Warhammer Total War: Warhammer III

[FreeKaner]

It's not only the AI, it's about unit stats and how the battles work too. Archers in WH can do everything, you can have an all-ranged army with at least half the factions because archers can tank. You should really try out Troy and get back at me with an opinion. It feels like I'm the only one who has played it.

I played plenty of multiplayer battles in Warhammer 2, so I know that archers can't tank. I also found it interesting so watched videos of people playing multiplayer battles. You'll have players bringing ranged units of course as they should but they are going to be always constantly be screened by melee & cavalry units, particularly artillery.

Here is an example, with high elves whose archers are strongest in the game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcfaMX2IrcA

You can see the high elf player brought 5 melee units, 5 ranged units, 1 melee cavalry and 2 chariots (which are both melee and ranged essentially)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ZjRdnTHsk

Here is another, high elf player brings 5 melee units, 2 ranged units, 2 cavalry and 1 artillery. Tomb King player has no ranged units to speak of.

Basically what you say doesn't correspond to reality when human players are involved, which means that the stats aren't the problem. Rather it's related to difficult curve and AI behavior, and this is also I think important, the tech tree buffs in the campaign map.

 

[Mitleser2020]

Basically what you say doesn't correspond to reality when human players are involved, which means that the stats aren't the problem. Rather it's related to difficult curve and AI behavior, and this is also I think important, the tech tree buffs in the campaign map.

Don't forget the skill trees, especially the red line, which encourage to use only a few/less unit types in a campaign army in order to buff as many of them as possible as much possible.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

The new factions seem extremely bland. Like, all of them. If you like playing Barbie's Dress-Up, you might appreciate chaos undivided, but I don't see the appeal of any other faction. There are so many factions now that they've started to cannibilize each other's mechanics on top of them all being shockingly samey anyway.

I just want muh Chaos Dwarves.

 

[Fedora Master]

The unit stats on the player's side aren't the problem. It's the massive stat buffs due to difficulty the AI gets, turning Skavenslaves into Stormvermin and Stormvermin into Warriors of Chaos. It's lazy, it's bad, it doesn't work and yet CA insists on it.

 

[copebot]

No, AI in older total wars is not better. I recently played Shogun, Medieval II and Empire & Napoleon. All of them have worse AI with it linearly getting better newer the game is, that's including the fact that the AI has an easier job when magic isn't involved. Saying battle AI in older titles is better is just nonsense doomerism. One thing that has been consistently improving in Total War is the battle AI, Troy probably has a better AI because of this same rule, it came after Warhammer 2.

In warhammer 2 too the enemy flying units go for your ranged units & cavalry try to flank. The reason you can have an all-ranged army in total war is because of the way difficulty works. It is NOT optimal to have all ranged army for most factions if you are playing on normal difficulty except for factions whose missile units are their strongest units. You watching some thot on youtube playing beastmen with all raider army is not evidence otherwise.

It's not only the AI, it's about unit stats and how the battles work too. Archers in WH can do everything, you can have an all-ranged army with at least half the factions because archers can tank. You should really try out Troy and get back at me with an opinion. It feels like I'm the only one who has played it.

In Troy one of the big differences is that lots of the melee just have amazing shields. Most races in WH2 have bronze shields at best, with some having silver. 3K also has stronger missile block units like the shielded cav that just don't exist in WH2.

Also it's funny playing Shogun 2 now because the AI is so aggressive and suicidal. The AI in that game tends to look for good one on one matchups, like a cavalry unit seeing an opportunity to attack an archer, not realizing that it will get instantly vaporized by all the yaris next to the archer. You can also skirmish out entire armies because their archers will keep chasing your archers, pulling them out of formation.

 

[Average Manatee]

The unit stats on the player's side aren't the problem. It's the massive stat buffs due to difficulty the AI gets, turning Skavenslaves into Stormvermin and Stormvermin into Warriors of Chaos. It's lazy, it's bad, it doesn't work and yet CA insists on it.

Yes, buffing MA/MD/Leadership is pretty much the worst way you could implement battle difficulty. MA/MD because they affect hit % and the actual change in outcomes can be all over the place from making the enemy units 3x as strong to not making them stronger at all. Leadership because breaking enemy morale is supposed to be a hugely important mechanic but on VH all but the lowest tier units basically never rout. It should all have been wiped away long ago and replaced by a simple +HP buff.

 

[Fedora Master]

Plus they never actually test the changes these stat buffs do. At the minimum the additional stats should be tweaked on a unit-by-unit basis but nope. They slap a modifier on it and call it a difficulty.

 

[Tyrr]

Elich looked at the unit changes from WH2 to WH3 (summary at 1h18m):


tl;dr: Cavalry got HP and def buffed, small frenzy change and very small missile strength change.

 

[Lacrymas]

Basically what you say doesn't correspond to reality when human players are involved, which means that the stats aren't the problem. Rather it's related to difficult curve and AI behavior, and this is also I think important, the tech tree buffs in the campaign map.

Huh, that's interesting. The tech trees always seemed terribly boring to me, now I see they are adversely affecting gameplay too. Are they balancing the units for multiplayer?

 

[baud]

Endless demon portals that NEVER stop even after you've won. What a great idea!

apparently once you've finished the narrative campaign (as in beating Be'lakor), the portals stop re opening, though you still have to go and close any that had opened beforehand

 

[Fedora Master]

Endless demon portals that NEVER stop even after you've won. What a great idea!

apparently once you've finished the narrative campaign (as in beating Be'lakor), the portals stop re opening, though you still have to go and close any that had opened beforehand

Legend said that's not the case. He did a world conquest and had to deal with the same portals in the same spots every 10 turns.

 

[FreeKaner]

Endless demon portals that NEVER stop even after you've won. What a great idea!

apparently once you've finished the narrative campaign (as in beating Be'lakor), the portals stop re opening, though you still have to go and close any that had opened beforehand

Legend said that's not the case. He did a world conquest and had to deal with the same portals in the same spots every 10 turns.

 

[Fedora Master]

Thank god for that.

 

[Average Manatee]

Are they balancing the units for multiplayer?

Yes, but I don't think campaign-specific buffs (whether lord redline traits, unique traits, or tech) is intentionally designed in any capacity to make units more suited for campaign. For example some lords take already OP units and make them 100% stronger faction-wide (Ikit Claw) while others take shit or OK units and make them 10% cheaper or 10% stronger, but only for the lord's army. There's also weirdness where middle-tier units for some factions end up stronger 1v1 compared to higher-tier units because they get better traits or techs (Halberdiers vs. Greatswords).

The only tech I can think of that was clearly intelligently designed with an intention of enabling a unique and otherwise impossible singleplayer playstyle is the Vampire Count's -100% skeleton upkeep one. Aside from that there's nothing like a cavalry-focused lord who actually significantly buffs cavalry or a tech that fixes their shortcomings.

It's also basically random whether a faction is allowed to stack various things like +unit recruit rank to recruit level 9 units (for max stats and to get redline 2nd traits) or you're just left recruiting rank 1-4 units that will take 100 turns to level up. This particularly irks me because if you do want to use melee or cavalry you have to recruit rank 9 melee units because that's the point where they can start to beat AI bonuses. Similarly it's basically random whether a faction has theoretically infinite magic from recruiting knowledgable lords or infinite money by recruiting (high level) lords that can unlock economic bonuses. Skaven get infinite plague priest heroes to spam skavenslave spells because there's an obscure follower you whose trigger you can abuse to infinitely scale your cap, and other races can stack research rate bonuses by intentionally turning off research before battles. Why? Who knows, but its not for campaign balance.

 

[Fedora Master]

Spoiler:

Spoiler

 

[Lacrymas]

It would be faster if WH3 didn't get stuck at faction 46 for some reason.

 

[GloomFrost]

Game is complete shit, and all these reviewers are falling over themselves to not come outright and admit it.

The average review:

Bugs up the butt, the siege rework is a sidegrade at best and a significant downgrade at worst, faction mechanics are bland and pointless, unit rosters feel limited, the AI is shockingly incompetent, they didn't port the best features of Troy and Three Kingdoms over, the meta is still range-heavy, the campaign is meh. 9.5/10 Best Game of the Year in the History of Mankind, buy it now.

To be fair nobody said so far that the game is GOTY or 9 out 0f 10. If anything it was more like get it on Gamepass MAYBE. And then IF they fix all the problems and make decent DLCs then again MAYBE get it on SALE.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Man, if I was to just read this thread, I'd be pretty bummed about the game.

Then I actually watched the Mandalore video that - supposedly - lambasts the game. He sucked its dick for approximately 90% of the run time and talked about two bugs that detracted from the experience.

I mean, I know this is the Dex, but give me a fucking break. At the very least the game will be a slight improvement on TWW2, which is in itself one of the best strategy games of the last decade.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Man, if I was to just read this thread, I'd be pretty bummed about the game.

Then I actually watched the Mandalore video that - supposedly - lambasts the game. He sucked its dick for approximately 90% of the run time and talked about two bugs that detracted from the experience.

I mean, I know this is the Dex, but give me a fucking break. At the very least the game will be a slight improvement on TWW2, which is in itself one of the best strategy games of the last decade.

It looks like it but I don't like how the DLC makes my wallet feel.

 

[Fedora Master]

Man, if I was to just read this thread, I'd be pretty bummed about the game.

Then I actually watched the Mandalore video that - supposedly - lambasts the game. He sucked its dick for approximately 90% of the run time and talked about two bugs that detracted from the experience.

I mean, I know this is the Dex, but give me a fucking break. At the very least the game will be a slight improvement on TWW2, which is in itself one of the best strategy games of the last decade.

It looks like it but I don't like how the DLC makes my wallet feel.

For the n-th time: There are easy ways around this.

 

[Lacrymas]

To be fair nobody said so far that the game is GOTY or 9 out 0f 10. If anything it was more like get it on Gamepass MAYBE. And then IF they fix all the problems and make decent DLCs then again MAYBE get it on SALE.

Everyone is saying how amazing the gameplay is, the best in the WH series (I'm sure some of them are holding back saying it's the best Total War gameplay ever), the only downside being the Realms of Chaos objectives. Except all the other downsides they mentioned that somehow don't matter. The only one saying the things you are is Mandalore after tonguebathing the game for 50 minutes.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Man, if I was to just read this thread, I'd be pretty bummed about the game.

Then I actually watched the Mandalore video that - supposedly - lambasts the game. He sucked its dick for approximately 90% of the run time and talked about two bugs that detracted from the experience.

I mean, I know this is the Dex, but give me a fucking break. At the very least the game will be a slight improvement on TWW2, which is in itself one of the best strategy games of the last decade.

It looks like it but I don't like how the DLC makes my wallet feel.

For the n-th time: There are easy ways around this.

I don't generally pirate a game unless it has a good GOG release. Dauphong is a glownigger and I don't trust him.

 

[Fedora Master]

Man, if I was to just read this thread, I'd be pretty bummed about the game.

Then I actually watched the Mandalore video that - supposedly - lambasts the game. He sucked its dick for approximately 90% of the run time and talked about two bugs that detracted from the experience.

I mean, I know this is the Dex, but give me a fucking break. At the very least the game will be a slight improvement on TWW2, which is in itself one of the best strategy games of the last decade.

It looks like it but I don't like how the DLC makes my wallet feel.

For the n-th time: There are easy ways around this.

I don't generally pirate a game unless it has a good GOG release. Dauphong is a glownigger and I don't trust him.

YOU DONT HAVE TO "PIRATE" ANYTHING. YOU CAN UNLOCK ANY DLC IN THESE GAMES WITH AN INI FILE AND A MODIFIED STEAM.DLL

But seriously, all the necessary data is already in your game files because you couldn't play MP otherwise. All it takes is to tick the box inside Steam that says "Has access to these DLCs" and that's it. I've played both older games for probably 2000 fucking hours combined and nothing ever happened so don't come at me with "but muh steam account" okay.

 

[Sunri]

To be fair nobody said so far that the game is GOTY or 9 out 0f 10. If anything it was more like get it on Gamepass MAYBE. And then IF they fix all the problems and make decent DLCs then again MAYBE get it on SALE.

Everyone is saying how amazing the gameplay is, the best in the WH series (I'm sure some of them are holding back saying it's the best Total War gameplay ever), the only downside being the Realms of Chaos objectives. Except all the other downsides they mentioned that somehow don't matter. The only one saying the things you are is Mandalore after tonguebathing the game for 50 minutes.

They can't say negative things they mention bugs but in the end they will recommend the game anyway because that's what will get them next installment early I think we will get similar crap to whII I regretted preordering it so this time I'm chilling out on release.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Man, if I was to just read this thread, I'd be pretty bummed about the game.

Then I actually watched the Mandalore video that - supposedly - lambasts the game. He sucked its dick for approximately 90% of the run time and talked about two bugs that detracted from the experience.

I mean, I know this is the Dex, but give me a fucking break. At the very least the game will be a slight improvement on TWW2, which is in itself one of the best strategy games of the last decade.

It looks like it but I don't like how the DLC makes my wallet feel.

For the n-th time: There are easy ways around this.

I don't generally pirate a game unless it has a good GOG release. Dauphong is a glownigger and I don't trust him.

YOU DONT HAVE TO "PIRATE" ANYTHING. YOU CAN UNLOCK ANY DLC IN THESE GAMES WITH AN INI FILE AND A MODIFIED STEAM.DLL

I have never posted in these threads so please forgive me for the ignorance but...what kind of DLC is that even if it is that easy to bypass? Sorry in advance. I just want one under twenty bucks with all the content.

I'll keep it in mind. I feel like people are telling me to skip the first one and just play the second one.

Fedora informed me through PM. Kudos.