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 Disciple of Fate wrote:
So unfortunate that the BOBB had to wait for the Skull throne Event, now everyone has played GS campaigns already.

More than enough reason to launch a new campaign.

man orcs are so much fun to play now, the new waaagh mechanic makes it feel like a real green tide

Absolutely love this update. Running an Eltharion and an Imrik campaign right now. Most enthusiasm I've had for the game in a year.

Vlad and Mannfred have been running the board in the Empire regions for every campaign I’ve played since this patch. Started an Azhag campaign and it seems AI controlled VC get all of East Sylvania and a portion of West Sylvania right at the start. Seems kind of silly.

Also, playing as Belegar is even more fun now, with all the buffs to Greenskins. Just battled my way to taking Karak Eightpeaks and its surrounded by greenskins to the North and Clan Mors to the south. Having a blast with this patch, other then the VC getting silly right at the start..

 nels1031 wrote:
Vlad and Mannfred have been running the board in the Empire regions for every campaign I’ve played since this patch. Started an Azhag campaign and it seems AI controlled VC get all of East Sylvania and a portion of West Sylvania right at the start. Seems kind of silly.

To a point. Once the Empire gets its act together and starts confederating (mid game), they seem to roll right over the vampires. In mine they get to the gates of Altdorf, but once the first confederations start happening, the ball starts rolling and the VC are pushed back to Sylvania in a very fast dozen or so turns, and then snuffed. The battle calculations for greatswords and other late game units seems to really favor empire vs vampires, while the inverse seems to be true early on.

Part of it is the change to the AI- the vampires used to get in fairly pointless fights with the dwarfs, and burned a lot of armies that way. Now they're encouraged to focus on the empire, and having Azhag up north gives them an ally, rather than expansion space for Ungrim (or Kislev).

Is anyone else having their maps being over run with Clan Mors or Cravenclaw while playing? As Eltharion I Hardly had a chance to fight Greenskins outside of the beginning two provinces, and didn’t even bloody get to see Grom, much less duke it out with him. Grimgor and Thorgrim got steamrolled by Clan mors, and Clan eshin took out Imrik. I think skaven took out half of bretonnia too Now I got Skaven empires on all sides, in a land war with Har greth, and may have to defend against more skaven soon.

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
Is anyone else having their maps being over run with Clan Mors or Cravenclaw while playing? As Eltharion I Hardly had a chance to fight Greenskins outside of the beginning two provinces, and didn’t even bloody get to see Grom, much less duke it out with him. Grimgor and Thorgrim got steamrolled by Clan mors, and Clan eshin took out Imrik. I think skaven took out half of bretonnia too Now I got Skaven empires on all sides, in a land war with Har greth, and may have to defend against more skaven soon.

Nope. I'm seeing seas of vampires and greenskins. Skaven keep coming to bad ends relatively early on, with the exception of Moulder, which rolls over Kislev and the Norse Dwarfs (though in fairness Kislev often ends up fighting 3-4 factions, so gets distracted). Vampires eventually fade into the mid/late game, but Grimgor becomes a massive block with Wurrzag and all the minor tribes underneath him. Ikkit tends to go back and forth with Estalia and TIlea, but eventually falls to those minor powers (usually Tilea)

I finally figured out what was going on with the latter- I started up a Eltharion mortal empires campaign (which I didn't really like- the split starting locations is actually annoying).
Anyway, when the gobbos on Ulthuan have one province left, Grom confederates them. I thought that was odd, since he's way off in the Misty Mountain area, but move on, take the settlement anyway, and start building defensively their while I focus on the savage orcs (Top Knots). Then a few turns latter, Grom confederates Wurrzag, which seems odd, since those vampires are in between and I didn't think they were at war. A bit latter, the savages are gone, and I'm moving into Groms territory, get jumped by Grom and Wurrzag's stacks, win, and then suddenly Grimgor confederates Grom's tribe, and my war with Grom is over.

And it hits me- the AI gets both confederation options (beating in a fight and just doing it through diplomacy, which they're inclined to do when they've lost stacks and are weak.) So its turn ~30, and Grimgor has about 11 provinces, all of Grom's and Wurrzag's stuff, and they'll come back in 4-5 turns. And the ridiculous green juggernaut picks up speed- having both confederation options is just crazy, given how easily the AIs give into each other on that score. The only one I usually see crumped (or just sitting in his starting area) is Skarsnik. He just doesn't have anywhere to go that the AI can handle.


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Skaven-wise, Queek seems to pick bad fights and gets plowed under, and while I suspect Eshin tend to take out Imrik early on, they tend to hit the green wall. The one major advantage Skaven have is their ambush. It lets them ignore Waagh armies, and those just vanish when their main army get wiped out.

I was playing a Vlad campaign, and south of the mountains, the dwarfs were hanging on, mostly by confederating westward, but they still get pushed out of Karaz-a-Karak. The weird thing here was Barak Var rallied and kicked Wurrzag back out of their city (which, I now suspect, is when Grimgor confederated with him). But Grimgor still took Karaz-a-Karak, and had 25-30 cities.

In my play through there are several blocks:

The High Elves have most of their island.
The Dark Elves have their area, and a bit of the HE's island.
The Lizzies have the south east.
I (Grom) have the south west, shared with Setra.

The Lizzies that were South West are gone ('cause of me!), and so is Imrik (also 'cause of me!). There is a group of allied Brets at the top of the area I'm in (all around Araby) that are being ground into dust by me and Setra. Somewhere in all this is clan Eshin, and they're the only Skaven I've seen so far.

I'm actually happy about that. From the all the stories I've heard from players, Skaven are terrifying. I don't want to face them.

The trick with skaven is focusing on their cities and just accept the fact that they will ambush you, which means not overloading on missile and artillery units. With solid fighting units, the ambush devolves into a straight fight pretty quick, and the skaven AI tends not to do that well with army composition or utilizing the ambush set up properly (often they set up on one side and further away) Fast stuff that can run night/gutter runners down also helps (as does attacking any siege engines they may or may not bring).

Voss wrote:
The trick with skaven is focusing on their cities and just accept the fact that they will ambush you, which means not overloading on missile and artillery units. With solid fighting units, the ambush devolves into a straight fight pretty quick, and the skaven AI tends not to do that well with army composition or utilizing the ambush set up properly (often they set up on one side and further away) Fast stuff that can run night/gutter runners down also helps (as does attacking any siege engines they may or may not bring).

ever heard of, you know, heros that can scout?
Also remaining outside their attack range will make it neigh impossible to get ambushed by them.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Voss wrote:
The trick with skaven is focusing on their cities and just accept the fact that they will ambush you, which means not overloading on missile and artillery units. With solid fighting units, the ambush devolves into a straight fight pretty quick, and the skaven AI tends not to do that well with army composition or utilizing the ambush set up properly (often they set up on one side and further away) Fast stuff that can run night/gutter runners down also helps (as does attacking any siege engines they may or may not bring).

ever heard of, you know, heros that can scout?
Also remaining outside their attack range will make it neigh impossible to get ambushed by them.

Er... skaven armies are invisible on the map when they want to be. Scouting heroes make no difference (beyond revealing the ruins as the skaven cities you already know they are), nor does their 'attack range.' You still have to get to their cities to wipe them out.

Anyone else running into the mouseover stance bug in the campaign map or the group option bug in battles?

I can't embed the GIF.

https://preview.redd.it/vr6ini0sjo351.gif?format=mp4&s=87b372e1e59064dcf0ed982679b1ab89d89af498

Edit: I'll have battles from time to time where the group option simply doesn't work.

Yes. It's bloody annoying.


In other news, defeating Gotrek gives your army leader the "Unbreakable" trait.

In other, other news, Grom now has the "Unbreakable" trait.

This game does throw weird results from time to time.

Playing a Throgg campaign. Spent the first 20 turns uniting Norsca west of the dwarves (the last idiot, Kamaerhon the Bloody Hound, razed the Varg Camp then spent half-a-dozen turns running from me). Then Cothique declared war. So I turn Throgg into the ocean and start going west. As I'm passing the northern end of Bretonnian, I notice two huge stacks from the Red Duke in L'Anguille.

Next turn, bam, they've taken Couronne- all that's left that I can see is a solitary level 1 Prophetess of Beasts camped out in a field, and I believe the orc settlement in the mountains just next to Marienburg.

The Red Duke's army is wrecked, and the garrison in Couronne is 4 skeletons with spears, 2 zombies and 2 bats.

I managed to steal a frost wyrm, skin wolves and an Ice Chariot in addition to my starting units and marauder filler, and the sorcerer of metal I recruited gives +5 melee attack to the entire army. With throgg's buff, my ice trolls have 71 melee attack.

So I'm very, very tempted, despite wanting to see a normally third tier faction over-run the Brets.

New Patch!

"Da Nutz & Boltz" beta patch. They fixed a bunch of stuff, but among other things:

Gambling Winds of Magic will no longer give the same result each time
Removed the Lord of Changes’ influence on the stance list – it should no longer play mind games and close while moused over
Fixed an issue with army selection on the campaign map where having two armies nearby each other would sometimes block selection of the other
Updated Black Orc Big Boss with a stauncher skill tree

Heh. That last one. Very droll.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Fixed an issue with army selection on the campaign map where having two armies nearby each other would sometimes block selection of the other

Sweet feth, I needed this.

Still think the 'hit box' for army selection is smaller than it used to be.

But still, they fixed some problems that have been dogging the game since the black orc boss mini-update

have done the eltharion campaign and now doing imrik on vortex.

Can report both are quite unique in the terms of mechanics.

Nice to be able to play as imrik without using mixus mod

Is Grom completely OP right now? I'm at about turn 75ish in a hard Mortal Empires campaign and I've confederated Skarsnik and Azhag. The Golden Order, Border Princes, Clan Angrud, and a couple of other dwarf factions (Karaz and I think Karak Hirn?) are all dead by my hand. The Vampire Counts decided to start a war with me and I've destroyed several of their armies and claimed Castle Drakenhof. I also took Skavenblight and Skyre might be down to 1 army.

The cooking feels really broken. Early game you can exchange scrap for random gold to speed up your economy. Once you unlock all four slots, which is really easy even with bad quest RNG, doing the Hag quest gives 150 scrap/5k gold every couple of turns. Compared to my Skarsnik campaign I feel like I have a lot more scrap on hand.

O&G in general are pretty ridiculous on campaign. I have a Wurrzag campaign I got rather bored of simply because it involved rolling over everything.

But yes, Grom is a cakewalk.

This seems to be a trend. Vampire coast was fairly OP on release, Ikkit and Deathmaster have absurdly broken mechanics.

----
The only start that I've found that is noticeably harder than it used to be is Empire (not Golden Order) and that's simply because the rebellion gets the mountain pass fort, and their AI almost always retreats there when you start taking cities. A stack behind the walls on top of that garrison is a pain for the empire early on.

And their relationships with the other empire states precludes exploiting them early on. Once past that hurdle, however, it isn't too bad.

Of course, Chaos, Beasts and Wood Elves still have issues as well.

I did get a WoC win on normal but it was painful and I cheesed it by basically never making marauders after turn 50~ in order to stack 2-3 armies together. I did enjoy the WoC quest battles and the three lords are great, Sigvuld less so, but damn that faction is boring as all hell. Especially in endgame when every army is just Chosen/Hellcannon/Knights except for Kholek and his Shaggoths. It feels like it has the least options out of any faction except maybe Norsca, but I haven't played most of the Order factions. They just seem to have more variance. Even running Grom as my faction leader I still use Black Orcs with Grimgor, Big 'uns with Azhag, Spider Riders with Raknik (which work surprisingly well), and Big 'uns/Orc Cav with the 'orrible. Though Spider Riders/Squig Hoppers seem much stronger than any Orc Cavalry unit.

 trexmeyer wrote:
I did get a WoC win on normal but it was painful and I cheesed it by basically never making marauders after turn 50~ in order to stack 2-3 armies together. .

In fairness, that isn't cheesing it when it comes to chaos. General advice is to delete the marauder building turn 1 (so the next building costs less growth) and never recruit any marauders at all.
And often people don't bother with knights. Just stacks of Chosen and Hellcannons. Shaggoths sometimes take their place (even without Kholek).

Chaos worked a bit better in game 1, simply because no one could re-settle 'wrong terrain' cities. In 2, the ruins chaos leaves behind get rebuilt absurdly fast, and you get increasingly surrounded by enemies as you go.

I can only play and have fun using Chaos with them heavily modded. The attrition amongst hordes gets modded out, the buildings generate about 25% more income (at high end, with the upkeep reductions they actually produce income), using growth to build more hordes is gone, they can encamp after razing, can recruit low to mid end Norsca/BoC units (for variance and gaks and giggles.) and mods that make the AI more difficult to compensate the mod benefits.

Though right now, I'm trying to make a Beastmen campaign work. Took Kazhrak to Skavenblight and just raid them and keep them in check while I build up my hordes and unlock the other 2 Legendary Lords. Its pretty damn boring, but I'm too much of a fan of Beastmen to not play them every now and again.

Voss wrote:

Chaos worked a bit better in game 1, simply because no one could re-settle 'wrong terrain' cities.

Which was also one of the most annoying things about playing a non-Chaos race in the first game. The Chaos invasion would hit, and you'd end up with a bunch of ruined cities neighboring your territories, with Chaos portals that you couldn't go in and clear out, meaning that you had a permanent corruption penalty in your provinces until one of the compatible AI races decided to resettle those provinces.

I have entirely too many hours played and I haven't even touched Wood Elves or Lizardmen at all.

A few thoughts.

Warriors of Chaos are bad, primarily because they are a melee infantry focused faction in a game where melee infantry is not good. It's not as a bad at lower level difficulties, but even on hard my High Elf Archers > Swordmasters of Hoeth. The melee buffs are stupid.

I don't want to contemplate how many hours I've spent on Greenskins. I restarted a Grom campaign after confederating Grimgor, Wurzag, and Skarsnik because Azhag was dead. So I then got the band together and won. I also played campaigns starting as Skarsnik and Azhag. Grom is clearly the best faction lord just because of the Cauldron. Wurzag is the best in battle lord thanks to spamming Foot of Gork. I really dislike that their Orc Boy cav is so bad it shouldn't be recruited. Somehow Forest Goblin Spider Riders are better. Orc Infantry is in general weak. Black Orcs are okay, but so damn slow. I think Night Goblin (fanatics) are underappreciated and Nasty Skulkers might be the best melee infantry in the game in terms of cost/effectiveness. I've had battles where they just destroy whatever they touch.

I ran a Morathi vortex campaign. The campaign itself is interesting after only doing vortex as Khalida, but damn is the Dark Elf roster not fun to me. Black Arks I think are implemented well.

I played Khalida to a win on Vortex, but not on ME. I think I'm like 3 turns away on it, but I don't want to go back to it just to kill Strygos. I played Settra to win on ME and tried getting into Arkhan.
I really dislike that the best unit for Tomb Kings is the Casket of Souls and that it is so heavily time gated. It's insane that the best opening strat is get 20 units - Casket of Souls - start facerolling.

Currently playing Imrik and Imrik's army is the stupidest thing in terms of being OP that I've played yet. It is beautiful.

I also played Ikit Claw. The wrong way. I ignored his Campaign Objectives and went east. Ratling Guns are amazing and they absolutely suck during sieges compared to Archers. Still, I managed to win some very lopsided fights (against me) thanks to Ratling Guns. I can't fathom playing another Skaven faction. I guess Clan Eshin might be okay.

I got like 80-100 turns deep in a Gelt campaign, but the Empire has been very underwhelming. Guns are more powerful than Crossbows, but the positioning requirements and borderline uselessness in sieges is very frustrating.

Might as well go here

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/dev-blog-july-2020/


Soft announcement of the next DLC for WH2, another Lord Pack.

Featuring... Wood Elves! (and a WH2 race lord). This should be simple and straight-forward, but the they break it down twice and just keep it confusing.

First off, if you buy nothing, there is a Free hero character and a general game update.

If you buy the lord pack you get a Wood Elf vortex campaign and.. the 'opposite number' lord for this pack, who is probably skaven or dark elf.

If you have warhammer 1, you also get an Old World Update for WE in Mortal Empires.

If you also have the original WE DLC for warhammer 1, you also get a fourth WE lord (a 'her' according to the blog) and new units and characters for Mortal Empires.

Not sure if there is also a FLC lord for either Skaven or DE, or if the 'have everything' 4th WE lord takes that slot.

They allude to doing something like this again in the future if this works out. Presumably for beastmen, because they also need a major overhaul.

No word in the blog about TW3, blaming Covid for not announcing the 'next Total War title.' which I guess could be something else, but they've got an absurd road map for Troy (given that its Saga and theoretically 'early access' on the Epic store), and also announced a new DLC for 3k.

---
Reaction- personally, WE desperately need an overhaul, so I'm happy to see this. Lord #3 will likely be in Orean's Camp down in the southlands, and the FLC lord (#4) will probably be in the Laurelorn Forest in the Empire, for a lack of other options.
No idea who the counterpart lord would be. Maybe Thrott if its Skaven and... Kouran Darkhand? or Beastlord Rakarth? if DE. Maybe? I'm kind of out of DE characters I care about, and felt Malus was disappointing and Lokhir was rather forgettable in implementation, and even Hellebron's death night mechanic was annoying.

But really, they've over-complicated this. Just give people access to the whole shebang if they buy the new DLC. They broke it down twice and still called it confusing themselves, and promised clarification when it actually comes out. That's absurd.

DLC for a DLC. I honestly didn't think they'd do it.

And it's not the Beastmen either, which is weird. They've got bigger gaps than the Wood Elves.

 trexmeyer wrote:
I have entirely too many hours played and I haven't even touched Wood Elves or Lizardmen at all.

A few thoughts.

Warriors of Chaos are bad, primarily because they are a melee infantry focused faction in a game where melee infantry is not good. It's not as a bad at lower level difficulties, but even on hard my High Elf Archers > Swordmasters of Hoeth. The melee buffs are stupid.

I don't want to contemplate how many hours I've spent on Greenskins. I restarted a Grom campaign after confederating Grimgor, Wurzag, and Skarsnik because Azhag was dead. So I then got the band together and won. I also played campaigns starting as Skarsnik and Azhag. Grom is clearly the best faction lord just because of the Cauldron. Wurzag is the best in battle lord thanks to spamming Foot of Gork. I really dislike that their Orc Boy cav is so bad it shouldn't be recruited. Somehow Forest Goblin Spider Riders are better. Orc Infantry is in general weak. Black Orcs are okay, but so damn slow. I think Night Goblin (fanatics) are underappreciated and Nasty Skulkers might be the best melee infantry in the game in terms of cost/effectiveness. I've had battles where they just destroy whatever they touch.

I ran a Morathi vortex campaign. The campaign itself is interesting after only doing vortex as Khalida, but damn is the Dark Elf roster not fun to me. Black Arks I think are implemented well.

I played Khalida to a win on Vortex, but not on ME. I think I'm like 3 turns away on it, but I don't want to go back to it just to kill Strygos. I played Settra to win on ME and tried getting into Arkhan.
I really dislike that the best unit for Tomb Kings is the Casket of Souls and that it is so heavily time gated. It's insane that the best opening strat is get 20 units - Casket of Souls - start facerolling.

Currently playing Imrik and Imrik's army is the stupidest thing in terms of being OP that I've played yet. It is beautiful.

I also played Ikit Claw. The wrong way. I ignored his Campaign Objectives and went east. Ratling Guns are amazing and they absolutely suck during sieges compared to Archers. Still, I managed to win some very lopsided fights (against me) thanks to Ratling Guns. I can't fathom playing another Skaven faction. I guess Clan Eshin might be okay.

I got like 80-100 turns deep in a Gelt campaign, but the Empire has been very underwhelming. Guns are more powerful than Crossbows, but the positioning requirements and borderline uselessness in sieges is very frustrating.

I think you are in for a treat with Lizard men.

Im currently doing a bretonia campaign but as Ive just unlocked hippogriff knights, its pretty much GG by now. With life mages nothings is topping me.

I own but still havent playeda campaign as any of these:

Wood elves
Skaven
Dwarves
Norsca
Vampire coast

Thing is once you unlock certain builds its just steam roll.
Except for high elves. You cant archer spam your way to victory

I found Groms campaign pretty fun. The cooking mechanic is very cool and rerally liked the new units except the wagons which sucked.. Chariots in general need bit of a buff IMO.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
DLC for a DLC. I honestly didn't think they'd do it.

And it's not the Beastmen either, which is weird. They've got bigger gaps than the Wood Elves.

In the model range, I'd agree. But the WE campaign is borderline non-playable in Mortal Empires. Only one option gives you an even vaguely average garrison in the outposts, and the Amber system is incredibly non-functional to start with, let alone when other factions can just deny you upgrades/tech/units and put you in amber-debt more or less without effort.

They're also tied for the least amount of LLs, and lords are something CA seems to inordinately value.

I'm still hoping both Beasts and Warriors get an overhaul (even if the latter has to wait until TW3). Since they share some significant problems- specifically the fragility of Horde based armies when the AI decides to hunt you en masse, it would make sense they'd tie the development together a bit, and pull in some ideas with what they may do with chaos in TW3.

Personally I want some deeply buried strongholds or shrines that they can fall back to. Similar in the way the Vampirates are horde/city factions, but less recruitment, and more upkeep and general buffs and traits (as well as a solid garrison)


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DLC for DLC feels inevitable to me. They couldn't leave those factions to rot, especially given how their main sales outreach is streamers who love multiplayer.
And just looking at the ME campaign Lord Selection screen gives an obvious feeling of how unbalanced factions are, even for single-player.
2 factions with 6 choices, 2 with 5, then several 4s, a couple 5s, then 2, 4, 2, 3, 3.

I've done Imrik campaigns in ME and Vortex. Not finishing ME since Clan Eshin keeps confederating with other Skaven to dodge death. Vortex was a joke even on Hard. Every army by mid game is Archers/Sisters/Sea Guard. Usually with a Noble or two on flyers, Handmaiden because why not, Loremaster for Earthblood, Fire Mage, and Lord on Dragon. Endgame is same thing + 3-5 Dragons. Final battle was a Heroic Victory with Imrik's army (Fire Mage, Life Mage, Handmaid, 2 Sisters, 5 Sea Guard, RoR Dragons, and then a couple more Sun Dragons). Life Mage is just there to heal the dragons and Handmaiden holds a couple of buffs for the Archers. The strat is literally just infantry sit outside LoS in checkers, Imrik dives the center line, Dragons breathe on the blob, Fire Mage dumps Burning Head + Flame Vortex. It's silly.

I tried Lizardmen and hated it. No artillery, short range at best, and magic seems mediocre compared to what it should be. I don't like infantry focused armies.