My Perspective on SFO: What I like and Dislike - Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires

Finally tried out SFO: Grimhammer III for Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires. It does some nice things like adding to uniqueness of legendary lords, improving balance etc. but has a glacial and annoying campaign pace.

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[Trairan]

I personally also like the slower paced campaigns from SFO, and the ongoing struggle from early game staying into mid and late game. Original Warhammer 3 has a pretty stupid AI and I usually get so strong by turn 50 that I get bored and never finish a campaign, playing on legendary difficulty, and I'm not even a good or experienced player at this game, I've only played Shogun 2 and Warhammer 3, vanilla just feels too easy.

So for me the point of this mod is making the campaign harder on the mid and long term because past early game I find it boring in vanilla.

[Dio_]

7 minutes in and absolutely no information on WHAT is actually changed by SFO, and you have a horrific recolour dialing saturation up way too much.

[trewajg]

While I understand your preference of playing very fast and agressive, one of the reasons I prefer to play slower campaigns is to actually experience the game! Like, playing fast and agressive, while it is optimal, you don't experience any units that are more tier 3. Every time I tryhard and rush everything I feel like I have won by turn 50 and have barely played the game because I didn't get to experience the units I like more, or try some different army comp.
I understand your desire to min max and do the most optimal strategies to have success in the game, but it just get boring and unfulfilling after a while and sometimes it is more fun to play in a less optimal way.

[tripletrollface]

I was actually interested in hearing criticism of SFO until it became clear you basically want to be steamrolling your campaign at turn 20. Your SFO settings are good enough indication of that.

SFO is better, not worse, for the exact reasons you highlighted.

[zeroner]

I thought SFO was Simply Fun Overhaul and not Optimize The Fun Out Of Your Game Overhaul... the mod creators themselves have stated on videos like the one on TGBOG channel that it is for people that are more into the immersion and closer to tabletop aspect and not so much for the tryhard "If im not winning im not having fun" type of players.

[redelephantsdotnl]

40 Seconds in: Nope. It started in Warhammer 1, as Steel Faith Overhaul. Some units and mechanics from that are still in there.
Six minutes in: Yeah, this is not for you, as is evident by all the settings you activated, essentially turning it into vanilla-on-steroids. SFO is geared towards a longer campaign where you utilize base troops more, do more with less by making strategic choices. Which is fine, but it's not what it's designed to do. Which tells me that.... Well, you're not exactly the person to review this.

[KSabotage]

I respectfully disagree. I don’t think SFO encourages passive play. I also don’t believe that its not strategic to decide to slow down expansion so you aren’t stretched too thin. I can’t think of a time when I’ve ever clicked end turn then not done several things before clicking end turn again.

But, this is coming from a diehard SFO fan since WH2. I have almost no experience in WH3 outside of the overhaul so it’s hard to look outside of my narrow scope. (Side note I think old world mod combined with SFO is chefs kiss). The mod certainly doesn’t magically fix everything, but I think it personally gets me much more involved in a way I can’t play without. Anyways, there’s my very biased opinion.

Huge fan of your channel, man! Happy to hear a different perspective on my favorite mod and glad you keep pushing the discussion forward. Keep it up🤙🏼

[EuclidGamer]

It's very clear that you are strongly opinionated towards a fast and aggressive game. I can understand this however you have to also understand that a lot of the community does not play the game to be good and fast and just be the best. Truthfully these games got me into Warhammer and it's mostly for a lore perspective (Love the lore mods). Lore is old and wise and takes time. I do not want to mow the grass in 30 turns if I can take my time and earn a slower experience. It's not sitting on your ass, it's exercising patience and taking things slower in a game that can be played in any way you prefer. I have a job, I already need to be fast and effective at my job. I will not let that mindset infect my passion of strategy games make me have a desire to rush rush rush and do it all fast as it would turn my hobby for fun and unwinding into a competition against the void lol.

I'm not trying to knock what your opinion is but to explain what the opinions of others may be and you do represent your opinion as if they are facts at times. Try to be a little more open minded. Steamrolling and being fast and efficient can be fun I understand but I am the kind of person who spends time and resources saving fellow factions and keeping the map diverse and alive rather than painting it. Example I always rush to save the Druzhina Enclave from Clan Moulder just for the sake of the fun of it.

Key take away of this is that not everyone is here to be good. A lot of us are here to play games and have fun. Fast can be fun but not for this guy. Also it's a video game. Most of us are "Sitting on our ass" when we are playing lol. Calling people lazy for not being rushy in a game lol

Little tit for tat ;-). This is critique but not hate.

Keep the videos up!

[robovinefilms]

The Double Skillpoints mod for SFO lets you clear the bigger trees faster. I use that and change technology to +50% and select "More Armies" with the mod's built-in settings menu.

Combine that with the longer empire building of "The Old World" and the pacing is just right to where I can clear 150 turns with Daniel, who's actually great in SFO.

[via_negativa]

It's a bit of a pick your poison scenario with with game at this point. I personally like SFO just because the extra options just tends to stave off the boredom for longer in the campaigns for me.

[stingblademaster]

I enjoy a slower grow. Allow myself to consolidate what I’ve taken over and a chance too get the higher tier units. I hate being punished by the game for not being aggressive with a faction that isn’t supposed to be aggressive. I would like if the AI could also build up for doom stacks and epic sieges

[VikingNewt]

interesting take, im gonna disagree with a fair amount of what you had to say on SFO, but i've been playing SFO variants since their first releases... for me its the fact that every lord has workable mechanics and bonuses as well as properly extended rearranged rosters.

that and having mother ostankya where shes supposed to be...

[rafaelortega]

Note that he ignored is that the garrison sistem is dependant on the buildings you make
A tier 3 region with recruitment buildings will have more garrison units than a tier 5 with no buildings
too easy? Increase the difficulty you know that can increase the difficulty of specific factions to make it more challenging (SFO customization menú)
About sieges there is only so much they can do without redesigning the siege maps and mechanics and that would a task worthy of it's own mod
Over all you ignored some of the SFO features, conveniently, and complaned about the sieges of wich they have little control over

[Shizandgiggles]

Another L of an opinion from Costin. You play with all easy options and autoresolve everything. What's the point of even playing at that point

[lost]

Slower pace better. Its so stupid and uninteresting to easy rush whole map in 30 turns

[LungDrago]

I think that SFO has the good idea on paper, but WH3, and really all Total War games to be entirely honest, are just way too limited in scope for what SFO would want to do. The campaigns in this game are full of various gimmicks, but when you look at the base mechanics, it just doesn't compare at all to most other turn based strategy games. It's a very bare bones board game where you build buildings, recruit armies, move armies and do battles. That's literally it, there's nothing more for you to do. There are other auxiliary mechanics present, but in the end it all boils down to those few basic things. Having control problems? Well, to fix that, you can build buildings (that increase control), do battles (fight rebellions, conquer whole province for a control commandment) or maybe recruit a hero/lord that can improve control (but you will have to do battles to level them up). Diplomacy? Diplomacy is a joke. The best way to engage in it is to do battles - with their enemies, or just to acquire cities so you can sell them. So in light of all that, you really do have a very good point, because if things generally slow down to the point that you cannot build buildings or do battles, there's really nothing for you to do.

What's really interesting though is that in this bare bones game, there are already balancing nightmares present in it. Like with the garrisons. Either they are too small and composed of such shit units they might as well not exist, which forces you to recruit defensive armies (which was pretty bad in WH2 that had the dumb supply lines mechanic), or they are too large and force either too many sieges that suck or push you to attack with ridiculous overwhelming numbers so you can auto-resolve. Neither scenario is good really, and in the three games so far neither SFO nor CA were able to find a sweet spot for them.

I would really like if the campaign was more complicated in mechanics but on the other hand I don't have the faith in these developers that it wouldn't all just end up in a huge jumbled mess.

[briangarcia]

Having played more paradox games than I have total war, I generally like to play tall and wish it were more doable in WH3. Despite this I prefer Vanilla over SFO for similiar reasons you listed in the video (e.g. SFO slows the pace of the game in a way that's just passive). The game would need to have more interesting internal politics, diplomacy, and economics to make a less expansionist playstyle fun and I don't think that is possible with modding.

[itsblessbless]

I used to play Radious back in the days on other Total War Games. I stopped when SFO came out because I quickly realized that Radious didn't have too much depth in the mod after trying SFO. Radious gave WH1 races identical unit counterparts, making them play exactly the same. They had archers for vampires, dismounted Reiksguard for empire, dismounted knights for Brettonnia, etc.

Although I respect this person's perspective, I feel that Radious is more for people who don't care much about the lore and want instant gratification in a game. They want to play something really fast and achieve as much as possible with less effort or thinking, which I don't fault them for that, it's their game. Diplomacy and other strategies are used more in SFO and you need to stick around to protect your provinces from rebellions. More thinking goes into it and you can't recklessly start wars. Radious just allows everyone to field several stacks of armies in the beginning - it feels more like a dressed up cheat mod. Rushing every opponenet's capital with 2 - 3 stacks isn't really what I call strategy.

If a player wants to think more critically and experience different campaign styles per race, choose SFO. If a player wants to have 5 stacks of low to mid tier units by turn 30, and set sail immediately, choose Radious.

[patrickdaly]

Tall being an end turn simulator is definitely a big problem, as you said, there needs to be choices to make. So if we assume that the player will hold and develop a single province (or two, or three, pick your poison), and has good defensive positioning to not need army maneuvering, what kinds of choices are even available? The economic system has no depth; If you can afford growth, build that first, otherwise prioritize cash buildings. There's no choices on the economic side, so I think what you're observing is that nerfing the thing that works down to the level of the thing that doesn't work results in a worse experience. Not too surprising really.

I had thought that the Radious overhaul at least made for a more fun experience, in that the player can afford to field more armies. It doesn't do much to address the core economic issues, mainly that the economic gameplay is completely one dimensional, but I think that's actually a little difficult to do because the only way I can come up with to make econ have choices, is scarcity. If you don't have enough money to afford all your buildings, then you have to make choices on what goes up first. If one path is objectively correct, scarcity doesn't help the game feel better because it appears to just slow the player down, rather than giving the player an interesting situation they need to solve. Scarcity and single resource may just not work that well together.

Compare this to Stellaris, where your very first economic choice in the game is between 4-8+ completely viable options. You can choose between any of the three basic resources, or alloys, or consumer goods, science, unity, amenities, or trade... Some choices are stronger than others but there are situations where you might pick any of those options. Minerals is often a top notch pick, unless you have plenty, in which case maybe alloys or consumer goods is a good choice. Long term, CG is nice for tech rush civs as well as wide civs. Alloys is good if you want to be hyper aggressive; Yes, you have to make an economic choice to decide to commit to aggression. Science is always great if you can afford the CG's, Unity's okay. If you're doing catalytic processing then minerals get deprioritized for food. Amenities is kindof a niche thing where the base species has the "produce 20% less amenities" trait, so going from -5 to +5 amenities will drastically increase all production. Trade based empires used to be too strong, they're not as viable after trade got nerfed but you still can pull it off.

It's a choice. I have to think about my very first economic click, I'm not repeatedly making depth=0 decisions, decisions based solely on the information I have on the screen. Before I even start I have to have a plan, and my choices are responding to the situations I have, to fulfill my plan.

[mathieulefo]

Sold me off of SFO, I was really interested in the factions feeling more different, but I do not want longer campaign. Still a newcomer to the game, and still have the feeling of always wanting to start a new campaign, so shorter is better for me.