Immortal Empires first impressions

[Alwyn]

A giant eagle of the Wood Elves

What has your experience of Immortal Empires been so far?

Looking at the battlefields reminds me of seeing Napoleon Total War for the first time (and being impressed). The dark tower in the picture above is simply part of the scenery for this battle (it isn't part of a settlement).

There are so many factions to choose from on the largest Total War campaign map I've ever seen. I hope the AI can build large empires, because that by itself (even without the endgame scenarios CA developed) would be awesome.

Then I saw this.



In Immortal Empires, we can not only choose a specific endgame challenge (or let the game choose), we can tell the game to start it when we want - even relatively early in a campaign. I'm looking forward to seeing that in action!

[Søren]

Brilliant so far. Despite being a beta it really doesn't feel like it - stability, performance and end-term times have been much better for me than in the Realms of Chaos campaign on release.

Despite loving history and the historical TWs - from the days of the original Shogun - this is the pinnacle of the series thus far. There's endless replayability, and the factions available can fit any playstyle or satisfy any desire. Equally, while the chaos-aligned factions didn't initially have strong appeal for me (other than Skaven) the recent DLC has made them some of the best-realised and enjoyable in the game.

They've also finally improved some of the more redundant lords. Volkmar's move to the Southlands (alongside Mannfred) to search for the Books of Nagash finally provides a good reason to play him - similarly Ghorst's move to the East with a new focus on raising hordes of enhanced zombies. Overall this release has given me a lot of confidence in CA's DLC team and anyone who hasn't tried it is missing out on one of the best experiences in strategy gaming.

[Abdülmecid I]

Immortal Empires seems to have been received positively so far. Reviews are overall encouraging and the active player-base has multiplied. Unlike Warhammer II, it didn't surpass the release figures, but Mortal Empires was released only a few weeks after the release and Warhammer II record was much lower. There's the question of whether these impressive numbers will persist or decline, but the former looks much more probable, now that Mortal Empires faces such great competition, at least in terms of variety. Sadly, because of the combined release, we can't estimate the impact of the Champions of Chaos pack, so we have to wait for the next DLC release, where the data will hopefully be clearer.

Overall this release has given me a lot of confidence in CA's DLC team and anyone who hasn't tried it is missing out on one of the best experiences in strategy gaming.

I think the combined map has been worked on by the main team. The DLC team enjoys a brilliant reputation in the official forums and the social media, but, according to the credits and Darren (a former CA employee), it's actually a very small group, only focusing on lord and faction packs. At least in regards to Warhammer II, the DLC team was composed almost solely of designers and modellers, even lacking programmers. For the various scripts and special mechanics, they must have borrowed the necessary specialised staff from the main team. As a result, for the Mortal Empires and the subsequent patching (like the acceleration of the AI turns) the main team was responsible.

[grouchy13]

For what my opinion is worth I feel IE is great, there are a few areas where it has improved from WH2, Firstly the new map is sumptuous and offers so much, the graphics in both the Campaign and battle maps have had huge uplift whilst the Melee in the battles feels more balanced with Cav and infantry 100% feeling more useful. The sheer number of factions is mind boggling, you find yourself sat at the faction selection screen like who shall I play!!!!

There are however a few Area's for improvement imo, firstly Siege AI needs looking into as does the wider Campaign AI. I can quantify this by saying I play on VH and I'm 287 turns into a Tzeentch Campaign and too often the AI just retreats into its settlements and acts very passively. Auto Resolve needs a tweak as does the Lord and Hero Skill tree's, too often you end up with more points than you can spend and end up with a fully ranked Lord/Hero and you cant get rid of the notification that you have spare character points.

Hopefully these can be tightened up over the development of the title with patches and updates, in conclusion then if the 18 years of TW experience under my belt counts for something, yes that's 18 years! I 100% put this in the pantheon of great TW titles....

[Alwyn]

Yes, the replayability of Immortal Empires, with so many factions and so much variety, is amazing - and sumptuous is a good way to describe the maps. I wonder what the impact of the Champions of Chaos pack will be (I also mainly play order factions, except for Skaven).

I like the idea of cavalry and melee being more useful too. Grouchy13, it's interesting that you're seeing passive AI in a VH campaign. I'm playing as Clan Moulder on Normal, the AI is completely different from my previous Clan Moulder campaign in Mortal Empires. In ME, Kraka Drak's armies mostly sat in their settlements and waited for me to attack them. In IE, while I was taking my first Kraka Drak settlement, Wintertooth took over the other Kraka Drak settlements, then took the Kraka Drak city from me and kept on attacking! I'm impressed with the AI aggression, and it's a shame that you're getting such a different experience on VH (I've seen other people saying that the AI was passive on the higher difficulty levels in their campaigns too, so obviously that needs looking into, as you said).

Any ideas for more endgame scenarios? With such an incredible range of factions, I wonder if there could be an endgame scenario in which the game picks any faction at random and gives them a massive boost in resources and aggression. Maybe some endgame scenarios wouldn't involve a big boost for one faction - for example there could be a 'betrayer' scenario in which, if the player leads an order faction, a powerful order faction forms an alliance with chaos factions and the allies all declares war on the player (and vice versa for chaos)? There are probably better ideas which I haven't thought of.

[Søren]

I've heard that the AI aggressiveness is inverted at the moment, whether due to a bug or just because on higher difficulties the AI is more cautious about losing its armies.

I think the combined map has been worked on by the main team. The DLC team enjoys a brilliant reputation in the official forums and the social media, but, according to the credits and Darren (a former CA employee), it's actually a very small group, only focusing on lord and faction packs. At least in regards to Warhammer II, the DLC team was composed almost solely of designers and modellers, even lacking programmers. For the various scripts and special mechanics, they must have borrowed the necessary specialised staff from the main team. As a result, for the Mortal Empires and the subsequent patching (like the acceleration of the AI turns) the main team was responsible.

Interesting. I can believe that the reality there is a bit different than the public perception. Though it was the design choices that I was more concerned about on release, as it they taken a step backwards in a few areas. The bugs and performance issues I expected to be ironed out eventually, as they have. But a lot of things like the design of the Realm of Chaos campaign, technologies and skill choices that were overly timid etc seemed like they'd ignored the evolution of the series over the last few years. But seems like these are being gradually fixed now.

Any ideas for more endgame scenarios? With such an incredible range of factions, I wonder if there could be an endgame scenario in which the game picks any faction at random and gives them a massive boost in resources and aggression. Maybe some endgame scenarios wouldn't involve a big boost for one faction - for example there could be a 'betrayer' scenario in which, if the player leads an order faction, a powerful order faction forms an alliance with chaos factions and the allies all declares war on the player (and vice versa for chaos)? There are probably better ideas which I haven't thought of.

The betrayer scenario sounds interesting. The Skaven and Chaos scenarios are conspicuously absent at the moment, I'd imagine they have something more interesting planned involving the under-empire in the first case. I also think they could make the campaign more dynamic by introducing minor events throughout. E.g. Luther Harkon could suddenly receive reinforcements to go on an expedition to search for treasure in Southern Lustria, or there could be a surge of Beastmen in the Drakwald Forest. Maybe some that involve a bit of player choice as well, if they're a local faction.

[Knight of Heaven]

I've heard that the AI aggressiveness is inverted at the moment, whether due to a bug or just because on higher difficulties the AI is more cautious about losing its armies.

Yeah it seems that way, it is also a reflection of the AI not building not enough armies, in comparison to WH2 for example

[Alwyn]

Minor events during the campaign sound like a great idea - I like it when campaigns are unpredictable - and the element of player choice sounds good to. How would the player choice work - would the player be invited to send a rival expedition, when an AI faction goes to search for treasure, for example?

Would you like to say more about what you mean by the design of the Realm of Chaos campaign, technologies and skill trees being overy timid?

It's interesting that the AI isn't building enough armies yet, hopefully we'll see improvements with updates to the game. Heir of Carthage said in a recent video that he has seen AI armies coming at him one at a time to attack a minor settlement, instead of sending a group of armies to take a province - so this seems to be an issue too. Of course, these issues could be linked - if an AI faction only has three armies, it's understandable that they wouldn't send them all against an enemy because their homeland could be captured quite easily - which might be resolved if the AI raised more armies.

He also said that the AI in battle tends to focus on attacking the player's high-value units, heroes and lords, which leads to AI units bunching up (and becoming more vulnerable to the player's ranged attacks). I agree with him that it would better if, rather than the AI having buffs on higher difficulties levels, it would be great if the AI used it units more effectively.

[Edit to add] Three Chaos Spawn appeared in one of Kislev's armies today. That was a surprise, because Kislev can't recruit them (and doesn't have an alliance with any faction that can). Initially, I thought this was a bug - then I found a video by MercytheMad, saying that an AI faction can use a special ability to cause three Chaos Spawn units to appear in an army, including army of another faction. Has anyone else seen unexpected or quirky mechanics like this?

[TallionGrizly]

i like play all faction ... this is very epic