Warhammer Total War: Warhammer 2

[CthuluIsSpy]

Something I don't like about the ME map is that its squished together and is a bit different from the Vortex map. Like, Galleon's graveyard is on the other side of Ulthuan, and Ulthuan is super close to Bretonnia too.
I don't know what they did to the balance, but in my normal Empire campaign the Greenskins nearly overran the dwarfs and would have wiped them out had I not intervened, and the Norscans still haven't wiped out Kislev or the Empire provinces.
Which is fine, because in WH1 it was pretty frustrating to see the Empire constantly be reduced to a wasteland, but they dealt like, no damage this time.

The high elves are getting their asses beat really hard. The didn't wipe out the Scourge of Khaine until turn 150, and most of Ulthuan is over taken by Dark Elves.

They also changed the campaign victory conditions to something annoying. I can't be bothered doing the long victory conditions, because you need 17 specific settlements, either direct control or military allies, and that's just crap. Even if I were to use military allies, I'd still have to go all the way over to Naggaroth or somewhere distant, and that's just annoying.
I really wish you could just give settlements to other factions, like you could in the earlier games. I really don't like expanding in terrain that's not ideal.

 

[Timeslip]

Something I don't like about the ME map is that its squished together and is a bit different from the Vortex map. Like, Galleon's graveyard is on the other side of Ulthuan, and Ulthuan is super close to Bretonnia too.
I don't know what they did to the balance, but in my normal Empire campaign the Greenskins nearly overran the dwarfs and would have wiped them out had I not intervened, and the Norscans still haven't wiped out Kislev or the Empire provinces.
Which is fine, because in WH1 it was pretty frustrating to see the Empire constantly be reduced to a wasteland, but they dealt like, no damage this time.

The high elves are getting their asses beat really hard. The didn't wipe out the Scourge of Khaine until turn 150, and most of Ulthuan is over taken by Dark Elves.

They also changed the campaign victory conditions to something annoying. I can't be bothered doing the long victory conditions, because you need 17 specific settlements, either direct control or military allies, and that's just crap. Even if I were to use military allies, I'd still have to go all the way over to Naggaroth or somewhere distant, and that's just annoying.
I really wish you could just give settlements to other factions, like you could in the earlier games. I really don't like expanding in terrain that's not ideal.

In WH1, the dwarves normally win out against the Greenskins and since no one else can occupy Greenskin settlements go on to become the #1 power. Have seen the greenskins get the upper hand once, possibly due to a couple of Waaagh army spawns.

 

[Raghar]

In WH1, the dwarves normally win out against the Greenskins and since no one else can occupy Greenskin settlements go on to become the #1 power. Have seen the greenskins get the upper hand once, possibly due to a couple of Waaagh army spawns.

That's because DLC units are OP and AI could spam them. They added delay, but it doesn't fix inherent problem that AI can hire them everywhere.

 

[Maculo]

One thing I am hoping for with the Malus campaign is that the expedition option can be made a random location. That way each campaign could be different with respect to starting regional enemies.

Also, apparently the side-characters from the Malus book series are treated like followers/banners, which is a nice touch.

 

[Drakron]

In WH1, the dwarves normally win out against the Greenskins and since no one else can occupy Greenskin settlements go on to become the #1 power. Have seen the greenskins get the upper hand once, possibly due to a couple of Waaagh army spawns.

Right now in WH2 Dwarves under AI are broken due to their money cheat hacks and that fucks up their balance (Dwarves are meant to have very powerful armies that are also very expensive, remove the costs and you get the Beardtide), the balance always been weird as either Greenskins or Dwarves dominated.

The Empire used to really struggle and dropped dead with the Vampires taking over, this doesnt happen anymore as they are strong but its not the BS that the endless Dwarven stacks because the Empire army is not as strong, Greenskins need help as Wood Elves have problems but at least their Victory condition is just getting the Oak of Ages upgraded and win the quest battle, they just need help with their settlement defenses since they get worst a worst deal that Norsa does with captured settlements.

 

[Maculo]

I presume CA will continue to touch-up the factions well into game 3 (Wood Elves, Beastmen, Chaos, Orks). One feature I desperately want to see in game 3 is randomized "End Times", where the invasion event can be one or a combination of Nagash, Archaon, Skaven,and/or Orks.

In case it has not been posted yet, below is the Malus campaign preview. The main mechanic is possession (surprise!), which reminds me of Hellebron's death night mechanic just more refined and interesting. In contrast to Hellebron, where you only rack up debuffs, there are benefits and drawbacks to low and high possession. Increased possession buffs Malus at the expense of replenishment and specific campaign bonuses. Those campaign bonuses are great though, with 10 public order, 60% construction expense reduction, free lord loyalty, and right of the Warmaster (free army). Granted, low Possession gives you a -10 to melee stats for all armies.



Edit: I just noticed Malus' campaign effects in the video at 3:23. He provides cavalry buffs, which is of no surprise. He also has "Reaper of Souls" and "Blood Storm" abilities, which I presume are vortex abilities. I also like the trait Contempt and Hatred that provides 20% weapon strength against...everything.

 

[Maculo]

CA released more information on Malus, and I think he will be a fun LL. Untransformed Malus has Blood Price (22% ward save, 60% armor piercing, 60% weapon strength for 22 seconds) that damages Malus to use, Daemon's curse (-24 melee defense and -16 leadership), and Warpsword of Khaine that passively heals him. The Tz'arkan transformation refills Malus' health bar and provides an AoE knockback and soul stealer. At the same time, transformed Malus will constantly lose health until he dies.

If nothing else, he will be a fun LL for an early aggressive campaign that allows you to abuse these abilities to the max.

Edit: Malus' mortal empires start is...interesting. Readying the map for TW3?:

Spoiler

 

[Danikas]

New units

 

[Maculo]

From the videos I have watched, Medusa and Scourgerunner chariots are amazing. The Medusa animations are great, except for a slight glitch with the hand holding the staff/trident (goes through the hand/arm).

I will be interested to see how people use Malus, because he seems like a coin-flip.

 

[Fedora Master]

Protip: All the files for the DLC content are present in your Steam installation of WH2. You don't need the DLC from WH1.

Spoiler

Don't give CA money. They'll only use it to add stronk black women to their historical titles.

 

[Danikas]

Protip: All the files for the DLC content are present in your Steam installation of WH2. You don't need the DLC from WH1.

Spoiler

Don't give CA money. They'll only use it to add stronk black women to their historical titles.

They are based in united cuckdom they have to toe the party line.

 

[Fedora Master]

I guaran-fucking-tee you the only reason they haven't added female units to the Empire or Dwarves is because GW doesn't allow them to.
The one faction where they had a free hand - VC - obviously does have them.

 

[Maculo]

I got around to watching the other Malus videos, and he dies in nearly every video due to the transformation drain. I wonder if the campaign will be more forgiving with either the drain or the wound state. Otherwise, people may avoid his transformation and/or he is going to be a crash course in micro for new players.

 

[AgentFransis]

Gave this a try with a trial version. Played a few hours so far and it seems pretty cool but I think at least an hour of that was spent staring at loading screens or being alt-tabbed waiting for them. Fun.
Normally I would buy the game at this point but I'm conflicted since I don't want to support DLC nickel and diming (compare this to another prominent fantasy strategy - Dominions - where the devs regularly just drop whole new factions in free patches).

 

[tabacila]

Edit: Malus' mortal empires start is...interesting. Readying the map for TW3?:

Spoiler

I always thought that the empty area on the Mortal Empires map was what we were going to get extra for the big combined map for WH3, but apparently a dev confirmed, quite a while ago, that this won't be it:

Spoiler

Some youtuber blew his load too early with some exclusive content and showed some lightning fast end turn times for ME. Apparently something like 10-15 seconds for the first turn. So maybe, possibly, Sigmar willingly time for a little hype?
Also some factions finally got renamed, like the Empire becoming Reikland and The Dwarfs Karaz-a-Karak.
Video got taken down quite quickly:
https://forums.totalwar.com/discuss...s-like-the-empire-appear-to-have-been-changed

 

[Fedora Master]

I do wonder what shortcuts they took to achieve that.

 

[tabacila]

They said it was all code optimization, but it probably involved some tentacle action with Slaanesh.
Everything about WH2 from launch to the release of Three Kingdoms screamed that it was quickly thrown together on the WH1 code with a couple of new features added in. The Vortex map was similar to the WH1 and ME was a distant secondary objective since most of their devs had to move to China total war.

Hopefully WH3 will get better treatment.

 

[Whipped Cream]

I suspect that a big part of the optimization is that the old code utilized multiple threads/cores quite inefficiently, when you consider that many of the different things that happen during the end turn in Total War game should hypothetically have a relatively high degree of parallelization to them. I've noticed earlier that most of my cores appeared to just be sitting there twiddling their thumbs during end turns. This has been a long-running issue in Total War games.

By the way, I experienced a funny example of bad code optimization recently at my job. We had a program that was made about a year ago whose job was to preprocess large datasets. The program was painfully slow and took several hours to complete its calculations each time you ran it. I noticed recently that there was a rare but very serious bug in the program's output and looked at the code to see what the issue was. My immediate reaction from looking at the code for a few seconds was "What the fuck?". I then spent a couple of days rewriting it more or less from scratch. It now runs in 15 seconds.

 

[AgentFransis]

I suspect that a big part of the optimization is that the old code utilized multiple threads/cores quite inefficiently, when you consider that many of the different things that happen during the end turn in Total War game should hypothetically have a relatively high degree of parallelization to them

Not so simple. Obviously you still have to evaluate each faction's turn one after the other or it breaks the rules of the game. Inside each turn evaluation there is probably parallelism to be found between different aspects of AI thinking, say economic development, diplomacy and army movement but these are probably still intertwined to some degree and you have to be careful since it's easy to introduce difficult to find bugs. Probably at best a small handful of people at CA understand the engine well enough to undertake this kind of optimization.

 

[Maculo]

I watched the Malus Mortal Empires campaign video before it went private. The turn time optimization is a huge improvement. The optimization alone is something to be excited about.

Based on what I watched the Malus campaign will offer good replayability imo, especially being surrounded by Skaven, Lizardmen, Undead/Tomb Kings, and Greenskins. To borrow from the youtube guy's (MonstersAbound) video, you can "seesaw" between control and possession states rather quickly. The potion eliminates 10 points and Malus builds 2 points per turn up to a total of 20. Therefore, you can plan around when you need full-control (50% building cost reduction, public order, replenishment) and possession (buffed Malus, and melee debuff removed). Originally, I thought full possession could be gamed for easy rebellion farming, but the replenishment debuff could bite, especially on higher difficulties. Perhaps you could eventually offset the replenishment debuff with traits, death hags, buildings, and a black ark, but that could take some time.

Also, I thought the choice to maintain Hag Graef was a no-brainer, but it may be a trap choice. You are stuck developing two settlements, a black ark, and 2 distant armies. On top of that, potions cost 600+ gold, which you may need to chug to keep a minimum amount of replenishment and public order. Furthermore, from the video the AI quickly colonized the ruins surrounding Hag Graef, which denied full control of the province. Even if the AI was slower, I doubt you would have much money to spare to colonize ruins and obtain full province control. On higher difficulties (and improved AI mod), I could see Hag Graef being pelted with rebellions and attacks from surrounding enemies.

 

[Average Manatee]

Also, I thought the choice to maintain Hag Graef was a no-brainer, but it may be a trap choice. You are stuck developing two settlements, a black ark, and 2 distant armies. On top of that, potions cost 600+ gold, which you may need to chug to keep a minimum amount of replenishment and public order. Furthermore, from the video the AI quickly colonized the ruins surrounding Hag Graef, which denied full control of the province. Even if the AI was slower, I doubt you would have much money to spare to colonize ruins and obtain full province control. On higher difficulties (and improved AI mod), I could see Hag Graef being pelted with rebellions and attacks from surrounding enemies.

I dunno how other people play on Legendary or Very Hard but my gameplan can basically be summarized as:

- Take a full province
- Fort up w/ growth bonuses
- Pray I don't get dogpiled too hard for ~30-60 turns depending on faction.
- Eventually update to a level 3-4 settlement with some powerful units and a caster who can do fire/light/whatever else has good vortex shit.
- Start capturing settlements from the AI that are level 4/5 and become level 3/4 for me.

Provinces in TWWH provide absolute shit income relative to what it takes to defend them (basically a full stack), and settlements below level 3 or 4 are generally a net drain. 90% of your income early game is the free 2.5k cash every faction gets. That coupled with the fact that growth is so slow means you have to fort up everything and basically pray that you don't get attacked and lose ~30k cash and 30 turns of development because your stack was out of position and unable to reach a settlement to defend. Anything that leads you to border more potential enemies and defend more land is a bad idea, especially as an "evil" faction that tends to get dogpiled even by their own race (at least if you are something like Brettonia you can generally trust an NAP from a Brettonian). So yeah, I can absolutely believe that two separate settlements are a trap choice. -50% construction cost is like the bare minimum you'd need to be viable (presumably the -10 melee attack won't be that bad, legendary is all about spamming arrows into pincushion enemies while your melee just runs in circles or stands there not dying).

I do really dislike how the growth system couples with the settlement rank reduction whenever it loses a defensive battle. Only the Skaven really have a viable mechanic to let you play an aggressive game well since you can capture a new rank 4 settlement immediately and a rank 5 settlement in 20 or so turns. Basically everyone else is better off letting the AI use their cheats to upgrade all that shit way quicker than you can and just take it yourself. It's very often the case that the first level 4 settlement I obtain isn't a level 3 settlement I've upgraded but a level 5 settlement the AI built and I captured.

 

[Maculo]

I dunno how other people play on Legendary or Very Hard but my gameplan can basically be summarized as:

- Take a full province
- Fort up w/ growth bonuses
- Pray I don't get dogpiled too hard for ~30-60 turns depending on faction.
- Eventually update to a level 3-4 settlement with some powerful units and a caster who can do fire/light/whatever else has good vortex shit.
- Start capturing settlements from the AI that are level 4/5 and become level 3/4 for me.

Provinces in TWWH provide absolute shit income relative to what it takes to defend them (basically a full stack), and settlements below level 3 or 4 are generally a net drain. 90% of your income early game is the free 2.5k cash every faction gets. That coupled with the fact that growth is so slow means you have to fort up everything and basically pray that you don't get attacked and lose ~30k cash and 30 turns of development because your stack was out of position and unable to reach a settlement to defend. Anything that leads you to border more potential enemies and defend more land is a bad idea, especially as an "evil" faction that tends to get dogpiled even by their own race (at least if you are something like Brettonia you can generally trust an NAP from a Brettonian). So yeah, I can absolutely believe that two separate settlements are a trap choice. -50% construction cost is like the bare minimum you'd need to be viable (presumably the -10 melee attack won't be that bad, legendary is all about spamming arrows into pincushion enemies while your melee just runs in circles or stands there not dying).

I do really dislike how the growth system couples with the settlement rank reduction whenever it loses a defensive battle. Only the Skaven really have a viable mechanic to let you play an aggressive game well since you can capture a new rank 4 settlement immediately and a rank 5 settlement in 20 or so turns. Basically everyone else is better off letting the AI use their cheats to upgrade all that shit way quicker than you can and just take it yourself. It's very often the case that the first level 4 settlement I obtain isn't a level 3 settlement I've upgraded but a level 5 settlement the AI built and I captured.

The -50% construction cost also only lasts about a turn or two due to possession ticks. The landmark building in Hag Graef, however, does provide 50% upkeep reduction for armies, although I am still not sure that is enough reason to keep it. I use improved AI (stronger Brayherds and Greenskin spawns, better AI army composition, etc.), and Beastmen, Skaven, etc., murder lightly defended cities.

Depending on the gold cost inflation for potions, you may need as much early gold as possible to maintain replenishment. If I recall correctly, the youtube video showed that Malus and his army at full possession had zero replenishment even when sitting in a settlement. The youtuber had to chug a 650 gold potion so that his army could replenish enough for the next battle. Depending on how aggressive the surrounding AI is, the early Malus campaign could be a slaughter zone, especially when an ill-timed transformation could kill Malus. I suspect players are meant to rely on the black ark for recruitment and focus on economy/growth/defense buildings in the initial province.

I am curious whether it would be optimal to sit at full possession at higher difficulties, provided you can overcome the replenishment problem (death hags, black ark, traits, etc.). Malus would have 35-40% ward save and regeneration, but would he still melt at very hard and legendary?

 

[Average Manatee]

You could of course bank several turns of money to blow all at once when you have -50% construction costs, so that's not too huge of an issue IMO. -50% upkeep for armies is huge though and might make it doable to keep two big stacks.

The replenishment issue is concerning. I expect if you are using him at max possession (-50% reinforcement) that you'd be using him entirely on his own. 40% ward save + 60 melee defense + regeneration is kind of on the edge between "can hold large armies in place long enough for a bunch of artillery or a vortex spell to eliminate most of them" and "can flat out solo whole armies". If you could find some equipment or there is enough tech/skill bonuses to get up another 30% ward/physical resist and/or 30 melee defense he could be in the realm of soloing whole armies (so long as you watch out for great duelist enemy lords).

EDIT: Looking at the youtube video it looks like the Hag Graef bonus is only applied to local armies. Ehh, that's way worse than a global -50%. Even a -50% upkeep army (which is really only -20% once you factor in the +30% upkeep penalty for maintaining two lords with 2 armies rather than one) is probably going to cost more than the province gives in wealth, and that's to say nothing of the cost to upgrade it. I suppose its a net gain if you stand around farming rebels though and killing the usual AI attackers to take battle loot. But it also means that even if you keep Hag Graef that no matter what you are going to be focusing all of your expansion at the other start position since its more economical to not expand in Naggarond.

Personally the reason I'd like having 2 settlements from the start is to get more building slots so you could fit more high-tier unit types and all the cool heroes in your perfect army before moving out. Except Dark Elves have never really had this problem because Black Arks are the perfect recruiting center, you've never really needed to build recruitment buildings as them.

 

[Maculo]

You could of course bank several turns of money to blow all at once when you have -50% construction costs, so that's not too huge of an issue IMO. -50% upkeep for armies is huge though and might make it doable to keep two big stacks.

The replenishment issue is concerning. I expect if you are using him at max possession (-50% reinforcement) that you'd be using him entirely on his own. 40% ward save + 60 melee defense + regeneration is kind of on the edge between "can hold large armies in place long enough for a bunch of artillery or a vortex spell to eliminate most of them" and "can flat out solo whole armies". If you could find some equipment or there is enough tech to get up another 30% ward/physical resist and/or 30 melee defense he could be in the realm of soloing whole armies (so long as you watch out for great duelist enemy lords).

The 50% is indeed huge, but I still think Hag Graef could be a trap. In my mind, the deciding factors are the cost of potion chugging and just how aggressive the AI surrounding Malus will be (i.e., exacerbates the need for replenishment). In contrast, 20,000 gold upfront would allow Malus to make decent strides in his region and chug potions. The potions allegedly increase in cost with each use, and Malus gains possession passively and for completing Whispers of Tz'arkan quests. I have heard conflicting answers with respect to what sitting in town with Malus accomplishes. One post said it decreases the possession tick from 2 to 1, yet another post said that it reduces corruption by 1.

I did see that Tz'arkan whisper quests award unique epic items, which may be a good source of equipment (one was a play on the Idol of Kolkuth from the novels). Malus also starts with a Master hero that grants guardian for 15% physical resist. Another option is sorceresses with defensive buffs on Malus (e.g., Cascading fire cloak for 30% melee defense), although the winds of magic maybe be better spent on Vortex spells.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, I wonder how attacking Malekith works out. Naggarond is close enough that you could defend it + Hag Graef from an army that spend 90% of its time in Hag Graef milking that -50% upkeep, and then you can rebel-farm two provinces at once. If that also means you get the potion recipe after you wipe him out and can make infinite free potions then that would be your best strat.

Generally you never want to spend winds on buffs for lords. Lords simply never do much damage quickly and are all about outlasting enemies. Even if you had a buff that made him flat out invincible for 60s you'd be better off casting flame vortex and racking up 400 kills than letting him kill 30 dudes on his own. Buffs/debuffs are strictly for units that can compress a lot of damage into their 30-40s of superiority over the enemy, and even then it's usually the case that a vortex spell would be better outside of very specific lores in specific situations.

I doubt getting Malus up to stack-soloing power is going to be that difficult. You're basically guaranteed to get one of those +15% or +20% phys resist items fairly quickly, couple that with any decent other equipment and only very elite units are going to be scary.