Total War: Warhammer

[Sepiche]

I'm around turn 125 in my Dwarf game now, and well into the end game. I've completely wiped the Greenskins and all orcs from the bottom of the map and have confederated most of the independent dwarf factions.

I retooled my armies for a while after taking the south to include the excellent iron drakes, iron breakers, gyrobombers, slayers, etc, and then launched an invasion of Zhufbar, a dwarven kingdom to my north that had allied with the Vampire Counts.

Unfortunately right after I committed to the invasion, Chaos came down full powered and started it's invasion of the south with 4 full stacks. I've allied up with pretty much everyone against Chaos... mostly Brettonia and The Empire. I haven't committed troops against Chaos directly yet as I wanted to finish my takeover of Zhufbar, but I did launch an attack on the Vampire Counts as they were starting to push into the Empire, and I figured dealing with them would help the Empire focus on Chaos.

It took me a few turns, but I managed to raze Castle Drakenhof, Castle Templehof, and a lot of their minor settlements, plus I had a huge victory with two of my armies against von Carstein's veteran army. They're still around as a faction (mostly because I don't want to deal with the attrition I take besieging in their lands), but are much weakened.

Now that I've got Zhufbar contained in a small area in the north and the Vampire Counts on the run, I'm starting to gather up my forces, do a final bit of retooling, and then plan on marching my whole army up to fight Chaos. Right now I've got 8 full stacks of troops, plus a special stack being built of all ironbreakers and top tier units for the High King to lead himself. Should still be a tough fight as Chaos armies tend to hit above their weight, but I'll outnumber them at least 2-1 in armies at least.

I should have been taking more screenshots of some of the good battles, but here's a couple of the good ones...

This is from one of the battles to get my lords top end gear. This is a unit of my iron drakes (flamethrowers) setting a Greenskin giant on fire:


And this is my greatest general Feydric Pandarkreig going toe to toe with Grimgor Ironhide, the legendary lord of the Greenskins:


I've put about 40 hours into the game now and, granted I've always been a Total War fan, but having played all of them at release, this is far and away the most polished, most well thought out, most balanced, most enjoyable Total War game to date.

If you don't like Total War games then this is probably still not your kind of game, but for anyone who even remotely enjoys Total War games, this one is a masterpiece.

[Blackhawk]

...

dammit

[tgb]

So I jumped on board today and started the Dwarven tutorial. It appears that you can only turn taxes on or off for a province but not actually set them. Is that right? Is that just for the Dwarves, or is that game-wide?

[Sepiche]

So I jumped on board today and started the Dwarven tutorial. It appears that you can only turn taxes on or off for a province but not actually set them. Is that right? Is that just for the Dwarves, or is that game-wide?

Nope, just on or off now. To be honest I haven't had a need to touch it at all though. Nothing bad really happens until you hit -100 public order which should give plenty of time to take over an area, clear it of enemies, and build some public order increasing buildings.

[tgb]

So I jumped on board today and started the Dwarven tutorial. It appears that you can only turn taxes on or off for a province but not actually set them. Is that right? Is that just for the Dwarves, or is that game-wide?

Nope, just on or off now. To be honest I haven't had a need to touch it at all though. Nothing bad really happens until you hit -100 public order which should give plenty of time to take over an area, clear it of enemies, and build some public order increasing buildings.

The second or third grudge in the tutorial was to get order up to +10 from -34. Maybe that's random, I don't know, but since I can't produce any buildings yet that increase order, the only way to get it moving into the green was by switching taxes off. Fortunately I still have a little trade income coming in.

[Max Peck]

So I jumped on board today and started the Dwarven tutorial. It appears that you can only turn taxes on or off for a province but not actually set them. Is that right? Is that just for the Dwarves, or is that game-wide?

Nope, just on or off now. To be honest I haven't had a need to touch it at all though. Nothing bad really happens until you hit -100 public order which should give plenty of time to take over an area, clear it of enemies, and build some public order increasing buildings.

The second or third grudge in the tutorial was to get order up to +10 from -34. Maybe that's random, I don't know, but since I can't produce any buildings yet that increase order, the only way to get it moving into the green was by switching taxes off. Fortunately I still have a little trade income coming in.

I believe you can also increase order by stationing an army in a settlement, or by deploying a thane anywhere in the province.

[Lorini]

Runesmiths can also help. I haven't had to turn off taxes as a Dwarf.

[tgb]

I'm only on the 3rd or 4th turn of the tutorial and none of that has opened up yet.

[Lorini]

I'm only on the 3rd or 4th turn of the tutorial and none of that has opened up yet.

What difficulty? I forget I play on Easy.

[Max Peck]

I'm only on the 3rd or 4th turn of the tutorial and none of that has opened up yet.

Ah, OK, your initial heroes (thane, runesmith, engineer) get doled out as you progress through the tutorial. You can still plunk your starting army (even if its just the lord) in a settlement to get the military presence bonus to stability.

[tgb]

I'm playing on easy, and while I was able to raise a 2nd army which helped order a bit in the first province, the grudge that tasks you with occupying your first Ork camp sends it spiraling back downwards for several turns. With taxes off I can get order up to +4/turn, but without it only +1.

[gbasden]

I'm also playing the Dwarf tutorial, and I was able to build a brewery in my main city that gave a pretty big boost to public order. That and you can research a few early techs that give bonuses as well. I finished off that grudge fairly quickly.

[tgb]

I must be missing something. I have a mission (apparently untimed) to win an ambush battle against an army of Goblins. I march my main stack to the quest location, put in an Ambush stance, and.....nothing. A few more turns go by, and still nothing.

This isn't my first TW rodeo, but what am I doing wrong?

[Max Peck]

I must be missing something. I have a mission (apparently untimed) to win an ambush battle against an army of Goblins. I march my main stack to the quest location, put in an Ambush stance, and.....nothing. A few more turns go by, and still nothing.

This isn't my first TW rodeo, but what am I doing wrong?

IIRC, you're supposed to walk into their ambush, not set up an ambush for them.

[tgb]

I must be missing something. I have a mission (apparently untimed) to win an ambush battle against an army of Goblins. I march my main stack to the quest location, put in an Ambush stance, and.....nothing. A few more turns go by, and still nothing.

This isn't my first TW rodeo, but what am I doing wrong?

IIRC, you're supposed to walk into their ambush, not set up an ambush for them.

That makes sense. I'm getting the feeling that in their determination to broaden TW sales outside of the core market and make it more accessible, CA lost sight of systems we vets know like the backs of our hands, and some things that should be intuitive.......aren't.

I'm sure I'll continue to break the tutorial by doing things I'm already familiar with before the game wants me to "learn" them.

[Sepiche]

Getting pretty close to done with my Dwarf game now I think... Chaos is on the run, and just need to take a few more settlements.

Defeating Archaon's army turned out to be a little easier than expected, although he did escape alive, so I'll need to hunt him down still.

I brought up 5 of my dwarven armies and kept being just out of range to attack him, but finally a couple of small Empire stacks managed to attack him while my host was nearby. I took a bunch of screenshots I didn't get around to uploading last night, but it was basically 2 of my armies + 1 stacks worth of Imperial troops versus Archaon's stack which was a couple of hell cannon, some chaos knights, trolls, and warriors.

It was mostly a slaughter as I had artillery and was able to send in a few squadrons of gyrocopters to take out his hell cannons which forced him to attack us. It turns out Chaos is remarkably vulnerable to gyrocopters... the hell cannons could at least shoot at them, but once I took those out he had absolutely no ranged weapons, so I was able to follow along with his army attacking him from the air the whole way.

The Empire engaged him first and then I threw my dwarven troops in including about 5 units of Iron Breakers and it didn't take long for his troops to rout after that.

The Empire also managed to take down a Chaos stack led by a greater demon, so now just two weaker Chaos stacks left that I haven't been able to run down yet.

I didn't sleep well last night so not sure if I'll be on much tonight, but I'll try to post some of the better screenshots when I get a chance.

[Max Peck]

I'm playing a Chaos Warriors campaign at the moment. The only ranged units are the hell cannons and a couple of variants of light cavalry. It's also difficult to deal with multiple armies, since Chaos armies are designed to work in isolation. If they get too close to each other, they take attrition damage (from infighting between the different hordes), so it can be tricky to make coordinated attacks or have reinforcements available without taking attrition damage on top of battle casualties. I lost a couple of hordes during the campaign because I got run down by multiple Empire or Dwarf armies, ending up losing to vastly superior numbers (which is somewhat ironic given that Chaos is fielding "hordes").

There is also some wonkiness with siege combat as Chaos (and possibly other factions). I have an all-monster army that has no units that are capable of using battering rams or towers, so if I attempt to play out the siege battle, it is impossible to scale or breach the walls. However, if I build just a single siege engine and then use the auto-resolve battle option, I can capture the fortified city. I'd have thought they'd factor in the ability (or lack thereof) to make use of the siege equipment when abstracting the combat resolution, but apparently not.

[tgb]

Playing on Easy, my Dwarf campaign is already pear-shaped by Turn 20. I do what I always seem to do in games of this kind - I bit off more than I could chew. I had an opportunity to invite another tribe into the Confederation, because moar cities, never once thinking I would inherit their war with the Vampire Lords. Now I have 3 half-stacks and I'm surrounded by enemies.

I'm really enjoying it a lot, although I don't go along with the OMG!!! Bestest TW evar!!!! crowd. That honor still belongs to Shogun 2.

[Sepiche]

There is also some wonkiness with siege combat as Chaos (and possibly other factions). I have an all-monster army that has no units that are capable of using battering rams or towers, so if I attempt to play out the siege battle, it is impossible to scale or breach the walls. However, if I build just a single siege engine and then use the auto-resolve battle option, I can capture the fortified city. I'd have thought they'd factor in the ability (or lack thereof) to make use of the siege equipment when abstracting the combat resolution, but apparently not.

Have you tried just having your monsters attack the gates directly? I timed it once and it's actually faster to send a lord and 2 or 3 units to tear down a gate rather than use a battering ram. The ram is so slow getting to the gate, it still loses out even though it does damage to the gate faster.

[Max Peck]

There is also some wonkiness with siege combat as Chaos (and possibly other factions). I have an all-monster army that has no units that are capable of using battering rams or towers, so if I attempt to play out the siege battle, it is impossible to scale or breach the walls. However, if I build just a single siege engine and then use the auto-resolve battle option, I can capture the fortified city. I'd have thought they'd factor in the ability (or lack thereof) to make use of the siege equipment when abstracting the combat resolution, but apparently not.

Have you tried just having your monsters attack the gates directly? I timed it once and it's actually faster to send a lord and 2 or 3 units to tear down a gate rather than use a battering ram. The ram is so slow getting to the gate, it still loses out even though it does damage to the gate faster.

I tried that, but none of the units in my gimmick army (Kholek Suneater leading nothing but Dragon Ogre Shaggoths) appeared to be capable of targeting the gates. I'll try again, just to make sure I didn't miss something.

Edit: OK, I tried again and this time I was able to use my beasties to strike asunder the gates of Karaz-a-Karak and devour the bristle-bearded Dwarven nuggets within. I'm not sure what I did wrong the first time I tried (on a different settlement, but still). Maybe I fumbled the mouse and had the cursor over the wall/gatehouse instead of the gate itself. There's still a disconnect, though, since even though I didn't need siege gear, I still had to build something before I could start the battle. Still, alls well that ends well (unless you're a Dwarf that was fond of your capital).

[Toe]

I been playing more of this lately and it has been pretty fun. I think I am up to about turn 150 or so. Since I was not very familiar with TW games, I went for super easy, so am playing dwarves (easiest faction plus dwarves are awesome) with difficulty set to easy with mods to stop enemy agent actions, so can't get much more easy. I am glad I went this rout as I have made a ton of mistakes along the way (oh, so I can't make this uber unit cause I built and upgraded the wrong tier 4-5 buildings?), but have been able to recover without much issue due to playing super easy.
Had an interesting stack of goblins attack me last night. 1 lord (grimgor I think?), 1 troll unit, 1 spear unit, 16(!) catapults. It was on a mountain forest map, so was not too difficult as I used some trees as cover for some of my units. I did take more losses than I have in most battles though. My army was an early stack, so did not have any gyrocopter or faster units to put any pressure on them.
I have knocked out all the goblins but the greenskins to the north, but they should fall quickly as they are pretty weak at the moment. As I mention, I keep uncovering mistakes I made, like last night I finally understood what the bar at the top of my screen was. I had hovered over it before it saw something like 0-9 severity and I was getting bonus, so did not pay much attention to it after that, thinking it was a happy realm gauge. Well it hit 10 last night and thats when I realized it was a meter to measure how pissed off my people were due to not resolving grudges, doh!. I have been knocking out grudges soon after they appear, except for one where i needed to get a master engineer to level 15. At the time I could only have one and he was in an army that was just mainly protecting my boarder, so not much action. He is level 10, so should not take too long to get him to 15 now that I know I need to get him in more battles asap.
Just created my first top-tier 20 stack and can't wait to get them into some action tonight as I been mainly just using warriors/longbeards and quarrelers with a 2-4 siege engines.

[Max Peck]

Blood for the Blood God! Cue outrage.

[Freyland]

I really don't know why I can't get my game to look as nice as the gameplay shown in their videos, or even some of the sponsored Let's Plays. I have a top of the line rig, and a 3000+ by whatever+ 30-some inched curved monitor, yet its a struggle. Am I missing any obvious tricks?

[Toe]

I really don't know why I can't get my game to look as nice as the gameplay shown in their videos, or even some of the sponsored Let's Plays. I have a top of the line rig, and a 3000+ by whatever+ 30-some inched curved monitor, yet its a struggle. Am I missing any obvious tricks?

A 30 inch monitor I imagine can make a lot of good-looking games look not so great. What resolution do you run the game with on that monitor? Are you running with all the graphic settings maxed?

[Blackhawk]

Blood for the Blood God! Cue outrage.

Am I reading that correctly? Is that paid DLC to add blood?

There is no outrage, not when dealing Creative Assembly. Not anymore. Just resigned sighs.

[NickAragua]

Blood for the Blood God! Cue outrage.

Am I reading that correctly? Is that paid DLC to add blood?

There is no outrage, not when dealing Creative Assembly. Not anymore. Just resigned sighs.

Yeah, I remember seeing the same thing for Rome II. I'm ok with it since it doesn't set off my "must have all content" obsession.

[Sepiche]

Yeah, I remember seeing the same thing for Rome II. I'm ok with it since it doesn't set off my "must have all content" obsession.

They've been doing that since Shogun 2. As I understand it, in order to sell the game in certain countries they have to take all the blood and gore out completely, but can get around that for other countries by making it a DLC available to those countries that allow it.

They could make it a FreeLC I imagine, but at least it's an option, and it's not too expensive.

[$iljanus]

Blood for the Blood God! Cue outrage.

Am I reading that correctly? Is that paid DLC to add blood?

There is no outrage, not when dealing Creative Assembly. Not anymore. Just resigned sighs.

And a dismemberment or two. Limbs for the limb god, I guess.

[Holman]

Spleens for the Spleen God!

I am an ecumenicalist.

[Freyland]

I really don't know why I can't get my game to look as nice as the gameplay shown in their videos, or even some of the sponsored Let's Plays. I have a top of the line rig, and a 3000+ by whatever+ 30-some inched curved monitor, yet its a struggle. Am I missing any obvious tricks?

A 30 inch monitor I imagine can make a lot of good-looking games look not so great. What resolution do you run the game with on that monitor? Are you running with all the graphic settings maxed?

Hi Toe, sorry for delay in response, two long days at work.

Is a 34 inch 5mm (GTG) curved monitor, being run at 3440 x 1440 I believe. The graphics card is a 6GB Geoforce 980ti. Settings maxed.

[Toe]

I really don't know why I can't get my game to look as nice as the gameplay shown in their videos, or even some of the sponsored Let's Plays. I have a top of the line rig, and a 3000+ by whatever+ 30-some inched curved monitor, yet its a struggle. Am I missing any obvious tricks?

A 30 inch monitor I imagine can make a lot of good-looking games look not so great. What resolution do you run the game with on that monitor? Are you running with all the graphic settings maxed?

Hi Toe, sorry for delay in response, two long days at work.

Is a 34 inch 5mm (GTG) curved monitor, being run at 3440 x 1440 I believe. The graphics card is a 6GB Geoforce 980ti. Settings maxed.

Hmm, not sure then. I assume other graphic-intensive games look awesome on your display? Or it could just be the videos look better due to, well, being smaller resolution. So, if you made a video of your gameplay and compressed it (or whatever they do to get them in that format), it might look like what you are seeing.

[ydejin]

Call of the Beastmen expansion arriving July 28th.

[morlac]

I should really want this game. Maybe I got burned out on Medieval 2 after years of playing it and it's mods. I only played 10-15 hours of shogun 2 and about 2 hours of Rome 2. I may be Total Warred out?

[Sepiche]

IMHO Warhammer is the best TW game ever, but that said, if you've burned out on the basic TW formula, it's doubtful it changes enough to keep you interested if the setting doesn't do anything for you.

[Holman]

I finally caved and picked up Warhammer because I traditionally love me some Warhammer. So far I'm not disappointed. The style and the mechanics have really pulled me in.

One point of concern for me, though: the game autodetects and puts me at High graphical settings, but I notice that my video card gets up to 85-90 degrees in this game. Lowering to Medium doesn't make that much difference to the heat.

My card is GeForce GTX 760 2GB, which is by no means new. Probably it's time for me to upgrade. But does anyone else notice that this game is hard on the card?

[Freyland]

Yup. My 980t1 fans really get a'whirlin to keep the temp at 80 or slightly less. I keep reading that it is because the game is optimized for AMD instead of Nvidia, but I don't know how much of that is truth vs rumor-mongering.

[baelthazar]

Just out of curiousity, do you guys have "unlimited video memory" clicked in the settings? IIRC, the game will rely almost solely on VRAM on the card, and will downgrade the quality of the graphics if your card does not have enough VRAM to accommodate the settings you chose. It has to do with some way to keep framerates consistent. Clicking "unlimited video memory" will allow you to "overflow" and not downgrade and will put some memory tasks on the PC memory (I believe). However, since it does not downgrade, you may paradoxically see worse framerates (it means you have chosen too high graphical settings).

It may be related to that. If it is basically hammering the GPU's memory and processor, then the heat would certainly be higher.

[Holman]

I'm not at home and can't check that setting, but I noticed in play that my GPU runs very hot (90ish) while my CPU cores stay around 45. Does that sound like what you're describing?

[baelthazar]

Oh, I have no idea and have not experienced it myself. I just wondered if you toggled that option if things would change.

[Sepiche]

Next DLC has been announced, due out December 8th:

New Wood Elves Race in the Grand Campaign
New additional Race-specific currency: Amber
Wonder-based Campaign victory condition
Wood Elves may conquer any region on the map
Two New Playable Legendary Lords: Orion and Durthu
Two new Lord types with deep-specialisation skill trees
Three new Hero types with deep-specialisation skill trees
Comprehensive Wood Elves army roster
Adds an additional campaign map to the game with the unique ‘Season of Revelations’ Wood Elves story Campaign
New Unique Monsters, Heroes, Magic and Game Features

Lots more detailed info on the Steam page:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/534331/