The shilling in this thread.
I've never seen anything like that on the codex it's almost like you're getting paid. Thought we know better, fanboys can be this deluded.
Just pulled an all nighter at my bro's. Played chaos the entire night just to be sure I was fair when I trashed the game earlier. My last battle involved 40 units, very Epic. It also lasted exactly 7 mins. Oh well. I tried to immerse myself into the universe for my session, trying to follow the lore by first gathering the viking tribes then marching south with a massive host of vassals and personal hordes. It didn't work. And it's programmed not to work, even though it encourages you to try it.
-When I said the battle speed was in the same vein they followed since Empire it was an understatement. The battle speed is even faster. Damage is dealt extremely fast, generally whoever can make enough sense out of this mess to pull split second moskitos micromanagement will win. If your battle lasted more than 10 minutes it probably involved two full stacks of horse archers skirmishing each other.
Indeed, that is a good point, and my main problem with the game. Several mods remedy it, though:
Mostly
the proper combat mod
-Army composition in the north is a joke. Horse archers can make up to half the AIs stacks. Fighting horse archers as chaos is not hard, it's a slug, an unfunny one. And you will do that a lot. There is no other way to deal with it as chaos than outfirepowering it with even more horse archers. Unless you want to pause every 2 seconds to manage 10 different micro ambush while you slowly corral the scattered enemy horses into the invisible gamey wall of the maps. Which I had to do once.
Indeed, but there too, another mod solves the problem:
Better AI army composition
That or autoresolve, because fights between 2 stacks of ranged cavalry is a torture indeed.
-The quests and objectives are irrelevant. They add Sawyerian bonuses in most cases, they don't contribute to the immersion because there's no surrounding story, writing or even complexity to them. Just go to place and sometimes kill village. GRURRRR.
-The game designers are disciples of Sawyerity. 3% charge bonus. Boo yeah. They're almost all like that.
Indeed. I ignored most of the quests. But note that they make some sense with Chaos, though, as Chaos gods rewarding you for amusing them is in line with the lore.
-Immersion is only in the graphics and the intro. There's hardly any story to speak off. Little writing, no relevant progression. Just rape the lore and go south immediately. Empire can fall apart pretty fast when pressured by both chaos, vampires and greenskins and Kislev is a joke early on. I tried to be fairplay. 100 turns in and I still can't manage to unite Scandinavia into a reasonable amount of vassals. Because...
-...Because AI gets to generate a colossal host in any corner of the map they want. They are not impeded by economy, hero respawn times, nothing. They get to generate a hero, and if you let that corner of the map dark for 5 turns they'll come out with a full stacks. And you're limited to 2 armies if you want to be reasonably practical in the first 50 turns, then maybe a third one if you just want to ravage viking lands without trying to must one of those delicate vassal.
It's one thing to beat every single full stack the AI throws at you, it's another to be at 4 different corners of the map to prevent your vassals from getting gobbled by a single surprise stack from that one province the AI resettled back at the beginning.
How so? I managed to unite Norsca between 60 to 100 turns in both games.
You don't need to babysit your vassals that much, except Bear tribe, you can use the diplomacy screen to order them to attack a given settlements. That's how I left my vassals do most of the fighting in Norsca, and raze Kislev by themselves. I only kited the dwarves litteraly to death to make it possible, and softened the Skaeling a little.
But the objection about AI rebuilding its armies instantly is a very valid one, to the point it can be more beneficial to leave a crippled AI stack wander aimlessly in your backyard than to destroy it to have it instantly replaced by a new one.
But razing the settlements after crippling the army usually does it, though (or asking your vassals to do it).
-Battle AI is of course dumb, your challenge is just clicking on things fast enough to properly flank and surround the enemy on time. It's a fight with your mouse and keyboard more than anything. Also having to fly the camera to follow everything as units roll faster than a sports car. You can exploit the shit out of it if you have more horse archers.
It is not great, and handles some combos badly, but I have found it more competent than in the previous total wars.
The thing is, if you have more horse archers, and mounted mages than the AI, to the point that your total ranged firepower is better than the AI's, there is litteraly nothing it could do to win. So the only thing it could do would be to instantly surrender. ie it can be a problem with army composition (not selecting enough ranged units, or fast units), but I don't see how it is supposed to handle your having more horse archers. when they can kite any cavalry until it is dead.
Ranged cavalry devastating melee armies is kind of historically accurate, but they also are useless in sieges.
-Visibility is sub par. Did someone call it the most advanced UI in recent times?
It's very hard to distinguish allies from enemies or even your own units. Colors are not sharp, the surfaces on which they're printed are tiny, snow makes it even impossible to see the yellow lines on the floor.
We need standard bearers to be in the game!
-Some units just don't seem to be worth the cost. Dragon ogres, trolls, most monstrous units are terrible at tanking damage and don't deal it fast enough. So they're supposed to be used for flanking? Do we need more flanking units? A single charge of light cavalry in the flank or the back is enough to turn the tide of an engagement super fast (and break the moral of the enemy). Unless you're counting split seconds I don't get it. Single giant units are alright.
The chaos canon is a piece of shit. Pointless, it will end up doing more damage as you forgot to turn it off than it will do at the start of the engagement where it kills about half a unit before it reaches you. Not worth the cost. Haven't played a siege yet (no castles in the north) tho I don't have the feeling it damage walls, since its more like a slow energy ball.
Welcome to playing chaos, with its OKish infantry(well, Chaos Warriors are among the best infantry, but not really better than dwarves or Empire, and they have no ranged option, and a laughable cavalry to supplement it. Fortunately, it is not such a big deal in single player, but no one seems to pick chaos in MP).
Dragon Ogre Shoggoths suck a little less than Chaos Knights, so they make the bulk of your heavy cavalry for lack of better options.
Chosen are not cost effective at all, and their only use is to storm walls on siege towers.
The chaos cannon is bad, but as is most artillery currently. Its only use is to avoid your having to wait 2 turns to build siege equipment (you don't have the option to storm the walls immediately otherwise), if you have Dragon Ogre Shoggoth, or Giants to ram the door (Kholek Suneater can also ram the door by himself).
-Abilities are a joke. Is there a way to put them on automatic toggle? You're going to want to press these buttons as often as you can and just aim at the biggest pile of enemy or allies. Every spells does one of the same 3 shits. The difference is just fluff. Winds of magic are just random crap you don't notice. Who is going to plan ahead using that as a variable when the whole game is spent sweeping one stack of AI after the other.
Completely agreed on the abilities. Many would be better with an auto toggle (or activate whenever you charge someone if not in CD).
Regarding spells, it is not really true, you have:
Single target damage spells: very good for sniping generals
Single units damage spells: Fireball and fate of Brujna. Very mana effective
Vortex spells: Lol, so much skillpoints wasted for this
Area damage spells: same as vortex spells, but less random, so they are consistently horrible
buff/debuff spells(AoE or single unit): awesome and scale with unit sizes.
Some mobility/portal spells would be great indeed, as would be some spells to deny magic to your opponent, but there are more options than you male it sound. But many are downright horrible.
-Agent spam. It's as game breaking as people say it is. Starts slowly then becomes mathematically impossible to deal with.
It is ridiculous indeed, but with Chaos on Very Hard, it never got out of control in my campaigns, as I spent every occasion to level my own agents (I had 3 at level 30 when I finished, around turn 190), and culled most enemy agents.
It still remains an uninteresting element in the game, and I prefer the way it was handled in Shogun 1 and 2.
But several mods handle it pretty well IMO:
I use this one, now:
Less OP Agents - (VASTLY FEWER CHAIN SUCCESSES)
-It's also a pain in the ass to substantially devastate any region because your efforts will be invalidated by the turbo resettlement the AI can and will pull on every sides as you become surrounded by factions. You think you're done with one side? Too bad you have to spend 10 years to go back because some German baron just managed to resettle half the empire from his tiny village.
Just send your vassals deal with it! It is what they are for.
All of these issues are blatant, they should be so obvious even at the drawing board stage, let alone in beta. Some of these have been found in previous titles and reported on and on. I have to come to the conclusion that Creative Assembly developers have low native intelligence and poor work ethics. With their crappy 3D map they could at least look at HOMM or AOW for solutions to avoid the endless back and forth, cats and mice game, it is likely that it is beyond their neuronal capacity to do so.
I'm probably missing even more horrible shit. I'm trying to forget about this campaign I left in suspension after all my efforts were invalidated by a single viking stack while I was busy fighting Kislev + Empire with only 2 armies on hand.
I agree with a lot of your issues, but I think you are overstating some, and several are already fixed by modders.
That said, why are you doing fighting Kislev with Chaos? You will only help the Vampire Counts by razing them, and they are not part of your victory conditions. Just order some of your vassals to periodically raze the Northernmost settlements, and send everyone raze Bretonnia and the Empire!
Even though your vassals are dumb, they will eventually resettle all of their razed settlements.
You can also order them to go after specific armies on the diplomatic screen, so it helps fending of Kislev.