Total War: Warhammer 2 – Early Thoughts
I’ve put in some time into Total War: Warhammer 2 (mostly towards Skaven) and had some thoughts about the game and campaigns:
- Queek Headtaker’s campaign is listed as hard while Lord Skrolk’s is listed as normal; I think it should be reversed. Lord Skrolk’s starting position puts him up against the Spine of Sotek Dwarves and two Lizardmen factions immediately. It wasn’t unusual for me to get triple-teamed before the tenth turn, and after a few restarts I decided to shelve that campaign for now while I figure out how to approach it.
- Queek’s campaign isn’t too bad but the immediate problem is a lack of food; the juggling of food and playing a bit eventually created the realization that food doesn’t matter. Why? Simply because the penalties for not having food can be ignored. Even on legendary, -2 public order isn’t too bad with the scaling public order buildings available, and -10 leadership is fairly minor once your units become veterans. The rest of the penalties don’t really matter as long as they don’t affect income generated through provinces and upkeep.
- Skaven play a lot like the Dwarves: Excellent artillery, a hero that boosts artillery performance, decent front-line infantry, and a lack of cavalry (if you’re not counting the Doomwheel). I haven’t settled into a preferred army composition yet. Any halfway decent Skaven army in the campaign must field 4+ artillery pieces in order to make up for the loss of parity between Skaven infantry versus other faction infantry of similar cost tiers.
- The race for the Vortex is kind of a silly mechanic that doesn’t seem to add much depth to gameplay.
