The looming excitement that might be TW warhammer II

[Canas]

The new offerings to sotek mechanic is briljant, though I do wish all battles gave you some sacrifices, instead of only getting them via one of the end options.

 

[Aginor]

Can't wait to try a campaign with one of the new guys.

Meanwhile in my Wood Elves campaign I basically won. Just playing a few more battles to see the end of Orions story, and have battles against some factions I haven't fought yet.

 

[Canas]

I've been doing a campaign with the Cult of Sotek and I just got my EoTG for Tehenhauin. It's laser is hilariously powerfull (only two shots per battle though).

The red crests drop off heavily as the game progresses though. Even under Tehenhauin with skills specificly buffing them & all the technologies for skinks unlocked and at least 3 silver experience, they are getting their asses kicked by regular unsupported warriors of chaos. It's kind of dissapointing, I was hoping to be able to keep on using them and bring them along for their poison. But their stat-line just doesn't keep up... And that's when they're facing something they're supposed to be fighting on equal footing. In a battle I had earlier a unit of chaos Knights got a succesfull charge in and basicly wiped out the entire unit with just the charge, which is rather extreme...

 

[Canas]

well, I've done most of a mortal empires campaign now and so far the following stands out:

- EoTG's are awesome with their laser of doom
- Bastiladons with Arks of sotek are quite amazing. They're cheap, they're a bastiladon & the poison is quite nice. Though I wish it was just a constant (weaker) passive aura instead of a 1 minute CD. Also, they have poisoned javalins which is nice.
- Salamander packs are fairly great in the actual campaign, but balanced oddly in custom battle. However, in either case they're garbage in melee.
- Ancient salamanders are decent in melee, but at only 1 shot per volley their ranged firepower is lacking (they simply lack the volume of fire to effectivly bombard a unit). A middle ground between these two would be nice. Ancient salamanders should really come in small groups of 4-5, maybe even going as high as 10, & regular salamanders need a significant (defensive) buff in melee so they don't get slaughtered the moment someone touches them.
- Red-crested skinks are decent in custom battle, but rather awkward in the actual campaign. The difference with regular skinks is relativly minor, especially against lower tier units that don't have much armor yet, and all saurus are just way better. The longer the game goes on the more noticable this gets. And god forbid you face an actual elite unit or a high level lord. Even under Tehenhauin they face issues.
- Rippers are somewhat underwhelming, they're just really squishy. Especially if there's a more elite unit or god forbid, something with bonusses against them involved in the fighting. Also, with only 10 models they seem to have a bit of trouble chewing through units (they just can't get enough hits in and get stuck in a sea of bodies)

Also, the new stuff seems to be lacking technologies/skills. It's difficult to tell at times if they're actually affected by certain abilities.

And lastly, there's still the usual issues with how annoying the economy is to manage in this game. I swear to god this is the only TW game where I'm constantly struggling to field a significant force, let alone a few elite armies and I have no idea why.

 

[Lyvef1re]

Been enjoying the hell out of this game for while. Never saw there was an active thread tucked away here!

It is interesting you gys seem down on Ancient Sallies, internet at large seems hype on them? No idea on the regular packs though, the ancient seems to have stolen their limelight.

Also I can't be the only one who wishes we had a way to buy the Total War Kroxies for our tabletops. They're so damn cool! I'd rain money on someone even for just typical 3d printer quality version...they're just so, so much better than the default!

 

[Canas]

Been enjoying the hell out of this game for while. Never saw there was an active thread tucked away here!

It is interesting you gys seem down on Ancient Sallies, internet at large seems hype on them? No idea on the regular packs though, the ancient seems to have stolen their limelight.

There's a couple of reasons for that
- The internet is fairly focussed on multiplayer battles, in which a lot of units have very different stats as things like technologies and general skills are largely missing.
- Multiplayer battles are against human opponents, those play differently from the AI. Both in terms of army composition and how they command their armies. And this has significant effects on how you play in response. For example, the Ai's tendency to gang up on you with multiple stacks means in the campaign you'l naturally be more focussed on troops that can fight while outnumbered, or even gain significant bonusses/utility in that situation. Whereas in multiplayer this is far less relevant.
- The internet has a tendency of going for (theoretical) optimal cookiecutter builds (for any game really..). This leads to stuff like X being optimal, given you also use Y. However, if you don't use Y, X is no longer all that good either. Not to mention how it ignores personal preferences & skills which can allow a good player to win using a "suboptimal", but tailored to himself, build against a bad player with the cookiecutter build
- Expectations of what the unit is/does. I expected the ancient one to be a piece of artillery, but with a decent melee profile. But it completly lacks the volume of fire to function as effective artilery. Resulting in a monster that can provide some ranged support as opposed to the expected artillery with some melee capabilities.

 

[NIGHTBRINGER]

Any truth to it?...

 

[Captaniser]

Any truth to it?...

Yes it is. The DLC's for the game, especially the newer ones have had massive impacts on the balance between factions. As said in the video, the new and more crazy toys that CA has been making really shakes up the playing field for better and worse in every DLC, it can even drag a low tier army, such as the skaven up to the point that they can contest for the number 1 spot.

The total warhammer develepors have a nasty habit of giving all the shiny new mechanics to the newer races and leave the old ones in the dust, by giving them more wild units, better campaign features and completely new units that outshine all the previous units a faction has. Another thing that seems to be left out quite often when talking about balance is also the animations of monsters, and those have a massive impacts on the game aswell and those became really apparent when the second game dropped. In game one, a wyvern or Griphon could attack and do some light charges while in combat but they would still be in combat, a hellpit abom, spinhxes and carnosauars can perform attacks that launch them out of combat and knockout multiple units entities. Another animation issue is that attack intervals are also messy, take a shaggoth and a Griphon, they will attack once every 3 seconds, a hellpit and spinhx will attack every 2 seconds and a carnosaur will attack every 1,5 second.

 

[Lord-Marcus]

Yes it is. The DLC's for the game, especially the newer ones have had massive impacts on the balance between factions. As said in the video, the new and more crazy toys that CA has been making really shakes up the playing field for better and worse in every DLC, it can even drag a low tier army, such as the skaven up to the point that they can contest for the number 1 spot.

The total warhammer develepors have a nasty habit of giving all the shiny new mechanics to the newer races and leave the old ones in the dust, by giving them more wild units, better campaign features and completely new units that outshine all the previous units a faction has. Another thing that seems to be left out quite often when talking about balance is also the animations of monsters, and those have a massive impacts on the game aswell and those became really apparent when the second game dropped. In game one, a wyvern or Griphon could attack and do some light charges while in combat but they would still be in combat, a hellpit abom, spinhxes and carnosauars can perform attacks that launch them out of combat and knockout multiple units entities. Another animation issue is that attack intervals are also messy, take a shaggoth and a Griphon, they will attack once every 3 seconds, a hellpit and spinhx will attack every 2 seconds and a carnosaur will attack every 1,5 second.

The tomb scorpion is particularly egregious

 

[DeathBringer125]

I saw that the Ancient Salamander makes enemies it hits weak to fire so by using them with a hunting pack they can do a lot more damage. From my personal experience the salamanders are amazing if used right.

 

[Canas]

meh hes fairly focussed on the multiplayer and high level side of things. Stuff like smoother animations allowing you to dodge incoming attacks usually don't really matter if you play like a "normal" player and don't micromanage every single movement. For the most part tw Warhammer hasn't been too bad imho. Though I must say I disagree with his notion that the dlc is pay to win, id say you basically only have half the game if you don't get the dlc (its basically just an expansive fairly massive game that you buy in instalments. But then again what did you expect of a Warhammer game? Not like the table too is any better if you only buy half the units in a faction ).. At which point it makes sense the full faction would kick your ass if you're only playing with half the faction..

as for the powercreep there's a couple of things that are noticeable.

- CA nearly always errs on the side of op with new mechanics. And the list of new mechanics introduced by now is long. So yeah,new factions that have a shiny new properly different mechanic are nearly always powerfull. For example the vampire coasts pirate coves or the new world faction rites or the TK way of building armies.
- New units are a problem if they are accesible before the opponent has a counter. E.g.vampire coast is so dominant in campaigns due to having loads of early game long ranged firepower. And unless you can get to his artillery you have a problem. If you're then playing a faction and don't yet have flyers or cavalry to flank and take those out Youl suffer heavy losses even to a low tier army. Similarly an early game armoured unit when your opponent has no armourpiercing yet can solo half an army on a good day.

Overall the powercreep doesn't feel too terrible though, but then again I do avoid competitive multiplayer like the plague in this game..

 

[Canas]

I saw that the Ancient Salamander makes enemies it hits weak to fire so by using them with a hunting pack they can do a lot more damage. From my personal experience the salamanders are amazing if used right.

combining the two does give reasonable results yeah. But I do feel they're in a bit of a weird place right now where they don't truly full film any one role well and instead fill 3-4 roles halfway decently

 

[Canas]

Anyone tried playing much with the new skaven stuff? Especially the ratling guns seem to be buggy. They don't seem to be doing anything unless they have perfect line of sight to the point where even something as minor as a few trees or a slight slope seems to completly neuter them.

 

[Canas]

Does anyone know of any mods (for any of the newer TW games really) that stop the AI from cheating as horrificly much as it does with the spawning of armies? I get that the AI has to cheat a bit, but for example just now in Rome II I got attacked by 8! full stacks in a row. And it's that the 8th finally broke the garrison, cuz I could see another 4! waiting for their turn and that's just the armies that are trying to conquer my border-city, I have no LoS in the enemies territory, so there's god knows how many armies left in there. I mean, seriously the hell am I supposed to do with that. Even if it is 2 factions ganging up on me this just seems rather ridiculous.

Also, did I mention everything in those stacks is more elite than I can field? It's that I had artillery to kill off a good chunk of em before they reached me otherwise the garisson would've broken much sooner.


It seriously makes me miss Rome I where at least the AI wouldn't try to literally drown you in bodies.

 

[Paradoxical Pacifism]

Does anyone know of any mods (for any of the newer TW games really) that stop the AI from cheating as horrificly much as it does with the spawning of armies? I get that the AI has to cheat a bit, but for example just now in Rome II I got attacked by 8! full stacks in a row. And it's that the 8th finally broke the garrison, cuz I could see another 4! waiting for their turn and that's just the armies that are trying to conquer my border-city, I have no LoS in the enemies territory, so there's god knows how many armies left in there. I mean, seriously the hell am I supposed to do with that. Even if it is 2 factions ganging up on me this just seems rather ridiculous.

Also, did I mention everything in those stacks is more elite than I can field? It's that I had artillery to kill off a good chunk of em before they reached me otherwise the garisson would've broken much sooner.


It seriously makes me miss Rome I where at least the AI wouldn't try to literally drown you in bodies.

I installed two mods for total war warhammer 2 that does this. Haven't played around with them yet, however.

This mod introduces cost-based army caps in similar vein to multiplayer to prevent you and the AI from spamming doomstacks filled to the brim with elite units. Further more, it keeps lower tiered units and chaff still relevant through out the game, and makes the player (and the AI) build interesting armies as a result of this. Sounds pretty cool.

This one here removes all of the AI bonuses they get, equalizing the field between them and the player. Probably wouldn't recommend, though. It might make the game too easy, but i haven't tried it out.

 

[Canas]

I installed two mods for total war warhammer 2 that does this. Haven't played around with them yet, however.

This mod introduces cost-based army caps in similar vein to multiplayer to prevent you and the AI from spamming doomstacks filled to the brim with elite units. Further more, it keeps lower tiered units and chaff still relevant through out the game, and makes the player (and the AI) build interesting armies as a result of this. Sounds pretty cool.

This one here removes all of the AI bonuses they get, equalizing the field between them and the player. Probably wouldn't recommend, though. It might make the game too easy, but i haven't tried it out.

Mm, neither of those is really what I'm looking for. The main issue I have is that I rarely get to fight a fair fight cuz the AI just Always has more stacks than me and has the nasty tendency of keeping them close together so you get nonsense like what I described earlier where a single town gets attacked by 8 stacks in a single turn. If it's one army against 1 army I'l usually win, even with the AI cheating with all it's bonusses and more elite stuff.

As for the more "elite" armies, the main issue I have there is that you can make a bee-line towards high tier units, and since the AI cheats anyway it doesn't need to care about leveling up economic or public order buildings so it Always gets there first. Resulting in him having acces to elite stuff long before I do. It doesn't have many of em, so that mod wouldn't be needed, but 2-3 elite units are basicly impossible to counter if you don't yet have acces to similarly powerfull stuff. Imho one of the biggest flaws in this building system, it's infuriating to see the AI show up with several units of chosen when the most elite stuff you have is whatever survived of your starting lord's bonus army...

 

[Paradoxical Pacifism]

xD

 

[Canas]

Gotta love the Ai's obsession with spamming ranged troops.

 

[Paradoxical Pacifism]

Gotta love the Ai's obsession with spamming ranged troops.

Perhaps the easiest "The Stuff of Legends" achievement ever. It's an achievement you get when you win a battle that has you outnumbered 10-to-one. I don't think i was outnumbered by that much, but i think it had something to do with the auto-resolve's balance of power.

 

[Canas]

Perhaps the easiest "The Stuff of Legends" achievement ever. It's an achievement you get when you win a battle that has you outnumbered 10-to-one. I don't think i was outnumbered by that much, but i think it had something to do with the auto-resolve's balance of power.

auto-resolve makes 0 sense most of the time. It can create quite some hilarious succeses (or failures)