Warhammer Total War: Warhammer III

[Mitleser2020]

Campaign difficulty is definitely one of the worst areas of the game, it is atrocious really to increase melee stats of the enemy. It basically makes every enemy melee unit one tier higher. So your glass cannon high charge bonus early melee units with beastmen can't perform their role anymore as they'll lose to same price point AI melee units because of raw stat difference, and you have no choice but to abuse the AI with missile units. I don't understand how they even think that's a good idea, I don't use higher battle difficulties for this reason and only higher campaign difficulties.

WH3 update:

It's pretty much what you get for defeating Karl Franz now...

Speaking of Karl Franz...

That is how he looks in the new game:

So does the allied recruitment thing have any limits? Like unit tier or number of units?
It will definitely destroy my enjoyment to see a Vampire Lord running around with a stack of 10 Steam Tanks, 8 Skaven Jezzails and one Skeleton Spearmen. If there aren't any number or tier limits to it I think the first mod I'll be looking for is something to solve that.

From reddit:

Allied units will disband if your alliance ends. You are limited to 4 allied units in each army.

 

[Trithne]

This is meaningless.

 

[Delterius]

This is meaningless.

what it means is 'create a full stack of archers + a hero who can heal themselves'

 

[tabacila]

It's weird because they kept the small art 'videos' for the events.
This a really shit change tbh. They also removed the art that represented the region's climate/geography.

Speaking of Karl Franz...

That is how he looks in the new game:

Why the fuck would you not use those 2D drawings. They are pretty incline.
Also at least some of the graphics issues that have plagued WH2 are still here I see. In one of the vids I saw you could clearly see those shit black outlines on units that you now sometimes see in the desert.

Allied units will disband if your alliance ends. You are limited to 4 allied units in each army.

Praise Allah. A limit on the tier would have been nice as well.

 

[FreeKaner]

I hate minimalism cargo cult so much.

 

[FreeKaner]

 

[Lacrymas]

If I can't customize the T&A&D, don't even talk to me.

 

[Jaedar]

Campaign difficulty is definitely one of the worst areas of the game, it is atrocious really to increase melee stats of the enemy. It basically makes every enemy melee unit one tier higher. So your glass cannon high charge bonus early melee units with beastmen can't perform their role anymore as they'll lose to same price point AI melee units because of raw stat difference, and you have no choice but to abuse the AI with missile units. I don't understand how they even think that's a good idea, I don't use higher battle difficulties for this reason and only higher campaign difficulties.

WH3 update:

What are the odds of "Enemy forces are smarter, tougher and with higher leadership" actually meaning enemy AI is meaningfully better? 1:5 ?

 

[Lacrymas]

Literally zero chance.

 

[FreeKaner]

What are the odds of "Enemy forces are smarter, tougher and with higher leadership" actually meaning enemy AI is meaningfully better? 1:5 ?

I had heard a good argument against his line of thinking. If CA could make better battle AI, and their AI has been getting better each game to be honest, then they put their best AI into combat. Making higher difficulties better AI wouldn't work, rather, opposite would happen and lower difficulties would just have worse AI. That is, if you wanted to play with their best AI, you would need to play on highest difficulty and only handicapping the AI in lower difficulties.

It's unfortunate but I think some bonuses are necessary but I feel like instead of raw stat increase it could more to do with stuff like cooldowns, winds of magic, items etc. as to compensate for the fact that AI will not be able to use the mas precisely and accurately as player.

 

[tabacila]

Wasn't the AI in 3K smarter when scaled compared to WH2's? And they did mention they worked on WH3's AI starting from the one in 3K.
I think I remember LegendOfTotalWar showing their archers not falling for the trick of trying to shoot and waste their ammo on a single entity dodging in front of them on higher difficulty.

 

[Lacrymas]

Archers don't do that only with tiny entities like the Tzeentch heroes on the flying disks Chaos Undivided gets.

 

[Space Satan]

Supply lines have been nerfed hard and that makes entirely new playstile with several armies of mediocre units viable. Good
Magic nerfed. Good.
Ranged nerfed. Good.
Magic cap in battle. Good.
Units are not wasting ammo n single samll entites. Good.
Enemy archers learned to focus large units. Good.
MUCH more clear and handy diplomatic menu. Good

I am happy so far and ca't wait until Immortal empires to play with new mechanics.

 

[Lacrymas]

They should've copied the administration mechanic from Troy and not keep the obviously dumb supply lines. I know they'll keep working on this game forever, so they still might implement administration and fix other blatant oversights, but I'm not holding my breath. But hey, with the changes to supply lines and other things Norsca is officially fixed.

 

[Space Satan]

Speaking of Karl Franz...

That is how he looks in the new game:

Legendoftotalwar especially said he lowered the graphics for that stream significantly.

 

[Lacrymas]

A lot of people are saying the performance is pretty bad and they had to lower the graphics in order to not lag like crazy, but maybe that was only for streaming and such. Karl Franz looking terrible might be intentional. In the sense that it might be a low poly copy to lead the Empire faction. I'm guessing it's not actually the playable Empire faction, just a reassembled one to fill the map where he should normally be in. Such things are not unheard of in game development, it helps with minimizing hardware resource usage. He isn't a focus here at all, so why have the complete faction in there? It seems intuitive to me.

Also, the campaign goals are the same for everyone - find Ursun and complete the chaos realms. It's Vortex all over again. Not as dumb (still dumb though), but endgame will look the same for everyone, which is bad.

 

[Jaedar]

Magic nerfed. Good.

How was magic nerfed?

A lot of people are saying the performance is pretty bad and they had to lower the graphics in order to not lag like crazy, but maybe that was only for streaming and such.

It's also a month left until release, and afaik most performance improvements tend to be left until the end. A month isn't a super long time though.

 

[Lacrymas]

How was magic nerfed?

You don't get as much winds of magic if I've understood correctly. There's also talk that Fire is no longer the best school, Death has overtaken it.

 

[FreeKaner]

Death was the best school until they nerfed both bjuna and spirit leech, so I assume they just nerfed a fire a bit also.

Also best school is vampirism.

 

[Mitleser2020]

All UNIQUE Minor And Major Settlement Maps

Some good, some bad.
Modders needs to fix major settlements like Altdorf and Kislev³.

A little surprised by the two Lizardmen settlements.

 

[tabacila]

Supply lines have been nerfed hard and that makes entirely new playstile with several armies of mediocre units viable. Good
I am happy so far and ca't wait until Immortal empires to play with new mechanics.

Most of the changes look real good imo. The only things I'm still someone on the fence about it the possible balance breaking allied recruitment stuff.
The only bad change was not giving new races those settlement conquest icons and removing the region background art. I actually usually played with a mod that made those more visible.
Really hate this minimalistic stuff sometimes.

Also, the campaign goals are the same for everyone - find Ursun and complete the chaos realms. It's Vortex all over again. Not as dumb (still dumb though), but endgame will look the same for everyone, which is bad.

And like the Vortex it will be played a couple of times and then completely eclipsed by the big map.

 

[Lacrymas]

All UNIQUE Minor And Major Settlement Maps

Three things I notice immediately.

1) There are no tiered/staggered defenses like in Shogun 2. Come to think of it, there are no defenses to begin with at all. Did they completely do away with walls and gates? Can't say I'll miss them tbh. I suspect they couldn't figure out how to make them work and scrapped them entirely.

2) Strange lighting issues yet again. A lot of the maps look like the gamma is cranked waaaay up. The Empire and Skaven maps are the worst offenders here, but it's like this in all the other maps to a lesser extent. It makes the map look 3D printed, very bizarre.

3) Most of them are unreasonably huge? Maybe it's just me, but do they really need to be this big? It takes more time to traverse than to actually fight the battle.

 

[FreeKaner]

Big maps are good, I always felt maps in warhammer are too small, especially compared to shogun.

 

[Delterius]

The best school in WH2 is Life and Alarielle is a god with infinite HP. She also starts next to the Sword of Angst so we are all doomed.

 

[Sunri]

I knew this customization stuff reminded me of something

Spoiler