So no naval battles and no banner carriers. Huge letdown!

[paradamed]

So it has been confirmed by CA that they will not add banner carriers nor naval battles to the game. To me is a big letdown for sure.
After all these years not having naval battles is a huge stepback to the series, specially considering Warhammer universe could allow a mix of all the different naval battles in the previous games (ramming, cannons, etc) with endless possibilities.

Ditching the banner carriers and using the focusing on more important issues just seems lame for a professional team. I mean, Empire looked so half finished and now they use this excuse. Just a huge letdown, a huge letdown. The banners are such an important feature of the tabletop game, both aestethically and ingame.

This game has some interesting gameplay features judging from the previews but is getting farther and farther from original warhammer source material.

[Markas]

It's been known for a while about the naval battles so there's no real surprise. There weren't any unit standards in the reveals either, so...

Sorry it's a big letdown for you but you had plenty of time to brace for the impact.

[Baron of Hyrule]

The devil's in the details and the fandom is the hell.

Those are minor issues in the grand scheme of the game, IMO. I'm happy as long as it's well made, has minimum bugs and is fairly balanced.

Anyway, there's always dlc.

[Bobington]

Anyway, there's always dlc.

Oh boy, 99 dollars for a tiny stick with a picture on it! Here I come!

[Zephyrus]

I'll wait until the reviews before I purchase. Strange how other TW games have used officers in their units, but in this one they will be left out. The naval battles are of no concern to me and could be implemented later in a sequel. It's the land battles that I prefer they focus on, but the lack of banner bearers seen is a letdown.

[Aquila_Mars]

Oh Lady, I would banish thy enemy, but alas... My arse is glued to this horse... Alas, the enemy on the walls have outwitted me, they knew I could not dismount!


Dismount during battle DLC 4.99€

Mount again during battle DLC 2.99€

[Dalakh]

That surprises/disappoints you ?

Let me tell you what you should be worried about : They are keeping the fest that the Rome 2 army limitation system was AND all clues indicate that they are they are keeping the garbage province system as well. Now THAT is something to be concerned about. They didn't learn anything and they absolutely failed to see how very superior the Shogun 2 system was.

[lavez]

That surprises/disappoints you ?

Let me tell you what you should be worried about : They are keeping the fest that the Rome 2 army limitation system was AND all clues indicate that they are they are keeping the garbage province system as well. Now THAT is something to be concerned about. They didn't learn anything and they absolutely failed to see how very superior the Shogun 2 system was.

Speaking of the province system.

Empire's system was pretty solid despite no food being present as a resource. It used a pseudo-province system centred around cities, local recruitment, research & industrial centres and harbours, shifting the management focus towards war theatres themselves through control of special resources and strategic positions. But for that to work, they'd have to divide continent's landmass into a few "theatres of war" which fit the definition of "bioregions", geopolitical enclaves that could sustain a single regional superpower each within their respective natural borders. On an upside, if they went with such a system there would be less senseless micromanagement of individual settlements, a time better spent on military campaign itself.

Copying a Rome/Attila province system seems like a bad idea in comparison. Never played the Shogun 2 series, so can't really speak for merits of it's province management system.

As for army limits themselves, it has been a somewhat cancerous and controversial addition to Rome/Attila (seeing how most popular mod for both games, Radious, basically makes army limits a non-factor), but in Warhammer it might actually work since characters themselves are far more developed and the idea of decisive clashes between those hero-led armies actually make far more sense as a design concept in a Warhammer title, than it ever did in native TW titles. Not that the army limits are going away with any kind of patch, though, it's mostly an academic discussion by now - some swear by the feature, others simply hate it.

CA hasn't been particularly eager to talk of their campaign design on the economy/management side of things, besides saying that they intend to further reduce the micromanagement, to let the player allot more time into the military campaign itself - whether that means management of "mega provinces" to have less individual provinces to manage, or just a way to automate the process through advisors is pure speculation at this point. They seem far more confident with the unit battles themselves and hero/general/agent design in comparison.

And now for a little rant ...

It's pure speculation if they ever intend to develop standard bearers through a DLC expansion, or in the other two games from announced Warhammer trilogy. Naval combat seems a lost cause, especially given earlier map previews of the continent (focus is basically on surface and subterranean land battles, plus some prototyping for flying units). Say hello to a boring auto-resolve bar, that will absolutely slaughter player's army on higher game difficulties, with no way to play the actual battle itself. It does feel like an obvious regression for core TW players, since they were accustomed to playable naval battles by six consecutive TW titles already - Empire, Napoleon, Shogun 2, S2:FOTS, Rome 2 and Attila. Same for standard bearers, which were always there in some capacity, even if mostly an aesthetic component.

Perhaps the correct mindset about this is to think about the trilogy as a Warhammer series first, and Total War series second - but then that begs the question, why core TW games were "improved" with questionable design elements such as army limits, overpowered agents or imperium, which obviously don't belong in historic TW titles in the first place. Hell, even Napoleon's supply lines never made it into more recent titles, a phenomenal feature by all accounts. For all the CA's reassurances that somehow their Warhammer development team is separate from "historic TW games" team, there seems to be a very convenient game design overlap between both of these teams, and overwhelmingly in favour of WH games development at the cost of core TW games' gameplay design integrity.

For the future, CA, prototype your "ideas" for prospective fantasy/Warhammer titles on their respective experimental/early alpha builds, NOT on core TW titles. Army limits have no place in historic TW games. Stupid province system has no place in historic TW games. Million arcade unit abilities like "frenzy" or "flaming javelins" have no place in historic TW games, no, not even in your misguided effort to appease your "omg MLG esports" 250-actions-per-minute crowd - your singleplayer community isn't your proxy "multiplayer/e-sports" guinea pig that's supposed to suffer from your ridiculous unit design and 8-10 minute battles throughout their singleplayer campaign playthroughs. Rock-paper-scissors balancing has no place in core TW titles either, it basically nullifies strategy and long-term management to put more emphasis on unit micromanagement during battles. Now that you have your little TW: Arena thing going on, keep your ridiculous "multiplayer MLG 250 APM" ideas restricted to that title only.

[Evan MF]

I'll wait until the reviews before I purchase. Strange how other TW games have used officers in their units, but in this one they will be left out. The naval battles are of no concern to me and could be implemented later in a sequel. It's the land battles that I prefer they focus on, but the lack of banner bearers seen is a letdown.

Probably due to arbitrary 'engine limitations', the classic CA cop-out excuse.

[Påsan]

Naval Battles does nothing for me. In Atilla they were an ongoing nightmare to fight, in Rome 2 they were boring, in Shogun 2 fall of the Samurai they were mind-numbigly boring and did not work.

Its not like there is a lot of water o the map anyway, just the space between Marienburg and Norsca so many play through's would never even see a naval battle at all. Actually the only playable faction that is fielding boats would be the Empire, and you are playing as landlocked Reikland. Not a great loss.

[paradamed]

Oh Lady, I would banish thy enemy, but alas... My arse is glued to this horse... Alas, the enemy on the walls have outwitted me, they knew I could not dismount!


Dismount during battle DLC 4.99€

Mount again during battle DLC 2.99€

This is another issue that bother me. Why remove a succesful feature from previous games. Why CA? I want my troops to be able to mount and dismount and the engine allows that. Dont come with engine limitations excuse.

[illathid]

I'm guessing the no dismounting in battle is to save the animators work. You'd have to have animations for humans getting off horses, gryphons, demigryphs, and comparable ones for all the other races too.

[Boyar'sNephew]

So no naval battles and no banner carriers. Minor letdown!

[Aquila_Mars]

I'm guessing the no dismounting in battle is to save the animators work. You'd have to have animations for humans getting off horses, gryphons, demigryphs, and comparable ones for all the other races too.

They are cutting too many to 'reduce' work. If they didn't have the manpower or skill to do these things they shouldn't have attempted Warhammer in the first place.

*No naval battles (I personally don't care as I never liked naval battles anyway.) but animators don't have to work on these as they are auto battles. -less work.
*No Standard bearers because it'd take long time to animate for each different race and unit etc. (while this is true, it is far from not doable.) so -less work.
*No dismounting/mounting for some ungodly reason, and for humans who are on horses they could damn recycle the rome 2/atilla's dismount animations. But I guess that'd be too much work so, cut it. -less work.

What are these animators doing then? If they were so *enthusiastically* working on Thorgrim's attack animations from the throne (which sucked.) I'm not impressed.

I'm waiting for a post from them saying orcs and beastmen will use human attack animations (sarcasm) because it'd save the animators time to focus on more important matters.

So when are we getting static units because animating them would be too much work? I guess the next total war game will be a card game. That'd be less work that way.

's sake.

[ScipioGermanicus]

actually all models will use he same attack animation... look at the really point with the Warrior Priest and compared with the Dwarfs you will see the same 4 attack animations. Which also have been see by orcs. Mind you that they may add more than 4.

If you found this as "incompetence", "lazy" or "cheap", than no one stops you to create a better alternative.

[Aquila_Mars]

Yes, if I had about several hundred people working under me, there would be nothing stopping me from doing it. Unfortunately I'm not a company.

And I'm not going to get into this apologist debate. I'm not talking through rose tinted vision of mods, these are all things they did in previous titles. Their design decisions just don't make any sense to me.

Also worth mentioning, I keep hearing this "Why don't you do better?"

You won't see me doing 'better' because when I can't do something, I don't 'do it anyway'.

This mindset of "If you aren't doing the same thing/can't do something better" you can't criticise is absurd.

I had this creeping suspicion for a while now, but all the new info that comes to light, the more and more I see that this is looking more like Rome 2 (which was a horrid failure and don't you try to defend it) than something like Shogun 2 or earlier total wars (rome 1/m2) which were superior in all except graphics. (my personal opinion, and probably many others')
Warhammer total war, something I'd been waiting for a decade now, is looking like it is following in the footsteps of something that was horrid. It makes me scared.

[ScipioGermanicus]

Than perhaps you should realize that the things you want to have a re not so easily to archive instead of belittle arrogantly the works of others. Or making claims of what can be done.
Besides: when did beastmen and orcs had different animation than human in the series? I'm very sure that germanic tribes had always the same animation as the Romans.
Or army-banners (which is different form unit banners, something people are apparently unable to get)


PS: if the acknowledgement of other peoples work makes me a "apologist", than so be it. Great work btw to belittle opposition without having any arguments.

[Aquila_Mars]

I'm not belittling their work, I'm just wondering why they are taking stuff that they made before, out of the game.

Are you hinting that making dismounting animations for at least horse mounted units is that hard? Something they've actively done before?

And no, acknowledgement of others' work is not making you an "apologist". It is blatantly ignoring the flaws in their work that makes you one. I won't criticise something that looks good, did you see me criticise the flying unit animations? I think they look fantastic.
But I am not so blinded by that good work to willingly ignore flaws in other parts.

[Boyar'sNephew]

How about the both of you stop throwing around the aggressive words like "apologist" and "blatant"? Heating up the conversation doesn't help.

And, if you care so much, launch a online petition for either naval battles or banners? It might work, and it's certainly better than just ruminating about it. I'd even sign the latter (don't care so much about the naval battles, and there is no way that one will be added if the decision has been made).

[ScipioGermanicus]

Except that you asking things they did not before, different animations for difference races/factions for instance.

Except that there are not just horses around this time. Are you suggestion that only horse mounted unit should be doing that? That would be a far worse decision.

What is quote on quote a "flaw" is debate. If the units can demount before battle, then that is not a flaw. Also fascinated that "looking good" is apparently the only merit something could have, making sense is apparently not a priority. And your a blindly critiquing them in expectation which are crossing the border to entitlement.
But then again, you are the kind of people who are the embodiment why I can't take most critique seriously. Arrogant, entitle and anyone who doesn't agree with you what are supposedly "flaws" is a "apologist" and of course is a good junk of the critique base on a insane interpretation of a sentence which doesn't say what you and other claim.
But hey, actually reading what really standing there is apparently the mayor sight of a "apologist".

@Boyar'sNepew
As it happen both word you used where used by the same person. This person should not simply go unchallenged on the things he/she state.