New Total War game: Warhammer

[Blaine]

Also all factions have a base income of 2500. Tells you right in the game income panel. That's easily enough to pay maintenance on a full stack.

Yeah, and CA tells you right on their own blog that AI agents "follow the rules," but then someone went into the game files and discovered they were completely full of shit.

Full disclosure on exactly how the AI cheats, and how much, would be much appreciated.

 

[MoLAoS]

Also all factions have a base income of 2500. Tells you right in the game income panel. That's easily enough to pay maintenance on a full stack.

Yeah, and CA tells you right on their own blog that AI agents "follow the rules," but then someone went into the game files and discovered they were completely full of shit.

Full disclosure on exactly how the AI cheats, and how much, would be much appreciated.

Just wipe out every savage orc and greenskin in 55 turns. Barely broke a sweat. Was a massacre. I quit playing cause it was boring. Once you stack econ buildings on the ~10 provinces you have at that point its just a massacre for the rest of the game.

 

[kris]

I never should have tried expanding south before completely destroying the VCs. I easily could have; earlier on I was running roughshod over that whole patch of yellow, sacking as I went.

WTF are you talking about? You are dwarves. WTF are you doing fighting vampires? Your task is simple. Capture both regions in the province with Mount Gunbad to the north. Maybe confederate Zhubar. Later you'll confederate Karak Kadrin but not now. Potentially confederate Karak Varr.

I never been able to confederate anyone outside the one time I played in normal difficult.

 

[Cyberarmy]

I never been able to confederate anyone outside the one time I played in normal difficult.

Haven't got any problems in very hard. Conederated all but one clans under my banner. It become very easy especially when chaos attacks or constantly battling urks.
1 clan gave me the middle finger because of my relations with the Empire, gave them 100.000+ gold and made the necessary pacts to finish long campaign.

 

[Galdred]

Regarding AI armies, on second thoughts, I don't think it is that bad:
- the AI gets massive economic bonus on higher difficulties
- the limiting factor for armies is upkeep, not recruitment cost, so AI will mostly stick to a given upkeep limit, and once a stack is full, it will need a lot more incentive to get another lord (with the upkeep penalty incurred)

So when an AI army is destroyed, it may have a lot of available treasury. Even for the player, rebuilding does not take a long time and/or money (with chaos, I used to merge/recruit instead of wait for reinforcements, so recruitment costs and times were a non factor for me too).
Which means that killing an AI army is only useful to give you some breathing time, or if you chain it by taking one or several settlements and/or sue for peace afterwards.
Note that the English probably felt the same after annihilating French doomstacks at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt only to lose the war in the end.

 

[Blaine]

Note that the English probably felt the same after annihilating French doomstacks at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt only to lose the war in the end.

In the ancient world, sieges were much, much more common than field battles. Field battles typically required both sides to agree to fight, since otherwise one side could simply time-and-a-half the other direction (something this game simulates exceedingly well).

Even field battles were, in most cases, fought in relation to an ongoing siege—an army attacking the besiegers of a city to relieve it from the siege, for example, or a second army allied with a besieging army intercepting an enemy army sent to relieve the city from siege.

In general, sieges were safer not only for the besiegers, but also for the besieged. The majority of sieges ended in victory for the besieging army, and generally speaking, besieged cities capitulated long before they had to start eating the pet cats.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Hope we'll either get a decent patch or mods will fix the worst of it. I'm pretty sure I already saw a mod that eliminated AI bonuses.

Yes, that's what I'm waiting for. There already is a No AI Cheat mod, but it's early days and I know it must still be crude. Hopefully, a patch or three from now and with some more nuanced modding, it will be made tolerable.

There is this mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=693495451
"This mod disables any cheat on any difficulty that the AI gets but not the player".

 

[Blaine]

Maybe I'll just have to live with cheats after all, according to commenters the AI because pitiful and incredibly shitty when it has to follow the same rules you do (again, not too surprising if you're winning most/all of the battles).

I knew I should have stuck to board wargames. Only trouble is, the number of people who enjoy playing board wargames on a regular basis could fit on the head of a pin.

 

[MoLAoS]

So the power estimator is dumb as fuck. I had a hippogryph using lord and 19 units of pegasus knights using a Bretonnia faction mod and it gave me like 5% of the bar. I manually fought the battle and won in 2 minutes with a whopping 7 casualties by just flying over the wall and charging the city center and then using repeated charges to break morale of any unit that came at me. It was a massacre. Stupid battle AI power estimator...

 

[rashiakas]

You use a mod to unlock a faction that isn't playable in the main game and blame the game when it doesn't calculate correctly? Rethink who is stupid here.

 

[MoLAoS]

You use a mod to unlock a faction that isn't playable in the main game and blame the game when it doesn't calculate correctly? Rethink who is stupid here.

That's totally irrelevant... Flying units are available to other factions in the base game. The estimator should be able to understand how a flying unit strategy works.

 

[Beastro]

WTF are you talking about? You are dwarves. WTF are you doing fighting vampires? Your task is simple. Capture both regions in the province with Mount Gunbad to the north. Maybe confederate Zhubar. Later you'll confederate Karak Kadrin but not now. Potentially confederate Karak Varr. Meanwhile....

Not liking this feeling of railroading I get reading this thread.

The charm of previous TW games was the freedom to concentrate in any direction you wanted and completely ignore the campaign goals the game sets.

Is that still possible or does the game punish you from this?

 

[Blaine]

It's possible, he's just being an opinionated tit.

If not being able to claim any settlement bothers you, there's a simple mod for it.

 

[MoLAoS]

WTF are you talking about? You are dwarves. WTF are you doing fighting vampires? Your task is simple. Capture both regions in the province with Mount Gunbad to the north. Maybe confederate Zhubar. Later you'll confederate Karak Kadrin but not now. Potentially confederate Karak Varr. Meanwhile....

Not liking this feeling of railroading I get reading this thread.

The charm of previous TW games was the freedom to concentrate in any direction you wanted and completely ignore the campaign goals the game sets.

Is that still possible or does the game punish you from this?

Blaine is a moron. In the vanilla game its pointless to fight vampires as dwarves. You can't settle their land and they have a unique ability that makes raiding their settlements for money a bad choice. Even if you wipe them out it just means humans will settle their land and become a problem. Meanwhile the greenskins are boiling over with hatred of you and they can't settle border prince towns and the AI doesn't like to cross the Black Gulf. The specific faction called the Greenskins will likely confederate the other greenskin tribes and then shove north for you lands. They will probably waaaagh!!! too for bonus stacks. Also Chaos comes from the north and due to the AI bonuses and the base faction income its better to let the far north orcs and the nothern dwarves hold down chaos while you clear the south. Since orcs dwarves and humans can't settle each others lands southern provinces are extremely valuable for both factions to max out income buildings on while having army buildings only in the northern lands. Once you clean up the greenskins and savage orcs there is an effectively 0% chance that you will get attacked in the south so you need to focus your military power up north to stop chaos. The same is true for the Empire and the Bretonnian and Southern realms. Max them all out on income buildings and only have one or two military focused provinces in the north. Also the southern lands have more settlements per province and a higher number of ports and economy buildings in general so they are even more suited for econ maxing than just their safe location. Now, the Bretonnians and the Southern Realms are not as focused on murdering the Empire as the greenskins are with the dwarves but since the nothern chaos tribes spend most of their time in the northern empire lands compared to the world rim mountains you are even more shoved towards expanding south and ignoring the northern empire provinces to allow them to hold off by the chaos tribes and the vampire counts. There is literally no reason to expand north.

 

[Blaine]

Yeah, I'd much rather have Vampire Counts raiding my shit constantly than, say, razing Sylvania to the ground and wiping them out after farming it for money, meanwhile the aforementioned unique ability barely helps them at all compared to the huge hidden bonuses the AI already receives.

Ignore this idiot, there ARE choices to be made, even if they aren't optimal ones.

He's right about expanding north though, no one should do that (past the obvious demarcator).

 

[Beastro]

You can't settle their land

Wtf not?

What if you get sick of fucking Orcs and want to see if you could pull off a Dwarf invasion of Germany the Empire?

Sounds like an extension of the retarded campaign goals of previous TW games, only you're actively prevented and punished for acting in a way the game doesn't want you to?

I'm even happier I gave up this series after ETW.

 

[Blaine]

It's part of Warhammer lore, but as I mentioned, if you dislike the feature it can easily be modded out.

Not that I'm trying to push you to get the game, it's very much a mixed bag at the moment, at least for me given the shit I've already outlined.

 

[MoLAoS]

Yeah, I'd much rather have Vampire Counts raiding my shit constantly than, say, razing Sylvania to the ground and wiping them out after farming it for money, meanwhile the aforementioned unique ability barely helps them at all compared to the huge hidden bonuses the AI already receives.

Ignore this idiot, there ARE choices to be made, even if they aren't optimal ones.

He's right about expanding north though, no one should do that (past the obvious demarcator).

Vampire counts rarely raid and if they do its no biggy, and I've never actually been war decced by them. Besides, its a horrible decision money wise to be raiding or sacking their cities vs conquering greenskin and savage orc lands and making econ buildings. Also its not very efficient to have stacks of troops up their fighting off vampires when you could have troops down killing your real enemies who meanwhile are pretty focused on fucking you up.

 

[Harpsichord]

I knew I should have stuck to board wargames. Only trouble is, the number of people who enjoy playing board wargames on a regular basis could fit on the head of a pin.

Uh, why on earth would you go into a TW game expecting a 'wargame?' There are countless serious business wargames out there for the computer.

 

[Blaine]

Uh, why on earth would you go into a TW game expecting a 'wargame?' There are countless serious business wargames out there for the computer.

Why does anyone play TW games? So I can see the units actually do shit other than look like squares of green cardboard with red circles and little numbers printed on them, as well as make discrete tactical decisions on the battlefield, rather than simply moving 2-6 cardboard squares into/around a hex and rolling some dice.

 

[Galdred]

You can't settle their land

Wtf not?

What if you get sick of fucking Orcs and want to see if you could pull off a Dwarf invasion of Germany the Empire?

Sounds like an extension of the retarded campaign goals of previous TW games, only you're actively prevented and punished for acting in a way the game doesn't want you to?

I'm even happier I gave up this series after ETW.

Just burn all their cities to the ground, then!

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

24h into the game, I'm already bored and worn out. Only Chaos is fun to play due to unit composition and gameplay style. Orks too as I like them.

Vampire Counts snowball fast as fuck, it's always gg with them, Empire is fun only if you invade brettonia, dwarves are even more ez mode than vampires and never really liked them to begin with.

Same problems with every previous TW game. Hope they put in Skaven and the edgy elves so I can play as the jews and malus darkblade. Until then, not bothering with this game again.

5/10

 

[Galdred]

24h into the game, I'm already bored and worn out. Only Chaos is fun to play due to unit composition and gameplay style. Orks too as I like them.

Vampire Counts snowball fast as fuck, it's always gg with them, Empire is fun only if you invade brettonia, dwarves are even more ez mode than vampires and never really liked them to begin with.

Same problems with every previous TW game. Hope they put in Skaven and the edgy elves so I can play as the jews and malus darkblade. Until then, not bothering with this game again.

5/10

It won't happen before quite q long time I think, as skaven would require underground to work better, and dark elves are in another part of the world.
It looks like we'll get Beastmen and Wood elves first:
https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/178162/dlc-unearthed

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

24h into the game, I'm already bored and worn out. Only Chaos is fun to play due to unit composition and gameplay style. Orks too as I like them.

Vampire Counts snowball fast as fuck, it's always gg with them, Empire is fun only if you invade brettonia, dwarves are even more ez mode than vampires and never really liked them to begin with.

Same problems with every previous TW game. Hope they put in Skaven and the edgy elves so I can play as the jews and malus darkblade. Until then, not bothering with this game again.

5/10

It won't happen before quite q long time I think, as skaven would require underground to work better, and dark elves are in another part of the world.
It looks like we'll get Beastmen and Wood elves first:
https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/178162/dlc-unearthed

There was a map expansion thing already in the game files from what I remember reading. And skaven files are already in the game.

 

[A horse of course]

Beastmen and Wood Elves always made sense due to the fact that they both occupy already-existing parts of the map and are both forest-dwelling, which means they will obviously be nemeses for the regional occupation system (Dwarfs vs Orcs etc.). Dark/High Elves/Lizardmen mean a totally new map and probably naval battles. Tomb Kings and Ogre Kingdoms require extending the current map south and east.