Well, the good thing is, that checkerboard doesn't really require micro that much.
basically you go all ranged, the normal tier units are / were good enough and position them like so:
-_-_-_-
- - - -
Put em in guard mode and use heros infront and on the flanks to tie up.
Also in regards to WE melee infantry, i just dont know, for the price you pay they just , plain suck imo.
But like i said, i didn't play WE as of now.
Yeah, I guess I can try swapping out the eternal guard for more heroes instead. I'm already using a bit of a grid formation, though not as spread out as the ones I've seen other people using.
Playing around in custom battle, I realise I was making a bit of a mistake in using the eternal guard in a wide formation, they live longer in a square formation, though against Saurus Warriors they just don't live long enough for the Glade Guard to do enough damage (and the Glade Guard seem to do damage too slow to be useful).
Not sure, maybe just cheesing it up with all Waywatchers, Treemen and Dragons is the way to go, though even the Waywatchers don't do brilliant DPS against Saurus but at least they could run away and keep shooting. Watching some people playing campaigns on youtube whenever they go up against Lizard armies the Lizards are pretty basic Saurus+Skink stacks. But the army defending the Sacred Pools in my campaign were rocking a pretty good mix of Saurus, Temple Guard, Chameleon Skinks and Dinos.
I'm sure it's very different in MP where you make an army to a specific points cost, but in campaign where it's just full stack vs full stack the Lizards seem pretty powerful.
Yeah, I think I'm gonna swap from EG and Treekin to Treemen now. I tried Bladesingers for a few games and while I understand they're trying to be a glass cannon, they're a bit too "glass" and didn't make much of an impact before dropping to too few models to do much.
It seems Oreon has been destroyed in my campaign as I never got the quest to go down there and the High Elves are holding that forest now.
I've revived 7/8 forests, declared war on Eataine to take the last one, am now at war with basically everyone, and apparently your reliability rating causes disorder. I had rebellions in basically every province.
Good news is that Waywatcher+Treemen stacks still delete everything 1v1, particularly in ambushes. I don't recall sitting on 100% ambush chance in forests beforehand, but now you just sit in the forest and let them come to you if you want.
Sadly, the Wood Elves are sort of better at being Norsca than Norsca. I can pop out of a forest, raze 1-2 minor settlements and pop back in time to ambush any invaders. All across the map. Fighting the world doesn't even matter at this point.
trexmeyer wrote: I've revived 7/8 forests, declared war on Eataine to take the last one, am now at war with basically everyone, and apparently your reliability rating causes disorder. I had rebellions in basically every province.
I'm doing the vortex rather than ME and I'm almost the exact opposite. I think I'm approaching the end game now (unless there's some surprises coming) and I've mostly run out of enemies, with allies everywhere except Naggaroth which I now own and haven't had much problems with rebellions (other than one annoying one up north when I had no armies nearby to deal with it). I have tried to be careful with who I make friends with to avoid conflicts or being drawn into unnecessary wars.
Made friends with the Lizardmen in Lustria after clearing the Skaven and Humans from the Lustria Heathlands, made friends with Southlands Lizardmen (Tiktaq'To holds much of it) and Tomb Kings after clearing the High Elves from those Heathlands, and made friends with the Ulthuan High Elves. I ended up controlling all of Naggaroth (at first tried razing my way through to clear out the DE, but that just meant Skaven moved in, so now I've cleared the Skaven and setup outposts instead).
The only forest that has been a bit slow is the Ulthuan one, as instead of owning those heathlands I've made friends with the local Elves, but that has meant that forest has grown a lot slower than the others.
I'm kinda at the boring end of the campaign now where almost every battle can just be autoresolved, and my only enemies are a few scattered Skaven factions.
Good news is that Waywatcher+Treemen stacks still delete everything 1v1, particularly in ambushes. I don't recall sitting on 100% ambush chance in forests beforehand, but now you just sit in the forest and let them come to you if you want.
I haven't spent any time laying ambushes, but yeah, most my armies have converged on the same composition of 3 Hawk Riders, a Glade Captain for the movement bonus, a spell caster, then just Treeman, Waywatchers and Swiftshiver Scouts forming the bulk of the army. I do like to also have a Treekin or two also, although that aren't as tough Treeman the enemy can't just walk past them like they often do with Treemen.
In the end, my campaign has been a mix of conquest taking all of Naggaroth and diplomacy with HE, Lizards and TK in the other regions.
Finished the WE's Vortex campaign. It was probably a touch short, I didn't even get to try out Zoats because my main settlement didn't have space for the cavalry building, and I only just got my other settlements to tier 4 when the campaign finished.
Was good though, I like the increased emphasis on quests and roleplaying.
One thing I have always and still hate about Total War is the way units become obsolete. In the late game there's no point taking certain units because it's more important to maximum the unit slots rather than save money on cheaper units.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Finished the WE's Vortex campaign. It was probably a touch short, I didn't even get to try out Zoats because my main settlement didn't have space for the cavalry building, and I only just got my other settlements to tier 4 when the campaign finished.
Was good though, I like the increased emphasis on quests and roleplaying.
One thing I have always and still hate about Total War is the way units become obsolete. In the late game there's no point taking certain units because it's more important to maximum the unit slots rather than save money on cheaper units.
I try to use mods like Tabletop Caps - it categorizes things as Rare or Special like in the TT and limits how many of each you can have in each army. It is a little janky sometimes, but it really helps with the issue.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Finished the WE's Vortex campaign. It was probably a touch short, I didn't even get to try out Zoats because my main settlement didn't have space for the cavalry building, and I only just got my other settlements to tier 4 when the campaign finished.
Was good though, I like the increased emphasis on quests and roleplaying.
One thing I have always and still hate about Total War is the way units become obsolete. In the late game there's no point taking certain units because it's more important to maximum the unit slots rather than save money on cheaper units.
I try to use mods like Tabletop Caps - it categorizes things as Rare or Special like in the TT and limits how many of each you can have in each army. It is a little janky sometimes, but it really helps with the issue.
Yeah, I was thinking something points / gold related like in multiplayer, so if you have a few expensive units you can balance it with some cheaper ones and doomstacks of purely high cost units can't be made.
The Sisters campaign just ended up being Waywatchers + Treemen, and I'm starting a Lizardmen campaign and if memory serves toward the late game the "Jurassic Park" build of mostly dinos becomes the way to go.
A problem is at the moment there's not much of a middle game. There's early game where you try and maximise value, then late game where you try and maximise value within the 20 slots, so many middle tier units just aren't useful at any point in the campaign (by the time you recruit them you're replacing them) and even many early game units are only useful for a few turns (Goblin Wolf Riders / Chariots come to mind).
Skirmisher units are in general that valuable in SP. Some might be high value in a starting army, but aside from that it's either not worth it to build the building or they're not worth the cost. Restrictions (supply lines, units per army, building limits, etc) force doomstacks on higher levels.
Is it just me, or do Razordons kind of suck? It seems they have a long animation / set up before they shoot, and because of their short range and non-arcing trajectory I spend more time getting them in position and they don't seem to get off many volleys.
I'm playing another Grom play through because I hate elves and I love having themed armies. I've got Grom, Skarsnik and Raknik (spider goblin). The night goblin regiments of renown I have in Skarsnik's army seem to have his bonuses, but if I put the wolf chariot RoR with Grom or spider rider RoR with Raknik they don't get their bonuses. Is this a known thing or am I missing something?
Picked this up over Christmas and have been doing a sisters playthrough on ME and I'm really enjoying it. I'm at turn 130, I've had the opportunity to regrow the oak for a while but I've been having fun just bumbling about and fixing up the other forests. I kind of only got treemen recently in my armies but holy crap are they fun to batter the buggery out of everything.
Just found a dirty dirty bug. If you're assaulting a walled province which has no breaches, a death mage can use life leech at infinite range. Walk up to the walls and make those nasty artillery pieces disappear.
Finished a short victory with the sisters on ME, was good fun playing as wood elves. I'm glad of the reboot they received, the new units are fun and the way they've created WE territories are great. I might go on to try the long campaign victory but to be honest I don't know if I can be arsed to go attack Eataine just for the woods of Avelorn. Also can you confederate with Drycha or do you have to kill her to get her wood too?
Also a weird one: so I'm on turn 140 or something and chaos is busy attacking and I glanced up on the Naggarothi coast and somehow the Spine of Sotek dwarves had taken a settlement in the Deadwood and I've no idea how they did it? Did they tunnel up there? I don't think I've ever seen the AI go from one end of the map to the other, they weren't allied to me or anything
Voss wrote: Patch is out, with some fixes for the Forge of Daith and some other WE-centered fixes.
It seems like the only Forge of Daith change is that now Naestra items don't reset the item back to its base level once they're finished?
A good change, though I had hoped for more.
Also, is it just me or has arrow of kurnous been nerfed a bit on the Sister's hawk riders? Previously it was a bit OP at low tiers, but wasn't that impressive at higher tiers.
Played Eltharion on Hard for the first time and it was pretty easy, but damn if I don't hate these starts with multiple armies and provinces. The Mistwalker units are good, but expensive. The new changes to Growth/Public Order really slow the game down and I'm not a fan of them.
TW's social media accounts posted a series of pictures showing all of the different FLC that had been released since TW: Warhammer 2 came out. And then at the very end...
(bad link removed)
It's probably not much of a surprise to most players, but it appears that the final FLC for Warhammer 2 will be a legendary lord (possibly through Total War Access). And if they're teasing it now, then it's probably not all that far off.
Edit - The link didn't work like it was supposed to, so I removed it. It's described two posts down in any case.
Eumerin wrote: TW's social media accounts posted a series of pictures showing all of the different FLC that had been released since TW: Warhammer 2 came out. And then at the very end...
It's probably not much of a surprise to most players, but it appears that the final FLC for Warhammer 2 will be a legendary lord (possibly through Total War Access). And if they're teasing it now, then it's probably not all that far off.
Eumerin wrote: TW's social media accounts posted a series of pictures showing all of the different FLC that had been released since TW: Warhammer 2 came out. And then at the very end...
It's probably not much of a surprise to most players, but it appears that the final FLC for Warhammer 2 will be a legendary lord (possibly through Total War Access). And if they're teasing it now, then it's probably not all that far off.
Can you just describe whats at the end?
I dont twitter out of principle
Huh.
Apparently the link (which is supposed to go directly to the specific image) doesn't work. So you're not missing much by not clicking it.
It's literally just a panel - like all of the previous panels in the image set that list FLCs that have been released (it's the bottom panel on that specific image; the top panel is for the Glade Guard) - that says "Total War Access" and "Legendary Lord".
He looks moderately interesting and I'm sure he'll be fun to play as a Monster mash army.
His introduction also means that Dark Elves will likely not be featured in the DLC.
We can likely elimate WE, Skaven, DE, VC (5 Lords), HE, Chaos Warriors, probably Norsca...probably..., Greenskins (recent rework), and I doubt The Empire will be getting touched. Bretonnia has four lords, TK have four lords, Dwarves have four lords, VCoast has four lords...I can't recall how many the Lizardmen have off the top of my head, but if I had to guess...
I think the DLC could be nearly anyone, but Beastmen v Bretonnia (or Dwarves) would be good. Bretonnia isn't in a bad spot, but they're somewhat bland mechanics wise when compared to updated factions. I could see Beastmen v Bretonnia with a Norscan FLC working out thematically, but I really doubt that would happen.
trexmeyer wrote: He looks moderately interesting and I'm sure he'll be fun to play as a Monster mash army.
His introduction also means that Dark Elves will likely not be featured in the DLC.
We can likely elimate WE, Skaven, DE, VC (5 Lords), HE, Chaos Warriors, probably Norsca...probably..., Greenskins (recent rework), and I doubt The Empire will be getting touched. Bretonnia has four lords, TK have four lords, Dwarves have four lords, VCoast has four lords...I can't recall how many the Lizardmen have off the top of my head, but if I had to guess...
I think the DLC could be nearly anyone, but Beastmen v Bretonnia (or Dwarves) would be good. Bretonnia isn't in a bad spot, but they're somewhat bland mechanics wise when compared to updated factions. I could see Beastmen v Bretonnia with a Norscan FLC working out thematically, but I really doubt that would happen.
I think they've said in the past that they'd prefer to release DLC with a TWW2 race included. So maybe TK or VCoast. I have heard Lizardmen theorised also.
Keep an eye on Rakarth's whip at the battle decision UI. Its... a completely immobile, coiled whip, no animation to it at all. He just waves it around like a club. :/
OK. Albion for Mortal Empires as well. (Nakai doesn't start there if you do, thanks to dynamic starts)
That's um.... Ok.
So his thing is he gets beasts & monsters. He can only gain/restock beasts by events or certain actions.
Most of them are locked to either beating certain races or doing things to their cities, and its only a chance.
Sometimes you can raid in specific terrain types (or chaos corruption) to get lesser beasts.
Mostly he wants to beat up Norsca or Lizardmen. High or Wood elf cities can get dragons. He can get exploding squigs from greenskins, but... whatever.
Oddly the ME campaign encourages you to beat up norsca for a while, then go rampage against the empire, which will give you no sorts of beasts at all, beyond maybe raiding for giant wolves and getting harpies out of high casualty battles.
A quest popped up for sacking or razing altdorf on turn 6 or so- I suspect its tied to taking all of Albion.
Overall, its a cute addition, and better than some of the other DE lords, just for the more varied enemies nearby and the different recruitment pool.
Looks like the Forge of Daith got another update for the Wood Elf Sisters. Haven't tried it yet, but looks like it has an interface and more options now.
Gave the Sisters a go with the new Forge of Daith, definitely a big improvement. There's a whole interface for it now, and instead of just feeling like random upgrades for random items you get to save up points from winning battles and choose your upgrades.
They're divided into different item classes, Dragon, Eagle, Twilight and Dreaming, or you can select from one of 4 of Daith's Blessings.
Good to see they're listening to their customers about how underwhelming Daith's Forge was compared to something like Grom's Cauldron, shame it took a few months to implement though as I imagine most people won't revisit the Sisters campaign to find out.
Voss wrote: OK. Albion for Mortal Empires as well. (Nakai doesn't start there if you do, thanks to dynamic starts)
That's um.... Ok.
So his thing is he gets beasts & monsters. He can only gain/restock beasts by events or certain actions.
Most of them are locked to either beating certain races or doing things to their cities, and its only a chance.
Sometimes you can raid in specific terrain types (or chaos corruption) to get lesser beasts.
Mostly he wants to beat up Norsca or Lizardmen. High or Wood elf cities can get dragons. He can get exploding squigs from greenskins, but... whatever.
Oddly the ME campaign encourages you to beat up norsca for a while, then go rampage against the empire, which will give you no sorts of beasts at all, beyond maybe raiding for giant wolves and getting harpies out of high casualty battles.
A quest popped up for sacking or razing altdorf on turn 6 or so- I suspect its tied to taking all of Albion.
Overall, its a cute addition, and better than some of the other DE lords, just for the more varied enemies nearby and the different recruitment pool.
I thought you could raid the Imperial Zoo in Altdorf and get stuff from there
I thought you could raid the Imperial Zoo in Altdorf and get stuff from there
You can, but its a one-and-done quest. Most of the beast recruitment comes from doing specific actions against Norsca or Lizards, with a few other options.
I'm about 75 turns in on Rakarth ME on VH/N. Albion is kind of a funky start location. You face similar issues to Norsca. I'm at war with multiple HE factions, but only one has moved against me...once.
I defeated Couronne and Mareinburg fairly quickly and then raided Altdorf, but Reikland is too much of a slugfest right now with the occasional Norscan army coming down to harass Citadel of Lead. At least the other two cities in Albion have good defenses. Monster Mash is fun with Rakarth and his Harpies are actually good enough to tear through ranged/lower-tier infantry. With something like four provinces (and only one at T5) I can afford two stacks + a Black Ark and have two other Black Arks building up.
Possibly the biggest issue is that autoresolve is awful and it's necessary to fight most battles with Rakarth manually. I think this will be the case until I replace all his Harpies.
This was confirmed on the r/TotalWar subreddit by Creative Assembly’s lead community manager Grace Carroll (known on Reddit as ‘Grace’). A subreddit user was speculating as to whether we’d hear about the final Warhammer II DLC this month, to which Carroll responded: “No, there won’t be any news on WH2 DLC for a couple of months at least”
Ambush Vampire Counts on VH+ is absolutely busted. You can hit 100% early on thanks to Blood Kisses being hilariously easy to farm, especially after you pick up the Lahmian Bloodline upkeep reduction. At that point surround the enemy cast Winds of Death 2-3x and enjoy your victory. Oh and supply lines really don't matter since your armies are basically all free except for lords, heroes, a siege attacker unit if needed, and Dire Wolves as needed.
Vampires are one of the fastest expanders in the game (if not the fastest).
But if you use the cheese of skellie spam, lots of heroes and wind of death (I actually like pit of shades more to be honest) then battles get boring pretty quick.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Vampires are one of the fastest expanders in the game (if not the fastest).
But if you use the cheese of skellie spam, lots of heroes and wind of death (I actually like pit of shades more to be honest) then battles get boring pretty quick.
Some factions are problematic in a way, since their design does basically only facilitate a certain playstyle.Vampire counts are probably one of the clearest exemples.
I think it's not helped by the fact that the battlefield cheats the Ai recieves make melee infantry a losing proposition for most factions on the higher difficulty.
I watched alot of the vidoes by Zerkovich to get to grips with the game and he repeatedly makes the point that the VH and Legendary campaigns can be much less fun as the AI has to cheat much more to pose a threat but that means to win you tend to resort to Doom Stacks and similar which tips it massively the other way and makes most battle pointless.
From my limited experience - I tend to agree - I enjoyed my Hard level camapign but did not feel I had to spam units or "cheesse" the game and only veyr late did I ever have more than one Terrorghiest or similar in a army.
Mr Morden wrote: I watched alot of the vidoes by Zerkovich to get to grips with the game and he repeatedly makes the point that the VH and Legendary campaigns can be much less fun as the AI has to cheat much more to pose a threat but that means to win you tend to resort to Doom Stacks and similar which tips it massively the other way and makes most battle pointless.
From my limited experience - I tend to agree - I enjoyed my Hard level camapign but did not feel I had to spam units or "cheesse" the game and only veyr late did I ever have more than one Terrorghiest or similar in a army.
But this is also on TW1 not TW2
it's a general issue which i think is partially tied to the statification and 1v1 / melee engine of newer total war games.
i guess it's cheaper than making a more refined AI. But makes everything above normal/hard bracket a bit of a slog and displaces a lot of units from viable to just outright not fieldable.
Im currently playing my VC campaign.
Skellie spam can get the win con. BUT I dont think it is up to par if you going for map domination.
T5 dwarf and DE armies will wreck skelly spam if you cant hide it.
A couple iron breakers will just kill your entire blob. then you might struggle with winds of death if they have enough gunpowder
SIngle entity and monstrous cav will just walk through pit of shades and not care about winds. I think VC really struggle at High tier level especialy if AI gets cheats and spams single entities and or monstrous cav.
The key is to play really agressive early game and kill off the main scary factions. But dwarfs are a real slog and their underway and mountain terrain can mean you get bogged down. Ungrim on his own pretty much kills the entire skellie army so you have to cycel charge him with your lord hoping he doesnt get his licks in and cast spirirt leech.
Strongest build is isabella with disciplined vampire heros and terrogheists IMO. I can auto resolve against 2-3 bretonia doom stack.
Mr Morden wrote: I watched alot of the vidoes by Zerkovich to get to grips with the game and he repeatedly makes the point that the VH and Legendary campaigns can be much less fun as the AI has to cheat much more to pose a threat but that means to win you tend to resort to Doom Stacks and similar which tips it massively the other way and makes most battle pointless.
From my limited experience - I tend to agree - I enjoyed my Hard level camapign but did not feel I had to spam units or "cheesse" the game and only veyr late did I ever have more than one Terrorghiest or similar in a army.
But this is also on TW1 not TW2
Very Hard and Legendary battle difficulty the AI basically just cheats. I don't know if they act more intelligently, but it doesn't seem like they do. They just get buffed (or you get nerfed) to balance their stupidity.
I think the best option is to play on Normal or Hard battle difficulty, but increase the campaign difficulty. That way melee infantry is actually a viable option, and "balanced" armies can actually function.
Of course doom stacks always become the default at harder campaign difficulty due to supply lines. It's almost always*** more efficient to concentrate power into a few armies instead of having many mediocre armies due to supply lines. Supply lines is really a stupid mechanic and I hope they come up with something better for TW3.
***VC are the exception to that, because you can get free skeletons using the technology tree, meaning the VC's best strategy isn't elite armies, it's to take many disposable armies made from free skeletons.
Mr Morden wrote: I watched alot of the vidoes by Zerkovich to get to grips with the game and he repeatedly makes the point that the VH and Legendary campaigns can be much less fun as the AI has to cheat much more to pose a threat but that means to win you tend to resort to Doom Stacks and similar which tips it massively the other way and makes most battle pointless.
From my limited experience - I tend to agree - I enjoyed my Hard level camapign but did not feel I had to spam units or "cheesse" the game and only veyr late did I ever have more than one Terrorghiest or similar in a army.
But this is also on TW1 not TW2
Very Hard and Legendary battle difficulty the AI basically just cheats. I don't know if they act more intelligently, but it doesn't seem like they do. They just get buffed (or you get nerfed) to balance their stupidity.
I think the best option is to play on Normal or Hard battle difficulty, but increase the campaign difficulty. That way melee infantry is actually a viable option, and "balanced" armies can actually function.
Of course doom stacks always become the default at harder campaign difficulty due to supply lines. It's almost always*** more efficient to concentrate power into a few armies instead of having many mediocre armies due to supply lines. Supply lines is really a stupid mechanic and I hope they come up with something better for TW3.
***VC are the exception to that, because you can get free skeletons using the technology tree, meaning the VC's best strategy isn't elite armies, it's to take many disposable armies made from free skeletons.
I have just purchased TW2 so will see what changes but had no real supply issues as VCs as just raised the dead most of the time - did end up with about 7 armies in the end of variable quality.
Apparently the AI does not get better but units are discounted heavily for it in campaign and the units themselves get big boosts - especially in stuff like Leadership.
Mr Morden wrote: I watched alot of the vidoes by Zerkovich to get to grips with the game and he repeatedly makes the point that the VH and Legendary campaigns can be much less fun as the AI has to cheat much more to pose a threat but that means to win you tend to resort to Doom Stacks and similar which tips it massively the other way and makes most battle pointless.
From my limited experience - I tend to agree - I enjoyed my Hard level camapign but did not feel I had to spam units or "cheesse" the game and only veyr late did I ever have more than one Terrorghiest or similar in a army.
But this is also on TW1 not TW2
Very Hard and Legendary battle difficulty the AI basically just cheats. I don't know if they act more intelligently, but it doesn't seem like they do. They just get buffed (or you get nerfed) to balance their stupidity.
I think the best option is to play on Normal or Hard battle difficulty, but increase the campaign difficulty. That way melee infantry is actually a viable option, and "balanced" armies can actually function.
Of course doom stacks always become the default at harder campaign difficulty due to supply lines. It's almost always*** more efficient to concentrate power into a few armies instead of having many mediocre armies due to supply lines. Supply lines is really a stupid mechanic and I hope they come up with something better for TW3.
***VC are the exception to that, because you can get free skeletons using the technology tree, meaning the VC's best strategy isn't elite armies, it's to take many disposable armies made from free skeletons.
I have just purchased TW2 so will see what changes but had no real supply issues as VCs as just raised the dead most of the time - did end up with about 7 armies in the end of variable quality.
Apparently the AI does not get better but units are discounted heavily for it in campaign and the units themselves get big boosts - especially in stuff like Leadership.
More good info here:
Spoiler:
Yeah, I watch LegendofTotalWar occasionally and he explains it. Basically in battle you get leadership nerfs and melee nerfs (melee attack and defence I think?), which basically makes melee infantry suck on harder difficulties as your elite infantry will lose vs the AI's elite infantry by a large margin.
Ranged units become a far better option on higher difficulty levels because those nerfs don't affect them as much. So maxing out the difficulty your options become ranged units, single entity monsters, characters and magic, with the best strategies being the ones that cheese the AI's stupidity (e.g. doing things to make them blob up and hitting them with AoE in a way that would never work against a human opponent).
But you can set the campaign difficulty to max and the battle difficulty to normal or hard so that the AI build better armies, but when you actually get into the fight your melee infantry aren't nerfed into oblivion and you can play in a way that's more similar to WHFB itself plays.
Mr Morden wrote: I watched alot of the vidoes by Zerkovich to get to grips with the game and he repeatedly makes the point that the VH and Legendary campaigns can be much less fun as the AI has to cheat much more to pose a threat but that means to win you tend to resort to Doom Stacks and similar which tips it massively the other way and makes most battle pointless.
From my limited experience - I tend to agree - I enjoyed my Hard level camapign but did not feel I had to spam units or "cheesse" the game and only veyr late did I ever have more than one Terrorghiest or similar in a army.
But this is also on TW1 not TW2
Very Hard and Legendary battle difficulty the AI basically just cheats. I don't know if they act more intelligently, but it doesn't seem like they do. They just get buffed (or you get nerfed) to balance their stupidity.
I think the best option is to play on Normal or Hard battle difficulty, but increase the campaign difficulty. That way melee infantry is actually a viable option, and "balanced" armies can actually function.
Of course doom stacks always become the default at harder campaign difficulty due to supply lines. It's almost always*** more efficient to concentrate power into a few armies instead of having many mediocre armies due to supply lines. Supply lines is really a stupid mechanic and I hope they come up with something better for TW3.
***VC are the exception to that, because you can get free skeletons using the technology tree, meaning the VC's best strategy isn't elite armies, it's to take many disposable armies made from free skeletons.
I have just purchased TW2 so will see what changes but had no real supply issues as VCs as just raised the dead most of the time - did end up with about 7 armies in the end of variable quality.
Apparently the AI does not get better but units are discounted heavily for it in campaign and the units themselves get big boosts - especially in stuff like Leadership.
More good info here:
Spoiler:
Yeah, I watch LegendofTotalWar occasionally and he explains it. Basically in battle you get leadership nerfs and melee nerfs (melee attack and defence I think?), which basically makes melee infantry suck on harder difficulties as your elite infantry will lose vs the AI's elite infantry by a large margin.
Ranged units become a far better option on higher difficulty levels because those nerfs don't affect them as much. So maxing out the difficulty your options become ranged units, single entity monsters, characters and magic, with the best strategies being the ones that cheese the AI's stupidity (e.g. doing things to make them blob up and hitting them with AoE in a way that would never work against a human opponent).
But you can set the campaign difficulty to max and the battle difficulty to normal or hard so that the AI build better armies, but when you actually get into the fight your melee infantry aren't nerfed into oblivion and you can play in a way that's more similar to WHFB itself plays.
Pretty much If you get a chance watch the vid - its quite fun and also goes into details like exactly what stats get boosted and by how much.
However as I understand it the two different channels appraoch if from very different game views. Z likes fighting battles online and campaign is not a big deal and Legend is the opposite (I think)
I veer towards V's opinion that if the hardest settings forces you to play with Doomstacks that mean you autowin battles - well.....why play on them at all?
But as he says - we paid money for the game to play it how we want.
Still downloading the TW2 game however - another day apparently.....
Mr Morden wrote: Pretty much If you get a chance watch the vid - its quite fun and also goes into details like exactly what stats get boosted and by how much.
However as I understand it the two different channels appraoch if from very different game views. Z likes fighting battles online and campaign is not a big deal and Legend is the opposite (I think)
I veer towards V's opinion that if the hardest settings forces you to play with Doomstacks that mean you autowin battles - well.....why play on them at all?
But as he says - we paid money for the game to play it how we want.
Still downloading the TW2 game however - another day apparently.....
Yeah, playing TWW2 is Legend's full time job, I think he's racked up over 10,000 hours which is insane when you consider how long the game has been out.
Basically he plays in a way that's gonna make him money. I like to play in a way that I can actually use the units I think are cool, lol. One of the things I find frustrating is how low tier units very quickly become obsolete in campaign (not really a problem in multiplayer where you play to a points level rather than a specified number of units). I'd love it if I could bring one of my favourite units - wolf riders and chariots - to more battles, but they just become a liability in campaign.
Mr Morden wrote: Pretty much If you get a chance watch the vid - its quite fun and also goes into details like exactly what stats get boosted and by how much.
However as I understand it the two different channels appraoch if from very different game views. Z likes fighting battles online and campaign is not a big deal and Legend is the opposite (I think)
I veer towards V's opinion that if the hardest settings forces you to play with Doomstacks that mean you autowin battles - well.....why play on them at all?
But as he says - we paid money for the game to play it how we want.
Still downloading the TW2 game however - another day apparently.....
Yeah, playing TWW2 is Legend's full time job, I think he's racked up over 10,000 hours which is insane when you consider how long the game has been out.
Basically he plays in a way that's gonna make him money. I like to play in a way that I can actually use the units I think are cool, lol. One of the things I find frustrating is how low tier units very quickly become obsolete in campaign (not really a problem in multiplayer where you play to a points level rather than a specified number of units). I'd love it if I could bring one of my favourite units - wolf riders and chariots - to more battles, but they just become a liability in campaign.
I find wolfrider archers and chariots atleast in normal with the right lord traits to be a nice harrasing unit.
StygianBeach wrote: Since I found out how the difficulty works in Total War I just play on normal.
Honestly I wish more developers were more clear on what difficulty settings did in game in the game itself. Sometimes I think that people get hooked on the idea that the AI gets insane cheats on anything but super-easy or is specifically working differently between the difficulties.
H.B.M.C. wrote: The higher difficulty levels encourage the spamming of ranged units because melee units cease functioning as they're meant to.
Not sure why they made that choice when working out the difficulties.
Its the easiest way , they just increase some of the stat values in a table and call it done.
Not really sure what the alternative is.
I guess changing the AI behaviour which is I think what players expect/want. But this would mean doing a lot of work so no wonder option 1 is what we got lol.
But if not AI behaviour which would be really hard to code, what else can they do in a TW game? The AI already outmatches you in terms of micro management.
StygianBeach wrote: Since I found out how the difficulty works in Total War I just play on normal.
Honestly I wish more developers were more clear on what difficulty settings did in game in the game itself. Sometimes I think that people get hooked on the idea that the AI gets insane cheats on anything but super-easy or is specifically working differently between the difficulties.
Because that is the way it often works in strategy games.
Civ is by far the worst, where they just toss extra techs, units (including settlers) and then throw numeric economy bonuses on the AI and call it a day.
Total War also is mostly numerical adjustments- both to unit stats and AI economies.
Stat inflation is usually the go-to method for RPGs as well. And/or a damage adjustment. (-25%, 0, +25%, +50%, etc). Pathfinder:Kingmaker took this to insane lengths and bump primary and secondary stats (which also got boosted by the primary stat adjustments) which in worst cases took monster stats completely out of the bounds of the random number generator (the d20 roll).
'AI' just generally... isn't. Its hard, and tweaking numbers is a lot easier. But rarely produces a satisfying result.
AI is something that has stagnated in practical terms I think. The problem is its freaking complex and most game AI are anything but AI. They don't think and many are highly repetitive with little room to vary behaviour.
It's why after a while of playing one game you can often beat the AI without thinking because whilst AI can beat a player in micro control; it can't beat a player in terms of thinking ahead or having a game plan. The AI's game plan is the same every time (or is the same within a limited pool).
It's something that I think RTS and Strategy games really show up. In shooters and such the AI doesn't need a game plan, it just needs to move and aim and shoot and if anything likely needs toning down from what it can do to give the player a chance.
In RTS what AI need is a fundamental concept of pre-planning concepts. Which I suspect is insanely hard to code into an AI which then also has to be produced on a computer game budget and run on a home PC
H.B.M.C. wrote: The higher difficulty levels encourage the spamming of ranged units because melee units cease functioning as they're meant to.
Not sure why they made that choice when working out the difficulties.
Its the easiest way , they just increase some of the stat values in a table and call it done.
Not really sure what the alternative is.
I guess changing the AI behaviour which is I think what players expect/want. But this would mean doing a lot of work so no wonder option 1 is what we got lol.
But if not AI behaviour which would be really hard to code, what else can they do in a TW game? The AI already outmatches you in terms of micro management.
One think Zerk mentioend was that in previous TW games the AI could manage basic formations - front line, flanks gaurds and then flanked by its cavalry or similar.
I would wager those are pre-designed formations. It was probably l lot easier in historical games where basically the unit roster is much smaller and simpler than in Warhammer and in earlier games where the maps were far more open.
Heck the Medieval 2 AI would regularly just abandon whatever plan it started the game with to pull back a few feet and redraw lines again. Even if it was doing a siege that's how it would often try it.
I think it is a lot harder in Warhammer because there's a lot of units that don't neatly fit into simple categories and some which are very situational. Eg take the High Elf Phoenix. On the one hand its a strafing bomber that wants to sweep back and fourth over infantry lines dropping its firebomb whilst avoiding (as much as it can) ranged attacks.
On the other its a fast moving flying unit that wants to engage other flying units to prevent them flanking your army; on the other its a support unit designed to fly around and strike the rear of a unit already engaged in combat; on the other it wants to hit artillery that's left undefended or the rear or archers.
Basically it has a lot of roles; some of which have vastly different situations where they work and some where they don't.
I think the TW Warhammer AI makes up for this added complication by being far more aggressive in general. Which means it charges a lot rather than drawing lines and forcing you to come to it all the time. IT also means once combat engages things are confusing and chaotic and its weakness at fine planning isn't so apparent.
I did what amounted to a speed run of Sisters of Twilight VH ME. They're completely busted. You can actually autoresolve pretty much everything during that campaign and the whole 15+ Hawk Riders in their army is incredibly dumb. Anything that can actually hit you you can burst down nearly instantly.
Isabella Von Carstein is comparable in terms of ease even on VH. You can take Drakenfel (sp?) on turn 2 by swapping her out for Vlad since Mannfred always wanders off. After that the super easy version is to just wipe out the local VC and then farm them + the local Skaven for rep with the Dwarves since Dwarf AI can be bent to your will as pretty much any faction. I've gotten Karaz-a-Karak to agree to invade Reikland with me before.
Harder version is vassalize and confederate Mannfred...I don't think he or Ghorst are good enough to justify tanking Dwarf relations. You don't want to fight Dwarves because eventually Grimgore will confederate all the Greenskins and he is more independent minded than the Dwarves.
Raw power boosts are the way to go, in terms of resources and numbers. I don't like it when units get a % modifier themselves for difficulty, I would rather the OPFOR remained the same but simply got more forces to throw at you.
I play Total War Warhammer on Normal battle difficulty and Legendary strategic difficulty. I hate the nerfs on gets, even the mild 10% penalty on Hard mode, I think a unit vs unit fight should go as predicted, and I dont like it when the units are so nerfed the high difficulty games eschew most of the unit roster to better cope with the penalties.
I far rather play on Normal and force my armies to be built on 'comp' that play on Very Hard and build cheesestacks.
As for AI its hard enough to code that IO don't think the game has any business using the resources it has, little or lot, to anything less than the best of its ability regardless of difficulty level. The one exception to that is the level of tolerance or lack thereof for the players choices.
Orlanth's Player Tip - For a challenge that still feels like Warhammer play the game on Very Hard or Legendary strategic difficulty, Normal battle difficulty and add the following voluntary restrictions.
1. 50% rounded down of every army MUST be made up of tier 1 or 2 infantry or cavalry.
2. All units./characters that are not tier 1 or 2 cavalry are 0-3 per army.
Note this wording means that a Lord on its own is legal and the restriction on spamming units is not too restrictive, it ramps up the difficulty without being broken as the AUI can make cheesestacks but the player cannot. If you want six of something nasty you need a minimum of two armies.
I have two additional rules but you can leave thme out for simplicity.
3. When confederating you have one turn to make any absorbed army legal.
4. When confederating you may not disband the original faction leaders army, once legal. This is a role play inclusion, e.g. if you confederate with Middenland, their leader Boris Todbringer is still entitled to raise men under arms, whether or not you can afford to keep him doing so.
Give it a go.
There are apparently some mods that put on unit caps and similar from Tabletop - Zerk is trying one at the moment.
Isabella Von Carstein is comparable in terms of ease even on VH. You can take Drakenfel (sp?) on turn 2 by swapping her out for Vlad since Mannfred always wanders off. After that the super easy version is to just wipe out the local VC and then farm them + the local Skaven for rep with the Dwarves since Dwarf AI can be bent to your will as pretty much any faction. I've gotten Karaz-a-Karak to agree to invade Reikland with me before.
Harder version is vassalize and confederate Mannfred...I don't think he or Ghorst are good enough to justify tanking Dwarf relations. You don't want to fight Dwarves because eventually Grimgore will confederate all the Greenskins and he is more independent minded than the Dwarves.
Completed a 400 turn long Campaign with Vlad and Isabella - I kept Mannfred as an independant ally - just left him Drakenhof and he acted as a powerful screen against the Dwarfs whilst I fought Chaos and with Averland took the Empire - but that was TW1 - trying out on TW2 and its def lots of different stuff. Bit wierd that the Lahmian Sisterhood is led by a male vampire who Neferata stuck in a coffin and gave to Nagash.
Also started an Imrik campaign cos Elves and Dragons
Mr Morden wrote: There are apparently some mods that put on unit caps and similar from Tabletop - Zerk is trying one at the moment.
Isabella Von Carstein is comparable in terms of ease even on VH. You can take Drakenfel (sp?) on turn 2 by swapping her out for Vlad since Mannfred always wanders off. After that the super easy version is to just wipe out the local VC and then farm them + the local Skaven for rep with the Dwarves since Dwarf AI can be bent to your will as pretty much any faction. I've gotten Karaz-a-Karak to agree to invade Reikland with me before.
Harder version is vassalize and confederate Mannfred...I don't think he or Ghorst are good enough to justify tanking Dwarf relations. You don't want to fight Dwarves because eventually Grimgore will confederate all the Greenskins and he is more independent minded than the Dwarves.
Completed a 400 turn long Campaign with Vlad and Isabella - I kept Mannfred as an independant ally - just left him Drakenhof and he acted as a powerful screen against the Dwarfs whilst I fought Chaos and with Averland took the Empire - but that was TW1 - trying out on TW2 and its def lots of different stuff. Bit wierd that the Lahmian Sisterhood is led by a male vampire who Neferata stuck in a coffin and gave to Nagash.
Also started an Imrik campaign cos Elves and Dragons
The problem I had with Mannfred as an ally was that it seems like everyone goes to war with him, so I got dragged into a whole heap of wars with anyone and everyone.
Mr Morden wrote: There are apparently some mods that put on unit caps and similar from Tabletop - Zerk is trying one at the moment.
Isabella Von Carstein is comparable in terms of ease even on VH. You can take Drakenfel (sp?) on turn 2 by swapping her out for Vlad since Mannfred always wanders off. After that the super easy version is to just wipe out the local VC and then farm them + the local Skaven for rep with the Dwarves since Dwarf AI can be bent to your will as pretty much any faction. I've gotten Karaz-a-Karak to agree to invade Reikland with me before.
Harder version is vassalize and confederate Mannfred...I don't think he or Ghorst are good enough to justify tanking Dwarf relations. You don't want to fight Dwarves because eventually Grimgore will confederate all the Greenskins and he is more independent minded than the Dwarves.
Completed a 400 turn long Campaign with Vlad and Isabella - I kept Mannfred as an independant ally - just left him Drakenhof and he acted as a powerful screen against the Dwarfs whilst I fought Chaos and with Averland took the Empire - but that was TW1 - trying out on TW2 and its def lots of different stuff. Bit wierd that the Lahmian Sisterhood is led by a male vampire who Neferata stuck in a coffin and gave to Nagash.
Also started an Imrik campaign cos Elves and Dragons
The problem I had with Mannfred as an ally was that it seems like everyone goes to war with him, so I got dragged into a whole heap of wars with anyone and everyone.
I think I kept him as a defensive ally and ignored anyone who i did not want to war with. This time the Empire sub factions seem less friendly but on the other hand Drycha is a good ally and also allies with Sisterhood and Azhag.
Is the Imrik Campaign bad then? Seems much easier so far - lots of example missions givng you free stuff
Mr Morden wrote: There are apparently some mods that put on unit caps and similar from Tabletop - Zerk is trying one at the moment.
Isabella Von Carstein is comparable in terms of ease even on VH. You can take Drakenfel (sp?) on turn 2 by swapping her out for Vlad since Mannfred always wanders off. After that the super easy version is to just wipe out the local VC and then farm them + the local Skaven for rep with the Dwarves since Dwarf AI can be bent to your will as pretty much any faction. I've gotten Karaz-a-Karak to agree to invade Reikland with me before.
Harder version is vassalize and confederate Mannfred...I don't think he or Ghorst are good enough to justify tanking Dwarf relations. You don't want to fight Dwarves because eventually Grimgore will confederate all the Greenskins and he is more independent minded than the Dwarves.
Completed a 400 turn long Campaign with Vlad and Isabella - I kept Mannfred as an independant ally - just left him Drakenhof and he acted as a powerful screen against the Dwarfs whilst I fought Chaos and with Averland took the Empire - but that was TW1 - trying out on TW2 and its def lots of different stuff. Bit wierd that the Lahmian Sisterhood is led by a male vampire who Neferata stuck in a coffin and gave to Nagash.
Also started an Imrik campaign cos Elves and Dragons
The problem I had with Mannfred as an ally was that it seems like everyone goes to war with him, so I got dragged into a whole heap of wars with anyone and everyone.
I think I kept him as a defensive ally and ignored anyone who i did not want to war with. This time the Empire sub factions seem less friendly but on the other hand Drycha is a good ally and also allies with Sisterhood and Azhag.
Is the Imrik Campaign bad then? Seems much easier so far - lots of example missions givng you free stuff
I wouldint call it bad. That said I'm not sure how many patches ago I played it so maybe things have changed.
IMO it is notoriously hard on harder campaign + battle difficulties. You are dealing with double whamy of economical and geographical & strategic challenges.
From economy perspective, the capital is in a really bad place with no realistic access to any harbours so no way to establish any trade/diplomacy. Normaly by the time you can confederate Caledor and "get access" to ulthuan you will be so bogged down and invested in the east trying to defend your holdings you cant do anything with it or have resource to defend the foothold. I wish there was a way to manualy switch capitals.
The main issue is you are dealing with clan eshin to the east. They must be eradicated before they confedare with another rat faction or become too strong. The AI cheats on the numebrs of rat armies they field off just 2-3 settlements is binkers.. Rats are just a nightmare to fight startegicaly because their ambush attacks and underway. Then you have Malus to the south. By the time you finish with those you will end up either making enemies with Dwarfs or orks & possibly beatsment in the west.
The strategic campaign Is very challenging because of the terrain. You end up having to fight across the mountains with either orks dwarfs or skaven. Having to underway really puts high elves at a distadvanatge early on. It will take you like 2-3 turns to capture minor settlements all the while a main ork/beatsment army can just underway to the heart of your empire. I think on my last playthough I spent about 15 turns trying to hunt down and finish moghur(I think?). His faction would retreat to the mountains using the underway and hide. And as soon as I started moving out to capture new territory he would respawn and have a new fullstack and underway deep into my territory over 2 or so turns and sack/raze minor settlements. Basiclay ended up getting dragged into wackamole all the while the orks would do the same. Every time id capture terrioty they would recapture as soon as I marhc on and then just underway around.
All this said you start off with a dragon, fire mage and get dragon mount very early on. So very early game can be very satisfying as you can be bit OP. The unique dragons are very awesome too!
My Manfred campaign is basically done.. I think I wont bother to get the whole map. Already got half of ulthuan and the entire old world. Only left with cult of pleasure, and clan pestilence as enemies. Maybe play on until I finish the SOK building and get the dread incarnate doomstack going for a few turns of fun but thats it.
Not really sure what to play as next.
Maybe I will try Imrik again.
Think this time I will try to force march west T1 and try to get to the coast and abandon the capital before the orks war dec me. Im counting on them not war decing while im moving through their lands as relations wont be that bad. That or fight my way through to the coast before dwarf factions capture those.
Only played a few turns - but got a coast al settlement very quickly to the west and noted the Eshin to the north west. Allied with Tomb Kings and Wood Elves so far.
I suck at playing Dark Elves. I don't know why I just can't get them to work and I keep getting rolled. The one exception now seems to be Rakarth as I can just load up on monsters. That seems to be the only way I can win with them.
Now to see if I can win this Vortex campaign before I try my hand at a Mortal Empires one.
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: I suck at playing Dark Elves. I don't know why I just can't get them to work and I keep getting rolled. The one exception now seems to be Rakarth as I can just load up on monsters. That seems to be the only way I can win with them.
Now to see if I can win this Vortex campaign before I try my hand at a Mortal Empires one.
Don't forget Black Arks. Also, there was a bug where the AI wouldn't detect Black Arks in cities and just throw itself into entrenched full stacks repeatedly...it might still be a thing.
Ran through Sisters on Twilight legendary. It's absurdly easy, probably the easiest option in the game. Was able to confederate Drycha, which was odd.
Also did Vampire Counts and Bretonnia (Fay Enchantress) VH. Fay Enchantress is a quick win (less than 120 turns~), but Vampire Counts are borderline broken in my mind.
Off the top of my head I've done the following on VH/L:
Wulfrik: Start is tricky, but once you get a couple of capitol techs you start snowballing hard.
Warriors of Chaos: I've only done this with an encamp mod that requires no movement (in game default is 25%, but Vampire Coast needs 0%). It should still be easy now...with Rakarth and other changes I've seen Reikland and Couronne get wiped out by AI factions multiple times since T&T.
Skaven (Clan Eshin): Did this on Vortex. About 100 turns. Easy.
Greenskins (Grom): Also on Vortex. Easy.
Vampire Counts: Takes ages, but they're honestly OP and scale well on difficulty increases.
Bretonnia (Fay Enchantress): I quit once when going for industry tech and ran it again going for confederation tech. Confederation tech is stronger.
Sisters of Twilight: Might be the easiest conditions in ME and the army you start with is obscene.
I'm close to wins as Gelt and Morathi in ME, but I don't know if I can be bothered to finish those runs.
Gelt is a pain. Not for any difficulty reason, but just for the Empire confederation mechanic (which is part of the campaign goals). It just takes a long time for the authority and each regional 1-10 ranking to go up.
Sometimes its easier to just declare war and soak the penalties.
In some ways it seems like it would be easier on higher difficulties as the other states are more likely to be wiped out, and all you need to do is reclaim the original territory.
Okay well after taking your advise I finally managed to beat the Vortex Campaign for Dark Elves. Seems I really was over thinking it and just "shooting the hell out of everything" makes everything much easier.
Also, while shades are good, man are Darkshards w/shields cost effective. I probably rolled around the map conquering Ulthuan with them longer then needed since they were so good.
News is up. The Silence and The Fury. Lizardmen vs Beastmen. The Lizard LL is apparently a skink who got trapped in the Realm of Chaos for a while, and went Doomguy on the inhabitants.
Unfortunately I'm at work, so I'll leave any further details - along with the trailer link - to others.
Yeah. According to the steam page there seems to be a couple interesting mechanics (I suspect a test bed for TW3).
Beastmen: Taurox
After embarking on a bloody rampage through Talabecland, Taurox was rewarded by the dark gods with a body of brass… and still, he thirsts for slaughter! As he wins battles, Taurox gains Momentum, and his army can replenish action points to fight and fight again. The longer his kill-streak continues, the greater the gifts bestowed upon him by the ruinous powers. He and his Beastmen hordes will ultimately need to locate the Heart of Darkness, where he will face Oxyotl in a final, decisive battle.
Lizardmen: Oxyotl
A chameleon Skink of high renown, Oxyotl has a long history of fighting – and succeeding against – the otherworldly forces of Chaos. His prescience enables him to detect where the forces of chaos will strike next and, utilising the network of lost Secret Sanctums across the world only he can capture and develop, Oxyotl can choose which threats to tackle, and reap the rewards of victory. Oxyotl can instantly travel between his capitol, his unique mission areas, and any Secret Sanctums he has rediscovered. Ultimately, he must travel to the Heart of Darkness and face the hordes of Taurox in a final, desperate battle.
The Secret Sanctums thing is something, ironically, I think Beastmen should have had (and from the beginning) The horde-only playstyle is a little bizarre, and a few shrines and totems in the mountains and forests as 'gathering points' would have worked really well. Mechanically I guess it works for Oxyotl.
Not sure Lizards needed a 7th legendary lord, but whatever. I look forward to updated beasts at last.
I agree that 7 LLs seems a bit much. But CA seems determined to have at least one WH2 race in each DLC, and they never used the Tomb Kings or Vampire Coast for that. So someone was going to get a seventh lord.
That will change with the upcoming game, although there will likely be complaints if the other three WH2 starting races don't also get a seventh
Meanwhile, Empire and Dwarves have four. And Norsca has two...
I think he'll be like Markus Wulfhart was for the Empire in TWW2 - a way of introducing the Empire to the main campaign.
So TWW3 won't have Skaven outside of whatever they call the third game's version of Mortal Empires, but introducing Thanquol will bring Skaven into the main game.
Gorgon's and Jabberslythes in the new trailer for The Silence and the Fury.
Lizardmen also got a winged serpent of some sort (only mentioned in the fluff of WHFB, if memory serves) and Troglodon. MIght be more, but I'm at work and can only briefly watch it.
edit: Was any of that stuff in the reveal trailer or patch notes? Sorry if none of the above is news, first I clearly saw any of it.
Coatl, special Chameleon shock infantry (with pre-charge explosive darts), feral Trogladons and Skin Oracles riding Trogladons.
Beastmen got Doombulls, Wargors, Tuskgor Chariots, Jabberslythes and Ghorgons (finally!).
Ogre Mercs are coming (they put out a teaser showing them from the belly down, standing amongst legions of Ungors), and the FLC Legendary Lord is a frickin' Dwarf!!!
There will be two major parts of the free patch that lands with the DLC – updates for the Beastmen… and smaller but still significant changes to one more faction you’ll find out about tomorrow.
The Beastmen update will keep their destructive, horde nature but allow them to temporarily settle down in a region around a herdstone. This forms the central theme of Taurox’s campaign to appease Chaos, but all Beastmen factions will be able to interact with them. Once the land around a herdstone has been razed and harvested for all the slaughter it can offer, the Beastmen will move on, leaving true destruction in their wake.
The updates to 'one more faction' are likely dwarfs, given that they mention them getting 'big upgrades' just prior to that paragraph.
Other possibles could be Thorek Ironbrow or Alrik Ranulfsson.
Though out of all of the possibilities I'd put Alrik as the least likely, as he is probably the least known due to only appearing as a special character in the first 6th edition dwarf army book. He is the OG Shieldbearer lord though.
It's said that the pre-order race for a new game gets their budget from the marketing department, which can lead to a smaller and incomplete roster with limited playability (READ: Warriors of Chaos and Norsca).
Maybe, given that this new Lord Pack doesn't add all that many new units, they're using part of that DLC's budget to start work on the Ogres, meaning that the very basic Ogres don't have to come out of the pre-order race's budget. Sharing the load, so to speak.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Maybe, given that this new Lord Pack doesn't add all that many new units, they're using part of that DLC's budget to start work on the Ogres, meaning that the very basic Ogres don't have to come out of the pre-order race's budget. Sharing the load, so to speak.
Quoting myself here as I might be right.
The Ogre Mercenaries have been revealed, and it's not units of Ogres. It's 5 different units.
I for my part am looknig forward to the Beastmen rework the most. Horde style factions always did kinda suck in TW. And i hope that this way we will see finally a decent groundwork for them.
Also working beastmen not just pushover annoyances. Especially of concern are the finances in their regard...
A new Dwarf Legendary Lord? I wonder who it will be. I mean as far as named Heroes go who in the Lore?
I mean I'd think it be Thorek Ironbrow but I imagine if he is going to be added he'd be in Warhammer 3. Could be Bugman? Or they could actually make Alrik Ranulfsson a Legendary Lord.
Only other one i can think of is making an Engineer Lord and use Burlok Damminson
Lorewise Bugman would probably be best fit by a special hero than a lord, with a unique skill chain that buffs rangers in battle and with an ability to summon a unit of Bugman's Rangers.
Or have him as a wandering horde-esque campaign if he was a lord.
It's Thorek Ironbrow. And lots of updates to Dwarfs as well - big updates to Engineers and Runesmiths. New Grudge system (unique for each LL). An entire new Rune crafting system. All the LLs got updates as well. Reorganised buildings as well.
Lots of runes that Runesmiths can cast (and even overcharge) during battles for various effects.
Doesn't use Winds of Magic, but has individual and global cool-downs, so a particular Rune may have a cool down, and there's an overall cool down before you can use any others that aren't on cool down as well.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Lots of runes that Runesmiths can cast (and even overcharge) during battles for various effects.
Doesn't use Winds of Magic, but has individual and global cool-downs, so a particular Rune may have a cool down, and there's an overall cool down before you can use any others that aren't on cool down as well.
Excellent. Having Thorek without actual casting of runic magic would have just been wrong! Bring on the Rune of Doom!
I mean if it is Thorek cool. I mostly thought they would leave him for Warhammer 3 and whatever the Mortal Empire campaign for that will be. Sorta like how we haven't had a Grand Master Legendary Lord yet for the Empire. Been waiting for The Rieksmarshal to show up.
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: I mean if it is Thorek cool. I mostly thought they would leave him for Warhammer 3 and whatever the Mortal Empire campaign for that will be.
The timing of this Dwarf update is likely due to the impending release of TWWH3. The immortal empires map expansion will start right on the edge of Dwarves territory. And it's likely that there will be Dwarves settlements scattered around the map in the mountain ranges in TWWH3. Pushing the Dwarf update now allows them to get the bugs worked out, and test the mechanics properly before the third game arrives.
Makes sense and I'm cool with it coming early honestly. I was planning on playing a Dwarf campaign for my next go through anyway once I finish this Rakarth one I'm on.
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: Makes sense and I'm cool with it coming early honestly. I was planning on playing a Dwarf campaign for my next go through anyway once I finish this Rakarth one I'm on.
I'm going to be a bit of a wet blanket and say I don't really like the idea of Ogre Mercs.
Working within the strengths and weaknesses of an army is half the point of Warhammer where the different factions are so diverse. Having Mercs that can be taken by any faction to patch weaknesses, meh, I'd rather they just saved them up and released them as their own faction.
One good thing though, the auto resolve is now no longer a guess. It actually tells you what the outcome will be. I'll admit, I used to quicksave before an autoresolve then reload it to fight manually if the outcome sucked, now it'll just tell you whether or not you the broad outcome of an autoresolve.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I'm going to be a bit of a wet blanket and say I don't really like the idea of Ogre Mercs.
Working within the strengths and weaknesses of an army is half the point of Warhammer where the different factions are so diverse. Having Mercs that can be taken by any faction to patch weaknesses, meh, I'd rather they just saved them up and released them as their own faction.
One good thing though, the auto resolve is now no longer a guess. It actually tells you what the outcome will be. I'll admit, I used to quicksave before an autoresolve then reload it to fight manually if the outcome sucked, now it'll just tell you whether or not you the broad outcome of an autoresolve.
But it's still kinda silly in the way it kills things.
"Your 15 chaff archer units will be totally fine. Your unique monster that you started with and can't recruit for at least another 30 turns? Oh that's dead!"
H.B.M.C. wrote: But it's still kinda silly in the way it kills things.
"Your 15 chaff archer units will be totally fine. Your unique monster that you started with and can't recruit for at least another 30 turns? Oh that's dead!"
Well now you have the choice - auto and loose it - fight and try not to!
Thork's model is a bit... odd. Not surprised they went with shieldbearers again, but the red lights on the front of his anvil look like a terrible computer console from a bad 80s sci-fi film.
Interestingly, he doesn't actually start on it, though.
His banner/symbol is really nice.
As far as the 'dwarf rework' goes... they've added more stuff to the Forge. And a high number of grudges can spawn slayer units that you can recruit from the RoR pool rather than needing buildings (though you can also do that).
The new Forge bit is runes, all dwarf characters can equip 3 and they effectively replace the caster item slot. Thorek also has his own stuff that he can 'reforge' for his quest.
Runesmith runes are now more like magic (though a cooldown, rather than winds of magic)
For the sake of disambiguation, Runes really need explaining.
Runesmiths have castable Runes.
There are still unit-equipable Runes that function like banners
And now there are character-equipable Runes that add stat bonuses. Unlike tabletop where they're alternatives to magic weapons, armor, etc, these are in addition, which makes dwarf characters even nastier.
Post battle option for dwarfs is now 'drink to victory' which gives a province buff (growth/order/income).
Legend of Total War posted a video using an Ogre "doomstack", gives some indication of how they might play. I guess the conclusion is they are okay but not exceptional, but we'll see down the track when the actual OK faction is released what they have.
Voss wrote: Thork's model is a bit... odd. Not surprised they went with shieldbearers again, but the red lights on the front of his anvil look like a terrible computer console from a bad 80s sci-fi film.
Interestingly, he doesn't actually start on it, though.
.
Most legendary Lords have to get their signature artefacts during their campaign - eg Vlad has to get his ring and sword back etc.
Voss wrote: Thork's model is a bit... odd. Not surprised they went with shieldbearers again, but the red lights on the front of his anvil look like a terrible computer console from a bad 80s sci-fi film.
Interestingly, he doesn't actually start on it, though.
.
Most legendary Lords have to get their signature artefacts during their campaign - eg Vlad has to get his ring and sword back etc.
Well, he has to go get his hammer (oddly a lot of the FLC recently either start with an artifact or get it for free pretty quickly- ie, fewer or no quest battles). Is just the other dwarf LL with carriers starts with them. There isn't a foot option.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Legend of Total War posted a video using an Ogre "doomstack", gives some indication of how they might play. I guess the conclusion is they are okay but not exceptional, but we'll see down the track when the actual OK faction is released what they have.
No units, outside of some ranged or artillery, get busted without appropriate unique, red line, blue line, or LL faction effect buffs.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Legend of Total War posted a video using an Ogre "doomstack", gives some indication of how they might play. I guess the conclusion is they are okay but not exceptional, but we'll see down the track when the actual OK faction is released what they have.
No units, outside of some ranged or artillery, get busted without appropriate unique, red line, blue line, or LL faction effect buffs.
Some doomstacks don't really rely on Lord buffs to work well, especially ones that revolve around monsters. The Stegadon doomstack for example is pretty capable all on its lonesome, adding a life Slann for healing is good but even without it, it's a very competent doomstack.
So I was mildly concerned the Ogres would be a bit OTT for a merc unit in some factions, but yeah, I kinda forgot that in general in TWW2 the Monstrous Infantry tend to be a bit underwhelming.
I don't really play doomstacks***, but some doomstacks offer insight into balance (whilst of course others are just aberrations brought about by stacking certain units with certain buffs).
***Except when I'm playing Wood Elves because late game there isn't a lot of options to make a balanced army that won't just get wiped out.
Though there is some debate on the definition of "doomstack", I think it's just maxing out your armies in the best way, that might be monster spam in one army, buff stacking in another army, but in another army (like Dwarfs) it might still be a "balanced" army that just makes use of the best units.
There seems to be soom debate about them and what exactly makes a Doom stack - hwoever people also seem to have a lot of fun making up stacks of say 19 mammoths and seeing what they can do - which is cool.
Nearest I have come is completing the Imrik campaign and after getting fighting to get all his Dragons, uniting them in one army for the final Vortex battle - otherwise I tend to restrict myself in armies - but only because I sort of roleplay it in campaign
The only thing I don't really get the is idea of setting the game to the hardest setting (I play normal-normal) but then using stacks of Monsters (or whatever) to steamroller the AI? Doesn't that kinda defeat the object of the harder setting?
Except when I'm playing Wood Elves because late game there isn't a lot of options to make a balanced army that won't just get wiped out.
Only played as Drycha and really enjoyed having a wierd and wonderful array of Beasts, Malevolent Dryads and Trees but no Elves (well apart from the mindcontrolled waystalker I had at the beginning) - although i think I had one ghost unit in the final battle.
I mean Doomstacks exist in a space no different then Power gaming lists on the tabletop. In the case of Legend he exclusively plays on Legendary difficulty. The A.I. cheats on legendary so in order to win you gotta cheat right back. I wouldn't call it broken when CA's idea of game balance is "lets have the AI cheat" instead of making a smarter AI.
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: I mean Doomstacks exist in a space no different then Power gaming lists on the tabletop. In the case of Legend he exclusively plays on Legendary difficulty. The A.I. cheats on legendary so in order to win you gotta cheat right back. I wouldn't call it broken when CA's idea of game balance is "lets have the AI cheat" instead of making a smarter AI.
So why play on Legendary? Is it for the achievements? Or is it fun - genually interested?
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: I mean Doomstacks exist in a space no different then Power gaming lists on the tabletop. In the case of Legend he exclusively plays on Legendary difficulty. The A.I. cheats on legendary so in order to win you gotta cheat right back. I wouldn't call it broken when CA's idea of game balance is "lets have the AI cheat" instead of making a smarter AI.
So why play on Legendary? Is it for the achievements? Or is it fun - genually interested?
Because its the highest challange.
The problem however is, that Total war has not inovated beyond statification of units, making legendary AI really problematic since you will lose with equivalent units against other units in melee f.e.
Hence why you see a Ranged type of meta.
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: I mean Doomstacks exist in a space no different then Power gaming lists on the tabletop. In the case of Legend he exclusively plays on Legendary difficulty. The A.I. cheats on legendary so in order to win you gotta cheat right back. I wouldn't call it broken when CA's idea of game balance is "lets have the AI cheat" instead of making a smarter AI.
So why play on Legendary? Is it for the achievements? Or is it fun - genually interested?
Because its the highest challange.
The problem however is, that Total war has not inovated beyond statification of units, making legendary AI really problematic since you will lose with equivalent units against other units in melee f.e.
Hence why you see a Ranged type of meta.
Is it a challenge if you can then Doomstack it? I tried the game on higher settings and found the AI "cheats" too much - so I don't play on them.
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: I mean Doomstacks exist in a space no different then Power gaming lists on the tabletop. In the case of Legend he exclusively plays on Legendary difficulty. The A.I. cheats on legendary so in order to win you gotta cheat right back. I wouldn't call it broken when CA's idea of game balance is "lets have the AI cheat" instead of making a smarter AI.
Yep. That trivial task of 'a smarter AI.'
I can't think of many (any?) strategy games that manage 'smarter AI' rather than passive battle buffs or resource buffs.
Some barely manage AI at all (Civ has become the flagship of that, where modders are routinely required to tighten up AI priorities to the point that they'll actually build certain unit types and act aggressively).
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: I mean Doomstacks exist in a space no different then Power gaming lists on the tabletop.
There's similarities, but also TWW2 lets you do baically whatever you want. Other than a few exceptions you can spam stuff (exceptions are things like Dread Saurians being linked to a building, largely limiting how many you're able to take).
The tabletop version of WHFB had points % limits on different types of units, and many units were 0-1 or similar to limit doomstacking.
Also the fact TWW2 doesn't have points limits, so once you have a stable economy you can take the 20 most powerful units rather than the 20 most logical / balanced / etc units.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, Troglodon teaser is up...
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: I mean Doomstacks exist in a space no different then Power gaming lists on the tabletop. In the case of Legend he exclusively plays on Legendary difficulty. The A.I. cheats on legendary so in order to win you gotta cheat right back. I wouldn't call it broken when CA's idea of game balance is "lets have the AI cheat" instead of making a smarter AI.
So why play on Legendary? Is it for the achievements? Or is it fun - genually interested?
Because its the highest challange.
The problem however is, that Total war has not inovated beyond statification of units, making legendary AI really problematic since you will lose with equivalent units against other units in melee f.e.
Hence why you see a Ranged type of meta.
Is it a challenge if you can then Doomstack it? I tried the game on higher settings and found the AI "cheats" too much - so I don't play on them.
Neither all factions can doomstack (cue khemri) nor is it indeed really a challange, bar the start its indeed actually just a case of surviving initially and then steamrolling later.
Also seconded on the too much cheating from the AI. Swordsmen with shield vs ungor spear herd should be clear cut in favour of your swordsman , except on legendary that isn't the case anymore, making any melee unit worthless.
If they can figure out in TWW3 how to make the AI smarter as difficulty level goes up instead of just cheating more, that'd be awesome.
I end up just playing on Normal battle (but higher difficulty campaign) because the AI's cheating screws up the balance of the game, it doesn't just get harder, it makes certain units obsolete (looking at you, melee infantry).
Melee infantry play no real role in TWW2 at the highest difficulty levels. You can send melee infantry into AI controlled ranged infantry and they'll have a hard time winning. This is why it's all about missile units, war machines and monsters.
Norsca is different though. Nothing they have is as good as Mammoths. You can build a balanced army of various unit types, but 19 Mammoth spam will always be better. I don't see this as a problem with Mammoths. I see it as a problem with everything else in their roster.
You can play Legendary difficulty with normal battle difficulty. The challenge in the battles is then that you can not pause, which for certain armies is extremely punishing.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: If they can figure out in TWW3 how to make the AI smarter as difficulty level goes up instead of just cheating more, that'd be awesome.
They seem to be doing the opposite in some ways. The new battle mode nerfs the crap out of enemies so they can do wave after wave after wave. Its basically cheating in the player's favor so it can fake 'epic' battles against trash daemons.
To be fair though, the AI has been tweaked over time. It does try to outflank more, though sometimes this produces odd results (I haven't fought a dwarf army for over a year that doesn't march to the left in open field battles and try to line up again. I have no idea what that's about). But they don't seem to charge straight in anymore regardless of the rock/paper/scissors of anti-large/anti-infantry/etc.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Melee infantry play no real role in TWW2 at the highest difficulty levels. You can send melee infantry into AI controlled ranged infantry and they'll have a hard time winning. This is why it's all about missile units, war machines and monsters.
Norsca is different though. Nothing they have is as good as Mammoths. You can build a balanced army of various unit types, but 19 Mammoth spam will always be better. I don't see this as a problem with Mammoths. I see it as a problem with everything else in their roster.
Yeah, it's because on higher difficulties the AI gets melee buffs, so crap AI melee units will beat good player controlled melee units.
From memory there's no such ranged buffs / debuffs so that becomes the logical option (along with ranged units having more options for cheesing the AI's stupidity, like blobbing AI units up onto characters to be shot in the back or magicked to death).
trexmeyer wrote: You can play Legendary difficulty with normal battle difficulty. The challenge in the battles is then that you can not pause, which for certain armies is extremely punishing.
Ah right did not know that - I only pause at the start of Sieges as that seems fair given that the Ai starts shooting from the start
H.B.M.C. wrote: Melee infantry play no real role in TWW2 at the highest difficulty levels. You can send melee infantry into AI controlled ranged infantry and they'll have a hard time winning. This is why it's all about missile units, war machines and monsters.
Norsca is different though. Nothing they have is as good as Mammoths. You can build a balanced army of various unit types, but 19 Mammoth spam will always be better. I don't see this as a problem with Mammoths. I see it as a problem with everything else in their roster.
Yeah, it's because on higher difficulties the AI gets melee buffs, so crap AI melee units will beat good player controlled melee units.
From memory there's no such ranged buffs / debuffs so that becomes the logical option (along with ranged units having more options for cheesing the AI's stupidity, like blobbing AI units up onto characters to be shot in the back or magicked to death).
this, ranged output is unafected and since you have an initiative advantage due to range its the prefered way to play.
Except for the blobbing.
the blobbing goes back to their engine change with Empire total war (similar phenomenon of bobbing is veryfable when you charge an Artillery position with 2 or 3 regiments of cav). Its an issue that has plagued melee centric total wars since then and lead to the infamous kill moves type 1 vs 1 fighting.
Recent total wars did compound that issue however with the implementation of hero singular entity units which lead to the blobbing up surounding said unit. The fact that you can make heroes really durable on top of that doesn't help either and worsens the situation actively.
Recent total wars did compound that issue however with the implementation of hero singular entity units which lead to the blobbing up surounding said unit. The fact that you can make heroes really durable on top of that doesn't help either and worsens the situation actively.
Definitely. Enemies blobbing up around a hero or lord are perfect targets for magic or artillery, which are already incredibly killy in Warhammer Total War.
It's the reason Gor-Rok is so easy to start. He's a very tanky lord and he starts with Kroak who has insanely powerful AoE spells (which also don't even hurt friendly units). They basically single handedly win you most of your early battles (and sieges at every point in the campaign), with Kroak having a bad day where he has less than 500 kills on his own and it isn't uncommon for him to hit kills in the thousands as you're going up against skaven.
Recent total wars did compound that issue however with the implementation of hero singular entity units which lead to the blobbing up surounding said unit. The fact that you can make heroes really durable on top of that doesn't help either and worsens the situation actively.
Definitely. Enemies blobbing up around a hero or lord are perfect targets for magic or artillery, which are already incredibly killy in Warhammer Total War.
It's the reason Gor-Rok is so easy to start. He's a very tanky lord and he starts with Kroak who has insanely powerful AoE spells (which also don't even hurt friendly units).
Ding ding ding, same for Kholek, and even trhogg to a degree. (probably even better compounded with grom and river troll hags.)
Another issue is imo, with the statification (cue Health being asigned multiple to an entitiy of a unit) and singular fight animation engine, formations like a spear wall and a shield wall, a wedge etc, don't really work and istead only really provide a stat boost. Cue Attila f.e. where the testudo only increases shield block chance by i believe 300%. Similarly units like the empire State army suffer from not being able to use formations in an intuitive manner, which makes spearmen probably one of the most obsolete unit types in the game instead of a mainstay, and enforces a halberd meta in normal because why bother with zwei and spearmen with shields when the halbadier does anything better whilest being faster to recruit. Don't get me wrong, as a swiss i enjoy a good halberd blob, but not to the exclusion of breakthrough units like zweihänder and swordsmen or purely defensive units like pikemen / spearmen. It would also add a layer back to the distinction of factions, orks are cheaper singular better fighters because they are stronger and tougher but they have an hard time dislodging a spear wall frontally. Vice versa chaos warrior shieldwalls should be nigh unbreakable due to their discipline but the cost should be higher.
Right now though, thanks to the engine and lack of formations you'll never have a reason to not recruit an elite unit beyond cost efficiency (halberd state troop vs zwei), theres no place for empire knights in an empire army really either. Shock cav and melee cav only distinction is in regards to melee defence making shock cav also rather obsolete since they don't break formations and anyways end up blobbing up around their target. In essence the engine since ETW designed around shooting units and ranged combat cripples melee or heavily melee centric games heavily and makes by virtue of that whole unit types more or less ignorable if not outright obsolete.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Melee infantry play no real role in TWW2 at the highest difficulty levels. You can send melee infantry into AI controlled ranged infantry and they'll have a hard time winning. This is why it's all about missile units, war machines and monsters.
Norsca is different though. Nothing they have is as good as Mammoths. You can build a balanced army of various unit types, but 19 Mammoth spam will always be better. I don't see this as a problem with Mammoths. I see it as a problem with everything else in their roster.
Yeah, it's because on higher difficulties the AI gets melee buffs, so crap AI melee units will beat good player controlled melee units.
From memory there's no such ranged buffs / debuffs so that becomes the logical option (along with ranged units having more options for cheesing the AI's stupidity, like blobbing AI units up onto characters to be shot in the back or magicked to death).
Recent total wars did compound that issue however with the implementation of hero singular entity units which lead to the blobbing up surounding said unit. The fact that you can make heroes really durable on top of that doesn't help either and worsens the situation actively.
Be interesting to see if the new Wound mechanic changes Large single entities much - and if its rrelated to starting health or total proportion as in campaign quite often you will have damaged units in battles
Right now though, thanks to the engine and lack of formations you'll never have a reason to not recruit an elite unit beyond cost efficiency (halberd state troop vs zwei), theres no place for empire knights in an empire army really either. Shock cav and melee cav only distinction is in regards to melee defence making shock cav also rather obsolete since they don't break formations and anyways end up blobbing up around their target. In essence the engine since ETW designed around shooting units and ranged combat cripples melee or heavily melee centric games heavily and makes by virtue of that whole unit types more or less ignorable if not outright obsolete.
I think that Three Kingdoms did a pretty good job in making shock and melee cavalry feel different and function as you would expect. A unit of shock cavalry could absolutely melt units on the charge if they got the flank or rear. They'd basically plow through untis like the Rohirrim at the Battle of Pelennor Fields, rather than knock down the first two ranks and then just kind of stop like it does in Warhammer.
The Warhammer maps are also often too small to really get the most out of cavalry even if they were more effective, another instance where 3K is superior.
Right now though, thanks to the engine and lack of formations you'll never have a reason to not recruit an elite unit beyond cost efficiency (halberd state troop vs zwei), theres no place for empire knights in an empire army really either. Shock cav and melee cav only distinction is in regards to melee defence making shock cav also rather obsolete since they don't break formations and anyways end up blobbing up around their target. In essence the engine since ETW designed around shooting units and ranged combat cripples melee or heavily melee centric games heavily and makes by virtue of that whole unit types more or less ignorable if not outright obsolete.
I think that Three Kingdoms did a pretty good job in making shock and melee cavalry feel different and function as you would expect. A unit of shock cavalry could absolutely melt units on the charge if they got the flank or rear. They'd basically plow through untis like the Rohirrim at the Battle of Pelennor Fields, rather than knock down the first two ranks and then just kind of stop like it does in Warhammer.
The Warhammer maps are also often too small to really get the most out of cavalry even if they were more effective, another instance where 3K is superior.
Cav in 3 kingdom has the same issue though. The reason as to why it works is not because cav works as intended but rather the massive disparaty in stats and "weight" disparation, aka infantry being more or less weightless in 3k.
Oh, wow. That's a massive, massive change.
Some of the early stuff isn't explained well in the video,* but tossing out money and upkeep is huge (they work like tomb kings to some extent.
Its also a major step up in terms of looks of the UI. Its raising my expectations of warhammer 3.
Maybe too many currencies and interlocking steps, however.
*trivia note- the narrator for the video goes by 'Blondie.' CA hired him off of Paradox a year or two ago, he was part of the PR/streaming team, iirc.
Yeah, I watched the start of a livestream by Legend where he talked about the new mechanics and it looks like good changes, hopefully they balance out well to produce a fun campaign.
It's good to see CA are gradually moving away from the simplistic mechanics used earlier in the Warhammer series, first with the Wood Elf update and now with the Beastmen.
I do hope (but not expecting) the Lizardmen get a change to their geomantic web system, as it's pretty boring and not engaging at the moment.
They've got TWW3 to think about, and the first race getting a rework with that game is said to be Norsca.
I moreso mean in the DLC, I don't think we've heard all of what Lizardmen are getting yet? Or have we? I haven't been following super closely. It seems like the Youtuber crowd has only been given access to the Beastmen portion so far.
Review of new Beastmen and Dwarfs with a bit of humour
I moreso mean in the DLC, I don't think we've heard all of what Lizardmen are getting yet? Or have we? I
And for the Lizardmen:
Skink Oracle (Hero) – a spellcaster with access to a unique selection of spells from various lores.
Chameleon Stalkers (Infantry) – ambush units with an explosive dart first-strike ability.
Coatl (Flying Monster) – highly intelligent, very scary, and able to hide their allies and bring forth lightning with their magic.
Troglodon (Monster) – poison-dealing monsters that can also shoot their venomous spit, which is effective against larger targets.
There are also a selection of new Regiments of Renown coming to both factions.
I moreso mean in the DLC, I don't think we've heard all of what Lizardmen are getting yet? Or have we? I
And for the Lizardmen:
Skink Oracle (Hero) – a spellcaster with access to a unique selection of spells from various lores.
Chameleon Stalkers (Infantry) – ambush units with an explosive dart first-strike ability.
Coatl (Flying Monster) – highly intelligent, very scary, and able to hide their allies and bring forth lightning with their magic.
Troglodon (Monster) – poison-dealing monsters that can also shoot their venomous spit, which is effective against larger targets.
There are also a selection of new Regiments of Renown coming to both factions.
I mean in terms of mechanics rather than units. Like, how is Oxyotl's campaign going to work and does it bring any changes to how the Lizardmen as a whole function. I've only seen trailers for the Beastmen side so far.
Grom the Paunch for example brought with him the whole cooking thing, which really changes how the Orcs and Goblins play if you choose him.
I'm not expecting a complete overhaul like the Beastmen obviously, they desperately needed it, but I wouldn't be surprised if they slip some goodies into the Lizardmen also. There were a lot of complaints with Tehenhuin that he didn't bring enough of an update.
I'm going to play this game series forever. Even now, there are still factions I haven't touched.
Every DLC release I get hyped for it, but also equally hyped for my usual go-to campaigns. Like "How will this change a Skarsnik playthrough?" "I bet this will make an Empire campaign more challenging!" And on it goes.
I think the only Tomb Kings campaign I've done is Arkhan, for instance.
Though with this next DLC, I'm a Beastmen fanboy, so I'm going to wear it out.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I mean in terms of mechanics rather than units. Like, how is Oxyotl's campaign going to work and does it bring any changes to how the Lizardmen as a whole function. I've only seen trailers for the Beastmen side so far.
nels1031 wrote: I'm going to play this game series forever. Even now, there are still factions I haven't touched.
Every DLC release I get hyped for it, but also equally hyped for my usual go-to campaigns. Like "How will this change a Skarsnik playthrough?" "I bet this will make an Empire campaign more challenging!" And on it goes.
I think the only Tomb Kings campaign I've done is Arkhan, for instance.
Though with this next DLC, I'm a Beastmen fanboy, so I'm going to wear it out.
I easily have more hours in TW2 than anything other than MMOs and maybe Overwatch. The game is virtually endless. There are so many permutations. Playing literally every single LL would be a full time job if you wanted to do it in under a year.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I mean in terms of mechanics rather than units. Like, how is Oxyotl's campaign going to work and does it bring any changes to how the Lizardmen as a whole function. I've only seen trailers for the Beastmen side so far.
Oxyotl doesn't change how the Lizardmen function.
Seems like he has a few unique mechanics that he brings to the table with the extra quests and whatnot. Though nothing as significant as what the likes of Grom brings.
nels1031 wrote: I'm going to play this game series forever. Even now, there are still factions I haven't touched.
Every DLC release I get hyped for it, but also equally hyped for my usual go-to campaigns. Like "How will this change a Skarsnik playthrough?" "I bet this will make an Empire campaign more challenging!" And on it goes.
I think the only Tomb Kings campaign I've done is Arkhan, for instance.
Though with this next DLC, I'm a Beastmen fanboy, so I'm going to wear it out.
I easily have more hours in TW2 than anything other than MMOs and maybe Overwatch. The game is virtually endless. There are so many permutations. Playing literally every single LL would be a full time job if you wanted to do it in under a year.
I seem to recall LegendofTotalWar passing 10,000 hours recently, or something like that, I remember it was basically 8 hours a day since the game came out, haha.
You don't really have to play every single LL though, you can confederate if you want to control them, after which the only reason to play different LLs is start position, faction mechanics or special objectives.
Seems like he has a few unique mechanics that he brings to the table with the extra quests and whatnot. Though nothing as significant as what the likes of Grom brings.
I really like that Drycha has such a unique army list
I still haven't played as Drycha beyond the first few turns. I like Waywatchers and archers in general too much so always end up going for the Sisters.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I still haven't played as Drycha beyond the first few turns. I like Waywatchers and archers in general too much so always end up going for the Sisters.
I finished her campaign and only used a couple of elf units beyond garrisons - good fun and very different to standard Wood Elf army.
Okay sooo Taurox's momentum ability is kind of ridiculous. Apparently in Legends stream yesterday Turn 11 started about 2 hours into the game and did not end until 3 hours later. During which he won 27 consecutive battles (not including autoresolved ones) got Taurox to level 30, killed Oxyotl, burned Naggrond to the ground and invaded Ulthuan.
Oh man I hope they don't nerf him before release that sounds fun.
Probably the most interesting aspect of the Beastmen is once the ritual is popped at the Herdstone, all settlements in the Bloodground are locked and can't be colonized, until the herdstone is destroyed (and it gets a pretty decent garrison).
That's a big change to the dynamic on the campaign map, and at least slows down expansion and certain factions going for full sprawl.
Its something need to do for Chaos Warriors once they get around to them in TW3. Or maybe its something the various chaos god armies will do from the start...
Which makes me wonder about the fate of Archaeon & company. Sigvald could easily be bumped over to Slaanesh, but Chaos Warriors are really feeling like abandonware at this point.
I kind of like his style, tries to have more fun with it compared to Legend who just plays the highest difficulties then cheeses it all the time (which is fun in its own way). Janet plays more like how I myself would play.
But yeah, it looks like Oxyotl will be a fun campaign, racing around the world doing missions, building Sanctums and whatnot. His army doesn't trespass, but with the missions I think you'll pretty quickly be at war with everyone.
Curious to see how the new Chameleon Stalkers function in the game, looks like the idea is you charge in taking a shot as you do, then once the charge bonus wears off just retreat out and back in again. Seems like they're a good early game unit but the "early game" is usually pretty short, are they just going to be a waste of space once after the first few turns and they start encountering better armoured foes?
H.B.M.C. wrote: I got to the end of Turn 11 in Legend's Taurox stream. Over two hours for one turn, and something like 17 battles fought (or 27?).
Utterly insane. He had every rampage bonus. At one point he backed up his save in case selecting the same buff twice crashed the game.
Just wait, it gets crazier.I caught the end of it yesterday quite by accident. He beats the campaign by turn 18. Infact Turn 17 takes a few more hours and he wins 50 battles. The momentum mechanic is nuts.
Its something need to do for Chaos Warriors once they get around to them in TW3.
Could also fix the problem that the other factions have with Chaos Warriors in the first game - namely when the Chaos Warriors do their thing on razed settlements that you can't settle, causing a constant stream of corruption that you can't do anything about.
A SHOUT-OUT TO THE MODDERS
The Silence and the Fury DLC and accompanying content tackles a lot of areas that have been long requested for a do-over by our community. So a big shout-out to to the fantastic modding community, who’ve provided some awesome options for players in the meantime. In particular:
A SHOUT-OUT TO THE MODDERS
The Silence and the Fury DLC and accompanying content tackles a lot of areas that have been long requested for a do-over by our community. So a big shout-out to to the fantastic modding community, who’ve provided some awesome options for players in the meantime. In particular:
What can be done is modify unit stats, appearances, costs, etc. Some scripting can be modified...you could probably make it so the Chaos Invasion spawns continuously over several turns for example.
The most cool thing to come out recently for modding was a top notch modeling editor that lets you massively tweak ingame models.
Overread wrote: 2 1/2 hours still to go on my download - one day fibre broadband super speed net will be mine. Until that day I'm glad I've at least got broadband!
Luxury - 17hrs remaining for me for just the base patch.....
I started with Malagor, since Taurox seemed absurdly easy to just go nuts with.
Malagor is surprisingly crazy in his own right. He can just spam flock of doom, and it wrecks his starting opponents (savage orcs, which seems ironic) (78000 damage in a single battle).
Its definitely worth waiting until you have enough 25+ marks to get level 2 before popping your first ritual. Its a major jump in the power level of units you can recruit. And gets you an additional army.
Dread and favor seem very limited at the moment. I've improved herdstones twice, just so I have a decent recruitment pool, but getting the things I want is slow going, as is raising unit caps.
Blood grounds don't always make much sense. Myrmidans is not part of the bloodground for its associated town for some reason, nor is the little dwarf/goblin hold on the south side of the mountain. But the skaven hold next to athel loren is. I think some of it is set up to make you split attention between multiple factions, both to increase people you're fighting, but also so you can't hyper focus on wiping a faction out and get all the benefits.
Its also very easy to get stuck on their research tree. 5 ambush battles is surprisingly difficult for a faction that's theoretically built around ambushing. But there's so much focus for going after cities, and the AI really likes to hug towns these days.
There are some interesting tweaks to the battle AI. Numas spread its archers and units out throughout the city, rather than deploying bunched up on the wals. It didn't _help_, but it wasn't a straight forward punch over the walls and beeline to the city center like it used to be.
I've been playing some Oxyotl. The autoresolve predictions are seriously out of whack, it really does not value his new chameleon skinks enough.
It was predicting pyrrhic victories for battles where I lost 18 skinks/saurus in total. Dividing the enemy armies by luring them off chasing your chameleon skirmishers then picking them off with the stalkers is very effective, though takes some juggling to keep on top of.
And sieges are a cake walk when you have lots of stalking units as you can lure the enemy forces to one side of the wall with your visible ones while you hop over it with all your invisible skinks somewhere else and capture the centre then just hold it and wait for the timer to run down. Same method as I used with Snikch.
I really suck at micro so my Oxyotl battles aren't going as well as the ones I've seen people playing on youtube, lol. I just lose track of the skirmish units and they end up in combat.
I'm curious to see if Skinks can remain viable into the late game, and if so is it only in Oxyotl's army or can they still be viable in other armies.
Also the locations of Oxyotl's missions seem to be random, on Janet's videos they were sending him to interesting places where things were hapening, mine keep sending me to the middle of nowhere.
Voss wrote: Malagor is surprisingly crazy in his own right. He can just spam flock of doom, and it wrecks his starting opponents (savage orcs, which seems ironic) (78000 damage in a single battle).
Malagor is evil cow Superman. He can solo multiple armies without taking a scratch.
Taurox is the most busted thing I've played on the campaign map so far. There are many lords much better in battle, but his momentum outpaces everything so hard it's just silly.
Even just autoresolving (I fought like one siege battle) and not minmaxing momentum use, I tore through the entire NE corner of the map in like 40 turns...and that's horrifically slow compared to what he can do. Traitor-Kin does an obscene amount of damage for a 7 Winds spell.
Yeah everything I've seen with Malagor is nuts. He's easily the best lord in the game now. Or at least tied for best with Alarielle. Being a single entity small target that can fly and use magic is nuts.
After Legend beat the Taurox campaign in 18 turns....yeah broken as all hell. Cant wait to give them both a go! Once I finish my Dwarf Campaign that is.
SkavenLord wrote: Been seeing posts on Malagor and Taurox. Any news on the other two lords? Would be curious to see whether or not they are still viable options.
Kazrak is a fighty lord who's ok, but suffers like most strictly melee lords in that he lacks magic, which is a source of major damage (and he can't steamroll armies like Taurox). There's just nothing he does that Malagor doesn't do 10x better.
Spawnyface (the name escapes me) is fine if you like lots of Spawn.
SkavenLord wrote: Been seeing posts on Malagor and Taurox. Any news on the other two lords? Would be curious to see whether or not they are still viable options.
Morghur is a pretty decent beaststick, and his damage aura is kinda crazy (it even works on units above him while bashing on a gate) and does a lot of passive damage. And he can randomly generate spawn units in battle.
Thing is, Malagor can get the damage aura, too (but I don't think its quite as powerful). And gets to be a flying terror bomb that can drop cygors anywhere and has an ability to remove immune to psychology. And just spam flock of doom all day. Beasts have an absurd amount of Winds of Magic buffs.
Khazrak I need to check. He seems better but has a problem in that rather than specializing, he buffs a bunch of different unit types a little, and doesn't really offer anything that stands out.
I'm playing a slow campaign of Khazrak, not a steamroll, but not exactly easy either. Only a few of my mods are active that increase difficulty (come on updates!). I feel like with Khaz that I get an ambush result when not raiding about 9/10 times. I saw how busted Taurox was and would rather wait for him to get hotfixed before I invest time into him.
I spent like 25 turns raiding Estalia and wiping out Clan Skryre. Didn't mess with the Herdstone mechanics until I got to Massif Orcal and went to war against all of Bretonnia. Been farming them for Dread and such and just completed the ritual to lock about 1/4th of Bretonnia into ruins unless they attack my Tier 4 herdstone.
I just recruited Malagor and he was a spellcasting/summoning beast. Love that he actually flies now. I think the nerf bat is coming for him though.
I think I'll try a Morghor campaign next, and turn the entirety of Norsca into his Bloodgrounds.
Loving this update, I can tell that they put some serious TLC into this. Only thing that bothers me is that it seems (for me and how I play) that it takes awhile to get serious amounts of Gors. I don't think I've bothered unlocking any Ungors unit caps, as I'd rather save the points or upgrades on more stuff that has longevity.
My thoughts :
Just make Ungors of all varieties inifinitely recruitable, and change their spot in the upgrade menu with the Gors. Unless this patch seriously beefed up Gors, I see no reason that they have to be so limited. But it could be that I haven't been in a big hurry to unlock them.
Taurox is just..... All my prayers to the dark gods have been answered! He is an absolute powerhouse in mele, if you also add a Gorebull or two to his army and max out on Minotaurs and Bestigors and two Gorgons you will steamroll everyone and.
I had a few rough battles early on against Morati and the sisters of twilight but after the turn 15 I had a second army up, who shadowed Taurox and gained exp and such, from there I went on to burn down every dark elf city, murder all the Skaven, kick Alit Anar into orbit and invade Ultuan.
The hardest battle was against Tyrion and three other armies near the Phoenix gate, lost a fair amount of units but after the dragons fell it turned to a rout.
Good times indeed!
So CA replaced Rune of Wrath and Ruin with one that does damage (finally), but the damage is really mediocre.
Edit: Actually, I really dislike a lot of elements of their rune crafting. They limit so many runes to 1 or 3. What the hell? Why? Is a Rune that gives 20% HP that powerful?
Master Rune of Alaric the Mad kind of sucks. It just trades 75 Damage for 75 Armor Piercing.
I've been playing a new Dwarf campaign with Thorek and I am really enjoying it so far. The start position at the bottom of the ME map is good fun.
I am also playing with Mixu's various mods to add more LL's which means each army I am fielding specializes in different units which makes them all fun to play in battles.
Honestly the best change is making dwarf units available earlier, irondrakes at tier 3 makes the mid game an absolute blast!
Runes are still a little meh but so much better than before. I prefer the offensive magic over buffs but I feel like they could be very useful in the hands of a skilled player.
Commander Cain wrote: I've been playing a new Dwarf campaign with Thorek and I am really enjoying it so far. The start position at the bottom of the ME map is good fun.
I'm fighting with his ME campaign, to be honest. Partly because I'm now chasing Kroq-gar around as he runs up the coast. (He took umbrage to me defending myself from the corner toad), after I rolled right over the spider-gobbos, Queek, the Silver Host and Khalida.
The lack of mobility (compared to beasts, the movement range just seems low) and replenishment is really killing it for me.
Did CA beef up flock of doom? I remember it used to be such a worthless spell, but my Skink Oracle is racking up a ton of damage most battles, dropping flocks on the enemies that inevitably blob up around him. Even when I forget to drop his free comet (I suck at micro...) he still seems to get consistently big damage outputs.
Either that or his Troglodon mount is doing some serious work.
From what I've seen Flock of Doom does consistent damage, but doesn't kill stuff all that quickly.
Best lore for the Beastmen is Wild, as Traitor-Kin is like Flock of Doom, but racks up kills way quicker.
nels1031 wrote: I just recruited Malagor and he was a spellcasting/summoning beast. Love that he actually flies now. I think the nerf bat is coming for him though.
I mean why, though? It's a single-player game. If he's overpowered in campaign, then really who cares?
His use in multi-player would be far different, as things that are good in MP aren't necessarily good in campaign, and vice versa.
trexmeyer wrote: So CA replaced Rune of Wrath and Ruin with one that does damage (finally), but the damage is really mediocre.
Edit: Actually, I really dislike a lot of elements of their rune crafting. They limit so many runes to 1 or 3. What the hell? Why? Is a Rune that gives 20% HP that powerful?
Master Rune of Alaric the Mad kind of sucks. It just trades 75 Damage for 75 Armor Piercing.
I imagine we'll quickly see mods removing the restrictions.
I think I'll do that today, maybe up the damage on Wrath and Ruin after I look at it, and look over the Master Runes to see how they compare to TT. Master Rune of Alaric the Mad should ignore all armor saves...but I need to look at how armor works again.
With the way Dwarf ruins work It not doing a super amount of damage does make sense. I mean it doesn't rely on Winds of Magic and you can just cast it over and over.
H.B.M.C. wrote: From what I've seen Flock of Doom does consistent damage, but doesn't kill stuff all that quickly.
Yeah I seem to remember in the past FOD wasn't really useful past the early game, but I'm into the mid-game now and my Oracle seems to be dishing out a lot of damage each battle.
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: With the way Dwarf ruins work It not doing a super amount of damage does make sense. I mean it doesn't rely on Winds of Magic and you can just cast it over and over.
You can only cast the baseline version 9-10 times in a battle. It's on a 60s/90s CD. Not sure if it is a shared CD across all character, which would make it worse.
By comparison I think the longest CD on any spell is 30s. My bigger issue is that Traitor-Kin is a spammable 7 Winds Spell that I got 1k+ kills with and Wrath and Ruin barely tickles a single unit.
Edit: I think Rune crafting should trigger a 10 turn CD for basic Runes and 20 turns for Master Runes. That way you're not limited to 3/1, but you can't spam them out. Also, aren't you able to stack normal Runes in the TT?
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: With the way Dwarf ruins work It not doing a super amount of damage does make sense. I mean it doesn't rely on Winds of Magic and you can just cast it over and over.
You can only cast the baseline version 9-10 times in a battle. It's on a 60s/90s CD. Not sure if it is a shared CD across all character, which would make it worse.
By comparison I think the longest CD on any spell is 30s. My bigger issue is that Traitor-Kin is a spammable 7 Winds Spell that I got 1k+ kills with and Wrath and Ruin barely tickles a single unit.
Edit: I think Rune crafting should trigger a 10 turn CD for basic Runes and 20 turns for Master Runes. That way you're not limited to 3/1, but you can't spam them out. Also, aren't you able to stack normal Runes in the TT?
There were actually quite a few rules about Rune stacking in TT!
Spoiler:
1) No single item can have more than three runes. It is
virtually impossible to forge items able to bear the strain
of carrying so much power. Runesmiths call this the
Rule of Three.
2) Weapon runes can only be inscribed on weapons
(always hand weapons), armour runes can only be
inscribed on gromril armour, banner runes can only be
inscribed on standards, engineering runes can only be
inscribed on war machines, and talismanic runes can
only be inscribed on talismans (of which more later).
This is called the Rule of Form by Runesmiths.
3) No more than one item may carry the same
combination of runes. Y you could not have two runic
weapons both engraved with a Rune of Speed and a
Rune of Fire, for example, or more than one standard
bearing two Runes of Battle. This restriction also applies
to the use of single runes, so you could not have two
characters in your army wearing armour engraved
with only a single Rune of Iron, for example. Creating
runic items takes a great deal of effort, and Runesmiths
don’t like repeating themselves. N or do they copy other
Runesmiths’ work, except during their apprenticeship.
This is known among Runesmiths as the Rule of Pride.
4) No master rune may be used more than once
per army, and no more than one master rune can be
inscribed on an item. Master runes are so powerful that
they cannot be combined together on the same item or
used together on the same batdefield. For this reason,
Runesmiths describe these runes as Jealous Runes.
5) Apart from the master runes (which can only be
used once) other runes can be combined as you wish,
to produce varied or cumulative effects. For example,
you might inscribe a weapon with a Master Rune of
Swiftness (Always Strikes First special rule), the Rune of
Striking (+ 1 Weapon skill) and the Rune of Fury (+ 1
Attack). With the exception of master runes, most runes
can be used in multiples, although whether their effects
are simply added together or combine into a new power
will be stated within the rune’s rules. To reflect this,
the points costs for multiples of the same rune do not
necessarily increase in a uniform manner. For example,
a weapon engraved with one Rune of Cleaving costs 10
points, a weapon with two Runes of Cleaving costs 35
points, whereas a weapon engraved with three Runes of
Cleaving costs 65 points.
Overread wrote: 2 1/2 hours still to go on my download - one day fibre broadband super speed net will be mine. Until that day I'm glad I've at least got broadband!
Luxury - 17hrs remaining for me for just the base patch.....
Well.. I feel bad now with raging at a 4hr download...
Automatically Appended Next Post: So Ive been mesing around with taurox.
Instead of the usual nurgle stink nonsense I want to try the 10% weapon strenght for minotauts traits.
But ive hit a snag, has anyone figured out a way to rush/ spam minotaurs? The ruin ritual mehcanic doesnt seem very conducive to minotaurs.
All in all I really like the beastment re-work. Night and day to the previous state of affairs
Overread wrote: 2 1/2 hours still to go on my download - one day fibre broadband super speed net will be mine. Until that day I'm glad I've at least got broadband!
Luxury - 17hrs remaining for me for just the base patch.....
Well.. I feel bad now with raging at a 4hr download...
Automatically Appended Next Post: So Ive been mesing around with taurox.
Instead of the usual nurgle stink nonsense I want to try the 10% weapon strenght for minotauts traits.
But ive hit a snag, has anyone figured out a way to rush/ spam minotaurs? The ruin ritual mehcanic doesnt seem very conducive to minotaurs.
All in all I really like the beastment re-work. Night and day to the previous state of affairs
Well the moon event if you are lucky, horde growth is a must also.
I guess if you rampage enough there's the option to lower the dread cost there. Multiple hordes, that solely exist to farm dread and provide additional building slot capacity?
Additionally, the hero variant might aswell help.
I'm kind of not liking the way Ogres are just randomly in half the armies I come up against now. They aren't hard to kill or anything, they just seem way to prevalent in the AI armies.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I'm kind of not liking the way Ogres are just randomly in half the armies I come up against now. They aren't hard to kill or anything, they just seem way to prevalent in the AI armies.
Just starting a Taurox Campaign - made a few mistakes but happily going along now...at turn 32. Found a couple of Ogre camps but not fought any emeny armies so far who have recruited them.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I'm kind of not liking the way Ogres are just randomly in half the armies I come up against now. They aren't hard to kill or anything, they just seem way to prevalent in the AI armies.
Just starting a Taurox Campaign - made a few mistakes but happily going along now...at turn 32. Found a couple of Ogre camps but not fought any emeny armies so far who have recruited them.
I think it was roughly in the 40's I started encountering them. Maybe I just got unlucky but around half of the AI armies I've fought against recently have Ogres in them.
Restarted Taurox as I misunderstood some mechanisms and now its brutally effective....although took me some time to realise I had to raise a herdstone in Nagarond and the other two settlements to tick the box not just raise them.
So how long has Silver Pinnacle and other Dwarf/Orc holds been there on the north east side of the Worlds Edge Mountains? Around where the Chaos invasions spawn in?
Went up there with Kazhrak to put Archaon and Co. in their place and saw that you can go down that route. Pre-patch I had been just fooling around with an Empire campaign and a Skarsnik campaign with some Wood Elves sprinkled in and never really bothered going that far northeast. Pleasantly surprised to see Silver Pinnacle. Might have to explore that area with a Vampire Count campaign and see if it gives any bonuses, since its Neferata's lair.
nels1031 wrote: So how long has Silver Pinnacle and other Dwarf/Orc holds been there on the north east side of the Worlds Edge Mountains? Around where the Chaos invasions spawn in?
Went up there with Kazhrak to put Archaon and Co. in their place and saw that you can go down that route. Pre-patch I had been just fooling around with an Empire campaign and a Skarsnik campaign with some Wood Elves sprinkled in and never really bothered going that far northeast. Pleasantly surprised to see Silver Pinnacle. Might have to explore that area with a Vampire Count campaign and see if it gives any bonuses, since its Neferata's lair.
I think since TW2 - I noticed it appeared when I upgrade from TW1 to 2. Annoyingly its always owned by her traitoreous creation Khaled al Muntasir rather than say Naaima, Rahsa or even Imentet :(
Its currently a very weak and passive sub faction but hopefully this is a placeholder until TW3 and we get Neferata - hoping for Coven Thrones, Mortal Swains (Heroes from ither armies) and an influence mechanism like the High Elves
trexmeyer wrote: Pretty sure Silver Pinnacle was added in Twisted and Twilight.
Yeah. It definitely wasn't there at the start of TW2. It wasn't even there at the start of the Eshin, Imrik & Dark Elf guy pack. (which added the Wolf Lands, Pig Barter and Dragon Isles). The northern part of the map was carefully blank, and then got fleshed out later. T&T is the most likely spot.
Oxatyl... what in the eff... had a go at the mortal empires campaign.
Seems really hard.
The nerfs you get for not completing the vision quests are a pain. The rewards seem hardly worth it.
Lizards dont really spam armies. You pretty much have one army for ages, and you get everyone attacking you from every direction. If you leave on a vision quest your army is away for at least two turns and gets depleted.
You up wasting turns trying to replenish rebuild and can't really hold a bigger area because you will get settlements sacked by some crappy armies you can't afford to chase away..
Seems really hard.
Havent figured out a good startegy yet.
Argive wrote: Oxatyl... what in the eff... had a go at the mortal empires campaign.
Seems really hard.
The nerfs you get for not completing the vision quests are a pain. The rewards seem hardly worth it.
Lizards dont really spam armies. You pretty much have one army for ages, and you get everyone attacking you from every direction. If you leave on a vision quest your army is away for at least two turns and gets depleted.
You up wasting turns trying to replenish rebuild and can't really hold a bigger area because you will get settlements sacked by some crappy armies you can't afford to chase away..
Seems really hard.
Havent figured out a good startegy yet.
I'm not playing on super high difficulty (can't remember, but definitely not the highest) however my tactic was basically to fight as many battles to prop up my economy so I could afford a 2nd army and use that battle income to build enough resources to eventually start expanding. If the 2nd army is sitting around doing nothing for a few turns, I just sack some of the enemy settlements nearby to keep them weak and make me some money and levels.
So I'd transport to a vision quest, but then take that opportunity to beat up some of the local settlements before travelling back home or to the next quest, then that money would support an army that would babysit the home area.
There is an element of luck in where the visions send you. I watched a youtuber playing an Oxyotl campaign and he got sent completely different places to me, I kept getting sent to the middle of nowhere where there wasn't much to do and as such my economy was growing a lot slower. If you get sent somewhere that has valuable provinces, it can be worth capping a few before you head off and either just let the enemies eventually take it back, or if you want to hold it build walls and a Sanctum (I did that with Quintex because it's actually worth a bit of money).
I haven't tried it myself, but making friends with the locals on your vision quests and then setting up ambush buildings can make a bit of money, but it seems to me the ambush army is usually too weak to do much unless you have the ally supporting you.
Oh and the High Elves were all willing to trade almost immediately, so maybe prioritising sending a hero to explore Ulthuan might help early on?
Argive wrote: Oxatyl... what in the eff... had a go at the mortal empires campaign.
Seems really hard.
The nerfs you get for not completing the vision quests are a pain. The rewards seem hardly worth it.
Lizards dont really spam armies. You pretty much have one army for ages, and you get everyone attacking you from every direction. If you leave on a vision quest your army is away for at least two turns and gets depleted.
You up wasting turns trying to replenish rebuild and can't really hold a bigger area because you will get settlements sacked by some crappy armies you can't afford to chase away..
Seems really hard.
Havent figured out a good startegy yet.
I'm not playing on super high difficulty (can't remember, but definitely not the highest) however my tactic was basically to fight as many battles to prop up my economy so I could afford a 2nd army and use that battle income to build enough resources to eventually start expanding. If the 2nd army is sitting around doing nothing for a few turns, I just sack some of the enemy settlements nearby to keep them weak and make me some money and levels.
So I'd transport to a vision quest, but then take that opportunity to beat up some of the local settlements before travelling back home or to the next quest, then that money would support an army that would babysit the home area.
There is an element of luck in where the visions send you. I watched a youtuber playing an Oxyotl campaign and he got sent completely different places to me, I kept getting sent to the middle of nowhere where there wasn't much to do and as such my economy was growing a lot slower. If you get sent somewhere that has valuable provinces, it can be worth capping a few before you head off and either just let the enemies eventually take it back, or if you want to hold it build walls and a Sanctum (I did that with Quintex because it's actually worth a bit of money).
I haven't tried it myself, but making friends with the locals on your vision quests and then setting up ambush buildings can make a bit of money, but it seems to me the ambush army is usually too weak to do much unless you have the ally supporting you.
Oh and the High Elves were all willing to trade almost immediately, so maybe prioritising sending a hero to explore Ulthuan might help early on?
I've started Oxyotl twice and they've been frighteningly easy both times (playing very hard, not legendary), but I may just have gotten lucky. Both times I've run with a single army - Oxyotl, Oracle, Skink chief, 6 chameleon, 6 chameleon stalkers, 5 blessed stegs (although until you get these skink javelins will do). The chameleons do pretty much all the work, you can break massive armies just using these 6 and the lord. And stalkers are very effective at standing in front of your missile troops (javelins/stegadons) and scaring off anything that gets close.
Complete the fist bit by wiping out the norse in your starting area. the first game I played my first visions allowed me to teleport to Morathi, wipe her out and claim that area. The second time it took me to Pestilens, wipe them out, claim there, immediately kill Gor-Rok (he can't be trusted and will eventually go to war with you anyway).
Then with the single army try to be nice to lizardmen and beat up everything else around you. When visions happen complete them ASAP, loot and occupy whatever the local village is so you get the heal bonus and move on. You won't be taking much damage as you'll be kiting the whole enemy army and you can quite quickly get healing buffs. Prioritise leveling up Oxyotl to make Skinks better and to get lightning strike.
Don't spend any money on places you take over outside of Lustria, let them fall. Once you've completed the visions from the current batch, teleport back to Lustria and continue to build your empire.
Eventually you can start on the second army (I built a Pompous hero army) and completing Lustria becomes easier. (third army is going to be a stegadon hero army with Kroak and a life Slann support).
I think it depends entirely on wether or not the dark elves go to war with you almost immediatly or not.
It just turns into a giant case of wackamole otherwise.
You go off on a vision quest, territories get raided and sacked by elves or norscans who keep coming for you and only you.
Holding land is also difficult because of the corruption resulting in dang rebellion every other turn.
The skink spam is not very good in sieges though... A dino spam life slaan army is just so much better but the economy side of it sucks. Getting multiple armies take s avery long time and its wackamole until that point.
One thing I did find very useful is buiding a portal on top of enemy capitals and destroying from within.
On my last play thought I managed to pull ahead aggressively veyr quickly and get lucky with my quests and rewards.
I abandoned the North as soon as the first batch of visions arrive. It didn't seem worth keeping. Run to a much more permissive part of the map and you simply avoid all those problems. The skink stack isn't the easiest way to siege, but it isn't exactly difficult.
Ive done a Taurox, oxotl and thorek ironbrow campaigns so far since the new DLC.
Ive yet to see a single merc ogre unit be available.. Do I need to download a freelc for ogres or soemthing? Or are they in specific geographical areas of the map?
I think they are on Total War Access, like Rakarth and a few other FLC’s.
In my playthroughs, it seems like a camp pops up when you conquer a region capital, but there is a timer. I’ve also got a mod that makes them appear more frequently.
Argive wrote: Ohh yeah it was stupid TW access website add-on...
Gawd I hate how they do these...
To be fair, the Ogres are a fun addition but they are not overly powerful, in my campaign as Vlad I hired the Mournfangs on two occasions to have some heavy cavalry against the Empire and such, but my regular cavalry outperformed them in almost every turn. But maybe I am just not very good with how I employ them in battle.
Im finding them really useful in the kalida campaign im doing now.
TK struggle to get good armies quickly as they are severly effected byt he cap and the spear skellies might as well not exists. The ogres really helped on several occasions
Hire them for one or two battles/difficult siege then disband them if upkeep costs are problematic. Mournfang cav are really nice boost vs kroq gar. My line of crap stack skellies blobbed up and whilst getting chewed up by saurus i used the cav to go around and cycle charged each portion of the line until the saurus broke
The Ogre camps only really pop up after a big battle with a lot of causalities. I'm currently in the middle of Thorek's campaign and just took out Mazdamundi who was garrisoning a city with a full stack and they popped up. Pretty much anytime there's a big siege battle the Ogres appear.
It turns out the Oxyotl campaign is a royal pain in the arse. The start is rediculous easy and you can win everything at a canter. By turn 100 though everyone hates you and has declared war. I have no idea why. Factions that I have had no interaction with travel half way across the map to destroy me. I'm exterminating factions not because I want to expand but because I want them to stop pestering me.
In fairness this can happen just as you gain in power and influence and sometimes through the network of allies the AI has. It can also happen if you don't spend enough time sweet-talking the AI on different factions to have peaceful boundaries and allies of your own.
Of course allies in wargames are often just an excuse for a quiet boundary before you declare war.
It actually amuses me a bit when players complain that "The aI just clears war on me even though were were allied" when its behaviour most AI will get from players
Henry wrote: It turns out the Oxyotl campaign is a royal pain in the arse. The start is rediculous easy and you can win everything at a canter. By turn 100 though everyone hates you and has declared war. I have no idea why. Factions that I have had no interaction with travel half way across the map to destroy me. I'm exterminating factions not because I want to expand but because I want them to stop pestering me.
I don't think thats an oxyotl problem.
I think thats a "kill the player" problem.
On some play throughs the diplomacy aspect seems to be completely random... I remember on one of my HE campaigns i got war dec'd by Kroq Gar very early on, didn't think anything of it.
Few turns later, a random kroq gar army went ACROSS THE ENTIRE MAP to attack ME at ulthuan...
I suspect there is something weird going on with diplomatic penalties. Like if you get treaties with people and they die it breaks the treaties which I dont think should affect your standing but it seems it does.
I think the only real issue is the AI sending armies over insane distances - which is likely just part and parcel of the issue that the AI doesn't "see" the board like a human does. Furthermore the AI can't plan ahead in the same way - and when you can't plan or think ahead even in the most basic of terms it can have a heavy influence on how the AI works out what to do.
Indeed it could just be a weighted element to be more aggressive against the player which then rose above a series of conditions to avoid/make peace with closer factions. So suddenly in one turn it wound up with the far off player being the most "attractive" to declare war on. The AI not really thinking about building an empire or such
Battle normal so the untits are not hugely distorted and mostly act as you expect they should....
Campaign normal as there seems to be less "get the player" from the AI despite it often being stupid or even suicidal
It is bizare when enemies send armies across the entire map, suffering attrition and attacks to finally arrive half depleated at your lands.....
TW1 seems different to TW2 -- I played 1 and manged to keep friendly with most factions even as Vampires - esp when the Chaos Invasion began.....to be fair they later fell out with me following the defeat of Archaon and co (after I done majority of the work!) It may be because there are many more factions?
It is bizare when enemies send armies across the entire map, suffering attrition and attacks to finally arrive half depleated at your lands.....
I dunno, sounds like the most historically accurate thing for a setting based on the medieval period. Very reminiscent of the 1st Crusade, especially if they travelled over their allies' lands in raid stance
On higher difficulties the AI really does gun for you. Generally I only play on Very Hard and if you do intend to do that you have to make sure you take out the "problem" factions early or they will snowball in the late game. Usually HIgh Elves, Dark Elves or Dwarfs have to be taken out before they can snowball. Or at the very least you have to make sure their "traditional" enemies are on equal footing to keep them busy.
The last campaign I played was Exiles of Nehek and I foolishly took out the Dark Elves early, which allowed the High Elves to Snowball. I basically had to pay them off each turn to stop them from declaring war on me. I could certainly beat them but the AI Economy was so good I'd have to spend all my effort on JUST them and not focusing on beating the campaign.
The AI is just weird sometimes, probably due to poor prioritization.
It almost always ignores beastmen herdstones (I just don't think they added them to the AI's priority list). The only time I've seen them attack a herdstone is when it was a place the AI desperately wants (like Malekith and the north coast of Ulthuan). Hundreds of turns, its the only time I've seen it even attempt.
Its even worse if the herdstone is just in the surrounding area, but not in the area of vital interest (but blocking resettlement via the post-ritual bloodgrounds). The AI just can't cope with it and doesn't ever try to 'free' the area.
It also gives very little weight to finishing a faction off. I've watched armies go back and forth in front of the last empire city (Brass Keep), despite being at war, and even back off of sieges they could easily win (Ikit vs an empty level 3 Bretonnian sieges. Sat there for four turns and then... left).
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Weird Ogre interaction I've noticed... in a vampire army, they actually suffer attrition in 'untainted' lands like the rest of the army. That seems a little weird. On the plus side, they don't suffer vampiric attrition when hired by vampires. I guess that's balance, of a sort.
Voss wrote: The AI is just weird sometimes, probably due to poor prioritization.
It almost always ignores beastmen herdstones (I just don't think they added them to the AI's priority list). The only time I've seen them attack a herdstone is when it was a place the AI desperately wants (like Malekith and the north coast of Ulthuan). Hundreds of turns, its the only time I've seen it even attempt.
Its even worse if the herdstone is just in the surrounding area, but not in the area of vital interest (but blocking resettlement via the post-ritual bloodgrounds). The AI just can't cope with it and doesn't ever try to 'free' the area.
It also gives very little weight to finishing a faction off. I've watched armies go back and forth in front of the last empire city (Brass Keep), despite being at war, and even back off of sieges they could easily win (Ikit vs an empty level 3 Bretonnian sieges. Sat there for four turns and then... left).
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Weird Ogre interaction I've noticed... in a vampire army, they actually suffer attrition in 'untainted' lands like the rest of the army. That seems a little weird. On the plus side, they don't suffer vampiric attrition when hired by vampires. I guess that's balance, of a sort.
Voss wrote: The AI is just weird sometimes, probably due to poor prioritization.
It almost always ignores beastmen herdstones (I just don't think they added them to the AI's priority list). The only time I've seen them attack a herdstone is when it was a place the AI desperately wants (like Malekith and the north coast of Ulthuan). Hundreds of turns, its the only time I've seen it even attempt.
Its even worse if the herdstone is just in the surrounding area, but not in the area of vital interest (but blocking resettlement via the post-ritual bloodgrounds). The AI just can't cope with it and doesn't ever try to 'free' the area.
It also gives very little weight to finishing a faction off. I've watched armies go back and forth in front of the last empire city (Brass Keep), despite being at war, and even back off of sieges they could easily win (Ikit vs an empty level 3 Bretonnian sieges. Sat there for four turns and then... left).
----
Weird Ogre interaction I've noticed... in a vampire army, they actually suffer attrition in 'untainted' lands like the rest of the army. That seems a little weird. On the plus side, they don't suffer vampiric attrition when hired by vampires. I guess that's balance, of a sort.
All good points
I can't recall if the Sylvanian Levy (living) troops suffer attrition in the same way but I think they do.
trexmeyer wrote: FWIW, in my short game as Taurox I had 2+ Herdstones attacked by the Dark Elves.
In my rampage across Ulthuan towards the end of the campaign, several armies followed me attacking the various herdstones I errected....not that I cared once I had the points - they just took damage and attrition.
Finished it! I'm not a great player and I don't use much jankiness, but Oxyotl is the first campaign I've won on L/VH/L. Aside from everyone going to war with you (which is frustrating but not difficult) it is super easy. Oxyotl's skink stack is amazingly good and sieges are a breeze.
Henry wrote: Finished it! I'm not a great player and I don't use much jankiness, but Oxyotl is the first campaign I've won on L/VH/L. Aside from everyone going to war with you (which is frustrating but not difficult) it is super easy. Oxyotl's skink stack is amazingly good and sieges are a breeze.
I found Oxyotl's campaign is slow, but not particularly difficult. It takes soooo much longer to snowball, and it took me ages to finally get the Lizards to start confederating with me, but Oxyotl's army is insanely powerful against most enemies. I could imagine a full stack of heavy cav might be the only thing he'd struggle with.
What did you use for your other armies? That's been my main struggle, with the poor economy I lean toward Skink armies but they don't perform nearly as well outside of Oxyotl's army and I've had a few of them wiped out.
I can't say I found it slow. I conquered Lustria fairly quickly and only confederated with Tehenhuain (+5 global public order) who was pretty easy to get on board. I murdered the rest of the lizards. The second and third armies were junk mostly made from exalted and ogres I'd picked up, but eventually replace with Slann life/heroes/stegadon. I think I finished with 6 armies.
Because for half of the game you've only got the one army to pay for and don't exactly need any specialist buildings, economy was never a problem. After Lustria I took Ulthuan, then mopped my way up Nagaroth and by then the long campaign was over. I had also littered the areas I was fighting in with sanctum that reduced the cost of troops so as I was pushing forward my costs were staying down.
The only annoyance was having to take a few sidesteps to stop enemies targeting me (Dreadfleet and Skryre) but thanks to Oxyotl's teleporting you can jump into their back yard and shut them down pretty quick.
Did you push down into Lustria early? I kinda just followed the missions around and none of the missions led me to Lustria, so maybe that's why. I had to send a hero down to discover most of the Lizardmen factions, and it was turn 100 by the time I confederated Tehenhauin.
Well finished Thorek's campaign in Vortex. Dwarfs are still tough and I had no trouble rolling over everyone in Lustria. I did notice Dwarfs being somewhat slower then I remember. But given how tough they are I guess that's a fair trade off.
Yep, started the campaign three times before I made the push to victory on the fourth. The furthest it ever left me from Lustria during the first set of visions was Quintex. Bee-line for Lustria, the North is a trap (abandon it) and nobody (except Tehenhuain) is your friend.
Your army just needs Oxyotl, 6-7 skirmishers, the Oracle and as many pompous Chiefs as you like. Make sure you get the range damage trait from Marcus Wolfheart and make everyone stalk as soon as able. During sieges your army is hidden so the AI acts screwy and clumps up. You can murder garrisons and supporting armies just using Oxyotl and the Oracle's flock of doom.
Yep, started the campaign three times before I made the push to victory on the fourth. The furthest it ever left me from Lustria during the first set of visions was Quintex. Bee-line for Lustria, the North is a trap (abandon it) and nobody (except Tehenhuain) is your friend.
Your army just needs Oxyotl, 6-7 skirmishers, the Oracle and as many pompous Chiefs as you like. Make sure you get the range damage trait from Marcus Wolfheart and make everyone stalk as soon as able. During sieges your army is hidden so the AI acts screwy and clumps up. You can murder garrisons and supporting armies just using Oxyotl and the Oracle's flock of doom.
At about turn 90 I decided to install a mod that alters the behaviour of the "great power" penalty to not affect your own race, because I was getting sick of the Lizardmen factions hating poor Oxyotl
I took the north of Naggarond, it was pretty easy to hold as I mostly left the Norscans alone and they don't seem to want to attack me much even though we're technically at war.
I think maybe taking Quintex (since it's a very profitable region) and then expanding into Lustria might be a good idea.
Granted the campaign hasn't been difficult, just slow, taking ages to confederate and the only dino units I have are RoR and Blessed units.
For some reason I'm really struggling this time around. I'm not even sure what im doing wrong just the AI cheats seem to be off the chart.
I seem to have really lost my TW edge.
Contemplated dropping the difficulty down to normal but its far to grating.
The main problem as far as I can see is that as soon as I attack a target, I get blindsided by some rondos and the game really ramps up "destroy the player" and its just lame..
I have hundreds of hours in the game and I'm still yet to play a single Empire campaign, lol.
Also on the list is Dark Elves, High Elves and Skaven.
We should see who wins the battle of most armies unplayed for most amount of hours, though I think I'd have an unfair advantage as I often just leave the game open while I go do other things.
Well 'armies unplayed' is a tricky metric. I haven't finished Bret or Dwarf campaigns in WH2, because I find their restrictions annoying. But I did finish them in one.
Same with Norsca it seems. I've definitely played, but never made the push to the end. With those factions I just get kind of bored as the steamroll ramps up. Winning isn't the question, just the amount of tedium and turns passed before the objectives are all tidied up.
I managed to get past the big hurdle. Im not a fan of empire authority mechanic. At higher difficulty none of the nearby human factions want diplomacy or trade (which is stupid). Therefore you just got to conquer them and eat the penelty when possible. I ended up going in aggressively early on and taking out marineburg and nuln provinces ASAP to have the income in order to support more armies/build up altorf to tier 4. Did have to do a Quick detour to take out rakarth and then double back to deal with manfred. Vampires were just sititng around raiding my lands while I was dealing with conquering rakarth and havign my armies baby sititng my provinces in case they tried to go for my settlements.
Luckily neither the dwarves or the gobos war deced me while I was dealing with rakarth/ getting raided by vampires.
Once back in my lands managed to roll up the vampire invasion in two decisive battes and the blitz through all the territories they held and smash through to sylvania before they can recover.
So the key was to be very agressive ealry on. Getting a bright wizard as quest reward was very clutch as well.
Allowing vampires to conquer the other areas saved me from either trying to confederate them and dropping authority by war decing them. Manfred wont break the NAP and just raid instead so as long as my armies are strong enough and manage to wipe all his armies in one or two turns (they conveniantly all bunch up, perfect for some fire storm and burning head). Rakarth was a new veriable which I wasnt expecting.
Its a very hard campaign because of the mechanics and you dont get decent army until Tier 4 with hell storm rocket batteries
Ive played as all the factions.
Most hours into HE & Lizardmen by far. I like dragons and big dino monsters
Ive pretty much assured victory now as empire so maybe a session or mroe and ill be satisfied Ive exacted my revenge for all the failed attempts. Nothing more frustrating then being like 30 turns in and having to restart.
I haven't played as eshin yet so might do that next.
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Voss wrote: Well 'armies unplayed' is a tricky metric. I haven't finished Bret or Dwarf campaigns in WH2, because I find their restrictions annoying. But I did finish them in one.
Same with Norsca it seems. I've definitely played, but never made the push to the end. With those factions I just get kind of bored as the steamroll ramps up. Winning isn't the question, just the amount of tedium and turns passed before the objectives are all tidied up.
I think I gave up with norsca as well. The inability o resupply high tier units and mammoth stack being very veeery expensive was the primary reason. It got really tedious.
Also you end up having o fight empire, bretornia and dark elves all at the same time and its lame.
Not sure how it works now with oxyatl as norca.. might be able to use them as buffer vs delvs.
For some reason I'm really struggling this time around. I'm not even sure what im doing wrong just the AI cheats seem to be off the chart.
I seem to have really lost my TW edge.
Contemplated dropping the difficulty down to normal but its far to grating.
The main problem as far as I can see is that as soon as I attack a target, I get blindsided by some rondos and the game really ramps up "destroy the player" and its just lame..
Disclaimer: I play heavily modded.
Empire can be frustrating, particularly diplomacy amongst the other Elector States. I downloaded a mod that opens up more options for using the political currency(I forget the name of it), where you can use that to "buy" a trade agreement/alliance/pact.
As another said, it behooves you(imo) to take on Marienburg early to get that extra port money. I also like to prevent them from wiping out Bretonnia, which happens alot in my playthroughs. They have alot on their plate early on with Rakarth, Marienburg, Orcs and Norsca all up in their junk. I hate when major factions get rolled by a minor faction early in a campaign.
After that, I usually went after the Greenskin faction up north, near the Wood Elf province. Once you have Marieburg, and the north west Orc province, I'd be able to swamp Middenheim pretty easily, provided no other faction tried to secede or declare war. Then I go after Nuln to pump out some mortars. By that time, the Vampire Count factions usually have taken a good deal of the Empire.
This is all while leaving a decent sized army stack at Helmgart, as the Orc faction with red/white banners based out of Masif Orcal usually comes at me every few turns.
As frustrating as the early 3rd of an Empire Campaign can be, once you get your economy pumping, its alot of fun.
Mr Morden wrote: So far coompleted Belegar, Imrik, Vlad and Isabella, Taurox, G'Rok, and Drycha campaigns - really enjoyed them all and quite different.
Playing Karl Franz at the moment (not sure why Nuln does not have Emmanuelle in charge).
.
Model. Particularly for TW 1 they stuck pretty hard to existing tabletop models (except, for whatever reason, that other necromancer) and stats/items/etc and she never had either. So lacking any other need for a female empire lord model, they didn't spend the time and money on the model, voice and animation.
It's not a great reason, but particularly for the first game, makes some sense.
This is all while leaving a decent sized army stack at Helmgart, as the Orc faction with red/white banners based out of Masif Orcal usually comes at me every few turns.
As frustrating as the early 3rd of an Empire Campaign can be, once you get your economy pumping, its alot of fun.
Yeah I was wasting my time farting around with the fealty stuff and that mechanic is complete garbage at higher difficulty. Its far too random. Like im still waititng to confederate with todbringer..
I actually built up the fort asap and the orks would come up every few turns which was a nice income boost. The garrison and map is fantastic for defending vs the orks. I didn't even bother sending an army there.
I like Karls Franz as a lord. He is a fun beatsick and flying him into hords of enemies and droping fire storm on the blob while hellstorm batteries go to town is pretty fun.
The more I play the more I think playing Very hard/legendary is not worth it for me anymore. It only makes the early game abhorrently difficult where its easier to just start over until you amange to smash it so hard you wont be challenged anyway.
My favourite lord is by far imrik or tyrion. I love my elves
Not sure how I missed it in the patch notes, but the timer restriction on releasing Night Goblin Fanatics is harsh.
The timer starts ticking at 15 seconds once melee begins… Meaning a good deal of your dudes will be dead before you release them, either to missile damage or the 15 seconds of combat, thereby reducing the chances of getting to release all 3 charges. Kind of kills my desire to play them now. Been searching for a mod to remove that timer.
Hell, I think I’d prefer if they were something you couldn’t control like in the tabletop, where they’d release at a certain range but were persistent until death.
nels1031 wrote: Went back to my favorite faction, Crooked Moon.
Not sure how I missed it in the patch notes, but the timer restriction on releasing Night Goblin Fanatics is harsh.
The timer starts ticking at 15 seconds once melee begins… Meaning a good deal of your dudes will be dead before you release them, either to missile damage or the 15 seconds of combat, thereby reducing the chances of getting to release all 3 charges. Kind of kills my desire to play them now. Been searching for a mod to remove that timer.
Hell, I think I’d prefer if they were something you couldn’t control like in the tabletop, where they’d release at a certain range but were persistent until death.
Yeah, not being able to blunt the first charge with fanatics is painful
Been playing skaven as ikit claw and my co op ally is playing tomb kings with settra (hard campaign ai, normal ai for battles for both players).
At the moment most of our enemies are fairly pathetic and weak at about turn 97 or so. Chaos is wreaking havoc but hasn't reached us and empire is positioned mostly away from us.
Also I dug under cities under most of the wood elf sub faction territories so I could get some really solid cash flow going with like 50% of territory income for most of the under cities since each wood elf territory makes so much.
The only huge threat in our immediate vicinity are the greenskins under grimgor and mostly because they kept confederating or destroying other greenskin clans. Now they have about 65 settlements and their only significant enemy is empire as far as I can tell. I have less than 20 I think and my ally has around 25. I don't think it's a good idea to disturb such a giant so soon because greenskins aren't fighting enough powerful enemies to cover for us. If we do we will need a plan and maybe to attack it all at once from multiple sides.
Okay finished up my Malagor campaign. Overall Beastmen are super fun to play as. I basically just walked over everyone and burned half the Empire to the ground...not that it was much of an Empire anymore as a mix of Vampires, Skaven and Norsemen basically destroyed it already.
Also Razorgor Chariots are so ridiculously broken. I should not be able to walk over 3 whole Dwarfs stacks in one battle with marginal loses.
Next up I'll probably give Ikit Claw a go as the only Skaven faction I've played so far was Pestiliens.
To be honest, the Beastmen do seem to be extremly powerful - I had not trouble at all on Very Hard and I normally play on normal.
Its def fun not having to worry about your settlements but its very hard to stop you or even slow you down.- and thats without even buidling Doomstacks or even using Tuskagor Chariots
They are shifting around how cavalry work so that now when you're charging the enemy they should want to brace (ergo not move) instead of counter-charging you (ergo running at you). Before if you charged a charging cavalry unit, the charging unit got a charging bonus which basically meant they worked way better than they should have. Now you don't get that bonus so in theory cavalry charging into close combat should favour the encounter more so if the enemy charges at them at the same time; but should do worse if the enemy "braces" and holds still.
Reading through the notes seems they may have fixed Razorgor Chariots. I'll have to test it out, as well as see how to aoe change effects things like Flock of Doom. One thing I did notice is when its cast it really did hit units well outside the casting area. Making Malagor just, silly stupid good.
I mean its good they toned down Beastmen....but damn were they fun to play.
Mr Morden wrote: Yeah Hopefuly this will avoid another Cyberpunk 2077 style gak show!
Really looking forward to Grand Cathay info tomorrow!
There's no way that could happen. Cyberpunk 2077 has engine issues that I think are related to object persistence and threading. They could've delayed to 2022 and not fixed those problems.
WH2 and WH3 are more like massive expansions to WH1. I don't expect them to fix issues with sieges or zone of control.
Honestly the biggest change that I'd like to see is more campaign maps.
One I'd really love is a "1 race" map where each race appears only once on the map. So you can get the full general experience of multiple races, but without all the multiple sub-groups. Perhaps with the option to select or random the specific lord variant for each race slot.
Or Import the TW 1 and 2 campaign maps into the game so you can launch them within TW 3 but without having to have the other games installed
Overread wrote: Honestly the biggest change that I'd like to see is more campaign maps.
One I'd really love is a "1 race" map where each race appears only once on the map. So you can get the full general experience of multiple races, but without all the multiple sub-groups. Perhaps with the option to select or random the specific lord variant for each race slot.
Maybe different scales - so you would just have the Empire as a map or but with many more settlements to fight over?
Overread wrote: One I'd really love is a "1 race" map where each race appears only once on the map. So you can get the full general experience of multiple races, but without all the multiple sub-groups. Perhaps with the option to select or random the specific lord variant for each race slot.
I agree this would be fun, but I don't think the AI is smart enough for that.
So many games where you never encounter major players in the Warhammer world because some random minor faction wiped them out on turn 7. You finally get away from the Lustriabowl and march into Sylvania only to find it a bustling hive of Dwarven culture and military prowess. You leave the forrests of Athel Loren to venture to great Ulthuan, the home of your kin, the High Elves, to find that Count Noctilis owns half the donut, and Morathi the other half. You launch a Crusade into the Southlands to rid deserts from the undead scourge of the Tomb Kings to find an ongoing war of attrition between a Lizardman and a daemon-possessed Dark Elf. And how often does Grom or Imrik just get ganked by other AIs before the game even gets going? Grom's almost always dead by turn 10...
I wish what you're suggesting worked, but I fear that even with a 1 race map, so many of them would get blitzed before you ever saw them.
Overread wrote: Or Import the TW 1 and 2 campaign maps into the game so you can launch them within TW 3 but without having to have the other games installed
I wish that were possible. I wish there were options for a grand campaign where you could pic a section of the map, and just play there with whatever factions make sense.
Overread wrote: One I'd really love is a "1 race" map where each race appears only once on the map. So you can get the full general experience of multiple races, but without all the multiple sub-groups. Perhaps with the option to select or random the specific lord variant for each race slot.
I agree this would be fun, but I don't think the AI is smart enough for that.
So many games where you never encounter major players in the Warhammer world because some random minor faction wiped them out on turn 7. You finally get away from the Lustriabowl and march into Sylvania only to find it a bustling hive of Dwarven culture and military prowess. You leave the forrests of Athel Loren to venture to great Ulthuan, the home of your kin, the High Elves, to find that Count Noctilis owns half the donut, and Morathi the other half. You launch a Crusade into the Southlands to rid deserts from the undead scourge of the Tomb Kings to find an ongoing war of attrition between a Lizardman and a daemon-possessed Dark Elf. And how often does Grom or Imrik just get ganked by other AIs before the game even gets going? Grom's almost always dead by turn 10...
I wish what you're suggesting worked, but I fear that even with a 1 race map, so many of them would get blitzed before you ever saw them.
But that's not a problem. The idea that the AI should hold the whole game map in a state of static preservation of each race wouldn't be much fun as then its mostly just the player "mopping up the map" every time. Factions rising and falling on their own with the AI very much is normal and should happen. An AI getting wiped out isn't a problem. Sure it means you might not "meet every race" but you'd have a good chance of seeing many of them and you'd have the experience of diversity without the excess of the current Mortal Realms map system.
And nothing stops you starting another game, putting the factions in different start positions and playing again.
If you get a chance watch the vid - its quite fun and also goes into details like exactly what stats get boosted and by how much.
