Good choice. That's the faction I recommend for a first go. Your strengths are your archers, which have longer range, your cav, which you probably don't have much of at this point, and the Sea Guard, which are a ranged unit that is good in melee. Skirmish mode can make these units retreat as the enemy approaches so I turn that off. Mix spear and sword units until you can get a lot of Sea Guard. Your weakness is the bolt thrower, but it will still get kills and compel the enemy to come to you. Eventually you'll have dragons and pheonixes (pheonixii?), which are mid-tier as monstrous units go, but very cool. Chariots can be effective, but I am not a big fan.

Eventually you'll get some high end infantry, but that's much later on.

So I'd look to make something like 8-10 infantry (sword/spear/Sea Guard), 4-6 archers, two bolt throwers and the rest cav for a good balanced composition. In the early going this is difficult of course, but once you have consolidated the starting province you'll be in better position economically to field full stacks.

As High Elves, alliances are easy, and trade partners and confederation too. Look to form strategic alliances with a few others to protect you from strong enemies until you get your feet under you. This is the Vortex campaign correct?

I've got a better handle on things now - I think I'll restart the campaign and see how I do. I've gotten a better handle on combat, unit usage, and army composition (at least at first). I also have a better sense of the campaign.

The campaign is interesting. You're in a race, except you're really not. It might seem that you need to get going and keep up with the rituals, but you have time and can take it slow, waiting until you've built up your forces. I don't know which difficulty you are playing, and much depends on that, but when you do start a ritual Chaos stacks spawn and come for you, so you have to be prepared for that.

The key is to identify and capture the way-fragment sites whenever possible so that you are generating it and not your rivals. It makes the campaign more strategic than other TW campaigns in the sense you are encouraged to conduct raids and surgical strikes, targeting and taking those sites or at least stopping the rival rituals, rather than a running a creeping border tide.

Tyrion can be a monster of melee, depending on your choices when upgrading him. Get him in to battle as much as possible so he reaches the highest levels.

If you end up liking Warhammer, the ultimate TW campaign in my view is the Mortal Empires campaign, which is a free download, but does require owning WH1. It stitches together the maps from both games as well as all of the factions. It's epic.

You might already be aware, but there are a number of free DLC on the Steam Store for WH2. You can get a few Legendary Lords this way

Yes, I made sure to get all the Legendary Lord freeware they had. I also grabbed a couple through the Total War dashboard.
I have to confess - my initial reaction to the game was positive enough that I grabbed WH 1 and a couple of DLC for WH2 before the Steam sale ended. I felt that way when I wanted to play that expanded campaign the price was about the same as a DLC addon. Plus you get the built in WH 1 campaign and all the factions. The DLC I grabbed were the Vampire Coast and Tomb King ones - both of those races sounded quite interesting (and c'mon - skeleton soldiers!!) so again I figured grab it while the price is good.

If you ever read through this thread you'll see that both Tomb Kings and Vampire Coast were factions that I really enjoyed. They are cool too because they are not part of the Vortex race, but have different campaign objectives. All of this points to the thing I've gone on about endlessly in this thread, and that's the 'factionality' as I call it, or the uniqueness of each and every one that gives WH2 more replayability than other TW titles.

That's great you have WH1. While it's worth a go on it's own, I really like having those "Old World" factions available in the ME campaign.

I do remember a mention of the Tomb Kings (that's what led me to look into it) but I don't recall the Vampire Coast. I'll have to go back and check your impression on it. I do recall reading you rather enjoyed the Dwarfs as well. I look forward to playing more of this title.

I also went and fired up the other TW titles I have just for laughs and I have to say for the 15 minutes I gave each one of them, Rome II is the one that sticks in my mind. I'm not sure why, but that is a title I plan on checking out sometime soon as well.

I also plan on grabbing Troy for free on Epic when it comes out.
Because free.

haha honestly I've enjoyed virtually all of them. So I reckon there's little to learn from my testimonials

Vampire Coast is cool because it is a hybrid nation, where you have normal landlubber type gameplay, but also a mobile base that's your pirate fleet. It plays sort of like the hordes from Atilla. The Dreadfleet is another of those factions but have no land-based territory, though you can of course capture some. But you can also play tall, pillagin' and plunderin' the whole way through.


Tomb Kings are cool with some very unique mechanics, including no upkeep for their armies. Dead guys don't get paid I suppose. Instead, your force limits are dictated by your buildings and tech.

Even though I like most of the races/factions in WH2, if I had to pick a few that did not light my fire it would be Wood Elves, Greenskins, Beastmen and the Bretonnia factions. But that's the appeal, so many to try, and with a very different experience.

Well I can see this becoming quite a time sink!

I've dropped over 1000 hours in to it so far over the years. Not quite EU IV level, but I say that any game I play for more than 300 hours is a classic. Whenever a new DLC drops I give it another go.

Wow. I can't think of a game I've got that kind of time into - maybe Elite Dangerous, certainly Eve, but other than that nothing comes close.

Yeah, it's my shame

I'd say I've dropped that much time in to all of these titles

Grand Prix Legends
Falcon 4
MiG Alley
TW Med 2
Warhammer 2
EU IV
Elite Dangerous

Ooh Falcon 4 - add that one to my list as well!
And IL-2 1946.

if i extend that to series, it would be more. Civ, Football Manager, Deus Ex, Silent Hunter and more would hit that mark combined.

i had a look at the latest WH2 DLC and might have to pick it up. That free Imrik one looks cool. A high elf dragon lord.

And i have never given Greenskins a proper go, I keep waiting for a DLC to flesh them out, and the Warden and the Paunch DLC looks to do just this. Might be time for a new WH2 run.

Well if we are going to go back even more, I'd have to add the original Civ, the original Elite, Elite:Frontier (2nd one), and a shareware title called "MechForce." Battletech is its spiritual successor.

I restarted my campaign. I'm only 4-5 turns in and I've taken over the Lothern province. I'm thinking I'll hire a 2nd lord to just run the map and chase down goody huts. Eventually I'll build him an army when it fits the economy. Good idea?

yes, I do that often. if you can afford the additional maintenance you can make a boatload of money plus some buffs that way. Many of those pay a lot better when you can fight the battle, but even just sailing around with a lord on his own can bring in big money.

As I am sure you noticed, each army raises the upkeep costs of all other armies by a few percentage points. So while a new lord is affordable I'm sure, it also raises the upkeep costs of your first field army. The treasure lord should easily cover those costs though.

I did end up picking up the free Imrik DLC along with the paid Warden and the Paunch DLC.

Imrik is really cool, but his start locations are bad. You have this kick-ass dragon army but terrible terrain, lands and economy. Grom the Paunch is also really cool, but I started a game as him and didn't like the way he is voiced, his dialog. But his campaign could be fun. And the new high elf lord Eltharion or somesuch is cool too, starts in a good spot and has some fun units and mechanics, but his game consists of waiting 150 turns for Grom to arrive. I played a few turns of this campaign and I'll see how it goes. Maybe I can confederate the other elves before Grom gets here.

I'm really enjoying this game! Here's my campaign progress so far - I've finished off Cult of Excess (no real trouble there) then turned toward Saphery and took them out. That was a bit more challenging. After taking 3 of her 5 cities, Harrieth got much more difficult. She wasn't fielding a full stack, but had units more advance than what I had available (Silver Helms, White Lions of Chrace, and Swordmaster of Hoeth to name a few). I managed to get her down to one city, one of the minor settlements (Tor Finu) on Saphery, but I couldn't finish her off. Her city garrison and her army were too much. I even recruited a second army (though not a full stack) to attempt to crack it but couldn't.

Finally I decided to try and lure her out. I left he area, and she promptly grabbed Shadow Peak away from me. I stayed away for a bit, and she moved back to Tor Finu. This time, I sent one army (Tyrion, my main army) between Tor Finu and Shadow Peak, and the other army (now almost a full stack) sat just south of Tor Finu. Harrieth came after Tyrion to stop me from grabbing that city back, and this time I smashed them, killing her in the process. I quickly grabbed Shadow Peak and had both armies hit Tor Finu. The garrison was no match for what I had. Saphery was eliminated and the province was mine!

During the war with Saphery, Broken Axe Yvresse and then declared on me. They hit one of my cities while I was taking care of Saphery, and I've mixed up with them a couple of times since Saphery was defeated. I'm creating a 3rd army now (still have really good cash flow) and will start working on conquering them and driving them off the continent.

Nicely done. Any good confederation targets? Nearly half of Ulthuan is yours already.

One ritual done, good economy. Looks great JC. Who holds Caim Thel, is that greenskin rebels? Which units are you favoring?

Do you have access to regiments of renown? A lot of that is DLC locked so not sure what's required or if you have it.

Caim Thel is held by Broken Axe, a greenskin horde. I'm trying to confederate Avelorn and Ellyrian, but they aren't going for it yet. They like me a lot, and I've used Influence to tip the scale more my way, but they won't budge. I may have to throw some cash at them, but I've been building pretty heavily and I haven't got much in the coffers for bribes.

I don't have any regiments of renown, not sure if I have access to them or not.

UPDATE - ok, I looked into it, and I don't have any of the DLC that unlocks them for HE. Yet.
OH and I happened to notice in my previous post I meant to say that Broken Axe eliminated Yvresse and is now coming after me. IT got a little garbled.
Serves Yvresse right, though. I offered to confederate them a number of times and they turned me down!

Yeah I looked it up and they come from the Queen and the Crone DLC. They are not so amazing you need to get them, but they add something to recruitment and are fun to have in your armies. Perfectly fine without them too. They are just copies of existing units with some boosted stats and purple on their unit cards. And you only get one of each type, unless they are destroyed in which case you can recruit another. Nothing game-changing.

I tend to have one very high tier army at least, usually the one led by my faction leader, and I like to put these regiments in that army, 'cause it looks awesome lol. Other armies tend to have more pedestrian units due to upkeep costs. High elves though also tend to have strong economies, compared to some others like the Skaven, where it's not uncommon to have a few armies of low and mid-tier fodder.