HEIR TO SIGMAR - Legendary Empire Long Campaign Victory - Diplomatic route - My thoughts

[captainkrunch]

How dare this man like a feature that I don't and focus on how it actually plays out rather than the fact that they appear out of nowhere!

[Markas]

I don't really see an effort for conversation here. The magical ladders is in essence equal to the game decision of shogun 2 wall scaling.
Attila/rome and med 2 playthroughs where laughably easy, even on legendary. The settlements where not grand battles about the city, but left to the best chokepoints often in the city square in a settlement or attacking

In 150 turns I've fought two siege battles. Personally I think Magic ladders are a complete non-issue (I think I've seen them in action once) except it seems to many that don't have the game. Siege battles are simply not that common. I've yet to hear also how their inclusion is dumbing down the game- is there Ye Olde Ladder Tactic I'm not aware of that impinges tactics between when troops set off and get to the wall?

As for difficulty... Well, there wasn't any difficulty in Med 2 (Often due to the horrendous bugs). Losing a battle would have required a high-tier steam achievement itself.

[wyless]

For the op, your opinion is great. I think the same and appreciate CA for going into this milestone of merging these great genres really well. To the detractors. I don't think you understand. If there are thousands of units on the battlefield you can't have super micromanage Nguyen abilities. This slows the game down and not everyone has a super computer. It's dumbed down for the masses who can't afford a 3000 dollar computer. Not dumbed down for the dummies as I see posts all the time about how to do menial things. On top of that warhammer TT was a balance of what happened in combat not a balance of unit abilities pre-combat. There weren't a whole lot of special formations there were a lot of special character abilities. I think CA did a good job and think they will continue to do so.

[Holy.Death]

that is when i stopped reading

basically i see a pattern in such reviews and that pattern is dumbed down = fun

You see what you want to see. "Streamlined" doesn't not always equal "dumbed down" just as "complex" (or complicated) does not always equal "deep".

[Thelann]

It was always an issue among total war community. Some wish for a simulation, others wish for a game. From a simulation standpoint, the magical ladders indeed suck. However, total wars were always games before being simulations. The fact the first games were grounded in history mislead some people to think otherwise, but the creative assembly never stated so, as far as I remember. Their goal was clear, providing an enjoyable strategic battle game with an historical background (except warhammer), nothing more.

From this point, the magical ladders are a good game design decision. It brings more interesting/intense situations on the battlefield, because each unit is potentially a threat. Is it a simplification? Certainly. Is it a "dumb down"? Not from a game standpoint. Games don´t have to be complicated to be enjoyable. "Easy to understand, hard to master" is usually a definition for a good game, and I would say siege battles fit this description quite well. CA cut something that did not work and found an alternative. It´s not realistic? nor is the warhammer lore, but I can get over it because it makes the game interesting. Giving direct order to units is not realistic either, but nobody is complaining...

To OP, I am very happy that you enjoyed TWW that much. I think the core of the game is very promising. It needs to mature of course but between new unit types, emphasis on heroes, unique mechanics and magic, there is really a lot to enjoy. And with a bit of modding we can always fix the few things that are not optimal (battle speed and balance someone?)

[geala]

It is not fair to reduce the TS post to the magical ladder thing. I don't like such features too, I despised S2TW and ETW for it, but probably you can get rid of it by modding. In my TW:Warhammer battles the ladders played no role so far, but I had only a few sieges. In TW:Attila I had tons of defending sieges and did not notice the impossibility for the AI to be successful without magical ladders, I lost a lot and there were some extremely hard fought victories.

I'm in an Empire campaign on vh (I don't like legendary because you cannot save games, to battle the sometimes stupid results of army movement and control zone issues) and I faced up to 4 Chaos armies together with 7 full stack Norsca armies. Occasionally I had 5 settlements sieged at the same time, with two of my 4 armies blocked in the sieged cities. Marienburg was sieged by 4 full stack armies f.e.. When one of my armies was caught and annihilated by one Chaos army, led by Archaon (i was not careful enough to mass my armies together) the situation became very dangerous. At that time I got a lot of military allies and trade agreements to help me financially, my allies finally beat 3 of the Chaos armies, Karl Franz could beat the 4 Norsca armies together with the army in Marienburg and the garrison, then Archaon met his desired fate. It was fun.

I had slighly similar situations in TW:Attila too when I fought as Aksum against the Sassanids and their allies. I think some regions changed between us for six or seven times in a row, at one time I lost two armies and my king, only the great distances you have to travel in the desert saved me. So I like to say that you can have fun in both games.

What I really like in TW:Warhammer is that despite the ladder stuff the AI did not assault immediately but sieged first for some turns. I hope this is a rule, also for coming history games. This is how combat against fortified places should be, their main goal was to allow defending with minor numbers and above all, to buy you time.

[Stangler]

Really good review. I have also found that diplomacy has been a key part in my attempts to fight off Chaos but I still had triple stacks of chaos to deal with.

It is good to hear that sending Franz down to battle orcs was so successful.

[Eugee]

So this is my first Total War title I've played; I came here because I love Warhammer. The first time I had to siege a settlement I had a lot of mortars which I was just gonna shell the walls with while I my battering ram opened the gates. I had a bunch of sword/spearmen/crossbowmen as well, so I just ran them up to the walls to get out of the tower firing arcs. During this moving up I moused to close to the walls and saw the ladders--I was like AWESOME and clicked it. My sea of swordsmen started climbing the walls a few at a time.

Where they had troops, my swordsmen got cut apart. Where they didn't my swordsmen flooded the walls. It was a very costly assault--I now take the turns to build some towers because they facilitate getting past the walls so much better.

At no point did I think to myself, "Self, those ladders are really cheapening this simulation for me."

I don't keep track of my army's food consumption, or waste removal, or disciplinary actions either. I'm fine with ladders just being considered standard siege equipment that doesn't require turns to construct.

[Passive62]

just as a reminder, troops with ladders take a pretty good hit with negative modifiers. If you use ladders, you have a costly solution. If you use the assault towers, you dont have these negative modifiers.

Fighting up a ladder is heavily penalized.