Warhammer Total War: Warhammer III

[FreeKaner]

FreeKaner Kudos to you for taking the time and explaining your argument in detail. I agree on Bretonnia being a much more in depth/consistent and arguably better parody of Medieval France.
I still dont think Araby or Kislev are necessarily bad parodies/factions just because they are historically inaccurate, but jedem das Seine.

As you yourself said, a good parody requires intimate knowledge of the foundations of what is being parodied. Kislev and Araby are made with partly ignorant and wholly ignorant of the basis which makes for terrible caricatures of caricatures.

I am not against parodies or "inaccuracies". I am against incoherence and ignorance.

Here is a mindblowing fact: Medieval Arabs didn't use curved swords, they used Greco-Roman style straight swords.

 

[Fedora Master]

Only culturally-neutral parody pirate skellingtons from now on!

Skeletons are very offensive to China, please stop.

 

[FreeKaner]

I.E if "Araby" had as much "accuracy" as Bretonnia, this is what Arabic archers and cavalrymen would look like:

Spoiler

Spoiler

and if they wanted to be as accurate as Kislev, they could add this sort of stuff which is "inaccurate" time period & locality:

Spoiler

Spoiler

Which would be the "non-Arab" equivalents.

Anyway that should be enough but I wanted to elaborate why Araby is not on the level of even Kislev, let alone Bretonnia as people seem to think Araby is just those but "brown" so that's why it doesn't get a pass.

No wonder the Demon Prince is such a pushover, the Empire Captain you fight in your first battle has BETTER STATS THAN IT.

Prince is extremely undertuned, they thought that the body parts would compensate for it but in reality they are just items with visuals which all the other LLs already get. The base combat stats need a huge boost.

 

[razvedchiki]

the second picture is from the siege of constantinople FreeKaner?

 

[FreeKaner]

the second picture is from the siege of constantinople FreeKaner?

Both of them are supposed to be, one from outside the siege and other in streets of Constantinople. Although the one inside has the Ottoman soldier wearing later period armor. Outside siege one is more accurate overall.

 

[Fedora Master]

Since rifts let you go ANYWHERE on the map I'm now trying out a classic migration campaign. Settling the Demon Prince on the plains of Zharr, fuck Norsca, fuck Kislev, fuck those Wood Elves. Let's see how it goes.

 

[Average Manatee]

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.

This is sadly the case. As Skrag I have an alliance with the Empire and my corner of the map. Why would I every start a war in a total WAR WARhammer game when the goal is to just have one doomstack that can fight a few battles every 30 turns?

Skrag is pretty awesome since he can amass up to around +50% movement which lets him be speedy gonzalez going through the chaos plane. Shame about the ones where you can't take advantage of faster movement tho.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Wait you're telling me Arabs DON'T have flying carpets in real life?!

With enough hashhash (opium and/or poppy?) anything is possible.

 

[Lacrymas]

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.

This is sadly the case. As Skrag I have an alliance with the Empire and my corner of the map. Why would I every start a war in a total WAR WARhammer game when the goal is to just have one doomstack that can fight a few battles every 30 turns?

Skrag is pretty awesome since he can amass up to around +50% movement which lets him be speedy gonzalez going through the chaos plane. Shame about the ones where you can't take advantage of faster movement tho.

Not having much of a reason to go to war is a pretty pervasive problem in this series. I have a military alliance with some ogres as Cathay because I let them eat some of my free caravan troops. I'm not particularly sure whether Cathay and the Ogres even have any lore reason to dislike each other. Cathay seems like it hates only chaos.

 

[Haba]

I just cant get over how utterly retarded the sieges are in this.

All the fucking gates are open. Everyone carries a siege ladder up their arse. Snekkity snekkity.

You play fucking Pac-man inside the city walls.

 

[Lacrymas]

The sieges are retarded, yes. Even worse than WH2. The maps are great, don't get me wrong, but the meta of archers + monsters is still the same and now there's the ridiculously annoying tower defense on top. The problem with sieges was that the design not only encouraged but actively necessitated ranged-heavy armies as both the attacker and defender and that CA couldn't code fighting on walls even if their lives depended on it. Not that the maps were small or that the sieges were short. Now they are the same, but longer with more bullshit on top.

 

[Fedora Master]

Quick report: Migrating via the rifts is viable but of course stretches out the game somewhat. The trick is to enter the rift, teleport where you wanna go, then go back in and do one of the realms. I chose Slaanesh to get a juicy boost via the bribe, worked out well enough.
Demon Prince really is a bummer though, you can't use any of the cool shit you pick up.

 

[MajorMace]

I mean, it's basically always been like that in Warhammer.

Every single faction lore is insultingly lacking compared to the Empire. It will always be the case, that's how they developped their world. As duely noted, at first, Bretonnia was barely fleshed out.

Without a strong v4 for the fantasy rpg I doubt we'd see much more added to whatever they have in store for their reboot of Warhammer Battle.

Now the trial for inaccuracy is a bit too much. Although the way they treated american natives, especially, is revolting.

 

[tabacila]

Not having much of a reason to go to war is a pretty pervasive problem in this series. I have a military alliance with some ogres as Cathay because I let them eat some of my free caravan troops. I'm not particularly sure whether Cathay and the Ogres even have any lore reason to dislike each other. Cathay seems like it hates only chaos.

I think the Ogre Kingdoms were always sort of a neutral faction in lore. Ready to fight for whatever reason and anyone that gave them a meal ticket sort of thing. So there isn't really a lore reason to hate/love/nothing them.

Yes, the sieges continue to be the bane of these games. After I attacked a couple of minor settlement and saw the same towers be rebuilt twice in 30 seconds I pretty much just auto if I can afford it.
The new maps are great and make for a more fun experience, but the tower defense elements are just pure shit. Here's hoping there will be at least a modding solution to that.
Unfortunately for the walls part of the problem I'm starting to think that ladders are not removable by modding, since it's been seems that units that can stay on walls are the same as units that have ass ladders. The best modding solution I found was reducing climbing speed .

 

[Lacrymas]

It's doubly funny when incorporeal undead bust out the ass ladders.

 

[thesheeep]

It's doubly funny when incorporeal undead bust out the ass ladders.

Is it more or less funny than Ogres smashing down walls and then proceeding to stand in front of the hole in the wall with their fingers in their noses?

 

[fizzelopeguss]

But racial caricatures can be fun? Also the caricaturizing seems to selectively be or not be a problem. Remember Russians in the Red Alert games? But now I guess games are sirus bizniss.

Being retarded, illiterate and ignorant just lazily repeating same mainstream caricatures that has existed for 200 years, so brave and stunning.

Correct, and your hideous faction and precious game is shit.

 

[Parabalus]

So here you go, you have your Bretonnia, based-off Medieval France, having Spanish Tercios, German landsknecth, French longbowmen, Italian Knights, with French oxriders and elephants all dressed in combination of Russian and Swedish clothing, using German titles. That's basically what "Araby" is.

If Bretonnia was one just race representing the entirety of 'Historical Europe', would this be that bad?

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Araby will and should be Andhaira dressed as Jaffar, wanking off a Djinn in the corner with skulls festooned all over. But they'll never make it, because the wogs and alphabet parade will hate everything they come up with anyway.



There we go. Campaign getting savaged.

 

[Sunri]

If we look only at the game without background lore, no one would tell that any of the order factions are grimdark people complaining about Cathay are dumb dumb.

 

[Delterius]

So here you go, you have your Bretonnia, based-off Medieval France, having Spanish Tercios, German landsknecth, French longbowmen, Italian Knights, with French oxriders and elephants all dressed in combination of Russian and Swedish clothing, using German titles. That's basically what "Araby" is.

If Bretonnia was one just race representing the entirety of 'Historical Europe', would this be that bad?

I think that's the point he's making. Araby's aesthetics are nonsense because they aren't grounded anywhere in space or time. Bretonnia's are very specifically a parody of arthurian legend based around medieval anglo-norman-france. Think about how well Bretonnia works with the setting. It's arthurian bedrock means that their ambivalent relationship towards the Wood Elves can draw upon fairy tale lore with words like Otherworld and Fae figuring proeminently. Being squarely medieval means that Bretonnia contrasts well with the Empire, the Southern Realms, and the High Elves. It also gives the faction a strong identity based around crusades and stuff. Being specifically based around an anglois space also gives us more obvious avenues for expansion. Quite a few people talk about how maybe Bretonnia could break the mold a bit with a Regiment of Renown based around Robin Hood, which I believe is part of the tabletop campaign already. All of that would be dilluted if Bretonnia had to do triple duty and represent thousand years of not only french history and folklore but also italian and spanish history as well as some parts of the eastern mediterranean and the balkans.

An ideal Araby revamp would draw on the 1001 nights and create a realm based around very specifically the abbassid and cordoba eras. We are talking different clothes, different architecture, different weapons, and so on from what most people believe. It would be nothing like the books or the fan made faction mod that was linked earlier. But it would make for a much better foil for Bretonnia and the Tomb Kings.

 

[Parabalus]

So here you go, you have your Bretonnia, based-off Medieval France, having Spanish Tercios, German landsknecth, French longbowmen, Italian Knights, with French oxriders and elephants all dressed in combination of Russian and Swedish clothing, using German titles. That's basically what "Araby" is.

If Bretonnia was one just race representing the entirety of 'Historical Europe', would this be that bad?

I think that's the point he's making. Araby's aesthetics are nonsense because they aren't grounded anywhere in space or time. Bretonnia's are very specifically a parody of arthurian legend based around medieval anglo-norman-france. Think about how well Bretonnia works with the setting. It's arthurian bedrock means that their ambivalent relationship towards the Wood Elves can draw upon fairy tale lore with words like Otherworld and Fae figuring proeminently. Being squarely medieval means that Bretonnia contrasts well with the Empire, the Southern Realms, and the High Elves. It also gives the faction a strong identity based around crusades and stuff. Being specifically based around an anglois space also gives us more obvious avenues for expansion. Quite a few people talk about how maybe Bretonnia could break the mold a bit with a Regiment of Renown based around Robin Hood, which I believe is part of the tabletop campaign already. All of that would be dilluted if Bretonnia had to do triple duty and represent thousand years of not only french history and folklore but also italian and spanish history as well as some parts of the eastern mediterranean and the balkans.

An ideal Araby revamp would draw on the 1001 nights and create a realm based around very specifically the abbassid and cordoba eras. We are talking different clothes, different architecture, different weapons, and so on from what most people believe. It would be nothing like the books or the fan made faction mod that was linked earlier. But it would make for a much better foil for Bretonnia and the Tomb Kings.

Everything you mention is just more detail and specialisation, by virtue of there also being historical Germany, historical England, historical America etc.

Whereas for Araby they had to fit >10 races into one, otherwise people would complain that something was left out.

If there were >10+ Arabian factions, and you had to fit the Western ones into just one race, what would you do other than the same thing they did to Araby?

 

[FreeKaner]

Everything you mention is just more detail, by virtue of there also being historical Germany, historical England, historical America etc.

Whereas for Araby they had to fit >10 races into one, otherwise people would complain that something was left out.

If there were >10+ Arabian factions, and you had to fit the Western ones into just one race, what would you do other than the same thing they did to Araby?

They didn't really do that. There is very few things actually Arabic in Araby. Any Abbasid & Arabian nights based faction would already necessarily fit at least 4 races (at the very least Arab, Persian, Turk and Berber) and a timespan of 300 to 500 years. There is very few actual races in Araby, it is just stereotypes and names. Aesthetically speaking I'd call Araby Indo-Persian and that's giving them a credit as if there was a theme in there. Bretonnia has its French knights and British peasants, Kislev has its gospodars as Rus principalities and ungols as Cossacks/Tatars as differences, they represent more than one thing but do so coherently. It's certainly possibly to do this with a potential medieval middle-eastern factions, in fact any good medieval Middle-eastern faction really should fit 4-5 races by default and that would be one of my complaints that they don't. They just call it "Arab" while not using ANYTHING medieval Arabic whatsoever.

If they could a "Pan-Greater Middle-east faction", spanning from Morocco to India, for whatever reason, Araby is still not it. It's basically Ottoman military concepts with Ottoman terms, weird Indo-Persian clothing all of it just called "Arabyan".

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Fantasy Warhammer is retarded, if you like the historical aspect mixed with monsters LotR is ten times better as actual thought went in to the design of the world. This mishmash of stolen ideas from all over the place is giving me aneurysm every time I read some lore in these games. I don't get it, what is the appeal?

 

[FreeKaner]

Fantasy Warhammer is not retarded at all. Well not wholly. It's not about historical accuracy or whatever, it is about making coherent factions. Coherence is what makes fantasy good. Empire and Bretonnia are both very ahead of most fantasy settings really. Empire in particular has nuance and depth than more "non-retarded" (supposedly) settings like Forgotten Realms do. It's just the whole thing was designed for Empire & Chaos as well as other fantasy races like Greenskins, Elves, Vampires, Tomb Kings etc. (which are also very good) anything else is very much periphery, and the fact that it is periphery automatically makes them into parodies, which I don't object per se. What I object is how worse it gets as it goes away from the Western Europe, Bretonnia is a very competent parody, Kislev is an almost bad one. Similarly Cathay is a decent parody though also recently drafted for Warhammer 3. I assume if they give Nippon same treatment it would also be just decent and coherent Sengoku Japan parody with some medieval stuff because there is more general knowledge about Japan aesthetics and what it actually looked like. Araby is an atrocious one and one of the worst fantasy factions ever. For it to be added to the setting it would be completely rewritten and retconned, if the Devs won't add it because of "sensibilities" as where this conversation started, well at least they have the sensibility to realize it is an extremely incompetent and ignorant caricature, though I believe that's not for all the right reasons either. Reasons being that medieval Middle-east is not "common knowledge" at all like France or Japan is in general western audiences, when people think of "Crusader Era Middle-east", at least half of what they think is not from it and that's being generous.

People don't realize it but it is not because LOTR is "historically accurate" that it is good, it is not historically accurate to anything, except some imaginations of an Anglo-Saxon horsemen. It is good because it is extremely coherent in its themes and philosophy, with attention to detail and depth. None of which has anything to do with "historical accuracy".

Anyway that's enough discussion about Araby.

More important facts remain, such as when CA will patch this weird units standing around doing nothing in battle bug.

 

[Parabalus]

Everything you mention is just more detail, by virtue of there also being historical Germany, historical England, historical America etc.

Whereas for Araby they had to fit >10 races into one, otherwise people would complain that something was left out.

If there were >10+ Arabian factions, and you had to fit the Western ones into just one race, what would you do other than the same thing they did to Araby?

They didn't really do that. There is very few things actually Arabic in Araby. Any Abbasid & Arabian nights based faction would already necessarily fit at least 4 races (at the very least Arab, Persian, Turk and Berber) and a timespan of 300 to 500 years. There is very few actual races in Araby, it is just stereotypes and names. Aesthetically speaking I'd call Araby Indo-Persian and that's giving them a credit as if there was a theme in there. Bretonnia has its French knights and British peasants, Kislev has its gospodars as Rus principalities and ungols as Cossacks/Tatars as differences, they represent more than one thing but do so coherently. It's certainly possibly to do this with a potential medieval middle-eastern factions, in fact any good medieval Middle-eastern faction really should fit 4-5 races by default and that would be one of my complaints that they don't. They just call it "Arab" while not using ANYTHING medieval Arabic whatsoever.

If they could a "Pan-Greater Middle-east faction", spanning from Morocco to India, for whatever reason, Araby is still not it. It's basically Ottoman military concepts with Ottoman terms, weird Indo-Persian clothing all of it just called "Arabyan".

So what would you call

It's basically Ottoman military concepts with Ottoman terms, weird Indo-Persian clothing

instead?

 

[FreeKaner]

So what would you call



instead?

If that is what the aesthetic was based off on coherently, it would be based off of gunpowder empires. Which is what large part of aesthetics, architecture, arms and armor seen normally as "Crusader Era Medieval Arab" (Including Disney's Aladdin) come from. I guess I'd call it Khwarasani or something going with Warhammer naming convention as Greater Khorasan area is where all those traditions intersected. Cities being based on Tehran, Delhi, Samarkand, Bukhara, Herat and stuff like that. You could probably stretch it a bit to include Damascus and Baghdad with some deserts to add in some medieval Arabic stuff. That really wouldn't be "Crusader Era Arabia" as people want however, thought it would basically look the same except not being named and identified wrongly.

Else you can just make a faction named "Nottomans" or something, base it off fully on Ottoman empire and just make it counter-part to Cathay.