Warhammer Total War: Warhammer III

[Mitleser2020]

Slaanesh gets shafted yet again and not in the way he likes it.

Again? There are more Slaaneshi-themed LLs than Khornate-themed LLs.
Khorne needs content.

 

[9ted6]

Slaanesh gets shafted yet again and not in the way he likes it.

I guess xir daemons are what you would call "problematic" in this day and age. Evil genderfluid creatures of lust? Naaaaaah, can't have that association.

To be fair having a porn god was always cringe.

If they'd made xyr a god of generalized desire instead of only focusing on sex it'd have been significantly better writing. Though it's not like Warhammer doesn't have a billion other profoundly retarded things in it anyway.

 

[Fedora Master]

If they'd made xyr a god of generalized desire instead of only focusing on sex

Slaanesh is the God of Excess.
All Chaos Gods represent a spectrum of emotions and behaviors. Sadly even GW forgets this.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Slaanesh gets shafted yet again and not in the way he likes it.

I guess xir daemons are what you would call "problematic" in this day and age. Evil genderfluid creatures of lust? Naaaaaah, can't have that association.

To be fair having a porn god was always cringe.

If they'd made xyr a god of generalized desire instead of only focusing on sex it'd have been significantly better writing. Though it's not like Warhammer doesn't have a billion other profoundly retarded things in it anyway.

But Slaneesh kinda is. It's god of excess in all forms. IIRC being perfectionist enough about something is even enough to get you to fall to it

 

[9ted6]

Slaanesh gets shafted yet again and not in the way he likes it.

I guess xir daemons are what you would call "problematic" in this day and age. Evil genderfluid creatures of lust? Naaaaaah, can't have that association.

To be fair having a porn god was always cringe.

If they'd made xyr a god of generalized desire instead of only focusing on sex it'd have been significantly better writing. Though it's not like Warhammer doesn't have a billion other profoundly retarded things in it anyway.

IIRC being perfectionist enough about something is even enough to get you to fall to it

And then for some reason you turn into a naked lobster girl with a penis.

 

[Fedora Master]

The entire tech tree references perfumes and fashion. It's not just sex all the time.

 

[Bohrain]

Slaanesh kind of gets flanderized due to tzeentch occupying the thematic domain of knowledge. Slaanesh has keepers of secrets as their signature exalted daemons, but in warhammer fiction people always end up dealing with tzeentchian demons if they are seeking forbidden knowledge or you know, overindulging in pursuit of knowledge. Which basically narrows slaanesh worshippers to hedonists.

 

[9ted6]

Slaanesh kind of gets flanderized

Warhammer is flanderization incarnate. It's a big reason why people either love it or hate it.

 

[Fedora Master]

It took me thousands of hours and three games but I just realized Vampires say "Crush the breathers", not "Crush the breeders". I always found the latter a bit... odd.

 

[Caim]

It took me thousands of hours and three games but I just realized Vampires say "Crush the breathers", not "Crush the breeders". I always found the latter a bit... odd.

"If it breeds, we can kill it."
- Manlet Von Cumstain

 

[Fedora Master]

I'm actually playing Mannfred right now and hooooly shit fighting Khorne is a slog

 

[Average Manatee]

That sounds like a special kind of hell since the best way to kill Skarbrand is to shoot him with your guns. And then he dies and is back 5 turns later cause lmao why not.

 

[Fedora Master]

 

[Lacrymas]

After installing 10+ gameplay mods in order to try to finally enjoy this game, I have some observations and thoughts. Even with the mods that nerf basically everything and essentially use the multiplayer balance, the snowballing past turn 10 still remains. I played N'Kari again and there are so many ways to exploit Slaanesh's mechanics it's not even funny. You have an endless supply of devotees to summon free disciple armies with. The disciples armies can be cheesed in a hundred different ways, like extending movement, using them as free city defense, whittling down other armies, using them to summon even more armies using the last manifestation. The disciple army summoning cooldown isn't factionwide, so you can summon more and more armies every 10 turns. Cults proliferate themselves by using a cultist to place a cult in a town, use the cult slot to produce another cultist which summons a third cultist from yet another town and so on. Then there are the vassals, the moment you vassalize Eltharion (which can be done on turn 5ish) you've essentially won the game. Imo, Slaanesh is the one of the most broken factions in the game, even if their battle performance isn't very good.

I think the most disappointing aspect of this game is being able to win a campaign by turn 10 or even turn 1 (like with Wood Elves or any Warrior of Chaos faction). The big map becomes a negative, rather than a positive. I was semi-excited about the WH40k Total War, but I don't think I am now, there are just too many things that need fixing:

1. Shallow campaign faction mechanics which are either excruciatingly meh and you forget they even exist or comically broken and they trivialize the game from the very start. I count the tech trees here as well.
2. Shallow and samey battles due to the number-based (rather than function-based) unit design and lack of map features/variety/interaction. This causes the infamous doomstacking of a single unit type, necessitating forcefully putting in unit caps via mods.
3. Imbalanced factions that range from unplayable (Tomb Kings, Tzeentch, Vampire Coast, Ogres, Daniel, Norsca, Volkmar the Grim/Markus Wulfhart) to so vanilla they are unfun (Lizardmen, Bretonnia, Cathay, Beastmen, High Elves), to shockingly busted (Chaos Dwarfs, Greenskins, Warriors of Chaos, Wood Elves, tentatively Slaanesh and Dark Elves). Even while they are this imbalanced, they are still somehow extremely samey and lacking in meaningful lore-based differentiation, both in campaign and battles. There are very few well thought-out and engaging races.
4. Bad and overcrowded strategic map that is lacking in anything noteworthy outside of landmark buildings. The only thing you do is settlement hopping.
5. Imbecilic AI, both in battles and campaign.
6. Shallow economy revolving only around gold for the vast majority of factions. The factions which do have other resources are never placed in a position to choose between resources, they just come from different sources and don't interact with each other, f.e. Slaanesh with favor (i.e. gold) and devotees.
7. Stackable buffs and traits that make every unit in an army unkillable or Übermensch-like. Think red line skills and defeat traits, but others as well.
8. Exploitable diplomacy to the extreme. AI factions will pay you exorbitant amounts of money for you to join a war you are already going to declare anyway, so your best bet is to always check what factions are at war to cheese this. Ditto for selling settlements you don't need to the AI.
9. Awful and nonsensical victory conditions.

Honestly, I can go on and on. I haven't even gotten to CA's DLC practices, lack of updates for said DLCs and them doing the bare minimum in general.

 

[9ted6]

Shogun from 24 years ago has more in-depth mechanics and satisfying gameplay than TWWH.

 

[Hydro]

Twarhammer 3 is shit

Wow, more news at seven I guess.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

I just had a classic realization of "you think you do, but you don't" about the campaign map. It started with Empire that all "rebel" towns (non-playable factions) became actual nations/factions with their own diplomacy, economy etc. All these years I always liked mods that got rid of the rebels and placed real countries for the historical settings. The thing is most of the time the good mods actually did interesting things with that and at worst it added flavour.
Now I fucking hate all the pointless one town nations in the vanilla games, they are pure detrimental to the game. They clutter the map and the turns. The AI is needlessly exposed for its ineptitude and the player is faced with its inability to play the game every turn and sometimes couple a times per turn. Other times it hits you how poorly designed and bare-bones mechanically nu-TW games are when 50 nations are shown to make their turn and nothing actually happens that turn.
Another problem is these nations get actual economy and they build the little town they are given to the fullest, so when you take it it's actually way more advanced than all your towns except your capital. It diminishes everything about developing your own and promotes conquest, conquest, conquest and that is on top of been already the most op strategy anyway with all the money or other mechanics that reward fast and endless expanding.
On theory the idea can be good and create good campaign and diplomacy gameplay as in most paradox games where the small nations either seek alliances with great powers or band together defensively so it doesn't quickly become repetitive snowball like in nu-TW. It doesn't help that there isn't any depth to any system on the campaign map.
All in all I think the replacment of the rebels with pointless nations was actual decline.

 

[Cyberarmy]

View attachment 50439

That must have been a really valuable settlement
But yeah, there are some wonky shit that can be done via diplomacy screen. Like you can tell some faction that you are in war with to cancel his agreements/aliiances with another faction that you are in war with, if they both hate you enough. Makes zero sense ...

 

[Average Manatee]

The settlement trade logic is wonky and massively values recruitment buildings for some reason.

Vassals are quite overpowered in WH3, avoid using them if you want any kind of challenge.

 

[Lacrymas]

All features are either so weak they are not worth using or bonkers broken and trivialize the game.

 

[Elttharion]

Legend's new leak, grain of salt and all that:

First DLC: Lords of Shanyang

• 2 Cathay LLs, generic lords and heroes for each, 7 units
• a Cathayan Ogre with cathayan ogre units (all units appear to be OC)
• a Cathayan Tigerman with tigerman units
• Golgfag Maneater FLC

Second DLC: Dogs of War

• Borgio and Lucrezzia LLs, Mydas the Mean LH
• the race only has 9 regular units (???) including halfling hotpots, a bunch of RoR from the DoW army book, and they can recruit units from other races as well
• Dechala as Slaanesh FLC

Third DLC: Monkey King

• 2 Cathayan Monkey LLs (LMAO?), a Cathayan Monkey LH, monkey units
• Li Dao FLC

What a huge pile of shit

 

[Cyberarmy]

Can't really understand the focus on Cathay, either their hands really tied about other eastern factions or they want the Chinese yen so much.

I think they are the most boring race of the 3rd game by far, their old yin-yang mechnaics were also better than this one imho.

 

[Lacrymas]

Imo, this info was purposefully leaked so CA can test the waters whether people are willing to buy Cathay DLC in order to double dip into the Chinese Market. Both Cathay DLCs are obviously bad, but the bigger problem is them stopping the revamps of the older races. My guess is that Thrones of Decay turned out to be too expensive to produce, partly because most of that effort benefited everyone for free as part of the race reworks. Corporate suits don't like devs giving "too much" stuff to player, let alone for free. It's a mess.

 

[SmartCheetah]

Legend's new leak, grain of salt and all that:

First DLC: Lords of Shanyang

• 2 Cathay LLs, generic lords and heroes for each, 7 units
• a Cathayan Ogre with cathayan ogre units (all units appear to be OC)
• a Cathayan Tigerman with tigerman units
• Golgfag Maneater FLC

Second DLC: Dogs of War

• Borgio and Lucrezzia LLs, Mydas the Mean LH
• the race only has 9 regular units (???) including halfling hotpots, a bunch of RoR from the DoW army book, and they can recruit units from other races as well
• Dechala as Slaanesh FLC

Third DLC: Monkey King

• 2 Cathayan Monkey LLs (LMAO?), a Cathayan Monkey LH, monkey units
• Li Dao FLC

What a huge pile of shit

If true, they are shooting themselves in the foot again. Chinese market already shown that they a) don't give a fuck about Total War franchise b) Majority of those who actually do give a fuck, pirates the game
"but akshually, people from outside of China play Cathay too!" - oh yeah, one of the less popular factions judging by the polls around the internet. Makes sense to give shitloads of content to one of the less popular factions within the game world with a lot of already established factions people want content for.
They could have focused on releasing packs that fill blanks (heroes, legendary lords, 2-3 units etc.) for a lot of popular factions at once, something we haven't seen so far but oh well - their decision making is going to kill the game.

 

[Caim]

They probably focus hard on Cathay because they don't want to shift the focus of the Realm of Chaos campaign too hard or flood it with even more factions.