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 flamingkillamajig wrote:
(at least this game on 'hard' is easier than the hardest difficulty of xcom 2 on ironman for me esp. with empire).

That is because 'hard' is literally designed to be the new normal.

I only run hard ever since I found out.

Grim and the Grave is out; I picked it up. Starting a game as Vlad to see how he plays.

Show and tell?

 lord marcus wrote:
Show and tell?

No pics, but so far he's pretty solid. He is foot only, so that's a hindrance; his starting units were pretty good. At level 3 I think he unlocks a skill that adds xp every turn to his army and a smaller amount to local armies, pretty useful. Haven't unlocked the quests for his gear yet - I have Manfred and Ghorst already around turn 30 since they are both so easy to unlock. Starting with Vlad seems like a pretty solid idea since to unlock him you have to take Altdorf, all of the other VC lords are easier. The Ghoul King seems interesting, but I wish they were more differentiated from the standard vampire lords. Regiments of Renown seem cool, but I play with the radious mod so I am already spoiled for unit choices.

ah the radious mod, so many bad design choices in there lol, its even more unbalanced than the standard game

So i probably should've built more walls sooner. I'm at turn 130+ and i swear every enemy has gotten a piece of my *** at some point or very nearly. I've outlasted a bunch of factions but haven't been really killed by any. My current main enemy is vampire counts and they just keep throwing armies at me. I think they've just about lost most of their armies though. Only one that looks threatening is mannfred's. I killed so many armies of his. Early on i killed like 4 vamp armies but then i lost some armies against him and kept having to rebuilt and fight him off. I managed to kill a few more of his armies and i think he's stretched pretty thin now for the territory he's got to protect.

Thankfully it's at a time when just about everybody else except greenskins and chaos tribes are allied with you so they are a huge buffer. Oddly Kislev is holding down the chaos wastes pretty solidly and my northern allies got things under control (i could confederate but if i did that i'd have more enemies and more useless armies to disband).

 Formosa wrote:
ah the radious mod, so many bad design choices in there lol, its even more unbalanced than the standard game

Agree. I use several mods (such as one which speeds up the rate of combat animations without meaningfully affecting DPS) but Radious seems horribly overrated.

I do not need bloated umpteen unit variations on unit X either.

I honestly love this game, but the broken hero system makes me want to put my head through a wall. I hate to trust in mods (as I've had some bad experiences with them) but I think I might have to in order to actually do something against enemy heroes

 Formosa wrote:
ah the radious mod, so many bad design choices in there lol, its even more unbalanced than the standard game

That is a opinion open for debate, the standard game is as fun as watching paint dry. And in dire need of severe improvement if you ask some. I would rather have a large rooster of units than a few stock units that is less than fun to use

The only thing that makes the base game dry is because they took the lazy way out and reused the empire roster for the minor factions

 Trondheim wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
ah the radious mod, so many bad design choices in there lol, its even more unbalanced than the standard game

That is a opinion open for debate, the standard game is as fun as watching paint dry. And in dire need of severe improvement if you ask some. I would rather have a large rooster of units than a few stock units that is less than fun to use

that's fine, id like more units too, but just spamming units at us with no thought to balance or fluff, no thanks, I got WARHAMMER total war because A: its a Warhammer game and B: its a total war game, its not called Radious total war

BTW for clarity, I like the standard radious mod, I just don't like the Total units mod, why use swordsman, when armoured swordsman exist, why use either when you can spam knights of morr, its the same issue for every race.

It comes down to player preferences, I guess. I use the Empire of Sigmar mod and while I could use the three Reiksguard units on foot instead of state troops I don't (except in Karl Franz army, he has nothing but mounted and dismounted Reiksguard, it's a joy) because it wouldn't feel right

Elves... when will we get elves?!?!

Played through Dwarves and Empire now. Tempted to try Chaos out, just cause that seems like it would be really difficult. Really waiting for the Elves though. Been a life long High Elf player, and it I'm Jonesing hard for them.

High Elfs are apparently part of the first new full on 'expansion', since much more would be needed for them locationwise (and high elfs without dark?)

Wood Elfs however seem to be a dlc race coming eventually.

 Ashiraya wrote:
but Radious seems horribly overrated.

It was good for earlier TW games but I didn't like it here. In earlier games unit bloat was managed by only allowing certain units to be recruited from specific locations. That worked well but the sheer unit spam is the most obvious issue with Radious, for me at least.

I run at lot of mods, I probably have at least a dozen active at any one time, but none of them add any units.

I like the radious mod for most of the non unit changes mostly, but the unit stuff is fine for me.

It gives me more options, which is always a good thing in my opinion. I build armies that I think are thematic and choose units accordingly, so I don't mind there being a bunch of choices.

 Formosa wrote:

 Trondheim wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
ah the radious mod, so many bad design choices in there lol, its even more unbalanced than the standard game

That is a opinion open for debate, the standard game is as fun as watching paint dry. And in dire need of severe improvement if you ask some. I would rather have a large rooster of units than a few stock units that is less than fun to use

that's fine, id like more units too, but just spamming units at us with no thought to balance or fluff, no thanks, I got WARHAMMER total war because A: its a Warhammer game and B: its a total war game, its not called Radious total war

BTW for clarity, I like the standard radious mod, I just don't like the Total units mod, why use swordsman, when armoured swordsman exist, why use either when you can spam knights of morr, its the same issue for every race.

Well in my humble opinion they threw the fluff out the window when they made Empire seccesionists in Reikland, and the fact that most of the Dwarf factions are notoriously untrustworty, or the fact that you can have trade with the Vampire counts.

The game as is now is decent but not what it could have been. Also why did they get rid of army traditions? I mean in a total war game that would have been awesome and made your armies much, much more valueable

Are dwarfs untrustworthy or are they just hard to trust others? Also far as i can tell in the game the dwarfs mostly trust you as long as you don't ally with an idiot who attacks them or vice versa.

The only background i mostly knew about was vampire counts and skaven and not a whole lot else so take that as you will.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Are dwarfs untrustworthy or are they just hard to trust others? Also far as i can tell in the game the dwarfs mostly trust you as long as you don't ally with an idiot who attacks them or vice versa.

The only background i mostly knew about was vampire counts and skaven and not a whole lot else so take that as you will.

..... Yes very much so, in particular Karak Hirn and the other smaller clans, backstabbing a holes all of them. I have had them declear war on me without cause more times than I care to think about. Last time this happend was when I played as the Empire and had just gotten into a confederation with the faction that has Nuln as it capitol. BAM suddenly four Dwarf throngs swooped in and rolfstomped me until I managed to wipe the rats out

 Trondheim wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Are dwarfs untrustworthy or are they just hard to trust others? Also far as i can tell in the game the dwarfs mostly trust you as long as you don't ally with an idiot who attacks them or vice versa.

The only background i mostly knew about was vampire counts and skaven and not a whole lot else so take that as you will.

..... Yes very much so, in particular Karak Hirn and the other smaller clans, backstabbing a holes all of them. I have had them declear war on me without cause more times than I care to think about. Last time this happend was when I played as the Empire and had just gotten into a confederation with the faction that has Nuln as it capitol. BAM suddenly four Dwarf throngs swooped in and rolfstomped me until I managed to wipe the rats out

That there is just the wanaz from the Black Mountains and Grey Mountains. True Dawi would never be so craven.

I gotta say the first time i rolled out demigryph knights vs dwarfs in this i sorta stood back and was like "Holy Jesus!". They pretty much routed the whole army themselves and same went for bretonnia. Those poor bretonnians don't even really seem to have a counter to that and dwarfs are also fairly stumped vs lance demigryphs. The halberd ones are ok and sometimes do decent vs larger targets but nothing too great.

I'd say if you face a monster a luminark of hysh is your best bet. Those things are just silly vs characters btw and some other single targets. I wonder what it'll do to hellcannons and monsters.

Other than that i have gotten the hang of helstorm rockets and they are sick vs slow armies or light infantry spam. Still needing to find how best to use helblaster volley guns.

In the current game chaos has been owned by us and i'm doing pretty well. Confederated the last empire faction (only took in two), had to destroy one and the others either destroyed themselves or got killed by other factions. Gotta say the empire is a bunch of self destructive little ****s but then a lot of the factions are.

My biggest issue currently is being outmaneuvered by enemies or having the wrong setup for my army to face an army but i seem to have done ok for the most part. Only real threats at this point are greenskins and varg (chaos tribe). Vampire counts could also be a problem if they declare war but thankfully the greenskins are fighting them and it's keeping me free to handle other problems. Oddly as you say dwarf factions do seem to be backstabbers but some bretonnian factions were too and part of it is allies making a hundred enemies. Note to self don't make allies unless they are powerful enough as they love making enemies.

 Formosa wrote:

BTW for clarity, I like the standard radious mod, I just don't like the Total units mod, why use swordsman, when armoured swordsman exist, why use either when you can spam knights of morr, its the same issue for every race.

Why use swordsmen when you can have great swordsmen?

Because swordsmen are shielded and are way cheaper?

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

BTW for clarity, I like the standard radious mod, I just don't like the Total units mod, why use swordsman, when armoured swordsman exist, why use either when you can spam knights of morr, its the same issue for every race.

Why use swordsmen when you can have great swordsmen?

Because they have different rolls, one is shielded and high defence, the other is armour piecing and anti elite, and each has a different cost, armoured swordsman are just swordsman +1 for no reason, knights of morr are just better than everything at everything, so no need for Greatswords, Spears, halberds and normal swordsman, then we get into plugging holes in the weakness of an army for no reason, undead archers and handgunners, black orc arrer boys, it goes on, the unit balance is non existent.

Played some more of the game today. Got a random general to whatever rank you need to have them using a griffon mount. I feel like that's impressive for a guy that when he dies is gone for good. Oddly he seems to have a ridiculously lucky and good track record. Lucky because i kept him out of an army that got slaughtered at one point. His units of crossbows, greatswords, demigryphs with halberds, helstorm rockets and luminarks are amazing esp. in sieges and have won me battles vs dwarfs, undead and the norse tribes. In particular i'd imagine they're best vs hordes and lightly armored melee armies mostly. Luminarks rock in sieges (breaking down walls, gates and enemy towers), character killing and tough small unit killing (chariots, monstrous infantry, monsters and other single or near single targets). The rockets are just great in general but esp. vs lightly armored horde or slow moving targets like dwarfs. Demigryphs with halberds are kinda just ok but their role is monstrous infantry and cavalry killing). The crossbowmen are only there because i need something to kill incoming flyers and fast units like wolves and light cavalry esp. with shooting weapons.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Because swordsmen are shielded and are way cheaper?

Shields don't do much compared to 70 more armour. Cheapness applies to armoured swordsmen too.

Formosa wrote:Because they have different rolls, one is shielded and high defence, the other is armour piecing and anti elite, and each has a different cost, armoured swordsman are just swordsman +1 for no reason, knights of morr are just better than everything at everything, so no need for Greatswords, Spears, halberds and normal swordsman, then we get into plugging holes in the weakness of an army for no reason, undead archers and handgunners, black orc arrer boys, it goes on, the unit balance is non existent.

Greatswords have 2 less melee defence. Due to their armour they'll last longer against anything. I'm not even sure they'll die more quickly to AP archers. The only advantage swordsmen really over them is the cost. That applies to armoured swordsmen too. Knights of Morr did seem a bit good but I don't know how good they'd be against heavily armoured troops or monsters. How much AP damage did they have? Undead archers were put in because it makes no sense not to have them (plus they are generally less cost effective than the archers of other races; same with Black Orc Arrer Boys). I mean, it's not amazingly balanced but neither is the base game.

Been playing the new dlc without mods and Vlad is a beast

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
Because swordsmen are shielded and are way cheaper?

Shields don't do much compared to 70 more armour. Cheapness applies to armoured swordsmen too.

Formosa wrote:Because they have different rolls, one is shielded and high defence, the other is armour piecing and anti elite, and each has a different cost, armoured swordsman are just swordsman +1 for no reason, knights of morr are just better than everything at everything, so no need for Greatswords, Spears, halberds and normal swordsman, then we get into plugging holes in the weakness of an army for no reason, undead archers and handgunners, black orc arrer boys, it goes on, the unit balance is non existent.

Greatswords have 2 less melee defence. Due to their armour they'll last longer against anything. I'm not even sure they'll die more quickly to AP archers. The only advantage swordsmen really over them is the cost. That applies to armoured swordsmen too. Knights of Morr did seem a bit good but I don't know how good they'd be against heavily armoured troops or monsters. How much AP damage did they have? Undead archers were put in because it makes no sense not to have them (plus they are generally less cost effective than the archers of other races; same with Black Orc Arrer Boys). I mean, it's not amazingly balanced but neither is the base game.

Kinda agree with SomeRandomEvilGuy. Swordsmen are one of those units that stops being useful when you get the higher tier version of the same thing. I think crossbowmen still retain their use (longer range and better vs light infantry and can shoot over other soldiers) but the shield isn't enough to make up for the lack of armor usually. Greatswords are usually just more durable. AP weapons could probably kill em fast but they have their own and if you have the right tools for the job you should be able to handle opponents that they can't. Swordsmen just aren't that good against more basic things (probably some of the worse melee troops). Under fire from ranged weapons the armor also probably helps. Basically if you have the time and the money greatswords are superior in every way to swordsmen. I suppose you could still use swordsmen or crossbowmen or similar with priests and then use them to settle ruins though (the priests rebuilding the army faster of course).

At least they're not spearmen without shields though. I tend to stop even making spearmen with shields once halberds are available. Also since i got demigryphs with halberds i'm not even really building halberds anymore. Halberds are nice but demigryphs have the mobility and durability that they don't. Infantry probably do it better en masse but the ability to threaten monstrous infantry and chariots on the move is really nice.

I personally never make spearmen without shields and even then they don't remain long in my army.

 Bobthehero wrote:
I personally never make spearmen without shields and even then they don't remain long in my army.

Off-topic but you should totally change your 4 shades of grey in your models to like 50 ;P.