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[Mech#4]

It's not that common of an occurance and even when you ask the A.I. to attack a certain army or location they don't often follow through, even if I've got an army there to support them.

I have had some really neat battles as the Von Carsteins fighting alongside Hochland troops against Chaos. Imagining what the empire soldiers must be thinking when they're marching next to a Strigoi Ghoul King and his army of ghouls is very entertaining.

I had another battle as the Wood Elves where I aided the dwarfs in recapturing one of their holds from the greenskins. Some nice images of Wardancers fighting alongside Slayers.


I find the diplomacy rather reliable, as long I keep in mind a few things. Namely don't accept defensive/military alliances or military access if the A.I. asks for them and keep your reliability rating as high as possible by not breaking agreements just after you make them.

I've found the A.I. tends to ask for defensive alliances with you if they're looking to go to war and need your involvement to make up the power difference. Getting dragged into wars because I accepted defensive alliances or losing reliability in diplomacy because you have to break your agreement with one side is a no win situation unless you're powerful enough to deal with them.
In my current game as the Von Carsteins, the Vampire Counts and Mousillon keep asking me to break my non-aggression pact with Bretonnia. Mousillon ended up going to war with Bretonnia but was stomped so accepted my Confederation offer giving me their territory and keeping myself friendly with Bretonnia.
Bretonnia may end up going to war with me, probably because of the negative affects of the Vampiric corruption that is now spreading more strongly from Mousillon (due to research).

Having a defensive alliance with Bretonnia and the Empire, while gaining positive relations with both of them, ends up losing you reliability if they go to war as you have to choose one of them or drop both alliances. Better to keep relations at trade level (Which is hard enough to gain unless you have a lot of trade resources).

Also, if the A.I. asks you for peace, you can usually extort a fair amount of gold from them (~2000) in exchange for peace even if you haven't actually fought since they might've gone to war with another faction in the meantime. Again one of the dwarf factions near Athel Loren I was able to gain about 6000 gold from since they went to war with me, didn't like the power difference and wanted peace again soon after.

There's still cases of some factions declaring wars out of nowhere. Usually this for me is various Dwarf factions and I brush that off as them being forced to due to a grudge.

[Majestic7]

Are aspiring champions worth using for Chaos? The unit size seems to be pretty small (16) and the stats aren't that great. I can see how vanguard deploying heavy infantry might be useful though, especially when I don't have any cavalry (yet) other than the two starting marauder ponies.

[umiman]

Are aspiring champions worth using for Chaos? The unit size seems to be pretty small (16) and the stats aren't that great. I can see how vanguard deploying heavy infantry might be useful though, especially when I don't have any cavalry (yet) other than the two starting marauder ponies.

Aspiring Champions are super strong. Get them.

They're immune to knockback and every single one of them attacks in AOE like a hero unit. Not to mention they do magic damage.

They're basically Trolls except with leadership. And they buff the morale of all your other units.

CA introduced these guys to give Chaos something more cost effective for skirmish battles. In the campaign, they're there to give you more killing power in the early / mid game.

[Mech#4]

I haven't used them too much, mostly because I haven't played much of the Warriors of Chaos since they were added.

The lower stats would be offset, I believe, by their AOE attacks. The times I have used them I've deployed them just behind the front line of my infantry so they can charge into the melee without being charged themselves. I don't really see the use of their vanguard deployment unless you want to hide them in a forest and flank that way. I treat them much as I treat trolls, chaos spawn and the like. I think they have encourage (like longbeards) which is useful to put them near other infantry.

[umiman]

So here's the Total War team status report: https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/192834/what-the-teams-are-working-on-17-03-2017/p1?new=1

Basically,

1. They might release more DLC for the current Total War Warhammer
2. Nothing new about Warhammer 2
3. They're looking into releasing DLC or a sequel to Attila or Rome 2.
4. I guarantee you from this wording:

The game retains the same strong focus on character design that infused previous major releases, with the key personalities of the period in particular being an early priority for us now; as such there are some vibrant and striking renders plastered around the studio, with eye-catching combat animations garnering some serious attention too.

The next historical Total War will be Three Kingdoms Total War. It has to be. There really aren't a lot of historical periods of great battle where there are a lot of "key personalities" who are "vibrant" with melee combat.

They've already done the Sengoku Jidai. Charlemagne, Alexander, Rome, and all the pre-middle ages have been done. Anything involving the Medieval era will just be Medieval 2 and there aren't that many key personalities of that period that require strong character design. I mean, who gives a shit if King Henry VIII has 300 polygons for his massive dong.

There's nothing left. It has to be China. They could do something strange and have I dunno.... the Japanese conquests of Manchuria, which would be fairly interesting since it would involve Yi Sun-sin. But that would be too small in scope for a Total War game and I bet almost no one would know what that conflict even involved (it's pretty epic though).

C'mon, please be China!!!!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Just kidding, we all know it'll be Total War: SO NO CHI NO SADAME JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOJO!!!!!!

[Teneb]

I suppose they could also make a Total War about the rise of Islam, though it would probably fit best as a charlemagne-like expansion to Attila. Though they'd have to make it after Muhammad is gone.

But yeah, Three Kingdoms China would be great.

[Mech#4]

I'd like to get peoples thoughts on something I've found in the game.

In large battles, (40 plus units), the A.I. tends to bring reinforcing units into battle by charging them from the map edge into melee in a stream, rather than forming up into battlelines. This rather removes tatical choices and becomes more about weight of numbers.

Have other people found this? How do you deal with controlling 40+ units on the battlefield, especially when the armies arrive bit by bit rather than as one whole? If this is an issue, how would you change things (other than "Improve the A.I.)?

[umiman]

I'd like to get peoples thoughts on something I've found in the game.

In large battles, (40 plus units), the A.I. tends to bring reinforcing units into battle by charging them from the map edge into melee in a stream, rather than forming up into battlelines. This rather removes tatical choices and becomes more about weight of numbers.

Have other people found this? How do you deal with controlling 40+ units on the battlefield, especially when the armies arrive bit by bit rather than as one whole? If this is an issue, how would you change things (other than "Improve the A.I.)?

As far as I'm aware, it's been like this since Medieval 2. As in, even before they allowed more than 20 unit cards per army. Reinforcements always came in one by one unless they were controlled by a completely separate faction.

You can't change this either. It's just how it is.

[Tack]

Medieval 3

FTFY

But also yes would be so keen for a three kingdoms TW.

[Majestic7]

Wouldn't Three Kingdoms be a bit boring regarding unit variety? That was the main rub in Shogun and Empire for me, despite both being good games. (Okay, Empire was bad at launch, but patches made it fun artillery slaughter simulator.)

[Tack]

I actually really liked the samey units in Shogun.
IMO it allowed for a lot more tactical thought instead of playing the meta.

[Retropunch]

Wouldn't Three Kingdoms be a bit boring regarding unit variety? That was the main rub in Shogun and Empire for me, despite both being good games. (Okay, Empire was bad at launch, but patches made it fun artillery slaughter simulator.)

Kinda agree with this - the main reason I love TW: Warhammer is due to how different the units are. In previous TWs (especially shogun) I felt like units were basically carbon copies with a few stat changes. I'm sure if you were into that time period they'd seem different, but they don't have nearly the same variety as Warhammer.

That being said, I get Tack's point on that it lessens the tactical thought - TW:W is basically rock paper scissors (as all combat boils down to really) but in a pretty black and white way. I'd prefer a bit more nuance, but hopefully they can combine the two somehow.

I'm not big into the Three Kingdoms time frame myself, and I don't know how popular it would be for general western mass consumption, but I'd be interested to see how they tackle it!

[Tack]

I'd say Shogun was rock paper scissors - Archers, Cavalry, Spears, Swords. Everything else is shock or support.
TW:W is 'Vampire counts win every tournament' and then 'wood elves win every tournament', until the next flavor of the week hits meta.


Caveat incl. I don't play online all that often so it doesn't affect me, and crazy balance issues are a side-effect of creative race diversity (as evidenced in the original warhammer)
But I definitely feel as though the simplicity has its place, and is definitely a refreshing change now and again.


As for Three Kingdoms lore- If I'm weeb enough to enjoy Shogun, I could be cheeb enough to enjoy Emperor.

[Retropunch]

I'd say Shogun was rock paper scissors - Archers, Cavalry, Spears, Swords. Everything else is shock or support.
TW:W is 'Vampire counts win every tournament' and then 'wood elves win every tournament', until the next flavor of the week hits meta.


Caveat incl. I don't play online all that often so it doesn't affect me, and crazy balance issues are a side-effect of creative race diversity (as evidenced in the original warhammer)
But I definitely feel as though the simplicity has its place, and is definitely a refreshing change now and again.


As for Three Kingdoms lore- If I'm weeb enough to enjoy Shogun, I could be cheeb enough to enjoy Emperor.

Yeah I don't do competitive online with it or anything, so the meta doesn't really affect me at all. I had much better awesome tactical single player moments in TW:W than I did in previous ones because of how crazy the units are - shogun was sometimes the equivalent of trench warfare for me.

I definitely enjoyed the Shogun lore, but I think it's because the whole 'stylised Japanese history' of ninjas and geishas and Japanese warlords with crazy face masks is pretty sort of 'popular culture', whereas I'd be hard pressed to tell you much about the Three Kingdoms lore and I lived in China for a while.

Not saying it's not a cool historical time, just that I don't know if it's mainstream enough for them these days. Shogun was released at a time when games didn't need to be as mass consumable as well, so I don't know if they'll take the risk. I'd be happy if they did though.

[umiman]

I'm a bit of a three kingdoms wackjob and general history nut so I can give some insight here.

But yeah, unit wise ancient China will probably have just the standard variety of units. Though I don't think it'll be any different from Rome 2 though. Except with shittonnes more crossbows.

Warfare in 220AD China involved almost entirely peasant levies led by small bands of trained fighters. The generals would usually lead these peasant levies by example from the front and the side with the more... "Valiant" general would be able to motivate his band of rabble to sweep the enemy from the field.

This is why there were so many duels during that time period. Because while there might have been 70,000 men in the battle (or 1,400,000 if you believe the Three Kingdoms book), only a few hundred would have been trained fighters. If let's say, Xu Huang defeated Guan Yu in melee combat, the rest of his peasants would have no motivation to fight.

That being said, there are a lot of exceptions to this and ancient Chinese warfare did had some differences from others.

Chief among them all is the fact that the ancient Chinese made extensive use of the crossbow. Even the repeating crossbow got some limited use. This was more than one thousand years before Europe started doing so.

China would equip practically all their levies with crossbows and spears. This is one reason why they had some massive levies to begin with as it's significantly easier to train a peasant to pull a trigger compared to using a spear wall or firing an arrow.

Additionally, if you believe the stuff that's in the Three Kingdoms book, there were some zany units like guys who only carried massive giant shield to form walls in combat, flamethrower tanks (lol zhuge Liang nonsense), chariots with spiked logs tied in between them, etc.

As far as I'm aware, other than the peasants, they did have heavy cavalry of multiple types (this was apparently the distinguishing power of the northern Chinese, think semi-mongols on one hand and classic heavy cavalry from places like modern day Beijing), heavy armored infantry (Cao Cao and the state of Wei really loved these, along with the heavy cavalry), and chariots. Chariots were considered superweapons back in those days.

As for artillery, they really only used small ballista and really rudimentary catapults (like those in shogun 2,). They did have siege towers of differing sorts though.

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tl;dr:

Units in China 220 AD:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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With all that being said, I would like to think that a Total War Three Kingdoms shouldn't involve the units way too much, strange as that sounds. The focus on that timeperiod was mostly on the generals and leaders because the soldiers were all peasants more or less.

That's why a real Three Kingdoms Total War would be about the stories about your individual generals. They'd be the ones charging into battle head first. They'd be the one slaying the enemy general and causing the enemy to rout. It'd be a story about them, their betrayals, loyalties, and individuality. The soldiers and numbers don't really matter because they're all peasants and will flee at the first sign of their impending defeat.

So maybe instead of having a large variety of units, Total War Three Kingdoms would instead have a roster like Shogun 2, but have hundreds of different individual generals and commanders instead.

But at the end of the day, it's just my fantasy.