Warhammer 3 Update 2.2 Out Now, Full Patch Notes Here

The developers at Creative Assembly have deployed the latest Warhammer 3 Update 2.2, and here is the complete patch notes list. This release includes all the feedback the developers have received since the launch of Update 2.0 and Update 2.1. The developers have made several changes to settlements and garrisons to reduce the frequency of settlement battles. A game mode split option has been added to ranked multiplayer, letting you join separate queues and giving you greater control of your online experience.

All the relevant information you may need to know regarding the Total War: Warhammer 3 patch notes for Update 2.2 is covered below in the next section. You should be able to download and install this patch right away as it includes plenty of improvements and optimizations.

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5 RACES & BALANCE

Warhammer 3 Patch Notes: Update 2.2

Here are the official patch notes for Total War: Warhammer 3 Update 2.2 that is now rolling out to all the supported platforms of the game:

Here are some of the highlights:

  • Changes to settlements and garrisons to reduce the frequency of settlement battles.
  • Additional flavour for some of the special settlement garrisons—including Karak 8 Peaks, Black Pyramid, Skavenblight and more—by allowing them to use additional units.
  • A character experience rebalance, reducing the importance of victory types and focusing on enemy unit destruction.
  • Tweaks to the victory objectives of several legendary lords, including those of the Lizardmen, High Elves and Empire.
  • A game mode split option has been added to ranked multiplayer, letting you join separate queues and giving you greater control of your online experience.
  • Adjustments to AI aggression, strategy and overall game difficulty.
  • Plus, monsters are invading the old world in the form of Regiments of Renown III, and a new endgame crisis brings ruin-death to all! Yes-yes…
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RELEASE SPOTLIGHT

REGIMENTS OF RENOWN III

twwh3 design Patch 2.2 Launcher ROR Line

In Update 2.2, we’re introducing our third Regiments of Renown unit pack, free for all players of WARHAMMER III. Monsters rise up this month as we focus on some of our factions’ most vicious units, blessed with a few extra nasty tricks that make them more powerful than ever!

Regiments of Renown III unleashes the following units:

THE GREEN GUARDIAN – Terracotta Sentinel
GRAND CATHAY

A lone Terracotta Sentinel stands centrally in the picture, a green aura shining through the gaps in its ornamental armour. In the background, a rocky outcrop with scattered embedded buildings can be seen to the right, while the left shows a city skyline of oriental buildings illuminated by the orange mist of dawn.

Centuries of silent sentry duty at the edge of the Warpstone Desert has been broken by a stunning display of choreographed violence. Foes stand little chance against the enchanted behemoth towering above them.

  • ABILITY: Redirecting Aura – Enemy units within range of the aura will have their projectiles redirected back at themselves.
  • STAT ADJUSTMENT: Increased Missile Resistance

KHORNE’S BLOODY FIST- Bloodthirster
KHORNE

A roaring Bloodthirster faces the camera. Its hugely muscular frame holds a two handed axe horizontally, with flames engulfing the hands. Huge, fiery wings frame on either side, while two huge, curled horns adorn the side of its face, with two straighter horns pointing upwards from the top of the head.

Even by Bloodthirster standards, the Bloody Fist stands apart. With every savage-yet-precise blow, it grows stronger, while its enemies are pounded to a gory blot on the landscape.

  • ABILITY: Goreshell: The Bloodthirster – Gains Damage Resistance when near large enemy targets.

THE FROZEN HEART OF WINTER – Elemental Bear
KISLEV

A crackling blue light seeps through gaps in the skin of the Elemental Bear, whose huge frame supports an armour made of dead trees. The bear appears to be standing in some sort of walled metal basement or container.

More than a mere bear, this elemental creature has all the pride and rage of its beleaguered Motherland distilled into its colossal, icy form.

  • ABILITY: Heart of Winter Spell (Bound Version) – Creates an area that damages nearby enemies over time. 

UNCLE FURUNCLE – Great Unclean One
NURGLE

The Great Unclean One's bright green skin is punctuated by bright red pustules across the shoulders and arms, while a muddied, brown residue pools around the crevasses and under the creature's flabby breasts. On its head we see two large, slightly curled horns, a single red eye and a long red tongue, handing from its toothy, smiling jaw. A mist of yellow spores is seen in the background.

Those who’ve heard of Uncle Furuncle know to steer well clear of his gaseous girth, lest a torrent of putrid filth descend upon them from gods know where.

  • ABILITY: Defiling Deluge (Active) – Uncle Furuncle heals himself while damaging enemies around him.
  • SPELL UPDATE: Miasma of Pestilence → Spirit Leech

THE SNOWHORN OF MOURN – Stonehorn
OGRE KINGDOMS

The head of the roaring Stonehorn supports a huge icy helmet that sits across the forehead, with two massive spiky horns protruding from the sides. The head is attached to a hench, hunched body. Barren, snowy, rocky ground can be seen behind.

Used to living in the sub-polar temperatures of the Granitetooth Graveyard, this characteristically vicious Stonehorn knows how to use the icy cold to its best advantage, bringing far more than mere heft to the fight.

  • ABILITY: Glacial Defence (Active) – Stonehorn gains increased armour and missile resistance, at the expense of some speed.
  • ABILITY: Frostbite – Reduces the speed of enemies this unit strikes in melee.

THE MARQUIS OF MASOCHISM – Keeper of Secrets
SLAANESH

The Keeper of Secrets bends forwards as it prepares to unfurl in attack. Its pale purple skin can be seen clearly through the tight, skimpy suit which mainly covers only its limbs. Two brown horns curl backwards from its forehead, while a blue jewel shines brightly from between its plain white eyes. In the background we see figures that are either statues or perhaps victims frozen by a curse of some sort.

“I have such sights to show you!”

  • ABILITY: Feasting on Fear (Passive) – Regenerates health based on number of enemies who have had their morale break around the Keeper of Secrets.
  • SPELL UPDATE: Lash of Slaanesh → Phantasmagoria
  • SPELL UPDATE: Acquiescence → Enfeebling Foe

THE GOLDEN GRIFFIN OF THEURGY – Lord of Change
TZEENTCH

The Lord of Change's screeching beak protrudes sharply from beneath its golden plumage. A purple gown is draped over the creature's torso, while his hand grips the hilt of a sword, the tip of which is presumably thrust down into the ground. Huge yellow and blue wings stretch from the beast's back.

The most powerful of the Changer’s chosen confuses and beguiles before swooping in to give his enemies a bloody, merciless mauling.

  • ABILITY: Increased Armour (permanent Glittering Robe)
  • SPELL UPDATE: Blue Fire of Tzeentch → Searing Doom
  • SPELL UPDATE: Pink Fire of Tzeentch → Gehenna’s Golden Hounds

SKAVEN ENDGAME CRISIS: VERMINTIDE

The green light from the gatling gun's ammunition illuminates a scene of skaven warriors advancing from right to left, firing at an unseen enemy. A castle can be seen in the abckground, upon which is depicted a large skull.

The Skaven undercities are erupting!

Burrowed deep beneath the surface, the Skaven are expanding their underground empire to the farthest corners of the old world. With Warpbombs ready to turn your settlements to ash plus hordes of vermin spewing out from the dirt in the name of the Under-Father, willing factions must race to wipe the major Skaven factions off the map and put a stop to the Vermintide.

But tread carefully, for every Skaven clan that’s yet to be slain makes the erupting undercities even deadlier.

Yes-yes…

The camera looks down on a procession of skaven troops trudging single file through a rocky outcrop, their large red banners held aloft.

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STABILITY & PERFORMANCE

Improvements made to the overall stability and performance of the game.

  • Fixed an end-of-turn crash that could occur when a default rebel faction was set to another faction omitted from the Campaign.
  • Fixed a rare crash when characters would trigger post-battle voiceover lines in a Campaign.

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GAMEPLAY

Below are changes made to the gameplay rules, AI, and other mechanics that dictate how the game is played.

RULES, SYSTEMS & GENERAL UPDATES

  • How They Play events on campaign starts have been rewritten to cover core gameplay elements for every faction.
  • Removed a number of starting wars between factions who were not their intended starting opponents. (This is unlikely to affect player experience directly, but will improve the performance of AI factions such as the Daemon Prince.)
  • Updated reinforcement locations within various faction settlements to prevent unintended enemy behaviour.
  • Effects that increased healing caps are no longer 100x stronger than intended.
  • Settlement and deployed towers have had their damage reduced to be consistent with WARHAMMER I and WARHAMMER II towers.
  • When colonising ruins, you now take a temporary vigour penalty instead of a massive manpower loss.
  • Fixed some quest items that provided magical attacks despite the Legendary Lord having magical attacks by default.
  • Fixed an issue where Sword of Khaine didn’t correctly transfer post battle if its owner died, resulting it equipping to another Lord/Hero.
  • Fixed an issue where vassalized factions would lose objective completion upon re-loading a save file.
  • Fixed an issue where auto-resolve battle results would change after loading a quick save.
    Removed the cap for income provided by tribute from vassals.
  • Endgame ultimate victory objectives now support vassalizing factions as an alternate option to confederating or destroying them.
  • Endgame scenarios now trigger the research of all technologies for the respective factions automatically.
  • The free upkeep effect on endgame scenario armies is now visible to the player.
  • Mounted Marauder variants will no longer fire autonomously in melee, though it is still possible to manually order the unit to fire (we are investigating other cases of units that gain large amounts of performance from similar behaviours).
  • Allied recruitment will now provide access to all units offered by the requisite DLC (if owned). As before, there is a subset of units available to non-DLC owners.
  • Added and increased trade-focused benefits to the ports of Marienburg, Lothern, Erengrad and Bordeleaux.
  • Campaign reductions to the Winds of Magic cost should now properly affect overcast spells.
  • Dragon Fang Mounts are now properly available to the intended WARHAMMER III factions.

We’ve implemented additional fixes for instances of flying units being able to capture points, this time affecting:

  • Mage (Fire) – Dragon Mounted (High Elves)
  • Phoenix Mounted (Teclis)
  • Glade Captain – Eagle Mounted (Wood Elves)

DEV NOTE:

The Blood Pack Incidents would regularly all fire between turns 10 and 20. Given the duration of most campaigns, this meant that around 20% of campaign battles were actually being fought with a completely different pace and balance than intended.

  • Adjusted the timing of Blood Pack Incidents so that they’re more regularly spaced out.
  • Reduced the duration of Blood Pack Incidents to five turns.

EXPLOIT FIXES

  • Fixed an exploit where certain Legendary Lords from WARHAMMER II could be duplicated in a single campaign.

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RACES & BALANCE

GENERAL

  • Each Allied Outpost in Tomb King or Beastmen settlements will now grant +1 Unit Capacity for all of that faction’s units.
  • Added missing UI tooltips to Giant Spiders, Feral Bears and Feral Ice Bears units.

ABILITIES

DEV NOTE:

In Update 2.0, we significantly buffed many units across all the undead races. Combined with the switch to percentage-based healing in Total War: WARHAMMER III, this significantly reduced the impact that Crumbling has on units whose Leadership has broken. As a result, we’re slightly increasing the damage of Crumbling to help with clearing out undead enemies that are falling apart.

CRUMBLING (Tomb Kings, Vampire Coast, Vampire Counts)

  • Damage: 10-21 → 14-28

CHANNELLING & WINDS OF MAGIC REPLENISHMENT

Several races lacking the Channelling stance now have their own unique method for replenishing Winds of Magic.

BEASTMEN

It gets spicy after hours! This faction now benefits from greatly increased Winds of Magic replenishment during Full Moon events:

  • +50% during Full Moon
  • +100% during Lunar Eclipse
  • +150% during Solar Eclipse

In addition, Beastmen now gain +10 Winds of Magic per turn when in a Raiding stance.

GREENSKINS

  • Based on their faction-wide WAAAGH! level, gain –3/3/6/9 Winds of Magic per turn for all forces.

LIZARDMEN

  • Like the rest of the Lizardmen race, Nakai now has access to the Channelling stance.

NORSCA

  • Gain +10 Winds of Magic per turn when in a Raiding stance.
  • Devotion to the Eagle now grants Winds of Magic power capacity.

VAMPIRE COAST

The Flagship Expansion stance (only available at sea) now offers the following Winds of Magic options:

  • +20 Winds of Magic per turn (own army)
  • +10 Winds of Magic per turn (forces within sphere of influence)

WOOD ELVES

  • Wood Elf Major Settlement buildings now grant 3/6/9/12/15 Winds of Magic Reserve per turn to local armies (they are magical forests, after all).
  • Abduct Captives Post-Battle options now offers +5 Winds of Magic Reserve.
Balance changes to the BEASTMEN race and factions, available in Immortal Empires to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER.

DEV NOTE:

In this update, we’re raising the multiplayer cost of all Chaos Spawn units for all races, as they were an overly prevalent unit thanks to their excellent mass and tanking potential. In the Beastmen’s case, they have a notably lower damage than the other variants, so we are compensating for that.

Across the board, Giants have been not a popular unit in any race or game mode despite the addition of missile resistance. We are again giving them a blanket buff: increasing their armour and weapon strength to make them one of the hardest hitting units in the game! They’ll still be a slow, huge target, so we believe that this should bring them into the meta without making them too oppressive.

Minotaurs are another unit that has been performing poorly, especially when Chaos Spawn occupy a similar design space. For now, we are giving them a boost to their hit points: allowing more time to benefit from their Bloodgreed passive. Paired with reductions to their multiplayer cost, we hope to encourage their inclusion in competitive builds.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Beastmen no longer unlock Dark Elf ports when erecting a Herdstone.
  • They also no longer use their Basic Port in Special Port Locations.

TAUROX THE BRASS BULL

  • Taurox now gains +1 Momentum from the first battle he fights each turn. 
  • Momentum will no longer decay after concluding a Rampage; only when Taurox fights another battle.
  • Momentum granted at the start of a new Rampage: 1 → 3

CAMPAIGN

  • The Eye of the Gods (event): No longer targets an army that does not belong to the player’s faction.
  • Oak of Ages settlements will now correctly provide a unique Herdstone building chain when occupied.

BATTLES

  • Fall of Man (quest battle): Karl Franz will now spawn during the battle, as intended. 
  • Fall of Man (quest battle): Updated the intro camera height.

UNITS

CHAOS SPAWN (BEASTMEN)

  • Base Weapon Damage: 90 → 100
  • Multiplayer Cost: 900 → 1,000 gold

GIANT (BEASTMEN)

  • Armour: 30 → 50
  • Base Weapon Damage: 150 → 200
  • AP Weapon Damage: 450 → 500
  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,500 → 1,400 gold

MINOTAURS (SHIELDS)

  • Hit Points: 8,224 → 8,704
  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,250 → 1,200 gold

MINOTAURS

  • Hit Points: 8,224 → 8,704
  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,250 → 1,200 gold

MINOTAURS (GREAT WEAPONS)

  • Hit Points: 8,224 → 8,704
  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,350 → 1,200 gold

BUTCHERS OF KALKENGARD (MINOTAURS – SHIELDS)

  • Hit Points: 8,224 → 8,704
  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,700 → 1,500 gold

SKILLS

CROWFATHER (Malagor)

  • Now offers missile resistance instead of missile damage to his army, as per his WARHAMMER II effect.

TECHNOLOGY

BEASTMEN

  • Technologies are now correctly labelled as ‘Challenges’ in the search field.
Balance changes to the BRETONNIA race and factions, available in Immortal Empires to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER.

DEV NOTE:

In Update 2.0, we changed the speeds of several horse-based cavalry rosters. However, Bretonnia hadn’t received this treatment… until now! We’ll monitor how the faster cavalry units get on, as well as your feedback as you get the time to experiment with them in combat.

CAMPAIGN

  • Fixed Battle Pilgrim unit cards not showing on buildings for Bretonnia.
  • rare softlock that could occur during AI Bretonnia faction turns has been fixed. 
  • Fixed the unavailability of the Bretonnia Brothel building.
  • The Fay Enchantress’s quest for Morgianna’s Mirror will no longer auto-complete when constructing any building rather than the specified Tower of the Enchantress.
  • Fixed Repanse’s starting mission for Pierre d’Arden’s banner not completing.

BATTLES

  • Updated character abilities in the Chalice of Potions, Guardian of Lyonesse and Sword of Lyonesse quest battles.
  • Enabled the missing army in Repanse’s Sword of Lyonesse quest battle, meaning players can now complete it.

UNITS

Chop chop! Update 2.2 delivers the following speed buffs:

BRETONNIANS

  • Run Speed (on Barded Warhorse mount): 75 → 78

REPANCE DE LYONESSE

  • Run Speed (on Suleman mount): 70 → 75

KNIGHTS ERRANT

  • Run Speed: 75 → 78

KNIGHTS OF THE REALM

  • Run Speed: 75 → 78

QUESTING KNIGHTS

  • Run Speed: 75 → 78

GRAIL KNIGHTS

  • Run Speed: 75 → 78

GRAIL GUARDIANS

  • Run Speed: 70 → 75

ABILITIES

DOLOROUS BLADE (Green Knight)

  • Removed the buff to Melee Base Damage (as the Green Knight does not benefit from it).
  • Duration: 27 → 33 seconds
Balance changes to the DAEMONS OF CHAOS race and factions, available to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER III.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • The Daemon Prince can now use their basic port in special port locations.

CAMPAIGN

The Daemon Prince’s deity-specific, post-battle captive options now offer an additional effect in addition to Glory gain:

  • Khorne: Unit Experience
  • Nurgle: Replenishment
  • Slaanesh: Favour
  • Tzeentch: Winds of Magic

UNITS

CHAOS FURIES

  • Multiplayer Cost: 600 → 550 gold

SKILLS

FREAKISH MUTATIONS

  • Now properly applies its effects to the Chaos Warshrine unit.
Balance changes to the DARK ELF race and factions, available in Immortal Empires to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER II.

DEV NOTE:

The Dark Elf slave system felt too passive, so we’ve made things a bit more dynamic by removing the Slave Cap on Minor Settlements. Players can now utilise the global effects at the cost of their Public Order to focus on capacity, or instead have a settlement utilise around 100 Slaves to keep their Infrastructure Bonuses active. Other settlements, in the meantime, can keep their capacity lower and just use slaves when maximum capacity is reached.

Once you get a chance to play with it, let us know what you think: whether the system is now too punishing or if it is still too passive.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Cleaned up redundant Help Page information regarding Dark Elf slave mechanics.

SLAVES (Dark Elf Racial Mechanic)

  • Starting number of Slaves reduced: 200 → 100
  • Slave Rite cost: 400 → 800 gold
  • Diktat cost: 400 → 600 (Open Market), 200 → 400 (elsewhere)
  • Diktat cooldown (Open Market): 5 → 0 turns

Several adjustments have been made to the slave drain in relation to public order:

  • If Public Order is Insecure, Wavering or Weak, the slave drain rate from buildings now increments to 10%/25%/100% accordingly.

The slave capacity brackets have also been adjusted as follows:

  • Tier 1: 0-500 → 0-800
  • Tier 2: 501-5,000 → 801-2,000
  • Tier 3: 5,001-10,000 → 2,001-5,000
  • Tier 4: 10,001-20,000 → 5,001-10,000
  • Tier 5: 20,001-50,000 → 10,001-100,000

CONSTRUCTION COSTS

  • Construction costs changed 0/-2/-5/-7/-10 → -2/-5/-10/-15/-25
  • Construction time reduction per turn (instead of %) → 0/-1/-2/-3/-4
  • Public Order increased 0/-1/-2/-3/-4 → -1/-2/-3/-4/-6
  • Added income % from all buildings → 1/2/5/10/20

COMMANDMENTS

The Increase Production Commandment now has the following effects:

  • Growth: +25 → +50
  • Slave Income: +10% → +20%

Sacrifices for Khaine’s Slave effects have changed:

  • Slave Decline: -30 → -50

ROADS

  • Now additionally reduce the Slave cost of Diktats by 10%.

BUILDINGS

INDUSTRY (CHAIN)

  • Slave drain is now only active when above 100 total slaves.
  • Slave Drain Rate: -10/-20/-40 → -20/-40/-80

BLACK ARKS SLAVE BUILDING

  • Added Slaves per turn → 10/20/40

FARM

  • Provide half their growth based on Slave availability.
  • Added small slave capacity increase → 20/40/80
  • Added 5%/10%/20% Slave Income increase in region.

MINOR SETTLEMENT

  • Removed the Slave Capacity

PORTS

  • Slave drain is now only active when above 100 total slaves.
  • Slave Drain Rate: -8/-20/-50 → -10/-40/-100

PUBLIC ORDER

  • Provide half their public order based on Slave availability.

SLAVE BUILDING

  • Added public order penalty → -2/-4
  • Slave capacity decreased 500-1,000 → 300-600

CAMPAIGN

  • Rakarth’s Whip of Agony quest battle now correctly offers a recruitable Black Ark as a reward.
  • Malus’s rite Gift to the Witch King now gives experience to the spawned Hero. The number of settlements in Malekith’s faction is now displayed when performing the rite.
  • The Dark Elf long victory reward now grants +15% income from slaves.
  • Fixed Lokhir being wrongly affected by loyalty.

BATTLES

  • Updated character abilities in the Warpsword of Khaine quest battle.

ABILITIES

  • Fixed an issue where Murderous Prowess wouldn’t always display in battle. 

SKILLS

  • Fixed Rakarth’s Carrion Crows skill not disabling upkeep for Harpies.

TRAITS

  • Morathi will no longer gain the Corrupted by Slaanesh character trait.

TECHNOLOGY

  • Fixed Morathi’s technologies Festivals of Ruin and Endless Debauchery spreading Chaos Undivided corruption instead of Slaanesh corruption.

ITEMS

  • Fixed Morathi’s quest item Heartrender and the Darksword spreading Chaos Undivided corruption instead of Slaanesh corruption.
Balance changes to the DWARF race and factions, available in Immortal Empires to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Rebalanced the starting severity of some starting Grudges for the Dwarf Legendary Lords.
  • Fixed issue where the Grudge severity was increasing far more quickly than intended.
  • Moved Belegar’s Vanguard deployment benefit from his Lord effects to his Faction effects.
  • Dwarfs no longer retain their mohawks after losing their heads (which, let’s be honest, was quite the skill…)!

CAMPAIGN

  • Dwarfs no longer declare war on other AI dwarfs during the Grudge Too Far endgame scenario. 
  • Fixed an issue where Gotrek could not equip Dwarf runes. 
  • Thorgrim Grudgebearer’s starting engineer now has his unique starting trait, as does Kazador.

ABILITIES

  • Added an army-wide +20% missile block chance to Belegar’s Lord trait.

ITEMS

  • Fixed the icon incorrectly claiming that unique items in The Forge could be crafted multiple times.
Balance changes to the GRAND CATHAY race and factions, available to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER III.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Fixed unintended cases where Cathayan Yin and Yang buildings could be converted into each other.

Both Miao Yin and Zhao Ming no longer have access to active spells or abilities when in their dragon transformation, with the exception of the following:

  • Dragon’s Breath
  • Talons of the Night
  • Eye of the Storm

CAMPAIGN

  • The Caravan Encounter, A Gift from Ind, will now only offer units that will fit within the 20 unit cap of the caravan army (e.g. if the army has 20 units already, no units will be offered).

ABILITIES

  • Fixed the Dragon Emperor’s Wrath of Cathay compass ability not causing enemy armies to take attrition in Immortal Empires. 
Balance changes to the GREENSKINS race and factions, available in Immortal Empires for owners of Total War: WARHAMMER.

DEV NOTE:

Greenskins will also benefit from the Giant buffs. We will, of course, be monitoring both how it plays out and your feedback as we make additional changes.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • When an AI Greenskin faction’s WAAAGH! completes, the event message will now display the faction in question, and will only display if the player has met the faction through diplomacy.

CAMPAIGN

  • The Pigbarter settlement chain is now appropriately that of a major settlement.

GRIMGOR IRONHIDE

  • Grimgor Ironhide’s quest item Blood-Forged Armour will now correctly be awarded to the AI.

Grimgor’s short victory underwent some tweaks to bring it inline with other short victories:

  • Grimgor’s short victory description is now more accurate. 
  • Added The Tower of Torment and The Challenge Stone regions to Grimgor’s short victory region objectives. 
  • Reduced Grimgor’s short victory requirements 6 → 5.

GROM THE PAUNCH

  • Fixed Grom’s cooking ingredients not unlocking when completing his quest battle, or when getting certain character types to Rank 15.
  • Fixed Grom the Paunch’s Lord defeat trait not applying the Causes Terror attribute.

SKARSNIK

  • Fixed Skarsnik’s faction effect not applying +100% experience for heroes.
  • Skarsnik’s Greenskin Recruitment building chain now starts at Level 2.

WURRZAG

  • Fixed Wurrzag being able to recruit the Idol of Gork Regiment of Renown at Rank 2 rather than Rank 30.

UNITS

GIANT

  • Armour: 30 → 50
  • Base Weapon Damage: 150 → 200
  • Armour-Piercing Weapon Damage: 450 → 500
  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,500 → 1,400 gold

GOBLIN WOLF CHARIOTS

  • Projectiles: 2 → 1
  • The Teef Robberz (RoR – Wolf Chariot) unit now correctly has Strider, as opposed to a deprecated and non-functional attribute.
Balance changes to the HIGH ELF race and factions, available in Immortal Empires for owners of Total War: WARHAMMER II.

DEV NOTE:

Although they remain capable in campaign, High Elves have been called out for their overall underperformance in multiplayer—despite implementing numerous buffs to them in 2.0. So, we are rolling out a massive pass of Multiplayer Cost reductions across the board for Ranged and Elite units. This will allow High Elves to bring more troops to multiplayer battles, significantly boosting their overall power level and map presence.

We are also adding Martial Mastery to Swordmasters of Hoeth and Loremasters. As some of the best combatants in the High Elven roster, we believe this to be not only an appropriate buff for performance reasons, but also thematic ones.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Fixed some text in the Athel Tamarha panel where the phrase ‘Upgrades Available’ was cut-off with ellipses for several languages.

CAMPAIGN

  • Legendary Lord quests granting unique items will now grant the ancillary if the mission is cancelled.
  • The High Elf Noble’s Gain Influence agent action now grants influence over time, as in WARHAMMER II.
  • Fixed an issue where the Cult of Pleasure was not getting the correct Elven Building, removing garrisons. 

ALITH ANAR

  • Alith Anar will now receive a Shadow Mage at the start of a campaign. 
  • Plus, his starting position has been changed—starting in Karond Kar made it harder to convincingly brood, so they are now encamped in The Monoliths.

ELTHARION THE GRIM

  • Eltharion’s long term goals no longer mimic other High Elf goals. Instead, he will need to deal with his rival, Grom the Paunch, ensure Tor Yvresse is in safe hands, and deal with other nearby Greenskin and key Skaven threats.
  • Increased the strength of Eltharion’s second starting army and changed its Lord to an Archmage with a custom trait.
  • Added unit capacity for Mistwalker units to the Tor Yvresse main settlement building, and removed the ability to build the Mistwalker building in this settlement.
  • Eltharion’s Mistwalker dilemma will no longer trigger for Legendary Lords who have been confederated.

IMRIK

  • Imrik’s victory objectives have seen minor tweaks to better suit his starting position. Rather than, migrating back to Ulthuan, he now needs to encounter all the dragons, as well as destroy nearby major Skaven, Chaos, and Greenskin factions.
  • Fixed an issue where Imrik’s dragon encounter markers wouldn’t produce a generic dragon army to fight against.
  • Clicking Imrik’s dragon encounter button will no longer move the camera to the bottom left of the map.

TECLIS

  • Teclis’ starting position has been changed, having emerged from the jungles and reclaimed the Fortress of Dawn for the High Elves.
  • His victory objectives have seen minor tweaks to better suit his new starting position—he now needs to gain control of the majority of the Elven colonies, rather than taking full control of Ulthuan.

BATTLES

  • Updated the character model in the Talisman of Hoeth quest battle.
  • Assigned the correct deployment positions for the Lamoureux quest battle.
  • Rotated reinforcement armies to closer match their entry locations from WARHAMMER II in the Shackolot Dragon battle.
  • Updated the map for the Armour of Caledor quest battle to fix the intro camera.

UNITS

ARCHERS

  • Multiplayer Cost: 475 → 450 gold

ARCHERS (LIGHT ARMOUR)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 525 → 475 gold

ELLYRIAN REAVERS

  • Multiplayer Cost: 700 → 600 gold

EVERQUEEN’S COURT GUARD (SISTERS OF AVELORN)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,400 → 1,300 gold

HERALDS OF THE WIND (ELLYRIAN REAVERS)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 900 → 800 gold

KEEPERS OF THE FLAME (PHOENIX GUARD)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,650 → 1,500 gold

LOREMASTER OF HOETH

  • Passive Ability: Martial Prowess → Martial Mastery

LOTHERN SEA GUARD

  • Multiplayer Cost: 650 → 600 gold

LOTHERN SEA GUARD (SHIELDS)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 750 → 700 gold

PHOENIX GUARD

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,400 → 1,300 gold

SHADOW WALKERS

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,100 → 1,000 gold

SWORDMASTERS OF HOETH

  • Passive Ability: Martial Prowess → Martial Mastery
  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,250 → 1,300 gold

TALONS OF TOR CALEDA (ARCHERS – LIGHT ARMOUR)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 800 → 675 gold

THE FIREBORN (DRAGON PRINCE)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,850 → 1,800 gold

THE GREY (SHADOW WARRIORS)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,150 → 1,050 gold

THE PUREMANE COMPANY (WHITE LIONS OF CHRACE)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,100 → 1,000 gold

THE SCIONS OF MATHLANN (SPEARMEN)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 850 → 800 gold

THE STORM RIDERS (LOTHERN SEA GUARD)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 850->800 gold

TRAITS

  • High Elf Influence traits have been rebalanced, bringing the weaker ones up to par and reducing a few outliers, while some have had their effects adjusted to make use of new possibilities introduced in WARHAMMER III.
  • Fixed Alith Anar’s Lord trait not reducing the upkeep for Shadow Warriors.

TECHNOLOGY

  • Restored the missing units from the High Elf technology tree from the Warden & the Paunch DLC.

ITEMS

  • Changed the mission requirements of Teclis’ Scroll of Hoeth quest item to defeat Tzeentch armies instead of Dark Elf armies.
Balance changes to the KHORNE race and factions, available to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER III.

DEV NOTE:

While Khorne performs very well in campaign, their units are often too expensive in the multiplayer environment—even when considering their high power levels that are designed to make up for the race’s lack of magic. As such, we are reducing the Multiplayer Costs of the most elite units of Khorne to allow them to shine in multiplayer.

At the same time, the Spawn of Khorne underperform when compared to their counterparts, so we are very slightly increasing their armour. Minotaurs of Khorne will be receiving a significant Multiplayer Cost reduction, in addition to matching the hit point buffs of the Beastmen variants. This should make them a more attractive pick in all game modes.

The Chaos Shrines of Khorne have a similar problem: where their Giver of Furious Glory ability is much weaker than the counterparts, and so we are increasing the maximum boosts these can offer. That said, we are assigning a multiplayer cap of 1 to all Chaos Shrines, as we would like it to be a support unit as opposed to core pieces of the army.

Chaos Knights have been underperforming in multiplayer across the board for all races, so we are reducing their Multiplayer Cost globally.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • The Gorebeast Chariot of Khorne now uses the correct icon in the Daemonic Glory panel. 
  • Fixed Khorne Blood Hosts counting towards Supply Lines calculations. 
  • Fixed the Skullcrusher Leader Boon of Chaos only applying to the character instead of all Skullcrushers in the army.

CAMPAIGN

  • Skarbrand’s short victory reward in Immortal Empires (Winds of Magic) has been replaced with a chainsword.

UNITS

BLOODTHIRSTER

  • Multiplayer Cost: 2,200 → 2,000 gold

CHAOS KNIGHTS OF KHORNE

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,500 → 1,400 gold

CHAOS KNIGHTS OF KHORNE (LANCES)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,600 → 1,500 gold

CHAOS SHRINE OF KHORNE

  • Multiplayer Cap: 2 → 1

CHOSEN OF KHORNE (DUAL WEAPONS)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,650 → 1,500 gold

DAEMON PRINCE (KHORNE)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 2,550 → 2,100 gold

KNIGHTS OF THE BRAZEN THRONE (SKULLCRUSHERS OF KHORNE)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 2,200 → 1,900 gold

MINOTAURS OF KHORNE

  • Hit Points: 8,224 → 8,704
  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,450 → 1,300 gold

MINOTAURS OF KHORNE (GREAT WEAPONS)

  • Hit Points: 8,224 → 8,704
  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,550 → 1,300 gold

SKULLCRUSHERS OF KHORNE

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,800 → 1,700 gold

SOUL GRINDER (KHORNE)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,900 → 1,750 gold

SPAWN OF KHORN

  • Armour: 20 → 30
  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,000 → 1,100 gold

ABILITIES

GIVER OF FURIOUS GLORY (CHAOS SHRINE OF KHORNE)

  • Maximum Base Weapon Damage Effect: +5% → +15%
  • Maximum AP Weapon Damage Effect: +5% → +15%

HORN OF KHORNE

  • Now plays the correct audio.

MANTLE OF IMMOLATION (BLOODCRUCHERS OF KHORNE)

  • Now provides weakness against fire instead of reducing fire resistance.

ITEMS

  • Khorne factions can no longer earn the Chromic Tome Ancillary
Balance changes to the KISLEV race and factions, available to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER III.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Replaced Mammoths with Marauder Hunters in both of Katarin’s starting enemy armies.
  • Added Sleds and Little Grom to Erengrad Frosthome special building.
  • Reduced Port cost of Erengrad from 2,000/4,000/6,000/8,000/10,000 → 500/1,000/2,000/4,000/6,000 gold.
  • Fixed campaign settlement visuals for the Southern Oblast region to properly display as Kislev.

TECHNOLOGY

  • Katarin now starts with the Ice Sculpting technology already unlocked, granting faster access to the Ice Court training mechanic.
  • Changed Kislev Technologies that require ownership of settlements to also allow for allies/vassals ownership of the settlements.

ITEMS

  • The tooltip to acquire Katarin’s unique weapon, Frost Fang, has been updated to better reflect how to obtain it.
Balance changes to the LIZARDMEN race and factions, available in Immortal Empires to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER II.

DEV NOTE:

Lizardmen have been performing very well since the changes we introduced in 2.0. We will keep an eye on them as we consider further tweaks for roster diversity; keep the feedback coming!

For now, we are only adding a cooldown to Lord Kroak’s Deliverance of Itza spells, as these are hugely powerful and should conform with the norms of our spell systems, regardless.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Fixed a bug where the Alignment of Monuments commandment was providing global construction time reduction instead of provincial.
  • Nakai is no longer too zoomed in on the character details panel.
  • A broken visual link in Nakai’s technology tree has been fixed.
  • Fixed an issue where Coatl units would not be recruitable if you owned the Silence & the Fury DLC but not the Prophet & the Warlock DLC.

CAMPAIGN

TIQ’TAQ’TO

  • Tiq’taq’to will now receive a Skink Chief with a unique trait at the start of a campaign. 

KROQ-GAR

  • Kroq-Gar’s long victory objectives no longer target Lustria and instead focus on eliminating the forces of destruction and chaos nearby, as well as ensuring nearby jungles are in safe hands. 
  • His short victory objectives have been slightly tweaked to better suit his starting position.
  • Fixed an issue where razing or sacking a Skaven settlement would not count towards Gor-rok’s Mace of Ulumak quest. 

NAKAI

  • Nakai’s long victory objectives now mainly focus on dealing with the servants of darkness in the east, with the exception being Clan Pestilens in Lustria.
  • If Clan Pestilens is still alive once Nakai reaches his short victory, he’ll receive a dilemma allowing him to spawn a wandering army to aid the lizards in Lustria.
  • Added the total Old One’s Favour value to Nakai’s Temples of the Old Ones panel.
  • Removed the duplicated experience effect on Nakai’s Sentinel Hall building.

OXYOTL

  • Fixed Oxyotl’s Visions of the Old Ones spawning extremely strong enemy armies in the early game.
  • Fixed Oxyotl’s teleportation cooldown; he is now limited to teleporting once per turn.
  • Oxyotl’s long victory no longer targets Lustria. Instead, it requires the completion of 25 medium/hard Visions of the Old Ones missions (previously Oxyotl’s pre-2.2 short victory condition).
  • Oxyotl’s short victory objective, the completion of medium/hard Visions of the Old Ones missions, has been reduced 25 → 6.

SPELLS

DELIVERANCE OF ITZA (Lord Kroak)

These spells now have cooldowns of:

  • Level 1: 0 → 15 seconds
  • Level 2: 0 → 20 seconds
  • Level 3: 0 → 25 seconds 
Balance changes to the NORSCA race and factions, available in Immortal Empires to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER II.

DEV NOTE:

This time around, Norsca only receives some minor changes. Ice Wolves in particular have been performing significantly worse than Flesh Hounds while being in a similar cost bracket. As such, we are bumping up their combat performance and slightly reducing their Multiplayer cost.

Additionally, we are also slightly increasing the leadership of Norscan and Chaos Troll units: matching those of the Greenskin variants and allowing them to remain in combat a little longer. We are also reducing the Multiplayer Cost tax on the heavier Troll variants.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Removed secondary building requirements for all units.
  • Moved unlocks for Chariot units to the Smith chain.

SMITH CHAIN EFFECTS

  • Recruitment cost reduction: 5%/10%/15%
  • Local recruitment capacity: 1/2/2
  • Global recruitment capacity: 0/0/1

OFFERINGS CHAIN EFFECTS

  • Recruit rank: 1/2
  • Unit XP gain: 50/100
  • Casualty replenishment: 5%/10%

NORSCAN INCOME CHANGE

  • From Infrastructure: 100/200/300 → 50/100/150 gold
  • From Settlement buildings: 40/80/120/160/200 → 20/40/60/80/100 gold
  • Ports are unchanged.

CAMPAIGN

DEV NOTE:

We can see that players are enjoying Norsca now, although there have been a lot of comments about the ease of their campaign. We want to retain their naval based expansion pattern and their strong focus on naval operations, so we have therefore reduced their land-based economy. This should also put a bit more emphasis on devoting razes to the gods without stopping players from creating a bit of static economy where needed.

  • Fixed the map position of the Norsca Monster Hunt quest battles.
  • Skeggi’s settlements in Southern Naggarond have been removed and returned to the neighbouring Dark Elf factions.

UNITS

BEASTS OF TASHNAR (NORSCAN WARHOUNDS)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 700 → 600

 NORSCAN GIANT

  • Armour: 30 → 50
  • Base Weapon Damage: 150 → 200
  • AP Weapon Damage: 450 → 500
  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,500 → 1,400 gold

NORSCAN ICE WOLVES

  • Melee Attack: 26 → 30
  • Base Weapon Damage: 29 → 32
  • Armour-Piercing Weapon Damage: 13 → 16
  • Multiplayer Cost: 650 → 600 gold

NORSCAN ICE TROLLS

  • Leadership: 40 → 45
  • Multiplayer Cost: 950 → 900 gold

NORSCAN TROLLS

  • Leadership: 40 → 45

WAR MAMMOTH

  • Fixed an incorrect mass setup.

SKILLS

  • Throgg’s King of Trolls skill now applies effects as intended. 
Balance changes to the NURGLE race and factions, available to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER III.

DEV NOTE:

In this multiplayer update for Nurgle, we are making their Chaos Shrines more expensive on characters while encouraging the inclusion of Elite Monsters and Chaos Knights in the meta.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Pestilence effects that are designed to increase enemy siege attrition no longer decrease it.

UNITS

BILIOUS THUNDERGRUFF (CHAOS GIANT)

  • Armour: 30 → 50
  • Base Weapon Damage: 150 → 200
  • Armour-Piercing Weapon Damage: 450 → 500

CULTIST OF NURGLE

  • Chaos Warshrine (mount) Multiplayer Cost: 800 → 1,000 gold

DAEMON PRINCE (NURGLE)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 2,550 → 2,100 gold

CHAOS KNIGHTS OF NURGLE

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,500 → 1,400 gold

CHAOS KNIGHTS OF NURGLE (LANCES)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,600 → 1,500 gold

CHAOS WARSHRINE OF NURGLE

  • Multiplayer cap: 2 → 1

GREAT UNCLEAN ONE

  • Multiplayer Cost: 2,000 → 1,800 gold

SOUL GRINDER (NURGLE)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,900 → 1,750 gold

SPAWN OF NURGLE

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,000 → 1,100 gold

ABILITIES

CHILDREN OF NURGLE (PASSIVE)

  • No longer utilised in the game.
Balance changes to the OGRE KINGDOMS race and factions, available to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER III.

DEV NOTE:

In Update 2.0, we went a bit too far by reducing the capture weight of all Ogre Infantry to 3 in Domination mode—akin to other monstrous infantry. As this race lacks access to regular, non-expendable troops, we will be making an exception to bring their control capabilities up to speed with other races.

CAMPAIGN

  • Having found the open air and sea breeze of Myrmidens a little too overwhelming, Skrag the Slaughter’s starting position is being updated to the more familiar (and cramped) tunnels of Karak Angazhar.

BATTLES

  • Improved the attacking AI’s ability to knock down settlement walls.

UNITS

GIANT

  • Armour: 30 → 50
  • Base Weapon Damage: 150 → 200
  • Armour-Piercing Weapon Damage: 450 → 500
  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,500 → 1,400 gold

MONSTROUS INFANTRY UNITS

  • Domination Capture Weight: 3 → 5

MONSTROUS MISSILE INFANTRY UNITS

  • Domination Capture Weight: 3 → 5

TECHNOLOGY

SKY-TITAN PLATEAU

  • Now gives +1 Camp Limit for every Level 5 Camp constructed.
Balance changes to the SKAVEN race and factions, available in Immortal Empires to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER II.

DEV NOTE:

The mass of Skaven Doomwheels needed a bump, especially since similar chariots are significantly more weighty. This should allow them to push past infantry mobs more easily while ensuring that they can still be surrounded and caught.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Warlock Engineer heroes once again experience a 10-turn cooldown when establishing undercities.
  • Added missing settlement icons for resource and strategic locations for Crookback Mountain.
  • Improved Skaven AI construction to reduce the amount of Skavenslave armies (especially for Clan Eshin.)
  • Fixed an issue where the Plague Priest from the Pestilent scheme was not spreading plagues to settlements.

FACTION AND LORD EFFECT UPDATES

DEV NOTE:

We’re continuing to iterate on the Faction and Lord effects of older Lords. The goal is to ensure every character has their own thematic playstyle that incorporates any new mechanics and systems added since their original introduction. 

QUEEK HEADTAKER

DEV NOTE:

Clan Mors are known for a most un-Skavenlike loyalty, so we’re representing this by giving Queek access to cheaper, more frequent uses of Menace Below, as well as cheaper Clanrats and Stormvermin.

The following changes have been made to Faction Effects:

  • -2 Loyalty for Grey Seers.
  • Queek no longer steals a percentage of XP from other Lords.
  • Food cost reduced by 33% for Menace Below uses.
  • Players can now purchase up to +5 additional uses of Menace Below before battle.
  • Reduced upkeep for Clanrats and Stormvermin by 25% faction-wide.

DEV NOTE:

We’ve also added a new reward for capturing Karak Eight Peaks and tweaked Queek’s Lord effects to be more versatile.

Queek’s Lord Effect changes:

  • The 50% upkeep reduction for Clanrats and Stormvermin (Lord’s army) has been removed.
  • Added: -20 Leadership for enemy Lords and Heroes in the local region.
  • Weapon Strength and Melee Attack buffs when fighting Dwarfs and Greenskins now apply map-wide.
  • Melee attack buff when fighting Dwarfs and Greenskins changed +10 → +10%.

Karak Eight Peaks changes:

  • Controlling Karak Eight Peaks as Queek now grants Frenzy for all Clanrats and Stormvermin.

TRETCH CRAVENTAIL

DEV NOTE:

Tretch’s original bonuses for breaking treaties were not really worth the major reliability cost. We’ve reworked them to instead provide major bonuses on any war declaration: rewarding the player for setting up cunning schemes and eliminating their opponents in rapid, unexpected attacks. To represent Clan Rictus’ renowned wealth, Clanrats and Stormvermin who manage to survive a few battles and gain some experience will win the gift of improved armour and weaponry. Tretch’s own army will now benefit from the Devastating Flanker attribute—making his armies particularly vicious in ambushes.

The Betrayal Bonus has been reworked; Tretch’s faction now gains the following bonuses to all armies for three turns whenever he declares war:

  • +25% ambush success chance
  • +50% enemy reinforcement time
  • Vanguard Deployment
  • +1 use for Menace Below

Other Faction Effect changes include:

  • +3 Recruit Rank for Stormvermin has been removed.
  • +1 Armour and Base Weapon Damage Attack per unit experience rank for Clanrats and Stormvermin has been added.

And Lord Effects:

  • Added Attribute: Devastating Flanker (all units)
  • Removed Attribute: Vanguard Deployment (all units)

CAMPAIGN

  • Throt’s Flesh Laboratory upgrades will now correctly apply their effects (such as random mutations for Skaven Slaves units). However, for this to take effect, players must start a new campaign.
  • The Warlock Engineer’s model is no longer offset on the campaign map after a quick save is loaded. 

BATTLES

  • Skaven Settlements having their wall towers swapped for Tier 3 and Tier 4 projectiles has been fixed.

UNITS

TRETCH CRAVENTAIL

  • Removed Ability: By Our Blood (Passive)

DOOMWHEEL

  • Mass: 1,250 → 2,000
Balance changes to the SLAANESH race and factions, available to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER III.

DEV NOTE:

Slaanesh has shown near-absolute dominance in multiplayer as of the 2.0 update. There are many factors to this, and while we have raised the cost of Devoted Marauders in 2.1, many significant outliers remain.

One such overperforming unit is the Chaos Shrine of Slaanesh. We are reducing the damage of its Giver of Torturous Glory, seeing as the Shrine does not need to be actively in melee to trigger this. Reducing the Multiplayer cap will have a significant impact, too.

Another big overperformer have been Hellstriders of Slaanesh, as they have gained significant stats thanks to the Mark of Slaanesh but remained at the same price. This will now increase to match the Hellscourge variant.

On the topic of Hellscourges, we have an across-the-board problem where the associated infantry units have no armour-piercing damage. Expensive units must perform well, so we are giving them a 1/3 Armour-Piercing ratio and matching their costs to the core variants. Hellscourge units will continue to be better at holding the line, but perform just slightly worse in terms of damage dealing than their regular infantry counterparts.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Slaanesh Disciple Armies no longer count towards supply lines calculations.
  • N’kari can now choose to destroy or subjugate targets to satisfy their short victory objectives.

UNITS

CHAOS KNIGHTS OF SLAANESH

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,500 → 1,400 gold

CHAOS KNIGHTS OF SLAANESH (LANCES)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,600 → 1,500 gold

CHAOS SORCERER OF SLAANESH

  • Chaos Warshrine mount Multiplayer Cost: 800 → 1,000 gold

CHAOS WARRIORS OF SLAANESH (HELLSCOURGES)

  • Base Weapon Damage: 32 → 20
  • Armour-Piercing Weapon Damage: 0 → 10
  • Campaign cost: 950 → 850
  • Upkeep cost: 238 → 213
  • Multiplayer Cost: 950 → 850
  • Removed: Weak Against Armour

CHAOS OF WARSHRINE SLAANESH

  • Multiplayer Cap: 2 → 1

CHOSEN OF SLAANESH (HELLSCOURGES)

  • Base Weapon Damage: 44 → 26
  • Armour-Piercing Weapon Damage: 0 → 13
  • Campaign Cost: 1,600 → 1,400
  • Upkeep Cost: 400 → 350
  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,600 → 1,400
  • Removed: Weak Against Armour

CULTIST OF SLAANESH

  • Chaos Warshrine mount Multiplayer Cost: 700 → 1,000 gold

DAEMON PRINCE (SLAANESH)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 2,550 → 2,100 gold

DEVOTED MARAUDERS OF SLAANESH (HELLSCOURGES)

  • Base Weapon Damage: 24 → 18
  • Armour-Piercing Weapon Damage: 0 → 9
  • Campaign Cost: 525 → 500
  • Upkeep Cost: 131 → 125
  • Multiplayer Cost: 525 → 500
  • Removed: Weak Against Armour

KEEPER OF SECRETS

  • Multiplayer Cost: 2,000→1,800 gold
  • Removed: Blissful Rapture (Passive)

MIRROR GUARD

  • Multiplayer Cost: 950 → 1,000 gold

HELLSTRIDERS OF SLAANESH

  • Campaign Cost: 600 → 650 gold
  • Multiplayer Cost: 600 → 650 gold
  • Upkeep Cost: 150 → 175 gold

HELLSTRIDERS OF SLAANESH (HELLSCOURGERS)

  • Base Weapon Damage: 27 → 33
  • Armour-Piercing Weapon Damage: 13 → 7
  • Campaign Cost: 700 → 650 gold
  • Multiplayer Cost: 700 → 650 gold

SOUL GRINDER (SLAANESH)

  • Charge Bonus: 50 → 40
  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,900 → 1,750 gold

SPAWN OF SLAANESH

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,000 → 1,100 gold

ABILITIES

  • Disciple Armies that are summoned via Slaanesh’s Unholy Manifestation will now scale in size based on the local Slaanesh corruption. 
  • The max damage of Giver of Torturous Glory (Chaos Shrine of Slaanesh) has been reduced from 16-32 → 12-24.
Balance changes to the THE EMPIRE race and factions, available in Immortal Empires to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Some padding has been added between the Empire technology groups so they appear nice and neat.
  • Empire factions can no longer bypass the five turn cooldown on confederation through their faction mechanics.

ELECTOR COUNT TWEAKS

  • Elector Counts can now be invited to join wars.
  • Greatly reduced the reinforcement delay and removed the cost for moving the reinforce point in Empire Elector reinforcement battles.
  • Added extra cavalry units to Empire Elector reinforcement battles to help with larger map sizes.

DEV NOTE:

Previously, the player would receive an Imperial Authority penalty when Elector Count capitals were razed, but not when they were occupied. This produced strange outcomes; for example, it was considered fine if Festus occupied Hochland, but not if he razed it. Now, the penalty will apply if any non-Empire faction controls the capital.

Since Sylvania is occupied on Turn 1, we’ve increased the ‘buffer’ for when penalties from lost capitals kicks in from 1 → 2.

  • Fixed an inconsistency with Elector Capitals being razed versus occupied.

REGION TAGGING

Elector Counts now use the Region Tagging system present in Champions of Chaos.

  • Players now gift a broader set of regions to the relevant Electors, including ones not owned by an Elector at campaign start that they might have a claim to.
  • Authority is now gained by returning an Elector’s capital, rather than reviving them from death – this removes situations where it was better to allow an Elector to die rather than save them.

Note that players will need to start a new campaign for these changes to be implemented.

CAMPAIGN

  • Fixed an issue where Karl Franz’s short victory objective would sometimes abort.
  • Karl Franz will now receive a guaranteed Wizard of a random type at the start of his second turn.
  • Added a missing garrison building chain to Altdorf. 
  • Reduced the unlock of Castle Reik in Altdorf to Tier 3.
  • Markus Wulfhart’s long victory objective now targets Lustria instead of the Empire.
  • Armies spawned from Markus Wulfhart’s Hostility mechanic will now only spawn from certain specific locations in Lustria (if Wulfhart or his ally occupy these regions, the armies will no longer spawn).
  • The Altdorf Conclave of Wizards has been reduced to Tier 3 to match the generic chain it replaces. It now also grants an additional +1 Battle Wizard capacity over the generic version.
  • The player-controlled Empire can now do full diplomacy with Marienburg, including diplomatic confederation.
  • Confederating Empire minors through the Empire politics changes now properly obeys the five-turn cooldown on confederation (the event giving you the option to confederate will be delayed until these five turns have expired).
  • Volkmar has increased baseline aversion with undead factions: Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts, and Vampire Coast.

BATTLES

  • Prestige gained from battles is now visible in the post-battle screen.
  • Updated the reinforcement location for the player’s allies during the Amber Bow quest battle.
  • Multiple buildings in the Amber Bow quest battle are no longer incorrectly marked as destructible.

UNITS

BORIS TODBRINGER

  • Fixed the order of Boris Todbringer’s campaign skills.

KARL FRANZ

DEV NOTE:

The Emperor was due a touch-up. His new lord effects allow him to operate more effectively when supporting the Electors, and we’ve buffed Ghal Maraz to better align with its legendary status in the lore.

  • Faction effect now grants +25% Prestige from all battles.
  • The Best of the Empire skill that used to grant a+5 Leadership bonus for various units has been replaced by a +20% Experience gain for all units (lord’s army).

Lord effect has also undergone some tweaks:

  • It now grants the Guardian ability to Reiksguard and Greatswords in Karl’s army.
  • Removed: +8 Leadership
  • Added: +10 Charge bonus
  • The effect can now replenish in neutral territory.

ITEMS

  • Ghal Maraz now grants sundering attacks and +75 flat Armour-Piercing, instead of +10% Weapon Strength.
  • Also grants an additional +15% Weapon Strength when fighting against Chaos.
Balance changes to the TOMB KINGS race and factions, available in Immortal Empires to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER II.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Removed Vampiric Corruption from Level 3 of the protection chain for Tomb Kings.
  • Added a bespoke overlay for the Defeat panel for Tomb Kings.
  • Fixed a discrepancy between porthole and unit card for Dire Wolves unit.

CAMPAIGN

  • There are some slight tweaks to Khalida’s short victory to make them more Vampire-centric. 
  • Settra will now receive a Tomb Prince with a unique trait at the start of a campaign. 
  • Tomb Kings can now increase hero capacity repeatedly via the Mortuary Cult.

BATTLES

  • Updated the subtitles display speed in Arkhan’s The Staff of Nagash quest battle to be consistent with other quest battles.

ITEMS

  • Fixed unique items in the Mortuary Cult incorrectly showing the icon representing that they could be crafted multiple times.
Balance changes to the TZEENTCH race and factions, available to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER III.

DEV NOTE:

We are for the most part happy with Tzeentch’s performance, and these changes are largely just part of wider passes such as the Spawn and Chaos Knights.

Chaos Sorcerers of Lords were able to instantly summon Spawn without a wind-up or initial cooldown, and we are bringing this in line with Cultist summons.

Chaos Warshrines of Tzeentch haven’t been as performant as their counterparts, and have forced your spellcasters to stay in the direct vicinity. This isn’t very practical, so we are giving the Giver of Arcane Glory a map-wide buff, with a better Spell Mastery effect.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Added missing SFX for Tzeentch Sorcerer Lord on disc when doing casting animations.
  • Half of the Library and Corruption chain’s income% increase is now Winds of Magic dependent.

CAMPAIGN

  • Kairos’ starting position has been changed. With his mysterious goals in the Fortress of Dawn now complete, Kairos has retreated to the Fateweaver’s Crevasse just across the ocean.

UNITS

CHAOS KNIGHTS OF TZEENTCH

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,500 → 1,400 gold

CHAOS KNIGHTS OF TZEENTCH (LANCES)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,600 → 1,500 gold

CHAOS WARSHRINE OF TZEENTCH

  • Multiplayer Cap: 2 → 1

DAEMON PRINCE (TZEENTCH)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 2,550 → 2,100 gold

DOOM KNIGHTS OF TZEENTCH

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,600 → 1,500 gold

KNIGHTS OF IMMOLATION (DOOM KNIGHTS OF TZEENTCH)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,800 → 1,700 gold

LORD OF CHANGE

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,700 → 1,500 gold
  • Removed: Fires of Tzeentch (passive)

MARAUDER HORSEMAN OF TZEENTCH

  • Multiplayer Cost: 600 → 650 gold

SOUL GRINDER (TZEENTCH)

  • Ammunition: 10 → 15
  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,900 → 1,750 gold

SPAWN OF TZEENTCH

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,000 → 1,100 gold

THE SEVERED CLAW (ASPIRING CHAMPIONS)

  • Hit Points: 7,040 → 9,040

WYRD SPAWN (CHAOS SPAWN)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,250 → 1,300 gold

ABILITIES

SWORD OF CHANGE (CHAOS SORCERER LORD OF TZEENTCH)

  • Initial cooldown: 0 → 60 seconds
  • Recharges when Winds of Magic is over 15
  • Wind-up time: 0 → 5 seconds
  • Multiplayer Cost: 150 → 200 gold

GIVER OF ARCANE GLORY (CHAOS WARSHRINE OF TZEENTCH)

  • Effect Radius: 35m → Infinite
  • Spell Mastery: 10% → 20%
Balance changes to the VAMPIRE COAST race and factions, available in Immortal Empires to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER II.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Vampire Coast artillery crews now play context sensitive VO.
  • Fixed Vampire Coast armies building Vampire Counts siege towers
  • Added a bespoke overlay for the Defeat panel for the Vampire Coast.
  • Fixed an issue where Zombie Resurrection sound effects could be spammed if multiple entities were brought back to life at once.

ABILITIES

  • Fixed incorrect display of Exploding Unit phase ability on the Bloated Corpses. 
Balance changes to the VAMPIRE COUNTS race and factions, available in Immortal Empires to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Fixed an issue where Chillgheists were not healing from effects as expected. 
  • Removed some unnecessary penalties from Kemmler’s AI.
  • Fixed an issue where the Balefire Aura from the Balefire Corpse Cart would not apply.

BATTLES

  • Updated the hard collision in Vlad’s Blood Drinker quest battle.

UNITS

BANSHEE

Being an ethereal unit, we want to make the damage Armour-Piercing vs normal damage output ratios consistent with other ethereal units.

  • Base Weapon Damage: 70 → 0
  • Armour-Piercing Weapon Damage: 240 → 290

ABILITIES

  • Mannfred von Carstein’s Lord effect granting him 15 additional magic reserves will now no longer revert upon loading a save file. 
Balance changes to the WARRIORS OF CHAOS race and factions, available in Immortal Empires to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER.

DEV NOTE:

Warriors of Chaos have been performing rather well since they can have access to marked units and a wide variety of characters. Largely speaking we are happy with where they stand, with the majority of issues addressed with changes to the mono-god races. 

The Undivided Chaos Warshrine has been not nearly as performant as its marked counterparts, and so we are doubling the Physical Resistance effect of Giver of Glory.

The rework on Aspiring Champions have got them performing better than before, but we felt they could use another bump up to their hit points. This should bring them more in line with units of 16 entity count.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Fixed an issue where Arcane Wisdom was not granting Warpflame attacks to all units with the Mark of Tzeentch.
  • Warriors of Chaos can now choose to destroy or subjugate targets to satisfy their short victory objectives.
  • Fixed a variety of skills not applying correctly for Champions of Chaos army lines.
  • Fixed an issue where Valkia’s shield would T-pose after the death animation.
  • Festus, Azazel, Valkia, and Vilitch can now upgrade Daemonic infantry into their Exalted variants.
  • The Chaos Sorcerer Lord’s cape no longer has a mind of its own after the unit’s death.

CAMPAIGN

  • Fixed an issue that was causing Warriors of Chaos factions to gain much higher post-battle loot values than intended.
  • Sigvald’s buildings and commandments now spread Slaanesh corruption rather than Chaos Undivided corruption.
  • Valkia’s Bloodletting ability at max level now allows casualty replenishment in foreign territory.
  • Fixed Valkia’s soul gain from post-battle sacrifices not being increased by her faction trait.
  • Fixed a number of rifts that can be opened by Be’lakor in Immortal Empires that were positioned within impassable terrain.

UNITS

  • Updated Festus’ battle behaviour to make him engage more in melee combat than before.
  • Added missing AI usage configurations on Festus’ Healing Elixirs and Harbringer of Pestilence.

ASPIRING CHAMPIONS

  • Hit Points: 7,808 → 9,856

CHAOS GIANT

  • Armour: 30 → 50
  • Base Weapon Damage: 150 → 200
  • Armour-Piercing Weapon Damage: 450 → 500
  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,500 → 1,400 gold

CHAOS KNIGHTS

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,400 → 1,300 gold

CHAOS KNIGHTS (LANCES)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,500 → 1,400 gold

CHAOS SPAWN

  • Multiplayer Cost: 900 → 1,000 gold

CHAOS TROLLS

  • Leadership: 40 → 45

CHAOS TROLLS (ARMOURED)

  • Leadership: 40 → 45
  • Multiplayer Cost: 950 → 900 gold

CHAOS WARSHRINE

  • Multiplayer cap: 2 → 1

DAEMON PRINCE (UNDIVIDED)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 2,400 → 2,000 gold

PRINCE SIGVALD THE MAGNIFICENT

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,050 → 1,200 gold

SWORDS OF CHAOS (CHAOS KNIGHTS)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 1,800 → 1,500 gold

ABILITIES

DEV NOTE:

With the inclusion of Be’lakor in the Warriors of Chaos race—as well as his frequent appearances in multiplayer events—we noted that the cost of his abilities haven’t been set properly for the Multiplayer setting; today, we’re taking taking steps to address that and bring him into balance with the rest of the multiplayer roster.

Additionally, his Shadow Shroud ability’s duration is significantly longer than that of similar abilities while also offering a notably stronger +40% Damage Resistance. While we want to maintain the power level, we’ll be reducing the uptime to bring it into line.

GIVER OF GLORY (CHAOS WARSHRINE)

  • Physical Resistance effect: 10% → 20%

SHADOW SHROUD (BE’LAKOR)

  • Duration: 33 → 20 seconds
  • Multiplayer Cost: 150 → 200 gold

LORD OF TORMENT (BE’LAKOR)

  • Multiplayer Cost: 100 → 200 gold

SKILLS

  • Fixed an issue where Undivided Daemon Prince’s skills Chaos Marked and Atmosphere of Ruin did the same thing.

SIGVALD

  • The Innate trait now grants the Fascination army ability to Sigvald’s army if he is your faction leader.
  • Egomaniacal now grants the Narcissism army ability to Sigvald’s army if he is your faction leader.
  • Born to Serve now grants the Sweet Sorrow army ability to Sigvald’s army if he is your faction leader.
  • Favoured Son now grants +4 Armour-Piercing Melee Damage to Marauders, Warriors and Chosen of Slaanesh.
  • Marked By Slaanesh now grants +5 Melee Defence to Marauders, Warriors and Chosen of Slaanesh.

TECHNOLOGY

  • Sigvald now has access to the Vicious Lash technology.
  • Fixed an issue where the technology requirements for Nurgle and Slaanesh Forsaken unit upgrades were the wrong way around.

ITEMS

SCARLET ARMOUR (Valkia)

Reduced the intensity settings of the item:

  • Max kills required: 500 → 100
  • Min kills required: 250 → 50
Balance changes to the WOOD ELF race and factions, available in Immortal Empires to owners of Total War: WARHAMMER.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Added missing Wood Elf units to allied recruitment. 
  • Removed description that states special Wood Elf outposts reward Amber.
  • Added missing garrison buildings to Wood Elves settlements.
  • Added a starting development/Kindred point for Orion and Durthu.

FACTION AND LORD EFFECT UPDATES

DEV NOTE:

We’re continuing to iterate on the Faction and Lord Effects of older lords, with the goal of making sure every character has their own thematic playstyle and to incorporate new mechanics and systems added since their original introduction. 

ORION

DEV NOTE:

As the face of the more hostile side of the Wood Elves, we’ve tweaked Orion so that he focuses much more on campaign map mobility and aggression. Orion is now rewarded for fighting multiple factions at once, and gains improved tools to allow him to zip around the map – opening up a more expansionist playstyle than is available to other Wood Elves.

We’ve also tweaked the Wild Hunt to have it trigger more frequently, though with a shorter duration, meaning that it can have a more reliable impact on Orion’s campaign.

Changes made to his Faction Effects:

  • New effect: +50% movement range in Worldroots stance
  • New effect: -8% upkeep for each active war (Orion’s army)
  • New effect: -4% upkeep for each active war (all other armies)
  • Removed: +10 leadership in forest battles
  • Removed: -15% upkeep for cavalry units

Changes made to his Wild Hunt:

  • Duration: 10 → 5
  • Cooldown: 20 → 10
  • Now starts with the Wild Hunt already active turn 1.
  • Orion now gets +50% battle movement speed when the Wild Hunt is active so he can keep up with his Wild Riders. Zoom zoom.
  • All characters get +25% movement range after razing a settlement during the Wild Hunt.
  • No cooldown on Deeproots teleportation during the Wild Hunt.

Changes made to his Lord Effects:

  • Weapon Strength and Charge Bonus buffs now effect all cavalry units, not just Wild Riders and Stag Knights.
  • Removed +5% faction-wide missile damage

Changes made to his Neverending Hunt Skill:

  • Now grants +25% movement after razing a settlement for Orion himself.

Other changes:

  • Wild Rider recruit time set to 1 turn for all Wood Elf factions (as in WARHAMMER II).

DURTHU

DEV NOTE:

With Drycha heavily focusing on the Tree Spirit side of the Wood Elf roster, Durthu was left without a clear niche. Back before he got really cranky, Durthu was the architect of the original alliance between the Wood Elves and the Forest Spirits –  as such, we’re giving him a host of tools that open up new synergies between the two halves of the rosters.

His Ancient Treemen now provide map-wide missile damage buffs when casting, and both Spellsingers and Ancient Treemen will become more powerful when working together. On top of that, his Treemen can now also tear down walls, opening up new avenues of attack for mobile Elf units.

This theme of synergy extends to Durthu’s personal army; with his Treemen and Treekin now providing potent area effects, he’s encouraged to mix units together to maximize their performance benefits.

We also felt that Drycha’s combination of much stronger Treemen and much earlier access to them was probably a bit too much of a powerful combo, giving a major power-spike as soon as you built a Tier 3 settlement. As such, we’ve split the difference between the two Tree Spirit focused characters—both Drycha and Durthu now get access to Treemen at Tier 4, rather than at 3 and 5 respectively.

Changes made to his Faction Effects:

  • New: Attribute: Wallbreaker for all Treemen and Ancient Treemen.
  • New: Attribute: Mastery of the Elemental Winds for all Ancient Treemen and embedded Spellsinger heroes.
  • New: Passive Ability: Wrath of the Wood (mapwide missile damage buff when casting) for Ancient Treemen.
  • Removed: -50% recruitment cost for Branchwraiths
  • Removed: +10 melee attack in forest battles

Changes made to his Lord Effects:

  • Removed: +5% weapon strength factionwide
  • Removed: +10 charge bonus for tree spirit units
  • Added: Passive ability: Resplendence of Luminescents (AoE melee buff) to all Treekin units
  • Added: Passive ability: Annoyance of Netlings (AoE melee debuff) for Treemen units

Other changes:

  • Durthu now starts with a Spellsinger instead of a Branchwraith.
  • Durthu now has access to Drycha’s alternate version of the Forest Spirits chain.
  • Level three of the Drycha/Durthu Forest Spirit chain now requires a Tier 4 settlement (was Tier 3.)

CAMPAIGN

  • Wood Elves no longer declare war on other AI Wood Elves during The Wild Hunt endgame scenario.
  • Fixed the Spirits of the Elder dilemma – offering to confederate the Wood Elf faction Spirits of Shanlin – lacking rewards under each option.
  • Fixed cases where a Wood Elf army couldn’t teleport in or out of The Haunted Forest or Jungles of Chi’an forest regions.

BATTLES

  • Major Settlements controlled by the Wood Elves now have walls in defensive settlement battles.

UNITS

HAWK RIDERS

  • Added Attribute: Vanguard Deployment
  • Recruitment Time: 2 → 1 

TRAITS

  • Removed the Wood Elf Talon of Kurnous innate trait from the Spellsinger and Spellweaver trait pool as the effects (Missile Range/Strength) would have no effect on them.
  • Fixed the Sisters of Twilight not gaining a unique trait when completing the quest battle for their dragon mount.

TECHNOLOGY

  • Fixed Drycha’s technology Wisdom of the Wildwood not giving physical resistance to the relevant units.

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CAMPAIGN

Update Notes Campaign Header I

Update 2.2 brings an assortment of changes have been made to the overworld campaign and world mechanics.

CHARACTER EXPERIENCE

DEV NOTE:

In WARHAMMER II, character experience from battles was based entirely on the result type of that battle—a Heroic victory would grant a certain flat amount, and a Crushing Defeat much less.

In WARHAMMER III, this was changed so that the value of the enemy army played a major role. While this resolved some issues (such as reducing the amount of XP you could get from trivial battles) it didn’t address them all. Notably, battle result types continued to play a major part, even though the logic producing them was not clear; whether you got a Heroic, Close or Pyrrhic victory could often feel arbitrary and random. This also greatly disadvantaged the AI’s own progression, which tends to lose a larger proportion of battles than the player.

Additionally, the system resulted in substantially faster progression compared to WARHAMMER II, especially if fighting against high-value armies. While we are happy with the rate of experience gain being faster than WARHAMMER II, it also greatly increased the range of XP you could earn from a single battle. This meant that the rate of progression could be radically different depending on factors such as starting position and playstyle.

As such, we are making the following changes:

Victory type is no longer used as part of the experience calculation. Instead, experience will be granted based on a combination of the enemy army’s value and the proportion of the enemy army that was destroyed, regardless of whether the battle was a win or a loss.

  • In other words, destroying 80% of the enemy army will grant the same amount of experience regardless of whether the battle was a heroic victory or a crushing defeat (after all, failure is often the best teacher)!
  • If the enemy army is fully destroyed as a result of the battle (for example, if it was caught in Forced March stance and could not retreat) it will grant the full amount of experience even if some units were able to escape during battle.

The formula used to calculate experience has been adjusted to narrow the range of possible experience rewards. Experience gain will be around the same while fighting low and moderate-value armies, but less when fighting very high-value ones.

  • Heroes will now gain around 50% more experience from participating in battles, bringing their progression rate closer to that of Lords.

In addition to this, we’re adding a new Mentor skill to every Lord and Hero. This unlocks at Level 30, and can be upgraded further at Levels 40 and 50, and allows them to share a portion of their experience earned among characters of the same type across the faction. Plus, the Lord version of the skill will grant increased experience gain to Heroes in their army.

SETTLEMENT & GARRISON CHANGES (FREQUENCY OF UNWALLED SETTLEMENT BATTLES)

DEV NOTE:

We continue to look for a sweet spot for the unwalled settlement battle type. The following changes will adjust the frequency of the battle type and reduce it – how much will depend on the player’s and also the AI’s playstyle.

Additionally we have lost some of the more detailed and nuanced pieces of content when we transitioned from ME to IE, but are in the process of re-adding some of this flavour.

  • All major settlements will retain their walled settlement battles (enabled by the wall effect on the primary chain).
  • All minor settlements will now trigger a land battle by default.
  • Added an effect that has a chance to turn the default land battle into an unwalled settlement battle (similar to the wall effect on major settlements leading to walled settlement battles).
  • The effect has been added to most standard garrison chains starting on Tier 2 and Tier 3.

The below exceptions should remain as they were before:

  • Major settlements in Norscan and Ogre homeland still do not provide walled sieges, but will change to unwalled settlement battles.
  • Wood Elf glades still do not provide walled sieges, but will change to their unwalled settlement battle version.
  • Wood Elf outposts still do not provide walled sieges, but will change into their worldroot battle version.
  • Beastmen Herdstones still do not provide walled sieges but will change into their beastpath battle version.

There are some additional changes, too:

  • Added a unit of Reiksguard to Castle Reik and adjusted Reiksfort to 1 Reiksguard (instead of 2).
  • Ogres had access to both garrison chains in minor and majors – now only one is correctly available.

Missing siege defence tower projectile upgrades have been added for:

  • Kislev
  • Ogres
  • Nurgle

Heroes have been added to settlement garrisons from hero unlocking buildings:

  • Khorne
  • Tomb Kings
  • Bretonnia Tier 3 (was Tier 5)
  • Cathay
  • Daemon Prince
  • Nurgle
  • Ogre
  • Slaanesh
  • Drycha

In addition, we have added missing spells to garrison heroes.

Finally, additional units at all tiers for special settlement locations with 3-4 units of higher unit quality have been added to the following:

  • Khemri
  • Lahmia
  • Black Pyramid
  • Tor Yvresse
  • Karak 8 Peaks
  • Hellpit
  • Gaean Vale
  • Hexoatl
  • Itza
  • Karaz-a-Karak
  • Lothern
  • Naggarond
  • Skavenblight
  • Altdorf
  • Drakenhof
  • Couronne
  • Wei Jin 

AI AGGRESSION & GAME DIFFICULTY

DEV NOTE:

We have received quite a lot of feedback related to AI and game difficulty. While we’ve been fixing significant issues, we also felt it was a good opportunity to increase the aggressiveness of the AI. However, this is a double-edged sword: for players that are already struggling with the game, this has the potential to worsen the experience. We will need a lot more feedback on this topic to decide if these changes are correctly balanced.

Please be vocal about your experience and don’t forget to add your difficulty settings.

GENERAL AI UPDATES

  • Increased general AI army aggressiveness to a balance between the current (WARHAMMER III) and former (WARHAMMER II) values.
  • Added additional difficulty scaling for aggressiveness (on Very Hard and Legendary).
  • Tweaks for AI behaviours around settlements (they are now more likely to attack).
  • Increased faction potential bonus for higher difficulties.
  • Added increased XP gained for AI units.
  • Added increased XP gained for AI characters.
  • Reduced AI generated diplomatic goals 2 → 1.
  • Adjusted AI skill selection for Khorne, Tzeentch, Kostaltyn, Kugath, Boris, and Greasus.
  • Adjusted how AI deals with character Yin and Yang effects.
  • Increased priority for AI to build garrison and wall buildings.
  • AI behaviour with commandments that consume slaves adjusted.
  • Settlement AI will now be aware of stealth units trying to capture victory points. 
  • Fixed a bug stopping the AI from correctly constructing buildings.
  • The AI will now reliably research technologies that cost money.
  • Removed a bug preventing the AI using their togglable abilities.
  • The AI will no longer be able to directly declare war on vassals of human factions.
  • Fixed multiple cases wherein respawned AI factions would become inactive. They are now more likely to declare war.
  • Addressed a bug where the AI would avoid entering a settlement when attacking it.
  • The AI will no longer be reluctant to upgrade last level of a chain if chain was already present in faction.
  • Attacking AI armies in siege battles will no longer commit to approaching a ladder if there are other, easier means of nearby entry. 
  • Improved the AI’s use of agents, which should lead to more agents being embedded in armies, and fewer cases of a large number of agents from several factions congregating around each other.
  • The AI now uses the new dynamic region hint system as part of its evaluation on when to declare war. This should decrease war declarations by distant factions that are unlikely to come and attack you.
  • Various factions have had their base faction potential changed as part of start position moves and other changes.
  • Legacy nerfs to the Barrow Legion when controlled by the AI from WARHAMMER I have been removed as they were no longer necessary (thanks to the modding community for bringing this to our attention!)
  • Minor Tzeentch factions have been prevented from using Changing of the Ways in the IE map as well as the RoC map. This will likely require a new campaign to take effect.

AI CONSTRUCTION CHANGES

GENERAL

  • Higher incentive to construct landmarks and special buildings.
  • Updated AI construction for Empire, Dwarfs, Greenskin, Vampires, Norsca and Bretonnia.

DAEMON PRINCE

  • Incentivized to outsource Barracks to minor settlement.

KISLEV

  • Increased chance to pick unique buildings in Kislev.
  • Avoid construction of basic barracks and cavalry building in cities (Kislev, Erengrad and Praag).
  • Higher chance for Boris to build the Bear building.

LIZARDMEN

  • Incentivized to outsource Saurus Barracks to major settlement (get access to Temple Guard).

PROLOGUE (THE LOST GOD)

  • Fixed an issue where Yuri’s axe would float after a combat animation.

IMMORTAL EMPIRES

  • Added a new Skaven-themed endgame scenario.
  • Black Pyramid of Nagash now starts flying when the Pyramid of Nagash endgame scenario triggers. This battle also loads with the Black Pyramid in the map.

DIPLOMACY

  • Low reliability rating no longer increases chance of successfully inviting another faction to join your wars.
  • Confederation has been rebalanced, making it easier to achieve. Specifically, the base aversion has been reduced slightly, the weighting for the player’s military strength has been increased slightly, and you will gain a bonus to confederation if you own regions within the currently active region hint group for that AI faction. Plus, the penalty to confederation for the target having recently conquered a settlement now only applies for seven turns, down from 10.
  • Eltharion and N’kari now have diplomatic contact at the start of the game. 
  • Added a front end customisation option to enable diplomacy (peace/confederation) for endgame scenario factions.
  • Encountering a vassal faction will automatically count as meeting its master.
  • Fixed an issue where resurrected factions could not be engaged with via diplomacy. This requires a fresh campaign, however.
  • The Gift to Vassal option is no longer available if the vassal is dead and unable to be resurrected. 
  • Reduced public order penalty from confederation: -8 → -4

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BATTLES

Update Notes Battle Header I

It is called ‘Total War’ after all, so of course Update 2.2 brings some improvements to the battles themselves!

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Added missing army abilities to multiple quest battles.
  • Fixed missing tooltips for Battle Leader invalid usage flags on abilities.
  • Updated Neuland to correctly load barricades in the style of the settlement they are contracted in.
  • Fixed missing or non-functional Army Abilities on minor factions during battle. This means that changing an Army banner’s colour (for example, during a multiplayer battle or just a custom battle) will no longer prevent some Army abilities from working correctly. 

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MULTIPLAYER

RANKED MATCHMAKING GAME MODE SELECTION

TWW3 U2.2 Ranked Matchmaking Split Queue

With Update 1.3, we added the normal land battles to the Ranked Matchmaking queue, which was the first step towards providing a more complete battle experience within a multiplayer context. In 2.2, we’re not only updating the Domination core tickets mechanic, but we’re implementing a game mode selector for Ranked Matchmaking.

  • Added a selector in Ranked Matchmaking to queue for Land Battles, Domination Battles, or both.

GENERAL UPDATES

  • Fixed an issue that caused multiplayer games to soft lock when the faction taking their turn would disconnect from the game.
  • Declining a Threaten will no longer cause a crash if an allied player is asked to join the ensuing war. 
  • Fixed a multiplayer campaign desync issue when playing as Greenskins and starting or finishing a WAAAGH!
  • Players can now play any faction in the Realms of Chaos sandbox mode—regardless of the faction’s restrictions in regular Realms of Chaos games.
  • Teammates in multiplayer campaigns will now start with a trade agreement if it’s possible for the factions to be trading.
  • Added chokepoint battle catchments to rivers in the Chaos Wastes.

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GAME

Balanced, competitive factions are great and all, but it’s important they look and sound great as they get to business. Here’s a look at all the issues that have been fixed in Update 2.2:

GRAPHICS

We’ve implemented fixes and made adjustments to several graphical aspects of the game:

  • The shader for Hexwraith’s scythe when viewed through the porthole. 
  • The aspect ratio of all WARHAMMER III characters in the Athel Tamarha and Elector Counts panels.
  • Several instances wherein mounted and shielded Lords/Heroes weren’t utilising their shields against ranged fire. 
  • An issue where a certain Daemon’s body would not disintegrate upon death. Looking at you, Azazel. 
  • An issue where the Arnheim battle map was displaying a floating magical pillar. 
  • Several instances of Chaos Knights not skinning properly. 
  • An issue where Knights of the Blazing Sun would have missing textures on some LODs. 
  • An issue where lakes would appear as grey spots on the Tactical View.
  • An issue where lava would display both Tzeentch corruption and the usual textures simultaneously. 
  • Some previously missed art assets now use WARHAMMER III‘s style.
  • All the 2D Lords and Heroes artwork from WARHAMMER I and WARHAMMER II has been updated to align with WARHAMMER III‘s style.

AUDIO

We’ve implemented fixes and made adjustments to several audio aspects of the game:

  • Battle replays not triggering sounds nor updating audio settings while paused.
  • Buildable tower and barricade construction sounds continuing to loop after the construction is cancelled.
  • Various sounds becoming excessively ducked when the camera is positioned near Lords or Heroes in battle.
  • A number of Daemon faction leaders’ voices not matching their diplomatic actions. 
  • A bug where music would sporadically stop playing during battles. 
  • Campaign pending battle music not triggering on the post-battle screen after fighting a manual battle in single player, as well as a multiplayer bug where it could loop after exiting the post-battle screen.
  • An issue where Malus would steal Tzarkan’s reverb during campaign voice lines.
  • The excessive reverb in the voice lines of Tehenhauin’s Sacrifices to Sotek.
  • Skaven characters’ excessive chat.
  • Kholek’s campaign Channelling Stance now vocalises slightly less often.
  • Loyalty-related dialogue during opening character details even if the character does not use loyalty.
  • A minor sync issue between some campaign music elements

We’ve enhanced the audio of several Lord Select videos:

  • Drycha
  • Ghorst
  • Gombrindal
  • Orion
  • Oxyotl
  • Sisters of Twilight
  • Skarsnik
  • Volkmar
  • Wurzagg

AUDIO – SETTLEMENT SOUND 

DEV NOTE:

The sounds of legacy faction settlements have been updated, polished, and brought up to a similar standard as the settlements added in WARHAMMER III. All settlements now have bespoke crowd wall and loops with unique one-shot sounds based on the temperament of the settlement. This means that if the settlement is in revolt or under siege, the player will get a better sense of the current faction flavour more than ever before.

As a part of this, you will also be able to hear which faction is in control of a settlement building. For example: the Empire has a real bustling crowd activity with farm animals, metal steam machinery, and old world industry. Gone are the continual bell sounds, which have been replaced with a richer soundscape that feels like you are in Empire territory without having to look.

This has been an improvement the sound design team have wished for, as it felt weird to hear high quality, detailed sounds from Cathay and Tzeentch settlements in contrast to factions from WARHAMMER I and II.

The following factions have had their settlement sounds recently updated:

  • Empire
  • Bretonnia
  • Dark Elves
  • High Elves
  • Wood Elves
  • Norsca
  • Beastmen
  • Greenskins
  • Skaven
  • Vampire Counts
  • Vampire Coast
  • Tomb Kings
  • Dwarves
  • Lizardmen
  • Warriors of Chaos

UI

Added new fullscreen parallax background illustrations for:

  • Beastmen
  • Bretonnia
  • Greenskins
  • Tomb Kings
  • Vampire Counts

Other fixes:

  • Daemons of Chaos background illustrations were re-exported to fix some visual issues with parallax.
  • Fixed incorrect display of Shadow of Khaine phase ability.
  • Added an inky background effect behind the Pieces of Eight panel so the text will be more readable in various colour profiles.
  • Updated all Stance Icons for all factions to match the art style of WARHAMMER III. 
  • The Vision of the Old Ones tooltip was updated to be more accurate, and translations were added to reflect this.
  • Fixed an issue where settlement Victory objectives weren’t updating correctly after loading in.
  • Added various player name displays in the UI for Battle Replays. 
  • Added the player list to the top left when watching Free for All and Domination replays. 
  • Made it easier to see the Beastmen Bloodgrounds icon on city labels.
  • Updated the subtitles reveal speed for some Beastmen quest battles.
  • The settlement art for Xing Po, Arnheim, and Fortress of Vorag are now lore-appropriate. 
  • Increased the size of the frame for supporter actions cost on the Motherlands panel so numbers fit properly.
  • Changed behaviour of the Gifting Unit text component so that it scales better with different army sizes.
  • Fixed multiple issues with pre-battle screens displaying partly black.
  • Fixed the Character Trait tooltip not showing the reason for the character gaining the trait.
  • Added the Ability Information tooltip to buildings that will give an ability when built.

SETTINGS

  • Added the functionality to use the text boxes to input specific endgame settings i.e. turn triggers.

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LOCALIZATION

  • Increased padding of the description text in multiplayer campaign lobby so umlauts are displayed properly.

Multiple instances of missing translations have been fixed:

  • Queek Headtaker: Lord details
  • Bastion Gatehouse
  • Slaanesh: Regiments of Renown event
  • Great Maw Site
  • Greenskins: reputation tooltip, pause menu
  • Dwarfs: faction mechanics in the pause menu
  • Wood Elves: Help page
  • Disturbance to Ubersreik: event message
  • Sky-Titan Plateaus: technology effect
  • Imrik: long victory condition
  • Ku-gath: Lord skills
  • Kislev: pause menu
  • Khorne: How They Play message

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MODDING

  • Added the ability for modders to lock/unlock technologies using a Lua script.

⬥    ⬥    ⬥


LOOKING FORWARD


As you can see, we’ve crammed a lot into Update 2.2, but the work never stops. Update 2.3 rapidly approaches and is currently due to land in November. Here’s a look at some of the improvements you can look forward to when it arrives!

UPDATE 2.3

This is going to be WARHAMMER III‘s final patch of 2022 before we ramp back up again in the first quarter of 2023. Update 2.3 is expected to focus on bug fixes and balance changes that weren’t quite ready for this release, as well as fixes to any issues that may bubble up over the next few weeks. As a result, it is expected to be lighter on content than 2.2.

With this in mind, we want to ensure 2.3 addresses the most critical issues and the things that are most important to all our players, so your feedback – as always – continues to be vital. Please keep it coming on our official channels, get involved in the discussion around WARHAMMER III, and give us your thoughts on how the game can best progress throughout the rest of this year and far beyond. 

As always, here are some of our most heavily monitored channels for providing feedback. Make use of them!

 Feedback: Immortal Empires Public Beta (Official Forum)
 Feedback: Total War: WARHAMMER III Discussions Forum (Steam)
 Bugs: Total War: WARHAMMER III Support Forum (Official Forum)
 Bugs: Total War: WARHAMMER III – Game Bug Reports (Steam)

There are already some known issues currently on our radar, so let’s take a look:

AUTO-RESOLVE: MINOR SETTLEMENTS POST-2.2

There’s currently a known issue wherein Minor Settlement battles will have inaccurate auto-resolve battle results. We’re already aiming to have a fix ready for Update 2.3, and we’ll keep you updated if anything changes.

AI PRE-EMPTIVE DODGING: ARTILLERY AND RANGED ATTACKS

Another issue currently under investigation concerns the AI’s ability to dodge certain artillery and ranged attacks in Battle, making it a less viable tool than intended. We’re trying to achieve a delicate balance with this one: we don’t want the AI to make *zero* attempts at dodging incoming fire if it is feasible for them to do so, but certainly agree that (at the moment) the balance is way off.

There’s no fixed ETA for a fix, but please keep the feedback and clips coming as we dig down into this issue and work towards a solution! 

SIEGE BATTLES: DEPLOYABLE STRUCTURES

Reducing the number of Minor Settlements in Update 2.2 only addresses part of the problem we’ve identified. In particular, we’ll be continuing to investigate how deployable structures are utilised in siege battles; our goal is to work out how to best employ the structures without entirely negating what they offer to a siege battle. We’ll have more on this in the future, but please know that we hear your concerns, we’re looking into it, and we appreciate all the feedback we receive on this topic!


If you’d like to read more game updates and news, check out our Patch Notes section.

Source: Total War

Haris Nadeem
Haris Nadeem

Haris is an avid mobile gamer who loves to play Call of Duty: Mobile and PUBG Mobile in his free time. He is also a coffee aficionado who loves to write technology news and gadget reviews.

One comment

  1. Excellent article thank’s for submitting this post such a great read very informative alot of valuable information in this post really nice article

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