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TWW1 Lords don't seem to have the same array of skills as the TWW2 ones, which is a shame. I'd hoped they would've been updated with a wider variety, but from the brief look I've had at Thorgrim, at the least, it's either unchanged or very similar. They don't even have the same level of general buffs as the New World LLs have; the most you'll see on Old World Lords are like the 10% reduction on Reiksguard and Greatswords from Karl Franz, or 10% off Longbeards and Hammerers from Thorgrim.

Compared to the New World lords which keep their 35% and 50% reductions, and probably their updated skill trees--although this I've not checked--I'm not sure how Old World armies are going to stack up. Some of the reductions were already rather substantial when everyone had them, but now most of the Lords don't, is there going to be some effect on balance?

Well I guess compared to other artillery. Normally I'll get 20 to 30 kills per bolt thrower, and really not much off of single targets (with the larger bolt). With dwarves or the empire I felt like more damage was going out.

I've noticed that the initial few hits from Multi-Shot rarely really kills anything, but by the end of the fight even a single HE bolt thrower can rack up solid number of kills; at the very least, the wider spread can really weaken units enough that by the time they hit archer range, half the unit falls over in the first volley thanks to the bolt-thrower stripping hit points.

Wait what? Are we talking the Elven ones? How is it possible to not to get well above 100+ kills in every battle with the eagle claw or repeater bol thrower?

 Avatar 720 wrote:
TWW1 Lords don't seem to have the same array of skills as the TWW2 ones, which is a shame. I'd hoped they would've been updated with a wider variety, but from the brief look I've had at Thorgrim, at the least, it's either unchanged or very similar. They don't even have the same level of general buffs as the New World LLs have; the most you'll see on Old World Lords are like the 10% reduction on Reiksguard and Greatswords from Karl Franz, or 10% off Longbeards and Hammerers from Thorgrim.

Compared to the New World lords which keep their 35% and 50% reductions, and probably their updated skill trees--although this I've not checked--I'm not sure how Old World armies are going to stack up. Some of the reductions were already rather substantial when everyone had them, but now most of the Lords don't, is there going to be some effect on balance?

Patch notes/update mentioned that revamped skill trees for TW1 lords will come in a patch (along with Norsca).

I hope they'll also move some of them around. I'd like to see at least a few spread out to other areas. Ghorst & Gelt in Lustria, for example, the White Dwarf elsewhere and the Slayer King back in his proper home.


New addition to the ME map: Hell Pit. On the Kislev side of the Gianthome mountains. A 10 slot city.


Objectives in ME are pretty rough. They vary slightly by faction, but controlling 8 (short) or 17 (long) of legendary lord faction capitals is pretty typical. Other stuff also complicates it- Queek wants 50%+ skaven corruption in all his territory, and 3 specific regions (including the dwarf start location)

Teclis has it pretty rough, since he's far away from most of his objectives. He's also slowed by public order penalties due to vampire and skaven corruption all around him.

Voss wrote:

 Avatar 720 wrote:
TWW1 Lords don't seem to have the same array of skills as the TWW2 ones, which is a shame. I'd hoped they would've been updated with a wider variety, but from the brief look I've had at Thorgrim, at the least, it's either unchanged or very similar. They don't even have the same level of general buffs as the New World LLs have; the most you'll see on Old World Lords are like the 10% reduction on Reiksguard and Greatswords from Karl Franz, or 10% off Longbeards and Hammerers from Thorgrim.

Compared to the New World lords which keep their 35% and 50% reductions, and probably their updated skill trees--although this I've not checked--I'm not sure how Old World armies are going to stack up. Some of the reductions were already rather substantial when everyone had them, but now most of the Lords don't, is there going to be some effect on balance?

Patch notes/update mentioned that revamped skill trees for TW1 lords will come in a patch (along with Norsca).

Oh.

I don't know about anyone else, but personally I wouldn't have minded waiting for that to be available to begin with. I was honestly surprised that ME appeared as soon after TWW2 general release as it has. I might just put off playing any of the old Lords until that patch.

It's a bit of a shame that the TWW1 Lords didn't get updated. But I'm still happy to play it now rather than waiting. If the campaign gets too hard because the AI can upgrade their Lords better, I'll just lower the difficulty. On higher difficulty levels the AI just cheats harder so I'm not overly concerned about having to dial the difficulty back if it is an issue, but I doubt it will be.

The only slightly annoying one is the omission of Norsca, primarily because that's who I was planning on playing first off because I haven't tried them yet. It seems odd since Norsca is still in the campaign, you just can't play them.


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It does seem like ME is a bit less stable for me. I would often alt-tab out of the game during load screens or end turns when waiting for the AI, but it keeps crashing on me when I alt-tab now, not all the time but often enough to be annoying. The screen goes black and I can't open anything other than pressing ctrl+alt+delete to kill the process.

The TWW1 stuff not being updated just means I'll be first doing a Kroq'gar playthrough. I dislike the Vortex campaign so I was waiting for ME to play Lizardmen.

When they finally do the TWW1 stuff I'll go play Vlad.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
It's a bit of a shame that the TWW1 Lords didn't get updated. But I'm still happy to play it now rather than waiting. If the campaign gets too hard because the AI can upgrade their Lords better, I'll just lower the difficulty. On higher difficulty levels the AI just cheats harder so I'm not overly concerned about having to dial the difficulty back if it is an issue, but I doubt it will be.

The only slightly annoying one is the omission of Norsca, primarily because that's who I was planning on playing first off because I haven't tried them yet. It seems odd since Norsca is still in the campaign, you just can't play them.

As far as Norsca goes, it's the old version, no Wintertooth or Wulfrik. The change to the settlement system seems to mean the Varg go nuts, with nothing to keep them in check, and they take over the north dwarf realm and the colonize everything in Kislev. This is especially true playing chaos warriors- they just colonize in your wake and become a massive power. I don't think they have the new norscan units though. So no mammoths, but they might get the better marauder units, not sure.

Ah ok, that makes sense then. It seems the team working on Norsca was working separately in parallel with the team working on ME so the ME team just worked on the pre-Norsca build of TWW1.

Does seem a bit odd though, I wonder how long it would have pushed back the release if they'd included Norsca.

They don't say. It gets mentioned in the patch notes and things
https://www.totalwar.com/blog/mortal-empires-patch-notes

but just 'future update.'

I wouldn't think much more than a month, since, well, all that is done. But they're making it a package deal with a bunch of other stuff:

The one exception is the Norsca Race Pack (Wulfrik the Wanderer and Throgg the Troll King). These have yet to be implemented and will become playable in a future update. The same update will also implement the 30th Anniversary Regiments of Renown, Old World Legendary Lords skill adjustments, and other changes and additions which first appeared in the Foundation Update for Total War: WARHAMMER 1.

Though that stuff is also done. Depends how well testing goes, really - both for stability and balance.


Speaking of which, I spent the day trying a few different Lords (Archaeon, Queek, Teclis and Vlad). I'm rampaging with Vlad, while they others were sluggish. The change to settlements is a huge game-changer- I've got all of Zhufbar, Barak Var and the Dwarf capital, and the cash flow helps a great deal (as does killing the dwarf faction in the early game). Kislev made a mountain redoubt out of the northern dwarf realms. Somewhat surprisingly, its turn 70 and the chaos invasion hasn't happened yet. This is pretty much the playthrough I settled on for being the most fun.

Archaon was effective, but since the chaos horde interacts with nothing, it isn't very interesting.

I overextended with Teclis and was constantly fighting with growth (high elves have a terrible growth rate, and a two city starting region doesn't help), corruption (due to his neighbors) and public order (partially due to corruption), and southern (central) lustria to the mountains is just too big to keep stamping out fires. And I don't have the funds to build a second army to take on the brutally stacked lizard cities of the interior. Plus Teclis' actual campaign goals have squat to do with Lustria.

Queek has a rough starting position, 2 city province, no food, two undead neighbors, and an orc/dwarf province in the exact opposite direction of where he wants to go. The orc realms to the north have a mountain range that's too big to underway through, and building a continuous realm runs headlong into the food problem. Just seems an exercise in frustration.

May give Skrolk a spin just to see what the early game is like for him, but so far, having a lot more fun with the Old World lords.

I've been playing as Isabella. People were saying you could confederate with Mannfred in TWW1 but he declared war on me around turn 10 and doesn't seem to show any signs of letting up. Tossing up just wiping him out or holding out to see if he can be confederated later on.

Yeah, Teclis is a grind. Constant attrition really hurts high elves; and fairly rapidly the relatively friendly Lizardmen were ground down by Pestilens who now have like 15 settlements to my five. Plus Eshin is just waiting in the wings - it took way too long for me to wipe out the Vampire Coast and take it over.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I've been playing as Isabella. People were saying you could confederate with Mannfred in TWW1 but he declared war on me around turn 10 and doesn't seem to show any signs of letting up. Tossing up just wiping him out or holding out to see if he can be confederated later on.

Oh, I just wiped him out the first couple turns (built some extra vargheists first). He moved his army out of Drakenhof, and I just took it with the bats and Vargheists, then wiped out his attritioning army. For small starting factions like that, I don't seem much point in confederating.
After that, I took the two small empire provinces to the west, then turned on Templehof and then Zhufbar. The latter unfortunately confederated with the Dwarfs with their last little town, so I was obligated to smack the Dwarfs around.



Ah. I finally found out what happens with the chaos invasion, which finally happened. Not sure where everyone is, but it produced a weird effect.
The mini-'cinematic' popped as usually, showing off some chaos armies in the usual spot in the wastes. But in the diplomatic log there are four chaos armies
Servants to Chaos, at war with Naggarond, Cult of Pleasure, Lothern and Hexoatl (and me), which are presumably in Naggarond somewhere
Puppets of Chaos, at war with Pestilens, Loremaster (and me)
Vessels of Chaos, at war with Last Defenders and Clan Mors (and me)
and then
Warriors of Chaos, led by Archaon, presumably in their usual spot. At war with Kislev, the various Empire factions, Bretonnian, the remaining Dwarfs of Clan Angrund, and... not me, as Von Carsteins.
Which is a little weird, as they're the ones I'm likely to come into contact with... unless they others are ignoring the AI and are on a direct route to me.

Meanwhile, I've got the Empire on the ropes, having just taken Nuln and Altdorf. They've got the two small towns in the Reikland left and one other somewhere, which I think is Mousillon.

Greenskins have grown out of control since I've taken out the Dwarfs. 31 settlements, and they've confederated everyone, including the Crooked Moon (Skarsnik). They're currently fighting the wood elves for no good reason, but hopefully it will keep them distracted.


Bah. Next turn, Empire Confederates with Middenland. 6 more cities. How annoying.

I had about 7 stacks appear in the sea north of Ulthuan for the Chaos invasion, just as I was mopping up the last resistance to my rule.

I'm using Radious so I don't know for sure if it affects that, but about eight turns later Archaon spawned and another 7 odd stacks appeared. And three just rolled up from the south somewhere.

It's interesting, the settlement limitations in TWW1 mostly seemed to keep the AI in check. With the more open settlements of Mortal Empires AI superpowers seem more likely to form.

Voss wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I've been playing as Isabella. People were saying you could confederate with Mannfred in TWW1 but he declared war on me around turn 10 and doesn't seem to show any signs of letting up. Tossing up just wiping him out or holding out to see if he can be confederated later on.

Oh, I just wiped him out the first couple turns (built some extra vargheists first). He moved his army out of Drakenhof, and I just took it with the bats and Vargheists, then wiped out his attritioning army. For small starting factions like that, I don't seem much point in confederating.
After that, I took the two small empire provinces to the west, then turned on Templehof and then Zhufbar. The latter unfortunately confederated with the Dwarfs with their last little town, so I was obligated to smack the Dwarfs around.

I decided not to wipe him out, took Drakenhof after he declared war on me and a little bit later he asked for a peace treaty so I have left him to his own ways. Up to turn 50 now and still haven't managed to get him to confederate but he's "very friendly" and a trade partner now.

Zhufbar has been a pain in my arse since the beginning of the game. The Stunties seemed to enjoy parking armies in Zhufbar making it hard to cap, only just capped it in the past few turns. Prior to that I tried taking the minor settlements in the Zhufbar province but I just got endless uprisings which were strong enough to instantly take one of settlements back off me. I've spent far more money on the Zhufbar province than it's earned me, I'm hoping that now I have the major settlement in the province things will settle down a bit.

So is the idea with Vampires just to get your corruption high using "Spread Corruption" skills on your Vampire heros so that you don't get uprisings? Uprisings have been a real thorn in my side, I've spent half my time just wandering around the few provinces I own putting down uprisings. Normally my approach to public order is build public order buildings, but the vampire public order and corruption buildings kind of suck and require a level 2 settlement to build.


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I do feel a bit like I messed up my Vampire campaign. Over extended with not enough corruption and over invested in magic. I'm not used to having almost every character being able to take magic so now I have armies with more spells than I have winds of magic to cast them.

The corruption thing kind of sneaked up on me. I was just expanding as I normally would and then I was getting rebellions, like, everywhere, before I noticed my corruption was way too low. I've spent lots of turns just running my Lords from province to province taking out rebellions while I wait for my corruption to come up so they can be self sufficient.

Thinking I might start another Lizardmen campaign. I reckon Kroq might start in a more interesting location, but I kinda prefer Maz with his magic flinging super elite Temple Guard army.

Hmm. I don't really have a problem with corruption, but I took the growth and corruption advances from research first, and usually get a corruption building at e second tier in a village (don't like them in capitals) so they are +4/+2 in adjacent provinces. Usually that means being able to run directly for an enemy town and siege it (especially with vlad), and not worry about it too much. Sometimes it means a turn or two in raiding stance, but that isn't a big deal.

As for vampire heroes, I use them as melee bruisers for Isabella. Well, and one for going to quest locations (since I needed to buy a third for vlad' quest anyway)


Kroq-Gars starting location is annoying- he's in a corner and has to deal with corruption attrition pretty quickly (and lizards don't have a raiding stance), and he has a really long slog to any campaign objectives.

Securing his initial province is really easy, but deciding what to do next is tricky. Plow up to Lahmia, or work your way across the south lands to go somewhere else?

Is Lahmia on the map? I thought it was further east than the mortal empires map went.

At the moment I'm turn 80-ish and have 5 or 6 provinces with 3 armies and spend most my time quelling rebellions. If the corruption is below 50% it seems the public order penalty is bad enough that I'll very quickly get rebellions. It's probably made worse because I hold a couple of settlements in provinces where I don't own the entire province (eg. Karaz-a-Karak) and in those ones it's really hard to build enough corruption to stop the public order going to hell. I should probably just try and take the whole province but I didn't want to start a war with those particular neighbours.

Averland also just screwed me up a bit, I started conquering them and as a last ditch effort they sent an army out to just raze my settlements I've stopped them now but they razed multiple settlements which is costing me heaps of money and lost one of them when another faction swooped in on the unoccupied razed settlement.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Is Lahmia on the map? I thought it was further east than the mortal empires map went.

Yep. If you recall Brightwater from the original TW1 map (the southernmost orc/dwarf area) there is a lake and an inlet out to the sea. South of that is Lahmia and two towns on the ME map.


Queek's starting area empties out just southwest of one of those towns (Mahrak), and south of that is the Crater of the Walking dead, which borders the Southland Jungles and Kroq-gars Kingdom of Beasts provinces.


Once the Tomb Kings come out, I'd hope that Settra will pop in Khemri, and Khalida will be near Lahmia or in the Crater. (if those two end up as the Legendary Lords, which seems logical since they lead to different playstyles)

Did they buff savage orcs? Jeebus. I am playing an MP campaign vs a Wurrzag player and I just witnessed a unit of savage orcs kill a full HP warboss in a matter of seconds. Even Grimgor was slaughtered like a sheep.

I have never seen anything like this before. It's early game too so they're just standard savage orcs without lord battle traits etc. Makes me kind of scared for when I have to face them considering my vampires lack the option of shooting them.

Don't think so. I tried Wurrzag out briefly and ran into a standard dwarf stack (mostly warriors, as this was about turn 25) and the Savages just bounced, hard. Even with multiple Feet of Gork stomping on dwarf units the savage orcs just died miserably.

Might just be the low armor of vamps, vs the higher armor of dwarves.

 Wolfblade wrote:
Might just be the low armor of vamps, vs the higher armor of dwarves.

Neither grimgor nor warbosses have low armor.

Well TWW1 hasn't been updated yet, so it's easy enough to compare. In custom battle at least, new Savage Orcs have buffed HP (7290 vs 6030), slightly reduced charge bonus (26 vs 27), slightly increased physical resist (30% vs 25%) and everything else looks the same. In campaign Wurrzag confers an extra charge bonus (+25).


I feel like my performance is worse since ME was released, even just in custom battles. Not sure what's going on there.

About 40 turns into my Empire campaign, have Marienburg and Corounne rolled up. That'll show those that traitors and frenchmen!

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Wolfblade wrote:
Might just be the low armor of vamps, vs the higher armor of dwarves.

Neither grimgor nor warbosses have low armor.

True, but don't orks have a spell to give AP damage?

Goblins do.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Goblins do.

Was he using wurzag in the battle? Wurzag has a power/ability that gives all units in his army magical attacks, which ignores armor obviously. Not to mention he gets a few spells that are good vs single combatants.

Magic damage doesn't ignore armor. It only ignores physical resistance.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Magic damage doesn't ignore armor. It only ignores physical resistance.

Hm, pretty sure it did last time I looked it up, guess I'm wrong. Either way I think there was something you either missed (magic/abilities), or were just really unlucky with the RNG armor reduction. Also, what type of savage orks? Regular ones, tier 1 orks?