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Thread: Total War: Warhammer

  1. #1
    Respect the point. Byron's Avatar
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    Total War: Warhammer

    Okay so nerd alert, up until about 5 years ago, I was a massive Warhammer nerd, both Fantasy and 40k, I played it since I was 11 and a lot of my lunchtimes at school were spent in the science classroom that doubled as a gaming club, using bunsen burners as terrain and not realising that however fast we played, you couldn't get a 1500 point battle done in an hour (for the uninitiated, you need about an hour per 500 points)

    So when I heard Creative Assembly had obtained a licence from Games Workshop for a Warhammer game I went nuts with excitement, thinking about the grand scale that could be achieved and what could be done with a rich history like Warhammer, without worrying about historical constraints.

    Then Rome Total War 2 was released, which every Total War fan knows was a debacle. I got sucked into the pre-order hype, played it for an hour and then didn't touch it for a year until I was certain that it was playable. Even then, I reckon it was decent, but not excellent, a 7/10.

    Then Attilla Total War came out, 10/10 best game evar. I loved the way CA managed to create a world of chaos fitting with the period of history when the nomadic tribes swarmed over Western Europe.

    So, I've heard good things about Total War Warhammer, if you buy up to May 31st then you get Chaos Warriors as a free DLC and CDKeys are offering it for £32.99 currently. I'll report back when I have more info.

    Who else is excited?

  2. #2
    Senior Member Cord's Avatar
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    I'm not excited, but I do own it. I'm a Total War nerd (or at least was) but largely uninterested in Warhammer.

    I've only played a few hours but the early signs are reasonably positive. Certainly not had the immediate feeling I had with Rome 2 that I'd bought a duffer.

    If you are going to get it, I would recommend doing it while Chaos are free. The playable faction selection isn't particularly generous (it's 4) with the base game.

  3. #3
    Senior Member Disco's Avatar
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    o/ Nerd five! In my head I still think I'm going to get around to painting the rest of the models I spent quite a lot of money on a few years ago.

    I'm glad the game has been made (although how you come up with that name rather than the glaringly obvious I do not know) and I'm looking forward to seeing how ridiculous it is but I'm not getting it until all/more of the races are out and they've gotten a year or so of patching behind them. I understand that new races in this version are going to be more individual than in previous iterations but I still think 4 (they were guilt tripped into the Chaos thing so I'm not counting them) is still pretty stingy and I'm happy to wait until they've added in (presumably) Brettonia and some Elves at least.

    I've spoken to a couple of people who got streaming keys early and it's apparently more stable than previous releases but the state of the AI remains to be seen, how it handles the new mechanics and in particular sieges will be the real test.

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    Senior Member Cord's Avatar
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    From what I've played so far they've largely taken sieges out of it. I think they only occur for the major city in a province (cities are still grouped together into provinces like Rome 2). If you attack a minor city and play the battle you just have a fight outside it. I haven't found the AI particularly challenging, but also not glaringly shit.

    The races do have slightly different play styles and are more individual that your standard Total War (you also get race specific missions where you go off and fight a scripted battle to earn some trinkets) which is good, but 4/5 still feels a little sparse and I'm only early into the game. I think they plan on giving out a free one at some point (almost certainly Brettonia who already exist in a reduced form in the game as it is) but it's still a few short of what I'd consider the minimum a Total War should ship with.

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    Senior Member Disco's Avatar
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    I must admit I'm looking forward to playing as Undead or Chaos, the other three I'm not that bothered about.

    It's also pretty silly how they've released this right after GW binned the world it's based on in favour of what looks like a horrible fantasy version of 40k.

  6. #6
    Respect the point. Byron's Avatar
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    Agreed, after having put in 6 hours today I've got some pretty comprehensive notes to put in when I get home.

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    Respect the point. Byron's Avatar
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    Okay so full review below (or as full as you can get after 6 odd hours)

    Graphics:

    So this will run fine on most half decent rigs. I'm running

    CPU - Intel Core i7 4720HQ 2.60Ghz
    Graphics - AMD Radeon M200X Series
    Ram - 16GB
    OS - Windows 8.1 64bit

    I can run it on Medium settings, with High unit stacks and it runs fine at 30ish fps and looks good. I hear Directx 12 will improve graphical output by 20 percent and reduce the load on CPU's as well but it's Windows 10 only, the crafty bastards.

    Sound:

    Simply not enough epic music I think. Where the fuck is my blood-pumping music? This really hasn't been beaten in God knows how many years.

    Campaign Gameplay:

    So this has been streamlined a little. It's strange as they really can't be trying to pull in the casual crowd with a game about Warhammer, so I'd have thought they would have been better off going full Hearts of Iron micro-management but the important thing is that what they have cut isn't really a massive deal, they've shifted the focus away from a settlement micro-management and move it towards customising your characters which is staggering. Giving your characters skill points in specific areas means you can actually move characters towards offensive, defensive or bureaucratic which I don't think CA have ever really managed up to this point. Settlement wise it's simplified as I mentioned, you can no longer adjust tax rates or issue edicts for each city, nor can you install regional governors like you could in Attilla and the reality is you now basically just have two types of buildings, military or economic. You could argue this was always the case, but here it feels even more noticable how they have streamlined it.

    Battle Gameplay

    This is noticeably good in the sense that the AI isn't completely fucked. It still feels like they've arbitraility made the enemy better on higher difficulties by increasing their morale/attack but I think that's always been an issue. The main selling point is that the enemy doesn't make stupid moves. If you have artillery then the AI won't stand around, even if you are the aggressor, if they see high ground, they will try to use it and I think the best endorsement of the AI is that it's not intentionally stupid which is high praise indeed given the state of Rome 2. One concern is that the battles are brutally fast but a bit too fast, and it kind of means battles are like winding up a toy and letting go, you don't have a great deal of control to change things once you've let fly. The Lords/Heroes work very well mind you, as individual wrecking balls. Thorgrim Grudgebearer in particular could tank two units of Orcs on his own without much concern. I've yet to use wizards but I hear their spells work very well, just need to see what The Comet of Casandora looks like

    Factions:

    It is barebones, it really is. A bonus is that all the Factions have their own playstyle which means there is a bit more variety than 4/5 factions would normally give and the Chaos work as a horde would in Attilla and as you would expect. The other good news for CA is that they have a good number of DLC packs available. Logically I imagine it would be roughly as follows;

    Bretonnia - Free DLC but please for the love of God expand the roster. 3 cavalry units for a cavalry faction is pathetic frankly.
    Elves - High Elves, Wood Elves, Dark Elves. Good variety there
    Beasts - Ogres, Beastmen, Lizardmen
    Dead - Expand the Vampire Counts, actually give us a choice between the noble families, Tomb Kings, the Cursed City of Carcassone
    Skaven - Free DLC
    Free States - Border Princes, Marienburg, Kislev

    The big disappointment is that with all the Factions you don't get a more in depth choice. Imagine if you had a choice between Talabeclan, Altdorf and Stirland for the Empire, or various tribes/clans for Greenskins and the 4 Chaos Gods.

    The more I think about it, the more I think they've missed a real opportunity here to add some real depth, without needing to expand beyond the 4/5 races they've initially given us.

  8. #8
    Senior Member Cord's Avatar
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    I've given it a proper session today and I think my conclusions are roughly the same as yours.

    I think the foundation of the game is pretty damn solid. The AI so far has been reasonable (I'm playing as dwarves and it's a challenge to keep my artillery and missile troops alive as the AI is good and aggressive at flanking with cavalry), I like the focus on the characters and more RPG element and it looks good and runs remarkably well for a Total War game.

    What they've failed to do is make the most of that by skimping on the factions, and as you have said, not giving you enough customisation/depth within the various factions. I'm not all that worried though, as at least that's something that can be fixed with DLC and the game itself is solid. They'll rip us off obviously, but I think once you have all the factions and they've released a load of unit packs, it should be a really good, and really re-playable game.

  9. #9
    Webly Ian's Avatar
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    Incidentally, holding back on races they can sell later is exactly the same shit that was pulled with the Blood Bowl games.

    I'm not saying that Games Workshop are a load of massive money-obsessed cunts or that it's their fault, but I'm also not not saying that.

  10. #10
    Senior Member Disco's Avatar
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    Thinking of getting this to play over the weekend, anyone know what DLC (other than the additional races) is worth getting?

  11. #11
    Senior Member Cord's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Disco View Post
    Thinking of getting this to play over the weekend, anyone know what DLC (other than the additional races) is worth getting?
    Bit late on the reply, but I haven't yet bothered with the additional races, as £13.99 is a bit steep (bastards seem averse to sales as well), but I've been happy with the two 'Lord packs' (the £5.99 ones) I've bought.

    You get more units which is always a bonus, but mainly they are good as CA got much better at making the legendary Lord characters as they went on, to the point where the ones in the base game seem a little dull/useless by comparison. The new ones have much better abilities/gameplay mechanics and having more varied starting positions gives it more replayability. I'd particularly recommend the King and the Warlord one (Dwarf/Goblin focused) as the Lords in that are much more interesting to play as than the original lot.

  12. #12
    Senior Member Disco's Avatar
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    I found a sale here that's still on today: https://uk.gamesplanet.com/promo/tw_weekend

    I ended up getting the Lord packs plus Chaos and Beastmen, not bothered about the Wood Elves as yet.

  13. #13
    Senior Member Cord's Avatar
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    Cheers for that, picked myself up the Wood Elves.

    How are you finding the game so far?

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    Senior Member Disco's Avatar
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    I'm liking it so far, the map is glorious and I've only poked around in a small corner of it. Started as Vampires (because whoever says skeletons aren't the best thing ever is deluding themselves) and I'm beginning to get the hang of it, I like being able to raise tons of chod troops to throw at the enemy, it literally doesn't matter if half my army dies because you just spook them and a load more back to life afterwards. The economy stuff always worries me slightly as I've never got my head around it entirely and the extra layer of Warhammer flavour makes it slightly more impenetrable (do I want to build some spooky trees or a spooky gibbet? Yeah, why not!) but I've just got my first full province so it should start making a bit more sense. On the plus side I have already been screwed by an autoresolve so it's definitely a Total War game.

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    Senior Member Disco's Avatar
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    I think I might be dead (beaten rather, as a vampire I suppose I was already dead), it all appeared to be going so well too. By which I mean I happily ignored dire warnings of impending doom and now it's not so much impending as really happening right now.

    I started out following the direction the game prods you in (unifying the two Sylvania regions) then went after The Empire. Rather successfully too, but it seems I shouldn't have dismissed the Chaos armies footling around to the north. They were full of utter shit troops so I was happy to wait until I'd finished some other stuff before going after them but it turned out to be just a precursor. There are now at least six full stacks of double hard bastards giving me a right good rodgering, so much so I don't think I can hold them off. The only hope for survival (they're into Sylvania which, if it falls, utterly fucks me) is them losing interest and buggering off after Brettonia or Dwarfs. Unfortunately the only way to anyone else is basically right through my kitchen.

    So yeah, fucked. I know what I've done wrong though, once I got a grip on what to build where I fannied about upgrading/building random stuff rather than concentrating on getting alternate troop producing regions. As a result I can build shit troops pretty much everywhere but decent stuff only in one place. Planning! If I die (just about to fight a crucial siege defence that the AI thinks I'll get crushed in but I'm convinced we have a chance) I might have a bash at Chaos, not having to build stuff sounds appealing.

  16. #16
    Senior Member Disco's Avatar
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    Fucking dwarfs, they're such dicks.

  17. #17
    Senior Member Cord's Avatar
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    Wood Elves are my particular bête noire. I don't think I've got remotely close to ever killing one of their tree bastards.

  18. #18
    Senior Member Disco's Avatar
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    I wiped them out in my second Vampire game but only after rinsing the rest of the map. I doubt I'd have got far into that forest without the huge amounts of troops and spook-bucks I was getting by that stage. Even then I basically wore them down by throwing three armies at a time into each battle. I'm leaving them alone as Dwarfs, bollocks to getting kited about by all their archers.

    I'm slightly disappointed with the apparent lack of emergence that goes on in longer games. The Dwarfs always confederate and murder the orcs, The Empire can barely handle the Norse (lol at the bullshit Norse invasion of the Badlands when you play down there) let alone Chaos, and the Wood Elves always massacre Brettonia.

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