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There is more to video game development than whether or not they have X number of coders sitting at a desk. A lot of it is studying your playerbase and adjusting based on profitability. Noise is noise, data has value. I think it is most likely that CA are very used to weathering the storms of fan discontent and that what many doomsayers see as "this launch is a total disaster that could damage the longevity of the game" is actually an enormous nothingburger and that there is nothing the internet loves more than a good communal whine that will be forgotten in time. The purpose of releasing a profitable video game that isn't "video games as a service" or a gacha or something else cursed in EA sports game fashion is to get the biggest bang for your productivity buck on release date. TWWH3 has been doing well in that area for awhile, being one of the best selling games of all time on Steam in pre-orders alone. To some of us and to a majority of Reddit and official forums and other echo chambers it looks like this: 1) TWWH3 releases 2) RoC sucks 3) CA will go bankrupt because nobody will buy their DLC because game bad 4) I can't believe these clowns don't have a guy run in and bolt on some option menus in an afternoon of light coding, ez Now what is happening in cold, hard reality that does not care how you feel about the game? 1) TWWH3 releases 2) Outstanding sales 3) It is virtually impossible to refund the game (i.e. Steam refund window, PC title, Game Pass, etc) 4) A significant number of players are actually perfectly content with it. They play the factions that appeal to them on gut instinct, win a campaign or two on Easy or Normal and try some stuff out, getting an easy 30+ hours in the game. A game is considered "long in the tooth" if it breaks 40 if we're going by an all-genres average. Yes, this will change if we go to specific genres but for a lot of gamers getting a meaty 20 hour experience is a bit decadent. 5) Because these are one time sales it does not actually matter if people stop playing the game. There aren't always on servers to host. CA is not involved in whether or not your computer is running your tenth solo campaign. CA does not get extra dollars if you put three or four digit hours into playing it. This might affect your likelihood of helping spread word of mouth... but even a guy like Legend is still making entertaining WH3 content after his Taking My Ball post. 6) Their launch successful but flawed they have all the time in the world, relatively speaking. But having all your investment made back and then some and months to apply polish is a much better position to be in than pre-release. 7) Everyone will come stampeding back when IE, Mod support and the consistent tides of DLC beat upon the metaphorical shores. Like that tide it is inevitable. Word of mouth and "the bad launch" will not survive the release of Chorfs, of IE, or any surprise announcement with a big enough lore name. A minority of players will be burned but remember, CA got their big prize. Everything after that is mostly gravy. And they're going to get a lot of gravy anyway. 8) There is no reason(to them) to rush the process. Everything CA does has to be rigorously reviewed, able to deploy across multiple platforms(market places in this case, I guess), work in multiple scenarios and not cause complications with anything that already exists. 9) In 1-2 years time WH3 will be viewed as the definitive way to play the game and salty veterans will grumble about "the release sure was rough." In 3+ years WH3 will be series, company, genre and IP defining as the best possible Warhammer 3/TW experience, argued about for decades by Fantasy vs History nerds. I do not say this as a shill for CA, or that they're right, or that RoC is secretly fine and I'm gaslighting you. I don't care what they do or how long they take at this point as long as they don't somehow break it going forward. My $60 was a simple investment that will grow in gameplay value in a few or several months with 99.9% certainty. I just see a lot of posts that don't understand "why doesn't CA hunker down and slam in some fixes" or declare they have no long term thinking(in a 3-5 year development time period with additional delay and an openly stated and planned 5-6 year+ DLC tail.) It's entirely possible that to them everything is totally fine and they just have to ride out the almost typical screeching overreaction to every media hype event that has occurred in the last five years. What is happening now is just industry standard and completely normal, entirely expected. Furthermore there's virtually no teeth in the outrage of the fanbase unless they actually close their wallets 6 months from now. Which has me curious if we have any records of Vortex outrage and any records of players turning their back on WH2 forever. That'd be a good pattern to study.
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Mar 10, 2022 19:27
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holy poo poo you're telling me corporations make decisions based on potential profits??? drat. i had no idea.
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Mar 10, 2022 19:50
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This does seem to be a surprise to the screaming portion of the fanbase declaring CA to be shortsighted clowns bungling the most important video game of their lives, where "their" could be either party. 
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Mar 10, 2022 19:53
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yeah but they bought a game at full price and expected it to have a certain level of quality. why should anyone care about why CA/sega/whoever chooses to do something a certain way because it makes them more money if that leads to worse experience for the consumer? and why does it upset you so much that people are vocally unhappy with something they were sold? like, no poo poo, the company cares about their profits more than their products. going facts don't care about your feelings about that doesn't make you smarter than the people complaining. idk, i think looking at a video game as an investment instead of a product is kinda nuts.
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Mar 10, 2022 20:02
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Only as upset as you are, pal. If you think I made that post just to show off how smart I am then whatever but the last page has people declaring that CA has no long term thinking or wondering why they don't just slide in and brute force mod fixes like fans are. A few pages back and people are openly wondering if CA will take the money and run because the release is just so god drat embarrassing. Maybe I'm going mad(but not upset) reading this day after day because again, the 8/10 game wasn't an 11/10 that personally gave me a reach around for my game expectations. Or I'm going crazy that this is the reaction to every hyped game these days from half the fanbase. I thought I'd chip in a view on how the developers are considering things vs the hysteria. Sorry for the effort post, I'll go try a Ku'gath campaign again and scream about Tzeentch in a few days. I agree that it is crazy to consider a video game an investment in most cases. This is an exception, unless you're going to pretend that WH2 isn't an obvious pattern WH3 is going to follow. WH3 actually will grow in value over time so.. I said as much? Crazy.
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Mar 10, 2022 20:07
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it doesn't grow in value, it's still just a video game, unless value means in-game content and fortnite has successfully generated infinite value by being both free and supplied with fresh content all the time. and i kinda feel like people have the right to say whatever they want about a product they bought. but i feel like we're on the verge of the most tedious argument in SA history here lol so let's just flip a coin to decide who's right.
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Mar 10, 2022 20:13
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Agreed and yeah I meant value as in content and gameplay value. If you actually enjoy Fortnite then yeah you get some great value there.
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Mar 10, 2022 20:17
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Doomykins posted:Maybe I'm going mad(but not upset) reading this day after day because again, the 8/10 game wasn't an 11/10 Rethink your post from the perspective of someone for whom the average total war game is am 8/10 (including WHII), but III is somewhere around a 1 or 2 out of 10. I have extracted maybe 2 or 3 hours of fun out of the game, over 8-12 of playing. The rest of that time was not fun, but some mix of frustration and disappointment and trying to figure out what I can do differently or change in the game to make it fun, failing, and having given up. That's my disconnect with your premise. I don't doubt the game is financially successful from launch, but unless they fix the many many non-campaign but core gameplay problems I found with the game, I'm sure as gently caress not buying any DLC for it, throwing good money after bad. If their business model on the game requires a long tail of DLC to make it a 'success', then I can absolutely see it being a failure in retrospect a year or two down the line.
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Mar 10, 2022 20:24
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in 2 years people will be asking if TW3 had a rough launch and no one will remember
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Mar 10, 2022 20:27
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Third World Reagan posted:in 2 years people will be asking if TW3 had a rough launch and no one will remember Hey, many of us aren't even touching the game unit immortal empires touches down. Still preordered tho lol.
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Mar 10, 2022 20:29
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Threadkiller Dog posted:Hey, many of us aren't even touching the game unit immortal empires touches down. Still preordered tho lol. I mean, if you got a decent discount and you got Ogres dlc, then its really not the worst preorder ever
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Mar 10, 2022 20:31
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Third World Reagan posted:in 2 years people will be asking if TW3 had a rough launch and no one will remember I am going to remember the post-launch discussion started roughly on page 91 until the end of time. Or at least I'll be able to reference this post in 2024 when it gets brought up.
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Mar 10, 2022 20:33
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Slyphic posted:Rethink your post from the perspective of someone for whom the average total war game is am 8/10 (including WHII), but III is somewhere around a 1 or 2 out of 10. I respect this. Ideally in a month they're going to drop the "RoC Fixes: What Were We Thinking" patch and it'll be much closer to acceptable standard for everyone.
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Mar 10, 2022 20:35
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Slyphic posted:Rethink your post from the perspective of someone for whom the average total war game is am 8/10 (including WHII), but III is somewhere around a 1 or 2 out of 10. I'm sorry you are having this experience. There are some in this thread that seem to think this is the default experience though.
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Mar 10, 2022 20:36
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Doomykins posted:It's entirely possible that to them everything is totally fine and they just have to ride out the almost typical screeching overreaction to every media hype event that has occurred in the last five years. What is happening now is just industry standard and completely normal, entirely expected. Furthermore there's virtually no teeth in the outrage of the fanbase unless they actually close their wallets 6 months from now. Yes I can see CA looking at the game losing over 75% of its launch playerbase in only two weeks (steeper drop than in any previous TW game, including Rome 2 and Thrones of Britannia), and being the worst-reviewed main line TW game on Steam, and thinking "yeah we nailed it".
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Mar 10, 2022 20:38
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e: dupe
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Mar 10, 2022 20:38
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I finally had Tzeentch do the whole settlement thing. He gave me a settlement that Skarbrand was about to attack from some other faction. I think he was trying to provoke a war? I'm going to pretend the AI did something cool don't look under the hood.
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Mar 10, 2022 20:40
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The only annoying time I had with tzeentch is when he gave my place to an ally of mine. but then I took some random city and traded for it back
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Mar 10, 2022 20:42
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The AI gets a fat ol discount for Changing of the Ways on higher difficulties too, so how frequently you see stuff like that might vary.
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Mar 10, 2022 20:43
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Third World Reagan posted:in 2 years people will be asking if TW3 had a rough launch and no one will remember Rome 2 had a far worse launch than this and it seems to me that its been fairly forgiven, if not forgotten, at this point.
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Mar 10, 2022 20:48
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I mean the game is not WC3 reforged levels of disaster or whatever, but it's completely understandable to be annoyed with it after the absolute polish WH2 had in the end. I'm most confused about the performance issues, I have a 3080TI and cannot fathom why this game runs so, so poorly compared to WH2.
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Mar 10, 2022 20:50
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In Hams 2 the general consensus was that a hard or higher campaign difficulty setting was essential if you wanted to get any sort of aggressiveness from the AI and hopefully achieve some field battles without resorting to ambush. In Hams 3 if you are claiming there are no field battles you apparently don't consider fights against demon armies field battles for some reason because I personally feel like the entirety of the Realm of Souls Campaign is CA saying "gently caress You Here's Your loving Field Battles" and also sieges are a Tower Defense game now (where unit movement is a nightmare unless you split up your entire army and attack from every single possible direction at once and suddenly everbody does what they are supposed to largely but good lord CA how could anyone do that in real time?) So it seems to me in Hams 3 if you want the game to be hard put it on harder difficulties but why are you surprised when Tzeentch steals your cities and poo poo? e: If the answer is "it's an unfun mechanic and should never be allowed to because the player can do nothing/etc" I'm just gonna respond stop caring about your loving settlement so much and laugh because it's tzeentch poo poo so don't bother Twigand Berries fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Mar 10, 2022 |
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Mar 10, 2022 20:53
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Twigand Berries posted:So it seems to me in Hams 3 if you want the game to be hard put it on harder difficulties but why are you surprised when Tzeentch steals your cities and poo poo? e: If the answer is "it's an unfun mechanic and should never be allowed to because the player can do nothing/etc" I'm just gonna respond stop caring about your loving settlement so much and laugh because it's tzeentch poo poo so don't bother I don't know if you're talking to me but the post I made about it itt was just surprise that the minor factions can do it too. I do think the cooldown for it should be longer than 10 turns though
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Mar 10, 2022 21:00
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Double Bill posted:Yes I can see CA looking at the game losing over 75% of its launch playerbase in only two weeks (steeper drop than in any previous TW game, including Rome 2 and Thrones of Britannia), and being the worst-reviewed main line TW game on Steam, and thinking "yeah we nailed it". WH3 also started at a much higher number than either one of those titles. By a *relative* percentage the drop is high, but using *absolute player counts* WH3 is doing just fine.
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Mar 10, 2022 21:00
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"Transfer Settlement" is actually "attack a Settlement anywhere in the world, defeat the army + towers + terrain + casters + faction spells + items held without a fight 100% of the time no matter the defender strength, do it without movement or opportunity costs as the attacker and 0 casualties, displace the defending Lord and their 20 stack if they were there too and then force the player into a lose/lose with a neutral or ally in a game mode where one extra war dec can cause a death spiral or they can shell out an extra 12-30k in assets of towns to get it back, also changing factions flips the buildings so gently caress your build plan" makes it arguably the most powerful faction ability in the game short of Eshin randomly deleting you by killing your LL if you let them live until Turn 100+. CA wisely didn't allow that in WH2. Also the no cooldowns and Tzeentch subs can do it too thing. My record is 3 Transfers in less than 15 turns.
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Mar 10, 2022 21:03
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I will plague this thread every few turns
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Mar 10, 2022 21:05
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DeadFatDuckFat posted:I don't know if you're talking to me but the post I made about it itt was just surprise that the minor factions can do it too. I do think the cooldown for it should be longer than 10 turns though Not really. Sorry I'm just blabbering. Game needs some loving tweaks for sure.
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Mar 10, 2022 21:10
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orangelex44 posted:WH3 also started at a much higher number than either one of those titles. By a *relative* percentage the drop is high, but using *absolute player counts* WH3 is doing just fine. Higher yes but not by that much, Rome 2 had a peak of 120k compared to 165k of WH3. 3K beat all of them though, with almost 200k peak. It also kept its launch players for much longer. It's still a very good game and it's pretty baffling how almost none of that quality transferred to the next game.
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Mar 10, 2022 21:14
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I wish the battles didn't control worse than ever but mainly I'm just waiting for blood dlc
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Mar 10, 2022 21:15
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Angrymantium posted:The big difference is that you will lose Realms of Chaos if you aren't dropping everything to pursue its objectives constantly. My first playthrough kicked me out after turn 155 when I didn't make it to a portal fast enough to get to the forge of souls. It's about as close to the opposite of the design philosophy that lead to the previous game being so enjoyable. Ya I hate gimmicky mechanics like this. Game devs use it to make every moment more impactful due time constraint but its just loving annoying, it's fine if it's done once.. I don't know if anyone here played XCOM 2 but it had so many levels where you had to save civilians in a certain amount of turns, completely ruined the game for me despite the first game being amazing. Onmi posted:Yeah it's a joker's trick "Here, try this one out." And then it stabs you in the ribs. I think Cathay is a WAY better starter (They have the most traditional army styling compared to Kislev's hyper-utility army) or Skarbrand for 'Ease (But he's a very specific army) Ya I just read this now but I have restarted my Kislev campaign not sure how many times. Everytime something else goes to poo poo. I should just be playing yakety sax in the background because it's just me chasing armies around. Don't have enough devotion to invoke Ursun, don't have enough devotion to build higher tier buildings. I haven't lost a single battle on normal or hard but I can't keep devotion high, nor expand in one direction without something happening on the other side. I did figure out Kossars are the best unit and you can win most early-mid game battles with ease so thats helped a bit. Still having fun though.
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Mar 10, 2022 21:38
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Any player count discussion has to happen in the context of extremely hyped, long-awaited Elden Ring releasing a week after launch.
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Mar 10, 2022 22:07
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Ulio posted:Ya I hate gimmicky mechanics like this. Game devs use it to make every moment more impactful due time constraint but its just loving annoying, it's fine if it's done once.. I don't know if anyone here played XCOM 2 but it had so many levels where you had to save civilians in a certain amount of turns, completely ruined the game for me despite the first game being amazing. What? Aggressive timers are meant to discourage turtling and encourage more aggressive play and your example, XCOM 2, is the perfect example of this design ideology. The first game had nothing to discourage the player from inching forward on overwatch, so the sequel added timers, some of them pretty aggressive, so that the optimal strategy is no longer to inch forward on overwatch every mission. Unfortunately WH3's timer accidentally made turtling the ideal strategy and punishes aggressive play. Oops
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Mar 10, 2022 22:08
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I usually hate timers, but XCOM 2 is an example of them actually being good.
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Mar 10, 2022 22:11
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The Door Frame posted:What? Aggressive timers are meant to discourage turtling and encourage more aggressive play and your example, XCOM 2, is the perfect example of this design ideology. The first game had nothing to discourage the player from inching forward on overwatch, so the sequel added timers, some of them pretty aggressive, so that the optimal strategy is no longer to inch forward on overwatch every mission. Also the first XCOM had terror missions where you had to aggressively push to save civilians too? And in many ways they're a lot more punishing than the XCOM 2 variants, especially the version introduced in the expansion.
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Mar 10, 2022 22:11
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I’ve been busy and haven’t finished a campaign yet. The farthest I’ve gotten are with N’kari on VH/N and Skarbrand on Legendary/N. In both cases, I’m on my second foray into the Realm of Chaos. I took some advice and did Tzeentch first with N’kari, and managed to save scum it through even though Miao Ying got in before. A fun wrinkle to it is getting teleported after you attack her while she’s standing on a teleport. I didn’t manage to kill her in the first fight, so I had to do it again.The battle was tough for Slaanesh, I can see why I’d want to get it out of the way and not ramp it up, especially with Slaanesh. My army is still pretty marauder infantry-heavy. What should be my anvil later in the campaign? Skarbrand did Nurgle first and is close to doing Khorne’s endurance battle. Where’s a good guide on how not to gently caress up Tzeentch’s realm on legendary when I do it next?
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Mar 10, 2022 22:18
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Dr Christmas posted:Skarbrand did Nurgle first and is close to doing Khorne’s endurance battle. Where’s a good guide on how not to gently caress up Tzeentch’s realm on legendary when I do it next? Theres a map/guide on reddit that shows the possibilities of where the portals will take you in tzeentch world, but I dunno if thats a bit too much cheating for you https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/syr0uh/the_chaos_realms_tips_and_ai_cheats/
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Mar 10, 2022 22:21
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Dr Christmas posted:Where’s a good guide on how not to gently caress up Tzeentch’s realm on legendary when I do it next? https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/syr0uh/the_chaos_realms_tips_and_ai_cheats/ This one is straight up a map of your route depending on your LL. Otherwise, you can game your fights in the realm to leave enough alive (if they aren't all demons) to get another fight so you can reveal more paths, etc. If you go to Tzeentch first, it's all demon armies so at slight disadvantage. I looked for/downloaded/installed the no chaos mod in about two minutes flat. Working without a hitch so far.
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Mar 10, 2022 22:25
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The Slaanesh anvil is Marauders(chaff, die, don't care, merge units until slots open match what you can 1 turn recruit) into Whip Marauders(base MD 42) and then considering Daemonettes(flankers, some physical resist, fast) and definitely going for Exalted Daemonettes(good physical resist, high MD and -9 attack to whoever they're fighting on hit.) Expect Marauders to die like you're playing an expendable front faction but the T2 Whip guys are great for holding as far as glass cannon approaches go and Exalted Daemonettes are a T3 unit, they've just got brutal upkeep. Exalted Daemonettes are base MD 44 +9 vs their target when they enthrall. Base physical resist 20%, 30% with red line buff. Win some fights and build their chevrons and yeah, every unit in your squad there has hero/lord level defenses down to the individual, MD 60 around your first gold! The downsides are armor 15 and crumbling if you muck it up but with Slaanesh I found that every battle was rushing to meet the enemy and using my hammers to break them absurdly fast, minimizing actual time spent in combat fighting real foes. Against certain late game doomstacks you may have trouble, though high MD will go a long way even vs the likes of Khorne. Seduce is also your best friend for the front, nothing spoils AI focus like a sacrificial decoy or two.
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Mar 10, 2022 22:30
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Doomykins posted:The Slaanesh anvil is Marauders(chaff, die, don't care, merge units until slots open match what you can 1 turn recruit) into Whip Marauders(base MD 42) and then considering Daemonettes(flankers, some physical resist, fast) and definitely going for Exalted Daemonettes(good physical resist, high MD and -9 attack to whoever they're fighting on hit.) Expect Marauders to die like you're playing an expendable front faction but the T2 Whip guys are great for holding as far as glass cannon approaches go and Exalted Daemonettes are a T3 unit, they've just got brutal upkeep. Yeah I've got to figure out a way to get into them. I think the only problem is the corner start and every place I want to be seems really far. e: can they recruit quickly away from home as well as Khorne? because I guess that addresses the problem.
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Mar 10, 2022 22:32
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Ulio posted:Ya I hate gimmicky mechanics like this. Game devs use it to make every moment more impactful due time constraint but its just loving annoying, it's fine if it's done once.. I don't know if anyone here played XCOM 2 but it had so many levels where you had to save civilians in a certain amount of turns, completely ruined the game for me despite the first game being amazing. Yeah, Kislev has no ability to chase down enemy armies which in turn makes it impossible to patrol your lands. They have no block army, there is STILL no solution to the "LMAO I can force march and attack your settlements and run off like a giggling school girl." the enemy AI has. Oh they have a province command to reduce enemy movement? Be a shame if you didn't own the whole province! Like I've gotten 'good' at Kislev and I just loving hate how bad their army abilities are.
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