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AllSeeingSkink wrote:
TW:W1 keeps telling me I've run out of video card memory with my 2GB GTX960, so I guess they needed to bump up the recommended V-RAM specs even if graphically the new game is much the same as the old one.

I get that message as well, but I never used to when I first start playing. Nor does it seem to impact anything in play, which I run on low specs but with no problems. I have wondered if its a bug and there's no actual issue with video card memory.

Enjoying it so far. Playing as Tyrion, working my way clockwise around Ulthuan. Caledor declared war on me early, otherwise I'm trying to confederate with the other HE factions. Putting all the Dark Elves to the sword though. No mercy for those traitorous scum.

Started with Tyrion. Recruited a Princess and gave her a Swifthawk surname, nifty bonuses on archer units and an Elven Noble. Raised the Noble's experience bar on Caledor's army. Apparently you can get some additional influence that way, although I really haven't paid attention to that. Was more amused with how Noble's "diplomatic chat" might have went. Need a name for him Aasaryan *something to be decided*.

Really want to unlock those Loremasters...hope there's a quest that gives you one as a reward.

Got two trading achievements, playing on normal as I was afraid that hard might prove too hard and I'd need to restart everything.

Fingers crossed that our new legendary lord is going to be Eltharion the Grim.

Playing as Malekith at the moment, I am haing a bit of trouble with the Norscans in the north and the Beastmen in the south.

 djones520 wrote:
Enjoying it so far. Playing as Tyrion, working my way clockwise around Ulthuan. Caledor declared war on me early, otherwise I'm trying to confederate with the other HE factions. Putting all the Dark Elves to the sword though. No mercy for those traitorous scum.

Caledor and Saphery were invited into the war against the initial Dark Elf faction on Ulthuan.

By the Dark Elves.

Against me, Tyrion.

*Pained sigh as my brain tries and fails to justify such a thing*

So now I'm bulldozing Saphery--or I would be, had an army of 11 Troll units not suddenly spawned inside my territory, and the only army I've got that can come close to dealing with them is Tyrion's, so I've had to pull him away from bulldozing duties to chase these fething trolls around, hoping they don't try and attack any settlements along the way.

Started a Dark Elf/Malekith campaign. Promptly found out that I have been pronouncing Druchii wrong for the entirety of my Warhammer Fantasy fandom.

Droo-kee? Rather than Droo-chee?

Am I alone on this?

 nels1031 wrote:
Started a Dark Elf/Malekith campaign. Promptly found out that I have been pronouncing Druchii wrong for the entirety of my Warhammer Fantasy fandom.

Droo-kee? Rather than Droo-chee?

Am I alone on this?

I tend to flutter between both, the same as I do things like Cata-can/Cata-chan.

I was more surprised to learn that I've never once noticed Mazdamundi had a 'd' after the 'z'. I'm been saying Mazamundi for years and nobody's called me out on it.

 nels1031 wrote:
Started a Dark Elf/Malekith campaign. Promptly found out that I have been pronouncing Druchii wrong for the entirety of my Warhammer Fantasy fandom.

Droo-kee? Rather than Droo-chee?

Am I alone on this?

I pronounce it 'Drew-khai' myself.

I had always gone with dru-kii-i. Im not upset with this though.

My High Elf pronounciations have been on point though.

So quick question:

Will I autolose if I don’t complete the ritual first?

Apologies if its been talked about previously, but I actively tried to avoid any details about this game, be it its campaign gameplay, faction strengths and what have you, so that its all fresh, unkown and new before I jump into it. Didn’t want to spoil anything.

I basically only tuned in for faction reveals and such. It also doesn’t help that I rarely read tutorials in games either!

You dont have to be the first to complete it. You will lose if you never complete it though. First to complete the last ritual wins.

I pronounced it as dru kai aslo. Is there a way to play the HE's in the old world? For some reason I thought you could take them there.

I thought this was basically going to be an expansion, but there is a whole new campaign mechanic that seems fun - a giant chaos vortex everyone tries to gain control over.

I was torn between lizardmen and ratmen, but I chose skaven and am liking them.

Having a little trouble with their army, though, the only thing that seems to be worth a damn are rat ogres.

 Tagony wrote:
I pronounced it as dru kai aslo. Is there a way to play the HE's in the old world? For some reason I thought you could take them there.

Not until they release the mega-campaign. Supposed to be the first dlc I think. Don't worry, its free.

Am I one of the few actually playing Lizards? lol

Started with Mazdamundi on Easy because I haven't really played Total War games all that much, though it's turning out to be a bit too easy. I'm almost at turn 100 and I'm way ahead in rituals and have a nice hefty dino brigade that the AI seems to struggle against with almost all my heroes/lords mounted on stegadons or carnosaurs.

Still fun though. Is it normally this bloody hard to get a confederation? Took me 87 turns to convince one of the other Lizardmen factions to confederate with me, and they only did so when they were a couple of turns away from being wiped out by Skaven. My only past experience with Total War was playing Bretonnians in TW1 and they just seemed to be happy to confederate within a turn or two of getting the necessary tech upgrade.

I'm playing as Lizardmen too, on Hard - the new mechanics are cool, but I think I played too conservatively. I'm pretty powerful, have the middle 1/3 of the continent sewed up and I'm at #1 strength.

Unfortunately the #2 guys are Lothern, who have confederated with every other high elf faction and are ahead of me on the Vortex. I've convinced one of the other Lizard factions to confederate when Pestilens was about to wipe them out, and the diplomacy buff means I'm allied with and trading with the other surviving lizard factions.

I really want to mount a punitive expedition to mess up the elves some, but Pestilens is threatening to expand into my territory and I had to send a few armies to take the former Loremaster territories to my southwest before they could raise any forces to threaten my flank.

Tyrion is the most popular pick within 12 hours of game's launch. Time to get few more turns before the day ends.

Playing skaven myself as queek. Didn't play much but basically wiped out most of the high elf faction. I'm playing on hard difficulty though i did play the tutorial (and queek's start campaign is supposedly hard) and so far have had a mostly easy time except one battle which i was lucky enough to ambush when i attacked it. Had i not ambushed in all likelihood i would have lost that battle. I had another army but the fact i won that battle and did it so handily allowed me to basically go to his island and now i'm sieging his last territory with no army to stop me.

So far i have about 4 territories and the best units i can make are clanrats with shields and nightrunners of both types. Slaves are cheap garbage troops.

Oddly skaven corruption is a double edged sword for skaven and just bad for everything else. It ruins public order hardcore to the extent i have to make non-corruption buildings and station troops just to stave it off. I may just make whole armies of nothing but slaves to keep public order in check if that even makes any sense at all. Slaves prevent a rebellion through sheer numbers? That's just weird.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Is it normally this bloody hard to get a confederation?

I'm not a TW pro, but I did notice it was almost impossible to get a confederation going as orks, but as empire is was super easy.

In the end though, you do have to be orky (or skaven-y) about it. If they won't join on you on their own, just take what you want!

 Kap'n Krump wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Is it normally this bloody hard to get a confederation?

I'm not a TW pro, but I did notice it was almost impossible to get a confederation going as orks, but as empire is was super easy.

The various empire sub-factions had an 'underdog' trait, which made them want to confederate.
It's a weird thing that, like a lot of the diplomacy has a lot of hidden rules, bonuses and penalties. If they're too strong, they won't. If the relative strength doesn't match some equation you never see, they won't. If you're too unreliable, they won't. (This is extra fun in this game, since calling intercessions is a declaration of war, and will break treaties).

The strength thing is pretty nebulous. I just wrapped up my Morathi game (first game), and Naggrond and Hag Graef are still running around. As far as the system is concerned they're really strong, despite having a handful of half stacks that get trounced by anyone who tries to attack them. But they had a colonizing fetish so they have 15 and 19 settlements respectively, even though most of the are pure trash. (Malekith spent a good chunk of the early/mid game running around the entire continent colonizing the wastelands in the west), and then they both repopulated most of Ulthuan's outer ring, and the conquered the norscan tribes. So despite the fact that I had 450-500 rated relationships (a mix of war, ritual bonuses and holding the shrine of asuryan) with them both, they won't consider it.

------

But any case, the first campaign is done. I picked up 43 out of 106 achievements in the process, without cheese hunting for more (like the income, some of the unique structures and controlling various sites (the volcanoes, swamps, and sartosa).

Really did not like Morathi. Wanted to use the dark magic- pit of shades ended up doing very little and I couldn't overcast it for some reason, and her personal abilities from tabletop (enchanted beauty and blessings) are stuck up the wrong tree (the melee one). The sorceresses, however, were amazing. Some crazy sieges happened during the incursions, and a lot of my cities had a free sorceress, and even just chillwind made a big difference (pushed stacks back, did damage and kept them under the towers longer).

My approach ended up evolving in an unexpected direction- didn't want to fight Clar Karond, but the Sthis Tor faction to the south got in a pitched fight with Mazdamundi, and lost their capital to rebels. So I seized the capital, took the Mirror Pool (ritual resource site) from the remain skaven, and the proceeded to push Mazdamundi's face in. As it happens, a rogue army consisting of chaos and dark elves end up squatting in the ruins I left behind, and ended up turning into a major power in the northern jungles. We got along well with non-agression and trade, so they kept my southern border rather secure. As I came back, Clar Karon was on the losing end of a war with a beastmen herd (somehow), and I snapped up the free ritual resources from the ruins. Ghrond also somehow stayed intact, but with no allies, so a sniped it from under Malekith's nose- he got the arena, Hag Graef somehow got the border town, and I got the city.

Then it was across the sea to war with the stinking high elves. Seized some ground, destroyed too armies, then lost my foothold to a major push with yet more armies. Rebuilt, secured alliances (which did squat in the real fighting), while Lothern confederated away. The long war ensued- I took Vaul's Anvil, Lothern and Hoeth, and burnt everything else I could get my hands on, while my allies took a few cities (and a lot of ruins) on the northern side of the ring.

Meanwhile, while this was going on, Kroq-Gar botched his first ritual and never recovered. Then Pestilens confederated with Mors and took Queek's remaining territory, though subsequently lost most of it to the island elves of the southeast. Despite this (and my massive advantage in ritual resources), Pestilens was right on my heels for the final ritual (about 15 turns behind me). As i sieged their capital, they somehow managed to ambush the besiegers with an army, drawing in the city garrison and two! other skaven armies hiding in the area. They won, but were brutalized. Unfortunately they all fled to the other side of the city. Regrouping, I went for the final battle and, unsurprisingly, won.

As I said, I didn't like Morathi. I did her first with the idea that the rest would be better and I wouldn't want to step down to a Lord I didn't care for after playing the fun ones. Glad i did frankly. She just doesn't bring much to the table, the chaos corruption did minor attrition to my enemies (and more to allies, since Malekith kept wandering through and occasionally just hanging out). She's a pure caster with surprisingly little to cast, and a lot of melee abilities she shouldn't use very often.

The dark elf roster in general was solid. I got a lot of use out of Dark Riders and their vanguard deployment, and several time the saved me a lot of casualties for being able to descend on siege engines.Cold Ones hit very hard- the Dread Knights upgrade... didn't impress me so much.
Line infantry took a lot of damage, and auto-resolve often wiped them out completely. Sorceresses were crazy, and death hags on the altar would absolutely go nuts.

Did run into a few AI problems. One of the chaos corruption battlemaps (which was very common) features a pair of causeways across a river of lava. Twice, against skaven forces, the AI moved up across the river and... sat there. First time, I completely emptied my bolt thrower ammunition on them. They seemed to want me to cross the river, but my dark riders got to their artillery, so all they could do was die. Between the bolt throwers, and my sorceress tossing blade wind and chill wind, hundreds of skaven died and the remainder didn't put up much of a fight.

The AI also prioritizes colonizing too heavily, even for the worst environments, and often when there are enemies nearby that can destroy the weakened army (and lack of a new garrison).

I did enjoy the campaign and the surprises, but I can definitely tell it's going to wear on me pretty quickly. I look forward to the Mortal Empires campaign, more exploring and setting reasonable goals that don't involve running to different continents to beat the face of one particular set of idiots. Though the turn timer for the big campaign worries me... especially when the fast forward turns itself off.

Next, I think, is Kroq-Gar, followed by Skrolk and then Tyrion, making for a nice world tour.

Voss man you gotta lower the amount of text in your posts so they get read. Not trying to be mean just helping you out as someone that writes too much myself.

My game was going well until the first battle vs lizardmen. I think it was Kroq-gar or whoever runs the 'last defenders' lizardmen army. The other lizardmen army was getting thrashed by him and after the elves which i easily beat there weren't really many other opponents to beat. Anyway after the losses i had some serious food production problems to the extent i almost ran out of food (not sure what happens if you do). It was so bad i had to betray my ally skaven buddies and kill them. One of them lived due to me letting them have an island and they attacked me just before i left the game. Sadly that now leaves me in a position as the next enemy in line vs the powerful lizardman army and i can't really fight them off. The only things i can have that'd even be a match for them are stormvermin and plagueclaw catapults. I pray it'll be enough.

Btw is it me or are lizardmen just broken good. Guy has 3 armies and even with elites all over the place (i can barely get over one) and even with one army and some garrison he can fend me off without much issue. It still really sucks that computer players don't have to worry about army upkeep.

I haven't had to fight the lizards yet. It's been nothing but Dark Elves and Chaos so far. I've almost got Ulthuan secured, and then I'm thinking about heading north and wrecking the Dark Elves. They're second to me on the ritual, so need to slow them down a bit.

I started my "let's play around a bit and get a feel for what's going on" campaign play with Malekith. After clearing out the initial Skaven incursion, I grabbed Altar, since it's the big settlement in that province, and right next to Malekith's capitol.

This arguably turned out to be a mistake. The Chaos corruption started shooting through the roof. Part of it was characters (that I eventually located and chased out). Part of it was an unannounced event that added five(!) points of Chaos corruption to the province. And part of it was a Chaos population group that was still in place even after I owned all four settlements in the province. Unrest shot up to 100%, and I ended up spending an inordinate amount of time trying to keep the province stable (which is part of the reason why I ended up seizing all four settlements).

Mung was running around a bit in the northern areas until I started razing all of their settlements up there (didn't wipe them out, though, as they had at least one more settlement - and possibly others). They took Ghrond right before I could finish them off, so I "liberated" it instead of the more usual "conquered" it. Unfortunately, when I was putting my anti-Mung defences together in the early portion of the game, I accidentally put the garrison in the cul-de-sac settlement in Naggarond instead of the one that was in the pass leading to the Mung territory.

/facepalm

Early on I had military treaties with my southern and eastern neighbors. These worked quite well... right up until the point about thirty turns later when one of them suddenly (and out of the blue) declared war on the other.

/sigh

Now that I've got a more general idea of what's going on, I'm going to start over. And hopefully avoid some of my more careless mistakes.

Honestly at this point i may need to just start over myself and also turn the advisor off so he shuts up for once. Lizardmen are definitely a hard army to crack. I mean sure you can make em go crazy but the amount of armor and fighting power of saurus is so nuts you need so many 'elite' units of skaven (or as elite as a horde army can get) just to hold them off for any amount of time. Perhaps i should've just spammed clanrat armies but they tend to crack and flee very fast vs saurus.

I got beef with the fact that I just took Tor Anlec as Malekith and saw that it has the unihabitable debuff...

Its the Witch Kings house fffs!

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Honestly at this point i may need to just start over myself and also turn the advisor off so he shuts up for once. Lizardmen are definitely a hard army to crack. I mean sure you can make em go crazy but the amount of armor and fighting power of saurus is so nuts you need so many 'elite' units of skaven (or as elite as a horde army can get) just to hold them off for any amount of time. Perhaps i should've just spammed clanrat armies but they tend to crack and flee very fast vs saurus.

I haven't tried being on the other side of the fence yet, but the one battle that I found really hard and lost some Temple Guard units was when the AI brought lots of fast missile units (gutter runners I think?), they seemed to be fast enough to be able to kite my cavalry and managed to inflict a surprising amount of missile damage on my melee units. Trying to beat Saurus/TG with melee units seems almost impossible, especially if they're hordey type units because if they bring some magic they'll lay down some nasty AOE.

 nels1031 wrote:
I got beef with the fact that I just took Tor Anlec as Malekith and saw that it has the unihabitable debuff...

Its the Witch Kings house fffs!

Why do you think he moved? He partied so hard there it fell into the sea.

Oddly throwing stars units seem to be better kiting units.

I did have to restart the campaign as it became too impossible to win. However i'm managing now. First i had the plagueclaw catapults and halberd stormvermin and now i have lots of sword and shield stormvermin which are really good btw. Also the defenses i had held hardcore. He made one assault against me which failed horribly (making defenses and getting that suicide bombing ability for your units is great).

The rat ogres might work too if i use them. The one warpfire thrower i had at campaign start seemed decent at certain times. At one point i built 5 but they all died when i auto-resolved a sea battle. That miffed me quite a bit actually. Anyway there's still enemies left to fight. 2 main lizardmen forces that just keep rebuilding like it's nothing and sending more dudes my ways. Dunno if they even have saurus in many of those armies anymore. I managed to put 'last defenders' in a bad situation and beat up on him a lot too taking his land in his back field and smashing one of his 2 main armies. With allied skaven help i think we'll be able to wreck him hard. Course the other lizardmen opponent was building up strength while i attacked the other. Ugh typical total war enemies.

Some odd stuff...

Lothern is an extremely tough nut to crack. No surprise there. It's the High Elf capital, after all. However, Glittering Isle, which is a minor settlement right next to it, was just as hard. Um... what?

The red bars that you would *think* are associated with health... apparently aren't? I had one fight in which Malekith (on Seraphon) was thrashing around in the middle of a large group of units, all with completely empty red bars, all of which had at least twenty men remaining each, and all of which were quite eager to continue fighting. In another battle, I completely depleted Tyrion's red bar, continued to pound on him and watched him refuse to die before he finally pulled back, and then looked on in surprise as his bar was back up to 75% when he reentered the fight a little while later.

Skaven can apparently ambush you... while they're attacking you with full strength armies. And it means that you don't get any support from nearby friendly armies. This happens during incursions. It's bad.

I had constant attacks from Mung (the Norse that start in the NW corner of the map), to the point where I really wasn't able to start doing what I wanted to until I finally sent an expedition in to clean them out (they were growing at an alarming rate, and managed to wipe out at least two Dark Elf factions essentially on their own). The Dark Elves on the eastern side of the continent endured constant attacks from the Norse that they shared a border with (and actually were on the verge of winning when I sent some troops in to deal with them). Meanwhile, the Skaelings - the Norse faction that starts next to Ulthuan - had done absolutely nothing by the time I finally landed on the High Elven continent. And even though I wiped out the entire High Elf military, and endured constant attacks from the replacement armies (invariably led by Tyrion with five dragons - I haven't seen Teclis on the campaign map), it wasn't until I took Lothern that the Skaelings finally started to attack Ulthuan.

It's nice that the Cult of Pleasure (i.e. Morathi) is friendly with Malekith. It's not so nice that they corrupt *everything*. They occupy the southern half of the Dark Elf continent, and are keeping the Lizards busy. I'm kind of scared what will happen if I ever manage to confederate with them (which is looking unlikely before the game ends) given the massive amounts of corruption in all of their territories.

The Witch Elf structures are the anti-corruption structure for the non-Cult of Pleasure Dark Elves. Use them. Love them. Especially if you're sharing a province with the Cult of Pleasure.

Amusingly, I pretty much own Ulthuan at this point. I haven't actually conquered the whole thing. But I'm essentially razing at will. However the point of the game is to win the Vortex campaign. If you want the conquest victory conditions, then you need to wipe out six different factions. And only two of them are High Elf factions (two each from High Elf, Lizardmen, and Skaven - presumably if you're playing as one of those races, then two Dark Elf factions replace the one you're playing as).



In World of Warcraft, one of the skin tone choices for a Night Elf character is pink. In the cut scenes for the Vortex campaign, that's what the Dark Elf skin color looks like.

Eumerin wrote:


Skaven can apparently ambush you... while they're attacking you with full strength armies. And it means that you don't get any support from nearby friendly armies. This happens during incursions. It's bad.

Skaven have the same ambush-on-attack stance as beastmen.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It is also worth remembering that in TWH1 and 2, normal is easy, hard is normal and so on. Therefore I do not recommend playing at less than hard.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The enemy battle AI is also immensely stupid. Like wow. It's not outright broken like Rome 2 but it is still embarrassingly terrible.