I set the game's appmanifest to read-only and copy mod data to the game folder. Makes it impossible for any update to affect my game.

Thematic armies and no doomstacks feels like an obvious one

I understand that running around the enemy with fast single entities is cheese, cause Ai doesn't understand that it can't catch up with them. However my micro is so hilariously bad that AI actually catches up with my entities pretty often when I forget about them because my frontline joins the battle lol. So for me it's fine to kite a little here and there. However, I agree with your thoughts on corner camping! Thank you for your video :)

The thing you're trying to describe with the word realism is:

That strategy games needs to abstract away many things to have fluid experience.

Warhammer 3 abstracts much less things than most games. Flanking, ammunition, tiredness hils etc.

Realism does not mean realistic according to our reality, but that the things I mentioned above including others are not abstracted away.

Personally i think corner camping and rushing a fast unit towards the ai army to confuse it are the two most ways of trivializing the game, there has been battles I should have never won because of how many armies were coming at me but using a fast unit to scatter the armies approaching and funnel them into my corner but without this most of my campaigns would have ended sooner. I feel lots of people who also complain about the ai and use these two plays would not be able to save a lot of their campaigns from bad situations. (Edit. I'm not saying the ai isnt bad it is but if you are using cheese to beat the ai then id say it does a fairly good job in some situations)

To jump on not cheesing the battle AI, I do the same "stay in formation" anti-cheese and the AI some times surprises and even impresses me. One time my army had no ranged units throt monsters) and the AI sent skycutters to attack me...and didn't move the army until they were out of ammo (i was hiding in a forest). Another thing, is that the AI has done a decent job with magic - facing a metal sorcerer can be maddening, though they don't use high winds magics enough. When you stay in formation, the AI is also really good at trying to crash your backlines/flanking. If the opponent army has any cav, I have to protect my flank with a unit and don't even get me started on flying units (ok, I will - if the other army has 2+ flying cav units i have to make a unique formation to defend against it. Logma riders kinda suck, but I was always annoying fighting them). This is how I enjoy 100+ turn campaigns (just won a domination victory with throt). This is all on VH battle difficulty.

Fort the "realism" part, if that word is a problem do to the fantastic setting, I would call it "thematic consistency/world integrity".

Another one, which wasn't mentioned - making an " realistic army".  Like, I could just spam 3 armies of kosars or have single bears stacks but I rather build mb suboptimal but proper army with different units and different unit tiers

Hmm, using diplomacy to trade someone one minor province to become your vassal. Thats the most immersion / fluff breaking thing the game allows

Also selling settlements to me has to make sense are we actively trying to be allies etc because selling land or giving it to a potential ally is a huge thing... Idk seems like it follows real world very well lol

Love this

Whats the unit card mod you're using for the Kislev units throughout the video?

I also sometimes declare war on someone who is supposed to hate me for lore reasons.
Not always, but I felt deliberately breaking immersion when I have Norska conquering half of Empire while I as Carl trying to not piss them of so I could kill Vlad

Hey, great video, exactly the feeling I have nowadays!

I played my last two campaigns (Tyrion and Katarin) in Legendary/VH Iron man difficulty in Vanilla with the kind of rules that you talk about in the video + no autoresolve (at least for the 60 first turns).
Except for the replenishment being way too strong during almost the whole campaing and the steam roll effect after like 60 turns, I had some of the best time with the game I have ever had (I got 1 100 hours on the game), loosing some battles, making some error that cost me a lot, and feeling the pressure at the start of the of the battles I fought.

This game is huge, has his pros and cons and so needs for the player to adapt his way of playing it to enjoy campaings at the most.

But really I had a feeling that I played a whole new game just because I played it in a way that I thought the game should be played instead of trying to beat the game in any way I can find and then crushing it too easily and too quickly.

Working on how I want to play the game make it so much more enjoyable, and it doesn't necessary means that I need a whole bunch of mods, imagination can do a lot too!

I've realized that when I play strategy games like TW3, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings... I'm not actually playing strategy games, I'm playing RPGs as a big faction rather than a single guy. I like to do things I think make sense for my faction in the situation they find themselves in, and if it leads to ruin that's ok, I just consider that to have been their story.

Idk I have a fantastic time in vanilla I did recently download a mod but it's just a camera mod I don't think that counts

You're touching on something that many games fail to achieve. I'm also bothered by the lack of challenge in today's games.

In medieval times they could scale walls. But the losses were immense for the besiegers.

For me caring for each soldier, especially playing human factions realy brings out immersion. They banter during marchi g, they yell and insult during battle so when they die even if its some cheap unit I feel them. So I never send units as flesh shields, just feels morally wrong

Comment for the comment gods. Good video