Would you call TW Warhammer a step forward?

[Druout]

First impressions are a thousand times more postive.

And the people whining in this thread? I dont think they even bought/played the game.

It's a massive step forward.

I, unfortunately did. Huge step backward.

[irisheagle]

AI ridiculously overpowered because they can't make anything challenging tactical..

The AI is ridiculously overpowered because you're playing on Legendary mode. Every TW game (Actually every strategy game, but that's neither here nor there) the difficulty has just been giving increasingly absurd buffs to the AI. Or did you forget how in M2 on the hardest difficulty levy spearmen could eviscerate dismounted knights in a 1v1?

As to the campaiign map stuff, sorry if this makes me a "filthy casual" but I'm here for the battles, not as much the overmap. If I wanted a extrodinarily complex overmap, I'd play a Paradox game, probably Vitctoria 2, which are actually built around them. And before people say combining the two would be great, no it wouldn't, because the entire point of a Paradox game gets thrown out the window if you can play the battles yourself and reliably win 9/10 times.

The earlier games had complexity, but shallow complexity. You almost always built the same buildings, in the same order, because there of course was an optimal path as there always is in games like this. Then you gave yourself a nice pat on the back for building things in the order you knew was right, because its the one that always works.

The fact that the AI finally seems to have figured out how flanks and the hammer and anvil works is an improvement enough for me. The important part, above all else, is the battles in a Total War game. They are the bread and butter. Everything else should follow to serve that purpose.

And believe me, I've been frustrated with it, I mean I even bought Darth's Gettysburg game thinking like a fool that would be the thing that did it, but it really wasn't that special either. But to say its a step back from the other games is a bit much. it's a step forward, but only a small step.

Also Naval battles were always garbage. There I said it. They never got them to be anything remotely satisfying in any TW game.

[morsone]

from reddit, i agree completely:

• No reload animations
  
  
  • Hand gunners, thunderers and artillery has no reloading animation. It has been disappeared. I understand that CA can make a game like hellcannon. but, it disappoints me that detailed animations has now gone from TW:Warhammer.
  
  
• No small city battle
  
  
  • With siege warfare in TW:Atila, a small city, with barricade and civilian. This was the best mechanic in TW:Warhammer that should still exist. Whenever sweeping out empire territory with Chaos and orks, on the other hand, defending empire territory, newer version gives me some sort of empty felling since there isn’t siege warfare mode any longer.
  
  
• No river Crossing Battle
  
  
  • Defending huge number of enemies from the lake shore who tries to attack my territory was the most excellent strategy option that totalwar player can have. Plus, campaign maps had encouraged many of the players to bring out their kind of Grand Strategy. But, these are all gone now. There’s no such thing like that in TW:Warhammer anymore.
  
  
• No formation
  
  
  • In Medieval II: Total War, appearance of Pikemans and halberdier holding spear against enemies was pretty awesome in visually and tactically and was needed strategy bring victory. However, State troops can’t be doing the same thing again.

[The Despondent Mind]

This is why I don't get CA apologist, when they remove perfectly good stuff from their new games, it never fails to anger me.

Instead of making siege battles for small cities more interesting, thoughtful and make several city patterns, they just remove them... BUT LOOK AT THE HELLCANON OMGZ SO AWESOMEEEEE I HAVE TO PRE ORDER!!! *plays the game 3 hours *

[Ciruelo]

MTW2 has proper sieges rather than the trash in warhammer which is honestly the most horrible siege idea CA has ever had (I'd even take the crawling ETW sieges over it, at least that required some thought), it has individual unit formations, it has multiple (rather than 2) group formations, it has tiered fortresses. Hype train, new setting, and warhammer units make people either forget or overlook what has been removed that added more deliberate thought to the combat I guess.Well that and being the most simplistic in terms of tactical strategy which undoubted makes it more appealing to the casual player I suppose.

WTF!? MTW2 sieges were boring as hack and full of bugs. Sieges have never been fun against AI in any TW. Group formation was an useless feature as it's much more fun and tactical-requirement to set the formation yourself than using a default one. MTW2 was slower, that's why people say it was more tactical and less arcade. If you don't like to play games with micromanagement don't play total war, there are a lot of good turn based games out there for people that can't play fast reactive games.

[The Despondent Mind]

MTW2 as much as I like it, has horrible sieges, essentially a ruined version of RTW sieges. But they could have improved further on the RTW system despite its flaws, because what we have now is a sad compromise.

[lavez]

The AI is ridiculously overpowered because you're playing on Legendary mode. Every TW game (Actually every strategy game, but that's neither here nor there) the difficulty has just been giving increasingly absurd buffs to the AI.

Galactic Civilizations II allows you to customise every single AI opponent, you can tweak how advanced AI algorithms it can use, how aggressive it will be and what kind of personality/strategy it will employ, among other things. AI resource boosts are solely to the player's discretion, if you regularly beat Intelligent AI on 100% resource parity in Free-For-All games, you can give them a boost, or just form a set of 'good' or 'evil' opponents that will band together against the player if he's of the opposite ethical alignment.

In either case, I'm not going to argue with your opinion that 'every strategy game under horizon overbuffs the AI', because it's a generalisation rather than a statement of fact, and as such let's agree to disagree.

Or did you forget how in M2 on the hardest difficulty levy spearmen could eviscerate dismounted knights in a 1v1?

That totally hasn't happened at all. The only difference between battle difficulty levels in Medieval 2 was that both the player and AI units would rout slower/faster depending on the setting. On 'easy' troops would take longer to rout, on 'hard' and 'very hard' they'd often break after short contact. Once you got hammer & anvil right, open field battles actually became easier on 'very hard' because whole enemy army would rout, instead of absorbing the hit and sending their spearmen after your cavalry. Not that vanilla BAI in Medieval 2 was particularly great, especially before the 1.3 patch was out.

It's true, however, that in original Rome the AI gets statistical bonuses to it's units on higher difficulty levels and can overwhelm the player's better quality troops through sheer numbers of boosted infantry units.

The fact that the AI finally seems to have figured out how flanks and the hammer and anvil works is an improvement enough for me. The important part, above all else, is the battles in a Total War game. They are the bread and butter. Everything else should follow to serve that purpose.

In which case singleplayer and multiplayer custom battles should suffice, no?

Except, not really.

CA doesn't have to make strategic campaign layer overly complicated if they're afraid 'just for the battle' folk will leave, they could take the safe route and simply make the interaction between battles and campaign more meaningful - AI generals could hold grudges after defeats, get increasingly aggressive after a string of victories, develop their own rules of engagement and preferred army composition.

Similarly, AI generals could take into account whether a particular battle is or isn't important for their faction, and prioritise certain units of AI/player opponent depending on campaign context - an intercepting army that knows it's too weak to destroy the player's army could instead opt to destroy his siege engines and frustrate his attempts to siege a nearby city, or simply decide to kill the player's general and/or expensive but weakened units from previous battle, in a bid to weaken him as much as possible even in the face of defeat.

Further, generals' antics and the battles outcome could have a more profound political, economic and social influence on the factions of winners and losers. This is a whole area of improvement that would actually make the battles more interesting to play, and make what happens in campaign feel directly relevant to players' efforts on the battlefield.

Also Naval battles were always garbage. There I said it. They never got them to be anything remotely satisfying in any TW game.

Opinion.

Here's mine: Napoleon's and Fall of the Samurai's naval battles were the best in the franchise (despite the idiot AI), Empire's take was forgiveable because it was the first, Shogun 2/Rome II's naval combat was god awful, and not much better in Attila.

[Evan MF]

To me it is a giant confirmation that CA is moving away from trying to create a plausible, realistic (within limits) battle simulator and moving more towards a battle-area type of game, where formations and manoeuvring is not as important as unit combos and the timing of special abilities, spells and use of special gimmick units. Two more titles like this and the studio won't recover, Rome 2 and to an extent Shogun 2 were already a step down this path but a 3-part Warhammer is the nail in the coffin in my opinion. I don't think we'll see anything of the likes of RTW (the unit physics more so than the uniforms), M2TW or Empire/Napoleon again, those games had a semblance of restraint and attempted to emulate historical warfare, for their time they were great achievements, especially the further back you go.

[Johnadiw26]

In my personal opinion, all of you compare what is good and not good about warhammer and another latest TW games, and i am here only can watch TW: warhammer Lets play and my pc only can handle Rome total war 1, made me sad seeing some comment bashing about CA and warhammer so bad...yada..yada, i am gladly exchange all of my money in wallet right now, if i can play TW : Warhammer only a hour time. Anyway are there good spec PC with with budget 500 us dollar so i can play warhammer too?. I am sorry if i am so very rude, sorry for bad english

Sent from my Smartfren Andromax AD688G using Tapatalk

[Zephyrus]

Every new game in a series should be an improvement from the last. There is no excuse for Seige AI to still be this bad at this point in CA's development process. They had a great idea with making each game part of a larger puzzle and drawing in more customers. They made the effort to put in different animations for each race. I appreciate those efforts, and the launch was far better than the RTW2 debacle. They still have quite a ways to go before their games are worth the $60-80 prices they're asking for. I'm not sure if the faults are with the Warscape engine or the misuse of funds for content that is done at the bare minimum. Banners and command units should have made an appearances, and seiges improved especially with the delayed date they had.

The quality of the stratmap has decreased since rtw1, and I appreciate Paradox focusing on that aspect of gameplay, but word-play and better metamap visuals are not my cup of tea. Total War caters to action/strategy wargamers, and both should be improved with every release.

[Osbot]

Yes it is a step forward. It is absolutely a step forward.

This is, first and foremost a Warhammer game. A lot of the stuff that you are accustomed to in historical TW games don't belong here. Family trees? Don't belong.

Total War games have NEVER been simulations. They've just been the most realistic out of a bunch of games that were not very realistic. There is, in fact, almost nothing realistic about TW games. Armies didn't fight the way they do in TW, and they didn't fight the way a lot of people think they fought. The entire Medieval/Rome settings in TW are between 100% and about 85% fantasy. Other than Rome, no other faction in ANY of those series had anything resembling regimented units, or uniform weapons.

Why do I think Warhammer is a step forward? It's a back to basics game. They've looked at what worked in Attila, Rome and Shogun, and they've emphasized those features. The things that were causing their games problems, they've designed around the problems. Some of the things removed don't really fit with Warhammer.

They've also added A LOT. They have 5 factions, that play fundamentally different. They have improved the combat massively. They have fixed the biggest problem with sieges which as another poster in another thread tactfully pointed out, we're not fighting a siege, a siege comes before the attack, the attack is made with months of preparation the where the attack is coming from is already decided before you get on the map, so narrowing of the focus of the attack not only makes sense thematically, it helps the AI by automatically putting them in the right place to defend. It's not like you could EVER surprise an enemy with siege towers, by the time you build them and move them into position the enemy is going to have DAYS if not WEEKS to prepare for the attack and they are going to know exactly WHERE it is coming from.

As to river crossing battles, I can take them or leave them. Realistically, no general worth their salt is going to assault across a defended ford, they are going to move on down the line and cross in an undefended area, or just wait on their side. Removing them to me is whatever, the AI shouldn't attack across rivers, and the player won't either.

The reloading animations. Honestly, I don't care. I never spend any time watching archers shoot at ranges where I would actually care about the reload animations. 98% of all gameplay is done where troops are virtually indistinguishable from each other, and the 2% I do zoom in, I'm watching the melee.

Naval Combat. First off, there should never have been naval combat as it was represented in Medieval, Attila or even Rome. Here is how real medieval naval combat worked. They chained all their ships together, and then crashed into the other fleet and had a land battle on a bunch of connected ships acting like an island. Even naval combat in antiquity was functionally the same. Just a giant blob of ships all stuck together where everyone fought each other.

So naval combat in Rome Attila and Medieval, if they can't get that working, just scrap it. Naval battles were pretty damn rare aside from the couple of Roman Carthage battles. For Warhammer, honestly, leave it out. I don't know much about Warhammer naval stuff, but I assume it is not age of sail style, when naval warfare actually became a thing.

Let's be honest, naval combat in Attila and Rome 2 was fun the first time you saw it, but it was horrific to play, and whats worse, if you played on harder difficulties, one of the biggest advantages the AI gets on higher battle difficulty is rate of fire and accuracy buffs.

Warhammer is absolutely a step forward. I look forward to seeing what they've done with Warhammer and applying the applicable parts to their next historical title. The genre will be better for this back to basic approach imo.

[Bulk]

Yes it is a step forward. It is absolutely a step forward.

This is, first and foremost a Warhammer game. A lot of the stuff that you are accustomed to in historical TW games don't belong here. Family trees? Don't belong.

Total War games have NEVER been simulations. They've just been the most realistic out of a bunch of games that were not very realistic. There is, in fact, almost nothing realistic about TW games. Armies didn't fight the way they do in TW, and they didn't fight the way a lot of people think they fought. The entire Medieval/Rome settings in TW are between 100% and about 85% fantasy. Other than Rome, no other faction in ANY of those series had anything resembling regimented units, or uniform weapons.

Why do I think Warhammer is a step forward? It's a back to basics game. They've looked at what worked in Attila, Rome and Shogun, and they've emphasized those features. The things that were causing their games problems, they've designed around the problems. Some of the things removed don't really fit with Warhammer.

They've also added A LOT. They have 5 factions, that play fundamentally different. They have improved the combat massively. They have fixed the biggest problem with sieges which as another poster in another thread tactfully pointed out, we're not fighting a siege, a siege comes before the attack, the attack is made with months of preparation the where the attack is coming from is already decided before you get on the map, so narrowing of the focus of the attack not only makes sense thematically, it helps the AI by automatically putting them in the right place to defend. It's not like you could EVER surprise an enemy with siege towers, by the time you build them and move them into position the enemy is going to have DAYS if not WEEKS to prepare for the attack and they are going to know exactly WHERE it is coming from.

As to river crossing battles, I can take them or leave them. Realistically, no general worth their salt is going to assault across a defended ford, they are going to move on down the line and cross in an undefended area, or just wait on their side. Removing them to me is whatever, the AI shouldn't attack across rivers, and the player won't either.

The reloading animations. Honestly, I don't care. I never spend any time watching archers shoot at ranges where I would actually care about the reload animations. 98% of all gameplay is done where troops are virtually indistinguishable from each other, and the 2% I do zoom in, I'm watching the melee.

Naval Combat. First off, there should never have been naval combat as it was represented in Medieval, Attila or even Rome. Here is how real medieval naval combat worked. They chained all their ships together, and then crashed into the other fleet and had a land battle on a bunch of connected ships acting like an island. Even naval combat in antiquity was functionally the same. Just a giant blob of ships all stuck together where everyone fought each other.

So naval combat in Rome Attila and Medieval, if they can't get that working, just scrap it. Naval battles were pretty damn rare aside from the couple of Roman Carthage battles. For Warhammer, honestly, leave it out. I don't know much about Warhammer naval stuff, but I assume it is not age of sail style, when naval warfare actually became a thing.

Let's be honest, naval combat in Attila and Rome 2 was fun the first time you saw it, but it was horrific to play, and whats worse, if you played on harder difficulties, one of the biggest advantages the AI gets on higher battle difficulty is rate of fire and accuracy buffs.

Warhammer is absolutely a step forward. I look forward to seeing what they've done with Warhammer and applying the applicable parts to their next historical title. The genre will be better for this back to basic approach imo.

What back to basic approach dude? What are you even talking about? Have you played Shogun 1 and Medieval 1?

Now I've heard a nice comment from someone on these forums. What is left in this game when you click autoresolve for battles? How interesting and enjoyable is what's left after that?

[Yerevan]

In my personal opinion, all of you compare what is good and not good about warhammer and another latest TW games, and i am here only can watch TW: warhammer Lets play and my pc only can handle Rome total war 1, made me sad seeing some comment bashing about CA and warhammer so bad...yada..yada, i am gladly exchange all of my money in wallet right now, if i can play TW : Warhammer only a hour time. Anyway are there good spec PC with with budget 500 us dollar so i can play warhammer too?. I am sorry if i am so very rude, sorry for bad english

Sent from my Smartfren Andromax AD688G using Tapatalk

Please, according to TWC's standards you're not rude at all ! No need to apologise.

I'm not a computer expert but it seems quite easy to find cheap PCs that can handle TWW. Maybe not on ultra graphics but still nice. I believe there's a thread for that kind of question :

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ies-amp-Advice

[Druout]

Yes it is a step forward. It is absolutely a step forward.

This is, first and foremost a Warhammer game. A lot of the stuff that you are accustomed to in historical TW games don't belong here. Family trees? Don't belong.

Total War games have NEVER been simulations. They've just been the most realistic out of a bunch of games that were not very realistic. There is, in fact, almost nothing realistic about TW games. Armies didn't fight the way they do in TW, and they didn't fight the way a lot of people think they fought. The entire Medieval/Rome settings in TW are between 100% and about 85% fantasy. Other than Rome, no other faction in ANY of those series had anything resembling regimented units, or uniform weapons.

Why do I think Warhammer is a step forward? It's a back to basics game. They've looked at what worked in Attila, Rome and Shogun, and they've emphasized those features. The things that were causing their games problems, they've designed around the problems. Some of the things removed don't really fit with Warhammer.

They've also added A LOT. They have 5 factions, that play fundamentally different. They have improved the combat massively. They have fixed the biggest problem with sieges which as another poster in another thread tactfully pointed out, we're not fighting a siege, a siege comes before the attack, the attack is made with months of preparation the where the attack is coming from is already decided before you get on the map, so narrowing of the focus of the attack not only makes sense thematically, it helps the AI by automatically putting them in the right place to defend. It's not like you could EVER surprise an enemy with siege towers, by the time you build them and move them into position the enemy is going to have DAYS if not WEEKS to prepare for the attack and they are going to know exactly WHERE it is coming from.

As to river crossing battles, I can take them or leave them. Realistically, no general worth their salt is going to assault across a defended ford, they are going to move on down the line and cross in an undefended area, or just wait on their side. Removing them to me is whatever, the AI shouldn't attack across rivers, and the player won't either.

The reloading animations. Honestly, I don't care. I never spend any time watching archers shoot at ranges where I would actually care about the reload animations. 98% of all gameplay is done where troops are virtually indistinguishable from each other, and the 2% I do zoom in, I'm watching the melee.

Naval Combat. First off, there should never have been naval combat as it was represented in Medieval, Attila or even Rome. Here is how real medieval naval combat worked. They chained all their ships together, and then crashed into the other fleet and had a land battle on a bunch of connected ships acting like an island. Even naval combat in antiquity was functionally the same. Just a giant blob of ships all stuck together where everyone fought each other.

So naval combat in Rome Attila and Medieval, if they can't get that working, just scrap it. Naval battles were pretty damn rare aside from the couple of Roman Carthage battles. For Warhammer, honestly, leave it out. I don't know much about Warhammer naval stuff, but I assume it is not age of sail style, when naval warfare actually became a thing.

Let's be honest, naval combat in Attila and Rome 2 was fun the first time you saw it, but it was horrific to play, and whats worse, if you played on harder difficulties, one of the biggest advantages the AI gets on higher battle difficulty is rate of fire and accuracy buffs.

Warhammer is absolutely a step forward. I look forward to seeing what they've done with Warhammer and applying the applicable parts to their next historical title. The genre will be better for this back to basic approach imo.

So what you want is a dumber game then with more limited options? The sieges are awful and the worst in the series bar none; sieges throughout history require planning, to include deployment considerations (hint; doesn't mean two walls only and starting with all your troops in missile range). They didn't fix sieges they just dumbed them down to appeal to the casual crowd rather than improving on them,. Same deal in terms of tactical strategy in general for this game. As to fords; Cowan's Ford, Xiaoyao Ford, Kelly's Ford, etc. plenty of examples where commanders fought at fords. This isn't back to basics, this is back to the lowest common denominator to ensure mass casual appeal with minimal grey cell activity required.

[A Barbarian]

What is left in this game when you click autoresolve for battles? How interesting and enjoyable is what's left after that?

In that case, it's true that TW-Warhammer is not a game you will enjoy. But for that there are Paradox games which are much more in-depth than TW-games will ever be on the campaign map.

Personally, I enjoy TW-Warhammer a lot because for me the battles are by far the more important part. And there CA made some good progress with the battle AI imho.

In order to enjoy battles more I just use a battle mod to slow them down (could still be slower though).

While I also enjoyed river/bridge crossings in previous TW games, they often caused path-finding, collision and gameplay problems. For example I remember that in Rome 1 TW, it was possible to defeat a whole stack of enemies with just a single spear unit, blocking the bridge, lol.

[Druout]

I have to honestly say I'm giving up on CA at this point. They dumbed the game down and got rewarded for doing so by the masses of casuals who now have the instant gratification moshpit clickfest they find "accessible" with minimal thinking required. All hope of returning to anything resembling thoughtful strategy based tactical options is gone.

[EternalSilence]

Its seems CA/Sega hit the jackpot with this Warhammer franchise of Total War.
Selling 500 000 copies in the first 4 days.
Strange, as you see only 130 000 people actually playing it at peak times on steamstats.

[inuart]

I feel better if i treat it as a brand new game/ a game made by different studio which refer to total war series. It is sure a step back if we expected it as a game improved base on Attila total war with Warhammer background (or like the Warhammer mod of Medieval II). It is disappointing that so many details and elements develop from previous series are removed. However it does brings somethings new and interesting features, eg. magic, hero in battle, beast, air battle, etc. It is fun to play but honestly it lack of depth in campaign,i guess it is a game for CA to attract new kinds of player ,making it simple & fun might be a good way for CA to explore such new market. Sorry for my bad English.

[Mr.D]

They removed everything AI can't handle, leaving a dull and boring game.
Most turns I just move units because nothing else to do on campaign map.

[Mr.D]

It turned into a hero simulator, armies are just there.