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New Total War game: Warhammer

Rahdulan

Omnibus
Patron
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
5,105
Was playing the old EB mod for the first Rome TW and then tried this... holy crap the battles are fast, units just melt in seconds, plus all those clicker abilities. I want my wargaming simulation back, not this spastic League of Legends shit. :negative:

That was also my complaint ever since Shogun 2 - arcade factor is off the charts with units that can engage and disengage completely willy-nilly. I mean, it's not like I want some of the old TW games' problems like, well, let's just call it "peculiar" unit movement style when in cities and things like that, but I can't help thinking this pace in newer games exists because of MP where no one has the time for long games or something. I guess it's just a matter of taste.
 
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Maggot

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 31, 2016
Messages
1,243
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
some of the old TW games' problems like, well, let's just call it "peculiar" unit movement style when in cities and things like that
That's on a game by game basis. I've been playing the first Medieval and the units are responsive while not being full arcade mode like the new games. Castle pathfinding works just fine because they're not tiny narrow streets with impassable terrain everywhere. Combat still holds up great, isn't too slow or too fast, and you can tell when units are winning or losing even from a distance thanks to the push/pull mechanics. Only downside is no marquee select.

I've also been playing a Warhammer co-op campaign and the AI is completely incapable of handling the campaign map. I can just lure the AI out of settlements with an army, go around and take the empty settlement with another army, then defend against the AI from their own settlement. Something else that drives me crazy about this game is the useless tech, building, and general tree. There is no sort of thinking or balancing required with building anything so you might as well just top off everything and snowball after 20 turns. The tech and general/lord skilll tree all involve (except for picking a mount and spells) picking a bunch of shit percentile bonuses or +10 to armor for a specific unit and feel like busywork. All those shit bonuses could be cut down and you could keep the spells. If the tech in your game stays the same, don't add a useless tech tree to it. I'd much rather have something like the blacksmithing armor and weapon bonuses back instead. At least those made sense and you could tell how much armor or weapon upgrades a unit had just by looking at how many extra banners the unit had like in RTW. I don't think the AI even gets access to the tech tree or lord bonuses. Also the one wall siege battles are terrible.
 

A horse of course

Guest
Finished Season of Retardation campaign unmodded. Holy shit that was one of the most lazily scripted campaigns I've played since King Arthur.

I killed Morghur literally 20-30 times because he just respawns continuously at the same fucking point every 2 turns after being defeated. It was the same old Total War experience - everyone is vindictively (almost suicidally) aggressive towards you at the start, then as you start taking land and gaining in power you begin steamrolling the map and nobody wants to declare war on you. CA's solution to this is to endlessly spawn armies at random (i.e. the same three points) throughout the map who make a beeline for your undefended settlements.

This is particularly annoying for WE because everything outside of Athel Loren (which you need to grab unless you're prepared to gamble on the AI alliances not fucking you over with their imbecilic diplomatic decisions) is basically no-mans-land with a maximum of less than half a stack to defend it. The whole experience was 100 turns too long by far. Whilst the WE roster is an interesting (albeit probably unbalanced) departure from the hammer-and-anvil battle lines of the other factions, the way they've set up their campaign priorities is absurd and completely at odds with the lore.

On the upside, we now know that CA can draw nice tits

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A horse of course

Guest
Gotta get that 5% ammo bonus to one of your troop types man.

Which will probably be bugged and does nothing for two months until CA patch it with the next DLC (*cough*goblinabilities*cough*).
 

DramaticPopcorn

Guest
I've bought the vanilla version of this game and cannot believe just how utterly arcadey and vapid the combat has become, it's so jarring to watch those blobs hack away each others' numbers without any need for actual strategy.

It is especially jarring just after having played Medieval 2.
 

A horse of course

Guest
I can defend one aspect of the "arcade" combat in Warhammer, which is that the speed at which units die does mean that packing your armies full of elite troops makes a real difference. In most previous games you can spam the shittiest spear or pike milita troops and rear charge virtually any enemy to gain victory. Even in Med2 this tactic only became an issue in the late game where European factions could quickly tear militia units apart with chivalric foot knights and barely notice the morale hit from flanking. In Warhammer it can be a real problem resisting a concerted breakthrough by monsters or high-dmg infantry.

Apart from that I completely agree. I had zero problems with the single special abilities they added to famous generals in Med2: Kingdoms, especially since some of them were quite cool (Byzantine bribe, for example), but in Warhammer, you have regular cav units with two different powerful buff and debuff abilities to micro whilst faffing around with cycle charging. I swear one day this series will turn into a fucking MOBA.
 

A horse of course

Guest
Finished the Grand Campaign. It's not quite as heavily scripted as SoR but it has the same problems I mentioned in the review above. You're forced into either a highly expansionist playstyle to secure enough amber, or turtling until the scripted End Times event and hope the game doesn't bug out and break the Shield of Civilization buff on some of the factions. Tied with Warriors of Chaos for worst campaign.
 

fastjack

Augur
Joined
Mar 31, 2004
Messages
347
Location
the south bay
Finished the Grand Campaign. It's not quite as heavily scripted as SoR but it has the same problems I mentioned in the review above. You're forced into either a highly expansionist playstyle to secure enough amber, or turtling until the scripted End Times event and hope the game doesn't bug out and break the Shield of Civilization buff on some of the factions. Tied with Warriors of Chaos for worst campaign.

I tried a Warriors of Chaos campaign and didn't get very far before boredom forced me to switch over to Dwarves, which I had quite a bit of fun with until the mop up phase. In case I ever end up playing again, which campaign(s) would you say is the most fun?
 

A horse of course

Guest
Finished the Grand Campaign. It's not quite as heavily scripted as SoR but it has the same problems I mentioned in the review above. You're forced into either a highly expansionist playstyle to secure enough amber, or turtling until the scripted End Times event and hope the game doesn't bug out and break the Shield of Civilization buff on some of the factions. Tied with Warriors of Chaos for worst campaign.

I tried a Warriors of Chaos campaign and didn't get very far before boredom forced me to switch over to Dwarves, which I had quite a bit of fun with until the mop up phase. In case I ever end up playing again, which campaign(s) would you say is the most fun?

Vampire Counts or Fempire were pretty good on release. Empire faces a lot more challenges at the moment due to random hordes spawning everywhere though. You can see half of Reikland burnt to the ground within the first 5 turns. It can also be rather tedious after beating Archaon and resettling the entire north of the map. I think Greenskins/Dwarfs are a good campaign because they're not intrinsically tied up with the scripted events (Archaon has to be killed but this will happen eventually anyway). That said, you're kinda forced into staying in the far south of map for much of the campaign since if you neglect to defeat your nemesis faction they'll quickly become one of the most powerful factions in the campaign (Orcs can be obscenely difficult to beat once they start rolling with multiple Waaaaaghs). As a result, you don't interact with the other races as much as you might like. I'm sure this will be much less of an issue once Tomb Kings/Skaven/Ogres are added to the final game.

Beastmen are one of the easiest campaigns in the game due to their automatic stealth stance as you can easily fool the AI into sending it's units halfway across the map whilst you burn their settlements to the ground, and the scripted Morrsleib events give ludicrous buffs. You can also pretty much hide in the corner of the map and wait for Chaos to wipe everyone out by themselves, though it's best to start destabilizing Bretonnia and The Empire from the get go.

Clan Angrund/Crooked Moon are "challenge" campaigns in that they're designed for veteran players. Belegar has a ridiculous 50% increased upkeep cost on his units whilst Skarsnik can only really field goblin units until Karak Eight Peaks is retaken (protected by a fairly strong army). Similarly, Wurrzag starts near the Greenskins but primarily fields savage orc units. I'm hoping we get some more sub-faction DLC/FLC over after xmas (e.g. Middenheim?), but we'll see.

If you're not sure about replaying and don't want to buy their overpriced DLC, I would recommend waiting until February when the "Old World" re-release/patch comes out (basically Imperator Edition) and you can play as Bretonnia for free (all the DLC factions will still be on the map, just not playable).
 

Ranarama

Learned
Joined
Dec 7, 2016
Messages
604
Bah does this one still limit you to only fighting racial enemies? I got tired of only fighting Orcs as Dwarves and gave up on the game. If I can't rule the entire world in what way is it a Total War game?

Still I guess mods might fix that. Or have they already?
 

rashiakas

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Oct 4, 2011
Messages
816
Pathfinder: Wrath
What. You can fight anyone, restriction is only on what kind of city you can keep. There is a mod to change that, but there are so many regions I think its okay the way it is.
 

kris

Arcane
Joined
Oct 27, 2004
Messages
8,835
Location
Lulea, Sweden
He probably refer more to how the campaign normally turns out. Most factions end up fighting the same type of enemy for long parts of most of the game. I mean I went out of my way to get into battle with vampire counts in my dwarf campaign.

the little experience I now got with the Wood elfs has not been positive. Their army roster is cool and all, but I never felt so restricted in what I can do. No income, anything you conquer is easily lost as you can't have walls and is basically limited to one army. Stray from your only starting region and someone might burn it. I tried it with both lords and I felt the best tactic might be to just raze everything for money, yet then you dont get amber... with Orion I spent like 8 turns just moving back and forth with an Orc and Brettonian army around, never managing to catch them in battle. Not what I would consider entertaining.
 

Lone Wolf

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Apr 17, 2014
Messages
3,703
Opt in to the beta patch, which buffs the WE considerably, boosting their income (every outpost now has a base income of 50), upping archery range from 160 to 180 across the board, and reducing the negative amber penalty (less replenishment, rather than no replenishment from -1 to -10 amber).
 

kris

Arcane
Joined
Oct 27, 2004
Messages
8,835
Location
Lulea, Sweden
Opt in to the beta patch, which buffs the WE considerably, boosting their income (every outpost now has a base income of 50), upping archery range from 160 to 180 across the board, and reducing the negative amber penalty (less replenishment, rather than no replenishment from -1 to -10 amber).

I already had that in play yesterday.

Problem is really that you have no easily defended homeground (city walls) so you cant go around fighting without risking having your capital sacked which is a disaster with the low income. You really play the game for the battles, not for the maneuvering.

Empire for example have an capital that you can normally just leave there while going out fighting with your army. with WE you dont even have an introductionary battle around in the normal campaign, just armies that sit around in their cities or attack after their full (but seemingly still didn't want to engage me). I was yet to have any full or near full army battle with my two short WE forays. Nearest was when attacking a dwarf settlement, 15-14 battle.
 

A horse of course

Guest
Buffing them isn't going to help the central problem, which is that their campaign playstyle revolves around them acting nothing like Wood Elves.
 

A horse of course

Guest
CA's assembly kit is a fucking nightmare compared to Pack File Manager. I would literally pay for modding if they just hired those guys for every new game.

Thanks to some help from another modder, got killable Lords working. For some reason there are already Lords marked as non-immortal already (Skullsmashers, Top Knots) but they still don't die. Weird. No serious bugs so far, other than Durthu's faction now being run by a very, very deep-voiced young lady.

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