Warhammer Total War: Warhammer III

[pickmeister]

My experience of the first two TWW games is that they are very fun until you start discovering the glaring AI flaws in the tactical maps (some of them dating back years and years, to previous TWs) and getting hit by the major strategy/campaign map annoyances, which usually come by mid-late game.

Battlefield animations are mostly great, and the different units are well represented - however, in terms of gameplay, all factions sort of devolve into a samey mush over time, which is a shame.

I think these games would benefit greatly from a smaller scale. Trying to cram everything in at the same time is a major source of decline.

My first TW game was the original Shogun, all the way back when it was released over 20 years ago. I played the hell out of it and I remember it in contrast to Myth, which was my other most-played strategy game. Each scratched a different itch, and I miss the simplicity of the more Risk-like strategic layer of earlier TWs.

You're right and I can already see them at times. I don't remember the same level of annoyance in the old Total War: Rome, but that might be just me not remembering it right. Seeing the AI blatantly abusing movement range because it can see yours even through the fog of war is infuriating. The ambush stance does mitigate it a little in some situations but that's just a workaround for bad design.

I do realize it's essentially a generic total war with a very nice coat of paint and some interesting mechanics. But the things that feel too gamey and immersion breaking in the historic games are something I can tolerate in Warhammer setting for some reason.
Hopefully, in time, some mods are going to appear fixing the AI at least a little so it doesn't have to cheat like a motherfucker to make it at least a slightly challenging contender. All I've seen so far were mods that either removed the AI advantages/cheats completely, making it completely incompetent or make it cheat even more to make the game more difficult. None of those seem that great to me.

I've just decimated two Chaos doomstacks, now going for the third one. 1 Legendary Lord, 8 Ironbreakers, 1 Master Engineer, 6 Quarreller, and 4 Organ Guns feel like cheating. Not sure which faction to play next yet. I'll probably just skim through the first game to get into the second one, and eventually the third one to see the improvements in each iteration.

 

[Average Manatee]

Boris just keeps FUCKING ME HARD. I don't understand how you're supposed to reasonably beat Kislev this early and its impossible to avoid his doomstack running straight at you.

Let's recap:
Kossars: a RANGED BOW TIER 1 unit, 41 melee attack 29 melee defense.
Nurglings: supposed to be a tanky melee unit, 29 melee attack 25 melee defense, gets another 9 melee defense while in melee (which seems like a stupid ability, I don't know why that exists). Total of 29 melee attack 34 melee defense.
Bloodletters: supposed to be a super strong offensive tier 2 melee unit. 37 melee attack, 29 melee defense, +9 vs. infantry for a total of 46 melee attack 29 melee defense
Blue Horrors: my best ranged unit, supposed to be a ranged/melee hybrid. 90 range (vs. kossar 140), only 5 ammo (vs. kossar 20), 21 melee attack 28 melee defense.

His tier 1 spam absolutely rapes mine. Even if I went maximum abuse and used my lord to force him to waste 100% of his ammunition, kossars would just run into melee and destroy me, especially with even moderate AI melee bonuses. If I went straight for tier 2 units I might be able to get half an army of them but as you can see even bloodletters don't match up great vs. them.

Let's look at other matchups with my limited, irreplaceable starting units:

My starting cavalry? His entire army is ranged, it can't come anywhere near anything without dying since its super weak and even if it does half his units are either anti large (kossars with spears or anything on a bear) or just tanky and take no damage (armored kossars).
My dogs? What a laugh, everything beats them in melee.
Flying plague drones? More things to get shot.
Pink Horrors? Theoretically a good ranged unit. Still less range and laughable melee stats compared to kossars.
My Lord? 60 MA/60 MD/529 weapon strength. Nice, those are decent lord stats, considering he also has abilities to boost weapon strength. Boris? 77 MA/68 MD/37 bonus vs. Large/490 AP weapon strength. Also nice, his lord literally hard counters mine. His war bears also have 63 MA/41MD/23 bonus vs. large/110 weapon strength, so they hard counter my lord as well. Never mind that my lord is a huge flying dude with low armor that is also hard countered by his ranged units.

My only saving grace is that I randomly got a spell caster by event. But that's unreliable and he can't nearly do the work of beating this on his own. Trying the battle a few times I can get ~250-300 kills with him but its just not enough and even if you inflict a lot of damage Boris is just gonna spam more kossars and continue the rapetrain.

Have no idea how to play this aside from abusing ambush stance which tilts autoresolve in your favor

 

[Fedora Master]

Nurglings are complete trash. The DP gets access to all T1 daemons easily, try getting more Daemonettes instead. The only really dangerous units in his stack are the bear cav.

Not at my computer so I can't test the situation myself though.

 

[Average Manatee]

Daemonettes are tier 2 like the Bloodletters and basically the same stat ratio when you take into account Bloodletter's vs. infantry bonus (also die even quicker to arrows). And an army of them basically breaks the bank (the nurglings cost half only about 1/3rd as much as Daemonettes or Bloodletters and already put me at close to zero income). Tier 1 infantry for Slaanesh is marauders who are at best equivalent to Nurglings I think but almost twice the price. I think Nurgle's T2 Plaguebearers are the best option since they have decent melee stats and massive non-AP weapon strength which is better suited to fighting Kossars than the much lower AP damage Bloodletters and Daemonettes have. Plaguebearers also have like 40 and 60% more health respectively. If I can demolish the Kossars the bear cav will probably rout or at least I can find a way to eventually grind them down. But getting to Tier 2 in time for Boris and being able to pay for that army is hard.

Also, while I don't NEED to make my settlements Nurgle for this, taking Nurgle options and going down the Nurgle skill path is what gives replenishment bonuses that are essential early game. I actually can't even unlock tier 2 infantry without at least some devotion into Slaanesh or Khorne which is hard to afford to invest in. And doing the Nurgle commandments is what gives settlements more growth.

 

[Lacrymas]

Just spam blue horrors.

 

[Average Manatee]

Just spam blue horrors.

Kossars: a RANGED BOW TIER 1 unit, 41 melee attack 29 melee defense.
Blue Horrors: my best ranged unit, supposed to be a ranged/melee hybrid. 90 range (vs. kossar 140), only 5 ammo (vs. kossar 20), 21 melee attack 28 melee defense.

I don't think Blue Horrors could beat Kossars even if I played on Easy difficulty. They are fine against anything else up here in the north (except maybe dark elfs), but kossars hard counter them at range and in melee.

 

[copebot]

Just spam blue horrors.

Kossars: a RANGED BOW TIER 1 unit, 41 melee attack 29 melee defense.
Blue Horrors: my best ranged unit, supposed to be a ranged/melee hybrid. 90 range (vs. kossar 140), only 5 ammo (vs. kossar 20), 21 melee attack 28 melee defense.

I don't think Blue Horrors could beat Kossars even if I played on Easy difficulty. They are fine against anything else up here in the north (except maybe dark elfs), but kossars hard counter them at range and in melee.

Your problem is your army. In my undivided campaign, I leaned heavily on Slaanesh marauder spam in the early game, even though I stayed undivided through to the end. It's the best early game eco unit for him, can be replaced easily, and the Slaanesh buildings are the best buildings because they give you the most money. The other gods' buildings are only useful for heroes and their other units. Daemonettes are the best infantry one tier up, but obviously bloodletters are pretty dope also. The best casters are the Nurgle casters because of healing, flying, and that ability that turns them into a mortis engine during its duration.

A basic marauder stack would trade up versus that Kislev stack. The stack you brought 100% loses. Use marauders to get to the point to which you can afford better units, and then keep using marauders until the marauders start losing too much, so you replace them with better stuff and unbeatable heroes. Your economy is actually pretty solid as Chaos Undivided, but you need to spam Slaanesh settlements to take advantage of it. You can recruit marauders at tier 1 in any Slaanesh settlement and the global recruit time goes down to 1 turn when you have ten Slaanesh settlements. With this kind of eco spam, your wins won't necessarily be pretty, but you will win. The reason why this works is because the basic pervert marauders have shields, bonus to infantry, and are very cheap. Yes, nurglings are cheaper, but without Nurgle tech and Nurgle lords they are not good. Yes, blue horrors have bubble shield and a ranged attack, but they are more expensive and lame in melee. Nudist marauders are effective and cheap right out of the box, and get even cheaper through the pseudo tech tree you get to the point to which they become nearly free, especially in your LL's army. Yes, bloodletters are dope, but they are too expensive for the early game. For one bloodletter, you can pay for two marauder units, and in the early game, you probably don't really need the AP from the bloodletters.

 

[Galdred]

My experience of the first two TWW games is that they are very fun until you start discovering the glaring AI flaws in the tactical maps (some of them dating back years and years, to previous TWs) and getting hit by the major strategy/campaign map annoyances, which usually come by mid-late game.

Battlefield animations are mostly great, and the different units are well represented - however, in terms of gameplay, all factions sort of devolve into a samey mush over time, which is a shame.

I think these games would benefit greatly from a smaller scale. Trying to cram everything in at the same time is a major source of decline.

My first TW game was the original Shogun, all the way back when it was released over 20 years ago. I played the hell out of it and I remember it in contrast to Myth, which was my other most-played strategy game. Each scratched a different itch, and I miss the simplicity of the more Risk-like strategic layer of earlier TWs.

I was also thinking I missed the simplicity of the earlier Total Wars: the strategic part was much simpler, which mean that the AI could avoid embarassing itself too much, and it was much clearer to read:
You would know in advance the terrain over which the battle would take place.
Also, the battles were slower, with units that didn't melt as fast. It meant that it was much easier to use reserves, of to flank an unit that was already engaged.
But Total War Warhammer brought a few cool things to the formula, like the large battles, magic and heroes.
In a way, I don't mind Warhammer TW being arcadey as much as the historical total wars.

 

[Average Manatee]

Your problem is your army. In my undivided campaign, I leaned heavily on Slaanesh marauder spam in the early game, even though I stayed undivided through to the end. It's the best early game eco unit for him, can be replaced easily, and the Slaanesh buildings are the best buildings because they give you the most money. The other gods' buildings are only useful for heroes and their other units. Daemonettes are the best infantry one tier up, but obviously bloodletters are pretty dope also. The best casters are the Nurgle casters because of healing, flying, and that ability that turns them into a mortis engine during its duration.

Ehh, I'm not really seeing the marauder advantage. W/ level 3 red line bonuses:

Nurgling: 30 MA/39 MD/28 WS, poisons enemies
Marauder: 40 MA/28 MD/29 WS, +7 vs. infantry

It's marginally better, a total of 75 melee stats vs. 69, but I don't see it massively changing the results. Will try it out when I feel like giving the campaign another go though.

The Slaanesh settlements definitely don't seem to make any more money, all of the income buildings are just 100g per rank regardless of which chaos god you devote to. EDIT: Ohh, I see one has a conditional bonus. Though it doesn't really help me because I can't get a settlement to tier 3 before being ganked. It also requires >25 control in the province which is fairly hard to do.

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

The last good Total war game was Medieval 2 and Rome: Total War was peak Total War. Shogun was meh. Rome 2 was meh. Atilla was even worse than Rome 2. Warhammer is garbage. All of them are garbage.

The only thing Medieval 2 and Rome needed was improved AI and the ability to play as the Kingdom of Israel with a unique Jerusalem map. (Though Rome had Jewish units in its rebels faction).

We don't even need new textures. Just the older games with better AI and better Windows 7 Compatibility.

 

[Lacrymas]

We don't even need new textures. Just the older games with better AI and better Windows 7 Compatibility.

We already have this, it's Rome Remastered. It technically requires Win 10, but it will probably run on 7 as well. I have the original installed on my Win 7 laptop and it works fine with a few tweaks.

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

We don't even need new textures. Just the older games with better AI and better Windows 7 Compatibility.

We already have this, it's Rome Remastered. It technically requires Win 10, but it will probably run on 7 as well. I have the original installed on my Win 7 laptop and it works fine with a few tweaks.

The Remaster is ugly though.

 

[copebot]

Your problem is your army. In my undivided campaign, I leaned heavily on Slaanesh marauder spam in the early game, even though I stayed undivided through to the end. It's the best early game eco unit for him, can be replaced easily, and the Slaanesh buildings are the best buildings because they give you the most money. The other gods' buildings are only useful for heroes and their other units. Daemonettes are the best infantry one tier up, but obviously bloodletters are pretty dope also. The best casters are the Nurgle casters because of healing, flying, and that ability that turns them into a mortis engine during its duration.

Ehh, I'm not really seeing the marauder advantage. W/ level 3 red line bonuses:

Nurgling: 30 MA/39 MD/28 WS, poisons enemies
Marauder: 40 MA/28 MD/29 WS, +7 vs. infantry

It's marginally better, a total of 75 melee stats vs. 69, but I don't see it massively changing the results. Will try it out when I feel like giving the campaign another go though.

The Slaanesh settlements definitely don't seem to make any more money, all of the income buildings are just 100g per rank regardless of which chaos god you devote to. EDIT: Ohh, I see one has a conditional bonus. Though it doesn't really help me because I can't get a settlement to tier 3 before being ganked. It also requires >25 control in the province which is fairly hard to do.

The issue is really the difference in entity count. Nurglings get "60" that kind of fluctuate depending on the animation. Marauders get 120. That's a lot more effective weapon damage going out because more entities are attacking for every animation cycle. +7 v. Infantry is a lot more than it seems when we're talking about trash stacks because it also applies to WS for every entity attacking when the target is infantry. So, it's 28+7 WS on a marauder, so 35 WS per entity, with 34+7 base MA vs. infantry, so it's 43 base MA. Nurgling base MA is 24 and MD is 28. Marauders also have 960 more hitpoints.

Poison is good, but it's not going to outweigh that many more entities hitting that many more times with that much more oomph. Head to head, nurglings will lose with 100 marauders still alive. The big thing is just that nurglings lack the entities.

 

[Average Manatee]

The issue is really the difference in entity count. Nurglings get "60" that kind of fluctuate depending on the animation. Marauders get 120. That's a lot more effective weapon damage going out because more entities are attacking for every animation cycle. +7 v. Infantry is a lot more than it seems when we're talking about trash stacks because it also applies to WS for every entity attacking when the target is infantry. So, it's 28+7 WS on a marauder, so 35 WS per entity, with 34+7 base MA vs. infantry, so it's 43 base MA. Nurgling base MA is 24 and MD is 28. Marauders also have 960 more hitpoints.

Poison is good, but it's not going to outweigh that many more entities hitting that many more times with that much more oomph. Head to head, nurglings will lose with 100 marauders still alive. The big thing is just that nurglings lack the entities.

Pretty sure you are wrong on your reasoning, but incidentally right for a different reason. The issue isn't entity count (excess entities just sit in the backline, you can see that only 1/3rd of marauders are in combat vs. most of nurglings if you have them fight), but that nurglings are too big and can't concentrate on enemies well while smaller marauders can gang up and surround them. They also have a really bad spread out formation while the marauders keep formation.

In any case, still not sure how marauders can beat Kossars. It's just a really bad matchup with all the buffs they get and even moderate AI melee bonuses.

 

[pickmeister]

Finished my dwarf campaign in Warhammer I. The Chaos invasion was a little tedious to deal with. It essentially came down to a combination of ambush, lightning strike, and overstacking their doomstacks. Could've been better but eh, whatever. The execution reminded me the Crusader Kings II retardacy with the Aztec invasion.
Confederated and conquered all Dwarven lands, accomplished the long campaign victory and was pretty happy about myself.
Then I tried out all the other races, mostly as Vlad von Carstein and two mini campaigns. Didn't bother with them that much, just wanted to try them out before jumping to the next game.

Yesterday, I installed the second game with all DLCs and started with the High Elf Tyrion campaign. Just got my first whole province, conquered another settlement, made some trade deals with other high elves, and damn. There are so many little improvements, some of them I don't even notice probably, that make it much more enjoyable. And I can't tell what has changed about battles in the second game but they feel much more dynamic and fun. It's almost like they were just testing the waters with the first one and went deeper with the second one.

Is going from the second to the third game now (not at launch) as significant as from the first to the second?

Some time ago, Mandalore was showing in his Warhammer 2 video that the change in lighting screwed up unit and lord portraits from the first game but I can't reproduce the same - so I'm guessing CA fixed it since then?

Some mods I got:
Better Camera Mod - a must imo, the original camera is too limiting
Community Bug Fix - read a lot of recommendations, and thought why not
Skip Intro Logos - they get old fast
Improved Arrow Trails - because the original ones are awful
Immersive Battle Banners with Tabletop Heraldry overwriting it - this way I get coats of arms/banners from Tabletop Heraldry with nice battle banner unit symbols from Immersive Battle Banners. I never got even close to the Warhammer tabletop except walking by brick and mortar Games Workshop in Dresden a few weeks ago. But I did play Warhammer Online which was much closer to the tabletop game with heraldry than TWW so I'm used to them and I like the way they look. Also, the extremely vibrant colors CA used are extremely jarring on the battlefield

 

[Galdred]

Is going from the second to the third game now (not at launch) as significant as from the first to the second?

I don't know, but I couldn't get into Warhammer 2, as it felt too close to Warhammer 1, but I had a great time with TW:W3. I couldn't pinpoint what made it work better for me. Maybe because I have a fondness for Warriors of Chaos.

 

[pickmeister]

I don't know, but I couldn't get into Warhammer 2, as it felt too close to Warhammer 1, but I had a great time with TW:W3. I couldn't pinpoint what made it work better for me. Maybe because I have a fondness for Warriors of Chaos.

Sounds great to me then. Can't wait to run through Warhammer 2 and jump into 3 already.

 

[Fedora Master]

Each game is a straight improvement over the last. At least the Grand Campaign. Don't bother with Eye of the Vortex or Realms of Chaos.

And don't pay for the DLC.

 

[copebot]

The issue is really the difference in entity count. Nurglings get "60" that kind of fluctuate depending on the animation. Marauders get 120. That's a lot more effective weapon damage going out because more entities are attacking for every animation cycle. +7 v. Infantry is a lot more than it seems when we're talking about trash stacks because it also applies to WS for every entity attacking when the target is infantry. So, it's 28+7 WS on a marauder, so 35 WS per entity, with 34+7 base MA vs. infantry, so it's 43 base MA. Nurgling base MA is 24 and MD is 28. Marauders also have 960 more hitpoints.

Poison is good, but it's not going to outweigh that many more entities hitting that many more times with that much more oomph. Head to head, nurglings will lose with 100 marauders still alive. The big thing is just that nurglings lack the entities.

Pretty sure you are wrong on your reasoning, but incidentally right for a different reason. The issue isn't entity count (excess entities just sit in the backline, you can see that only 1/3rd of marauders are in combat vs. most of nurglings if you have them fight), but that nurglings are too big and can't concentrate on enemies well while smaller marauders can gang up and surround them. They also have a really bad spread out formation while the marauders keep formation.

In any case, still not sure how marauders can beat Kossars. It's just a really bad matchup with all the buffs they get and even moderate AI melee bonuses.

It's not an exact comparison (you can't pick marauders as Demons of Chaos in skirmish anymore even though you can in campaign and battle difficulty doesn't apply), but in skirmish I beat the stack you posted earlier with marauder spam just now. It wasn't "pretty" like I said, but the Kossars weren't the problem. The Tzar Guard, bears, and Boris were way worse. The Kossars melt quickly in melee once you close the gap. If you do the comparison on TWWStats.com, you can see basic Kossars are way outclassed by pink marauders in melee both in terms of entities, stats, and hitpoints. Pink marauders have bronze shields. In campaign, after a victory like this, you just merge your survivors, recruit replacements from global or the settlement you just conquered, and move on.

With the nurglings, entity count does matter because even a thin line of nurglings will only actually engage a pretty small number of entities. That's what I meant by "more entities are attacking for every animation cycle." Just like you're saying, there's like 3-4 dudes for every nurgling cluster, and each of those dudes is hitting for 35 weapon strength when they land a strike. The little cluster might have a big chunk of HP, but it's getting ganged up on. Nurglings aren't bad units in a Nurgle army for various reasons. It's just that they're not amazing in an entry level DoC army.

 

[Average Manatee]

You're not taking into account the horrendous amount of buffs Kossars get in campaign and with AI buffs/XP buffs. Like I posted, ~41 MA 29 MD. Same for the rest of the army too, e.g. Warbears in skirmish have like +15 MA/+5 MD compared to the ones I fought. And Boris doesn't get his quest equipment bonuses in skirmish.

If you look at the the image you posted of the nurglings you can see that ~66% of the nurglings are in combat vs. ~33% of the Marauders. So if we look at # of entities fighting its about the same for both sides. The issue isn't number of entities, it's that the nurglings constantly have things hitting them from the sides which lowers MD by something like 50%.

 

[Dwarvophile]

Playing my first Kislev campaign. I just freed our brothers from the southern Oblast from the tyranny of the drug addicted Baersonling gay Nazis (& NATO didn't lift a finger).

Now what do you guys think would be the best Lord for my second army : Boyar, Attaman or Ice Witch ?

 

[Average Manatee]

I'd always go Ice Witch if you can have one ready (sometimes you need an army and don't have an ice witch trained). Which lore of Ice Witch to use it up to you, you probably want a hero of the opposite type as well. I go with the Lore of Ice for my Lords because I think Ice has the better early spells while Tempest has the better later spells, and for a lord you want to get your spellcasting levels done quickly so you can start putting points into red/blue lines.

Boyars and Attamans are the same unit I think, just with Attamans earning traits while they govern provinces? The only reason I see to go with them over an Ice Witch is if you really want one of their traits. One of the traits gives a nice army wide defense bonus but you can get it on patriarch heroes too if you want to stack it. And you'll probably have a lot of patriarch hero slots available eventually.

 

[karoliner]

 

[Dwarvophile]

Ouch, this Tzarin campaign won't be easy. Turn 17, I have ennemies in every direction and my potential allie factions are already crumbling.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Yeah, she really has a nasty starting location, one of the most intense campaigns I played probably. I first conquered nearby tribes and then eliminated Vampires and Elves in the south, giving the settlements to the Empire helps a little bit so that they won't get erased quickly.
I was under constant assaults from north, thankfully sleds made short work of most demon armies.