Kurt Helbrog? I like his mustache and his character but I'd prefer Espeth for a LL as she's more unique and shows the gothic side of the Empire more. And she can start anywhere basically
I agree. with the lvl 3 alegience being weak. IMO it feels like a placeholder because IMO it makes more sense to award some sort of LL/LH or maybe unlock recruiting units from the DoC roster. That said at the time it was made it was rather cool. I think it was the first faction to have "elite OP" campaign units.
I guess i'll go with Grimgor. I do like the GS campaign so i wonder how the badlands is now with VC and skaven all around us.
I did play wurzag during game 1. What i don't like using him is due to roleplaying. The lack of a savage orc lord and heros always make me feel weird. I really want wurzag's army to be fully savage orcs, not savage orcs with a black ork or a goblin melee hero. it is one of my few pet peeves with this game. GS needs more heros and lords.
I like it at the time however it was extremely painful to confederate because at the time if you give too much space to the dwarves they willquickly become an unstopable force.
I think she would be a cool norsca LL assuming she isn't given to other chaos factions.
boris supposedly is coming for game 2. I'd really enjoy if most hopefully all elector counts got a LL. Empire is broing to fight because it is extremely generic. I wish elector counts had some difference like skaven clans do.
Elspeth, my bad
Death wizard who travels around the world looking for magical artifacts on a dragon. She lives half way between life and death and uses a scythe. Has a 'rivalry' with a nurgle warrior of chaos so I think she may be somewhat likely despite being a very newish character
If she is Khorne aligned I wonder how CA will pick the LL for that? Go with iconic Daemon Prince or the cool looking unique woman coded demon?
She goes to Warrior of Chaos.
The red demon for Khorne rep for Demon of Chaos and hopefully the Dog for 2nd DoC rep
Are they keeping WoC separate from DoC? I thought they main theory is that they are combining everything?
They will be keeping them separate, as it's how it was in 8th edition and that's the main goal for CA.
I don't think that's a main theory at all, the only point of contention for the DoC will be if it's one race with all god units useable(like it was in Warhammer Fantasy) or four races one for each god(how it is in modern times) . So maybe that's where you got combining everything?
Alongside what doukou said i want to add:
- CA's original plan when warhammer 1 launched was for daemons of chaos would be 1 faction for each chaos god (undivided doesn't seem to have been planned at the time)
- CA has since than that the scope of warhammer 2 and 3 has been increased (which I think makes sense when we look at game 2 model/animation quality VS game 1. For example beastman and WoC have basically no monsters/weird units while tomb kings and skaven had some of the hardest to animate units at their release)
- CA has given hints that warhammer 3 is bring kislev at launch. IMO this effectively means that DoC will be a single race (or there wouldn't be space for kislev)
At this point in time I think we can safely expect:
- DoC will be a single race
- Wh3 launch races will be DoC, kislev, ogre kingdoms and chaos dwarves.
- Wh3 will add chaos realm (or something similar) to the map alongside the darklands
- Dogs of war, thanquol and Nagash are planned as DLC. (assuming Neferata and boris are released for game 2)
- araby, ind and other similar races are not on the current plan
- the big map that combines all games will not be as "shrunk" as the current ME
- The original campaign will probably focus on a end times event
- Pre-order DLC will probably not be a new faction (so that a norsca problem wouldn't be repeated)
IMO the biggest questions are around the LL that combine factions in the lore. For example the everchosen is supposed to lead an army composed by all facets of chaos. Will CA allow archeon to recruit norsca, WoC, DoC, chaos dwarves and beastman units?
The same thing with Nagash. Nagash should be capable of leading tomb kings, vampire counts and vampire coast armies.
So like WH2, with 2 LL for DoC? Probably Khorne and Tzeentch. Nurgle (Cooler Units) and Slaanesh (Avoid Mature Rating) for DLC?
That is my guess as well. i'd also say that for slanessh N'Kari is probably confirmed as well with all the references in the game about her.
I think DoC will launch with 4 LLs and have a mechanic tied around their division, making each LL feel very different.
I'm not sure what that leads for Lord Packs besides Bel'kor(only undivided/neutral demon) since I doubt they'd want to make it uneven
That is also an option. But i'll still stand that from a marketing perpective it makes more sense to have 4 races at launch instead of just kislev and DoC.
I'm still saying that as well. 4 races but DoC get 4 LLs off the bat instead of two, that way DoC can get a race mechanic built around the conflicts between the 4 factions within the race
Before the release of WH3, I hope CA moves some playable Old World factions to the New World, like how some New World factions can be played in the Old World. Playing Old World factions become too tedious since I fight the same enemies and navigate through the same regions over and over again. Currently, the Old World factions are too concentrated in one area near to each other IMO.
It's time for that special time of year, it's time for me to spend far too many words doing a revised version of the ranking blogs I put out earlier this year. Definitely didn't double my playtime over the last 12 months or anything.
HOLD UP!!!
Do you have any SHAME to not follow the GREAT PLAN?
Jokes aside I agree with most of the ranking but due to lizardmen being 9th ranked i'm going to nitpick your list
- IMO belegar campaign is fun. Instead of a full stack you should probably have 2 3/4 stacks or similar so yo ucan attack/defend 2 points. Being forced to win without a full stack is very viable in normal/hard dificulty settings. You can also use diplomacy to try and get some needed income. It is one of the hardest campaigns but i found it fun to be able to juggle the a slow expansion with very limited income.
- Personally the slayer king is the worst dwarf campaign. The lack of slayer lords and heros make his faction a bit weird because only the faction leader's army has big boni for slayers.
- Ghorst has a new fun mechanic. His corpse carts get a free raise dead ability. This effectively means he has a lot of ways to get zombies during battle. IMO he is still the worst LL but he has that going for him now.
- IMO Malus campaign mechanic is not fun because of the -50% replenishment when you have the ability to transform. IMO a general replenishment malus just makes it that i'll never be at that level of posession. It is just too painful for all my armies to stop moving just so that the malus army can beat a hard fight. I wish CA made that -50% apply only to Malus army as that would create more interesting campaign decisions.
Unfortunately it seems this is the end of the line as you are indeed being sacrificed to Sotek. This will give the strength to continue to win campaigns.
Good list and thanks for posting it!
That said I can't agree with how high Dark/High elves are, just so jack of all trades and both of their campaign mechanics pale to anything post Tomb King DLC
Or how low Brett/WE got
i'm going to answer because no one did. I'm not playing the beta.
CA didn't write anything about changing the growth. Maybe a change to try and delay t4-t5 cities so that t3 becomes mroe relevant?
tha said i can see it reallu hurting slow growth factions like tomb kings, dwarfs,etc. while fast growth factions like skaven can easily bypass these problems.
This is my fav Chaos god and i can't wait to spread the Nurgle's gifts. Fingers crossed chaos becomes fun in game 3.
Looks like it wasn't the beta - it's actually the patch released with the DLC that caused it indirectly. They made some big changes to public order, and I thing is that if you have low order, the growth will be affected negatively (and vice versa)
Not sure if even that is new, but the way the game tries to trend you towards neutral order (i.e. 0) by giving you opposite modifiers (negative when order is high, positive when its low) to reduce the occurrence of rebellions, I guess it has a side effect on the player spending more time in a state where growth is low (as you don't get the high PO bonus)
for me that change only made me have less rebelions. Usually I I had to trigger a rebelion when I conquered a province since the malus of province instability is usually huge. Now with that bonus i can usually just push on and the province gets better slowly.
I usually already built the PO building in every province so that change doesn't really affect me. I can see how it can be painful for thsoe that don't build the PO building as one of the first buildings. Usually a T3 PO building + tech is usually mroe than enough to get provinces to >+5 until the high PO. Unlike 3K and other historical titles there isn't a penalty to ahve high tier cities so it is much easier, to me, to reach and keep T5 settlements.
I also use agents on the key provinces that I want to be tip top shape.
In fact i'd say this change allows me to be much more agressive, specially with allowing me to sack cities much more without much of a penalty. Specially with factions that can spread corruption.
A bit off topic but i found an interesting sound app. I have been playing warhammer 2 with a sound app called DTS. Basically what does app does is to try to translate 7.1 sound into a headset spatial audio.
I have kingston hyper x cloud 2 headphones and there is a really good improvement into spatial part of the sound. I found it very immersive VS normal sound.
For example sounds from charges, guns, artillery are correctly heard from where they are in relation to the camera. THis is spetaculary immersive as i have been playing GS. It is amazing hearing the orcs screeming charge very acurately.
The cool part is that I didn't find there was decrease in quality of the sound. And it apparently ignores non gaming sounds.
Alongside DTS there are 2 other "apps" for spatial sound:
If you play with headphones i'd recomend to give the apps a try and see if you like their effect.
The app is available in microsoft store and has a trial. Currently it is on sale for 14€.
There is an era thread that explain it in further detail here.
I have kingston hyper x cloud 2 headphones and there is a really good improvement into spatial part of the sound. I found it very immersive VS normal sound.
For example sounds from charges, guns, artillery are correctly heard from where they are in relation to the camera. THis is spetaculary immersive as i have been playing GS. It is amazing hearing the orcs screeming charge very acurately.
The cool part is that I didn't find there was decrease in quality of the sound. And it apparently ignores non gaming sounds.
Alongside DTS there are 2 other "apps" for spatial sound:
- Windows sonic that exists in W10 for free -> this one doesn't work very well in my PC, but since it is free do give it a try.
- Dolby atmos -> personally i found that DTS "tricks" my brain much better than atmos specially in strategy games. In FPS or similar i found it very good too.
If you play with headphones i'd recomend to give the apps a try and see if you like their effect.
The app is available in microsoft store and has a trial. Currently it is on sale for 14€.
There is an era thread that explain it in further detail here.
So, uh, I possibly encounter another bug in my Norscan campaign. Most of the renowned units are gone and I need it to complete one of the two remaining monster hunter challenges...
Happy new year!
Hopefully this will be the year of Warhammer 3. WH2 is starting to feel really dated by now.
Hopefully this will be the year of Warhammer 3. WH2 is starting to feel really dated by now.
I wish you a happy and safe new year!
I'll be blunt and say i'm still satisfied with warhammer 2, despite putting like 800h in it. That said warhammer 3 is clearly planned for 2021!
That said I kinda wish it released on 2022 or thereabouts as I wish CA raised the minimum requirements so they can push the game into having an even bigger map. I hope we get something like a mini-chaos realm into warhammer 3 ME campaing. In short my wish is that the game scope isn't limited by my current PC (the GTX1000 series).
The current lack of stock of the 3000 series (and other PC components) might make the current market have lower specs. I want warhammer 3 to be as ambitious as possible so it can be supported for years to come!!!
I can't wait to finally have Chaos becoming a threat.
i'm not into the competitive MP. But I think that wh2 can be really cool to watch with all the animations and cool effects on the battefield. I'd really enjoy if there was an easy way to share replays so that everyone could experience the battles they want.
I think these initiatives take quite a bit of cooperation so it is amazing to see it done for a total war game. Wish all the compettitors a big good luck and hope the best person wins!
Just finished the Norsca campaign and destroyed all factions except the mercenary/rogue factions (I forgot its name). It's pretty refreshing to play a faction that focuses more on battle than settlement management. The campaign made me realize how massive the Empire land is. I spent so much time trying to completely destroy the Empire factions, but of course much to my annoyance, they did the Skaven tactic; they would colonize ruins far from my armies and revived destroyed factions. Wash, rinse, and repeat. I spent almost 200 turns playing whack and mole with them.
The economy is also a bit challenging. To make it somewhat sustainable, I needed to build more armies to get more money. Early to mid-campaign, I always had enough money only for 10 turns. So yeah, this is basically a start-up simulator where I need to burn a lot of cash to get a lot of cash. If anything, Norsca would be destroyed by itself. Thank the Chaos gods for the -%75 upkeep from defeating the Chaos faction. With this bonus trait, I was able to make 7K a turn while previously I lost 20-30K a turn. Honestly, defeating the Chaos is the only option that makes this campaign manageable, especially to conquer the new world. I was simply snowballing after I got the upkeep discount.
The monster hunter mechanic is kinda fun, but I was really bummed that only a few of the monsters can be recruited from the units of renown. I know technically they're dead and sacrificed to the Chaos gods, but man the items aren't just worth it. The third-tier rewards from aligning to god were also simply okay-ish at best. The second-tier rewards are much better (bonus damage, replenishment, EXP). Fortunately, the Norsca tech tree is surprisingly good. Some tech technologies unlock a really cool bonus to the faction, especially the ones that require you to occupy the main settlement of a faction.
So yeah, I'm surprised that I'd enjoy this campaign as much as I did.
The economy is also a bit challenging. To make it somewhat sustainable, I needed to build more armies to get more money. Early to mid-campaign, I always had enough money only for 10 turns. So yeah, this is basically a start-up simulator where I need to burn a lot of cash to get a lot of cash. If anything, Norsca would be destroyed by itself. Thank the Chaos gods for the -%75 upkeep from defeating the Chaos faction. With this bonus trait, I was able to make 7K a turn while previously I lost 20-30K a turn. Honestly, defeating the Chaos is the only option that makes this campaign manageable, especially to conquer the new world. I was simply snowballing after I got the upkeep discount.
The monster hunter mechanic is kinda fun, but I was really bummed that only a few of the monsters can be recruited from the units of renown. I know technically they're dead and sacrificed to the Chaos gods, but man the items aren't just worth it. The third-tier rewards from aligning to god were also simply okay-ish at best. The second-tier rewards are much better (bonus damage, replenishment, EXP). Fortunately, the Norsca tech tree is surprisingly good. Some tech technologies unlock a really cool bonus to the faction, especially the ones that require you to occupy the main settlement of a faction.
So yeah, I'm surprised that I'd enjoy this campaign as much as I did.
I'd highly recommend the Norsca SFO campaign. It gives Wulfrik horde recruitment and a bunch of horde buildings -- which negates one of the biggest annoyances of Norsca in letting you recruit on the go rather than having to actually raise your army in Norsca - and it makes trolls in Throgg's army pretty much fantastic. The faction's also about to get a big update that will let Wulfrik taunt legendary lords into combat and get rewards if he wins, and Throgg is getting some sort of troll adaptation bonus for beating different factions.
Beta changelog here
You touch a lot of points that i'd like for CA to change. I specially would like for Chaos corruption >50% to not allow other factions to colonize in that region. Alongside this i'd really like if a ruined settlement by a Chaos faction should have a permenent and constant chaos corruption generation. ALongside this I think it would be cool to have chaos factions have signficantly upkeep discounts in chaos territory.
IMO those 3 changes would change chaos factions from hack and mole killing faction to an unstoppable force once the ball was rolling.
the 1 LOrd chocie is also super painful.
I also feel like norsca needs some sort of mechanic to work with other chaos forces, right now there is basically 0 benefit to following Archeon.
That said with game 3 focus on chaos i am hopping that norsca get some love. like the WE they needs some touching up despite their core gameplay loop being super satisfying.
ALso the werewolves, femir and mammoths have some great models.
Yeah, I also noticed that unit recruitment is a pain in the ass early in the game. A lot of back and forth between my settlement and enemy regions because I often lost some units. And global recruitment is unreliable at the beginning due to the long recruitment time. Making Wulfrik a horde is interesting, though I'm not sure how balanced the game would be. I haven't tried SFO for quite some time, but maybe I'll try it for the next playthrough. Thanks!
Since TW 2 allows all factions to colonize all regions/settlements, I found the ruin/colonization mechanic in a weird position. I don't really have any reasons to raze settlements unless I'm bordering with a lot of enemy factions. Sure, the disadvantages of conquering settlements with incompatible climate can be irritating, but most of the time, I always occupy them because I don't have an incentive not to do so.
I like your idea about factions need to lower Chaos corruption before they can colonize the region. I often think that the ruin mechanic is designed around the players, not the AIs. I'm just tired of chasing an army across the land because it decides to colonize all ruins for some reason. Like you, I also hope that TW3 brings a significant change to Norsca/Chaos. I found it funny that Norsca is more threatening than Chaos will ever be in TW2.
The main bottleneck for WH2 (and to a lesser extent f.ex. Three Kingdoms) seems to be poor optimization of the engine for multi-core processors, so that is where the hope is for expanding the scope in terms of world map size etc.
As it stands the 3k-cards seem to offer very much diminishing returns (and anyway the adoption of them will be slow.)
Asrai Resurgent Update patch notes
So Orion's cavalry bonuses applying to Great Stag Knights is kind of a 'no duh', but also, I thought his offices were still shit at first, but I could see it being a pretty nuts swarm during the wild hunt. +75% income from razing (which is the WE equivalent to sacking), +20% campaign movement range, +100% post-battle loot, +120% from raiding, and all the other double unit bonuses. Could be a fun raiding party sort of thing
i'm super happy today, i got vacinated! YAY!
I like the changes done.
I still think durthu will be the "key"/main7strongest LL. He can confederate with everyone, gets no norsca penalties and his offices give considerable upkeep reduction towards his defensive armies.
i haven't played orion in a while but from seeing his offices they felt super bland, like they are a minor blue skill point.
I like the changes done.
I still think durthu will be the "key"/main7strongest LL. He can confederate with everyone, gets no norsca penalties and his offices give considerable upkeep reduction towards his defensive armies.
Happy to hear it!
By the way, what difficulty do you all use in your campaigns? I'm thinking to jump from Hard to Very Hard, but I'm not sure what are the main differences between these difficulties. If its main difference is giving more money so the AI can make endless stacks, I think I'm good with Hard lol
The main difference is actually mostly on 2 things:
- player malus are upped quite a bit -> campaignwise it is harder to hold territory due to the PO penalty and corruption can become a really PITA to manage. Battlewise however is where the difference is really noticeable; you melee units penalty is high enough that they really become at least 1 tier less. THis heavily changes the balance as units such as that melee flankable units become much less useful; for example on VH a lion of chrace just can't compete with the output of a ranged unit. Concretely a lion of chrace will hit a clanrat unit and take a WHILE to beat them and will take quite a bit of losses. This means that you are pushed by the balance to go for ranged focused armies. Alongside this the AI gets a massive boni to leadership. IMO it is so high that clanrats now can fight evenly with a lot of units. It makes skaven and vampire coast extremely formidable opponents
- the AI will prioritize you heavily. This means that the AI will gang up on you even with neutral/slightly friendly reputation. This becomes so bad that the AI can send stacks from the other side of the world and be beaten by a local power because all their armies are on route to you.
IMO VH and legendary are basically for those that dominate or want to cheese the game mechanics. If you apply normal "historical" tactics in VH/legendary it just won't work due to what is mentioned above.
To answer your question I mostly play on Hard. Personally the malus on hard make me not be overly aggressive early game, specially because the AI can beat me if I let it fight me with numerical advantage. I'd say that i do still play normal from time to time when i want to explore some quick campaign. My main issue with normal is that i usually can win a 2 to 1 fight without severe losses (specially when using elite races) which basically means I can sometimes conquer almost 1-2 territories per turn early game which leads me to "win" in less than 100 turns.
Difficulty bonus/malus numbers
I did a mod for this so I can pretty much just spit numbers at you, I'm just running a find replace for player/AI, but it SHOULD still all match up.
Difficulty goes (Easy/Normal/Hard/VH/Legendary)
Campaign (Mechanical Changes)
- The AI will gain 0/0/100/250/500 passive experience per turn for all units.
- The AI's buildings are 0/-50%/-60%/-70%/-80% cheaper to construct
- The AI has a lower resistance to occupying territory (10/40/50/60/70)
- The AI can recruit units that cost 0%/30%/50%/60%/70% less
- The AI has 3/4/5/7/9 bonus replenishment for all units.
- The AI's characters have 10/10/12/14/16 bonus replenishment.
- The AI has 0/0/-10%/-15%/-20% less upkeep for all units.
- The AI suffers -30%/-50%/-60%/-70%/-80% less attrition in all territories
- The AI is immune to Horde infighting
- The AI has 2/3/4/5/6 global recruitment slots and 2/2/3/4/4 local recruitment slots
- The AI has 20/40/60/100/125 bonus growth in settlements
- The AI has 5/6/7/8/9 bonus growth for hordes
- Colonising costs 0 money (it will still consume troops)
- The AI will gain 10 influence per turn and have a 0/0/25%/50%/50% reduction in the cost of Intrigue Actions if they are playing High Elves.
- Slave rites are free for the AI on all difficulties.
- The AI generates 4/6/8/10/12 of their ritual currency per turn in the vortex campaign.
- The AI has a 60% reduction in the decline of their Slaves
- The public order penalty for slaves is reduced by 20%/30%/40%/60%/80%
- The player has a +1/0/-2/-4/-8 change to their public order.
The player also gets a negative multiplier for their units in autoresolve (-0.01/-0.05/-0.07500001/-0.1/-0.15) and the AI gets some bonus for siege equipment or something.
Campaign (AI Changes)
This one is a bit harder to explain but basically there's a list of priorities the AI will choose from to do things. Hard AI adds in two tasks that are pretty much "go and gank the player"
Battle Changes
This one is modified by the BATTLE difficulty, difficulties are laid out by Easy/Normal/Hard/Very Hard
AI gets -4/0/4/10 more morale.
Player gets 4/0/-2/-4 more morale
AI gets a 0.8/1/1.1/1.15 multiplier to Charge Bonus and Melee Attack
AI gets a 0.9/1/1.1/1.15 multiplier to Melee Defence and Melee Damage
AI gets a -10/0/10/20 bonus to missile reload speed.
So in conclusion, the AI gets cheaper buildings and units, bonus growth and experience, near immunity to all attrition, bonus recruitment slots, and just general better units.
I tend to play on VH/N but that's mostly because I want the cheevos. If I could pick whatever I want, I'd probably do Normal or Hard with Normal Battle Difficulty.
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Oof, that gives me a flashback to when I was playing Shogun 2 campaigns in Hard, and the AIs decided to declare war on me in the early game for some reason. I'm never a fan of difficulty that increases the enemies' aggressiveness for the sake of being aggressive and that weakens my units. It just feels cheap. The reason I want to up the difficulty because I was watching PartyElite's videos where he played TW2 on Very Hard and it looked somewhat manageable. But after reading your impression on the difficulty, I think I'm good with Hard for the rest of the series lol
Wow, this is really informative and detailed. Bookmarked!
Thanks a bunch for writing this! :D
AI does seem to pump the brakes after youre in more than 3-4 wars at once on higher difficulties, so declaring war against minor and distant factions will keep them off your back. Also, when in doubt, sack Skaven. Literally everyone seems to hate every Skaven faction, so its a super easy rep grind if youre playing a campaign and youre near pretty much any Skaven except Mors, which generally gets too big to be worth it.