Warhammer Classic Total War Combat
TL;DR makes combat to be somewhat closer to older Total War games.
My personal mod that I made for WH2TW and now for WH3TW so that I can enjoy this game’s combat more.
Changes I’ve made:
– Melee combat is much more brutal and faster, elite infantry that are designed to shred infantry will do so extremely quickly.
– No more RNG shields, instead shields are added in the form of frontal melee defense/armor. This means that armor piercing weapons (like guns) will go through shields, but frontally things like arrows will be blocked.
– Added a ‘dodge’ mechanic to light and nimble units to offset heavily armored units, this is RNG based, but is again only frontally.
– Arrows now have very little armor piercing damage but very high raw HP damage, so the less armored a unit is, the more they will be ripped apart.
– Firearms and guns are almost entirely armor piercing, but have even slower reloads, so you can pull some Shogun 2 tactics if you want. Good for dealing with heavy shielded enemies.
– Crossbows are a bridge between the two. Not great, not terrible.
– ALL ranged weapons (that aren’t homing magical ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥) have inaccuracy, if you shoot into blobs expect to hit your own troops. (Durr)
– Infantry units should feel like they have more weight to them, especially on charges.
– Units will attack each other far more frequently, no more of this standing and staring at each other for 5 minutes, this makes combat feel far more vicious.
– Anti large is now anti large. Charge into spears at your own risk. (Cav can still be OP and I intend to tweak them later down the line)
– Added a basic skeleton archer unit to the vampires, because I think it’s utterly ridiculous that a faction doesn’t even have a basic skirmisher unit. This should elevate the vampires from being gimmicky worse-than-tomb-kings to now just worse-than-tomb-kings.
– Gave 2 elite foot knights to the French so they have some foot knights. They are slightly worse than chosen, and very expensive. (And yes their thumbnails are complete garbage)
– Buffed some of the flying units like harpies and furies because my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ god they were ♥♥♥♥ ass.
– Bunch more that I don’t remember.
– Made Skelemen not walk dumb
– Cavalry is now a man on a horse, instead of a discount monster homunculus that can walk into melee combat and win with halberd infantry.
– Shock cavalry hits very very very hard on the charge, but can be braced and nullified. Use your brain, you can’t just charge braced heavy infantry and live now.
– Melee cav is now far worse on the charge (because you’re charging with a sword into a formation, not a lance or spear), but much better at defending itself, so good for harassing and killing enemy light infantry/skirmishers, or other cavalry (they will slaughter shock cav in combat, BUT WILL GET SLAUGHTERED ON THE CHARGE)
I’ve tweaked certain weapon stats to make them a little bit more balanced, nerfed some abilities, buffed some others. Martial Prowess is extremely strong and was far better than Murderous Mastery, so I’ve buffed murderous mastery to be permanent once you achieve it. So don’t let Dark Elves hit their kill quota, or suddenly they’ll have uh… still a slightly worse version of martial prowess.
A big reason why I’ve made these changes to ranged units is just because in vanilla warhammer ranged units are laughably and undeniably OP. A tiny thin line of cheap infantry takes an incredibly long time, even for elite melee infantry, to cut through. So all you have to do is have your hordes of bow monkeys (elves) shoot gorillions of arrows into the fight, all of which will magically miss your own men and only hit the enemy, doing ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of damage. With these changes you actually need a clear shot at the enemy, and ideally you want to be flanking them where their shields won’t block you. Skirmishers are still strong, they just now require more thought to use which I personally enjoy.
The shields vs dodging adds an interesting kind of rock-paper-scissors element, where say you have witch elves which before were borderline worthless, and shielded dread spears. The dread spears have solid armor and can block the arrows which come at a way higher rate of fire, but they can’t block guns. The witch elves can dodge the guns, and will likely end up making it to the gunlines before taking many losses, however they’ll be shredded by higher rate of fire weapons like bows due to how dodging works. So a good strategy is using light and nimble mixed in with your heavy infantry for good results so you can deal with multiple situations.
I have changed cavalry in the latest update. Cavalry now behaves like it should, relatively realistically. Shock cavalry can all but obliterate unbraced light infantry in a single charge. The heavier the shock cav, the more deadly they are. However they cannot defend themselves very well in melee combat. Leaving them in a blob is a death sentence, regardless of how armored they are (They will get dragged off their horses and stabbed by sharp things). Bracing is stronger against cav charges, you can halt a cav charge in its tracks with a properly braced unit of heavy infantry. Melee cavalry is terrible on the charge, but much better in melee combat. While they are FAAAAAR weaker in sustained melee combat compared to infantry, they are capable of holding their own for a time and inflicting damage. Use them to kill skirmishers, flank, harrass enemy light infantry, and to slaughter enemy cavalry in sustained melee. Shock cav, armed with lancers, will utterly demolish melee cav, armed with swords, on the charge. So don’t charge them.
Using the new cav will take some getting used to, it isn’t nearly as brainless as before where you can walk your unit of bloodknights, uphill, into a braced unit of daemonettes and win (true story). But it is arguably stronger now, just far riskier. Greater risk/reward, etc.
In the future I’m going to see if I can make chariots worth using and not laughing at.
I buffed Purple Sun death lore spell to being useful, it’s now worth the magic cost.
If you spot any issues, or have any suggestions, post them below. Or don’t, I’m not your dad.
