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CMLR wrote:

 The Grumpy Eldar wrote:
Of course they are going to ask full price for this because they call it a full game... They stapeled a 2 hehind it but it's just an expansion.

Actually it is a standalone game because you don't need Total Warhammer to play it, but you will gain access to any Total Warhammer race and DLC you own in the new campaign if you own both games.

Not will it be standalone, but it will also come with four playable races just like the first game did. And the content in the second game is completely independent of the content in the first game. You're not getting rehashed content from the first game if you purchase the second one.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
If you start the game with a level 1 Teclis, Malekith or Slann.

Something not quite right there.

Why not? Durthu started at level 1.

As did The White Dwarf, who was palling around with Malekith back in the day.

Baron Klatz wrote:
That's 2 races not factions. They're still listed and given points under Order and Death. The Tomb kings army is actually a Top-tournament force right now as well with Bretonnia not being too shabby either.

They most likely got rid of the models because they want to redo their designs later down the line with less historical appearance and more high fantasy/gothic.

Well, first off, anyone who looks at gothic as inspiration for Tomb Kings is being stupid. That completely defeats the purpose of them being the Tomb Kings.

But having said that...

GW's actions during the life of WHFB suggests that the problem isn't "We want to redo the models". In fact, Tomb Kings had just had a very big overhaul, and the range had a number of impressive models in it (including quite a few new ones). But keep in mind that both armies were infamous for the ridiculously long amount of time that was spent waiting for a new army book to be released. When Tomb Kings finally got a new army book in 8th Edition, it was the army that had gone the longest without a new book at that point. And the Brettonians never did get a new army book. That suggests that GW just isn't interested in the two factions for some reason. Either the sales weren't as good as GW had hoped, or no one at GW really likes either army.

Personally, I suspect that it was a combination of both.

Back on topic, do we think we won't have any order faction in the last installment?

The word thus far has been that the third game will focus on Chaos - possibly the heretofore ignored southern polar gate. I expect that the various armies off the eastern edge of the first game's map will trickle in as DLC and FLC. And to be frank, there isn't really that much content off the eastern edge of the map. As such, it would be difficult to justify the cost of a stand alone game that focused just on that region.

I suspect that its because the Skaven don't directly fit into the Vortex theme of the game. The two elven races and the Slaan all have immediate reasons to be interested in the Vortex. The Skaven, however, do not.

Or, at least not yet...

It's also possible that the work on the Skaven isn't as far along.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
We get High Elf Princesses as generic Lords (Yay!), but instead of doing it like the wood elves, Princes are the melee Lords whereas Princesses are lightly armoured sword/bow hybrids (Boo!).

Honestly i don't think there was even any High Elf Princesses in the Tabletop. I played and it wasn't my played faction and i didn't face high elves enough but i could swear i never saw such a thing. There may have been some female wizards but i'm not sure. Not that i totally mind since well all Elves have a lot of women and men in their armies. I mean i know the Ward army book had it and all but high elves did have those archer chicks (some sort of magical flaming arrow unit called sisters of averlorn i think) and maybe a couple other things. Oddly i can't seem to remember it's been about 2 years since Fantasy was killed off. I think dark elves had more female models. The witch elves are all females but you probably wouldn't enjoy that they're scantily clad hehe. Not completely sure what else the dark elves had.

The Dark Elves had female warrior models for the rank and file troops (in the previous batch of plastic warrior figures, one in four of the torsos had noticeable breasts). I didn't get the "stupidly dramatic names" version of the warriors that they released with the last book, so I can't tell you if any of the torsos from the current batch of figures are obviously female.

However, to the best of my knowledge, that was the only unit with mixed gender figures. While in theory there were female Dark Elves in most of the other units (the Executioners and the Assassins being the only units that *should* have been male-only for in-setting religious reasons), there were no obviously female models in those other units. AFAIK, the only other female Dark Elf unit figures were of the female-only types - Witch Elves (plus the similar unit they added in 8th). And in the same vein, the only female character models were for sorceresses (including Morathi). The melee character figures were all male, even though in theory there should have been some female non-magical leaders based on what we'd been told about Druuchi culture.

The Dark Elf roster is up.

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/dark-elf-army-roster/

Interestingly, both of the generic missile character options are male, while the generic melee character options are female. The melee hero is a hag, which makes sense. The melee lord a female dreadlord, so that was obviously just a design decision.

The missile hero is an assassin, which is an odd choice, imo (on the tabletop, assassins best known for popping out of hiding in an otherwise bland unit, and meleeing an enemy character to death). We'll see how that works out.

The generic casters are all Sorceresses only. No males (which fits with the fluff before the last army book).


Edit - nm. Found the Cauldron.

Edit 2 - /sigh

 Henry wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
, while the generic female character options are female.

Only quoting this because it tickled me.

Oops.

Fixed.

Saw this. I find it somewhat amusing that the completely unexpected Norsca roster has been revealed, and the Skaven are still under wraps.

I'm curious about their implementation. I'm guessing that they'll be located north of the Dark Elves? There are tribes of Chaos-worshipping humans up there, but the only time they've ever mattered to the lore is when Morathi recruited them to help attack Ulthuan. Technically, there are Norsca in the first Warhammer TW. But I can't inagine them introducing a new playable faction at launch that starts in the Old World while everyone else starts in the New (or Ulthuan).

There's a Steam page up for the Norsca expansion, with some information. Apparently they'll be located north of the Sea of Claws, which is in the Old World. So they'll still be an Old World faction. That will limit their interactions somewhat with the races in Warhammer II (I'm guessing they'll only really be a worry for the High Elves - at least initially). Also, the Norsca DLC is listed for pre-purchase on the page for the first game (it's not listed on the page for the second game, which is probably good because otherwise people who were purchasing the second game might buy it by accident). There are big banners on both the Warhammer TW page, and the Norsca DLC page, advising people that the DLC is free with the pre-purchase of Warhammer II.

They're primarily a raiding faction, and can gain access to "hunts" that send them after powerful creatures located in different parts of the world. But despite the fact that they're a raiding faction, if they take a faction capitol, they can build a settlement there and gain access to some of that faction's technology.


FAQ on the release - https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/6o14op/norsca_faq/

Of particular note -

Can you play as Norsca in Total War: WARHAMMER II?

No, it is DLC for the first game only.

However, shortly after the launch of the second game, we will be releasing an extra combined campaign map, which is a whole new, massive campaign accessible for free by owners of both first and second games. Norsca will also eventually be playable in that combined campaign map.

The Norsca DLC will be available on August 10, including for people who have pre-purchased Warhammer II, which will not be available until September.

 nels1031 wrote:
Aren't there Norse colonies in the New World as well? Lorewise there are/was.

I thought I saw some Chaos-ish banners when they did the campaign map flyover.

They'll presumably be a different faction, kind of like how the current Skaeling faction is essentially Norse, even though it's not the "Norsca" faction.

 nels1031 wrote:

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:
Well the Norsca Faction gets the abilities to set up Raider Settlements in coastal regions, probably the towns with Ports.

Ah, thanks, just read it on the steam page. Was workblocked.

I just purchased the DLC faction, already purchased WH2. Did I feth up?

Yes. Check with Steam for a refund on the DLC.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
The Dark Elf roster is up.

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/dark-elf-army-roster/

Interestingly, both of the generic missile character options are male, while the generic melee character options are female. The melee hero is a hag, which makes sense. The melee lord a female dreadlord, so that was obviously just a design decision.

The missile hero is an assassin, which is an odd choice, imo (on the tabletop, assassins best known for popping out of hiding in an otherwise bland unit, and meleeing an enemy character to death). We'll see how that works out.

Prior to Age of Sigmar, Assassins could take missile weapons. They came with shurikens as standard but could take Repeater Handbows like Corsairs.

Yeah, but shooting things usually wasn't their primary role on the table top. I'm not entirely certain how a "missile hero" works in battle, but it looks like shooting things is going to be its primary battlefield role in TW.

The generic casters are all Sorceresses only. No males (which fits with the fluff before the last army book).

Sorcerers did exist, they just had to avoid Malekith.

Some of the bigger families of Naggaroth kept Sorcerers around as otherwise they would owe favors/wealth to the Sorceress Covens...and since Sorcerers would be killed by Malekith or his followers it wasn't exactly a case of Sorcerers posting an ad in the yellow pages under "Wizard"...

"Under wraps" presumably means "not an obvious part of the big raiding party that you just sent to the Old World to collect some slaves."

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:
Aren't there Norse colonies in the New World as well? Lorewise there are/was.

I thought I saw some Chaos-ish banners when they did the campaign map flyover.

You're thinking of Skeggi. A Norscan settlement/port off the coast of Lustria. It wasn't really a chaos thing as anybody could dock there, like the Empire as long as they paid a fee. Not really a place for a Norscan invasion to start off.

There are also some Chaos-worshipping humans north of the Dark Elves. I don't know that they've ever "officially" been stated to be Norse, though. AFAIK, the only role they ever played in the fluff was when Morathi recruited them for the last attack on Ulthuan (the one that included the Battle of Finuval Plain). They got left behind as the Dark Elves returned home. Those humans are undoubtedly part of the regular Chaos attacks that the northern watch towers guard against. But the Dark Elves are more concerned about the daemons that are part of those raids than the humans.

Incidentally, Steam is currently running a sale on all GW products. TW Warhammer is currently 66% off. And all of the DLC (except for Norsca, of course) are currently 33% off.

Eumerin wrote:
Incidentally, Steam is currently running a sale on all GW products. TW Warhammer is currently 66% off. And all of the DLC (except for Norsca, of course) are currently 33% off.

As part of the GW-wide "Skulls for the Skull Throne" sales event on Steam right now, Krell has been released for Warhammer: Total War as a free download. Creative Assembly has confirmed (both through phrasing in the release announcement, and more directly on the official forum) that Krell is the "Old Friend" that was listed on the release map as the final release for Warhammer: Total War.

Creative Assembly's 30th birthday is coming up. To celebrate, everyone gets 30 regiments of renown for Total War Warhammer for free.

You'll need to be registered with Total War Access, and log in on or after August 10th. Once you do that, you'll get access to the new units.

Norsca's live today. I don't have it yet, so I can't comment on it. Plus, Steam just started downloading the 2.4GB update for it.

Also, since it's Creative Assembly's 30th Anniversary, they've made 30 Regiments of Renown available for free. You'll need to log into Total War Access to claim them, though.

Here's a campaign map for the new Vortex campaign in Warhammer Total War II.

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/eye-vortex-campaign-map/

I think it's safe to say that things are not exactly to scale in that map. If nothing else, Ulthuan isn't supposed to be that big.

Creative Assembly has revealed that the combined Warhammer 1 and 2 campaign will be called "Mortal Empires". There's a nice, long blog post about it here -

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/mortal-empires

I started my "let's play around a bit and get a feel for what's going on" campaign play with Malekith. After clearing out the initial Skaven incursion, I grabbed Altar, since it's the big settlement in that province, and right next to Malekith's capitol.

This arguably turned out to be a mistake. The Chaos corruption started shooting through the roof. Part of it was characters (that I eventually located and chased out). Part of it was an unannounced event that added five(!) points of Chaos corruption to the province. And part of it was a Chaos population group that was still in place even after I owned all four settlements in the province. Unrest shot up to 100%, and I ended up spending an inordinate amount of time trying to keep the province stable (which is part of the reason why I ended up seizing all four settlements).

Mung was running around a bit in the northern areas until I started razing all of their settlements up there (didn't wipe them out, though, as they had at least one more settlement - and possibly others). They took Ghrond right before I could finish them off, so I "liberated" it instead of the more usual "conquered" it. Unfortunately, when I was putting my anti-Mung defences together in the early portion of the game, I accidentally put the garrison in the cul-de-sac settlement in Naggarond instead of the one that was in the pass leading to the Mung territory.

/facepalm

Early on I had military treaties with my southern and eastern neighbors. These worked quite well... right up until the point about thirty turns later when one of them suddenly (and out of the blue) declared war on the other.

/sigh

Now that I've got a more general idea of what's going on, I'm going to start over. And hopefully avoid some of my more careless mistakes.

Some odd stuff...

Lothern is an extremely tough nut to crack. No surprise there. It's the High Elf capital, after all. However, Glittering Isle, which is a minor settlement right next to it, was just as hard. Um... what?

The red bars that you would *think* are associated with health... apparently aren't? I had one fight in which Malekith (on Seraphon) was thrashing around in the middle of a large group of units, all with completely empty red bars, all of which had at least twenty men remaining each, and all of which were quite eager to continue fighting. In another battle, I completely depleted Tyrion's red bar, continued to pound on him and watched him refuse to die before he finally pulled back, and then looked on in surprise as his bar was back up to 75% when he reentered the fight a little while later.

Skaven can apparently ambush you... while they're attacking you with full strength armies. And it means that you don't get any support from nearby friendly armies. This happens during incursions. It's bad.

I had constant attacks from Mung (the Norse that start in the NW corner of the map), to the point where I really wasn't able to start doing what I wanted to until I finally sent an expedition in to clean them out (they were growing at an alarming rate, and managed to wipe out at least two Dark Elf factions essentially on their own). The Dark Elves on the eastern side of the continent endured constant attacks from the Norse that they shared a border with (and actually were on the verge of winning when I sent some troops in to deal with them). Meanwhile, the Skaelings - the Norse faction that starts next to Ulthuan - had done absolutely nothing by the time I finally landed on the High Elven continent. And even though I wiped out the entire High Elf military, and endured constant attacks from the replacement armies (invariably led by Tyrion with five dragons - I haven't seen Teclis on the campaign map), it wasn't until I took Lothern that the Skaelings finally started to attack Ulthuan.

It's nice that the Cult of Pleasure (i.e. Morathi) is friendly with Malekith. It's not so nice that they corrupt *everything*. They occupy the southern half of the Dark Elf continent, and are keeping the Lizards busy. I'm kind of scared what will happen if I ever manage to confederate with them (which is looking unlikely before the game ends) given the massive amounts of corruption in all of their territories.

The Witch Elf structures are the anti-corruption structure for the non-Cult of Pleasure Dark Elves. Use them. Love them. Especially if you're sharing a province with the Cult of Pleasure.

Amusingly, I pretty much own Ulthuan at this point. I haven't actually conquered the whole thing. But I'm essentially razing at will. However the point of the game is to win the Vortex campaign. If you want the conquest victory conditions, then you need to wipe out six different factions. And only two of them are High Elf factions (two each from High Elf, Lizardmen, and Skaven - presumably if you're playing as one of those races, then two Dark Elf factions replace the one you're playing as).



In World of Warcraft, one of the skin tone choices for a Night Elf character is pink. In the cut scenes for the Vortex campaign, that's what the Dark Elf skin color looks like.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Skaven have the same ambush-on-attack stance as beastmen.

Beastmen aren't usually throwing multiple full strength armies at the same small location on the world map. That's what happens during the incursions in TW2.


While you do see a lot of full strength beastmen armies during the Chaos invasion in TW1, they tend to be scattered across wide areas of the world map and not focused in on one province.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Avatar 720 wrote:

Basically, Skaven feel fun until you start facing anything that causes fear or requires more specialist weaponry to defeat; chances are that unless you have an excess of Rat-Ogres, you're stuffed.

As the Dark Elves, my constant fights with the Tyrion invariably had at least five dragons in his army. I don't think your Skaven would have liked that.


You can apparently build the Black Pyramid of Nagash. There's an achievement for doing so, though from comments on the forum the achievement appears to be bugged. The pyramid increases vampiric corruption by 20% (don't know if it has other benefits).

 LordofHats wrote:
Also where's that tomb kinds DLC? This is where the Tomb Kings are right XD

Yeah, the Tomb Kings should be located in the northern part of the South Lands (the continent south of Ulthuan on the map). I checked all eight starting locations, and noted that there's a conspicuous lack of players starting there. I was checking the official forums, and spotted a post where someone noted that Khemri is in the game, and has ten building slots in it - like all of the capitols do.

No word on when they'll get released, though. The only announced DLC release date is for the combined "Mortal Empires" campaign that will allow you to merge the two games together. That DLC is supposed to be released sometime over the next few weeks. I wouldn't be surprised if Tomb Kings is the first paid DLC.



Edit -

A couple of items.

First, I might just not be looking in the right spot, but so far I haven't found a way to adjust my taxes (or turn them off for a province) while playing as Malekith. This is annoying when dealing with a restive province that's barely developed.

Second, this game *REALLY* needs a way to itemize the categories in the Province Stability category. I'm sick and tired of looking at the list of negative stability items and seeing "Buildings" with a massive negative number next to the entry, and (afaik) no buildings in the province that reduce stability. I'd like to know exactly *what* is causing each element of the instability, but the game doesn't provide that information.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Ok i'm not sure if this happened because of an 'event' in the game but the whole world's ports became aware of each other instantly.

And it's not necessarily a bad thing. It also allows you to find distant trade partners that you otherwise wouldn't be aware of. My Dark Elves ended up finding a very lucrative trade partner in one of the Southlands Vampire factions.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
@eumerin: A think most instability is caused by conquest in the same province. Otherwise it'd list it as taxes or corruption or something. You just gotta hover your mouse over the public order to find out.

Nope. I'm aware of the one turn Conquest penalty, the province disruption penalty that fades over time, the Corruption penalty, and Taxes. The first two disappear pretty quickly, and the latter two are around permanently. It's also not from my Slaves. And Events have their own line (for instance, Confederating with someone provides a -8 stability Event modifier across all of your provinces). This is stuff turning up *long* after the conquest is over. I'll get an entry that reads "Buildings" with a negative number (frequently a -7) attached to it.

 djones520 wrote:
It's pretty obvious that the Vamp Counts are just a place holder. Tomb Kings will definitely be one of the expansion races this game.

IIRC, there are some vamps in the Southlands in the setting. But by and large, you're probably right.


On another note, someone was commenting earlier on how easily a one province faction was rebuilding elite armies. Fact is, it's pretty clear that the AI factions don't actually use money. This became painfully obvious to me during a Brettonia playthrough when Mousillon by itself was consistantly maintaing three full strength armies at once.

This applies at least as far back as Shogun 2, btw.

As big as Mortal Empires will be, just remember that there's an even bigger campaign coming after the third game is released!

Rumor on the third game is that it will be focused on the Four Powers, possibly set at the previously unvisited south pole chaos gate. If true, that still leaves everything off the Eastern edge of the map from the first game. There are a few published races out that way that will need to be added at some point.

Voss wrote:
Evil-slaver-pirate-fanatics is a poor starting point for making a faction interesting, even in Warhammer. For one thing, its stepping on too many toes.

Dark Elf toes, for one.

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
My understanding is that the Tomb Kings are a well rounded horde army, with strong elite units but not really what I was thinking of. I'm thinking Huns or Scythians from Rome style, or the Mamluks from Medieval.

Ahhhh ok. I was under the impression Tomb Kings focused a lot on chariots and horsemen. Been awhile since I have read much on Fantasy though. I'm still catching up on the new 40k Fluff tbh

Light chariots and light cavalry. The Tomb Kings don't get heavy cavalry.

I'm not sure how they'll handle the light chariots. Unlike the other races, Tomb Kings run their chariots in units. And those units are small units just like the typical cavalry unit you see on the tabletop (since cavalry is too expensive to buy in a brick). But cav in TW always comes in a block. So I'm not sure how they'll treat light chariots.

Their infantry is weak, but fearless. And many of the spells cast revolve around replacing dead troops. They have tough construct infantry (basically bone golems and bone giants), flying undead vultures, and giant scorpion constructs that get buried beneath the sands before a battle starts (so they can burrow to an inconvenient location and surprise the enemy army). For ranged attacks, they have archers with typical undead aiming skills (i.e. Poor), but that aren't effected by any ranged attack modifiers (so they ignore penalties for range and partial cover). And the Screaming Skull Catapult is pretty self-descriptive.

And they have the Ark from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Yes, really.

They use a primitive form of spell casting. In older editions, this meant that they didn't roll power dice, and never miscast. But that got changed in the last edition (since it was incompatible with the revised magic rules).

And as mentioned earlier, they got some giant construct beasts in the last edition.

Answering some questions about Mortal Empires -

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/mortal-empires-with-ian-roxburgh


One bit of information - Queek and Teclis will have different starting positions in the Mortal Empires campaign.

 nels1031 wrote:
Does anyone that plays Dark Elves heavily make use of Black Arks ?

I built one very late in my game, and then promptly lost it when a High Elf army sailed *out* of a besieged city (I had no idea they could do that) and attacked it in the middle of the ocean, sinking it. So I had to wait a while to build another.

IMO, they're useful for two things. The first is if you want to rampage through an area with an army, but don't want to take (and thus be bothered with trying to hold) a city. You can sack and/or raze every enemy city that you come across, and the Ark will provide you with decent replenishment for your army.

The second is that an upgrade Ark gives you a way to replenish the more valuable units in your expeditionary army without having to either sail all the way back home, or build up a conquered city to Tier 4 or 5 (which takes a while).