Warhammer Total War: Warhammer III

[Average Manatee]

Was messing around a bit and it seems like the Assault Garrison action is wildly overpowered. Not sure if this is a new thing or it was always this way, but 1 use of it seems to kill 50-75% of the garrison if your hero has the level 3 skill and trait boosting it. Two or three turns and there's nothing left at all. This is a good solution to being forced into constant non-autoresolvable settlement battles I guess. Assault Army is nowhere near as powerful, it might deal out about 1-2 units worth of damage spread out among an army. Might be OK defensively to whittle down an enemy that is going to siege you for a few turns before assaulting?

The AR heavily favors Khorne armies on top of it already being massively biased towards garrisons, so it doesn't surprise me, lol.

I am playing Skarbrand right now and i can see that autoresolver heavily favours the savage orcs, could be why Wurzagg dominate everything

The game mechanics heavily favor Wurrzag. His savage orcs start at 45% physical resist and +25 charge bonus and will eventually get 50% phys resist + 8% ward save + potential 30% missile resist scrap upgrade + 8 melee attack + 37 charge bonus + magical attacks for everyone + removes all enemy magic resistance + wurrzag being one of the most overpowered casters in the game + all the other normal lord orc buffs and op shit like Waagh! Basically nothing can fight him in melee and if they pick that scrap upgrade they are almost immune to non-magical ranged damage as well. Bloodletters can bypass phys resist with their magic attacks but they'll still get raped by that charge bonus due to their lack of armor. 80+ charge bonus on a 120 model unit is broken as fuck.

 

[MajorMace]

Got a screenshot?

I've seen autoresolve results that are a bit too favorable to my settlements, but my settlements generally have walls built.

Khorne infantry is insanely tanky. Not sure how autoresolve works but if it simulates that they can hold out for a long time while towers massacre things then it may be legit. The AI probably shouldn't be starting fights that autoresolve into a player victory though.

Spoiler

 

[thesecret1]

AR seems pretty fucked in general. Frequently, I have AI attack me with their lord... and let me win via AR. In general, it feels as though if the enemy has weak kinds of units, it massively underestimates them. I've had a 6 troop stack (tier 2 troops) in a tier 1 unwalled settlement annihilate a 20 troop stack of greenskins through AR. Like sure, I get that most of that 20-stack were shitty goblins and what not, but there was still 20 of them. And they didn't just get repulsed, they all died down to a man. I couldn't ever get such a great win in manual battle.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

AR seems pretty fucked in general. Frequently, I have AI attack me with their lord... and let me win via AR. In general, it feels as though if the enemy has weak kinds of units, it massively underestimates them. I've had a 6 troop stack (tier 2 troops) in a tier 1 unwalled settlement annihilate a 20 troop stack of greenskins through AR. Like sure, I get that most of that 20-stack were shitty goblins and what not, but there was still 20 of them. And they didn't just get repulsed, they all died down to a man. I couldn't ever get such a great win in manual battle.

Yeah AR need to be nerfed not in how it calculates chance but also on the resolution. Making a losing side always lose 100% of their force is nonsensical. Outside of undead/demon as they don't have a "retreat", a 20 stacks should never lose 100% of their units during AR lose. This will also allows a more dynamic game as you don't lose all your factional strength from 1 bad battle AI factions wise.

 

[Average Manatee]

Those K:D ratios aren't totally off if we assume what the game is doing is simulating a series of 1v1 fights. I checked and a unit of chaos warriors can kill ~600 ungors before routing, if we assume that the game is forcing them into a head-on 1v1 with no flanking (e.g. simulating you defending a choke point) then 900 is probably fair. It's also possible the game isn't simulating fatigue which really hampers the stats of elite units over time. But yeah agree it should be fixed.

The game is also clearly adding in tower damage since the total kills of the units are ~1500, meaning the towers did 800 kills themselves. Which is probably an underestimate of real gameplay.

 

[MajorMace]

I didn't realise ungors were that weaker than chaos warriors, but even then, it just feels wrong to wipe an army out with literally nothing.

 

[Average Manatee]

For what its worth I was able to win this in a skirmish battle very easily:

It's obviously not entirely comparable but I did upgrade the ungor spearmen to ungors. I'm pretty sure most of the chaos warrior damage was from tower friendly fire. If anything the ungors in your battle actually performed better and got more kills than mine. Their lord charged down a long alley alone and my cannon tower killed him with no trouble at all.

I didn't realise ungors were that weaker than chaos warriors, but even then, it just feels wrong to wipe an army out with literally nothing.

Ungors are one of the weakest units in the game after actual tier-0 trash like skavenslaves and peasants while Chaos Warriors are Tier-2 infantry in a faction where every melee unit is basically a tier above what it's actually supposed to be. Heavy armor, frenzy, silver shields and great stats vs. no armor piercing, trash stats, no charge bonus chaff. Warhounds are probably as bad or worse. The archers would have eventually chewed the chaos warriors up in a long fight though (or not? maybe the towers would murder them too quickly).

That said I definitely don't think you should be able to autoresolve this. I'd be 100% fine with the AI just flat out cheating to know battle results and not engaging in a battle where they'd lose autoresolve.

 

[kris]

Dunno about ranged being better, it's always been dominant in WH2 and 3. But most of the new demon races are lightly armored and often without shields so arrows massacre them.

Even moreso with Ogres. i mean they are all big so you can shoot them well through your infantry and you just destroy them with ranged, I even did that with Orks.

 

[Space Satan]

Kislev was an AUXILIARY army. Literally a supplement to Empire. Something between Dogs of War and a Border Prince. They got more content in other army books than in own one. To the point where CA hadto invent new units to let them actually have comparable number of units in Total War. There were no content for that much units. At this point arguing about Kislev content is like arguing that, yes, CA resurrected FB, BUT I WANTED IT TO BE DIFFERENT!

 

[Bohrain]

I think CA employees stated in the QA sessions that they had to do vampirates, kislev and cathay in pretty close cooperation with GW because it's their IP and there wasn't really a full armybook to straight up copy all units.

 

[Delterius]

itt slav fans wrestle with the fact that warhammer is germanic paranoid fantasy where anglos (elves), jews (dwarves), anglo-lower class (orcs), stalinist with tradchungus characteristics (bretonnia) all surround the One Normal Country (empire)

 

[tabacila]

Kislev was an AUXILIARY army. Literally a supplement to Empire. Something between Dogs of War and a Border Prince. They got more content in other army books than in own one. To the point where CA hadto invent new units to let them actually have comparable number of units in Total War. There were no content for that much units. At this point arguing about Kislev content is like arguing that, yes, CA resurrected FB, BUT I WANTED IT TO BE DIFFERENT!

Yeah I wanted it to be different. I wanted a pastiche of a real world culture, like the Empire or Brettonia, not Frozen(TM) the new WoW race choice.
The problem is not that they filled huge gaps in Kislev's non existing army book. The problem it's how they filled them with: flanderization and stupidity.

Kislev is cold as shit, but let's give the kossars no sleeves. That looks cool an unique right? Show their gainz for the motherland.
All characters getting the warbear.
All sled variants are drawn by bears and have that shit ice effect. Maybe have some horse drawn ones without that effect?
Should we give a handgun unit an axe to have some melee power? I mean WH is full of dual weapon units. Nope, make an axe-gun that clips through the model and makes no sense.
Kislev is using a shit load of guns. Since they're so familiar with them, and friendly with the empire shouldn't they see the value of artillery, especially smaller mobile guns, since their whole spiel is adaptability? NIET comrade, just ONE big gun, no in-between, nothing more practical for a people that relies on maneuver and doing jack of all trades to survive the deamon rape... Also give it bear to haul it around....

Maybe it's just me, but the great draw of human factions in WHFB was that they were basically medieval armies, with a little extra, going up against all the crazy stuff of the setting. With Kislev it's all fantasy, almost all the time.

I never expected to find Cathay's roster a far better fit in the TW:WH world than Kislev's. It's amazing imo how CA/GW brought a good version of a bug people empire into the setting, based on less than nothing compared to Kislev, but shat the bed so hard with Kislev itself, which had a lot of the pieces already there.

I think CA employees stated in the QA sessions that they had to do vampirates, kislev and cathay in pretty close cooperation with GW because it's their IP and there wasn't really a full armybook to straight up copy all units.

Not sure about the vampirates. That felt more like CA getting ideas and approval from GW. GW is planning Cathay and Kislev as proper army books in their upcoming 'ressurection' of WHFB those two were definite collaborations. The units from the game will probably be the models GW will jew out.

 

[underground nymph]

Absolutely. CA’s Kislev is a pure decline style-wise. It’s a proof of a complete lack of understanding of what WFB supposed to represent. Especially in case of Kislev, that is supposed to be an epitome of a miserable people on the frontier doing their best to scrap some war equipment to see the morning.

I will be surprised if GW will adopt this travesty as an official army models. My bet is Kislev was mostly designed by CA’s art department which is known to rely heavily on outsourced designers with GW merely approving concept arts.

 

[Nathir]

Kislev was an AUXILIARY army. Literally a supplement to Empire. Something between Dogs of War and a Border Prince. They got more content in other army books than in own one. To the point where CA hadto invent new units to let them actually have comparable number of units in Total War. There were no content for that much units. At this point arguing about Kislev content is like arguing that, yes, CA resurrected FB, BUT I WANTED IT TO BE DIFFERENT!

The problem is not that they came up with new stuff. The problem is that they came up with new stuff that looks bad.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Welp, one of you guys was talking about how Dark Elf Black Arks are fucked in a good way and he is right!

Played with Lokhir a lot this weekend and boy, I terrorized the whole coast. By turn 60 I had Lokhir and full 10! Arks with a bonus of total +%600 sacking settlements, that's without any bonuses from lords and tech tree.
That's easy 50-100K from even the minor settlements! This is insane!
Black Arks really grow fast this time, mix this with their low upkeep cost and Lokhir's trait that allows you a new Ark for each port you have it's really easy to blot out the sun with Black Arks, full of your deepest desires.

I allied with N'kari for even more lols in combats.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

itt slav fans wrestle with the fact that warhammer is germanic paranoid fantasy where anglos (elves), jews (dwarves), anglo-lower class (orcs), stalinist with tradchungus characteristics (bretonnia) all surround the One Normal Country (empire)

Dwarfs are Northern England, and the Orcs are southern England.

 

[Wassersäufer]

Playing Grimgor really makes you realise how empty the East of the Map is without the Chaos Dorfs. I have no idea why they added southern Cathay, apart from Nakai farting around there, but left the Darklands basically empty and uninteresting.

 

[thesecret1]

WH3 did something weird to shock cavalry where the Charge Bonus doesn't seem to be nearly as good as it was in WH2. Heavy cavalry with huge mass and good stats + AP damage still do well but light cav doesn't really seem to massacre light or fleeing units like it used to. This leaves bear cavalry as your best option and they do wreck a lot of things.

Dunno about ranged being better, it's always been dominant in WH2 and 3. But most of the new demon races are lightly armored and often without shields so arrows massacre them.

Pretty far now in the Kislev campaign and you were right. I don't know what CA did, but cavalry (at least Kislevan one) is SHIT. Downright useless. Their charges just lack any punch, even if their charge value is high. Bears seem to do a lot better.

Ranged probably felt really strong to me because Kislev, turns out, is a ranged faction. Sure, the tooltip claims that the units are hybrids, etc. but really, that's a lie – they're ranged, all of them, with the "melee oriented" hybrids having a slightly higher survivability on melee (the only purpose of that being to give back lines time to shoot whatever is fighting them dead). The units themselves are pretty good, usually able to absolutely destroy half the enemy army before it even reaches them, punching well above their weight if positioned right. Even the starting shitty units are pretty good for this, and the moment you unlock armored kossars with guns, you have your own mobile killing field – the guns shred anything that's coming to pieces, and when the enemy stragglers finally reach you, they have enough staying power to hold them long enough for arrows to finish them off. Ice guards are naturally even better at this and make all other infantry obsolete, but these basic troops will carry you through early and even midgame easily.

 

[bobocrunch]

yea chaos auto resolve seems a bit silly

 

[Average Manatee]

Ranged probably felt really strong to me because Kislev, turns out, is a ranged faction. Sure, the tooltip claims that the units are hybrids, etc. but really, that's a lie – they're ranged, all of them, with the "melee oriented" hybrids having a slightly higher survivability on melee (the only purpose of that being to give back lines time to shoot whatever is fighting them dead). The units themselves are pretty good, usually able to absolutely destroy half the enemy army before it even reaches them, punching well above their weight if positioned right. Even the starting shitty units are pretty good for this, and the moment you unlock armored kossars with guns, you have your own mobile killing field – the guns shred anything that's coming to pieces, and when the enemy stragglers finally reach you, they have enough staying power to hold them long enough for arrows to finish them off. Ice guards are naturally even better at this and make all other infantry obsolete, but these basic troops will carry you through early and even midgame easily.

Honestly Kislev should do *OK* in melee, looking at their unit stats. Tzar Guard has significantly better base stats than Greatswords for a very slight HP loss (3%), and their non-great weapon variant looks really tanky. Ice Guards (Glaives) are about the same situation vs. Halberds, though with a much greater HP penalty (but they get ranged slowing weapons and magical attacks).

What you usually need to do to make melee competent is find a way to recruit them at rank 7-9 for the increased stats and high rank red line bonuses. Problem is, at least in the original campaign, kislev has those shitty provinces with only minor settlements. You kind of need to either expand into chaos waste or empire regions with 4 settlement slots and pump out all the +2/+1 rank buildings and then recruit with a general with the +2 rank blue line bonuses, along with ideally the +2 recruit rank tech.

Of course this is still basically a challenge run. If you want to make the most effective military you'll just spam out cheap armies that are 1/3rd Armored Kossars and 2/3rds Kossars and you can conquer half the map before you'd even be able to build rank 9 infantry.

yea chaos auto resolve seems a bit silly

I mean the average chaos warrior can probably kill 50 skavenslaves with his piss stream.

 

[thesecret1]

Honestly Kislev should do *OK* in melee, looking at their unit stats. Tzar Guard has significantly better base stats than Greatswords for a very slight HP loss (3%), and their non-great weapon variant looks really tanky. Ice Guards (Glaives) are about the same situation vs. Halberds, though with a much greater HP penalty (but they get ranged slowing weapons and magical attacks).

Their rank 3 units, sure. But if you have a full stack of those, few things will be able to actually reach them to test that out. Tzar guard is a waste of money when you could just get even more ice guards

What you usually need to do to make melee competent is find a way to recruit them at rank 7-9 for the increased stats and high rank red line bonuses. Problem is, at least in the original campaign, kislev has those shitty provinces with only minor settlements. You kind of need to either expand into chaos waste or empire regions with 4 settlement slots and pump out all the +2/+1 rank buildings and then recruit with a general with the +2 rank blue line bonuses, along with ideally the +2 recruit rank tech.

Of course this is still basically a challenge run. If you want to make the most effective military you'll just spam out cheap armies that are 1/3rd Armored Kossars and 2/3rds Kossars and you can conquer half the map before you'd even be able to build rank 9 infantry.

The solution to shit provinces is Norsca. Habitable climate with all the provinces having a larger settlement. But by the time you build those up, you already own half the map with kossars and armed kossars, as you said. Really, you don't even want to expand into Kislev proper. The supporters mechanic punishes you for fighting other kislevites and the land is all shit. Big cities like Praag or Erengrad may seem tantalizing, but they cost a fortune to build up and lack the countryside to make them grow faster.

 

[Average Manatee]

Their rank 3 units, sure. But if you have a full stack of those, few things will be able to actually reach them to test that out. Tzar guard is a waste of money when you could just get even more ice guards

Tzar Guard is still a good unit though. I've seen them hold out literally forever in defensive sieges.

Also one nice thing about Kislev I forgot: it's very easily to get 1 turn global recruitment times (which means effectively 0 turns of time lost since you just end the turn and have it at the beginning of next turn). Very nice and convenient to replace your whole army with top tier units in the field. Can also just summon a lord in a far off province and 2 turns later have a full army anywhere on the map. I'm sure it's even nicer in Immortal Empires.

The solution to shit provinces is Norsca. Habitable climate with all the provinces having a larger settlement. But by the time you build those up, you already own half the map with kossars and armed kossars, as you said. Really, you don't even want to expand into Kislev proper. The supporters mechanic punishes you for fighting other kislevites and the land is all shit. Big cities like Praag or Erengrad may seem tantalizing, but they cost a fortune to build up and lack the countryside to make them grow faster.

My problem with the Norscan area is that the province layouts are absolutely, cancerously large and spread out and are impossible to defend against multiple foes until you have level 3 settlements with walls that can hold out on their own. Going there at the start of the game when you are capturing a bunch of level 1 settlements leads to tearing your hair out as random shit comes out of the fog of war to sack and then run away.

 

[thesecret1]

Also one nice thing about Kislev I forgot: it's very easily to get 1 turn global recruitment times (which means effectively 0 turns of time lost since you just end the turn and have it at the beginning of next turn). Very nice and convenient to replace your whole army with top tier units in the field. Can also just summon a lord in a far off province and 2 turns later have a full army anywhere on the map. I'm sure it's even nicer in Immortal Empires.

Yeah, just gotta upgrade Praag enough. Though by that point in the game, you're likely already running around with a bunch of doomstacks.

My problem with the Norscan area is that the province layouts are absolutely, cancerously large and spread out and are impossible to defend against multiple foes until you have level 3 settlements with walls that can hold out on their own. Going there at the start of the game when you are capturing a bunch of level 1 settlements leads to tearing your hair out as random shit comes out of the fog of war to sack and then run away.

The mountain areas are actually fairly easy to hold, since the enemies are just more norscans with their marauder stacks (lol) who are usually too pussy to try anything on a fortified town, even a tier 2 one. The real problem is the coast – there you really are going to be tearing your hair out unless you keep a lord around at all times. Nearest norscan province from Kislev is actually nice in that the only coastal settlement is a big one, so nobody tries moving on it (after you crush the tzeench faction there, of course), it's layout actually kinda decent enough to be defensible and allow growth. To expand past that, you have to dedicate an army to secure your southern flank and just go around pacifying the Empire and Albion – your coastal hovels cannot be raided if you've killed all the raiders at the source. Also Empire, at least in my game, was getting absolutely buttfucked by practically everything – greenskins and their skaven butt buddies taking out Marienburg, elves sacking nordland, and Ogres (especially ogres!) taking out all of middenland and most of Hochland and threatening to actually spill even far past that (imagine my surprise when those fuckers conquered a town in Ostland!). Sylvania is also a problem just waiting to explode. All in all, ignoring Empire as Kislev seems to potentially lead into there just not being an Empire later on, and your southern flank getting raped by all manner of undesirables.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, just gotta upgrade Praag enough. Though by that point in the game, you're likely already running around with a bunch of doomstacks.

It can save like 20 turns having a lord run back and forth halfway across a continent. And again, you can just raise a lord anywhere on the map and have an army in two turns (or a competent half-army to defend with in one), rather than... 10-15 turns. Very useful when the map has two paths but you have only one army.

The mountain areas are actually fairly easy to hold, since the enemies are just more norscans with their marauder stacks (lol) who are usually too pussy to try anything on a fortified town, even a tier 2 one. The real problem is the coast – there you really are going to be tearing your hair out unless you keep a lord around at all times. Nearest norscan province from Kislev is actually nice in that the only coastal settlement is a big one, so nobody tries moving on it (after you crush the tzeench faction there, of course), it's layout actually kinda decent enough to be defensible and allow growth. To expand past that, you have to dedicate an army to secure your southern flank and just go around pacifying the Empire and Albion – your coastal hovels cannot be raided if you've killed all the raiders at the source. Also Empire, at least in my game, was getting absolutely buttfucked by practically everything – greenskins and their skaven butt buddies taking out Marienburg, elves sacking nordland, and Ogres (especially ogres!) taking out all of middenland and most of Hochland and threatening to actually spill even far past that (imagine my surprise when those fuckers conquered a town in Ostland!). Sylvania is also a problem just waiting to explode. All in all, ignoring Empire as Kislev seems to potentially lead into there just not being an Empire later on, and your southern flank getting raped by all manner of undesirables.

I'd probably just go for destroying the empire immediately. It's so rich and valuable and easy to defend.

The other surprisingly easy path is the chaos wastes if you start with or can get Boris (with immunity to attrition up there). All the chaos wastes are in a nice line so as soon as you can field a 2nd competent army as anyone that can tank corruption/climate penalties up there you can conquer a vast amount of land in record time. As a bonus the non-chaos AIs seem to not be that aggressive if you occupy chaos waste land. I think they consider it low-priority somehow and won't aggressively declare war over it as long as you stick to the north of the map. Instead they'll all love you (even factions like dark elves) because they hate all the fucking chaos tribes that you're speedclearing.

 

[Sizzle]

 

[Mitleser2020]

Summary of the Update 2.1

• The Total War: WARHAMMER III Assembly Kit has arrived for our amazing modding community!
• The High Elf Archmage is no longer unstoppable when mounted on a dragon.
• The Warriors of Chaos can now subjugate all human and elven races.
• Archaon and Be’lakor can now confederate other Warriors of Chaos factions upon capturing their final settlement.
• Added an Ultimate Crisis setting to trigger ALL endgame scenarios in the same playthrough (only for the strong-willed and stout of heart).
• All Legendary Lords now begin with the Siege Attacker trait.
• Improvements to the Dwarfs—they are gaining spell resistance, additional movement options, and buffs to their Hammerers.
• Stationary vortex spells have been rebalanced so that targets have a chance to react.
• Helman Ghorst is getting some necessary tweaks to bring him into balance with the rest of the battlefield.
• Domination Battles will see rule changes to help them last longer (and will continue to see changes in future updates).
• The Empire will receive reduced penalties to their Imperial Authority when they incur their first losses.
• Regiments of Renown units are now available to the appropriate factions, and costs have been reduced for units that were asking for far too much.

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/tww3-update-210/