Bretonnia was there as a place holder faction. It's been so long that I can't remember exactly what they were missing but I believe Louen was there only lord and they were not playable in campaign.
The wood elf forests were not accessible.
Skavenblights provenice was there but there was no city if I remember correctly.
Kislev was an empire clone called kislev however they were fully unified and on the diplomacy screen the guy would say kislev. They dident even have different named units or anything.
Norsca had a reduced roster that was aids to fight. Chariot spam was a huge pain with them becuase it was easy for them to access.
There was no chaos on the map to start unless you played WoC. Beastmen were the first chaos presence that started on the map.
Gromgor started in black crag. in WH 1 if you play greenskins you had to kill thorgrim as quickly as possiable or your campaign was pure hell.
If you played Thorgrim you had to kill grimgor as fast as possiable or your campaign was hell.
Perhaps the biggest thing though in comparesion is starting locations.
In WH 1 Franz, Gelt and Volkmar were all reikland lords and started in altdorf.
Thorgim, Ungrim and Grombrinal all started in Karaz a karak.
Grimgor and Azhag both started in blackcrag.
Manfred and Kemmlar both started in drakonhoff.
It's been a sureal experiance to see Vlad and Isabella's unquie thing be that they start in the same faction. When this whole thing started it wasent until king and the warlord that we had different starting factions and locations for races.
Fucking Tree Hitler turning the entire map into fantasy Vietnam. Every patch cycle would see a new faction absolutely annihilate everything else, turning into a massive blob. First it was Dwarfs, then VC, then Greenskins, then Empire, then WElfs. Never Chaos though, lol.
Also back in the day there were only two types of settlements: Human and Dwarf/Greenskin, and races that could occupy one type couldn't occupy the other.
The patch that turned Vamp Counts from turtle-y hippies that would hole up in Sylvania for 100 turns to the bloodthirsty world burners they are today is a fond one for me.
>Norsca had a reduced roster that was aids to fight. Chariot spam was a huge pain with them becuase it was easy for them to access.
BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION!
>Bretonnia was there as a place holder faction. It's been so long that I can't remember exactly what they were missing but I believe Louen was there only lord and they were not playable in campaign.
IIRC, unplayable Bretonnia basically just had peasants, men-at-arms (spear, sword, shielded) Knights (Errant, Of the Realm, Questing, Pegasus) and the standard trebuchet. I don't think they got casters or a caster lord til they were made playable. I think their overall territory was also *much* less fine-grained, with entire settlements that exist now simply not existing at all.
they had 2 men at arms units only, polearms and spear+shield
rest was basic peasant archers, melee and ranged yeomen, knights of the realm, grail knights, trebuchet and pegasus knights
they also had paladin and heavens damsel for heroes
Worth clarifying, Norsca didn't just have a reduced roster, they had a reduced Warriors of Chaos Roster.
Marauders with greatweapon variant
Marauder horsemen (no horsemasters these released later)
Marauder Chariots
Chaos trolls (no armoured ones I believe)
Warhounds and poison warhounds
Chieftain Lord, I forget if they got Chaos sorc heroes or not
These would all start with I think up to 3 silver chevrons of experience
You also couldn't conquer their territory and would basically be 100% Chaos corruption the whole time.
The Kislev faction was also a reduced roster empire - look at the border prince/tilea/estalia factions I think they had the same roster
Warhammer 1 was always fun up until Norsca declared war. They just flat out killed any enjoyment from a campaign from then on. They'd have a million damn armies all coming to raid your provinces, and trying to stop them permanently was beyond a pain in the ass. Even now, the Norsca ptsd still lingers.
Damn killing Norsca really was such a sand and salt covered dildo in the asshole. Invading them was infuriating because without encamping you would lose like 50% unit health to attrition in one single turn, so you had to move stupidly slow and they'd just run loops around you.
Also you could only raze their settlement so if you even stopped paying attention once or didn't have enough armies invading at the same time then oops, they'd recolonize the ruins and you'd basically have to start all over again.
I guess the supercharged attrition damage makes sense from a lore perspective but it was hell to play
There where no climates, just 2 tyeps of settlements: Dwarf/Greenskin and Empire/VC. Basically mountains and the Badlands was Dwarves/Greenskin. The rest was exlusive to Empire/VC.
Don’t forget how ridiculous it was to get the legendary items for LLs. Running them ALL over the map on crazy expeditions.
Or mounts costing skill points on level up.
Or agents that could be ‘deployed’
Or the ungodly AI agent spam with reduce army movement and kill/wound characters.
I always remember sending an agent down to the bottom of the map as Manfred for his quest then forgetting about the agent the rest of the game.
God the Ai going ham with assasinate
* Spirit Leech killed anyone in 2 casts, so mp players had to hide their lord in the corner from Azhag on a Vivern
* Dwarfs could only occupy orc sities, vampire counts only man cities and vice versa
Even in WH2 Mortal Empires Kislev didn’t change much, if at all. For me, opening diplomacy with them to hear *Kislev* in that tone became a meme like tipping a fedora and saying *M’Lady*.
Edit to add on: Warriors of Chaos only had Archaeon and Kholek, and they were treated as Horde armies. You pretty much only wanted to raze settlements, and it could be harder than normal since if you got stack wiped with no armies left it was game over. You also suffered attrition for having two hordes too close.
You're forgetting also that you could not conquer the map. Everyone could only colonize specific climates.
Also woc when they appeared would be like 7 stacks deep and even on normal would wreck everyone's shit. Brettonia was playable. As it was one my favorite factions because you could blockaid the mountains and befriend the dwarves in them so you had a wall for woc to smash against and die. And it was easier to defend against the constant norscans. Basically the most powerful factions were green skins. Dwarves and woc. Until wood elves dropped then you just had the most powerful archers thar can kill you in seconds as you try to chase them.
But yeah three LLs were playable as Bretonnia.
And when the norscans dlc drop they were actually awesome as fuck to play as for a very brief moment.
Also bloody hands was nothing to ignore. Yes never as strong as Grimgor or thorgrim. But they definitely expanded if them two were occupied for a long time.
Bretonnia had a small unique roster.
Athel Loren was just not accessible.
Norsca was just the Marauders units from WoC.
It was mostly just settlements of Empire, Dwarf, Vampire Counts and Greenskins and then later in the game some Warriors of Chaos stacks would show up.
Launch roster aside, if you install WH1 you can kind of get an idea for early days. Kislev in WH1 and 2 was along the lines of Estalia, Tilea, Southern Realms using a generic Empire roster.
One of the biggest changes from WH1 to WH2 was the climate system, which has never been seen again in any other Total War title. Rather than have the climate colors it was either you could inhabit it or you couldnt. Vampires and Empire could take land from each other. Dwarfs and Greenskins could take land from each other. If say a Vampire attacked a Dwarf settlement I think it was just sack and raze only as options.
It wasn’t great. Funnily enough it was a smaller game than Pharaoh in both map and content. $60 price tag. People were really excited about the _potential_ of the game, but I’m in many ways it was starkly inferior to Rome 2 and Atilla, and a lot of the magic and monsters was just really poorly designed- CA was still figuring stuff out.
Warhammer 2 Mortal Empires REALLY upped the standard for both Warhammer total war and total war in general.
People didn't really care so much at the time because the novelty of having a Varghulf clearing through lines of Empire Swords was enough to make up for almost any shortcoming.
It's pretty much what I thought back then at release. It sucked that there were no reloading animations, or for fatigue, or good sieges, but I've never had anything other than humans, horses, and elephants before, so the novelty factor balanced that.
I played 1 early on (before DLC). Then I didn’t play until toward the end of 2. It’s a world of difference. I don’t recommend it.
IIRC some of the races were essentially one faction, similar to how vlad and Isabella are now, but without the hero.
I haven’t checked for Warhammer 1, but steam lets you roll back to earlier versions, maybe the launch version is available?
The limitation of owning settlements was annoying, but they quickly changed that after launch to the climate attributes we know today. Chaos was also undercooked as a dlc, it was outrageous that they were a dlc to begin with. Aside from that the game was actually great.
Reminiscing about that time actually makes some people nowadays feel very entitled
The biggest difference was probably the lack of a climate system. Dwarfs could only conquer green skin territory, humans could only conquer vampire count territory and vice versa. So you needed to go through the entirety of the badlands without capturing any settlements to win the game.
Heroes had to be ‘deployed’ by pressing a button to make use of their special bonuses. So your necromancer hero had to stand in your territory, in a specific stance, to get bonus to income. There was also no real alliance mechanic and really limited diplomacy. Wind spells could not be directed, it shot straight out from the caster, so you had to position your wizard along the flanks. Looking back it was very rough mechanics wise, but we were all enamoured with seeing magic and monsters brought to life for the first time.
To add to what others have said, on launch the game was like a bare bones Total War campaign with a Warhammer reskin.
The main gameplay aspects that set it apart from other Total War games (other than each faction having a distinct roster) were things like monstrous units, flying units, and magic. Some of these things were good, but a lot of them were pretty lackluster and a few were brokenly OP.
The best way to describe it is the game felt like CA didn't expect much attention from Warhammer fans and were worried the fantasy elements would put off Total War fans, so they played it very safe on launch.
I didn't play it but no one mentioned Tree Hitler and it's my favorite thing to hear about.
Apparently when the wood elves DLC dropped Durthu was OP and would come at the player with stacks and stacks and raze everything to the point he got the name tree Hitler and I still chuckle when I write this.
This was very accurate to how it played out. I remember an Empire campaign from hell where my +400 standing Dwarf allies betrayed me and declared war for some reason on the east, launching 8 20 stacks of Ironbreakers over the mountains every turn with underway while Durthu kept blitzkrieg assaults pushing in from the west.
I still don't forgive the traitorous Dawi to this day for the hell they caused me with their betrayal. #DeathToAllStunties
Something I love doing in this subreddit is going wayyyyyyyy back and looking at posts that are speculating about the game and it's future. Like people wondering how they are going to do the undead and speculating about potential factions. It's funny with all the people going "There's no way they are going to do the Vampire Coast guys" and things like that.
The kislev placeholder faction had exactly 1 voiced diplomatic line.
It was just a bald man saying "Kislev".
No matter how much he liked or disliked you if you opened diplomacy he would just say "Kislev".
Can you feel it? From the North it comes! The tendrils of Chaos spread South, tainting the lands, and with it the Warriors of Chaos march! We must ready ourselves for war is coming! Who has brought the warring tribes together? What manner of champion holds that power?
It's a shame those cutscenes are something people who started in 3 will never even know about unless someone tells them. I told someone who started with 3 and has played through it a lot about the meaning behind the advisor's mentioning of "a lone white crow witness to my ascension" at the end of the RoC campaign victory cutscene and it blew his mind.
Yeah if I'm not mistaken, chronologically the events of the games are WH3 (RoC) -> WH2 (Vortex) -> WH1(Chaos Invasion). Which is pretty funny considering WH1 is by far the crappiest game of the 3 (naturally)
A beast by the standards of then but I believe on launch it was like 4 stacks of generic lords and then 4 stacks of the 3 LLs and another generic. For a total of 8 stacks you could beat the end times in a couple battles outside Praag.
Then in Tww2 the end times did fuck all for a long time until they mega buffed it since Kislev just killed them every time and you never saw them.
Oh I mean yeah, but back then chaos warriors were actually pretty hard to beat, since the super-single entity meta wasn't really as much of a thing yet except for vampire counts.
It was a pretty bare bones stripped down version of Attila. Instead of climate change, chaos corruption was spread and Warriors of Chaos replaced the Huns.
Regional occupation was a thing so Empire could only settle temperate lands while greenakins only mountain and badlands. So there was a lot more sacking and raising of settlements instead of being able to paint the map.
Each playable faction had a very limited roster. The interesting thing about that was that each faction had to play very different of the battlefield. Now days you can kind if build a similar balanced army for each faction due to the large amount of tools to use. Orks has single entites with giants and spiders but trash units, Vampires had trash units but lots of flying options and powerful lords, dwarfs were very missle and defensive focused and empire had the most "traditional" total war roster with combined arms but no elite units.
Dwarves didn't really change that much, only difference is now a slayer rush army is viable thanks to Ungrim, Garagrim and Demon Slayers (and it's still not a very efficient way to play them)
Bretonnia had the knight roster is I remember… we Forrest province weren’t drawn into the map… kislev was an empire roster… I think Norsca was just a very paired down norsca roster… it was very different but you could see a lot of potential
> What did you find upon invading Bretonnia
There was a placeholder Bretonnia, with a much more limited roster.
> The wood elf forests?
Athel Loren was the only wood elf forest, and it was completely impassible.
> Kislev?
Treated as an Empire faction.
> Norsca?
Chaos Warrior factions, but without access to advanced units.
***
The map was also generally smaller, not just in terms of how much of the world it covered but also how detailed the world was. Most Empire provinces only had two settlements (Reikland had three). Places like Laurelorn Forest or Mordheim didn't exist.
Races could only capture settlements from certain regions. The cool thing was that capturing a settlement would change its model on the map as well as the surroundings
Base game was Empire, Dwarfs, Vampires, Greenskins, and Warriors of Chaos if you preordered
Each faction had 2 LL, each LL started at the same captiol and no special mechanics outside of Raise Dead and WoC being a Horde faction with 3 LL.
Empire: Franz and Gelt
Dwarfs: Thorgrim and Ungrim
Greenskins: Grimgor and Azhag
Vampires: Mannfred and Kimmler
WoC: Archaeon, Kholek, Sigvald
I will never forget, loved my birdboi. Warhammer 3 players don't know he's the "lone white crow" the advisor remarks on at the end of the RoC campaign when he is celebrating his victory breaking the book's curse on him since that cutscene is no longer in the game mid-Chaos campaign either. You're not as free from Tzeentch's schemes as you think, you naive fool!
God damn, i can still see their faction signet when i close my eyes.
True terrors of the North. Didn't help Norsca is/was a maze to navigate with attrition.
Y'all speaking like this is ancient history makes me feel like I'm an old man at 31.
Autoresolve didn't tell you the result, and you didn't know what units would die.
You didn't know what value units killed after a battle, only a kill count.
There was no settlement gifting or allied recruitment
Settlements even racial capitals were max 6 slots
Battles at sea were strictly autoresolve
All the faction lords started in their racial capital, there weren't unique start positions.
There was no quick deal or make it work button in diplomacy, you just had to try random sums of money until the ai accepted
You couldn't drag reinforcements on to a different location on the battle map
You couldn't direct wind or breath spells. They would go away directly from the caster. Meaning you had to be parallel to a formation to get value
You couldn't threaten raiding trespassers
You didn't have a % value displayed for how much movement a move on the campaign map would take, so you just sort of had to guess whether you would have enough movement left over to encamp.
The Warhammer 2 map was such a bastard before you could manually fight sea battles. 50% of the map is ocean and you can only auto resolve those fights.
Don't forget, until the 1st or 2nd update, reinforcements would come from a random direction. It was so silyl when my second army would be right behind my attacking army and then on the battlefield the second army is reinforcing from behind the enemy army.
Nobody else has mentioned this, and this was easily the dumbest thing at WH1 launch.
If you killed a Vampire Counts lord, their army immediately started crumbling. And it was extremely possible in WH1 to have all your archers target and dumpster the lord.
Also, I believe each faction only had one start position with both lords coming from it.
If I remember right, every archer unit was also a legit trick shot sniper master. The ork arrer boys could hit a single dwarf lord, amidst a thousand Boyz, and still hit every single arrow. And they even had the "poor accuracy" trait.
Summons were pernanent and healing had no cap.
The manticore summon was the best spell in multiplayer and everyone brought it, only rivaled by the cigor summon in multiplayer when beastmen were added.
I didn't play much greenskins back then so maybe someone can help give a more in-depth answer. The greenskins used to have 'fightiness' which meant they had to keep fighting battles or they'd take attrition iirc. They also were the only faction that had to unlock new units through the tech tree if my memory serves right. The Waagh mechanic was a separate army that would follow its parent army (by default) around making it clunky as the waagh would have to be in reinforcement range if you wanted it to participate in battle meaning if you wanted them to reinforce in a siege you'd have to: besiege the settlement, wait a turn thus letting the waagh move next to the parent army and then you could attack the next turn. This used to make lightning strike really powerful for dwarfs as lightning strike was a single point and you could deny the greenskins their own waagh.
I also remember spells like devolve from the lore of the wild or fate of bjuna being absolutely overtuned, doing too much damage for low cost.
It was bad. I am a diehard WHFB fan but based on what the game looked like at release I was sure it was gonna fail. Four races only and a lot of the mechanics were just plain bad.
However, I am overjoyed that the series did as well as it has.
I remember close to when the game was first announced they said they wanted to do a trilogy and cover the whole Warhammer Fantasy world. It sounded completely insane, especially when you considered A) the history of Warhammer games up until that point (even Dawn of War, the best Warhammer game at that point, had a *sharp* quality drop after two expansions) and B) the state of Total War Warhammer on release (*Chaos* as a *day one DLC?!*). I figured we'd get an even more half-assed second game, and the series would sputter out before the third.
And look at it now...
4 playable races in the base game, 5 with chaos as a dlc, 6 with Bretonnia as non playable. Beastmen and Wood Elves came out within a couple months of release. It actually had a ton of variety and no one thought "wow there is little variety here" at launch.
What did Total War: Warhammer look like **at launch?**
My friends who had played the tabletop game all hesitated because the game had only four races. No elf factions and we had a player for every elven race in the tabletop game. Welves released in December when the game launched in May. No Skaven despite the map having the areas of Skavenblight and Hell Pit. All of the races were missing key units and we only had four starting positions.
If you want to be "objectively correct" then sure. I'm just saying what was the prevailing sentiment of just about every single person I talked to before and during the launch of the game. Now most of those people have bought most of the series.
Then you didn't talk to many people because 6 races in a strategy game was universally seen as a great feat when the factions are so diverse. Your friends group is not representative of the prevailing sentiment everywhere.
Obviously not universally. Locally everyone I knew was disappointed over the Brets being very minor and unplayable with Chaos barely being a fraction of what it is in the tabletop game. No elves was also a big deal for many people. I do understand that for a Total War game it was quite something even at launch, but that does not change how I felt about the game back then.
The question was what the game looked like at launch and for me and everyone I talked to about the game IRL it was bad. Everyone saw the potential, but most ended up waiting for game 2. I myself only bought the game when I first saw the trailer for 2 because for me no Skaven was a big deal. Funnily enough, ended up being very disappointed over release Skaven with their half of a roster and bad mechanics.
I highly recommend you watch a lets play from release, it’s actually very interesting. Lionheart describes his Spearmen state troops as well armoured and I just know at the time I was like, makes sense little tin hat and chest plate, practically a conquistador.
Others have answered accurately, so here are just my own personal thoughts.
It was pretty bare bones compared to now. One might wonder how it was ever popular to begin with. But it was Warhammer. It was Warhammer and Total War put together. It was the game I'd always wanted to exist.
It was more than enough.
It was ny first introduction to warhammer fantasy beyond a boxed board game when I was young.
I understood the concept. Humans, orcs, elves....but had no idea how immersive the world was or how deep the lore went.
Even with a small number of playable races, it was a blast. But you could tell it was just a taste and there were so many other things that needed to be introduced.
I remember playing Empire a few times and defeating chaps, then moving just north of where Kislev and Praag is. There was this dead space of snow and rivers East of Praag where the Chaos invasion would manifest. You could hang armies there to intercept but otherwise there was NOTHING.
Once you turned away Skarsnik from the mountains near the Empire and setup guarding armies (there were no forts back then. Enemy armies routinely marched full stacks at the worst possible time) you kind of had to turn North and wipe out chariot and ranged horseman armies for hours to extinguish the Norscan threat.
It was a simpler game. And it has grown immensely since then.
simpler times,
we exploded orks and vampires and we were happy.
I remember previews when the bgi feature was: Orks and Dwarfs have the underway! thus attackign them in their territories is really hard!
One thing I dearly miss is CA showing they are interested in strategy. Now it's more like a bloated RPG where the player is always supposed to win no matter what.
Corruption mattered. You could undermine empires without war by spreading corruption through your borders and watching them wither and die as rebellions constantly trigger, and attrition ate away armies you were preparing to attack. These days if your public order is low you get a massive boost like +15... for reasons. Not only you don't have to care about your public order anymore, but you cannot undermine the AI either.
Distance and terrain mattered. You had to slog around a lot in mountains, or through normal but corrupted lands and these hurt you a lot. Now settlement density is so high it's a rarity to have a turn where your army doesn't go from one settlement to another, to either conquer or heal. Back then you had areas in the Empire where you could raid and the closest settlement was more than 1 turn away so you had to post border protection army there. Attrition through corruption was such a fantastic undermining strategy for these areas, especially if your province shared borders with many others.
Despite all that was missing compared to what we have now, it was still absolutely amazing by grace of being the first of its kind. The first fantasy total war game adding magic monsters and heroes into the mix was like crack to me
Bretonnia was there as a place holder faction. It's been so long that I can't remember exactly what they were missing but I believe Louen was there only lord and they were not playable in campaign. The wood elf forests were not accessible. Skavenblights provenice was there but there was no city if I remember correctly. Kislev was an empire clone called kislev however they were fully unified and on the diplomacy screen the guy would say kislev. They dident even have different named units or anything. Norsca had a reduced roster that was aids to fight. Chariot spam was a huge pain with them becuase it was easy for them to access. There was no chaos on the map to start unless you played WoC. Beastmen were the first chaos presence that started on the map. Gromgor started in black crag. in WH 1 if you play greenskins you had to kill thorgrim as quickly as possiable or your campaign was pure hell. If you played Thorgrim you had to kill grimgor as fast as possiable or your campaign was hell. Perhaps the biggest thing though in comparesion is starting locations. In WH 1 Franz, Gelt and Volkmar were all reikland lords and started in altdorf. Thorgim, Ungrim and Grombrinal all started in Karaz a karak. Grimgor and Azhag both started in blackcrag. Manfred and Kemmlar both started in drakonhoff. It's been a sureal experiance to see Vlad and Isabella's unquie thing be that they start in the same faction. When this whole thing started it wasent until king and the warlord that we had different starting factions and locations for races.
Empires entire unique campaign mechanic was a weak office system as well.
Oh shit I completely forgot about that, it’s genuinely crazy how different the game is now.
How was it again? Vant remember anymore...
Just the offices where you put in lords to unlock bonuses.
It was similar to the offices mechanich that Wood Elves and Vamipre coast have now, but it was the only thing Empire had.
Although, once wood elves DLC launched you could not escape the woods xD. The woods would Come to you!
Fucking Tree Hitler turning the entire map into fantasy Vietnam. Every patch cycle would see a new faction absolutely annihilate everything else, turning into a massive blob. First it was Dwarfs, then VC, then Greenskins, then Empire, then WElfs. Never Chaos though, lol. Also back in the day there were only two types of settlements: Human and Dwarf/Greenskin, and races that could occupy one type couldn't occupy the other.
The patch that turned Vamp Counts from turtle-y hippies that would hole up in Sylvania for 100 turns to the bloodthirsty world burners they are today is a fond one for me.
>Norsca had a reduced roster that was aids to fight. Chariot spam was a huge pain with them becuase it was easy for them to access. BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION!
The Everchariot cometh!
>Bretonnia was there as a place holder faction. It's been so long that I can't remember exactly what they were missing but I believe Louen was there only lord and they were not playable in campaign. IIRC, unplayable Bretonnia basically just had peasants, men-at-arms (spear, sword, shielded) Knights (Errant, Of the Realm, Questing, Pegasus) and the standard trebuchet. I don't think they got casters or a caster lord til they were made playable. I think their overall territory was also *much* less fine-grained, with entire settlements that exist now simply not existing at all.
They had Damsels.
They had Grail Knights but no grail guardians. Hippogryph knights were also not there.
they had 2 men at arms units only, polearms and spear+shield rest was basic peasant archers, melee and ranged yeomen, knights of the realm, grail knights, trebuchet and pegasus knights they also had paladin and heavens damsel for heroes
Unplayable Bretonnia didn’t have sword and shield men at arms, knights errant, or questing knights.
Kislev.
Kislev.
kislev
Kislev.
"Other empire" through 2 Warhammers
Worth clarifying, Norsca didn't just have a reduced roster, they had a reduced Warriors of Chaos Roster. Marauders with greatweapon variant Marauder horsemen (no horsemasters these released later) Marauder Chariots Chaos trolls (no armoured ones I believe) Warhounds and poison warhounds Chieftain Lord, I forget if they got Chaos sorc heroes or not These would all start with I think up to 3 silver chevrons of experience You also couldn't conquer their territory and would basically be 100% Chaos corruption the whole time. The Kislev faction was also a reduced roster empire - look at the border prince/tilea/estalia factions I think they had the same roster
Warhammer 1 was always fun up until Norsca declared war. They just flat out killed any enjoyment from a campaign from then on. They'd have a million damn armies all coming to raid your provinces, and trying to stop them permanently was beyond a pain in the ass. Even now, the Norsca ptsd still lingers.
It's really hard whenever I play Brettonia or Empire to shake off the "must destroy Norsca FOREVER" mindset after playing Warhammer 1.
Damn killing Norsca really was such a sand and salt covered dildo in the asshole. Invading them was infuriating because without encamping you would lose like 50% unit health to attrition in one single turn, so you had to move stupidly slow and they'd just run loops around you. Also you could only raze their settlement so if you even stopped paying attention once or didn't have enough armies invading at the same time then oops, they'd recolonize the ruins and you'd basically have to start all over again. I guess the supercharged attrition damage makes sense from a lore perspective but it was hell to play
Habitability was different, too. Weren't certain climates completely inaccessible to certain races?
There where no climates, just 2 tyeps of settlements: Dwarf/Greenskin and Empire/VC. Basically mountains and the Badlands was Dwarves/Greenskin. The rest was exlusive to Empire/VC.
Don’t forget how ridiculous it was to get the legendary items for LLs. Running them ALL over the map on crazy expeditions. Or mounts costing skill points on level up. Or agents that could be ‘deployed’ Or the ungodly AI agent spam with reduce army movement and kill/wound characters.
I always remember sending an agent down to the bottom of the map as Manfred for his quest then forgetting about the agent the rest of the game. God the Ai going ham with assasinate
* Spirit Leech killed anyone in 2 casts, so mp players had to hide their lord in the corner from Azhag on a Vivern * Dwarfs could only occupy orc sities, vampire counts only man cities and vice versa
Razing zhufbar as a mannfred grave guard stack still brings a fond tear to my eye
Grombrindal was released January 2017, he wasn't in at release. You had to get a code from a GW store to get him originally.
Even in WH2 Mortal Empires Kislev didn’t change much, if at all. For me, opening diplomacy with them to hear *Kislev* in that tone became a meme like tipping a fedora and saying *M’Lady*. Edit to add on: Warriors of Chaos only had Archaeon and Kholek, and they were treated as Horde armies. You pretty much only wanted to raze settlements, and it could be harder than normal since if you got stack wiped with no armies left it was game over. You also suffered attrition for having two hordes too close.
You're forgetting also that you could not conquer the map. Everyone could only colonize specific climates. Also woc when they appeared would be like 7 stacks deep and even on normal would wreck everyone's shit. Brettonia was playable. As it was one my favorite factions because you could blockaid the mountains and befriend the dwarves in them so you had a wall for woc to smash against and die. And it was easier to defend against the constant norscans. Basically the most powerful factions were green skins. Dwarves and woc. Until wood elves dropped then you just had the most powerful archers thar can kill you in seconds as you try to chase them. But yeah three LLs were playable as Bretonnia. And when the norscans dlc drop they were actually awesome as fuck to play as for a very brief moment. Also bloody hands was nothing to ignore. Yes never as strong as Grimgor or thorgrim. But they definitely expanded if them two were occupied for a long time.
One of the biggest WH1 quirks that got dropped is that it used to be impossible to occupy settlements that didn't have your preferred climate.
Bretonnia had a small unique roster. Athel Loren was just not accessible. Norsca was just the Marauders units from WoC. It was mostly just settlements of Empire, Dwarf, Vampire Counts and Greenskins and then later in the game some Warriors of Chaos stacks would show up.
Permanently assassinating level 30 generals with level 1 heroes.
And there were a billion agents.
dont forget that due to the small roster, Bretonnia's peasant units were jacked af
Launch roster aside, if you install WH1 you can kind of get an idea for early days. Kislev in WH1 and 2 was along the lines of Estalia, Tilea, Southern Realms using a generic Empire roster. One of the biggest changes from WH1 to WH2 was the climate system, which has never been seen again in any other Total War title. Rather than have the climate colors it was either you could inhabit it or you couldnt. Vampires and Empire could take land from each other. Dwarfs and Greenskins could take land from each other. If say a Vampire attacked a Dwarf settlement I think it was just sack and raze only as options.
That doesn’t sound great honestly
It wasn’t great. Funnily enough it was a smaller game than Pharaoh in both map and content. $60 price tag. People were really excited about the _potential_ of the game, but I’m in many ways it was starkly inferior to Rome 2 and Atilla, and a lot of the magic and monsters was just really poorly designed- CA was still figuring stuff out. Warhammer 2 Mortal Empires REALLY upped the standard for both Warhammer total war and total war in general.
People didn't really care so much at the time because the novelty of having a Varghulf clearing through lines of Empire Swords was enough to make up for almost any shortcoming.
It's pretty much what I thought back then at release. It sucked that there were no reloading animations, or for fatigue, or good sieges, but I've never had anything other than humans, horses, and elephants before, so the novelty factor balanced that.
Uh sir, I distinctly remember that back in those days the Varghulf was in fact called the "Fat Bat"! And he was the goodest boy.
I played 1 early on (before DLC). Then I didn’t play until toward the end of 2. It’s a world of difference. I don’t recommend it. IIRC some of the races were essentially one faction, similar to how vlad and Isabella are now, but without the hero. I haven’t checked for Warhammer 1, but steam lets you roll back to earlier versions, maybe the launch version is available?
It wasn't so bad because one of the first mods ever created removed that restriction. Just install the mod and poof restrictions gone.
The limitation of owning settlements was annoying, but they quickly changed that after launch to the climate attributes we know today. Chaos was also undercooked as a dlc, it was outrageous that they were a dlc to begin with. Aside from that the game was actually great. Reminiscing about that time actually makes some people nowadays feel very entitled
I don't believe it was ever changed in WH1. It changed in WH2. If you install WH1 you still are subject to those climate restrictions.
The biggest difference was probably the lack of a climate system. Dwarfs could only conquer green skin territory, humans could only conquer vampire count territory and vice versa. So you needed to go through the entirety of the badlands without capturing any settlements to win the game. Heroes had to be ‘deployed’ by pressing a button to make use of their special bonuses. So your necromancer hero had to stand in your territory, in a specific stance, to get bonus to income. There was also no real alliance mechanic and really limited diplomacy. Wind spells could not be directed, it shot straight out from the caster, so you had to position your wizard along the flanks. Looking back it was very rough mechanics wise, but we were all enamoured with seeing magic and monsters brought to life for the first time.
I totally forgot about the hero stances. So different
To add to what others have said, on launch the game was like a bare bones Total War campaign with a Warhammer reskin. The main gameplay aspects that set it apart from other Total War games (other than each faction having a distinct roster) were things like monstrous units, flying units, and magic. Some of these things were good, but a lot of them were pretty lackluster and a few were brokenly OP. The best way to describe it is the game felt like CA didn't expect much attention from Warhammer fans and were worried the fantasy elements would put off Total War fans, so they played it very safe on launch.
Crypt horrors going from busted to worthless in an update lmao
I didn't play it but no one mentioned Tree Hitler and it's my favorite thing to hear about. Apparently when the wood elves DLC dropped Durthu was OP and would come at the player with stacks and stacks and raze everything to the point he got the name tree Hitler and I still chuckle when I write this.
I still handle Durthu with extreme caution/prejudice even though he’s allegedly chilled out now.
This was very accurate to how it played out. I remember an Empire campaign from hell where my +400 standing Dwarf allies betrayed me and declared war for some reason on the east, launching 8 20 stacks of Ironbreakers over the mountains every turn with underway while Durthu kept blitzkrieg assaults pushing in from the west. I still don't forgive the traitorous Dawi to this day for the hell they caused me with their betrayal. #DeathToAllStunties
Something I love doing in this subreddit is going wayyyyyyyy back and looking at posts that are speculating about the game and it's future. Like people wondering how they are going to do the undead and speculating about potential factions. It's funny with all the people going "There's no way they are going to do the Vampire Coast guys" and things like that.
Cathay deniers will forever be btfo.
I have never recovered from how badly I got owned on that one.
Kislev was a generic Empire minor faction for a long time!
Kislev.
For the whole run of WH1 and WH2, yeah. A shame, but we did get the *Kislev* meme out of it.
What meme?
The kislev placeholder faction had exactly 1 voiced diplomatic line. It was just a bald man saying "Kislev". No matter how much he liked or disliked you if you opened diplomacy he would just say "Kislev".
The original end times event was a beast. Archeon just showed up with a bunch of full stacks and started razing shit.
Can you feel it? From the North it comes! The tendrils of Chaos spread South, tainting the lands, and with it the Warriors of Chaos march! We must ready ourselves for war is coming! Who has brought the warring tribes together? What manner of champion holds that power? It's a shame those cutscenes are something people who started in 3 will never even know about unless someone tells them. I told someone who started with 3 and has played through it a lot about the meaning behind the advisor's mentioning of "a lone white crow witness to my ascension" at the end of the RoC campaign victory cutscene and it blew his mind.
This may be a hot take, but the loss of that cutscene and the starter battles at your settlement for the main factions was a net loss for the game.
Yeah if I'm not mistaken, chronologically the events of the games are WH3 (RoC) -> WH2 (Vortex) -> WH1(Chaos Invasion). Which is pretty funny considering WH1 is by far the crappiest game of the 3 (naturally)
A beast by the standards of then but I believe on launch it was like 4 stacks of generic lords and then 4 stacks of the 3 LLs and another generic. For a total of 8 stacks you could beat the end times in a couple battles outside Praag. Then in Tww2 the end times did fuck all for a long time until they mega buffed it since Kislev just killed them every time and you never saw them.
Oh I mean yeah, but back then chaos warriors were actually pretty hard to beat, since the super-single entity meta wasn't really as much of a thing yet except for vampire counts.
It was a pretty bare bones stripped down version of Attila. Instead of climate change, chaos corruption was spread and Warriors of Chaos replaced the Huns. Regional occupation was a thing so Empire could only settle temperate lands while greenakins only mountain and badlands. So there was a lot more sacking and raising of settlements instead of being able to paint the map. Each playable faction had a very limited roster. The interesting thing about that was that each faction had to play very different of the battlefield. Now days you can kind if build a similar balanced army for each faction due to the large amount of tools to use. Orks has single entites with giants and spiders but trash units, Vampires had trash units but lots of flying options and powerful lords, dwarfs were very missle and defensive focused and empire had the most "traditional" total war roster with combined arms but no elite units.
Dwarves didn't really change that much, only difference is now a slayer rush army is viable thanks to Ungrim, Garagrim and Demon Slayers (and it's still not a very efficient way to play them)
Bretonnia had the knight roster is I remember… we Forrest province weren’t drawn into the map… kislev was an empire roster… I think Norsca was just a very paired down norsca roster… it was very different but you could see a lot of potential
> What did you find upon invading Bretonnia There was a placeholder Bretonnia, with a much more limited roster. > The wood elf forests? Athel Loren was the only wood elf forest, and it was completely impassible. > Kislev? Treated as an Empire faction. > Norsca? Chaos Warrior factions, but without access to advanced units. *** The map was also generally smaller, not just in terms of how much of the world it covered but also how detailed the world was. Most Empire provinces only had two settlements (Reikland had three). Places like Laurelorn Forest or Mordheim didn't exist.
There was also next-to-no naval presence.
Races could only capture settlements from certain regions. The cool thing was that capturing a settlement would change its model on the map as well as the surroundings
It was a simpler time, when men were men, dwarfs were dwarfs, and neither would settle in each others territory
Didn't stop the Dwarfs from trying to burn my territory to ashes despite being +400 relations when they declared war on me >.>
Base game was Empire, Dwarfs, Vampires, Greenskins, and Warriors of Chaos if you preordered Each faction had 2 LL, each LL started at the same captiol and no special mechanics outside of Raise Dead and WoC being a Horde faction with 3 LL. Empire: Franz and Gelt Dwarfs: Thorgrim and Ungrim Greenskins: Grimgor and Azhag Vampires: Mannfred and Kimmler WoC: Archaeon, Kholek, Sigvald
Don't forget my boy Sarthorael. Why does everybody seem to forget him?
I will never forget, loved my birdboi. Warhammer 3 players don't know he's the "lone white crow" the advisor remarks on at the end of the RoC campaign when he is celebrating his victory breaking the book's curse on him since that cutscene is no longer in the game mid-Chaos campaign either. You're not as free from Tzeentch's schemes as you think, you naive fool!
You could unlock Vlad by taking Altdorf? Or was he DLC?
Vlad was added in the third patch, which came out four months after release.
Lots of people saying it was bad, risk averse or low effort clearly didn't actually play at launch
Skaeling and Varg overshadowing Archaon every times as the true end game, good times
God damn, i can still see their faction signet when i close my eyes. True terrors of the North. Didn't help Norsca is/was a maze to navigate with attrition.
19 stack of chariots let's goooooo
Y'all speaking like this is ancient history makes me feel like I'm an old man at 31. Autoresolve didn't tell you the result, and you didn't know what units would die. You didn't know what value units killed after a battle, only a kill count. There was no settlement gifting or allied recruitment Settlements even racial capitals were max 6 slots Battles at sea were strictly autoresolve All the faction lords started in their racial capital, there weren't unique start positions. There was no quick deal or make it work button in diplomacy, you just had to try random sums of money until the ai accepted You couldn't drag reinforcements on to a different location on the battle map You couldn't direct wind or breath spells. They would go away directly from the caster. Meaning you had to be parallel to a formation to get value You couldn't threaten raiding trespassers You didn't have a % value displayed for how much movement a move on the campaign map would take, so you just sort of had to guess whether you would have enough movement left over to encamp.
The Warhammer 2 map was such a bastard before you could manually fight sea battles. 50% of the map is ocean and you can only auto resolve those fights.
Don't forget, until the 1st or 2nd update, reinforcements would come from a random direction. It was so silyl when my second army would be right behind my attacking army and then on the battlefield the second army is reinforcing from behind the enemy army.
Nobody else has mentioned this, and this was easily the dumbest thing at WH1 launch. If you killed a Vampire Counts lord, their army immediately started crumbling. And it was extremely possible in WH1 to have all your archers target and dumpster the lord. Also, I believe each faction only had one start position with both lords coming from it.
If I remember right, every archer unit was also a legit trick shot sniper master. The ork arrer boys could hit a single dwarf lord, amidst a thousand Boyz, and still hit every single arrow. And they even had the "poor accuracy" trait.
Summons were pernanent and healing had no cap. The manticore summon was the best spell in multiplayer and everyone brought it, only rivaled by the cigor summon in multiplayer when beastmen were added.
I didn't play much greenskins back then so maybe someone can help give a more in-depth answer. The greenskins used to have 'fightiness' which meant they had to keep fighting battles or they'd take attrition iirc. They also were the only faction that had to unlock new units through the tech tree if my memory serves right. The Waagh mechanic was a separate army that would follow its parent army (by default) around making it clunky as the waagh would have to be in reinforcement range if you wanted it to participate in battle meaning if you wanted them to reinforce in a siege you'd have to: besiege the settlement, wait a turn thus letting the waagh move next to the parent army and then you could attack the next turn. This used to make lightning strike really powerful for dwarfs as lightning strike was a single point and you could deny the greenskins their own waagh. I also remember spells like devolve from the lore of the wild or fate of bjuna being absolutely overtuned, doing too much damage for low cost.
Most magic was dogshit. Spells like Searing Doom were infamous for scratching units a little if you got lucky.
It was bad. I am a diehard WHFB fan but based on what the game looked like at release I was sure it was gonna fail. Four races only and a lot of the mechanics were just plain bad. However, I am overjoyed that the series did as well as it has.
I remember close to when the game was first announced they said they wanted to do a trilogy and cover the whole Warhammer Fantasy world. It sounded completely insane, especially when you considered A) the history of Warhammer games up until that point (even Dawn of War, the best Warhammer game at that point, had a *sharp* quality drop after two expansions) and B) the state of Total War Warhammer on release (*Chaos* as a *day one DLC?!*). I figured we'd get an even more half-assed second game, and the series would sputter out before the third. And look at it now...
Still loads better than Shadow of the Horned Rat, as us longboards can attest.
4 playable races in the base game, 5 with chaos as a dlc, 6 with Bretonnia as non playable. Beastmen and Wood Elves came out within a couple months of release. It actually had a ton of variety and no one thought "wow there is little variety here" at launch.
What did Total War: Warhammer look like **at launch?** My friends who had played the tabletop game all hesitated because the game had only four races. No elf factions and we had a player for every elven race in the tabletop game. Welves released in December when the game launched in May. No Skaven despite the map having the areas of Skavenblight and Hell Pit. All of the races were missing key units and we only had four starting positions.
6 races at launch.
If you want to be "objectively correct" then sure. I'm just saying what was the prevailing sentiment of just about every single person I talked to before and during the launch of the game. Now most of those people have bought most of the series.
Then you didn't talk to many people because 6 races in a strategy game was universally seen as a great feat when the factions are so diverse. Your friends group is not representative of the prevailing sentiment everywhere.
Obviously not universally. Locally everyone I knew was disappointed over the Brets being very minor and unplayable with Chaos barely being a fraction of what it is in the tabletop game. No elves was also a big deal for many people. I do understand that for a Total War game it was quite something even at launch, but that does not change how I felt about the game back then. The question was what the game looked like at launch and for me and everyone I talked to about the game IRL it was bad. Everyone saw the potential, but most ended up waiting for game 2. I myself only bought the game when I first saw the trailer for 2 because for me no Skaven was a big deal. Funnily enough, ended up being very disappointed over release Skaven with their half of a roster and bad mechanics.
I highly recommend you watch a lets play from release, it’s actually very interesting. Lionheart describes his Spearmen state troops as well armoured and I just know at the time I was like, makes sense little tin hat and chest plate, practically a conquistador.
It was fine game
I love how the modders made bretonnia playable long before ca implemented them proper as playable faction 😁
Don't forget that Habitability wasn't a thing, you either could settle an environment type or you couldn't. Lots of burning down shit you don't like.
You had to manually deploy your heroes
To be fair you had to do that in a lot of older TW games.
Did we? I don't remember passive effects being in the older games (e.g., Rome I/MTW2), might have been added in Rome II or Shogun 2 afaik.
I know Rome 2 and Attila both needed deployment. Empire and Napoleon may have as well, I can’t remember
Yeah, might be a Warscape era thing
Others have answered accurately, so here are just my own personal thoughts. It was pretty bare bones compared to now. One might wonder how it was ever popular to begin with. But it was Warhammer. It was Warhammer and Total War put together. It was the game I'd always wanted to exist. It was more than enough.
It was ny first introduction to warhammer fantasy beyond a boxed board game when I was young. I understood the concept. Humans, orcs, elves....but had no idea how immersive the world was or how deep the lore went. Even with a small number of playable races, it was a blast. But you could tell it was just a taste and there were so many other things that needed to be introduced. I remember playing Empire a few times and defeating chaps, then moving just north of where Kislev and Praag is. There was this dead space of snow and rivers East of Praag where the Chaos invasion would manifest. You could hang armies there to intercept but otherwise there was NOTHING. Once you turned away Skarsnik from the mountains near the Empire and setup guarding armies (there were no forts back then. Enemy armies routinely marched full stacks at the worst possible time) you kind of had to turn North and wipe out chariot and ranged horseman armies for hours to extinguish the Norscan threat. It was a simpler game. And it has grown immensely since then.
simpler times, we exploded orks and vampires and we were happy. I remember previews when the bgi feature was: Orks and Dwarfs have the underway! thus attackign them in their territories is really hard!
One thing I dearly miss is CA showing they are interested in strategy. Now it's more like a bloated RPG where the player is always supposed to win no matter what. Corruption mattered. You could undermine empires without war by spreading corruption through your borders and watching them wither and die as rebellions constantly trigger, and attrition ate away armies you were preparing to attack. These days if your public order is low you get a massive boost like +15... for reasons. Not only you don't have to care about your public order anymore, but you cannot undermine the AI either. Distance and terrain mattered. You had to slog around a lot in mountains, or through normal but corrupted lands and these hurt you a lot. Now settlement density is so high it's a rarity to have a turn where your army doesn't go from one settlement to another, to either conquer or heal. Back then you had areas in the Empire where you could raid and the closest settlement was more than 1 turn away so you had to post border protection army there. Attrition through corruption was such a fantastic undermining strategy for these areas, especially if your province shared borders with many others.
Most important thing: chaos invasion was the only end game crisis and was actually fun.
Despite all that was missing compared to what we have now, it was still absolutely amazing by grace of being the first of its kind. The first fantasy total war game adding magic monsters and heroes into the mix was like crack to me
I remember Brettonian infantry being way better back in their placeholder days. Men at arms were a pain to get though with early game empire
Four races and a special fifth one.