Warhammer Total War: Warhammer III

[thesheeep]

Yet Reddit et al are still full of "NOOOOOOOOOOOO IT'S FINE THERE ARE NO PROBLERMS!!!!" people

Reddit is just the worst of all hivemind platforms.
The way votings and display order work just makes the echo chamber even stronger.

It's honestly useless outside of memes and/or tech help.

 

[Tyranicon]

My biggest complaint is how CA seems utterly unable to improve combat AI despite decades in the business. Why does your current game have worse AI than a game you released in 2004?

Bigdicked basement devs compared to current day wagie cagie devs.

Yet Reddit et al are still full of "NOOOOOOOOOOOO IT'S FINE THERE ARE NO PROBLERMS!!!!" people

Reddit is just the worst of all hivemind platforms.
The way votings and display order work just makes the echo chamber even stronger.

It's honestly useless outside of memes and/or tech help.

Reddit is good for the super niche subs like r/askhistorians or whatever. Abandon all hope if you try going into any of the popular subs.

 

[Great Deceiver]

AI hasn't been a priority in game development for ages. The current audience (comprising mostly zoomer spastics with the attention span of a lemming and who play games alt-tabbed while looking at their favourite streamer) doesn't give a shit about it.

AI development is hard and takes talented people. Most game "developers" these days are dangerhair incompetents who couldn't engineer their way out of a paper bag. These are the results.

 

[Fedora Master]

3K had a good AI both on the campaign and somewhat on the battlefield.
Archers not wasting ammo on LLs for example, which they totally dropped in WH3.

 

[Lacrymas]

Why does your current game have worse AI than a game you released in 2004?

If I were to guess, it's due to two things besides the devs not caring about the AI. 1) The bigger thing by far is how combat works in general. Even though WH seemingly has endless variety of units, they are actually all very samey in terms of combat role and stats. This dumbs down combat a lot, so it's much easier for the player to outmaneuver the AI, making it seem dumber than previous games in the series. The ranged-heavy meta doesn't help. 2) WH3 in particular has the added hurdle of having huge and ever-changing maps (due to the awful, awful tower mini game), which I suspect makes AI development a nightmare if they even tried at all.

 

[Maculo]

The first campaign I completed was a L/N Skarbrand campaign. I loved it, but it is easy relative to other campaigns on legendary.

I tried Kislev and Cathay, and I just don’t enjoy the order factions like I thought I would. It doesn’t help that I make the same mistake every time - I expand into a third region too quick, have several factions declare war and send stack after stack, and then lose momentum/interest.

I made several attempt at Kairos L/N, and I am having trouble breaking through the Snake Gate in the initial turns. I feel like army loss penalty never kicks in at the Bastion maps, and so I slowly get ground down by towers. I need to either bait Ming Zhao Miao Ying out and/or wait until the Chaos/Norscans break through.

 

[Average Manatee]

I found Miao Ying to be a very easy and smooth game. As long as you maintain harmony you get pretty massive bonuses, and you can customize what units your primary settlement forts give (obviously the Yin ones are better because they give ranged units and ranged>melee). Just plug up the destroyed great wall quickly and it ends up being a source of free money as the kurgans attack and you sally forth to wipe them. It also helps that the jade warrior building covers all your basic unit needs very affordably. Expansion was quite swift and I had all of Cathay minus Zhao Ming holding 4 regions by turn 40ish.

 

[Maculo]

I found Miao Ying to be a very easy and smooth game. As long as you maintain harmony you get pretty massive bonuses, and you can customize what units your primary settlement forts give (obviously the Yin ones are better because they give ranged units and ranged>melee). Just plug up the destroyed great wall quickly and it ends up being a source of free money as the kurgans attack and you sally forth to wipe them. It also helps that the jade warrior building covers all your basic unit needs very affordably. Expansion was quite swift and I had all of Cathay minus Zhao Ming holding 4 regions by turn 40ish.

I will try Miao Ying again soon. I mindlessly colonized the Snake Gate early with a damaged army only to be hit by 3 stacks of Kurgens the next turn. It wasn't my smartest move.

I find something off about Cathay's gameplay though. I expected it to play similar to the Empire (swiss army knife), and instead it plays like awkward patchwork of units centered around a dragon delivery system. It has Bretonnian peasants, Darkshards, Pegasus knights, Hierotitans, jezzails, handgunners, helstorm rocket battery, etc. Cathay has all these various unit ideas, and yet I find myself just focusing on the dragons while the rest of the army sits stationary to soak a Yin/Yang buff. I am not saying Cathay is weak, but too defense oriented for my liking. I would welcome any pointers, because I feel like I am missing something.

In contrast, Skarbrand felt simple, but engaging with collapsing front lines, sniping spell casters/LLs, utilizing mortal vs. demons unit (weapon strength/armor vs. speed, deterioration, etc.), and maintaining momentum.

 

[Lacrymas]

Cathay's tech tree is also all over the place. By the time you get the upkeep and cost reduction of peasants, you've already replaced them.

 

[Mazisky]

3K had a good AI both on the campaign and somewhat on the battlefield.
Archers not wasting ammo on LLs for example, which they totally dropped in WH3.

Are you sure about that at higher difficulties? Devs said WH3 uses the 3k AI

 

[Maculo]

Cathay's tech tree is also all over the place. By the time you get the upkeep and cost reduction of peasants, you've already replaced them.

You had to remind me. Thus far, all of the tech trees either enhance or tied into their respective faction’s theme/mechanic: Khorne tech improves the blood host armies (more blood, more skulls); Kislev tech incentivizes unifying the homeland; and Kairos allows for more schemes.

Cathay’s tech tree. . . puts you at odds with its Yin/Yang mechanic and losing the buff. While you can offset, or regain balance a few turns later, it’s not what I would call interesting or thought provoking. It doesn’t enhance the mechanic, nor does it tie into holding the bastion. My only surprise is that it is a straight line and not oriented in a yin/yang circle.

 

[flyingjohn]

AI hasn't been a priority in game development for ages. The current audience (comprising mostly zoomer spastics with the attention span of a lemming and who play games alt-tabbed while looking at their favourite streamer) doesn't give a shit about it.

AI development is hard and takes talented people. Most game "developers" these days are dangerhair incompetents who couldn't engineer their way out of a paper bag. These are the results.

"OH BOY I FINALLY MANGED TO MAKE THE AI USE THE ARCHER ABILITY AND WALLS SUCCESSFULLY"
Yeah,Tim,we are scrapping walls and the archers don't have any abilities and are nerfed. Hope that doesn't inconvenience you.

This is modern game development.You would have to be insane to be a AI dev on any modern game.
Plus it is cheaper to get a couple of juniors to make some something quickly before release and have the actual competent people modify their work so it actually functions.

The moment the main designer role was removed from the AI role is the moment strategy game AI become impossible to properly implement.

 

[Average Manatee]

I find something off about Cathay's gameplay though. I expected it to play similar to the Empire (swiss army knife), and instead it plays like awkward patchwork of units centered around a dragon delivery system. It has Bretonnian peasants, Darkshards, Pegasus knights, Hierotitans, jezzails, handgunners, helstorm rocket battery, etc. Cathay has all these various unit ideas, and yet I find myself just focusing on the dragons while the rest of the army sits stationary to soak a Yin/Yang buff. I am not saying Cathay is weak, but too defense oriented for my liking. I would welcome any pointers, because I feel like I am missing something.

I pretty much just used the jade warriors with a roughly 50/50 split between ranged and melee. You don't have to sit in one defensive blob, all you need is a single Yin unit next to all your Yang units or vice-versa (which basically means just have a melee unit defending your ranged units). For Jade Warrior melee units there is an ancillary that gives you +3 ranks recruiting them when you win battles with them in your army. It seemed to be incredibly common to get, and you can have 3 lords/heroes in the same province with it on them to recruit rank 9 jade warrior melees. This will make them pretty damn good, almost khorne-level

I utilized some slight cheese: Always travel with two lords, one with the army who ends every turn in ambush and one on their own who acts as bait. Your armies will be a bit more expensive because of this but not significantly so in the early game and it lets you draw out those full enemy stacks from defending their settlements which end up being absolute hell to take. I had the Yin lords with +35% ambush chance trait have the army and focus on army buffs (their spells are kind of shit) while the Yang lords focus immediately on their AoE spells. Miao Ying gets her own Yang lord to act as caster/bait. This also ensures your Ying/Yang is pretty balanced.

I would recommend going for the tzeentch minor faction to the north immediately after taking your second settlement. Tzeentch is unfortunately the one faction in which the bait strategy often fails because they have their teleport/ambush stance, but you can retreat from that just fine and hopefully catch their army in the open. Once they have been taken care of immediately run to the gate and have your Yang lord colonize it (since he has no army you don't lose a huge amount of unit strength). From there you should be pretty safe to start rolling through the cathay rebels and allying/befriending all of the other cathay minor factions. Check the quick diplomacy deals available every time before you end turn and you'll eventually confederate them and from there you'll have to go defeat the greenskins and skaven. Build walls everywhere and Cathay defenses are good enough to beat most things even including the chaos armies from the portals (check if you can sally forth though because sometimes they'll just starve you out otherwise, often you can win an open ground fight).

There's also some slight cheese you can do for getting lords with the right trait. Start a few games and use the Save Character feature on lords with the level 1 trait you want, then you can recruit them in your main game. They'll be the same price and everything. This is particularly useful for the Yin lords with the +35% ambush trait.

For the building yin/yang I went with the Yin growth building next to the Yang income building. Just leave some slots open and build one or two of either when you need to be back in balance. Unfortunately confederating AI factions will fuck your harmony up pretty hard (remember you don't want to delete lords due to the current upkeep bug, you need to get them killed).

 

[Lacrymas]

There's an easier way to cheese settlement battles with full stacks - siege them and they attack you in the next round because the AI is deathly afraid of attrition. This only works if they think they are stronger than you, though.

 

[Fedora Master]

There's an easier way to cheese settlement battles with full stacks - siege them and they attack you in the next round because the AI is deathly afraid of attrition. This only works if they think they are stronger than you, though.

Which in most cases it won't. I don't really recall ever having the AI sally out.

 

[Lacrymas]

Which in most cases it won't. I don't really recall ever having the AI sally out.

When I played it a month ago, only 1 settlement didn't attack me when I sieged it.

 

[Fedora Master]

Which in most cases it won't. I don't really recall ever having the AI sally out.

When I played it a month ago, only 1 settlement didn't attack me when I sieged it.

I find it very noticeable with Kislev. Take Kostaltyn and try to get the rebels in your starting province to sally out against your initial stack. Won't do it.

 

[Lacrymas]

I find it very noticeable with Kislev. Take Kostaltyn and try to get the rebels in your starting province to sally out against your initial stack. Won't do it.

Have you tried disbanding some troops or giving them to another commander so the AI thinks you are weaker?

 

[Maculo]

I think I am over the initial hump with Kairos (famous last words?). I baited Miao Ying outside the wall, breached the Snake Gate, and have established a foothold in Cathay. Kairos on average garners 600 - 1,000 kills per battle. Next goal is to stack heroes and/or Lords of Change for delicious spell damage+/winds of magic.

I pretty much just used the jade warriors with a roughly 50/50 split between ranged and melee. You don't have to sit in one defensive blob, all you need is a single Yin unit next to all your Yang units or vice-versa (which basically means just have a melee unit defending your ranged units). For Jade Warrior melee units there is an ancillary that gives you +3 ranks recruiting them when you win battles with them in your army. It seemed to be incredibly common to get, and you can have 3 lords/heroes in the same province with it on them to recruit rank 9 jade warrior melees. This will make them pretty damn good, almost khorne-level

I utilized some slight cheese: Always travel with two lords, one with the army who ends every turn in ambush and one on their own who acts as bait. Your armies will be a bit more expensive because of this but not significantly so in the early game and it lets you draw out those full enemy stacks from defending their settlements which end up being absolute hell to take. I had the Yin lords with +35% ambush chance trait have the army and focus on army buffs (their spells are kind of shit) while the Yang lords focus immediately on their AoE spells. Miao Ying gets her own Yang lord to act as caster/bait. This also ensures your Ying/Yang is pretty balanced.

I would recommend going for the tzeentch minor faction to the north immediately after taking your second settlement. Tzeentch is unfortunately the one faction in which the bait strategy often fails because they have their teleport/ambush stance, but you can retreat from that just fine and hopefully catch their army in the open. Once they have been taken care of immediately run to the gate and have your Yang lord colonize it (since he has no army you don't lose a huge amount of unit strength). From there you should be pretty safe to start rolling through the cathay rebels and allying/befriending all of the other cathay minor factions. Check the quick diplomacy deals available every time before you end turn and you'll eventually confederate them and from there you'll have to go defeat the greenskins and skaven. Build walls everywhere and Cathay defenses are good enough to beat most things even including the chaos armies from the portals (check if you can sally forth though because sometimes they'll just starve you out otherwise, often you can win an open ground fight).

There's also some slight cheese you can do for getting lords with the right trait. Start a few games and use the Save Character feature on lords with the level 1 trait you want, then you can recruit them in your main game. They'll be the same price and everything. This is particularly useful for the Yin lords with the +35% ambush trait.

For the building yin/yang I went with the Yin growth building next to the Yang income building. Just leave some slots open and build one or two of either when you need to be back in balance. Unfortunately confederating AI factions will fuck your harmony up pretty hard (remember you don't want to delete lords due to the current upkeep bug, you need to get them killed).

Thank you, Average Manatee, I appreciate this. The second lord/ambush setup is a fantastic idea. I also didn't know the Save Character feature could carry over to a new campaign.

In prior campaigns, I did overlook the usefulness of jade warriors. I viewed jade warriors as an awkward middle between peasants and Celestial Dragon bros that I could skip.

 

[Average Manatee]

In prior campaigns, I did overlook the usefulness of jade warriors. I viewed jade warriors as an awkward middle between peasants and Celestial Dragon bros that I could skip.

The only real advantage I can see for the Celestials is AP missile damage, but I don't feel that to be a very essential attribute in WH3. Factions in general don't seem to field nearly as many high armor units as in WH2. In particular the chaos factions barely even have them outside of khorne. The fact that the AI LL and their best army spend half the time in the chaos rifts probably also contributes to this.

Also Cathay has the best red-line buffs of all the WH3 factions. Cathay gets +6 MA/+6 MD on their frontline and +10%/+9% missile damage for their ranged. That's actually better than WH2, I don't recall any factions with +range before the rank 7 buff. This gives mid-tier units a lot of lethality, staying power, and the ability to dominate sieges with ranged spam. Meanwhile other WH3 factions get red-line buffs that are pretty much a joke.

 

[MuckMan]

The only real advantage I can see for the Celestials is AP missile damage, but I don't feel that to be a very essential attribute in WH3.

I am playing as Zhao Ming and I feel that the AP-Missiles of the dragon guard would be helpful against stonehorns. Goldtooth keeps attacking me with 6+ Stonehorns in his army and it sucks big time.

 

[Fedora Master]

Patch 1.1 Preview
Here we go! Update 1.1 is the first of our large updates to the game. Currently slated for early next month, the build will introduce a swatch of changes across a variety of areas:

• The strength of the negative Realm traits has been reduced by roughly ~50%.
  
• Daemon Legendary Lords will no longer be burdened by the negative traits of their respective patron god.
  
• Traits gained in the Realm of Chaos will now be removed when a Legendary Lord completes the survival battle within that realm.
  
• When a player intercepts an AI Lord at the Forge of Souls, their souls will now be lost—forcing them to restart their collection. This should make it easier to disrupt the Souls race.
  
• The “Protection” building chain can now be used to prevent rifts from spawning in the province in which they're built.
  
• The rewards for gaining Souls have been improved by providing additional bonuses for a limited period of time.

Doesn't address the fundamental problem but okay CA...

While the Assembly Kit is still in the works as we prioritize our fixes to the core game, we are excited to share that we’ll be aiming to release the mod manager and enable Workshop support alongside Update 1.1.

 

[Lacrymas]

So, the AI now hasn't got even a chance to win. What's the point of the campaign in this case?

 

[Average Manatee]

All you had to do in WH2 was beat them once and they were out of the race. So this still gives them more of a chance eventually... if you play another 120 turns. Plus there's far more AIs you have to stop in WH3.

 

[Lacrymas]

Plus there's far more AIs you have to stop in WH3.

Sure, but aren't you given the chance to teleport to them all if they collect the souls? So it doesn't really matter that much.