The Real Problem with Chariots - Immortal Empires - Total War Warhammer 3 

Just to make it absolutely clear, Chariots are not designed to be great at duels, and that is absolutely fine. They should certainly trade some of their single target damage for the extra mobility and wave clear against infantry that a Chariot affords. But its also quite clear that they should not be THIS egregiously bad at running down foot lords. There's a zone at the front of many of these chariot units where they do close to zero damage, which is unfortunately a zone that becomes inhabited by enemy characters often, when simply clicking an attack order

If "time in melee" > 10s then "rider range" = "mount range". Something to this effect should allow the rider to attack as if they were on foot in duel situations without messing with what happens with the initial/cycle charge, animations, or pathing.

Simplest solution would be to offset the target to one side of an SEM for chariots. This would cause them to pull up alongside the character enabling one mount and the driver to attack. Would require making a ghost hotbox of the recipient of the charge as well which may complicate it.

Just let chars dismount and fight on foot like in older tw titles. Simple and cool, the idea of malekith parking and dismounting to lay the smack down in a duel is kinda badass. Would also let you get up on walls when the ai is camping the walls with a goon squad and you can only climb up with skavenslaves bc your army is all stompy/weapon teams.

Why are knockdowns basically free i-frames in the first place? If a model is not braced or running away and gets run over by the mounts/chariot, it should take significant damage.

This has been going on for a while. Turin has a replay where a slaan kills Arkhan in melee on his chariot because he can’t land attacks.

They could work a lot more reliably if the AI for the chariots could be changed so that a direct attack command on enemies would cause the chariot to pull up alongside the target and strike in melee with the rider (after their initial charge so they don't lose their crowd effectiveness).

I don’t think giving the steeds the full weapon power would be great but it seems like the simplest band-aid solution. Changing the attack pathing to focus on the chariots position would be best but it would take a lot more dev time/resources. My personal wish would be to allow dismounting.

While I agree that this is an issue that should be addressed, I would also note if you want your lord to serve as a duelist you probably shouldn't take that lord on a chariot. Still, I agree with you that they should be much better vs single targets than they are. Too bad we don't have a dismount option, eh?

Having the chariot pull alongside the target would probably result in "attacked in the flank" penalties, and the ai would need to be reprogrammed to not try to face the target it's attacking. I think the simplest solution would be to adjust the chariot commander's attack area to include the front of the chariot, the area where the steeds attack. It might look silly having Malekith waggle his sword in the back and hit a target in the front, but it's simple and more immersive than having the entire chariot pop in and out of existence with the dismount option. It might even solve the pursuit issue, since your alluress would be getting hits in alongside the steeds, and it could fix all chariots not just lord/hero mounts. The issue of "chariots not supposed to be good duelists" should already be solved by the lower melee defense of the chariot.

While not specifically to your point, which I agree with, I was thinking about the fact that it would be nice if mounted Lords and Heroes had the option to be able to dismount. Essentially a reversion to their foot lord sprites, animations, and stats pre-mount but once they get off of their mount that can't remount till after the battle (one and done). Because let's be fair, I think all of us have delt with the fact that we go into battle and go "oh damn, I meant to dismount them before battle." A dismount option would be fantastic and it would (edit: also) help elevate what you were referring to in this video.

let chariot lords and hero's to dismount and remount the chariot...kind of like in troy, a littler like artillery, with the ability to dismount and remount.

I did a little check myself, and it looks like a problem mostly for mounted characters. The chariot attacks aren't the Lord/Hero attacks, but because of how the chariot is programmed it will directly face the enemy. It's not a problem for unit chariots who seem to do their exact standard damage from the front as usual. The valid fixed would be to reprogram character chariots to try and get the character to enter contact, which sounds like hell for the AI programmers, or to take away the chariot-specific attacks and have the entire model hit as the hero, which might have very weird issues. This might be a corner they've painted themselves all the way into.

Although it might necessitate rebalancing of stats across the board there's a common sense change (which I've seen partially addressed in a few mods) which I think would help here: Knocked down entities need to have Collision and invulnerability disabled. To go with this they need to rework how collisions happen so that units are more frequently knocked over rather than sent blasting off again into the sky. And anybody sent for a 20 meter ride through the sky should just die.

Killing routing units in general has been bad in WH games

I dunno, I still find Slaaneshi chariots to be underwhelming in my campaigns, and I rarely see multiplayer battles where they're super stunning either. Considering how fragile they are and how some of these units are supposed to be pretty much the height of the Slaanesh roster, they feel pretty weak.

I always thought that was on purpose. Make them crappy duelist but good crowd clearers.

How do you get the shadow to be that sharp? Mine doesn’t get like that with a 3060

Why are you so consistently rewarding my refreshing binges! xD

This seems easy to sort out. They could just make charriots bypass the "no damage when on the floor" rule so that trampling infantry in general would still inflict damage (as it would happen in reality). With the current situation infantry is taking enough damage so that most models being thrown away are generally dead anywway, but being able to "finish the job" when you trample over fallen models wouldn't be so unbalancing; this would help immensely against single entity infantry that is not meant to resist big charges

I assume this just something that's very difficult to account for when balancing the stats of a unit designed to work like this. Where in order for them to be effective at pushing through and damaging a large group of infantry units without being op. As if they increased its accuracy and damage to allow them to inflict anything meaningful on the SE units, this would make them mow down regular infantry way too easily.

I am thankful for your input and bringing these issues to the attention of the community and CA. This will make the game a more functional and fun experience for us all! You are doing Sigmar's work!

I think a damage modifier should be introduced when attacking some fleeing units or/as well as a damage buff for mounted units to fleeing units so units like the chariot can be more effective with this hp based system. Med2 and even shogun for example would kill/capture fleeing units on contact.

Are the lord stats not applied to the mount in all cases? E.g. horses, eagles, dragons, etc.?

What is happening in that second or so between when the chariot makes contact and starts pushing the unit but the unit being pushed hasn’t reacted yet? It feels like there is either an issue and some calculation step is falling or it is the result of an intentional ‘fix’ to some other aspect of the chariot (like a grace period after contact but before slowing the unit w/ mass calculations to let the chariot get deeper for the damage calc.) I suspect it’s the second one. They would need to undo that for SEMs somehow if so.

I wnder if it is possible to program chariots as to turn around on single entities or targets in general, or maybe just push around them.

Love these videos of you going somewhat in-depth in these kind of issues. Hope CA will find a solution someday, but considering that chariots are such a strange amalgamation of multiple entities in a single unit... yeah. btw any chance we will soon see a multiplayer battle where Karl Franz whoops some Chaos ass?

Where is this theme from? Is this Runescape? Or the Settlers?

How has this changed with the 5.x w/e update?

I honestly have no idea how to chariot, I don't have the APM to do the whole in and out in and out thing with chariots and even just doing the occassional runby they never seem to do enough to feel worth the effort.

i wonder if grom has this issuie since he swings as he goes thru

What if mounted units could dismount? What do you think of this game mechanic?

Grom and Settra seem to do pretty well in duels without being overpowered, CA should just port over whatever those two have to all single entity chariots

Why the daemonettes model didn't have whips, isn't that a thing in their tabletop model??

Personally, I have no problem with chariots being worthless in 1v1 duels. My problem is that you were able to dismount your lord midcombat in Three Kingdoms and you STILL can’t here. WHY? Artillery units can lay down their cannons and run away on foot if they need to, lords should at LEAST be able to jump off their horse to fight on foot for a few minutes when needed

That AEO music actually works for some reason...

The biggest issue is the invulnerable frames knocked back/down models get. Units that cause knock down tend to deal lower damage than expected. It would be nice if knockdowns were counted as a double damage critical hit or a damage over time until the unit it upright again.

In early to ask a question. How/why does nearly every race aside from humans get some type of dog/hound unit? Other races hound units are designed after the dog/wolf archetype that humans domesticated, why no pups for the humans? Is there a lore reason in the immortal empires universe, is it simply a design/balance choice by CA, or conventional dogs do not exist in this universe?

What if they added a way to let you dismount lords from chariots and mounts mid-combat? Once you were off, you couldn't get back on

Would be cool if there was a attack order option that prioritized moving slightly past the enemy to allow the mounted lord the ability to get hits in instead of the steeds

Can you please do a bone giant vs Nurgle? 🙏🙏🙏

I still wish we could dismount and fight on foot just like we could in Shogun 2. It’s a shame that feature was removed.

They honestly just have a problem with the way charges are designed. Charges should do massive damage based on the mass and charge bonus of units involved pretty much within 1-2 seconds, rather than being spread out over a 10 second bonus, in my view. This specific problem you mentioned though would be solved by increasing the damage done with charges to single-entity targets. They could also have it so that when you target a lord or such and don't push your chariot out of melee after the charge, it automatically tries to put your lord "next to" the enemy so they actually can attack them in cases such as here. Though I do think that chariots shouldn't be very good in 1v1 fights to begin with, they should at least be competent, especially when considering Legendary Lords.

Im not sure how to fix these edge cases. You could try and give the mounts the stats of the lord as an easy fix, but this would make them too good at duelling probably making them a must buy instead of an option. Ideally IMO there would be some way to shift chariot behaviour vs groups and vs individuals (e.g. they go sideways after the charge), or design unique animations for individual targets that do make use of their full stats. The latter would be a lot of work since you need to work on every chariot option in the game, almost a small dlc. However, I'm not sure the TW engine can handle the behaviour switch option.

I was so excited to try out Slaanesh chariots in battle cause of those nightmare wheels. But then I did and it's just so underwhelming... These giant spikes wheels are going over a ton of troops that just kinda get up and shrug it off.

The slaanesh chariots dont even get rider attacks. So it's even worse for them. Thank you for bringing to light an issue I been harping on a bit in other places for a while now!

Great music choice, my brother.

Make Chariots like artillery, where the unit can de couple from it and recouple with it in your Malekith example 1v1 decouple from chariot kill the beast lord then hop back in and keep on trucking. On the other hand give the chariot its own health pool and when it dies then the lord character becomes a foot lord. and you have to pay a gold fee to get it back (on the big map)

So this is the third Warhammer video in a row I listen to that has the AoE2 soundtrack. Is this a cabale?

Song name: Ride Lawrence Ride. Fitting 🤔

In Three Kingdoms, there aren't any chariots unfortunately, but mounted generals when given attack orders on each other will pull up beside each other and start attacking while facing a 90 degree angle away from each other. Mounted generals will even attack sideways against other generals on foot too. CA could implement this functionality into Warhammer mounts and chariots pretty easily if they tried hard enough.

Simple solution just give Chariots two modes one is charge one is melee. In charge mode it works like what it is now. In melee mode, it will try to use the rider attacking its targets but lost ability to run push away units like it does in charge mode.

This same no charge damage thing happened to me with chaos furies. Enemy had 1 infantry left running for the hills after the battle ended and i wanted to kill him before he was out of the map. Furies couldnt kill him for 1 minute. Just charging knocking him down and waiting him to get up and repeat. i think problem is more general then just chariots. This stuff i talked about happened way less with other units than chariots tho.

I did a double take at the thumbnail. It looked rather, uh...Slaaneshi.

Reminds me of that replay from Turin where Arkhan got slapped around by a Mike Tyson Slann when the two were the only ones left.

Am I going mad or is that AoE2 music in the background?

I don't know anything about game design but maybe the "point of contact" on the model when fighting in sustained combat should move from the front of the horses (other animals are available) to the actual chariot where the rider/s can attack.

So why does Malekith have such sucky charges against those marauders? It feels like that was kinda thrown by the wayside

"Drive me closer! I want to hit them with my sword!"

kAgreed. As a campaign player, I have found that even just the horse/horse-like mounts can have a less severe version of this problem where they charge into an enemy foot character but knock the clutz over before the attack animation can land. Then they keep moving forward and stop to turn around and go back into a charge animation (likely repeating the cycle) rather than staying put to duel properly. This problem comes from the interaction between charge animations for mounted characters vs. foot characters and knockdown invulnerability and has been here since the beginning of the trilogy. I'm not sure if there is anything CA can do to fix it (remove knockdown invulnerability entirely??), but as a result many campaign players choose not to even bother mounting up some duelists if they don't have a decent monstrous option (main examples being Malus and Archaon). The chariot issue is even worse though. Both kinds of mount have the charge-knockdown cycle problem (you can see a chariot example at 5:15). With horse mounts, once the characters actually engage each other in combat and break out of the charge->knockdown->charge again cycle, the mounted character can finally perform as intended. For chariot mounts, they won't actually attack properly unless the enemy comes to the side or rear of the chariot where the rider can take a swing, like at 4:11 where Vader actually swings at the beastlord. Maybe CA could program chariots to turn side on to the intended target instead of front forward? I don't know whether that is feasible.

What if the lord could just... hop off the chariot? Give them separate health pools, and if the chariot dies while the lord is on it, they take X amount of damage. Or maybe a unit that goes under the wheels should take a guaranteed attack equal to some percentage of the Lords weapon strength?

I' perfectly honest here: I never used chariots, ever. Not in in WH 1, not in 2 and not in 3. I never got my head around them and rather have a regiment of cav of monsters than these

It's like I was waiting for this to appear

I wonder if being able to dismount from chariots could solve this issue? I know in past Total War games, dismounting was something you could do, so it's not something CA is unfamiliar with.

Valid point M&C - cheers.

Agreed! After the charge, chariot characters should position so that the rider can attack the selected target. I’d want Malekith to pull up alongside the beastlord so that he can swing Destroyer, rather than leaving it to the adorably weak cold ones.

I've felt for a long time chariots is due a rework on how the unit works. They are highly micro intensive units that requires most of your attention, and can do brilliantly, but fail and they're a liability, and they feel quite... unstable compared to cav. Now some may really like that imbalance and the micro intensity, but for some races the chariots are fairly big for their roster, yet unless you are microing them heavily (which is fun in MP but a slog and taxing against AI in campaign with battle onto battle, etc), they won't be worth it. Nevermind if you can't reach such micro levels. Not that I know how to redo them, but I think just more tools and bit of a better AI for the chariots. This is something I want for Total War as a whole, to be able to give a command to a unit and no matter WHAT happens, they will move there. No models getting stuck dragging the unit back. Having to babysit cav and especially chariots to make sure they move anywhere is not the most fun of things and I feel that's an issue with several chariots in a unit, adding more unnecessary micro. Another is just to have chariots not stop when attacking something. Why would a chariot ever stop to attack? If the chariots had their own "AI", where when they attacked a unit or single character they kept moving around, that would not only help with the micro and their survivability, but also if they kept trying to face the side to the characters it'd let your lord/hero get the most swings out, which is exactly what chariots are made IRL. They are not meant to charge up front, yet sending an attack order makes them do it. I think making chariots just more cooperative and accessible is one way to make them work more consistently, likely they may end up OP cause the micro and yank is their downside, but then you should probably be able to balance them better. This would also be a good change in less likely places, like AI using chariots, who are micro gods, and having a unit that benefits from omnipotent micro face players that likely aren't best at dealing with, is a sure way to get a skewed image of how good or bad chariots actually are as opposed to lowering the bar of usage and lowering how much chariots benefit from insane micro.

One of the issues is lack of damage from the knock back and lack of a trample mechanic. If the character getting knocked flying took appropriate damage from the impact of that (which should straight up kill most normal infantry and seriously damage characters and cavalry, monsters and chariots do appropriate damage when they run over something on the ground, most of this ceases to be a major issue. Sure, the character doesn’t really get to fight, but the damned chariot does so much damage that it doesn’t matter.

It kinda makes sense that chariots behave this way if the target is not in melee range of the guy in the chariot chassis. It would be a nice improvement if, when a chariot is nose to nose with another unit for an extended amount of time, the chariot would pull up alongside the target so the lord in the chassis could hit the target, instead of the horses munching on the target forever.

Would be nice if /stand still and attack/ commands would make chariots point their rear at an enemy so the lord/hero/unit driving the chariot could reliably swing their weapon.

The ideal solution is to have the unit ai pull the main chariot body as close to the target banner holder as possible until base contact occurs with an enemy individual once the charge is over and unit consolidation occurs. Your lord should be prioritized and the steed attacks are a bonus. The video doesn't explain why noble chariots are so good at gooning though. Why are they an exception? I hear them as a staple HE strategy.

reminds me of a time where I fought some wood elves with my juiced up Kroq-Gar. The elves had that spellcaster that floats around, and my boy could not hit her. He ended up pushing her around all over the place, and I was super disappointed because I wanted to see how quickly Kroq-Gar could tear a spellcaster apart. It wasn't game changing. My army was able to beat theirs easily, and my boy tore through the rest of the army, so I at least got to watch Grymloq stomp around.

Maybe single entity chariots should get a stance switch some kind, so they can choose between ramming into something, or doing a driveby swipe with the lord's weapon.

CA has always had trouble with chariots, take the Tuskgor chariots when the The Silence & The Fury came out and the impacts doing crazy damage for a bit.

Wasn't convinced at the beginning of the video but definitely convinced now watching it all the way through. It's okay for chariots to be bad duelist, but this is just ridiculous. CA should increase the damage the mounted beasts do or give the lords short-range range weapons to use as an alternative weapon when they can't reach their attack attack.

It's odd that people seem to be fine with the chariot, chariot pullers and the hero all having one shared HP, but also are against them just having one attack value as displayed on the unit card.

I have suggestion: make it possible to dismount just like unmanning artillery pieces. Chariot would have to stay there unusuable until mounted again

Idk, chariots are for charging or punching through Frontline infantry, as you clarified yourself. Adjusting their ability to fight something outside their intended role seems really low priority (though it would prob be easy).

Chariots need some kind of "pulled under the wheels" function that can apply to heroes. A percentile chance that the hero fails to get out of the way in time and is simply trampled, dealing massive damage as the body of the charriot drives over them.

Maybe have a way for the lord to ditch the chariot for those occasions

Is this something that’s only wh3 because I’m worried that my boi Grom is going to be useless when coming to the big stage

I have such a love hate relationship with Tiranoc Chariots. They are so good for harassing and making units chase it on the battlefield while getting a not great, but decent amount of kills/damage, but has a 100% chance to do nothing and get killed in auto resolve against anything. Auto resolving against a soft blow of wind will kill it.

Maybe all chariots should work like Groms. Good charge and AOEs arround the model from time to time.

I never understood why chariots felt so slow in these games. They usually don't exceed 50% speed advantage against foot lords. Less thundering across the battlefield and more trundling and if you focus on them for too long, it starts to feel really bad.

I got distracted by how sexy those maps looked, but hopefully they'll take another look at chariots especially for Slaanesh

Seems a fair weakness to me considering the incredible blob handling capabilities. Mirror to Grimgor who duels well but struggles with blobs. Also consider the geometry of a chariot and it seems logical. If it's a gameplay problem, I'd say it's the same old knockdown issue for footlords.

.. Am i the only one whose first thought of the thumbnail was of two cold ones getting it on >_>?

Im not saying there should be dismounting option, but there should be dismounting option

When it comes to chariot, I think Chariots and other mounted units/entities should have a special combat sequence where they are riding along side each other exchanging hits. Riders with spears do more however if lets say a Chariot decides to charge against a giant monster be it somethign that is hard to knock around, then I feel the chariot should lose its charge bonus entirely and maybe suffer one unit of damage. Yes one singular notch of damage.

Upvote for the killer background track

There are so many possible failure points on chariots, as well as so many obscure and hidden stats (including stuff you can't look up on TWWStats), that it's hard to diagnose what's going wrong. I have a few ideas, but I wouldn't bet on them being correct without better info. We know that impact damage was fixed in 1.1, and it seems to behave consistently, even though the 'new' formula used by CA to calculate it has some strange balance implications (that's a topic unto itself). Either way, I don't think impact damage is ever really going to be noticeable in SEM combat and it's not intended to be; it's a small but uncapped source of damage that mostly affects hordes of low mass troops. We know that Collision Attacks are not completely nonfunctional in WH3 (though they could be in the preview build for all I know), because otherwise back in 1.0 Slaaneshi chariots would've done literally 0 damage without stopping to take normal swings (they don't have mounted models that can attack independently, not even the mounted character versions). Their Collision Attacks seem to be very ineffective for whatever reason, but they do exist (also it would've been very noticeable on other units like War Sleds and Stonehorns). We know that the entities pulling the chariot have separate stats compared to the actual vehicle. We know this because CA specifically increased the mass of the Gorebeasts pulling the Gorebeast Chariot of Khorne, which as it turns out had a very low mass value compared to the listed value for the chariot itself. [At this point in the writing of this comment, I went and did a bunch of testing of my own.] I don't think the 100-ish damage hits we're seeing in these SEM tests are caused by impact damage. If you could get that much on a single model with 800 mass, using a chariot with 3550 mass, most chariot units would instantly destroy most infantry units on a decent charge. From testing, a Boyar on a horse impacting but not hitting a Magistrate on the charge does like 5 or 6 damage; that's 1600 vs 600 mass. Exalted Seeker Herald vs the same Magistrate (3350 vs 600) does around 12 (which may suggest that the real mass value being used for the calculation is closer to 2500?), though it has been extremely difficult to get this to happen. I'm almost positive we are seeing Collision Attacks connecting, both in the video and in my own tests; they're just dealing unexpectedly low amounts of damage. Another reason for that is the fact that I'm seeing consistently correct (or plausibly correct) damage increases on these hits from casting Weapon Strength buffs. Impact damage is not affected by Weapon Strength, it only cares about speed and mass. A third reason is that they seem to miss based on RNG, like any attack can. Whether or not the impact knocks the target down does not seem to affect the outcome. After testing a bunch with various Slaaneshi chariots, which, again, do not allow a mounted lord or hero to attack independently, I don't think there's a way to get them to deal their listed Weapon Strength's worth of damage to a target, certainly not to an SEM. It doesn't happen on any sort of Collision Attack I've been able to get, and it doesn't happen in sustained combat with the Seekers making attacks. This means that when it comes to damage output, most of the unit's in-game statblock is, in fact, irrelevant. What seems to matter is the hidden statline of the Seeker entities themselves. For the aforementioned Exalted Seeker Herald, the Seekers seem to deal 80-ish damage per hit against a single infantry character in sustained combat. Charging a Magistrate from the front results in about 100 damage. Doing so from the side or rear results in about 120 damage. This seems to suggest that *the Seekers are the ones making Collision Attacks*, with the aid of a Charge Bonus of about 20, and the benefit of Devastating Flanker. Running more tests with the Exalted Seeker Alluress yields similar values, roughly in line with the 10% loss in damage you'd expect compared to the Herald (as is the case with their relative Weapon Strength values and overall statline). [note: Heavy War Sleds' bears do about 50 damage to infantry SEMs on Collision Attacks; based on the in-game statblock, you might expect them to do closer to 150] TL;DR - In conclusion, my current running theory is that most of what a beast-drawn chariot is going to be doing at any given time (ie running into enemies with the front end) is going to be affected not by its own statblock, but by the hidden stats of the entities pulling it. In Malekith's case, enemies that proc Collision Attacks because the Cold Ones ran into them are not going to get hit with his 400 Weapon Strength, but by the much lower Weapon Strength of the Cold Ones. Ditto for sustained combat, in which we can clearly see that their bites do not do 400 damage. In fact, I'm not sure that it's even possible to get Collision Attacks that use Malekith's own WS. Between that, and the fact that Malekith himself is never going to be in range to swing against a single target when the chariot is rotating its front to face it, the real 'effective' statline you're working with would be way way worse than advertised. So far, that's my best guess for why this is happening.

To me biggest problem with chariots is that they are good only vs infantry, and not very good at that really. There are other, better ways to deal with infantry like spells, artillery, monsters etc. Chariots are very easily countered, and if opponent doesn't bring any infantry you just wasted money

what if the lords had the ability to dismount a chariot sorta like how a siege weapons team can leave their siege weapons

Simple solution. Arm chariot characters with whips that can do an area of attack animation or whip single entities.

Just make steeds and chariot riders do the same damage. Reduce it if certain ones seem a bit 'much' but damn. Perfectly highlighted the fact it should take less than 40+ charges to kill a bog-standard lord.

It would be less annoying if some factions weren't limited to chariot mounts. As a BM player the utility of some of my lords gets directly tied to the current efficacy of chariots. When they were OP so were my Lords, and when they're bad, my lords are bad.

Chariot damage needs to be simplified. That's it. One stat line no matter what attacks, plus impact damage on the charge - scaled with their speed.

Don’t even know what the video is about yet but I’m slapping that like button as I watch this stupid ad

I wish chariot units had the characters riding on the back have like… range 5 with their attacks

I figured this was intended, since you can bully other infantry units nearly unchallenged. However, your lord shouldn't be a useless duelist on a chariot, just maybe not as good as he could be on foot. Maybe just make all attacks on lords and heros full strength? Dunno how feasible that is.