Total War: Warhammer 3’s Chaos Dwarfs are the worst of the worst - and they’re lots of fun
Translate
The Total War: Warhammer series has been engaged in a long-running experiment, the purpose of which is to find the secret formula that marries strategy gameplay with the Warhammer universe’s “fluff”—the tomes of complex lore that form the backdrop for its fantasy battles. For the past week, I’ve been playing around with the new Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs DLC for Total War: Warhammer III, and I think this is as close as Creative Assembly has ever come to cracking the code.
Unlike many traditional fantasy settings, Warhammer isn’t divided up into “good guys” and “bad guys.” Instead, the Old World is populated by bad guys and worse guys, and the Chaos Dwarfs are in the running for top of the pack in the “worse guys” division. Hated by just about everyone (save for the similarly reviled Skaven), the Chaos Dwarfs are cruel industrial autocrats, enslaving anyone they can get their hands on to put them to work in their mines and factories, which produce the exotic and powerful weaponry the Chaos Dwarf warriors wield on the battlefield.
Creative Assembly has done a marvelous job of bringing this brutal system to life in the Chaos Dwarfs’ economy. Playing as a Chaos Dwarf sorcerer-prophet Drazhoath the Ashen, I have quite a bit of bookkeeping to look after: First, I’ll need labor to work in my mines and on my production lines. Labor is indicated by a ball and chain icon—the Chaos Dwarfs aren’t wasting time looking for volunteers, mind you.
I need a constant supply of new labor in my settlements, because, you see, the Chaos Dwarfs also aren’t big on things like worker safety or well-being. Buildings usually take a couple turns to complete in Total War games, but the Chaos Dwarfs can finish them instantly by paying from the labor pool—in other words, rushing the job and knowingly killing workers in the process.
The constant workforce pinch sends me searching for additional labor beyond my borders. There are two main avenues to pursue here, namely slave caravans and war. Caravans work much the same way as they do in other Total Warhammer 3 factions: I recruit a caravan leader who comes with their own little army of bodyguards, and it acts more or less autonomously as it makes its way from my capital city to a far-flung trade outpost, only interrupting me when a big decision or battle pops up.
Meanwhile, I’ve got Drazhoath tramping around ogre country up in the Mountains of Mourne, picking fights with Greasus Goldtooth and the Evil Sunz greenskins. After each battle, I have the option to send captives back to my capital, where they’ll be distributed throughout whichever provinces I have set to accept new labor.
War is, in other words, made necessary by the economy I’m building in my territory. Each new settlement I capture is going to need more labor, and whenever I want fancier guns, shinier armor, or any of the really powerful special abilities my Chaos Dwarfs can use on the battlefield, it creates new demands for additional labor. The Chaos Dwarfs go to war so they can go to war, in other words. Nothing else matters to them, and it creates real incentives to do astonishingly evil things, such as pillaging whole towns just to carry off as many slaves as possible.
It’s grim stuff, certainly, but it’s rare that a piece of Total War DLC has managed this kind of synthesis of lore and mechanical design. It’s a system that pulls me straight into Warhammer’s roots as a grimdark cartoon reaction to the Thatcherite England of the 1980s. It’s all here in Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs: capital’s need and utter contempt for labor, the hostility and suspicion toward international neighbors, and the construction of ever-more-elaborate military equipment. The growth of the security state is even included: As my labor pool gets bigger and bigger, control in my provinces gets increasingly unstable. It’s not long before I need to start instituting draconian policies and stationing my meanest generals in my own provinces just to make sure order doesn’t break down and threaten my weapons production.
Even apart from this remarkably clever socioeconomic commentary, Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs is one of the better pieces of Total Warhammer DLC I’ve seen in recent memory, and it’s one that I’d recommend as a must-buy for any fan of the series.
Posted on 04/13/20232.3K Views
Mentioned
Comments
No Comments YetLeave my comment