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For my game I've finally conquered the south of fantasy Africa and am prepping to move north against the undead hordes. Kroq and his army are almost all level 20+ and gold chevrons, and nothing seems capable of stopping them at this point I really think Skraven need buffs. Their infantry are trash even against Skinks, and their specialists can't even survive being hunted down by a single unit of Cold Ones. I won two battles yesterday against full stack Clan Mors armies using nothing but a garrison force of 2 Temple Guards, 1 Solar Engine Basti, 2 javelin skinks, one chameleon skins, one cold one, and a scar vet and skink priest. A pure garrison force and the 5 units of glob throwers got smash by the chameleons and cold ones alone while the temple guard massacred the bulk infantry. Its one thing when you need numbers to win, it's another thing when the numbers don't matter and Temple guard will kill your entire army almost single handedly while two lone units keep specialists off their backs...

The only thing Skraven has that scar me are the Grey Seers. They have one crazy spell that launches a poison cone aoe thing and that just tears apart infantry.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Kroxigor are just monstrous infantry but yeah a significant amount of the saurus units and some others go 'out of control'. I've had to face down multiple carnosaurs already and kill em. I honestly don't think kroxigor could be high tier units. Lizardmen have a lot of monsters.

I think they work. Excellent addition to a flanking force of skinks to provide some actual muscle for the bodies.

Also odd we didn't get to see any of the lizardmen weapons teams they had on the tabletop.

I think their roster could really use some mounted skink skirmishers, as skinks become functionally worthless in late game. Too squishy to stand up to strong infantry/monsters, and can't outrun cavalry which mince them. Is there any mounted skinks to use as a basis?

What are people's thoughts on Skink Priests? i've been rolling 2 in Kroq's army, one from each school and I'm curious what spells people find are working. The Heaven one has disappointed me so far, but the Beast one has nice stuff. Wild Heart is great, and Flock of Doom and the Amber Spear give him great range on a variety of units. Experimenting with the Manticore summon and it's been hit and miss. Dropping it behind an enemy infantry line seems to work, but it dies so quick I'm not sure its worth the power I spend on it.

Btw on the note of kemri i looked in that part of the map and allied somebody there. There's some ghoul king and some necrarch or something but no tomb kings oddly which legit should be where egypt is on a world map.

I imagine it'll be like the Wood Elves and the Bretons. They weren't anywhere to be seen on the map when Warhammer Total War I came out, but were added into the game ahead of their DLC/FreeLC releases. I look forward to tomb kings. While Lizardmen brute force is totally my style of play I think the lore for the Kings is really great.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
Man, I am really struggling with skaven. There never seems to be enough food, despite only having around 9 territories and near-constant fighting. And I'm always behind on the ritual tracker. And apparently all skaven units are awful in combat - it's like an army of grots.

I'm probably going to have to restart, which I hate to do 100 turns in, but I'm facing down like 3 massive chaos armies and a huge HE intervention army with like 1 strong army of my own and 2 weak ones.

What exactly happens with the tracker, when it finishes? When one race gets the to the end, do they just win?

I feel like Skaven's balance between food, money, corruption and public order is REALLY hard to manage as well as trying to keep armies running and racing for the vortex.

At one point at another I'll be fine in two things but everything else suffers. It feels especially difficult to actually advance your army strength because resource buildings are so important. Usually by turn 50 I'm JUST starting to get tier 3 buildings where all the better units are hidden in my capital because I need to keep the infrastructure under control first. I'm on turn 100-odd of my current campaign and the most advanced units I have are rat ogres and plague claw catapults because I can't afford to buy the settlement upgrades to get more slots despite have the slave buildings in every province. Meanwhile Itza has just turned up at the Alter Of The Horned Rat with 3 doomstacks with Horned Ones and Temple Guard. As I said I'm fine for money and corruption is low but I have no food and my public order is dropping. I can't raid for food which seems to be what a lot of people suggest but my armies are too busy taking settlements in order to keep a steady flow of money and food coming in. As I've said I've played several campaigns around 50 turns and I've yet to actually field a non-garrisoned HPA, Warpfire Thrower or Death Globes or the like.

This is made worse by the fact that auto-resolve apparently hates skaven as much as everyone else so you have to fight a vast majority of your battles manually. It's incredibly common that the auto-resolve will give you a 10% chance but you easily win a decisive victory with very little losses.

Also, on the race for the vortex:

 LordofHats wrote:

I think their roster could really use some mounted skink skirmishers, as skinks become functionally worthless in late game. Too squishy to stand up to strong infantry/monsters, and can't outrun cavalry which mince them. Is there any mounted skinks to use as a basis?

I've found them worthless early game. Against skaven it isn't too awful, but bows or crossbows vs blowpipes is just not a thing that happens.
Terradons aren't bad though, particularly with research and lord buffs.

What are people's thoughts on Skink Priests? i've been rolling 2 in Kroq's army, one from each school and I'm curious what spells people find are working. The Heaven one has disappointed me so far, but the Beast one has nice stuff. Wild Heart is great, and Flock of Doom and the Amber Spear give him great range on a variety of units. Experimenting with the Manticore summon and it's been hit and miss. Dropping it behind an enemy infantry line seems to work, but it dies so quick I'm not sure its worth the power I spend on it.

Unsupported units tend to die fast, summons doubly so. I use that kind of thing for reinforcement.

But, really, I much prefer heavens to beasts. Heavens is amazing. Wind blast is a lot like the skaven poison spell, comet and chain lightning are fantastic when they bunch up, the buffs spells help, and thunderbolt is great for wrecking artillery pieces (drop it right on the machine, not the crew).


One big thing I'm having trouble with as Lizards is attrition. Driving into the vampire desert is a pain since there isn't a rite or a raiding stance to avoid attrition. Just move half speed and camp.

Btw on the note of kemri i looked in that part of the map and allied somebody there. There's some ghoul king and some necrarch or something but no tomb kings oddly which legit should be where egypt is on a world map.

I imagine it'll be like the Wood Elves and the Bretons. They weren't anywhere to be seen on the map when Warhammer Total War I came out, but were added into the game ahead of their DLC/FreeLC releases. I look forward to tomb kings. While Lizardmen brute force is totally my style of play I think the lore for the Kings is really great.

Well, Bretonnia was there, but a few units were missing and they weren't playable. Tomb Kings will slot right in nicely (I'm hoping for Settra and Khalida, since the playstyles (and starting areas) diverge.

People have also mentioned Araby, which I initially thought was unlikely (since they were never developed beyond warmaster), but it's right there and the current Empire/Bretonnian stuff in the region doesn't really fit.

Voss wrote:

I've found them worthless early game.

Cheap disposable infantry aren't useless, so long as they last long enough. Especially since Saurus are so expensive early on. By late game though just about everything cuts through them like butter so they're not even good for that by then.

Terradons aren't bad though, particularly with research and lord buffs.

I've found these useful and keep them around for a single reason; they're capable of killing the crew of an artillery piece without support so long as enemy ranged isn't pouring shots at them. Real helpful for dealing the skraven catapults and hellfire canonns. EDIT: I was thinking more like mini-Cold Ones, maybe with the ability to skirmish.

Wind blast is a lot like the skaven poison spell,

It's short the damage. Man if Wind Blast did damage like that poison spell XD

One big thing I'm having trouble with as Lizards is attrition. Driving into the vampire desert is a pain since there isn't a rite or a raiding stance to avoid attrition. Just move half speed and camp.

I tend to suck up a turn of attrition at a time because undead armies aren't much stronger body for body than Skraven are, and smashing them at 3/4 strength is doable.

People have also mentioned Araby, which I initially thought was unlikely (since they were never developed beyond warmaster), but it's right there and the current Empire/Bretonnian stuff in the region doesn't really fit.

For those of us unaware of the lore, what is Araby? I was surprised at the Empire hanging around the new world colonial Spanish Style. I'd play "Empire Colonies" if it got some unique flare.

Araby is what it sounds like. Camel cav, slaves, djinn, magic carpets. All that jazz.

Oh. Araby. Wow that's painfully obvious...

 LordofHats wrote:
Oh. Araby. Wow that's painfully obvious...

Yeah, there are a whole host of reasons why it was never developed for WFB (early fiction- the original novel line, with Zaragoz and the other Orfeo stories- also had them as very stereotypical slavers and killing people for not following the 'One True God' as well), but I could see it being fleshed out into a faction like Norsca was.

Partially simply because there aren't many options for 'official-had-an-army-book' DLC races for this game. Basically just Tomb Kings. Though I could see an argument for doing a mini-DLC like King and the Warlord, and putting the invasion of Ulthuan by Grom the Paunch as a mini-campaign, and giving him a starting position on the vortex campaign map. But the problem with inserting several other factions into the campaign map is the continents are oddly tiny with fairly big provinces. Taken together it's a lot to conquer, and it's easy enough to swap out the desert vampires for tomb kings, but jamming, say, Amazons in Lustria raises a question of 'where?'

With these games, is there any link between 1 and 2? Or are all of the races from 1 separated from 2?

 -Loki- wrote:
With these games, is there any link between 1 and 2? Or are all of the races from 1 separated from 2?

If you own both games you will be able to play "Mortal Empires" which is both maps combined and all the factions from both games.

 djones520 wrote:
It's pretty obvious that the Vamp Counts are just a place holder. Tomb Kings will definitely be one of the expansion races this game.

IIRC, there are some vamps in the Southlands in the setting. But by and large, you're probably right.


On another note, someone was commenting earlier on how easily a one province faction was rebuilding elite armies. Fact is, it's pretty clear that the AI factions don't actually use money. This became painfully obvious to me during a Brettonia playthrough when Mousillon by itself was consistantly maintaing three full strength armies at once.

This applies at least as far back as Shogun 2, btw.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
With these games, is there any link between 1 and 2? Or are all of the races from 1 separated from 2?

If you own both games you will be able to play "Mortal Empires" which is both maps combined and all the factions from both games.

Excellent. I just got a PC that can run these games. Looks like they're next on the shopping list.

A lot of the old armies are present in some way but realistically the major races from the first game have minimal presence in this game (not sure about chaos, beastmen and greenskins though).

When the maps combine however you will see skaven in tilea (italy) and all over the old world really. In many ways they're more infested in the Old World than the New World but they exist everywhere.

I'm sure it'll be when the 3rd game hits that we'll see chaos dwarfs (broken OP army from forge world) and ogres. Not sure what else is left for the 3rd game to have if tomb kings end up being in the 2nd game. I honestly figured 3rd game would be End Times with Nagash and archaeon.

I think there's a lot of potential in a third game to flesh out the content of the first few games. Instead of adding more armies, add more legendary lords from the lore, more starting locations, more objectives, more everything. With II I think we'll see the bulk of the races implemented on a code level, freeing development to expand on armies and mechanics, and maybe flesh out the corners of the map. After all Total War games tend to suffer from "vast corner of the map" syndrome.

I think mortal empires will easily be the coolest part of Warhammer II. It's the biggest campaign map any total war game has ever produced by far.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:
also had them as very stereotypical slavers and killing people for not following the 'One True God' as well)

Well to be fair to the Sterotype, the Arab world was pretty big on the whole slavery thing for a solid millennia XD I mean, everyone kind of was, but the Arab was really really into it, right up to the point the slaves ended up running countires cause their owners said "feth you run this gak Ima go get drunk even though I'm supposed to have sworn off liquor" XD

As big as Mortal Empires will be, just remember that there's an even bigger campaign coming after the third game is released!

Rumor on the third game is that it will be focused on the Four Powers, possibly set at the previously unvisited south pole chaos gate. If true, that still leaves everything off the Eastern edge of the map from the first game. There are a few published races out that way that will need to be added at some point.

 LordofHats wrote:

Voss wrote:
also had them as very stereotypical slavers and killing people for not following the 'One True God' as well)

Well to be fair to the Sterotype, the Arab world was pretty big on the whole slavery thing for a solid millennia

Yes, they were. But there needs to be a bit more to fantasy-culture-analogues beyond 'Hassan Chop!' style stereotypes. Evil-slaver-pirate-fanatics is a poor starting point for making a faction interesting, even in Warhammer. For one thing, its stepping on too many toes.

Voss wrote:
Evil-slaver-pirate-fanatics is a poor starting point for making a faction interesting, even in Warhammer. For one thing, its stepping on too many toes.

Dark Elf toes, for one.

Voss wrote:
Yes, they were. But there needs to be a bit more to fantasy-culture-analogues beyond 'Hassan Chop!' style stereotypes. Evil-slaver-pirate-fanatics is a poor starting point for making a faction interesting, even in Warhammer. For one thing, its stepping on too many toes.

There isn't really a skirmishing mounted army in Warhammer right now. There's the Bretons to be sure, but they're all about heavy cavalry. I think with some expansion there's room for a "eastern steps" style force utilizing hard hitting fast, but lightly armored shock cavalry and mounted skirmishers.

This isn't 40k but it's still Warhammer. Lizardmen eat their captives in this game, the Dark Elves are already doing the whole slave bit, and the Empire is chalk full of religious fanatics. Evil-slave-pirate-fanatics kind of fit right in (the good old Barbary States eh?), and honestly there's something of a bizarre charm in the way Warhammer fantasy runs with its historical pastiches. Sure they're stereotypical, but its the simplicity of it that gives it the charm imo, particularly how when you piece it apart a lot of it really comes from the crazy ideas western Europeans had about other groups. You've got the crazy vicious vikings and their crazy gods, the wakey natives of bizarre and primal lands (Lizardmen), and the Skraven are like the black plague personified. I find those parts of the lore much more interesting than the stuff that's just ripped right out of Tolkein.

 LordofHats wrote:

Voss wrote:
Yes, they were. But there needs to be a bit more to fantasy-culture-analogues beyond 'Hassan Chop!' style stereotypes. Evil-slaver-pirate-fanatics is a poor starting point for making a faction interesting, even in Warhammer. For one thing, its stepping on too many toes.

There isn't really a skirmishing mounted army in Warhammer right now. There's the Bretons to be sure, but they're all about heavy cavalry. I think with some expansion there's room for a "eastern steps" style force utilizing hard hitting fast, but lightly armored shock cavalry and mounted skirmishers.

I don't know much about Fantasy. I liked the first TW:W game, don't have this one yet. But would Tomb Kings be a "hard hitting fast, but lightly armored shock cavalry and mounted skirmishers"?

Genuinely curious. I like their lore a lot, which is basically the only thing I know about Fantasy. I am basically waiting to buy the 2nd(and possibly 3rd) game until either they are implemented or the really big campaign hits.

My understanding is that the Tomb Kings are a well rounded horde army, with strong elite units but not really what I was thinking of. I'm thinking Huns or Scythians from Rome style, or the Mamluks from Medieval.

 LordofHats wrote:
I think their roster could really use some mounted skink skirmishers, as skinks become functionally worthless in late game. Too squishy to stand up to strong infantry/monsters, and can't outrun cavalry which mince them. Is there any mounted skinks to use as a basis?

Skink Cold One Riders actually predate Saurus Cold One Riders in the fluff. It's testing my memory, but I think they were originally a Regiment of Renown, then they became a unique unit in a "Southlands" army list (which was a skink heavy list in one of the older Army Books) where they rode Horned Ones rather than Cold Ones (which were less buff and more intelligent versions of Cold Ones), then eventually were dropped in favour of Saurus Cold One Riders.

What are people's thoughts on Skink Priests? i've been rolling 2 in Kroq's army, one from each school and I'm curious what spells people find are working. The Heaven one has disappointed me so far, but the Beast one has nice stuff. Wild Heart is great, and Flock of Doom and the Amber Spear give him great range on a variety of units. Experimenting with the Manticore summon and it's been hit and miss. Dropping it behind an enemy infantry line seems to work, but it dies so quick I'm not sure its worth the power I spend on it.

Yeah I'm finding much the same. I do struggle with enemy missile units so using Skink Priests to throw some magic at them to break them up is useful.

How are people finding Slann?

Mazdamundi is a magical monster, but with regular Slann I'm not finding their spells all that useful. I find in my Slann based armies I need a Skink Priest attached to do most of the casting while the Slann just sits there looking pretty and building up my winds of magic.

 LordofHats wrote:
My understanding is that the Tomb Kings are a well rounded horde army, with strong elite units but not really what I was thinking of. I'm thinking Huns or Scythians from Rome style, or the Mamluks from Medieval.

Ahhhh ok. I was under the impression Tomb Kings focused a lot on chariots and horsemen. Been awhile since I have read much on Fantasy though. I'm still catching up on the new 40k Fluff tbh

Hopefully i'm not dead tired at work tomorrow. Finished off the high elves on the southeast of africa and killed off one of the rogue army faction (empire horde based faction) and hurt bretonnia enough to peace treaty them easily. Finally starting to reclaim land that i lost and with my food count so incredibly high as well as money doing alright i should be able to throw down some high level settlements without issue. I've basically turned one into a small bastion in the space of about 2-3 turns.

I also started doing my first summon for the vortex even though everybody else is on 3 or perhaps 4 soon. I do have enough warpstone to do a tier 2 summon as well so i could just get all this out of the way in a hurry perhaps. I hate how loyalty for my grey seer is starting to slip again. This is my 2nd really high level Grey Seer whose loyalty has gotten nearly traitorously bad.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
My understanding is that the Tomb Kings are a well rounded horde army, with strong elite units but not really what I was thinking of. I'm thinking Huns or Scythians from Rome style, or the Mamluks from Medieval.

Ahhhh ok. I was under the impression Tomb Kings focused a lot on chariots and horsemen. Been awhile since I have read much on Fantasy though. I'm still catching up on the new 40k Fluff tbh

As a player of the game yeah far as i know chariots were big as well as their skeleton bowmen which were similar to trueflight arrows (could never be worse than basic user's BS shooting). One of the other big things was the living statues they had that just destroyed things. Seriously they had some tough monsters. Ultimately however they were weaker than vampire counts when both had their 8th ed books. Vampire counts didn't totally disappear when their lord died if another vampire lord with the lore of vampires could vouch for your vampire lore general. With tomb kings however if your summoner dude that keeps everything together dies your whole army starts disintegrating. Can't state how rough that can be for some units. In the case of vampire counts it was a great way to kill ethereal units.

The first Nagash novel gives a good outlook of what the Tomb King army is like.

Basically GW just did a carbon copy of the ancient Egyptian army.

Spear infantry, backed by archers. Heavy emphasis of chariots. When big monsters became all the rage in 7th/8th edition, GW added some new models to the range to keep them in line with all the other armies.

I wouldn't wait too long on the rituals, the last one I did was the third one and even on the lower difficulty it knocked me around a bit. The 3 ritual sites were quite far apart so I set up armies near each of them to defend, but instead I got several (5 I think) full stacks attack near my capital. Lost an army and several settlements near my capital and took a while to rebuild afterwards.

So doing one ritual after another might be a difficult prospect.

Eumerin wrote:

 djones520 wrote:


On another note, someone was commenting earlier on how easily a one province faction was rebuilding elite armies. Fact is, it's pretty clear that the AI factions don't actually use money. This became painfully obvious to me during a Brettonia playthrough when Mousillon by itself was consistantly maintaing three full strength armies at once.

This applies at least as far back as Shogun 2, btw.

From what I've heard if the AI ends its turn with what would be negative gold it gets 2000 gold at the start of its next to prop it up. Cheating AI isn't anything unusual for strategy games though.

Any Lizard players considered NOT mounting their skink heroes on terradons and stegadons? I've got one coming up through the ranks now and I'm considering leaving him on foot and see how he goes, maybe good for taking out war machines?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Any Lizard players considered NOT mounting their skink heroes on terradons and stegadons? I've got one coming up through the ranks now and I'm considering leaving him on foot and see how he goes, maybe good for taking out war machines?

Would he not be better mounted then to get around the enemy lines faster?
The thing to remember about mounting them is that it makes them weaker against spears and other anti-large stuff. Not sure if terradons count as mounts. Also, remember you can always dismount them from the Skills menu.

Yah, I have the chance to mount Alastar on a dragon by now but I want him to be a front line beat stick.

 Sim-Life wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Any Lizard players considered NOT mounting their skink heroes on terradons and stegadons? I've got one coming up through the ranks now and I'm considering leaving him on foot and see how he goes, maybe good for taking out war machines?

Would he not be better mounted then to get around the enemy lines faster?
The thing to remember about mounting them is that it makes them weaker against spears and other anti-large stuff. Not sure if terradons count as mounts. Also, remember you can always dismount them from the Skills menu.

Well if you unlock the skill to mount him, it then locks off 2 Chameleon-like skills you would have been able to take if you'd left him on foot. Those skills are ones that give him firstly Vanguard, +5 speed and secondly Stalker and another +5 speed. So the idea with keeping him on foot would be to hide him in a forest up a flank, run around and take on warmachines and if he gets in trouble hopefully he has the speed to run back in to the forest and become hidden again.

I think once you take the Terradon/Stegadon even though you can dismount him, you can't then pick up the ninja skills required to make him useful on foot.

If you take the Chameleon like skills it then locks the skills required to mount a Stegadon though and having the option of an extra Stegadon sure it hard to pass up.
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tagony wrote:
Yah, I have the chance to mount Alastar on a dragon by now but I want him to be a front line beat stick.

Wouldn't mounting him on a dragon make him a better beatstick; lose out a bit on anti-large but surely you'd gain more on damage and disruption?

I have been mounting all my Scar Vets and Oldbloods on Carnosaurs and still using them as front line beat sticks, should I have been keeping them on foot?

From what I could tell from TWW1, at least, Heroes and Lords on mounts tended to spend less time actually killing things, and more time ineffectually knocking them around.

(EDIT: I should mention that this only really applies to things larger than horses. A horse isn't too bad because it isn't so big it gets in its own way, and stops your own Lord being knocked around by enemy cavalry the entire game.)

Which leads into a bit of criticism I have surrounding running down fleeing units, which, even with cavalry, is painful to watch; half the guys in the fleeing unit just get thrown around, separating the unit and usually not killing anything, and your chasing units has to hunt down each soldier individually, but as an entire unit, leading to situations where you're watching 45 Ellyrian Reavers running after one dude who got separated from the other 50 men in his unit when the Reavers charged in and sent him flying.

It's also a pain when you're racing a unit to the edge of the battlefield, because if your cavalry knocks even a single soldier outside the boundary, the entire remainder of the unit counts as having successfully fled, even if they're still firmly inside the battle confines.