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Changling's campaign sounds fun. Basically a 1 army run around cause mischief approach! Almost like running a mercenary force in the game and I wonder if some of the structural elements might have been a potential "Dogs of War" set of mechanics that they messed around with before and never released or developed.

Sounds like he has a great campaign.

Now if only the DLC were worth the price...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Now if only the DLC were worth the price...

Meh, I see hours of entertainment with the 3 unique playstyle campaigns and more hours with my old faithful campaigns and how the new lords will effect them. $22.49 was an easy buy for me. YMMV

Not guaranteed. Ingredient hunting is also not new.

I didn't buy Chaos Dwarfs as a protest in the shift in attitude I am feeling from CA. I will do the same here.

With Warhammer 2, I felt like CA was always trying to exceed my expectations.
With Warhammer 3 I feel like they are trying to reduce them.

 nels1031 wrote:
Meh, I see hours of entertainment with the 3 unique playstyle campaigns and more hours with my old faithful campaigns and how the new lords will effect them. $22.49 was an easy buy for me.

You have low standards then.

The price they're asking for the content they're providing is absurd. Previous packs either had more (and still cost less), or just cost less. This price was expensive for Chaos Dwarfs, but it provided an entire new faction for the game. This is a couple of units and some HQs.

Compare this to the The Warden and The Paunch or The Prophet and The Warlock. Those were impactful DLCs and didn't cost anywhere near this much. Warden and The Paunch also revitalised the game. This DLC has vanished off the top sellers list within a week.

CA are shooting themselves in the foot. The other foot. They've already shot the first foot off completely with their antics since TWW3's disastrous launch.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:
Meh, I see hours of entertainment with the 3 unique playstyle campaigns and more hours with my old faithful campaigns and how the new lords will effect them. $22.49 was an easy buy for me.

You have low standards then.

The price they're asking for the content they're providing is absurd. Previous packs either had more (and still cost less), or just cost less. This price was expensive for Chaos Dwarfs, but it provided an entire new faction for the game. This is a couple of units and some HQs.

Compare this to the The Warden and The Paunch or The Prophet and The Warlock. Those were impactful DLCs and didn't cost anywhere near this much. Warden and The Paunch also revitalised the game. This DLC has vanished off the top sellers list within a week.

CA are shooting themselves in the foot. The other foot. They've already shot the first foot off completely with their antics since TWW3's disastrous launch.

They also lost the historical playerbase, let's not beat around the bush.

The gameplay is stagnating, Price increases for features that were allready there. FFS, pharao promotes formations... FORMATIONS:

I'm normally very quick to chug down any content for TWW but this is too much for me. 3 Legendary Lords and some roster additions is something I'd pay maybe £10 for but this is priced like an expensive race pack.
I found it very interesting that Sega put out a statement on their Total War Blog in response to the backlash so things must be getting quite heated for them.
https://www.totalwar.com/blog/dlc_statement/

Mozzamanx wrote:
I'm normally very quick to chug down any content for TWW but this is too much for me. 3 Legendary Lords and some roster additions is something I'd pay maybe £10 for but this is priced like an expensive race pack.
I found it very interesting that Sega put out a statement on their Total War Blog in response to the backlash so things must be getting quite heated for them.
https://www.totalwar.com/blog/dlc_statement/

Well they are at a stage in which what happened to war thunder will happen and get a review bombing.

Which, yes, honestly if you are that disconected with your custommer which spends money for your services attempt to treat that way is innevitably deserved.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Spoiler:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:
Meh, I see hours of entertainment with the 3 unique playstyle campaigns and more hours with my old faithful campaigns and how the new lords will effect them. $22.49 was an easy buy for me.

You have low standards then.

The price they're asking for the content they're providing is absurd. Previous packs either had more (and still cost less), or just cost less. This price was expensive for Chaos Dwarfs, but it provided an entire new faction for the game. This is a couple of units and some HQs.

Compare this to the The Warden and The Paunch or The Prophet and The Warlock. Those were impactful DLCs and didn't cost anywhere near this much. Warden and The Paunch also revitalised the game. This DLC has vanished off the top sellers list within a week.

CA are shooting themselves in the foot. The other foot. They've already shot the first foot off completely with their antics since TWW3's disastrous launch.

They also lost the historical playerbase, let's not beat around the bush.

The gameplay is stagnating, Price increases for features that were allready there. FFS, pharao promotes formations... FORMATIONS:

I don't think they've lost me; they just aren't giving me what I want. I haven't played a good historical TW title since Attila, and even then it was a departure from typical campaign game play as it was more of a civilization preservation/survival simulator so it definitely didn't wet everybody's whistle. I didn't care about 3k or these 'Saga' side projects and I sure as hell am not paying $60 for them. Where is Medieval 3? Where is Empire/Napoleon 2? I understand that there has been much development focus on Warhammer 2/3, and thats fine; they're great games but at some point we're going to have to return to the basics that made TW the franchise that it is today.

As far as the WHIII DLC pricing, I personally thought the Chorf DLC offered a satisfactory amount of content for the price; this one does not. Did the community even want another Tzeentch or Kislevite lord? Another Cathayan lord, sure. Its obvious that new content has to fall within Realm of Chaos narrative (even though nobody plays it) but what about the fixes for the existing content that the community has been shouting about for months?

When will Daniel not suck? When will the Empire's janky campaign mechanics be overhauled? When will ogre camps be mobile? etc etc.

GrosseSax wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:


They also lost the historical playerbase, let's not beat around the bush.

The gameplay is stagnating, Price increases for features that were allready there. FFS, pharao promotes formations... FORMATIONS:

I don't think they've lost me; they just aren't giving me what I want. I haven't played a good historical TW title since Attila, and even then it was a departure from typical campaign game play as it was more of a civilization preservation/survival simulator so it definitely didn't wet everybody's whistle. I didn't care about 3k or these 'Saga' side projects and I sure as hell am not paying $60 for them. Where is Medieval 3? Where is Empire/Napoleon 2? I understand that there has been much development focus on Warhammer 2/3, and thats fine; they're great games but at some point we're going to have to return to the basics that made TW the franchise that it is today.

As far as the WHIII DLC pricing, I personally thought the Chorf DLC offered a satisfactory amount of content for the price; this one does not. Did the community even want another Tzeentch or Kislevite lord? Another Cathayan lord, sure. Its obvious that new content has to fall within Realm of Chaos narrative (even though nobody plays it) but what about the fixes for the existing content that the community has been shouting about for months?

When will Daniel not suck? When will the Empire's janky campaign mechanics be overhauled? When will ogre camps be mobile? etc etc.

But that is what i mean. Pharao is and feels supposedly like and looks a damn lot like troy. But first off we had that game and secondly it's not what made total war great.
For these other games, formations and firing drills are key aspects. Things we had, which they are promoting now.

And it seeped intow WHTW, the empire in the lore has a chance against their enemies because they have drilled proffesional troops fighting in formations.... we don't have that, ontop of the janky mechanics.

I would have def bought Pharaoh if it had a Mythic option like Troy but just historical not bothered. Also Shadows of Change looks ok - expensive and no reason to buy at the moment when I have Balders Gate and others

GrosseSax wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Spoiler:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:
Meh, I see hours of entertainment with the 3 unique playstyle campaigns and more hours with my old faithful campaigns and how the new lords will effect them. $22.49 was an easy buy for me.

You have low standards then.

The price they're asking for the content they're providing is absurd. Previous packs either had more (and still cost less), or just cost less. This price was expensive for Chaos Dwarfs, but it provided an entire new faction for the game. This is a couple of units and some HQs.

Compare this to the The Warden and The Paunch or The Prophet and The Warlock. Those were impactful DLCs and didn't cost anywhere near this much. Warden and The Paunch also revitalised the game. This DLC has vanished off the top sellers list within a week.

CA are shooting themselves in the foot. The other foot. They've already shot the first foot off completely with their antics since TWW3's disastrous launch.

They also lost the historical playerbase, let's not beat around the bush.

The gameplay is stagnating, Price increases for features that were allready there. FFS, pharao promotes formations... FORMATIONS:

I don't think they've lost me; they just aren't giving me what I want. I haven't played a good historical TW title since Attila, and even then it was a departure from typical campaign game play as it was more of a civilization preservation/survival simulator so it definitely didn't wet everybody's whistle. I didn't care about 3k or these 'Saga' side projects and I sure as hell am not paying $60 for them. Where is Medieval 3? Where is Empire/Napoleon 2? I understand that there has been much development focus on Warhammer 2/3, and thats fine; they're great games but at some point we're going to have to return to the basics that made TW the franchise that it is today.

As far as the WHIII DLC pricing, I personally thought the Chorf DLC offered a satisfactory amount of content for the price; this one does not. Did the community even want another Tzeentch or Kislevite lord? Another Cathayan lord, sure. Its obvious that new content has to fall within Realm of Chaos narrative (even though nobody plays it) but what about the fixes for the existing content that the community has been shouting about for months?

When will Daniel not suck? When will the Empire's janky campaign mechanics be overhauled? When will ogre camps be mobile? etc etc.

I definitely wanted a new Kislev lord. Wasn't really fussed whether it was Ostankya or someone else from the lore I wasn't familiar with.

More than that, though, I wanted Kislev fleshed out in a way that would enable you to pick more thematic armies. From what I understand the Ice Court, Orthodoxy and Ungols don't get on, but it's difficult at present to make fully thematic armies.

Added to that, I consider two casters in the same army to be redundant (surely not alone in that) unless one of them offers something worthwhile outside their casting (which most don't), so Ostankya and any Ice Witches have hero-less armies, because they don't need their respective thematic hero and the patriarch is completely unthematic.

Some sort of Akshina hero and Kossar hero would go a long way imo.

We also saw with Eltharion that CA are capable of delivering a bunch of faction specific flavour units alongside new generic ones when the mood takes them. I can't think of race more deserving of that treatment than Kislev with their three distinct rival factions.

GrosseSax wrote:

I haven't played a good historical TW title since Attila,

But the only big TW title since Attila was 3K. And, unfortunately, everyone - including CA , given how they abruptly dropped it - acknowledges that game was a mess.

Where is Empire/Napoleon 2?

Napoleon 2? Please, NO! Refighting a Napoleonic battle with less than a thousand men on each side is borderline blasphemous.

To be blunt, the game style just doesn't work well once the battles start to scale up beyond a certain point, and the Napoleonic era is well past that point. Little Round Top? Sure. Borodino? Absolutely not.

I understand that there has been much development focus on Warhammer 2/3, and thats fine; they're great games but at some point we're going to have to return to the basics that made TW the franchise that it is today.

And they will after WH3 plays out. They were always going to introduce the characters in this DLC. After all, there are five dragon sub-rulers in Cathay, and I'll be surprised if we don't get all five of them before the game is done. So Warhammer 3 releases will be in the pipeline for a while. But when they aren't, the Warhammer team will likely get a new project.

Did the community even want another Tzeentch or Kislevite lord?

Changling has been talked about for a while. Players knew that he was coming. They just didn't know when or where or how he would operate. As for Kislev, all of the factions in Warhammer 2 eventually had four lords (and some had even more). I would expect that all of the starting factions in Warhammer 3 will similarly end up with at least four before everything is wrapped up. That also means that the Chaos Dwarfs could get one more.

When will ogre camps be mobile? etc etc.

I would imagine that sooner or later we'll get a free ogre overhaul patch alongside an ogre DLC (along the lines of what happened with the Wood Elves and Beastmen) that adds at least a couple of new ogre lords.

Great war mod turns 4 infantry units into 1000 men.
That is a decent enough increase and already possible with NTW.
It's just CA that is lazy and doesn't care to innovate.
Because they are not under competitve pressure and get government tax money which should've gone to start ups in the UK:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Great war mod turns 4 infantry units into 1000 men.
That is a decent enough increase and already possible with NTW.
It's just CA that is lazy and doesn't care to innovate.
Because they are not under competitve pressure and get government tax money which should've gone to start ups in the UK:

There are other issues, and it's not just laziness. If you're going to refight one of the battles of the Napoleonic era, then to properly refight with only twenty units, you're at the very least looking at a minimum unit size of a brigade, and possibly a division. Infantry brigades were more or less integrated infantry formations. You didn't have just a single type of infantry. You had multiple types, all working together under the direction of the brigade commander. Total War units are homogenous.

In short, there would need to be a lot of changes to the way that the game works, and "more infantry per formation" would only be the start.

Again, that is lazyness. They would've been capable of doing something like this, since we are talking about a mod as an exemple here in an nowadays consisered old game.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Again, that is lazyness. They would've been capable of doing something like this, since we are talking about a mod as an exemple here in an nowadays consisered old game.

No, it's not laziness. It's getting down to micro-managing levels far beyond what any general of the time would have had to worry about. The Grand Armee at the start of the Russia campaign had 685,000 men. With an army that size, Napoleon didn't worry about giving orders to individual companies, which is the level that Total War operates at. He told his corps commanders what he needed them to do, and they drew up plans for their own formations based on the guidance Napoleon provided for them. He might have directed an individual division or brigade from time to time. But that was as far down the chain as he likely ever went, and even then only at particularly important moments. Armies that size need to be abstracted in order to maintain anything even remotely close to manageability. You can't just say, "Well, now the line troops are in units of 20,000 each," because that's not how the line troops were actually organized on the battlefield. Under Napoleon, a typical line battalion had seven (later four) companies/platoons of fusiliers, and one each of grenadiers and voltiguers (the latter were sometimes detached and organized into larger formations with others of their kind). A light infantry battalion had seven (later four) units of chaussers, and one each of carabinieres and voltiguers.

As a result, any maneuver element larger than a company of infantry is going to have a mix of troops, and not be the homogenous units that we see in Total War. Total War as it exists can properly depict a clash with multiple battalions on each side. But anything larger than that would require a complete redesign of the combat system, and likely involve abstracting parts of it to avoid killing the player with micro-management. And, as it turns out, the formation sizes in Total War pretty much perfectly support a clash between battalions, as the French companies of the era were typically between 100-200 men (the size varied) The problem, of course, is that clashes between a few battalions during this era were generally of very minor significance, outside of a tiny handful of instances where a battle hinged on a very small piece of terrain.

Or to put it another way, Total War is the perfect scale to depict the sorts of units it portrays on the battlefield. The problem is that those sorts of units on the battlefield were tiny parts of absolutely massive armies.

again , nothing beyond lazyness is stopping ca to implement a system as such.
It's neither the seize of the armies nor the scale.
It's merely that ca thinks it's not worth to implement auch a size-system e.g. innovate.

But there are other ways too.

I don't know about you but operating 40 units at once on a large TA map is about as much as I feel comfortable doing and that's with the pause button being used.

Now don't get me wrong I utterly love massive combat, but the more units you add the more micro you ad and the more you end up in overview mode directing blocks of troops on a map.

When you then add on abilities, formations, specific charge strikes and all then it gets even more complicated to micro each unit.


Controlling bigger and bigger armies requires innovation in terms of how you manage them and some of that might be things like the units having single formations or auto-formation assignment. eg a cavalry block would auto assume wedge when given a charge but would use line when given a move attack order etc.

Another layer is that CA puts a lot into the 3D designs and fights and players want to see that. So you also need a control system that's going to have some downtime during the game to watch the fight.




I think the difference is that CA has a model which works. It's not the best and only way to produce such a game, but its a formula which works and heck the few times they've messed with it in a big way (eg sieges) it generally got them a lot of complaints. Everyone whined about TW Warhammer 1 sieges being smaller; and now they complain about 3 being bigger and with the defence buildings on top.


Heck I actually liked the Warhammer 1 and 2 because you could defend a whole wall with an army; 3 is feeling like other TW games where you've a MASSIVE wall and a tiny army to hold it. Which often results in holding just one segment of the wall and then pulling back to holding one corner against the enemy. Because if you spread out to hold every part you often end up far too thin on troops to make it effective.

With AI, i think we may well are at a stage were we could draw up plans and comit to the command of a specific force whilest delegating.

Not Online!!! wrote:
With AI, i think we may well are at a stage were we could draw up plans and comit to the command of a specific force whilest delegating.

Maybe maybe not - video game AI has honestly stagnated for a long time in my view. The only video game AI that I think has really pushed new ground is Starcraft 2. It's still about the only RTS AI I've seen that scouts (or simulates scouting at least); will hold back an attack to build a bigger one instead of attacking almost on a time-clock; sometimes holds back to use artillery at long range; retreats from an unwinnable battle from time to time.


A lot of the new AI developments are impressive but also basically rely on massive amounts of collaging with regard to images and text. It's very impressive, but at the same time its relying on insane quantities of media and fundamentally the AI still has no idea what its doing. Images can easily have too many fingers or strange detail areas; text can very readily be utterly made up near rubbish. Not to mention all that requires huge amounts of computing power, which is a big limit for video games that have to run on your home PC.
The other layer is that if the AI just copies human behaviour it can produce an experience people don't actually want from an AI. Consider how humans will often form alliances and break them purely for military focus. You'll ally to avoid a war; move your army into key positions and then break the alliance and declare war for an easy victory. Which means if the AI does that then that's what it would do - it would always be a super unreliable ally in games; which is often something many players very much dislike.
Human VS human playing is different compared to AI. Dropping into starcraft again the top teir players are all about micro-clicking and micro movements and such. Moving just after shooting to move out of range and then stop and cycle into a new firing sequence and such. Things that many who play against AI don't want to engage with.



The other thing is I'd argue that having AI control chunks of your army on its own is creating a very different game to what Total War games are. Not to mention increasing unit sizes and the number of units to account for such a system would very very quickly overpower most home PCs. TW games are already pretty demanding on home PCs, you go increasing the numbers many times over and either we have to wait for some big technological advances; or the graphics quality has got to lower.

That would be the case, if it weren't for the fact that one still could innovate on that front AND in regards to ressources get rid of things like Denuvo which are prove to be not only not effective but punish players that bought the game legitimatly with bad performance

AI is a buzzword right now, but is largely still crap. Chatbots can simulate a conversation to a certain extent, but only insofar as they're able to look at a table of "normal" responses to what was just said. They have zero comprehension of what they're saying. They merely know that the response they've picked to your latest comment is a popular one.

Wishing otherwise won't change that.

Ai in the sense of game ai. It'd be not particulary difficult to improve CA's AI in total war, compared to certain other games.

There's a huge difference between "basic competent AI" and "able to smartly and efficiently micro-manage every last company that fought at Austerlitz".

I also have to ask, what would really be the point? The general's eye view wasn't at that tiny level. It was at the higher levels, the ones that used to be represented by square cardboard counters on hexmaps made by SPI and Avalon Hill. If you zoom in close enough that you can see the individual men fighting with each other, then you're ignoring the rest of the battlefield. That might be useful for portraying something like Hougoumont (though even that clash had more troops than are represented in a Total War army). But it's not so useful for fighting an entire battle.

Really digging that we're getting Thing(s) in the Woods and an Incarnate of Beasts.

Hopefully gets us to even more of the other monsters from Monstrous Arcanum.

GrosseSax wrote:
As far as the WHIII DLC pricing, I personally thought the Chorf DLC offered a satisfactory amount of content for the price; this one does not. Did the community even want another Tzeentch or Kislevite lord? Another Cathayan lord, sure. Its obvious that new content has to fall within Realm of Chaos narrative (even though nobody plays it) but what about the fixes for the existing content that the community has been shouting about for months?

Tzeentch, Kislev and Cathay are core factions of Total War Warhammer III. It wouldn't make sense to release big expansions for factions that people who own this game might not have access to. Moreover, the other factions from TWW1 and TWW2 have all had, with the exception of Norsca, additions to their rosters since they were first introduced, some multiple times over.

Tzeentch can't be left with a single LL. Cathay and Kislev also need expansion and reworks. This DLC doesn't go far enough on that latter aspect, but they definitely needed new content and new LLs. I doubt we'll ever see Kislev or Tzeentch with 6-7 LLs like some of the TWWI/II races (there just aren't enough Tzeentch DoC characters to get there), but leaving them at their base-game rosters and moving back to Empire, High Elves and Orcs wouldn't be right either.

As for fixes, that's a separate issue and not anything to do with the DLC. They don't need to make a Lizardmen DLC to fix Nakai's broken campaign - they just need to get around to fixing it. The fact that it's taken them this long to solve something that modders fixed in an hour shows how little effort CA is putting into this game.

They are more concerned about the Hyenas shooter, they can pump full off microtransactions etc. . Which funnily enough has also led to a huge employee turnover aswell.

NVM that Hyenas looks utter dogshit from a shooter persepctive and the trailer shows that the game isn't working at ALL in it's core, the shooting mechanics.

Booted up an Ice Queen campaign with the new DLC for gaks and giggles while Starfield was unpacking for early access.

Their technology tree is still a scattershot collection of unrelated random stuff.

A few new settlements in their territories and they get provincial capitals again, which is great as it opens up more buildings for an effective economy/war machine . The fanatic guy(Konstantin?) got rolled over pretty quick, with Azazel and Throt on my doorstep about 25 turns in. Nice to have Hag Witches with different magic schools supplementing the Kislev roster. New crossbow unit is an upgrade to the early archers that Kislev gets. Recruited a few Thing in the Woods units to see how they do, but wanted to see other stuff before I spent anymore time with the Ice Queen.

Moved on to a Beastmen campaign just to see if Tzaangors, Incarnate of Beasts and the Cockatrice were added to their roster. All but the Cockatrice, but I bet there is already a mod to add that. No Mutalith either, but I didn't expect that. I think they get a unique building or 2 now as well, but I didn't get deep into it.

Going to jump into a Changeling or the Mother Ostankya campaign this weekend if Starfield doesn't grab all of my attention. On the other hand, kind of want to play an Empire campaign now that The Changeling is in your neighborhood, presenting new challenges.