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Troglodon looks really good - dinos are always cool

 Mr Morden wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:
I mean Doomstacks exist in a space no different then Power gaming lists on the tabletop. In the case of Legend he exclusively plays on Legendary difficulty. The A.I. cheats on legendary so in order to win you gotta cheat right back. I wouldn't call it broken when CA's idea of game balance is "lets have the AI cheat" instead of making a smarter AI.

So why play on Legendary? Is it for the achievements? Or is it fun - genually interested?

Because its the highest challange.

The problem however is, that Total war has not inovated beyond statification of units, making legendary AI really problematic since you will lose with equivalent units against other units in melee f.e.
Hence why you see a Ranged type of meta.

Is it a challenge if you can then Doomstack it? I tried the game on higher settings and found the AI "cheats" too much - so I don't play on them.

Neither all factions can doomstack (cue khemri) nor is it indeed really a challange, bar the start its indeed actually just a case of surviving initially and then steamrolling later.

Also seconded on the too much cheating from the AI. Swordsmen with shield vs ungor spear herd should be clear cut in favour of your swordsman , except on legendary that isn't the case anymore, making any melee unit worthless.

If they can figure out in TWW3 how to make the AI smarter as difficulty level goes up instead of just cheating more, that'd be awesome.

I end up just playing on Normal battle (but higher difficulty campaign) because the AI's cheating screws up the balance of the game, it doesn't just get harder, it makes certain units obsolete (looking at you, melee infantry).

Melee infantry play no real role in TWW2 at the highest difficulty levels. You can send melee infantry into AI controlled ranged infantry and they'll have a hard time winning. This is why it's all about missile units, war machines and monsters.

Norsca is different though. Nothing they have is as good as Mammoths. You can build a balanced army of various unit types, but 19 Mammoth spam will always be better. I don't see this as a problem with Mammoths. I see it as a problem with everything else in their roster.

You can play Legendary difficulty with normal battle difficulty. The challenge in the battles is then that you can not pause, which for certain armies is extremely punishing.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
If they can figure out in TWW3 how to make the AI smarter as difficulty level goes up instead of just cheating more, that'd be awesome.

They seem to be doing the opposite in some ways. The new battle mode nerfs the crap out of enemies so they can do wave after wave after wave. Its basically cheating in the player's favor so it can fake 'epic' battles against trash daemons.


To be fair though, the AI has been tweaked over time. It does try to outflank more, though sometimes this produces odd results (I haven't fought a dwarf army for over a year that doesn't march to the left in open field battles and try to line up again. I have no idea what that's about). But they don't seem to charge straight in anymore regardless of the rock/paper/scissors of anti-large/anti-infantry/etc.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Melee infantry play no real role in TWW2 at the highest difficulty levels. You can send melee infantry into AI controlled ranged infantry and they'll have a hard time winning. This is why it's all about missile units, war machines and monsters.

Norsca is different though. Nothing they have is as good as Mammoths. You can build a balanced army of various unit types, but 19 Mammoth spam will always be better. I don't see this as a problem with Mammoths. I see it as a problem with everything else in their roster.

Yeah, it's because on higher difficulties the AI gets melee buffs, so crap AI melee units will beat good player controlled melee units.

From memory there's no such ranged buffs / debuffs so that becomes the logical option (along with ranged units having more options for cheesing the AI's stupidity, like blobbing AI units up onto characters to be shot in the back or magicked to death).

 trexmeyer wrote:
You can play Legendary difficulty with normal battle difficulty. The challenge in the battles is then that you can not pause, which for certain armies is extremely punishing.

Ah right did not know that - I only pause at the start of Sieges as that seems fair given that the Ai starts shooting from the start

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Melee infantry play no real role in TWW2 at the highest difficulty levels. You can send melee infantry into AI controlled ranged infantry and they'll have a hard time winning. This is why it's all about missile units, war machines and monsters.

Norsca is different though. Nothing they have is as good as Mammoths. You can build a balanced army of various unit types, but 19 Mammoth spam will always be better. I don't see this as a problem with Mammoths. I see it as a problem with everything else in their roster.

Yeah, it's because on higher difficulties the AI gets melee buffs, so crap AI melee units will beat good player controlled melee units.

From memory there's no such ranged buffs / debuffs so that becomes the logical option (along with ranged units having more options for cheesing the AI's stupidity, like blobbing AI units up onto characters to be shot in the back or magicked to death).

this, ranged output is unafected and since you have an initiative advantage due to range its the prefered way to play.

Except for the blobbing.
the blobbing goes back to their engine change with Empire total war (similar phenomenon of bobbing is veryfable when you charge an Artillery position with 2 or 3 regiments of cav). Its an issue that has plagued melee centric total wars since then and lead to the infamous kill moves type 1 vs 1 fighting.

Recent total wars did compound that issue however with the implementation of hero singular entity units which lead to the blobbing up surounding said unit. The fact that you can make heroes really durable on top of that doesn't help either and worsens the situation actively.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Recent total wars did compound that issue however with the implementation of hero singular entity units which lead to the blobbing up surounding said unit. The fact that you can make heroes really durable on top of that doesn't help either and worsens the situation actively.

Definitely. Enemies blobbing up around a hero or lord are perfect targets for magic or artillery, which are already incredibly killy in Warhammer Total War.

It's the reason Gor-Rok is so easy to start. He's a very tanky lord and he starts with Kroak who has insanely powerful AoE spells (which also don't even hurt friendly units). They basically single handedly win you most of your early battles (and sieges at every point in the campaign), with Kroak having a bad day where he has less than 500 kills on his own and it isn't uncommon for him to hit kills in the thousands as you're going up against skaven.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Recent total wars did compound that issue however with the implementation of hero singular entity units which lead to the blobbing up surounding said unit. The fact that you can make heroes really durable on top of that doesn't help either and worsens the situation actively.

Definitely. Enemies blobbing up around a hero or lord are perfect targets for magic or artillery, which are already incredibly killy in Warhammer Total War.

It's the reason Gor-Rok is so easy to start. He's a very tanky lord and he starts with Kroak who has insanely powerful AoE spells (which also don't even hurt friendly units).

Ding ding ding, same for Kholek, and even trhogg to a degree. (probably even better compounded with grom and river troll hags.)

Another issue is imo, with the statification (cue Health being asigned multiple to an entitiy of a unit) and singular fight animation engine, formations like a spear wall and a shield wall, a wedge etc, don't really work and istead only really provide a stat boost. Cue Attila f.e. where the testudo only increases shield block chance by i believe 300%.
Similarly units like the empire State army suffer from not being able to use formations in an intuitive manner, which makes spearmen probably one of the most obsolete unit types in the game instead of a mainstay, and enforces a halberd meta in normal because why bother with zwei and spearmen with shields when the halbadier does anything better whilest being faster to recruit. Don't get me wrong, as a swiss i enjoy a good halberd blob, but not to the exclusion of breakthrough units like zweihänder and swordsmen or purely defensive units like pikemen / spearmen.
It would also add a layer back to the distinction of factions, orks are cheaper singular better fighters because they are stronger and tougher but they have an hard time dislodging a spear wall frontally.
Vice versa chaos warrior shieldwalls should be nigh unbreakable due to their discipline but the cost should be higher.

Right now though, thanks to the engine and lack of formations you'll never have a reason to not recruit an elite unit beyond cost efficiency (halberd state troop vs zwei), theres no place for empire knights in an empire army really either. Shock cav and melee cav only distinction is in regards to melee defence making shock cav also rather obsolete since they don't break formations and anyways end up blobbing up around their target. In essence the engine since ETW designed around shooting units and ranged combat cripples melee or heavily melee centric games heavily and makes by virtue of that whole unit types more or less ignorable if not outright obsolete.

Not Online!!! wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Melee infantry play no real role in TWW2 at the highest difficulty levels. You can send melee infantry into AI controlled ranged infantry and they'll have a hard time winning. This is why it's all about missile units, war machines and monsters.

Norsca is different though. Nothing they have is as good as Mammoths. You can build a balanced army of various unit types, but 19 Mammoth spam will always be better. I don't see this as a problem with Mammoths. I see it as a problem with everything else in their roster.

Yeah, it's because on higher difficulties the AI gets melee buffs, so crap AI melee units will beat good player controlled melee units.

From memory there's no such ranged buffs / debuffs so that becomes the logical option (along with ranged units having more options for cheesing the AI's stupidity, like blobbing AI units up onto characters to be shot in the back or magicked to death).

Recent total wars did compound that issue however with the implementation of hero singular entity units which lead to the blobbing up surounding said unit. The fact that you can make heroes really durable on top of that doesn't help either and worsens the situation actively.

Be interesting to see if the new Wound mechanic changes Large single entities much - and if its rrelated to starting health or total proportion as in campaign quite often you will have damaged units in battles

Not Online!!! wrote:

Right now though, thanks to the engine and lack of formations you'll never have a reason to not recruit an elite unit beyond cost efficiency (halberd state troop vs zwei), theres no place for empire knights in an empire army really either. Shock cav and melee cav only distinction is in regards to melee defence making shock cav also rather obsolete since they don't break formations and anyways end up blobbing up around their target. In essence the engine since ETW designed around shooting units and ranged combat cripples melee or heavily melee centric games heavily and makes by virtue of that whole unit types more or less ignorable if not outright obsolete.

I think that Three Kingdoms did a pretty good job in making shock and melee cavalry feel different and function as you would expect. A unit of shock cavalry could absolutely melt units on the charge if they got the flank or rear. They'd basically plow through untis like the Rohirrim at the Battle of Pelennor Fields, rather than knock down the first two ranks and then just kind of stop like it does in Warhammer.

The Warhammer maps are also often too small to really get the most out of cavalry even if they were more effective, another instance where 3K is superior.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Right now though, thanks to the engine and lack of formations you'll never have a reason to not recruit an elite unit beyond cost efficiency (halberd state troop vs zwei), theres no place for empire knights in an empire army really either. Shock cav and melee cav only distinction is in regards to melee defence making shock cav also rather obsolete since they don't break formations and anyways end up blobbing up around their target. In essence the engine since ETW designed around shooting units and ranged combat cripples melee or heavily melee centric games heavily and makes by virtue of that whole unit types more or less ignorable if not outright obsolete.

I think that Three Kingdoms did a pretty good job in making shock and melee cavalry feel different and function as you would expect. A unit of shock cavalry could absolutely melt units on the charge if they got the flank or rear. They'd basically plow through untis like the Rohirrim at the Battle of Pelennor Fields, rather than knock down the first two ranks and then just kind of stop like it does in Warhammer.

The Warhammer maps are also often too small to really get the most out of cavalry even if they were more effective, another instance where 3K is superior.

Cav in 3 kingdom has the same issue though.
The reason as to why it works is not because cav works as intended but rather the massive disparaty in stats and "weight" disparation, aka infantry being more or less weightless in 3k.

New vid up for Beastmen...

Oh, wow. That's a massive, massive change.
Some of the early stuff isn't explained well in the video,* but tossing out money and upkeep is huge (they work like tomb kings to some extent.

Its also a major step up in terms of looks of the UI. Its raising my expectations of warhammer 3.

Maybe too many currencies and interlocking steps, however.


*trivia note- the narrator for the video goes by 'Blondie.' CA hired him off of Paradox a year or two ago, he was part of the PR/streaming team, iirc.

Yeah, I watched the start of a livestream by Legend where he talked about the new mechanics and it looks like good changes, hopefully they balance out well to produce a fun campaign.

It's good to see CA are gradually moving away from the simplistic mechanics used earlier in the Warhammer series, first with the Wood Elf update and now with the Beastmen.

I do hope (but not expecting) the Lizardmen get a change to their geomantic web system, as it's pretty boring and not engaging at the moment.

I doubt it'll be any time soon.

They've got TWW3 to think about, and the first race getting a rework with that game is said to be Norsca.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I doubt it'll be any time soon.

They've got TWW3 to think about, and the first race getting a rework with that game is said to be Norsca.

I moreso mean in the DLC, I don't think we've heard all of what Lizardmen are getting yet? Or have we? I haven't been following super closely. It seems like the Youtuber crowd has only been given access to the Beastmen portion so far.

Review of new Beastmen and Dwarfs with a bit of humour

I moreso mean in the DLC, I don't think we've heard all of what Lizardmen are getting yet? Or have we? I

And for the Lizardmen:

Skink Oracle (Hero) – a spellcaster with access to a unique selection of spells from various lores.
Chameleon Stalkers (Infantry) – ambush units with an explosive dart first-strike ability.
Coatl (Flying Monster) – highly intelligent, very scary, and able to hide their allies and bring forth lightning with their magic.
Troglodon (Monster) – poison-dealing monsters that can also shoot their venomous spit, which is effective against larger targets.

There are also a selection of new Regiments of Renown coming to both factions.

 Mr Morden wrote:

I moreso mean in the DLC, I don't think we've heard all of what Lizardmen are getting yet? Or have we? I

And for the Lizardmen:

Skink Oracle (Hero) – a spellcaster with access to a unique selection of spells from various lores.
Chameleon Stalkers (Infantry) – ambush units with an explosive dart first-strike ability.
Coatl (Flying Monster) – highly intelligent, very scary, and able to hide their allies and bring forth lightning with their magic.
Troglodon (Monster) – poison-dealing monsters that can also shoot their venomous spit, which is effective against larger targets.

There are also a selection of new Regiments of Renown coming to both factions.

I mean in terms of mechanics rather than units. Like, how is Oxyotl's campaign going to work and does it bring any changes to how the Lizardmen as a whole function. I've only seen trailers for the Beastmen side so far.

Grom the Paunch for example brought with him the whole cooking thing, which really changes how the Orcs and Goblins play if you choose him.

I'm not expecting a complete overhaul like the Beastmen obviously, they desperately needed it, but I wouldn't be surprised if they slip some goodies into the Lizardmen also. There were a lot of complaints with Tehenhuin that he didn't bring enough of an update.

I'm going to play this game series forever. Even now, there are still factions I haven't touched.

Every DLC release I get hyped for it, but also equally hyped for my usual go-to campaigns. Like "How will this change a Skarsnik playthrough?" "I bet this will make an Empire campaign more challenging!" And on it goes.

I think the only Tomb Kings campaign I've done is Arkhan, for instance.

Though with this next DLC, I'm a Beastmen fanboy, so I'm going to wear it out.

I have hundreds of hours in the game and still haven't played about half the factions, lol.

All the new Beastmen and Lizardmen units

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I mean in terms of mechanics rather than units. Like, how is Oxyotl's campaign going to work and does it bring any changes to how the Lizardmen as a whole function. I've only seen trailers for the Beastmen side so far.

Oxyotl doesn't change how the Lizardmen function.

 nels1031 wrote:
I'm going to play this game series forever. Even now, there are still factions I haven't touched.

Every DLC release I get hyped for it, but also equally hyped for my usual go-to campaigns. Like "How will this change a Skarsnik playthrough?" "I bet this will make an Empire campaign more challenging!" And on it goes.

I think the only Tomb Kings campaign I've done is Arkhan, for instance.

Though with this next DLC, I'm a Beastmen fanboy, so I'm going to wear it out.

I easily have more hours in TW2 than anything other than MMOs and maybe Overwatch. The game is virtually endless. There are so many permutations. Playing literally every single LL would be a full time job if you wanted to do it in under a year.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I mean in terms of mechanics rather than units. Like, how is Oxyotl's campaign going to work and does it bring any changes to how the Lizardmen as a whole function. I've only seen trailers for the Beastmen side so far.

Oxyotl doesn't change how the Lizardmen function.

Seems like he has a few unique mechanics that he brings to the table with the extra quests and whatnot. Though nothing as significant as what the likes of Grom brings.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 trexmeyer wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:
I'm going to play this game series forever. Even now, there are still factions I haven't touched.

Every DLC release I get hyped for it, but also equally hyped for my usual go-to campaigns. Like "How will this change a Skarsnik playthrough?" "I bet this will make an Empire campaign more challenging!" And on it goes.

I think the only Tomb Kings campaign I've done is Arkhan, for instance.

Though with this next DLC, I'm a Beastmen fanboy, so I'm going to wear it out.

I easily have more hours in TW2 than anything other than MMOs and maybe Overwatch. The game is virtually endless. There are so many permutations. Playing literally every single LL would be a full time job if you wanted to do it in under a year.

I seem to recall LegendofTotalWar passing 10,000 hours recently, or something like that, I remember it was basically 8 hours a day since the game came out, haha.

You don't really have to play every single LL though, you can confederate if you want to control them, after which the only reason to play different LLs is start position, faction mechanics or special objectives.

Seems like he has a few unique mechanics that he brings to the table with the extra quests and whatnot. Though nothing as significant as what the likes of Grom brings.

I really like that Drycha has such a unique army list

I still haven't played as Drycha beyond the first few turns. I like Waywatchers and archers in general too much so always end up going for the Sisters.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I still haven't played as Drycha beyond the first few turns. I like Waywatchers and archers in general too much so always end up going for the Sisters.

I finished her campaign and only used a couple of elf units beyond garrisons - good fun and very different to standard Wood Elf army.