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Select the units you want to control, group them, place them as you want, then click the option to preserve their relative position, et voila custom formations.

I've figured out from skirmish mode a pretty good idea on what each unit in the Greenskin army is supposed to do.

Big'Uns have the orc equivalent of anti-large, which makes them get extra damage against cavalry or larger units such as monstrous creatures. Unlike spearmen and other defensive anti cavalry units which are expected to receive a charge, Big'Uns should charge into cavalry units or monstrous creatures to leverage their strong charge bonus.

Savage Orc Big'Uns have anti-large, and they also have immunity to fear and terror, which can make them useful when dealing with fear monstrous units such as Shaggoths such as Kholek Suneater, Wyverns or dragons.

This makes them roughly the orc equivalent of Slayers. Also noteworthy is that Slayers are the only close combat infantry in the dwarven army with anti-large, which makes me suspect that their role is also to engage cavalry units from the rear once they have been intercepted by their heavily armored dwarven counterparts, since slayers technically receive a damage bonus against cav as well. Dwarves do not have spear infantry (or cavalry) which is interesting.

Orc Boar Boyz have anti infantry and armor piercing plus shields, which makes them ideal for attacking heavy infantry units, especially missile troops with good melee skills such as quarrelers. This makes them ideal against dwarves.

Orc Big'Un Boar Boyz have armor piercing and anti-large, which makes them ideal for crushing charges and cycle charges against heavy cavalry and armored monstrous creatures.

Savage Orc Big'Un Boar Boyz have armor piercing, anti-large, and immunity to fear and terror which makes them useful for heavy cavalry and fear-causing monstrous creatures. They also have warpaint, which gives them a 20% physical damage reduction common to all Savage Orcs. Savage Orcs should be cycle charged as much as possible due to high offense>defense.

Savage Orcs have immunity to terror, strong charge bonus, fast movement speeds, but are largely for punishing infantry squads in close combat. Due to their lack of armor, they should be used in the rear prior to engaging infantry near terror causing aura units such as Kholek Suneater or Giants, where standard Boyz might flee due to the aura leadership malus.

Black Orcs have very high armor saves and to leverage this should be kept away from great weapon units, ideally against heavy shielded infantry such as dwarves or shielded chaos warriors. These seem to be the most versatile and capable infantry in the orc army with high leadership values, best disposed in the flanks. Vulnerable to artillery and armor piercing units such as Shaggoths or Kholek Suneater. Interestingly, Big'Uns and Savage Orcs both outperform Black Orcs against Kholek Suneater in my testing. Two units of Savage Orcs were able to overcome Kholek easily, whereas Kholek obliterated an entire unit of Black Orcs with ease.

Warbosses are mediocre beat sticks onfoot, and their primary use is their leadership abilities. They are merely average frontline combatants and have to be handled carefully to preserve their leadership active abilities, which must be used on cooldown. Do not engage enemy lords with this unit unsupported as he will die. His hit points are very low.

Warbosses can be equipped with a war boar which gives him armor piercing, and increases his charge bonus and speed for no downside. It should be said though that this should be primarily used for mobility and a warboar equipped warboss will still easily rout when confronted with a powerful lord or when targeted by heavy infantry. This compromises the army which relies on his leadership aura and abilities.

Warbosses can be mounted on wyverns, but they are slow once engaged and cannot lift off when surrounded. Must use his charges carefully as he will land in the middle of units and become overwhelmed. Also, the price is only 50 gold less than putting Azhag on a wyvern, who has only slightly worse combat stats, the same core abilities, but access to Death Magic spells, which include powerful AoE and debuffs.

The Arachnarok spider is the best unit in the army (and possibly the game) with armor piercing and poison attacks, 100 armor (equivalent to chaos warriors and dwarven lords), fast runspeed, massive weapon damage, high combat abilities, and ranged attacks to boot.

Grimgor Ironhide is a Warboss with 110 armor. He has low health and while he is an adequate footbased beatstick, he gets exploded by armor piercing power lords such as Kholek Suneater. Only average for the points. He is nothing like his facewrecking 8th edition counterpart. Huge disappointment.

Azhag costs only 50 gold more than a Warboss on a Wyvern. His combat skills are mediocre but he can fly around the battlefield extremely quickly as long as you do not engage him in combat. It is a tempting but stupid idea to send him to go engage enemy artillery as he will quickly be surrounded and unable to fly away from combat, also carrying your leadership aura and abilities away from your army center is a great way to watch a third of your army rout while he struggles to kill a unit of marauders and a cannon. Best way to use him is to fly around the army center casting unit buffs and Lore of Death Magic, engaging a weak flank strategically once all units are engaged. Once he has lost most of his health he easily routs and takes about a third of your army with him due to bad leadership.

Standard Orc boys are screening infantry that should be used to charge the enemy center and flanks, fixing them with their numerical superiority. They will rout every battle against numerically equivalent forces and must be periodically sent back into battle to use their full effect.
Fortunately they have high charge bonuses, so this can still work out if you cycle charge each routing unit when it recovers.

 Yodhrin wrote:
Select the units you want to control, group them, place them as you want, then click the option to preserve their relative position, et voila custom formations.

Agh, I'm sorry I didn't see that under game options. Thank you very much.

I also used to use either "W" or the up arrow to order a battleline to shuffle forward.

Just realized that the only way to beat an arachnarok spider is to fix it with a unit of slayers and then shoot it with a cannon.

It easily chewed through 2 units of slayers. It also chewed through halberd chosen (which have armor piercing, charge defense against large, and anti-large) without a problem. Killed a Shaggoth without breaking a sweat, barely injured. Also killed Kholek Suneater 1v1 without a problem. It even knocks down Giants and paralyzes them with each hit so it can't even strike back. Pretty ridiculous for the biggest single humanoid in the game, with armor piercing to boot, getting knocked around by a giant spider.

I have no idea why they thought 150 armor on a monstrous creature was a good idea

My new army list for orcs is 5 Arachnarok spiders.

Gyrocopters and Trollhammer Irondrakes are garbage. Neither even dented the spider.

Also, just realized that hard mode and very hard mode add leadership maluses to friendly troops and positive bonuses to enemy troops. I thought they got rid of those garbage balancing methods, but evidently they are still relying on them since they refuse to code in AI changes.

Also, I've been through 2 complete campaigns in M2TW and Shogun 2 and I didn't know you could shuffle units with the arrow key :{ I'm a dumb person.

 Yodhrin wrote:
Select the units you want to control, group them, place them as you want, then click the option to preserve their relative position, et voila custom formations.

Yeah i know that's a thing but i don't know how to do it either.

@TedNugent: According to the info on the victory screen i recruited 41 heroes and lost 9 but it gifts you some during the campaign so i may have had at least a few more. I also recruited 13 lords and lost 15 somehow. Some may have been gifts/rewards because i think i had 5 armies at the end so 5 lords leading them.

Been playing with the Radious Mod, since why not; vampire counts campaign was going swimmingly until my ally Orcs - the Bloody Spears or whatever, who had routed almost all the dwarfs and taken everything east of me confederated with the misc 'greenskins' faction who hated me.

Eight banners of orcs hit my southeast border, which had almost nothing defending it. Never trust orcs.

 Bromsy wrote:
Been playing with the Radious Mod, since why not; vampire counts campaign was going swimmingly until my ally Orcs - the Bloody Spears or whatever, who had routed almost all the dwarfs and taken everything east of me confederated with the misc 'greenskins' faction who hated me.

Eight banners of orcs hit my southeast border, which had almost nothing defending it. Never trust orcs.

That's how i feel about the empire, bretonnia and sub-faction dwarfs i faced in my campaign. They all fought me at the same time.

Btw i'm almost curious if i should use disorder increasing heroes vs the orcs. If the orcs aren't fighting or they are losing their fightiness goes down. Adding public disorder to that would increase that rate exponentially and rebellions would be super common.

so I logged 30 hours into the game, mostly as the vamps.

Turns out I must be the friendliest Fething vamp in the warhammer world because every single faction (Bretonia, dwarfs, Empire and other factions of man) asked for trade and alliances almost every other turn while I was beating back the chaos hordes. The hordes, by the way, never made it past the barders landing or whatever due to my defense. Pretty proud of that! hell, the general I named after myself ended up slaying archeon in the final battle Now I'm sitting with about 4 full stack armies wondering what I should do. I am thinking about breaking my alliance with the empire (who had united all the factions of mankind ) after I finish off the Varg and other warriors, or go for the greenskins with that settle anywhere mod.

So, that's the free period for the Chaos Warriors over now.

So I'm going trough as ungrim now and i'm on the Dragon Cloak of Fryskar quest now. It is asking me to raid any settlement from the greenskin tribes. So I took over a town, and sacked a town for money. Do I need to raze one? Or is it sack one of the bigger settlements? Thanks if I'm missing something stupid!

"Raid" in Rome 2 was a specific "Battle stance" your army could do in enemy territory. If I remember right, it halved the armies upkeep costs while in that territory and reduces the income from that territory by a percentage too.

Compel, you deserve a hug sir. Thank you!

has any fellow undead players been having a hell of a time fighting against the Varg and Skaeling? I am in a split war against them and the greenskins and cannot seem to penetrate the northern mountains without all the armies dogpiling me.

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
has any fellow undead players been having a hell of a time fighting against the Varg and Skaeling? I am in a split war against them and the greenskins and cannot seem to penetrate the northern mountains without all the armies dogpiling me.

A bit. I just decided to make peace with the skaeling and finish off the varg while fighting orcs. After that the bretonnia, empire, empire vassal dwarfs and other small faction dwarfs all declared war on me. They all just decided to ally against me in that fight. I was mad because bretonnia was a good trading partner for a while due to my port and our sea link.

I was about as nice of a vampire as you. I think the only good guy i fought early was the dwarfs and i'm not sure if they attacked me first. Oh and one or two small empire sub-factions i think but that was super early on.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
has any fellow undead players been having a hell of a time fighting against the Varg and Skaeling? I am in a split war against them and the greenskins and cannot seem to penetrate the northern mountains without all the armies dogpiling me.

A bit. I just decided to make peace with the skaeling and finish off the varg while fighting orcs. After that the bretonnia, empire, empire vassal dwarfs and other small faction dwarfs all declared war on me. They all just decided to ally against me in that fight. I was mad because bretonnia was a good trading partner for a while due to my port and our sea link.

I was about as nice of a vampire as you. I think the only good guy i fought early was the dwarfs and i'm not sure if they attacked me first. Oh and one or two small empire sub-factions i think but that was super early on.

for me they really dont want to have peace, So I dont know what to do about it besides send ALL of my full stack armies to roflstomp them.

also they seem to have a rebellion when they hit -50 public order instead of -100? (i'm using a mod to conquer everywhere)

 Tiger9gamer wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
has any fellow undead players been having a hell of a time fighting against the Varg and Skaeling? I am in a split war against them and the greenskins and cannot seem to penetrate the northern mountains without all the armies dogpiling me.

A bit. I just decided to make peace with the skaeling and finish off the varg while fighting orcs. After that the bretonnia, empire, empire vassal dwarfs and other small faction dwarfs all declared war on me. They all just decided to ally against me in that fight. I was mad because bretonnia was a good trading partner for a while due to my port and our sea link.

I was about as nice of a vampire as you. I think the only good guy i fought early was the dwarfs and i'm not sure if they attacked me first. Oh and one or two small empire sub-factions i think but that was super early on.

for me they really dont want to have peace, So I dont know what to do about it besides send ALL of my full stack armies to roflstomp them.

also they seem to have a rebellion when they hit -50 public order instead of -100? (i'm using a mod to conquer everywhere)

They tend to throw peace treaties at you if their *** gets kicked hard enough and from what's i've seen so far they seem to obey it fairly well. May be so you guys can concentrate on enemies elsewhere. If peace doesn't work then sweeten the deal with money or something.

Had a few attempts at the Greenskin campaign.

Lessons learnt so far are...

1) Build the obedience buildings asap, slow growth is worth not having rebellions spring up.

2) As with any faction, having 1 front is the best possible thing, althouh with Greenskins, multiple fronts (if you have the economy to fund it) is good for keeping your fightiness down.

3) Armour piercing is your friend against dorfs, as they all come with a fair chunk.

4) Ironhide is a pretty decent beatstick and the first set of red traits also comes with some pretty nice armybuffs.

5) The starting Goblin Shaman spell is great, abuse it always.

Was doing pretty well as Chaos until out of nowhere a wild Tzeentch army appeared...kind stuck now with no real way of defeating it. Tried on the battlefield multiple times, I always kill the LoC but the rest of his army just does too much damage.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 Tiger9gamer wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
has any fellow undead players been having a hell of a time fighting against the Varg and Skaeling? I am in a split war against them and the greenskins and cannot seem to penetrate the northern mountains without all the armies dogpiling me.

A bit. I just decided to make peace with the skaeling and finish off the varg while fighting orcs. After that the bretonnia, empire, empire vassal dwarfs and other small faction dwarfs all declared war on me. They all just decided to ally against me in that fight. I was mad because bretonnia was a good trading partner for a while due to my port and our sea link.

I was about as nice of a vampire as you. I think the only good guy i fought early was the dwarfs and i'm not sure if they attacked me first. Oh and one or two small empire sub-factions i think but that was super early on.

for me they really dont want to have peace, So I dont know what to do about it besides send ALL of my full stack armies to roflstomp them.

also they seem to have a rebellion when they hit -50 public order instead of -100? (i'm using a mod to conquer everywhere)

They tend to throw peace treaties at you if their *** gets kicked hard enough and from what's i've seen so far they seem to obey it fairly well. May be so you guys can concentrate on enemies elsewhere. If peace doesn't work then sweeten the deal with money or something.

I did make varg peacefull in my last play session, now I can just focus on the skaeling and watch my back for any rowdy empire about to attack me.

I feel pretty happy though. I managed to defeat 3 full stacks of chaos with 1 of vampire counts. Granted, I had the black coach, Manfreed, a necromancer, two vargulfs and a terrorguist in the army. Somehow Both Manfreed (on a zombie dragon no less!) and my necromancer got killed, and I saved the game by having my terrorgeist fly around attacking maurader horsemen as he was the only thing that could catch it. I kid you not, I must have gotten over 2000 kills at least!

"Fools! Your attacking me is only making my army more badass!"

In my vh chaos campaign, the VCs follow the chaos forces at a respectful distance, colonizing all the former human lands that chaos razed

I hate Thogrim with a passion, every 10 turns or so, he just turns up on an unguarded border, while I keep attempting to finish off the various things in the south eastern corner.

I've razed about a fair number of dorf settlements north of me, but don't want to push to far north on my fragile economy (can't afford the extra stacks)without solving the south.

In my greenskins campaign i already have 12 settlements only 2 full provinces sadly (confederated one faction of greenies with 2) and took out the main dwarf faction. Oddly the other factions arrayed against me weren't very aggressive at all. That's their mistake. They're next ;P.

Is anyone else finding this "kick you in the balls hard?" I am playing greenskinz on normal and if I haven't got a Thorgrim stack rolling through my lands unstoppable I have a bunch of savage orcs attacking that also seem to be unstoppable.

After a lot of reloads I managed to crush the Dwarfs and made friends with the Orcs however I now have 3 full stacks of elite Chaos Warriors just show up in the south of the badlands! I have 2% corruption and these guys just appear out of nowhere??

I am enjoying the challenge but it seems so much harder than the previous total wars (I have been playing the series since the start).

Anyone else finding this?

So...I've settled on Sigvald the Magnificent. Why? In a word: Hellcannon.

He's also no slouch in melee, and because he's (perpetually, apparently) on foot, you don't have to worry about him straying too far afield. Also, with a hellcannon (or four, which is how I'm rolling), enemies are less inclined to stand around picking their teeth while you slog across the battlefield toward them. These days I get to wait for them to slog to me, while my Marauders harass their flanks and the hellcannons obliterate the center.

The two biggest annoyances I'm dealing with right now are: 1) You can't optimize your movement if you want to go camp--move--camp. I sometimes go too far and can't re-camp. Dumb. Where's the button that says, "Move as far as I can and then make camp"? 2) Your Lord doesn't appear to gain ANY experience for laying siege. Reduced XP, sure, but none? Bah. My solution is the above-mentioned hellcannons.

I've made my peace with attrition losses due to having another army too close; there are some situations where it simply can't be avoided. I wish I could take some of my excess 'population' from my main horde and 'gift' it to new ones so they could jumpstart their growth. /shrug Having an allied stack (even if it's a small one--my allied horde just has some chariots and dogs in it, so it's my 'fast attack' detachment) AND having 'Lightning Strike' (denying your enemy reinforcements) is really important.

Daston wrote:
Is anyone else finding this "kick you in the balls hard?" I am playing greenskinz on normal and if I haven't got a Thorgrim stack rolling through my lands unstoppable I have a bunch of savage orcs attacking that also seem to be unstoppable.

That's been happening to me, too - so far they're not unstoppable, I've been making heavy use of Waaagh! armies to help deal with them and I've killed Thorgrim three times, but they are slowing me down to an annoying degree. They show up, sack a city, get cornered and stomped out, then come back in a few turns.

I've killed Thorgrim's army to a man three separate times, he just keeps getting right back up...

 Spinner wrote:

Daston wrote:
Is anyone else finding this "kick you in the balls hard?" I am playing greenskinz on normal and if I haven't got a Thorgrim stack rolling through my lands unstoppable I have a bunch of savage orcs attacking that also seem to be unstoppable.

That's been happening to me, too - so far they're not unstoppable, I've been making heavy use of Waaagh! armies to help deal with them and I've killed Thorgrim three times, but they are slowing me down to an annoying degree. They show up, sack a city, get cornered and stomped out, then come back in a few turns.

I've killed Thorgrim's army to a man three separate times, he just keeps getting right back up...

Dwarfs running around attacking settlements are a major problem early game, you have to take out Karaz a Karak (and the side ones in the northern side) if you want to have them stop spawning random armies that attack you from the north. I besieged it with 2 Orc armies and after I took it out (it gives major income btw) it became the turning point in the campaign for me since I could start conquering the rest of the orc tribes in the badlands at my leisure. The Red Fangs are the only orc tribe I've encountered that are as aggressive and typically if you're beating the snot out of them you can force a peace treaty.

Also finally beat the Orc campaign. So much monies, gotta love dat conquering. Ended with me razing Altdorf to the ground, conquered all the Badlands, had 6 full stack armies with WAAAAGH!'s following them and a daily income rate of 11,000 gold per turn. I didn't realize how easy Orcs have it against Chaos, by the time they got through to me it was just Sigvald and Archaon and they got shrek'td hard.

AI douchebaggery is getting on my nerves, alongside being able to reinforce from miles away. I remember when reinforcing armies was only possible if the armies were standing next to each other; currently these Counts are able to send on stack into my territory to encircle, and have another stack sit in their territory outside of attrition, but still in range to reinforce for an attack.

Combine that with them pulling entire armies out of their arse, and my allied Dwarf force being creamed by 70% zombie armies because of how auto-resolve works, and I highly regret even thinking I could take on Vamps. There's just nothing I can do. I don't own settlements close enough to the front-line to replenish units or train more, retreating never takes me far enough from an enemy to avoid being run down, my allies are less than useless despite their armies being far superior thanks to AR still being broken--seriously, it's been awful for as long as I can remember--and after every fight, the Vamps auto-regenerate half their army back for free, can raise dead from the fight, and come back at you as if you'd never beaten them to begin with...

I might have to restart and focus on nuking the Vamps from the get-go. Around turn 30+ they've managed to get so fat off kicking other AI around that they need all your attention to get rid of, but by that times you're likely already deep intro greenskin territory.

I really do not like this game and I really thought I would. My main problems right now in order

Tag teamed by random enemys had the goblins team up with the dwarfs after i took my area.

Random full army spanws

Useless units. I get it orks are stupid but come on. I had a unit told to retreat who stood still til they all died. A unit of spider riders chasing a single dwarf gunner across the map with out turning around.

Units standing behind each other waiting for a turn to fight.... Like wtf is this a cheese action movie . stop guys one at a time frig we do not want to go winning this.
Want to see what I mean tell 2 units of ork to attack anything the first unit there will form a line of about 5 units then when one dies move in. While the second unit will wait patiently for their turn rather then circling or moving on.

The horrible auto resolve, auto loss more like it. 4 units of orks, azhag, 2 units of spider riders, 3 units of arrow boyz 4 units of golbin spearmen. Vs goblin boss 3 units of spearmen and 2 units of goblin archers.
Thats right a horrible defeat to the man even azhag died........

And god I hate the fat dwarf riding around on the chair his people hold. How many times can he auto spawn after death current anwser 6 with a full army.

I find it surprising you guys are having such a hard time with the orcs. I'm playing on normal with Grimgor and it's fairly easy. Kill enough dwarfs (which makes greenies love you) and then confederate with greenskins to absorb them into your empire. I'm on turn like 46 or something and the main dwarfs have been gone a while, the other dwarfs are on their last legs (1-2 territories left) and my territory is on ridiculous levels. Everybody within view has like 4 or so territories at most excepting one other greenskin tribe i know about (which has savage orcs) and shocker they're on friendly terms with me and waiting to join a confederation. All i have to do is conquer a bit more, make more money and i'll absorb their 12 territories into my empire as well.

Seriously i don't get the complaints so far. I've pretty much absorbed every orc faction out there into my orc faction. Not only that but the Waaagh! army is just stupid good. You keep letting them tag along with you for each battle and you let them die for you so your waaagh! can stay higher which is the only real negative modifier besides losing. Also using the Underway is stupid strong.

I will admit though that my obedience and Waaagh! levels were a bit of a struggle but as a 2nd playthrough and knowing the ins and outs of this it's not that hard anymore (they're mostly in the negatives but stabilizing). Keep winning fights for each army and honestly that could probably be mitigated by adding units from failing armies into successful ones with higher Waaagh levels.

It's Turn 43 and everything yellow is mine.

This just in from the Warhammer app..

Apparently there is a hidden code in this image. Buggered if I can see it though
Linky:
http://d3sfrpv2p43dtq.cloudfront.net/panoramas/warhammer/the-empire-besieged/index.html