Certain building chains and technology choices tie directly into the slave economy. Having captives show up as a tangible number (that’s just for Dark Elves, the other factions have their own special mechanics), affects several of the strategic choices a player will be making.

When a Dark Elf army chooses to take captives after a battle those prisoners show up as a resource and start to generate income, instead of just vanishing to some invisible slave mill.

Except without Games Workshop charging me a tenner for every new bolt thrower.ĭark Elves are sadistic types, led by a guy who once had a reasonable claim to the High Elf throne but has long since torpedoed his eligibility by embracing murder, slavery, goth rock, and a thoroughly weird relationship with his mum. Total War: Warhammer 2’s main campaign is much longer than Warhammer’s, so I made the choice to primarily relive my teenaged tabletop years with the Dark Elves. That’s no slight on the other three (Lizardmen, Skaven, High Elves), who from what I’ve experienced have just as many specialties of their own. The vast majority of my time has been spent in command of Malekith’s torture-happy Dark Elves, so I’ll be using them as the bulk of my examples. That confident approach to merging lore and flavour with the moving parts of a strategy game has continued in Total War: Warhammer 2, which pushes the factional distinctions even further with its four races. Some of the mechanics that were technically unique at launch, weaker stuff like the Empire’s political offices, were eclipsed by later additions like Bretonnia’s peasant economy or Norsca’s monster hunt quests. Players who closely followed the first Total Warhammer and its steady flow of paid and free DLC will know that Creative Assembly leaned heavily into the idea of faction diversity. For now though it is a stand-alone follow-up, with four new factions and plenty of applied lessons from the past year-and-some spent on the series. Total War: Warhammer 2 will, ultimately, hook up with the first game and all of its factions for a ‘Mortal Empires’ campaign that will span (a version of) the Old and New Worlds. Sixteen months after the launch of Total War: Warhammer, Creative Assembly have developed and released a second entry that’s both conventional stand-alone sequel, and a significant expansion towards a planned trilogy of combined titles.

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