Creative Assembly just rolled out an update for Total War: Warhammer 3. Mostly focusing on improvements for Immortal Empires, it's also got a slew of balance changes, content updates, and bug fixes. Here's a glance at the highlights.
If you're like me and have had a love affair with da green boyz since before there were cell phones, you'll be stoked to see that the original eight Legendary Lords from the first Total War Warhammer have received new intro videos. Emperor Karl Franz looks majestic, I guess, but the real highlight is seeing Grimgor Ironhide and Azhag the Slaughterer with updated graphics. Waaaagh!
Immortal Empires' scope is massive, there's no debating that, but sometimes comparing it to some of the previous campaign maps left me wondering where all the stuff was. Playing through the main scenarios in Total War: Warhammer 2 felt like I was discovering a cool new landmark everywhere I turned, but sometimes the gigantic map in Immortal Empires felt a little barren. CA is addressing that by reintroducing some of the major settlements and landmarks from these earlier maps, like Karak Eight Peaks and the Royal Ellyrian Stables.
In addition, they've added some brand new landmarks focused on the more recent Chaos factions. There's a new one just down the street from Skarbrand's starting area that provides 100 skulls a turn, which is great news for anyone looking to decorate Khorne's throne.
Balance changes include a little nerf to the crumbling armies of the Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings, which is probably a good thing. They also tweaked the scripting for dodging projectiles—on easier difficulties, the AI will still eat your goblin doom divers straight to the nugget, but they'll dodge out of the way on Legendary. When they're shooting you, on those higher difficulties the computer will stop aiming at whatever comes into range first and start picking softer targets. Watch out for cannon.
Adjusting some of the campaign goals for the factions is in the cards too, making them line up a bit more with the shuffled starting locations that came with IE. Also, they're adding the endgame scenarios to multiplayer, so just when you're starting to get the upper hand on your buddies you can look forward to a swarm of pissed-off dwarfs coming for your lunch.
This is probably the last update before the end of the year, but CA has announced another State of the Game post will come out before the holidays. Here are the full patch notes, but if you're just interested in the general gameplay updates you'll find those below.
- GENERAL UPDATES
- Added a large number of landmarks present in Mortal Empires and the Realm of Chaos map to Immortal Empires, and made them available for WARHAMMER III factions where appropriate.
- Added several new landmark variants for Monogod factions near their Immortal Empires starting locations.
- Added a number of 10-slot settlements to Immortal Empires which had not yet been ported from Mortal Empires or the Realm of Chaos.
- Introduced new landmarks for Nurgle in Pigbarter, Tzeentch in the Golden Tower, Khorne in Galbaraz and Slaanesh in Tor Elyr.
- Fixed an issue where Savage Orc garrison buildings weren’t enabling minor settlement battles.
- Fixed an issue where Environment Types would sometimes display incorrectly in battle (this includes Dark Elves, Greenskins, Ogre Kingdoms and Skaven types appearing when they shouldn’t).
- Fixed an issue where Bretonnia’s unique resource (Chivalry) would appear as if it was being granted to other, non-Bretonnian factions.
- Attacking an army while in the Ambush stance will no longer prevent your opponent from bringing reinforcements.
- The Sires of Mourkain faction is no longer limited to one army.
- Fixed an issue causing the leader of the Blood Keepers faction in Immortal Empires to be mysteriously absent on turn one.
- Improvements have been made to unit coordination when queueing up to enter a single breach.
- Unit columns are now better spaced to prevent units from adjacent queues blobbing together.
- Improved how units move to prevent them from blobbing together while attempting to enter a settlement.
- Endgame multiplayer victory objectives in Immortal Empires now require capturing the capital of all other players not in your team (this resolves the issue of receiving both the victory and defeat screen simultaneously).
- Fixed an issue where one faction’s currency would be replaced by another’s upon re-loading a save.
- RULES & SYSTEMS
- Offering to join a war alongside an endgame faction to fight a hated enemy will now always grant a positive effect to said faction’s opinion of that deal.
- Vassal factions will now join their master’s wars once again, as intended.
- The Sword of Khaine dilemmas will now properly display the Sword of Khaine item details in the dilemma panel.
- Fixed a script error that could occur with the Black Pyramid endgame if the pyramid is controlled by vampires.
- Addressed an oversight wherein some Dark Fortresses were unable to build walls, resulting in unintended field battles.
- Dilemmas that target a character with loyalty will now show the character’s loyalty with the character portrait (thanks, ShadowStorm1985!).
- AI RULES & LOGIC
- The AI is now more likely to accept a peace treaty when far away from the player.
- The AI’s selection of provinces to build allied outposts in has been improved in some cases.
- EXPLOIT FIXES
- Fixed an exploit wherein the Underway/Teleport/Tunnelling stances could be used to bypass the Great Bastion in Immortal Empires.
