Can finally have a dwarf campaign that isn't hopelessly fighting Grimgor all the time!
In Mortal Empires he's in Karak Zorn (down in the bottom of the Southern World's Edge Mountains, beside the Oreon's Camp Wood Elves. So you still might run into Grimgor before too long.
Oh bugger, at least it would give me buffer to build up and prepare.
Other wise it's vortex campaign then!
Though hopefully they might have done something to slightly lower the chances of Grimgor/Orcs in general steam rolling.
Can finally have a dwarf campaign that isn't hopelessly fighting Grimgor all the time!
In Mortal Empires he's in Karak Zorn (down in the bottom of the Southern World's Edge Mountains, beside the Oreon's Camp Wood Elves. So you still might run into Grimgor before too long.
And being in a corner of the map is pretty good for dwarfs where it takes a while before you're able to field multiple competitive armies.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Reviews say the Naman are absurd but their existence balances Wu out.
3DS Friendcode 5413-1311-3767
0
SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
Oh my god, Malagor starts default flying now, that's so dirty. And it doesn't take him long to get to 2 Winds cost Flock of Doom. Just hide your entire army at the start and send him in to waste all the enemy ammo and attrit them down on his own.
Oh my god, Malagor starts default flying now, that's so dirty. And it doesn't take him long to get to 2 Winds cost Flock of Doom. Just hide your entire army at the start and send him in to waste all the enemy ammo and attrit them down on his own.
It really is disgusting. He's so fast and small enemy archers barely hit him. He has 121 speed if his leadership is high (110 base). He also gets a permanent Flock of Doom aura when he's in melee in his skill tree. Basically a Mortis Engine++.
danx on
0
SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
Oh my god, Malagor starts default flying now, that's so dirty. And it doesn't take him long to get to 2 Winds cost Flock of Doom. Just hide your entire army at the start and send him in to waste all the enemy ammo and attrit them down on his own.
It really is disgusting. He's so fast and small enemy archers barely hit him. He has 121 speed if his leadership is high (110 base). He also gets a permanent Flock of Doom aura when he's in melee in his skill tree. Basically a Mortis Engine++.
He's relatively squishy at least so you can't quite take advantage of that for -too- long. But you can just joust to trigger it and it still works...
0
Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
Reviews say the Naman are absurd but their existence balances Wu out.
Nanman are the biggest, being a new faction with some absurd abilities. That’s the most change if you’re looking for it
I personally liked the World Betrayed(?) one, that gives you two new campaign mechanics, with Lu Bu’s kill list and Sun Ce’s impending doom that are fun to play with. The latest DLC gives Cao Cao a new ridiculous start, I think? And the Mandate of Heaven is really interesting conceptually (playing as a failing empire is neat!) but haven’t played it myself
I didn't think malagor had flock of doom? he has his own special lore with like bray scream and what not. I found most of them to be pretty bad
Yeah, not anymore. Now his spell list is a mix of Beasts, Death, Wilds, and Shadow. Based on watching a few battles on Legend's stream today, he's practically Teclis-lite.
Reviews say the Naman are absurd but their existence balances Wu out.
Nanman are the biggest, being a new faction with some absurd abilities. That’s the most change if you’re looking for it
I personally liked the World Betrayed(?) one, that gives you two new campaign mechanics, with Lu Bu’s kill list and Sun Ce’s impending doom that are fun to play with. The latest DLC gives Cao Cao a new ridiculous start, I think? And the Mandate of Heaven is really interesting conceptually (playing as a failing empire is neat!) but haven’t played it myself
Avoid the Princes, that one’s pretty flat
I agree with this, though in different orders.
A World Betrayed is my favorite of the DLC. Sun Ce and Lu Bu have fun, unique mechanics that push you to engage in combat a lot and get a lot of really cool bonuses through completing a quest list (Lu Bu's is all about defeating various generals while Sun Ce's has a lot of variety from defeating specific people to having certain classes of generals leveled up or conquering specific territories).
Mandate of Heaven would be my number 2, giving an interesting and longer campaign against or for the Yellow Turbin, though it tends to die down once either side wins that war. I wouldn't want to start a grand campaign there (some of the mechanics make no sense and are super annoying when you get into later 3 Kingdoms years), but it makes for a pretty good short campaign.
I find the Furious Wild DLC to be kind of weird. The Naman have some interesting stuff going on, but it feels more like a super mini campaign down in the southwest corner of the map and, to me at least, doesn't really fit nicely into the larger battles.
Fates Divided is good if you're a big fan of Yuan Shao as it adds a bunch to his faction, but otherwise is pretty mediocre over all. I can't really recommend this one. Cao Cao, Yuan Shao, and Sun Ce start in very strong positions, and if you play as anyone else then you're scrambling just to stay alive (especially at higher difficulties).
Eight Princes is bad. Its the kind of thing you expect to happen if an executive tells the developers "Oh yeah, you need a completely new grand campaign to exist with no ties to the original, and you only have two months to make it."
Reviews say the Naman are absurd but their existence balances Wu out.
Nanman are the biggest, being a new faction with some absurd abilities. That’s the most change if you’re looking for it
I personally liked the World Betrayed(?) one, that gives you two new campaign mechanics, with Lu Bu’s kill list and Sun Ce’s impending doom that are fun to play with. The latest DLC gives Cao Cao a new ridiculous start, I think? And the Mandate of Heaven is really interesting conceptually (playing as a failing empire is neat!) but haven’t played it myself
Avoid the Princes, that one’s pretty flat
I agree with this, though in different orders.
A World Betrayed is my favorite of the DLC. Sun Ce and Lu Bu have fun, unique mechanics that push you to engage in combat a lot and get a lot of really cool bonuses through completing a quest list (Lu Bu's is all about defeating various generals while Sun Ce's has a lot of variety from defeating specific people to having certain classes of generals leveled up or conquering specific territories).
Mandate of Heaven would be my number 2, giving an interesting and longer campaign against or for the Yellow Turbin, though it tends to die down once either side wins that war. I wouldn't want to start a grand campaign there (some of the mechanics make no sense and are super annoying when you get into later 3 Kingdoms years), but it makes for a pretty good short campaign.
I find the Furious Wild DLC to be kind of weird. The Naman have some interesting stuff going on, but it feels more like a super mini campaign down in the southwest corner of the map and, to me at least, doesn't really fit nicely into the larger battles.
Fates Divided is good if you're a big fan of Yuan Shao as it adds a bunch to his faction, but otherwise is pretty mediocre over all. I can't really recommend this one. Cao Cao, Yuan Shao, and Sun Ce start in very strong positions, and if you play as anyone else then you're scrambling just to stay alive (especially at higher difficulties).
Eight Princes is bad. Its the kind of thing you expect to happen if an executive tells the developers "Oh yeah, you need a completely new grand campaign to exist with no ties to the original, and you only have two months to make it."
World betrayed is not for you though if you don't like to be stressed. Both Lu Bu and Sun Ce are very tempo-focused campaigns.
3K is weird though in that it's the free updates that have been the best. Like, the new start dates don't do much except for the specific lords that DLC was about..and the furious wild was about the Nanman so it's not really interesting if you don't want to play the Nanman. But the free bandit update? And the update that added fortified mountain passes? Those were amazing and game changing.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I actually really liked the character of the 8 princes and faction mechanics. Unfortunately everything else was pretty lame. Someone needs to make a mod that just replaces random minors in 190 with the Sima Clan.
I felt like in Furious wild the only playable character that felt like they really fit in the campaign was Lord Shamoke. The rest can’t ever compete for emperor of China, so what is the point.
Mandate of Heaven has a bad tendency to turn into a clusterfuck. Its fine if you just want to play the war but falls apart quickly after it is over or reaches stalemate.
The chapter packs.., Meh not really my thing:.. I like starting small rather than big so really only tried sun ce or lu bu.
Dwarf rune rework. They're more useful and they've become more magic-like (they're now activated in the magic tab to the right and they can be overcasted for a miscast chance and longer cooldown. Still don't use mana). You can also manufacture rune-items in the forge.
Grudge mechanic rework. In some ways less punishing (less public order penalty), in some ways more punishing (it now reduces research rate) and having grudges gives you a chance to spawn slayers that can be recruited through the RoR pool.
Belegar now has his own unique skill tree (buffing diplomacy and improving the abilities of his cheap units, primarily rangers. As well as a 10% physical resistance bonus in his army), capping out with a skill that reduces settlement building construction times by 50% factionwide.
Master Engineer change. You can now either have a sniper rifle or a big ass dwarf shotgun. Not both. Each has become more powerful but more specialized.
Thorex Ironbrow is the dwarfiest of dwarfs with more oathgold, unique oathgold items, more armor, more armor piercing and faster crossbow/catapult reloads. Also, his catapults fire homing missiles and his crossbow artillery fires explosives. So now your dwarfs dwarf so you can dwarf while you dwarf.
In the Vortex campaign Thorek Ironbrow joins THE LUSTRIA BOWL, the warhammer equivalent of a Royal Rumble.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Thorex Ironbrow is the dwarfiest of dwarfs with more oathgold, unique oathgold items, more armor, more armor piercing and faster crossbow/catapult reloads. Also, his catapults fire homing missiles and his crossbow artillery fires explosives. So now your dwarfs dwarf so you can dwarf while you dwarf.
Oh my
Hopefully someone can mod him so he can start in Lustria for Mortal Empires.
Thorex Ironbrow is the dwarfiest of dwarfs with more oathgold, unique oathgold items, more armor, more armor piercing and faster crossbow/catapult reloads. Also, his catapults fire homing missiles and his crossbow artillery fires explosives. So now your dwarfs dwarf so you can dwarf while you dwarf.
Oh my
Hopefully someone can mod him so he can start in Lustria for Mortal Empires.
Well. it's a skill (that you can get at lvl13) and only for Thoreks own army. So not as powerful as a faction-wide buff :pop:
But I forgot to mention that those homing catapult projectiles also gain anti-large, so I'm going to guess that Thorek will want to get a lot of them in his army.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
0
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Technically, any dwarf can get the skill through runes, Thorek can just get it for free.
Technically, any dwarf can get the skill through runes, Thorek can just get it for free.
Yeah, the rune rework has two parts to it beyond making them a bit more spell like. First, Dwarfs no longer have a magic item slot. Instead, dwarf lords and heroes get three rune slots. They can mix and match the runes any way the want to, and get runes by either crafting them with the dwarf crafting mechanic (you can only craft each rune once, but some of them give multiple copies of the rune) or as rewards sometimes for completing grudges.
The second part of runes is rune battle flags. Again you craft these, but they go on a unit and enhances that unit. Some of the flags are specific to artillery and provide things like tracking missiles or explosive rounds.
PSN|AspectVoid
+2
SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
I was not prepared for Choas Invasion V2. Though my walls would keep me safe but they didn't. Lost 10 cities so far to them.
Luckily I can recruit Blackguard at rank 7 in one turn in Nagarond. Since Choas lacks ranged weapons, I just spammed out 3 stacks of them with Darkshard, Bolt throwers, plus some monsters (manticores recruit quickly and are great at sniping Hellcanons) and Cavalry.
Wish I had more Hydras, but they were taking to long to train.
I was not prepared for Choas Invasion V2. Though my walls would keep me safe but they didn't. Lost 10 cities so far to them.
Luckily I can recruit Blackguard at rank 7 in one turn in Nagarond. Since Choas lacks ranged weapons, I just spammed out 3 stacks of them with Darkshard, Bolt throwers, plus some monsters (manticores recruit quickly and are great at sniping Hellcanons) and Cavalry.
Wish I had more Hydras, but they were taking to long to train.
For the most part, walls in TW2 really aren't all that useful. I find for siege battles if you're on defense its best to hole up in your capture zone. It restricts the enemy movements, is often far enough back that their artillery can't target you because too much stuff gets in the way, and gives you much more favorable odds. In the last game I played (high elves) I won a siege defense where I had the garrison and a half damage army vs three full stacks fighting that way. It took me like 40 minutes to do, and I had almost nothing left at the end, but I still won, and my reinforcements arrived the next turn to do the mop up.
My sister got me Three Kingdoms for my birthday; it's been a lot of fun to dink around with and feels wildly different from Warhammer in ways I was not expecting
I'm pretty deep into a campaign where I, Cao Cao, decided to pretend to be friends with Tao Qian so I could amass power before wiping him out; it's now been like 10 in game years and we accidentally became allies in a coalition, where I am just doing the Mean Girls thing and completely perforating his entire society with spies and saboteurs and talking shit about him behind his back while hoping that an opportunity to bulldoze his lands sort of casually presents itself.
10/10 would Cao Cao again
+4
SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
Kong Rong report, Turn 134
I hit King this turn, which kicked off the Three Kingdoms separation, and so I figured it was a reasonable time to take a break/update progress. Only Wu beat me to it and I wasn't even trying very hard, since stability works in my favor. Wu and Yan split off from the coalition while I stuck with the reformed Han Empire, as Liu Bei had the Puppet Emperor and abdicated back to him (after I went through all the effort to eliminate them as a faction right before Liu Bei took the last Dong territory!).
I'm sitting in Rank 5, with the 3 Emperors ahead of me and Zhurong in 4, who just confederated Shamoke and triggered the "Southern Lands" united. No big deal, I was about to wardec her in a couple turns anyway.
Since the last update, I had steadily been eating my way west. First through Liu Biao & Liu Cheng's coalition, then through Gong Du and the remnants of the Han. Right around then Yuan Shao broke MA and declared on me with all of his vassals in a mindbogglingly dumb move. Gongsun Zan jumped him soon in retaliation. I buzzsawed my way through his territory soon after, nicely cleaning up the borders in the central plains. (I also held off killing his last territory way in the north until Gongsun Zan did it and so didn't eat the faction hatred and now he's also in my court after his faction blew up.) I then peaced and vassalized his former vassals Ma Teng and Gongsun Kang. Afterwards, I briefly kicked Liu Yan in the teeth in order to vassalize him and roughly here we are. During all of this, I've been steadily buying off territory from the 3 big kingdoms and either keeping it (mainly in the case of Luoyang because it's going to be so rich once I finish developing it back up), releasing vassals, or holding it to use as a foothold to buy more territory. Every 10 turns, the wallet of Kong opens and more of China becomes mine.
Ideally I can hold off taking part in any of the soon to come wars and just keep buying up territory until I can get deepstrike forces in place to take all 3 capitals at once.
Damn you have a lot of vassals. How on earth did you get so many that don't hate your guts and revolt?
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Also. This FLC patch will bring new and powerful skill trees to:
Vlad&Isabella: Vlad is now an even more powerful generalist leader while Isabella is more of an skirmisher/monster leader
Volkmar&Arch lectors: They now have really powerful unique skills (that boost their army in general and free company&flagellants in particular). And they can boost the number of Witchhunters and warrior priests you can field.
Wulfrik&Throgg: Wulfrik gets buffs to hunting big monsters (with among other things a skill that gives Javelin throwers super-anti-large javelins) and Throgg becomes even more monster centric with the ability to give Fimir Regeneration and Trolls/Skinwolves super regeneration.
P.S: Honestly. I'm not sure if any other game gets more love than Warhammer, because every major update with a DLC has just been a lot of love for everyone (patching&FLCs). The only faction left out? Warriors of Chaos. But maybe that will get fixed with WHIII.
Fiendishrabbit on
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Vlad has a skill that gives him +40 relations with Empire factions. While the soonest he could get it is level 13, that still might be a fun campaign: build tall in Sylvania and try to shepherd the Empire as allies.
Damn you have a lot of vassals. How on earth did you get so many that don't hate your guts and revolt?
They're almost all tiny babies I personally formed out of single commanderies, so balance of power is favorable. They had bonuses for me granting independence. Their personalities are not Defiant or anything else that would make them want to revolt. And if their relations get too low because I was beating up people they considered friends then I threw them some cash to balance things out. (This was still less than what I made off them from being a vassal+having a trade partner.)
Only annoying thing about these awesome updates is that it kills my desire to play until the patch is released :P
That's actually been a weird issue I've had with Warhammer; I don't play Total War super often, so when I do get back to it it always seems like if I just waited a little bit longer, I'd get into it right after a new content addition. And if I started now my campaign would get interrupted with a big update that I'd want to restart for to see the new toys.
Damn you have a lot of vassals. How on earth did you get so many that don't hate your guts and revolt?
They're almost all tiny babies I personally formed out of single commanderies, so balance of power is favorable. They had bonuses for me granting independence. Their personalities are not Defiant or anything else that would make them want to revolt. And if their relations get too low because I was beating up people they considered friends then I threw them some cash to balance things out. (This was still less than what I made off them from being a vassal+having a trade partner.)
I see I need to refine my empire building style...
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
He has spells from beasts, wild, and shadow, with improved arcane conduit (he's like a Beastie Teclis).
He gets a skill that reduces magic costs by 1 factionwide, and he can get the storm of Crows spell cast down to 2 winds of magic.
Edit: He also gets a skill that auto casts Crows around him when he's fighting in melee. He's a flying, more powerful Mortis Engine.
Beastmen lords can now be recruited for free, so you can 1 time per turn recruit and demolish the barracks for 2300 per turn. I expect this to be fixed.
Oh my god. We're making moves as Cao Cao. I used the fact that Tao Qian and I are "friends" as an excuse to basically not build any extra armies and super-charge my economy while heading south and clearing easy conquests for more land for more peasant economy. Then I quickly summon three more full stacks, leave the coalition, declare war on Tao Qian (and by extension, Liu Bei), flank and annihilate two of Liu Bei's armies that were left surprised in the middle of my land, and then issue an imperial decree from the emperor under my control that Liu Bei has to make peace with me and pay me money for it
Also. This FLC patch will bring new and powerful skill trees to:
Vlad&Isabella: Vlad is now an even more powerful generalist leader while Isabella is more of an skirmisher/monster leader
Volkmar&Arch lectors: They now have really powerful unique skills (that boost their army in general and free company&flagellants in particular). And they can boost the number of Witchhunters and warrior priests you can field.
Wulfrik&Throgg: Wulfrik gets buffs to hunting big monsters (with among other things a skill that gives Javelin throwers super-anti-large javelins) and Throgg becomes even more monster centric with the ability to give Fimir Regeneration and Trolls/Skinwolves super regeneration.
P.S: Honestly. I'm not sure if any other game gets more love than Warhammer, because every major update with a DLC has just been a lot of love for everyone (patching&FLCs). The only faction left out? Warriors of Chaos. But maybe that will get fixed with WHIII.
The stuff for Throgg is the only stuff I've seen that's just not that good. The buffs he gets are pretty useless since they don't affect mammoths, and mammoths are so much better than anything else Norsca has that you're actively playing badly if you're not getting them. The regeneration he gets is also not really much better than standard regen because it disables the moment the battle is won/loss, so you never really raise that many units over what your losses would have been anyway.
Its like everyone else ran up a staircase, and Throgg tripped on the first step and is just laying there. Sure he's "higher" than he was before, but...
Oh, and Warhammer gets the most love because it makes Creative Assembly the most money. They're willing to put the money into the updates for the Total Warhammer games because the updates are very profitable for them. When updates are not profitable, we get situations like Three Kingdoms where support is just cut off.
mammoths aren't available out the gate and skinwolves are super fucking good even if you have mammoths
+3
BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
Throgg crushed L/VH before by just stacking 19 Ice Trolls into his army with him. Any further buffs to other monstrous units are going to see him do even better.
Considering that Throgg's unique skill-line also gives trolls&fimir bonus leadership, melee defence, frenzy (not just regen upgrades) and makes them recruitable in 1 turn (factionwide)... Yeah. You can't just say "but they're not mammoths".
Ice trolls, armoured skinwolves and Fimir were rather impressive before the update. Now, in Throggs army, they're just insane.
Note that he also gets three special "banners" (assign to a unit, they get huge bonuses). One for skinwolves (makes a unit 45% faster, stalk, unspottable and an upgraded version of strider), one for fimir (+50 Charge, debuffs enemies they hit and projects a +5 MA aura) and one for trolls (+MD, even more that is, Guardian, unbreakable and Expert charge defence). So basically ultrapowerful versions of that Black Orc banner that Grimgor has.
Let's just say that whatever unit is on the wrong side of a Fimir Greatweapon unit with that banner is an Ex-unit. Especially if they're large (like a mammoth).
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
It seems pretty neat to me, I like the idea of being the horde that is always on the move and burning down the world. I want to erect huge herdstones and douse them in blood.
"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
+4
SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
Okay, the Nanman units are insane. Who ever thought Hidden Vipers were a good idea? Sheesh. At least they have no weapons to back up their generals all being impressive stat balls also...
The Jabberslyth model in that video is so high res and detailed it looked like it was from a different game compared to the older beastmen units from WH1. Which technically it is but they didn't really have that issue with Greenskins or Wood Elfs. Unless I just didn't notice it before.
The Jabberslyth model in that video is so high res and detailed it looked like it was from a different game compared to the older beastmen units from WH1. Which technically it is but they didn't really have that issue with Greenskins or Wood Elfs. Unless I just didn't notice it before.
"1 Charlemagne."
"Daddy Jabberslyth TWO Charlemagne"
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Posts
Oh bugger, at least it would give me buffer to build up and prepare.
Other wise it's vortex campaign then!
Though hopefully they might have done something to slightly lower the chances of Grimgor/Orcs in general steam rolling.
And being in a corner of the map is pretty good for dwarfs where it takes a while before you're able to field multiple competitive armies.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Reviews say the Naman are absurd but their existence balances Wu out.
It really is disgusting. He's so fast and small enemy archers barely hit him. He has 121 speed if his leadership is high (110 base). He also gets a permanent Flock of Doom aura when he's in melee in his skill tree. Basically a Mortis Engine++.
He's relatively squishy at least so you can't quite take advantage of that for -too- long. But you can just joust to trigger it and it still works...
Nanman are the biggest, being a new faction with some absurd abilities. That’s the most change if you’re looking for it
I personally liked the World Betrayed(?) one, that gives you two new campaign mechanics, with Lu Bu’s kill list and Sun Ce’s impending doom that are fun to play with. The latest DLC gives Cao Cao a new ridiculous start, I think? And the Mandate of Heaven is really interesting conceptually (playing as a failing empire is neat!) but haven’t played it myself
Avoid the Princes, that one’s pretty flat
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Yeah, not anymore. Now his spell list is a mix of Beasts, Death, Wilds, and Shadow. Based on watching a few battles on Legend's stream today, he's practically Teclis-lite.
I agree with this, though in different orders.
A World Betrayed is my favorite of the DLC. Sun Ce and Lu Bu have fun, unique mechanics that push you to engage in combat a lot and get a lot of really cool bonuses through completing a quest list (Lu Bu's is all about defeating various generals while Sun Ce's has a lot of variety from defeating specific people to having certain classes of generals leveled up or conquering specific territories).
Mandate of Heaven would be my number 2, giving an interesting and longer campaign against or for the Yellow Turbin, though it tends to die down once either side wins that war. I wouldn't want to start a grand campaign there (some of the mechanics make no sense and are super annoying when you get into later 3 Kingdoms years), but it makes for a pretty good short campaign.
I find the Furious Wild DLC to be kind of weird. The Naman have some interesting stuff going on, but it feels more like a super mini campaign down in the southwest corner of the map and, to me at least, doesn't really fit nicely into the larger battles.
Fates Divided is good if you're a big fan of Yuan Shao as it adds a bunch to his faction, but otherwise is pretty mediocre over all. I can't really recommend this one. Cao Cao, Yuan Shao, and Sun Ce start in very strong positions, and if you play as anyone else then you're scrambling just to stay alive (especially at higher difficulties).
Eight Princes is bad. Its the kind of thing you expect to happen if an executive tells the developers "Oh yeah, you need a completely new grand campaign to exist with no ties to the original, and you only have two months to make it."
World betrayed is not for you though if you don't like to be stressed. Both Lu Bu and Sun Ce are very tempo-focused campaigns.
3K is weird though in that it's the free updates that have been the best. Like, the new start dates don't do much except for the specific lords that DLC was about..and the furious wild was about the Nanman so it's not really interesting if you don't want to play the Nanman. But the free bandit update? And the update that added fortified mountain passes? Those were amazing and game changing.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I felt like in Furious wild the only playable character that felt like they really fit in the campaign was Lord Shamoke. The rest can’t ever compete for emperor of China, so what is the point.
Mandate of Heaven has a bad tendency to turn into a clusterfuck. Its fine if you just want to play the war but falls apart quickly after it is over or reaches stalemate.
The chapter packs.., Meh not really my thing:.. I like starting small rather than big so really only tried sun ce or lu bu.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Oh my
Hopefully someone can mod him so he can start in Lustria for Mortal Empires.
Well. it's a skill (that you can get at lvl13) and only for Thoreks own army. So not as powerful as a faction-wide buff :pop:
But I forgot to mention that those homing catapult projectiles also gain anti-large, so I'm going to guess that Thorek will want to get a lot of them in his army.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Yeah, the rune rework has two parts to it beyond making them a bit more spell like. First, Dwarfs no longer have a magic item slot. Instead, dwarf lords and heroes get three rune slots. They can mix and match the runes any way the want to, and get runes by either crafting them with the dwarf crafting mechanic (you can only craft each rune once, but some of them give multiple copies of the rune) or as rewards sometimes for completing grudges.
The second part of runes is rune battle flags. Again you craft these, but they go on a unit and enhances that unit. Some of the flags are specific to artillery and provide things like tracking missiles or explosive rounds.
Luckily I can recruit Blackguard at rank 7 in one turn in Nagarond. Since Choas lacks ranged weapons, I just spammed out 3 stacks of them with Darkshard, Bolt throwers, plus some monsters (manticores recruit quickly and are great at sniping Hellcanons) and Cavalry.
Wish I had more Hydras, but they were taking to long to train.
For the most part, walls in TW2 really aren't all that useful. I find for siege battles if you're on defense its best to hole up in your capture zone. It restricts the enemy movements, is often far enough back that their artillery can't target you because too much stuff gets in the way, and gives you much more favorable odds. In the last game I played (high elves) I won a siege defense where I had the garrison and a half damage army vs three full stacks fighting that way. It took me like 40 minutes to do, and I had almost nothing left at the end, but I still won, and my reinforcements arrived the next turn to do the mop up.
I'm pretty deep into a campaign where I, Cao Cao, decided to pretend to be friends with Tao Qian so I could amass power before wiping him out; it's now been like 10 in game years and we accidentally became allies in a coalition, where I am just doing the Mean Girls thing and completely perforating his entire society with spies and saboteurs and talking shit about him behind his back while hoping that an opportunity to bulldoze his lands sort of casually presents itself.
10/10 would Cao Cao again
I hit King this turn, which kicked off the Three Kingdoms separation, and so I figured it was a reasonable time to take a break/update progress. Only Wu beat me to it and I wasn't even trying very hard, since stability works in my favor. Wu and Yan split off from the coalition while I stuck with the reformed Han Empire, as Liu Bei had the Puppet Emperor and abdicated back to him (after I went through all the effort to eliminate them as a faction right before Liu Bei took the last Dong territory!).
I'm sitting in Rank 5, with the 3 Emperors ahead of me and Zhurong in 4, who just confederated Shamoke and triggered the "Southern Lands" united. No big deal, I was about to wardec her in a couple turns anyway.
Since the last update, I had steadily been eating my way west. First through Liu Biao & Liu Cheng's coalition, then through Gong Du and the remnants of the Han. Right around then Yuan Shao broke MA and declared on me with all of his vassals in a mindbogglingly dumb move. Gongsun Zan jumped him soon in retaliation. I buzzsawed my way through his territory soon after, nicely cleaning up the borders in the central plains. (I also held off killing his last territory way in the north until Gongsun Zan did it and so didn't eat the faction hatred and now he's also in my court after his faction blew up.) I then peaced and vassalized his former vassals Ma Teng and Gongsun Kang. Afterwards, I briefly kicked Liu Yan in the teeth in order to vassalize him and roughly here we are. During all of this, I've been steadily buying off territory from the 3 big kingdoms and either keeping it (mainly in the case of Luoyang because it's going to be so rich once I finish developing it back up), releasing vassals, or holding it to use as a foothold to buy more territory. Every 10 turns, the wallet of Kong opens and more of China becomes mine.
Ideally I can hold off taking part in any of the soon to come wars and just keep buying up territory until I can get deepstrike forces in place to take all 3 capitals at once.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
P.S: Honestly. I'm not sure if any other game gets more love than Warhammer, because every major update with a DLC has just been a lot of love for everyone (patching&FLCs). The only faction left out? Warriors of Chaos. But maybe that will get fixed with WHIII.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Think I'll start with a Thorek Vortex campaign. Will be fun to play as dwarves against Lizardmen.
That's actually been a weird issue I've had with Warhammer; I don't play Total War super often, so when I do get back to it it always seems like if I just waited a little bit longer, I'd get into it right after a new content addition. And if I started now my campaign would get interrupted with a big update that I'd want to restart for to see the new toys.
I see I need to refine my empire building style...
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
He has spells from beasts, wild, and shadow, with improved arcane conduit (he's like a Beastie Teclis).
He gets a skill that reduces magic costs by 1 factionwide, and he can get the storm of Crows spell cast down to 2 winds of magic.
Edit: He also gets a skill that auto casts Crows around him when he's fighting in melee. He's a flying, more powerful Mortis Engine.
Beastmen lords can now be recruited for free, so you can 1 time per turn recruit and demolish the barracks for 2300 per turn. I expect this to be fixed.
The stuff for Throgg is the only stuff I've seen that's just not that good. The buffs he gets are pretty useless since they don't affect mammoths, and mammoths are so much better than anything else Norsca has that you're actively playing badly if you're not getting them. The regeneration he gets is also not really much better than standard regen because it disables the moment the battle is won/loss, so you never really raise that many units over what your losses would have been anyway.
Its like everyone else ran up a staircase, and Throgg tripped on the first step and is just laying there. Sure he's "higher" than he was before, but...
Oh, and Warhammer gets the most love because it makes Creative Assembly the most money. They're willing to put the money into the updates for the Total Warhammer games because the updates are very profitable for them. When updates are not profitable, we get situations like Three Kingdoms where support is just cut off.
Ice trolls, armoured skinwolves and Fimir were rather impressive before the update. Now, in Throggs army, they're just insane.
Note that he also gets three special "banners" (assign to a unit, they get huge bonuses). One for skinwolves (makes a unit 45% faster, stalk, unspottable and an upgraded version of strider), one for fimir (+50 Charge, debuffs enemies they hit and projects a +5 MA aura) and one for trolls (+MD, even more that is, Guardian, unbreakable and Expert charge defence). So basically ultrapowerful versions of that Black Orc banner that Grimgor has.
Let's just say that whatever unit is on the wrong side of a Fimir Greatweapon unit with that banner is an Ex-unit. Especially if they're large (like a mammoth).
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
The video for the Beastmen rework.
It seems pretty neat to me, I like the idea of being the horde that is always on the move and burning down the world. I want to erect huge herdstones and douse them in blood.
"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
"1 Charlemagne."
"Daddy Jabberslyth TWO Charlemagne"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden