Warhammer 40K: Armaggedon - Turn-based strategy from Slitherine

[Darth Roxor]

I think it is a worthy successor to Rites of War

P. much exactly what I needed to know.

MUH D1P

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

GODDAMN IT

Just scale it up x1000

 

[Agesilaus]

it's on sale until december 3rd so I think I'll hold off until some more gameplay videos role onto youtube

 

[Galdred]

I added a summary and some explanations about AI passivity in scouting : I think they will correct it, but it is a bit easy to exploit ATM if you use mostly range 3+ weapons. Given that I have not tried the latest build (we had way too much requisition points in beta 3, so I had mostly shadowswords, anihilator predators and Titans at this time, which made blasting units from out of their spotting range pretty easy, but they halved the amount of requsition, so such approach might not be feasible anymore).

Whoa, nice job Galdred. With a few screenshots and better spacing, that could be a Tac Cancer preview.

Thank you
I would need to install and play the commercial build in order to post screenshots, but I am very busy these days(moving back home and all the related paperwork issues). I will try to do this during the week end.

 

[Galdred]

GODDAMN IT

Just scale it up x1000

The trailer or the units? Because given the lore and its 1000 Space Marine strong chapters, and the requirements of Warhammer 40K TT (which is that 1 Space Marine is at most equivalent to 3 IG or Orks), it is hard to represent battles with many men on each side, while having the Space Marines being relevant (the ridiculously small cannon chapter size is already a problem in a tabletop Warhammer 40K Apocalypse, while a complete playthrough of the Space Hulk boardgame might well have you deplete the whole 1st company of the Blood Angels).

 

[VonVentrue]

Thanks for such an extensive and insightful summary, Galdred - I couldn't have asked for more.
Updated my wishlist.txt, ever since finishing Battle Worlds:Kronos, I've been on the lookout for an equally competent experience to scratch that elusive Battle Isle itch.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

I bought the game, have only just begun playing it. I liked the panzer corps game pretty much, so I was willing to buy this first day.

That being said, there are a few things that are bothering me at the moment, but maybe its just that I need to get over comparing it to panzer corps---

but anyway the main issue to me is that infantry tactics and abilities do not feel right compared to how they worked in panzer corps. What I mean is that they have taken out the close combat ratings and the close terrain type along with the ability to fortify and entrench with really takes a huge part of infantry tactics and to some degree artillery tactics out of the game.

In panzer corps infantry can entrench in close terrain like a city or woods and be a huge obstacle to uproot which required artillery and pioneers and other infantry to help out and gave infantry a very valuable role both offensively and defensively. Also in close terrain tanks were forced to use their close combat fighting ability instead of their huge main guns which nerfed using tanks in forests and cities which is realistic and also allowed infantry a way to defend themselves against tanks. Without this in the game I feel like infantry does not have as much a useful nor interesting role.

So far I feel like panzer corps rules better differentiated different weapon types and gave each unit types actual valuable roles where as so far in the warhammer version it feels like weapon types are not that different from each other. But it may be that I am not understanding the interplay between weapons types and how to use them to their best ability yet. But at the moment I feel like there needs to be something done to make infantry tactics and artillery tactics more interesting somehow.

I realize entrenching and close combat terrain may not be a part of the warhammer game system so maybe that is why it was not included, but I feel like the game is missing something without this so far...

but I have only played an hour or so, and its possible I am not understanding how the entire system works yet..

 

[Galdred]

I bought the game, have only just begun playing it. I liked the panzer corps game pretty much, so I was willing to buy this first day.

That being said, there are a few things that are bothering me at the moment, but maybe its just that I need to get over comparing it to panzer corps---

but anyway the main issue to me is that infantry tactics and abilities do not feel right compared to how they worked in panzer corps. What I mean is that they have taken out the close combat ratings and the close terrain type along with the ability to fortify and entrench with really takes a huge part of infantry tactics and to some degree artillery tactics out of the game.

In panzer corps infantry can entrench in close terrain like a city or woods and be a huge obstacle to uproot which required artillery and pioneers and other infantry to help out and gave infantry a very valuable role both offensively and defensively. Also in close terrain tanks were forced to use their close combat fighting ability instead of their huge main guns which nerfed using tanks in forests and cities which is realistic and also allowed infantry a way to defend themselves against tanks. Without this in the game I feel like infantry does not have as much a useful nor interesting role.

So far I feel like panzer corps rules better differentiated different weapon types and gave each unit types actual valuable roles where as so far in the warhammer version it feels like weapon types are not that different from each other. But it may be that I am not understanding the interplay between weapons types and how to use them to their best ability yet. But at the moment I feel like there needs to be something done to make infantry tactics and artillery tactics more interesting somehow.

I realize entrenching and close combat terrain may not be a part of the warhammer game system so maybe that is why it was not included, but I feel like the game is missing something without this so far...

but I have only played an hour or so, and its possible I am not understanding how the entire system works yet..

I think you are right about infantry being in need of some thing to make it worthwile and I posted a lot about this during the beta. That said, there are good reasons why this game cannot work like PanzerCorps : attacking a forest with tanks in PzCorps meant you were sending your armored units inside the forest where they would fight at a disadvantage.
Here,with the scale being much smaller than in Panzer Corps, it just means firing at the units inside(the tanks do not approach, and it only represent a few trees), so it only provides some cover.

It is true taht infantry is too easy to dislodge now (it used to be too hard in beta 2, but they nerfed infantry cover too much in beta 3 and later).
Some maps still make infantry hard to engage with tanks (lots of buildings bunched together or lot of terrain that breaks LoS).
Some infantry have close combat weapons (0 range) which allow them to ignore cover, but the problem is that these units usually lose a lot of strength before assaulting (even assault terminators have a hard time engaging in melee without losing some guys first), and the dedicated anti infantry weapons that ignore cover are not that useful either because as you said, infantry already dies a lot to generic weapons, even in cover, and the vehicle using anti infantry weapons usually lack resilience.
Most victory locations are on tiles that can only be walked on by infantry though, so you still need some, and the units with both ranged and assault weapons (some dreadnoughts, command squads, regular terminators) are great finishers(they are very strong, so they excel against units with red morale that do not fight back much, or artillery that cannot attack back from range 1), but overall, infantry needs something to make it worthwile to take.

They said they would look for ways to make infantry more resilient to non specific anti infantry weapons, but I don't know how they intend to implement that (they were talking about adding blast to some weapons, to tag them as anti infantry).

Regarding weapons that are good against tanks or infantry, the general idea is that lots of shots are usually better against infantry, while fewer shots with high strength are bettr against tanks.

Concerning specific infantry units, unfortunately, I think it is a safe bet to axe guardsmen with lasguns or flamers, and just keep command squad and special weapon squads (heavy bolter support and anti tank).

 

[A horse of course]

I still have the beta installer sitting on my desktop. The problem is that it's sandwiched between all the pornhub videos so I always get distracted on the way there.

 

[Aothan]

any idea how long a typical multiplayer game might last, I have some interest but not sure if I could stay playing the same online game for hours at a time.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Yeah, infantry seems underwhelming so far. Heavy weapons and ratlings are ok as support units, but your regular guardsmen and hive militia are pretty much a waste of resources. I get that they suck because they're IG infantry, but you should still want them as meat shield, something to engage enemy infantry or take mission objectives, as it is I can't find a use for them.
I've managed to use a flamer squads nicely with chimera transport once, but they still got wiped out one turn after dismounting.

Other than that, I like it so far, but I've only just started the first campaign after tutorial. Gotta love the other commander who got "exterminatus" for disobeying orders, the first metal boxes moment in this game

 

[Makabb]

Final liberation is still the superior game.

 

[spectre]

If only it worked on 64 bit OS though...

 

[Makabb]

win 7 64 playing it right now without a problem, even the music is running, only the videos don't work.

 

[Jaedar]

win 7 64 playing it right now without a problem, even the music is running, only the videos don't work.

As far as I understand it, that's a pretty significant drawback.

 

[Luka-boy]

Indeed.

 

[Absalom]

If only it worked on 64 bit OS though...

Had no problems on Win8.

Final Liberation is fun, but there's only one strategy that really works: Completely cheese artillery and turn every battle into a moonscape on turn one. Also, there's a bug that makes purchasing AA tank impossible so hard difficulty. (Where orks have a good chance of having flyers)

 

[panzertoter]

It works. You just have to run it under VMWare Windows 95/98 system.

 

[VonVentrue]

It works. You just have to run it under VMWare Windows 95/98 system.

Precisely - setting up a virtual machine is something totally worth carving a few blocks of time out of your daily schedule for - be it VMWare of VirtualBox.

 

[oscar]

Having quite a lot of fun with this. Infantry feel about right to me: vulnerable to concentrated fire (but then again, what isn't?) if left out in the open but nice bullet sponges for the AI to erode its morale against and wear down its strength if fortified or in good cover. I also have a soft spot for the cavalry bros

Artillery so far seems the king of the battlefield being tough, punchy, fast and good against both enemy armour and infantry. Most of the models even do a decent job of defending themselves with retaliations.

This artillery primacy also means that scouting is really important and sentinels are indispensable.

 

[Galdred]

Having quite a lot of fun with this. Infantry feel about right to me: vulnerable to concentrated fire (but then again, what isn't?) if left out in the open but nice bullet sponges for the AI to erode its morale against and wear down its strength if fortified or in good cover. I also have a soft spot for the cavalry bros

Artillery so far seems the king of the battlefield being tough, punchy, fast and good against both enemy armour and infantry. Most of the models even do a decent job of defending themselves with retaliations.

This artillery primacy also means that scouting is really important and sentinels are indispensable.

You can scout with Warhounds later on :D Quite expensive, but they last long. Early on, tanks cannot match the rew damage of assault infantry (well, rough riders and command squads, really). Basically, the unit power is really dependent on the number of weapons(command squad and ranged terminators get to fire once, then attack with their close combat weapons, hence their strength on CC).
I think they made Marines too weak, because of low unit count (10 marines in a hex, or 7 pred or 7 dreadnoughts? Seriously?), so in act2, you don't have appealing infantry options anymore, but before, command squads do the job nicely(and their command aura really helps : they passively increases morale of adjacent units).

Concerning infantry, I think the best would be to voice your concerns on the official slitherine forum, or at least on Steam, as they listened to feedback, and making infantry different than armor was on their to do list for after beta.

 

[Mangoose]

It works. You just have to run it under VMWare Windows 95/98 system.

Precisely - setting up a virtual machine is something totally worth carving a few blocks of time out of your daily schedule for - be it VMWare of VirtualBox.

I got Chaos Gate working in Virtualbox (forget what version) Win98 but could never get Rites of War or Final Liberation working...

Which is fine because Chaos Gate is more my preference of type of game anyway.

So sad that computer crashed so I couldn't finish my LP

 

[Jaedar]

I tried to get chaos gate working in virtual environment bet never got it to function properly. Rites of war worked out of the box though, but don't remember if it was on xp or w7.

 

[panzertoter]

Chaos Gate works flawlessly, but you have to turn off hardware sound acceleration in DirectX inside virtualised Win 95/98.

 

[Agesilaus]

Played a few hours of Armageddon, it's p good. Lot of good quality sound effects, graphics don't break up when you zoom in, and it's a very smooth experience gameplay wise. I didn't bother with the panzer war series, so the last time I played something like this was Fantasy General, or Battle for Wesnoth; that means I'm not particularly good at it, unfortunately, but it's not that difficult on normal setting. I don't understand the point in purchasing certain units, but then again I haven't had any economic issues so I roll around with 4 basilisks, snipers, mortar crews, and tanks. There was one questionable moment when I shot an entire unit of flying orc motorcycles (??) out of the sky with my basilisk, which seemed a tad unlikely.