Warhammer: Magic & Creatures vs Total War Armies

[xjlxking]

At this point, we are just using our ego to argue. I've said my opinion. I don't think SEGA/CA will put such random events. Yes, there are random events, but I don't think they will go to the extreme that you think they will. I understand what you are saying and your stance on it, but I don't agree.

[Darios]

I go away for the weekend and come back to see that there are 3-4 Warhammer threads going on in the Attila threads.

You're telling me that Warhammer fans don't have their own forums somewhere out there in the world wide web?

[Markas]

You're telling me that Warhammer fans don't have their own forums somewhere out there in the world wide web?

Not on TWC as of yet as GED was away when the announcement was made. Not sure why you would think we'd have to leave Total War Centre to discuss a Total War game.

[Darios]

As it stands, 3 out of the 5 threads on the Attila main discussion is about Warhammer.

April was a very depressing month for ATW fans. The only information we got out of CA was about Arena, Kingdoms, Warhammer, a blood hotfix, and the Steam Workshop. No news about improvements, patches, DLC, or even a Rally Point episode. I hope that morale concerning ATW is not so low that people would rather talk about a game that they currently know nothing about rather than trying to fix/improve a game that has the potential of becoming great. Hopefully CA will give us some real news concerning Attila this week. If they do not do anything by the end of May then I guess it would be safe to assume that it's all over for Attila and that it'd be a bigger disaster than Rome 2.

[SinerAthin]

I think Magic will fit quite well in Total War.

A lot of the abilities that we have in Rome and Attila already feel like magical effects you just turn on.

But perhaps what I'm more interested in is if there'll be any room for counter-magic gameplay in Warhammer. It's cool to blast armies, but sometimes I think it'd been advantageous to use the power of your magi to screen your advancing infantry from enemy magical spells instead in the case of a siege for instance.

spells combined with counter spells is something I feel could make a much more deeper and complex magical system.

I can also think of perhaps a category of tactical but non-harmful spells, like creating magical fog to hide your unit movement, which I feel could be cool and add yet a third dimension to any magical system.

[HigoChumbo]

At this point, we are just using our ego to argue. I've said my opinion. I don't think SEGA/CA will put such random events. Yes, there are random events, but I don't think they will go to the extreme that you think they will. I understand what you are saying and your stance on it, but I don't agree.

I don't know why ego has anything to do with my comments here. I'm just giving arguments to discuss over something I don't agree with. In any case I respect any opinion presented in a mature way, so there.

I don't think they'll take the risk either, I'm just saying I think it would be not only cool, but actually add to the strategy. In any case I don't want to make any longer the list of "features that won't be there and whose absence will disappoint me the very day they show gameplay".

I go away for the weekend and come back to see that there are 3-4 Warhammer threads going on in the Attila threads.

You're telling me that Warhammer fans don't have their own forums somewhere out there in the world wide web?

I've already said somewhere that we should stick, to the General TW Discussion while we get a dedicated subforum, if only out of convenience (I have to visit 3 different subforums everytime I check for Warhammer news). That said, I don't see why would we discuss a Total War in a place other than the best Total War forum there is.

For what mods have said, it seems the making of the new forum is inminent, so don't worry.


(And well, after all everything seems to point out that Warhammer will end up being an Attila mod with greenskins )

But perhaps what I'm more interested in is if there'll be any room for counter-magic gameplay in Warhammer. It's cool to blast armies, but sometimes I think it'd been advantageous to use the power of your magi to screen your advancing infantry from enemy magical spells instead in the case of a siege for instance.

spells combined with counter spells is something I feel could make a much more deeper and complex magical system.

I can also think of perhaps a category of tactical but non-harmful spells, like creating magical fog to hide your unit movement, which I feel could be cool and add yet a third dimension to any magical system.

That would be really interesting (I actually suggested something similar when I said they could take Sacrifice's spells as inspiration):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

• Notice how this one even interacts with moving flying units (in the end). Yes, this is a freaking 15 year old game, just in case you bring up the "that's very hard to code" argument again:

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

The problem here is that I doubt that an AI uncapable of even using torches properly (torches being the workaround for other stuff it can't use properly) could handle the tactical complexities of such stuff.

[jtfjtfjtf]

I think Magic will fit quite well in Total War.

A lot of the abilities that we have in Rome and Attila already feel like magical effects you just turn on.

But perhaps what I'm more interested in is if there'll be any room for counter-magic gameplay in Warhammer. It's cool to blast armies, but sometimes I think it'd been advantageous to use the power of your magi to screen your advancing infantry from enemy magical spells instead in the case of a siege for instance.

spells combined with counter spells is something I feel could make a much more deeper and complex magical system.

In the tabletop game for every spell cast the opponent can try to dispel it. You get a higher chance if you have a wizard. So it's definitely something they can try to be creative with in the Total War game.

[Wintercross]

And why would backfiring magic be intrusive? It would be no different to the current agent system. The more powerful the ability, the less chance of success it has, the highest chance of having a negative drawback it has (like getting your agent killed) and the highest the effect of being successful is (killing the enemy 12 star general). The more skilled the mage, the better his chances are, and the more powerful spells he can use.

Again, it's exactly the same as the risk you take now when you decide to fire a catapult into a melee because you think the chance of killing their general is worth taking the risk of hitting your own soldiers.

I was actually arguing for magic backfiring. I think it is a vital part of magic in Warhammer. What I was saying is chance is fine as long as it fits and makes sense. Having a risk of a spell going bad would be fine. I would say make it more likely for a backfire to happen when fatigued, under fire or in melee for example.

[KiKiweaky]

Have any of you ever played King Arthur the role playing wargame, or the second one? They implemented magic with large units pretty well in that and had flying units and some huge monsters too.

No magic backfires though which would be sweet. Imagine trying to cast a spell and your wizard ends up turning into a chaos spawn and slaughtering his body guards haha.

[The Despondent Mind]

Well in the mod Call of Warhammer for MTW2 the magical units and monsters sort of work, they can be game breaking sometimes but you can manage them. My point is that if the modders can make it sort of work with an game not meant for that, I guess the developers should do it better.

Then again it's CA.

[Caradrayan]

I wanted to chime in here with some perspective. Personally, I thought Warhammer: Dark Omen was a great game, (and Shadow of the Horned Rat before it) Both of those games implemented basically a straight port of mages from the tabletop ruleset of the time. These were the days when the system was based on a deck of cards. every round, 15 seconds or so, you got -1 to +3 magic points. Spells cost 1-3 points and you could save up to 8 points I think. So, magic was unreliable in that you might not have the mana to cast the spell you want when you want it. They did not implement miscasts. This was important for those games because you only got 1 or 2 mages to play with for the whole game and if they died they were gone. In Warhammer: Total War, presumably you will get to recruit mages. If your mage dies to a miscast, it will suck, but you can hire another one. Another factor that speaks to from those games is that when you first got the mage, he wasn't *that* useful. it was only after training them up over the course of a few battles that they got their most powerful spells, the ones that melted whole units and could dominate a battle. In the tabletop, more powerful spells are more likely to miscast. That risk vrs reward meta-game sounds great to me. Let experienced mages get spells that can destroy half an army personally, and let the break be that if you try to do that every battle, the mage will self destruct eventually.

[Markas]

Man I loved Dark Omen back in the day. For those unfamiliar with it here's a let's play-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gURdHzE0DJ8

The Winds of magic system was good as well, there were eight orbs that could be filled, they started off with only one lit up and every 30 second turn you got between -1 to +3 orbs filled. The mages had spells that cost 1-3 orbs.

[HigoChumbo]

In the tabletop, more powerful spells are more likely to miscast. That risk vrs reward meta-game sounds great to me. Let experienced mages get spells that can destroy half an army personally, and let the break be that if you try to do that every battle, the mage will self destruct eventually.

Well, I can say you are not alone here, although I fear the "casual audiences will not like/understand that" argument will be heard every day at CA's headquarters and will most likely be a strong driving force of their development proccess, so I would not hope for much.

That said, I think "half an army" is probably too much (unless some specific conditions with a counterplay are met, such as a mage having a very strong area attack and the enemy making a huge blob asking for them to be blown into oblivion). Battles are already too short. In the tabletop game, blowing "half an army" probably means 15-30 soldiers, and you still have your powerful heros and creatures to turn the tide after that, but in TW we are speaking of hundreds if not thousands of men. I certainly want TW:WH to be more individualistic, with a stronger focus on unique, powerful units, but I still want it to retain its grand scale, I'd not like to see a couple of champions dueling each other for 5 minutes in the middle of a battlefield surrounded by nothing but lowly soldier corpses.

[Påsan]

I doubt Mages will be that powerful. They are not on the tabletop at any rate. The artillery in Fall of the Samurai was pretty damn devastating so about that level at the most. Besides mages is not only for throwing fire balls, they can buff own units as well.

[WAR monger]

I doubt Mages will be that powerful. They are not on the tabletop at any rate. The artillery in Fall of the Samurai was pretty damn devastating so about that level at the most. Besides mages is not only for throwing fire balls, they can buff own units as well.

They aren't?

And guys, I don't understand why you were arguing with anyone like xjlxking anyway. It doesn't look like he knows too much about Warhammer, fantasy or interesting games in general.

[Påsan]

They aren't?
v
And guys, I don't understand why you were arguing with anyone like xjlxking anyway. It doesn't look like he knows too much about Warhammer, fantasy or interesting games in general.

They rarely wipe whole units by themselves. Now CA could very well make them OP because they are cool and new and flashy aka fire balls in Rome, but the natural place for them is as support units.

[Evan MF]

Chance/randomness that is built into the game mechanics in the form of RNG detracts from the strategy and skill aspect of the game. If the game wants to be taken seriously as a competitive strategy and not a sandbox fantasy fling with dragons, wizardry and all manner of other bells and whistles, then the only 'chance' involved should be player-invoked; that is the player having imperfect knowledge or imperfect experience when making a strategic decision and thus making an informed guess as to what to do, in doing so, allowing him to improve his skills with time and experience and thus optimise his strategic approach.

There is nothing more frustrating as a gamer than having bipolar tools at your disposal, where the likelihood of casting a spell, say, can result in huge gains or huge losses on the basis of a coin flip, with no pertinence at all to your ability or your situation. It's why games like Hearthstone can vary in enjoyment so vastly from match to match and why even at the professional 'e-sport' level a lot of players don't have much better than 50% win ratios, because the a lot of the game's tools have a heavy RNG influence and are in a sense rigged to produce these results.

I would not want to see spells done in such a way in Total War: Warhammer, even if that's the way it's done in the tabletop gameplay, it will just take so much agency away from players and move the strategic emphasis away from unit manoeuvring tactics, which is the core of Total War battles in my opinion.

[HigoChumbo]

If the game wants to be taken seriously as a competitive strategy and not a sandbox fantasy fling with dragons, wizardry and all manner of other bells and whistles

Since when has TW been taken as a serious competitive strategy game anyways? It's always been way more single-player focused, and single player loves those bells and whistles more than perfect balancing.

Chance/randomness that is built into the game mechanics in the form of RNG detracts from the strategy and skill aspect of the game.

It does not detract from strategy and skill. It just makes it different, adds a new layer.

You could be the most skilled military commander on the planet and strategize as much as you wanted... if you decided not to take into account the chance/randomness that it might rain during your campaing, you would most likely be screwed.

There is nothing more frustrating as a gamer than having bipolar tools at your disposal

Tell that to Napoleon.

where the likelihood of casting a spell, say, can result in huge gains or huge losses on the basis of a coin flip, with no pertinence at all to your ability or your situation

There is an entire city built in the middle of the desert moving millions of dollars every year whose very existence proves that people actually like that. Gambling can be thrilling. Unpredictability is thrilling. Having everything perfectly under control can be boring. It's not something you would spam every battle, it's something you could use as a last resort perfectly knowing that it might very well turn against you but letting you choose if you actually have no better option than to gamble or face a sure defeat and therefore the risk is worth taking.

It's why games like Hearthstone can vary in enjoyment so vastly from match to match and why even at the professional 'e-sport' level a lot of players don't have much better than 50% win ratios, because the a lot of the game's tools have a heavy RNG influence and are in a sense rigged to produce these results.

And still it's one of the most successful and played games in the past few years and arguably the best game Blizzard has released since The Burning Crusade.

By the way, I don't really give a damn about TW being an e-sport or not. If they manage to balance it as an afterthought, thats ok, but if the single player experience is going to be harmed by the insistence on milimetrical balancing, making the final result to fall short of epicness and immersion, then they can shove balancing up Tywin Lannister's bunghole.

As far as they do it in a way that does not detract from unit manouvering, then I see nothing wrong with it. It might be a very interesting addition.

[Son of Horus]

Attila is supposedly one of the most balanced games because it has such limited and similar rosters to one another.

People are complaining about the lack of variation. Go figure.

In regards to the casting a spell and it going wrong/working, well, the game has always been about RNG. You can do things to influence those odds - such as by having better units, more advantageous placement/charges, better generals with better bonuses, and so on and so forth. The first game I played - M2TW had that. I lost 5 kings and heirs in as many turns thanks to a high level assassin that was killing them off (it was a HRE assassin, and because of that, still one of the reasons why I don't like playing the HRE!) before on one turn he failed, and was made visible - I then had an assassin of my own attack him. I had a 39% chance of success. I gambled.

And I lost. My best Assassin was dead, as was 4 generations of my family tree leaving one of my weakest generals as King - although thankfully now on the other side of the map, trying to kill the Moors. I'd eventually lose Capital to HRE attacks made against the armies I had assembled there to defend against their attacks - with my armies breaking thanks to the lowered morale. If I'd had a better Assassin, or my generals had better Personal Security traits, the HRE assassin would likely have been killed or unsuccessful, and the HRE would have been killed by myself rather than the Hungarian/Venetian alliance.

In Warhammer, the ability to be more powerful at casting spells is dependent on your level; from 1-5. Each level allows a character to know 1 spell, and also makes them easier to cast. If the player wishes, when casting that spell, a wizard may choose (if the spell allows) to cast a more powerful version of it - the downside to this is that it becomes more difficult to cast. The higher the level, the less a Wizard needs to draw on the winds of chaos themselves (this game mechanic representing the more powerful casters being able to draw that power out of the aethyr with more ease and safety than a less accomplished wizard). Considering as well that in game, there is only so much magic available to cast in the winds of magic, someone drawing on all of the available power to cast a super fire ball might leave their side bereft of other magics which may otherwise have been more useful - such as by enchanting the weapons of their units or by healing those wounded so far. Until the winds of magic blow strong again, this can leave an army becalmed - and considering the nature of some foes as being weak only to magic, such as ethereal wraiths (an undead unit) or in the old versions of daemons, this could leave you at a hefty disadvantage.

The actual blowing up of a character casting a spell is thankfully rare - but drawing on the fickle and dangerous winds of magic straight from the chaos wastes and tainted with madness and damned prophecy, those who take more and more power from the winds themselves risk more than just their lives, but their souls. At the same time, some wizards may see this is a price worth paying - either for personal gain, actively welcoming the chaos gods into a faustian pact that only favours Chaos, or in an attempt to sacrifice themselves to save the rest of their allies.

In game terms - this means that the more dice you use to power your spell, the more likely it is to go off - sometimes with such power that it can't be stopped (or dispelled). In such events though, the residual magic left over pulses through the wizard, and may result in death or mutation. A more powerful mage (in theory) doesn't have to use as much of the winds of chaos, so has less chance of being susceptible to corruption. The only thing is that the core rules don't actually support this way of thinking (each level of magic adds +1 to the roll, while a dice adds between 1 and 6, but only on a the roll of a 6 does the chance of causing an Irresistible Force/Miscast spell increase/occur.

There is no real difference between a Wizard casting their spell and an assassin attempting to kill an enemy - the difference is that a Wizard can choose to try and draw more power in effort to cast a more powerful spell - more powerful wizard have less need to draw on that power - and so it's a matter of risk over reward - either risk having the fireball trigger on yourself rather than the enemy if you're found wanting, or just ensure that you survive by casting weaker spells.

I just hope that more effort goes into the spells - allowing some form of "mutagen" or seperating spell path which allows you to craft spells - for example - one upgrade path lets you cast 1 fireball, and then a bigger fireball, or another lets you cast multiple fireballs, while another turns it into a flamethrower effect etc. Admittedly that is not in the Warhammer Fantasy Battle Game rules right now, but it's a staple of the genre.

[Markas]

Isn't one of the criticism of the End Times ruleset that magic is really OP? I saw a game and the purple sun of whatumadutha wiped out nearly a whole regiment.

The actual blowing up of a character casting a spell is thankfully rare - but drawing on the fickle and dangerous winds of magic straight from the chaos wastes and tainted with madness and damned prophecy, those who take more and more power from the winds themselves risk more than just their lives, but their souls. At the same time, some wizards may see this is a price worth paying - either for personal gain, actively welcoming the chaos gods into a faustian pact that only favours Chaos, or in an attempt to sacrifice themselves to save the rest of their allies.

In the games I saw on youtube a magic user getting killed/seriously wounded casting seemed to be 1 in 3 games, often costing the game if they were the Lord. When it goes wrong it really goes wrong.

In game terms - this means that the more dice you use to power your spell, the more likely it is to go off - sometimes with such power that it can't be stopped (or dispelled). In such events though, the residual magic left over pulses through the wizard, and may result in death or mutation. A more powerful mage (in theory) doesn't have to use as much of the winds of chaos, so has less chance of being susceptible to corruption. The only thing is that the core rules don't actually support this way of thinking (each level of magic adds +1 to the roll, while a dice adds between 1 and 6, but only on a the roll of a 6 does the chance of causing an Irresistible Force/Miscast spell increase/occur.

Good to know, most of the magic system still baffles me. The battle report series I watched went by so quickly in the magic phase I didn't know what caused a miscast at all.

I just hope that more effort goes into the spells - allowing some form of "mutagen" or seperating spell path which allows you to craft spells - for example - one upgrade path lets you cast 1 fireball, and then a bigger fireball, or another lets you cast multiple fireballs, while another turns it into a flamethrower effect etc. Admittedly that is not in the Warhammer Fantasy Battle Game rules right now, but it's a staple of the genre.

I found the fundamentals of the Winds of Magic system in Dark Omen to be quite workable as a basis. Too much micro I think would sideline magic in the bigger battles.