Warhammer III announced.

[Steph]

Meet Daniel!

[Alwyn]

Thanks Steph!

I like the sound of the diplomacy changes, with the ability of allies to ask each other to do specific things (like protect cities). Region trading could lead to some interesting results, I wonder how smart the AI will be with this (I remember players exploiting this feature in Empire Total War).

The outpost system sounds like a lot of fun, I look forward to trying combinations of my units and units from other factions.

The different designs of settlements sound like an improvement too.

Wow, Daniel looks cool!

[Steph]

About region trading, there are constraints, like it should be adjacent to his territory, or it should already have one region in the province. I'm not sure of the details yet, but it seems the goal is more to consolidate provinces that abusive growth

[Narf]

Thanks for the update, this makes me hungry for its release!

[Steph]

Some more information about the Chaos Realms.

From time to time, rifts appear on the campaign map. Each rift generates a lot of chaos corruption associated to a specific god. You can go there, and close the rift, use it to teleport to another rift, or... enter one of the Chaos Realm.

Once there, you can move your amry, heal it in some specific spots, change stance (including encampment), but the important point is to reach some areas tied to the scenario, win some battles there to harvest a soul.

Several factions can enter the same realm, and then it's a race to harvest the soul: the first one to get it close the realms, and all the other armies there are teleported back to the campaign map.

It is not possible to settle in the Chaos Realm, just visit it for a few turns to try harvesting these souls.

For the battles there, the Wind of Magic are unlimited, they will always refill. And you have a kind of "wheel of fortune", randomly selecting a wind with a random strong effect you can unlock after casting enough spell. Once done, the wheel turn agains for a new wind and effect.

[Alwyn]

The rift and Chaos Realm mechanics sound interesting, I like the idea of a race to harvest a soul (or maybe to close the rift before someone else can get the soul).

It sounds like managing your economy will be important in Warhammer III, if you're sending an army into rifts while keeping enough armies on the campaign map to defend and expand your territory.

[Edit to add] Zerkovich's video demonstrating ten new mechanics looks good.

[Dumanthis]

8 player multiplayer campaign!!!!

[Steph]

And simultaneous turns! That's a big step forward, and a big surprise. Also, there are several campaigns. Not big changes or mechanism differences like Vortex vs ME, it's more a focus on a specific regions, with a more advanced start, where you have some settlements with building already in place, LL with already a few ranks and a bigger army. One focused on Cathay, once focused on Kislev. This is to propose shorter campaigns, with a quicker start, if you want to play with friends but have less time to go to the thick of it.

There is also a new "domination" mod for multiplayers. Each player set up two armies. A smaller one, available at start, and a reinforcement army. You have control points on the map, which you have to capture and hold to generate points, and reinforcement spawnpoints. You gain a kind of currency during the battle, which you can use to summon units from your reinforcement army, and have it spawn at these spawn points.

[Alwyn]

That's cool - up to 8-player campaigns, being able to play in teams (with the option of allocating units to friends in battles) and simultaneous turns if you want them.

I'm intrigued by the more focused campaign maps and how they'll work in multiplayer. Presumably smaller maps work well because you can finish the multi-player campaign faster. I wonder if there's any chance that they'll upgrade the old mini-campaigns such as the Season of Revelation (the Wood Elves mini-campaign from the Realm of the Wood Elves DLC) so that they could be similar to these Warhammer III focused campaigns, suitable for multiplayer?

[Steph]

It was already possible to give units to friend in battle in Warhammer 2

I highly doubt they will upgrade older maps. The multi players campaign all seem to be based on the WH3 campaign map, but focused on some specific part, probably a lot easier to maintain. I don't think CA would spend the resources needed to completly update an old map, and not focused on the new core races.

[Lord Baal]

So... wego turns... I had a infraction in my profile due a heated argument a few years back because several people were mad about me suggesting that for Total War....

[Alwyn]

Yes, after I posted above, I remembered that players could give units to friends in battle in multiplayer campaigns in Shogun 2, so that part's not new! I imagine you're right about updating the older maps; I found a comment that CA said in a stream that it would be too expensive to port the Season of Revelation mini-campaign from Warhammer to Warhammer II - if that was too expensive, it's not likely that they'll add it to Warhammer III.

I wonder if 8-player multiplayer will lead to more tournaments being shown on YouTube, with commentary from players and spectators about the strategies used. I imagine it would be interesting to see an 8-player game in which players were free to form (and break) alliances in the ways that we normally do in Total War campaigns - like playing Risk or Diplomacy with a group of friends, or like the 10-player strategy game matches in Iain M Banks' book The Player of Games.

Lord Baal, for what it's worth, I think simultaneous turns are worth trying. Obviously, they included an option not to have simultaneous turns, so people who don't like the idea aren't forced to use it.

[Steph]

yes, it's an option.

And simultaneous turns (for the players, it works as usual for the AI) are really simultaneous : if you move an army, an other player can move its own to escape or intercept apparently. Which should be tricky if you have many armies to keep track off.
So it's not "every one give blind orders, then hit end turn and wait to see what the others did".
And in the campagin setup, you can chose to have teams, coop or free for all, so it seems to be rather diverse.

[Steph]

Reviews are coming... With some negative aspects

If I sum up the issues there seems to be:

- Bug in melee, bugs in Siege with units behaving strangely (the AI doesn't know what to do and is sometime kind of moving back andf forth, units on wall, don't shoot). Can be fixed by CA with patches. I remember Rome 2 was aslo very buggy at launch... Let's hop they will react quickly

- Cartoony graphics: I have to play to give a better opinion, but it seems the good thing is the map is easier to read. And maybe it's possible to mod it a little. So not big concern

- Missing units, or not as good as WH2 is now: also not a bit issue. WH2 was improved with DLC, new LL, new units, new mechanism... WH3 is at the beginning, I was expecting that. If CA delivers good quality DLC "soon", WH3 has the opportunity to quickly get better than WH2. Beside, mods can also help. So again not a big concern.

- Copy/paste recoloured units : can be fixed by DLC or mods, not an issue IMO.

- Sieges issues (AI, deployable defenses): Need some patch to fix AI or bugs. And for the deployable defense, etc, some form of modding to adjust to own taste may help. Moderatly concerned

- Narrative / campaign is a bit weak. The rifts are annoying because they still happen every 5 turns, even after beating the campaign, spawning endless Chaos. I was not expecting to focus much on that, same as Vortex. Maybe some issues (like endless rifts) can also be modded, to make it more rewarding or less frequent? Moderarly concerned.

- The real big concern I have is "how good will the combined map be?" I have a lot of expectation with that. I hope that we can still get to the Realm of Chaos, it would be a waste to have it only in campaign. Missing the Vortex in ME is not a big deal, because except for one final battle, you don't miss much: some occasionnal invading army? A few cutscene? But for game 3, not being able to enter the realm of chaos at all, and so missing all the new battle landscape, would be disappointing. So I hope we still have some rift to go there occasionnally, and also to teleport on a large combined map.

So I can understand some people may want to wait a bit to get the game, like wait for the combined map, or a few patches and DLC, I personnally want to get it as soon as possible.

For two reasons

1) avoid doing the same as Game 2. I waited too long, didn't try the new LL as soon as they were available. And so I think I did not explored the game fully. For game 3 I want to experience all. And play each LL once. Even if it's then to decide I don't enjoy some of them and won't play them again.

2) I want to port my mod, but not always run behind updates and DLC... So start as soon as possible, in parallel with playing the game. So when the flaws are corrected, the DLC are out, the mod is playable. So even if most races are not playable at launch, I can start moddign Cathay/ Kislev for example, so they are done when the other races are available and I can port them from my game 2 mod.

I will give more feedback hopefully tomorrow: the game can be downloaded today, I hope it's still possible to have a look the pack with RPFM and see a bit how it's organized, and what could the modding possibilities be.

And more this week end / early next week, I have two days off Thursday / Friday to try it for myself.

[Steph]

Pre load finished, 65.3 Gb in 10 minutes. Waiting for Thursay 9 am to play it

[Anna_Gein]

How the hell could there be so many, fundamentals, bug for a game which is in spirit, if not in practice, the third version of the same game aka TW Wharhammer I ?

I don't mind if it has a rocky start anyway as I did not plan to get it on release. I did like Warhammer I when I finally got into it and I liked Warhammer II but the later was already a tad too much on the high fantasy domain. I like the Warhammer Universe as much as any gamer but there is only the Human Empire I find genuinely interesting. And the dark elves for the lolz as they are so much caricatural. I don't find the any factions featured in Warhammer III remotely interesting.

The narrative stuff seems dubious at best if not annoying like the Vortex spawning armies were in Warhammer II. I don't really like the artistic direction like the look of Kislev. And some of the design choices appear to me as the final death spell to the TW formula. I am thinking especially about this recruitable reinforcements during battle stuff.

Sorry, I did not want to be negative. I guess there is not a thousand way to express why you don't buy on release date the new iteration of a Franchise you once loved dearly.

[Dumanthis]

Just finished the prologue, really loving it . Might be the best prologue/tutorial for a total war game so far. Going to start a proper campaign soon (Haven't decided yet which faction to play the first). Haven't faced any bugs whatsoever so far, maybe some yanky animations but nothing game breaking. It seems many negative reviews are complaining about optimisation issue but luckily have not had any on my end

[Steph]

No real bug either the game is running smoothly, and I finished the prologue. Really nicely done.

I have started modding the game, to reduce the size of lord/hero, and remove the LOD. This seems to be working.
But the textures have been changed, so I'm afraid porting my full regional recruitment mod maybe a kind of nightmare...

Also, I had a look at the datafiles, with region and provinces.... Some are named "combi", and it's... IMMORTAL EMPIRE.

It is very likely the map will be like that



From the list of province, regions:
- Full Empire, Bretonnia, Norsca, Tilea, etc as in Mortal Empire
- Full Southlands and Lustria as in Vortex (provinces are a bit reworked)
- Naggaroth as in Vortex, except the North West part (a few region missing)
- Ulthuan kind of mix between Vortex and Mortal Empire (for example, 5 regions for Yvresse, but still 2 for Caledor)

And we have full Cathay! And also Southern Chaos Waste, and Ind/Khuresh possibly, although there are no region there them, probably place holder for future DLC (same as the Darklands was at the start of Mortal Empire)

[Alwyn]

It's running smoothly here too. I'm enjoying the prologue, it seems like a great introduction to Warhammer III's mechanics and units (I haven't played the main campaign yet.)

Thanks for the preview of the Immortal Empires map, it looks like it will be an amazing campaign. Good luck with your modding Steph!

Has anyone managed to use FRAPS with Warhammer III? I use it mainly to take screenshots for AARs (so this isn't about seeing the fps). FRAPS seems to work with Warhammer II but not III (unless I'm missing something, which is always possible).

[Abdülmecid I]

Nice map, Steph! CA has stated that the region list is obsolete, but I imagine the final version will be similar to that design with some minor tweaks. As for Ind and Khuresh, CA also confirmed that there are now plans for them and that they are extremely unlikely to be added to the game. In my opinion, they will probably serve as a ''dumping ground'' for the remaining legendary lords. Similarly to Mortal Empires, CA will probably try to evenly distribute them across the map, so locating some of them in the south-eastern corner seems ideal for balancing purposes.