Karak Kadrin has facerolled all opposition in this playthrough, annihilating & occupying Zhufbar, razing almost every VC holding (Chaos are undoubtedly about to finish off the remainder) and now chipping away at the Schwartzhafen.
I'm tempted to just sit back and watch what happens when Archeon spawns. If they steer in Kadrin territory, I don't at all doubt that Kadrin's stacks will outright murder the lot of them without me having to lift a finger.
I finished my old VC game! Apparently I'd selected short campaign and didn't have to kill the dwarves.
Actually, you don't have to select anything. You just keep playing from that point for the Long Campaign goals.
Probably best to stick to short though on VC unless the Dwarfs got their asses handed to them early. having to inch across the badlands to wipe out the last of them is not very fun.
I started out by attacking the Varg (who were my big problem) until they sued for peace with 4 or 5 settlements remaining. They haven't been a problem since. Then the Skaeling declared war so I had a pretty long campaign against them that ended with them eradicated. I can't quite be fucked to go back out and take out the Varg.
After that I disbanded, took over all the lost settlements and built up a ton. I bribed the Western Brettonia forces into alliances and fought off half hearted Greenskins incursions (the dwarves eventually finished them off*). Once I was in full face roll mode I wanted to kill the Border Princes but they were allied with the dwarves. I gave the dwarves a huge payout and after two turns they not only broke their alliance but actually declared war. That was a pretty quick one. Now I have my "allies" in the west in a pincer movement, since I took the north of Brettonia. I'm thinking of just building enough armies that I can siege the entire remaining world of man at once. I think I'd need twelve, I have about six and am making 40k a turn. If that worked out ok, I'd try and push the same strategy with the dwarves (I'd need 25). I don't think my loosy goosey VC units would do great against ironbreakers.
*if I had a nickle for every time I've heard that
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Golden YakBurnished BovineThe sunny beaches of CanadaRegistered Userregular
How are the VC for doing political stuff and making alliances? Because actually, now that I think about it, they should be pretty good, lorewise vampires have all kinds of agents and spies and things spread out everywhere, they should be able to influence at least humans into doing what they want. Vampire mind-control, promises of immortality and what not, all buys them plenty of influence canonically.
Just decided to end my Greenskin campaign. So much fun WAAAGH'NG it up. Highlight for me came during the Chaos invasion.
As Empire, the other factions curbstomped Archaon for me. Only one Chaos stack reached my lands, with Archaon, and I shattered him, eliminating Warriors of Chaos. So as Greenskins, I pretty much ignored them. Zufbar and the areas near the VC's were mine due to a confederation and I had sent Grimgor around to begin annihilating 'DEM DEAD Tingz.
Alas, I slowly noticed ruins appearing. Chaos had come. They drove through the Vampires and 4 full stacks poured through Blackfire Pass. They began to spread out, inching into my lands and spreading towards the Border Princes.
I was out of position with Grimgor in the mountains. I delayed and Chaos splitting two stacks off to ravage the Border Princes slowed them down enough for me to reposition Grimgor and pull my own stacks North (I had JUST finished completely conquering the Badlands with my other armies).
I trapped Chaos in between Grimgor's stack and my returning southern forces at Blackfire pass. The battle was epic and resulted in only Kholek escaping north. After victory, the two Chaos stacks that went for the Border Princes returned and I barely finished them off.
Was quite a feeling. Granted, Archaon returned later as I didn't fully eliminate them, but by that point I was far too powerful.
XBL: Bizazedo
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
Unfortunately they are awful because of aversion penalties. They can get +10 from research but aversion can be as high as -40, depending on race and possibly difficulty level(?).
You can still make friends by teaming up on Chaos a lot of course, just don't expect it to last.
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
There's an interesting mod that went up recently, adding all of the tabletop HQ units (army leaders/Lords) into the game. Not legendary lords, just regular lords for your armies, stuff like Bright Wizard Lords or Dwarf Runesmith lords.
Not that I have ever seen unfortunately, it must be very hard or impossible to do because I imagine any respec mod would shoot to the top of the popularity rankings.
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
Vampire Counts don't have access to global recruitment.
How is this problem best solved?
Build recruitment buildings in more provinces?
Have lords that are really just transport armies to refill the frontline armies?
Send a new army to hold the frontline while your frontline army goes home to recruit?
Raise Dead is your global recruitment; whereever there is a battle marker on the map, that region will let you raise better units, depending on the size of the battle and IIRC your best recruitment buildings factionwide.
Because of that, don't worry if you get into a massive battle you probablly can't win; if you give them a good beating before losing, that battle will almost certainly leave a marker that will let you recruit things like vargulfs and Grave guard without having to lay down a single production building.
Can you raise anything you can recruit? Or are there some exceptions?
You can raise anything regardless of whether or not you have buildings to recruit them. But things are cheaper the more recruitment buildings you have. I am unsure if it scales with army size or not.
Slamming a bunch of zombies into an enemy to rack up the casualty rates is not a bad strategy as VC. Just try to salvage the lords at the end by keeping them close enough to the edge of the screen to retreat.
Edit: 2 stacks of zombies in ultra is at least 6080 casualties just waiting to happen. They cost 150 cash apiece right? So this army costs 5700 plus lords to put together. Probably cheaper than buying recruitment buildings all things considered.
Sorry, no.
Total war supports database modding, making it fairly easy to add assets, alter skills etc. However, resetting skillpoints would be a functionality mod. Not supported.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
It's just me and the dwarves now after they rolled the Varg. We're uh... Kind of looking uneasily at each other now. I'm massing as many troops and heroes as I can for the inevitable shitshow. They have 24 settlements!
Does anyone else find they mentally assign personalities to their lords based on their performance? Like I have a rickety old necromancer who holds the west side of the map as a troubleshooter (puts down rebellions etc) but is never part of any offensives and I can't help but think of him as a grumpy old grandpa. Especially since he never loses a fight.
Conversely Manfred had a bad run of always being in the wrong place at the wrong time and missing the fight and now I think of him as kind of a dumbass.
Also! I wish I had started embedding vampires and wight lords into armies much earlier, because it seems like they can really shitkick as the levels go up. For smaller fights I now mostly use the heroes.
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
In my dorf campaign I would often send just my shit-kicker heroes and ranged units out to smaller fights. I once held off half a stack of chaos units with just that combo. They really wanted to kill my heros. So much that they turned their backs to my artillery and ranged units.
Does anyone else find they mentally assign personalities to their lords based on their performance? Like I have a rickety old necromancer who holds the west side of the map as a troubleshooter (puts down rebellions etc) but is never part of any offensives and I can't help but think of him as a grumpy old grandpa. Especially since he never loses a fight.
Conversely Manfred had a bad run of always being in the wrong place at the wrong time and missing the fight and now I think of him as kind of a dumbass.
Also! I wish I had started embedding vampires and wight lords into armies much earlier, because it seems like they can really shitkick as the levels go up. For smaller fights I now mostly use the heroes.
Yes.
I...I may of even had a few Lords I though of as myself.
One thing I really hope they add in a future DLC is the ability to play minor factions and fleshing them out (I know there's a mod for that but it seems a bit buggy currently).
A big part of what makes the older games like Medieval good as well as other grand strategy games like Europa Universalis is for advanced players to take small insignificant nations in horrible starting positions and make something grand out of them (or just survive against horrible odds).
I think it would be enough with even small modifications for most generic factions and just slightly larger ones for Bretonia, Border Princes, Tilea and Kislev.
Things like adding unique legendary lords (can look very much like generic ones but some different traits), quest battles, unique short victory conditions and slight changes to units like some units being buffed (there has to be a Slayer focused dwarf faction, or a traditionalist one etc) or changes to upkeep (+/-) as well as some cosmetic changes to general troops (shields and uniform color for empire factions as an example).
All in all it should be a rather easy DLC to make but it would add a TON of replay-ability to the game.
So, they had a twitch stream yesterday showing the mini-campaign. Pretty cool seeing all of it in action.
I know some people like @ObiFett was wondering, at least on the campaign, why Beastmen weren't the greatest faction ever with their own underway, a Waaagh! mechanic, invisible encampments, and a chance for ambush battles when attacking, and I'll tell you what it is.
Beastmen have no March stance.
So if you have multiple hostile stacks running nearby, you got to be really sneaky with encampment stance and Beast paths to get to where you want to go, because you won't be able to chase down anyone, nor be 100% certain you can escape being surround by marching away as far as you can.
Also, Beastmen ambush are kinda different from regular ambushes. Instead of surrounding them from all sides in their marching formation, you can only deploy on one flank, so with quick action, the ambushee might be able to reform and protect their missile and arty. They do take place in the awesome beast paths map though.
And the Doombull, on top of being basically a monsterous infantry melee hero (empire swordsmen come up to his knees), has two sets of mutually-exclusive army-wide buffs that they can pick up. One is increasing the armor or weapon damage of the entire army, the other is leadership or another options, which they never moused over, but from the name and the icon probably has something about horde growth/replenishment/upkeep.
I like the idea of random events to spice up the game, but the +20 weapon damage and +20 charge to all armies... come on.
It looks like the intensity of the possible bonuses are also random, while the penalty is mostly the same. They moused over the Bestial Rage and reinforcement bonuses several times, and the amount of rage per turn or casualty replenishment changed with almost every moon, but every time the penalty was +33% to upkeep and -20 horde growth respectively.
It also looks like you have to pick one of the bonuses, which can lead to the two sets of extremes seen in the livestream: one where there is an insane combat buff right before a major battle, and one where none of the bonuses you want are really useful or necessary, so you have to pick the one with the least disruptive drawback for what you are about to do.
One thing I really hope they add in a future DLC is the ability to play minor factions and fleshing them out (I know there's a mod for that but it seems a bit buggy currently).
A big part of what makes the older games like Medieval good as well as other grand strategy games like Europa Universalis is for advanced players to take small insignificant nations in horrible starting positions and make something grand out of them (or just survive against horrible odds).
I think it would be enough with even small modifications for most generic factions and just slightly larger ones for Bretonia, Border Princes, Tilea and Kislev.
Things like adding unique legendary lords (can look very much like generic ones but some different traits), quest battles, unique short victory conditions and slight changes to units like some units being buffed (there has to be a Slayer focused dwarf faction, or a traditionalist one etc) or changes to upkeep (+/-) as well as some cosmetic changes to general troops (shields and uniform color for empire factions as an example).
All in all it should be a rather easy DLC to make but it would add a TON of replay-ability to the game.
This would be cool, but my impression has been that they are happy to let this part of the game be fleshed out by player made mods. They have a video series covering mods on the official Total War channel, the last one showcasing a faction expansion mod for Estalia, Tilea and Border princes including custom units, techs and building chains. It even explicitly mentions the faction unlocker mod being necessary, which I find pretty interesting. That leaves out unique legendary lords and quest battles, but I'm still happy to see them embracing and actively encouraging player mods that in some sense can be said to directly compete with their paid DLC content, while focusing their own efforts on adding the more unique, development-heavy factions.
I'm holding off on starting a new campaign until I've got the DLC and the new patch is out.
Definitely doing the Beastmen mini campaign first.
Also I've have my first SSD soon so I'm looking forward to slightly faster loading times!
I'm strongly considering the DLC just because I assume that Beastmen will fight similarly to Skaven when (not if damnit) are released - lots of massed disposable infantry
I would think so, as well as some monster units and fingers crossed a Screaming Bell and Doom Wheels. It would be nice if somehow you got hero units (Assassins) that could hide inside of regular units like you could tabletop back in the day. Should have some kicking wizards too.
So overpowered heals for VC is kind of broken. You can have a battle, then cluster everyone together and bring them back to full strength while the enemy routs. But the caster in the middle and if he mis casts he gets healed anyway. Most of my battles are 0 losses now.
I almost won a Long Victory on Empire by turn 100, then Archaeon showed up right as I was sieging the last town I needed to finalize my glorious reunification of the Empire. Time to kill me an Archaeon, I guess.
I'm on Normal, I'm kind of just learning the game right now. Gonna switch races and bump it up to Hard for my next run.
So overpowered heals for VC is kind of broken. You can have a battle, then cluster everyone together and bring them back to full strength while the enemy routs. But the caster in the middle and if he mis casts he gets healed anyway. Most of my battles are 0 losses now.
So overpowered heals for VC is kind of broken. You can have a battle, then cluster everyone together and bring them back to full strength while the enemy routs. But the caster in the middle and if he mis casts he gets healed anyway. Most of my battles are 0 losses now.
Dang I keep forgetting about over casting.
How do you cast so much and so often?
If you save most of your magic (and most spells seem to be trash for VC) you have enough for two or three casts easy. That's all it takes, and the spell overcast is just 11 mana
What kind of difficulty is everyone playing on?
I'm usually playing on hard. I tried very hard but the battle buffs just get to crazy for the AI just like in previous total war games. I just don't like seeing my elite units get into even fights with tier 1 enemy units. It's doable but you have to be real careful which makes the game less fun for me.
My first game was normal then I went up to hard and very hard. I've done one on legendary.
I think the campaign layer is easy, which makes the battles pretty easy because even if I can't win a fight I can throw more units at it thanks to my economy. I've never been great at TW games though, this one seems easier than previous versions.
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
Just got my first Empire victory! 118 turns on normal. I guess I should bump it up to hard for my next run, maybe I'll do greenskins or chaos.
I did mine in 120
Curiously, I think that Empire might be the easiest victory to get quickly because reuniting the Empire with alliances is pitifully simple once Archy and the not ready for prime time players show up.
And if you've killed off the VCs early (which I confederated Stirland and did) then the alliances are all that's left.
I find the idea of wiping out two factions (with VCs) or uniting the scattered dwarfs (that you don't actually have diplomatic contact with until later) to be much more time consuming.
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
So overpowered heals for VC is kind of broken. You can have a battle, then cluster everyone together and bring them back to full strength while the enemy routs. But the caster in the middle and if he mis casts he gets healed anyway. Most of my battles are 0 losses now.
Dang I keep forgetting about over casting.
How do you cast so much and so often?
If you save most of your magic (and most spells seem to be trash for VC) you have enough for two or three casts easy. That's all it takes, and the spell overcast is just 11 mana
Invocation of Nehek is pretty much the best spell from Lore of Vampires.
But Lore of Death (Vampire Heroes&Manfred) has several very powerful spells. Spirit Leech, Doom&Darkness, Soulblight and Fate of Bjuna are all extremely powerful when hitting the right target.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Posts
I'm tempted to just sit back and watch what happens when Archeon spawns. If they steer in Kadrin territory, I don't at all doubt that Kadrin's stacks will outright murder the lot of them without me having to lift a finger.
Actually, you don't have to select anything. You just keep playing from that point for the Long Campaign goals.
Probably best to stick to short though on VC unless the Dwarfs got their asses handed to them early. having to inch across the badlands to wipe out the last of them is not very fun.
After that I disbanded, took over all the lost settlements and built up a ton. I bribed the Western Brettonia forces into alliances and fought off half hearted Greenskins incursions (the dwarves eventually finished them off*). Once I was in full face roll mode I wanted to kill the Border Princes but they were allied with the dwarves. I gave the dwarves a huge payout and after two turns they not only broke their alliance but actually declared war. That was a pretty quick one. Now I have my "allies" in the west in a pincer movement, since I took the north of Brettonia. I'm thinking of just building enough armies that I can siege the entire remaining world of man at once. I think I'd need twelve, I have about six and am making 40k a turn. If that worked out ok, I'd try and push the same strategy with the dwarves (I'd need 25). I don't think my loosy goosey VC units would do great against ironbreakers.
*if I had a nickle for every time I've heard that
As Empire, the other factions curbstomped Archaon for me. Only one Chaos stack reached my lands, with Archaon, and I shattered him, eliminating Warriors of Chaos. So as Greenskins, I pretty much ignored them. Zufbar and the areas near the VC's were mine due to a confederation and I had sent Grimgor around to begin annihilating 'DEM DEAD Tingz.
Alas, I slowly noticed ruins appearing. Chaos had come. They drove through the Vampires and 4 full stacks poured through Blackfire Pass. They began to spread out, inching into my lands and spreading towards the Border Princes.
I was out of position with Grimgor in the mountains. I delayed and Chaos splitting two stacks off to ravage the Border Princes slowed them down enough for me to reposition Grimgor and pull my own stacks North (I had JUST finished completely conquering the Badlands with my other armies).
I trapped Chaos in between Grimgor's stack and my returning southern forces at Blackfire pass. The battle was epic and resulted in only Kholek escaping north. After victory, the two Chaos stacks that went for the Border Princes returned and I barely finished them off.
Was quite a feeling. Granted, Archaon returned later as I didn't fully eliminate them, but by that point I was far too powerful.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
You can still make friends by teaming up on Chaos a lot of course, just don't expect it to last.
I'm probably going to try it out later today, but they've put all the details up on a google docs sheet https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cAPBWrYcrsxf1NuNje_DMbGTDuKxv5-GFFomK04Syo0/edit
It's only Empire lords at the moment, but they're supposedly putting a lot of emphasis on getting them balanced with the existing stuff.
You can raise anything regardless of whether or not you have buildings to recruit them. But things are cheaper the more recruitment buildings you have. I am unsure if it scales with army size or not.
Slamming a bunch of zombies into an enemy to rack up the casualty rates is not a bad strategy as VC. Just try to salvage the lords at the end by keeping them close enough to the edge of the screen to retreat.
@Rami
@Ivar
Edit: 2 stacks of zombies in ultra is at least 6080 casualties just waiting to happen. They cost 150 cash apiece right? So this army costs 5700 plus lords to put together. Probably cheaper than buying recruitment buildings all things considered.
Sorry, no.
Total war supports database modding, making it fairly easy to add assets, alter skills etc. However, resetting skillpoints would be a functionality mod. Not supported.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Conversely Manfred had a bad run of always being in the wrong place at the wrong time and missing the fight and now I think of him as kind of a dumbass.
Also! I wish I had started embedding vampires and wight lords into armies much earlier, because it seems like they can really shitkick as the levels go up. For smaller fights I now mostly use the heroes.
Yes.
I...I may of even had a few Lords I though of as myself.
I am a nerd.
A big part of what makes the older games like Medieval good as well as other grand strategy games like Europa Universalis is for advanced players to take small insignificant nations in horrible starting positions and make something grand out of them (or just survive against horrible odds).
I think it would be enough with even small modifications for most generic factions and just slightly larger ones for Bretonia, Border Princes, Tilea and Kislev.
Things like adding unique legendary lords (can look very much like generic ones but some different traits), quest battles, unique short victory conditions and slight changes to units like some units being buffed (there has to be a Slayer focused dwarf faction, or a traditionalist one etc) or changes to upkeep (+/-) as well as some cosmetic changes to general troops (shields and uniform color for empire factions as an example).
All in all it should be a rather easy DLC to make but it would add a TON of replay-ability to the game.
I know some people like @ObiFett was wondering, at least on the campaign, why Beastmen weren't the greatest faction ever with their own underway, a Waaagh! mechanic, invisible encampments, and a chance for ambush battles when attacking, and I'll tell you what it is.
Beastmen have no March stance.
So if you have multiple hostile stacks running nearby, you got to be really sneaky with encampment stance and Beast paths to get to where you want to go, because you won't be able to chase down anyone, nor be 100% certain you can escape being surround by marching away as far as you can.
Also, Beastmen ambush are kinda different from regular ambushes. Instead of surrounding them from all sides in their marching formation, you can only deploy on one flank, so with quick action, the ambushee might be able to reform and protect their missile and arty. They do take place in the awesome beast paths map though.
And the Doombull, on top of being basically a monsterous infantry melee hero (empire swordsmen come up to his knees), has two sets of mutually-exclusive army-wide buffs that they can pick up. One is increasing the armor or weapon damage of the entire army, the other is leadership or another options, which they never moused over, but from the name and the icon probably has something about horde growth/replenishment/upkeep.
It looks like the intensity of the possible bonuses are also random, while the penalty is mostly the same. They moused over the Bestial Rage and reinforcement bonuses several times, and the amount of rage per turn or casualty replenishment changed with almost every moon, but every time the penalty was +33% to upkeep and -20 horde growth respectively.
It also looks like you have to pick one of the bonuses, which can lead to the two sets of extremes seen in the livestream: one where there is an insane combat buff right before a major battle, and one where none of the bonuses you want are really useful or necessary, so you have to pick the one with the least disruptive drawback for what you are about to do.
Definitely doing the Beastmen mini campaign first.
Also I've have my first SSD soon so I'm looking forward to slightly faster loading times!
This would be cool, but my impression has been that they are happy to let this part of the game be fleshed out by player made mods. They have a video series covering mods on the official Total War channel, the last one showcasing a faction expansion mod for Estalia, Tilea and Border princes including custom units, techs and building chains. It even explicitly mentions the faction unlocker mod being necessary, which I find pretty interesting. That leaves out unique legendary lords and quest battles, but I'm still happy to see them embracing and actively encouraging player mods that in some sense can be said to directly compete with their paid DLC content, while focusing their own efforts on adding the more unique, development-heavy factions.
I mean you can rename generic Lords to whatever you want... So I think it's encouraged.
You can even rename units, to have your own version of Immortulz.
I'm strongly considering the DLC just because I assume that Beastmen will fight similarly to Skaven when (not if damnit) are released - lots of massed disposable infantry
I'm on Normal, I'm kind of just learning the game right now. Gonna switch races and bump it up to Hard for my next run.
Dang I keep forgetting about over casting.
How do you cast so much and so often?
If you save most of your magic (and most spells seem to be trash for VC) you have enough for two or three casts easy. That's all it takes, and the spell overcast is just 11 mana
I'm usually playing on hard. I tried very hard but the battle buffs just get to crazy for the AI just like in previous total war games. I just don't like seeing my elite units get into even fights with tier 1 enemy units. It's doable but you have to be real careful which makes the game less fun for me.
I think the campaign layer is easy, which makes the battles pretty easy because even if I can't win a fight I can throw more units at it thanks to my economy. I've never been great at TW games though, this one seems easier than previous versions.
I did mine in 120
Curiously, I think that Empire might be the easiest victory to get quickly because reuniting the Empire with alliances is pitifully simple once Archy and the not ready for prime time players show up.
And if you've killed off the VCs early (which I confederated Stirland and did) then the alliances are all that's left.
I find the idea of wiping out two factions (with VCs) or uniting the scattered dwarfs (that you don't actually have diplomatic contact with until later) to be much more time consuming.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Invocation of Nehek is pretty much the best spell from Lore of Vampires.
But Lore of Death (Vampire Heroes&Manfred) has several very powerful spells. Spirit Leech, Doom&Darkness, Soulblight and Fate of Bjuna are all extremely powerful when hitting the right target.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden