It would be great if the AI kingdoms would recognize the threat of Chaos forces and, you know, try to form alliances to unite against them rather than losing all their settlements and complaining about you not being one of them. That said, how the hell do you build to deal with Chaos forces? (Playing as VC. First save file where I was Wood Elves I got royally screwed by not knowing what I was doing.)
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Total War: Warhammer |OT| WAAAGHcraft 4
- Thread starter PeskyToaster
- Start date
Was I just lucky? I managed to stay clear of the Dwarfs in my Very Hard Vampire campaign. I could just march in and focus on the humans after I had dealt with my rival vampires.
I completed my short campaign now. I think I got like 4-5 fully packed Chaos Invasions + Cohorts and Norsca tribes. Pretty sure the Steel Faith Mod made things a lot more difficult than it had to, and it became more tedious than fun in the end. Will try another balance mod for my next campaign, but I haven't decided which race to play as. Maybe Chaos as they are the only Faction I have not tried of the originals ones.
I completed my short campaign now. I think I got like 4-5 fully packed Chaos Invasions + Cohorts and Norsca tribes. Pretty sure the Steel Faith Mod made things a lot more difficult than it had to, and it became more tedious than fun in the end. Will try another balance mod for my next campaign, but I haven't decided which race to play as. Maybe Chaos as they are the only Faction I have not tried of the originals ones.
They kinda do, especially if you are the same race. On my dwarf campaign I could easily get alliances with other dwarfs. And just now with my recent VH vampire campaign I could get military alliance with orcs, dwarves, humans, elves and other vampire factions. They didn't want to do it immediately, but after the first wave everyone become super friendly. Without their aid I doubt I would have beaten them.
Sändersson
Member
Doesnt the "shield of civilization" trait basically mean that the faction is ready to make peace with almost anyone and ally with neutral and friendly factions?
ShogunDarius
Member
The only reason i'm at war with the dwarfs is because i was trying to do all the optional objectives and one of the first was be at war with 4 factions. I tried to utilize a war with the Dwarfs as a way to complete that and get extra leverage with the Greenskins.
regarding dwarfs ive noticed if they have 1 full stack of top tier and i do too auto battle massively favours dwarfs.
regarding dwarfs ive noticed if they have 1 full stack of top tier and i do too auto battle massively favours dwarfs.
The Hamburglar
Banned
Did they make regiments of renowned free?
No but they added 30 regiments of renown for free for the rest of the races that didn't have them, Bretonnia, Chaos, Wood Elves and Beastmen. You can download them for free from total war access and add them to your steam account.
ShogunDarius
Member
is there anything I can do as VC to speed up Vlad recruiting Isabella?
What i'm thinking of doing a new playthrough, keep my alliances wiith the greenskins but not to go to war with the dwarfs but concentrate on Averland and Wissenland
What i'm thinking of doing a new playthrough, keep my alliances wiith the greenskins but not to go to war with the dwarfs but concentrate on Averland and Wissenland
I figured out pretty quickly that going for all the optional quests would be a dumb plan, especially on a very hard campaign. You only get 1000 extra resources for doing it too, so ask yourself if that is worth a full on war against the dwarves. Go for the quests that are within your reach and ignore the stupid ones that put you in great disadvantage. I have OCD when it comes to these things, so I also like going for them, but I managed to ignore them for this campaign. In retrospective I am glad I did.
I finally got around to pre-ordering this last night. Have to admit I'm looking forward to getting back on it. I just wish I didn't suck so much at the combat element. I think not having had more experience with Total War on the whole makes me feel a bit lost (and that's even with a good amount of tabletop experience).
Are there any good resources people here recommend to git gud?
Are there any good resources people here recommend to git gud?
From what we know game 2 is "better" in every regard to game 1 however you can't play as the races 1 game on game 2 without owning game 1.
In your situation I'd wait for warhammer 2 to be released and check my OT for feedback. If warhammer 2 is as good as it looks just buy warhammer 2 unless you really want to play as a warhammer 1 race.
I'll trey to keep the OT with as much info as CA gives at the time.
Note that game 1 races are just for the "mega campaign" which releases "weeks" after warhammer 2 launches and not for the vortex campaign.
Personally i'd just keep 2 half armies to combo with the garisons and beat the dwarves. The rest of my armies would be focused on defeating the empire. Having the WE as allies is great.
If you have the patience shows us a screenshot and i'll try to formulate a more precise plan.
First mortis engine is relatively strong in melee, you don't need to keep him out of the fight as long as he is supported.
IMO:
4 blood knights is overkill; they are the best cavalry in the game and will in almost any 1 on 1 fight. I think 2 are enough.
1 hex knight - i don't know if these guys have been buffed but when i used them they are far too expensive for what they do in battle (mostly because of their low health). I'd take 2 black knight with lances instead.
3 of both grave guard-> i'd take 4 of each GG or 6GG + 2 carin wraiths
2 crypt horrors ->sure
1 varghulf ->i don't think it is worth it in an army with both crypt horrors and a terrorgheist
1 terrorgheist -> sure
2 vargheist
1 mortis engine
1 melee hero
this is a great balanced army that you can use for every faction but you can fine tune it againts other races.
for example against the dwarves who have 0 mobility, 0 magic but lots of armour I'd take something like this:
2 blood knights
2 black knights with lances
1 terrorgheist
1 vargheist
1 mortis engine
1 melee hero
4 GGGW
2 GG
3 cairn wraiths
2 crypt horrors
with this army you have a lot of AP damage. You would use the flying units to stop the artillery; use the normal GG as a shield for the main force; envelope the enemy then use the knight to cycle charge from behind.
The good ai factions do band together when the main force of chaos arrives (the good factions are empire, dwarves and bretonnia). You being undead just makes the living not work together with you.
If you really want to beat chaos easily as VC you want to conquer sylvania; the province above it (bechafen if i remember correctly) and wolfenburg on the left of that province. By controlling these 3 cities you should have enough income for 4/5 late game armies.
After you conquer those provinces what you do is disband most of your armies and invest everything into getting those provinces with defense and money buildings.
ShogunDarius
Member
yeah i started to notice that too. they are only useful at the beginning really but some can really disadvantage you
no way for other factions to recruit another LL. What i want to mention is that you can conf anyway if the LL is dead; he will be added to your pool anyway.
You do need for vc to recruit isabela to get her but if in the mean time vlad dies don't fret and conf anyway.
If i were you I'd just decrease the dificulty. In total war games (and most strategy games that aren't real time) the difficulty only changes bonuses/penalties not the "smartness" of the AI.
If you want an in depth look at the mechanics you can take a look at "the beginners guide" of PartyElite on youtube. He goes deep on how the game works but it is not necessary to know it to win on hard dificulty.
ShogunDarius
Member
its just on normal it seems to take Vlad over 100 turns to recruit Isabella which is way too long
In my last playthrough with the Vampire Counts on hard, Von Carstein with 3 provinces only recruited a second lord when his only lord, Vlad, was wounded. But I needed cheat a bit and reload the same turn 3 times until the AI decided that was better to recuit Isabella instead of a generic lord.
Just got another cutscene where the main Chaos forces have arrived and begun to move south. So now my capital is besieged by the Dwarfs and the original Chaos forces are smashing my smaller settlements, while the real armies are marching on down to smash us all. That's just dandy.
Heh, I did exactly that. I had a ton of income coming in, and a military pact with Ostermark. Three chaos armies then laid siege one by one on my settlements. Even with full armies + garrisons, my forces were obliterated and my settlements razed. :/
Heh, I did exactly that. I had a ton of income coming in, and a military pact with Ostermark. Three chaos armies then laid siege one by one on my settlements. Even with full armies + garrisons, my forces were obliterated and my settlements razed. :/
If you use Workshop you can also download this mod:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=787937112&searchtext=objectives
It extends the primary objective giving you more time to do your secondary objectives. I am gonna try it in my next Chaos campaign.
On the topic of mods are there any you recommend that are compatible with the latest Norsca update? Especially overhauls the enhances many aspects of the game. Steel Faith was interesting, but I didn't really notice that many new things other than garrisons being severely overpowered and Chaos being much more harder-- just not in a very fun or balanced way. I also think with all the new factions in the Norsca update it becomes even extra unfair as they usually becomes vassals of Chaos forcing you to deal with even more army stacks.
ShogunDarius
Member
in general whats the difference in normal and hard difficulty?
only reason i want to play hard is so Von Carstein summons Isabella faster tbh.
as for End game 20 composition, taking what others have said into account i'm thinking
LL
2 Blood Knights
2 Hex Knights
1 Terrorgheist
1 Varghulf
3 Grave Guard Great weapon
3 Grave Guard
2 Cairn wraiths
2 Crypt Ghouls
2 Vargheist
1 Mortis Engine or Black Coach
i am willing to drop the crypt ghouls if anyone thinks those 2 spaces would be better used for units.
also Mortis Engine vs Black coach?
only reason i want to play hard is so Von Carstein summons Isabella faster tbh.
as for End game 20 composition, taking what others have said into account i'm thinking
LL
2 Blood Knights
2 Hex Knights
1 Terrorgheist
1 Varghulf
3 Grave Guard Great weapon
3 Grave Guard
2 Cairn wraiths
2 Crypt Ghouls
2 Vargheist
1 Mortis Engine or Black Coach
i am willing to drop the crypt ghouls if anyone thinks those 2 spaces would be better used for units.
also Mortis Engine vs Black coach?
Pyros_Eien
Member
General changes from difficulties is the AI is more agressive towards you(the higher, the more likely they'll just run past someone they're at war with just to attack you).
You also get penalties in combat to leadership(you get less, enemy gets more, so you need to play better to not get routed while it's much harder to get the enemy to route, on legendary for example greenskins have very high leadership, close to dwarf level, so that makes the early fights way harder since they also have numbers) and on the campaign map to public order(generally get a rebellion everytime you occupy something on legendary if you sack it, but can be used to your advantage to farm rebels and level your lord).
I think there's some diplomacy penalties too but not entirely sure since diplomacy is such a mess in general and it tends to be easier to just stomp everyone.
In my opinion, hard is fine though. That's what I started with, it was my first total war, and by turn 50 I thought it was too easy already. Very hard is pretty nice if you don't want too much crap but still a challenge, legendary is rough. The thing is quite often, the early game is the hardest part, but once you get rolling if you have a solid economy, even on legendary it becomes easy to win. Early game you'll often have to do stupid stuff like kiting armies and abusing ranged units and turtle for a while to secure a good position.
Pyros_Eien already mentioned the difficulty changes; it really is just modifier; so i'll focus on the roster.
I'd change hex knights into black knights with lances. Hex knights have few models and small health pool so they need way too much micro to not get destroyed; black knights high Armour makes them much more resilient.
Crypt ghouls is early tier unit; either substitute them for crypt horrors, GG , GGGW or cairn wraiths. Crypt ghouls are almost useless late game.
normally choose the mortis engine.
The rest is great.
The Mortis Engine and the black coach feel different niches while their are both chariots.
The mortis Engine is a major support unit, has an aura that is capable of healing your units while dealing a small damage to surrounding units damage; the fact that can heal itself and has relatively high health pool means it will be hard to take down unless the AI focuses on it. It has also relatively high mas so it should be able to evade any "pinning" down from the enemy AI. In short you should charge your mortis engine into the hardest part of the battle where its aura will try to balance the fight; retreat if it takes too much damage.
The black coach is the "main" chariot of the VC; Its main purpose is disrupting the main battle lines while killing "weak" troops like archers and artillery. It is super useful against factions that have low mass but lots of weak ranged troops like WE (elf build) and empire. This unit needs to be heavily micromanaged because it needs to keep moving from unit to unit and not get bogged down in combat; this is one of the most challenging units to use but if used well a black coach can make sure 3-4 groups of archers can't fire at all or open holes in the enemy formation that your infantry can use. IMO black coach is not a very "good" unit in the VC roster because it will have a hard time against chaos, can be useless against GS (if they don't take ranged units) and can be pinned down "easily" by compact dwarf formations. The VC vargheist can almost do the same levels of disrupting however the fact they are flying makes them much more versatile.
Pyros_Eien
Member
True endgame composition is 19 terrorgheists and some shmuck on a dragon. Generally speaking once you have endgame economy, you can just mass the stupid units and ignore the balanced compositions. You only need 1 or 2 combat ready armies, the rest is just garrison garbage, can do with like lots of graveguards and one necro to heal them as long as you're fighting in garrison and put walls on everything.
But for a more "normal" army, I'd go heavier on black knights, like 3 or 4(replacing the 2 hex wraith as mentionned plus a couple more), they're good against the AI in general. Cav is especially useful against ranged stuff, if you have 5-6 cav total(counting the blood knights), you can route or destroy all their ranged units and artillery very early, taking minimal damage. Graveguards are great at soaking up damage from the rest with Incantation while you're doing that, and once the ranged is dead, just chain charge into whatever's left with your cav and you'll break everything in seconds and since you can chase down everything they'll never regroup.
That's how I played VC at least, I didn't use Terrorgheists/Vargheists/Vargulfs really, mostly a lot of cav and a lot of infanty and a caster(and I would have used mortis but wasn't released last time I played which was very early on). Bog down the center with expendable graveguards and annihilate everything else with cav charges.
But for a more "normal" army, I'd go heavier on black knights, like 3 or 4(replacing the 2 hex wraith as mentionned plus a couple more), they're good against the AI in general. Cav is especially useful against ranged stuff, if you have 5-6 cav total(counting the blood knights), you can route or destroy all their ranged units and artillery very early, taking minimal damage. Graveguards are great at soaking up damage from the rest with Incantation while you're doing that, and once the ranged is dead, just chain charge into whatever's left with your cav and you'll break everything in seconds and since you can chase down everything they'll never regroup.
That's how I played VC at least, I didn't use Terrorgheists/Vargheists/Vargulfs really, mostly a lot of cav and a lot of infanty and a caster(and I would have used mortis but wasn't released last time I played which was very early on). Bog down the center with expendable graveguards and annihilate everything else with cav charges.
ShogunDarius
Member
i'm surprised so many don't rate hexwraiths despite having terror and are ethereal and do magic damage and fire damage, plus armor piercing.
I would have thought Cairn Wraiths and Hexwraiths would be a good double eam to use especially on dwarfs
I would have thought Cairn Wraiths and Hexwraiths would be a good double eam to use especially on dwarfs
LurkerPrime
Member
I completely forgot about VCs' line of etheral troops... All the Greenskin waaaghing has destroyed my mind.
ShogunDarius
Member
wouldnt the VC Cairn Wraiths and Hexknights be one of the hardest units to defeat for an army if they have no magic damage at their disposal?
Kaffeemann
Banned
They are not as tanky as one might think. They have 80 physical resistance but much lower HP than comparable units. Their melee attack is also really low so they have problems putting their armor piercing to good use.
ShogunDarius
Member
if thats the case, is it worth even having them? at best the seem faster than their VC equivalents
i know its been suggested to play Hard but since i've felt the game is fairer on normal i'd rather play that (except the dwarves confederating all other dwarf factions), is there anything I can do as Manfred to speed up Isabella being recruited by Vlad on normal? constantly defeating Vlad?
also whats the best way to get an army to attack me when on the battlefield? unless the enemy ai is attacking me, i've never had them more towards me
Kaffeemann
Banned
Cairn and Hey Wraiths are most cost effective when fighting against heavily armored enemies that have a lot of armor piercing themselves. I still don't use them very often.
If you want an enemy army to get closer use ambush stance.
If you want an enemy army to get closer use ambush stance.
ShogunDarius
Member
Do i need to finish the wood elves mini campaign to be able to recruit the red duke as the Vampire Counts in the grand campaign?
Kaffeemann
Banned
You can't recruit him regardless. The only way to get him is through confederation Mousillion.
ShogunDarius
Member
oh, can i get him that way without having completed the dlc yet?
Kaffeemann
Banned
Yes.
ShogunDarius
Member
one last question, in the GC, if you go into ambush state and a enemy triggers it, what buffs does that give your army?
Cairn wraiths are pretty good because of their speed; if you can make an enemy rout with terror, a unit of cairn wraiths will make short work of them because of their high speed. Cairn wraiths are a very good flanker unit, extremely useful because of their high speed.
Hexwraiths are kinda useless because of both blood knights and black knights with lances which do the melee/shock cavalry better. They have no real niche in the VC army. They were more interesting when you didn't have blood knights.
There is no way to speed vlad to recruit isabela. What i normally do is "waste" an agent that stays near their capital to see what lords they recruit and to know when is necessary to go and help them so that other AI doesn't wipe them out.
Play on whatever difficulty you find the game fun; The difference between difficulties is really just modifiers.
the AI will only attack you when it "thinks" it has the advantage, open field battles initiated by the AI are rare unless you purposely bring an army with less then 20 units. If you just want to catch an enemy army in open field battle you have 2 mechanics:
- ambush stance-> when you enter this stance the AI forgets where your army is, so it will move to attack one of your provinces until it finds your army, then it will try to flee however it should have wasted too many movement points to leave your range.
- agent block action-> this action when successful cuts movement points in half, perhaps more. making it easier to your armies to catch the AI.
you have a special type of battle where your enemy is in a column formation (infantry in front, artillery in the back). You can see the enemy formation and deploy from both sides fairly close to the enemy. the enemy moves along side a predetermined path until they have LOS on you. This types of battles are slaughters because the defensive side has no chance to use ranged troops or their cavalry.
If you have the beastmen DLC they only fight like this.
Pyros_Eien
Member
Yeah ambush fights are mostly a position advantage, I don't think you get any numerical advantage. It's super strong against some armies, but not so great against other armies. Like if all they have are strong melee units and low/no ranged units/artillery, having the "advantageous" position really doesn't help since you'd want to deploy far away and shoot them down to soften them anyway. Unless you yourself are melee centric, then it's whatever.
It is still kinda useful because you can generally deploy on 2 sides, so you can get flanking bonuses right away, you can break the armies very quickly especially if you have some good shock troops like heavy cav, chariots or just strong melee monsters.
I've found ambush to have very mixed results against the AI though, they seem to tell when you're ambushing if you have too strong of a force compared to theirs, seems to mostly only work if you're weaker/equal.
It is still kinda useful because you can generally deploy on 2 sides, so you can get flanking bonuses right away, you can break the armies very quickly especially if you have some good shock troops like heavy cav, chariots or just strong melee monsters.
I've found ambush to have very mixed results against the AI though, they seem to tell when you're ambushing if you have too strong of a force compared to theirs, seems to mostly only work if you're weaker/equal.
Is there any way to play without the chaos invasion now? I feel the mechanic ruins a lot of races campaigns since the no ai really fights them well or allies agains then. The north is always just ruins after a while if you play greenskins etc
Really looking forward to part 2, mostly because the chaos invasion breaks a lot of the ai
Really looking forward to part 2, mostly because the chaos invasion breaks a lot of the ai
Goldfishking
Member
I'm pretty sure there are mods for that. Not sure how they work since the norsca update though.
ShogunDarius
Member
if 2 or more of your armies are in ambush state and close together will they support each other?
ShadowSwordmaster
Banned
The Chaos invasions does not happen in the Norsca campaign.
Pretty good sale on Bundle stars.
Slightly cheaper DLC than straight from Steam as well;
https://www.bundlestars.com/en/collections/total-war-warhammer
Slightly cheaper DLC than straight from Steam as well;
https://www.bundlestars.com/en/collections/total-war-warhammer
ShadowSwordmaster
Banned
I'm ready for Warhammer 2.
Pretty good sale on Bundle stars.
Slightly cheaper DLC than straight from Steam as well;
https://www.bundlestars.com/en/collections/total-war-warhammer
Does preordering WH 2 from BundleStars give you the Norsca dlc?
Edit: I am going to answer my own question after further investigating and say, "Yes you do!".
ShogunDarius
Member
in the VC campaign early on you get the battle of Hel Fenn, are there any other battles like that not linked to character quests items? if so, what and how do i trigger them to appear?
ShadowSwordmaster
Banned
Each of the four original races get them. You would need to accomplish the early missions that you're given.
ShogunDarius
Member
missions like declare war on von castein?
ShadowSwordmaster
Banned
More like defeating an army or taking a city. I know after taking back the Dwarf providence if you play just the dwarves and not the Belagar one, the mission will pop up. The same thing goes for the Empire and Greenskinz too.
ShogunDarius
Member
well i try to except the missions that require agent specific stuff. unles you mean chapter objectives then i only do the main objectives now.
Pyros_Eien
Member
Hmm I think there's only 2 type of missions, missions that are part of a chain that lead to legendary items for your lord, which generally unlock when you're the appropriate level, and every(most?) races get one quest battle right next to their start point early on that rewards a free random hero. I don't remember anything else unless you're playing mini campaigns with elves/beastmen, then there's various quest battles for the objectives and campaign progression stuff.
