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I decided to forge on with Kislev (mostly to unlock Boris). Things are going well, campaign wise, though it took a lot for the Enclave (that holds Erengard) to confederate. Devotion/support is kind of... blah.
I'm not entirely sold on the army composition- its fine, but... I dunno. I like Tempest magic better than Ice, and I don't like a primary caster (especially with no melee hero. The patriarch is a really fantastic support, but he doesn't exactly beat face). For units, too many do the same thing, so army composition just settles into 'get the better ones that do X'

For Boris:


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Game's good overall, but I see this main campaign getting old, fast. The chaos realms are different, but I don't think they're going to remain 'fun different' for an extended period.

The big issue is I'm on the second Soul, and the game is really chugging. Between the corruption everywhere due to the rifts, and the nigh-constant blizzards in Kislev, there's so much particle crap on the campaign map that my system is just... not happy.

Also, Nurgle plagues seem so much worse than Skaven plagues. The Daemon Prince just seems to show up and any army in the region gets infected- with Skaven you could just avoid the settlement they plagued, and not worry too much.

But I'm about to dive into Nurgle's Manse and then call it a night. For whatever reason, Kugath followed me in (and around) with a broken shell of an army (all units at about 20% health). It was worth taking an extra turn to punch his face in.


Weirdest thing so far- Kraka Drak fell rather ignominiously to Nurgle Rebels. With Kugath standing outside to snap it up from them. Fast forward ~20 turns, and its now owned by Fateweaver. He transferred ownership to himself from the other side of the map. Its also at 100% Slaanesh corruption (and 50% Nurgle, though that's falling) so Control is spiraling down.

Also, you can watch a dwarf gyrocopter spin around the mountains east (?) of Zhufbar. Its a bit weird to watch one of the egg-copters zoom about.

I hate having potato internet :(

still showing 3 hours this morning! :(

Been playing Skarbrand exclusively so far. I just like how he's pretty straightforward.

I got about 20-40 turns in on 3 different playthroughs and kept hitting a wall. I was playing too defensively and not making use of his army generation ability when razing a settlement. About 20 turns into a playthrough this morning before work and I have almost triple the territory I had in any of my other playthroughs with a relatively healthy economy. Fun stuff.

Also, has anyone invaded Slaanesh's realm yet? It warns you that you'll be tempted every step of the way and I just laughed it off. Then the temptations started popping up and stacking up. The ones closer to the center of his realm are pretty damn... tempting. Particularly for my army and economy at the time. Still, I powered through and got the second soul.

Played through the Prologue last night. Surprisingly, the only achievement I missed was the one that asked you to fill up the army. I stopped at 19/20 units.

I then started up the Cathay campaign. But after a couple of battles, I had to shut it off for the night. Right now I have a rebel city to capture, beastmen raiding my capitol province, and two temporary missions for things that I need to do anyway, but are in the complete opposite direction from the rebels. Business as usual!

Random things - Miao Ying's banners are light grey. The banners of the Cathay rebels are white. Whoever decided that these two color schemes are a good idea for groups that start the game fighting each other needs to be subjected to some traditional Chinese punishment methods. It doesn't help that banners of units that are losing morale turn lighter.

During the Prologue, I had a few instances in which I seemingly issued orders to a unit, but the unit didn't respond.

The Advisor's bird is absent this time around. I don't know whether we saw it in the second game, but iirc we didn't have an intro sequence with the Advisor joining your faction like in this game and the first game. And the bird only really appeared in the intro sequences (and, you know, when it...). Anyway, just a minor note.

The new settlement battle is annoying. In the one that I fought, the tower at the entrance seemed overly tough. I don't know that it actually killed anything. But it survived an awful lot of punishment from my siege weapon (a sky gondola). In contrast, the barricades blocking access to the supply point controlling that tower were destroyed pretty much the moment my troops touched them. I suspect there's supposed to be something going on here that isn't clear yet.

With the settlement battles, when you capture a zone it destroys the surrounding enemy defences. So it's probably that you came across?

I've started as Katarin after the prologue, all will fall before my icy slippers.

 Olthannon wrote:
With the settlement battles, when you capture a zone it destroys the surrounding enemy defences. So it's probably that you came across?

I've started as Katarin after the prologue, all will fall before my icy slippers.

No, the barriers were between me and the supply point. They might have been defended by Peasant Bowmen who retreated from my advancing troops, which left the barrier undefended. I'm wondering if that's why they instantly collapsed? It's something I'll have to keep an eye on in the future.

On another note, the pre-battle load screen has been providing some very handy advice on how the Tomb King mechanics work.

It shouldn't. Barricades don't need to be manned to act as blockers (which... eh. Especially given that defenders largely treat them as if they don't exist).

It may be that the particular barricade wasn't attached to the supply point you thought it was. I'm not familiar with the Cathay maps, but sometimes the 'adjacent' build points aren't all that adjacent.

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Towers are... interesting. The magic ones are pretty impressive over the long term, but the lower level ones seem ignorable, better to focus on troops or capture points.

Voss wrote:


It may be that the particular barricade wasn't attached to the supply point you thought it was. I'm not familiar with the Cathay maps, but sometimes the 'adjacent' build points aren't all that adjacent.

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Towers are... interesting. The magic ones are pretty impressive over the long term, but the lower level ones seem ignorable, better to focus on troops or capture points.

The battle was small enough that I only captured one supply point (in the center of the settlement) before the enemy army collapsed.

I honestly can't stand the new campaing with the rifts.
They completely remove the sandbox that is supposedly total war, suck massively overall, are basically just a busywork for the sake of it, etc.

The realms themselves sound nice, until you actually suffered through nurgle and tzeentch which are just.... bad.
The race for the souls is more annoying than anything.

Tzeentch is annoying, because if someone gets ahead of you, there's nothing you can do but give up. (gates end movement, for the most part). Its a pure crapshoot.

Slaanesh has much the same problem- the fights with the lurking armies can be tough, you can't avoid them upon exiting a gate, and leave you no choice but to camp and replenish several times.

Nurgle's realm is bizarrely easy. You fight one of two armies at the entrance, march, camp, fight one of the next set of armies, get the code, head back, camp again and do the fight. It may depend on what faction you've got, but the Nurgle Realm armies drop dead to ranged and magic.


There definitely isn't anything to the campaign that I'd want to do it more than a few times. And even then probably start jumping into Slaanesh for the temptations, then 'traverse rifts' to go gank the competitors rather than win by the souls.


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Yeesh. Fair warning to anyone playing Kislev, the Confederation with the other LL happens automatically over the end turn, and can absolutely tank your economy. Evil mini-Rasputin had 5 armies and a half dozen loose heroes and my economy went from +1000 per turn to -11,000. Drained my treasury completely and set everyone to attrition status.

And now I'm fighting...uh... everything east, north and northwest of me. The Brotherhood of the Bear or whoever took over High Pass, and its ugly out there. Someone failed to put down their demon rebellions when the rifts were up.

And bloody Skrag. Bypassed Middenland and Nordland to come lay siege to Erenguard. He's at war with every single Empire faction, and he still came to say 'Hi.'

Fun bugs for everyone:

Disbanding armies doesn't reduce upkeep.

Ogre camps don't replenish garrisons in certain territory.

Huh? Disbanding armies reduces upkeep just fine for me.

Haven't tried ogre camps, but if the 'certain territory' is Uninhabitable Climate, that isn't a bug. The 15% malus has always been able to push the replenishment below the minimum threshold.


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Finally. Breached Tzeentch's realm and got that soul. [Other factions stand at 2 each for Khorne, Tzeentch and Slaanesh (none this round) and 1 for Goldtooth (his first, this round). Cathay was also in the realm of Tzeentch, and appeared next to the last gate I needed right before I went through. Then... teleported to a different gate. I guess they're personalized? Kugath and the Daemon Prince have been too busy sacrificing themselves against my armies (and plaguing them, which...), and Skarbrand kept himself busy this round killing his army to raze towns in Norsca and then immediately settling them. Because reasons.

And the cutscene lore dump for the 3rd soul is... weird.


Also, one simple attrition plague has taken Boris Ursus out for 8 fricking turns!

Voss wrote:
Huh? Disbanding armies reduces upkeep just fine for me

I've heard reports of this one elsewhere. If I remember correctly, it might be a Kislev thing.

Apparently, it seems the idiotic Denuvo DRM that SEGA loves so much in hampering performance. As usual, the paying customer gets screws whilst the pirates don't care.

Eumerin wrote:

Voss wrote:
Huh? Disbanding armies reduces upkeep just fine for me

I've heard reports of this one elsewhere. If I remember correctly, it might be a Kislev thing.

If it is, I guess I'm absurdly lucky or its a mini-Rasputin specific thing. I've had no problems with Kislev.

The most noticeable problem (other than skipping ahead in the tutorial part of the prologue and being on a screen where the recruit lord button is unavailable when it demands you click it), is the graphics tanking at the start of turn when it auto-switches perspective from a Chaos Realm to whatever army/hero I was last on. Not sure if its the system chugging or my old graphics card, however. (I was going to upgrade this last year, but with everything the new cards never came down in price). When the chaos realms aren't active, the strain isn't nearly so bad.


For the combined game map, I hope they leave the chaos realms out. They're not terribly fun, and the map is so severely warped to fit them in. I would've rather they did a standard North oriented map, and just put the chaos realms floating separately, rather than functioning as the north pole

Voss wrote:

Eumerin wrote:

Voss wrote:
Huh? Disbanding armies reduces upkeep just fine for me

I've heard reports of this one elsewhere. If I remember correctly, it might be a Kislev thing.

If it is, I guess I'm absurdly lucky or its a mini-Rasputin specific thing. I've had no problems with Kislev.

The most noticeable problem (other than skipping ahead in the tutorial part of the prologue and being on a screen where the recruit lord button is unavailable when it demands you click it), is the graphics tanking at the start of turn when it auto-switches perspective from a Chaos Realm to whatever army/hero I was last on. Not sure if its the system chugging or my old graphics card, however. (I was going to upgrade this last year, but with everything the new cards never came down in price). When the chaos realms aren't active, the strain isn't nearly so bad.


For the combined game map, I hope they leave the chaos realms out. They're not terribly fun, and the map is so severely warped to fit them in. I would've rather they did a standard North oriented map, and just put the chaos realms floating separately, rather than functioning as the north pole

Double check your actual gold upkeep rather than the percentage increase displayed at the top. The tooltip decreases properly, but the actual increase for multiple armies doesn't go down, and will even go up more if you re-recruit the same Lord into a new army.

Hmm. I've only ever gone by the gold upkeep, not the percentage.

When the devotion game confederated me with mini-Rasputin, I was at -11K, and disbanded stuff until I was at +1K. Disbanded armies after the other two confederations as well, and upkeep went down.

I'll take a look when I get home... I was pondering saving, disbanding everything and passing the turning to get the first two 'income achievements' (5K and 20K) anyway.

Voss wrote:
Hmm. I've only ever gone by the gold upkeep, not the percentage.

When the devotion game confederated me with mini-Rasputin, I was at -11K, and disbanded stuff until I was at +1K. Disbanded armies after the other two confederations as well, and upkeep went down.

I'll take a look when I get home... I was pondering saving, disbanding everything and passing the turning to get the first two 'income achievements' (5K and 20K) anyway.

Yeah, the upkeep for individual units will go away. It's the supply line penalty for having multiple lords that doesn't properly decrement.

 Laughing Man wrote:

Voss wrote:
Hmm. I've only ever gone by the gold upkeep, not the percentage.

When the devotion game confederated me with mini-Rasputin, I was at -11K, and disbanded stuff until I was at +1K. Disbanded armies after the other two confederations as well, and upkeep went down.

I'll take a look when I get home... I was pondering saving, disbanding everything and passing the turning to get the first two 'income achievements' (5K and 20K) anyway.

Yeah, the upkeep for individual units will go away. It's the supply line penalty for having multiple lords that doesn't properly decrement.

Ah. Ok, that I will check on. That sounds a lot more plausible than 'disbanding armies doesn't reduce upkeep'
Thanks

It probably has something to do with the Lord still being in your faction, just not deployed. Just like how a wounded Lord who heals back up will need to be redeployed, but is still in existence and you're paying for his upkeep. They may still not have properly implemented the disbandment of lords. I know there were similar issues in Rome 2 where you could end up with a bunch of useless generals who were sucking up your upkeep while not on the battlefield.

Hmm. The short term fix (at least for non-immortal ones) might be to re-hire and mass suicide them against... whatever. A pack of lords would have decent auto-resolve weight, and if you're stuck paying for them as is...


Also, if any one is interested- a way to reset rift spawns timers (to put them off more or less indefinitely) Fair warning: backup the files in question and be careful before editing. (in spoiler tags because the url is long and copied oddly)


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Ok, just tested things out with my Kislev game. Disbanding armies works fine. Supply lines goes up and down like it should, all the way to zero.

To the point that it tipped me over to 20K income per turn, so I got that achievement. And bought my way to a 10th alliance so got that one too.

And then borrowed an empire army, to see how that worked- which, don't recommend. Crappy unit composition, and all their movement is already gone. And the one you borrow stays wherever it is (in this case, south of Altdorf). In some cases this might be useful (taking a foothold in a far off land, for example, or personally fighting an enemy the AI is failing at), but its pretty terrible for reinforcing your own situation.

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Huzzah. Finally took Doomkeep. Both armies on that side are plagued again, but at least Prince Timmy will stop coming out to get punched in the face. One coastal settlement left and then the least impressive enemy is gone.

Finally cleared my first portal. I picked Khorne for the realm. And the first opponent I faced was... a lizardman(?) with spear-armed sauruses, supported by dragon-ogres(!?), including a shaggoth?

Okay... that was a bit of an odd combination...

The shaggoth turned out to be the easy part, as I turned Miao Yang into her dragon form, and smacked the shaggoth around.

Ok, this bothers me. All four (five with the DP) factions have military alliances with each other.

I get it, since all four are at war with all non-chaos factions they encounter, so their military actions are constantly increasing relations, but.... no. Nkari and Skarbrand and Kugath and Kairos should not be bosom buddies. They should have a hell of a malus to relations.

I’m enjoying this game, its been alot of fun, but I don’t see myself doing another playthrough after my Skarbrand campaign.

Probably keep it on hold until the new version of Mortal Empires comes out.

I just had a stack of Kurgan bypass the Dragon Gate in Cathay. One stack laid siege to the gate. A second stack then ran right past it and got into the area behind.

That's not how it's supposed to work.

Eumerin wrote:
I just had a stack of Kurgan bypass the Dragon Gate in Cathay. One stack laid siege to the gate. A second stack then ran right past it and got into the area behind.

That's not how it's supposed to work.

Yeah, but its consistent with how sieging settlements have worked since at least TW2. Once a city is under siege, their zone of control is gone (the red zone), so they can't reinforce, and can be bypassed.
Its been a gimmick for taking out armies around an enemy city without having to fight the city garrison at all (even if you're only sieging it with a general and empty stack)

But hey, its still better than the elf gates in Ulthuann. Enemies could walk past those without sieging them at all.

I beat the campaign with Skarbrand. Was crazy lucky.

Within 10 turns, a cult building popped up at N’kari’s capital. For gaks and giggles I chose the building that teleports your faction leader. Skarbrand then proceeds to raze the capital, with a Bloodhost forming. N’kari is killed the next turn, followed by another Slaanesh settlement. Another Bloodhost army forms, rinse and repeat until I fought my way back to my starting province, razing settlements and calling up bloodhosts. Then I’d just wait for the settlements to fold into my empire due to Khorne’s campaign mechanic. Within 25 turns I had the top left portion of the map under my control and from there I built up an economy and defensive armies, while getting Skarbrand and his army levelled up.

The final battle was… interesting. Very tower defense-esque and grindy. Luckily my army was built for such an occasion.

Going to tool around with my new pet Be’lakor for a bit.

I think I’ll give Kislev a go when I feel like another campaign. I felt bad for Ursun.

Voss wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
I just had a stack of Kurgan bypass the Dragon Gate in Cathay. One stack laid siege to the gate. A second stack then ran right past it and got into the area behind.

That's not how it's supposed to work.

Yeah, but its consistent with how sieging settlements have worked since at least TW2. Once a city is under siege, their zone of control is gone (the red zone), so they can't reinforce, and can be bypassed.
Its been a gimmick for taking out armies around an enemy city without having to fight the city garrison at all (even if you're only sieging it with a general and empty stack)

But hey, its still better than the elf gates in Ulthuann. Enemies could walk past those without sieging them at all.

It's not being bypassed, though. There are giant impassable walls running up to the city on each side. The AI can't get through those regardless of the status of the garrison. The AI unit must literally be running *through* the city.

I understand that part of the issue is that the engine is incapable of handling "gate"-style settlements. That's why you can besiege the things from just one side (which is also silly, but slightly less absurd than what I described above). But they need to come up with a fix for the engine that properly handles the gate situation before they release the second Three Kingdoms game that they mentioned back when they stopped work on the first one.

Did prolog.
Started as cathay.

How do you confederate?

Sees closest i get is -3 and i cant improve it or add anything. If i threaten its war deck

Voss wrote:


But hey, its still better than the elf gates in Ulthuann. Enemies could walk past those without sieging them at all.

When I first started playing TWW2 on the vortex campaign, I stopped for a few days because I was so bloody irritated that happened. The usual spawn of chaos and skaven happened during a ritual and I was like oh well I'm sure they'll be stopped by these gates that's their whole job..