Trouble is brewing within the realms of Warhammer. While strife is commonplace in the Warhammer universe – thanks, Chaos! – this particular disturbance centers around Total War: Warhammer 3‘s computer-controlled campaign factions. Creative Assembly has delayed further updates on the Tides of Torment DLC, choosing to focus on fixing what their lead technical designer describes as a “catastrophic failure” affecting the game’s AI.
These AI problems have been plaguing Total War: Warhammer 3 for several weeks. They became “highly visible” following the release of update 6.3 in late August, though the root causes existed beforehand. A hotfix hasn’t been released yet. According to Adam Freeman, Creative Assembly’s head of community, in a recent Steam post, the campaign AI issues are “complex to resolve.” He assures players that the team is working as quickly as possible, given the complexity, after thorough investigation into the core issues.
So, what exactly is wrong with the campaign AI? In short, the AI factions are not recruiting units effectively. Incorrect “assumptions” regarding resources are causing the AI empires to become inactive. Freeman explained, “We found that the AI was generating recruitment lists without considering the unit caps, which lead to the recruitment failure, which then stalled the AI’s decision-making.” The issues were compounded by changes to specialized resources used by the Lizardmen and Tomb Kings.
The Steam post includes a deeper analysis by Radoslav Borisov, lead technical designer. He details how the AI failing to track unit caps impacted resource management, adding details about game’s problems with “pooled resources.”
Borisov explained: “If the AI decides to attack a settlement, it generates a recruitment order. The AI then expects an increase in force strength to a level that can defeat the settlement garrison.
Because the unit recruitment order cannot be completed, the AI can’t continue with the original task. This paralysis in faction decision-making results in the faction failing to complete aggressive actions.”
Borisov continues, describing “assumptions” about the state of the game world used when recruiting units. He concludes, “Any errors in creating those assumptions has lead to a catastrophic AI failure.”
Currently, Total War: Warhammer 3’s AI is struggling with “pooled resources.” Pooled resources are a flexible in-game resource linked to a location, faction, or army. As Borisov said, “The AI cannot properly understand, plan, or budget pooled resources. Lately, AI has been inaccurately calculating resource costs, which leads to incorrect beliefs about what it can afford, which results in action failure.”
According to Borisov, the investigation of the past few weeks have shown Creative Assembly that the majority of internal game systems weren’t ready for actions that couldn’t fail but did. Difficulties with pooled resources have caused numerous problems, including the AI’s inability to change stances, attack, recruit, and lay siege.
Creative Assembly has identified the main causes, but Borislov believes there are likely more issues they haven’t yet uncovered. He added, “There are around 200 different pooled resources in the game, and they are used in many ways.” While the connection between pooled resources and unit caps is unclear, it seems that now is a good time to invade the Warhammer world, assuming you’re a human player capable of counting spearmen.
Creative Assembly plans to address the issues with a hotfix next week. Freeman mentioned that it is in testing and showing positive signs of improvements. The developers intended to include fixes in the larger update 7.0, but decided to address the issue now. A look at Steam user reviews reveals that consensus is currently “Mostly Negative” for the last 30 days.