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Kanos posted:They're only including four races and the Empire is a 100% lock for the baseline human faction so it would be super weird if Bretonnia got the thumbs up over more immediately iconic races like Skaven or Chaos. The four races are the Empire, the Dwarfs, the Orcs, and the Vampire Counts. Chaos is going to be present in some fashion but not playable, and non-playable minor races have been confirmed. Come on Lizardmen for first expansion!
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Jun 10, 2015 14:55
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Cythereal posted:The four races are the Empire, the Dwarfs, the Orcs, and the Vampire Counts. Chaos is going to be present in some fashion but not playable, and non-playable minor races have been confirmed. Yeah, I know, that's why I said it would be weird for them to include Another Basic Human Faction when there's a lot of iconic races who haven't made it yet. Brets would be a nice fit for an expansion that had Wood Elves and Skaven since there's natural overlap there both allies/enemies-wise and geography-wise and neither of those factions really field cavalry. Kanos fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 17:04
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I always assumed they would leave chaos out as a playable race in the base game but have it present and then the first DLC or 'expansion' would be the ability to play as them as they are an incredibly iconic part of the warhammer universe.
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Jun 10, 2015 17:19
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"Preorder from Gamespot to play as the exclusive Chaos faction."
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Jun 10, 2015 18:28
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Catsplosion posted:I always assumed they would leave chaos out as a playable race in the base game but have it present and then the first DLC or 'expansion' would be the ability to play as them as they are an incredibly iconic part of the warhammer universe. Chaos is going to be its own expansion; the factions will be the four gods, with the option to unite them all under one banner through force in order to destroy the world.
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Jun 10, 2015 18:34
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You know, it'd be an interesting take on Chaos as a playable faction if they didn't actually have traditional empires or territories at all to begin with, but relied almost entirely on agents and subversion to corrupt territories, bring them over to Chaos worship, and thus gain the beginnings of their empire. Maybe even a mechanic where temporarily bringing a city over to Chaos and then sacrificing the hell out of its population before abandoning the place as a corrupt hellhole that's difficult to resettle is beneficial for Chaos, to encourage spreading corruption far from your borders. Heck, to make it more extreme, you could make it so that Chaos never actually gains territory at all - instead, provinces given over to Chaotic corruption provides Chaos with more power which they can use to raise hordes, empower their warriors, summon daemons, etc. Meanwhile, kingdoms and territories whose provinces have been fully given over to Chaos (like the northern warriors) will maintain their independence and their own armies and diplomatic policies, but will be willing set aside their difference to attack where Chaos points. Everyone else fights for territory, but Chaos fights for the control of souls instead. Sort of like a turbo-charged Hunnic horde that focuses more on agents instead of raw military power.
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Jun 10, 2015 19:06
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Or they could just rename "public order" to "Corruption" and have it spawn a little Chaos army in the province if it reaches max 
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Jun 10, 2015 19:16
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Tomn posted:You know, it'd be an interesting take on Chaos as a playable faction if they didn't actually have traditional empires or territories at all to begin with, but relied almost entirely on agents and subversion to corrupt territories, bring them over to Chaos worship, and thus gain the beginnings of their empire. Maybe even a mechanic where temporarily bringing a city over to Chaos and then sacrificing the hell out of its population before abandoning the place as a corrupt hellhole that's difficult to resettle is beneficial for Chaos, to encourage spreading corruption far from your borders. They'd have to exclude Norsca, the viking land which Chaos bros call home, for that to work. That would be kind of weird, considering that in the fiction the way big Chaos invasions always work is some powerful champion units the tribes of Norsca and they all launch an invasion on the Empire together. That said, Chaos agents which spread corruption would be awesome. Witch hunter agents for the Empire would similarly be a must.
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Jun 10, 2015 19:48
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Lassitude posted:They'd have to exclude Norsca, the viking land which Chaos bros call home, for that to work. That would be kind of weird, considering that in the fiction the way big Chaos invasions always work is some powerful champion units the tribes of Norsca and they all launch an invasion on the Empire together. That's what I mean by the second paragraph, though - the Norsca would still be independent, but as you gain Chaos power you could levy their units into a horde and empower champions and such to personally lead around, and given enough Chaos power and enough corruption in the North you can raise yourself up a gently caress-off huge army AND tell all the Norsca to stop fighting each other and follow your stacks down south to wreak havoc. At which point the cities in the Empire which you've secretly corrupted earlier throw open the gates and invites your slavering horde in.
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Jun 10, 2015 20:06
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Tomn posted:You know, it'd be an interesting take on Chaos as a playable faction if they didn't actually have traditional empires or territories at all to begin with, but relied almost entirely on agents and subversion to corrupt territories, bring them over to Chaos worship, and thus gain the beginnings of their empire. Maybe even a mechanic where temporarily bringing a city over to Chaos and then sacrificing the hell out of its population before abandoning the place as a corrupt hellhole that's difficult to resettle is beneficial for Chaos, to encourage spreading corruption far from your borders. Total War: Evil Genius
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Jun 10, 2015 21:33
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Lassitude posted:They'd have to exclude Norsca, the viking land which Chaos bros call home, for that to work. That would be kind of weird, considering that in the fiction the way big Chaos invasions always work is some powerful champion units the tribes of Norsca and they all launch an invasion on the Empire together. To my knowledge, the actual chaos forces comprised of chaos warriors and demons that serve the chaos gods directly are technically separate from the vikings, though obviously they often work together. A bit like how the medieval knightly orders in europe were often aligned with a certain country, but would often be doing their own thing. With that in mind, they could still have Norsca, except just as a bunch of independent NPC-controlled barbarian tribes doing their thing. The player wouldn't control any one of those, but instead only have direct control over a chosen chaos champion with a small core of chaos warriors who've left tribal life behind. Roam around the wastes, bully or inspire some of the tribes to give you money or warriors, make raids into the Empire, and eventually try to make all the tribes ally with you and launch a combined crusade southwards.
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Jun 10, 2015 21:55
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Tomn posted:That's what I mean by the second paragraph, though - the Norsca would still be independent, but as you gain Chaos power you could levy their units into a horde and empower champions and such to personally lead around, and given enough Chaos power and enough corruption in the North you can raise yourself up a gently caress-off huge army AND tell all the Norsca to stop fighting each other and follow your stacks down south to wreak havoc. That sounds like fun - also sounds like Chaos will not be playable at launch however. 
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Jun 10, 2015 22:30
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Yes but it's completely impossible because at this point CA can't even make run-of-the-mill 4X strategy AI whose wheels don't fall after before you've hit turn 10. Asking them to code something so radically different as a shadow government pulling strings behind the scenes is like asking a dog to cure cancer. If they can just make an AI that can build armies and attack you, that will be an incredible feat. Let's all hope they pull it off, because they've had a hard time since Medieval 2 and things haven't gotten better.
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Jun 10, 2015 22:37
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The AI has consistently improved since Rome Total War, it's just that you've been playing Total War games for a decade or more and the AI's improvments are modest. If Dark Souls releases a new game every two years you'll see a lot of people complaining about the stupidly easy game that Dark Souls VI is compared to the first one, not because of it being easy but because people have been playing it forever.
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Jun 10, 2015 23:24
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Mr. Stingly posted:If they can just make an AI that can build armies and attack you, that will be an incredible feat. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the CA AI was historically unable to do something as simple as naval invasions outside of accidents (and rome:tw) until like Napoleon: total war I never saw England expand outside its borders in E:TW
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Jun 10, 2015 23:32
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I went back to play RTW a while ago and you'd be surprised just how braindead the AI is in comparison to how it is in more modern ones. Recalling my last time I played Shogun 2, the big things in the map are being able to do navel invasions effectively, being more sane about suing for peace and starting wars, exploiting weakness in player defenses, and having sane army composition. As late as Med 2 the AI was doing poo poo like starting random wars with a random navel blockade or having armies comprised entirely of skirmishers and catapults farting around in a desert while you rampage across their countryside. In battle, the AI is more aware of terrain, is more responsive to weaknesses in its position (like when it has few archers it tries to engage asap rather than skirmish), pays better attention to terrain, and doesn't get its general killed as often. It is still garbage at some basic things though, like sieges or dealing intelligently with hiding troops (it right now just pretends troops you hid in woods are not there, and it doesnt bother being sneaky at all with its own). It is also really easy to gently caress around with by doing things like using some light cav to peel away units from their army to destroy with some other units. Its still an improvement but its hard to appreciate since its still getting its face rocked by anyone semi competent. It reminds me reading about Half Life 2 AI and how it actually was programmed to use coordinated military maneuvers and tactical responses to player actions which the player will never notice because the player slaughters them like chaff within 10 seconds of encountering them. TW AI is rather weak compared to a player but comes across a lot worse since its initial weakness means its going to be having to cope with really lovely strategic situations where the player is running a train on them after slaughtering their best army within three turns of a war starting. (theres still a ton of room for improvement of course) e: navel invasions get brought up and i think its fair to point out that naval invasions are apparently a complete loving nightmare to create AI for without using workarounds. a lot of TW mechanics are things that AI doesn't really like dealing with)
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Jun 10, 2015 23:44
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Perestroika posted:To my knowledge, the actual chaos forces comprised of chaos warriors and demons that serve the chaos gods directly are technically separate from the vikings, though obviously they often work together. A bit like how the medieval knightly orders in europe were often aligned with a certain country, but would often be doing their own thing. With that in mind, they could still have Norsca, except just as a bunch of independent NPC-controlled barbarian tribes doing their thing. The player wouldn't control any one of those, but instead only have direct control over a chosen chaos champion with a small core of chaos warriors who've left tribal life behind. Roam around the wastes, bully or inspire some of the tribes to give you money or warriors, make raids into the Empire, and eventually try to make all the tribes ally with you and launch a combined crusade southwards. During the big invasions south the nominally Chaos viking dudes of Norsca are banded together with the overtly Chaos warbands that wander the Chaos Wastes. The Chaos race(s) will no doubt have the uniting of the various tribes of Norsca/Chaos Wastes starting with one little territory and going from there. Although hopefully with a big corruption mechanic on top of it to allow cults and beastmen and stuff to flourish if the Empire isn't on top of purging that poo poo.
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Jun 10, 2015 23:54
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Tiler Kiwi posted:e: navel invasions get brought up and i think its fair to point out that naval invasions are apparently a complete loving nightmare to create AI for without using workarounds. a lot of TW mechanics are things that AI doesn't really like dealing with) They tried making naval invasions easier for the AI in Rome 2 by letting all armies embark on transports without having to use dedicated fleets. The natural consequence of this on launch was the AI, especially down on the italian penisula, parking all of its army stacks on nearly defenseless transport ships right outside its major cities, ready to be (auto battled) to death by like three galleys.
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Jun 11, 2015 00:24
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Tomn posted:You know, it'd be an interesting take on Chaos as a playable faction if they didn't actually have traditional empires or territories at all to begin with, but relied almost entirely on agents and subversion to corrupt territories, bring them over to Chaos worship, and thus gain the beginnings of their empire. Maybe even a mechanic where temporarily bringing a city over to Chaos and then sacrificing the hell out of its population before abandoning the place as a corrupt hellhole that's difficult to resettle is beneficial for Chaos, to encourage spreading corruption far from your borders. Not Warhammer, but That Which Sleeps is similar to that.
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Jun 11, 2015 13:37
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Tiler Kiwi posted:In battle, the AI is more aware of terrain, is more responsive to weaknesses in its position (like when it has few archers it tries to engage asap rather than skirmish), pays better attention to terrain, and doesn't get its general killed as often. It is still garbage at some basic things though, like sieges or dealing intelligently with hiding troops (it right now just pretends troops you hid in woods are not there, and it doesnt bother being sneaky at all with its own). It is also really easy to gently caress around with by doing things like using some light cav to peel away units from their army to destroy with some other units. Its still an improvement but its hard to appreciate since its still getting its face rocked by anyone semi competent. The battle AI is competent, and this has been the case for some time. It ebbs and flows - some games have a really exploitable tactical AI, others have a decent tactical AI, but all of them at least fight and move their units around. (Except for Rome 2's chicken dance bullshit at launch which lasted for months but that's a different story). The strategic AI is awful, and the strategic gameplay is a slog. The upgrade system in Med 1 was fairly straightforward and the AI still could not keep up in unit quality past the first third of the game. That problem has remained and it makes the campaigns interesting at the start, then incredibly boring. Shogun 2 mixed it up with the realm divide / shogun and emperor stuff, but that was just the best patch they put on the problem. Aside from the giant stacks spawning and tight money it was still a mess trying to get the AI to do anything other than sometimes put up a fight as it's losing. Using Shogun 2 / FOTS as an example is not great because the scope was so limited they could make it 'work'. With Rome 2 / Attila you can see that the strategic AI simply can't cope. My biggest concern about warhammer was the way that managing the different factions in Attila was tedious rather than fun. You have all this busywork and dumb building management, but that basically ends up being overhead clicks you have to do before you can get back to the next fight. The faction and dynasty systems worked out much the same way. You'll pay if you ignore them, but you'll probably hate them if you try to use them. Did I mention Agents? There's something really wrong with the way CA looks at the strategic layer. I have been wondering if someone did a playthrough of Med 1 and kept track of how much time they spend doing pointless empire management vs fighting, and compared that to a more recent CA title, what results they would get.
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Jun 11, 2015 21:10
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I remember when I played Rome TW (the first one) how much I wanted to have the ability to take an army I made on the strategic map, including the exact troop counts, mercenaries, and general(s) - all the traits included, and see how well they'd fare in custom battles. Does any of the later games give you that as an option?
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Jun 11, 2015 21:15
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my dad posted:I remember when I played Rome TW (the first one) how much I wanted to have the ability to take an army I made on the strategic map, including the exact troop counts, mercenaries, and general(s) - all the traits included, and see how well they'd fare in custom battles. Does any of the later games give you that as an option? Nope, I'm pretty sure there's no way to do this other than just set it up unit by unit in custom battles. Being able to save or export the stats of an army in that manner would be fun, though.
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Jun 11, 2015 21:41
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I am optimistic based on the little information we have now that TW:Warhammer may be moving in the direction over more fight-y goodness, with most of the new stuff in the strategic view being more fluff related and framing. It certainly seems they're giving us more options in combat, with the changes to how units interact, the addition of the magic system, and depending on how flying units work. The strategic game will always be somewhat of a burden on the tactical, but it's really just there to provide context for the fights anyway. If it ends up being managing stomping out Cults for the Empire, keeping da boyz in line for Orcs, etc while building your armies, it'll at least be nice window dressing as you build your armies to go smash guys. And hey, maybe stuff like the magic system will give the tactical AI a crutch. It can't fight you on an army basis, but here come the fireballs!
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Jun 11, 2015 21:42
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Rakthar posted:Using Shogun 2 / FOTS as an example is not great because the scope was so limited they could make it 'work'. Well, yeah, that's probably one of the more important considerations when designing a game where you want the AI to pose a challenge. If you design systems that an AI can't cope with, its going to lead to bad AI. Shogun 2 doing "cheaty" things like reducing the amount of valid strategic options or simplifying army setup and city building means that the AI is going to put on a better performance, even if its not really "smarter". One problem with Rome 2 AI, for instance, was the fact they made a city management scheme that the AI was just utterly incapable of managing. I've also written words about the whole politics system in Rome 2, along with their love of lovely tiny x% bonuses on everything. I was not a fan.
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Jun 12, 2015 00:36
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Rakthar posted:The battle AI is competent, and this has been the case for some time. It ebbs and flows - some games have a really exploitable tactical AI, others have a decent tactical AI, but all of them at least fight and move their units around. (Except for Rome 2's chicken dance bullshit at launch which lasted for months but that's a different story). tbh the biggest problem with Rome 2's strategic layer was how the AI couldn't delete units so they'd make spearman and slinger armies at the start because that's all they had and then they basically kept that poo poo forever since even after unlocked other units those were still cheap. Grabbing Better AI Recruitment and mods that improve early units into better ones makes the AI create actual armies. You can actually see how CA saw this was a brilliant move since in Attila a lot of baseline units become upgraded as time passes to stronger units. This makes the AI a bit more challenging.
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Jun 12, 2015 02:03
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Mans posted:tbh the biggest problem with Rome 2's strategic layer was how the AI couldn't delete units so they'd make spearman and slinger armies at the start because that's all they had and then they basically kept that poo poo forever since even after unlocked other units those were still cheap. The fact that different major factions are going to play differently may help this. If the factions have special mechanics and their units are dramatically different rather than just "this guy has two more attack", they're going to be making different AI for the factions anyway. So they can afford to say "Okay, Orc AI maybe you want to build a bunch of grunt type guys, and then when you can afford it get some Black Orcs because they kick rear end", without having to make a huge decision tree so it can take into account area of the world, recruitables from each base, recrutiables from mercs, etc. The AI decisions will be more distributed, and thus simpler in nature.
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Jun 12, 2015 02:27
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Another thing people might have overlooked: It's a Warhammer game and as such the emphasis is not gonna be on the management of cities and trade routes. Orks, chaos and the undead wouldn't give a poo poo about such things anyway. Their economies are based on killing and conquering in the first place.  
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Jun 12, 2015 02:46
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Mans posted:tbh the biggest problem with Rome 2's strategic layer was how the AI couldn't delete units so they'd make spearman and slinger armies at the start because that's all they had and then they basically kept that poo poo forever since even after unlocked other units those were still cheap. Well, Warhammer really doesn't seem to have units that are obsolete garbage at least. Everything seems to have a role, even if it's just being cheap cannonfodder. Wonder if army point limits will factor in.
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Jun 12, 2015 03:04
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What are the odds Vampire Counts are getting Queen Neferata and that loving cat? I don't follow tabletop closely, but I haven't seen her in a long time.
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Jun 12, 2015 03:08
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The money equivalent has to come from somewhere.
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Jun 12, 2015 03:08
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Bloodly posted:The money equivalent has to come from somewhere. Well, it's more than by limiting based on points rather than number of units they can make the cannon fodder useful even in the late game. 100 knights against 1000 peasants and all that.
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Jun 12, 2015 03:12
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Mans posted:Total War: Evil Genius I'd pay money for that. I mean, I'd pay money for more Evil Genius period, but I'd pay money for that.
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Jun 12, 2015 09:04
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Recent Total War games have always lost me around the time when I start looking at the tech tree and start realizing that the dudes that are fighting and getting experience now are going to be unceremoniously fired as I advance up the tree, and I stop caring about all those little pixeldudes and quickly get bored of the game. Having a crazy in-depth hero system will change that, even if they don't use Warhammer's unit model to ditch the entire concept of 'early-game chaff'.
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Jun 12, 2015 09:06
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Tehan posted:Recent Total War games have always lost me around the time when I start looking at the tech tree and start realizing that the dudes that are fighting and getting experience now are going to be unceremoniously fired as I advance up the tree, and I stop caring about all those little pixeldudes and quickly get bored of the game. Having a crazy in-depth hero system will change that, even if they don't use Warhammer's unit model to ditch the entire concept of 'early-game chaff'. Rome had only few instances of units upgrades, and mostly for big players, but in Attila most of your starting units have a couple upgrades available over time. Sadly you lose the ability to build more basic units, and end up with good but expensive stuff instead.
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Jun 12, 2015 09:47
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The great thing about Warhammer, though, is that cannon fodder is a very crucial aspect of not only the tabletop (presumably) but also the fluff. The space marines/knights/nobs win the battle, but the guardsmen/peasants/boyz do the fighting and dying. I would expect to not have an army full of nobz and ogres without any massed boyz and stuff. If I was playing as Empire which, presumably, I'll be doing almost exclusively, then I'd expect to have a shitton of idiot low-value pikemen running around and dying/denying territory while my "real" units get poo poo done, much like in every total war game. Peasants are useless, but levy spearmen and levy pikemen have a purpose.
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Jun 12, 2015 10:00
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Excuse me, Peasants are perfect for catching lances 
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Jun 12, 2015 10:08
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WHAT A GOOD DOG posted:The great thing about Warhammer, though, is that cannon fodder is a very crucial aspect of not only the tabletop (presumably) but also the fluff. The space marines/knights/nobs win the battle, but the guardsmen/peasants/boyz do the fighting and dying. I would expect to not have an army full of nobz and ogres without any massed boyz and stuff. The funny thing is that relatively speaking, the Empire infantry is actually kind of decent. Sure, they'll still get mulched by proper elite units, but pound for pound they're often as good as or even better than the rank and file of many other factions. Put them up against an equal number of orc boyz or chaos marauders, and they may well end up winning the day. Now if you want some really lovely peasants to throw into the meatgrinder, just look at Bretonnia instead. Those guys really do exist only to provide a diversion while the knights do their thing 
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Jun 12, 2015 10:20
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WHAT A GOOD DOG posted:The great thing about Warhammer, though, is that cannon fodder is a very crucial aspect of not only the tabletop (presumably) but also the fluff. The space marines/knights/nobs win the battle, but the guardsmen/peasants/boyz do the fighting and dying. I would expect to not have an army full of nobz and ogres without any massed boyz and stuff. I'm going to win all my battles with pike & shot, just like Gustavus Adolphus would want me too.
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Jun 12, 2015 10:51
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Perestroika posted:Now if you want some really lovely peasants to throw into the meatgrinder, just look at Bretonnia instead. Skavenslaves, man-thing EDIT: That being said, if there's any unit that deserves to be ignored, it's them 
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Jun 12, 2015 10:58
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Charlz Guybon posted:I'm going to win all my battles with pike & shot, just like Gustavus Adolphus would want me too. I can't wait for the inevitable YouTube video and/or TWC post comparing Empire Arquebuseers vs Ratling Musketeers and how clearly blah blah insanity something something.
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Jun 12, 2015 11:00
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