Warhammer Total War: Warhammer III

[Cyberarmy]

Or lord/heroes levelled as garbage...

 

[Lacrymas]

I'm warming up to horrors a little. They're just really shitty against Cathay because they have so many jade warriors/archers, but against any faction that is mostly light armor they are pretty good. I think the thing is that you can't really spam them because they take up such a large surface area. A few of them in a formation to flank are pretty solid. You just can't spam a million of them or the formation is too large and they can't really do anything in city alleys because of it when you have too many of them.

You literally don't need anything besides Infernal Gateway against Cathay.

 

[Bohrain]

Or lord/heroes levelled as garbage...

The one button respec mod is a must. It's baffling that CA can't implement it on the base game given how simple of script it is.

 

[pickmeister]

Finally finished my first Realm of Chaos campaign. As Kislev, specifically Katarin. On easy. And I'm not ashamed of it.
If the game keeps blatantly cheating, I can too by dropping the difficulty.

I read that at launch it was even worse but I have trouble believing that for two main reasons - first, garrisons were significantly larger at launch, therefore AI was less aggressive and second, all three DLCs (Ogres, Champions of Chaos, and now Chaos Dwarfs) only make it harder for the order factions while the new factions are overtuned as fuck.
First, I took everything from the rival Ropsmenn Clan but then Skaven started to be annoying with Valkia joining in. Cleared Skaven and, conquered Hell Pit but Norsca started to be annoying. Cleared Norsca at the north-east (before the mountain pass) but vampire cunts started to be annoying. Sometime during this time I got my second soul and Ku'Gath decided he wants to have some fun too and joined Valkia on her raiding ventures. As both of them kept coming only through the northeastern mountain pass, I stationed two full armies there in ambush stance and it was so blatantly fucking obvious the AI is cheating like a motherfucker. As both of my armies were blocking the way, Valkia and Ku'Gath kept lining up in the mountain pass waiting for me to clear the way I guess. But both my armies were still in the ambush stance so how could they know? At one point there were 5 armies waiting. Fucking clowns.

Anyway, cleared Vampire Cunts but Chaos Dwarfs started to be annoying. Then I fucked myself over a bit because right after the third round of rifts opened I got enough supporters to confederate with Kostaltyn and of course that fuck had barely one full army and no patrol/outposts built so rifts spawned in all of his provinces. Fuckin' idiot. And to spice it up, Vilitch, Festus, and Skrag joined the plundering of my lands as well. Fun times.
Pushed Chaos Dwarfs all over the mountains back and gave all the setllements to suriving Dawi (who lost it almost immediately) because I didn't wanna deal with Chaos Dwarves as I already had a lot on my plate. Cleared all my lands from that demon and ogre pest, got my 4th soul and went to the final battle.

The appearing rifts would be fine if it wasn't for that cheating AI. Not only it often sees my armies in ambush stance (without them being revealed), three turns after destroying Valkia, she's back with 3 more doomstacks topped with regiments of renown. I started autoresolving 95% of battles in the second half of campaign as I couldn't be bothered.
The rifts campaign maps in are not bad at all, actually. Was pretty funny in my Tzeentch realm (the first one I did), where my Katarin, Skarbrand, and Kairos kept passing each other without attacking while we wandered around through portals. Slaneesh was fine. Those rewards (last one especially) were pretty intriguing but I'm there for the soul so it is kinda pointless in the end. Khorne was a quick one and Nurgle was slightly annoying with the attrition but my Katarin was already level 47 at that point with Ulrika boosting campaign movement so I ran through it quickly.

Tzeentch and Slaneesh battle maps were not bad, just long-ish. Going into Khorne battle I expected even more bullshit but it was actually the best map from all. But Nurgle map .. fucking hell .. I don't know what is wrong with that map but no matter the positioning or the elevation my Ice Guards refused to shoot at anything. On all the other maps they kept firing all the time but on Nurgle map, nothing. They just kept looking around and maybe shoot twice a minute. And infrantry were almost useless too as all those large Nurgle units kept throwing them around like damp rags. The nurgle map is a total bullshit.
Also all the 4 bosses looking the same and having absolutely the same animation is laughable.
Going into the final battle I was interested in how different it's gonna be and nope. It's the same shit as the 4 survival battles before. What a lazy design. And it was even easier than the nurgle one. The only nuisance was the enemy armies that kept coming the whole battle.
The piece of shit programmer or designer that put skirmish stance on by default in the Crystal Cloak quest battle should be hanged.

In the end, I had one army stationed at the northeastern mountain pass for Valkia. One at the east waiting for Chaos Dwarfs (because of my useless Dawi allies), one army patroling southern border taking out Ogre armies, one army camping in Erengrad, Kostaltyn patrolling the western coast, another army by the northwestern bridge, Boris camping by the Hell Pit, and Katarin running around in chaos realms. And it still wasn't enough to keep enemies at bay.

After all this whole time I can't say I've grown fond of Kislev. I'll play them at some point again but it's not going to be anytime soon. Their factions mechanics are very underwhelming. They have Ice Court and I can't say I found many of those selectable traits whole lot useful. They have invocations that are alright, I guess, if you can afford to spend the devotion. And then there's the race for supporters to confederate which is just meh. An extra mechanic to get something all other factions have by default.
Their units are alright but somehow .. unimpactful? Their units are mostly decent at everything but don't excel at anything. People kept raving about light war sleds being amazing not getting stuck so I tried them out and either I am really bad with chariots or they just suck because my sleds got stuck at the first enemy unit.
But what really bugs me about playing Kislev is that the only artillery unit they have is from a fucking tier 4 building and until then, they either make a suicide run with a ladder up their ass against the wall or wait it out to get a battering ram and towers. And their lords are extremely underwhelming and weak compared to other ones. They don't excel at anything outside of global recruitment slot spam. They just aren't very much fun to play. There's no chance I could send Katarin head to head against some other lords.

Now I'm not sure what to play next.
I might try RoC, as Cathay as it is being heavily recommended as less annoying. Probably without finishing it. Just to try it out how it plays with not busted faction
Or play IE as whatever. Never played Empire in any of the previous games so I'd like to try that but people say Empire is unplayable at the moment.
Or download SFO as from reading about it, it looks like it is moving the game to a more interesting, lore-friendly, and immersive direction.
Not sure yet.

Question for others - it is the same in Immortal Empires or it's only ROC campaign where the allies are completely useless? I gave surviving Dawi two provinces I got from Chaos Dwarfs and they lost most of it immediately. Empire got raped by Mannfred and Skrag. There's no point in doing diplomacy at all as I need to do everything myself anyway..

 

[Fedora Master]

Don't. Play. RoC.
It's that easy. It's by far the worst campaign they ever made.

 

[Lacrymas]

Now I'm not sure what to play next.
I might try RoC, as Cathay as it is being heavily recommended as less annoying. Probably without finishing it. Just to try it out how it plays with not busted faction
Or play IE as whatever. Never played Empire in any of the previous games so I'd like to try that but people say Empire is unplayable at the moment.
Or download SFO as from reading about it, it looks like it is moving the game to a more interesting, lore-friendly, and immersive direction.
Not sure yet.

SFO is Nurgle levels of bloated. The game doesn't need more units, it needs a total rebalance of all units and maybe even game mechanics in order to make them usable and not just roster-fillers. But I digress. I wouldn't play RoC, especially as Cathay, it really is the worst campaign they've ever made without a single redeeming quality. As for Cathay itself, it's a very boring and straightforward faction, with unimpactful mechanics and a lame roster. I don't think this game, including IE, is in a good spot right now. Not only are the factions shockingly imbalanced for such a simple game, there are also bugs galore, a very boring meta and borderline unplayable sieges. It desperately needs a total overhaul.

 

[pickmeister]

Yeah, RoC sucks cock. It feels like all the production value went into the tutorial and ROC was just an afterthought. I wanted to complete it once as Kislev and unlock Boris. Now that is done, I can finally play the game.

SFO is Nurgle levels of bloated. The game doesn't need more units, it needs a total rebalance of all units and maybe even game mechanics in order to make them usable and not just roster-fillers. But I digress. I wouldn't play RoC, especially as Cathay, it really is the worst campaign they've ever made without a single redeeming quality. As for Cathay itself, it's a very boring and straightforward faction, with unimpactful mechanics and a lame roster. I don't think this game, including IE, is in a good spot right now. Not only are the factions shockingly imbalanced for such a simple game, there are also bugs galore, a very boring meta and borderline unplayable sieges. It desperately needs a total overhaul.

I thought SFO does just that and Radious is the bloated one. Not adding many units but mainly rebalancing, making to more akin to the lore. And adding some mechanics to factions that had none. But do correct me if I'm wrong.

I like the game and could understand lack of balance for the sake of it being according to Warhammer lore. What bugs me however, is the blatantly cheating AI that obviously isn't playing by the same rules and keeps producing doomstack after doomstack every couple of turns while owning 2 settlements. There's nothing fun about that.

 

[Average Manatee]

Question for others - it is the same in Immortal Empires or it's only ROC campaign where the allies are completely useless? I gave surviving Dawi two provinces I got from Chaos Dwarfs and they lost most of it immediately. Empire got raped by Mannfred and Skrag. There's no point in doing diplomacy at all as I need to do everything myself anyway..

It's an RoC thing. The minor unplayable factions are coded to be less aggressive and get penalties in autoresolve vs. the major playables. This obviously includes all Dwarf/Empire/Wood Elf/Greenskin factions for RoC.

Really shows the lack of effort put into the campaign, you'd think they could at least make Karl Franz playable if you own WH1.

 

[pickmeister]

It's an ROC thing. The minor unplayable factions are coded to be less aggressive and get penalties in autoresolve vs. the major playables.

I am happy to read that. Thanks. Ogres walking right through Stirland territory to raid me was laughable.

 

[Fedora Master]

Radious was always bloated garbage, SFO turned into bloated garbage. Too many cooks.

 

[Bohrain]

Honestly the lead designer for the game in launch felt like a retard who doesn't even play Total War. They put a lot of resources on several things that you don't engage a lot in; the tutorial, daemon prince dress-up and survival battles. You do the tutorial once for novelty, but for some reason it has shitton of production value blown into it. Similar thing with survival battles, but you don't want to do them ever again because they are jarring. Daemon prince stuff was so integrated to the whole daemons of chaos faction mechanics that once the game 2 DLC team took over, they just shafted Be'lakor to Warriors of Chaos because it was less of a hassle to redo all the tech tree shit. Siege rework is a mess, infinitely spawning towers, maybe 5 different minor settlement maps and awful corridors where single units have to stretch their formation to get through. RoC campaign just straight up isn't fun to play, the AI blatantly cheats and instead of having soft time constraints like the Thrott campaign in game 2 it's endless pressure.

 

[Jaedar]

You do the tutorial once for novelty, but for some reason it has shitton of production value blown into it.

I have to assume it's done this way to appeal to new players and journalists.

 

[Lacrymas]

CA not knowing how to play their own game is very likely the culprit for the horrible state of WH3.

RE: The tutorial - ironically enough, it's the best part of this game. I would've liked to see more cinematics and story elements for the other factions as well. They blew their budget on the huge siege maps nobody wants to engage with and a lot of their post-launch support was trying to salvage the RoC campaign because they were too greedy and/or dumb to just unlock IE for everyone and not have a separate map like the Vortex.

 

[Crispy]

Just yesterday I finally agreed to a peace treaty with the Eastern clan of the Chaos Dwarves because I was getting so sick of their same lords throwing full armies at me every several turns. I had beat them down badly enough and was about to lay siege to their main city that they finally came to their senses and threw in the towel. My other allies weren't too happy about it, but since they're down to just a few settlements left of their own, who cares?

How often, if ever, does the A.I. break a peace treaty? Anyone see it happen?

 

[Average Manatee]

What do you mean by break? There's a 10 turn sort of truce where if they declare war there will be a hit to their reliability rating (you can see yours in the diplomacy screen). Most AIs won't violate this. After that all bets are off, if they dislike you there's a high chance they'll eventually attack again. Sometimes the AI will can attack earlier if they are evil/particularly hate you/are skaven.

But leaving AIs with their capital alive tends to be bad. The AI gets the same base 3k income per turn you do and their capital is probably upgraded, so even taking away 3/4ths of their territory probably only reduces their income by half. Something like 5k cash is enough to make a full strength stack of high tier units. 2 stacks if its harder difficulties. They'll be a problem later if they aren't crushed.

 

[Fedora Master]

 

[Jaedar]

How often, if ever, does the A.I. break a peace treaty? Anyone see it happen?

If they dislike you (which they will, if you've killed their armies or taken settlements), you should expect them to declare war on you again within 10-15 turns (iirc the earliest they can do it is 10 turns, as that's the earliest you can declare war after peacing out). The only way to avoid it in my experience is to either be MASSIVELY above their strength rating or preferably just wipe them out.

As Average Manatee said, the ai can easily field 2 or 3 good stacks off a single settlement, especially on the higher difficulties. You always want to finish them off, it really is total war in the literal sense.

 

[copebot]

But what really bugs me about playing Kislev is that the only artillery unit they have is from a fucking tier 4 building and until then, they either make a suicide run with a ladder up their ass against the wall or wait it out to get a battering ram and towers. And their lords are extremely underwhelming and weak compared to other ones. They don't excel at anything outside of global recruitment slot spam. They just aren't very much fun to play. There's no chance I could send Katarin head to head against some other lords.

Cool that you had a good time.

Little Grom is obviously a strong unit, but you don't really need it for a good Kislev army. The one thing their lords have going for them is the bear mounts, but I'm not sure that I'd call them weak. They have one of the best T1 units in the game in the form of basic kossars. Their racial passive is also extremely good. Tzar Guard are also extremely strong because of the high stats and the interplay with the racial passive. Both light and heavy war sleds are the best ranged chariot types in the game. War bear riders are probably the best anti-large cavalry in the game, although they are a little slower than demigryphs. Streltsi are up there with Thunderers for one of the best gunpowder units in the game. Their only units that are kind of shit from a campaign perspective are the elemental bear (way too expensive/big) and the snow leapard (amazing against things like Ogres but an odd cat out for most other things). The horse archer and the other light cavalry unit are also both very generic.

That being said, a great eco stack is just a lord, hero, basic kossars, and a Little Grom for siege attacker. They don't really need anything else to win the game.

 

[Average Manatee]

If they dislike you (which they will, if you've killed their armies or taken settlements)

Sometimes you get attacked by someone who should be biased towards friendly with you and you can repair relations. e.g. Empire attacked by Dwarves. In that case there's a good chance you can buy them off and ally them. AI values trading away settlements super high, give them 2 or 3 you just conquered and you can generally get an alliance. Really depends on exactly how much they hate you though, if you've done a lot of fighting they might be -400 or something.

 

[Bohrain]

Personally I don't like playing Kislev. Their magic is shit and you are stuck playing with kossars stacks for way too long. I wish they had a ranged armor piercing glass cannon unit. Streltsi are closest to that, but they are basically a more costly version of dwarf Thunderers. Their status as hybrid units is mostly wasted since their melee def is the same and attack is inferior to that of a chaos marauder.

 

[Average Manatee]

Shit magic? Bruh what?

Frostbite attacks - 30% movement speed (Ice Guard inflict this so its practically a global debuff in lategame fights, lots of your spells also do it).
Freezing Winds -25% movement speed (Also Global, just keep spamming cheap tempest spells)
Ice Sheet -25% movement speed (Localized but the AoE is huge and its practically free).
Bitterness of winter: -25% movement speed (Localized army ability from Ursun)

Kislev can win the dumbest outmatched battles if you can maneouver at all to ensure the enemy doesn't completely outflank you on a wide front. Any kind of mountain or other terrain obstruction to put your back to and its just stupid how easily you rack up kills vs. enemies that can only crawl towards you.

Also Gust of True Flight is situationally really great (snare a lord or dragon and snipe them from super long range), and their AoE stuff isn't bad either. Aside from the AoE stuff your spells are dirt cheap.

I do agree that kossar spam being the dominant strategy for so long gets old though.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Just yesterday I finally agreed to a peace treaty with the Eastern clan of the Chaos Dwarves because I was getting so sick of their same lords throwing full armies at me every several turns. I had beat them down badly enough and was about to lay siege to their main city that they finally came to their senses and threw in the towel. My other allies weren't too happy about it, but since they're down to just a few settlements left of their own, who cares?

How often, if ever, does the A.I. break a peace treaty? Anyone see it happen?

You wot mate

Peace treaty is absolute garbage in this game, especially with Chaos fuckwats who hate everybody. After 15 turns they will just shit out 2 doomstacks and attack you again. Better use your remaining turns to fortify your frontier cities and set a stack nearby as they WILL attack.

Never accept Peace Treaty unless you are under 5 war gang bang and desperately need to move your stack elsewehre (e.g. protecting golden goose province) or something.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Personally I don't like playing Kislev. Their magic is shit and you are stuck playing with kossars stacks for way too long. I wish they had a ranged armor piercing glass cannon unit. Streltsi are closest to that, but they are basically a more costly version of dwarf Thunderers. Their status as hybrid units is mostly wasted since their melee def is the same and attack is inferior to that of a chaos marauder.

Their sleds are good for another type of army and Boris rocks with bears. You just have to endure Kossar stacks a bit longer than it have to, in the early stages of the campaign. But even full Kossar stacks can be diverse enough.
Tzar guards are beast, they hold the line forever, mostly till they wipe out. Couple them with the ice guard you have one of the most powerful in your disposal, with use of Kislevs slowing spells.
Gryphon cavalary (legion?) is also good but not as effective as bear cav.

 

[Gromoer]

My best Kislev tactic is ice guard full stack and playing it like a line infantry. So much fun.
Exactly because I’m so prone to cheese I am desperately waiting for an ultimate mod for army caps.

 

[Elttharion]

Spoiler

FEATURE FOCUS #1: ELEVATION​

FEATURES & MECHANICS

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CA_oxfordcomma


May 15 2023

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Greetings!
Today we’re kicking off a series of blogs that are a little different to our norm in which we take a deep dive into some of the grittier aspects of Total War: WARHAMMER III, tearing into the real meat of the game and pulling apart its entrails for all to see.
The aim is to explore some of the often-overlooked areas of the game at a developer level, with the aim of squashing some of the mysteries surrounding the many, many systems found in WARHAMMER III.
Helping us get our head round things is WARHAMMER III designer William Håkestad.
We begin with a look at elevation. How much does having the high ground really change the course of battle? Let’s find out!

ELEVATION 101​

You’ve quite likely seen the “Units with the high ground enjoy a significant advantage when fighting on sloped terrain” loading screen tip, but have you ever wondered ‘how’?
Let’s peel back the curtain a bit using a force that some say is more dangerous than any of the dark gods… Maths!

In Total War, you control ‘units’ that comprise individual ‘entities’. For example, an Empire Swordsmen unit is a collection of 120 Swordsmen entities.
The elevation calculations happen at the entity level. This means that when calculating the bonus an attack should gain from elevation, the relative height between the attacking and defending entities is determined regardless of the overall situation of their units. Therefore, the numbers can vary when fighting on particularly bumpy terrain, or if a unit is deployed across a slope.

Regarding about elevation in combat, there are three key cases where it becomes relevant:

• Projectiles
• Melee Attacks
• Locomotion

PROJECTILES​

When a projectile hits an entity, we generate a ‘height delta’ that is equal to the difference in vertical height between the firing and receiving entities, calculated from the base of each (sorry Henri – being tall does not actually factor into elevation modifiers).
We use this delta to give the unit a height coefficient value for the attack. This coefficient linearly scales up to a maximum delta of 40 metres, at which point it caps out at 30%. So, a ranged unit firing down upon their target from 40 metres or above is doing a respectable 30% extra damage!
It’s important to highlight that this delta can also be a negative, and a ranged unit firing at a target that is 40m above them is doing 30% less damage. So, in practice, assuming a pair of otherwise equally matched ranged combatants are shooting at each other, the one with the high ground is enjoying 184% of the damage of their target’s volley!
This isn’t mutually assured destruction – it’s a complete slaughter.
As a practical example, an Empire Crossbowman firing at an Empire Swordsman roughly 32 meters below them gains one point of armour piercing and four points of base missile damage from his elevation, netting him a modest four extra damage after calculating for the armour roll in this interaction.
Now four damage might sound like a very small difference, but consider that an Empire Swordsman has 69 hit points for every entity in the unit.

• 69/23 = 3
• 69/19 = 3.6

By taking this high ground, the Crossbowman can potentially take out a Swordsman in three crossbow bolts instead of four. Plus, this interaction repeats over 100 times in every volley, meaning that small, consistent bonuses can cascade into huge performance improvements in practice.
Let’s look at one final example:

In this case, the high ground advantage has an approximate coefficient of 25%, and this bonus compounds into the unit with an elevated position, letting them rout the otherwise identical enemy unit while maintaining an additional 1,000 health, and with twenty extra entities left standing. It will be in much better shape later in the battle if it has a chance to contribute again.
Taking all of this into account, here are two common scenarios that you can take advantage of in WARHAMMER III:
Walls

• Walls and other elements common to settlement battles provide opportunities to gain an elevation bonus over your opponent, alongside some potential added benefits like partial cover against projectiles.

Flying Units

• Flying units hover roughly 16 meters above the ground, and so they benefit from an elevation damage bonus of 12% if their target is standing on ground level. Remember that this also means they take roughly 12% less damage from missiles fired from those same targets. As such, flying units placed above already tall terrain compound their additional height and quickly reach high coefficients (though, like all units, a height delta exceeding 40 metres does not grant any further benefit).

MELEE​

This works exactly like the projectile examples above in every way with a single, functional difference – the maximum coefficient is achieved at one meter of difference between the attacker and the defender.
It’s worth remembering that these deltas are calculated between individual entities in their respective units, thus introducing a much greater level of uncertainty into an engagement as fighters jostle around in the fray, gaining and losing height advantage relative to their target. Over an entire engagement, however, the unit with the overall better position on a slope will average higher, reliable coefficients, alongside the much stricter requirements for the height delta of one meter.
Let’s pit a unit of Swordsmen against a unit of Spearmen on a very steep slope.

Normally, Swordsmen can handle the more specialised Spearmen with ease, thanks to their greater melee stats and higher damage. But, when the Spearmen attack from the high ground, their advantage swings this matchup back in their favour, further highlighting how the effective usage of the terrain can let a unit take fights it would otherwise be unable to.
In the engagement pictured above, the usual decisive victory for the swordsmen gets flipped to a narrow victory for the spearmen!

LOCOMOTION​

The high ground isn’t just about fighting. OK, it’s mostly about fighting, but slopes can also affect how quickly a unit travels and how much fatigue they suffer while doing it.

Take this Red Crested Skink Chief running up and down the slopes of the Grimminhagen.
Units moving across uneven surfaces have a value called a ‘locomotion gradient’ which has a value of zero on a perfectly flat surface and trends either upwards or downwards when moving up or down a slope.
Travelling downhill here, the Red Crested Skink Chief reports an ‘actual speed’ value of 5.8 m/s, which is higher than the 46 listed on his unit info panel (we multiply all speed numbers by 10 for display in game to help keep the whole numbers nice and readable!)
This speed change is because the slope he’s moving down has a locomotion gradient of roughly -0.26, which we subtract from the default speed multiplier of 1.0, resulting in a 26% speed increase. Technically, a unit can achieve up to a 50% speed increase given a comically steep surface, but we cap the value there for sanity purposes.
Spinning him around and running him back up the slope slows him down to a more modest 3.62 actual speed value – a 22% decrease, roughly.
In short, if you’re trying to put some space between yourself and some enemy archers, you should probably not run up a hill! And, equally, you should probably not deploy your own vulnerable ranged units near the base of a hill, where the enemy can take advantage of the increased speed to close the gap faster while simultaneously taking less damage from your low ground fire.
Collision impact damage must also be considered. This is a very complex topic that we might dive into more deeply in a later blog, but the short and sweet version reads like this: Entities moving faster when they collide with the enemy will deal more damage and cause higher knockback based on their relative velocity to the target.
In other words, the most brutal charges are delivered downhill!
Finally, the locomotion gradient is also used to penalise the fatigue of units moving up steep slopes, though do keep in mind that no fatigue benefit is gained by going downhill.
In our example above, the gradient of 0.26 triggers the most severe fatigue penalty, increasing the amount of fatigue the unit gains by a whopping 150%!
Here are the fatigue numbers in detail:

• Gradients steeper than 0.2 increase fatigue gain by 150%
• Gradients steeper than 0.1 increase fatigue gain by 100%
• Gradients steeper than 0.05 increase fatigue gain by 50%

BREAKING THE RULES WITH STRIDER​

Got all that? Good, because units with the ‘Strider’ attribute ignore a lot of what’s listed above!
A Strider unit doesn’t suffer any of the typical penalties when it comes to dealing damage, although it is still subject to the typical penalties when it comes to receiving it. So, such a unit deals full damage (but no extra) while shooting at someone above it and deals full damage (plus extra) when shooting someone below it.
A Strider’s actions negate the penalties, but his reactions do not.

NEXT UP​

And we’re done! The ground has levelled out and everyone’s knackered. Hopefully you learned something new and it didn’t leave you tilted.
Our next Feature Focus blog will examine at the overall concept of damage – both how it’s dealt and how to defend yourself against it. Also on the way are deep dives into projectiles and target penetration. Plus, we’ll be parallel parking our way into the topic of chariots, mass and charges.
As always, your feedback is welcomed. See you on the battlefield!
– The Total War Team

Theres some good info here. I didnt know strider also affected projectiles.