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Voss wrote:
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.

Unless their gods tell them to and then they have no choice but to do as they are told

 Argive wrote:
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

Had the same problem with Kislev for quite a while (for the non Rasputin factions). Basically you need to set up the relationship get non aggression, trade and access, and then fight/trespass on/do hero actions against people they're at war with (and don't have any agreements with people they're fighting). Also build up your relative strength, whether by building up your own armies or picking a war coordination target where they'll get an army wrecked or take attrition (if they'll move- the AI often ignores coordination targets). The AI also seems more inclined to accept confederation when the rifts are open- it may affect a background strength/threat calculation, like the relative strength of threats against them.

Just building an empty stack can push the number to positive if you're close enough, its a very gamey system.
Also, allying other factions increases your relative strength number for confederations.

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Eumerin wrote: 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.

Eh. I get what you're saying, but I think you're taking a digital object too literally and also taking the physical great wall too abstractly. If the city actually blocked movement 100% of the time, pathfinding calculations would turn into a nightmare. From a realism standpoint, once you lock down the garrison, that wall is just a physical barrier that can be climbed, sapped, breached, whatever. Manning that entire stretch of wall just isn't possible. They're just not diving down to that level of detail were you see dudes with ropes or digging tunnels (or traitors opening passages, etc)

Plus, think of the gameplay consequences. If it was a full barrier, enemy armies would just stack up on each other, and those sieges would turn utterly un-winnable real fast. If they come in and run around doing other things, you've got options beyond lose the city to the chaos tide, and then deal with multiple armies in close support of each other. (because it isn't just allies who reinforce now, its all your enemies).


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nels1031 wrote: The final battle was… interesting. Very tower defense-esque and grindy. Luckily my army was built for such an occasion.

Yeah... did that this morning. Did not enjoy. Of course, I had a caster lord, for an especially long haul domination battle, 42 minutes) in the realm of chaos, not having infinite winds of magic was terrible . As a caster lord, that was awful. Did not enjoy the many, many things or the constant stream of reinforcements. I had a lot of ice witches, and their magic bows had less effect than I was hoping, thanks to all the armor on the field.

Also from a lore perspective, the whole thing really ground my gears.

Weirdest thing.. TW3 is canonically

I had some time today and started a Legion of chaos. Customizing the Demon Prince is pretty cool.

Fooled around with a Kislev campaign as well. They seem like they have the most landmak/unique buildings in the trilogy, to the point of distraction in my opinion. Couldn’t get into the faction though. No interest in the Cathay factions at the moment. Probably just stick it out with the Legion of Chaos.

Where are people going after the initial stages of the campaign with Skarbrand? I cleared the immediate area, then headed up to take out N'Kari, but after taking him out my campaign stagnated because there was no one left to fight in the area. Once Skarbrand loses momentum it seems hard to pick it back up again.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Where are people going after the initial stages of the campaign with Skarbrand? I cleared the immediate area, then headed up to take out N'Kari, but after taking him out my campaign stagnated because there was no one left to fight in the area. Once Skarbrand loses momentum it seems hard to pick it back up again.

The most straightforward thing seems to be to ignore the settlement east of you (despite being in your initial region, and do a big circle up to Nkari, then pick up that settlement after you hack through the nurgle faction above it).

I tried it out, Skrabrand seems very killy to the point of being easy, but... I wasn't particularly invested in it. Though some of that is not wanting to deal with the campaign mechanics again.
As a lcukyincident, Nkari failed to deal with the Khorne towns in his region, so a cult popped in his capital on turn 18, so I built the 'LL teleports to that location' building, took it, and he fell to attrition and the minor khorne faction.

Also toyed with Nurgle and the Daemon Prince.
Nurgle feels awful, sorry to say. Felt stuck on crap tier units and replenishment is surprisingly awful, even with the +20% unholy manifestation (and immobility). Took the Tzeentch faction instead of going after the ogres, but took a lot of casualties. Went after Kairos when he seemed overextended, wiped out two stacks and settlements, but by the time I replenished, he had two new stacks with doom knights reinforcing his remaining two towns. I had... a couple forsaken, plague toads, a beast of nurgle and I think a single spawn that I could recruit (plus plaguebearers, the starting stuff and nurglings, obviously.) Diseases don't last long enough and failed to spread to anything that mattered.

Daemon Prince also feels awful, and just cosmetic. But he's bizarrely more reliable at doing the disease thing than Nurgle once its unlocked. Its infinite on your own armies and just... spreads. You don't have to juggle infections or anything else. The attrition plague doesn't do that much but it also stops them from healing, which is a big deal. Like Nurgle you're better off going North rather than do the settlement battle the quests tell you to do, because that kicks off the order tide. (Though that is very ineffective if you're not playing those factions... the anti-player bias is pretty hateful for those two factions).

Messed about with Greasus a bit today (huzzah for random holidays). He's fine, but really lacks access to an early caster. Ogre mechanics are interesting. Not sure about high tier units being restricted to camps, though- really have to pay attention to where you place those.. Meat production is fine as long as you're paying attention. The maze like qualities of the mountains and relative emptiness of the Dark Lands is something to keep in mind for Greasus' campaign. There are turns where you don't do much.

 Argive wrote:
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

I haven't managed to do it yet, either. I'm currently at war with two big Cathay factions, and also dealing with other issues (such as that aforementioned siege). But if I ever manage to resolve that, I'm going to try making threats over it.

Voss wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Where are people going after the initial stages of the campaign with Skarbrand? I cleared the immediate area, then headed up to take out N'Kari, but after taking him out my campaign stagnated because there was no one left to fight in the area. Once Skarbrand loses momentum it seems hard to pick it back up again.

The most straightforward thing seems to be to ignore the settlement east of you (despite being in your initial region, and do a big circle up to Nkari, then pick up that settlement after you hack through the nurgle faction above it).

I tried it out, Skrabrand seems very killy to the point of being easy, but... I wasn't particularly invested in it. Though some of that is not wanting to deal with the campaign mechanics again.
As a lcukyincident, Nkari failed to deal with the Khorne towns in his region, so a cult popped in his capital on turn 18, so I built the 'LL teleports to that location' building, took it, and he fell to attrition and the minor khorne faction.

Yeah I think my problem was instead of doing a circle, I zig-zagged my way up and used blood host armies to take out all the adjacent settlements. That meant once I hit N'Kari there wasn't anything left in the area and I had to spend several turns walking back without anyone to fight and lost all my momentum, then when I did find someone to fight the battle was close, I lost a lot of troops and had slow replenishment and not enough money to buy replacement units.

Skarbrand seems super easy if you can just keep the momentum up, I just didn't plan far enough ahead and let him lose momentum.

It's probably also a good idea to invest in a 2nd army and head off in a different direction so if one army loses momentum the economy doesn't just die, that was at least half my problem, was playing with negative income which worked great up until there was no one to fight.

I do love the way Skarbrand can just charge straight through the enemy lines and take out the enemy general in a few swings. If they try and run away he has the mass to pull through enemy formations and the speed to chase them down.

I wonder how he'll go against some of the better duellist Lords from TWW2, given how quickly he spanked N'Kari I'd be surprised if anything can stand up to him.

I might pause the Skarbrand campaign to try Tzeentch or one of the human factions.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

I wonder how he'll go against some of the better duellist Lords from TWW2, given how quickly he spanked N'Kari I'd be surprised if anything can stand up to him.

He’ll fall to the power of Skarsnik, like all the rest.

Eumerin wrote:

 Argive wrote:
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

I haven't managed to do it yet, either. I'm currently at war with two big Cathay factions, and also dealing with other issues (such as that aforementioned siege). But if I ever manage to resolve that, I'm going to try making threats over it.

I’m playing as northern Cathay. I’ve confederated most of Cathay, only two factions are left. The iron dragon and the burning nomads. I’m in the middle of the first chaos gate opening event. How I did it was rather weird and can’t say if it would work for others. I started out with the easier agreements. Then couldn’t quite confederate. There was this settlement I didn’t want, but I wanted to kill the enemy holding it. So I killed the enemy and gave the settlement to the iron dragon (as in the trade settlement function). Suddenly all of Cathay wanted to confederate with me. I mean immediately after. And if not confederate they wanted to make deals. Not sure if bug or what. Maybe giving a settlement and confederating directly after is the way to go? I play on second hardest difficulties on both campaign and battle.

 Nerak wrote:

Eumerin wrote:

 Argive wrote:
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

I haven't managed to do it yet, either. I'm currently at war with two big Cathay factions, and also dealing with other issues (such as that aforementioned siege). But if I ever manage to resolve that, I'm going to try making threats over it.

I’m playing as northern Cathay. I’ve confederated most of Cathay, only two factions are left. The iron dragon and the burning nomads. I’m in the middle of the first chaos gate opening event. How I did it was rather weird and can’t say if it would work for others. I started out with the easier agreements. Then couldn’t quite confederate. There was this settlement I didn’t want, but I wanted to kill the enemy holding it. So I killed the enemy and gave the settlement to the iron dragon (as in the trade settlement function). Suddenly all of Cathay wanted to confederate with me. I mean immediately after. And if not confederate they wanted to make deals. Not sure if bug or what. Maybe giving a settlement and confederating directly after is the way to go? I play on second hardest difficulties on both campaign and battle.

I have been doing similar - and although only confederated one by turn 20 its looking good. I had a +50 boost to diplomacy with each "gift" but no one offered confederation.

Is this a mod or a vanilla function ?
Region trading was never a thing before

 Argive wrote:
Is this a mod or a vanilla function ?
Region trading was never a thing before

Region trading was a thing until ca went bad and regressed. That being said it's back and vanilla.

 Argive wrote:
Is this a mod or a vanilla function ?
Region trading was never a thing before

They brought it back in Troy and 3 Kingdoms i think as well. Its very nice to have as an option

So I've finally managed to get some time to play. I confederated with the bear brotherhood lads extremely easily and now I've got the first Ursun's roar. To be honest I don't really care too much about the main campaigns, mortal empires is all that matters to me.

Maybe I should start over, and hand over Terracotta Graveyard after I secure it from Tzeentch.

 Olthannon wrote:
To be honest I don't really care too much about the main campaigns, mortal empires is all that matters to me.

That's where I'm at with it. I did a Skarbrand campaign to completion and now I'm just tooling around with different faction mechanics and playstyles.

Mechanically, this campaign feels much more like a chore then WH2's campaign, where you could essentially work at your own pace.

Agreed. As mentioned above, I'm in the middle of a massive war, and I got the message that the portals will open soon. I'm not sure whether I can spare an army to go poking around in one of them.

That it has to be your LL (and likely most powerful army) makes it worse. The funny thing is, the domination battles don't necessarily need a highly tuned army, but getting there often does.

Though, when I did the Realm of Slaanesh last in my Kislev campaign, none of the native armies attacked me at all. Not even the last one standing next to the portal (and my army) and I was in march stance to get there.

nels1031 wrote:Mechanically, this campaign feels much more like a chore then WH2's campaign, where you could essentially work at your own pace.

I think that's the big thing. I didn't really like the Vortex campaign either, but the pacing of gathering materials and activating events was your choice. This feels a lot more all or nothing, and you increasingly have to drop everything to control portals opening in your territory, send your lord off for however many turns and get the stupid taint traits off them when they come back. It kills the flow of the game- actually ignoring them feels freeing, but realistically you can't really afford to do that, because the AI factions don't seem to have trouble expanding and soul diving simultaneously.

Voss wrote:

Messed about with Greasus a bit today (huzzah for random holidays). He's fine, but really lacks access to an early caster. Ogre mechanics are interesting. Not sure about high tier units being restricted to camps, though- really have to pay attention to where you place those.. Meat production is fine as long as you're paying attention. The maze like qualities of the mountains and relative emptiness of the Dark Lands is something to keep in mind for Greasus' campaign. There are turns where you don't do much.

I tried to start a Greasus campaign and I wasn't feeling it. His start location is very limiting.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Argive wrote:
Is this a mod or a vanilla function ?
Region trading was never a thing before

Region trading was a thing until ca went bad and regressed. That being said it's back and vanilla.

I'm aware of it being a feature in previous titles but it always needed a mod for Warhammer TW games

Thanks. I will check this out as a means of confederating. Taking some gakky settlement and then giving it away.

 Sim-Life wrote:

Voss wrote:

Messed about with Greasus a bit today (huzzah for random holidays). He's fine, but really lacks access to an early caster. Ogre mechanics are interesting. Not sure about high tier units being restricted to camps, though- really have to pay attention to where you place those.. Meat production is fine as long as you're paying attention. The maze like qualities of the mountains and relative emptiness of the Dark Lands is something to keep in mind for Greasus' campaign. There are turns where you don't do much.

I tried to start a Greasus campaign and I wasn't feeling it. His start location is very limiting.

Yep. It wouldn't be quite so bad for a faction with Underway (or whatever), but hoofing it is rough. The Maw sacrifice for +20% movement feels mandatory.
On the other hand, camps can make it very defensive, and difficult to invade.

I also don't like the distances in the Dark Lands. That'll be problematic in the future- its probably the most spread out area of the map. I'm torn between hoping for a revision of provinces on the campaign map and just not caring and hoping the IE map isn't so warped. On the campaign map that area is stretched to make the compression from NW to NE possible at the chaos wastes.

So I finally went into whackoworld to get me a soul. Only I ballsed it up pretty royally. I was busy laying siege to a capital with the Tsarina and then I had to wait a bit to get my troops back up to full and I went to go see Nurgle. Mucked about in there a little too long and basically didn't pick up a soul.

Now my first question is: has that buggered me or is it not too much of a slog to make up the difference? Because I might honestly just start afresh.

And two: I've of course got these Nurgle gifts and it says if you garrison a provincial capital or somewhere with "protective buildings" it gets rid of that but I've tried that and they are still there. Am I missing something?

For the first part, it depends. From what I've seen, some factions are more successful than others, but particularly later on, they start to fail at souls. By the time I had my 4th, for example, 1 faction had 3 (just got the 3rd the same time I got my 4th), a couple had 2 and 1 more had 1 (and 2-3 had none). Leeway will likely depend on difficulty to some degree.

A capital (maybe city) should have a percentage chance of removing the chaos realm debuffs. If you build the anti-skaven building at tier 3, that gives a +50% chance to remove the debuff. Once built, its basically 100% chance- I've never seen it fail, but it only does 1 'layer' of the debuff at a time, so you usually have to park your LL for three turns after coming back with a soul. Which... sucks.

I decided to let myself get tempted with Slaanesh, so hopefully I can catch up later on that lost soul I probably went too cheaply, +15 ranks on lords/heroes, +5 recruit rank and a slab of cash looked like it'd help more in the campaign than having a soul, lol.

There's an item from Slaanesh that gives +200 growth locally and +25 control globally. That's may be worth skipping a soul to have. Put it on a hero early and camp your settlements to level them up quicker, and you can also expand quickly without worrying about public order.

Yeah Nurgle one stinks..

So I have a question for everyone. I’m at around turn 50, playing as Cathay. I just noticed I can not embark on water. I wanted to send an army across the water but could not find a way to do so. Ended up marching 4 turns in a big semi circle. Also seems like harbors aren’t a thing? Anyway has anyone else embarked a hero or lord on water? Did I miss something?

After taking a Legion of Chaos campaign pretty deep, I think this faction needs some work.

1. You should be able to spend favor for buffs, items, global effects etc.. I’m maxed out in all 5 favor categories and there’s no where to go with it. It just sits at 3080. Non-siege Battle results only allow you to choose favor, instead of the standard Regen/Leadership+/Ransom etc. Its really annoying when deep in enemy territory and that little sliver of regen could be all the difference.

2. The concept of the Demon Prince is awesome. Had alot of fun tooling him out, getting different looks and such. Ultimately, its not enough. The abscence of taking ancilliaries is a huge minus. Got a sweet banner after a quest reward? Cool, you can’t use it in your main characters army! Have a 5th bracer of Nurgle instead.

3. Not a fan of how a Greater demon will take the place of a normal Herald. Had a Herald who was leader of my secondary army, essentially from the first 10 turns. Level 18, customized as I needed him. Had the option to instead have a Greater Demon takeover. That sounded awesome, so I did it. Greater Demon was a level 8…

In larger scope of what needs work:

1. Alliances get crazy mid to late game. All 4 Chaos factions up north are shacked up in alliances, with a few minor demon factions thrown in, creating this super power on my doorstep that I want no part of. Its like TW: 3K’s Yuan Shao super factions all over again.

2. I’m a veteran of Total War games and I’ve never struggled to put together armies like I have with this game. In my first complete campaign, I had 2.5 stacks. Skarbrand, 2 heroes and the best Khorne units on offer. Second army was just what I could afford, nothing high tier that could stand up to another full stack outside of ambushes/sieges. The .5 stack was a “seasonal” army that I flexed up and down as needed to close rifts. I had near a quarter of the map and my economy could really only support 1 top tier army. Having similar issues in Legion of Chaos. Maybe its different for non-Chaos factions? AI certainly doesn’t have the problem, which I expect in this game series, but it feels extreme.

3. I think CA’s fixation on telling a story in their campaigns for the last two TW games has fallen flat. Its like they took the wrong lessons from the first Beastmen DLC, which had a mini campaign that no one talked about/seemed to play, or the fast forward in time Eight Princes DLC for 3K that no one really wanted/expected. ‘Aw, man! Nobody played the mini campaign/DLC campaign. Lets make them play a limited map with a story campain on rails, instead of some sort of open world strategy game sandbox! No Total War fan wants that, right!?” Needless to say, I want my world map campaign asap. Or at least mods to buff/adjust certain things

I love the game, but I may put it down for awhile.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Nerak wrote:
So I have a question for everyone. I’m at around turn 50, playing as Cathay. I just noticed I can not embark on water. I wanted to send an army across the water but could not find a way to do so. Ended up marching 4 turns in a big semi circle. Also seems like harbors aren’t a thing? Anyway has anyone else embarked a hero or lord on water? Did I miss something?

Not too familiar with Cathay’s map yet, so I don’t know where you are at, but If its a sheer cliff face on the map you can’t embark onto water unless you have a city harbor or find a shallow beach. It also might take up a turn to embark on water, once you find a spot to go out to sea. Depends on how much movement you have.

You also have to click into the water then choose the route when your army gets into the water, clicking a route over a body of water will make the pathfinding choose the land route, rather than a path through the water.

finished rift campaign, in multiplayer and solo.
Replay value: 0
Story: meh
Mechanics of rifts: bad.

Iow all my issues are with the bad campaign, so far my game has some performance issues but other than my old graphics card dieing on me it runs good and overall is good and has a lot of potential.

 Nerak wrote:
So I have a question for everyone. I’m at around turn 50, playing as Cathay. I just noticed I can not embark on water. I wanted to send an army across the water but could not find a way to do so. Ended up marching 4 turns in a big semi circle. Also seems like harbors aren’t a thing? Anyway has anyone else embarked a hero or lord on water? Did I miss something?

The map doesn't really have an ocean near Cathay. It just cuts off there.

There's real water around the dragon isles for the lizardmen to paddle around in, and then there is the Sea of Claws below Norsca, which is a pool of blood from all the Empire and Wood Elf armies taking attrition as they endlessly suicide bomb the Daemon Prince.
There's also the sea between Norsca and the Chaos Wastes, but that's a more peaceful path for Nkari and Skarbrand to take a moonlight boat ride as they meander south like the best friends they are.

Why are the Steam reviews so bad?