Nanman DLC announced.

[Basileos Leandros I]

As always, the UI team is doing a splendid job. Started with Thrones of Britannia I guess, the extra attention to periodic art is gorgeous. Love it big time.

However... this is no longer historical TW. And I'm afraid there will no longer be historical TWs.

[Daruwind]

And what were people expecting? Attila was not such hit as Rome2 (no matter reasons like R2 launch ), ToB was the weakest TW so far (despite being okay) while Wh(1+2) mega success, while 3K is as well success for more romance mode and while Troy looks like initial great success (despite being paid by Epic)

No matter what excuses and pointing at bad luck for (for historical titles) CA we can have, the fantasy TWs are selling....selling like crazy for whatever lucky reasons (Epic, romance popularity in China, Wh popularity among old fans)

So any analytic will probably point to fantasy selling > historical right now. If I were CA higher up, decision if next should be Empire2/Medieval 3 or Tolkien....Tolkien would win every time just because it seems now as the best bet.

[Seether]

Can’t argue with that Daruwind, however I can add that perhaps many of those who want historical are the same people who have supported CA since the original Shogun (or Medieval or Rome) and, with CA quite clearly going straight fantasy from here out (they have even stopped supporting Records despite originally claiming the opposite), feel forgotten and betrayed. Just a thought.

[Sarkiss]

if they want to maximise the exposure and returns they would do well to push both historical and fantasy. they seem to have enough respurces for it (new studio, Epic). alternative is losing the 'old timers' - people like myself that have zero interest in WH and fantasy - and is a lose-lose for both the CA and the history players, who still form a chunk of their customers with many that followed the franchise from its earliest releases.

[zoner16]

Some gameplay videos:

CA Livestreams

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Gate Battles

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Serious Trivia

Great Book of Grudges

Standard Battles

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

MrSmartDonkeyLP

Zerkovich

Unit Showcase

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

PartyElite

Zerkovich

The flaming maces are apparently not on fire in Records mode, which is a rather strange choice of a bridge too far, but sure.

Impact damage is out of control for the war beasts, so we're probably going to mod that. Elephants are still pretty vulnerable to ranged units, so they do have a counter. Will have to test how powerful tigers are in practice.

Honestly, with the exception of the tigers, I'm not that upset with the roster. It's probably playing up the tribal aspect too much, but it's at least forcing a different style of battle gameplay, which has been a problem for the game for a while. It's really just the tigers that bother me. They're essentially stronger war dogs, they're apparently limited, and they don't change the game 'that' much, but my mind just recoils upon seeing them.

We got confirmation that Nanman can reform themselves to use Han units, and that Han and Nanman generals can be captured and employed by the other side, which lets each side field the others' units. That mostly just makes the Yellow Turbans the weird outlier who can't do that.

[Daruwind]

Can’t argue with that Daruwind, however I can add that perhaps many of those who want historical are the same people who have supported CA since the original Shogun (or Medieval or Rome) and, with CA quite clearly going straight fantasy from here out (they have even stopped supporting Records despite originally claiming the opposite), feel forgotten and betrayed. Just a thought.

Which I totally understand, I would love Empire 2 and new proper naval combat like nothing else. Well maybe even more than Med3

But then again, I´m probably outlier as I love both history and fantasy (Wh - love, Tolkien - love... ) heck I even enjoyed ToB....so only recent problem for me is Epic Troy.

Anyway. Tigers, Elephants, shamans, fire...the similar to Cyclops, Minotaurs and heroes in Troy....CA knows what is selling. I will just point to https://store.steampowered.com/app/2...War_Unit_Pack/
Snake Pot Ballista, Beehive Onager... Ok, Tigers are exactly the same borderline as always. But nice touch with no flaming maces in Record more and that Tigers are limited.

That being said, I think once we get to Empire 2/Med 3, it will again be quite toned down as there is simply not much option in such scenarios. I see much bigger issue with some Heroes in Troy. Hector resurrecting units or Sirens are in my eyes way worse than Tigers. :-)

[zoner16]

Shamans and mystic/religious units have been in Total War since Rome. Including them as a psychological/morale unit is one thing, actually giving them magic is another. It's really just about squaring the "can I believe this is happening?" circle.

CA needs things to put in trailers to get people who don't study the period hyped, which I understand. Total War has always had a spectacle angle about it, and hey, history had spectacle, sometimes even weaponized it. It's just something that needs to be prevented from running away with the game.

If every battle with the Nanman turns into "oh God, tigers..." I'm going to have a problem. If they end up being like the old flaming pigs, where I just get a bit of a chuckle out of it every once in a while, I'll be fine.

[PikeStance]

As always, the UI team is doing a splendid job. Started with Thrones of Britannia I guess, the extra attention to periodic art is gorgeous. Love it big time.

However... this is no longer historical TW. And I'm afraid there will no longer be historical TWs.

And what were people expecting? Attila was not such hit as Rome2 (no matter reasons like R2 launch ), ToB was the weakest TW so far (despite being okay) while Wh(1+2) mega success, while 3K is as well success for more romance mode and while Troy looks like initial great success (despite being paid by Epic)t.

The UIs are the best part.

Personally, I found ATW far better and more challenging than R2. R2 did have an interesting end game mechanic. From a tactical perspective, the tactics are all the same really. This is true in ToB as well. ToB had at least some interesting mechanic. It was a dumb marketing strategy to release that type of game when they did. I personally find their marketing and PR to be lacking for the past few years.

Hope springs eternal with every release, but the games became more gamey as they went. I felt like a frog in a pot being slowly to boil. I look around burned wondering how did this happen.
The next stage in tactical battles have already begun; Grand Tactician. Granted the ACW may not be everyone's cup of tea, but they are promising to move on to another period (Gunpowder, so we will finally get our Tactical fix. TW is going to become one of those titles that eople wonder what it could have been. Now, it will be lost in fantasy titles that is a dime a dozen. Once the fantasy people realize that CA do not develop anything new, they just shell game features and they never really develop anything interesting (innovative), the title will slowly decline like their historical titles did.

[Huberto]

TWR2 was traumatizing and a tipping point for CA. I had some optimism when they moved through Attila and it's solid campaign DLC; even when SAGA was announced I thought they were saying we want to do interesting scenarios with historical authenticity but I doubt those DLCs sold very well and at the end of the day they were simply finishing up business and preparing for a shift in setting to fantasy.

As Daruwind says, WH exceeded commercial expectations, and as I say it justified the streamline approach and took the series to an exceedingly comfortable place of focusing on unit artwork and small scale battles chock full of asymmetrical gimmicks (isn't that the rule of cool?). I will hand it to CA for the improvements to diplomacy in 3K. Beyond that though, there really isn't anything to hold me. The battles are five minute micro click fests. I've played Thrones enough. I can't get motivated to play Troy because of the heroes and it's just not my bronze age game at all. Nanman is a big FU "Keep Out, Romance Only!" I would rather uninstall than run into those tiger units unfortunately.

I'm not totally sure what I feel, angry? betrayed? It's more sad, about the wasted potential, but also the feeling of emptiness when you are brutally confronted and it's no longer possible to lie to yourself that what you loved is ever coming back. Those ridiculous dudes on elephants and tiger skins did that to me.

[zoner16]

Overview of map changes coming with the patch outside of the Nanman territories by SeriousTrivia (great channel):



Lots of fixes to commandery names, addition of settlement and county names so that you're no longer fighting the battle of "Chen - Farmland." Some other additions, such as Xiapi, Jiuzhen, and Liaodong, and some changing of commandery shapes and movement of resources.

Addition of passes. Most are historical, but Hulao Pass wouldn't be called that for quite some time. I believe it was called Xuanmen Pass during this era. It's also in the wrong place, but CA have acknowledged this and said they'll fix it on the next expansion patch. Jiameng Pass is also an anachronism of the Romance, based off the real Jianmen pass that stood between Hanzhong and the Sichuan basin where Jiang Wei historically made his final stand.

New impassable or difficult terrain around the mountains to make them more defensible, and shallows around Chang'an to prevent it from being attacked over and over from the river.

[Seether]

I like the name changes for specific settlements, however they need to fix the commandery names. Currently commanderies are a mix of commandery, city, and province names; with the new settlement names you can have Jingzhao commandery with Chang’an city, Henan commandery with Luoyang city, Wei commandery with Ye city, Shu commandery with Chengdu city, etc. I actually made a mod for TWTK that changed commandery names, but I pretty much abandoned it months ago when I gave up on the game.

[zoner16]

They've mostly fixed that. I didn't spot any remaining commanderies that were still named after cities or provinces, except for Luoyang, which is still called Luoyang, even though everything else got renamed.

There's some commanderies that are anachronistic or oddly shaped. For example, Xiangyang wasn't separated out into its own commandery until I think midway through the period, and while they've renamed Jianye into Danyang, it's still overly large.

[Seether]

Ok, I went through the entire video this time (instead of skimming) and am mostly pleased with the commandery renaming. Obviously Luoyang needs to get changed, but some others need to be looked at. Jiangyang, for example, was not a commandery until 221 when Liu Bei split up Jianwei commandery. Huainan... I'm pretty certain refers more so to the region (south of Huai River), but Jiujiang was the actual commandery - Huainan/Jiujiang history seems a bit muddled at times.

Although some of the more interesting choices CA made, like Jianning, Danyang, Xiapi and Lean, are exactly what I did in my TWTK mod.

[Fahnat]

This is looking more like a dynasty warriors game than a total war one.

[youneuoy]

Well, the totalwar seems to be over

[PikeStance]

True, it always had a 2nd or 3rd rate campaign aspect with a tactical aspect that went from innovative to hollywood arcade style. This ain't your daddy's total war. LOL

[Anna_Gein]

Do these DLCs actually sell ? The few TW players I know in real life ignore them completely. So do I.

Broadly speaking, the total war franchise is agonizing as far as my little personal circles goes. Witout putting the commercial success since R2, it feels like something has definitively broken down with TW whenever I ask to real life friends what they think about the latest TW game. And to make it clear, I am not asking history nerds (I happen to be that person among my friends). Rather I am asking people who don't are familiar with history and don't overly care about it.

Warhammer was a fun game and the favorite release since a long long time. This had less to do with fantasy & dragons but more to do with the fact that the original and some factions in Warhammer 2 are a no non-sense experience. There is a little bit of campaign management. Then some battles. That is pretty much all what you can ask in a TW. In comparison Attila, ToB, Three Kingdoms and Troy are full of BS and non-sense features which punish the player.

Also CA release way too much content lately. Imo they are burning their fanbase just like Ubisoft did with AC before they made a small pause between Syndicate and Origins.

[Abdülmecid I]

The price of the DLCs is so disproportionaly high, in comparison to their production cost, that they are probably guaranteed to generate a net gain, even if they fail commercially and don't match SEGA's expectations. From the Linked In profile of Stelios Avramidis, we know that the blood pack for Warhammer and the Wood Elves made respectively over 200% and 100% of net profit.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Mr. Avramidis* presents these figures as a total success, but there's a chance that he's hyping the results to promote his bio. Judging from the omission of the Beast Men and the general more lacklusture welcome they received from the community, we can deduce that Beast Men sold less, although that doesn't mean that the expenses surpassed the profits. In my opinion, most DLCs are probably profitable enough, except for the few glaring disappointments. For example, Beasts of War for Rome II was so much ridiculed in the Internet that one week after its release, CA was forced to release a couple of extra units (including warriors dressed as crocodiles) for free, but only for the owners of the DLC. That sounds to me as a typical attempt to strengthen the purchase numbers, after an underwhelming performance on release day. The same conclusion will probably apply for Eight Princes, but Nanman will probably achieve its goal.

The trailer looks much more spectacular, basically thanks to the flaming maces and domesticated tigers that has so much frustrated the history partisans. The truth is that the majority of the fanbase is nowadays asking for more fantasy and extraordinary content, not realism and accuracy. When Troy's "Behind the Myth" approach was announced, criticism was mainly directed against the lack of monsters, not the implementation of superhuman lords and the divine favour resource.

*I just noticed that the details over the sales have been removed from the page. They were still visible, when I created that thread approximately two weeks ago...

[zoner16]

Some interviews I think help illuminate various things:

https://www.pcgamesn.com/total-war-t...erview-preview



The references to variety and diversity are definitely something that the fanbase has been complaining about for a while. It's hard to shake the feeling that you're playing the same battles with different costumes in each campaign. Eight Princes was partly skewered on that complaint (as was Thrones), and I think it's something that's stuck with the developers as a mantra: "Make sure every content drop is different!"

It does make sense. With Total War DLC, you're usually not asking for new systems within the base campaign like Paradox. You'll get those with the free patch. You're asking people to pay to get another campaign entirely, rather than just replay on of the ones they already have. There has to be something of significantly unique and desirable enough to justify a purchase.

One of the Youtubers, I think Many A True Nerd, referenced Rome: Total War's unique and out there units as a big reason that game is still so fun, and I have a hard time disagreeing. I don't think my younger self would've bother playing Germania if it hadn't been for the fact that I thought the berserker-spin looked cool, and I barely cared that Egypt was out of date because I loved their chariots. In Warhammer, one of the big motivations for me to keep playing a campaign I'm already dominating is to unlock the endgame monsters/constructs/characters and have fun watching them go to work.

I don't necessarily think that the fanbase is demanding fantasy in everything (well, there are some that are), but I do worry that the amount of variation and spectacle that is being demanded is going to keep compelling CA to make detrimental concessions in everything they do out of fear of being perceived as "too much like the other thing." I'm reminded of the Rome 2 debacle that was intrinsically related to the push for "cinematic" experiences, with an absurd amount of choreography and post processing effects that had a horrible impact on gameplay and performance. This doesn't really feel any different, but the sacrifice here is historical grounding and balance.

Once they run out of well known legendary literary traditions to draw on (there aren't that many), what do they do next? Even Warhammer content creators want a Medieval 3, but that's not exactly backed by a fantastical epic that can be used as a sourcebook. Is there enough "spectacle" in medieval europe to drive sales, or is it now too mundane to exist on its own merits?

[PikeStance]

Do these DLCs actually sell ? The few TW players I know in real life ignore them completely. So do I.

Broadly speaking, the total war franchise is agonizing as far as my little personal circles goes. Witout putting the commercial success since R2, it feels like something has definitively broken down with TW whenever I ask to real life friends what they think about the latest TW game. And to make it clear, I am not asking history nerds (I happen to be that person among my friends). Rather I am asking people who don't are familiar with history and don't overly care about it.

Warhammer was a fun game and the favorite release since a long long time. This had less to do with fantasy & dragons but more to do with the fact that the original and some factions in Warhammer 2 are a no non-sense experience. There is a little bit of campaign management. Then some battles. That is pretty much all what you can ask in a TW. In comparison Attila, ToB, Three Kingdoms and Troy are full of BS and non-sense features which punish the player.

Also CA release way too much content lately. Imo they are burning their fanbase just like Ubisoft did with AC before they made a small pause between Syndicate and Origins.

I couldn't agree more! I have about an hour each evening to play if that (by the time I put my son to bed). One time I was so busy picking attributed and other incidentals that an hour into playing I haven't done anything. Mind you, I didn't think about anything. I literally just click on anything. I really didn't care because I think it should be random anyway. If there was a feature where you can actually automate it, I am on it. I don't mind managing my "empire" but micromanaging every person was tedious. R2 wasn't really much better sometimes.

The price of the DLCs is so disproportionaly high, in comparison to their production cost, that they are probably guaranteed to generate a net gain, even if they fail commercially and don't match SEGA's expectations. From the Linked In profile of Stelios Avramidis, we know that the blood pack for Warhammer and the Wood Elves made respectively over 200% and 100% of net profit.

Mr. Avramidis* presents these figures as a total success, but there's a chance that he's hyping the results to promote his bio. Judging from the omission of the Beast Men and the general more lacklusture welcome they received from the community, we can deduce that Beast Men sold less, although that doesn't mean that the expenses surpassed the profits. In my opinion, most DLCs are probably profitable enough, except for the few glaring disappointments. For example, Beasts of War for Rome II was so much ridiculed in the Internet that one week after its release, CA was forced to release a couple of extra units (including warriors dressed as crocodiles) for free, but only for the owners of the DLC. That sounds to me as a typical attempt to strengthen the purchase numbers, after an underwhelming performance on release day. The same conclusion will probably apply for Eight Princes, but Nanman will probably achieve its goal. .....

Personally, no DLC is ever worth its advertised price. I buy everything on sale. My wife will kill me if I did otherwise,..LOL

Some interviews I think help illuminate various things:....?

I do not have a problem with fantasy titles, but they seem to have merged fantasy with historical, but any fantasy in a game means fantasy. I was also irritated that I have been waiting for a China TW for quite some time given the history of China there are many time periods to base the game on. What we get is fantasy, not history. They really do not care about history anymore; just look at their reaction tot he complaints about women generals in R2.

Grand tactician gives me the real battle experience over TW's gamey arcade battles, and give me real campaign mechanic that is more realistic than the sill character building crap TW gives.