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I could see a plan to release WH3 for the holidays. It would be their only new game this year.

However, the announcement trailers have generally been bigger, and of better quality than this video.

Are we sure that the "final DLC" wasn't the one that we just got for Wood Elves and Skaven?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

One of the stupider things GW has done was to kill WHFB a short while before TWW1 came out. There would have been sooo many people would have been inspired by the video game to buy some minis only to find out the table top game had been killed and many of the models were no longer available.

GW never seems to pay much attention to what's been licensed aside from making the occasional nod here and there (for ex., the occasional pic of a painted Blood Ravens model). That was a mis-calculation in this case. But given the quality of most of the licensed video game content, it's usually a good move.

As for CA licensing AoS - I suspect that they would do just fine with the license. People will buy it because they like Total War, and they like what CA did with the previous GW property that they had (i.e. Warhammer). One of the things that I noted when the game was still in pre-release was that a lot of the people excited about the game really seemed to know very little about the setting. That would suggest that while most of the players had heard of it, and probably seen some spectacular miniatures, they'd never actually played the tabletop game. Given that, I suspect that a Total War: AoS game would sell just fine.

However, such a thing is still quite a ways out at this point. We're not even sure whether we've seen the initial teaser for the third and final Warhammer game. Warhammer 2 was released in September of 2017. Given that, the final DLC will be released at least three and a half years later. Assuming a similar life cycle for Warhammer 3, we're still more than four - and possibly five - years away from Warhammer 3's final release. An AoS game is still a long ways off for the players.

 Overread wrote:
The Warhammer games are like the Lord of the Rings films - its made to roll one into the next. So unless something went really wrong it won't be 3 or 4 years until Warhammer 3. It will be fairly soon after the last DLC - 1 year or so I would estimate. I wouldn't think they'd leave it years and years when the games roll into each other.

Eg Warhammer 1 was released in 2016; Warhammer 2 was released in 2017. If anything we've already had the abnormal years long gap since 2018.

You misunderstood me. What I meant is that the LAST DLC release for Warhammer 3 is still a long ways off, much like the upcoming last DLC for Warhammer 2 will be released probably three and a half years after Warhammer 2 was released. And a hypothetical AoS game won't come until after that.

 Overread wrote:

Whilst its not a fun game the "Epic Battle Simulator" team appears to be pushing mass battle systems quite a lot.

Incidentally, EBS is free until tomorrow.

Anything's possible, and my sample locations might have been skewed. But I'll also note that TW wasn't the first time someone attempted to bring Warhammer mass combat to the computer. There were the two games with you playing an Empire mercenary commander, and a later game with you playing as a chaos champion (iirc). Neither of those games had the same level of success the Total War version has had.

Voss wrote:

Another video and constellation will be coming.
Though not necessarily tomorrow since the line at the end is apparently 'We _shan't_ see the third constellation tomorrow, I'm sure of it.' But then again, this astronomer seems to be a bit of an idiot.

I got the impression that his comment was more a stubborn insistence that nothing important was going on, and that the stars weren't saying anything important. Or in other words, deep down, he already knows what the third constellation will be. But he's refusing to admit that the things he's seeing are in any way significant.

Anyway, we'll find out shortly!

 Olthannon wrote:
Maybe it's just a chaos update and they're putting in kislev as the other lord pack. That would be damn sweet.

Warhammer 3 will be focused on the Chaos Powers. Given that, I would be very surprised if the very last release before Warhammer 3 had a Chaos focus.

EEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Neat! The announcement trailer for the third game! And Cathay! Wow! I did not expect that! Looking forward to it! I do wonder if its appearence is due to Three Kingdoms - both the fact that there's been research by CA on Chinese troops, and the fact that Three Kingdoms got a lot of attention in China? Either way, I'm looking forward to it!

I'm also curious how Kislev is going to be handled. In both Warhammer 1 and Mortal Empires, Kislev is a speed bump whose fall is all but guaranteed (or else there wouldn't be much of a Chaos invasion). Given that, I wonder how it will be treated in the full three game version of Mortal Empires?

On another note, since there's apparently one more Warhammer 2 DLC left to go and it still hasn't been announced yet, I wonder if it will be a pre-order bonus for Warhammer 3 like Norsca was for 2?

Voss wrote:

I still hope the last Warhammer 2 DLC hits beastmen. They still lack units from their actual army book, which is absurd.

While pretty much everyone agrees that Beastmen need a lot of love, I'd be surprised if they get a redo before the third game is released. When the Wood Elves got their expansion, CA explained well in advance exactly how the new DLC would interact with the various content options that players had (i.e. players who had the second game but not the first game, and players who bought the new DLC but didn't own the original Wood Elf DLC). We knew all of that months before we knew any details about the DLC other than the fact it would include Wood Elves. We haven't heard anything similar regarding Beastmen. Given that, I doubt we're going to see a Beastmen overhaul before the third game arrives.

I'll also note that a Beastman DLC that does for them what the last DLC did for Wood Elves would also fit much more thematically with the third game.

Cathay is coming to TOW

More immediately, Cathay might be coming to Age of Sigmar.

I get a bit lost in the utter _glut_ of LLs they've added to the game 2 base races (six of each, sheesh, and yes I'm presuming DE will get their sixth with the last DLC/FLC) and forgot they started with just a pair each.

The Empire and the Dwarves could also use another LL each to match them up with their counterparts from the first game.

 Overread wrote:
They also note that the pre-order bonus remains in effect for the first week after release. So you can simply wait until it goes live and buy during that week.

Honestly much as I love the series and game I never feel any real need to pre-order because in the end I'm not getting anything and they won't run out of stock. Chances are I might pre order a few days in advance if there's a pre-download (esp as my net is pretty slow so the 30GB+ or so in size that the game is at least likely to be will take a while); but that's purely impatience on my part. Any time in that first week will be good.

And let's be blunt - unless it's an utter and complete disaster of the sort that reformats your hard drive when you try and run it, anyone who bought the first two games is probably going to buy the third game very early on, even if it means sitting and waiting three months for CA to patch it into a playable state.

 His Master's Voice wrote:
It's strange how unreasonably angry the omission of Chorfs from the base game made me. Like, skip-release-and-buy-on-sale angry.

This was the one chance Chorfs had to maybe convince GW they deserve a future SoB treatment, and they got the DLC finger instead. And looking at CA's track record with DLC factions, the best you can expect is 'better than Beastmen".

Goddamnit.

Both the Vampire Coast and Tomb Kings factions were very well received by the players. The other DLCs for Warhammer 2 were only sub-fsctions of an already existing race. So the current track record suggests that the Chaos Dwarves will turn out just fine.

As for being in at release? Never would have happened. The Ogre Kingdoms would have had a higher priority based on its status as a fully supported army when 8th Edition ended.

Voss wrote:
[
Eh. I do think its very (very, very) surprising that its Cathay rather than OK or CD as a base faction. 'Never would have happened' seems absurd in the face of basically fully developing Cathay as a faction this long after WFB as a game was killed off.

I agree that Cathay is very surprising. But imo, the choices would either boil down to "something conventional that was fully supported by the game" - and the only choice like that still left is Ogre Kingdoms - or "something completely out of left field", which is where Cathay falls. Chaos Dwarves are somewhere in the middle of that, which dramatically reduces their chance of being included, imo.

The announced plan from the start was to have all of the published armies (with a question mark for Chaos Dwarves), so I would expect to see the Ogres. I wouldn't be surprised if they're a DLC army, though.

 Overread wrote:

Whilst they want to reward their TWW2 customers, they really would rather everyone started to shift toward the 3rd game when it comes out. Attention on the 2nd game only needs to be enough to spark interest in those who are not keeping up with the news; get them playing near the launch of the 3rd game, even just for a bit, so that they are excited again for the game series and more likely to jump on the 3rd game.

Eh...

Gonna have to disagree here. First of all, the pre-order bonus for the second game was Norsca.

Second, and more importantly, the draw for these games has always been that they're not just three Warhammer games. The draw has been that this is essentially one GIGANTIC game, released in three bite-sized (and wallet-conscious) chunks. To a certain extent, it's actually in CA's best interests to get people who buy this game thinking about the earlier games (if they haven't already). Because if you have the first game and the third game, then you can buy the second game to get access to a massive campaign that spans across all three games.

Third and finally, the release of the second game didn't stop work on the first. Some of the most significant reworks to the first game's content (such as the Empire rework) actually took place after the second game was released. Yes, it's true that all DLC after Norsca required the second game. But that doesn't mean that there hasn't been some content improvements for people who only own the first game (said content also applies to people who play Mortal Empires, of course).

Right now, I don't think we have any way of predicting which game the pre-order bonus will require as its "core" game.

Voss wrote:

Eumerin wrote:Gonna have to disagree here. First of all, the pre-order bonus for the second game was Norsca.

Which was a complete clusterfeth. Not something they're going to want to repeat.

It was a problem because of a lack of communication and coordination between the two teams. As the cause of the problem has been identified, it should be something that can be avoided if they do something similar for the third game.

Second, and more importantly, the draw for these games has always been that they're not just three Warhammer games. The draw has been that this is essentially one GIGANTIC game, released in three bite-sized (and wallet-conscious) chunks.

Keep in mind, the 'gigantic' game is a secondary game mode. The focus has been on the 'main campaign' map for the game in question- the ME campaign is a bonus- the focus is always on the base game at hand.

It's secondary for the game at hand. But it's the primary mode for the "big picture", so to speak. Or to put it another way, the Vortex Campaign gets you to start playing TWWH2. But Mortal Empires is the advertisement to own *both* games instead of just one, and is where you turn to when you want to expand your play beyond the limits of the individual games. Want Settra to sack Altdorf in revenge for all of those archeological looting expeditions? Then you turn to Mortal Empires. The sum is greater than the whole of its parts.

Doing a race that fits at the juncture of all four continents on the not-Atlantic (the Vortex map) AND in the completely landlocked space between Kislev, Cathay and the Chaos Wastes is a hard one.

Doesn't have to be a new race. It just needs to be new starting locations and lords. We've got Bretonnians, Empire, and Greenskins in the second game. Two were part of a DLC, and the other was free.

 Overread wrote:
And honestly this will be the 3d game in the series using the same core mechanics, the same core features and the same engine. It's one of the few times a pre-order is pretty darn safe and if not you've got a whole week to make an order after launch incase CA makes an (unexpected) bungle of epic proportions. Even then it would have to be extreme because this is their second biggest franchise seller and their most popular game in general

The main thing that we're looking at as possible screw-ups are making some blatant flubs with racial mechanics, and ending up with something completely overpowered - along the lines of what people reported with Yuan Shao in Three Kingdoms, where he'd rapidly vassalize half the map early in the game (interestingly, Liu Bei is reported to have a problem right now due to cheap troops leading to far too many armies even before he's given Liu Biao's territories). That doesn't rule out other problems. Things up to and including "wipes your hard drive when you click the install button" are always a possibility (though a very remote one). But as you note, the core gameplay elements are very much a known quantity at this point due to the first two games.

While I haven't watched the trailer yet, I'll note that Skarbrand is in it. And a CA rep has stated that Skarbrand is merely jumping. He can't fly, as his wings have been destroyed.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I think Skulltaker will get mount options.

So long as it's not a giant skull...

Voss wrote:

Yeah. I think I expected crossbows more than the grenade launchers

They're hand cannons. And the Chinese really did use them, starting in the thirteenth or possibly fourteenth centuries. I expect that we'll see crossbowmen as well, though, and hand cannons will just be another missile weapon option - albeit one better suited to knocking down the really big nasties that frequently turn up in Chaos armies.

No, I mean dragons that turn into humans.

This is normal in Chinese mythology. For example, in the famous Chinese novel 'The Journey to the West', one of the dragon kings disguises himself as a human scholar in order to test a local fortune-teller. One of his sons spends most of the novel shape-shifted into a horse to serve as a mount for the monk who is making the titular journey. There's nothing unusual about dragons in Chinese stories shape-shifting to pass as humans or other creatures.

Nor are dragons the only creatures that do so. Chinese beliefs about fox spirits (Huli Jing, or Kyubi) are very similar to those of the Japanese (Kitsune). The Koreans also have similar legends (Kumiho), except that their fox spirits are *always* malevolent. 'The Legend of the White Snake' is an old story about an actual snake that attains human intelligence, changes her shape into a human woman, and falls in love with a human healer. And there are more.

What is unusual is the idea of a dragon personally ruling over the humans, as appears to be the case here. The historical emperors were metaphorically linked to dragons, but there was no claim that they were actually dragons. Dragons ruled their own domains, and served the Jade Emperor, who ruled the heavens.

 Olthannon wrote:
Most dragon folklore from across the world revolves around dragons shapeshifting. It's one of the biggest things about about them?

Western dragons don't. They act pretty much exclusively as greedy, intelligent, forces of destruction. They exist to cause problems that are surmounted when the hero defeats them.

Asian dragons, on the other hand, are very much the opposite, and are part of the celestial order.

I guess I need to repeat/clarify what I posted above.

Dragons in Chinese myths and legends shapeshift.

Dragons in Western myths and legends do not.

Every single reference listed above to a western dragon shapeshifting is a contemporary story, and not something tied to a classical myth or story.

Also, just to throw it out there, the original AD&D gold dragon was based off of the Chinese version of the creature, based on the artwork found in the 1st Edition Monster Manual. Presumably that's where the writers got the idea of dragons shape-shifting into humans.


Famous appearances of dragons in historical western culture include -

Beowulf (fought in the third part of the epic)
The Tarasque (supposedly tamed by St. Martha - the one from the Bible - and then killed by peasants in a nearby village when she took the tarasque there to show that it was no longer a threat)
St. George's famous opponent (the only old story I'm aware of that involves the classic trope of the hero rescuing a princess from being sacrificed to a dragon)
The Revelation of St. John the Divine - Satan is repeatedly referred to as a (presumably metaphorical) dragon.
Fafnir - A dwarf cursed into becoming a dragon in the Volsung Cycle
Midgard Serpent - One of Loki's sons; a great dragon that encircles the world, and that will kill Odin and Thor (and be killed by the latter) during Ragnarok
Nidhog - A wyrm that lives at the base of the World Tree in Norse mythology, and gnaws its roots

And if you want to include sea serpents -

Perseus famously rescued Andromeda from being sacrificed to a sea serpent while returning home after killing Medusa (which makes this a second "save the princess from the dragon" story, again if you include sea serpents).


Of the bunch listed above, the only shape shifting involved is Fafnir. And in his case, it's an involuntary curse.

 Olthannon wrote:


Japanese and Chinese dragon mythology intertwines. Historically, Japanese dragon myth comes from China, Korea and India. So entirely possible to have some in Nippon.

More accurately, China was the lone "super power" in its part of the world, and as a result the surrounding settled cultures such as Korea and Japan were heavily influenced by Chinese styles and customs. China itself picked up some influence from India due to the introduction of and influence from Buddhism, and that also flowed out to the surrounding settled cultures. The elite in surrounding nations sent their children to China to be educated, and those children brought back Chinese ways when they returned home.

Off the top of my head, I'm not familiar with any Japanese stories involving dragons. They also don't seem to be as prominent in Japanese art as they are in China. But dragons have been important enough in Japan that a couple of very famous and important warships (they were the first purpose-built fleet carriers anywhere in the world) - Soryu and Hiryu - were given names incorporating the Japanese word for dragon.

The real question, imo, is what exactly did chaosxomega expect? It's fantasy China. It needs to look like fantasy China, and it does. It sounds as if chaosxomega was expecting something that didn't look anything like China, except for the visual ethnicity of the troops.

I'm surprised no one has already posted this link.

Tzeentch gameplay mechanics -

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/total-war-warhammer-3-tzeentch-campaign-mechanics/?fbclid=IwAR22mtXPP2sck_9P54Lyk4FsAZjO9NpmNd9RVzlEwEATGlhb_BqmAPZz4Zo

Voss wrote:

-----
The map seems interesting. Apparently Kairos is planted outside Cathay for an invasion, but DLC lords will be elsewhere. From the big Kislev vs Khorne focus, I presume Skarbrand is similarly close to Kislev. Leaving Nurgle and Slaanesh puttering about in the middle, either to fight each other or act as spoilers for the more aggressively placed chaos gods (lore check says Slaanesh to the west to mess with Khorne and Nurgle more to the east to mess with Tzeentch).

And the as yet unannounced, but almost certainly guaranteed pre-order bonus DLC Ogre Kingdoms somewhere in the middle.

The blog post covering Kislev's campaign mechanics is up.

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/total-war-warhammer-3-kislev-campaign-mechanics/?fbclid=IwAR1jUS4tRVevbeHUIFbXLfgIbRKT5lIm7EFDTkK8IQlBoys1NvSGDw66nRA

Devotion, training lords before they enter your pool, and more. Take a look! I'll note right off that there are three Kislevite cities, but only two lord's mentioned in the blog post. I'm guessing the third city will eventually get a DLC lord.

Other minor items - Ogres are mentioned in a laundry-list of Kislev's neighbors. They're to the east, which is expected. But the mention suggests they might start quite close. Also, the Skaven Hell-Pit will be on the map.

Next up is Khorne. The campaign mechanics for the servers of the Skull Throne can be found here -

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/total-war-warhammer-3-khorne-campaign-mechanics/?fbclid=IwAR1X4mqwFEG6dxOU2I3wbhbphrc08ICSiVv2LGPdquIwEvRZ6Yl4FwGh52E

Yeah, I wouldn't expect to see anything about reworks yet. The focus right now is on the brand-new stuff that will be available in the new game. This is the content that will get you to buy TWWH3. WoC and Norsca reworks will - by necessity - not require the new game, and anyone who owns the first game DLCs will get them (probably for free, unless a WoC DLC drops, similar to the ones that the Wood Elves and Beastmen got).

So, the focus is exclusively on the new content for now.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Voss wrote:
Just for the record, LoTW just confirmed that while the Chaos Dwarfs aren't in the game, their cities are on the map.

I mean... didn't we know that already? Were Tomb Kings part of TWW2 before their Race Pack was released? I figure it's the same situation for the Chaos Dwarfs.

My recollection is that the geography was there, but the territory was occupied by vampires. Given that pattern, it wouldn't surprise me if the Chaos Dwarf cities are occupied by regular non-playable dwarves when the game launches.