Warhammer: Magic & Creatures vs Total War Armies

[Son of Horus]

Being fair, it's been one of the criticisms of 7th and 8th edition at large. The End Times rulebook just kind of turned all the dials up to ridiculous, and what little balance there was just went flying out the window. Being fair, the exploits have been there for a while - at the dawn of 8th edition, you could only throw up to 6 dice at a spell, because rolling a double automatically caused an Irressistible Force. Skaven had a spell which just instantly killed whatever it touched without any other rolls of the dice IIRC - but in addition to that, there is an item which allows any double to count as an IF, and for them to also roll an additional dice more than normal. So, if you do the maths, that's 6 possible results from 7 dice, where any double causes an Irressistible Force and cannot be stopped on a spell which instantly kills whatever it touches.

That works, right? Needless to say, friendly games and tournaments alike quickly cottoned on and banned it, but the End Times ruleset is just to allow you to have fun using whatever models you like, really - it is quite good for a newcomer to get into, because now, they no longer need to spend hundreds and hundreds of pounds on getting an army, then ages painting it just so that they can play with their centrepiece Griffon or Dragon or Daemon whatever you like, they can just say "I'm using this model, and this model and this model, this is my 1500pts army, lets fight". Which is quite a good sales pitch - as not only were big scary creatures historically (gaming-wise) notoriously susceptible to getting shot by cannons leaving your once proud griffon to look more like strawberry jam, but required at least another 1600pts of army to play - which at anywhere between 4-10pts for some basic models, was really limiting to getting your favourite model on the table (by which point they were dead in the first turn as well, so you might as well have not taken him, and just taken another 400pts of army.

In regards to how Winds of Magic work, I'd probably find it something along the lines of a trait like Zeal, Authority and Cunning - each turn, there's a random Winds of Magic event (which could be influenced by other factors, such as the strength of the Chaos Faction, or buildings/monuments in particular settlements/regions of the map), which increases or decreases a Wizard characters ability to cast magic spells - the higher this value, the more likely it is that they can cast a spell, and the more likely that any spell they cast is more powerful (say base 40% chance to cast a spell, each +1 magic causes +5% chance to cast spell, and +5% to the variables of the spells, whether it's range, damage, strength of buff/debuff etc). If there's an enemy wizard on the field, they could have an ability called dispel which works like a stance - rather than casting spells they are countering an enemies - which reduces the enemies magic skill by the magic skill of the user - hence in smaller battles, it might be better to just have your powerful caster sit in dispel mode and prevent the enemies from casting, while your unbuffed units kill the enemy, but in more desperate battles, when you're forced to empower your puny human halberdiers with magic weapons and to force their bodies to become as strong as an Ogre just so that you can take down the Black Orc "Immortulz" that form Grimgor's bodyguard.

I can't really see the spells being much different from abilities as they are now, with the exception of a few targeted ones like a fireball you can tell the caster to shoot at rather than just relying on autoaim or having said fireballs working as a shooting attack.

[Dodanodo]

As someone who does not play Warhammer or really knew anything about it before watching all of Arch's lore video's and 1 or 2 LP's on youtube, I don't know allot about how Magic works in Warhammer fantasy. However, based on what I do know and what I think I would like and what I think the average TW player could atleast grow to like I would like to make the following suggestion as a template. Bare in mind, I don't now any of the spells used in Table Top warhammer so I have no idea whether the examples of spells I give are in the Warhammer universe or not, but bare with me here.

What I would like is that a basic mage has several abilities, preferably customizable, and that those spells could range across differant types:

first, a passive aura. This could be anything from a morale boost, increased attack/defense for nearby units (the standard sort of thing we already know), to some form of wardsave aura. Like in an area around the mage every unit gets like a shield sort of thing, that will stop the first projectile that would hit it, from an arrow to a cannonball or even a fireball. then lets say the shield for the individual unit takes 1 minute to regenerate after being hit. This would provide some of your units with some basic protection against artillery and magic, but will not survive a barrage or consistent fire, and is barely effective against normal archery fire and useless in melee. This allows CA to balance artillery and magic to be both powerful yet counterable. It prevents magic from becoming the go to answer to every big enemy army, but still allows it to be big and over the top ones in a while, without feeling completely imbalanced. Higher level mages could of course have a stronger effect of any of these things, like stopping more projectiles or lowering recharge time. Really, you could do lot's of fun stuff with just an aura, like giving your units flaming weapons or something, all fun stuff, just so long as they stay close to your mage. It's really no less balanced then your general abilities are nowadays. The aura should be passive to prevent a clickfest, and keep maneuvering and putting the right units in the right place the main strategic element of the game.

Secondly, a mage could have an automatic spell cast. It could function as a (relatively) shortrange artillery piece, throwing fireballs of a similar size we are already used to from Rome II's artillery. It would not have to be a fireball of course. Lightning bolts for example could function as dedicated Anti-air, being instantly at the target. However, not having a large area of effect nor firing in an arc could make it not so useful against ground forces. Again, I suggest this an auto-attack option to keep micro low and to prevent you from having to individually target flying units with your cursor every time you cast a spell, which can be annoying and distracting, especially if you are also in a complicated maneuver on the ground. I'm sure there are more imaginative ways to implement this than fireballs and lightning bolts, but I can't think of anything right now.

Thirdly, there are the activated ability spells. Now these can be really diverse. I'd like these to be mostly supporting spells, like healing damaged soldiers, creating a rain cloud over a part of the battle area, preventing the use of fire-based weaponry to your enemy unless he maneuvers around it (or helping units that are on fire). This could really help a faction like the woodelves who have many units vulnerable to fire. But you can also think of things like spawning a marsh to slow down enemy troop movement, changing the direction of the wind during a sea battle to be in your favor. I also liked an earlier suggestion made in this thread of creating a fogbank to temporarily disguise your units. those sort of support spells are the ones I'm honestly looking forward to the most. Nothing permanent or gamebreaking, just something your opponent can and sometimes has to work around to make battles more interesting and fun. They are ways to switch up the gameplay we've had since Shogun 1 in a meaningful way, with out being gamebreaking or overpowered. You can also add in a sort of counterspell if you're afraid they would be too unbalanced, but that should like take up a slot that could otherwise have been a more offensive spell, so as to force the player to really think about what spells they wanna have during the battle, keep it strategic if you will.

And lastly there should be those 'last resort' spells (or as I like to call them: The "you feellin' lucky, Punk?" spells). These should be rare but powerful spells, that have a reasonable chance of backfiring, but can really save your but in dire circumstances. One obvious example is a giant fireball/meteorite/[insert random explosive thing here] that will blow up multiple units of standard infantry or heavily damage more elite units, sending them through the air and breaking their formation. But another is a vampire specific spell that would temporarily block out the sun, giving your vampire units a huge boost or all undead units a decent boost (or both), but having the adverse chance of backfiring and intensifying the sun, weakening your army (or just your vampires) and probably making you lose the battle. A fun idea would be to give every faction one specific elite spell like this, just to add to their uniqueness and keep these pretty rare. I'm all for adding risk to magic, I would just like magic to play a prominent role on the battlefield and honestly I don't want to have to worry about killing my mage with every spell I cast. With the big ones it's fun though and it helps to keep them balanced, prevents someone from spamming them and such.

I apologize for the wall of text, but I had a couple of ideas and I just had to write them down. I look forward to discussing them with you all.

[Henchman#24]

I think the problem with making spells and their effectiveness based on campaign events kind of presents problems for multiplayer balance. Also, making the mechanics behind them too complicated presents other sorts of problems. I think you either need to keep it to a simple support spells are just regular abilities, regular attacks are about as effective as a high tier archer unit and pose no risk, and major spells, like calling a giant fireball out of the sky have a base 30% chance to backfire horribly with a decreasing probability based on unit experience.

[HigoChumbo]

They can always make single and multiplayer rules different. Total War has always been first and foremost about singleplayer, and the concept would in my opinion greatly suffer if the single player component was designed with multiplayer balance in mind.

Calling a Fireball is not really so differente from shooting a catapult. Yes, it's powerful, but its not precise, and has a long idle period between shots. Simimilar rules could be applied. I'm all in for backfiring magic though.

[Henchman#24]

I suppose so, but the multiplayer community has always been pretty active since Rome. I'm not opposed to making the rules governing single and multiplayer different (I mean, they have to be at a certain point) but I do think multiplayer should be given a good amount of consideration.

[IrishBlood]

In terms of magic users/wizards/sorcerers etc in the warhammer world, you guys should know that there is no such thing as a 'catch all' wizard who can perform any spell he wants.

The vast majority of magic users go with a school of magic and stick with it for their entire lives and rarely try anything else outside their comfort zone. This is because magic is INCREDIBLY hard to handle. Some people have more magical proficiency (most have none what so ever) than others, while the vast majority tend to be good at a particular type of magic.

For this reason in the Empire there are Bright wizards (fire), Celestial mages (storms, lightening etc) mages that can bend and shape metal with their mind etc. This way it would be quite easy for CA to implement specific magic units that perform a certain task; fireballs, buffs etc, rather than having one unit for each faction that does it all through spells.

Fair enough, chaos factions and elves etc may have wizards and the lack that can perform vastly varied and different kinds of spells, but even then they are usually in line with the kind of gods they work with and you rarely see them adopting the spells and types of magic used by other races.

I believe that certain magical creatures and sorcerers should be EXTREMELY OP to the point that they can only be defeated by VERY clever tactics, overwhelming numbers, superior technology (cannons and the like) or by your own magical heros and creatures. This will make the game far more epic. If Warhammer Total War will be anything like Call of Warhammer then it should really be done this way because the battles I fought in that mod were by far more epic then any I fought in any other Total war game!

[Collateral_dmg]

In terms of magic users/wizards/sorcerers etc in the warhammer world, you guys should know that there is no such thing as a 'catch all' wizard who can perform any spell he wants.

The vast majority of magic users go with a school of magic and stick with it for their entire lives and rarely try anything else outside their comfort zone. This is because magic is INCREDIBLY hard to handle. Some people have more magical proficiency (most have none what so ever) than others, while the vast majority tend to be good at a particular type of magic.

For this reason in the Empire there are Bright wizards (fire), Celestial mages (storms, lightening etc) mages that can bend and shape metal with their mind etc. This way it would be quite easy for CA to implement specific magic units that perform a certain task; fireballs, buffs etc, rather than having one unit for each faction that does it all through spells.

Fair enough, chaos factions and elves etc may have wizards and the lack that can perform vastly varied and different kinds of spells, but even then they are usually in line with the kind of gods they work with and you rarely see them adopting the spells and types of magic used by other races.

I believe that certain magical creatures and sorcerers should be EXTREMELY OP to the point that they can only be defeated by VERY clever tactics, overwhelming numbers, superior technology (cannons and the like) or by your own magical heros and creatures. This will make the game far more epic. If Warhammer Total War will be anything like Call of Warhammer then it should really be done this way because the battles I fought in that mod were by far more epic then any I fought in any other Total war game!

Yes the battles in Call of Warhammer are truly epic sometimes, and extremely hard lol.

The magic is divided in lores, and there are a number of them (lore of death, lore of life, lore of fire etc.). And like you said, the mage uses only one lore in a battle, but yes, you could basicly say that they use them for life, because you will have a mage throughout your campaign, not like the tabletop, where you can choose diferently every time. Those are mostly human and elf spells, other races like Chaos and Orcs have their own lores, and cant use the other ones (with some exceptions sometimes, e.g. Azhag the Slaughterer (orc warboss) who can use lore of death, but is not a mage). I hope we will see all those lores in the game, and be able to use them as we see fit.

[Son of Horus]

Azhag, however, is dead. So that makes things easier.

The question is regarding units which can select multiple lores; people like Teclis or Mannfred (and it IS Mannfred von Carstein in the trailer) who have access to multiple lores. It's easy enough to class someone like Thyrus Gormann or Balthasar Gelt as they are of a particular Lore of Battle Magic, but the more powerful characters don't.

I hope as well that some of the Monsters from the Monstrous Arcanum are included as well.

[atheniandp]

I've always advocated randomness in Total War. The series has so far been too determinate. Elite units will always, without a chance otherwise, defeat weaker units. Cavalry will almost always get shredded by spears. I want to see a Total War game where as part of the deterministic variables, there is also a "luck" mechanic that can allow units to function better or worse in a given scenario.

[HigoChumbo]

Elite units will always, without a chance otherwise, defeat weaker units. Cavalry will almost always get shredded by spears.

Unless you are fighting each game's british faction. Just got my experienced tesalian heavy cavalry crushed in a melee by a bunch of briton slingers.

[Himster]

So how do you guys think we could balance this?

The advantage the Warhammer setting has over historical settings is: Warhammer is already a strategy game, a strategy game that has been balanced and refined continuously for nearly three solid decades. Historical settings are not pre-meditated to be balanced: only by total war style contrivances can a degree of balance be inserted into the historical setting. But the Warhammer setting is designed to be balanced from the get go.

[HigoChumbo]

The advantage the Warhammer setting has over historical settings is: Warhammer is already a strategy game, a strategy game that has been balanced and refined continuously for nearly three solid decades.

Well, that's not what I've read many tabletop players saying.

And many of the tabletop rules can't be just copypasted to a video-game. They have to adapt everything.



In any case I insist that I don't give a damn about milimetrical balance. I want the game to be fun, immersive, spectacular, strategical. Balance can be detrimental for all those. In fact, there is fun in asymmetry. Arguably the most fun battle I've played in my current Rome 2 campaign was one in which I managed to resist a full stack of Parthians with 4 Macedonian units, all of them melee fighters, with no cavalry support whatsoever.

[Frost, colonel]

If things are flying around I expect my missile troops to be able to fire in the air at them, flying pin cushions as it were.

[atheniandp]

In fact, there is fun in asymmetry.

Hang on, this topic is far more subtle than you're making it out to be. One of my problems with Total War is that the higher difficulty settings always unreasonably empowers computer units to compensate for poor AI. This sounds fine until you realize that if you have 2 units and the AI has 2 identical units, they will win each and every single time.

We need indeterminacy, randomness, or luck in Total War games. The Warhammer tabletop game actually incorporates this through dice rolls. In the historical settings this makes sense as well, as there are countless examples of elite troops being held back by levies and poorer quality infantry.

I'm not saying levies should destroy Praetorians each and every single time, but there should be at least a *chance* that they could.

[HigoChumbo]

Hang on, this topic is far more subtle than you're making it out to be. One of my problems with Total War is that the higher difficulty settings always unreasonably empowers computer units to compensate for poor AI. This sounds fine until you realize that if you have 2 units and the AI has 2 identical units, they will win each and every single time.

Exactly my problem in my current campaign. The game is absurdly easy in normal (I don't think it took more than 4 or 5 turns to destroy the all powerful romans, parthians, and a bit more for the seleucids due to their countless satrapies, didn't even have the need to play a single battle), but I don't want to pump up the difficulty because I hate when the only thing that changes is letting the AI cheat.

In any case, what I mean with asymmetry is not that, but the fact that you might be fighting a more powerful empire and that might force you to adapt a particular strategy, that maybe some faction can have a really strong unit that you have trouble dealing with, and balancing it would end up in a boring campaign. For instance, one thing I like about the parthians is how they forced me to change my strategies because of their mass ranged units and their mobility. I was rolfstomping throughout all of Europe with my Macedonian Pikemen Phalanx with few casualties, and as soon as I reached the middle East I had to start hiring archer mercenaries and pumping slingers because their mounted archers were destroying my pikemen.

It would be even more challenging if I had little to no chance of defeating those units with my current army, so I would be forced to avoid open battlefieds, bring the campaign to my my mountainous realm, to rely on foreign mercenaries or even to straight avoid war with them. And I think there is fun in that. It's boring that you are able to conquer everyone and everything from the very first turn of battle. In Europa Universalis it's thrilling to survive against the monster France becomes, there is no way you can 1on 1 them, and even sometimes they even crush a coalition of the other top powers in Europe (Britain, Spain, Austria, Burgundy). And that forces you to adapt very particular strategies. In Rome there is really no difference if you decide to attack the gauls or the Carthaginians save for the different units. In EU, it's suicidal to just go straight against France.

That's what I mean with asymmetry. And I mean it not only for factions and unit rosters, but also for unit types. If I have an army of mass elf archers, and I attack the Empire, and they send steam tanks against, I wouldn't care if they are completelly immune to my arrows. It would actually be fun in a way and immersive to get crushed in such a battle and being forced to pull back to the forest and having to rethink the entire strategy. Same goes with flying units. If you go to the battlefield with no counter to them, expect to be crushed.


As for the chances and the dice rolls... well I think that given a standard scenario, like a unit of peasants frontally charging a unit of praetorians... i believe praetorians should win everytime, maybe the modifiers could be how long would the peasants last, how casualties would they inflict etc, or maybe if some conditions are met, like the peasants being motivated by some particular effect (like a general action) then yes, they could be eventually be able to defeat them, but not just as a standard chance. Some requirement should be met, and that requiremente should have something to do with player actions, or campaign events (maybe those peasants just got their town destroyed and their families raped by those praetorians) or stuff like that.

[DeadInTheWater]

Personally, I think they should keep it as close to the table top rules as possible (Probably won't happen though. This is what may make or break the game). If not there will have to be a new balancing system implemented which would erode the core feel. If I'am not mistaken, there has been alot of work done on fine tuning the table top rules for balance and function over the years. The max point system could be similar to the Imperium system.

Never played the actual game, but i find it mighty interesting. I don't want a Total War full conversion mod (probably what we are going to get), I want a Warhammer grand strategy game. Turn based all around. This would get rid of the sub-par battle A.I..

With recent CA efforts of late, I expect a disappointment. Not without hope however.

[IrishBlood]

If things are flying around I expect my missile troops to be able to fire in the air at them, flying pin cushions as it were.

LOL! Clearly you are not familiar with the warhammer universe. You may indeed turn such flying creatures into pincushions, but chances are that wont kill them

For example most flying creatures could possibly be killed by lots of arrows, but the biggest baddest ones like Dragons, wyverns, hydras, undead monstrosities or demonic creations will (or at least should) be immune to such attacks and would only be taken down by YOUR badass monsters or advanced technology like cannons, helstorm rockets etc.

I also hope that they make hero units a real thing in this game. In warhammer certain heros (or villains depending on your perspective!) can literally turn the tide of battle almost single handedly and I feel this needs to be represented in game.

[HigoChumbo]

This bit in the PC gamer article caught my eye

Thankfully, the Winds of Magic that power spells are concentrated in certain areas and not others, and randomised before each battle, so that wizardly-dominance can’t be relied upon.

Does that mean that wizards will only be able to cast certain spells into specific areas of the battlefield?


edit:

"You're not going to be able to cast those big spells over and over again," Ian Roxburgh, the project lead, assured me. "When you go into a battle, there will be a limited amount of spells you'll be able to draw upon and that will vary each time. There's a semi-random element, but it's also linked to the campaign game. The further north you go, and nearer to the Chaos Wastes you are, the higher amounts of magic you'll receive, but we don't want you approaching every fight with a rotation of spells that you know you can use."

So it's just that you don't know what spells you are going to get for each battle.

[Samitte]

Does that mean that wizards will only be able to cast certain spells into specific areas of the battlefield?

That would make sense. But other things could/should potentially affect it as well. Magic in Warhammer, in case of that of the Humans and Vampire Counts (And Elves and some other races) works with the Winds of Magic. Imagine a magical version of the sirrocco, mistral, ponente etc. These winds flow across the world and unlike actual winds are attracted to certain features where they flow stronger, linger and are more easily harassed. The most logical would be to have the location of the battlefield determine what magic is more powerful and which are weaker.

Life Magic(Ghyran): This would be strongest near rivers, in lush forests, during spring and summer.
Death Magic(Shyish): Thrives near places of death, gallows, past battlefields, graveyards and during winter.
Fire Magic(Aqshy): Would be stronger in deserts and near volcanoes. But also gains strength when emotions get heated or near open flames.
Beasts Magic(Ghur): Flows strongest the further you get away from civilisation, in the hearts of jungles or deep in the mountains.
Heavens Magic(Azyr): I believe this wind is basically everywhere where the wind goes, and is hard to take a hold of.
Metal Magic(Chamon): Is attracted to metals, especially the heavier ones like gold and lead. (Which is why some wizards adorn themselves in these metals heavily)
Light Magic(Hysh): Is stronger the closer you are to the light of the sun, and thus during the day and above ground. It would be even stronger on a mountaintop.
Shadow Magic(Ulgu): Gathers in the shadows, at night, and in mist.

Ork Magic on the other hand would be stronger the more Orks there are on the battlefield and the more excited they are.

The Vampire Counts use a twisted version of the lore of Death if I recall right, which would thus still be strongest around those places.

So it's just that you don't know what spells you are going to get for each battle.

Due to the fickle nature of the Winds of Magic, in the tabletop game, you roll every turn to determine how strong the Winds flow this turn and at the start of every battle you roll and find out what spells your wizards can cast. The amount is tied to their Wizard level with them having access to 1 spell per level.

For example:

An ordinary human Battle Wizard has a wizard level of 1 or 2.

Almost all vampires have an innate ability for magic, but their power can vary immensely and some might not even have any at all (though this is old lore now)

And Dwarfs get none because of their innate resistance to magic, instead their Runesmiths are excellent at breaking enemy spells.