New Total War game: Warhammer

[varangos]

I would be butthurt like you if I had spent 50 bucks on a shit game.

But that's what happens when you allow GG shitposters to roam the forums freely.

 

[Mark Richard]

having a shitty pc does not help

being your first total war game makes you think its a good game lol.

Perfection. If I don’t like the game, I need to git gud at hardware. If I do like the game, I've never played a Total War game in my life.

 

[Spectacle]

Have you tried to limit framerate? Games might be confused by your high refresh rate monitor. BTW Shogun 2 low performance can be remedied by switching into DX9 mode, and not many fucks are given. Graphics is nearly same.

V-sync isn't really compatible with G-Sync, and as far as I know, there's otherwise no way to limit framerate without an in-game (or at least config file) option. Maybe one of those open-source advanced GPU settings programs would allow it, dunno.

You can use NVIDIA Inspector to set an FPS cap in the driver on a per-program basis. In some games this is essential, for example in Skyrim physics can go crazy if the FPS is higher than 60, since Bethesda for some reason decided to reuse the frame timer for physics calculations.

 

[Blaine]

I might try that, although as a rule I'm reluctant to tweak advanced settings unless absolutely necessary (lest I alter some global variable that ends up wreaking all sorts of havoc), and also I vaguely recall frame limiting doesn't always "stick" even with third-party tools, depending upon the game.

Performance is quite acceptable; it only goes to Hell during siege battles, but by "goes to Hell" I mostly mean "I've been spoiled by 100+Hz G-Sync."

Changing tack, I dropped Vamps and switched to Dwarfs. I don't think the Vamps really suit my playstyle, at least not until I'm more experienced with the game. There's just something about them... the cannon fodder feel a bit too fodder-y, while the basic advanced units like bats and dire wolves don't feel effective enough, given their roles. I won many a battle, and Von Carstein'ing the enemy commanders for easy routs is a massive boon, but the attrition rate of the undead meatshields irks me.

Also, when playing the first dozen or so turns and fighting the introductory "rival vampire" NPCs, there's a ludicrously early rush to field advanced units as soon as possible, by about turn six or seven; and the lack of ranged weapons is obnoxious for sieges or assaults of any kind.

I expected the Dwarfs to be annoying to use during castle sieges, but in fact, it's just the opposite. Early game at least, you don't even need to bother with siege equipment. The little shits are slow (God, are they slow), but massed quarrelers and grudge throwers put immense pressure on the wall defenses, allowing some units to climb somewhat safely with just ladders; and a couple units of miners get the gates down in no time so your leader and infantry can flood in. I've won two or three sieges quite handily despite making numerous mistakes, for example forgetting that two units of dwarf warriors even existed in the deployment zone until after I'd gotten the gates down. Once my ranged units move up, I assume they're the back line. Gotta check the tactical view more often.

I'm on turn 32 with Dwarfs currently, have captured many Greenskin settlements, almost have two provinces locked down (and some misc. settlements), allied with all the other dwarfs, global strength rank 2. Some Greenskins moved halfway across the globe to sack one of my settlements, I retook it with my second army, and then fucking Von Carstein immediately appeared and pressed a second attack on said settlement, maybe 1-2 turns later. I fended him off just barely, then ordered the second army out of the settlement to finish him off. That'll show him.

 

[XenomorphII]

So here's a question for those playing, is there an actual end state for the chaos invasions? Playing as Carstein now, and they just keep coming. I win when I can engage, but their armies just avoid me while occasionally raiding/razing areas. Or is there some trick to pinning down an army that I'm missing?

 

[Blaine]

So here's a question for those playing, is there an actual end state for the chaos invasions? Playing as Carstein now, and they just keep coming. I win when I can engage, but their armies just avoid me while occasionally raiding/razing areas. Or is there some trick to pinning down an army that I'm missing?

Well, you're further along than I am, so I'm just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks here, but I'd say that if they're faster than you and you can't catch them to finish them off, it's going to be difficult to wipe them out. Even if you do, perhaps the CAI will spawn more. The victory conditions I've seen typically include pushing Chaos back into the Chaos Wastes, which suggests it may not be possible to wipe them out.

You might try military alliances if you can't catch retreating armies, and hope an ally will decide to pop out and finish them off.

 

[XenomorphII]

Update: Apparently once the Everchosen is killed in battle, then their armies stop spawning and you can wipe out the Chaos Warriors faction but taking out the remaining stacks. Norsca keep coming though.

 

[Blaine]

Playing Dwarfs in a nutshell:

 

[Havoc]

SKAVEN TECHNO LAZERS!

There's episode two.

 

[Blaine]

Fuck, no wonder Dwarfs hate Greenskins. The little shits sit .000001 of a micrometer out of attack range and just raid; if you move your army from a settlement that's not quite well enough defended in order to attack them, they'll use their 500-mile movement range to launch an assault.

Fortunately, I can be a huge faggot too and move my army just far enough to keep them away from most of the province, but close enough that they can't get to the settlement.

All in all, it's good that the AI's doing this rather than being utterly retarded, and if Greenskins couldn't outrange Dwarfs, they'd be underpowered cannon fodder.

 

[kris]

All in all, it's good that the AI's doing this rather than being utterly retarded, and if Greenskins couldn't outrange Dwarfs, they'd be underpowered cannon fodder.

But that is mostly because the AI cant build an army.

 

[Blaine]

Yeah, well, no kidding. They AI loves to send small, shitty, attritioned armies everywhere. There are still doomstacks, but sometimes they have too many low-level units or bad balance.

I can't help but feel that CA ought to use some "flexible interventive scripting," scripts that run every few turns, perform checks on AI armies, and then upgrade/merge/recruit/disband as needed according to a table assembled by a human... but that probably would mean not firing their senior programmers every two years in order to furnish the CEO of Focus with a larger yacht.

 

[Lone Wolf]

On the other hand, the last Top Knotz army I fought was all Savage Big Uns, Savage Big Uns Boar Boyz (these guys can really hurt - even Longbeards get all they can handle) and Boar Boyz.

We traded casualties at 1.5:1, which is no good for the Dwarves. Luckily, stomped out the Greenskins before they could bring Giants into the fray.

And be careful with the Greenskins; their special ability is a real headache when it comes into play. You let them get on a roll, and you'll find two doomstacks to deal with, instead of one. And if Ironhide is combat oriented... No bueno.

More generally, I've seen very few 1-5 unit armies running around. The smallest tends to be 7+, which makes the battles more meaningful and decisive. That was a good design decision.

I'm at 80 turns with the Dwarves, and Chaos is starting to make itself felt. Been seeing their agents roaming the landscape. Luckily, the stout folk have decent technological/hero options for dealing with Corruption. Don't leave it unchecked, by the way. Even at 8-9% Corruption, that's already a -2 to Public Order.

 

[Inf0mercial]

So is this worth buying even if it endorses CA's new terrible fucking dlc practices? I have been watching some vids but it's hard to get a good idea when the people I am watching keep making retrarded decisions, one guy I watched seemed to not realise that light cavalry is meant to be pulled out after the initial charge and simply let them get stuck in with heavy infantry units.

He also kept charging the single ranged unit in the back that his arty was hitting and ignoring his goblins getting mulched by orkz when with a few back charges he could have broken then and freed up a unit.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Blaine]

On the other hand, the last Top Knotz army I fought was all Savage Big Uns, Savage Big Uns Boar Boyz (these guys can really hurt - even Longbeards get all they can handle) and Boar Boyz.

We traded casualties at 1.5:1, which is no good for the Dwarves. Luckily, stomped out the Greenskins before they could bring Giants into the fray.

And be careful with the Greenskins; their special ability is a real headache when it comes into play. You let them get on a roll, and you'll find two doomstacks to deal with, instead of one. And if Ironhide is combat oriented... No bueno.

More generally, I've seen very few 1-5 unit armies running around. The smallest tends to be 7+, which makes the battles more meaningful and decisive. That was a good design decision.

I'm at 80 turns with the Dwarves, and Chaos is starting to make itself felt. Been seeing their agents roaming the landscape. Luckily, the stout folk have decent technological/hero options for dealing with Corruption. Don't leave it unchecked, by the way. Even at 8-9% Corruption, that's already a -2 to Public Order.

I just made a Dwarfen confederation, and public order shit the bed. No surprise there, but managing it is a pain in the ass. -5 from "events"... gotta love that detailed information. Managing public order can be fairly obnoxious, since your options are so limited. I'd wanted to mount a siege, but I may just pull back, park my armies, and wait.

The book fills up with grudges; meanwhile, the targets refuse to fight and only run away. As they should, and to be fair I know the Greenskins are hurting pretty badly, but it's literally impossible to catch them, except possibly in a large garrison that one doomstack isn't strong enough to defeat. An ambush is technically possible, will probably try it at some point, but it involves an army possibly sitting around doing jack shit for who knows how many turns.

So is this worth buying even if it endorses CA's new terrible fucking dlc practices? I have been watching some vids but it's hard to get a good idea when the people I am watching keep making retrarded decisions, one guy I watched seemed to not realise that light cavalry is meant to be pulled out after the initial charge and simply let them get stuck in with heavy infantry units.

He also kept charging the single ranged unit in the back that his arty was hitting and ignoring his goblins getting mulched by orkz when with a few back charges he could have broken then and freed up a unit.

What, you want someone to talk you into it? The AI is at least as good as in any other Total War, and probably better (though, far from perfect). The game's not half-empty awaiting DLC like Stellaris was, either. You should be able to get tons of playtime out of it, even if you ignore all the upcoming DLC, which I don't doubt there'll be plenty of.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Have you been using March stance? It extends your army's movement quite a bit. It can also help to get the +10% Campaign Move upgrade on your lords. If the Greenskins avoid fighting too long, though, you'll have nothing to worry about, because once their Fightiness sinks they actually get massive attrition, and, eventually... disappear.

Managing public order can be fairly obnoxious, since your options are so limited.

Dwarves have a decent Public Order chain for your provincial capital (or, at least, that's where I'd put it). At Lvl 5 I think it gives 9-10 Public Order.

Also, they have a whole tech chain specifically for Public Order.

I get the sense that it's easier to manage than with other factions, as 'loyalty' is advertised as one of the Dwarf factions' biggest strengths - that is to say, rock-solid domestic stability.

 

[Blaine]

I've avoided using it, since it has annoying maluses, like starting battle "winded"... then again, come to think of it, it shouldn't matter with these flea-bitten attritioned groups of homeless Greenskins. I usually use Underway stance, because it extends movement (presumably by eliminating the penalties associated with snowy passes, etc.) and avoids environmental attrition, and Greenskin interceptions obviously aren't an issue. I definitely do need to grab the +10% campaign movement, though. It's minor, but I guess with Dwarfs every little bit helps.

There's this one particular settlement with shitty PO, and I'd had it under control enough that I had 25 turns before a rebellion, but confederating reduced that to five turns. Looks like I'm going to have to put down a rebellion, since that settlement is basically as far as possible from my frontlines where my armies are. That, or I'll have to cut taxes (to 0, thanks CA for the lack of a slider) and deal with five cents per turn for a while.

 

[Blaine]

The March stance doesn't matter at all, since I can't initiate combat when in March stance. It's useful only for covering extra ground. +10% Campaign Move doesn't do anything, either, because the CAI simply places Greenskin raiding parties an additional 2mm outside of my radius. That's bullshit in and of itself, a blatant cheat by the computer, because the player can't see enemies' movement radius through any means I've been able to discover.

If you're playing Dwarfs, you're not allowed to catch Greenskins that don't want to be caught, through any means. They made sure of it.

It's a game of musical chairs. They have three or four pissant armies, and they cat-and-mouse away from my attackers, never letting themselves get hemmed in, but shitting on my public order, not only through raiding but by denying me the completion of grudges.

Well, message received. I'm going to send three doomstacks I can't afford crashing through the last of these faggots' territories, razing their shitholes to the ground as I go, because if I occupy them, they'll fucking start raiding those too. They won't be able to fag around all three doomstacks, nor do anything about me crushing their settlements.

 

[mutonizer]

Restarted my Empire run as well, got overwhelmed by Chaos while I was trying to solve the Vampire problems. Had no idea wtf I was doing anyway but second run is even more interesting now that I know more. Haven't tried other factions but I gotta say, uniting the human factions somehow is very entertaining and feels heroic fantasy in itself. Push too much and you get ganged upon by everyone around, don't push enough and you're locked into a stand still while everyone else pushes around and you won't be ready for End Times.
Another thing, while I miss the village battles, the town sieges are pretty good now. The fixes they put in, with wider walls, wider streets and whatnot remove most pathing issues without ruining the look'n feel too much. Once again, not having to be "historical" seems to have freed them into doing something that just works instead. And once again, flying units completely screws up the old battlefields, and heroes are insane.

Sad to see some have performance issue, having a blast personally (though I installed a camera and hero unit resize mod).

EDIT:

The March stance doesn't matter at all, since I can't initiate combat when in March stance. It's useful only for covering extra ground. +10% Campaign Move doesn't do anything, either, because the CAI simply places Greenskin raiding parties an additional 2mm outside of my radius. That's bullshit in and of itself, a blatant cheat by the computer, because the player can't see enemies' movement radius through any means I've been able to discover.

Haven't tripled checked but pretty sure you can click on enemy troops to see their movement radius (red hue). Otherwise, use agents to stop them and ambush stance to trick them into coming to you.

 

[Blaine]

Yeah, I finally noticed their movement range, it's just so huge that it blends in with the fucking political borders. Doesn't matter, the Greenskins are going extinct. Meanwhile, the vampires chose the perfect time to attack and may be able to take one of my fortified settlements... I had half an army in there with garrisons, but I needed a few more units to have a decent chance and they didn't quite make it in time.

That's all right. Even if they take the settlement, I have three armies on the way (very slowly, stop being fat you fuckers) to bulldoze through that pass and then wipe their territories off the map. I presume the humans are going to get mad at that point, and Chaos will smash into the fray, and at that point I'm just going to sit back and hope for the best.

When I created another confederacy, I was awarded a Dwarf army. I decided to merge it with an existing army and boot the commander and a couple excess units. When I got them in range to merge them, some asshole agent assassinated the lord of the new army, so I had to pick a new one. I picked Ironfist, the other Legendary Lord of the Dwarfs.

Merged the armies, tried to disband level 1 shit-tier Ironfist and some throwaway units, received a message: "You can't disband a Legendary Lord." So, goodbye, a nice little chunk of my income that's going to fuck me out of a few upgrades, and thanks CA. I don't think you're allowed to double up on lords in one army, but I plan to try next turn.

 

[Blaine]

All that effort spent marching armies toward the besieged city, but it turns out I didn't need them. The Vamps decided they had enough siege equipment built and assaulted the walls, but not before offering a peace treaty (wat?). Unfortunately for them, they sent Van Carstein into my territory to raid a few turns before, and he got his ass kicked, so once he rejoined the siege his reinforcements were shit.

Did it manually, my first siege defense, fully expecting to lose to the massive flying unit spam and so on.

 

[Vibalist]

A guy wrote the following in a Steam review:

There is some sort of opaque weight of numbers stuff in the coding that prevents a smaller force from winning, ever. period. A smaller army incurs debuffs that stack in accordance to the size difference, preventing you from winning any battles that involve you having more than a couple units less than the enemy.

Is this actually true?

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

All that effort spent marching armies toward the besieged city, but it turns out I didn't need them. The Vamps decided they had enough siege equipment built and assaulted the walls, but not before offering a peace treaty (wat?). Unfortunately for them, they sent Van Carstein into my territory to raid a few turns before, and he got his ass kicked, so once he rejoined the siege his reinforcements were shit.

Did it manually, my first siege defense, fully expecting to lose to the massive flying unit spam and so on.

Dorfs are legit baby-tier. Incredibly easy to defend with.

 

[kris]

And be careful with the Greenskins; their special ability is a real headache when it comes into play. You let them get on a roll, and you'll find two doomstacks to deal with, instead of one. And if Ironhide is combat oriented... No bueno.

Imagine then when you meet this double army within the first 20 turns like I did. It will waste my army, but i plan to continue anyway.

A guy wrote the following in a Steam review:

There is some sort of opaque weight of numbers stuff in the coding that prevents a smaller force from winning, ever. period. A smaller army incurs debuffs that stack in accordance to the size difference, preventing you from winning any battles that involve you having more than a couple units less than the enemy.

Is this actually true?

Interesting. that makes sense for at least one battle i had were i wanted to hurt Grimgors army a bit with a garrison. it just fell apart.

But would that mean you are doomed against a double stack?

 

[Blaine]

Dorfs are legit baby-tier. Incredibly easy to defend with.

And also to lay siege with. I cranked the difficulty to hard, but it doesn't seem to make a huge difference other than somewhat higher casualties compared to normal, which makes Dwarfs even slower on balance because they sit around inhaling donuts longer.

The trouble is in the field, e.g. never being able to catch up to anything; also, when you get a lot of territory and have to haul those donut-stuffed asses more than five feet in any given direction. I'm unfortunately fighting a war on two fronts right now, because I made yet another confederation and realized that the last couple of Greenskin settlements down south were apparently doing fairly well. They're WAAAAGH!ing over several of my settlements right now, and it remains to be seen if I can fatroll enough firepower down there before it gets too out of hand.

If I can settle the score down south, I'll most likely have won the game. I'll probably do Chaos next.

Slowness is the Dwarfs' only weakness other than lack of cavalry (just add more ranged units, no problem), so it's for the best, but man... it's an obnoxious weakness.