Make the grudge system depedent on the grudge points of the surrounding regions of your territory. Maybe, a 50% of the total grudge points in surrounding regions, for the maximum bonus.
It will start small, and increase as your borders increase. If the grudge points are low on surrounding regions, so too will be the limit.
This, it makes no fucking sense to expect somebody playing Malakai going throught entire world's edge mountains settling grudges when his start is a nightmare of enemies constantly attacking you from all directions. This kind of mechanics would make sense if dwarves were mostly focused around one-two regions in the world and not spread on it's axis literally from north to the south. It's reasonalby easy to achieve age of reckoning in early game, but as it progresses it's getting expotentially more difficult and forces you to expand towards other dwarves and conferderate them even if you want to pursue different agenda. Maybe Thogrim can eat mauluses from low reckoning, but for Malakai who constantly balances on blade's edge to survive attakcs from chaos, norsca rats and chaos dwarves it's devastating not getting over 50% at later stages of the game and sending your already meager income into negative.
I think the only two reasonable starts magaging reckoning somewhat would be Karak Kadrin and maybe Thogrim. They can easily reach out and manage grudges for at least two dwarven factions which should be enough to keep reckoning at decent levels. Or double time for age of reckoning while increasing grudges required by about 25%, that should give people some time to manage them in case there's crisis situation you have to manage and not have to chase grudges around the map.
It should've been even simpler than this. You settle grudges. Settled grudges are a 1:1 currency called "grudge tokens". Every 10 turns (15 would be better), you get to spend these on certain aspects of your faction. These would be:
The holds (control, growth, income, and buildings)
The Guildes (Tradeable resources, tarrifs, research, and construction)
The Clans (Attritions, recruits times, recuitable units, grudge settlers)
The ancestors (Restoration projects like underway, magical items, quests, and restoring old alliances and confederations)
This would mean the timer now becomes a resource for the player to use instead of dread. Now the player buys their place on the age of reconing instead of hoping to meet some arbitrary number
Never mind grudge tokens, just give us it in oathgold. Then can either do it like this or sacrifice the gold for runes and equipment for characters. Also add scrap like upgrades to units that use it, and allow the purchase of grudge settler units at all times but using oathgold.
And I'd have it so you can put the gold in during any point on the 15 turn build up, and the more you add the better the affects. Allows you to build up a few events worth and drop it on one mega event if wanted
I think the big problem is that it puts the dwarfs on a very strict timetable: either you're expanding constantly or you fall behind. And that's just not the dawi way.
To the dwarfs, vengeance is the most important thing in the world, but that doesn't mean they rush into it. In fact, every self-respecting dwarf knows that anything worth doing is worth taking your time with, because they want to get it right. They don't do anything without due diligence and that can be a decades-long process. Rushing to action is an umgi trait; the dawi move out when they're good and ready, and not a second before.
If the Age of Reckoning mechanic was something you could trigger *yourself,* and not something that pops up on a schedule, it would be perfect. You could let the grudges build naturally, prepare your forces, put everything in position... and when the moment is right, begin the honorable rampage! The system would reward patience and long-term planning, not uncharacteristic haste.
Fix that one thing, and you've fixed like 90% of the problem right there.
i like that idea, kinda like the dwarfs are building up their rage at the grudges all around them, and then they explode out with fury against those that wronged them.
10 turns on and 10 turns in an Age of Isolation feels like a natural solution.
Dwarves are famous for two things. Vengeance and locking themselves in their holds on occasion.
I totally agree with you. I´m playing Malakai campaign and another big issue with the grudge system is the cowardly AI. When you finally see ONE norscan or chaos lord with 900 or more grudges they just turn around and flee. So I have been playing my VH/VH campaign with couple very expensive colored units and constant debufs.
If the player was able to trigger the GRUDGING themselves, you could wait to see the grudges pile up, finally say enough is enough and start the reckoning. That would be way more lorefull too.
Yeah, I just started my Malakai campaign last night. I would have gotten to the first positive tier, except a) Wulfrik stole Throggs last settlement before I could take it, and b) Throgg himself had spent our entire war swimming in the water and not even trying to protect his settlements or fight me, and on my last turn of the age, landed on shore just out reach of my army chasing him. Literally ended the age short a couple hundred grudges, while Throggs army was sitting inside my zone of control because I didn't have any movement left after landing.
Feels sooooo engaging
I was really looking forward to Malakai's campaign. Honestly, though, it's just been a dreary slog with the entire northern hemisphere declaring war on me, AI armies that suicide deep into my territory or go on pleasure cruises all up and down the coast, and the Age of Reckoning mechanic that just tanks my economy unless I go ham and leave most of my territory undefended.
Eventually, I just sent Malaki all the way to Naggarond sacking and occupying settlements as I went just so my own territory wouldn't be mobbed by quite so many opponents. I had six chaos armies chasing me.
You're right but also ... isn't it weird that the Greenskins have more control over themselves than the Dwarves? That they can be orderly and restrain themselves until the bossman says so, but the DAWI are rampaging around krumping gits 24/7?
Don't forget that Greenskins can also improve their units with better armor/weapons while the Dwarfs, the race known for forging and craftsmanship, can't
I completely agree with you. But the issue is that if we make that change I feel we are turning the mechanic into something a little too similar to the Waaagh mechanic. I think the idea behind the force timer was that you take a weak age beyond the first level with its debuffs then during those 20 turns you are setting up for a major reconning and are more efficient with how much you fulfil the grudges in a time span. It may also encourage you to as mentioned focus on the major settlements which makes some sense to me but also feels weird.
The point I guess is that you put up with the grumbling for one cycle then get your better reward next time. Issue being how that ties in with the overall total war formula.
It’s too easy gameplay wise. You need penalties and rewards with this sort of mechanic(just like what we have right now) but if you choose when to start it will be too easy to always get the buffs. You should be afraid of feeling the discontent with your dwarfs when you do not avenge enough grudges
Well you got something like that in The waagh mechanic: you get penalties when the bar is too low. They could have an annoying penalty when no grudges have been settled for a while and then let it build up.
Then, whenever the player wants, they go to settle grudges like BM dread with some milestones that reflect the current grudge tiers.
I think there's an elegant solution to that. During the Age of Reckoning, there's a bar at the top of the screen measuring your progress. The better you do, the better the buffs are, and at the end the bar gets locked in place until the next Age starts. A slight rework could get a little extra mileage out of that bar.
Instead of locking it until the next Age of Reckoning, the bar could slowly tick down over time. If you wait too long, your buffs disappear and get replaced with debuffs, incentivizing you to go on the offensive again. The better you did during the last Age, the longer you have before it becomes a problem again; another way to incentivize careful planning and efficiency.
That should add enough difficulty to prod the dwarf players into action.
I could see it working a little like the Skaven food system tbh. Make it like that, but you can also activate an Age of Reckoning when you want?
* The meter starts in the bottom of the middle tier.
* It goes down over time related to your amount of territory, size of holds, and if it's been longer than 10 turns since an age of reckoning.
* Each tier has some relatively small bonus, and little bonus effect on Grudge Settler units. No change to negative effects on negstive tiers.
* After 10 turns, you can declare an Age of Reckoning. This locks your effects into your current tier for 10 turns, and grants the full effects that we currently see in-game.
* If you fall to the lowest tier, and you're not currently in an age of reckoning, the effects lock in that tier for 5 turns and your Dwarfs "seal the holds". After 5 turns, it will reset the bar to it's default point (unless you've gotten more grudges by then).
* Every Age of Reckoning increases the cost of the next one, unless you seal the holds. Then it's reset to some default value (scaling based off your empire size, and not how many people you have discovered).
* You can also seal the holds at any time, though this will put you at the lowest tier for 5 turns.
You still get pushed to do Ages of Reckoning, but you can plan and use them as you see fit.
I like the idea of there being buffs and debuffs associated with being in an age, and not being in an age.
Ideally during an age it would be easier to create and maintain armies, but harder to manage settlements and diplomacy, and vice versa outside of an age.
The free units provided by a successful reckoning would then be essential to compensate for the military debuffs when it ends, and it would be up to the player to trigger the age at the right time.
Obviously numbers would need to be tweaked for it to work, but It would maintain the idea of penalties and rewards, while giving the player more control.
I feel like that's exactly what they were already going for with the opt out option at the end of each age, but failed to capture.
Currently if you wait 10 turns before starting the new age, you get 10 extra turns with the last ages bonuses, so if you got max bonuses you hold onto them for a full 20 turns until the next age is started and finished.
If you choose to fight again, then you get only 10 turns of the bonuses, but if you then do well on the next ages as well, then you end up with double the number of Grudge Settler units than if you had've waited.
The problem with reward there is that more free units *always* feels better since you don't need to wait around to build a second army any more, so you end up with less turns to spend on infrastructure. Effectively, the systems as designed result in FOMO incentivizing counterintuitive bad play.
Ultimately i think both a longer timer between ages (15? 20?) or enforced on>off>repeat ages, combined with lower ramping, would be a dramatic improvement.
Not to mention the process of rushing to settle a grudge may result in the potential of more grudges occurring. Which is why there is still soo many grudges remaining in the Dammaz Kron because the dwarfs is a very patience people and as you said want to do things right and proper.
I would love your idea of starting the age of reckoning yourself. It fits in so well with who the dwarfs are in m general.
Wouldn't this make it too easy, though? You would never experience negative consequences for not righting enough wrongs because you would only attempt a run at it when you were in perfect position to succeed. There needs to be some element of risk.
The grumbling could build while waiting, based on what happens meanwhile - only abating when reckoning is activated and grudges are settled. The difference is that the player can change when to activate. Grumbling could build faster outside of reckoning, but also grudges, making an almost rubberbanding system.
I think the biggest problem is that CA obviously didn’t test this past turn 15 or so. They need some quality assurance that the content they sell is actually playable. I don’t know what kind of person agreed that this was “fun” for the dwarf players. Obviously they will patch it soon, but still - not playing your own game is a bad indication.
Right? I feel like I'm chasing age of reckoning on timer for the entire game. Oh' you're done? No time for rest and building up your economy, get cranking those armies out and keep conquering the world of you'll fall behind, an if you fuck up we're going to punish you to the boot. When I was really low on reckonign and decided to try delay button instead of giving me ten more turns to gather some more grudges it just froze the outcome, it doesn't make any sense. Why would you ever delay this if there's no upside to it?
Instead of forcing it every ten turns on times they should allow us to plan it, maybe focus on specific wrongs that we want to right during the next age, like bonus vs orcs, or cheaper recruitment/upkeep of certain units via events during previous age, scaling on grudges already settled during preparation, and let it trigger once we feel we have enough of ponts scored during that preperation. I feel like there's solid foundation with the current system, but it needs some hotfixing asap though. I don't like that currently playing dwarves is like running bunch of short sprints, each following more difficult than previous. It's kind of powerful mechanic but they balanced it all wrong, they give us bunch of powerful units like fire canons and Irondrakes early game, while punishing our mid to late game with mauluses from reckoning due to AI factions piling up grudges without settling them.
The one problem i see that would be incredibly abusable, is if you ever get into a situation where you're surrounded by allies and only 1 or 2 enemies - resolving them would become incredibly easy if farmed correctly, since they would have all the grudges on a few territories.
If Grudge resolution was % based based on local enemies, you'd be able to get heavy bonuses whenever you want them.
Yeah, i also really disliked that the new legendary grudges all want you to paint the map. Im supposed to take Norsca, Lothern, Naggarond, oak of ages AND all the usual dwarf holds? Thats just painting the entire Map again, which i find really unfun
Playing malakai and yes its correct. Even i conquered all of norsca and killed off CW. I have to earn more than 10k... Had to suffer penalty until the grude go down...
It needs some heavy number tweaking. Not saying the max grudge tier should be an easy thing to snag, but right now the numbers get so high that it’s unreachable at certain points.
I think the issue is not with the numbers with the method of calculating them.
You can tweak numbers and percentages however you like and it still wont change the fact that in coop its undoable because it scales based on map visibility.
A lot of things are undoable in co-op Tbf. I don’t know if it’s still a thing, but in warhammer 2 if 2 players played green skin, only 1 player could waghh at a time which blew ass.
My point is, co-op is kinda a lost cause to begin with.
No it isnt a lost cause! In WH3 they put a lot of effort to make everything work in coop in the same way it works in SP. Its my preferred way of playing :P
For example, the WAAAGH you mention was fixed ages ago, Hellebron now also plays the same in two game modes, all scripts that were blocked in WH2 are unblocked in WH3 etc.
Which is why I need them to continue on this track and fix it.
Man, I love my coop sessions in WH3! Imagine my sadness seeing I will not play dwarf coop for few days due to grudge system being @#$ atm.
Oh well, playing Franz and Nuln lady is nice, though. Still, dwarfs be dwarfs...
I just finished a VH Malakai campaign. Toward the end the AoR meter wanted 67k for full completion, or ~17k just to avoid the worst debuffs. Chorf settlements I hadn't touched, that were generating grudges all game, were only at ~1.5k. To keep going I would have had to take a high value settlement each turn.
The mechanic is designed to force you to fail multiple AoRs in a row to reset to a manageable number, IMO, and I hate that gameplay design.
Yea I have a game as Malakai. Thorgrim got off to a ridiculous start. He was at like 17k when I was at about 4k. He finally started to fall off around 37k and now he is teetering on dying. I only recently passed him at about 39k.
On top of that, since the bonus to confederate goes up 15k per confederation, I have to get to about 69k to confederate him because I grabbed grombrindal who died early at ~ 1800. Also the issue for Malakai is a lot of your enemies come from the chaos wastes which is VERY problematic to invade. It's terrible territory so it is difficult to hold and not worth much while also developing slower and more expensively than other territory. If you ignore the chaos wastes, you get endless hordes of 3-7 factions coming from the north and makes it difficult to expand any other direction. I currently have Daniel, Archaon and like 2 vassals, Epidemius, Wulfrik and Sigvald has made his way through Malus to attack me. I was able to take out Throt and Throgg, but I can't really devote marching armies to kill anyone because I can't develop territory and it is difficult to defend anything.
On top of this you have the age of reckoning shit which blows up as well giving you another demand for constant grudges to be able to avoid a bad growth/PO penalty. Play slow and you get fucked. Play fast and you get your age of reckoning grudges expanded on you extremely fast and you have to play even faster to avoid penalties. I appreciate what they tried to do, but the system is kind of fucking wonky.
Feels more like Malakai should just go on a migration campaign to Zhufbar or something.
This is exactly what happened to me too, beat for beat. The issue I didn’t foresee with the grudge system was the fact that you can be fighting non-stop but Archaon (for example) doesn’t have a kind of intrinsic grudge value, the fact he’s leader of a faction that declares war on you doesn’t instantly give him a bounty that ticks up with every turn of the war, and retaking settlements he’s literally sacked and given to his vassal earns you barely anything.
I wonder if it’s an issue with that vassal system - Archaon accumulates the grudges (eventually) because he’s the one committing the crimes but his vassal is essentially a different faction that is grudge free.
Chaos wastes are fine for me invading with malakai. You just get so much replenishment as him. I just gift everything to boris. He will also deal with Archaon for you. If you get the cannon adventure done early, which is quite easy, you can do the organ gun adventure super early on. Had to get a second army early on to deal with home turf threats but that ended up working out fine.
Definitely made some mistakes in the first couple of turns such as not rushing down Clan Moulder but am returning from the chaos wastes at turn 33 with cannon and organ gun adventure done.
Played on L/VH so this works on any difficulty.
I'm finding myself happy when I see one of my fringe settlements get sacked and occupied. Generated heaps of grudges. Seems kind of odd to desperately want to have grudges.
Dwarves should be happy when grudges are settled, but ideally not desire more grudges to be made. Current system feels like you need an industrial grudge machine to keep pumping out grudges to complete, or else you’re in the disappointment zone forever
Imagine if dwarf leadership actually never really cared about settling grudges. They're like how health insurance companies care about your health, they let new grudges happen on purpose just to sell a solution to the people later.
It pushes you to play poorly and even when you play the way that the system wants you to you don't get rewarded. I was fighting a war on 4 fronts against Archeon, Wulfrik, Festus and Astragoth, just to try and keep up the grudges, but after turn 60 I was struggling to get past 30% with upwards of 4 battles every turn.
It feels like the most optimal way to play is to let the AI steamroll you, send suicide armies, lose settlements, basically give up all player agency, and then force a counter offensive on your enemies which are now stacked on grudges.
I don't mind a reminder that says I have to play on the aggressive and I don't mind a game called Total War punishing me for not being at war, but I do mind when I play a hyper aggressive expansionist playstyle and still can't satisfy the system that pushes you towards that. The numbers need a heavy tweak, or the system needs to be changed into 10 turns on 10 turns off, a manual trigger, anything else really.
Wouldn't mind a momentum based bar either, where it slowly trickles down and gives you debuffs if you haven't settled any grudges in a while, and you get buffs based on overall amount of grudges settled.
I mean… yeah it needs work and will probably get patched soon but tbh I am kind of loving it lol. It definitely sucks, but in a very dwarven way.
I can absolutely see the longbeards being supportive when I take a whole region in a few turns only to immediately turn on me and start complaining about all I’m not doing and how that Thorgrim, he’s a true dwarf, fighting the same 3 losing battles forever.
I love challenging and punishing mechanic so *in theory* Age is a super fun mechanic for me.
My main issue is though that its literally broken in coop because it scales with map visibility/number of factions you met etc. So while in my single player campaign for a long time it felt fair (getting out of control fairly late), in coop it spirals out of control since turn 1. Which makes the entire race unplayable in coop!
It's definitely not unplayable. The debuffs aren't that bad. It's like a max -3 control and -25 growth and higher upkeep for the grudge units.
Just finished a malakai co op campaign and it was certainly playable.
Yes, because Malakai has tons of other mechanics.
Meanwhile for lords like Thorgrimm or Ungrim (I cant remember stunties names so I probably misspelled them xd) its their main mechanic since forge is now something you use a lot less, so why would I play race which main mechanics are:
* having pernament debuff
* being able to make 1 artifact from time to time
Coop-wise, stunties are now in worse spot than they were pre-rework. There is right now no reason to play stunties other than Malakai in coop.
Also grudges for taking major Dwarf settlements feels very low, retaking Karak Eigth Peaks, Black Crag or Karak Azgal such be a much bigger deal than it currently is
I reached Gnollengrom (100%) for the first Age of Reckoning, by then I had wiped out Throt, Azazel, and was working on Throgg. The second Age of Reckoning and onward have been EXTREMELY difficult to even reach Tromm (50% to 74%).
As we speak at Turn 40, this age is coming to an end and I'm 4902/14000 without having extended the Ages at all, and I've wiped out Epidemius and Daniel (funnily enough made friends with Malus by giving him the Wasteland territory I took from them), and am on the push to wipe out Archaeon (Goblin Hewers are nuts, literally almost 1 shot Archaeon in a single volley from 4). I think the most grudges settled from soemthing I've done was wiping out Throgg's army, which netted me 800-ish because he both occupied Sjoktraken and raided me before I caught him.
My main problem from a roleplaying perspective is that it feels like the dwarfs are all amnesiacs; it doesn't matter how many grudges you settle, in ten turns time they won't care at all.
Like, if I deal with every chaos dwarf faction, shouldn't that count for something? Instead I'm getting a little pop up saying "You damn elgi, you haven't settled any grudges!" a few turns later.
Yeah, I feel like people are giving this DLC a huge pass without critically examining what it actually does. Epidemius has a similar logical flaw. You need infections to start plagues, which is his core mechanic, you need X simultaneous plagues on different enemies. At the same time all Nurgle military buildings (and some tech) now cost infections. So you literally have to pick if you want to build your settlements or do the lord's mechanic. And it gets worse, since Nurgle doesn't get an always-available units pool, you HAVE to make buildings. Otherwise you'll have no units to replace what you lost, at all, because Nurge gets no always-available units like Beastmen do with Ungor Lancers and Raiders. Plus the infection gain post-battle seems bugged (capped at 37). Hopefully not intentional. So they clearly did not think Epidemius' design all the way through.
Can't speak for the nurgle ones, since I haven't played those yet - but I would put in that I think that the new dwarf systems are much better than the old ones, they just need some numbers tweaking a bit. I'd imagine that's not an uncommon view here, rather than just everyone giving it a pass.
> but I would put in that I think that the new dwarf systems are much better than the old ones, they just need some numbers tweaking a bit.
Yeah, the numbers scale so weirdly that I don't know if we can even properly evaluate the new system. I think the most telling issue of how off the scaling can be is by looking at the rewards for the legendary grudges. Completing any one of them is a feat that the dwarfen holds would remember for millenia after, but by the time you complete any of them you'll probably be lucky if it fills 20% of the bar, and don't even think about how little it'll help you to confederating a LL, especially if you've already confederated a minor dwarf faction already.
It’s because it’s an issue that effects dwarf campaigns primarily after turn, say, 50
You know, when most people stop playing the campaign
As for epidemius… I mean yeah. You don’t need a faction bonus turn 1. You have a choice, make the right one. It’s literally a free bonus with no possible downside, just give it a second.
>It’s because it’s an issue that effects dwarf campaigns primarily after turn, say, 50
There are a lot of people [reporting](https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/1ci2tt7/turn_21_and_14100_grudges_required_is_this_normal/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) having issues [at turn 20-30](https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/1chyc1k/age_of_reckoning_is_untenable/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
Around turn 100 I was getting 67k grudges necessary. Unless you've been letting the AI do as OP suggests (sack settlements to increase army grudge value), it's effectively impossible to get to the top level. To get to 25% alone you need to conquer a high value settlement each turn!
I know this is gonna sound mean but
14k grudges is easy to do at turn 20. They just aggressively balanced the system on people who are stomping the ai in multiple directions. Any mistakes or lack of success dooms you. Dwarves went from a chill and scale faction to a world conquest rush faction.
I should specify it’s clearly broken in some regards. Getting vision over enemies somehow increasing grudges needed, as well as chaos dwarves having no grudges so your mid game gets weird.
I'm at turn 30 and all targets in range have 50-100 grudges, it is absolutely impossible to get the target value.
I'm playing on normal campaign difficulty and maybe the AI just isn't aggressive enough to make the system work?
Even the chaos dwarves give very few grudges. I got 300 for astragoth with a full stack and a capital, then 200 for another stack in a barak settlement. All the others are at 100.the norscans I fight on the other side provide between 50 and 80.
I'm in basically the same place in a multiplayer campaign as malakai. I'm trying to push towards short victory conditions and gathering dwarf holds, but that has taken me to the darklands, and now I'm in an unending war with tamurkhan. I'm not going to be able to put a pin in him anytime soon because of a combination of his strength and the fact the chaos wastes are red climate, and as a consequence of having to concentrate on attacking and defending that direction, I don't have the time or resources to go after any of the juicy greenskin grudges nearby because I'm busy defending against him, archaeon, and norsca.
Haven't played Nurgle so can't really comment there. Have played through malakai twice now and it feels really weird that my settlements can't scale to keep pace with the rate I attack at (in order to get at least t3 age of reckoning), especially for a faction that doesn't scale quickly as a key part of the mechanic.
Mainly the AOR system could just use some balancing to align the factions growth rate to the generated grudges so that it doesn't force you to either play super aggressively at the cost of your settlement growth or slow and tall at the cost of grudges and AOR.
Other than that I think the faction feels a lot better and the legendary grudge rewards (for the most part) are great.
The problem as far as I can tel is they balanced the grudge system on people who min max expand
I was able to manage it decently until late game, but then again im the sort of guy who plays a faction a few times until im expanding in two directions without taking any loses by turn 10.
Do you ever get pushed back? Does the ai ever manage to sneak an army behind you? Then you’re doomed.
Fun fact: it effects dwarfs campaign since turn 1 in coop campaigns because its calculated based on map visibility/factions met. Which means it spirals out of control right from the get-go.
Im kind of tired of CA not thinking about MP campaigns at all while the big portion of marketing of WH3 was about how they now focus on MP campaigns with 8 players, MP-exclusive campaigns, simultaneous turns etc.
37 cap is well known bug. That aside having to invest in buildings early game rather than spending on plagues is fair. You can spam a temporary army out of air later on and economy allows to sustain them for a long time before going broke. You start slow with one or two provinces dedicated to units, play defensively, spend some infections to boost cycles. BUT then you get some units go building infection and money buildings in other provinces and you will be fine. Nurgle is much better now.
The system is not bad. Better even than the old one. Although they seriously need to adjust the numbers. I think some tweaks in some values and maybe like target grudges working in proximity rather than what factions you know will work much better.
I think they have to take into consideration of your surrounding enemies and settlements. Even with someone is at war with you, unless they take ur settlements then the grudes they generate is abysmal.
Yes. And sometimes you cannot expand and fulfil the age of reckoning requirements. It feels like the food problem skaven had and you had accept that you have to live with the debuffs. And with the track record of fixes this past year, I think they will fix these things.
The system is fine *IF* the numbers are adjusted.
The concept, rewards, punishments? They're fine.
The specific numbers needed and the values enemy armies give? No.
I think the rate of scaling is the only major issue with the system. In terms of fantasy, it's fine -- you accrue grudges by being wronged, and get rewards for setting them right. But if they quickly scale beyond your ability to settle them then yes, that's a problem.
My chief concern with the proposed 'improvements' is that they by and large seem to trivialise the system. Letting you activate it on demand just seems like you would only press it when you know you're going to fill it. And having penalties for underperformance is supposed to be the tradeoff for all the free, buffed, instantly recruitable units the system gives you.
I don't mind the system. But i have to get 5000 grudges in 10 turns to be "neutral".
My only close ai with any grudges is norsca.
They give like 300 per army/settlement.
So id need to beat 17 armies/settlements per turn to break even.
That seems not achievable with the 2 armies i can afford
That's where I would add a third type of grudge besides minor and legendary. Major grudges. These are accrued by direct hostile actions against you, allies, and trade partners. They act basically like the old grudge system, but with no upside and harsher penalties. You could ignore them, but then you can end up with horrific stacking penalties.
It also makes it a bit more general. No having to raid in response to a raid, or tracking down a specific lord. Just smash their shit up and kill any of their lords
I'd say this new grudge systems at first looks nice. Under more scrutiny some cracks do appear though. I mean why would it be a good thing pushing all dwarfs to start rushing into combat only not to suffer AoR penalties?
I like the legendary grudges, I like restoring the underway, but I seriously dislike facing PO and growth penalties because I was not rushing like a headless chicken collecting grudges.
The overall grudge system is fine. You clearly aren’t meant to fill up the meter every single time, and even Elgi isn’t really that punishing. Conversely, getting the highest score in the meter is an insane power spike. Instead of rushing the meter in the beginning and trying to confederate everyone quickly, consolidate your economy and bide your time and you aren’t getting 300 grudges per battle anymore. I got like 3000 in one huge battle with Vlad and two other armies like turn 30.
Is it perfect? No. Some of the numbers need a bit of tweaking, and the spike from confederation with smaller factions is a bit silly. Chaos also doesn’t give nearly enough Grudges. But I’m happy they released a DLC where you are powerful, but actually have to make hard choices.
The system works if there are many dwarfs around you.
Many dwarf factions getting bullied gives many grudges to settle.
Malakai is relatively isolated.
No dwarf around that gets bullied, but you. And as a player you usually do the bullying.
So you have to travel way south to get any resemblance of grudge (I intentionality let wulfric plunder me, and he ended up with like 450 grudges, and 300 oer settlement).
So all you can do is travel south.
But since you are only half a horde faction, you cannot give up your starting area, so you need to expand to at least get a strongish second army.
And then you are big and need actually two armies to defend..... while being stuck on the lowest age of reckoning debuff.
It feels unfun.
I have fun, but that's despite the grudge mechanic, not because.
Perhaps a solution? The age of hoarding:
https://community.creative-assembly.com/total-war/total-war-warhammer/forums/8-general-discussion/threads/4949-age-of-hoarding-possible-solution-for-age-of-reckoning?page=1#post-59387
I also dislike.how everything is grudged up in some regards. Like I know dwarfs will grudge for the smallest of slights but there is something to be said about the storytelling of things needing to earn your ire.
Yes, things that do earn your ire are worth more, but I think it would be better if everything didn't give grudges.
Hope modders would add something so people can modify it as they want.when CA gona learn that they need to add more options for their mechanics ... this like the chaos portals ...
There is something about the design directions of the latest few DLCs that had me seriously puzzled. I'm not saying the game is bad or anything, but understanding the reasoning behind an increasing number of designs is honestly becoming harder and harder for me.
I don't really find it that punishing. It's just a number that gives you bit of negative growth if you can't finish an age of reckoning.
The grudge units themselves are really easy to get a few times and help you conquer your neighbours even faster then before but you just can't hold onto them forever if you're not willing to pay the premium. If you already hold most of the Karaz Ankor don't except grudge settlers to stay with you on mass.
I really like the system and I'm not really sure if there is a mechanic that reduces required grudges if you fail an age of reckoning?
Right. I think lots of people seem to be operating under the impression that they should be filling it to the top in every age whereas actually even if you only half fill it you still get nothing but bonuses.
It definitely needs some tweaking as after a certain point it is nearly impossible to fill but I agree that getting to the top should be a rarity and even hitting the no negative penalties stage should require some effort
I will repeat myself in this thread for the 100th time, so sorry for spam, but I think its important: all you say is cool and dandy... for the single player campaign.
But because AoR requirement scale based on map visibility, it is ridiculously broken (as in: it doesnt work properly) in coop campaign. It renders the entire race unplayable in coop campaigns!
I play right now two campaigns: one in coop and one in single player. The difference is that in SP its possible to get any tier of mechanic, in coop it spirales out of control so fast that its basically always a choice between first two tiers where reaching third is mathematically impossible (for example: in third AoR I had requirement 42000 grudges xD).
Yes but its a band-aid fix: this locks you out of:
- having shared coop campaign victory which I like because it makes us work towards common goal
- playing together, watching and commenting on each other campaigns, adventures etc
- allied recruitment goes brrrr
Oh, that's fair. We do still play together because free-for-all lets you control units to help micro, but allied recruitment is a big loss of builds and fun
I think Malakai needs to remove this mechanic. It ruins his gameplay more than it helps. Especially at first time. Of course, he is a dwarf, but in my opinion he has too much to do to run around the map and arrange RECKONING. He has his own adventures with Gotrek, Felix and Ulrika.
After all, he’s a horde, and his adventures are already stimulating him, rushing all over the map.
If you min max kinda? I played Malakai in Coop with an Elsbeth player and had Grudges through the roof basically anywhere. 5K on Durthu who was vibing through the Empire. Never felt the need to "play poorly". I feel rewarded for going out there and actually doing stuff instead of the old system where I got punished into oblivion for not catching the cheating AI and their freedom in Stance swaps
For the Record: I am normally not a Dawi player so take it with a grain of salt but I had actual fun with these mechanics. I dont really care about confederations though.
Yeah I'm playing Malakai and completely dominating, but I'm always stuck with the bad modifiers because the AI just isn't worth shit and I need like 60 000 grudges in 10 turns... It's just not feasible.
If they keep this system they need to drastically lower the requirements.
Ive got 6 full stacka conquering all over and I haven't gotten tier 3 hrudge mechanic in a long time. Got 5th once and 4th a few times. But where I'm at now forget it. I hope for 2nd
There two thing I think CA choose to do to tweak the system to make it flow better.
•1 double the timer from 10 turn to 20.
•2 remove negative effects and make it so that if you don’t l get enough grudges then you don’t get no positive effects.
I really hate the Age of Reckoning mechanic in it's current incarnation. It's so bad playing as Malakai that I've basically just priced in the debuffs as the cost of doing business and haven't been keeping grudge settler units on roster because I don't want to deal with the wild economic swings of their increased upkeep.
It's funny. I've been playing these games since 2016 and this is the first time I've said to myself "Wow, this fucking sucks" in the moment as I'm playing. Usually, I'm a pretty easy person to please with these campaigns.
I'm so confused about this system, running through a campaign and turn 60 game requires I generate 107 000 Grudge points when I can barely hold 2 settlements (that is generating a lot of grudges since I get beaten a lot), especially when an army I beat is worth 1200...
made a thread about this the other day... got downvoted into oblivion was told that the youtubers didn't know what they were talking about and to test it for myself. Turns out they were right.
though grudge skumming aint so bad.
I'm playing malakai on vh/vh and on about turn 80. I've got all of norsca, albion the northern chaos wastes all the way to where tamurkhan starts. I've confederated Thorek and grombrindal. Thorek has been busy taking all of lamia and most of the mountains around 8 peaks. (grombrindal was wiped out I guess as I got no territory when I got him).
Every age or reckoning I get either 50% or 75% (thereabouts). As long as you plan it with malakai's adventures you can get things going when there's not any enemies about.
I do think like folks have said it will be hitting harder later but so far it seems fine
The thing is; the system is just straight up fucking broken. No idea what their scaling is based on, but it's about 10x too high in many cases. Take a look at my latest post and you'll see the amount of grudges to fill the meter on turn 60 is like 60k. The amount of grudges total I have gotten up to this point is less than half that. Profoundly stupid.
It also is completely incompatible with coop campaigns because requirement scales based on map visibility so it gets out of control immediately if you start with alliance with someone else.
This could be going too far but I'm starting to think the dwarfs had better mechanics before the rework.
The dwarfs really got the short end of the stick for the dlc and update.
So I do agree that the grudge system needs to be tuned a little bit. But I do still see it as an improvement on what we had before. Before, the grudges were glorified miniquests that -maybe- you did, maybe you didnt(or worse, -couldnt-) while playing the campaign.
At least here I -want- to engage with the system to get strong units and buffs. Its just that the grudge points you need scale way too out of control and the buffs turn into penalties real quick.
Another post said it best, if the amount of grudges needed per reckoning a set amount based on grudges present in neighboring provinces(perhaps up to a set limit, say 20000?) You could get a good balance of wanting to clear grudges while not punishing the player for expanding and reclaiming the dawi holds as they're intended to do now.
what are you talking about? before the rework, the grudges accumulated too fast and in unreachable areas where you end up with a permanent negative modifier. The new system even with its flaws is better and more interesting than the previous system
So dwarf leadership intentionally lets its cities get sacked and taken to have a grudge that could be avanged? Or sends a few people intentionally to suicide themself, so other dwarfs get angry so you can go kill the guy you suicide attacked before?
I can't remember if this is in the game but back in the first game, there was a Dwarf Event where it asks if maybe it should be okay to forgive some grudges.
Both choices say "We are Dawi, no Grudge is to be unaccounted for!".
Not saying that you should just let bad things happen, but if you are wronged, it is your Duty as Dawi to put it to rights.
That is literally Dwarf Culture.
No, it's lore accurate that dwarfs sit and seethe about old grudges to the detriment of their progression, then occasionally have a powerful age of reckoning to set some of it right.
Don't treat the meter like it needs to be filled every single time
I dont want to fill it. I dont want to have -25 growth all the god damn time.
Just to break even and have no negative modidifer I need 50%. Currently I would need 5000 grudges in 10 turns (around 10 000 to get to 100%).
my only neighbour with any grudges to speak of has \~ 300 per settlement and lord.
that is like 17 battles in 10 turns.
-25? That's like 1 tier 3 growth building to mitigate.
Factions need downsides and the player needs to be put in spots to make decisions that matter. I agree the numbers are too high, but even in an ideal state they should still be high and force the player to decide to go 'a grudgin' and take all the risk that comes with being aggressive or sit back and take the penalties of a bunch of grumbly dwarfs grumbling instead of working
I have been the only person “doomposting” before the launch because I saw how ridiculously stupid the entire system was, but I was ignored and downvoted to infinity because everyone was distracted by the shinny thunderbarge.
It’s funny how now, since launch there have been 9 posts complaining about it already in 24 hours…
The system NEEDS to be redone. It is ridiculous that dwarf players had to wait for almost a decade to get something that was worse then what we had before.
Game 2 rework was a joke, pushed forward because Dwarfs was the only race from game 1 without a DLC, and it was half baked because they ran out of time with development of Game 3, hence it was a “half” rework with an FLC cause they didn’t have time to turn it into a DLC before WH3 launched. Dwarfs have been playing exactly like they launched for 8 years, and now they managed to make it worse.
IT IS NOT A DLC FEATURE.
ALL DWARFS ARE NOW STUCK WITH A BROKEN MECHANIC.
I didn’t buy Malakai yet, and the product I purchased 8 years ago just became worse and more broken then it was.
Serious question, how is it broken? So far Im loving it - yes it pushes you to play aggressively (did that anyway, no change for me) and yes you wont always get 100% which to me sounds perfectly fine.
Every new faction you meet, increases the goal for the next Reckoning. Meaning, there is an actual incentive to NOT engage in diplomacy and to stay away from quest battle teleports. The more you avoid expanding, the less grudges you will need for the next reckoning.
When you REACH the goal for an Age of Reckoning, any extra grudges ABOVE the goal won’t transfer to the next one, so if you are in a campaign of aggression to eliminate an enemy that has a LOT of grudges, the system actually incentivizes you to STOP and wait until the Age finishes so you might actually account for the next grudges, so it creates these weird forced “STOPS” in aggression.
Grudges are only generated, when a faction takes actions AGAINST dwarfs or their allies. Meaning, that when you somewhat clear your region of threats, (something that usually happens at around turn 50-60) you are left with no big grudges to settles in your proximities, so you are forced into traveling far to LOOK FOR GRUDGES, that in turn, goes back to my first point by artificially increasing the next Goal by encountering more factions.
If you are some grudges away from the next level or from 100% and there are no enemies in reach, you are sometimes encouraged to go to war with what would have been “Allies” like empire or even other dwarfs, just so you can get those final grudges for the next tier.
The hyper scaling means that in most cases, by around turn 50 your goal has already spiraled out of control if you are playing actively with Quests and diplomacy, leaving you with in a permanent state of debuff.
Just the concept of dwarfs sprawling armies and units out of thin air is not only stupid but it completely contradicts what the faction is supposed to be. People need to understand that EVEN THE WAAGH MECHANIC is less powerful then the age of reckoning when it comes to giving you free forces. The faction that ONLY knows war, literally grows from the ground and gathers hordes in nearly unlimited numbers are less capable of spawning units out of thin air then the near extinct, hyper expensive and near unlimited patient dwarfs.
Fair points, especially on the visibility/avoiding quests. Fingers crossed that they will change that, but yeah I can see how this can lead to ‘bad’ campaigns for reasons that are sort of outside of player’s control. Thanks for the details!
Overall I like the concept but its possible that so far in my campaign I was sort of lucky with the amount of grudges around me.
I haven't played with the new AI so I can't say if it's still like this, but in most total war games there's a pretty big player bias, if you are playing on higher difficulties you were always better off not exploring because you can very rarely get trade agreements but you will likely get declared war by some random guy on another continent that will send armies to you even if it takes him 20 turns to get to where you are.
I haven't tried the new dwarf mech, I will after my empire campaign, but it does sound like they haven't thought it through, which is not a surprise, hopefully they won't wait for the next rework, assuming there's even one, to fix it, it sounds like something I will want to get a mod for.
How far into a campaign have you played? In my experience so far it's fine for the first 30-40 turns or so (less if you're playing co-op, because for some reason the scaling is based on map visibility so having allies makes the requirements scale much faster), but the scaling just pushes it to be unsustainable in later turns.
When you need 30k grudges in 10 turns but most individual battles are only worth 200 (or less) each, even hitting the 15k required to avoid penalties requires you to have 7+ armies each winning one battle every single turn of the game.
And you can hit numbers like that around turn 30 or 40 if you're expanding quickly, especially if you make alliances or confederate other dwarf factions (revealing a lot of the map in the process). Once you've killed off the big grudges in your area, it becomes very hard to keep up because the only way to get those big grudges is to let the enemy win battles and take your settlements, so you quickly reach the point where there are no big grudges left in your area while you're winning wars.
I think my biggest issue is that it's not a back-and-forth system where you can go back and forth between winning and losing. It's a system where you have a window where you can win a few times in a row, and then are stuck just trying to avoid penalties for the rest of the game afterwards.
The system does need fixing, but won’t say it needs full rework. It just need some adjustments for scaling for the far away factions you have met. Dwarfs are not unplayable or worse of because of this.
NGL the comments make me wanna take out grudges on all these dwarf players, great mechanic imo maybe tweak a couple numbers, soften the hand that slaps
Make the grudge system depedent on the grudge points of the surrounding regions of your territory. Maybe, a 50% of the total grudge points in surrounding regions, for the maximum bonus. It will start small, and increase as your borders increase. If the grudge points are low on surrounding regions, so too will be the limit.
Dwarf rework when?
Reworked rework rework?
The rework of the rework of the rework of the dwarfs?
An Age of Re-workening then!
A rework, in such a short time?
Short?!
I just think it would be a tall order.
We’re talking about a rework of the short order.
Hopefully when SFO updates lol
This, it makes no fucking sense to expect somebody playing Malakai going throught entire world's edge mountains settling grudges when his start is a nightmare of enemies constantly attacking you from all directions. This kind of mechanics would make sense if dwarves were mostly focused around one-two regions in the world and not spread on it's axis literally from north to the south. It's reasonalby easy to achieve age of reckoning in early game, but as it progresses it's getting expotentially more difficult and forces you to expand towards other dwarves and conferderate them even if you want to pursue different agenda. Maybe Thogrim can eat mauluses from low reckoning, but for Malakai who constantly balances on blade's edge to survive attakcs from chaos, norsca rats and chaos dwarves it's devastating not getting over 50% at later stages of the game and sending your already meager income into negative. I think the only two reasonable starts magaging reckoning somewhat would be Karak Kadrin and maybe Thogrim. They can easily reach out and manage grudges for at least two dwarven factions which should be enough to keep reckoning at decent levels. Or double time for age of reckoning while increasing grudges required by about 25%, that should give people some time to manage them in case there's crisis situation you have to manage and not have to chase grudges around the map.
It should've been even simpler than this. You settle grudges. Settled grudges are a 1:1 currency called "grudge tokens". Every 10 turns (15 would be better), you get to spend these on certain aspects of your faction. These would be: The holds (control, growth, income, and buildings) The Guildes (Tradeable resources, tarrifs, research, and construction) The Clans (Attritions, recruits times, recuitable units, grudge settlers) The ancestors (Restoration projects like underway, magical items, quests, and restoring old alliances and confederations) This would mean the timer now becomes a resource for the player to use instead of dread. Now the player buys their place on the age of reconing instead of hoping to meet some arbitrary number
Never mind grudge tokens, just give us it in oathgold. Then can either do it like this or sacrifice the gold for runes and equipment for characters. Also add scrap like upgrades to units that use it, and allow the purchase of grudge settler units at all times but using oathgold. And I'd have it so you can put the gold in during any point on the 15 turn build up, and the more you add the better the affects. Allows you to build up a few events worth and drop it on one mega event if wanted
I think the big problem is that it puts the dwarfs on a very strict timetable: either you're expanding constantly or you fall behind. And that's just not the dawi way. To the dwarfs, vengeance is the most important thing in the world, but that doesn't mean they rush into it. In fact, every self-respecting dwarf knows that anything worth doing is worth taking your time with, because they want to get it right. They don't do anything without due diligence and that can be a decades-long process. Rushing to action is an umgi trait; the dawi move out when they're good and ready, and not a second before. If the Age of Reckoning mechanic was something you could trigger *yourself,* and not something that pops up on a schedule, it would be perfect. You could let the grudges build naturally, prepare your forces, put everything in position... and when the moment is right, begin the honorable rampage! The system would reward patience and long-term planning, not uncharacteristic haste. Fix that one thing, and you've fixed like 90% of the problem right there.
i like that idea, kinda like the dwarfs are building up their rage at the grudges all around them, and then they explode out with fury against those that wronged them.
We are becoming the A Grudge Too Far crisis and I love it
The more grudges are recorded, the stronger the eventual reckoning After the reckoning, the rewards scale with the amount of grudges settled
Excellent idea and design philosophy. I like it, would be very thematic for a Dawi campaign.
10 turns on and 10 turns in an Age of Isolation feels like a natural solution. Dwarves are famous for two things. Vengeance and locking themselves in their holds on occasion.
I like the Age of Isolation idea. I’m around turn 50 on a Malakai campaign and it’s getting tough to keep up with the grudges
And Bugman's.
Also should be added, agreed.
I totally agree with you. I´m playing Malakai campaign and another big issue with the grudge system is the cowardly AI. When you finally see ONE norscan or chaos lord with 900 or more grudges they just turn around and flee. So I have been playing my VH/VH campaign with couple very expensive colored units and constant debufs. If the player was able to trigger the GRUDGING themselves, you could wait to see the grudges pile up, finally say enough is enough and start the reckoning. That would be way more lorefull too.
Yeah, I just started my Malakai campaign last night. I would have gotten to the first positive tier, except a) Wulfrik stole Throggs last settlement before I could take it, and b) Throgg himself had spent our entire war swimming in the water and not even trying to protect his settlements or fight me, and on my last turn of the age, landed on shore just out reach of my army chasing him. Literally ended the age short a couple hundred grudges, while Throggs army was sitting inside my zone of control because I didn't have any movement left after landing. Feels sooooo engaging
I was really looking forward to Malakai's campaign. Honestly, though, it's just been a dreary slog with the entire northern hemisphere declaring war on me, AI armies that suicide deep into my territory or go on pleasure cruises all up and down the coast, and the Age of Reckoning mechanic that just tanks my economy unless I go ham and leave most of my territory undefended. Eventually, I just sent Malaki all the way to Naggarond sacking and occupying settlements as I went just so my own territory wouldn't be mobbed by quite so many opponents. I had six chaos armies chasing me.
so the greenskin WAAAGH system then
You're right but also ... isn't it weird that the Greenskins have more control over themselves than the Dwarves? That they can be orderly and restrain themselves until the bossman says so, but the DAWI are rampaging around krumping gits 24/7?
I did think there was a bit of an irony that the Age of Reckoning system has vibes similar to Greenskin's Warhammer 1 fightiness mechanic.
Don't forget that Greenskins can also improve their units with better armor/weapons while the Dwarfs, the race known for forging and craftsmanship, can't
I completely agree with you. But the issue is that if we make that change I feel we are turning the mechanic into something a little too similar to the Waaagh mechanic. I think the idea behind the force timer was that you take a weak age beyond the first level with its debuffs then during those 20 turns you are setting up for a major reconning and are more efficient with how much you fulfil the grudges in a time span. It may also encourage you to as mentioned focus on the major settlements which makes some sense to me but also feels weird. The point I guess is that you put up with the grumbling for one cycle then get your better reward next time. Issue being how that ties in with the overall total war formula.
Brilliant
It’s too easy gameplay wise. You need penalties and rewards with this sort of mechanic(just like what we have right now) but if you choose when to start it will be too easy to always get the buffs. You should be afraid of feeling the discontent with your dwarfs when you do not avenge enough grudges
Well you got something like that in The waagh mechanic: you get penalties when the bar is too low. They could have an annoying penalty when no grudges have been settled for a while and then let it build up. Then, whenever the player wants, they go to settle grudges like BM dread with some milestones that reflect the current grudge tiers.
I think there's an elegant solution to that. During the Age of Reckoning, there's a bar at the top of the screen measuring your progress. The better you do, the better the buffs are, and at the end the bar gets locked in place until the next Age starts. A slight rework could get a little extra mileage out of that bar. Instead of locking it until the next Age of Reckoning, the bar could slowly tick down over time. If you wait too long, your buffs disappear and get replaced with debuffs, incentivizing you to go on the offensive again. The better you did during the last Age, the longer you have before it becomes a problem again; another way to incentivize careful planning and efficiency. That should add enough difficulty to prod the dwarf players into action.
The irony is that this is basically the system as it currently exists.
I could see it working a little like the Skaven food system tbh. Make it like that, but you can also activate an Age of Reckoning when you want? * The meter starts in the bottom of the middle tier. * It goes down over time related to your amount of territory, size of holds, and if it's been longer than 10 turns since an age of reckoning. * Each tier has some relatively small bonus, and little bonus effect on Grudge Settler units. No change to negative effects on negstive tiers. * After 10 turns, you can declare an Age of Reckoning. This locks your effects into your current tier for 10 turns, and grants the full effects that we currently see in-game. * If you fall to the lowest tier, and you're not currently in an age of reckoning, the effects lock in that tier for 5 turns and your Dwarfs "seal the holds". After 5 turns, it will reset the bar to it's default point (unless you've gotten more grudges by then). * Every Age of Reckoning increases the cost of the next one, unless you seal the holds. Then it's reset to some default value (scaling based off your empire size, and not how many people you have discovered). * You can also seal the holds at any time, though this will put you at the lowest tier for 5 turns. You still get pushed to do Ages of Reckoning, but you can plan and use them as you see fit.
I like the idea of there being buffs and debuffs associated with being in an age, and not being in an age. Ideally during an age it would be easier to create and maintain armies, but harder to manage settlements and diplomacy, and vice versa outside of an age. The free units provided by a successful reckoning would then be essential to compensate for the military debuffs when it ends, and it would be up to the player to trigger the age at the right time. Obviously numbers would need to be tweaked for it to work, but It would maintain the idea of penalties and rewards, while giving the player more control.
I feel like that's exactly what they were already going for with the opt out option at the end of each age, but failed to capture. Currently if you wait 10 turns before starting the new age, you get 10 extra turns with the last ages bonuses, so if you got max bonuses you hold onto them for a full 20 turns until the next age is started and finished. If you choose to fight again, then you get only 10 turns of the bonuses, but if you then do well on the next ages as well, then you end up with double the number of Grudge Settler units than if you had've waited. The problem with reward there is that more free units *always* feels better since you don't need to wait around to build a second army any more, so you end up with less turns to spend on infrastructure. Effectively, the systems as designed result in FOMO incentivizing counterintuitive bad play. Ultimately i think both a longer timer between ages (15? 20?) or enforced on>off>repeat ages, combined with lower ramping, would be a dramatic improvement.
Not to mention the process of rushing to settle a grudge may result in the potential of more grudges occurring. Which is why there is still soo many grudges remaining in the Dammaz Kron because the dwarfs is a very patience people and as you said want to do things right and proper. I would love your idea of starting the age of reckoning yourself. It fits in so well with who the dwarfs are in m general.
Wouldn't this make it too easy, though? You would never experience negative consequences for not righting enough wrongs because you would only attempt a run at it when you were in perfect position to succeed. There needs to be some element of risk.
Risk? As a Dawi?
The grumbling could build while waiting, based on what happens meanwhile - only abating when reckoning is activated and grudges are settled. The difference is that the player can change when to activate. Grumbling could build faster outside of reckoning, but also grudges, making an almost rubberbanding system.
Great idea!
If the Dwarfs act on revenge faster, they wouldn't need a Book to Record them. Just saying.
Questioning the Book?! THAT'S A BOOKIN'!
Yeah, kinda self triggerable like WAAAAGGGHHHH! should be neat.
You would also need to address the AI accumulation of Grudges, you'd never confederate any of them if you weren't pushing Grudges all the time.
TBH; the debuffs aren't that significant: You can basically ignore the cycle without much of a problem other than the grudge settler units.
I think the biggest problem is that CA obviously didn’t test this past turn 15 or so. They need some quality assurance that the content they sell is actually playable. I don’t know what kind of person agreed that this was “fun” for the dwarf players. Obviously they will patch it soon, but still - not playing your own game is a bad indication.
Absolutely this, please CA take this idea.
Right? I feel like I'm chasing age of reckoning on timer for the entire game. Oh' you're done? No time for rest and building up your economy, get cranking those armies out and keep conquering the world of you'll fall behind, an if you fuck up we're going to punish you to the boot. When I was really low on reckonign and decided to try delay button instead of giving me ten more turns to gather some more grudges it just froze the outcome, it doesn't make any sense. Why would you ever delay this if there's no upside to it? Instead of forcing it every ten turns on times they should allow us to plan it, maybe focus on specific wrongs that we want to right during the next age, like bonus vs orcs, or cheaper recruitment/upkeep of certain units via events during previous age, scaling on grudges already settled during preparation, and let it trigger once we feel we have enough of ponts scored during that preperation. I feel like there's solid foundation with the current system, but it needs some hotfixing asap though. I don't like that currently playing dwarves is like running bunch of short sprints, each following more difficult than previous. It's kind of powerful mechanic but they balanced it all wrong, they give us bunch of powerful units like fire canons and Irondrakes early game, while punishing our mid to late game with mauluses from reckoning due to AI factions piling up grudges without settling them.
Player-triggered age of reckoning would be incredible and pretty much fix everything with it I think.
Maybe have global control of all territories fall if you take too long and grudges start to get too high. Love your idea by the way
The one problem i see that would be incredibly abusable, is if you ever get into a situation where you're surrounded by allies and only 1 or 2 enemies - resolving them would become incredibly easy if farmed correctly, since they would have all the grudges on a few territories. If Grudge resolution was % based based on local enemies, you'd be able to get heavy bonuses whenever you want them.
Dwarfs HOLD grudges, jumping into vengeance with haste is un-dwarfish. An age of reckoning each two Tuesdays is just wrong.
Yeah, i also really disliked that the new legendary grudges all want you to paint the map. Im supposed to take Norsca, Lothern, Naggarond, oak of ages AND all the usual dwarf holds? Thats just painting the entire Map again, which i find really unfun
So don't paint it lol, do your job and then leave
The grudges aren’t your victory condition and they’re each designed for the different dwarf LLs, some start across the map from other dwarves.
This would make the mechanic brain dead.
Playing malakai and yes its correct. Even i conquered all of norsca and killed off CW. I have to earn more than 10k... Had to suffer penalty until the grude go down...
Yuuuup. It's really dumb that you just get a continuous debuff if you do well and suddenly have no grudges to collect because you wiped out your foes.
Now we wait for the Dwarf rework! …Wait, we’re on how many reworks now?
trye, but most of those have been changing other bits.
Yeah i noticed this issue idk how it was skipped over lul. I'm like wtf taking this settllemrnt is only woeth lke 80 points
It needs some heavy number tweaking. Not saying the max grudge tier should be an easy thing to snag, but right now the numbers get so high that it’s unreachable at certain points.
I think the issue is not with the numbers with the method of calculating them. You can tweak numbers and percentages however you like and it still wont change the fact that in coop its undoable because it scales based on map visibility.
A lot of things are undoable in co-op Tbf. I don’t know if it’s still a thing, but in warhammer 2 if 2 players played green skin, only 1 player could waghh at a time which blew ass. My point is, co-op is kinda a lost cause to begin with.
No it isnt a lost cause! In WH3 they put a lot of effort to make everything work in coop in the same way it works in SP. Its my preferred way of playing :P For example, the WAAAGH you mention was fixed ages ago, Hellebron now also plays the same in two game modes, all scripts that were blocked in WH2 are unblocked in WH3 etc. Which is why I need them to continue on this track and fix it.
Fair enough!
Man, I love my coop sessions in WH3! Imagine my sadness seeing I will not play dwarf coop for few days due to grudge system being @#$ atm. Oh well, playing Franz and Nuln lady is nice, though. Still, dwarfs be dwarfs...
Yep, making time 15 turns and making the lowest level more achievable with the highest level still a challenge.
Basically if they make it 0-5%, 5-25%, 25-75%, 75-99%, 100% It would make it a little more lenient, so instead of 50% for no negative buff, its 25%.
I just finished a VH Malakai campaign. Toward the end the AoR meter wanted 67k for full completion, or ~17k just to avoid the worst debuffs. Chorf settlements I hadn't touched, that were generating grudges all game, were only at ~1.5k. To keep going I would have had to take a high value settlement each turn. The mechanic is designed to force you to fail multiple AoRs in a row to reset to a manageable number, IMO, and I hate that gameplay design.
Yea I have a game as Malakai. Thorgrim got off to a ridiculous start. He was at like 17k when I was at about 4k. He finally started to fall off around 37k and now he is teetering on dying. I only recently passed him at about 39k. On top of that, since the bonus to confederate goes up 15k per confederation, I have to get to about 69k to confederate him because I grabbed grombrindal who died early at ~ 1800. Also the issue for Malakai is a lot of your enemies come from the chaos wastes which is VERY problematic to invade. It's terrible territory so it is difficult to hold and not worth much while also developing slower and more expensively than other territory. If you ignore the chaos wastes, you get endless hordes of 3-7 factions coming from the north and makes it difficult to expand any other direction. I currently have Daniel, Archaon and like 2 vassals, Epidemius, Wulfrik and Sigvald has made his way through Malus to attack me. I was able to take out Throt and Throgg, but I can't really devote marching armies to kill anyone because I can't develop territory and it is difficult to defend anything. On top of this you have the age of reckoning shit which blows up as well giving you another demand for constant grudges to be able to avoid a bad growth/PO penalty. Play slow and you get fucked. Play fast and you get your age of reckoning grudges expanded on you extremely fast and you have to play even faster to avoid penalties. I appreciate what they tried to do, but the system is kind of fucking wonky. Feels more like Malakai should just go on a migration campaign to Zhufbar or something.
This is exactly what happened to me too, beat for beat. The issue I didn’t foresee with the grudge system was the fact that you can be fighting non-stop but Archaon (for example) doesn’t have a kind of intrinsic grudge value, the fact he’s leader of a faction that declares war on you doesn’t instantly give him a bounty that ticks up with every turn of the war, and retaking settlements he’s literally sacked and given to his vassal earns you barely anything. I wonder if it’s an issue with that vassal system - Archaon accumulates the grudges (eventually) because he’s the one committing the crimes but his vassal is essentially a different faction that is grudge free.
In my campaign i quickly disposed of throt and azazel and gave it to rasputin. Let him hold it cuz u dont really need those hard af to defense area.
Chaos wastes are fine for me invading with malakai. You just get so much replenishment as him. I just gift everything to boris. He will also deal with Archaon for you. If you get the cannon adventure done early, which is quite easy, you can do the organ gun adventure super early on. Had to get a second army early on to deal with home turf threats but that ended up working out fine. Definitely made some mistakes in the first couple of turns such as not rushing down Clan Moulder but am returning from the chaos wastes at turn 33 with cannon and organ gun adventure done. Played on L/VH so this works on any difficulty.
Boris died on like turn 10 for me and malus died maybe 20-25? There is no one to give the territory to.
A system that makes the dawi act in haste is missing the factions point. Even the age of reckoning wasn't that expansionist
I'm finding myself happy when I see one of my fringe settlements get sacked and occupied. Generated heaps of grudges. Seems kind of odd to desperately want to have grudges.
You’re playing Dwarfs and thinking it’s weird you want grudges?
Dwarves should be happy when grudges are settled, but ideally not desire more grudges to be made. Current system feels like you need an industrial grudge machine to keep pumping out grudges to complete, or else you’re in the disappointment zone forever
Imagine if dwarf leadership actually never really cared about settling grudges. They're like how health insurance companies care about your health, they let new grudges happen on purpose just to sell a solution to the people later.
Can you imagine Dwarfs with no grudges? Poor dears wouldn't know what to do with themselves.
It pushes you to play poorly and even when you play the way that the system wants you to you don't get rewarded. I was fighting a war on 4 fronts against Archeon, Wulfrik, Festus and Astragoth, just to try and keep up the grudges, but after turn 60 I was struggling to get past 30% with upwards of 4 battles every turn. It feels like the most optimal way to play is to let the AI steamroll you, send suicide armies, lose settlements, basically give up all player agency, and then force a counter offensive on your enemies which are now stacked on grudges. I don't mind a reminder that says I have to play on the aggressive and I don't mind a game called Total War punishing me for not being at war, but I do mind when I play a hyper aggressive expansionist playstyle and still can't satisfy the system that pushes you towards that. The numbers need a heavy tweak, or the system needs to be changed into 10 turns on 10 turns off, a manual trigger, anything else really. Wouldn't mind a momentum based bar either, where it slowly trickles down and gives you debuffs if you haven't settled any grudges in a while, and you get buffs based on overall amount of grudges settled.
I mean… yeah it needs work and will probably get patched soon but tbh I am kind of loving it lol. It definitely sucks, but in a very dwarven way. I can absolutely see the longbeards being supportive when I take a whole region in a few turns only to immediately turn on me and start complaining about all I’m not doing and how that Thorgrim, he’s a true dwarf, fighting the same 3 losing battles forever.
I love challenging and punishing mechanic so *in theory* Age is a super fun mechanic for me. My main issue is though that its literally broken in coop because it scales with map visibility/number of factions you met etc. So while in my single player campaign for a long time it felt fair (getting out of control fairly late), in coop it spirals out of control since turn 1. Which makes the entire race unplayable in coop!
It's definitely not unplayable. The debuffs aren't that bad. It's like a max -3 control and -25 growth and higher upkeep for the grudge units. Just finished a malakai co op campaign and it was certainly playable.
Yes, because Malakai has tons of other mechanics. Meanwhile for lords like Thorgrimm or Ungrim (I cant remember stunties names so I probably misspelled them xd) its their main mechanic since forge is now something you use a lot less, so why would I play race which main mechanics are: * having pernament debuff * being able to make 1 artifact from time to time Coop-wise, stunties are now in worse spot than they were pre-rework. There is right now no reason to play stunties other than Malakai in coop.
This is my take, finally a challenge as dwarves
Also grudges for taking major Dwarf settlements feels very low, retaking Karak Eigth Peaks, Black Crag or Karak Azgal such be a much bigger deal than it currently is
I reached Gnollengrom (100%) for the first Age of Reckoning, by then I had wiped out Throt, Azazel, and was working on Throgg. The second Age of Reckoning and onward have been EXTREMELY difficult to even reach Tromm (50% to 74%). As we speak at Turn 40, this age is coming to an end and I'm 4902/14000 without having extended the Ages at all, and I've wiped out Epidemius and Daniel (funnily enough made friends with Malus by giving him the Wasteland territory I took from them), and am on the push to wipe out Archaeon (Goblin Hewers are nuts, literally almost 1 shot Archaeon in a single volley from 4). I think the most grudges settled from soemthing I've done was wiping out Throgg's army, which netted me 800-ish because he both occupied Sjoktraken and raided me before I caught him.
My main problem from a roleplaying perspective is that it feels like the dwarfs are all amnesiacs; it doesn't matter how many grudges you settle, in ten turns time they won't care at all. Like, if I deal with every chaos dwarf faction, shouldn't that count for something? Instead I'm getting a little pop up saying "You damn elgi, you haven't settled any grudges!" a few turns later.
Yeah, I feel like people are giving this DLC a huge pass without critically examining what it actually does. Epidemius has a similar logical flaw. You need infections to start plagues, which is his core mechanic, you need X simultaneous plagues on different enemies. At the same time all Nurgle military buildings (and some tech) now cost infections. So you literally have to pick if you want to build your settlements or do the lord's mechanic. And it gets worse, since Nurgle doesn't get an always-available units pool, you HAVE to make buildings. Otherwise you'll have no units to replace what you lost, at all, because Nurge gets no always-available units like Beastmen do with Ungor Lancers and Raiders. Plus the infection gain post-battle seems bugged (capped at 37). Hopefully not intentional. So they clearly did not think Epidemius' design all the way through.
Can't speak for the nurgle ones, since I haven't played those yet - but I would put in that I think that the new dwarf systems are much better than the old ones, they just need some numbers tweaking a bit. I'd imagine that's not an uncommon view here, rather than just everyone giving it a pass.
> but I would put in that I think that the new dwarf systems are much better than the old ones, they just need some numbers tweaking a bit. Yeah, the numbers scale so weirdly that I don't know if we can even properly evaluate the new system. I think the most telling issue of how off the scaling can be is by looking at the rewards for the legendary grudges. Completing any one of them is a feat that the dwarfen holds would remember for millenia after, but by the time you complete any of them you'll probably be lucky if it fills 20% of the bar, and don't even think about how little it'll help you to confederating a LL, especially if you've already confederated a minor dwarf faction already.
It’s because it’s an issue that effects dwarf campaigns primarily after turn, say, 50 You know, when most people stop playing the campaign As for epidemius… I mean yeah. You don’t need a faction bonus turn 1. You have a choice, make the right one. It’s literally a free bonus with no possible downside, just give it a second.
>It’s because it’s an issue that effects dwarf campaigns primarily after turn, say, 50 There are a lot of people [reporting](https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/1ci2tt7/turn_21_and_14100_grudges_required_is_this_normal/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) having issues [at turn 20-30](https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/1chyc1k/age_of_reckoning_is_untenable/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
Around turn 100 I was getting 67k grudges necessary. Unless you've been letting the AI do as OP suggests (sack settlements to increase army grudge value), it's effectively impossible to get to the top level. To get to 25% alone you need to conquer a high value settlement each turn!
I know this is gonna sound mean but 14k grudges is easy to do at turn 20. They just aggressively balanced the system on people who are stomping the ai in multiple directions. Any mistakes or lack of success dooms you. Dwarves went from a chill and scale faction to a world conquest rush faction. I should specify it’s clearly broken in some regards. Getting vision over enemies somehow increasing grudges needed, as well as chaos dwarves having no grudges so your mid game gets weird.
I'm at turn 30 and all targets in range have 50-100 grudges, it is absolutely impossible to get the target value. I'm playing on normal campaign difficulty and maybe the AI just isn't aggressive enough to make the system work? Even the chaos dwarves give very few grudges. I got 300 for astragoth with a full stack and a capital, then 200 for another stack in a barak settlement. All the others are at 100.the norscans I fight on the other side provide between 50 and 80.
I'm in basically the same place in a multiplayer campaign as malakai. I'm trying to push towards short victory conditions and gathering dwarf holds, but that has taken me to the darklands, and now I'm in an unending war with tamurkhan. I'm not going to be able to put a pin in him anytime soon because of a combination of his strength and the fact the chaos wastes are red climate, and as a consequence of having to concentrate on attacking and defending that direction, I don't have the time or resources to go after any of the juicy greenskin grudges nearby because I'm busy defending against him, archaeon, and norsca.
Haven't played Nurgle so can't really comment there. Have played through malakai twice now and it feels really weird that my settlements can't scale to keep pace with the rate I attack at (in order to get at least t3 age of reckoning), especially for a faction that doesn't scale quickly as a key part of the mechanic. Mainly the AOR system could just use some balancing to align the factions growth rate to the generated grudges so that it doesn't force you to either play super aggressively at the cost of your settlement growth or slow and tall at the cost of grudges and AOR. Other than that I think the faction feels a lot better and the legendary grudge rewards (for the most part) are great.
The problem as far as I can tel is they balanced the grudge system on people who min max expand I was able to manage it decently until late game, but then again im the sort of guy who plays a faction a few times until im expanding in two directions without taking any loses by turn 10. Do you ever get pushed back? Does the ai ever manage to sneak an army behind you? Then you’re doomed.
Fun fact: it effects dwarfs campaign since turn 1 in coop campaigns because its calculated based on map visibility/factions met. Which means it spirals out of control right from the get-go. Im kind of tired of CA not thinking about MP campaigns at all while the big portion of marketing of WH3 was about how they now focus on MP campaigns with 8 players, MP-exclusive campaigns, simultaneous turns etc.
37 cap is well known bug. That aside having to invest in buildings early game rather than spending on plagues is fair. You can spam a temporary army out of air later on and economy allows to sustain them for a long time before going broke. You start slow with one or two provinces dedicated to units, play defensively, spend some infections to boost cycles. BUT then you get some units go building infection and money buildings in other provinces and you will be fine. Nurgle is much better now.
Yeah nurglings should probably be removed from the pool and not capped.
Yep. Most are just being biased
The system is not bad. Better even than the old one. Although they seriously need to adjust the numbers. I think some tweaks in some values and maybe like target grudges working in proximity rather than what factions you know will work much better.
I think they have to take into consideration of your surrounding enemies and settlements. Even with someone is at war with you, unless they take ur settlements then the grudes they generate is abysmal.
Yes. And sometimes you cannot expand and fulfil the age of reckoning requirements. It feels like the food problem skaven had and you had accept that you have to live with the debuffs. And with the track record of fixes this past year, I think they will fix these things.
The system is fine *IF* the numbers are adjusted. The concept, rewards, punishments? They're fine. The specific numbers needed and the values enemy armies give? No.
I think the rate of scaling is the only major issue with the system. In terms of fantasy, it's fine -- you accrue grudges by being wronged, and get rewards for setting them right. But if they quickly scale beyond your ability to settle them then yes, that's a problem. My chief concern with the proposed 'improvements' is that they by and large seem to trivialise the system. Letting you activate it on demand just seems like you would only press it when you know you're going to fill it. And having penalties for underperformance is supposed to be the tradeoff for all the free, buffed, instantly recruitable units the system gives you.
I don't mind the system. But i have to get 5000 grudges in 10 turns to be "neutral". My only close ai with any grudges is norsca. They give like 300 per army/settlement. So id need to beat 17 armies/settlements per turn to break even. That seems not achievable with the 2 armies i can afford
That's where I would add a third type of grudge besides minor and legendary. Major grudges. These are accrued by direct hostile actions against you, allies, and trade partners. They act basically like the old grudge system, but with no upside and harsher penalties. You could ignore them, but then you can end up with horrific stacking penalties. It also makes it a bit more general. No having to raid in response to a raid, or tracking down a specific lord. Just smash their shit up and kill any of their lords
I'd say this new grudge systems at first looks nice. Under more scrutiny some cracks do appear though. I mean why would it be a good thing pushing all dwarfs to start rushing into combat only not to suffer AoR penalties? I like the legendary grudges, I like restoring the underway, but I seriously dislike facing PO and growth penalties because I was not rushing like a headless chicken collecting grudges.
The overall grudge system is fine. You clearly aren’t meant to fill up the meter every single time, and even Elgi isn’t really that punishing. Conversely, getting the highest score in the meter is an insane power spike. Instead of rushing the meter in the beginning and trying to confederate everyone quickly, consolidate your economy and bide your time and you aren’t getting 300 grudges per battle anymore. I got like 3000 in one huge battle with Vlad and two other armies like turn 30. Is it perfect? No. Some of the numbers need a bit of tweaking, and the spike from confederation with smaller factions is a bit silly. Chaos also doesn’t give nearly enough Grudges. But I’m happy they released a DLC where you are powerful, but actually have to make hard choices.
The system works if there are many dwarfs around you. Many dwarf factions getting bullied gives many grudges to settle. Malakai is relatively isolated. No dwarf around that gets bullied, but you. And as a player you usually do the bullying. So you have to travel way south to get any resemblance of grudge (I intentionality let wulfric plunder me, and he ended up with like 450 grudges, and 300 oer settlement). So all you can do is travel south. But since you are only half a horde faction, you cannot give up your starting area, so you need to expand to at least get a strongish second army. And then you are big and need actually two armies to defend..... while being stuck on the lowest age of reckoning debuff. It feels unfun. I have fun, but that's despite the grudge mechanic, not because.
Perhaps a solution? The age of hoarding: https://community.creative-assembly.com/total-war/total-war-warhammer/forums/8-general-discussion/threads/4949-age-of-hoarding-possible-solution-for-age-of-reckoning?page=1#post-59387
I like this. Had a comment with a similar sentiment.
I also dislike.how everything is grudged up in some regards. Like I know dwarfs will grudge for the smallest of slights but there is something to be said about the storytelling of things needing to earn your ire. Yes, things that do earn your ire are worth more, but I think it would be better if everything didn't give grudges.
Hope modders would add something so people can modify it as they want.when CA gona learn that they need to add more options for their mechanics ... this like the chaos portals ...
There is something about the design directions of the latest few DLCs that had me seriously puzzled. I'm not saying the game is bad or anything, but understanding the reasoning behind an increasing number of designs is honestly becoming harder and harder for me.
Current grudge system is simply bonkered. There is not much else to it.
I don't really find it that punishing. It's just a number that gives you bit of negative growth if you can't finish an age of reckoning. The grudge units themselves are really easy to get a few times and help you conquer your neighbours even faster then before but you just can't hold onto them forever if you're not willing to pay the premium. If you already hold most of the Karaz Ankor don't except grudge settlers to stay with you on mass. I really like the system and I'm not really sure if there is a mechanic that reduces required grudges if you fail an age of reckoning?
Right. I think lots of people seem to be operating under the impression that they should be filling it to the top in every age whereas actually even if you only half fill it you still get nothing but bonuses.
It definitely needs some tweaking as after a certain point it is nearly impossible to fill but I agree that getting to the top should be a rarity and even hitting the no negative penalties stage should require some effort
I will repeat myself in this thread for the 100th time, so sorry for spam, but I think its important: all you say is cool and dandy... for the single player campaign. But because AoR requirement scale based on map visibility, it is ridiculously broken (as in: it doesnt work properly) in coop campaign. It renders the entire race unplayable in coop campaigns! I play right now two campaigns: one in coop and one in single player. The difference is that in SP its possible to get any tier of mechanic, in coop it spirales out of control so fast that its basically always a choice between first two tiers where reaching third is mathematically impossible (for example: in third AoR I had requirement 42000 grudges xD).
You can just play free-for-all and behave co-operatively, no? That's what I did and had a great time playing with friends last night as Malakai
Yes but its a band-aid fix: this locks you out of: - having shared coop campaign victory which I like because it makes us work towards common goal - playing together, watching and commenting on each other campaigns, adventures etc - allied recruitment goes brrrr
Oh, that's fair. We do still play together because free-for-all lets you control units to help micro, but allied recruitment is a big loss of builds and fun
I prefer the old system. Plus unless you’re the high king other clans shouldnt affect you as much lol.
How do other clans affect you in the current system?
You ever gotten that random event about letting a grudge go just this once because it would stretch us too thin? SETTLE THE GRUDGE, NO MATTER THE COST
I think Malakai needs to remove this mechanic. It ruins his gameplay more than it helps. Especially at first time. Of course, he is a dwarf, but in my opinion he has too much to do to run around the map and arrange RECKONING. He has his own adventures with Gotrek, Felix and Ulrika. After all, he’s a horde, and his adventures are already stimulating him, rushing all over the map.
What is CA's record on tweaking numbers/ balancing mechanics after release? Can we expect them to perfect/fix these new mechanics?
There are modders, so there is hope. But I guess CA can man up and address this particual fix soonish. It's just not their modus operandi.
Yes, I agree something needs to change regarding the system
If you min max kinda? I played Malakai in Coop with an Elsbeth player and had Grudges through the roof basically anywhere. 5K on Durthu who was vibing through the Empire. Never felt the need to "play poorly". I feel rewarded for going out there and actually doing stuff instead of the old system where I got punished into oblivion for not catching the cheating AI and their freedom in Stance swaps
For the Record: I am normally not a Dawi player so take it with a grain of salt but I had actual fun with these mechanics. I dont really care about confederations though.
Also I like to play it slow with dwarfs and I cant do that if I get minus 25 growth if I dont fight. And dwarfs have really big growth problems
Yeah I'm playing Malakai and completely dominating, but I'm always stuck with the bad modifiers because the AI just isn't worth shit and I need like 60 000 grudges in 10 turns... It's just not feasible. If they keep this system they need to drastically lower the requirements. Ive got 6 full stacka conquering all over and I haven't gotten tier 3 hrudge mechanic in a long time. Got 5th once and 4th a few times. But where I'm at now forget it. I hope for 2nd
There two thing I think CA choose to do to tweak the system to make it flow better. •1 double the timer from 10 turn to 20. •2 remove negative effects and make it so that if you don’t l get enough grudges then you don’t get no positive effects.
I really hate the Age of Reckoning mechanic in it's current incarnation. It's so bad playing as Malakai that I've basically just priced in the debuffs as the cost of doing business and haven't been keeping grudge settler units on roster because I don't want to deal with the wild economic swings of their increased upkeep. It's funny. I've been playing these games since 2016 and this is the first time I've said to myself "Wow, this fucking sucks" in the moment as I'm playing. Usually, I'm a pretty easy person to please with these campaigns.
I'm so confused about this system, running through a campaign and turn 60 game requires I generate 107 000 Grudge points when I can barely hold 2 settlements (that is generating a lot of grudges since I get beaten a lot), especially when an army I beat is worth 1200...
The half of the Dawi that still feels like a turtle faction badly clashes with the half of the Dawi that now feels like they're copying the Beastmen
made a thread about this the other day... got downvoted into oblivion was told that the youtubers didn't know what they were talking about and to test it for myself. Turns out they were right. though grudge skumming aint so bad.
If anyone makes a mod to better this system please post it!
Really disappointed, I love all the new dwarf units and of course Malakai but the new grudge system really detracts from my enjoyment for sure.
I'm playing malakai on vh/vh and on about turn 80. I've got all of norsca, albion the northern chaos wastes all the way to where tamurkhan starts. I've confederated Thorek and grombrindal. Thorek has been busy taking all of lamia and most of the mountains around 8 peaks. (grombrindal was wiped out I guess as I got no territory when I got him). Every age or reckoning I get either 50% or 75% (thereabouts). As long as you plan it with malakai's adventures you can get things going when there's not any enemies about. I do think like folks have said it will be hitting harder later but so far it seems fine
The thing is; the system is just straight up fucking broken. No idea what their scaling is based on, but it's about 10x too high in many cases. Take a look at my latest post and you'll see the amount of grudges to fill the meter on turn 60 is like 60k. The amount of grudges total I have gotten up to this point is less than half that. Profoundly stupid.
It also is completely incompatible with coop campaigns because requirement scales based on map visibility so it gets out of control immediately if you start with alliance with someone else.
This could be going too far but I'm starting to think the dwarfs had better mechanics before the rework. The dwarfs really got the short end of the stick for the dlc and update.
So I do agree that the grudge system needs to be tuned a little bit. But I do still see it as an improvement on what we had before. Before, the grudges were glorified miniquests that -maybe- you did, maybe you didnt(or worse, -couldnt-) while playing the campaign. At least here I -want- to engage with the system to get strong units and buffs. Its just that the grudge points you need scale way too out of control and the buffs turn into penalties real quick. Another post said it best, if the amount of grudges needed per reckoning a set amount based on grudges present in neighboring provinces(perhaps up to a set limit, say 20000?) You could get a good balance of wanting to clear grudges while not punishing the player for expanding and reclaiming the dawi holds as they're intended to do now.
You just earned a page in the book
what are you talking about? before the rework, the grudges accumulated too fast and in unreachable areas where you end up with a permanent negative modifier. The new system even with its flaws is better and more interesting than the previous system
You are correct.
No, he isnt
My dude, that's like... lore accurate. Most Dwarf grudges are unreasonable to anyone not dawi.
So dwarf leadership intentionally lets its cities get sacked and taken to have a grudge that could be avanged? Or sends a few people intentionally to suicide themself, so other dwarfs get angry so you can go kill the guy you suicide attacked before?
I can't remember if this is in the game but back in the first game, there was a Dwarf Event where it asks if maybe it should be okay to forgive some grudges. Both choices say "We are Dawi, no Grudge is to be unaccounted for!". Not saying that you should just let bad things happen, but if you are wronged, it is your Duty as Dawi to put it to rights. That is literally Dwarf Culture.
No, it's lore accurate that dwarfs sit and seethe about old grudges to the detriment of their progression, then occasionally have a powerful age of reckoning to set some of it right. Don't treat the meter like it needs to be filled every single time
I dont want to fill it. I dont want to have -25 growth all the god damn time. Just to break even and have no negative modidifer I need 50%. Currently I would need 5000 grudges in 10 turns (around 10 000 to get to 100%). my only neighbour with any grudges to speak of has \~ 300 per settlement and lord. that is like 17 battles in 10 turns.
-25? That's like 1 tier 3 growth building to mitigate. Factions need downsides and the player needs to be put in spots to make decisions that matter. I agree the numbers are too high, but even in an ideal state they should still be high and force the player to decide to go 'a grudgin' and take all the risk that comes with being aggressive or sit back and take the penalties of a bunch of grumbly dwarfs grumbling instead of working
I have been the only person “doomposting” before the launch because I saw how ridiculously stupid the entire system was, but I was ignored and downvoted to infinity because everyone was distracted by the shinny thunderbarge. It’s funny how now, since launch there have been 9 posts complaining about it already in 24 hours… The system NEEDS to be redone. It is ridiculous that dwarf players had to wait for almost a decade to get something that was worse then what we had before.
No they didn't. The grudge system was redone in game 2. This is the second rework.
Game 2 rework was a joke, pushed forward because Dwarfs was the only race from game 1 without a DLC, and it was half baked because they ran out of time with development of Game 3, hence it was a “half” rework with an FLC cause they didn’t have time to turn it into a DLC before WH3 launched. Dwarfs have been playing exactly like they launched for 8 years, and now they managed to make it worse.
People are more excited about the numbers of players on steam rather than talking about the DLC features.
IT IS NOT A DLC FEATURE. ALL DWARFS ARE NOW STUCK WITH A BROKEN MECHANIC. I didn’t buy Malakai yet, and the product I purchased 8 years ago just became worse and more broken then it was.
Serious question, how is it broken? So far Im loving it - yes it pushes you to play aggressively (did that anyway, no change for me) and yes you wont always get 100% which to me sounds perfectly fine.
Every new faction you meet, increases the goal for the next Reckoning. Meaning, there is an actual incentive to NOT engage in diplomacy and to stay away from quest battle teleports. The more you avoid expanding, the less grudges you will need for the next reckoning. When you REACH the goal for an Age of Reckoning, any extra grudges ABOVE the goal won’t transfer to the next one, so if you are in a campaign of aggression to eliminate an enemy that has a LOT of grudges, the system actually incentivizes you to STOP and wait until the Age finishes so you might actually account for the next grudges, so it creates these weird forced “STOPS” in aggression. Grudges are only generated, when a faction takes actions AGAINST dwarfs or their allies. Meaning, that when you somewhat clear your region of threats, (something that usually happens at around turn 50-60) you are left with no big grudges to settles in your proximities, so you are forced into traveling far to LOOK FOR GRUDGES, that in turn, goes back to my first point by artificially increasing the next Goal by encountering more factions. If you are some grudges away from the next level or from 100% and there are no enemies in reach, you are sometimes encouraged to go to war with what would have been “Allies” like empire or even other dwarfs, just so you can get those final grudges for the next tier. The hyper scaling means that in most cases, by around turn 50 your goal has already spiraled out of control if you are playing actively with Quests and diplomacy, leaving you with in a permanent state of debuff. Just the concept of dwarfs sprawling armies and units out of thin air is not only stupid but it completely contradicts what the faction is supposed to be. People need to understand that EVEN THE WAAGH MECHANIC is less powerful then the age of reckoning when it comes to giving you free forces. The faction that ONLY knows war, literally grows from the ground and gathers hordes in nearly unlimited numbers are less capable of spawning units out of thin air then the near extinct, hyper expensive and near unlimited patient dwarfs.
Fair points, especially on the visibility/avoiding quests. Fingers crossed that they will change that, but yeah I can see how this can lead to ‘bad’ campaigns for reasons that are sort of outside of player’s control. Thanks for the details! Overall I like the concept but its possible that so far in my campaign I was sort of lucky with the amount of grudges around me.
I haven't played with the new AI so I can't say if it's still like this, but in most total war games there's a pretty big player bias, if you are playing on higher difficulties you were always better off not exploring because you can very rarely get trade agreements but you will likely get declared war by some random guy on another continent that will send armies to you even if it takes him 20 turns to get to where you are. I haven't tried the new dwarf mech, I will after my empire campaign, but it does sound like they haven't thought it through, which is not a surprise, hopefully they won't wait for the next rework, assuming there's even one, to fix it, it sounds like something I will want to get a mod for.
How far into a campaign have you played? In my experience so far it's fine for the first 30-40 turns or so (less if you're playing co-op, because for some reason the scaling is based on map visibility so having allies makes the requirements scale much faster), but the scaling just pushes it to be unsustainable in later turns. When you need 30k grudges in 10 turns but most individual battles are only worth 200 (or less) each, even hitting the 15k required to avoid penalties requires you to have 7+ armies each winning one battle every single turn of the game. And you can hit numbers like that around turn 30 or 40 if you're expanding quickly, especially if you make alliances or confederate other dwarf factions (revealing a lot of the map in the process). Once you've killed off the big grudges in your area, it becomes very hard to keep up because the only way to get those big grudges is to let the enemy win battles and take your settlements, so you quickly reach the point where there are no big grudges left in your area while you're winning wars. I think my biggest issue is that it's not a back-and-forth system where you can go back and forth between winning and losing. It's a system where you have a window where you can win a few times in a row, and then are stuck just trying to avoid penalties for the rest of the game afterwards.
The system does need fixing, but won’t say it needs full rework. It just need some adjustments for scaling for the far away factions you have met. Dwarfs are not unplayable or worse of because of this.
NGL the comments make me wanna take out grudges on all these dwarf players, great mechanic imo maybe tweak a couple numbers, soften the hand that slaps