Total War: Warhammer 2 First Hands-On With Skaven
The Skaven is presently the team I have to most to talk about, as they were the primary focus of the preview event. I have plenty of general campaign info as well, but before that let me get into some details on the other three teams. I’ve played Lizardmen before at E3, but only in a quest battle. What I saw of the Lizardmen campaign map only came from the red borders around my lovely Skaven townships. From the presentation they gave, I know that the Lizardmen utilize ley lines under their cities to boost the Edicts that you can issue when you control an entire province. Certain cities are far more important to these boosts than others, but overall you’ll want to control as much territory as possible. They also have breeding events for certain units, which will spawn specialized variants with visual changes. Think Regiments of Renown, but not quite so extreme.
Combat wise, the Lizardmen remind me of the good ol’ days of rampaging War Elephant armies. Aside from the normal breaking and routing, Lizardmen units can also just go apeshit with a new out of control status. It isn’t quite a “fight to the death” mode, but does give Lizardmen significant staying power when other armies would flee. Combined with high natural armor and very mobile ranged skirmishers, I had an extremely hard time killing even the most modest Lizardman army without high level Skaven units. Also, they get dinosaurs. That’s a win.
I also got my hands on Dark Elves for one of their quest battles. Taking control of Malekith and his army, I matched off against a High Elf army that was frankly no match for me. Mounted atop his Black Dragon Seraphon, Malekith’s magic tore through the High Elf lines with ease. Their unique race mechanic is called Murderous Prowess, a dark reflection of the High Elves’ Martial Prowess. Score a certain number of kills, and you’ll be rewarded with a massive team-wide stats boost. It rewards hit-and-run tactics, and the magical bombardments popular to casters.
Other than that, it was kind of hard to get a sense of their strengths and weaknesses. Their ranged line was strong in a predictably elfy fashion, but I’ll need a lot more testing to judge the effectiveness of their various melee units. I didn’t go up against enough large enemies to judge the effectiveness of their Halberdiers, enough heavily armored to judge their Greatswords, etc. I’ll have to spend much more time with the team to figure out just how exactly you’re supposed to murder best with them.
I didn’t run into any Dark Elves during my Skaven preview, but the devs did get some info into how the team will play on the Campaign map. The new unique Dark Elf resource is slaves, which are taken after successful battles. According to the devs, slaves are assigned to cities at will. Similar to Skaven Corruption, slaves come with both an up and a downside. On the one hand, slaves are a major economic boost. Various quests will also require a certain number of slaves (or slave sacrifices) to be completed. The downside is that slaves don’t really like being slaves, leading to a Public Order debuff. Weigh your risks carefully, or you might be crippled by a slave revolt.
Perhaps the most compelling of all of the Total War: Warhammer 2’s new unique mechanics are the Dark Elf Black Arks. After performing a special Rite, the Dark Elves will be able to create a special mobile city called the Black Ark. Sailing through the ocean, this nautical doom fortress can serve as a staging ground for your plentiful slave raids. On top of that, Black Arks gain access to a unique building chain that allows them to perform magical bombardments. Fans of Total War: Shogun 2 – Fall of the Samurai will fondly remember these devastating barrages. Initially weak, upgrading the Black Ark to the max level will give you access to numerous, increasingly lethal options. Sure, bombing your enemy from the ocean lacks finesse. But come on, it’s undeniably satisfying to watch helpless infantry be launched into the sky by doomfire rained down from murder fortresses sitting comfortably several miles away.
This leaves the High Elves as the team I have had no actual playtime with. And you know what? Good. Who needs the pompous Asur of Ulthuan and their dumb Silver Helms anyways? All I need to know is how to best chase down their stupid Archers with my Clanrats. I had plenty of fun nibbling at their heels while my Legendary Lord Queek Headtaker took their stupid heads.
I did get some new info on them, such as their Martial Prowess combat mechanic. Opposite of the Dark Elf Murderous Prowess, Martial Prowess is a buff that starts active and deactivates if you lose enough Leadership. So basically, it’s a noob’s new favorite thing. Pack all of your units into a box, point as many ranged units outwards as you can, and pray they’re too stupid to flank you. Tactical genius.
For the Campaign map, High Elves can now spend special Influence points to perform diplomatic shenanigans. People have always criticized Creative Assembly for their diplomacy system being… well… kind of shit. So they’ve gotten around that by just letting you do the sneaky things you’ve always wanted with zero subtlety or skill. Want your allies to break up with their friend so you can invade them? Spend some Influence! Honestly, it’s something that they’ve needed to introduce for quite some time. It’s infuriating getting stuck behind a border because the team you’re friendly with will just not agree to military access without 5000 gold in tribute. So maybe this turns out to be the best new mechanic of the series. Or maybe that honor goes to the doom ships raining magic death from the sky or the rats bursting from the ground to gnaw you to death. Only time will tell.
So that concludes the team specific new stuff I saw in my playthrough of Total War: Warhammer 2. Of course, we’ll have to wait for a full review for me to really sink my crooked pointy teeth into it all. Seeing as how that’s still a month off, here’s some juicy general tidbits for all the megafans to slobber over.
First off, the UI has been significantly overhauled. Event messages now pop out from the side map/event panel, obscuring far less of the screen. End of Turn resolutions can now also be customized and are resolved individually. Are you like me and need to make sure none of your towns have an open construction slot? Turn it on, and cycle through your waiting cities. Did you actually mean to leave your army there for a few turns while you got another one ready? You can either turn off the idle army notification, or just skip past that particular message. It’s a much smoother and more customizable process, and a real relief to series veterans.
There are far more buildings now (at least for the Skaven), which is made up for by the number of City building slots going up from 5 to 7. Cities and towns also have more of a difference in what they can construct, with buildings specific to each being clearly labeled. With the amount of unique resources increasing, the number of special buildings has also gone up. I only saw two really interesting ones, but I’ll have to wait for the full game for the final verdict on that. Overall, it seemed much more difficult to concentrate your military production into one large center. This might vary between the teams of course, but for the Skaven it took a healthy spread of the economic and military structures to maximize your unit output. As a small quality of life improvement, buildings now also display the tier that they are constructed at, not the tier of that specific building chain. This means that monster dens that build at Tier 5 will now be displayed as a Tier 5 structure, not as a Tier 1.
Heroes and Lords also got some UI improvements, starting with the Hero skill rankings. It was hard to tell what different Heroes actually did in Total War: Warhammer, but now a quick ranking and description is available in their unit card. So if your Wizard can Block Armies vs Assault Units, you’ll now see that displayed on their card with a marker unerneath telling you their proficiency in that skill. This goes hand in hand with the Hero’s campaign skill no longer being arbitrarily tied to its own tree. As we’re still in the hypernerd section of this preview, I’m going to assume that you know what the skill trees look like. The blue Campaign tree for heroes is now no longer locked, instead spread between different one/two skill micro-trees for each ability. Now if you want to level up an assassin Wizard, you won’t have to needlessly go into their Public Order and recruitment cost skills first.
A long time favorite mechanic of Total War games, Traits now also come with their own levels and methods of acquisition. Attack enough cities, and your Lord will gain an increasing bonus to their siege and attack stats. Do it even more, and the skill will level up. Some Traits, like Hero success chance vs a specific race, only have a single level. Multi-level skills now also have negative levels as well. In my time, I never got to test these out, and the devs were being tight lipped as to the actual conditions for being smacked with a negative level. Maybe it’s a natural side effect of leveling up something too high? I can see a world where my hero with max raiding skills might also incur a slight Public Order debuff. Whatever it is, I’m eager to find out in my full playthrough.
As a final little note for fans of the multiplayer, all factions will be available at launch in the skirmish mode. As I don’t really know what Total War: Warhammer 2’s Bretonnia is, I think this mostly just applies to previously existing factions. Also, as now all the Legendary Lords have their own faction and starting position, you will finally be able to play through a co-op campaign as the same team. At long last, you won’t have to create awkward alliances between Dwarves and Vampires just to be able to fight alongside your friends.
I was already embarrassingly excited for Total War: Warhammer 2 before checking it out. After seeing the improvements they have made, I simply cannot wait for September 28th to roll around. Now you may notice that I left some mechanics out of my discussion. I didn’t even talk about the new climates system, or the game changing Rituals. The reason for this is that with my limited time in the game, I didn’t really get the chance to fully analyse these systems. For that, you’ll just have to wait for my full review. I’ll see you then.
Categorized:Horror Gaming News
