Warhammer Total War: Warhammer III

[Lacrymas]

In that case you don't know how to play them. They play fine. I could go over what to do with most of the factions you list but you listed like 20 so pick something narrow your selection.

Karl Franz. This is on Very Hard or Legendary difficulty mind you.

 

[rashiakas]

You must be terribad at this game. Karl plays fine, not sure what your problem is.

 

[Average Manatee]

In that case you don't know how to play them. They play fine. I could go over what to do with most of the factions you list but you listed like 20 so pick something narrow your selection.

Karl Franz. This is on Very Hard or Legendary difficulty mind you.

Conquer your starting province and then go kill Festus. You want to be reasonably quick to take him out before the vampire counts get out of control but its not that difficult. You actually get a huge advantage in that since you aren't at war with them until you want to be, you can just force march straight to their capital and take it out in one turn, at which point they are functionally crippled (especially for Festus because of the Keep mechanic, it's like taking the only tree of a wood elf race). Gelt is harder because vamps are harder to fight IMO. From what I've seen the changeling is a joke and doesn't respawn if you kill him.

There's certainly things that could be improved. e.g. I really HATE how all of the elector count state troops have way too much maintenance cost until you've fully united the empire at which point you might as well call the campaign done. The bonuses for high authority are also kind of a joke. Would be better if there was like a higher +3 and +5 level that gave significantly more bonuses and to also act as a buffer against authority penalties. But it's playable. Just don't piss turns away not defending the empire and the campaign works fine. CA probably should remove the "recommended for first campaign" thing though since it is one of the few campaigns where you need to play in a specific fashion knowing where your enemies are.

 

[Axel_am]

You must be terribad at this game. Karl plays fine, not sure what your problem is.

What? Karl plays fine??

The guy with these memes is fine?




I don't have all the necessary context but you might be in the wrong here.

 

[Lacrymas]

Karl Franz has one of the slowest starts in the game and Imperial Authority cripples him severely. You have to take care of AI factions which are very easily destroyed by either Festus, the Changeling or even rebellions. Then vampire counts.

Conquer your starting province and then go kill Festus. You want to be reasonably quick to take him out before the vampire counts get out of control but its not that difficult. You actually get a huge advantage in that since you aren't at war with them until you want to be, you can just force march straight to their capital and take it out in one turn, at which point they are functionally crippled (especially for Festus because of the Keep mechanic, it's like taking the only tree of a wood elf race). Gelt is harder because vamps are harder to fight IMO. From what I've seen the changeling is a joke and doesn't respawn if you kill him.

Yes, we know what *has to be done*, but it's easier said than done, that's the problem. "Fix you initial issues and it's smooth sailing from there" isn't very helpful ;d

 

[Average Manatee]

If a few factions are destroyed its no big deal. Yes you have to go deal with the threats. You're deciding to play on Very Hard/Legendary, winning fights is a problem for you to solve. I can do it quickly just fine with T1/2 empire armies. I legit don't think I've ever seen imperial authority dip below -1.

You must be terribad at this game. Karl plays fine, not sure what your problem is.

What? Karl plays fine??

The guy with these memes is fine?




I don't have all the necessary context but you might be in the wrong here.

Memes don't reflect reality. I was concerned about the changeling too but he's a fucking wet noodle. I'm not sure if he's actually bugged as AI because I've never seen him respawn and half the time he dies to other AIs. When I played Vamp Counts he was literally just a free XP/money treat when I ran into him.

 

[Bohrain]

I had less fun playing WH3 campaigns compared to WH2. Modded out sieges in both games so it's not really about that. I think most of it comes from the fact that AI factions consolidated and bloated naturally over time in older games so you always had Grimgor or Vlad or someone being a legit thread over the yonder. In game 3 they'll maybe absorb a few minor factions, but ultimately stop growing and stay more passive. They should be more aggressive by default especially given that game 3 has more functional diplomacy, so you have better tools to cover your back. Also it feels like game 3 has way more units that have either hitbox issues or half the models derp around instead of doing anything when you give attack orders. And hearing that they have next to no automatic testing going on, I assume that they don't actually look systematically what the damage output of units should be given their stats vs how they actually perform in battle. So those kind of issues will never get fixed if they become prevalent.

 

[Average Manatee]

I had less fun playing WH3 campaigns compared to WH2. Modded out sieges in both games so it's not really about that. I think most of it comes from the fact that AI factions consolidated and bloated naturally over time in older games so you always had Grimgor or Vlad or someone being a legit thread over the yonder. In game 3 they'll maybe absorb a few minor factions, but ultimately stop growing and stay more passive.

Aye, that's a big issue. Late game wars are lame when you're just mowing down a dozen minor factions. Supposedly people were bitching that AIs confederated too easily and so they made it harder, but nowadays it seems so rare. I don't think I've seen an evil faction like Dark Elves confederate once and for good factions like High Elves its still super rare. Should probably look to see if there's a mod to make it happen more often.

They made the "end game crisis" thing as the late game challenge but it has a ton of issues and is basically asking you before you start the game when are you gonna be bored and need a challenge. And its not a particularly fun challenge either.

 

[Axel_am]

You're deciding to play on Very Hard/Legendary, winning fights is a problem for you to solve.

This looks like the "do you even lift" button but with more words.

So what you are saying is that Karl is shit on higher difficulties and that the AI can't play with him too? That sounds like a considerable amount of unplayability to me.

 

[Average Manatee]

You're deciding to play on Very Hard/Legendary, winning fights is a problem for you to solve.

This looks like the "do you even lift" button but with more words.

So what you are saying is that Karl is shit on higher difficulties and that the AI can't play with him too? That sounds like a considerable amount of unplayability to me.

He's fine on higher difficulties. If you can't win with him then you are bad at the game. Empire is a well-varied faction with basically every tool in the game aside from great melee and early magic. From what I've seen the AI can do pretty well.

If you want to see what a hard campaign is, look at Kugath or the Daemon Prince.

 

[Lacrymas]

He definitely isn't fine on higher difficulties and the entire Empire needs a rework. Yes, if you get over the initial hurdles (of which there are many) Karl Franz does well, but that's true for literally every other faction. He is universally considered to be bad and it's a well known issue. There's no point to playing him and you'll just be unreasonably crippled for quite a while. Compared to actually good factions, he's unplayable.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

I don't have all the necessary context but you might be in the wrong here.

The problem with Franz is that his campaign is rail-roaded whack a mole that is incredibly unfun to play. I never tried Legendary, but Very Hard is doable in the sense that you must know the optimal path due to bloodbowl that is empire. If play inefficiently the Elector Counts gonna be rolled and you gonna lose. It' just incredibly annoying to play.

"Slow faction" economy is not a reason a faction is unplayable. It's retarded to complain that factions feel the same but wanting every single faction to have the same strong economy. That being said some startpos like Karl is just really - really unfun. Katarin is also one of the factions where you are Order faction surrounded by some assholes so you need to play whack a mole lest enemies rape you nonstop.

That being said latest patch reduces AI agression to player so there are chance that they will be somewhat better.

And just use Mixer as base mod even though you are not playing anything else. It makes most factions becomes major faction so that they don't get rolled as fast, making those startpos tolerable (that being said Karl still plays like shit)

 

[Lacrymas]

A faction being shit vs a faction not being shit is hardly faction variety.

 

[Tyrr]

Franz got harder/messier because they added new evil factions inside or near the Empire but didn't also update the Empire mechanics. These mechanics are still balanced with the old state of the game in mind.

 

[Bohrain]

Yeah the imperial authority mechanic was just copy pasted from high elves and slapped to them on WH2 release. You didn't really have any major faction to worry about until Manny/Vlad started attacking.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

A faction being shit vs a faction not being shit is hardly faction variety.

But it is. Factions with slow early game economy have to be played differently versus factions with good economy.

You can argue that the tactical/unit layer might not be distinctive enough to make up for it, but e.g. playing Nurgle with its dogshit crawling economies is indeed different, also considering the units available to Nurgle. The same with the Oger Lords or the Dorf.

Another thing to note is on VH/VH, or Legendary/Legendary you are expected to cheese the game instead just playing normally. The game pretty much cease to be a normal Grand Strategy game but pretty much become an optimization puzzle. Some startpos is easier than the other of course (e.g. Karl is probably up uuup there in difficulty) but really the startpos are not really designed around Legendary difficulty.

 

[Lacrymas]

There's a difference between the economy itself being shit and how difficult it is to set it up. Since WH3 relies solely on gold, there aren't enough strategic mechanics to allow for variety within economies. They are either good or bad and when it's bad the faction simply suffers, it's not a different playstyle.

 

[Average Manatee]

They moved Mannfred out and added Festus so its kind of even in that regard. Festus is much easier to kill due to the ability to snipe his Dark Hold at which point he's literally a joke (and Festus himself, while a powerful lord in your hands, is a big, fat, slow, low armor target that even basic archers will murder in seconds). IMO it would have been worse fighting a combined Mannfred + Vlad double team, especially with the "dead rise again" mechanic.

As far as the other threats go they are pretty tame and usually not a problem for a long time. Skrag being successful and invading the empire is pretty low proability. Usually I find that Heinrich Kemmler eventually breaks out of his hole and becomes threatening but it takes a long time. The Changeling is pretty much a nonfunctional faction for AI. I feel like Norse is less threatening than WH2, probably thanks to Kislev and the chaos factions up there.

IMO the factions that need changes are:

- Daemons of Chaos (literally just complete shit, this faction is the brainchild of the lowest IQ worker at CA and has nothing going for it, shit economy, shit unit access until you have basically won the game, shit lord that doesn't get all the normal skills you want, etc etc).
- Ku'Gath (awful economy, slow as hell to develop, units are the worst suited for campaign. Literally only Ku'Gath himself is good. Also starts next to some tough factions.).
- N'Kari (as faction on its own they are legitimately decent. But he's unarmored and large and he's got unarmored troops and cavalry while fighting high elves where 50% of enemy units are archers and the other 50% are Lothern Sea Guard, so both archers and spearmen. Probably the worst possible matchup you could start with and elves are gonna dogpile you. Either need to be insanely aggressive at wiping out everything or just run away. It's also at odds with his faction mechanic of trying to corrupt factions over time cause you don't have time).

Everything else is generally pretty OK. Obviously its a chaotic game and its possible a lot of factions that hate you get powerful but that's a risk of many start positions.

Another thing to note is on VH/VH, or Legendary/Legendary you are expected to cheese the game instead just playing normally. The game pretty much cease to be a normal Grand Strategy game but pretty much become an optimization puzzle. Some startpos is easier than the other of course (e.g. Karl is probably up uuup there in difficulty) but really the startpos are not really designed around Legendary difficulty.

The difficulty modifiers honestly aren't that bad. The number of factions that you need to cheese significantly with rather than play as the faction is intended is pretty small.

 

[Bohrain]

Ku'gath starting next to the guy whose LL gimmick is that he makes his army immune to poison is a pretty big oversight.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah. It'd be fine if he was a 2nd or 3rd lord for a faction specifically intended as a "challenge", like how Skarsnik and Belegar are explicitly and obviously marked as factions that are gonna be tough as hell. But as the main lord and only way to play Nurgle its an awful situation. And Nurgle as a faction does have a lot of unique mechanics but you just don't have time to work with them until the deathbowl. Even after Ghorst you have to deal with Grimgore and the Chaos Dwarfs (and the Chaos Dwarfs horrific artillery ability).

 

[Caim]

I thought the general consensus was that Total War 3 is shit. Why is the codex still playing it?

I can see that you are new here. The Codex is fond of declaring games to be shit then playing the shit out of them.

As the saying goes, you can't judge a game until you have beaten it at least seven times.

 

[Axel_am]

I thought the general consensus was that Total War 3 is shit. Why is the codex still playing it?

I can see that you are new here. The Codex is fond of declaring games to be shit then playing the shit out of them.

As the saying goes, you can't judge a game until you have beaten it at least seven times.

Yeah, that's for sure. On top of that they play it with the hardest possible settings + something extra.

The Karl Franz situation discussed earlier in the thread could be considered such a case maybe.

 

[Fedora Master]

So how's Pharaoh?

Lol

Eurogamer:

Total War: Pharaoh review - skip the battles and enjoy a great grand strategy campaign​

Someone wasn't paid off it seems

 

[Lacrymas]

Enjoy a single* "great" grand strategy campaign more like. As far as the impressions I've read go, once you've played 1 campaign you've played them all.

 

[Caim]

No idea how different the factions are from one another in Pharaoh, but they can't differ that much. Maybe some minor numbers and a few units.