[Total War] 3 Kingdoms out now. Cao Cao says ciao ciao to the alliance you made with him.

Bethryn

Spectrum wrote: »

I wish I understood what fucks up ranged weapon LOS through destroyed wall segments. So much squirrelly behavior trying to get my guys to shoot through the gaps sometimes.

Centre of your unit to centre of their unit is the LOS needed for attacks (some caveats with arc of fire, since there is also rubble around destroyed walls).

Spectrum

Bethryn wrote: »

Spectrum wrote: »

I wish I understood what fucks up ranged weapon LOS through destroyed wall segments. So much squirrelly behavior trying to get my guys to shoot through the gaps sometimes.

Centre of your unit to centre of their unit is the LOS needed for attacks (some caveats with arc of fire, since there is also rubble around destroyed walls).

Center to center was clear. They just insist on running up right to the edge and trying to get through the wall still sometimes. Hell, even my catapults had problems arcing through the gap to shoot the unit that was causing issues.

-Loki-

About the faster end turns, a CA member on reddit said it was simply due to optimising the games systems. Trade, economics, recruitment, etc all got better optimisation which also made the AIs use of those systems much faster.

Spectrum

It's so nice that Skryre has a sane ME Short Victory condition. I might actually complete this in <150 turns (knock on wood). Apparently a lot of the newer Lords/faction do compared to the huge in scope stuff the older ones got.

-Loki-

They have a lot of stats on a lot of player behaviour in campaign.

I’m wouldn’t be shocked if they shortened the short victory conditions on noticing a lot of people not completing campaigns.

Kruite

The total list of "must control these capitols" is an absurd goal for many of the races. High Elves might be one of the few that can get most of them within reason.

That_Guy

Yeah, expecting Dawi to haul clear across the map to take Dark Elf or Lizard Men cities is absurd.

Kruite

Demanding a non-frozen climate race to march that far into the north to take out the Dark Elves...oooof

It plays like killing the orcs as empire or vampires in WH1

Bethryn

It's not particularly bad as Order factions because you can make a Military Alliance with Tyrion quite easily, and he'll sort out Naggaroth.

It's Destruction characters, particularly someone like Morathi, who have a really hard time even getting the 8 for Short.

We don't talk about Tretch's victory conditions.

OpposingFarce

Dwarfs have it easy. Ignore all terrain and attrition with the underway.

Also why alith anar is the best HE lord. Absolutely broken and a huge quality of life thing.

Kruite

Ambushing on attack is one of the best faction perks you can get. It's basically a free lightning strike in the right conditions.

Jealous Deva

I think they have already softened the victory conditions a bit for ME (IIRC Teclis originally had something like “kill clan Mors” as a condition, which is likely to only realistically happen by happenstance). They need to just ditch the “kill x capitals” for short and move the short requirements to long though. And maybe make a third “total victory” condition for map-painters.

For example, I was recently playing a campaign with one of the lizardmen factions (I think maybe Tehenuin) and the victory condition was basically “hold all provinces in Lustria through yourself, vassals or allies, kill clan pestilens and Lorkhir, build 3 tier 5 buildings, and Chaos must be dead”. Then there was the “hold 8 capital cities one”.

Well, honestly, if you have taken all of Lustria, repelled the chaos invasion, and wrapped up the chaos invasion, and fully maxed out buildings in 3 provinces, isn’t that really enough for a short campaign? And if not then there’s always the long one?

Spectrum

The secret to Destruction is to let Bretonnia, Empire, and Lothern stick around while still doing military actions against them. They'll eventually form the Order super alliance, which will drag everyone into the world war. That will give you sufficient relations with all of their enemies to get the Military Alliances to stick.

My current Skryre game at one point (before confeds started kicking in) I was allied to Clan Pestilens, Cult of Pleasure, Naggarond, Vampire Coast, Dreadfleet, Norsca, and the Barrow Legion. Sartosa and Broken Nose were also asking me for alliances that I was declining.

Ivar

I wish there were short campaigns in the newer Total War games.
These days it's only long and super long.

Jealous Deva

Ivar wrote: »

I wish there were short campaigns in the newer Total War games.
These days it's only long and super long.

A lot of the Vortex and WH1 DLC campaigns for Mortal Empires are actually decent in that regard.

Markus and Nakai have very achievable short victory conditions. Tomb kings and pirates are a little longer but still focused (although really with both its mainly a factor of becoming dominant in your local area enough that you can afford sending out a few armies to the other side of the world to do quest battles or kill rogue armies). The original 4 vortex race campaigns aren’t my favorite but they are definitely a lot better than just “conquer the world”. On the ME side, Beastmen, Norsca, and Bretonnia I remember particularly have very focused narrative objective based campaigns that don’t drag out too far. Probably wood elves too but I honestly never gave them much of a try.

Kruite

WE, beastmen, and orcs all could use quality of campaign fixes.

Jealous Deva

Well to be honest I played Beastmen a while ago and they were fine other than needing a bit of army variety, I don’t know how they are now when your main objectives are EmpireBretoniaDwarfzilla though.

Jealous Deva

Holy crap...

Surprise Festag mortal empires map expansion!

https://reddit.app.link/yC41s2Ck61

So if you’ve every played Khalida or Kroq-gar in Mortal Empires, there was a bit of east coast and ocean there corresponding to the red sea/indian ocean IRL (there’s no Arabian peninsula analog in warhammer).

That bit of ocean has been added as traversible, as well as five provinces consisting of its northern shore and the dragon isles. Malus will start in the dragon isles (with the option for Har Graef ofc), and Snikcht will start on the far eastern edge (like in the warhammer equivalent of Iran)

Iblis

CA is also now letting the youtubers with early access show off the Dark Elf additions. Looks like Malus’ abilities cost health to cast. Turning into Tzar’kan refills him to full health, but he starts rapidly losing it, so health management is gonna be a lot of playing Malus.

Medusas are looking fantastic. Their ranged attack is surprisingly devastating and they are good at melee and also just fairly quick. They are low armor however, so most ranged infantry can do a number on them if you’re not careful.

Edit: Oh, and they have the lord pages they’ve been doing lately up now too. Looks like Clan Eshin is heavily focused around using their own units, other clan units are vastly more expensive.

-Loki-

Jealous Deva wrote: »

Holy crap...

Surprise Festag mortal empires map expansion!

https://reddit.app.link/yC41s2Ck61

So if you’ve every played Khalida or Kroq-gar in Mortal Empires, there was a bit of east coast and ocean there corresponding to the red sea/indian ocean IRL (there’s no Arabian peninsula analog in warhammer).

That bit of ocean has been added as traversible, as well as five provinces consisting of its northern shore and the dragon isles. Malus will start in the dragon isles (with the option for Har Graef ofc), and Snikcht will start on the far eastern edge (like in the warhammer equivalent of Iran)

I’m wondering if the improvements to turn times prompted them to look at gradually expanding the ME map. Previously they said they made cuts to the ME map when combining the two maps because of turn times.

Also in the blank area north of Sniktchs starting position, Kislev has some holdings. This leaves the ME map open for a Kislev pre order DLC, though that would be kinda weird to implement unless they unlock ME for owners of that DLC as well as owners of the original game, and DLC owners only get to select Kislev Lords. It can be done, but it’ll be weird.

Iblis

https://www.totalwar.com/games/warhammer-ii/the-shadow-the-blade/

There we go, back from work so I can more easily link that stuff I mentioned. And talk about it more! So a lot of neat information. I like the sound of the Snikch campaign since it heavily incentivizes you to go for Eshin units and even lords. Particularly his Gutter Runners and Night Runners get armor piercing projectiles to help make up for the fact that Skryer's ranged units are gonna be so expensive to deploy earlier on. Also the video explains something that I had been wondering about. A lot of the people previewing it had said that Skitterleap was swapped from Lore of Ruin to Lore of Stealth. Apparently Lore of Ruin got a new spell in exchange, Flensing Ruin. Which if you've read Gotrek and Felix, it's a spell Thanquol uses frequently to make an example. It sends out bands of green warp energy that flay flesh straight from bone. Fittingly it seems to be a spell designed to nuke strong single targets.

-Loki-

That explains his ‘reducing enemy cities to rubble’. Additional -5 public order when besieging a city.

Still sad that the Old Worlds greatest assassin can’t perform assassinations.

Iblis

He might be able to. They have only briefly shown off the Shadowy Dealings, which can be performed by Lords in addition to agents.

Mr Ray

I heard a youtuber today refer to Repanse as "Rapunzel Mayonnaise" which I found more amusing than it probably actually is.

Jealous Deva

-Loki- wrote: »

Jealous Deva wrote: »

Holy crap...

Surprise Festag mortal empires map expansion!

https://reddit.app.link/yC41s2Ck61

So if you’ve every played Khalida or Kroq-gar in Mortal Empires, there was a bit of east coast and ocean there corresponding to the red sea/indian ocean IRL (there’s no Arabian peninsula analog in warhammer).

That bit of ocean has been added as traversible, as well as five provinces consisting of its northern shore and the dragon isles. Malus will start in the dragon isles (with the option for Har Graef ofc), and Snikcht will start on the far eastern edge (like in the warhammer equivalent of Iran)

I’m wondering if the improvements to turn times prompted them to look at gradually expanding the ME map. Previously they said they made cuts to the ME map when combining the two maps because of turn times.

Also in the blank area north of Sniktchs starting position, Kislev has some holdings. This leaves the ME map open for a Kislev pre order DLC, though that would be kinda weird to implement unless they unlock ME for owners of that DLC as well as owners of the original game, and DLC owners only get to select Kislev Lords. It can be done, but it’ll be weird.

Well they were going to have to expand the map in game 3 (at the very least all the eastern blank space will be provinces and have factions there) anyway so it may be more that optimization was motivated by fitting people in.

I was honestly not expecting an eastern extension so soon though.

If we don’t get Kislev (which I think Kislev is pretty likely) we at least will get some kind of empire presence, CA has said people really love human factions based on their statistics and I doubt they would not have one represented at all.


I wonder a bit if Malus and Snikct will be playable in WH3 from the beginning, being they start in what will undoubtedly be game 3 territory.

Kruite

If I had to guess, the Malus satellite position is going to be the islands off the coast of the southlands (the HE colony islands). Clan Eshin currently starts in Araby in ME and Vortex campaigns, so he could potentially be right in the thick of the undead at the start of the Vortex campaign.

Fiendishrabbit

Kruite wrote: »

If I had to guess, the Malus satellite position is going to be the islands off the coast of the southlands (the HE colony islands). Clan Eshin currently starts in Araby in ME and Vortex campaigns, so he could potentially be right in the thick of the undead at the start of the Vortex campaign.

Malus satellite position has already been confirmed to be the HE colony islands in Vortex. In the ME campaign both he and Clan Eshin start in the brand new Darklands provinces, which adds a bit of coastland east of the orkish badlands (where Eshin starts) and the new Dragon Islands (where Malus starts).
Eshin starts in the land of dervishes in Vortex.

Spectrum

A duck!

Bethryn wrote: »

It's not particularly bad as Order factions because you can make a Military Alliance with Tyrion quite easily, and he'll sort out Naggaroth.

It's Destruction characters, particularly someone like Morathi, who have a really hard time even getting the 8 for Short.

We don't talk about Tretch's victory conditions.

I think my least favorite are people like Aranessa and Alarielle who have to take out Norsca/Wintertooth. Fuck that all the way off. If I ever go through a long campaign with them I'm modding Insane to have no penalties.

Lord_Asmodeus

I'm using a mod for the Wanderer that's supposed to make the Great Plan vassals able to build buildings but I'm not sure it's working.

Iblis

Some more random bits. Apparently in the badlands there is now a Fortress of Vorag settlement that looks like a vampire counts settlement and has innate vampiric corruption. It starts occupied by green skins.

Also apparently a YouTubed accidentally released a video early that talked about how they’re changing generic faction names. Like The Empire is now going to be Reikland, or The Vampire Coast is now The Awakened.

Terrendos

Aww man, I like it when the Empire tries to secede from the Empire.

Iblis

I like the change overall. I was very confused when they went back to that convention to name Harkon's faction the Vampire Coast. Most of the names are pretty boring though, for the most part just their starting location. Like Greenskins are now Black Crag.



Video discussing Snikch's campaign. Looks like his Shadowy Dealings let you send off Eshin lords and heroes for a small number of turns while they complete a special objective. They don't cost upkeep or anything while away, so you can recruit a Master Assassin very early on and use them kind of like an agent and build up experience for them. It also appears the increased recruitment for non Clan Eshin units might be more restrictive than initially thought, as it seems that clanrats and storm vermin might not be considered Eshin units and you need to build good relations with Mors to recruit them cheaply.

Also apparently he can hit 80% ambush success chance and can debuff the enemy's defenses while ambushing.

Jealous Deva

So not a huge surprise, but Repanse has been confirmed to start in the crusader states of Araby in both campaigns.

-Loki-

With Araby officially not happening and their lands full of crusading Brettonians, that was always the logical place for her to go.

Jealous Deva

I’m curious why they never pulled the trigger on araby... Maybe they just didn’t want to get into the minefield of doing what is essentially a parody or Flanderization of a non-European culture?

Kruite

They are a niche faction that occupies less than 2 provinces at the start of the map, where as Kislev holds 4 and is not a playable faction.

If they do Araby justice at all, it will be a modified brettonian faction with special units akin to Clan Skyre with their added bonuses to their units or Arkon the Black in regards to access to vampire units.

Jealous Deva

I don’t think the limited space would have been much of an issue if it were planned for from the start. Araby has enough space for 2 LLs, and there are a few other locations they could start (like golden magus could have a start on the islands, and there was an arabyan charachter in lore that led an expedition beyond the worlds edge mountains.

Nor should an army list have been much of a problem - the warmaster list is fine with a little bit of embellishment. Spears, guard (Sword and board armored)infantry, bows, jezzails, light cav (bow and sword), cataphract heavy cav, camelry, elephants, Djinn and carpet riders were all in and would be a good core that could have had a few more units added.

Bizazedo

Might just be a resources thing. What would give greater return, Araby or Cathay?

Kruite

Jealous Deva wrote: »

I don’t think the limited space would have been much of an issue if it were planned for from the start. Araby has enough space for 2 LLs, and there are a few other locations they could start (like golden magus could have a start on the islands, and there was an arabyan charachter in lore that led an expedition beyond the worlds edge mountains.

Nor should an army list have been much of a problem - the warmaster list is fine with a little bit of embellishment. Spears, guard (Sword and board armored)infantry, bows, jezzails, light cav (bow and sword), cataphract heavy cav, camelry, elephants, Djinn and carpet riders were all in and would be a good core that could have had a few more units added.

So ... a Brettonian reskin w/ 3 or 4 new units.

trade hippogryph knights, pegasus knights, and grail knights for elephants, carpet riders, camel riders, and cataphracts.