Total War: Warhammer

Pyros I heard that its based on your three strongest settlements in the province, which can change from turn to turn based on what you build.

One thing I'm thoroughly enjoying so far, is the apparent efficiency of the new game. It loads much faster and runs smoother in a lot of ways. Except, I suppose, when I'm on the map and moving around, OR, it bounces in and out of the diplomacy screen. Otherwise, much faster.

I am thinking about picking this up for when I finish up Divinity. Remember seeing some people mention they were doing something to tie the first one with the second, how is that all working? Do I miss out on a lot if I don't buy both of them?

zombiewizardhawk said:

I am thinking about picking this up for when I finish up Divinity. Remember seeing some people mention they were doing something to tie the first one with the second, how is that all working? Do I miss out on a lot if I don't buy both of them?

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The combined campaign isn't out yet.

If you're just starting out honestly I think I prefer the first game overall (campaign map and races), plus you can probably find it sort cheap (I think it was down to $17 on bundlestars a month ago).

If you don't know WHFB, everything is a bit more "normal" high fantasy in the first game. In part two you start to get into crazy races and more weird mechanics. It's not bad but personally I'm looking forward to the combined map more than just the WHTW2 campaign mode right now.

Yeah i'm probably going to wait til I can find some discounts on the first one since it's 59.99 atm and much more likely to have another sale/discount in the next month or two than a big sale showing up for part 2 and if it's still gonna be a bit for the combined campaign then waiting isn't too big of a deal to me.

I'm not sure I like the beginning of the campaigns in WH2 on VH. They are so hit or miss based on sea treasure spawns and drops. If you get a 5,000/10,000 drop in the first five turns you're pretty set. If not its pretty much just restart and try again. Im having a tough time gettting a skaven and DE VH campaign off the ground. Last skaven was going great and then the Lizardmen Rite where they get like 10 feral carnosaurs just came through and fucking stomped me.

So questions for Skaven players, how are you building your lords? Ive been going straight for +ambush chance in the bottom line. Is the extra ambush chance necessary for the default stance initiations to get consistent ambushes? Also, what is your first army composition like, do you keep it mostly skavenslaves to get a 2nd stack of skavenslaves up asap or clanrats/gutter runners from the beginning with delayed 2nd stack?

I have the least playtime with DE's and I feel like i just dont understand the DE units that well, the hybrid shit it weird to me and im terrible with the slave mechanic. Shades just seem way overpriced and dark shards seem underwhelming but probably cause i just use them like a normal archer with shitty range. Also I just get bogged down against norsca.

Ended up picking it up the other day. Playing Mazdemundi for my first campaign on hard (i'm a noob at total war games, only played Attila for like 20 hours). Thought I was doing pretty good for a while but now Lothern is about to start their 4th ritual, other 2 just started their thirds and i'm a couple turns away from starting my third. No clue how i'm going to be able to catch up to Lothern. I'm assuming they got so far ahead because everyone and their mom wants to war me and get beat down while they just chill on their island without a care in the world (I spawned a 10k gold intervention on their 3rd ritual and saw other interventions too and they all got crushed no problemo).

I love the total war games, and I love fantasy settings. I use to collect warhammer minis when I was a kid (especially Dark Elves). Is this worth dropping the money for this? Or should I just redownload Atilla Total War? I guess what I'm asking is for other TW veterans to tell me if this is an improvement to the series.

I think it's worth it. I've been playing total war since the original shogun. I wasn't gonna get warhammer at first cause I wasn't familiar with the theme but it's become my favorite total war.

If this was tough for me on normal (first one was way easier on normal imo) am I just terrible or what? Couple pals threw in the towel "cuz hard" already lol.

Julian The Apostate said:

So questions for Skaven players, how are you building your lords? Ive been going straight for +ambush chance in the bottom line. Is the extra ambush chance necessary for the default stance initiations to get consistent ambushes? Also, what is your first army composition like, do you keep it mostly skavenslaves to get a 2nd stack of skavenslaves up asap or clanrats/gutter runners from the beginning with delayed 2nd stack?

I have the least playtime with DE's and I feel like i just dont understand the DE units that well, the hybrid shit it weird to me and im terrible with the slave mechanic. Shades just seem way overpriced and dark shards seem underwhelming but probably cause i just use them like a normal archer with shitty range. Also I just get bogged down against norsca.

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I'm about 70ish turns in to my VH Skaven campaign with Lord Skrolk - I built him (and most of my Skaven lords) as heavy yellow-line, stand-alone characters. Really focused on magic & spells, given how strong they are. I didn't bother with the blue lines, beyond a single point in the +10% movement skill to start. I'm usually not trying for offensive ambushes, given that most of my "good" armies are supported by a secondary cheapo force of disposable skavenslaves. However, having a shit army follow your powerhouse around has been great for the Chaos interventions - I park my good armies in ambush in a section of jungle with around 90%+ to ambush, and then leave the junk army just behind it. They almost always take the bait, especially given that I wall up almost every single settlement.

My starting stack was a mix - mostly 6+ clanrats with shields as a front line, Skrolks' starting Plaguemonks as flankers/damage dealers, with skavenslaves to fill in the rest (I got a huge amount of use out of skavenslave slingers, and am only now finally replacing all of them in my armies). That was cheap enough to let me field a fast second army that was mostly filled out before turn 10. Plus, Skrolk's starting position puts him next to two easily captured early settlements that have pastures - so he can settle those really fast and not worry about food/growth issues for a very long time.

As for DE's - I beat my Normal Malekith campaign last weekend (as my first WH2 playthrough), and there's a lot I would do differently in retrospect. Once you get the starting public order in a province under control, it really should be all slaves, all the time. Dark Elves economy is crazy with the right synergies; I should've built way more Black Road/Slave Markets and fewer remote military provinces (which took forever to get up and running). Shades - especially the 2h greatswords - are amazing once stacked; they melt anything in range with their armor-piercing missiles and can melee almost as well as the DE Executioners. I also think that the DE cavalry is kinda shitty in general - I'd probably forgo them for more Hydras to charge in and soak up enemy arrows so my Shades can close the gap and win the battle.

Ya DE cav interrupts more than it kills really. I've had chase some basic shit across the map and never kill it.

Nirgon said:

If this was tough for me on normal (first one was way easier on normal imo) am I just terrible or what? Couple pals threw in the towel "cuz hard" already lol.

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Depends. Early game is super critical and can be kind of RNG heavy. Sometimes the roaming enemy near you rushes right for you and takes two+ vital turns away, other times you don't see them for 50 turns and then they randomly die off.

Campbell1oo4 said:

I love the total war games, and I love fantasy settings. I use to collect warhammer minis when I was a kid (especially Dark Elves). Is this worth dropping the money for this? Or should I just redownload Atilla Total War? I guess what I'm asking is for other TW veterans to tell me if this is an improvement to the series.

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My opinion only applies to the first game as that is the only one I own but I'm sure it's applicable to the second game as well.

I think the fantasy setting has freed up CA to be a lot more creative in their units and factions. Each individual faction has unique play styles (for the most part), something that wasn't often true for a lot of the historical factions. So, you really do feel like you're playing something different when, say, you go from Dwarfs to Norsca, for example. The unit rosters are also quite varied and interesting and you really have to think about your compositions based on your opponent. This also means the various faction DLCs don't even feel like a ripoff (to me, anyway). The Lord and Hero building also offers a lot of choices that allow me to craft the kind of characters I want, not to mention the different Legendary Lords being fairly interesting and unique.

I know nothing about Warhammer lore and I absolutely love this game. I've played three campaigns so far -- with various restarts and testing, I've easily done over a thousand turns.

So, as a huge TW fan, I think this is completely worth it.

Campbell1oo4 said:

I love the total war games, and I love fantasy settings. I use to collect warhammer minis when I was a kid (especially Dark Elves). Is this worth dropping the money for this? Or should I just redownload Atilla Total War? I guess what I'm asking is for other TW veterans to tell me if this is an improvement to the series.

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Punko TLDR version edit: Below is a long way of saying, it's a modded TW game and does not play distinctly different from previous TW games (and in several aspects plays a little worse) - keep that in mind when you make your decision.

Original post below:

I managed to get a key from one of my reseller contacts for $5 - for that price the game is worth it as the fantasy aspects of the game are refreshing, if poorly implemented. Outside of a deep discount, you're probably better off waiting for a sale than paying anywhere close to full value. As I've said before, the game looks and plays like a LOTR Rome / Atilla reskin. The only thing you're really missing out on are monstrous units and magic as the other games in the series don't really delve too deep into these mechanics besides the rare elephant or naval artillery appearance. The diplo/strategic AI is still bad, the battle AI is still bad, combat is the same (aside from the magic/monstrous units) and didn't get enough polish concerning large / hero units interacting with standard units or other hero/large units, and by 3/4 of the way through you're still dealing with 'hero spam' unless you have a faction with a hero that can be specialized as an assassin (not all factions do) and other burnout mechanic issues as predecessors, and finally the DLC is still a shit show of factions + poorly done campaigns + shit that should have been in the base (some of the 'freelc' redeems this).

Coming from Rome or Atilla, the game is relatively unpolished. You can see that they had some good ideas, but they didn't follow through with the majority of them. Legendary Lords (Hero Generals) / Heroes (think agents / generals) are the prime example of this. The customization of your generals / agents is something you should be familiar with - in TW:WH they actually reduced your freedom by turning your several trait trees into trait corridors. On a Legendary Lord this usually isn't an issue as you potentially have so many corridors you partially invest in several to get what you want (not all legendary lords are created equally though), but in generals / agents depending on faction you can get pretty restricted builds with agents being so restricted that several don't really have a specialized purpose at all besides flavor? That's without talking about how the polish level varies between factions and you can tell they obviously put more time into some factions than others simply looking at the skill tree depth. Several of the factions have "unique" currency that doesn't have any effect other than being a different way of saying / representing denar / gold - this may have been better implemented in WH2? Again, several of the factions have unique traits, but most of them don't really have any meaningful impact whatsoever (chivalry / waagh / vampiric necromancy / etc) as the mechanics aren't really tied into the game mechanics at an in depth level.

WH2 is looking like they took a step back from scale and focused on the WH + WH2 = WH2 aspect which makes me still think the combining of two producers known for money grabs are still doing just that and putting minimal work in to justify their product, but it still means they worked on refining some of the issues with WH. If you're specifically a Warhammer fan - by all means, go balls deep seeing your lore put to use. If you're coming in strictly as someone who enjoys fantasy elements and also has ties to TW - wait it out for a good price as you're going to want that extra cash to buy some of the DLC / WH2 to get a more meaningful experience.

Long way of saying, it's a modded TW game and does not play distinctly different from previous TW games - keep that in mind when you make your decision.

Campbell1oo4 said:

Is this worth dropping the money for this? Or should I just redownload Atilla Total War? I guess what I'm asking is for other TW veterans to tell me if this is an improvement to the series.

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Sulrn said:

Long way of saying, it's a modded TW game and does not play distinctly different from previous TW games - keep that in mind when you make your decision.

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Punko said:

oh no, the core of a total war game resembles other total war games, from the total war series?

who could have fucking thought, thx for the 3+ paragraphs

the issues you describe (different lvl of polish between factions, for example) are 100% present in every other iteration of the game, I guess you missed that

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Added a TLDR edit for illiterates.