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Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




I think Chaos Dwarves are a given due to the existing content and massive demand for them. They also have rigging for basically everything they need in place. More importantly, they're not potentially offensive. Hobgoblin Khanate could follow by virtue of roster overlap, but that's more of a stretch.

The only way we can ever solve anything is to look in the mirror and find no enemy 
   
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All of the Daemon campaign mechanics are looking really cool. I never really cared about the addition of Daemons in TWW, but now I'm eager to try a campaign of all 3 of the ones we've heard about.

They also sound like they'll be a nightmare for players if the AI does a good job of exploiting the daemon mechanics.

Khorne's probably the least interesting to me, as it sounds like they'll have a very slow expansion, but depending on how well it's balanced that could also be fun.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/21 01:26:09


 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




I'm 99% sure the AI doesn't access the mechanics. I've seen scrap upgrades used, I know they use rites, but I'm pretty sure things like Shadowy Dealings, Grom's Cauldron, Ikit's Lab, etc, aren't used by the AI. ASFAIK, Dwarf crafting isn't either.

The only way we can ever solve anything is to look in the mirror and find no enemy 
   
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Terrifying Doombull




AllSeeingSkink wrote:
All of the Daemon campaign mechanics are looking really cool. I never really cared about the addition of Daemons in TWW, but now I'm eager to try a campaign of all 3 of the ones we've heard about.

They also sound like they'll be a nightmare for players if the AI does a good job of exploiting the daemon mechanics.

Khorne's probably the least interesting to me, as it sounds like they'll have a very slow expansion, but depending on how well it's balanced that could also be fun.

Huh, Khorne sounded like an insanely fast snowball to me.

The Blood for the Blood God option after taking a settlement both replenishes the attacking army and spawns a Blood Host army, which can immediately move and attack and potentially raze a settlement and spawn a Blood Host army which can then...

Then toss in passive colonization of ruins. Probably not the best option, but free settlements are great. And the more you fight, the more bonuses you get to replenishment, growth rate, and global recruitment time, all of which lower downtime a lot.
The manifestations include +50% movement range and the cults include an option that lets you teleport your leaders army to a city. Khornes going to be a crazy rampage

Efficiency is the highest virtue. 
   
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Voss wrote:
AllSeeingSkink wrote:
All of the Daemon campaign mechanics are looking really cool. I never really cared about the addition of Daemons in TWW, but now I'm eager to try a campaign of all 3 of the ones we've heard about.

They also sound like they'll be a nightmare for players if the AI does a good job of exploiting the daemon mechanics.

Khorne's probably the least interesting to me, as it sounds like they'll have a very slow expansion, but depending on how well it's balanced that could also be fun.

Huh, Khorne sounded like an insanely fast snowball to me.

The Blood for the Blood God option after taking a settlement both replenishes the attacking army and spawns a Blood Host army, which can immediately move and attack and potentially raze a settlement and spawn a Blood Host army which can then...

Then toss in passive colonization of ruins. Probably not the best option, but free settlements are great. And the more you fight, the more bonuses you get to replenishment, growth rate, and global recruitment time, all of which lower downtime a lot.
The manifestations include +50% movement range and the cults include an option that lets you teleport your leaders army to a city. Khornes going to be a crazy rampage


Maybe you're right, I was thinking the cost to establish a settlement then waiting and the passive colonisation of ruins would slow you down, it seems like the intended play style of sacking and razing would leave you overextended.

But perhaps you're right, I think it'll depend on how it's balanced whether Khorne becomes either a steamroll faction or just a harasser type faction where it's hard to gain momentum without overextending.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/21 03:36:34


 
   
Made in us
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The trick is though, its often better to not have a lot of settlements early, and just focus money into armies and building up core regions. Going wide can drag you into a lot of costs, ending up with a lot of mid-tier settlements, but not the higher stuff that makes the faction great (Lizards in particular absolutely choke going wide early on, as do most of the elves).

For Khorne, I think the big play is making a wide swath of devastation and then coming out later with a small colonizer force after you've built up a bank of gold and skulls to settle with (and likely skipping the passive settlement once you're ready to expand). A small core area is much easier to defend in any case, both from revolts and aggressors.

The free Blood Hosts mean you don't have to worry much about being overextended, and even suiciding them is worth it for the bloodletting bonuses and skulls (as well as forcing attackers to turn back due to causalities).

Now, in the AI's hands, I full expect a fairly incompetent harasser faction, though that depends on the auto-resolve weight they get.
For the player, lack of magic and range is going to be a problem, though the battle meter abilities may make up for that.

----
I really hope they put up Slaanesh mechanics this week. The Nurgle mechanics make me hope it isn't just the hurr-durr leadership penalties that GW would go with.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/11/21 04:16:00


Efficiency is the highest virtue. 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




FWIW, the OvN Chaos Dwarves are really good and since they use a mix of Chaos and Dwarf voicelines, they aren't jarring. Good design, good roster, decent enough mechanics. Also, you can opt to disable the rest of the OvN factions since quite a few are lackluster. Araby isn't good. I played about 80 turns with them and they're all over the place.

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Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios

Araby could be interesting if they integrated them into the Tomb Kings in some way. Living descendants of the ancient tomb king civilization.

Since the Tomb Kings still interact with the world in the same way as if they were still alive, it could give some interesting dynamics to look at a civilization that blends normal human life with some non-evil necromancy.

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 Grey Templar wrote:
Araby could be interesting if they integrated them into the Tomb Kings in some way. Living descendants of the ancient tomb king civilization.

Since the Tomb Kings still interact with the world in the same way as if they were still alive, it could give some interesting dynamics to look at a civilization that blends normal human life with some non-evil necromancy.


That's basically what OVN does with one of the Araby LL options. You are aligned with Numas, can grant them settlements, have access to Tomb King units via rare buildings, and can increase that cap via tech.

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trexmeyer wrote:
I'm 99% sure the AI doesn't access the mechanics. I've seen scrap upgrades used, I know they use rites, but I'm pretty sure things like Shadowy Dealings, Grom's Cauldron, Ikit's Lab, etc, aren't used by the AI. ASFAIK, Dwarf crafting isn't either.


Apparently the AI doesn't track food so all that mechnaic is ignored and it now and again gives Ikit stuff he might have done by then.

That's basically what OVN does with one of the Araby LL options. You are aligned with Numas, can grant them settlements, have access to Tomb King units via rare buildings, and can increase that cap via tech.


SOunds cool and very lore friendly

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trexmeyer wrote:
I'm 99% sure the AI doesn't access the mechanics. I've seen scrap upgrades used, I know they use rites, but I'm pretty sure things like Shadowy Dealings, Grom's Cauldron, Ikit's Lab, etc, aren't used by the AI. ASFAIK, Dwarf crafting isn't either.
Certain things they use, certain things they don't. Grom's Cauldron does get used, as sometimes you come across the more obvious effects (like Gobbo archers firing explosive shots!). Other things, like the entire Food mechanic for Skaven, doesn't get used.

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Interesting. I had no idea with Grom since the only time I fought him was very briefly as Yvresse.

The only way we can ever solve anything is to look in the mirror and find no enemy 
   
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I've heard it said that Grom does use his Cauldron, but he cheats. I have no idea if that's true though.
   
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trexmeyer wrote:
Interesting. I had no idea with Grom since the only time I fought him was very briefly as Yvresse.
That's a good point actually: You often don't get to see this side of Grom specifically because he dies so quickly in regular campaigns. Like, turn 10 he's gone a lot of the time.

He only really sticks around if you're playing as Yvresse/Eltharion, as he's the main bad guy, so he'll confederate Grimgor and the others and become stronger. But if you're playing anyone else, chances are you won't even see Grom unless you are playing as Tyrion or maybe Allarielle, and even then you've got to be quick before Yvresse wipes him out.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I've heard it said that Grom does use his Cauldron, but he cheats. I have no idea if that's true though.
The AI cheats with everything, so that shouldn't be a surprise.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/22 02:50:31


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"GW really needs to understand 'Less is more' when it comes to AoS." - Wha-Mu-077

 
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut




Eh, even in my sole Yvresse campaign I wiped him before he could confederate anything. The sole GS I see do anything routinely is Grimgor. Every now and again Wurzag takes over.

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Terrifying Doombull




Yeah, the greenskin results are predictable.

Wurrzag usually goes to Grimgor, but occasionally ambushes his stack after a tough fight, so ends up in charge.

Skarsnik usually simply sits on his one settlement, gradually builds a second army and BOTH just sit there.

Azhag seems to do well initially, but ends up in more and more wars and eventually gets overwhelmed by a team-up between the dwarves and that skaven clan to the east after Kislev, the Empire province around Bechafen and/or Drycha push him back into the mountains. Which usually weakens those factions enough for Mannfred to push north and wipe them out.

I don't think I've -ever- seen Grom since his DLC patch.

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Cheating AI is an unfortunate thing to still have at this stage of game development sophistication. You'd think we could have figured out something less lazy to increase difficulty in computer games.

Especially when it comes to mechanics like that. No reason you cant make the AI use them. Too tough to make them randomly go down their advancement options?

Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines

Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.

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Far as I can tell the thing is we don't actually have AI as such in games,

The core issue is that a lot of abilities and resources are things that the computer could manage, but are near impossible to manage if you've got no plan of how you're going to play the game itself. What we call AI in computer games hasn't got a plan ahead of itself unless a human operator typically pre-designs on (or several to be chosen) for the AI to use.

Simply put computer games got a lot more complex over the years and AI development hasn't kept up at the same rate as visuals or other areas of game development have. It's expensive, its time consuming, its complicated and in the end its all got to run on a very simple home computer.



I think the most highly developed AI work has possible been done through Starcraft 2 - at least for an RTS style game. Heck they even did some work with REAL AI systems not just "fake" computer game style AI. SC2 remains about the only RTS game I've played where I've seen the AI use effective retreating tactis. That said it still has issues - its still very predictable how it will build up its base; when it times its attacks and often where it will place those attacks. It's better than many, but its still not "thinking" for itself.




RTS and TBS games really show up these issues. FPS style games often don't need the AI to think, it just has to shoot the player and if anything its probably so good at that it has to be toned down from its maximum potential to be fair.

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More trailers...


This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/26 15:40:04


 
   
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 Grey Templar wrote:
Cheating AI is an unfortunate thing to still have at this stage of game development sophistication. You'd think we could have figured out something less lazy to increase difficulty in computer games.

Especially when it comes to mechanics like that. No reason you cant make the AI use them. Too tough to make them randomly go down their advancement options?


Honestly, it might be. The core engine isn't much different than Medieval II. They've tacked on essentially all of the Warhammer II elements. They would honestly need a new or heavily updated engine to fix AI issues and other bugs like the siege gates one.

The only way we can ever solve anything is to look in the mirror and find no enemy 
   
Made in au
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I think I heard something about them reducing the AI cheating in battles for TW3, but I honestly couldn't remember which video it was on, and whether they do anything with campaign mode is a different question.

TBH, I don't really care too much about AI cheating on the campaign map, I don't think we need symmetry of capability between the player and the AI on the campaign map. It's more in battles where it's annoying (X elite unit dies to Y not-so-elite unit simply because Y is controlled by the AI so gets a melee and leadership buff).

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/26 17:06:04


 
   
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The issue there is that they can't perform certain actions correctly. The player will always be able to out maneuver the AI. We're likely decades away from that changing. The AI also doesn't use magic well and doesn't avoid getting wrecked by magic well either. They also don't focus fire with ranged units.

You could probably fix things like preventing the AI from wasting ammunition shooting at very fast, SEUs, especially ones with high missile resistance, but I doubt most players are using that cheese to waste ammo.

Summon units, like Clanrats, onto specifically siege weapons, maybe weak casters, or weak ranged. I've seen AI summon blow Menace From Below on Chosen over Hellcannons. Doesn't make any sense. Priority should be siege -> ranged -> rear -> flank.

Don't blob on up on SEUs. The most amount of units that can actually hit a SEU is 1-2, maybe 3, but there's really no reason for 1-2. It's a very easy way for the player to get the AI to blob up for vortex/wind spells.

Improve AI reaction time to bombardments, vortex, and wind spells.

Focus fire high value units and vulnerable units when you have multiple targets in range. Don't shoot into shielded units from the front. Shoot low armor, unshielded, etc first.

Protect your artillery! AI never does unless they're like Dwarves. It's way too easy to hide a couple of fast units and have them delete artillery before it does anything.

Don't rush headlong into combat. Lorewise, it makes sense for Greenskins, Chaos Warriors, and Norsca to do so, but other faction are all too willing to give up their tactical advantage in order to close into melee.

I think these are fixable issues. Right now, the only thing the AI really does well is beeline to your artillery with flyers or cavalry. They're very annoying at that.

The only way we can ever solve anything is to look in the mirror and find no enemy 
   
Made in us
Terrifying Doombull




Some of that isn't actually desirable though. While a minority of players want a challenge, most players want a 'fun' play experience. That means being able to land big spells, not micromanage on dodging or playing 4d tactical chess vs the AI.

Its always something that frustrates game developers, because the 'bad AI' gets a lot of press, but even 'too effective' limited AI hurts sales and cuts down the audience. The player 'always' outmaneuvering the AI is actually desirable from a marketing perspective. Companies have actively tried to sell games on hard mode vs 'casual,' and as a general rule it doesn't work out well.


---
The Nurgle vs Slaanesh video is interesting. I love the clip of the Fiend standing up on its hind legs, its super creepy and unnatural looking.

Efficiency is the highest virtue. 
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut




Those changes would be specific to VH battle difficulty, not normal. I think they would be preferential to the current system of AI having flat bonuses for melee combat. Normal battles are relatively fine.

The only way we can ever solve anything is to look in the mirror and find no enemy 
   
Made in au
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Voss wrote:
Some of that isn't actually desirable though. While a minority of players want a challenge, most players want a 'fun' play experience. That means being able to land big spells, not micromanage on dodging or playing 4d tactical chess vs the AI.

Its always something that frustrates game developers, because the 'bad AI' gets a lot of press, but even 'too effective' limited AI hurts sales and cuts down the audience. The player 'always' outmaneuvering the AI is actually desirable from a marketing perspective. Companies have actively tried to sell games on hard mode vs 'casual,' and as a general rule it doesn't work out well.


The idea is you have AI that scales with difficulty level, rather than simply letting the AI cheat more as difficult level goes up.

Or if you do let the AI cheat, maybe just make the cheats uniform instead of the stupidity we have now where melee infantry becomes useless but missile units are unaffected.
   
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Even if they want to go with passive stat buffs giving the AI increased magic and missile resistance would be better than buffing melee stats.

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Indeed. Leadership debuffs become worthless in higher levels because of how much gains they get too.
   
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Nurglings.


   
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The Conquerer






Waiting for my shill money from Spiral Arm Studios

Nurglings are gonna be the enemy of everybody's fps.

Self-proclaimed evil Cat-person. Dues Ex Felines

Cato Sicarius, after force feeding Captain Ventris a copy of the Codex Astartes for having the audacity to play Deathwatch, chokes to death on his own D-baggery after finding Calgar assembling his new Eldar army.

MURICA!!! IN SPESS!!! 
   
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I like how they roll up into a ball. Reminds me of Critters 2.

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