Is Powercreep Ruining Total War: Warhammer 3?

[@SimpleReally]

undoubtedly, meanwhile I need 15 turns to research a +3 control technology as lizardmen

[@marekstarzyk9355]

so true.

[@addisonchambers9256]

As a fellow lizardmen player, man technology does not feel impactful in the faction. Especially considering how many techs they have

[@shorewall]

@@addisonchambers9256 I think there are a handful of early techs that are nice to pick up, but after that it is a chore. Getting all skink units poison attacks and vanguard is my fav.

[@addisonchambers9256]

​@shorewall i did kinda forget that one, that one is a game changer especially for Tehenhauin who i play the most. Some of the economic ones are good too, but compared to others it's so taxing without much reward

[@Thunderstryk]

lizards feel so friggen bad. Have they even had any updates since warhammer 2? The faction mechanic is so stupid too, 0 interaction, boring and minimal bonuses. also cant even get benefits for forever. God please CA fix some of the forgotten races.

[@jimmojam7211]

I really wish they'd just buff some of the older "secondary" factions like Tomb Kings, Norsca, Vampire Coast/Counts/Wood Elves, Bretonnia, etc.

[@purplefanta7142]

Updating older factions would be great. Even just adjustments. Even a few more tech nodes. New items maybe. Touched up skill trees.

[@TheDarthMarko]

HE need a boost too

[@CapybaraConnoisseur89]

Yeah they play badly compared to anything new here, it's sad because I love Vampire Counts new Nosferatu is making me want to play them, but they're so lame in game, outdated mechanics, Tech Tree, Lord/Hero Skills, animations... Everything! I mean I'd love Terrorgheist and Varghulf getting new animations, they just look sad compared to new units

[@giovannigio3764]

The Vampire Counts are very strong. No buff needed. 💪 And you can use mods to buff fractions with new units and gameplay.

[@CapybaraConnoisseur89]

@giovannigio3764 they're strong because of old outdated mechanics, they need rework like yesterday

[@Csrattic]

The ai being so scared to fight is what usually gives me the most campaign fatigue. I feel like once I have a decent army the ai just refuses to fight and makes me spend multiple turns chasing their armies around unless they outnumber me 2-3 stacks to 1

[@TheSuperappelflap]

I usually have to recruit three armies and box one AI army into a triangle slowly so it cant run away from me. And then the AI just gives up and leaves the army standing there, forcing me to waste another turn walking at them with 1 or 2 of my armies, instead of taking its best shot at fighting one of my armies and maybe escaping afterward. The campaign map army movement AI is designed just to waste the players time instead of trying to take good fights. The AI in WH2 would occasionally team up with 2 or 3 stacks and send those at you but in WH3 it doesnt even do that anymore. It just runs around with single stacks trying to sack minor settlements and runs away when you send an army to fight them.

[@Csrattic]

@ “it just runs around with single stacks trying to sack minor settlements” brother I actually despise this. I was chasing queek around with my back up army for 3-4 turns while just runs away and sacks the same 2 settlements. Another thing I’m sick of ai doing is standing just outside of my attack range then forcemarching half the map if I approach even in ambush stance

[@hugo3627]

The game is just a race against the clock. You have to destroy your enemies before the next one shows up. In the meantime they refuse to actually fight. Unlike in AoW and CIV there are no rival empires, there are just whac-a-moles.

[@changer_of_ways_999]

This is why I miss road construction from previous historical titles. We need a home territory movement buff to chase down sacking weasels.

[@Keln02]

I use lord baits

[@grassrootsdictator5701]

Powercreep has a simple solution, it’s not glamorous or immediately profitable but going back and sprucing up old content and factions as free updates will buy huge amounts of longevity and good will

[@changer_of_ways_999]

True. I prefer enriching the rest as opposed to nerfing.

[@AkaRystik]

A lot of factions could really use it too. Lizardmen, Tomb Kings, Vampire Coast, elves could use some tweaking. Old content is being left in the dust and its getting very noticeable.

[@YashaSkaven]

"not immediately profitable" Shareholders: then we want more powercreep please

[@williamchristy9463]

@@AkaRystik I think the high elves are fine, but the wood and dark elves need work. Tomb kings likewise feels.... fine? They lack anything special compared to the newer DLC legendary lords, but they're at least on par with the base race lords.

[@Kratatch]

You can also do like me when playing Skulltaker, do not take the trait that spawn Bloodhosts. He is still broken but at least you do not get swamped under 200+ Hosts this way. When i had the trait in my first campaign every turn took ages to do the host stuff. I gave up on it when i had 216 Bloodhosts running around. (I achieved all victory conditions but tried to take the entire map but...) And yes i prefer to play this game like a Civilization game where i auto resolve most stuff, because i am garbage at the actual battles. Give me a Victory on auto resolve that only a dead monkey would lose in the battle and i would lose it.

[@Party4Lemons]

I honestly think the pacing of campaigns in 3 is the main issue. Being unbeatable by Turn 30 without any late-game units is just ridiculous. This is the fault of the cowardly AI giving no serious opposition. I don't see an issue with powercreep really because most faction mechanics are turned off or toned down when the player is playing another faction.

[@Geesaroni]

Hit the nail on the head there, I think. An overtuned faction where you struggle at turn 10, break through at turn 20, are super overpowered by turn 40 and you just mop up the entire rest of the objectives by turn 50 is actually a really tightly paced campaign, if a short one. Not all campaigns need to be long. I enjoyed my Taurox campaign because it didn't overstay its welcome. I also enjoyed my Boris campaign. It took until turn ~70 to be truly safe, and by that time I needed to scramble to get ready for the endgame crisis. It's those campaigns where you're in no danger of losing whatsoever by turn 30 but the steamroll still takes until turn 120 to get your victory screen that are the source of campaign fatigue.

[@the_tactician9858]

The AI in general is either way too passive or solely focused on the player, and that has everything to do with suboptimal AI design. The AI would benefit hugely if it was encouraged to push out a bit more when the player isn't looking, more so even if the AI is encouraged to make slightly more risky moves at times. That causes either staggering victories or crushing defeats, which in turn allows factions to take advantage of the power vaccuum.

[@Štajeproblempodstanari]

What happened to his live streams ?

[@katiexxii7578]

I’ve definitely noticed this, even using tons of mods to affect the campaign and battle difficulty to my liking, I’ve found that I quit campaigns a lot sooner than in 2. In warhammer 2 it was common for my campaigns to go 100+ turns before I get burnt out. But in 3 I usually start to get bored before turn 50. Because as you said you just get way too powerful too quickly.

[@Cursedpeopleakajuice]

​@@katiexxii7578 same bro in wh2 there was one faction which was strong and you have to fight it plus you had less army due to that upkeep which helps in us not being able to snowball the game now we can snowball it like literally

[@joshuanowlin443]

The ai ruins the game not power creep. I have seen repeatedly a faction will get like 20 settlements then send all its armies to stand around their capital and they will stay there as you take all their settlements. I have had factions declare war on me, have armies in move range of my cities, I will have no armies anywhere near them, and for 20 turns they will not attack. The ai is way to passive. Or like I watched thorek and ungrim send like 20 armies to wipe out clan more who has 5 settlements and it will take them like 40 turns, they are absurdly bad at the game. Even when they do attack they just sack and siege, they seldom actually take a settlement. Powercreep can't even compete. Also agree that early game greenskins is miserable now.

[@patrickdaly1088]

Completely incompetent AI that does not play the game and needs to cheat to put up any kind of fight(ignore FOV and FOW, the AI can see your ambush on the map and your stealthed units on the battlefield) is probably my #1 problem. The AI is either god tier in a way that feels bad (Cavalry use and spell dodging) or completely and totally incompetent in a way that feels worse (What's wrong with sending 20 units through the space of one? What's a vortex?) Obviously, a perfect AI wouldn't be fun either(for most people anyhow ;) ), but starting from there and disabling or slowing down behaviors to dial back the difficulty is a much better approach than whatever hodgepodge they've got. A perfect AI dodges immediately, on very hard give a bit of random delay to how fast it reacts to represent a spectrum of good human reactions, it only misses the dodge like 10% of the time and is usually very quick about it, but it's not instant. On easy mode, they only see the spell to dodge it maybe 20% of the time, and if they do dodge, they start several seconds later. Stat boosts are not **difficulty** modifiers.

[@RoulicisThe]

It's either "too passive" or everyone just gangs up on you like you're a rabid dog needing to be put down. No in-between with that AI

[@loowick4074]

Problem is the mediocre AI is made worse by giving the player so much power that it can't cope with. Like what's the AI gonna do against dozens of bloodhosts and new lords that can solo armies?

[@joshuanowlin443]

@RoulicisThe I wish they would gang up on me, I long for the 70+ settlement fully confederate dark elf/skaven attacks from all sides like from warhammer 2

[@deathninja16]

Mods and setting the difficulty higher with end game crisis helps.

[@darthimperious8661]

I’ll be honest, I think that how the autoresolve calculations let me win outrageously without having to earn it does more damage than the power creep. Edit: I do actually like auto resolve, I’m not hating on the game I just wish that it wasn’t obviously absurdly winnable or not based on very specific stats.

[@1tsbag134]

When I started playing WH 3 I thought I was so bad at the game because autoresolve could carry me way better than it could in WH 2. In WH 2 I rarely used autoresolve and I could comfortably win battles with low odds.

[@JWSoul]

Yeah this needs to stop. I now play battles i could win with Auto if i see them as being fun / a challenge! i have lost a number i have fought instead of an easy Auto resolve. I do not think Auto resolve calculates reinforcements correctly.

[@whereswaldo6396]

What difficulty to you guys play on? This is the main reason I play on hard or very hard

[@dracowar6]

@@whereswaldo6396 i play VH/H and this DLC is the first one ever I refunded bc it was just boring.

[@heurek91]

​@@whereswaldo6396If you play an armor-heavy faction, autoresolve should just let you win. For example, Aarbal's campaign is easy if you buy Chaos Warriors because their armor is so high that you can autoresolve every fight. However, if you play as an Ork faction, you have to fight manually because your units have almost no armor.

[@Helikite]

My entire problem with Total war warhammer is that AI doesn't do things that benefit it but it does things just to fuck the player over. If you somehow manage to not be in a war with a faction you have 110% certainty that someone will declare war on you even if it doesn't make sense for them to do it. Game is plenty of fun but this pisses me off immensely. I can play underpowered factions just fine and try to make them work if their units and lord look cool but this is inexcusable in a strategy game imho.

[@TheSuperappelflap]

The AI is designed to lose to the player and just drag out their death animation as long as possible instead of going for its best shot at beating you.

[@hugo3627]

This is kind of what makes Zeentch a bit unappealing to me. If the AI was a bit more ambitious themselves it would be fun to manipulate the AI.

[@dracon501]

Just as bad is the AI's desire to drag you into unfavorable wars by targeting your allies. Your faction could be #1 in power and all of your allies will be targeted. Makes having anything beyond a non aggression pact worthless.

[@crayvun2196]

YES this is the real issue here. The AI is cowardly, dishonourable and stupid; no matter what faction it is. Decaring war, sacking, then running when you show up and requesting peace. Standard procedure for the AI. They should spend more time making the AI immersive and believable (not necesarily "harder", though it might be a side effect of improving the AI).

[@the_tactician9858]

This is a major issue for me. I love playing somewhat diplomatic, in particular things like vassalization and confederations, and in particular I love playing factions against each other. TW has allowed players to do this before, for example with the pope's crusades in Medieval 2 or with Cao Cao's mechanics in Three Kingdoms. Warhammer 3 has zero incentive to play factions against each other, nor to vassalize factions outside of the factions that kind of have to vassalize factions like the WoC, and they mostly get vassals by smashing stuff like regular. A defensive ally is pretty much as reliable as a vassal lord in terms of what it can do, and much more potent. I'm fairly sure the AI for vassal faction gets dumbed down even further, especially on legendary lords. If WH3 is put down, I really hope they touch up the AI to make it more interesting, and maybe even spruce up the diplomacy a bit, give it a bit more flourish, perhaps add more options like tributary states giving you a big sum of money per turn but still being independent from you, or puppet states that you basically control in all but name: they have a seperate income that you as a player can use to build up their lands, the player can recruit troops for them to complement their own weaknesses and they cannot do any diplomacy at all, automatically following the player in anything they do.

[@phailupe2941]

I like how you presented your evidence. For me personally, I really hate it when you’re able to end your campaign like 20 turns in. Typically in total war the beginning of the game is the hardest part and it only gets easier the more you play, which should be the exact opposite. The bigger issue in my opinion is this stupid fucking reverse difficulty curve that really builds up your campaign fatigue. I don’t like to struggle for 30 turns then become god and challenge the rest of the braindead ai trying to convince them to convince them to stop existing.

[@Kees247]

It would be great if the ai got smarter when the game gets boring.

[@rency1803]

Yea one of the biggest problem with this game is everything they throw at you at the late game is not any harder than the early game, it's just more tedious. With most campaign, what you see in the first 20 turn will likely be what you see for the rest of the campaign. If you get through the early game smoothly then at around midgame you just know you can't lose anymore and the victory objective become more of a grind than a challenge.

[@CareerKnight]

They need to allow the comps to empire build and form powerful blocks again like the did in WH2. It would go a long way to making post turn 30 campaigns not feel like a cake walk.

[@Tuboshi0815]

@@CareerKnight Yes, but remember that there was alot of whining about AI empires.

[@duplicitouskendoll9402]

That's why they need a longer term campaign objective, like WH2 had in the Eye of the Vortex. I'd actually love to see that refreshed and added to IE as an optional objective (like end game crises). If not that, then hopefully we'll get a proper narrated chaos endgame (End Times, with the chaos realms added to the map and portal travel/invasions?) and a sort of realm divide mechanic between order and chaos. Some big scripted battles and perma-death for defeated LLs as the scenario progresses...

[@orestisgeorgatos6725]

i don't think skulltaker or golgfag are meant to be power creep , it's just that skulltaker's cape was more likely than not designed before the bloodhost changes (which, poor planning but makes sense) and golg's rewards are either too much by accident or because of a bug, because he does get resources insanely faster than the other ogres

[@acoon5978]

And it looks like the patch coming tomorrow they are adjusting Golg's contracts and other stuff so they are adjusting him. Not much on Skulltaker yet maybe the next patch. 🤷

[@SkullivanBones]

The reason i think OoD wasn't as well received as ToD is because, both what legend said, but also because it may have had the same amount of content on paper, but it wasn't as much MEANINGFUL content. Most of the faction rework stuff came down to a slight adjustments (ogrehaul), a fresh coat of paint (scrap), and stat changes (wurzag/skarsnik).

[@theretardedhorse7897]

I agree but to be fair that's still a lot. I mean ToD was a beautiful release, but imo we gotta stop comparing everything going forward now with it. OoD is still a very solid DLC and I would never go as far as to call it bad( like a lot of other players). I mean we should expect more of these free race updates etc, but not everything has to be as fantastic and gamechangin as Thrones of Decay

[@giorgaras1851]

My main problem with this dlc is the fact that most of the units we got are complete garbage.

[@blaketev]

​@@giorgaras1851 I don't think the unit strength is the issue as much as it is what they do for the faction. Adding a shield to Blorcs is a fucking modded unit. Wrathmongers and skullreapers are just the same elite infantry khorne already has. It's boring as shit.

[@TheCatWarBoss]

You are right. But thing is there is so much you can possibly do with what is left in units in TT rosters. Khorn already scraping bottom of the barrel because of that. And alegedly GW does not allow any diviations from tabetop.

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

I just didn't care for any of the factions in it. Actually I haven't really cared for any of the factions the DLCs for 3 have touched. I grabbed Elspeth, got the champions of chaos, and have zero desire to touch any of the others. Gorbad seems maybe fun, I don't dislike greenskins, but they're not on my favored list, either. Like lizardmen, like skaven, like tomb kings, like vampires. Chaos isn't bad on the whole, but I don't really like any of the monogod fixations, and much prefer my multicolored monster mash.

[@keilanl1784]

Another thing to look at are the actual reviews themselves. Most of the negative reviews for the new DLC (all lords) are about the splash attack bug, which has skewed all of the reviews downward. If CA was trying to earn more money back with this DLC, they absolutely screwed themselves over by pushing the unnecessary (and broken) splash attack change with the DLC.

[@xathlak]

I was genuinely surprised that they didn't address skulltakers issues in the beta fix.

[@lukerevelt7265]

Nah they want to wait until everyone buys it first lol

[@Dorin_Azril]

I started up a legendary Arbaal campaign last night and went for a little over 20 turns. In that time I ended up with 4 solid legendary lord traits (Belekor, Sigvald, Crone and Malus), multiple powerful blue items (Talisman of Preservation, Armor of destiny, etc.), tens of thousands of gold with a positive income, every hero on the roster with all the legendary heroes just around the corner and to top it off an army of Chosen and Skullreapers, which for some gods forsaken reason you get at tier 3 (with turn 1 global recruitment because why not). I fought like 2 battles manually and only because they wanted to kill like a single unit. For a faction called the "Challengers of Khorne" there is ironically absolutely no challenge. You just teleport directly on top of some half-dead marching army and that's that. I've done a Skulltaker and Golg campaign and had pretty much the same results. What happened to earning things in games? Everything is just handed to you like you're a child and I honestly don't know how you can enjoy these campaigns beyond turn 20 if you're not a child. The characters are so cool and the faction mechanics are pretty interesting but without anything to really unlock or earn it all feels totally pointless. Why can't the legendary heroes be something you have to really work towards? To unlock Skar Bloodwrath it says I had to recruit ONE Skullreaper and get some kills with it... like what? And the funniest part is I recruited chosen instead and still completed it lol. The game is just so stupidly easy with nothing meaningful or interesting to work towards, it's a real shame. I imagine older total war games were actually about strategy, so I can sympathize better with the historical folks now.

[@13g0man]

Arbaals teleporting needs to have some improvements considering its power. As it is, you can teleport to a Legendary Lord, declare war, kill him, blow up the nearby city to give yourself a Blood Host ally and as you have an ally the AI will not attack you 1v2. Next turn you teleport out leaving the Blood Host to continue the assault. My first campaign deleted Sylvania before turn 10 - my second deleted most of their territory in 4 turns, and I chased their last army for the next 10 to end it.

[@connoisseurofcookies2047]

I think it's realistically impossible to find a satisfying balance between "underwhelming" and "overpowered" insofar as new content goes and, honestly, there's nothing wrong with a little bit of powercreep. Personally, I don't think powercreep is all that impactful as far as quality is concerned, what is important is that the content is designed in such a way that the player wants to take advantage of the full roster and the entire range of mechanics made available to them, the true loss is when the player is funnelled into playing a hyper-optimised game while ignoring 90% of what the faction has to offer.

[@resileaf9501]

Part of that has to be put on the player though. I feel like people are sometimes too focused on always doing the most optimal thing, on always making things too easy on themselves by seeking out the most overpowered builds that it would take gigantic effort to counter. You know the saying, given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of the game.

[@dylanxo689]

@@resileaf9501the disgusting vocal minority

[@Tseims]

I would say that this is not entirely true. Imrik wasn't underwhelming on release and could get very powerful during the campaign, but his start was still difficult. I will add that repeating these kinds of starting scenarios is difficult, but definitely not impossible.

[@lemurking6896]

@@Tseims I think it's important to note that Imrik was / is free. It's much more difficult to convince people to pay for a difficult faction - if Belegar dropped today I think it'd get slammed for railroading the player into rushing Karak 8 Peaks (not to mention the lame unit additions)

[@mavrelnotmarvel]

I spent a decade on the World of Warcraft forums, 25,000 posts deep before I grasped sanity and quit posting years ago, and that post was absolutely 100% correct about negative feedback loops, and happy posters don't saying anything. People will polish CAs nob as a reflex to the nonstop negativity found on the forums. Hyperbolic negative reactions encourage hyperbolic positive reactions fueled by frustration at the incessant onslaught of the former. It is almost NEVER the opposite in any gaming community I've ever observed. The negative posters fail to see that and always think they're speaking truth to power, thus fueling the lopsided cyclical hate to love war you see all across the entirety of the internet concerning any beloved fantasy setting.

[@mavrelnotmarvel]

That being said, love your content! lmao It continuously brings me back to TW and WH after thousands of hours playing casually This is just a pet peeve topic of mine

[@youtubedeletedmynamewhybother]

typically though i find the bootlickers to be much worse ppl than the ones complaining about factual issues in the game. Yes there are lunatics on the negative side too. But if you ever want to have a disingenuous honey suckle go and hang around bootlickers for Any company. Theyll rot your brain rapidly.

[@emanuelalfred1565]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts! I agree with you. I've noticed a similar trend and have also reduced my activity in the forums. While I can appreciate certain criticisms, I believe constructive feedback can be valuable. Unfortunately, it often gets overshadowed by excessive negativity and exaggeration. Focusing on more thoughtful discussions could really enhance our community.

[@darthzelius1906]

Biggest problems is the small map, the AI is not building large powerful empires and sieges are painful

[@mema0005]

Can not overstate how uninteresting Skulltaker looks. Just looks absurdly easy

[@millerrepin4452]

That's a good thing. You should look at some campaigns and have a breeze with them and others feel like they really challenge you by having to engage in every mechanic to survive. Do you want to turn your brain off or or think every piece of action carefully? The choice is nice.

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

​@@millerrepin4452 The easy difficulty exists if you want to do this for an afternoon.

[@hubertignatowicz7879]

I think biggest Warhammer flaw is destroying great feature from Rome II and Attila. Strategy on strategic map. There was road for armys, right? You had corridors, like dense forests and mountains was walls, or you were forced to stick to the roads on desert, etc. Cities sometimes had stronghold feautre, liek Milan - you can`t go around, you must take it, or spend 10 turns more to move around it. Warhammer has what, 3 empire forts and Catay gates. Thats all from strategy positioning. I want that back, cause now, even mountains are useless when some factions can go "underground".

[@youtubedeletedmynamewhybother]

imagine playing those factions if they couldnt go underground though. They would be inherently gimped and anti-fun to play...

[@hubertignatowicz7879]

@youtubedeletedmynamewhybother im sure theres a way to balance game and fun without destroying half of game by taking away strategy from strategy-tactic game.

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

I mean The underground factions have a pretty natural logic and lore limiter, that just being places there, y'know, actually IS an underway, like mountains. That you can do underway movement on, say, Ulthwan or Nehekara is just ridiculous. Just make certain areas underway friendly, and other areas not. But, the lack of any sort of strategic defenses are on of the biggest gripes with the game. Territory should absolutely have a "border" status, and a "behind lines" status, where armies behind lines take attrition and a vigor debuff or SOMETHING, just to discourage going around defenses. The fact that the AI can just walk around forts and stuff is ridiculous

[@hubertignatowicz7879]

@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Yes. Its simply total lack og logistic in game. No logistic, no movement logic.

[@MrRedcarpet02]

@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Underway movement isn't possible in Ulthuan anymore, was blocked. Thankfully

[@masondouglas99]

People complain wayyyyy to much if a lord isnt super good and broken. Its a lose lose situation

[@JonnehBongeh]

Just make everyone equally broken I suppose, Its why I enjoy SFO.

[@joshuanowlin443]

@@masondouglas99 not really like elspeth is strong but she isn't broken, and people really like her. I don't think the audience wants skulltaker to be the new standard(though every now and then it's fun) they just want the campaign to not be totally miserable(like wulfhart or wh2 norsca).

[@Killthefish]

They probably complain because the Lord is either a copy of another better one or that said Lord comes with 3 units for the price of a full game and those units are more powerful than the Lord they come with, and the fact that the AI uses all the broken units while you can't unless you buy them which was a huge issue while I was playing where the skaven would come at me with snipers, nukes and mini guns yet when I play skaven I get hamsters with daggers and bows, the main issue for me personally was that the DLCs felt patched on and could/should have been there day 1 but instead they "fix" broken units by adding more broken units while neglecting the other stuff which no-one uses, my personal favourite was the orcs but explain why my orc has a dragon yet I have to buy a DLC to get dragons, or why that the orc who specialises in abominations like idols and trolls doesn't get them without paying but a dude like grimgore being played by a AI avoids the one thing he's build around just to shove in my face "haha I got idols and you don't" Edit - if I didn't explain my point well then TLDR = why add copies of other Lords/units with Better stats when they couod take the time to make unique ones which synergies with their respective lord and not so much with others, it would make stuff feel unique, grimgore invading with stacks of black orcs and heavy weapons, skarsnik with a swarm of beasts and spiders and the mountain orcs coming with monsters and abominations, but instead they all feel the exact same and every faction just copies the others of the same type, orcs all get black orcs because the rest suck, the empire just rush steam tanks why use anything else, skaven? Just spam the absolutely broken sniper and mortars, there's no exception where the best unit for this lord isn't the best unit in general, I haven't played since WH2 since I no longer have a PC but I put a lot of time into it even if it wasnt my favourite but I also really enjoyed Rome 2 as much as people love to hate it factions felt unique in that and each had their strengths and weaknesses and it was the patching of those weaknesses that made it so fun to me

[@lowbearful]

clearly this isn't true, thrones of decay was very well received and as shown in the video had very good reviews. the lords in thrones all felt incredibly powerful but skulltaker is just too far in this dlc and they did undercook gorbad relative to most other lords. it goes to show that people aren't annoyed at having powerful lords like in thrones, but they need the quality of campaign mechanics on top of that

[@axyramariel7557]

Powercreep would be a problem if AI could pull it off. And regarding DLС in general, my opinion is that the Empire and Dwarves are more popular than Ogres, Orcs and Demons... It’s so simple and banal - I personally played with them for 400+ hours for a total of 10 hours.

[@effindave6909]

Is that personal bias though? I'm the exact opposite. I have never even started an order campaign outside of the lizardmen in all three games. The chaos factions were the thing I wanted most out of game 3.

[@axyramariel7557]

@@effindave6909 Of course this is a purely personal opinion. For me personally, any company for demons boiled down to “First, yolo-low tier units, a little later - thicker units”... At the same time, take an empire - gather shooters, VERY carefully select a position on the terrain, provide protection for them and artillery - but pistolers require a different approach, and tanks don’t care about anything... + more schools of magic. But in the end it is clear that everything is individual.

[@jays.6843]

If it's busted and fun, there isn't a problem. If it's busted and boring, then it needs fixing immediately. I think Skulltaker is incredibly boring. His entire campaign just becomes a grindy mess. Yes, it is a steamroll, but if it take 15 minutes to tap auto resolve, them it's just boring. Golg is fine because it's just strong but you still need to play the game. The economy is stupid strong, but he can't fart out infinite armies.

[@rency1803]

Yea for example espelt is a legendary lord that is very strong but require you to play the game to some extend. Khorne is just a braindead faction by default and having a legendary lord that heavily lean toward that just make every single battle you fight become the same thing. Even if you don't cheese skulltaker you still basically can't loose with him, he's good if you want to have a power trip campaign and smashing things but it does gets old really fast, even taurox need more thinking than him.

[@Grivehn]

Thrones of Delay featured Empire and Dwarfs, on top of that it was long-anticipated Malakai, with a bonus of a Gotrek and Felix rework, making Malakai's campaign one of the most lore-friendly ones. Whilst Elspeth was literally equipped to kill Vlad, something many people (somehow, despite him having nothing but crapstacks for 30 turns) struggle with. Lets not forget about Gelt and Franz rework either. There was no way that dlc wont sell like hot cakes, and it was actually good, great even. There was also no way this dlc will sell as well, or any other that follows, simply because nothing is half as popular, even put together, as Franzman and Dörfs. Not even Nagash will sell this well, unless it'll be paired with Boris Todbringer full-fledged LL. Or maybe-maybe if that 'super-dlc' plan is still a thing and they will rework all undead and give out like a dozen characters including Thanqoul to finish off the game. Expect next dlc to have even less sales, because aside Nathan (Great Book of Grudges), very few people care about Slaanesh. By far the least popular and least represented Chaos God. Nkari's IE campaign start being what it is also didnt help. And if it'll be paired with elves, or even Cathay... I dont expect those to sell like hotcakes either. But who knows, maybe my impression of ppl being tired of Cathay and not wanting to play elves, just kill them, is wrong. Maybe China market and Wukong hype for Monkey King would save that dlc.

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

That's a good point, especially since it absolutely clashes with me by counterexample. I don't care for the dwarves, Khorne or Nurgle, and don't really like Kislev. Actually, I don't really like ANY of the factions that have gotten DLC for game 3, besides warriors of chaos broadly, sven if not so much monogod, and kinda Elpseth, but that's more because Gelt is the one who got the actual rework, and Elspeth is kinda just Gelt's discarded husk, and I sorta like gunline empire at least. Slaanesh is the only monogod faction I'm at least passingly interested in, I would enjoy Nagash/an overall undead rework greatly, and mark Lizardmen, Skaven, Vampire Coast and Counts, and Tomb Kings as my favorite factions. If the next update was somehow Lizardmen, Skaven, and Nagash, I imagine I'd feel like how a lot of empire/dwarf fans felt about Thrones, compared to the average opinion of "eh". Considering that thematically it's Slaanesh and probably the elves getting attention next time, I anticipate another emphatic "eh" with mild interest in how they make Slaanesh not the second most miserable faction to play behind only Nurgle. Faction bias absolutely probably plays a part in this, and while Khorne and Greenskins are... reasonably popular, Ogres are generally disliked, and one campaign that plays nothing like the baseline for the faction that's a cakewalk isn't helping that.

[@gonkdroid9325]

I wish campaigns had more direction. I get that its a sandbox and you can make your own goals, but for me, I like to feel like I'm working towards something instead of an arbitary number of settlements taken and then you can stop playing. Would like to see more faction-specific quests and final battles

[@TheSuperappelflap]

I would like to see factions spawn in their lore-accurate locations next to their lore-accurate enemies so that you can actually pick a fight with someone and design your armies to fight that faction, instead of being dumped in a mosh pit of 20 different factions no matter where you start.

[@marcelk2753]

People wanted only sanbox campaigns and know people are unhappy again. Its a toxic feedback cycle right now.

[@HomerJSimpson999]

you can follow the victory conditions

[@gonkdroid9325]

@ Thats what I'm saying the victory conditions often feel arbitrary and boring. It would help if they were more thematic and contained more quests instead of "30 more cities and I stop playing"

[@jamesk2325]

@@gonkdroid9325 there's a REALLY AWESOME mod out there worth looking into; it adds multiple new victory conditions for each legendary lord unique to their own motives/goals, with several 'short victory' conditions and a long victory one where each gives some kind of significant buff for the rest of the run so you have a reason to do them all beyond "I was told to"

[@amirsalehabadi7243]

I think the AI being ass is the bigger issue Also the fact that they never test anything is annoying

[@bobsalami]

I like the new campaigns, honestly, and i wish that OTHER older campaigns would get brought to the same level.

[@kakaomilch5905]

Ok next time just don't play the game and win automatically

[@bobsalami]

@@kakaomilch5905 thanks, I'll try it :)

[@squashiejoshie200000]

@@kakaomilch5905 Some people play for a power trip campaign. There's nothing wrong with that. The power creep just means there should be better difficulty settings to allow challenge for people, even on strong lords.

[@thepiousskull]

@@squashiejoshie200000 The settings should mean CA balances the game for the middle ground of players and powercreep enjoyers can get their mindless power trip by adjusting the settings rather than having it baked in courtesy of CA. Then, the rest of us can enjoy a modicum of strategy in our strategy game.

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

​@squashiejoshie200000 I mean... A power trip campaign exists, it's called Easy battle difficulty. You wanna ram empire swordsmen into Chaos Warriors and give 'em a good licking, you have your option to tick.

[@Dragon_of_Terra]

Personally I think it's better that CA launches the new Units/campaigns/LL at an overtuned state and then weaken them later as opposed to launching them in an onderwhelming state and buffing them to relevance, people want to play and enjoy their dlc day 1 and if you bought a £20 dlc only for everything in it to be weak, then the complaints would be even greater.

[@MidnightBlackandVictoria]

Doing Warhammer is tricky. On the one hand, many players WANT things to be even and balanced. They want every faction to have its "equivelant" in power to the next faction because that is easier for them and what they are used to with 4X, strategy games. And I can see their point. On the other hand, Warhammer was NEVER designed to be balanced. Its asymetric warfare at its finest (Which also matches the grim dark asthetic and mature playstyle of the game). An example of this would be Khorne, which are SUPPOSED to be so sickingly OP in melee that most other factions should have NOTHING that can 1V1 any unit of the same tier in straight melee vrs melee with the occasional exception (Black Orcs, Witch Elves, ect should be on equal footing, maybe slightly weaker in melee but close) while the rest should have a snowballs chance at it. The trade off for not having magic access, or effective ranged. NO ONE should be able to match skaven in sheer numbers. Vampire Count characters should be downright scary and hard to bring down, No one should be a match for Tzeentch in magic, ect. Costs for that OP unit should be represented though, so Khorne Armies for instance should have small numbers but be a bit hard to bring down and IMPOSSIBLE for others to 1v1. In fact, there are trade offs like this for a few factions, who trade having one type of advantage for an extreme advantage on something else. This should result in players having to figure out how to deal with these advantages while exploiting their own. On TT, the idea was to do as much damage as you could to an oncoming Khornate army and HOPE you did enough before they reached you, or you were done for. Choke points, bait, dope on a rope strategies, and overwhelm tactics were crucial. I KNEW eventually, as the more "tailored" armies like Chaos, Skaven, DEs, Tomb Kings, and so forth came on the scene there would be a conflict between "Balance" and the assymetric heart of this series this franchise is known and loved for. CA has done a good job representing this "somewhat" with faction mechanics, but this doesnt make up for the disadvantages some armies take when they are nerfed down to be like everyone else. I was surprised a couple weeks ago when I commented this elsewhere at HOW MANY people not only understood this clash between two gamestyles fine, but WANT it to be represented assymetric and NOT fixated on balance. It reminds me of the "Introducing Chaos Dragon" video some years back where she boasted at the power of the chaos dragon, and alot of NON Chaos players were saying they couldnt wait to face and take down such a creature, and were later disappointed that most of it was hype and fluff (Especially TT players who know well how dangerous a centerpiece like even a manticore can be in the right hands!) Too much balance, and it ceases to be warhammer....Make it too much like the TT, and people who don't play TT but only know TW are going to not be happy and complain. It really is a dillema imo, and its starting to show....I see that after watching your video above. The majority of players needs to push for one style or the other. Me? I want it as close to the TT experience as possible no matter HOW OP some units, monsters, or characters may end up being so long as they can be overcome in some way using strategy and arent unbeatable by even one faction. EVERYONE should be able to win against any other faction if they put their mind to it, but other that that I would rather the kid gloves came off!

[@VenrisSFO]

Why we even have more than 50 turns when most campaigns end before that?

[@khankhomrad8855]

Decided to give Karl Franz a shoot last week. Got a Long Victory out of nowhere by turn 60. Having short campaigns take 30 turns and long ones 60-80 is ridiculous. By turn 60 you are barely seeing T4 stuff running around.

[@axeljoelsson2245]

Personally I have never ended a campaign before turn 100-120 unless I genuinely dislike the faction or some mechanic of the campaign. But I have no idea what the norm is.

[@keremdemircan4203]

game is just too easy

[@Breggea]

@@axeljoelsson2245 In Coop we also play like 100+ turns. Endgame crisis and if we beat that we call it a victory. Because nothing could win anymore at that point.

[@TheErtagon15]

​@@axeljoelsson2245personally i just get bored 30-40 turns in and dont finish almost any campaign

[@danielbricker7204]

i dont think they expected you to cheese Skull taker's mechanic in the way that you did. i think they expected you to wipe stuff out and move on. i think the solution would be to nerf the amount of skulls they you get from lords after killing them or whatever

[@khankhomrad8855]

QA is there to stress test mechanics. The devs might not have thought about players playing like that, but QA should. That's their job after all.

[@squashiejoshie200000]

@@khankhomrad8855 QA can't test for things they don't think to test. I was watching Enticity's Skulltaker stream and nobody thought of farming lords. We all just thought that Skulltaker's cloak should only apply on Skulltaker's army instead of all armies.

[@lordinquisitor838]

I think it’s easily fixed by making the skulls a lord gives reset when they die

[@Aneerah]

@@squashiejoshie200000 That makes them bad QA testers

[@khankhomrad8855]

@@squashiejoshie200000 If you have a mechanic that incentivises killing lords, and you know that Legendary Lords respawn indefinetly, you have to account for this case. Like someone else said, if no one at QA thought about this then they aren't doing a good job as testers.

[@playwars3037]

A small point, DLCs do pay for the rework, but minor reworks are not always paired with a DLC for their faction. Case in point : The Silence and the Fury that came with a minor dwarf rework and free LL, but had literally nothing related to them in the DLC itself.

[@e.t.anderson9049]

I was thinking the same thing

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

Any minute now, the Geomantic Web and Lizardmen tech tree will get a silent stealth rework, and Chakax will appear as a legendary hero. Aaaaaany second. My glass of copium is full to tbe brim, I can wait a while.

[@chriscurniski2530]

Really happy and appreciative of these more discussion based videos and content explorations you’ve been doing the last few weeks. Hope you keep up with them and continue to enjoy it!

[@quint3ssent1a]

It does. Factions that were left alone and didn't received reworks/dlcs are now so below the curve, it's ridiculous. Beastmen were everyone's punchbag, but almost every dlc brought something to them EVEN IF IT WASN'T DIRECTLY FOR THEM, and now they are much better off than Vampire Coasts, for example.

[@jamescooke7243]

Ca said they will be getting around to every faction eventually

[@therabbitify]

I don’t mind a hard campaign

[@biowiener7825]

beastmen already got their rework, it made them a million times better than before, the main problem is that the ai cant utilize the faction the same as the player can. taurox gets killed in every campaign i ever played, yet when playing yourself he can kill pretty much anyone, he was basically the prototype to skarbrand in gameplay

[@quint3ssent1a]

@@biowiener7825 coincidentally they also received new units in almost every dlc, new variants of gors, that elemental incarnation of beasts, whatever.

[@Grivehn]

@@biowiener7825 Beastmen cant recruit new armies from their 'camp cities', (aside their LL) nor are able to make any new ones afaik. Its a bug and they havent fixed it since Wh2.

[@effindave6909]

I am 100% the kind of player you're talking about around the 7 minute mark. I play video games to relax. Yes, I want some challenge but I'm not playing TW to get my soul crushed.

[@Brutik5]

One of reasons why on IME release Katarin was my longest campaign was because it was challanging even on Hard/Normal difficulty. (Or was it VH/Normal? I don't remember anymore). But point is, it was difficult and me playing relativelly slow with ballanced armies didn't cause me having OP armies. I played 220 turns of that campaign and there was still challange, but it was on other side of the map. Somehow Slaneesh managed to vasalize entire ulthuan. Insane. But I got bored of the campaign because the ulthuan was only good challange on the map, but it was far away.

[@Pcr12]

Personally, I thought Golg's campaign was pretty fun. Going around the world, saving the ordertide (trying to, rip Cathay), and buying peace treaties with the ultimate crisis with the fat stacks of otherwise unused gold. Good times.

[@SereglothIV]

Regarding the DLC being less successful, it's not only the matter of the races being less popular, but also quite similar to each other. In Thrones of Decay we had an Empire faction focussed on magic and war machines, a dwarf faction focused on war machines and slayers, and a demon faction. In this DLC we got 3 factions focusing on... smashing things. Which is appealing to some poeple, while not appealing at all to others.

[@ChrisNihilus]

I play hardcore on every game... expect Total War. Me, and I think a lot of people, just don't like how blatantly the AI cheats. It's immersion breaking.

[@Breggea]

get the mod where it gives you +5 public order penalty and set the combat cheats to 0 for AI. That way you can play on very hard an it is really okay. Sometimes the start is hard. But if you handle that you will manage the rest. Most factions have a pretty good start. But some are crazy hard... But thats more because of the position than the difficulty.

[@WeAreLegion1]

I don’t have a problem with powerful lords. I have a problem with them not doing anything to old races and them just falling behind. I also have a problem with them deciding to cut out realms of chaos content but then giving the same amount of content in the IE campaign. If you don’t have to do a bunch of crap but the dlc still takes the same amount of time and then you get the same content you would have got minus the ROC crap. I’m glad they stopped worrying about ROC but that was because I thought they would put more effort into IE. CA just aren’t a good company. That’s the part that needs to be accepted.

[@williamknudson8414]

I'm over here as someone who thought Khalida sounded like a less evil Tomb King only to discover she had a tough start initially and it's only gotten worse with factions being added. If people need challenge, there are 100% faction starts that will challenge you!

[@Dash-oPepper]

I tend to just play on normal all around because higher difficulty usually doesn't mean smarter AI. It's just arbitrary buffs and detriments. To your other point, sometimes we want to be Taurox or Skarbrand and run wild. Sometimes we want to build a massive faction with diversity in our armies. And yes, sometimes we want to start off in a bad way and test ourselves. So we need some factions that are overwhelming and some that are underwhelming. Personally, I think letting players choosing horde factions start wherever they want would be amazing for both solo and multi-player games.

[@draner3343]

I did an Arbaal campaign after a year of not playing and after turn 35 I got tired how passive the AI was. Yet Skulltaker still snatched up a quarter of Lustria. I added a mod to make the AI more aggressive and by turn 65 I got a notification that he gained a hegemony over the Island. It’s turn 105 and he’s in an intercontinental conflict with the Cult of Pleasure and N’Kari who has taken all of the High Elf island with Be’lakor’s help. It’s fucking insane and I love it

[@jasonr8525]

Completely removing the upkeep cost for blood hosts was a mistake. It's still way too easy to get a massive collection of skulls with not enough things to spend them on. Golgfag's contract rewards need to be severely reduced. In my campaign his army is walking around with 30k meat and I have about 2mil gold. Havent even completed short campaign victory yet

[@emanuelalfred1565]

How many armies and camps did you have around this point?

[@zachrobertson684]

Once I got an understanding of Golgs mechanics, it's unbelievably easy to steam roll on Very Hard. First 15 turns I didn't even realize camp units were free upkeep. That's insane. After I figure that out it's just a game of pumping out camps and running around the map obliterating anyone everyone with tier 4 plus stacks despite running a deficit. It's definitely noticeable how powerful DLC factions are.

[@TM-MIKEYheheheha]

To be fair I think they accidentally overtuned the rewards and they are nerfing them

[@aoffydosy1530]

The upkeep removing is the idea of SFO mod team that have it before ogre rework. The great different is SFO won't let you spam too many powerful units unconditionally as there are each unit cap

[@phelanlawson1995]

If anything WH3 really shows the cracks and flaws the greater total war series has to deal with.

[@Cuintus]

Hello Legend, I've been a long time watcher, but this is my first comment. I agree with what you say in this video. I play on Campaign Normal difficulty, Very Hard AI behavior, and Normal Stat buffs to the AI. I play this game to relax, have fun, look at the battle animations and get myself into troublesome situations for overestimating my army's capabilities, which I manage to somehow come out of thanks to the millions of tips and disaster battles I've watched you do. I don't build my armies to be the best of the best, but to be thematic. Regarding the Power Creep issue... it's a tough one, as I am of the belief it is mostly self-inflicted. "Oh, I have access to a Cheat Code in GTA V, let me spawn all the weapons and vehicles and be a god!".... and then 20 minutes later, you are tired and bored of the game. Is it the game's fault for giving you the option to cheat? Or is it yours for judging the game after cheating? I apply the same logic for Khorne. Before this DLC, I've seen people (including you) play Skarbrand by "abusing" the Blood Host mechanic. I've always played it by Attacking, Sacking, then attacking again on the next turn, and razing. Instead of having all the Bad Lands conquered by turn 7, I had my starting province taken by turn 10. Am I playing it incorrectly? No? Are you playing it incorrectly? No. If one decides to take a mechanic to the extreme, all the power to them, that's the fun of the game. When we are talking about a Single Player game... go nuts as much as you want, I say. So to answer your questions: No, I don't believe Power Creep is a bad thing. Yes, I do agree that their inconsistency regarding buffing/nerfing certain things make no sense sometimes. Yes, I do agree that it is better for them to have released the DLC now, and fix it after the holidays. Thank you for videos, you are amazing, I really enjoy your content, and I wish you and your family the best for these Holidays.

[@pit_shost]

I hope we get another king in the warlord style dlc. Some challenge campaigns would be nice change of pace

[@MrHalstedt]

A big challenge with this DLC is that Ogres aren't very appealing (possibly the only rave I've not done a campaign with?), Khorne is naturally a bit one dimensional, and Greenskins are too beloved to not get right. Following Thrones of Decay was always going to be a huge ask

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

Agree. Ogres are on a lot of people's least played faction list, and Golg doesn't... exactly fix that. Sure, HIS campaign is entirely different, but Greasus and Skrag being slightly less dysfunctional doesn't make them engaging or fun. And yeah, Khorne is basically entirely a "who am I fighting first" aesthetic choice, since you're either autoresolving for tbe 30th time this turn, or telling the big blob of infantry to fight anything that happens to be thataway. I think Gorbad is a good one, especially since his features encourage actually using the crazy unit variety greenskins have, but, he can't hold up the dlc on his own. Or, like, Shadows of Change. Entirely besides the other drama going on at the time, I know exactly one person excited for Ostankya, 'cuz he loves Baba Yaga lore... and pretty much nothing else. Tzeentch is a modestly liked faction, but the Changeling is another weird campaign, and I don't hear much fanfare about Cathay, they're one of my least played factions. Maybe I just hang out with weird people, I dunno, but, none of the actual factions in Shadows of Change seem to get all that much enthusiasm. Meanwhile Thrones touched Empire and Dwarves, two of the most beloved factions, and Nurgle, who was damn near unplayable by anyone who enjoys entertainment (and I'm vaguely aware that since they broke it up, Tamurkhan himself is the least bought of the three). Faction bias absolutely plays a part in this, people like improvements to factions they actually play, and ways to play those factions differently. Fewer people care about the vague idea of multiplayer health, and fewer people still have all encompasing interest in all factions. People like improvements to what they actually play, not improvements that totally exist, trust me, but you'll never see them because you've never played Ogres or Nurgle or whatever before, and probably still never will even after the update, and only ever get to notice Tamurkhan throwing stacks of nigh unkillable heroes at you, or Greasus buying your capital, and see the power creep in that vacuum.

[@charleshughes7007]

As someone who didn't play any of these three factions prior to this DLC, I was excited for it to give me an excuse to check them out. So far I've only messed with Gorbad but he's pretty fun and it doesn't seem like they did a bad job from that perspective even if the balance is a bit off.

[@benjamincarlson6994]

interesting note a day later, CA has a beta patch out now to tweak primarily Skulltaker, with a lot of the critiques you made reflected in the patch notes

[@rumplstiltztinkerstein]

To be honest there was a dude that beat Skarbrand's campaign on Legendary at turn 8. In a single turn he burnt from lustria all the way to Naggaroth all the way to the chaos wastes stopping close to the badlands. That is just what Khorny boys do.

[@40kVallin]

As a casual player (I only play on hard or very hard depending if I know the faction better or not), I don´t think power creep matters too much. Even with vanilla factions, I limit myself to the units I use, sometimes I skip equipment completely because in most battles equipment doesn´t turn the tide or win the battle. If its not on legendary (and Warriors of Chaos is by far the easiest faction on legendary), all campaigns get too easy after let's say turn 50 at max. I just become unstoppable in most cases. Not because I´m so good, but just because a person is smarter than the AI. For me its important that a campaign makes fun and that they play differently. Skulltaker is fine when I want to completely go nuts and we all know he is getting fixed with that Bloodhost spam, we had more than one faction that was too strong in the beginning. Unique mechanics that make a campaign special is what´s nice. And yes that can include teleporting Skulltaker, so I don´t have to walk endlessly, but can send a hero and then for example pop up in Ulthuan and start kicking elves.

[@piotrjanukanis4459]

Personally, I don't enjoy campaigns like Skulltaker's, but it doesn't spoil my enjoyment of other, more challenging campaigns - and why would it? It's a sandbox game, play it the way you like, if you want to tryhard Belegar, great, if you want to cheese it with Skulltaker, great, I don't get what's the issue. It seems like this whole discussion is centered around people who don't like it when others are having fun in a different way.

[@Dr.AvenVon]

problem is, there are more and more campaigns that are braindead easy like skulltaker, and fewer campaigns that are like belegar. hell, even belegar isn't all that difficult anymore. that is thhe problem, we have like 5 difficult campaigns left in this game

[@XiaosaGaming]

@@Dr.AvenVon There are difficult campaigns in the game? I am not so sure. I think the Warhammer Total War is stupid brain dead even on very hard difficulty. I've had way more of a challenge with older Total War Games like Medieval 2 Total War, personally it feels like more "modern" Total Wars are stupid brain dead easy that I just don't feel any challenge with any of the AI. They really need to rework the AI.

[@Dr.AvenVon]

@@XiaosaGaming agrred for the most part. all of the difficult campaigns left are only difficult because you are surrounded by people who hate you and are way stronger early game than you are. if you are interested, those 5 factions are: -all of basegame kislev factions -khalida -daemon prince

[@1701Emperor]

The teams never work on a singular release at a time. While working on this DLC, the team also allocate developers to future DLCs and patches and projects in general.

[@Traha]

Im a normal/normal player and my fav campaign in the game is Katarin. Enemies on all sides but some room to make allies and some variation in enemies depending how Drycha acts or how Azag progresses. And after an initial struggle you're in position to snowball. I think the problem with a guy like Skulltaker (to me) is you're pretty much snowballing from turn one and the exploits for his mechanics are almost -too- obvious. Legend took it to the extreme for his Skulltaker save(as we would expect him to!) but even i who tends to avoid that stuff kept a couple guys alive to farm. In regards to people mentioning how bad the AI is now one problem thats risen up is its almost like there's too many LL on the map now. Back in 2 you had AI factions like Grimgor who would generally get really strong cause he had a bunch of jobbers to beat up or confederate, but now so many factions have LL's with strong initial armies or the ability to quickly recover that you end up with a bunch of smaller guys that the player just rolls over when you get to them.

[@akro6277]

Did you even check what the greenskins nerf included? Economy buildings and upgrades are twice as expensive The tech tree is completely gutted, goblin units have basically nothing compared to what they used to have in the tech tree and additionally a lot of the good technologies are ridiculously hard to get e.g casualty replenishment technology is halved in effectiveness and take like 45 turns to get A lot of character skills have been nerfed/removed including things like goblintide and other unit buffs, significantly decreasing the effectiveness of goblins even further All of the legendary lord effects and faction buffs have been gutted e.g skarsniks’s 40% upkeep reduction for goblins is now 15% and a plethora of other faction nerfs. Not being able to build raiding stashes and an income building in the same region is the most irrelevant and least impactful nerf in this update, strange that’s all you mentioned.

[@ethanedwards7756]

To me the biggest problem is the combination of player power creep and AI factions being completely passive to the point they’re just waiting for the player to come conquer them For me a power fantasy is being in a bad situation but having so many tools at my disposal that I can resolve the situation however i want. If i can win with so little effort that i dont even need to use my OP abilities, then i get blno enjoyment out of using them. Why use your Ikit nuke if the AI will walk into rattling gun fire and you win the battle just as quickly I think the changeling is the worst Total War campaign ever created. As soon as you start the campaign you’ve won, the AI will never be able to eliminate all of your armies and cults because the faction is so OP. But that is only if you’re playing as the changeling. If the AI is in control of the changeling it will simply sit there and do nothing because the AI is not capable of using the faction mechanics

[@davidfazekas4729]

I completely agree with you Legend. I looked forward to buy at least Skulltaker's dlc but I want a decent challange campaign so I really happy you made the tier list about the campaigns. :)

[@taylor4733]

I play on the same settings as you (L/VH/Max AI cheats/No end game crisis), and with never have playing Khorne before I finished a Skulltaker campaign victory on turn 50 with controlling half of the map. I feel like the power creep is a little out of control with certain faction lords compared to others. I would like to see forgotten lords brought up to some of the more powerful lords. My favorite factions are wood elves and vampire coast, with vampire coast needing a rework more than anything. Where is the love for Aranessa? Maybe a campaign mechanic like Golg's could bring some new life to the vampires and let us play more like pirates. Why does a dark elf lord have a better pirate campaign than the actual pirates? To make it clear I am happy with the state of warhammer 3, I just personally would like to see some of the forgotten lords/factions get something new.

[@13g0man]

Or factions brought closer to their lore. The Vampire Counts as a classic example, their factions should focus more on the gentleman Vampire(diplomacy) or the bloodstarved beast(lost to the blood lust) aspects rather than how they currently are.

[@kevinmeyer1583]

Fundamentally, if the DLC factions were painting the map as the AI, I'd have more concerns. And with the exception of Yuan Bo once and the FreeLC Nurgle faction once, I've never seen it happen. The Chaos Dwarfs are still around. The Chaos Dwarfs do not own the entire badlands.

[@trygon9885]

I guess I am somewhere in the middle playing on VH/VH with no AI Cheats and I very much do enjoy to just paint the map

[@squashiejoshie200000]

Ayyyy, me too.

[@Kevalanium]

i hate painting the map i wanna get my achievement for beating the faction and move on so i had to get mods

[@Tuboshi0815]

@@Kevalanium Why do you need mods for that?

[@giorgaras1851]

​@@Tuboshi0815 probably because he sucks at the game.

[@smlbder352]

@@Kevalanium L

[@lowbearful]

the new hotfix addresses my complaints about skulltaker, good job on CA for being so quick about this!

[@manianeusz8654]

I think that the problem is Older factions have no interesting and interactive campaign mechanics, for example - high elves, dark elves, Lizardmen, Bretonnia, Norsca(xD) and even new ones - Cathay, Kislev.(imo) I would've put Dwarfs there as well, but The new updates made them feel fresh again, but still they lack any lord to lord unique mechanics. apart from Malakai and Thorek? Of course Skulltaker is absolutely stupid broken OP and needs a nerf, but again will the average player be able to exploit the bounty/skull mechanic? Being a single player only enjoyer I do not really care about lords nerfs since Im not going up against a level 50 lord on turn 30, nor will the AI make doomstacks. I prefer the game on Hard - hard difficulty with no stat boosts. But coming back to the main point. I believe that older factions getting much needed reworks, tweaks, additions will make the newer factions look and feel less power creeped.

[@personpeoplehime]

I really like OoD, power creep doesnt bother me in a single player game with mods. Im currently playing the new orks and having a challenging time killing the dwarves. Honestly I think the game is what you make it, it's not a big deal lol

[@keremdemircan4203]

I think the game is just too easy. Plain and simple. I've been playing every Total War game at the maximum difficulty possible since OG Rome and the point where we came is pathetic. Empire, Attila, WH2 I loved these games because they were really challenging. I miss those games

[@trixus4768]

I mean, when you think about it, what are the campaigns that are the most powerful? Skulltaker (sure, but he is probably getting a nerf). Then it would be Bathasar Geld, Grimgor, Bel'akor, Morathi, Tyrion, Skarsnik and Vlad (or Isabella). But like... these are either a part of the base game or DLC from gazillion years ago... what I'm trying to say is that powercreep has been in the game for ages because how difficult it is to balance... Idk... Medusa against a Stonehorn. And you know what? Powercreep has been (and still is) a thing on tabletop as well and for the same reason.

[@thijsdeboer389]

Tbh i think it depends on the individual, i like TWW as a casual game and dunking on the ai with some overpowered shit is super fun to me (Also i don't know enough about the game mechanics to snowball within 30 turns but i imagine abusing those would make the game boring)

[@tm103]

Legend is spot on re: the software development and timing of release. At some large corp you aren’t getting shit done from the middle of December to the middle of January

[@leonidas231]

Skulltaker, the end game threat we've been waiting for and Gorbad being out of Black Crag ruins his campaign cause its Grimgor 2.0 and nothing truly new

[@loowick4074]

Greenskin issue is a good highlight with the community. They dont want even minor nerfs to their faction and demand a power fantasy ....but bitch about powercreep at the same time

[@lachlain4070]

I have always had this philosophy in games as I play them, watch dev cycles, read feedback. The problem isn't power creep and more what I will colloquially refer to as weakness creep. Characters/champions/factions/etc. Like Skulltaker are not that common in games, just look at SoC and ToD. Instead what people see is these new lords with new fun mechanics and compare them to other lords and realize the older lords suck. They perceive these new changes as power creep because they are new and don't think too critically about it. The primary issue I see (and one I feel) is that companies accidently or inevitably make older campaigns bad as they introduce new and cool things making it seem like there is creep when in actuality there may be little to none. Also the AI is bad so it doesn't even matter.

[@Raptor747]

I mean, when the Skaven have a global range nuke, can summon clanrats repeatedly anywhere on the map at no cost (negating the entire deployment and formation aspects of strategy; if the AI didn't spam it, it would be devastating against your artillery because unlike the AI, you cannot pay perfect attention at all times), weapons teams that have more firepower than gunpowder units while having more range and more ammo, fighting them is an absolute pain in the ass as something like, say, the Empire.

[@Amenema]

It’s less power creep and more “we’re finalizing all races to be viable, but can’t rework 10 years of content all at once, so we’re starting with the Warhammer 1 races, and working our way forward.” Let’s just be patient and let them work their way through them all.

[@ak-gp6ug]

more like "the newest DLC is going to be broken, and then we'll nerf it when the next one comes out"

[@Loner762]

Agreed, buffing what sucks is always better than nerfing what's strong. Warhammer 3 is a single-player game first and foremost. The majority of players have always been single player campaign not multi-player

[@roofie1695]

I agree, even thought I think they are going a bit overboard with it. But its probably intentional

[@Obdezat]

Man all these races were “viable”. They just weren’t interesting in what they were doing on the campaign map. Now they’re more interesting but destroy literally any adversity and challenge on the campaign map. What’s the point in playing a 4x strategy game if none of your decisions actually matter and it’s more just fighting battles, collecting a resource, and making future battles even easier to win? It’s a boring game loop, and leads to what is supposed to be a grand strategy game feeling effectively over a few hours in.

[@orestisgeorgatos6725]

glazer spotted

[@qasemsoleimani9443]

There are fewer, not more people working in the DLCs. Sofia replaced the employees transferred to other projects, they did not reinforce them.

[@Cynndora]

i don't worry too much about powercreep, i care more about each faction having something special that makes them interesting to play. outside of SFO which does wonders for this, many factions i don't even consider playing because it's far better to just play my favourite of that race and confed the other lords, a good example of this is High Elves where i never even consider playing anyone but Alith and Eltharion because their faction mechanics are really cool and i can just get the other lords under a far better faction than their own, like who doesn't want stalk and teleport stance on every army.

[@eyeoftomato9547]

Honestly was expecting half of the comments or concerns with this dlc to be people hating on the races in it, theres a weirdly high number of empire stans that come outta the woodwork whenever they aren't in a dlc.

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

I mean, it applies to me, but I'm a weirdo who likes lizards, rats, and undead. I haven't been especially happy or catered to by any of the game 3 dlcs.

[@aimerw]

My preference would be for new lords to introduce new and significantly interesting mechanics. However, most mechanics introduced with new lords are just reskins or slight modifications - not particularly interesting. Unfortunately, it is very much easier to make flashy and numerically more powerful mechanics than it is to make interesting ones. Furthermore, if people are buying the DLC it is likely either because they enjoy the race, lore about the lord, or the flashy mechanics/units shown. Interesting mechanics are more difficult to show and therefore sell.

[@jakebishop7822]

As someone who thinks the Skulltaker campaign was heaps of fun, but probably not very repayable due to how OP it is, it being broken on release, and then nerfed in the future has me happy

[@theniceadmiral8488]

I agree with legend This dlc + patch needed a bit more time in the oven The powercreep is player powercreep and doesn't matter for the players that dobt want to play that way

[@SummitVS]

Thanks for your videos 8:13 where have i heard this before? This is such a good point to highlight and it applies to a lot more than videogames.

[@ctg4818]

Its like a Paradox game where the game costs over $1,000 because they feel the need to sell every update.

[@Lo7q7le7guste7mrtf]

I personally don't mind a power creep. You can always come up with challenges on your own. But I do understand if the game feels too easy. However if I had to choose between super hard TWWH1 campaigns and TWWH2 or 3 campaigns, I much rather take 2 or 3 since I don't want the game play sessions to take years either. Nor do I want to stress too much, since I mostly just want to play the game for fun.

[@hannibal5158]

My biggest problem is that a ton of campaigns offer no more challenge by turn 15-20… instead of pushing it back, CA made it so you can recruit everything earlier. AI is a spectator in this world, it does not expand, it does not confederate, it just waits for the player to kill it.

[@squashiejoshie200000]

Are you playing on legendary? If not, and the game is too easy, try turning up your difficulty. Otherwise, you can look into mods if you want to keep playing.

[@hannibal5158]

@ I play in Very hard, I don’t like the limitations on saves and camera that legendary has but the few times I tried it it didn’t change anything to the passive AI. AI was still the same I was just more nerfed as a player, it didn’t make it smarter.

[@hedless4788]

I'm glad you separated out the people who play it on Legendary. Same thing happened with Stalker 2 where many people were judging it vs a heavily modded Stalker 1, primarily 2 mods sets that changed the games severely. Now I judge Stalker 2 negatively still, but I have to keep in mind how both that game and War3 are played, and I think you did a pretty good take on how it turns out. Excellent video!

[@robinstacpoole2667]

So we have had a new DLC. Legend has declared himself happy (happier) with the current status of TWWH3. I’ve been waiting for the usual Legend Total War live stream. It has not happened. From this, I conclude that Legend: • Is making enough from disaster videos to keep him happy (looks like your average is back up to 80K?) • Does not need Superchats • Has found a way to have a great balance between being a new dad and having a KZbin account Hope those are true, happy Xmas

[@wolfie54321]

I can't imagine running all night streams is great when you have a kid, it might occasionally be convenient to have a parent up all night, but Legend being in Oz means he streams at absurd times locally to get the best global reach. I imagine previously it was basically that disasters were his "day job" and streams were his "night job".

[@olafthemoose9413]

I only play on legendary and usually with pretty early endgames. That being said I also enjoy playing powerful factions, they just need to offer sufficient challanges. I have no problems with having powerful tools but then also give me tricky situations to solve so I get to use those powerful tools in a meaningful way instead of roflstomping the whole campaign with OP stuff. Belegar for example is great. You get 4 super powerful heros, you a dwarf factions so you get all the OP tools dawi have (age of reckoning, item crafting, deeps, grudge setteler units, ....) but you also face serious opposition, especially if you put an early endgame of skaven and greenskins. I just view the game as a puzzle to solve. I don't mind having only a few weaker tools -> I'll tune down the difficulty a bit by lowering the various endgame parameters. But I also don't mind having powerful tools -> I'll tune up the difficulty of the endgame. The best thing that could happen to the game for me is more and better endgames and more ways to customize them.

[@solidcobalt]

I finished my skull taker campaign with 155 active armies on like turn 49 lol

[@PlayerSlotAvailable]

Sheesh... I am trying to finish my first Snikch campaign (All victories) and I am on turn 320

[@theonlyexclusive4295]

Full map completion turn 111 with 697 armies. Yes I’m being serious.

[@solidcobalt]

@@theonlyexclusive4295 yeah man I believe it .. I created a bunch of 'blood host factories' by just constantly stacking settlements every turn/other turn and I'm guessing you probably did the same, if I tried harder I could probably make 60+ per turn it's just exhausting to keep track of at that point lol

[@solidcobalt]

@@PlayerSlotAvailable skull taker is just incredibly broken at the moment

[@simon6154]

I'm civil engineer and I work in road design company for 2 years now. I totally get all of this. We don't have enough people, company is taking on more projects, we are working over hours, (I don't that much because it's not good for you and I have other shit to do in a day) because of that we are unhappy, sick, under stress all of that. So many times now boss comes and he's like. Till Friday this needs to go out for this and this reason. It's fucking Wednesday. I once said, look I can take 1 or 2 more days and polish this. Or if you want this to go out on Friday it will be unfinished with mistakes. He does not care, unfinished it is. It's ok he says. It happened that I got shit later for not paying enough attention to stuff and making mistakes/forgetting something... Shitshow. I'm 100% sure same shit is happening here.

[@TheSuperappelflap]

If your boss tries to give you shit after you told him you needed more time and he didnt give it to you, just tell him to write it down in an email. He wont. It will imply his own negligence & if he ever fires you you can sue him if he writes anything down black on white. He will hopefully pick to either give you the time or not complain about the consequences afterwards.

[@simon6154]

@@TheSuperappelflap I started doing this yes. Once he said that I can copy signature from director from other company that we worked with from one document to the other. I said ok but I wrote an email to him that stated everything, because that was one thing that made me think I can get in trouble. From that thing onwards I'm doing that with everything

[@102728]

Yet to watch through the whole thing, but I think power creep is a serious issue in many games that have active development during their lifespan. You see this in twwh3, but also games like league of legends, where each champion is released overtuned and packed with more and more tools. I draw that compariaon because both games use the same approach - release new content stronger than existing content to make it more enticing for players to interact with and spend money on, and update existing content to the power level of new content over time through reworks. This works as an immediate solution to the power disparity between content pieces, but introduces a different issue. Before I continue on whqt that issue is and why it is, I would like to contrast this approach with helldivers 2, which went the opposite direction of nerfing everything to an intended power level, causing a lot of issues for that game - partially because ganers have been conditioned to expect power creep, but also because the intended power level wasn't in the right spot which was exacerbated by bugs affecting player powerthat took a long time to fix. Now, the issue with the rolling increase of power over time in games like twwh3 and lol is that, while the relative power level between content pieces is roughly in line, the overall power level increases, which fundamentally alters the game experience. And that's why I brought up helldivers 2, because the community outrage, review bombing and dwindling player numbers, the developer ended up caving and increased player power level accross rhe board by a huge amount in one go. And this fundamentally altered the game's experience, just like in games like twwh3 that increase player power through powercreep over a longer period. Just in this case the contrast showed how impactful this increase in power level actually is on the game experience. And that is the core issue with powercreep in my opinion. Not that new content is stronger than existing content, that can be corrected in a reasonable manner through reworks. But rather that the overall power increase changes the game fundamentally. The longer this goes on, the more a game plays different from the original release you bought. And the game's design decisions that made sense back then, make less and less sense for the game as the game changes more and more. I believe it is possible to stick to the intended power level, and keeping the game's design coherent with it. I believe a game will be much better as a result if it manages to do this. And I believe the cornerstone required for succeeding in this is a proper definition of the player's intended power level, that then all content can be tuned to. I think games 'evolving' over time (the powercreep component of that, not the content richness) is a bad thing, as they rarely evolve with a clear, intentional design behind it and instead just lose their coherence. Okay, now I'm ready to watch the video :p

[@MrCheckpoint93]

7:10 I remember when i bought the chaos dlc after i see a chaos invasion with the orcs, i thought i will be a fking badass chad with chaos , then i realized i will have 1 army ,i should rush for lightning strike... Im happy now , i like chaos and enjoying destroy the word with thousands of deamons

[@AsnorC]

I don't care about powercreep. Played as Gorbad and I really enjoyed the challenge of it. Had no clue which way to expand towards first and now I'm playing Skulltaker and just enjoying the Khorne playstyle of hyper aggression. I've seen some people complain about the imbalance of factions and needing to ban factions from a head to head campaign, but not every game needs to be balanced to fit a competitive playstyle. And as you say, there are variety of lords with different power levels, just choose the one that fits ur preferred difficulty.

[@Dr.AvenVon]

that is because gorbad is the only one in this dlc that is not completly OP

[@joshuapinkley8562]

One thing i dont understand is how they missed the raiding stance issue for ogre camps. It happened to me on my first playthrough.

[@shetlandapache949]

They dont have devs that playtest their own game

[@Loner762]

I like the new campaigns and would rather patiently wait to have the old races/factions be buffed up and reworked to modern standards rather than crabs in a bucket nerfing everything. I believe in the COD:MW2 philosophy of "if everything is overpowered, then nothing is!" 👍

[@Torylon86]

Legend hitting the nail on the head. I only played very hard to get the achivements, now I just play normal so I can use any cool looking unit and not feel handicapped

[@AliothAncalagon]

I don't think powercreep ruins the game. I think older units or factions not being able to keep up with powercreep is what can ruin games.

[@JayDragon7]

Funny thing about AI Skulltaker upgrading his cloak of skulls is i went over to Lustria as Elspeth a bit late into the campaign. He had completely taken over but was cleaning out Oxyotl. I saw him defeat an army and spawn a blood host. But the blood hosts he spawned from his cloak proc seemed to just... Not have AI. They'd stand in place and never move. So there was just a bunch of blood hosts all over Lustria thst weren't moving or doing anything.

[@pacocheung1864]

The anti player bias is way too strong still, I get that on higher difficulties they should be challenging, but the ai makes such illogical decisions just to sabotage / randomly ruin your game it is way too frustrating I can be 4 provinces away and none of my armies nearby, yet they’d still think I’m their “main threat”, trespass their armies for 5 turns straight just to suddenly declare war and burn down a random level one settlement, then immediately leave after my armies show up, cowardly and more annoying than challenging. Especially on higher difficulties they just beeline towards the player for absolutely no reason I have a campaign that I might send to legend because the new (really strong) DLC lords are so unfun and brutal to play against it feels like a punishment just for playing the game….. I do hope others are enjoying the new DLC and lords, because playing any other faction in the old world right now is like legendary+ difficulty

[@HomerJSimpson999]

you can play any old world faction on any difficulty only with autoresolve and win.

[@RavaTroll]

I admit I play TWW because I love the lore, love the armies, and I didn't play the tabletop much. So I play on Normal difficulty for both settings, and use a mod to give myself some buff. This way I can watch my armies fight in some kind of cinematic mode, play themed armies, and just have fun playing "toy soldiers" i guess. Exactly like when I was a little kid and played with my dad's armies with made up rules against myself (throwing dices was important though hehe).

[@ronaldramirez5601]

What it's really funny is that some people want "balance" or "realism" in a game that's it's about FANTASY, hell they are nerfing Golg just when the ogres were fun! I mean, c'mon! This game has characters that supposedly can kill entire armies by themselves in the lore, how the hell they can expect "balance"? This is a game about monsters, little humans and creatures that don't exist, if you want realism then play historical (that it's a big if) or change your franchise, but please don't remove FUN. And also, we must keep in mind that we still have a lot of bugs that remain in the game, even exported from the other Warhammers. Thank you Legend for the video.

[@TheSuperappelflap]

equating balance and realism is a false premise, your entire post after that is nonsense. This video is about balance. Realism is an entirely different story. In Starcraft lore Protoss space ships are so big they can take on an entire zerg swarm by themselves, the game still has to be balanced so that you cant win the campaign or a multiplayer match by A-moving a single void ray. The same applies to warhammer. Just because the lore says something, doesnt mean its a good idea to make an unbalanced game. Many lords in the game are already way too strong, to the point where its easier to kill the entire army around them and win by army losses, because they are practically invulnerable and will beat an entire army by themselves. This is not fun to play with or against. So if your goal is fun, then you should agree there should be a reasonable amount of balance. Now, you can argue that in single player campaigns, its not bad if the player gets some overpowered functionality, but the AI can also get them, and it makes multiplayer campaigns unplayable when you cant beat the other guys army with anything you can make.

[@ronaldramirez5601]

@@TheSuperappelflap The Power creep it's addressed in the comment as "balance". Many, of the people that play the game, don't want balance. That's the point, and I can argue that many players want even more overpower stuff, just check the amount of mods that offer a lot of overpowered units and you will see. I can understand your take about balance because of the issues you pointed out, or the game mechanics that can be frustrating, but in this case, I don't care about that. I want to build nonsensical units, I want to build doomswarms or doomstacks, and many players also want that. Like I wrote, this is a game in which magic exists, and you can annihilate entire armies of perfectly balanced troops with one character, where's the balance in that? We should remove it then? Put limits in the power level?. And also, who will determine what it's overpowered or not? The lore? the community feedback? ourselves?. It's very easy to say "ugh imbalance it's not fun this and that" but it's an futile exercise because there are different opinions and different playstyles, but when CA always try to balance something it removes all the fun, and excuse me, it's a game to have fun not save lives or to solve the meaning of life.. That's my two cents. Peace.

[@TheSuperappelflap]

@ronaldramirez5601 if you want to play game where you just press button to win, you can play cookie clicker.

[@ronaldramirez5601]

@@TheSuperappelflap You missed the entire point then, it's a game to have FUN no to have another job to play a game. But it doesn't matter you will never change my mind or myself change yours, so keep to your niche.

[@TheSuperappelflap]

@@ronaldramirez5601 it's more fun when I can't just win the game by pressing random buttons without paying attention. Go watch a movie.

[@jeatall]

Concerning the rushed stuff, there are a few cities where they forgot to implement the maps (the new region south of cathay, you can go there fast with Gold Order). If you attack the city it s just a flat empty map.