Total War Warhammer 3 DLC to "take a back seat" due to game-breaking bug

What's the most important part of a strategy game? The presentation? The dinosaur warriors? The ability for AI opponents to recruit units? While the former two are nice to have in any game (yes, Saurians fit into any game), the latter is a pretty vital part of any game that wants to boast some semblance of challenge. However, Total War Warhammer 3 is currently struggling with this very problem, as some surprise elements of old code have caused errors that leave the Lizardmen and Tomb Kings in particular unable to recruit units to their armies.

The problem stems from unit caps, and the fact that the AI doesn't take them into account when deciding which unit to recruit next. When the army can't recruit the unit that the AI instructed it to, it runs into a brick wall and ends up paralyzed. The army will then not complete any aggressive actions whatsoever.

However, there are other problems. Total War Warhammer 3's codebase is probably a decade old at this point and has been passed through various different teams at developer Creative Assembly. Unfortunately, this causes a lot of unforeseen errors with  many of its major updates, and it makes the usually-exciting experience of jumping into a new patch fraught.

The game has 'mostly positive' feedback overall on Steam, but this has dropped to 'mostly negative' in the last month, with just just 25% of reviews saying something positive about the game. Worse than the game-breaking bugs is the fact that the latest patch, which effectively broke the Tomb Kings and Lizardmen, was released as a beta before the full release. Players noticed the problems, gave their feedback to the Creative Assembly team, and yet nothing was done. The patch still broke the AI.

Today's statement at least suggests that Creative Assembly is attempting to tackle the problem. Radoslav Borisov, the game's lead technical designer, explains the ins and outs of the issues in a blog post and assures that a hotfix is on the way. However, it doesn't sound like future issues will be going away, as he describes the act of peering through the dense fog of the code in order to reveal more, deeper issues within.

Adam Freeman, Total War's head of community, adds that news of the forthcoming Tides of Torment DLC "will take a back seat until we've resolved this issue." Considering the DLC was originally slated for the summer and has already been delayed, it seems unlikely it will hit its planned October release, if it even appears this year.

If you, like me, are a Norsca player fed up of waiting, there are plenty of other great Warhammer games to while away the days, weeks, and maybe even months until Tides of Torment. If you're not bothered by the setting, our list of the best war games is also worth perusing.

Are you annoyed by the constant bugs in the game? Come and vent in our community Discord server, where staff and fellow readers share your frustrations.