Playtesting signups and release timetable

[Tiler]

I played some Dark Elves!

Corsairs have the same stats as the Dark Elf Spears, down to the "effective against cavalry" boon. Corsairs don't have "fast run speed". If corsairs were some kind of light skirmishers or something it'd balance out the Dark Elf early roster better. I assume. Unless there's something I'm missing.

Speaking of corsairs... its a bit obvious and I also guess it's impossible to deal with in the engine, but the Dark Elves are actually in a pretty awful position to try sea based attacks. Their unique boats are fast but thanks to engine quirks, they cant move armies any faster than a regular boat, so its a bit difficult to move your armies where you want them to be due to all the empty space. Its a very, very isolated start.  A very low pressure early game. You could probably get most of your victory provinces just taking over the north before fighting the High Elves.

As it is, the early Dark Elf game is... kind of anemic. Lots of moving infantry armies around in vast empty jungles to pick fights with rebel villages. If the beastmen/undead in the region were a bit more aggressive it'd make things pretty dicey, but they're content to sit back and not do much. High Elves are expansionist, though.

Cavalry are expensive enough that I haven't really sprung for them, so I haven't got the full Dark Elf army experience. Dark Elf armies don't have any glaring problems; compared to tomb kings their units are smaller and more expensive and don't offer much in return, but on their own, they're well rounded and I didn't see anything that leapt out aside from the corsair/spearelf similarities. Crossbowelves are pretty effective so far but are not overpowered. Witch Elves don't actually make any noise when using the Screeching ability. New World Natives carry large shields and have no armor, but have something like 4 armor and 0 shield.

Will add more as I continue to play.

e: Actually expanding north is very painful. Bloodletters are very strong units. Berserk in general is a very powerful trait, especially on large units with a lot of armor. Had an army fight outnumbered against them and be annihlated, then had a larger force with Cold Ones and light cavalry support, and I still very nearly managed to lose, only scraping by due to gradually wearing them down with constant crossbow fire and cavalry charges. I don't think I lost a single field battle as Skaven, but with Dark Elves, I've lost around four.

Looking at custom battles, there's a few factions without a super powerful unit. Dark Elves have a well balanced force, but its not much compared to things like Bright Wizards, mechanical Taruses, Jezail spam, or other units capable of destroying armies fairly easially. Also, there's a few more "hacked together" units that, while fun concepts, don't work well in practice. Flying Carpets get a nasty bug where enemy units still try to fight with them when they're dead, landmines should probably only be capable of "shooting" once since as it is they're real terrors. Walking Woods just... well, they look really funny in action and when routing, at least.

Also the naval AI for the rebels cheats a bit. They will path from anywhere in the ocean to attack a boat sitting in some forgotten cove; I have a nice screenshot of about 6 rebel navies in my waters, having come there from all across the world to pick a fight with my one naval unit.

[Clockwork]

I still can't see unit abilities and such, same as the screenies I sent you before Jub.

[Dunadd]

Jubal wrote

Most provinces don't have their trade goods placed on the campaign map, which may be an issue with trade? Not sure.

Any chance of adding a few in for each province?

[Tiler]

Okay, I ran through the early stages of several campaigns. Here's just a miscellaneous run through of things I encountered.

- "Unrest" is a pretty big problem for a lot of factions to deal with. I don't recall it being a major problem with vanilla RTW so I assume its something thats been modified in. Its not really fun to deal with with any group, but certain factions lack big bonuses to add happiness to settlements or cheap units to sit in cities. A lot of the "barbarian" factions have this problem. This is harder to tell without playing a full playthough, since I also noticed buildings for Barbarian factions were not showing up past the third tier (Dragon Islander's temples are an example). Factions should really have some means of getting at least +75 order in a settlement, even if its a pricy/slow means to do so. Wood Elves in particular look nigh unplayable in the long term. Factions with split starts also have major difficulties with disorder due to "distance to capital" issues.

- Shields are pretty inconsistent. Most units with shields have a shield value of '1', which is basically nothing. Dragon Islander's Long Shields have 5 which is the highest I've seen. Several units do not have shield graphics but have shield armor value, such as Djinni and Knight Errants. Many others have shields but have 0 shield value such as Eastern Spears and Hobgoblins. Shield values in general seem to be either low or nonexistant, which makes missile troops very powerful. I've had AI units dissolve while trying to mount a charge into a group of archers. Wood Elf glade riders are also very powerful as well.

- Speaking of the dragon long shields, they seem to have a very high ammo count for their very damaging projectiles. I would imagine since they're pretty heavily based on legionaries, they should only get two. In any case, they basically annihilate any infantry that isnt a berserker unit.

- There are a few units that are very, very powerful, but honestly they're such a blast I don't care. Guys like the the djinn, bright wizards, giants, and those Chaos Dwarf mechanical bulls should have high cost and upkeep though to counter the whole "we can destroy an entire army solo" power factor. They're hilariously fun to watch in action, in any case.

- A few more creative units don't seem to work well with the engine. Araby flying rugs cause problems when they die where enemy units keep trying to fight with them. Landmines in general seem sort of wonky and just don't really fit in, and Walking Woods... well, they're funny when they're running away, in any case.

- As others have noted, there is virtually no income from trade.

- Some of the AI factions are very passive. Skaven, Undead, Dark Elves, Orc, Beastmen, Lizardmen, and Kiev do not expand much at all. Chaos expands quite a bit, but they take a long time to take over the rebel settlements and come into conflict with other factions. I don't know what triggers AI expansiveness, but I think the lack of income from trade and high disorder caused from distance from capitals might have something to do with it.

- Undead probably should start with economic buildings. Their expense of their generals means that they start off with a very tiny income and them and wood elves are the only two factions where the AI attacked my initial provinces. Their start is very difficult. I'm not surprised the AI can't do much with them.

- Generals gain an excessive amount of traits.

- AI Tomb Kings run roughshod over AI Araby very quickly every time I play.

I'll add more to this post later as I continue playing. I know there's stuff I forgot to write down. I'm having a lot of fun with this, I hope you continue to work on it.

e: Also sorry if some of the stuff I'm writing are things you can't modify at all. I know there's a lot of things hardcoded like the CAI and other mechanics, but I don't know how much you're able to influence or mitigate, so I'm just writing whatever I encounter that seems off.

[Jubal]

Thankyou all for the fantastic work so far, I've started on fixing some of the key problems and will respond to more points tomorrow. Do keep reports/tests coming in as much as you all can, it's all really useful. 

[Jubal]

Trade is now much better; I've basically given each province 1 resource which isn't much but is enough to get some trade running at least. Took a long time though.

Balance issues for units are next step I think.

Unrest isn't something I've done anything to at all; I'll give some factions bigger happiness & law boost options to counteract it more easily. The temples should go up to T5, but on the building browser will only show to T3 as you can build 3/4/5 at the same city level. Does the L4 show up after you built L3?

Walking woods/landmines/carpets are admittedly problematic but I find them quite amusing and they add some interesting tactical options that one wouldn't get otherwise. No idea why generals are getting excess traits.

[Tiler]

Yeah the trait thing is weird. Its a clean install of Rome Total War Gold Edition on Steam, and its not like you're changed the values, but generals really, really quickly get a laundry list of traits. The amount of unrest is odd as well, but that could just be my memory of vanilla being skewed; I don't remember provinces being stuck with 80% stacks of unrest without having a city full of foreign spies, but if its something that can't be influenced, then its just my memory thats off.

And yes, I'm able to build to T5 temples, at least with the Dragon Island guys, where I noticed it. Its not a problem.

[Jubal]

slayergr says steam tanks are not working for him - can anyone confirm/deny this?

[comrade_general]

Confirmed; message-less CTD.

[Jubal]

Weird, they work wholly fine for me

At what point does the crash occur?

[comrade_general]

When starting the battle the loading bar gets about a quarter of the way.

[Grey_Seer76]

Hi, new to the forum and aching to get my hands on the warhammer mod, I found this site via google but cannot find the final download despite searching the site and the date given for release was yesterday, help please 

PS as a long time total war fan and a warhammer player I hope you can forgive my excitement. Also as a side note I have always found that RTW offers more tactical challenges than any other game and I look forward to playing my favourite faction (the skaven, the BOnd villians of the warhammer world) and getting my hands on the Chaos Dwarves!

[Dunadd]

Played as Araby. Fought tomb kings a lot.

Tomb king Bone Giants seem massively hard to kill/ a bit OP, unless they're meant to be? didn't have djinn mages in that battle but likely couldn't have used them if i had due to the bone giants' speed and apparently area effect combat?)

Djinn mages seem to be able to wipe out Tomb King chariot bodyguards a bit too easily - after softening the chariots up a but with camel or horse archers i can destroy a tomb king chariot bodyguard unit almost instantly with a single volley each from two units of Djinn mages.

A single unit of djinn mages can mostly destroy or rout most other units with a single volley too.

( I was playing on huge unit sizes which might make the mages more powerful)

The chariots seem weaker and less aggressive than they were before, only using archery and almost never charging - maybe need more hit points and/or higher archery rating?

Finally tomb kings units need to all get 100 morale so they're proper undead that don't rout (if they've not got it already - i have noticed tomb kings units routing many times but only when they took very heavy casualties first)

[Dunadd]

Grey_Seer76 wrote

cannot find the final download despite searching the site and the date given for release was yesterday, help please 

The currently released version (not the final one) has it's own thread in the forum here. It doesn't have the full range of unit types for some factions and you sometimes get crashes you can't reload from in campaigns, but it's still fun to play.

The final version isn't finished yet - Jubal might still send you a play test version of it by message here if you ask him.

If it's too late for that don't worry, final version should be released soon.

[Jubal]

so nad news - I've ocome down with a heavy fever and my head feels like a brick, so not really able to do much at the moment. I'll get back to things when I'm better again.