Warhammer Total War: Warhammer III

[Sloul]

Finally, the trilogy is complete, for what's worth. Is Estalia a playable faction? What about the Amazons? How much space would it take to install all 3 games and DLCs to have the entire playable map?
Are sieges still retarded with instant-spawn ladders (even when the attacking units are ghosts)?

You don't need to install all three, just install the last entry that you possess.
You just need to own the games / dlc's on steam.

 

[Average Manatee]

So VH seems to be the same as Legendary but you are allowed to save.
The stat buffs are completely overtuned as usual, the first battle as Skrag against the dwarves took ages because their lord simply would. not. break.
And neither could my ogres actually hit him and finish him off.

Completely untested.

That's honestly normal, 16-32ish model units have trouble ganging up on small, tough cunts. Especially when you are using non-AP units vs. tin can dwarves. Even without difficulty modifiers the trouble is that you probably have 3 or 4 guys max with 35 MA trying to hit an enemy with 55-60 MD (so easily reaching the min hit rate of 10%) who also has 50% damage reduction.

Ogres are basically cavalry who rely on rolling over infantry units and getting lots of surface area to hit things.

 

[Fedora Master]

So VH seems to be the same as Legendary but you are allowed to save.
The stat buffs are completely overtuned as usual, the first battle as Skrag against the dwarves took ages because their lord simply would. not. break.
And neither could my ogres actually hit him and finish him off.

Completely untested.

That's honestly normal, 16-32ish model units have trouble ganging up on small, tough cunts. Especially when you are using non-AP units vs. tin can dwarves. Even without difficulty modifiers the trouble is that you probably have 3 or 4 guys max with 35 MA trying to hit an enemy with 55-60 MD (so easily reaching the min hit rate of 10%) who also has 50% damage reduction.

Ogres are basically cavalry who rely on rolling over infantry units and getting lots of surface area to hit things.

You're right, but a lone lord surrounded by your entire army should eventually break, not go to low morale and then recover. There seems to be something very wrong with the way larger and single entities fight smaller ones. Playing Miao, she can't even kill a single unit of peasant archers in dragon form, at least not quickly.

e: All-male units still get female screams during combat, by the way.

Between all these bugs, the obvious balancing issues and the spelling errors everywhere I wouldn't be surprised if it came out CA outsourced parts of the game to some third world studio.

 

[Average Manatee]

I do feel like there's some kind of issue with cleaning up weakened, dispersed units. Especially when they are already fleeing from battle. In WH2 light cav would annihilate fleeting peasants and archers in half a second and even strong units died quickly but in WH3 it take a good amount of time

 

[Lacrymas]

RE: Cathay lore - it's Soviet realism but Chinese. The high elves were the blandest race up until now, but Cathay takes the cake.

 

[Fedora Master]

I do feel like there's some kind of issue with cleaning up weakened, dispersed units. Especially when they are already fleeing from battle. In WH2 light cav would annihilate fleeting peasants and archers in half a second and even strong units died quickly but in WH3 it take a good amount of time

The only unit I've found that does the job well are the dog types, Sabretusks especially.

RE: Cathay lore - it's Soviet realism but Chinese. The high elves were the blandest race up until now, but Cathay takes the cake.

They really downplayed the "Inbred aristocratic retards" aspect. The TT had the High Elf player roll a die before the game to see if their lord would be on the table or be replaced by a random asshole due to intrigue shenanigans for one.

 

[tabacila]

I think IndiePride was right when he said WH3 really needed another delay.

 

[Fedora Master]

Sounds fairly grimderp to me.

 

[Fedora Master]

The Wu Xing Compass makes no sense. It seems almost as if the effects are reversed, the energy per direction should DECREASE over time so you have an incentive to redirect it instead of keeping it set.

e: Ku'Gath is completely bugged. Can't move, can't end the turn after starting the campaign.

 

[Tyranicon]

...blandest, least interesting out of any faction I can remember. Actually no, that would be the Dwarves.

That's a grudgin'.

Waiting for Chaos Dwarfs so I can jump-start the industrial revolution, in an overpowered way. I'm expecting them to be the most broken thing ever.

 

[Olinser]

...blandest, least interesting out of any faction I can remember. Actually no, that would be the Dwarves.

That's a grudgin'.

Waiting for Chaos Dwarfs so I can jump-start the industrial revolution, in an overpowered way. I'm expecting them to be the most broken thing ever.

Expecting Chaos Dwarves from GW is like looking for a leprechaun in Brazil.

 

[FreeKaner]

I actually love the chaos campaign, way more than Vortex one. It's much better and in particular I love chaos realms. People complaining that it is difficult or unfair are why we can't have nice things.

 

[Fedora Master]

I don't see what exactly you could love about it. There are no difficult choices to make, no particularly interesting situations and lots of room for frustration.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Still downloading, I think chaos gods demands more sacrfices.

 

[FreeKaner]

I don't see what exactly you could love about it. There are no difficult choices to make, no particularly interesting situations and lots of room for frustration.

There are many difficult choices to make, one common one is fighting or avoiding enemy LLs in many of the realms. Every layer of Slaneesh is a difficult choice. In general the way campaign works is full of difficult choices because of the competition and race to souls. You never really feel comfortable or safe. It feels like playing an Attila Total War campaign which I also loved. Trying to persist rather than "blob & chill".

My only complaint about any of them would be that I think there are way too many armies in Tzeentch realm. Aside from that I enjoy all of them, I enjoyed Tzeentch too the RNG and mapping of it.

 

[Tyranicon]

...blandest, least interesting out of any faction I can remember. Actually no, that would be the Dwarves.

That's a grudgin'.

Waiting for Chaos Dwarfs so I can jump-start the industrial revolution, in an overpowered way. I'm expecting them to be the most broken thing ever.

Expecting Chaos Dwarves from GW is like looking for a leprechaun in Brazil.

The DLC must flow, and with Araby confirmed out, they've got few options. I'm hopeful.

 

[FreeKaner]

Chaos Dwarves are first DLC. The area they are in is already in the map, unlike Ind or even rest of China, there are plenty of references to them including a Demon Prince in Daemons of Chaos faction. It is not any harder for them to do than Tomb Kings, hell probably easier considering how many stuff they can reuse from Dwarves and Chaos.

 

[Olinser]

I don't see what exactly you could love about it. There are no difficult choices to make, no particularly interesting situations and lots of room for frustration.

There are many difficult choices to make, one common one is fighting or avoiding enemy LLs in many of the realms. Every layer of Slaneesh is a difficult choice. In general the way campaign works is full of difficult choices because of the competition and race to souls. You never really feel comfortable or safe. It feels like playing an Attila Total War campaign which I also loved. Trying to persist rather than "blob & chill".

My only complaint about any of them would be that I think there are way too many armies in Tzeentch realm. Aside from that I enjoy all of them, I enjoyed Tzeentch too the RNG and mapping of it.

Is that a joke? There's zero 'choice' in any of the realms. Unless you're terrible at the game, none of the AI are going to beat you to any of the realm goals unless they accidentally luck into it in the RNG Tzeentch realm before you can ID the path. There's zero reason to fight them unless you want their LL traits. All of the Chaos realms are incredibly straightforward, with the exception of the Tzeentch portal RNG. Nurgle you walk to the point and then walk to the quest goal, that's it. Khorne you fight a couple respawning armies to get your points and then walk to the quest point. Tzeentch is annoying RNG, totally dependent upon you picking lucky in first portal, and then IDing enough to make informed choices from 2nd island, and paradoxically is the domain that may require the most fights to beat because there's several forced fights moving around the little islands and you have to fight them to mitigate the RNG. Slaneesh is a joke, you don't even have to do anything other than walk in a straight line between portals and you don't even have to fight. There's one or two bribes that have reasonable benefits, but there's no reason to take them unless it's the absolute first portal you entered - why would I need money and a few levels 60 turns into the game? And most of the other realms give large amounts of money and XP from all their fights anyway. Sure, it's a legitimate strategy to rush into Slaanesh first and take one of the big bribes, but honestly the only reason to do that is if you aren't actually capable of winning the quest fight, since if you DO take a bribe, that prevents you from actually getting a soul that round, you just added 30 turns to the length of your campaign for an extra round of portal spawns.

And the quest battles are a joke, they're all exactly the freaking same with only minor and unnoticeable differences with the map gimmicks. They all just follow the same pattern of move forward and kill laughably small army on point, cap point, build a couple towers, sit and wait for spawnwaves, move to next point, build towers, wait for spawnwaves, move to final point, build towers, kill laughably weak Daemon with a ton of HP, mop up final spawn, win. It's so dumb - why are ALL FOUR of them battles just cosmetically different? Sure, Khorne's thing should be just throwing waves at you, but why is Tzeentch doing that instead of throwing spells, illusions, and elaborate plans at you?

As far as the main map goes, it's a boring drag. There is ZERO incentive to expand on the normal campaign map further than is necessary to sustain your LL army and a single lord back home. In fact, expanding past just a small handful of provinces means that you are forced to park lords all across your territory to deal with the portals when they spawn, and since there is NO BENEFIT to the actual victory conditions to have more territory, all that does is waste time. The campaign very much encourages you to simply turtle in a corner and mash the end turn button continuously.

I wasn't the biggest fan of Vortex but at least it forced you to expand to the point you could beat the large later invasions, and you HAD to control a certain amount of territory to finish it in any kind of reasonable amount of time.

This is a pretty poorly thought out mechanic, where the ONLY thing influencing the portal spawns is the turn timer. After the first portal or two you're invincible and just mashing the end turn button waiting for the next spawn cycle. and since the game gives you multiple turn warning, there's no reason your LL shouldn't be fully healed and ready to enter portal within 1-2 turns at most.

The campaign is definitely the weakest feature of the game because there IS no meaningful choice.

If you were going to shoehorn us into this, then they should have put in the time to make it a scripted campaign like the Prologue, that was 10x better than the full campaign.

 

[FreeKaner]

The entire first paragraph is basically stating what I said but more verbose and negatively. Including the criticism I made about armies in Tzeentch realm. Slaneesh temptations are good because they are powerful and it is a legitimate choice between making your campaign position much stronger or achieving campaign victory 30 turns earlier. I.E tempo vs. efficiency which is always a legitimate dilemma.

I am not interested in "absolute player freedom" drivel, like "I can't play this campaign on my own pace like Vortex" or "I just want to blob & chill". Sure if you do want those there is going to be immortal empires, where you can blob & chill to your heart's content. You have to play with less territories yes, because you can't blob freely as that'll create more problems but you still want to expand as much as you can because that's how you get the funds to sustain more armies as your main army will be in chaos realms. I especially find, in all games, the criticism that players doesn't have absolute control and ability to interfere, delay or completely shut out all given systems of a game to be completely degenerate opinion.

All the criticisms that really come down to "I can't blob at my own pace so this is bad design" are meaningless to me. There is also something to be said about the mental state of people who lash out at any timed content with shrieking disbelief like some sort of cornered animal. It's same with people complaining about timed objectives in Kingmaker and Wrathfinder too, some of the better parts of the game is existence of proper time management.

Also you know if you just want to bloooob, you can finish the game objective and just continue your campaign. See how Sunri is playing Cathay to 300+ turns as pseudo immortal empires.

 

[FreeKaner]

Furthermore I consider that map painting fans shouldn't be catered to, especially when their idea of fun is that there should be no obstacles or distractions to them painting the map.

 

[thesheeep]

So VH seems to be the same as Legendary but you are allowed to save.
The stat buffs are completely overtuned as usual, the first battle as Skrag against the dwarves took ages because their lord simply would. not. break.
And neither could my ogres actually hit him and finish him off.

Completely untested.

I was wondering about that, too.

Playing as Ogres, your army seems entirely incapable of dealing with single large entities, be it Lords or stuff like giants.
You need to rely on gnoblars ( ) and Hunter heroes (which are actually pretty good) in early game to hit those and later on giants, leadbelchers and stonehorns.

Very clearly seems to be a bug, considering all those other issues with large entities.

 

[FreeKaner]

Yeah there is a massive bug with how entities interact right now. Playing as Greasus I found that I had to spam click for him to hit any single entities and even then it only worked half the time, so despite his massive damage especially against Large units he wasn't dealing much damage over time at all, combined with ogres themselves being unable to hit anything it becomes extremely troublesome. I played until the end because I had hunter hero who could deal with most single entities but even the last battle had some annoying moments trying to pass ogres through choke points.

Not playing another campaign until they fix this bug.

 

[AwesomeButton]

...blandest, least interesting out of any faction I can remember. Actually no, that would be the Dwarves.

That's a grudgin'.

Waiting for Chaos Dwarfs so I can jump-start the industrial revolution, in an overpowered way. I'm expecting them to be the most broken thing ever.

Expecting Chaos Dwarves from GW is like looking for a leprechaun in Brazil.

The DLC must flow, and with Araby confirmed out, they've got few options. I'm hopeful.

I wonder if it's just "sensibilities" that's the reason for skipping Araby, or other reasons, like it being rated low with focus groups?

C&C Generals did the best Araby :D (When games were games, not "cultural phenomena")

 

[Wassersäufer]

...blandest, least interesting out of any faction I can remember. Actually no, that would be the Dwarves.

That's a grudgin'.

Waiting for Chaos Dwarfs so I can jump-start the industrial revolution, in an overpowered way. I'm expecting them to be the most broken thing ever.

Expecting Chaos Dwarves from GW is like looking for a leprechaun in Brazil.

The DLC must flow, and with Araby confirmed out, they've got few options. I'm hopeful.

I wonder if it's just "sensibilities" that's the reason for skipping Araby, or other reasons, like it being rated low with focus groups?

C&C Generals did the best Araby :D

Considering Araby is bascially Crusader Era Arabia as seen from the christian world, I think its obviously "sensibilities". I recall one of the Devs talking about having less cliche factions, or something to that effect.
And newer Araby is exceptionally boring, Bedouins who worship the Nehekharan gods. Stunning.

 

[FreeKaner]

I wonder if it's just "sensibilities" that's the reason for skipping Araby, or other reasons, like it being rated low with focus groups?

C&C Generals did the best Araby :D

Araby is like if there was as a "Bretonnia" faction, called "Francia" with its people called "Francs" but instead of actual interesting stuff like peasantry being Anglos and knighthood French a la Plagenets in England, everyone was French and their units were a combination of stuff like Spanish tercios, Italian knights, British longbowmen, German landsknecht and Hungarian hussars and maybe French artillery, as well as French ox cavalry while viewed as Medieval France. They would also have a Jean of Arc that's basically a hysterical witch that is burning the countryside and mythic units like Nagas. All under the umbrella of French people.

If you disliked how incoherent and retarded this all is you would hate fun. This only being made in the first place of course that people thought those were all just Arabic and exotic and "fun". Of course people don't know as much about medieval middle-east except "haha funny camel men" so none of that would even be noticed as out of place.

Kislev is almost like this, almost, but at least Kislev has two different peoples and is mainly based off of Rus principalities and Cossacks with the Polish hussars being more of a side thing and part of Eastern European aesthetics. It still has some retarded stuff like axegun Stereletsy.

Nobody is against fantasy or "fun". Araby doesn't do well because it is retarded. I would love an actual medieval middle-east "Bretonnia" faction based off of Arabian nights taking influence from real life Abbasids but such a thing can't even have even the basic nuance like Bretonnia distinction between French knights and Anglo peasantry even in a "parody" faction.