Can we rule the world? New info on regional occupation.

[emcdunna]

True. There is scripted stuff.

And remember, the mountain regions are all over the place. They are close to everything.

It's a lot more like making a game of thrones total war and forcing the ironborn greyjoy faction to only have navies, no armies. Yeah they could raid and pillage inland or conquer coastal settlements, but that'd be it.

And that's fine by me.

[♘Top Hat Zebra]

Your missing a big point, which is the scripted stuff that will take up your time instead of straight up conquering.

Yeah, but a scripted WWI scenario for that hypothetical game wouldn't make up for the fact that you were continent locked either.

I do not see the two as being relevantly connected. You could do both.

They seem to be choosing to go in the precise opposite direction of what would be interesting. Rather than giving the player more freedom, and expanding the mechanics of the campaign map to allow for more dynamic gameplay, they're literally taking a world-conquering grand strategy game and trying to turn it into some kind of weird, scripted, story-heavy game. They downplay conquest, they downplay settlement management, they downplay economy and diplomacy. What's left? Just a series of pre-determined battles?

They might as well just make a traditional RTS campaign.

Frankly, these scripted battles sound pretty terrible, like an admission that they don't trust their own game to give you interesting scenarios on it's own, so they have to hand-craft them for you. They'll probably be fun the first time, other than the fact that you know armies were spawned just to give you a challenge, but will they be fun the second time? Third?

I guess that doesn't really matter, though, because once once you conquer all the territory you're allowed to conquer as a faction, there's not really any reason to ever go back and replay it.

This is the worst feature I have ever seen them add into a Total War game, significantly worse than armies being locked to generals, or the ugly Rome II settlements that replaced the interesting ones from prior Warscape games. Their reasons for adding it make no sense to me. Lorewise, Karl Franz going around sacking Imperial cities bothers me significantly more than a bunch of grumbling Dwarves being forced to occupy a town outside of a mountain would. Gameplaywise, I don't see how this changes anything whatsoever except now instead of occupying certain regions, you're going to raze them to the ground.

The put a hardcap on armies, they put a hardcap on traits, they put a hardcap on certain units, the put a hardcap on building slots, now they put a hardcap on regions, why are they hardcapping everything?!? Do they hate emergent gameplay?

[Sharpe]

The put a hardcap on armies, they put a hardcap on traits, they put a hardcap on certain units, the put a hardcap on building slots, now they put a hardcap on regions, why are they hardcapping everything?!? Do they hate emergent gameplay?

I don't think they do, rather they want to move away from the traditional formula for this one. They can get away with it by virtue of it being Warhammer and their actually being some legitimisation behind the limited expansion, mostly the introduction of new gameplay elements in it's place - Waaghs, Chaos incursions, Norse raids - if you were the Empire at least.

Don't get my wrong I love the classic style and I believe their historical series will continue with this and so I'm willing to give this a chance, in fact I'm quite excited for it, more now than before when I thought you could just paint the map your own colour. The thought of constantly strong, lore-relevant factions makes me happy.

As I was saying I do love the "paint the map" style but dude, it's so stale at times. In Rome 1, Med 2, Empire, Napoleon, Rome 2 and Attila once you amassed enough developed provinces you could just steamroll the map - it's almost as if you are forcing yourself to not play optimally to give yourself a challenge and that is something I hate. I want to have to use every bit of cunning and trickery to win rather than not going all out "because it will be too easy". Yes, I do believe there are other ways they could counter this in traditional Total Wars like capping expansion through making occupation extremely difficult and making Army Size less proportional to treasury size but I'm willing to see how this works out.

Sometimes I feel that the hardcore crowd here want too much of an absolute sandbox, and that is something I have personally moved away from. If they had it their way their would be unlimited settlements, generals, armies, and it's just ridiculous. Limiting stuff is not that same as taking away gameplay - it's shifting the focus elsewhere. Developing a narrative in a complete sandbox is fun, but developing a narrative WITH help from new gameplay elements and events is right up my street personally.

Sorry for the long post but I'm just trying to let you understand why I'm pretty happy about this.

[emcdunna]

Maybe they thought that a fantasy game with magic, heroes, monsters, and all that stuff would be overwhelming to the player without a little structure and guidance. Hence the quest levels and limited expansion.

Take third age total war. Was it cool to declare war on dwarves as elves? Yes. But I also could never keep myself from instanta- spawning massive armies of elite troops using cheat codes.

So they removed cheat codes that used to remove fog of war or give you money, build your buildings instantly or give you units in Empire:TW... but that made the game more fun.

No longer was I tempted to solve every problem by cheating. I had more fun than ever beating campaigns on very hard with no cheats.

Technically they removed a gameplay option then too, by removing cheats, but it lead to a better experience overall.

Couldn't this be the same?

[♘Top Hat Zebra]

snip

But this isn't going to create situations where strong factions survive, anymore than that happens in any prior Total War game. It's just going to create situations where half the map is nothing but empty, razed territory, exactly like happens in Attila. Just because orcs can't occupy the Empire doesn't mean the AI won't just rampage through it's lands razing everything. In fact, given that supply lines and logistics don't exist in Total War, this will make it far easier for the AI to go on huge rampages, because they will no longer have to defend the territory they take from the enemy.

And it's not like you are gimped as a faction due to this change. You can still take basically half the map, and going by every prior game, you don't need half the map to become an unstoppable killing machine. Honestly, it doesn't even really make sense. Orcs can occupy Dwarf strongholds, but can't occupy human cities? Why? Dwarves are perfectly fine with living in disgusting orc settlements in the inhospitable badlands, but steadfastly refuse to live in the bountiful lands of the Empire? What?

The only change is that you can no longer expand where you want to, but you are limited to certain avenues of expansion. AI as well. They could have easily done this in natural, lore-appropriate way. Taking a settlement that doesn't exist in your race-appropriate regions would be costly, and would take lots of money and time to become as viable as other regions. There would be benefits as well, perhaps even an AOR system.

Instead, they opted for forcefields.

It's not that I am against them doing something different. I want them to do something different, because as it is, it's very unrealistic. But this is not even an okay way to represent what they are trying to represent. Rome mods like EB did this in a great way, where owning lands outside of your cultural boundaries became steadily more difficult, requiring entirely different government styles with different economic, recruitment, and governing abilities.

[emcdunna]

They need to find a way to keep the late game player faction to get so much more powerful than the AI that the game becomes boring.

Either limit the player's power (reduce marginal rate of income from new settlements) or just make sure AI faction's do some kind of scaling with the play

Even if it's automatic or forced technological or economical expansions (give AI extra armies or income for free when the player gets stronger), it'd make the game better in the mid/late game

[Bryan77600]

From my point of view we never had settlement on mountains from any previous total war, right ?
Why would humans build big cities under or on top of a mountain ? and why would they even build castle, to protect what ? shepherd ? (i don't want to argue on badlands being mountain or not...)

The lore of warhammer include races that do build cities on them, so actualy it is a very new things that introduce CA, not a restriction ! We just have diferent races that lives in diferent environment (well just 2 for now...), and i thinks that it is a good thing that CA understand that. (even if they don't explain it simply, the guy who written that blog have to been paid for...)

Just imagine you as the empire, been annoyed by greenskin raiding from their inhospitable mountain. Would you really try to colonize them while not being interested of their lands ? build costly castle when you can simply raze them and solve the problem !
When we look at the incoming extensions, would you really like to see wooden elves living under a mountain ?

Actualy the only thing that scares me is diplomatic option, wich became much important as ever, i would like to be able to forge strong alliances, or even subjugate with factions thats i can not occupy...

[emcdunna]

More examples:

Skaven only live underground. So holds only, they only go above ground to raid and pillage. They should also add an extensive underground map for them to move around and show up deep inside the empire with.

Bretonnia... Yeah cav doesn't jive well with mountains or underground regions or deserts.

Beastmen don't have an empire, they're just a disorganized band of raiders that hide in the woods and ambush patrolling armies.

Chaos are definitely horde only, daemons don't conquer lands and start taxing the local humans. Neither would the chaos warrior hordes.

Wood elves aren't interested in conquering, mostly just to defend the woodland realms from beasts or invaders. Maybe special forest territories are required for this?

Dark elves would conquer elven lands but I doubt they'd hold much more than outposts in human lands. Same for high elves. They'd focus on building isolated outposts on islands or port cities.

And what about lizardmen, are they gonna uproot and travel across the ocean to fighht over deserts and mountains when they basically only wanna live in the jungles?

Ogres are definitely a horde only faction for the most part.

So honestly, besides the faction's already in the first game, it's hard to see ANY of the factions conquering the whole map and subjugating the other races to their own will.

Mostly there is just raiding, sacking, and possibly razing each other while migrating hordes roam free between the established empires.

[♘Top Hat Zebra]

Horde factions couldn't take settlements anyway, so that's fine for them.

But as for the rest, there's nothing intrinsically preventing them from taking those places. The only excuse is that they "Wouldn't" but that's hardly a reason to forbid it, is it? Karl Franz wouldn't sack Imperial towns, but you can make him. Dwarfs wouldn't randomly declare war on the Empire and raze their cities to the ground, but you can make them. Egypt wouldn't march an entire army through Europe to attack the Britons, but you can make them. Doing things that wouldn't have happened is basically the entire premise of Total War, if you're limited only to what your factions probably would have done, then that's rather boring isn't it?

Why would humans not live in gigantic, nearly impregnable mountain strongholds? We're not talking about colonizing the whole thing with a city's population, we're talking about a military garrison. That's why you would need negatives to balance out the positives.

If you conquered a Dwarf Karak as the Empire, you would get reduced population, a weak economy, no food production, and low public order. But, other benefits, like good forges, siege engines, military research bonuses, AOR Dwarf troops, or other such things. Unique bonuses that you cannot get any other way, but with equally difficult negatives to holding the area. The pros and cons should be different for different factions. The Empire would have a relatively easy time, and lots of bonuses, controlling a Dwarf Karak, whereas Wood Elves would have a much more difficult time holding one, and less benefits. They can still do it, but there's less reason to, outside of specific scenarios. They could take one at a key mountain pass and use it specifically for a powerful fort, and little else, for instance. Similarly, Night Goblins taking a Scaven undercity would fit in relatively well, but the Empire would have basically no use whatsoever, and be far better off simply razing it to the ground.


My point isn't that painting the map your color should be the goal, or even an efficient way to play. My entire point is just that you should have the option. Humans don't have any use whatsoever for an orc camp in the badlands, but you should have the option of choosing to take it, even if it's the wrong choice. If you are playing GTA, is it a good idea to walk into a police station and shoot a cop in the face? No, not really. Will you die? Probably. But does that mean you simply shouldn't be allowed to do it at all? Definitely not! Players should always have the option to make poor decisions, and if the game is dynamic enough, even poor decisions can be good decisions with the right strategic mind. Maybe shooting the cop was a distraction? Maybe the Wood Elves taking the Karak are using it as a distraction, knowing the dwarves would want to retake lands that belong to them, allowing the elves to rebuild their strength?

Or maybe it was just a poor conquest choice, and it drains money, and you never get any significant benefit from owning it. Maybe you just get shot to death by the police for no reason.

But you should always get the choice, either way, because that's way more fun.

[Lord Baal]

Ummm, maybe a campaign with the restrictions and a sandbox gameplay where there's none?

[Derpy Hooves]

Ummm, maybe a campaign with the restrictions (TWW) and a sandbox gameplay where there's none (every other total war game)?

[emcdunna]

I see your point.

So really, it should be wayy more complicated than simply holds and human settlements. Every faction should have a different set of usable settlements, military only settlements, and useless ones.

It shouldn't be as simple as mountain hold vs human settlement.

Maybe they'll make it more complex in the next game? I mean like I said about the other factions, they can't stick to a 2 way system where it's just mountain holds or human settlements. They could again go with a "nemesis" system that makes a new "elf" settlement that only elves would hold, but that'd be sub-optimal

[Sir Adrian]

They said this system will only be in this game and never again.

[captainkrunch]

I don't think your inability to control your cheating impulse is reason enough to restrict the game, you just have to control yourself. Believe me, I had the same problem in Oblivion, then I decided to control myself and the game was alot more fun.

I don't think your inability to control your cheating impulse is reason enough to restrict the game, you just have to control yourself. Believe me, I had the same problem in Oblivion, then I decided to control myself and the game was alot more fun.

This was meant for @emcdunna, forgot too qoute.

[shawn858]

They said this system will only be in this game and never again.

source? I'm 95% sure that they didn't say they'd "never" do this again.

[emcdunna]

All they said was that they "wouldn't necessarily do this in later games, it all depends on what fits the lore for those factions"

[Sharpe]

It's interesting to note the different responses on different mediums. On reddit the response was overwhelmingly positive, here is so so and on the official forums it's mixed also. Can see why it's so hard to take cues from a fanbase that is sone divided.

[Sir Adrian]

And if you translate that from marketing to English it means "we currently have no intention of doing this in the future".

[emcdunna]

Translate from marketing to English? You must be a wizard to know how to perform such miracles

[Markas]

And if you translate that from marketing to English it means "we currently have no intention of doing this in the future".

Your translator must be broken if that's what it came up with. Either that or your command of the English language.