Total War: WARHAMMER - Official anounced

[Rendark]

The new warriors of chaos are a cool i guess but some things are a bit lazy. Such as, exalted heroes can only be marked by Khorne and Nurgle. I don't think ill be playing them until a mod comes out to correct this.

[ParanoiD84]

Playing a Archaon legendary campaign and its a blast with all the alligned units his army is mostly undivided then i have a tzeentch one running around too and a nurgle one on the way.

Lots of qol things added and the campaign map looks much better now too.

Gonna start a Vlad one too soon as vampires was my very first run in Warhammer 1.

[KrayZ33]

is the 8(?) player immortal empire a thing in this update?
I hope so?

I want to play with 2 friends.

Can't wait to start a Vampire campaign, they look like so much fun now.

[Zmagoslav]

Immortal empires feels like a fresh wind, but not only in the positive sense...

It holds a few changes from MI that i'm not particulary fond of;
- the distances between settlements being rather short caused most battles to be sieges... which can of course become quite tedious after a time
- reinforcing mechanics are hugely unfavorable
-- they really hurt with empire reinforcement events
-- sometimes an ally will pull you into a battle he will pretty much lose before you get on the field... netting you a loss unless you auto-resolve (i had my full stack close to festus (full stack) and his reinforcing army (stack of 10) and an allied faction decided to attack those 2 armies with a stack of 3 units)
- isabela's defeat trait is pretty much locked away now with her being a hero if not played

[Mehrunes]

After much deliberation I ended up with Mannfred to play around with his new starting position and the tomes of Nagash. I'm curious about the new Legendary Hero/Lord thing for Vlad and Isabella, but Isabella was my last VC play-through in Warhammer II.

Cult of Sigmar is an annoying cockblock due to how the AI plays them, but after replying the fight against their triple army I finally got a result that didn't handicap me on the third try by rushing his reinforcements (as much as you can rush things with early VC army). Still, Volkmar's stupid-ass two unbreakable flagellants he has from the start were a major pain for my army.

But then I got a major battleground boosting the raise dead pool and I got two terrorgheists and two varghulfs by turn 12. It's pretty much smooth sailing since then, even though it did put a significant dampener on my economy. So did the fact that aside from Necrarch Brotherhood (which I almost have the diplomatic acceptance to confederate) my trade partners got their asses handed to them in the last few turns. Arkhan got the ball rolling early on and almost defeated the nearby Dwarves and conquered the Orgres, but then Repanse got some steroids and steamrolled him in return and now he only has his capital and the former Ogre one settlement province left. While also conquering the Strygos Empire on the side.

I'm actually inclined to let her conquer Arkhan completely at this point so I can swoop in and take it for myself. I got into contact with Vampire Coast in Sartossa so they may pick up the trade profits slack after Arkhan kicks the bucket. And Mannfred is on the other side of the central mountain range now because stupid lizards keep declaring war on me, so I should get into contact with the Silver Host soon for even more trade income.

[Jastall]

The Greenskins endgame crisis is... something. As Archaon I beat up Grimgor until he had 2 faraway settlements left, he was then fairly powerless all game long. But then the event fires and all the playable Greenskins gets tons of stacks and become incredibly aggressive. The big lug is gunning for my back door with a fat wad of Black Orcs and spiders while Azhag keeps my main armies busy. Getting emergency armies as WoC is actually not really viable as you can at best recruit Aspiring Champions, Dragon Ogres, Warriors and Knights right off the bat, and in fairly limited numbers besides. Rank 1 Marauders and Trolls just get mauled by elite Greenskins.

It's great fun. I cruised through the campaign as the Norscans crippled Kislev before I arrived and Festus was already plaguinating half the Empire during that time, but now there's a ton of Orcs to kill all over the place. Wurzzag has already been eliminated but I assume Skarsnik and Grom will balloon out of control and I'll have to deal with them at some point.

Despite the relative artificial manner in which a race is just given tons of troops and told to go to town, it makes for a far better endgame than the Chaos invasion in 1 and 2 which was far more predictable, annoying and often harmless. CA said they want to expand this system and I'm looking forward to it.

[KrayZ33]

Hmmm.. the settlement trading and stuff makes the Empire Campaign (Reiksland) feel better. I'm probably confusing something (maybe with Volkmar), but I could swear that they wanted to rework it even more.

And no matter how I look at it. The Golden Boy start always feels very slow and tedious to me.
The small province capital starting positions are boring as hell to play because you need so long to get it going before you can recruit advanced units.
The Golden Boy one especially because you are surrounded by "allies". I just don't feel like attacking dwarfs, they are the goodest boys.


The Vampire start in the "same region" feels much better to play and less passive. At least if you play the "intended" way.

[Kumorii]

Went with valkia, managed to vassalise every single demon and most norscan tribes. Causing the endtimes. Everyone just rolls them over. Though when the endgame event kicked off it turned into a slog. As usual with end-hame campaigns it turns into auto resolve fest. Want to finish it, but don't look forward to it.

Getting really bored of minor settlements battles though. Gonna try out the mod that only makes ports minor settlements even though that feels like a band aid fix.

[Mehrunes]

I don't like the fact that I'm not allowed to confederate certain factions. The option to confederate just isn't there for Sylvania and the Barrow Legion while I'm playing as Mannfred. It's not even a minor vs major faction thing, because Ghorst's faction can be confederated (putting aside his asinine amount of reluctance to do so).

Also, having some minor issues with the end game event. First of all, having the Wood Elf one fire just as I had four armies stationed in their shitty forest, with just one camp left to clear was rather unfortunate for the end game threat. Most of their armies got stomped hard immediately. Secondly, I find it kinda annoying that already conquered provinces related to the end game threat can still spawn their armies. I had two armies spawn right on the doorstep of my capital thanks to Oreon's Camp and then two more near Akendorf. At least as VC I'm the king of emergency armies.

It's also weird that not all of their camps spawn their armies. I'm fairly certain there's a Wood Elf grove somewhere in southern Cathay from my time sailing through their rivers to screw with Vilitch (who, for some god-forsaken reason, had one settlement right at the eastern edge of the map and then one more right next to the central Orc wasteland, which was quite annoying in terms of logistics once his genius ass declared war on me), yet when I was clicking through the event-related provinces that I have to clear to beat the event that one wasn't listed.

Other than that I'm having a blast.

[Faldric]

I think the AI needs better evaluation which fights to pick. They often abandon their last settlement because they think they will lose. Then you take the city, attrition kicks in for the AI and then they throw the remaining units against the now garrisioned army. It makes zero sense. They should try to take a different settlement or to defend the settlement.

[Mehrunes]

Goddamn, I forgot how devastating the Mortis Engine can be. Since I was right in the middle of Wood Elf forest of bullshit when the Wood Elf end game threat kicked in and spawned at least ten more armies on top of my ass, I had my hands busy. Between isolating the extra forest twerps with no way to escape and utilizing lighting strikes I destroyed half of them one by one, but then I got a huge fight with four armies at once. I was still pretty powerful due to the aforementioned tactics, but then I was out of moves and the big fight sapped my power quite a bit. So then three remaining Wood Elf armies attacked my settlement.

And boy, was that a mistake. For those who don't know, Wood Elf settlements have three points of interests, the central square and two slopes on each side leading to the square. And the AI attacked me with teeny tiny army of 1 lord and two heavily wounded archer units. The meat and bones of their army were the two reinforcement armies that were full health. And their spawning spot was right next to one of those slopes. And so was my for my two wounded armies.

And that slope turned into a goddamn meat grinder, because the end game Wood Elf army are weirdly spearmen-heavy. My Grave Guard were holding the line, supported by Mournghuls, Hexwraiths, Varghulfs and some cav, with Terrorgeists first dealing with two enemy lords on dragons and then screwing with the archers from behind. But due to low Winds of Magic reserve I got only two Winds of Death and two Purple Suns. Which still dealt a lot of damage since the enemy had no choice but to blob on that slope.

But one Mortis Engine outdamaged both my lords combined, dealing almost 70k damage and killing more than 700 units. And unlike the Corpse Carts and even the Black Coach I didn't even need to micro it at all. I just left it in the middle of the melee blob and it just destroyed it by existing.

[jackofwind]

Noctilus is massively, wildly, insanely broken with regards to quickly acquiring a dirt-cheap-upkeep Necrofex doomstack and annihilating all the neutral pirates and coastlines on the way to a piss easy campaign victory.

Auto-resolve heavily favors the stack early-game until you split it with a frontline of Leviathans (if need be) in late game, and Noctilus' casualty replenishment rate is insane so you'll fully heal at a maximum of 2 turns even after a decimating win. 1-turn Necrofex recruitment and insane income generation means on the off-chance you do lose one it's replaced immediately on the next turn while you're replenishing anyways.

Luckily the AI doesn't play him that way.

[Mehrunes]

The confederation acceptance is really something special. Barrow Legion has only its capital and one army. Base acceptance is -70, because of course. Diplomatic prospects bonus is whooping 0, because why not. And then there's the relative faction strength. I have 21 fully stacked end game armies. The bonus is fucking 22.5. I need two extra armies to increase it by an additional 0.1. And making any kind of a treaty with them, even if it's just a trade agreement, only reduces the relative strength modifier and makes it all the more impossible to confederate them. Ditto with Ghorst. -70 baseline, 39.5 from relative strength. He has two heavily wounded armies, with 20 units in total split among them. At least the option to confederate the Barrow Legion reappeared. The button is still missing in diplomatic talks with Sylvania.

[Combatbutler]

The confederation acceptance is really something special. Barrow Legion has only its capital and one army. Base acceptance is -70, because of course. Diplomatic prospects bonus is whooping 0, because why not. And then there's the relative faction strength. I have 21 fully stacked end game armies. The bonus is fucking 22.5. I need two extra armies to increase it by an additional 0.1. And making any kind of a treaty with them, even if it's just a trade agreement, only reduces the relative strength modifier and makes it all the more impossible to confederate them. Ditto with Ghorst. -70 baseline, 39.5 from relative strength. He has two heavily wounded armies, with 20 units in total split among them. At least the option to confederate the Barrow Legion reappeared. The button is still missing in diplomatic talks with Sylvania.

I really hope they do something about confederations, at this point point I have a feeling only high elves can confederate through influence spam.

[Jastall]

On the other hand, as Archaon everything Chaos wants to be my vassal. Kholek, Daniel, the Champions, even Be'lakor eventually were quite easily to vassalize. Kholek even threw 10K my way when I did it. Trogg will hear none of it so I might have to bonk the guy on the head someday, but in the meantime those dastardly vampires have backstabbed me as I started to get Grimgor under control. They seem a lot more aggressive than most AI factions who avoided my armies like the plague, sadly. I don't mind, I like that I'm a big empire at turn 96 and still have tons of stuff to do.

[Kumorii]

I really hope they do something about confederations, at this point point I have a feeling only high elves can confederate through influence spam.

They have announced they will change confederations in an upcoming patch. Eta still not known afaik.

- - - Updated - - -

On the other hand, as Archaon everything Chaos wants to be my vassal. Kholek, Daniel, the Champions, even Be'lakor eventually were quite easily to vassalize. Kholek even threw 10K my way when I did it. Trogg will hear none of it so I might have to bonk the guy on the head someday, but in the meantime those dastardly vampires have backstabbed me as I started to get Grimgor under control. They seem a lot more aggressive than most AI factions who avoided my armies like the plague, sadly. I don't mind, I like that I'm a big empire at turn 96 and still have tons of stuff to do.

Yeah, same with Valkia, vassalized everyone including the norscans so now the entire north of the mapp is just steamrolling south.

[KrayZ33]

After playing a bit more, I now believe that the Empire needs a patch/rework again. The Imperial Authority thing just doesn't work properly and has to be cheesed to not shoot yourself in the foot.
I also think that the elector counts should be able to join your wars in the beginning at a certain... what's it called... "loyality point" (or whatever it's called) threshold.

5+ = defensive alliance
8+ = "Vassalize"
2+ = non-agression pact.
3+ = Trade
10 = Confederate option.

And you should be able to just buy them out or demand money or something at a price/for a bonus. Or do something for them for more loyality on your own accord instead of relying on random stuff to happen.
It just doesn't feel right the way it is now.
In the end everything is still The Empire and the way I understood it, they are still part of the realm and support each other to some degree. But it doesn't feel like that in the campaign at all. In fact I'm more or less conquerering my own "allies" instead of winning them over.

Don't get me wrong. The "game" the empire has to play should last rather long... but the diplomacy you can do to advance this basically doesn't exist.

[Flurryfang]

It is insane how big a difference the implementation of Immortal Empires have made for the game, its like a completly new game, that is actually as diverse as it needs to be :O


But with the addition of the other races into the bigger map, some problems with WH3 are also much clearer and have a bigger impact.

1:Vassels/Confederations are lacking for how big a game Immortal Empires is. Not being able to confederate all factions of the same race, makes it feel like you are often lacking something if you go for a conquest victory. Its like playing pokemon and not being able to complete the pokedex, its painful. And while vassels are improved greatly, its hard to create a real coalition against Order/Chaos, since some races/factions just won't cooperate. It would be great if you could just dominate another race and take them over, forcing them to be your vassal and push towards your opponents.

2: Settlement battles are just not good and i have yet to actually play a single siege battle so far in Immortal Empires, because it is just so much more easy to siege for 2 turns and auto-resolve. Its a shame though, as some siege battles in TW2 was my favorite way to do battles, especially with gate or fortress sieges. There is alot of potential in having defensive style battles in TW and i for one believe that it can be done. Make Sieges Great Again!

3: Most characters are not prepared for having 50 levels. Hell, some were not ready to have 40 back in TW2, so now that we have an abundance in levels, its obvious that it was a thing CA did not completly thought through.
With the new levels, we simply need more stats to go into, more values to improve our heroes, so that when you meet a lvl 40 lord, they feel like an absolute monster of an opponent.

TW3 is finally getting good and the future looks brighter than ever for the series :O If they improve the important aspects of the game over the next 3-4 years, i believe that it might end up as one of the few close-to-perfect games out there

[KrayZ33]

2: Settlement battles are just not good and i have yet to actually play a single siege battle so far in Immortal Empires, because it is just so much more easy to siege for 2 turns and auto-resolve. Its a shame though, as some siege battles in TW2 was my favorite way to do battles, especially with gate or fortress sieges. There is alot of potential in having defensive style battles in TW and i for one believe that it can be done. Make Sieges Great Again!

Ah good point, I agree. And even though I knew how many settlement/siege battles you have to do in WH3, it's still way too many even if you were warned and prepared for that.
Open field battles are basically always ambushes.
Attrition kicking in immediatly is kinda silly. I didn't check, do castle walls give you some kind of "buffer" ? Like 3 turns before it kicks in or something?
Because it's just like you said.

"Close defeat and I don't feel like playing a 30 minute match? Guess I'll wait 2 turns and auto-resolve"
The enemy can't even do anything against it. Recruiting doesn't work... so there is no way for the AI to resolve this if the auto-battle AI says "if you sally out now, you might lose".
The AI won't do it and thus you just "won" the battle before it started.

Maybe there should be some kind of militia recruitment for the besieged faction. (T1 units only or something)
Or maybe they should just buff up the supplies you get per round by a very significant amount so that you can start with *way* more barricades and towers, but in the end this won't solve anything. It's too easy to cause attrition now.
2-4 Turns are *nothing*, especially now after the supply lines change.

As for the amount of settlement fights.
I think they should enable those once the region is leveled up to lvl 3.
Regions usually switch around often enough so that lvl 3 settlements are "relatively" rare even in endgame, unless a faction did really overwhelm their part of the map.

[Flurryfang]

Ah good point, I agree. And even though I knew how many settlement/siege battles you have to do in WH3, it's still way too many even if you were warned and prepared for that.
Open field battles are basically always ambushes.
Attrition kicking in immediatly is kinda silly. I didn't check, do castle walls give you some kind of "buffer" ? Like 3 turns before it kicks in or something?
Because it's just like you said.

"Close defeat and I don't feel like playing a 30 minute match? Guess I'll wait 2 turns and auto-resolve"
The enemy can't even do anything against it. Recruiting doesn't work... so there is no way for the AI to resolve this if the auto-battle AI says "if you sally out now, you might lose".
The AI won't do it and thus you just "won" the battle before it started.

Maybe there should be some kind of militia recruitment for the besieged faction. (T1 units only or something)
Or maybe they should just buff up the supplies you get per round by a very significant amount so that you can start with *way* more barricades and towers, but in the end this won't solve anything. It's too easy to cause attrition now.
2-4 Turns are *nothing*, especially now after the supply lines change.

As for the amount of settlement fights.
I think they should enable those once the region is leveled up to lvl 3.
Regions usually switch around often enough so that lvl 3 settlements are "relatively" rare even in endgame, unless a faction did really overwhelm their part of the map.

Im not sure, that the problem is attrition by turn 1, because i will say that it has an effect when i defend. It makes taking the fight more appealable, than just waiting 5 rounds until i can create an army nearby.

I think it is more about making the siege battles more fun. Its always gonna be more quick to just do auto-resolve, so maybe make it so that i really want to take the siege fight, because it is fun and interesting to play compared to open battles. Give me siege weapons and a large chance getting out with less losses, and it will be worth the try.

When it comes to defending, i think they should go away from the tower defense focus, and focus on actual fighting. Maybe allow me to support the garrison with more troops, with buff zones where i can fight/hold better, and overall just make the defensive advantage on stats and not towers, that takes it toll on the enemy army automaticly.