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Chaos is easily dealt with. I only play on Hard but it should be manageable even on higher difficulties thanks to the extreme stupidity of the AI.

Determine a settlement as your furthest northern border. IMO Bechafen is ideal.

Fortify this settlement fully as much as possible, and station a good army inside when chaos comes. Do your best to minimize other conflicts at this time (should be simple as the chaos invasion has a predictable timing).

When Chaos assaults the city, duke it out on the battlefield. Normally the best way to deal with the AI is artillery as the AI has no idea of what proper spacing is, but since vampires don't have artillery magic works just as well. Send a single super tough lord or hero forward as bait and watch enemy units bunch up around him or her. Spam magic (wind of death is great, as are vortexes) on your lord. Win the battle.

Bottlenecks inside castle gates do the job too.

Don't worry about enemy magic. The AI usually wastes all its reserves spamming buffs and healing on units right at the start of the battle, long before any fighting actually begins. (It's kind of embarrassing that the AI is this bad but it is).

Chaos is only broken in Mortal Empires, since they applied the Intervention Army logic to Chaos rather than the WH1 style Chaos Incursion, plus it has more issues on top.

WH1 Chaos Incursions work like normal.

 Wolfblade wrote:
Chaos is bugged currently, and only targets you, the devs are aware and are working upon the issue iirc though.

Is that in WH1 also? Because I don't have WH2 yet.

Ah, saw replies after the comment. Nvm on that.

I have a lot of issues with my income as well. I try to build as many income buildings as I can but it never seems to work out for me. I always end up dirt poor.

You need to lowball you military for as long as possible. If you wont need an army for more than five turns disband as much of it as you can.

One army per region I fully own is usually my rule, with a few regions dedicated to military production and the rest for income, usually does me well but in my current run, the Brets took Marienburg before me, so that's a big load of money I don't have access to.

Yeah Chaos is totally borked in ME, can't wait for the fix. Its ok and challenging, but having to fight off 12 Chaos stacks every 30 turns plus the Dawitide with 5 armies gets kinda grindy. As Im Kroq I have to hope someone up north kills Archaon and stops the madness. The Dawitide certainly won't let me go north...

 Ashiraya wrote:
Chaos is easily dealt with. I only play on Hard but it should be manageable even on higher difficulties thanks to the extreme stupidity of the AI.

Determine a settlement as your furthest northern border. IMO Bechafen is ideal....

The problem I've had is that my TWW1 campaigns I didn't spread myself to the north east where the incursions come from, so I couldn't predict which path they'd take.

But yeah, if you can set up a settlement in the north east near Kislev before the incursions show up I imagine it's easier.

Fighting Kholek in open battle has been my biggest problem in TWW1. Archaon and the lesser Chaos lords are easy fights by comparison, Kholek just charges in to my front line, the amount of focus to bring him down leaves the rest of my line vulnerable or to ignore him he'll do a ton of damage.

TWW2 it's just a pain in the arse because they come from all directions. Chaos showed up in my Vamp campaign when I only had 4 armies, meanwhile they have several groups each of 4 to 6 full stacks coming from the north, the south, the south west and the west.

I am actually quite enjoying how broken Chaos is at the moment, I'm currently camped out at Zhufbar with 5 stacks headed straight for me. Desperately trying to get a gyrocopter or two so I can deal with those blasted hellcannons...

Been playing queek's campaign in mortal empires after my 'eye of the vortex' campaign really went down the drain hardcore.

I find it funny because his early campaign difficulty is on very hard. It is pretty hard though i find horde army campaigns much harder (esp. warriors of chaos). You get a public order de-buff for not owning the city of pillars (karak eight peaks) until you manage to own it and yes that's from the start. You also sit between two vampire factions filled with vampiric corruption and the left one (which i'm fighting and killing) is also in the desert. I dunno if you get double attrition for that but it seems like it. This means it can be rather slow. Also there are no pastures in sight on the map for miles so get ready to raid territories like mad for food. It's only the beginning of the campaign and i'm at like bottom tier for food and have been the whole time.

Early into the campaign i fully finished off my first greenskin opponent and was going to fight the dwarfs below me. I was a turn or so away from attacking (thank god i didn't) and then the undead faction to the left of me declares war on me. The dwarf dude ends up declaring war on him and after a long crazy while i ended up with him as a full blown ally best buddy for life and he only had one territory for the longest time. He totally protected the bottom pass to me though just by being there. Anyway now i have 2 dwarfs allies. The weaker one is the one just below my starting area and we've been wrecking the crap out of the undead to the left of us. The first undead guy has only one territory left down from dwarfing us in power bar. The other undead opponent is also getting hit significantly with some decent help from my dwarf ally. Things could get a bit hairy but if things go well i could be rolling in money very soon. The plan is if i kill this enemy army i will go into my territory and replenish troops, head back to the enemy home territory and just straight up plunder the territory and go straight back to raiding it for easy cash and food. Plundering it gives like 12k cash i think and keeps it around so i can keep raiding it no problem. As far as the vampire faction on the right goes my massively powerful dwarf ally wanted me to go to war with him so i did. He's only on 2 territories though and is spiraling the drain so i figure i can not fight the guy and never worry about him attacking me before he dies anyway.

Oh and you heard that right 2 dwarf allies to a skaven faction. I also have a savage orc faction that likes me and i think he has vampiric influence on him even though i've been killing the vampires that influence him. That's like archaeon and the empire teaming up, greenskins with dwarfs or tomb kings and nagash teaming up. In case you guys don't know it's incredibly unlikely and unfluffy for dwarfs and skaven to team up. If anything greenskins tend to fight with and against skaven for dwarf holds but usually until they inevitably betray each other.

---------

Oh and before i forget doing multiple armies and taking weak spams of units (not so much slaves but lots of clanrats) is actually pretty good. You just engage with equal numbers and take the extra units you have to flank and rear charge the enemy as they're held up by the other units. Then you get a full surround from it. It's quite nice. Ranged firepower also tends to help as well while the enemy is busy cutting through your hordes and taking morale damage from being hit on all sides and being fired on. Basically you see silly battle results where you outnumber the enemy 2-3 to 1 and lose about as many guys as they do by the end of it. This is even the case against vampire counts which have a lot of low level hordes themselves.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Maybe it was just because of the lords I played, but the incursions that occur during a ritual started far enough away from my actual ritual sites that sitting garrisoned up wasn't a brilliant option because I'd lose a lot of settlements as they made their way across to my actual ritual sites.

So far the chaos incursions I've faced have been pretty crappy armies. I could beat them with whatever half stack army I had around the area, inherited from a faction I'd confederated. Whereas as the mercenary forces the computer summoned were much more powerful, and needed much stronger armies in the area.

One really annoying thing is that those armies can move immediately after being summoned, and won't just go for the ritual city. They'll often go and trash a different, non-garrisoned city within range. That's a big part of the reason I've held off on the rituals, having cities trashed by spawning armies that I can't react to is bs.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bobthehero wrote:
One army per region I fully own is usually my rule, with a few regions dedicated to military production and the rest for income, usually does me well but in my current run, the Brets took Marienburg before me, so that's a big load of money I don't have access to.

I build a single army with good enough first tier stuff very early in the game, and then just rely on that while my capital builds to tier 5. As new units become available I might upgrade part of my army, but only if I actually want to keep those troops for the duration. So I'll trade out some crossbowmen for outriders, but I won't bother with knights or reiksguard, I just wait for demigryphs.

I also try and delay building second armies as long as possible, until I can fill them with elite troops from day one. Sometimes this will mean I'll give up on a chance to expand, just because I don't want to go too far from home.

I'm also ruthless with confederated provinces early in the game. Sack their armies, tear down their military buildings.

The only place I build any unit producing buildings is my original, starting location. Every other part of my empire is pacified.

This approach leaves a lot of money, which I spend on income, morale boosts and walls for every settlement. Not necessarily in that order, priority depends on morale and proximity to the enemy.

This approach means there's almost always enough money to pay for every building upgrade when its available. My first game I bought every unit as it became available, only to replace it a few turns later, and expanded to two and three armies too soon.
This left me with a shortage of funds to upgrade settlements and build there. Which compounded my money issues, particularly as uprisings and enemy factions attacking uncalled towns only made my money issues worse.

Outriders are terrible in my experience, I would much rather have a mix of handgunners and crossbowmen. I personally keep a few Reiksguard with KF, because they're meant to be his bodyguard.

 Bobthehero wrote:
Outriders are terrible in my experience, I would much rather have a mix of handgunners and crossbowmen.

Outriders fill a different role, they are for kiting. I've found in general kiting units are more useful in multiplayer than campaign. The AI isn't smart enough to shut down stationary missile units like a human player will do so you can get off heaps of volleys. A smart human player will make an effort to screw up those stationary missile units so getting off volleys when you need them is harder, having something that can kite and keep firing while tying down more opposition resources is a good option.

Outriders need to be micromanaged to lure opponents.

Pistoliers have 360 arc and get the shots in. I try to keep Gelts outriders alive because rear shots are good, but the AI prioritises them for fire and they have to stay well away from missile troops. But they are the only outriders I have, I like variety but light cavalry are a pain for an oldster like myself to micromanage.

Light cavalry are just as good as heavy for mopping up fleeing troops though, just make sure they cant rally.

 Orlanth wrote:
Outriders need to be micromanaged to lure opponents.

Can't you just chuck them on Skirmish mode? I have noticed skirmish mode in TWW2 seems a bit more intelligent than TWW1. TWW1 they'd often wait too long before kiting away and thus end up getting trapped or surrounded, TWW2 they seem to make more of an effort to keep away (to the point you have to be more vigilant if you DO need them to move somewhere specific that you turn off skirmisher mode first).

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Outriders need to be micromanaged to lure opponents.

Can't you just chuck them on Skirmish mode? I have noticed skirmish mode in TWW2 seems a bit more intelligent than TWW1. TWW1 they'd often wait too long before kiting away and thus end up getting trapped or surrounded, TWW2 they seem to make more of an effort to keep away (to the point you have to be more vigilant if you DO need them to move somewhere specific that you turn off skirmisher mode first).

I think overall they just increased the range that skirmish mode forces units to try and maintain, ironicly though, skink javelins range is actually shorter than the range skirmish mode forces them to keep. Overall though it works way better than TWW1

Got about 14 territories now in my mortal empires campaign with queek. Still got 2 dwarf allies (yep dwarfs are my skaven's closest allies) and somehow my closest buddy has almost as much military power as me on one territory. With his help we finished off the necrarch brotherhood (i did the heavy lifting mostly). I think all of the not africa's undead factions hate me. Only the strigoi kingdoms pose a threat to me however and they annoyingly keep making more armies despite us killing them constantly.

I didn't really make any of the new units i can make so only one army is fairly current tier and most are running on clanrats as the mainstay unit (one is half or a third composed of slaves). I really need to update them but managing all my territories is becoming a chore esp. with the constant fighting in the west and the moving battle-line territories.

 Wolfblade wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Outriders need to be micromanaged to lure opponents.

Can't you just chuck them on Skirmish mode? I have noticed skirmish mode in TWW2 seems a bit more intelligent than TWW1. TWW1 they'd often wait too long before kiting away and thus end up getting trapped or surrounded, TWW2 they seem to make more of an effort to keep away (to the point you have to be more vigilant if you DO need them to move somewhere specific that you turn off skirmisher mode first).

I think overall they just increased the range that skirmish mode forces units to try and maintain, ironicly though, skink javelins range is actually shorter than the range skirmish mode forces them to keep. Overall though it works way better than TWW1

I rarely ever used Jav Skinks to know. I find Skirmishing Chameleons are really good. They need a bit of micro to make sure they haven't been pushed out of range by an enemy who started chasing them but then turned around, basically just need to make sure their target is whoever is trying to chase them. But they really just peck away at targets.

Unfortunately in campaign late game it's more about elite stacks than it is about cool tactics and efficient builds so skinks in general become a bit useless.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Wolfblade wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Outriders need to be micromanaged to lure opponents.

Can't you just chuck them on Skirmish mode? I have noticed skirmish mode in TWW2 seems a bit more intelligent than TWW1. TWW1 they'd often wait too long before kiting away and thus end up getting trapped or surrounded, TWW2 they seem to make more of an effort to keep away (to the point you have to be more vigilant if you DO need them to move somewhere specific that you turn off skirmisher mode first).

I think overall they just increased the range that skirmish mode forces units to try and maintain, ironicly though, skink javelins range is actually shorter than the range skirmish mode forces them to keep. Overall though it works way better than TWW1

I rarely ever used Jav Skinks to know. I find Skirmishing Chameleons are really good. They need a bit of micro to make sure they haven't been pushed out of range by an enemy who started chasing them but then turned around, basically just need to make sure their target is whoever is trying to chase them. But they really just peck away at targets.

Unfortunately in campaign late game it's more about elite stacks than it is about cool tactics and efficient builds so skinks in general become a bit useless.

You mean like spamming 10 monsters and clicking the 'I win' button? I'm sure that's expensive to buy and maintain though.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Wolfblade wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Outriders need to be micromanaged to lure opponents.

Can't you just chuck them on Skirmish mode? I have noticed skirmish mode in TWW2 seems a bit more intelligent than TWW1. TWW1 they'd often wait too long before kiting away and thus end up getting trapped or surrounded, TWW2 they seem to make more of an effort to keep away (to the point you have to be more vigilant if you DO need them to move somewhere specific that you turn off skirmisher mode first).

I think overall they just increased the range that skirmish mode forces units to try and maintain, ironicly though, skink javelins range is actually shorter than the range skirmish mode forces them to keep. Overall though it works way better than TWW1

I rarely ever used Jav Skinks to know. I find Skirmishing Chameleons are really good. They need a bit of micro to make sure they haven't been pushed out of range by an enemy who started chasing them but then turned around, basically just need to make sure their target is whoever is trying to chase them. But they really just peck away at targets.

Unfortunately in campaign late game it's more about elite stacks than it is about cool tactics and efficient builds so skinks in general become a bit useless.

You mean like spamming 10 monsters and clicking the 'I win' button? I'm sure that's expensive to buy and maintain though.

I'm talking when you hit the point that you can't really afford lots of low tier units in an army because a full stack is 20 units regardless of whether it's made of Temple Guard or Skinks and the TG will win games and the Skink one will just bounce off the enemy full stacks.

When the AI is rocking up with nothing but armoured troops blow darts don't really do much anymore.

Recently beat the vortex with Malekith on very hard; now doing mortal empires with Malekith on legendary, took me about 25-30 tries to setup my base and surroundings, am at the first wave of chaos around turn 150, wrecked 5/7 armies with not a scratch on my territory, fought off another 3 different single armies from teclis, lizardmen factions, the AP weapons from the dark elves is really a plus vs chaos; only real setback was losing a couple armies and their lords to the Lizardmen.

Vs hellcannon BS, you need to line up in a skirmish line, single file, laugh at their face when they miss or kills 1 guy!

Say what

 Ashiraya wrote:


Say what

Probably more a short term end to hostilities until they are in a better situation to kill each other again. It's not like they're military allies or something.

I find the turns in mortal realms take bloody forever. I was raising a army for 4 turns and it took 12 minutes for those turns to pass.

I'm somewhere over 160 turns in (perhaps 180?). My game was going well. Still might be. When the undead enemy we were fighting was on the ropes i suddenly had some of my trade routes cut. The big issue being this annoyed my dwarf buddies for some stupid reason and i lost a significant amount of income and started being in debt significantly. Just to put this in perspective went from 250 to 50 or 0 relationship with one just from trade routes being cut.

Anyway chaos came into the world and i lost a territory from them. It didn't help they were raiding my lands and really put me at negative income. Managed to kill one of the 4 armies in that sub-faction and lost queek's army taking most of it down but there's also yet another army from another chaos sub-faction at the very least. Not to mention i'm getting sieged by that vampire enemy somewhere else and my allies are basically dumb ***es right now. The vampire enemy army's attack is rather pitiful and i should be able to handle it pretty easily though.

What really miffs me about all these chaos armies is that from what i've seen they bypassed multiple territories just to come attack mine. It's incredibly stupid and frustrating. That said crooked moon mutinous gits did the same and took one of my territories as well. It's the only time they did or at least managed to hold onto it. I have plenty of defenses and walls at territories to the north, the east of my base is just an enemy getting killed by another enemy so my only real issue is to the western territories.

Chaos' first incursion wrecked me. 8 stacks his my territories, and I lost maybe a quarter of my land when all was said and done. I still hadn't fully confederated Ulthuan yet, so the 4 regions I ended up losing, other factions snagged up before I could free an army from the fight to get to them.

Dark Elves took advantage of my distraction to push back into their territory I had taken, and half my Naggaroth territory was lost as well.

That was just the first incursion... Archaon's going to suck.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

What really miffs me about all these chaos armies is that from what i've seen they bypassed multiple territories just to come attack mine

That's exactly what happened. It's the bug mentioned above.

CA's aware of it and is hoping to have a fix in place soon.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:


Say what

Probably more a short term end to hostilities until they are in a better situation to kill each other again. It's not like they're military allies or something.

Eh. There should be _something_ in the AI behaviors that makes that not possible. I can see the AI getting all sorts of confused about it, possibly to the point of never restarting the war (which is obviously really bad for Skarsnik)

Considering I've seen the Greenskins confederate the Mutinous Gits before, it seems borked.

Who are the mutinous gits from a fluff perspective and why should other greenskins hate them so much as not to make peace treaties with them? I don't remember them in the official GW fluff so I just figured they were something like a rebellion against Skarsnik.

I always assumed Orc and Goblin politics was a very fluid thing, just following whoever is most successful at any given point in time and putting down treaties to keep yourself alive before breaking them to become the new top dog.

But yeah, definitely hoping they fix Chaos in the campaign and introduce Norsca soon. I'm playing a Wood Elf campaign at the moment just because WE economy is based on razing rather than holding settlements, so if Chaos sweeps in worst case scenario I can fall back to Athel Loren and deal with them before getting back on the razing train.

Trying to build up a bit of a buffer, playing WE in the past I've always just worked at a massive negative income and used the razing to keep positive, trying to build a bit of an anti-chaos buffer this time.

It's funny how WE play like I feel many other armies SHOULD play (Orcs for example).



Has anyone ever tried an "evil" Bretonnian game where you just ignore Chivalry and instead build crusades which loot and sack rather than being all goody goody? Was wondering if that was something that would be interesting but I can't remember the negative effects of low Chivalry.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Who are the mutinous gits from a fluff perspective and why should other greenskins hate them so much as not to make peace treaties with them? I don't remember them in the official GW fluff so I just figured they were something like a rebellion against Skarsnik.

I always assumed Orc and Goblin politics was a very fluid thing, just following whoever is most successful at any given point in time and putting down treaties to keep yourself alive before breaking them to become the new top dog.

The mutinous gits are a CA invention to get around the fact that Karak Eight Peaks is held by Belegar, Skarsnik and Queek in the lore. So now all three want to get their home back. So Skarsnik and the gits making peace is like Franz letting the Reikland rebels have Altdorf.

I've probably lost a good 4-5 territories now but i gained one from crooked moon mutinous gits which took a poorly defended territory earlier on. I smashed their forces and their held territory pretty handily. They're seemingly weak in that area.

As far as the main chaos force assaulting me i took down about 2 armies i think and 2-3 are heavily battered. The rest of my garrisoned forces are holding fairly well so that's going fairly well. One of the chaos armies also sieged and attacked one of my territories after they lost against that very territory before so i doubt they'll get it this time around.

Also strigoi kingdoms took one of the territories i was holding before after he took it from my dwarf ally which took it after i lost it and it was just a chaos ruin. All of those things happening annoyed me. I think it was the black pyramid of nagash territory. Anyway the strigoi are getting fairly strong again even though they lost an army not terribly long ago.

So anyway i'm on 10 territories now down from 14 or 15. A third of my land lost is still pretty significant and 2 territories were heavily defended too.