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[Pyros_Eien]

Any thoughts on the Chaos army Dlc, are they a good army to start with and is it worth the money?

Personally, while I really like chaos in the tabletop version(granted it was a long time ago before Chaos was split in various armies, mostly I liked demons which are different than Warriors of Chaos), I thought they were the worst DLC(but free when I got them). Sigvald hero quests and my Kholek+19dragons armies were the only thing really fun about it, the campaign is poorly designed due to the AI all rushing for you and the lack of room at the start, the units not particularily well balanced with a lot of really trash tier ones and a lot of really strong ones so you're forced into stacking a lot(more so than other armies) and overall the horde gameplay is pretty meh in my opinion.

So I'd say don't spend money on it, unless you really want to, then why not I mean it's still a campaign and all. But the more recent DLCs are much better than the older ones, they improved over time(instead of the opposite which is sometimes common when they stop caring and are just churning garbage out for money). Like The Warlord and the King is better than The Grim and the Grave for example, because of the different factions and starting areas making the campaign a lot more unique, especially Skarsnik. And the Wood Elves mini campaign have more stuff going on than the Beastmen mini campaign and such.

Still in the end it's a matter of what you like as armies.

 

[| Praxis |]

Thanks for the answers. Who are a good starting faction then?

I have played most of the other Total War games, so not a beginner but my knowledge of Warhammer is nearly 20 years stale and mostly 40K.

 

[patapuf]

Thanks for the answers. Who are a good starting faction then?

I have played most of the other Total War games, so not a beginner but my knowledge of Warhammer is nearly 20 years stale and mostly 40K.

I thought empire would be easy since they are the most similar to "traditional" Total war factions (heavy cavalry and a mix of infantry units and some artillery) but boy was i wrong.

I think Vampires are easier.

 

[Poodlestrike]

Vampires and Dwarves a are the easiest starting factions, imo. Vampires because their troops don't break and flee, Dwarves because they're so heavily armored that you can basically just set them down wherever.

 

[Palmer_v1]

Thanks for the answers. Who are a good starting faction then?

I have played most of the other Total War games, so not a beginner but my knowledge of Warhammer is nearly 20 years stale and mostly 40K.

Dwarves are probably the easiest. Stay on top of your grudges, and you won't have any rebellion issues, and their economy is ridiculous once you get it going. Your only direct threat most of the time is the Greenskins.

 

[Llyranor]

How are wild elves difficulty curve wise?

 

[Poodlestrike]

How are wild elves difficulty curve wise?

Ummm... Well, I haven't actually played with them myself, but the Al's performance suggests that they're pretty easy.

 

[Palmer_v1]

Ummm... Well, I haven't actually played with them myself, but the Al's performance suggests that they're pretty easy.

The AI suffers from none of their downfalls, i.e. constant Beastmen attacks and Amber restricitions.

Wood Elves have a tricky difficulty curve, I think. It's tough to get a good foothold early on, but things start to snowball in your favor once you do. You can play peacefully with most of your neighbors. Only major issue is Beastmen will be spawning armies near you and they love to try and attack your tree.

 

[karnage10]

Any thoughts on the Chaos army Dlc, are they a good army to start with and is it worth the money?

They are a "bad" army to start with because of one feature: your hordes cannot be near each other. This means that you need to know when to pick a fight and when to run. My main complain about chaos campaign is that the first 100-150 turns are in norzca making sure you have 2/3 strong enough hordes to fight kislev; IMO the chaos campaign should feel like a powerfull invasion instead it feels like you are a weakling that grows just strong enough to make the enemy crumble.
Chaos is the worst faction created and really really needs a revamp, it feels incomplete; that said it is still fun using the units of chaos: kholek and archeon can mow down 5 units easily, chosen can wipe out the enemy frontline with ease, hellcannon is an amazing artillery unit (high morale and health damage with their guided shot) and aspiring champions can mow down low tier units really easily; in battle chaos are really fun to use.

Thanks for the answers. Who are a good starting faction then?

I have played most of the other Total War games, so not a beginner but my knowledge of Warhammer is nearly 20 years stale and mostly 40K.

I'm going to vote vampires because they have one of the best economies (use the heros!) and their army is easy to understand (hold a line, heal it with the lord/hero and smash the flanks with cavalry/monsters)

How are wild elves difficulty curve wise?

there are 2 factions of WE: WE and argylon (i might have pronounce it wrong).
First i want to say that the mini campaign is easier to start with because it has more cities in the forest (which is the only place where you can build the good stuff). Argylon is hard as hell and you need quite a bit of luck to not get everyone ganging up on you. The main WE faction is probably like empire, once you manage to have the hold on your home province you are probably set up for the win unless you piss everyone before the chaos event.
The main dificulty with the WE are the battles, their armies are really really weird; their tree kin units are really good tar pits however they barely kill the units they fight with, their elves units are high damage but low armour and as such will likely take heavy damage against any sort of high damaging unit; where the WE roster shines is with their high mobile units such as the wild riders (their elks), these mobile units have very high speed and very high charge bonuses are capable to wipe entire units in 1/2 charges from behind.

 

[ShadowSwordmaster]

Thanks for the answers. Who are a good starting faction then?

I have played most of the other Total War games, so not a beginner but my knowledge of Warhammer is nearly 20 years stale and mostly 40K.

Empire is a good starting point if you are use to playing other Total War games. After that, I would suggest the Vampire Counts or the Drawfs.

 

[WhiteWolf]

I have never played a Total War game before, but the Humble Monthly convinced me to give this a try (though being able to summon giant, rampaging spiders may have also had an influence.)

 

[ElyrionX]

I was reading somewhere (probably here or reddit) where a guy managed to achieve 70k income with Empire by deploying heroes in Altdorf where they will gain income traits over time and then stacking these income bonuses repeatedly by recruiting heroes whenever possible. Can't find the damn post now. But is this possible?

 

[ShadowSwordmaster]

I was reading somewhere (probably here or reddit) where a guy managed to achieve 70k income with Empire by deploying heroes in Altdorf where they will gain income traits over time and then stacking these income bonuses repeatedly by recruiting heroes whenever possible. Can't find the damn post now. But is this possible?

I think so.

 

[karnage10]

I was reading somewhere (probably here or reddit) where a guy managed to achieve 70k income with Empire by deploying heroes in Altdorf where they will gain income traits over time and then stacking these income bonuses repeatedly by recruiting heroes whenever possible. Can't find the damn post now. But is this possible?

i'm not remembering the empire heroes abilities but i can give you a good example for VC.
The VC agent necromancer can be deployed to gain -10% cost for buildings, in his blue line you can also get an increase 15% in income for the buildings in the province (great for the capital because it has the gold mine); if you leave him there he will gain traits that increase the money he ears even further. I also remember that the banshee had some good campaign buffs as well.
I'm not sure you can get 70k from a province unless you are "wasting" time to get the required traits but you should be able to get 10-20k from your home province with ease when everything is upgraded to max level.

 

[LurkerPrime]

Also worth noting that building cost reduction from Necromancers is way better than it sounds. -10% soon becomes -20% to -30% as the hero continues doing it, at least for VC.

That's thousands saved on higher tiered buildings.

 

[johancruijff]

Guys in charge of the Lorehammer mod found a way to include custom battlemap in the campaign

Yuge news

They actually beat CA, that is gonna make an announcement tomorrow

 

[Pyros_Eien]

Thanks for the answers. Who are a good starting faction then?

I have played most of the other Total War games, so not a beginner but my knowledge of Warhammer is nearly 20 years stale and mostly 40K.

I'll second what ppl have said already, vampires and dwarfs are your fairly easy armies to start with. Vampires start in a fairly protected area with the mountains to the south and east generally being "safe" as greenskins and dwarfs don't really come down that often, letting you expand easily, and your basic troops do really well against all the empire early tier stuff. Dwarfs have extremely cost effective units all around and generally outclass greenskins(other than the dreaded Grimgor), plus the starting position offers strong ressources and an easy way to expand safely. The special campaign with Clan Angrund is really hard though on the other hand.

Empire and Greenskins have much more exposed starting positions and a wide variety of ways the surrounding factions can interact so they're pretty fun to replay but can also start really bad really fast(or the complete opposite and feel like easy mode). Wood Elves are imo much harder to start with, they're constantly being attacked by Beastmen, can't expand the same way other races do and their units aren't that good until you have a bunch of lord skill points to make them stronger. Starting with Durthu helps though, better position and he's a much stronger lord, possibly the strongest in the game.

Also, unless you have a particular want for them, avoid Balthazar Gelt and Heinrich Kemmler as your starting lords. They're glorified generic casters and start pretty weak. At least Kemmler can recruit the Von carsteins pretty easily iirc, but Gelt not so much so you're stuck with him for a while and he's really not great(also doesn't help that Lord of Metal is pretty weak compared to Kemmler's magic).

 

[karnage10]

make war not love will start on 16th February!
Click here to register; hopefully total war wins this time.

 

[Stevey]

make war not love will start on 16th February!
Click here to register; hopefully total war wins this time.

I picked Dawn Of War II

 

[karnage10]

I picked Dawn Of War II

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! you TRAITOR!

 

[ShadowSwordmaster]

I picked Dawn Of War II

Dammit, Stevey.

 

[Lister]

I picked Dawn Of War II

Shameful Dispray!

 

[grandwizard]

I voted for coh :<

 

[LurkerPrime]

I didn't vote at all.

 

[Ark]

Voted for TW:W

 

[Lister]

I didn't vote at all.

That's why Trump won!

 

[Violet_0]

so the game is pretty freaking great, but

is it normal that you get overrun by two Chaos crusades in a row? Pretty much had to surrender on turn 143 after I got swarmed by yet another "spawned out of nowhere" army (oh, and I got "ambushed" after not even moving from my city for a number of turns). Me (Vampires) and the Empire were the only ones even left to fight Chaos with any noteworthy manpower, I was trying to hold the north but I don't know how I am supposed to do that pretty much all by myself. Before the crusades started, I had the biggest military by far. Constantly rebuilding my cities/economy ate all my resources so I didn't even have access to most of my tier 4 units or any of the tier 5

by the way, fighting Chaos is the most ridicules shit ever, they ride right past me, always out of movement range from my armies, and sack every city that is too weakly defended - which is extremely frustrating when they have higher movement range than me. And another thing, it's super fucking stupid when I had two of my own heroes just go around trying to assassinate the dozens of Chaos and Border Princes heroes that walked around my territory every turn

 

[karnage10]

so the game is pretty freaking great, but

is it normal that you get overrun by two Chaos crusades in a row? Pretty much had to surrender on turn 143 after I got swarmed by yet another "spawned out of nowhere" army (oh, and I got "ambushed" after not even moving from my city for a number of turns). Me (Vampires) and the Empire were the only ones even left to fight Chaos with any noteworthy manpower, I was trying to hold the north but I don't know how I am supposed to do that pretty much all by myself. Before the crusades started, I had the biggest military by far. Constantly rebuilding my cities/economy ate all my resources so I didn't even have access to most of my tier 4 units or any of the tier 5

by the way, fighting Chaos is the most ridicules shit ever, they ride right past me, always out of movement range from my armies, and sack every city that is too weakly defended - which is extremely frustrating when they have higher movement range than me. And another thing, it's super fucking stupid when I had two of my own heroes just go around trying to assassinate the dozens of Chaos and Border Princes heroes that walked around my territory every turn

I'm going from the last part of your comment to the first:

- when assassinating heroes only take the time to kill those that are "dangerous", as vampire the only heroes worth kiling are those that sabotage your armies or spread "anti corruption" too much for your buildings. This "agent" spam normally happens late game when the AI is kinda cornered.

- Chaos is always outside of your movement range because you are not "abusing" your stances and you are not using your heroes. Heroes can sabotage the enemy armies halving their movement points however it is easiest to just enter ambush stance where the enemy is likely to move- the objective is NOT doing an ambush but wasting the enemy move points (they can only detect you when they are near which means it is very likely you can attack them the next turn).

- there is a limit to the chaos hordes, they are not limitless; that said they pose an mid game challenge that spices the game. As vampire the easiest way is to survive is by doing 3 things:
1) don't attack kislev at the beginning of the game; they should take the brunt of the chaos invansion
2) against chaos high armored troops you really really need AP units which means either a line of GG with GW or a lot of crypt horrors. Against chaos skellies/zombies/crypt ghouls and vargheists are pretty useless, their lack of AP means that they will lose 1 on 1 figths agaisnt even chaos warriors. Crypt horrors, GGwGW and cairn wraiths are the mains units against a chaos army, terrorgheits, mortis engine (DLC needed) and varghulfs can also be pretty good if you have them supported by a fodder unit (skellies/GG/crypt ghouls). you can't figth chaos like an empire army, fight it like a highly mobile melee dwarf army.
3) expand southward towards tilea/border princes/estalia and keep every territory walled; this has a twofold purpose, first the chaos army will take casualties from your corruption 2nd it has some of the best natural defences like the black fire pass (an army here will force a confrontation)

The chaos are a force to be reckoned with, as vampires there are a few units that you have to be careful in engaging:
archaon the everbastard -> when used by AI he will not rout and can probably kill 2-3 groups all by himself, he also has a lore of fire which means a few damage spells can and will damage you heavily BUT your overcasted invoctaion of nehek should be able to counter that damage

Kholek the unstopable -> the damage he takes is reduced by 40% and has probably the highest mass in the game (which means no unit you have can pin him down) he can kill a half a dozen units so be prepared for heavy losses. The best way to deal with him is by routing the army.

Chosen -> the best infantry in the game as such they should always be engaged in 2 to 1. even then you will probably take heavy losses.

Giant- > high damage unit with little Armour however if you don't have blood knights nor a terror gheist he will deal heavy damage. Since he has AP damage remember to keep your lord/heroes as far away as possible.

Hell cannon-> one of the best artillery in the game , when possible you should have either 1/2 groups of flyers to destroy them; wolves are also good especially the RoR (DLC needed)

gore beast chariot -> this is not a unit that will deal heavy damage but it might break your line well enough for other untis to deal that damage; if you don't have blood knight this chariot might be a bit of a pain in the but to deal with; while the black knight can beat them this is one of the few chariots that does have some survaivability in melee which means it will take a while for your cavalry to beat them however if you let them run free they might make your line very vulnerable to units like chaos warriors and forsaken.

 

[LurkerPrime]

Yeah, the thing with Chaos is that you need to prepare all game for their arrival. The player is the only one that realistically has a chance at stopping them--the AI alone are never enough. (Although I did see an AI Kislev somehow stomp them one time...)

The key thing is, when the invasion is about to start (after the first armies land, before Archaeon) you need to cease all current wars immediately. It doesn't matter who's winning, or how dangerous they will be, or anything like that--all armies need to be mobilised for Chaos right away, because between the ceaseless Norsca hordes, the intimidating waves of Chaos, and the elusive Warherd of Chaos, it ends up being a lot of different threats that must be tackled and extinguished as soon as possible. You absolutely cannot delay engaging Chaos' forces--it will only disadvantage you in your overall war against them.

The good news is, the Grand Campaign helps everyone out with the Shield of Civilization trait. The moment Archaeon arrives, every civilized faction (aside from horde factions and Greenskins) gets huge diplo bonuses to facilitate peace, trade, and alliances; use this to bolster your allies and economy through trade and diplomacy, then direct their troops from the diplo screen.

The bad news is, both Chaos and the Warherd of Chaos must be defeated to fully eliminate Chaos from the game. Otherwise, they will both return after a 'wounded' time out (IIRC Chaos returns with a couple stacks.) which can be particularly troublesome after they've started to ruin the map and spread out. The Norsca, meanwhile, are a perpetual thorn in the side that must be endured.


So what this means for VC is:

• Embrace vampiric corruption. It will debilitate their armies even if they manage to breach your territory, giving you an edge against them in battle.
• Strengthen your economy (i.e. make vampire crypts or necromancer towers) so you can field large armies with high-tier (anti-armor) units, plus heroes to back them up.
• Abuse raise dead--always outnumber the enemy. An army of high-tier units backed by a legion of expendable troops makes all the difference in autoresolve, as well as in the battlefield.
• And counter to karnage, I would recommend taking Kislev and corrupting it if possible. Then you can weaken their armies on the approach and force them into a siege, then throw your full army at them. Even if they raze Kislev, the march into your core territory is very long from there, giving you a huge buffer to weaken any approaching armies.

 

[ShadowSwordmaster]

Voted for TW:W

Nice.

 

[Violet_0]

I'm going from the last part of your comment to the first:

thanks, karnage, I just had to vent a little

1) don't attack kislev at the beginning of the game; they should take the brunt of the chaos invansion

I was about to take Kislev when the first Chaos crusade happened : /

I didn't actually have a problem with fighting Chaos, I won more than one battle were the, eh, "chance of winning the battle" bar was completely red. My problem was their armies evading mine and razing my weaker cities all the time, resulting in some really stupid chases. The only battle I lost was the ambush by a Beastman herd on one of my armies that was protecting a city, I don't fully understand the mechanic but I'd expect the point of it would be to lay a trap that the opponent runs into, not crash into them with your chariot. Got cut off from my garrison and a vulnerable starting position (which again, doesn't make any sense because I wasn't moving), they had 4 Cygors and lots of Bestigors and a rank 24 general against my weakest army and I still almost won this. I think I might actually still be able to salvage the game, but not sure if it's worth the headache

what I'd like to know, is beating Archaon the endgame part of the campaign? Also, at what point are you supposed to have your tier 5 units? I focused on economy all the time and was in a very good spot before Chaos showed up

Yeah, the thing with Chaos is that you need to prepare all game for their arrival

was my first game, to quote Illidan; I was not prepared

The bad news is, both Chaos and the Warherd of Chaos must be defeated to fully eliminate Chaos from the game. Otherwise, they will both return after a 'wounded' time out (IIRC Chaos returns with a couple stacks.) which can be particularly troublesome after they've started to ruin the map and spread out. The Norsca, meanwhile, are a perpetual thorn in the side that must be endured.

the "wounded" time only lasted maybe 10-15 turns. The second time I got the video with Archaon so I guess it's a scripted event anyway

regarding vampiric corruption, at some point they just moved without damage through my territory despite other armies still suffering from the effect. But I don't have that much Chaos corruption and my southern provinces were nearly free of any, they could still march around without any trouble

oh, a couple more things: how do you stop rebellions in recently occupied cities without having an army on standby all the time (aside from the +moral or whatever they are called buildings, obviously), how many armies are you supposed to have when Chaos starts invading, are you generally expected to have heroes walk around solo and what's the best way to get diplomatic brownie points with factions to stopped them from freaking spamming you with heroes? Also, can you actually get on the good side of the Chaos factions via diplomacy?

 

[Aztechnology]

Voted for TW:W of course.

 

[LurkerPrime]

So, uh, whoops. The Chaos invasion can't be stopped until Archaeon arrives with the main host of the invasion force. Should have mentioned that.

Now specific answers:

• Re: working with Chaos. Vampire Counts are actually one of the few factions that have a slight chance to ally (or at least be neutral) in Chaos' invasion, at least for a while. It can be handy to let them soften up human factions, but will only serve to make the fight more difficult in the long run. (Chaos' forces will be more spread out, Norsca and Warherds will likely be stronger, and allies will be more scarce.) So it depends.
  
• For keeping order, Vampire Counts are different than other factions. They have huge order bonuses with high Vampiric corruption, and very high penalties for low vampiric corruption. To have a self-sustaining settlement, you'll want around 50% vampiric corruption in the province at a minimum, which means having a corruption-generating building in the capital (which will spread to nearby provinces at higher tiers, softening them up for conquest). Also worth noting that heroes can help a lot with corruption and/or order, depending on how you develop them.
  
• Because of corruption, garrisoning armies will be difficult to avoid if you expand your territory rapidly. However, once you get corruption high enough it's incredibly difficult for others to take it back since non-undead experience severe army and order penalties at high corruption. e.g. At 50% corruption, it causes attrition to non-undead while allowing undead armies to replenish outside of towns in their province.
  
• Note that amies can avoid land-based attrition (corruption or otherwise) if they're travelling underground (i.e. Dwarves/Greenskins/Wood Elves/Beastmen), raiding, or encamped.
  
• Lastly, the number of armies you have ready for Chaos' invasion depends on the size of your empire and your economy. If you can at all afford to muster more, I'd recommend it, if only to end everything quicker; but at the same time, you need to continue improving your infrastructure with a decent turn-to-turn income. It's really a judgement call based on your particular situation, IMO. As a general rule of thumb, the correct amount of armies to have will leave you feeling like you don't have enough to protect all of your territory.

Bonus response: The objectives of the Grand Campaign are in accessible in the top-right part of the UI somewhere. I want to say the hotkey is 8, but I don't remember exactly. For VCs Short Victory, it's primarily centered on defeating Chaos and the Empire, on top of owning a lot of human land.

 

[karnage10]

thanks, karnage, I just had to vent a little



I was about to take Kislev when the first Chaos crusade happened : /

I didn't actually have a problem with fighting Chaos, I won more than one battle were the, eh, "chance of winning the battle" bar was completely red. My problem was their armies evading mine and razing my weaker cities all the time, resulting in some really stupid chases. The only battle I lost was the ambush by a Beastman herd on one of my armies that was protecting a city, I don't fully understand the mechanic but I'd expect the point of it would be to lay a trap that the opponent runs into, not crash into them with your chariot. Got cut off from my garrison and a vulnerable starting position (which again, doesn't make any sense because I wasn't moving), they had 4 Cygors and lots of Bestigors and a rank 24 general against my weakest army and I still almost won this. I think I might actually still be able to salvage the game, but not sure if it's worth the headache

what I'd like to know, is beating Archaon the endgame part of the campaign? Also, at what point are you supposed to have your tier 5 units? I focused on economy all the time and was in a very good spot before Chaos showed up



was my first game, to quote Illidan; I was not prepared



the "wounded" time only lasted maybe 10-15 turns. The second time I got the video with Archaon so I guess it's a scripted event anyway

regarding vampiric corruption, at some point they just moved without damage through my territory despite other armies still suffering from the effect. But I don't have that much Chaos corruption and my southern provinces were nearly free of any, they could still march around without any trouble

oh, a couple more things: how do you stop rebellions in recently occupied cities without having an army on standby all the time (aside from the +moral or whatever they are called buildings, obviously), how many armies are you supposed to have when Chaos starts invading, are you generally expected to have heroes walk around solo and what's the best way to get diplomatic brownie points with factions to stopped them from freaking spamming you with heroes? Also, can you actually get on the good side of the Chaos factions via diplomacy?

First i want to say that your "complaints" are very on point an it is something the game should explain better.

I want to say that there are 2 chaos invasions; the first is weak and can normally be ignored. the 2nd starts with the archaon video. At this point is when you can actually beat the chaos armies, the problem is this 2nd invasion has at least 2 waves of armies - when the video starts WoC has 3 hordes + 1 beastmen horde then after a few turns they will receive a few more hordes.

Now while these are scripted events that always happen they are heavily RNG based which means you can't predict exactly when they happen however the main factor that increases the chance for archaon to spawn is the "imperium level". In the victory conditions screen it the objective that says "conquer X ammount of cities" the further you complete this type of objectives the higher the chance for chaos spawn. In short the more agressive you are the higher the chance for chaos spawning.

The beastmen base stance is ambush, so they can move and attack which can trigger an ambush battle instead of a normal battle. This means that when you see chaos coruption increasing without noticing any nearby agent/army then hide your army inside a city so that you aren't ambushed by the brayherd.

Now to your questions

- they just moved without damage through my territory

Armies can use "underway" pass (dwarves, beastmen, GS and WE), raiding stance (all factions) and encampment (empire, WoC, beastmen, dwarfs) to escape the vampiric corruption

- how do you stop rebellions in recently occupied cities without having an army on standby all the time

As VC the you have 3 approaches - the easiest but takes a long time is by having high tier corruption building in nearby provinces (they have an osmosis modifier which will convert nearby provinces); the other is by using a hero that buffs the public order; the last way is simply by keeping the army there until you can build vampire crypts (use the necro to decrease the cost and the other agent to boost growth).

- how many armies are you supposed to have when Chaos starts invading,
It depends on how your armies are made off, i normally prefer few armies full of elite units because i'm confident i can win any fight even if it is 2 on 1. The "meter" i use to know how many armies i should have is by watching my income I normally try to keep income at around 2k (which allows me to build almost anything in 2-4 turns).

- are you generally expected to have heroes walk around solo
Depends on how the AI targets me but i normally have 2 agents going around buffing my cities/ assassinating stuff; as VC the wight king and the banshee are great in battle and i like to have at least 1 of those in each army.

- what's the best way to get diplomatic brownie points with factions to stopped them from freaking spamming you with heroes?
As VC the best way is to research ASAP the tech that gives you the diplo bonuses, then you have to be careful which factions you do deals with. If possible try to attack unliked factions (for example, sometimes border princes decides to pick a fight with both clan angrund and WE; conquering them gives you diplo points with the WE which is a dangerous faction in the early/mid game);
Unfortunately the best way to get diplo points is to raid the enemy provinces of the faction you want the diplo points, you can get 100s of points by leaving an army raiding; this is a bit too costly for me but it is an option.

- Also, can you actually get on the good side of the Chaos factions via diplomacy?
I think only beastmen can get on the good side of the chaos invasion however as VC you can stay neutral if you pick a fight with any faction that chaos is fighting against (Which is probably the whole world by that point).

 

[Violet_0]

much obliged, guys. Thanks for taking the time to answer all my question, I appreciate it

I'm starting a new game now with VC now that I got a little better idea of how the game works
I tried out Empire, which actually is quite a bit harder than VC as plenty of people have said, mainly because everyone wants to go to freaking war with you. Had a lot of money issues, and by turn 63 several huge wood elves armies with lots of late game units are laying siege to Altheim, so there's that. I've read some of the last few pages and apparently the WE economy is kind of not working correctly right now?

 

[LurkerPrime]

Wood Elves have an economy gated by a unique resource--amber... but the AI doesn't use it at all. It lets them expand, research, and use units faster than the player realistically can, suffering almost no penalties for losing outposts (settlements conquered outside of their forest). They're going to tune Wood Elves nexth patch, but right now that faction is really messing with the balance.

This imbalance has made Empire starts a lot harder than before. The traditionally secure Reikland chokepoint, and the Nuln region, are the two spots the Wood Elves will strike from. You will have to fully eliminate Wood Elves to win the game, by virtue of their aggressiveness; they will attack you when you can least afford it as you're spreading Eastward towards the VCs, or even fighting Chaos. (Their AI is stupid aggressive, to the point of recklessness. No other faction is like this.)

So, yeah. The Wood Elf faction is kind of borked. I don't understand how CA shipped it like that.

 

[karnage10]

much obliged, guys. Thanks for taking the time to answer all my question, I appreciate it

I'm starting a new game now with VC now that I got a little better idea of how the game works
I tried out Empire, which actually is quite a bit harder than VC as plenty of people have said, mainly because everyone wants to go to freaking war with you. Had a lot of money issues, and by turn 63 several huge wood elves armies with lots of late game units are laying siege to Altheim, so there's that. I've read some of the last few pages and apparently the WE economy is kind of not working correctly right now?

Adding to what prime said, for the empire holding marienburg also helps a lot because it has a special port that gives a lot of money but the towers are currently bugged and they don't fire. Putting aside this bug and the WE economy the empire is also in a reletively precarious situation, you are surrounded by factions that will DoW on you if they smell weakness and your army requires you to know well each of your units (while VC can win battle because of their terror and their numbers, empire requires you to know how to handle both ranged troops and cavalry to beat your opponent). This means that if you master empire, you can probably handle any other faction in a few turns.
Before going empire try the dwarfs, they are the polar opposite to the VC, they re highly immobile and armored and have very powerful ranged units and have the best tech tree in the game.
After learning VC and dwarfs you probably learnt how to control cavalry (VC speciality) and ranged weapons (warfs speciality) which means you can fully use empire's assets -the combination of ranged weapons to soften key targets and a cavalry charge to rout the enemy.

So, yeah. The Wood Elf faction is kind of borked. I don't understand how CA shipped it like that.

IMO CA shipped it like this because their deadline arrived. Since beastmen had a cut roster i think the WE were also planned with less units BUT they changed the DLC plans and delayed brettonia and revamped the WE DLC. The WE faction was probably designed without the use of amber and without the access to some of their units, so CA didn't have the time to redo the AI.
What bugs me the most is not releasing a patch this month instead of gathering everything for frebruary. I don't mind the AI being "slightly" bad if patches were rather quick, but this 2 month delay is a bit too much in my oppinion.

 

[Deleted member 325805]

I just played for a little with my friend who tried explaining the game to me, I understand it a little now, I think it could enjoy it so I'll watch some guides later. We had really bad lag though (Internet, not frame rate) which is odd since we're both on fibre.

 

[Violet_0]

dwarfes are pretty damn boring. They're supposed to be boring in tabletop too (not that I ever played, I seemingly only collect unpainted models ), so that's not much of a surprise. I'm finishing up the Orks now and just walk around and reclaim the fortresses and the monotony of it all is killing me

VC still has the best army, imo. Aside from the Coven Throne, they got all the relevant units in TW:WH. As soon as you can ditch the skeletons/zombies, you have access to heavy infantry, several choices for cavalry, lots of cool monsters, weird and fun "chariots", spectral units, magic, Mortis Engine (which I still haven't seen in-game), well pretty much everything but artillery and ranged units - which is what the Terrorgheist and Banshee are for in the tabletop game, not sure if they have the same function in TW. VC, Skaven and Lizardmen used to be favorites

 

[razzmahtazz]

Oh god wood elves!

I thought it funny that they were pretty much conquering everything in my empire playthrough. They had me surrounded. They conquered everything west of the mountains. Brettonia and the Red Duke was the only holdovers. Wisenland was conquered earlier on while my main armies were trying to get a hold of ostland and hoch in grueling sieges. When they finally declared war on me Reikland was almost lost.

I tried commanding a battle against them and jesus, all their units seems to be so fast and their ranged reach is so far. IDK how to counter them yet. Anyone got a good guide on how to beat them on the tactical map other than pure numbers and auto-resolve?

 

[Lister]

Oh god wood elves!

I thought it funny that they were pretty much conquering everything in my empire playthrough. They had me surrounded. They conquered everything west of the mountains. Brettonia and the Red Duke was the only holdovers. Wisenland was conquered earlier on while my main armies were trying to get a hold of ostland and hoch in grueling sieges. When they finally declared war on me Reikland was almost lost.

I tried commanding a battle against them and jesus, all their units seems to be so fast and their ranged reach is so far. IDK how to counter them yet. Anyone got a good guide on how to beat them on the tactical map other than pure numbers and auto-resolve?

Cavalry. They are super weak to it. I don't think their air units are built for toe to toe either.

I like to hide it behind hills and I move them behind groves, cause I know that's where they'll likely be or retreat to.

 

[NEO0MJ]

Cracked and bought this. I forgot sometimes how "minimum" minimum can be, lol. Can't get 60 FPS at all so I opted for maximizing graphical potential without dipping under 30 FPS but I need a way to lock it as it fluctuates too much. Any recommendations?

 

[Nere]

Cracked and bought this. I forgot sometimes how "minimum" minimum can be, lol. Can't get 60 FPS at all so I opted for maximizing graphical potential without dipping under 30 FPS but I need a way to lock it as it fluctuates too much. Any recommendations?

What are your specs?

 

[NEO0MJ]

What are your specs?

Here they are. It's probably the CPU holding me back the most.

CPU: Intel i7 3635QM
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 8870M
Ram: 12 GB

 

[karnage10]

dwarfes are pretty damn boring. They're supposed to be boring in tabletop too (not that I ever played, I seemingly only collect unpainted models ), so that's not much of a surprise. I'm finishing up the Orks now and just walk around and reclaim the fortresses and the monotony of it all is killing me

VC still has the best army, imo. Aside from the Coven Throne, they got all the relevant units in TW:WH. As soon as you can ditch the skeletons/zombies, you have access to heavy infantry, several choices for cavalry, lots of cool monsters, weird and fun "chariots", spectral units, magic, Mortis Engine (which I still haven't seen in-game), well pretty much everything but artillery and ranged units - which is what the Terrorgheist and Banshee are for in the tabletop game, not sure if they have the same function in TW. VC, Skaven and Lizardmen used to be favorites

Mortis engine , corpse cart and strigoi are dlc units. I kinda disagree dwarves are boring, there is a weird pleasure I seeing all their ranged units during and taking down the massive monsters.

Oh god wood elves!

I thought it funny that they were pretty much conquering everything in my empire playthrough. They had me surrounded. They conquered everything west of the mountains. Brettonia and the Red Duke was the only holdovers. Wisenland was conquered earlier on while my main armies were trying to get a hold of ostland and hoch in grueling sieges. When they finally declared war on me Reikland was almost lost.

I tried commanding a battle against them and jesus, all their units seems to be so fast and their ranged reach is so far. IDK how to counter them yet. Anyone got a good guide on how to beat them on the tactical map other than pure numbers and auto-resolve?

WE units(specially the ranged units)deal a lot of damage but have little to no armor, as such you will want units with high mobility, heavy armor and high charge bonus.WE tree kin units have high survivability so try to ignore those units and focus on the archers/wild riders.
As VC black knights, blood knights and a line of GG (the normal version) should works well;
as dwarves you should be able to outgun the pointy ears;
as GS black orcs, doom divers and big boar boys should be able to defeat any army pod the WE;
as the empire it is really hard to win 1 on 1 unless you make weird comps like having a lot of cavalry;
as beastmen you will probably lose, you need higher numbers or an ambush;
As chaos you have the best counter against the we units;
In short to beat them you want to hit them fast (minimize the exposure to the ranged units) and hard ( their low armor means that they will take high damage from charge bonus).
All this said WE are really hard to beat in both the campaign (because their forest is an army factory) and in battle (the AI will inflict you heavy casualties if you let their ranged units roam free), you really have to commit your forces to beat them , ignoring them or making a low effort will just make them a bigger threat then chaos. The best way to beat them is to go after their cities and keep your settlements walled.

 

[Violet_0]

Mortis engine , corpse cart and strigoi are dlc units. I kinda disagree dwarves are boring, there is a weird pleasure I seeing all their ranged units during and taking down the massive monsters.

they aren't really flexible, though (yeah yeah I know, they're dwarfes)
as far as gunline armies go, I think I prefer the Empire. They just don't have a lot of options for army composition, the one exception being the copters. The campaign of the dwarfes is also kinda boring, you wipe out the orcs and then work your way north to fight back chaos

e: buh, the Terrorgheist doesn't have the scream attack (Banshee probably doesn't, either?). It's just a flying Vargulf in TW
also, the Iron Drakes so far have been kind of terrible for me. At the very least, they're difficult to use correctly

e2: okay I kind of want the WE dlc now. I happen to own some unpainted dryads models, deer cavalry and a dragon too

 

[LurkerPrime]

The Beastmen are double-screwed against Wood Elves because of that anti-Beastmen tech they'll get near-immediately.

...which reminds me, I need to play a Beastmen campaing post-WE. Should be even better than before, now.



In all situations, I honestly found autoresolve best against WE. They absolutely cannot handle 2v1 or siege situations with how the AI builds their armies; so much that I've actually been wondering if the victory chance is a bug. (Although autoresolve gets super dicey if they make defenses in their core settlements.)

 

[karnage10]

they aren't really flexible, though (yeah yeah I know, they're dwarfes)
as far as gunline armies go, I think I prefer the Empire. They just don't have a lot of options for army composition, the one exception being the copters. The campaign of the dwarfes is also kinda boring, you wipe out the orcs and then work your way north to fight back chaos

e: buh, the Terrorgheist doesn't have the scream attack (Banshee probably doesn't, either?). It's just a flying Vargulf in TW
also, the Iron Drakes so far have been kind of terrible for me. At the very least, they're difficult to use correctly

e2: okay I kind of want the WE dlc now. I happen to own some unpainted dryads models, deer cavalry and a dragon too

i'm not a tabtletop player but from my understanding CA opted for using those attacks as animations; when engaged in combat the terrorgheist sometimes uses a scream that deals quite a bit of damage.

For me the Iron drakes are really strong but over priced; they are usefull against low armour high unit count (like goblins,skellies and zombies), they are also a great unit to take down the WE tree kin. I think all flame units should be reworked into being stronger or cheaper, currently i fell they are far too niche of a unit.

Wait until Thursday to buy DLC, there is curretnly an event called "make war not love" where SEGA normally discounts games and DLC. There is no guarantee that Warhammer will have DLC discount but it is a possibility.

If you are enjoying the game and want more content I highly recommend most DLC with the exception being WoC- which has a boring campaign. The WE and the beastmen are very different factions both in campaign and in battle tot he 4 base races. The sub factions added in the FLC and K&W are also very different from their respective main factions.

The Beastmen are double-screwed against Wood Elves because of that anti-Beastmen tech they'll get near-immediately.

...which reminds me, I need to play a Beastmen campaing post-WE. Should be even better than before, now.



In all situations, I honestly found autoresolve best against WE. They absolutely cannot handle 2v1 or siege situations with how the AI builds their armies; so much that I've actually been wondering if the victory chance is a bug. (Although autoresolve gets super dicey if they make defenses in their core settlements.)

Beastmen are currently a lot of fun especially because of the addition of morghur- although he lacks mobility his chaos spawn are very fun to use. My only complain is that the victory conditions doesn't have the need to destroy WE so you are kinda tempted to just ignore the ponty ears and destroy the rest of the factions.

 

[Violet_0]

i'm not a tabtletop player but from my understanding CA opted for using those attacks as animations; when engaged in combat the terrorgheist sometimes uses a scream that deals quite a bit of damage.

ah, I didn't notice that. Still, it would be nice if dragons could use their breath and the terrorgheist their scream attack. That's what makes them interesting in the first place

For me the Iron drakes are really strong but over priced; they are usefull against low armour high unit count (like goblins,skellies and zombies), they are also a great unit to take down the WE tree kin. I think all flame units should be reworked into being stronger or cheaper, currently i fell they are far too niche of a unit.

I checked out the official forum and it seems they (and most short-ranged units in general) are severly underpowered at the moment. They are extremely vulnerable at such a small unit size and their damage output might be lower than the thunderers

Wait until Thursday to buy DLC, there is curretnly an event called "make war not love" where SEGA normally discounts games and DLC. There is no guarantee that Warhammer will have DLC discount but it is a possibility.

If you are enjoying the game and want more content I highly recommend most DLC with the exception being WoC- which has a boring campaign. The WE and the beastmen are very different factions both in campaign and in battle tot he 4 base races. The sub factions added in the FLC and K&W are also very different from their respective main factions.

ah well, I already bought the DLC. Something I haven't quite figured out yet: do ember units need ember for upkeep or do you only pay once to purchase them?

 

[Ordinaryundone]

ah well, I already bought the DLC. Something I haven't quite figured out yet: do ember units need ember for upkeep or do you only pay once to purchase them?

IIRC you pay once to buy them, but it doesn't "use up" the Amber. It takes 1 from your stock, and then gives it back to you if that unit gets disbanded or killed. So you have to be careful about buying lots of Amber units if the majority of your Amber supply comes from treaties or far away outposts because if you lose them you'll start running at a deficit.