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That’s because Total War: Warhammer 3 is fresh out of the oven and thus has its own host of problems (as is tradition for newly released Total War games). Generally, the game’s good and is enough to get every Total War or Warhammer fan excited. But the developers might have to address some issues and implement these solutions before all that excitement gets replaced by frustration.
10 More Faction Options
The previous Total War: Warhammer games did come out with a rather limited roster but at least they’re highly varied. While Total War: Warhammer 3 technically has eight factions right off the bat, five of those are from Chaos and sure enough, they share some units and buildings. In fact, the biggest difference among the five Chaos factions is in the campaign map.
So essentially, there are really only four factions available at the moment, especially in the temporary absence of the Mortal Empires DLC or other faction DLCs. What’s more, the Chaos factions could have used more different units to better set themselves apart.
9 Fairer Auto-resolve Metrics
This has always been a constant problem in Total War games, even historical titles. There are campaign scenarios when the AI comes up with a nonsense army stack that heavily favors the auto-resolve results while being clunky in the actual battle map. Total War: Warhammer 3 is still affected by this.
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Players can even test it out for themselves by picking the Slaanesh faction as Slaanesh’s troops lack armor and are glass cannons. If they go up against a heavily armored but mathematically and practically weaker army in auto-resolve, they would still lose since that mechanic favors armored units. So good luck skipping small battles as Slaanesh or with a lightly armored army.
8 Campaign Victory Condition Overhaul
Since there’s no Mortal Empires DLC yet, a big chunk of gameplay for Total War: Warhammer 3 involves the narrative campaign. It’s similar to the Vortex campaign in the second game except for the common complaint about the third game is how the victory condition forces players into a single playstyle.
Forget about expanding fast and taking settlement after settlement here (even in just a single front). Doing that will spawn too many Chaos rifts and can force players into the defensive. This also forces players to leave armies around the rifts, resulting in wasted resources and opportunities.
7 Less Tedious Settlement Battles
Clunky settlement battles or sieges are likey a staple or tradition in Total War games these days. Even in Warhammer 3, settlement battles are still dreaded slogs. The AI still has a pathing issue, especially in crossing and fighting over narrow streets and pathways. This affects both the player and the enemy army.
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Towers have also gotten more persistent here and can respawn too much, leading to frustrating battles of attrition. Moreover, the AI often doesn’t know how to handle settlement battles and will make questionable decisions or maneuvers. Improvements to settlement AI are sorely needed here.
6 Fewer Chaos Realm Invasion Penalties
One of the most fun new gimmicks in Warhammer 3 is the ability to grab the bull by the horns and assault Chaos itself in their own home court. On paper, it’s an exhilarating campaign scenario but in practice, it can be too taxing on other factions.
At most, players can bring only one or two armies in Chaos Realms, and only the faction leader’s army is allowed. The problem is, the faction leader will accumulate some bad traits while in the Chaos Realms. These traits do go away but they take too much time to disappear, leaving the faction leaders benched for too long after a prolonged Chaos Realm outing. Lessening the severity of these invasions won’t affect gameplay too much since it’s mostly just thematic.
5 AI That Doesn’t Cheat
The Chaos rifts and Realm invasion penalties wouldn’t have been that big of a problem if only the AI is also affected the same way as the player. They don’t seem to have problems dealing with Chaos rifts and are able to expand without problems. Moreover, they also don’t seem affected by Chaos Realm invasion penalties.
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Of course, there’s also the usual AI surprise doom stack army that it keeps churning out effortlessly, especially when their cities are cornered. The obvious solution is to subject the AI to the same penalties and hurdles as the players go through as there are already enough challenges and obstacles in the game.
4 Smarter AI Pathing In Sieges
As mentioned earlier, the AI, while smarter during field battles compared to their older game counterparts, are still walking disasters when it comes to sieges. They tend to commit some buggy maneuvers that will cost them the entire battle. They’re still easy to abuse, much like how they were in older Total War games.
It’s not just the enemy AI that’s affected by pathing issues too, but also the player’s army. Good luck getting everyone across a bridge, or a gate, or a street while they’re under fire without shouting at the screen. Moreover, the automation can be abysmal at times and a whole infantry unit will get wiped out by archers if the player forgets about them as they will literally do nothing while they’re being killed depending on some toggles.
3 Better Faction Balancing
Total War: Warhammer 3 hasn’t been out a month yet but there are already some go-to units for building doom stacks and cheesing through the whole game. Other factions perform better than others and some spells that were previously normal or just decent in the older games got too jacked up.
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The Pendulum spells, for example, are now completely capable of wiping out one to three units for a low Winds of Magic cost. Meanwhile, the Slaanesh faction effortlessly wins manual battles with their Daemonettes and makes vassal factions way too easily. This might change in the future, especially for multiplayer.
2 Performance Issue Fixes
Over time, this kind of problem for Total War: Warhammer 3 will surely go away. But at the moment, the game needs some heavy optimizations as even flagship graphics cards such as the RTX 2080 or 3080 experience hiccups when running the game even if they should be able to render it at max settings smoothly.
Stuttering is a common issue as the game is also CPU intensive. Oh, and players better get used to the loading screen if the game is running on a traditional hard disk as loading per battle or campaign map transition might take a while (around three to five minutes).
1 Fixes To Bugs & Glitches
Yet another line of issues that will surely be fixed as time goes by are the numerous bugs and glitches. Some of them can even be game-breaking. At the moment, there are plenty of reports where the game can crash if players tab out (alt + tab). Worst case scenario, that keyboard command might not even work which is questionable for a 2022 game.
There are other types of crashes such as after a loading screen and also some unit movement glitches where for some reason, some units will ignore commands and freeze after being ordered to charge. In time, all of them might get fixed and all the chaos will subside; only then can players have fun with the real Chaos.
Total War: Warhammer 3 is available on PC.
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