BORIS: “After all Kislev has endured, why would we ever quiver before these milk-sops?” [confirmatory boosh] [triumphant music flares] Well, after four years and God knows how many DLC packs, we've finally made it. We had the bronze hammer, the silver hammer, and now the Big Roman Three. Now, if you don't know anything about "Total War" or Warhammer Fantasy, I made a big video about all of that a while back. For the sake of not retreading a bunch of basics, I'm going to assume you're familiar with the previous games. Plus, for the first time, the game has a proper tutorial campaign. There's a lot more to it than I thought there'd be, and we'll get to that soon. This is an early review copy, and they said that some bugs would be fixed, so I won't point out minor stuff they might fix over the next week or so. But, if it's a bug from a previous game that's still around, or something major that I don't think will be repaired in time, I think that's fair game. This series has had some buggy launches. Make no mistake, this has some significant bugs. It might not hard crash often, but some things will break down COMPLETELY. There will be a lot to discuss with sieges. [he can't do it, someone help him] Anyways… The tutorial campaign is really something. It's the overbearing hold-your-hand-every-step-of-the-way tutorial that, honestly, this series has always needed. It explains the basics, but you can also learn more advanced stuff that you can only learn through guides or through digging through the controls. The act of just pausing the game gives you a lot of information. Some useful keybindings are also shown with graphics. You get something more readable, compared to a giant control list of keybindings (though that is still there, if you look for it). To make the game more readable, they added features like having your units be highlighted, and adding Snoozing icons onto the unit cards if they're idle. From the moment these features were revealed, I knew I would hate them. So, thankfully, all these new additions can be toggled. I also hated this new, Nuclear Waste Green color they were using. See, it's bright, but the game has an updated lighting engine. Some maps can now cause a bloom effect, which ranges from weird… to kind of bad, to HORRIBLE. It turns out that Mountain Dew Green™ is frequently horrible. You can change this color, but it'll be for every element. So I got the old yellow selection color back, but now my health bars are yellow too. Casualty replenishment made me squint, but it was worth it. That said, there are tons of UI improvements. Having floating portraits for characters in a battle is a godsend. The segmented lazy health bars keep things more trackable. Reinforcement icons have a timer, and show what units are inside of them. If it looks like your backup will enter the field from the other side of the planet, you can just move the icon over. But doing this will make them take longer. Unit ranks easily show what they do, post-battle rewards are more detailed. Your Lords and Agents entering a new area now show the effects they're having, making it less of a mystery trying to remember what everyone does. The new character menus in general are great. You can salvage worthless items to cut down on clutter and get some extra money, or fuse two of the same type together to get something better. This significantly cuts down on the hoarders' level loot stack you can have by the midgame. You can toggle flying units to go on the ground for tactics like ambushes. Lords, Heroes and single monsters are wounded at low HP and less effective. I mean, Jesus Christ, there are so many good changes! A lot of cryptic aspects of the game are made clearer, and anything that can be seen as too handholding is almost always an option. The additions are fantastic, but I do think there's some change for the SAKE of change. More on that soon. No, one more! The in-game encyclopedia. The online nightmare is over. Coming back to the tutorial itself, it is the most Creative Assembly Monkey's Paw. Because it assumes you're brand new to playing these games, but is also loaded with production value and story. It follows the quest of a Prince of Kislev named Yuri. Kislev is the Warhammer Fantasy's version of Russia, though it's a bit of a Slavic Stew, taking the cool bits of each culture in the area and throwing them into a big pot. They were sort of around in the previous games. DMITRY TZARYOV, MOST ESTEEMED BOYAR OF KISLEV: “Kislev.” That was it. Typically, their God-Bear Ursun would perform his annual roar to make winter go away. Except that hasn't happened for years now. So Yuri and his brother have been sent far north, to try and find out why their god has stopped. YURI: “The dead … outnumber the living.” YURI: “We are lost. We are alone.” The man has been sent into maybe one of the worst places on the planet, and is undergoing a trial of faith. It kinda reminds me of "The Terror". Except, they actually want a bear in their lives. YURI: “Ursun… each day I pray… you do not answer.” YURI: “This… is our darkest night. Can you not see Kislev suffering?!” YURI: “Help us!” YURI: “Show me a sign!” YURI: “ANSWER ME!!” [his shout echoes through the mountains] YURI: “Then Kislev is lost...” Until he does hear Ursun's voice, beckoning him to come farther north. If you know Warhammer, you probably have an idea of what's going on. It's still fun seeing it all unfold. URSUN: “Follow… my… voice...” YURI: “We move north.” The entire story takes place in an isolated mini-campaign. Characters make conversations with each other, you have small decisions to make, and there's a ton of voice acting for everything. It is a well-polished, atmospheric campaign teaching you how to right-click on the badman. Compared to main game Kislev, it has different characters, technology, locations… If you're new to the series, it is now one of the best tools for learning how to play the game. If you're a veteran, it's full of pauses explaining very basic stuff. But it still seems like something worth playing. It's a direct prequel to what happens in the main campaign, and while it is explained, it's very abridged down. The tutorial has some of the strongest character-motivated scenes in the entire series. And it's all in service of a tutorial that's abridged in a few seconds. For a while, I thought I'd actually have a lot to talk about the story of the main game. Because it sets up some strong motivations for some key players in that. Unfortunately, in a sentence I'd never thought I'd say, the main story doesn't hold up against the tutorial. YURI: “Why?” BE'LAKOR: “Because gods are SELFISH! They will betray YOU as they betrayed me!” BE'LAKOR: “I have freed you from their burden!” YURI: “What I did… I did for Ursun!” BE'LAKOR: “You did it for yourself!” BE'LAKOR: “Took.. what your heart desired.” BE'LAKOR: “Look how you've reveled in your dark baptism…” GERIK: “The camp protects us. But what of our supplies?” YURI: “Where… is he?” BE'LAKOR: “Let me show you… what you hold so dear…” YURI: “Build a camp. Then we can rest.” The production value is so weirdly high that it can easily be a standalone demo for the game. Except, everything personal about the narrative gets dropped off. This is a WEIRD situation. What's important is that Ursun is alive. But he's dying and imprisoned by Richard Armitage. Factions might want to save the bear, or take his power, or just eat him. And Mr. Advisor just wants a drop of the bear's blood for his own purposes. So there's gonna be some serious shit going down in the Realms of Chaos. But for now I wanna talk about the visuals. On the campaign side, the map is just like the games before it. Taking place in a single large handcrafted map. The Immortal Empires Megamap isn't out yet, and I suspect won't be for some time, but this is what we got for now. Once again, it is very technically impressive for an overworld map. The setting has wrapped around East, but also pushed far up into the North. These include the Realms of Chaos, each one being ruled by its own god. When it comes to how good and detailed a Campaign map can be, these are the current winners. The Realms have an absurd amount of fine touches to them, and they're vastly different. Nurgle has a disgusting poison swamp and sewer jungle combo. Where Tzeentch has a bizarre anti-gravity ocean reef filled with strange crystals. The world map has way more effects and, funnily enough, my computer has more problems running it than the actual battles themselves. The landscapes can be more dreary and oppressive, which is perfect for what this game is all about. I mean, this whole thing is centered around evil demons. It's not all a hellscape though, because there are still flashes of beauty. Unless they fall to Corruption, where they do become hellscapes. Its use of color is better than ever, but something strange happened while playing it. I remember "Warhammer II" looking better, but only SOMETIMES. It took a while to put my finger on it, but I think I have it figured out. "Warhammer II" has this sharpness to it, focusing on realism. Details like trees are pretty simple graphically, but they add a lot of depth from a distance. When it's all working out, a location can look incredibly rich. When it's not, with something like corruption, it can look weird and soupy and hard to read. "III" is all about readability. It's going for a cleaner look that can still be very good, but sometimes it's so smoothed out that it almost looks cartoony. And wouldn't you guess, one of the biggest culprits is the trees. Technically, they're better than before, but something about how they're lit and the lack of detail makes it come off… not… right. It's likely they look like this so they can easily change color to show corruption. If you look at it in the right areas from high enough up, it CAN look great. Especially with all the new lighting and weather effects and everything fancy. I just wish there was some kind of middle ground. Maybe it's only that the trees are way too big? Maybe I'm going crazy? Maybe I should stop talking about the trees. They don't like that. They've never liked that. [ba-dam] It can be a rich map, but I'm not 100% on-board with the artstyle shift. It's way too smoothed out at points, and comes across as odd-looking. That said, the actual battle maps have never been better. Sieges can now happen in gigantic city layouts. They've gotten a big overhaul this round, and I'll talk about them in their own section. The maps keep that ridiculous scale that doesn't lose out on the smaller touches. There's a good variety of them that flesh out the world, and they can have interesting terrain features to boot. Though, as you might expect, the Realm of Chaos absolutely dunks in this department. Not only can these maps be outlandish in what they have, but they can be HUGE. Penetrating the Realm of Chaos can become a gigantic ordeal. Unless you decide to visit Slaanesh, in which case the gigantic ordeal might be penetrating you. You'll see some crazy shit out there, though, sadly, there's not much in the way of actual map hazards. They're such all-encompassing, evil, hostile areas. Having some hazard or debuffing zones would've been great to be more tactical with. POOR KISLEVITE: “We are doomed, comrades!” Yeah, this place sucks. You use terrain just like you always did, and it does seem like a missed opportunity. There's no denying these maps look incredible for an RTS, but actively having to learn and adapt to an alien terrain could've elevated it so much more. As a mortal myself, I don't think I'd feel comfortable fighting in the Forest of Cholera. Or the fifty-story blood fountain. But that's just me. Graphically, yeah, this fucking rules. The battle maps have new, better effects for grass and vegetation, weather and night battles look FAR better than before, and, outside of the new bloom, the new light and shadow effects add so much more depth. Actually, I did wonder if old characters would look weird in their portraits. Well, uh... Everyone's looking a little bit pink right now. Maybe that'll change with the combined map. To their credit, it does look like a lot of old units are getting touch-ups – the textures might be sharper, the models have some adjustments. They're not all at a 100% yet, but I'm glad and thankful that work is still being done on the old stuff. The bar for unit detail had been set pretty high. Most of the new units, and ESPECIALLY the new daemons, hit this mark or SURPASS it. The way they animated and brought to life creatures like this really is an achievement in itself. "Warhammer III" might have the most technically impressive unit I've seen in any RTS. It at least made me say out loud, “holy shit, how long did that take?” These are the children of Nurgle, the Nurglings. They're a rampaging swarm, made out of mini-squads of units. To make them look like a swarm, they have an absurd amount of animations. They're always doing tricks or fighting or chasing each other or forming a big person, and it keeps this effect for everything they do, from running to fighting. Their movement is so chaotic it actually looks like a liquid. When they start winning in a fight, it actively looks like the other side is being drowned by them. This one unit could've been someone's project for a LONG time. [nurglings having a blast] There's more to talk about in detail here, but I'll save that for the factions themselves. Model- and animation-wise, most of what's brand new is excellent. BUT there are some issues. [charge slam, khornates cheering] The animation is great, but I did start to notice something in combat. In the previous games, there were a lot of specialized Monster vs Monster animations. That's still here, sort of, but there seems to be a new system that lets big creatures fight each other in general that looks less awkward. The thing is, outside of the big monsters which are a maybe, looking at regular units – they don't seem to do this. In fact, sometimes, they'll bug out completely and stop fighting, or they start jittering in place. Sometimes, units would just kind of mosh pit into each other and not actually fight. There are definitely a few issues at play here, but one thing kept sticking out to me. The close fights seemed less visceral and lacked seeing something gnarly happening every once in a while. This is because the Daemon Invasion game… has no blood. In COMBAT. You remember the blood fountain. There are much BIGGER blood fountains. There's the blood pool, the blood lake, the blood skull… You can fight in an actual river of blood, as long as it doesn't come out of anybody. That'd be too far. [daemons cheering] What is fine is the sex daemons, who turn the blood skull into a very… different kind of skull. I mean, everything about Slaanesh, really. They have a technology to transform people into bottoms. Nurglings coming out of every orifice imaginable, and the larger daemons, ACTUALLY, violently shitting on people to death. This is all well and good, just no blood in the fighting. And most foul of all, reminding me of New Jersey. VOLATILE: “JERRRSEY!!!” There are one of two things happening here. One is that something is bugging out about the way units fight. This seems possible because, while they added a flying toggle for units, it seems like that did something to their behavior. When they attack, they can get stuck in this transitional sky-ground phase, and maybe that's happening in a similar way with the ground units. Something just isn't lining up. Or some animations and effects were cut out for the Blood DLC, and something's now not working right. It's not a constant issue, but happens well enough to be noticeable. There also were times where I'd order a unit to attack, and it would just run away instead, and it wasn't in Skirmish mode or anything. So it could be a deeper root issue or multiple things for why the individual fights aren't gelling so much anymore. In any case, I've said it before and I'll say it again, but the Blood DLC is some bullshit. In the worst case, content was cut that's kinda breaking the fights, and in the best case, the fights now just look worse and lack impact. The idea that it's been cut due to mature content just seems kind of silly now. The fights are still fun, but there is a layer of jank there that wasn't present before. For the uninitiated: when I made the "Warhammer II" video, the game had been out maybe... three years? They had a lot of time to polish the game up. The prologue did give me high hopes, but this kind of thing is not unusual at all for a "Total War" launch. The good news is that this is only one of two major bug issues I've had with the game. The second is also a doozy, but I'll hold off on that for now. I've gotta talk about menus. On first seeing Campaign gameplay, I went, “wow, these menus are RED.” That's pretty unusual. I'm more used to seeing that kind of thing in, like, an Oblivion mod. But that does fit the whole daemon theme of the game. I did get worried when the main menu reminded me more of a mobile game, but the new faction selector is great, and there's all the other UI improvements I mentioned earlier. I played it for two weeks straight to get used to it, and not compare constantly, and then I went back to "Warhammer II". My first thought was, “wow, this is bright!” My second was realizing how much better some things were that got changed. For missions and quests you used to have this handy icon up in the top right corner. To make them extra handy, it even separates these out. You know what's an important quest battle and what's a side mission. For some reason, they removed this icon, and now every mission and quest now shows up unsorted on a banner on the right side of the screen. Where you could once easily tab between Missions and Events, the events screen now covers up the mission banners. Just to make it even weirder, it will issue a mission like the old game. Clear in the right-center, all readable at once. Cool, okay, you click out. It's now on a banner on the right side of the screen. You click that, and now it's all crunched up on the bottom. You need to drag-scroll to read it, and the Teleport button is always partially cut off. It's like, it worked fine before, and this is worse… needlessly. This seems to be the running theme for the UI issues. At first, I thought they might have changed the magic orb icon to an hourglass to try and fit more spell icons on there. But, no, they just made it way harder to read at a glance. Where a city wall used to just have crenellations on the banner, it now has a wall icon. I can guarantee new players are gonna think it's a capital, because it looks more like a crown. As far as the whole red thing goes, that wouldn't be a problem in itself. It's more how far this theme was taken that confuses me. I'll start with a small example. In "Warhammer II", different factions had different colored technology icons. It's not vital, just a tiny thing to add some flavor. "III" keeps the icon color theme, but the banner is always red. Now let's apply this to something like character skills. They're scaled nicely across the screen and colored. It's easy to tell someone, “ah, you're having trouble, just put more points in your blue line!”, or something like that. Again, they kept the old icons, but it all looks red. This can't possibly be to make it more easily readable. If you think it's for better theme and flavor, then how about this... In previous games, when you conquered a city or colonized somewhere, you'd get these nice little art icons. It gives a nice extra window into what your faction is all about. Now they're super simplified icons. Red on Red icons. So, when they do add the old races, are they gonna get rid of the artwork, or... what's the plan with that? Minimalism is the exact OPPOSITE of Warhammer. When people say they want more minis, they mean the little dudes. If you're still not convinced, maybe this will do it. In "Warhammer II", when you construct a building, there's a green banner. When you deconstruct a building, there's a red banner. This has been burned into players' brains for hundreds, maybe thousands of hours. Someone said... “What if they were both red?” 😂 Someone made a little deconstruct icon, but the game looks like THIS and you cycle through cities all the time. And look, game devs are hard working people. If there's a lazy game dev, I have not met them. This alone convinces me, this was probably not the UI Team's idea. A lot of people, including me, have called "Warhammer II" a very good standalone expansion. I can only guess that someone thought the game needed to look radically different to dispel that. Even if that meant removing well thought-out things that were already working fine for years. And look, being irritated at menus probably isn't what you're here for, but there are just some of the annoyances that do stack up. Having information in new areas, but sometimes they go back to the old ones, can drive you nuts. The deconstructing ESPECIALLY kept reminding me of a story. It's not a video game one, but too perfect not to briefly tell. The UI reminds me of an incident in China, in 1966. ♫ Mao Zedong - Red Sun in the Sky ♫ The Cultural Revolution was in full swing. Academically speaking, it was a mess! I'd recommend the book "Born Red" if you wanna learn an account about that. There are rascally little characters to meet like Xiǎo Bàwáng. Anyways, they really liked the color red. So much so, that in August, the Beijing Red Guard demanded that red must be the color of progress. Red must mean "move forward". And this includes the fucking traffic lights. Red is now "go". They did overturn this after a few months, because there were an obscene amount of car crashes. So, next time you hear someone say how they like that every element is red, close your eyes and pray they are never, ever, traffic planners. But that's enough about China for now. How is the audio this time around? [sounds of battle, crisp and clear, layers of screaming and metal clashing amidst bombastic music] [galloping, more metal meeting metal and screaming, while war drums play] [dragon roars with an ethereal whirring] [more battle noises, big nurgle man stomps the floor, screaming] [horse go fast] It's the same rich soundscape as before. Every battle has layers upon layers of it. There even seems to be more variety in the units addressing who they're fighting. More trash-talk is exactly what I like to see in Warhammer. In other good news, while not as deep and trait-based as the old games, they did bring general speeches back. You just need to be close to them before the fight. MIAO YING: “You will see your families again! THIS the Storm Dragon swears!” [artillery goes boom] BORIS: “Your children will grow old and fat thanks to your bravery this day!” [horn blowing] [horn blowing]
COLDSTEEL: “Those few who survive will say that they met God!” COLDSTEEL: “Those few who survive will say that they met God!” COLDSTEEL: “And he is great and terrible!” KU'GATH: “Battle… means death.” KU'GATH: “Death… means decay.” KU'GATH: “Decay… means disease.” KU'GATH: “Disease… is glory!” The audio team went to work once again, and, like last time, I'd only have good things to say. The only time I can recall being underwhelmed at how a unit sounded was with the Ogre Leadbelchers. [chunky boom booms, but not enough] It's a quality effect, but… those are CANNONS. But I'm not gonna go through the game unit by unit, because I'd go feral. My key audio issue before was the music, and it wasn't BAD. It seemed too subdued and controlled, especially compared to the trailers. You still have that kind of thing, especially since it uses music from the old games, but even the more intentionally dry tracks have more going on now. Managing cities as Tzeentch, I was hearing weird chimes and horror strings. [ominous, creepy music track] LUDRED: “His gaze upon me…” KAIROS: “We… witnessed… eternity…” When it came to factions like the Ogres and Kislev especially, there are some standout tracks now. The Ogres will bounce between Mongolian tribal music and these big, bombastic war drums pretty frequently. It's the exact kind of music I didn't really expect to be hearing playing this, and it's great. [Steppe tribal music] MANEATER: “By the ass!” [Steppe tribal music] GUTBLAUT: “Hunter!” GUTBLAUT: “The maaaw.. proviiides!!” [more fighting and music, tribal chants] GREASUS: “The strongest! The fattest!” GNOBLAR: “Serve the ogres!” GNOBLAR: “Rampage!” [mongolian chanting] [mongolian chanting]
GNOBLAR: “Lookin' for 'em!” [mongolian chanting] It sounds like some people at Creative Assembly are able to show more of their power level. [tribal chanting, drums punctuated by brass and louder chants] [bombastic orchestral] BATMAN: “idontwaerhockeypants” [music swells with louder chanting and brass] Yeah, no jokes, uh... holy shit. This has the best music in the trilogy. It's some of the best a "Total War" game has gotten in a long time. Judging on how it sounded before, this was probably a risk, and it paid off. It can add so much energy to the battles. It's not constantly bombastic, but it sounds like music that was allowed to be noticed and appreciated, rather than just being a backdrop. It can be the kind of score that makes you do a really dumb charge in a fight, because it just feels so right to. It's a massive improvement, and I'm so glad for it. Gameplay-wise, there's a lot of new stuff to cover, so I'll do what I did last time: go faction by faction and pick out the new stuff along the way. Easy. I MISS HIM SO MUCH: “Kislev.” Residing in Kislev is a hard life. The climate rarely goes above sub zero, the local wildlife is aggressive, and it's regularly attacked by interdimensional monsters. Every so often, the local mayor will need to step outside to 1v1 a daemon lord. So, really, it's just Russia. Except, daemons keep burning all their buildings down, so they can't climb on those as high as they'd like for no reason. They're led by an Ice Witch Queen named Katarin, who constantly feuds with the leader of the Orthodoxy, Kostaltyn. You've got the vodka makers, powerful squatting form, the babushkas, the bear cavalry… It's everything you'd expect. As far as the battlefield goes, they have an interesting roster. Most of their core units have hybrid roles. Regular Kossars have bows, but can also wade into melee combat with swords or spears. Their big armored brothers can hold their own in melee a lot better, but they can still whip out handguns. They do have some specialized units, but it's more about adaptability and versatility. Having a bunch of troops that can switch between ranged and melee and be decent at both gives you a lot of reactive room in your tactics. It also gives you more wiggle room to recover from mistakes. Say, you weren't paying attention and you left your artillery undefended. Well, it's pulled by polar bears. Not Earth polar bears – Kislev polar bears. Which are somehow even more murderous. [roar and smack] Y-Yeah, even if it's caught, that artillery is going to be fine for a while. The roster includes Ungol Horse Archers, for harass potential, solid infantry line-holders, and, if you're feeling Polish and a little tired of zabawny miś, you can send out Winged Hussars that have everything short of the funny number. You also get some new kinds of magic, including Ice to try out. They're all about giving you options and things to experiment with, and it's not wonder it's recommended as a first campaign. On the campaign side, Katarin and Kostaltyn are competing for supporters. Getting to a tier before the other will unlock buffs for this faction, though they can be overtaken later. Another new resource called Devotion can be used to buy special religious building that usually give more supporters. You can also spend them on invoking the Motherland, which is similar to rituals in "Warhammer II". The entire theme is built around Kostaltyn, the state and the Orthodoxy, versus Katarin's strange magic and the Ice Court. Kostaltyn loves the bear, Katarin loves ice, by their powers combined you get the big Ice Bear. But let's get more into this rivalry. On the campaign side, Katarin has control of the Ice Court. This lets you train magic Lords and Heroes over a series of turns, with some dilemmas along the way. On the battlefield, the Ice Court brings the Ice Guard. These are deadly hybrid units that are good in melee, and have slowing ice arrows. Combined with some spell buffs, the ranged game here can be supremely effective. Magic can be absurdly strong in this setting. So, to counter her, Kostaltyn... also… has access to the Ice Court. Which is strange, since he hates them and considers them heretics. He does have secular units, like the, uh, Tzar Guard maybe? They're just armored Kossars with a cape. Even that's too much, because he doesn't buff Tzar Guard at all. His faction bonus gives mild buffs to regular Kossars and a nice ward save for Patriarch Heroes. His entire skillset doesn't really go with this rivalry at all, except for a single one that affects building cost. Even the race for supporters increases relations with the opposing faction with each tier. This feels less like a rivalry, and more like a race for a few buffs. Yet, every faction in the game gets updated on who's winning this, like it's some kind of big deal. To make it stranger, Kostaltyn seems like a pious, though serious and suspicious man in cutscenes, but then in-game he's, like, this raving lunatic. I get the sense that they weren't 100% on what to do with him. Even if they gave him a reskinned Ice Court mechanic, which trained Boyars and Patriarchs instead, that would at least be more thematic. Or, maybe, he shouldn't have it at all, and instead buff the regional governors you can assign. While I rarely do this, I think this is a case where he needs new units. Because, right now, he's just a worse Volkmar. VOLKMAR: “Volkmar the Grim!” See, Volkmar came in a DLC with specialized fanatic and religious units. "Warhammer III" mentions the Orthodoxy a lot, including black-robed secret police units that root out Chaos. KOSTALTYN: “Too late for repentance, traitor!” Him having some anti-magic spell resistant police units makes a lot of sense to me. I would say he should buff some regular units, but there's an issue on that front. The regular units are already filled with Ice Magic. A while back, someone asked me if I thought Kislev was flanderized, due to all the bears. I thought this was weird even before they showed off the new Kislev lore. Katarin did have a tabletop model where she was on a majestic ice sled. Now she's on a bear. Ice Witches, Patriarchs, it doesn't matter – you get a bear. I didn't like it before, due to variety's sake, but now there's a new problem. In a race like Wood Elves, there's a clear distinction between the trees and forest spirits and the... elves. But the Campaign mechanics and the looks of the units themselves made them distinct. Kislev has state units, magic units, and then… ehhehehn? This would be fine, but now we've said there's a government and religious institution rivalry, and they're only begrudgingly working together to fight Chaos. They're not mortal enemies, but if Kostaltyn had his way, he would be the George Foreman of grilling witches. Having units more separated out could help in that department. Instead of magic sleds, just have sleds! The bear can lean more on representing the state. Instead of Witches riding bears, they ride Snow Leopards, since they're trained to protect the Court members. The Elemental Bear could actually represent or be a reward for both factions coming together. As it is now, the whole rivalry aspect of the faction's roster just comes across as hollow. If they're going to go with this, I think they need more distinction as sub-factions. It is fun seeing Iorek Byrnison move up the Interpol's Most Wanted list, but, man, biker week in Austin doesn't have this many bears... Oh yeah, you can also unlock Boris Ursus. He has his own start position way out East, and can kind of throw supporters at a group temporarily, for some buffs? This seems especially tacked on now, because he doesn't care about that. He just wants to expand the country's borders and fight Chaos. Actually, I should get into that. Every once in a while, mysterious rifts of energy will appear across the map. These are the gateways to the realm of Chaos, and will start spreading corruption like nuts. Then they'll eventually start spawning armies and Heroes, and that's where the trouble really begins. It's a world invasion, but some lessons have been learned since "Warhammer II". And it's clear some DLC features, like Wood Elf invasions, were testing this. For one, you're warned they're coming. When they do, they'll have several turns of inactivity. You have some options on what to do. With an Agent, you can simply close the rift. HUTAMA: “… for a price.” The economy won't like the rift-closing fund, but it does stop the being-devoured-by-daemons fund. You can also use military forces to close it off, but they'll have to fight a small battle, which gets bigger and bigger each time the rifts appear. Alternatively, you can leave it open and teleport a character across to a different rift. You still have a daemon issue, but it's a much better commute. Most importantly of all, your faction leader can enter a rift, to start an incursion in the Realm of Chaos. As you've already seen, the Realm of Chaos sucks. No matter the faction, your objective is simple. [biker music, meaty whacks, bottle shatters] [wham wham wham] [door knocking] [door's kicked open] [BLAM] BARGE IN AND MAKE IT EVEN WORSE! Each Realm is dedicated to a god and has its own separate challenges, though there can be questionable rewards in there too. In the Realm of Khorne, there are many strange rogue armies. You'll need to spill a lot of blood to progress further. Some parts of it will offer powerful weapons, like a cursed spear, or a CHAINSWORD. This is a few years early on "Total War 40k". Tzeentch's realm is an annoying maze, Slaanesh's tempts you with more and more powerful rewards to leave, and Nurgle's is very stinky. Overcoming these trials will be challenging. The daemons respawn endlessly, and sometimes, other factions are also venturing around the Realms of Chaos. You'll need to overcome the Realm's trial and then face a Daemon Prince in a new kind of fight called a Survival Battle. You want their soul, and if another faction beats you to it, you'll be kicked out of the realm, and can't come back until all the rifts respawn. Only one soul per rift cycle, too – you can't double-dip. There are some drawbacks. You have a chance of getting a negative trait while being in the Chaos Realm. These can be significant debuffs that you get multiple levels of. The only way to cure it is to sit your Lord outside of a province capital and wait for a chance that it goes away. At best, fixing it is dull, and at worst, it is incredibly annoying. If you're playing a race like Ogres, you might not have easy access to a trait curing building. The same goes for someone like Skarbrand who gets all over the planet. Changes to supply lines means you can easily field more armies than before, but like "II's" ritual campaign, you don't need to expand too much. It is a definite improvement that the mechanic doesn't outright punish you for expanding, like it used to. They did have to warp the map in a strange way to accommodate the realms. It'll be interesting to see if they make it into the big combined map. A domination victory in this campaign is especially difficult. If another faction gets all four souls, they can go to the final battle and win the game. There's no magic intercept button this time – you have to physically slow them down in the realms. So, where "II", sort of, allowed you to ignore the main campaign, and play more sandbox, this is much harder to do here. Beating the campaign won't give you any kind of map-painting reward or buff. For better and worse, the main mode is much more objective-focused than before. The sandbox will come eventually, but this is what you have for now. Alright, let's get into the new Survival Battles. These can be some of the longest in the series, and they're not kidding about "survival" – it's an endurance round. What you do is advance to capture a point, hold off a wave of enemies, and then do this two more times. On the last point, the Daemon Prince himself will join the fight as a final boss. During all of this, you have a new resource called Supplies. You get them for murdering and a big chunk when capturing a new point. These let you build structures in designated areas on the parts of the map you control. There are four kinds of towers, which, no matter your race, get more shooty and explodey the more you spend on them, but also four kinds of wall structures which can behave differently. You can put down platforms for ranged infantry, structures that buff your guys or debuff the enemy, or, yeah, a big fat wall they have to break through. You could also spend Supplies on spawning in reinforcements, because things just work weird in the Realms of Chaos. This includes being able to give your soldiers temporary upgrades for the battle. You can restore everything from magic to ammo to healing, though healing still has the caps. It plays sort of like a tower defense mode, but the flow isn't that controlled? It also depends on who you're fighting, since each god has a different survival map. On some, towers can be incredibly powerful, since the enemy barely has any options for dealing with them. Whereas Tzeentch's fun zone of hell has plenty of ranged options, and your towers will be the least of your worries. I've played quite a few of these, and I'm still not sure how to feel about them. The word that keeps coming to mind is "long". The fights take a long time, the map itself is long, but there's something not quite right about the flow of the level. Like in a tower defense game, the whole goal is to keep the bad guys out of the end point. If too many bad guys get in, then you lose. Except, here, you have an entire army you can keep in the center. Even as you progress to the next wave, to make sure your tower resources weren't wasted, enemies will continue to spawn at the beginning of the level, along with the new areas. The routes and room for maneuvering in these levels is very tunneled. It is tightly controlled and narrow, limiting what options you have. The farthest out of this mold is Tzeentch, who has pathways that go all over the place. It does frequently go into chokepoints, but it's a lot more interesting terrain-wise. Because the maps are so big, there are areas in it that have fun fight potential. The thing is, they intend you to bring a Legendary Lord with a loaded army into this map. Moving through it usually means narrowing your troops, and it feels sticky to control. The question is: why would they want you to fight in these weird narrow areas to get to a more opened up control point? That's because you're fighting through the expressway lanes that were designed for the AI to go through. The map was designed for swarms of zombies to beeline towards a single point. The terrain has to get in the way of the enemies and curve them around, just like a tower defense game. If the enemy could run right at you, towers couldn't be as effective. Fighting in lanes like this would frequently turn into a terrible blobfest. The enemy endlessly runs to a single point, until you kill enough of them. Moving your troops too far and away from the center means they'll likely be overrun by the swarm. So, for most factions, the answer is usually "keep your guys in the point, and let the towers pepper them on the way over". "Control the chokepoints, because that's what you do against overwhelming numbers". I've had fun fights in this, but usually with RANGE-centric armies. Because, in regular battles, the enemy is targeting different key units of yours. Here, it feels like they're beelining towards the point, and just fighting whatever's in the way. So, exploding them at range before they get there is very satisfying. Like a tower defense game... The final battle is one of these too, and tries to account for it by dumping units directly on top of you. It's also worth noting that, while quest battles have never been skippable on autoresolve, THESE are. Fighting hold-out siege battles can be a blast, but these are strange. The fun seems to depend on a specific loadout, which you might not have, since you fought regular battles on the way here. The realms do have some great regular old battle maps in them. They've already confirmed these battles won't be in the combined map, and I see why. They can be enjoyable, but I find them too limiting and I can't see myself going out of my way to replay them. [taco bell's getting thrashed] My head hurts from trying to figure this out – it's time for Khorne. Khorne is an angry god of violence, and his faction is led by Skarbrand, who is a one-man doomstack. [violence] Khorne is all about the supreme authority of violence. If you like to be fighting all the time, this is where you go. That's not to say it's "Right Click: The Adventure", because there is some depth to this. You'll notice daemon factions do share some similar traits, and some units, but we'll get to those as we go along. Khorne wants more skulls for his Skull Throne. You have plenty of neighbors who can donate. The most efficient way to help the skull drive is directly through combat and conquest. But there are a few alternatives. A battlefield where two other races fought can leave a bunch of bodies behind, which means they're free skulls. You can also have your army conduct some blood trials in a new stance, which will cause attrition, make experience go up, and give you a small amount of skulls per turn. So what the hell do you do with all these skulls? Well, for one, you spend them on technology. These give you the latest scientific advancements in getting pissed off. You can also practice what you preach and directly FedEx them off to the Skull Throne. This will give you all kinds of buffs for a series of turns, and it only gets better with technology. When you regularly defeat a settlement, you can spawn a new army out of it. These blood armies must keep fighting, or they'll begin to die. With the power and tech and the Throne, these armies can spawn larger and last longer. It is funny just how much they wanna fight. BLOODTHIRSTER: “SKULLS! FOR! THE SKULL THRONE!!” BLOODTHIRSTER: “Sail… Sail! SAIL!!” The Throne can let you summon Bloodletters onto the battlefield. It only gets better with time. Now, the way Khorne corruption and all daemon corruption works is interesting. As it spreads throughout the world, you hit thresholds, which allow you to use unholy manifestations. Again, these are similar to "Warhammer II" rituals. These will give other temporary powers, like instantly obliterating a settlement or giving Skarbrand a new army to fight for more skulls. However, every so often, a god becomes ascendant for ten turns, and these powers get even better. For example, now Skarbrand can fight a bigger army. So these are cool and engaging, but there's more. When corruption is high enough in an enemy area, it might spawn a cult of your god. This gives you some options for some undercity buildings. You can make them an income stream for your special resource or destroy the cult for something special. In Skarbrand's case, he will instantly show up to wherever this is. This synergizes perfectly with him. He can kool-aid man fist his way through the planet and immediately start riling up blood armies. Your only limit is your upkeep. Now, for one, Skarbrand has a murder meter similar to the Brass Bull, so that does take some stress off the economy. But the idea of a Khorne economy sounds like a paradox, but they made it work. If you have one owned settlement in a province, there's a chance your guys will take over any ruins in it for FREE. You have territory under your influence, but you're still mostly free to burn everything down. The way corruption and all these new mechanics work together really is great. Khorne plays like a bloodthirsty monster, but not in a way that feels like simple mashing. That said, Skarbrand truly can be a one-man army. They rose the character level cap to 50, so there are a lot more points to work with. But there is an issue across the heroes in near every faction, where their skillset hasn't really grown to compensate for this. For example, at max level, the Training skill still gives only 25 XP per turn. Every Lord's first red line skill gives 75. It is completely outclassed. It's almost like they haven't changed the design of their skill lines since "Warhammer I". "II's" DLC introduced all kinds of new interesting skill lines, and none of that is here. Even the treasure hunting in ruins is gone, and you can only scout for Skaven now, which are even more hilariously obvious. At first, I wondered if Tzeentch Heroes could booby-trap ruins or something else interesting, but these are mainly stuck in the past. So that's unfortunate. But moving on, The Khorne roster is all about mauling the enemy in the face. There are no more Donkeys of Khorne. The roster brought in all-new dedicated warriors, along with all their war gear. They're comparable to Orcs in size, and carry on the faction's spirit of getting into melee and killing. They don't do spells or magic or even ranged, outside of some artillery. They just want to hit you in the face and take your skull. This is a joint task force of mortals and daemons, and while you know people just run away, daemons function a little bit differently. They can't actually die, but their soul goes back to the Realms. In-game, this means if their leadership is too low, they'll start crumbling and then vanish, very similar to undead. You'll need to consider who in the army will fight to the death and who will rout and maybe come back for another chance. Khorne's army is strong in combat, and can be become even more effective by killing. Killing enough enemies can unlock army-wide abilities, and even individual units might have a bonus too. You can essentially have your stronger units just eat enemy chaff, keeping them healthy and powering them up to fight a stronger battle. They are an aggressive wrecking ball of an army, and they play exactly how you think they would. I don't have any real issues with these guys. They're fun to play and full of flavor. They're a raging red river on the battlefield and the Campaign map. I really like the event where a Slaanesh daemon seduces one of the warriors. Above the others, Khorne hates Slaanesh. So you either castrate your entire army or implement an official horny police. NIEVE: “Ye, ye -” You know what, let's talk about Slaanesh now. Slaanesh is the god of pain and pleasure, sex, drugs and rock 'n roll. His depraved followers are mortals and daemons who though the Cenobites were just too vanilla. In-game, their faction is led by the daemon N'kari, who, fun fact, was once enslaved by Malekith. Or N'Kari tricked him into letting him be a slave. He likes that sort of thing. Where Khorne was about anger, Slaanesh is about sheer depravity. MELKIOR: “They will NEVER know the safe word…” Considering the company's weird relationship with blood, I thought they might try to tone Slaanesh down a little. Thankfully, they didn't. I'm not saying it's Lust from Beyond, or that you should be expecting a Free the Nipple pack to go with the Blood pack, but I think they found a good balance. In the beginning, the Advisor says to be careful not to expose your flank to Skarbrand. In reality, this is the exact kind of thing N'Kari would do to piss him off more. However, properly using flanks is the key to winning with his faction. It's all about rear charges and hitting the right spot in the right time. Most Slaanesh units are ridiculously speedy. Even N'Kari is constantly Naruto-running around the map. The mortal followers are made up of a few kinds of masochistic marauders. They're not great at fighting, but effective for tying the enemy down for the real fun. Which is getting shredded from every other angle by the daemons. The cavalry and chariots are good at quickly repositioning for a new charge. Ideally, you maneuver around the map hurting the enemy using your units and spells, and then deliver the perfect charge when the positioning is right. Though, on the battlefield, out of all the factions in the game, this is probably the one I'm the worst at. Am I losing it? Maybe my shoes are too tight? It turns out, there's a few factors at play, including a nasty bug. For one, the cavalry and chariot mass and charge bonus isn't that high. Even a perfect hit on exposed weak units can feel like a tickle. The second is that there's a bug with how charge reflection works. This is used on some anti-large units, like halberds and pikemen. The idea is: if they're braced for a charge it won't end well for units charging them from the front. How it currently works is, if they counter charge, that damage will still apply, and, POSSIBLY, even when they're just moving AROUND, that damage will apply. I've hit units from the back with chariots, and my chariots melted instead of them. This bug is easier to tolerate on other factions, and especially their cavalry, because they're much beefier. These are glass cannons with virtually no armor. So I do get how they're SUPPOSED to play, but I don't know how much is muddy due to design or to some kind of bug. Slaanesh does have two aces in the hole. One is the Lore of Shadows magic, and again, this is either a bug or something is incredibly overtuned. The Lore of Slaanesh does have some direct damage spells, but again, it's more about positioning. Stuff that causes rampage, reduces unit speed – you get it. For the new Shadows Pendulum, you line up your trashy tarpit, wait for the high grade enemies to come, and then you click the funny button. [scary swoosh] This might not be balanced. SPIFFING BRIT: “What do you mean? Of course it's perfectly balanced.” SPIFFING BRIT: “Why shouldn't a very easy to access spell wipe out entire mol-” Hey, how did you...? Wat?! Okay, the second is that they do have good units, but they can fill the holes in their roster on the Campaign map. "Warhammer III" has had a huge rework to diplomacy. This is the perfect time to cover what's new there and then come back to Slaanesh-specific stuff. There is a dedicated "fuck-off" button for tresspassers. If they don't pack up in two turns, you can declare war on them with no diplomatic penalty. No more violating the NAP on my watch. You can offer or receive diplomatic threats, where refusal results in war. How dangerous you are as a faction is now taken into account, and United Against Us events only happen if you're starting to become dangerous. You can finally trade or directly gift cities. Your allies behave in smarter ways, and are better at coordinating with you. Alliances themselves have also gotten a big overhaul. If they have the space for one, you can build an outpost in an allied city. They can build one in yours too, and it has three levels of upgrades. The outpost provides a garrison to the city, so, if you're ever under attack, you'll have some allied units there for you to control. It's not purely a defensive benefit. Over time, you build up a new resource with your friend called Allegiance. To get it even faster, you can fulfill special missions that your ally issues to you. This can be spent on recruiting a limited number of allied units into YOUR army. Let's say you're having some daemon trouble as Kislev. You only need to call up your friend Karl to borrow some heavy artillery. With enough of it, you can flat out directly control an allied army. The rework has made keeping and maintaining allies something really worth investing in, compared to before. They don't get in your way nearly as often, and they're way more directly useful to your war effort. This is a fantastic addition, and WAY more than I was expecting. With this new system, Slaanesh has some advantages. Slaanesh can build up seductive influence over susceptible races, like humans and elves. Being friendly with them diplomatically is one of the better ways to get your claws into them. Once they're in too deep, you can mindbreak them, and they become your vassal. Your speedy demons can then have partial backup from the simping auxiliaries. Even better, for a cost, you can seduce enemy units directly before a battle. They'll only be with you for the one fight, so feel free to be as reckless as possible with them. Technology can give you a higher budget for seduction, and make the process of getting new vassals easier. There's also your special resource to consider, which this time around is just Devotees. These can be spent on Pleasure Parties in cities that can buff things up for a while. VAN'KARHOLME: “Fucking slaves, get your ass back here!” They can be spent on Disciple Armies, or spreading cults across the world. Of course it's Marienburg... You could ally with the competing daemons too, but their corruption will end up being a problem. It's better to turn the mortal races into your thralls, and wipe out your otherworldly neighbors. Besides what feels busted about the main roster, it is a fun campaign. The only thing I found strange is that the cost of seducting a unit doesn't scale based on wounds or the rank of it. It also seems like some units should be immune to it, especially since the AI can do it to you as well. My biggest issue is tied to the diplomacy AI. It just hurts Slaanesh the most. Factions will still declare war on your vassals, and don't seem to account for you. I think they fixed this in "Three Kingdoms", but it's popped up again here. It's a fun campaign, but for now, I wouldn't rely on the core roster. Now, I don't wanna get too bogged down in daemons. So I'm gonna take a Great Leap Forward over the next two, and talk about Cathay instead. Cathay is… an interesting place. It's actually the largest human empire in the setting, but, until recently, it never got much attention. While its subjects are mainly human, it is ruled by immortal dragons. If they desire it, they can shift into a human form or go right back. Currently, there are two playable dragon leaders. Miao Ying, who controls the northern, much more lush provinces of Grand Cathay, and her brother Zhao Ming, who controls the more arid western provinces. He's more of a wild card due to warpstone exposure, but can come up with some innovative ideas. ZHAO MING: “Father loves me, despite my… difficulties.” Cathay faces constant danger from neighbors, but the worst are the forces of Chaos. Fortunately, they've constructed the Great… Bastion of Cathay. It's worked wonders for keeping daemons out of their land. They do send trade caravans out to the western world, but sometimes things get… perilous. All of this and more is reflected in their unique mechanics. You don't have a singular special resource you collect. No kinds of labor points or something, thank God. Instead, you have the two forces of Yin and Yang. Spiritually significant in the East, and the Olive Garden of tattoos in the west. To maintain harmony, you must have balance. Technology, characters or buildings have a Yin or Yang value that contributes to your overall score. Balance can swing one way over the other. It'll begin to debuff what you have more of and cause public order to fall. In this example, the more Yang I have, the less money Yang buildings make. But Yin buildings are making more and are now cheaper to construct. The more out of balance you are, the more extreme these effects get. Balance gives significant buffs, and it makes you always aim to have it. This system makes you put more planning into your empire building. Taking over cities can give you new buildings that throw things out of wack, tech is always adjusting it one way or the other, so you'll need a good amount of foresight to stop things from going out of control. On occasion, you'll get dilemmas that put points in one side or the other. These give opportunities to get things back on track if balance has seriously been shaken up. At first, I thought this would be annoying to deal with, but I ended up liking it a lot. It makes you consider some progression options you might not have otherwise, for the sake of keeping balance. And making smart decisions in that constraint can be pretty engaging. The actual building economy isn't the richest anyways, but that's what the trade caravans are for. You pick their route, destination and how much money they'll be carrying. Then you see what happens. As the turns go by and the caravan moves through the game world, all kinds of events will pop up. These can be a lot of fun. Sometimes, it's a small scale battle. There are opportunities to recruit special foreign units into the expedition. And situations can affect everything, from army abilities to diplomacy. There's a solid sense of progression to it, too, as you clear up the roads, and your army and your Caravan Lord becomes stronger. If you're committed to turtling and defending the wall, these frequently give you stuff to do. The act of defending the wall is making sure a Cathay faction owns the gates. If Chaos takes it over, it just becomes a rubble pile that all their hordes climb over. Chaos will build up to attack it constantly. Besides the old-fashioned ways of getting rid of them, there's also a magic compass you can adjust. This can generate extreme attrition to melt a lot of them, but the other rewards the compass offers are tempting enough that you want to keep shifting them around. On the campaign side, it's a very rich faction mechanics-wise, and Harmony extends to the battlefield as well. Units are also marked as Yin or Yang. Luckily, these don't affect the overall faction score, which would be a surefire way to make it annoying as hell. Instead, keeping the two kinds of units close together gives them a combat buff. Keeping Harmony on the field will keep your forces at max effectiveness. They won't melt into dust without it, but it's strong enough that you do want to utilize it when you can. Again, maybe making you play in ways you wouldn't otherwise. As you might expect, they have a balanced roster. Instead of Kislev's “Oops, all Hybrids!”, Cathay's units are much more specialized. This emphasizes the whole Harmony aspect even more, as you try to find ideal combinations of units. You have different kinds of reliable gunpowder infantry and some artillery, solid infantry line-holders, good schools of magic, fast-moving cavalry, and some other junk. For being ruled by a despotic luck dragon, there's a lot to like about Cathay. Any real issues I have are just minor oversights. Like there being a skill to increase Leadership on an Unbreakable unit. The Terracotta Sentinel does not give a single fuck. Not since the Overlord Tank in "Command & Conquer: Generals" has there been such an effective border expander. [swoosh swoosh slam] Now, as for the great bastion itself, the wall on the battlemap is ENORMOUS. The scale of it is absolutely insane, and I believe it's kept Chaos out. At least until you turn around and see where the battle actually is. It's a much smaller gate, and the enemy will approach with… towers and rams, and it's time to talk about the siege overhaul. BLOODY LETTERSON: “Ow my shoulder!” "Warhammer III" has completely reworked city battles. Not only are there wall sieges, but also minor settlement battles. These are typically big maps with lots of room to maneuver. The old style simple city grid is nearly completely gone. The level design also has some advantages for the owning race who built it. An Empire map has lots of elevation for ranged units, wide areas to maneuver forces around and chokepoints to try and funnel enemies into. It's made to consider all kinds of defense variety. An Orc map has messily connected wide roads, with a lot of room directly behind the walls to pile in the boyz for foightin'. A Dwarf Fort DOES have narrow controlled roads. This accommodates how they move their deep-ranked formations and makes it harder to unexpectedly flank them. Vampire maps are also kind of chaotic, with winding city streets. But they also have tall buildings, which help obscure their forces from enemy ranged units. My point is, there was clearly a lot of design thought put into these layouts. These on their own are SIGNIFICANTLY better than before. Additionally, instead of a single capture point, you'll have several. Remember the Survival Battles? Well, the tower and barricade system is present here too, and only that. You have a set amount of Supplies for building before the battle starts, and, on the Campaign map, you might've found ways to get more. The moment someone lays a siege, the defenders will begin to take attrition. This effect can be reduced, and you can generate more supplies for each turn under siege. Maps will have several Supply Points, that passively generate them as the battle goes on. Each point controls a zone of defensive barricades and towers. If the enemy captures it, you lose that passive supply income, and every defense under that zone of influence gets destroyed instantly. There are also key Victory Points. When attackers control these, they generate tickets to outright winning the fight. So, in theory, you have several zones that are fun to fight in, spread across the map. It's a big overarching battle, instead of a single point blobfest. In Survival, the AI always beelines towards a single point. But here, they SOMETIMES beeline towards a single point, and then they lose their minds. ♫ Kirby Air Ride - Item Bounce ♫ Did they spawn a unit that can't capture here? I can't even count how many units have just run through Supply Points. I've seen units run by capture points, change their mind and turn around, and then they run away from it again. It actually started getting really funny to see how close they would get, before getting scared and running away from it again. Look, holy shit, they're almost on the border now. And oooh, there they go. I'm not kidding when I say most points I've seen the AI capture have been on accident, simply from a large enough crowd constantly moving through it. Sometimes, their brain outright shuts down, and they sit outside the settlement not doing anything. Or start running around like headless chickens outside the settlement. Even spamming magic on them non-stop would not unstick them. Sometimes, they get on a point, but forget they need to fight for it. I've seen Lords walk to the Victory Point to die no matter what, including some who will die outside the walls, because they move so slowly. Well, in this clip he's not moving at all. That... also happens sometimes. A-any minute now… Okay, there he goes. I've seen them play chicken outside the points, I've seen them have prayer circles around the points… It's like having multiple nightmare "TF2" games happening at the same time. Where is everyone going? What are you doing? There are issues to make it not COMPLETELY their fault. I've had units get stuck inside the terrain, or trying to dock with it like it's a wall. Sometimes, you can pass through your own barricades, and sometimes, your guys get stuck in them forever. I've seen battering rams not disappear and block off the gate, and sometimes... I'm not running the show anymore. GNOBLAR: “Raaaghnn!” Eeehm... Where do I start? I'll try my best, but, you saw how it is. In good news, attacking an enemy city does feel a lot better. The AI is still horribly buggy, but in ways you might not obviously notice. Like running their units all over the map or docking melee units into walls. Even that second might be better, because sometimes, now walls actually block off a ranged unit's line of sight, and they can't fire at all. Or they simply can't dock to walls anymore. Anyhow, when playing defense, someone might argue the AI ignores Supply Points because it makes more sense to capture the Victory Point. Which could be true, but them yo-yoing on and off it makes me think they are taking it into account. They seem to notice them better once they DO have your Victory Point. What happens typically is, if you do build a bunch of towers, the AI will lead a suicide charge towards your Victory Point. If they're physically blocked off, they might fight, but I've also seen some take the longest way possible around the entire map to get there, getting torn apart by defenders and towers along the way. It's extra interesting watching unbreakable units the AI has. They never run away or fall apart, so you get to see them fulfill what they were trying to do the whole time. You guessed it: it's usually getting on or at least sort of near a Victory Point. What's really ironic is that a minor settlement battle can be easier to defend than a proper walled siege battle. The larger cities can have multiple points for tickets. A minor settlement only has one to worry about. Due to this, I can reliably take a walled city a lot faster than a small settlement. The AI is also better at focusing and not spreading its forces all over the map. Sometimes, the starts align and the AI works really well, which makes me think it might be a map-specific issue, but there's a whole lot of maps with issues. The thing is, I've played these maps in Multiplayer. Co-op against the AI, or going head-to-head. If you're fighting a smart enemy, these can be incredibly engaging mechanics. The attacker wants to be aggressive in taking points and reducing supply, keeping the defenses down. The defender has to react and keep key zones under control. I'll skip over all the arguments about whether or not it's too arcadey and say that, yeah, it can be a blast. If you have an intelligent reactive enemy, or sheer numbers that outweigh how dumb they can be. Here's the part I flat-out don't understand. We've had siege AI that has known bugs and hiccups on a simple grid with a single Control Point. "III" has brought in sprawling maps tailored to the strong points of the defender. If it was just this with the Victory Points and no Supply system, I think me and plenty of other people would've been happy. You might have special faction abilities down the line or something. But now we have these huge new maps AND a system that lets you place pathblockers and towers all over it. Total War AI having to react to a dynamically changing map sounds monstrously complicated. It creates so many situations they have to adapt to, and that's beyond the pathfinding just breaking. If Supplies were only a pre-battle resource you could build with, and the fight itself only had the Victory Point, then at least the map is set. It would still be a ton of parameters to consider, but I could see the AI handling it better that way. These games are absolute monuments of coding, work and simulation. It's rare for it to have a genuine meltdown on a regular battle map, and it's been that way the whole trilogy! It's just sort of funny when that happens. So this is what you call "asking for trouble". I think the AI just being able to handle layouts like these would've been more than enough. Right now, they have to deal with that, and towers springing up to murder them, and barricades blocking off their pathways. You could say to ignore the Supply system, but the points are still on the map, and it circles back around to me wondering why we have it at all. "III" has some fun, sectioned off multiplayer campaigns. There are eight player games, but even better than that, simultaneous turns. It was pretty stable from what I played, too! You can easily juggle unit control around to buddies no problem. The gigantic battles are also a lot more fun in co-op, since you can manage it better handing off units to friends. Fighting an overwhelming force in a city can now be FANTASTIC. Like I said before, this works best with overwhelming enemies, or smart enemies. Multiplayer has BOTH. I think it's unreasonable to want all the work that has been done scrapped completely. But this could be ideal as a multiplayer-exclusive or custom battle mode. Or maybe special maps like the Bastion could keep it, where it could be especially hyper-tuned. This is a single wall again. That seems workable. Okay, completely ignoring the supply stuff now, let's talk about the walled sieges. It's still just towers and rams, towers and rams. Judging from how the Slaanesh tower looks, there's a scrapped design for that battering ram somewhere. Anyway, with the newly designed maps, ass ladders need to be limited or gone completely. I started pretending to not have them while sieging cities, and really trying to take gates from the inside and stuff. And the act of just fighting on the new maps is great! At their core, they're incredibly well designed. There are still siege towers and plenty of ways to blow up walls, so maybe we've progressed past the need for ladders. As for the settlement battles, no matter how they are and how far they move the cities apart, I still think they're probably too frequent. Maybe you should need to have at least a Tier 2 settlement, before you can get a settlement battle? Just to make them less frequent, especially in an area that's changing hands constantly. Again, these are only a portion of the battles. There are the regular ones, and choke points, and ambushes have been overhauled to be more like "Three Kingdoms", that have an escape point, but I am in awe of how messy sieges are. It's so strange to talk about, because it feels like I'm not even engaging with it properly. At least compared to before, I can see where the fun is that needs a LOT of polishing, compared to it being dull if it worked perfectly. For now, if they are too much, you can always autoresolve. Or the enemy might ignore the Great Bastion, and just... move right through it... Nurgle is a stinky man. And so is Ku'gath and all his followers. ♫ Madworld - Ain't That Funny ♫
♪ You die, I get paid ♪ ♪ More cash surviving this game ♪ ♪ It's crazy, I get more money by killing these fools ♪ ♪ Now ain't that funny? ♪ Ku'gath combines the horror and disgust of a TLC Human Interest documentary with the high stakes thrill of a LiveLeak street fight. His forces are gross and diseased and they know it and love it. The units are horrible to look at, but they have such joy in their hearts. They are wonderfully brought to life and animated, and, as you'd expect, they have a lot of flavor in the Campaign map as well. For starters, how they build is VERY different. Nurgle is about the cycle of life, death and rebirth, so the buildings do the same. You build it once, then it automatically progresses through a lifecycle. At some point, they'll give you a unit to summon, and then keep cycling through. There are ways to speed up the process, but regardless, the buildings are always growing and doing something. Initially, gaining the units is slow, but once they're grown, you can summon them INSTANTLY. This means, once your economy is rolling, you can quickly recover an army or pump out a death stack. You may have guessed that this is a generally slow-moving faction. I mean, Ku'gath is practicing some kind of mobility scooter krav maga. The idea is to nurture and grow your cities, while cooking up all kinds of plague. Nurgle's special resource are infections, which you utilize in making new diseases. You can easily choose an army or city of your own to infect instantly. You can't directly click-plague an enemy, but a cult can unleash a random one. Maybe… not in Cathay. [cheers]
Maybe… not in Cathay. You have to hope that plague spreads through contact, and technology and manifestations can make this easier. The more you spread a general type of plague, the more symptoms underneath it will unlock, giving you different kinds of effects you can mix and match to help your forces and harm your enemy. Certain combinations are special plagues, like Nurgle's Rot, that have MUCH stronger effects. The local dwarfs might not be so tough after catching palsy. Or anything else you use to box them in. You wanna weaken the enemy, because your battles are about OUTLASTING them. The army may be slow, but it has a lot of sustaining potential. Army abilities can be activated based on how much damage your forces have taken. Buff or debuff, most of these spread to close proximity units, and there are skills and spells you have that do the same. This is all about making the fight as much of a blobfest as possible, to spread all of your bullshit around. KOSSAR: “We must engage the stink!” [sickening pop] Similar to Vampire Counts, there are obvious ways to outrange and outposition you. You do have some tricks to deal with it, but this is very much a mudball faction. Ideally, plague will have already weakened your enemy, so the process of tarpitting and outlasting them will be easier. It's a simple playstyle I'm sure people will poke holes in, but it's a lot of fun. It's perfectly thematic for a group that makes everyone in a voting district instantly shit their pants. Hey, we found a dinosaur fossil, let's shove maggots in it! They do have an issue, which is better to expand on when talking about Tzeentch. So let's change over. Tzeentch is all about knowledge, scheming, manipulation and magic. He's represented in-game by Kairos Fateweaver. He deals with time-space continuum nonsense, like setting out to kill his past self, only to be ambushed by his future self. That is a normal day in the Tzeentch Gang. This time around, you're special campaign resource is Grimoires. These are mainly used for unlocking and using the Ways of Change. These allow you to spy, scheme or cause diplomatic incidents. Incite a rebellion here or there, open the gates for a siege, or transfer yourself a nice settlement. You could gain a lot of direct power doing this, but more importantly, you can be funny. Yeah, I could just take a settlement... Or I could transfer it over to Skarbrand. Or a different edgelord who will notice the area and get pissed off. Why fight yourself, when you can welcome Khorne to the neighborhood? These are very powerful, but the cost does scale, and the most extreme options, like swiping a capital, just can't happen. It's not an “I Win” button, because that's what the army is for. You can eventually get a teleport stance and manipulate magic to help your faction out, but I don't find this stuff worth going over, compared to the roster. Tzeentch is a range-centric faction, from bolt-throwing horrors to living flamethrowers. Between the magic and flamethrowers, when you're in range, Tzeentch can melt like nobody else. If you want it to be extra stupid, use the Lore of Metal. My result screens often look like I used some kind of meme doomstack. A big part of why Tzeentch is so powerful is that every unit Tzeentch has comes with a barrier. This is a personal shield generator that goes ON TOP of the HP and absorbs all damage, and also can be buffed. You can get into range position, harass and do all sorts of stuff, without your shields ever being broken. And if they do, it doesn't matter much, because you can move them away. Then the shields will recharge. [Halo Shield Recharge.wav]
They can do this forever. The slow blade isn't gonna penetrate the shield. The overpowered Death Pendulum from earlier can't penetrate the shield. In a game where health regen had to be capped, I'm amazed that barriers like this can exist at all. And there is no chance they're going to survive as they are. These barriers feel like some kind of compensation. I can win near every fight on the field. But for me, it doesn't hide how boring this faction is to play. The truth is, all of the Chaos God factions have wonderful, fleshed out mechanics on the Campaign. The issue is, some previous races have been expanded out to enormous sizes. Even something like Vampire Counts, that only got one DLC, feel substantial. "III's" brand new races, like Kislev or Cathay or Ogres, still feel really solid. Then you compare these to a mono-god daemon faction. These can feel smaller than they already look. All the rosters have Flying Furies, Chaos Spawn and Soul Grinders. The Grinders are the golden example of what to do. They perform different roles in their respective armies. But, even if they perform a similar role, they're distinct, both, visually and gameplay-wise, so it doesn't feel like you're just playing a clone of the same unit. Your endgame monster is already going to be similar to an Exalted Lord. While someone like Khorne might have reused stuff, they at least gave his mortal followers a brand new look. Not here. There are no Donkeys of Khorne, but there are Donkeys of Tzeentch. There are a few layers to why these repurposed units don't make the cut. The first is technical, being the effects that are lost along the way. Let's check out the Chaos Spawn introduced in "Warhammer I". They have this gross, wet, slimy layer to them. This model is somebody's baby. Now let's repurpose it into a Nurgle Spawn, which should be way grosser, and... it's... actually pretty dry-looking. Work was put into recoloring the models, but they look worse, because they weren't meant to be colored like it. And they are way too similar. The unaffiliated Chaos Warrior models from the older game look WAY better than the brand new ones. They also don't gel with the visual theme for the faction. Having the Tzeentch warriors covered in skulls seems more like a Khorne thing. And yes, I know, on tabletop, you repainted Warrior models, but we could have a lot more creativity here. Khorne and Slaanesh got unique mortal follower models, but Tzeentch and Nurgle weren't so lucky. Instead of adding something new, they reused old models. To bring up the Spawn again, the game "Chaosbane" gave them all kinds of variety. Using the silhouette as a base, there could be tons of unique designs. There are creative artists there, fully capable of doing that. For one reason or another, that didn't happen. Again, I'd understand it more if the rosters weren't already so small. If it's going to be that way, at least go the extra mile in making them distinct. They've shown that you can share a unit name and still do that. I mean, the Warriors of Chaos are missing their leaders right now, so maybe something is planned for them? I don't know. Will they be their own thing, or fold more into the daemon armies, with some kind of DLC? I have no clue how they'll deal with the Everchosen. Subsequently, synthesizing Sigvald's soldiers into Slaanesh's swarms seems sincerely sensible, saving separation of such squads sustains scheduled schemes and strategies from CA, but, fuck, it sure seems like he belongs there. The truth is, when you see how many settlement maps they share, and the same unique capital building, and the tiny roster with shared units, you get that these are sub-factions. They don't feel that way in the Campaign map, because they are so fleshed out and engaging there. But if you only heard the hype about 8 races, it's not going to be what you expected. LUDRED: “I castrate myself!” This is likely why the Daemons of Chaos are recommended as a first Campaign. Their roster has every single daemon. It's even bigger in Campaign, where they can get every single Chaos unit. It is so much stuff in the battlefield, I don't have anything to say on it. It would be like asking what are the nuances of the Radious mod? This is the toy box faction, and they give you one hell of an action figure. Channel the power of "Spore" with a customizable Daemon Prince. … or maybe channel "Shogun 2: Avatar Conquest". Dedicate your actions to Chaos Gods, and they'll give you special units, buffs and, of course, your customizable war gear. Some of these only look vaguely different, but you can come up with all kinds of combinations. Once you get enough glory, you could dedicate yourself to a Chaos God, or choose to remain Undivided. Except for pure flavor, there's no reason to not be Undivided. You already get mini-campaign features from the other gods. You have Slaanesh's Seduction ability, Tzeentch's Teleport, minor switchable plagues of Nurgle and Khorne's murder meter. I thought dedication might unlock the deeper faction mechanics, but it doesn't. Undivided doesn't cut you off from units – you get every single endgame daemon. So yeah, I'm just gonna say this is the daemon fun box. Also, man, is it ironic that the character with the most story going on is supposed to be the custom action figure guy. It's not like the journey is gonna be that worth it. That leaves the Ogre Kingdoms, which are the pre-order Day One DLC, whatever the hell. I actually had to pause when I saw Greasus Initial D-ing his way across the screen. GREASUS: “Greasus Goldtooth, Overtyrant and Hoardmaster!” That's like a wrestling intro. The Ogres are a combination of steppe mountain tribes and the worst shoppers at WalMart. They fight to eat and eat to fight, and worship the Great Maw. Which, so far, will eat anything they throw into it. It looks like it could be some kind of Tyranid, but it did teach them magic. The special kind that actually lets you cast fist. The Ogres rely on having meat, and so great is their appetite that, if they don't have a steady supply, they'll start eating each other. If they have a meat surplus, they have some options. They can fatten up before a fight to increase their mass and charge bonus, sending all their many enemies flying even further. It could also be shipped off to the Great Maw instead, to give all of your soldiers a temporary buff. The meat itself can obviously come from battle, but also by being inside the radius of an Ogre Camp. It's similar to a horde army, but more like a deployable city. You can't build a lot in the actual settlements, but they do give access to, both, unique buildings and resources. Greasus can't build a big castle, but he can build a toll booth. They're, both, brutal fighters, but also shrewd traders. Other factions will periodically offer mercenary contracts for diplomatic bonuses or money, but you don't have to do these if you ever don't want to. You're free to roam around the mountains and patrol your trade empire. You could make money through deals, or raid the Grand Cathay trade caravans that pass through. It really does play like running a criminal shakedown operation than a proper empire, with a fun balance between horde armies and proper settling. Also unlike the other factions, their heroes have fleshed out, unique skillsets. These encourage you to make meaningful choices, and build unique themed armies based around their skills. On the battlefield itself, they're a high-speed freight train. Most ogres should be charging everywhere all the time. Their charge bonus is ridiculous, and you can get a lot of mileage out of constantly moving around. Except for Greasus, who sometimes slips into a diabetic coma. Or he's half fighting and half passing out. God bless 'im. Except for the gnoblars, who are more of ammunition and bait for the Ogres, the entire roster is large units capable of being hard countered. Though, with those Heroes, you have some surprises, like being able to field a viable stealth army. Just so long as you bring the right units along. Like every DLC race pack since "II", they're great and sure to be favorites. Though I do wonder why some of the base game factions aren't quite up to their level. And… wow, that's it. Fooff... "Warhammer III" has brought in fantastic new mechanics, interesting new races, and a whole ton of potential for the big mega map. While some areas are incredibly polished, others are unbelievably broken. I think it could've benefitted from a longer delay, instead of coming out in a month packed with games. Like the Lord Packs before it, there are some factions who got the short end of the straw. I guess it all depends on how things progress from here, since some races who didn't have it so good in the beginning are now living large. For now, I'm more curious about what you'll have to pay to improve. If you already pre-ordered it, I'm sure you'll be happy somewhere down the line. If you haven't done that yet, I can safely recommend it to you on Game Pass. Right now, it doesn't rely on you owning any of the previous games' content. You can get it cheap now on Game Pass with a bunch of other games, then, when the big map comes out, you can hopefully buy this on sale when it's more polished up. It has a ton of stuff to love, and I'll play the absolute hell out of it. But, besides some design shortcomings, the bugs I encountered were concerning enough that… I can't recommend this at full price right now, because I have no clue what someone might run into. If the game as-is worked perfectly, I'd say go for it. But, as someone who really enjoys this series, I can only give it a definite "maybe". I don't know if I'll cover what comes next, but at least keep an eye on this game. Enjoying it now depends on your tolerance for a fantastic game, that has some bugs and weird decisions covering it up. Please. Fix Horse. ♫ Sam & Max - The Office ♫ I'm so tired I - don't even know what to say. Cakebak3r: "Thoughts on the new "Dune" film? Are we gonna get good games in that universe?" I did like the movie, even if I wish the costumes were a little bit more "Lawrence of Arabia". We did have a very good string of "Dune" games, since nearly all RTS stuff is based off of "Dune 2" in some way. But I don't know, I've only seen some stuff about Spice Wars and not a whole lot. Talus: "What is [your] favorite "Age of Empires" spin-off, "Galactic Battlegrounds" or "Age of Mythology"?" Definitely "Mythology". "Mythology" is very much its own thing, while "Battlegrounds"… is literally "Age of Empires II", but with more insane balance. Though, "Age of Empires II", but "Star Wars" is the whole appeal there. Vonerd: "Have [you] ever thought of covering "Outer Wilds" someday?" "Outer Wilds" is an excellent, wonderful, magical game. If you like space, just go play "Outer Wilds". If you like video games, just go play "Outer Wilds". You explore a strange solar system. That's all you need to know. Don't look anything up. You'll be good to go. That was my "Outer Wilds" video. Hayden: "How should I get out of Jury Duty?" Well, that's a good one. So, you can talk loudly or put it in paper, but basically make sure that they know your mind is already made up. For bonus points, talk about how you're an expert in whatever the case is about, and mention, like, TV shows and all sorts of bullshit as your citations. You will be out of Jury Duty in no time. There probably won't be any long-term consequences, but I don't have the answers for that. Duke Jacob Von Briton: "[Are you] going to take a big nap now?" Boy, am I. It's gonna be a long one. [MARV DIES AGAIN]
One thing that I don't see being discussed very often but he touches in the video. It seems many lords and heroes went back to the WH1 school of barely any skills. That is specially true for melee characters. Just take the boyars as an example, they only differ from empire generals for the fact that they get a bear instead of a griffon as their top mount, but for the rest is just bare bones. CA even upgraded some of these in the previous game to WH2 levels of design (see Thanes), I don't understand how they just downgraded back to square one. Seen that the ogres do not suffer from such design choices made me even more confused.
I subscribe to every criticism regarding UI. Red on Red for everything is an overkill.
Just gotta say, his blaring of the Throne Of Bhaal song just made me start up a new run.
I was appalled by the red on red UI when it was revealed and somehow it's even worse than expected. Removing colored skill lines to make it all red, changing the construct and deconstruct icons to both be red...it's just silly.
UI mods can't come fast enough.
Man, his "changes for change's sake" criticism was on point.
I’ve been saying it the RED ON RED should be illegal.
"Ingame Encyclopedia" YES!!! YES!!! Finally!
And the other changes sound great too!
The UI downgrade is such a strange set of decisions. We lose the colored skill lines for clarity, the green vs. red construction banners, and the race specific tech colors.
It's all so needless.
Edit: And we lost the quest button in the top right as well? Why?
Some Khorne fanboy designed the UI and we know it