Worse still, if youвЂ™re new to the game the first you hear of the land bridge might be when an enemy army crosses over and besieges your capital. Given, though, that the campaign map clearly strives to be readable by all players at a glance, these are bizarrely cryptic way of delivering basic information. If you mouse over the collection of discoloured rocks on the shore, youвЂ™re rewarded with a tooltip telling you itвЂ™s a land bridge. Similarly, itвЂ™s possible to determine that you can cross the river directly above the EmpireвЂ™s capital. Also, even if you find a forest you can pass through, TW: Warhammer makes it difficult to move by placing the path selection beneath the trees, so itвЂ™s obscured unless you zoom in. There are tooltips which distinguish between light and dense forest if you hover over an area for long enough, but itвЂ™s not immediately clear that light means passable, nor is it apparent how far the light forest extends beyond the point youвЂ™re hovering over. You canвЂ™t go through the forest below Grunberg, except at the very bottom вЂ“ yes, that looks identical but for some reason itвЂ™s different. You can, for instance, go through the forest south of Bretonnia but not the one in the EmpireвЂ™s capital province (except in the centre where itвЂ™s less dense). Worse, you canвЂ™t actually pass through all of TW: WarhammerвЂ™s forests, and the game makes no effort to communicate which are impassable. The same is true to a lesser extent in the gameвЂ™s forests, where dozens of tree models make it difficult to tell at a glance where you stand in relation to enemy settlements and armies. Instead, however, your army will chart a new path to their objective which avoids the enemy, and if youвЂ™re not alert your twenty troops will end up doubling back because thereвЂ™s one unit of goblins at the end of the pass they havenвЂ™t been instructed to fight. Mercifully, itвЂ™s impossible to accidentally send your troops into an offensive battle if you mistakenly click past a hidden army. Often, you end your turn just short of an army you couldnвЂ™t see, and fight a battle you couldnвЂ™t reasonably predict. If you lose track of your own counter between the peaks you can access the forces list to find them, but the same canвЂ™t be said for enemies.ДЄI factions donвЂ™t make great use of the ambush stance, which allows you to take an enemy by surprise, but they hardly need to in mountain areas where the counters are just too short to be clearly seen.

The problem is particularly acute for the Greenskins and Dwarfs, who spend much of the game moving their short counters through narrow and tall mountain passes. Losing track of your armies is about the most basic thing which could go wrong in a game about setting up battles, and yet in TW: Warhammer it happens irritatingly often. Where most strategy games simplify terrain on their maps for the sake of clarity, TW: WarhammerвЂ™s map is crowded with distracting visual noise. Specifically, the campaign map is comparatively realistic, so terrain features like mountains shoot up from its surface and forested areas are covered in dozens of tree models. The problem with TW: WarhammerвЂ™s map is that it has a stylistic goal which it pursues to the detriment of usability. The campaign map, meanwhile, is so visually busy that basic information like where your armies are and how far they can move is obscure. In battles, Creative Assembly make good use of visual shorthand so can you extract relevant information at a glance. In particular, the gameвЂ™s campaign map is a mess which is difficult to parse and frustrating to use. Outside of battles though, TW: Warhammer has trouble presenting basic information. Arrows, cannonballs and spells have brightly coloured trails so you can tell whatвЂ™s about to hit you. Your general glows, and he or she is often comically large compared to regular soldiers. Your unit of spearmen will tell you when theyвЂ™re attacked from behind and their banner will flash when theyвЂ™re about to retreat. Total War: Warhammer is good at presenting complex information in battles.

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