Total War: Warhammer 3 experiences...

[ZedClampet]

The other thread is a little all over the place. Thought I would create one for discussing the game now that it has launched.

I've got about 20 hours in the game so far, which for a game like this isn't much. As I learn new stuff or change my mind on things, I'll add posts to this thread.

Steam Reviews

People seem to be downvoting this primarily for low FPS. I'm getting 45 on Ultra on my laptop, and that's good enough for me. There's no reason you need high frame rates in a strategy game. Nothing is even moving on the screen most of the time. But I don't find the game poorly optimized at all. Forty-five FPS for my laptop in a CPU intensive game isn't bad, actually.

Major Changes

These are the big changes I've noticed so far:

Multiplayer (Co-op and PvP)

Simultaneous Turns: Finally they add the ability for everyone to take their turns at the same time. As someone who plays a lot of co-op, this is incredibly helpful. The game is moving along much more quickly.

Multiple Campaigns and up to 8 players at a time: Previously, so far as I know, Multiplayer was just two people. Now, depending on the campaign you choose, you can have up to 8. Campaign #1 is up to 8 and mirrors the single-player campaign. You can play as any faction. You must venture into the Chaos realm several times before any other faction does it. This can be done in either co-op or PvP, and you can even create teams in PvP. Campaign #2 is PvP and only for 2 players. You each play as Kislev. It's a simple one, just see who can claim the most territories in 30 turns (don't know if you can change that or not). Campaign #3 is Co-op, and maybe 2 or 3 players, can't remember, but you have to take over certain settlements in a set number of turns. My son and I had the pleasure of failing this campaign earlier today. You can only play this one as Cathay.

Happiness vs Control

Happiness has been changed to "control" and boy is it a nightmare. The entire time I played TWW2, I may have had one or 2 rebellions. I've already had 4 or 5 in this game in a very short amount of time. A lot of times there just isn't anything you can do, and you'll just have to be prepared to fight the rebel army. At one time tonight, I had two armies garrisoned in my home province, which I'd had control of for two dozen turns, and my control was simply stable.

Battle Maps

I haven't manually fought that many battles yet, but right now I would put them kind of in the mid-way point between Warhammer2 (boring) and Troy (crazy). They are definitely an improvement from the last game and give you a lot to think about when setting up your units.

Battle AI

I really need to test this more to give a definitive answer, but one thing I've definitely noticed is that the enemy will concentrate its ranged fire. This is bad news for the humans. I was fighting a battle today, and was concentrating on getting my cavalry through the line to do the hammer and anvil, and when I checked back at the center of my troops, my Lord was down to less than half health because every single enemy ranged unit was attacking him. That's quite something to deal with. Better go after those archers hard.

Outposts

Got an ally? You can build an outpost in one of their capitals, which lets you recruit anyone they can recruit (I think) as long as you have enough loyalty points (long story). Playing as Cathay and tired of your crap-tastic infantry? Hey, become an ally with the Dwarves, build and upgrade an outpost, and recruit some Dwarven units. This also helps out your ally by adding to their garrison. The Dwarves built an outpost in your capital? Now you have some dwarven units in your garrison.

Unique Faction Mechanics

As usual, each faction has their own mechanics. For instance, Cathay can send out caravans and earn pretty good amounts of gold. You might want to play a faction solo before playing it in multiplayer because you really don't get any explanation in multiplayer.

As a final note, I'm really enjoying the story. It's very, very strong for a game's story and especially for Total War.

 

[Pifanjr]

I haven't been able to play it yet and probably won't be able to for at least three months, but I've been reading every post on the subreddit.

Battle Maps

I haven't manually fought that many battles yet, but right now I would put them kind of in the mid-way point between Warhammer2 (boring) and Troy (crazy). They are definitely an improvement from the last game and give you a lot to think about when setting up your units.

Could you perhaps expand a bit more on this please? I've never considered the battles in Warhammer 2 boring. There's so much to micro that I usually put it on slow-motion so I don't get overwhelmed.

Battle AI

I really need to test this more to give a definitive answer, but one thing I've definitely noticed is that the enemy will concentrate its ranged fire. This is bad news for the humans. I was fighting a battle today, and was concentrating on getting my cavalry through the line to do the hammer and anvil, and when I checked back at the center of my troops, my Lord was down to less than half health because every single enemy ranged unit was attacking him. That's quite something to deal with. Better go after those archers hard.

I've read that the AI is very aggressive towards lords and heroes now. Not just with ranged units, I've read that Skarbrand in particular will just smash through your lines to get to your lord. Which honestly is how I play Warhammer 2 as well, as killing the enemy lord almost guarantees you can rout the rest of the enemy army fairly quickly afterwards.

Outposts

Got an ally? You can build an outpost in one of their capitals, which lets you recruit anyone they can recruit (I think) as long as you have enough loyalty points (long story).

From what I understand there are some units unavailable to be recruited with an outpost, primarily the highest tier ones.

 

[ZedClampet]

Could you perhaps expand a bit more on this please? I've never considered the battles in Warhammer 2 boring. There's so much to micro that I usually put it on slow-motion so I don't get overwhelmed.

I meant the maps were boring, not the battles. The maps (and I've only played a few, so take this with a grain of salt) seem to have more potential for creating chokepoints, for instance, and there seem to be more maps with lanes. Elevation seems more pronounced, as well.

I noticed that if you divide your forces into one main and one subgroup, that the enemy AI will try to overwhelm your subgroup. So I was defending on a map that had a large flat area on the left, a long, sharp decline to the right, and a small flat area on the far right. So I put a few units over on the right side and lined up some units at the top of the hill on the left. Sure enough, they sent about 8 units to my guys on the right, and I had them fall back as the line of units from the top left charged down the hill then caught the enemy units in the rear. Was a lot of fun.

I've read that the AI is very aggressive towards lords and heroes now. Not just with ranged units, I've read that Skarbrand in particular will just smash through your lines to get to your lord. Which honestly is how I play Warhammer 2 as well, as killing the enemy lord almost guarantees you can rout the rest of the enemy army fairly quickly afterwards.

Yep. In historical Total War games it's even easier, as the general isn't super powerful. Just get through their lines and head straight for him. Honestly, that made some games a little too easy.

One thing about the new factions is that their lords are all wizards, so smashing through the lines to get to them is pretty effective. Will be interesting to see what they do when the Immortal Empires campaign comes out and you can play someone like Thorgram Grudgebearer, or if they'll add factions to the original campaign that have warriors for lords. If I'm playing the dwarves, you don't have to smash through my line to get to Thorgram. He's right up front if you really want to fight him. I've never lost him yet. That's one bad dwarf.

From what I understand there are some units unavailable to be recruited with an outpost, primarily the highest tier ones.

We haven't really made it to this point yet because we've been starting new games after a few turns to try out the different factions, but if I had to guess, you can probably only recruit up to tier 3 level units. That seems to be as much as you can upgrade your outpost.

 

[Pifanjr]

I meant the maps were boring, not the battles. The maps (and I've only played a few, so take this with a grain of salt) seem to have more potential for creating chokepoints, for instance, and there seem to be more maps with lanes. Elevation seems more pronounced, as well.

Ah yes, a lot of battle maps in 2 are pretty bland, having only a small hill or a clump of trees as diversity.

One thing about the new factions is that their lords are all wizards, so smashing through the lines to get to them is pretty effective. Will be interesting to see what they do when the Immortal Empires campaign comes out and you can play someone like Thorgram Grudgebearer, or if they'll add factions to the original campaign that have warriors for lords. If I'm playing the dwarves, you don't have to smash through my line to get to Thorgram. He's right up front if you really want to fight him. I've never lost him yet. That's one bad dwarf.

I hadn't realized all the new lords are wizards. I assume Skarbrand is an exception?

We haven't really made it to this point yet because we've been starting new games after a few turns to try out the different factions, but if I had to guess, you can probably only recruit up to tier 3 level units. That seems to be as much as you can upgrade your outpost.

I'm pretty sure at least some of the tier 4 troops are available too.

 

[ZedClampet]

I hadn't realized all the new lords are wizards. I assume Skarbrand is an exception?

Sorry for the badly written response. I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that. Skarbrand and that guy with the Ogre Kingdoms are the two playable melee lords. I think that's it.

I'm pretty sure at least some of the tier 4 troops are available too.

Hope so. That would be great.

 

[ZedClampet]

I'm pretty sure at least some of the tier 4 troops are available too.

Played more last night. As it turns out, some tier 5 units are available, too. This is a really fun feature. Whoever thought of it did a great job. It adds so much to the game. I pay a lot more attention to diplomacy now and really nurture relationships with some of the other factions/races.

So I'm neck deep in a Cathay co-op campaign now, and better understand the faction. I'm really enjoying them. Just unlocked the tier 5 units, and they are pretty awesome. The Fire Rain Rockets (Tier 4) are fun. My son had 4 of them in his army and killed the opposing general before the army even reached his lines (he still lost the battle lol). The Sky-Junk (Tier 5) have the exact same attack as the Fire Rain Rockets and are mobile flyers. That sounds great until you realize the person shooting is in the middle of a 10 day drunk and can't hit a damn thing. You may be able to move right next to your target and be more effective, though. I've only used them once and that was in a custom battle. In my campaign, I haven't been able to afford the building that recruits them yet.

Unlike the Vortex campaign in 2, I haven't figured out a way to speed up the campaign or how to get ahead of the other factions. In Vortex, if you were playing as a ritual faction, you could just grab a bunch of ritual sites and be on your way. In this campaign you have to wait for the portals to Chaos to be opened up. Then you go through and do "the things" and get spit out on the campaign map again and have to wait for the next time the portals open again.

If I'm playing it right (and there's probably stuff I don't know yet), you are eventually going to have to address the other factions who are also going through the portals, otherwise that 4th portal is going to be a mad dash to the end, and the Chaos realm is not a place you want to do a mad dash through.

The options I can think of to take out/delay the opposing factions are to either send heroes to their regions and try to close all the portals before their armies can go through them, or to send an army into whatever region of Chaos they went to and defeat that army before it can complete its task. There's no option to send intervention armies like in the last game.

 

[Pifanjr]

There's no option to send intervention armies like in the last game.

Apparently you can intercept an AI army who has all 4 souls before it does the final battle, but they'll be able to try again after 15 turns, so that only works to buy yourself a little bit of time. Once there are several AI factions with 4 souls it would become almost impossible to stop all of them.

Someone compiled all of the data they could find for the daemon realms by reading through the game's scripts:
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/syr0uh/the_chaos_realms_tips_and_ai_cheats/



And someone made a guide to edit the amount of rounds between rifts and how many rounds they stay open (or rather, how to remove the rifts entirely, but you can follow the guide to just adjust the numbers instead):

Total War - no rifts

Thanks for AzertyKeys! AzertyKeys thread link: https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/svv5td/for_those_who_want_to_mod_the_rifts_out_and_so/ Thanks for AzertyKeys! 1 Step 1 download RFPM 1 Step 2: unpack and run rpfm 2 Step 3: open warhammer 3 pack file 2 Step 4: allow to save CA packfiles ...

docs.google.com

 

[ZedClampet]

And someone made a guide to edit the amount of rounds between rifts and how many rounds they stay open (or rather, how to remove the rifts entirely, but you can follow the guide to just adjust the numbers instead):

I've been avoiding the deep dive into the files until they fully support modding, which should be any day now.

 

[ZedClampet]

Played a battle last night defending a settlement with a garrison. Wanted to try the new "tower defense" mechanics. Was kind of fun, but not overly helpful. It might turn the tide if the battle is really close. In my case, I was kind of overmatched and it didn't really help at all, Built barriers and funneled the enemy up one patch and had a tower shooting at them, but it really only did minimal damage to a single unit.

In other news, I found out you can move while encamped. This is incredibly helpful in the portals where you take constant attrition.

The Grand Cathay caravans seem to need balancing. At around turn 80 neither one of us can get a caravan to complete its journey. I've stopped sending them, as it's a waste of money. Maybe it's supposed to be an early game thing, dunno.

 

[ZedClampet]

Won my single-player campaign. Decided to play a little differently. I did the entire campaign having only my home province, which was two minor settlements and my capitol. Was actually quite fun for me this way. At the end of the game, the entire map was covered in chaos corruption except for my little patch of ground.

Thought the campaign was fun up until I got to the fourth portal, then there was not much fun to be had. The fourth portal makes you rely on RNG and blind luck to get to the battle. It's a large area with many different levels. Each level has at least 2 teleporters. You have no idea where the teleporters go until you stop in a particular spot on each level and ask the chaos god to reveal two teleporters to you. The ones that he reveals may or may not (most likely) be useful to you. When you ask the chaos god to do this, it ends your turn. At the end of every turn, you get attacked by one or two 20 stack armies, which depletes your numbers. Also, you have to move in the garrisoned stance to avoid attrition and get a small number of your lost people back. You can easily get attacked 5 or six times per level, and you may not even be going in the right direction. And there don't have to be armies on that level for you to be attacked. It simply spawns them in. The result is an incredibly frustrating experience where you are lost, confused and losing strength constantly.

I didn't really enjoy the final battle, either. Was too chaotic with too many enemies, and it lasted forever. Seemed much crazier than the vortex battles in 2, but maybe I was still angry about the 4th portal.

Overall, except for the end, it was a good campaign with an impactful story. Because of the end, though, I'm not sure how many more of these I'll actually play. I may wait for the Immortal Empires campaign to release.

 

[ZedClampet]

That was on "Normal" difficulty by the way. Honestly, I wouldn't have made it through the 4th portal, due to bad luck, if I had been on any higher difficulty.

When I went back to our co-op campaign, and I had many provinces instead of just one, I thought, "What a mess." Because of all the portals opening all over the place and the ensuing, massive chaos corruption, if I ever do play this campaign again, I'll do it the same way, with just one province. It really only hurts, imo, to have more territory.

Oh, and when I was complaining about the caravans, it was because I was using the wrong strategy. in my solo game, I only had one caravan guy that I used over and over, and it was fine. In the multiplayer one, I tried using several guys, and none of them ever got strong enough.

 

[ZedClampet]

There are a few people on reddit who are not amused that the campaign is most easily won by not expanding your faction's control. I can kind of see their point.

 

[Brian Boru]

not amused that the campaign is most easily won by not expanding your faction's control

I can see their point too. That's my main beef with Civ5, that the 'wide' strategy doesn't work.

 

[Pifanjr]

The fourth portal makes you rely on RNG and blind luck to get to the battle.

In the link in my previous post it's shown there is a limited number of possible routes and it should be possible to get to the end in a maximum of 6 jumps.

 

[ZedClampet]

In the link in my previous post it's shown there is a limited number of possible routes and it should be possible to get to the end in a maximum of 6 jumps.

Thanks. I try to avoid strategy guides whenever possible. But, yeah, I'm playing Kislev this morning (my only settlement is Kislev), and I figured out a good strategy for that portal. Don't think I'll have anymore problems with it. But I've discovered that it was bugged the other night when I was playing. This playthrough was completely different. There was no randomly being teleported. The game didn't spawn in extra armies to attack me every turn. Was just a whole different experience.

 

[ZedClampet]

Yesterday I discovered something new and wonderful (to me). I had just signed a peace treaty with someone, and suddenly they sent an army and parked it next to my city. It annoys the ever-loving hell out of me when a faction without Military Access wanders into my territory. But I noticed there was a little button above that army's flag. When I hovered my mouse over it, it said to select the button to warn that faction to get out of your territory. If they don't leave in two turns, you can declare war on them without penalty. That's actually something I've wanted to be able to do in Total War for a long time. Very glad they put that in.

I've finished two campaigns, a single player and a co-op campaign, both with Cathay (which is not a popular faction to play for some reason, but I like them). Currently, I have a Kislev single-player campaign going. We had a problem with our second co-op campaign playing the Ogres. It won't let my son into the Impossible Fortress in The Realm of the Sorcerer. That's a major problem. We reverted to an old save, and it still wouldn't let him in. Now we're going to try to revert to a much older save before that instance was generated, but it's a bit annoying. That one realm has been really buggy for us. Previously we experienced a random teleporting bug, which teleported you to a different level every time you clicked somewhere, a bug with too many enemy armies spawning every time you finished your turn, this bug where you can't get in the final battle, and we've also crashed to desktop twice while in this realm. I think it needs some work. Ogres are a lot of fun, though.

 

[ZedClampet]

Should I make a generic Total War thread? @Pifanjr is still playing TW2, and I like reading his stories. Plus, I'm going to be playing Troy some more. Also, I'm going to remote hypnotize @Brian Boru and make him play some Total War.

 

[Pifanjr]

Should I make a generic Total War thread? @Pifanjr is still playing TW2, and I like reading his stories. Plus, I'm going to be playing Troy some more. Also, I'm going to remote hypnotize @Brian Boru and make him play some Total War.

Yes, you should. I'll keep posting my game stories to the Currently Playing threads, but it would be nice to have a place to discuss the game further as well.

 

[Brian Boru]

Should I make a generic Total War thread?

Definitely. Much easier for me to beam my anti-hypno defenses at just one thread.

 

[Pifanjr]

Definitely. Much easier for me to beam my anti-hypno defenses at just one thread.

Anti-hypno defense sounds like it defends against anti-hypno, implying that you are afraid of someone preventing you from being hypnotized.

 

[ZedClampet]

I just finished my Kislev campaign. I'm used to the final battle now, so that's not a big problem, but after the battle, Ba'lakor (the game's antagonist Demon demi-god, is standing in Kislev (which is supposed to be Russia) in the snow, and in his disgusted, deep and raspy voice he says, "So many snowflakes.."

At least he didn't call me a beta.

 

[Pifanjr]

Some more information about the upcoming patches was released: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1142710?emclan=103582791469281609&emgid=3127192599498940954

Seems like it's going to take a bit longer for the 1.1 patch to be released, but it should address a bunch of balance issues and modify the realms of chaos mechanic, as well as squash some of the major bugs.

I'm hoping to get a new SSD in about two months, at which point I'll have the space to install Warhammer 3 and it seems most of the major issues will be fixed by then.

 

[ZedClampet]

Some more information about the upcoming patches was released: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1142710?emclan=103582791469281609&emgid=3127192599498940954

Seems like it's going to take a bit longer for the 1.1 patch to be released, but it should address a bunch of balance issues and modify the realms of chaos mechanic, as well as squash some of the major bugs.

I'm hoping to get a new SSD in about two months, at which point I'll have the space to install Warhammer 3 and it seems most of the major issues will be fixed by then.

I agree that most of the things they talked about there do need some work. My Ogre lord got two negative traits back to back right as I went into a portal. One was (all units) -30% melee defense, and the second one was -20% melee defense. I was forced to manually fight all the battle and to remain in the encampment stance.

Overall, from reading on Reddit, who whole rift thing is maybe unbalanced. There are quite a few people who are failing this campaign and just can't get it right..

 

[ZedClampet]

CA released some notes about the first major update coming in early April. The major changes as I see it are surrounding the chaos realm. The negative traits your lord earns while there will be half as strong and he/she will lose those traits as soon as they are done in the realm. Also, if you have to intercept another faction that is getting ready to fight the final battle, if you win, that faction loses all it's souls and has to start over. Previously winning only gave you 15 turns to get to the final battle yourself. Honestly, making the opposing faction lose everything seems a bit much to me, but it will certainly make the game more relaxing if that's what they were shooting for.

Modding tools and workshop support will be included in the update. I've been looking through the files thinking of things I'd like to do. The only thing I've done so far is change the rift scripts for a co-op game with my son. Since he can't stand playing that way, I just got rid of them. Well, actually, I let them open once because there is a realm you can go into and get nice rewards from, but once they close they don't come back.

My favorite faction to play is the Ogre Kingdom, so naturally they are being heavily nerfed because they are messing up PvP. This makes me sad. I'm not really sure CA understands exactly why the Ogres keep winning, though. It's not because of individual units being exceptionally good. It's partially because they are melee focused. They have melee generals and heroes and their infantry and cavalry are very strong. People really over-value magic in this game, and that's where the other factions are losing--most of them are magic-centered. I never did get around to playing all the factions in WH2, but of the ones I played, the only magic user who wasn't a liability was Lord Kroak. I still put magic users in my armies because they are fun, but you'd be better off with people who can fight. If you had two evenly matched armies getting ready to fight, and one army had your standard wizards as Lord and hero, and the other one had a melee lord and a melee hero, the melee army would trounce the magic one (assuming mid to late game stats for the lords and heroes).

But the major reason the ogres win campaigns is because of their camp system. I'm not going to go into detail about how that works, but if you use it correctly, you can have extra top-tier armies--up to 7 of them. I mean, come on. If you have several extra armies with nothing but tier 5 units and you still lose, I have no idea what you were doing.

Oh, another good thing they are changing is the 'influenced by chaos' negative traits your lords and heroes almost can't help but to acquire. Now there will be a method of losing those traits. I have literally dismissed high level lords and heroes who have acquired these traits, and I actually abandoned an SP campaign when it happened to my legendary lord. You simply can't have someone who is causing -10 control everywhere he/she goes. Rebellions are already problematic enough.

 

[Pifanjr]

CA released some notes about the first major update coming in early April. The major changes as I see it are surrounding the chaos realm. The negative traits your lord earns while there will be half as strong and he/she will lose those traits as soon as they are done in the realm.

Only if you win the final battle, so you would still have them if you get kicked out if someone else beats you to the end.

Also, if you have to intercept another faction that is getting ready to fight the final battle, if you win, that faction loses all it's souls and has to start over. Previously winning only gave you 15 turns to get to the final battle yourself. Honestly, making the opposing faction lose everything seems a bit much to me, but it will certainly make the game more relaxing if that's what they were shooting for.

It seems a bit much to me too, but they did the same thing with the Vortex campaign and people already avoided the entire ritual mechanic there too despite of that, so I guess it's preferable to most players.

People really over-value magic in this game, and that's where the other factions are losing--most of them are magic-centered. I never did get around to playing all the factions in WH2, but of the ones I played, the only magic user who wasn't a liability was Lord Kroak. I still put magic users in my armies because they are fun, but you'd be better off with people who can fight. If you had two evenly matched armies getting ready to fight, and one army had your standard wizards as Lord and hero, and the other one had a melee lord and a melee hero, the melee army would trounce the magic one (assuming mid to late game stats for the lords and heroes).

From the lists of top tier lords, I think Teclis is the only caster lord besides Mazdamundi. The rest is all melee focused or a hybrid melee and spell caster.

I hardly used any magic on my first campaign three campaigns, which were with Settra, Thorek and Repanse, but with Direfin I used magic quite a lot. Summoning Rotting Prometheans is very useful to hold annoying units back while the rest of your army unloads their bullets on them, while Vargheist's Revenge can just delete multiple units, though it's not easy to set up with how long it takes to trigger.

Oh, another good thing they are changing is the 'influenced by chaos' negative traits your lords and heroes almost can't help but to acquire. Now there will be a method of losing those traits. I have literally dismissed high level lords and heroes who have acquired these traits, and I actually abandoned an SP campaign when it happened to my legendary lord. You simply can't have someone who is causing -10 control everywhere he/she goes. Rebellions are already problematic enough.

You could already lose those traits by putting your lord in untainted land. The problem was that factions that generate corruption themselves also needed to find untainted land, which didn't make sense. Those factions can now also get rid of these penalties by being in an area of their own corruption. I think it still takes 20 turns though.