Warhammer fantasy battle, the one with the miniature paintings, rich game lore and the millions of nerd fans. Well if you failed to notice, it's finally being paired with Creative Assembly's Total War mass battle simulator. Dubbed Total War: Warhammer, gamers everywhere will be able to see the beautiful tabletop game come to life. Oh and check this is out as no one else knows this, this is the first of 3 completely standalone Total War Warhammer titles that will be coming to PC. That's not including all the content packs that come with each one of those Total Warhammer games.
Traditionally Total War games have been set in accurately portrayed periods throughout our history. And I for one have longed for this partnership but never thought it would happen. Well let's recap on what we know so far about Total War Warhammer and we will also predict its system requirements so people can have an idea about whether or not their PCs will run Total Warhammer when it eventually arrives next year.
Check out our similar Fallout 4, DOOM, Battlefront, Dishonored 2 and Hitman sys spec summary.
Total War Warhammer Release Period: Holiday 2016
Platforms Total War Warhammer is available on: PC Only!
Total War Warhammer full development began: 2013
Total War Warhammer Background: Deep and rich universe of Warhammer heralds a new era for Total War. Gigantic monsters, flying creatures, legendary heroes and storms of magical power take their place on the battlefield, alongside thousands of warriors clashing in real-time tactical battles
Key Total War Warhammer Game Features
- Total War Warhammer is the first in a trilogy of stand alone Total War games
- Each of the 3 Total War Warhammer games will also have additional content DLC packs
What we know about the first Total War Warhammer
- There will be flying mounts - We know of Griffins and Wyvern (maybe high elf phoenix)
- Monstrous units can interact with individual units. For example, a griffin can pick up an enemy orc and drop him from the sky
- Giants can pick up enemy and eat them
- There will be giant gobbo spider mounts, for the greenskins
- Dwarven cannon units
- Factions - Undead vampire, Orcs, Humans and Dwarves
- Each faction will have a primary Hero Lord character. Which is a legendary hero
- Grimgore Ironhide Black Orc is a confirmed Legendary hero
- Karl Franz griffin rider will be the Legendary hero for the humans
- Normal TW diplomacy will have some constraints due to the expected natural faction alignments. Humans wont ally with undead for example
- Weather - no seasons, no weather, no turns. This was based on a strange official quote. Not sure what it means yet
- Heroes are basically agents. They can be bundled with an army
- Examples of heroes are - Witch Hunters, Warrior priests, Shaman and Wizards
- They will fight with an army unit on a battlefield as an army general character
- Heroes can also perform actions in the turn based world view, like agents from previous TW games
- Heroes will have a "massively deep skill tree". Deeper than ever before, to help you get into the character and narrative of these heroes
- The story arc is likely to include the Demon Lord of Change, a greater demon of the Chaos God Tzeentch (Changer of the Ways)
- Note that CA have used the tag line "Our rules have changed", as a nice easter egg
Total War Warhammer Game Engine
Total War Warhammer is built on Creative Assembly's newish Warscape engine. It was used for Rome 2, which launched with a number of bugs. But since then CA tightened up the engine and by the time they released Total War: Attila, the engine was pretty much stable. This engine is constantly improved upon by the team and the visual improvement between Rome 2 and Attila was evident. However this means that the system requirements for Total War Warhammer will be pretty high, but worth it.
Total War Warhammer System Requirements (Speculative)
- OS: Windows 7 or Windows 8 and above - 64bit
- CPU: Intel Core i5-2310 2.9GHz / AMD Phenom II X6 1065T
- RAM: 8 GB System Memory
- GPU VRAM: 2GB
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 or AMD Radeon R9 270
- HD: 45 GB Free Hard Drive Space (speculative download size)
- DX: DirectX 11
When Total War Rome 2 released in Sept 2013, a lot of PCs found it hard to run. Then when the revamped Total War Attila released at the beginning of this year a lot of PCs found it hard to run.
A possible Total War Warhammer world map, based on faction information currently provided
Click the image below to expand. Here we can see a number of silhouettes of unannounced troops in the Creative Assembly developers right hand monitor. There is a phoenix, belonging to the high elves.
Below you can see a sense of scale between some of the monstrous units
Black orcs get larger the longer they spend in harsher environments. The Legendary Hero orc Grimgore Ironhide became enormous as he defeated enemy after enemy. All the orcs around him would also grow to try and keep up with him. Will this be a buff that translates into the Total Warhammer orc faction? If Grimgore is in an army then his Black Orcs could get physically larger as they gain veterancy and experience. Definitely a feature I would enjoy in the final Total War Warhammer.
Here is the Announcement TW Warhammer Trailer
There is so much that can go right with Total Warhammer that I am having a nerdgasm. So rest assured we will be watching this title with some keen interest.
Who else likes both franchises, Total War and Warhammer? Which of Warhammer Fantasy's unique differences would you like to see make it into Total Warhammer, like Grimgore's ever-increasing size?
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Yasssh! Available on PC only.
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I don't really know anything about Warhammer but this game does look interesting and I will probably give it a go. Tbh I'm just waiting for the next major historical TW game which will hopefully be Medieval 3. Whatever the next TW game following this will be CA need to make a new engine for it. The Warscape engine has caused problems ever since Empire and it's surprising that CA have stuck with it ever since.
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"Humans wont ally with undead for example" ow that's such a pitty...I already saw myself taking humans to the dark path :p
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Yeah I thought the same thing. I believe there will be a day-one-mod for that though ;)
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Didn't mean to downvote - but apparently I cannot let it turn back to previous so I've had to upvote instead..
Anyway, CA has confirmed that NO modding will be available for the TW:Warhammer Series, since it's not "their" game only.
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!!!
Damn that's bad news!
Where did you find that out?
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[QUOTE] As this isn’t just a CA game, regretfully there are no plans to support modding for Total War: Warhammer. An Assembly Kit is will be available very shortly for Total War: ATTILA however [/QUOTE]
Ref. total war official forums
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Damn, well thanks I guess.
Still, mods are what made Rome II enjoyable for me.
I'm still hopeful though, it's a long time until release and this is still subject to change. I just can't imagine a TW without mods.
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that actually means CA doesn't support modding offically,so there will most likely be "old school modding",ie like TW game normally until workshop tools released. just my hunch. or more like my wish. as usually TW needs mods to be truly enjoyable.
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Why does no one remember the Game Mark of Chaos the is baciscally what this game will be yes that game was epic and really the only way such game can be done
and dont get me start with that fact even that game need major cpu power to run
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Hehe I actually enjoyed Shadow of the Horned Rat first, then Dark Omens. Amazing games!
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for me id love to reply it but lost my copy year ago in a move to a new city it wasthe game that helped me find the total war series infact only down side to the game back then was the ammont of prelevel loading it needed
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Will have to wait for some kind of ultimate edition to have most of the problem fixed :p Lesson learnt from Rome 2. while it was a great game, the number of bugs at launch made it horrible :p
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I thought CA stated in offical forums it wil be PC only,just like all other TW series O_o
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That is what I have read also. The consoles don't have enough CPU power to run a modern Total War game properly. Even people with high end i7 CPUs have CPU bottlenecks when playing Rome II & Attila. Mainly because the Warscape engine that they use forces all of the AI through CPU core 0. You almost have to have an i5 or i7 clocked at 4.0GHz or faster to not get stutter with their newer games.
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yeh,I just started new campaing in Rome2 and...well,fps goes down to 15 at moment armies clash together,especially if even 1 unit of reinforcements. Attila is same. too bad OC is not option,bad lottery ticket. considerin to get 4790K but can't afford 400€ for long time
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Why can't you just OC your i7-4770K to around 4.1GHz to 4.3GHz? I have my mobile i7-4900MQ OCed to 4GHz. Well 3.991GHz to be exact. That is all I can get out of it with stable performance. I am only showing 5% OC here on GD because 4GHz is only 5% more than my stock Turbo clock of 3.8GHz which is what it was running at when playing games before I OCed.
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because my 4770K can't be clocked even 4GHz stable. it just doesn't like OCing at all. extremely bad CPU for that,bad luck.
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Are you sure it is your CPU? Maybe it is actually your power supply or even the connection to your power supply that is causing that problem. You should be able to get about 4.3GHz OC on just air cooling.
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haven't really even consider that O.o so I test ATX connector and CPU power connectors. thanks for tip :D
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No problem & I hope that is the answer to your problem. New wires or a new power supply is a lot cheaper than a new CPU. ;)
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well,it kind of solved problem. now I got 4.1GHz stable (2hours of AIDA64 test). that would actually be free if connector or wire is broken,it's only 9months old PSU with 3years of warranty. :P and that already helped for TW pretty well.
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Well if you are still using a factory cooler with the factory thermal paste then 4.1GHz is about right. Get an after market cooler for cheap & replace that crap factory thermal paste application with something better. I used OC Diamond on mine. If not it would have never held 4GHz stable.
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I use CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO pasted with Phobya HiGrease Extreme. noway I would done any OC with that stock cooler...temps was 71C with stock clocks and horrible noise :D
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Okay well that is good then. I am glad that you at least got it up to or a little above 4GHz. That really is the sweet spot for Rome II & Attila. Anything below 4GHz will have some stutter
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You guys are absolutely right. That totally was a typo that shouldnt have been in there. I will remove that. This is a PC only!
Thanks for letting me know. F
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It is cool Felix. You have a lot to go through right now with E3 still being so fresh.
I do think it would be awesome if CA could finally make Total War use multi core CPUs better so that the consoles could run this new game. I think it would be great for more people to get a chance to experience Total War, & even though I think Total War has gone downhill some I am still a fan. ;)
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TW for me has gone down hill but recently I've been enjoying Rome 2 and found new love for Empire. CA do need to make TW use multi core cpus anyway for PCs but I think bringing TW to consoles would be a good thing so like you said more people can experience TW. If CA were to bring TW to consoles then I think it would be a game like Arena rather than one of the major TW games like Rome 2 or Warhammer.
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I don't think I agree with the downhill thing. Every TW game has it's ups and downs. Medieval 2 is by far still my favourite, but it's definitely not without its faults. And all games since medieval 2 have their ups and downs. Empire was the first to include naval battles. It could have been done a bit easier to handle, but I've seen quite a few epic battles :)
Shogun 2 and its 2 major add-ons rots and fots were and still are really awesome. If it had the same kind of mods as Medieval 2 had, I'd even dare put it higher on my top 10 games list!
Rome II definitely has issues, and it's really only fun to play through as the Romans, but I like the introduction of faction politics. Plus the region system does at an extra dimension to tactics and city building policy. I didn't like the need for every army to have a general at first, but I've grown fond of it. Plus it's more historically correct.
So for the games themselves, I don't know if downhill is what I would describe it as, just different.
What I don't like, and where I agree with the downhill part, if that's what you meant, is the EA-tier policy towards DLCs and all that they are in now. Keeping factions out of the base game and then selling them as playable for ludicrous amounts of extra cash is lamentable.
It's all a matter of personal opinion of course, but that's where I stand.
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I think you're right "downhill" is probably not the best word to use. Yes all TW games have their ups and downs as do all games. But if anything has gone "downhill" it is CA's reputation. The buggy releases of Empire and Rome 2 did much to tarnish CA's standing. And also as you say the DLC policy which is one of the very few things I really can't stand about TW. But despite this CA have done a lot to fix past mistakes and despite my own disappointment at the release of Rome 2, the DLC policy and the fact that they bloody well need to make a new engine, I still love TW games and always will.
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Don't get me wrong... I have enjoyed all of the TW games so far, but Rome 2 really feels like a gutted TW game. Attila did fix a lot of problems that existed in Rome II, but not everything. To me Medieval 2 is still the pinnacle of TW games & to me it has been a downward spiral ever since Medieval 2 with the exception of Shogun 2. Shogun 2 really was great.
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Regardless of ROMEII's extremely buggy release - I still felt more reassured by the community feedback and continuous patching ..than I did with Attila's release.
Attila had a strong release, but was left unattended for way too long
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I honestly haven't really put much of an effort yet in Attila. I only played it immediately after release so I don't know in what ways it has changed so far. How does it play nowadays?
What are the differences with the release version?
Are there any mods I should get when getting back into it?
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it's still pretty same. player extends border of kingdom with money more than occupying towns from enemies. haven't tested yet in fresh campaing but removing raze from all others exept nomads hopefully fix this. but diplomacy is still dead.
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I am a huge Total War fan & I have every Total War game ever released, but after Rome II & Attila I think I am done with Total War for awhile. They really screwed the pooch with both of those games. Now they are breaking tradition with a fantasy setting which really turns me away. My all time favorite so far is Medieval 2. I doubt I will buy anymore Total War until Medieval 3 if it ever happens.
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I saw Holiday 2016 and died a little inside. I want this game now. T_T
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So, won't there by a faction for Elves?
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Not on release, but there will be two expansions (installments) I believe that may bring a few more major playable races into the game. These could be; Lizardmen, Elves, Dark Elves etc. Or they might be released as dlc.
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then I guess I'll have to stick with the inferior humans until such a DLC is released :(
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I'm not even surprised about them keeping that as DLC.
Like "eh" I'll complain, but I'm going to get it eventually.
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I thought Elves in the game would be a no-brainer actually. Guess I'll have to wait a lot to enjoy the game with my favorite race.
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the problem with picking elves you'd have to decide which elves to put as their from my know how about 7 types of elve races from light to dark to wood the desert and each one has like 30 differnt units types that would be tough ask
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It needn't be that accurate...Light and Dark elves would suffice and you may list the woodland elves and others under the Light and so on.