Warhammer Total War: Warhammer 2

[Average Manatee]

Single model units only scale their health with unit size and become increasingly overpowered the lower unit size you use.
Any large unit that knocks down units becomes stronger against infantry at lower unit sizes since not enough troops exist to slow them down.
Magic totally doesn't scale at all and spells are very overpowered at smaller sizes, often taking down lords in a few direct damage spells, AoE spells wiping out half an army, and heal spells healing way percentage wise than they should.
Ranged units get stronger at large unit size since they can mass more firepower in a confined area against melee units that have a lot of reserve troops in the back not doing anything but catching arrows.

I'd say the largest unit size is the best balanced but this does make normal cavalry weaker than it would be on, say, medium size. Cavalry ends up needing to run further around the enemy lines to flank, gets stuck in every enemy unit, and doesn't get great charges off since 2/3rds of the cavalry is in the 2nd and 3rd row not really hitting anything. But if you go to lower unit sizes then chariots and the big monsters or strong lords just pulverize infantry.

 

[copebot]

Ultra because it's cooler. Large and lower is a little different because it becomes more viable to snipe lords / heroes and for all the other reasons mentioned.

Spells are the same no matter what the unit size is which has some odd effects. For example, non single entity units keep the same health per model but just get more models, whereas single entities get more or less health. Spells that do damage per entity are then more powerful on larger unit scale but spells that just do damage to units get to be nearly useless on big unit scale. Spells that pierce formations or hit areas can have more damage potential with more units to hit. Overall the major balance differences don't start becoming noticeable until you get below Large size.

 

[Maculo]

Quick question - what is the optimal unit size in terms of gameplay? I keep seeing stuff like "CA balance the game based on the Large unit size" and I did see a comment from them confirming that, but it's from 2018 so I'm not sure how reliable that is anymore.

Ultra or large. Smaller unit sizes do not fair well against magic, which is already powerful as is.

 

[Mazisky]

There was an official statement from CA that they balance around large size.

Keep in mind that in a couple months with Warhammer 3 this will change because they will scale and balance all unit sizes, unlike Warhammer 2.

 

[Lacrymas]

So, the game is still balanced around the large unit size and not ultra. Does anyone have experience with both ultra and large? Which is better in terms of gameplay and balance?

 

[Parabalus]

For single-player take the one you find cooler and your rig can handle, the differences vs the AI are minor.

 

[Lacrymas]

I'm playing on normal difficulty with Tyrion as my first ever Total War game. I chose him because he's the blandest character and I wanted to learn the game first before playing with people I'm more excited about. I'm also playing on ultra unit size and archers feel ridiculously overpowered. I managed to take on a Count Noctilus army + a small reinforcement army pretty decisively

And this is without Tyrion at the helm. I also had the Sword of Khaine, so these armies wouldn't have stood a chance against Tyrion, but I digress. So yeah, that's why I'm asking about unit size, archers feel ridiculous. Spearmen feel useless. I don't have any of the DLC, but as far as I know Sisters of Avelorn are even more grotesque.

 

[Parabalus]

Ranged spam sadly has no solution. If you bump the difficulty up from Normal it gets even more tilted towards ranged, since enemies get MA/MD buffs.

All ranged armies are a very common way to steamroll the AI.

 

[Lacrymas]

Great, I managed to cheese the game on my first ever try and that wasn't even my intention. Archers were overperforming in the tutorial battles and spearmen were lagging very far behind, so it was only natural for me to go archers. Hopefully, WH3 fixes this. I suppose there are mods to put limits on spamming the same unit?

 

[copebot]

Some factions cannot spam units (Tomb Kings, new Beastmen) because they have recruitment caps. There are mods that do it for every faction. It's probably the direction the series is moving in because people tend to prefer the unit cap solution. The most popular that isn't part of a bigger mod is probably Tabletop Unit Caps: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1456828999

There are ways to make melee 'work' in single player but overall ranged armies are more versatile and stronger. Multiplayer is just very different because players target their spells correctly, which makes it so that players have to use formations that counter that. The AI doesn't target spells well most of the time so it's not as important. Players are also better at juking ranged fire and avoiding it in general.

For melee armies you just have to have the attitude that it's for fun unless it's a hero doomstack or other single entity doomstack. For making armies in general you want to have something to hold / distract the enemy and something to kill. With enough killing power you don't really need something to hold as long as you're not outnumbered. For an actual melee army what I find works best is to use a faction that has good single entities, ideally that have area buffs, and to create a strong central formation that can just crack any enemy center very quickly, exploiting terror routing when possible. You mix the single entities in with the front line so that everything is a lot tankier, crack the AI, and then fan out to crack any of the remaining pockets and run down the routers. Way less viable on VH battle difficulty but still feasible. Area buff spells can actually be viable with this type of formation because a single spell can boost the weapon strength of like 8-12 units in one go rather than just a couple.

The AI tends to prefer very wide line formations, but wide formations are rarely good because of the way that the game works.

Balanced armies are, in general, bad. It almost always helps to have an army that is very good at a particular thing rather than one that's equal parts melee / ranged / cavalry / artillery.

 

[Jaedar]

And this is without Tyrion at the helm. I also had the Sword of Khaine, so these armies wouldn't have stood a chance against Tyrion, but I digress. So yeah, that's why I'm asking about unit size, archers feel ridiculous. Spearmen feel useless. I don't have any of the DLC, but as far as I know Sisters of Avelorn are even more grotesque.

Melee units are sadly pretty bad. Single entity melee (like tyrion or dragons) are good, especially with healing. Cavalry and elite melee infantry are sometimes good, but mostly not. Stuff like spearmen are basically just meatshields. Of course as high elves you get lothern sea guard which make the archers look like skavenslaves.

 

[Lacrymas]

I'll probably use that mod for the next campaign. I see that core units are unlimited, though, but I don't know what units count as core. Tier 1 archers should probably count as that? It doesn't fix the high elves then.

 

[copebot]

I'll probably use that mod for the next campaign. I see that core units are unlimited, though, but I don't know what units count as core. Tier 1 archers should probably count as that? It doesn't fix the high elves then.

The bigger issue with the TT caps is that heroes, lords, and especially wizards become much more powerful because of their abilities, levels and equipment. A high level wizard with a good spell school and a fast mount can chew threw 1-2 stacks of low tier infantry easily. It's not lore friendly necessarily to have doomstacks of heavily armored units and dragons all over the place but at least those don't disappear in a puff of Burning Head.

 

[Raghar]

Great, I managed to cheese the game on my first ever try and that wasn't even my intention. Archers were overperforming in the tutorial battles and spearmen were lagging very far behind, so it was only natural for me to go archers. Hopefully, WH3 fixes this. I suppose there are mods to put limits on spamming the same unit?

You can play vampires. Enjoy your melee armies TM, and flying monsters.

 

[Lacrymas]

I'm thinking of going High Elves -> Repanse -> Lizard people -> the new dwarf lord -> Skaven -> Dark Elves. On the Eye of the Maelstrom campaign that is. Then I'll move onto Mortal Empires and try the vampires. I have 0 DLC and I'm not planning on buying some any time soon, the only one I'm actually interested in is the Tomb Kings anyway. We'll see how WH3 turns out.

 

[Average Manatee]

I'm playing on normal difficulty with Tyrion as my first ever Total War game. I chose him because he's the blandest character and I wanted to learn the game first before playing with people I'm more excited about. I'm also playing on ultra unit size and archers feel ridiculously overpowered. I managed to take on a Count Noctilus army + a small reinforcement army pretty decisively

And this is without Tyrion at the helm. I also had the Sword of Khaine, so these armies wouldn't have stood a chance against Tyrion, but I digress. So yeah, that's why I'm asking about unit size, archers feel ridiculous. Spearmen feel useless. I don't have any of the DLC, but as far as I know Sisters of Avelorn are even more grotesque.

Melee is fine on normal difficulty. In fact it can get kind of overpowered, with high tier and high level units that have good buffs you can beat the AI by rolling your head on the keyboard for 5 mins. It actually gets pretty degenerate as you need far less strategy than even ranged spam. It's only on VH that melee starts to suck 80% of the time. Your spearmen performing poorly is because they are spearmen, they aren't meant to kill anything since they are bottom tier units that just hold the line.

Also keep in mind that your archers were firing at low quality, slow, entirely unarmored and unshielded enemies. i.e. the units they are supposed to hard counter. The game can be kind of deceptive with a stack like that since you'll steamroll every AI army for 30-50 turns until you run into an enemy legendary lord with mid to top tier units who completely wipes you.

 

[Jaedar]

A high level wizard with a good spell school and a fast mount can chew threw 1-2 stacks of low tier infantry easily.

A high level wizard with a good spell school can chew through 10-20 stacks of just about any infantry.

 

[Maculo]

I don’t know if this is new, but the modder behind Closer to Tabletop may not bring it over to game 3, which sucks. I glanced through the FAQ /google doc and noticed a new paragraph where he discusses it.

 

[A horse of course]

Well, it's pretty crazy to spend most of your free time trying to "correct" a game with a completely different design philosophy. Which you have to update every time new content is added. And those updates change the way existing mechanics work. And every time the game is patched it breaks the mod.

 

[Maculo]

I commend the modder for the hours his team poured into it. I was just excited to see CTT for the Daemon armies and extended map.

 

[Fedora Master]

Modders are scum and the big overhaul mods have long since turned into bloated garbage.

 

[Lacrymas]

No modders have actually tried to tackle the biggest issues without bloat - range superiority, sieges, and dumb Mortal Empires goals for most factions. There is actually a mod that addresses the last issue, but some factions got shafted more than others (Chaos Warriors). I know they are technically a horde faction on a campaign to destroy the world, but I'd wager people like Archaon and Sigvald would have more precise goals than "destroy 50 provinces/settlements".

 

[Maculo]

No modders have actually tried to tackle the biggest issues without bloat - range superiority, sieges, and dumb Mortal Empires goals for most factions. There is actually a mod that addresses the last issue, but some factions got shafted more than others (Chaos Warriors). I know they are technically a horde faction on a campaign to destroy the world, but I'd wager people like Archaon and Sigvald would have more precise goals than "destroy 50 provinces/settlements".

I would argue that CTT tackles range superiority by reducing ranged accuracy. Furthermore, the CTT unit caps helps too (no automatic doom stacks of 19 Sisters of Avelorn).

Sieges are a whole different ball game. I hope game 3 adequately addresses it.

 

[thesheeep]

No modders have actually tried to tackle the biggest issues without bloat - range superiority, sieges, and dumb Mortal Empires goals for most factions.

That's a bit unfair.
Warhammer 2 just isn't THAT moddable, some things are too ingrained in the core game that cannot just be "mods will fix it".

I honestly think the mods went about as far as they could, considering that they can't really do much coding and instead just have work within databases/value tables for the most part.
More units/factions? Sure.
Different AI behavior/siege mechanics/other things wrong with the game? No can do.

Something like Grimhammer and what it did, e.g. with the Norsca campaigns is pretty much as good as it gets.

Sieges are a whole different ball game. I hope game 3 adequately addresses it.

Improve it? Oh, I sure hope so.
Adequately address it? That's about as likely as the game releasing in great condition with no major bugs.

 

[Maculo]

That’s why I prefaced it with “I hope” :D.

I am excited for game 3, but I am worried about CA being able to deliver on all those features. For example, the survival battle mode looks cool, but I could see it losing its novelty after a few campaigns similar to vortex. My hope is that CA will deliver a multiplayer version of that battle mode though.