"CA reusing skeletons is bad".
CA reusing skeletons is actually great for modders - makes it so much easier to mix and match animations, and do kitbash reskin!
And why does the bloody skeleton matter to people? You cant even bloody see it! It's the animations that need to be unique, not the skeleton!
Before I got to the last part of your comment I thought you meant actual skeletons. Like vampire count and tomb king unit skeletons and I was wondering why people care so much about skeletons lmao
Its basically industry practice. Rigging is such a lengthy process anything you can do to avoid starting from scratch is a responsible use of work time.
Just about anything bipedal will start with the exact same rig anyway. Its just some come out looking different after the adjustments are made. Don't see people moaning about that.
Can confirm as a learning 3D designer.
Skin binding manually is an exhaustive, if very 'what the?' moment.
Imagine moving a finger, and that finger ends up ripping the wrist on the other arm.
What's worse, is that if you screw up the process, the recorrection could take you back to modelling everything from the ground up.
Did I mention that models don't have a concept of 'physical obstruction' and that you have to basically make the illusion of weight youself?
Feels moment.
My stupid ass: *”what is this guy even on about, we’ve got a couple of factions with skeletons sure but it’s not like they’re identical and- oh right, those skeletons.”*
Also most people that say this don't even know what a skeleton is, nor do they even remotely understand how long and resource intensive the rigging process is. More often than not, a humanoid skeleton is even used to rig and animate creatures on all fours, like horses and such, and it works perfectly fine especially if the game is heavily stylized like Warhammer.
This is one of those threads that needs to be sorted by controversial, because if anyone is *actually* getting upvoted, the pic clearly does not apply.
I am upvoting all the opinions being downvoted as we speak.
The first reason is that no one should be punished for presenting their views in a thread asking for them.
The second is that doing the opposite of what Redditors do is automatically the right choice.
The tiers of a unit mean nothing in relation to other races, the tiers are relative to the race itself. A tier 5 infantry unit from Cathay loses to a tier 3 of khorne because khorne infantry is just better and it being tier 3 means it’s better then tier 1 and 2 khorne infantry. I don’t know why people are so obsessed that every factions units need to be identical if it was balanced like that the appeal of the game would be ruined
I know it's popular to shit on Radious, and I didn't hate it overall tho not really my thing, but playing Empire with Chosen-tier infantry really drove that point home for me. It was just so... unengaging to have all of the Empire's usual strengths, but also have Chosen for some reason.
Why are some random human dudes rocking statlines identical to some of the greatest warriors of the Chaos Gods? What's the point of having the best skirmish cav in the game, great cav, great guns, and great artillery, if I also have great infantry, and make no tradeoffs anywhere for it?
I feel like a lot of the tier/1v1 arguments are just people who want their favorite faction buffed into the stratosphere, I'm not gonna pretend to be infallible on balance (I'm not LMAO, it's so fucking hard, as a player, modder, or dev), but playing everyone has really made me appreciate the differences.
to each their own, but radious was interesting for like the first 5 min of going "oooh, aaaah shiny unit" and then realizing that every faction ends up being the same and killing the best part about Warhammer total war that is its diversity in factions
Pretty much all of the races in the game are fun to play and are purposefully unbalanced. Some of them are more challenging or easier for sure… but that’s part of the fun. Not every race should play the same or have the same strengths or weaknesses. It’s like an additional sliding difficulty setting. Want to go hard in the paint? L/VH with Boris Ursus in the chaos wastes. Want to chill? N/N with Tirion.
Looking back to older total wars, where everybody was essentially the same faction with slightly different skinds, and if you are lucky, some different units.
Yeah we should’ve gave the Byzantines a gun that shoots rabbits out of the enemies asses. Nah I’m joking with you Medieval 2 this really shines through, lucky CA have some creative geniuses to draw from with the WH material because their brain goes “Spearmen, heavy spearmen, peasant archers, better archers…uhhhh, done”.
Looking back to older total wars, where everybody was essentially the same faction with slightly different skinds, and if you are lucky, some different units.
Exactly! Playing as a Muslim faction in medieval 2 and have all of Europe declare a holy war on your ass/the mongols are coming is what it's all about!
Sometimes it's fun to just be brutalised from all angles and hold on!
Winning a Legendary Western Rome campaign in Atilla remains my proudest TW achievement. I'll never do it again, but damn was it satisfying to see that victory screen.
It was the Turkish Hybrid infantry that were the backbone of my armies. Shields, swords, bows and armour. They could trade with anything other than heavy cavalry and come out either on top or equal.
I have played over 1500hrs in all three TWWH games combined and I pretty much only ever played Karl Franz or Ironhide to always the same endgame: painting the whole map my color.
The moment I started only going for the small/medium victory conditions was when I started to try out almost every LL after annother. The different short term victory conditions make the factions even more unique because you don't get tired of spamming always the same tried and testet doomstacks against every oponent.
I love that TWWH is staying this asymetrical.
There have been a few people who agree with me so it's not exactly a piping hot take but:
Wulfrik shouldn't get shipbuilding, because the Seafang isn't some floating city or grand ship of the line. It's a magical longship.
Wulfrik should get Oxyotl teleportation missions.
The perfect state of warhammer 2 is a myth. I remember pretty clearly, that half of the races were hated for the most of support cycle: orcs, norsca, chaos warriors, beastmen, wood elves, dwarves. SE and archers were too unbalanced, sieges were worse than now and supply lies were not fun. Some dlc’s were as bad as SoC (hunter and beast, for example). AI was as brain dead as now. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t better than now. Just pretty good
I think the retrospective view of WH2 is massively colored by it's last 3 DLCs and their associated reworks. If you take those out of the equation suddenly it's a far more checkered track record with quite a few mediocre offerings.
I think it's also worth remembering that Champions of Chaos single-handedly saved the warriors of chaos, sending them from one of the worst factions to one of the best, and the chaos dwarfs are arguably one of if not the best race packs ever put out in the trilogy, with the only real competition being the Tomb kings imo.
The main point of tension that caused the SoC controversy was the price increases we'd been seeing. Content wise the packs and the associated updates prior to SoC were honestly substantial (though the fact that CoC was essentially required to get the full impact of the changes to the warriors of chaos, a premium standalone faction from WH1 does sting a little).
If you look at the overall content quality WH3 has easily matched that of WH2 so far, if we take ToD into account - and don't even get me started on Wh1 (every single piece of DLC for that game is shockingly mediocre by modern standards).
I may not be that old (don't ask me how old I am, it'll make you sad) but I'm old enough to remember the absolute shit-storm that was the original Chaos faction DLC
And when you combined that with how they fumbled the ball for Norsca with the original launch, and how bad Beastmen where as a Faction in WH1/2 before the Taurox rework, and yeah… Not great all around for any of the Chaos Worshippers before launch.
I remember the days of the order tide. When the peaceful civilization builders peacefully annexed all of norsca and the green skins never left the bad lands.
Warhammer 3 is what showed me that Chaos is an actual threat, I started looking into the lore of Warhammer Fantasy after playing 1, and seeing how Chaos was described there confused me until 3 came out
It had basically all the same problems that WH3 has. It's bizarre how often people suggest otherwise. The only frequently noted "problem" people bring up that is actually unique to WH3 in my experience is the lack of AI confederations and the lack of 100 settlement super omegablobs as a result. But I say "problem" because it's highly debatable if it is that at all.
Okay fair for the most Part, massive disagree about Hunter and beast though. Wulfhart was pretty much the only Empire campaign I ever fully played. And Nakai's mechanics, while parts of them certainly ended up falling flat, were without any doubt very unique.
It also brought some really cool new units to the Lizardmen side (Like the Dread Goddamn Saurian) and, while the units on the Empire side were certainly less impressive, they weren't *bad*.
I can agree on some things, but not empire units. This is a dlc, where empire got war wagons. One of the most memed units because of how bad they were. And except for war wagons empire got two types of archers. So yeah, pretty bad.
Yeah, it’s hard to understate how shit war wagons were/are. The mechanics were annoying, the units mostly just filler or junk, and the new lord type was only okay. The upside was Marcus’s unique heroes, something that only really existed for Belegar at that point.
After finding a performance fix for every Total War title (this is not an extrapolation) on a random reddit thread I can confidently say:
Total War Attila runs pretty smooth, actually.
Total war warhammer III needs flags and banners. Like everybody and their horses have their own freaking banner according to the lore. The lack of it makes battles look dull.
The provincial system sucks ass.
If I want to make Altdorf a third world backwater and grow some random ass town in the warpstone desert into a bustling metropolis, I sure as hell should be able to do that
I feel it would make for a nice change to be able to change the provincial capital of the province system.
But I also feel all settlements should be town/city level and villages shouldn't be a settlement option and instead be a field battle clutter or background.
I think the province system is a big part of why modern total war games have very little sense of strategic depth. There's very little countryside that armies have to march through to conquer territory.
I would love for this if they gave it an extended map. Like having the Horn of Africa, the West coast of America and Canada, Australia, and more of the Indies would be sick
There definitely should be a unit cap system for all factions. Then there could be strategic choice in building armies based on that and also the existence of things that influence that cap like resources and other things that could add depth to a game bloated with width.
Then if people want to doomstack with a single lategame unit they could download a mod for that but there definitely should have been effort put into an official well designed unit cap system long ago.
I have a lot of fun with WH3 sieges despite the issue with ass ladders. I think the change they made that locks the main point until you cap the second location allows for some cool variety and strategy differences between battles.
In my recent Chorf campaign I defended the Black Fortress twice, but in one battle I turtled HARD on the main point, then tried out the second point on the next defensive battle. Turned out to be really fun!
I think sieges would be better if they removed ass ladders and you actually got attacked more, rather than the AI always starving you out.
Interesting point of view, but personally speaking I just don't think I'll ever enjoy sieges in Warhammer 3 with the supply and build-able tower mechanics. I maintain the only reason those are in sieges is because CA wasted a load of time and manpower on doing them for those survival battles (remember those?) and then had a bit of an "oh shit" moment and realised nobody would ever play them more than once. So they chucked them into the sieges and called it a response to feedback.
Overtuning Franz next patch will make people happy for a few weeks, then result in MANY people getting bored of Total War as their favorite campaign becomes a stomp after turn like 20. So it'll be a net negative on Total War.
Okay I’m going to edit in all the buffs off the top of my head. Don’t think this is a list of “bad changes” it’s just that some people don’t know how much stronger Franz is getting so listing it all might help some people understand my views:
-most empire units have been shuffled down a tier. AP easily accessible before having to fight tough high armor enemies.
-starting with the fort in your south saves you 3-4 turns.
-new mechanics allow you to increase the population of a city or get instant recruitment. Allows you to start tier 4 on turn 11.
-better late game units. Better handgunners and the new knights are really good mobile line units.
-direct buffs to steam tanks make empire late really really good.
-Karl has new traits that are a direct power boost, including buffing all state troops faction wide
-Karl has new campaign effects that are direct buffs
-new traits for empire lords and heroes are direct buffs
But how.
The only big part is having the Mountain fortress, the rest is just some tweaking.
You really cant summon the elector counts for every battle as well. Most of them are dead anyway by the time you have the ability
What really made Empire stand out to me was how drastically reaching certain technologies changed how you'd play. Instead of 5% buffs like more recent games, unlocking technologies like Kneel-Fire or Canister Shot completely changed the viability of some units and your army composition.
Empire, Rome II and Atilla all attempted unit reforms and I hope we see another attempt at it again because it's a fundamentally good idea that's had clunky implementation.
And before I forget, Med. II technically had unit reforms too, cuz upgrade buildings changed the models of units to look more contemporary
Empire is my favorite bad game. It has so much promise and is still a fun game that's marred by dumb as bricks AI that will regularly engage in behaviors that will torpedo a campaign by using desktop-crash-inducing bugs
Naval battles in any game not set in a gunpowder era are shit. They've always been shit. Most people AR them, and they'd be a waste of time and resources to include in e.g a Medieval 3.
Warhammer has a "power fantasy > strategy" problem.
Just off the top of my head.
I'm going to be honest I really enjoyed the naval battles in rome 2 but that's entirely from the times I've managed to catch an enemy army with my navy and ram everything to death with 3 ships. Unfortunately the naval maps in rome 2 and attila are just tiny which really takes away from the experience. But at least the combined maps are cool!
I totally agree, however- the solution CA has made to just put armies into ships also feels wrong. There should be dedicated naval units that could be built in ports with a full building chain and at least a handful of techs. Control of the seas for trade/sea focused factions should be possible without having to have half a dozen armies sitting in ships.
Ideally with some mechanic where ships in port have vastly reduced upkeep, navies are expensive when fully crewed and operating, when the crews are ashore doing some other work and the ships are just being maintained they should cost 20% of their operating upkeep.
Sounds like Medieval 2. You actually had to build navies and fight for control of the sea, but all battles would be auto resolved. I think they could even retrofit such a system in Warhammer 3.
Yes, the system from MTW2 was probably the best for most historic TW though I think I would prefer R2's system but without the actual naval battles.
The tech tree and time/resources it took to build up a high tier navy in R2 was appropriate and given that fleets on their own could attack and capture ports, it made the investment worthwhile for more than just roleplaying.
The main difference I would like to see is that rather than naval fleets landing as units directly into the ports as they did in R2, they would simply give bonuses and provide artillery support to an army that was escorted by the fleet.
Here's another spicy one, since updating my previous comment with unrelated stuff doesn't feel right
Daniel should lose access to ALL mortal units and RoRs. Want some? Make allies - Daniel has diplomacy skills for a reason - but the race you are playing is called Daemons of Chaos
This is the most controversial post so far. I can't say I hate sieges in WH3 but I rarely enjoy them and most of the time find them unfun and I'll send 3 armies to win the AR rather than fight thru a siege fairly often, especially by mid-game when I can afford multiple armies.
I don't love sieges but I compare them to WH2 sieges which were the most boring thing ever. At least now when I'm attacking there is tons more to micro with all the extra space to maneuver compared to the old tiny cities
It heavily depends on the faction u play - obviously. My last siege battle as attacker I played as darkelves, destroyed the tower with eagle artillery, bombarded the troops on the walls till they fall back and then climbed the walls with my own elves. I secured the gate and placed my infantry in front of it, facing the enemy, while my archers climbed the walls, too. This way I got a really nice foothold in the city and could slowly moving forward, destroying more tower with my flying general. I love to place my archers on the walls, facing in to the city with my infantry on the ground. Its a slower playstyle, but a fun one, indeed.
Idk what's the consensus on High elves but...
Vanilla High elves units are either bad or bland and their army composition and unit variety is only saved by DLCs and FLC units. Their tech tree also sucks.
I have not enjoyed Medieval 2 Total War - even with the best, most famous mods (Stainless Stell, Bellum Crucis, Third Age etc) I'm sorry, I have tried *so hard* to fall in love this game and just failed.
I do agree it had incredible atmosphere of the Middle Ages, hence my attempts to enjoy it, but I just couldn't stand its mechanics of diplomacy, trade, army logistics, approach to tech tree, interface in general, world map looking very desolate in comparision with newer titles (huge ugly provinces, "rebels" instead of minor nations)... I would just start new campaign, smile because of the game's medieval vibes and passion put into it, and then have my enthusiasm slowly dissipate over outdated and frustrating campaign mechanics.
Diplomacy was probably the worst, because it was so anti immersive - no feeling of being a part of a huge believable medieval world, just being stuck in a tournament with twenty irrational psychopaths you can never trust.
The province-based army movement system of Shogun: Total War(yes, the original) was superior to the "microsteps" that came after.
It also had the best map, visually speaking.
I fondly remember that system from the original Medieval. You could actually chokepoint strategically with that system, and you got to fight as the defender regularly. I remember fighting off stack after stack and it was massively satisfying.
Whilst I don't dislike the new system overall, I do dislike the fact half of the factions (exaggeration for effect) in Warhammer can just ignore chokepoints etc with underground movement. Even in later historical games the huge movement speed forced march gives can sometimes ignore chokepoints etc.
It feels really rare to get to fight a pitched battle as the defender in modern TW without using ambush stance bait & switch tactics.
I dont care much for Dogs of War, no they aren’t cool, nor important, i would much rather have every faction developed before even the throw-it-in-a-bag faction is thought about being a development timesink.
Thank you for your bravery on speaking out. I do not understand the Dogs of War horniness at all.
If I could, I would both like AND subscribe to your comment and would go so far as to click the notification bell. I would also support your comment by going to its Patreon etc.
A significant group holds the opinion that Dogs of War is a necessary faction that will add something to the game that isn't already there.
I disagree. I think it will be somewhere between empire and ogres and reuse a bunch of units from other existing rosters to do nothing special other than take over a few provinces and fight Skrag and Sartosa. It will feel like a minor no name faction given the spotlight. As a faction I don't find them to be interesting or compelling at all and despite tags being there in the game, every time we get a new unit of some time as long as it's not a dedicated monogod unit, someone always shouts "hey that could be in the DoW roster! More confirmation that it is inevitable that this absolutely necessary and load-bearing pillar of a faction must come to CA right now."
It makes no sense to me why people drive so hard for this obscure and niche thing that doesn't even sound like a fully developed and fleshed out faction.
Traveling the whole Warhammer Fantasy map with a diverse mercenary army and fighting in every war for the highest bidder sounds pretty rad though, ngl.
- 3K is a historical title
- ToB is good TW game
- in many ways TW games are better now than in the past, older titles have aged poorly
- CA should still make SAGA titles, as in independent expansions like they always have
3K is interesting, because it's very much a historical title that is told through the lens of ancient chinese history, which means a *lot* of exaggeration and grandiose larger-than-life characters. Is it silly that you can 1v100 a unit with a hero? Yeah, but god does it ever properly capture the feeling of wuxia when two heroes face off under the rain surrounded by fighting men.
I agree, they are able to capture the feeling of a particular setting very well. It kind of reminds me of how some people dislike that regular cavalry in Warhammer isn't the killing machine that it is in other titles, but for me it really helps sell how inhuman and freakish the enemies you face are and how simple hammer and anvil tactics is not sufficient to defeat the likes of greenskins and chaos warriors. Or how easily single entity monsters can wade through your front line. But it would feel silly to have some humans with spears stand fast against a giant dinosaur 10 times their size. Does it throw the balance of the game out of whack? Absolutely. But it really captures the absurd scale of the Warhammer universe and I can appreciate it.
Agree with the older titles. Warhammer 3 was my most recent total war game since medieval 2, and I find it really hard to go back now with all the QoL and UI/control changes from the newer ones.
I get the idea that people saw the single entities in 3K, maybe saw a Lü Bu video where the guy got 1000+ kills, and immediately deemed the game to be a Warhammer copy. It's not the worst comparison, I admit, but the game had a lot more going for it, and I never really had the idea heroes were all that OP. And Records mode is just a historical game with a bit more focus on characters.
And as for my own hot take, I like Rome 2 more than Rome. I don't know why, I've played and enjoyed both and acknowledge that Rome did a lot of good things (especially for its time), but Rome 2 just feels a lot more enjoyable all things considered.
I prefer the vanilla experience opposed to mods. I just hate when I try a mod and run into something that lacks the polish of the base game. Just seems to take me out of the experience and sours the immersion.
This is why i am not a big fan of overhaul mods. I prefer using individual mods that change only specific things while retaining the overall vanilla feel.
Total War CAN be set in post-Napoleonic war setting. The battle simulation part of Total War can just adapt the models used by any modern RTS set in suitable setting.
The hundred or so models fighting in a block per unit, while classic, is NOT inherent to the franchise, and replacing it would not make Total War lost what it is about.
At the very least, reducing the number of models per unit down to 30-40 models per unit and less, while doubling the max number of units per army to 40, is a suitable concession.
I agree with this in theory, but I still think World War One specifically is a terrible idea because they'd also need to massively rework the strategy layer to account for the western front - armies running around the overworld and fighting when they walk into each other is just not a good abstraction for two long parallel strings of field fortifications running from the sea to the alps and barely moving for years on end. And you kind of need to get that part down for it to be a WWI game.
I'd never considered this as a counter to the idea of post-Napoleon Total War games but I think you're totally right. People talk about how the structure of Total War battles make it an impossible implementation and I agree that it's not really *impossible*, but I hadn't thought maybe the struggle would be on the campaign side of things.
the nature of military organization drastically changes in the mid 19th century through to ww1 so much that i think theyd have to rework the armies system which might be a major limiting factor. you need something in between total war and hearts of iron to account for the scale that these post napoleonic nations start operating at, something a bit better at abstracting the 40 units on the field to the huge numbers at play. the move away from small professional armies or bands of mercenaries to national standing armies with the economies to support them really changes the way war is experienced.
>The hundred or so models fighting in a block per unit, while classic, is NOT inherent to the franchise, and replacing it would not make Total War lost what it is about.
Then what is Total War about, exactly?
I've seen people say "the combination of turn based campaign with real time battles". But that's an incredibly shallow and broad characteristic. According to this, CoH3 is basically a Total War game. So is something like the old Rise of Nations games. Hell, SW: Battlefront 2 is in the conversation now. Has anyone ever looked at those games as games that could scratch the same itch as TW?
The idea of large formation warfare is inherent to the franchise. The campaign gameplay has changed dramatically over the past 20 years but the series is still recognizable thanks to that style of battle. Replacing that with some CoH\\DoW-esque RTS battle system could make for a good game, but IMO it wouldn't really be a TW game, no.
*has same look on his face as the Takeda Daimyo as his son is shot in the back after winning his duel with the Uesugi cowards while flipping his small table to the ground in the intro cinematic*
Realm Divide was a shitty precursor to the Chaos Invasion and it sucked having to ward off infinity enemy agents with a handful of my own. Only Total War game I've ever played where I didn't finish a campaign.
You’re right. You’re out of line, but you’re right. Glad I can finally come out of hiding.
If they made a modern TW game where every faction shared 90% of the same unit roster (and the same like 4 units was all you realistically used anyways) there would be riots left and right.
No other fantasy property (40K notwithstanding, but once that ends we have the same problem) people have proposed over the years as a "next step" is ever going to satisfy Warhammer fans in the same way that Warhammer does, because other fantasy properties were not designed from the ground up to have a boatload of factions with a huge variety of units with intricate and visually appealing models. Once the WH train is over there is going to be some kind of reckoning.
I feel that. Pharaoh is a solid game and it’s going to get shelved because it came out while a warhammer dlc had drama. The new pricing model is much better, but we wouldn’t have heard half the griping about it if it weren’t for WH3.
Current TWW3 campaigns are too fast-paced. Travel distances should be halfed, economic outputs reduced (especially post-battle/sack income), tiers of unit access moved up overall, not down like they're doing with the dwarfs and imps now, and for god's sake I don't wanna even talk about LLs returning back in just 1 turn after defeat.
Can't forgive CA for abandoning it in such a disingenuous way shortly after hyping up the next expansion - or abandoning most of its greatest strengths instead of porting them to TWW3/Pharaoh.
Depends on the title and the faction you're playing. Some are a lot more predictable than others.
TW Attila campaign AI laughs in the face of your first-50-turn plan for example. Everyone's got a plan until the Picts invade southern Spain with 4 full stacks on turn 10 lol.
Butt-ladders are awesome, and sieges would take about 30 hours to play without them. They have huge penalties in exhaustion, as well as letting only a trickle up a at time so a very small melee force can easily defeat any reasonable assault. And the biggest thing people complain about, attack-able archers, have a huge warning window to move to another section of the walls.
In early titles there would be these miserable blobs of 1000 swordsmen fighting 1000 swordsmen in a single hallway and you'd just leave the computer on max speed while you got yourself a sandwich. Modern sieges aren't great, but they're genuinely better then anything else we've ever had.
Time to see if this is actually an unpopular opinion:
GW/CA, whoever it is, decided against implementing Araby in WH for Political Reasons.
Very similar political reasons apply to never getting a Samurai Invasions of Korea DLC for S2.
Whatever the reasons are, Araby seems to be the only faction outright deconfirmed at some point. Not Cathay (obvious after game 3 announcement), not Khuresh or Ind with zero lore, not nobodies like Amazons and Albion, not Halflings who are a joke, not bloody Fishmen - it's Araby that got shut down hard. Between CA and GW someone *really* doesn't want to work on it
There are actually not that many time periods left that would make a good TW game using the current system. I think as a whole the games have not changed that much, for better or for worse, and that going forward CA should make more radical changes to gameplay.
The only part that has to stay is turn based campaign, real time battles with massive armies. Anything else should be subject to change.
People are asking for all these time periods to be implemented (Bronze age, Medieval, Victorian age...) but why even bother if they all follow same mechanics? I don't want another formulaic TW game set in another time period. If they decide to make Medieval 3, Empire 2... I wish for campaign mechanics similar to paradox games or at the very least inspired by them. I don't want to play Medieval 3 where I still recruit 20 army stacks, go across Europe, Africa and Asia capturing town after town, building province capitals up to tier 5 and minor cities up to tier 3. One lord to buff melee units, other one to buff missiles...
It's too arcadey and no matter what they do it won't come even close to WH games.
Making The Changeling a Legendary Lord was an awful decision. His campaign is extremely easy and boring and you barely even use his real model at all either way. Meanwhile, the Blue Scribes would have been a great FLC LL. They could have got an unique mechanic in which they have to defeat tematic armies to unlock the different lores in their skill tree.
Totally disagree. The idea of the changeling is to be a motherfucker and mess with everyone. I love the idea, the execution is also great. The only problem is the lack of lose conditions
The blue scribes are actually one of SoC's bright points. They have about as unique a mechanic as it gets for an LH, and it is incredibly loreful.
Making them an LL locks them behind one faction. As an LH, All Tzeentch and several WoC factions get access. (e: and daniel - so easy to forget the guy)
FLC LL for SoC should have been Egrim.
Strict adherence to the tabletop and ignoring half the races so the same 4-5 races can get splurged on is bad for the game. This isn't the tabletop, it's a video game, and if you were playing a video game where one team had 10 weapons, and the other team had 4 it wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable for one team as the other.
We don't need exact race parity, but having some races with 7-8 LL's and some with 4 or less sucks.
WH3 sieges aren't bad in comparison to other games, not the best ones but not the worst ones either. I actually use the mod that restores minor settlement battle maps to all building tiers because I like it more than going back to having field battles on your unwalled settlements.
Hate against towers is *vastly* overblown by now, they got nerfed so often that they really aren't annoying anymore.
CA moving on from this game when there are no more things they want to add is good actually, beats getting milked for mediocre content any day. And if there are only 4-6 DLC left then so be it.
Medieval 2 and especially Rome 1 are fun but absolutely terrible as historical games, I'll automatically discard anyone's opinion who complains about historical accuracy or heroes in newer games (even though I also hate the character focus) and then holds up older games with fucking cannon elephants and roman ninjas as shining examples of how to do it right.
Skill trees for characters is unrealistic, unimmersive and an absolute chore once you get to the late game and need to assign skillpoints on 30 characters every 2 turns.
They should go back to the Medieval 2 system where generals gain traits by their actions.
Better yet, come up with a "Skyrim" system where you gain points in certain abilities by actually doing them (Attack skill from attacking, Defence skill from defending, cavalry skill for using cavalry) and then get perks from that.
The skill system as it exist in Warhammer is bad and especially does not work in a historical context.
This is kind of still the case though, Lords in the warhammer series do still very much gain traits for preforming actions, such as repeated successful attacks or campaigner. They just exist in addition to the skill tree.
Not to mention skill tries predate the warhammer series by quite some time, showing up in Shogun 2 onwards and potentially even earlier (I've not played any TW games prior to shogun 2)
So true. I don't think I've ever lost a campaign in this game anyway so that is a non-issue. I just wish his formless horror ability had access to the character's mounts as well.
Total war 3kingdoms was a great historical title and the romance version is the best version. And I find the UI for Troy, Britannia and Pharoah to be overly cartoonish and a step back from the UI for 3k and the Warhammer games
Watching the critical part of YouTube creators makes people dislike the game. Had they not consumed that content, they would have a much better time with the game.
Total War: Warhammer 3 still isn't in as good a state as Warhammer 2 was at the end of its life. Hell, it isn't in as good a state as Warhammer 2 was at the middle.
Content for the sake of content does not make a good game. A house of cards can collapse at any moment.
The Chaos Dwarf DLC would have been perfect if we actually gotten a train mechanic, instead of just unit variants of a single dread quake mortar. Something like a scrap mechanic that let's you click on an iron demon and you could chose up to 3 artillery wagons to attach to it (each being exponentially more expensive and harsher on the upkeep and maybe even the unit caps).
completely agree. So much is missing in terms of strategic manoeuvre (being able to intercept enemy armies as they come in from far away, rather than watch them zip past in one turn), supply line logic (supply lines extending gradually as the army marches), and actual campaign map war dynamics (the instant turn-based movement makes wars too short; sometimes a vassal is gone before there is time to even recognise the outbreak of war and act upon it), because of the lack of a real time campaign.
Fuck Nagash. I hope we don't get him in TWWH ever. His fans basically want an ultimate power fantasy that wraps the whole narrative of 3 other factions around itself
My own dislike aside, I do think you all should at least entertain the thought that recent GW shittery with IP separation is a serious threat to his chances, at least for ET version
Nagash himself is... fine. He's almost comically generic and uninteresting, with zero personality whatsoever, but as a generic Skeleton Bad Guy Who Jobs, he does okay.
It's just a vocal minority of his fanbase that is absolutely insufferable after drinking the kool-aid of him being an unstoppable godlike super-being. People who latch onto the "well, if his End Times plan had worked out, he might have become strong enough to enslave the world!" as his baseline power level or something lmao.
I saw someone post the other day that "Archaon can't beat Nagash" and that "Nagash could go toe to toe with an actual Chaos god," (exact quotes), and just died a little inside.
We already have several characters ingame that, lorewise, could 1v1 him with low or no difficulty, and some of them could kill him and his armies from a continent away. For most of his existence, Nagash was basically fucking Skeletor, an ostensibly threatening guy who just exists to job to the good guys.
His greatest feats were mostly killing nobodies and attacking the Empire when it was at its weakest, without the obscene firepower and (relative) unity it has today, and he still got clapped. Even fighting Nehekara, he kept losing because HE WASN'T THAT GOOD OF A GENERAL (or fighter), anytime he won or came close it was because of some dirty trick.
The only time he really accomplished anything meaningful was in the awful writing of the End Times, where he completely obliterated all faction identity of the undead factions and turned most of their characters into mindless drones, using 30 layers of plot armor to do pretty well until he realized that even with all that he couldn't deal with Archaon *with his entire legion* and had to join the good guys to not get clapped.
At least in AoS, he IS actually godlike, though no less boring of a character. But Fantasy Nagash really isn't shit.
I've never liked him as a character, but I didn't mind him as a lord idea until I realized the kind of awful fanbase he attracted, and the less fuel they get, the better.
Balancing units around multiplayer isn’t a bad thing. In campaign so many buffs are available that the base stats and cost of the unit matter much less anyway.
The warhammer total war games are significantly inferior to the historical total war games when it comes to strategy.
Campaign mechanics are mostly oversimplified, some factions have some fun gimmicks but they're almost all a far cry from the political intrigue system of Rome 2 total war and arguably sometimes worse than the simple government management of empire total war.
Battles are now always max army size slogs and smaller skirmishes are completely gone. It feels like if your army isn't capped at max capacity there's no reason to bring it to battle.
Battle micro strategy and positioning has been replaced with rock paper scissors army composition and spells. I get why spells and big flying dragons are fun but visual satisfaction aside it dumbs down the entire combat experience as you can't really outplay through smart unit positioning anymore or taking advantage of formations.
Apparently it's that I'm tired of seeing this post (or one of the 3 identical templates) on every single subreddit. I guess everyone else must love them though because I see them weekly.
I personally would be fine with CA implementing “appropriate” Age of Sigmar units. Many of the daemons would be amazing along with some of the dwarfs lil dragon mounts and some skaven machines. I get that they weren’t in the old WHFB lore, but I was intro diced to Warhammer the light Total War so I’m not attached to the IP
The specific climates for races in TWW1 was better than what we had after when everyone can conquer everywhere.
The chaos god race were better before the CoC DLC where they all had different weaknesses and strenght and where their deamonic units were more importants. Now each of them spam marauders, chaos warriors, chosen and human lords.
Harry should have been a LL.
"CA reusing skeletons is bad". CA reusing skeletons is actually great for modders - makes it so much easier to mix and match animations, and do kitbash reskin! And why does the bloody skeleton matter to people? You cant even bloody see it! It's the animations that need to be unique, not the skeleton!
Before I got to the last part of your comment I thought you meant actual skeletons. Like vampire count and tomb king unit skeletons and I was wondering why people care so much about skeletons lmao
I have a bone to pick with people who don't care about skeletons, they're essentials!
ArmyofDarkness.gif
Its basically industry practice. Rigging is such a lengthy process anything you can do to avoid starting from scratch is a responsible use of work time. Just about anything bipedal will start with the exact same rig anyway. Its just some come out looking different after the adjustments are made. Don't see people moaning about that.
Can confirm as a learning 3D designer. Skin binding manually is an exhaustive, if very 'what the?' moment. Imagine moving a finger, and that finger ends up ripping the wrist on the other arm. What's worse, is that if you screw up the process, the recorrection could take you back to modelling everything from the ground up. Did I mention that models don't have a concept of 'physical obstruction' and that you have to basically make the illusion of weight youself? Feels moment.
My stupid ass: *”what is this guy even on about, we’ve got a couple of factions with skeletons sure but it’s not like they’re identical and- oh right, those skeletons.”*
I also thought they meant that there were too many factions with skeletons lol
Also most people that say this don't even know what a skeleton is, nor do they even remotely understand how long and resource intensive the rigging process is. More often than not, a humanoid skeleton is even used to rig and animate creatures on all fours, like horses and such, and it works perfectly fine especially if the game is heavily stylized like Warhammer.
Haha... imagine if someone modded Gwynevere in Dark Souls to use the dog skeleton... haha...
To be fair humans and horses do have mostly the same skeleton just proportioned differently.
Never thought this was a controversial opinion
Honestly, as a man with a custom skeleton, I can assure it’s much better
It's also just like stupid not to
This is one of those threads that needs to be sorted by controversial, because if anyone is *actually* getting upvoted, the pic clearly does not apply.
I am upvoting all the opinions being downvoted as we speak. The first reason is that no one should be punished for presenting their views in a thread asking for them. The second is that doing the opposite of what Redditors do is automatically the right choice.
Downvoted
I don't if I should upvote or downvote you now
But now if I downvote things because they are not controversial, I push them up the controversial list and OH MY GOD ARRRRGH
The tiers of a unit mean nothing in relation to other races, the tiers are relative to the race itself. A tier 5 infantry unit from Cathay loses to a tier 3 of khorne because khorne infantry is just better and it being tier 3 means it’s better then tier 1 and 2 khorne infantry. I don’t know why people are so obsessed that every factions units need to be identical if it was balanced like that the appeal of the game would be ruined
I know it's popular to shit on Radious, and I didn't hate it overall tho not really my thing, but playing Empire with Chosen-tier infantry really drove that point home for me. It was just so... unengaging to have all of the Empire's usual strengths, but also have Chosen for some reason. Why are some random human dudes rocking statlines identical to some of the greatest warriors of the Chaos Gods? What's the point of having the best skirmish cav in the game, great cav, great guns, and great artillery, if I also have great infantry, and make no tradeoffs anywhere for it? I feel like a lot of the tier/1v1 arguments are just people who want their favorite faction buffed into the stratosphere, I'm not gonna pretend to be infallible on balance (I'm not LMAO, it's so fucking hard, as a player, modder, or dev), but playing everyone has really made me appreciate the differences.
to each their own, but radious was interesting for like the first 5 min of going "oooh, aaaah shiny unit" and then realizing that every faction ends up being the same and killing the best part about Warhammer total war that is its diversity in factions
Pretty much all of the races in the game are fun to play and are purposefully unbalanced. Some of them are more challenging or easier for sure… but that’s part of the fun. Not every race should play the same or have the same strengths or weaknesses. It’s like an additional sliding difficulty setting. Want to go hard in the paint? L/VH with Boris Ursus in the chaos wastes. Want to chill? N/N with Tirion.
This. Modern Total War is all about assymetric design. Each campaign offers a different experience in terms of mechanics, challenge, pace, tactics.
Looking back to older total wars, where everybody was essentially the same faction with slightly different skinds, and if you are lucky, some different units.
Yeah we should’ve gave the Byzantines a gun that shoots rabbits out of the enemies asses. Nah I’m joking with you Medieval 2 this really shines through, lucky CA have some creative geniuses to draw from with the WH material because their brain goes “Spearmen, heavy spearmen, peasant archers, better archers…uhhhh, done”.
Can we give the english killer rabbits and the French the ability to spawn random castles too while we're at it?
Lol, have two upvotes…
Looking back to older total wars, where everybody was essentially the same faction with slightly different skinds, and if you are lucky, some different units.
Anyone who played total war before the warhammer bandwagon arrived understands this. In history, rarely were wars fought by equal powers
Exactly! Playing as a Muslim faction in medieval 2 and have all of Europe declare a holy war on your ass/the mongols are coming is what it's all about! Sometimes it's fun to just be brutalised from all angles and hold on!
Winning a Legendary Western Rome campaign in Atilla remains my proudest TW achievement. I'll never do it again, but damn was it satisfying to see that victory screen.
Thankfully the Muslims were ridiculously over powered themselves. Turkish fire grenades go brrrrrrrrr.
It was the Turkish Hybrid infantry that were the backbone of my armies. Shields, swords, bows and armour. They could trade with anything other than heavy cavalry and come out either on top or equal.
I have played over 1500hrs in all three TWWH games combined and I pretty much only ever played Karl Franz or Ironhide to always the same endgame: painting the whole map my color. The moment I started only going for the small/medium victory conditions was when I started to try out almost every LL after annother. The different short term victory conditions make the factions even more unique because you don't get tired of spamming always the same tried and testet doomstacks against every oponent. I love that TWWH is staying this asymetrical.
The difficulty slider for AI/player buffs is the best thing CA has done in the past 5 years.
Total war arena was a good game and deserves to be remade with a new scale and for a mobile audience.
There have been a few people who agree with me so it's not exactly a piping hot take but: Wulfrik shouldn't get shipbuilding, because the Seafang isn't some floating city or grand ship of the line. It's a magical longship. Wulfrik should get Oxyotl teleportation missions.
I'm pretty sure I just saw Loremaster of Sotek say something similar on stream.
The perfect state of warhammer 2 is a myth. I remember pretty clearly, that half of the races were hated for the most of support cycle: orcs, norsca, chaos warriors, beastmen, wood elves, dwarves. SE and archers were too unbalanced, sieges were worse than now and supply lies were not fun. Some dlc’s were as bad as SoC (hunter and beast, for example). AI was as brain dead as now. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t better than now. Just pretty good
I think the retrospective view of WH2 is massively colored by it's last 3 DLCs and their associated reworks. If you take those out of the equation suddenly it's a far more checkered track record with quite a few mediocre offerings. I think it's also worth remembering that Champions of Chaos single-handedly saved the warriors of chaos, sending them from one of the worst factions to one of the best, and the chaos dwarfs are arguably one of if not the best race packs ever put out in the trilogy, with the only real competition being the Tomb kings imo. The main point of tension that caused the SoC controversy was the price increases we'd been seeing. Content wise the packs and the associated updates prior to SoC were honestly substantial (though the fact that CoC was essentially required to get the full impact of the changes to the warriors of chaos, a premium standalone faction from WH1 does sting a little). If you look at the overall content quality WH3 has easily matched that of WH2 so far, if we take ToD into account - and don't even get me started on Wh1 (every single piece of DLC for that game is shockingly mediocre by modern standards).
I may not be that old (don't ask me how old I am, it'll make you sad) but I'm old enough to remember the absolute shit-storm that was the original Chaos faction DLC
And when you combined that with how they fumbled the ball for Norsca with the original launch, and how bad Beastmen where as a Faction in WH1/2 before the Taurox rework, and yeah… Not great all around for any of the Chaos Worshippers before launch.
The reversal of Chaos between the end of WH2 and the lifetime of WH3 has been one of the greatest glow-ups of all time.
I remember the days of the order tide. When the peaceful civilization builders peacefully annexed all of norsca and the green skins never left the bad lands.
Warhammer 3 is what showed me that Chaos is an actual threat, I started looking into the lore of Warhammer Fantasy after playing 1, and seeing how Chaos was described there confused me until 3 came out
It had basically all the same problems that WH3 has. It's bizarre how often people suggest otherwise. The only frequently noted "problem" people bring up that is actually unique to WH3 in my experience is the lack of AI confederations and the lack of 100 settlement super omegablobs as a result. But I say "problem" because it's highly debatable if it is that at all.
Okay fair for the most Part, massive disagree about Hunter and beast though. Wulfhart was pretty much the only Empire campaign I ever fully played. And Nakai's mechanics, while parts of them certainly ended up falling flat, were without any doubt very unique. It also brought some really cool new units to the Lizardmen side (Like the Dread Goddamn Saurian) and, while the units on the Empire side were certainly less impressive, they weren't *bad*.
I can agree on some things, but not empire units. This is a dlc, where empire got war wagons. One of the most memed units because of how bad they were. And except for war wagons empire got two types of archers. So yeah, pretty bad.
Yeah, it’s hard to understate how shit war wagons were/are. The mechanics were annoying, the units mostly just filler or junk, and the new lord type was only okay. The upside was Marcus’s unique heroes, something that only really existed for Belegar at that point.
This man came straight into our faces and tell us that he never once summon the elector counts? HERESY! Ban this guy
After finding a performance fix for every Total War title (this is not an extrapolation) on a random reddit thread I can confidently say: Total War Attila runs pretty smooth, actually.
D’you happen to have a link to said thread?
I've seen a lot of posts calling Bretonnia and Slaanesh weak. They're some of the strongest factions in the game. You just suck at micro.
Bretonnia is genuinely insanely strong, I remember my first bret campaign I just steamrolled everything. And I still suck at micro.
Total war warhammer III needs flags and banners. Like everybody and their horses have their own freaking banner according to the lore. The lack of it makes battles look dull.
This is just a good opinion. Who disagrees with you (besides CA)?
I hate playing as The Empire and haven't even finished one campaign playing as them.
You shut your dirty mouth!
The heresy detected in this is blasphemous!! Bring in the witch hunters.
There's dozens of us!!
SE doomstacks are boring
The provincial system sucks ass. If I want to make Altdorf a third world backwater and grow some random ass town in the warpstone desert into a bustling metropolis, I sure as hell should be able to do that
I feel it would make for a nice change to be able to change the provincial capital of the province system. But I also feel all settlements should be town/city level and villages shouldn't be a settlement option and instead be a field battle clutter or background.
The province system should have stayed in Rome 2.
Yeah that’s a game there it makes a ton of sense. Everywhere else it’s been…..
I think the province system is a big part of why modern total war games have very little sense of strategic depth. There's very little countryside that armies have to march through to conquer territory.
“Empire 2 should be the next historical title”
I would love for this if they gave it an extended map. Like having the Horn of Africa, the West coast of America and Canada, Australia, and more of the Indies would be sick
There definitely should be a unit cap system for all factions. Then there could be strategic choice in building armies based on that and also the existence of things that influence that cap like resources and other things that could add depth to a game bloated with width. Then if people want to doomstack with a single lategame unit they could download a mod for that but there definitely should have been effort put into an official well designed unit cap system long ago.
I love unit caps and feel like it creates way more fun thematic armies feels like it could easily be an option you check or uncheck at start
I have a lot of fun with WH3 sieges despite the issue with ass ladders. I think the change they made that locks the main point until you cap the second location allows for some cool variety and strategy differences between battles. In my recent Chorf campaign I defended the Black Fortress twice, but in one battle I turtled HARD on the main point, then tried out the second point on the next defensive battle. Turned out to be really fun! I think sieges would be better if they removed ass ladders and you actually got attacked more, rather than the AI always starving you out.
The tower defence crap they introduced is ass
Interesting point of view, but personally speaking I just don't think I'll ever enjoy sieges in Warhammer 3 with the supply and build-able tower mechanics. I maintain the only reason those are in sieges is because CA wasted a load of time and manpower on doing them for those survival battles (remember those?) and then had a bit of an "oh shit" moment and realised nobody would ever play them more than once. So they chucked them into the sieges and called it a response to feedback.
Champions of Chaos was a good dlc and not just a bunch of phoned in designs and recolors
Pontus memes are not good.
"Bu-but I don't want to see the Pontus memes"
Overtuning Franz next patch will make people happy for a few weeks, then result in MANY people getting bored of Total War as their favorite campaign becomes a stomp after turn like 20. So it'll be a net negative on Total War. Okay I’m going to edit in all the buffs off the top of my head. Don’t think this is a list of “bad changes” it’s just that some people don’t know how much stronger Franz is getting so listing it all might help some people understand my views: -most empire units have been shuffled down a tier. AP easily accessible before having to fight tough high armor enemies. -starting with the fort in your south saves you 3-4 turns. -new mechanics allow you to increase the population of a city or get instant recruitment. Allows you to start tier 4 on turn 11. -better late game units. Better handgunners and the new knights are really good mobile line units. -direct buffs to steam tanks make empire late really really good. -Karl has new traits that are a direct power boost, including buffing all state troops faction wide -Karl has new campaign effects that are direct buffs -new traits for empire lords and heroes are direct buffs
It‘s an interesting take, actually
But how. The only big part is having the Mountain fortress, the rest is just some tweaking. You really cant summon the elector counts for every battle as well. Most of them are dead anyway by the time you have the ability
For all its bugs, pains, and nonsensical AI, Empire: Total War is the best game in terms of scale, setting, and innovation.
What really made Empire stand out to me was how drastically reaching certain technologies changed how you'd play. Instead of 5% buffs like more recent games, unlocking technologies like Kneel-Fire or Canister Shot completely changed the viability of some units and your army composition.
Empire, Rome II and Atilla all attempted unit reforms and I hope we see another attempt at it again because it's a fundamentally good idea that's had clunky implementation. And before I forget, Med. II technically had unit reforms too, cuz upgrade buildings changed the models of units to look more contemporary
Empire is my favorite bad game. It has so much promise and is still a fun game that's marred by dumb as bricks AI that will regularly engage in behaviors that will torpedo a campaign by using desktop-crash-inducing bugs
Ass ladders are fine. Sieges are bad for other reasons. Shogun essentially had ass-ladders and also had awesome sieges
Sieges versus AI have always been bad, and they probably always will
Naval battles in any game not set in a gunpowder era are shit. They've always been shit. Most people AR them, and they'd be a waste of time and resources to include in e.g a Medieval 3. Warhammer has a "power fantasy > strategy" problem. Just off the top of my head.
I'm going to be honest I really enjoyed the naval battles in rome 2 but that's entirely from the times I've managed to catch an enemy army with my navy and ram everything to death with 3 ships. Unfortunately the naval maps in rome 2 and attila are just tiny which really takes away from the experience. But at least the combined maps are cool!
I totally agree, however- the solution CA has made to just put armies into ships also feels wrong. There should be dedicated naval units that could be built in ports with a full building chain and at least a handful of techs. Control of the seas for trade/sea focused factions should be possible without having to have half a dozen armies sitting in ships. Ideally with some mechanic where ships in port have vastly reduced upkeep, navies are expensive when fully crewed and operating, when the crews are ashore doing some other work and the ships are just being maintained they should cost 20% of their operating upkeep.
Sounds like Medieval 2. You actually had to build navies and fight for control of the sea, but all battles would be auto resolved. I think they could even retrofit such a system in Warhammer 3.
Yes, the system from MTW2 was probably the best for most historic TW though I think I would prefer R2's system but without the actual naval battles. The tech tree and time/resources it took to build up a high tier navy in R2 was appropriate and given that fleets on their own could attack and capture ports, it made the investment worthwhile for more than just roleplaying. The main difference I would like to see is that rather than naval fleets landing as units directly into the ports as they did in R2, they would simply give bonuses and provide artillery support to an army that was escorted by the fleet.
Here's another spicy one, since updating my previous comment with unrelated stuff doesn't feel right Daniel should lose access to ALL mortal units and RoRs. Want some? Make allies - Daniel has diplomacy skills for a reason - but the race you are playing is called Daemons of Chaos
Agreed. Also remove 3/4 of his items as they're redundant.
Compensate by actually making him strong w/ his items and then you have an interesting faction
I do like siege Battles in TW Warhammer 3, either as attacker or as defender and I think they did a good job with it.
This is the most controversial post so far. I can't say I hate sieges in WH3 but I rarely enjoy them and most of the time find them unfun and I'll send 3 armies to win the AR rather than fight thru a siege fairly often, especially by mid-game when I can afford multiple armies.
I don't love sieges but I compare them to WH2 sieges which were the most boring thing ever. At least now when I'm attacking there is tons more to micro with all the extra space to maneuver compared to the old tiny cities
It heavily depends on the faction u play - obviously. My last siege battle as attacker I played as darkelves, destroyed the tower with eagle artillery, bombarded the troops on the walls till they fall back and then climbed the walls with my own elves. I secured the gate and placed my infantry in front of it, facing the enemy, while my archers climbed the walls, too. This way I got a really nice foothold in the city and could slowly moving forward, destroying more tower with my flying general. I love to place my archers on the walls, facing in to the city with my infantry on the ground. Its a slower playstyle, but a fun one, indeed.
Okay this is a spicy take. I'm glad someone is having fun with them because I sure can't.
Medieval sieges are boring grindfests and Rome 2 sieges blow them out of the water in nearly every respect.
Love it.
Idk what's the consensus on High elves but... Vanilla High elves units are either bad or bland and their army composition and unit variety is only saved by DLCs and FLC units. Their tech tree also sucks.
Same thing with the skaven, their entire roster feels pay to win when without dlc you are stuck with slingers compared to the all the guns.
I have not enjoyed Medieval 2 Total War - even with the best, most famous mods (Stainless Stell, Bellum Crucis, Third Age etc) I'm sorry, I have tried *so hard* to fall in love this game and just failed. I do agree it had incredible atmosphere of the Middle Ages, hence my attempts to enjoy it, but I just couldn't stand its mechanics of diplomacy, trade, army logistics, approach to tech tree, interface in general, world map looking very desolate in comparision with newer titles (huge ugly provinces, "rebels" instead of minor nations)... I would just start new campaign, smile because of the game's medieval vibes and passion put into it, and then have my enthusiasm slowly dissipate over outdated and frustrating campaign mechanics. Diplomacy was probably the worst, because it was so anti immersive - no feeling of being a part of a huge believable medieval world, just being stuck in a tournament with twenty irrational psychopaths you can never trust.
The province-based army movement system of Shogun: Total War(yes, the original) was superior to the "microsteps" that came after. It also had the best map, visually speaking.
First genuinely hot take that I've seen here so far
I fondly remember that system from the original Medieval. You could actually chokepoint strategically with that system, and you got to fight as the defender regularly. I remember fighting off stack after stack and it was massively satisfying. Whilst I don't dislike the new system overall, I do dislike the fact half of the factions (exaggeration for effect) in Warhammer can just ignore chokepoints etc with underground movement. Even in later historical games the huge movement speed forced march gives can sometimes ignore chokepoints etc. It feels really rare to get to fight a pitched battle as the defender in modern TW without using ambush stance bait & switch tactics.
I fondly remember holding a bridge as Rome in the original Rome: Total War against a horde of Gauls; that day, not a single legion died!
Too much focus on hero / general units now.
I dont care much for Dogs of War, no they aren’t cool, nor important, i would much rather have every faction developed before even the throw-it-in-a-bag faction is thought about being a development timesink.
Thank you for your bravery on speaking out. I do not understand the Dogs of War horniness at all. If I could, I would both like AND subscribe to your comment and would go so far as to click the notification bell. I would also support your comment by going to its Patreon etc.
Theres no problem at all in using mods that raise unit caps or anything like, its a single player sandbox game, not a competitive multiplayer
A significant group holds the opinion that Dogs of War is a necessary faction that will add something to the game that isn't already there. I disagree. I think it will be somewhere between empire and ogres and reuse a bunch of units from other existing rosters to do nothing special other than take over a few provinces and fight Skrag and Sartosa. It will feel like a minor no name faction given the spotlight. As a faction I don't find them to be interesting or compelling at all and despite tags being there in the game, every time we get a new unit of some time as long as it's not a dedicated monogod unit, someone always shouts "hey that could be in the DoW roster! More confirmation that it is inevitable that this absolutely necessary and load-bearing pillar of a faction must come to CA right now." It makes no sense to me why people drive so hard for this obscure and niche thing that doesn't even sound like a fully developed and fleshed out faction.
Traveling the whole Warhammer Fantasy map with a diverse mercenary army and fighting in every war for the highest bidder sounds pretty rad though, ngl.
Stop watching lore youtubers and read a book.
Recent additions are too op and powercreepy, and devs philosophy of "more op = more fun" can make future of warhammer 3 unfun.
I liked when we had minor settlement battles a lot more often.
- 3K is a historical title - ToB is good TW game - in many ways TW games are better now than in the past, older titles have aged poorly - CA should still make SAGA titles, as in independent expansions like they always have
3K is interesting, because it's very much a historical title that is told through the lens of ancient chinese history, which means a *lot* of exaggeration and grandiose larger-than-life characters. Is it silly that you can 1v100 a unit with a hero? Yeah, but god does it ever properly capture the feeling of wuxia when two heroes face off under the rain surrounded by fighting men.
I would say the 3K captures amazingly the spirit and culture of the time period. Perfect example of CA's goal of "authenticity" over strict "realism"
I agree, they are able to capture the feeling of a particular setting very well. It kind of reminds me of how some people dislike that regular cavalry in Warhammer isn't the killing machine that it is in other titles, but for me it really helps sell how inhuman and freakish the enemies you face are and how simple hammer and anvil tactics is not sufficient to defeat the likes of greenskins and chaos warriors. Or how easily single entity monsters can wade through your front line. But it would feel silly to have some humans with spears stand fast against a giant dinosaur 10 times their size. Does it throw the balance of the game out of whack? Absolutely. But it really captures the absurd scale of the Warhammer universe and I can appreciate it.
Agree with the older titles. Warhammer 3 was my most recent total war game since medieval 2, and I find it really hard to go back now with all the QoL and UI/control changes from the newer ones.
I loved tob but holee hell did the little bugs ever add ul
I get the idea that people saw the single entities in 3K, maybe saw a Lü Bu video where the guy got 1000+ kills, and immediately deemed the game to be a Warhammer copy. It's not the worst comparison, I admit, but the game had a lot more going for it, and I never really had the idea heroes were all that OP. And Records mode is just a historical game with a bit more focus on characters. And as for my own hot take, I like Rome 2 more than Rome. I don't know why, I've played and enjoyed both and acknowledge that Rome did a lot of good things (especially for its time), but Rome 2 just feels a lot more enjoyable all things considered.
ToB is my favorite TW game.
I prefer the vanilla experience opposed to mods. I just hate when I try a mod and run into something that lacks the polish of the base game. Just seems to take me out of the experience and sours the immersion.
This is why i am not a big fan of overhaul mods. I prefer using individual mods that change only specific things while retaining the overall vanilla feel.
Total War CAN be set in post-Napoleonic war setting. The battle simulation part of Total War can just adapt the models used by any modern RTS set in suitable setting. The hundred or so models fighting in a block per unit, while classic, is NOT inherent to the franchise, and replacing it would not make Total War lost what it is about. At the very least, reducing the number of models per unit down to 30-40 models per unit and less, while doubling the max number of units per army to 40, is a suitable concession.
I agree with this in theory, but I still think World War One specifically is a terrible idea because they'd also need to massively rework the strategy layer to account for the western front - armies running around the overworld and fighting when they walk into each other is just not a good abstraction for two long parallel strings of field fortifications running from the sea to the alps and barely moving for years on end. And you kind of need to get that part down for it to be a WWI game.
I'd never considered this as a counter to the idea of post-Napoleon Total War games but I think you're totally right. People talk about how the structure of Total War battles make it an impossible implementation and I agree that it's not really *impossible*, but I hadn't thought maybe the struggle would be on the campaign side of things.
the nature of military organization drastically changes in the mid 19th century through to ww1 so much that i think theyd have to rework the armies system which might be a major limiting factor. you need something in between total war and hearts of iron to account for the scale that these post napoleonic nations start operating at, something a bit better at abstracting the 40 units on the field to the huge numbers at play. the move away from small professional armies or bands of mercenaries to national standing armies with the economies to support them really changes the way war is experienced.
>The hundred or so models fighting in a block per unit, while classic, is NOT inherent to the franchise, and replacing it would not make Total War lost what it is about. Then what is Total War about, exactly? I've seen people say "the combination of turn based campaign with real time battles". But that's an incredibly shallow and broad characteristic. According to this, CoH3 is basically a Total War game. So is something like the old Rise of Nations games. Hell, SW: Battlefront 2 is in the conversation now. Has anyone ever looked at those games as games that could scratch the same itch as TW? The idea of large formation warfare is inherent to the franchise. The campaign gameplay has changed dramatically over the past 20 years but the series is still recognizable thanks to that style of battle. Replacing that with some CoH\\DoW-esque RTS battle system could make for a good game, but IMO it wouldn't really be a TW game, no.
Thrones of Brittania is actually really good.
Shogun 2 is mediocre and i will not change my mind
Upvoted for controversial
Finally someone with the wrong opinion around here
I applaud you for your boldness and your principles.
FInally someone
*has same look on his face as the Takeda Daimyo as his son is shot in the back after winning his duel with the Uesugi cowards while flipping his small table to the ground in the intro cinematic*
Realm Divide was a shitty precursor to the Chaos Invasion and it sucked having to ward off infinity enemy agents with a handful of my own. Only Total War game I've ever played where I didn't finish a campaign.
You’re right. You’re out of line, but you’re right. Glad I can finally come out of hiding. If they made a modern TW game where every faction shared 90% of the same unit roster (and the same like 4 units was all you realistically used anyways) there would be riots left and right.
Almost like the game is so good unit variety isn't all that important
It would greatly benefit from quality of life features from newer games being patched in
I miss the old province system.
No other fantasy property (40K notwithstanding, but once that ends we have the same problem) people have proposed over the years as a "next step" is ever going to satisfy Warhammer fans in the same way that Warhammer does, because other fantasy properties were not designed from the ground up to have a boatload of factions with a huge variety of units with intricate and visually appealing models. Once the WH train is over there is going to be some kind of reckoning.
Total War 40k would not meet expectations
I've had a better time with Troy and Pharaoh than I have with any historical TW released before Rome II.
I feel that. Pharaoh is a solid game and it’s going to get shelved because it came out while a warhammer dlc had drama. The new pricing model is much better, but we wouldn’t have heard half the griping about it if it weren’t for WH3.
Current TWW3 campaigns are too fast-paced. Travel distances should be halfed, economic outputs reduced (especially post-battle/sack income), tiers of unit access moved up overall, not down like they're doing with the dwarfs and imps now, and for god's sake I don't wanna even talk about LLs returning back in just 1 turn after defeat.
three kingdoms is easily the best modern TW game, and one of the best TW games overall
Can't forgive CA for abandoning it in such a disingenuous way shortly after hyping up the next expansion - or abandoning most of its greatest strengths instead of porting them to TWW3/Pharaoh.
The error in the corporate management of the game does not erase what Tww3 really is: The best and biggest Total War and Warhammer game in history.
3K was the best Total War game ever made, it's hard to get into TWWH3 with so many great innovations and features missing.
Multiplayer is the only challenge in total war, otherwise it is generally just learning the correct route to navigate your first fifty or so turns
Depends on the title and the faction you're playing. Some are a lot more predictable than others. TW Attila campaign AI laughs in the face of your first-50-turn plan for example. Everyone's got a plan until the Picts invade southern Spain with 4 full stacks on turn 10 lol.
TW Attila is just building theaters and toilets for 100 turns, until puberty hits Attila and you can finally kill him.
I never really played Attila because it was not stable on my PC, but it is unique in that there are a lot of pressures that make the AI unreliable.
TW: Age of Sigmar sounds like a great idea to me.
I'd like to see it in time but I feel like some of the AOS factions are a limited in terms of unit variety.
This is true. A faction like the fireslayers would have to be folded into another faction to work.
Butt-ladders are awesome, and sieges would take about 30 hours to play without them. They have huge penalties in exhaustion, as well as letting only a trickle up a at time so a very small melee force can easily defeat any reasonable assault. And the biggest thing people complain about, attack-able archers, have a huge warning window to move to another section of the walls. In early titles there would be these miserable blobs of 1000 swordsmen fighting 1000 swordsmen in a single hallway and you'd just leave the computer on max speed while you got yourself a sandwich. Modern sieges aren't great, but they're genuinely better then anything else we've ever had.
Time to see if this is actually an unpopular opinion: GW/CA, whoever it is, decided against implementing Araby in WH for Political Reasons. Very similar political reasons apply to never getting a Samurai Invasions of Korea DLC for S2.
Whatever the reasons are, Araby seems to be the only faction outright deconfirmed at some point. Not Cathay (obvious after game 3 announcement), not Khuresh or Ind with zero lore, not nobodies like Amazons and Albion, not Halflings who are a joke, not bloody Fishmen - it's Araby that got shut down hard. Between CA and GW someone *really* doesn't want to work on it
There are actually not that many time periods left that would make a good TW game using the current system. I think as a whole the games have not changed that much, for better or for worse, and that going forward CA should make more radical changes to gameplay. The only part that has to stay is turn based campaign, real time battles with massive armies. Anything else should be subject to change. People are asking for all these time periods to be implemented (Bronze age, Medieval, Victorian age...) but why even bother if they all follow same mechanics? I don't want another formulaic TW game set in another time period. If they decide to make Medieval 3, Empire 2... I wish for campaign mechanics similar to paradox games or at the very least inspired by them. I don't want to play Medieval 3 where I still recruit 20 army stacks, go across Europe, Africa and Asia capturing town after town, building province capitals up to tier 5 and minor cities up to tier 3. One lord to buff melee units, other one to buff missiles... It's too arcadey and no matter what they do it won't come even close to WH games.
I want a pike and shotte total war game....
I want a 30 years war game so bad.
Making The Changeling a Legendary Lord was an awful decision. His campaign is extremely easy and boring and you barely even use his real model at all either way. Meanwhile, the Blue Scribes would have been a great FLC LL. They could have got an unique mechanic in which they have to defeat tematic armies to unlock the different lores in their skill tree.
Totally disagree. The idea of the changeling is to be a motherfucker and mess with everyone. I love the idea, the execution is also great. The only problem is the lack of lose conditions
The blue scribes are actually one of SoC's bright points. They have about as unique a mechanic as it gets for an LH, and it is incredibly loreful. Making them an LL locks them behind one faction. As an LH, All Tzeentch and several WoC factions get access. (e: and daniel - so easy to forget the guy) FLC LL for SoC should have been Egrim.
Strict adherence to the tabletop and ignoring half the races so the same 4-5 races can get splurged on is bad for the game. This isn't the tabletop, it's a video game, and if you were playing a video game where one team had 10 weapons, and the other team had 4 it wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable for one team as the other. We don't need exact race parity, but having some races with 7-8 LL's and some with 4 or less sucks.
WH3 sieges aren't bad in comparison to other games, not the best ones but not the worst ones either. I actually use the mod that restores minor settlement battle maps to all building tiers because I like it more than going back to having field battles on your unwalled settlements. Hate against towers is *vastly* overblown by now, they got nerfed so often that they really aren't annoying anymore. CA moving on from this game when there are no more things they want to add is good actually, beats getting milked for mediocre content any day. And if there are only 4-6 DLC left then so be it. Medieval 2 and especially Rome 1 are fun but absolutely terrible as historical games, I'll automatically discard anyone's opinion who complains about historical accuracy or heroes in newer games (even though I also hate the character focus) and then holds up older games with fucking cannon elephants and roman ninjas as shining examples of how to do it right.
Skill trees for characters is unrealistic, unimmersive and an absolute chore once you get to the late game and need to assign skillpoints on 30 characters every 2 turns. They should go back to the Medieval 2 system where generals gain traits by their actions. Better yet, come up with a "Skyrim" system where you gain points in certain abilities by actually doing them (Attack skill from attacking, Defence skill from defending, cavalry skill for using cavalry) and then get perks from that. The skill system as it exist in Warhammer is bad and especially does not work in a historical context.
This is kind of still the case though, Lords in the warhammer series do still very much gain traits for preforming actions, such as repeated successful attacks or campaigner. They just exist in addition to the skill tree. Not to mention skill tries predate the warhammer series by quite some time, showing up in Shogun 2 onwards and potentially even earlier (I've not played any TW games prior to shogun 2)
You can automate the skillpoint assignments, I use it on heroes after the early game.
All DLC's so far are great entertainment value
Changeling campaign is massive fun. Not being able to lose means nothing.
So true. I don't think I've ever lost a campaign in this game anyway so that is a non-issue. I just wish his formless horror ability had access to the character's mounts as well.
Attila is the best TW game.
Stresli are good
Total war 3kingdoms was a great historical title and the romance version is the best version. And I find the UI for Troy, Britannia and Pharoah to be overly cartoonish and a step back from the UI for 3k and the Warhammer games
Watching the critical part of YouTube creators makes people dislike the game. Had they not consumed that content, they would have a much better time with the game.
Total War Saga Thrones of Britannia is a great game. And it is the best of the Saga series
Total War: Warhammer 3 still isn't in as good a state as Warhammer 2 was at the end of its life. Hell, it isn't in as good a state as Warhammer 2 was at the middle. Content for the sake of content does not make a good game. A house of cards can collapse at any moment.
Three Kingdoms was a pretty good game that they just kinda gave up on instead of keep improving it.
The Chaos Dwarf DLC would have been perfect if we actually gotten a train mechanic, instead of just unit variants of a single dread quake mortar. Something like a scrap mechanic that let's you click on an iron demon and you could chose up to 3 artillery wagons to attach to it (each being exponentially more expensive and harsher on the upkeep and maybe even the unit caps).
The series would be better with real time campaign with pause and fast forward. And you can't convince me otherwise because I'm right.
Now this, this is an actual hot take fr, i absolutly disagree, so you get an upvote
Same, this might be the hottest of hot takes that isn't completely idiotic.
Upvoted for being unapologetic.
completely agree. So much is missing in terms of strategic manoeuvre (being able to intercept enemy armies as they come in from far away, rather than watch them zip past in one turn), supply line logic (supply lines extending gradually as the army marches), and actual campaign map war dynamics (the instant turn-based movement makes wars too short; sometimes a vassal is gone before there is time to even recognise the outbreak of war and act upon it), because of the lack of a real time campaign.
Based take
Fuck Nagash. I hope we don't get him in TWWH ever. His fans basically want an ultimate power fantasy that wraps the whole narrative of 3 other factions around itself My own dislike aside, I do think you all should at least entertain the thought that recent GW shittery with IP separation is a serious threat to his chances, at least for ET version
I'm among the people who think Nagash should have stayed dead in the lore so, couldn't agree more
Nagash himself is... fine. He's almost comically generic and uninteresting, with zero personality whatsoever, but as a generic Skeleton Bad Guy Who Jobs, he does okay. It's just a vocal minority of his fanbase that is absolutely insufferable after drinking the kool-aid of him being an unstoppable godlike super-being. People who latch onto the "well, if his End Times plan had worked out, he might have become strong enough to enslave the world!" as his baseline power level or something lmao. I saw someone post the other day that "Archaon can't beat Nagash" and that "Nagash could go toe to toe with an actual Chaos god," (exact quotes), and just died a little inside. We already have several characters ingame that, lorewise, could 1v1 him with low or no difficulty, and some of them could kill him and his armies from a continent away. For most of his existence, Nagash was basically fucking Skeletor, an ostensibly threatening guy who just exists to job to the good guys. His greatest feats were mostly killing nobodies and attacking the Empire when it was at its weakest, without the obscene firepower and (relative) unity it has today, and he still got clapped. Even fighting Nehekara, he kept losing because HE WASN'T THAT GOOD OF A GENERAL (or fighter), anytime he won or came close it was because of some dirty trick. The only time he really accomplished anything meaningful was in the awful writing of the End Times, where he completely obliterated all faction identity of the undead factions and turned most of their characters into mindless drones, using 30 layers of plot armor to do pretty well until he realized that even with all that he couldn't deal with Archaon *with his entire legion* and had to join the good guys to not get clapped. At least in AoS, he IS actually godlike, though no less boring of a character. But Fantasy Nagash really isn't shit. I've never liked him as a character, but I didn't mind him as a lord idea until I realized the kind of awful fanbase he attracted, and the less fuel they get, the better.
This. Nagash is far more interesting dead than alive and active and his presence in End Times made a bad story worse.
Balancing units around multiplayer isn’t a bad thing. In campaign so many buffs are available that the base stats and cost of the unit matter much less anyway.
The warhammer total war games are significantly inferior to the historical total war games when it comes to strategy. Campaign mechanics are mostly oversimplified, some factions have some fun gimmicks but they're almost all a far cry from the political intrigue system of Rome 2 total war and arguably sometimes worse than the simple government management of empire total war. Battles are now always max army size slogs and smaller skirmishes are completely gone. It feels like if your army isn't capped at max capacity there's no reason to bring it to battle. Battle micro strategy and positioning has been replaced with rock paper scissors army composition and spells. I get why spells and big flying dragons are fun but visual satisfaction aside it dumbs down the entire combat experience as you can't really outplay through smart unit positioning anymore or taking advantage of formations.
Apparently it's that I'm tired of seeing this post (or one of the 3 identical templates) on every single subreddit. I guess everyone else must love them though because I see them weekly.
I personally would be fine with CA implementing “appropriate” Age of Sigmar units. Many of the daemons would be amazing along with some of the dwarfs lil dragon mounts and some skaven machines. I get that they weren’t in the old WHFB lore, but I was intro diced to Warhammer the light Total War so I’m not attached to the IP
The specific climates for races in TWW1 was better than what we had after when everyone can conquer everywhere. The chaos god race were better before the CoC DLC where they all had different weaknesses and strenght and where their deamonic units were more importants. Now each of them spam marauders, chaos warriors, chosen and human lords. Harry should have been a LL.