Quick Survey of Warhammer Battles

[Fredrin]

I've put together a quick 22 question survey, mostly asking your thoughts and impressions on battles in this game

Please chip in your 2 cents and take it here:

Click here to take the survey

Most people find these things a bit of fun. I'll release results once it's had a decent number of responses. Please share it around if you enjoyed.

[craziii]

some of the questions are loaded and bias and some of the questions needed to be more specific. ex: 2 armies of similar strength will have longer battles than 20 vs 10 or 5 units. if generally speaking, 5 to 15 mins. if similar strength 10-15. and what do you even mean by arcadey?

[Gavani]

Also completed.

I would agree that some of the questions are a little loaded and could be worded differently.

[daelin4]

On the subject of arcadey, I think the question ought to be broken down into two sections: what the person considers it to mean (put in like 4-8 options) and choosing what fits their description the most, and then utilizing said option to decide whether they think Warhammer battles fit that category.

Same goes for what is considered "depth-giving features", and then asking the person whether that thing is worth putting into the game.

The reasoning is quite simple: if people want things like "more depth-giving features", it matters quite a lot on just what that is. otherwise you just do what CA does: they put things in nobody actually wanted or asked for vecause in their minds these are more depth-giving features...something many of just might disagree very strongly.

[Fredrin]

Fair enough, I was mostly after a read on people's thoughts about battle pace, to be honest.

Some interesting results if you want to check them out though:

https://forums.totalwar.com/discussi...ults-are-in/p1

[daelin4]

Mmm in that case I think the survey was too broad for that agenda. I think there was like, what, two specific questions on battle pace? The rest seemed irrelevant if that was the intended subject of research/ interest.

[Fredrin]

Mmm in that case I think the survey was too broad for that agenda. I think there was like, what, two specific questions on battle pace? The rest seemed irrelevant if that was the intended subject of research/ interest.

OK. As ever, thrilled to hear about the shortcomings of the survey rather than any analysis of what data it did bring to light

All results here, for those interested:

https://forums.totalwar.com/discussi...ults-are-in/p1

Written summary here:

Who took the Survey?

[All numbers in brackets are percentages]

• Most results came from either these forums (34) or Reddit (53), with the rest coming from Steam, Twitch streams and various other sources.
• The majority of respondents are in the 21-30 age bracket (61). 16% of people are in the 0-20 bracket, while 23% responded as 31 years or over
• Medieval II and Rome II came in as the games most people had played (76 each). The first Shogun and Medieval games had the fewest players (26 and 33)
• When asked how dedicated we are as fans, we averaged 7.6 out of 10 for TW and 6.4 for WHFB.

About battles:

• A full 83% said battles were to some degree too fast, while 15% said they were spot on and only 2% said too slow.
• On average, people voted for battles to be 34% slower. Those who wanted it faster (50 in total) averaged 2%.
• 76% of players said that the game would benefit from more tactical options against 1% who said it needs fewer.
• On average, people gave the battles a 6.6 out of 10, when asked how well "epic" describes them.
• The siege battles scored a slightly unfortunate 3.9 out of 10 when people were asked for their general feelings on them.
• There was no great desire for map size to be larger - a 6/10 showing a slight preference from some for larger maps and this is almost exactly the same story for unit sizes.
• There was a high standard deviation in results when people were asked how "Arcadey" they thought the game was. Overall, it got a 4.6/10 in terms of accuracy.
• A whopping 89% said they would like to see more depth giving features in future battle design - 68% either agreeing or strongly agreeing, 2% saying they disagreed.
• People are by and large quite happy with the size and variety of unit rosters, giving that category a 7.5/10, while the overall game score got a healthy 8.1/10.
• People rated battles an overall 7.9, but were a bit less happy with campaign strategy which came in at 6.9.
• The marketing team at CA can pat themselves on the back - a huge proportion of people gave their hype levels for Warhammer a perfect 10, with the overall hypometer at 8.6.

These results were published after approx 1000 responses. There have been roughly 1,200 more since but they remain largely unchanged. I added the following question to add a bit of clarity to the question of battle pace:

[BMV]

Hope CA hears this information...

[craziii]

70% wants 10-18 minutes I was right on the mark.

[Fredrin]

70% wants 10-18 minutes I was right on the mark.

The interesting part I find is that this makes the preferred battle time a good 4 minutes longer than what one of the developers said it is at the moment. Apparently the average is 10 minutes in the first game, but that seems a bit long to me. playing a 10 minute battle is a rarity.

But yes, 14-15 minutes on average would be perfect in my opinion.

[Ichon]

The interesting part I find is that this makes the preferred battle time a good 4 minutes longer than what one of the developers said it is at the moment. Apparently the average is 10 minutes in the first game, but that seems a bit long to me. playing a 10 minute battle is a rarity.

But yes, 14-15 minutes on average would be perfect in my opinion.

I saw that comment as well and wondered if it calculated according to the battle timer only or counting people pausing the game to issue orders?

[Fredrin]

I saw that comment as well and wondered if it calculated according to the battle timer only or counting people pausing the game to issue orders?

Someone pointed out some pretty convincing reasons to say that this was a "real time" average - so that would include the additional time spend in slow mo and pause. Strikes me as completely inaccurate way of measuring battle speed but there we go.

If asked I would probably guess it was around the 7 minute mark. And in line with most people who took the survey, I would like battles to last (on average) about twice that.

I've no idea what CA are playing at with battle speed, to be honest. Out of almost 2,300 responses a total of only 56 people said they wanted battles to be faster. Nearly 5 times as many people said battles are "much too fast" and that's the most extreme of three categories they could vote in.

There are clearly some quite complex reasons why they are keeping battle pace so much faster than average preference. Keeping their player base happy does not seem to be one of them.

[LestaT]

It was to my understanding that when people want slower battles, it means engagement part, the brawling and the clashing part when units met with each other. Maybe other people have other ideas but I dont want to spend 10 minutes just for armies to walk towards each other but spend 5 minutes trading blows.

I would prefer 5 minutes walking but 10 minutes fighting. Both ways times spent are the same 15 minutes but I guess people want to see more the clashing than more manouvering.

[Ichon]

Yeah it is really hard for me to imagine that real time length of battles is more than 6-8 minutes since CA already said majority of people play on Normal/Hard where AI routs fairly quickly after lines meet. The battle maps are also generally smaller than past TW so walking time is less.

15 minutes of real time seems a bit long to me- ideally, including walking I'd like battles to last 11-12 minutes or +10-20% longer than currently. I never pause battles anymore and can even look around a bit at the battle scenery after giving the first sets of orders but it still seems a bit brief when units are routing before cavalry even has time to loop around to back and start rear charges.

[Fredrin]

It was to my understanding that when people want slower battles, it means engagement part, the brawling and the clashing part when units met with each other. Maybe other people have other ideas but I dont want to spend 10 minutes just for armies to walk towards each other but spend 5 minutes trading blows.

I would prefer 5 minutes walking but 10 minutes fighting. Both ways times spent are the same 15 minutes but I guess people want to see more the clashing than more manouvering.

Yeah, a long maneuvering phase before engagement made sense in Empire and Napoleon - it was mostly ranged combat, so managing kill-zones was key. But in Warhammer there's not as much need. Part of this is to do with the fact that there is not much terrain variation and whatever advantages are conferred by terrain don't count for much when compared with other mechanics.

It's a point often raised that there is not much scope for complex or multi-staged tactics once your front lines have engaged, which is as much a by-product of game design as it is of play-style. I would much prefer to have options available to me, like cycling reserves and skirmishing troops, than just watch my front lines slug it out. As it stands, I barely have time to to perform even quite straightforward maneuvers because battle pace is set so insanely fast.

The most obvious explanation is that they make them very quick to mask other deficiencies, such as weak AI and lack of tactical depth. I enjoyed the first few battles in Warhammer for sheer novelty value, but they are far from rewarding in any deeply satisfying sense imo.

[Ichon]

Yeah, a long maneuvering phase before engagement made sense in Empire and Napoleon - it was mostly ranged combat, so managing kill-zones was key. But in Warhammer there's not as much need. Part of this is to do with the fact that there is not much terrain variation and whatever advantages are conferred by terrain don't count for much when compared with other mechanics.

It's a point often raised that there is not much scope for complex or multi-staged tactics once your front lines have engaged, which is as much a by-product of game design as it is of play-style. I would much prefer to have options available to me, like cycling reserves and skirmishing troops, than just watch my front lines slug it out. As it stands, I barely have time to to perform even quite straightforward maneuvers because battle pace is set so insanely fast.

The most obvious explanation is that they make them very quick to mask other deficiencies, such as weak AI and lack of tactical depth. I enjoyed the first few battles in Warhammer for sheer novelty value, but they are far from rewarding in any deeply satisfying sense imo.

Yeah my suspicion has been faster pace makes the AI feels more competent though I do think AI in Warhammer is fairly decent compared to other TW titles especially given the new types of units it has to account for it still has quite a few flaws.

I would say there are so many things that impact how battles 'feel' that its hard to assign responsibility. For example now that CA actually did something to let AI field better units earlier in campaign it is possible to have some enjoyable battles before Chaos and you see more of the nice roster CA built. Still several other issues of course but I was surprised how big a difference that made in my enjoyment. Now if terrain actually mattered and units lasted a bit longer I would be nearly satisfied for what CA has accomplished at the present time/tech/resource levels.

I'd prefer units had slightly more melee defense and armor while charge bonus was slightly lower but lasted longer so armies which rely alot on charge wouldn't be hugely weakened if CA simply made units last longer in melee. Mods can accomplish most of that other than how long the charge bonus lasts (at least I don't see where that variable resides in moddable files).

[Fredrin]

Yeah my suspicion has been faster pace makes the AI feels more competent though I do think AI in Warhammer is fairly decent compared to other TW titles especially given the new types of units it has to account for it still has quite a few flaws.

I would say there are so many things that impact how battles 'feel' that its hard to assign responsibility. For example now that CA actually did something to let AI field better units earlier in campaign it is possible to have some enjoyable battles before Chaos and you see more of the nice roster CA built. Still several other issues of course but I was surprised how big a difference that made in my enjoyment. Now if terrain actually mattered and units lasted a bit longer I would be nearly satisfied for what CA has accomplished at the present time/tech/resource levels.

I'd prefer units had slightly more melee defense and armor while charge bonus was slightly lower but lasted longer so armies which rely alot on charge wouldn't be hugely weakened if CA simply made units last longer in melee. Mods can accomplish most of that other than how long the charge bonus lasts (at least I don't see where that variable resides in moddable files).

Totally agree about the AI competence in this game - it genuinely felt like a big step forward. But it's presumably the case that the AI get proportionally more "intelligent" when you give it less tasks to manage, hence why the rest of the combat mechanics feel a bit light.

There have been some good comments made on the other forums about counter mechanics dominating combat to the exclusion of most others. Instinctively, I find it hard not to subscribe to this school of thought, though as you say, there are so many things going on it would be a mistake to attribute it solely to one thing over another.

The AI's army comp has been improved since release and with the awesome rosters available, the ingredients are definitely there. For me at least, it really is down to what instruments we're given as players and what little time to play these battles. Not quite enough imo

[craziii]

The interesting part I find is that this makes the preferred battle time a good 4 minutes longer than what one of the developers said it is at the moment. Apparently the average is 10 minutes in the first game, but that seems a bit long to me. playing a 10 minute battle is a rarity.

But yes, 14-15 minutes on average would be perfect in my opinion.

your time frame/window is way too specific. do you expect a battle between 5 units and 20 to last 15 minutes or 5 minutes? survey clearly showed 10-18 that is a big range.

[Fredrin]

your time frame/window is way too specific. do you expect a battle between 5 units and 20 to last 15 minutes or 5 minutes? survey clearly showed 10-18 that is a big range.

I'm just giving 14 minutes as the median point between 10 and 18. The question is asking people what their preferred average is, so when answering, you'd expect people to be factoring in some of the the shorter 5 v 20 battles and longer late game 20 v 20 sieges into their answer. But the "average of averages" still comes up as just under 14, which I take to be a lot longer than what it is currently.

I will at some stage run a more i-depth survey when time allows and I will probably go into a bit more detail with the questions. An important one here would be: "what do you perceive the average battle duration to be currently?" To see the deviation between perceived and preferred.

I will also separate out sieges from field battles. Perhaps a good idea to make sure everyone is on the same page is to embed a video of an actual battle and ask people how long they think it should have lasted.

Anyway, the data is very clear regadless of a bit of ambiguity in the questioning: an absolutely huge majority of people want battles slowed down, while almost no one wants them any faster. CA really need to do something about this.

[LestaT]

Might also have clear separation between SP battles and MP battles.

For me, overall I'm fairly satisfied with the current SP battles. In the beginning, yes with raw recruits the battles are pretty fast but it keeps longer and longer further into campaigns with high tier uniits with high experience.

Cant say I care about MP though.

IIRC, in Shogun 2, there were separate stats between SP and MP. Need to check back on db though.

The issues with balannxing now is that with single stat fir both SP and MP, it may be good for one but pretty imbalance in the other.

Seeing from the MP twitch yesterday, the HE may seems to be the weakest amongst the 4 but who know, they may be stronger is SP campaigns due to other buffs etc which by making them 'balance' for MP, may make the HE becoming too OP in SP.

If there 2 separate stats for MP and SP then I believe the battles are much easier to balance, though probably created more work for CA.