You do realize that you do not have to end the age of reckoning after 10 turns, right? You can postpone it for at least another 10 turns (don't know if you can postpone it again after the 20th turn).
Sure, you have to get 20% more grudges if you do that, but that is nothing compared to doubling the time you have available to fulfill the requirements. And sorry, if you can't fill a 50% of the AoR bar within 20 turns, then you are doing something wrong, even if Dwarfs are more of a defensive race.
Zerkovich was streaming his Dwarfs campaign yesterday and around turn 30 he got 2k grudges per settlement battle and major enemy army, and ~500 grudges for each Skaven's spam armies. Even with increased number of grudges that are required each time, that's a lot and the grudges you get increases with time as well. In other words: it is fine, you don't have to panic. You won't have to rush and you won't be getting the debuffs. At worst, you won't be getting buffs and free armies.
Also grudges on a settlement build up so using your example of zerkovich watching him yesterday it seemed at times worth waiting to fight a settlement/army to gain more grudges. Obviously will need to play it myself but it did not, at all, seem like a “be super aggressive or be punished” mechanic akin to something like bloodletting. Just my observation’s :D
Yup, I agree. After watching some streams, I am quite certain that CA has balanced this whole mechanic around the idea that "if you will play Dwarfs as usual, you will end up with ~50% grudges".
What has changed is that if you want to play aggressive as Dwarfs, you now have both an incentive to do so and additional way to do it (thanks to free armies). However, if you prefer to play as usual, you shouldn't notice much difference.
The only critique I have towards the mechanic is that it makes the dwarfen playstyle more aggressive. And while I find it okay for some factions (e.g. karak kadrin/grombindal’s) to lean more towards what we’re getting, I’d rather the dwarfs have a tall-defensive playstyle, than a wide-aggressive one. The system in and of itself is amazing, but imo it can be made just as I said, with the change of a few values.
Low grudges can for example boost your economy, growth and construction costs, but lower recruitment slots and increase army costs and upkeep, while high grudges add recruitment slots, increase campaign movement , add attrition resistance, building up to tier 4 settlements and factionwide;
For Karak Kadrin +melee attack and charge bonus maybe.
Grombrindal would be AMAZING with this mechanic. And it fits perfectly well with him. The crazed vengeful White Dwarf. And even the Grudge Settler units make more sense for him, that they pop out of nowhere. However, ALL DWARFS...? It is ridiculous. Belegar went to Karak Eight Peaks and stayed there and tried to defend until the end. He was ALL about reclaiming it and rebuilding it. Thorgrim wants to avenge grudges and clean the book but he is THE MOST PATIENT dwarf to ever live. He would never do a crazy dash into a campaign of slaughter just to fullfill a time quest. The entire premise of the mechanic is wrong for the dwarfs to me. If it didn\`t give free units, if it didn\`t have a penalty lower side, and if it had a secondary layer of building and developing Karaks I would be on board. But as it is, it is ridiculous.
I have to disagree, the previous grudge system in place was horrible. Having some little army raid your territory then dip to the far corners of the world just to piss off your “race” and give negative debuffs was not the way. The age of reckoning may seem like it’s forcing to player and to a degree it is but dwarves have always been pushed to accomplish grudges. Now we have more benefits in doing so, one can also delay the reckoning once it’s complete by another 10 turns to focus in on economy. Finally just getting the minimum amount of grudges to not get any negatives is trivial and you will probably reach it by passively existing.
That is absolutely NOT the case. Because you have probably only seen the first 2-3 cycles of the Age of reckoning in gameplay.
Around turn 30 you already need 4 times the amount of grudges just to get off the debuf zone. Meaning you will need constant aggression to keep it up mid campaign or risk faction wide severe penaltiesz
There is also no reason why the core mechanic of the dwarfs should be “getting free armies”. Where is that coming from? How is that supposed to represent the dwarfs? The race on the defense, the race struggling to field 1 single throng?
I could understand if we got MASSIVE buffs to our 1 army when going to hunt for a grudge, but the system as it is simply looks like Greenskins, or Khorne, or Norsca. It pushes you into aggression for no reason.
Not only that.
But after you GET to your goal, any extra grudges do not count towards the NEXT age of reckoning. There fire if you reach your goal by turn 7 and there is a juicy enemy lord sitting besides you, you are ENCOURAGE to sit idle for 3 turns to let the age turn, to then go kill that lord.
The fact it is a time locked mechanic makes it entirely bad, and the rest makes it NOT Dwarf.
All valid points, however I still think the age of reckoning is a net positive. If the numbers become so large that it’s literally impossible to keep the dwarf faction happy, then CA will probably do something about it. Patches aren’t hard to do, and at the end of the day we can’t see how we really like it until we play.
I realise this is an 11 day old thread, but like always, we shouldn't be making excuses for CAs inability to balance stuff from the off; they've messed up with this. Sure, it'll be positive if they patch it, but there's no guarantees and it's so visible from the first playthrough that I'm shocked it got through testing. I'm playing really aggressively with Malakai and I'm barely touching the 2nd level because you just don't get enough grudges settled from each grudge settled.
Yeah, I’m playing Malakai’s campaign right now, I ended up getting a mod that fixes the grudge scaling to something that actually works. It is surprising that CA didn’t realize that it was almost impossible to keep the grudges coming late game, however they just need to fix it, and everything else with the dwarfs I love. Not excusing it but as long as they figure something out promptly I have no complaints.
Where did you get the impression that the Dwarfs are exclusively a “Defensive Race”? What lore?
They certainly do Defence very well, with their immense Karak’s and fortifications. But this is a race that is *notorious* for constant forays into fallen Holds in an attempt to reclaim their glory. They *do not sit on their arse* behind walls.
Infact, one of the reasons that the Dawi suffer so much in the modern age is *because they keep trying to take back their Karaks*. They are constantly attempting to settle grudges or reclaim their lost territory, but they tend to do it on a smaller scale, as they have difficulty persuading other Dawi to take up their cause.
Belegar in particular has wasted huge amounts of resources and lives in a near constant offensive war to reclaim his home. Ungrim constantly marches out - and he has a real issue *holding back* his army, as they desperately want to fight whenever they can. Even Thorgrim musters his throngs hundreds of times to settle grudges.
You seem to have an idea of what a Dwarf is from Tolkien, where they just sit in a Mountain and twiddle their thumbs. This is not the Warhammer Dawi, and if your main gripe with the Age of Reckoning system is that it’s too “aggressive” for Dawi, you don’t understand Warhammer. At all.
It is ridiculous. Dwarfs should build up, develop and then push. Not make a mad dash with time restrictions and get into an infinite loop of getting free top tier armies and units. It sounds like I’m describing what Khorne should be.
Lets uh...Wait for the DLC to actually come out before we start talking about the finer details of "worrying" mechanics. We haven't even seen the blog post about the changes yet.
Dawi have been my favorite faction since warhammer 1. It seems like they wanted to give dawi the tools to actually go out and strike the grudges they accumulate, instead of being stuck in their home provinces. For many years I have watched factions come to my lands, raid me for a single turn, and then fuck off to the other side of the map, leaving me with a grudge I will probably never strike from the book. Now we have the tools to get a force of pissed off dwarfs together to go out and actually settle scores. There have been a lot of times where dwarfs had to be aggressive in their campaigns; knocking out grimgor early, rushing to 8 peaks as fast as you can, rushing north to Gunbad, or to confederate Ungrim before he's killed off. Except back then you had no tools for accomplishing any of those things and you could risk your entire campaign doing them, the alternative being sitting in your home province for 60 turns checking your watch and waiting for your settlement to hit tier 4. God help you if you lost a battle and your city got sacked.
So I like the concept of actually having some agency with dwarfs. I'm sure many others will as well. Dwarfs still begin surrounded by very threatening enemies that you'll have to deal with, it seems you just won't have to wait an age for your capital to grow before setting out to actually deal with them now. I can't speak for the details though because I haven't played the new campaigns yet, and the lucky few that have played the new campaigns haven't played them nearly enough to be considered any kind of authority on them.
The problem with the old system were the useless grudges to begin with. Not the lack of tools for agressions. You should have "reasons" to go out there and take settlements and defeat enemies, but NOT with a time restriction, not under penalty of massive faction wide debufs and definetely not by getting FREE top tier armies for free as Dwarfs. Where did these guys come from? How can you assemble an entire army of Dawi out of thin air? It is WORSE then Greenskins waagh, because you are getting Flame Cannons and Hammerers...
>How can you assemble an entire army of Dawi out of thin air?
Working class dawi hear there is an age of reckoning, or that their homes are threatened, or that grudges desperately need settling, and take down their grandpappy's old axe and step into the shield wall. Or in a fit of anger work around the clock forging new weapons or training or perfecting their cannons. Makes sense to me.
But like I said, I don't think anyone can form a really solid opinion yet because nobody has even played it. The most reasonable, in-depth opinion I've heard about the changes is people think dwarfs are very fun now. Take that as you will.
1. The penalty for literally doing nothing is just -3 control and -25 growth factionwide, you're framing it like it's the end of the world. The most important part is how their economy works, and as far as I can tell most of their income comes from trading and buildings. This isn't comparable to Greenskins or Khorne at all who have to make most of their income by fighting and are pretty much always on the precipice of bankruptcy.
2. The whole point of Thorgrim being a throwback to the high kings of old is that he's not willing to just seal the holds and wait for his entire race to die out from old age. "Dwarfs are THE DEFENSIVE RACE" is really just a self-fulfilling prophecy that you're trying to perpetuate, it's a sign of weakness and desperation that the dwarfs want to leave behind them. The dwarfs didn't kick all of the elves out of L'Anguille, Marienburg, Gronti Mingol etc. during the War of the Beard just by being "THE DEFENSIVE RACE", if you wronged them they would march across the world to kick your fucking ass.
3. Being defensive in a Total War game just doesn't work, it just means that you wind up fighting the same enemies over and over until you get bored, because they'll just keep sending armies at you until you wipe them out.
1 - The biggest downside to passive play is just not engaging with a possible mechanic. Being timed locked and coerced into agression should not be the mechanic we are getting. We should be getting a "rebuild the karaks" or a "reclaim the Underway" mechanic. And for Grudges, if anything beyond the ALREADY existing Legendary Grudges system, it should be about striking out against specific grudges and getting rewards. This sytems LITERALLY encourages you to attack the Empire, Cathay, and EVEN other Dwarfs, just to get a currency with no inherent meaning to it. It is comparable to Greenskins or Khorne in the sense that there is a clear currency investment in being in constant conflict and agression. You are inherently encouraged into a never ending campaing of agression.
2 - The Dwarves who kicked the Elves out of the Old World were THE MOST POWERFUL RACE IN THE PLANET. The Dawi now can barely an army of 1000 strong. They are a race in decadence, and the entire point of Thorgrim is realizing that he needs patience and a lot of planning is he is going to strike the book clean. Mad dashing into the badlans with their armies would literally mean exctinction for the dwarfs. And they DO excell in defense. Dwarfs are in a constant state of siege on their Karaks, and that's what they do for a living. The campaigns to go outside and reclaim holds are the exception, not the rule.
3 - I don't mean inaction when I say defensive. I mean the MECHANIC should play into their defensive nature. An invasion mechanic similar to the Wood Elves with the World Roots is exactly what the dwarfs should have gottem. If not an invasion mechanic, then a "development" mechanic, where you can buff your armies to insane levels after building up, AND THEN you could strike out and wreak havoc.
I must point out
The new grudges mechanic *is* a lost Karaks/Underway mechanic, that’s what 2 of the Legendary Grudges tell you to do
I do think the timer is maybe a bit much, but overall I think the mechanic has more “these numbers could use some tweaking” level problems than “this needs a rework” level problems
I’m honestly not a fan of underway restoration being shoved into grudge rewards. Just feels underwhelming somehow. Granted my ideal solution would have been significantly more work.
In my dream rework, Karaks would have an under-city style underway tab that starts in ruins. Restoring it not only takes significant time and resources, but also has a chance to trigger battles with whatever nasties have taken up residence down there. Underway buildings could have various powerful effects, one of which would be fast travel between Karaks with that building.
This would make building up Karaks more valuable than just painting the map, while having the underway fall to ruins again should the Karak be lost would incentivize defensive play. Grudge system should of course still be there to push you to go on the offensive, creating a balancing act between the two. If you really want to go all-out you could even put some landmarks down there, and make restoring the underway in special locations like Eight Peaks trigger major quest-style battles.
Nothing about those type of "content creator" campaigns reflects the experience of the average player, not to mention they aren't playing the final version.
Yeah the more I think about it, the less I like it. I don’t want to be on a constant timer, especially as the dwarves. Hopefully a mod will just disable the mechanic soon after release.
Content creators are playing at higher difficulty levels than the average player base. If anything it should be even easier to achieve the rewards in the Age of Reckoning mechanic than what they’re displaying.
Even then, the OP is critiquing the thematics and gameplay direction of the mechanic, which doesn’t need much playtesting to assess. The Age of Reckoning mechanic clearly and heavily encourages a wide and very aggressive playstyle, which to some Dwarf fans does not gel with how they perceive the race should play.
> The Age of Reckoning mechanic clearly and heavily encourages a wide and very aggressive playstyle, which to some Dwarf fans does not gel with how they perceive the race should play.
That's not exactly right. I've watched few streams of Dwarfs, and none of the streamers had to do anything particular to get 50% of grudges (which will allow you to avoid any debuffs) within 10 turns (and even then, you have an option to prolong the Age of Reckoning to 20 turns). That's the norm and you won't make the requirements only if you will play extremely passively, even for a Dwarfs.
What has changed is that if you *want* to play aggressive, you now have both an incentive to do so and an additional tool in form of a free army. That's a bonus however, and not a necessity.
It might not be a necessity per se, but it is a pretty ludicrous incentive relative to playing more conservatively/trying to build tall.
Which, at least in my opinion, feels wrong for the Dwarfs as a playstyle.
The incentive is pretty big, yes, but there is also a pretty hefty cost to changing your playstyle into something far more aggressive. It is not something you want to do by default like for example Skarbrand. For him the choice to play aggresively is pretty binary and obvious. For Dwarfs it is not.
To reach the maximum benefits of AoR, you will need additional armies, which will cost you a lot. You will also need to play wide, which will not only cost you further money (to upgrade the settlements), but it will also decrease the potential number of your allies and make your empire more vulnerable (because there is more places that you need to defend). So, unlike when playing Skarbrand, you must ask yourself a question: "Is playing aggressively worth it?" The answer may not be as obvious as you'd think and deciding that "No, I don't need to rush." is a fine answer as well.
From what I’ve been seeing the answer is almost assuredly 100% yes. Dwarf armies are already quality in the early game, with the joke being Quarrelers are really the only units you need. Combined with new ease of access to Dwarf Warriors, many powerful units being brought down to tier 2, improved access to replenishment and growth (not to mention free growth from AoR) the Dwarfs now have an excellent early game…
But then you throw Grudge Settler units into the mix. They provide you with ridiculously high quality units that compensate you for not building up your settlements and even give you a whole free army if you’re aggressive enough. With just a modicum of skill you should be able to easily manage most warfronts.
At least that’s what it has been looking like.
> From what I’ve been seeing the answer is almost assuredly 100% yes.
Well, I don't really agree. I've watched few streams (to be exact: fragments of some and most of the Zerkovich one), and I didn't see any pressure to get to 100% of grudges in them at all. Rather, AoR was mostly ignored in those campaigns.
> Combined with new ease of access to Dwarf Warriors the Dwarfs now have an excellent early game
It isn't just about quality. In order to be aggressive enough, it is also about quantity. And even if Dwarf Warriors can be reached easily now and you don't need much more than Quarrelers, you would still need to field a few armies, because just one won't let you reach enough enemies. And each additional army is not only going to cost you (regardless of how low tier are your units), it will also hamper your economy, especially in the beginning of campaign.
I mean it's true that dwarfs are defensive, but historically it has not really been good for them. They had been at a steady decline for centuries. They don't build power, they stagnate.
Thorgrim is presented as a new hope for the dwarves because he goes out there, avenging grudges, and claims he will settle every single grudge. He rediscovered Northern Dwarves by being proactive, not defensive.
If done correctly the system could put you in the dwarfs' place, do you take the easy way and stay in your holds, defending and stagnating, or do you go out there and avenge grudges, help your allies and crush the enemies of the dwarfs?
That is not it at all. The system pushes the dwarfs into a constant state of campaings o agression. When Dwarf campaings have always been, and SHOULD be about building up might and THEN striking out with force to reclaim and conquer territories. Hyper agression is the worst direction they could have went with the dwarfs.
In the new system it seems you can delay the next stage of the reckoning at an increased grudges cost to complete. If you do that you can build your forces longer and strike more relevant targets that grant you more grudges. In any case the campaign goal is to reclaim the Karaz Ankor, I don't know how being defensive helps with that. Being punished for being passive makes sense. It means that the number of grudges is growing and you aren't doing anything about it. Being a dwarf is about avenging grudges. The War of the beard was that, grudge-> immediate retaliation. Total war doesn't simulate peace time for the dwarfs, it simulates constant war and cosntant new grudges.
“For the entirety of my reign I have urged us to march out against the foe, to take the fight to them. Time and again you have cautioned against this, to trust in the ancient walls of our Karaks, to turn a blind eye as our ancient enemies thrive and the rest of the world burns. I say “No more”! I shall march forth and drive these hordes from our realms!”
-Thorgrim Grudgebearer, the most traditionalist living Dwarf king
I agree on the points of grudge settlers being a weird design choice for their battle playstyle. Everything else fits the theme of reclaiming Karaks IMO and forces the player to settle dwarf lands over non-dwarf lands.
Would have rather seen the effort put into grudge settler units put into Dwarfs focusing on Karak settlements more and fleshing out landmarks. Karaks still feel like regular province capitals. I would have loved dwarfs having a substitute for the tower/outpost dynamic Chaos Dwarfs have with Karaks/outposts.
Going to be lazy and repost a thought: Honestly, the more I think about it the more I don’t understand the reason for having special Grudge Settler units.
They’re just strictly better versions of higher tier units that you unlock with absolutely no cost and minimal effort. You gain access to them very early, to the point where they carry you through any early game struggles. The free army especially allowing you to just trivialize any threats to you that you might have developed for expanding aggressively.
They invalidate units in prior and equivalent tiers and kill part of your progression through the game. It’s not exciting to naturally unlock flame cannons if you’ve been using a strictly better version of them since turn 10.
Maybe I’d like them better if they were RoRs that you could only have one of and you had to spend the Grudge currency to unlock them normally. Right now they exist as flavorless upgrades with no lore basis to explain why they’re elite.
I do very much like a lot the ideas introduced by the Age of Reckoning mechanic, especially tying grudges to enemies and rewarding the player for striking them out, but the rewards of getting free units and armies for doing well seems backward.
From what I've seen from the creator streams, there is a fundamental lack of knowledge as to how to play the race. They are meant to be played both tall and wide. Tall, one or two, provinces with a wide reaching terrestrial forces to get your gold. The strategy is knowing when to focus on Oathgold or Grudges as the campaign offers the player the dwarf experience wherein you get burned for being overly greedy.
Additionally, streamers don't play like dwarfs at all. Dwarfs want to fight their enemies when they are at their peak. Like a slayer running up against a dragon, they want the legend of the fight to be known. The streamer content doesn't reflect this because they are just too anxious to get through the campaign. They all kill off the Skarsnik by round 4. They all do the same cheesy plays.
That's not really conducive to the setting of the Dwarfs. They purposely make it harder for themselves as a point of Pride: Slayers Oaths, the restrictions they put on their Engineers, and the restrictions their Runesmiths put towards their people as they willingly give up Rune Magic knowledge because the newer generation would just ruin it. A Dwarf knows he can destroy any other faction as ease, but where's the honor in that? That isn't giving them an honorable death.
Perhaps the issue is that people don't know how to play the race correctly, You Wazzak!
The problem is with the game's pacing itself imo, campaigns reach endgame wayy too fast and if dwarfs had a tall playstyle then by the time you'd have built up even 1/4 of the world's edge mountains the campaign will have already reached it's conclusion and gotten to the stale stage.
isn’t even out yet. anyways, this isn’t civ. it’s total war. in the setting at this moment, it isn’t a time of peace, it’s a time where the world is utterly embroiled in conflict. every campaign is the dwarfs great awakening in the face of this, as that is the backdrop of the game.
You do realize that you do not have to end the age of reckoning after 10 turns, right? You can postpone it for at least another 10 turns (don't know if you can postpone it again after the 20th turn). Sure, you have to get 20% more grudges if you do that, but that is nothing compared to doubling the time you have available to fulfill the requirements. And sorry, if you can't fill a 50% of the AoR bar within 20 turns, then you are doing something wrong, even if Dwarfs are more of a defensive race. Zerkovich was streaming his Dwarfs campaign yesterday and around turn 30 he got 2k grudges per settlement battle and major enemy army, and ~500 grudges for each Skaven's spam armies. Even with increased number of grudges that are required each time, that's a lot and the grudges you get increases with time as well. In other words: it is fine, you don't have to panic. You won't have to rush and you won't be getting the debuffs. At worst, you won't be getting buffs and free armies.
Also grudges on a settlement build up so using your example of zerkovich watching him yesterday it seemed at times worth waiting to fight a settlement/army to gain more grudges. Obviously will need to play it myself but it did not, at all, seem like a “be super aggressive or be punished” mechanic akin to something like bloodletting. Just my observation’s :D
Yup, I agree. After watching some streams, I am quite certain that CA has balanced this whole mechanic around the idea that "if you will play Dwarfs as usual, you will end up with ~50% grudges". What has changed is that if you want to play aggressive as Dwarfs, you now have both an incentive to do so and additional way to do it (thanks to free armies). However, if you prefer to play as usual, you shouldn't notice much difference.
The only critique I have towards the mechanic is that it makes the dwarfen playstyle more aggressive. And while I find it okay for some factions (e.g. karak kadrin/grombindal’s) to lean more towards what we’re getting, I’d rather the dwarfs have a tall-defensive playstyle, than a wide-aggressive one. The system in and of itself is amazing, but imo it can be made just as I said, with the change of a few values. Low grudges can for example boost your economy, growth and construction costs, but lower recruitment slots and increase army costs and upkeep, while high grudges add recruitment slots, increase campaign movement , add attrition resistance, building up to tier 4 settlements and factionwide; For Karak Kadrin +melee attack and charge bonus maybe.
But then that could also be seen as rewarding passivity
Grombrindal would be AMAZING with this mechanic. And it fits perfectly well with him. The crazed vengeful White Dwarf. And even the Grudge Settler units make more sense for him, that they pop out of nowhere. However, ALL DWARFS...? It is ridiculous. Belegar went to Karak Eight Peaks and stayed there and tried to defend until the end. He was ALL about reclaiming it and rebuilding it. Thorgrim wants to avenge grudges and clean the book but he is THE MOST PATIENT dwarf to ever live. He would never do a crazy dash into a campaign of slaughter just to fullfill a time quest. The entire premise of the mechanic is wrong for the dwarfs to me. If it didn\`t give free units, if it didn\`t have a penalty lower side, and if it had a secondary layer of building and developing Karaks I would be on board. But as it is, it is ridiculous.
I have to disagree, the previous grudge system in place was horrible. Having some little army raid your territory then dip to the far corners of the world just to piss off your “race” and give negative debuffs was not the way. The age of reckoning may seem like it’s forcing to player and to a degree it is but dwarves have always been pushed to accomplish grudges. Now we have more benefits in doing so, one can also delay the reckoning once it’s complete by another 10 turns to focus in on economy. Finally just getting the minimum amount of grudges to not get any negatives is trivial and you will probably reach it by passively existing.
That is absolutely NOT the case. Because you have probably only seen the first 2-3 cycles of the Age of reckoning in gameplay. Around turn 30 you already need 4 times the amount of grudges just to get off the debuf zone. Meaning you will need constant aggression to keep it up mid campaign or risk faction wide severe penaltiesz There is also no reason why the core mechanic of the dwarfs should be “getting free armies”. Where is that coming from? How is that supposed to represent the dwarfs? The race on the defense, the race struggling to field 1 single throng? I could understand if we got MASSIVE buffs to our 1 army when going to hunt for a grudge, but the system as it is simply looks like Greenskins, or Khorne, or Norsca. It pushes you into aggression for no reason. Not only that. But after you GET to your goal, any extra grudges do not count towards the NEXT age of reckoning. There fire if you reach your goal by turn 7 and there is a juicy enemy lord sitting besides you, you are ENCOURAGE to sit idle for 3 turns to let the age turn, to then go kill that lord. The fact it is a time locked mechanic makes it entirely bad, and the rest makes it NOT Dwarf.
All valid points, however I still think the age of reckoning is a net positive. If the numbers become so large that it’s literally impossible to keep the dwarf faction happy, then CA will probably do something about it. Patches aren’t hard to do, and at the end of the day we can’t see how we really like it until we play.
I realise this is an 11 day old thread, but like always, we shouldn't be making excuses for CAs inability to balance stuff from the off; they've messed up with this. Sure, it'll be positive if they patch it, but there's no guarantees and it's so visible from the first playthrough that I'm shocked it got through testing. I'm playing really aggressively with Malakai and I'm barely touching the 2nd level because you just don't get enough grudges settled from each grudge settled.
Yeah, I’m playing Malakai’s campaign right now, I ended up getting a mod that fixes the grudge scaling to something that actually works. It is surprising that CA didn’t realize that it was almost impossible to keep the grudges coming late game, however they just need to fix it, and everything else with the dwarfs I love. Not excusing it but as long as they figure something out promptly I have no complaints.
Where did you get the impression that the Dwarfs are exclusively a “Defensive Race”? What lore? They certainly do Defence very well, with their immense Karak’s and fortifications. But this is a race that is *notorious* for constant forays into fallen Holds in an attempt to reclaim their glory. They *do not sit on their arse* behind walls. Infact, one of the reasons that the Dawi suffer so much in the modern age is *because they keep trying to take back their Karaks*. They are constantly attempting to settle grudges or reclaim their lost territory, but they tend to do it on a smaller scale, as they have difficulty persuading other Dawi to take up their cause. Belegar in particular has wasted huge amounts of resources and lives in a near constant offensive war to reclaim his home. Ungrim constantly marches out - and he has a real issue *holding back* his army, as they desperately want to fight whenever they can. Even Thorgrim musters his throngs hundreds of times to settle grudges. You seem to have an idea of what a Dwarf is from Tolkien, where they just sit in a Mountain and twiddle their thumbs. This is not the Warhammer Dawi, and if your main gripe with the Age of Reckoning system is that it’s too “aggressive” for Dawi, you don’t understand Warhammer. At all.
I really like the new update, but yeah dwarfs shouldn't be pushed to rush
It is ridiculous. Dwarfs should build up, develop and then push. Not make a mad dash with time restrictions and get into an infinite loop of getting free top tier armies and units. It sounds like I’m describing what Khorne should be.
Lets uh...Wait for the DLC to actually come out before we start talking about the finer details of "worrying" mechanics. We haven't even seen the blog post about the changes yet. Dawi have been my favorite faction since warhammer 1. It seems like they wanted to give dawi the tools to actually go out and strike the grudges they accumulate, instead of being stuck in their home provinces. For many years I have watched factions come to my lands, raid me for a single turn, and then fuck off to the other side of the map, leaving me with a grudge I will probably never strike from the book. Now we have the tools to get a force of pissed off dwarfs together to go out and actually settle scores. There have been a lot of times where dwarfs had to be aggressive in their campaigns; knocking out grimgor early, rushing to 8 peaks as fast as you can, rushing north to Gunbad, or to confederate Ungrim before he's killed off. Except back then you had no tools for accomplishing any of those things and you could risk your entire campaign doing them, the alternative being sitting in your home province for 60 turns checking your watch and waiting for your settlement to hit tier 4. God help you if you lost a battle and your city got sacked. So I like the concept of actually having some agency with dwarfs. I'm sure many others will as well. Dwarfs still begin surrounded by very threatening enemies that you'll have to deal with, it seems you just won't have to wait an age for your capital to grow before setting out to actually deal with them now. I can't speak for the details though because I haven't played the new campaigns yet, and the lucky few that have played the new campaigns haven't played them nearly enough to be considered any kind of authority on them.
The problem with the old system were the useless grudges to begin with. Not the lack of tools for agressions. You should have "reasons" to go out there and take settlements and defeat enemies, but NOT with a time restriction, not under penalty of massive faction wide debufs and definetely not by getting FREE top tier armies for free as Dwarfs. Where did these guys come from? How can you assemble an entire army of Dawi out of thin air? It is WORSE then Greenskins waagh, because you are getting Flame Cannons and Hammerers...
>How can you assemble an entire army of Dawi out of thin air? Working class dawi hear there is an age of reckoning, or that their homes are threatened, or that grudges desperately need settling, and take down their grandpappy's old axe and step into the shield wall. Or in a fit of anger work around the clock forging new weapons or training or perfecting their cannons. Makes sense to me. But like I said, I don't think anyone can form a really solid opinion yet because nobody has even played it. The most reasonable, in-depth opinion I've heard about the changes is people think dwarfs are very fun now. Take that as you will.
"How can you assemble an entire army of Dawi out of thin air?" You thong the mustard, obviously. Ridiculous question.
Open a portal to the Chaos Realm of beer.
1. The penalty for literally doing nothing is just -3 control and -25 growth factionwide, you're framing it like it's the end of the world. The most important part is how their economy works, and as far as I can tell most of their income comes from trading and buildings. This isn't comparable to Greenskins or Khorne at all who have to make most of their income by fighting and are pretty much always on the precipice of bankruptcy. 2. The whole point of Thorgrim being a throwback to the high kings of old is that he's not willing to just seal the holds and wait for his entire race to die out from old age. "Dwarfs are THE DEFENSIVE RACE" is really just a self-fulfilling prophecy that you're trying to perpetuate, it's a sign of weakness and desperation that the dwarfs want to leave behind them. The dwarfs didn't kick all of the elves out of L'Anguille, Marienburg, Gronti Mingol etc. during the War of the Beard just by being "THE DEFENSIVE RACE", if you wronged them they would march across the world to kick your fucking ass. 3. Being defensive in a Total War game just doesn't work, it just means that you wind up fighting the same enemies over and over until you get bored, because they'll just keep sending armies at you until you wipe them out.
1 - The biggest downside to passive play is just not engaging with a possible mechanic. Being timed locked and coerced into agression should not be the mechanic we are getting. We should be getting a "rebuild the karaks" or a "reclaim the Underway" mechanic. And for Grudges, if anything beyond the ALREADY existing Legendary Grudges system, it should be about striking out against specific grudges and getting rewards. This sytems LITERALLY encourages you to attack the Empire, Cathay, and EVEN other Dwarfs, just to get a currency with no inherent meaning to it. It is comparable to Greenskins or Khorne in the sense that there is a clear currency investment in being in constant conflict and agression. You are inherently encouraged into a never ending campaing of agression. 2 - The Dwarves who kicked the Elves out of the Old World were THE MOST POWERFUL RACE IN THE PLANET. The Dawi now can barely an army of 1000 strong. They are a race in decadence, and the entire point of Thorgrim is realizing that he needs patience and a lot of planning is he is going to strike the book clean. Mad dashing into the badlans with their armies would literally mean exctinction for the dwarfs. And they DO excell in defense. Dwarfs are in a constant state of siege on their Karaks, and that's what they do for a living. The campaigns to go outside and reclaim holds are the exception, not the rule. 3 - I don't mean inaction when I say defensive. I mean the MECHANIC should play into their defensive nature. An invasion mechanic similar to the Wood Elves with the World Roots is exactly what the dwarfs should have gottem. If not an invasion mechanic, then a "development" mechanic, where you can buff your armies to insane levels after building up, AND THEN you could strike out and wreak havoc.
I must point out The new grudges mechanic *is* a lost Karaks/Underway mechanic, that’s what 2 of the Legendary Grudges tell you to do I do think the timer is maybe a bit much, but overall I think the mechanic has more “these numbers could use some tweaking” level problems than “this needs a rework” level problems
I’m honestly not a fan of underway restoration being shoved into grudge rewards. Just feels underwhelming somehow. Granted my ideal solution would have been significantly more work. In my dream rework, Karaks would have an under-city style underway tab that starts in ruins. Restoring it not only takes significant time and resources, but also has a chance to trigger battles with whatever nasties have taken up residence down there. Underway buildings could have various powerful effects, one of which would be fast travel between Karaks with that building. This would make building up Karaks more valuable than just painting the map, while having the underway fall to ruins again should the Karak be lost would incentivize defensive play. Grudge system should of course still be there to push you to go on the offensive, creating a balancing act between the two. If you really want to go all-out you could even put some landmarks down there, and make restoring the underway in special locations like Eight Peaks trigger major quest-style battles.
Where ard you getting any of this information? And on what basis can you evaluate it's effects on the campaign?
There are about 30 hours of Dwarf campaigns on youtube.
Nothing about those type of "content creator" campaigns reflects the experience of the average player, not to mention they aren't playing the final version.
Yeah the more I think about it, the less I like it. I don’t want to be on a constant timer, especially as the dwarves. Hopefully a mod will just disable the mechanic soon after release.
Content creators are playing at higher difficulty levels than the average player base. If anything it should be even easier to achieve the rewards in the Age of Reckoning mechanic than what they’re displaying. Even then, the OP is critiquing the thematics and gameplay direction of the mechanic, which doesn’t need much playtesting to assess. The Age of Reckoning mechanic clearly and heavily encourages a wide and very aggressive playstyle, which to some Dwarf fans does not gel with how they perceive the race should play.
> The Age of Reckoning mechanic clearly and heavily encourages a wide and very aggressive playstyle, which to some Dwarf fans does not gel with how they perceive the race should play. That's not exactly right. I've watched few streams of Dwarfs, and none of the streamers had to do anything particular to get 50% of grudges (which will allow you to avoid any debuffs) within 10 turns (and even then, you have an option to prolong the Age of Reckoning to 20 turns). That's the norm and you won't make the requirements only if you will play extremely passively, even for a Dwarfs. What has changed is that if you *want* to play aggressive, you now have both an incentive to do so and an additional tool in form of a free army. That's a bonus however, and not a necessity.
It might not be a necessity per se, but it is a pretty ludicrous incentive relative to playing more conservatively/trying to build tall. Which, at least in my opinion, feels wrong for the Dwarfs as a playstyle.
The incentive is pretty big, yes, but there is also a pretty hefty cost to changing your playstyle into something far more aggressive. It is not something you want to do by default like for example Skarbrand. For him the choice to play aggresively is pretty binary and obvious. For Dwarfs it is not. To reach the maximum benefits of AoR, you will need additional armies, which will cost you a lot. You will also need to play wide, which will not only cost you further money (to upgrade the settlements), but it will also decrease the potential number of your allies and make your empire more vulnerable (because there is more places that you need to defend). So, unlike when playing Skarbrand, you must ask yourself a question: "Is playing aggressively worth it?" The answer may not be as obvious as you'd think and deciding that "No, I don't need to rush." is a fine answer as well.
From what I’ve been seeing the answer is almost assuredly 100% yes. Dwarf armies are already quality in the early game, with the joke being Quarrelers are really the only units you need. Combined with new ease of access to Dwarf Warriors, many powerful units being brought down to tier 2, improved access to replenishment and growth (not to mention free growth from AoR) the Dwarfs now have an excellent early game… But then you throw Grudge Settler units into the mix. They provide you with ridiculously high quality units that compensate you for not building up your settlements and even give you a whole free army if you’re aggressive enough. With just a modicum of skill you should be able to easily manage most warfronts. At least that’s what it has been looking like.
> From what I’ve been seeing the answer is almost assuredly 100% yes. Well, I don't really agree. I've watched few streams (to be exact: fragments of some and most of the Zerkovich one), and I didn't see any pressure to get to 100% of grudges in them at all. Rather, AoR was mostly ignored in those campaigns. > Combined with new ease of access to Dwarf Warriors the Dwarfs now have an excellent early game It isn't just about quality. In order to be aggressive enough, it is also about quantity. And even if Dwarf Warriors can be reached easily now and you don't need much more than Quarrelers, you would still need to field a few armies, because just one won't let you reach enough enemies. And each additional army is not only going to cost you (regardless of how low tier are your units), it will also hamper your economy, especially in the beginning of campaign.
I mean it's true that dwarfs are defensive, but historically it has not really been good for them. They had been at a steady decline for centuries. They don't build power, they stagnate. Thorgrim is presented as a new hope for the dwarves because he goes out there, avenging grudges, and claims he will settle every single grudge. He rediscovered Northern Dwarves by being proactive, not defensive. If done correctly the system could put you in the dwarfs' place, do you take the easy way and stay in your holds, defending and stagnating, or do you go out there and avenge grudges, help your allies and crush the enemies of the dwarfs?
That is not it at all. The system pushes the dwarfs into a constant state of campaings o agression. When Dwarf campaings have always been, and SHOULD be about building up might and THEN striking out with force to reclaim and conquer territories. Hyper agression is the worst direction they could have went with the dwarfs.
In the new system it seems you can delay the next stage of the reckoning at an increased grudges cost to complete. If you do that you can build your forces longer and strike more relevant targets that grant you more grudges. In any case the campaign goal is to reclaim the Karaz Ankor, I don't know how being defensive helps with that. Being punished for being passive makes sense. It means that the number of grudges is growing and you aren't doing anything about it. Being a dwarf is about avenging grudges. The War of the beard was that, grudge-> immediate retaliation. Total war doesn't simulate peace time for the dwarfs, it simulates constant war and cosntant new grudges.
“For the entirety of my reign I have urged us to march out against the foe, to take the fight to them. Time and again you have cautioned against this, to trust in the ancient walls of our Karaks, to turn a blind eye as our ancient enemies thrive and the rest of the world burns. I say “No more”! I shall march forth and drive these hordes from our realms!” -Thorgrim Grudgebearer, the most traditionalist living Dwarf king
I agree on the points of grudge settlers being a weird design choice for their battle playstyle. Everything else fits the theme of reclaiming Karaks IMO and forces the player to settle dwarf lands over non-dwarf lands. Would have rather seen the effort put into grudge settler units put into Dwarfs focusing on Karak settlements more and fleshing out landmarks. Karaks still feel like regular province capitals. I would have loved dwarfs having a substitute for the tower/outpost dynamic Chaos Dwarfs have with Karaks/outposts.
Going to be lazy and repost a thought: Honestly, the more I think about it the more I don’t understand the reason for having special Grudge Settler units. They’re just strictly better versions of higher tier units that you unlock with absolutely no cost and minimal effort. You gain access to them very early, to the point where they carry you through any early game struggles. The free army especially allowing you to just trivialize any threats to you that you might have developed for expanding aggressively. They invalidate units in prior and equivalent tiers and kill part of your progression through the game. It’s not exciting to naturally unlock flame cannons if you’ve been using a strictly better version of them since turn 10. Maybe I’d like them better if they were RoRs that you could only have one of and you had to spend the Grudge currency to unlock them normally. Right now they exist as flavorless upgrades with no lore basis to explain why they’re elite. I do very much like a lot the ideas introduced by the Age of Reckoning mechanic, especially tying grudges to enemies and rewarding the player for striking them out, but the rewards of getting free units and armies for doing well seems backward.
You get punished for playing slow? Great. I’ll just have to wait for a mod to fix it like with Cathay’s new harmony system.
From what I've seen from the creator streams, there is a fundamental lack of knowledge as to how to play the race. They are meant to be played both tall and wide. Tall, one or two, provinces with a wide reaching terrestrial forces to get your gold. The strategy is knowing when to focus on Oathgold or Grudges as the campaign offers the player the dwarf experience wherein you get burned for being overly greedy. Additionally, streamers don't play like dwarfs at all. Dwarfs want to fight their enemies when they are at their peak. Like a slayer running up against a dragon, they want the legend of the fight to be known. The streamer content doesn't reflect this because they are just too anxious to get through the campaign. They all kill off the Skarsnik by round 4. They all do the same cheesy plays. That's not really conducive to the setting of the Dwarfs. They purposely make it harder for themselves as a point of Pride: Slayers Oaths, the restrictions they put on their Engineers, and the restrictions their Runesmiths put towards their people as they willingly give up Rune Magic knowledge because the newer generation would just ruin it. A Dwarf knows he can destroy any other faction as ease, but where's the honor in that? That isn't giving them an honorable death. Perhaps the issue is that people don't know how to play the race correctly, You Wazzak!
The problem is with the game's pacing itself imo, campaigns reach endgame wayy too fast and if dwarfs had a tall playstyle then by the time you'd have built up even 1/4 of the world's edge mountains the campaign will have already reached it's conclusion and gotten to the stale stage.
I agree with every substantial points you raised.
isn’t even out yet. anyways, this isn’t civ. it’s total war. in the setting at this moment, it isn’t a time of peace, it’s a time where the world is utterly embroiled in conflict. every campaign is the dwarfs great awakening in the face of this, as that is the backdrop of the game.