I kinda like that losing is a distinct possibility now though, usually with these games it's all too easy to completely outmaneuver the AI and counter their feeble counter-attacks.

I haven't played very much yet, just on a Dwarf campaign so far, but I expect that once you suss the optimal tactics and exploits it'll get a lot easier.

I couldn't see you on my friends list Temps, maybe try adding me now?

Ah yes I see you there now.

I've only been playing the one campaign as Dwarfs so far, good fun though it's taking me a while to upgrade my buildings enough to be able to recruit some of the fancier units for more versatility, I've mainly just been rocking armies full of Warriors, Quarrellers, Grudge Bearers and a couple of Miners. I recently absorbed Barak Varr into my confederation which gave me access to Slayers and Longbeards, and some other artillery I think. I'll be getting the other Dwarf nation to the south into my confederation soon, it seems to hit your economy pretty hard when you do it though, I think due to the additional army upkeep.

I initially couldn't decide what race to play as, Empire seemed too much like a real army and I wanted to play as a race with a little more fantasy flavour. Dwarfs didn't have any cool monsters to play with, but the accent and generous use of wazzock and pillock sealed the deal for me

Im finding fighting the Orcs to be pretty easy at the moment, got my tactics sorted so that I usually just hold a defensive semicircle on a hill with my warriors up front and my quarrellers and artillery behind in the centre, focussing on the enemy ranged units as I have no cavalry as Dwarfs to deal with archers or other skirmish units. Dwarf units are so tanky that they can easily weather a frontal assault while the ranged units continuously wear them down.

Oh man this is just brilliant when it gets going. The Greenskins are no more, so attention is turned to THE NORTH. As Chaos approaches, its time to squish the effete Vampire Counts and go after the biggest grudge of all time.

But what's this, an ARMY lies in wait at Schwarzhafen, the first capital city within my reach...





Thorgrim Gurdgebearer surveys the lands...



They'll fight them on the walls...



In the gatehouse...



Until they scatter through the streets



Don't come between a Dwarf and his grudge, Undead scum.

Out of curiosity what spec pc are you using? The last few posts have done a very good job of selling this to me.

Maybe a bit beyond my pc. Shame, looks very interesting stuff.

At the moment i have a 7870 radeon, 16gb ram, not sure on the cpu but it gets around the 4ghz range (if i have that right). Was thinking of adding a new gpu in there, probably woukdnt bother with tge cpu at the moment. Biggest barrier at tge moment is time more than money to be honest.

You will be able to play with that I think, not high settings but medium/low should be doable with tweaks. If that 4Ghz CPU is an Intel chip then you should be alright (Warhammer loves more cores though), if it's AMD then that's definitely something to upgrade (Ryzen shouldn't be far away). This kind of game is much more dependent on CPU than most, with other games you can get a away with a weaker CPU and rely on the GPU for the majority of the performance.

I think I'm at a similar place in the campaign to Tempy now, duking it out with the Vampires and Chaos. Here's my assault on Castle Drakenhof -



Here's my map, got pretty much all the Southeast under my control now -



It really is a stonking game, so so cool. I was going to regale some of the epic happenings that are going on, but I think it's maybe better not to spoil them. Got taken by surprise and had to react fast which was really cool, the game is managing to keep me on my toes.

I already have that code pack! It's how I got it so cheap. It's a real shame this released in such a sorry state as with the release of Wood Elves, even without buying the DLC the game has updated to make it a far better experience than the reviews* suggest.

*I mean steam reviews here, the press reviews were pretty much on point.

Yeah after some initial caveats with stuff I now think it's the only essential Games Workshop video game out there. I was never that into Fantasy Battles, but it pretty much does the table top game justice, which is no small feat. 

At first I found the fact that each campaign had such a different tone was an issue. You can't just drop in like you could with the old Total War games, you have to try and fail to get a feel for each race, how they play, and what the strategies are. The forums suggests that "the game doesn't start til turn 50" and they're pretty much right. I have wrought much more enjoyment out of it after reading a lot of guides and stuff, because often the game is a bit bad at telling you lots of things even though they match what the lore suggests. Dwarves like to keep to their own kind! This means confederating them is an easy way of winning, but Grudges will force them to move out into the wider world where they are at risk... who knew? They don't need lots of military, just one or two deployment bases because they'll use the rest of the space for economy so they can globally reinforce, of course! The Greenskins should always be raiding, which is death for other races, but for the Greens it means they can EARN GOLD, DENY ATTRITION and RECRUIT UNITS DIRECT TO THE FRONT LINE - it's perfect!

BUT

The game never outright tells you this. It's both good that it doesn't, but a bit troublesome from a newcomer's perspective. There is a lot of poring over text and menus to make sure everything is just so, but it's worth it for the dominance it lets you exert, and in the four totally unique ways it lets you exert it. Fights are different over and over, even if as Dwarves your tactics rarely change. Undead are like fighting 3 different races in successive battles as sometimes they'll field just heroes and monsters. Greenskins can be an ocean of hurt or two sharp pincers. Empire are off to the West arguing with themselves so who cares.

The only REAL complaint I have right now is Auto-Resolve is bullshit. Not in an inherently bad or good way, just plain BS. I had Chaos attack an army of Dwarves in the underway instead of the larger force who were relgated to reinforcements. What this meant was my small force in the underway was attacked from behind whilst my reinforcements slowly dribbled in as another force swept in to crush my small Dwarven army. I quicksaved and tried the battle 3 times with no success. Finally I auto resolved it, and my Dwarven forces wiped out 1700 of 1701 Chaos units. It is clearly not even related to the conditions of battle, which makes it a bit cheap/weak in equal measure. 

Still, last night I got my first Heroic Victory, which was really cool.

I think it might be down to DirectX 12, I noticed the ambient occlusion looked different, more full on Dx12 vs 11, may be something else or it could be the same I'm not sure.. It can be a little buggy though I think, I've seen some weird shifting shadows when looking at the tops of fort walls for example. May the same thing that was causing that crazy graphical glitch. Also check if for that annoying thing in PC games where all the settings have differing max quality levels, there's a few in Warhammer that can go up to "Extreme" I think.

I'm not really sure how the confederacy thing is weighted, for a while they weren't in favour, then they were for some reason. I think it was going back and forth, some of the mechanics are a bit veiled I think.

Also regarding the game being very different to play now compared to release -



@4:49 he talks about how much richer the game is now with all the new factions.

When your Vampire Lord is slain and you dissolve -

That looks pukka.

I'm mostly ignorant of End Times lore so looked it up. Morrslieb is a really nice word to say out loud.

Anyway the last paragraph tickled me.

In The End Times, with the aid of a scroll given to them in secret by Skreech Verminking, the Grey Seers finally drag Morrslieb closer to the world as part of a plan to regain their prominence. The Slann of Lustria put up a huge fight, resulting in many deaths from magical strain on both sides, but fail to stop the Grey Seers entirely. In a typical display of Skaven arrogance/envy/idiocy, Clan Skyre then tries to one-up the Grey Seers by blowing Morrslieb up. Of course, since Morrslieb is so much closer to the world now, this means they nearly end up destroying the fucking world in the process. It takes the heroic sacrifices of Mazdamundi and Lord Kroak to keep the world from dying, and even then, Lustria and the Southlands are both utterly annihilated by a cosmic firestorm.
The surface looks like a skull. A skull.

Ratmen. Always good for a laff.