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Lord Koth posted:Are you only counting series here? Because Total Warhammer (3 games), Vermintide (2 games) and the Grudgebringer series (2 games) are all pretty well-regarded, and I think there's a few more that have had at least reasonably decent receptions. There are a whole bunch of strategic partnerships. Total Warhammer/Dawn of War with Sega, turn based strategy with Slitherine, Age of Sigmar with Frontier, Vermintide and 40k Vermintide, Space Hulk, Blood Bowl, Inquisitor Martyr, Battlefleet Gothic, Necromunda : Hired Gun, then there's the novel-adaptation weirdness of Eisenhorn. Looking ahead there's a bunch of VR stuff, and bunch of mobile games, and they're getting in on the XCOM revival with a new Chaos Gate game. Not all of these games are successful or blockbusters or even playable, but if you look closely there's a very clever set of strategic partnerships with a selection of studios/publishers that don't overlap and are often multiple-game deals. Today's GW knows the most valuable thing they have is not the minatures or their rulebook but their IP, and they're consciously pursuing a strategy of ensuring that whatever kind of entertainment you are into there is something in that space with their logo on it.
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Jul 26, 2021 00:49
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Vagabong posted:To make the situation even more insulting, GW built the animation studio off of hiring people who had made their names making fan works before closing off that avenue to anyone who might try and follow in their footsteps. You can make fan animations they just can't make money. What's the point of hiring fan animators rather than gifted animators anyway? The only reason these animations monetised at all was Warhammer skins on them.
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Jul 26, 2021 00:58
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GW has a long and rather fraught history with licensing. The Warcraft and Starcraft saga seems to have burned them pretty badly and for a long time there were only a very few licenses given out through major publishers with GW being extremely hands-on through the process, which resulted in a handful of fan favourite games and eventually the Dawn of War series, but also resulted in a lot of games that never came out and a few hard flops. But the fate of THQ made them rethink things and I think the reason they decided to throw open the doors instead of doubling down is at least partially thanks to a studio called Cyanide. Cyanide were very much not THQ. They were a tiny developer who had previously made whose only previous experience was a series of Tour de France-licensed Cycling Manager games, and they published them through a publisher whose only release other than their games was Virtual Skipper 2. Very much not the kind of people that GW gave licenses to. So when they asked GW for a Blood Bowl license, GW said no, and Cyanide... made it anyway. They released 'Chaos League' in 2004 which was blatantly Blood Bowl with only some of the serial numbers filed off. And apparently it did okay. Better than GW seems to have thought was possible. So when GW took them to court, instead of suing them into a crater they reached an undisclosed settlement that involved Cyanide getting the Blood Bowl license. Which isn't a thing that normally happens. GW has a reputation for being extremely protective of their IP, for them to bring Cyanide into the fold instead of seeking to destroy them seems extremely unusual. In 2008, Dawn of War: Soulstorm came out badly balanced and full of bugs. In 2009, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning lost a billion dollars for its developers. In 2010, THQ began the long slide into bankruptcy. But in the middle of all of this, Blood Bowl quietly came out and did... okay. Decent reviews, decent sales. Nothing amazing, but when all of GW's all-in hands-on adaptations through major publishers were flopping hard, doing okay for no effort must have seemed like a pretty good deal. By the time THQ went bankrupt and the 40k rights that had been theirs for something like fifteen years went on the auction block, GW had apparently decided, gently caress it. The way we do things isn't working. Our stranglehold on our IP isn't making us money. It's time to do things differently. After that, it seemed like anyone who wanted a license could get one. Warhammer Chess? Sure. Warhammer Angry Birds? Fine. Warhammer Plants vs Zombies? Great. Warhammer Left 4 Dead? Go for it. Adaptations of old board games and spin-offs? Why not? Three Space Hulks, three Necromundas, two Battlefleet Gothics, Warhammer Quest, Mordheim. Have a CCG. Have a platformer. Have a side-scroller. Have a rail shooter. A tower defence. A deck-builder. It was madness. But... maybe not. Or at least there was method to the madness. The licenses they were giving out were very restrictive. The rail shooter didn't have a full 40k license, it had a license to make a game about an Imperial Knight. The platformer had a license to make a game about a Doomwheel. The Angry Birds game only had a license for Snotlings when it so easily could have been proper Doom Divers. The Plants vs Zombies only had licenses for the Dark Angels, not all Space Marines. The Chess game only had Blood Angels. The deck-builder only had Space Wolves. The side-scroller only had Ultramarines, and only added more after it got a good reception. It's not a free-for-all, it's survival of the fittest. You want to make Left 4 Dead? Vermintide only gets Skaven as enemies. That did well, now you can add Chaos. That did well too? Here's Beastmen. Still going strong? Okay, you can make Left 40k Dead. Battlefleet Gothic: Armada had Imperial Navy, Orks, Elder, and Chaos, and got Tau and Space Marines in DLC after it did well, and Necrons and Tyranids in the sequel. Mordheim only got four factions from the original game, and it did well enough to add two more as DLC. Underhive Wars only gets three of the Necromunda Houses, and we'll see if they do well enough to get the other three. It happens too regularly and across too many developers to just be coincidence. They're not giving out licenses for the entire setting unless they're sure the studio can handle it. Like, say, if they've got a proven track record of making popular sprawling strategy games. That's how Total Warhammer happened, and I suspect they were ready to yank the license if the initial Empire/Orcs/Dwarves/Vampires game flopped. Whether it was their strategy or just reflexive protectiveness of their IP, they've built a system where the failures are easily forgotten and the successes build. And as willing as I am to give GW a bollocking when they earn it, they've done pretty well with their video game licensing strategy. This post... kind of got away from me. I guess I still have a lot of emotional baggage about the army mans I used to play with as a teenager.
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Jul 26, 2021 01:23
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The IP thing is overblown. It's pretty standard IP law sabrerattling that most companies have buried in their legal pages,. The whole thing was kicked off by one of the animators GW hired quitting the job after his contracted project was finished, due to his own fanbase from before being hired sending him such a torrent of death threats and other poo poo over 'selling out' that it drained his enthusiasm to work with the franchise ever again. People went digging around in the legal stuff primarily to make GW out to be the bad guy in that situation. As for AoS/Old World, WHFB was in a bad bad way and the writers didn't know what to do with the setting. AoS was in the works for a long time judging by John Blanche's concept art for Stormcast et al it just had the misfortune of being managed by idiots in the higher ups. I wouldn't hold your breath on The Old World being a success purely off the back of Total Hams', not only is it being set up as a boutique resin game ala the existing Horus Heresy game but it's also being headed by the bigoted, pigheaded dolt who nearly drove Horus Heresy and Forge World as a whole into the ground with bad decision after bad decision.
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Jul 26, 2021 01:40
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I am going to wager that WHFB remake will be bad.
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Jul 26, 2021 01:48
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the thing about GW building a competitive environment for its own IP ecosystem or whatever and turning shovel ware into gold or dust is all true and pertinent though. even if nobody calls me back about my plan to be “the idea guy” for a gorkamorka killer app
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Jul 26, 2021 01:54
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JBP posted:I am going to wager that WHFB remake will be bad. This is petty lore nit-picking that probably isn't really indicative of anything, but I remember reading one of their 'sneak peeks' about it and I was kind of put off by how they're apparently adding a bunch of still-extant Elven city-states to the coastline of the Old World. And the tabletop RPG of Warhammer Fantasy is still going and it's doing things like adding gnomes to the setting and adding new provinces to the Empire.
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Jul 26, 2021 02:32
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SteelMentor posted:The IP thing is overblown. It's pretty standard IP law sabrerattling that most companies have buried in their legal pages,. I guess hope really is the first step on the road to disappointment. 
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Jul 26, 2021 02:34
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Tehan posted:This is petty lore nit-picking that probably isn't really indicative of anything, but I remember reading one of their 'sneak peeks' about it and I was kind of put off by how they're apparently adding a bunch of still-extant Elven city-states to the coastline of the Old World. And the tabletop RPG of Warhammer Fantasy is still going and it's doing things like adding gnomes to the setting and adding new provinces to the Empire. My understanding is that they're moving the setting back way prior to Big Karl etc so it makes sense that the elves have their old outposts, but that being said idk how interesting that setting will be or what they intend to do with character models. I really want it to be good, but if it's actually 100% FW I don't hold a lot of hope for it having a decent mini range until 2031.
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Jul 26, 2021 03:15
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JBP posted:My understanding is that they're moving the setting back way prior to Big Karl etc so it makes sense that the elves have their old outposts, but that being said idk how interesting that setting will be or what they intend to do with character models. I really want it to be good, but if it's actually 100% FW I don't hold a lot of hope for it having a decent mini range until 2031.  They've have to wind it all the way back to before -1589 when the fourth Phoenix King, Caradryel the Peacemaker, withdrew all military forces from the Old World and mandated that all settlers in the Old World return to Ulthuan or no longer be considered citizens of Ulthuan, leaving the secessionist inland settlements of Athel Loren and Laurelorn as the only Elven presence in the Old World until the Treaty of Amity and Commerce in 2150, after which there still weren't independent Elven cities, just Elven enclaves in human cities like Marienburg and Erengrad. And -1589 was before the tribes that eventually formed the Empire even arrived in the Reik Basin. I mean, what are we to believe, that these are magical time-travelling city-states or something? Boy, I really hope somebody gets fired for this blunder.
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Jul 26, 2021 03:32
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The Old World the new version of the game takes place prior to Asavar Kul's Chaos Invasion. This is when Teclis was helping the Empire out and the current Phoenix King was sending out more groups to explore and stuff outside of Ulthuan. Tehan posted:This is petty lore nit-picking that probably isn't really indicative of anything, but I remember reading one of their 'sneak peeks' about it and I was kind of put off by how they're apparently adding a bunch of still-extant Elven city-states to the coastline of the Old World. And the tabletop RPG of Warhammer Fantasy is still going and it's doing things like adding gnomes to the setting and adding new provinces to the Empire.
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Jul 26, 2021 03:39
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JBP posted:They're saying you can't monetise their IP. See https://www.games-workshop.com/en-FI/Intellectual-Property-Guidelines "Fan-films and animations – individuals must not create fan films or animations based on our settings and characters. These are only to be created under licence from Games Workshop." They separately ban "all forms of fundraising activity, and generation of any advertising revenue", which sounds incredibly questionable to me. If an artist has a Patreon and happens to make a Warhammer piece, does GW now think they're never again allowed to raise money? I can fully understand not being allowed to sell or directly monetize GW IP, but fundraising (which does not involve a sale, i.e. no access to the material is given in exchange for payment) is very distinct from that. Vagabong posted:To make the situation even more insulting, GW built the animation studio off of hiring people who had made their names making fan works before closing off that avenue to anyone who might try and follow in their footsteps. Elukka fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Jul 26, 2021 |
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Jul 26, 2021 03:44
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MonsterEnvy posted:I don't think any new provinces were being added. May be some minor duchys that no one cares about, but no whole provinces. Sudenland's been restored, Elector Count and all, where in earlier editions it was destroyed like eight hundred years ago and has been part of Wissenland ever since.
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Jul 26, 2021 03:45
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Tehan posted:Sudenland's been restored, Elector Count and all, where in earlier editions it was destroyed like eight hundred years ago and has been part of Wissenland ever since. In the upcoming Old World? or the RPG? If the later where was that written?
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Jul 26, 2021 03:52
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MonsterEnvy posted:In the upcoming Old World? or the RPG? If the later where was that written? RPG. Archives of the Empire, Volume 1.
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Jul 26, 2021 03:56
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Tehan posted:RPG. Archives of the Empire, Volume 1. Interesting.
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Jul 26, 2021 04:15
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Woodelves are OP as gently caress holy poo poo, an 11 stack of those knife ears by the everpeak gave my T3 20 stack a run for it's money. One of their lords nearly killed a decently equipped thane, runesmith, AND thorgrim with guardian in abuncha longbeards and hammerers. What downsides do they have if they filled with durable murder infantry and amazing ranged units? No artillery on an army list that has stalk everywhere? Gonna burn all those goddamn trees.
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Jul 26, 2021 04:32
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Twigand Berries posted:I actually was a redshirt in the early 2000s for a year. The thing was, I helped open the Chicago (suburb) Battle Bunker which was the first one in the U.S. outside of Maryland. Basically it meant I met a bunch of bigwigs from England whose names I don't remember except Ed who was in charge of like all of the U.S. operations and taught me an excellent drinking game at a bar that had indoor beach volleyball bizarrely. The meat of my take on my time was they were riding the success of getting the contract to LOTR and feeling crazy expansionist because they were finally getting people in the stores with Frodo. I remember thinking at the time "but what happens when everybody moves onto the next big IP?" Don’t keep us in suspense, what was the drinking game?
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Jul 26, 2021 04:45
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Their downside is that they need to pick between incredibly powerful ranged units and incredibly powerful cavalry. Leaning on their incredibly powerful monsters and Lords helps, of course, when their incredibly powerful glass cannon melee units hit their kill limit.
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Jul 26, 2021 04:46
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Arghy posted:Woodelves are OP as gently caress holy poo poo, an 11 stack of those knife ears by the everpeak gave my T3 20 stack a run for it's money. One of their lords nearly killed a decently equipped thane, runesmith, AND thorgrim with guardian in abuncha longbeards and hammerers. What downsides do they have if they filled with durable murder infantry and amazing ranged units? No artillery on an army list that has stalk everywhere? Gonna burn all those goddamn trees. I'm playing a wood elves ME campaign and a stack of ten units is so strong it's just a licence to menace and harass everyone in the world with little blowback. It feels pretty on lore popping out of the woods to lay waste to a bunch of eye sores then loving off and sending a request for peace which is almost always accepted lol.
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Jul 26, 2021 04:49
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They have almost no armor to speak of and are generally (or were, prior to recent patch charge bugginess) pretty vulnerable to cavalry. And for dwarf-specific counters, quarrelers should trade very well against their archers what with their armor and shields. Their AP glade guard variant also does magic damage so doesn't do as much against the dwarfs as it might, and waywatchers are expensive as gently caress. Organ guns should help. Don't get me wrong, especially on campaign WEs can be a nightmare but they aren't too overpowered as a faction. Your army just sounds like it had an exceedingly poor composition to go up against them. And they don't have that many units with stalk, and those that do often struggle badly when found.
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Jul 26, 2021 04:55
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I think I realized a big part of why the late game tends to be more boring than the early-midgame. The initial state of the world is tuned to be just chaotic enough - not too random, so that you can make meaningful plans, but enough that there is a level of uncertainty in everything and the future is butted. Your plans will have to adjust when you get an unexpected war declaration, or even just an inconvenient horde of beastmen. This applies to all the AI factions too, you get shifting power dynamics, alliances, etc. It feels rich and dynamic. Later, eventually, a few dominant factions emerge, and will duke it out in a doomwar. This sounds fun on paper, but in practice, that war will likely be very one-sided, and with only a few factions that make a difference any more, there is very little uncertainty left. It would just be an enormously long grind to finish it up with the result known ahead of time. They really should put more effort into the late game. They've clearly put in the effort to make the world's initial state interesting, but the state which inevitably emerges in the late game is very boring. I think the Chaos invasion is an attempt to slap a band aid on that, but it's not enough. It's just one thing, it's not the significant redesign that would be needed to actually make the late game fun. Of course, shorter campagins like some of the DLC ones sidestep the issue by not having a late game at all. That works too.
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Jul 26, 2021 05:02
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This is the weirdest campaign ever i wish they had seeds so you could replay it. Imerik went on a jihad and killed eshin and got all of the dark lands but now grimgor is mopping him up and i'm facing this endless wave of waaagh stacks. I have 4 armies sitting along my border fighting off greenskin aggression while those goddamn elves have taken all of the badlands not ruined by malagor. Jokes on grimgor/elves though because i just made a huge military alliance chain and now they got empire stacks funneling in through black fire pass to get killed in the darklands. Also gently caress orgre mercs, they mess with auto resolve so much making me fight every battle manually no matter how easy it is. Apparently the AI thinks i'll send in 3+ units 1 at a time to get slaughtered.
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Jul 26, 2021 05:06
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I know it's not very well loved but IMO Mordheim: City of the Damned is a secret good sleeper hit Warhammer fantasy game. It's a little more ambitious than it can pull off but it successfully captures the feeling of building a squad, carrying them through battles, losing them to unavoidable bullshit, and scrounging together a team of all the biggest baddest survivors you can muster. With the DLC there's a lot of faction variety and it feels like a tabletop miniatures game. I've never understood why people hate it so much - it has Mixed reviews on Steam but if you read the complaints in negative reviews the vast majority of them are saying "I don't like that the outcomes of dice rolls are random" deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Jul 26, 2021 |
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Jul 26, 2021 05:09
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deep dish peat moss posted:I know it's not very well loved but IMO Mordheim: City of the Damned is a secret good sleeper hit Warhammer fantasy game. It's a little more ambitious than it can pull off but it successfully captures the feeling of building a squad, carrying them through battles, losing them to unavoidable bullshit, and scrounging together a team of all the biggest baddest survivors you can muster. With the DLC there's a lot of faction variety and it feels like a tabletop miniatures game. My problem with it (from early days, no idea if this is still a thing) is how insignificant most things are. I level up a unit and can choose between a handful of +2% boosts. Weapon differences boil down to 2-5 or 1-6 damage, maybe with a +1% to parry. It was a huge letdown to level up my squad and have them be the exact same as they were before
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Jul 26, 2021 05:16
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the thing with GW ip stuff is that theyre apparently really huge pains in the rear end to work with. very much, we will review every single line you write and throw random fits over how lore appropriate one thing is or isn't. so big or successful publishers don't really want to bother with that poo poo. instead you get the middling and small ones that either are fanboys of the setting (GW's favorite type of contractor / employee since they can stiff them) or are willing to put up with all the poo poo to get access to the GW namesake to sell their stuff.
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Jul 26, 2021 06:05
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Relatedly to the fanboy thing the reason GW are hiring fan animators is specifically to get cheap employees. The contracts are according to at least one person approached really garbage, and he refused to sign. At which point GW decided to DMCA his Patreon and YouTube.
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Jul 26, 2021 07:10
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So I'm playing an Azhag campaign and I've secured everything down the mountains to Karaz-az-Karak. Unfortunately this puts me in a bad spot. Since Chaos is a joke against AI factions, this means that they use the gap north of me to flood down into my territory rather than getting blunted by Skaven. The vampires are all dead because the Empire is on a roll, so now I've got Skaven, Chaos and Empire all gunning for me. On top of all this I want to actually put Azhag's unique skills to good use, so I'm using Big Uns as my main infantry and abusing the vanguard deployment to get them into the face of the enemy as soon as possible. I have one dedicated anti chaos army of black orcs and biguns and artillery and my other army is Azhag which is trying to be a general purpose force. Going up against the hordes of the ordertide I need some cavalry. Is it worth going for Mournfang Cavalry mercenaries over the garbage cav the Orcs usually get? Should I ditch the arrer boys and plop some giants or trolls in there instead? Is the magical attack bonus from Aspect of thr Dread Knight worth it? I have several questions and I'm not sure which direction to aim my next waaagh yet.
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Jul 26, 2021 07:47
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Arcsquad12 posted:So I'm playing an Azhag campaign and I've secured everything down the mountains to Karaz-az-Karak. Unfortunately this puts me in a bad spot. Since Chaos is a joke against AI factions, this means that they use the gap north of me to flood down into my territory rather than getting blunted by Skaven. The vampires are all dead because the Empire is on a roll, so now I've got Skaven, Chaos and Empire all gunning for me. As a dawi player orc boar cav is more scarier than most cav units and i find mournfang to just get caught on terrain constantly. I played a little of the grimgor campaign and used the boar boys to wait until waaagh pops then sweep into the back line and they utterly crushed anything they charged. Everyone hates on boar cav but paired with boys being the anvil they worked great for me--use some sneaky stabbers to screen em so when they pull back to cycle charge the sneaky stabbers charge in. Magical damage is huge against certain lords who have 50% and higher physical resist and a great spell to have just encase. Pair azhag with a doom and darkness and foot of gork at the same time and you'll shatter most units that aren't 80 leadership. Also black ork big bosses are amazing for your infantry line and keeping them in the fight for longer.
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Jul 26, 2021 08:00
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On the note of cavalry, what should I be looking for in terms of stats for cavalry that's good against other cavalry? Do I just want the best shock cavalry like I want against infantry?
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Jul 26, 2021 08:48
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Lord_Magmar posted:Yes, as noted he tricks the Chaos Gods (except maybe Tzeentch) into granting him impossibly great boons for his part in the End Times (because they want the world destroyed too and moved on to other ones to mess with them), by pretending to claim he would now champion only them individually. Once he’s loaded with all the boons he declares himself the true champion of chaos and is now waging war to kill the Chaos Gods (and Sigmar). The boons having collectively made him too powerful to be stripped of said boons unless all the Chaos Gods actually do so together. That's pretty cool. So his followers worship him instead of the big 4? Or are they all just anarchists who want to break everything
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Jul 26, 2021 09:36
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Elukka posted:I think I realized a big part of why the late game tends to be more boring than the early-midgame. The initial state of the world is tuned to be just chaotic enough - not too random, so that you can make meaningful plans, but enough that there is a level of uncertainty in everything and the future is butted. Your plans will have to adjust when you get an unexpected war declaration, or even just an inconvenient horde of beastmen. This applies to all the AI factions too, you get shifting power dynamics, alliances, etc. It feels rich and dynamic. Like you say some campaigns avoid the problem. I like to declare victory with Belegar once I've grabbed Karak Eight Peaks and there's no real prospect of losing it again. Even with the map-painter campaigns you can try just going for the short victory conditions. edit: if you wanted to try something sorta like Realm Divide you could try one of the various mods that beef up the Chaos invasion. It's still a doomwar, but at least it adds another faction. Zephro fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Jul 26, 2021 |
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Jul 26, 2021 09:49
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Zzulu posted:That's pretty cool. So his followers worship him instead of the big 4? Or are they all just anarchists who want to break everything I would imagine so, as he’s declared himself the the only true successor of Chaos and lord of all it contains. Probably a bit of both, and infiltrators from the gods trying to claim his head, or who want to kill him and claim his boons for themselves. I never really looked into the lore of his new warband and/army, beyond they follow him willingly. Perhaps he presents it as being the true champion of Chaos, and the gods themselves being unworthy of their thrones for how they allowed Sigmar to forge the new realms instead of claiming the potential of creation for themselves. Lord_Magmar fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Jul 26, 2021 |
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Jul 26, 2021 10:00
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Vagabong posted:To make the situation even more insulting, GW built the animation studio off of hiring people who had made their names making fan works before closing off that avenue to anyone who might try and follow in their footsteps. Also every animation they showed looked downright god awful newgriunds quality and theyr charging a sub for it like they think they're netflix The only decent animation were those pretty but joyless astartes shorts but that's made by a fan for free and makes the official stuff look embarassing New GW sucks really hard too imo it's just old GW was comically bad. Like the new thing where you have to buy multiple rulebooks for a single army and there's basically dlc rules now
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Jul 26, 2021 10:09
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Zephro posted:This is a problem with basically every 4x / strategy game, really. It's sort of inherent to the genre. The bigger you get, the more powerful you get, so the bigger you get, etc. The only solution is negative feedback of some kind to counterbalance that virtuous cycle, but it's really hard to balance it properly. Warhams has a very mild version with supply lines, various Civ games have a similarly limp version with mechanics like corruption, etc. Shogun 2 tried a really abrupt, smack-the-player-in-the-face version with Realm Divide, which was caused you huge problems and felt very unfair the first time you experienced it, but quickly became just another mechanic you needed to plan for on the second playthrough. This is why one of my dream games is an asymmetrical 4x where instead of playing against opposing factions with all the same tools and goals as you, you play against challenges designed to be faced by a growing and/or burgeoning empire - like imagine Civ with only one "player" and that player has to face off against hordes of barbarians, natural disasters, etc. instead of other "players". There aren't many games that have even attempted it. Thea: The Awakening was good but I heard bad things about the sequel. Warlock 2 does a pretty cool similar thing where throughout the course of the game you are trying to explore different ethereal planes and progress through them. I can't even think of others off the top of my head The Old World is kiiiind of trying it, but it still has opposing empires on the same playing field as you. Like, imagine if the Chaos Invasion in this game was an actual all-out invasion that felt unstoppable, coming at you from all sides, corrupting your generals, etc. and doing other seemingly-insurmountable things that are way outside of the player's grasp of power, instead of just a roaming horde faction. Maybe you could even decide "gently caress it, the world is over, Order is losing" and forsake everything you know to join the chaos horde, which would then convert your lords into roaming chaos hordes and give you a new campaign objective of destroying all Order. Maybe Chaos crushes the Empire so you take your boy Karl and join the high elves and then start marching High Elf armies commanded by Franz into battle against Chaos. I don't know, just let adversaries be on a completely different mechanical scale than the player, which will in turn give the player new ways to play the game and an emergent narrative to go with their empire/lord. That way if the player is on a runaway exponential growth of power you can throw counters at them without needing those counters to be actual things produced by in-game empires that the player could also play as, so the threats don't need to be balanced with "what kind of damage could the player do with this?" in mind. deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 10:49 on Jul 26, 2021 |
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Jul 26, 2021 10:38
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I think the late game chaos invasion is a good start and model for sprucing up the endgame. They just need more variety and more things going on and not just the threat of Chaos. For players who want even more dynamic campaigns they could also have a campaign toggle that enabled natural disasters or magical phenomena occuring to change conditions on the strategy and combat layers of the maps
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Jul 26, 2021 10:47
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deep dish peat moss posted:This is why one of my dream games is an asymmetrical 4x where instead of playing against opposing factions with all the same tools and goals as you, you play against challenges designed to be faced by a growing and/or burgeoning empire - like imagine Civ with only one "player" and that player has to face off against hordes of barbarians, natural disasters, etc. instead of other "players". CK2 was this, if you wanted. You could start small, take on neighboring duchies, graduate to kingdoms, then try against the HRE or the Byzantines. Then you perhaps needed to fend off crusades/jihads, survive the arrival of the Mongols (or the Aztecs), and finally take on China.
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Jul 26, 2021 12:03
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Communist Thoughts posted:Also every animation they showed looked downright god awful newgriunds quality and theyr charging a sub for it like they think they're netflix I think Sodaz, one of the people who backed out of the contract, despite using sfm instead of all-original assets like astartes, had a really great sense of direction and pacing in their animation. Their warhammer stuff is still up, re-uploaded by fans, but GW not doing what they could to keep them on board is a sad mistake, I think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGNcYm8frrk
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Jul 26, 2021 12:45
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Torrannor posted:CK2 was this, if you wanted. You could start small, take on neighboring duchies, graduate to kingdoms, then try against the HRE or the Byzantines. Then you perhaps needed to fend off crusades/jihads, survive the arrival of the Mongols (or the Aztecs), and finally take on China. I loved the sunset invasion. All those smug kingdoms on the west coast, safe no more.
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Jul 26, 2021 13:06
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Regarding campaign dynamics, the mod Unnatural selection (mod to buff selected AI factions) recently had an update that enables you to change the behaviour of AI minors so that they become as aggressive and use all of their resources like the major factions. Combined with a mod that removes autoresolve bonuses for the majors, the map becomes a true free-for-all at least in theory. I can't speak to what if anything it does to the endgame, but at least the early game is noticeably different. I started as Thorek in ME and Numas aggressively took out the vampire minor faction near them plus a TK minor, before getting into a war with Khemri and starting to get their poo poo pushed in. I've never seen the TK minors do basically anything before. It probably depends on the campaign and personal preference if this actually makes the whole experience better, but the mod is a good one for anyone interested in mucking about with the campaign balance.
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Jul 26, 2021 14:09
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