For example, when I played early this year as the Lizardman faction Hexoatl, I was swiftly able to dominate Lustria, the continent I was on. The last major improvement, and the one that justifies Creative Assembly’s more subtle expansion release this year, is that the releases of legendary lords for existing factions allows them to diversify the map. We should commend Creative Assembly for their commitment to improving a years-old game in ways that didn’t seem possible.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a game that needed this kind of optimization so much receive it so successfully, except perhaps Crusader Kings’ famous castration bug. The patch attached to the recent release of The Shadow & The Blade add-on, however, adds a massive technical improvement, making the game infinitely more playable. Early in the game, you’d spend 15 seconds moving an army, press end turn, and then wait for 2-3 minutes, with different waits in the late game. The second major issue was that with its huge map and well over a hundred different factions, Mortal Empires was just slow as hell. The latter problem is still present, but it’s not a deal-breaker on its own.

The two biggest problems were that the Chaos invasions, the centerpiece of the fantastic campaign of the first Total Warhammer, were basically nonfunctional, either focusing entire on the player to the point of absurdity, or barely being noticeable. (It also created major technical headaches for Creative Assembly, and it took it months to add the final faction from the first Total Warhammer, Norsca, as functional in Mortal Empires.) It’s been a curiosity that I’ve wanted to like as much as I’ve liked the main games, but always missing something. See, Mortal Empires has largely been a mess since its release. Three top investment pros open up about what it takes to get your video game funded.

Total war warhammer chaos invasion