CA-Pingu#2295

CA-Pingu#2295

2 months ago Aug 15,2024, 13:58:27 PM

Total War: WARHAMMER III - Patch 5.2 Dev Blog

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​​Hi everyone!


I'm Mitchell Heastie, Design Director on Total War: WARHAMMER III, and today I want to share with you some of the things I've been working on. This will be a developer diary that gives you a look into what is coming as part of Patch 5.2 and this time around I'll also talk a little bit wider than that about what to expect going forward for our updates and how you can help shape them.


First though a bit of backstory. When I think back to the very first DLC we ever made for the Total War: WARHAMMER trilogy, Call of the Beastmen, there was a moment where Rich and I discussed adding the moon cycle mechanic to the race. At the time this seemed like a tiny addition, and indeed it was compared to the kind of features we do now, but I always consider that moment monumental as for me it was the first instance of us pushing a boundary, trying to do something a little bit different that we hadn't done before, to add more than was originally planned, and we did it just because it was cool, we thought players would like it and we wanted the DLC to be as special as it could be.


I think it's that moment that set us on a path to try to do more for all new content, to keep pushing our own expectations for what new content for the game could be, to always be on the lookout for what special idea we could do next, and I really do believe it's that precedent that created a mindset for what got us here now with the absolutely insane scale of content we have. This way of working, to always be pushing, meant that over the years we tried a lot of new things, some that didn't work so well, others that were massive successes, but all the while our content was growing in scope and complexity, and we were learning.


This you will all know by now has had a few effects; I think our content got better over time, which is fantastic, but this improvement has meant that the content we created in the past grows more outdated as time progresses, either because it was made without the knowledge, lessons, or technology we now have. This is where your, and our, desire for the old content to be reworked or updated comes from - not failure, but progress and success. It's something we've been cognizant of for a long time, hence our many reworks and updates, and it's something we want to continue to do going forward.


I think it's a blessing to be able to have such a vivid view of how you as a designer, and as a team, have improved in your craft over the better part of a decade, but of course that does mean we have some work to do. Let's talk about that work.


Updates Going Forward


You will have heard the team talk about "What's Next" in our recent YouTube video aptly titled "Total War: WARHAMMER III - What's Next?", watch that here if you haven't already. In that video you'll have heard among other things that our plan is to bring more to our game updates that fall in-between our DLC releases, just like Patch 5.2 does! These updates will allow us to tackle the things we are less likely to do as part of an upcoming DLC - as you will have gleaned from my intro this will be things like updating older features, or at times even updating races, but primarily focused in areas of the game that we recognise haven’t been priorities in the past, or were likely to be in the future.


It's also extremely important for us that we're reacting to what you want, particularly when looking to update older content, but more on that in a bit. Alongside updating older content, I also want to make sure for each update we're providing something new, sometimes that will be something really small, or in the case of Patch 5.2 something a bit bigger as you'll see in just a moment - but for every release I'm hoping we can provide you a fresh experience in some way.


It's important to note that these aren't DLC-level additions or changes, and while we have people dedicated to these updates (including me) the wider team is hard at work developing the DLCs that make these updates possible. Deciding what goes into each of these updates is very much centered around what players are asking for, but also what we have planned and are making in the future, and the feasibility of developing these ideas. For you as a player that could mean you see the number 2 and 3 things on your personal wishlist added, updated or fixed, but you wonder why we've not tackled number 1. That could be because we have plans to do it going forward elsewhere or because it's simply too difficult to tackle in one of these updates for any number of reasons - almost never because we're unaware or haven't seen your feedback. It's not an exaggeration to say that sometimes what might be number 1 on your wishlist may take the same effort as the 9 other items in your top 10, it's something we as developers are constantly grappling with and hopefully we can communicate why we choose to do certain things going forward (just as I will in this dev diary!)


The Content


Patch 5.2 will come with bug fixes and other smaller changes and additions, but primarily it has 4 major components (and a few surprises I won't mention here):

  • A new feature for the Dwarfs - The Deeps
  • A rework of the Chaos Cult feature
  • A new small "global" feature – Unusual Locations
  • An update to Cathay's Ivory Road feature

In the spirit of this being a developer diary I'll go through the top 3 today as those are what I've been developing, but for the Ivory Road update you can expect changes that bring it more in line with the Chaos Dwarfs convoys feature.


You likely know this already but what you're about to see is a work in progress - all text, art, balancing…well in-fact pretty much everything you see is not only possible to change, but at this stage quite likely to. We're showing you things a bit earlier than we normally would, hopefully you enjoy that but do keep in mind it comes with more caveats! Oh, and if you're wondering why there are pink icons in places, it's what we use as our placeholder while our artists are hard at work, and its bright pink so it's super obvious!


The Deeps - New Dwarf Feature


"Dwarfs? They just had an update!" That's what you're thinking, yes I can read minds, and as I mentioned I'll give you some idea of why we choose what we do: in this case there was a fair amount of feedback for Dwarfs based on their last update that some consider their overall playstyle to be fairly aggressive and focused on an expansionist or "wide" playstyle. Not too surprising given this is Total War after all, but it is a fair point that the fantasy of Dwarfs is a more defensive and "tall" one (trying my hardest to avoiding any short jokes here...).


Ultimately the aim with this feature is to provide more opportunity for playing taller, perhaps investing more in fewer settlements and making what you do have tougher to take, and the best thing is, if you want to keep doing what you're doing this feature is optional! It really is playstyle dependent, and I like to think this feature rounds off one of the last rough edges of Dwarfs and we wanted to take this chance to do that before we move on to other areas of the game.


So what's the feature all about? All Dwarf factions will have access to "The Deeps", essentially the deeper locations in their holds. In gameplay terms these provide you more room to build with extra building slots and a completely separate building tree that allows a few different bits of gameplay with things you can't do with your traditional building options - there are some limiting factors though and heavy investment is required to develop your Deeps, this isn't just a pure power spike for the Dawi.


You'll gain access to the Deeps in any settlement you own by constructing the "Great Gate", the entrance that links the surface world with the Deeps. It's important to note though, digging to such depths is costly and time consuming, you're going to need permission from the High King to be expending such resources, and you'll need to develop your existing Deeps locations before you can expand to more. Belegar and Thorgrim have a small bonus in this regard though, Belegar because he's already received permission to go reconquer Eight Peaks, and Thorgrim because he is the High King, duh!


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Below you can see the building tree of the Deeps, I won't go through every building, but I'll show you a couple of cool ones. Before that though eagle eyed viewers will notice the build slots appear blocked, and that is because they are! There are a number of quirks involved with expanding downwards, notably "Blocked Tunnels" which need to be dealt with (again there are trade-offs to using the feature!). There are also some stranger things you can discover in the Deeps, but I'll leave those for you to find...


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Just two of the building choices you'll have include the Guild Foundries for those who (like me) enjoy a nice bit of turtling, and also you can now seal your hold to become the most defensive stubborn little settlement in all of the Old World, just as it should be, good luck displacing a sufficiently annoyed Dwarf.


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I'll leave it at that as a top-level overview of the Deeps, be sure to look out for more details in our patch notes for this update. Hopefully you're excited to give the feature a go!


Chaos Cults - Feature Rework


We just saw something new with the Deeps feature and as I mentioned earlier we're looking to both add and update where possible. So next up we'll talk about the rework of the Chaos Cults feature coming in Patch 5.2. Worth noting before we jump in, everything you see applies to all 4 Chaos Gods who utilize Cults.


Why Chaos Cults? Well, we've seen a lot of feedback on Cults since their inception in WARHAMMER III's release, and in truth they never really hit the mark. There's a number of things I'd highlight as the cornerstones of the issues; availability, interactivity and usefulness - let's go through each of those.


Availability of Cults was an issue because the requirements of high corruption to spawn a Cult was too difficult to achieve just in general, but also even harder to specifically target locations with corruption if there was somewhere in particular you wanted Cults to appear. We're tackling this by doing away with the corruption trigger of Cults entirely, and instead the method of spreading Cults will now be the Cultist agent for all of the Chaos factions - this was how it worked for Slaanesh before and it's just the optimal gameplay to be honest so it's present for everyone now! Ultimately the fantasy is that Cults create the corruption, not the other way around.


You'll see all Cultists now have the "Establish Chaos Cult" agent action, but there's also something extra - the Cult Magus. The Cult Magus is a new campaign-only version of the Cultist agent, and they can create special Cult locations that have extra building options and innate benefits - like all other campaign-only agents they'll disappear when using their agent action, as you can imagine the Cult Magus is now managing the Cult he's just established so you can't reuse him. You'll get a new Cult Magus from establishing and sufficiently developing a standard Chaos Cult.

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The design for the interactivity level of Cults clearly erred on the side of passiveness at release - spawning them was largely out of your hands and once established not much could dislodge them. We've flipped that on its head to make them more interactive both when using them and indeed when they're used against you. It'll be no surprise we do this with the Discoverability feature first used with the Skaven Under-Cities. Essentially building more makes you more discoverable to the region owner, with certain buildings making you more or less discoverable, some revealing you instantly and others simply destroying the Cult. As the region owner you can discover Cults in the usual ways, with agents or buildings - and once a Cult is discovered it can be removed in the usual way.


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The usefulness of the existing Cults was hit or miss, certain building options were great, others less so. Cults now have more than doubled in their building choices, and they also come with 2 slots instead of 1 (or 3 in the case of a Cult established by a Magus). The buildings are broken down into 4 categories, the machinations of a cult focused more on ongoing benefit from the cult's presence, corruption which is of course focused on corrupting the region, rituals which are focused on providing one off benefits usually resulting in destruction or discovery of the cult, and finally the Cult Magus' unique building options which come with a ritual that is stronger than all others and the Cult Magus chambers which can help hide your cult. Below you can see the Tzeentch Cult buildings - obviously ignore the missing icon issues!


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All Cults now have access to the teleportation ritual, previously only Khorne could do this, but it was one of the few people really enjoyed so now it’s available for everyone. There are 36 buildings across all Cults, too many to show here, but in general you'll see Tzeentch focused on his many tricks and Grimoires, Khorne on war, killing and Skulls, Slaanesh on seduction of course, and Nurgle on plagues and how to benefit more from them. Some examples of the building choices:


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That's a brief overview of the Chaos Cult rework. Cults are an interesting design challenge so let us know if you have new ideas for what Cults can offer, as we can always make additions or changes in future updates based on how players are using them.


Unusual Locations - New Mini Feature


This last feature is something small, something a bit different and unlike what we've done elsewhere in the game - it's also the section you're least going to want spoilers for as you can discover the content yourselves through your campaigns!


So what is it? Well, I'm a huge fan of worldbuilding content in games, especially if they have lore as rich as Warhammer's does, and from a gameplay perspective I've always wanted to make the world feel a bit more alive - this is hopefully a start to doing more for both of those things (and I want to keep working on those going forward).


With the addition of this feature there are now various unique, and perhaps strange, locations that can appear at your settlements, some will be Cults, some various Orders, or perhaps something entirely different - none of them linked to any existing factions. They'll situate themselves at your settlement as a building at various points throughout your campaign, and all come with effects and in many cases trade-offs, events, traits, items, or otherwise. Something akin to landmarks but bringing more interactivity, uniqueness, and flavour to your campaigns.


Certain instances of these Unusual Locations will only appear in certain places; others can appear in many places and you'll be able to remove them if you want much like you can other unwanted visitors. There are 20 in total so far, and I'd like to add more going forward, as this batch are mostly focused on the Old World and the races therein. I'll leave you with two simpler examples just so you have a rough idea of what to expect.


In the first example you've discovered the grave of a Grail Knight, well-kept and providing some relief of corruption in the nearby area - those who visit the site to pay their respects may gain a unique trait. The second example sees you having to make a decision as one involved in the politics of the Empire - this Cult clearly offers benefits, if you're willing to manage its corrupting influence.


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Here’s a couple more icons as a teaser, I won’t spoil what they are exactly but will instead let you all speculate until release!


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My hope with this content is that as you're going about your business playing your campaigns, every now and then you'll come across something unique or interesting to deal with and to distract you if only for a moment from your more traditional gameplay. I think the more we can have that happen the better, as it will provide more variety to your experiences.


Shaping Future Updates


Hopefully you've enjoyed this overview of the some of the main content coming in Patch 5.2 and hopefully it's as exciting for all of you as it is for us. For me personally it's been a blast making it, and I'm looking forward to speaking to you all more going forward with our future updates - let us know if you want more developer diaries in this format!


I mentioned at the start you can help us shape our future updates, so how can you do that? It's pretty simple really, we have a wonderful team here at Creative Assembly who are dedicated to gathering your feedback from all platforms where you share it. It may not always be visible, but I can promise you it does reach us developers. We will continue looking to action the feedback that you present us with, through our updates, fixes, and improvements - but of course with the caveat of development feasibility that I mentioned earlier. If you'd like to share your thoughts on what you want to see next then please do, you can do this in any number of places such as our official forums and the Total War Discord, though our teams are everywhere and they see it all eventually.


Thanks so much for reading! I look forward to when you can get your hands on Patch 5.2, and in particular to seeing your comments and feedback, on not only this update but future ones too.


Cheers,

Mitch Heastie

Design Director – Total War 

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2 months ago
Aug 15, 2024, 2:19:00 PM

These unusual locations in particular sound like a really cool addition. A more lively and dynamic game world is always a plus, and I'd really like to see one of these affecting Mordheim somehow. There used to be a great mod in the second game where you could purge Mordheim by building one of three buildings that would summon a respective army for you to fight, I could definitely see this new feature doing something similar.

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2 months ago
Aug 15, 2024, 2:19:55 PM

I love this new style of communication with us, keep it up. 


This update is looking great so far, I particularly like that you're experimenting more with trade-offs, I think that's something that's been very lacking in the game. Having trade-offs is way more interesting than having everything buffing you in my opinion and hopefully we'll see a lot more of this. Maybe some trade-offs could be introduced for everyone as a way to limit the player's snowball, I think currently it's a big issue that is making the campaign boring quite fast.

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2 months ago
Aug 15, 2024, 2:27:17 PM

Great please more Dev diarys I love this and iam hyped for all things 

Cathay cavarans needed more flavor

For the Future

The empire needs more goods Like Ulric and Halflings

Tyrion Teclis Malekith need uniqe Mechaniks


 

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2 months ago
Aug 15, 2024, 2:30:55 PM

YES! Thank you for adding more stuff to do on the Campaign map such as those Unusual locations, It's so fun to explore! Know that some of us really appreciate stuff outside of Combat like that. I am a huge fan of Civilization 5 and Endless Legend games and Warhammer provides that itch I can't get from those two. It's just so fun to interact with this established Fantasy universe and I've definetly spent more time on the Campaign map than actual battles just out of sheer enjoyment it brings me. ( I love this stuff 100x more than any DLC units )

Updated 2 months ago.
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2 months ago
Aug 15, 2024, 2:33:10 PM
All of it looks great. Unusual locations looks interesting, always love to find unique stuff around the map, especially more emergent stuff. Hoping for like land treasure battles one day that provide unique item rewards/buffs, against a wide variety of enemy types with odd army comps, and especially some crazy hard ones for late game.
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2 months ago
Aug 15, 2024, 2:37:59 PM

I really hope you guys don't forget that the lack of challenge and difficulty is a major flaw of this title and that it needs to be worked on. Are there any plans to unshackle the AI? Allow it to build empires and strong armies again?

Updated 2 months ago.
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2 months ago
Aug 15, 2024, 2:39:30 PM

I love the constant updates and communicate!
All the listed changes sound great. I would like to suggest more unique battles tied to certain factions, events, and locations. For factions, example: Elspeth really only has her item quest battles, it would be nice to see more tied to certain milestones or unlocks for her campaign mechanics (same for all the other legendary lords in the game). For events, yes there are the end of campaign army spawns, but maybe put in some unique battles to say fight a chaos army if chaos is taking over too much of the map and it gives you a bonus against those factions if you win (and maybe some tied to lore events that can randomly happen throughout a campaign). For locations, more unique army spawns and battles like the sealing of Silver Pinnacle (that is such a cool unique mini-event, I would love to see more like that for other locations).

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2 months ago
Aug 15, 2024, 2:42:33 PM

These update features all look good.


A suggestion I have is for the player to be able to clear out cults, undercities and the like with other means then just paying gold.

An option to have the garrison units clear it out and thus forcing a small battle against the cult/undercity forces would be super awesome to have.

Of course this could incur a risk, if you fail the battle then your city would fall to whatever faction who spawned the cult/undercity .


This would make it a lot more fun and intressting to deal with, while still alowing you to also just throw some gold at the problem as we can now.

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2 months ago
Aug 15, 2024, 2:44:06 PM

An excellent update is the making! Also yes dev diaries are cool and should be continued.


You mentioned that Cults can be used against the faction that owns them, how does this work? Does this refer to just destroying the Cult or is there somethinf else here?

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2 months ago
Aug 15, 2024, 2:47:22 PM

I think one of the biggest problems left in the game is the lopsided difficulty, especially above normal/hard campaign difficulty. The AI is the strongest in the beginning and you have to deal with them with low tier units that are most of the time not exciting to use. Eventually, after dealing with the difficult first few turns, you will reach critical mass and no other faction is a challenge for you


I would love for some scaling difficulties that allow you to build up a foundation in the beginning and deal with overwhelming numbers with some actually exciting and fun high tier units to use a bit later in the game. Regardless, I love the update.

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2 months ago
Aug 15, 2024, 2:47:31 PM

All these features look great, I don't have any feedback for these changes in specific but there's something I'd like to see tackles in the future.


At some point down the line could we get a free -lc lord for Tzeentch? With Nurgle and now Khorne getting one it would be great to even it out for the faction that already got DLC.


Also like others here I would like to see AI get tougher after the early game.

Updated 2 months ago.
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2 months ago
Aug 15, 2024, 2:52:01 PM

Looks like I have to save some money for this expansion is a must buy.

Not Nippon or some revisit to Brettonia but definitely something noteworthy.

I love the Idea of making the world more lively and more lore related landmarks which can be interacted with. (Grave of Krell,etc) 

Even the landscape change when you conquer area are something I fall in love for the first sight of gameplau, making it deeper gives goosebumps! (Something like Disciples 3 used would be astonishing!)

Keep Up the Good Work I love where it heads! 

and some Nippon related news would never hurt 😆 

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2 months ago
Aug 15, 2024, 2:59:16 PM

Just once I'd like one of these to be about improving something relevant in the game. Instead you clowns at CA, Rich, are always adding bells and whistles on top of broken features and gaping flaws.


Sieges are a joke, you could do better starting from scratch with an empty field and a generic *fully destructible* fort. Nobody wanted your plaza, infinite resources, tower defense minigame BS. All we needed were functional maps. Units still B-line for ladders when the walls around them are completely breached.


The difficulty is nil because the AI is also a joke. Like, fix it? Seriously, this is huge, your game's useless AI is becoming as infamous as what you clowns did to sieges for the WH series. There's an ever diminishing point in playing as the game presents no *actual* challenges. The closest it comes is stacking the deck in the AI's favour and letting them attempt to faceroll.


And that brings me to the endgame: it stinks. It's boring as hell. There could have and should have been all sorts of scenarios for crisis. Instead they're all the same and the long victory conditions for 99% of factions are nothing to speak of. You guys could have had the realms of chaos on the IE map without the stupid race, but apparently you only go with bad ideas.


Optimization: WH3 is the worst. Like of any game ever. I might be using hyperbole, but not much. It's the only game of most modern games that gets my system cooking and yet still doesn't run that well.


And maybe have a good will sale sometime? Like you guys pulled so much shit over the last couple years that enabled these gaping flaws to grow worse- maybe be good to your fanbase once in a while instead of trying to appease us by putting a bunch of total PR flavoured BS talk at the front of your blog? Haven't seen any of the DLC's, controversial or not, have a *decent* sale in over a year.


Seriously, talking about adding more random stuff to the game when you can't even handle what's been sitting on the plate for years... CA management should have been flushed out when Sega yanked your leash. You're doing a terrible job.


Updated 2 months ago.
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2 months ago
Aug 15, 2024, 3:14:59 PM

All of this looks really cool and flavorful, thank you. But I will chime in with the crowd who ask for more difficulty on legendary and some AI improvements (on the campaign map specifically). Maybe you guys are already working on it, in that case, I apologize. This is my only real complaint - WH3 is my favorite game ever - however, I have gotten too good at it and would like to make it EVEN harder. In this regard, I dont think end game crises scatches the itch for a challenge many veteran players have because it feels less dynamic than enemy empires steadily growing throughout the campaign. 

In WH2 you could rely on Malekith, Tyrion, and other powerhouse factions to expand aggressively and to be a late-game challenge. In WH3 the AI seems to stop expanding at a certain point, making them easy pickings from turn 40 onwards (with most factions) when the player has become very strong. Again, love your work and can't wait for 5.2.


Kind regards, Toby



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2 months ago
Aug 15, 2024, 3:16:42 PM

this looks pretty good. unusual locations sounds the most interesting to me... hoping to discover "Wyvern nest"... feral wyverns now recruitable :D

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2 months ago
Aug 15, 2024, 3:16:52 PM

The CA Redemption arc continues apace. And the Steam reviews are flipping to reflect that. Awesome stuff you guys, you're on a roll!

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