OK, just finished dwarf long campaign on easy:
What should I do next? I'm kind of split between which faction to go.
Vampire Counts. The army concept is completely different, but the mindset is not so alien that you'll find yourself frustrated. Feeling frustrated due to faction mechanics is definitely a possibility with Orcs and chaos, and shifting from defensive dwarfs to hyperaggressive orcs or the chaos chessgame might be too much.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Chaos has no real counter to mounted ranged units....
Maybe the chaos cannons is the real solution...hmmm
I'd probably try "marauder horsemen. A lot of them", but you're right. Chaos doesn't really have a counter to ranged cavalry.
Vampires on the other hand deal pretty easily with ranged skirmishers. Either using bats or using cavalry in combination with Curse of Years/Danse Macabre to nullify the speed advantage.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Yea... the horsemen suck, and are more annoying than an actual asset. However, I did use 4 of the to great effect during an early fight with a full stack plus garrison of dwarfs. Ran down their ranged units with dogs, marauders and a spawn and it forced an entire route!
Chaos has no real counter to mounted ranged units....
Maybe the chaos cannons is the real solution...hmmm
Well besides their own mounted ranged unit no. Heavy skirmish is very strong for chaos. Their main issue is that they can't protect those mounted ranged units from any enemies and so have a hard time using them as bait. So long as you don't ride out to meet them And have shields you kinda win by just shooting them with your own ranged while behind a line of melee
Whereas empire can easily pull flyers going after pistoliers into a hellblaster volleygun barrage.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
That was always a big problem with rome 2 unit mods. Its like, ok Armenia or whoever has a tier 1 spears, tier 4 spears, so giving them tier 2 and 3 spears to fill the gaps is reasonable, but taking rome and giving them hoplite level spears or heavy cav that is competitive with parthia when they are supposed to be legion focused is not. Most people just dont get that.
"Cheat" mods" (like, overpowered units or units that deliberately fill a gap like giving Vampires ranged units) are a pretty big thing on the workshop (and TW Center) before it. It's not that people "don't get it" or whatever, it's just that it's a video game and sometimes people just want to mess around and have fun because it's a video game. I love doing my "serious" playthroughs where i crank up the difficulty, but then sometimes you come across some cool units that definitely aren't balanced and want want to do a playthrough with those. It's like a sandbox, you play how you want and you do what's fun but there's always going to be someone coming around trying to tell you YOU'RE NOT DOING IT RIGHT or whatever even though it's you by yourself and you aren't interacting with anyone else's sandbox, just so they can feel like the master of sand castle balance, I guess?
It's not even having those units for yourself sometimes, either. Sometimes it's fun to give enemy factions OP units and see how you handle them.
Just about the only thing that irks me are the people who claim to be building something balanced, better than vanilla, but it's just mostly uninspired. There aren't many people who have a true eye for balance in games these.
A great example is the Black Ship in the original Shogun 2 you could capture (included in the base game, even). Was it balanced? Not at all! It was a hell of a lot of fun to use sometimes, though.
Would you consider Empire of Sigmar as a cheat mod?
My original banshee hero (level 20) succeeded in wounding the Everchosen so it's really now or never for the battle of Templehof.
It is depressing looking at the chaos army though. Chaos warriors, like grave guard but better stats in every way! Chaos knights, like black knights but better stats in every way! There's also 2 chaos giants and 3 units of chaos trolls.
I'll have to send the terrorgheist to deal with the hellfire cannon, grave guard will have to enter the meat grinder with all of the chaos warriors and then I'll run my wraiths into the side and hope they cut through them quickly enough.
Crypt horrors will do that too, ideally. But I need something to distract all of the trolls until I mulch their infantry. Skeleton spears for their cavalry obviously. My own black knights aren't going to be that useful against their infantry, maybe I can distract the trolls but just running in and out. Or switch the terrorgheists to trolls and cavalry to the cannon.
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
That was always a big problem with rome 2 unit mods. Its like, ok Armenia or whoever has a tier 1 spears, tier 4 spears, so giving them tier 2 and 3 spears to fill the gaps is reasonable, but taking rome and giving them hoplite level spears or heavy cav that is competitive with parthia when they are supposed to be legion focused is not. Most people just dont get that.
"Cheat" mods" (like, overpowered units or units that deliberately fill a gap like giving Vampires ranged units) are a pretty big thing on the workshop (and TW Center) before it. It's not that people "don't get it" or whatever, it's just that it's a video game and sometimes people just want to mess around and have fun because it's a video game. I love doing my "serious" playthroughs where i crank up the difficulty, but then sometimes you come across some cool units that definitely aren't balanced and want want to do a playthrough with those. It's like a sandbox, you play how you want and you do what's fun but there's always going to be someone coming around trying to tell you YOU'RE NOT DOING IT RIGHT or whatever even though it's you by yourself and you aren't interacting with anyone else's sandbox, just so they can feel like the master of sand castle balance, I guess?
It's not even having those units for yourself sometimes, either. Sometimes it's fun to give enemy factions OP units and see how you handle them.
Just about the only thing that irks me are the people who claim to be building something balanced, better than vanilla, but it's just mostly uninspired. There aren't many people who have a true eye for balance in games these.
A great example is the Black Ship in the original Shogun 2 you could capture (included in the base game, even). Was it balanced? Not at all! It was a hell of a lot of fun to use sometimes, though.
Would you consider Empire of Sigmar as a cheat mod?
When i looked at the unit list i guessed yes. Its very hard to add units while not unbalancing things. Most of the balance in the game comes from the unit types that are lacking in each faction and this is the kind of thing that these mods tend to add. Better infantry for empire, ranged units for undead, etc.
But then i read the description of the mod and found this
-Balance is still all over the place, so do bear this in mind. As of right now, this mod makes the Empire obscenely strong (in multiplayer anyways, although most of these units are tough to recruit in singleplayer, so you won't see the AI fielding them that often) so do be aware that this mod is really just for fun right now.
My original banshee hero (level 20) succeeded in wounding the Everchosen so it's really now or never for the battle of Templehof.
It is depressing looking at the chaos army though. Chaos warriors, like grave guard but better stats in every way! Chaos knights, like black knights but better stats in every way! There's also 2 chaos giants and 3 units of chaos trolls.
I'll have to send the terrorgheist to deal with the hellfire cannon, grave guard will have to enter the meat grinder with all of the chaos warriors and then I'll run my wraiths into the side and hope they cut through them quickly enough.
Crypt horrors will do that too, ideally. But I need something to distract all of the trolls until I mulch their infantry. Skeleton spears for their cavalry obviously. My own black knights aren't going to be that useful against their infantry, maybe I can distract the trolls but just running in and out. Or switch the terrorgheists to trolls and cavalry to the cannon.
Use your cav to charge in behind the trolls and warriors. Chaos man's are tough, but you can break them with flanking.
In fact I would add the terrorgheist in the charge too, use regular bats to tie up the cannon.
There are 3 halberd units mixed in with the regular warriors which makes me think twice about using cavalry.
But the main issue is I need to keep the chaos cavalry and the trolls and giants away from this mess until I can grind down the warriors. So something has to be a distraction because I only have 1 unit of fellbats.
They attacked and razed my minor settlement that housed the forest buildings so I was cut off recruiting a second terrorgheist and a second unit of bats 1 turn before they were ready.
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
My original banshee hero (level 20) succeeded in wounding the Everchosen so it's really now or never for the battle of Templehof.
It is depressing looking at the chaos army though. Chaos warriors, like grave guard but better stats in every way! Chaos knights, like black knights but better stats in every way! There's also 2 chaos giants and 3 units of chaos trolls.
I'll have to send the terrorgheist to deal with the hellfire cannon, grave guard will have to enter the meat grinder with all of the chaos warriors and then I'll run my wraiths into the side and hope they cut through them quickly enough.
Crypt horrors will do that too, ideally. But I need something to distract all of the trolls until I mulch their infantry. Skeleton spears for their cavalry obviously. My own black knights aren't going to be that useful against their infantry, maybe I can distract the trolls but just running in and out. Or switch the terrorgheists to trolls and cavalry to the cannon.
Use your cav to charge in behind the trolls and warriors. Chaos man's are tough, but you can break them with flanking.
In fact I would add the terrorgheist in the charge too, use regular bats to tie up the cannon.
Yeah, key to trolls is to focus them with a bunch of units as their morale breaks pretty easily, and though they come back into the fight, it's pretty easy to just chain them running away long enough for them to be a non-factor.
It is depressing looking at the chaos army though. Chaos warriors, like grave guard but better stats in every way! Chaos knights, like black knights but better stats in every way! There's also 2 chaos giants and 3 units of chaos trolls.
Chaos Warriors aren't actually straight better than grave guard though they are probably better at their job and in general. Grave Guard have bonus damage versus infantry equal to about 26% of their base damage. This damage is unlisted until you hover over it. You might not win the line, but you will do a lot better than you think due to this.
You can also forgo shielded units against them though the extra defense probably makes the regular GG more effective for the purpose.
That being said, if your army consists of grave guard and black knights you've got the wrong army to take on Chaos. They're all armor and large monsters and you've got no anti-large and no anti armor. It would be like trying to take on dwarves with that army. No anti-armor. All charge bonus into units which negate it.
A tactic which you should be able to swap to relatively fast is to get some bats and use the bats to lock down targets for your terrorgeist. Put a unit of bats on the doomcannon. This will stop it from firing while your geists kill the cavalry(they're anti-large after all). More bats means you can lock down more cannons/fast movers while you wait for your geist to finish off whatever its eating. Then, once the enemy cavalry is taken out/distracted your cavalry is free to charge the back line of the chaos warriors. And well, it doesn't matter if you don't have super knights if you're charging into unprotected flanks. All your GG/wraits have to do is not die before your flyers can lock down the enemy cavalry.
Grave guard do just fine. Sure. Chaos warriors are better, they're supposed to be since they're the key strength for chaos units. Grave guard are more "The guys that stand in a battleline and slog it out until your heroes, flyers and crypt horrors have decided the battle". Though having fear and anti-infantry bonuses really helps softening up the enemy for when your vargheists crash into their rear.
Also, something people so rarely mention is that Undead units don't get tired. Each warrior fights as effectively at the end of the battle as they did at the beginning. That's a huge advantage and at least partly compensates for the lack in attack&defence.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Yep this is my secondary army which mostly put down the lesser human armies and held my borders.
That said I'm dumb and forget they were attacking my capital which has a massive garrison of troops that I'd forgotten about until I went to initiate the battle.
So in the end I was able to outnumber their warriors with grave guard and drive all of my cairn wraiths and crypt horrors into their flanks. The bats tied up the cannon and the trolls, I used my spears and cavalry to pincer their cavalry and my vampire lord and wight king took on the giants. Necromancer stayed with all of the grave guard for the healing and spell support.
They have two more stacks coming my way but my third army is almost up and running and is heavily anti-armour for dealing with chaos and then the Dwarfs.
Assuming the best way to make a vassal is to to pillage and sack their settlements until they give up right? I've got a nice alliance and trade deal with Wissenland because I started attacking the Empire. But I'd really prefer to just own them.
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
Easiest way to get a vassal is to subjugate. But this requires that you kill their last settlement when they have no armies. It also means that they have to rebuild their lands from square 1. Its good if you want to make a trade partner but bad if you want to do anything else.
Second easiest is to pay them off probably. Ideally when they don't have any armies to leverage any strength. If they're super happy with you but also just lost their army then you have the easiest time to vassalize them.
I'm a way into an empire campaign after finishing off my greenskins rampage.
I have to admit, I just didn't get some of the greenskins units. Especially some of the poison units. For example comparing spider riders and wolf riders I couldn't find much reason to use spiders. Not when wolf riders were cheaper and faster. Likewise the fanatics mechanism wasn't explained particularly well. It was only later that I noticed night goblin shamans could buff them somehow, but I never really tested it.
First impressions of empire were that there was so much more of everything. The economy is naturally much deeper due to trade and the whole tech tree is much more complicated with inter dependencies throughout. Similarly I'm finding agents playing a much bigger role - largely because you have a load more to choose from and more of them compared to orcs. I've also been finding the quests trickier. At the minute I have to kill 5 greenskin armies with karl franz - except they're in the badlands and retreating already and where I really need him is in the north fighting chaos.
The poison debuff is a pretty huge deal, I think the poison night goblin archers are well worth using even if they can't do shit to armour by themselves.
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
My most recent one I've got three full stacks of Orks (one's a waagh) and two full stacks of Skaelings that are in the two provinces that I've actually been able to secure (Reikland and The Wasteland)
god damn.
Just cannot fight that many guys
"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
I'm about 25 turns into an orc game. So far so good, but I'm not sure I have the "attack everything, all the time" mentality. I think i like to go slowly and cautiously. Which to me, means dwarves (their artillery looks amazing).
From what I understand about Orcs, they are all about outnumbering the other side. With unit count capped at 20 per army, does that mean, with orcs, I should field more armies than the other races? Not knowing which buildings were good, I went with the gold buildings, so I can afford a lot of boyz now.
Edit: Also, I've been occupying everything because my treasury is doing just fine. Any possible pitfalls of this? (like say, what happens in Civ games?)
I'm a way into an empire campaign after finishing off my greenskins rampage.
I have to admit, I just didn't get some of the greenskins units. Especially some of the poison units.
Poison is -18 to 22% damage, -18% vigor, and -24% speed.
Enemies cannot run away and go from "fresh" to "tired as all shit" basically immediately. Its really strong, especially on ranged cavalry. Very little can chase you down because as soon as they get in range they're slowed.
For spider riders especially this is pretty powerful because they have strider, which means they don't slow down in forests or up hills and they don't get any combat penalties as a result of that too. Combined with almost twice the armor and they're going to wreck.
I'm about 25 turns into an orc game. So far so good, but I'm not sure I have the "attack everything, all the time" mentality. I think i like to go slowly and cautiously. Which to me, means dwarves (their artillery looks amazing).
From what I understand about Orcs, they are all about outnumbering the other side. With unit count capped at 20 per army, does that mean, with orcs, I should field more armies than the other races? Not knowing which buildings were good, I went with the gold buildings, so I can afford a lot of boyz now.
Edit: Also, I've been occupying everything because my treasury is doing just fine. Any possible pitfalls of this? (like say, what happens in Civ games?)
Not like what happens in Civ. Main disadvantages compared to subjugating:
1) Fewer Armies: NPC's get their own base income and so can make their own armies. In general the same land will produce more income if spread out over more factions. So if you think of it like two players, going from 2 factions to 1 faction would lose you your 2500 base income. Which is a full army worth of upkeep
2) Fewer Heros: You lose access to the factions heros.
3) More army upkeep: Because you have more land to cover the total upkeep for your armies is 1.02^x *[armies] where x is the number of armies you have under one faction. So if you had two factions as opposed to 1 its (1.02^x/2) * [armies]. This is small compared to the total income reduction.
4) No trade; Doesn't matter for orcs. But if you subjugate someone you can just force them to trade with you. And then if they get uppity you can crush them and subjugate them again.
Main disadvantages compared to just raiding/sacking them
1) Income: Enemy settlements that you can constantly raid are good sources of battles. Which means loot. And you can sack them... which means more loot. Sack them, wait for them to rebuild and then sack them again.
2) Exp: Enemy settlements that you can constantly raid are a good source of battles. Which means XP.
3) Orc specific: Fightiness! Lots of battles means lots of fightiness. WAAAAUGH.
Basically you can think of an essentially cowed faction (one that you can crush when you want) as a farm for resources (and a bulwark against invasion). Wait until you can see the glint of their dosh. Then take it. Then let them go get some more dosh for you to take. Its the circle of waaaaugh!
edit: Additional bonuses. If there are rebellions you don't have to deal with them. Alternately you can crush them for more battles/getting out of hand.
I updated the NVIDIA drivers and now all the terrain is flashing. Anyone else have the same problem?
Have you tried alt tabbing? I've been having what sounds like this problem since the start on my 980 Ti; the screen will flicker through the UI elements, but it goes away and stays away the first time I alt tab and reenter.
Tried that now, didn't make any difference. Reinstalled the drivers, and that fixed it.
Chaos has no real counter to mounted ranged units....
Maybe the chaos cannons is the real solution...hmmm
Well besides their own mounted ranged unit no. Heavy skirmish is very strong for chaos. Their main issue is that they can't protect those mounted ranged units from any enemies and so have a hard time using them as bait. So long as you don't ride out to meet them And have shields you kinda win by just shooting them with your own ranged while behind a line of melee
Whereas empire can easily pull flyers going after pistoliers into a hellblaster volleygun barrage.
Best counter I've found for enemy mounted missile is poison warhounds, ideally hiding in ambush near your flanks. They're faster that almost every missile cavalry in the game (marauders are just as fast and goblin wolf riders are one point faster) and there is a tech that will boost them to being even faster. They just need to connect on an attack once, and the enemy will get a debuff that slows them down, letting the rest of the hounds catch up and overtake them.
The annoying thing with Chaos is that they seem to have infinite money. In terms of cost efficiency, Grave Guards are better than Chosen since you can get 5 Grave Guards for the price of 3 Chosen. But it doesn't work like that in the campaign since Chaos will match your numbers and 5 Grave Guards vs. 5 Chosen will lose badly.
Ha ha oh man that is nasty. So i go against a much larger (26 vs 20) army of basically counters to all my flyers in Karl Franz as VC. I assassinate franz with spirit leach then hit upgraded Doom and darkness right on the main bulk of his army right after that. Instant rout. -24 leadership per second, full to shattered in 3 seconds flat.
Wait the leadership penalty is per second? I don't even know how to cast the upgraded spells.
God damn Empire confederated with Wissenland, which proper screws me. Now I'm surrounded by Empire provinces and 2 new armies. I've spent the last 20 turns dealing with this shit, had 3 minor settlements raised. But I've finally taken out the bulk of the forces and started sweeping up the new territory.
I don't know how they did it since Empire and Wissenland had been at war forever, and I had an alliance with them. It's not like Empire had made any progress on Wissenland since I started taking them apart.
e: And now the Dwarfs too. This is the thanks you get for taking out the bulk of the chaos forces.
Rami on
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
You can cast the upgraded (or rather, overcast, because you don't HAVE to get rank 2 of the spell to overcast it) version of a spell by clicking on the button for the spell twice. you can also find out how the overcast changes the spell by right-clicking on a spell, then clicking the little up arrow button in the corner of the screen that pops up.
Note that not all spells have an overcast version (though most do) also that there is a 50% base chase (affected by certain items and traits) that the spell will miscast, damaging the caster (though the spell itself will fire off as planned) but with some spells, like Spirit Leech, the Lore of Vamp healing spell, and several of the single target (de)buffs that become AoE when overcast, the risk/cost can be very much worth it.
Just lost a match because i wanted my melee/archer group to shift to the right, but i couldn't get them to move over at all without changing their facing. I thought i read that ALT click did it but it still scattered my entire group. Pretty frustrating to lose because i think i stood a shot if i could get the formation i wanted.
How do you make a squad shift but maintain rank and facing?
Wait the leadership penalty is per second? I don't even know how to cast the upgraded spells.
God damn Empire confederated with Wissenland, which proper screws me. Now I'm surrounded by Empire provinces and 2 new armies. I've spent the last 20 turns dealing with this shit, had 3 minor settlements raised. But I've finally taken out the bulk of the forces and started sweeping up the new territory.
I don't know how they did it since Empire and Wissenland had been at war forever, and I had an alliance with them. It's not like Empire had made any progress on Wissenland since I started taking them apart.
e: And now the Dwarfs too. This is the thanks you get for taking out the bulk of the chaos forces.
All leadership effects are per second. Well maybe it's like per 2 seconds but it's def per tick with some definition of tick that is reasonably fast. Your leadership max is the static number that a unit shows when hovered over. So if you have 50 leadership and net -2 then you break in 25 seconds. A long time to drop a buff on them (like a hero AoE). "Leadership bonuses" go to the max while leadership effects go to the time.
Base hero AoE is +3. So the first rank leadership is +8 total and a buffing hero like a vampire gets up to +12! Which is super huge. And another reason why they're so much better than wight kings.
Edit: also you can check what active effects are (including difficulty buffs!) by hovering over the little grey bar under the red HP bar on a unit. (Easier if you pause)
Edit2: there are effects for taking damage, having a lord nearby, having exposed flanks(so edge of the line), being attacked in the flanks/rear, having faster and stronger enemies nearby, units nearby breaking, lords dying. Etc etc. managing leadership is super important to not getting rolled.
the base leadership effect is iirc 5 for everyone and it's 10 for enemies on very hard.
Edit: you might notice enemy lords occasionally just dying if they're on low HP. And you're like "I totally didn't do anything to them" and the answer is they tried to overcast a spell on low HP and it killed them
Just lost a match because i wanted my melee/archer group to shift to the right, but i couldn't get them to move over at all without changing their facing. I thought i read that ALT click did it but it still scattered my entire group. Pretty frustrating to lose because i think i stood a shot if i could get the formation i wanted.
How do you make a squad shift but maintain rank and facing?
Alt plus left click slide. Alt plus right click will set facing at that position so you can mess things up like that easy. Another easy way to do it is without alt and just right click drag left to right relative to facing(from behind them). This will respace your units along that line with a width equal to what you drew.
I can recommend the faction mod which let you start as any of the many different factions on the map. Started a "VC" campaign as Mousilion in the lands of Bretannia. Had 1 minor settlement and just a regular Vampire. No legendary lords.
I quite like it. You are surrounded by plenty of minor Bretannic factions which aren't very powerful, but could quickly overwhelm you if they banded together. Additionally, the lands aren't developed for Undead armies, so very low Vampire Influence meaning rebellions are common.
I'm on turn 50ish and have 2 good armies going. It's a lot of fun with just zombies and the low tier troops vs their low tier cavalry. As a side note, I found out Master of the Undead and Curse of Undeath aren't as powerful as I assumed. Sure, the hp regenerates but at a speed where it really doesn't feel it matters too much. Could just as easily get that back via encampment/reinforcement.
Just lost a match because i wanted my melee/archer group to shift to the right, but i couldn't get them to move over at all without changing their facing. I thought i read that ALT click did it but it still scattered my entire group. Pretty frustrating to lose because i think i stood a shot if i could get the formation i wanted.
How do you make a squad shift but maintain rank and facing?
Alt plus left click slide. Alt plus right click will set facing at that position so you can mess things up like that easy. Another easy way to do it is without alt and just right click drag left to right relative to facing(from behind them). This will respace your units along that line with a width equal to what you drew.
Mark all units you want to move (or the group you want to move), hold ALT, start left-dragging.
At this point you can let go of ALT, it's still in the same mode as long as you hold down the left mouse button.
Then you can hold CTRL, and as long as you hold CTRL the left-dragging will rotate the formation.
If you let go of CTRL you will go back to the first mode, that is moving instead of rotating.
I'm playing a dwarf campaign, and I haven't tried cannons yet.
Can I put them behind my line and have them shoot over my troops, or do they shoot straight ahead?
I'm playing a dwarf campaign, and I haven't tried cannons yet.
Can I put them behind my line and have them shoot over my troops, or do they shoot straight ahead?
Cannons will shoot over your head yes. But only really good for tagging large monsters like that. Gotta get an angle in order to be effective against infantry
I'm playing a dwarf campaign, and I haven't tried cannons yet.
Can I put them behind my line and have them shoot over my troops, or do they shoot straight ahead?
Cannons will shoot over your head yes. But only really good for tagging large monsters like that. Gotta get an angle in order to be effective against infantry
What about the organ gun? Is that indirect fire, or direct (straight forward)?
However, if you find a hill, put your siege weaponry (especially cannons) on top, your ranged infantry below and screen them with warriors/longbeards/ironbreakers. Then you're golden.
Against Giants though they're superb all the time, and even on flat ground they do fairly well against trolls and cavalry.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I'm playing a dwarf campaign, and I haven't tried cannons yet.
Can I put them behind my line and have them shoot over my troops, or do they shoot straight ahead?
Cannons will shoot over your head yes. But only really good for tagging large monsters like that. Gotta get an angle in order to be effective against infantry
What about the organ gun? Is that indirect fire, or direct (straight forward)?
Thanks for the information on the poison debuff, I'll give the poison units more of a shot next time. It's a pity that some of this stuff is buried in the UI though. Would it really be that hard for them to add it to the online encyclopedia thing they use in game?
Posts
Vampire Counts. The army concept is completely different, but the mindset is not so alien that you'll find yourself frustrated. Feeling frustrated due to faction mechanics is definitely a possibility with Orcs and chaos, and shifting from defensive dwarfs to hyperaggressive orcs or the chaos chessgame might be too much.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Maybe the chaos cannons is the real solution...hmmm
I'd probably try "marauder horsemen. A lot of them", but you're right. Chaos doesn't really have a counter to ranged cavalry.
Vampires on the other hand deal pretty easily with ranged skirmishers. Either using bats or using cavalry in combination with Curse of Years/Danse Macabre to nullify the speed advantage.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Well besides their own mounted ranged unit no. Heavy skirmish is very strong for chaos. Their main issue is that they can't protect those mounted ranged units from any enemies and so have a hard time using them as bait. So long as you don't ride out to meet them And have shields you kinda win by just shooting them with your own ranged while behind a line of melee
Whereas empire can easily pull flyers going after pistoliers into a hellblaster volleygun barrage.
Would you consider Empire of Sigmar as a cheat mod?
It is depressing looking at the chaos army though. Chaos warriors, like grave guard but better stats in every way! Chaos knights, like black knights but better stats in every way! There's also 2 chaos giants and 3 units of chaos trolls.
I'll have to send the terrorgheist to deal with the hellfire cannon, grave guard will have to enter the meat grinder with all of the chaos warriors and then I'll run my wraiths into the side and hope they cut through them quickly enough.
Crypt horrors will do that too, ideally. But I need something to distract all of the trolls until I mulch their infantry. Skeleton spears for their cavalry obviously. My own black knights aren't going to be that useful against their infantry, maybe I can distract the trolls but just running in and out. Or switch the terrorgheists to trolls and cavalry to the cannon.
When i looked at the unit list i guessed yes. Its very hard to add units while not unbalancing things. Most of the balance in the game comes from the unit types that are lacking in each faction and this is the kind of thing that these mods tend to add. Better infantry for empire, ranged units for undead, etc.
But then i read the description of the mod and found this
So i would say yes. Its a "cheat" mod.
Use your cav to charge in behind the trolls and warriors. Chaos man's are tough, but you can break them with flanking.
In fact I would add the terrorgheist in the charge too, use regular bats to tie up the cannon.
But the main issue is I need to keep the chaos cavalry and the trolls and giants away from this mess until I can grind down the warriors. So something has to be a distraction because I only have 1 unit of fellbats.
They attacked and razed my minor settlement that housed the forest buildings so I was cut off recruiting a second terrorgheist and a second unit of bats 1 turn before they were ready.
Yeah, key to trolls is to focus them with a bunch of units as their morale breaks pretty easily, and though they come back into the fight, it's pretty easy to just chain them running away long enough for them to be a non-factor.
Chaos Warriors aren't actually straight better than grave guard though they are probably better at their job and in general. Grave Guard have bonus damage versus infantry equal to about 26% of their base damage. This damage is unlisted until you hover over it. You might not win the line, but you will do a lot better than you think due to this.
You can also forgo shielded units against them though the extra defense probably makes the regular GG more effective for the purpose.
That being said, if your army consists of grave guard and black knights you've got the wrong army to take on Chaos. They're all armor and large monsters and you've got no anti-large and no anti armor. It would be like trying to take on dwarves with that army. No anti-armor. All charge bonus into units which negate it.
A tactic which you should be able to swap to relatively fast is to get some bats and use the bats to lock down targets for your terrorgeist. Put a unit of bats on the doomcannon. This will stop it from firing while your geists kill the cavalry(they're anti-large after all). More bats means you can lock down more cannons/fast movers while you wait for your geist to finish off whatever its eating. Then, once the enemy cavalry is taken out/distracted your cavalry is free to charge the back line of the chaos warriors. And well, it doesn't matter if you don't have super knights if you're charging into unprotected flanks. All your GG/wraits have to do is not die before your flyers can lock down the enemy cavalry.
Also, something people so rarely mention is that Undead units don't get tired. Each warrior fights as effectively at the end of the battle as they did at the beginning. That's a huge advantage and at least partly compensates for the lack in attack&defence.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
That said I'm dumb and forget they were attacking my capital which has a massive garrison of troops that I'd forgotten about until I went to initiate the battle.
So in the end I was able to outnumber their warriors with grave guard and drive all of my cairn wraiths and crypt horrors into their flanks. The bats tied up the cannon and the trolls, I used my spears and cavalry to pincer their cavalry and my vampire lord and wight king took on the giants. Necromancer stayed with all of the grave guard for the healing and spell support.
They have two more stacks coming my way but my third army is almost up and running and is heavily anti-armour for dealing with chaos and then the Dwarfs.
Assuming the best way to make a vassal is to to pillage and sack their settlements until they give up right? I've got a nice alliance and trade deal with Wissenland because I started attacking the Empire. But I'd really prefer to just own them.
Second easiest is to pay them off probably. Ideally when they don't have any armies to leverage any strength. If they're super happy with you but also just lost their army then you have the easiest time to vassalize them.
Third way is to crush them and then request.
I have to admit, I just didn't get some of the greenskins units. Especially some of the poison units. For example comparing spider riders and wolf riders I couldn't find much reason to use spiders. Not when wolf riders were cheaper and faster. Likewise the fanatics mechanism wasn't explained particularly well. It was only later that I noticed night goblin shamans could buff them somehow, but I never really tested it.
First impressions of empire were that there was so much more of everything. The economy is naturally much deeper due to trade and the whole tech tree is much more complicated with inter dependencies throughout. Similarly I'm finding agents playing a much bigger role - largely because you have a load more to choose from and more of them compared to orcs. I've also been finding the quests trickier. At the minute I have to kill 5 greenskin armies with karl franz - except they're in the badlands and retreating already and where I really need him is in the north fighting chaos.
Don't worry bout Karl going south. He gets two weapons to choose from, the hammer is better armor piercing and is gained from fighting the orcs.
The sword quest takes you north, the pendant east to vampire bat country.
My most recent one I've got three full stacks of Orks (one's a waagh) and two full stacks of Skaelings that are in the two provinces that I've actually been able to secure (Reikland and The Wasteland)
god damn.
Just cannot fight that many guys
"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
From what I understand about Orcs, they are all about outnumbering the other side. With unit count capped at 20 per army, does that mean, with orcs, I should field more armies than the other races? Not knowing which buildings were good, I went with the gold buildings, so I can afford a lot of boyz now.
Edit: Also, I've been occupying everything because my treasury is doing just fine. Any possible pitfalls of this? (like say, what happens in Civ games?)
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
Poison is -18 to 22% damage, -18% vigor, and -24% speed.
Enemies cannot run away and go from "fresh" to "tired as all shit" basically immediately. Its really strong, especially on ranged cavalry. Very little can chase you down because as soon as they get in range they're slowed.
For spider riders especially this is pretty powerful because they have strider, which means they don't slow down in forests or up hills and they don't get any combat penalties as a result of that too. Combined with almost twice the armor and they're going to wreck.
Not like what happens in Civ. Main disadvantages compared to subjugating:
1) Fewer Armies: NPC's get their own base income and so can make their own armies. In general the same land will produce more income if spread out over more factions. So if you think of it like two players, going from 2 factions to 1 faction would lose you your 2500 base income. Which is a full army worth of upkeep
2) Fewer Heros: You lose access to the factions heros.
3) More army upkeep: Because you have more land to cover the total upkeep for your armies is 1.02^x *[armies] where x is the number of armies you have under one faction. So if you had two factions as opposed to 1 its (1.02^x/2) * [armies]. This is small compared to the total income reduction.
4) No trade; Doesn't matter for orcs. But if you subjugate someone you can just force them to trade with you. And then if they get uppity you can crush them and subjugate them again.
Main disadvantages compared to just raiding/sacking them
1) Income: Enemy settlements that you can constantly raid are good sources of battles. Which means loot. And you can sack them... which means more loot. Sack them, wait for them to rebuild and then sack them again.
2) Exp: Enemy settlements that you can constantly raid are a good source of battles. Which means XP.
3) Orc specific: Fightiness! Lots of battles means lots of fightiness. WAAAAUGH.
Basically you can think of an essentially cowed faction (one that you can crush when you want) as a farm for resources (and a bulwark against invasion). Wait until you can see the glint of their dosh. Then take it. Then let them go get some more dosh for you to take. Its the circle of waaaaugh!
edit: Additional bonuses. If there are rebellions you don't have to deal with them. Alternately you can crush them for more battles/getting out of hand.
Tried that now, didn't make any difference. Reinstalled the drivers, and that fixed it.
Best counter I've found for enemy mounted missile is poison warhounds, ideally hiding in ambush near your flanks. They're faster that almost every missile cavalry in the game (marauders are just as fast and goblin wolf riders are one point faster) and there is a tech that will boost them to being even faster. They just need to connect on an attack once, and the enemy will get a debuff that slows them down, letting the rest of the hounds catch up and overtake them.
God damn Empire confederated with Wissenland, which proper screws me. Now I'm surrounded by Empire provinces and 2 new armies. I've spent the last 20 turns dealing with this shit, had 3 minor settlements raised. But I've finally taken out the bulk of the forces and started sweeping up the new territory.
I don't know how they did it since Empire and Wissenland had been at war forever, and I had an alliance with them. It's not like Empire had made any progress on Wissenland since I started taking them apart.
e: And now the Dwarfs too. This is the thanks you get for taking out the bulk of the chaos forces.
Note that not all spells have an overcast version (though most do) also that there is a 50% base chase (affected by certain items and traits) that the spell will miscast, damaging the caster (though the spell itself will fire off as planned) but with some spells, like Spirit Leech, the Lore of Vamp healing spell, and several of the single target (de)buffs that become AoE when overcast, the risk/cost can be very much worth it.
How do you make a squad shift but maintain rank and facing?
Nintendo ID: Pastalonius
Smite\LoL:Gremlidin \ WoW & Overwatch & Hots: Gremlidin#1734
3ds: 3282-2248-0453
All leadership effects are per second. Well maybe it's like per 2 seconds but it's def per tick with some definition of tick that is reasonably fast. Your leadership max is the static number that a unit shows when hovered over. So if you have 50 leadership and net -2 then you break in 25 seconds. A long time to drop a buff on them (like a hero AoE). "Leadership bonuses" go to the max while leadership effects go to the time.
Base hero AoE is +3. So the first rank leadership is +8 total and a buffing hero like a vampire gets up to +12! Which is super huge. And another reason why they're so much better than wight kings.
Edit: also you can check what active effects are (including difficulty buffs!) by hovering over the little grey bar under the red HP bar on a unit. (Easier if you pause)
Edit2: there are effects for taking damage, having a lord nearby, having exposed flanks(so edge of the line), being attacked in the flanks/rear, having faster and stronger enemies nearby, units nearby breaking, lords dying. Etc etc. managing leadership is super important to not getting rolled.
the base leadership effect is iirc 5 for everyone and it's 10 for enemies on very hard.
Edit: you might notice enemy lords occasionally just dying if they're on low HP. And you're like "I totally didn't do anything to them" and the answer is they tried to overcast a spell on low HP and it killed them
Alt plus left click slide. Alt plus right click will set facing at that position so you can mess things up like that easy. Another easy way to do it is without alt and just right click drag left to right relative to facing(from behind them). This will respace your units along that line with a width equal to what you drew.
I quite like it. You are surrounded by plenty of minor Bretannic factions which aren't very powerful, but could quickly overwhelm you if they banded together. Additionally, the lands aren't developed for Undead armies, so very low Vampire Influence meaning rebellions are common.
I'm on turn 50ish and have 2 good armies going. It's a lot of fun with just zombies and the low tier troops vs their low tier cavalry. As a side note, I found out Master of the Undead and Curse of Undeath aren't as powerful as I assumed. Sure, the hp regenerates but at a speed where it really doesn't feel it matters too much. Could just as easily get that back via encampment/reinforcement.
Mark all units you want to move (or the group you want to move), hold ALT, start left-dragging.
At this point you can let go of ALT, it's still in the same mode as long as you hold down the left mouse button.
Then you can hold CTRL, and as long as you hold CTRL the left-dragging will rotate the formation.
If you let go of CTRL you will go back to the first mode, that is moving instead of rotating.
Can I put them behind my line and have them shoot over my troops, or do they shoot straight ahead?
What about the organ gun? Is that indirect fire, or direct (straight forward)?
Against Giants though they're superb all the time, and even on flat ground they do fairly well against trolls and cavalry.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Direct fire.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772