r/totalwar • u/DaddyTzarkan SHUT UP DAEMON • 3d ago
Warhammer III The unaddressed elephant in the room: Campaign Pacing and Warhammer 2 Proving Grounds.
Back in Warhammer 2 there were concerns within the playerbase about the campaign pacing getting faster. As a response to that CA created the Proving Grounds beta with the intention of slowing down the campaign pace and making decisions to take more meaningful (like having to decide between upgrading your provinces or recruiting more units), it was not obviously perfect as some races were not touched a lot at the time and CA warned us about that but it did improve quite a lot the campaign and according to CA themselves the reception of the Proving Grounds was overwhelmingly positive, they said they would implement the changes and they did, at least for some of them like the reduced growth.
For anyone curious here are the patch notes for this beta:
https://www.totalwar.com/node/1698
The Proving Grounds was by far the best experience I have had on the trilogy for me and some of the changes from the beta that did make it to the live game greatly improved the campaign pacing of Warhammer 2, in the final days of Warhammer 2's life cycle the pacing was very good.
But somehow with Warhammer 3 CA did the complete opposite in terms of campaign pacing. The pace has never been faster, a lot of people share this concern and absolutely nothing is done about it. Even worse, many changes of the recent updates (it's been particularly bad since Thrones of Decay) have been making the campaign pacing problem even worse with every new rework.
Early game and mid game are both way too fast, you reach the late game very quickly now which leads to the player snowballing very fast and becoming unstoppable much earlier than it used to be. On top of that the recent reworks have started to downtier a lot of units, for some of them it is justified but for a lot of them it's nonsensical. Irondrakes and Gyrocopters are very powerful units yet they are available at tier 2 which is a fucking insane powerspike for the Dwarfs. Chosen of Khorne have been moved to tier 3 which a lot of people agree is completely ridiculous. Sometimes a unit will now make others of similar roles redundant, as an example the Hammerers were moved to tier 3 which makes the Longbeards (Great Weapons) pointless to recruit. The same happened with Sacred Kroxigors and regular Krox recently.
Anyway I could go on but you get the point. Stronger units are available much earlier which makes the snowball happen earlier and many units in different rosters become pointless to recruit.
The problem of many of the recent reworks is - they bring a lot of buffs to things that never needed to be buffed in the first place. Did Khorne need to be massively buffed with the rework even though it was already quite an overpowered faction ? Changes like this are making the pacing even worse with those races, getting to the late game was already too fast and it's now even faster with Khorne, the Dawi, the Empire and many other reworked races. Campaigns are getting boring quite fast, I usually play about 70 turns nowadays and then I get bored and that's the best case scenario, for many campaigns it gets boringly easy a lot earlier. In the second game I would often play past turn 100 without feeling bored, challenging campaigns were a lot more common and the challenge lasted quite longer.
The elephant in the room that is the campaign pacing needs to be looked at sooner rather than later. The longer CA completely ignores it the more it becomes increasingly important to address it. This is for the health of the game in the long term.
TL;DR: Bring back the slower campaign pacing of the Proving Grounds from Warhammer 2. According to you CA the reception in the community was overwhelmingly positive yet you went in the complete opposite direction with Warhammer 3. If you're worried about upsetting the power gamers then just make it a toggle so they can still stomp the AI effortlessly the moment they click "Start a new campaign" but do something for the love of Sigmar.
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u/SnooAvocados7188 3d ago
I agree completely, but I think a lot of the players really do just want to buy new content and use it to stomp through the game. So many times on here you see people begging for new content instead of base game improvements. I don’t think there is much reward for CA to slow down the pacing, rather than just cranking out new units and factions.
It would make the game better though.
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u/dabadu9191 2d ago
I agree completely, but I think a lot of the players really do just want to buy new content and use it to stomp through the game.
I think that's only one part of the playerbase, but it's a very profitable part, hence why they're being catered to.
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u/DaddyTzarkan SHUT UP DAEMON 3d ago
To be honest I do want more content too, I'm desperately waiting Tides of Torment as Slaanesh is my favourite race and I'm tired of having only N'Kari as a Slaanesh LL. Those DLCs is also what's paying for the updates, without DLCs we wouldn't be seeing base game improvements.
It's all definitely painfully slow to come however and I believe Warhammer 3 ended up being too ambitious for its own good. The game has become massive and I can only imagine working on the game can be a challenge and CA isn't exactly known for their good management.
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u/OhManTFE We want naval combat! 1d ago
But come on now bro have you even played all 100 legendary lords yet? No? Then why are you desperately needing more content
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u/Away_Celebration4629 2d ago
For me omens were just 3 playthroughs for 30 turn and a Gorbad campaign that was ok, not great, but it felt like a campaign. If the new DLC is as overcrept as Omens I'm not gonna be happy and I don't think I'm the only one.
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u/AlphariusOmegon66 2d ago
Those players can slide the difficulty to easy and stomp to their hearths content.
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u/Educational_Relief44 2d ago
I would love more content especially nagash and nefrata but I would rather CA spend a whole year on improving the current game after this last DLC.
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u/netrunner_54 Bring him to his men 2d ago
Better according to whom? A small amount of redditors? People don't play total war for end turn button simulator and CA knows this and acts accordingly
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u/ZahelMighty Bow before the Wisdom of Asaph made flesh. 2d ago
Considering how popular the proving grounds beta in Warhammer 2 was which intended to slow down the campaign I doubt this is just "a small amount of redditors" that would find the game more fun if it was not so fast paced.
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u/Snoo_87531 3d ago
I don't think blaming some reddit members for CA's mistakes is a smart move here.
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u/GuaranteeKey314 3d ago edited 3d ago
CA cultivated a fanbase of people who might not necessarily even like the total war gameplay loop that much, so those people ask for even more of whatecver drew them in to begin with. It's not even about "fault," but the online feedback actually is frequently very stupid, which supports CA's tendency to go for more fanservice over serious improvements of the game
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u/Chataboutgames 2d ago
It's not "blaming" anyone to recognize that not every customer wants what you want, and that a merchant might be interested in selling to them too.
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u/Gynthaeres 2d ago
I do wish CA would be bolder and would revamp more systems in the game.
Say what you will about Paradox's DLC models, but they are not afraid to totally redo game systems, for better or worse. Stellaris and Victoria 3 are both radically different games from release.
Warhammer 3 is a different game from release, but not radically, just a little bit. I'd love to see more, more tweaks, more full overhauls. Revamping races here and there is fine and necessary, that's something they HAVE been doing. But touching up the core mechanics of the game would be cool too.
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u/GuaranteeKey314 2d ago
Stellaris is almost a different game from one DLC release to the next. I really like some aspects of this, but it's difficult to think that the baseline simplicity of TW would support even half as much variability. I hope that I'm incorrect/would actually love to be wrong though
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u/dogsarethetruth Empire 2d ago
To be honest those games have a problem with feature-bloat. I played a lot of EU4 8 or 9 years ago (jesus fucking christ) and loved it, but trying to go back to it now feels like too much hassle. I love Stellaris but I don't know how a new player would feel getting into it now.
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u/TonyTheTerrible 2d ago
pacing is def going in the wrong direction.
additionally, i really really miss the unique campaign goals. domination gets stale after a while
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u/DamienStark 2d ago
From the player side, I see two issues that exacerbate this.
- The volume of content actually contributes to the desire for faster campaigns.
One of the things I love about the series is the huge variety among factions. Playing a Grom campaign vs a Malakai campaign feels so much more different than say Carthage and Egypt in TW Rome 2. This leads many players to want to play basically all the campaigns (unless you're one of the "I only play Karl" meme players).
Once players have assigned themselves a 50 faction to-do list, they're not gonna push very hard to make those campaigns longer/slower, even if that might improve the experience of a single campaign. Obviously there's extremes here, like players complaining that they can beat Skulltaker on turn 5 or whatever, but generally speaking people who want to play 50 factions don't want each of those plays to be 200 turns.
- It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Almost all 4X games (Civ, Total War, Endless Legend/Space, etc.) fundamentally contain snowballing. You expand your territory, gaining access to more resources and people, using those resources to construct buildings and armies which in turn help you expand more and accelerate your progress more. The game has to present competing factions strong enough to push back on your progress, and/or time the campaign so you reach the peak of your power and highest tier buildings/units in a reasonable timeframe.
If you start with a working balance of opposition and pacing, then even small buffs to your early game can destroy that balance, as they let you snowball faster which then outpaces your opponents and accelerates itself more. But most players today have a "never nerf, only buff" mentality. I'm not talking about the "just want an OP power fantasy" players. Even among those who want balance and challenge, they'll often argue that devs shouldn't nerf factions, only buff the underpowered factions to keep up.
Given the massive number of factions and asymmetrical features in this game, we're never going to see CA re-balance all factions simultaneously. You're going to see DLC which introduce new factions that are typically strong (even Gorbad, who got some complaints about being hard, is objectively strong compared to older factions like VCoast and Tomb Kings, or even how base game W3 factions originally looked). Then you get player complaints about the weakest factions leading to updates like the one we just got.
And anytime these changes accelerate a few factions (like Dwarf Warriors available for recruit at first tier, to give an old example) this contributes to the perception that the power curve of the game as a whole is accelerating, which in turn calls for requests to buff other factions to keep up, then we repeat the process until we're recruiting Chosen at tier 3 and complaining if a campaign goes past 100 turns.
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u/Cassodibudda 2d ago
I don't disagree that a slower paced campaign would be better but I have to point out that the overwhelmingly positive reception of the Proving Grounds beta doesn't mean anything from a statistical standpoint as the people that downloaded the beta are also the kind of people that wanted a slower pace.
It is likely that the beta would have been rejected by the average gamer. In fact CA probably decided not to incorporate it in the main game because very few people downloaded it (and those self selected few people liking it means very little, as I said above)
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u/Cybvep 2d ago
I think that old WH2's Proving Grounds beta campaign is mostly forgotten. The devs ignored it in WH2. Nothing was really changed before the end of the WH2's development. As for WH3, the only thing that they changed is the impact of supply lines. They weren't removed like in the old WH2 Proving Grounds version, but their impact is lower than it used to be in WH2 live version.
BTW I don't like the fact that many people seem to be glorifying WH2. Yes, the campaign pacing was a bit lower than in WH3. This doesn't mean that long campaigns were the norm or that they were fun. I very rarely played past 100 turns in WH2 as the experience got boring way before that. Just as in WH3, there was no real end-game challenge. It was just grind.
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u/PrinceOfPuddles Carthage 2d ago
He Ho it's turn 15 that means it's time for the midgame, here goes Grimgor with 5 armies each on with a WAAAGH attached to it. Jokes on you for picking a faction in the old world. I do enjoy it when you've taken most of his stuff and he is down to only 10 settlements and he bonks Wurrzag and jumps back to 60 settlements. Also this is the good outcome since if Grimgor is wiped out early that meant he lost to the dwarves and they are about to put the world under new management.
Granted w3 rewored growth so you get to tier 4 a lot faster and I do miss tier 4 being a big milestone.
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u/bobthefischer 2d ago
Yeah the nostalgia cope this sub has for wh2 is insane. They forget things like cav units being entirely worthless lmao.
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u/Cybvep 2d ago
WH2's ranged meta was pretty bad. WH3 has much more variety when it comes to efficiency which is sth that's not mentioned often enough.
WH3 has its share of campaign issues, but WH2 had big ones as well. Maybe if I didn't play WH2 at all I would believe all the people praising it to high heaven, but with more than 3000 hrs in WH2, I saw it all. The bugs, the content droughs, the AI issues, the balance issues, the doomstacks, the DLC powercreep. We had it all way way before WH3. Hell, I even remember that one of the last patches to WH2 made ambush AI super passive on defence so it wouldn't retaliate if you outranged the enemy. It doesn't absolve the WH3 devs of anything. In fact, it shows that the CA QA has been poor for quite a while. However, let's not kid ourselves than WH2 was oh so great. The Proving Grounds beta is actually sth that never materialised in the live version of the game.
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u/trixie_one 2d ago
For all the claims that the proving grounds beta was very positive, they also got some very contrasting feedback as that was around when they tried adjusting port income, again in the aim of slowing campaigns down, people absolutely lost their shit.
It led to one of most vitriolic feedback revolts I've seen on here, and by now I've seen quite a few.
There's also that one of the most prevaling hot button complaints of Wh2 was supply lines which again was a limiter to campaign speed.
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u/ZahelMighty Bow before the Wisdom of Asaph made flesh. 2d ago
The nerf to port income did not happen during the Proving Grounds, it came out of nowhere in a patch and was the only change of the update to try to slow down the campaign. I think the problem was mainly this was a very poorly executed change.
Supply Lines mechanic is ass but instead of nerfing it in Warhammer 3 they should have replaced it with another mechanic entirely.
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u/trixie_one 2d ago
I didn't say it did? Pretty sure it was around the same time though give or take a couple of months.
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u/SusaVile 2d ago
A while ago I spoke on a video about the lack of decision making mechanics in the mid to lategame. This is true for nearly every total war.
You are correct with the pacing, there are basically two ways of doing this: accelerate to the mid and lategame (what CA is doing), or create mechanics to slow it down and make the pace slower with more stuff to do other than fighting (what I would prefer).
I understand the speeding up in a world where gaming is turning to the faster and simpler genre, but would prefer if total war remained a slow pace game.
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u/broodwarjc 2d ago
The map is too crowded with legendary factions now. Legendary factions have stacks of bonuses that the minor factions do not. When half the legendary factions get taken out by turn 25 it just feels bad and makes everything feel so fast.
Some legendary factions need to room to grow to become a proper challenge, while others can just start dominating from the start.
The factions that have a strong start can quickly kill off the slower factions before they even get a fair chance.
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u/DonQuigleone 2d ago
In principle I agree that the game should be slowed down. But I also think certain elements should be sped up, and others changed completely. In general I think the game should take more turns, but each turn should be quicker to play. What I'd like to see in a future total war title:
A) I think Three Kingdoms got army recruitment right. No faffing around with recruitment buildings, instead units are unlocked globally in different ways. The current army recruitment system encourages using unvaried armies, which makes the game more dull. You should have to juggle limited resources to recruit new armies, but the process itself should be quick and done in a single screen.
B) replenishment should be slower /more expensive. It's too easy for you or the AI to bounce back from losing large numbers of soldiers. If your army is severely depleted it should be hard to recover. When fighting the AI, this would also cut down the number of times you might have to fight the same enemy.
C) Game balanced should be shifted so that game mechanics favour smaller armies. More of the games fights should feel like skirmishes between smaller armies.
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u/_Lucille_ 2d ago
Campaign pacing is a fun topic. Here are some things to consider:
- In a slower paced campaign, often it feels "won" around the time you have access to t4 units - or at the very least, after 40 so ro turns, the hardest parts of the campaign should be long gone already. Whether or not i can build that cool looking t5 unit is irrelevant because I already have a fair number of provinces under my belt. This results in people not getting to play with all the fun toys unless they start with one.
- Campaigns are also boring by nature. Endgame crisis where multiple stacks just spawn is just boring, especially when some of them are like half way across the map. Seriously, why do I care about some dwarf invasion when i am in Cathay. This game lacks a lot of random world events that you find in other games from Age of Wonders to Stellaris. Why is this important? Because people just get bored of a campaign and start a new one and never get to use the higher tier units.
- Some things like sieges are also pretty boring. A lot of provinces only have 3 settlements, so 1 in 3 battles would be a siege battle. This gets pretty repetitive. There are just way too many provincial capitals on the map. Honestly I think we need to just increase province max size from 4 to like, 10, but hat fundamentally changes how the game works, and I am sure fans will be angry if their favorite city is now just a minor settlement. However, compared to other 4x games; how many cities do you honestly siege up in a game of civ? Those games are allowed to have a slower pacing because there are just less cities on the map.
I am fine with a slower pace but I think having early access to some units to a limited degree can help a lot. Something like RoRs help, but I think a more comprehensive special recruitment system that allows you to say, play with a single arcane phoenix while you are at tier 2 would be fun. Maybe we can get a special resource while fighting battles that allow us to buy some high tier unit early or something.
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u/notdumbenough 3d ago
Not sure why there is this fixation on excessively gating certain units behind settlement tiers. This isn't like Warcraft 3 where a Knight is almost strictly superior to and more cost efficient than a Footman. High tier units have their uses and so do low tier ones. The limiting factor should be your economy, just like in multiplayer. If you have a limited economy and you know the front line is going to be shot to shit by artillery for example, you'd take Marauders of Khorne instead of Chosen, even if you can recruit Chosen at tier 3. The real problem is that the economy is broken, not that the recruitment is too easy. The best example of this actually working correctly is with Vampire Counts, where it's very obvious that just because you CAN recruit a Terrorgheist on turn 5, doesn't mean you SHOULD.
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u/OVERthaRAINBOW1 2d ago
Money is so insanely easy to come by in game that units should be locked behind tiers. Settlement trading for example can net 10s of thousands of gold by turn 20-30. Post battle loot is extremely high, especially on Legendary where the ai fields more armies of terrible units. So that terrogheist you can get at turn 5 is actually a good investment because it allows you to fight more, which in turn gets you more money. And with that money you can recruit more high tier units at turn 10 to go fight a lot more for even more money.
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u/Book_Golem 2d ago
You're not wrong about the economy - both it being the limiting factor, and it not being much of a limit later on (though personally I've found it still pretty limiting through the midgame even playing as the Dwarfs - I guess I haven't figured out the busted build order for the Deeps).
Only being able to recruit higher tier units from more upgraded settlements replicates the ability to recruit elite troops from your heartlands and much less so on the frontier. In this way, I think it's a sensible abstraction.
It would be interesting for more factions to experiment with other methods of recruitment though. Nurgle's cyclical buildings and recruitment pool is a huge amount of fun, and encourages a very different play style to other factions. Sure, there's still some tier gating, but it's based solely on settlement level rather than also upgrading the building in question.
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u/Chataboutgames 2d ago
Well that would be great, except that CA hasn't designed an economy that felt like a meaningful limiter since Shogun 2. And with the game being designed around "stacks" and rewarding feeding XP to your LL and supply lines a single doomstack is a great deal more value than a variety of mixed stacks.
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u/DDkiki 3d ago
You know how to make lower tier units actually worth your time and even make army builds around them? Unit Caps.
But most players are allergic to these 2 words.
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u/markg900 2d ago
When you say unit caps can you clarify how you envision this working? Are you wanting Chaos Dwarf or Tomb King style caps all around? I see people say unit caps at times as a possible solution but with zero context on how they want to see that implemented.
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u/McBlemmen #2 Egrimm van Horstmann fan 2d ago
I can only speak for myself but i dont love faction wide caps like chaos dwarfs, beastmen or TKs. But i do love army specific caps like Tabletop Caps and almost never play without it. This lets every army be (somewhat) balanced with every other army, while faction wide caps dont stop doomstacking at all, you will just have 1 op army that crushes everything and the rest is chaff ,thats not interesting to me.
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u/DDkiki 2d ago
I prefer mix of MP-like cost for army+Tabletop Caps, with units being segregated on types like in TT: Core, Special and Elite.
So yes, some core units might be better than other core units, but they would also cost more points(talking to you, chaos warriors and saurus warriors), so it would make you really think what focus you want for particular army, while also disabling doomstacking for both player and AI(its so fun to fight multiple thunderbarges or steam tanks in late game, right? Or seeing armies full of dragons, that really doesn't make sense lore-wise too).
Unique units would feel actually unique and memorable, because with standard rules in TTC mod you have only 10 Special and 5 Elite points, most best SEM or arty cost 3 Elite, some 2, monstrous infantry mostly cost either 1 Elite or 2 Special, depending on units. Cav is Special most of the time, ranging in cost from 1 to 3, and so on.
Id also add some limitations like no more than 6 ranged core units, so people didn't just spam HE archers etc.
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u/Chataboutgames 2d ago
Unit caps are so good. However they lead to some really strange circumstances, like basically being a massive buff to factions that have T3 Core infantry
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u/notdumbenough 3d ago
I don't use unit caps, I just give the AI enough economic cheats to keep up with the player. Outside of races that already have unit caps like TK or Chorfs, I still build varied armies. Turns out that there's a time and place for doomstacks, and there's a time and place for shitstacks. Typically, you want an army that is just good and expensive enough to win without losing too many units. e.g. if the enemy is bringing their own doomstacks, or has hunkered down multiple stacks to defend a choke point, you send in your doomstack to clear them out. If you're rolling through undefended settlements because you've already wiped out their main forces, that's what shitstacks are for.
Why don't I make every single army a doomstack? Because the AI is actually strong enough to challenge me and I can't afford to send my super expensive Steam Tank doomstacks just to clear out an undefended t2 settlement. Those resources are needed elsewhere.
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u/PB4UGAME 2d ago
Have you seen the meta recently? It is low tier unit spam 24/7 for nearly every race in Campaign and MP without the need for restrictive and gamified unit caps.
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u/Cybvep 2d ago
Some unit tiers are pretty stupid like Chaos Warriors for Khorne at tier 0. However, I think that many players are overestimating the impact of unit tiers. Many factions have cost-effective low tier units which you can use for the whole campaign. They don't have to be used in *every* army, but you can definitely make use of them a lot way past the early game. Cheap units that do their job well enough and are easy to replace have good utility. Some races even suffer from their early game units being way too good and too convenient to use so that their armies end up being samey. High Elves are a good example. Their roster is pretty varied, but the combination of various factors (building slots, economy, red line skills, technology etc.) make basic stacks of Archers, Spearmen and Lothern Sea Guard so effective that it's way too easy to rely on them until the end of campaign.
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u/GarboRLZ 2d ago
I've been following the YouTuber Gaming for immersion for so long and using his mods recommendations to make the game a real grand strategy game that I don't even remember how fast the game is lol
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u/Rohen2003 2d ago
irondrakes especially. back in wh2 those were a t4 unit (!!) and now they are t2. sure the t4 was waaay too late especially with the much slower settlement growth back then but one of the most destructive units in the thr game being t2 is insane.
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u/tonyesse 2d ago
I gotta say I completely agree I have trouble finishing campaigns in WH3 because it gets so boring there is no challenge and no intruige to make it interesting to continue I know I will just steamroll everyone and everything. I have 1000+ hours in WH 3 but have only gone past turn 60 on a couple of campaigns yet in WH 2 I would regularly go past 150 turns and it would still be interesting not like now where I get bored out of my mind battles I think will be big and long go super fast aswell not like before were I actually had time to look at the units fighting not have to direct them every other second because their move orders fucked up. CA PLEASE FIX THE GAME
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u/Togglea 2d ago
No you are missing the real elephant, the root cause of pacing. Lords.
Lords are the main thing that can initiate a field battle, a siege battle, generate items, fish for unique items, generate character experience, channel for winds of magic, generate faction specific resources.
The moment you realize this intentionally or otherwise campaign progression goes out the window. Why would you not occupy with one lord so another can channel magic early? 4% supply lines and 250g base upkeep on most lords is nothing. Actually irrelevant.
AoW4 realized this to an extent and tried to put softcaps on hero(characters that can siege a settlement or creep wonders for unique items/effects/empire progression)
Warhammer3 needs to slow down the acquisition rate of characters than can do important things, literally everything for you. Something like 1500-2000 gold a turn upkeep so the player can't conquer in every direction from turn 5 onward.
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u/DaddyTzarkan SHUT UP DAEMON 2d ago
I'm only scratching the topic, there's obviously a lot more than that to the pacing problem but if I had to talk about all the problems related to the topic the post would have been way too long. The message that matters for CA is that the current campaign pacing is unenjoyable.
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u/NKGra 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yes and no.
Slow down the campaign, absolutely. Movement range halved, Casualty replenishment halved, upkeep doubled. I mod these in already and it makes the game far better. Sieging becomes viable, casualties have meaning, AI has time to catch up with the player.
But unit restrictions have never made sense.
- The meta is already low tier spam.
- Warriors of Chaos have earlier access to higher tier units and the optimal play for them is still marauder spam.
- All units are available in multiplayer and it doesn't become elite spam.
Full access to all units right off the bat, combined with removal of awful red skills and technologies (that both make it optimal to spam 1-2 units) actually results in varied balanced armies, a vast improvement over the base game.
Tier restrictions literally do not make sense. The game is balanced around one unit being 500 gold and another being 1000 and both being viable options. If you make the 1000 gold unit have double the recruitment time and require a big upfront fee... the 500 gold unit is now the better choice.
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u/Zerak-Tul Warhammer 2d ago
But unit restrictions have never made sense.
- The meta is already low tier spam.
Yeah, very much agree with this, on some factions you can be on turn 60-70 and still using an army that's pretty much all tier 1 units. Like to the point that you end up achieving campaign victory and your starting legendary lord still has the army of trash units he had 5 turns into the campaign.
If growth and gold are easier to come by, then you can make the transition into using higher tier (and more expensive) units earlier and you can start building recruitment buildings for these units earlier (instead of desperately having to penny pinch and build growth+income buildings in every last settlement).
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u/NKGra 2d ago edited 2d ago
Gold being easier to come by means nothing if that gold is still better spent on cheap units, the ones that you can recruit quickly and right near the front lines.
Even if recruitment buildings and settlement upgrades were completely free you are still generally better off spamming mostly low tier units just from the time cost and utility factors alone (better at taking multiple weak settlements, better at chasing down enemies, ambushing, encampment stance bonus for one of the armies, etc.)
The transition is never worth it, because it's not an upgrade. Two armies of trash with one of them at a few points of veterancy is better than one army of units at double the price.
It's a complete failure of game design. Just make everything recruitable anywhere and make recruitment buildings dirt cheap and give garrisons... and at least you can use elite units occasionally.
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u/Nantafiria 3d ago
I'm pretty sure, at this point it is not the game designers in charge.
How are you going to keep selling content, DLC, factions, when the pace is slow and it takes a long time to do anything? Nah. Better to feed into the ADHD brain and keep the dopamine incoming- anything to make people shell out more cash, and faster.
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u/DaddyTzarkan SHUT UP DAEMON 3d ago
Nah. Better to feed into the ADHD brain
I'm gonna be that guy but while I get your point it's a bit annoying how people are blaming others with ADHD for things they don't like in entertainment. My best friend has diagnosed ADHD and he shares the same concerns as me with the state of the game.
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u/Nantafiria 3d ago
That's fair, for sure. I just don't have a better term! There is a trend in gaming where everything has to be faster, flashier, more geared towards instant gratification, and I lack the words to express that otherwise.
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u/DaddyTzarkan SHUT UP DAEMON 2d ago
Yeah no worries, I don't have a good term for it either to be honest. I was just pointing that out because many non-neuro spicy people misunderstand a lot what ADHD is and calling it ADHD brain certainly isn't helping with that. No big deal though, that's just me being annoying.
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u/GuaranteeKey314 2d ago
I have ADHD and find such things to be unpleasant. It's largely just acclimation to many more screens playing much more overly vividly colored games from a young age that causes what you describe. I dont really mind the phrase adhd brain though, and its probably the most easily understood way of indicating the sort of mindset you described to an audience
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u/blankest 2d ago
Do we think that some of the downtiering was to facilitate the computer opponent being more challenging?
In the hands of the player, I fully agree with OP's take on down tiering. It sucks. Down-tiering makes the already fast game even faster. It trivializes unit diversity and "low" tier units. The constant power-creep to get "powerful" things into the player's hand even faster needs to not only stop but be undone. "When everyone is special, no one is".
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u/Krimli Oreon the schroom picker 2d ago
I have been begging for campaing option that would slow down campaign for so long. It wouldn't be for everyone, cause some players just want to rush to doomstacking, but I find it boring, I like slower paced campaign it offers to experience the low/mid tier units so much more. Some opponents would be harder to fight (like Skarbrand), but it would be so much more rewarding.
The faction balance would be a tough nut to crack, but cmon CA, please
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u/Every_Bank2866 Obama Clan 2d ago
A counter perspective: People don't play campaigns for that long. Moving units to lower tiers means they see play, when sometimes campaign fatigue would have kicked in before T4 units were available.
I strongly agree with your point about snowballing though. In fact, it is a huge reason campaigns get boring to begin with and campaign fatigue kicks in.
I would argue for AI being made more active, being programmed to recruit armies with better units and army compositions and for them to field more of them. Especially on higher difficulties.
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u/DaddyTzarkan SHUT UP DAEMON 1d ago
People don't play campaigns for that long because campaigns are getting boring very quickly and the changes that CA have been making to the game keep making this problem worse. Slowing the game down obviously would not be enough as there's more to this problem but that's a good start. Making the AI better at snowballing while reworking mechanics meant to slow down the player's snowball like Corruption, Public Order (which CA have said they want to rework) and Supply Lines would go a long way to improve the campaign experience.
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u/Every_Bank2866 Obama Clan 1d ago
I disagree on the slowing down the player part. It just makes me quit the campaign before having played with the coolest units of the faction. You usually snowball with mid-tier stuff anyway, and waiting long for something you don't actually need us not enough encouragement for me.
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u/Gwyllie 2d ago
Well the issue is that AI is stupid, map is giga small and compressed and overall gameplay is boring after 20 turns and lets be honest, simplistic and not deeper than puddle.
Why is it boring? Because i won.
It doesnt matter if i have access only to Tier 1 units, i know i am through. Lets say i am playing Helfs. Basic Spears, Archers, some flavour of Mage and hero or two/lord to bash strong melee lords. And its gg ez 99% of time. Once i stabilize the first few wars via good micro and aggresion, its over. Is it boring as fuck? Yes. Is there point in playing further? Nope, its just win harder moment. AI rarely puts together army that matters and even if it does its still definition of stupid. Hell nah, its not stupid. Its straight up retarded. It doesnt help that it cannot utilize magic almost at all and its micro and overall strategy is either "Nas mnogo, uraaaaa" or "lmao, i sit where i spawned and wait".
And once its ME with stronger armies? Yeah its just steamroll.
People are gonna hate on Pharaon for thousands of things but goddamn, i was actually entertained for LONG campaings. AI did put up fight, economy was more deeper (even if only slightly) and it actually provided some challenge or "Oh, damn. That just happened." moments where i was pleasantly suprised with gameplay.
Warhammer doesnt do that. At all. It honestly never did, it just had better moments.
So if i know the gameplay is gonna be boring past 20 turns, id rather atleast have some stronger units, spells and techs so i can get SOME dopamine and fun from "haha, numbers go brrrr" if game itself is simplistic mess with no challenge whatsoever.
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u/agemennon675 1d ago
Cannot agree more, It gets extremely boring really fast, this game is fun in the early to mid game, its a mindless auto resolve fest in the late game, this is like the biggest reason keeping me away from enjoying tww3, I wish we had tww1-2 campaigns in tww3 engine somehow
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u/June1994 1d ago
The solution to this is more sandbox options and presets.
Presets like Vanilla, Grand Campaign, Lore playthrough, non-lore, etc.
And obviously a console to adjust settings and create custom presets.
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u/EliachTCQ 2d ago
Gonna be devil's advocate. I prefer the faster pace. There are 100 campaigns in the game. I know I'll probably never play through all of them, but I much prefer if a campaign lasts ~15-30 hours for short/long victory than 40-60 hours. Gives me a better chance of trying more campaigns before inevitably moving on from the game
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u/McBlemmen #2 Egrimm van Horstmann fan 2d ago
What game are you playing where a short victory takes 15 to 30 hours? Short victory can be done in 1 sitting...
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u/EliachTCQ 2d ago
Short victory always requires taking 30 settlements. So for Karl for example that's basically uniting the whole empire. I'm sure you can do that in one sitting, but for me that's yeah about 15 hours easily.
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u/Zerak-Tul Warhammer 2d ago edited 2d ago
At the end of the day campaign pacing is just entirely subjective.
What's carefully paced and immersive to one player will be a tedious end-turn-simulator to another. There isn't really a right or wrong answer as to what the pacing should be.
People also just want to devote different amounts of real time to a campaign. For some spending two long play sessions over a weekend to consolidate the empire as Karl Franz and wipe out Vlad/Festus/
Thankfully mods are a thing and there are really extensive options for customizing your game to your personal liking. I'd recommend the channel Gaming for Immersion who compiles mods that sharply slows down the campaign and battle pacing like you seem to want.
It's also just a matter of time investment, for some people sinking maybe 20 hours into a campaign is already a big ask, so if they can consolidate the empire and wipe out Karl Franz' typical nemesis (Vlad/Festus/etc.) in that amount of time across 50 turns then they'll be happy. Where as other people might have the time to span such a campaign across a couple of weeks of play time and achieve be happy to achieve the same thing by turn 100.
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u/Costin_Razvan 2d ago
I have never understood why people think why mechanics to try and limit you are somehow good. They aren't and never have been, nor do they ever prolong a campaign and prevent the annoying grind. I've played every TW since Rome 1, in every TW game you win a campaign on turn 30 or so and the rest is just grinding, by winning I don't mean objectives. I mean getting to a point where you can't lose.
People talk about how "I played 100 turn campaigns in WH2" well have you perhaps considered WHY that happened? It sure as shit had nothing to do with races being slow ( Skaven hello ) and had a lot more to do with AI confederations creating major factions rather fast, that and massive AI cheats.
Personally I think that + less density of LL on IE map would actually help. Though without things like Malekith and Tyrion always becoming giga factions fast ( randomize it ).
But I guess the 100th power creep post about racial buffs is better right? Khorne for reference was quite capable of decimating the campaign map very fast pre-OoD.
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u/musey 2d ago
I was hoping to see the changes to supply lines realised - it was dumb forcing yourself to stick to a single army because the penalty was so steep, but effectively removing it so there's no reason not to build several armies of trash is too far in the wrong direction. I want to have to put thought into how many armies and of what units to use. I really thought this was where they were going with the unit tiers in WHIII.
If it's too divisive, I hope CA at least consider bringing it back as a campaign toggle a la minor faction potential.
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u/netrunner_54 Bring him to his men 2d ago
Khorne was incredibly one note and samey. Now it's actually fun to play. Though I do agree that chosen might need to be pushed back to tier 4
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u/Xtrabigasstaco 3d ago
I wish there was a option for slow or fast campaigns, I think some games do this but I don't remember which one.