My Perspective on SFO: What I like and Dislike - Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires

Finally tried out SFO: Grimhammer III for Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires. It does some nice things like adding to uniqueness of legendary lords, improving balance etc. but has a glacial and annoying campaign pace.
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[@Trairan]

I personally also like the slower paced campaigns from SFO, and the ongoing struggle from early game staying into mid and late game. Original Warhammer 3 has a pretty stupid AI and I usually get so strong by turn 50 that I get bored and never finish a campaign, playing on legendary difficulty, and I'm not even a good or experienced player at this game, I've only played Shogun 2 and Warhammer 3, vanilla just feels too easy. So for me the point of this mod is making the campaign harder on the mid and long term because past early game I find it boring in vanilla.

[@makeytgreatagain6256]

Game is good but I dislike how it handles strategic threats. As the chorfs once I got strong enough the entire south lands alongside the worlds edge declared war on me only to lose and then have fellow chaos factions including archon declare war on me only to also lose to my never ending legions of Chaos dwarfs. It wasn’t even a fun endgame threat just irritating like I was given 0 room to breathe and was swatting flies

[@TheOniraf]

Teach me your way sensei, I suck at this game, I get bodied as Karl Franz every single time.

[@trewajg]

While I understand your preference of playing very fast and agressive, one of the reasons I prefer to play slower campaigns is to actually experience the game! Like, playing fast and agressive, while it is optimal, you don't experience any units that are more tier 3. Every time I tryhard and rush everything I feel like I have won by turn 50 and have barely played the game because I didn't get to experience the units I like more, or try some different army comp. I understand your desire to min max and do the most optimal strategies to have success in the game, but it just get boring and unfulfilling after a while and sometimes it is more fun to play in a less optimal way.

[@Krethak]

While I agree that not rushing is better for your blood pressure and I personally enjoy a slower paced campaign myself (I recently tried out old World mod and it is a LOT more relaxed to play than the IE map) but if I look at this you won't even get to experience your high tier units either because it takes forever to build up. If SFO reduces growth, public order and income then you must wait a lot longer until you have the surplus to upgrade your settlement and the money to do so so ultimately you have to play EVEN LONGER with those Tier 2/3 armies before you can even build the fancy units (and affording them with crappy income is an entire different matter at that point)

[@JakeBaldwin1]

@@Krethak I would be fine with the lower growth, public, and income if there was some way to globally increase it so you get rewarded for building the appropriate infrastructure. Like you build a farm in one province that massively increases the growth locally, but then gives a minor growth bonus to the rest of the empire. I personally don't like how the various provinces never really interact with each other, once you build them up to max you can basically forget about them.

[@Krethak]

@@JakeBaldwin1 Oh yes I like interacting buildings over the faction or at least adjacent provinces. Try out Agemouk's Tomb King extended if you want to have an example how that can be made. I think it's a great mod that rewards playing long campaigns and has interesting and unique effects on their buildings and technologies ^^

[@Shizandgiggles37]

@@Krethakyea they do reduce the growth but I find taking the "No taxes" side is great. Increases growth by 50 and +10 control per turn. It's a really good option to help control and grow your settlements if you can afford to do it. Plus is makes you play slower with less money. Usually around turn 100-120 I've got enough for 5-8 full stack and top tier units. Depends on the faction though

[@Monsteretrope]

Ngl, you sold SFO to me :)

[@alexcebollero]

I’ve play SFO since 2 and it’s the only way I play now. I personally find it great because it does slow down the pace of a game so your games can last over a series of play sessions. To each their own though!

[@tripletrollface]

I was actually interested in hearing criticism of SFO until it became clear you basically want to be steamrolling your campaign at turn 20. Your SFO settings are good enough indication of that. SFO is better, not worse, for the exact reasons you highlighted.

[@lost4820]

yeah this settings+auto resolve mode means he win every campaigne in 30 turns with zero battles.

[@Costin_Gaming]

SFO isn't going to stop you from steamrolling at turn 20-30, it's just going to make it very annoying in the way Warhammer 1 and 2 with constant rebellions was. But the very incentive structure that exists from vanilla still exists in SFO: Conquering a lot of territory and destroying your opponent quickly is still the best way to play.

[@bubyCZ]

@@Costin_Gaming You do not have to wait. You can sack the shit out of teritorry that is not beneficial to your faction. You have to be methodical where you put your resources and how you get them. When you popped those SFO settings - You play with extreme replenish, growth tech etc. ... so that you could steamroll autoresolve like in vanilla and THEN you wonder why everything else does not synergize... Factionwide elite unit caps and lower replenishment are barebones basics with SFO, otherwise it just does not work. Vanilla and CA-style is braindead steamrolling where campaign is just custom battle selector with unlimited money... hold on, no, NOT EVEN THAT because of how CA is handeling autobattle and economy where you can go without any meaningful manual battle in the entire campaign -.- ... Speedruning ADHD BS is plague in modern gaming...

[@KrokoDildos]

@@Costin_Gaming annoying? SFO literally makes the game non-casual and as close as possible to what we see in the lore - all units are rebalanced in accordance with it (approximately). After sfo, the vanilla game loses interest and turns into a routine coloring of the map, spamming of doomstacks, it’s even boring to watch. Company sfo does not look annoying, rather, it is more complex, realistic and forces you to play with more types of troops, rather than spamming the same doomstack in vanilla. into the aggressive style of the vanilla game - any child who has played this game for at least 50 hours can handle it. It just can't challenge you

[@ian2372]

SFO is hard to get into. It's not about easy mode. Radious has alot more units and is alot more interesting over time than SFO. SFO has a rigid play style and it's not for everyone.

[@LungDrago]

I think that SFO has the good idea on paper, but WH3, and really all Total War games to be entirely honest, are just way too limited in scope for what SFO would want to do. The campaigns in this game are full of various gimmicks, but when you look at the base mechanics, it just doesn't compare at all to most other turn based strategy games. It's a very bare bones board game where you build buildings, recruit armies, move armies and do battles. That's literally it, there's nothing more for you to do. There are other auxiliary mechanics present, but in the end it all boils down to those few basic things. Having control problems? Well, to fix that, you can build buildings (that increase control), do battles (fight rebellions, conquer whole province for a control commandment) or maybe recruit a hero/lord that can improve control (but you will have to do battles to level them up). Diplomacy? Diplomacy is a joke. The best way to engage in it is to do battles - with their enemies, or just to acquire cities so you can sell them. So in light of all that, you really do have a very good point, because if things generally slow down to the point that you cannot build buildings or do battles, there's really nothing for you to do. What's really interesting though is that in this bare bones game, there are already balancing nightmares present in it. Like with the garrisons. Either they are too small and composed of such shit units they might as well not exist, which forces you to recruit defensive armies (which was pretty bad in WH2 that had the dumb supply lines mechanic), or they are too large and force either too many sieges that suck or push you to attack with ridiculous overwhelming numbers so you can auto-resolve. Neither scenario is good really, and in the three games so far neither SFO nor CA were able to find a sweet spot for them. I would really like if the campaign was more complicated in mechanics but on the other hand I don't have the faith in these developers that it wouldn't all just end up in a huge jumbled mess.

[@ColetheFlame01]

I agree a lot on this especially with the garrison part. I'm currently on a quest to complete every single race Legendary campaign victory achievement and dear gosh are garrisons important in that, but they are so useless in some factions. the Empire have waaay too little ranged units on their minor settlements, the elves have an overabundance of archers but once the enemy do hit the wall your archers start to suck, the Tomb Kings at best get one Ushabti and that's it for minor settlements, etc etc. the balancing on garrisons is so utterly crap that the only reason I build them is to just slow the ai cause it will always spend one turn building siege equipment on walled settlements even if it has siege attackers in its armies 95% of the time.

[@patrickdaly1088]

Tall being an end turn simulator is definitely a big problem, as you said, there needs to be choices to make. So if we assume that the player will hold and develop a single province (or two, or three, pick your poison), and has good defensive positioning to not need army maneuvering, what kinds of choices are even available? The economic system has no depth; If you can afford growth, build that first, otherwise prioritize cash buildings. There's no choices on the economic side, so I think what you're observing is that nerfing the thing that works down to the level of the thing that doesn't work results in a worse experience. Not too surprising really. I had thought that the Radious overhaul at least made for a more fun experience, in that the player can afford to field more armies. It doesn't do much to address the core economic issues, mainly that the economic gameplay is completely one dimensional, but I think that's actually a little difficult to do because the only way I can come up with to make econ have choices, is scarcity. If you don't have enough money to afford all your buildings, then you have to make choices on what goes up first. If one path is objectively correct, scarcity doesn't help the game feel better because it appears to just slow the player down, rather than giving the player an interesting situation they need to solve. Scarcity and single resource may just not work that well together. Compare this to Stellaris, where your very first economic choice in the game is between 4-8+ completely viable options. You can choose between any of the three basic resources, or alloys, or consumer goods, science, unity, amenities, or trade... Some choices are stronger than others but there are situations where you might pick any of those options. Minerals is often a top notch pick, unless you have plenty, in which case maybe alloys or consumer goods is a good choice. Long term, CG is nice for tech rush civs as well as wide civs. Alloys is good if you want to be hyper aggressive; Yes, you have to make an economic choice to decide to commit to aggression. Science is always great if you can afford the CG's, Unity's okay. If you're doing catalytic processing then minerals get deprioritized for food. Amenities is kindof a niche thing where the base species has the "produce 20% less amenities" trait, so going from -5 to +5 amenities will drastically increase all production. Trade based empires used to be too strong, they're not as viable after trade got nerfed but you still can pull it off. It's a choice. I have to think about my very first economic click, I'm not repeatedly making depth=0 decisions, decisions based solely on the information I have on the screen. Before I even start I have to have a plan, and my choices are responding to the situations I have, to fulfill my plan.

[@K4Sabotage]

I respectfully disagree. I don’t think SFO encourages passive play. I also don’t believe that its not strategic to decide to slow down expansion so you aren’t stretched too thin. I can’t think of a time when I’ve ever clicked end turn then not done several things before clicking end turn again. But, this is coming from a diehard SFO fan since WH2. I have almost no experience in WH3 outside of the overhaul so it’s hard to look outside of my narrow scope. (Side note I think old world mod combined with SFO is chefs kiss). The mod certainly doesn’t magically fix everything, but I think it personally gets me much more involved in a way I can’t play without. Anyways, there’s my very biased opinion. Huge fan of your channel, man! Happy to hear a different perspective on my favorite mod and glad you keep pushing the discussion forward. Keep it up🤙🏼

[@Costin_Gaming]

It's trying to encourage you to sit on your ass and build up. It's failing hard on that I'd add.

[@lost4820]

Slower pace better. Its so stupid and uninteresting to easy rush whole map in 30 turns

[@Costin_Gaming]

It's not slower: It's more annoying to achieve the same result as vanilla.

[@VikingNewt]

your doing warhammer wrong. powergamers ruin everything they touch.

[@TheGreatDanish]

@@VikingNewt you're doing warhammer wrong. casuals ruin everything they touch. See what I did there? Its the same thing you did. Unabashed stupidity. People play games differently. There is no wrong way to play a single player game. The fact that you dislike the dominant way most people play is not an issue. The obstinate, donkey like pride in *not* following the meta to the point of being bitter about it *is* an issue. Don't be a bitch about how other people play games, dude.

[@via_negativa6183]

It's a bit of a pick your poison scenario with with game at this point. I personally like SFO just because the extra options just tends to stave off the boredom for longer in the campaigns for me.

[@stingblademaster]

I enjoy a slower grow. Allow myself to consolidate what I’ve taken over and a chance too get the higher tier units. I hate being punished by the game for not being aggressive with a faction that isn’t supposed to be aggressive. I would like if the AI could also build up for doom stacks and epic sieges

[@VikingNewt]

interesting take, im gonna disagree with a fair amount of what you had to say on SFO, but i've been playing SFO variants since their first releases... for me its the fact that every lord has workable mechanics and bonuses as well as properly extended rearranged rosters. that and having mother ostankya where shes supposed to be...

[@robovinefilms1811]

The Double Skillpoints mod for SFO lets you clear the bigger trees faster. I use that and change technology to +50% and select "More Armies" with the mod's built-in settings menu. Combine that with the longer empire building of "The Old World" and the pacing is just right to where I can clear 150 turns with Daniel, who's actually great in SFO.

[@robovinefilms1811]

The big loser faction I've found with The Old World and SFO together is poor Markus Wolfheart. The mod DRAMATICALLY improves Empire but Mark has to fight deadlier generic elves with SFO that also have better garrisons; takes a rough starting campaign and makes it even harder.

[@Miller09095]

I prefer a slower paced campaign. It forces me to make strategic decisions like when to start an offensive against an enemy and if a full blown siege is worth doing or if I should siege it to bypass defenses. It's also why I like DEI in Rome. I don't win by turn 25 and feel like starting a new game where the challenge is still alive. Once I feel like I've won, I typically stop and move on. These type of campaigns I can play 10-15 turns until I accomplish a specific goal like conquering a particularly strong fortress and then go do something else.

[@Miller09095]

I'll add, that slower pace is mainly for my own immersion into the world too.

[@jyria4827]

I've not watched the video (yet) just reading comments. One missing aspect everyone is that SFO is balanced/made around Multiplayer campains/ Player vs Player. I see plenty of discussion about Ai being dumb (AI is indeed extremeley dumb in this game, worse than 2005 RTS AI) and too easy to deal with, too easy to map paint ect. From what I know Venris and his team always said the balance and game pace is not resolved around the AI more more so on Head to Head campains.

[@Costin_Gaming]

Well that's a decent enough reason for some choices.

[@xBLOODDRUNKx]

Having to hit this button without anything happening lol This is so true, if this kinda playstyle is going to happen they need to give more things to do at the minimum. The diplomacy and subterfuge from three kingdoms, more ways to spend your currencies like chaos dwarfs. This would give specific, diverse and fluid gamplay. This still dosent solve how a building tall changes the overall gameplay with ai or combat.

[@rafaelortega6964]

Note that he ignored is that the garrison sistem is dependant on the buildings you make A tier 3 region with recruitment buildings will have more garrison units than a tier 5 with no buildings too easy? Increase the difficulty you know that can increase the difficulty of specific factions to make it more challenging (SFO customization menú) About sieges there is only so much they can do without redesigning the siege maps and mechanics and that would a task worthy of it's own mod Over all you ignored some of the SFO features, conveniently, and complaned about the sieges of wich they have little control over

[@Costin_Gaming]

They do have control over whether or not they add units to garrisons, and they decided to add a significant number of units.

[@rafaelortega6964]

@@Costin_Gaming So just auto resolve an easy settlement is best way to go? What is the right spot of units on a garrison?

[@briangarcia869]

Having played more paradox games than I have total war, I generally like to play tall and wish it were more doable in WH3. Despite this I prefer Vanilla over SFO for similiar reasons you listed in the video (e.g. SFO slows the pace of the game in a way that's just passive). The game would need to have more interesting internal politics, diplomacy, and economics to make a less expansionist playstyle fun and I don't think that is possible with modding.

[@soupforsale6356]

Its completely understandable that the explosive, steamroll a strong campaign and pretty much win by turn 30 (after several arduos battles) playstyle, doesnt gel well with sfo. (Unless you're playing Khorne or Greenskins). But I strongly disagree with just a snippet of, "it's usually not worth it to expand", in my opinion the combination of faction caps and high tier units being far far better than lower tier units in SFO, makes that constant drum of expansion, atleast, just as necessary. Still, totally reasonable that you wouldnt enjoy SFO as much if you dont want that early mid lategame playstyle. I honestly agree with you that it feels a bit strange right now. Warhammer 2 Ordertide and Endgame flowed super neatly into SFO's gameplay pattern. With ai not being as aggressive and the endgame being pretty pointless in WH3, "vanilla" sfo, feels like its missing some challenge especially past turn 70-90 or so. Personally using a combination of four (five really) mods has helped a lot, 'Ai Declares War, Stronger and Fairer, Deepwar AI, these three juice up ai aggression, and lategame empires by a very satisfying amount for me. Particularly Deepwar and AI Declares are worth you checking out imo. Then Dynamic Disasters, for a proper endgame, (and recruit defeated legendary lords, for imo a better lategame, works really well with AI declares war imo)' Either way, enjoyed the video! I really do feel SFO is the only way to play WH3 for me, and your listed Pros hit the nail on the head for a handful of why I love it so much.

[@ian2372]

After playing Radious for so long it is hard to get into SFO. I like unit variety and SFO doesn't have as many units.

[@zeroner777]

I thought SFO was Simply Fun Overhaul and not Optimize The Fun Out Of Your Game Overhaul... the mod creators themselves have stated on videos like the one on TGBOG channel that it is for people that are more into the immersion and closer to tabletop aspect and not so much for the tryhard "If im not winning im not having fun" type of players.

[@Costin_Gaming]

That's fair enough for SFO, my issue is twofold with it: 1) People overhype it for what it is, creating a false impression it's significantly better than vanilla. 2) Creative Assembly is copying ideas, and bad ones at that, from SFO.

[@zeroner777]

@@Costin_Gaming I understood your issues from the video hence my comment but let me explain further. People usually hype up what is interesting to them or what they find fun, if SFO happens to be played by people that enjoy a more casual/immersive/turtle-y experience they will go and advertise that to others as the best thing, just like how you like optimized gameplay and mainly advertize that as the best iteration of a game/mod. CA copying ideas is not generally a bad thing by itself but what CA Sofia does is a double edged sword since they take alot of their feedback/ideas from the community. If the feedback leans in the direction of more casual-friendly gameplay with a personalize your own campaign then that is what they would naturally implement in their products.

[@itsblessbless]

I used to play Radious back in the days on other Total War Games. I stopped when SFO came out because I quickly realized that Radious didn't have too much depth in the mod after trying SFO. Radious gave WH1 races identical unit counterparts, making them play exactly the same. They had archers for vampires, dismounted Reiksguard for empire, dismounted knights for Brettonnia, etc. Although I respect this person's perspective, I feel that Radious is more for people who don't care much about the lore and want instant gratification in a game. They want to play something really fast and achieve as much as possible with less effort or thinking, which I don't fault them for that, it's their game. Diplomacy and other strategies are used more in SFO and you need to stick around to protect your provinces from rebellions. More thinking goes into it and you can't recklessly start wars. Radious just allows everyone to field several stacks of armies in the beginning - it feels more like a dressed up cheat mod. Rushing every opponenet's capital with 2 - 3 stacks isn't really what I call strategy. If a player wants to think more critically and experience different campaign styles per race, choose SFO. If a player wants to have 5 stacks of low to mid tier units by turn 30, and set sail immediately, choose Radious.

[@maximum9977]

"Having to do somrthing is better to do nothing" Strongly disagree. I will prefer to press end turn instead of fighting another manual siege battle) and press autoresolve for me is pretty much the same as do nothing

[@Costin_Gaming]

Now THAT's fair!

[@Hammers_Peace]

Maybe play a different game?

[@maximum9977]

@@Hammers_Peace I am playing different games. I love tww3 but in current state it is awful to me, I get bored too fast.

[@sketchyjgaming5534]

MaYbE PlAy A DiFfErEnT GaMe​@@Hammers_Peace

[@aagereinertjakobsen4832]

The godawful end turn times make playing tall an absolute chore.

[@NuclearSunshineSB]

Do you dislike Europa Barbarorum, Stainless Steel, DEI and so on? I love those mods, and it seems like I might love SFO for the same reasons. I love those mods not just because they are slow, but because their difficulty forces me to use the full scope of the game. To me total war becomes incredibly boring after the initial challenge, because it's basically auto resolve battles and click end turn, just painting the map in my color. I play hard or very hard both with campaign and battle difficulty and yet the challenge is only felt in the first 30-50 turns. I just finished a DEI campaign, where I had to max out and use over a douzen agents, started a political intrigue around every 3rd or 4th turn, I properly learned naval battles for the first time in almost 500 hours of Rome 2 gameplay and after winning my campaign as Carthage at round 148, I still have to think about everything I do, double check every army and manually play every battle. It makes the game so much more diverse. Haven't played SFO, but I'll give it a go I think

[@st0ox]

I think that the total war campaign is from the fundamental mechanics extremely simple compared to more serious turn based board games (for example: GMT COIN Games or GMT Empire of the Sun or GMT Here I Stand or diverse PAX Games). I mention these Games because they simulate better why empire building is such a challenge even if you have more and better resources, armies and technologies at some point. So they have naturally a "better" end game. BUT total war doesn't need to be a great campaign game for me. What I need is exactly what a mod like this provides. A generator of different enough battle setups so the whole thing doesn't get boring, but at the same time I don't want an AI that cheats too heavily and pulls out Full stacks of armies out of his ass every other turn. And I don't want to have meta battle effects like Morale and Attrition to have an artificial balancing effect because the Devs were underpaid to do balancing the right way instead of doing it with a crowbar. Morale and Attrition are very important for realism but they usually should make war even more unbalanced and not balanced what WH3 compared to WH2 did try in my opinion.

[@Grivehn]

Im not entirely sure you come from a zoomer 'I want everything and I want it now' or simply 'I conquer everything quickly because I can' mindset, and would be unfair to judge you without knowing which. For the latter, SFO makes it more slow and annoying, I agree. Not being able to build up provinces, thus my conquering outpacing my buildup is something I find a reality of gameplay in SFO as well. Garrisons are more capable in this game as well, and AI tends to build a lot of them, so that slows down things too, aye. I also always modify upkeep, because frankly upkeep reduction is king in SFO. And for races such as elves and dwarfs, replenishment can crawl to a standstill, too. I gave up my Eltharion campaign very early when both Nkari and Wurrzag far outpaced my 1 meager armies on both fronts, getting dwindled down by constant armies coming at me. It is closer to lore, which was the intention, but having basically zero replenishment is just not fun for this game. I hated Bretonnia for the same reason. So if I go at Eltharion again, I gotta up the replenishment as well. So I can see where you come from with all this. Although I would still say there is a general divide between younger people who wanna speedrun even strategy games, and older diehard fans who got used to slower pace, and Venris would belong to the latter. If thats not your cup of tea, for all the blings of SFO it has over vanilla, and oh boy, it expanded in basically every aspect, my favorite being elite unites actually being elite, not overpriced dogcrap, then there is no miracle at the end of the day. SFO cannot fix the worst of the problems of the basegame, simply because no mods can.

[@Costin_Gaming]

Neither mindset. My mindset is formed based on the experience I've had playing legendary ever since it was introduced. It's based on the notion of: "What is the best way to achieve success in the fastest way possible, because otherwise you get screwed if you play slow." Basically pushing this so hard comes from knowing what happens if you don't, especially when I recall the Shogun 2 experience of Legendary. As for the general divide you talk about. Personally I just think a lot of us who have played games for decades ( I started playing games at 6 years old and that was almost 30 years ago ), got used to a lot of the grindy crap that we had to endure in the older games. Just because we got used to it doesn't make it good, it never was really, we just accepted it for lack of other options. There's also a divide between players that seek to improve their gameplay and those that are comfortable where they are and don't, and I imagine a lot of the older generation of gamers are especially like that. heck I was like that until I decided to really push in Napoleon and Shogun 2 and even then it was only over the last few years when I played in some of the best guilds in World of Warcraft in the world that I really improved ( because you are forced to or kicked out there ).

[@Grivehn]

​@@Costin_Gaming I see, thank you for your explanation. It helps understand where youre coming from and I believe I see that now. Wanting to be the best and push on is certainly a choice, and most wont make it, including myself. I firmly play for fun, and wanna feel progress with my time, not setbacks and stagnation. Hence why I never touched legendary, plus I dont like all the artificial cheats or the fact it has 1 save file, which can get bugged, you can crash etc. There are ways around it sure, but exiting the game every 1-2 turns to copy the file is a hassle, too. As for older games, I would agree with you there. Being slow, grindy, unforgiving or having labirynthine maps where one can get easily lost in never made it appaeling to me to play those games. Im entering my thirties as well, but missed a lot of games, as internet came late into my country. And I didnt go back to visit a lot of them either, just didnt feel the urge. Id also agree with you Warhammer3 is the best of the trilogy, and likely best Total War, period. Or it would be, if all the campaign behavior, battle bugs, and dumb design was fixed. I never would install WH2 again, but Wh3 is still lacking after 2 years of being out. I hope some of the AI issues get fixed down the line. As for general autoresolve, or sieges, Im not holding my breath. It'll have to do with what we get from a (for now) apologetic CA.

[@arisplugis5197]

my biggest dislike with Warhammer is that AI is not building late game doomstack armies. turn 1400 is latest i ever been in WH3 campaign. no matter how rich and large AI faction is, it will produce the same mid-game army composition in turn 1400 as in turn 100. it will build more armies but they will be all the same :( sorry for my English, but i hope you get my point and can agree with it.

[@Noctani]

Having mobile defensive armies has merit but not with how wh3 was developed and not with the AI's current capabilities. In fact, I'd argue this would make things far easier or just oppressive given the AI gap. One mistake I often see people make when saying auto-resolve gives me too many causalities, I have to fight, is while that's true for some battles it's also true that an equally skilled player would out right devastate your army in SOME situations, while auto-resolve says everyone lives. But truth is we only complain when auto-resolve doesn't go in our favor. Stronger garrisons have merit especially for newer players, both on defense and when attacking. For players who have reached a certain level of efficiency placing more mainly tier 1 units in the game doesn't make it more difficult but merely take longer. I can see the argument from both sides. I would argue SFO did a great job for a certain percentage of the player base. For the player base who wants to play the game as efficiently as possible or is learning to do so, then SFO probably isn't for you. For efficient players I would argue it's more important for garrisons to have an increase in quality, but SFO overcorrected in terms of numbers. If I were a developer I'd ask myself what type of experience do I want for the player. I want 30% of the battles to be easy, 30% medium, 20% hard, 10% very hard, 5%, 2% impossible(they should run). Depending on the skill of the player this generalization will shift. As the player gets bigger the expectation is his adversaries become harder because the player is stronger. Tier 1 settlements should be easy. Tier 2 should be between easy & medium depending on walls. Tier 3 medium to hard. Tier 4 hard. Tier 5 hard to deadly for 1 army. For Dark Elves SFO have a tier 3 minor settlement with 12 units, provincial capital not belonging to a main faction of 12 units, and a main faction province capital containing 17 units. The base game Dark Elves have a tier 3 settlement with 7 units, a tier 3 provincial capital with 11 units, and a main faction tier 3 settlement with 14 units. I think tier 2 settlements should have a garrison of 8 (4 tier 1, 4 tier 2). Tier 3 settlements (3 tier 1, 3 tier 2, 3 tier 3,). Also, I would like creative assembly to bring back settlement battles for tier 3 settlements without towers. The chokes alone with make a numerically disadvantaged force more effective against one with higher numbers. Garrisons should vary and be like a puzzle to figure out during battle part of the problem is the overabundance of tier 1 units and lack of variation. Another idea is being able to pool your garrisons from within the province to make a stand, but that would have far reaching second, third, and fourth order effects just like mobile defense.

[@EuclidGamer]

It's very clear that you are strongly opinionated towards a fast and aggressive game. I can understand this however you have to also understand that a lot of the community does not play the game to be good and fast and just be the best. Truthfully these games got me into Warhammer and it's mostly for a lore perspective (Love the lore mods). Lore is old and wise and takes time. I do not want to mow the grass in 30 turns if I can take my time and earn a slower experience. It's not sitting on your ass, it's exercising patience and taking things slower in a game that can be played in any way you prefer. I have a job, I already need to be fast and effective at my job. I will not let that mindset infect my passion of strategy games make me have a desire to rush rush rush and do it all fast as it would turn my hobby for fun and unwinding into a competition against the void lol. I'm not trying to knock what your opinion is but to explain what the opinions of others may be and you do represent your opinion as if they are facts at times. Try to be a little more open minded. Steamrolling and being fast and efficient can be fun I understand but I am the kind of person who spends time and resources saving fellow factions and keeping the map diverse and alive rather than painting it. Example I always rush to save the Druzhina Enclave from Clan Moulder just for the sake of the fun of it. Key take away of this is that not everyone is here to be good. A lot of us are here to play games and have fun. Fast can be fun but not for this guy. Also it's a video game. Most of us are "Sitting on our ass" when we are playing lol. Calling people lazy for not being rushy in a game lol Little tit for tat ;-). This is critique but not hate. Keep the videos up!

[@Costin_Gaming]

Actually a lot of people according to data from CA and even what my own polls show is that people do player faster paced campaigns vs the 100+ turns giants. So the argument you're making, people that play to sit on their ass turn after turn? They are the minority, the overwhelming majority is not like that. They may not play as aggressively or fast as someone like myself, but they do prefer faster paced campaigns.

[@EuclidGamer]

@@Costin_Gaming Not arguing. Just conversing on opinion. I didn't say that people do not play faster campaigns. Did you read what I said? Data tells us things sure. But it still does not make it a fact as with two possibilities no one preferred playstyle can be seen as a fact only a preference. Minority or not there will always be a group of people who are not entertained by the fast paced gameplay. Also it could be said that people do not play campaigns for that long (+100 turn giants) because of the pace of the normal game or even with mods not counting SFO. It's already over by the time they are satisfied. I just find it strange the negative connotation you are giving people that do not play like you do. It's aggressive like your playstyle. I get it and am not bashing what you are saying just not understanding the strong stance against such a playstyle? If its preference I get it but it's not factually "wrong" to play in a way unlike your own.

[@barkliDetolli]

Tell me please. how to make such rich and beautiful rich graphics in the game as in the video?

[@Grz349]

13:32 I’m not sure it fair to say the modding community has stayed the same about not adding more options, I do agree with you about options being limited. But this is a base game problem, modders have a limited ability to change that fact based on the scope of the game as serious by the developers.

[@Krethak]

The garrison thing for small settlements doesn't make sense. Those are "small towns" Why would in EVERY-SINGLE-ONE 1.500 Soldiers be stationed? I think they should have increased the garrison for major settlements (perhaps not all of them, but notable ones) and do something about it that Siege battles cannot be cheesed instead of just buffing the HP of things. Like an easy change would've been to make Wall towers have a 180° firing arc and a range that is at least equal to every artillery That already eliminates 90% of the cheese tactics and neccesitate that you take the walls to make the towers stop shooting. Or add artillery to the garrison that can be mounted on the walls for added range. Would it make dealing with siges more annoying? Probably! But by removing the cheese that turns a battle just into a test of patience you would have an actual incentive to loose. And if you use up all your ammo and then concede defeat you get an ammo Debuff of at least 50% for the next battle in the same turn, 75% if you do it again as you can't prepare enough ammo in the same turn to just cheese your way through it. Aside from that I wouldn't be a fan of constant rebellion and even more reduced growth and income either. It makes you play with those boring Crapstack armies that much longer because you can neither afford to construct the buildings, nor the units once you have them unlocked. I do imagine just like another person here said that SFO + Old World mod might be a good fit, because since you need at least 2 turns for getting somewhere you still have a bit of buffer time for the control to stabilize, or traversing your kingdom takes some extra time where your land is slowly building up from the inside out. But that is still something I need to try out myself, for now I'm having fun with the Old World mod as I think it's a lot less "stressful" gaming experience compared to the vanilla game ^^'

[@semipork]

Love the SFO mechanics it brings or updates to every race and Legendery lord but I don't care for how they balance many units.

[@giovannigio3764]

If you know how to play the game than Norsca is one of the best factions in WH3.

[@Shizandgiggles37]

Another L of an opinion from Costin. You play with all easy options and autoresolve everything. What's the point of even playing at that point

[@maximum9977]

I just use mod to disable siege battles at all. And with SFO big garisons you get pretty decent land battle.

[@alexcebollero]

I disagree with your garrison argument. In base game it is easy to delete settlements so they’re easy pickings. While in sfo if you go after a tier 3 settlement it’s a challenge. If you go after one with a garrison building like walls even more so. Each lord is also different with their garrisons. For example id rather attack a Skarsnik garrison over a Grimgor garrison. Skarsnik is lots of gobbos, Grimgor has black orks. At the end of the day it is all opinion based, but your opinion comes off very critical. Still enjoy your content!

[@Costin_Gaming]

A full stack of proper troops will always win vs a garrison, frankly it's a colossal waste of a time. Unless it has a legendary lord inside of course.

[@alexcebollero]

@@Costin_Gaming see that’s the point of SFO. A full stack of proper troops. Not just 20 dark elf spearmen for example. When attacking a t3 HE settlement they will have atleast 2 white lions and a P Guard which alone will trade for vast quantities of the spearmen.

[@Brutik5]

And I totally get you, sitting on your ass, paying upkeep for armies that are just waiting is waste and sure way to lose eventually if AI is agressive and expanding, reminds me of toguawa campaign in Shogon 2 where you start as vassal, I didn't want to damage my honor rating so I refused to betray my master, leading turn after turn me not being able to do anything, watching AI take territory around me and eventually my master betraying me and shortly after all surrounding nations declaring war on me, I was surrounded with my pathetic 2 provinces by 3 factions. And even if I could defeat them all, which I couldn't not on legendary, if I moved one direction, the enemy would come from behind. I tried campaign again but this time after I defeated my first starting enemy I prepared my army on Master border and declader war on him, taking his cities while his armies weren't even close, and taking city after city and for next 10 - 20 turns from various factions, the entire campaign turn into such a chaos for AI as it couldn't consolidate it's power, while Takeda was pushing north, I came from south sacking their capital, for early game I was one who would just come from behind and sack their cities and move on. It was strange campaign, it felt like I was always one step in ahead of AI, you don't lose movement in Shogun 2 when taking city, so I just kept going until it slowed down a bit when I met my first real armies and needed wait for replenishment. I do enjoy taking things slow, but in Shogun 2 that doesn't work and in Warhammer 3 AI turns take so much time that if I don't fight battle every turn I get bored of waiting 45-60s for a turn. I only played the game so much because I guess I really enjoyed it, but when I already played for hundreds of hours, those turn times are bigger and bigger issue for me. Edit: I don't play games after Shogun 2 on legendary anymore. Hard or Very Hard and I just don't try hard that much. But with Shogun 2 I feel like I can't, I always played on Legendary as far as I can remember and it would feel strange to go difficulty lower now, especially when I do believe that it can be won without cheesing even on Legendary. Edit2: Also the example I shared with Toguawa is extreme one, but it's what you reminded me of when you say: "Either be strong at turn 20-30 without looking back or consider campaign lost". I had campaign where it was good middle ground too, I was slowly winning and pushing, but not entirelly losing, eventually I would consolidate my empire to by around 40 provinces and quite strong by turn 200 and it was my most memorable campaign and longest campaign in WH3 as Kislev, because it was just challinging enough for me for the entire playthrough. And I still had powerful enemies, but I kinda got bored of the campaign, because I was autoresolving most of my battles with 2-3 army stacking running together and AI failing to make large enough force to face these stacks.

[@chapteriv3053]

Sieges in 3K is very good imho.

[@redelephantsdotnl]

40 Seconds in: Nope. It started in Warhammer 1, as Steel Faith Overhaul. Some units and mechanics from that are still in there. Six minutes in: Yeah, this is not for you, as is evident by all the settings you activated, essentially turning it into vanilla-on-steroids. SFO is geared towards a longer campaign where you utilize base troops more, do more with less by making strategic choices. Which is fine, but it's not what it's designed to do. Which tells me that.... Well, you're not exactly the person to review this.

[@Costin_Gaming]

When SFO starts having influence over game design decisions, as it clearly did with Pharaoh, you can be certain I will review it. The argument that only people that like the end turn simulator should review it is also a silly one.

[@Dio_07]

7 minutes in and absolutely no information on WHAT is actually changed by SFO, and you have a horrific recolour dialing saturation up way too much.

[@Phil_3491]

The customization is what makes SFO good.

[@sebycondurat2900]

Garison too stong. Rebelion too hard pls fix. No sige atacker oh no i have to wait 1 turn to autoresolve the pain. The point of unit caps is to stop you from using only 1 unit and at least see the models of other units expirance the whole game.

[@mathieulefo6658]

Sold me off of SFO, I was really interested in the factions feeling more different, but I do not want longer campaign. Still a newcomer to the game, and still have the feeling of always wanting to start a new campaign, so shorter is better for me.

[@dare2630]

Don't play SFO, its non-existent balance will ruin your experience

[@simpleman3898]

If that is the difference in warhammer 2 and 3 then yes 3 is better. Im new to the game and it's quite a bit to learn. If the start is to hard im just going to give up. SFO is good as a mod once im better at the game. 😊

[@XeikZone]

I love this dude...he is very squishy

[@Aaron.Montell]

For some reason I think that I have to agree. I used to love SFO II for WHII but somehow I couldn’t get into it in Warhammer 3 it really felt pretty slow and inconsistent to me. I remember playing as Settra with it when he launched and it was the greatest campaign that I ever played. As of today In campaign I never felt like I was going to become bankrupt but also never really took off it was pretty static. Also much of the stuff of previous games was left out so sometimes I would look for differences compared to vanilla but couldn’t spot much for some factions. For example Kislev with their horrible techs and skills. Also the battles where lords, monsters, elite units and magic would rack up hundreds of kills seem to be over. And low tier units are about the same as vanilla and lose their worth with the next tier although a bit better than vanilla. But unfortunately I will sit this one out for the time being.

[@tetrisint]

to be fair Settra's campaign is rather influenced by relocation of expremely potent LLs from Chaos, Vampires and Empire. In WH2 he simply didn't have real opposition in his corner of the map at all.

[@paulmualdeave5063]

It seems too show and income is worse

[@chapteriv3053]

Honestly i don't understand how anyone can enjoy SFO or why its so popular. - Unit sizes are too low to enjoy an epic battle. Unit size on Ultra: Blood Knights are just 20, vargheist is 6!? Its not even half of vanilla its lower. I know there is a mod for Extreme size both for vanilla and SFO but its broken and causes crashes and its not even enough. Most asinine thing is that they doubled the healthpool of all units but downsize the unit size is the most stupid thing i have ever seen. - Economy is waaay less then it used to be. Good luck trying to keep your borders with only 2 armies roaming around that by the way took forever for you to upgrade those settlements. Seriously you upgrade economy buildings and minor settlement to max so you can maintain 2x tier 2 units on an army. Elite armies are relics of the past... - Tech tree even on first tiers takes 5 - 10 turns each. Let me tell you by the time you actually take some of the juicy tech lines to enjoy their benefits you will be bored out of your mind from playing same armies same faction for 250 ! turns... - March stance requires to have 25% campaign movement ?!?!?!?!?!?!! all of this and lets remember mod has "Fun" in its name.... very ironic if you ask me. there is a lot to go on here, but i have to say i hated this mod. also mod author is egotistical/narcissistic. removes any comment/censorshiping that criticizes their mod and blocking you from ever commenting so people don't see how bad their changes is and they download so their numbers go up, truly pathetic..

[@averybaumann]

It sounds like you want to pay a slash and burn campaign, some races like beast lords, Nordica, dark elves,chaos, it sou ds like sfo wants to give some mechanics that would favor build up. When you think about it warhammer had 10's of thousands years of history and you level all of civilization and history, thousands of years in 20 years, sfo favors more build up.