Total War: Warhammer 3 has received its latest DLC, Tides of Torment, which expands on various factions in the game and introduces a few new lords, alongside other goodies.
Of course, the DLC is a great addition, and yet another expansion to the overall great core experience that Warhammer 3 provides. It's a game with countless factions, lords, and units, with gameplay variability that is seldom seen in other titles, including Total War ones. But while the vastness of the map, the sheer number of unique experiences you could have, and the variation between them are all fine and dandy, one aspect continues to be ignored by CA, despite the countless released DLCs.
And that, my friends, is the diplomacy.
Diplomacy in Warhammer 3 is the shallowest I have ever had. It essentially boils down to random AI prompts for alliances or trade, getting declared on by a nation on the other side of the planet, or extorting the AI for money every turn if available.
There is literally zero incentive to engage in diplomatic communication with other nations, at least not if they aren't also controlled by conscious humans. In fact, I don't know if I could even say that there is a diplomacy in Warhammer 3, which could better be described as a rudimentary skeletal construction that resembles diplomacy but is far removed from the actual thing.
This all stood out to me so sharply after I had recently tried out Three Kingdoms, a game which CA continues to ignore and pretends never happened, despite its containing some of the best and most interesting mechanics ever added to a Total War game.
The most interesting of all, however, is the diplomacy. You can hire spies, send them to others' courts, recruit enemy spies and generals to your side, ruin a nation from within, engage with your own court, retain the loyalty of your officers, lose their loyalty and get betrayed, make strategic offers or demands, and so on and so forth. The diplomacy system is so well-developed and detailed that I cannot for the life of me understand why it was cut from subsequent TW releases.
If anything, the sheer volume of playable factions in Warhammer 3 would lend itself perfectly for immense diplomatic depth, with each faction handling things differently. Sure, a core system of mechanics could exist for all factions and, much as the game does right now, they could vary at least in some respect between the individual nations.
It would fill the immense void and gap where diplomacy ought to be in Warhammer 3, which is now as surface-level as it gets. Of course, WH3 has other issues that are generally lacking, particularly when it comes to sieges and the campaign map, but I feel diplomatic mechanics are the worst of them all.
Sieges are getting at least some attention right now, with a** ladders no longer being a thing, but that's only a start toward something good, rather than a proper improvement. Unfortunately, diplomacy hasn't even had a band-aid fix, let alone a notable update or expansion, which leaves the game in a sorry state no matter how much other aspects are updated.
More DLCs are to be added to WH3, one in the summer next year and one or more after that, so let's pray to all the gods, Chaos included, that someone in CA has the bright idea to start digging deeper in the game's core, rather than stretching it out as widely as possible with the depth of a puddle.
Well, maybe Medieval 3 will solve these issues, or whatever new Total War game CA is saving for the The Game Awards.
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