There is going to be some free DLC, mostly new magical lores, heroes and units, though there is suppose to be a couple legendary lords and a full race (likely Bretonnia, as they already have a unique army, even though they aren't playable in the grand campaign)
For the paid stuff, it'll mostly be legendary lords and races, likely just those that live mainly in the Old World (so like Beastmen, or Kislev being expanded from Not-Empire to a full race), some of the latter coming with their own mini-campiagns (though they'll still be made playable in the grand campaign.)
After races and locations beyond the Old World... Last I heard, they were planning on going the Relic route, with two planned stand-alone expansions/sequels that combine to make even larger Grand Campaigns. Like the next expac/game might be the New World, with High Elves, Dark Elves, Lizardmen and something else (don't know enough Warhammer to know what else might work) and you can play it by itself, or if you have the base game link it up for a Grand Campaign that straddles both continents.
There is going to be some free DLC, mostly new magical lores, heroes and units, though there is suppose to be a couple legendary lords and a full race (likely Bretonnia, as they already have a unique army, even though they aren't playable in the grand campaign)
For the paid stuff, it'll mostly be legendary lords and races, likely just those that live mainly in the Old World (so like Beastmen, or Kislev being expanded from Not-Empire to a full race), some of the latter coming with their own mini-campiagns (though they'll still be made playable in the grand campaign.)
After races and locations beyond the Old World... Last I heard, they were planning on going the Relic route, with two planned stand-alone expansions/sequels that combine to make even larger Grand Campaigns. Like the next expac/game might be the New World, with High Elves, Dark Elves, Lizardmen and something else (don't know enough Warhammer to know what else might work) and you can play it by itself, or if you have the base game link it up for a Grand Campaign that straddles both continents.
New World would probably be Skaven for the last race slot. Their Clan Pestilence is kinda the Lizardmen's arch-enemy. That would also provide a nice 2-2 split between order and disorder.
Having finally had a chance to dig into this, a couple of thoughts:
1) I'm enjoying it MUCH more than I thought I would. Wasn't too jazzed about the Warhammer universe, never really engaged that. Yeah, not a problem now. The game oozes environment and thematics.
2) Also really enjoying the mechanics. I like that the Vampires literally have zero missile troops. It makes you play a certain way, which contribute to the "feel" of playing them. Completely different from the dwarfs (which really SHOULD be spelled dwarves, but ok ok), who for a giant missile line and have nothing I've seen so far like cavalry. Which is different from the Empire, who has a very mixed force, but then limited magic early on, and none of your troops are better then other factions specialty, so you really need to use combined arms. Really enjoying that each faction isn't just a re-skin and that there aren't even "types" of reskins (barbarians, romans, greeks, persians, western feudal, eastern feudal, Arab and Turkish feudal, etc).
3) That said, have encountered the same issue with both the Empire as the Dwarfs, which is rapid expansion got me in both games to a point where my land was too big and my armies made up of troops that were too weak to handle shit when it got "real". Will probably try again and go deliberately slower. As annoying as that has been, it's also nice that a total "push to paint the map" or zerg strategy doesn't seem very viable like it always usually is in these games. And the differences between top tier and mid level troops is noticeable (at least it is when all my armies start losing and I have no money).
TLDR: It's good, it shakes up some of the standard Total War mechanics, and each faction is very unique.
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No-QuarterNothing To FearBut Fear ItselfRegistered Userregular
Started playing as Vampires, but then I switched to Orcs after I discovered how spiritually uplifting it is to watch Goblin Doomdivers plowing into enemy lines before Grimgor and da Boyz get stuck in.
GREEN IS BEST!
Gits.
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Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
Ugggghhh fuck OFF marienland! With your fuckin hero units and shit. I am gonna bring the iron fist of the Empire down on your heads like a goddamn storm.
I just played through my friendliest TW campaign ever. Most of the human factions and dwarves formed alliances, beat up on the orcs and vampires, then lived side by side with flourishing trade and public order, happy as can be. Then when Archeon showed up everyone sent some stacks up north and we whipped that chaos ass before it could even get anywhere. I guess there's much less animosity in warhammer than in real life.
I just played through my friendliest TW campaign ever. Most of the human factions and dwarves formed alliances, beat up on the orcs and vampires, then lived side by side with flourishing trade and public order, happy as can be. Then when Archeon showed up everyone sent some stacks up north and we whipped that chaos ass before it could even get anywhere. I guess there's much less animosity in warhammer than in real life.
Which is great unless you're playing as the vampires. A bunch of the humans and dwarves formed alliances to deal with the Chaos threat and remained allied after that and hated me despite the fact that I was the one who wiped out two stacks, finished off the other two stacks, and put a sword in Archeon's head.
Joke wound up being on them though as I cowed the Varg and Skaelings into making peace so they ignore me while their stacks continue hitting the human and dwarf factions but each time the humans and dwarfs cross my territory to try to reach the North they take attrition.
That's more Bretonia's thing really, the Empire's cavalry are decent but not the best, which sums up the empire really; they're not the best at anything but they don't have any real weaknesses either.
I just played through my friendliest TW campaign ever. Most of the human factions and dwarves formed alliances, beat up on the orcs and vampires, then lived side by side with flourishing trade and public order, happy as can be. Then when Archeon showed up everyone sent some stacks up north and we whipped that chaos ass before it could even get anywhere. I guess there's much less animosity in warhammer than in real life.
Which is great unless you're playing as the vampires. A bunch of the humans and dwarves formed alliances to deal with the Chaos threat and remained allied after that and hated me despite the fact that I was the one who wiped out two stacks, finished off the other two stacks, and put a sword in Archeon's head.
Joke wound up being on them though as I cowed the Varg and Skaelings into making peace so they ignore me while their stacks continue hitting the human and dwarf factions but each time the humans and dwarfs cross my territory to try to reach the North they take attrition.
See for me, chaos isn't at war with me. Don't know why, but I'm in an island of burned realms as they rampage, and I get to pick up free territory off of the broken remnants of imperial land.
Heinrich Kemmler is pleased.
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Golden YakBurnished BovineThe sunny beaches of CanadaRegistered Userregular
I just played through my friendliest TW campaign ever. Most of the human factions and dwarves formed alliances, beat up on the orcs and vampires, then lived side by side with flourishing trade and public order, happy as can be. Then when Archeon showed up everyone sent some stacks up north and we whipped that chaos ass before it could even get anywhere. I guess there's much less animosity in warhammer than in real life.
Yeah, I kinda wish that didn't happen, or if it did, to put off Archeon's first appearance for another 50-100 turns or so. While Chaos is the one thing that gets everyone to drop their infighting and actually work together in the lore, this golden age of unity also ends within five minutes of the last Warrior of Chaos getting impaled.
I'd like to see some kind of "old animosities" modifier that makes everyone remember they're suppose to hate each other after the invasion ends, and maybe see factions return to reclaim old territory if no one claims the ruins after X turns. Kislev and Ostermark were turned into a wasteland in my Empire game, their respective factions wiped out, and no one ever once bothered to show up and take them back for almost 50 turns before I decided to claim them.
After a few abortive attempts at a campaign I decided to sit down again tonight and give it another shot. First, I uninstalled the game from my optical drive and cleared up SSD space to reinstall it there and sweet fancy Moses was that ever a good idea. Loading times reduced to 20-30% of what they were before.
Read a few pages back in this thread and gleaned some useful TW campaign knowledge (I never really did much in Shogun 2 or Rome 2 other than online multiplayer) and I think I'm ready to go.
That's more Bretonia's thing really, the Empire's cavalry are decent but not the best, which sums up the empire really; they're not the best at anything but they don't have any real weaknesses either.
Lore-wise, maybe, but right now Demigryph Knights dominate all. Pound for pound they're better than even Grail Knights and the Halberd version will destroy virtually any monstrous units with no backup and only a couple of casualties.
I just played through my friendliest TW campaign ever. Most of the human factions and dwarves formed alliances, beat up on the orcs and vampires, then lived side by side with flourishing trade and public order, happy as can be. Then when Archeon showed up everyone sent some stacks up north and we whipped that chaos ass before it could even get anywhere. I guess there's much less animosity in warhammer than in real life.
Yeah, I kinda wish that didn't happen, or if it did, to put off Archeon's first appearance for another 50-100 turns or so. While Chaos is the one thing that gets everyone to drop their infighting and actually work together in the lore, this golden age of unity also ends within five minutes of the last Warrior of Chaos getting impaled.
I'd like to see some kind of "old animosities" modifier that makes everyone remember they're suppose to hate each other after the invasion ends, and maybe see factions return to reclaim old territory if no one claims the ruins after X turns. Kislev and Ostermark were turned into a wasteland in my Empire game, their respective factions wiped out, and no one ever once bothered to show up and take them back for almost 50 turns before I decided to claim them.
I don't think the AI knows how to reclaim razed territories. I certainly didn't until someone in here mentioned it was possible.
Also, I think the Vampires & Chaos need to form an alliance, since they both thrive off of disorder that every other faction is trying to stave off.
Which leads to another conundrum where if you ignore the south, the Greenskins will form a Waaagh!, and if you ignore the North, the winds of Chaos will blow a shitstorm down on your head. So if you allied factions cant hold their own shit together, you get double teamed.
That's more Bretonia's thing really, the Empire's cavalry are decent but not the best, which sums up the empire really; they're not the best at anything but they don't have any real weaknesses either.
The empire actually has a wider selection of various cavalry. The Brettonian cavalry is great, but it's all various types of heavy cavalry.
No equivalent of pistoliers or outriders. Once the elves arrive though they'll feature better light cavalry though.
They're definitely the most cavalry focused of our current factions though.
The empires real strength is variety. No other army can field good missile cavalry, good heavy cavalry and good artillery. I don't think any other faction features anti-armor missile cavalry either.
Their only real weakness is their lack of quality non-hero flying units.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Enjoying a co-op campaign with a friend of mine, slowly getting the hang of the game. Still think the way you upgrade buildings and what purpose they serve is confusing and a bit unclear. Kinda wish it had the Heroes Might & Magic city upgrade system.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
I wish it just went back to the Shogun 2 system and introduced the province system as a micromanagement streamliner by letting you create provinces out of 3 or 4 regions and stacking them on top of each other in the UI for easy management.
It's pretty much the biggest holdover from Rome 2 I really don't like.
The only buttons I really miss, is one that would let me cycle through all my Lords that still have movement. (similar to the Inactive unit button in Civilization)
The only buttons I really miss, is one that would let me cycle through all my Lords that still have movement. (similar to the Inactive unit button in Civilization)
I just played through my friendliest TW campaign ever. Most of the human factions and dwarves formed alliances, beat up on the orcs and vampires, then lived side by side with flourishing trade and public order, happy as can be. Then when Archeon showed up everyone sent some stacks up north and we whipped that chaos ass before it could even get anywhere. I guess there's much less animosity in warhammer than in real life.
Yeah, I kinda wish that didn't happen, or if it did, to put off Archeon's first appearance for another 50-100 turns or so. While Chaos is the one thing that gets everyone to drop their infighting and actually work together in the lore, this golden age of unity also ends within five minutes of the last Warrior of Chaos getting impaled.
I'd like to see some kind of "old animosities" modifier that makes everyone remember they're suppose to hate each other after the invasion ends, and maybe see factions return to reclaim old territory if no one claims the ruins after X turns. Kislev and Ostermark were turned into a wasteland in my Empire game, their respective factions wiped out, and no one ever once bothered to show up and take them back for almost 50 turns before I decided to claim them.
I don't think the AI knows how to reclaim razed territories. I certainly didn't until someone in here mentioned it was possible.
Also, I think the Vampires & Chaos need to form an alliance, since they both thrive off of disorder that every other faction is trying to stave off.
Which leads to another conundrum where if you ignore the south, the Greenskins will form a Waaagh!, and if you ignore the North, the winds of Chaos will blow a shitstorm down on your head. So if you allied factions cant hold their own shit together, you get double teamed.
The AI definitely knows how to reclaim razed territories. It does not prioritize doing so though whether it doesn't like the troop cost, the money cost, the calculations it does to figure out if the distance traveled is worth the risk, or some other factor.
After finishing up my first game as the vampires, I've started up as the dwarfs and it is very, very different. The lack of diplomacy and need for corruption made the Vampire strategic game very slow but you also didn't have any major enemies early on either. Dwarfs feel like they're fighting every orc faction within 10 turns of starting. On top of that, I have no clue how orcs decide to confederate with each other. Some tool tips suggested that they look for strength more than diplomacy yet every time I was doing damage to the main Greenskin faction they'd somehow convince another minor tribe to join them. They had some early victories before I got a handle on how to build up dwarf settlements but have consistently been losing generals and land since so I have no idea what kind of recruiting drive they're on.
The last minor orc faction didn't join them and has done well enough to now have a Waagh with them. Thankfully one of the dwarf lords I gained from confederating has Lightning Strike so hopefully that will let me perforate the Waagh stack. If not, I have 3 stacks in the area to their 2 anyway.
Anyone have experience with DLgamer? It looks like they have Total Warhammer at the lowest price. I'd like to grab it but I'm not familiar with the site.
Achieved a short campaign victory at last on my dwarfs. Spoiled for a long summary
Ironically I only need to take two more settlements for a long campaign victory, which my armies were about 2 turns from taking anyway because I wasn't allied with the only other dwarf civilization left
Took me 300 turns and 47 hours, because I was playing very slow and methodical, only expanding when i'd built up what I had already conquered and making sure I didn't lose a single battle, so no auto-resolving. So yes I could've won alot sooner. Fighting battles manually meant I'd win battles the auto-resolve would've made me lose, but also meant I spent alot of time slowly grinding down armies and trying to wipe them down to the last man, which is hard with no cavalry. also a lot of time spent fighting garrison armies when an auto-resolve would win much quicker. Lots of time building up the former human lands from the wasteland Chaos turned them into and waiting for money too.
Turns 0-70ish were fighting the Greenskins, got lucky when they decided their armies had things better to do than fight me, allowing me to take 3 whole provinces before they showed up.
Turns 70ish-110 were spent watching Chaos kill off Bretonnia and most of the Empire, meanwhile I disbanded my entire army, built up the former Greenskin lands to provide me with a great economy and rebuilt my army with better troops with more experience (thanks to bonuses from thanes. Replaced quarrellers and warriors with ironbreakers and thunderers (troops came from Karaz-A-Karak and guns from Barak Varr)
Turns 110 -210 were spent fighting Chaos, The Border Princes and Tilea. The 3 main stacks of Chaos went down within a few turns of reaching my armies (special mention to the 2 units of cannons who killed 1/4 of Archaons army as they trudged uphill towards me), then there was lots of chasing the various armies of Norscans while making sure they didn't sack any of the new settlements I was building.
Turns 210- 240 were sieging Estalian cities (once the armies from Tilea made the long walk there, because of the swamp blocking access between the two) because I couldn't be bothered to fight full strength armies of Estalians. also the estalians had settled Bretonnia once Chaos wiped them off the map
Turns 240-290 were fighting the Vampires, took 3 small cities in the first few turns of war, fought 1 army with 5 terrorgheists in the field, then lay siege to all their remaining cities as they each had an army with 5 more terrorgheists in them so decided to let attrition do the work for me. Also finally recruited Ungrim Ironfist my 2nd legendary lord.
Turns 290-300 bribed the last independant dwarfs into an alliance thereby winning the campaign (they were pissed because I didn't go to war with the Empire's 1 city, which I was using for trade, also the irony of humans being the fallen empire while dwarfs expanded everywhere. At this point I ruled everything from the Badlands to half of Norsca with 10 armies poised to invade the other half.
So game mvps, 2 of them: ironbreakers, and thunderers. Ironbreakers hardly ever died, and their grenades wrecked anything fighting charging them. Then attacking cities I'd send one unit in through a wall breach, wait for the enemy to clump up around it and then other ironbreakers would throw their grenades at the mass of bodies and wreck them. The ironbreakers would be fine, while anything lightly armoured (aka anything but dwarfs) got shredded.
Thunderers may have slightly less range than quarrellers but their armour piercing was using for fighting chaos and enemy generals while still doing plenty of damage. They won alot of battles for me, thanks to dwarfs being so short meant they could always shoot over ironbreaker's heads and into combat.
Cannons were great at taking out towers and breaching walls, while flame cannons are just hilarious when it comes to fighting large groups of lightly armoured infantry.
worst units: slayers, utterly useless. Their lack of armour means they die so easily, especially if they get caught up in ironbreaker grenade throwing or any long fight. Not needed versus trolls because trolls are weak to fire, so ironbreaker grenades do tons of damage while the ironbreakers actually stay alive fighting them. Also my armies ranged units do a better job of killing monsters (including the one time I fought a giant, it was just constantly being knocked over by cannon fire and never even made it within thunderer range.)
Worst things to fight? tough to say, chaos warriors are very tough, but the rest of chaos was garbage. Vampires had terrorghiests and vargheists (had to fight 20 terrorgheists in 4 armies fuck them). but their infantry is garbage and you can just kill the general and watch them crumble
The empire's artillery and handgunners were annoying as they could actually hurt ironbreakers thanks to armour piercing. So i'd say Chaos->Vampires/Empire->Greenskins.
Greenskins came last because goblins.
My army composition was 1 each of general, thane, runesmith and engineer, 8 ironbreakers, 6 thunderers and 2 cannons (or flame cannons). In the early game I used same numbers, but dwarf warriors, quarrelers and grudge throwers.
not sure which army to do next, maybe Vampires because with no range units its gonna be the opposite of the solid wall of defence backed by guns that dwarfs have
I'm enjoying the hell out of my Vampire Counts campaign so far. I expanded to just south of the Chaos Wastes, and let the not-Russia guys keep the provinces right on the border. They provided a nice buffer for me once the hordes started coming, but after Chaos laid waste to a few cities I decided it was time to enter the fight myself and start rebuilding some of the razed settlements. I took care of the initial waves, but now Archaeon and his buddies have spawned and the real fight is about to begin.
My greatest hope is that someone will love me enough to trade with me after taking out the Chaos stacks. Something tells me they wont, the ungrateful bastards.
I'm enjoying the hell out of my Vampire Counts campaign so far. I expanded to just south of the Chaos Wastes, and let the not-Russia guys keep the provinces right on the border. They provided a nice buffer for me once the hordes started coming, but after Chaos laid waste to a few cities I decided it was time to enter the fight myself and start rebuilding some of the razed settlements. I took care of the initial waves, but now Archaeon and his buddies have spawned and the real fight is about to begin.
My greatest hope is that someone will love me enough to trade with me after taking out the Chaos stacks. Something tells me they wont, the ungrateful bastards.
They won't. So you'll wipe out the Chaos stacks and end them, make peace with the Vargs and Skaelings, and then colonize cities they wipe out so you can start spreading corruption and lowering public order enough to cause rebellions in the province and take cities without needing to declare war on the 5 powers that ally to fight Chaos, fail at it, but still decide they're best friends.
I'm enjoying the hell out of my Vampire Counts campaign so far. I expanded to just south of the Chaos Wastes, and let the not-Russia guys keep the provinces right on the border. They provided a nice buffer for me once the hordes started coming, but after Chaos laid waste to a few cities I decided it was time to enter the fight myself and start rebuilding some of the razed settlements. I took care of the initial waves, but now Archaeon and his buddies have spawned and the real fight is about to begin.
My greatest hope is that someone will love me enough to trade with me after taking out the Chaos stacks. Something tells me they wont, the ungrateful bastards.
They won't. So you'll wipe out the Chaos stacks and end them, make peace with the Vargs and Skaelings, and then colonize cities they wipe out so you can start spreading corruption and lowering public order enough to cause rebellions in the province and take cities without needing to declare war on the 5 powers that ally to fight Chaos, fail at it, but still decide they're best friends.
The corruption mechanic has been awesome so far. I pumped growth early on, and have already had several huge vampire revolts take out some of the greenskin cities next to me. I will be more than happy to take the ruined provinces and corrupt the hell out of the rest of the world. I'm happy that there are so many mega-huge provinces close to the Counts starting area for maximum corruption spreading.
I just played through my friendliest TW campaign ever. Most of the human factions and dwarves formed alliances, beat up on the orcs and vampires, then lived side by side with flourishing trade and public order, happy as can be. Then when Archeon showed up everyone sent some stacks up north and we whipped that chaos ass before it could even get anywhere. I guess there's much less animosity in warhammer than in real life.
Yeah, I kinda wish that didn't happen, or if it did, to put off Archeon's first appearance for another 50-100 turns or so. While Chaos is the one thing that gets everyone to drop their infighting and actually work together in the lore, this golden age of unity also ends within five minutes of the last Warrior of Chaos getting impaled.
I'd like to see some kind of "old animosities" modifier that makes everyone remember they're suppose to hate each other after the invasion ends, and maybe see factions return to reclaim old territory if no one claims the ruins after X turns. Kislev and Ostermark were turned into a wasteland in my Empire game, their respective factions wiped out, and no one ever once bothered to show up and take them back for almost 50 turns before I decided to claim them.
I don't think the AI knows how to reclaim razed territories. I certainly didn't until someone in here mentioned it was possible.
Also, I think the Vampires & Chaos need to form an alliance, since they both thrive off of disorder that every other faction is trying to stave off.
Which leads to another conundrum where if you ignore the south, the Greenskins will form a Waaagh!, and if you ignore the North, the winds of Chaos will blow a shitstorm down on your head. So if you allied factions cant hold their own shit together, you get double teamed.
The AI definitely knows how to reclaim razed territories. It does not prioritize doing so though whether it doesn't like the troop cost, the money cost, the calculations it does to figure out if the distance traveled is worth the risk, or some other factor.
After finishing up my first game as the vampires, I've started up as the dwarfs and it is very, very different. The lack of diplomacy and need for corruption made the Vampire strategic game very slow but you also didn't have any major enemies early on either. Dwarfs feel like they're fighting every orc faction within 10 turns of starting. On top of that, I have no clue how orcs decide to confederate with each other. Some tool tips suggested that they look for strength more than diplomacy yet every time I was doing damage to the main Greenskin faction they'd somehow convince another minor tribe to join them. They had some early victories before I got a handle on how to build up dwarf settlements but have consistently been losing generals and land since so I have no idea what kind of recruiting drive they're on.
The last minor orc faction didn't join them and has done well enough to now have a Waagh with them. Thankfully one of the dwarf lords I gained from confederating has Lightning Strike so hopefully that will let me perforate the Waagh stack. If not, I have 3 stacks in the area to their 2 anyway.
I'm talking more about a faction being "reborn" and claiming the ruins that used to be part of their starting territory. I know minor factions can return- had Stirland reappear briefly to take over the Moot, only to be wiped out by the Vampire Counts shortly thereafter- and I'd kinda like that to happen more often, especially when entire provinces (as was the case in my Empire Campgain) were wiped out with nothing but Chaos Portals to mark that anyone was ever there. I also did something similar on purpose to the Skullsmasherz to stop them from raiding Marienburg, and more than 160 turns later, noone has ever come by to claim it (but ironically enough, one of the minor dwarf factions has sent heroes there to disrupt it.)
That's more Bretonia's thing really, the Empire's cavalry are decent but not the best, which sums up the empire really; they're not the best at anything but they don't have any real weaknesses either.
The empire actually has a wider selection of various cavalry. The Brettonian cavalry is great, but it's all various types of heavy cavalry.
No equivalent of pistoliers or outriders. Once the elves arrive though they'll feature better light cavalry though.
They're definitely the most cavalry focused of our current factions though.
The empires real strength is variety. No other army can field good missile cavalry, good heavy cavalry and good artillery. I don't think any other faction features anti-armor missile cavalry either.
Their only real weakness is their lack of quality non-hero flying units.
Bretonnia has light calvary, they're called Mounted Yeoman and Yeoman Archers. Yeoman Archers are somewhere between Pistoliers and Outriders; They have the AoE firing radius of Pistoliers, but almost the same range of Outriders. Better for impromptu charges than both as well, though they suffer from the same the low leadership of all Bretonnian units that aren't knights, lords or heroes.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
Im very happy with the added Empire units mod, i'll definitely install it when I play Empire. Just for the foot Reiksguard. I had a unit of them when I was younger, and they were the best models I ever painted, thanks to some guy at a GW store who showed me some way of mixing small amounts of washing up liquid with paint to get the armour to look dull and lived-in instead of shiny and chrome. They came out looking awesome and I didn't paint anything near as good for about 5 years.
Then they got removed as an army option, so I stopped playing Empire.
Modding is only going to make this game even more better
Don't feel bad. I lost my first two campaigns as dwarfs including a very dwarfish defeat where all my allies were ground away and karaz a karak was taken while thorgrim was away on a murder crusade. I escaped with thorgrims full stack many thunderers and cannons and reclaimed the blasted and corrupted ruins of zhufbar province's settlements. My stack cost more than I made with only the two small settlements so I was forced to raid the vampires. I held on gamely but failed to take zhufbar and then chaos came... They destroyed my final settlements and a final dwarflord died in the forests.
Man, Empire is rough when you start with Balthasar Gelt. You have no early options to fight enemy melee lords. One guy racked up 117 kills and routed half of my army by himself.
Man, Empire is rough when you start with Balthasar Gelt. You have no early options to fight enemy melee lords. One guy racked up 117 kills and routed half of my army by himself.
You have Shimmering Cloak unlocked yet? I find most units can hold their own pretty well against non-legendary Lords when they have that buff on, at least until they can get reinforced.
Buff and Debuff spells might not be as flashy as damage spells, but they can be just as effective when used well.
Took the plunge on this and am doing well after restarting a hilariously disastrous first outing as Empire. I started over and ignored my advisers for the most part and have been doing much better. The setting and graphics are amazing. I can't wait for some optimization passes to make things run smoother because it should not be dropping frames at all on my setup, but oh well, its fine for now and I know it will only get better as CA does more optimizing.
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Because I'd sure like a proper High Elf add-on.
http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War:_WARHAMMER_Future_Content_Blog
There is going to be some free DLC, mostly new magical lores, heroes and units, though there is suppose to be a couple legendary lords and a full race (likely Bretonnia, as they already have a unique army, even though they aren't playable in the grand campaign)
For the paid stuff, it'll mostly be legendary lords and races, likely just those that live mainly in the Old World (so like Beastmen, or Kislev being expanded from Not-Empire to a full race), some of the latter coming with their own mini-campiagns (though they'll still be made playable in the grand campaign.)
After races and locations beyond the Old World... Last I heard, they were planning on going the Relic route, with two planned stand-alone expansions/sequels that combine to make even larger Grand Campaigns. Like the next expac/game might be the New World, with High Elves, Dark Elves, Lizardmen and something else (don't know enough Warhammer to know what else might work) and you can play it by itself, or if you have the base game link it up for a Grand Campaign that straddles both continents.
New World would probably be Skaven for the last race slot. Their Clan Pestilence is kinda the Lizardmen's arch-enemy. That would also provide a nice 2-2 split between order and disorder.
1) I'm enjoying it MUCH more than I thought I would. Wasn't too jazzed about the Warhammer universe, never really engaged that. Yeah, not a problem now. The game oozes environment and thematics.
2) Also really enjoying the mechanics. I like that the Vampires literally have zero missile troops. It makes you play a certain way, which contribute to the "feel" of playing them. Completely different from the dwarfs (which really SHOULD be spelled dwarves, but ok ok), who for a giant missile line and have nothing I've seen so far like cavalry. Which is different from the Empire, who has a very mixed force, but then limited magic early on, and none of your troops are better then other factions specialty, so you really need to use combined arms. Really enjoying that each faction isn't just a re-skin and that there aren't even "types" of reskins (barbarians, romans, greeks, persians, western feudal, eastern feudal, Arab and Turkish feudal, etc).
3) That said, have encountered the same issue with both the Empire as the Dwarfs, which is rapid expansion got me in both games to a point where my land was too big and my armies made up of troops that were too weak to handle shit when it got "real". Will probably try again and go deliberately slower. As annoying as that has been, it's also nice that a total "push to paint the map" or zerg strategy doesn't seem very viable like it always usually is in these games. And the differences between top tier and mid level troops is noticeable (at least it is when all my armies start losing and I have no money).
TLDR: It's good, it shakes up some of the standard Total War mechanics, and each faction is very unique.
GREEN IS BEST!
Gits.
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Which is great unless you're playing as the vampires. A bunch of the humans and dwarves formed alliances to deal with the Chaos threat and remained allied after that and hated me despite the fact that I was the one who wiped out two stacks, finished off the other two stacks, and put a sword in Archeon's head.
Joke wound up being on them though as I cowed the Varg and Skaelings into making peace so they ignore me while their stacks continue hitting the human and dwarf factions but each time the humans and dwarfs cross my territory to try to reach the North they take attrition.
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That's more Bretonia's thing really, the Empire's cavalry are decent but not the best, which sums up the empire really; they're not the best at anything but they don't have any real weaknesses either.
See for me, chaos isn't at war with me. Don't know why, but I'm in an island of burned realms as they rampage, and I get to pick up free territory off of the broken remnants of imperial land.
Heinrich Kemmler is pleased.
Yeah, I kinda wish that didn't happen, or if it did, to put off Archeon's first appearance for another 50-100 turns or so. While Chaos is the one thing that gets everyone to drop their infighting and actually work together in the lore, this golden age of unity also ends within five minutes of the last Warrior of Chaos getting impaled.
I'd like to see some kind of "old animosities" modifier that makes everyone remember they're suppose to hate each other after the invasion ends, and maybe see factions return to reclaim old territory if no one claims the ruins after X turns. Kislev and Ostermark were turned into a wasteland in my Empire game, their respective factions wiped out, and no one ever once bothered to show up and take them back for almost 50 turns before I decided to claim them.
Read a few pages back in this thread and gleaned some useful TW campaign knowledge (I never really did much in Shogun 2 or Rome 2 other than online multiplayer) and I think I'm ready to go.
Lore-wise, maybe, but right now Demigryph Knights dominate all. Pound for pound they're better than even Grail Knights and the Halberd version will destroy virtually any monstrous units with no backup and only a couple of casualties.
I don't think the AI knows how to reclaim razed territories. I certainly didn't until someone in here mentioned it was possible.
Also, I think the Vampires & Chaos need to form an alliance, since they both thrive off of disorder that every other faction is trying to stave off.
Which leads to another conundrum where if you ignore the south, the Greenskins will form a Waaagh!, and if you ignore the North, the winds of Chaos will blow a shitstorm down on your head. So if you allied factions cant hold their own shit together, you get double teamed.
MWO: Adamski
The empire actually has a wider selection of various cavalry. The Brettonian cavalry is great, but it's all various types of heavy cavalry.
No equivalent of pistoliers or outriders. Once the elves arrive though they'll feature better light cavalry though.
They're definitely the most cavalry focused of our current factions though.
The empires real strength is variety. No other army can field good missile cavalry, good heavy cavalry and good artillery. I don't think any other faction features anti-armor missile cavalry either.
Their only real weakness is their lack of quality non-hero flying units.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
It's pretty much the biggest holdover from Rome 2 I really don't like.
MWO: Adamski
Was that one in the old games?
The AI definitely knows how to reclaim razed territories. It does not prioritize doing so though whether it doesn't like the troop cost, the money cost, the calculations it does to figure out if the distance traveled is worth the risk, or some other factor.
After finishing up my first game as the vampires, I've started up as the dwarfs and it is very, very different. The lack of diplomacy and need for corruption made the Vampire strategic game very slow but you also didn't have any major enemies early on either. Dwarfs feel like they're fighting every orc faction within 10 turns of starting. On top of that, I have no clue how orcs decide to confederate with each other. Some tool tips suggested that they look for strength more than diplomacy yet every time I was doing damage to the main Greenskin faction they'd somehow convince another minor tribe to join them. They had some early victories before I got a handle on how to build up dwarf settlements but have consistently been losing generals and land since so I have no idea what kind of recruiting drive they're on.
The last minor orc faction didn't join them and has done well enough to now have a Waagh with them. Thankfully one of the dwarf lords I gained from confederating has Lightning Strike so hopefully that will let me perforate the Waagh stack. If not, I have 3 stacks in the area to their 2 anyway.
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Took me 300 turns and 47 hours, because I was playing very slow and methodical, only expanding when i'd built up what I had already conquered and making sure I didn't lose a single battle, so no auto-resolving. So yes I could've won alot sooner. Fighting battles manually meant I'd win battles the auto-resolve would've made me lose, but also meant I spent alot of time slowly grinding down armies and trying to wipe them down to the last man, which is hard with no cavalry. also a lot of time spent fighting garrison armies when an auto-resolve would win much quicker. Lots of time building up the former human lands from the wasteland Chaos turned them into and waiting for money too.
Turns 0-70ish were fighting the Greenskins, got lucky when they decided their armies had things better to do than fight me, allowing me to take 3 whole provinces before they showed up.
Turns 70ish-110 were spent watching Chaos kill off Bretonnia and most of the Empire, meanwhile I disbanded my entire army, built up the former Greenskin lands to provide me with a great economy and rebuilt my army with better troops with more experience (thanks to bonuses from thanes. Replaced quarrellers and warriors with ironbreakers and thunderers (troops came from Karaz-A-Karak and guns from Barak Varr)
Turns 110 -210 were spent fighting Chaos, The Border Princes and Tilea. The 3 main stacks of Chaos went down within a few turns of reaching my armies (special mention to the 2 units of cannons who killed 1/4 of Archaons army as they trudged uphill towards me), then there was lots of chasing the various armies of Norscans while making sure they didn't sack any of the new settlements I was building.
Turns 210- 240 were sieging Estalian cities (once the armies from Tilea made the long walk there, because of the swamp blocking access between the two) because I couldn't be bothered to fight full strength armies of Estalians. also the estalians had settled Bretonnia once Chaos wiped them off the map
Turns 240-290 were fighting the Vampires, took 3 small cities in the first few turns of war, fought 1 army with 5 terrorgheists in the field, then lay siege to all their remaining cities as they each had an army with 5 more terrorgheists in them so decided to let attrition do the work for me. Also finally recruited Ungrim Ironfist my 2nd legendary lord.
Turns 290-300 bribed the last independant dwarfs into an alliance thereby winning the campaign (they were pissed because I didn't go to war with the Empire's 1 city, which I was using for trade, also the irony of humans being the fallen empire while dwarfs expanded everywhere. At this point I ruled everything from the Badlands to half of Norsca with 10 armies poised to invade the other half.
So game mvps, 2 of them: ironbreakers, and thunderers. Ironbreakers hardly ever died, and their grenades wrecked anything fighting charging them. Then attacking cities I'd send one unit in through a wall breach, wait for the enemy to clump up around it and then other ironbreakers would throw their grenades at the mass of bodies and wreck them. The ironbreakers would be fine, while anything lightly armoured (aka anything but dwarfs) got shredded.
Thunderers may have slightly less range than quarrellers but their armour piercing was using for fighting chaos and enemy generals while still doing plenty of damage. They won alot of battles for me, thanks to dwarfs being so short meant they could always shoot over ironbreaker's heads and into combat.
Cannons were great at taking out towers and breaching walls, while flame cannons are just hilarious when it comes to fighting large groups of lightly armoured infantry.
worst units: slayers, utterly useless. Their lack of armour means they die so easily, especially if they get caught up in ironbreaker grenade throwing or any long fight. Not needed versus trolls because trolls are weak to fire, so ironbreaker grenades do tons of damage while the ironbreakers actually stay alive fighting them. Also my armies ranged units do a better job of killing monsters (including the one time I fought a giant, it was just constantly being knocked over by cannon fire and never even made it within thunderer range.)
Worst things to fight? tough to say, chaos warriors are very tough, but the rest of chaos was garbage. Vampires had terrorghiests and vargheists (had to fight 20 terrorgheists in 4 armies fuck them). but their infantry is garbage and you can just kill the general and watch them crumble
The empire's artillery and handgunners were annoying as they could actually hurt ironbreakers thanks to armour piercing. So i'd say Chaos->Vampires/Empire->Greenskins.
Greenskins came last because goblins.
My army composition was 1 each of general, thane, runesmith and engineer, 8 ironbreakers, 6 thunderers and 2 cannons (or flame cannons). In the early game I used same numbers, but dwarf warriors, quarrelers and grudge throwers.
Made focusing on establishing the empire much simpler
My greatest hope is that someone will love me enough to trade with me after taking out the Chaos stacks. Something tells me they wont, the ungrateful bastards.
They won't. So you'll wipe out the Chaos stacks and end them, make peace with the Vargs and Skaelings, and then colonize cities they wipe out so you can start spreading corruption and lowering public order enough to cause rebellions in the province and take cities without needing to declare war on the 5 powers that ally to fight Chaos, fail at it, but still decide they're best friends.
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The corruption mechanic has been awesome so far. I pumped growth early on, and have already had several huge vampire revolts take out some of the greenskin cities next to me. I will be more than happy to take the ruined provinces and corrupt the hell out of the rest of the world. I'm happy that there are so many mega-huge provinces close to the Counts starting area for maximum corruption spreading.
I'm talking more about a faction being "reborn" and claiming the ruins that used to be part of their starting territory. I know minor factions can return- had Stirland reappear briefly to take over the Moot, only to be wiped out by the Vampire Counts shortly thereafter- and I'd kinda like that to happen more often, especially when entire provinces (as was the case in my Empire Campgain) were wiped out with nothing but Chaos Portals to mark that anyone was ever there. I also did something similar on purpose to the Skullsmasherz to stop them from raiding Marienburg, and more than 160 turns later, noone has ever come by to claim it (but ironically enough, one of the minor dwarf factions has sent heroes there to disrupt it.)
Bretonnia has light calvary, they're called Mounted Yeoman and Yeoman Archers. Yeoman Archers are somewhere between Pistoliers and Outriders; They have the AoE firing radius of Pistoliers, but almost the same range of Outriders. Better for impromptu charges than both as well, though they suffer from the same the low leadership of all Bretonnian units that aren't knights, lords or heroes.
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I'm not very good at this game
Then they got removed as an army option, so I stopped playing Empire.
Modding is only going to make this game even more better
It was ducking badass.
You have Shimmering Cloak unlocked yet? I find most units can hold their own pretty well against non-legendary Lords when they have that buff on, at least until they can get reinforced.
Buff and Debuff spells might not be as flashy as damage spells, but they can be just as effective when used well.