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shalcar
Oct 21, 2009

At my signal, DEAL WITH IT.
Taco Defender


Total War: Warhammer is the tenth game in the Total War series by Creative Assembly. Using grand scale strategic turn based management and real time action packed battles, the Total War franchise has a long and storied history of great games.


What's new in this one?
In a series first, Creative Assembly has teamed up with Games Workshop to bring Warhammer Fantasy Battles into Total War's traditionally historical setting. This has opened up a huge design space, with giant monsters, fliers, magic and legendary heroes striding the battlefield cutting through lesser warriors like so much chaff.


Warhammer is the one with the orcs, right?
The races available in Total War: Warhammer are the Empire (Humans), Dwarves, Orcs, Undead and Chaos (DLC only). Empire and Undead can't occupy settlements intended for Dwarves/Orcs and vice versa. The Empire is the most traditional faction consisting of early gunpowder era units, knights and steam powered tanks. Undead are powerful vampires and necromancers who control the armies of the dead and all sorts of night terrors. They spread corruption throughout the lands that keep their foul forces in top notch fighting shape. Unsurprisingly, they don't care about losses all that much, as they can raise the fallen. Dwarves hate everyone and keep a list of every grudge that has ever happened to them. Stubborn and uncompromising, they are heavily armored with powerful ranged units and helicopters(!) but have exceptionally poor mobility. The Orcs must be constantly fighting or else face internal rebellion. With hordes of goblins, orcs, wolves, spiders and self guided artillery (they shoot goblins at the enemy) the orcs tend towards lower quality but high numbers fighting.


Ok, but I've heard you never buy CA games on release.
The game is great as is right now and well worth the purchase. It's a CA game that just came out so there are still some rough edges, but the core experience is so good it won't matter.


Attila ran like a three legged dog in concrete though, am I going to need 1080 GTX's in SLI to get 30 frames?
No! CA has brought the Warscape engine into the 64 bit era and optimized it to the point where you will get a similar experience to Shogun 2, a game from 5 years ago!


Can I play this with my friend online?
Absolutely! The game has a co-operative campaign mode where you and a friend can take control of two separate factions and conquer the world together! There are also multiplayer tactical battles against people online if that's more your style.

Is there an online version of the clunky ingame encyclopaedia?
Yes there is, you can find it here.

:siren:Frequently Asked Questions:siren:

Should I buy all the DLC?
The DLC only lets you play/use the races/Legendary Lords yourself, they will always be in the game for the AI regardless. Only buy the DLC if you want to play as that specific race or Legendary Lord. The Grim and the Grave / The King and the Warlord add Regiments of renown you can recruit as Undead/Empire or Dwarf/Goblin respectively but those are the only DLC that impact the game for the original Legendary Lords.

Is there a relatively indepth look at how the battle mechanics work?
Yes there is, you can find it here.

Why can AI Armies move more than my armies and still be able to attack?
The AI army might have more campaign movement bonuses than you. The other possibility is that the AI is using Forced March to sneak just outside of your range. Try setting your army to Ambush stance and the AI (probably) won't know you are there and can end up where you can catch them! Alternatively, there is a mod that increases movement speed in friendly provinces.

I can't find Ambush stance
You are Chaos and don't have it.

Drowning in enemy agents
Work on having good assassin style agents from early on (Witch Hunters for Empire etc). See the agents section below. Alternatively if it just seems ridiculous (and it can be, it's a common complaint about the game) get the no aggressive actions agents mod.

Recruitment bonuses, how do they work?
They are province wide, so only apply to troops trained in that province.

Why can't I build this max rank building?
Only the provincial capital can build the max rank buildings. You will need to build certain buildings in capitals in order to access all your units. You can get a mod to let all regions go to max rank buildings.

Why can't I assault a fortification?
You don't have a siege weapon built or already in your army. Some monsters which can smash gates don't count for this.

Do I have to march across the map just to do this quest battle?
You can teleport to a quest battle for 5k. THIS ONLY APPLIES TO THE QUEST BATTLES! Agent actions still have to be done via map travel.

My replays are playing weird/broken
Replays are bugged, the patch should fix it... maybe. Replays have been janky for the last 3 CA games (see the disclaimer about some wonkyness!)

AOE magic seems to not work very well?
Magic damage isn't scaling with unit sizes, so Ultra unit sizes are significantly less impacted by AOE magic than Small unit sizes. No idea if it's intended or not.

Why would I bother with garrisons when I can build armies?
Garrisons don't cost upkeep and so free up cash for your offensive armies. It might save you more money to have a defensive building on a border than an economic one makes you!

Their provinces have walls and mine don't, what gives?
If it's not the capital of the province then upgrading your Village Garrison to level 2 grants you defensive walls, which can be a literal game-changer. Don't underestimate them!

How confederations work
Let you boldly go where no Waaaaggh has gone before. You will typically need to be significantly stronger than the clan you are trying to confederate with. It joins both factions into one bigger one, which isn't always as good an idea as it sounds. It will resets garrison sizes in the newly confederated lands as well as give you a -8 Public Order modifier for several turns. This can be catastrophic!

Why can't I capture some settlements?
Not every race can inhabit every province. Humans and Undead occupy one type while Orcs and Dwarves occupy another.

What's the point of attacking the other type of settlements?
Sacking provinces makes heaps of money and can be just what you need to supercharge your economy and keep those troops earning their pay. Just because you can't live there doesn't mean you can't loot everything shiny from it!

How do I get my units to move in formation?
Click the lock button with a group selected in order to lock their relative positions to each other or create a pre-locked group with Ctrl-G.

How do I get my units to not all attack the same unit when I order an attack with multiple units selected?
Hold Alt when right clicking your attack order with a locked group selected and the computer will select "sensible" targets (ie. spread out the attack along the line instead of all on the unit you clicked on).

Do guns and crossbows have different arcs in this game?
Yes! Crossbows arc their shots and so can shoot over the top of units somewhat. Guns on the other hand have a flat trajectory and so must have a direct path to the enemy unit. One way of achieving this is using a checkerboard pattern of troop deployment.

What the hell is a checkerboard?

Fans posted:

I'll do it in pictures!

Here's the formation head on.


And here it is from the other side.


I'm Undead and there never seem to be any casualties to Raise Dead with?
There are reports that Raise Dead for the Undead is bugged for some people. Right now it seems to be luck of the draw if it impacts you, but it seems to be only a minority. Likely to be patched.

The AI just swapped a Lord out with another one! Why can the AI cheat like that?
It isn't cheating, you can do it too! You can swap Lords at any time. Want Karl Franz to take over a stack from Joe Nobody? Boom, one click and it's done.

Some buildings I've never seen before and can't find, what's the deal?
Certain buildings are locked to certain locations or a region having access to a certain resource. These are typically better than regular buildings and are well worth the slot.

Can I zoom the camera out more? It seems really close the the ground.

Captain Beans posted:

The in game 'debug camera mode' gives you the same unrestricted camera - and avoids crashes and keeps multiplayer compatibility.
C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\The Creative Assembly\Warhammer\scripts

And in preferences.script change the line
default_camera_type # (starts as 1 or 0)
to
default_camera_type 2

:siren:I've never played Total War and I'm totally new at this. Any general army tips?:siren:
Forums poster Sober has your back! It's general for all Total Wars, but it applies just as much to this one!

Sober posted:

By popular request, and for a megathread in case heaven forbid, people new to the series want to actually play a total war game want to actually not just smash their head at it for 4 hours before it makes sense or they give up, I give you ...

A Guide on How to Play Total War Games For New Players Because No One Will Ever Teach You The Fundamentals

But Sober, the Total War franchise has been a thing since the year of our lord, two thousand (Total War: Shogun released in 2000)! Why do we need a guide now?
Because frankly, there really is a dearth of guides on how to play Total War. Not to be lazy, so I googled "how to play Total War" and the top results are the official How To Play guide for Total War Rome 2 (which is honestly pretty crappy, all things considered) or really specific to one game.

So let's say there was a recent Steam Sale (we're all guilty), and you decided "hey, why don't I grab the most recent Total War game for cheap or all the older back catalogue for like 50 bucks. I hear there's plenty of hours in any single Total War game alone!" And you're not wrong there. The problem that I've found though, is that none of them actually teach you how to play Total War in any competent capacity.

This is what the guide is for, to teach you the fundamentals, because for heaven's sake, there really isn't a good one. Especially when everyone points to "well buy the game in the era that interests you" and assumes they can enjoy fumbling about and learning the unexplained fundamentals of game as much as you did back in the day. You old farts.

Let's get started.

:byodood: HOW DO I PLAY A TOTAL WAR GAME I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING :byodood:

Welcome to Total War! It gets easier, I promise. So I figured you've probably started the respective tutorials for the game you're interested in. This may range from "hmm, alright" (Napoleon, Shogun 2) or "WHAT THE gently caress IS THIS poo poo" (Rome 2). That's quite alright. I think they taught you the controls.

Forget about the tutorial unless you have a godly amount of patience because everything after that requires more work than the actual game usually entails. If you want a more in-depth look at the camera/unit controls, I recommend watching this video. Yes, it's for Rome 2 but 95% of the what is explained there works in the older games in regards to unit control (and basic camera usage for Empire and newer games).

I still recommend you leave the advisers on because while they do explain everything for you, they do it at a drip feed, and requires you basically click on everything carefully so you don't trigger them before they finish one topic. They are extremely serviceable for the advice they give specifically for each game.

Start up a campaign instead
Most people will spend a majority of their hours in a Total War game playing the campaign(s). These are basically two games rolled into one, where you play the game on a big Risk-like map of the world, while you play those battles where you tell your groups of sweaty, muscly men to go kill the other group of sweaty, muscly men. If you are absolutely new, pick the factions with a easy start position to give you more time to get used to everything. The hard starts really are hard, with poo poo coming at you the moment you hit end turn, if not starting you knee-deep in poo poo.

Essentially, campaigns break down into two distinct layers:
1) The campaign map: a STRATEGIC, TURN-BASED layer and
2) The battle map: a TACTICAL, REAL-TIME layer

The Campaign Map
In any Total War game, this is the part where you play it in a turn-based fashion. You take your turn doing whatever you want at your leisure, then you end your turn when you've got nothing else you can do or you need to pass the time (preferably in that order). All the other factions/countries/etc. take their turns and it's back to you. Anything the other factions do to you on their turn, you will have a chance to react to.

The campaign map serves as a sandbox for you to take a faction and have them conquer the map in whichever way you deem fit within a time limit and with certain victory conditions. Simple as that.

From the strategic layer, you raise armies and recruit new units. You then move those armies around and you use them to go fight other armies and use them to take over other regions by capturing settlements.

Another thing that you can do on the strategy layer is recruit agents, which are single characters that you can use to do certain things to other actors in the game (armies, agents, settlements) like assassinate another character or accompany an army to buff them.

Actors like agents and armies/fleets have limited movement in movement points that limits where they can move in the turn.

The map is divided into different regions, and these are the discrete building blocks of your empires in Total War. You manage building infrastructure in regions you control to support your economy: you have to balance buildings that increase the wealth, happiness, growth of a region, as well as unit recruitment. Units cost money to recruit and/or maintain, so you need to maintain a stable economy to keep your war machine going. Upgrading your infrastructure also supports your war machine by letting you recruit better/advanced units or making them better in some way (more experienced, better equipment), or allowing you to move stuff around faster.

You also conduct diplomacy with other factions, research (Empire and newer), exploration, trade and a few other things from this layer.

Research (from Empire and onward) is basically a technology tree that doles out new units/unit abilities/buildings/infrastructure improvements/etc.

Diplomacy from declaring war/making peace to making vassals are all conducted from the diplomacy screen (you need an diplomat agent in Medieval 2 and older games though to do anything but declare war). Usually things like making peace, allies, trade are a stopgap before you go on conquering everything, while providing you with some leeway to how you want to do it if you want to make alliance blocs or to double check that declaring war on someone won't drag five other factions into war against you (either all at once or sending everyone into a gradual hate spiral), or that it won't piss off your shaky ally into breaking trade agreements with you, causing your economy to grind to a halt.

For starters you want to conduct diplomacy to trade with other factions if you can; this will net you some extra income as well as some favour towards a faction if you do. This is always a good starting place if you want to build better relations with a faction. In later games, resources are traded and trade can help if you want to improve your infrastructure, as they will require you have access to certain resources. There isn't too much nuance in diplomacy in a Total War game (it is called Total War after all) but there is enough in it to encourage its use.

When armies clash, you go into the tactical layer of the game, or the battle map.

The Battle Map
This is where battles take place in Total War games. Whatever units the involving armies were made up of and their conditions on the campaign map will be represented on the battle map. I will cover what are the majority of fights you will play a Total War game, which are pitched field battles.

Battles are fought in real-time but if you're playing against the AI you also have control to the speed controls to pause/slow down/speed up the battles. I'd recommend you pause if you feel overwhelmed at any point during a fight. You do not need Korean StarCraft rock star god ubermicro to play Total War battles, not even in MP. What usually wins battles is the applying the proper units to the right places during a battle. Battles in Total War are about maneuvers and bringing the right army to the fight.

In battles, the goal isn't necessarily to eliminate the entire enemy force, but to make them rout and run away like a bunch of babies. Units have morale and if you can reduce their morale to zero, they will stop fighting and instead opt to run off the battlefield.

There are plenty of ways to break an enemy unit's morale, the most common way is to kill them. The faster you kill them, the faster their morale breaks. Flanking a unit is usually the go-to maneuver, because that typically means a unit is being attacked both in front (which it's prepared for) and from the sides/behind (which it isn't) and will start taking losses even faster. Barring that, you need massive superiority (both quantity and quality) to kill the enemy faster than they're killing yours.

How do I deploy my army?
The one huge problem in Total War games is that no one ever really teaches new players how to deploy an army unless you are coincidentally a military historian, nor does the game really fully explain what your units actually do besides that you right click them to get them into fights.

There are many, many different ways to deploy armies in Total War games, and a lot of it has to do with what units were in your army that you brought to the fight (i.e. units you recruited during your turns in the campaign in the first place). How comfortable you are with battles also determines what units you recruit in the campaign, but a few fundamentals exist in the general sense. They differ from game, faction, playstyle per faction, etc. but the general builds are the same. You are also free to experiment from there.

In the broadest sense, army composition depends on these roles:
  • Infantry: the men who do the fighting and dying, and usually your main core of units that make up a good portion of your armies. Multipurpose.
  • Cavalry: Usually found on your flanks at the start, you use them to chase down more vulnerable units or to flank the enemy's units after your infantry are engaged with one another. Generally multipurpose but biased towards flanking use.
  • Skirmishers/Light Infantry: for screening your main force, these are generally the ranged units like archers. Screening means you use them in advance of your attack to absorb enemy missile fire so they don't have any left on your actual men. They can also be used to flank, or defensively after they retreat to the flanks/behind when the main infantry line engage. They usually will poo poo their pants in an actual fight or just at the sight of cavalry coming at them.
  • Artillery: Depending on the era the game you are playing, they are "nice to have" or "the fury of a thousand suns". Almost required in gunpowder armies.

Refer to this image for the most basic and balanced deployment setup:

From that you can play around with it. (I'm also too lazy to make any more so just use that as a reference point)

For the sword/spear/bow/horse games:
For absolute starters, familiarize yourself with the basic procedure of "fix and flank", or better known as The Hammer and Anvil tactic.

Your main line: Bring a core of infantry. They generally have swords or spears and their job is to get in fights. These are for holding down the other enemy's core of infantry. The fight begins when someone commits their line towards the other and they smash into each other. They don't have to be the best of the best, but the better they are, the longer they will hold the line before they run, which means you have more time to maneuver. Generally, just select all your tougher infantry and drag them out to a thin line, keeping them maybe 3-5 ranks/men deep - this is usually a good balance of length and depth of a battle line. If you are afraid if your line being weak, you can place units behind them as reserves to bring up to the front if needed.

Skirmishers: place them in front offensively or behind when on the defensive. If you are confident with maneuvering them on the flanks, they are just as good as cavalry. But remember they are usually light infantry so they are extremely vulnerable to cavalry but can outrun most heavier infantry if they need to turn tail.

Calvary: bring a comfortable amount (usually 2 to 4) to use for charging into the enemy's flanks after the lines meet. People usually hit the enemy's line from the flanks and work towards the center (because this also frees up infantry from your flanks to help maneuver with). They can also chase away/kill/rout skirmishers if needed.


For gunpowder games:
Your main line: Line infantry of varying degrees of quality. Drag them out as thin as you can to maximize fire, though be careful as though 2 rank deep formations provide really good fire, they are vulnerable to being charged and surrounded since they have no depth. You usually have one flank slowly crawl up the side and fire towards the enemy's line's flank. Just slowly progress until you've killed more of them and routed them. Usually your perfect straight battle line at the start devolves into a V, U or W when you're done.

Skirmishers (and some other infantry): They usually are better than line infantry at something but suck in being main line infantry (standing and shooting and dying). They are either skirmishers (don't line up in neat lines to be shot at), or have better range/accuracy as snipers, or other abilities like throwing grenades but have much less men per unit. Use them as specialist infantry on the flanks or to screen.

Cavalry: Take a bit of a backseat because though they can charge thin lines, a frontal charge towards musket fire will almost always just instantly rout them. And just because line infantry shooting at line infantry will generally resolve one another as long as you are maneuvering something. Generally used for chasing down cannon crews or routing units. Some cavalry are dragoons and are basically line infantry on horses - you can run them towards the enemy's flanks, dismount them and they start firing, then pack them up and continue on. Make sure that if you are attacking line infantry with melee cavalry it is from behind and they don't have time to brace for it by doing stuff like going into square formation or turning around to give you a volley of gunfire.

Artillery: The fist of an angry god. Unless you are really confident at maneuvering on the field with just infantry and cavalry, make sure to bring cannons - they are a force multiplier, being able to fire across the map and ruin someone's day. They either go on the flanks of your line infantry or at the center while your infantry surround it. That or find them a good elevated position to fire from.

The Empire


madmac posted:

What the other guy said, but just because I feel like it I'll give you an Empire effort post.

Empire State Troops

Man for man Empire State Troops in general aren't the best around, they're fairly fragile, relatively easy to route and not especially good at anything. They are however highly cost effective and versatile, and in combination with Honest Steel you can utilize them as expendable meatshields the entire game.

Note that every race gets basically that same buff skill for their basic infantry, but it's most effective for Empire because they're the only faction who will be using those basic units the entire game.

Spearman Crap unit, counters cav semi-effectively but you get the better-in-all-respects Spearman-with-Shield with a level 2 Rax so don't actually build these ever.

Spearmen with Shields Are anti-large, so they do poorly against infantry but are fairly strong against Cav and Monster units. Having a shield* lets them absorb ranged fire better so these are decent line units. Early game you'll just be doing infantry clashes against other Empire factions though, so you don't need more than like 2 of these for a long while.

*Units with shields deflect 30% of incoming projectiles from the front. Does not help vs Artillery.

Swordsmen These are your basic anti-infantry unit, they're good against infantry but bad against cavalry and monsters. Build a ton of these early game for fighting other Humans and worry about diversifying later.

Halberds Halberds don't have shields, so they're weak against archers but have both anti-large and armor piercing, making them solid hitters against basically everything especially later in the game when armored and large units become more common. You'll want a handful of these early on and more late game depending on who you are fighting. Are also the best possible units to defend your artillery with.

Greatswords Expensive but very powerful anti-infantry units. These can replace swordsmen eventually but not until you have the finances to support their upkeep. Note that Greatswords have Armor Piercing and also a +10 damage bonus vs infantry, they'll wreck heavy infantry for you no problem but not having a shield makes them somewhat vulnerable to archers. For best results, deploy them on the flanks to sweep around and crush enemies from behind, or put them in a second row behind your front line to counter charge and wreck after your more expendable swords/spears take the brunt of the enemy charge.

Crossbows Have good range and a fast rate of fire, and can arc their shots over your front line so you don't have to do anything special to deploy them effectively. They are strong against lightly armored units but weak against heavy armor. In general it's often ideal to use them to focus fire enemy archers after your respective lines are engaged.

Handgunners They shoot straight, so you want to deploy them with elevation or on flanks when possible, however their damage output is quite high when used correctly and they tear up most heroes and armored units like nothing. Pretty much just use crossbows early game and worry about these guys later when stronger enemy units start showing up. Deploying them effectively requires more micro than crossbows and will take a little practice.

Pistoliers, Outriders, Grenade Outriders

These are light ranged cav units. You can set them to skirmish mode and they'll easily outrun most melee attackers while kiting them to death. These are a fairly niche/skill unit, they can be effective as highly mobile flankers but you can also totally ignore them and be fine. Enemy ranged infantry will rip them to shreds in seconds, so beware.

Empire Knights, Reiksguard

These are heavy armored shock cavalry units. Their role is to circle around and flank charge into units for massive damage and morale shock. Use them to clear out enemy archers and artillery, then send them crashing into the back of engaged enemy infantry for a near-instant route. You want to leave them engaged for a few seconds after charging to take full advantage of their charge bonus, but then you'll need to pull out if fighting anything stronger than an archer unit. Pull out, reform, and charge again.

Empire Knights are cheaper than Reiksguard but inferior in every other respect.

Demigryph Knights

Somewhat like the above Knights except they are insanely powerful and murder everything even if you leave them stuck in close-combat forever. Abuse as much as your conscience permits.

Mortar

Your basic artillery. It has decent range and splash but poor damage and your other artillery is better after you unlock them.

Cannons

Cannons have excellent range, are very precise, and do very good damage to armored and large units. Use these to snipe powerful enemy units but don't expect them to do much against infantry formations.

Hellblaster cannon

A short-ranged rapid-fire cannon designed to take on infantry blocks but seems iffy in it's current implementation. Avoid for now.

Hellfire Rockets
Basically your upgraded mortar. Has insane range and splash but terrible aim and poor armor piercing.

Steam Tanks

Kills everything, never dies.

Luminarch of Hysh

A very specialized laser cannon designed to snipe monsters specifically. It's kinda niche and easily ignorable for now.

Heroes are a whole topic in themselves I'm not getting into right now.

shalcar fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Apr 16, 2017

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shalcar
Oct 21, 2009

At my signal, DEAL WITH IT.
Taco Defender
The Undead

Sjonnar posted:


LORDS OF UNDEATH

Mannfred von Carstein

Leader of the Vampire Counts of Sylvania, and the better of the two starting legendary lords. Technically a wizard, Manny has access to the Lore of Vampires and Lore of Death, but can also be built into a near-unkillable melee fighter without sacrificing his magical powers. He starts with the spells Invocation of Nehek, a heal-over-time spell that regenerates your units (including Manny himself), and Spirit Leech, a damage-over-time spell that deals heavy damage to a single target.

Important skills to note are The Hunger, which gives him significant life regeneration while in melee, Power Drain, which gives him an extra 15 points of power reserve in combat (though this requires heavy investment into Lore of Vampires, which you may not want to make), Children of the Night, which with two points invested gives you an extra vampire hero slot (though all lords have access to this skill, you might want to spend these points elsewhere on Manny), and Fate of Bjuna, a damage-over-time spell that deals heavy damage to multiple-model units.

Mount options are an armored nightmare, a flying nightmare,and a zombie dragon. Unfortuantely, each mount has the previous as a prerequisite, so you can't have Manny walk until level 25 then get a zombie dragon for a single point.

Heinrich Kemmler

The most powerful human necromancer alive, Kemmler sold his soul to the Chaos gods for a second chance after his enemies defeated and ruined him. He is a wizard lord with access to the Lore of Vampires, and starts with Invocation of Nehek. Kemmler is strictly inferior in combat to Mannfred, and indeed, to even a generic vampire lord.

His most notable skill is Master of the Dead, which passively provides regeneration to your units near him. It's not very strong, though. Not even close to Invocation, for example.

His punishment for sucking is having to walk everywhere he goes. No mount options, not even a dead horse.

Vampire Lord

A generic vampire lord with access to the Lore of Vampires and the same combat and campaign support skill trees that Manny gets. Starts with Invocation of Nehek.

Skills to note are The Hunger, Power Drain,and Children of the Night. You want that Children of the Night on every vampire lord; vampire heroes are awesome, as you'll see. Since you don't have access to Lore of Death, consider advancing Lore of Vampires far enough to get Power Drain and Curse of Years, an awesome area debuff that utterly shitifies the stats of any enemy in range.

Mount options are the same as Manny's.

Master Necromancer

A generic necromancer hero with access to Lore of Vampires. Starts with Invocation of Nehek. Can get Master of the Dead, like Kemmler. Also like Kemmler, not worth taking over a vampire lord.

Mount options are a nightmare and a flying nightmare. No dragons for these losers.

DEAD HEROES

Necromancer

A wizard hero and basically identical in combat power to the necromancer lord. Has access to Lore of Vampires. Starts with Invocation of Nehek. Can ride a nightmare.

On the overmap (which is the only place they should ever be), you can deploy them to reduce building costs in your provinces, and spec them to be better at same with Prime Mover, or in enemy provinces to gently caress with their winds of power. Another good skill is Advisor, which increases the income from whatever region he's in by up to 15%.

Vampire

Your best hero by far, and one you should be able to get quite a few of, thanks you your lords all getting Children of the Night. A durable melee fighter thanks to The Hunger, extra life regen on command skill Immortal Will, and her solid combat skill tree, and a powerful caster thanks to her access to Lore of Death. That's right, the vampire hero does not get Lore of Vampires like everybody the gently caress else, but rather the much better Lore of Death. This makes sense because

In combat, she can use her Spirit Leech to snipe lords and Fate of Bjuna to kill hordes before wading into melee to crack heads with the best of them. On the overmap she can deploy to speed growth in your provinces or retard it in enemy provinces, but why? She can also get some healing and corruption-spreading skills in the blue tree.

She can ride a nightmare and later, a flying nightmare.

Banshee

Your assassin hero. On the overmap, she's an assassin, with the aptly named Assassin skill. In combat, she's a surprisingly tanky assassin thanks to her ethereal trait preventing 75% of incoming damage. She's fast as hell, but can't ride a mount.

You can deploy her in your provinces to reduce enemy agent success chance, or in enemy provinces to gently caress with their income, but her best use is wandering around murdering enemy agents for levels. She can get the Inspector skill to increase income by up to 15% in her current region.

Wight King

Your fighter hero. In combat, he's a durable fighter, though not as durable as the vampire thanks to lack of health regen. On the overmap, he can deploy in your provinces to increase public order, or in enemy provinces to reduce it and spark rebellions. Or he can sit in your army and passively improve your units' veterancy with Drill Master, as well as making new units cheaper to recruit with Inspirational and recruiting them at higher levels with Exemplar.

He can ride a dead horse, and add a significant amount of armor to it with an extra point.

KNEE DEEP IN THE DEAD

Zombies
Role: Cheap Tar Pit
Requires: Barracks Level 1

Zombies are dirt-cheap expendable troops used to bog your enemies down while your better units kill them. You'll lose these in huge numbers and not give a fraction of a gently caress.
Raise Dead will always present you with at least three units of zombies to recruit, which underscores their expendability.

Skeleton Warriors
Role: Tar Pit
Requires: Barracks Level 1

Skellies are your upgraded tarpit infantry. They have shields and thus can tank ranged fire better than zombies, and are faster as well. Still not as strong as other factions' basic infantry, skeletons are still primarily used to tie up enemy forces.
Raise Dead will always present you with at least one unit of skeleton warriors to recruit.

Skeleton Spearmen
Role: Anti-Large Tar Pit
Requires: Barracks Level 2

Skeletons with spears. These are more effective at dealing with enemy cavalry. Still just a tarpit.
Raise Dead will always present you with at least one unit of skeleton spearmen to recruit.

Crypt Ghouls
Role: Basic Damage Dealer, Debuffer
Requires: Cairn Level 1

Crypt ghouls are your most basic damage dealers, but their attacks do little against armored ememies, and you will soon want to replace them with much more effective killers. Their poison damage reduces the stats of enemies they hit.

Grave Guard
Role: Tough Tar Pit
Requires: Barracks Level 2, Armory Level 1

The tarriest of pits, Grave Guard are much better equipped to survive extended engagements while holding your enemies in place for your monsters to kill.

Grave Guard(Greatswords)
Role: Infantry Killer
Requires: Barracks Level 3, Armory Level 1

Grave Guard which have traded their standard issue sword and board for a great big fuckoff zweihander. Use these to flank and murder enemy infantry being held down by your tarpits.

Cairn Wraiths
Role: Elite Killer, Hero Killer
Requires: Cairn Level 3, Armory Level 1

Spooky ghosts designed specifically to murder your enemies' best units, Cairn Wraiths come with several specialized tools to help them in their mission. First, their scythes are armor-piercing and deal magical damage, bypassing all damage reduction other than ward saves. Second, they are ethereal, which gives them a 75% chance to ignore any non-magic damage attack. Finally, they have the terror special rule, which causes enemy units around them to temporarily rout at a higher leadership breakpoint than normal (in addition to the normal -10 leadership from fear).

I'LL BITE YER KNEECAPS OFF!

Black Knights
Role: Infantry Killer Cavalry
Requires: Barracks Level 3, Armory Level 1

Black Knights are your basic anti-infantry cavalry. They should be used to flank and kill enemy infantry units trapped by your tarpits.

Black Knights(Lances & Barding)
Role: Elite Killer, Shock Cavalry, Linebreaker
Requires: Barracks Level 3, Armory Level 1

Black Knights which trade their swords for armor-piercing heavy lances. They can be used both to break infantry lines and morale with the weight of their charges, and to countercharge and kill enemy cavalry or monsters. Once their initial charge is completed, order them free of the melee and swing around for another charge.

Hexwraiths
Role: Elite Killer, Hero Killer, Shock Cavalry
Requires: Cairn Level 3, Armory Level 2

Wraiths on spooky horses; in addition to their normal wraithly abilities, they function as shock cavalry, and also are one of only two units you get with vanguard deployment.

Black Coach
Role: Infantry Killer
Requires: Vampire Crypt Level 2, Armory Level 2

A heavy chariot used to kill infantry, which gets stronger as enemy troops die nearby. Unfortunately it requires heavy micro to use properly, as it will get pretty hosed up if you charge it in and leave it there. Has three activated abilities with shared cooldowns which each increase specific combat stats.

CREEPY CRITTERS

Fell Bats
Role: Fast Flying Harrier
Requires: Forest Level 1

A cloud of giant bats. In the early game, bats will be your answer to light cavalry attempting to flank your forces, missile cav, missile units on walls that you're assaulting, and missile units in general. They are also extremely fast and can chase down routing enemies to keep them from coming back.

Dire Wolves
Role: Fast Light Cavalry
Requires: Forest Level 1

A pack of giant undead wolves that function as your light cavalry. Very effective at killing poo poo if you charge them into the rear of engaged units. Also good at running down fleeing enemies. Can be vanguard deployed.

Crypt Horrors
Role: Linebreaker, Tank
Requires: Cairn Level 2

Regenerating zombie trolls. Once your enemy's troops are bogged down in your tarpits, charge these through your own line into key enemy units. Also an excellent unit for duelling enemy monsters, as their poison shitifies the enemy's stats.

Vargheists
Role: Flying Heavy Damage Dealer
Requires: Forest Level 2

Berserk degenerate vampires, vargheists will be your primary damage-dealer for most of the game. Proper usage is to wait until the enemy are tarpitted by your crap units and then land these on top of them from behind. Their size and mass will disrupt the enemy formation, and their high-damage attacks will murder them in job lots. Have bats and wolves standing by to serve as cleanup crew once the enemy start to rout, and find another target for your vargheists. Also exceptionally good at taking walls.

Varghulf
Role: Heavy Linebreaker, Elite Killer
Requires: Forest Level 2, Vampire Crypt Level 1

Another degenerate vampire, the varghulf is a super-heavy living siege engine. In battle, use it like you would a unit of crypt horrors, to disrupt enemy formations or kill their monsters. In sieges, they are living battering rams capable of smashing a gate down before your troops can even reach the walls. Hopefully a future patch will tag them as siege engines so you can attack walled settlements without having to build towers or rams.

Terrorgheist
Role: Heavy Flying Linebreaker, Elite Killer
Requires: Forest Level 3, Vampire Crypt Level 1

Giant zombie bat the size of a dragon. Functionally a flying varghulf, and used in much the same way. Has the added bonus of being anti-large and dealing extra damage to targets of horse size or larger.



The Dwarves

Perestroika posted:

Melee Infantry

Pound for pound, Dwarves have some of the best infantry around. They might not kill very fast, but they have exceptional armour and leadership, to the point where even their baseline Warriors can stall elite infantry from the other factions for a disgusting amount of time. Inside the leadership aura of a lord, it's disturbingly common for their infantry to fight to the last dwarf without ever breaking.

Dwarf Warriors
Your baseline frontline infantry and staple for much of the early game. In a one-on-one extended brawl, they should usually win against any one of the other faction's baseline infantry (Orc Boys, Empire Swordsmen, Chaos Marauders, etc.). 6-10 units of these guys will usually be the core of your early armies. Their great armour and shields also allow them to just stand their ground against enemy missiles and take salvo after salvo of arrows on the chin to little effect. They have charge defense vs. large units, so make sure to have them stand still and braced when they're about to be hit by cavalry or monsters.
Dwarf Warrios also come with a variant carrying Great Weapons, but be aware that those only offer benefit against heavily armoured enemies. Against enemies in light armour, they will actually perform worse than regular Warriors. Great Weapon Warriors can be good against other Dwarfs early on, but against Orcs the regular variant will usually perform better.

Miners
Miners are essentially the militia-type infantry of the Dwarfs. In a straight melee they're inferior to the proper Dwarf Warriors, and indeed even to the baseline infantry of several other factions. However, they do have a few other tricks to make up for it: For one, they are your only early-game source of armour piercing damage, which is good to have if you find yourself up against Black Orcs or other Dwarfs (make sure to flank with them, if you can).
They also have a huge damage bonus against city gates. Even a single unit of Miners will usually be able to fully destroy a gate before a ram even manages to get there in the first place. Last but certainly not least, they eventually get a variant carrying thrown mining charges. Those are amazing for completely disrupting an enemy charge, or for flanking around and throwing them into the back of an ongoing melee. They also have Vanguard deployment, but that's often more of a gimmick. Still, it can be useful to reach enemy city gates faster, and sometimes even to take out enemy artillery.

Longbeards
These are basically Dwarf Warriors++. They work much the same, but are a small upgrade in pretty much every way. Their main advantage is that they ignore psychological effects like Fear and Terror, which makes them particularly good against Vampire Counts. They also slightly buff the leadership of nearby allied units as long as they're not already buffed by a lord or hero, which can be helpful to strengthen a remote flank. In the medium term it's probably a good idea to completely replace your Dwarf Warriors with Longbeards, but the upgrade is incremental enough that you don't really need to rush there. Longbeards also come in a Great Weapon variant, and exactly the same caveats apply there as with Great Weapon Dwarf Warriors.

Ironbreakers
Ironbreakers are the pretty much the be-all and end-all when it comes to holding the line. Combining incredible armour, defense, leadership, and perfect charge defence, they can take on pretty much anything and hold it for a long, long time. They even come with a small supply of blasting charges that you know and love from the Miners, which will even further destabilize an enemy charge. The explosives together with their expert charge defense means that they're actually better off standing their ground and letting attackers crush into them, rather than trying to counter-charge. Maintaining a full line of them is very expensive, but almost nothing short of heavy artillery or huge monsters will get through them.

Hammerers
Like the name suggests, Hammerers carry big-rear end hammers, and are the Dwarf's big melee damage dealer. Unlike the Great Weapon variants of Warriors and Longbeards, Hammerers actually do appreciably more base damage than any other dwarf infantry even against targets with less armour, though of course they're still best used against whatever's got the most armour. It's useful to have a unit or two of them in reserve to bash in the heads of enemy elite infantry like Chosen or Black Orcs once they're engaged with your main line. But be mindful they they lack shields, so they're relatively more vulnerable to enemy ranged fire.

Slayers
In theory, Slayers are an excellent choice for taking down enemy monsters and cavalry with their high offensive power and anti-large bonus. In practice, they're much too fragile (particularly in auto-resolve) and too much of an investment to recruit to really be worth it. Your artillery and missile units will usually do the same job pretty much just as well, while also having more all-around utility and being less of a hassle to deal with. If you do use them, hold them far back and only send them in against monsters once they've been intercepted by your regular infantry. One thing of note is that they're the only (non-flying) Dwarf unit that moves faster than regular infantry, so they're actually capable of running down and massacring fleeing enemy infantry.

Missile Infantry


For much of the game, your missile infantry will generally be doing most of the actual killing while your melee infantry holds the line. Since Dwarfs lack any kind of fast-mover until very late in the game, missiles are also your only real way of reliably dealing with enemy cavalry, particularly ranged cavalry.

Quarrelers
Quarrelers are pretty much the bread and butter of any Dwarf army, and stay relevant throughout the entire game. They have great accuracy, range, and power, and the combined firepower of several units of them can melt enemy light units in just a few salvos. They also have shields to protect from incoming missiles, which means that they'll win a ranged fire exchange against almost every other ranged unit. They're even somewhat decent in melee, at least to the point that they'll usually be able to hold off enemies until your own melee infantry can relieve them.
Quarrelers can also come as a Great Weapon variant (note that this only replaces their melee weapon), which is less of a gimmick than it sounds like. Since they retain their regular crossbows in addition to the Great Weapons, they'll still be just as deadly against light targets. Meanwhile, the armour-piercing capabilities of the Great Weapons can be a nice backup in case you unexpectedly do find yourself up against heavily armoured enemies with nothing else ready to deal with them.

Thunderers
These are mostly similar to the Quarrelers, but they carry guns instead of crossbows. Their main advantage is that they're armour-piercing, but at the cost of shorter range and a flatter trajectory. This means they can't as easily fire over the heads of other friendly units. They're best used either for shooting through a checkerboard gap in your line, or to flank around and shoot into the back of the melee. They'll never fully replace Quarrelers, but having a few of these along is always helpful, even if just to deal with an Orc Lord.

Irondrakes
While the Irondrake's flamethrowers are metal as all hell, they're unfortunately mostly of a gimmick right now. Theoretically they can do huge damage against lightly armoured targets, but in practice Quarrelers can do pretty much the same thing at greater range and with less difficulty.
They also come in a variant carrying Trollhammer Torpedoes, which are essentially small-scale rocket launchers intended to murder monsters of all stripes. Their main problem is that they compete with cannons, which can do the same thing at much greater ranges. Still, their damage is very front-loaded, so they can quickly break an incoming unit of monsters or cavalry before they can even make contact. I like to keep a unit or two around as a fire brigade of sorts against monsters or cav coming in from an angle that cannons can't reach, and because rocket launchers own.

Artillery and War Machines

Dwarfs have some pretty decent artillery available to them, and they really need it. After all, with how slow they are, they have no other way to actually force the enemy to come to them.

Grudge Thrower
It's a straightforward catapult. It makes big holes into tight infantry formations, but it's too inaccurate to really hit individual characters or monsters reliably. It has a high arc to its trajectory, meaning you can shoot over your line to hit enemies even when they're pretty close by. I've found having between three and four early on quite handy to murder priority targets like Black Orcs or Big'Uns. Later on you can exchange a few of those for cannons for a more even ratio.

Cannon
The Cannon is to the Grudge Thrower what the Thunderers are to the Quarrelers. It's quite a bit more accurate and brings in even more damage, which makes it well-suited to shooting monsters and monstrous infantry before they can even reach your line. The fast projectile also means that they can hit moving cavalry decently well. The downside is that they have a flat trajectory, so you either need a hill to place them on, or make a gap in your line for them to fire through. I usually bring two of these in every army I have.

Flame Cannon
If your Grudge Thrower is the equivalent the Quarrelers and Cannons to Thunderers, then the Flame Cannon is the equivalent to basic Irondrakes. So unfortunately that means it's both pretty metal and pretty redundant. The range is too short, the firepower not too huge, and killing lightly armoured enemies at medium range is a niche that's already perfectly filled by your Quarrelers. Skip these.

Organ Gun
The Organ Gun is essentially a cannon that exchanges raw firepower for a better rate of fire. Its theoretical niche is killing small elite units of infantry and cavalry like Mounted Chosen or Black Orcs, but personally I've never really found that trade-off to be worth it. Regular Cannons will still kill those units decently well while being more versatile. They're still pretty fun to use, though.

Gyrocopter
You'll only unlock Gyrocopters very late in the campaign, so they rarely see very much use. Gyrocopters have a so-so main gun in front and two bombs to drop directly below them, which have a similar effect to mining charges. They can also charge into melee and cause some pretty decent carnage there. They're fun and it's nice to have something quick for a change, but all things considered most other late-game units will be all-around more useful.
The second version of the Gyrocopter is much the same, except it mounts a much more powerful and accurate Brimstone Gun. The gun is both anti-large and armour-piercing, which means this variant is actually quite useful. They're essentially light artillery with great mobility, so they can kill enemy artillery and ranged units or just fire into the back of the general melee. This can make them a legitimate replacement for your regular artillery, if you've the money and tech to make the switch.

Gyrobomber
These are basically Gyrocopters, but with a weaker main gun in exchange for more bombs. Since the main gun is what makes Brimstone Gyrocopters good in the first place, and the bombs are fiddly as hell to use, so that's really not a good trade. You can get pretty much the same amount of explosions with a unit of Ironbreakers and their charges anyway. Skip these.



The Orcs

madmac posted:

Infantry

Goblins

Simultaneously a lot better than you'd expect and also never worth building. They're quite cost effective chaff, especially for arrow catching with the 50% block shields but outside of MP and like automatic garrison choices there's not much reason to ever build them unless you're trying to cheese autoresolve with numbers or something.

Orc Boyz

It is kinda shocking how much of the map you can streamroll early game with just a stack of Boyz and their mostly mediocre stats, but I believe it comes down to them doing T2 damage as a T1 unit, Boyz are a threat to pretty much anything in numbers so just get your Waugh on, break early game armies with massed boyz charges and you've pretty much won the campaign already.

Night Goblins

I think the problem with Night Goblins is their tier placement, as an alternative to Boyz I would totally try Night Goblins, but matched up against Big'uns, really? That's the choice you want me to make? Also their bent towards ambush tactics is a little at odds with their hyper fragile morale making it really risky to deploy them outside your commander aura.

They are cool as hell though, especially with fanatics. I look forward to the inevitable Skarsnik DLC making an all goblin army viable.

Orc Big'uns

At a certain point you will upgrade your Boyz to Big'uns, and so will your garrisons. Just keep in mind it takes 2 turns to build them so a little advance planning is in order.

Big'Uns have a small anti-large bonus, unlike the entire rest of the Greenskin roster, but they're also somewhat weak defensively and don't have charge protection so don't start thinking of them as spears. They're pretty much just T2 Boyz, still kinda squishy but capable of wrecking everything with their big boy damage as long as you've brought enough of them. You'll be using them as a staple of your army as soon as they're unlocked.

Black Orcs

Black Orcs are everything you don't get from other Greenskin units. High Armor! High LD! Armor Piercing! Also hella expensive and take 3 loving turns to build. Like in practice Black Orcs are almost flatly superior to Big'uns but so much of a hassle logistically and upkeep-wise that it's not really advisable to replace them with Black Orcs wholesale. A small core of 4-5 Black Orcs in an army is all you will ever need, at most.

Big'uns do just as much damage or more to targets that aren't heavily armored anyway, and you're playing a shock based army so going too heavy on Black Orcs can be slightly detrimental.

Archers

Goblin Archers

Picking Archers with Greenskins is a matter of trying to find the least bad option. That's not to say you want to ignore archers entirely, they're useless against Dwarves (Except for Gyrocoptor missions) but perform well vs other Orc tribes and will save your rear end vs Savage Orcs so it never hurts to have a couple backing up your army.

All that said, Goblin Archers are definitely the weakest link. Slightly better accuracy does not compensate for their garbage range and missile damage.

Orc Arrer Boyz

I haven't tested this extensively, TBH, but my gut feeling is that Arrer Boyz are ever so slightly less poo poo than Goblin Archers, so that's my suggestion. The fact that they can fight off poo poo like light cav a little better is also a point in their favor.

Night Goblin Archers

I'm a hypocrite, because you're back to goblin bows with this, but I like Night Goblin Archers the best. Poison Arrows are just really really good, letting them fall into a supporting role in your army and the fanatics bowling through cav is always a plus. Never too many fanatics.

Cavalry

Mentally I separate Greenskin cav into three groups, so that's how I'll talk about them.

Goblin Wolf Cav

Available in melee, ranged, and chariot form. Basically terrible light cav all around but cheap and easy to get. Better 2 Wolf Cav than no Cav at all, but only just. In this game there's light Cav, and then there's Wolf Riders, who need to contemplate utilizing multiple units and cycle charging to take out an artillery crew.

The Wolf Chariot is actually probably the least bad option, combining a not terrible ranged attack with a not completely terrible charge, but by the time it's an option you are waaaay done with wolf cav.

Spider Cav

No Chariots, but it does lead to the giant spider of doom, so...

Spider Cav is my preference. They're faster than Boar Cav, stronger than Wolf Cav, and bring Strider, Poison, and Vanguard deployment to the table as bonuses. You can get through most of the game using Wolf Riders to strategically tie up units or mop up ranged, and Spider Rider Archers are one of the best ranged cav options in the game, IMO.

Boar Cav

I both like and hate Boar Cav. For one thing, unlike the Spider building that unlocks all of your non-boar cav and your best late game monster, the Boar chain wants me to dedicate a capitol slot to producing a single mid-tier Cav unit. They also take twice as long to build as Spider Riders that I'd rather have anyway.

More importantly though, the annoying thing about Boars is that they're both slow as poo poo and awful in melee, so any other faction besides dwarves is going to be able to easily counter your cav with cav 90% of the time. The decent charge impact and armor piercing is nice but I so rarely get to use it. I think against Dwarves is the one time they really earn their upkeep.

Monsters

Man, all the Greenskin Monsters are great. Yes even Trolls, which you can totally get way early on by just building a 5gp building in a level 3 town. Just use your Trolls as bodyguards for your General and they'll almost never route. They make great shock troops vs infantry and even bang up heroes pretty well. Used in small groups with some infantry supporting and their regen they'll fight the entire battle and almost never take any noticeable damage.

Giants are also really good outside the fact that autoresolve hates them and longs for their death. Yeah game, my 2 Giants with several thousand HPs who smash their way through huge multistack battles while barely getting scratched both died in a minor garrison skirmish. This is a very believable result.

Giant Spiders of doom are easily the strongest monster, obviously, though I notice them taking a lot more damage than Giants do. I think it's just that their threat level is so high the AI targets them more.

The key to using monster units in general is to use them as support troops rather than being your whole army. A Giant will smash straight through an infantry line, causing massive disruption and terror along with some solid aoe damage, but that doesn't mean you want to send one in alone and let him get surrounded by 4 units of Greatswords. Every monster hitting the enemy line should be followed by at least a unit or two of infantry or cavalry cleaning up.

Baby your monsters just a tiny bit and they're basically unkillable. Until you autoresolve.

Artillery

Rock Lobba's are average, Doom Divers are one of the best artillery in the game on account of their long range and extreme accuracy. I tend not to bother with Rock Lobba's unless I'm looking to roll over walls quickly, but Doom Divers are good and I should use them more, outside that one regiment with Grimgor that I kept alive the entire campaign.

Bleh, Greenskins have too many units, I'm done. I'll just say Shaman magic (both kinds) is a little underwhelming right now.



Chaos (DLC Only)

ZarathustraFollower posted:

1. Recruit a second stack on your 1-2 turn. Seriously. That generic lord was level 30 by turn 100 in my game due to how much fighting he did.
2. Awaken every tribe you can, then attack and subjugate them right afterward.
3. Raze the Varg and Skaelings to the loving ground. I tried to subjugate them and they betrayed me first chance someone new declared war on me, then started attacking my loyal vassals.
4. Death and metal wizards are the best options. Send one off to permanently deploy in Bearsonling's Camp (good use for any other lore if the game gives you them). You'll thank me later.
5. Sack, encamp, then raze every city. The weakened garrison next turn will not be able to do much damage after the first sack, and you'll end up with fat stacks of favor. I had >100k after buying every research before turn 30. Only takes slightly longer than just razing the first turn.
6. When you first get a new lord started, pick a lovely nearby town to have them sack every turn to get levels quickly with just some marauders and warhounds. Using the sack->encamp method will let you build up their structures at the same time.
7. Someone else mentioned you can buddy up with the orcs pretty easily at the start of the game. I forgot about trying that, but may be worth considering.
8. As mentioned before, lighting strike is pretty broken. Its super helpful for chaos since it lets you separate stacks out and thus don't need to worry about bringing in several stacks together (and suffer infighting because of it)
9. I would say the starting choice is between the everbland (discounted upkeep is pretty tempting) and doom mountain incarnate. Sigvald and Archaon are both easy to recruit, so don't worry about getting them; I started with Kholek so I don't know how hard it is to get him. When I took Aldorf, Kholek solo'ed the steam tank like it was nothing, and throughout the whole game he was at the front breaking every enemy line.



Heroes and what they do!

madmac posted:

The Wizard

Empire Wizards, Chaos Sorcerers, Necromancers, Shamans, all go here. By default Wizards have the ability to reduce construction costs for the province they are in when deployed by about 10%, with an extra 10% for the first point in their bottom skill chain. This is actually fairly useful if more than a bit micro-heavy, it's an easy way to upgrade your capitol province for cheap if nothing else.

Otherwise Wizard agents can buff their effectiveness at assaulting armies, damaging buildings, and give themselves a small buff to assassinate. Deeper in the chain they can learn an embed army ability to increase magic item droop chance, (Yay?) deploy to reduce winds of magic slightly, or boost the effectiveness of block army.

To sum up they are super annoying in the hands of the AI because they can do all the poo poo that will drive you crazy but because they aren't especially good at any one thing are rarely worth skilling up as agents for the player. (Plus, you know, giving up actual magic on the magic guy to be a mediocre agent.) gently caress Wizards!

The mini-me Lord

Thanes, Exalted Heroes, Captains, Wight Kings, all go here. Orcs are the only race who doesn't get one, but no big loss...

The default ability for all these basic fighter dudes is to increase public order when deployed. It's not great. They're further hampered by the first half of their skill chain basically being straight garbage. + assault, + 3 turns siege holdout time, - 3 enemy public order (when deployed) and -15% recruitment costs are you loving kidding me?

Bleh. After you've straight wasted 5 skill points they become almost sorta decent, getting a small buff to assassinate chance, the ability to boost recruitment XP when deployed, and most importantly the ability to train up armies when embedded.

These guys pretty much suck as agents, you can get some use out of them after level 8 or so but getting to that point is a drag and even then I consider them pretty meh overall. Training is good but for what it takes to get there bleh. For me they are forever quest fodder. I would say the one good thing about leveling them is that they're all so tanky by default that ignoring combat skills to go straight to training is no real loss.

The Assassin

Witch Hunters, Goblin Big Boss, Banshee, go here. Dwarves and Chaos get shafted.

Assassins are basically the best agents in the game for a very simple reason. They are by far the strongest agents at pulling off assassinations, and also bodyguard your stacks against enemy agents. The two best skills in one package, leveling these guys up should always be your first priority.

Your default ability is to deploy and reduce the success of enemy agents in that region. It's less useful than it sounds because they should always be embedded or shanking agents, but that's fine because this is the only agent type that can start pumping assassinate chance from level 3. They also get the ability to damage walls, block armies, and of course act as embedded bodyguards for your armies to protect against enemy agents.

Literally have all the best agent skills in the game with no downsides and usually have a pretty meh combat tree so you aren't missing anything. Always go full assassin.

The Priest

Empire Warrior Priests, and oddly, Vampire Heroes go here.

Priests are cool because they heal your dudes, and the two we get are also combat monsters with lots of powerful unique skills, so the only drawback is that distributing skill points can be really hard.

By default Priests can deploy and boost growth in a province. Eh. Luckily by level 3 you can go straight to replenishment for an extra 15% healing in your embedded army, which is actually huge. Once they get over the halfway hump then can learn Heal Troops to double down on replenishment with an extra +10% and also reduce attrition damage by 15%.

This is the rarest agent type, and leveling them up as agents is a bit of a sacrifice but if you have them abuse the hell out of them. My important Empire Armies always get a Warrior Priest and Witch Hunter as soon as I can afford it.

Anyway, Dwarves are special snowflakes, so

Engineers

Level them up for combat, seriously. Engineers have a unique campaign skill tree but it's not great. They get the Wizard's reduce construction cost deployment skill, and can eventually buff map movement as an army embed skill. Everything else they have isn't worth mentioning, even though they get a bit of unique poo poo like +trade goods and - enemy ammo, you're not going to get much use out of any of it.

Runesmith

Runesmiths are basically a mix between Wizard and Spy. They get the default deploy ability of assassins, (- agent success chance) and can learn the guard army ability later on. Otherwise they're basically wizards, though with the ability to double down on reducing corruption and enemy winds of magic.

They are actually the best dwarf agents by a mile, but they're also one of the best combat heroes in the game, so deciding how to skill them up is difficult, to say the least.

Heroes on the Battlefield

More fun then talking about the campaign stuff, if only because it's a bit more varied. Breaking these down by race.

Dwarf Thane

Oh Thane, why you so bad? Now, by default the Thane is about the tankiest hero in the game, with crazy high armor, LD, HP, and magic resistance, however, unlike similar melee heroes they have no unique combat skills and no mounts, so really it's just one slow-rear end dwarf model who never dies but doesn't do anything interesting or improve much with levels. More than anything, they're just the most boring hero in the game.

Dwarf Engineer

Anyone who has played Dwarves know that Engineers are super great, but seriously, they are. Being Dwarves they get that ridiculous 120 armor despite being a ranged sniper. The Engineer's combat tree is split about 50/50 between buffing his own ranged damage and buffing allied ranged units/artillery, definitely lean towards buffing allies. Their one active ability is an aoe buff that massively increases firing speed for nearby units, stick your Engineer in the artillery line and keep mashing that button forever.

Runesmith

Runesmiths are all about maxing the combat tree and spamming their three active runes. One of them gives +15 armor in an aoe, and their ultimate rune provides +44% protection from all damage for about 10 seconds. Dwarves are already incredibly tough, but with a Runesmith providing support they can feel literally unbreakable. Neither of these use winds of magic, so the only limitation is cooldown, and you have a skill that reduces cooldown, so..

They also passively increase allied AP damage like a metal wizard, and have a damage rune that drops a short range aoe spell that...does something presumably. The particle effects for it look like poo poo and I can never tell if it's actually doing damage but it's free and you might as well drop it on something, I guess.

Goblin Big Boss

The Goblin Big Boss is an interesting Combat hero, and by interesting I mean kind of really bad. This is a melee hero with Wizard level HP. Armor, and LD. They have decent melee stats and the duelist skill but even so being a terribly squishy melee only guy is not a great place to be. They also get a 50% missile block shield like normal goblins.

This guy's one saving grace in combat is being able to ride a spider for decent mobility, some extra armor and poison attacks. Also they have vanguard deployment, which is neat I guess. You're not going to be leveling these guys for combat anyway, just don't be surprised when you do take them into battle and they get splattered.

Orc/Goblin Shaman

Are spellcasters, I'm not going to talk about every school of magic because this is already long enough.

Night Goblins are super weak but keep the general Night Gobbo traits of being sneaky, poisonous and having vanguard deployment. They can also eat shrooms to make their spell cooldowns vanish for 33 seconds or so.

Orc Shamans are a bit buffer than your typical weedy wizard and can ride a boar into battle, giving them actually a quite powerful AP charge attack and increased armor.

Empire Captain

Despite being as vanilla melee hero as they come, has two advantages. Can ride a Pegasus obviously, and also gets the "Hold the Line" active ability normally only available to Empire Lords. It's an aoe buff unique to Empire that boosts charge defense so fairly useful.

Warrior Priests

Now, the thing with Warrior Priests is that they start with high LD but low armor and melee defense. They loving love to get themselves killed in auto-resolve, which thankfully is made slightly less painful by their healing skills. As level one heroes, they are trash. As high level heroes with their combat tree topped off they are utterly amazing because all of their active skills are insane.

A fully leveled Warrior Priest can massively buff their own attack rating and physical resistance, drop a 22% physical protection buff that works on them and surrounding allies, call down heavy aoe damage in a radius around them, and greatly bolster leadership of nearby units. In between unlocking all their amazing active skills or super good campaign healing, focus on buffing armor, melee defense, and HP, in that order.

Mounts are an interesting question for WP. The barded warhorse is a huge boost to one of their weakest stats, and the increased movement is good for getting where you need them to be, but OTOH 90% of being an effective Warrior Priests is slogging it out on the frontline with other infantry so I'm not sure it's worth the trade off. Maybe against factions like Vampires with no good anti-large units.

Warrior Priests are kinda weird and hard to level early on because they have the most pronounced power curve of any hero in the game. A high level priest is totally worth it though.

Witch Hunters Like all Assassin type heroes, you're not going to focus much on boosting their combat skills and that's fine. With Witch Hunters all you need is Accuse to melt enemy heroes and you are good to go. Accuse has a fairly long cooldown but the damage it does to single models is massive so abuse the hell out of it.

Otherwise the Witch Hunter is a decent shooting hero, faster than the Engineer but shorter ranged and squishier. If you do level up combat focus on buffing his ranged damage and pick up Slippery for the increased mobility. Witch Hunters are good hero/monster snipers but really bad at fighting normal units, even a pack of hounds is troublesome for him to take on solo so keep him safe.

Empire Wizards

Are Wizards. They can pick up Pegasus at high levels which is always useful for a spellcaster.

Necromancer

Well, Wizards are mediocre agents and Necromancers don't bring any combat spells not available to literally every VC Lord option, so use your freebie Necromancer to reduce construction costs in Sylvania and otherwise get used to sending their useless arses down to the badlands to unlock quest battles. The only thing less useful than a Necromancer Hero is the entirely useless Necromancer Lord. Even their mount option is just an evil horse, because they are the saddest thing.

Wight King

Wight Kings are in a weird place. They are actually stone cold killers on the battlefield with crazy stats, lots of mount options, some unique active buffs, and a 50% missile block shield. OTOH, I'm not sure they're actually stronger fighters than either type of Vampire and they have the Thane's campaign skill tree, so fitting them in can be hard.

Probably the one really good use for a Wight King is guarding Kemmler and his noodly little girl arms, so just name your first Wight King Krell and roll with it.

Banshee

Well, they're an assassin type so obviously battlefield performance is an afterthought. Also they're ethereal, which is a definite +/- situation. All ethereal units do magic damage, btw, which among other things means they do full damage to other ghost types. They inflict terror and have very high AP damage but actually just have a generic spy-type (Slippery, basically) combat tree with nothing particularly interesting about it, so Ghost Hero pretty much sums up everything they bring to the battlefield.

Vampire

Vampires are regenerating Death Lore wizards with solid melee stats and the Warrior Priest's campaign chain combined with the Vampire Lord combat chain. The only thing making them not utterly insane is that you can't skill everything and they only get Hellsteeds instead of Zombie Dragons.

Exalted Hero

Pretty boring (But effective, mind) standard melee hero. The most interesting thing they have going for them is being able to ride a Manticore and having a rare 50% block chance shield.

Chaos Sorcerer

I just want to point out that Sorcerers get 100 armor and decent melee stats because Chaos, on top of having access to some of the strongest magic lores. Only real downside is not getting a flying mount.

And that's my too long effort post about agents.

RuckusRouser posted:

Since so many people have asked -- and I was wondering myself -- here is the list of how much XP is gained through different actions (got this straight from the game files):

Agents
-Deployed-
100 XP each turn

-Action against another character-
Critical Fail: 200
Fail: 400
Success: 1000
Critical Success: 1600

-Action against an army-
Critical Fail: 200
Fail: 400
Success: 1200

-Action against an city/settlement-
Critical Fail: 200
Fail: 400
Success: 1200

Generals
-Passive XP (Sitting in Garrison or Raiding Stance)-
100 XP each turn

-Battles-
Crushing Defeat: 200
Defeat: 400
Valiant Defeat: 600
Pyrrhic Victory: 600
Victory: 1000
Heroic Victory: 1400

-Settlements-
Capturing/Razing/Sacking: 200

shalcar
Oct 21, 2009

At my signal, DEAL WITH IT.
Taco Defender
The first non-cosmetic DLC is Call of the Beastmen adding both a new mini-campaign about the Beastmen and allowing the you to use the Beastmen in the grand campaign.

Some Beastmen tips:

drat Dirty Ape posted:

Some beastmen tips (for reference I beat the mini campaign on hard and I'm well into the grand campaign on hard now):

- Raiding is very important, especially in the grand campaign. It's an important secondary source of income and it adds to your fightiness (or whatever the beastmen bray-herd thing is called).

-Get your primary stack to 17 troops ASAP so you can summon your free army. These armies exist to be totally abused, but try not to have them initiate attacks on cities or you don't get the income / horde grown bonus. If you have one that gets too banged up just let it die or disappear so you can start the process towards getting a new one.

-You can go a long long way with a stack of mostly ungors with your starting giant/mino unit, hero, and gorebull. Don't overextend yourself financially by hiring a ton of minotaurs or whatever too early.

-I find it's almost always better to take the money than the horde population growth.

-Encampment is basically a vanish button, so feel free to move about at will in the heart of enemy territory. Raid for a while in high income territories (preferably away from any stacks that you are worried about). Sooner or later the AI will come around to defend the town, which is often a good time to disappear and raze a nearby settlement.

-The moon events are very important and should dictate your strategy. Early on I like to take the 'horde growth, no casualty replacement' option while just raiding a territory with good income for a bunch of turns. If you're about to take some tough cities take the 'lower campaign movement for attack buffs' or the 'heal 50/100% of your army every turn' one. If you have a ton of money and want to hire a lot of troops wait for the 'pay extra for +6 levels' or 'pay -90% for new troops but -25 defense' one. If your army is hurt take casualty replacement one, etc etc.

- Each moon event seems to basically have 3 tiers. For example, the casualty replacement one is 10/50/100 %. No big deal and probably not worth the horde growth penalty at 10% but outright amazing at 100%. Some are amazing at the high levels and terrible at the low levels.

-I've had more success just cruising around the map raiding and destroying settlements here and there than I had initially trying to pave the earth like I used to with Chaos. Sometimes it's better to pass up settlements that aren't built up and come back and get them later.

-Every army needs a gorebull. Not only are they amazing in a fight, their buffs are just insane. +15 armor and +20% missile resist for everything around him? +20 leadership? Umm, yes please.

- If you are being agent swarmed just encamp all your armies for a few turns and they will all wander away.

-Blue line is great for beastmen LL. The upkeep bonus, raiding bonus, horde growth, and lightning attack are all great. IMO the red line is easily ignored, but that is just my preference.

-Try to build the upkeep reducing building after you've covered your bases. I'm still experimenting but what I like so far is something like this progression to start:
base building to max ASAP, ungor/gor (you start with this), minotaur, shaman, upkeep(1), mino(2), ungor/gor(2). After that I like to get the basic buff building (+armor +attack) and fill the other ones out before getting upkeep(2). Anything after that is just gravy (I usually go giant because giants are fun).

- Have your second army build the poison hounds thing for Khazrak's quest (also he needs to recruit a shaman which is why I always build that building with him, also shaman are pretty good). Chaos spawn are ok but I think minos are pretty much better at everything. I'm also not that impressed by razorgors, and even though centigors are fun I think the other things I mentioned are better.

- Research the horde growth first. After that I go for the +raiding/razing income techs, but the +10% speed is great too (and the preceeding tech is a huge buff to mino weapon strength). Pretty sure after that I went to the + casualty replacement and -33% recruit cost techs.

- Use the forest movement thing to save time crossing rivers and mountains and such, but always be careful because it leaves you open to attack and people can intercept you just like underway travel. I prefer to move in ambush stance and encamp or raid most of the time.

Ok that's enough :spergin:

shalcar fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Aug 6, 2016

ZearothK
Aug 25, 2008

I've lost twice, I've failed twice and I've gotten two dishonorable mentions within 7 weeks. But I keep coming back. I am The Trooper!

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021


This is the most fun I've had with a Total War game since I started with Rome 1 and I've played every single one of these things. It is cool stuff.

Comstar
Apr 20, 2007

Are you happy now?
This is Total:war:Hammer. Lots of people talking about hammers.

MadJackMcJack
Jun 10, 2009
The combat is fun, the 6 factions all play very differently, generals can lead a charge without causing a chain-rout and cavalry charges will send enemy units flying back 10 meters. Plus you can guide a cackling canvass-winged goblin to a messy death, what more do you want?

Wallet
Jun 19, 2006

Someone posted about a spreadsheet some guy made that let you compare unit stats earlier in the other thread, but it was missing some important things. I added unit's abilities, attributes (this is what the files call stuff like Vanguard Deployment), and their attack delay, as well as lazy DPS/Armor Piercing DPS calculations. I also made it slightly prettier. Some of it is still a little bit messy, but I figured someone might get some use out of it since comparing units in game is kind of a pain in the balls.

Anyone who wants to can view it here. You'll need to make a copy if you want to mess with it at all.

Plavski
Feb 1, 2006

I could be a revolutionary
Pretty much the best TW since Shogun 2, but the asymmetry means I'll be playing this way longer than I played Shogun 2.

It's so fantastic to be able to say that.

John Charity Spring
Nov 4, 2009

SCREEEEE
The game has its flaws and some implementations that aren't as good as they could be but like others I'm enjoying this way more than any TW since Shogun 2. I'm 100% on board for all the inevitable DLC.

(also I really didn't expect Total War Warhammer to have a better launch than Stellaris but here we are)

John Charity Spring fucked around with this message at 13:28 on Jun 8, 2016

dogstile
May 1, 2012

fucking clocks
how do they work?
Play Orcs. Smash gits. Chop Stunties. Bash Humies. Break vamps. Humiliate the everbitch.

Waaagh!

Korgan
Feb 14, 2012


dogstile posted:

Play Orcs. Smash gits. Chop Stunties. Bash Humies. Break vamps. Humiliate the everbitch.

Waaagh!

:orks101: :orks:

Zephro
Nov 23, 2000

I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...
Game owns and you should buy it.

The OP is good too. Might be worth pointing out that, with Engineers, you want to level them specifically to buff ranged units. Having your Quarrelers, Thunderers and artillery having extra accuracy, more ammo and a higher attack speed makes the Dwarfs already-good ranged game into something monstrous and beautiful.

Dre2Dee2
Dec 6, 2006

Just a striding through Kamen Rider...
Me and my friend are playing VC co-op. He's Manfred, I'm Kemmler. We are at turn 107, and I have 3 settlements to my name. The orc sent 4 full stacks to take Schwartzhaven and, while we did eventually kill all of them, Schwartzhaven was still razed. I am the weakest surviving faction in the game.

And now Chaos just showed up.... and everything was going so well :v:

Dre2Dee2 fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Jun 8, 2016

Mukip
Jan 27, 2011

by Reene
I disagree with the OP assessment about Empire spearmen. They seem to be only slightly worse than swordsmen against infantry and have less upkeep, which matters when running multiple stacks. They make fine chaff with tech/lord bonuses and are probably the best chaff vs Chaos in particular, given all their cavalry and large targets.

Ham Sandwiches
Jul 7, 2000

People are going to have different opinions on stuff, in multiplayer the spearman is amazing for the cost. In the campaign there's nothing a spearman can't do that a shielded spearman can't do better. So unless you are really hurting for that 25 gold a turn, you can probably just build the shielded guys.

The empire campaign can indeed be fiddly, I think Orks and Dwarfs may be solid choices for first playthroughs.

DiHK
Feb 4, 2013

by Azathoth
Good job OP, great :effort:.

As a TW Longbeard, TWWH is on par with Shogun 2, Medieval 2, Rome 1, and Napoleon. In time it will probably eclipse half of those except for the fact that WHFB makes it like comparing apples to oranges.

madmac
Jun 22, 2010

Mukip posted:

I disagree with the OP assessment about Empire spearmen. They seem to be only slightly worse than swordsmen against infantry and have less upkeep, which matters when running multiple stacks. They make fine chaff with tech/lord bonuses and are probably the best chaff vs Chaos in particular, given all their cavalry and large targets.

Chaff that can win a melee fight is worth a slight increase in upkeep over chaff that loses faster and collapses your line. Also you are better off using Halberds vs Chaos, with their lack of ranged units and heavy armor all around.

They are a solid pick against Norscans, but you'll be shooting them to death either way so it's not a big bump in effectiveness over swordsmen.

That's not to say Empire Spearmen are bad, they're just rarely an optimal choice given your other options and most common enemies. I like to keep two of them around early game to guard my flanks, at least.

Edit: I thought you were talking about Spearmen in general and not the shield/no shield divide. My bad!

Zephro
Nov 23, 2000

I suppose I could part with one and still be feared...
Yeah, they aren't kidding when they say Dwarfs get an easy start. The Empire will be your friend and will buffer you from Skaeling and Varg. The VCs are usually hostile but Zhufbar controls the pass between Sylvania and the mountains so they can't actually do anything to you. So you pretty much only have to worry about exterminating the Greenskins. You can conquer literally everything south of Karaz-a-Karak, including all the Badlands, and then you've got map edges on your south and east flank, humans to the west and north (who will spam you with alliance offers as soon as Archaeon shows up), and Black Fire Pass as a chokepoint in case Archaeon and friends make it that far south.

They're a good first-choice playthrough, I think. Just remember to rush Mount Gunbad.

Zephro fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Jun 8, 2016

Kanos
Sep 6, 2006

was there a time when speedwagon didn't get trolled

Zephro posted:

Yeah, they aren't kidding when they say Dwarfs get an easy start. The Empire will be your friend and will buffer you from Skaeling and Varg. The VCs are usually hostile but Zhufbar controls the pass between Sylvania and the mountains so they can't usually do anything to you. So you pretty much only have to worry about exterminating the Greenskins. You can conquer literally everything south of Karaz-a-Karak, including all the Badlands, and then you've got map edges on your south and east flank, humans to the west and north (who will spam you with alliance offers as soon as Archaeon shows up), and Black Fire Pass as a chokepoint in case Archaeon and friends make it that far south.

They're a good first-choice playthrough, I think. Just remember to rush Mount Gunbad.

These advantages are all true, but you definitely have some problems that other factions don't need to deal with. You have to face the Greenskin factions in numbers no one else ever has to deal with almost immediately; Grimgor will show up almost like clockwork by turn 10-12, and often he has a waaagh with him, meaning a new player is forced almost immediately into fighting against 2:1 odds or more. Strategically, you can't really choke point against greenskins because they'll just burrow under the loving mountains to stab you in the belly. Meanwhile the Empire and VCs have a super leisurely time for the first 20-30 turns beating up on lovely rebels and fractious Imperial factions that can't really fight back while also having tons of juicy nearby targets to break open like piggy banks.

I would say the easiest start is VC because Mannfred and his Varghulf are basically autowin buttons and Raise Dead forgives any and all tactical and strategic mistakes besides running out of money. Empire is a little harder than VC, Dwarfs are a little harder than that, and Chaos requires some basic knowledge(spawn a new horde immediately, rush growth skills) to even function. Greenskins are definitely the hardest start because it's the only start that has you at war with a ton of factions that are all fielding drastically superior troops to you at the start.

Kanos fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Jun 8, 2016

Archaeology Hat
Aug 10, 2009

Kanos posted:

These advantages are all true, but you definitely have some problems that other factions don't need to deal with. You have to face the Greenskin factions in numbers no one else ever has to deal with almost immediately; Grimgor will show up almost like clockwork by turn 10-12, and often he has a waaagh with him, meaning a new player is forced almost immediately into fighting against 2:1 odds or more. Strategically, you can't really choke point against greenskins because they'll just burrow under the loving mountains to stab you in the belly.

Meanwhile the Empire and VCs have a super leisurely time for the first 20-30 turns beating up on lovely rebels and fractious Imperial factions that can't really fight back while also having tons of juicy nearby targets to break open like piggy banks.

I'd say, having played everyone except for VC that the Dwarfs can have a really rough time in their early turns, especially if AI Grimgor does well but once they've got a handle on things their campaign is a pretty easy one - the Empire can have a fairly leisurely time early on but its quite easy, especially starting out to get into a situation where you're fighting wars with factions of all the races on all sides of your empire. I suspect this is because the Empire needs a fair bit more management on the Diplomacy screen whereas the Dwarfs start off in a war with Orcs and fighting the Orcs makes all the other Dwarfs like you.

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!
I think that Dwarves can get into a death spiral if they build up a ton of grudges and can't clear them. I don't think that, say, Empire has that issue. Also I find the Empire gameplay to be most fun, with VC second place. Can't get the hang of Dwarves.

I think you main thing you lose as Empire going for spears vs swordsmen is the charge bonus.

madmac
Jun 22, 2010
Dwarves are easy if you get a good start, pretty much. You have to be ready to fight Grimgor very early on, and yes, grudge spirals aren't fun, on higher difficulty especially it can cause instant mass revolts everywhere, giving you more grudges and more penalties, ect.

Once you're properly situated though it's pretty easy. You have the richest and most defensible cities, and while the orcs can annoy you sometimes with sudden Waaugh armies they became less and less of a match for you militarily as the game goes on. Especially if the Top Knots take over everything, as they are want to do, because while Savage Orcs are incredibly annoying their unit roster is shallow and never improves much.

Fans
Jun 27, 2013

A reptile dysfunction

madmac posted:

Dwarves are easy if you get a good start, pretty much. You have to be ready to fight Grimgor very early on, and yes, grudge spirals aren't fun, on higher difficulty especially it can cause instant mass revolts everywhere, giving you more grudges and more penalties, ect.

Once you're properly situated though it's pretty easy. You have the richest and most defensible cities, and while the orcs can annoy you sometimes with sudden Waaugh armies they became less and less of a match for you militarily as the game goes on. Especially if the Top Knots take over everything, as they are want to do, because while Savage Orcs are incredibly annoying their unit roster is shallow and never improves much.

Also Savage Orcs are absolutely dominated by Quarrelers, which for Dwarves are cheap and really good.

FlyingCowOfDoom
Aug 1, 2003

let the beat drop
Have they made any indication in posts/social media that they intend to fix the spell scaling? Magic damage feels pretty useless if you don't play on one of the smaller unit settings currently. For VC the only reason to really recruit a Necromancer over a Vampire currently is to turn him into a money lord through the blue line passives.

Edit: Thats a really nice first post OP, thanks for putting it all together.

madmac
Jun 22, 2010

FlyingCowOfDoom posted:

Have they made any indication in posts/social media that they intend to fix the spell scaling? Magic damage feels pretty useless if you don't play on one of the smaller unit settings currently. For VC the only reason to really recruit a Necromancer over a Vampire currently is to turn him into a money lord through the blue line passives.

Edit: Thats a really nice first post OP, thanks for putting it all together.

There's a Reddit AMA tomorrow that will probably address that as it is on the question list.

Also a facebook interview yesterday where they basically said "Yes there will be balance patches and we know about Demigryphs. We like to take our time to figure out what is causing balance issues and gathering all feedback before making measured changes, ect ect."

Plavski
Feb 1, 2006

I could be a revolutionary
I think Orks are the easiest for a new player. Free Waaagh's all the time, no faffing about with trading or diplomacy, just fight fight fight. They teach you to be incredibly aggressive and how turtling is death.

1st_Panzer_Div.
May 11, 2005
Grimey Drawer
Jesus, that's an OP! Thanks for the new thread, game is actually pretty easy to just pick up and play.

genericnick
Dec 26, 2012

Zephro posted:


They're a good first-choice playthrough, I think. Just remember to rush Mount Gunbad.

I'm not even sure how good this idea is. If you take both settlements Zhufbar looks rather shaky against the vamps. In my game I had to confederate them just a few turns later because it looked unlikely that they would hold out long against the VC. Also marching a big stack north early tends to invite a raiding visit from Ironhide that can seriously damage your growth.

Xae
Jan 19, 2005

Playing Empire and invaded VC.

Won an Epic out numbered 4:1 defense.

:smug:

Get my first crash to desktop trying to take a screenshot of my ridiculous kill count.

Deified Data
Nov 3, 2015


Fun Shoe

Plavski posted:

I think Orks are the easiest for a new player. Free Waaagh's all the time, no faffing about with trading or diplomacy, just fight fight fight. They teach you to be incredibly aggressive and how turtling is death.

Yeah, the value of a free second army can't be understated for a new player, and I speak from experience. Lets you easily autoresolve all those annoying early game sieges you're going to be doing. I wont miss having to babysit fightiness but I'm almost worried that not having it there will make me slow and complacent.

Suggestions for a second playthrough for someone who still kinda sucks?

Arianya
Nov 3, 2009

FlyingCowOfDoom posted:

Have they made any indication in posts/social media that they intend to fix the spell scaling? Magic damage feels pretty useless if you don't play on one of the smaller unit settings currently. For VC the only reason to really recruit a Necromancer over a Vampire currently is to turn him into a money lord through the blue line passives.

Edit: Thats a really nice first post OP, thanks for putting it all together.

This is the main thing killing my enthusiasm for playing Empire/VC/Chaos. Magic just feels so bleh, not at all like I'm manipulating the very fabric of reality to unleash hell upon my enemies. More like I'm playing with a more expensive, less effective artillery piece.

mornhaven
Sep 10, 2011

Deified Data posted:

Yeah, the value of a free second army can't be understated for a new player, and I speak from experience. Lets you easily autoresolve all those annoying early game sieges you're going to be doing. I wont miss having to babysit fightiness but I'm almost worried that not having it there will make me slow and complacent.

Suggestions for a second playthrough for someone who still kinda sucks?

Dwarfs are pretty good. Their start can be rough, but they're fun to play. VC might be good as well if you don't want to deal with having ranged units.

Plavski
Feb 1, 2006

I could be a revolutionary

Deified Data posted:

Yeah, the value of a free second army can't be understated for a new player, and I speak from experience. Lets you easily autoresolve all those annoying early game sieges you're going to be doing. I wont miss having to babysit fightiness but I'm almost worried that not having it there will make me slow and complacent.

Suggestions for a second playthrough for someone who still kinda sucks?

I found Dwarfs pretty easy once you get over the initial hump, but VC or Empire is probably your best bet. If you don't get a good economy going with Dwarfs it can be tough to keep your upkeep in line.

Empire don't really have anything special to worry about, just make friends with everyone and take Marienburg asap. Then you can hang back for ages until you get Demigryphs and Greatswords and crush your enemies into a fine paste. I think the key to Empire is to expand West, not North. Allow everyone else to wear themselves out on Chaos and VC's while you pick off the unmolested Brettonians and weird loser Mousillon fruits.

VC's are also pretty simple, you just need to learn about corruption. SOmeone else said it earlier, but raise dead really does allow you to cover your mistakes or bolster forces before a fight. It gives you a huge margin for error. Make sure you get the lord skills that let you recruit extra vampires and go crazy. Oh, and Mannfred can basically solo the entire old world.

Perestroika
Apr 8, 2010

Conot posted:

This is the main thing killing my enthusiasm for playing Empire/VC/Chaos. Magic just feels so bleh, not at all like I'm manipulating the very fabric of reality to unleash hell upon my enemies. More like I'm playing with a more expensive, less effective artillery piece.

Try this mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=695024040 . It makes both magic and legendary items significantly more powerful, and personally I love it to bits. It also redoes the mage skilltrees a little, so that the second point into a single spell is less of a waste.

Arglebargle III
Feb 21, 2006

I'm a total warham and this game is destroying my life like fentanyl. A+ two hams up.

Murgos
Oct 21, 2010

madmac posted:

Also a facebook interview yesterday where they basically said "Yes there will be balance patches and we know about Demigryphs. We like to take our time to figure out what is causing balance issues and gathering all feedback before making measured changes, ect ect."

Demigryphs are kind of what lets Empire play with the big boy monster factions so I hope they don't get nerfed too much but you could totally see it coming. Although I suppose that at the same time Empire magic should get a buff but how you would make magic effective anti-monster without exacerbating the lord sniping I have no clue.

Arianya
Nov 3, 2009

Perestroika posted:

Try this mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=695024040 . It makes both magic and legendary items significantly more powerful, and personally I love it to bits. It also redoes the mage skilltrees a little, so that the second point into a single spell is less of a waste.

Will give it a shot. Should I play it on Ultra like the description says or is it better suited to Normal to give that "Arcane Might" feeling?

Robo Reagan
Feb 12, 2012

by Fluffdaddy
all i know about this game is it made nerds really mad before it released

Ludo Friend
Aug 2, 2012


Migration games are great fun. Manfred decided he was gave no fucks about how precious homeland and sailed off to tilea.

Starting in a new position really changes up how the game plays. Wish there could be a mod that randomises starting positions for all factions, so I don't have to waste 10 turns getting to my new starting spot though!

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toasterwarrior
Nov 11, 2011
Grimgor is always a threat to a Dwarf player, but I think it's also just as important to take out that Doom Diver he starts with as soon as possible. Definitely make room for Miners in your army as long as it exists; apart from being able to do actual damage to the badass motherfucker that is Grimgor, they're going to be the only thing in your roster in early game that will be in any position to actually attack the Doom Diver once battle starts.

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