the idea of end game crisis is in my opinion is good, the issue is in HOW they implemented it. It's just a grindfest mass-spawn or arguably bad army. It's not interesting, it's not fun to go against, it's nonsensical when a +400 friendly faction just declares war on you because it was designed as your crisis ending.
They should do something like a High Elf or Lizardmen crisis, where it's a few extremely strong armies led by LLs that, if destroyed, stay dead and give faction bonuses for every doomstack defeated. Furthermore if you have good relations with the High Elves or Lizardmen you can choose to side with them against the rest of the world, but miss out on the faction bonuses by doing so.
It's pretty "great" when you put random crisis, play as a dwarf faction and everyone who you confederated comes back, is hostile, and immediately wrecks your whole territory. 10/10 immersion
Stellaris actually has a much deeper, and more content rich Crisis system than you described. For one, there are mid-game crisis's. One big example is that the Maurader (Pirate) factions that you can pay to raid you rivals, can be unied under a Khan in the midgame. The Endgame Crisis's, expanded on what you mentioned: Prytorean Scourge: I've personally never seen them so i cant honestly input much here, but i believe they show up if too many civilisations have specialised in to bio-engineering, species modification and such. The Contigency: An Ancient AI that, if you let them, seduces your Synths over to their side. Interesting, you can get another "Crisis" Faction, the Cybrex, to spawn as enemies to the Contingency, under certain conditions. So you can basically watch a benevolent crisis fight a malevolent crisis in some cases. The Voidborn(?): Beings from another dimension. Spawn if too many empires have psionics as their focus. Can only be defeated by destorying dimensional anchors and over time, more factions of them spawn and there is some in-fighting between them, competing for "hunting grounds". There is also one other Crisis that was added in a recent DLC, but i cant comment on that as i dont have that DLC. I do recall some people mentioning that it has some diplomacy aspects, basically letting you join her. Beating a crisis, as in, being the one to make the killing blow, will reward you with a Relic which gives factionwide passive effects, and usually interesting mechanics by activating the relic on a long cooldown, and by spending influence. ALSO - In the nemesis expansion, and later in the Machine age expansion, they allow you TO BECOME THE CRISIS, in two very different ways, that have different gameplay paths and different mechanics. Not to mention the Galactic council, and how a custodian, or even a galactic emperor can be voted in, to defend the galaxy against the Crisis, allowing several unique assets available to them for that purpose.
The thing I'll never get: Why don't they use the realms of chaos to make an actually good, quest and lore-heavy end game crisis about the chaos invasion? Instead of all those "instantly spawn a million doom stacks somewhere" grind scenarios, where only Black Pyramid (depending on your start location) and Chaos Dwarfs are somewhat ok. Sure, RoC the campaign sucks, but you could definitely rework those assets into something good.
Definitely, it's not like we're expecting them to implement some revolutionary tech... the answers are already in the game files. I think a lot of us assumed that there was going to be some end-times threat coming from the warp when we imagined TWW3 since the whole plot of TWW2 was around the Vortex
This, it's already the final installment, why not let people just come into the warp and have some avenger style epic final battle that doesn't end as idiotically as the endtime novel? Such a waste.
So there is a mod that kinda does this, Chaos invasion mod, it adds in the campaign endgame crisis. There's two phases: Phase 1: all norsca factions and beastman factions get endgame crisis armies 10 turns later Phase 2: All chaos warrior factions spawn endgame armies and rifts open up (nothing spawns from the rifts but you can traverse them and close them getting buffs if you close them) There's another version you can do to this that add all the demon factions as well, this also adds in the chaos dwarves which realy caught me off guard my first time doing this. I was playing kislev and I was off in the chaos wastes killing norsca and the chaos dwarves on the other side of the mountain drops 10 armies and I have nothign back there to fight them off.
My opinion before the video starts: 1. Lightning Strike makes them trivial. 2. Empire gets screwed pretty badly in ultimate mode since they are sounded by Dwarves, Vampires, and Wood Elves 3. You can not prevent them by taking out factions that becomes endgame crisis. In fact the opposite, they re-emerge harder than skaven.
The fact that factions just get resurrected through the endgame crises has always been the most confusing part. If they just get disabled if I'm able to wipe the race out, it'd have a way better "beat the clock" vibe instead of "tough luck, bud, your mountains are now dwarf again."
@@sgt.animal.8205 that was the 2nd or 3rd iteration of the invasion, and the worst, when Dark Elves were the only counter to the order tide and then they had the chaos invasion spawn on their back line by all their tier 5 cities it was ridiculous. I preferred the original iteration where they invaded via the chaos wastes and also sent a large naval force to the badlands and lustria.
I hold steadfast on the fact that Endgame Crisis should be larger growing scenarios, like quests, with multiple stages, which snowball over time, which are connected to some lore events. Right now they really are just... boring and tedious and I have no love for them. Not even cause I can't beat em, they're not that hard. I just feel annoyance whenever they happen. And of course, they shouldn't have absurd anti-player bias. That part just makes it feel silly.
I know it's not really possible with 100 legendary lords but I would love instead of just campaign victories you got like a unique sequence of quest dilemmas for every lord, with decisions and choices in it that could influence your whole campaign. I know the alternate win conditions mod kind of takes care of this and it is a must-have mod for me but it doesn't do it quite far enough in my opinion.
@@TheLordofMetroids Doesnt take much for CA to get some unique rewards patched into the game for each Lord, provided they can come up with the ideas. Voice acting and quest battles would take more time, but I doubt this sort of thing would.
An endgame crisis mechanic was already solved years ago, by the very game that popularised it - *Stellaris.* And I'm sure that's partly down to the game also having a fun midgame crisis to mix up the game, but it really is amazingly well implemented there. So it's just baffling to see so many games copy the idea and end up with much poorer imitations by comparison. That being said, the endgame crisis in TWW3 being called "too difficult" is categorically not the issue, since there's just as many players who say the game is way too easy overall.
Yeah, like the only reason to really utilise most of the game is due to the end game crisis, it is why you mess with the galactic community, it is why you fight the fallen empires, it is why you build a massive economy. The crisis are the end game and they aren't just a tedious war thing, like you can do shit to affect them and make them weaker and you can do things to specialise against them. Its a good system with a build up period, unique mecganics and rewards and ALSO has cool music and sound stuff (there are unique background noises and musical notes that get stronger the better the crisis does) Like it's a good system, can be customised and randomised, can be very much customised and isn't a slog fest. It feels amazing to play them the first time especially, but it doesn't feel terrible or annoying after 1000+ hrs. And with a difficulty modifier that goes up to 25x, it can be as hard as the vast majority of players will ever need.
I think crusader kings 2 had the endgame crissis first. That game actually had multiple crisis. It had the Seljuk invasion as a early game crisis for people in the middle east, it had the mongol invasion for the late game. And the endgame crisis was the Aztecs showing up.
There use to be a mod called dynamic disasters that was basically endgame crisis, but every race would have it and it was staggered out overtime. Instead of making it even more grindy it felt way better because it wasn't just a flash in time. It completely revamped the late game.
I suspect that CA hasn't forgotten about end game crisises, it's just that improving them or adding more is way, waaayyyy back on the burner. If I were to make an ambitious and optimistic guess, I'd say that they intend to expand on them greatly with the rumoured End Times DLC they're looking to finish the series off with. They are undeniably awful in their current iteration though. More than anything they expose the inadequacy of the AI: I've never seen crisis factions act in anything like a coherent manner, without mods anyway. They tend to just clump up around particular settlements and then refuse to do anything. How I wish they'd work on the strategic AI.
I was looking for this answer, I don't own tww3 and today I learn there is no chaos endgame crisis like on tww2... How strange being this the third game centered around chaos gods and factions... It's obvious they are going to revamp them completely with that endtimes DLC. This to me looks like a beta feature to try out, disable or turn it on, however you like, but it screams beta test feature as hell, look at that kraka drak legacy faction spawn that was clearly forgotten...
I think CA need to just learn from Stellaris for the endgame crisis, add more story event, quest battle and design some kind of tier 6 7 8 monster as bosses. I would love to see the current endgame crisis be moved down to become mid-game crisis and have the end time order vs chaos as the true endgame crisis.
In general CA should implement the campaign map mechanics from AOW/Stellaris. It’s a shame because I feel like paradox games moment to moment and real time gameplay is so so boring but the campaign mechanics and graphics are amazing. And it’s the complete opposite for TW. If total war could just improve the campaign side of things they’d nail it.
My problems with these end game crisis: you don't control when/where they happen, and it's just a grind. CA could re-use the chaos realms they have on the RoC campaign and let the player trigger a reverse invasion when he wants to. Bringing the fight to the chaos gods would be a great final push for when you are steam rolling the mortal realms, and test the metal of your end game stacks. It could even be something unwinnable, where you try to go as far as you can.
I'd wager they are crafting a huge rework for endgame events and the chaos end times will be the main focus. It'll probbaly come with the endtime DLC they keep saying is in the works, maybe next year maybe 2-3 years.
Yeah i like the Chaos Dwarf one because it has atleast a teleport to get through and you have a decent goal , I mean if you are f.e Dark elves you cannot reach most of the endgame crisis anyway. Maybe instead of having to fight a million battles, there could be a big epic battle after you did some damage to the crisis and you can farm the leaders trait points and get a some global bonuses (f.e if you defeat greens skins you get good relation to dwarfs/ Melee buffs to ur units and a shit ton of gold)
An easy way of getting the traits of the enemy lords would be a great incentive indeed, especially given how powerful some can be. The issue of a big battle is that it takes a bit more work to implement than just adding items I'd say
On another note, 'not a matter of challenge but a matter of grind' is exactly how I look at campaign difficulty. I play campaigns anywhere from normal to very hard based on how much of a pain in the ass do I want to have when playing this campaign. I'm literally looking at it as reducing frustration rather than maximizing fun.
I always play with the crisis turned off. But as someone whose favourtie race are the high elves, you got me hooked instantly when you said about the original Phoenix Crown. I wouldn't even care what bonuses it gave, I'd play with the dwarven crisis turned on in every high elves campaign (and dark elves too, I guess).
I nearly always play ultimate crisis. But sometimes i deactivate the Dwarfs, because they are already as AI Faction like an endgame faction. I would like if they change some mechanics too. 1. Dont make just Neighbors and the Player to enemies, if the Crisis begins... make everyone an enemy to the crisis faction (with diplomacy on, if activated) 2. Split the spawning points to more fairness. Right now, ultimate crisis as Empire Player (Elsbeth, Karl Franz) ist just an GG. Alone the dwarfs factions would wipe you out. Add Vampires and Woodelves+Skaven to it... lol. While that, in entire Cathay and Soutwest(Lizardmen Location) its only 1 Skaven faction as crisis for the entire region 3. Like Legend already said, add more mechanics like the teleport system of chaos dwarves to the game. Would be more fun
The problem with everyone going to war with them, is you get the order tide problem from WH2, where everyone else on the map gets like +60 relations and forms alliances.
I have a mod installed to address your first point. Said mod makes the crisis factions declare war on everybody else except fellow race crisis factions (e.g. crisis Grimgor will not be at war with crisis Skarsnik, etc.). In my last campaign though, I noticed that the Skaven crisis factions were fighting each other. I was using the Old World map mod and I noticed that the Brettonian lands basically became a thunderdome where Skryre was fighting Eshin plus both were brawling with Grom the Paunch as well. That was pretty hilarious to see. Not sure if the mod made the Skaven vs Skaven on purpose but on the other hand, it's kinda lore friendly that they backstab each other anyway. haha
I completely agree, whenever I turn on end game crisis it usually ends up being more of a timer for my campaign because I never want to deal with it when it emerges
They should make "Endgame Crisis" a campaign-arching scenario with quests, decisions and scenarios along the way, not just dumping a bunch of stacks at a specific turn. The one thing TW:WH3 seriously needs is a campaign map overhaul with events and quests similar to Age of Wonders 4.
I always put the End Time Crisis on 200, Ultimate Crisis mode.. I always regret it but the sheer level of terror cannot be matched and the reaction of my friends when 20 armies of dwarves shows up on their doorstep is hilarious.
I feel like they should add a quest battle or something for each end game crisis and make it a victory condition. It would change how people look at it, instead of being a random roadblock it should be what the end goal
Imagine if they brought the RoC in, but of course as a toggle-based Endgame Crisis. They already have a bunch of rewards from the RoC campaign (i.e. unique weapons and items, the entire Realm of Slaanesh, etc.). I think it would really bring in some variety for late stage campaigns and make for a thrilling finish to the game. The main problem with RoC was that you could never get your foothold set before the portals appeared. But if they only appeared once you were big enough (like 150 turns or when you hit Long Victory) then it would be a welcome challenge that would add variety! I also think it would be fun for multiplayer campaigns, both co-op and Head to Head.
I don't give a damn what people say: the WH2 vortex campaign was a very cool idea to push against endgame fatigue. Needs some work but I would like to see an universal goal campaign again.
WH 2 was much better in many things, at least I didn't feel like every other faction is insignificant cuz there are so many of them now and they are so "different"
Yeah, I bought W3 on a sale but I'm still on W2, simply because Vortex is the best campaign in the trilogy, with some annoyances modded out and more challenge modded in of course.
I have almost 5000 hours into Stellaris as well, and I spent a fair few hours trying to figure out what the meta of Crises was in that game. I think at its core, it's an interesting game design conceit for empire building type games. The motivation seems to come from an anti-snowball perspective, in that reasonable difficulty curves for the early game that allow for a range of successful play quality rather than "Only one line can win," will *inevitably* fall to player snowballing. Players are always going to find ways to optimize that a generalized AI won't be able to match, and crises can be a good way to "round two!" with a stronger enemy that would not be a good idea to have in the game at the very start because of how powerful they have to be. In order to provide challenge for the player to overcome, the "regular empires" in Stellaris normally aren't how that is done. The AI is MUCH better than it was, but it still needs absurd cheats to be competitive with humans. With ACOT, a mod that gives the player some insane tools, you can still *lose* the game if you tune the difficulty settings correctly, I have lost the tier 7 start before because of a crisis that spawned with more strength than I was ready for at that time. This was a really impactful lesson to me, that it's not the power of the player tools, or the size of the challenge, it's that the two are matched up. The proper tools to meet the challenges you face, not too strong, not too weak. The conclusion I came to was that such systems have to be more reactive, and *punish the player for success* but not in a way that feels bad. Empire Size in Stellaris is a great example of how to punish a player for success, in that your empire is going to get bigger over time, you can't do anything about that. But it's a facet of the game to manage; You can choose how you want to spend your size expansions, you can choose whether to play tall or wide, you can mitigate those penalties, all in all it's supply lines *but it feels good* like it's a mechanic I can optimize over. Reacting to the player's progress without spawning roadblocks is also tough, like realm divide. "Congratz you crossed a line in the sand and now you have to deal with a crisis particularly tuned to your progress" can go very well, or very poorly. It shouldn't feel like getting specifically targeted, IE anti-player bias, and triggers should be clear, turns is a very bad mechanic and it should be more reactive to the player rather than "Can you make it to the place you need to be by X turn." It's so hard to judge that time without a lot of experience, by the time you can tune the difficulty correctly, 1) You're better now and that's not the right difficulty, and 2) You're probably almost done with the game anyhow. Crises should have their own goals and motivations, empires should too, and "Against the player" as a reason should be completely verboten. That makes this so hard; It's exactly what they're doing, they just can't do it or it feels bad. Spawning a crisis that particularly hunts only the player would be iffy at best, but if the Stellaris Khan spawns in your backyard and you're the juiciest target, it's very easy to say "well yeah that was the correct strategic decision" and the loss feels OK, the loss feels like my fault and not a poorly designed game.
I liked the original Chaos invasion mechanic the best, the downside of it was they'd ignore a lot of people to beeline to the player which didn't feel thematic. When they changed the chaos invasion in mid Warhammer 2 to pretty much wipe out the Dark Elves and leave the order tide intact and unopposed it was completely terrible. The current "end game crisis" feature is only saved by the fact you can trigger it on "Long Term Campaign Victory" if you care about achievements (you cannot get faction win achievements if end game crisis is turned off). It's as usual something that pretty much only affects players which again doesn't fit any kind of theme or lore.
I don't think a reward would really help for me. To me, If you beat the endgame crisis, you've basically won the campaign. Unless I have a huge amount of free time and want to go for a world conquest or something, it's just not gonna matter. Making them more unique/interesting could definitely help, but even for the better ones, I just can't be bothered fighting 20 of basically the same army. They would have to really change it up a lot, and I'm not sure it's really worth the effort/resources for CA
Yeah, it definitely has the potential for ruining a campaign. Was recently doing a Nagarythe campaign where I was allied with Herald of Twilight and they still turned on me during the endgame crisis - which wasn't the big deal. The big deal happened about 20ish turns later, where all of the other WE factions started sailing to my provinces with well over 20 full stacks of endgame armies. To add to this, all of my other elf allies would not lend a finger and I would actually lose rep with them defending myself. A similar thing happened in my Tamurkhan campaign where the dwarf crisis just steamrolled any potential allies and I'm having to fight Malakai, Belegar and Grombrindal's massive armies where all three factions are top 5 in campaign power. Also seems really random at times, like spawning when they shouldn't or not spawning where they should. There are a few instances where it can actually make it easier to get your completion achievement than a long victory, but that's only really true if you're lucky enough to face the super easy Chaos dwarf endgame crisis. The Chaos Army crisis in WH2 was much better in comparison
I was playing as Zhao Ming and got the Vampire Crisis. Dealing with Ghorst was easy enough but I got quite worried when I saw a dozen armies from Manfred going straight to the Dragon Isles and my armies were fighting against Grimgor in the North. It turned out to be a lot easier as Manfred had taken 90% casualties from untainted, no region and deep sea attrition. The AI focusing on the player to the exclusion of everything makes it not worth playing.
I feel another reason roc failed is that the map feels very small even if it isnt because everything is divided up aggressively by difficult to pass terrain. If you're a demon faction you get all of the chaos wastes and then you have to slog through a bunch of uncomfortable terrain or the sea to get to norsca. Or if you're cathay you are entirely blocked off by mountains and ogres on all sides except one which is unhabitable land that causes attrition when you try to move through it. It's so closed up compared to tww2 where everything is just kind of open and you can go pretty much anywhere from turn 1.
I'd love to see 2-3 thematic, well paced endgame crises. A Chaos Invasion, an Ordertide, and maybe a couple others. Let the crises be based on map situations, and the crisis factions build up strength as they unify the world against you
What I would love, is for the end game crisis to be a steady build up type system that is going to snowball into a great tide if left alone for too long. Something like for instance the dwarf crisis, it should cause this… - Remaining dwarf factions no longer suffer upkeep penalties - Remaining dwarf factions global recruitment reduced to 1 turn - Remaining dwarf factions global recruitment increased to max 30 slots - Remaining dwarf faction tech tree fully researched - Remaining dwarf faction’s settlement garrisons increased significantly - remaining dwarf factions granted new army abilities - remaining dwarf factions no longer suffer attrition - Remaining dwarf faction’s growth increased significantly - One of the remaining dwarf faction’s are granted a unique Lord wielding powerful unique items that leads an army of Grudge Settler units Upon completion of the crisis, the unique Lord from that faction and his items are added to players recruitment pool as well as the ability for that lord only to train dwarven grudge settler units into his army. I would definitely do it in order to get access to that lord and his powerful items
Honestly this is one of those systems where the developers could learn from the mods that expanded upon them. I do know that there is one mod that overhauls the entire endgame crisis system and its great because you can tweak a lot of settings, like making it so that its only major factions, but they spawn more armies. This helps in some cases where for example, you're playing as cathay and there is a minor orc faction right smack bang in the middle of cathay (for some reason). It also adds MID GAME CRISIS situations - As i recall, they are focused generally on naval raids and invasions, so one of them for example is cathay sending a massive navy to the new world from the west edge of the map. Another feature is crisis situations that trigger every so many turns (Again, all of these things are tweakable in the mod config menu in-game), for example one of them is norscan raids that send raiding fleets to certain locations every so often. Another one, which i think is quite interesting, is Bretonnian Crusades, where a faction will be randomly rolled to be its target, and Bretonnia will then send a crusade against that faction until they are defeated or a timer runs out and they return home. I use it because it adds those extra interesting systems AND because it lets me tweak the settings, even the base game crisis, to take out some annoyances i have with it as mentioned before. Would love to see something similar in the basegame.
My sugestion for endgame crisis is that they should work something similar to the way Three Kingdoms endgame situation worked: you have a coalition of enemies that actively cooperate to attack a coalition of allies. In Warhammer, this could work with escenarios such as Chaos invasion, in which an alliance of WoC, Norska, the different monogod factions, beastmen and Chaos dwarves target another alliance of HE, Empire, Cathay, Kislev, Bretonia and Dwarves. During the escenario random war objectives appear for each alliance, so that each alliance must attack and defend certain objectives with a timer, each of them granting rewards (permanent bonifications and items). The war objectives after these timers end would grant points to the endgame scenario score for each alliance and, after a certain number of rounds or after reaching a certain threshold, one of the alliances is considered victor and receives heafty rewards. Permanent debuffs would also apply for an alliance if a certain number of factions from that alliance are destroyed; and also support events similar to the Reikland ones randomly appear allowing you to get involved in battles to protect frontier settlements from other allies, these would provide you units from the supported faction in a recruitment pool you could use from that moment on. Other endgame scenarios I can think of are: undead factions (VC, Vampirates and TK) vs order factions (Empire, Dwarves, HE, Kislev, Cathay, Bretonnia) vs evil non-chaotic factions (skaven, GS, DE), with a worldwide scenario and three big alliances. Another possibility could be nature defenders (WE, Lizardmen and HE) vs order industrialists (Empire and dwarves) vs evil industrialists (DE and Chaos dwarves).
I would say they should do what they did for the total warhammer 2 vortex campaign. Have an "end game" difficult battle that you have to fight. Except instead of 1 battle, have it a chain quest of multiple battles and have a reward for completing each one, and you can do at any time.
Best way to increase the Challenge in a less grindy way is: choose or opponent(s) let them get an early crisis with minimum strength (optional: still enable diplomacy if you are too close to them and still fear to get overwhelmed, tho keep in mind not to end up making them your allies, cuz then it is just pointless) what happens is the AI will get just 1-2 extra armies as a good challenge BUT they will have all Tech for the long run making it basically the Legendary+ Way of playing
For me, the main problem is that I forget to configure it. I don't want to fight good guys, if endgame crisis happens, I don't to see my fellow order factions go to war agains me.
The only time I enjoyed fighting the endgame was with skarbrand. Defeating literal dozens of armies in one turn is hell of a power trip Edit: A similar mechanic that absolutely sucks ass is the rogue armies. No reward, no way to prepare, no nothing. I was thinking about it recently, and I thought that these mechanics can maybe be merged in a way. Say, a warning appears "hey player, this region has fallen into the influence of %entity%, in 5 turns the %entity% is going to slap you on your cheeks here". Then a buffed up rogue army appears, a couple of armies instead of one, give some actual reward - probably a temporary faction-wide effect. Maybe offer an option to fight a specific quest battle with your faction leader (with the ability to teleport!!!) instead of building a new force. Give a lesser reward for that. Would definitely give some flavor to random bullshit spawning in the middle of nowhere and ravaging your lands.
I did a Skarbrand run and got the Dwarf crisis. I will admit that that was really fun but only because of the mechanics of Khorne. Wouldn't work with anyone else.
Thanks for the video! And I agree these scenarios lack proper motivation. I let one happen once and it immediately de-railed my campaign. Without some kind of carrot, I just found it annoying and loaded up another campaign with the setting turned off. 33:20 Up to you whether you make more or not. I hope they are beneficial to the channel regardless of what the redditors do.
My first experience with the endgame crisis was a Wild Hunt, I thought the text suggested that the normally isolationist wood elves were just going to become extremely aggressive and start trying to conquer, maybe with some bonuses to income or recruitment like some fun random event. Instead it was pure frustration as wood elf armies would underway towards my empire, I was Cathay playing a chill game, took over the Chaos Dwarf area and had armies built to take out armour since my main enemies I was planning to strike were Chaos, Dwarfs, and Lizardmen (Domination Campaign). This left me chasing down their countless infinitely respawning armies as they ran around using the underway in large regions with many mountains, and if I caught them now I have to deal with wood elf units as pre-DLC Cathay with armies not built for fast skirmish units. I still won, but I was mentally exhausted and annoyed by how long it took.
I have some ideas about endgame crisis: 1. Tomb Kings. Triggers if Black Pyramid is not under player's control. Black Pyramid starts spawning new armies every 5-10 turns, which are aggressive and try to conquer more territories. To beat: conquer Black Pyramid. Reward: for other Tomb King factions and Volkmar - get all books of Naggash immediately, for other factions - campaign buff. 2. Beardtide. Goal: a set of two cities like in Thorek campaign, conquering each set gives a different reward. Can be gold, unique items, campaign buffs or units (thunderbarges!!!). 3. Wild Hunt. Reward: for capturing more then two elven trees you can travel between them like wild roots mechanics. For capturing all of them plus Oak of Ages you enslave Ariel and force her fight for you. 4. Vampires. That's one a bit lame, but I can't come up with more then "get Ulrika and Isabella in your army." Maybe when Naggash will finally be in the game, the vampire crisis can be centered around Naggash. 5. Vermintide. Leave it as it is, but for defeating some clans you'll get additional rewards. For clan Pestilence: a rite to summon a plague in enemy city. For clan Skryre: increased research rate and bonus for ranged and war machine troops. For clan Eshin: a rite to summon an assassin that can kill lords and heroes. 6. Chaos Infighting. A new crisis that spawns 4 monogod factions, each in the war with each other and bent on destroying rivals. Some minor monogod, chaos warriors, beastmen or chaos dwarves factions will become the vassals of those factions. If a crisis faction destroys a crisis rival, they'll get more armies and more vassals, destroy them yourself to prevent this. The last faction standing will attack the world - and you, even if you are a chaos faction yourself.
So what we want is a Fishmen Endgame crisis which gives a good reward to make it worth doing and some more unique shit like maybe unique maps to fight them on and items to make a good set bonus (not fucking X corruption +5 CA lol)
I turn it off, eventually one race in their region will become dominant and sort of a crisis themselves if you don't snowball the game. I'd rather see end game option of All Chaos factions vs all Order factions. Chaos allies to Chaos, Order allies to Order. Or even a 3rd faction Destruction. Competing for world domination.
For this exact reasons is why right now I have a blast with The Changeling, I am on an adventure, with goals in each major region, I had to resurrect Scarbrand to get his sword, all the quests gives something that even if small is to be desired. I want that in an endgame crisis.
1:30 Love that point you're making there :D Edit after watching the video to the end: I agree with you about adding a motivation to actually activating the endgame crisis - I already like the challenge but without any reward they are a dull grind
Two of my own thoughts to add in on this. 1. Endgame crises are also just incredibly passive (at least in the latest patch). Can't even count the number of times the crisis has happened, they take over their capital and the immediate surrounding locations and then just turtle. That isn't a crisis. 2. Endgame crisis doesn't break all relations. I get they can't have them declare war on literally everyone without breaking things but I had a Lizardmen campaign where I had the Dwarf crisis occur and because they were *just* far enough away from other Order factions they didn't break trade relations, which meant that my relations with other Order factions kept getting worse because I was committing violence against their trade partners, even though it was an Endgame crisis. I eventually just abandoned the campaign before the entire world declared war on me because I was fighting the Endgame Crisis.
Yeah I usually only leave the will of hashut endgame crisis on just because the teleporting is really nice for any faction that does not have world teleporting
I'm personly so happy I can turn them off in the base game without needing any mods. If I could do the same with the Hun invasion for Attila I would play that game almost endlessly.
7:53 You're not kidding! I just started a standard Immortal Empires campaign as Astragoth Ironhand; one of his Short Victory conditions is the destruction of Kraka Drak, and because it's still in the game's code but not on the map, his Short Victory is already halfway won!!
Hear me out : Completing the "end crisis" allows you to recruit units of the race of that end crisis (allowing you to have fun being like those rogue armies being 2-mixed-factions armies)
When i'm playing Khalida, I turn on the Black Pyramid and Vampire crises for a bit of roleplaying. When I play as Eltharion I do the same for the Greenskins. Lately i've even been toying with a very early game crisis trigger, around 30 - 50 turns. Ultimately I just wish there was a lot more control over the minutia of these scenarios rather than just a generic difficulty slider. There also should be more of them, and my biggest issue is the Dwarf one. When the Dwarf crisis triggers it literally says that the Dwarfs have decided to settle ALL the grudges, and yet they don't go to war with everyone which I think is a bit misleading lol.
Love how you put the reason why CA should consider giving rewards for the endgame crisis at 19:58: "to give you something to explore and go and do to experience the world they have created"
I definitely agree there needs to be special rewards after the end game. It especially needs to be related to the crisis you beat. Imagine getting really unique stuff, like beating the vampire crisis gives your faction a minor version of rising from the dead (or empowers it if you're vampires.) With that being said, I think that's only half of the puzzle. They also just need to be a lot more engaging than they are. Spamming a big doomstack faction isn't really all that fun. There needs to be gameplay mechanics along with it. They *kinda* stepped in the right direction with the chaos dwarf tunnels, but that's extremely barebones compared to what things could be. Imagine, for example, the Greenskin crisis has this big warboss, and his horde gradually builds up in strength for something like 20 turns. At the 20th turn, it gets super massive strong with a whole warhost, and they beeline for the capital of the Strength Rank #1 faction to conquer it (as their WAAAGH target.) But, during those 20 turns, you can find smaller warhosts that are slowly making their way to the warboss, and taking them out before they reach him weakens how strong the WAAGH is. That would give the player SOMETHING to engage with that's just a little bit more flavor to the crises. I know it's not groundbreaking or amazing, but we don't need a whole lot to improve on what we have.
I think the most fun I had during an endgame crisis was when I was playing as Belegar Ironhanmer, had fairly okay relations with the wood elves as I made my way to Karak Eight Peaks then right after I got Karak Eight Peaks back, the wood elf crisis triggers. That threw a fun wrench into things.
One thing that might make things more interesting is the ability for you to get bonuses if you're playing as one of the crisis races. Of course, that would probably require more work. One thought I had (this one was in response to Legend talking about Skaven) was the possibility of unlocking unique units. Something like the Empire State Troops. Each capital unlocks certain new units, and the pool size for each unit is equivalent to the number of major faction capitals you hold. So if you were Skaven and you had either previously confederated Clan Skryre, or you beat them as a Crisis, you could unlock some special Skryre units. In addition to your own faction's units. And you'd have a pool size of 2. Go deal with Throt and you'll get a pool size of 3, in addition to his special units. And so on. Maybe factions that are confederated should spawn a special rebel faction of that type (so you'd get a rebellious Skryre faction in that case). Heavily-themed armies, possibly with all the Skryre units, but they don't have Ikit Claw. I'm sure a mod could implement that. Though it would likely be a lot of work. And I didn't spend too long thinking about most of these ideas, so there's definitely more to be done. I just think there's something to the idea of "Dealing with other races upgrades specific characters. Dealing with your own race upgrades your entire faction." Or maybe some level of character and faction bonuses. I have no idea at this point. Though I find I prefer faction-wide effects (like special units or buffs) preferable as a reward. But I suspect that might be personal preference.
I my personal Fix for Endgames Crises is to make them more story Thematic, Like have an Empire Crises, where the empire Descends into civil war, each Elector count declaring Independence and return, being at war with each other and anyone who has Empire Territory. Elesepth and wolfhart will become Lords under Franz and any legendary Heroes will be granted to Franz. If you are an Order Faction you can choose to help Franz regain the Empire in which case you get a reward or a unique Cannon and Steam Tank. If you are Destruction or Chaos and defeat them all and gain all Empire territory you get the Title of the "New Emperor" a fun Trait, but also you get Karl's Hammer. Have a Grudge too far have Thorgrim if he is still around declares war on the High Elves, the player if they are an Order faction get an "Either you are with us or against us" Ultimatum, siding with the dwarves puts you at war with the High Elves and Wood Elves but allies you with the Dwarves, and siding against them puts you at war with all remaining Dwarves, but allies you with all the Order Elves. The Dwarves spawn some armies with units that are variations of units we faced before but with specific abiltiesto help fight elves. While the Elves also spawn armies that do a similar thing. Beating the Dwarves sees the Elves reward you with special heroes and increased winds of Magic. While defeating the Elves sees the Dwarves reward you with thunder Barges and boost to all artillery and warmachines. Have the Vampire Crises, see AI Faction Leaders being turned into Vampires and able to Raise Dead, getting "the Hunger", and being Vassalized by a Vampire factions while still able to recruit their normal faction stuff, on top of raising Vampire monsters. The factions don't all declare war on the player right away, instead they just attack previous allies, and try to turn other factions into vampires using a new unique hero. Killing the Major Vampire factions off ends the crises, and you find the "Heart of Nagash" or something which gives you a faction wide buff of some kind.
Turned it off years ago and never looked back. I really appreciate that atleast CA has given us the ability to modify settings or turn it off completely (which i have done exactly). This game already have extreme player bias of any strategy game i play and i don't need another random faction on steroids gun for my settlements which completely derails your campaign if you turn it on early. On the other hand my campaigns rarely last over 100 turns to just grind through all of the end game crisis over and over again. I mostly play on v.h / v.h
For me I wish we had a modified vortex race, this is available via mods in tw2. The original was silly, if you did not reach the end first you just fought a super easy battle and your opponent folded. Instead, make it important you get there first, and if you don't it just gets really much harder each battle as the leader keeps retrying harder and harder. Then the rest of the game makes itself as you try to get as many tablets as possible and defend rituals.
I think the problem is mostly with Total War’s game design. If you play the game proper, you have really strong armies at mid game and once you get to that point no other army or faction really poses a challenge to the player. So player gets fatigued cause the AI still isn’t the best at making good armies. CA just makes this artificial late game challenge, chaos invasion/realm divide/mongol invasion etc. to “challenge” the player. But it just feels artificial because the player bias is just turned to eleven without any real reward. I think CA needs to instead of making them “kill everyone” make like a multi-part quest chain to make more cinematic and even solve the problem of long campaigns. Like Vermintide: Defeat 5 skaven characters. Get reward. Defeat 3 skaven lords. Get reward. Hold Skavenblight for 5 turns. Culminates in a battle against the skaven, get a unique reward and all remaining skaven factions will be reduced to infighting.
Pretty much agree, definitely there must be some good reward at the end to even enable it. But I'd like to add: 1. There also should be some wider effect from the crises, such as the chaos one had in Warhammer 2, when Ai factions were more likely to make alliances and peace, this made the chaos invasion atleast look dangerous on paper. 2. Idealy player should be able to prevent endgame scenario from spawning by finnishing some objectiv and get some smaller reward for it, then beating the scenerio. This is also important if you don't armies spawning on already secured territory. 3. Scenerious should't be connected to playable factions or maybe should be connected only to some special miner ones, be more centralized, or have multiple rewards, if player is required to travel to multiple continents to finish it. 4. If it would remained connected to playable factions and even miner ones, it would be exactly better, if they would be getting stronger by time, insted of just having armies spawned once
I think they should bring back something similar to the vortex final battle, where you have to fight several different factions in one big battle Makes things a whole lot less repetitive and interesting, and forces you to actually think and fight smart against some of the best enemies those factions can offer Maybe an order tide final battle vs the entire chaos tide, or something like an actual battle of Nuln where several factions combine together to fight a combined threat in a massive siege / battle. Mixed factional unit armies are a whole lot more interesting and fun for a big “final battle”. Just imagine iron breakers fighting alongside waywatchers and stegadons, with Karl himself leading them all I know there’s some mods that offer that, but it would be really nice to be a proper base game feature
I was playing Reikland IM EMP campaign with the Wild Hunt one turned on, I was barely surviving when it happened and I didn't realize the entire Wood Elf faction turned hostile so I really wanted to delay it. The issue with End game crises is when you're a beginner I don't know how my campaigns will turn out, nothing is ever planned due to so many stuff happening in the game to micromanage that it becomes overwhelming, so I have no choice not to be ready for End game crisis's. The game needs a toggle on off option before the turn that it happens so that I am ready for the challenge.
I Feel like one way they could add some fun is allowing you to Join the End Game Crisis, Like Of course this is only active when you play a Faction that goes with an End Game Crisis, Like with Wood Elves, When it Triggers, You get big bonuses, Perhaps higher Income and you spawn with a few armies, Allied with Wood Elf Factions but are at war with EVERYONE. Then the Goals Change like Make sure your big landmark is safe while razing/sacking/occuping lots of settlements
Fall of the Samurai crisis felt the most organic to me. A natural end game instead of something being awkwardly insertes to challenge the player. I liked that.
One way that I think could make end game crisis more interesting is having the triggers be dependent on the state of the factions they belong to. Grudge too far starts to trigger when dwarf factions get wiped out. Once enough do a chain of events start to trigger in which the dwarf start to unite and gather troops to give a last ditch effort of protecting themselves. Then along the way there are quest battles (depending on faction) and or objectives one can do to either stop the crisis (maybe wipe out the main drawf factions before the timer runs out) or help it along (like crush a green skin army) For skaventide it could be if the main skaven factions are too strong and to stop skaventide you need to boot them out of the top 10 list of strength, or maybe kill one of the main factions so that the skaven would fall into infighting (this would affect you as a skaven player as well. So if the event fails you will get a negative relationship with other skaven) And so on and on.
Honestly, I agree. Here's a few things I would add to the discussion. Fundamentally, the strength of the total war series is its ability to provide the necessary tools for the player to build a narrative for their campaign and for the players to make their own story; total war is as much a roleplaying game as a strategy game. Endgame crises go against that by completely disrupting the narrative that the player has built over the course of the campaign, going against one of the greatest strengths of the franchise. Here's a few issues and fixes. Factions resurrect after being defeated. How many of you have abandoned a Karl Franz campaign when Vlad magically appeared with ~5 armies in Sylvania and you just said "screw it"? Improve this by having a toggle where players decide whether factions resurrect. Factions automatically meet you diplomatically. This can create weird scenarios, treaties, or declarations of war that have no cause to exist. It makes the campaign go global too quickly. Getting vision or diplomacy is usually an investment (scouting with hero, yuan bo faction trait, high elf tech). So why is it so gratuitous with the endgame crises? Improve this by removing meeting endgame factions. Factions automatically declare war on you. How many of you have built up your relations with the dwarves, traded settlements, made alliances, shared borders with them, only for them to betray you? Improve this by having a toggle where players decide whether there's an automatic war declaration but by having an increasing diplomatic penalty + unreliable trait, like in Warhammer 2 once you beat the WoC crisis. Factions get a huge power spike and completely imbalance the status quo. Improve this by gradually (early on in the campaign up until the time of the crises) providing bonuses to AI instead of giving all of it as a lump sum. Obviously those are all intentional design choices, but they go against the spirit of total war. CA needs to weave the endgame scenario into the player-built narrative, not disrupt it.
I feel like the crises should include curated quest battles in order to end them, like have an Order vs Chaos crisis where there are armies (friendly and hostile) all over the place and to stop it you have to complete a series of quest battles where you're rushing to save your allies and their settlements (LOTR style) then end it with an extremely difficult battle against 4 stacks alongside some of the allies you've saved.
If you could wipe out a faction or race entirely, thus preventing them from spawning, I'd be fine with that - it would add strategic planning to campaigns, for example destroying WE
So there is a mod that kinda fills alot of your gripes about endgame crisis, Chaos invasion mod. It gives norsca, beastmen and chaos warriors engame crisis armies, brings the rifts from the storyline in (nothing spawns from them but you can close them and get items and/or buffs to the army that closes it) and once you beat all of a faction you get one big battle, like if you beat all the beastman factions you get an event fighting all the beastman armies (you can auto it and its almost always a decisive victory) and you get like 4 sets of 3 unique items you can only get from beating them. Personally I like the grind of the endgame crisis so when I play this mod I buff that shit all the way up so there's like 10 armies for each faction. I had Boris and Katarine holding the line into Kislev against 30+ endgame armies, but I get that it's not for everyone
I liked the idea where the end game crisis is an entity not yet on the map. like chaos invasion in previous games. Someone once suggested fish people invasion.
They just need to feel different. Take the Chaos Dwarves for example. In WH2 the Chaos Dwarf mod had a late game event like the original chaos invasion where at the edge of the map you would have at first several armies of greenskin slaves and some smaller chaos dwarf warriors spawn as a "Scouting" party. Then later the armies would get more and more powerful. Imagine if for the Chaos Dwarves the endgame crisis gave them a small buff to start with. It is called the Will of Hashut so maybe it give priority to consolidating provinces and growing settlements at a fast rate rather than expanding. Then they get small buffs to their spell casters, Spell Mastery and the such while recruiting more Demonic units. As the Crisis becomes more and more serious they begin recruiting more and more powerful units. Perhaps gaining upkeep reduction on some mid-low tier units to so that they keep the armies varied. Eventually they start on the Warpath towards Cathay as they did in lore. Then they begin making smaller Artillery stacks that help other Chaos Armies siege down the cities of the Empire. That would make it feel like a crisis you need to squash, and the other Scenarios could follow a similar path. In the Vermintide the Skaven mostly retreat to their strongholds slowly spreading the Undercity as they prepare to burst under some of the key cities across the world and open up a multifront war. The Vampires all begin gunning for the Books of Nagash and Marching on Cathay/Empire lands. The cool thing is that buffs associated here could then also apply to the player. If you the player are a Chaos Dwarf and that Crisis fires then you could be the Crisis and become the ultimate big bad.
I agree with you. They should make those endgame crisis more interesting with objectives and rewards and unique things happening like the drill for the will of hashut. That would make playing through them less annoying and more fun.
I think it's not just about the carrot. Hell even if there was one, my campaigns are usually way over when the endgame crisis shows up. Yes you could do them earlier, but unless that's a huge carrot, it'll still be more of an annoyance than fun. What I'd personally wish for is for them to have carrots (yes plural) and NOT be endgame crisis. It should have several stages ramping up to something akin to the endgame crisis. That way you constantly have to engage with it over the course of a campaign. They could drop unique items or upgrades depending on the stage and faction your fighting. Like vampire counts could give immunity to vampire attrition, a healing blade, etc. I think there's quite a bit of potential there to make them fun and interesting to spice up campaigns (not just be one annoying slog at some point, which more often than not I can't be bothered with, even if there was a reward).
I like your idea of unique items or effects. Additionally, something that I’ve thought about previously would be unique traits for Lords that fight and beat End Game armies, something that can be saved for the Lord to be used in another campaign. I’m just spitballing but maybe beating an End Game dwarf army would grant that Lord increased income from a special trait. Beating vampires End Game armies could maybe grant increased HP and a sort of blood chalice/healing potion. Beating GS End Game armies maybe gives physical resistance, WE maybe grants ambush defence chance and missile resistance. I really like the idea of legacy lords that get traits that can be saved.
Agreed about the complete lack of anything interesting for endgame crisis. Just a spam of stack to roll your eyes at and then tackle slowly (or quickly with lightning strike, but I disable that with mods). A great thing would be for it to start like at turn 25, with sites you need to investigate with heroes. Too many, too spread out for them to all be dealt with, but you _can_ deal with the ones you want to stop now. Sending a hero makes a small army pop up (like the forest invasions). Defeating the small army finishes the site. Not defeating it (or not engaging with the hero phase) means it moves on to phase 2. Phase 2 is a proper marker event, with a significant army now, and cults/undercities spawning in regions around it. Deal with all of them, that site is finished. Phase 3 is proper emergence of the threat. One big stack shows up with weaker supporting stacks (like one chosen/monster stacks, with 2-3 marauder stacks, or one weapons teams or monster stack, with 3-5 stacks of slaves). A few cultist type heroes also show up, to block/assault armies, spread plague, destroy walls, etc. Defeating all armies also wipes the associated heroes, which can also be killed normally. If not all sites are dealt with at phase 3, phase 4 will spawn a whole bunch of high tier stacks like now, to essentially punish the player, but in one of the sites (you don't know which), not all over the place, in a similar way to WH2, representing the enemies having fully organized into a horde ready to take on the world. Clearing sites gives a province effect like Yuan Bo's, plus a special trait to all characters involved, plus one random thematic item. AI needs to be able to engage with the system too, but poorly. Intrinsic rewards are OK, but then the task needs to be fun. Grinding stacks isn't fun. They, at least, need to be themed armies instead of samey balanced ones. Like monsters for Moulder, tech for Ikit, plague and swarms for Pestilens, etc. The idea of a "crowning item" is pretty good though. I actually like the race for the nemesis crown as a possible crisis. You hunt for it, fight for it, if there were a few of these or buff bundles spawning in endgame, held by doomstacks. Hell, give then to a variety of chaos factions (WoC and Daemons rampaging, beastmen raiding for forests, and skaven with undercities everywhere). Speaking of grind: Currently playing a WE Orion campaign. Had an absolute blast at the beginning, defending my tree, doing the confederation missions, helping Bretonnia and the western empire with their enemies and making friends. Great. Then went over to Ulthuan where it was a bit of a grind with the DE, but still pretty good to do the waywatcher/shade duels. Then my first forest hit 100 health, I defended it, and realized how long it's going to take for a Long Victory. 8 turns of waiting for every forest, gotta do it one by one, for 8 forest. So essentially 40ish great turns and 64!! Turns of boredom waiting for the timer.
Since you brought Stellaris into the conversation, Legend: In Stellaris you also get specific Technologies from Said End Game Crisis from their debrief. So, you Destroy a small portion of them and get their tech. which also gives you in-sight on how you can better counter them, DURING said Crisis.
My problem with endgame crisis in Warhammer 3 is that by the time they spawn the campaign is basically over, all the challenge in the campaign happens mostly in the early game, where you are struggling with economy and your various neighbors. By turn 100-200, I'm in a comfortable enough spot where as long as I don't just afk and mash end turn for 30 turns I can keep expanding and conquering without any issue, so something to mix up the power balance is definitely good to ramp up the difficulty again to match where you end up; however, having mass armies spawn all over my provinces feels extremely unsatisfying and then I need to turn all my armies around and chase down a bunch of armies for no territory gain or to reclaim territory I already own. As several people have stated in the comments, some long spanning quest that results in an end game scenario would be far more satisfying as long as there are tangible benefits for engaging with it and it doesn't punish me for having a successful campaign with a large empire (dwarves end game when you own world's edge mountains is hell). Stellaris relics are a really nice boon to have, and having something similar in Warhammer 3 would be awesome, add some unique building chains based on crisis, interesting legendary items for the quest stages, possibly unique rites related to it, there's plenty of ways to integrate the systems they already have into an end game scenario to make it more impactful and satisfying than infinite hordes of 20 stacks
Endgame crises is also a way to "finish your campaign" especially in regards to achievements, in regards to the usual long campaign objectives. For exemple, winning with high elves requires to kill all dark elves... And that would means as Teclis to conquer nearly the whole map because you're not fighting dark elves at all, and going to cathay just to kill Lokir ? Usually I just turn on them if they are close and I have a shitty long compaign objectives. And I just turn on the black pyramid usually since it's the easiest.
Usually don’t play with it on I agree. Probably would with a reward at the end. To be honest even the small cut scene from Warhammer 2 got me excited like “ oh shit chaos is coming”. Would be cool to have something a bit more on that end too.
Grinding for grinding sake it's not fun. I would love to see missions or a quest that has some lore background during the End Times or Storm of chaos. I know... it's a longshot. Great video Legend
There is one scenario where I did enjoy Ultimate Endgame. Thats when I was playing as Archaon. Just for the thematic feel of basically a version of everyone trying to stop the End Times. And Archaon currently has such a variety of units to fight with and so many enemies to defeat and get souls.
6:35 - actually it appears whatever undead faction held last the black piramid. I had once this crisis with Vampire Counts. I don't know if the pirates would also work but it seems to be possible.
You should also be able to customise each endgame crisis. I may want to have a small crisis of Greenskins in the early/ mid game and then a stronger mid game crisis of vampires and finally an endgame of dwarfs kicking ass. I don't want all of them to spawn at the same time. This system could be so much fun with the right amount of work dedicated to it...
Hey Legend, regarding the Greenskins Ok you can switch them off before it starts, but if you don't, it is EXTREMELY grindy. Easily on par with the Dwarves in my opinion! Also, the problem I see is that I use the endgame scenarios to add difficulty to the late game, but I find it really hard to set it up correctly, because factions often weaken or kill each other before I even get there - or else it gets far too hard to overcome
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4:04 if disclaimers don't apply to you
Thank you legend 👏
-insert Admiral Akbar meme-
KEK
xD
5:05 i don't know why but turning the battle difficulty from very hard to easy does not change my auto resolve result in any way
the idea of end game crisis is in my opinion is good, the issue is in HOW they implemented it. It's just a grindfest mass-spawn or arguably bad army. It's not interesting, it's not fun to go against, it's nonsensical when a +400 friendly faction just declares war on you because it was designed as your crisis ending.
They should do something like a High Elf or Lizardmen crisis, where it's a few extremely strong armies led by LLs that, if destroyed, stay dead and give faction bonuses for every doomstack defeated. Furthermore if you have good relations with the High Elves or Lizardmen you can choose to side with them against the rest of the world, but miss out on the faction bonuses by doing so.
It's pretty "great" when you put random crisis, play as a dwarf faction and everyone who you confederated comes back, is hostile, and immediately wrecks your whole territory.
10/10 immersion
Stellaris actually has a much deeper, and more content rich Crisis system than you described.
For one, there are mid-game crisis's. One big example is that the Maurader (Pirate) factions that you can pay to raid you rivals, can be unied under a Khan in the midgame.
The Endgame Crisis's, expanded on what you mentioned:
Prytorean Scourge: I've personally never seen them so i cant honestly input much here, but i believe they show up if too many civilisations have specialised in to bio-engineering, species modification and such.
The Contigency: An Ancient AI that, if you let them, seduces your Synths over to their side. Interesting, you can get another "Crisis" Faction, the Cybrex, to spawn as enemies to the Contingency, under certain conditions. So you can basically watch a benevolent crisis fight a malevolent crisis in some cases.
The Voidborn(?): Beings from another dimension. Spawn if too many empires have psionics as their focus. Can only be defeated by destorying dimensional anchors and over time, more factions of them spawn and there is some in-fighting between them, competing for "hunting grounds".
There is also one other Crisis that was added in a recent DLC, but i cant comment on that as i dont have that DLC. I do recall some people mentioning that it has some diplomacy aspects, basically letting you join her.
Beating a crisis, as in, being the one to make the killing blow, will reward you with a Relic which gives factionwide passive effects, and usually interesting mechanics by activating the relic on a long cooldown, and by spending influence.
ALSO - In the nemesis expansion, and later in the Machine age expansion, they allow you TO BECOME THE CRISIS, in two very different ways, that have different gameplay paths and different mechanics.
Not to mention the Galactic council, and how a custodian, or even a galactic emperor can be voted in, to defend the galaxy against the Crisis, allowing several unique assets available to them for that purpose.
The thing I'll never get: Why don't they use the realms of chaos to make an actually good, quest and lore-heavy end game crisis about the chaos invasion?
Instead of all those "instantly spawn a million doom stacks somewhere" grind scenarios, where only Black Pyramid (depending on your start location) and Chaos Dwarfs are somewhat ok.
Sure, RoC the campaign sucks, but you could definitely rework those assets into something good.
Definitely, it's not like we're expecting them to implement some revolutionary tech... the answers are already in the game files. I think a lot of us assumed that there was going to be some end-times threat coming from the warp when we imagined TWW3 since the whole plot of TWW2 was around the Vortex
It would be cool if every few turns Demon armies spawn and you had to invade the realms and close something to prevent that faction's demons.
This, it's already the final installment, why not let people just come into the warp and have some avenger style epic final battle that doesn't end as idiotically as the endtime novel? Such a waste.
So there is a mod that kinda does this, Chaos invasion mod, it adds in the campaign endgame crisis. There's two phases:
Phase 1: all norsca factions and beastman factions get endgame crisis armies
10 turns later Phase 2: All chaos warrior factions spawn endgame armies and rifts open up (nothing spawns from the rifts but you can traverse them and close them getting buffs if you close them)
There's another version you can do to this that add all the demon factions as well, this also adds in the chaos dwarves which realy caught me off guard my first time doing this. I was playing kislev and I was off in the chaos wastes killing norsca and the chaos dwarves on the other side of the mountain drops 10 armies and I have nothign back there to fight them off.
I think the real end game crisis should be the End times, but I dont think we will see that until Nagash is introduced.
My opinion before the video starts:
1. Lightning Strike makes them trivial.
2. Empire gets screwed pretty badly in ultimate mode since they are sounded by Dwarves, Vampires, and Wood Elves
3. You can not prevent them by taking out factions that becomes endgame crisis. In fact the opposite, they re-emerge harder than skaven.
The fact that factions just get resurrected through the endgame crises has always been the most confusing part. If they just get disabled if I'm able to wipe the race out, it'd have a way better "beat the clock" vibe instead of "tough luck, bud, your mountains are now dwarf again."
Weirdly, Greenskins stay dead unlike the other crises
@@geoffreyguestion2843at least with Dwarfs orSkaven its somewhat lore friendlier with the deeps where they crawl out again... 😅
@geoffreyguestion2843 "somehow Palpatine has returned... and he is backed by the first order" xD
YES
CA should bring back Chaos invasion endgame crisis, when it was really difficult, Empire was trully shield of the Old World.
With all of the new chaos stuff it could really be the ultimate crisis. Just a big alliance of all the chaos factions, led by archaon.
Was literally feeling a Chaos Endgame Crisis today and surprised that it wasn't there like in WH2
Need to spread it out a bit more than they did in 2, but yeah, good system for TW.
it was not difficult, chaos always destroy malekith and if player dont touch empire, empire always destroy chaos ez.
@@sgt.animal.8205 that was the 2nd or 3rd iteration of the invasion, and the worst, when Dark Elves were the only counter to the order tide and then they had the chaos invasion spawn on their back line by all their tier 5 cities it was ridiculous. I preferred the original iteration where they invaded via the chaos wastes and also sent a large naval force to the badlands and lustria.
I hold steadfast on the fact that Endgame Crisis should be larger growing scenarios, like quests, with multiple stages, which snowball over time, which are connected to some lore events.
Right now they really are just... boring and tedious and I have no love for them.
Not even cause I can't beat em, they're not that hard. I just feel annoyance whenever they happen.
And of course, they shouldn't have absurd anti-player bias. That part just makes it feel silly.
I know it's not really possible with 100 legendary lords but I would love instead of just campaign victories you got like a unique sequence of quest dilemmas for every lord, with decisions and choices in it that could influence your whole campaign.
I know the alternate win conditions mod kind of takes care of this and it is a must-have mod for me but it doesn't do it quite far enough in my opinion.
Both of these comments would MASSIVELY improve the quality of the game, well worth the effort
@@TheLordofMetroids Doesnt take much for CA to get some unique rewards patched into the game for each Lord, provided they can come up with the ideas.
Voice acting and quest battles would take more time, but I doubt this sort of thing would.
To be fair, you expect a Total War to not have player bias….
An endgame crisis mechanic was already solved years ago, by the very game that popularised it - *Stellaris.* And I'm sure that's partly down to the game also having a fun midgame crisis to mix up the game, but it really is amazingly well implemented there. So it's just baffling to see so many games copy the idea and end up with much poorer imitations by comparison.
That being said, the endgame crisis in TWW3 being called "too difficult" is categorically not the issue, since there's just as many players who say the game is way too easy overall.
I liked the attila endgame crisis.
Yeah, like the only reason to really utilise most of the game is due to the end game crisis, it is why you mess with the galactic community, it is why you fight the fallen empires, it is why you build a massive economy.
The crisis are the end game and they aren't just a tedious war thing, like you can do shit to affect them and make them weaker and you can do things to specialise against them.
Its a good system with a build up period, unique mecganics and rewards and ALSO has cool music and sound stuff (there are unique background noises and musical notes that get stronger the better the crisis does)
Like it's a good system, can be customised and randomised, can be very much customised and isn't a slog fest.
It feels amazing to play them the first time especially, but it doesn't feel terrible or annoying after 1000+ hrs.
And with a difficulty modifier that goes up to 25x, it can be as hard as the vast majority of players will ever need.
I think crusader kings 2 had the endgame crissis first. That game actually had multiple crisis. It had the Seljuk invasion as a early game crisis for people in the middle east, it had the mongol invasion for the late game. And the endgame crisis was the Aztecs showing up.
There use to be a mod called dynamic disasters that was basically endgame crisis, but every race would have it and it was staggered out overtime. Instead of making it even more grindy it felt way better because it wasn't just a flash in time. It completely revamped the late game.
ooo i might have to check that out, personally im using chaos invasion mod but dynamic disasters sound interesting
@@H4zardWarningMultiple complaints that the most recent update broke dynamic disasters
before watching the video: agreed, I always turn it off
Same
I think that since i started playing wh3 i only turned it on once, never again.
Same here
I always leave it on "on long campaign completion" for if I want to play on after the end of the campaign, which I usually don't
ditto
I suspect that CA hasn't forgotten about end game crisises, it's just that improving them or adding more is way, waaayyyy back on the burner. If I were to make an ambitious and optimistic guess, I'd say that they intend to expand on them greatly with the rumoured End Times DLC they're looking to finish the series off with.
They are undeniably awful in their current iteration though. More than anything they expose the inadequacy of the AI: I've never seen crisis factions act in anything like a coherent manner, without mods anyway. They tend to just clump up around particular settlements and then refuse to do anything. How I wish they'd work on the strategic AI.
I was looking for this answer, I don't own tww3 and today I learn there is no chaos endgame crisis like on tww2... How strange being this the third game centered around chaos gods and factions... It's obvious they are going to revamp them completely with that endtimes DLC. This to me looks like a beta feature to try out, disable or turn it on, however you like, but it screams beta test feature as hell, look at that kraka drak legacy faction spawn that was clearly forgotten...
I think CA need to just learn from Stellaris for the endgame crisis, add more story event, quest battle and design some kind of tier 6 7 8 monster as bosses.
I would love to see the current endgame crisis be moved down to become mid-game crisis and have the end time order vs chaos as the true endgame crisis.
In general CA should implement the campaign map mechanics from AOW/Stellaris. It’s a shame because I feel like paradox games moment to moment and real time gameplay is so so boring but the campaign mechanics and graphics are amazing. And it’s the complete opposite for TW. If total war could just improve the campaign side of things they’d nail it.
My problems with these end game crisis: you don't control when/where they happen, and it's just a grind. CA could re-use the chaos realms they have on the RoC campaign and let the player trigger a reverse invasion when he wants to. Bringing the fight to the chaos gods would be a great final push for when you are steam rolling the mortal realms, and test the metal of your end game stacks. It could even be something unwinnable, where you try to go as far as you can.
How is there no Chaos endgame?
I'd wager they are crafting a huge rework for endgame events and the chaos end times will be the main focus. It'll probbaly come with the endtime DLC they keep saying is in the works, maybe next year maybe 2-3 years.
Just give us the Chaos endgame crisis. Nothing more. Nothing less. Just give us a true canon apocalypse.
Yeah i like the Chaos Dwarf one because it has atleast a teleport to get through and you have a decent goal , I mean if you are f.e Dark elves you cannot reach most of the endgame crisis anyway.
Maybe instead of having to fight a million battles, there could be a big epic battle after you did some damage to the crisis and you can farm the leaders trait points and get a some global bonuses (f.e if you defeat greens skins you get good relation to dwarfs/ Melee buffs to ur units and a shit ton of gold)
An easy way of getting the traits of the enemy lords would be a great incentive indeed, especially given how powerful some can be. The issue of a big battle is that it takes a bit more work to implement than just adding items I'd say
End game crisis feels like an hotfix for the lack of difficulty... But a bad one. And the real fix aint comming
On another note, 'not a matter of challenge but a matter of grind' is exactly how I look at campaign difficulty. I play campaigns anywhere from normal to very hard based on how much of a pain in the ass do I want to have when playing this campaign. I'm literally looking at it as reducing frustration rather than maximizing fun.
I always play with the crisis turned off. But as someone whose favourtie race are the high elves, you got me hooked instantly when you said about the original Phoenix Crown. I wouldn't even care what bonuses it gave, I'd play with the dwarven crisis turned on in every high elves campaign (and dark elves too, I guess).
I nearly always play ultimate crisis. But sometimes i deactivate the Dwarfs, because they are already as AI Faction like an endgame faction.
I would like if they change some mechanics too.
1. Dont make just Neighbors and the Player to enemies, if the Crisis begins... make everyone an enemy to the crisis faction (with diplomacy on, if activated)
2. Split the spawning points to more fairness. Right now, ultimate crisis as Empire Player (Elsbeth, Karl Franz) ist just an GG. Alone the dwarfs factions would wipe you out. Add Vampires and Woodelves+Skaven to it... lol. While that, in entire Cathay and Soutwest(Lizardmen Location) its only 1 Skaven faction as crisis for the entire region
3. Like Legend already said, add more mechanics like the teleport system of chaos dwarves to the game. Would be more fun
The problem with everyone going to war with them, is you get the order tide problem from WH2, where everyone else on the map gets like +60 relations and forms alliances.
I have a mod installed to address your first point. Said mod makes the crisis factions declare war on everybody else except fellow race crisis factions (e.g. crisis Grimgor will not be at war with crisis Skarsnik, etc.).
In my last campaign though, I noticed that the Skaven crisis factions were fighting each other. I was using the Old World map mod and I noticed that the Brettonian lands basically became a thunderdome where Skryre was fighting Eshin plus both were brawling with Grom the Paunch as well. That was pretty hilarious to see. Not sure if the mod made the Skaven vs Skaven on purpose but on the other hand, it's kinda lore friendly that they backstab each other anyway. haha
I completely agree, whenever I turn on end game crisis it usually ends up being more of a timer for my campaign because I never want to deal with it when it emerges
They should make "Endgame Crisis" a campaign-arching scenario with quests, decisions and scenarios along the way, not just dumping a bunch of stacks at a specific turn. The one thing TW:WH3 seriously needs is a campaign map overhaul with events and quests similar to Age of Wonders 4.
One minor vampire faction comes back as endgame crisis - Mousillon
Also, killing krak a drak is still a victory condition for Astragoth
I always put the End Time Crisis on 200, Ultimate Crisis mode.. I always regret it but the sheer level of terror cannot be matched and the reaction of my friends when 20 armies of dwarves shows up on their doorstep is hilarious.
It is worth it because mostly player has won campaign already so doesn't matter that much what happens.
I feel like they should add a quest battle or something for each end game crisis and make it a victory condition. It would change how people look at it, instead of being a random roadblock it should be what the end goal
Imagine if they brought the RoC in, but of course as a toggle-based Endgame Crisis. They already have a bunch of rewards from the RoC campaign (i.e. unique weapons and items, the entire Realm of Slaanesh, etc.). I think it would really bring in some variety for late stage campaigns and make for a thrilling finish to the game. The main problem with RoC was that you could never get your foothold set before the portals appeared. But if they only appeared once you were big enough (like 150 turns or when you hit Long Victory) then it would be a welcome challenge that would add variety! I also think it would be fun for multiplayer campaigns, both co-op and Head to Head.
I don't give a damn what people say:
the WH2 vortex campaign was a very cool idea to push against endgame fatigue.
Needs some work but I would like to see an universal goal campaign again.
I dont care, I didnt like it.
@@Anglo-Brit you identify as Anglo Brit...your argument is invalid.
WH 2 was much better in many things, at least I didn't feel like every other faction is insignificant cuz there are so many of them now and they are so "different"
@@glara-i4s yeah they shoudlve reintroduced different leaders for factions and the map is to small for it rn
Yeah, I bought W3 on a sale but I'm still on W2, simply because Vortex is the best campaign in the trilogy, with some annoyances modded out and more challenge modded in of course.
33:49 timestamp for people with low attention span 👍
😂😂 come on fam
thanks
Literally the end of the video XD nice. Was wondering what timestamps were thrown into the video
You got me.. Well done..
I have almost 5000 hours into Stellaris as well, and I spent a fair few hours trying to figure out what the meta of Crises was in that game. I think at its core, it's an interesting game design conceit for empire building type games. The motivation seems to come from an anti-snowball perspective, in that reasonable difficulty curves for the early game that allow for a range of successful play quality rather than "Only one line can win," will *inevitably* fall to player snowballing. Players are always going to find ways to optimize that a generalized AI won't be able to match, and crises can be a good way to "round two!" with a stronger enemy that would not be a good idea to have in the game at the very start because of how powerful they have to be.
In order to provide challenge for the player to overcome, the "regular empires" in Stellaris normally aren't how that is done. The AI is MUCH better than it was, but it still needs absurd cheats to be competitive with humans. With ACOT, a mod that gives the player some insane tools, you can still *lose* the game if you tune the difficulty settings correctly, I have lost the tier 7 start before because of a crisis that spawned with more strength than I was ready for at that time. This was a really impactful lesson to me, that it's not the power of the player tools, or the size of the challenge, it's that the two are matched up. The proper tools to meet the challenges you face, not too strong, not too weak.
The conclusion I came to was that such systems have to be more reactive, and *punish the player for success* but not in a way that feels bad. Empire Size in Stellaris is a great example of how to punish a player for success, in that your empire is going to get bigger over time, you can't do anything about that. But it's a facet of the game to manage; You can choose how you want to spend your size expansions, you can choose whether to play tall or wide, you can mitigate those penalties, all in all it's supply lines *but it feels good* like it's a mechanic I can optimize over.
Reacting to the player's progress without spawning roadblocks is also tough, like realm divide. "Congratz you crossed a line in the sand and now you have to deal with a crisis particularly tuned to your progress" can go very well, or very poorly. It shouldn't feel like getting specifically targeted, IE anti-player bias, and triggers should be clear, turns is a very bad mechanic and it should be more reactive to the player rather than "Can you make it to the place you need to be by X turn." It's so hard to judge that time without a lot of experience, by the time you can tune the difficulty correctly, 1) You're better now and that's not the right difficulty, and 2) You're probably almost done with the game anyhow. Crises should have their own goals and motivations, empires should too, and "Against the player" as a reason should be completely verboten. That makes this so hard; It's exactly what they're doing, they just can't do it or it feels bad. Spawning a crisis that particularly hunts only the player would be iffy at best, but if the Stellaris Khan spawns in your backyard and you're the juiciest target, it's very easy to say "well yeah that was the correct strategic decision" and the loss feels OK, the loss feels like my fault and not a poorly designed game.
I liked the original Chaos invasion mechanic the best, the downside of it was they'd ignore a lot of people to beeline to the player which didn't feel thematic. When they changed the chaos invasion in mid Warhammer 2 to pretty much wipe out the Dark Elves and leave the order tide intact and unopposed it was completely terrible. The current "end game crisis" feature is only saved by the fact you can trigger it on "Long Term Campaign Victory" if you care about achievements (you cannot get faction win achievements if end game crisis is turned off). It's as usual something that pretty much only affects players which again doesn't fit any kind of theme or lore.
I don't think a reward would really help for me. To me, If you beat the endgame crisis, you've basically won the campaign. Unless I have a huge amount of free time and want to go for a world conquest or something, it's just not gonna matter.
Making them more unique/interesting could definitely help, but even for the better ones, I just can't be bothered fighting 20 of basically the same army. They would have to really change it up a lot, and I'm not sure it's really worth the effort/resources for CA
yeah they are called ENDGAME
they are basically the final boss of the campaign
B-but Legend! The real carrot is the sense of pride and accomplishment!
Yeah, it definitely has the potential for ruining a campaign. Was recently doing a Nagarythe campaign where I was allied with Herald of Twilight and they still turned on me during the endgame crisis - which wasn't the big deal. The big deal happened about 20ish turns later, where all of the other WE factions started sailing to my provinces with well over 20 full stacks of endgame armies. To add to this, all of my other elf allies would not lend a finger and I would actually lose rep with them defending myself. A similar thing happened in my Tamurkhan campaign where the dwarf crisis just steamrolled any potential allies and I'm having to fight Malakai, Belegar and Grombrindal's massive armies where all three factions are top 5 in campaign power. Also seems really random at times, like spawning when they shouldn't or not spawning where they should. There are a few instances where it can actually make it easier to get your completion achievement than a long victory, but that's only really true if you're lucky enough to face the super easy Chaos dwarf endgame crisis. The Chaos Army crisis in WH2 was much better in comparison
I was playing as Zhao Ming and got the Vampire Crisis. Dealing with Ghorst was easy enough but I got quite worried when I saw a dozen armies from Manfred going straight to the Dragon Isles and my armies were fighting against Grimgor in the North. It turned out to be a lot easier as Manfred had taken 90% casualties from untainted, no region and deep sea attrition.
The AI focusing on the player to the exclusion of everything makes it not worth playing.
@maxpower3990 exactly, the anti player bias is stupid. Grombrindal literally walked his ass across two continents to attack me in the old world
I feel another reason roc failed is that the map feels very small even if it isnt because everything is divided up aggressively by difficult to pass terrain. If you're a demon faction you get all of the chaos wastes and then you have to slog through a bunch of uncomfortable terrain or the sea to get to norsca. Or if you're cathay you are entirely blocked off by mountains and ogres on all sides except one which is unhabitable land that causes attrition when you try to move through it. It's so closed up compared to tww2 where everything is just kind of open and you can go pretty much anywhere from turn 1.
I'd love to see 2-3 thematic, well paced endgame crises. A Chaos Invasion, an Ordertide, and maybe a couple others. Let the crises be based on map situations, and the crisis factions build up strength as they unify the world against you
What I would love, is for the end game crisis to be a steady build up type system that is going to snowball into a great tide if left alone for too long. Something like for instance the dwarf crisis, it should cause this…
- Remaining dwarf factions no longer suffer upkeep penalties
- Remaining dwarf factions global recruitment reduced to 1 turn
- Remaining dwarf factions global recruitment increased to max 30 slots
- Remaining dwarf faction tech tree fully researched
- Remaining dwarf faction’s settlement garrisons increased significantly
- remaining dwarf factions granted new army abilities
- remaining dwarf factions no longer suffer attrition
- Remaining dwarf faction’s growth increased significantly
- One of the remaining dwarf faction’s are granted a unique Lord wielding powerful unique items that leads an army of Grudge Settler units
Upon completion of the crisis, the unique Lord from that faction and his items are added to players recruitment pool as well as the ability for that lord only to train dwarven grudge settler units into his army.
I would definitely do it in order to get access to that lord and his powerful items
Honestly this is one of those systems where the developers could learn from the mods that expanded upon them.
I do know that there is one mod that overhauls the entire endgame crisis system and its great because you can tweak a lot of settings, like making it so that its only major factions, but they spawn more armies. This helps in some cases where for example, you're playing as cathay and there is a minor orc faction right smack bang in the middle of cathay (for some reason).
It also adds MID GAME CRISIS situations - As i recall, they are focused generally on naval raids and invasions, so one of them for example is cathay sending a massive navy to the new world from the west edge of the map.
Another feature is crisis situations that trigger every so many turns (Again, all of these things are tweakable in the mod config menu in-game), for example one of them is norscan raids that send raiding fleets to certain locations every so often. Another one, which i think is quite interesting, is Bretonnian Crusades, where a faction will be randomly rolled to be its target, and Bretonnia will then send a crusade against that faction until they are defeated or a timer runs out and they return home.
I use it because it adds those extra interesting systems AND because it lets me tweak the settings, even the base game crisis, to take out some annoyances i have with it as mentioned before.
Would love to see something similar in the basegame.
10:48 the gang. Mustacheguy, beardyboi, leafear, aunty and baldy!
My sugestion for endgame crisis is that they should work something similar to the way Three Kingdoms endgame situation worked: you have a coalition of enemies that actively cooperate to attack a coalition of allies. In Warhammer, this could work with escenarios such as Chaos invasion, in which an alliance of WoC, Norska, the different monogod factions, beastmen and Chaos dwarves target another alliance of HE, Empire, Cathay, Kislev, Bretonia and Dwarves.
During the escenario random war objectives appear for each alliance, so that each alliance must attack and defend certain objectives with a timer, each of them granting rewards (permanent bonifications and items). The war objectives after these timers end would grant points to the endgame scenario score for each alliance and, after a certain number of rounds or after reaching a certain threshold, one of the alliances is considered victor and receives heafty rewards.
Permanent debuffs would also apply for an alliance if a certain number of factions from that alliance are destroyed; and also support events similar to the Reikland ones randomly appear allowing you to get involved in battles to protect frontier settlements from other allies, these would provide you units from the supported faction in a recruitment pool you could use from that moment on.
Other endgame scenarios I can think of are: undead factions (VC, Vampirates and TK) vs order factions (Empire, Dwarves, HE, Kislev, Cathay, Bretonnia) vs evil non-chaotic factions (skaven, GS, DE), with a worldwide scenario and three big alliances. Another possibility could be nature defenders (WE, Lizardmen and HE) vs order industrialists (Empire and dwarves) vs evil industrialists (DE and Chaos dwarves).
I would say they should do what they did for the total warhammer 2 vortex campaign. Have an "end game" difficult battle that you have to fight. Except instead of 1 battle, have it a chain quest of multiple battles and have a reward for completing each one, and you can do at any time.
Best way to increase the Challenge in a less grindy way is:
choose or opponent(s)
let them get an early crisis with minimum strength
(optional: still enable diplomacy if you are too close to them and still fear to get overwhelmed, tho keep in mind not to end up making them your allies, cuz then it is just pointless)
what happens is the AI will get just 1-2 extra armies as a good challenge BUT they will have all Tech for the long run making it basically the Legendary+ Way of playing
For me, the main problem is that I forget to configure it.
I don't want to fight good guys, if endgame crisis happens, I don't to see my fellow order factions go to war agains me.
Same. I like the endgame crisis, but I have to make sure to switch off the dwarfs if I’m playing an order faction.
I save it for when I play ogres.
The only time I enjoyed fighting the endgame was with skarbrand. Defeating literal dozens of armies in one turn is hell of a power trip
Edit:
A similar mechanic that absolutely sucks ass is the rogue armies. No reward, no way to prepare, no nothing. I was thinking about it recently, and I thought that these mechanics can maybe be merged in a way.
Say, a warning appears "hey player, this region has fallen into the influence of %entity%, in 5 turns the %entity% is going to slap you on your cheeks here". Then a buffed up rogue army appears, a couple of armies instead of one, give some actual reward - probably a temporary faction-wide effect.
Maybe offer an option to fight a specific quest battle with your faction leader (with the ability to teleport!!!) instead of building a new force. Give a lesser reward for that.
Would definitely give some flavor to random bullshit spawning in the middle of nowhere and ravaging your lands.
I did a Skarbrand run and got the Dwarf crisis. I will admit that that was really fun but only because of the mechanics of Khorne. Wouldn't work with anyone else.
Thanks for the video! And I agree these scenarios lack proper motivation. I let one happen once and it immediately de-railed my campaign. Without some kind of carrot, I just found it annoying and loaded up another campaign with the setting turned off. 33:20 Up to you whether you make more or not. I hope they are beneficial to the channel regardless of what the redditors do.
My first experience with the endgame crisis was a Wild Hunt, I thought the text suggested that the normally isolationist wood elves were just going to become extremely aggressive and start trying to conquer, maybe with some bonuses to income or recruitment like some fun random event. Instead it was pure frustration as wood elf armies would underway towards my empire, I was Cathay playing a chill game, took over the Chaos Dwarf area and had armies built to take out armour since my main enemies I was planning to strike were Chaos, Dwarfs, and Lizardmen (Domination Campaign). This left me chasing down their countless infinitely respawning armies as they ran around using the underway in large regions with many mountains, and if I caught them now I have to deal with wood elf units as pre-DLC Cathay with armies not built for fast skirmish units. I still won, but I was mentally exhausted and annoyed by how long it took.
I have some ideas about endgame crisis:
1. Tomb Kings. Triggers if Black Pyramid is not under player's control. Black Pyramid starts spawning new armies every 5-10 turns, which are aggressive and try to conquer more territories. To beat: conquer Black Pyramid. Reward: for other Tomb King factions and Volkmar - get all books of Naggash immediately, for other factions - campaign buff.
2. Beardtide. Goal: a set of two cities like in Thorek campaign, conquering each set gives a different reward. Can be gold, unique items, campaign buffs or units (thunderbarges!!!).
3. Wild Hunt. Reward: for capturing more then two elven trees you can travel between them like wild roots mechanics. For capturing all of them plus Oak of Ages you enslave Ariel and force her fight for you.
4. Vampires. That's one a bit lame, but I can't come up with more then "get Ulrika and Isabella in your army." Maybe when Naggash will finally be in the game, the vampire crisis can be centered around Naggash.
5. Vermintide. Leave it as it is, but for defeating some clans you'll get additional rewards. For clan Pestilence: a rite to summon a plague in enemy city. For clan Skryre: increased research rate and bonus for ranged and war machine troops. For clan Eshin: a rite to summon an assassin that can kill lords and heroes.
6. Chaos Infighting. A new crisis that spawns 4 monogod factions, each in the war with each other and bent on destroying rivals. Some minor monogod, chaos warriors, beastmen or chaos dwarves factions will become the vassals of those factions. If a crisis faction destroys a crisis rival, they'll get more armies and more vassals, destroy them yourself to prevent this. The last faction standing will attack the world - and you, even if you are a chaos faction yourself.
So what we want is a Fishmen Endgame crisis which gives a good reward to make it worth doing and some more unique shit like maybe unique maps to fight them on and items to make a good set bonus (not fucking X corruption +5 CA lol)
I turn it off, eventually one race in their region will become dominant and sort of a crisis themselves if you don't snowball the game. I'd rather see end game option of All Chaos factions vs all Order factions. Chaos allies to Chaos, Order allies to Order. Or even a 3rd faction Destruction. Competing for world domination.
For this exact reasons is why right now I have a blast with The Changeling, I am on an adventure, with goals in each major region, I had to resurrect Scarbrand to get his sword, all the quests gives something that even if small is to be desired. I want that in an endgame crisis.
1:30 Love that point you're making there :D
Edit after watching the video to the end:
I agree with you about adding a motivation to actually activating the endgame crisis - I already like the challenge but without any reward they are a dull grind
Two of my own thoughts to add in on this.
1. Endgame crises are also just incredibly passive (at least in the latest patch). Can't even count the number of times the crisis has happened, they take over their capital and the immediate surrounding locations and then just turtle. That isn't a crisis.
2. Endgame crisis doesn't break all relations. I get they can't have them declare war on literally everyone without breaking things but I had a Lizardmen campaign where I had the Dwarf crisis occur and because they were *just* far enough away from other Order factions they didn't break trade relations, which meant that my relations with other Order factions kept getting worse because I was committing violence against their trade partners, even though it was an Endgame crisis. I eventually just abandoned the campaign before the entire world declared war on me because I was fighting the Endgame Crisis.
Yeah I usually only leave the will of hashut endgame crisis on just because the teleporting is really nice for any faction that does not have world teleporting
I'm personly so happy I can turn them off in the base game without needing any mods. If I could do the same with the Hun invasion for Attila I would play that game almost endlessly.
I like them, helped me a lot with campaign victory achievements, not a fan of short/long victories tho
7:53 You're not kidding! I just started a standard Immortal Empires campaign as Astragoth Ironhand; one of his Short Victory conditions is the destruction of Kraka Drak, and because it's still in the game's code but not on the map, his Short Victory is already halfway won!!
Hear me out : Completing the "end crisis" allows you to recruit units of the race of that end crisis (allowing you to have fun being like those rogue armies being 2-mixed-factions armies)
When i'm playing Khalida, I turn on the Black Pyramid and Vampire crises for a bit of roleplaying.
When I play as Eltharion I do the same for the Greenskins.
Lately i've even been toying with a very early game crisis trigger, around 30 - 50 turns.
Ultimately I just wish there was a lot more control over the minutia of these scenarios rather than just a generic difficulty slider. There also should be more of them, and my biggest issue is the Dwarf one. When the Dwarf crisis triggers it literally says that the Dwarfs have decided to settle ALL the grudges, and yet they don't go to war with everyone which I think is a bit misleading lol.
Love how you put the reason why CA should consider giving rewards for the endgame crisis at 19:58: "to give you something to explore and go and do to experience the world they have created"
I definitely agree there needs to be special rewards after the end game. It especially needs to be related to the crisis you beat. Imagine getting really unique stuff, like beating the vampire crisis gives your faction a minor version of rising from the dead (or empowers it if you're vampires.)
With that being said, I think that's only half of the puzzle. They also just need to be a lot more engaging than they are. Spamming a big doomstack faction isn't really all that fun. There needs to be gameplay mechanics along with it. They *kinda* stepped in the right direction with the chaos dwarf tunnels, but that's extremely barebones compared to what things could be. Imagine, for example, the Greenskin crisis has this big warboss, and his horde gradually builds up in strength for something like 20 turns. At the 20th turn, it gets super massive strong with a whole warhost, and they beeline for the capital of the Strength Rank #1 faction to conquer it (as their WAAAGH target.) But, during those 20 turns, you can find smaller warhosts that are slowly making their way to the warboss, and taking them out before they reach him weakens how strong the WAAGH is. That would give the player SOMETHING to engage with that's just a little bit more flavor to the crises. I know it's not groundbreaking or amazing, but we don't need a whole lot to improve on what we have.
I think the most fun I had during an endgame crisis was when I was playing as Belegar Ironhanmer, had fairly okay relations with the wood elves as I made my way to Karak Eight Peaks then right after I got Karak Eight Peaks back, the wood elf crisis triggers. That threw a fun wrench into things.
One thing that might make things more interesting is the ability for you to get bonuses if you're playing as one of the crisis races. Of course, that would probably require more work. One thought I had (this one was in response to Legend talking about Skaven) was the possibility of unlocking unique units. Something like the Empire State Troops. Each capital unlocks certain new units, and the pool size for each unit is equivalent to the number of major faction capitals you hold. So if you were Skaven and you had either previously confederated Clan Skryre, or you beat them as a Crisis, you could unlock some special Skryre units. In addition to your own faction's units. And you'd have a pool size of 2. Go deal with Throt and you'll get a pool size of 3, in addition to his special units. And so on.
Maybe factions that are confederated should spawn a special rebel faction of that type (so you'd get a rebellious Skryre faction in that case). Heavily-themed armies, possibly with all the Skryre units, but they don't have Ikit Claw. I'm sure a mod could implement that. Though it would likely be a lot of work. And I didn't spend too long thinking about most of these ideas, so there's definitely more to be done. I just think there's something to the idea of "Dealing with other races upgrades specific characters. Dealing with your own race upgrades your entire faction." Or maybe some level of character and faction bonuses. I have no idea at this point. Though I find I prefer faction-wide effects (like special units or buffs) preferable as a reward. But I suspect that might be personal preference.
I my personal Fix for Endgames Crises is to make them more story Thematic, Like have an Empire Crises, where the empire Descends into civil war, each Elector count declaring Independence and return, being at war with each other and anyone who has Empire Territory. Elesepth and wolfhart will become Lords under Franz and any legendary Heroes will be granted to Franz. If you are an Order Faction you can choose to help Franz regain the Empire in which case you get a reward or a unique Cannon and Steam Tank. If you are Destruction or Chaos and defeat them all and gain all Empire territory you get the Title of the "New Emperor" a fun Trait, but also you get Karl's Hammer.
Have a Grudge too far have Thorgrim if he is still around declares war on the High Elves, the player if they are an Order faction get an "Either you are with us or against us" Ultimatum, siding with the dwarves puts you at war with the High Elves and Wood Elves but allies you with the Dwarves, and siding against them puts you at war with all remaining Dwarves, but allies you with all the Order Elves. The Dwarves spawn some armies with units that are variations of units we faced before but with specific abiltiesto help fight elves. While the Elves also spawn armies that do a similar thing. Beating the Dwarves sees the Elves reward you with special heroes and increased winds of Magic. While defeating the Elves sees the Dwarves reward you with thunder Barges and boost to all artillery and warmachines.
Have the Vampire Crises, see AI Faction Leaders being turned into Vampires and able to Raise Dead, getting "the Hunger", and being Vassalized by a Vampire factions while still able to recruit their normal faction stuff, on top of raising Vampire monsters. The factions don't all declare war on the player right away, instead they just attack previous allies, and try to turn other factions into vampires using a new unique hero. Killing the Major Vampire factions off ends the crises, and you find the "Heart of Nagash" or something which gives you a faction wide buff of some kind.
Turned it off years ago and never looked back. I really appreciate that atleast CA has given us the ability to modify settings or turn it off completely (which i have done exactly). This game already have extreme player bias of any strategy game i play and i don't need another random faction on steroids gun for my settlements which completely derails your campaign if you turn it on early.
On the other hand my campaigns rarely last over 100 turns to just grind through all of the end game crisis over and over again. I mostly play on v.h / v.h
For me I wish we had a modified vortex race, this is available via mods in tw2. The original was silly, if you did not reach the end first you just fought a super easy battle and your opponent folded.
Instead, make it important you get there first, and if you don't it just gets really much harder each battle as the leader keeps retrying harder and harder. Then the rest of the game makes itself as you try to get as many tablets as possible and defend rituals.
it's been at least a decade since i've had a TW game that didn't end in campaign fatigue .
I think the problem is mostly with Total War’s game design. If you play the game proper, you have really strong armies at mid game and once you get to that point no other army or faction really poses a challenge to the player. So player gets fatigued cause the AI still isn’t the best at making good armies. CA just makes this artificial late game challenge, chaos invasion/realm divide/mongol invasion etc. to “challenge” the player. But it just feels artificial because the player bias is just turned to eleven without any real reward. I think CA needs to instead of making them “kill everyone” make like a multi-part quest chain to make more cinematic and even solve the problem of long campaigns. Like
Vermintide:
Defeat 5 skaven characters. Get reward.
Defeat 3 skaven lords. Get reward.
Hold Skavenblight for 5 turns. Culminates in a battle against the skaven, get a unique reward and all remaining skaven factions will be reduced to infighting.
10:50 I understood that reference
WE"RE THE BLOODY UBRISEIK FIVE OR FOUR WHATEVER
@@sebastiangibson9671 "...OR FOUR, IT DOESN'T MATTER!" Is the correct quote, if I remember it correctly
Pretty much agree, definitely there must be some good reward at the end to even enable it. But I'd like to add: 1. There also should be some wider effect from the crises, such as the chaos one had in Warhammer 2, when Ai factions were more likely to make alliances and peace, this made the chaos invasion atleast look dangerous on paper.
2. Idealy player should be able to prevent endgame scenario from spawning by finnishing some objectiv and get some smaller reward for it, then beating the scenerio. This is also important if you don't armies spawning on already secured territory.
3. Scenerious should't be connected to playable factions or maybe should be connected only to some special miner ones, be more centralized, or have multiple rewards, if player is required to travel to multiple continents to finish it.
4. If it would remained connected to playable factions and even miner ones, it would be exactly better, if they would be getting stronger by time, insted of just having armies spawned once
I think they should bring back something similar to the vortex final battle, where you have to fight several different factions in one big battle
Makes things a whole lot less repetitive and interesting, and forces you to actually think and fight smart against some of the best enemies those factions can offer
Maybe an order tide final battle vs the entire chaos tide, or something like an actual battle of Nuln where several factions combine together to fight a combined threat in a massive siege / battle. Mixed factional unit armies are a whole lot more interesting and fun for a big “final battle”. Just imagine iron breakers fighting alongside waywatchers and stegadons, with Karl himself leading them all
I know there’s some mods that offer that, but it would be really nice to be a proper base game feature
and for the memes,have karl franz in a cinematics and yell AVENGERS ASSEMBLE xD
@
Gelt: is that everyone?
Zhao Ming: what you wanted more?!
I was playing Reikland IM EMP campaign with the Wild Hunt one turned on, I was barely surviving when it happened and I didn't realize the entire Wood Elf faction turned hostile so I really wanted to delay it. The issue with End game crises is when you're a beginner I don't know how my campaigns will turn out, nothing is ever planned due to so many stuff happening in the game to micromanage that it becomes overwhelming, so I have no choice not to be ready for End game crisis's. The game needs a toggle on off option before the turn that it happens so that I am ready for the challenge.
I'd love to see a return of the mini cinematics you used to get for finishing the game like in medieval 2
Oh Legend. I will always listen to your beautiful Aussie voice when you go on tangents and rants and long intros.
I Feel like one way they could add some fun is allowing you to Join the End Game Crisis, Like Of course this is only active when you play a Faction that goes with an End Game Crisis, Like with Wood Elves, When it Triggers, You get big bonuses, Perhaps higher Income and you spawn with a few armies, Allied with Wood Elf Factions but are at war with EVERYONE. Then the Goals Change like Make sure your big landmark is safe while razing/sacking/occuping lots of settlements
Fall of the Samurai crisis felt the most organic to me. A natural end game instead of something being awkwardly insertes to challenge the player. I liked that.
One way that I think could make end game crisis more interesting is having the triggers be dependent on the state of the factions they belong to.
Grudge too far starts to trigger when dwarf factions get wiped out. Once enough do a chain of events start to trigger in which the dwarf start to unite and gather troops to give a last ditch effort of protecting themselves.
Then along the way there are quest battles (depending on faction) and or objectives one can do to either stop the crisis (maybe wipe out the main drawf factions before the timer runs out) or help it along (like crush a green skin army)
For skaventide it could be if the main skaven factions are too strong and to stop skaventide you need to boot them out of the top 10 list of strength, or maybe kill one of the main factions so that the skaven would fall into infighting (this would affect you as a skaven player as well. So if the event fails you will get a negative relationship with other skaven)
And so on and on.
Honestly, I agree. Here's a few things I would add to the discussion.
Fundamentally, the strength of the total war series is its ability to provide the necessary tools for the player to build a narrative for their campaign and for the players to make their own story; total war is as much a roleplaying game as a strategy game. Endgame crises go against that by completely disrupting the narrative that the player has built over the course of the campaign, going against one of the greatest strengths of the franchise. Here's a few issues and fixes.
Factions resurrect after being defeated. How many of you have abandoned a Karl Franz campaign when Vlad magically appeared with ~5 armies in Sylvania and you just said "screw it"? Improve this by having a toggle where players decide whether factions resurrect.
Factions automatically meet you diplomatically. This can create weird scenarios, treaties, or declarations of war that have no cause to exist. It makes the campaign go global too quickly. Getting vision or diplomacy is usually an investment (scouting with hero, yuan bo faction trait, high elf tech). So why is it so gratuitous with the endgame crises? Improve this by removing meeting endgame factions.
Factions automatically declare war on you. How many of you have built up your relations with the dwarves, traded settlements, made alliances, shared borders with them, only for them to betray you? Improve this by having a toggle where players decide whether there's an automatic war declaration but by having an increasing diplomatic penalty + unreliable trait, like in Warhammer 2 once you beat the WoC crisis.
Factions get a huge power spike and completely imbalance the status quo. Improve this by gradually (early on in the campaign up until the time of the crises) providing bonuses to AI instead of giving all of it as a lump sum.
Obviously those are all intentional design choices, but they go against the spirit of total war. CA needs to weave the endgame scenario into the player-built narrative, not disrupt it.
I feel like the crises should include curated quest battles in order to end them, like have an Order vs Chaos crisis where there are armies (friendly and hostile) all over the place and to stop it you have to complete a series of quest battles where you're rushing to save your allies and their settlements (LOTR style) then end it with an extremely difficult battle against 4 stacks alongside some of the allies you've saved.
If you could wipe out a faction or race entirely, thus preventing them from spawning, I'd be fine with that - it would add strategic planning to campaigns, for example destroying WE
So there is a mod that kinda fills alot of your gripes about endgame crisis, Chaos invasion mod. It gives norsca, beastmen and chaos warriors engame crisis armies, brings the rifts from the storyline in (nothing spawns from them but you can close them and get items and/or buffs to the army that closes it) and once you beat all of a faction you get one big battle, like if you beat all the beastman factions you get an event fighting all the beastman armies (you can auto it and its almost always a decisive victory) and you get like 4 sets of 3 unique items you can only get from beating them.
Personally I like the grind of the endgame crisis so when I play this mod I buff that shit all the way up so there's like 10 armies for each faction. I had Boris and Katarine holding the line into Kislev against 30+ endgame armies, but I get that it's not for everyone
I liked the idea where the end game crisis is an entity not yet on the map. like chaos invasion in previous games. Someone once suggested fish people invasion.
They just need to feel different. Take the Chaos Dwarves for example. In WH2 the Chaos Dwarf mod had a late game event like the original chaos invasion where at the edge of the map you would have at first several armies of greenskin slaves and some smaller chaos dwarf warriors spawn as a "Scouting" party. Then later the armies would get more and more powerful. Imagine if for the Chaos Dwarves the endgame crisis gave them a small buff to start with. It is called the Will of Hashut so maybe it give priority to consolidating provinces and growing settlements at a fast rate rather than expanding. Then they get small buffs to their spell casters, Spell Mastery and the such while recruiting more Demonic units. As the Crisis becomes more and more serious they begin recruiting more and more powerful units. Perhaps gaining upkeep reduction on some mid-low tier units to so that they keep the armies varied. Eventually they start on the Warpath towards Cathay as they did in lore. Then they begin making smaller Artillery stacks that help other Chaos Armies siege down the cities of the Empire.
That would make it feel like a crisis you need to squash, and the other Scenarios could follow a similar path. In the Vermintide the Skaven mostly retreat to their strongholds slowly spreading the Undercity as they prepare to burst under some of the key cities across the world and open up a multifront war. The Vampires all begin gunning for the Books of Nagash and Marching on Cathay/Empire lands. The cool thing is that buffs associated here could then also apply to the player. If you the player are a Chaos Dwarf and that Crisis fires then you could be the Crisis and become the ultimate big bad.
I agree with you. They should make those endgame crisis more interesting with objectives and rewards and unique things happening like the drill for the will of hashut. That would make playing through them less annoying and more fun.
I think it's not just about the carrot. Hell even if there was one, my campaigns are usually way over when the endgame crisis shows up. Yes you could do them earlier, but unless that's a huge carrot, it'll still be more of an annoyance than fun.
What I'd personally wish for is for them to have carrots (yes plural) and NOT be endgame crisis. It should have several stages ramping up to something akin to the endgame crisis. That way you constantly have to engage with it over the course of a campaign. They could drop unique items or upgrades depending on the stage and faction your fighting. Like vampire counts could give immunity to vampire attrition, a healing blade, etc. I think there's quite a bit of potential there to make them fun and interesting to spice up campaigns (not just be one annoying slog at some point, which more often than not I can't be bothered with, even if there was a reward).
I like your idea of unique items or effects. Additionally, something that I’ve thought about previously would be unique traits for Lords that fight and beat End Game armies, something that can be saved for the Lord to be used in another campaign.
I’m just spitballing but maybe beating an End Game dwarf army would grant that Lord increased income from a special trait. Beating vampires End Game armies could maybe grant increased HP and a sort of blood chalice/healing potion. Beating GS End Game armies maybe gives physical resistance, WE maybe grants ambush defence chance and missile resistance. I really like the idea of legacy lords that get traits that can be saved.
Having a community that doesn't scream at each other discussing something they disagree about must be the highest achievement on the internet
Agreed about the complete lack of anything interesting for endgame crisis. Just a spam of stack to roll your eyes at and then tackle slowly (or quickly with lightning strike, but I disable that with mods).
A great thing would be for it to start like at turn 25, with sites you need to investigate with heroes. Too many, too spread out for them to all be dealt with, but you _can_ deal with the ones you want to stop now. Sending a hero makes a small army pop up (like the forest invasions). Defeating the small army finishes the site. Not defeating it (or not engaging with the hero phase) means it moves on to phase 2. Phase 2 is a proper marker event, with a significant army now, and cults/undercities spawning in regions around it. Deal with all of them, that site is finished. Phase 3 is proper emergence of the threat. One big stack shows up with weaker supporting stacks (like one chosen/monster stacks, with 2-3 marauder stacks, or one weapons teams or monster stack, with 3-5 stacks of slaves). A few cultist type heroes also show up, to block/assault armies, spread plague, destroy walls, etc. Defeating all armies also wipes the associated heroes, which can also be killed normally. If not all sites are dealt with at phase 3, phase 4 will spawn a whole bunch of high tier stacks like now, to essentially punish the player, but in one of the sites (you don't know which), not all over the place, in a similar way to WH2, representing the enemies having fully organized into a horde ready to take on the world. Clearing sites gives a province effect like Yuan Bo's, plus a special trait to all characters involved, plus one random thematic item. AI needs to be able to engage with the system too, but poorly.
Intrinsic rewards are OK, but then the task needs to be fun. Grinding stacks isn't fun. They, at least, need to be themed armies instead of samey balanced ones. Like monsters for Moulder, tech for Ikit, plague and swarms for Pestilens, etc. The idea of a "crowning item" is pretty good though. I actually like the race for the nemesis crown as a possible crisis. You hunt for it, fight for it, if there were a few of these or buff bundles spawning in endgame, held by doomstacks. Hell, give then to a variety of chaos factions (WoC and Daemons rampaging, beastmen raiding for forests, and skaven with undercities everywhere).
Speaking of grind: Currently playing a WE Orion campaign. Had an absolute blast at the beginning, defending my tree, doing the confederation missions, helping Bretonnia and the western empire with their enemies and making friends. Great. Then went over to Ulthuan where it was a bit of a grind with the DE, but still pretty good to do the waywatcher/shade duels.
Then my first forest hit 100 health, I defended it, and realized how long it's going to take for a Long Victory. 8 turns of waiting for every forest, gotta do it one by one, for 8 forest. So essentially 40ish great turns and 64!! Turns of boredom waiting for the timer.
I personally like End Game Crisis and Ultimate Crisis mode.
Helm of Draesca: I can't even fuse that garbage
Since you brought Stellaris into the conversation, Legend: In Stellaris you also get specific Technologies from Said End Game Crisis from their debrief. So, you Destroy a small portion of them and get their tech. which also gives you in-sight on how you can better counter them, DURING said Crisis.
My problem with endgame crisis in Warhammer 3 is that by the time they spawn the campaign is basically over, all the challenge in the campaign happens mostly in the early game, where you are struggling with economy and your various neighbors. By turn 100-200, I'm in a comfortable enough spot where as long as I don't just afk and mash end turn for 30 turns I can keep expanding and conquering without any issue, so something to mix up the power balance is definitely good to ramp up the difficulty again to match where you end up; however, having mass armies spawn all over my provinces feels extremely unsatisfying and then I need to turn all my armies around and chase down a bunch of armies for no territory gain or to reclaim territory I already own. As several people have stated in the comments, some long spanning quest that results in an end game scenario would be far more satisfying as long as there are tangible benefits for engaging with it and it doesn't punish me for having a successful campaign with a large empire (dwarves end game when you own world's edge mountains is hell). Stellaris relics are a really nice boon to have, and having something similar in Warhammer 3 would be awesome, add some unique building chains based on crisis, interesting legendary items for the quest stages, possibly unique rites related to it, there's plenty of ways to integrate the systems they already have into an end game scenario to make it more impactful and satisfying than infinite hordes of 20 stacks
I remember using it pretty liberally. But after a while. It got super stale, and I turned them off, never to turn them on again.
Endgame crises is also a way to "finish your campaign" especially in regards to achievements, in regards to the usual long campaign objectives.
For exemple, winning with high elves requires to kill all dark elves... And that would means as Teclis to conquer nearly the whole map because you're not fighting dark elves at all, and going to cathay just to kill Lokir ?
Usually I just turn on them if they are close and I have a shitty long compaign objectives. And I just turn on the black pyramid usually since it's the easiest.
Usually don’t play with it on I agree. Probably would with a reward at the end. To be honest even the small cut scene from Warhammer 2 got me excited like “ oh shit chaos is coming”. Would be cool to have something a bit more on that end too.
Grinding for grinding sake it's not fun. I would love to see missions or a quest that has some lore background during the End Times or Storm of chaos. I know... it's a longshot. Great video Legend
I agree with you, I just disable it now in new campaigns.
There is one scenario where I did enjoy Ultimate Endgame. Thats when I was playing as Archaon. Just for the thematic feel of basically a version of everyone trying to stop the End Times. And Archaon currently has such a variety of units to fight with and so many enemies to defeat and get souls.
6:35 - actually it appears whatever undead faction held last the black piramid. I had once this crisis with Vampire Counts. I don't know if the pirates would also work but it seems to be possible.
You should also be able to customise each endgame crisis. I may want to have a small crisis of Greenskins in the early/ mid game and then a stronger mid game crisis of vampires and finally an endgame of dwarfs kicking ass. I don't want all of them to spawn at the same time.
This system could be so much fun with the right amount of work dedicated to it...
Hey Legend, regarding the Greenskins
Ok you can switch them off before it starts, but if you don't, it is EXTREMELY grindy. Easily on par with the Dwarves in my opinion!
Also, the problem I see is that I use the endgame scenarios to add difficulty to the late game, but I find it really hard to set it up correctly, because factions often weaken or kill each other before I even get there - or else it gets far too hard to overcome
Love what you did with the intro 😂❤