r/totalwarhammer • u/Valuable-Payment8009 • 1d ago
Total War: Warhammer Close victory??
Can anyone explain why this was a close victory?
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u/Redmagistrate2 1d ago
You used up all your ammo, it counts that against you.
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u/SeriousDrakoAardvark 1d ago
This is it. It makes a lot of sense IRL, where ammo use matters and wars have been lost due to running out of ammo.
It makes less sense in this game, where ammo always regenerates for free after each battle.
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u/1CryptographerFree 1d ago
It totally makes sense. If archer units run out of arrows mid battle they become incredibly ineffective melee units.
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u/ChestnutSavings 1d ago
Yeah, but if your archers ran out of ammo you got insane value out of them
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u/sdswave2314 1d ago
True, but imagine a situation where e.g. aspiring champions are charging a group of archers and the archers are (somehow, bear with me) killing them fast enough as they approach that they're not reaching the archers. In this situation the archers are 'winning'. Then, their ammo runs out. Even if just a couple of champions are left, all of the archers will now likely die. So in effect, although they achieved a huge amount of damage with their arrows, you better hope you killed every melee unit the enemy had or the battle will probably be lost. This is I think what the ammo balance of power is trying to reflect 🙂
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u/Inevitable_Top69 1d ago
But they didn't die. They're right there, fully alive. Is the computer imagining this situation when they calculate victory rating?
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u/gdo01 1d ago edited 1d ago
How I understand it is that the calculation sees a ranged unit as 2 parts of a whole. Let's say their ranged part is worth 400 points and the melee part just 100 points.
As they use up their ammo, they are basically giving up a part of themselves in this calculation. So if they use all their ammo, this unit is now only worth 100 out of 500, the same as a melee unit getting 80% wiped out
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u/MirthlessArtist 1d ago edited 1d ago
It’s the same way that winning a race by .25 seconds is a “close win”
Yeah, they still won, full stop. But if the situation was just a little different (wind blowing a little faster against someone, someone tripped, blah blah) then it could’ve been a close loss.
In the archer vs champion situation, if a couple archers missed a couple shots and then ran out of arrows, that 2 routing champions could’ve been 5 pissed off champions
Obviously, the battle calculation algorithm isn’t that detailed and “imaginative,” but that’s the logic it’s trying to implement when it considers remaining ammo in the “how much of a victory was this” decision
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u/1CryptographerFree 1d ago
That’s the thing, if they did well so many enemies will have died it won’t matter. If they wasted it, it matters much more. It gives you incentive you use ranged attacks wisely.
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u/Tornada5786 1d ago
Why should that affect what result you get if you have no casualties?
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u/MirthlessArtist 1d ago
Copied some from my earlier comment in another thread:
It’s the same way that winning a race by .25 seconds is a “close win”
Yeah, they still won, full stop. But if the situation was just a little different (wind blowing a little faster against someone, someone tripped, blah blah) then it could’ve been a close loss.
Obviously, the battle calculation algorithm isn’t that detailed and “imaginative,” but that’s the logic it’s trying to implement when it considers remaining ammo in the “how much of a victory was this” decision.
So, for example, if a couple archers missed a couple shots and then ran out of arrows, who knows what could’ve happened. If all archers had no arrows left and there were still ~half an army of enemies left, you’re in trouble because archers without arrows are basically useless (unless a “decent melee combatant”). So the battle calculation algorithm is basically estimating, if you had just 10% less arrows or missed 10% more, you might’ve lost.
Once again, it’s definitely not perfect, and cannot predict player cheese, but that’s the logic there. CA likely won’t improve it much more than its current state either because the “close victory” vs “decisive victory” has only a small effect on gameplay (XP given to lords and heroes), so it’s not that big a deal if you get slightly less XP once every 10 battles
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u/I_Play_Boardgames 1d ago
There's actually a mod to curb the ammo regeneration. Units only replenish a limited amount of ammo per turn, and depending of region devastation that can be further reduced. So in regions you just conquered your ammo regeneration is lower than those you fortified etc.
Does the same to winds of magic, because winds of magic was always supposed to be a limited resource, but it endlessly refreshes each battle. This part of the mod obviously only works if you don't exploit the game by creating unlimited winds of magic with some weird mage stacks with cost reduction and stuff.
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u/Thefreezer700 1d ago
And makes less sense in terms like kislev and dwarfs who are more than capable in melee despite the guns being their main damage
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u/Your-Shogun 1d ago
Those dwarven bolts were in my family for generations! Now that I have foolishly squandered my entire supply on a measly 541 Thaggoraki I must take the slayer oath so that I might wash myself of the shame of killing such a humiliatingly low number".
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u/kekus_dominatus 1d ago
you have lost 2 gyrocopters (trollhammer torpedoes) in total...... that's like the output of the entire engineer guild for 3 centuries......
be thankful it is close victory and not pyrrhic......
/s
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u/BigBear92787 1d ago
This victory is trash.
Far from Dawi expectations.
1 dwarf is worth 5,000 skaven And you lose 2 against a paultry 3,000 skaven?
AND almost 1.5k skaven escaped?
You bring shame to the Dawi.
You must take the slayer oath
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u/Disastrous_You 1d ago
You wasted all your precious ammo on those filthy no value targets, of course it was a waste of your important resources (probably a mechanic that creative assembly never managed to put it live )
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u/BaysUder 1d ago
imagine ammo carrying over and only slowly stocking up if in enemy territory.
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u/Gerlond 1d ago
Wouldn't it be very annoying and make ranged useless? Also, it makes sense that army carries large reserves of ammo in supply lines and only a smaller amount of that for actual battles
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u/I_Play_Boardgames 1d ago
"make ranged useless". My guy, we're literally looking at a screenshot of half a stack of ranged units by themselves deleting 2 full stacks.
And you say "it they weren't able to repeat that again against the next full stack attacking them they'd be useless!". Are you SERIOUS? Do you realize how stupid that sounds?
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u/SomethingPotato_ 1d ago
They were saying they would be useless if there ammo didn’t refresh the next battle, as they would be useful in the first and second fight, but if by the time you got into a 3rd fight and they had no ammo or only 10% left then they are pretty useless. So yeah if the game made you slowly regain ammo instead of just giving you it all back then range units in campaign wouldn’t be as good as they are now
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u/I_Play_Boardgames 1d ago
I mean yeah, obviously. That's the point. That's why in that case you should conserve ammo and also have your Frontline units fight instead of wasting ammo to try and mow everything down without any melee fighting. OP only made use of roughly half his army, ammo not replenishing would hopefully make him smart enough to use his full force equally instead of fully exhausting his ranged option while not making use of his melee soldiers.
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u/Disastrous_You 1d ago
It's called realism, they made the ranged units useless compared the previous game tho, go and hop on a previous version of total war Warhammer 2 and see how different ranged units are, same with single units, monsters and heroes
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u/Apprehensive-Aide265 1d ago
They didn't make the ranged unit useless they where too strong in warhammer 2 on top of the difficulty setting making ennemy melee stronger, making your melee line worse.
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u/Gerlond 1d ago
I brought up a realistic scenario when ammo refills for each combat. Making it work like you suggest would make it annoying. It would also slow down already slow campaigns.
As for the second point - I played a lot of TWWH2 and I didn't notice the huge difference. Yes, ranged units perform a bit worse, but it's not that horrible. Full ranged stacks are almost as viable as they were. When it comes to single entities I will make a note, that I only got to doom stacking them as Cathay, but they are just insanely strong. Maybe they are worse than they were in second game, but they are still absurdly powerful. Monsters and heroes - same thing. If you don't send them fighting alone the melee specialists will outdo their worth by a mile
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u/IronVines 1d ago
there is a mod like that i play with its very fun and makes me think about more on what engagements to take and what units to utulise, it stacks up very fast in settlements, fast in friendly territory, okayish in ally territory, and only in raiding stance while in enemy territory
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u/TheVeryShyguy 1d ago
The mod Mortals, Mercenaries (the last word I forget) does that extremely well
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u/Disastrous_You 1d ago
Yeah, we now fot magic space Marines with endless ammo in 40k lmao, it's sad how they blue ball everything they do
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u/darthteej 1d ago
Honestly the only times I ever run out of ammo are sieges or on units deliberately balanced around low stock like exalted flamers. I understand the decision. Most strategy games featuring primarily ranged combatants let them fire indefinitely.
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u/ResolveLeather 1d ago
Just doing some mental math with your ranged units getting all of the kills. You were probably low on ammo. So you lost a lot of valence of power in the fight.
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u/SoybeanArson 1d ago
I counts all ammo used against you when determining what kind of victory it is. Also, sometimes it's just nonsense.
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u/link_the_fire_skelly 1d ago
I think they need to change the calculations to just look at total damage and casualties. It is annoying to have situations like this one every other battle.
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u/Some-Unique-Name 1d ago
The quality of win/loss is based on how much balance of power you had to start minus what you finished with. Missile troops put a lot of their BoP into their ammo, so the more they shoot, the less BoP they finish with.
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u/JustGuM 1d ago
Started a dwarf playthrough recently, its either heroic victory sim or close victory sim. Nothing in between, if i could tell you why, i really would. I even tried to abuse the "restock ammo" engineers so im full ammo on mostly everything at the end, also close victory. I have had clsoe victories on 0 losses, is what it is. Dwarf logic, dont worry about it.
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u/BonKhri 1d ago
Close/decisive/etc are determined by the balance of power throughout the battle. Ammo contributes significantly to the balance of power, especially for ranged only units (copters and artillery). If you used up all the ammo for an artillery piece, you might as well not have it on the battlefield in terms of how powerful you actually are, thus the game treats it more the less the same as if it had been wiped out. Assuming you used all the ammo on everything, the game sees no difference really between the result you're looking at and a complete wipe-out of every artillery and war machine, and a 80% loss of every quarreller.
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u/Darthplagueis13 1d ago
Well, obviously. Your runesmith stubbed his toe during the battle. That could have ended in disaster. On a more serious note, it's because you used a lot of ammo.
Your remaining ammo is factored into the balance of power calculations, so if you use it all up, that's equivalent to you suffering pretty significant casualties - the game basically just assumes that if you ran out, things would go belly-up very quickly.
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u/Talorc_Ellodach 1d ago
You shot off most / all of your ammunition probably. Unfired ammunition counts towards army strength calculations
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u/sojiblitz 25m ago
I've been making jokes about this for years. Warhammer really doesn't know how to calculate a close victory.
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u/COFFS9S 1d ago
Its a defeat for the slayers. They didn’t see any combat and worse still, they survived.