New Total War game: Warhammer

The choreographed fights are out. Pay attention moran. In case your bias hasn't completely turded your brain away you should have sensed a familiarity when looking at the line fly overs.

Just like in every 3D total war. They never were able to calculate a proper single unit realistic AI. They're just bad like that.

 

Did you even watch the video?

 

Yeah, "Quest Battles" and the explicit statement that there will be no modding capabilities (compared to mainline games where they made vague promises) indicates that this is gonna be linear as all hell. Very worrying. If I wanted to play a series of scripted battles I'd fire up Mark of Chaos.

 

They're out damnit. Look back again multiple units attack a single unit at the same time. They did it probably because of their big single units and so on, but most fans were really asking for the medieval 2 system.

 

Quest battles are optional for phat lewt apparently. Like Karl Franz saying in the video he'll only wield Ghal Maraz if he wins this battle.

 

I wonder if we'll be able to approach those Quest battles with our own armies, or those default for dat specific battle.

 

Plenty of stupid shit that the sandbox brings that just break the purpose of me playing the game.

Not ever being able to have a proper punic war in Rome, Diplomatic AI that's a simple AI and doesn't react to your actions or the general map changes and so on. Just feels empty a lot of time. AI is limited but scripts can bring a better sense of purpose to all this.

 

I think it will be your army. Wouldn't make sense to hand your general a totally different one just for one battle. After all, KF can lead your troops in every other battle as well.

 

Then don't run your general into a fence. Fence wins.

 

Yes, cause when chasing the routing enemy with 20 units I should always make sure no one cross a fence.

Stupid AI Always win.

 

Rome 2 isn't just 1v1 animations though. They added generic swings like RTW and M2 and expanded on this with Attila. In attila they changed the matched combat (the 1v1 duel animations) to be shorter chained sequences that could be interruptible so that there's less dueling and more group fighting. It looks like they're expanding on this even more with Warhammer.

 

Saw only one extended scripted fight between the two flying units. Beyond that there were maybe a handful of sporadic scripted moments between units, but for the most part they seem to be sticking with the old Rome/Medieval 2 model of damage via generic swings. Though I suspect that this is a two birds one stone approach in which they'll be able to placate fans and not bother with the workload of adding dozens of individual scripted for confrontations between units of different sizes and body proportions.

 

Well yeah obviously. No way they could have pulled this with the usual budget wasting AAA studios do and the interns they keep hiring to replace seniors.

There is also a technical limitation to the number of different animations. The more they do, the more FPS drop on most systems to the point where it becomes unplayable. To expect them to fix that is to expect them to come up with a new revolutionary engine and combat physics. They haven't done anything revolutionary since the Rome 1 engine, and they have no way to pull this today with all the experienced programmers they keep firing and the unwillingness of SEGA to let them do anything that's not crucial to a marketing trailer.

 

I understand the familiarity with the gameplay demo. It's essentially Call of Warhammer or Third Age Total War with charge animations and custom attack animations for big beasts. The individual soldier AI was not improved, the generic swings are back and you see them all around the big spider staying there like they're constipated with only 2 or 3 attacking at the same time. You can see the giant creatures behaving exactly like in Third age Total War once engaged in melee, which is stand around here attacking one unit at a time even thought it's a giant fucking spider with the mass of a truck.

The Graphics are barely better, even though it requires a system 5 times more powerful, the animation quality is only great for the giant creatures but it's not like you ever zoom in the melee in the middle of a battle so that whole mocap thing is and will always be bullshit.

To be fair, you have spells and proper single soldier units, so I guess that's cool too. Proper cavalry charge. And units won't glitch as much. Medieval 2 was too limited for that.

 

It was especially funny seeing the same problems they have with "big units" repeating. OH WOW LOOK AT THESE BIG UNITS AND THEIR COOL BESPOKE ANIMATIONS

please don't look at how normal regiments of soldiers only attack it one by one, turning battles into boring and slow cinematics that make no actual sense

To be honest, I don't think there is any hope left in man--er, the Total War series. It was founded on a cool visual gimmick that has become more and more outmoded and useless as time goes on. Every Total War game would be improved by removing the real-time combat section and replacing it with something more abstract. But that wouldn't look cool in trailers, so it trundles onward.

 

That's like the entire franchise... Replacing them with turn based tactical squares would defeat the entire point.

What we need is a competitor with tons of cash and the same goal, otherwise they'll keep doing the exact same limited simulation over and over again.

 

If they've gone this long without a version of this combat that is fun, maybe the whole idea is fundamentally dumb. Are there people out there who found the gameplay of the real time battles fun? Like, aside from the spectacle and the wow factor? If there are, and they aren't moaning retards, I take it all back, but from what I've gathered it always just comes back to people who like seeing thousands of soldiers on the screen at once, not legitimate gameplay preferences.

 

Yes well video games are whimsical news at 11. If you were really serious about this you would attend your local wargame chapter, or buy electronic ones if there's no one around to play with.

I'm not going to argue about the virtues of TB vs RT but for me nothing trumps Slow Real time in depth, which is something CA has never really done and is steering away from with each title. I blamed the tactical map that does not encourage few decisive battle at first, but it's obvious we're also dealing with a generation of gamer that do not want to sit though an hour long battle and is unwilling to think deeper than fast paced out witting.

They steered away from a beloved formula in medieval 1 and went in a direction that they have barely modified since Rome 1 how is that proof of anything.

 

I watched one of the recent videos and... it looked terrible. All these years and they still haven't fixed the way units clash? They're fighting, but in the most uninspiring manner possible. When you see the cavalry charge up and suddenly stop on impact, or the people shuffle aimlessly until it's their turn to strike, it totally dispels any sense of gravity or danger.

The videos did nothing but prove that the people behind total war just aren't up to the task anymore. Stick a fork in them, they're done.

 

Actually, the real time combat is the point of the whole franchise. That's how it's been in Medieval and Shogun.
It took a turn for the worse in Rome, but was still tolerable (even though the AI didn't really have a clue on how to navigate the 3d map), and they really began filling the campaign with pointless micro in Medieval 2 (all these fucking daughters, priests, merchants and guilds).
It's a sad fact that CA lost their shit and instead of making battles fucking flawless like they should, they essentially split the game into two components that compete for player's attention.
As a result, more and more guys just autocalc 90% of the battles. Hey, I guess that's telling when peeps just click away the fucking selling point of the game.

I'd actually say that it's pretty to come looking for a decent map painting experience in Total War. Paradox titles are so much better in this regard, to the point of being the polar opposite of TW.

 

The first Rome was great at the charge things, dudes would get awesome air time when hit by cavalry

 

Well as much as i like RTS part of the game, I, too, autocalc about half my battles simply because they are way too frequent and half the time aren't important or actually dangerous for the player.

 

One of the things I really missed from the 2d map TW's(S1TW and M1TW) was the fact that most battles were semi-important to decisive.

 

Yes, the gameplay is actually fun.