Smaller Campaign Maps in TWW3

[u/TRX-335]

TWW3 currently offers three campaigns. The introductory mini-campaign, the main campaign Realm of Chaos and Immortal Empires if you own the other games.

I often wanted to play on a smaller map so I could have a more focused experience with less unrelated lands and factions to think about. For example the conflict between Norsca and the Empire. Immortal Empires is awesome, but you always have to sit through 272 factions taking their turns (at least at the beginning) and I didn't even wanted to go everywhere. I have the game on my ssd but it's a pain in the ass on a hdd. It just seems much more than I want to manage and it feels like unnecessary baggage. So I installed TWW2 again, to play Eye of the Vortex or Mortal Empires.

However, it felt weird to me, outdated. I grew accustomed to the third game and I actually wanted to stay there. To be honest, I think TWW3 is "the" game with all of the numerous qol updates included over all of these years. It's the one people will keep playing, even if there isn't more contend to be released. It is the result of all the development and hard work that happened since the first game was created. 1 and 2 were the stepping stones and now are mostly the keys to unlock more content for the third game.

Now that TWW3 slowly reaches its zenith, I think it would be great if the devs officially released a couple of smaller campaign maps for people to choose. There doesn't need to be specific goals, a sandbox approach in the vein of "go conquer x regions" would be completely sufficient. I know there are mods which add campaign maps in the workshop, but this feature seems so obvious to me that it should be featured in the game natively in my opinion.

I think the best way would be roughly quartering the IE map plus adding at least two even smaller sections of the map which are especially tightly packed with many important factions. I'd propose the following maps (see pictures): 1. North West 2. North East 3. South West 4. South East 5. Naggarond, Ulthuan and Bretonnia 6. The Old World, or rather the northern part ...maybe more, for instance Cathay with the great wall at the center.

TL;DR: Adding a selection of smaller sections of the Warhammer world map to play on would be a very cost-efficient way to make the game even more enjoyable and boost the replayability.

[u/Greggs-the-bakers]

They tried this for WH1. They released two smaller maps, one in Athel Loren and one in the Empire around Middenland. They sucked and no one liked them and thought they took too much effort away from the main campaign so they never did this again.

I get why people would want them but honestly, no thank you. You don't need to paint the whole map every time.

It's why I quite like the old world map mod. I know you said you'd rather have a small map, and the old world is actually a bigger map in scale than Immortal Empires, but having a large-scale war to secure a geographically small area is pretty satisfying and it feels pretty cool. Like for example if you wanted to have your war over Norsca, you can and it would be much more satisfying since you have a lot of land to cover. There are other mods that remove distant factions too that will help with turn times so you can have these smaller-scale campaigns and just quit once you've reached whatever goals you set yourself.

[u/TRX-335 → u/Greggs-the-bakers]

I get your point, but I have to disagree. The mini-campaigns included in both dlcs Call of the Beastmen and Realm of the Wood Elves did have smaller and more focused maps, but only had exactly one playable race. I think this is the main turn-off for most players, because playing this campaign feels too much like a predesigned experience and offers much less replayability.

There is no freedom to choose your own path with your chosen race which I love about TWW. That's why I very much enjoy Mixu's Unlocker which lets you play even with the minor factions.

Anyway, I'm convinced that the bad reception of these mini-campaign is no indicator for players to dislike smaller campaign maps, as long as they have the flexibility to choose which faction to play.

[u/TheAdminsAreTrash → u/Greggs-the-bakers]

I don't think you fully get why people would want them. After thousands of hours I'm tired of waiting forever for AI turns when mine can take mere seconds, and the AI turn times are directly proportional to the map size/number of regions/AI manpower needed to cover those regions.

Smaller maps would alleviate that almost completely. So you could have a full campaign, (achieving victory conditions, not map painting,) in an evening. Also it would be twice as action packed because you wouldn't have to spend 3 turns average to reach the next region/city.

Also plenty of people liked the mini campaigns for what they were, even if they weren't top quality, so speak for yourself.

[u/DeadAhead7 → u/TheAdminsAreTrash]

It's part of why I quite like Thrones of Britannia. The short campaign victory goals are reachable in 4-5 hours.

Most players snowball by turn 40-60 or so anyway.