Total Warhammer

Okay, the game is actually Total War: Warhammer, but I'm just going to call it Total Warhammer because it's easier and I'm lazy. Now, to be clear I am a fan of both the Total War series, and Games Workshop's Warhammer (both their Fantasy and 40k lineups as well as several of their other games). So I am coming at this with reasonably high expectations.

For the TL;DR people here's the summery up front: It's a decent strategy game with some wonderful visuals and neat mechanics. If you're a pure Total War fan I'd potentially suggest giving it a pass, or waiting to get it on sale or bundled with some of the DLC. If you're a pure Games Workshop / Warhammer fan this is a must buy. Some of the mechanics may take a little getting used to, but by far this is the closest to the table top experience I've seen in a computer game. It is solid, stable, and performs well on my 3 year old gaming laptop.

Basic Gameplay

Now for the nuts and bolts. In the Total Warhammer campaign you take command of one of 4 starting factions (Dwarves, Orks, Empire, Vampire Counts) ... I'll get to DLC in a bit ... and go through a series of objectives to try and achieve victory (as described by your faction at least). The game takes place in 2 modes ... the campaign map, a turn based mode in which you manage your resources, raise armies, recruit units for your armies, position your heroes to aid your plans or hinder your opponents and maneuver your armies to get them where you need them.

Each army is led by a Lord, a powerful individual that gains levels and skill that will aid them, bolster the units under them, or help with the larger campaign. Heroes may also be embedded into an army to bring their substantial power to bear on a battle directly as well, or they can remain independent and operate on the campaign map avoiding direct battle but using their skills in other ways to aid their faction.

Unlike in many of the other Total War games, here the factions are very different with different mechanics that make them each feel unique. This is part of where the game is really well done. Orks feel very much like Orks. They have a Waaagh meter that if the commanding Lord of the army doesn't keep 'iz boyz in good fights (that is fights that they are winning) his units will start to suffer attrition because the orks get bored and start deserting, or fighting among themselves. Dwarves have their Book of Grudges where the longer a grudge stays on the books the more unrest it causes in your settlements.

Settlements, unrest, income, taxes, all of this needs to be managed and each of the factions goes about that in a slightly different way. Also certain factions can only settle in certain locations, Vampire counts, for example, can't take over a Dwarven keep, but the can take over an Imperial settlement. While that may seem to set the game up into a pair of rivalries (Vampire Counts v Empire, Orks v Dwarves) it's not quite that simple. Just because you can't settle it doesn't mean you can't raid it or raze it.

 And that brings us to combat. Because invariably your armies are going to meet the armies of one of the other factions on the field of battle at some point. Combat takes place in a pause-able real time fight with both sides issuing orders to their units trying to maneuver to take advantage of the terrain or just flank their opponent.

Just as the campaign mechanics are different, the units are also different between the factions (not just in look, but in function) Dwarf Crossbow units (for example) have good accuracy and damage at range, but they are no slouch in a melee fight either (you have to toggle them to their melee weapons, but aren't push overs in any case). On the other hand Goblin Archers in addition to having shorter range, don't stand up in a melee fight well at all. Though with the sub factions within each faction, you'll be fighting some mirror images of your armies as well.

Cons

Okay a few things that I've come across in my playing of the game (I've played as every available faction for at least the early game). Compared to Total War: Shogun 2 (the one I've personally spent the most time in) settlement management is over simplified, I would like to have seen more depth here than there is. If nothing else an ability to adjust tax rates instead of just 'off or on' would have given some options.

I'm also not a fan of the region system (a region is 2 or 3 (usually) settlements and to get certain options you have to control all settlements in the region. I like the idea of this but I think they went the wrong way in its execution. That is to say I think that the regions are too big ... I would have liked it better if they had divided the settlements into smaller parts that had to be captured to control the settlement. I think that would have increased the conflict and offered more depth while grouping several settlements together into a region I think actually took depth and options away.


Part of the feeling of this is that each region has a capital settlement and all the others are 'minor' settlements. Combat at a 'minor' settlement takes place in the field just like it would if there was no settlement there. This is one of the places where I agree with some of the negative reviews, this takes a lot of strategy out of the game, in previous Total War games even a village without walls you could use buildings and such to set up choke points OR go meet them on the open field. Now you don't have that choice at all.

Likewise while you can BUILD 'walls' in the minor settlements you don't actually get walls, you get a few more garrisoned units to help you fight out in the field. This is much less of a help in an attack than actual WALLS would be. Only the capital cities have actual walls though.

Which brings us to Capitals these are where you have walls and actually fight in a city. But unlike previous Total War games (or at least Total War: Shogun 2) your city apparently only has 1 wall (at least during an attack) so your opponent can't attack from multiple sides of the city ... again, limiting the strategy of the fight. Not a good choice for a strategy game, in my opinion.

Other missing items from previous Total War games are unit formations. Skirmish formation when melee troops approached archers to spread them out and limit ranged casualties, spear units setting for a charge, shield units coming together for a shield wall ... these formations and using them properly gave depth to the game and strength and versatility to the units to minimize a weakness or maximize a strength in a key point in the battle. But they are gone in Total Warhammer.

Heroes in Total Warhammer are powerful tools that can really change things. Like Lords they level up and earn skills, but unlike Lords they can not lead an Army. They are a bit over powered in the campaign because if they aren't attached to an army, armies and lords can't attack them. Another Hero can attempt to assassinate them but that is the only way to attack a hero that is operating independently. As such they can wreck your town buildings or garrison and, unless you have a hero nearby, there's nothing you can do about it, even if you have a much more powerful Lord with a full army in the settlement. (I should note that if you have a lord and his army in the settlement, an enemy hero will have a more difficult chance to succeed in their sabotage, assassinate, or other 'mission's but they can stand there and try every turn until you get your own hero there to try and assassinate them.)

Combat feels 'off' a bit. Units break and run very fast (at least in the early game) which doesn't allow a lot of time for larger battle strategies. While the default 'max' time for a battle is listed as 60 minutes, I don't think I've had even a massive battle last more than 15 yet. maybe that will change in the late game, but currently it really does feel like some things have been 'sped up' in an attempt to make the game feel more fast paced.

That probably seems like a lot of Cons there, but really they're minor. Most of them will only apply if you have played and enjoyed earlier Total War titles (Shogun 2 and earlier as some of these changes were apparently in Rome 2 and Atilla as well). And some of these changes have as much to do also with one of the big PROs ... faction diversity. While in Shogun 2 you had a LOT of factions, you all used the same troop types, formations, mechanics, etc. Now Faction A may have a bonus to a couple of unit types while Faction B had bonuses to different units, and Faction C had bonuses to production, but ultimately they were the same.

Several other elements of the game are new such as is gear, magic, and of course the monstrous units. I suspect that last one is why they've done away with village fighting as large units in a village would have pathing and movement issues, or would be unable to get in at all unless you made buildings destructible and I suspect that would have been time and/or resource intensive and they decided that it was better left out for now.

DLC

Okay, currently there are 3 DLC available for the game. 2 Add new playable factions, Chaos Warriors, and Beastmen respectively, and the 3rd adds blood and gore to the battles. (See my Ramble about people complaining about DLC over on the Path of Bones) Each of these factions added new unique mechanics to the game and the Beastmen also added a smaller more focused story style campaign centered around their faction.

Some people will complain that there is going to be too much DLC for the game (and Creative Assembly does tend to create a lot of DLC for their Total War titles so that isn't surprising), that it costs too much, or that they held content out of the game just to release it later. I say people complain too much. I like the DLC system, if I'm not interested in a particular piece of DLC (the blood and gore pack for example) I just don't buy it. And I remember the days where you had to wait much longer for an 'expansion' to the game that was often another $50. Beastmen is a $19 add on ... if $19 seems too much wait a bit and catch it on sale.

CA has also announced 10 free DLC (one of which is a new playable race) so they are definitely planning to support and expand the game even for those that don't get any of the paid DLC.