Total War: Warhammer

[Cyborg]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/03/31/total-war-warhammer-vampire-counts/

There are a whole series of these gameplay videos. It looks great. Only two concerns: is the strategic layer interesting beyond just the battles, and are they going to do a blood bowl moneymaking scheme where they sell a new race every single month for a zillion dollars, unbalancing everything?

Those two concerns are the only thing keeping me from paying top dollar for this game. I don't mind if they do an expansion every year or something like that, but if they do a trickle feed of race DLC, not going near this title.

[Wingflier]

Honestly I've been thinking about making this thread for weeks, but you finally beat me to it.

This game does indeed look amazing. I'm never been a big fan of the Total War series, but this one looks different from the rest. For one thing, being set in a fantasy setting it has things like dragons, ogres, and flamethrowers, which is a lot more interesting than your typical swords and arrows rah rah rah.

Also the (so far) 5 different races with their own unique mechanics seems to spice things up a lot as well, instead of "human", as it was in every other game.

I've also always loved the Warhammer universe. It's just so full of amazing ideas and concepts. There's no other universe that perfectly blends both fantasy and sci-fi elements together so seamlessly. It's truly a work of art, and if they can capture it in a Total War game, I have no doubt it will be as amazing as it sounds.

[Coppermantis]

Between this and Battlefield Gothic: Armada, I'm glad we're finally getting some more good Warhammer PC games. Nothing's really stood out since Space Marine and Dawn of War, so that the new games are looking decent is a welcome change.

[Cyborg]

Between this and Battlefield Gothic: Armada, I'm glad we're finally getting some more good Warhammer PC games. Nothing's really stood out since Space Marine and Dawn of War, so that the new games are looking decent is a welcome change.

I thought Armada looked like crap on twitch. All of the gameplay videos from the trailers show these awesome space battles, I couldn't believe my eyes it was so awesome. And then when I looked on twitch, I saw everyone playing naval warfare on this map overlay screen. It's the same thing that the wargame series did which completely disappointed me. Are there awesome graphics? Yeah probably, but apparently that's not how the game is played.

[Toranth]

Love Warhammer.  Hate Total War.
What to do, what to do... The pain is killing me!   

Between this and Battlefield Gothic: Armada, I'm glad we're finally getting some more good Warhammer PC games. Nothing's really stood out since Space Marine and Dawn of War, so that the new games are looking decent is a welcome change.

BFG is turning out to be very much like the original Tabletop version, complete with widespread whining about unbalanced ships and features.  I still pre-ordered, and am playing a lot of it, because I loved the original.  If you didn't like the original, or don't like mid-paced 2D small fleet naval battles, it probably isn't for you.

Now if only they'd make an Advanced Space Crusade... And combine it with Space Hulk and BFG for amazing fighting/boarding combined games...

[Wingflier]

This is a game I'll probably end up pre-purchasing a few days before release, then making full use of Steam's "trial system", which gives me 2 hours to see if I enjoy the game or not.

Of course on a game of this scale two hours is practically nothing, but perhaps I'll at least get a glimpse of whether the game is worth keeping. As someone who has historically not been a fan of the Total War series, there is a lot of things that could go right, and an even bigger list of things that could go wrong, and I don't think I can trust 3rd party reviewers to make that decision for me.

[chemical_art]

This is a game I'll probably end up pre-purchasing a few days before release, then making full use of Steam's "trial system", which gives me 2 hours to see if I enjoy the game or not.

Of course on a game of this scale two hours is practically nothing, but perhaps I'll at least get a glimpse of whether the game is worth keeping. As someone who has historically not been a fan of the Total War series, there is a lot of things that could go right, and an even bigger list of things that could go wrong, and I don't think I can trust 3rd party reviewers to make that decision for me.

As a huge fan of the total war series, I will suggest that for your excellent idea of taking advantage of the trial system that you wait a couple of months (typically first expansion at least) before diving into the game. I cannot remember a total war game that was not horribly broke at launch. Even by modern standards it is bad. However, they get many of the problems by the time the first true expansion happens and by the time they do their "game of the year / superior" version they get virtually all of them. So unless you are certain you are going to love the game it is better to just wait and let the red shirts sort it out for you.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, TW games are a bit like wine. The problem is they're still in the "bunch of feet stomping grapes" phase during release. So if you don't like the taste of feet, wait a while.

After a number of years there's stuff like the middle earth mod for Medieval TW 2, and it's sublime.

[Wingflier]

This game comes out in a few days, and from the looks of it, it's already pretty polished. I was watching a Twitch stream of a couple guys playing in "Co-op" mode. I don't know if that means there's a co-op campaign or if they were just playing a randomly generated skirmish map on the same team.

Either way, it was a lot of fun to watch. They both had their own cities and armies, which they controlled individually (simultaneous turns), however, when a battle ensued, something even more epic occurred.

The problem with these types of games is that generally, when one player goes into a battle, the other player is forced to spectate for the duration of the battle because if they were to skip the battle, they'd still be forced to wait until the other player was finished to end their turn. This was how it worked in the latest Heroes of Might and Magic game (VII) that just came out a couple months ago. Needless to say, this is a less than ideal way of playing a "co-op" game. But being forced to auto-resolve all your battles just so your friend doesn't die of boredom isn't much fun either.

However, Creative Assembly has come up with a GENIUS idea. For the player(s) spectating, the person who commands the army can give control of certain units to his friend, providing him with something to do and taking a massive amount of micromanagement burden off of himself (anyone who has experienced the Total War series in the past knows how overwhelming it can become). So in the stream I was watching, the defending player gave his ally both his archers and his cavalry while he kept the melee units and hero for himself.

Watching them coordinate their attacks was extremely exciting and enjoyable. The developers thought of everything. You can even draw on the map to give more specific and detailed instructions on how to attack or defend in an extremely chaotic battlefield.

The way the two armies clashed in the middle, but that the battles then became fragmented and centralized at different points all over the map was one of the most realistic and epic parts of watching them play. And having to coordinate despite the disorganized madness was very inspiring to watch. It was flank, to counter-flank, to flank again. The enemy AI seemed surprisingly intelligent as well, especially since it had been given only a 40% chance to win at the beginning of the battle. It was retreating, kiting, and flanking wherever possible. It would use its mounted archer units to force casualties on the slower melee units, then retreat as soon as they got close, continuing to harass them through attrition as they tried in vain to catch them. Even though it eventually lost, it created enough causalities for them to make their lives miserable going forward.

This feature really makes the game for me. I can't imagine what playing co-op would have been like without it (well actually I can after my experience with HoMM VII, it would have sucked). When I tuned into the stream they had already been playing for 11 hours straight together, and from what I could tell, they were having the time of their lives.

I'll post the video as soon as the stream goes down.

[Wingflier]

Preliminary reviews of the game surprisingly show no signs of major performance or optimization problems. In fact, the game itself seems to have a lack of design problems as well. Many people are hailing it as the most polished Total War release of all time.

Ironically, some of the most common complaints were that there was TOO much fighting, and that the importance of the campaign map (strategic layer) has given way to a much more battle-oriented game (tactical layer), where the outcome of each skirmish plays a much larger role than it did before in deciding victor and vanquished.

Personally, I love this, as my main beef with the previous installments of the Total War series has been that the campaign is too centered around playing Civilization, with the casual battle thrown in every few hours. This seems to be a much more war-centric title, and I'm loving every moment of that news.

It's received glowing reviews from pretty much every gaming site on Earth, with the worst review I found coming from Rock-Paper-Shotgun. The reviewer claimed that he loved the game, but found the economy portion to be lacking, and claimed that the game limits your ability to field an army because of insane upkeep costs and lack of options in terms of generating resources, creating a massive rubberbanding effect where losing one battle can spell the end of your campaign.

However, many players in the comments disagreed with him, citing examples of where they had up to 5 large and advance-tech armies at once, with the economy to pay for it. This reviewer's proficiency at correctly playing the game, in other words, has been brought into question.

Anyway, I'm still deciding whether I want to pre-order this. I found it for $45 online, but going this route would most likely preclude my ability to refund it should I decide I don't like it in the end. Is it worth the extra $15 to be able to return it, and furthermore would I be able to get a proper impression of it in 2 hours anyway?

I could of course wait several months before purchasing it (once all the inevitable bugs and design flaws had been addressed), but then I would have to buy the Chaos faction separately, something that I might end up paying more for in the end anyway.

[Wingflier]

Well, I've played ten hours of the game so far and these are my first impressions:

I had every reason to dislike it.

1. I've never liked any of the Total War games. Too complicated, too slow paced, battles every few hours, combat was boring, everything was boring, somebody please kill me.

2. I've never liked the "Civilization" genre of game in general. Yes, I know not everybody would lump Total War into the same genre, but to me it is. It's basically just Civilization except with real-time combat. This goes for the Heroes of Might and Magic series as well, except it has turn-based combat. You build cities on the campaign map, capture territory, all the AIs have their turn, there are the subfactions, the diplomacy, the technology trees, the armies and blah blah blah, it's all the same game in different packaging. That's my opinion. I don't know exactly what it would be called but I call it the Civilization genre and I've never liked it because boring as all hell.

3. I hate diplomacy in general. I've never seen it done right. It's either way too easy to exploit or way too complicated to be any fun.

So knowing all of these things going into it, the reason I was still willing to shell out 45 bucks was because I LOVE the Warhammer Universe, and I thought maybe the cool factor of that would somehow make up for all the elements of the genre that I detest. Also it looked like they were doing it a little differently since it was part of the Warhammer franchise, and (presumably) they didn't want to make another Total War game in slightly different (and more colorful) packaging. At best, I expected to have a game that I moderately enjoyed playing, SOMETIMES, when I was in a mellow enough mood to be bored out of my mind but also wanting to do a Civilization style game.

Instead, I was absolutely blown away. This game is...everything I could have ever wanted and more. It is NOTHING, I mean NOTHING like the other Total War games or any other game I've played that remotely relates to it in the same genre. They NAILED the Warhammer feel. It is battle after glorious battle. You'll be lucky to go 3 turns without engaging in combat on several different fronts. You can not "Oh I'm going to diplomacy and Sim City my way through this" no f*ck you, this is Warhammer, go hard or go home we're killing you. The constant battles, all the campaign portion of the game does is lead up and complement those instead of the other way around. There is no diplomacy option. Oh, don't get me wrong, you can make allies, but the only purpose of making allies is to have more war buddies. And the battles themselves are EPIC. Just EPIC. Like Lord of the Rings level, Gimli and Aragorn fighting off hordes of enemies by themselves somebody pinch me I'm crapping my pants epic.

I'm done talking about it. One of the most common negative reviews I saw on Steam was the complaint that the game is so different to the previous installments of the Total War series, and long-time fans were unhappy with how different it felt and played to the last 8 million games before it. If you like Total War, you should probably stay away. If you hate Total War, this is the game for you.

[eRe4s3r]

Yeah after 137+ turns I have to say this game is a blast ,)

Also got my "The Stuff of Legend Achievement" (win a battle where it's 10:1 against you) when my puny garrison (ok, it was actually a tier 3 town with no wall) was attacked by stack with 7 !!! heroes. Fought nearly 20 minutes on that one.

[Mánagarmr]

Nailing the Warhammer feel isn't however, overly difficult. Just go 110% steampunk grimdark with assholes in every corner and a catholic church on steroids and there you go.

[Wingflier]

Yeah after 137+ turns I have to say this game is a blast ,)

Also got my "The Stuff of Legend Achievement" (win a battle where it's 10:1 against you) when my puny garrison (ok, it was actually a tier 3 town with no wall) was attacked by stack with 7 !!! heroes. Fought nearly 20 minutes on that one.

How in God's name did you achieve that?

[eRe4s3r]

Yeah after 137+ turns I have to say this game is a blast ,)

Also got my "The Stuff of Legend Achievement" (win a battle where it's 10:1 against you) when my puny garrison (ok, it was actually a tier 3 town with no wall) was attacked by stack with 7 !!! heroes. Fought nearly 20 minutes on that one.

How in God's name did you achieve that?

Undead specialty monsters, you get them at tier 3 towns for free in defense, assuming you have a guard post (first upgrade before walls) they are amazing when the enemy doesn't have the right counters ,p Also to be fair, I really do know how to play vampires in this ;p Lack of artillery and archers just means you can't play a waiting game no matter what, bog down heroes with trash (zombies) And flank them with anything that can easily disengage again, you want the charge bonus damage, not a melee fight.

The combat pre-screen had a solid red bar, no yellow victory chance prediction ;P. I assume that meant in auto-resolve, the chance for victory was smaller than 1% .. well I guess that's why that achievement is called that since if you turn such a battle to a win you definitely deserved it ;P

To be fair in all my time so far in the game this was the only battle where I have even seen this situation.