Total War: Warhammer is coming

[Josquius]

So. .....razing enemy settlements..... you mean burn them and go home, returning the settlement to enemy hands?
Realistic I guess.  But potentially annoying.

[jimmy olsen]

So. .....razing enemy settlements..... you mean burn them and go home, returning the settlement to enemy hands?
Realistic I guess.  But potentially annoying.

If a human player takes an ork hold, I wonder if they can give it to their dwarf allies, or vice versa?

[Lettow77]

Orc with a C. K is the space fungus.



To put this issue to bed; Undead do indeed have the fatigue and morale everyone else does. They experience these shocks normally-  There is no special mechanic for mass crumbling when the Lord dies, for example, just the normal severe morale hit that is inflicted when a general dies applies to the undead as well. And undead leadership is mostly very poor. The only difference (As I noted previously) is how undead react to having their morale flatline: Instead of routing or shattering, they burst into treats. Constant HP loss that does not otherwise impair their ability to function but soon destroys the unit.

In the above picture you can see the zombies have been running a bit and need to catch their breath, but they are tucked in nicely between two other units so they feel safe and comfy, keeping them at Eager. These are enthusiastic and intrepid zombies with can-do spirit.


It's a pretty miserable design decision. I was expecting the most from Vampire Counts among the five initial factions, but for the immediate future i'll pin my hopes on Bretonnia. Bretonnia is basically M:TW 3, so needlessly conservative and unimaginative design decisions won't hurt them as they have the Undead.

[Martinus]

Bretonians vs. Orks

Looks absolutely beautiful.

https://youtu.be/p_AD4gHVrWU

Err, it looks absolutely shitty. 

[Valmy]

Man I want to play the Empire in a Warhammer Total War game so bad. This better not be shit.

[Razgovory]

So. .....razing enemy settlements..... you mean burn them and go home, returning the settlement to enemy hands?
Realistic I guess.  But potentially annoying.

I never do that to enemy settlements.  A proper Razing is a series of irrational arguments interspersed with jokes.

[jimmy olsen]

http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Siege_Q_and_A

...
What's with Undead getting tired?

That's placeholder, Undead don't get tired, instead they are animated by the strength of their lords' magical control over them, and this can be affected by their activities in battle. The bond between a unit and their lord can be weakened in a similar fashion to 'tiredness' but the terminology used in the final game will make this clearer.


Are there different speeds of crumbling?

In the game there's two states of 'Crumbling'. The first is similar to when a non-undead unit is starting to break or 'shaken', an undead unit will crumble slowly at this point as the magic that binds them weakens under assault. Then, when a non-undead unit would be shattered, the undead unit crumbles at a much faster rate.

In the final game we're going to make sure that the two crumbling states are easy to understand, and we are still balancing the effect and speeds involved.

[Berkut]

THe undead don't get tired, why that would be silly!

Instead they will get "Less Animated" which acts in every exactly the same as "Tired" but we replaced the label, so no worries!

[Lettow77]

 Besides the foolishness about being tired, from the several battles we've seen the undead play extremely conventionally, with the same hammer-and-anvil tactics that have ruled the game since Shogun 1. When skeleton warriors clash with empire halberdiers, there isn't much appreciable difference.

The main problem I see is that they've downplayed raising dead- it's harder to do and less rewarding than in tabletop, and having several casters does nothing to increase the cap on fresh undead you can raise, while restoring the numbers of existing undead is also more difficult than i'd like it to be. Vampire Counts should be a very top-heavy race that leans on its casters heavily, and should be in little danger of running low on troops as long as they have magical supremacy.

Regeneration and raising the dead are almost irrelevant side-abilities in the current build though, so Vampire Counts big iconoclastic tactical difference is that the don't have archers.

[Valmy]

so Vampire Counts big iconoclastic tactical difference is that the don't have archers.

What? Boooooo!

At least they CAN raise dead so maybe modders can once again bail out Creative Assembly.

[jimmy olsen]

so Vampire Counts big iconoclastic tactical difference is that the don't have archers.

What? Boooooo!

At least they CAN raise dead so maybe modders can once again bail out Creative Assembly.

Raising the dead is very easy. Lettow is very biased and completely exaggerates.

https://youtu.be/2a9nF8X2Yd4?t=215

Also, here's a VC assault on Altdorf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SFM6-LC6io

[Lettow77]

I hadn't looked for attacks from Languish's intrepid reporter. While your own bent toward hype with regards to upcoming games is well known,  what stake would I have in this game not being excellent? I believe I have followed it closest of anyone on Languish, and hope for the best.

Sleepy skellies or Knightless battles against Bretonnia are not the best.

But to clear up accusations of exaggerating, let's look at the facts of Raising the Dead as shown in game.

Raising a fresh unit creates a unit of Zombies, or, if boosted, a unit of skeletons. There must be army slots available to cast, meaning you cannot do so if you have a full stack of a Lord and 19 other units. Additionally, the spell has a hard cap of twice per battle, regardless of how many spellcasters you have brought.

But that isn't the whole story. There is also the Invocation of Nehek, which heals an existing unit. In tabletop it would immediately add multiple new models, potentially beyond the starting amount. Instead of providing new men to a unit outright, in-game it restores hp to existing units first, and is slow enough that a unit engaged in melee will take about as much damage as it heals, or more. Unable to heal very rapidly, what it won't do is appreciably regrow your number of skellies.

Unlike Raise Dead, it has no hard cap on casting, but does have a cool down. It is neither spammable nor decisive, having more in combat with the combat buff spells Empire and Orcs also have.

This stands in contrast to contrast to the tabletop experience, where VC could restore ranks to several units a turn, and any combat that didn't end swiftly would go to the Vampires as they replenished their losses indefinitely.

Have you ever played the tabletop game, Tim？

[Tamas]

THe undead don't get tired, why that would be silly!

Instead they will get "Less Animated" which acts in every exactly the same as "Tired" but we replaced the label, so no worries!

Yeah, sounds just like a renaming.

[jimmy olsen]

This stands in contrast to contrast to the tabletop experience, where VC could restore ranks to several units a turn, and any combat that didn't end swiftly would go to the Vampires as they replenished their losses indefinitely.

Have you ever played the tabletop game, Tim？

How many people on Lnaguish, a rather nerdy subset of the population, have ever played tabletop? Not that many, are all of us who haven't played tabletop not entitled to an opinion?

[Lettow77]

 Of course you're entitled to your opinion! I just wondered what perspective you were approaching it from, beyond the general Tim-is-hyped-to-be-hyped angle.

Total Warhammer is trying to wear two hats as once as a fairly faithful representation of the tabletop world and a Total War game. They are doing a pretty good job, with 0 innovations or new units unsupported by the lore, but I'd say they've leaned more in favor of the "Total War" than "Warhammer Fantasy" end of the spectrum. That's not a bad thing at all, but a side-effect has been some very unoriginal and conservative choices.

Chaos, Dwarves, Orcs and the Empire don't represent that much of a departure from Total War as we've known it-  Yes, there are monstrous infantry and spells, but the General's abilities have gotten increasingly "spell-like" from Shogun 2 onwards, and the game already had Elephants.  Flying units and spells (that they've been very moderate in the application of, repeatedly stressing they won't be overpowered) are a big change, but it supplements the hammer & anvil that is the meat of the game rather than replacing it.

Vampire Counts, an untiring, unfeeling army of the dead, represent a major departure from the Total War's tested formula that the other factions don't. Units outside the General's "leadership bubble" (A concept fortuitously present in either warhammer or total war) cannot march, and so shamble across the board slowly. To add to this, they lose combat to virtually everyone- even Bretonnian peasants will put in a respectable performance against zombies and skeletons. But if they aren't slain outright, they are almost assured to come back from the dead. The battle is won by killing the summoners, or somehow overcoming his dark mastery in the magic phase. It's thematic and makes sense- A stake through Dracula and all his horrors of the night dissipate.

But Vampire Counts were too many changes at once. Asked to accept an army that was able to make good almost all of its casualties, ignoring fatigue and morale and dependent mostly on Magic, a new feature they are trying to keep toned down, CA decided that was a lot of risks to take and went with what we have- Undead units that can run(!) with or without proximity to their Lord, but feel the effects of morale and fatigue.  It has recently been renamed, but the effects and mechanics are the same- The same things that will make a man of Stirland reassured, afraid or tired will work the same results upon the dead man of Sylvania. The ability to raise dead and restore lost ranks is greatly downplayed, as I have explained at length earlier, but more than anything else it's that nothing changes.

I still won't want to fight up a hill, because its dispiriting and tiring for my skeletons, and the enemy charging downhill will enjoy a bonus to momentum that will inflict casualties I can't afford to place.

I will still win my battles by holding their line in place with infantry and attacking from the sides with cavalry, which has been the go-to strategy of Total War for as long as it's been a series.

It's disappointing for a faction that I was looking forward to the most of the initial five, as they promised to shake up a lot and be free of the conventions of the game.