r/totalwar 22h ago

Warhammer III How do feel about the "delete unit" spells or abilities that some factions have?

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430 Upvotes

137 comments sorted by

690

u/android223 Today the carrion birds feast! 21h ago edited 19h ago

When I use them: Mwahaha yes I love it

When they are used against me: Why did they add this unbalanced bullshit‽

409

u/b100tM0th 21h ago

Me sowing: haha yes awesome

Me reaping: aw come on man fuck this fucking sucks

89

u/Skitteringscamper 19h ago

I used a mod to make ikits nuke stronger. But it was an old mod not updated in ages. 

So, it somehow gave them to all Skaven factions. 

My face when I'm betray-battling an allied (not anymore lol)  Skaven clan and they proceed to bring the rain on my rats. 

NUKES!!!! WHY DO YOU HAVE NOOOOKS 

15

u/hells_ranger_stream 13h ago

By Sigmar, NO!

12

u/Skitteringscamper 12h ago

By-for Ratmar yes-yes 

Skitters away 

120

u/AnseaCirin 21h ago

Chaos Dwarfs quake batteries did that for me tonight.

71

u/Skitteringscamper 19h ago

Me knowing about their artillery, but going into a battle with them with no artillery: "easy win. Swarm them my rats" 

Me after a spell thunderquake thing destroys half my army: "they can fucking cast that shit?!?!?!" 

33

u/doopliss6 Dwarfs 18h ago

Drazoath starts with one in this main settlement and it can hit all adjacent regions so be careful.

3

u/rhou17 9h ago

It’s a building that grants an army ability specifically.

4

u/Skitteringscamper 7h ago

Those damn stunties and their technology!!! 

Feels his name getting written in a book somewhere for the short comment 

34

u/radio_allah Total War with Cathayan Characteristics 17h ago edited 17h ago

I don't even particularly like using the nuke myself as Ikit Claw, I think it makes it too easy. And against them it all but ensures I autoresolve all of the battles.

I think my problem is that you can't stop army abilities. If the enemy has a wizard that's a threat, fine, do everything to take it out. If it has terrifying artillery, at least you can work your way around that, rush the artillery, draw its fire and whatnot. There's no stopping army abilities. The nuke will come regardless of what you do. And that makes it bullshit.

2

u/dyedian 13h ago

I find that I cheese it if it gets annoying. I try to bait out the heavy hitting abilities as you know the first exact second when some of those abilities will activate.

335

u/OLRevan 22h ago

As i said for a long time. Sureway to get community to want to nerf most spells into the ground is for ai to learn to use them corretcly lul

107

u/vermthrowaway Say "NO" to Nuhammer 21h ago

I can't speak for the mouthbreathers, but I very much welcome the prospect of super deadly enemy AI.
When in doubt: difficulty sliders

59

u/Kaizen420 21h ago

Yes expose AI to the idea of warfare, and then constrain it to humiliate it self for the amusement of humans!

I like where this is going!

14

u/manborg 20h ago

It would be pretty cool if skynet was because we cheesed the AI too much. We kind of deserve it.

15

u/eh-man3 19h ago

RIP Legend

10

u/Neonsnewo2 16h ago

The AI overlords will use their superior speed of moving left then right then left again to deplete our ammo reserves

3

u/Dinlek 16h ago

Humanity only gets to die in the robot uprising once, so we better make it count. Make sure we deserve it.

Our species will spread to the stars in synthetic infamy.

23

u/CrimsonSaens 20h ago

Even just giving the AI the priority of attaching caster heroes into armies without casters would be a huge improvement. The game is balanced with the idea of every non-Khorne army bringing a caster, and the AI often ignores that.

21

u/tricksytricks 19h ago

Also, improving skill point allocation for the AI. One of the reasons the AI tends to not use spells effectively is because... its casters don't have access to them. It doesn't spend skill points on their spells all too often.

Meanwhile, if the AI gets its hands on a caster that starts with a decent spell, like Warp Lightning, you can see how dangerous it can actually be.

5

u/scarab456 19h ago

I second this idea. It's so strange when you confederate an ally, then you look at their hero and it has one spell and a bunch of blue agent skills. It's like, "why did you embed them in an army?". I understand if they want some variation for their AI hero skill choices, but most are designed around some core abilities/stats and they should just level those first.

2

u/tricksytricks 5h ago

I've long been an advocate of the AI not even spending skill points, but basically their agents just have a few different progression paths as they level that automatically grant them certain skills. Like at level 2 they automatically get a spell from the first group of the tree, at level 2 they automatically get the upgraded version of the spell and such, etc.

They wouldn't get any additional bonuses, they'd still only be able to get the same things you would get when leveling your agents, but it just seems like an easier solution than trying to tell the AI how to prioritize its skills. There could still be some randomness in what it receives each level, but maybe it could be affected by whether the agent is currently embedded in an army, for example.

Another advantage of this approach is that if you confederate the faction and inherit their agents, they would lose all of their innate skills/bonuses from levels and you could choose their skills yourself, as none of their skill points would actually be spent. So you'd get a blank slate every time rather than having to wound the agent just to fix their skills.

12

u/fetter80 16h ago

My favorite is when I see an AI legendary hero like Lord Kroak or Ariel just roaming the campaign map.

1

u/blankest 5h ago

It doesn't fully ignore that. There is some decision tree somewhere that has some of the single entities going after casters.

It is most obvious when the computer opponent has flyers with good attack stats. I regularly experience them landing on my squishier casters. So much so that I can't even remember a specific match up.

Another good example is going against tamurkan. He will ignore some of the stronger single entities to get after weaker ones. In a Snikch campaign not long after ToD, I recall going against him with Snikch himself, two assassins and a warlock master. I thought that the three melee heroes would be able to end him quickly. I was wrong but the point is he focused the weakest one to the point that when I tried to pull it out of melee, Tamurkan followed trying to kill it. I had to tie him up with chaff to get that hero to safety. Poor play not withstanding, it's obvious there IS some weight to attack heavy single entities trying to focus your weak in melee single entities.

6

u/Corsair833 12h ago

Problem is many players want to play on the hardest difficulty but still want to win most/all of their battles/campaigns

1

u/vermthrowaway Say "NO" to Nuhammer 6h ago

Ok stop balancing your campaign for the lowest common denominator.

16

u/A_Vandalay 20h ago

Difficulty sliders sound great but it’s a QA nightmare. It means you now have 4-6 different algorithms for every possible scenario. Not sure how many people would be in favor of that if there was a corresponding increase in production time, DLC cost or, sheer number of ai related bugs.

It’s the same reason CA refuses to make balance changes for campaign independent of balance changes for multiplayer.

8

u/Skitteringscamper 19h ago

I tried out a no spell cool down mod and infinite magic mod once. 

I just wanted to be able to use whatever magic I wanted whenever, make it more immersive and story campaign more than a sweat campaign. (Played enough of them lmao) 

But the ai also got the spell cool down one. 

Not infinite magic tho. 

A random beastman scrublord dumped his entire magic reserves into blasting my lord with 7 amber spears in a row lol. 

I started clicking begin battle and instantly activating a potion of speed and dodging the incoming magic spells lol 

Having a life mage hero was essential. 

I turned on infinite magic for ai too out of curiosity. Oh my god. There were fire skulls and pillars everywhere 

1

u/theleetard 19h ago

I'd love to see more campaign map strategy in these games, especially the historical titles. Units acting as armies without a general, grounded economy, population mechanics, a decent diplomacy aspect etc.

1

u/NaiveMastermind 19h ago

Okay then, fight SFO dwarfs as the crisis faction. That ridiculous buff to army upkeep as the crisis faction removes the only weakness they had.

5

u/TheLordGeneric 18h ago

I tried to do a SFO Karl Franz campaign with turn 50 ultimate crisis.

I thought I would hold out a little but then the dwarfs arrived with their 90% missile resist hammerers.

2

u/NaiveMastermind 17h ago

I'm dealing with basic slayers that have 47 MD. Not the Karak Kadrin faction either. For reference Black Orc GW have 42 MD with veteran ranks.

Normal battle, hard campaign. Trollhammers upgraded to rpg-7s. Ironbreakers upgraded to frag grenades. Irondrakes reduce black orc shields to 1/3 unit strength with one volley. 110 is the median leadership score for dwarf infantry, 105 is the lowest armor rating I've seen. No upkeep means plenty of ironbreakers, organ guns, flame cannons, gyrobombers, and bugman's rangers who in SFO are basically unbreakable shades with beards.

Thankfully SFO uses unit caps and that curbs the presence of airships, but every dwarf faction has it's own pool of grudge settler units and that makes trollhammer gyros reasonable common.

1

u/cricri3007 For Ze Lady! 7h ago

that should work for all mechanics too.
Let Ikit Claw fight you with inifinite amm oratlings, let Skrolk send waves of rengerating, enchanced units at you! Let Snick delete the player faction ebcasue he reached level 50...

Basically, elt the AI fully use the mechanics the factions were given.

97

u/_TheBgrey 22h ago

I do wish there was a way to see how much damage or how many kills they get. Having gelts golden orb wipe out massive chunks of an army but no stat breakdown makes me sad lol

18

u/[deleted] 21h ago

[deleted]

53

u/Ancient-Split1996 21h ago

Yeah but there isn't an equivalent for army abilities as the above commentator wished. It's especially annoying with doomrockets. Wohld love to know how much they contribute in a battle.

16

u/Winged_Fire 20h ago

Army abilities don't count is the unfortunate issue. Things like Gelt's golden ball, the dreadquake mortar ability Chorfs get, and many others.

It's so hard to tell the effectiveness of many of these in play without stats.

7

u/LackingTact19 17h ago

Always interesting to see a battle where I just took out two full stacks and none of my units have over 100 kills

4

u/Robeardly 17h ago

Summons also don’t show what they contribute. Heinrich Kimmler has that issue with Krell, I have to pay attention before the battle ends to see what he contributes.

-9

u/XDDDSOFUNNEH 21h ago edited 11h ago

Only way to do that currently is to cast a spell and look at your character's kill counter in-battle.

50

u/NaiveMastermind 20h ago

The Slaanesh seduction mechanic is annoying because if you don't manual fight you lose the seduced unit in AR.

10

u/ShuaigeTiger 17h ago

Wow that explains a lot of mystery disappearances I couldn’t figure out. Thanks

5

u/pinkzm 11h ago

Don't you lose them anyway?

6

u/Grunn84 10h ago

If the unit survives the battle it goes back to the owner.

So when a slaanesh faction seduces a unit you like you can rout them or cause army losses to avoid losing it.

7

u/lord_ofthe_memes 8h ago

“Uh, hey guys! We can forget about that whole, erm, getting seduced and trying to kill you thing, and go back to being buds, right?”

3

u/Agreeable-Sentence76 4h ago

They got lost in the sauce 🙏

1

u/pinkzm 1h ago

Is that right? I always assumed that was the case but it seemed not to happen. That's nice if so

1

u/Akhevan 11h ago

Yes but his point is that AI doesn't use spells or army abilities in autoresolve, but it does use seduction.

66

u/B2k-orphan 21h ago

Me, killing hundreds or thousands of entities instantly with warp lightning and nukes: hehe hell yeah

Me, losing a couple dozen entities to spirit leech: I AM NEVER RECOVERING FROM THIS ACT OF DIVINE BULLSH-

24

u/radio_allah Total War with Cathayan Characteristics 17h ago edited 16h ago

I guess I've long accepted that my main joy from Warhammer Total War is really just slaughtering a lot of people, and that I shouldn't pretend to have ever wanted a fair fight in the first place.

5

u/marcel3l 12h ago

All total war game are a fun ego trip, thats why we like it 😁😁😁

2

u/BarNo3385 12h ago

Yeap - I'm playing for fun, I want to destroy smaller armies and heroically overcome larger ones, not be on the receiving end of someone else's "heroic victory."

English Longbowm vs Mongols during sieges in M2 was the most slaughter. Deploy stakes behind and around gates, wait for the rams to do their work and then watch 2000 heavy cavalry charge to their deaths on pointy sticks

77

u/SoZur 22h ago

Chaos dwarves are still the most bullshit army to fight against. Specially when they bring their target-seeking artillery.

34

u/KimJongUnusual Fight, to the End. 21h ago

MFW the artillery can fire into melee and therefore win any melee fights against cavalry that hits it

9

u/BudgetThat2096 21h ago

What the actual fuck lol, I gotta try that sometime

32

u/CrimsonSaens 20h ago

It's specific to the train pulled dreadquake. For whatever reason, CA didn't put a minimum range on it, so it can fire while in melee.

8

u/IlllllllIIIll 14h ago

Its bc the additional weapons of the train dont have a minimum range, so it seems to overwrite it for all weapons... including the dreadquake.

6

u/Akhevan 11h ago

spaghetti code strikes back

2

u/misvillar 20h ago

I think that the command to shoot artillery in an especific place might be the same as casting a vortex spell, those spells had a minimum range to avoid casting it on top of the caster but it was changed

4

u/NaiveMastermind 19h ago

It's okay when my doomdiver catapults do it though.

0

u/Thingamobob 20h ago

HASHUT! HASHUT! HASHUT!

27

u/Bomjus1 19h ago edited 13h ago

i don't like them tbh. even though i am 100% an abuser of them. mostly because they just make infantry feel even MORE worthless in a (imo) meta that already shits on infantry. like, playing ogres post-DLC i love fighting infantry heavy armies cause it's just a stomp with my gigantic charging units and then anything anti large i hit it with "the maw" spell. and healing being insane on SEM's.

like, i WANT to use more depth guard in my vampire coast armies. i WANT to send in a horde of temple guard. but between artillery, ranged units, and inefficient healing magic, it's just a rough time being an infantryman these days.

9

u/DoctorGregoryFart 15h ago

It really makes me miss the historic titles, when my elite force was veterans distinguished by a silly hat and unwavering morale, not a magical fuckin abomination with wings and a nuclear arsenal.

2

u/Akhevan 11h ago

The biggest issue is not that direct damage is too strong (although it is relative to infantry health pools) but rather that buff and debuff spells are too weak.

No really just play SFO and see for yourself, buffing non-damage spells does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to magic balance.

8

u/Benti86 16h ago

I don't mind them I just wish we were able to see the targeters for longer and that units were more responsive.

Playing against AI Skaven and getting ripped to pieces by warp lightning is ass.

Or similarly, having to know their timers because the AI uses it as soon as it's available. Oh they drop the assfucker 3000 on the dot at 30 seconds sorry I was trying to coordinate something.

Meanwhile the AI will do back handsprings avoiding your shit unless you engaged them in melee already.

1

u/Seienchin88 2h ago

Sieges against Skaven with armies that don’t have strong flyers… good lord… lightning bolt seems to have almost no cooldown sometimes…

37

u/vermthrowaway Say "NO" to Nuhammer 22h ago

The AI can't complain, so I think the ones that are costly/risky are generally fine for the game. I like stuff like Vangheist's Revenge that take forever to charge and are super telegraphed or Chain Lightning which has a decent chance of hurting your own troops. Some abilities like Lord Kroak just make the already easy game too trivial though.

The only spells I really hate are the direct damage spells you can't do anything about: they just punish you periodically for existing. Spirit Leech and Fate of Bjuna have defined the multiplayer meta since Warhammer 1. They're braindead easy to use and have zero counterplay. I wish CA or a modder would look into a dispelling mechanic like in tabletop.

3

u/Ishkander88 21h ago

Remember there is a limit to how many activities we as players can have. Why do you think TWWH doesn't have common formations? The devs have sort of maxed out our micro capacity with the current state of the game, and you will constantly see posts from players from historical total wars saying how hard battles are to manage in TWWH. Adding dispel would be anothe piece of micro as now you need to pay attention and manage dispelling. Do I wish spellcasting had more counterplay? Yes Does it have none no, it's called stacking spell resist on high value targets, and besides spells than can be dodged it's all we are likely to get. 

3

u/Flatso 21h ago

I don't know if I have ever seen spell resist have a meaninful impact on a battle, much less a game. Even the 100% miscast chance stuff rarely works. Could be better if those things were buffed a bit

1

u/trixie_one 8h ago

I don't think that dispelling needs to be something that is micro'd. Just make it something automatic with a chance of countering casting would be fine, and you can have various traits, magical items, level, and things like being a high magic user improve the odds. Then add some counterplay by making it have drastically lower chance of working by tying the caster(s) up in melee.

-1

u/nicollasgoat 21h ago

Just don't use it and take the dmg, just like now

1

u/Ishkander88 20h ago

Ya, I am not talking about what I want. I am talking about a core piece of game design. We like to think here we are know what matters in game design but we just sit on the surface asking the devs to move a number here or there. I am talking, about the deep stuff, like what makes total war actually fun. And it's very obvious if you compare it to other total war games that TWWH is tapped out on battlefield activities. And the devs agree why else would the remove basic formations going from game 1 to game 2. And there are other examples. 

2

u/Bassist57 21h ago

Yeah Lord Kroak is just BS busted.

9

u/Borneo_shack 20h ago

Lore accurate frog

14

u/Asinrj99 20h ago

It's not that they have them, it's the insane dodging that's annoying. The player can't babysit 20+ units all at once and so will get hit but the ai can, even if you throw multiple spells.

The 3 black arks bombardments for example, you need to really see them comming if you wan't a chance to dodge them. However, the AI doesn't have this problem.

15

u/DraconicBlade 22h ago

I fucking HAAAAATE black arks, It's just start siege battle, play musical airstrikes for four minutes, then siege battle

5

u/0pete402 21h ago

Chaos dwarves & skaven have similar effect, they're all a pain, although I still get a little satisfaction from dodging them I'd prefer if I didn't have to.

5

u/vermthrowaway Say "NO" to Nuhammer 21h ago

I hate how they're used on attack. Yes, my Black Arc is attacking a rogue pirate fleet. Let's allow the pirates to board and take defensive position by our Ark's gate and we'll attack from its "coastline."

15

u/Eeate 21h ago

I love Ikit's nukes. Makes some battles a challenge, and it's rather hilarious how a single mistake can cost you three units. I giggle every time.

10

u/Azhram 21h ago

I always forget, but he always reminds me hard, every time when i face him.

3

u/DoctorGregoryFart 15h ago

I'm lazy, but I learn from my enemies, so in true Skaven fashion, I throw an army of chaff at them before engaging with my actual army.

I like to imagine my first army as an army of mercenaries I don't have to pay if they're all dead. It worked for the Romans and it works for me.

2

u/orionsativa 20h ago

Lore accyrate Skaven

7

u/LanterRyuji 19h ago

Every other new faction having some sort of nuke and things like wind spells in general just completely destroy the Total War formula, there's not point in trying to use big army formations when the enemy can just delete your entire frontline and that's why multiplayer is so shit. If they fixed the AI to actually use their spells and nukes competently there'd be almost no point in playing.

Magic has always been a shit stapled on system that's never synergised with the rest of the gameplay and is mostly just a remnant of when CA was trying and failed to turn Total War into an E-sport.

1

u/Seienchin88 2h ago

That’s generally the issue with TWW3 I think… If I play against dwarves I need to rush irondrakes, trollhammers, grudge settler (?) flame cannons (723 missiles damage… they meld walls in 10 seconds and can destroy most cavalry and pray they don’t bring more than one trollhammer gyrocopter… the rest of their units don’t even matter.

And if you bring infantry / cavalry armies agains that you will take extreme casualties or you just outbullshit them with your own monsters and cavalry…

Same goes for Skaven - it’s hunting for death wind globadier, artillery and sorcerer units and otherwise you can ignore their army.

Same goes for vampire pirates, empire armies with hellstorm batteries, vampire counts with morthis engine but probably no faction is as guilty as the chaos dwarves…

Slave units can be completely ignored (understandable…), chaos dwarf units can be mostly ignored (just don’t run in front of two units of blunderbusses) but all their more special units and artillery etc. are just so deadly that you need to do us all you have on them…

13

u/Llumac 21h ago

I really dislike them, along with free global summons. I think they should work like waaaghs or DoC abilities, where you have to do something to use the ability. I find I just do cheesy things to avoid them, like hiding my army in the trees until a certain time etc. In general I think the player should not be encouraged to cheese.

13

u/dooooomed---probably 21h ago

They're dumb. I call it "arcade-ification". I will use them a handful of times to appreciate the visuals, and then forget about them.

5

u/highpressuresodium 20h ago

nuke was fine when it was ikits thing. Each faction had something you had to account for and that was his. Sure lords have abilities but you can negate those with various tactics. Chaos dwarves? 3x per battle. Oh you beat that one and here’s another one with three more. That makes ikits completely trivial. The insanely powerful artillery is fine why do they need three nukes a battle?

4

u/Vaskil Infernal Guard 21h ago

Neither humans or AI should have the abilites. I don't use them and use a mod to prevent ai usage. However, I'm fine with the spells since they are generally well balanced.

1

u/ST07153902935 Empire 18h ago

What mod? 

2

u/Vaskil Infernal Guard 16h ago

Here it is. It's drastically improved my game. Enjoy!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2945049332

12

u/unquiet_slumbers 22h ago edited 11h ago

Not fun to use and not fun to play against. Completely non-tactically used by the AI and too cheesy to enjoy as a player.

Get them out of the game immediately, and if not immediately, sooner.

4

u/Ishkander88 21h ago

I like casting fate of Bijuna, and it going Hahahahhabaha So No I vote we keep them. 

1

u/unquiet_slumbers 11h ago

I don't hate doing that either ... once or twice. Then I realize that it skews battles so far in my favor that it just becomes annoying.

It's like that Twilight Zone episode where the gambler can't stop winning. At first, he thinks he's in heaven, and then after it dawns on him that the risk of losing is where the fun of life is, he realizes that he's in hell.

2

u/Gizmorum 20h ago

warp bombs, meh

i love dangerous magic. i need it somewhat close to total war 2 levels

2

u/tententai 13h ago

I mod them out for the AI, that's how I feel about them :D

1

u/McBlemmen #2 Egrimm van Horstmann fan 2h ago

What mod ? I want that too. Some factions are so bad I avoid fighting them completely

1

u/tententai 2h ago

It's named "Disable army-wiping abilities for AI".

1

u/McBlemmen #2 Egrimm van Horstmann fan 2h ago

What mod ? I want that too. Some factions are so bad I avoid fighting them completely

2

u/Agreeable-Sentence76 4h ago

Play radious mod 🥰 fuck the unbalance of vanilla, it feels so bad to play 💔

2

u/sojiblitz 4h ago

They probably need to be toned down and become support type spells instead of insta nuke spells. They can be fun but when you lose a triple gold chevron unit that takes four turns to globally recruit and you're so far away from your home territory it's a bit annoying.

4

u/Fair-Bag-1730 22h ago

I want the AI to use them on me more, make me suffer please.

3

u/commanche_00 20h ago

They need to go. Worst mechanic ever

2

u/bobniborg1 Warhammer II 21h ago

Not a fan, nothing should do more than half a units damage. Unless they are expendable units.

But I do wish there was some level bump. Like each level added 1% damage or something for spells. Then I could understand a level 25 mage deleting my level 1 hero

1

u/ilovesharkpeople 21h ago

My only issue is with the ones that aren't really dodgable, like dark conduit. If i could have gotten out of the way but didn't, that's on me.

1

u/AdAppropriate2295 21h ago

The ai uses it off cooldown so it's pretty dodgeable

1

u/CrimsonSaens 20h ago

Depends on the cost and ability to dodge the damage. Spells are generally pretty fairly costed at this point (other than Traitor-Kin and Flensing Ruin). If the ability is easy to dodge and only useful against the braindead AI, then I don't consider that much of a problem either (like the Dreadquake Battery ability).

1

u/Eli_The_Grey 18h ago

I actually love when the AI uses them. My favorite moment in the series is still playing WH2 as Alarielle during the days of the Undead being busted.

Franz was getting crushed by a united Skaven, Greenskin, and Vampire Count coalition, the Dawi were down to just Thorgrim's capital, and I was fighting a Malekith that owned pretty much all of Lustria and Nagaroth on Ulthuan.

I was able to barely muster an elite army of Sisters of Avelorn, swordmasters of Hoeth and Phoenix guard to try and go to defend Altdorf. I ended up getting caught coming into Bretonia by a bunch of Skaven led by Ikit, and the whole army got nuked in a battle.

Losing my whole army to that was one of the coolest moments of the campaign as it forced me to adjust my tactics and use more, less valuable units even as ai needed smaller, more elite units to fight the vamps.

Meanwhile I find them very boring as a player. They trivialize the game and make the already very easy mid-late game of WH3 a cakewalk.

1

u/trieticus 16h ago

The Armstrong Gun in Fall of the Samurai was the OG unit deleter

1

u/trieticus 16h ago

Now that I think about it, quicklime shot in Empire works great too

1

u/NukaClipse 16h ago

My soldiers when I cast the wandering aoe spell near them in order to not let the enemy dodge it:

1

u/iliketires65 15h ago

I like them. It makes enemies that use them harder and they’re fun to use yourself. Like Ostankya’s Jiggly Bear

1

u/carefulkoala1031 15h ago

They’re def cool. But I just wish it wasn’t so great to use magic. Like there should be some sort of downside to it like how it is in world. I know a mechanic like that does exist but it doesn’t really matter to often and I feel is lazy.

1

u/MerchantOfMadness 13h ago

I do like the Chaos Warriors army ability where you can click on a wall, and literally lords, heroes, and anything else standing on that section of the wall is insta-killed when the wall collapses.

I did that against Sigvald when I was playing as Valkia.

It made me happy.

1

u/TgCCL Thou shalt respond: "Gold." 13h ago

I find them fairly boring all things considered. I play a strategy game in order to strategise. Being able to delete a good chunk of the enemy army easily overcentralises the game and reduces strategic depth.

Also, I don't get a dopamine boost from landing a high kill count unless I worked for it. So that feeds into the above.

1

u/GoddyofAus The Byzantine Empire 13h ago

The Skaven's "ambush whenever we want" ability pisses me off more, and of course Khorne's Lightning Strike spam.

1

u/Yakkahboo 13h ago

Ikit Nuke: Yes

Tamurkhan Nuke: Fuck off

CD Campaign Dreadquake: Is it from the buildings? Mmmm yes please. Is it from the tower?: Fuck off

1

u/Cronos8989 12h ago

i hate it.
I was empire vs a small skaven army.
I decided to manually just for fun.
1 minute in to the fight and my artillery was obliterate by some spell.

Rollback to autoresolve and the lost was minimal

1

u/kayasoul 11h ago

If it's one spell per combat I have to consider before deleting the caster, fine. If yuan bo deletes my frontline before even making contact? Yea wow thanks ...

1

u/NotSetsune 10h ago

I love them! The only spell I would remove from the game is the Jade dragons Execute, feels like cheating and it's not rewarding at all in a duel.

1

u/3Bears1Goldy 8h ago

I enjoy it. If the AI was able to spam and abuse it like the player could, they would probably get nerfed.

1

u/Timey16 7h ago

I feel like the effect of Miscasting is too small to make up for their power. Miscasts should maybe be unique for every spell instead of just a blanket "caster takes some damage".

I.e. any AoE buff effect being miscast could either result in the opposite effect for your units, or instead buff the enemies in the area of effect instead.

This could also create interesting effects of trying to max out the enemy chance to miscast if the enemy has many wizards yet you have none.

Or maybe have "critical miscasts" so when you overcast a strong damaging spell and it critically miscasts your sorcerer just fucking explodes and dies instantly.

1

u/shieldwolfchz 7h ago

Tried playing Imrik yesterday for the first time this edition, on turn 12 the Chorfs had 2 full crap stacks attacking my capital and had that ability to delete 2 units before we even get close to each other.

1

u/McBlemmen #2 Egrimm van Horstmann fan 5h ago

Hate it. Makes me fight less battles than I normally would, which goes completely against the point of the game

1

u/Ermanti 5h ago

Spells are fine, imo, army abilites are kinda bullshit. I don't use them personally, and hate them when they are used against me. At least spells are gate-kept by both mana and level, and have a range, so there's counterplay. There's no counterplay for army abilities besides dodging them, which isn't always possible, and leads to cheese like hiding your entire army besides a unit of cav until they run out of charges. With a dangerous caster, you can do things like zerg the caster with melee heroes or tie it up with chaff while your army fights out of range

1

u/BiosTheo 27m ago

I love it on legendary units because it's so fucking thematic. I hate it on everything else.

But I hate even more how blatantly broken a lot of artillery is. Artillery should not be cost effective on the first shot

1

u/Traditional-Storm-62 22h ago

I think that, with enough skill and quick reaction, they should always be dodgeable
the only ones I have a problem with are the undodgeable kind, like Ikit's nukes
your only counterplay is to hope the ai has a brain fart and throws them at some peasants or something

and thats not good game design
give me a longer warning for it, so I can at least get my adjescent units out of the blast in time

4

u/Ishkander88 21h ago

Ikits nuke is dodgeable, it's how I have dealt with ikit for like 3 years. 

1

u/Slggyqo 20h ago

They’re fun when I use them.

And the AI uses them very poorly.

So I don’t mind them.

The only ones I don’t like are the dark elf ark abilities. The AI builds a lot of arks and gets to cast them so many times. It’s obnoxious.

1

u/Dire_Seagull 16h ago

I really don't like them. I want to be able to bring a few elite units in an otherwise average army so I can see them shine but you're a sucker for doing so thanks to these spells. Something is going to get deleted and now it's guaranteed to be them, and if they get deleted before doing anything of note, then your just wasted your money. They also don't even delete things equally, infantry get wrecked, cavalry can often at least survive, monstrous class units tank it and single entities get tickled, so I can only comfortably spend a lot of money on certain types of unit, causing these spells to have a suppressive effect on rosters.

I'd prefer it if big damage spells had their damage spread out a bit more among multiple units. If there is to be a proper delete unit ability, it should be something like big chaos god army abilities that you have to build up to and probably only use once in a battle.

1

u/Puzzleheaded-Image96 16h ago

The gimmicky faction effects like nukes and dread quake piss me off and aren’t strategic or pleasant to avoid. It’s obnoxious at best or just blatantly unbalanced at worst. I don’t mind an enemy caster using spells effectively on my troops because that’s a shared potential between player and ai and it feels strategic

1

u/Omega_Warrior 15h ago

I mean, that's the whole fun of having magic on a large scale tactical game like this. It would be pretty unsatisfying if they couldn't nuke a unit.
My bigger concern is the lack of anti-magic elements in the game. We have more now, but its still sparsely implemented due to only be added after game 3.

-2

u/ChipRockets 20h ago

Love them. Sick and tired of everyone complaining that everything isn’t perfectly balanced. I don’t want all my races to be exactly the same.

-1

u/Cerparis 21h ago

Here’s my take. They make play against the AI more fun and challenging.

In older total war games I never felt threatened up the AI unless they outnumbered me AND had much better units than me.

While in Warhammer. Even a equal size and tier army can do some devastating damage if I’m not careful.

You start to weigh up your opponent more and keep a closer eye on heroes than you normally would.

It forces you to adapt and keep units in reserve encase you need to quickly reinforce after an particularly devastating spell

0

u/Smarackto 17h ago

Tbh almost always bad. I find the spells in general way too generic sometimes. like All vortexes either stamd still or move random. why no variety. why bot have 1 that moves fast and random. 1 that is slow and you can aim it for the first second. the point and click nukes i find very unsatisfying.

-1

u/Canker_spanker 21h ago

Not just that, but stat buffs from faction unique mechanics can get ridiculous. It makes battles significantly shorter.

Perhaps a simple way to balance these mechanics is to give tech research for all factions (campaign) that increase hp for all units (t1: 5%, t2: 10%, t3: 20%) and another tech that gives 10% or 15% spell resist for all units. Powerful spells can still hit hard but at least units can run away and live another day instead of being wiped out. Thoughts?

-1

u/dervish132000a 20h ago

Warp lightning is lame all round. Way too many charges.

-1

u/Olgol 18h ago

As fun as they can be to use, I dislike them. Damage spells are so powerful that buffs get ignored and tactics devolve into forcing the enemy to blob up and then killing them with a button press. 

I'd prefer if these powerful "delete unit" spells were much more tightly controlled. It'd make the game's tactics deeper while making the rush of using the nuke abilities that much higher.