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rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
Hello thread, I just picked up a new gaming PC after being massively out of date and only playing indies and consoles for a long, long time. I just picked up this game and the free DLCs (and ended up getting Markus Wulfhart) as I was a huge fan of the series in the way back (last one I played was Medieval II, but I had the most experience playing was Rome I all the way back in like 2005). I've been playing and loving the game for about a week or two but had a few questions or issues I was hoping to get some feedback on. I've only played the vortex campaign, normal/normal difficulty.

1) Any high elf campaign I play crashes when I get enough waystones for the first ritual. I hover over the ritual once the tooltip pops and immediately CtD. I've seen a few people post about this and have tried most of the no-brainer fixes I could think of (running as admin, running compatibility mode, verifying game files, driver checks, etc.). Anyone else deal with something like this?

2) I am obviously a sack of poo poo on the tactical side but am getting better. I have a tendency to just form two lines, melee in front of ranged, and let it sit like that. I've finally wrapped my head around moving archers out and to the flanks to shoot enemies in the side and back instead of milling about and waiting to shoot enemies that are already running from the front line. I'm also getting better at using vanguard units to distract and outflank enemies (I went from hating Markus' hunters and pistoliers to wanting two units or more to buy time). What is the best way to line up high elf and empire lines at the start of a standard battle? Should I checkerboard squares of them? Build individual groups of mixed-use infantry by making like a left flank group and and right flank group? I'm starting to realize just lining up and going toe-for-toe with lizardmen is a bad proposition.

3) How many provinces should I aim to control and when is it better to sack versus occupy versus loot and occupy? I can do okay for 40 or 50 turns in any campaign then I gradually get my poo poo pushed in. Part of this is I know I'm being too passive in the early, early game but part of this is my chalking it up to being literally stupid as gently caress. I have 40 hours played and just realized you don't have to be garrisoned in a settlement to do local recruitment, just being in the province is enough. I can usually get two provinces and then maybe pick off another that's a one-settlement province (one of the gates for elves or the blessed something-or-other for Wulfhart), then I get pushed back and end up spread too thin and end up taking the same settlements back and forth forever while they get damaged and razed to poo poo and therefore p. much useless to me after the fourth pass-around.

4) How many nobles and lords should I aim to have by the end of say, turn 20 or 25? I usually have two of each but I'm starting to see how valuable being able to chain "assault troop" or "assault garrison" in a single turn is. I do like how Wulfhart gets a bunch of good ones for free, that was my first time having like 6 heroes.

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rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
I think High Elves, Dark Elves, Humans and Dwarfs are probably the easiest first factions to learn with, but really any work - I would maybe advise not starting with some of the more out-there factions like Vampire Counts (no ranged or artillery) or Wood Elves (extremely micro-intensive and squishy) but you could easily pick up the game playing Lizardmen or Orcs if you wanted.

When I first got the game, Dwarfs were the first faction I was able to do really well with, and I think part of that was playing as them means you don't have to worry about two of the most micro-intensive factors of battle - using magic and using cavalry. I've gotten much better at the former and still suck rear end with the latter 200+ hours later

e: That being said I would say if you start Dwarf to use Grombrindal, he adds the replenishment and mobility the Dwarfs sorely need to every lord in your faction, not just himself. Beregar can just go gently caress himself, and Thorgrim is ok, but you will be able to recruit Thorgrim as a Lord in a Grombrindal campaign so...

rideANDxORdie fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Jan 23, 2021

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
I read trash 40k fic to unwind all the time and just got interested in WH Fantasy b/c I picked this game up during pandemic so I'll take em easy. I'll make a donation to a food bank in your area if you like and/or cover shipping as long as you can vouch for them being pretty good reads

e: feeling pretty dumb looking back and realizing you hadn't read them either lol

rideANDxORdie fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Jan 26, 2021

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
Awesome!



I am a dinosaur and it took me way longer to figure out how to post an image on the forums than it took to make the donation lol

rideANDxORdie fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Jan 26, 2021

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
I am still really new to the modern TW series but I can say for sure having played nothing but vanilla, they need to pick one or two out of the following three when it comes to delaying the teching up of settlements 1) making growth take forever; 2) having higher-tier settlement upgrades take 4+ population surplus and 3) having higher-tier building upgrades come with 4+ turn building times. Using all 3, like Warhammer 2 does now, means I struggle to even see most T4 or T5 units before the campaign is effectively decided since you end up doing the bulk of the really impactful campaigning with armies of T1 and T2 units plus whatever elites you can dig up from your starting lord, some RoRs, or other mechanics that let you get your hands on high-tier units early (imperial supplies, blessed spawnings, Malus' beast rite, etc.)

Sieges have been discussed to death and I don't think I have any analysis that hasn't been said before. Sieges should at the very least be as fun as regular battles, not something that makes me want to log off of the game when I get one I can't autoresolve. Building and using siege equipment sucks, everyone (it seems) just cheeses these because the way CA seems to want you do sieges is so unbelievably dense - does anyone ever march their army/siege weapons up to the gates in a slow line the way the AI does? Maybe they could use the dilemma system to offer some risk/reward for attackers by having dilemmas in the pre-battle screen that could lead to advanced starting positions, open gates or wall breaches, or place one or two units on the top of a wall or inside the gate on the positive side but risk starting with units damaged or debuffed or a boost to the defender's towers if the dilemmas fail? IDK

Diplomacy definitely needs clarification at the least, and hopefully an overhaul at best. "Moderate" chance of success means "hell no" in my experience and it's crazy that you have to pay someone weaker than you and already friendly to agree to a trade agreement that benefits them way more than it does you sometimes.

Something should be done so that you don't have to essentially beeline to lightning strike on almost every single lord - if they're going to keep it as is, just give it to all level 10 lords or something because it's very boring and not that rewarding to spend your early game beelining blue line skills on pretty much every non-mage legendary lord. Skaven ambush on attack is hot bullshit too.

My last wish would be some solution to how frequently you have to level up your lords and heroes. I think maybe slowing down the individual levels but giving characters 2-3 skill points a go would be a lot more satisfying than slowly plinking in single points, but having to level up multiple characters almost every single turn can get exhausting.

These are just my thoughts as a guy who enjoyed the very early TW and then took almost ten years off, then played 200+ hours of TWII in quarantine lol. It's been very interesting reading how some of the other TW games have iterated on these systems but to be honest, the fantasy/magic nature of Warhammer means I'm not very likely to try out those others. The "mystical" units in Troy looked like infantry with fancy armor essentially - I want my dragons and necrofexes dammit!

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
The advisor smirking at the end of the trailer was thinking of all the people saying they'd eat their underwear if Cathay made into the game

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
My understanding as an outsider is that GW gas always been pretty tight about licensing, and the reason that vermintide and TW Warhammer were made using WHFB property was it was dead IP at the time and they didn't care or think the games would land.

Now the games are popular and people like me are interested in WHFB so they are bringing it back? Regardless, bad business instincts all around sounds like

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
Yeah I understand they are not stingy with the IP now, I meant more about the 2000s and early 2010s. Now there's licensed WH and 40k poo poo everywhere but for a long time they seemed not interested

The "bad business sense" part was referring to licensing out your dead property then scrambling to revive it after the licensing revives interest but clearly I've touched a nerve and also don't know/care that much about tabletop

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
So is there a goon community for MP? I've kind of hit my limit on campaign for a little and want to dip my toes into MP, would rather do it with someone willing to share a few pointers or shoot the poo poo instead of grinding it out in randoms

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
The first rule of Steamhead is you don't talk about Steamhead - Tyler Duardin

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010

Jarvisi posted:

Well, I did it. I have to play empire now.

(Also Grom's mortal empire game is surprisingly short, just like his mortal empires game)

Or find someone to get me Plaguebearer.



I have plaguebearer if you still need LMK

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
I mean new armies are awesome but really I think improved diplomacy and sieges are THE things I'm hoping for in a TWW3

Also maybe let us play with Tier 4 and 5 stuff by turn 35 and not turn 115 please

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
I've been playing MP after cracking out and playing 200+ hours of campaign after I first got the game. I can tell CA does definitely not prioritize the MP experience and I wouldn't say just hopping into quick battles was the most fun - not because of toxicity (everyone is usually silent IME) but because a lot of these guys have their armies and formations locked in and so you will get 60 seconds to build your army, then 60 seconds to deploy it. It's a lot when you're just learning, plus self-analysis is hard and to get better you really need people who will play you over and over and tell you what's going on.

I asked in this thread for MP and got the sense it wasn't a focus here (not a problem, just an observation), but I have had great luck joining two youtuber's discords (Turin and Zerkovich) and just asking for beginner PVP matches. Usually I can find someone in my skill range, and if I can't, there's always someone who is way better than me but will talk me through things. For example, I had one guy build a DE army and completely wreck me. I asked to him to play the same army over and over while I tried different things to try and improve the outcome. That's the kind of thing that will get you moving along skillwise. I can actually use cavalry now!

Anyways that's my two cents on getting in MP, your mileage may vary but as someone without a ton of Total War history and literally no PVP experience in RTS, I found just hopping into quick match to be absolutely no fun at all at first. I'm just starting to play it now but still enjoy having a game opponent that will break down the matches with you after

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010

Grumio posted:

I remember in old WFB there was a magic item that would swap the combat stats of the weilder and whoever they were in combat with. Stick it on a mage and all give the lord trying to gank them a nasty surprise

Ah yes, Captain Ginyu's Scroll of Change Bodies

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
I have never seen a community so obsessed with predicting what's coming next be so consistently wrong lmao (TW community in general, not just this thread.

It owns how many "Why Cathay will never be in the game" or "Here's why Chaos Dwarves and Ogre Kingdoms HAVE to be the starting factions in TWW3" videos I've seen on youtube

Honestly it feels better not being super brushed up on the lore and the tabletop game since it seems doing so loads up a bunch of expectations and I would way rather just have CA do what they want with the license since versimilitude with TT and "the lore" is like the least important thing to me

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010

Zaphod42 posted:

Having a hard time picking the next DLC to buy

Vampire Pirates, Tomb Kings, or Ikit Claw (Skryre)?

Seems like some people love pirates and some people think their campaign is disappointing. Some people love tomb kings but others think they're only so-so. So hard to know which I'd actually prefer....

Don't have Skryre but Vampire Coast is one of my favorite factions to play and they have a very enjoyable campaign IMO - easily the best implementation of a "horde" faction. Tomb Kings are fun to play in MP but I found their campaign in vanilla to be basically torture, which people say is due to growth changes made before I bought the game in 2020. TK campaign is building stacks of trash units while you agonizingly wait for permission to build more than four units of archers, chariots or anything else fun to play with

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
I've tried TK a few times since picking up the game earlier this year and I found their campaign layer to be especially tedious, and the growth issue was a huge part of that. Shame since I really like playing them in MP

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
There definitely is a ton of room for magic to grow. Even though it's very powerful (to the point of being broken beyond belief in single player) there's a lot more that could be done then just buffs and a series of wind/vortex/missile/airstrike spells. Spells that leave physical barriers or some kind of counterspell/dispel system would be cool

I am also interested in seeing if they do anything to make elite infantry more worthwhile in MP. Taking just one unit if elite infantry is basically asking for it since it's p much guaranteed to get wipes by a spell or focus fired out, and taking more than two units or so is prohibitively expensive. Elite infantry tends to move in tight formation too, it would be nice to have the option to have elites move in a more staggered formation to defray some of these issues too. MP play you see a lot of blobs of basic infantry and not a lot of elite infantry, accurate I guess but sucks to have such a big portion of the roster that includes some very iconic units basically trivialized

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
Does anyone have some experience with Drycha campaign? I'm feeling kind of aimless in my current one, I've secured the whole province that borders her starting Gryphon Wood on the East/South and have now finished off Mannfred and Vlad. I don't have any active wars with anyone around me anymore. It's around turn 60 and I'm thinking I should have been off using Deeproots to do... something else instead of fighting a mini hellwar with the VCounts. I've looked at some "first 20 turns" style guides which usually end before getting to where I am.

Mostly I'm wondering around what turn should I be using Deeproots to move Drycha's army somewhere else? And where to? Should I be killing the other wood elf factions and taking their forests?

Also having not played a bunch of Wood Elf before, is it normal to only have one army for a while? I'm feeling particularly pinched economically between the race's weird building mechanics and fairly expensive, elite roster.

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
Trip report for Taurox:

Never played Beastmen before, only faced them a few times ever in campaign (usually enemy beastmen hordes are easy to autoresolve) or in multiplayer. Taurox is busted beyond belief between his campaign mechanics, his abilities on the battlefield, and the new herdstone system for Beastmen. I got about 25-ish turns in and had wiped three DE factions off the map already (two minor ones and Morathi) with just the one army. I put all my Dread towards herdstone upgrades and only had the one army. You can kind of just roll with whatever units/capacity you get from horde buildings (and 2/3 of Taurox's starting units are insanely good) without having to worry about spending dread on capacity. As an aside, I also had about 1/2 the regiments of renown roster available to me at this point too, which seemed crazy early but I guess that's what happens when you push Taurox through 2-4 battles a turn

E: This is one VH/H campaign/battle, respectively

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010

Elukka posted:

How do you do Imrik on ME? The campaign appeals to me for some reason but I just can't manage it. No allies, enemies all around. I can't even beat Clan Eshin because I can barely afford one half-decent stack and then eventually you have a billion orcs and probably Malus on you too.

Imrik's campaign is pretty tough and the real key to success IMO is you need to be able to use his ridiculous in-battle stats, dragons and abilities to clutch heroic wins all the time. His starting province honestly sucks both in terms of value and vulnerability. Strategically you really, really need to put Clan Eshin into the dirt very, very early or else you will get bogged down in a hellwar as they will send 2-3 stacks and besiege 2 of your settlements constantly.

LOTW has a good guide on Imrik ME here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jsei1eRcTXk

There are some alternatives to this strategy, if you can finagle enough influence you can try to turn Grimgor or Eshin into neutral, if not allies or I've heard you can take the option to confederate with Caledor, move Imrik to Ulthuan and get your campaign out of the Darklands altogether, although I have never tried this myself

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010

I R SMART LIKE ROCK posted:

iirc I watched this video and it gave a lot of good info on how stats work: https://youtu.be/GTEq1GdRVmU

I never played a total war game before last year and this helped me understand the underlying mechanics

Zerk's channel is pretty good and was the resource I ended up using a lot when I was brand new to Total War Warhammer and was struggling to beat easy. I was so bad I was getting worse results than autoresolve most fights. He's got quite a few vids on basic tactics and controls stuff too.

LOTW recently took a break from nebbishly cheesing the gently caress out of Legendary to put together something that is actually informative for the playerbase about how different resistances and damage types interact with each other - I found the section on armor to be mostly new to me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLluhYzA82E&t=4s

Here's a snapshot of his flowchart for damage types. Basically start at the top w/ "is this attack physical or magical" then work your way down to find what resistances are applies to what. Armour works by applying a damage reduction % value to the BASE (non armour-piercing) damage. The reduction is randomly picked from a range of 50% of the unit's armour up to 100%. All reductions (including armour damage reduction) has a cap of 90% damage reduction.

https://gyazo.com/9e44c2122546ec4ce2eaa837c147df78

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
I had Jerrod's Errantry Army take over a province and a half in my latest campaign in the area between Norsca and Kislev. I was Wulfrik and Throgg had decimated that area before I wiped him out and confederated. Jerrod moved in and got set up and was actually not especially easy to deal with - brettonian knights backed up with handgunners and cannons.

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
I do for Norsca and for the new dwarf lord, usually take a pass on Imrik's. Empire confederation is usually a yes but will be deferred if I don't want to deal with the hassle or have the finances at that exact moment

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010

Elukka posted:

Huh, does Thorek get a confederation event? Is this ME only, since the other Dwarf lands aren't on the Vortex map?

I think he has one on both but I can confirm the ME one for sure. On ME it's a dilemma that let's you confederate the minor dwarf faction just south of Black Crag. I think on Vortex you get the chance to confederate the Spine of Sotek dwarfs.

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
If Chameleon Stalkers and their explosive precursor weapons are something CA are looking to expand, I would like to see dwarven miners and ironbreakers get the "throw while charging" functionality added to their special ranged weapon. I also think it would be cool if dual-wielding slayers got an armor-piercing and/or anti-large throwing ax precursor projectile to soften up targets as they charge in.

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
I think Turin is a more entertaining host/announcer and having his content be MP-focused is a lot more exciting, LOTW just has a ridiculous work ethic/release schedule. The dude does 6+ hours of campaign stream a day and releases a 15 min-1 hour edited video each day too, even on weekends. LOTW did help me a ton with campaign but tbh his edited doomstack videos don't do anything for me, but the saving your disaster battles/campaigns are some of the best, most informative campaign videos I've seen.

Once you know the AI inside and out like LOTW does, it kind of sucks all the tension and challenge out. Anyone can make any doomstack work, you can watch people build a 19 bats + 1 vampire stack and wreck on Legendary

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010

I R SMART LIKE ROCK posted:

I was using a 970 up til a few months ago and it ran WH2 just fine

the decision on WH3 makes sense and now I've got time to get some Battle Brothers in

Battle Brothers is such a classic. We have a thread here which is dead these days but is probably the greatest single source of info and analysis on the game. Its my most played modern game by like a country mile lol

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
Funnily enough, Skaven is the only race I haven't spent hardly any time playing either. I think part of it is how powerful they are and certainly the fact that my major introduction to the WH fantasy IP was through mass rat murder via Vermintide 1+2. I tried playing a little bit of Ikit Claw but stopped after 25 turns or so since I just felt too powerful already. I had something similar happen when I played Taurox too - something about being that OP from the get-go means the campaigns never felt high stakes or interesting.

Skaven are an awesome race though, really do enjoy murdering them!

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
Kemmler is a lot of fun, you get to spamming a lot of high-level necromancers real quick. His starting province kind of sucks but is workable but the cool thing is his faction capitol has a landmark that lets you get mortis engines crazy early. Also you get some variety in potential enemies compared to the Von Carsteins where you almost always just fight empire for the mid game

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
Gor Rok is insane in sieges too. I've sent him up on to enemy walls by himself, turned on triple fast forward, and browsed the forums as he casually killed 900+ enemy units and singlehandedly caused the army losses penalty. He got down to about 60 percent health after hitting regen cap

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
I have played a fair bit of VH and honestly it sucks rear end for real, you don't have to cheese it as bad as LOTW does but it is a bummer. It doesn't change anything about AI strategies but what it does do is warp unit dynamics so badly in a way that rewards unit types that were already the best in the game (SE lords, heroes and monsters as well as missile infantry) and trashes the unit types that already aren't too hot (infantry and heavy cavalry). It's just not fun to me to have the enemy swordsmen be rendered into mulching machines that you have to kill down to 10 or less entities while my depth guard gets space jam dunked by clan rats. Hard is the sweet spot for me

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010

Gort posted:

I've got 120 hours in this, and I feel like I know the basics of how to work the game, but I'm not good at it. I'm just going to post a huge wall of questions in the hope that someone's a huge nerd for this game like I am for Hearts of Iron 4. My most recent game is as Karaz A Karak, so I'll use that as an example.

First up - Settlement building strategy.

So as Karaz A Karak I beelined to take over my starting province. While I was doing that, I upgraded the capital settlement, set up the gems building in the capital, and upgraded the infantry building in the capital so I can get Quarrellers. I've found in previous games that the only settlements that don't get razed by random raiding enemy armies are ones with walls, so my next step is to try to get walls on the two minor settlements ASAP, which requires population, which means I need to maximise growth. To do this, I put barley fields in all three settlements, and use the commandment that increases growth. I then get the most exposed minor settlement to level 3, and give it the guard building which gives it walls, then move on to the other minor settlement and do the same there. The third slot on the minor settlements gets a toolmaker for money.

So at this point the starting province is two level 3 minor settlements with walls, toolmaker and barley field, and the capital is level 2 with an infantry building and gems building. Next step is to upgrade the capital as much as possible as fast as possible, and grab any unique buildings and any recruitment buildings I want (Grudge Throwers are an early priority). I'll also probably need to put a pub in the capital to keep order.

Finally, once my capital has hit max level I'll get rid of all the growth buildings. Maybe I'll put recruitment buildings that max out at level 3 in the minor settlements to make room for more high level buildings in the capital. What do other players initial provinces end up looking like when they're "maxed out"?

Is that pretty much what other players do? I wonder if I'm too walls-fixated. I've had a fair few bad experiences where a random army comes barrelling out of the fog of war and clowns on a settlement that took tons of money and time to build up, and walled settlements are the only ones that stand a chance in that scenario.

Army composition strategy.

Obviously this is going to vary heavily by faction. An average early army in my Karaz A Karak game is the general, a runesmith, an engineer, six Dwarf Warriors with shields for a frontline, four Dwarf Warriors with Great Weapons (or Slayers if they're available) for flanking, four Quarrellers that mostly shoot at enemy archers, and three Grudge Throwers to force the enemy to come to me. This composition seems to do well against the early AI Greenskin and Skaven armies I've fought. The runesmith mostly spams runes of speed, with the occasional rune of slowness for enemy cavalry units. The engineer is mostly there for his army buffs, though restocking ammunition is nice in sieges or long battles.

The main issue I have playing Dwarfs against Greenskins and Skaven is enemy archer units - no cavalry means you basically have to outshoot them, and luckily Grudge Throwers and Quarrellers do that nicely.

As I get more advanced units I'll swap out like for like - so Dwarf Warriors will become Longbeards or Ironbreakers, Grudge Throwers become Organ guns, and flanking units might become gyrocopters or whatever.

Battle strategy

An average battle versus Greenskins and Skaven has me making a big line out of my melee troops - Warriors in the middle, two Great Weapon units on each end of the line. Then my three heroes behind the melee line, Quarrellers behind them, and Grudge Throwers behind them. If I'm fighting Skaven I'll put a high damage unit behind the Grudge Throwers to deal with the inevitable spawns of three clanrat units on top of the Grudge Throwers. I turn off skirmish mode on the Quarrellers and Engineer so they don't run to random places. I'll use Entrenchment from my engineer on one of my Grudge Thorwers.

The enemy will approach the line since the Grudge Throwers will force them to, and once they're within bowshot, I'll pause the game. I'll individually target each enemy archer unit with a Quarreller unit, and each enemy melee unit in their frontline with a Dwarf Warrior unit. If they've a general out front I'll send my general to duel them. (often my general is the High King and he tends to win such duels) My flanking units will go to the flanks and try to charge the rear of the enemy melee line if I outnumber the enemy, or just charge the ends of the enemy line if not. I'll target any non-melee enemy units with Grudge Throwers to avoid friendly fire. I put Rune of Speed on the middle of the battle. Then I unpause the game, and hopefully my army wins. Mostly my time after the game unpauses is spent micromanaging Quarrellers to change target from a broken enemy archer unit to an unbroken one.

I wonder if there's a more elegant way to control the army than this. It seems like it'd be a big hurry to set off the initial charge in multiplayer.

World map strategy

So mostly my games go like this - I take over my initial region, build up a full stack army, and it goes off conquering, trying to get more full regions. I'll usually get to a point where I'm facing something like a full enemy stack inside an enemy castle, and I'll add a second army to my first one, which joins it conquering. Usually that wins against anything it actually faces.

Trouble is, this leaves my original regions quite unprotected, and they tend to get raided. What do people tend to do about this? I wonder if other players tend to have "guard armies" they leave at home to cover for problems like this.

Good co-op campaign matchups

I'm going to be starting an MP co-op campaign soon, which is what's prompted all these questions. I'm thinking Mortal Empires map. The other player has said they want to play Wood Elves. What's a good other side to go with them? We don't really want to fight each other, more of a "take on the bastards" campaign. I was thinking maybe Bretonnia would go well with one of the two Athel Loren Wood Elf factions.

There's been a lot of good advice but I thought I'd pipe in on the campaign map / build order front. I think a lot of people are going to tell you to raze the infantry building in Karaz-a-Karak and rebuild it in the minor settlement since it only goes up to T3. This would also be my advice in most cases, HOWEVER I find playing as Thorgrim/Grombrindal it's better to keep it in Karaz-a-Karak to start. I think instead of rushing T3 on your minor settlements you should be pouring as much growth in Karaz-a-Karak itself as early as possible and keep your recruiting buildings there in the early game. Getting Karaz-a-Karak to T3 faster will open up a lot of powerful units to you early (longbeards, thunderers, Thane heroes).

I find myself rushing to the northern province to try and lock down Gunbad and the provincial capitol up there which means Grimgor is going to be sending raiding parties through the underway from the south and mucking up your minor provinces. Having him wreck your settlement that allows you to recruit quarrellers can really hamper your early game momentum. Instead of rushing T3 at those settlements to get walls, get them to T2, put in the defensive building (which may not give walls but does boost the garrison) and build a small second army to defend the Silver Road province - the combination of both these things is usually enough to scare away Grimgor until you have the northern province under control and you're ready to push south towards Black Crag. As a bonus, if you win a fight within the Silver Road province you can use one of the post-battle options to boost growth and PO in the province for a few turns too. Finally, you can use the secondary lord to transfer reinforcements to Thorgrim's stack out in the field. It's not much, but every bit helps with the growth-starved Dawri. Once you have a few of those pesky greenskin-occupied neighboring provinces sorted out, you may want to take a few turns rearranging buildings such that the infantry building is in a minor settlement w/ walls.

Army composition-wise I would say you're probably a little too heavy on melee infantry and could afford to drop the warriors with great weapons as they're pretty tepid and at this point you shouldn't need armor piercing for the foes you're fighting. Try dropping those guys and replacing with more quarrellers. Quarrellers are extremely effective in the early game. As mentioned before, instead of lining your quarrellers' focus up so one unit is shooting one enemy unit, use pairs, trios or even all of your quarrellers to focus down single units - you'll break the enemy forces faster. Don't be afraid to let your quarrellers take one round of parting shots at fleeing units as well - unless the unit is shattered (with a skull by the broken flag), it's likely they will come back and you will have saved yourself some time by shooting them as they ran. My early game army is usually a few dwarf warriors and miners for cheap frontline, and 8-12 quarrellers. They're that effective.

rideANDxORdie fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Nov 3, 2021

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010

MonsterEnvy posted:

It's still early on and that was normal AI. They could improve it for launch. (I also don't care too much if the AI makes mistakes.)

To my knowledge there are no AI changes from difficulty level to difficulty level, just the "cheats" that give AI extra leadership and other stats. Nothing LOTW does to game the AI on Legendary would be changed if you move the battle difficulty

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
Yeah under the TWW2 calculations 20% is a massive boost, coupled with a few levels in lord/hero skills and a province with +casualty replenishment (usually growth buildings, which means you'll have multiple in each province) you will easily be clearing 40-50% replenishment a turn. When your forces are wounded you tend not to move around either unless to bunker up in a friendly settlement so the no movement seems ok. It seems like a mechanic to replace multi-turn recruitment times with multi-turn replenishment times for Nurgle

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010

Flavahbeast posted:

I think they also recently changed some sources of fire damage imbue, particularly the Banner of Eternal Flame, to also increase base weapon damage a bit so it's always a decent bump to unit damage instead of only being helpful in the edge case where you're fighting something fire vulnerable

fire imbued attacks count as physical attacks and are mitigated by %phys resist, according to the forums

This isn't quite true, fire damage is essentially a yes/no property that is applied to either physical or magical attacks. If a unit does not have the "magical attack" property (like Brettonian peasants w/ fire arrows), then the fire damage is physical, but if a unit has magical attacks and fire damage (like flamespyre phoenixes) then the fire damage is magical. It's a little confusing. LOTW breaks it down here (timestamped for the damage flow chart):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLluhYzA82E&t=1030s

The way fire damage works now in TWW2 means it's usually less useful than more useful outside of just a few cases for undead, tree units, and some units w/ regeneration.

E: Whoops, missed the "imbued fire attacks" part of this post but still this may help somebody so leaving it up. There's a lot of misconceptions up thread so give this a watch if you're confused

rideANDxORdie fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Nov 23, 2021

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
TBH I'm a little surprised there is still only four Empire lords since I thought analytics showed the most played campaign by far in both TW1 and TW2 is the Empire

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010
Not backporting any of the various improvements made to horde/semihorde (VCoast) factions to WoC have made them the single most painful campaign to play IMO, and that's on normal/normal. Factor in the Legendary AI cheats that make melee infantry the single worst class of units by far and it's even worse. Hoping for some serious improvements in TW3 or just abolish the faction and roll it into the various new Chaos factions IMO

rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010

litany of gulps posted:

Boredom is a choice. You could say any faction is boring for any reason. Why is Chaos boring? Well, they just have great infantry, powerful cavalry, tons of monsters, and the best artillery. What could possibly be more borrrrring? So bored. You don't have to play Pontus, dude.

Because their outdated horde mechanics make you have to park your rear end and not do anything on a lot of turns and for some reason they're the only faction that can cause attrition on themselves. Every horde faction in TW2 has a much better feel on the strategic map, including Nakai, who is also not that much fun to play. When you look at the VCoast or the Beastmen campaign (post-Taurox) it's like night and day. It's not a question of what units they have available, I actually really like playing WoC in multiplayer but the campaign is just glacially slow

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rideANDxORdie
Jun 11, 2010

Communist Thoughts posted:

I think I might have preferred beastmen before the update, there's no challenge to them at all anymore

/hipster

I honestly felt this way with Taurox too. Felt like I could do anything I wanted and the AI could never, ever even come close to stopping me straight from Turn 1. They can't even keep up most of the time. TBF this is still better than pre-rework Beastmen so...

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