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The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
I'm pretty new to Total War games, only played a bit of this (High Elves Tyrion Vortex) and Three Kingdoms. What should I be doing with Vampire Coast? I picked Count Noctilus since he had an easy rated start. After playing a high elves campaign I can make zero sense of this faction. Most of the front line infantry also has ranged attack but sometimes just seems to sit there and die instead of firing. Do I just raid/plunder coastal towns or should I be trying to occupy stuff? Which units are not complete rear end?

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The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
Hmm ok thanks guys.

Should I be checkerboarding my front line with the handgun(rifles?) guys? They seem tricky to use, I'm still trying to figure out how to make unit facing moves properly. Is there an easier way to rotate a unit that I'm missing? Like I got flanked by cavalry on my last engagement and obliterated because my units stood there like dumbasses while I tried frantically to right click/drag them to face the appropriate side.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe

Kanos posted:

Checkerboarding is primarily necessary to make flat-trajectory weapons - typically guns - function effectively. Factions reliant primarily on parabolic ranged weapons like bows don't really need to do it, though you'll definitely see a modest increase in damage output if you do so.

I tried checkerboarding my army last night as Vampire Coast but obviously I need more practice. It went OK but I still took more losses.

I'm having trouble sorting out the VC faction units. So the pistol infantry, I'm just supposed to treat them as disposable melee? Should they stay in the front line with the Zombie Pirate guard dudes who just have a sword? Or should I be running them backward after a few volleys? So the Zombie Gunner (Handguns) are my real ranged units that I need to protect?

I got kinda whooped on because cavalry keeps flanking me and they're so loving fast. I don't know what I'm supposed to do there other than turn to face and focus fire. I noticed my guys kept running away and figured out it was skirmish mode so I should probably turn that off. I'm struggling to make real use of the guns, it always seems like their LOS is blocked no matter what I'm doing. Melee in front of them, can't fire. Wrong trajectory, can't fire. They are so loving frustrating and finicky compared to elven bows. I'm trying to do things like that pic linked earlier but it just never works out.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe

ZearothK posted:

A very good formation for Vampire Coast that doesn't show up in that image is the onion. Essentially you deploy in squares and distribute your zombies in layers in a relatively compact distribution, with artillery in the core of the onion. As JCS said Gunnery Mobs are decent at the flanks, but they're not bad as a frontline either IMO, specially if you enable guard mode so they continue shooting even while engaged in melee. Zombie Handgunners will be your real damage dealer for most of the game.

And yeah, turn off skirmish from all your Zombie units, they can't run away from enemies anyway. You can change for it to be disabled by default in the menu.

Ok thanks, I will give that a shot tonight. I love the pirate campaign play style but I'm struggling to get their battle stuff to work. I probably shouldn't have started with the high elves, they seem like easy mode compared to this.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe

Nah I'm really early on, Count Noctilus. No prometheans yet.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
Thanks guys, appreciate all of the help getting going with VC. I will work on teching up a bit and getting mortars. I foolishly followed the games quest to Caledor and got into a pissing match with 3 different High Elf factions. I've been totally bogged down and only surviving by raising dead. The replenishment penalties to VC really suck compared to other factions :(

This is the best thread in games btw.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
How does Global Recruitment work with VC? Like if I sailed halfway across the world and my mortar building finished at the Graveyard, I assume I can just pop on land and recruit from there. Or do I need to do it from a settlement like other factions? I'm a bit confused at how Raise Dead and recruitment differ, guess I will go read up a bit. I assume you need to have battled recently to raise dead and it seems like I can't control what the pool of units is.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe

Something I would really love to see is the ability to save a formation. I'm making progress with VC but guns are so finicky to setup and it's repetitive getting your lines going when they're the same every time. Unless there is a mod for that I'm not aware?

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
Thanks for all of the help thread. I finally wrapped my head around Vampire Coast and had a blast. Took someone's advice about just letting the elves duke it out over their donut and sailed around pillaging and setting up coves instead. By the end I was making thousands per turn even with multiple doomstacks roaming around. Tyrion got punked by Saphery who lost the whole thing to the dark elves. Then the Skaven came over and took over half the world. Tomb Kings dominated the south, just destroyed everyone else. The western jungle continent looked like apocalypse now and I avoided the whole thing outside of the ports. The dark Elf area looks like Mordor by the way.

Anyways really enjoyed it and trying to decide what to do next. Are tomb King mechanics fun? I started playing an empire campaign in ME but they seem pretty boring.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
I decided to forge on with my Empire playthrough in Mortal Empires and its actually turning out pretty fun. I concentrated on being buddies with Bretonnia, they have screened me from Norsca nicely. I spent like 20 turns getting going and pinning down Marienburg who had a fat port income that I really wanted. After securing that I went east and made buddies with a few people there while also securing friendships in the north with Nordland/Middenland to secure my borders from other Norsca bullshit.

Along the way various chaos/greenskin bullshit started to creep in so I had to spend a good 10-20 turns knocking that out. When that was done I noticed a shitlord of vampiric corruption seeping in from the east so I went out that way to see what the gently caress was going on. Holy poo poo Vampire Counts loving everywhere. One castle alone had an income of 4k going. I made buddies with the dwarves nearby who then got confederated by other dwarves and started digging in. loving 50 turn brawl with the 3 vampire factions there, I just could not get ahead. I finally had to bring in another 3 armies to deal with it. Finally last night I managed to kill them all and the corruption is just starting to dissipate. But ho boy that income, even with 4 armies going I have 6k surplus each turn. I confederated Tacabled or whatever they're called and that poo poo is a mess but I will sort that out tonight.

The win conditions are kinda crazy by the way. I see long form victory in there, what is the short term victory? Just follow the weird quests or whatever?

I think after this I'm going to do a Tomb Kings thing in Vortex, they look interesting.

Edit: nevermind I re-read the win conditions and wowzer, its going to be awhile.

The Gunslinger fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Sep 9, 2019

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
So my adventures with the Empire in Mortal Empires continue:

- Wiped Vampire Counts off the map, the lingering corruption is annoying as gently caress and I hate that this mechanic takes forever even with multiple heros with cleanse and Untainted buildings

- Dwarves are my closest ally and fully united, they are loving everything up south of the mountains

- I left a few empire allies alone to screen enemies for me but a few of them are confederation options now

- Skaven from the northeast near Kislev are starting to creep in

I'm at turn like 80 or something like that. I just got a big scary thing about a Chaos Invasion from the north. Are they going to come through the Nosca territory or something like that? Should I be heading up north to shore up my allies there and deal with the Skaven poo poo near Kislev? What am I looking at here in terms of challenge? I've got like 4-5 full stacks of varying strength, my main army is tanks + LL + 2 captains and a shitload of gunners/artillery. This mechanic seems annoying, I just have ever present chaos corruption until I kill them I guess but I can't even see them on the map or have any idea where they are going to pop up. My economy is pretty good, like 11k per turn so I'm thinking maybe I should just murder the Skaven on this continent before they become annoying but I don't want to be fighting on 2 fronts if Chaos shows up.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe

Dr Christmas posted:

Yep, Norsca is going to get more aggressive and Chaos armies are going to appear from the Chaos Wastes in the northeast. They’ll appear until Archaon and a bunch of other doomstacks appear, and if you beat that back they’ll be gone for good. Global chaos corruption will ramp up until this happens, but in the later stages all the “good” factions will get a massive diplomacy bonus until the end. This all happens in TW1, and beating the final Chaos invasion in that not only ended the diplomacy bonus but made all your allies aggressive and unstable. I don’t know if that last bit happens in Mortal Empires. Mortal Empires also periodically spawns a bunch of minor Chaos factions in the ocean to mess with the New World and Brettonia.

Hmm ok thanks. Am I good with 4-5 stacks to deal with that or should I be getting a bunch more? Looking at a map online chaos wastes seems just NE of Kislev. He has a bunch of territory but no real armies so I suspect he will get hosed up quick so I might as well go up there, smoke him and wait for Chaos to show up.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
How does the Elector Count stuff work? I have slots open and many characters but can't put them in. Do they need to be the specific previous Lords who owned the territory? This campaign was started pre-patch in Mortal Empires so I wonder if its something to do with that.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
I just don't get why he has so many +army skills in his tree when its a struggle to field more than 1-2? Seems like he needs some tweaking.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
For what it's worth I don't really get Nakai either. I started out and went slightly west then south, took a bunch of undiscovered settlements for my vassal and then promptly ran right into Markus and the Dark Elves.

Edit: thanks for the above, I will give that a shot later.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
I'm not a fan of Nakai's campaign or at least in Lustria. Maybe I need to just take off out of this shithole. I take something and move on, a few turns later I'm in the red again because one of the other 12 factions here has taken it back. I ground Markus into the dust and the Skaven took everything back from behind me and I'm in the red again. The garrisons you leave behind are loving useless after like 30 turns and the AI musters their poo poo so fast. I also struggle to see the point of his upper tech tree, the +army capacity thing is a joke. You can barely ever field 2 at once, let alone more. Anyways I'm going to do the stupid quest battle and end this, just not enjoying it like I did other Horde factions.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
Any tips for an Alarielle campaign on vortex? Tyrion is so fuckin ridiculous, he confederated another HE faction in the first 13 turns. I thought I was doing well having destroyed scourge of khaine but Tyrion is just walking around with 2 doomstacks and is building a third. The AI must get upkeep bonuses or something, this is impossible.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
I'm like 40 turns into a Wulfhart vortex campaign and kinda disliking it. I took Txanlan to the south and now I just turtle because basically everything has tried to take my poo poo, public order sucks and any expansion triggers a lizard stack. I get what they were going for here but it doesn't feel fun when everyone else gets to do whatever they want and I have to sit around for 20 turns because the 5 other AI factions are playing hide and seek constantly. These infantry units are loving Kleenex too.

Vampire Coast is constantly loving with my poo poo but I can't go deal with it, ork and lizards immediately hop on me when I leave a settlement. Oh and Nakai died on like turn 11 which makes this all seem pointless. Does this get better? I feel like I can't do anything and it's super frustrating.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe

John Charity Spring posted:

Sounds like you'd be better off restarting the campaign and just being a bit bolder in some areas. The way I did it was to take that first province then Tlaxtlan, finishing off that lizard faction, then I actually gave gifts to the orcs because I didn't want to have to deal with them and I pushed east to the coast through vampire pirates and skaven while defending Tlaxtlan with walls and eventually a second army. By turn 40 I had the Vampire Coast under control, as well as Xlanhuapec, the province in between there and Tlaxtlan that starts as a lizardman faction.

As for your armies, you really need to get a solid ranged and artillery component to do the damage while your main line holds them just long enough. Swordsmen and spearmen and even halberdiers are going to suffer a lot against saurus troops and savage orcs, which is why I minimised the orc-fighting I was doing and tried to make sure I was fighting lizardmen with the benefit of walls. But also I went with the artillery reinforcements early on which gave me a unit of outriders with grenade launchers, and those guys are monsters who'll get 400+ kills per battle reliably. The basic infantry reinforcements are a solid choice too just to buff up your line a bit. Also, focus on grabbing the various hunters as quickly as possible - you can have all 4 by around turn 15 easily, and they give your forces a big boost.

I did the trick to get all 4 hunters in like the first 10 turns which helps a bit. I'm confused how you pushed east so aggressively when you're facing 3, sometimes 4 fronts. If I push east to the VC through the mutineers I take some pretty heavy losses while Xlanhuapec tries to attack from the southeast. I can't replenish fast enough to deal with both of them. I also have to worry about the Skaven from the south of Tlaxtlan and if I give the Orks gifts then I can't really do much with walls or etc, my starting economy is dogshit. I also have constant public order issues while my army is gone, already had a rebellion and had to reload an earlier save because it totally screwed me over while I was too far away. I don't even know how you're fielding a second army. I guess I need to go back to the drawing board or just play something else, this one is just dead in the water. The irony is that I'm doing well in the battles with the garbage units you have to deal with before supply drops but the campaign stuff is loving absurd.

The Gunslinger fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Sep 27, 2019

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

I'm not very good at this game and I have had a lot of trouble with Markus too. I understand CA wants to bow to the loud minority of players that want a harder game but if the DLC additions are all going to be so difficult I wont be buying them. I was never able to get a Tenehuian (sp?) game off the ground even on normal, I didnt enjoy TikTaqTo's gameplay at all, but loved Ikit Claw. I love the new Empire Mechanics that came with the DLC but I'm not playing any of the DLC Lords because its an exercise in frustration for me.

Yeah I don't really get where I'm going wrong here, I bumped the difficulty down to Normal just to see what happens and its still a shitshow in this restart. I'm winning battles but the campaign is a loving mess. I get they wanted to go for "surrounded by enemies in a harsh environment" but its loving frustrating as hell in practice. I keep reading other peoples experiences online and I guess there is just some randomness to the AI that makes a difference too. Some people said VC totally left them alone but they were right on my loving doorstep before I knew it. Oh and the Orks basically stampede south and destroy everything then come for me. The hostility meter thing is what's pushing me over the edge, its bad enough dealing with everyone hating you, rebellions and skaven/VC but then this mechanic just tilts it into ridiculous.

I get that I'm bad at Warhammer games but normally its me sucking in battle and doing OK on the campaign, this DLC is the total opposite. Argh.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
That all totally makes sense and I'm restarting (again) to attempt it but the issue is that I get hosed on like 3 fronts at once. If I could just focus on one thing for more than 2-3 turns I would probably be OK. I guess I will try just hiring a second lord when another bowling ball hits my territory and try to manage things with the garrison. Thanks for the suggestions guys, I will keep trying.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
Finally some success. I had to sacrifice my war wagon and it took a few tries but I pushed east and killed Harkon. I don't know why fighting VC triggers that hostility meter too, loving dumb. I ended up triggering the lizard stack and survived with a garrison'd lord and some battle cheese. Now to get my economy going and then push south or west. I wish you could recruit from disbanded imperial supply units, I had to get some in a hurry on my secondary lord but I'm not waiting 6 turns to exchange units between them while my economy is in the tank.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
I started a Skrolk campaign and I'm really digging the Skaven. The Under-Empire stuff is pretty neat and I love their hit and run campaign style. I spec'd Skrolk for spellcasting and its pretty damned fun dropping summons on artillery units and stuff like that.

I really didn't want to push south very far but everyone kept declaring war on me while Itza and VC oddly left me alone. Itza really hates me but just won't declare war for some reason. That little poo poo Teclis even dropped in unexpectedly with 2 full stacks at one point but I was able to cobble together a good ambush force + garrison to neutralize it. So now I own the entire lower half of Lustria and I'm pushing north just because I'm bored. I confederated Ikit who is pretty awesome and I'm happy the Legendary Lords don't have the absolutely pointless Loyalty mechanic, that's something I need to mod out.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe

Kestral posted:

Also, simultaneously nuking Athel Loren is harder to pull off than it sounds, because they can and will build detection structures and park detecting heroes there, and as soon as you build the nuke they will throw money at it and destroy the under-city unless they’re basically broke.

How exactly does the detection stuff work? I have one option that says it increases detection to 140% but will result in an army emerging. Does that mean I need to build a few of the negative detection options first? I don't really get that part of the Under-Empire stuff. Like what happens when I hit 100% detection? They just get a notification or is my Under-Empire building destroyed automatically?

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe

Ravenfood posted:

Yes you need to build -detection options if you want to include the larger +detection buildings in your Undercity. If detection hits 100% (note that heroes each passively decrease that by 10% iirc) the other faction gets a notification and can destroy it if they want, which costs a varying amount based on how large the Undercity is. It costs me somewhere between 2-3k usually.

Ahhh ok, thanks that's really helpful to know. I'm kinda shocked at how little downside there seems to be to Under-Empire. I seeded maybe a handful of cities with +food, +income and the 5% chance to spread and I've got half of the map going now. My income and food production is ridiculous even with 6 full stacks running around. Skaven is just bonkers.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
At the very end of my Skaven campaign, I kinda got lazy and totally forgot about the Vortex bullshit. The High Elves finished their ritual so I need to knock them out of the race but I keep getting trounced by Tyrion.

My army composition is:

Skrolk, Warlock-Engineer, Assassin, 2x Ratling Weapons Team, 2x Warp Lightning Cannon, 3x Plague Catapult, 2x Hell Pit Abomination and a mix of Stormvermin Shields/Halberds.

Their poo poo is a mixture of High Elf cheese - 4 phoenix/dragons, 5 phoenix guard, 2 bolt throwers and greatswords/LSGs. I just can't beat them even with Mazmundi reinforcing and my summon spam. Their units are so loving strong and even when flanked can take mine. Tyrion is pretty leveled and even when my Assassin and Skrolk team up on him he keeps them occupied long enough that poo poo falls apart elsewhere.

I'm going to go back to an earlier save and try to have a better army comp. How do I out cheese the Elves? Do I need a lot of ranged spam and if so what? Poison Globes?

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
I'll give that a shot, thanks guys.

quote:

This raises the worrying thought that you might have fought an entire campaign using a line of stormvermin and that you haven't been doing donuts in the enemy formation on your warp bikes while ratling guns shoot everything.

Haha well it is my first Skaven campaign and I was doing super well up until this point, I didn't really experiment much.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

I could post a screenshot of how I set up my battleline when I do another battle tonight, if you would like.

I know some people find sitting and shooting boring but for some reason I really enjoy managing the gunline in such a way to make sure I never get engaged in melee and thus take as few casualties as possible. Watching the battle in slowmo as the Ratlings are all unloading while Plagueclaw and Warp Lighting fire is arcing overhead is just art to me.

That would be cool if you don't mind posting an example. I ended up finishing my Skaven vortex campaign but I'm probably going to do an Ikit ME run next so it would be helpful.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

Alright, took me longer than I expected, but here we are:


I hope this does it justice - they are facing the bottom right-hand side of the picture.

I tried to highlight that I bunch up my siege engines and Jezzails inside the range of the Warlock Engineer's "Ballistics Calibration" AoE. I wait to pop that till the Jezzails start shooting. The Warlock Engineer never moves unless I need him to help a flank or kill a powerful lord but that is more of a "Break Glass In Case of Emergency" move than a usual thing.

The "front line" is two Ratling Guns, a Warpfire Thrower, then two more Ratling Guns. Notice the Warpfire Throwers are hidden - they have the "Sniper Cloak" that you unlock in the Forbidden Workshop, which grants missile damage bonus and Stalk. They are a nice fun surprise for anything that gets too close.

Ikit is on a Perfect Vigour Doomwheel and I use him to distract the enemy army early on by rolling up and dropping some Warp Lightning and Brass Orbs. I dont actually engage but he gets close enough to, say, get their archers to stop long enough to try to shoot and thus be more susceptible to Warp Lightning.

I tend to use the Warp Lightning Cannons on cav first, especially if it is heavy cav, and definitely if it is god drat Grail Knights. Otherwise they shoot lords or tight clumps of heavily armored things. Plagueclaws shoot at tight clumps of infantry, usually at least weakening archers first so I do not receive return ranged fire once said archers get in range.

Jezzails also shoot cav and/or lords or heroes, depending on the enemy army comp - Cav always dies first. They will shoot enemy ranged units too, especially if they have AP ranged units.

Ratlings sit tight until things get close enough. I try to shoot at things on the flanks first since I have the Surprise Warpfire team hidden in the center.

The Doomflayers are kinda a wildcard right now. I needed them early in the game to distract units and kill archers, but that its turn ~55 and I have Ikit up to level 30+, I have all the skills I need to make this army a murder machine. They are still good at flanking or going after weaker/non-anti-large infantry but that isnt even needed half the time anymore.

I am debating swapping the Clanrat Spear+Shield units for more Jezzails or something. They usually only ever do anything if I am fighting two stacks.

I'm still debating on keeping the Assassin - I mainly have him because I am usually quite bad at this game and I am trying out this one on hard, so I expected to be taking more losses and the Assassin has casualty replenishment. He is super effective at helping to kill enemy lords and/or heroes, but cant really do it on his own because of low armor and low Melee Defense. But he is great if you have him join in a melee to go after a powerful unit.

edit: here is poetry in motion against a town garrison:


Awesome! I love fully gun mode!


edit2:
I just spent the past ~8 turns sacking each of these settlements and installing an undercity and man does it feel good to be a rich ratman:


Thanks man, I will give some of this a whirl later.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
I ran into that Gotrek & Felix bug earlier and thought it was going to ruin my campaign. I eventually had to hammer quicksave when the end of it triggered and then reload the game otherwise it was stuck in a turn you could not end.

I decided to give Alith Anar a shot because he looked interesting. Get about 70 turns into it and Naggarond wardecs me (while hes doing the ritual no less!), I say fine and take about half of his territory and chaos razes another quarter of it. Then comes at me with 8 full stacks out of nowhere. Basically walked right over my poo poo and no amount of ambushing is going to help stop the endless wave. He's also fielding 2 of those black ark things. I look at his economy and this is impossible, how the gently caress? Like he should be in negative upkeep at 4 stacks.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
I just don't see how the math shakes out on that but fair enough. It's a campaign ender for me and I don't see how I could've avoided it. I went back and he wardecs me no matter what and if I don't come for him, he comes for me. Even with prep time its just too much, my economy only supports 2 stacks and lightning strike/ambush only help so much. Just a bunch of wasted time. I guess I can go sail for Ulthuan or something while I still have a few cities left. I guess his Hard start was no joke. I think next time I'll just push southwest to the Lizards and try to buddy up with them.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
My buddy picked up Warhammer 1 in the recent sale and I've been doing a co-op campaign with him. We both played Bretonnian factions, this is my first try with one and man it is boring. 6 building slots in capitals really blows and whats with all of the build restrictions on their low tier stuff? Sorry you need to build a cellar hahah. The peasantry limitations are annoying considering all of their infantry seems to be peasant based. Trebs are super inaccurate and their cavalry is solid but frankly I don't love Cav anyway, too easy to bog down. I don't know, maybe I'm just not getting these guys but I'm really looking forward to the end of this campaign so I can convince him to play Dwarves or something instead.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe

fool_of_sound posted:

Bret demands that you learn how to micro shock cavalry effectively. That's all there is to it. Peasants exist for bows, and men-at-arms exist to protect your bows. The rest is various flavors of shock cavalry. I find Bret crazy boring cause the do exactly one thing, but on the other hand I feel mostly the same about dwarves.

I'm not having problems winning battles with them thankfully. We took out The Red Duke, confederated the rest of Bretonnia and took over Marienburg. Now we're off to face the Elves in the east which is going to suck but whatever. I'm just surprised at how mediocre the faction is overall and how much attention it needs to bring it up to the others I've played in 1 & 2. It seems to run on a system of negatives - peasant economy, skill reqs for some units and tech research for every enemy. The garrisons you get are the absolute worst and you can't really improve them due to bizarre requirements in other low tier buildings. The legendary lord skill trees seem really average at best too.

The co-op campaign victory wants 80 territories though (we're at 26) and my buddy insists on finishing this so I guess I will buckle down :(

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe

Hungry posted:

Despite nearly 300 hours in Total Hams 2 by now, I still struggle to use Empire effectively in actual battles, whereas with Dwarfs I can stomp two Greenskin doomstacks with one army. I suspect playstyle means a lot, so I'd recommend trying out some other factions until you find something that works for you.

You can get pretty crazy with advanced formations, hammer/anvil and poo poo but what really works wonders is just putting a few lords/heroes out front to tank. Basically any unit with a small actual unit size/count that the enemy will blob around, needs to be able to take some punishment. Just Franz alone is great for this. Then just murder them with your guns. Take your LL through the redline to buff guns/archers. Have a few infantry units to deal with enemy cavalry or any stragglers that slip through. Tech to artillery, usually kill half of them before they even arrive. I win every battle this way on Very Hard.

Oh and turn off Skirmish mode. You don't want your gunline running away prematurely. Just babysit your front line and move up infantry reserves if they start to get through then reposition the gunline to fire on their flank. Guns kill poo poo SO fast when they have an unobstructed view.

This is even easier with the Skaven. Most of my Skaven armies now are pretty much guns/lightning cannons and 4 doom flayers.

The Gunslinger fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Nov 18, 2019

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
I don't know they pulled off these turn times but it's roughly 80% faster on my 3900x in Mortal Empires. Vortex goes by so quickly I can barely register the names. Just loving well done CA.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
Doing Vortex with Eshin, you have some serious food supply problems if you don't immediately go south and grab Tlaqua with its food unique from the lizards. I have never previously come close to 0 food but after running wild across the northwest I was out of food for a good 15 turns even with the missions and etc. Over-expansion totally my fault. It was worth it though, finished off Arkhan, the dwarves, humans and I'm about to declare on Khemri next now that my food supply is secured.

I also can't believe how fast Snikch levels up, I'm like turn 50 and close to max level.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
Instant Quest Battles doesn't work with the new lords I think. I've tried all 3 and their questlines just never fire. Just a FYI to anyone who uses this, one of the few QOL mods I use because loving traipsing all over the map to get some dumb quest to trigger in Mortal Empires.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe

gently caress, thank you for that confederation one. I'm so sick of Empire/Dwarf confederating so quickly.

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe

1st_Panzer_Div. posted:

Start anywhere mod is incredible. Ikit-Claw Strolk in Marionberg :getin:

What is the actual mod name? I can't seem to google this.

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The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
So I did it, I finally managed to finish a Mortal Empires campaign thanks to the new turn times. In theory it would end anyway but I'm at turn 176, I've painted 1/2 of the loving world from Naggarond to Lustria to the HElf Donut and yet no Chaos Invasion event triggers. I know I won and its silly but it would've been somewhat amusing to see Franz and his 20 doomstacks he has sitting up near the wastes take them out in a few turns. I've got a very modest modlist that's all non-scripting stuff (One Button Respec for LL, change starting position, skip intros) so I'm confused why the event never fired, I easily own 100 settlements. In past games it triggered at like turn 100 and/or 30 settlements owned. Anyone else run into this?

Oh and I had the best loving battle with Mazdamundi on Very Hard difficulty. He brought a full stack of endgame dino poo poo and it came down to the last few units, loving awesome fighting the Lizardmen.

The Gunslinger fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Dec 30, 2019

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