The looming excitement that might be TW warhammer III

Also another major thing;
They've finally returned seperate difficulty sliders for the campaign and battles. Been a while since I seen those and it's nice to have them again.

 

So is part III better than part II of the Total War: Warhammer franchise? What is better and what is worse?

Warhammer II seemed to have the more interesting lineup of starting armies... but III has the Chaos Dwarfs waiting in reserves!

 

Narrativly warhammer III is definitly better.

Warhammer II is better in the sense that it has had the time to mature, get some supporting DLC, patches, alternative game-modes ( e.g. mortal empires), mods etc.

If you really want a particular mod then for now stick with II until proper mod support is released.
Similarly, if you only care about mortal empires/don't care for the special campaign, or don't like the warhammer III starting races then stick with II till mortal empires is released.

As for genuine gameplay differences;
III has some much needed improvements to certain things; like the ability to trade regions. Which is good. However, it also takes away some things like searching for treasure in ruins, which is a shame. I hope those come back at some point.

It also brings some interesting concepts, like the build-a-daemon-prince-workshop, and the new faction abilities are fun (Stealing regions as Tzeentch is great)

The new sieges take some getting used to. But are overall, fairly fun. And I imagine they're especially good if you get to be the defender (so far I've only attacked)
It also makes minor cities much easier to defend as the player as now you actually have some decent choke-points and supportive fire from towers to work with alongside your garrison.

On the flip-side; as the attacker they're a bit of a pain, the maps I've seen so far lack open spaces for manouvering, or even setting up a wider frontline, as the attacker, and taking an alternative route to flank an enemy requires walking across half the map. So it tends to devolve into a big blob in a chokepoint as you try to push through to reach a control point with the occasional flyer attempting a flanking attack, especially in the early game.

The new races are fun, so far. But I haven't played with all of them yet. And it's a safe bet that some of those will need some love at some point. But it's a decent starting point.

There's some bugs here and there which is annoying, but nothing major so far. And there's also some things that need a balance pass (e.g. early game daemons have basicly no armour, which is fine when you're fighting empire swordsmen or marauders, but kind of problematic when a random stack full of wood elf archers shows up and they just shoot everything before you ever get into range)

Also, in terms of starting lineup, 3 actually does fine despite the starting line-up being kislev, ogres, cathay and 5x chaos. The various chaos factions are sufficiently different in terms of campaign mechanics as well as general unit design and not just recolours of eachother.

Other than that it's more of the same really, which shouldn't come as a suprise
Imho, the mods & availability of your prefered race are currently probably the biggest factors when deciding which one is better
Once warhammer III has had some time to mature, and the missing bits from II have been ported over it'll definitly be the better of the two.

 

The best defense is a good offense!

Good to know! Thank you.

Shame that my potato of a laptop can't handle the game. Maybe my next computer!

 

Wire in a second potato and you'll be fine

 

So, played some more and got into the first invasion before my campaign went south again due to unexpected thing.

So now I can say something about the invasions of the chaos realm.

First of, an early warning would be nice. Now the portals appeared 2-3 turns after I lost half my army reclaiming a settlement and I was still busy reinforcing, so I had to waste time waiting for reinforcements. Having a warning, and a count-down, 4-5 turns beforehand would be great so you can prepare.

Second issue; the race-against-the-ai aspect is kind of a pain, it has the same issue as the campaign in warhammer II had; the AI just cheats too much to make it an interesting race. Kislev somehow got their soul within 3 turns, which seems rather fast. Definitly going to use a mod for that...

Third issue; I'm somewhat surprised the AI succeeded at all. This was the very first invasion, and all 4 souls were claimed. Given that everyone's still using early-game armies this is rather surprising, especially as the AI armies I faced inside were fairly dangerous, on top of the negative effects of being in a chaos realm.

Fourth and final issue. The AI can close gates (you can too) this is very annoying when it randomly closes the gate you're just about to enter... Twice...

Actually moving through the realms is fine. It's mostly just the whole "race-against-an-ai-that-cheats-and-randomly-screws-you-over" that kinda sucks

 

Attempt #2 at invading the chaos realm. This time I actually got inside early. However Grassus then parked his fat ass on a teleport point, making it impossible for me to actually go to the next area (realm of tzeentch) while Kairos was running ahead and claimed the daemon prince's soul....

Admittadly, it is rather tzeentchian for this to happen. But it's also increadibly annoying to "lose" cuz of stupid stuff like this.

 

yeah, the campaign revolves around finding Ursus for various reasons.
E.g. the daemon prince wants to absorb his power, the ogres want to eat him cuz they're ogres, Kairos wants to take his eyes so he can finally see the present.

To find Ursus you need to invade the realms of chaos and collect the soul of a favoured daemon prince for each chaos god. Once you have the four souls you can find Ursus.

Also, definitly play the prologue first, it explains some things which are only implied in the main campaign.

 

I do have to stop and admire the fact that the plot of the prologue goes down a very familiar road in an RTS game (specifically, a prince going north into a barren wasteland to vanquish an evil threatening his homeland, only to become corrupted by dark powers in the process).

 

I mean, not like Arthas was the first prince to ever do that. It's a common enough trope

 

Not like warcraft wasn't a rip off of Warhammer because they couldn't get the IP.

 

They used the voice line. They are self aware of thier communities memes

 

Yea that trailer was ass.

Valkis gets pounded by some slanesshi dudebros, flies into the sky and screams.

 

How about a different one then?

 

Yup. Hopefully it gets a finish in the let's play video