Warhammer Total War: Warhammer III

[FreeKaner]

 

[Humbaba]

Good to see that CA is doing everything wrong with Fantasy, so that they can learn from their mistakes and make Total Warhammer 40k even better.

 

[Delterius]

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.

Don't forget that the lore is full on grimderp at times. In some editions the average Bretonnian peasant is supposed to be so horribly shackled to their land and and so inbred that they are multi limbed and indistinguishable from Tzeentchean Blobs. Whereas the contrast with the Empire is that their peasants will be taxed to death by age 12, at which point their carcasses are burned to death for the crime of witchcraft and their families persecuted for the local lordling's lost revenues. So yeah, that shit was toned down not only for the Total War games but in between tabletop editions as well.

Cathay's rulers are too heroic? So are Leonceur and Karl Franz. Cathay's lands too nice? Bretonnian towns are impossible fairy tale castles and the countryside is beautiful as well. The ruling government too well meaning and organized? The royal family lost one (1) sibling for a few weeks and the country imploded into a Chinese Style Civil War. A quarter of Cathay is ruled by a Warpstone addict with daddy issues and the buildings will hint that 'both life and labour are cheap in Cathay', 'for all are compelled to work by the Emperor's will'. There's a reason why those Cathay rebel factions from the early game will sometimes quip that they won't be slaves.

If you had to create a pastiche western europe faction what would you do other than the same thing they did to Araby?

If there were around 4 middle eastern factions and only one western european faction I'd make something akin to Bretonnia, not Araby. Something that is well done and well thought out. That's the problem with your response. You don't seem to care for the difference. It's not a matter of adding more or less detail to a faction, it's discussing what identity one wishes to give said faction and filtering out one's sources for architecture, clothing, weapons, tactics and folklore.

Consider that at one point Bretonnia was a great deal more generic than it is today. It used to do double duty and also represent the British Empire, with a large technologically advanced Navy and colonies around the world. I'm not sure if that part of the lore was completely extirpated from canon, but it's clear that the focus of Bretonnia as a faction was shifted as it went through overhauls in its tabletop history. Hell, there was a time when Bretonnia was accused of being too 'Hero Bright' when compared to the Empire: it was back when the questing nobility was meritocratic and peasant villages would nominate a hero and pool resources to get them armor and weapons so they can go around doing hero stuff. Which is to say that there's nothing new under the sun.

Araby is where Bretonnia used to be. It's stretched too thin. It's supposed to be a medieval muslim arabic analog to Bretonnia's old errantry wars. But there's nothing arabic or medieval about it. And the reason why that's a bad thing is because it dillutes the faction and warps its details. Case in point:

So what would you call

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

instead?

Such a faction would be turco-persian and early modern in nature. It would be a gunpowder focused faction based around a small elite infantry and a large disciplined cavalry force. It would have horse archers, elite cavalry, elite gun-men, hand cannons and siege artillery. It's main geopolitical rivalry would be akin to the Great Ottoman-Habsburg Wars rather than the Crusades, so it would share a border with the Empire rather than exist across the sea from Bretonnia. It's main internal struggle would be against local factions and nomadic peoples across a large mountaineous landscape. It's aesthetics would be decisively ottoman turkish, which is to say that buildings would be akin to those in Anatolia and Greece and an architecture adapted to it's mountaineous landscape. Their people/soldiers would wear jackets, baggy pants and veils. They would wield curved swords, short bows and a bunch of different types of guns. Unique faction mechanics can draw from things like the extremely unique slave system found in Mamluke states to Iranian traditions of a scholarly bureaucracy and Ottoman. One might call this faction Turania or something.

Meanwhle an Araby would be abbassid and cordoba based. It would be a medieval army of spearmen, archers and heavy melee cavalry. It's main geopolitical rival would be Bretonnia and Estalia, mirroring the Crusades and the conquest/re-conquest of Iberia. As such the faction can mostly stay where it is. It's main internal struggle would draw from things like the Anarchy in Samarra for an early game succession civil war between an imperial capital of scholar bureaucrats and the power of great families at the borders of the empire. It's aesthetics would be arabic, which is to say that buildings would be akin to those found in Egypt and the Hejaz/Bagdad with an architecture that is adapted to it's desert landscape. It's people/soldiers would wear long single piece robes and turbans. They'd wield straight swords, spears, javelins and composite bows.

Araby could be a fusion culture of both the medieval arab dominated middle east and the late medieval/early modern turk dominated middle east. But it would have to be like Kislev. And to get on Kislev's level you have to step back and discuss all the details. I could see a situation where you have a 4 province Araby inspired in the late Abbassid caliphate. You have an Araby sub-faction with an LL more closely inspired on medieval Cordoba and the Maghreb and you have another Araby sub-faction more closely inspired by the Mamlukes and the Ottomans. The overall architecture would have to be a fusion of mountaineous turco-persian and desert levantine. The units would be like Kislev's slav-tatar split, with archers dressed as arabs and horse archers dressed as turks. This would be something truly good, unique, that enriches the world and is capable of selling. It is also, I think, the baseline for any hypothetical re-imagining of the region be it by GW or CA.

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?

I like pike and shot tactics and magic and stuff.

 

[InspectorRumpole]

Oh boy, all these disappointed kids complaining on reddit about the state of WH3 brings joy to my heart.

It's like they never played a TW game before.

Only a week ago it was posts like "goodbye old friend" (uninstalling WH2)

 

[Parabalus]

It's not a matter of adding more or less detail to a faction, it's discussing what identity one wishes to give said faction and filtering out one's sources for architecture, clothing, weapons, tactics and folklore.

The identity they gave Araby is everything vaguely Middle-Eastern.

That identity might suck, but everything and the kitchen sink is what they went with.

It used to do double duty and also represent the British Empire

High Elves are the British Empire.

Such a faction would be turco-persian and early modern in nature.

That's a completely different question though - constructing entirely different races, no matter how better they may be, does not answer which name would be best suited for the current Araby.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

High Elves are the British Empire.

A perfidious inspiration for a perfidious race.

 

[Delterius]

The identity they gave Araby is everything vaguely Middle-Eastern.

Yes?

That identity might suck

That's the post, yeah.

High Elves are the British Empire.

And at one point so was Bretonnia, proving the point that factions need both a niche and a well thought out, strong identity.

That's a different question entirely though - constructing entirely different races, though better they are, does not answer which name would be better suited for the current Araby.

It's in the post. The current Araby should just be called Turklandia or something because that's what it is. There could be an entirely different faction called Araby, or an entire new form of Araby, which fully utilizes the early modern turkish and medieval arab pastiche, like Kislev does for their slavs and tatar-slav cossacks. What exact name it would have would be a work in progress. If I had to come up with something on the spot that conforms to shit like Tilea and Estalia then fuck call it Sarrakhan - Sarracen + Khanate - or something to that effect.

 

[zapotec]

That's how the Kislevite population was depicted in the first edition Warhammer RPG if somebody is interested

Spoiler

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

These Tomb Kings and Bretonnian maps looks splendid!

 

[FreeKaner]

That's how the Kislevite population was depicted in the first edition Warhammer RPG if somebody is interested

Spoiler

It seems Ungols were more outright Tatar in earlier versions while they are more Cossack in later versions, it is also definitely actually a lot more accurate & nuanced. There is no comparison of those Tatar (left) and Rus principality (Right) accuracy in first picture in Araby, nothing even remotely close to distinction in arms and armor of different peoples like Rus commander (Left), Tatar cavalryman (right), Slav cleric with Greek style robes (bottom) in the third picture is present in Araby. They are all just homogenized, have same style, all are called Arabyans, and neither that clothing or style has anything to do with Arabs or medieval middle-east.

This is what I say. People seem to believe that Araby is just about as detailed or pastiche as everything else in Warhammer, so complaints are just asking for undue historical accuracy. No, it is not even a pastiche, it is just homogenized nonsense with no knowledge whatsoever. It is neither medieval nor Arab, it doesn't even have the clarity to have anything like Arab governor, Steppe horseman, Persian scholar with distinct looks & fashions like this Kislev has.

People who made Warhammer fantasy knew their history, they weren't ignorant retards working off caricatures. You can tell this from even how the army books are written. The writing style & language reminds me a lot of the actual manuscripts from early print era.

 

[Parabalus]

It's in the post. The current Araby should just be called Turklandia or something because that's what it is. There could be an entirely different faction called Araby, or an entire new form of Araby, which fully utilizes the early modern turkish and medieval arab pastiche, like Kislev does for their slavs and tatar-slav cossacks. What exact name it would have would be a work in progress. If I had to come up with something on the spot that conforms to shit like Tilea and Estalia then fuck call it Sarrakhan - Sarracen + Khanate - or something to that effect.

That's not in the post though.

I don't disagree with the stuff you said at all, merely curious at what delightful names the well versed populace here could come up with for the current abomination.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I would call them the Hassoq Empire.
Because Ottomans.
Either that or the Poofs, but I don't think that would be received well.

 

[FreeKaner]

Oh boy, all these disappointed kids complaining on reddit about the state of WH3 brings joy to my heart.

It's like they never played a TW game before.

Only a week ago it was posts like "goodbye old friend" (uninstalling WH2)

I checked it and I have to say a lot of it is basically complaining they have to actually play outside of their comfort zone. Especially in terms of siege battles.

Warhammer 3 maps are so much better than 2, they are bigger and have more features and creativity to them, they look much better too. One of the biggest problems in WH2 was how claustrophobic both the land battles and sieges were.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Oh boy, all these disappointed kids complaining on reddit about the state of WH3 brings joy to my heart.

It's like they never played a TW game before.

Only a week ago it was posts like "goodbye old friend" (uninstalling WH2)

I checked it and I have to say a lot of it is basically complaining they have to actually play outside of their comfort zone. Especially in terms of siege battles.

Warhammer 3 maps are so much better than 2, they are bigger and have more features and creativity to them, they look much better too. One of the biggest problems in WH2 was how claustrophobic both the land battles and sieges were.

So they're closer to Shogun 2 or Medieval 2 Maps then? That's nice.

 

[FreeKaner]

So they're closer to Shogun 2 or Medieval 2 Maps then? That's nice.

Yes, you actually have to manoeuvre and use tactics. Overall sieges and maps of Warhammer 3 reminds me a lot of Medieval 2 and Shogun 2 in function.

All this does is vindicating CA's shit design decisions in 1 and 2 making maps flat, featureless and small, as well as sieges just one wall. Most players are shit eaters so they like shit design. Because all they want is to stay in their comfort zone.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

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.

CA artists fucked up, no shit.

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.

They look great already.

Instantly recognisable with their own silhouette.

Fucking queers would have them lifting armour from generic osprey shit. That's why Cathay looks so fucked up, it's an asset flip from 3kingdoms and dynasty warriors with dull crap like terracotta warriors and world of warcraft dragons. Rather than Age of Conan Khitai with serpent worshipping whores, deranged Monkey mutants, and malformed eunuch sorcerers with sharpened filed teeth with chunks of jade warpstone drilled into their foreheads. Their 'Great Bastion' is less grimdark than the history of the real fucking thing.

People who made Warhammer fantasy knew their history, they weren't ignorant retards working off caricatures. You can tell this from even how the army books are written. The writing style & language reminds me a lot of the actual manuscripts from early print era.

Warhammer is entirely caricature, right down to the names and locales. Mummified Egyptians, Giant rats that are obsessed with rocks cheese that falls from the moon. Transylvanian vampires. Orcs and Dwarfs that speak in Cockney and Northern English accents to signify the north/south divide in this country. Albion a land of endless fog and rain, full of druids and bog monsters. Curious Geazar of the republic of Remas. Marco fucking Colombo.

Blanches art for the game is pastiche of Altdorfers Alexanderschlacht.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_B...acht_bei_Issus_(Alte_Pinakothek,_München).jpg

Itself a painting of a Classical battle with anachronistic soldiery from the renaissance.

 

[Raghar]

This video says CA needs to remove mist effects, not Denuvo. What an asshole video... Why not both?

 

[FreeKaner]

CA artists fucked up, no shit.

Blanches art for the game is pastiche of Altdorfers Alexanderschlacht.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_B...acht_bei_Issus_(Alte_Pinakothek,_München).jpg

Itself a painting of a Classical battle with anachronistic soldiery from the renaissance.

This is the core of the matter, really. Ever since Rennaisaince but especially modern Era. It has become common for Ottomans to be used as what "Medieval Arabia" looked like. Because Ottomans were closest to them by proximity, most well-represented and well known by them in terms of fashion and architecture but especially arms and armor. They used this retroactively to represent everything from ancient Persia to medieval Arabs. It continued in 19th century orientalism, where things like Arabian nights became very popular, again Ottomans (as well as Mughals, as British Empire became familiar with them) was used to create these archetypes, pastiches, stereotypes or caricatures. This is why everything you sent is pastiche of not Medieval Arabia, but Ottomans/Mughals (really more the latter, except that galley art, which is beautiful by the way, that is partially Ottoman based off on Ottoman galleys of 16th century & partially Khorosan Persian/Tatar domes.)

There is one thing wrong, it's all wrong. It's no different than using 16th century Milan to represent Roman Empire, or 16th century France to represent Charlemagne's France.

If there was a faction called "Carolingian Empire", and all its aesthetics including its Paladins were was based off on this painting:

Would that be fine? Just chalk it up as good art and say it is pastiche and it doesn't matter it is not actually medieval Franks?

If you are gonna make an entire faction based off Renaissance European perception of Ottoman aesthetics as pastiche. Maybe don't call it "Medieval Araby" then, call it "Hottoma" or something whatever it is then use terms like "janissary", "sipahi", "akinci" to your hearts content, while adding bedouin and camel auxiliaries or whatever it is as Ottomans indeed had Arabs within its borders.

It really is very much "I don't know about it so it is fine". When people look at pastiche like Araby they don't realize it's inaccurate not by a few "historical accuracy" details, but by an order of magnitude. While it would be obvious to anyone that Charlemagne's France didn't look like 16th century France so they'd notice it.

I mean it has to be stated medieval Arabs, nor Ottomans for that matter, ever used elephants in battle. It's an Indian thing, partially used by Tamerlane who adopted it from his campaign in India and used it against Ottomans/Arabs. By that magnitude you can make "Rome" faction and give them Elephant units, because they fought against Carthage who used elephants.

 

[zapotec]

what the hell is this happening

 

[FreeKaner]

There is also another thing to add here, but it is separate. That's the Renaissance humanist painters who were painting historical battles & events just used contemporary equipment, architecture and aesthetics because they didn't know what 3th century Greeks or Persians looked like. That's fine, they didn't have access to material to know and deduce looks of these peoples so instead of making shit up on the fly, they instead did best as they can with what they knew. That painting of Alexander vs. Darius in Issus has more attention to detail to contemporary arms and armor than most games today will have, despite the latter having access to literally all the material in the world. It just takes 1 google search to know what medieval Arabs looked like, or Alexander's or Darius' army. There is no excuse except willful and stubborn ignorance. The 16th artist did best he can with what he had available to him, here we have people doing worst they can because "pastiche". Just call repeating same tired aesthetics from a Disney movie lazily and say "it's just fantasy learn to have fun", really there can be nothing new and better done?

 

[FreeKaner]

what the hell is this happening

Turn off screen space reflections & lighting quality to low, it seems to fuck up in ice maps for some people.

 

[Delterius]

generic osprey shit

Ah a subhuman. Was wondering when they'd show up.

 

[InspectorRumpole]

Oh boy, all these disappointed kids complaining on reddit about the state of WH3 brings joy to my heart.

It's like they never played a TW game before.

Only a week ago it was posts like "goodbye old friend" (uninstalling WH2)

I checked it and I have to say a lot of it is basically complaining they have to actually play outside of their comfort zone. Especially in terms of siege battles.

Warhammer 3 maps are so much better than 2, they are bigger and have more features and creativity to them, they look much better too. One of the biggest problems in WH2 was how claustrophobic both the land battles and sieges were.

I don't know, there seems to be a lot of issues, from denuvo stealing 20% performance (reviewers were given a non-denuvo version), to the UI being red on red.

Some of it is probably legit, while other have played too much Immortal Empires to forget how campaigns work.

 

[KateMicucci]

This discussion made me realize that Warhammer is one of the few fantasy settings that actually has knights in it.

I have Warhammer to thank for getting me into reading old chivalric romances.

 

[FreeKaner]

That's why Cathay looks so fucked up, it's an asset flip from 3kingdoms and dynasty warriors with dull crap like terracotta warriors and world of warcraft dragons. Rather than Age of Conan Khitai with serpent worshipping whores, deranged Monkey mutants, and malformed eunuch sorcerers with sharpened filed teeth with chunks of jade warpstone drilled into their foreheads. Their 'Great Bastion' is less grimdark than the history of the real fucking thing.

This is also another entirely deranged mentality. That basically "Western Europeans" have the "normal" stuff, they get to be the normal basis with down to earth aesthetics based on actual real stuff, sometimes even more plain than reality. Empire is basically mostly HRE arms, armor except simpler and more practical. Everyone else gets delineated as "exotic bizarre people" contrary to reality. So Kislev gets Streletsy with "bizarre exotic weird fun lolol" guns with axes as stocks, because the "normal" is already taken up by Empire. Similarly, "Arabs" get camels and bizarre weird massive curved Aladdin scimitars that never existed because they can't use normal Greco-Roman swords like they did in reality, that wouldn't befit the exotic weird bizarre outlandish foreigners. Similarly Cathay should just have nothing to do with China, it should be Monkey mutants and malformed eunuchs. Cathay can't even have musketmen as Ming did in reality, they have to have these bizarre exotic weird long guns only. Even "weird fantasy" of Bretonnia has medieval French knights down to detail, the only exaggerated parts are the figurines they have on their helms and their attitude, but Araby can't have normal fucking Arabic heavy cavalry with their straight swords and mail armor on horseback, that would be way too normal we can't have that.

Not that there is anything wrong with fantastic, exotic or weird in fantasy. It's that nobody else gets to have anything normal at all, they can only have bizarre and weird and exotic, anything else would be "too normal because this is fantasy", yet there is nothing wrong with normal when Empire gets to just have greatsword landsknecths more plain than an Osprey drawing or just straight up 16th century knight with no additions whatsoever. Else Knights-Errant of Bretonnia being directly same as any Osprey drawing of crusader era French Knights. Normal space is already occupied by the familiar and everpresent never changed normal Western Europe, so everything East of Berlin is where "exotic weird bizarre fantasy" happens.

 

[MajorMace]

I think people are lazy and racist and I don't know if it's worth lamenting on.