Overread wrote: To be fair that is very Chaos to try and sneak in and conquer without others realising only then to rise up with overwhelming force.
Sure? And the cults are sort of trying to model that (I think). But it seems better to forgo that aspect as well and just crush your immediate neighbor without setting up cults in the next neighbor, lest you trigger a war where enemy lords start swarming your position from wherever they are on the map. Keep the fog of war absolute for as long as possible, as zero contact to 'encountered' changes AI behavior massively.
That still happens in ME Chaos campaigns in TW2 (just finished one, in fact), where suddenly Karl Franz and two buddies are suddenly elbow deep in Bretonnia or Kislev just to get your main army despite the fact that you've never been in Empire territory at all yet, the five other wars they're fighting, and they have absolutely no line of sight to your position, because they don't have any actual alliances. Best to avoid.
When are they going to talk about Norsca and Warriors of Chaos?
IMO, WOC should become Chaos Undivided essentially and have access to some demons, but as secondary units. Same deal with the respective Chaos factions. They have mortals, but as secondary units. In both cases the secondary units can fill vital roles for the faction, but lack the redline buff potential from their primary faction.
Norsca should be turned into Tribes of Chaos or Northman with a focus likely on Norsca (ofc), Kurgan, and maybe the Hung. At a minimum have a generic lord type for each of the tribes that buffs that specific tribes playstyle. Norsca should shift focus to being more of a maritime threat, possibly with ship building. The Kurgan would be more focused on cavalry and possibly have horde options. The Hung are too similar to the Kurgan (nomadic horsemen) for them to really have a distinctive playstyle. I think maybe a Fimir generic lord would work better. That way you have three lord types that buff the three core types units that Norsca currently has in game. Norsca lord would be Marauders and possibly Skin Wolves. Kurgan would be cavalry, mammoths, and possibly chariots. Fimir would be trolls, Fimir, and giants. Also maybe add in a Kurgan hero that specializes as a duelist.
trexmeyer wrote: When are they going to talk about Norsca and Warriors of Chaos?
During this preview cycle? Likely not at all.
They've still got to show us:
1. Nurgle reveal. 2. Nurgle unit roster. 3. Nurgle mechanics. 4. Slaanesh reveal. 5. Slaanesh unit roster. 6. Slaanesh mechanics. 7. Pre-Order Race (probably Ogres) reveal. 8. Pre-Order Race unit roster. 9. Pre-Order Race campaign mechanics. 10. Cathay LL mechanics. 12. Kislev LL Cathay mechanics. 13. 4 Chaos Daemons LL mechanics. 14. Whomever the 5th Chaos LL is mechanics (probably Be'lakor). 15. Pre-Order Race LL campaign mechanics. 16. Any other new mechanics coming to TWW3 (be it how Corruption now works, more information on Sieges, supply lines, any changes to diplomacy, etc.). 17. What the actual plot of the game is (ie. what's the Vortex campaign of this game). 18. Overall campaign mechanics. 19. More detailed look at the set-piece battles in the Chaos Wastes. 20. The TWW3 map.
And given the way CA has been drip feeding this stuff, that could take a while. Norsca, IIRC, is getting the first rework come the Immortal Empires campaign (or whatever the full map campaign is called), so chances are when they reveal that, which won't be until after the game is out, then we might see the Norsca stuff.
Or they could pivot to Norsca tomorrow. I doubt it, but who knows?
As for Warriors of Chaos? Chances are their rework has been factored into the designs of the mono-God Chaos factions, so we could see an expansion of the Marked LLs for them (Valkia The Bloody, Egrimm Van Horstmann, Arbaal the Undefeated - whatever mortal Lords they decide to give us).
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.
Probably because armies like Tzeentch will have a lot of magic users in general and if they have too much power from the Winds of Magic, they could end up using so many powers at once that they'd be overpowered.
And a great deal of the balancing comes off the back of the multiplayer scene. For good or ill, CA is more responsive to balance issues from their stable of youtubers, streamers and mini-tournament players.
Overread wrote: Probably because armies like Tzeentch will have a lot of magic users in general and if they have too much power from the Winds of Magic, they could end up using so many powers at once that they'd be overpowered.
100 is pretty low for a cap, unless they're redoing how much power you need. I just checked one of my campaigns and without trying to cheese it by turn 90 I have several vampire armies in the range of 100-150 reserves. That's without spamming magic reserve boosts in armies that aren't spamming wizards.
I'm not a fan of hard caps like this, hopefully it works out with whatever other changes they're making, but diminishing returns on investment make more sense than hard caps if balance is an issue.
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Voss wrote: And a great deal of the balancing comes off the back of the multiplayer scene. For good or ill, CA is more responsive to balance issues from their stable of youtubers, streamers and mini-tournament players.
What's good for multiplayer isn't necessarily good for single player though. In single player you want to let people make their absurd armies so people can live out their silly dreams.
Voss wrote: And a great deal of the balancing comes off the back of the multiplayer scene. For good or ill, CA is more responsive to balance issues from their stable of youtubers, streamers and mini-tournament players.
What's good for multiplayer isn't necessarily good for single player though.
Sure? I have no argument with that.
But that doesn't change the fact that most of CA's balancing comes from watching their multiplayer stable of streamers, and listening to their issues with the game.
Voss wrote: And a great deal of the balancing comes off the back of the multiplayer scene. For good or ill, CA is more responsive to balance issues from their stable of youtubers, streamers and mini-tournament players.
What's good for multiplayer isn't necessarily good for single player though.
Sure? I have no argument with that.
But that doesn't change the fact that most of CA's balancing comes from watching their multiplayer stable of streamers, and listening to their issues with the game.
Doesn't multiplayer have different balancing anyway though?
Honestly it'd seem a weird choice for CA to balance single player off the multiplayer streamer community, I always thought more people played single player than multiplayer anyway, and I thought the biggest TWW streamers were the ones who played single player (like lionheartx10 and LegendofTotalWar).
There have been issues that LegendofTotalWar has been bitching about for years and they still haven't fixed, and I think he's one of the most popular total war streamers.
Voss wrote: And a great deal of the balancing comes off the back of the multiplayer scene. For good or ill, CA is more responsive to balance issues from their stable of youtubers, streamers and mini-tournament players.
What's good for multiplayer isn't necessarily good for single player though.
Sure? I have no argument with that.
But that doesn't change the fact that most of CA's balancing comes from watching their multiplayer stable of streamers, and listening to their issues with the game.
Doesn't multiplayer have different balancing anyway though?
Honestly it'd seem a weird choice for CA to balance single player off the multiplayer streamer community, I always thought more people played single player than multiplayer anyway, and I thought the biggest TWW streamers were the ones who played single player (like lionheartx10 and LegendofTotalWar).
You're right. Singleplayer is much more common than multiplayer- you can see that in the achievement stats for TW2, where even playing a single individual multiplayer battle is something only 33% of players have done.
But that doesn't change anything.
Look into the Everchosen Invitational, which has been running for years. Turin, ItalianSpartacus, JanetonOccassion, the pool of handselected players (two months of qualifiers) and the various tournaments run by the same folks. That's the pool of streamers I'm talking about. There have been 8 or 9 Everchosen events, and pre-Covid, CA invited pairs of streamers in to host and commentate, and help set rules and pick the pool of players.
Those are the folks I mean.
There have been issues that LegendofTotalWar has been bitching about for years and they still haven't fixed, and I think he's one of the most popular total war streamers.
Not with CA. There are (as I understand it) 'creative differences' and hard feelings.
According to Steam I've never played a multiplayer battle in TWW2 even though I have hundreds of hours in the game, lol, it just has no appeal to me. I thought I had played a multiplayer battle at some point but maybe it was the previous game or at a friends house, because I don't have that achievement.
There's certain games I enjoy playing multiplayer, just not TWW.
Yeah, I've heard that CA don't have a good relationship with Legend, but at the same time you'd think they'd still try and fix the stuff he points out to them, especially given he has a bigger subscriber base than all of those youtubers you mentioned combined.
But at the end of the day I don't know how much CA actually takes input from streamers vs appearing like they take input from streamers, and how much actually ends up in the game.
Multiplayer shows how humans will use the different armies in a competitive "I've got to win" situation. AI tend to be a touch more limited in how they play. Yes what they do they do perfectly, but the AI isn't as inventive as a player and they aren't as creative in finding new ways to run things.
So pooling MP data is a great way to see how things can be abused, broken or twisted by a thinking player. These tricks and methods bleed back into the singleplayer because people will watch and swap ideas and take ideas and experiences from MP into singleplayer.
So suddenly those multiplayer tactics are important, because they are having a direct influence on how people can play in the singleplayer.
If they find issues and errors then they can fix them up and improve both experiences.
Eh, I don't think there's that much similarity in how to play single player vs multiplayer, people behave so differently to the AI that the tactics become very different and the exploits that work in single player have little to no bearing on multiplayer.
Then you also have the random AI "cheats" that completely throw the balance out of whack anyway.
Single player and multi player are different enough that trying to port balance from one to the other is always going to end badly. If most people just played multi I'd say who cares, there's games where single player balance means nothing because no one spends much time on single, but in this case most people play single.
* You have equal points
* Humans are much better at doing the unexpected and reacting to the same
* You don't get campaign bonuses to your units
* You can can't doom stack to cheese the game - which is needed on Legendary - which kinda defeats the point of legendary difficulty....
* Artillery is not auto-win,
I have only play a bit of multiplayer and its a huge step up to win games there - not done it yet.
I've never really got on with MP or even Skirmish all that well with TW games - mostly because I hit choice paralysis in terms of how to build an army.
Esp with regard to the fact that you don't just buy units, but levels on units. So you hit the "Do I just go all in basic levels and more units; or elites or some elites or what just what!"
Which is a learning curve thing for each army in terms of learning how to use the points system to buy a functional powerful force. It's just a curve I've never really put time into learning
But at the end of the day I don't know how much CA actually takes input from streamers vs appearing like they take input from streamers, and how much actually ends up in the game.
I mean, during the Everchosen events they'd have studio guys sit down with the streamers and talk about changes they made and reactions to the changes, so... a lot. Enough to fly some of those guys to their HQ and host them for a couple days, and do mutual advertising for each other (they push the game, CA pushes their streams).
But at the end of the day I don't know how much CA actually takes input from streamers vs appearing like they take input from streamers, and how much actually ends up in the game.
I mean, during the Everchosen events they'd have studio guys sit down with the streamers and talk about changes they made and reactions to the changes, so... a lot. Enough to fly some of those guys to their HQ and host them for a couple days, and do mutual advertising for each other (they push the game, CA pushes their streams).
But how much of that translates to in game changes and how much is for publicity?
Obviously it's better than them being disconnected from the community, but it doesn't prove that's what they use as a basis for balancing the game, let alone using it to balance the SP experience.
I beginning to think you just don't like the answer.
Look at how they format patch notes:
Beastlord (Razorgor Chariot)
Melee Defence 20 to 32
Melee Attack 32 to 38
Charge 95 to 90
Anti-Infantry 28 to 25
Cost 1200 to 1250
Hellebron
Melee Attack 70 to 68
Hellebron (Dark Steed)
Melee Attack 70 to 68
Hellebron (Cauldron of Blood)
Melee Attack 40 to 38
Melee Defence 22 to 28
Cost 2000 to 1950
Hellebron (Manticore)
Melee Attack 60 to 58
Death Hag
Melee Attack 62 to 60
Bonus vs Infantry 25 to 20
How many SP focused players will even notice these numerical tweaks? Cost doesn't even have any meaning in SP.
Meanwhile, how long did it take them to fix heroes T-posing on mounts on the campaign map? The ruined appearance of Mordheim? Buildings that were bugged in some way?
I don't think I ever contended that CA don't attempt to balance the multiplayer game? I questioned how much of the balancing comes from actual youtubers and in turn how much filters down into singleplayer.
This whole thing started because we were talking about a 100 cap on WoM reserves, which comes from a blog which was talking specifically about campaign mechanics. We've taken a bit of a step to start talking about minor tweaks of unit costings in multiplayer, lol.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I don't think I ever contended that CA don't attempt to balance the multiplayer game? I questioned how much of the balancing comes from actual youtubers and in turn how much filters down into singleplayer.
This whole thing started because we were talking about a 100 cap on WoM reserves, which comes from a blog which was talking specifically about campaign mechanics. We've taken a bit of a step to start talking about minor tweaks of unit costings in multiplayer, lol.
No, we haven't taken any sort of step at all. I was pointing out the stat changes, which affect both SP and MP, but don't mean much to SP, except for specific players that are really obsessive about stats (since the math difference is less than experience rank differences and difficulty setting tweaks). As an aside, I was pointing out that cost is tweaked simultaneously with unit stats, but has no meaning in SP- hence they don't do MP and SP separately. They just do the one patch that affects both 'branches' of the game, despite how relatively unpopular multiplayer is. They balance both and it ALL filters down into SP, except for things like cost, which don't apply (except indirectly, as a unit that gets a lower cost in MP might get its stats reduced to compensate, and that stat reduction will still affect the unit in SP)
I was pointing to the patch notes to reinforce what I've been repeatedly telling you with yet more evidence, since you're randomly rejecting the idea that their MP streamer stable is where much of the balancing tweaks come from, despite the fact that CA openly talks about it on CA sponsored and broadcast streams.
Voss wrote: I was pointing to the patch notes to reinforce what I've been repeatedly telling you with yet more evidence, since you're randomly rejecting the idea that their MP streamer stable is where much of the balancing tweaks come from, despite the fact that CA openly talks about it on CA sponsored and broadcast streams.
Yeah and I just am not willing to take some marketing talk as indicative of what contributions occur in house. *shrugs*
I know they do occasionally listen to streamers, and I know they have events with streamers, and I know CA makes balance tweaks to MP, I've even seen CA reps watching and commenting on youtubers on their streams.
To me those things aren't evidence that "much of the balance" comes from input from streamers, or that the 100 WoM reserve cap originated from some MP balancing (especially when the blog we're talking about is discussing some pretty broad changes to how WoM work *specifically* on the campaign map, with channelling stances, building or losing WoM over multiple turns, etc). You mention unit costs that have nothing to do with SP, but on the flip side WoM reserves have a bunch of inputs with buffs and debuffs in SP that don't exist in MP at all.
In addition to streamer's comments, they likely gather statistics on how units perform in game, perhaps even statistics on how much certain units are used, their own experiences (it seems like at least some folk at CA actually play their games), internal playtesters, external playtesting, and so on. I have no doubt that the comments of streamers and other gamers plays into that soup, how significant an ingredient it is just seems like conjecture to me, then extrapolating that to a cap on WoM in campaign mode of a game that hasn't even been released to streamers yet, I'm not even sure why we're wasting time discussing it
Overread wrote: I've never really got on with MP or even Skirmish all that well with TW games - mostly because I hit choice paralysis in terms of how to build an army.
Esp with regard to the fact that you don't just buy units, but levels on units. So you hit the "Do I just go all in basic levels and more units; or elites or some elites or what just what!"
Which is a learning curve thing for each army in terms of learning how to use the points system to buy a functional powerful force. It's just a curve I've never really put time into learning
You want no more than you can micro effectively and a lot of higher tier units aren't worth their point cost, especially on mounts. It's not all comparable to SP since all lords/heroes are missing their leveled up skills. Magic isn't anywhere near as effective in general because players usually have the good sense not to blob. Lord sniping spells are probably more valuable.
It seems oddly fitting and typical that I'm _far_ more excited for the Slaanesh and Nurgle magic lores than the Tzeentch lore. I've felt that way about pretty much every chaos army book and codex.
Particularly Slaanesh. Enough damage spells to be satisfying, but with a lovely buff, excellent debuffs and an outright denial spell. There are some tasty treats with nurgle, but being able to bump attack and AP, while decreasing enemy melee defense and /or offense is nigh-irresistible.
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Also the Cav update for TW2 finally got pushed out to the live game. Though they're still calling it the Cavalry Beta, which makes 'Cavalry Beta Live!' an impressive misuse of terminology.
Kind of hate it?
Stat-wise, he's unsurprisingly woeful. But... wow. At 20 defense and 50 Armor, if he's attacked at all, he's in trouble. Trash units will do a surprising amount of damage.
Faction effects are... meh?
Bonus to hero action success is fine.
Enemy reinforcement prediction is new... but as a player I suspect you'll learn those anyway. A bonus to know a system timer is a weirdly useless meta-ability
Your own reinforcement time is OK... but I don't fight battles with reinforcements much. If I have to use them, I usually go for autoresolve anyway, because there's just too much to micro.
That's a lot of stuff I don't care about, that only matter in specific circumstances. In a one-on-one fight, its like having no faction effects at all.
Lord effects- some big defensive bonuses, almost to the point of immunity. Fine.
Unlock other lores means... giving up an item slot AND losing some of your own spells. And it de facto counts as a legendary lord effect, effectively 'eating' one (often LL's will have 3 or more abilities). That's really harsh.
Given the way it works, and the spells gained, I'd take Light or Life and never put points into Treason or Firestorm. But the drawbacks make the ability really inflexible, and you can only take one lore at a time.
Aside: Hero-wise, the iridescent horror does all the heavy lifting in actions. I don't usually even bother to use the abilities the cultist has (and speed research seems to be gone)
For whatever reason, I didn't expect Greasus and Skrag. (really should have though, given its the main 'faction' leader and the big wizard for the army).
Had to pull out the old 8th edition army book. I'd forgotten how... unexciting the Ogre Special Characters were. Skrag has some potential for interesting mechanics, though. His cauldron has potential both in battle (buffing himself and Gorgers) and on the campaign.
Greasus, I assume, will have some sort of faction or lord effects on trade, money and/or upkeep.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I've long thought that Grom's cauldron was a test bed for the eventual Ogre Kingdom release. I suspect Skrag will get an Ogre version of that.
Yeah, I was thinking of Grom as well. But maybe army buffs by sheer quantity of meat, as well as type.
I wonder if either will get a from-scratch mount option, the way Thrott (and some of the Pirates) did. Greasus had the unfortunate quality of being absurdly slow, and for Skrag, dragging that big old pot across the battlemap is going to be painful.
Apparently its also going to be on the Microsoft store, and part of their game pass. I found that useful last year for games I wasn't sure of (outer worlds and imperator rome) and got to dig into them for a month. There was a $1 special on the pass at the time, so it was really cheap to check stuff out and then cancel the sub.
They intend to support cross-store multiplayer, but the big issue is you can't mix and match games on different platforms. If you've already got 1 & 2 on Steam and you get 3 elsewhere, you won't get everything from old games unlocked when Mortal Empires++ finally comes out.
The FAQ page also has a lot of links to other subjects they've covered (factions, magic, sieges, etc)
The MS store system sounds interesting and being on something like game pass will likely help secure sales on either store for people new to the series. For established it makes no real difference so long as the MP remains cross compatible, since all those on steam right now will almost certainly get 3 on steam to unlock all the mortal empires content and anything else.
Apparently its also going to be on the Microsoft store, and part of their game pass. I found that useful last year for games I wasn't sure of (outer worlds and imperator rome) and got to dig into them for a month. There was a $1 special on the pass at the time, so it was really cheap to check stuff out and then cancel the sub.
They intend to support cross-store multiplayer, but the big issue is you can't mix and match games on different platforms. If you've already got 1 & 2 on Steam and you get 3 elsewhere, you won't get everything from old games unlocked when Mortal Empires++ finally comes out.
The FAQ page also has a lot of links to other subjects they've covered (factions, magic, sieges, etc)
Wait, so is it going to be free on game pass, or do you still have to pay for it?
I had game pass for a while and I remember the free game selection wasn't brilliant, most games you had to pay extra and while the prices were discounted, it wasn't a hell of a lot better than steam sale prices.
I eventually got rid of game pass because I'd go months without playing a game, then play only one game for months, so it made more sense just to buy individual games when they went on sale.
Apparently its also going to be on the Microsoft store, and part of their game pass. I found that useful last year for games I wasn't sure of (outer worlds and imperator rome) and got to dig into them for a month. There was a $1 special on the pass at the time, so it was really cheap to check stuff out and then cancel the sub.
They intend to support cross-store multiplayer, but the big issue is you can't mix and match games on different platforms. If you've already got 1 & 2 on Steam and you get 3 elsewhere, you won't get everything from old games unlocked when Mortal Empires++ finally comes out.
The FAQ page also has a lot of links to other subjects they've covered (factions, magic, sieges, etc)
Wait, so is it going to be free on game pass, or do you still have to pay for it?
Anything on game pass is covered by the monthly sub (if you want to buy them there is also sometimes a discount). The trick with games like this is it _doesn't_ include DLC. You have to pay for those, and if you haven't bought the base game, you'll lose access to everything if you let the sub go. Though apparently according to this, FreeLC will be available.
I had game pass for a while and I remember the free game selection wasn't brilliant, most games you had to pay extra and while the prices were discounted, it wasn't a hell of a lot better than steam sale prices.
It is limited (they claim 'over a hundred' at the moment, and also EA play is bundled in and I don't know if those are counted or not) and it cycles games out from time to time. It is better than it used to be, and there are some future perks from MS buying up Bethesda and Obsidian- future games by them will be on the pass on day 1, since they're part o fthe .
Its an iffy thing, depending on what games you actually value. For this, for me? Completely useless, as I've got 1 & 2 and all the DLC on steam already.
Looks like a map has been released, it looks like a curved version (spherical planet viewed from the top) stretching from the old world to the dragon isles at the bottom, then up to the chaos region in the north. Though perhaps it'll extend further to the east and west? It doesn't look like much of Cathay is on the part they show.
Yeah, there is probably a good 25% cutoff to either side and a little below too. Plus I doubt it will quite look like that in-game due to being able to change your perspective. Papers maps are always a little weird compared to the "real" thing.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Ogres leaked!
Banners went up before they were meant to. Whoops!
As for Kairos, his unique abilities seem pretty gakky. Manipulate reinforcements during battles, and give up your own powers for a few others.
I know why I would be googling the new jersey governors race... but why were you? Also, how oddly scientifically specific of you to research whether or not ph can denature proteins
Grey Templar wrote: Yeah, there is probably a good 25% cutoff to either side and a little below too. Plus I doubt it will quite look like that in-game due to being able to change your perspective. Papers maps are always a little weird compared to the "real" thing.
Yeah, that map is really grossly distorted. I didn't expect it to go so deep into the empire, but so much is squished and stretched that I doubt the campaign map will really look much like that. (Mortal Empires++, on the other hand... Well. They had to make some serious compromises on the current one)
There's also a lot of erroneous assumptions in the video. We know from the Kairos blog that he starts next to Cathay (probably near the Riverlands- his location on his stat screen is 'The Volary- Eastern Steppes'), so closer to Slaanesh's domain, and as far as he could be from the Realm of the Sorcerer). The speculation for Ulthuan and Naggarond seems right out. ME++ is the place for that.
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Another cool Ogre video though. Love the 'Maw' spell.
Grey Templar wrote: Yeah, there is probably a good 25% cutoff to either side and a little below too. Plus I doubt it will quite look like that in-game due to being able to change your perspective. Papers maps are always a little weird compared to the "real" thing.
Yeah, that map is really grossly distorted. I didn't expect it to go so deep into the empire, but so much is squished and stretched that I doubt the campaign map will really look much like that. (Mortal Empires++, on the other hand... Well. They had to make some serious compromises on the current one)
There's also a lot of erroneous assumptions in the video. We know from the Kairos blog that he starts next to Cathay (probably near the Riverlands- his location on his stat screen is 'The Volary- Eastern Steppes'), so closer to Slaanesh's domain, and as far as he could be from the Realm of the Sorcerer). The speculation for Ulthuan and Naggarond seems right out. ME++ is the place for that.
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Another cool Ogre video though. Love the 'Maw' spell.
I did also notice Khorne was maybe supposed to be a main enemy for Kislev, but in that map you'd have to go through Nurgle to get to Khorne from Kislev.
But we don't know what that map represents, maybe it's mortal empires where things have been shuffled around, maybe there'll be bastions of the different Gods within the lands themselves and you just teleport into the different God's realms rather than physically walking through them.
This is a version taken from Cody Bond's video and posted on reddit...
Seems weird that for all the Cathay hype, they're squished off to the far right of the map, with the (supposed) Great Bastion taking up no space at all, whereas the Darklands, the far east of the Empire, Norsca and the Chaos Wastes being more important. Hell, the Dragon Isles and the waters around them take up more space than the Great Bastion. Great for Malus I suppose, but not so good for Lady Cold & Aloof.
chaos0xomega wrote: I know why I would be googling the new jersey governors race... but why were you? Also, how oddly scientifically specific of you to research whether or not ph can denature proteins
Not my desktop. Screenshot came from somewhere else. I don't even know what the game is on that website!
Grey Templar wrote: Yeah, there is probably a good 25% cutoff to either side and a little below too. Plus I doubt it will quite look like that in-game due to being able to change your perspective. Papers maps are always a little weird compared to the "real" thing.
Yeah, that map is really grossly distorted. I didn't expect it to go so deep into the empire, but so much is squished and stretched that I doubt the campaign map will really look much like that. (Mortal Empires++, on the other hand... Well. They had to make some serious compromises on the current one)
There's also a lot of erroneous assumptions in the video. We know from the Kairos blog that he starts next to Cathay (probably near the Riverlands- his location on his stat screen is 'The Volary- Eastern Steppes'), so closer to Slaanesh's domain, and as far as he could be from the Realm of the Sorcerer). The speculation for Ulthuan and Naggarond seems right out. ME++ is the place for that.
---
Another cool Ogre video though. Love the 'Maw' spell.
I did also notice Khorne was maybe supposed to be a main enemy for Kislev, but in that map you'd have to go through Nurgle to get to Khorne from Kislev.
But we don't know what that map represents, maybe it's mortal empires where things have been shuffled around, maybe there'll be bastions of the different Gods within the lands themselves and you just teleport into the different God's realms rather than physically walking through them.
Portals seems most likely. Hopefully anyway. Walking from the real world into the god's realms is... uh... horribly lorebreaking. Special super heroic individuals can end up there, but armies would be mutating masses of insane flesh long before they get there. And that's not even accounting for places where the ice is suddenly lava and the air is fish with razor sharp claws. Those realms aren't 'islands' surrounded by water, they're playgrounds of the gods buried in the immaterium. At least if they have even a modicum of respect for the setting, they aren't going to do that. (And so far, they've been... reasonably good... about that kind of thing)
But its very clear that the various chaos lords don't start there.
@HBMC- Elder Scrolls Online. It didn't strike me as your kind of thing, to be honest.
I'm sad that there's no Thundertusk in the unit roster. I'm fearful that we'll spend years waiting for it to arrive, like the Ghorgon.
Maybe though they will be a DLC for Ogres that'll have Golgfag Maneater and come with Bruisers, Yhettes and a few variants of Thundertusks. And Bragg the Gutsman as a Legendary Hero!
H.B.M.C. wrote: I'm sad that there's no Thundertusk in the unit roster. I'm fearful that we'll spend years waiting for it to arrive, like the Ghorgon.
Maybe though they will be a DLC for Ogres that'll have Golgfag Maneater and come with Bruisers, Yhettes and a few variants of Thundertusks. And Bragg the Gutsman as a Legendary Hero!
There was one unit card hidden behind another that I thought might have been a Thundertusk.
Ooo. I like the camp mechanic. Its what I wanted for beastmen before the herdstone revamp.
I'm kind of impressed they kept the mercenary aspect for other factions. That's a nice touch, even if it is just Bulls.
And added what looks like an improved version of the Eshin contracts with various factions.
Huh. Overall it looks like they dove into establishing the spirit of the faction. I really like it.
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Easter Egg- the camp shown off is at Fort Bergbres, the mountain fort SW of Marienberg. Thats... really far from the action in this game.
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Easter Egg- the camp shown off is at Fort Bergbres, the mountain fort SW of Marienberg. Thats... really far from the action in this game.
The file structure is such that it is relatively simple to implement a preexisting faction into any campaign map. The lack of certain factions in Vortex is literally only because CA hasn't bothered to add them, not because it is difficult to do so.
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Easter Egg- the camp shown off is at Fort Bergbres, the mountain fort SW of Marienberg. Thats... really far from the action in this game.
The file structure is such that it is relatively simple to implement a preexisting faction into any campaign map. The lack of certain factions in Vortex is literally only because CA hasn't bothered to add them, not because it is difficult to do so.
It has nothing to do with factions. The camps are named after the nearby settlement, which in this case is the mountain fort between Marienburg and Bretonnia. That has to be on whatever map they're testing out here.
The Empire takes up a big chunk of the TWW3 map. Wouldn't be much of a Chaos invasion, or a thematic 'first line of defence' for Kislev, if there was nothing to invade after taking their lands.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: There was one unit card hidden behind another that I thought might have been a Thundertusk.
It's the Slave Giant I believe.
Either way, Thundertusk was confirmed on Reddit to not be part of the roster.
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Easter Egg- the camp shown off is at Fort Bergbres, the mountain fort SW of Marienberg. Thats... really far from the action in this game.
The file structure is such that it is relatively simple to implement a preexisting faction into any campaign map. The lack of certain factions in Vortex is literally only because CA hasn't bothered to add them, not because it is difficult to do so.
It has nothing to do with factions. The camps are named after the nearby settlement, which in this case is the mountain fort between Marienburg and Bretonnia. That has to be on whatever map they're testing out here.
My point was that they could stick any faction on any map that they have made with minimal effort.
Ehh, I'm sure they'll add it eventually. There will probably be a general content update 6 months after launch. Every faction getting a few new units.
I'm just ready to send a couple Stonehorns into a massive legion of Empire spearmen followed by a wave of hungry bulls. I really like the Meat mechanic too. Really gets the feel of Ogres going.
I'm sure once we've got some fleshed out forces (ie. extra LLs) for the four main Chaos factions, and Norsca/Warriors of Chaos have a re-work, and they've added Chaos Dwarfs and maybe Dogs of War, then we'll start to see the TWW1 and TWW2 races get new stuff.
Or they'll split them up, and use the various Chaos DLCs to add in extras, so an Empire vs Khorne DLC (eg. Toddy vs Valkia), a Slaanesh vs Dark Elves one, a Nurgle vs Wood Elves one, a Tzeentch vs Vampire Counts one, or whatever. Then an Ogre vs Dwarfs one to bring in the rest of the missing Ogre units, plus Golgfag as an LL, and have him fighting Grimm Burloksson and his Thunderbarges in the Mountains of Mourn!
I do kinda wish they would tone down some of the more silly terrain features. While there is a section of the mountains of mourn that have very large prehistoric skeletons laying around, they're not that big nor are they everywhere in the warhammer world. You can have fantastic scenery, just keep it within reason please.
I personally think it detracts from the battles for these absurdly giant skeletons to be scattered everywhere in the games. Less is more folks.
But loving the unit rosters and footage. Cant wait to play it.
I wish there were "Duels/Challenges" in these games.
Been playing alot of Three Kingdoms lately and I like the duels in that game, even if its a bit sparse and usually a distraction to the main battle. I figured TW: Warhams would have them considering they were a decent part of WHFB mechanics, but alas, nope. Would be pretty damn cinematic too. Could dedicate a branch of skills to dueling, even.
Kind of frustrating when I see an enemy hero/lord in this game and send my killy hero/lord after him/her/it and they get lost in a big blob of a unit, instead of doing what I sent them to do.
The point was to show off the maps and models, not for commentators to get caught up in nit-picking 'quality of play' with old magic lores (or anything else)
Someone to skip next time and focus on people who will actually pay attention and focus on showing off the new stuff. Yes, its a set recording, but their stable of advertisers can focus on the important stuff, like the state of the game.
The point was to show off the maps and models, not for commentators to get caught up in nit-picking 'quality of play' with old magic lores (or anything else)
Someone to skip next time and focus on people who will actually pay attention and focus on showing off the new stuff. Yes, its a set recording, but their stable of advertisers can focus on the important stuff, like the state of the game.
Which one are we complaining about?
In Legend's one it was basically a joke, because he was initially talking as if he was playing it, but most viewers probably noticed the misuse of spells which would be very uncharacteristic of him.
The point was to show off the maps and models, not for commentators to get caught up in nit-picking 'quality of play' with old magic lores (or anything else)
Someone to skip next time and focus on people who will actually pay attention and focus on showing off the new stuff. Yes, its a set recording, but their stable of advertisers can focus on the important stuff, like the state of the game.
Which one are we complaining about?
In Legend's one it was basically a joke, because he was initially talking as if he was playing it, but most viewers probably noticed the misuse of spells which would be very uncharacteristic of him.
milkandcookiesTW ( the OK vs Khorne video HBMC posted). He approached the whole thing as if it were a MP competitive event (which to be fair, is what he usually does). Rather than a CA PR guy vs AI to show off the new game.
My reaction is a little bit the MP feedback focus thing again, which is useless in this case because these numbers aren't final and the CA guy's 'play' (good or bad) has no impact on the game.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Indypride is a caster. That's the way he always talks. I don't think he's judging the player either.
I don't care if he's judging the player, just that he's wasting time on casting the game as if its PvP match rather than focusing on the units, abilities, maps, reinforcement points and structures, or anything relevant to TW3.
When the stable gets their advance copies and can play each other in actual matches, that will be fine and appropriate, but its wasted time for a small set of preview videos.
The latest patch to Warhammer 2 introduced an ability called Wayfarer. Volkmar provides it to certain units. It gives 200% Acceleration and Deacceleration. Lance for Bretonnian Knights gives 40/40. I haven't seen this ability discussed much at all. It makes cavalry MUCH more response. I've been tooling around with a 100/100 version of Lance and it feels much smoother to use for cycle charging.
I wonder if we'll see more of it in Warhammer 3 with Kislev cavalry.
We meet up with him around the Grey Mountains, so, far from the Ogre Kingdoms themselves, but if the nations of men are looking to the north, well, that’s an opportunity to fill that cauldron up!
So... yeah. Skrag's all the way down at the far edge of the TW3 map, apparently, with the Empire to chew on (and Bretonnia, if the map extends further)
Greasus, on other hand, gets a cart pushed by only a pair of gnoblars. Apparently animating dozens wasn't viable.
A big old palenquin with dozens of gnobbos would probably not have looked good on more uneven terrain anyway. It would have been an animators nightmare.
I suppose the irony is that Greasus represents the least fit member of the Ogre kingdoms pushed around by the 2 most fit #rippedGnobbos
The flying unit change will be interesting! Being able to ground them at will might mean making some more viable as anti-archer units. At least it will be interesting to see if their damage from ranged attacks changes depending on if they are in flight or on the ground .
Interesting stuff, but what's with the EPIC voiceover?
That's nothing new for these kind of videos. They've used that guy (and that tone) for other mechanical previews in the past.
Its basically to make up for the dry subject matter.
Edit: I don't remember Ogres having access to Beasts on the TT, but I didn't play the 8th edition army. Not sure why you'd take it over The Maw. Healing is too good to pass up.
Edit: I don't remember Ogres having access to Beasts on the TT, but I didn't play the 8th edition army. Not sure why you'd take it over The Maw. Healing is too good to pass up.
8th edition Ogre Kingdoms had Great Maw, Beasts, Death and Heavens with the requirement that one of them must take Great Maw so you didn't see many others given the cost of Ogre Wizards.
Maybe I'm just coming down from the insanity of TW2's DLC lords, but I'm underwhelmed by these passive buffs (and puzzled by these 'under the hood' bonuses like unit mass and Kairos' reinforcement shenanigans). I mean sure, campaign movement and sack/raze bonuses are fine, but they aren't exciting.
Would have preferred Skrag in the mountains on the other side of the Empire. More choice in what to do, and more variety of targets. Conquering the Empire again (as Skrag no less, which is... why, though?) isn't exactly interesting after years of Mortal Empires.
Its all very nice looking....but my Chaos Dwarfs....
Ugg, I mean I wasn't going to buy it day 1 anyway as paying full price for a game is dumb. But I was hoping they would be in the base game and not DLC.
Yeah, Ogres had lore of beasts. But you would never take it. Great Maw was the go to for your main caster, usually followed by a low level heavens caster for those sweet rerolls. And Comet was always fun when you managed to get it. Enabled a lot of catch 22s with your opponent. Do you dispel my easily cast trollguts, bullgorger, and toothcracker, or do you dispel the comet that I'm gonna toss all my remaining dice at?
Very nice. I have questions about who that guy is. It cropped up on the very early trailers, and the 'dead' Tsar Boris in the first Kislev trailer made me wonder. Now I'm wondering once again.
'Exile' doesn't narrow things down.
@Commodus Leitdorf- that ship sailed ages ago. Once ogre mercs popped up in TW2, it was clear who the on-release race pack would be.
The dude could maybe be Archaon. He was a priest of Sigmar who discovered some awful truth and decided to join chaos, so he traveled the wastes to become the Everchosen.
Tarara wrote: You guys think we'll get Dawi Zharr eventually?
I mean, they made a Vampire Coast army and all they had was an army list in White Dwarf and "Zombie Pirate" models which were just the old Zombie Sprue and Mordheim Sprue packaged together. Chaos Dwarfs at least had relatively recent models and an army book, even if they were only forge World.
I was personally hoping they would be in the base game, but I have no doubt we'll see them as probably their first DLC for the game.
H.B.M.C. wrote: The Dark Lands are a big part of the map. It'd be really weird to not put the race in that occupies the central part of the map.
Then again, I said the same thing about Araby...
Love to see Araby - but I think Chaos Dwarfs much more likely as not issues with any real world equivalent which might cause issues.
Looking forward to: (in order to what I want)
Neferata and Sisterhood, new Vampire units - Coven throne, spirit hosts, Zombie Dragons, living/tomb king units for Neferata
Other Vampire Bloodline lords
Amazons
Chaos Dwarfs
Elspeth von Draken
Dogs of War/Tilea rework
Tamurkhan
Araby
Ok, I have no idea if this will be fun to play (especially for me, as I like everything reasonably balanced and using the same rules), but it looks ambitious and amazing.
You never know Araby might well arrive as DLC in the future. It would be strange to finish TW Warhammer and not touch on Araby, but to have touched on Cathay when Araby did have an army at one stage (even though it was only Warmaster and not the core game).
But with Araby, Nippon and a few other forces lurking, CA could keep DLC coming for Warhammer 3 for longer than the previous games as there's no 4th game in the series.
Since they've gone on record explicitly saying no Araby and tw2 is done, I'd just take the no and accept tw3 for what it is. Or at least go to the tw2 thread and clutter that up.
They could add in Araby for Immortal Empires, but I really doubt it for the same reason Dune suddenly had the word "Jihad" erased from the film version. CA will get some blowback for Orientalism with Cathay, but creating Araby would really invite criticism.
While it sounds vaguely Orientalist and stereotypical in its depiction, the good news is Warhammer 3 will finally give more depth to the faction.
I don't think Araby should be added. The roster and lore that exist aren't even half-baked, it's just a rip off of One Thousand and One Nights with no deviation to make it feel interesting.
I just wonder if we'll get some of the minor factions from the Old World like Estilia and Tilea, or something odder like the Hobgoblin Khanate. They're running out of things to add for sure.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
Esmer wrote: Seeing Daemonettes of all things running away in terror from those little slime balls is...weird.
It didn't look like a daemonette. Maybe a cultist, perhaps a unit leader or some sort of character. She didn't look like she had much in the way of mutations like the Slaanesh Marauders around her.
nels1031 wrote: I don't think that was a Daemonette. Looked like some sort of mortal Slaanesh unit, as there were also some sort of Chaos Marauder Slaanesh variant.
edit: unmounted Hellstriders, from the look of their elongated spear/arm. The female was probably a unit leader.
I was under the impression that Hellstriders literally can not dismount.
nels1031 wrote: I don't think that was a Daemonette. Looked like some sort of mortal Slaanesh unit, as there were also some sort of Chaos Marauder Slaanesh variant.
edit: unmounted Hellstriders, from the look of their elongated spear/arm. The female was probably a unit leader.
I was under the impression that Hellstriders literally can not dismount.
Technically no, however honestly whilst its a bit of the lore, there's nothing really on the model that suggests it, heck the warrior on a seeker looks overweight for the mount on the model and there's no leg clasps or anything to reinforce that they can't leave the saddle. Personally I prefer the lore of the new sickblade/blissbarb riders and it could be a dismounted one of them. Then again if you look in the Libre Chaotica things like elongated blade arms aren't unique to hellstriders, its just unique on the models. So it could just be a slightly warped cultist.
The Slaaneshi Cultist being an Elf is a nice change. Certainly more combat orientated than that poor hapless Nurgle Cultist she cuts to ribbons in the trailer.
That weird half "Historical mythological" mish mash still turns me off it given it was a war that involved literal gods involving themselves half the time along with suped up mythological heroes that could take armies on their own.
nels1031 wrote: None of these faction reveals are doing anything for me. I want more Total War: Troy DLC.
Spoiler:
Said no one ever.
All this Slaanesh stuff is amazing.
All the Demons look okay to me, but I've never been a fan of them. They do have very interesting mechanics. I was really looking forward to Ogres, but I have a feeling that they're going to be weak unless you run SEU stacks.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: That weird half "Historical mythological" mish mash still turns me off it given it was a war that involved literal gods involving themselves half the time along with suped up mythological heroes that could take armies on their own.
Mythos DLC sorts much of this out - we have the mythological monsters and the world map looks fantastic!
nels1031 wrote: None of these faction reveals are doing anything for me. I want more Total War: Troy DLC.
Spoiler:
Said no one ever.
All this Slaanesh stuff is amazing.
All the Demons look okay to me, but I've never been a fan of them. They do have very interesting mechanics. I was really looking forward to Ogres, but I have a feeling that they're going to be weak unless you run SEU stacks.
I've never been that into daemons on the table top, but this has got me more excited for them, I'm particularly interested in Tzeentch, but Khorne and Nurgle also look interesting. Slaanesh so far is the only one that doesn't really interest me, but maybe when we hear about their campaign mechanics that'll change.
One of the biggest problems with Total War has been it makes me want to collect the table top version of all these armies. It's lucky GW killed WHFB otherwise I would have spent thousands by now on half a dozen different armies
I don't like the general art changes they've made. The in game map and UI were great in TW2. I don't know why they changed the schemes. The new in game map is cartoonish and the UI is less readable. It feels like a change was made for the sake of making changes.
trexmeyer wrote: I don't like the general art changes they've made. The in game map and UI were great in TW2. I don't know why they changed the schemes. The new in game map is cartoonish and the UI is less readable. It feels like a change was made for the sake of making changes.
That's been my complaint for most TW games made after Medieval 2 which was fairly fancy but still reasonably clear. The overview map is a beauty today but it actually conveys information less clearly than in the simpler, less pretty past. In the past the map only showed the information it needed. Today we've griffins flying around peaks of mountains which look cool - beautiful - but its not information. The actual territory information is there but its lost in the detail, but its nothing new, its been like that for a while.
I'm curious why they felt the need to change the chariot designs as they have. The original designs have more fluid bone like structures supporting the chariot bed itself, whilst the Warhammer designs go for a straight pillar approach. I'd wager its not any more complex to model one over the other.
Those and the inclusion of "Exalted" deamonettes makes me wonder if that is all part of a re-imagining by GW of the seeker+deamonette+chariot designs at some point in the future. Ergo the game is running off future kit designs or at least inspired by potential future kit designs and ideas.
Overall a solid roster! I like the inclusion of Slaanesh themed Cultists and they look very suited to the role!
All of the Chaos forces have 'Exalted' Daemons. They're a way to pad out the roster because the Daemons were pretty thin on the ground before you split them into 4 distinct forces.
It's why the unit champions have become Hero characters as well.
They seem to be going for factions focussed around a particular god not artifically dividing them into Warriors, Daemons, Beasts etc which for me is a step forward.
So you can also add mortal units with new LL like Dechala with her Tormentors Warband as a Regiment of Reknown.
Also there is another faction- Daemons of Chaos, in addition to the monogod factions.
Ah... the diplomacy changes (33:30 or so in the video) are so good. Basically 3 Kingdoms, including trade settlement.
Quest UI has basically moved to the map. Not entirely sure about that.
End turn sequence has a faction counter: 106 in the base game, include minors, rebels, etc. Good end turn time
The shape of the campaign map is honestly weird, at least going back and forth from the trade route map (which is Cathay faction thing). Castle Drakenhof is more 'south' (but still a little west) from Cathay. I don't mind a little stylistic liberty with maps, but its strange when its one-to-one with land armies are actually walking on (just a level of zoom)
Its.. a customizable faction leader, 'the daemon prince,' which you can name.
DID YOU SAY CUSTOMISABLE?
We did! Give the Daemon Prince a name that strikes fear in the hearts of his enemies (with a profanity filter of course, to make sure nothing offensive is being used and avoid sparking another war) and customise his design with hundreds of items, creating billions of potential combinations! Each part changes the appearance and stats of your Daemon Prince. For example, using an Armoured Corpulent Tail provides the ability ‘Slime Trail’ +10 Armour and +3% hit points while a Masquerading Helm provides armour bonuses, new melee attacks and the ability to cast the Slaaneshi spell Phantasmagoria. Do you want the Daemon Prince to be a spellcasting powerhouse? An absolute tank? A fast-moving damage dealer? It’s up to you!
The Daemon Prince leads a faction called the Daemons of Chaos and can mix and match his units from any of the Chaos Gods, letting you build terrifying armies. So, if you want to lead an army containing Daemonettes, Beasts of Nurgle and Tzeenchian Flamers, this is the Legendary Lord for you.
There are 238 items a Daemon Prince can get. You can't get all of them - the first 130 are available to anyone - but the final 12 (for being Chaos Undivided), or 24 (for each Chaos God) only come from choosing a dedication.
The only two games I've ever pre-ordered were StarCraft Remastered, because vain bonuses, and TWWI, because Dota 2 special set (got Axe's yellow kit, which I really like but don't even use anyway).
I am extremely tempted to buy this because I want day one Build-A-Daemon Prince, but thankfully I can hold right now.
That being said, I wish GW make a kit fully stocked with options like this DP. At least the very basic ones for each flavor.
H.B.M.C. wrote: There are 238 items a Daemon Prince can get. You can't get all of them - the first 130 are available to anyone - but the final 12 (for being Chaos Undivided), or 24 (for each Chaos God) only come from choosing a dedication.
The thing with the DP items, though, is between the reputation point gating and the relative power level as you go up the tree, you won't use a lot of them. Just eyeballing it, there are definitely good and bad choices (on top of things you want for specific spells), so at least some (if not a lot) of the customization options are a little irrelevant.
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I'm watching the Legend of Total War stream, and I'm boggling at the idea that Channeling Stance matters. Staying about the lower threshold (so you don't take leadership and physical resistance penalties) is a really big deal, at least for daemons.
And magic reserves are simply not as exploitable as they used to be. Apparently 100 is a hard cap for total magic reserve (several of the WH2 LL casters can blow past that without effort, and get faction or tech benefits on top).
The amount of clear information the new UI gives you is really nice.
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I hate the Iridescent Horror voice. It just sounds like a skaven.
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Just for the record, LoTW just confirmed that while the Chaos Dwarfs aren't in the game, their cities are on the map.
Voss wrote: The thing with the DP items, though, is between the reputation point gating and the relative power level as you go up the tree, you won't use a lot of them. Just eyeballing it, there are definitely good and bad choices (on top of things you want for specific spells), so at least some (if not a lot) of the customization options are a little irrelevant.
Oh I know, I'm just saying that there are tons of items in there that I'm totally not going to steal for ideas for my own RPG/40k stuff.
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.
Voss wrote: The thing with the DP items, though, is between the reputation point gating and the relative power level as you go up the tree, you won't use a lot of them. Just eyeballing it, there are definitely good and bad choices (on top of things you want for specific spells), so at least some (if not a lot) of the customization options are a little irrelevant.
Oh I know, I'm just saying that there are tons of items in there that I'm totally not going to steal for ideas for my own RPG/40k stuff.
Yeah, fair. I think the most interesting thing about is the base form is heavily based on the current DP model, and you replace it pretty much right away...
Just saying, but almost any of these options would make for a better kit.
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.
In theory, yeah. I like the confirmation, though.
Plus the map is just so weird. Its heavily askew (Norsca points almost directly northwest instead of slightly south of west), and the Empire is incredibly squished (Kislev is 2-3 times its size, I think). The Mountains of Mourn are directly south of Cathay, with everything focusing on the 'bowl' of the chaos wastes at the top of map surrounding the Realms of the various gods.
The Dark Lands are, functionally, the 'lower right' corner of the map. Empire is lower left, Cathay upper right, and Norsca upper left. Castle Drakenhof is basically in the bottom center.
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Under the radar feature: Fusing magical items. 'Fusing' isn't the right word, but you can take 2 green weapons and make a blue rare weapon. You can also salvage unwanted items for gold.
Items also equip instantly, which... makes for some exploits. [If you've got an amazing weapon, you can just hot-swap it between lords for multiple battles in the same turn.
Are we sure weapons equip automatically? I know the Daemon Prince bits do, but weapons?
And yeah, I love that you can sell off unwanted followers or endless duplicate banners. The interface for using items/followers is greatly improved as well.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Are we sure weapons equip automatically? I know the Daemon Prince bits do, but weapons?
Yep. I've seen multiple people do it without timers. (Beta version disclaimer, may change in the future disclaimer)
And yeah, I love that you can sell off unwanted followers or endless duplicate banners. The interface for using items/followers is greatly improved as well.
There doesn't seem to be any filtering, which is potentially annoying, because its just a single list. I see sorting by rarity, but I don't know what else is there, because no one has played with the sorting function yet.
Currently trying to figure out if the Daemons faction is immune to plague. With enough Nurgle Rep, they generate their own and are immune to those (despite the tooltip saying non-Nurgle armies will suffer attrition). But I wonder if it also makes them immune to Skaven and other Nurgle plagues.
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Changing the location for your reinforcements is rather ridiculous. You can do it during the battle after setup, and it doesn't change the timer!
You can really screw with enemy positioning.
Settlement battles have the potential to get rather tedious, but the auto-resolve is hideous.
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Flying lords (especially heralds on disc) are absurd with 'wind' spells. They do so much damage which advances the 3 tiers of special battle abilities (top one is often a nuke), and its pretty devastating. The downside is its a lot of pre-engagement micro, where you're just zipping back and forth, waiting for cooldowns on spells.
Voss wrote: Currently trying to figure out if the Daemons faction is immune to plague. With enough Nurgle Rep, they generate their own and are immune to those (despite the tooltip saying non-Nurgle armies will suffer attrition). But I wonder if it also makes them immune to Skaven and other Nurgle plagues.
I doubt they are immune to the Skaven plagues. While it would make sense from a fluff perspective(because really, you think some rat sniffles are gonna hurt a daemon?) it might get ignored either for game balance OR just because they'd probably just forget to give them the immunity because the Skaven plague effect is probably a differently coded effect from a Nurgle or a normal Plague.
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.
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.
Greenskins are the current occupants.
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Interesting change: NPC Warriors of Chaos factions have settlements. (And IMO, the battle layout for the minor settlements is far less obnoxious than Norscan settlements)
Olthannon wrote: I am going to have to preorder like a sucker aren't I?
To be fair, none of their releases have had a less then ideal rollout like Rome 2's years ago, so I'd say pre-order away.
The Total War franchise is one of a handful of franchises that I always pre-order as they never let me down. The only thing I got salty about was the Troy "Epic store exclusive for 1 year".
trexmeyer wrote: The 9th LL being Build-A-Demon is a Sixth Sense level twist. There's no way anyone could have expected it.
One can hope they are prototyping you being able build your own legendary lord for every faction. I want to bring my custom Ogre tyrant to the field(Attila the Hungry Mawseeker of Great Girth!)
Olthannon wrote: This is absurdly cool. I am going to have to preorder like a sucker aren't I?
Eh. Barring some major bugs (which seems unlikely, because there's enough people digging in behind the scenes as well as showing a lot), you know what to expect at this point.
Most of the embargos seem to be 'how do you feel about it/ reviews' rather than content. Factions are on a schedule, but there's a 100 odd hours of gameplay out at this point, daemon realms have been shown off (though not the climax battles AFAIK)
So its not at all like pre-ordering blind.
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Oh. Skarbrand attacking a Chaos Warrior major settlement siege is up on Legend's stream.
They took an interesting approach for Warriors settlements. Its basically a big ruin, mostly in shades of gray touched by oranges from lava and fires.
Threaten trespassers. Get them to leave, when armies show up and just raid your territory.
I've been wanting this for like the past 8 Total War games.
I didn't watch the youtube video, as I'm trying to go as spoiler-free as possible, but the seeming port over of 3K's diplomacy system is a very welcome change. The "make this work" option in diplomacy really took out alot of the guesswork involved in TW diplomacy. It also made the player make tough decisions, like "Can I really afford to give him X amount of my income for 10 turns, or Do i really want to get rid of this high level item to get him to make peace with me?" Glad to see that come over to Warhams.
Threaten trespassers. Get them to leave, when armies show up and just raid your territory.
I've been wanting this for like the past 8 Total War games.
I didn't watch the youtube video, as I'm trying to go as spoiler-free as possible, but the seeming port over of 3K's diplomacy system is a very welcome change. The "make this work" option in diplomacy really took out alot of the guesswork involved in TW diplomacy. It also made the player make tough decisions, like "Can I really afford to give him X amount of my income for 10 turns, or Do i really want to get rid of this high level item to get him to make peace with me?" Glad to see that come over to Warhams.
Full disclosure: I'm not sure item trading made it in. I know the 'make it work' button is, as well as trade settlement, but they might have passed on items knowing exactly how abusable that is.
Especially with Fuse and Salvage also being options for items, it could be even more of an exploit than it was in 3K.
Threaten trespassers. Get them to leave, when armies show up and just raid your territory.
I've been wanting this for like the past 8 Total War games.
Yup. The fact that your two choices were either "ignore the army that's pillaging your land" or "Declare war!", without any in-between choice, was annoying. While I do generally like stomping on raiders, sometimes I don't feel like starting a two-front war with someone who should generally be smart enough not to annoy me.
Threaten trespassers. Get them to leave, when armies show up and just raid your territory.
I've been wanting this for like the past 8 Total War games.
Yup. The fact that your two choices were either "ignore the army that's pillaging your land" or "Declare war!", without any in-between choice, was annoying. While I do generally like stomping on raiders, sometimes I don't feel like starting a two-front war with someone who should generally be smart enough not to annoy me.
I'm curious how its handled, though. Wonder if you could impose attrition or some such to the raiding armies. If its just a "Get off my lawn" diplomatic gesture, from experience I don't think the enemy Total War AI would care.
Threaten trespassers. Get them to leave, when armies show up and just raid your territory.
I've been wanting this for like the past 8 Total War games.
Yup. The fact that your two choices were either "ignore the army that's pillaging your land" or "Declare war!", without any in-between choice, was annoying. While I do generally like stomping on raiders, sometimes I don't feel like starting a two-front war with someone who should generally be smart enough not to annoy me.
Well, sometimes you still have to.
What the option does is tell them to leave. If they haven't, after two turns you have the option to declare war on them with no diplomatic penalties (if you still have non-aggression, trade, or the cooldown period from breaking pacts).
If they have reasons to be crossing your territory (quest goals, or enemies they can't path to otherwise), they may well not leave. They don't suffer any penalties for not leaving, you're just free to do something about it (and the AI script should give weight to them leaving, but... AI scripts are what they are.)
nels1031 wrote:I'm curious how its handled, though. Wonder if you could impose attrition or some such to the raiding armies. If its just a "Get off my lawn" diplomatic gesture, from experience I don't think the enemy Total War AI would care.
Yeah, its 'get off my lawn.'
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Ok- Skarbrand versus Nurglings is hilarious. He punts them. Just winds up and gives them a kick.
What the option does is tell them to leave. If they haven't, after two turns you have the option to declare war on them with no diplomatic penalties (if you still have non-aggression, trade, or the cooldown period from breaking pacts).
If they have reasons to be crossing your territory (quest goals, or enemies they can't path to otherwise), they may well not leave. They don't suffer any penalties for not leaving, you're just free to do something about it (and the AI script should give weight to them leaving, but... AI scripts are what they are.)
Of course. The other faction has the opportunity to ignore you. But if it works, then you've avoided a hassle.
Raiding armies really should be attack-able as if you were at war with no penalties as long as they are within your territory. Kinda like how CK3 does it. Otherwise it is just incredibly annoying because you're getting massive economic debuffs and the only way to get rid of them is war.
I think this "get off my lawn" thing is a great addition. Presumably it is to stop the problem I have come across where you sign a non aggression pact with some dick ass faction and they immediately proceed to start raiding one of your settlements.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Turns out Be'lakor is a playable Legendary Lord in the game, but he's not his own faction. He's just a character you get for beating the game.
Hopefully that'll change in the big campaign.
Not that its bulletproof proof, but I don't think the equivalent changed for 3 Kingdoms, where Dhong Zhou (The Tyrant, central to how the story kicked off) was unlocked only after completing a campaign. His younger self was a playable lord in a later DLC expansion, which may have unlocked him in the main game as well, but I had long since unlocked him before then so can't say conclusively.
CA-Pingu on the TW Forums wrote:We've seen a lot of discussion about a certain Dark Master, so we’re here to clarify: Be’lakor is your prize (his punishment) for beating the game, and is a unique Lord for you to wield in that campaign if you continue playing. He will also be available within the Daemons of Chaos Custom Battle roster.
You can play with him in the campaign if you continue playing that campaign after winning it.
Or custom battles.
Currently, he doesn't become his own faction on the map that you can start a new campaign with.
Currently, he doesn't become his own faction on the map that you can start a new campaign with.
Well that's lame.
Yes and no? I kind of get it, since the main campaign is pretty narrative focused (even moreso than 2, and 1 didn't really have one). So it doesn't really make sense that he'd become someone you can track down on the map, stab in the face and wipe out all his cities. And given his role in the campaign,- it'd be odd to set up the circumstances as why you, the player, are just hanging out where he is waiting for other people to show up- because that's still the objective of all the non-player factions (except ogres? maybe? The embargo date for them hasn't happened yet AFAIK.)
On the other hand, for the Immortal Empires campaign, it'd be fine. But they aren't going to start talking about that until after launch.
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Also, according to the FAQ, there are actually a couple other campaigns buried under multiplayer (that are hopefully playable without other people) where they could include him if they wanted to, but it doesn't look like they have.
I hope he gets the full LL/Faction treatment for the big map.
Grey Templar wrote: Soooo, you beat Belakor with any faction and he just becomes a Legendary Lord in your faction? Or is it specifically the Daemon campaigns?
Be kinda weird for Belakor to be a LL in an Empire or Cathay army.
SkavenLord wrote: While Be'lakor is not playable, don't suppose there would be a way to "kitbash" a daemon prince to take on his likeness, would there?
On an side off-topic question has anyone seen multiple arms as one of the options perchance?
I haven't seen anyone get that far (apparently they can't go past turn 50 at the moment. Legend of Total War is milking hours of footage out of the fact that Skarbrand gets a lot of armies attacking a lot, and auto-resolve is brutally punishing so its better to manually resolve battles), but peering at the interface, I don't see any.
The most distinctive I've seen are the Slaanesh scythe arms. (maybe flamers arms for tzeentch, but I can't tell for certain. Might be tails)
This video has a very Nurgle heavy prince at 6:11, a Tzeentch prince at 10:49 and I think a Slaanesh prince somewhere (all Daemon Prince faction), but I can't find it again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJehiY1DZf8
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As far as re-making Be'lakor as the DP... it depends on the model they end up using for him. His basic shape is pretty generic, and there are a couple pretty good horn racks, but keeping the color right is a matter of not using too many god-themed bits (they shift your color palette)
H.B.M.C. wrote: He is playable. He's an unlock for the campaign once you finish it.
Yes! That was quite surprising news. I was referring moreso however to a situation in which you wanted to abuse the customization system to make a knock-off Be'lakor if you wished to use his likeness before you fight him.
SkavenLord wrote: While Be'lakor is not playable, don't suppose there would be a way to "kitbash" a daemon prince to take on his likeness, would there?
On an side off-topic question has anyone seen multiple arms as one of the options perchance?
I haven't seen anyone get that far (apparently they can't go past turn 50 at the moment. Legend of Total War is milking hours of footage out of the fact that Skarbrand gets a lot of armies attacking a lot, and auto-resolve is brutally punishing so its better to manually resolve battles), but peering at the interface, I don't see any.
The most distinctive I've seen are the Slaanesh scythe arms. (maybe flamers arms for tzeentch, but I can't tell for certain. Might be tails)
This video has a very Nurgle heavy prince at 6:11, a Tzeentch prince at 10:49 and I think a Slaanesh prince somewhere (all Daemon Prince faction), but I can't find it again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJehiY1DZf8
Interesting. Seems like Slaanesh would be the closest thing to getting additional limbs, but this is just wishful thinking on my part. I'll check out that video though. Thanks!
The more coverage of the Undivided Daemon Prince I watch, the less impressed I am.
The concept is great (though... its a specific story person and not 'your own daemon prince.' You can just change the Daemonic Name, its really clear who he is, to the point that insome of the audio barks on the campaign map, he basically deadnames himself).
But the customization is... meh? Some of the individual pieces are great, others are not so much, both in appearance and rules-wise. Some of the tails, particularly, don't join up to the body well. A lot of it is just... minor variants of the same piece?
Character-wise... he sucks. There isn't any way around that at the beginning of the campaign, his stats are just trash tier, and basic archers are an absurd threat to him, as his hit box is huge, and armor is non-existent. As you unlock more stuff, you can increase his stats, but he isn't a match for other legendary lords. And I mean their base stats level 1, without even considering buffs from their skill trees and items (and generic magic items, which the DP can't use. At all.)
You can give him the Tzeentch barrier ability, but it pales in comparison to blue horrors- if you really stack it, he might match them by the time you dedicate to Tzeentch.
As a spellcaster, he's so-so, though you can get really early access to some big spells (though casting multiple is kind of 'good luck'- getting used to the new way winds of magic work is going to be revelation for some people).
Campaign wise- if you can make him a damage dealer, going random on the 3 tiers of chaos abilities can turn up good results. But on the map? Oh merciless gods. His starting position _sucks_, and the 'non-chaos factions are auto-at-war with daemons' trait is just brutal. By comparison, the monogod factions are in the Chaos Waste, which limits the hostility a lot until you get established- at least its only enemies in a few directions to start with, and Nkari is up in the corner.
It also doesn't help that the TW3 Norsca is severely squished and small, much smaller than the Mortal Empires Map ~2 turns from north coast to south coast in forced march, with your main settlement right in the middle. And Nordland, the hostile Norse, Konstanyn and Laurelorn forest all bee-line for you across the sea, so its a pretty unending defense rather than expansion. Add in the greenskins in your backyard and its just ugly.
Amusingly, Legend of Total War's approach to the faction was to recruit a Tzeetch Herald and have it do most of the heavy lifting with a bunch of micro and tzeentch wind spell, have the DP show up as reinforcements, and often not even fight.
He has no real campaigm mechanics beyond 'unlock more stuff that is inferior to normal equipment'. And he's too easy to kill.
He's gonna need major reworks, otherwise Be'lakor, once he becomes his own separate faction within Daemons of Chaos and not just a special recruitable LL, will be the default choice.
Well, he does get campaign mechanics- at 770 rep with each god, he gets their signature thing- the bloodletting mechanic, plagues, teleports and seduce units.
Battles and conquests give ~65 rep, some quests give 250 or 90 for two gods, so it doesn't take too long. (There's also a gnoblar massacre event that gives an item or +250 rep for everyone, and seems to pop a few turns in)
But he does also have problems building a decent army- he's stuck in scrub tier units for a long time as he needs both rep and buildings and settlements of the right god to build units.
And the first settlement is a trap- Khorne gets warhounds at tier 1, slaanesh marauders, nurgle nurglings and tzeentch blue horrors (which are by far the best option to start with).
Its the old 'balance' adage that flexibility equals power, so flexible factions need to have worse choices, and unfortunately that informs the DP's equipment and unit options.
Daemon Prince vs Miao Yin
Grand battle in a Blood Arena in the Realm of Khorne, with a Storm of Magic and Cataclysm spell (of Life)
At the start of battle a wheel replaces the magic interface and randomly picks a starting lore for the Cataclysm spell, and under a Storm of Magic, magic reserves never go down (this is basically exclusive to the god's realms, from what I can tell). While the reserves don't exhaust, current available magic still ticks down like normal. The cataclysm spell cycles to different lores over the course of battle.
H.B.M.C. wrote: He is playable. He's an unlock for the campaign once you finish it.
I was expecting DLC.
H.B.M.C. wrote: He has no real campaigm mechanics beyond 'unlock more stuff that is inferior to normal equipment'. And he's too easy to kill.
He's gonna need major reworks, otherwise Be'lakor, once he becomes his own separate faction within Daemons of Chaos and not just a special recruitable LL, will be the default choice.
I am not so sure. He might be inferior to stock daemons but he ought to be, he has a critical advantage in customisation which is more than compensation.
Unlike item swaps there is no turn delay, and you aren't limited to what you find but can chase the tree to get the items you want unlocked.
You can take a look at what you will be fighting then tailor your character to fit the opponent stacking the correct damage types and defences. If facing two different opponents on a single turn you can do this twice then swap in a more generic against-all-comers loadout for the end turn. I do not know exactly what the daemon prince can get but if he is able to stack ambush gear when setting up an ambush a loss in direct combat capability will be worthwhile just for that,
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Mostly the DP is about swapping Armor, Melee Attack and Melee Defense. Attack can get pretty high (for early game, nothing like the older LLs that can hit 110+ melee attack), armor starts at effectively nothing and is hard to get decent (and you'll limit defense and attack for trying).
Tzeentch bits can give trivial amounts of barrier, lower miscast chance and raise magic recharge rate.
Some Nurgle bits give extra HP.
Slaanesh- is mostly melee and speed % increase
Khorne- melee and charge.
Everyone but khorne can get a few spells at the cost of stat increases.
There are various passive abilities and spells (that replace the armor, attack or defense increases that other pieces in the same category get). A few active abilities that are minor temporary buffs (speed, or attack or damage) , a couple summoning abilities (blue horrors or whatever), the best are in-combat regeneration and 'damage aura while engaged.'
Weapons are a very basic progression with increases to base and AP damage, two handed weapons get a bigger base damage buff and bonus vs infantry.
If fighting wood elves, you definitely want chaos weapon and shield (for missile defense) and extra armor, otherwise the DP is just dead. (or so far out of combat you might as well not have him in the battle)
Orlanth wrote: I am not so sure. He might be inferior to stock daemons but he ought to be, he has a critical advantage in customisation which is more than compensation.Unlike item swaps there is no turn delay, and you aren't limited to what you find but can chase the tree to get the items you want unlocked.
There are no turn delays in item swaps anymore.
The items you can get are generally more useful than the body parts you can get for the DP, who also can't get said items. He lacks armour, he's huge, he's slow, and the AI just wipes him off the face of the Old World the second he comes into range.
The Prince's skill tree is pretty woeful. There's a lot of it, but he doesn't have a personal buff line. At all. His unit buffs are spread out under specific gods. Campaign movement bonus is buried 6 skill points deep in Chaos Undivided. Casualty replenishment requires a point in Nurgle's line. The first point in every line is a shoddy +3% glory gain for that specific god (or undivided) glory (ie, a waste of skill points). For most lords, each skill point is important decision. For the Daemon Prince... it barely matters.
Its downright embarrassing when an LL comes off half dead or worse to a unit of norse marauders.
Because the TW forums tend to be rowdy and demanding, and firmly believe that its unreasonable for any faction to have more of anything than other factions, however temporarily
Spoiler:
especially LLs.
It can be a useful place to dip in and out of for info; but spending any time there is exhausting.
Doesn't make any sense to me. Why would you want a game to have less content or fewer options?
Yes, it's very clear that Skaven were perhaps over-favoured with the TWW2 DLC releases, often getting the lion's share of the cool new stuff even in DLCs when they weren't the headliner, but I'd still rather have it than not have it.
That said in general its more that people have different interests and those who aren't getting "as much" content (perceived or real) will feel short changed. Not forgetting some people might fire up the game and only play as one or two factions - the game has more than enough content that many people might never play as some races or only in a few random matches not a full campaign (or enough of a campaign that they've already won etc...)
H.B.M.C. wrote: Doesn't make any sense to me. Why would you want a game to have less content or fewer options?
Yes, it's very clear that Skaven were perhaps over-favoured with the TWW2 DLC releases, often getting the lion's share of the cool new stuff even in DLCs when they weren't the headliner, but I'd still rather have it than not have it.
Skaven do more though.
Most faction characters bring only themselves and a philosophy. So Alith Anar brings a nasty bow and a bad attitude, but Shadow Warriors are a standard unit. There isn't much opportunity to make him different, though I did expect Anar's personal army to have the horde mechanic.
On the other hand Ikit Claw comes with a lot of tools in the lore, which translate into new units.
Basically it comes down to this, skaven do not share. Most other race factions bring what they have to the whole faction and keep for themselves only a specific skillset and item loadout. However skaven warlords keep the best stuff to themselves so the major clan leaders will have a lot of unique stuff each.
This translates into content.
Just as well it works this way though, as co-op rats would be utterly unstoppable. Monsters and ninjas and nukes and necron guns, no thank you.
Meanwhile, as a big Tomb Kings fan, I have to content myself with four LLs, one of whom works for the hated Nagash.
Don't get me wrong. I understand *why* TKs only get four lords instead of the (at least) half-dozen that the other army book armies got in the second game. And I don't begrudge the other races their characters. But it still makes me a bit jealous from time to time.
Useful video for anyone worried about the graphics requirements (recommend is significantly higher than 2).
So this has same views at different quality levels (low, medium, high, ultra):
Also, Tzeentch and Nurgle get shown off tomorrow.
Warning for anyone watching a Nurgle stream: some of the animations are.. colorful. And enthusiastic.
So if you aren't a fan of Nurglings being born the natural way, maybe watch Tzeentch instead.
Voss wrote: Useful video for anyone worried about the graphics requirements (recommend is significantly higher than 2).
So this has same views at different quality levels (low, medium, high, ultra):
So...Nurgle really struggles with settlement battles. The slow speed is brutal on the new larger maps, and a dedicated air contingent (furies, drones) are basically necessary to take out towers, as you won't be capturing supply points to disable them for quite a long time.
The recruitment mechanics are interesting, but they're choked by settlement size (if you hit a point in building cycle beyond the settlement size, you're sent back to the beginning), so growth is absolutely vital, even more than normal
H.B.M.C. wrote: Nurgle turns out to be the slowest and grindy campaign. It fits, really.
Slow does fit. Melting under archery... not so much.
Even more than dwarfs, the roster lacks answers to common problems: how to lock down missile units- there is basically no counterfire outside Kugath himself and the Soul Grinder, no anti large at all, even the 'fast' units are slow or ineffective- drones are surprisingly lacking in combat, etc.
It take the rock/paper/scissors aspect a little too far. Against vampire counts or WoC its pretty crushing, because they have to get into melee, and the nurgle line is a lot tankier (and surprisingly damaging), but any army with maneuver is just going to whittle them until instability takes units. it may be thematic, but it may well not be fun.
Now I know why they held Kislev back: a placeholder for unlocking Boris is on their start screen. That came out earlier, but its pretty stark on the menu.
The story is... ok. At least it provides a 'good enough' reason for why Kislev is divided and why anyone would think dipping into the Realm of Chaos would be a good idea.
Not sure about the Devotion Race faction mechanic from Troy.
And as they're all anti-large, they eat Ogre armies for breakfast. Boris looks great on his bear.
Just sucks that he gets his own faction, start position and even plot, whereas Be'lakor is relegated to rando not-quite-Legendary Lord who anyone can use. Man he'd better get a very early FLC turning him into the second LL for the Daemons of Chaos faction, complete with his own faction mechanics and whatnot.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Just sucks that he gets his own faction, start position and even plot, whereas Be'lakor is relegated to rando not-quite-Legendary Lord who anyone can use. Man he'd better get a very early FLC turning him into the second LL for the Daemons of Chaos faction, complete with his own faction mechanics and whatnot.
Probably when we get "mortal empires" in TWW3 it'll come with Belakor being a regular lord, or at least I hope so.
Haven't watched much yet, but lots of manipulation of income and control on a regional basis.
Ooo. Proliferate cultists is kinda crazy- you get cults up to three random cities (human or elf). You can force vassalizations with cults, and then build outposts and start recruiting units from them. Like waywatchers or great cannons or what have you.
And Nkari has probably the best starting position in the game- safely tucked up in the corner, and no non-chaos factions to stumble across and just endlessly send armies at you.
1. Not his own faction.
2. A not-so-Legendary Lord in anyone's army.
3. No faction traits or army abilities to really speak of.
4. A tiny skill tree.
5. They're not even using his current model, just the old one.
Nathan's an optimist, but it has been tiresome to hear the litany of "Despite CA saying no, we're probably getting Ind/Nippon/Kuresh!" from people.
We didn't get Araby, and they're on the frickin' map FFS. These other groups aren't even there, and have even less about them than Araby ever did (who had a full Warmaster army, with minis).
Honestly, for me, once Chaos Dwarfs are in, the game is essentially done.
They can expand existing rosters and whatever, but as far as I'm concerned, 'Immortal Empires' and Chaos Dwarfs will make it a complete game, and I don't really need anything else.
Getting every faction to 3 LLs each and sorting out Warriors of Chaos would be nice, but I'm not even holding my breath on that.
Though at this point I will actually be a little pleased if they give Thanquol a miss and give nothing more to Skaven ever.
Voss wrote: Honestly, for me, once Chaos Dwarfs are in, the game is essentially done.
They can expand existing rosters and whatever, but as far as I'm concerned, 'Immortal Empires' and Chaos Dwarfs will make it a complete game, and I don't really need anything else.
Getting every faction to 3 LLs each and sorting out Warriors of Chaos would be nice, but I'm not even holding my breath on that.
Though at this point I will actually be a little pleased if they give Thanquol a miss and give nothing more to Skaven ever.
I’m of a similar mind in regards to Chaos Dwarfs and completing the game, though I’d like to see Hobgoblin Khans in some fashion. Mainly because I loved the Dogs of War Special Character and the unit.
In regards to Warriors of Chaos, I’d be fine with them just doing a copy/paste of the Beastmen Herdstone mechanic.
1. Not his own faction.
2. A not-so-Legendary Lord in anyone's army.
3. No faction traits or army abilities to really speak of.
4. A tiny skill tree.
5. They're not even using his current model, just the old one.
Yikes...
I don't know how they screw something up like that when it's so easy not to make those mistakes.
Making what...10 variations? of Bel'akor for all the factions once you have the baseline one established should take a day or two tops to set up. You're literally just duplicating 90% of crap, assigning it to X faction, and updating the red/blue lines to be appropriate. I assume that they're running a single script to add him in so just add a logic check for the faction and add the appropriate one to each faction pool. This is one thing they dropped the ball on that I really can't understand. It will be corrected in a week or so with mods.
I'm mostly disappointed they didn't use the new model for him I liked the old model on the table top, but the new one is glorious and one of my favourite models in GW's current line up. Maybe they made the Belakor TT model after CA had already done the virtual model, but I think it would have been worth updating.
The other stuff, if enough people complain I'm sure by the time Mortal Empires rolls around he'll be upgraded.
Voss wrote: Honestly, for me, once Chaos Dwarfs are in, the game is essentially done.
They can expand existing rosters and whatever, but as far as I'm concerned, 'Immortal Empires' and Chaos Dwarfs will make it a complete game, and I don't really need anything else.
Getting every faction to 3 LLs each and sorting out Warriors of Chaos would be nice, but I'm not even holding my breath on that.
Though at this point I will actually be a little pleased if they give Thanquol a miss and give nothing more to Skaven ever.
I’m of a similar mind in regards to Chaos Dwarfs and completing the game, though I’d like to see Hobgoblin Khans in some fashion. Mainly because I loved the Dogs of War Special Character and the unit.
In regards to Warriors of Chaos, I’d be fine with them just doing a copy/paste of the Beastmen Herdstone mechanic.
I'm sure when they add the Chaos Dwarves they'll have Hobgoblins as part of the roster. Maybe they'll even be mercenary units.
Chaos Dwarves be needing those sla... I mean Prisoners with Jobs
I am not expecting many faction releases for 3. Chaos Dwarves and maybe the Hobgoblins mostly. Hobgoblins to bring a little more life to that part of the world in Mortal Empires.
I expect that all chaos related armies will be getting love with lord packs. I am hoping they give Chaos Warriors a proper rework at some point. It would also be odd if Archaon wasn't a part of the WH3 Map, I don't know if it would really be the End Times without him.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: We will finally see Nagash most likely as well as an army of some sort. He's been hinted at for two games as it is.
Nagash is in the lore alot - but thats Warhammer I would prefer him in the background and add the Vampire bloodline leaders plus their sire but I know alot want to see Old Bones.
If we do crossed fingers we don't go down the End Times route....stick to Storm of Chaos (they have been using that book quite a bit)
This battle is against the 'Dark Land Greenskins' by the by. The auto-war with non Chaos factions means Ku'Gath's starting position will eventually bring them into conflict at the northwestern corner of the Darklands.
The siege map is also pretty amazing and huge.
This battle is against the 'Dark Land Greenskins' by the by. The auto-war with non Chaos factions means Ku'Gath's starting position will eventually bring them into conflict at the northwestern corner of the Darklands.
The siege map is also pretty amazing and huge.
From that video: Glad that missile fire can damage siege towers now.
In regards to the siege map, happy that they are expanded. One of my main mods was the custom maps mod that really added life to a siege.
Ogres are finally getting shown off tomorrow. Should be interesting- from what I've seen of some multiplayer stuff, Ironblasters are hideously powerful, and fast. They're basically a bundle of great cannons that can turn on a dime.
Gorgers look a lot more interesting than they were on table top, as well.
From the 'souls' screen, they look as tied into the main campaign as everyone else. For Skrag in particular, I can see them wanting Ursun's meat, but just for variety's sake I'd rather they had their own concerns- much like Tomb Kings or other DLC race packs.
Holy carp! Castle Drachenfels is on the map (above the dwarf holds in the mountains).
Also the Empire battle-maps finally got redone (rather than pasted over from TW1 like they were in TW2).
Nice - well Genevieve is in Age of Sigmar now
Cool little short story now out for TW3 Access
Extract
Spoiler:
“Six are we, a darkling coterie. Revel with gaiety,
to summon our master, the great N’kari,” the
dancers sang in unison. Not that the audience
heard the lyrics for they were too engrossed in
their merriment. Two of them bashed into each
other, knocking their pewter tankards of kvas
out of both their hands. Anger was fleeting as
they instantly recognised each other.
“Jakub! What are you doing down here?” said
the older one with a large kossar-style beard.
“I just came to quench my first, as usual, then
followed the singing. What’s going on, Anton?”
“I don’t know, this Empire-man brought these
elves into the inn, and next thing we’re in the
cellar, moving barrels so there’s room to sing
and dance! I have to go shortly; my wife is
expecting me home by the late evening bell.”
Before the two friends could continue, the
volume rose as a clearing was made in the
middle of the floor. A group of six Kossars began
dancing - a mix of high and low kicks, as was the
tradition in southern Kislev. The elves swooped
in, weaving in and around the dancers to a
mesmerising effect. The crowd cheered, louder
and louder, all while clapping to the beat of the
stamping Kossars.
“I SEE HERESY!” the voice, louder even than
the crowd, reverberated across the cellar, every
syllable laden with judgement. The dancing
stopped. Suddenly there was silence. All looked
up to the top of the cellar steps. There stood
Kostaltyn, the Supreme Patriarch of Ursun’s Cult
and leader of the Great Orthodoxy, “All here are
sinners. All here shall burn.”
Just wanted to let you guys know that if you haven't jumped in early and pre ordered but were interested to see how the game looks out of the box, I will be live streaming my first look at the game on Thursday 17th Feb at 17:30 UK time.
Live stream is
Twitch: athariel_gaming
You Tube: athariel's gaming lounge
Facebook gaming: athariel_gaming
I normally stream World of Tanks but being a big Warhammer and in particular Warhammer Fantasy fan and a Total War fan I wanted to do a special stream for this release. I am also intending to wear my Blood Dragon Helmet (also a Warhammer Fantasy cosplayer) for some of the stream though it doesn't fit over my headphones very well .
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Preload is smaller than I was expecting, only 65GB? I wonder if the final download will be big or if the files are just very compressed.
System requirements say 120gb of available space is needed, so roughly half is pre-loading. Pretty sure the install prompt told me that more then 121 GB was required for install. Had to uninstall a game to open up space and get it going.
It's more likely because the download mirrors as it downloads. So if its 65GB then it needs at least 120-130GB of total free space to have room to mirror during the download and install. This is done to hopefully reduce errors during the download and install process.
A fair few games do it, but often as not we don't notice until we hit really big and chunky games like this, especially if you're putting it on a smaller SSD for the faster loading times.
Overread wrote: It's more likely because the download mirrors as it downloads. So if its 65GB then it needs at least 120-130GB of total free space to have room to mirror during the download and install. This is done to hopefully reduce errors during the download and install process.
A fair few games do it, but often as not we don't notice until we hit really big and chunky games like this, especially if you're putting it on a smaller SSD for the faster loading times.
I don't think that's typical for games on Steam, or any games I've downloaded recently for that matter (not that I have downloaded a whole heap recently, but the few I have were mostly in the 100GB range). I have had programs that needed double the available space to download and install, but not for a while and I don't think it was a game.
I'm gonna guess the downloaded files are compressed compared to the final files and on launch we'll still have to download more. I checked the folder and it has the 65GB of files and the store page says 120GB required, TWW2 is just under 60GB on my disk and the store says it requires 60GB.
We'll find out tomorrow I guess (or tonight in my part of the world...).
This wouldn't be the first time I've seen a big game that needed twice the space. The one that most immediately comes to mind is The Division 2, on my PS4. Whenever a patch dropped - no matter how small - I always needed nearly as much free space on my hard drive as the game itself took, or I'd be informed that I didn't have enough free space for the patch. And Division 2 is not a small game.
Eumerin wrote: This wouldn't be the first time I've seen a big game that needed twice the space. The one that most immediately comes to mind is The Division 2, on my PS4. Whenever a patch dropped - no matter how small - I always needed nearly as much free space on my hard drive as the game itself took, or I'd be informed that I didn't have enough free space for the patch. And Division 2 is not a small game.
Yep Warhammer 1 and 2 have always done that. Again you tend to just not notice it until its on the 500GB SSD drive with other games and space gets tight. I did think that shifting from 1 and 2 which were in the 30-40GB region that the 3 was jumping a LOT into 120GB for a basic install. So I'm guessing they are trying to get around the issue of lots of people complaining about "It says 40GB and I've got 50GB so why don't I have enough space"
I'm expecting a chunky update tomorrow, finishing the base game packet and a day 1 patch, and a fairly long install time.
Got most of my docket cleared today, and will start the remaining game download up in the morning before getting on with the remaining laundry, exercise and breakfast- thursdays tend to be agreeable with my work schedule, so it works out pretty well.
Figure I'll kick the prologue out of the way, while I decide who I'm starting with. One benefit of the daemons of chaos faction is you can save characters for use in other games, so you can save any daemon heroes and lords and recruit them in the appropriate monogod factions. (for a much higher recruitment cost).
But I'm still leaning toward Ogres or Slaanesh. Small chance of Kislev just to get lord unlocks out of the way.
I think I was right about the being compressed rather than mirroring, it's unpacking 65GB into 113GB.
EDIT: Blood for the Blood God, Skulls for the Skull Throne, and Milk for the Khorne Flakes!
Automatically Appended Next Post: I know it's early, but I'm not sure I like the new minor settlement battles. I think they'd be good if they were infrequent but I'm only a few turns in and I already feel like I've played too many of them, lol. Too many choke points / corridors and too many capture points for garrisons to defend.
Cool, cool. My entire Steam library page is black while the game is updating/unpacking. I can get a timer off the store page (about 19 minutes), but that's it.
Not worried at all.
Edit: Right, good to go. Shut down and starting up again fixed all woes (not surprised, just relieved)
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I think I was right about the being compressed rather than mirroring, it's unpacking 65GB into 113GB.
EDIT: Blood for the Blood God, Skulls for the Skull Throne, and Milk for the Khorne Flakes!
Automatically Appended Next Post: I know it's early, but I'm not sure I like the new minor settlement battles. I think they'd be good if they were infrequent but I'm only a few turns in and I already feel like I've played too many of them, lol. Too many choke points / corridors and too many capture points for garrisons to defend.
Watching the preview streams and vids, I wondered how many people would have that reaction
I'm 87% downloaded and I still don't know if I'll start as Kislev or Cathay but it's so close..
EDIT: it's downloaded and I'm playing the prologue. So far so awesome. I hope people cease their whinging about how Kislev looks because they look fantastic.
I happened to be up when it went live. So I finished the install and fired it up. There's a Prologue campaign, which I ignored, and instead started a New Campaign. This screen is changed. Unlike in the earlier games, where you saw all of the Legendary Lord's you can pick, now you go to a faction screen and choose a lord from that faction. Given how many lords will be available to pick from if you play the combined campaign, this is probably a smart change.
Started Cathay as the Storm Dragon. Watched the Cathay intro, took a glance around the map (the colors and art look different than I remember in the previous games) areas that were visible (spotted Tzeentch, unaligned Cathay, Cathay rebels, greenskins, and ogres) , and called it a night.
I'll probably take a look at the Prologue when I get home this evening.
The prologue goes on a bit too long (and the khorne quest battle is rough. Love the map though.)
Spoiler:
Loremaster of Sotek (the streamer) compared the prologue to Arthas' backstory in Warcraft, particularly his fall in WC3. He was quite enthusiastic about it.
He's right to make that comparison, but other than the setting elements (specific artifacts, etc), it _is_ the story of Arthas. Full stop, just with warhammer serial numbers. And Yuri falls to chaos because of... impatience, I guess?
That said, I don't know what his 'brother's' plan was. Not find the bear and go home? And deal with endless winter? He objects to 'consulting' the Khornate shrine, which is fine, but... he tags along for the rest of the trip anyway. Not sure what he expected at that point, since Yuri goes full 'and your (soldiers') blood is necessary!'
I kind of want to do it again to see if there are real consequences to any of the choices, but I suspect not. And its a bit too much of a slog to do again.
Apparently a number of negative reviews on Steam. There appear to be some optimization issues. Oddly, based on what I've seen elsewhere, a high-end CPU might actually be more likely to give you issues than an older one.
However, there's also a review bombing issue. Apparently quite a few Chinese got upset about the pre-release marketing direction CA took, and are retaliating by posting negative reviews. I don't know much more than that.
Given that the game just came out, it'll likely be a bit before positive reviews show up. As I saw noted elsewhere, if the game doesn't work, you've got nothing to do but complain. If it does work, you're currently too busy playing to post a review.
Honestly I've yet to see any game these days launch without needing some patches in the first few weeks. The only ones that get around it tend to be either very simple games or those that had extensive beta or early access schemes. Ergo where the big data and error pooling happened before launch.
It's the same as how most major mmo will have a bad first week/month of server issues until the population settles down and such.
Eumerin wrote: Apparently a number of negative reviews on Steam. There appear to be some optimization issues. Oddly, based on what I've seen elsewhere, a high-end CPU might actually be more likely to give you issues than an older one.
Seems to be okay for me. I played TWW2 on a mix of high and ultra settings, I started TWW3 on high and it's been mostly fine. When I get back to the game tonight I might try seeing if I can push some settings up to ultra while remaining playable.
I don't think it was a graphics issue, but in one battle things got jittery for about 10 seconds, I have a feeling it was related to an enemy Bloodthirster trying to land in a packed blob to attack my general and either the world or just the camera tripped out when he couldn't land.
The only other annoyance was that the game launched in a much lower resolution than my monitor's, and when I turned it up to native res the UI got really big so I went back to low res, but then I discovered there's a "UI scale" option in the advanced graphics setting which was set to 200% for some reason, turned it to 150% and it's fine.
I will admit, there's some things that I've been disappointed with. Overall happy, but my gripes so far...
1. The AI has gotten dumber. I'm playing on normal battle difficulty like I did in TWW2 to stop the AI cheating, so maybe it's intentional and I have to turn up the difficulty to get non-slow level AI.
2. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems like units engaged in combat spend more time just staring at each other not attacking than they did in TWW2?
3. The UI feels worse to me.
4. As I mentioned earlier, not a fan of the new tower-defence-choke-point style minor settlement battles.
Overall I’ve been enjoying it though, those are just my minor gripes. I’ll get more stuck in over the weekend when work isn’t so hectic.
"Ok, it didn't take 4 minutes to get past the splash screen this time. That's good. Drivers are updated. Put graphics to medium high, as the FPS is the same anyway. Let's start with the prologue. Alright all loaded up. Here we... oh hello little spider! You're very tiny. What are you doing coming down from the ceiling. You're very small to be all by your...*looks up*"... self... oh... you have a lot of brothers and sisters. That's... not good."
*Half a can of bug spray later*
"Ok! Now I can play!"
Yeah. That really happened. There was a slight spider genocide.
"Ok, it didn't take 4 minutes to get past the splash screen this time. That's good. Drivers are updated. Put graphics to medium high, as the FPS is the same anyway. Let's start with the prologue. Alright all loaded up. Here we... oh hello little spider! You're very tiny. What are you doing coming down from the ceiling. You're very small to be all by your...*looks up*"... self... oh... you have a lot of brothers and sisters. That's... not good."
*Half a can of bug spray later*
"Ok! Now I can play!"
Yeah. That really happened. There was a slight spider genocide.
Sooooooooooooooooo being as your flag says you're in Australia I have to ask, on behalf of us who live in normal ecosystems.
"Ok, it didn't take 4 minutes to get past the splash screen this time. That's good. Drivers are updated. Put graphics to medium high, as the FPS is the same anyway. Let's start with the prologue. Alright all loaded up. Here we... oh hello little spider! You're very tiny. What are you doing coming down from the ceiling. You're very small to be all by your...*looks up*"... self... oh... you have a lot of brothers and sisters. That's... not good."
*Half a can of bug spray later*
"Ok! Now I can play!"
Yeah. That really happened. There was a slight spider genocide.
Sooooooooooooooooo being as your flag says you're in Australia I have to ask, on behalf of us who live in normal ecosystems.
How many inches across was the "small spider" ? ?
I literally have a huntsman next to me as I type this. No, it's not a pet, it just decided to wander in and say hello.
It's the white tails and redbacks that crawl out from behind my desk that scare me more though.
Overread wrote: Sooooooooooooooooo being as your flag says you're in Australia I have to ask, on behalf of us who live in normal ecosystems. How many inches across was the "small spider"??
Like... rice grain sized. These were tiny baby spiders, just lots of them (around 20-ish).
If they'd been normal spider sized I would've set my apartment building on fire and called in an airstrike.
2. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems like units engaged in combat spend more time just staring at each other not attacking than they did in TWW2?
I've definitely noticed a bit of that, especially in one of the early parts of the prologue. And a few times I've had my horsies just sitting there. Really like the Kislev aesthetic and also the Tzeentch daemons are cool, it's fun to zoom in and watch them caper.
I do sort of like the prologue but also it's a lot longer than it needs to be. I stopped early evening as it finally gives me the option for diplomacy.
Spoiler:
Prince Yuri is starting to look a little unhealthy
My cat is next to me which is much better than huntsmen and spider babies..
2. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems like units engaged in combat spend more time just staring at each other not attacking than they did in TWW2?
I've definitely noticed a bit of that, especially in one of the early parts of the prologue. And a few times I've had my horsies just sitting there. Really like the Kislev aesthetic and also the Tzeentch daemons are cool, it's fun to zoom in and watch them caper.
A couple of times I zoomed in on my Bloodletters to watch the carnage and it seemed like they were just standing around doing nothing, lol, I seem to recall TWW2 was a bit more dynamic when you zoomed in close to a melee. I know single entities always had a bit of an issue, but Skarbrand is a lot less impressive when he spends half his time looking one way and taking a step, then looking the other way and taking a step, then repeating that a few times before he actually decides to swing his axe.
Infect me daddy 
