1684

Could be; I usually can’t win on normal, so it doesn’t hit me the same way.

1685

I actually don’t mind the city sieges. At least they’re something different. I try to avoid attacking if at all possible, attacking is pretty horrible in sieges, but if i have to play a couple it’s not the end of the world.

There’s a kind of ‘bad taste’ the Immortal Empires map compared to the Mortal Empires one for old factions; they usually lost settlements or land, are squeezed into a smaller area that makes less strategic sense. There’s also a sense that the AI will not suffer you to go without a war. As soon as i’ve won one war, a neighbor with negative attitude drops a Declaration at me.

The big thing for me is that i don’t really like how Chaos is done here. I don’t really like that Chaos has settlements. I know they couldn’t really figure that one out and tried to mix it up, but ultimately you’re / they’re painting the map like everybody else.

OTOH there does seem to have been some clean up with things like corruption mechanics which i appreciate. They also, for better or worse, seemed to nerf all the broken / unlimited power campaign mechanics that were found over the years. It also cleans up the so-called ‘order tide’ or ‘chaos tide’, where you indirectly through winning battles against your moral opposite faction end up causing a cascade of victories for the good guys / bad guys, so that by the time you reach halfway down your continent the good guys / bad guys have complete dominance over the world. When i’ve looked up from wherever, Lustria, to the old world in the War3 campaign, it’s generally a CF mess.

The actual map itself has been tuned to be a slight bit more cartoonish, but imo has more variety and better legibility than the old one. It might also feel more cartoonish though.

It took me a long, long time to get into War 3. I got it near launch and just set it down almost immediately afterwords. I really didn’t like the vibe of the specific campaign, don’t really want to play a demon or kit out a demon with different heads. For whatever reason in my own head cannon these demon factions really shouldn’t be galavanting across the world on a Grand Tour, but be like horrors seen through the veil of madness sort of thing. I actually think on the whole I prefer the old Chaos mechanics / personality. But, eventually, i fired it up again and had a decent time once more.

1686

That’s my key complaint about the game. It not only makes it easier in the long run, but simultaneously makes it really annoying and tedious to deal with especially for the first stage (the least interesting stage, in terms of army composition).

Functionally, it ends up bogging down the start of the game where I feel like I have to go through battle after battle after battle of samey T1-T2 battles. When the dust settles, there’s no competition because the AI has just thrown everything it had at the player regardless if it made any strategic sense to do so. I’ve watched them bypass entire provinces that were A) adjacent to their borders and B) completely undefended just to get at one of my settlements (and yes, they were at war with the faction whose territory they were traversing). It would have been so much better for the AI to take neighboring provinces instead of sending what it had towards me to get annihilated.

1687

Yep good observation. My main complaints with the third game are:

  1. The always flaky AI seems actively worse / more annoying.

  2. In the name of being different, they’ve saddled a bunch of factions with mechanics that are just annoying to play. I’m thinking Nurgle economy, Khorne economy/rage bar, the stupid yin/yang micromanagement for Cathay, and the dumb church/court thing for Kislev. I could go on.

  3. Old factions got their mechanics dumbed down in some uninteresting ways.

  4. Any battle where “defensive supplies” come into play is worse than all battles in the preceding games.

  5. A lot of rosters have lack variation leading some factions to have very samey feeling battles throughout an entire campaign. This has always been a a problem for certain factions but seems to be worse in some of the new factions for this game, particularly the demons.

1688

Does anyone know of a good streamer that does full campaign playthroughs? I used to watch LegendOfTotalWar, but he has changed his format and does not do many of his live streams anymore and seems to mostly just do short videos on various subjects.

I am just looking for someone whom I can learn from and watch how they manage both campaigns and battles. I am only interested in single player stuff, so videos on PvP stuff are not of any real interest to me.

1689

this guy is kinda chill

1690

Thanks, Ill check him out.

1691

I didn’t watch much of MercytheMad, but I liked enough of his videos, so +1 for me. And I didn’t watch them much only because I preferred to play the game instead and ended up with a decent grasp of playing it.

Regarding anti-player bias. So, I haven’t played WH3 since release, and even then, not much anyway. I burned out heavily from WH2 I think. Is the anti-player bias worse in WH3 or about the same as WH2. Because I found that bias to be infuriating in WH2. I remember a few campaigns where I’m thinking “oh come on!!” followed by a number of swear words inviting the AI to just exit the game less than gracefully. Maybe I just suck at diplomacy in these games though.

Also, call this heretical, but I really dislike LegendofTotalWar since a few years ago. I'd tune into his videos on occasion and click away thinking about how much of a wanker he is. Partly with his comments in game, and to his audience, and partly with his playstyle. I get it, he plays Legendary because it's in the name, but to cheese the game by playing on Legendary/Very Hard and relying on ranged unit spam which takes away from the beauty of WH games and the large unit roster is one-dimensional at best. Think the kids today would call it basic? Based? Sure, I get it, ranged units are powerful and battle difficulties (WH2 anyway) don't really affect them compared to melee debuffs against the player... but if you choose VH battle difficulty then have to cheese things to win, well what have you really achieved? I'd still play Very Hard campaign, but battles - nah, I want an even playing field with an AI that may not do so well with unit composition, but does exceedingly well with rapid decision making and management of units such as light cav, archer cav, chariots etc.
1692

I think War 3 is in a pretty excellent place gameplay wise right now. If Immortal Empires campaigns are your jam, I don’t think anyone’s complaints about War 3’s couldn’t also be leveled at War 2 (unless its about Dark Elf’s slave cheese).

I have really enjoyed playing as the new Chaos factions, though I haven’t tried Slaanesh (N’kari) yet. Tzeentch (Kairos) was a fantastic magic fueled power trip (once you unlock teleport stance that costs ZERO winds of magic, you will be ambushing more than Skaven) and Nurgle (Ku’gath) was a ton more fun than I was led to believe it would be. Skarbrand is excellent as always, though his campaign mechanics are a bit trickier than his straightforward battle mechanics.

They also really toned down the difficulty of the Realms of Chaos campaign (their Vortex). Though Vortex is still the better of the two (by quite a bit) so much of the absolute testicle smashing frustration of the RoC campaign can be mitigated or is outright gone.

If you enjoyed the Beastmen campaign in TW2, Nakai the Wanderer (the horde Lizardman) has had a pretty major update for TW3 and is actually a delight to play. His economy is strong and the vassal who takes care of his cities is no longer some independent entity who other factions declare war on constantly (this is thanks to how they changed up vassals in TW3). But really any Chaos faction feeds that destructive satisfaction.

Overall, I think most of the new factions in TW3 are an absolute delight to play with the exception of Cathay, whose yin-yang mechanic was a constant pain. They made it more manageable in battles but on the campaign its a huge pain to maintain harmony. Thematically I can see how it makes sense, as maintaining harmony leads to technological and developmental (of your settlements) stagnation, but considering you need to constantly research and upgrade settlements, its just a straight up annoying feature.

1693

This is good to know! Although I never finished my Four Beastmen of the Apocalypse campaign (play Taurox, confederate the others, annihilate literally every other faction) I enjoyed it immensely for a good number of hours. Speaking of Taurox, I heard he got a nerf in this one.

1694

My understanding is that whatever trick people were using to have him rampage across the entire map in 1 turn has been fixed. You can still go “fighting round the world” but not in a single turn kind of way. Nakai’s start position in Cathay is right by some sea lanes and his horde can just sail anywhere he wants without really ever worrying about his cities, as that is all taken care of by his vassal with substantial garrisons. He doesn’t rampage like Taurox but he is still pretty quick.

1695

Damn, I’m gonna have to get back into this aren’t I. I really wanted you be like, “Shiva is right, WH3 sux, attempt no landings there.”

1696

TW 3 has its problems and was not terribly enjoyable when it launched (I liked it, but I could see its many flaws) but I think its definitely in a better place now.

Minor settlement battles are still a thing but I feel now that it takes a Tier 3 settlement (and usually one with a garrison building as well, unless you’re Nurgle) they occur at a more appropriate pace (instead of like, 75% of the time it is more like 25%). The AI is still skittish and troublesome to catch out in the open field, but now if they retreat to a settlement its not always going to be a slog since there is a good chance it will just a be a field battle with their garrison in tow. I would very much recommend using characters who can Block Army as an action and any other tools at your disposal (such as ambush stance) to try and get the AI out in the open.

The Chaos factions (Nurgle, Khorne, Slaanesh and Tzeetch) no longer declare war immediately when they sense you (and vice versa when you play as them and meet order factions). This helps with the AI sending armies across the map to come get you (and really helps in the Realms of Chaos campaign). Its still a thing but it was so much worse at launch than it is now (I rarely notice it myself).

I do miss the large AI empires that would form so you frequently got a proper end game enemy (they don’t really do so now) but the end game crises resolve that pretty well. I didn’t mind the AI being able to confederate each other in TW 2 but it seemed to always favor the AI Elves (mainly Malekith/Naggarond and Tyrion/Eataine).

1697

He often explains what he’s doing and answers questions. He does play other things of course, but TWW3 is his main game by a large margin and is a generally pretty cool dude.

I don’t catch him all that often, but he’s up there as far as streamers for the game.

1698

Battle replays have been unleashed.

K’daai and a reminder that Sigvald is OP.

Dreadquake Mortar RoR:

2 Likes
1699

Fantastic videos. Milkandcookies really puts together some epic and thematic fights and does a great job commenting on them.

1700

The ability to put the mortar on a train and choo choo around the battle has me sold.

1 Like
1701

Battle replays weren’t in the game before this? I haven’t played War III yet.

1702

Replays from Chaos Dwarfs were under embargo or whatever one wants to call it.

1703

Ahhh Txs.