Gadgetory

hey everyone i'm steve from gamers nexus thought in that and we're here at the total war suite for GDC 2016 coverage looking at some new stuff i'm joined by al Bickham who and before we get started all this coverage is brought to you by raw Furies a goner that's a new indie platformer check that out link in description below for more information so total war the war hammer part specifically is a pretty cool fusion yeah yeah and we've seen some coverage so far but tell us about the new stuff today so today we're showing off the vampire counts in earnest and today is the day for those of you watching a bit further down the line when the trailer came out so we're kind of rolling all this into one so yeah today we've actually got people playing our preview code which lets you play as the vampire counts from a start of a campaign and we're just in how far people can get without you know seeing how far is the campaign they get so so yeah it's really exciting they are vastly different to the you know 280 total war faction in any other game even in in the confines of the single game of total war warhammer itself they are totally unique they've got a bunch of unique mechanics they could raise dead in battle they can raise dead on the campaign map as a recruitment tool as well so and they have access to some really interesting kick-ass units and they have no ranged units which is you know completely unusual for any total war faction yeah so if they were no arranged units how do they what's the balance there how do they compete so from a kind of top-line perspective I would say that it kind of comes down to balance and the way we've approached that in the game because because Warhammer the tabletop been naturally has this sort of asymmetrical design where certain races have certain things other races don't have anything like that they have completely different stuff so everybody has their own stuff going on you know it's not like a previous total war game where everybody gets at least some cavalry whether good or bad and some ranged units and you know some grades of heavy light medium infantry you know vampire counts for example do not have any raised units and we weren't going to change that just to fit in with the total way of things because that's how they're on the tabletop game we want to be really faithful to that so instead they have a range of other things at their disposal so they can raise dead for example so you know if your if your front lines engaged with your enemy's front line you can you if your if your Lord or spellcaster on the on the field has access to that spell he can summon a unit of skeletons and zombies to appear behind the enemy lines and attack them in the rear and stuff like that so they also have a crumble mechanic which is you know which is kind of modeled on or at least in you know in flavor if not if not specific mechanics in its modeled on the sort of crumble mechanics the instability the undead units get in the tabletop game so basically when a when an undead unit is suffering all the same things that would normally cause morale penalties and make them run away they don't run away they're unbreakable they're Undead they they're already dead they don't then oh don't scare they're not scared of dying they're already dead right so basically they don't they don't flee their unbreakable instead they have this crumble mechanic which means when they're suffering all those kind of what would normally be negative morale modifiers because they're surrounded they're being tacked in the rear they're being attacked by particularly terrifying unit or something like that they start crumbling because they're unstable little bits will fall off them the unit will start falling apart quite quickly you know more models more entities in that unit will die more quickly than they normally would so what that unbalanced kind of what that means is your your armies as a series of units you know viewed as a series of units will maintain its cohesion more solidly throughout the course of battle but each unit is individually more prone to collapsing on itself right you know if it's particularly surrounded all being you know being hit with always negative modifiers so it's kind of you know it's kind of swings and swings and roundabouts but also the vampire is something the word go they get supplying units to get fell bats which are awesome for kind of snooping around the battlefields and going artillery hunting or like chasing down fleeing units like you've got unit vultures fleeing off the table you know they're probably going to come back so send your bats in super fast zip across the sky and pick away at them you know as they they work like super fast cavalry basically one thing we were talking about before was sort of the almost of physics mechanic where if you've got a big heavy unit at lansdowne it does can you talk about that son yeah so actually we've done a lot of work on the kind of the effective mass in the system so in the total battle system so now we've got super heavy units heavier them hadn't you know other total war games because you've got things like dragons and when I dragon drops down out the sky and bumps into a unit of 120 goblins he's going to send a bunch of them flying obviously oh she's going to cause terror or fear whatever they cause as well and you know basically they have this they have this big physical presence on the battlefield and you can you can see shape different shades of that working so if you get say I'm thinking of a light cavalry in it like goblin wolf riders for example the very light they're very fast-moving the very kind of light cavalry now when they hit you know a heavy a heavily armored heavy infantry unit maybe like a mid or high to super tough super armored well-shielded you know they're kind of going to crash against it like a wave off the rocks you know but if you conversely if you get a unit of sort of savage org boys riding on borz they're really tough you know big heavy high mass units so if they hit a lighter unit they'll interpenetrate them not guys flying and so you get you know just feels more real you get this you get a sense of things actually interacting physically on the battlefield in a way that in a way that we haven't really you know chief before so and that's a lot of math and calculations and things like that but we're also yeah i'll talk about other kinds of calculations here so AI specifically okay an AI has been a big thing for a total war ii the very old game aspect to shogun medieval yeah pretty easy to exploit some of the AI yeah but it's gotten harder as time has gone on so how about now with the new game with total war war hammer so we but you know especially with the the open field AI you know we've built on where we were in a pretty good with place place with the tiller so Attila I think you know provided a nice challenge provide you know the AI was doing all the copyright stuff and we've made some changes to it for warhammer specifically in in the areas so reserves is one area in which the AR looks more closely at the other units it's got and it won't commit everything if he thinks it's going to win the engagements it's got involved in and in the battlefield it'll hold some units back and it will feed those units into those flash points as its as it you know as as it feels it's appropriate to win those to win those individual conflicts so you know it's it's it's much better you know holding units in reserve committing them wisely rather than throwing everything in and losing a whole you know so it reads up you know we've completely redesigned the way cities work in in cjs for example on you know when you go into a big siege battle we've made the city's much more readable both for the player and for the AI right it understands better how to navigate around that city so you know it's going to make it's going to make nice efficient pathways to the city when it's aiming to say get to a capture point and stuff like that and when it comes and supports you if you all say you're attacking a city and you're trying to knock some walls down or you've got a big monster smashing away at the gates it's going to go right you okay those guys are going to get in the gate there's no point in me trying to send something in smash the gates down because you're already doing it so we'll wait to see what you're doing and then it will commit its troops accordingly so you'll get this better soft sense of support you know as an AI a lie a lie on your side it's you know you just get this great sense of support with it as well so so yeah we've been working away and you know do some nice things and it feels really good so let's let's talk about the vampire counts for a little bit here before closing out so can you tell us some about the Lord's that have been shown for this one yeah sure so so the kind of arch vampire for the vampire counts is Manfred von Kahr Stein who is not only powerful warrior he's a dual caster so he has access to the lure of vampires in the law of death as well as he's a dual caster right Scott you can you know when you scale them up you can throw points into more and more of those you know unlock a load of a load of spells across but both those effectively eventually he can be upgraded to fly around on a zombie dragon as well so he announced this killer zombie dragon the air so he's he's going to be flying around on this this this decrepit rotting horror in the sky throwing spells around left right and center but also getting you know getting down and dirty and getting into melee as well with that big dragon fighting you know these fighting from so so he's pretty cool we're hungry kemmler as the second he's a he's a sort of arch necromancer the vampire counts and you know these guys are they're not like generals from previous total war time they are like generals but only insofar as they lead armies around the campaign and of a combination of agents and generals right yeah totally but with vastly deeper skill trees loads and especially with Manfred because he's got to spell laws he's got so in his if you can visualize his skills tree it's like he's got personal combat skills you can throw skill points into he's got his army command skills which improved his abilities to you know he gives buffs to the units at various unit types in his army like Boston Mary attack mal a defense shield you know all that kind of stuff he's got a campaign skill tree which improves you know he's moving on the campaign map various other aspects of his management style on the campaign map you know officer buffs off here and there and then he's got to individual spell trees as well that you can three points into and of course he's got all his unique quest chains the unlocks as he goes through the campaign as well so you know this so much gameplay bound up in these guys and you can push their development in very specific directions if you want you can make them incredibly capable leaders in battle you know you can give them give them all these skills which bring loads and loads of buffs you know and a lot of these skills stack as well so you know you can you can upgrade melee damage for certain units in your army but maybe you can upgrade that three times you know to give them a really a really strong boost so you can totally just focus on that with Lords if you want and actually it's a really valid tactic in the campaign game to create specific Lords to do specific things you know so you get green skin to a good example because they have they have all these skills in their campaign skill tree which enable you to make more money from raiding and looting and sacking you know because that's that is an important that's a kind of fundamental form of income for that for the greenskins right they're not really good at trading and I don't know you know exactly having having a having a conflict into infrastructure and you know marketplaces and they don't do all that so they just bash stuff till money falls have it so so sprouts on self so so yeah there you know so it's so you might want to build Lords for your greenskin armies that really are there just to make money for you on the campaign and pretty improve your entire campaign in car so specialization is totally something you can do in a way that you know else doing a nother ballgame sake very cool how about that that's tough yeah yeah looks like it yeah how about release date target stuff like that real estate is 24th of May i'm going to say i'm a bit jet-lagged so forgive me if that's where i'm pretty sure i was twenty fourth mate yeah we just actually announced a sip so we slipped by about a month which is given us a bit more polish time which is great you know it just means we're going to be even more solid and stable and launch and I mean just play the code today and I think you'll agree like we're in a really good place it's going to you know we're aiming for a really you know a really kind of solid launch effectively so and we're really happy with where the games at so far you know it's loads of fun it's got you know bucket loads of variety in it between all the different races and stuff so yeah I'm sure people going to have fun with it it looks like it's so for more coverage on total war war hammer check the channel we did some talks on dx12 which is going to be integrated that's that's freshly announced from Andy and the team here at Creative Assembly and as always links in the description below for more information thanks for watching it will see you all next time