Total War: Warhammer 2

[Benhur]

The FLC hero has me very excited. Not only will I finally go ahead and play a game a Brittania in a Mortal Empires Campaign, but they start on a whole other continent where I get to beat the crap out of vampires and skeletons. Couple that with very shirt turn times, Thursday can’t come quick enough.

[ShivaX]

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/total-war-warhammer-ii-the-potion-of-speed-update/

Art instead of models is nice.

Pestilens is slightly less garbage.

[Scotch_Lufkin]

Art instead of models is nice.

This looks so much better to me.

Old art (3D models)

New art

[KevinC]

there is so much content in WH2 it’ll take a lifetime to complete I think.

Half of that is due to the current turn times, though! ;)

[Telefrog]

That looks so much better.

I was really sad when the unit art style for most Total War games changed from 2D to 3D.

[whispa]

What a difference in the portraits! Looking forward to the improved turn times as well. Apparently there is one more DLC and FLC coming in 2020. Wonder if they plan to add another before TW Warhammer 3?

[ShivaX]

I expect pre-Warhammer 3 there will be a pre-order bonus again. Most people think it’s probably going to be Thanquol, which would make sense though they might be saving him for a DLC in TWWH3. Though that would be kind of weird since he isn’t all that involved with Chaos for the most part.

[jpinard]

Noooo :( I liked the old art. The Britannian Lady looks like she’s strung out on heroin.

[ShivaX]

Noooo :( I liked the old art. The Britannian Lady looks like she’s strung out on heroin.

The Lady is a hell of a drug.

[Richard_Holt]

It says so much about my brain, that my favourite change in this patch is the faction naming conventions. This has been bugging me for two years!

[jpinard]

It says so much about my brain, that my favourite change in this patch is the faction naming conventions. This has been bugging me for two years!

What is this of which you speak?

[ShivaX]

It says so much about my brain, that my favourite change in this patch is the faction naming conventions. This has been bugging me for two years!

What is this of which you speak?

FACTION NAMING CHANGES

As many of you have noticed, there’s some divergence in naming conventions between certain factions from WARHAMMER I and WARHAMMER II – a hangover from the early days when Dwarfs, for example, were the only playable Dwarfen faction. We’ve now addressed these for consistency. Old World factions, and some New World factions, will no longer use the name of their race, but instead will have their own unique faction name:

• The Empire → Reikland
• Dwarfs → Karaz-a-Karak
• Greenskins → Black Crag
• Vampire Counts → Sylvania
• Vampire Coast → The Awakened
• Bretonnia → Couronne
• Wood Elves → Talsyn
• Norsca → World Walkers

[SamS]

• Free Company Militia: Fire while moving

Nice!

[Scotch_Lufkin]

Noooo :( I liked the old art.

(To be fair, one can like the old 3D model art - it was pretty decent, right up until this morning when they showed the new artwork - I don’t believe someone that says the prefer the 3D models to 2D art, subjective or not! :P)

[lordkosc]

Noooo :( I liked the old art.

[Chaplin]

Can you explain a bit?

Like I said, you will probably need to embiggen them by clicking because the very nature of shrinking an image removes sharpness.

I will attempt to show it with a small image that the forum won’t resize.

No Sharpen:

Sharpen:

The sharpen effect makes the image look a little more blocky, imo. I think it looks better without the sharpen feature applied - it’s a softer, more rounded look - and that extends to the entire screen.

On the other end of the spectrum, here is the full 1440p image without sharpening:

And a full 1440p image WITH Sharpening:

Maybe open them both in a new tab and compare them that way. In Chrome, you can right-click and Open in a new Tab. Don’t forget on each image within the tab to click one more time on the image to make sure it’s full sized.

And of course, the best way to compare - launch the game and try turning it on and off - I didn’t seem to require a restart to take effect.

I admit, I am not the best at picking out proper eye candy. To me the sharpened looks…sharper. I am viewing them full screen. The pictures without sharpening look darker with more blobs to them. I see a brightness in the sharpened option that seems to be bringing out the metal or sun lit surfaces. I almost see it with a painters eye when I compare the two. To me sharpening looks cleaner, but both look jagged.

With that said, I built a BEAST of a computer to play this game in all of its glory and I still struggle. One big sadness is that the game does not properly support 5120x1440 (but it still looks pretty damn awesome). I have come to accept that the game has bugs and lacks optimization (see turn time issues). I hope TW:W3 has a lot of polish gained from TW:3K and am very happy to not have to wait for the turn timer optimizations.

Like you, I think I discovered a valuable fix. So let’s compare notes and see what the best options are.

I was getting so frustrated with checkered or blocky patterns on the shaded side of sloped terrain. It was especially bad on desert or snow maps. I have recently read that SSAO is messed up and that option is the culprit of the behavior that I am seeing.

Even having a PC way beyond what WH:TW2 needs I think I have learned that these settings should be off despite what one would think with a good machine:

1. SSAO (should be off especially on snow or desert maps)
2. Direct X 12 beta (poor performance)
3. Sharpening???

I recently went up to extreme shadows (they ARE much nicer). I fiddle with the AA settings all the time as they seem to have huge FPS consequences even on my machine but something always feels off especially when I view YouTube content. I am now thinking it is the SSAO.

[KristiGaines]

This new patch is HUGE. I will report on ME turn times tomorrow night. I’d say probably 20 percent of my play time in this game is watching a turn time. Or, well, grabbing a snack and calling someone during a turn time.

My Plan is to play the new Joan of Arc Britainia heroine. I may do a sorta after action report of sorts (that’s what you call that I think). I am going to look and see where she starts.

Ok it may have to wait till Thursday. I’ve seen some inconsistent reports on when this patch drops. 12th? or 10th?

Looks like the 12th. Btw she starts in the “southlands” --boy I hope that is sorta the border prince region. I am have a ton of problems down there as the empire in my recent ME campaign. Orcs have managed to destroy the dwarves and the skaven are coming up. It isn’t pretty. “Southlands” may mean Africa so I guess well see unless someone knows or I missed something.

[Scotch_Lufkin]

I was getting so frustrated with checkered or blocky patterns on the shaded side of sloped terrain.

I haven’t observed this, but I’m playing on a desert map in my current campaign, so I’ll do some testing.

Honestly, I am not seeing any sort of checker-boarding or anything with SSAO on or off. With SSAO on I was seeing more defined shadows, which is what SSAO is supposed to do.

As for performance, Warhammer 2 is a hog. I have a 9700K, 32GB of memory, and a 1080Ti and on Ultra, with Extreme shadows and no sharpening, I’m scoring about 68FPS average in the benchmarks. That’s excellent, to me, and the game looks fantastic to boot. I was, in actual practice, getting something like 86 fps or so whenever I looked up at the Steam overlay.

I also found I got better performance (and it would actually save my damned settings!) once I disabled the GeForce Experience optimization and especially the GeForce Overlay. Give that a try if you have that software installed, too. Though I imagine scoring in the 60’s at my settings would be much harder at ultra-wide 1440p (I’m on 2560x1440), I think you can probably turn off anti-aliasing to help you out - at these high resolutions, AA (and turning off sharpening) should give you some frames back.

Some screens (SSAO is ON, Sharpening is OFF, shaodws are Extreme)*
*Also, this is DX11. I see DX12 and I usually avoid it, and since this DX12 has been in beta for 2 years, extra avoid it. However, for fun I just ran a benchmark with my current settings in DX12 and I was annoyed and unsurprised to see I get like 8FPS less (60.5 average) when I use DX12.

@Dan_Theman LOL nice. That’s one of those words I’ve gotten wrong my entire life. :)

[Dan_Theman]

I’m playing on a dessert map in my current campaign

“It’s not flambe without a little flame!” -Teclis
“I’ve got some rocky road for you!” -Grombrindal
“Ice cream for the Everqueen” -Alarielle

[Scotch_Lufkin]

Ok it may have to wait till Thursday. I’ve seen some inconsistent reports on when this patch drops. 12th? or 10th?

It says the 12th on Steam for the DLC, so that’s what I was going with. I also just found this entry:

https://totalwarwarhammer.gamepedia.com/Potion_of_Speed_Update