Total War: Warhammer Analysis
January 21, 2017
1 Overview
Total War: Warhammer is a turn-based strategy and real-time tactics game
developed by Creative Assembly and published by Sega in 2016. It is based on the
Warhammer franchise from Games Workshop.
2 Formal Elements
2.1 Players
In Total War: Warhammer, the player takes control of a faction in the Warhammer
universe.
- Greenskins: Their major resource is gold, but one of their unique mechanics is ”fightiness.” This is a meter for each army that fills as they raid and win battles, but drops during inactivity or losses. If it drops below a certain point, they will fight amongst each other, resulting in losses.
- Chaos Lords: Their major resource is ”favour” (presumably from the Chaos god), and unlike other factions, they have no buildings.
- Beastmen: These are like a combination of the chaos and orcs factions: they have no buildings, their major resource is ”favour,” and each army has a bestial rage bar that works the same as the ”fightiness” bar for the orcs.
- Dwarfs: Their major resource is gold, but their unique mechanic is grudges. Each time a faction raids them, takes a settlement from them or otherwise performs some action detrimental to them, a ”Grudge” is issued, which will be a revenge quest against that faction. Letting grudges accumulate unanswered results in lowered public order and other penalties.
- Empire: Their major resource is gold, but the player must assign different lords to ”Offices,” such as Treasurer, etc, that have an effect on how the empire is run.
- Vampire Counts: Almost all the units for the vampire counts are undead, so they will never flee in battle. Further, as they have no ranged units, playing them represents a challenge on the battlefield. Their major resource is Dark Magic, and another unique mechanic is that they can recruit units at the sites of major battles throughout the campaign map for greatly reduced prices.
- Wood Elves: The elves use gold and Amber, a resource which can be attained through completing quests, trade, and occupying outposts. Like the Empire, they have Offices, to which the player must assign lords.
Each faction has unique units, lords, heroes, abilities, and buildings.
2.2 Objectives
Each faction has unique objectives, which involve completing the lord’s quest line,
occupying specific settlements, and eliminating certain factions.
2.3 Rules
Total War: Warhammer is an incredibly complicated game with many rules,
interacting systems, and moving parts which affect other moving parts which affect
other moving parts which affect …You get the idea. As a small illustration, consider
the diagram here subsection 1.
This shows some of the basic relationships between money generation, keep
upgrades, population growth, and public order. Blue elements indicate positive
effects. For example, building an upgrade to the keep will increase the amount of
money generated by the keep itself, and also by any buildings in the province.
Further, it increases the rate at which population is generated. The red elements
indicate negative effects. Upgrading the keep increases the amount of population
required to get a surplus population point, making it more difficult to get that. It
also increases the number of surplus population points required for upgrading the
keep and the cost for doing so. There are technologies that, once researched, affect
the amount of money, public order or population generated each turn, as well as
buildings that have similar effects. Taken together, these feedback loops are similar to
the Engine Building mechanic described in Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design
by Joris Dormans and Ernest Adams. The elements in red, however, are
part of the Dynamic Friction and Stopping Mechanism patterns in the same
book.
2.3.1 Turn Structure and Actions
The player will probably spend a large amount of time looking at the world map. The
world map shows the landscape from a standard 3/4 top-down camera that can be
zoomed in/out and rotated around. The fog-of-war is active on this map, and the
player will be prevented from viewing armies or heroes that are outside of any of the
player’s cities’ or armies’ sight radius.
A top-down abstracted version is also available, which shows what faction controls
which province and any armies and heroes that are visible to the player.
The player can take many actions from this screen. By clicking on an army’s flag,
the player can recruit new units into it, dismiss units from it, trade units between a
neighboring army, or give orders to move the army to a different location, to attack
another army or lay siege to a city. Hero units can be embedded in an army, or they
can move independently inside one’s own provinces or perform actions against other
factions, like assaulting their armies, damaging their buildings, or assassinating their
heroes or lords.
The player is limited to 20 units per army, although if several armies are close
together they can participate in the battle at the same time.
By clicking on a city’s icon, the player may view the garrison, see what buildings
have been built and which ones can be upgraded, or decide to destroy a building or
build a new one.
Viewing the faction’s available quests, objectives, and research trees can also be
accomplished quickly from the main map.
The last set of actions is diplomacy. The player may initiate a wide variety of
actions, for example
- Declare War
- Demand/Offer Payment
- Demand faction become a vassal
- Demand faction join faction
- Offer Trade Agreement
- Offer Non-aggression Pact
- Demand/Offer to Join War
- Demand Military Alliance
When the player has completed all the actions they want to perform during a
turn, they can use the advance turn button (shaped like an hour glass) in the lower
right corner. The campaign AI controlled factions then take their own turns,
initiating the same actions available to the player.
2.3.2 Real-Time Battles
The camera controls similarly in the real-time battles as for the turn-based
campaign map. The play can click on units or select groups of units and have
them move around on the map and attack enemy units. Gameplay can be
paused, slowed down, or sped up at any time to allow the player to plan their
actions.
Since the beginning of the Total War franchise, the real-time tactics have been
based on a rock, paper, scissors-like relationship among archers, infantry, and cavalry
units.
This simple relationship has been complicated and muddied by different kinds of
infantry units with slightly different movement speeds, attack ranges, attack values,
defense values, in addition to different kinds of cavalry units, the addition of siege
weapons and firearms, and in the latest iteration, by the game-changing addition of
magical powers. The terrain further affects the relationship, as archers positioned on
a high steep hill might be able to take out a cavalry unit before it reaches them,
while hills will also block firearms, which must have straight line-of-sight to their
targets.
2.3.3 Faction Research
Each faction has a ”unique” set of technology trees to be researched. I say that in
quotes because although the names and named effects of each technology is limited to
that faction, the effects follow a general pattern. For example, the Vampire Counts
have a technology called Infiltrate Noble Houses, which gives them a +10 in
diplomatic relations with all factions. Meanwhile, the Dwarfs have one called Dwarfen
Diplomats, with exactly the same effect. The number of turns required to research
these technologies is quite different, because these research options are located in
different places in their respective research trees, but most of the other technologies
are similarly themed. On the military side, there are bonuses for ranged units,
infantry units, cavalry , or siege units, and reductions in the costs or upkeep for the
same. On the civil side, there are bonuses for trade, growth, or income generating
buildings.
There are truly unique technologies, but the vast majority are shared among the
factions under different names.
2.3.4 Heroes and Lords’ Skills and Traits
Continuing the trend of combining different game genres, Total War: Warhammer,
like several previous games in the Total War franchise, features hero and lord units
which have stats, skills, and traits which can be modified during and by play.
As the player leads these units in battles and missions, they gain XP and and
earn skill points which can be invested in several different skills. The skills might be
simple stat boosts, magic spells, or abilities which affect how the unit behaves in
battle or on the campaign map.
2.3.5 Heroes and Lords’ Equipment and Inventory
As can be seen in the picture here, the lords also have equipment. These include
armor, weapons, magical items, followers, banners, and mounts. Equipment can be
gained through completing special quests or through battle. As with skills, stats, and
traits, these allow the player to further customize their heroes and lords to particular
playstyles.
2.4 Procedures
There are several procedures that the player will engage in during play.
- Assembling an Army: Putting together an army is a multi-turn process in Total War: Warhammer. Many units take several turns to train, and the best units for each faction are usually unlocked after upgrading the buildings which produce them, and by building auxiliary buildings. The units, like the lords and heroes, gain XP based on their kills in battle, and this is automatically used to increase their rank. Increased rank provides increases to their stats, like damage, speed, defense, etc. Due to the prohibitive upkeep on armies, building a large powerful army requires a lot of economic management throughout the player’s provinces. This also makes building such an army a more time and thought consuming process.
- Engage in Diplomacy: Although presented in a bare bones fashion above, each turn the player may try to engage multiple factions in diplomatic actions.
- Manage Economy: Each settlement and province, and many buildings have the ability to affect the economy of your faction in some way. The keeps all increase the amount of income generated per turn, while resource generators like Lumber Yards, Iron Mines, or Gold Mines also generate money and resources that can be traded with other factions for even more money. With all these ways to make money, it might seem that fielding huge armies would be no problem, but the designers have given the lords and the units in their armies quite large upkeep costs, so that having one large army of experienced units might consume more than 5,000 gold per turn. Managing how you produce money is therefore critical to success.
- Engage in Battle: With a name like Total War, you know you will engage in battles, and the series lives up to its name. The battles in Total War: Warhammer are some of the most beautiful, dramatic, and dynamic of the whole series. Positioning and correctly maneuvering troops is critical, as is considering the special auras of both the enemies’ leaders and your own, and the dynamics of the units themselves. As an example, there are gigantic units which receive special bonuses when fighting units weak to them, as well as receiving extra penalties when up against units that are strong against them.
2.5 Resources
2.5.1 Abstract
- MONEY: Each faction has their own version of money. The Dwarfs use gold, the Vampires use Dark Magic, etc. These basically work the same way for all factions: the player is given a base rate of 2500 per turn, to which will be added taxes, revenue from buildings, and from which will be subtracted losses due to being raided, construction costs, unit upkeep etc.
- Rank: Each faction has a dynamically generated rank, which compares the strength of that faction against every other faction. The level and number of armies, in addition to the number of settlements and the power of one’s economy play a role in determining this number.
- Reputation: Each faction has a reputation with other factions. Like money, numerous factors affect one’s reputation with another faction, including racial effects, recent events between the two, (dis)approval of one’s actions against a third faction, etc.
- Corruption: Corruption is created by units and buildings which belong to either the Chaos Lords or Vampire Counts factions, but these two factions actually create different kinds of corruption. For the Vampire Counts, Vampiric Corruption will help increase the public order of a province, making it less likely to rebel, while for other factions it has the opposite effect. Chaos corruption works the same for the Chaos -affiliated factions.
- XP: All lords, heroes, and units receive XP for doing damage in battle and for completing quests. Units upgrade their stats automatically, while the player has a degree of control over how to upgrade lords and heroes.
- Health: All units have health that works exactly the same as health in every game ever made. The only twist is that lords can be brought back to life after waiting a certain number of turns.
- Stats: All units have stats, many many stats. These include melee damage rating, range damage rating, range attack distance, melee and ranged defense, movement speed, charge bonus damage, and others. They are affected by leveling up.
- Morale: A unit’s morale basically tells you how it is feeling. This could be affected by how it is doing in battle, whether it is being attacked from the flanks or rear, whether a lord or hero is near it, magic spells cast on it, and several other factors. Units with low morale have a much greater chance of running from battle.
- Stamina: Stamina indicates how much energy the unit has for movement and attacks. Units with low stamina will move more slowly and attack less frequently.
- Ammo: Ranged units like archers, catapults, and riflemen have limited ammunition for their weapons. They can only continue firing while ammo lasts, and after it runs out, they must switch to melee combat.
2.5.2 Physical
- Items: Lords and heroes can acquire items which increase different stats or which give special abilities. If the lord dies or his army is defeated in battle, these may be lost or stolen.
- Units: Given that units level up as they survive battles and deal damage to foes, it is easy for the player to become attached to them and to try to keep them around for the whole game. They also cost money and time to train, incentivizing keeping them around for as long as possible.
- Lords and Heroes: There are several types of lords and heroes. Lords can be magic, ranged, or melee combat focused bad-asses, or they could focus more on administration. The best way to play each lord depends on their skill trees. Heroes are more generic, but still feature items, skills and stats like lords do. Heroes cannot lead armies in battle, but they can assassinate other lords or heroes, damage buildings in a settlement, lay traps, or make speeches to foment rebellion and public discontent.
- Settlements: There are a huge number of different settlements in the game. These can be taken over, raided, or razed to the ground. If the player decides to occupy one, it can be used as a staging ground for planning attacks or building an army, or even as an economic resource generator, all depending on the buildings which the player constructs there.
- Buildings: Each settlement can contain several buildings, and upgrading the keep increases the number of available slots for buildings. Buildings basically fall into two categories: military and economic. Like many other aspects of gameplay, the player must decide in which settlement to place a building.
2.6 Conflicts
2.6.1 Stability versus Speed
This plays into the long-term versus short-term investment conflict that is common in
many strategy titles. The player may try to expand their territory as rapidly as
possible by taking over other faction’s settlements. However, there is an immediate
penalty to public order in a recently conquered settlement, and it is quite easy for
recently conquered territories to become rebellious, forcing the player to backtrack
and deal with the rebellions. On the other hand, eliminating a weak nearby enemy
quickly can give the player access to resources and income they might not otherwise
receive.
2.6.2 Money versus Military
Since a diplomatic option is usually possible, the player may choose to focus efforts
on the construction of economic buildings and research options that enhance their
economic power. With enough gifts to hostile factions, they can usually be turned
into allies, thus making military investment moot.
2.6.3 Conquest versus Diplomacy
This plays similarly to the above conflict and might be subsumed under it. Inside of
attacking one’s neighbors, the player attempts to maintain friendly relations with
them.
2.7 Boundaries
2.7.1 Map
There are factional restrictions on occupying settlements. For example, the humans
and vampires can occupy only the plains settlements, while dwarfs and orcs can
occupy the mountainous and wasteland settlements. These have been implemented,
according to the developers, to mirror the behavior of these factions in the
tabletop wargame. The Chaos lords and Beastmen are similarly prevented from
having any settlements at all, while the Elves may possess any settlement
type.
The map is also limited to a small area of the Total War, representing most of the
Old World.
2.7.2 Factions
Due to the built-in relationships between the factions, it is basically impossible to
become allies with certain factions. For example, the Dwarfs are basically prevented
from becoming allies with the Greenskins.
2.8 Outcomes
The game allows for a wide range of outcomes. In Total War: Warhammer, as in
other games in the Total War series, the player may plan and scheme and
battle for 35 or 50 hours and still in the end be defeated. The player may
instead use bribes, diplomacy, and economic trading to gather allies and
grow in power and status among the nations of the world. Or the player
might raid, plunder, pillage, and burn their way through the world, leaving a
path of fire and corpses in their wake. Even a combination of the above is
possible.
The state of the world at the end of play could be one of (mostly) peaceful
alliances and trading partnerships, or of huge regions subjugated under one
rule.
3 Dynamic Elements
Total War: Warhammer is a complex, multi-layered experience that reacts in many
ways to the player’s actions and simulated many different AI controlled
factions.
3.1 Economy
The player receives a small base income of 2500 money units per turn, but this can
be heavily modified by a wide array of other factors:
- the number of settlements controlled
- the number of upgrades to the keep of each settlement
- which technologies the player has researched
- the number, type, and upgrade level of various economic buildings
- income from raiding and sacking other factions
- being raided or sacked by other factions
- gifts from other factions
- trade agreements with other factions
- skills, followers, and traits of heroes and lords
- number and upkeep requirements for army units
The player’s economic status will thus shift and flow with each new turn of
events.
3.2 Diplomatic Relations
Although this system can be gamed to some extent, the AI controlled factions react
in mostly reasonable and predictable ways to the player’s actions towards them and
towards other factions. Actions that the faction approves of will increase their
disposition towards the player, while opposite actions will have the opposite
effect. Since each faction has an opinion regarding other factions as well, the
player’s actions towards other factions will affect their approval with the first
faction.
3.3 Real-time Battles
The AI controls the placement, orientation, and pathing for their units in the
real-time battles. As the player makes moves, the AI reacts, attempting to counter
them. The AI is not just passive, however; it attempts to enact a battle plan that it
has judged will be advantageous to it.
The units undergo loss from magic, melee and ranged damage, and they evaluate
their situation to arrive at a morale rating, which if dire enough, may cause them to
run away.
4 Dramatic Elements
There are three main types of story elements in Total War: Warhammer:
- those introduced to guide the player through the game experience at the beginning of each faction’s campaign
- those that emerge dynamically as the player battles, trades, and forms alliances with other factions.
- those that are part of the quest line for each major lord
4.1 Characters
Each faction has two legendary lords available for the player to choose from at the
beginning of a campaign. The legendary lords have unique abilities and equipment,
the later which are unlocked by leveling up the lord and by performing special
actions associated with a quest on the campaign map. These actions could be as
simple as fighting a specific battle, deploying a particular unit to an area, or having
set units in one’s army.
There are textboxes describing what happens off screen during these quests, and
the lord will give a special speech before any quest battles.
In addition to any legendary lords, there are numerous minor lords, plus different
categories of hero units. In contrast to the legendary lords, these minor lords
and hero units do not have any unique quests or stories associated with
them.
As detailed before, the lord and hero units are customizable in terms of
equipment, abilities, followers, and mounts, all of which could have both battle and
campaign effects.
4.2 Story
Although there are limited story elements contained in the quests for each legendary
lord, there is little overarching story. Perhaps the only overarching theme is that
”Winter is coming,” to borrow a phrase from another popular franchise. The Chaos
Lords are gathering strength in the North, and after turn 100, they begin their
invasion of the southern lands.
5 Conclusion
Total War: Warhammer is a huge, complicated game of strategy and tactics,
featuring at present seven different playable factions, each with different units, lords,
heroes, buildings, technologies, and starting locations. Although Creative Assembly
has been slaving away on historically based strategy games for 17 years, this game
marks the first time that they have done a fantasy strategy game and their
eponymous creativity is on full display.
5.1 Potent Elements
The battles create all the feelings of the Siege of Helm’s Deep or the Battle of
Pelennor Fields, combined with those of a well-played chess game when everything
goes your way, and if everything doesn’t you get to imagine how Mordor felt in those
movies. They are big, loud, dramatic, bloody, and demand constant care to the
positioning and disposition of one’s troops.
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