port from Warhammer 1 to 2 totally broke. The faction came out late because they basically had to rebuild everything to make them fit. Most of the other factions were ported over as a core and then content adjusted and updated for Warhammer 2.
This is the same as for 3. Whilst there is a lot of work and its not as simple as a copy-paste; they don't have to rebuild the factions (or shouldn't at least). Instead its more respecting the fact that Warhammer 3 introduced new things and thus the Warhammer 2 armies, after the content is ported over, have to be updated and adjusted to fit with those new content elements.
From memory, I read a blog post that basically said the Norsca design team was a separate team to the WH2 design team and they weren't communicating enough such that the Norsca team was diverging from what would allow it to be plugged straight into WH2, and they realised too late and so Norsca ended up getting delayed.
I would guess that while the WH2 team was busy porting over the WH1 armies, the Norsca team was busy writing Norsca for WH1, so that too close to the release date they had to start from scratch porting Norsca over when all the other armies were already approaching their completion.
Yep that sounds about right. Norsca was a "freaking heck this game made so much money we can pay for another army lets do it" which then turned around and bit them when the issues arose.
While he's a bit "vanilla" when it comes to Orc Warbosses, Gorfang Rotgut should get fleshed out a bit more as well. That's a character that had history with a few of the main characters in the Badlands, notably King Kazador (who also needs some love!). He even teamed up with Morglum at some point.
The trailer is... meh. (too much grunting and scenery chewing)
Good shot of the warshrine, though
Not much to the actual article either.
Long forgetting the Hippocratic Oath he so vehemently preached as a mortal, Festus can be found concocting a variety of horrific potions and unleashing Lore of Nurgle spells, both of which allow him to manipulate the battlefield in insidious ways. While his Healing Elixirs ability replenishes the hit points of his own combatants, the Harbinger of Pestilence ability instead deals damage to enemy combatants. Yet there’s a catch: both act more like toggleable passive abilities that are mutually exclusive to use (meaning that only one of the two can be active at any one time).
FACTION EFFECTS
Vassals gain poison attacks and spread Nurgle’s corruption
Can brew Plagues
Souls +25 when a plague is spread
The radius of the healing/damage passives is a big deal. If its battlefield, cool. If not, he might have trouble as a foot lord (not sure what possible mount he could get, beyond a war shrine, and no idea if they did the work for that)
Rest is pretty blah.
I'm amused that CA thinks the warhammer world has a Hippocrates to base an oath on, but never mind.
The start, with him walking the streets of an Empire city is really good. Atmospheric.
Kinda want to play that game, to be honest.
Some nice battlemaps, not much use for the unlocked rifts beyond wandering around the world.
Shows off the warband upgrade mechanics. Some of that is going to hurt. Need rank 5 to upgrade marauders to warriors, then need to rank up again to upgrade to knights. Hope there's decent options later to just recruit better units directly (in sufficient numbers)
In regards to the confederation discussion in the quote, there is a mod (in WH2) that allows defeated LL's and any hero/lord with the immortal trait to join your faction, minus their campaign mechanics and such. IE, If you are playing Skarsnik and Grom is eliminated, he'll join you if you want, but lose his goblin customization thing. Hope that mod maker ports that over to WH3, if they haven't already.
Hello Total War: WARHAMMER fans! Over the past few weeks, months, and even YEARS, there’s been a healthy debate within the community as to how we approach the implementation of certain races in the Total War: WARHAMMER games. Nowhere has that been more apparent than the split between the Warriors of Chaos, the Daemons of Chaos, and the “Monogod” races (Tzeentch, Slaanesh, Khorne, and Nurgle).
With that discussion rising to the forefront following the reveal of the Champions of Chaos, we wanted to take a moment to sit down with our design team and get their thoughts on the process behind it. So today, we’re here to provide you with a clear picture of what, why, and how we’ve split the Lords of Chaos, as well as the role it will play in our forthcoming DLC!
(You ready for a super deep dive? Let’s go!)
CHAOS Q&A
WHY ARE THE FOUR NEW LEGENDARY LORDS CONSIDERED “WARRIORS OF CHAOS?”
With this being the first Warriors of Chaos Lords Pack since 2015, we wanted to reintroduce this iconic race in a way that was befitting of their infamous world-ending reputation. To that end, introducing four Legendary Lords—each of whom is aligned with one of the four Chaos Gods—was a flavorful way to start, particularly given that we already have two Undivided Lords in the form of Archaon and Kholek.
Beyond the flavor that each Champion could bring to this Lord’s Pack, we found that several design elements aligned exceptionally well with the revamped Warriors of Chaos mechanics. For instance, the vision for Azazel was that he’s been sent out into the world to find and lure promising Undivided champions into devoting themselves to Slaanesh. He’s basically an evil talent scout—a role implied as far back as Morkar the Uniter, who may have been persuaded along his path to become the first Everchosen way back in the days of Sigmar.
For some characters, it would have been very hard to find a niche for them in the Monogods roster. Festus is a good example here; he’s a durable Lore of Nurgle spellcaster who’s a master of brewing plagues…but how do you make him interesting alongside Ku’gath, who’s better at all those things in addition to throwing exploding Nurglings? The answer: put Festus in the Warriors and you’ve *immediately* got a combination of features that’s entirely unique!
Finally, this approach allowed us to push the quality of the pack far higher than we could have otherwise. Having the whole team laser-focused on a shared feature-set meant that every single playtest, improvement, and bug fix benefited all the characters rather than one.
It needs to be stressed, though, that even in this context, our goal was to create four Warriors of Chaos experiences that feel like Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh, and Tzeentch—much in the same way that Wulfhart and the new Volkmar feel like Empire factions even though they don’t share the same mechanics as Karl Franz. These are true hybrids: drawing a ton of flavour and gameplay from their relevant Dark God. They’ll be fully capable of running armies that will look very much like the ones you’d see when playing as the relevant God-specific race…but with Dragon Ogres!
WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE THE ‘MONOGOD’ RACES OF KHORNE, SLAANESH, NURGLE, AND TZEENTCH?
It’s important to state: the new DLC characters existing within the Warriors of Chaos race DOES NOT prevent us from adding mortal characters to the Monogod rosters.
This is something we confront on a DLC-by-DLC basis. In some instances, mortal characters might fit better alongside a Daemon-focused roster or the Monogod mechanics; in others, the roster might end up with wildly different, bespoke feature-sets more appropriate to the given faction. Don’t worry; there are plenty of exciting characters who will be joining the Monogods in the future….
It’s also worth stressing that this pack will still massively transform the Monogod playstyle. In some cases, their rosters are almost doubling in size, with each God gaining a new hero and two lords to lead their armies, topped off by the ability to convert Mortal Lords into Daemon Princes. Even older heroes are getting updated: with Cultists now riding the new Warshrines into battle as mounts. Combined with a ton of balance changes and the new Immortal Empires starting positions, we’re pretty sure the Monogods will offer a ton of fresh, new experiences.
WHY ARE THERE TWO SLAANESH LEGENDARY LORDS IN THE WARRIORS OF CHAOS?
With hindsight, everything is much clearer…
It’s fair to say that if Sigvald hadn’t already been in the game since 2016, he would have (undoubtedly) been the Slaanesh Champion in Azazel’s place. Beyond that, we wanted to ensure that all four of the Dark Gods had representation within this pack in order to provide you with a larger variety of Legendary Lords to play at launch. Plus, we really like the Swiss Army Knife dynamism that Azazel brings to the roster!
Ultimately, our aim has been to ensure that both Slaaneshi Lords offer a distinct playstyle. As Azazel is a Daemon Prince, he has a narrower choice of units to recruit from, solely focusing on Undivided and Slaaneshi units, whilst Sigvald has the potential to branch out into units from all four pantheons and Undivided. That’s not to say you’ll see Sigvald leading armies of screaming Khornate berserkers or festering Nurgle-worshipers: due to the Dark Authority system (see below) Sigvald’s own personal retinue will maintain a distinctly Slaanesh flavour and he’ll need to do some delegation to others to efficiently maintain units devoted to other Gods. So, even though there’s only one Lord in the Slaanesh race, you’ve got three *very* different ways to play a Slaanesh-themed campaign.
HOW DO THE UNIT ROSTERS WORK IN A CAMPAIGN?
While the Warriors of Chaos can eventually access a truly vast array of mortal and daemonic units, it’s not just a case of constructing specific buildings and spewing out multicoloured units… Much like the lore, you’ll have to work hard to amass the forces of multiple Gods, and certain characters will find it easier (or more difficult) than others.
Every unit in the roster is treated as either a “Warband” unit or a “Gifted” unit. Warband units are your bread and butter: consisting of Mortal humans as well as the bulk of the Undivided monstrous units. Almost all of them can be “Marked”—an act that devotes them to a specific God and turns them into a new unit with new visuals, stats, and even new voice lines—though you can’t necessarily Mark a unit right from the start.
Gifted units are primarily Daemons accompanied by a few specialist, non-Daemonic units—such as Hellcannons and Shaggoths—and are recruited by spending Souls on Chaos Gifts (hence the name) or via certain special events. The catch? There’s a cap on the number of these “Gifted” units you can have in any given army; that is, unless you’re Be’lakor, who can recruit as many as he likes! Like Marks, these options aren’t necessarily available from the very start of your Campaign.
In fact, the specific conditions for unlocking these options is one of the key ways we’re differentiating the individual factions. For example:
Be’lakor can recruit a whole bunch of Gifted units from Turn 1 onward, but must unlock the ability to Mark mortals in his skill tree.
Sigvald can recruit Slaanesh mortals and Daemons from Turn 1 onward, but must wait to unlock other God’s forces. (Though he might struggle to keep Khornate units in check…)
Archaon can unlock the ability to recruit God-specific units and is best-suited to access and lead forces that mix-and-match with a bit of everything.
Kholek will have the hardest time getting access to God-specific units, but has easier access to Dragon Ogres and Dragon Ogre Shaggoths.
On top of these special conditions, a “Dark Authority” system restricts which units you can include in any given army. God-specific units won’t simply follow anyone… For example, if you want Nurgle followers or Daemons in your army, you’ll need a Nurgle lord or hero in the army to keep them in line; otherwise they’ll suffer from increased upkeep and reduced replenishment. And if you try and put Khorne units in an army with Slaanesh characters or (Gods forbid) a wizard, you’ll need to make sure there’s a proper Khornate character present to balance things out. We really want to sell the idea that these “Warbands” are perilous coalitions of rivals, forcing you (the player) to think carefully about how you your armies.
WHAT’S SPECIAL ABOUT THE NEW DLC LORDS?
Comparatively, the four new DLC Lords are almost akin to a sub-race within the Warriors: Lords who are more closely aligned to their specific God, and thus limited in their access to the full suite of Marked units in lieu of their patron God’s specific units alongside the Undivided. To accommodate this sacrifice, they instead gain a variety of specialist advantages:
They can start Marking Mortals and recruiting Daemons from Turn 1 and will find it both easier and cheaper to do so.
They share a uniquely structured tech tree—about half of which is built for their particular faction—that allows for more specialization in God-specific units and mechanics.
They spread (and benefit more from) their own God’s corruption, but are actively penalized by the corruption of an opposing God.
They get access to their God’s battle mechanics and army abilities.
They each get versions of certain Campaign features belonging to the main Daemon faction; for example: Festus can brew and spread plagues, but they have slightly different effects to Ku’gath’s.
There’s also a ton of other variations we’ve made where appropriate; for example, vassals belonging to the DLC lords will take on certain attributes from their masters: spreading their favoured corruption and gaining thematic bonuses in battle. They’ve even got unique ways to keep their troops in line; Festus, as an example, can get more Nurgle Authority by bestowing his armies with plagues, making it easier for him to put Nurgle troops in Undivided-led forces.
All in all, we’ve tried to make these four Champions feel different from the rest of the Warriors of Chaos. Our dialogue engineers have even gone so far as to ensure that units in these characters’ armies use different voice lines when led by one of the characters; you’ll hear Marauders and Warriors and Chosen in Azazel’s army shouting about their allegiance—not just to Slaanesh, but to Azazel himself!
On top of all that, they also participate in a brand-new Campaign set on the Realms of Chaos map, which offers a dramatic narrative following the main game’s Ursun storyline. It’s a nifty, alternate take on the Rifts system: one with more control in the leadup to a truly epic finale.
WHAT ABOUT CONFEDERATION?
Initially, the team were aiming for Archaon (at minimum) to be able to confederate all the Warriors of Chaos. However, there were some significant technical and balance issues that we were unable to resolve in the time we had to implement the rest of their feature overhauls. Given the technical issues, we were concerned that launching with confederation enabled could jeopardize the core experience of the Warriors of Chaos; as such, we chose to disable the option for the initial release of Immortal Empires.
With that said, we know that this is important to you, and will be looking to enable some form of confederation for the Warriors in a post-release patch. We’ll talk more about how we’ll aim to accomplish that feat in the future!
COMING SOON!
We hope this offers clarity into our design process and helps you understand where our four newest Legendary Lords are landing in the WARHAMMER III roster! As mentioned before, there’s still room for adjustments and changes, so we look forward to hearing what you think when you get your hands on them this August.
Check back next week for another look at an upcoming Champion, as well as more details about Immortal Empires!
Its embarrassing (for the ranting portion of the 'fanbase') that they had to explain this. The idea that everything would be limited to exactly X and Y (in army rosters and mechanics) forever because of the name at the top (warriors of chaos, daemons, monogod) was obviously false.
Customized army options (Drycha and Vampirate Mermaid, for example) already existed!
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As far as confederation goes, I honestly don't care. I hate it as a mechanic. Its frustrating when enemies do it (and can lead to random outbreaks of peace) and makes the opposition less interesting.
As a player, it feels like cheating. Just an easy button push to gain a swath of territory for free (or something the AI will just refuse to do, which can be frustrating in its own right, when confederation is the central mechanic- like Empire now)
Voss wrote: Its embarrassing (for the ranting portion of the 'fanbase') that they had to explain this. The idea that everything would be limited to exactly X and Y (in army rosters and mechanics) forever because of the name at the top (warriors of chaos, daemons, monogod) was obviously false.
More mystifying are the ideas that:
1. People thought these four characters would be Daemons of Chaos units. They were WoC Lords in WHFB.
2. That people thought the inclusion of these LLs would somehow prefect DoC from getting their own LL expansions.
H.B.M.C. wrote: 1. People thought these four characters would be Daemons of Chaos units. They were WoC Lords in WHFB.
I imagine a lot of people never played WHFB or it's been so long that they've forgotten. They just see Nurgle daemon looking thing and assume it must be a Daemons of Chaos unit.
I don't know. Its hard to imagine obsessing that much about faction identity in a property they don't know very well.
Plus it requires thinking that WoC would never get an uplift (unlike pretty much every other faction) and everything Chaos would be DoC from the TW3 launch onwards, despite the fact CA had already stretched the daemon roster with Forge world units (like the Nurgle Toads) and the Exalted versions.
About the only legitimate complaint was that the launch rosters for the Monogod factions were overly thin.
But that's because the Daemons roster is quite thin, and that's before you split it out into monogod lists.
They've stretched it pretty thing already - creating 'Exalted' versions of basic units, making basic unit leaders into Hero level characters, adding mortal units, and universal spawn/Furies - and it's still thin.
Voss wrote: I don't know. Its hard to imagine obsessing that much about faction identity in a property they don't know very well.
Given the amount of people I've seen saing "But Khorne only has one LL!"... no, DoC have 5 LLs. People need to stop thinking of the DoC LLs as completely separate factions.
I'm guessing people just saw daemons / daemon princes and assumed they'd be for the daemon factions, as that's the way TWW has worked so far.
I did play WHFB and had totally forgotten that Festus was in WoC instead of DoC, and Azazel, he wasn't even in the last WoC book, wasn't he squatted a couple of decades ago?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
H.B.M.C. wrote: Given the amount of people I've seen saing "But Khorne only has one LL!"... no, DoC have 5 LLs. People need to stop thinking of the DoC LLs as completely separate factions.
CA treats them as separate factions. If you play one of them, you can't confederate the others like you would be able to if they were the same faction. I believe CA also advertised the game as having 7+1 factions, a number you only get to by assuming they're different factions. CA isn't really bound by the structures outlined in previous WHFB armies books (which sometimes left a bit to be desired anyway).
I'm guessing people just saw daemons / daemon princes and assumed they'd be for the daemon factions, as that's the way TWW has worked so far.
Visit the total war forums for a bit to see the obsession in action. It has been a complete gakstorm 24/7 for quite a while now. (Partly why I just laugh when people complain about negativity on dakka- visit any video game company's forums for a bit)
I did play WHFB and had totally forgotten that Festus was in WoC instead of DoC, and Azazel, he wasn't even in the last WoC book, wasn't he squatted a couple of decades ago?
He (and other chaos characters) wandered off, yeah. But they did need more LLs to add anyway, and the chaos pool isn't actually very deep, especially when it comes to specific characters dedicated to specific gods. (and two of the major undivided characters are shorn off into the Norscan faction in TW). Valkia and Vilitch were obvious picks from the WoC books, as was Festus. For Slaanesh... who else would you pick?
H.B.M.C. wrote: Given the amount of people I've seen saing "But Khorne only has one LL!"... no, DoC have 5 LLs. People need to stop thinking of the DoC LLs as completely separate factions.
CA treats them as separate factions. If you play one of them, you can't confederate the others like you would be able to if they were the same faction. I believe CA also advertised the game as having 7+1 factions, a number you only get to by assuming they're different factions. CA isn't really bound by the structures outlined in previous WHFB armies books (which sometimes left a bit to be desired anyway).
CA treats them however its convenient (as should be obvious with the way warriors, marauders, forsaken and knights were divvied up between the monogod factions). The leadup to TW3 didn't advertise 7+1 factions, they were pretty quiet about it until campaign start screens starting showing up when their streamer stable started showing the game off. That's when it became clear it was 7 base factions. But again, its a matter of convenience. Prior to 3, they stuck pretty close to armies as they were in army books (with the baffling exception of orcs with spears, and a few FW odds-and-ends here and there, plus Norsca and Vampirates).
But it largely works out better this way. Its certainly more interesting if Archaeon, Sigvald, Kholek N'kari and Azael (etc, etc) all function differently. Even Belakor and Azael as daemons make more sense with easy access to mortals, because getting into the heads of people is kind of the whole deal for both of them. N'kari could have, but that would involve unique 'chaos elf' models more than anything else, because that's where his attention lies (and that would've been a lot of work, plus the balance problems of having a lot of archers in-faction)
I'm guessing people just saw daemons / daemon princes and assumed they'd be for the daemon factions, as that's the way TWW has worked so far.
Visit the total war forums for a bit to see the obsession in action. It has been a complete gakstorm 24/7 for quite a while now. (Partly why I just laugh when people complain about negativity on dakka- visit any video game company's forums for a bit)
I would have liked Egrimm van Horstmann. I used to love that model. Seems odd he isn't there, considering it seemed like they were showing that in one of the cinematics.
I wonder if they decided against a Chaos Dragon because they already have so many races with dragons.
I wonder if they decided against a Chaos Dragon because they already have so many races with dragons.
I'm confused.
Are you suggesting that there's something like a limit on the number of dragons one can have? That there is potentially such a concept as "too many dragons?"
I wonder if they decided against a Chaos Dragon because they already have so many races with dragons.
I'm confused.
Are you suggesting that there's something like a limit on the number of dragons one can have? That there is potentially such a concept as "too many dragons?"
I'm not advocating it, but my assumption from a gameplay standpoint is that this was floated. Chaos dragons are cool as hell, especially Galrauch. Van Horstmann is an absolute baller, also aboard a chaos dragon. So why are they not included? My assumption, CA are weak willed and have indeed created the concept of too many dragons.
Voss wrote: I might be wrong, but with the way they do cinematics, the model needs to be somewhere in the game engine. So... future release?
I believe most are in-game-engine based. So if its in there then chances are they will have one appear in the future. As you say it could well be a future release such as DLC or free and such.
Not really sold on the 'twin.' (which iirc is actually Vilitch?) I think its mostly the lighting effects (particularly when its conjuring a spell in hand). But it looks like a cartoon ghost (like Casper) more than something real, made of flesh and blood and attached to the 'body' of the other.
nels1031 wrote: I think Valkia is going to blow me away. It was such an awesome mini for its time and seeing it brought to "life" is going to be pretty wild.
Agreed
None of the three so far revealed ever really interested me in the lore compared to others - Dechalla for Slaanesh, Tamakhan for Nurgle, Engrimm for Tzeentch. Oh well really just waiting for Neferata and her ladies
Voss wrote: Not really sold on the 'twin.' (which iirc is actually Vilitch?) I think its mostly the lighting effects (particularly when its conjuring a spell in hand). But it looks like a cartoon ghost (like Casper) more than something real, made of flesh and blood and attached to the 'body' of the other.
This was after my time so I had to look it up. The manky worm is Vilitch and he makes a pact with Tzeentch because he's a weak bicth. And his brother the big lad becomes an mindless slave.
In the End Times the brother makes a pact with Tzeentch and the roles reverse and Vilitch is the one that becomes the mindless one.
So I wonder if there's perhaps two talent trees based on which one is in charge?
Most interesting thing is probably the generic chaos lord... on Chaos Dragon. (at about 2:00 in the video). And then loses it, of course, on ascending to a daemon prince (which gets to keep magical items, and doesn't get the customizable gifts of the Kevin the Daemon Prince. Expected but... mixed feelings there)
Stats for the DP are at 3:18. Armor's real bad, rest is ok. Skill tree is much more like a traditional lord, rather than the wretched thing Kevin got for his unique faction. Mix of Metal and Tzeentch spells (capping off with infernal gateway and transmutation of lead)
Interesting video, but its more informative about generic lords than Vilitch himself.
H.B.M.C. wrote: The items you get are generally more useful than the various mutations and whatnot Daniel can get, especially the higher level ones.
Oh, definitely. The daemon prince and gifts was/is kind of a mess. I liked it much more in theory than in implementation- it felt at least somewhat thematic, if imperfect. But in terms of game mechanics, it was garbage.
Similarly, I have the feeling that, statwise, you're better off keeping Chaos Lords and turning down daemonhood. And that's a little sad.
I was actually poking at a Nkari campaign a couple weeks ago (hoping to finish it before IE, because I think Nkari's start is pure hell, in the midst of a personal Ordertide. Unsurprisingly lost interest past the midgame. Its just too much un-fun cruft, despite having both Mao Yin and Katarin as vassals, which may actually make it impossible to win, unless the special Slaanesh vassalage can be broken. Also both Greasus and Kugath are hiding somewhere on the map with zero settlements, and I can't be asked to track them down), and for his quest battle, the pile of elven archers and particularly the sisters just shredded everything they touched, and the current Slaanesh roster has the same low armor problem. So going daemon prince with a generic lord may end up just being a loss.
Might come down to the fact that Daemon Princes are very slow in the air, and the AI targets them with everything like the world depends on it, and they haven't the defences to stand up to that kind of incoming firepower.
They have very little armour (something items can mitigate somewhat, but something Daniel can't! ) and whilst barrier certainly helps, that's a Tzeentch only thing.
With Immortal Empires just around the corner, we want to make sure everyone is battle ready! From today till the 18th of August, Microsoft Store will be offering up to 75% off Total War: WARHAMMER I, II titles & DLC with a special bundle on both!
Hey everyone. So, as you know Immortal Empires is getting closer and closer with every passing day. Everyone here is working as hard as possible to make sure we have a smooth release. This week we won't have a dedicated Immortal Empires blog. I know I know!
That being said, what has been the most interesting article you've read regarding Immortal Empires and what would you like to hear more from?
Oooo, start positions. Pretty much finalized until another DLC
Oh, but I hate hers. Why shove her up in the corner? (especially after that quote about her haunting the borders of Kislev?)
Azazel inherits Timmy's spot.... fine.
Festus has free reign over the empire NPC factions.
Vilitch gets the other corner, which is also a little boring.
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I still think they screwed up on starting locations a bit. I'm ignoring Greasus, and that general area because Chaos Dwarfs will change that immensely
But some starts are suddenly much harder (Malekith- a lot more serious enemies and fewer allies) or just squashable, especially in the early game (Nkari and Skarsnik).
Others are simply on easy mode- little competition, easy to turtle and build up (Empire, Mazdamundi, Rakarth, even Nakai, Sigvald and Azazel).
The Southland Scrum is an entirely different beast. I do wonder how Fateweaver's AI is set up, as he can just nope out and go build a power base while using 'changing of the ways' to make it even more of a mess.
I figured the excess of “!?” would convey sarcasm, as I mention how excited I am for Valkia’s reveal a few posts up on the same page.
But thanks for the info!
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Voss wrote: Oh, but I hate hers. Why shove her up in the corner? (especially after that quote about her haunting the borders of Kislev?.
I know you mentioned that they’ve largely ignored End Times stuff, but perhaps they got the idea to put her up there because at the onset of the End Times, she was the tip of the spear in the invasion that sent the Dark Elves out of Naggaroth and on to their final attempt to take Ulthuan.
Voss wrote: Vilitch gets the other corner, which is also a little boring.
With Kairos having flown south for the winter, they need something Tzeentchian over in Cathay.
Sure, Cathay needs some chaos threats. But corner camping with a relatively safe buffer space is very a different experience to being in the thick of things.
It also really limits available enemies. If you want to recreate the chaos invasion of the old world through kislev and the empire, you're way out of place for that.
Its one thing for the factions that are effectively tied to the geography of their countries. But for the ones that aren't, getting stuck in the corners feels like a raw deal. Especially when there isn't any strong lore reason for them to be there.
Certain factions it'd make sense if they had options for their start locations. For some of the chaos factions it doesn't make sense they'd be locked in one place, and some of the more nomadic factions also.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Certain factions it'd make sense if they had options for their start locations. For some of the chaos factions it doesn't make sense they'd be locked in one place, and some of the more nomadic factions also.
Like most thngs there is a mod for that but it would be nice if more of the things that get modded where actually in the base game but sadly the hard work of modders seems to make companies lazy
Voss wrote: Not really sold on the 'twin.' (which iirc is actually Vilitch?) I think its mostly the lighting effects (particularly when its conjuring a spell in hand). But it looks like a cartoon ghost (like Casper) more than something real, made of flesh and blood and attached to the 'body' of the other.
He's definitely gotten a lot more "chaosy", though IIRC he didn't actually have an official model or even artwork??? At least nothing I can find.
I don't hate it, but I think it would be better if he looked a little more like some horrible conjoined twin thing and less Big Dude with a ghost on his shoulder.
Voss wrote: Vilitch gets the other corner, which is also a little boring.
With Kairos having flown south for the winter, they need something Tzeentchian over in Cathay.
Sure, Cathay needs some chaos threats. But corner camping with a relatively safe buffer space is very a different experience to being in the thick of things.
It also really limits available enemies. If you want to recreate the chaos invasion of the old world through kislev and the empire, you're way out of place for that.
Its one thing for the factions that are effectively tied to the geography of their countries. But for the ones that aren't, getting stuck in the corners feels like a raw deal. Especially when there isn't any strong lore reason for them to be there.
It could be an interesting mechanic at some point to allow, at least in a single player campaign, players to pick starting locations for some factions.
All of the Chaos factions should be able to move fairly freely in the realm of chaos.
Beastmen, Ogres, certain LLs in various factions, etc... Give them a handful of choices in starting locations and switch around. Maybe let them swap with other generic members of their faction.
Voss wrote: Not really sold on the 'twin.' (which iirc is actually Vilitch?) I think its mostly the lighting effects (particularly when its conjuring a spell in hand). But it looks like a cartoon ghost (like Casper) more than something real, made of flesh and blood and attached to the 'body' of the other.
He's definitely gotten a lot more "chaosy", though IIRC he didn't actually have an official model or even artwork??? At least nothing I can find.
I don't hate it, but I think it would be better if he looked a little more like some horrible conjoined twin thing and less Big Dude with a ghost on his shoulder.
Left one is the new AoS one, right is the older Warhammer Fantasy one.
Spoiler:
Chaos Art after getting a model
Spoiler:
Chaos Art before getting a model.
Spoiler:
He's been around a while at least when it comes to these. Though I think the older Chaos Art was pre-7th edition
The Total War FB page had some links to the blog detailing Valkia's faction/mechanics and a separate youtube trailer, but both led to a 404 screen. Someone probably jumped the gun with the post or it needed some last minute editing.
Has access to Bloodletting
Campaign movement range: +20% after winning a battle (all characters)
Souls gained from sacrificing captives: +50%
Vassals gain Frenzy and spread Khorne’s corruption
LORD EFFECTS
Passive ability: The Gaze of Khorne
Campaign movement range +35% after enemy retreats from battle
Daemonshield grants invulnerability, her spear can fire off a line eruption, and Gaze buffs damage around her.
No point trying to run away from her (except maybe on some of the weirder places in the map where fleeing goes further than it should).
A normal sized flying model should be interesting. Hope the hit boxes and animations can cope.
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Think I may do a chaos champions campaign with her while waiting for a hotfix or two (or even a patch) for IE. I doubt that's going to be in great shape on the 23rd.
Huh. I was poking at the TW3 Steam page in the store (for the DLC) and went back to it in my library, and found an extra DLC poking about (in addition to Ogres). Its simply titled 'Eight' and was added August 18th, 2017. It doesn't link to anything, while clicking on Ogres in the 'Manage my DLC' window links to their store page.
Its a weird date, and scrolling through TW1 and 2 DLC release dates confused me more, since a Lot of DLC release dates for TW2 are a month before TW2 came out (August vs September), even stuff that came out near the end of TW2 like Ogre Mercs.
But, to wrap up this interlude, For TW2, August 18 was the date for the 30th Anniversary regiments. August 19th was.... Blood for the Blood God II.
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TL;DR Eight is Khorne's number, and Khorne is blood, blood, blood. The Blood pack may finally be sneaking in. Hopefully with sliders.
And its supposed to be around now, according to the Roadmap:
https://www.totalwar.com/blog/twwh3-roadmap-2022/
I'd love a blood option that is a bit more reserved, I also tended to turn it off because with it on it just looked absurd and lowered performance. At the moment it feels like someone stubs their toe and then just explodes in a spray of blood and gore.
Was there any news that there'd be sliders, or was that just wishlisting?
Can we just have the blood effects from Shogun 2 or Medieval 2? I don't want to pay for anime blood explosions. I just want semi-realistic bloodied warriors.
Better yet, realistic blood effects in the base game and a "Pay for your anime blood explosions" DLC.
Base game won't happen, as there are too many countries where that's a problem that impacts rating (or being able to sell it at all) and sales. Or CA still believes it does (I haven't personally had to deal with it since I picked up Fallout 2 in the UK and all the kids were chopped out and quests were left broken).
But yeah, I'd prefer they stopped dialing it up to 11.
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Gameplay video is interesting. I do love having the option to short circuit the race and just kill the others. (You could theoretically do that in the base game, but there were so many, so far apart and with back-ups that it was stupidly difficult to pull off).
Voss wrote: Base game won't happen, as there are too many countries where that's a problem that impacts rating (or being able to sell it at all) and sales. Or CA still believes it does (I haven't personally had to deal with it since I picked up Fallout 2 in the UK and all the kids were chopped out and quests were left broken).
That's always come across as a weak excuse to charge a few bucks for something that should probably just be a checkbox in the game to begin with. Other games just have the gore then remove it for the one or two countries where it matters, and I'm not convinced it'd make much of a difference to the rating in most countries anyway.
The countries that would take issue with the blood already take issue with the bloodless violence that already exists in the game without the DLC. And again, you can just toggle it off/on in countries where it is. It's just a particle effect.
In fact, creating it after the fact as a separate file and download would actually be more complicated coding than just including it in the base game from the ground up and having an on/off switch.
Stealth change:
Immortality at rank 20 (for non-named characters) comes for free.
Watched some of the let's plays that are going up (for IE, chaos champions are next week). Seems decent, but haven't really looked for problems.
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Immortal Empires End Game (spoilers) This is big change from WH1 and Mortal Empires.
Basics:
Spoiler:
So, the end game event obviously can't be the same chaos invasion, because the chaos factions all start on the map. (though... well, see the next bit)
End game has options, and sliders.
First is a difficulty slider. Starts at 100 (%). Can be scaled up or down, I think to 50% or 200%)
Second is a warning timer. Defaults to 10 turns but can be adjusted.
Two things can trigger the end game event- either the turn timer (100-150 turns is default, and there is a small range down and a huge range up) or triggering on long victory. If you uncheck both boxes, an end game scenario does _not_ happen. There is also another checkmark that disables it as well)
Details:
Spoiler:
there are five scenarios to choose from. You can uncheck any, and it picks one at random from the ones checked
Scenarios are:
The Black Pyramid
A Grudge too Far
Da Biggest Waaagh!
The Wild Hunt
Vampiric Ascension
Now, I don't know the details, obviously these are race associated, so why a chaos invasion (without the LLs, but with lords like Sarthoriel or whatever) isn't an option is a bit weird.
The End Times events spawn either about 10 full stacks in one location (Tomb Kings) or about 5 full stacks for each sub faction of a race - Dwarfs, Orcs and Vampires - which can as you can imagine hugely change the balance of power - note that the factions seem to retain all their normal stacks, settlements and mecanics etc as well and the new super win condition is destroy all these factions.
You can make it happen from turn 10 onwards if you like (but still random which turn it wll happen)
Lots of good stuff tbh
Now just waiting for Neferata, Chaos Dwarfs and Amazons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RECDsxOxz8 About 17:15 in the video.
Cathayan caravans can pick up plagues as they travel through Festus' or other Nurgle territory (and presumably skaven as well, but the odds of that are low). And carry them to regions they enter afterwards. Its interesting since they're on the map, but don't move quite like other units. Annoying to have happen, but its a deeper interaction than I expected.
Couple other things of note when watching this series:
1- the defensive dilemmas where you can send a force to defend a friendly Imperial town... really suck at the moment. It doesn't take into account TW3 reinforcement timer. So you get to sit and watch the AI defenders get butchered, then move your token force on the map and lose. Though oddly, it gives the player control over building towers and defenses. Autoresolve largely wins, though.
2- Defensive AI is still really terrible, to the point of maybe being worse. Every siege battle involves the defenders instantly abandoning the walls (and thus defensive fire from the permanent towers), and milling about taking fire from mortars and whatnot.
Siege Ai can also be terrible, with the Ai just parking units in front of towers and waiting rather than assaulting gates. Its pretty bad.
Also 99% of battles are minor settlement battles, and it's as tedious as all feth.
Legend's Settra campaign has 3 field battles in 6 hours (the one you start with, and then 2 in a row at the 6 hour mark). He would watch his stream viewership decline sharply whenever he went into yet another minor settlement battle, then come back up after it was over, and shoot straight up for the two field battles.
Worse, playing on the highest difficulty, the AI is super timid, running away at the slightest sign of the player's armies, and never making any moves to attack except if it's a Tier 1 settlement with the player's army 3-5 turns away.
He's playing a "This Is Total War" campaign, which is a self-imposed requirement that he declares war on everyone he meets, no matter what, and he's had several turns in a row of hitting end turn and not having the AI - Legendary Difficulty, mind you - do anything and just hide in their cities and not expand.
Seems CA took the anti-player bias and flipped it totally on its head.
The problem with letting the AI assess relative strengths is that many times the player only goes after an AI army when the player has superiority over that army. You are very unlikely to go chasing an army that's stronger than your own. So the best thing to do when you've a weaker army is to retreat and hide behind walls.
It's rather like how the Medieval 2 AI would very often initiate a siege and then decide to retreat from its siege equipment and draw up lines behind. Because bringing you out from behind the walls to attack them was a superior tactic to attacking your walls.
Heck I recall a good few games where you'd play chase all over the battlemap because the AI would retreat and retreat its formations to a corner and such. Very valid tactic to cut down on your potential to flank them; but very frustrating as a player.
This is part of the issue of building an AI. You want it to be smart, but at the same time you want it to engage with the player and play the game. In a siege you want it to attack the walls, maybe pull back and force you out once in a blue moon. In a pitched battle you want it to either hold lines or charge and you don't want it to always do one or the other (though I'd argue charging is often favoured).
H.B.M.C. wrote: Also 99% of battles are minor settlement battles, and it's as tedious as all feth.
Legend's Settra campaign has 3 field battles in 6 hours (the one you start with, and then 2 in a row at the 6 hour mark). He would watch his stream viewership decline sharply whenever he went into yet another minor settlement battle, then come back up after it was over, and shoot straight up for the two field battles.
Yeah, I started watching one of Dame Offensive's streams and it very quickly reminded me why I stopped playing TWW3 to begin with, those damned minor settlement battles on narrow streets.
It's a shame because the maps look nice, they're just don't look like fun to play on.
This game really needs modded maps, was that ever a thing in previous total war games? I'm not big on modding, but I dunno how many more minor settlement battles I can endure before I want to give up on TWW3 again. It just takes everything that was fun about Total War's battle system and throws it out the window in favour of blobby clusterfecks down narrow paths with a tedious capture the flag mechanic and a tower defence game thrown on top.
Legend has a very specific play style as well and maximises every element, watching say Zerkovich who is pretty careless of most campaign mechanics he often will try and bait the enemy out of sieges to get field battles by not attacking with great armies or waiting a few turns.
However yeah Survival/Settlement battles/Siege are my least favourite element of TW3 - not just the time it takes but also the tower building during the battle, just have a set allowance at the start of a battle that you have to build defences.
Also attrition from turn 1 is too good. TW1 and2 takes too long but IIRC legend suggested that Tier 2 and 3 defences should add to this - a turn or two would make sense.
While his campaign mechanics are new (get books, get bonuses for each book and other bonuses for sealing each book, which may be automatic, so you're just getting bonuses on bonuses). his quests are still the same (back up in the Empire). And he gets sidequests from empire provinces to fight their enemies (all the way back home). Its still a mess.
Though his new buffs make free company ridiculously good (in addition to flagellants)
Voss wrote: While his campaign mechanics are new (get books, get bonuses for each book and other bonuses for sealing each book, which may be automatic, so you're just getting bonuses on bonuses). his quests are still the same (back up in the Empire). And he gets sidequests from empire provinces to fight their enemies (all the way back home). Its still a mess.
Voss wrote: While his campaign mechanics are new (get books, get bonuses for each book and other bonuses for sealing each book, which may be automatic, so you're just getting bonuses on bonuses). his quests are still the same (back up in the Empire). And he gets sidequests from empire provinces to fight their enemies (all the way back home). Its still a mess.
I really thought they'd fix that...
That's alright. I'm watching Janet on Occasion's Karl Franz lets play, and he's had an old (pre-rework) confederation event, had a duplicate Middenland Runefang turn up (after restoring then confederating Boris) and just got a side-quest telling him to create an alliance with Ostland (which is literally impossible since the Empire rework).
There's apparently a lot of little things to fix during the Beta (though new quest battles don't qualify for little things). Heck they're apparently skimping on new quest battles. Belakor gets the Sword of Shadows at level 7. No quest, no real announcement, it just turns up. Hopefully the paid DLC lords will get a bit more love.
Voss wrote: While his campaign mechanics are new (get books, get bonuses for each book and other bonuses for sealing each book, which may be automatic, so you're just getting bonuses on bonuses). his quests are still the same (back up in the Empire). And he gets sidequests from empire provinces to fight their enemies (all the way back home). Its still a mess.
I really thought they'd fix that...
That's alright. I'm watching Janet on Occasion's Karl Franz lets play, and he's had an old (pre-rework) confederation event, had a duplicate Middenland Runefang turn up (after restoring then confederating Boris) and just got a side-quest telling him to create an alliance with Ostland (which is literally impossible since the Empire rework).
There's apparently a lot of little things to fix during the Beta (though new quest battles don't qualify for little things). Heck they're apparently skimping on new quest battles. Belakor gets the Sword of Shadows at level 7. No quest, no real announcement, it just turns up. Hopefully the paid DLC lords will get a bit more love.
There's also another week before release and the streamers probably have a build that's a few weeks old, so some of this stuff miiiiiight be fixed by the time it releases to the general public (but I'm going to guess not, given most of the issues with the first TWW3 build were present in the streamers pre-release copies and didn't get fixed).
I'm sure they won't, given that they're old issues dating back to the Empire rework introduced in the Hunter and the Beast.
Some things might, but legacy bugs from TW2 mechanics don't seem high on their list of issues.
The Empire's settlement defense missions are much worse, because the reinforcement change for TW3 has the player sitting there helpless while watching the AI crap itself for two solid minutes.
Overread wrote: It's rather like how the Medieval 2 AI would very often initiate a siege and then decide to retreat from its siege equipment and draw up lines behind. Because bringing you out from behind the walls to attack them was a superior tactic to attacking your walls.
Heck I recall a good few games where you'd play chase all over the battlemap because the AI would retreat and retreat its formations to a corner and such. Very valid tactic to cut down on your potential to flank them; but very frustrating as a player.
Yeah, that was always annoying.
But they could easily fix that by giving the defending player the option to just end the battle. If the attacking force is refusing to assault the walls, the defender has no obligation to sally out. It would be better than forcing the player to just afk for 20 minutes while the timer counts down.
If the AI is the attacker it should be forced to take aggressive action, likewise if it is the defender it should be more likely(but not forced) to take defensive action.
It's too easy to bait the AI because it acts on it's perceived force disparity. I can attack an AI army that is technically superior, take a good defensive position, and then the AI falls into the trap of attacking my army that will annihilate it due to better positioning. It is fun, but it's also kinda not at the same time.
Voss wrote: While his campaign mechanics are new (get books, get bonuses for each book and other bonuses for sealing each book, which may be automatic, so you're just getting bonuses on bonuses). his quests are still the same (back up in the Empire). And he gets sidequests from empire provinces to fight their enemies (all the way back home). Its still a mess.
I really thought they'd fix that...
Coming back to this, apparently what they have done (globally, for everyone) is strip out _all_ the intermediate steps to quest battles. No amassing wealth, sending a character to <region>, sack/raze X cities, defeat Y armies of <faction>, or any of that. At the required level, the quest pops and you can ignore it for as long as you like, travel there or teleport. Simple, done. A lot of the flavor is also gone, but apparently there were lingering bugs from various quest-chains from games 1 & 2, so they purged it with fire.
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Random other stuff.
Dark elves got a slave rework, and can spend them per region like Slaanesh can spend cultists. They also have a global cap (based on empire size and buildings), and don't passively generate income (except for a couple faction traits and buildings). Ports burn through them like firewood, as do some other buildings, so the usage of slaves is a passive push towards aggression.
Vampire bloodline traits got reworked somewhat. Necrach tree (research, winds of magic cap increase and upkeep reduction) and Von Carsteins first trait (+10% casualty replenishment) are obvious choices for everyone. Raise dead is different in how units accumulate in the pool, but more transparent. Works much like the new Warriors of Chaos recruitment pool, seems much harder to get top end units just lying about.
Ghorst is wildly different. Still wants to run zombie hordes (no one else really does), and gives a lot of buffs. And huge bonuses to healing caps (+500%) for zombies.
Archaon and Kholek get absurd bonuses for vassals. (and remember, dark fortresses are tied to specific norscan tribes, and vassalize the faction if you occupy them. Some seem to overlap, but you can have a cloud of vassals)
Archaon- Per vassal, Archaon gets +10% research rate, +10 diplomatic relations with other chaos factions, and +25 souls per turn (which makes it real easy to slot and upkeep gifts), and he also gets a single extra gift slot to spend souls on. He can start to really fly through the tech tree. (Which is quite different now, and mandatory for a lot of unit upgrades).
Kholek, Per vassal, Kholek himself gets +5% to weapon strength, armor, and unit mass. The sword of khaine is a lot further away, but I don't know that it matters anymore. The passive bonuses make him even more outrageous and unstoppable.
Sigvald doesn't get vassalization bonuses but gets the slaanesh seductive influence trait (so can forcibly vassalize with enough corruption) and can seduce units as well.
It might also be that with the scale of the game and the sheer number of factions, its much easier to work quests in as one time events rather than chains of events; when its too easy to end up with a chain that you can't complete or a chain that you are in the wrong area for and so never complete; because all the other factions drew you in different directions responding to attacks and such.
I haven't looked super closely at it, but it seemed like Vampire Counts got nerfed. The bloodlines seem less impactful, and taking away the skellie spam (not that I particularly enjoyed skellie spam). Unless they're doing something else to beef them up to compensate?
Less skellie spam is good for nothing else than ensuring the AI won't have a million massive doomstacks on turn 10. Not that they are hard to kill, just annoying.
I have to say I have never been a fan of the "teleport to the mission battlefield" mechanic. It's just not immersive IMO. Prerequisites or not. I mean, walking across the whole map wouldn't be better, but it just seems like a lazy cop out for them realizing "Oh dang, we can't have players walking their main army across the whole map multiple times a game!"
They should have just made the missions a little closer to their starting locations.
It's just lazy. I don't know what the solution would be, but it's just weird and I have never liked it.
Grey Templar wrote: Less skellie spam is good for nothing else than ensuring the AI won't have a million massive doomstacks on turn 10. Not that they are hard to kill, just annoying.
I dunno if it'll affect the AI, the AI doomstacks regardless of mechanics that affect the player.
It's more that they're nerfed from the player's perspective when they are playing as VC.
Legend of Total War made a good point in one of his streams, when it comes to campaign it's less important to have balance and more important that players can play the way that they find fun. So taking away something (for example skellie spam, though I think he was talking in terms of something else) is a net loss unless it's replaced by other mechanics that are also fun.
I never really exploited skellie spam, so I don't hugely care about that, but given they've also nerfed the bloodlines I think the faction is just going to get weaker unless they're doing something to compensate. VC are already a weak faction when it comes to sieges, and I feel like they're going to be weak in the tower defence game.
I have to say I have never been a fan of the "teleport to the mission battlefield" mechanic. It's just not immersive IMO. Prerequisites or not. I mean, walking across the whole map wouldn't be better, but it just seems like a lazy cop out for them realizing "Oh dang, we can't have players walking their main army across the whole map multiple times a game!"
They should have just made the missions a little closer to their starting locations.
It's just lazy. I don't know what the solution would be, but it's just weird and I have never liked it.
It's a tough one, I agree it's a bit silly, but at the same time you don't really want the quest battles forcing the player to play a certain way (e.g. I have to expand in a certain direction and make sure my army is at full strength by turn X because at level Y I'll get the quest battle in Z location).
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I haven't looked super closely at it, but it seemed like Vampire Counts got nerfed. The bloodlines seem less impactful, and taking away the skellie spam (not that I particularly enjoyed skellie spam). Unless they're doing something else to beef them up to compensate?
I can only hope that its in preperation for the Bloodline lords
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I haven't looked super closely at it, but it seemed like Vampire Counts got nerfed. The bloodlines seem less impactful, and taking away the skellie spam (not that I particularly enjoyed skellie spam). Unless they're doing something else to beef them up to compensate?
Lamia seems worse, Dragon is situational (I don't care enough about vampire cav, nor training for vampire units), but the VC bloodline has a great first one (+10 replenishment) and a good control bonus. Necrarch is gold from top to bottom, and Strigoi has its uses (corruption in particular).
Honestly, Necrarch is probably too good, with a huge research bonus, more magic during combat and general upkeep reduction.
Olthannon wrote: Oh damn so they are introducing the vampire bloodlines. Awesome. I used to have a Lahmian army for WFB. Might try that out on release.
What? Those were added quite a while back in TW2. (I don't want to say two years, but I think... about that long- nope, I'm entirely wrong. End of 2018 alongside Lokhir Fellheart. https://www.pcinvasion.com/warhammer-2-lokhir-fellheart-bloodlines-free-update/).
They just changed some of the bonuses around, in addition to tech tree changes and specific lord changes.
Each bloodline gets 3 levels of bonuses and can get 3 special but 'non-legendary' lords with bloodline specific skills.
Olthannon wrote: Oh damn so they are introducing the vampire bloodlines. Awesome. I used to have a Lahmian army for WFB. Might try that out on release.
Vampire Bloodline - well a bit of them have been in for ages but very little - and all tied to the Von Carsteins - I think we have to wait till we get Neferata and her first children
Wow did they really? Y'know I knew they had added Strigori from the times I've seen them as AI but I've just realised just now I don't think I've actually played as the VCs since the first game. I guess with zombie pirates and tomb kings i didn't think much had changed since the first time round to warrant giving them a playthrough. I don't think I've played O&Gs since 1 either.
You probably should. Vampire Counts are a very powerful faction in TWW2.
Most of what made them work has been gutted in TWW3. They're still powerful, but their magical dominance is gone thanks to the new magic system, and they don't get free Skeletons and whatnot.
Of course, Helman Ghorst, probably the most reviled TWW character for being a complete nobody who got a paid DLC slot, can now buff his Zombies to the point of absurdity in TWW3. So there's that!
In my wee neck of the woods, "sonna" isn't pejorative, but I totally appreciate that seems weird out of no where. International and all that.
