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 Commander Cain wrote:

 Overread wrote:
*stares at 4 hour download time*

9 hours for me, gotta love the country life!

Yep, just glad that I'm not on limited downloads per month. That (a few years back) really was a pain to handle esp when a game might be 10 or more GB these days and that's without the plethora of patches that can appear in launch weeks.

 Overread wrote:


2 hours to go - and naw but its 6.7GB total at around 5-600kbps download speed.
Welcome to the countryside - although last month they DID put the new box down the road, but we've not yet adapted to superhighspeedultra broadband

Ouch...probably would have been quicker to drive to a family/friend's house near a city connect to their wifi. Download, buy them a meal and then drive back. Less than 4 hours?

 Whirlwind wrote:

 Overread wrote:


2 hours to go - and naw but its 6.7GB total at around 5-600kbps download speed.
Welcome to the countryside - although last month they DID put the new box down the road, but we've not yet adapted to superhighspeedultra broadband

Ouch...probably would have been quicker to drive to a family/friend's house near a city connect to their wifi. Download, buy them a meal and then drive back. Less than 4 hours?

But I don't want all the hassle of carrying the computer down 2 flights of stairs and into the car and back again.

And naw 4 hours isn't bad, even 20GB isn't to bad if you leave the computer running overnight. What's bad is a 35GB or bigger game - now they are scary monsters (although more because most games that big want an SSD drive and my little 500GB one is filling up fast). The way games are going I'm wondering if one day we'll see games sold on their own dedicated drive

Started with Luthor's campaign. Its... OK?

Slow start, and it's easy to get trapped as a land campaign once the pirate fleets start showing up off the coast and declaring war, as usually at least one is lurking within attack range at any given time.

His goals aren't all that interesting, however. With all the factions running around Lustria at this point, finding a ruin to search once that pops is surprisingly hard (even if you create it yourself, someone else might swoop in and settle it). Then razing/sacking three lizard cities... I've run out. Lustria is awash with various flavors of elves and rats rampaging about, and the orcs are bottling Mazda in the isthmus.

Reinforcing/creating new armies is absurdly easy (even compared to tomb kings). Local, global and ship recruitment + raise dead, with lots of ways to gain new recruitment slots.

And ship growth isn't a problem. A second lord in the 'fleet engineer' office gives +10 growth on top of increased growth from the dedicated growth upgrade and the ship level upgrade. Don't bother wasting skill points on it.

Pirate fleets: these respawn far too fast. I've butchered Gentlemen Jenkins at least 4 times in under 100 turns. There isn't much benefit beyond post battle loot, but they come back and declare war again anyway.

Voss wrote:
Started with Luthor's campaign. Its... OK?

Slow start, and it's easy to get trapped as a land campaign once the pirate fleets start showing up off the coast and declaring war, as usually at least one is lurking within attack range at any given time.

His goals aren't all that interesting, however. With all the factions running around Lustria at this point, finding a ruin to search once that pops is surprisingly hard (even if you create it yourself, someone else might swoop in and settle it). Then razing/sacking three lizard cities... I've run out. Lustria is awash with various flavors of elves and rats rampaging about, and the orcs are bottling Mazda in the isthmus.

Reinforcing/creating new armies is absurdly easy (even compared to tomb kings). Local, global and ship recruitment + raise dead, with lots of ways to gain new recruitment slots.

And ship growth isn't a problem. A second lord in the 'fleet engineer' office gives +10 growth on top of increased growth from the dedicated growth upgrade and the ship level upgrade. Don't bother wasting skill points on it.

Pirate fleets: these respawn far too fast. I've butchered Gentlemen Jenkins at least 4 times in under 100 turns. There isn't much benefit beyond post battle loot, but they come back and declare war again anyway.

I actually found the mortal empires campaign more interesting. The minor pirate fleets in the ocean are annoying but let's be reasonable here, any minor settlement with the wall upgrade is capable of defending itself against these fleets. Granted the ammount of them is way to high the respawn rate is annoying and at the start they may bugger you over. On the other hand Lustira is a relatively easy place to expand in, rich in ressources and easily defendable thanks to the positioning of itself in the lower left corner.

Download took 1.5 hours.

I started with Heini Kemmler in Mortal Empires.

Right now I am spamming necromancers and sending them around, they seem to enjoy wounding themselves.

 StygianBeach wrote:
Download took 1.5 hours.

I started with Heini Kemmler in Mortal Empires.

Right now I am spamming necromancers and sending them around, they seem to enjoy wounding themselves.

Ah Yes the classic total war staple of severly incompetent agents when fielded by the player vs the lvl 1 ai agent that is secretly James Bond.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Voss wrote:
Started with Luthor's campaign. Its... OK?

Slow start, and it's easy to get trapped as a land campaign once the pirate fleets start showing up off the coast and declaring war, as usually at least one is lurking within attack range at any given time.

His goals aren't all that interesting, however. With all the factions running around Lustria at this point, finding a ruin to search once that pops is surprisingly hard (even if you create it yourself, someone else might swoop in and settle it). Then razing/sacking three lizard cities... I've run out. Lustria is awash with various flavors of elves and rats rampaging about, and the orcs are bottling Mazda in the isthmus.

Reinforcing/creating new armies is absurdly easy (even compared to tomb kings). Local, global and ship recruitment + raise dead, with lots of ways to gain new recruitment slots.

And ship growth isn't a problem. A second lord in the 'fleet engineer' office gives +10 growth on top of increased growth from the dedicated growth upgrade and the ship level upgrade. Don't bother wasting skill points on it.

Pirate fleets: these respawn far too fast. I've butchered Gentlemen Jenkins at least 4 times in under 100 turns. There isn't much benefit beyond post battle loot, but they come back and declare war again anyway.

I actually found the mortal empires campaign more interesting. The minor pirate fleets in the ocean are annoying but let's be reasonable here, any minor settlement with the wall upgrade is capable of defending itself against these fleets. Granted the ammount of them is way to high the respawn rate is annoying and at the start they may bugger you over. On the other hand Lustira is a relatively easy place to expand in, rich in ressources and easily defendable thanks to the positioning of itself in the lower left corner.

The minor pirate fleets don't attack settlements. The swarm (at least for Harkon) just keeps him stuck there in the early game, before he has decent units. The Norse fleet has a level 20 lord on a mammoth, another mammoth and a frost wyrm. The dwarf fleet has a stack of late tier units, the dark elves have dread riders, a hydra, multiple repeaters and so on. They aren't winnable fights with chaff, and even mid tier armies struggle with back to back fights (or running out for a treasure island battle)

Lustria depends on how the AI behaves. If the lizards camp in the major settlements with full stacks, no it isn't easy to expand- it takes time, and requires an economy for a second army, or luck. This is complicated by the Vampire Coast not having an ambush stance- the AI won't come out if you've got death stacks nearby. Combined it all makes for a slow start, especially if you want to set up the ship growth with starting money.

Did about 40 turns with Kemmlers Barrow Legion last night on very hard. Just as I suspected, the Karak Ziflin dwarf faction was rolled over. Blackstone Post being made the province capital was a huge blow to their survivability. Wiped them out within 5 turns and the Orc faction up north within 2,0 then went to town on the Bretonnians, with the goal of working over to the Red Duke, to either get his allegiance or take over Mousillon to get the sweet unique structure . Granted, most of my favorite mods that make AI harder, custom siege maps and garrison numbers stronger weren't updated, but it seems like Kemmler can easily pick off the solitary Bretonnian factions.

Two surprises :
Only Kemmler gets the "no attrition" in non corrupted territory. I suppose it would be OP to make it faction wide.

And he gets the "Vampire Bloodlines" feature. I thought it would just be a Von Carstein/Vampire Counts thing? Not complaining, mind you, just didn't expect it. I think Lahmian Vampires will be a good fit for him. I think its one of the weaker Bloodlines, but with all the extra Necromancers that Kemmler can get, having drastically reduced upkeep and such on agents could be a huge boon. But I went with Necrarch to get the 25% research.

Loving the changes, but probably won't touch the game again until most of my favorite mods are updated in the next few days (hopefully)

Voss wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Voss wrote:
Started with Luthor's campaign. Its... OK?

Slow start, and it's easy to get trapped as a land campaign once the pirate fleets start showing up off the coast and declaring war, as usually at least one is lurking within attack range at any given time.

His goals aren't all that interesting, however. With all the factions running around Lustria at this point, finding a ruin to search once that pops is surprisingly hard (even if you create it yourself, someone else might swoop in and settle it). Then razing/sacking three lizard cities... I've run out. Lustria is awash with various flavors of elves and rats rampaging about, and the orcs are bottling Mazda in the isthmus.

Reinforcing/creating new armies is absurdly easy (even compared to tomb kings). Local, global and ship recruitment + raise dead, with lots of ways to gain new recruitment slots.

And ship growth isn't a problem. A second lord in the 'fleet engineer' office gives +10 growth on top of increased growth from the dedicated growth upgrade and the ship level upgrade. Don't bother wasting skill points on it.

Pirate fleets: these respawn far too fast. I've butchered Gentlemen Jenkins at least 4 times in under 100 turns. There isn't much benefit beyond post battle loot, but they come back and declare war again anyway.

I actually found the mortal empires campaign more interesting. The minor pirate fleets in the ocean are annoying but let's be reasonable here, any minor settlement with the wall upgrade is capable of defending itself against these fleets. Granted the ammount of them is way to high the respawn rate is annoying and at the start they may bugger you over. On the other hand Lustira is a relatively easy place to expand in, rich in ressources and easily defendable thanks to the positioning of itself in the lower left corner.

The minor pirate fleets don't attack settlements. The swarm (at least for Harkon) just keeps him stuck there in the early game, before he has decent units. The Norse fleet has a level 20 lord on a mammoth, another mammoth and a frost wyrm. The dwarf fleet has a stack of late tier units, the dark elves have dread riders, a hydra, multiple repeaters and so on. They aren't winnable fights with chaff, and even mid tier armies struggle with back to back fights (or running out for a treasure island battle)

Lustria depends on how the AI behaves. If the lizards camp in the major settlements with full stacks, no it isn't easy to expand- it takes time, and requires an economy for a second army, or luck. This is complicated by the Vampire Coast not having an ambush stance- the AI won't come out if you've got death stacks nearby. Combined it all makes for a slow start, especially if you want to set up the ship growth with starting money.

Actually you can bait them and the Vampire coast has a easy enough economy to grow.
Basically as harkon it is anyways always war with the lizard man, defeat their armies in your territories, then advance.
On the other hand you can technically always leave and build coves everywhere, works also fairly well.

That wasn't my experience at all. They didn't leave their territory. They rarely left their capitals. I had to go to them.

Leaving lustria meant getting pounced on by multiple pirate armies.

Economic growth was slow, as venturing forth to get money somewhere else meant getting attacked. It was a matter of stacking up to break the first couple provinces, and -then- the usual snowball starts. After that the problem is claiming the continent fast enough in front of the waves of skaven and elves.

By comparison, Cylostra has been largely ignored by the pirate fleets, to the point that I didn't see most of them except when passing by with agents, and now I'm hunting them down as I advance on Lothern, having dealt with Mazda, Morathi, and the High Priest.

But the start of Cylostra's campaign was a lot more fun. I never felt stalled, but I had real opponents that put a fight, rather than big stacks behind static defenses, and had to deal with keeping order across several partial provinces.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ok, the final battle is pretty amazing. They kicked out a lot of effects and features for that one.

As far as the game was concerned, I shouldn't have won- it gave me a tiny bar, down around 15%. Btu then it doesn't account well for Cylostra's summons or the smaller units in the roster.

Or the AI's tendency to cluster up on this kind of terrain. Queen Bess and two mortars drops a unit's health bar down to 25% and puts them at wavering. When they overlap its even more fun. Especially when followed up by the ship gun abilities and/or the ghost ship gunnery spell.

I was getting fairly concerned by the last wave and <spoilers>'s army. All told I mostly lost deck gunners and mournguls. Crabs and sirens held the line.

That wasn't my experience at all. They didn't leave their territory. They rarely left their capitals. I had to go to them.

Leaving lustria meant getting pounced on by multiple pirate armies.

Economic growth was slow, as venturing forth to get money somewhere else meant getting attacked. It was a matter of stacking up to break the first couple provinces, and -then- the usual snowball starts. After that the problem is claiming the continent fast enough in front of the waves of skaven and elves.

By comparison, Cylostra has been largely ignored by the pirate fleets, to the point that I didn't see most of them except when passing by with agents, and now I'm hunting them down as I advance on Lothern, having dealt with Mazda, Morathi, and the High Priest.

But the start of Cylostra's campaign was a lot more fun. I never felt stalled, but I had real opponents that put a fight, rather than big stacks behind static defenses, and had to deal with keeping order across several partial provinces.

Probably has to do with the fact that you played maelstrom, especially against lizardmen that means the AI values it's city above their offensive capability and sits in them. On the other hand the VC rosster is good enough for siege battles (which still are terrible, especially for a TW veteran...) .
Then again i also found that the Zombiemusketmen are undervalued in auto-resolve, a bit of smart deployment with them and a frontline with holes in them and you can win nearly any battle. Gunneryweights are also absolute mad men, i am however still unsure what the blunderbuss ammo does for them.

I've not played much of VCoast yet, but initially they feel... fragile. As in, more fragile than a typical undead army. Note it's not something I'm complaining about, but more that I've found I need to be far more on the ball about things than I'm usually capable of. If I look away from somewhere for a little too long, units die.

I lost Saltspite's starting crabs to one of the early battles because I completely overestimated their staying power and had looked away to set up some other units for a little too long. By the time I realised and tried to pull them out they were already crumbling enough that they just slipped away.

Noctilus' starting Depth Guard are a little similar; that 90 armour means essentially nothing, and they'll happily hemorrhage models given half a chance. Anything with ranged chews through them, including basic pistol zombies, and you really need to babysit them to get their full use. They seem to work best going from combat to combat, breaking things with flank charges and moving on, rather than wading deep into melee. I've not tried the polearm variants yet, though.

A bit of a change of pace from what I'm used to.

Depth Guard really want to be in a second rank and then move in once an engagement has started. They just don't have the bodies to be on the line.

Crabs and hulks main problem is there is so much anti-large in the game, especially in the regions where this faction starts. The research for these units really helps them out (+20% physical resistance particularly)

I actually had really good experiences with the Sirens, except for one battle with Tyrion... because he was running around with 8 sisters of avelorn units. Even keeping them in the second rank didn't help too much, if they were exposed even briefly the units just evaporated.

By the late game with Cylostra I was using almost no Zombies other than Deck Gunners and Big Guns. Didn't use Depth Guard much either.


---
My biggest issues with the faction are the buildings and research trees. Most factions, I feel like I can't fit in everything I want, this one, beyond walls, corruption and money buildings, didn't care. Sometimes resource buildings, but they didn't do all that much. The unit buildings simply didn't matter much- relied on raise dead piles for secondary armies.

For research, aside from a few obvious ones, after a while I was hunting for something to research that would actually benefit me in some fashion. While a couple were very strong, I don't really like researching banners and followers. Several of the upgrades (particularly to infantry) were really trivial. Others (like ammo and damage for the big guns, and modifiers to the big guys) felt mandatory.

Lords also irked me a little. If they didn't have lore of vampires, I didn't really want them.

Really enjoying playing as vampire counts. The new addition of having free upkeep for zombies and skeletons makes it easy to make loads of hordes of cheap units.

The bloodlines mechanic is fun as well, I went for the Necrarch line as it buffs your research and the lords come with spirit leech making it super easy to take out enemy lords.

Kemmler still seems a little underwhelming but that could be just because I am used to characters that work best on the front lines. The start position is really good though, I cruised through most of the bret kingdoms with ease thanks to all the free zombies

Yeah, I tried out Kemmler. I still like throwing Krell at people, but went for free skeletons and an array of bloodline abilities. I wanted the public order and extra corruption more than anything, but honestly the blood dragon attrition immunity is calling hard, as I'm stuck fighting in Lothern because reasons.

My campaign bogged down in an unending war against the high elves, because the random Norse tribe that kept attacking me (Vanaheimlings?) talked Lothern and Avelorn into going to war with me, which seems absurd.

They just won't peace out either, despite the number of stacks I wipe, cities I seize, stack or raze. The bloodline lords are also really great for just throwing armies at people until you win, since they start immortal, you can just cycle through them, grab some raised dead and go again and again, as long as you account for the 1 turn delay before they can move.

I also found that Kemmler can Confederate with the Red Duke, so he's another immortal-by-default in my roster. Kind of nice, really.


As far as Bretonnia goes, it died quickly, with a whimper. Noctilus ate Carcassone and eventually Paravon (and Saltspite ate the Border Princes, not!Italy and Skavenblight), and they proceeded to split the dwarf realm in the mountains.

Vampire Coast may be a tad overtuned, based on how they tend to sprawl. Also the AI might need tweaking, as they don't give a rat's poxy buttocks about raiding and pirating. They conquer vast tracts of land, and the Southwestern Old World and Ulthuan get fairly riddled with corruption.

Voss wrote:

Vampire Coast may be a tad overtuned, based on how they tend to sprawl. .

Possibly. I was playing a game with Lokir Fellheart. About 30 turns in I face off against Luthor, who is already LEVEL 28!!! WHAT THE HECK?????

Voss wrote:
My campaign bogged down in an unending war against the high elves, because the random Norse tribe that kept attacking me (Vanaheimlings?) talked Lothern and Avelorn into going to war with me, which seems absurd.

The very first game of TWW2 I played, on the day of release, I was 3 or so turns into my Lothern game when the Dark Elves you're given to kick out of your starting province called both Caledor and Saphery into their war against me. I've had a very low opinion of that aspect of the diplomacy system--such as it is--ever since, and it's not been helped by the not-irregular occasions where such absurdities recur. Hell, the most infuriating times it happens are when the AI exploits the fact it already diplomatically "knows" every other empire on the map from turn 1, and calls empires it can't possibly have ever encountered before into wars with you, like rogue army stacks on the turn they appear next to your territory but nowhere near the AI calling them in.

It's possible for the player to exploit "join war", too, but only with the aid of heaps of gold, and it's a toss-up as to whether or not the AI you're drafting in is going to actually contribute given most are terrified of engaging armies their own stacks aren't substantially more powerful than. The only times I've used it are to pave a way to a confederation by hoping the AI I drafted in throws its stacks away, and I can swoop in and confederate, but even that's not guaranteed.

All the DLC (barring vampire coast) is now on sale if anyone was eyeing up some additions to the game. I picked up the King and the Warlord for some Karak Eight Peaks action!

The older TW games also got a new edition released with all their DLC's included like Napoleon and Medieval 2.