Valrak Total War: Warhammer 40,000

[Kallas]

3 hours ago, TheVoidDragon said:

units in the total war series (outside of things like monsters) fight like 18th century line infantry

Except...they don't.

 

Units like Chameleon Skinks don't fight like Napoleonic troops; sticking with Lizardmen, the Terradon Riders don't fight like Napoleonic troops; nor do Skaven Jezzails, or Skaven Doomflayers, which are functionally a melee bike unit.

 

This insistance that TW games focus only on this 18th century style of warfare is, quite simply, incorrect. TW:Warhammer has introduced many variables that would work very well to represent a lot of 40k units. Is it completely perfect for 40k right now, as is? No, there are still questions about things like Flyers that would need to be address (ie, not all 40k Flyers hover, which all flying units in TWWH can do).

 

Even amongst units with similar roles, we can see significant differences in how they actually operate on the battlefield:

• Empire Hangunners are the obvious Napoleonic-style line infantry. Blackpowder, need clean line of sight, they pause, rank up and fire volleys, and their projectiles are fast.
• Empire Crossbowmen are similarly ranked up and fire together, but the behaviour of the crossbow shots themselves allows them to arc their fire better (not always able to go over walls, depending on the angle, but often they can).
• Empire Archer are in a looser formation than Crossbowmen, have a more generous arc but have slower projectiles (especially when arcing).
• Empire Huntsmen are in a loose formation as well, but on top of the differences they share with the Archers, they can fire further (ie, 170 range vs the Archer's 140, IIRC); and on top of that they can fire while moving, giving them a niche among these various units.
• Wood Elf Glade Guard, the basic WE ranged unit, is kind of combination of the Huntsmen and the Crossbowmen - they can fire while moving and have arcing shots, but they rank up like Crossbowmen in close order
• Wood Elf Deepwood Scouts are, like Huntsmen, in loose formation, fire while moving, with longer range still, and they also have Stalk (basically they're hidden until quite close range or until they shoot), meaning they have more utility (but pay for it in other stats: eg, being fragile in melee)
• Wood Elf Waywatchers are even more powerful than Deepwood Scouts, having harder hitting bows, also having Stalk and having longer range, but they're similarly fragile in melee and expensive and fewer in number than things like the Glade Guard.
• Empire Free Company Militia are something on the other end of the spectrum: they're quite numerous, but they're in loose-ish formation (not as loose as things like Huntsmen and Waywatchers, but not as tight as Crossbowmen or Glade Guard), and they have decent melee stats (but not amazing, they're still militia after all). So they can shoot and fight in melee better than the dedicated ranged units.
• Kislev Armoured Kossars are basically ranked up Free Company: similarly armed (pistol and melee), plus a shield (to defend against missiles), much better stats but obviously cost more (also many of the skirmish style units above have vanguard deployment, allowing them greater initial deployment freedom).

These are just a few of the various missile units from TWWH which has hundreds involved - CA, while having various missteps, has done a good job in maintaining the feel of a lot of these factions and their units. In terms of 40k, it would absolutely be possible for them to create fitting and solidly accurate representations of the myriad 40k units.

 

For example, Space Marines would likely be in squads of either 5-10 (we've seen in TWWH small units, such as Warriors of Chaos Aspiring Champions which are in loose formation in units of 16 [on the largest unit size option]) and would likely be able to move and fire with some accuracy, good armour, good speed, etc - there's no reason to believe they would suddenly put Marines in tight block formations (and we know from previous TW games that unit formations are absolutely toggleable via simple button presses on the battlefield, so you could rank them up if you wanted to).

 

Basically, in terms of could they do? Yes, the 100% could, and it would work pretty damn well. There are definitely things they'd need to iron out, but similar things were said about TWWH too (eg, Magic and flying units) which they've done pretty damn well all things considered.

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

1 hour ago, TheVoidDragon said:

Either the way 40k combat is depicted would have to be changed to fit within the Total War series or the Total War series' core battle gameplay has to change significantly to fit with 40k, because they both involve very different styles/eras of warfare. Whether someone likes the idea of a Total War 40k game or not doesn't

make any real difference to that.

4 hours ago, Indy Techwisp said:

Moving on from arguing about whether or not the Total War engine can handle doing stuff it already can on Maps that could be modded in to see if it would work with them...

49 minutes ago, Scribe said:

Warhammer 3 is enough to show me in my 1000+ hours, that you can fight in various theatres, various types of terrain, with a multitude of unit types from small character single model, to skirmishers, to vehicles, to flying units, to single entity monsters, that could cover the vast vast majority of 40K unit types.

 

Total War hasnt been 'napoleonic' since Warhammer entered the scene.

 

If this turns out to be a thing, I don't see how the way 40k combat is depicted would mean significant change to either since as Scribe has been so nice to point out Total War hasnt been 'napoleonic' since Warhammer entered the scene. Like sure you can still build the classic blocks of infantry that TW was known for, but now?

I've ran many things that dont fit the classic napoleonic style:

• Dragon lord Imrik and a full dragon stack
• Nothing but Steamtanks and gelt
• Britannia peasant mob stack
• nothing but skinks
• oops all horse archers/gunners
• oops all grenade launchers
• Rakarth and his murderous menagerie of monstrous beasts
• oops all khorne berzerkers dwarven slayers
• A bretonnian hero deathstar
• Undead suicide bombers supported by gun golems made out of ship-parts and pistol zombies held aloft by giant bats
• skaven jezzails, flamethrowers, gattling guns and literal doom lasers with a nice nuke as the cherry on top

I've been playing this series since Shogun, every type of 40k unit or faction can be represented by something we've already seen CA do in some fashion or another.

• Blocks of melee/ranged/hybrid infantry
• Blobs of melee/ranged/hybrid infantry
• Skirmishers of melee/ranged/hybrid infantry
• Air ranged/melee units
• Units that fire on the move
• Units that fire stationary
• Units that dont need LOS
• Blocks of small elite units
• blobs of small elite units
• Tanks
• Monsters/Giants
• Magic
• Hero units (Shogun2 heros and WH regiments of renown)
• Legendary lords
  • Less legendary lords
  • heros/buffing leaders
• Factions that start with some close-by cities
• Factions that have a single starting location
• Factions that can settle or move with their base
• Factions that start with locations spread across the map

Wild speculation time
I don't think we'll get a WH3 size map initially but it would be silly to think CA isn't thinking they could do a 3 game series like they did with fantasy. I could see Lords of a similar faction start out at the same starting location like we saw in WH1

I've had a night to think on it and I think a fair bit of how the campaign will play and faction design will depend on what they decide to do with the map/scale of the campaign. Is this all going to be on a single planet? system? sub-sector? heck that could even be the map progression between the games if they pull the first one off.

Just thought if they went bigger than a single planet they could make use of the horde system from Atilla for the SM's so you could settle down at a recruitment world or be a crusading chapter

[TheVoidDragon]

40 minutes ago, Kallas said:

Except...they don't.

 

Units like Chameleon Skinks don't fight like Napoleonic troops; sticking with Lizardmen, the Terradon Riders don't fight like Napoleonic troops; nor do Skaven Jezzails, or Skaven Doomflayers, which are functionally a melee bike unit.

 

This insistance that TW games focus only on this 18th century style of warfare is, quite simply, incorrect. TW:Warhammer has introduced many variables that would work very well to represent a lot of 40k units. Is it completely perfect for 40k right now, as is? No, there are still questions about things like Flyers that would need to be address (ie, not all 40k Flyers hover, which all flying units in TWWH can do).

 

 

 

I even already said myself that there are some units that don't behave quite like that. It's not meant to be some all-encompassing thing that everything easily fits in, it's a broad descriptor of the style of warfare that in general the series involves rather than a literal "every unit behaves exactly like 18th century line infantry". The crewed weapons and vehicles and monsters and such of the TW:W games would work just fine in 40k, too.

 

Things like the units you mention have some adjustments to their behaviour but watching some gameplay of them just to check I'm remembering them correctly, I don't see how they counter the points I mentioned; They are still not the smaller squad level organization making user of cover, independence, initiative etc as you'd except from a more modern combat and would be required for 40k. That something like Chameleon Skinks is fighting in a looser formation and firing on the move doesn't mean that's not the case as they are still, on the whole, fighting like a more historical style of warfare. 

Edited Thursday at 12:14 AM by TheVoidDragon

[Marshal Rohr]

49 minutes ago, Kallas said:

Except...they don't.

 

Units like Chameleon Skinks don't fight like Napoleonic troops; sticking with Lizardmen, the Terradon Riders don't fight like Napoleonic troops; nor do Skaven Jezzails, or Skaven Doomflayers, which are functionally a melee bike unit.

 

This insistance that TW games focus only on this 18th century style of warfare is, quite simply, incorrect. TW:Warhammer has introduced many variables that would work very well to represent a lot of 40k units. Is it completely perfect for 40k right now, as is? No, there are still questions about things like Flyers that would need to be address (ie, not all 40k Flyers hover, which all flying units in TWWH can do).

 

Even amongst units with similar roles, we can see significant differences in how they actually operate on the battlefield:

• Empire Hangunners are the obvious Napoleonic-style line infantry. Blackpowder, need clean line of sight, they pause, rank up and fire volleys, and their projectiles are fast.
• Empire Crossbowmen are similarly ranked up and fire together, but the behaviour of the crossbow shots themselves allows them to arc their fire better (not always able to go over walls, depending on the angle, but often they can).
• Empire Archer are in a looser formation than Crossbowmen, have a more generous arc but have slower projectiles (especially when arcing).
• Empire Huntsmen are in a loose formation as well, but on top of the differences they share with the Archers, they can fire further (ie, 170 range vs the Archer's 140, IIRC); and on top of that they can fire while moving, giving them a niche among these various units.
• Wood Elf Glade Guard, the basic WE ranged unit, is kind of combination of the Huntsmen and the Crossbowmen - they can fire while moving and have arcing shots, but they rank up like Crossbowmen in close order
• Wood Elf Deepwood Scouts are, like Huntsmen, in loose formation, fire while moving, with longer range still, and they also have Stalk (basically they're hidden until quite close range or until they shoot), meaning they have more utility (but pay for it in other stats: eg, being fragile in melee)
• Wood Elf Waywatchers are even more powerful than Deepwood Scouts, having harder hitting bows, also having Stalk and having longer range, but they're similarly fragile in melee and expensive and fewer in number than things like the Glade Guard.
• Empire Free Company Militia are something on the other end of the spectrum: they're quite numerous, but they're in loose-ish formation (not as loose as things like Huntsmen and Waywatchers, but not as tight as Crossbowmen or Glade Guard), and they have decent melee stats (but not amazing, they're still militia after all). So they can shoot and fight in melee better than the dedicated ranged units.
• Kislev Armoured Kossars are basically ranked up Free Company: similarly armed (pistol and melee), plus a shield (to defend against missiles), much better stats but obviously cost more (also many of the skirmish style units above have vanguard deployment, allowing them greater initial deployment freedom).

These are just a few of the various missile units from TWWH which has hundreds involved - CA, while having various missteps, has done a good job in maintaining the feel of a lot of these factions and their units. In terms of 40k, it would absolutely be possible for them to create fitting and solidly accurate representations of the myriad 40k units.

 

For example, Space Marines would likely be in squads of either 5-10 (we've seen in TWWH small units, such as Warriors of Chaos Aspiring Champions which are in loose formation in units of 16 [on the largest unit size option]) and would likely be able to move and fire with some accuracy, good armour, good speed, etc - there's no reason to believe they would suddenly put Marines in tight block formations (and we know from previous TW games that unit formations are absolutely toggleable via simple button presses on the battlefield, so you could rank them up if you wanted to).

 

Basically, in terms of could they do? Yes, the 100% could, and it would work pretty damn well. There are definitely things they'd need to iron out, but similar things were said about TWWH too (eg, Magic and flying units) which they've done pretty damn well all things considered.

Unless those units are ducking into cover, breaking up into fire teams, and actually doing the things you do with long range accurate firearms it won’t work. You just described a bunch of stuff more like the clones and battle droids shooting at each other walking across open ground. That’s not how the Cadians fight or the Death Korps it’s definitely not how Space Marines fight. Everything you described is antithetical to the way everyone in 40K fights except the Mordians a few other exceptions. 

Edited Thursday at 12:22 AM by Marshal Rohr

[Kallas]

8 minutes ago, TheVoidDragon said:

They are still not the smaller squad level organization making user of cover, independence, initiative etc as you'd except from a more modern combat and would be required for 40k.

 

Neither are the units on the tabletop though.

 

Units on the tabletop have a small, very limited amount of freedom, there's barely any 'initiative' that individual models can undertake beyond "they're toeing into cover here" (which is sort of included in TWWH with things like Forests, but terrain is one aspect that CA would definitely have to work on for 40k). Independence, I don't even know what you're expecting here - what kind of independence are you expecting from individual models in 40k?

 

I don't find a lot of these kinds of arguments to be in particularly good faith - there are a lot of massive expectations placed despite TW being a (relatively) large scale battle game; it's much closer to 3000pts+ 40k than it is to, say, 1000pts or something like Kill Team or small scale narrative battles. And the thing is, both of those scales are absolutely valid: we have so many stories and lore snippets about huge battles as well as small skirmishes, neither is more 40k than the other - so the independence or initiative of individual Guardsmen is really not that important for a game that would not be focused on the same scale as, say, Dawn of War 2. Hell, Battlesector, which is a pretty solid little game, does not have this kind of initiative or independence for individual models, but it captures 40k pretty well IMO - units are heavily restricted, locked into predetermined spaces (more like chess than 40k's freedom of movement) but it's still inarguably 40k and fits well.

 

13 minutes ago, TheVoidDragon said:

That something like Chameleon Skinks is fighting in a looser formation and firing on the move doesn't mean that's not the case as they are still, on the whole, fighting like a more historical style of warfare. 

Even something like Dawn of War 2, which is fairly zoomed in, is not allowing you to control single models (unless they are larger or more noteworthy ones such as a Dreadnought or Force Commander). Even there we're controlling units, and much like the TW method, we're dragging out units into the correct formation and assigning their arc of fire/facing.

 

Again, a game that is one of the best 40k games made, one that captures the feel of 40k (at that scale) and it does not contain the individuality there - and in terms of customisation (which is absolutely a concern for a TW:40k), there are mechanics which CA has implemented in TWWH that could be applied (eg, Orc Scrap Mechanic upgrades which allow units to gain bonuses in certain ways; or the Warriors of Chaos warband upgrades, which allows units to advance from Marauder all the way up to Aspiring Champion).

 

Fundamentally, there is nothing particularly wrong with the TW method as it applies to a possible 40k game besides some people getting hung up units moving together (which they do already...in tabletop 40k).

[Kallas]

11 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

Unless those units are ducking into cover, breaking up into fire teams, and actually doing the things you do with long range accurate firearms it won’t work.

 

How many of these things happen on the 40k tabletop? Do your units never walk across open fields? How often do your units split into multiple fire teams?

Edit to add: Even with things like Combat Squads, this rule has been removed from all but Tactical Squads, how can your argument be taken seriously when such an option does not actually exist for 99% of the 40k tabletop?

 

These are things we are already locked into in the core game of 40k, but somehow this isn't ok in a TW-style game? I can't take this kind of argument seriously when you are ignoring the same limitations in the game that a TW:40k would actually be pulling inspiration from.

 

ETA: The granularity you're talking about is fine for something that is looking at a different scale, something similar to Dawn of War 2, or Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters. Total War is looking at a larger scale, closer to Apocalypse, where units don't tend to have small-unit tactics available in things like low-point 40k or previous versions of things like Kill Team/Combat Patrol.

Edited Thursday at 12:34 AM by Kallas

[Marshal Rohr]

At no point in its history has 3000pts ever bought anything close to a company worth of infantry and a company is a single unit of humans in Warhammer Total War. Empire Swordsmen are like 120 entities. 
 

edit: Hilarious to call something bad faith and then immediately ask if the ten yards of open ground between ruins is not equivalent to three football fields. 

Edited Thursday at 12:33 AM by Marshal Rohr

[Kallas]

2 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

At no point in its history has 3000pts ever bought anything close to a company worth of infantry

Um, yes, it has. Hell, in the last three editions, it's been pretty possible to bring almost a full company in 2000pts and easily possible in 3000pts.

 

3 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

a company is a single unit of humans in Warhammer Total War. Empire Swordsmen are like 120 entities. 

And units that are comprised of less than 20 models also exist.

 

Yes, traditionally large units have been the norm, but that is not to say that that's all that is possible.

 

It's also worth noting that Empire Swordsmen come in units of 120 on Ultra scale: on Small scale, they're in units of 30.

[Marshal Rohr]

3 minutes ago, Kallas said:

Um, yes, it has. Hell, in the last three editions, it's been pretty possible to bring almost a full company in 2000pts and easily possible in 3000pts.

 

And units that are comprised of less than 20 models also exist.

 

Yes, traditionally large units have been the norm, but that is not to say that that's all that is possible.

 

It's also worth noting that Empire Swordsmen come in units of 120 on Ultra scale: on Small scale, they're in units of 30.

I stand corrected, if you play the game wrong or on a PS1 the units are much smaller

 

edit: you absolutely cannot fit 100 space marines, tanks, characters, and artillery into a game of modern 40K for 3000 points. 

Edited Thursday at 12:42 AM by Marshal Rohr

[Kallas]

1 minute ago, Marshal Rohr said:

I stand corrected, if you play the game wrong or on a PS1 the units are much smaller

Like I said, not arguing in good faith.

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

....so both of you are hung up on or want something that no Grand strategy game has ever offered? Perhaps I've missed some that have been released but what grand strategy game that offers:

• They are still not the smaller squad level organization making user of cover, independence, initiative
• units are ducking into cover, breaking up into fire teams, and actually doing the things you do with long range precision firearms

Everything being described sounds more like mordhiem/necromunda/chaosgate/inquisitor/rogue trader and tangentially dow2 or the wargame:red dragon series

 

Is gladius less of a 40k game because it doesnt have those things?

Boltgun?

Regicide?

Power wash simulator?

Those card games

 

Is TW:40K going to be 1-to-1? no. Will it scratch that grand strategy itch that 40k hasn't had? probably and thats what Im going in expecting..a grand strategy game with 40k trappings.

[Marshal Rohr]

Just now, Mechanicus Tech-Support said:

....so both of you are hung up on or want something that no Grand strategy game has ever offered? Perhaps I've missed some that have been released but what grand strategy game that offers:

• They are still not the smaller squad level organization making user of cover, independence, initiative
• units are ducking into cover, breaking up into fire teams, and actually doing the things you do with long range precision firearms

Everything being described sounds more like mordhiem/necromunda/chaosgate/inquisitor/rogue trader and tangentially dow2 or the wargame:red dragon series

 

Is gladius less of a 40k game because it doesnt have those things?

Boltgun?

Regicide?

Power wash simulator?

Those card games

 

Is TW:40K going to be 1-to-1? no. Will it scratch that grand strategy itch that 40k hasn't had? probably and thats what Im going in expecting..a grand strategy game with 40k trappings.

Total War is, as a brand, a large scale battle game with a map layer that is varying degrees of well done. It has always been large units of infantry, archers, and cavalry. It is meant to simulate older battles. It tried to move forward in Napoleon to varying degrees of success. As VoidDragon said, you can either make it something like Company of Heroes without base building for battles and it stops being Total War. Or you can make it large scale Dawn of War 1 where units just stand and shoot towards each other or run up and punch like StarCraft, and it stops being 40K. 

8 minutes ago, Kallas said:

Like I said, not arguing in good faith.

Says the dude arguing that the 3 to 5km square maps of total war and the roughly one city block of 6x4 40K games are the same thing. 

[Scribe]

2 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

Or you can make it large scale Dawn of War 1 where units just stand and shoot towards each other or run up and punch like StarCraft, and it stops being 40K. 

 

Standing and shooting, running up and punching, or variously running toward, shooting, and then assaulting, has been 99% of 40K units for the last 25 years.

 

Let's not pretend 40K is 4D chess Brother.

[Kallas]

20 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

edit: you absolutely cannot fit 100 space marines, tanks, characters, and artillery into a game of modern 40K for 3000 points. 

Uh, you sure about that?

Spoiler

10th Edition Space Marines:

Captain (85)

6x 10 Intercessors (6x160=960)

2x 10 Jump Assault Intercessors (2x160=320)

2x 10 Hellblasters (2x230=460)

 

2x Land Raider (2x240=480)

1x Redemptor (210)

1x Storm Speeder Hailstrike (115)

1x Storm Speeder Hammerstrike (125)

1x Storm Speeder Thunderstrike (150

Total points = 2900pts

Total of 100 Marines in the classical Battle Company format (6x Tactical, 2x Assault, 2x Devastator) plus supporting units. Not claiming it's any good, but you said one "absolutely cannot" fit this into a 3k list.

 

Edit to note: Points may be off: I used New Recruit, because I am quite out of the loop on 40k points. If there's a major discrepancy in points then fine, but I doubt it's significant enough to make the point of this list irrelevant.

 

Thing is, this kind of list has been possible in most editions - maybe not perfectly 100 Marines, and certainly not competitively viable for many folks' tastes, but absolutely fieldable.

Edited Thursday at 01:02 AM by Kallas

[Marshal Rohr]

1 minute ago, Scribe said:

 

Standing and shooting, running up and punching, or variously running toward, shooting, and then assaulting, has been 99% of 40K units for the last 25 years.

 

Let's not pretend 40K is 4D chess Brother.

A good way to think about what I’m trying to describe is a 40K game is like 10 minutes of a battle. The scale is equivalent to one or two platoons coming into close contact. There’s a lot of crappy abstraction to explain why artillery is there and tanks can’t shoot the length of a runway. We all get that part, it’s gamey. My argument, and probably Void Dragons, is that to make 40K work outside of Company of Heroes Cover and combined arms rock, paper, scissors type game you have to make it MORE gamey. The same way Focus makes your Marines three different classes instead of a real combat squad in Space Marine 2. It’s not that it won’t have some fun moments, we’ve all got fond, rose tinted memories of DoW1 in spite of its flaws.  It’s that it won’t really be a Total War game and the stuff in the game won’t really be 40K. There’s going to be a lot of fun moments in micro, like the bezerker charge you talked about. Ultimately, it won’t be what it could be - which is Stellaris with naval and ground battles, narrative event chains, character building, etc - and because they are doing it like this it means they will NEVER approve another attempt that may work better outside of the total war paradigm. 

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

Ignores majority of responses, pulls out "It wont be 40k" while wanting something that doesn't even exist on the table top. Here's something that might be shocking: It doesn't need to be like CoH or DoW they could just make a total war game in the same vein of TW:WH and it will do well because people are expecting a 40k grand strategy game not what you and void are describing.

 

21 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

I stand corrected, if you play the game wrong or on a PS1 the units are much smaller

 

edit: you absolutely cannot fit 100 space marines, tanks, characters, and artillery into a game of modern 40K for 3000 points. 

Insinuates person is playing the game wrong while wanting something the genre doesn't offer, then tosses back a no u for arguing in bad faith

[Kallas]

3 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

Ultimately, it won’t be what it could be - which is Stellaris with naval and ground battles, narrative event chains, character building, etc - and because they are doing it like this it means they will NEVER approve another attempt that may work better outside of the total war paradigm. 

I really don't see how:

 

1) it should be Stellaris but 40k skinned - Stellaris is so zoomed out that most of the time the actual details of factions are mostly just numbers. The visual distinction between the factions kind of doesn't matter that much. And please don't misunderstand me: it's a fantastic game, but in terms of 40k, it would be so far zoomed out that it would hold little actual visually appreciable 40k-ness.

 

2) TW:40k would preclude something like a Stellaris-style game. They are actually pretty vastly different styles of games, much like DOW wouldn't prevent a TW:40k, because even though they're vaguely similar if you look at only a few keywords they're actually built very differently in almost every way that matters,

 

Thing is, GW has already shown us that they're absolutely willing to portray 40k in various scales: Chaos Gate Daemonhunters is more zoomed out than Space Marine/SM2, and Gladius is more zoomed out than CG:DH - TW:40k would be more zoomed out than Gladius (mostly), and a Stellaris:40k would be more zoomed out than that. There exists room for all of these to provide different experiences.

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

11 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

Ultimately, it won’t be what it could be - which is Stellaris with naval and ground battles, narrative event chains, character building, etc - and because they are doing it like this it means they will NEVER approve another attempt that may work better outside of the total war paradigm. 

This is literally the opposite of what the both of you have been describing. There is zero battelfield interaction with land units other than 2 columns of unit flags and numbers going down and the space units literally just fly around eachother in a circle constantly shooting at each other unless you have an artillery ship.
There's zero cover being used, combat squads etc

 

"A good way to think about what I’m trying to describe is a 40K game is like 10 minutes of a battle. The scale is equivalent to one or two platoons coming into close contact. There’s a lot of crappy abstraction to explain why artillery is there and tanks can’t shoot the length of a runway."

This has not been 40k for many editions and doesnt have the granularity the both you and void are describing in previous posts

Edited Thursday at 01:13 AM by Mechanicus Tech-Support

[Marshal Rohr]

7 minutes ago, Mechanicus Tech-Support said:

This is literally the opposite of what the both of you have been describing. There is zero battelfield interaction with land units other than 2 columns of unit flags and numbers going down and the space units literally just fly around eachother in a circle constantly shooting at each other unless you have an artillery ship.
There's zero cover being used, combat squads etc

 

"A good way to think about what I’m trying to describe is a 40K game is like 10 minutes of a battle. The scale is equivalent to one or two platoons coming into close contact. There’s a lot of crappy abstraction to explain why artillery is there and tanks can’t shoot the length of a runway."

This has not been 40k for many editions and doesnt have the granularity the both you and void are describing in previous posts

Try reading what I said before openly being wrong about what I am saying. Stellaris is grand strategy on a galaxy map. A warhammer grand strategy game could be a galactic map, and drill down on planets and naval combat. 
 

Edit: I’m done with this, I’ve said my piece. I was right about them ignoring the lore for SM2 and it was still fun in spite of its shortfalls and network issues. This will probably suck all my free time up because frankly I love total war and actually played Troy and Pharoah before the expansions. We can all come back to this next November when it’s out and see if I was right. 

Edited Thursday at 01:22 AM by Marshal Rohr

[Scribe]

19 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

A good way to think about what I’m trying to describe is a 40K game is like 10 minutes of a battle. The scale is equivalent to one or two platoons coming into close contact. There’s a lot of crappy abstraction to explain why artillery is there and tanks can’t shoot the length of a runway. We all get that part, it’s gamey. My argument, and probably Void Dragons, is that to make 40K work outside of Company of Heroes Cover and combined arms rock, paper, scissors type game you have to make it MORE gamey. The same way Focus makes your Marines three different classes instead of a real combat squad in Space Marine 2. It’s not that it won’t have some fun moments, we’ve all got fond, rose tinted memories of DoW1 in spite of its flaws.  It’s that it won’t really be a Total War game and the stuff in the game won’t really be 40K. There’s going to be a lot of fun moments in micro, like the bezerker charge you talked about. Ultimately, it won’t be what it could be - which is Stellaris with naval and ground battles, narrative event chains, character building, etc - and because they are doing it like this it means they will NEVER approve another attempt that may work better outside of the total war paradigm. 

 

I dont know if we are just ships in the night here a bit, but I think I get your POV now.

 

Will it be a perfect representation of the 40K universe? No. Will it be a great 4x Stellaris representation from BFG down to Kill Team in terms of scope and scale? No.

 

It absolutely could be a Total War game however, just as Warhammer 3 shows, but is it going to be a close representation of say, 3rd through 10th edition of 40K? No.

 

It will still be "40K" however.

[Lord_Ikka]

=][= Locked for a cool-down. When re-opened, remember to keep all comments respectful and on-topic. =][=

[Ayatollah_of_Rock_n_Rolla]

14 hours ago, Kallas said:

Except...they don't.

 

Units like Chameleon Skinks don't fight like Napoleonic troops; sticking with Lizardmen, the Terradon Riders don't fight like Napoleonic troops; nor do Skaven Jezzails, or Skaven Doomflayers, which are functionally a melee bike unit.

 

This insistance that TW games focus only on this 18th century style of warfare is, quite simply, incorrect. TW:Warhammer has introduced many variables that would work very well to represent a lot of 40k units. Is it completely perfect for 40k right now, as is? No, there are still questions about things like Flyers that would need to be address (ie, not all 40k Flyers hover, which all flying units in TWWH can do).

 

Even amongst units with similar roles, we can see significant differences in how they actually operate on the battlefield:

• Empire Hangunners are the obvious Napoleonic-style line infantry. Blackpowder, need clean line of sight, they pause, rank up and fire volleys, and their projectiles are fast.
• Empire Crossbowmen are similarly ranked up and fire together, but the behaviour of the crossbow shots themselves allows them to arc their fire better (not always able to go over walls, depending on the angle, but often they can).
• Empire Archer are in a looser formation than Crossbowmen, have a more generous arc but have slower projectiles (especially when arcing).
• Empire Huntsmen are in a loose formation as well, but on top of the differences they share with the Archers, they can fire further (ie, 170 range vs the Archer's 140, IIRC); and on top of that they can fire while moving, giving them a niche among these various units.
• Wood Elf Glade Guard, the basic WE ranged unit, is kind of combination of the Huntsmen and the Crossbowmen - they can fire while moving and have arcing shots, but they rank up like Crossbowmen in close order
• Wood Elf Deepwood Scouts are, like Huntsmen, in loose formation, fire while moving, with longer range still, and they also have Stalk (basically they're hidden until quite close range or until they shoot), meaning they have more utility (but pay for it in other stats: eg, being fragile in melee)
• Wood Elf Waywatchers are even more powerful than Deepwood Scouts, having harder hitting bows, also having Stalk and having longer range, but they're similarly fragile in melee and expensive and fewer in number than things like the Glade Guard.
• Empire Free Company Militia are something on the other end of the spectrum: they're quite numerous, but they're in loose-ish formation (not as loose as things like Huntsmen and Waywatchers, but not as tight as Crossbowmen or Glade Guard), and they have decent melee stats (but not amazing, they're still militia after all). So they can shoot and fight in melee better than the dedicated ranged units.
• Kislev Armoured Kossars are basically ranked up Free Company: similarly armed (pistol and melee), plus a shield (to defend against missiles), much better stats but obviously cost more (also many of the skirmish style units above have vanguard deployment, allowing them greater initial deployment freedom).

These are just a few of the various missile units from TWWH which has hundreds involved - CA, while having various missteps, has done a good job in maintaining the feel of a lot of these factions and their units. In terms of 40k, it would absolutely be possible for them to create fitting and solidly accurate representations of the myriad 40k units.

 

For example, Space Marines would likely be in squads of either 5-10 (we've seen in TWWH small units, such as Warriors of Chaos Aspiring Champions which are in loose formation in units of 16 [on the largest unit size option]) and would likely be able to move and fire with some accuracy, good armour, good speed, etc - there's no reason to believe they would suddenly put Marines in tight block formations (and we know from previous TW games that unit formations are absolutely toggleable via simple button presses on the battlefield, so you could rank them up if you wanted to).

 

Basically, in terms of could they do? Yes, the 100% could, and it would work pretty damn well. There are definitely things they'd need to iron out, but similar things were said about TWWH too (eg, Magic and flying units) which they've done pretty damn well all things considered.

 

14 hours ago, Mechanicus Tech-Support said:

 

If this turns out to be a thing, I don't see how the way 40k combat is depicted would mean significant change to either since as Scribe has been so nice to point out Total War hasnt been 'napoleonic' since Warhammer entered the scene. Like sure you can still build the classic blocks of infantry that TW was known for, but now?

I've ran many things that dont fit the classic napoleonic style:

• Dragon lord Imrik and a full dragon stack
• Nothing but Steamtanks and gelt
• Britannia peasant mob stack
• nothing but skinks
• oops all horse archers/gunners
• oops all grenade launchers
• Rakarth and his murderous menagerie of monstrous beasts
• oops all khorne berzerkers dwarven slayers
• A bretonnian hero deathstar
• Undead suicide bombers supported by gun golems made out of ship-parts and pistol zombies held aloft by giant bats
• skaven jezzails, flamethrowers, gattling guns and literal doom lasers with a nice nuke as the cherry on top

I've been playing this series since Shogun, every type of 40k unit or faction can be represented by something we've already seen CA do in some fashion or another.

• Blocks of melee/ranged/hybrid infantry
• Blobs of melee/ranged/hybrid infantry
• Skirmishers of melee/ranged/hybrid infantry
• Air ranged/melee units
• Units that fire on the move
• Units that fire stationary
• Units that dont need LOS
• Blocks of small elite units
• blobs of small elite units
• Tanks
• Monsters/Giants
• Magic
• Hero units (Shogun2 heros and WH regiments of renown)
• Legendary lords
  • Less legendary lords
  • heros/buffing leaders
• Factions that start with some close-by cities
• Factions that have a single starting location
• Factions that can settle or move with their base
• Factions that start with locations spread across the map

Wild speculation time
I don't think we'll get a WH3 size map initially but it would be silly to think CA isn't thinking they could do a 3 game series like they did with fantasy. I could see Lords of a similar faction start out at the same starting location like we saw in WH1

I've had a night to think on it and I think a fair bit of how the campaign will play and faction design will depend on what they decide to do with the map/scale of the campaign. Is this all going to be on a single planet? system? sub-sector? heck that could even be the map progression between the games if they pull the first one off.

Just thought if they went bigger than a single planet they could make use of the horde system from Atilla for the SM's so you could settle down at a recruitment world or be a crusading chapter

 

This is a TW battle and it hasn't changed since Shogun:

 

 

Those squares can be anything. It doesn't matter if they are dense lines of Greek hoplites, loose blobs of Skinks, or rows of Napoleon's Old Guard. It doesn't matter if they are shooting at each other, throwing spears or fighting melee. It doesn't matter whether the artillery sprinkled here and there is called ballista, warplock jezzail or canon de 12 Gribeauval. None of these changes the basic philosophy underlying how TW abstacts pre-modern battle. Like all traditional hexbased board games this philosophy stems from european warfare of XVI-XIX century: linearly deployed "regiments" engaging each other up to circa 100m with some occasional artillery. Everything in TW is built around this concept. Everything. How units behave, how you control them, how maps are designed. That you can create in TWWH armies of only dragons doesn't change that, just like possibility of creating only artillery armies in TW:Napoleon. This "abstracting" philosphy is completely unsuited for XX+ century battles. Why? Because TW chose this mode of abstraction to make the battles semi-realistic. It works quite well for XVI-XIX century, while becoming more abstract for earlier eras, although preservivng some sort of realism due to largerly linear nature of clash of arms. Yes, you can throw 40k units into this scheme but it means that you are abandoning the core idea behind TW battles, i.e. the semblence of realism. It would be a bigger DoW 1 battle. But I agree, that it would be WH40k like any other game in the setting.

 

Yes, in order to keep the semblence of realism the battles will have to be slightly scaled down, just like they are in the already mentioned by me Warno, Steel Division etc. It is simply impossible to control 1000+ troops of a fully stacked TW army on modern battlefield (ie 100+ squads with tanks and artillery), because they wouldn't be fighting close to each other on a max 500m wide front but spread across kilometers of battlefield. Micromanaging 20 squads of infantry trying to die in stupidest ways possible is already a challenge.

 

Honorable mention must be made for the maps issue. TW maps are largely irrelevant to fighting, simply cosmetic drapings for your lines of infantry. Creating maps for modern combat, where units are engaging with LOS of 2000+ meters, will be an enormous task for them, just as it is for Eugen and others (btw there are still no true city maps in their games due to seize of the files needed).

 

The operational level of TW, even if we leave aside the fact that it's average at best and was always just an addition to the battle system which is the main selling point of the game, suffers from the same problem of the core philosophy. It's meant to abstract pre-modern warfare with few big armies searching each other for battle. This is not modern warfare and this is not WH40k warfare.

 

 

 

[Mogger351]

There's a lot of forgetting that total war is a brand name at this point and whether it is or is not a total war game is simply whether it's published as part of the series. It doesn't matter what they do to change or update the engine or mechanics.

 

A 40k game from a group of people who understand the spectacle of larg escale battle is a concept to be excited by. Whether it's a napoleonic clone or not might have little relevance to this.

[MechaMan]

Creative Assembly have just posted their new years message: 

 

In their own words: 'We... hope to share news of new projects late this year!' - So highly unlikely that Warhammer 40,00 Total War will be announced in June, as suggested.

 

Edited Thursday at 05:43 PM by MechaMan

[Scribe]

CA's concept of time/dates, is not strong.