Im kinda disappointed that there are only 4 factions to start.
Well, if it's anything like their other recent games, there'll be two or three sub factions to each faction.
I can kinda see how that would work. The factions would be the races, while the sub-factions would be their actual factions. So humans would have the Empire, Bretonnia, etc; the elves would have High-, Dark-, and Wood elves; and so on.
That seems like it would work quite well, actually.
Could possibly even go a level deeper, with Humans being Middenheimer, Marienburgers, etc. Or even the various knightly orders. Tilea/Estalia are also options.
High Elves might be based on city-state as well. DEs and WEs sort of have to be actual races, not subraces, because they're very different. I have no idea how you'd split them up (fey or elf majority for WE? Khaine/Slaneeshi/Corsair/Normal for DE?)
O+G would probably be divided more along the lines of subraces rather than location (although location does feature into it a bit). NG, Goblin, Orc, Savage Orcs and Wolf Riders (or eastern hodgepodge). All with various resources and ways of doing things.
Will you join the Waaaggghhh! from an Orc leader from miles away with your gobbo horde? Does the Reik really care what happens to the Moot, unless ordered to by the Emperor himself?
There's lots of ways they can go with DLC whoring. If they do it right, it could be good. Big, basic Races at launch, then more different races/subraces, with lots of flavour units later on as DLC.
I'd prefer big races with options for more specific factions as an all-in-one package (ie: Buy DE. You get everything dark and elvy, so you're really buying 4 different factions. Normal faction (think AB race), then each specific subfaction, with them all being different enough to be worthwhile looking at, and gaining different bonuses and units for certain things. Corsairs do different things with slaves than Slaneeshi, but rule the seas instead of the chaos magicks, whereas Normal DE might not have the intrigue and assassination abilities of Khainite elves, but they do get a wide range of troop types to choose from).
So humans DLC would come with 5-8 different city-state variants or subfactions, just because the main race was already in the game. Tilea and Estalia aren't that different to the Empire, so even 4 regionals and those two would make a good package. Same with orcs, dwarves, vamps and elves and their various army types/subfactions. Less hard work, just unit variations, costings/availability, some strategic options and a bit of iconography.
Whereas new races (ones that actually do take a lot of extra art work/design/modelling and gameplay features to include) come with the big, basic race, and 3-5 subfactions along with it so you can vary up your playstyle a bit and try new things with your favourite race. That still leaves plenty of DLC for them to sell, but gives a nice all-in-one purchase for the customer so they only have to pick up their favourite races, rather than 100 DLC micro packages or oddly bundled groups.
The only odd bundle that I'd accept is Bretonnia and WE/Fey, because of lore and the fact that it'd be hard to split them up otherwise. You could have Bretonnia normal/Knightly/commoner I guess, but it's a pretty small package (same with WE splits for Normal/WE/Fey playstyles). A little bit of crossover wouldn't be terrible between them anyway, just to push the fluff a bit.
That's what I'm hoping for anyway. We'll see how it goes.
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Topic: Total War: Warhammer! Now with 2! And 3! (Read 512712 times)