TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER III
4.0 DEV UPDATE #3: GRAND CATHAY
Greetings!
Welcome back to another developer update. Last time we looked at some of the changes coming to Tzeentch in Update 4.0, and today we’re going to be delving into the changes you can expect for Grand Cathay, outside of their chunky additions arriving in Shadows of Change.
Remember, in between these updates, you can head over to the official Total War Discord server to share your thoughts with fellow Total War fans in the WARHAMMER discussion channel!
Let’s not waste any time, and see what the developers have cooked up.
GRAND CATHAY - HARMONY
We noted that the primary strategy amongst the community is to keep recruiting characters to maintain the balance of Harmony, with harmony mostly being a reactive thought process to tech completion or random events. We generally liked the interaction with buildings as a controllable state, so we’d like to scope it in and emphasize this aspect. Shadows of Change contains an update to Cathay, so it made sense to update the feature now, as well as the rest mentioned in this update.
What are we doing?
We are moving Harmony from a faction-based resource to a province-based resource.
This means that each province the player controls has its own Harmony value.
Harmony is now only influenced by the buildings within the settlements of that province; characters and technologies do not factor in.
Players are now encouraged to specialise a province in either Yin or Yang, or keep the province balanced – each is valid and has its own benefits, with Yin and Yang providing more transient benefits that eventually give way for a province to rest in harmony, once it is well developed and far away from threats.
We believe this fixes the more tedious aspects of balancing Harmony and puts a stronger emphasis on building composition.
Below is what you can expect the feature to look like in-game.
GRAND CATHAY - IVORY ROAD
In our internal playtests, we noticed that when attacking caravans belonging to Cathay, the loot gained was huge. (Under the hood, it was the regular amount of loot multiplied by a very large modifier.)
This meant that the early game economy for some factions could be very skewed if the player intentionally went out of their way to attack caravans entering their territory.
What are we doing?
Now, when attacking a caravan, the loot will be the regular amount of loot from the standard battle, plus whatever cargo the caravan is carrying.
We are also making the cargo visible above the caravan in the 3D UI, so the player will be able to make an informed decision about whether to attack or not.
The new UI element of how caravans can now be sussed out is visible below.
GRAND CATHAY - WU XING COMPASS
With Yuan Bo being our first Cathay Lord who has a start outside of Grand Cathay, we had to take a look at how we handle the compass feature.
Yuan Bo additionally has a large focus on the compass itself, with his Immortal Empires campaign being about globetrotting the Lustrian shores and constructing Astromantic Relays. We wanted to handle the long-term irrelevancy of the feature both for him and all Cathay factions that stick their toes outside their core provinces.
What are we doing?
The compass effects will now apply to all regions controlled by Cathayan factions, rather than the regions within Cathay itself.
We’ve also tweaked some of the effects provided by the compass directions in order to make them more useful and less situational.
(We don’t have a sneak peek for this one, but keep your eyes peeled, as it’ll be here very soon!)
THE GRAND MAGISTRATE LORD TYPE
With the addition of the Celestial General, we knew the Lord Magistrates tenuous hold on his position as “furiously battling for his right to recruited” was only going to get shakier.
What are we doing?
So, as part of this update, we’ve done an intensive overhaul to the Magistrates Skill tree, with benefits suited to leading from the back (bravely!) giving a variety of targeted buffs actives in battle and a reshuffled blue line that frontloads powerful skills, like Lightning Strike.
While the new Celestial General takes to the field to fight alongside his men, the Magistrate is best suited deploying buffs from his floating balloon and a variety of passive but powerful modifiers to the army as a whole.
And that’s all for this week! All of the above changes will be arriving in Update 4.0, have been thoroughly playtested and received positive feedback!
As always, we want to keep these short and precise, so let us know how you’re feeling about these over on our social channels below, and we’ll see you on the battlefield!
—The Total War Team
For the latest news and announcements, don't forget to visit our official social channels.