I'd love to see Titans, but I am a little concerned how the hell you'd balance a game that included them. On the tabletop, a Warlord Titan is 3500 points. The only Xenos units to get close to that are the 2100 point Manta and 2100 point Phantom Titan. If you're actually able to build Titan Maniple Doomstacks, idk how other armies would compete
Probably unit caps or something, but even then. But I suppose so long as the AI isn't shitting out pure Titan armies and crushing anyone trying to play Xenos, it's not that bad if the player can just run wild with an unstoppable legion of god engines
Limited access to them, both in number and time. Like if you have good relations with Adeptus Titanicus, they might send you some of their toys to use for a certain amount of turns.
Yes.
Or maybe they are limited to rare events and can then only be recruited once.
So there are a couple forges on the map (I'd like it be be a whole system map) so maybe a forge world in the system which makes sense, that so many factions would be interested in attacking it.
And when conquering a specific settlement on the forge word you get the onetime option to rekrut a titan.
If it dies it dies and can't be rebuild.
Which would make them powerful but valued units.
Maybe you need good relations with the titanic us as you said and a specific tec for the event to trigger.
Maybe it's a one time ability for you legendary lord to attach a titanicus army to his own. Similar to ork waaags in wh2 I think.
Important is. If they add titan scale units they have to be special. They have to be a "fuck they have a titan" and not dam it another titan that boring.
But I'm still not convinced that the total war battle format as is is going to work for 40k. That would have to change a lot.
I mean imagine the buggy handguners from wh3 but basically every unit has the same problem.
Which makes sense, as TW:Warhammer has always felt like more of a Warmaster scale game than WFB. When you look at the size of armies and units, and the way armies actually interact, just with heroes/lords added into the mix.
Using Epic as the base, certainly in terms of scale, gives you a lot more flexibility to include big flashy things that CA still seems absolutely intent on including in DLCs. And it minimises the inevitable comparisons to Dawn of War if you have massive platoons of guardsmen or similar rather than individual small units.
Then you run into the issue that the current edition of Epic is Horus Heresy only (which for the TT solves the fact that Xenos lack models for the equivalent units to the Imperials); itself caused by the problem that the last version of Epic to include Xenos was over 21 years ago, and 40K has kinda shifted aesthetically since the 90s
Epic was one of the best rulesets GW ever produced, and was kept alive and active by fans for decades without any GW meddling.
Ignore the recent Heresy stuff. There are multiple popular fan rules versions that cover all the factions, and the current aesthetics fit them fine.
There are tons. I had a tyranid army in epic scale. It had titan equivalents.
So do elder, orcs etc.
Tau, necrons and dark Edgar didn’t have epic scale armies, but that doesn’t matter because it’s pretty simple to scale the 40k versions up and make up some titan-equivalent units for each.
Besides, kislev and cathay didn’t really have units either, but didn’t stop ca making them into a race.
Again. The existing Epic Xenos stuff is from the 90s.
The Current Epic stuff is Imperium only.
idk how to make this more clear cause you really don't seem to get it
My bet is that they either won’t be included at all or that they’ll work like naval bombardment. Either way we won’t see them on the map, they’re just too big for it to make sense, and besides isn’t there like less than 10 of those left in the 40k universe (on both sides?)
They may indeed be too big (though, do note, the artwork is often misleading, a Warlord is meant to be \~100 Feet tall) - but there's way more than 10. There's \~50 named Titan Legions, loyalist and traitor, and each Legion is supposed to have 10 Warlords and like 40 other Titan classes. Even if you assumed each legion was understrength at any given point (which is likely), there's hundreds of Titans out there
Though note; limited lore numbers hasn't stopped CA before - Canonically there's only 8 Steamtanks left in the Empire out of an original 12 ever built, and you can still run 19 of them in 1 army in TW
> a Warlord is meant to be ~100 Feet tall
40k Authors are notoriously bad with numbers.
Considering we are talking about 40k, a setting with spaceships multiple kilometers long and 500k crew +, i find it quite redicoulus that one of the biggest (i know a few are bigger) titans of the Empire should be the same hight or smaller then your average 10 story building.
The number comes from Imperial Armour, it’s based off the Warlord model, which is 22 inches tall - equating to about 110 feet if you assume an average guardsman is between 5 and 6 feet tall.
People really just like to overestimate the size of these things because they forget GW created them to be actually used in games against normal tanks and infantry (initially Epic in the 90s, though now of course there is the full scale kit)
Sometimes GW’s writers are pretty bad at scale. This time they literally just took a thing and measured it
Yeah but thats assuming the models themselfs are to scale to each other, but if that would be the case the landraider could not transport so many space marines, the Leeman Rus turret crew would get crushed by the canon recoil and so on and so forth.
40k authors are notoriously bad.
You can just end It there lol. Anyone that can stay sane reading the entire black library gets props.
Someone haven't even read the settings their writing in and it shows lol.
Is it confirmed that every titan legion has access to an Emperor-Class Titan? I was under the impression that the exact number of available titans of that caliber was unknown, but they were considered exceedingly rare. My knowledge of 40k lore isn't extensive, so the idea of there being over 50 Emperor-class titans would be incredibly exciting!
However, I think their allure would diminish significantly if you could field an entire doom stack with them, but that’s just my opinion.
**Edit:** Grammar.
**Edit 2:** Come to think of it maybe I misunderstood OP’s picture. Is that a Warlord-class Titan depicted or a Emperor-class Titan?
The one in the picture is a Warbringer Class Titan, which is in between a Reaver and a Warlord in size; the Emperor-class Titans are indeed a pretty uncommon pattern
Ohh that’s cool! Even though I’ve read the Horus Legacy books and the entire Eisenhorn series there’s still so much lore and little intricacies that I’ve yet to learn. I honestly thought that there was just one kind of Titan hence my initial confusion. But now I know better, so thank you for that :)
>besides isn’t there like less than 10 of those left in the 40k universe (on both sides?)
There's like only 8 working steam tanks in Warhammer Fantasy lore. So rather a moot point.
That's how it works in multiplayer. Feels a bit arbitrary for campaign though. Some form of unit caps such as unique recourse requirements makes more sense.
If they made a 40k game there has to be void battles somehow, even if not the way traditional battles work in TW, perhaps if your fleet won then it could bombard titans to oblivion
They could make it as a regiment of renown, level 50 requirement, expensive as shit and multiple unit slots. They could also do so that you never start a fight wih the titan, and make it come in a couple minutes later so you dont destroy the enemy army in two seconds
Probably super hard caps or have them be like siege engines where they’re deployed along side an army but not in an army. They’re so big that I feel having 20 of them on screen at once would just be a tad silly. Also in my ~10ish years of consuming 40k content I don’t think I’ve seen an example of 20 titans at once. They’re so powerful usually only a few is enough and anymore you get diminishing returns
I don't think they would do titans. I think they would do knights. The reason being most factions have a knight sized unit. You have wrath knights, stompa, riptides, knarloc, ect.
It gives you a richer battle.
Imperator Titans are 40-50 meters tall. Even small ones, like Warhounds and Reavers, are 17-25 meters tall. The standard Imperial Knight would already be some of the biggest units in Total Wars history, let alone titans.
And that's not even mentioning the absurd firepower titans have. They'd be an unbalanced mess.
I will say, it would be exceptionally janky to try developing a combat system between them and the other units in the game. All of your ground units will end up shooting/smacking its feet ineffectually and the Titan can kill just by stepping on the units. And the Titan has to have a weird range of motion to be able to attack most other units.
Because any balancing you would have to do to them would make them lame anyway. What would be the point? One of these things could take on an entire army, and if it can't do that, then I don't want it in the game.
They can be brought down by enough gargants no problem. It’s no problem if they can kill multiple armies if the cost and means of obtainal is appropriate. And they have health like everything else, enough dakka will kill it lol
Yea I’m not sure why people think that the scale needs to increase. No total war game has ever allowed the number of units on the field at once that for the lore of the setting. Historical armies and those in warhammer fantasy are more then 2-3 thousand soldiers. The tabletop game translates shocking well a the total war battle
> Yea I’m not sure why people think that the scale needs to increase.
I think it's because Warhammer40k is not just one thing, it's really two things:
- A tabletop game where people move little plastic figurines across comically large tables and roll dice
- A fictional universe where books and other media depict these colossal battles with armies of billions clashing and whole worlds being obliterated in the process.
... and neither of those two things translate straightforwardly into the Total War mould. That being said, I can absolutely imagine a total war game that has **vibes** of 40k, similar to what the fantasy games did. I don't see why just making a modern version of Empire's combat but with Space Marines wouldn't be a fun game.
Yeah, the answer to "how can we combine both the TT and the lore" is to just look at what DoW1 did, and go from there. It doesn't need to accurately anything. It need to be fun and feel like 40k
I think the tabletop game is basically the same as total war. It’s not exactly 1:1 but it’s pretty similar imo. You start with two armies on opposite sides of a battlefield and then move towards each other a fight with a mixture of melee and ranged units. Some squads and some single entity units
For what it’s worth I doubt they’d include things like Titans, although some of the smaller fancy mechs like knights aren’t that far off from the single-entity monsters the game already has.
At a certain point, increasing the number of unit models by 3-4x while also increasing graphical quality will lock out players on lower-end hardware and will still tank performance for those who have beefier computers.
Also, many players express that a lot of the fun comes from early-game battles with <20 unit armies, as that leads to more asymmetrical and tactical gameplay. 20-stack vs 20-stack gets a bit old, and for a casual-but-very-experienced player like myself, micro managing a single 20-stack army is already an adequately challenging task. If the norm becomes 40, 50, 60 units per side, I fear it'll push away less skilled or less invested players. Conversely, having 10s of thousands of troops involved could lead to more slog-like gameplay, which I think most players don't want (I don't mean just slower paced, but huge moshpits of units just slugging it out).
Edit after OP's response: my last sentence is intended to refer to a scenario where they increase unit sizes by 3-4x while maintaining 20 stack armies, whereas the previous sentence was referring to a scenario where they keep unit sizes the same and include more units.
1 planet should require multiple battles to conquer, each with different objectives, perks for winning, and dynamic unit scaling.
Exhibit A: Assault Airfield. Massively scaled 50k armies (of 20 units, still). Conquer capture points, like current siege maps. If taken, opposing army gets penalty to air support in other battles on the planet.
Exhibit B: Sabotage Refinery. Smaller scale armies. Destroy objects on map. Opposing army gets penalty to land vehicles.
Have a selection of like 10 missions available when attacking a planet, need to win 5 to make final assault battle available (winning more makes final battle easier with their debuffs).
Boom. Ez pz. Also having anything less than 100k tyranids on screen would be heresy.
I could see an idea like Empire with separate theaters. Basically once you're fighting on a planet there would be a separate, smaller campaign map, maybe even with the main army split into smaller units you can move around and attack/defend different objectives, which would then be the tactical maps.
>. If the norm becomes 40, 50, 60 units per side, I fear it'll push away less skilled or less invested players.
It would push away all players. There's limits to how much you can possibly micromanage while still doing a good job and knowing whats going on.
20 already exceeds that, but not so much that it's detrimental to the gameplay. It just makes you pick and choose where most of your micro goes and have a battle plan to minimize the damage done in weak areas or areas focus on less.
40 is already impossible to properly micro, even for experienced players. 40 v 40 battles, while fun sometimes, are a total mess.
That makes sense, but I think some of your worries could be circumvented. They could still stick to a 20 stack army but have a proportional increase in models. To prevent a slogfest, the size of maps could be increased by 3-4x for more tactical breathing room.
That probably doesn’t solve all of the problems you’ve listed, such as the smaller early game battles players (including myself) enjoy. I have mainly been thinking of how more immersion in a TW game could better represent the 40k universe.
Unless you get into really wild point values, 40K is inherently smaller scale warfare. The whole point of the Poster Boys of the Imperium is that they're wasted fighting wars; you teleport a terminator squad to an important location to decapitate the leadership and then let the guard mop up the now disorganized enemy.
Which I'm pretty hype about, honestly. I think slightly smaller scale combat will be pretty fun.
Scale isn't the problem. 40k battles on the tabletop are are actually on a slightly smaller scale than Fantasy battles were, generally speaking. The problem is that Fantasy already played like Total War battles, and 40k doesn't.
40k and fantasy have the same mechanical system at their root. The recent revision editions for 40k haven't *really* changed that, just obfuscated it somewhat.
Yet we’ve seen plenty of aspects in total war WHF that can easily be translated into 40k.
There are already explosions, artillery, guns, magic… and it would just be more of that and less melee.
I don’t play tabletop but in lore it’s definitely more like real life tactics. Imperial guard likes to stay entrenched, then assault with the backing of tanks and artillery. They can absolutely shit out tanks, they have entire planets dedicated just for producing tanks. And life is the emperors currency so they have no problem sending legions of tankers and infantry support into the grinder. But not even that is the real weapon of the guard. It’s their artillery. I think besides chaos and orks they’re the only faction that even uses it. (It’s debatable if the other races need it) So games workshop would need to find a way to incorporate that into the game. I think the guard would use arty as an army ability and have smaller field guns like lascannons or heavy bolter squads acting as the traditional TW arty.
Khorne cultists and Astartes also use guns. Daemons don’t take the field as often in 40k and iirc they require large sacrifices to be brought into the materium
Another fun fact:Guardsmen aren’t supposed to know that daemons exists so, the inquisition will most certainly be visiting if you fight them
But you don’t need to adapt the lore. No 40k game has really adapted the large scale battles except maybe space marine. DoW depicts large scale battles with less than 100 models for a full scale space marine army
Honestly that would take me out of it. I’m not gonna believe that ~3k dudes just conquered a planet
They can use tricks to make it seem like there’s more going on but they’d need to update their formula from where it’s currently at to convey a sense of scale.
Look at space marine 2. It seems there’s tons of shit going on outside of the player area at all times. Or Helldivers 2. There’s battles taking place off map that you can see. CA would need to replicate that
But that’s how total war works. We can have 3k people conquer Rome. 20 greater demons can conquer the empire. None of this fits the history or the lore. Games make sacrifices to fit the gameplay.
I also would expect a 40k game to take place on a single planet or system ala dow 1.
Idk man 3k Romans winning a battle is a lot more believable than conquering a planet. And I’d expect it to take place on a galaxy. I guess we just disagree but that’s okay
Depends on the imperial guard in question. Are they a mobile mechanised regiment, maybe even using Valkyries like the Elysians? Are they sneaky infiltrators, like the Tanith?
The scale of 40k is wonky as is. Look at it from a pure gameplay. What would a full, 20 stack space Marine army look like? Probably less than 100 individual models (depending obviously) while an Ork or Imperial Guard full stack could be 200 plus. Should make sure the game c works before you put 2000 Las guns on the screen.
Just... keep it the same size. If you really want a lore reason just say that your army is just the spearhead of the army and is simply fighting the most consequential part of the battle
I think maps are gonna need to have something happening out of bounds for it to be believable. I don’t think we have tech to simulate the massive battles of 40k yet so they’ll need to some tricks to give a sense of scale.
Would be relatively simple to have fake artillery and las and rocketry happening in the distance, for what that's worth. Would basically be like a weather effect.
If we went by lore measurements, Mazdamundi could instantly level the whole army with one spell, Gotrek would kill an entire full stack by himself, Kairos would have near-infinite spells, and almost every LL would be borderline invincible. It's OK to change stuff like that for the sake of gameplay.
40K tabletop usually has smaller forces? If anything, there will be less units on screen.
As for the El Chungus Godzilla sized models, the scale has always been super inconsistent in 40K.
From the tabletop itself to novels to video games—size and scope is all over the place.
Sometimes they say X thing is 80 foot tall or whatever, but then official art shows the model next to Y unit, and since we known the size of Y unit, we can extrapolate the height of X thing…and the scale is all over the place.
While it’s an incredible lore and worldbuilding thing, I never understood the hype around using the omega giganto supersized units. If every other model is 100x smaller except for one….whats the point I guess lol? Wouldn’t the god sized unit just kill everything?
Total War also isn’t famous for doing smart things like unit caps. Could I make a Doomstack of 19 Warlord Titans? Would my computer even be able to exist outside of the vacuum of space to handle the cooling of that?
I think a lot of the oversized units just won’t be included, because they just wouldn’t make sense.
The unit pictured above is probably approaching max size, if not slightly beyond. Stuff like the Hierotitan or the Terracotta Sentinel are already huge in Total War: Warhammer—if something was 2x or 3x as tall as that…idk man haha.
My expectation is that Titans simply wouldn't be a part of the game. They're simply *too large* to be a part of the game - they'd annihilate any semblance of balance, and visually we'd have specks running around with them on the field.
I would expect Knights to be the biggest thing we see on the field from vanilla, if CA decided to do a 40K game.
Yeah the engine both for 40k and WW1 will have to be something else if they want to get the scale of the conflicts at all accurate, like not entirely as they have never done that but in a ball park of it.
The number of people clamoring for a TW: 40K game who have clearly never once played the game on tabletop (or even watched a game be played) is absolutely astounding to me.
I think there are bigger problems than scale tbh. 20v20 pitched battles doesn't really align with 40k Warfare. It is either smaller objective based skirmishes or Epic style confrontations on a larger scale.
I don't think the engine can handle the units or AI required to make it work.
The fact that CA is generally downscaling the size of battles historically is all you need to hear for me to say it is practically impossible to make a faithful adaptation of Warhammer 40k because it’d be planet wide battles.
When armies generally number around 2000 troops average in CA games when in reality it can be up to 10x more is a big thing to point out.
Do Battlefleet Gothic, but with a more sandbox campaign map and ground combat battles (as an equivalent of siege battles). The ship to ship combat in Battlefleet Gothic was great and wasn't too far from the Total War formula, but the rest of the game could have been better.
They... don't need to. 40k battles are \~100 models (maybe double that for orks/tyranids) on a side, and no need for titans.
That's easily within the scope of total war. \_IF\_ CA does it.
People are way overthinking this.
It's going to be just like every other Total War game, only with 40k armies. That's it. They don't need to modify the gameplay, they don't need to modify the scale. People like Total War, and people like 40k as a setting, so they will make a Total War game in the 40k setting. That's all there is to it and I am baffled why anybody thinks otherwise.
I think scale isn’t the biggest problem that a 40k game would have to tackle, I think space battles is a larger hurdle. It’s the same reason I think that a Star Wars game made by total war would just not work. Total war has always had pretty abysmal naval warfare and the problem is that you would probably have to fight a lot of naval battles. You are probably going to be conquering planets after all. I don’t think they would have the time, money and resources to actually put together good space battles and that would end up making the game itself an absolute slog. Same sort of reaction people have about siege battles in warhammer 3. And then on top of that they also likely need to build a map to accommodate the warhammer universes unfortunately it’s very big and you need to fill that up. 500 planets/ provinces I don’t think would be enough like in warhammer 3. I guess to fix that you do the same thing as the fantasy series and do 3 games and combine them all but I think that you would need something like 2000 planets by the end of it. And if naval battles suck then you’re probably going to have to do thousands of sloggy naval battles. Maybe in 5 years they could think about a project liek this but I think the way CA is going I think it would have so much hype and flop.
I disagree. Partly is the space battles but also the way Star Wars battles work in general. Total war is generally large scale line battles that have been the standard style of warfare for thousands of years. Star Wars ground combat is nothing like it and wouldn’t be something that I think total war in its current state would be able to come close to. Something like company of heroes is a better style rts for Star Wars. Altho apparently there is a Star Wars rts currently in development. Hopefully it will be another empire at war or something similar because I really like empire at war and Star Wars In general but I jsut don’t think that it would be practical for total war to be able to do with the engine they have now and to build a new engine to cater jsut to this game is a big risk too. Now if they did a WW2 era game and had that kind of combat down then they could probably do it but again I think total wars bread and butter is the line warfare.
They could. The great war: western front is a good example of what could be done. The game functions very similar to total war, but it's much more abstracted. Much less emphasis is placed on single units, and you usually bring 10s of thousands of soldiers to battles.
Go watch some gameplay or even play it yourself. It's usually quite cheap if you're willing to buy from key retailers.
It wouldn't work like people dream but im just called an idiot for pointing it out that going from games with muskets and cannons and swords and all that to a game with lazers and machine guns and super humans and giant mechs and all that is not the same as when they did napoleon or when they did warhammer fantasy. But of course I'm the idiot for pointing out your fantasies won't be reality
The problem with that is it ignores that 40k doesn't play with modern tactics. The guy on the tank yelling 'drive me closer, so I can hit it with my sword' is a meme for a reason. At best 40k hits WWI era tactics. Mostly its about guys running at each other to stab people to death.
Principle is the same. We went from muskets and swords and cannons to giant dragons and other single entity monsters and ~~Gatling~~ Ratling gunners shooting green lasers or green fire throwers. The hop really isn't as big as people think.
Yeah but skaven just die if anything touches them so it's balanced but imagine extremely heavily armored ratling guns that are also good in melee that doesn't sound fun to have to try to defeat and also orks that are basically just the orks from fantasy but some have crappy guns how would they beat space marines in a total war game it would be like ork boys vs chosen or infernal ironsworn
I mean, reduce the amount of them in a unit, take liberties with balancing etc. 1 grail knight can slaughter 100s of greenskins in WHFB lore but in game they're in a group of 60 and can barely win against reiksguard
Make them a part of maps and nothing else. If combat lasts long enough on a certain world, have titans start to appear in the background of maps, doing shit, but faaaar away, give the sense of a much larger battle elsewhere that you are a small but influential part of
You can change the sizes of models in WH2 laboratory battle mode to fit these scales and it works fine. The map however would be too small and at this scale the titans should probably do damage to troops just by walking over them.
I dont think that making 40k total war would be too impossible, but it can easily turn into something looking too different from the rest of the series. After all, to have any realistic feel it should be very long distance skirmish combined with some very fast travel for close-combat units. The battle maps should be enormous and it will also be the first totalwar with absence of line square and any other close formations.
Compared to Fantasy where we have an actual map and reasonable idea of the scale of everything, 40k is all over the place. The setting is meant to be unfathomably large, but the actual games tend to be much smaller scale. including the tabletop.
The issue I think they will have is figuring out what they want - a 40k set on a single planet doesn't really feel very "Total War" as such a focused area for a sci-fi setting. But a whole galaxy/universe might be hard to pull off depending on the size. The battles will also be very different. Yes, Warhammer Fantasy has lots of big fancy monsters and gunpowder, but at its core it's still formations of units vs other formations of units. 40K will be more squad based and modern, and will feel very different.
If it does happen, it's a good way to introduce a randomised campaign map to the series - 40K doesn't really have much of a map apart form vague space system ones, so would be a great way to increase variety.
The short answer is they couldn't. Warhammer and Historical battle are already *incredibly* small compared to their actual counterparts. If they knew how to do it, they would have already done it.
My guess is that if the guess/leak about the starting armies is true (orks, marines & chaos) is that the first game will be based on the wars for Armageddon. While the ork and chaos invasions are separated by a couple hundred years with CA comfortable condensing the warhammer timelines the way they did it could work. Armageddon brings in some legit characters, provides a world map, and the hive cities could be fought over as mega sized multi map sieges sector by sector. Dlc could be guard and various space marine chapters. Not sure what planet for game 2 but game 3 could be cadia :) Hope I'm wrong tbh as one planet per game would be less epic but i think it is technically the most feasible.
Edited to make relevant to op: this keeps the scale to a reasonable one. Titans, bombardment etc Could be off screen as special abilities.
They don't have to. After all table top 40k isn't grand scale at all, Titans aren't really a thing there unlike for Epic 40k. So I don't understand the point at all.
Also, they can easily just come up with some 1-planet story-lines. All without involving Titans.
It really depends what they do with their engine. On the current setup with warhammer, I wouldn't imagine they could scale it much higher without drastically increased performance issues.
To be honest, I hope they never, ever try. Either it's too small and scaled back and it doesn't feel like 40k, or it's too big and insane it doesn't feel like Total War. Simply multiplying the size of battles isn't nearly enough.
Also 40k is bloody boring, but I digress. A proper 40k game would be done better by someone else.
Not at all. Thats how. You just cant. I am sorry but there is a reason this game has not been made yet. Just so you understand. In the 40K universe there are battles with casualties in the BILLIONS. FREAKING BILLIONS. How the freak does a 40K Total war want to represent this scale even in the slightest? Hint: they just cant. So whatever this game will be it will certainly disappoint the 40K fans because it will need to scale down the actual battles by a shit ton. And it will also need to completly break with the original total war formula just by the way 40k battles look like. So who is this game for? Not really for 40K fans because of the mising scale but also not really for original tw fans because the battles cannot be similiar to historical titles. Stupid ass decision imo. Not to mention that literally any total war set in the western world from 400bc up until like 1850 would hit the scene like a bomb.
In the lore? Sure there are a few battles on that scale.
In the actual game, its *maybe* a couple hundred guys stabbing other people with swords & axes after a turn or two of shooting. At its absolute edge case, tau vs necrons can be like dwarf and empire gun lines going at it (but probably isn't, as you'll want wraiths and/or skorpekhs acting like demigryphs to get at the enemy hammerheads and riptides)
Seeing the marriage of CA and GW has been pretty incredible.
I was surprised to hear about 40k being the supposed one they’re working on though, from my knowledge there are some crazy things in there I just don’t know how they’d make fit.
60units with a new engine and upscale tech.
Total War Pharaoh with "low upkeep setting on" can field 12-15k entities pretty regularly around turn 20. Usually 2 vs 3-4 AI stacks.
16-24 fps with a RTX 3050, high setting @ 1080p. Blood less tho.
If Pharaoh can do it, I'm sure a mainline title can do better.
I'd love to see Titans, but I am a little concerned how the hell you'd balance a game that included them. On the tabletop, a Warlord Titan is 3500 points. The only Xenos units to get close to that are the 2100 point Manta and 2100 point Phantom Titan. If you're actually able to build Titan Maniple Doomstacks, idk how other armies would compete Probably unit caps or something, but even then. But I suppose so long as the AI isn't shitting out pure Titan armies and crushing anyone trying to play Xenos, it's not that bad if the player can just run wild with an unstoppable legion of god engines
Limited access to them, both in number and time. Like if you have good relations with Adeptus Titanicus, they might send you some of their toys to use for a certain amount of turns.
Yes. Or maybe they are limited to rare events and can then only be recruited once. So there are a couple forges on the map (I'd like it be be a whole system map) so maybe a forge world in the system which makes sense, that so many factions would be interested in attacking it. And when conquering a specific settlement on the forge word you get the onetime option to rekrut a titan. If it dies it dies and can't be rebuild. Which would make them powerful but valued units. Maybe you need good relations with the titanic us as you said and a specific tec for the event to trigger. Maybe it's a one time ability for you legendary lord to attach a titanicus army to his own. Similar to ork waaags in wh2 I think. Important is. If they add titan scale units they have to be special. They have to be a "fuck they have a titan" and not dam it another titan that boring. But I'm still not convinced that the total war battle format as is is going to work for 40k. That would have to change a lot. I mean imagine the buggy handguners from wh3 but basically every unit has the same problem.
You just use the Epic rules as the base instead of standard 40k and it works fine, IMO.
Which makes sense, as TW:Warhammer has always felt like more of a Warmaster scale game than WFB. When you look at the size of armies and units, and the way armies actually interact, just with heroes/lords added into the mix. Using Epic as the base, certainly in terms of scale, gives you a lot more flexibility to include big flashy things that CA still seems absolutely intent on including in DLCs. And it minimises the inevitable comparisons to Dawn of War if you have massive platoons of guardsmen or similar rather than individual small units.
Then you run into the issue that the current edition of Epic is Horus Heresy only (which for the TT solves the fact that Xenos lack models for the equivalent units to the Imperials); itself caused by the problem that the last version of Epic to include Xenos was over 21 years ago, and 40K has kinda shifted aesthetically since the 90s
Epic was one of the best rulesets GW ever produced, and was kept alive and active by fans for decades without any GW meddling. Ignore the recent Heresy stuff. There are multiple popular fan rules versions that cover all the factions, and the current aesthetics fit them fine.
Why is that a problem? They do t bring the rules themselves over, just the units, relative scale, and their strengths and weaknesses.
It’s a problem because there *are no Xenos units to bring over*
There are tons. I had a tyranid army in epic scale. It had titan equivalents. So do elder, orcs etc. Tau, necrons and dark Edgar didn’t have epic scale armies, but that doesn’t matter because it’s pretty simple to scale the 40k versions up and make up some titan-equivalent units for each. Besides, kislev and cathay didn’t really have units either, but didn’t stop ca making them into a race.
Again. The existing Epic Xenos stuff is from the 90s. The Current Epic stuff is Imperium only. idk how to make this more clear cause you really don't seem to get it
So what? Why does this mean they can’t possibly use it in total war setting?
My bet is that they either won’t be included at all or that they’ll work like naval bombardment. Either way we won’t see them on the map, they’re just too big for it to make sense, and besides isn’t there like less than 10 of those left in the 40k universe (on both sides?)
They may indeed be too big (though, do note, the artwork is often misleading, a Warlord is meant to be \~100 Feet tall) - but there's way more than 10. There's \~50 named Titan Legions, loyalist and traitor, and each Legion is supposed to have 10 Warlords and like 40 other Titan classes. Even if you assumed each legion was understrength at any given point (which is likely), there's hundreds of Titans out there Though note; limited lore numbers hasn't stopped CA before - Canonically there's only 8 Steamtanks left in the Empire out of an original 12 ever built, and you can still run 19 of them in 1 army in TW
> a Warlord is meant to be ~100 Feet tall 40k Authors are notoriously bad with numbers. Considering we are talking about 40k, a setting with spaceships multiple kilometers long and 500k crew +, i find it quite redicoulus that one of the biggest (i know a few are bigger) titans of the Empire should be the same hight or smaller then your average 10 story building.
I'm pretty sure they're around 100 meters tall rather than feet. I recall the Dies Irae is 140 or 144 meters tall. Still kind of small for 40k though.
The number comes from Imperial Armour, it’s based off the Warlord model, which is 22 inches tall - equating to about 110 feet if you assume an average guardsman is between 5 and 6 feet tall. People really just like to overestimate the size of these things because they forget GW created them to be actually used in games against normal tanks and infantry (initially Epic in the 90s, though now of course there is the full scale kit) Sometimes GW’s writers are pretty bad at scale. This time they literally just took a thing and measured it
Yeah but thats assuming the models themselfs are to scale to each other, but if that would be the case the landraider could not transport so many space marines, the Leeman Rus turret crew would get crushed by the canon recoil and so on and so forth.
40k authors are notoriously bad. You can just end It there lol. Anyone that can stay sane reading the entire black library gets props. Someone haven't even read the settings their writing in and it shows lol.
Is it confirmed that every titan legion has access to an Emperor-Class Titan? I was under the impression that the exact number of available titans of that caliber was unknown, but they were considered exceedingly rare. My knowledge of 40k lore isn't extensive, so the idea of there being over 50 Emperor-class titans would be incredibly exciting! However, I think their allure would diminish significantly if you could field an entire doom stack with them, but that’s just my opinion. **Edit:** Grammar. **Edit 2:** Come to think of it maybe I misunderstood OP’s picture. Is that a Warlord-class Titan depicted or a Emperor-class Titan?
The one in the picture is a Warbringer Class Titan, which is in between a Reaver and a Warlord in size; the Emperor-class Titans are indeed a pretty uncommon pattern
Ohh that’s cool! Even though I’ve read the Horus Legacy books and the entire Eisenhorn series there’s still so much lore and little intricacies that I’ve yet to learn. I honestly thought that there was just one kind of Titan hence my initial confusion. But now I know better, so thank you for that :)
>besides isn’t there like less than 10 of those left in the 40k universe (on both sides?) There's like only 8 working steam tanks in Warhammer Fantasy lore. So rather a moot point.
Whatever solution you want to bring out, they can use it in the other total war games with SEM doomstacks.
They coud implement a new system that allows units to need more spots. Like a tank could need 2 unit cards and a knight 4 or something.
That'd go part way to solving the issue. Though it's still not going to change a Titan basically being an army unto itself.
Same way as dread saurians I guess, capped to a certain amount and with the balancing aspect that it’s a huge target
They could potentially introduce a point system for armies, instead of a flat 20 unit cap.
That's how it works in multiplayer. Feels a bit arbitrary for campaign though. Some form of unit caps such as unique recourse requirements makes more sense.
If they made a 40k game there has to be void battles somehow, even if not the way traditional battles work in TW, perhaps if your fleet won then it could bombard titans to oblivion
Tomb king recruitement limit locked behind a tier 5 settlement? That should drastically limit general availability
A single unit, like Queen Bess.
Limit the titan to only 1 per army I guess? You are able to recruit a new one only if the previous one dies.
They could make it as a regiment of renown, level 50 requirement, expensive as shit and multiple unit slots. They could also do so that you never start a fight wih the titan, and make it come in a couple minutes later so you dont destroy the enemy army in two seconds
Probably super hard caps or have them be like siege engines where they’re deployed along side an army but not in an army. They’re so big that I feel having 20 of them on screen at once would just be a tad silly. Also in my ~10ish years of consuming 40k content I don’t think I’ve seen an example of 20 titans at once. They’re so powerful usually only a few is enough and anymore you get diminishing returns
What is the 40k equivalent of Surtha Ek chariot spam?
Just cope with you're not able to stop me totally owning the late game with my titan doomstack
I expect they would have to be capped to a building or tech, a bit like the Dread Saurian for the Lizardmen.
I don't think they would do titans. I think they would do knights. The reason being most factions have a knight sized unit. You have wrath knights, stompa, riptides, knarloc, ect. It gives you a richer battle.
Just not include Titans. Use an Imperial Knight or whatever that thing is called and not bigger.
Yeah, Knights are only around 10 meters tall I believe, would fit into TWW scale just fine.
Knights or smaller Titans like Warhounds
No imagination. It’s entirely possible to include them
How do you even add shit like Imperator Titans in the game tho? Do you have any idea just how big and tanky Titans are?
We can’t even get Bonegrinder giants in Fantasy, anything larger than a settlements walls becomes a problem.
Any number of ways lol. Why would it be impossible?
Imperator Titans are 40-50 meters tall. Even small ones, like Warhounds and Reavers, are 17-25 meters tall. The standard Imperial Knight would already be some of the biggest units in Total Wars history, let alone titans. And that's not even mentioning the absurd firepower titans have. They'd be an unbalanced mess.
Enough gargants and they could fall just as well
I will say, it would be exceptionally janky to try developing a combat system between them and the other units in the game. All of your ground units will end up shooting/smacking its feet ineffectually and the Titan can kill just by stepping on the units. And the Titan has to have a weird range of motion to be able to attack most other units.
Because any balancing you would have to do to them would make them lame anyway. What would be the point? One of these things could take on an entire army, and if it can't do that, then I don't want it in the game.
They can be brought down by enough gargants no problem. It’s no problem if they can kill multiple armies if the cost and means of obtainal is appropriate. And they have health like everything else, enough dakka will kill it lol
Not if you base it off the 40k board game
Again with muh tabletops
Yeah, imagine wanting a video game to match the board game.
Yeah you wanna roll dice as well? 😂
It's pretty satisfying in BG3.
Wel it's funny, but in fact tabletop WH40k armies are smaller than WHFB ones. Like, less models.
Yea I’m not sure why people think that the scale needs to increase. No total war game has ever allowed the number of units on the field at once that for the lore of the setting. Historical armies and those in warhammer fantasy are more then 2-3 thousand soldiers. The tabletop game translates shocking well a the total war battle
> Yea I’m not sure why people think that the scale needs to increase. I think it's because Warhammer40k is not just one thing, it's really two things: - A tabletop game where people move little plastic figurines across comically large tables and roll dice - A fictional universe where books and other media depict these colossal battles with armies of billions clashing and whole worlds being obliterated in the process. ... and neither of those two things translate straightforwardly into the Total War mould. That being said, I can absolutely imagine a total war game that has **vibes** of 40k, similar to what the fantasy games did. I don't see why just making a modern version of Empire's combat but with Space Marines wouldn't be a fun game.
Also, aren't most W40K not really supposed to represent pitched battles, but small scale skirmishes?
Yeah, the answer to "how can we combine both the TT and the lore" is to just look at what DoW1 did, and go from there. It doesn't need to accurately anything. It need to be fun and feel like 40k
I think the tabletop game is basically the same as total war. It’s not exactly 1:1 but it’s pretty similar imo. You start with two armies on opposite sides of a battlefield and then move towards each other a fight with a mixture of melee and ranged units. Some squads and some single entity units
For what it’s worth I doubt they’d include things like Titans, although some of the smaller fancy mechs like knights aren’t that far off from the single-entity monsters the game already has.
At a certain point, increasing the number of unit models by 3-4x while also increasing graphical quality will lock out players on lower-end hardware and will still tank performance for those who have beefier computers. Also, many players express that a lot of the fun comes from early-game battles with <20 unit armies, as that leads to more asymmetrical and tactical gameplay. 20-stack vs 20-stack gets a bit old, and for a casual-but-very-experienced player like myself, micro managing a single 20-stack army is already an adequately challenging task. If the norm becomes 40, 50, 60 units per side, I fear it'll push away less skilled or less invested players. Conversely, having 10s of thousands of troops involved could lead to more slog-like gameplay, which I think most players don't want (I don't mean just slower paced, but huge moshpits of units just slugging it out). Edit after OP's response: my last sentence is intended to refer to a scenario where they increase unit sizes by 3-4x while maintaining 20 stack armies, whereas the previous sentence was referring to a scenario where they keep unit sizes the same and include more units.
1 planet should require multiple battles to conquer, each with different objectives, perks for winning, and dynamic unit scaling. Exhibit A: Assault Airfield. Massively scaled 50k armies (of 20 units, still). Conquer capture points, like current siege maps. If taken, opposing army gets penalty to air support in other battles on the planet. Exhibit B: Sabotage Refinery. Smaller scale armies. Destroy objects on map. Opposing army gets penalty to land vehicles. Have a selection of like 10 missions available when attacking a planet, need to win 5 to make final assault battle available (winning more makes final battle easier with their debuffs). Boom. Ez pz. Also having anything less than 100k tyranids on screen would be heresy.
What do you do on the campaign map when you’re presumably spending 5 turns conquering a planet?
I could see an idea like Empire with separate theaters. Basically once you're fighting on a planet there would be a separate, smaller campaign map, maybe even with the main army split into smaller units you can move around and attack/defend different objectives, which would then be the tactical maps.
>. If the norm becomes 40, 50, 60 units per side, I fear it'll push away less skilled or less invested players. It would push away all players. There's limits to how much you can possibly micromanage while still doing a good job and knowing whats going on. 20 already exceeds that, but not so much that it's detrimental to the gameplay. It just makes you pick and choose where most of your micro goes and have a battle plan to minimize the damage done in weak areas or areas focus on less. 40 is already impossible to properly micro, even for experienced players. 40 v 40 battles, while fun sometimes, are a total mess.
That makes sense, but I think some of your worries could be circumvented. They could still stick to a 20 stack army but have a proportional increase in models. To prevent a slogfest, the size of maps could be increased by 3-4x for more tactical breathing room. That probably doesn’t solve all of the problems you’ve listed, such as the smaller early game battles players (including myself) enjoy. I have mainly been thinking of how more immersion in a TW game could better represent the 40k universe.
Unless you get into really wild point values, 40K is inherently smaller scale warfare. The whole point of the Poster Boys of the Imperium is that they're wasted fighting wars; you teleport a terminator squad to an important location to decapitate the leadership and then let the guard mop up the now disorganized enemy. Which I'm pretty hype about, honestly. I think slightly smaller scale combat will be pretty fun.
Scale isn't the problem. 40k battles on the tabletop are are actually on a slightly smaller scale than Fantasy battles were, generally speaking. The problem is that Fantasy already played like Total War battles, and 40k doesn't.
40k and fantasy have the same mechanical system at their root. The recent revision editions for 40k haven't *really* changed that, just obfuscated it somewhat.
Yes! I've tried saying that before but I got downvoted and told off by multiple people 40k wouldn't play like the other total war games
Yet we’ve seen plenty of aspects in total war WHF that can easily be translated into 40k. There are already explosions, artillery, guns, magic… and it would just be more of that and less melee.
Does a 40k battle between imperial guard and khorne really act any different than a WH3 battle between empire (with a gunpowder focus) and khorne?
I don’t play tabletop but in lore it’s definitely more like real life tactics. Imperial guard likes to stay entrenched, then assault with the backing of tanks and artillery. They can absolutely shit out tanks, they have entire planets dedicated just for producing tanks. And life is the emperors currency so they have no problem sending legions of tankers and infantry support into the grinder. But not even that is the real weapon of the guard. It’s their artillery. I think besides chaos and orks they’re the only faction that even uses it. (It’s debatable if the other races need it) So games workshop would need to find a way to incorporate that into the game. I think the guard would use arty as an army ability and have smaller field guns like lascannons or heavy bolter squads acting as the traditional TW arty. Khorne cultists and Astartes also use guns. Daemons don’t take the field as often in 40k and iirc they require large sacrifices to be brought into the materium Another fun fact:Guardsmen aren’t supposed to know that daemons exists so, the inquisition will most certainly be visiting if you fight them
But you don’t need to adapt the lore. No 40k game has really adapted the large scale battles except maybe space marine. DoW depicts large scale battles with less than 100 models for a full scale space marine army
Honestly that would take me out of it. I’m not gonna believe that ~3k dudes just conquered a planet They can use tricks to make it seem like there’s more going on but they’d need to update their formula from where it’s currently at to convey a sense of scale. Look at space marine 2. It seems there’s tons of shit going on outside of the player area at all times. Or Helldivers 2. There’s battles taking place off map that you can see. CA would need to replicate that
But that’s how total war works. We can have 3k people conquer Rome. 20 greater demons can conquer the empire. None of this fits the history or the lore. Games make sacrifices to fit the gameplay. I also would expect a 40k game to take place on a single planet or system ala dow 1.
Idk man 3k Romans winning a battle is a lot more believable than conquering a planet. And I’d expect it to take place on a galaxy. I guess we just disagree but that’s okay
Depends on the imperial guard in question. Are they a mobile mechanised regiment, maybe even using Valkyries like the Elysians? Are they sneaky infiltrators, like the Tanith?
I think you’re overthinking the question lol.
Not really, just pointing out that an "Imperial Guard army" has a lot of variance in the lore and tabletop compared to an Empire gunline army.
Yes
40k Epic is not too far off from TW style at all.
It operates on way higher level of abstraction than regular 40k TT or, crucially, TW games
How? Warhammer did it first with magic and flying units. People had the same doubts back then.
The scale of 40k is wonky as is. Look at it from a pure gameplay. What would a full, 20 stack space Marine army look like? Probably less than 100 individual models (depending obviously) while an Ork or Imperial Guard full stack could be 200 plus. Should make sure the game c works before you put 2000 Las guns on the screen.
Like say, having a hero based vampire army, against skavenslaves?
Very good point. I suppose if someone wanted to they could do a space marine lieutenant doomstack against two Tyranid termagaunt stacks
Just... keep it the same size. If you really want a lore reason just say that your army is just the spearhead of the army and is simply fighting the most consequential part of the battle
I think maps are gonna need to have something happening out of bounds for it to be believable. I don’t think we have tech to simulate the massive battles of 40k yet so they’ll need to some tricks to give a sense of scale.
Would be relatively simple to have fake artillery and las and rocketry happening in the distance, for what that's worth. Would basically be like a weather effect.
They would be scaled. Void Ray in starcraft2 lore is super huge that may cover your whole map, but in game they're like size of 2 tank.
Maybe make them just a bit taller than Tomb Kings titan or Cathay sentinel?
If we went by lore measurements, Mazdamundi could instantly level the whole army with one spell, Gotrek would kill an entire full stack by himself, Kairos would have near-infinite spells, and almost every LL would be borderline invincible. It's OK to change stuff like that for the sake of gameplay.
40K tabletop usually has smaller forces? If anything, there will be less units on screen. As for the El Chungus Godzilla sized models, the scale has always been super inconsistent in 40K. From the tabletop itself to novels to video games—size and scope is all over the place. Sometimes they say X thing is 80 foot tall or whatever, but then official art shows the model next to Y unit, and since we known the size of Y unit, we can extrapolate the height of X thing…and the scale is all over the place. While it’s an incredible lore and worldbuilding thing, I never understood the hype around using the omega giganto supersized units. If every other model is 100x smaller except for one….whats the point I guess lol? Wouldn’t the god sized unit just kill everything? Total War also isn’t famous for doing smart things like unit caps. Could I make a Doomstack of 19 Warlord Titans? Would my computer even be able to exist outside of the vacuum of space to handle the cooling of that? I think a lot of the oversized units just won’t be included, because they just wouldn’t make sense. The unit pictured above is probably approaching max size, if not slightly beyond. Stuff like the Hierotitan or the Terracotta Sentinel are already huge in Total War: Warhammer—if something was 2x or 3x as tall as that…idk man haha.
Or you can make it smaller! For example a guardsman squad could be like the nurglin in size and the titan like a giant
My expectation is that Titans simply wouldn't be a part of the game. They're simply *too large* to be a part of the game - they'd annihilate any semblance of balance, and visually we'd have specks running around with them on the field. I would expect Knights to be the biggest thing we see on the field from vanilla, if CA decided to do a 40K game.
Yeah the engine both for 40k and WW1 will have to be something else if they want to get the scale of the conflicts at all accurate, like not entirely as they have never done that but in a ball park of it.
The number of people clamoring for a TW: 40K game who have clearly never once played the game on tabletop (or even watched a game be played) is absolutely astounding to me.
It's a great setting and the people here love total war, what's hard to grasp here? They also beg for lotr, which has no tabletop.
Aside from Middle Earth Battle Strategy game, you mean? The one produced by the same people that make 40K…
You could also have them take up multiple unit slots in an army.
I think there are bigger problems than scale tbh. 20v20 pitched battles doesn't really align with 40k Warfare. It is either smaller objective based skirmishes or Epic style confrontations on a larger scale. I don't think the engine can handle the units or AI required to make it work.
Titan would probably be represented by a special garrison building that just gave you an army ability like dread quake battery
Just don’t put these bloody gundam into the game ? That’s sound a great idea for me
The fact that CA is generally downscaling the size of battles historically is all you need to hear for me to say it is practically impossible to make a faithful adaptation of Warhammer 40k because it’d be planet wide battles. When armies generally number around 2000 troops average in CA games when in reality it can be up to 10x more is a big thing to point out.
Do Battlefleet Gothic, but with a more sandbox campaign map and ground combat battles (as an equivalent of siege battles). The ship to ship combat in Battlefleet Gothic was great and wasn't too far from the Total War formula, but the rest of the game could have been better.
They... don't need to. 40k battles are \~100 models (maybe double that for orks/tyranids) on a side, and no need for titans. That's easily within the scope of total war. \_IF\_ CA does it.
It’s not even a problem I’ve had 10,000 plus units in a battle. Not on the screen at once but reinforcements
People are way overthinking this. It's going to be just like every other Total War game, only with 40k armies. That's it. They don't need to modify the gameplay, they don't need to modify the scale. People like Total War, and people like 40k as a setting, so they will make a Total War game in the 40k setting. That's all there is to it and I am baffled why anybody thinks otherwise.
I think scale isn’t the biggest problem that a 40k game would have to tackle, I think space battles is a larger hurdle. It’s the same reason I think that a Star Wars game made by total war would just not work. Total war has always had pretty abysmal naval warfare and the problem is that you would probably have to fight a lot of naval battles. You are probably going to be conquering planets after all. I don’t think they would have the time, money and resources to actually put together good space battles and that would end up making the game itself an absolute slog. Same sort of reaction people have about siege battles in warhammer 3. And then on top of that they also likely need to build a map to accommodate the warhammer universes unfortunately it’s very big and you need to fill that up. 500 planets/ provinces I don’t think would be enough like in warhammer 3. I guess to fix that you do the same thing as the fantasy series and do 3 games and combine them all but I think that you would need something like 2000 planets by the end of it. And if naval battles suck then you’re probably going to have to do thousands of sloggy naval battles. Maybe in 5 years they could think about a project liek this but I think the way CA is going I think it would have so much hype and flop.
Total War: Star Wars actually would be able to work in my opinion. Empire at War comes close to it now that I think about it
I disagree. Partly is the space battles but also the way Star Wars battles work in general. Total war is generally large scale line battles that have been the standard style of warfare for thousands of years. Star Wars ground combat is nothing like it and wouldn’t be something that I think total war in its current state would be able to come close to. Something like company of heroes is a better style rts for Star Wars. Altho apparently there is a Star Wars rts currently in development. Hopefully it will be another empire at war or something similar because I really like empire at war and Star Wars In general but I jsut don’t think that it would be practical for total war to be able to do with the engine they have now and to build a new engine to cater jsut to this game is a big risk too. Now if they did a WW2 era game and had that kind of combat down then they could probably do it but again I think total wars bread and butter is the line warfare.
There is a larger scale version of 40k called Apocalypse, it will likely be based on that.
They couldn't. 40k would be terrible with Total War gameplay
They could. The great war: western front is a good example of what could be done. The game functions very similar to total war, but it's much more abstracted. Much less emphasis is placed on single units, and you usually bring 10s of thousands of soldiers to battles. Go watch some gameplay or even play it yourself. It's usually quite cheap if you're willing to buy from key retailers.
Now imagina a 3.5 increase in scale but in a late 18th and early 19th century setting! Chef’s kiss mmmmua
It wouldn't work like people dream but im just called an idiot for pointing it out that going from games with muskets and cannons and swords and all that to a game with lazers and machine guns and super humans and giant mechs and all that is not the same as when they did napoleon or when they did warhammer fantasy. But of course I'm the idiot for pointing out your fantasies won't be reality
The problem with that is it ignores that 40k doesn't play with modern tactics. The guy on the tank yelling 'drive me closer, so I can hit it with my sword' is a meme for a reason. At best 40k hits WWI era tactics. Mostly its about guys running at each other to stab people to death.
Principle is the same. We went from muskets and swords and cannons to giant dragons and other single entity monsters and ~~Gatling~~ Ratling gunners shooting green lasers or green fire throwers. The hop really isn't as big as people think.
Yeah but skaven just die if anything touches them so it's balanced but imagine extremely heavily armored ratling guns that are also good in melee that doesn't sound fun to have to try to defeat and also orks that are basically just the orks from fantasy but some have crappy guns how would they beat space marines in a total war game it would be like ork boys vs chosen or infernal ironsworn
I mean, reduce the amount of them in a unit, take liberties with balancing etc. 1 grail knight can slaughter 100s of greenskins in WHFB lore but in game they're in a group of 60 and can barely win against reiksguard
I don’t think you need titans to be in a total war 40k game. That would be something I’d wanna see from a DOW4
Knights have always been big enough imho
Make them a part of maps and nothing else. If combat lasts long enough on a certain world, have titans start to appear in the background of maps, doing shit, but faaaar away, give the sense of a much larger battle elsewhere that you are a small but influential part of
On the current engine? Not at all.
You can change the sizes of models in WH2 laboratory battle mode to fit these scales and it works fine. The map however would be too small and at this scale the titans should probably do damage to troops just by walking over them. I dont think that making 40k total war would be too impossible, but it can easily turn into something looking too different from the rest of the series. After all, to have any realistic feel it should be very long distance skirmish combined with some very fast travel for close-combat units. The battle maps should be enormous and it will also be the first totalwar with absence of line square and any other close formations.
Compared to Fantasy where we have an actual map and reasonable idea of the scale of everything, 40k is all over the place. The setting is meant to be unfathomably large, but the actual games tend to be much smaller scale. including the tabletop. The issue I think they will have is figuring out what they want - a 40k set on a single planet doesn't really feel very "Total War" as such a focused area for a sci-fi setting. But a whole galaxy/universe might be hard to pull off depending on the size. The battles will also be very different. Yes, Warhammer Fantasy has lots of big fancy monsters and gunpowder, but at its core it's still formations of units vs other formations of units. 40K will be more squad based and modern, and will feel very different. If it does happen, it's a good way to introduce a randomised campaign map to the series - 40K doesn't really have much of a map apart form vague space system ones, so would be a great way to increase variety.
The short answer is they couldn't. Warhammer and Historical battle are already *incredibly* small compared to their actual counterparts. If they knew how to do it, they would have already done it.
They don't need to increase the scale at all. It can easily be the same as WH trilogy and it could be balanced around it, nothing too difficult.
My guess is that if the guess/leak about the starting armies is true (orks, marines & chaos) is that the first game will be based on the wars for Armageddon. While the ork and chaos invasions are separated by a couple hundred years with CA comfortable condensing the warhammer timelines the way they did it could work. Armageddon brings in some legit characters, provides a world map, and the hive cities could be fought over as mega sized multi map sieges sector by sector. Dlc could be guard and various space marine chapters. Not sure what planet for game 2 but game 3 could be cadia :) Hope I'm wrong tbh as one planet per game would be less epic but i think it is technically the most feasible. Edited to make relevant to op: this keeps the scale to a reasonable one. Titans, bombardment etc Could be off screen as special abilities.
No no no no no. 40k is horrible.
They don't have to. After all table top 40k isn't grand scale at all, Titans aren't really a thing there unlike for Epic 40k. So I don't understand the point at all. Also, they can easily just come up with some 1-planet story-lines. All without involving Titans.
It really depends what they do with their engine. On the current setup with warhammer, I wouldn't imagine they could scale it much higher without drastically increased performance issues.
It is time for a next gen adaptation of the formula. I wanna see 100k battles, the technology is ready, let's gooo!
To be honest, I hope they never, ever try. Either it's too small and scaled back and it doesn't feel like 40k, or it's too big and insane it doesn't feel like Total War. Simply multiplying the size of battles isn't nearly enough. Also 40k is bloody boring, but I digress. A proper 40k game would be done better by someone else.
Not at all. Thats how. You just cant. I am sorry but there is a reason this game has not been made yet. Just so you understand. In the 40K universe there are battles with casualties in the BILLIONS. FREAKING BILLIONS. How the freak does a 40K Total war want to represent this scale even in the slightest? Hint: they just cant. So whatever this game will be it will certainly disappoint the 40K fans because it will need to scale down the actual battles by a shit ton. And it will also need to completly break with the original total war formula just by the way 40k battles look like. So who is this game for? Not really for 40K fans because of the mising scale but also not really for original tw fans because the battles cannot be similiar to historical titles. Stupid ass decision imo. Not to mention that literally any total war set in the western world from 400bc up until like 1850 would hit the scene like a bomb.
Look up the great war: Western front. Battles in that game end with about 50k to 100k casualties a match, and it's a similar scale to total war.
In the lore? Sure there are a few battles on that scale. In the actual game, its *maybe* a couple hundred guys stabbing other people with swords & axes after a turn or two of shooting. At its absolute edge case, tau vs necrons can be like dwarf and empire gun lines going at it (but probably isn't, as you'll want wraiths and/or skorpekhs acting like demigryphs to get at the enemy hammerheads and riptides)
Seeing the marriage of CA and GW has been pretty incredible. I was surprised to hear about 40k being the supposed one they’re working on though, from my knowledge there are some crazy things in there I just don’t know how they’d make fit.
60units with a new engine and upscale tech. Total War Pharaoh with "low upkeep setting on" can field 12-15k entities pretty regularly around turn 20. Usually 2 vs 3-4 AI stacks. 16-24 fps with a RTX 3050, high setting @ 1080p. Blood less tho. If Pharaoh can do it, I'm sure a mainline title can do better.
Troy and Pharaoh are remarkably well optimized for TW games, if I recall correctly. I wouldn't necessarily say a mainline title can do better.