Warhammer Total War: Warhammer 2

[Fedora Master]

I just noticed... These are the people working at CA these days.

Spoiler

 

[GrainWetski]

Why do you think their first character is a female whale?

 

[Frusciante]

I just noticed... These are the people working at CA these days.

Spoiler

What is your point? Someone enjoying halloween is a problem now?

 

[thesheeep]

I just noticed... These are the people working at CA these days.

Spoiler

What is your point? Someone enjoying halloween is a problem now?

Everything is a problem now.

 

[Parabalus]

 

[thesheeep]

That shanty, though. Makes my toe nails curl in discomfort.

 

[Delterius]

That shanty, though. Makes my toe nails curl in discomfort.

Undead fear bonus.

 

[A horse of course]

I took a break of a few months from WH2 so as not to burn myself out for Curse of the Vampire Coast, came back and played an hour today and boy am I bored:

Same shitty graphics and disgusting jaggies (despite turning my computer into a fireball as my fans run into overdrive)
Vampire Coast models are clearly B-team animation work
Same boring Tier 1 units
Same AI cheating out the ass to level up all its units and settlements faster than possible plus buffs to replenishment and other under-the-hood stuff

I think I'm just really tired of Warhammer (and maybe the Total War formula) at this point.

edit: played another 20m and just barely destroyed the opposing starting faction, immediately attacked by three different factions bordering me. This is on Normal campaign difficulty. I think I need a longer break from this game.

edit 2: Coming back really reminded me of the central problem of translating the Warhammer world to actual campaign gameplay, both from a lore/fan POV and a replayability one. Everyone knows the overall geopolitical situation in Warhammer only works because the writers can make it so - the Empire never expands into Bretonnia or vice versa despite literally 2000 years of border wars, Greenskins and Dwarfs are stuck in a perpetual war yet somehow find the time and manpower to send thousands of men across the Old World whilst their sworn enemies - with whom they never engage in any form of diplomacy or treaties - are sitting one valley across from them etc. etc.

That in itself can be handwaved with the right system (e.g. the Warhammer mod for Mount and Blade worked well because most battles and border conflicts were inconsequential or quickly reversed, meaning that the player had a constant stream of things to do and the freedom to go wherever they wanted without worrying about half the world being conquered by stack spam). But it really translates poorly to the Total War campaign, since there's literally no reason whatsoever to go fucking off around the world when all your resources should be devoted to securing and expanding your immediate borders - forcing you into an extremely aggressive strategy of conquest if you're sitting next to factions that can quickly snowball. Battles are inconsequential if not immediately followed up with occupation or extermination, since an entire stack can be created in about 5 turns at the lowest tier, 2 during late game wars. There is no such thing as "border skirmishes" since the AI and mechanics are geared towards annihilation and the concept of supply lines or logistics is barely represented at all. Combined with "lore-friendly" racial affinity or maluses (HE vs DE, Dwarf vs Greenskin, Skaven vs Everyone etc.), I feel railroaded into playing the opening moves of campaigns in exactly the same way each time, and it's really dull at this point.

edit 3: Well now I'm just depressed. God I hate videogames

 

[Maculo]

I started a started a Vampire Coast campaign, and for once I am not immediately excited. I will finish it eventually, but I am in no rush.

I was tempted to start with the new DE hero, but for some reason I was really putoff by the voice acting. It sounds like a nerdy Darth Vader in the intro panel.

 

[Fedora Master]

I'm playing the new Kemmler faction and enjoying it so far. Although fighting dwarfs as VC early on is an exercise in frustration.

 

[Maculo]

With all the new factions, I would think Bretonnia has become a no-man's land. You have now have multiple corruption factions (Vampire Counts, Vampire Coast, Skaven), in addition to Beastmen, Wood Elves, DE/HE, Norsca, etc.

For the Lady.

 

[Fedora Master]

Bretonnia getting dunked on is pretty close to the lore though.

I once again must point out the amazing sound design. It's a fucking joy listening to some of those necromancer voice lines. Vanilla autoresolve balance/AI is still fucked.

 

[Maculo]

End slide spoiler for Vampire Coast. Teases TW:W3 to the surprise of no one (i.e., End Times):

Spoiler

 

[Agame]

End Times = TWWH3 is Age of Sigmar Mobile game.

 

[Fedora Master]

You wanted Chaos Dwarves and the Dark Lands? Fuck you, you get Sigmarines.

 

[A horse of course]

I powered through a campaign so I can get back to watching VR porn. Restarted as Count Noctilis and completely ignored all the in-game objectives aside from the main campaign objectives and it wasn't bad, actually. Since CN has more of a horde vibe with Ship Graveyard starting position, you can focus on hunting down unique pirate factions and raiding coastal settlements to set up pirate coves for money. I can imagine higher difficulties being problematic if the enemy starts going out of their way to attack your home region, however, since you're almost sandwiched between Tomb Kings and High Elves and would probably have to hold off endless stack spam if you let them snowball mid-game.

They obviously took their time with the main story battle, though it was a bit odd that your "true" objective is basically solved in a cutscene - on that subject, I'll never really be satisfied with the lack of naval battles in Warhammer, but the island/Black Ark battle system is definitely a passable fix compared to the ridiculous situation we had before. I imagine a Lokhir Felheart playthrough being potentially a lot of fun, and Naggaroth/Ulthuan warfare overall is going to greatly benefit from actually making sea battles tenable. I'm definitely disappointed at the lack of a Southern Realms/Dogs of War DLC pack, as those areas of the map are in desperate need of an update for Mortal Empires campaigns, but the raft of improvements to the main game has certainly softened the blow.

Absolutely not recommending anyone go out and buy CotVC or anything, but this is great step towards making the "final" product a much better experience. Now we just have to hope they don't fucking wreck everything with the next DLC.

 

[Fedora Master]

Those buffs the AI receives on Legendary are the worst crap. T1 spearmen vs T2 corsairs (ANTI INFANTRY) and the corsairs still get fucked.

 

[GrainWetski]

The game decided to remind me why I don't play without mods.

I was worried about losing a settlement but then I noticed the Dark Elf army had 17 Dark Riders.

 

[Fedora Master]

Okay that is pretty fucking METAL

 

[Fedora Master]

After some more time with the new patch I honestly think the FLC bits were completely hacked together and not tested at all.
- Black Arks are still largely useless. The additional replenishment and artillery abilities can be nice but since every sea battle is now a ghetto land battle there is no reason to use them over regular armies at sea. More than likely you'll just lose your upgraded ark to 2+ stacks of AI trash units.
- Island battles are often bugged when they spawn too close to the shore. The resulting AI army will spawn on land so your ark/seaborne army can't engage it so you get nothing at all.
- The stacks these island battles spawn are also extremely imbalanced. Sometimes you get a bunch of zombies, sometimes you get a dozen depth guard and cannons. Since you can't retreat from these things, you can kiss your stack goodbye more often than not.
- Lokhir is supposed to be a duelist but lacks the weight and speed to catch most other lords. The AI can just move their generals back through their chaff and you'll never catch 'em. Since he's supposed to kill heroes and lords he is also pretty worthless against said chaff.

 

[tabacila]

By island battles do you mean the battles you sometimes get when finding stuff on the sea? Yes, some of them are insane. Had one where I lost all my army except Luthor and a mortar, but got something like 20K gold out of it.
It wouldn't kill them to at least give us a partial list of units in those armies or a chance to retreat and lose the potential gold.

 

[LizardWizard]

The Skull Reef has the doom stacks, it's fairly straight forward.

 

[Morkar Left]

I love the brilliantly simple reason why they want to find that ship.

Maybe slowly time to get WH2...

 

[Fedora Master]

The Skull Reef has the doom stacks, it's fairly straight forward.

Hrm, thanks. I don't think it was made clear that these things have different difficulties.

 

[LizardWizard]

The Skull Reef has the doom stacks, it's fairly straight forward.

Hrm, thanks. I don't think it was made clear that these things have different difficulties.

Skulls give you 20k and maybe a magic item, can easily recruit an entire stack if you eek out the victory. You can also commandeer arty from these island battles, which is pretty useful early game.