Sums up most of my Nagash Campaigns so far + the artillery units

I run Total War on my potato pc and it apparently created a new faction.

I know we know already, but I made a graphic detail -why- the Strigoi Bloodline is better than the Strigoi Ghoul King.

Hey folks,

It’s been a week, as I’m sure you’re aware.

This week’s recap will be considerably shorter than usual as a lot of our time has been spent parsing through community discussion and feedback, but alas I swore to never let anything stand in the way of my This Week in Total War!

Shogun 2 Complete Edition

Of course, Shogun 2 Complete Edition has been a big topic of conversation this week after its initial release on Tuesday. Yesterday, SEGA and CA shared the following message in response to player feedback:

This is all we can communicate on this topic for now, but as soon as there is more news we will share it with you all through our community platforms.

Patch 9.0.4 for Warhammer III

On Thursday afternoon we rolled out Patch 9.0.4 for WH3. This release was primarily focussed on implementing a number of bug fixes and adjustments related to Nagash’s campaign, alongside some other bits and pieces. Check out the Release Notes for the full list of everything included.

We’re already working on 9.0.5 which we’re aiming to release within the next few weeks. Alongside a variety of bug fixes and adjustments across the game, we’re also focusing on bringing some improvements to Victory Conditions with the goal of making them more relevant and impactful. The team will still be keeping an eye on your bug reports and feedback in the meantime.

And that’s all for this week! Told you it’d be a short one. Hope you all have a fantastic weekend! 

— Steve

Even if you survive, how do you as a mortal swordman deal with all the infected vomit, guts and other bodily fluids that hit you during the battle?

Does the Emperor just burn every army after a battle with Nurgle and raise a new one?! We know that's what the Bretonnians would do to their peasant armies!

Is basically anything but an undead army doomed as soon as it sets out, with the leader just hoping they kill the other army first? As a leader, even if your soldiers aren't all covered in boils and vomiting and shitting themselves after the fight, do you trust them to NOT ultimately be corrupted by Nurgle thanks to just a little slime getting on them? If they come to you cured, do you serve them up to the Witch Hunters ASAP? So much as a lingering cough. also the Witch Hunters!

The other chaos gods can corrupt your troops too but wouldn't everyone who touched a single Nurgulite be lost? It seems like a losing war of attrition.

What does the lore say? Your head canon? Mine says the Emperor sends the minimum number of his worst troops up against Nurgle since the survivors must be cleansed with fire! Those men are doomed. DOOOOMED!!!

So I built an Agentic Army for Total War.

This project started from a simple TW annoyance: micromanagement. I got annoyed how in big battles if I lost focus on every unit, stupid stuff happened - like my artillery getting rolled up even though I have a cavalry unit sitting right next to them specifically to defend.

I figured let's give the cavalry unit an agent that understands its job. And that worked out pretty well.

Then I thought it would be even cooler if we could simulate an actual army.

This is where it gets a bit out of hand.

I ended up putting together what amounts to a simulation of a modern tactical operations center based on my old days in actual Army TOCs. Agents command each unit, task organized into battalions and a brigade

Side note: This is for Napoleon TW because that's what I've been into lately. I tried to build it in a way that it should be able to be ported to the other Total War titles pretty reasonably, too. I also bet there are some interesting directions to go to make it more accurate to the game era but would take some thinking and work on the mechanics: simulating messengers or flag communications, fog of war, etc.

There are a few big things that we've done so far.

I wanted persistent, learning commanders. So we generated initial units and commanders and created a feedback loop. After each battle an after action review is done where the commanders identify lessons that then get loaded into their next battle.

I built with the intent of my commanding the top level unit. My goal was less having AI fight for me and more getting into the actual role of a commander on the battlefield. I issue a commander's intent plus concept of the operation that codex turns into an operations order. That gets issued to the battalion commanders that then issue orders to their company commanders (I'm calling each individual unit a company since numbers in game are closer to historical and modern companies).

Throughout the fight, the agents maintain situational awareness of the battlefield, communicate, control their units, and adapt. It's taken a bunch of iterations to figure out how to do that and it's still not perfect. But It's been a super interesting challenge figuring out 1) how to translate visual battle information to llm context and 2) getting the agents to delegate or take initiative, adapt and work off of intent (how the actual military works) rather than trying to script everything out.

For this run, I decided to have codex play as brigade commander and just observe. Partially to see what would happen and partially as prep for the next stage where I play division commander.

The agents fought an equal enemy on expert and won! What's even more interesting is that there were some pretty cool moments where the agents adapted within the intent, coordinated, and exploited opportunities throughout - things regular AI or stock LLM's would never do. While it still did some pretty dumb things occasionally, it has made a ton of progress and is starting to feel almost like the real deal.

Anyway, just wanted to share my progress and feel out if people want to see more. I put together a little demo/battle synopsis of the headquarters interface, battle, and review. If there's enough interest I can share more on the battle itself, how I did it, where I'm at with it, learnings, etc. etc.

On the actual battle footage, I controlled the camera. You can see the green cursor highlight from Codex using the "computer use" skill as well. We both controlled the play/pause buttons. I paused and occasionally highlighted units when I wanted to make sure I understood what was going on. It also auto-pauses if any of the agents hit a compaction on their context. Almost all of the agent unit control is through the direct interface except in this one the general rally that codex did through the ui because that hasn't been implemented yet.

AI Disclosure: I don't know if this counts as AI generated but I did have Codex generate the video from the battle recording and retained data (with edits).

I just started a campaign as Itza and noticed there's a new category between the province capital and landmark called "Geomantic Buildings" that shows the original three buildings.

They are also still there between the infrastructure at their regular old place. I tried without mods active and it's still there, also asked a colleague of the Wiki to check without mods and he concluded the same, there's a new category of geomantic buildings and now the buildings are shown double in the building browser.

Could this be part of the Geomantic Web rework that has been accidentally pushed with Update 9.0 or one of its hotfixes?

M2EX is amazing!

This has to one of my favorite total war moments of all time!

It was me, Egrimm van GHORSTmann!

Previous Total War: AoS Concept Armies

Grand Alliance of Order

• Stormcast Eternals
  • 29 Non-Lord/Hero Units. 40 units in total.
• Idoneth Deepkin
  • 29 Non-Lord/Hero Units. 43 units in total.
• Fyreslayers
  • 24 Non-Lord/Hero Units. 35 units in total.
• Lumineth Realm-Lords
  • 28 Non-Lord/Hero Units. 45 Units in total.
• Daughters of Khaine
  • 26 Non-Lord/Hero Units. 36 Units in total.

Grand Alliance of Death

• Flesh-Eater Courts
  • 19 Non-Lord/Hero Units. 29 units in total.
  • Forgot to add Corpsemare Stampede. Should be 30 in total.
• Soulblight Gravelords
  • 34 Non-Lord/Hero Units. 53 Units in total.
• Nighthaunt
  • 30 Non-Lord/Hero Units. 42 Units in total.

Grand Alliance of Destruction

• Kruleboyz
  • 22 Non-Lord/Hero Units. 30 units in total.
• Gloomspite Gitz
  • 55 Non-Lord/Hero Units. 73 Units in total.
• Ironjawz
  • 28 Non-Lord/Hero Units. 39 Units in total.

Grand Alliance of Chaos

• Slaves to Darkness
  • 79 Non-Lord/Hero Units. 107 units in total.
• Skaventide
  • 44 Non-Lord/Hero Units. 63 Units in total.

---

Blades of Khorne (40 Non-Lord/Hero Units. 57 Units in total (including Prayer Lore Lord/Hero Variants.))

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!

Our first monogod faction for a Total War: AoS concept and it is the Blades of Khorne. Originally called the Khorne Bloodbound, the Blades of Khorne are one of the two oldest factions in Age of Sigmar, having launched before Age of Sigmar 1st edition was even made. With that said, how do the Blades of Khorne play differently from Total War Warhammer's Khorne? Other than some new units, the biggest differences is in optimization and mechanics.

In Total War Warhammer, Khorne is simple, straightforward, just go over there. You're done. In both Warhammer Age of Sigmar and 40k, Khornate units are excellent at melee but have a lot of early-game and mid-tier units that are more average in every other stat. And this is intentional design, you are expected to optimize Khornate units to their fullest potential. Crazy speed, crazy charge, crazy armor-piercing. You are encouraged to push the limits of slaughter and carnage as much as you can possible and create your very own hammers, beatsticks, and homing missile units. And when I say slaughter and carnage. This also means potentially being rewarded for harming your own units as well. No one is off the table. For Khorne cares not where the blood comes from.

And this is done primarily through four avenues. Lord & Hero support is one. Blades of Khorne have a ton of lord and hero options to buff your armies. Another is prayer lores. Khorne hates magic but he doesn't mind priest units to buff your allies or harm your foes. And you have three priest characters that comes with three prayer lore variants to choose from. Another is blood-drenched. Much of Khorne's roster have the blood-drenched trait to their weapons. It's similar to the Berserk passive in Total War: Warhammer but it will activate once enough units have been slaughtered. Finally, the most important one is the Blood Tithe. Think of it as a simple and quick in-battle skill tree to invest in. It's based around a currency you obtain from slaughtering your foes. The more skills you invest, the more stronger your army becomes over the course of the battle.

With that said, there are many potential LL options. Skarbrand is an obvious contender. Valkia is another one. Vorgaroth the Scarred One is a cool choice, the Khorne Dragon Rider. However, my money on the starting LL is fan-favorite Khorne character, Khorgos Khul.

Khorgos Khul is the Bane of Aqshy, the Bloodking of the Goretide, the Man Who Broke The Hammerhand. Similar to how Harry Hammerstorm is the first Fantasy Battles character, Khorgos Khul alongside Vandus Hammerhand are the first AoS characters. So what's his deal? Why is he such a fan-favorite? Well, Khorgos Khul was originally just a man known as Athol Khul. And he was just a family man looking after his own people. Compared to other origin stories of Khorne followers, he more-or-less started out as a normal guy. Than everything changes when an empire of wizards invades, forcing Athol Kul to go on a mission to rescue his people. He kept searching for solution after solution until he realizes the only way to save his people was to become a much worst monster than the empire. He participates in a ritual called the Red Feast, not fully realizing the consequences. And it is here he slaughters and slaughters more and more fellow warriors, some of whom are also here trying to desperately rescue their own peoples. And eventually, the number of people slain reaches 888. 8 being Khorne's favored number. With that, Athol Khul ascends as Khorgos Khul, a Champion of Khorne. And with his newfound Khornate followers and daemons, he annihilates the invading empire. But he's also too late. His family and people were wiped out and Khorgos Khul realizes that his actions were all for naught. And so he continues his endless slaughter in the name of the blood god, eventually becoming Khorne's favorite champion. How you may ask?

Khorgos Khul leads the Goretide. But the Goretide isn't just another warband. No. The Goretide is an continental-sized empire that is always on the move similar to the Mongols or the Huns. How did he achieve this you may ask? He possesses a terrifying element that is often lacking in Khorne followers. And that is an great understanding of logistics. That is how he rules not just the biggest Khornate nation in the AoS setting. But essentially the largest monogod empire in the mortal realms. Khorgos Khul is often considered to be Khorne's greatest general in the entirety of the Fantasy-AoS canon. And logistics and Khorne is a terrifying combination. Khorne is freaking proud of Khorgos Khul for essentially handing him his very own empire. Also probably should've mentioned this, but as of now, Khorgos Khul has ascended into daemonhood. He has no daemon ascended mini yet but he's such an popular and important character in AoS that GW gifted Khorne fans dedicated tabletop rules for an daemon ascended Khorgos Khul. With that said, in a Total War setting, Khorgos Khul and his Goretide would be your logistics Khorne faction focusing on buffing Khorne units in-general, decent replenishment and campaign mobility, and a focus on building monuments in the name of Khorne. Although he'd probably start somewhere in Khul's Ravage, I gave him the start position of Skulpile, an important Khorne city which gives him the opportunity to fight practically everyone. From his famous siege of Embergard, to the time he wrecked the settlement of Trucebreak, to fighting off the endless hordes of Skaven, to going for Hammerhal itself, or perhaps you may wish to rebuild his empire which consists of Khul's Ravage, the Scablands and the Capilarian bloodlands as its beating heart. Tons of different directions for a Khul player to go from. So yeah, get out there and embrace your micro-aggressions lol.

Notes

Below are some notes as to design choices.

• Blood Reavers & Meat-Rippers: These are essentially your Marauders of Khorne on steroids. Also Meat-Rippers are just Blood Reavers named after their weapon, the Meat-Ripper. Why did I change the name? Because Meat-Rippers is such a edgy Warhammer-ish name. Couldn't resist.
• Blood Whelps: Your early-game somewhat tanky skirmishers.
• Bull-Hounds: Doggos with stalk.
• Chaos Warhounds of Khorne: Basic doggos.
• Skull Scavengers: Contender for perhaps ugliest AoS mini, they are actually pretty decent in tabletop under Kamando Blades. Being at the bottom of the bottom of the hierarchy, I'd imagine they'd have stalk. Also can assist in getting out your army-wide buffs quicker since they invest in the Blood Tithe a little faster.
• Blood Warriors: These are essentially your Chaos Warriors of Khorne. How do Blood Warriors play like? If Chaos Warriors of Khorne are like a fine blend of aggression and defense. Blood Warriors are like maximized aggression and less defense. Their "shield" option is a spiked buckler and if you know about bucklers in history, they can be used to punch people. That is such a Khorne thing to do lol.
• Flesh Hounds: Best of the best doggos.
• Blood Letters & Exalted Blood Letters: Your shock troopers.
• Brutalisers: Also your shock troopers but with more emphasis on shattering morale.
• Fellriders of Khorne & Chaos Knights of Khorne: Included the Mark of Khorne units because Blades of Khorne doesn't have a dedicated early or mid-game cavalry. Only elite cavalry.
• Bloodthrone of Khorne: A chariot and shrine in one.
• Khorngor: Yes, that is the Blood Bowl Khorngor. Ironically, Khorne is the only monogod faction that has yet to get new monogod beastmen units.
• Skullreapers: Your anti-horde units for maximum slaughter, an upgrade from Blood Warriors.
• Hexgorger Skull: Flying unit for those who want to give the middle finger to wizards.
• Aspiring Deathbringers: Think of them as the Khornate version of Aspiring Champions. Very elite and tanky, but comes in a very small model count.
• Hounds of Wrath: This one kind of surprised me. I thought it was just straight-up monstrous infantry potential. According to its rules, I did not think it had a flaming breath attack lol. That is so Khorne lol.
• Khorgorath: A monster unit. They were originally regular animals that unfortunately got mutated over time by Khorne corruption.
• Skullcannon: The only artillery Khorne offers. Also a chariot that replenishes ammo in-melee.
• Skullcrushers & Bloodcrushers: Your hyper-elite cavalry.
• Wrathmongers: Your wrecking ball unit. An upgrade to Skullreapers.
• Bloodthirsters: Blades of Khorne offers three variants. They can be summed up as anti-infantry, anti-monster, and anti-hero.
• Slaughterbrute: The premier hyper-elite unit.
• Skullgrinders: In my opinion, the most interesting hero option for Khorne from a lore perspective. They are the closest thing that Khorne has to infiltrators but it's not really done intentionally, it just comes with the territory of Skullgrinders pretending to be ordinary blacksmiths selling Khorne corrupted weaponry to the greater populace.
• Slaughterpriest: Works much like the Bloodspeaker from Total War: Warhammer. Actually, was kind of surprised that the Slaughterpriest and Bloodspeaker are almost one-to-one, some of their abilties are named exactly the same such as Blood Sacrifice. Bloodspeaker really is just the Slaughterpriest quietly snuck into Total War: Warhammer.

Back in July I posted a save editor I wrote for Warhammer 3, mostly because the old SaveParser never got WH3 support. It has grown a lot since, so here's where it stands. Still free, no install, works with singleplayer and co-op/multiplayer saves.

The feature that started it all: my friend and I kept losing co-op campaigns whenever one of us couldn't play anymore. The editor takes a multiplayer save, you pick which player to keep, and it writes a normal singleplayer save. Your faction stays yours, the others are handed to the actual campaign AI, the map stays exactly as it was. Works from either player's copy and with saves from older patches.

New since the last post (v1.3):

• An Armies tab that shows every army, convoy and garrison as unit cards with the game's own art. Heal, set rank, duplicate or remove units with a click, or select a bunch at once.
• Adding units to an army. Pick any unit your faction (or anyone in the world) already fields and it lands in the roster at full strength and whatever rank you choose. This one took some reverse engineering of the game to get the campaign AI to accept the new units, but it now survives battles, turns and AI attacks.
• Faction flags and lord portraits everywhere, pulled straight from the game packs.
• A repair tool for saves that hang at end of turn after a conversion done with an older version.

The rest is still there: treasuries for any faction, character rank / XP / skill points (recruitment pool included), unit strength and experience, diplomacy (war, peace, alliances, treaties), save renaming, the mod list with Workshop links, and a raw save tree for the brave. Everything is verified in game on 8.1 through 9.0.3.

Where to get it:

• GitHub releases page ,or
• Nexus Mods.

^{The full source code is in the repo now, so if you'd rather not run a random exe you can build it yourself in a few commands.}

Usual caveats:

• The exe isn't signed, so SmartScreen will grumble on first run.
• Back up your saves before editing. It's a hobby project, so if something breaks, tell me here or open an issue on GitHub.

Next on the list: adding units straight from the game database (ones nobody on the map has yet), and editing the player roster of a multiplayer save, so a friend can drop out of a co-op campaign and come back later, or join a running one. If you've been in that situation, I'd like to hear how you handled it.

Since my game is in Czech, it takes those names into the app. Yours will be in your game's language.

For someone playing on a potato laptop, I can really see the difference in loading time and end of turn delay. I used to play maybe 35-50 turns MAX per campaign because the loading were unbearable, but I can actually play the game without getting sick of it now. Instead of a 50-50 split on loading vs playing, I get closer to 25-75 now.

Kudos for the changes here, and I hope I'm not crazy and imagining things. Thanks CA?

Week 8.

So, mostly used those three days that I had off this week to rest and recuperate. Things are still pretty difficult. I could have rushed something out but the project for this week is something that I've been thinking of doing for a while and I want to get it right. I also value my own mental health and don't want to turn something that's supposed to be a fun challenge into a death march.

All that to say that I'm pushing the next "official" Cabalpost back a week. I didn't want to leave you with nothing though, so this is a work in progress preview of what's to come. Brownie points for anyone who can identify what it's based on and what part of Egrimm's story it represents (hint; this is about 1/3 of the final layout).

Sorry for having to do this, but the Changer works in mysterious ways and sometimes we must sacrifice short-term gains for long-term benefit.

I think we've entered 6D chess territory here

I will be very happy, if every legendary chaos lord in endgame would have thematic high tier army for him.

Example: tamurkhan toad dragons rot knights plauge ogres, kairos and many lords of change, throgg with every troll in game, and some big monsters, dehekala with champions of slannesh and pleasureseekers etc.

I think u get the idea, and these armies with LL should be stronger than generic ones.

No mods used that impact battle except reloading animations and better camera. Other mods used were mixer and no supplylines and victory conditions overhaul. You can make depthguard even stronger if you level nemesis crown even higher than I did since I only got to level 3. Depthguard mostly killed chaff and flying monsters that got through count noctilus at the end and killed the vermin lords. Also yes I did change my comb at my second try cause the summons were getting too annoying