Warhammer Total War: Warhammer III

[Raghar]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZt5KCyDDz4

There, there you have a properly implemented ghost unit.

 

[Average Manatee]

So out of 13 factions here, only 6 have units that fulfill your criteria (well 7, but for my sanity's sake i'm ignoring chaos so count that as a loss in your favor).
Of the 6, the empire and dwarf units are the most similar in that they are both defensive line holding buffers with very samey buffs (although it is much more valuable for the empire since dwarves already tend to be high morale and have other units who give support buffs) but treat them the same and those satchel charges will make you rue it.

I rest my case and drop the mic, I do not think the Incredibles syndrome quote applies here and argue these are not interchangeable units and that they have more flavor and distinction then just their damage types. And this is the same regardless if we were to do expand the criteria to "only top tier melee cavalry" or "top tier melee halberdier infantry".
If you still ain't convinced, that's fine, we will just have to agree to disagree.

Those are all incredibly similar, cmon. And you're trying to be a stickler about the shield and other stats to get out of admitting that Tier 3 heavy infantry are almost identical. Vanilla units have essentially the same minor alterations with a stat buff here or an aura there. I have played Vampire counts with SFO and I do know that they make the vampires (canon appropriately) absurdly fast which is cool. But the other changes are a joke. lolol an aura of encouragement, half the high tier units in the game give that and its irrelevant.

You're also missing several units, Tomb Kings have Tomb Guard, Skaven have Stormvermin, Cathay have Celestial Dragon, Chaos factions all have Chosen, Kislev have Tzar Guard, Norsca have Marauder Champions. And yes, they all have their own dumb quirks (tomb kings heal, storm vermin can scurry away, cathay have their yin yang, chaos have their god's bonuses, kislev are momentarily unbreakable, Norsca have bloodrage), but you still use them basically the same.

 

[Lacrymas]

Units between factions are extremely similar, yes. I've been complaining about this since forever, especially in light of games like Gladius which manage to make different factions actually different.

 

[kris]

As an aside I remembered one of my first experiences trying total war mp and it just highlights the sort of subhuman thrash that infest it.

story time!

Context was Medieval Total war 2.

Me and my friend decided to try mp for the first time, we were both new to online gaming for the most part and still wild eyed and naive.
We say we are new players in lobby because well, again, we were wild eyed and naive, new to the internet as well.

A bunch of players immediately act super friendly towards us and propose to teach us in some "friendly games". These gents were the absolute pinnacle of good manners and friendliness. So my friend and I agree to a 2v2, and we picked balanced armies: infantry, archers, cavalry and some siege weapons.

The game starts, we see both enemy players have taken nothing but cavalry. Ok no problem, we will just form up our spear walls and...wait what?
The other team, up untill now so polite and friendly proceed to absolutely rage at us, calling us all sorts of names and being your average league of legends player pretty much.

Apparently unbeknown to us, taking even one unit of arty was considered heresy in the M:TW2 mp community. After unleashing entire paragraphs of vitriol at us, they rage quit.

Back in the lobby, they proceed to shit talk about us to the other mp "pros" in the lobby, who also agreed and proceeded to join in the bandwagon of insults.

The entire room previously sooo friendly and welcoming turn into a hive of toxic shit heads all screeching at us for taking artillery (and apparently taking all cav armies was a-ok though, because thats what the "pros" did), even though we did say we were new and no one bothered to tell us about mp etiquette when they were inviting us to play games with them (which i now know is actually because they wanted to stomp some noobs and pad out their stats). Needless to say, neither me nor my friend persisted with medieval mp.

Fuck the total war mp community, it's one thing for them to shit up mp, it's another when their bs affects sp too.

Certainly mirrors my first and only time playing WoW, although not everyone ganged up on me, there were so many "uninformal rules" that other players raged on me about that I didn't ever bother booting it up again. I am sure I was the winner here.

I am a bit surprised by your story though, since the few youtube clips I seen of WH MP always seen the use of artillery.

 

[zapotec]

medieval not warhammer eh

 

[BrotherFrank]

You're also missing several units, Tomb Kings have Tomb Guard, Skaven have Stormvermin, Cathay have Celestial Dragon, Chaos factions all have Chosen, Kislev have Tzar Guard, Norsca have Marauder Champions. And yes, they all have their own dumb quirks (tomb kings heal, storm vermin can scurry away, cathay have their yin yang, chaos have their god's bonuses, kislev are momentarily unbreakable, Norsca have bloodrage), but you still use them basically the same.

Did not consider tomb guard or stormvermin at same tier as those I mentioned (as i said, tier 1-3 is vanilla, the balance i know is completely different to what you are familiar with even in the case of the units you know and blood knights are in a tier of their own all together so i arguably should have left undead n/a too) except Cathay who I have no idea about (i play wh2, not wh3 so cathay in sfo 3 are a total ? to me). Norsca got lumped into chaos and their top eligible unit in the mod isn’t marauder champions.

And I disagree (clearly), they are not the same to me at all otherwise i wouldnt be arguing my position, and this was despite working in a very tight specific set of conditions mostly set by you. Hell you even mention differential quirks yourself and thats in vanilla, turn up those quirks to 11 and that would give you an approximate idea of what i’m used to.

 

[Cyberarmy]

These are gold,

 

[Space Satan]

For Warhammer Total War series music I can forgive them most of their fuckups. Entire music team should be given a hefty bonus and promotions because they not only wrote terrific music compositions but also integrated them into a gameplay. Most of their tracks are Dynamic, with lots of triggers. What this means is that music gradually shifts to fit for special occasions.
For example, when you move a lot of units music shifts to marching and drums, when you cast vortex spell it becames intense and when your units start to flee it shifts to tragic tones, when almost all your army clashes with enemy - it triggers power motives etc. etc. etc.
This alone makes WTW battles stand above other total war series and strategies in terms of athmosphere. Music feels always "fitting" and augments the curent events on the battlefield, plus, music never are the same as it readjusts for every battle.
Settra's theme, for example is most prominent for marchins undead legions feels at the beginning of the track.

 

[Fedora Master]

The soundscape of the game is excellent. Skaven throat singing.

Just wish they had a few more voice actors.

 

[Wassersäufer]

Is the Daemon Prince still as useless as ever? Im tempted to start a legendary IE campaign with him, but I remember he was less than spectacular when the game came out.

 

[Average Manatee]

They buffed his stats a bit. Used to be he'd literally lose in a 1v1 to the generic empire general in the first fight, now his starting stats are about comparable to a normal melee legendary lord.

 

[Lacrymas]

The problem isn't only him, the entire faction is bad because the daemon factions are bad (with the possible exception of Skarbrand).

 

[thesheeep]

The problem isn't only him, the entire faction is bad because the daemon factions are bad (with the possible exception of Skarbrand).

Grandpa Nurgle disapproves of this message.

Seriously, though, except for Daniel, the demon factions are fine (not sure about Slaanesh as I don't enjoy their playstyle so I never really tried).
They are all more than capable of playing and winning the campaign with and are enjoyably different to play.

Their problem is the low unit variety - but the chaos update/DLC did help with that at least somewhat.

I'd say all factions in the game are at least fun to play for a while.
Beware of the Kairos start, though... that bird has gotten the short end of the stick

 

[Cyberarmy]

Is the Daemon Prince still as useless as ever? Im tempted to start a legendary IE campaign with him, but I remember he was less than spectacular when the game came out.

His generals are better than him...

 

[Average Manatee]

I think they stealth-buffed Dark Elves slaves in ways unlisted in the patch notes. Or the changes were from a previous patch I missed? Anyway it's really, really good now. Definitely makes them one of the strongest overall races next to Skaven (and I guess... Bretonnia would be the other top-tier race?). Your growth buildings now also multiply slave income, so spamming growth + income buildings both makes you grow super fast and get tons of money. And that's what you should be spamming as most races anyway. Normally growth buildings past the first tier are kind of iffy since the upgrade cost is huge compared to the growth benefit but for Dark Elves they instead make massive bank and grow quicker than all the other races now. The bonuses for having lots of slaves are also way better, a decent amount of -construction cost, a HUGE -construction time bonus which again helps you grow faster, and the tiers are a lot more achievable rather than requiring like 100k slaves that it did before. Was playing Morathi and this combined with the starting position changes in WH3 compared to WH2 (you have a little bit of a breather before being swarmed by every faction in Ulthuan) makes it almost too easy.

The problem isn't only him, the entire faction is bad because the daemon factions are bad (with the possible exception of Skarbrand).

If your problem is lack of unit variety his faction should actually fix that since he can use multiple faction's units.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Definitely makes them one of the strongest overall races next to Skaven

I first played IE at launch with Dark Elves picking Lokhir. He gets so many Black Arks, so quickly it's not even fun after a while. Sacking bonus from them stack which easly net 40-50 K loot sacked from cities in their area. Pair this Black Ark army cost reductions, I easly bypassed slave mechanics altogether.

If they buffed slaves now noone can withstand them I think. You can just shit armies after a while.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, Lokhir's Black Ark play is incredible. I was getting basically infinite money as Morathi (each settlement province giving ~5000 income per turn, enough to support a strong full stack), can't imagine how much money I'd have been making if I was actually shitting out strong Black Ark stacks as well. And the construction time and growth bonuses of slaves can't be understated, it means you snowball newly conquered regions into moneymakers very quickly. I've avoided playing Lokhir in WH3 so far though because the east side of the map feels pretty barren and uninteresting IMO.

Spoiler

You can save his custom black ark and load it in as any Dark Elf Faction to get it with its special building. Multiple times, in fact, which bypasses their limited ability to spam black arks.

Then you combine this with the names of power exploit and its just stupidly overpowered

 

[Lacrymas]

The problem isn't only him, the entire faction is bad because the daemon factions are bad (with the possible exception of Skarbrand).

Grandpa Nurgle disapproves of this message.

Seriously, though, except for Daniel, the demon factions are fine (not sure about Slaanesh as I don't enjoy their playstyle so I never really tried).
They are all more than capable of playing and winning the campaign with and are enjoyably different to play.

Their problem is the low unit variety - but the chaos update/DLC did help with that at least somewhat.

I'd say all factions in the game are at least fun to play for a while.
Beware of the Kairos start, though... that bird has gotten the short end of the stick

The daemon factions aren't fine, though, especially on the IE map. It's obvious they weren't designed for a globe-trotting conquest and their units/gimmicks are weak in that context. Their economies are bad and can barely sustain more than 1 or 2 armies. They also lack map control and the ability to develop their provinces at an acceptable pace. Each of them (including Skarbrand) has a different, almost crippling weakness (Ku'gath is too slow, Kairos has shit replenishment, Skarbrand is too reliant on sacking and looting, Slaanesh's armies are weak) that is inherited by the Daemon Prince without getting any of the gimmicks, so that makes him the worst of them all.

 

[Wassersäufer]

Legion of Chaos definitely seems underwhelming, especially with Malus Chadblade just around the corner. Its hard to get the glory to unlock better units when you are very likely to face him early on.

 

[Average Manatee]

(Ku'gath is too slow, Kairos has shit replenishment, Skarbrand is too reliant on sacking and looting, Slaanesh's armies are weak)

Ku'gath I agree sucks. He really relies on plagues to do anything important.

Kairos is fine. His replenishment was buffed. He's still got shields and great magic.

Skarbrand has always been OP.

Slaanesh I haven't really played. I think he's kind of ehh? Seems to destroy Ulthuan in half the games I've played though. Will give him a try. On first glance he seems to have really good income if he keeps his control low. 200 income from settlement building + 200 income base + 200 if control below -50 building with another building giving +90 and a +50% income bonus. That's a potential 1035 income per minor settlement, top tier next to Dark Elves and Brettonia. I'm guessing the way to play him is to go for his AP shock cavalry?

All of the chaos factions are a lot more viable now that the unwalled settlement battles were changed to be only for settlements with the defensive building built. Slaanesh and Skarbrand especially appreciate not having towers endlessly spamming arrows at them as they try to rout the last few enemies.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I'm taking actually being outright quasi immune to physical damage to the point that without the right tools, a ghost unit can practically solo an entire army if played right.

Honestly, that sounds terrible.
Imagine going up against that without ways to fight it - and no, you cannot always know what you'll be up against.
Getting wiped by a single unit of ghosts has to be some of the worst feelings
And I'm not sure if every faction even has access to magic before end game...

Just making them scarier and increasing the resistance sounds more than fine to me. No need to go over the top.

They couldn't even do that in the table top.
IIRC whilst they did have physical immunity, you can still kill them through combat resolution and they had terrible damage output. They were basically roadblocks.

 

[Lacrymas]

Kairos is fine. His replenishment was buffed. He's still got shields and great magic.

Skarbrand has always been OP.

Slaanesh I haven't really played. I think he's kind of ehh? Seems to destroy Ulthuan in half the games I've played though. Will give him a try. On first glance he seems to have really good income if he keeps his control low. 200 income from settlement building + 200 income base + 200 if control below -50 building with another building giving +90 and a +50% income bonus. That's a potential 1035 income per minor settlement, top tier next to Dark Elves and Brettonia. I'm guessing the way to play him is to go for his AP shock cavalry?

All of the chaos factions are a lot more viable now that the unwalled settlement battles were changed to be only for settlements with the defensive building built. Slaanesh and Skarbrand especially appreciate not having towers endlessly spamming arrows at them as they try to rout the last few enemies.

Unless they buffed Kairos's replenishment in the last 2 months (that's when I last played him), it's still shit. Skarbrand is OP only because of his blood hosts or whatever the name was, his economy is shit otherwise and far too reliant on sacking and looting. Slaanesh has a single good unit - the exalted chariots - unless the army is headed by N'Kari himself. Here's where I think the misunderstanding comes from - the lords themselves are OP (except Ku'gath) and that's why people think there's nothing wrong with the daemon factions. Slaanesh's armies are ridiculously weak and die to everything even in open field battles unless N'Kari is in it. Kairos's army is "strong" because Kairos himself has crazy op magic. The difference between having Infernal Gateway and not having it is truly immense and literally gamechanging. Which means all daemon factions lack map control due to shit economies and only 1 truly viable army, with the possible exception of Skarbrand, but he has other issues. Yes, Slaanesh has the economic buildings, but keeping control down everywhere in order to squeeze out those bonuses is a) a micromanagement hell, b) not very reliable in the first place, and c) fucked over by constantly changing corruption levels. Developing your economy is only ever aа problem in the beginning, where fluctuating corruption levels is a big issue. Once you can sustain around 4 full armies, you've practically won the game at that point either way, so endgame is hardly a barometer for how well a faction plays.

 

[Average Manatee]

Bro I just played Slaanesh a bit and his armies annihilate shit. His cavalry game is insane, possibly better than Brettonia's if you use it well. Anything you flank dies in seconds. It's up to you to flank. N'kari himself is mostly good for dueling and for his magic (use the cheap wind spell to knock spearmen down so you can flank). Also public order is easy to manage because its designed to naturally hit a resting point. Though you probably need to play on legendary/VH difficulty otherwise the lack of control penalties means the corruption forces your control to be too high. For me my settlements are naturally resting around -50 to -75 just by not building any control buildings and having corruption.

Tzeentch armies has mad ranged ability and all ranged armies in TWWH dominate. His Cavalry are also good. I'll give you that he has some bad matchups (e.g. I would not want him in Slaanesh's start position facing down a million elven archers with better range), but for where he is, in the corner of the map fighting nobodies, he's fine.

Skaarbrand does need to loot, but what's the issue with that? All economies will eventually be fine if you own a whole continent. Skaarbrand can get there in like 10 turns. OK so developing from that point takes 30 turns but so what?

Ironically enough, Nurgle is actually the faction that most relies on their lord Ku'gath because he's one of the best artillery pieces in the game along with being one of the strongest melee lords in a faction that otherwise has nothing strong early game and takes forever to unlock new things. It's his units that are slow and shit.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yes, like I said, the chariots are good, but that's it, everything else relies on N'Kari being in the army (unless you have another very high level lord that can provide the same army bonuses, but again you've already won the game at that point). Slaanesh's economy being ok-ish only when you have an (extreme) artificial control malus is not a good look. You can, of course, eventually do well with every faction and every lord, but comparing the daemons to almost everyone else reveals their problems. Daniel's faction is the weakest of them all imo, but dwarfs, Kislev, Ogre Kingdoms are all even worse than the monogod factions, sure.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yes, like I said, the chariots are good, but that's it

This is just completely wrong.

Seekers of Slaanesh: 60 models, 40 AP damage, 80 charge bonus if charging from the rear or sides, 100 speed.
Questing Knights (brettonia's best comparable): 60 models, 48 AP damage, 41 charge bonus, 78 speed.

Getting ~33% more damage in a charge along with ~30% more speed so you can charge more often is incredible, and this is Slaanesh being compared to what are already some of the best cavalry in the game. Heartseekers are even more insane. The fiends of Slaanesh he started with were also quite good having similar speed, huge charge bonuses, AP damage.

His basic infantry are also just generally not bad, being very fast and therefor good for flanks themselves and being high damage to rout enemies quickly when you do. It's basically just playing a game of "don't get shot", because you have jack shit to defend against arrows. But that's easy if you have a handful of cavalry properly fucking up their backline.

I'll also point out that his top tier Chosen of Slaanesh infantry have a ridiculous 120 armor silver shields, 70 melee defence and 10% phys resist. That's literally better than Ironbreakers in every one of those stats (also has better health, melee attack, and weapon strength). I didn't get a chance to use them but on paper I don't know how you can lose if you start deploying armies with those.

On the magic front he has Shadow Magic. 'nuff said. A shadow magic lord is probably ideal for generic armies. He can also hire Chaos Lords of Slaanesh which are incredible if you go down the use-extra-lords-as-tagalong-units route. It only takes until level 5 for him to unlock his mount and have a massive 95 speed, 120 armor silver shield, 71 MA/75 MD, 50 charge bonus (more than N'Kari) w/ devastating flanker dude if you get him with unearthly reflexes. He's practically a N'kari replacement for duelling, he'll lack the AP but have much better tanking.