Intro
So here it is!
The first official fantasy based Total War game, the first featuring a native 64bit engine and also the first one to support the latest DirectX 12 3D API for Windows based computers.
Most still aren't aware that they are allowed to upgrade to Windows 10 for free till summer 2016 (without later dues) but also can switch from 32 bit to 64 bit for free anytime. I've written a small thread about this on TWCenter (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ration-advices)
Instead of writing a full length review about every tiny bit, I rather post this review as a quick to read review considering all pro's and con's I have found compared to Rome 2. I am aware Rome 2 is not the predecessor of Warhammer, but this is actually the latest TW game I've played before Warhammer.
This review will cover my experiences from a still running a MP coop campaign played with some minor cosmetically mods. So far played 31 hours and 103 turns.
Settings:
My friends faction: Greenskins
My faction: Dwarves
Battles: Fight battles
Difficulty: normal / normal
Graphics: Maxed out, 1080p, except AA
Applied Mods:
Chaos please wait: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=691279367
Conquer anywhere and diplomacy by Dresden: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=687689947
Less OP Agents: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=693592647
Olympian Cam Waaagh! Edition: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=691803600
No AI Public Order Cheat: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=691979636
Proper Battles by kam2150: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=691006940
Improved Flags by Noif: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=690002238
Larger Units: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=690309019
Technical stuff
Pro's:
-> optional DX12 support, this comes exclusively for all users that already migrated to Windows 10. You should consider to upgrade for free until end of July 2016. Quite all GPUs on the market do support DX12 natively but this doesn't mean they will all benefit from this in a similar manner. CA announced a cooperation and optimization for AMD graphics, which might end up that Nvidia pendants won't benefit a lot (refer Tomb Raider DX12). But at the end of the day we will have to wait till the DX12 beta has ended and the patch will be made publicly available.
-> 64-bit support: Which sounds old to geeks is a long demanded and new feature to the Total War series. Finally, the game is able to allocate more than 3.5 GByte system RAM and also the graphics card video RAM without near limits in the future. The great thing about this, is that the game is already able to take up all advantages.
While playing the campaign the consumption of system RAM varies from 4-6 GByte and the video RAM seems to be pre-allocated to its extend (4GB for my graphics card) on the campaign map, except in battles.
-> performance: 64-bit support and DX12 both do not grant more performance as a matter of course, but more as an additional matter of optimizations made. CA recently announced a blog post where they thoroughly describe the technical advancements. And so far I can tell all of them deal out.
Warhammer seem to have the best multicore support of all TW games so far, because the BAI and other CPU based tasks have been separated into 2 threads so at least for me 2 of 4 cores are permanently under fire, resulting in an acceptable framerate of 20-50 fps with maxed out settings (AA off) at a 1080p resolution, quite in opposite to Attila.
-> Really huge battles: Even in really huge battles like 4v2 or 4v3 with nearly all full stack armies the game remains quite playable performancewise.
Quite intentionally I have turned off AA as the aliasing isn't really bothering at my screen size (27 inch) and resolution (1080p). Some may say that an average framerate around 30 fps is unacceptable for a GTX 970, hence I try to look on the bright side of life and compared to Attila it is a breeze on same settings.
Game and gameplay
Pro's:
-> Battle AI is the best I've ever seen. It makes very logical and foremost quick moves. This circumstance results that I rejoiced to play huge battles (40v40 or more). The more units you'll have under control and the AI as well, the more you'll notice that you need a lot of timing and precision. Surely moves can be anticipated but this would even happen in a human vs human battle.
The Battle AI, imho, is the true gem of Warhammer. Challenging, quickly responding, carrying out coordinated attacks, and moves that you would expect from every human player alike as soon there is an opportunity to find a breach or isolated unit. This includes so far correct usage of units and counters.
-> Campaign AI: also this one seems to be a bit smarter and it will keep you busy for sure. Of course it is a bit easier in a coop campaign than playing on your own as you can merge your forces. So far I haven't experienced moves of the AI that were completely brainless as often happened in Rome 2.
-> Chaos comes a bit too early for the taste of most (mods available changing the event times), however it is a welcome and strong addition to the game, as most as it does not only affect the player but also the AI itself. And it really does. In our campaign Chaos and its infected Norse tribes capturing one city after another from some helpless AI folks, some other have enough forces to resist. It is creating baseline tension and additional task as soon you get involved.
-> tech tree: speaking for the tech tree of the dwarves it is very logic, aiding the concept and while there are mods reducing the research time by a half, I am satisfied with the vanilla values. Approaching the tech tree is now a lot like in Civilization, where you'll find prerequisites and even subtrees. Cannot tell if it is somehow balanced for each faction though.
-> retainers and hero upgrades: They are really a lot of fun and a hero (general) can have lot of them and you can also transfer them to other heroes in a helpful matter of time (1 turn) without having them nearby.
-> Music and Sounds: Who would have thought this? The music is really good in Warhammer in my opinion, at least far better than in Rome 2. Every faction seems to have their own tracks and even after many hours it doesn't get bothersome. Also sounds of units seem to have much more variation, perhaps one benefit of having more RAM available aswell.
-> Routing units as in Rome 1 / Medieval 2: No longer you will see lines of units routing, like depressed Lemmings. The mechanic to routing is Rome 1 / Medieval 2 grade! It is really great to have this mechanic back. Units will recover if not completely shattered.
-> Unit cards: They look really great, pretty most everything you can want!
-> UI: this a lot better looking and organized than in Rome 2
-> special (mission) battles / general speeches: My mate has to do some special battles that are introduced with a cinematic like sequence and great general speeches. Oh well, Orkish is actually hard to understand. Funnily, Dwarves seem to have a scottish accent.
-> faction specific positive and negatives: e.g. drawves do not have cavalry, face penalties when growing a too strong faction, penalties / attrition from foreign corruption. Greenskins have less issues with such penalties but suffer from the fact that they need to be kept busy with raiding, besieging or fighting, otherwise suffer from attrition aswell.
Mixed:
-> Graphics in Warhammer are actually not that great. Many people complain about animations or missing details on units. But hey we still have modders, at least for units and details. I don't like the coloring of units
Another reason why I am not satisfied with the graphics, is that in battles you can hardly separate your units. I am still in the opinion that Rome 1 was the best game to achieve this. Either due it's easy unit colouring scheme and then because you did not lose too much details when zooming out.
Warhammer suffers from an effect that people in forums describe as black ant effect, and if you look at some screenshots you will get the point quick enough. For the dwarves it is actually hard to separate your units from each other even when zoomed in.
-> Sieges: Siege maps look beautiful and are filled with awesome details, hence they become repetitive. Imho all changes made like 2 usable rows on the walls, assault mode (you cannot attack from several sides), removal of torches (hehe) come handy to support or conceal weaknesses of the AI. In siege battles just in my opinion, the AI could have been a bit more reactive and aggressive as it has quite nothing to lose. Often enough you find powerful troops like shock cavalry sitting inside the town while your units pass the streets just in front of them.
Con's:
-> Buildings follow the same scheme as in Rome 2. Too less options and bland imho.
-> no naval battles
-> no family tree
-> no worldwide seasons but region based
-> no sandals /sarcasm
-> Unit sounds and general speeches are not localized
-> Encyclopedia: this one is still useless imho, and could change the state of being so, if CA would finally integrate a context based help. If you right click on a unit or building it should open the regarding article instead your ending up in a cumbersome webpage, have to select your faction every time again etc etc. It cannot be so hard CA to hand over variables to this external process. How about using trigger files if not possible otherways?! At least it is no "slow pedia" anymore like in Rome 2.
-> Agents: They are pretty cumbersome at all: Even with an according mod it is near to impossible to have a chance to kill other agents and the fact that the Chaos events will spawn agents corrupting your back lands and so the public order is another thing that is just nasty while it feels more like a burden than a mechanic. If agents could be blocked more efficiently or assassinated the same way they would be a great aid. Most of the time I end up using their passive skills for a region. There are also some weird mechanics. While an agent can remove Vampire and Chaos corruption in foreign regions, it cannot do the same for your own.
-> Chaos and Vampire corruption are basically a good idea and addition, but the removal of both of them is too slow in my opinion. I would not want to wait literally 100 turns to remove other influences, plus buildings for dwarves’ costs loads of money with only minor effects as well.
-> Diplomacy must have been implemented with a mindset of cruelty by the developers or with simply too less balancing and passion. I really hope this gets fixed either by modders or CA.
Me playing as dwarves and do not have even good relations to tribes of my own, nor having one freaking trade route nor I can make decisive deals. In our coop campaign, the sword seems to be the only option of diplomacy. I would have wished much more here. The main issue seems to be faction based disgrace and a to narrow minded AI. As an example: If the Empire has no negative feelings about me and I am offering a trade agreement to them where I would gain +330 gold a turn and them +1100 gold a turn, while chances of success are declared as moderate, why does the AI decline this worthy deal, even then when I am adding up gold to change their minds? I don’t get it.
Conclusion
26 bucks paid for Warhammer including the playable Chaos faction turned out as a great deal for me. I’ve spent 31 hours so far in this coop campaign on normal difficulty, which does not appear too easy. Most of all as the battle AI is really good regardless.
I have no tie to the Warhammer universe at all, so please don’t ask me about typical TWC things like realism, historical accuracy and immersion. Subjectively, all feels about right. The few big drawbacks I see in Warhammer are those described in the con’s, and I really hope for a patch or more to address them.
Hope this is not blasphemy for Warhammer fans: Playing Warhammer feels a bit like playing Medieval 2 with Third Age mod based with new graphics and enough gameplay and performance improvements and changes.
Given the fact that I’ve intentionally bought to the game for testing and benchmarking only, and from the start declined the setting would inspire me at all, you might have noticed that I’ve got infected by this latest iteration of Total War.
If you get inspired by fantasy worlds, if you can get it at a good price and don’t mind a pressure of DLC spam in future, you can have a lots of fun playing Warhammer.
Post campaign impression and overall rating
Now that I have finished the first coop campaign I am not so sure about the replayability of Warhammer, at least not in a coop campaign on the same difficulty. Here is the summary.
Warhammer is a great game, performant and overall stable (6 crashes with no impact due proper autosaves, kudos to CA here). It made a lot of fun to play except the easy late game.
When I would be ask to rate Warhammer on a scale from 0 to 10, I would give it a fair 7 so just slightly worse one compared to the majority of users on Steam and metacritics.
al Qamar's review on Warhammer (multiplayer coop campaign - completed campaign)
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Also thanks for using my combat mod 
Originally Posted by alQamar
