They make the game more fun and add a ton of flavor to make campaigns feel different depending on the faction, so in that way I think they matter greatly.
It really comes down to WHICH mechanic…. Some are really useless or just feel old and unnecessary. Some are more a pain to think about, rather than make the campaign really interesting. Although the mechanics in general definetly have gotten better and more fleshed out. (Like the last addition with the Chaos Dwarfs, they have some of my favourite mechanics in Game so far)
Yes you can beat the campaign with no faction mechanics but if you are someone like me those mechanics greatly add character and theme to the faction, and I mean some of those mechanics are game changing and provide completely different experiences , just look at Ikit's workshop or Grom's cauldron.
I guess I see it like this: in theory, you could create a recipe for a porridge that would give you all the nutrients, vegetables, protein, fiber, etc that your body needs in one bowl. You wouldn't need to worry about things like seasoning because that's really not essential to survive, and you would never need to eat any other meal because you could just make another batch of nutrient porridge and live on that! But I think we can all agree that'd be an awful way to live, right? There's more significance to food than just keeping your body alive, at least for most people. Similarly, just because faction mechanics aren't always essential to play the game doesn't mean they aren't important to the experience. When I choose to start a campaign with a faction it's because I want a certain experience both mechanically and thematically, and the campaign mechanics are a big part of giving campaigns their flavor. Without them it'd all just be a big nutrient porridge.
You can argue that you can reach the same point without them, but you can hardly call them useless. For the campaign you did without mechanics you used a lot more cheese and a lot more manual fighting. I am sure if you had done the same amount of manual fighting in the first campaign you would have found those battles to be significantly easier. It's about the journey, not the destination. If the only thing that mattered was seeing the victory screen then the game would get really boring really quickly.
The faction mechanics are mainly saving you time by making you strong enough to autoresolve more often - both campaigns are 50 turns, but I imagine in real time, the second one probably took longer with battles. Then again, I know I personally spend a lot of time on the campaign map making sure commandments are being swapped around, diplomacy is looked over, etc. because I tend to try and be thorough. Vampire counts definitely suffer from a problem of 'thematic, but not interesting in a gameplay sense' mechanics like raise dead and the blood kisses, where there's no potential drawback to them, like, say, skaven food or empire's elector counts. (For the record, elector counts is definitely a mechanic that should be looked at - as it stands, it revolves around waiting for random events.)
its a shame there aren't undead versions of every unit. I'd love a version of vampire counts that gets pretty much all of their units from raise dead. Like you can always get regular skeletons and zombies, maybe a couple of other units too, but everything else has to be raised from something that actually has died somewhere on the map. And not like "a battle of X size happened, so you can now raise tier 4 units", more like "two dragons died at this exact spot, you can raise two undead dragon units here". But the faction has its origins as a tabletop wargame faction so that'll never be a thing unfortunately. But its always irked me that the faction all about raising the dead can't actually raise the dead. It can spawn undead sylvanian units anywhere and that just gets called raising the dead. Fighting the vampires should see you fighting undead versions of your own army imo. As they raise everything that dies in the area to fight you. Undead lizardmen. Undead Ogres. Undead Elves.
@@ASpaceOstrich I can see that for monstrous units, but not normal humanlike. You raise a body from whatever condition it was in, the magic might strip away the skin to make a skelly or like lizards skin wouldn't be hard like when it was alive. You don't keep any skill or memories from the body so it won't fight like an elf or dwarf, it's just a funny looking skeleton. As for the armor and weapons it's a hit or miss on if it would be useable after a battle, and even if it was it would break eventually. Also some factions don't have units that would work for raising like constructs for tomb kings or doomwheels of the skaven. Undead dragons do exist in some ways, undead ogres are basically just crypt horrors right.
To be fair, skaven food's downsides are 100% theoretical. They never have and likely never will affect anybody's campaigns, especially with how OP under-empires are.
@@andrewgoehring9108 It'd break eventually so the units would become more and more undead-like over time and require replacement. Which would also occur if you were to re-raise the same unit over and over again (i.e. undead dragon starts out as nearly as good as the original dragon, but if it dies and has to be re-raised, it becomes weaker and weaker). I think this concept of an army that literally just uses undead units from other factions would be really cool, but it's never going to happen in Warhammer specifically only because it was a tabletop game. If it wasn't, a vampire faction could totally be built with that in mind, but the tabletop faction wasn't, so the game counterpart also can't be. But in universe, thats whats actually happening. Its described as particularly horrifying to fight vampires because every unit that dies on both sides of the conflict gets back up and fights for them. Sure, undead elves or dwarfs won't be as good as waywatchers of ironbreakers, but the morale impact should be a factor and the equipment should still matter. Vampires having ready access to ranged units would be huge, and the more monstrous races would create equally monstrous undead. Oh, and of course, the beauty that would be sending in undead bears.
You can easily beat the game on the hardest settings without using the Kislev heroes or mechanics. All that matters is having high levels of devotion - a few churches and you're good to go.
@@instathrill8845 You get high devotion simply from fighting chaos, so unless you use Kislev's mechanics to use a bunch of devotion you'd actually swim in it. So there wouldn't be any chaos rebellions at all (other than just low order I guess).
Oi Zerk….I was reading your guides for various games before I realized you had a channel. You are the goat bro. Glad I f found your videos after following them guides word for word, bar for bar.
Feel like your results may have differed if you didn't cheese the AI during sieges. Also mechanics of scale later on would be more important back in Warhammer 2 where the AI frequently had their own massive empires to fight yours. As others have said as well Vampire Counts aren't actually the worst race for this play through type, since their power isn't dependent on the mechanic, just amplified.
I agree. cheesing the sieges altered the outcome and basically allowed him to Skip damage and claim a city. He was forced into the sieges because he was weaker and had he played them the outcome would have been different mostly likely. at the very least he should have played them because using an exploit is no different then using Raise dead to spawn multiple armies really quickly.
Is it "cheesing" if you're just using your brains? Does it really count if you have to dumb yourself down to give the AI a fighting chance? By that point you're just larping in a single player game.
@@skeith1543 @anovos658 I dont agree on not to cheese the AI in sieges because welp the AI is to bad at it so it get fuckeeed. To me that is no cheesing that is by desgine a fatal flaw AC should finialy work on. This is one thing why I hate sieges in TW W3 and I loved sieges in Shogun 2 and all TW games before Shogun 2. I am really shocked how shit they are now. Every TW I played before had good enough AI to not abandon important parts for sieges. TW WT seems to big or the devs are gone who made the AI
You often mentioned in your second playthrough that you had to fight a lot of the battles yourself in the second playthrough, while the territory you gained was about the same, the difficulty to get there was increased, which is significant. In the end you still didn't achieve the same expansion you did for the other campaign, which really tells that it is important, and certain factions require you to use their mechanics to play (empire random events) imagine trying to not complete a faction event.
It all really depends on player skill and faction playing as. Great players with powerful factions wouldn't need the mechanics while newer players or weaker factions would do better thanks to to them. So it really depends on who you are and who you're playing in the end.
Part of the issue with this is that the Vampire Counts are incredibly strong naturally, and their magic is the best in the game, and you're still using campaign mechanics in raise dead, which is also ridiculously strong. Might be harder to get away with as a weaker faction... still doable, though.
some mechanic are flavour for some factions ,but other factions/subfactions get massively stronger using their mechanics . Tzeench , Oxiotl , Alith Anar , Alarielle ,etc .
Similarly Taurox without using his rampage mechanic or spending momentum to refresh his campaign movement is pretty much just a somewhat better generic Doombull.
Lol I have yet to make friends with factions that normally hate me. Usually by the time I have enough influence to blow on enemies I'm already -130 from simply existing. It is nice getting that little boost to get your foot in the door with neutral races though
Рік тому+10
I would argue that many faction mechanics are too weak and not impactful enough, so that the effects on a campaign are barely noticeable. For the vampire counts, the bloodlines are nice to have, but the buffs are not that impactful. Research becomes great when a lot of them stack up small advantages giving you the upper hand later on (depending on factions, core features can be locked behind research). Some factions might have too many mechanics to begin with, where a few more impacful ones to replace the bloat would make them more fun to play.
I agree. The high elves have some of the worst faction mechanics in the game. Influence does essentially nothing other than being needed to recruit decent lords and not much else. The improve relations thing is essentially useless as the other factions opinion is not really a factor in diplomacy as long as they don’t hate you.
The ogres declaring war is likely due to no raise dead. You took heavy losses during the early auto resolves, leaving you weak so Ogres declared war. Normally raise dead lets you fill your army super fast.
They add a LOT of power and not using them at all is on you. If you are already playing on legendary, you could use further difficulty enhancing mods or house rules that would force you to use them more.
I know that the point if this vid wasn't to say that mechanics are dumb, but.... Campaign mechanics matter bc I want to have fun.......otherwise this game would become real boring real fast. I have 1300 hours in 3 and 2000 hours in 2. I doubt Id have played that much if mechanics weren't around.
Hmmm, I think there was quite the difference actually and you said it yourself, you had to manually fight a lot more battles on the "mechanic free" run than before. Now imagine you had fought the same number of battles in the first try by hand how much better you would have faired in the long run, as the money you don't spend on hiring new units, getting more experience on existing units and being able to chain more battles back to back accumulates quickly over those 50 turns. Mechanics might not matter so much, that they're essential to actually win the game (at least if you're a skilled player) but it undoubtedly makes it a lot easier and more convenient to actually use them as most of them don't really come with "additional costs" as in using up Gold or other resources that would be tied up otherwise.
Really depends on what faction, some mechanics are much more useful than others. Playing as like Ikit Claw, or Throt the Unclean, sure you could win a campaign not using any of their unique mechanics but it would be a lot harder and take a lot longer. Same could be said for beastmen factions, if you never bothered using their mechanics to get more units and armies, again, sure you could win a campaign, but would be making it a lot harder for yourself. Some mechanics are just basically pointless though, lizardmen geomantic web especially comes to mind, never used it at all and i'm pretty sure it would make no difference if I did
I feel like the Vampire Counts really isnt a good Race to look into this. Their mechanics are kind non factors. The bloodlines do little, raise dead is a wierd way to recruit units which is ofset by their units beeing mostly bad later on but good early + their tech tree is definitly on the weak side too. All in all mechanics are not super important powerwise but at a lot of flavor and make a campain feel and play different wich adds a lot of replay value.
I'd say that it's an unfair question because not all campaign mechanics are equals. Vampire Coast pirate coves and captaincy offices ? Pretty forgettable and superfluous (for the most part.) Lizardmen Geomantic Web ? Convoluted, at best. The Wood Elves Amber mechanic (in it's previous form) ? A remarkable pain in the ass. The Empire's political influence ? A very superficial rip off from the High Elves Influence mechanic - very perfectible, to boot. The Orcs scrap and Waaagh mechanics ? Hell yeah ! Bring forth the boys ! The Slave mechanics of the Chaos Dwarves and (now) Dark Elves to rush building construction in a jiffy ? Sign me the f- in. Taurox's insane campaign movement range by rampage ? How to redeem the Beastmen into an actual fun ride 101. Alith Anar's absurd package of : offensive ambush, bypassing terrain, perfect assassination, rewards for assassination and being an High Elve (to cheese money like no tomorrow) ? Lord heavens above... Ikit "Motherf*cking Nuke" Skryre ? Do i even need to say more ? Point is : all campaign mechanics aren't equal. Some are, in their current state, quite shit. Others are purely godlike. So, as cliche as it sounds, it really depends...
Shouldn't really take this guys videos seriously anyway considering he couldn't even handle the first 20 or so turns of legendary without getting steamrolled.
It sounds fun for a challenge campaign. Otherwise you are gimping yourself and taking away much of the flavor which makes this game special and stand out from other Total War titles. Youre gonna feel more burnt out and feel less distinction between races if you ignore their flavor. Just because some mechanics are underwhelming (like Lizard web, Ogre contracts or Chaos corruption for monogods for the most part), doesnt mean you should ignore Raise Dead, HE diplomacy, or Skaven DLC Workshop/Lab/Contracts, which are absolute gamechangers. If anything, this should make CA make sure all of these race mechanics are worth giving a damn about... some, like the ones I mentioned, admittedly dont. And if you dont even bother to level, or switch items, or research tech... why are you even playing the game? Its the equivalent of picking up Witcher3 and skipping all dialogue beacuse you wanna speedrun it. This is a strategy game. If you dont have time or patience to properly play it, why bother at all?
It would’ve been interesting to compare the battles fought stat, as it looked like you had to fight a lot more in the 2nd run. Someone who understands the game as well as yourself clearly doesn’t need the “flavour” mechanics; lesser players however, probably need them a lot more!
I see campaign mechanics more in the light of doing some "Roleplay". Also. I think if you did this ignoring of mechanics with the warriors of chaos, you'd be in for something more complicated.
Do campaign mechanics matter? Of course they do they can make a hell of a difference to a campaign. They can make hard obstacles easier and they can provide a hell of a lot of flavour and variety to campaigns. Do you have to use them? Of course not. The system is designed in such a robust way that if you goof up and forget to use a mechanic you can still play. Not as efficiently but you can still play. It's like your battle tactics you can just get by using good ol hammer and anvil but you can use a huge variety of strategies and tactics to make your battles far more efficient and skillful. The system design is brilliant "easy to learn but deep and rewarding to master".
Very cool idea. It was nice to see two versions of the same campaign condensed. Hell any campaign condensed is interesting to me. I have been meaning to try out the random location mod for Ku'gath. I would love to see that chaotic mess.
Nehekara warriors are stronger than they used to be with BvI. They'd tear through his infantry quite a bit. Settra is quite strong as well. You might be able to cheese the battle by running around and splitting up his forces though and then just leadership bombing them. Would take a while though.
I think you got a little lucky diplomatically with this campaign. Usually Skarbrand declares war the instant I make diplomatic contact with him, so round about the same time I capture khemri. Then of course Tik Tak To is just a matter of time along with the bowmen of Oreon, Kroqgar and Thorek, I rarely have time to go after Repanse so early and usually leave Arkhan to handle her.
@Zerkovich nice video I liked the 2 takes I came up with my own type of Campaign the 100 Turn Headstart it is proving challenging to downright unwinnable for some Legendary Lords.
The special mechanics for Ogres are almost mandatory. No camps = no best units and no income. Generally, I'd say that campaign mechanics help a lot if you auto resolve your battles. It gives you at extra boost to become stronger than what you really are. Playing the battles is kind of a cheat if you are good at them, because you can almost always outsmart and win most battles, which compensates for the lack of power that comes from campaign mechanics. Also, as you said, a lot of stuff in the tech tree are late-game based. You get some buffs at growth, replenishment and income early, which of course are good, but not mandatory, because you can always outtempo your enemies early. Later on, though, especially on auto-resolve, the extra stats you get from technologies that buff your tier 3 units can be crucial.
FUN FACT: the victory point timer is a reference to the instances that happened in history in multiple sieges through history where the garrison would surrender the city believing the city is already breached and taken when the enemy over takes parts of it .
Personally I like very significant mechanics that greatly influence playstyle at least in a good amount of factions, and then perhaps other factions with more of a sandbox feel, or at least some that way. Others can be more defined by unique army types.
I don't know, they do make a difference. I mean, you're good at tactics and you ran the campaigns intelligently. However it was a smoother ride and you did get a bit bigger running the mechanics. In the hands of someone less skilled with the game than you, somebody who makes basic mistakes, those faction mechanics might well be the difference between that player expanding and still having fun, and him just struggling and trading cities and getting frustrated. Especially the "Raise Dead" mechanic is worth its weight in gold, both for replacing casualties and upgrading your armies.
Although you're playthrough didn't show much difference you can spam cheap armies out as the Counts to grab more land and rank up Lords. On Turn 50 I had about 5-6 armies and had around 12 at turn 100. It does depend on your playstyle though as quite a few don't like the blob tactics of undead crap stacks.
Does anything at all matter? This is ridiculous, honestly. You can win a campaign using only Skinks but that says absolutely nothing about the entire rest of the faction. Like why have a Dread Saurian, Fireleech bolas, Solar Basilodons, Carnosaurs, when Skinks do the trick? Guess those just don’t matter
Its as important as what you make of it. I make it very important, and I have a lot of fun with it. Theme your armies, choose all the unique legendary lord skills, build all of your faction specific landmarks, use and abuse and play into everything that makes your campaigns unique. Its what makes everything feel so unique and different. Belthezar Gelt is a wizard and artillary lord, he gets his wizards and artillary. Settra loves charriots and tomb guards. Awesome combo and good practice with charriots. Pick up some red line to improve those. A bit of an odd one, but queek? He likes clanrats? Stormvermin? I dont care if its part of the meta, but I'd like to see 8 armies of clanrats and a main army of stormvermin built like actu armies march across the old world.I love being given a million options but still being able to play into an assigned inherent strength.
Some are very strong effects but truly no, you are hamstringing yourself but as long as a unit can do 1 damage you can theoretically do it, most painful things I have done in WH2 was a zombie only and all foot brettonia sfo legendary campaign and if it wasn't for being able to stack absurd armour with blacksmiths I'd have lost both my mind and patience again.
I think that Vampire Counts are not a good example, just like Nurgle with plagues for example... trying Kislev, Empire without the elector Counts system and influence, Chorfs without Hellforge...it would have been much different story. What i am trying to explain is that you just can't say campaign mechanics don't matter AT ALL only after playing one faction, there are factions with unique mechanics that impact the most and others little bit less but still add flavour to the game.
They need to add more quests that provide units to factions, it gets kinda repetitive that all games progress the same. For example, Gelt. Survive with crossbowman and swordsman while protecting your starting mortar and cannon with your life, also somehow expand because your first province sucks. Get tier two, get horses to catch fast units and hammer what gets to your frontline, get some pistoliers since they are tier 2 two. FINALLY get tier 3, get outriders and wish they had grenade launchers, change crossbowman for handgunners and more mortars. Finally you can have your gunpower based army. Karl gets (or used to? I dunno) a quest mage and that's it, so your armies will forever be the same until you unlock a new tier, this is even worse for the AI. I love the fight 19 orc boys as much as the next guy, but a troll or giant here or there would spice the gameplay. Beat an enemy army once, and you ran the enemy out of flavor.
The only way to get fun siege battles is to play the campaign in multiplayer and have other players control AI. Only way to have fun battles really, but the difference in siege battles is much more impactful.
I feel the item system is worse in WH3. I like the options to fuse and salvage items, but I dont like the layout of the menu compared to WH2. Another issue is that most factions dont have the option to pursue items, its entirely random what they get. Also the fusing is random. I wish every faction would have a system similar to the Dawi - maybe not as superior as the Dawi one. Equipping your characters with selected items is a part of the game I highly enjoy, but dealing with those tons of random items is extremely tedious.
Must say Manfred is the worst to test 😂 since his unique mechanic is actually one of the not mattering ones. And doesn't give him a big advantage. Better would be ikit without his rockets and workshop or the woodelves without worldroots 🤔 He doesn't even has a unique skill tree.
OK totally forgot raise dead 😂... I must say the fluffy mechanics are a big part of the fun of the game for me, since sieges so big parts of the battles are awful 😅 Love nurgle plagues for example 👻 but vampire mechanics are pretty dated in my opinion. And I hope we get a rework soon like maybe past the other stuff as I hoped for ages...
And for the playthrough didn't see or notice what difficulty you where playing on. What I do usually do is the plundering occupy mode, since it gives replenishment and rebuilding and public order doesn't seem to matter that much... And it's kind of beneficial to have some rouge armies to level up your lord. 😅..
Simple fact- if you are willing to cheese TWW3 is not a hard game. There are challenging moments, but on the whole it is very straight forwards. As you showed with Skarbrand, and as I’ve done plenty of times with Durthu, even owning settlements is irrelevant past a certain point. This is a game where you can win the entire campaign on turn 1 with one guy.
I would argue that if you had fought more battles manually on the first playthrough, you would've conquered much more much faster. And vise versa, had you auto resolved in the second campaign as much as in the first one, you would've lost the campaign. Edit: auto resolve is a campaign mechanic. So either do a playthrough thats all auto resolve or all manual fight if you want a valid comparison.
it's a general mechanic that exists to all factions. I think he was going for race specific mechanics. also research isn't the same across all factions so he could cut that out too.
Campaign mechanics tend to be incredibly useful and even instrumental at times, but they become obsolete very quickly. If you're a good player and know what you're doing, by turn 15 you can pretty much ignore them because you've had such a good start that it doesn't matter anymore. It's a shame really, I really want campaign mechanics to be impactful throughout a campaign but lets be real : battle micro is eveything in this game.
I wish to play a campaign with no artificial difficulty, which I already do, but also multiplayer-like battles with no battle tech or talents but I haven't found a mod for that yet
Oh. Also you have been declared because you were weaker by ogres and skarbrand. Also if you fought auto resolved manually in a normal campaign, it would lead to a better outcome and more land conquered. To do a real comparison, you should mirror decisions as well as you can. So manual all the battles.
I'll be honest, i've done two campaigns with the Khorne faction and didn't even realize that the Skull Throne button even existed until i watched this video, now i'm kinda curious as to what it does?
Just some short term buffs. The only one that really matters is the campaign movement buff, but using it can make it easier to rampage between multiple settlements. Basically if the settlements are close enough together you can wipe entire provinces in a single turn.
@@novakaizrI’ve successfully chain raised from one end of the empire starting at altdorf ending at castle dragon hoff in one turn don’t know how I did it though
To be fair, I’ve done a few 100+ turn khorne campaigns and the skull throne button was not hit more than a couple times ever. More like a “oops was that important? Should I have saved this?”
The income boost and movement buff it gives is pretty insane. Skarbaby can run circles around everyone like he's cosplaying pre-nerf Taurox. If the stars align, you can get the long victory at turn 75-100 from chaining skullethrone fights together (having free unit summons comes in clutch for this)
My brother in Nurgle, had you played mechanic free first and with mechanics second, you would have experienced a world of difference. Your immediate familiarity played a massive role in that second playthrough. You first playthrough was riddled with strategic mistakes (not tactical ones) and your faction mechanics practically let you take those screw ups with next to no consequences. You should try this again with a weaker faction, say... Empire or Dark Elves like Rekarth. Do the mechanics free run. Then do your with mechanics run. The difference will be massive.
Different factions have mechanics that vary in how impactful they are. For example Greenskins would be completely different to play without the waaagh.
Of course they do, especially for beastmen and daemonic factions! Some old mechanic is irrilevent (G-web) or even hurts the player (imperial authority), if we continue to talk about it CA devs will eventually fix them. In the meantime, there are mods.
For me it really depends on tbr mechanic. Raise Dead is super easy to use and has immediate benefits. Same with Ikit's workshop where it's just click and win. But something like Throt's lab or Grom's Cauldron? Miss me with that shit
I would argue that some mechanics are way more essential than others. Raise Dead is way more essential than the Bloodline stuff, for example. Also, some factions are way more dependent on their mechanics than others. But that is what makes TW:WH so unique, in my eyes. Factions are very different from each other, which is a big bo us for replay value. And you can play each faction differently, too.
That's not how you use the vampire counts... they are very aggressive faction. Their main ecolomy comes from 1 tier 1 building that gives 250 gold. You have 2 doom stack grave knights commanders at the beginning which u rush stack grave knights. These 2 are the bloodknight and manfred and both reduced upkeep for them. with these 2 armys they can solo pretty much anything. hence u can push towards 3-4 directions if u use the mechnaics correctly. I owned everything from start position to the end of the island in the south in less then 50 turns.
On the contrary, they mostly matter in early game and on higher difficulties. In the late campaign you can just spam high end armies left and right and you'll be just fine.
I like the idea of this video, but I feel its more a comment on how the vampire counts are kinda flat as a faction. Imagine Ogres with no camps, chorfs with no armory upgrades labour sacrifices or tower seats, beast men with no dread or rituals. Wood elves with no awakening, skaven but u always colonise at t1 and have 0 menace below. All of those campaigns are feasible, but tedious, to differing degrees
How important Faction mechanics are depends on the Faction and of course the mechanic. There are huge differences and the Buffs and Bonuses are not really balanced. I most appreciate the Campaign Mechanics which strongly influence the economy and empire building like Chaos Dwarfs or tell good stories
I also never look at items. Sometimes I forget to do the quests for legendary lord items. But you can win every total war game if you use agents to find out where the enemy is hiding then move your army. I would confidently argue that most problems people face in the game is because they move their armies blind. Use your agents! Do recon! Force others to adopt your peaceful ways by force!
In terms of mechanics I feel like the vampires raise dead is a bad example. I rarely follow mechanics myself, but it’s not like you have to dig far to find the raise dead mechanic. It’s an instant recruitment option, right by the regular recruitment option. Mechanics that are easy to take advantage of and just help you in the game seems like a weird handicap u set on yourself. Also, tech’s not really a unique faction mechanic. Maybe what they research, but you get a notification that you’re not researching something every time you try to end turn.
I am agree that youre test shows that the Raise the dead mecanics + lords + Technology is no use with Manfred. But as far as i see it it would be the same with Skarbrand, Thorgrim, Tyrion etc : theirs campaign are easy. With no big deal, no times yo get more than 3 to 4 war at youre borders... Trys the same with Zhao Ming who has to defend against Snitch, Malus, Helman, and sometimes Nakaï and Graissus, or Tzeench, or Boris... Vlad with 3 Dwarfs / 4 Empire enemies at the same time would have been a better test All the power of a mechanics reside to how usefull it is under a stressfull situation, and i saw none in those test. But to be fair i am still surprised to see how you manage the Manfred campaign without the Raise the dead. Another point : sometime a mechanic has no other use than just permit the brain to realease some stress ^^ i think you can pull out a Vlad campaign without the use of mechanics, but will it be as fun as you want it to be ? Or will you be overthinking every thing and finish a 2 hours gamesession mentally exhausted ?
The reason why a lot of mechanics don't seem to matter is because CA have this strange refusal to hit players with any real penalties whatsoever. For example take High Elves. If they came with enormous diplomatic penalties or are somehow unable to partake in regular diplomacy, then their influence mechanic would be far more relevant as an alternative.
Tbh, the Court Intrigue is most useful for those that don't start in Ulthuan. Currently playing an Imrik campaign and it is absolutely life-saving by making it easier to get allies in a place scarce with allies. But for Tyrion, for example, he's surrounded by numerous allies and will usually be able to fight enemies one at a time so it's not very useful for him.
I think this is true in a lot of games. If the faction mechanics were really powerful, then they either become mandatory or they make you OP. Both options are seen as bad. If they become necessary, players feel forced into using them and if they don’t understand them, you could have a player quickly bounce off the game by losing interest because they didn’t know they existed and just lost for not utilizing it. So you would need a good tutorial. If they are powerful but not mandatory to play, then using them just makes you OP to the point of trivializing the game. So that doesn’t seem like a good option either. And here is the solution, don’t make them powerful. If players engage with them, they get some buffs and are slightly stronger but not using them doesn’t derail the campaign. I actually think a lot of AAA games take this approach to their systems. To appeal to all types of players they can’t force anything on you, so they just have make everything marginal to the point of being there more for flavor than mechanics.
They make the game more fun and add a ton of flavor to make campaigns feel different depending on the faction, so in that way I think they matter greatly.
It really comes down to WHICH mechanic…. Some are really useless or just feel old and unnecessary. Some are more a pain to think about, rather than make the campaign really interesting.
Although the mechanics in general definetly have gotten better and more fleshed out. (Like the last addition with the Chaos Dwarfs, they have some of my favourite mechanics in Game so far)
yes so much fun having useless buffs
@@robertmu😂
it's very inconsequential tho wish there is some heavy restrictions that give both different flavours and gameplay
@@robertmu Infinite Ratling Gun ammunition useless? Nukes useless? sure.. ok.
Yes you can beat the campaign with no faction mechanics but if you are someone like me those mechanics greatly add character and theme to the faction, and I mean some of those mechanics are game changing and provide completely different experiences , just look at Ikit's workshop or Grom's cauldron.
@@forrestmcgee7631If you only play as Grom, you miss other starting positions amd different enemies.
Imagine playing Tomb Kings without researching 2 army😂 Good Luck man ur gonna need it
yea.... that would suck ass.
the magic of a sandbox game, play the way you want: Min-max / cheese / doomstacks / lore friendly and thematic / dark souls no mechanic run
I guess I see it like this: in theory, you could create a recipe for a porridge that would give you all the nutrients, vegetables, protein, fiber, etc that your body needs in one bowl. You wouldn't need to worry about things like seasoning because that's really not essential to survive, and you would never need to eat any other meal because you could just make another batch of nutrient porridge and live on that! But I think we can all agree that'd be an awful way to live, right? There's more significance to food than just keeping your body alive, at least for most people.
Similarly, just because faction mechanics aren't always essential to play the game doesn't mean they aren't important to the experience. When I choose to start a campaign with a faction it's because I want a certain experience both mechanically and thematically, and the campaign mechanics are a big part of giving campaigns their flavor. Without them it'd all just be a big nutrient porridge.
You can argue that you can reach the same point without them, but you can hardly call them useless. For the campaign you did without mechanics you used a lot more cheese and a lot more manual fighting. I am sure if you had done the same amount of manual fighting in the first campaign you would have found those battles to be significantly easier.
It's about the journey, not the destination. If the only thing that mattered was seeing the victory screen then the game would get really boring really quickly.
The faction mechanics are mainly saving you time by making you strong enough to autoresolve more often - both campaigns are 50 turns, but I imagine in real time, the second one probably took longer with battles. Then again, I know I personally spend a lot of time on the campaign map making sure commandments are being swapped around, diplomacy is looked over, etc. because I tend to try and be thorough. Vampire counts definitely suffer from a problem of 'thematic, but not interesting in a gameplay sense' mechanics like raise dead and the blood kisses, where there's no potential drawback to them, like, say, skaven food or empire's elector counts. (For the record, elector counts is definitely a mechanic that should be looked at - as it stands, it revolves around waiting for random events.)
its a shame there aren't undead versions of every unit. I'd love a version of vampire counts that gets pretty much all of their units from raise dead. Like you can always get regular skeletons and zombies, maybe a couple of other units too, but everything else has to be raised from something that actually has died somewhere on the map. And not like "a battle of X size happened, so you can now raise tier 4 units", more like "two dragons died at this exact spot, you can raise two undead dragon units here". But the faction has its origins as a tabletop wargame faction so that'll never be a thing unfortunately. But its always irked me that the faction all about raising the dead can't actually raise the dead. It can spawn undead sylvanian units anywhere and that just gets called raising the dead.
Fighting the vampires should see you fighting undead versions of your own army imo. As they raise everything that dies in the area to fight you. Undead lizardmen. Undead Ogres. Undead Elves.
@@ASpaceOstrich I can see that for monstrous units, but not normal humanlike. You raise a body from whatever condition it was in, the magic might strip away the skin to make a skelly or like lizards skin wouldn't be hard like when it was alive. You don't keep any skill or memories from the body so it won't fight like an elf or dwarf, it's just a funny looking skeleton. As for the armor and weapons it's a hit or miss on if it would be useable after a battle, and even if it was it would break eventually. Also some factions don't have units that would work for raising like constructs for tomb kings or doomwheels of the skaven. Undead dragons do exist in some ways, undead ogres are basically just crypt horrors right.
To be fair, skaven food's downsides are 100% theoretical. They never have and likely never will affect anybody's campaigns, especially with how OP under-empires are.
@@andrewgoehring9108 It'd break eventually so the units would become more and more undead-like over time and require replacement. Which would also occur if you were to re-raise the same unit over and over again (i.e. undead dragon starts out as nearly as good as the original dragon, but if it dies and has to be re-raised, it becomes weaker and weaker).
I think this concept of an army that literally just uses undead units from other factions would be really cool, but it's never going to happen in Warhammer specifically only because it was a tabletop game. If it wasn't, a vampire faction could totally be built with that in mind, but the tabletop faction wasn't, so the game counterpart also can't be.
But in universe, thats whats actually happening. Its described as particularly horrifying to fight vampires because every unit that dies on both sides of the conflict gets back up and fights for them. Sure, undead elves or dwarfs won't be as good as waywatchers of ironbreakers, but the morale impact should be a factor and the equipment should still matter. Vampires having ready access to ranged units would be huge, and the more monstrous races would create equally monstrous undead.
Oh, and of course, the beauty that would be sending in undead bears.
Would love to see this with Kislev because their mechanics are needed to get heroes and to prevent chaos rebellions etc.
You can easily beat the game on the hardest settings without using the Kislev heroes or mechanics. All that matters is having high levels of devotion - a few churches and you're good to go.
@@chrisjackson1215 Wouldn't high levels of devotion count as using Kislev unique mechanics though?
@@instathrill8845 high devotion just stops chaos invasions. I'd hardly call it using a mechanic, it's just control by a different name.
@@instathrill8845 You get high devotion simply from fighting chaos, so unless you use Kislev's mechanics to use a bunch of devotion you'd actually swim in it. So there wouldn't be any chaos rebellions at all (other than just low order I guess).
Oi Zerk….I was reading your guides for various games before I realized you had a channel. You are the goat bro. Glad I f found your videos after following them guides word for word, bar for bar.
Feel like your results may have differed if you didn't cheese the AI during sieges. Also mechanics of scale later on would be more important back in Warhammer 2 where the AI frequently had their own massive empires to fight yours. As others have said as well Vampire Counts aren't actually the worst race for this play through type, since their power isn't dependent on the mechanic, just amplified.
I agree. cheesing the sieges altered the outcome and basically allowed him to Skip damage and claim a city. He was forced into the sieges because he was weaker and had he played them the outcome would have been different mostly likely. at the very least he should have played them because using an exploit is no different then using Raise dead to spawn multiple armies really quickly.
Is it "cheesing" if you're just using your brains? Does it really count if you have to dumb yourself down to give the AI a fighting chance? By that point you're just larping in a single player game.
@@skeith1543 @anovos658 I dont agree on not to cheese the AI in sieges because welp the AI is to bad at it so it get fuckeeed. To me that is no cheesing that is by desgine a fatal flaw AC should finialy work on.
This is one thing why I hate sieges in TW W3 and I loved sieges in Shogun 2 and all TW games before Shogun 2. I am really shocked how shit they are now. Every TW I played before had good enough AI to not abandon important parts for sieges.
TW WT seems to big or the devs are gone who made the AI
You often mentioned in your second playthrough that you had to fight a lot of the battles yourself in the second playthrough, while the territory you gained was about the same, the difficulty to get there was increased, which is significant. In the end you still didn't achieve the same expansion you did for the other campaign, which really tells that it is important, and certain factions require you to use their mechanics to play (empire random events) imagine trying to not complete a faction event.
It all really depends on player skill and faction playing as. Great players with powerful factions wouldn't need the mechanics while newer players or weaker factions would do better thanks to to them. So it really depends on who you are and who you're playing in the end.
Part of the issue with this is that the Vampire Counts are incredibly strong naturally, and their magic is the best in the game, and you're still using campaign mechanics in raise dead, which is also ridiculously strong. Might be harder to get away with as a weaker faction... still doable, though.
I think the largest difference here came down to you having to cheese multiple sieges as compared to the actual "mechanics" campaign.
some mechanic are flavour for some factions ,but other factions/subfactions get massively stronger using their mechanics . Tzeench , Oxiotl , Alith Anar , Alarielle ,etc .
I couldn't imagine playing Tzeench without changing of the ways, manipulating the WoM, unholy manifestations, or Teleport.
Similarly Taurox without using his rampage mechanic or spending momentum to refresh his campaign movement is pretty much just a somewhat better generic Doombull.
i personaly like high elves mechanics cuz u can b friends with ur worse enemig and thats pretty fun XDDD
Lol I have yet to make friends with factions that normally hate me. Usually by the time I have enough influence to blow on enemies I'm already -130 from simply existing. It is nice getting that little boost to get your foot in the door with neutral races though
I would argue that many faction mechanics are too weak and not impactful enough, so that the effects on a campaign are barely noticeable. For the vampire counts, the bloodlines are nice to have, but the buffs are not that impactful. Research becomes great when a lot of them stack up small advantages giving you the upper hand later on (depending on factions, core features can be locked behind research).
Some factions might have too many mechanics to begin with, where a few more impacful ones to replace the bloat would make them more fun to play.
I agree. The high elves have some of the worst faction mechanics in the game. Influence does essentially nothing other than being needed to recruit decent lords and not much else. The improve relations thing is essentially useless as the other factions opinion is not really a factor in diplomacy as long as they don’t hate you.
The ogres declaring war is likely due to no raise dead. You took heavy losses during the early auto resolves, leaving you weak so Ogres declared war. Normally raise dead lets you fill your army super fast.
They add a LOT of power and not using them at all is on you. If you are already playing on legendary, you could use further difficulty enhancing mods or house rules that would force you to use them more.
Bro this is why I love the beastmen. Simple is sometimes really fun! Allows for strategy and tactics to shine more.
I know that the point if this vid wasn't to say that mechanics are dumb, but....
Campaign mechanics matter bc I want to have fun.......otherwise this game would become real boring real fast. I have 1300 hours in 3 and 2000 hours in 2. I doubt Id have played that much if mechanics weren't around.
Hmmm, I think there was quite the difference actually and you said it yourself, you had to manually fight a lot more battles on the "mechanic free" run than before. Now imagine you had fought the same number of battles in the first try by hand how much better you would have faired in the long run, as the money you don't spend on hiring new units, getting more experience on existing units and being able to chain more battles back to back accumulates quickly over those 50 turns.
Mechanics might not matter so much, that they're essential to actually win the game (at least if you're a skilled player) but it undoubtedly makes it a lot easier and more convenient to actually use them as most of them don't really come with "additional costs" as in using up Gold or other resources that would be tied up otherwise.
Really depends on what faction, some mechanics are much more useful than others. Playing as like Ikit Claw, or Throt the Unclean, sure you could win a campaign not using any of their unique mechanics but it would be a lot harder and take a lot longer. Same could be said for beastmen factions, if you never bothered using their mechanics to get more units and armies, again, sure you could win a campaign, but would be making it a lot harder for yourself. Some mechanics are just basically pointless though, lizardmen geomantic web especially comes to mind, never used it at all and i'm pretty sure it would make no difference if I did
geomantic web gives a massive boost to the lizardmen economy. or growth, so it allows you to more rapidly pump out more armies.
The Geomantic Web is passive, it just works you dingus and can literally ignore it since it'll just work anyways.
I'm a noob but I'd say the point is: winning battles and organizing your kingdom. Everything else is extra
I feel like the Vampire Counts really isnt a good Race to look into this. Their mechanics are kind non factors. The bloodlines do little, raise dead is a wierd way to recruit units which is ofset by their units beeing mostly bad later on but good early + their tech tree is definitly on the weak side too.
All in all mechanics are not super important powerwise but at a lot of flavor and make a campain feel and play different wich adds a lot of replay value.
I'd say that it's an unfair question because not all campaign mechanics are equals.
Vampire Coast pirate coves and captaincy offices ? Pretty forgettable and superfluous (for the most part.)
Lizardmen Geomantic Web ? Convoluted, at best.
The Wood Elves Amber mechanic (in it's previous form) ? A remarkable pain in the ass.
The Empire's political influence ? A very superficial rip off from the High Elves Influence mechanic - very perfectible, to boot.
The Orcs scrap and Waaagh mechanics ? Hell yeah ! Bring forth the boys !
The Slave mechanics of the Chaos Dwarves and (now) Dark Elves to rush building construction in a jiffy ? Sign me the f- in.
Taurox's insane campaign movement range by rampage ? How to redeem the Beastmen into an actual fun ride 101.
Alith Anar's absurd package of : offensive ambush, bypassing terrain, perfect assassination, rewards for assassination and being an High Elve (to cheese money like no tomorrow) ? Lord heavens above...
Ikit "Motherf*cking Nuke" Skryre ? Do i even need to say more ?
Point is : all campaign mechanics aren't equal. Some are, in their current state, quite shit. Others are purely godlike. So, as cliche as it sounds, it really depends...
Shouldn't really take this guys videos seriously anyway considering he couldn't even handle the first 20 or so turns of legendary without getting steamrolled.
Stone Cold Steve Manfred got me good.
It sounds fun for a challenge campaign. Otherwise you are gimping yourself and taking away much of the flavor which makes this game special and stand out from other Total War titles. Youre gonna feel more burnt out and feel less distinction between races if you ignore their flavor. Just because some mechanics are underwhelming (like Lizard web, Ogre contracts or Chaos corruption for monogods for the most part), doesnt mean you should ignore Raise Dead, HE diplomacy, or Skaven DLC Workshop/Lab/Contracts, which are absolute gamechangers. If anything, this should make CA make sure all of these race mechanics are worth giving a damn about... some, like the ones I mentioned, admittedly dont.
And if you dont even bother to level, or switch items, or research tech... why are you even playing the game? Its the equivalent of picking up Witcher3 and skipping all dialogue beacuse you wanna speedrun it. This is a strategy game. If you dont have time or patience to properly play it, why bother at all?
I'd like to see you play chaos dwarfs with no mechanics. Since you need to increese unit caps and Tower to get good buffs
Could probably get by with Hobgobbos and Lords but... why. Campaign mechanics are fun.
It would’ve been interesting to compare the battles fought stat, as it looked like you had to fight a lot more in the 2nd run. Someone who understands the game as well as yourself clearly doesn’t need the “flavour” mechanics; lesser players however, probably need them a lot more!
I would say that they do matter, but they are secondary comparing to battles gameplay
I see campaign mechanics more in the light of doing some "Roleplay".
Also. I think if you did this ignoring of mechanics with the warriors of chaos, you'd be in for something more complicated.
now try and do that with kairos
Do campaign mechanics matter? Of course they do they can make a hell of a difference to a campaign. They can make hard obstacles easier and they can provide a hell of a lot of flavour and variety to campaigns.
Do you have to use them? Of course not. The system is designed in such a robust way that if you goof up and forget to use a mechanic you can still play. Not as efficiently but you can still play.
It's like your battle tactics you can just get by using good ol hammer and anvil but you can use a huge variety of strategies and tactics to make your battles far more efficient and skillful.
The system design is brilliant "easy to learn but deep and rewarding to master".
Very cool idea. It was nice to see two versions of the same campaign condensed. Hell any campaign condensed is interesting to me. I have been meaning to try out the random location mod for Ku'gath. I would love to see that chaotic mess.
That battle at 5:00 could definitely be won 😂
Nehekara warriors are stronger than they used to be with BvI. They'd tear through his infantry quite a bit. Settra is quite strong as well.
You might be able to cheese the battle by running around and splitting up his forces though and then just leadership bombing them. Would take a while though.
Challenge: beat a khorne campaign while never using bloodletting
Lol easy
I think you got a little lucky diplomatically with this campaign. Usually Skarbrand declares war the instant I make diplomatic contact with him, so round about the same time I capture khemri. Then of course Tik Tak To is just a matter of time along with the bowmen of Oreon, Kroqgar and Thorek, I rarely have time to go after Repanse so early and usually leave Arkhan to handle her.
@Zerkovich nice video I liked the 2 takes I came up with my own type of Campaign the 100 Turn Headstart it is proving challenging to downright unwinnable for some Legendary Lords.
The special mechanics for Ogres are almost mandatory. No camps = no best units and no income.
Generally, I'd say that campaign mechanics help a lot if you auto resolve your battles. It gives you at extra boost to become stronger than what you really are. Playing the battles is kind of a cheat if you are good at them, because you can almost always outsmart and win most battles, which compensates for the lack of power that comes from campaign mechanics.
Also, as you said, a lot of stuff in the tech tree are late-game based. You get some buffs at growth, replenishment and income early, which of course are good, but not mandatory, because you can always outtempo your enemies early. Later on, though, especially on auto-resolve, the extra stats you get from technologies that buff your tier 3 units can be crucial.
bretonnian archers with 130 armour certainly helps in the autoresolve :P
FUN FACT: the victory point timer is a reference to the instances that happened in history in multiple sieges through history where the garrison would surrender the city believing the city is already breached and taken when the enemy over takes parts of it .
Personally I like very significant mechanics that greatly influence playstyle at least in a good amount of factions, and then perhaps other factions with more of a sandbox feel, or at least some that way. Others can be more defined by unique army types.
I don't know, they do make a difference. I mean, you're good at tactics and you ran the campaigns intelligently. However it was a smoother ride and you did get a bit bigger running the mechanics. In the hands of someone less skilled with the game than you, somebody who makes basic mistakes, those faction mechanics might well be the difference between that player expanding and still having fun, and him just struggling and trading cities and getting frustrated. Especially the "Raise Dead" mechanic is worth its weight in gold, both for replacing casualties and upgrading your armies.
Although you're playthrough didn't show much difference you can spam cheap armies out as the Counts to grab more land and rank up Lords. On Turn 50 I had about 5-6 armies and had around 12 at turn 100. It does depend on your playstyle though as quite a few don't like the blob tactics of undead crap stacks.
Dude, ive played 3 or 4 skarbrand campaigns and i didnt even know that is a fucking button....
How
I think it would be great if Dark Elves got a similar slave rework that the Chaos Dwarf labor mechanic brings, would help a lot
Does anything at all matter? This is ridiculous, honestly. You can win a campaign using only Skinks but that says absolutely nothing about the entire rest of the faction. Like why have a Dread Saurian, Fireleech bolas, Solar Basilodons, Carnosaurs, when Skinks do the trick? Guess those just don’t matter
Its as important as what you make of it. I make it very important, and I have a lot of fun with it. Theme your armies, choose all the unique legendary lord skills, build all of your faction specific landmarks, use and abuse and play into everything that makes your campaigns unique. Its what makes everything feel so unique and different. Belthezar Gelt is a wizard and artillary lord, he gets his wizards and artillary. Settra loves charriots and tomb guards. Awesome combo and good practice with charriots. Pick up some red line to improve those. A bit of an odd one, but queek? He likes clanrats? Stormvermin? I dont care if its part of the meta, but I'd like to see 8 armies of clanrats and a main army of stormvermin built like actu armies march across the old world.I love being given a million options but still being able to play into an assigned inherent strength.
Love your vids man, but I have to disagree, campaign mechanics are crucial on harder difficulties , which I guess you admit at the very end.
Well this was on Very Hard. Maybe there's a case for the video on Legendary xD
7:04 nice pun , Zerk, love it !
I feel like a Tzeentch playthrough with this would be actual hell. Kairos might be ok, but the deceiver would have a rough time
Some are very strong effects but truly no, you are hamstringing yourself but as long as a unit can do 1 damage you can theoretically do it, most painful things I have done in WH2 was a zombie only and all foot brettonia sfo legendary campaign and if it wasn't for being able to stack absurd armour with blacksmiths I'd have lost both my mind and patience again.
Why is every youtuber playing without the animated portraits? I still don't own TWWIII so I don't know if there's a reason.
Eats a an unreasonable amount of processing power to have them animated or something like that
Yeah, try Chorfs without mechanics
Campaign mechanics is a large reason i even get DLCs because they make for a unique experience. Markus Wolfheart's was really cool!
I think that Vampire Counts are not a good example, just like Nurgle with plagues for example... trying Kislev, Empire without the elector Counts system and influence, Chorfs without Hellforge...it would have been much different story.
What i am trying to explain is that you just can't say campaign mechanics don't matter AT ALL only after playing one faction, there are factions with unique mechanics that impact the most and others little bit less but still add flavour to the game.
If you have 2 items of the same type you dont need, you can combine them to a better ohne (for example 2 grey weapons will turn into a green item)
And wind of death is the bottom line, because stone cold Carstein said so!
I'd love to see somebody try this with the wood elves!
They need to add more quests that provide units to factions, it gets kinda repetitive that all games progress the same. For example, Gelt.
Survive with crossbowman and swordsman while protecting your starting mortar and cannon with your life, also somehow expand because your first province sucks. Get tier two, get horses to catch fast units and hammer what gets to your frontline, get some pistoliers since they are tier 2 two. FINALLY get tier 3, get outriders and wish they had grenade launchers, change crossbowman for handgunners and more mortars. Finally you can have your gunpower based army.
Karl gets (or used to? I dunno) a quest mage and that's it, so your armies will forever be the same until you unlock a new tier, this is even worse for the AI. I love the fight 19 orc boys as much as the next guy, but a troll or giant here or there would spice the gameplay. Beat an enemy army once, and you ran the enemy out of flavor.
High elf intrigue is super helpful for getting trade
The only way to get fun siege battles is to play the campaign in multiplayer and have other players control AI.
Only way to have fun battles really, but the difference in siege battles is much more impactful.
I feel the item system is worse in WH3. I like the options to fuse and salvage items, but I dont like the layout of the menu compared to WH2. Another issue is that most factions dont have the option to pursue items, its entirely random what they get. Also the fusing is random.
I wish every faction would have a system similar to the Dawi - maybe not as superior as the Dawi one. Equipping your characters with selected items is a part of the game I highly enjoy, but dealing with those tons of random items is extremely tedious.
Must say Manfred is the worst to test 😂 since his unique mechanic is actually one of the not mattering ones. And doesn't give him a big advantage. Better would be ikit without his rockets and workshop or the woodelves without worldroots 🤔
He doesn't even has a unique skill tree.
OK totally forgot raise dead 😂... I must say the fluffy mechanics are a big part of the fun of the game for me, since sieges so big parts of the battles are awful 😅
Love nurgle plagues for example 👻 but vampire mechanics are pretty dated in my opinion. And I hope we get a rework soon like maybe past the other stuff as I hoped for ages...
And for the playthrough didn't see or notice what difficulty you where playing on.
What I do usually do is the plundering occupy mode, since it gives replenishment and rebuilding and public order doesn't seem to matter that much... And it's kind of beneficial to have some rouge armies to level up your lord. 😅..
Almost totally defeats the purpose of playing Warhammer 3, suppose any game is really only as fun as YOU make it at the end of the day.
Simple fact- if you are willing to cheese TWW3 is not a hard game. There are challenging moments, but on the whole it is very straight forwards. As you showed with Skarbrand, and as I’ve done plenty of times with Durthu, even owning settlements is irrelevant past a certain point. This is a game where you can win the entire campaign on turn 1 with one guy.
Game mechanics make the game harder. You are unit capped while the AI still pumps out doomstacks
I would argue that if you had fought more battles manually on the first playthrough, you would've conquered much more much faster. And vise versa, had you auto resolved in the second campaign as much as in the first one, you would've lost the campaign.
Edit: auto resolve is a campaign mechanic. So either do a playthrough thats all auto resolve or all manual fight if you want a valid comparison.
it's a general mechanic that exists to all factions. I think he was going for race specific mechanics. also research isn't the same across all factions so he could cut that out too.
Campaign mechanics tend to be incredibly useful and even instrumental at times, but they become obsolete very quickly. If you're a good player and know what you're doing, by turn 15 you can pretty much ignore them because you've had such a good start that it doesn't matter anymore. It's a shame really, I really want campaign mechanics to be impactful throughout a campaign but lets be real : battle micro is eveything in this game.
I wish to play a campaign with no artificial difficulty, which I already do, but also multiplayer-like battles with no battle tech or talents but I haven't found a mod for that yet
You also used experience from the normal campaign to no mechanic campaign.
Oh. Also you have been declared because you were weaker by ogres and skarbrand. Also if you fought auto resolved manually in a normal campaign, it would lead to a better outcome and more land conquered. To do a real comparison, you should mirror decisions as well as you can. So manual all the battles.
I'll be honest, i've done two campaigns with the Khorne faction and didn't even realize that the Skull Throne button even existed until i watched this video, now i'm kinda curious as to what it does?
Main thing it does is let you move after razing a town, keeping the momentum going.
Just some short term buffs. The only one that really matters is the campaign movement buff, but using it can make it easier to rampage between multiple settlements. Basically if the settlements are close enough together you can wipe entire provinces in a single turn.
it also gives you 2 bloodletter summons to use in battles for the time it is active
@@novakaizr The movement buff does seem very useful, makes me wanna try another campaign.
@@novakaizrI’ve successfully chain raised from one end of the empire starting at altdorf ending at castle dragon hoff in one turn don’t know how I did it though
Actually you proved a really cool point, the mechanics aren't needed exactly but they add to the flavor of each faction.
Maybe do a test with another faction in reverse order. First without mechanism, next with them.
To be fair, I’ve done a few 100+ turn khorne campaigns and the skull throne button was not hit more than a couple times ever. More like a “oops was that important? Should I have saved this?”
The income boost and movement buff it gives is pretty insane. Skarbaby can run circles around everyone like he's cosplaying pre-nerf Taurox. If the stars align, you can get the long victory at turn 75-100 from chaining skullethrone fights together (having free unit summons comes in clutch for this)
My brother in Nurgle, had you played mechanic free first and with mechanics second, you would have experienced a world of difference.
Your immediate familiarity played a massive role in that second playthrough. You first playthrough was riddled with strategic mistakes (not tactical ones) and your faction mechanics practically let you take those screw ups with next to no consequences.
You should try this again with a weaker faction, say... Empire or Dark Elves like Rekarth. Do the mechanics free run. Then do your with mechanics run.
The difference will be massive.
Different factions have mechanics that vary in how impactful they are. For example Greenskins would be completely different to play without the waaagh.
Cathay's mechanics were essential for my run. Harmony is so good I could colonize the Chaos Wastes from the Bastion to Kieslev with zero issues
Shoulda gone Norsca
This would be torture with skaven. Under-cities and initial tech are crucial for food generation
Of course they do, especially for beastmen and daemonic factions! Some old mechanic is irrilevent (G-web) or even hurts the player (imperial authority), if we continue to talk about it CA devs will eventually fix them. In the meantime, there are mods.
For me it really depends on tbr mechanic. Raise Dead is super easy to use and has immediate benefits. Same with Ikit's workshop where it's just click and win. But something like Throt's lab or Grom's Cauldron? Miss me with that shit
I have an Empire Long Victory (WH1) and don't even know what the elector counts do 😂
I would argue that some mechanics are way more essential than others. Raise Dead is way more essential than the Bloodline stuff, for example. Also, some factions are way more dependent on their mechanics than others.
But that is what makes TW:WH so unique, in my eyes. Factions are very different from each other, which is a big bo us for replay value. And you can play each faction differently, too.
The real test would be a verses campaign where one person uses mechanics and Zerk doesn't
That's not how you use the vampire counts... they are very aggressive faction. Their main ecolomy comes from 1 tier 1 building that gives 250 gold. You have 2 doom stack grave knights commanders at the beginning which u rush stack grave knights. These 2 are the bloodknight and manfred and both reduced upkeep for them. with these 2 armys they can solo pretty much anything. hence u can push towards 3-4 directions if u use the mechnaics correctly. I owned everything from start position to the end of the island in the south in less then 50 turns.
On the contrary, they mostly matter in early game and on higher difficulties. In the late campaign you can just spam high end armies left and right and you'll be just fine.
U took one of the oldest races with propably the least amount of campaign mechanics. Thats cherry picking
I dunno about that, but still... the Vampires are a very solid race.
I like the idea of this video, but I feel its more a comment on how the vampire counts are kinda flat as a faction.
Imagine Ogres with no camps, chorfs with no armory upgrades labour sacrifices or tower seats, beast men with no dread or rituals. Wood elves with no awakening, skaven but u always colonise at t1 and have 0 menace below.
All of those campaigns are feasible, but tedious, to differing degrees
It depends on the difficulty level. Items and mechanics are more important on legendary/vh.
No mechanics allowed
*proceeds to cheese the victory point*
How important Faction mechanics are depends on the Faction and of course the mechanic. There are huge differences and the Buffs and Bonuses are not really balanced. I most appreciate the Campaign Mechanics which strongly influence the economy and empire building like Chaos Dwarfs or tell good stories
What I don't understand is why Skarbrand didn't declare war on him.
Is it just me or does the AI ALWAYS declare war on you when you make a move against another faction
"They [tomb kings] can raise armies incredibly quickly". Yep, because they raise armies. 😂
So i just watched this and found out Khorn had that button XD
I also never look at items. Sometimes I forget to do the quests for legendary lord items.
But you can win every total war game if you use agents to find out where the enemy is hiding then move your army. I would confidently argue that most problems people face in the game is because they move their armies blind.
Use your agents! Do recon! Force others to adopt your peaceful ways by force!
campaign mechanics in general allows you to win the campaign by turn 30 if you use them well :P
In terms of mechanics I feel like the vampires raise dead is a bad example. I rarely follow mechanics myself, but it’s not like you have to dig far to find the raise dead mechanic. It’s an instant recruitment option, right by the regular recruitment option. Mechanics that are easy to take advantage of and just help you in the game seems like a weird handicap u set on yourself. Also, tech’s not really a unique faction mechanic. Maybe what they research, but you get a notification that you’re not researching something every time you try to end turn.
I am agree that youre test shows that the Raise the dead mecanics + lords + Technology is no use with Manfred.
But as far as i see it it would be the same with Skarbrand, Thorgrim, Tyrion etc : theirs campaign are easy. With no big deal, no times yo get more than 3 to 4 war at youre borders...
Trys the same with Zhao Ming who has to defend against Snitch, Malus, Helman, and sometimes Nakaï and Graissus, or Tzeench, or Boris... Vlad with 3 Dwarfs / 4 Empire enemies at the same time would have been a better test
All the power of a mechanics reside to how usefull it is under a stressfull situation, and i saw none in those test.
But to be fair i am still surprised to see how you manage the Manfred campaign without the Raise the dead.
Another point : sometime a mechanic has no other use than just permit the brain to realease some stress ^^ i think you can pull out a Vlad campaign without the use of mechanics, but will it be as fun as you want it to be ? Or will you be overthinking every thing and finish a 2 hours gamesession mentally exhausted ?
The reason why a lot of mechanics don't seem to matter is because CA have this strange refusal to hit players with any real penalties whatsoever. For example take High Elves. If they came with enormous diplomatic penalties or are somehow unable to partake in regular diplomacy, then their influence mechanic would be far more relevant as an alternative.
Tbh, the Court Intrigue is most useful for those that don't start in Ulthuan. Currently playing an Imrik campaign and it is absolutely life-saving by making it easier to get allies in a place scarce with allies. But for Tyrion, for example, he's surrounded by numerous allies and will usually be able to fight enemies one at a time so it's not very useful for him.
I think this is true in a lot of games. If the faction mechanics were really powerful, then they either become mandatory or they make you OP. Both options are seen as bad.
If they become necessary, players feel forced into using them and if they don’t understand them, you could have a player quickly bounce off the game by losing interest because they didn’t know they existed and just lost for not utilizing it. So you would need a good tutorial.
If they are powerful but not mandatory to play, then using them just makes you OP to the point of trivializing the game. So that doesn’t seem like a good option either.
And here is the solution, don’t make them powerful. If players engage with them, they get some buffs and are slightly stronger but not using them doesn’t derail the campaign.
I actually think a lot of AAA games take this approach to their systems. To appeal to all types of players they can’t force anything on you, so they just have make everything marginal to the point of being there more for flavor than mechanics.