A little disappointed with the dwarf content.
Airship supercool. Slayer stuff, OK I guess. Malakai - meh, we've already got a Slayer lord.
I'd have preferred a dedicated engineer lord, and I dunno, mining golems as either monstrous infantry or monster units for a bit more variety in the roster.
Having a blast with Tamurkhan's campaign, having briefly started last night. Going to try to follow the path that his Warhammer Forge book laid out, rather than his objectives being to eliminate Kholek, Goldtooth and a third faction that I can't recall at the moment.
His chieftain recruitment tactic is pretty neat and really adds some roster diversity.
Didn't try Elspeth or Makaisson yet. Feel like Elspeth's campaign will be easy, with Nuln cushioned as it is between the mountains and Karl Franz and various other Elector Counts.
Makaisson's campaign might be wild fun,being more or less surrounded by Demons, Norsca and Skaven, with only minor Kislev factions on his border.
Debated starting a Epidemius campaign, but I've do so many campaigns in that area that its kind of played out for me.
Interested in trying out a Slayer-King campaign as well, since they just got so many Slayer upgrades.
You know, I really wish they had campaign mode where you could start as a custom legendary lord for each faction. Make the normal legendary lords recruitable by defeating/confederating them as normal.
Grey Templar wrote: You know, I really wish they had campaign mode where you could start as a custom legendary lord for each faction. Make the normal legendary lords recruitable by defeating/confederating them as normal.
You kind of can with Mods :
1. Mixu’s Faction Unlocker- Makes all minor factions playable.
2. Recruit defeated Legenday Lords - Allows the recruitment of Legendary lords of your faction that have had their faction destroyed.
But yeah, I understand the sentiment. Total War has been character focused since 2015’s Attila, possibly to its detriment in some cases.
I'd love to see a campaign that just has 1 of each race on the campaign map with fewer regions. Something that's grand but more "I can actually complete this and fight most races without giving up half my life to do so"
Meh, I was kind of excited for the DLC, but when it was broken into 3 separate packs that cumulatively are reasonably expensive, I think I'll sit it out until they're in the bargain bin
Overread wrote: I'd love to see a campaign that just has 1 of each race on the campaign map with fewer regions. Something that's grand but more "I can actually complete this and fight most races without giving up half my life to do so"
I'd like to see a campaign where things are a bit more lore friendly for the AI races, give them the ability to power up without conquering half the map. It's always been weird to me that the map starts out with everyone where they should be, then within a few turns everyone has gone insane in conquering everything and you have things like Drycha randomly owning half of the Empire.
So maybe the AI races focus more on economy and alliances rather than conquering and confederation, so that when you as the player start to conquer them they aren't a pushover but also haven't expanded in a way that feels weird.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Meh, I was kind of excited for the DLC, but when it was broken into 3 separate packs that cumulatively are reasonably expensive, I think I'll sit it out until they're in the bargain bin
I'm not sure I follow.
You can buy the three parts of the DLC as a single package for significantly less (15% discount on the price of all three individually). And if you buy one part of it, and want to buy the other two later, you can get them at a discount. It's $9 for the individual packs, or $23 for the combined package, which is less than the other large DLC packages.
What exactly do you not like about the way that the prices are structured?
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Meh, I was kind of excited for the DLC, but when it was broken into 3 separate packs that cumulatively are reasonably expensive, I think I'll sit it out until they're in the bargain bin
I'm not sure I follow.
You can buy the three parts of the DLC as a single package for significantly less (15% discount on the price of all three individually). And if you buy one part of it, and want to buy the other two later, you can get them at a discount. It's $9 for the individual packs, or $23 for the combined package, which is less than the other large DLC packages.
What exactly do you not like about the way that the prices are structured?
Maybe it's an Australian pricing thing? The individuals are $15AUD, the combined is $38AUD, it just doesn't feel to me like a 3 lord DLC is worth that much, so if I loved one of the other races maybe I'd be excited enough to buy an individual lord for $15 but I don't have a great deal of excitement about it. The Chaos Dwarfs DLC was $35 and brought with it an entire new race. Champions of Chaos was $25 and brought 4x Lords. It also doesn't feel like a Warden and the Paunch which turned O&G from boring to fun, or a Silence and Fury that brought a whole new flavour to Lizardmen and made Beastmen interesting.
Maybe I'm missing what is so great about this DLC? Happy to be proven wrong, I haven't been paying a great deal of attention to Warhammer 3 recently so maybe I'm just not seeing it.
I guess it's not a huge difference, they're both similar in price to the Chaos Dwarfs, over here TOD is a couple of bucks more expensive than Chaos Stunties, over there it's a couple of bucks cheaper. What was Champions of Chaos over there? As TOD seems (to me at least) be more similar to Champions than it is to Evil Stunties.
Does TOD change much in how those races play? I guess I was most interested in how it changes Dwarfs, as I like Dwarfs but find them boring to play a campaign with. But I was expecting a $25-ish dollar DLC rather than something that's $38 and that put me off.
So maybe the AI races focus more on economy and alliances rather than conquering and confederation, so that when you as the player start to conquer them they aren't a pushover but also haven't expanded in a way that feels weird.
The problem is that at its core Total War has always been a conquest game.
It's always been about being a game where you get into fights and come into the 3D battleworld to play out those fights. The other issue is if you stop the AI expanding and have it focus on other areas, you have to stop the player expanding too. Otherwise the player will conquer a few provinces and then be nigh unstoppable very early on in the game.
The other thing is game complexity, if you try and build a super detailed combat game; and political game; and empire building game all into one you can end up with something that has a LOT of simulation going on, but which is so complex its overwhelming to some and creates a very different play experience.
Honestly I think if you want a more political game you'd be looking closer to a Crusader Kings engine and setup. Where combat is a side element and politics and other elements come to the fore. Though even that can be tricky with a fantasy game where some factions are 100% against others and will not come ot the table to discuss things at all. IF a barbarian tribe comes out of the Chaos Wastes, they won't be politically allying with anyone save for those that are already attuned to Chaos; otherwise they will steamroll through everyone with combat as their main focus.
Conquest game for the player, but the basics are there for it to be more nuanced for the AI.
Like, instead of random small AI lord conquering all the land around them become your primary enemy, they could build a strong economy and strong alliances and trade which lets them build their settlements to a higher tier than the player with a more expansionist focus, thus making them harder to conquer. Their alliances will mean that instead of the player just fighting them and wiping them out in 2 turns, they can get meaningful support from their nearby allies (which kind of already happens but it is never central to the AI's strategy). Then once you've wiped them out, they can come back in the form of rebellions.
An AI with a single province could be quite hard to conquer if they had a few high tier armies spread across the province with high tier settlements that have solid garrisons and surrounding allies that will come to help them when you attack.
These features already exist in the game, but in reality what happens is a few AI factions snowball so that by turn 50 it's gone from 250 factions down to less than 100 and you have factions taking over swathes of land where lore wise they shouldn't be.
I'm not even saying that should be the main campaign mode, just saying to have it as an option the same way we have 10 different end game crisis as an option. It'd be nice to get to location X and have the expected faction in location X instead of being conquered by Grimgor or Thorgrim or whatever.
I'd even be totally fine if the AI cheated to make it more lore friendly, it's not like the AI doesn't cheat already.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I guess it's not a huge difference, they're both similar in price to the Chaos Dwarfs, over here TOD is a couple of bucks more expensive than Chaos Stunties, over there it's a couple of bucks cheaper. What was Champions of Chaos over there? As TOD seems (to me at least) be more similar to Champions than it is to Evil Stunties.
Does TOD change much in how those races play? I guess I was most interested in how it changes Dwarfs, as I like Dwarfs but find them boring to play a campaign with. But I was expecting a $25-ish dollar DLC rather than something that's $38 and that put me off.
By all accounts the dwarfs at least received a major overhaul. Lots of new Slayer units (dragonslayer hero, demonslayer lord, legendary hero, legendary lord (Malakai Makaisson), goblinhewer, doomseekers, and Long Drong's Slayer Pirates), finally a proper centerpiece unit with the battle zeppelin, and a major overhaul of the Grudge system that encourages a more active playstyle. Oh, and Gotrek and Felix got updated.
Apparently you can make a (regular) cannon doomstack with grapeshot now, as well.
Not sure if its a mod I'm running, or this patch made them super powerful(it certainly buffed them), but Dwarfs of the non-Chaos variety are dominating the map in my most recent campaigns.
That was somewhat true in mine. Malaki seems to struggle (though I'd put that at map position).
Belegar tends to confederate the lesser dwarf factions, while Ungrim and the High King consolidate their local area well, but eventually slog into a grinding stalemate against chaos dwarfs and/or skaven (down south). Greenskins and ogres just evaporate.
Though in my Empire campaign Belegar got stuck in Athel Loren- took out Durthu and the Oak of Ages, but ended up in an attrition war in southern Bretonnia against Orion. Unfortunately for him he took Grenstat from the Bloody Hands (who declared war on me early and would send an army every 20-30 turns), and to solidify my claim on the Empire I had to conquer it back.
Voss wrote: That was somewhat true in mine. Malaki seems to struggle (though I'd put that at map position).
Belegar tends to confederate the lesser dwarf factions, while Ungrim and the High King consolidate their local area well, but eventually slog into a grinding stalemate against chaos dwarfs and/or skaven (down south). Greenskins and ogres just evaporate.
Though in my Empire campaign Belegar got stuck in Athel Loren- took out Durthu and the Oak of Ages, but ended up in an attrition war in southern Bretonnia against Orion. Unfortunately for him he took Grenstat from the Bloody Hands (who declared war on me early and would send an army every 20-30 turns), and to solidify my claim on the Empire I had to conquer it back.
Yeah Malakai is in a target-rich environment.
Throt, Throgg, Azazel, Wulfrik, Daniel, Epidemius, Archaon, and that Chaos Dwarf are all right next-door. That plus anti-player bias all mean you get stuck in right away.
At least if you take out Throt right away your south flank is reasonably secure with Kislev guarding it pretty well so you can focus on taking over Norsca and defend in the east/north.
You can get the Bill King Band back together pretty easily though (except Snorri who's not in the game - just rename a generic slayer character I guess?), which is kinda cool.
Oh, and cannon grapeshot doomstack really is a thing, only slightly overshadowed because battle zeppelins are stupid good.
