Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Jay Rust
Sep 27, 2011

God, I need advice on playing as the vampire pirates. Or at least as Harkon. His lizard neighbours field units that seem designed to counter everything the pirates could throw at them early game. I’ve tried artillery, some monsters, but at the end of the day their bulky melee units with shields just run through my guys with relative ease

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

jokes
Dec 20, 2012

Uh... Kupo?

It's strange that they get to invade chaos/hell. Like, aren't they protecting their lovely little farms from world-ending disasters?

H2Eau
Jun 2, 2010

Jay Rust posted:

God, I need advice on playing as the vampire pirates. Or at least as Harkon. His lizard neighbours field units that seem designed to counter everything the pirates could throw at them early game. I’ve tried artillery, some monsters, but at the end of the day their bulky melee units with shields just run through my guys with relative ease

Your best tools are crabs, mournghuls, banshees, mortars, Big Bess, magic. Your normal infantry won't stand up to the lizards in a fight

I R SMART LIKE ROCK
Mar 10, 2003

I just want a hug.

Fun Shoe

Jay Rust posted:

God, I need advice on playing as the vampire pirates. Or at least as Harkon. His lizard neighbours field units that seem designed to counter everything the pirates could throw at them early game. I’ve tried artillery, some monsters, but at the end of the day their bulky melee units with shields just run through my guys with relative ease

I'm playing a harkon campaign now. What turn are you at and what does your campaign situation look like?

I've mostly gotten away with zombie mobs, a few handgunners, the starting units, 5 mortars and some heroes. Vampire magic helps a ton in terms of keeping your front line alive and active; you get invocation of nehek, dance macabre and raise dead. Later on you get wind of death but that takes some setup to use properly since it's pretty expensive

you want to avoid fighting more than one army at once since as you say they can overwhelm you with their living terminators saurus warriors. Their salamanders are also a problem as fire is a legit concern for undead factions

cannonades help against their dinos, same for handgunners. Also remember, who cares about losing grunts as undead, you can combine and rehire most of the junk troops. Try to keep your good stuff alive and sometimes you have to concede fights, since undead fight till the end, but you can raise dead after the fact and wear them down anyway

The other problem with undead factions is overextending; since they have very weak garrisons

litany of gulps
Jun 11, 2001

Fun Shoe

Jay Rust posted:

God, I need advice on playing as the vampire pirates. Or at least as Harkon. His lizard neighbours field units that seem designed to counter everything the pirates could throw at them early game. I’ve tried artillery, some monsters, but at the end of the day their bulky melee units with shields just run through my guys with relative ease

Harkon is tough in a way just because the northern and southern exits from his starting province are extremely large swamps. It becomes very easy to overextend while very close to your home base due to this. Harkon himself becomes unbelievably powerful in short order, but you really have to play defensively and stay close to the coast early on. Don't get drawn into the Lustrian hellwar. If you're playing Mortal Empires, finish off Teclis, Squidface, and go take the Maelstrom before you start pushing west.

Jay Rust
Sep 27, 2011

I don’t know, this all sounds like good advice, but it’s turn 15 and my economy can barely keep a stack of 20 mostly trash units, I’m regularly having wars declared on me, and it feels like even my “good” units are made of tissue. I do have 4 mortars, which are by far VIP, but it seems they aren’t enough. Any decently-sized lizardman armies are too much

Also are treasure maps just like not worth it at all? I designated one hero as my treasure retriever and it has NOT paid off so far

jokes
Dec 20, 2012

Uh... Kupo?

Economy is good to focus on when you get kinda big, before then you should be trying to conquer a bunch in order to shove bucks into your wallet. And leaning on growth buildings. Running a deficit is fine with a big bank and a conquering army.

Don’t be afraid to send out a doomed legion to a far-off coastline to sack a bunch of poo poo until they inevitably get stomped. Have a little defender army, sure, but gently caress it dude let’s go sailing. Sea treasure is also stupid valuable. I think the skulls are worth like 10k?

jokes fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Jun 8, 2021

TaintedBalance
Dec 21, 2006

hope, n: desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfilment

Jay Rust posted:

I don’t know, this all sounds like good advice, but it’s turn 15 and my economy can barely keep a stack of 20 mostly trash units, I’m regularly having wars declared on me, and it feels like even my “good” units are made of tissue. I do have 4 mortars, which are by far VIP, but it seems they aren’t enough. Any decently-sized lizardman armies are too much

Also are treasure maps just like not worth it at all? I designated one hero as my treasure retriever and it has NOT paid off so far

Gonna be real, I think Harkon is a very bad early VCoast intro unless you've got some serious hours under your belt or you're willing to set campaign difficulty down. Once you understand how to abuse VCoast tactics and his particular position, its actually quite good because the enemy feeds you constant armies to farm for gold and xp in a highly defensible position, but the expansion has to be VERY slow and controlled while fending off what can end up as an endless shitshow. You also need to aggressively be playing the diplo game to try and drag some of your neighbors into war with Not You before they all become friends over fighting You.

I think Noctilus actually has the best start because you can just kind of go wherever without having to care about really defending your home territory because you'll have an amazing garrison and its a pain to get to you. Although HElves will just throw multiple stacks at you sometimes, they are usually trash. I tend to just go to places where I know I can tilt things in favor of "Evil" factions to delay any early ordertiding and then just keep ping ponging around trying to keep as many people crippled until I see a real good place to go take over and start building up a real threat.

TheLastRoboKy
May 2, 2009

Finishing the game with everyone else's continues

jokes posted:

It's strange that they get to invade chaos/hell. Like, aren't they protecting their lovely little farms from world-ending disasters?

The entire premise of TWW2 is that the Skaven pranked everyone with a space program so as far as I'm concerned anything is possible and probably the result of a rat in a rocket.

SteelMentor
Oct 15, 2012

TOXIC
I'm totally down with Total Hams/The Old World pushing out from the "Oh no! Chaos/Skaven/Orks are vaguely menacing *insert generic minor settlement*!" paradigm repeated ad nauseum.

Shumagorath
Jun 6, 2001

Arcsquad12 posted:

Prophet and the Warlock has a great trailer but the best is still Curse of the Vampire Coast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHh1TxryWlw

ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY
Twisted and the Twilight was a loving masterwork, and that was after Shadow and the Blade. It's very difficult to get me hyped to play as Wood Elves and that trailer did it.

Then I played Last Defenders again anyway.

Shumagorath
Jun 6, 2001
Kroq and Rok need Saurus with javelins on the charge like Legionairres. I want Principe Chainsaws to Make Heavy Infantry Great (Plan) Again.

vandalism
Aug 4, 2003
It will be a cold day in hell when kislev beats chaos.

pnutz
Jan 5, 2015

Giggle Goose posted:

I dunno if any of you all have ever played Ultimate General: Civil War but it is basically a game wherein you fight Total War style RTS battles (albeit much longer and more complex) but the strategic layer is much simpler and basically revolves around you deciding how to allocate the resources the state gives you. The battle AI fucks up sometimes but by and large its got enough going on in any given battle that you barely even have time to notice that sort of thing.

aah, good memories of 1863 springfield lines and 20 lb parrott guns deleting the gently caress out of confederate lines from afar

the big howitzer was great for monster damage, but you had to be so close you ended up losing half the crew each battle

AnEdgelord
Dec 12, 2016
https://youtu.be/vB20-jY7oqc

Mans
Sep 14, 2011

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

jokes posted:

It's strange that they get to invade chaos/hell. Like, aren't they protecting their lovely little farms from world-ending disasters?

They best defense is an offensive with ice sleds and angry bears

Jack Trades
Nov 30, 2010

Have the developers said anything about updating the engine for the next game?
Right now the game is so loving ugly it makes me want to barf, especially whenever any kind of foliage is present, which is almost always. It's probably the ugliest strategy game I've ever played.

IAMNOTADOCTOR
Sep 26, 2013

What's the best lizard man to do the vortex campaign with? I just got all the dlc and have previously done a Skrolk and malekith camping but can't decide whos best for the lizards to start with.

Whorelord
May 1, 2013

Jump into the well...

Mazdamundi

Jack Trades posted:

Have the developers said anything about updating the engine for the next game?
Right now the game is so loving ugly it makes me want to barf, especially whenever any kind of foliage is present, which is almost always. It's probably the ugliest strategy game I've ever played.

what? game looks fine, better than the total war games that came out after it even

Count Thrashula
Jun 1, 2003

Peak Performance.

Buglord

Jack Trades posted:

Have the developers said anything about updating the engine for the next game?
Right now the game is so loving ugly it makes me want to barf, especially whenever any kind of foliage is present, which is almost always. It's probably the ugliest strategy game I've ever played.

Have you... seen any of the trailers or in game footage? You can literally see what the game looks like right now if you wish

Hunt11
Jul 24, 2013

Grimey Drawer

IAMNOTADOCTOR posted:

What's the best lizard man to do the vortex campaign with? I just got all the dlc and have previously done a Skrolk and malekith camping but can't decide whos best for the lizards to start with.

I would go with Kroq-gar. His corner gets very rough at the start but once you have cleared it out you can complete the ritual easily as long as you remember one simple rule. Do not push past the location with both a landmark and a vortex currency site because that way the chaos ritual armies will always come through the same place and you can just station a single army in the province and you will be able to hold off against almost anything.

Ravenfood
Nov 4, 2011

Jack Trades posted:

Have the developers said anything about updating the engine for the next game?
Right now the game is so loving ugly it makes me want to barf, especially whenever any kind of foliage is present, which is almost always. It's probably the ugliest strategy game I've ever played.

You should get persistent nausea looked at. It could be a sign of some pretty bad medical conditions.

Dr Kool-AIDS
Mar 26, 2004

It's obviously a dated engine more than five years after the original came out, right? So I'm not going to say the game looks phenomenal or anything, but I think revulsion at the sight of it is a bit much. But yeah if you're hoping for massive improvements, I think you're going to have to wait for future titles, because this one's basically more of the same.

Shumagorath
Jun 6, 2001

Hunt11 posted:

I would go with Kroq-gar. His corner gets very rough at the start but once you have cleared it out you can complete the ritual easily as long as you remember one simple rule. Do not push past the location with both a landmark and a vortex currency site because that way the chaos ritual armies will always come through the same place and you can just station a single army in the province and you will be able to hold off against almost anything.
Either this, or Nakai to have a fun campaign instead of vortex bullshit.

Gonkish
May 19, 2004

E3 is gonna be Fallen Gates 2.0. This is most likely all we're getting for June, at least. July will be Taurox and Oxyotl stuff. August might be the earliest we get some info on something that isn't Fallen Gates 2.0: This-time-with-build-mechanics.

Jack Trades
Nov 30, 2010

I mean, this is a screenshot from steam store page. You know, the screenshots they're using to show off the game?
https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/594570/ss_48c4d7b7c0ae11978b6f29fe58c3006802ee9651.jpg

Does this look good? It looks even worse in motion because they didn't bother implementing any anti-aliasing method.

Syncopated
Oct 21, 2010

SteelMentor posted:

I'm totally down with Total Hams/The Old World pushing out from the "Oh no! Chaos/Skaven/Orks are vaguely menacing *insert generic minor settlement*!" paradigm repeated ad nauseum.

I bet you'd like sigmarines in the game too huh? Disgusting...

cool av
Mar 2, 2013

yeah looks good to me

Ravenfood
Nov 4, 2011
Huh, fun fact, declaring peace less than 10 turns after declaring war tanks your reliability rating. As Imrik I rushed the starting enemy Dwarfs, sacked their last city, then demanded payment for a peace treaty, since the early cash was worth more than razing them. And...yeah, it turns out that that drops your reliability. Oh well, at least I didn't need that.

orangelex44
Oct 11, 2012

Definition of orange:

Any of a group of colors that are between red and yellow in hue. Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Old Occitan, from Arabic, from Persian, from Sanskrit.

Definition of lex:

Law. Latin.
It looks fine, considering that said screenshot is with a zoom level you’ll rarely be at for more than five seconds. Most game visuals break down somewhat when inspected too closely. I certainly wouldn’t classify it anywhere near “the ugliest strategy game I’ve ever played”.

Shumagorath
Jun 6, 2001

Ravenfood posted:

Huh, fun fact, declaring peace less than 10 turns after declaring war tanks your reliability rating. As Imrik I rushed the starting enemy Dwarfs, sacked their last city, then demanded payment for a peace treaty, since the early cash was worth more than razing them. And...yeah, it turns out that that drops your reliability. Oh well, at least I didn't need that.
The reliability is system is utter poo poo and completely opaque to the player. It's why we're hoping for 3K diplomacy in a setting that absolutely doesn't need it.

Mordja
Apr 26, 2014

Hell Gem
I think he's mostly nuts and lol at showing un ultra-zoomed in screenshot of the strategic map, but I do think the TWW games have some ugly/muddy ground textures that other TW games do not.

orangelex44
Oct 11, 2012

Definition of orange:

Any of a group of colors that are between red and yellow in hue. Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Old Occitan, from Arabic, from Persian, from Sanskrit.

Definition of lex:

Law. Latin.
Reliability is one thing, what’s worse are the trade deals with “moderate” success chance that fail to go through, meaning you get to play the game of “how much money do I think this will take, oh wait the answer is the AI refuses no matter what”.

Jack Trades
Nov 30, 2010

orangelex44 posted:

It looks fine, considering that said screenshot is with a zoom level you’ll rarely be at for more than five seconds. Most game visuals break down somewhat when inspected too closely. I certainly wouldn’t classify it anywhere near “the ugliest strategy game I’ve ever played”.

I don't know, I looked through strategy games in my steam library and the only other game that was actively uncomfortable to look at that I played was Age of Wonder 3, for the largely the same reason.

jokes
Dec 20, 2012

Uh... Kupo?

I really really really hope they implement Troy’s diplomacy system because, while also hosed up, it actually showed you what it was up to. You need to increase DIPLOMACY_BALANCE by 3 to make this deal work. Give them 3 moneys.

Muscle Tracer
Feb 23, 2007

Medals only weigh one down.

IAMNOTADOCTOR posted:

What's the best lizard man to do the vortex campaign with? I just got all the dlc and have previously done a Skrolk and malekith camping but can't decide whos best for the lizards to start with.

I'd say Kroq-gar because he starts farthest away from the areas you've already done. Or, if you want to stick closer to areas you've already done, Mazdamundi gets to start at the edge of Lustriadome rather than embroiled in the middle of it.

e: wow there were a LOT of responses while i had this page up :v:

Dr Kool-AIDS
Mar 26, 2004

Jack Trades posted:

I mean, this is a screenshot from steam store page. You know, the screenshots they're using to show off the game?
https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/594570/ss_48c4d7b7c0ae11978b6f29fe58c3006802ee9651.jpg

Does this look good? It looks even worse in motion because they didn't bother implementing any anti-aliasing method.

Nobody's going to make you play it. :shrug:

That probably sounds like a dick response, but what I mean is that I think it's fair to not think the game is beautiful or whatever, but if you think it's actively ugly in a way that few other games are, to the point where you can't stand looking at it, that's a legitimate reason not to buy or play a game.

Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Jun 8, 2021

Tiler Kiwi
Feb 26, 2011
i habitually turn off AA in a lot of games since I had a pretty bad computer for a while

Comrade Blyatlov
Aug 4, 2007


should have picked four fingers





What does it actually do?

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

stackofflapjacks
Apr 7, 2009

Mmmmm

Muscle Tracer posted:

I'd say Kroq-gar because he starts farthest away from the areas you've already done. Or, if you want to stick closer to areas you've already done, Mazdamundi gets to start at the edge of Lustriadome rather than embroiled in the middle of it.

e: wow there were a LOT of responses while i had this page up :v:

Kroq Gar starts with Lord Kroak right? Play that one, Lord Kroak is the most fun caster in the game bar none. Not even all the wurrzags can compare

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply