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Post by treadiculous on May 24, 2016 14:04:19 GMT -5
for some reason the launch date was today, which happened to be my birthday, so I felt obliged to buy this game!
its worth noting that the first time you play it needs to be started in 'offline mode' if you get it through steam.
so far I've played badly and lost quickly, however it seems to deliver the goods nicely!
anyone else out there playing?
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Post by emptyhat on May 24, 2016 16:19:50 GMT -5
I pre-loaded it so I guess I'll be playing it in a couple of hours, or whenever.
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Post by RedsandRoyals on May 24, 2016 16:37:54 GMT -5
I pre-loaded it and got in some skirmish games this morning. I'm withholding judgement for the time being.
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Post by Adkenpachi on May 25, 2016 11:22:10 GMT -5
Its not my cuppa tea, too far from totalwar. But for anyone interested, cdkeys has it for £32 rather than 40.
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Post by Rolling Thunder on May 25, 2016 15:28:25 GMT -5
I am waiting for the download to finish
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Post by RedsandRoyals on May 29, 2016 12:41:53 GMT -5
Some quick thoughts.
Pros
- Reasonably faithful to the setting, considering they have to make a few compromises to make the game
- Quests insert interesting set-piece battles into campaigns that you can fight with whatever army you recruited for your lord, and you can teleport to the site (and back after) if you have the money.
- Visually impressive battles and campaign map. Graphics are excellent
- Reworked and interesting approach to lords and heroes, including upgrades, skills, and wargear.
- Thriving mod community (even though it hasn't been out for more than a week yet) that addresses many of the negatives below (I've marked those with a *)
- Reworked sieges that condense the scale of the fighting while making it feel like you're laying siege to an enormous city. Makes everything seem more dramatic.
Cons
- Surprisingly small scope for a TW game. Relatively small world map, only six "Races" (Empire, Dwarves, Bretonnia, Orcs, Chaos, Vampire Counts) with no variation or roster changes between the various sub-factions.
- Some wonky balancing with various aspects, notably towers in sieges and artillery in general*
- Somewhat limited roster. They let their hands be tied by unit rosters in the actual game, instead of expanding in areas that made sense (dismounted knights, etc)*.
- The big Chaos invasion comes too soon, meaning most of the game (at least as the Empire) is frantically consolidating your position before Chaos finishes chewing through Kislev rather than traditional Total War empire building*
- Sometimes feels they went too cartoony, at least in combat. Lots of jumping in the air and spinning around done by infantry. It looks like a production of the Nutcracker Ballet gone seriously wrong. Also no kill animations, which were always fun to watch.
- VERY much a rock-paper-scissors feel, moreso than in other Total War game where it was a bit more general and nuanced by unit variations. This isn't exactly an egregious sin in and of itself, but it makes the gaps in certain faction rosters very painful at times (Lack of cavalry or equivalent for dwarves, no ranged units for Vampire Counts).
Other
- Magic is well implemented and useful without being game-breaking. They may have nerfed it a touch too much in too many ways, but it's not much of a problem.
- Heroes feel like proper Warhammer heroes, although they run in slightly the opposite direction as Magic up there and might want a slight nerf in the future.
- They stripped out a lot of the guts of normal Total War games to make this one run smoother, like adjusting taxes, factional politics, etc. Not really a problem for me, but go in expecting it to be more of a Warhammer game on a Total War scale, as opposed to Total War game with a Warhammer flavor. Your mileage may vary.
- Aerial units are interesting and, largely, well implemented. They offer good tactical flexibility and can be countered sufficiently to not be overpowered, and can serve as a sort of band-aid to cover roster gaps that were left in the name of flavor. I also never get tired of watching my Empire generals on griffons plow into units of goblins or zombies.
- This would have gotten me interested in Warhammer Fantasy if they hadn't chewed up the setting and shat out Age of Sigmar recently in it's place. They even have a link on the launcher to the Fantasy section of the GW website, but clicking on it to discover that Karl Franz is now just some random Free Captain on a Griffon and that nothing aside from the appearance of some of the minis is the same as in the game is probably more damaging to sales than helpful.
Overall, I'm enjoying it, especially the Empire. Despite it's cons, it feels like they have a very solid core that both they and modders can build on. I'm expecting that the next DLC will probably be various flavors of Elves, or maybe make Bretonnia properly playable. I do worry that the compact feel of the campaign and narrow faction choice limits the replayability of the campaign, though. A large part of the Total War experience was a large map where you had a lot of freedom to expand and conquer how you chose, and where the conflicts between the various AI factions would make it a different experience each time. That's missing to a large extent here.
If anyone has any questions about the game, feel free to ask, but I think most of you already have it to judge from my Steam friends list.
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Post by emptyhat on May 29, 2016 15:00:08 GMT -5
It does sound like most of your problems will be solved by the compulsary AoS DLC that will come along in a couple of months.
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Post by RedsandRoyals on May 29, 2016 17:18:51 GMT -5
It does sound like most of your problems will be solved by the compulsary AoS DLC that will come along in a couple of months. You can only purchase a hard copy of that, and when you open the CD case, there's just a turd with a twin-tailed comet symbol pressed into it. Just like what's in the box for every other age of Sigmar product.
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Post by emptyhat on May 30, 2016 10:10:23 GMT -5
I think not knowing about the teleport button has tanked my campaign.
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Post by Adkenpachi on May 31, 2016 6:59:12 GMT -5
So i was speaking to a friend who has already played TW:W for longer than I've played the last 3 total wars combined. I trust his judgement on the issue.
His brief round up is, if you're expecting total war you'll be disappointed, if you're expecting a table top warhammer style game you'll be disappointed. It is however very good, the battle mode is very similar but the campaign had to be severely changed to adapt to the races/universe/lore.
Edit : playing dwarf/human is a completely different game from chaos etc.
I may get it in a sale.
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Post by treadiculous on May 31, 2016 10:09:52 GMT -5
So I've played a few hours of custom battles, mainly orcs versus bretonians; seems to me that the HQ buff/spells are essential to victory!
I think I must be playing orcs wrong though as any victory is at huge losses to my side, so much so that I don't want to try the campaign yet!
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Post by emptyhat on May 31, 2016 10:42:46 GMT -5
Are you supposed to be able to by pass the siege of a third party on a city and attack the city itself? I had wanted to take a Dwarf city before VC could raze it but it wouldn't allow it. Later a Chaos army was besieging one of my settlements and a rival Orc army took it through the siege without attacking them.
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Post by RedsandRoyals on May 31, 2016 13:58:32 GMT -5
@adken: Yeah, that's a good way to sum it up. I've found Empire to be closest to a traditional TW game, in terms of flavor, mechanics, and a decent roster.
@tread: Yeah, get used to horrendous casualties. That should be lessened by vetting them up throwing in big angry wrecker units (trolls, etc) to support the boyz, but most armies bleed pretty heavily unless they're really tooled up by research-based buffs in the campaign or rely on heavily armored units. I've found most infantry is there to be meat-grindered while your big angry units like cavalry or monsters do most of the killing. Also be sure to check the army the AI automatically generates with custom matches. They'll try to spend all the funds so it may throw a bunch of elite shock units at you.
@empty: In theory, no, you can't bypass it, no matter which Total War game you're playing. If someone's already laying siege, you're SOL unless it's broken somehow. I don't know how the orcs ninja'd your settlement unless they forced the Chaos army away and then stormed it themselves. It may also have been a bug. Creative Assembly ganes usually has a nice little crop of them at launch
Edit: And someone just made a mod for dismounted knights for Bretonnia. Now the crusade can begin.
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Post by Rolling Thunder on Jun 4, 2016 6:16:45 GMT -5
Oh the whole, playing the Empire, I've found that artillery, and cavalry, have a disappointing lack of crunch effect. Cavalry charges seem to get shrugged off with minimal casualties. It is disappointing to see plate-armoured gothic knights, with lances, fail to inflict more than ten casualties on a unit of zombies, where a similar situation in Medieval II would have seen catastrophic casualties for the infantry. Hell, a similar charge in Empire, by cavalry armed with sabres and nothing else, would have produced higher kills.
And don't even get me started on the weakness of cannonfire.
Also, why are handgunners the same range as crossbowmen, and lack morale effects?
Also, why do Empire Knights have no sidearms? Maces or swords would be good.
Throwing axes are not armour-piercing weapons. Pistols are.
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Post by emptyhat on Jun 4, 2016 10:45:11 GMT -5
I don't know about empire heavy cavalry. But using goblin spider riders and wolf riders, light cavalry I found that charging in letting them fight briefly and then breaking away from combat for another charge later was good.
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Post by treadiculous on Jun 5, 2016 14:30:41 GMT -5
RT - I keep mistaking cavalry for infantry on the same basis, i'm watching them fight and thinking 'well that can't be cavalry otherwise they'd be crushing through and out the other side by now'.
however, I'm still really enjoying this game
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Post by emptyhat on Jun 5, 2016 17:25:48 GMT -5
Don't you issue a double click move through the infantry for a breakthrough attack? Or a charge to engage and tie them up.
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Post by Adkenpachi on Jun 6, 2016 9:27:09 GMT -5
Don't you issue a double click move through the infantry for a breakthrough attack? Or a charge to engage and tie them up. This is crucial, it's always been like it in TW games. Double click a unit or two's length behind the unit you want to disembowel otherwise you're ordering your cavalry to get in to hand to hand combat with them (which would negate their charge statistic and just place them as melee attack + armour vs infantrys melee attack + armour which would likely make it either an even match or the infantry would have an upperhand depending on stats. I always thought the cavalry were unrealisticly overpowered in other TW games as they're effectively infantry who cant block well once their horses are stopped.
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Post by Rolling Thunder on Jun 6, 2016 15:30:08 GMT -5
Don't you issue a double click move through the infantry for a breakthrough attack? Or a charge to engage and tie them up. This is crucial, it's always been like it in TW games. Double click a unit or two's length behind the unit you want to disembowel otherwise you're ordering your cavalry to get in to hand to hand combat with them (which would negate their charge statistic and just place them as melee attack + armour vs infantrys melee attack + armour which would likely make it either an even match or the infantry would have an upperhand depending on stats. I always thought the cavalry were unrealisticly overpowered in other TW games as they're effectively infantry who cant block well once their horses are stopped. Always? I don't remember this in medieval 2? Or Rome. Or even Empire. Then again, I play insane amounts of mods, so maybe this is a thing and I'm just used to it being fixed. Cavalry has, for the most, been quite underpowered in most TW games, which seriously underestimate the sheer amount of damage that a half-tonne warhorse, charging at full gallop, concentrated into the tip of a lance, will do. The more realistic mods (Stainless Steel/Broken Crescent/Europa Barbarorum) fix this, though Medieval 2 was a fairly good representation from a mechanics point of view. Even charging at a canter, as Roman Cataphracts were wont to do, or charging just with swords/axes (as was the norm in post-1600s cavalry) will deliver hugely more force than a comparable attack with an infantry weapon. Edit: Just walloped 45 Empire Knights into a unit of Empire swordsmen. 13 casualties. 13. And they're still fighting. What. The. fornicate. Dozens of the little bastards went flying, but they just pick themselves up and are like "lol, that ground's pretty soft", and then get on with fighting an enemy they have no reliable means of killing.
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Post by Adkenpachi on Jun 8, 2016 10:49:22 GMT -5
It's been a while since playing medieval and rome but i played the absolute nutse out of them and that's how i always played it because i noticed the charge was ok but then after that charge they get bogged down. Better to charge through and then back again.
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Post by Rolling Thunder on Jun 11, 2016 5:30:12 GMT -5
Yeah, just tested against Medieval II vanilla, using Spanish Sword and Buckler Men and Spanish Conquistadors as comparisons to Empire State Troops. The effect was horrific - the Gothic Knights just went into them, killed about 60% of the formation on the charge, and broke them in 60 seconds. Which is exactly what full plate armoured knights do to medium infantry armed with sideswords and bucklers.
Testing French Gendarmes against Russian professional spearmen in Schiltrom. Close fight, but the spearmen prevailled.
Testing pikes and halberdiers shows the initial cavalry charge to be pretty blunted, though the gothics/gendarmes tended to prevail. This is mostly due to CA being unable to code proper polearm fighting. Will be testing in EBII, shortly
Tested in EBII. Lance-armed Companions versus Gallic Sword heavies. Catastrophic casualties for the swordsmen, which led to the cavalry triumphing in melee, and Companions were considerably lighter cavalry than Empire Knights.
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Post by emptyhat on Jun 11, 2016 10:14:06 GMT -5
Have you tried the Warhammer monstrous cavalry?
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Post by RedsandRoyals on Jun 11, 2016 10:24:28 GMT -5
I think the "regular" forms of combat were scaled back a bit in order to make monstrous creatures and heroes seem more devastating without making them truly horrendous. Think of it as relative damage versus actual damage. Cavalry charges now seem to focus on the physical impact of throwing everyone everywhere instead of actual casualties.
Has anyone found any mods they like? I've got loads, mostly that add units and plug holes in rosters left by CA sticking to the tabletop for units.
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Post by Rolling Thunder on Jun 11, 2016 12:12:17 GMT -5
I think the "regular" forms of combat were scaled back a bit in order to make monstrous creatures and heroes seem more devastating without making them truly horrendous. Think of it as relative damage versus actual damage. Cavalry charges now seem to focus on the physical impact of throwing everyone everywhere instead of actual casualties. which makes cavalry pretty useless as a decisive arm. I wholly appreciate what you're saying, but it really makes cavalry quite useless.
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Post by emptyhat on Jun 11, 2016 14:38:17 GMT -5
Wasn't that also the case for non-monsterous cav in 8th ed Fantasy?
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