Total War: WARHAMMER II - The Laboratory

The Laboratory was developed by Creative Assembly, published by SEGA and released 14th December 2017. The Laboratory was made in partnership with Intel as a free update for Total War: WARHAMMER II.

About the Game

The Laboratory offers a brand new free game mode for Total War: WARHAMMER II, designed in collaboration with Intel. It introduces a custom battle playground with 16 different sliders to tinker and play with to push your battles to new and ridiculous levels of mayhem.

While all players will be able to play in The Laboratory, it is entirely free of any minimum or recommended specification guidance. As a result, sliders that effect GPU or CPU performance can easily override your main performance settings unless you have a very high-powered PC. This can negatively impact your frame rate or likely cause gameplay behaviors you won't see in the main game.

This is intentional and very much the point of The Laboratory!

It's very much a toybox to play with, and subtle changes and combinations of the sliders can produce varied and drastically different results and challenges for you to overcome - or just sit back and enjoy the carnage!

The full list of settings you can adjust are:

Unit Size - Increase the number of soldiers per unit and single units' health

Winds of Magic - Increase the availability of Winds of Magic for spellcasting

Explosions - Increase the size of explosion and vortex spells

Vigour Cost Reduction - Make units stay fresh for longer

Reload Time - Reduce the amount of time it takes to reload ranged weapons

Ammunition - Increase the total amount of shots per ranged unit

Projectile Penetration - Increase the distance projectiles can travel through enemies

Gravity - Decrease the effect of Gravity on units who are knocked into the air

Ability Radius - Increase the effect radius of abilities

Ability Recharge Reduction - Reduces recharge time on abilities

Charge Duration - Increase the duration of time it takes for charge bonus to fade away

Entity Scale - Increase or decrease the size of single unit entities like Lords and Monsters

Skills and Experience

The Laboratory was a relatively small undertaking in terms of development, but offered a unique and fun new twist on Total War battles. We got the opportunity to further optimize the game to run more units (entities) on the screen than ever possible before.

As this was developed with Intel, there was communication, builds, feature requests and feedback to manage between the two studios. We managed a healthy and productive partnership and delivered a new experience for players to enjoy.