Zeriel
Arcane
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2012
- Messages
- 14,020
Yeah, the only thing that looks even semi interesting here is the demon factions. Buuuuuut an entire game that is just "china + vikings + chaos" is a really fucking lame roster.
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Yeah, the only thing that looks even semi interesting here is the demon factions. Buuuuuut an entire game that is just "china + vikings + chaos" is a really fucking lame roster.
A horse of course
Guest
What did I tell you? SHIT!!!!!!!!!!
tabacila
Augur
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2011
- Messages
- 326
So bullet points seem to be:
.
Also saw this was posted. Lore experts (sic) talking to the WH3 writer. Haven't watched it.
- larger maps with more variety (wtf does that mean?);
- multiple victory/interest locations;
- in battle resource to build barricades, traps and towers generated by defenders holding key points in the city. Seem similar to what we had in Attila, but those were deployable only at the start of battle. Not overly happy about this RTS-like feature, but I guess I can imagine groups of terrified locals trying to build some impromptu barricades against the Slaneeshi rapehorde;
- multiple layers of walls: not sure if this means completely enclosed walls with their own gates inside the city, or just wall-like regions where you can (maybe) deploy troops, like on the outer walls, but with no gates;
- overlooks and bridges so you can place archers above the enemies' avenues of advance.
.Also saw this was posted. Lore experts (sic) talking to the WH3 writer. Haven't watched it.
tabacila
Augur
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2011
- Messages
- 326
The map they showed had three walls completely exposed to the enemy so I guess that's something... To be honest I don't think they were ever going to give up those huge background inaccessible cities, at least not for the larger settlements. They need to show those larger than life Warhammer cities I guess. Maybe minor settlements will get the 360 approach. They did do it for 3K.
Ladders are ok, but they will still be generated out of magical assholes and that sucks balls.
Ladders are ok, but they will still be generated out of magical assholes and that sucks balls.
tabacila
Augur
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2011
- Messages
- 326
Blog post about siege rework:
So settlement layout will be different by race. Attrition in sieges will be 're-balanced', whatever the fuck that means. Minor settlement battles will no longer have walls at all?
HOW SIEGES WORK IN TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER III
TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER III
Ben Barrett
October 11 2021
Welcome back to Castle TotalWar.com, after a months-long, grueling siege of our gates, we’re offering a peace/trade deal. You receive: information on sieges and minor settlement battles in Total War: WARHAMMER III. We receive: (hopefully) your excitement and happiness. Given you’ve clicked we’ll assume you want to take that and move right into it. Below you’ll find all the details on how we’re upgrading and modifying sieges in WARHAMMER III, alongside the plans for minor settlement battles, and how it impacts some of the most important sieges there are – the massive attacks from the Chaos Wastes on the Great Bastion of Grand Cathay. Plus, a couple of screenshots of the layouts of Wei-Jin and Nan Gau, two Cathayan cities you will be getting intimately familiar with in your campaigns. These are pre-release shots from an aerial angle to show you the layouts, so just remember they represent a game still in development.
SIEGES
The alterations to sieges come in two major components, both of which are vital to understand to see just how much things have changed. The first is in the map design itself, the philosophy of that, and the variety we’re introducing through them. There is now a much, much wider selection of potential siege maps, each assigned to a settlement based on their default faction’s culture, themes, and preferences for combat. Cathay and Dwarfs build highly defensive fortresses set into the sides of mountains, where their firepower can be exploited to its fullest. Meanwhile, Kislev has long withstood Chaos with tight streets and hardy men and women who will fight tooth and claw for every inch. Races like the Skaven and Greenskins have more ramshackle fortresses that are no less deadly, which themselves pale in comparison to the weirdness of the strongholds dedicated to each Chaos God on the outskirts of the Realm of Chaos.
The upshot of all this is that each time you enter a siege, no matter which side you’re on, the combination of your army, the enemy, and the layout of the settlement is going to make it a unique experience across many hours of play. We’ve deliberately paced the layouts of different settlements to avoid repeats between adjacent regions, and even factions that share layouts have different dressings that can impact gameplay as well as looks. Fighting two identical siege battles back-to-back should be a thing of the past
These maps themselves have been designed significantly differently from what you may be used to from WARHAMMER II. As well as the capture points and buildable towers and barricades which we’ll get into below, we’ve upgraded our tools, AI, and design to make for much better maps. One significant area is height variation, with much larger differences between elevation levels throughout a map and it being far more common that before. There are also dockable terrain areas within settlements, depending on their layout, giving ranged units more use inside the walls. These advancements also allowed us to add bridges to maps, giving new ways to move around settlements and creating tactical possibilities we haven’t seen before.
With this variation comes more open areas within settlements, which allows for far more diversity in viable unit types. A fight no longer starts and ends at the outer wall – of which many settlements now have several, making for two or three approach angles for attackers – and sieges are a much more interesting and realistic prospect of steadily defending and capturing areas of a town, city, castle, or Hell Pit. It makes defensive siege weapons a far more promising prospect, be they firing from the high ground inside a settlement past the outer walls or defending the streets themselves with clever placement.
The second big upgrade is introducing the supplies and buildable structures we first introduced to you in the Survival Battles mode. While it is the same system and basic understanding, the use is completely different. Sieges now feature several capturable locations rather than one, and each provides supplies per second, as well as governs a few buildable locations – if they’re lost, their attached buildings are destroyed. These come in two varieties, either towers or barricades.
The big idea is that your initial defence will be focused on the walls. When these fall to your enemy’s combination of artillery, flyers, siege towers, and brute strength – some units can now attack walls directly, as they can gates – you can retreat into the city and create a custom-made secondary line, with barricades, towers, firing platforms, and monuments where you want them. This allows you to create your own battlelines depending on your playstyle and the specifics of that battle. Each point can be upgraded or downgraded as you wish, for the relative cost of building, making you able to shift your strategy on the fly. Naturally, while this system is shared with Survival Battles, balancing is done differently to ensure good gameplay.
Each settlement also has a stockpile of supplies for you to begin the battle with. In Campaign, this is determined by various factors – buildings and level of settlement being the most notable, as well as scaling into the late-game for the more major, double-full-stack encounters that occur at that stage. This allows you to construct a few important towers and barricades to begin with, already garrisoning them with troops or using them as tactical chokepoints. In general, the new maps are much larger with many more potential points of entry for your foe, so all these additional resources are going to be needed to keep things in check.
As your opponent pushes in, you need to make decisions about which supply points and the districts they control are worth defending. Attackers cannot construct buildings or use supplies, nor do the supply locations provide victory points, but denying you them allows for more ways to move through your settlement. Dismantling defences and moving them to a new location to secure and fight the battle anew is vital strategy against the overwhelming odds that are often levied at a besieged settlement.
There are also two special capture points – one key building, and one victory location. The key building is usually closer to the center of the settlement, and it provides a defensive buff if it is under the control of the besieged. Previously we had defensive bonuses that weren’t always clear, so we’ve cleaned that up with this single, clear benefit. The final victory point is also still there, and usually the farthest from the gates. It will mark either the glorious taking of a supposedly impenetrable fortress, or the immovable object of your defensive forces proving their worth. Victory tickets are provided by both these capture points.
The upshot of all this is that siege battles will be more interesting, more exciting, more varied, with greater tactical depth and more diverse unit viability. New and larger map layouts with better terrain, cultural differences between factions being represented, plus the new home turf advantage of towers and key buildings all combines for a new experience.
We’ve also improved the AI, not only to handle all these new elements, but also to provide more of a challenge whether you’re attacking or defending. Flyers and fast-moving units will now prioritise useful actions like preventing sallied-out cavalry from attacking ranged or siege units. The AI also has a greater understanding of how different areas of the map are under threat, and when they should withdraw to prevent losses. This makes it more reactive and capable of fighting against diverse enemies. Many of these improvements are direct from THREE KINGDOMS and TROY, bringing the WARHAMMER trilogy right up to the modern day in terms of our best-designed Total War titles.
James Martin, of Survival Battle fame, has been taking us through everything so far, here’s his direct take on the AI changes: “We started with the 3K AI as it provided us with a good base to work from, the 3K settlement AI had been very well received and worked well for our new settlement layouts. From there we put a lot of work in to how we author our siege AI graph to make it easier to design and more flexible to work with, which has also improved the pathfinding within settlements. With the introduction of the ‘districts’ concept via the capture locations and supply points, the AI can now separate and manage large parts of the settlement map and say, ‘this area over that area, this district is more threatened than that one.’ They can then prioritise or fall back if one is overtaken by the attacker. For the settlement battles they also know how to build towers and barricades, which is something they don’t have to do in Survival battles.”
It also means that sieges are more challenging for the attacker, and defenders – particularly when manually controlled – can apply meaningful losses even with small garrisons if played well. It will take a true army to bust through the defence of a fortress and starving out the defenders through newly re-balanced attrition may be a better option than charging the walls. Of course, every day you spend starving them out is another day of them building supplies to construct defences should you attack before they give up.
MINOR SETTLEMENT BATTLES
This is all further enhanced by the minor settlement battles coming to WARHAMMER III. They follow many of the same improvements as sieges, most notably that we have designed a huge number of special maps for each minor settlement, rather than using lightly modified land-battle maps. The main difference is these are not walled, but otherwise use the same systems of a key building, districts, towers, and barricades. Victory requires either a routed enemy or captured settlement, as in other Total War games. Here’s a couple of examples of Minor Settlement Battle maps:
As mentioned, the defenders still have a supply count to build barricades and towers. Without an initial wall to act as a stopgap, it’s a much more frantic defence which can shift and move at any time. You’re unlikely to have time to build up a full stock of supplies while waiting for the enemy to get past your first line, so making sure your initial placements are up to snuff is vital.
Barricades are in positions that prevent deeper access to a settlement or, at the very least, demand that attackers take a more circuitous route. Towers are on platforms that are out of reach from melee units – only flyers and ranged units can target them. However, they are also destroyed if their attached capture point is taken, making quick-moving or stealthy troops another option.
For balancing reasons, we’ve made it so flying units and summoned units cannot capture points, though there’s nothing stopping them from wiping out the forces surrounding it and having some of their land-locked or corporeal allies come in to assist. Flyers are particularly effective at preventing defending ranged units from peppering your other attackers as they approach.
Minor settlement battles are now exactly what they should be – smaller sieges over less massive settlements, but with all the same grit and determination from both sides to conquer the area. They’re varied from each other, normal land battles, and other sieges, adding a third to the usual most common two types of battles. The new layouts and options also mean that, should you wish to, taking manual control over a defense against a rampaging army can really whittle them down over time, making it easier to defend your lands if your main armies are off making war elsewhere.
THE GREAT BASTION
Nowhere are the changes to sieges more relevant than in Grand Cathay. The Great Bastion is a mighty wall built to contain the tides of Chaos many thousands of years ago by the Celestial Dragon Emperor himself. It is now the domain of Miao Ying, the Storm Dragon, and she defends it with her life and her soldiers.
Gameplay-wise, it has relevant and unique elements on and off the battle map. During a campaign, as you control, hold, and build up the Great Bastion as Cathay, Chaos forces will begin to gather, preparing to attack. You can ride out to usher them to a swift death or allow them to attack and break against the wall as so many have before them. Numerous events and small quests will be centered around these walls and controlling and managing them properly is a big part of the Cathayan campaign in the north.
Once on the battlefield, the Bastion is an incredibly defensible fortress – one single attackable wall with clear fallback points regularly interspersed towards the center. Strong walls with powerful towers are followed by swathes of buildable locations and defensible positions. However, all this is needed as the forces that will come to take it are truly titanic. The Chaos Gods know the value of breaching the Great Bastion, and their armies will flood from the Realm of Chaos if it is disturbed, be that by you or another faction.
CONQUER YOUR DAEMONS, FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE
Be you attacking an enigmatic fortress of Tzeentch or defending the Great Bastion of Cathay – or anything in-between and beyond as any of the factions in WARHAMMER III – sieges are going to be something new and exciting. The new systems are highly flexible and moddable, giving far more tools for us (and you!) to expand them in the future. We’re looking forward to you getting your hands on it in early 2022.
TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER III
Ben Barrett
October 11 2021
Welcome back to Castle TotalWar.com, after a months-long, grueling siege of our gates, we’re offering a peace/trade deal. You receive: information on sieges and minor settlement battles in Total War: WARHAMMER III. We receive: (hopefully) your excitement and happiness. Given you’ve clicked we’ll assume you want to take that and move right into it. Below you’ll find all the details on how we’re upgrading and modifying sieges in WARHAMMER III, alongside the plans for minor settlement battles, and how it impacts some of the most important sieges there are – the massive attacks from the Chaos Wastes on the Great Bastion of Grand Cathay. Plus, a couple of screenshots of the layouts of Wei-Jin and Nan Gau, two Cathayan cities you will be getting intimately familiar with in your campaigns. These are pre-release shots from an aerial angle to show you the layouts, so just remember they represent a game still in development.
SIEGES
The alterations to sieges come in two major components, both of which are vital to understand to see just how much things have changed. The first is in the map design itself, the philosophy of that, and the variety we’re introducing through them. There is now a much, much wider selection of potential siege maps, each assigned to a settlement based on their default faction’s culture, themes, and preferences for combat. Cathay and Dwarfs build highly defensive fortresses set into the sides of mountains, where their firepower can be exploited to its fullest. Meanwhile, Kislev has long withstood Chaos with tight streets and hardy men and women who will fight tooth and claw for every inch. Races like the Skaven and Greenskins have more ramshackle fortresses that are no less deadly, which themselves pale in comparison to the weirdness of the strongholds dedicated to each Chaos God on the outskirts of the Realm of Chaos.
The upshot of all this is that each time you enter a siege, no matter which side you’re on, the combination of your army, the enemy, and the layout of the settlement is going to make it a unique experience across many hours of play. We’ve deliberately paced the layouts of different settlements to avoid repeats between adjacent regions, and even factions that share layouts have different dressings that can impact gameplay as well as looks. Fighting two identical siege battles back-to-back should be a thing of the past
These maps themselves have been designed significantly differently from what you may be used to from WARHAMMER II. As well as the capture points and buildable towers and barricades which we’ll get into below, we’ve upgraded our tools, AI, and design to make for much better maps. One significant area is height variation, with much larger differences between elevation levels throughout a map and it being far more common that before. There are also dockable terrain areas within settlements, depending on their layout, giving ranged units more use inside the walls. These advancements also allowed us to add bridges to maps, giving new ways to move around settlements and creating tactical possibilities we haven’t seen before.
With this variation comes more open areas within settlements, which allows for far more diversity in viable unit types. A fight no longer starts and ends at the outer wall – of which many settlements now have several, making for two or three approach angles for attackers – and sieges are a much more interesting and realistic prospect of steadily defending and capturing areas of a town, city, castle, or Hell Pit. It makes defensive siege weapons a far more promising prospect, be they firing from the high ground inside a settlement past the outer walls or defending the streets themselves with clever placement.
The second big upgrade is introducing the supplies and buildable structures we first introduced to you in the Survival Battles mode. While it is the same system and basic understanding, the use is completely different. Sieges now feature several capturable locations rather than one, and each provides supplies per second, as well as governs a few buildable locations – if they’re lost, their attached buildings are destroyed. These come in two varieties, either towers or barricades.
The big idea is that your initial defence will be focused on the walls. When these fall to your enemy’s combination of artillery, flyers, siege towers, and brute strength – some units can now attack walls directly, as they can gates – you can retreat into the city and create a custom-made secondary line, with barricades, towers, firing platforms, and monuments where you want them. This allows you to create your own battlelines depending on your playstyle and the specifics of that battle. Each point can be upgraded or downgraded as you wish, for the relative cost of building, making you able to shift your strategy on the fly. Naturally, while this system is shared with Survival Battles, balancing is done differently to ensure good gameplay.
Each settlement also has a stockpile of supplies for you to begin the battle with. In Campaign, this is determined by various factors – buildings and level of settlement being the most notable, as well as scaling into the late-game for the more major, double-full-stack encounters that occur at that stage. This allows you to construct a few important towers and barricades to begin with, already garrisoning them with troops or using them as tactical chokepoints. In general, the new maps are much larger with many more potential points of entry for your foe, so all these additional resources are going to be needed to keep things in check.
As your opponent pushes in, you need to make decisions about which supply points and the districts they control are worth defending. Attackers cannot construct buildings or use supplies, nor do the supply locations provide victory points, but denying you them allows for more ways to move through your settlement. Dismantling defences and moving them to a new location to secure and fight the battle anew is vital strategy against the overwhelming odds that are often levied at a besieged settlement.
There are also two special capture points – one key building, and one victory location. The key building is usually closer to the center of the settlement, and it provides a defensive buff if it is under the control of the besieged. Previously we had defensive bonuses that weren’t always clear, so we’ve cleaned that up with this single, clear benefit. The final victory point is also still there, and usually the farthest from the gates. It will mark either the glorious taking of a supposedly impenetrable fortress, or the immovable object of your defensive forces proving their worth. Victory tickets are provided by both these capture points.
The upshot of all this is that siege battles will be more interesting, more exciting, more varied, with greater tactical depth and more diverse unit viability. New and larger map layouts with better terrain, cultural differences between factions being represented, plus the new home turf advantage of towers and key buildings all combines for a new experience.
We’ve also improved the AI, not only to handle all these new elements, but also to provide more of a challenge whether you’re attacking or defending. Flyers and fast-moving units will now prioritise useful actions like preventing sallied-out cavalry from attacking ranged or siege units. The AI also has a greater understanding of how different areas of the map are under threat, and when they should withdraw to prevent losses. This makes it more reactive and capable of fighting against diverse enemies. Many of these improvements are direct from THREE KINGDOMS and TROY, bringing the WARHAMMER trilogy right up to the modern day in terms of our best-designed Total War titles.
James Martin, of Survival Battle fame, has been taking us through everything so far, here’s his direct take on the AI changes: “We started with the 3K AI as it provided us with a good base to work from, the 3K settlement AI had been very well received and worked well for our new settlement layouts. From there we put a lot of work in to how we author our siege AI graph to make it easier to design and more flexible to work with, which has also improved the pathfinding within settlements. With the introduction of the ‘districts’ concept via the capture locations and supply points, the AI can now separate and manage large parts of the settlement map and say, ‘this area over that area, this district is more threatened than that one.’ They can then prioritise or fall back if one is overtaken by the attacker. For the settlement battles they also know how to build towers and barricades, which is something they don’t have to do in Survival battles.”
It also means that sieges are more challenging for the attacker, and defenders – particularly when manually controlled – can apply meaningful losses even with small garrisons if played well. It will take a true army to bust through the defence of a fortress and starving out the defenders through newly re-balanced attrition may be a better option than charging the walls. Of course, every day you spend starving them out is another day of them building supplies to construct defences should you attack before they give up.
MINOR SETTLEMENT BATTLES
This is all further enhanced by the minor settlement battles coming to WARHAMMER III. They follow many of the same improvements as sieges, most notably that we have designed a huge number of special maps for each minor settlement, rather than using lightly modified land-battle maps. The main difference is these are not walled, but otherwise use the same systems of a key building, districts, towers, and barricades. Victory requires either a routed enemy or captured settlement, as in other Total War games. Here’s a couple of examples of Minor Settlement Battle maps:
As mentioned, the defenders still have a supply count to build barricades and towers. Without an initial wall to act as a stopgap, it’s a much more frantic defence which can shift and move at any time. You’re unlikely to have time to build up a full stock of supplies while waiting for the enemy to get past your first line, so making sure your initial placements are up to snuff is vital.
Barricades are in positions that prevent deeper access to a settlement or, at the very least, demand that attackers take a more circuitous route. Towers are on platforms that are out of reach from melee units – only flyers and ranged units can target them. However, they are also destroyed if their attached capture point is taken, making quick-moving or stealthy troops another option.
For balancing reasons, we’ve made it so flying units and summoned units cannot capture points, though there’s nothing stopping them from wiping out the forces surrounding it and having some of their land-locked or corporeal allies come in to assist. Flyers are particularly effective at preventing defending ranged units from peppering your other attackers as they approach.
Minor settlement battles are now exactly what they should be – smaller sieges over less massive settlements, but with all the same grit and determination from both sides to conquer the area. They’re varied from each other, normal land battles, and other sieges, adding a third to the usual most common two types of battles. The new layouts and options also mean that, should you wish to, taking manual control over a defense against a rampaging army can really whittle them down over time, making it easier to defend your lands if your main armies are off making war elsewhere.
THE GREAT BASTION
Nowhere are the changes to sieges more relevant than in Grand Cathay. The Great Bastion is a mighty wall built to contain the tides of Chaos many thousands of years ago by the Celestial Dragon Emperor himself. It is now the domain of Miao Ying, the Storm Dragon, and she defends it with her life and her soldiers.
Gameplay-wise, it has relevant and unique elements on and off the battle map. During a campaign, as you control, hold, and build up the Great Bastion as Cathay, Chaos forces will begin to gather, preparing to attack. You can ride out to usher them to a swift death or allow them to attack and break against the wall as so many have before them. Numerous events and small quests will be centered around these walls and controlling and managing them properly is a big part of the Cathayan campaign in the north.
Once on the battlefield, the Bastion is an incredibly defensible fortress – one single attackable wall with clear fallback points regularly interspersed towards the center. Strong walls with powerful towers are followed by swathes of buildable locations and defensible positions. However, all this is needed as the forces that will come to take it are truly titanic. The Chaos Gods know the value of breaching the Great Bastion, and their armies will flood from the Realm of Chaos if it is disturbed, be that by you or another faction.
CONQUER YOUR DAEMONS, FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE
Be you attacking an enigmatic fortress of Tzeentch or defending the Great Bastion of Cathay – or anything in-between and beyond as any of the factions in WARHAMMER III – sieges are going to be something new and exciting. The new systems are highly flexible and moddable, giving far more tools for us (and you!) to expand them in the future. We’re looking forward to you getting your hands on it in early 2022.
So settlement layout will be different by race. Attrition in sieges will be 're-balanced', whatever the fuck that means. Minor settlement battles will no longer have walls at all?
Lacrymas
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2015
- Messages
- 18,844
This is the case in Troy and it isn't bad.
tabacila
Augur
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2011
- Messages
- 326
I don't know what other changes are in Troy, but in WH that would make sense only if the remove the supply limit mechanic. That way you could have smaller armies buffing up the garrisons of frontier provinces, instead of being incentivized to just have fewer as possible complete stack armies.
Lacrymas
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2015
- Messages
- 18,844
You mean supply lines? There are no supply lines in Troy anymore, there's a whole administration mechanic that is more complex.
KateMicucci
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 2, 2017
- Messages
- 1,676
It sounds like bringing artillery to a siege is now even more useless for the purpose of breeching walls. Walls and towers already had so much HP that it would take all of the ammo of one unit to break one. Now with this silly supply system, taking time to knock down a wall at range will give the AI time to build a second wall behind it. Funny that that's actually a realistic thing for a besieged city to do, and it would be incline in a historical game. But in Warhammer it's easier to just swarm the walls with monsters, or spam archers who can magically arc their shots over the wall right onto your dick.
TheDiceMustRoll
Game Analist
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2016
- Messages
- 761
game looks amazing, incline and worth every penny. I do not have a loaded gun pointed at my head at this moment.
I could see multiple things happening with that.
There will no doubt be upgrades for better defenses on minor settlements.
This could mean walls on fixed points, it could mean higher supplies (so you can build more things during/before a siege), etc. all in addition to more units in the garrison.
Ehrm, no?
You cannot build walls in a siege. Walls are static.
What you can build are barricades (and small towers? not sure), and those are much more fragile than walls. AND they cost supply and time to build, which you do not have an unlimited amount of. And supply will get lower over time as the attacker advances.
If anything, artillery on the attacker's side will now be even more important as you won't be able to achieve anything without. Right now, you don't even need artillery to win a siege battle. Just climb the walls, it's okay (unless you only got chaff).
All in all, those changes should turn sieges into more of a battle of attrition instead of the WH2 sieges that are mostly just normal battles, but with a wall and an absurdly dumb defender AI.
How well the defender AI will utilize new mechanics is a different question altogether, obviously.
But at least it should make sieges A LOT more fun if you're the defender.
Another thing I'm wondering is what the attacker will actually get to counter all those advantages of the defender.
Possibly, the answer to that is "nothing" and you'll actually need multiple full stacks for a successful siege battle. Which makes sense, you really shouldn't be able to take a city with only the same amount of attackers as there are defenders.
But how much fun will that be, considering the increased upkeep of multiple armies?
If all of this just makes you never do siege battles and instead wait for the attrition timer to just "give you" the city, it would slow down the already slow campaigns even more.
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2009
- Messages
- 10,215
Not very impressed by siege rework from what has been shown. The primary walls will still be useless and fall within 30 seconds as the attackers spawns ladders.
The fighting inside the walls is harder to judge.
No word on increased AI capabilities, which is imo the biggest problem with current sieges. You can trivially take just about any settlement in the base game with a single caster hero mounted on a dragon.
It also seems that they are not addressing the various weird things like indestructible crenellations (the destruction of which was basically the primary use of siege weapons irl afaik) and a lot of the ranged units in the game having troubles shooting past/over/on walls. Not that the walls matter much when they are trivially scaled.
The fighting inside the walls is harder to judge.
No word on increased AI capabilities, which is imo the biggest problem with current sieges. You can trivially take just about any settlement in the base game with a single caster hero mounted on a dragon.
It also seems that they are not addressing the various weird things like indestructible crenellations (the destruction of which was basically the primary use of siege weapons irl afaik) and a lot of the ranged units in the game having troubles shooting past/over/on walls. Not that the walls matter much when they are trivially scaled.
tabacila
Augur
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2011
- Messages
- 326
Yeah the outer walls still seem to be a joke.
I really liked the old TW where ladders actually had to be built. It made walls force you to spend at least a turn for the most basic of siege equipment and units with ladders would move slower and be more exposed to enemy fire.
The video and blog are full of claims of better AI, especially mentioning taking what they had in 3K and Troy. I don't have much experience with those titles and it's CA making boasts about AI, so take that as you will.
I don't think this whole re-work of sieges things will be clear until someone, other than CA, actually plays and shows some battles. Right now it's just PR speak from CA.
I really liked the old TW where ladders actually had to be built. It made walls force you to spend at least a turn for the most basic of siege equipment and units with ladders would move slower and be more exposed to enemy fire.
The video and blog are full of claims of better AI, especially mentioning taking what they had in 3K and Troy. I don't have much experience with those titles and it's CA making boasts about AI, so take that as you will.
I don't think this whole re-work of sieges things will be clear until someone, other than CA, actually plays and shows some battles. Right now it's just PR speak from CA.
Sieges in 3K were fun, at least. VERY similar to what they showed for WH3 (minus the fantasy, obv.). Way ahead of WH2 sieges.
Pretty sure 3K was the testing ground for WH3 in many regards, anyway.
Are they perfect (and will WH3 thus have perfect) sieges?
No.
But, honestly, any improvement to WH2 sieges is good and looks like there will be several improvements tackling some, but not all issues.
So all in all a good development.
You also have to keep in mind that CA for some messed up reason balances focused on the small MP crowd instead of the much larger SP crowd - so some changes that we might think are obvious improvements might not be made because they'd upset MP people.
Lacrymas
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2015
- Messages
- 18,844
Troy's sieges have 2 things going for them, you can't easily kill defenders on the walls with archers/slingers and walled sieges are rare. I wouldn't call them good sieges, though, especially because heroes can take down walls by themselves, so the best tactic is bashing down the wall with your hero and then swarming the opposition. The arrows from the towers hurt a lot and it's not a good idea to have your units too close to the walls doing nothing. Sieges are quite a problem in all Total War games imo. Walls are a nuisance for both the defender and attacker, siege equipment is mostly a waste of time (especially rams when heroes can bash down the gate on their own), the AI can't handle sieges at all and will lose when attacking even when they grossly outnumber the defending player, agent actions are stupidly overpowered and can kill half the defenders in one turn, etc.
KateMicucci
Arcane
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- Sep 2, 2017
- Messages
- 1,676
Why would artillery be more important? The defender is rewarded for dragging out the battle with more supply. The attacker is in the same way punished for sitting back and letting his arty do the work. The optimal strategy against the new system described is to rush the walls with ladders, fliers and monsters before the defender has a chance to build the secondary defenses.
I don't think the defender gets MORE supply as the battle goes on - that would indeed be pretty absurd, at least if there was no cap to it.
I'm fairly sure you have the maximum/most amount of supply at the start of the battle to build stuff with. If it is like in 3K, you will build barricades, etc. BEFORE the siege actually starts (and you can thus react to how the attacker is positioned).
The only differences I see here is that you can also build during the siege and "recycle" what you have built to react to changes. If you recycle, you get the resources back immediately but if it gets destroyed you'll have to recover supplies via your "income".
That's my interpretation, anyway.
Also, again, you can only build/rebuild temporary defenses, which are a lot more fragile/less useful than stone walls/towers. The strong stuff is lost forever once destroyed by artillery.
But even if you were right, it would make artillery EVEN MORE important as only it would enable you to deal more damage than the defender can repair from a safe position before your army goes in.
You don't really want your army going in while the defender/their defenses are at full strength - that's the worst case scenario and trying to rush in would likely just make you lose your army. At least it should.
Last edited:
tabacila
Augur
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2011
- Messages
- 326
Blog post about Cathay campaign mechanics:
So Ogre Kingdoms confirmed as an actual race that can settle (probably in a Norsca like fashion), Cathay factions can play choose your own adventure with caravans on the Ivory Road and different types of corruption for each chaos god. Pretty good info.
LEADING GRAND CATHAY – HOW THE EASTERN EMPIRE DOMINATES ON THE CAMPAIGN MAP
TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER III
Ben Barrett
October 13 2021
Welcome back to TotalWar.com, let’s talk mechanics. You’ve learned all about the endless machinations of the dragons, the human lords, and the mass of humanity that makes up Grand Cathay. Now it’s time to learn how they play. This is the first in a series of articles where we will detail the main mechanics of each faction on the campaign map. Naturally, these are further modified by Legendary Lord choice, starting position, and then what happens in your own campaign – Legendary Lord mechanics will get their own posts soon enough. For in-battle mechanics, take a look at the Grand Cathay roster.
中文版请在我们的Bilibili专栏查看
Do remember that WARHAMMER III is still in development, with a due date of Early 2022. That means things can change – don’t take all the numbers in the screenshots below as completely, unmovably final. That said, feedback is feedback, we look forward to hearing what you think.
That’s quite enough of the caveats – on to the mechanics.
HARMONY
As we’ve discussed previously, Harmony is everything in Grand Cathay. The smooth combination of ranged firepower and stalwart frontlines. The wellbeing of the populace alongside their unswerving loyalty. As well as boosting the power of differently aligned units in battle, you must keep your faction as a whole in balance through considerate building choices, lord picks, and technology.
Just about everything will nudge the harmony of your faction one way or the other, all tracked by a handy bar at the top of the screen. Should you drift towards one side, it will become cheaper to push back to the center, but your over-represented buildings will be less effective, and your control of your provinces will drop.
Maintaining the middle point is the biggest reward, giving significant boons to all areas of your empire and a unique army ability to summon the spirits of ancestors long dead to help out in battle. With every researched technology, built building, and hired lord trying to dislodge it, maintaining this for an extended period can be challenging, but it’s more than worth it – even for just a couple of turns.
WU-XING COMPASS
The Wu-Xing Compass is a great magical device built into the holy city of Wei-Jin, created by the Celestial Dragon Emperor to control the winds of magic within Grand Cathay. Its primary purpose is to project power to and help defend the Great Bastion when it is under threat, but the progeny of the Emperor can direct it as they wish to serve their purposes.
Whenever the Compass is directed to one of its four points, that area begins to fill with magic. Most provide a faction-wide buff that is always active, with another that is only available when the compass is pointed its way. As that area fills with magic, the passive ability grows in strength. However, if the compass is pointed elsewhere, the magic in the area begins to drop, depowering the passive. This balancing act depends on your needs as well as any emergencies you may be facing, and must be chosen wisely as there is a turn limit on changing the compass again. Here’s a breakdown of the regions and their effects:
IVORY ROAD
Trade is important to Grand Cathay – it not only has a massive population, but a hugely different collection of magical artifacts and native flora and fauna to Kislev and the other nations to the West. Even the Ogre Kingdoms value the delights of Grand Cathay enough to pay for it when they feel like it (or raid the caravans when they don’t). Which brings us nicely to the game mechanics of the Ivory Road, the central trade route in and out of Grand Cathay, running right through the lands of Zhao Ming and off to the Empire.
When playing as a Grand Cathay faction, you can dispatch a caravan whenever you like, sending it along one of the many paths of the Ivory Road. This will take it through various regions, some of which may prove treacherous. At various points you choose which direction the caravan will next take, with it progressing naturally across the map. While you don’t have direct control over it, it does have vision as a normal army would, giving you important scouting information as it goes.
With each major rest-stop along the route, various events and dilemmas can fire – found friends, Ogre mercenaries, new routes, and many more surprises await upon the road. These can result in battles, bonuses, further cargo, or any combination. Once a caravan reaches a destination, you will receive money based on cargo amount and some other factors, and it will begin to return home. At this point, another caravan can be sent out.
Each caravan has its own leader, a new lord type with a unique ‘blue’ skilltree for increasing the boons of caravans – extra cargo, more replenishment between rest-stops, etc. They can naturally also take various combat upgrades, depending on what you think they might get up to. The key to this mechanic is finding safe routes or building caravans that can take the punishment of the big, wide world, plus making smart decisions about how and when to fight.
If you’re opposing Grand Cathay in the campaign (surely you wouldn’t dare?), you can find their caravans on the map and attack them. Doing so (and winning) will destroy the caravan, making it a good way to starve them of resources. Of course, it does involve declaring war, with all the diplomatic consequences that entails – the dragons may be pleased if you take out rebel caravans, but less so if you target theirs.
GREAT BASTION
The Great Bastion sits in the northmost part of Grand Cathay and is vital to the defense of the empire, its people, and the world. It also forms a central part of gameplay for the nation. As you can imagine, this is more relevant at the start of a campaign to Miao Ying, as she starts in the region, while Zhao Ming is busy dealing with rebel lords and various ratmen. That said, threats to the wall are a threat to the empire, and Zhao will need to keep an eye on it as much as anyone else.
The Great Bastion takes the form of a massive, impassable wall, with three gates that must be controlled and held by the forces of Grand Cathay. Chaos forces are constantly attempting assaults on it, but the larger ones come from a slow buildup of forces in the wastes. These must be dealt with through sallying forth or preparing your defenses with commandments at each gatehouse, if you hold them.
Threat to the Great Bastion is tracked through a meter at the top of the screen, which fills as Chaos prepares an assault, and descends if they are defeated. Keeping the threat low, and reaching zero, are looked on favourably by the Celestial Dragon Emperor, who will reward those who do so. Allowing a breach, as well as earning his ire, means Chaos is now rampaging through the soft heartland of Cathay, a recipe for disaster.
The Fortress Gate cities – the Snake Gate, the Dragon Gate, the Turtle Gate – share a unique building tree and commandments. These serve various purposes, and you will need to balance constant vigilance with the need for rest and recouperation at the edge of Chaos. Once a Gate is returned to its full glory at tier five, it reduces the cooldown on using the Wu-Xing compass.
TECHNOLOGY
Naturally, Grand Cathay has a technology tree like many of the other races. We’ll be highlighting anything unique about the layout and mechanics of tech trees in these articles. For Grand Cathay, tech choices are split into three branches, which converge a few times through the tree. The central, and least large, offers minor improvements but doesn’t push in either Yin or Yang direction. The other two are broadly focused on melee and ranged combat (though include many, many other elements) and push in the Yin and Yang directions, respectively. Each technology researched pushes your harmony in that direction permanently, with some doing this multiple times. That makes it a balancing act between what you need to buff your armies and your needs for Harmony.
This, along with all the other systems that interact with Harmony, can be quite a lot to govern every turn. Having Harmony during key battles or moments is more important than maintaining it constantly, though of course you could abandon that track to focus almost purely in one direction. Many technologies give boons to armies that are more one way than the other, and naturally affect the units that are most likely to be in those armies. Of course, each legendary lord has a preference too, and some of their skills can push one way or the other too.
A few times the tech tree for Grand Cathay recombines into one central point, then branches out again. Planning your next few turns of research and the armies that you will want to support will give significant boons as you prioritise your route through the tree. There are many dead-end paths with big rewards, but which aren’t the pre-requisite for anything else – when to take those is vitally important.
FOR THE DRAGON EMPEROR!
That’s Grand Cathay in a nutshell. All of this is naturally altered by faction bonuses and the capabilities of Zhao Ming, the Iron Dragon, and Miao Ying, the Storm Dragon specifically. We’ll get on to that in the future, along with the campaign mechanics for the other factions.
TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER III
Ben Barrett
October 13 2021
Welcome back to TotalWar.com, let’s talk mechanics. You’ve learned all about the endless machinations of the dragons, the human lords, and the mass of humanity that makes up Grand Cathay. Now it’s time to learn how they play. This is the first in a series of articles where we will detail the main mechanics of each faction on the campaign map. Naturally, these are further modified by Legendary Lord choice, starting position, and then what happens in your own campaign – Legendary Lord mechanics will get their own posts soon enough. For in-battle mechanics, take a look at the Grand Cathay roster.
中文版请在我们的Bilibili专栏查看
Do remember that WARHAMMER III is still in development, with a due date of Early 2022. That means things can change – don’t take all the numbers in the screenshots below as completely, unmovably final. That said, feedback is feedback, we look forward to hearing what you think.
That’s quite enough of the caveats – on to the mechanics.
HARMONY
As we’ve discussed previously, Harmony is everything in Grand Cathay. The smooth combination of ranged firepower and stalwart frontlines. The wellbeing of the populace alongside their unswerving loyalty. As well as boosting the power of differently aligned units in battle, you must keep your faction as a whole in balance through considerate building choices, lord picks, and technology.
Just about everything will nudge the harmony of your faction one way or the other, all tracked by a handy bar at the top of the screen. Should you drift towards one side, it will become cheaper to push back to the center, but your over-represented buildings will be less effective, and your control of your provinces will drop.
Maintaining the middle point is the biggest reward, giving significant boons to all areas of your empire and a unique army ability to summon the spirits of ancestors long dead to help out in battle. With every researched technology, built building, and hired lord trying to dislodge it, maintaining this for an extended period can be challenging, but it’s more than worth it – even for just a couple of turns.
WU-XING COMPASS
The Wu-Xing Compass is a great magical device built into the holy city of Wei-Jin, created by the Celestial Dragon Emperor to control the winds of magic within Grand Cathay. Its primary purpose is to project power to and help defend the Great Bastion when it is under threat, but the progeny of the Emperor can direct it as they wish to serve their purposes.
Whenever the Compass is directed to one of its four points, that area begins to fill with magic. Most provide a faction-wide buff that is always active, with another that is only available when the compass is pointed its way. As that area fills with magic, the passive ability grows in strength. However, if the compass is pointed elsewhere, the magic in the area begins to drop, depowering the passive. This balancing act depends on your needs as well as any emergencies you may be facing, and must be chosen wisely as there is a turn limit on changing the compass again. Here’s a breakdown of the regions and their effects:
- Great Bastion
- Passive buff provides additional supplies for Grand Cathay armies defending settlements and additional casualty replenishment for all armies.
- Active buff decreases recruitment costs and provides a unique army ability to drop meteors on enemies.
- Celestial Lake
- Passive buff provides growth to all Grand Cathay factions.
- Active buff gives additional income and stronger Winds of Magic growth within Grand Cathay regions.
- Warpstone Desert
- No passive buff or growing/falling energy reserve for this region, due to the mass of warpstone.
- Active buff lowers corruption across Grand Cathay, guarantees lower Winds of Magic reserves, and gives a leadership debuff to enemy armies inside the nation.
- Dragon Emperor’s Wrath
- Passive buff provides Control to all Grand Cathay factions.
- Active effect only at a full energy reserve applies massive (massive.) attrition to all Chaos forces besieging the Great Bastion.
IVORY ROAD
Trade is important to Grand Cathay – it not only has a massive population, but a hugely different collection of magical artifacts and native flora and fauna to Kislev and the other nations to the West. Even the Ogre Kingdoms value the delights of Grand Cathay enough to pay for it when they feel like it (or raid the caravans when they don’t). Which brings us nicely to the game mechanics of the Ivory Road, the central trade route in and out of Grand Cathay, running right through the lands of Zhao Ming and off to the Empire.
When playing as a Grand Cathay faction, you can dispatch a caravan whenever you like, sending it along one of the many paths of the Ivory Road. This will take it through various regions, some of which may prove treacherous. At various points you choose which direction the caravan will next take, with it progressing naturally across the map. While you don’t have direct control over it, it does have vision as a normal army would, giving you important scouting information as it goes.
With each major rest-stop along the route, various events and dilemmas can fire – found friends, Ogre mercenaries, new routes, and many more surprises await upon the road. These can result in battles, bonuses, further cargo, or any combination. Once a caravan reaches a destination, you will receive money based on cargo amount and some other factors, and it will begin to return home. At this point, another caravan can be sent out.
Each caravan has its own leader, a new lord type with a unique ‘blue’ skilltree for increasing the boons of caravans – extra cargo, more replenishment between rest-stops, etc. They can naturally also take various combat upgrades, depending on what you think they might get up to. The key to this mechanic is finding safe routes or building caravans that can take the punishment of the big, wide world, plus making smart decisions about how and when to fight.
If you’re opposing Grand Cathay in the campaign (surely you wouldn’t dare?), you can find their caravans on the map and attack them. Doing so (and winning) will destroy the caravan, making it a good way to starve them of resources. Of course, it does involve declaring war, with all the diplomatic consequences that entails – the dragons may be pleased if you take out rebel caravans, but less so if you target theirs.
GREAT BASTION
The Great Bastion sits in the northmost part of Grand Cathay and is vital to the defense of the empire, its people, and the world. It also forms a central part of gameplay for the nation. As you can imagine, this is more relevant at the start of a campaign to Miao Ying, as she starts in the region, while Zhao Ming is busy dealing with rebel lords and various ratmen. That said, threats to the wall are a threat to the empire, and Zhao will need to keep an eye on it as much as anyone else.
The Great Bastion takes the form of a massive, impassable wall, with three gates that must be controlled and held by the forces of Grand Cathay. Chaos forces are constantly attempting assaults on it, but the larger ones come from a slow buildup of forces in the wastes. These must be dealt with through sallying forth or preparing your defenses with commandments at each gatehouse, if you hold them.
Threat to the Great Bastion is tracked through a meter at the top of the screen, which fills as Chaos prepares an assault, and descends if they are defeated. Keeping the threat low, and reaching zero, are looked on favourably by the Celestial Dragon Emperor, who will reward those who do so. Allowing a breach, as well as earning his ire, means Chaos is now rampaging through the soft heartland of Cathay, a recipe for disaster.
The Fortress Gate cities – the Snake Gate, the Dragon Gate, the Turtle Gate – share a unique building tree and commandments. These serve various purposes, and you will need to balance constant vigilance with the need for rest and recouperation at the edge of Chaos. Once a Gate is returned to its full glory at tier five, it reduces the cooldown on using the Wu-Xing compass.
TECHNOLOGY
Naturally, Grand Cathay has a technology tree like many of the other races. We’ll be highlighting anything unique about the layout and mechanics of tech trees in these articles. For Grand Cathay, tech choices are split into three branches, which converge a few times through the tree. The central, and least large, offers minor improvements but doesn’t push in either Yin or Yang direction. The other two are broadly focused on melee and ranged combat (though include many, many other elements) and push in the Yin and Yang directions, respectively. Each technology researched pushes your harmony in that direction permanently, with some doing this multiple times. That makes it a balancing act between what you need to buff your armies and your needs for Harmony.
This, along with all the other systems that interact with Harmony, can be quite a lot to govern every turn. Having Harmony during key battles or moments is more important than maintaining it constantly, though of course you could abandon that track to focus almost purely in one direction. Many technologies give boons to armies that are more one way than the other, and naturally affect the units that are most likely to be in those armies. Of course, each legendary lord has a preference too, and some of their skills can push one way or the other too.
A few times the tech tree for Grand Cathay recombines into one central point, then branches out again. Planning your next few turns of research and the armies that you will want to support will give significant boons as you prioritise your route through the tree. There are many dead-end paths with big rewards, but which aren’t the pre-requisite for anything else – when to take those is vitally important.
FOR THE DRAGON EMPEROR!
That’s Grand Cathay in a nutshell. All of this is naturally altered by faction bonuses and the capabilities of Zhao Ming, the Iron Dragon, and Miao Ying, the Storm Dragon specifically. We’ll get on to that in the future, along with the campaign mechanics for the other factions.
So Ogre Kingdoms confirmed as an actual race that can settle (probably in a Norsca like fashion), Cathay factions can play choose your own adventure with caravans on the Ivory Road and different types of corruption for each chaos god. Pretty good info.
kris
Arcane
The caravan was the most interesting part for Cathay.
that one together with the great wall make me think you can easily bring in "free" money through battle wins.
that one together with the great wall make me think you can easily bring in "free" money through battle wins.
- Joined
- Jun 16, 2010
- Messages
- 2,363
Nice. Gonna pick them for the colors alone.
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