The looming excitement that might be TW warhammer II

The free-dlc map has finally been updated after months of inactivity






CA has also confirmed that all 3 of them will come out in september and these are not the last dlc's for the game.

 

only downside is the sheer amount of DLC. It's a bit on the expensive side. Though at least so far it's mostly worth it.

 

playing without does lead to significant balance issues though (depending on which one you lack..) Ah well, they were open enough about it going in so not like you can blame em.

 

Yeah, issue is that you simply don't have the shiny new stuff. So your army may be lacking crucial units. It's not super noticeable though, the free updates cover most of the balance.

 

Sadly nearly all DLC adds something completly new. filling a niche that wasn't yet filled, or just providing a new and improved version. So they all tend to affect the game significantly. It's quite noticeable if you let the AI play against itself. The most recent faction to have recieved DLC tends to get a massive powerspike and suddenly perform far better.

Similarly, newer factions tend to be more powerfull as they figure out how to better implement certain mechancis (or even just clean up animations causing newer monsters to be more difficult to stagger for example compared to old world monsters).

It's not game-breaking. But it's noticeable.

 

pretty much though a bit worse as all the factions are based around their tabletop counterparts, so some balancing is weird as some core units for a faction count as "elite" late game stuff in total war (e.g. big dinosaurs are relativly late game units, making the early game a tad weird as lizardmen at times). Getting one of those core-bits earlier can make a massive difference.

 

good luck, you'l need it

 

It's pretty fitting to play the tomb kings on a ancient computer. Load times literally turn you into a skeleton

 

As long as you keep representing the TK!!! TK for (un)life!

 

they're not much fun to play though, their mechanic is a tad weird.

 

That's a shame to hear. I had heard such good things about them up until this point (via YouTube videos). They were one of the main reasons I was planning on picking up the game at some point once I have a computer that can handle the game.

 

it's a matter of personal preference though. And the mechanic is definitly inventive and well executed. I just don't like it much.

In short, they don't have an army upkeep. Instead they have a limit on how many they can field of a certain unit. The only exception being basic spearmen and warriors, those they can field as many as they want. You get the ability to field X of a certain unit by building specific buildings. So the larger your empire the more stuff you can field.

The upside of this mechanic is that it's one of the few factions where you're not constantly struggling to keep a positive income. And it does make it one of the few empires where every city matters (for other empires you mostly only care if your income is still in the positive but beyond that losing or gaining a city has little impact)

The downsides are that the limitations are somewhat annoying; early on they mean it's very difficult to get multiple functional armies going as the early game limitations are rather harsh. Yeah, you can spam basic skeletons, but an army consisting of a general + a giant horde of cannonfodder, probably isn't going to perform terribly well against anything. While in the late game the limitations barely matter.

Also, it gives them a weird economy where 99% of their income comes from battle and you only make a couple hundred gold per turn passivly. Which can be very frustrating if you need to build up your forces and can't currently afford to go to war with anyone. Though that is also a more general complain I have with warhammer TW in general, the rewards from battle are absolutly massive and getting a decent passive income from your empire is a pain.

 

IMO, i like it a lot so far. 100+ turns on the vortex campaign so far, and i have all of nehekhara under Arkhan's grasp. Only a matter of time before I flood the rest of the southlands with my spooky, scary skeletons.

Hmm, you're not really supposed to spam only skeletons unless it's a second army supporting your main one in the early game. I think you're supposed to focus on growth and recruitment buildings so that you'll be able to field the two tomb kings' amazing early game units: Skeleton archers, and their chariots. Not to mention other units that are very useful besides just the skeleton infantry. Growth buildings because you obviously want to get to the big toys quicker

From my experience, Trade made up 70-80% of my economy with Arkhan. I never tried making a decent passive income from Arkhan's empire. The tomb kings' infrastructure is pretty terrible compared to other races. You need to either raid enemy territories, focus on trade, or instead of expanding your empire, raze your enemies' settlements to the ground to finance your buildings in order to make up for the terrible infrastructure. Though as i said before with my campaign, being expansive and aggressive works too.
There's also technologies in the tomb kings' tech tree that improves the income from the infrastructure.

And lastly, because none of the units require upkeep, you actually don't need a massive economy either. Because buildings are the main concern of the Tomb Kings' instead of units, having only 5,000+ gold per turn pretty much covers everything you need to build in a timely matter. The devs at CA forgot to make the tomb kings' buildings more expensive than other faction's