Total War: Warhammer

Lee · Post by **Lee** » Mon May 23, 2016 3:38 pm

Thanks for the write up Stuie. I am not thrilled with the idea of quick battles, so you convinced me I don't want to pay $60 for this (and don't want to buy a key elsewhere in case I want to return it). Will wait for a sale.

Freyland · Post by **Freyland** » Mon May 23, 2016 8:27 pm

Lee wrote:Thanks for the write up Stuie. I am not thrilled with the idea of quick battles, so you convinced me I don't want to pay $60 for this (and don't want to buy a key elsewhere in case I want to return it). Will wait for a sale.

The Modders on the Forums
Will slow things down,
Slow things down,
Slow things down.
The Modders on the Forums
Will slow things down,
They alllll-ways do!

Little Raven · Post by **Little Raven** » Mon May 23, 2016 10:13 pm

Yeah. I'm not the least bit worried about things like that, because that's just the sort of thing modders spend hours and hours perfecting. There's ALREADY been a minor factions mod released, and the game isn't even unlocked for most people yet.

Stuie · Post by **Stuie** » Mon May 23, 2016 10:18 pm

I forgot to mention....

Performance

The game looks and runs great for me on the default "High" settings. I did bump AA up to MLAA from the default of none; no noticeable hit to performance. Also note that I have the game installed on my SSD, and with that said, load times are negligible. There is also an "Ultra" setting for the graphics, but I do not dare.... My system specs for comparison's sake:

Code: Select all

------------------
System Information
------------------
  Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1
  Processor: AMD FX(tm)-6300 Six-Core Processor              (6 CPUs), ~3.5GHz
  Memory: 16384MB RAM
  DirectX Version: DirectX 11
---------------
Display Devices
---------------
  Card name: AMD Radeon (TM) R9 200 Series (x2)
  Display Memory: 4095 MB
  Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz)
------------------------
Disk & DVD/CD-ROM Drives
------------------------
  Drive: C:
  Free Space: 299.0 GB
  Total Space: 488.3 GB
  Model: Crucial_ CT512MX100SSD1 SATA Disk Device

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Tue May 24, 2016 9:28 am

I thought the game was due to unlock around noon EST, but it looks like we're off and running. One very early note -- it takes a few minutes (literally) for the game to launch and get to the menu. It will sit for a long time on the initial splash screen, then will likely appear to freeze when it starts the SEGA animated logo, but it will eventually come up. I've read that this can be mitigated by switching Steam to offline mode, but I haven't bothered to test that out. Since going offline apparently prevents the startup delay, I'm going to go ahead and jump to the conclusion that it has something to do with DRM activation, is not working as intended and will be patched up shortly.

In the mean time, I'm off to see what the deal is with dwarves. There are grudges to be sorted out...

Paingod · Post by **Paingod** » Tue May 24, 2016 9:37 am

Max Peck wrote:I'm going to go ahead and jump to the conclusion that it has something to do with DRM activation, is not working as intended and will be patched up shortly.

Without doing any research (or even owning the game), I'd say that sounds like a good conclusion. When I built my computer, the NIC was spotty - and some games with online elements simply freaked out when I'd try to run them - they'd never ever finish loading. I dropped in a new network card and the games worked flawlessly.

If the game has a buggy authentication method, then it could easily cause issues launching it.

IceBear · Post by **IceBear** » Tue May 24, 2016 10:28 am

Well, I can't even start the game. I get to the main menu and while I can move the mouse around, clicking a menu option does nothing

$iljanus · Post by **$iljanus** » Tue May 24, 2016 10:54 am

When I started it up I got the black screen of Chaos after the initial start screen but could still hear the narrator who sounds a lot like Cate Blanchett to me talking in the background. Was about to try the offline solution but the game did tell me that my video card driver was out of date. Upgrading to the second latest driver from Nvidia fixed the issue for me (I've heard that the newest driver version was problematic). Supposedly the game should only have to call home once so I hope that loading will be a lot quicker when I boot it up again.

IceBear · Post by **IceBear** » Tue May 24, 2016 11:08 am

$iljanus wrote:When I started it up I got the black screen of Chaos after the initial start screen but could still hear the narrator who sounds a lot like Cate Blanchett to me talking in the background. Was about to try the offline solution but the game did tell me that my video card driver was out of date. Upgrading to the second latest driver from Nvidia fixed the issue for me (I've heard that the newest driver version was problematic). Supposedly the game should only have to call home once so I hope that loading will be a lot quicker when I boot it up again.

Well, I think they released a hotfix this morning for that. So far, nothing I've tried actually lets me click on a menu option to start a game

NickAragua · Post by **NickAragua** » Tue May 24, 2016 11:13 am

Yeah, this one is definitely a "wait for patches and sale" kind of deal.

IceBear · Post by **IceBear** » Tue May 24, 2016 11:21 am

Ok, I had originally just set the main exe (warhammer.exe I think) to run as Admin but grasping at straws I set the launcher.exe and warhammer.exe to run as Admin and now the mouse clicks work

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue May 24, 2016 11:32 am

Paingod wrote:
Max Peck wrote:I'm going to go ahead and jump to the conclusion that it has something to do with DRM activation, is not working as intended and will be patched up shortly.
Without doing any research (or even owning the game), I'd say that sounds like a good conclusion. When I built my computer, the NIC was spotty - and some games with online elements simply freaked out when I'd try to run them - they'd never ever finish loading. I dropped in a new network card and the games worked flawlessly.

If the game has a buggy authentication method, then it could easily cause issues launching it.

That's interesting, because I would have thought the 3rd party DRM would be independent of Steam, meaning that it would do it's own check for an internet connection, not rely on Steam to tell it whether it's online or not.

So the fact that Steam thinks it's offline shouldn't affect whether the DRM thinks it's offline, I wouldn't think. My opinion would be that unless you pull the plug on your nic card (or turn off your wireless) the DRM will happily do its thing irrespective of Steam.

Since the evidence seems to be counter to this, I guess they did have it depend on Steam first. Which is odd. Because if you're going to depend on Steam, why bother putting 3rd party DRM on it in the first place?

e1123 · Post by **e1123** » Tue May 24, 2016 12:04 pm

Started it up before work this morning. It looks cool; I played one of the quest battles for a few minutes. The game recommended medium, but I tried high and it seems good. Loaded on my SSD. More later.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue May 24, 2016 12:13 pm

This will be the first Total War game I've played since the original Shogun, which I absolutely loved. Don't ask me why I never played any of the others. Might be that I like feudal japan over the other settings, but I'm not much of a history buff so I don't really know.

I do own total war: medieval but I bought it years after it was released, for super cheap, and then never played it.

Warhammer makes this one a no brainer though. Now just to bid my time for a few years until it's 10 bucks

.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Tue May 24, 2016 12:53 pm

GreenGoo wrote:
Paingod wrote:
Max Peck wrote:I'm going to go ahead and jump to the conclusion that it has something to do with DRM activation, is not working as intended and will be patched up shortly.
Without doing any research (or even owning the game), I'd say that sounds like a good conclusion. When I built my computer, the NIC was spotty - and some games with online elements simply freaked out when I'd try to run them - they'd never ever finish loading. I dropped in a new network card and the games worked flawlessly.

If the game has a buggy authentication method, then it could easily cause issues launching it.
That's interesting, because I would have thought the 3rd party DRM would be independent of Steam, meaning that it would do it's own check for an internet connection, not rely on Steam to tell it whether it's online or not.

So the fact that Steam thinks it's offline shouldn't affect whether the DRM thinks it's offline, I wouldn't think. My opinion would be that unless you pull the plug on your nic card (or turn off your wireless) the DRM will happily do its thing irrespective of Steam.

Since the evidence seems to be counter to this, I guess they did have it depend on Steam first. Which is odd. Because if you're going to depend on Steam, why bother putting 3rd party DRM on it in the first place?

I did say I was jumping to a conclusion, not that I knew what the problem actually was.

CA says it was due to unexpected server load, which caused a problem with the multiplayer server lists as well as the startup lag. There is a hotfix out already, which I just installed. It seems to work as advertised, because it now takes all of 10s seconds to get to the main menu, instead of the 4-5 minutes pre-hotfix.

Lorini · Post by **Lorini** » Tue May 24, 2016 1:34 pm

If you don't already have an SSD drive, I'd highly recommend one for this game. Otherwise you may as well play something on your phone while the screens load.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Tue May 24, 2016 1:49 pm

Lorini wrote:If you don't already have an SSD drive, I'd highly recommend one for this game. Otherwise you may as well play something on your phone while the screens load.

That's always the better option, but I'm playing it from a HDD and the load times don't seem that bad. But yeah, if I had space on my SSD I'd have put it there.

Edit: Dammit... My resistance to peer pressure is weak. As soon as I posted the above, I went and freed up some space on my SSD (sorry Bioshock Infinite, but we both know you weren't getting any playtime for now anyway) and moved the game from the HDD to the SSD. Just in case...

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue May 24, 2016 2:44 pm

Max Peck wrote: I did say I was jumping to a conclusion, not that I knew what the problem actually was. CA says it was due to unexpected server load, which caused a problem with the multiplayer server lists as well as the startup lag. There is a hotfix out already, which I just installed. It seems to work as advertised, because it now takes all of 10s seconds to get to the main menu, instead of the 4-5 minutes pre-hotfix.

I wasn't criticizing, I was just thinking about it and decided to comment.

Nice that they were on it and fixed it so fast. Mistakes happen, good on them for fixing it.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Tue May 24, 2016 6:23 pm

V-sync appears to be completely borked right now. Causes constant flickering and worse screen tearing than turning it off.

On the other hand...there is a button to eat the captives.

Toe · Post by **Toe** » Tue May 24, 2016 9:44 pm

I have an SSD and HDD combo with the game installed on the HDD and it runs smooth as butter at 3840 x 2160 with everything set to ultra/max (running an i7 cpu with a nvidia 12gb titan x).

Only issue I have at the moment is all the damn interface text is tiny, with no apparent way to make it bigger. A shame if I have to decrease resolution just so I can read text more comfortably.

Anyways, i jumped right into the dwarven campaign and have played 13 turns at easy difficulty level so far. I have not ran into any technical issues thus far. Having a lot of fun and can't wait to get back to playing. So much stuff to learn, but they do very nice job introducing you to different aspects at a relatively quick pace.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Wed May 25, 2016 3:13 pm

Man, I'm loving this so far. Very polished, 99% bug free, beautiful in both graphics and design.

Beyond how great it is in general to have a fantasy Total War game, I find myself really liking a lot of the tweaks they made to the UI, engine, and mechanics that really raise the bar. A few examples:
- The interface to move around items and followers between characters is much better: just a drop down that shows everything available and who it's being used by
- For a slightly higher upfront cost and construction time, you can build units globally, i.e. anywhere in your empire or with any currently encamped army, not just in the province with the buildings
- Lords and heroes level up more often giving a lot more incremental improvement than previous Total War games
- Tying some lord abilities to quests chains is a lot of fun... balancing when to fight those and when to wage war makes for some tough decisions
- Agents fighting on the battle field and being able to assign them magic items is fantastic
- When deciding to fight, flee, etc from a battle, there's now a "scout" button that displays what the battlefield will look like. Makes it much easier to see if you're going to be stuck on the crappy side of a battlefield and retreat if needed
- The different factions play very differently. Really makes for a nice change of pace when you get tired of one game. Chaos for instance doesn't even use money... they gain favor from raiding, fighting battles, etc and use that to upgrade and buy new units
- Granted I have an SSD, so YMMV, but load times seem light years better here than previous Total War games
- They significantly shrunk the size of siege maps which some people might consider a negative, but I think it makes sieges much more manageable. No more spending an hour taking the walls and slowly working your way back to the city center... it's pretty much take the walls, and the capture point is not too far beyond that.
- Some units can advanced deploy outside your deployment zone!

I took some great looking screenshots yesterday I was hoping to post, but I seemed to be having some sort of Steam issue which kept me from uploading them. Hopefully I'll get that sorted out and post some pics tonight or tomorrow.

Matrix · Post by **Matrix** » Wed May 25, 2016 3:23 pm

It plays great so far. Started my Orc Horde.... Its very much like Total war except with air ships and just all sorts of craziness.
Quests are really interesting, and upgrades. I am liking it so far.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Wed May 25, 2016 3:42 pm

I have exactly one complaint about this game, but it's a big one -- in all of the internet, I have not been able to find even a single Total WAAAGH!: Warhammer logo (and lack the skills to make my own).

Wait, that's a flaw in the internet, or in humanity itself, not the game per se. Never mind, carry on...

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Wed May 25, 2016 4:18 pm

Matrix wrote: with air ships

Welp, that's all I needed to hear. Boughtened.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Wed May 25, 2016 5:05 pm

Yeah, despite my early resistance I'll probably break down after I get paid on Monday.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Wed May 25, 2016 5:17 pm

Although I won't do business with Games Workshop anymore, I was a Warhammer fan (both tabletop and RPG) for years. After the last couple of Total War games have gone largely unplayed due to their issues, though, I'm still leery.

Luckily, I won't be able to afford it until a few patches are out (Ok, maybe the 2017 Steam sale), but you guys are making me really want it!

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Wed May 25, 2016 5:22 pm

One of my best battles so far was my main dwarven throng defending against a large orc horde. Usually my little guys can handle orcs no problem, but in this case all my troops were at 1/3 strength. Why were they at 1/3 strength? Apparently if you want to reclaim a razed town, it re-populates it by taking soldiers from your army.

I ended up winning the fight mostly because the orc army was still a pretty weak one, but mostly because the main dwarven legendary lord is an amazing badass.

My main problem with dwarves in the field is almost always ranged troops... especially mounted ones. You really need to rely on your quarrellers and thunderers to fight mounted ranged enemies, and even then they can do a lot of damage if you're not careful.

Also, one more thing to add to the list of things I love about this game:
Dwarves and Greenskins can use underground travel to get around mountains and zones of control. That itself is really cool, but even better...they can also sometimes intercept enemies who are trying to use the underground passages nearby which creates a tunnel battle.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Thu May 26, 2016 1:24 am

I think my dwarves are doomed to be eternally grumbling about unrebuked grudges. I'm being swarmed with ork heroes that constantly spam me with assassination attempts -- every freaking turn. All of my own heroes have been killed, and I can only recruit a grand total of one thane, who is too low level to actually do anything about it, so my Great Book of Grudges is filling up with a long list of retributive assassinations that I literally cannot accomplish. And they just assassinated my High King, so now I'm down to a level 1 lord too.

This aspect of the game is proving to be less than satisfying...

Toe · Post by **Toe** » Thu May 26, 2016 7:31 am

Max Peck wrote:I think my dwarves are doomed to be eternally grumbling about unrebuked grudges. I'm being swarmed with ork heroes that constantly spam me with assassination attempts -- every freaking turn. All of my own heroes have been killed, and I can only recruit a grand total of one thane, who is too low level to actually do anything about it, so my Great Book of Grudges is filling up with a long list of retributive assassinations that I literally cannot accomplish. And they just assassinated my High King, so now I'm down to a level 1 lord too.

This aspect of the game is proving to be less than satisfying...

I have read that others are complaining about this also. Sounds like something that needs to be fixed sooner rather than later. I have not had this happen to me yet, but thats either cause its still early one (like 20-25 turns) or because I have the difficulty set to easy. Do other factions have the same issue? (constant assassination attempts with really no way to counter). I know the other factions don't have the grudge book issue, but was not sure if they deal with the same balance issue.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Thu May 26, 2016 8:34 am

For the time being, my solution to the problem was to install a Steam workshop mod that disables AI hero offensive actions vs units. It's not ideal (I don't like gimping the AI much more than I liked the AI gimping me), but it'll do for now.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Thu May 26, 2016 11:21 am

That's weird. I'm playing as the dwarves as well, but no issues so far with agents getting out of control.

Despite a bit of confederating, the orcs in my game just kept fighting among themselves and I was able to march in and take swaths of their land before finally defeating their larger armies in battle. I'm about 75 turns in I think, and I've just defeated the last two large orc armies (topknots and red fangs), I've got the last Greenskin stronghold under siege, and I've only got 2 or 3 more provinces in the badlands to reclaim. Then I can turn my eye north to reuniting the dwarf kingdoms and getting ready to fight the vampire counts and chaos.

Finally figured out there was a bug with uploading screenshots in the latest beta Steam patch, so I had to roll back to the normal branch to upload.

Here's a couple of my dwarves assaulting Black Crag:

Here's my troops deployed before an underground battle:

And lastly, here's my legendary lord and a rune priest facing off against a Greenskin warlord:

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Thu May 26, 2016 4:05 pm

Has anyone here tried a coop campaign yet?

My friend and I tried one last night, but each time we started a battle it would desync right after it loaded and send us to the main menu. I haven't seen a huge rash of complaints though, so I'm wondering if this is just an issue with one of our computers. I did try putting my computer into the DMZ for a bit and it still didn't work, so probably not a port issue at least.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Fri May 27, 2016 10:54 am

Sepiche wrote:Has anyone here tried a coop campaign yet?

My friend and I tried one last night, but each time we started a battle it would desync right after it loaded and send us to the main menu. I haven't seen a huge rash of complaints though, so I'm wondering if this is just an issue with one of our computers. I did try putting my computer into the DMZ for a bit and it still didn't work, so probably not a port issue at least.

We tried again last night after checking our game caches and with my friend hosting, and it worked fine. Need to test and see if it was just a fluke from that night, or if there's some issue when I host, but we were able to play a half dozen battles last night without a hitch.

My dwarven game is also going well... I've almost taken all the Greenskin lands down to the bottom of the map, and I'm about to crush the last few orcish settlements. Once that's done I plan to rebuild my armies by adding all the new troops I have access to... irondrakes, gyrocopters, slayers, and then start picking fights with some of the dwarves up north to reunite the dwarven kingdoms who have so far resisted my calls for confederation.

$iljanus · Post by **$iljanus** » Fri May 27, 2016 12:57 pm

Sepiche wrote:
Here's my troops deployed before an underground battle:

And lastly, here's my legendary lord and a rune priest facing off against a Greenskin warlord:

I'm gonna play as the Dwarves next because I want to be dealing death to my enemies from the comfort of my Dwarven Barcalounger of Doom!

Oooh he's actually doing some reading while his enemies die around him. It's like he's on a portable toilet getting some bathroom reading done while being carried into battle. It's good to be a Dwarf Lord!

Edit:Or maybe he's a rune priest but still Dwarven battle furniture is pretty cool.

ericb · Post by **ericb** » Fri May 27, 2016 1:16 pm

Blackhawk wrote:Although I won't do business with Games Workshop anymore, I was a Warhammer fan (both tabletop and RPG) for years. After the last couple of Total War games have gone largely unplayed due to their issues, though, I'm still leery.

Luckily, I won't be able to afford it until a few patches are out (Ok, maybe the 2017 Steam sale), but you guys are making me really want it!

The GW of today isn't the same GW of a couple years ago or even 6 months ago. Once the new CEO took over (who finally actually plays the game) things have changed for the better. They are back on Facebook and active in the community, the FAQs are released as drafts and are coming out again (after a year of nothing), points added back to Sigmar, excellent value Start Collecting boxes (around 30-40% off based on existing retail boxes), more paint and terrain, computer games that aren't glorified phone games and much more. I was almost at the point of walking away too but they've really turned things around so far. Time will tell but there's actually positive buzz again.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Fri May 27, 2016 1:27 pm

$iljanus wrote:Oooh he's actually doing some reading while his enemies die around him. It's like he's on a portable toilet getting some bathroom reading done while being carried into battle. It's good to be a Dwarf Lord!

Edit:Or maybe he's a rune priest but still Dwarven battle furniture is pretty cool.

The guy on the throne is Thorgrim Grudgebearer, High King of the Dwarves! The book there is the Great Book of Grudges.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Fri May 27, 2016 2:29 pm

ericb wrote: The GW of today isn't the same GW of a couple years ago or even 6 months ago. Once the new CEO took over (who finally actually plays the game) things have changed for the better. They are back on Facebook and active in the community, the FAQs are released as drafts and are coming out again (after a year of nothing), points added back to Sigmar, excellent value Start Collecting boxes (around 30-40% off based on existing retail boxes), more paint and terrain, computer games that aren't glorified phone games and much more. I was almost at the point of walking away too but they've really turned things around so far. Time will tell but there's actually positive buzz again.

(Not intended as snark, just curious about some of my concerns that drove me away.)

Do they still charge massively more than their competitors for comparable products and forbid any other retailer from selling online with a shopping cart? And do they still treat potential B&M retailers like peons to be either forced into line as GW-centric stores or be crushed underfoot?

I'm just going to guess that they still 'reboot' the rules every couple of years, officially ending support for and invalidating all of their old products.

$iljanus · Post by **$iljanus** » Fri May 27, 2016 3:03 pm

Sepiche wrote:
$iljanus wrote:Oooh he's actually doing some reading while his enemies die around him. It's like he's on a portable toilet getting some bathroom reading done while being carried into battle. It's good to be a Dwarf Lord!

Edit:Or maybe he's a rune priest but still Dwarven battle furniture is pretty cool.
The guy on the throne is Thorgrim Grudgebearer, High King of the Dwarves! The book there is the Great Book of Grudges.

That's a lot of bathroom reading...

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Fri May 27, 2016 3:28 pm

$iljanus wrote:
Sepiche wrote:
$iljanus wrote:Oooh he's actually doing some reading while his enemies die around him. It's like he's on a portable toilet getting some bathroom reading done while being carried into battle. It's good to be a Dwarf Lord!

Edit:Or maybe he's a rune priest but still Dwarven battle furniture is pretty cool.
The guy on the throne is Thorgrim Grudgebearer, High King of the Dwarves! The book there is the Great Book of Grudges.
That's a lot of bathroom reading...

Yup, more so for some of us than others. The good news is that if you wipe out a faction, it strikes off the assassination grudges. I've still got one on the book for the Top Knotz that is enough to keep me in the top tier for grumbling by itself, but they're down to their last two settlements. Then I need to turn my attention to the Vampire Counts, because we apparently begrudge them their very existence. Sometimes I don't think there will ever be enough breweries in the world to ensure the existence of one single happily satisfied dwarf.

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Sun May 29, 2016 2:47 pm

I was looking forward to playing this on a new computer (because my old one is just not powerful enough even at medium-low) but my computer order was delayed. I did hobble around as the Vampire Counts for a while and really liked what I see, although I experienced the same difficulty in starting the game as I did with Shogun. I am just not good with the early stages of a Total War games, as the AI seems to out produce me, make better choices, and have bigger armies.