Total War: WARHAMMER

Damn, you are right.

I just confederated one of my friendly dwarven mates, and that gave me a port. In a single turn, my trade income went from ~850 to 4050 gold. This should give me the funds to finally beat to hell the invading orcs in my sourthern province, though now I have more terrain to defend.

Turn 16 with my dwarves. Did one quest, an underground battle, won it handily, took my starting province, have no idea what direction to expand in (the only faction I’m trading with are to the west, so don’t want to knock them out), upgrading my buildings but growth is slow so that population surplus is taking 6 turns per unit, Grombrimbal is now level 6 with some nice magic items, wiped out an orc faction (Skull boyz?) who dared set foot on my lands, and I now have a huge range of dwarf units I can buy but have no idea which ones to go with.

The trade also comes from the capital, which is why Angrund is pretty well screwed when it comes to trade : their cap doesn’t swap to Eight Peaks, so it’s permanently stranded from a port by the terrain (unless they changed it allowed dwarfs to trade over mountains at some point, but I don’t think they did).

OK, those greenskins to the south are pissing me off. Time to start sacking provinces until I get a port and more trade partners. I’m sitting on 40k gold with about 2,300 surplus per turn and a 15/20 stack that so far romps anything that gets near me.

Second confederation, yeah! I have 5 provinces under control now, and the money is starting to pour in.

But I think I’m going kind of slow. It’s turn 80 already. I read somewhere there is a ‘soft’ turn limit in the game, as the chaos horde starts to invade and things get more and more dicier because of that. In about what turns that start happening?

iirc, it’s actually triggered by empire size.

edit - nope, that’s just part of the equation; Steam Workshop::Chaos please WAIT! - Delay for Chaos Invasion

Turn 81. NOW I learn that I can ‘slide’ the recruit unit panel to see more units to the right.

/facepalm

I almost missed that too.

The greenskins went all Waaaaaagh on me around turn 25-28 since I stomped them out of the province immediately south of the Silver Road. Bribed a neighboring dwarf clan for a military alliance, and they immediately threw two full army stacks at the incoming Waaaagh and lost both. But it softened up that crusade enough for me to both finish them off and knock a few entries from my book of grudges. Good times. So much more fun than those damn unicorn-lovin’ Brettonians.

I didn’t write it specifically before but I’m liking this game a lot. I know I’m ‘late’ in this case, but… (impressions)

There is some streamlining in the campaign map (no naval action, no seasons, no squalor, no families) but it feels good, I think I’m actually more focused on the strategy because of the limited choices: fewer agents, limited building slots, harsher limits of number of armies makes me think twice where to invest my money or where to move to. I’m also putting more attention to the geography itself of the map.
I had some tough choices, where in a turn I had to try to stop a new waaagh! in the South before started, or conquer a settlement in the East and that way ‘complete’ a province owned by me, or stop a wild horde which was crossing an ally territory and aiming for my valuable harbor, and i loved it.
Dividing the map in lots of smallish factions (instead of just having one of each race like many fantasy games do) was a brilliant idea, first it allows the early game to be focused on conquering smallish kingdoms or having possible allies since the start, second it gives you a breather before the Greenskins and other factions like that start projecting force to the ‘outside world’, as they usually are fighting between themselves, third it allows for a more dynamic and interesting diplomacy, and fourth it’s pretty cool theme-wise, it makes more sense when your story is about uniting a fractured kingdom and defeating your enemy, instead about ‘conquering the whole world’.

There are some cool mechanics like army stances that I know aren’t really new but they come from Rome2 / Attila, but for me it adds up to the novelty and possibilities. Also more customization for the heroes, with individual items, banners to assign to units, spells, etc.

Of course the star of the show is the faction differentiation. They made a better job than a jaded gamer like myself believed at first. Not only they have armies with more different stats than in previous TW (say, dwarves are slower than other infantry, but they have innate magic res., and are tougher and have better leadership than average), as they have totally different combat philosophies (one without ranged fire, another without cavalry, one doesn’t rout, the other doesn’t have magic, etc), but also different geographic locations and now it feels it matters more where you are and who are your neighbors, different feeling in the overall progression, unique campaign mechanics (horde, underground tunnels, raise dead, grudges, waaaghs!, vamp/chaos corruption, etc), unique tech trees, unique buildings, unique skill trees for heroes/lords, unique monsters or spells, etc.
They also made a great job translating to the game new features like Winds of Magic. They didn’t slap a mana pool to use and that’s it, no, they respected the original idea, and you can see how the magic varies in strength in different territories, and it affects the gameplay in more interesting ways.

The AI playing in Normal is doing a fine job. I’m winning, which isn’t surprising as I played several TW before, but I’ve seen nifty plays both in the strategic map and in battle, and in some turns the enemy had good comebacks. In hard/hard it should be a sufficiently challenging game.

Finally the UI and help system is great, I usually have almost all the information I need at hand without being overwhelming, and it feels organized and well thought.

Some good observations on what works, thanks for taking the time in lay’em out, and got to say I agree with pretty much all of them, I’ve played every TW from the very beginning and while I still prefer the historicals, I got to say, they’ve done a fine job with this one and I’ve enjoyed every campaign I’ve played in it, due in no small part to what you outlined as the star of the show, they took the time to genuinely make unique races that play differently.

This is in my top tier of TW games, Shogun 2, MTW2, Attila and Warhammer.

P.S. If they pull off a combined map that actually works with all three games that could well push it to the top for me, man though is that going to be some work to pull off properly.

I finished my dwarf campaign last night. Everyone who looked at me funny had been wiped out, the dwarfs were united and some human and elf types survived too. Nemo me impune lacessit.

With their book of grudges that definitely sounds like a bit of Latin you’d hear a short bearded one spouting.

That you have Medieval 2 so high speaks to your good taste.

That you omitted Napoleon makes me question it ;)

Haha, yeah, I absolutely love MTW2. As for Napoleon, while I thought it was a vast improvement on Empire, I’d rather CA had worked on fixing Empire than make the standalone Napoleon that’s a bit too narrow and more narrative in the GC than I care for, (some, such as yourself I suspect, would argue trimming down from the expansive Empire made Napoleon a more focused product and that it was the better for it, I wouldn’t disagree).

It’s equal parts trim, and setting. Both mechanically and historically that is the most interesting time periods in a Total War game to me. That they were able to make TW work so well in the age of rifles made me very happy.

[quote=“TurinTur, post:1290, topic:76263”]
fewer agents
[/quote]Hahahahaha. Ahahahahah. Fewer agents. Ha. (You will get flooded with agents, or at least thats always happened to me - so much turn time wasted on watching little dudes run around in circles)

But yeah, there’s plenty to like about Warhammer. The UI for movement range could definitely see improvement though. Trying to sort out army range of your stuff and the enemy stuff is incredibly painful especially with army stances. The game is probably better off without those.

Note: I’m using two small mods AI mods, AI Campaign Balance and AI Buildings and Recruitment, maybe that’s why I see both better than average AI and not so many agents.

Yea I dunno, I’ve never had massive trouble with agents. Since having an agent with a good chance of success at the “Block Army” action trivializes the Chaos encounter, I tend to level that guy up by just assassinating AI agents.

For my money I like VC the best overall. The best campaigns though are the two that come with the King and Warlord DLC, with Crooked Moon Tribe and Angrand? (whatever that dwarf faction is called) trying to re-take Karak-Eight-Peaks. They are extremely challenging compared to the vanilla campaigns though, which may be a plus or a minus depending on how you enjoy your strategy games.

There is one thing I don’t like and it’s how limited feels needing a lord for every army. At the start it seemed alright, but if for logistical reasons I have army A in the North war front and army B in the South war front and I just want to move two units from A to B, I need to hire a new lord with his heavy costs just for that.

edit: so many controls I didn’t know about, even after playing Total War games for so many years

Agree on the army thing, that is a hassle, I liked being able to supply armies by just recruiting them and sending them on their way as I did in past TW titles, better still I liked that in Shogun 2 if I recruited an entire stack and fought a battle with them the highest ranked unit was offered to me to turn them into a general, effectively a field promotion for winning the battle they were just in.

That said, I guess it fits in with the lore (which I’ll admit I pay zero attention to and have zero interest in) because all of these armies are created at the behest of a hero who recruited them, or something like that. Game mechanics wise it’s still just a pain in the ass.