Total War : Warhammer (x)

I'm a long time Total War player, and always the historical titles. I love the series, have spent thousands of hours playing virtually every title since Med2 (I did skip Rome 2 and Britannia which I have yet to buy). The mix of turn based strategy and real time tactical battles is a winner. One thing I always have found appealing is a sense of asymmetry. I love a faction system that gives each one it's own unique bonuses or advantages. Not only does it give the game better replay value, it makes for more interesting battles. Shogun 2 was probably the best example of this in a Total War title. Gunpowder and swords made for good gameplay to me. Other notable examples might be English Longbowmen in M2, or Carthaginian War Elephants in Rome 1. These units give those factions something entirely unique, not only fun to play with, but an interesting challenge to overcome when fielded by your enemy. Atilla to me was a nice step in this direction, with more distinct faction mechanics. Playing as WRE is a far different experience than say the Ostrogoths or Atilla even.

But I've long wished for this to be more distinct. Let's face it, by making games based on history, you're constrained by what you're recreating. Prussian infantry might be the best, but by how much? The difference between my great swordsmen and your average swordsmen might be a simple +1 morale, +1 attack or -1 armor. The asymmetrical aspect is there, and evident in battle, but the difference is still fairly small. This concept carries over to the strategical layer as well. Historical TW titles don't have a great degree of it. Sure, maybe you research tech faster, or gain more through trade or diplomacy than another faction, but it's still more or less a level playing field, with all factions capable of the same strategical plans.

None of this is to say that historical titles are subpar, far from it, but I've always wished for a more singular faction experience. Which brings me to this thread. For a while, years in fact, I've ignored fantasy versions of TW. Even back in the Med 2 days, when I was a big fan of the Stainless Steel mod I ignored the Middle Earth mod, Third Age. It was (is?) immensely popular and I assume, quite well done. When Warhammer was released I took notice. Not only are reviews and player comments largely positive, it seemed to hit that spot, with distinctly asymmetric factions, unchained to the constraints of history. With Warhammer, CA was free to imagine units and factions. Now, I'm no Warhammer fan, honestly I know little about the lore and universe, and surely even here, the devs were shackled to a certain degree. But in a general sense they were far more free than before.

But I didn't buy it.

Then Warhammer 2 was released. Great reviews, player comments and seemingly even more factionality, which is a word I just made up, but seems to fit the point I'm making. Now I was seriously thinking about getting this game. I mean, I play lots of fantasy games, just never a Total War fantasy game. But why not? I really couldn't think of an answer, aside from the spyware Redshell. CA bowed to public criticism and recently removed Redshell. And that was the final straw. So I bought it (marked down slightly in the Steam summer sale for what it's worth). I had planned to wait a few days before posting about it. I wanted to get a feel for whether it was good, or even if I'd like it, though deep down I already knew these answers I think. With some time under my belt I could more objectively critique the game.

But screw it. I liked it straight away. The tutorial is really good. As a veteran of the series I could have figured it all out, but the tutorial has the opening moves covered and explains most of the basic mechanics. I'd reckon Warhammer 2 is the most accessible TW title for someone new to the series.

I chose to start as High Elves and played 12 or 20 turns, who knows. Fought some battles, took some territory, improved my towns, all standard TW stuff. But the new setting and completely new units are awesome. I have an army made up of spearmen, bolt throwers, some sort of cavalry which I still don't know what they are, and dragons, well actually a Phoenix, but dragons are coming. Assymetrical, indeed.

Time will tell whether I grow to like it more, or if I find it lacking. But early returns are quite positive and I've really enjoyed it so far. As mentioned I was a fairly steadfast historical guy for a long time. But I'm glad I moved past that and gave this one a go. It's both the same beloved Total War, but entirely new at the same time. Now, to find some Dark Elves to impale.

Glad you are enjoying it, DBond. I don't know anything at all about Warhammer so I haven't even considered buying those titles. I am a huge fan of the TW series but to be honest the fun kind of left it for me starting with Attila. That, and an update broke my far-in-progress saved game in Rome II, so I haven't touched any of them in a while now.

I really liked Attila, the campaign was great I thought. As mentioned I never did get Rome 2. Came close a couple of times but ended up skipping it, though that isn't forever necessarily. I may still do. I take long breaks between titles like you, and some I've revisited a few times, especially Medieval 2 which is easily my most played Total War game.

And yes, I am enjoying Warhammer 2. It is the same TW formula, but way different at the same time.

The campaign is a departure from usual. The one included with the game is called the Vortex campaign. The goal isn't necessarily domination, although you can go for that, but the game can also be won by completing rituals, which would make playing a tall faction viable. It is also very mission driven. Missions have become more common through each version, and quite heavy in this one. The rewards are great however, and most are not timed, so you get it when you get it. There is a second, downloadable free campaign that I believe does not have the alternative ritual type campaign goal.

One big difference here is that city-building is simplified. There's no squalor type mechanic to worry about. All buildings give bonuses only..

I don't know what to think about the tech system. As a noob, I found that I didn't have the right buildings to unlock anything other than the starting Military group until turn 50 or so. So for all that time I made no trade or economic or any other sort of tech progress. Just +3 melee attack sort of stuff. After you've played through once you would know which tech you'd want to rush, and rush that building line. I guess. Not a fan so far of how it works in Warhammer 2.

One of my favorite aspects of the series is character traits, retinue and so forth. It's a lot of fun in this game.In Warhammer 2, generals are Lords, and the agents are Heroes.They gain traits in a similar fashion as always, but they also have various skills, items, objects and followers. These are acquired through battle, quest/mission rewards and 'treasure hunting', not unlike uncovering those shiny gold locations in Civ 5. You gain magic swords, armors, talismans, banners and followers that can be freely assigned and swapped between your characters.

Earlier I was talking about 'factionality', and while it's still true, the many factions are one of four? races.So all of the High Elves clans are more or less the same, but the races are strikingly dissimilar. There are also 'rogue' factions, not unlike the hordes in Attila. Some wacky creatures for sure.

The battles are awesome. I've gotten my butt kicked a few times. Tactically it's probably the most diverse TW title I've played. The units are so varied. Flying units have a big impact on how it plays out. Monstrous units too. Battlefields are good, but be careful of sallies. When you maintain a siege you are said to encircle the town. I had one sally battle where I was given a glorious, commanding ridge from which to rain pain upon my enemy. down in the valley. When the enemy reinforcement arrived they were a full stack which emerged from the forest right behind me. Caught in the pincer I lost this battle, and my only Phoenix too. Ugly stuff, but lesson learned.

In all, I give Warhammer 2 high marks. Very engaging campaign play, and a neat end-goal mechanic that allows the player to play a bit taller if desired, and to eschew the standard TW blobbing that always turns the end of the game in to a tedious slog where no one can possibly rival you while you paint another 20 provinces to reach the victory conditions.

I'm really happy for Creative Assembly that Warhammer was a huge seller for them because I want the developer to stay in business but I never bothered buying the game. I'm just not into the fantasy stuff when it comes to strategy games. I'm all about the historical stuff.

I guess you can say I'm a big fan of the Total War historical series.

Hours played according to Steam:

TW Attila 3,539

TW Rome II 2,681

TW Thrones of Britannia 126

TW Shogun 2 1,514

TW Napoleon 478

TW Empire 285

I hear ya. That was me, before. I bet I could find a post I made saying the exact same thing. But I softened the stance as I no longer saw the reason why. It's FUN to play with these units. It's Total War: Refreshed. It helps that it's a good game of course.

Wizards and monsters and magic and goblins. There was a time when this didn't appeal to me. Now it does. Go figure

Those things appeal to me as well but in movies, tv shows and even PC shooters like the LOTR games from Monolith. I just don't care for it in a strategy game.

Still playing Warhammer 2, and I gotta say I am feeling like it's the best Total War title of them all, but these sorts of things are tempered with time. But it's really polished, interesting and fun. I played the Vortex campaign as the High Elves up to the fourth Ritual. I've set it to Hard/Hard as I've done with every one since Med 2. Upon reaching he 4th (of 5) Ritual I put that on hold as I wanted to try the Mortal Empires campaign that I saw was a free DLC.,

Without reading about it I downloaded it and went to play it. A message popped up saying that Warhammer 1 must be owned to play the ME campaign. Well if that ain't a kick in the pants, but entirely understandable if not forseeable. So I went to the Steam store and lessee, Warhammer 1, that will be sixty freakin' bucks! Whoa there pardner, that's a bit steep for the old game. I really wanted to play it though, but not for 60. So I searched and found it was that expensive virtually everywhere. Except for Fanatics. I bought a key there for $13. It doesn't even need to be installed, just owned. And that was all it took.

The Mortal Empires campaign is essentially both maps and all factions from both games stitched together. That results in one HUGE map and 117 factions. 117! Total War Battle Royale is what it is, and it's fun. Epic, even. I chose the Empire, a human faction loosely based on I guess Prussian or Holy Roman Empire armies. Swords, knights, artillery sort of stuff. A bit of an odd choice I thought with so many weird, wonderful races and factions to choose from, but they are far from the strongest faction and I liked their starting position and units and mechanics so stuck with them. My campaign is going well enough, but it's the tasty part early in the game when you are stretched to the limit and every decision feels so important to your survival and success. As an "Old World' faction (from Warhammer 1) it maybe isn't as fleshed out as the New World factions, but still I am having a blast, in some cases literally (mmm, artillery)

Despite doing well enough, I feel like at any moment it could all be lost, such is the state of affairs in the world. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men, and whatever those things are?

Warhammer 2 Mortal Empires campaign is awesome. Great game!!!

Yes it is! Which factions have you done in ME Airdrop?

My Empire campaign is going well. I have access now to most elite units, though affording to field them is another matter entirely. I've essentially unified the Empire lands through conquest, diplomacy (confederations) and alliances. Now we are staging to attack the Vampire Counts for control of Sylvania. That corruption is a serious deterrent though. It's like marching your armies through Russia in the winter.

After about 50 turns or so I had grown to 10 provinces, which put me in the top 3 to 5 in strength. This fluctuates as armies battle and towns fall and are taken. Early on I wanted to attack my neighbor Marienburg, mainly for their port. But other matters kept taking priority and I never did launch the attack, and they began growing, essentially matching my pace. Eventually I saw that it might makes sense just to be friends, since they could at least protect my western borders.

I've read some threads about Empire campaigns, and virtually all of them say attack Marienburg early on. But now it didn't make sense for me to do so. And it nagged at me. I wanted that territory. And that port.

Every few turns I run down the diplomacy screen and check each faction to see if any new deals can be struck, and dutifully clicked on Marienburg and saw that Confederation was green. Well now. In a single click I essentially doubled in size, and got that port I wanted haha. One thing I do not like about this title is that when you capture a town through conquest, you capture it down a level from where it had been, and the good buildings the enemy had there are gone. I saw this in my High Elves Vortex campaign. One of my enemies had a library that gave tons of good bonuses including 12% research rate. But when I took the city all of that was gone. Wasn't pleased about that.

But when you confederate, you get everything intact, and the AI has plenty of money to burn on buildings it seems, so gaining all nine Marienburg towns was a big shot in the arm for my campaign. You also get their armies and agents, but a few had to be sacrificed as the upkeep was crippling. I was surprised to see that another faction that was essentially my equal was willing to confederate, but they were indeed.

So now we turn to the east and the Vampires. Sylvania is a victory objective and there is a gold province there. If successful, it will put us in a good position to prepare for the Chaos Invasion, which I assume is still a thing? Not sure exactly what to expect as it seems CA has tweaked it a few times and maybe it's not so strong any more. But I want to be prepared.

I play as Empire. I just started a new one. I decided to go for Marrienburg as soon as I got rid of the secessionists.

In the past, I’ve gone straight for the vampires. I hate that corruption. But the units I need to beat them cost a ton. And the vampirism is brutal to deal with. I’m going to see if the other states can mess with the.

Given my cancer and chemo, I now have a ton of time so I should be able to spend a good deal on this.

I’m color blind. How do you tell if they’ll accept confederation?

Chaos is tough but if you have say two full strength armies in the northeast, you can hold them in check. It puts a cramp on expansion though....

Cool thanks man, and I'd be interested in any thing you'd care to post about your campaign, especially as we are the same faction.

The icon to the right of each diplomacy option is color-coded, which you cannot differentiate I imagine. It's reddiish-brown for low chance, beige-brown for moderate and green for high chance.

I already killed one Vampire faction, Von Carstein, but the territory was occupied by Averland. So just the VC left for Vampires as far as I can tell. They have about 6 towns, but are listed as 5th strength, so I think their units must be quite strong. I have arrayed 3 stacks along the border and will invade tonight. I have a few untainted traits/items/followers, but invading provinces with such high corruption will prove a big challenge I think. I see it taking 40+ turns to wade through while maintaining sufficient troop counts. Untainted buildings do not seem to give adjacency bonuses like other titles (like similar buildings since Shogun 2 I think. Even Vortex has adjacency. Maybe I've just missed it so far. Maybe it's a legacy from the Old World) so it is hard to overcome and has such a debilitating effect.

As for my run, the first move was to squash the seccessionists, like you said. That took about 5 turns, and then had to repel a couple of stacks from Skullsmasherz. Once i was ready to expand I invaded Middenland and through time made it my main cavalry-recruiting province. A muddled war situation saw us eventually occupy Hochland, and I confederated Marienburg after that. Of course this was the most pivotal event so far, doubling my size, economy and military. I then confederated Talabecland, who were down to a single region. Ostmark held the other Talabecland city and they DoW'd me and we took the Talabecland capital, which tidied up the lines to the east. Eventually got a peace with Ostland, but they just got attacked by Kislev and I don't think they will be any trouble from here on out. In the end I decided to let Ostland live, even though they have a gold province sitting right across the border. I reasoned that with the gold they might actually be able to field good armies, and would make a good buffer state to the east. I believe that direction is where I can expect the Chaos invasion to come from? Or at least one part of it?

So it's about turn 90 and we hold 20 or so regions. I just finished waiting for the diplomacy timer to tick down after breaking treaties with Bretonnia, and will attack next turn. This will further shorten my lines and give me some peace of mind. It will also complete control of two provinces that Bretonnia and I have shared since we incorporated Marienburg. I'm allied with (the quite strong) Tyrion, but we haven't helped each other yet. But it's one more friend to the west which is a good thing. Knowing what I know now I think if I did it again I would move south against Wissenland rather than north against Middenland. North is Norsca and south is Greenskins so I guess it's a pick your poison sort of thing. In the end it may not make a difference as I should have all of it confederated at some point down the line.

Dwarves and Wood Elves I have good relations with at the moment. So it's the VC to the east and Bretonnia to the west as the next moves for my Empire. I recently got called to war with the Greenskins who are very strong in this run, but there is quite a buffer standing between us (since I didn't invade Wissenland I would reckon lol). For what it's worth I started with Franz, in case there had been a choice

That didn't go well.

As mentioned I invaded the Vampire Counts and Bretonnia simultaneously, one on each flank of my realm. I sent my two best armies against the VC, easily took two settlements in a single turn, and then got crushed in the counterattack, when the VC brought three full stacks of foul creatures against my stacks who were understrength due to attrition and combat losses in the taking of the town and castle.

It's a standard tactic of mine to run two armies together, supporting, and I imagine many players do. Here, I had my Emperor's army in the castle-town, and the other army encamped just behind, within the reinforcement range.But the AI was smart. During their turn they sieged the castle with one army, then send a second and third around the back to attack my encamped army. Of course this meant my besieged army could not reinforce and it all went to hell, and each was defeated in detail.

Meanwhile..... in the west, I attacked two-settlement Bretonnia with two stacks of my own. Their two settlements were fairly far apart, so I planned to take the first with both armies, and then move to the second. There was little they could do. Or so I thought. On the first AI turn after I sieged, Bretonnia began confederating. Each turn they grew bigger and stronger to the point where I realized that I might have bitten off more than I could chew. Instead of a quick conquest I got a slog. In the end I took the two provinces, but Bretonnia was actually bigger after the peace deal than before the war started.

I'm about 150 turns in, holding 26 settlements. Both Wissenland and Averland are willing to confederate, but doing so would put me close to 40 settlements. Doing just one would put me around 33. As I believe imperium is the trigger for the Chaos invasion I am holding off doing so while I continue to prepare. Not ready for that just yet.

I don’t have 2 yet, still playing through 1....but I love the battles in this game. The various factions and units look amazing and are a blast to watch/see what they do.

Agreed. I wish now that I had played Warhammer 1 first. I'm sure I will give it a go at some point. For me there is lots to like about this game, but as I alluded to earlier, the 'factionality' is one of the most appealing aspects. The sheer variety and asymmetry from one to the next is awesome. And it's not just the units, but virtually all aspects of the faction. Bonuses, abilities, tech trees -- it's all different. Empire is only the third faction I've tried so far, and I'm looking forward to trying more. The ME and Vortex campaigns are also really fun, the mechanics are interesting, how it plays out is fun to watch. Having a lord dedicated to do nothing but treasure hunt the entire campaign is great too, as it essentially keeps me afloat I think haha.

In my Empire run, after taking Sylvania from the VC and more of my west coast from Bretonnia, I attacked Moussilon (spelling? the Vampire dudes) who were adjacent to the territory I just took. They had two settlements, and both with ports. Won that war, taking me to 28 settlements and must have hit the imperium trigger, and the Chaos invasion began. In no Total War game is there a more sweeping geopolitical shift than when this happens, I don't think. Suddenly, everyone's in it together, and united (for the most part) against the forces of Chaos. Once it triggered, I no longer needed worry about imperium and immediately confederated Wissenland, as I wanted that gunnery school they have. And then peace treaties were signed, alliances made, and trade agreements with factions that wouldn't consider it for the first 150 turns. Shogun 2's Realm Divide was the first thing of this sort that I recall in a TW game, and for the most part I don't like how it was handled. The Chaos invasion though is pretty cool, and we will see if I feel the same after having battled them.

It caught me off guard, I thought I would need closer to 35 settlements, but imperium is not just territory, but also army number and strength and how well developed your settlements are among other factors I suppose. So when it triggered, most of my armies were down south, arrayed against the Greenskins, so they are being rushed north and new armies are being drafted as well. If we do hold them off, I wonder though about the game afterwards, with all of this good will as we fight a common foe, will peace simply reign in it's wake? We shall see.

A few years ago I started a thread asking folks to rank the TW games.My original list had Medieval 2 at the top. As time went on I played more titles and first Napoleon, then eventually Atilla claimed top spot due to it's polished mechanics and interesting campaigns, and of course the 'factionality' thing I keep going on about. Having now played Warhammer 2 for many hours I dare say it now tops the list. It's a close run thing, but I just find the game compelling in ways that the historical titles are not. In a sense it's like deciding on your favorite Ferrari, they're all good and it comes down to personal preference or taste I suppose.

I've played as a few different factions, in both the Vortex and Mortal Empires campaigns. A couple days ago I started a ME run as Dwarfs, not knowing much about them, aside from the stereotypical Dwarf stuff. But what a fun faction to play. I can't recall which factions I may have played in TW that didn't have cavalry. It's a core facet of my tactical approach. I have purposely avoided non-cav factions before, like the Danes in Atilla. I mean, who is going to run down all those routers? Certainly not Dwarfs with their stubby little legs.

But that is part of the appeal. Finding a new approach, solving the tactical dilemma with different rules. In the past, I would wipe armies, because once they routed, my cav would clean them up, leaving not enough stragglers in most cases to maintain the force and they were gone. As the Dwarfs, some always get away it seems. The upshot is there is a follow up battle against the remnants, leading to more experience and better generals, or Lords in this case, and better units.

The start for the Dwarfs (not dwarves, as it seems to be in Warhammer) I found very challenging. You start with a single settlement, a Karak carved out of a mountain, as Drawfs do. The remaining two settlements that make up the Silver Road province are not too hard to take, and that was accomplished in a few turns, giving me three settlements, or one province. So far so good. But you also start at war with five Greenskins factions, who hate you. By turn 40 I finally captured my fourth. By turn 50 I was back to three haha. It's a seemingly never-ending procession of stacks from all directions. If I dealt with two stacks from one faction this turn, it's two more from another faction next turn. It was fun, all these battles, hanging by a thread, patching armies together to meet each new threat. But I was making no progress. Economy was stagnant since I had to keep armies in the field capable of defending my little corner of the mountain range and I continually spent to my limit.

Another challenge is that movement range is poor in the mountains as you'd expect, and stubby Dwarf legs don't gobble up much ground do they? So it's difficult to parry each thrust. But the Dwarfs have a trick up their sleeves. They can move underground, bypassing enemies or unpassable terrain, and ignoring terrain movement penalties. It's an awesome ability that's really fun to use. Further, armies using the underground passageways can be intercepted, and the battle is fought in a huge underground cavern, with the loser wiped out. Epic battles in a confined corridor that is just smash-mouth, with no subtlety or hint of maneuver.

In the first 50 turns I fought 37 battles, to give an idea of the pace in the early game for this faction. Of those, I fought 35, only auto-resolving twice. I had the most experienced Lords in the land at that stage that's for certain. Since virtually every one for these battles was fought at a disadvantage, playing them in real time was my only hope of survival. I lost a few of course, but the Dwarfs are steady men. They fight to the death, and are heavily armored. No cav as mentioned, but excellent archers and artillery. Did I say no cav?

Yes, no cav, but Dwarfs are ingenious and industrious, as is their nature. To solve the lack of mobility they have.... gyrocopters! Oh yeah. It takes a while to get them, you need the correct buildings of course, and I now even have an 'airport' at my capital. Sadly, I had to work today, so had to shut it down last night before I could deploy them in battle as it was way too late to be playing games. But tonight. Tonight I will unleash my whizbangs against mine enemy! They have been recruited and distributed to the field armies, and only await a battle. It won't be long in coming. Finally, I will be able to counter the enemy's artillery, which have spent many battles firing with impunity from afar. Little do they know, Dwarfs have gyrocopters!

Reading through this post got my curiosity aroused and grabbed it late last night,,,mostly I play Rome II and Shogun II,and think a break from historical to Fantasy would be fun...I've played Medieval II ,,Empire and Atillia to me all good games ,,once I get fully awake and walk the dog and eat I'm settling in to a solid day of Warhammer 2...Good thread here with a lot of useful information

Awesome, happy to hear it. Which faction will you start off with? Which campaign? The Mortal Empires one is free, but you have to download it. Let me know how it goes or if you have any questions.

In the end, the gyrocopters turned out to be useful, but not the death machines I had envisioned. They are a bit squishy, despite high armor. Perhaps those were armor piercing arrows the enemy was shooting. Still, it's a way to counter their artillery which was needed.

DBond not really sure where to start..From your post might give the high elves a spin..From what I've seen so far decided to go ahead and get the first Warhammer ..just a bit worn out on the old Nazie's and Japs thing and being a long time fan of LOTR which i read once a year and never get tired of it..Fills a need to escape for awhile..the great grandson was over last night and he got very absorbed in it ..got him flying EAW and now he is grabbing Warhammer and moving away from the X-Box..If it sticks we might do some MP good way to make a connection with him..His comment was "Didn't know old dudes like you are into this stuff" LOL Hey old but not in a coma

High Elves are a great choice, maybe even the best one for a first run. They were the faction I tried first. They are fairly traditional in their roster, the best cav, great infantry and archers, a bit weak on artillery and dragons! Public order is no issue due to buildings bonuses. And the Sea Guard, which are excellent early to mid game troops. They are a bit like the dismounted Jinettes from Med 2.

High Elves also have a good starting position. I'd go for Tyrion, Teclis has a much harder start. Alith Anar is good too but in a more perilous starting position. Tyrion is awesome, one of the best Lords in the game, he can grow to become a melee god if you take that path.

Quite possibly their most powerful advantage is the influence mechanic, called Intrigue at the Court. High Elves can spend influence to manipulate the political environment. You can make nations like you, hate you, or do it between two AI factions. I found this ability extremely powerful and effective.

So, great starting position, roster, King and abilities. A really good choice in my opinion.

I'm about 200 turns in to the Dwarfs campaign. We are the strongest faction in the land, though both Lothern (High Elves) and Empire (humans) are close. I have all requirements done for both a short and long campaign victory, aside from cleansing the land of the Chaos invasion. They just keep coming. Wipe out one wave, and another spawns. We are strong enough to deal with them, but it's a bit of a slog.

It's been a fun campaign, and particularly notable for the success we've had co-ordinating with allies. The war goal mechanic has been seen before, but never have I seen it work so well. Especially so with the Empire and our war against the Vampire Counts, who had grown very strong, and their corruption a blight on the land. Using the war goal I was able to direct Empire forces against specific towns or armies. It was due to the Empire being strong enough to have the armies available to respond and mobilize on the selected target. In this way we were able to strike from both sides, Dwarfs from the east and Empire from the west. And we systematically eradicated the scourge.

Same with a war with the Greenskins and a Drawf ally. Not as machine-like due to this Dwarf ally having less means and resources, but it still worked quite well.

I'm at the stage where we are strong enough not to worry about anything, and I've about had it, but I want to claim a campaign win. The Chaos have other plans though it seems.

I either own or am allied with virtually the entire map, so we 'see' everything. As a result, the AI turns are taking 13+ minutes if you can believe it.

DBond, what is your makeup,for empire armies? I usually get bogged down with the vampires and the relentless corruption. I use a Lord, a general or witch hunter, and maybe 6 greatswords, 4 crossbows, 4 arty (hopefully he’ll storm but sometimes I’m stuck with mortars) and four reiksguard or, if I’m later in the game, demigryph halberd knights.

Thoughts? Maybe it’s my current game bad luck because the Dwavres are about dead, which is pretty much left me alone against vamps from east and west, (Moiusilon) and Greenskins from south. I’m lucky no chaos yet....

Each army is slightly different, but on the main you've got the same sort of setup I used in my Empire run.

I prefer indirect artillery, so mortars and rockets, not cannon. My late game armies usually had a steam tank too.

I really liked the Reiksguard, great bang for the buck, especially with the buildings in Middenland, but in some armies I mixed in light cav. The grenade Outriders are auto-resolve stars.

Ranged was usually both crossbows and handgunners for the AP.

Franz for example was like this at the end

Franz
Empire Captain
7 x Greatswords
4 x Reiksguard
2 x Handgunners
2 x Crossbows
1 x Mortar
1 x Steam Tank
1 x Helstorm

The corruption is difficult, and I opted for attrition bonuses if I could for armies that would fight Vampires and Chaos I also had lots of Untainted bonuses and followers, so that when my armies were in those lands the corruption would be falling, which helps over the course of a long war.. I tended to invest fairly heavily in the blue tree for my Lords. Encamp stance is a life saver of course. And I ran armies in tandem, supporting.

The handgunners/crossbows were paired up on each flank, one of each type.

I shelved the Dwarfs run. I played a few more turns, and killed a couple more Chaos waves, but more came in their place. With little to do other than fight Chaos and watch long AI turns I decided to put it on hold, and I rarely return to finish these. I want to actually 'win' one of these campaigns though. I need to figure out how to move from Doomtide waves to the final one.

A few notes about the Dwarfs, who proved to be one of my all-time favorite TW factions. Their tech research is insane. I got so many +10% research followers I couldn't use them all. At the end, we were getting 400% research rate. I had almost done every tech, and if I played a little longer I would have. A huge advantage over other factions.

The Dwarfs, for whatever reason, get crap for battle loot, With Elven factions, I often get 3000-5000 in post-battle loot. Dwarfs get 300. Not sure why, but that is a huge handicap.

Dwarfs have a mechanic called Grudges. They even have a huge Book of Grudges, where every slight is recorded and must be avenged, lest the people think the leader is not up to snuff. So if Dwarf lands are raided, or tresspassed, or if a settlement is sacked, razed or otherwise sullied, this affrontery is recorded for all time. If allowed to go un-avenged, order begins to fall and bad things happen.

I went all-in on this haha. If another faction even looked at me wrong I would say out loud, "That's a Grudgin'!" in my best Dwarf-Pirate voice. And it would NEED to be avenged lol. Fun stuff.

I had a great time with this faction. Their infantry are amazing,and I loved the whole underground passageways thing. It was fun to fight for a change with no cav and so little mobility on the battlefield. A nice change of pace. It's a difficult start, but once I made the choice to launch the assault to capture the second province and it's port (so important) things began to snowball. The economy took off and we ended up owning, or being allied to, the world. Highly recommended faction.

For Airdrop..... you mentioned the Dwarfs have been mostly killed off and aren't helping from the east. When Warhammer 2 was released, evidently the Dwarfs were OP, there was even a name for it, Dwarftide. CA made some tweaks, and the result is that Dwarfs are now probably underpowered in auto-resolve, and no longer are strong enough to do much in the campaign when controlled by AI.

Even though I shelved this Dwarf run, I am still really liking Warhammer 2, and began another campaign, this a H/H Dark Elves run (Malekith) in the Vortex campaign. It's awesome how different each faction is. These guys are evil, but that's worth a go and we got off to a good start. H/H makes for difficult starts for me, but once you've gotten a foothold I think that's the sweetspot for the AI for me.

I LOVE this game. It’s probably my favorite Total War game so far...and I’ve had em since the beginning.

I feel the same, though I also realize that novelty is a factor and may be part of why I feel this way. I haven't been in it since the beginning, Rome 1 was my first TW game, but that's still most of them, and Warhammer 2 is right at the top of the list. What do you like about it?

As to your Empire- VC thing, have you tried pulling back and see if they will come to you? Of course the corruption attrition works both ways and if you can get the VC stacks to enter your lands you would benefit. Maybe try setting a couple armies on ambush and see if they will come for your frontier towns. Or use a half-stack bait army with full stacks hidden nearby. A combination of attrition and Assault Units could melt the vampire stacks and open the door.

A questionable tactic I use on particularly tough enemy settlements, like one with a huge garrison and a full stack army is to hit it with Assault units and Assault Garrison and maybe hit the walls and then siege the town. Next turn, break the siege, hit them with the agents again and encircle once more. This prevents the enemy from replenishing. After a few turns you can essentially waltz right in. They might sally of course so be sure you can handle it if they do.

As to my Dark Elves run it's all going well. Dark Elves have some good units and abilities. Their archers-- Shades and Darkshards-- are excellent, probably the best archers in the game. Infantry isn't the greatest, especially I suppose having come straight from a Dwarfs run. Melee defense in particular is not a strength. They are all about hitting fast and hard. The ability called Murderous Prowess is awesome, And they have Dark Arks, a ship that acts as a mobile base, to allow recruitment and replenishment (and bombardment ala Shogun 2) anywhere. An amazing thing when invading faraway hostile shores.

Learned something new yesterday, to my consternation I must say.

My Naggaroth was at war with the high elves of Nagarythe. I launched an invasion of their territory and took 3 of their four settlements. The fourth was a port city, called Slaver's Gate I think. I sieged this last town with one full stack army (Malekith) and had a second supporting in reinforcement range as per usual. I then moved my Dark Ark, which I had spent tons of money and dozens of turns building up, to a position adjacent to the port. This would provide bombardment support during, and reinforcement after, the battle.

Clicked end turn and the Nagarythe army that was in the town simply sailed out the backside and sunk my Black Ark! What the?

I don't know that I've ever seen this. The siege of a port city does not close the port and the enemy can freely leave (or arrive?) to a sieged city by sea. There is no blockade mechanic any longer so no way to close it off. What a kick in the teeth that was, to lose this ship that was so central to my invasion plans. Not a problem to recruit another, but it's losing all that progress that stings.

(Edit) Actually this may have also happened in Atilla now that I think about it

I fought another battle, early in this campaign. The battle was tight, I took some heavy losses, but eventually broke them and they ran for the exits. I gave chase on foot and with some volleys of bolts, but most routers escaped. In the after-battle screen I looked at the enemy who survived and thought how great it would have been to have had cavalry to run them down.

Wait a second.... I'm not the Dwarfs. I had two full units of cav that I had hidden behind a hill and then completely forgot about them. Duh.

After playing a couple of Mortal Empires campaigns (on the big map stitching both games together), this Dark Elves run is in Vortex. I decided I would send a raiding army and a Dark Ark to the old world and sack, pillage and plunder my way about. So I set sail and roll back the fog and err, hit the edge of the map. There is no old world in Vortex. Duh.

I managed to finish one of these campaigns, this one a H/H run as Dark Elves (Malekith) in the Vortex campaign. It was the best Total War campaign I have ever played. With the amount of discussion going on, I reckon few folks around here will do the same, but I will refrain from spoiling it, just in case. But I will say that the campaign is highly engaging (to me), throws a big plot twist, and really ramps up the challenge as you near completion of the Rituals.

As mentioned earlier, there are two campaigns, Eye of the Vortex and Mortal Empires (ME). The ME campaign stitches together all factions and both maps from Warhammers 1 and 2. It is a grand campaign in every sense. It's like most of the grand campaigns that have come before, and plays out in much the same way, aside from the Chaos Invasion near the end.

The Vortex campaign is quite different. I imagine that CA was looking for a way to keep the challenge level up throughout the campaign. Lets face it, in any Total War title there comes a point where you are steamrolling everyone, usually by mid -game. The last part of the run is academic, as you fill in victory objectives. Or at least that's been my experience throughout the series,

The Vortex campaign seeks to correct this late-game humdrum. In the campaign there are four playable races, Dark Elves, High Elves, Lizardmen and Skaven (Rat men). Each race is divided in to a large number of factions. The leading faction for each carries the Vortex torch for their race.

So what's the Vortex? It's a big blue and green swirling maelstrom above the High Elves island of Ulthuan.designed to drain magical energy from the world. Each race seeks to control it. The Vortex campaign is therefore a race between each, err, race, to gain control. The winner will be the first one to complete five Rituals. Do so, and the power of the Vortex is yours, or so the legend goes.

To perform a Ritual, ritual currency must be gathered. It has a different name for each race --Way fragments, Warpstones, Scrolls of Hekarti and Ancient Plaques -- which, when enough has been accrued, allows that faction to kick off a ritual, which lasts for 10 turns. During the ritual you gain bonuses, reduced upkeep, increased public order and so on, but the forces of Chaos will take exception, sending armies to stop the Ritual. These are not so strong early on, but grow in number and power with each successive Ritual.

Ritual currency is gained through settlements, missions and buildings. Scattered about the map are special Ritual currency sites, settlements that have unique buildings that yield far greater amounts than a normal settlement. These strategic locations transform the game. Their importance is obvious, and each faction needs to control as many as possible, to generate currency for themselves as well as to deny it to their rivals.

Instead of the creeping border tide that we usually see in TW games, this mechanic leads to surgical strikes, invasion of far away places. It adds urgency, encouraging the player to take risks. To get out of your comfort zone advancing and protecting your borders, and instead rolling the dice with a a military expedition. If a faction clear across the world is leading the race, you feel compelled to try and stop them, and that means capturing or razing their Ritual sites.

And it is a lot of fun, for me at least. I loved the whole thing. It shakes up the standard TW gameplay. For others maybe not so much. With so little discussion here at Sim HQ, I've been reading other forums and many players complain about the Vortex mechanics. Some gripes are legit, but for the most part I see it as jaded douchebags who need things to complain about. At the center of their complaints is the fact that the 'race' isn't really one at all. It is possible to win the campaign while ignoring the race altogether. When an AI faction wins the race, the player has a chance to fight a battle against them, and if the player wins, that leading faction is removed from the list of contenders.

Do this against each race and you win, and wouldn't need a single fragment or Waystone. These folks use this as 'proof' that the Vortex campaign sucks. Phooey.

You know, you could finish a marathon by running to the end of the first block, ducking in to an apartment and watching TV and eating Cheetos for four hours, then running the final block of the race and across the line. Marathons suck.

So, because it's possible to win by ignoring the rituals, the ritual race itself is invalidated. CA put this in I am sure so that these same people wouldn't complain that the "AI always beats me to the final ritual, this game sucks." Sheesh.

For me, I enjoyed every minute of it, and felt a distinct challenge all the way to the final battle. The campaign was strategic on a level that all others are not. I could go on sprinkling praise or a critical eye over what I think is the best Total War title of them all. And will do so if asked. But for now, I just wanted to share a few thoughts on the Vortex campaign so others might get a feel for what it is.

Here's a shot showing Malekith's army as he returned from the final battle to take control of the Vortex, which you can see the bottom of in the center of the shot (looks like a tornado).

The city at the bottom of the screen, Lothern, is the capital of the High Elves. Or it was. I sniped it while the HE armies were away, mostly.

Winning the final battle raised all Lords levels by 5, though I stopped playing at this point. In Malekith's army are several Executioners (green unit card), which are the top anti-infantry infantry unit for the Dark Elves. The Shades (blue card) are excellent ranged units, also having greatswords and do a nice job in melee when called upon. All Dark Elves archers have armor piercing, which is fabulous.

Purple cards are Regiments of Renown, special upgraded versions of regular troops that are unlocked as your general gains levels. Also in the army are cavalry and mounted bows, plus a dragon and two Hydras, which are 5-headed beasts that just wreck sh!t. A few units of Executioners were lost in the final battle, because it ain't easy.

A weekly Warhammer update! Yeah, yeah, I know. Hey Russ, what ever happened with your solid day of Warhammer/? Did you play? What did you think?

Since the last post I've played a couple more campaigns. After completing the Eye of the Vortex as the Dark Elves I messed around with a few things, including an abortd run as Bretonnia in Warhammer 1, then chose Grombrindal the White Dwarf. A really strong Legendary Lord and lots of fun. I fought through the difficult start to emerge strong on the other side and grew quickly. After confederating several Dwarf clans I stood poised in the mountains to invade the Vampire Counts. Just as Chaos emerged from the wastes to the north, we launched an invasion with 5 stacks. Upon capturing the first settlement I saw I had only options to sack or raze, no occupation. In Warhammer 2, settlements are either suitable, partially suitable or unsuitable, but all can be occupied, with varying levels of bonus or malus depending upon suitability.

In Warhammer 1, it's far more blunt. You cannot live here, the game tells you. And with it, the entire strategical plan I had coiled was undone. I would be left to play out the remaining turns defending, sackin', raidin' and razin'. Not enuff grudgin'! So I lost my enthusiasm and decided to go a different route. There are some things I grew accustomed to in WH2 that are absent for WH1 and while it's still a great game, the Mortal Empires campaign means I won't need to play WH1, regardless of faction. Glad I gave it a go though, and ticked one more title off my 'played' list.

In Warhammer limbo once more I debated the various factions. As I've mentioned a few times, the factionality in this game is fantastic. Each race is so different. and I've only played a few. One I had not tried are the Skaven, the rat men. At first glance they weren't too interesting, a bit repulsive to be honest. They live underground, their settlements appearing as razed cities to the unwary. They have a mechanic that requires a constant food supply which can put the brakes on expansion. They rely on plagues and pestilence. And, well, they're rats.

But as I played other factions and fought the Skaven they started interesting me. They could wreck me with their artillery. and sheer numbers. They have slave units that are meat shields and you sort of take on a different view. These troops are expendable. They are dirt cheap. Like mob the enemy and then hit the whole blob with your awesome artillery. You can always raise more rat slave units.

Furthermore, they have fantastic agents, and their high-tier military units are quite good. And they have some really good abilities. One is called "The Menace Below". It's a battle ability that lets you spawn a unit of low level rat warriors anywhere on the battlefield. So many uses, but spawning them in the center of a group of enemy archers is hilarious. Or in front of a fleeing unit to slow them down. Or in front of their main line advance, causing the enemy to stop and deal, while that awesome artillery rains destruction. So much fun.

On the campaign map they have an ability that grants a chance that your attack is an ambush. So you can move to attack, and get an ambush. Not just ending your turn in ambush stance. This is so amazing.

With my current DLC soup I have three Skaven Legendary Lords to start as.

Strolk is in Lustria (South America) in the jungles. He is full-on plague lord, and this is central to his playstyle. This region remains the only one I have not played in. There are minor factions there that I have yet to meet, let alone fight, since by the time I can see this region in previous games, these minors are gone.

Tretch Craventail is in the NW part of the ME map (North America). He is a backstabber extraordinaire. His faction actually gains public order for each diplomatic treaty he breaks. LOL. But I've played extensively in this part of the map (Dark Elves) and wanted to go somewhere different for this run.

So that leaves Queek. Of the Skaven LLs, he is the most melee-centered. And unlike most Skaven, he is loyal and brave. A real character, yes-yes, kills me some dwarf-things, yes-yes. He starts way down in the SE corner, amongst Lizardmen and Vampires and Tomb Kings. And he is the only Legendary Lord with a start labeled as Very Hard in this campaign. So yeah, that sorta seals the deal right there,

So sure, another 'awesome faction' according to me, but hey I'm easy to please. This post is longer than planned so I'll end it here. I just want to reiterate once again (talk about redundancy!) how amazing this game is with each race being a complete new experience. New techs, units, abilities, handicaps. With each one I play I feel like it's an entirely different game. Really enjoying it.

Another week has gone, and with it, an astounding 260 turns of a Skaven campaign. Can't recall the last Total War campaign that I've played as long.

This is a Hard/Hard Mortal Empires run, and as mentioned in the previous post, it's the only start in Mortal Empires labeled as Very Hard. And it is, or at least, it could be. I felt that in the early turns things broke well for me. I see the potential for disaster, but avoided it, or it avoided me perhaps.

In the very first turns I cleared out the Greenskins from my starting province and began slowly expanding. There is no time limit in this campaign, no need to rush. The primary threat for me at this stage was the presence of the lizardmen to my east. They clearly didn't care for my ratmen. Early units for Skaven are quite squishy, and the lizards are not. They have armor and monsters and dinosaurs. I had little to counter this. So it forced me to play differently, and to approach army composition with specific guidelines and a change in both strategy and tactics..

I came to see my armies as hard-counters. That is, ensuring I have the correct unit types to counter the specific threats in the enemy's armies. Does the enemy have a preponderance of armor and monsters? Then I need to have armor piercing and anti-large units to deal. Sending a few units of clanrats with swords against a few charging dinos is sure to end in a pell-mell race for the exits.

I also came to see the Skaven roster as awesome. But it takes a while to unlock it all of course, so the early game was a series of skirmishes, raids, sacking and plundering. Complicating matters is the food mechanic that Skaven have, Each army and each settlement you have costs one food. If you fall low on food reserves you get order and leadership penalties. So expansion, both in territory and in military strength, is tempered by the need to balance the food reserves.

So I went slowly. 100 turns in I had just 15 regions. The leading factions had over 50. But by taking my time I was able to build a solid base, tech up and fill out my armies with the units I needed. After clearing out the lizardmen and settling this corner of the map,I insulated my entire starting area behind a huge wall of allies. Potential enemies would need to travel through many provinces owned by my allies before they could even get to me, and even then my cities appear as ruins and the AI is programmed to be fooled by this, or so it seems. So more than any other TW faction I've played, I came to realize that I could venture further afield, and leave my homeland mostly undefended by mobile armies. This was supported by the fact that Skaven have really good, strong garrisons, and I could take on any single-stack army at the walls, if it came to that.

But this sort of locked me in. I couldn't expand my little corner of the world without going to war with an ally. So a distant target was needed. I took Queek's army and another and began the long trek over land and seas to Lustria. Usually in a TW run I will start sending agents off in all directions to roll back the fog, discover other factions and hopefully get some trade partners out of it. But in Warhammer I've more or less stopped doing this. New trade agreements are valuable of course, but there's also a chance that the faction you discover says something along the lines of "Oh there you are. We hate you. To war!" And they declare on you on the very first turn you learn of one another. That's not too good. So I began keeping everyone on a short leash. just rolling back the fog enough to keep an eye on anyone encroaching my borders.

But this also meant I had yet to discover any other Skaven factions, who would make good allies and potential confederation targets. The skaven lord Skrolk is in Lustria and as my first agent touched down on his shores I began trying to butter him up. Not only did I want to be allies, I also needed somewhere for my two armies to encamp. The long journey through deserts and open ocean had caused serious attrition. So I did things like give gifts and use my agents against his enemies to curry favor and get military access. This was done and my armies made landfall to find he was down to 3 regions, and a second lizardman faction was sweeping down to crush him. My two armies added stiffness to his defense and together we fought them to standstill. The High Elves were also a problem, but by using the underways and ambushes we started to roll them back. Skrolk was so happy about this he agreed to confederate and now my Clan Mors had a second homeland and a second Legendary Lord as well. Skrolk is a caster and a nice complement to Queek's melee-centric abilities.

Now it was on. The entire western side of the map was nothing but me and enemies and a shrinking Dark Elves enclave up north. I was at the extreme southern end with my rear secure and one direction to fight. And as luck would have it, another lizardman faction as enemy with my stacks tailored for this particular foe.

We now have 40+ regions and are the strongest in the land. Sadly, my allies suck big time and can't do anything right, so I'm on my own as I watch them do stupid sh!t every turn as their cities are taken by the enemies. When the campaign starts I think there are 117 factions, plus a number of emergent and rebel factions that pop up. Now, 260+ turns in, it's down to the last 23. Battle Royale, Total War style!

That's right folks, another week has gone. I decided to snap some pics and put them up for SimHQ consumption, then basically forgot to take any, so that was a fail.

Can hardly believe it myself, that I am still playing this game. It's been a couple months now and I am still finding new and interesting stuff. The factionality thing continues to pay dividends. Each faction or race I choose is like an entirely new game. So far I've played as

High Elves (twice, in each campaign)
Empire
Dwarfs (two times, each with a different Lord)
Dark Elves (Twice)
Skaven
Bretonnia (briefly)

Each of those plays so differently, it's awesome. And now I've gone and bought the Tomb Kings DLC. I'll keep it brief as there's little interest, but it's another great faction. These dudes are all undead, skeletons and stone monsters 'living' in the desert, with a decidedly Ancient Egypt theme. Entirely new mechanics than any I've tried so far. For example, their armies have no recruitment cost nor upkeep. Recruitment is capped by research (for new Lords) and buildings (for higher tier units). Lots more unique facets.

Infantry is a weakness, but maybe the most powerful monsters in the game, a unique tech tree mechanic and in the Vortex campaign, they have objectives separate from all other races that are doing the Vortex thing. I'm playing on Hard/Hard as per usual, and frankly it's been the easiest start I've done so far. It got more challenging after 50 turns, but a fairly easy start. I'm finding that fighting other Tomb Kings is difficult.

I've dropped a ton of time in to this title, far more already than Atilla which I liked. The replayability factor with all the different factions is extremely high. And there are still a few factions that I have yet to try.

Check up in the community War hammer 40000 Space Marines is free at Humble Bundle for a bit..I got a steam key from them and no issues signing onto Steam and getting it in my library..The price is right
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/warhammer-40000-space-marine

Well it's Warhammer, and a reply, so I'll take it. Thanks man. How did your solid day with Warhammer that you mentioned go? Did you try it?

A few times I've referred to 'monsters', but that's just me being lazy. Monstrous units is more accurate, if the point isn't too fine.

Man, I just had a weird experience...I got destroyed as Empire in a game. I had ports, etc. Vamps and chaos just killed me!

I'm gonna have to have a go at that again. That was weird!!!

What difficulty are you playing? I've had the VC afflict a few heavy defeats on me as well. They are tough, especially once they have their roster teched up. The key as I see it, and easier said then done, is to snipe the Lords as quickly as possible. I began embedding an Empire Captain who was heavily invested in the yellow line, to exclusively go after the enemy Lords. Knock the Lord out and the army crumbles. Not always possible though and the Vampires have some excellent Legendary Lords.

It was on hard. But I’m stupid in that I basically let them get too established and didn’t do what you said and take out their lords soon enough. Good news is with my health condition, I’ve got loads of time to give it anither go....

It seems in about half the campaigns I play the Vampire Counts become one of the top factions, usually at the expense of the Empire. On the others, the Empire rolls over the VC.

Here are a couple of shots, just ones I happened to have

This is a Skaven ambush of the dastardly High Elves just as the Plagueclaw catapults unleash their first salvo




This is the map at one point during a Mortal Empires campaign as Skaven. Yellow is my territory, and as you can see I took over certain strategic locations, not just a creeping border tide. This was a very fun campaign, one of the longest I've played. Starting location was in the southeast corner.



This shot is of the Skaven armies standing victorious at Karak Eight Peaks, one of the more important settlements in the campaign, and the objective of several factions. We just happened to win the race



The Araby desert, home to the Tomb Kings. These shots, I think, fail to really capture how gorgeous the map is.

Finished the Khemri campaign with Settra. That was fun, and was over in 155 turns. The final battle was epic. For much of it I thought I would lose, and I came about as close as can be.

A few notes about the Tomb Kings, then some pics. Like the Dwarfs, the Tomb Kings have a crafting mechanic. The more trade resources you have access to the more items you can make. Some of it quite powerful, on par with any of the purple items from quests. The absence of recruitment cost or upkeep seems OP at first glance, but it isn't. Armies are capped through tech and infrastructure. At the end I had 6 armies, which is more or less in line with what I've done with other factions. Income is far less for Tomb Kings, which plays it's part in the equation as well. For me the main advantage here is that no recruitment cost means you have little objection to using global recruitment. There is still the extra recruitment time, but with no monetary cost you'll use both queues and therefore can recruit an entire army in 3 turns. Losses are quickly replaced, and new Lords are up and running in no time.

The start for Settra is pretty easy as I mentioned. Other Tomb King lords have more difficult starts. Settra himself is a beast. I put him on a warsphinx mount and he just crushes. As monstrous units became available I focused on them, and had several in every army. The sphinx and the titan especially were vital. In the final battle even Settra went down, but there was a single titan that won that battle at the end. Epic stuff. With fairly weak infantry, the monstrous units are the key for victory on the battlefield for Tomb Kings.

Another interesting thing is I won this campaign having held only 20 settlements (7 provinces). It didn't require massive conquering, and that's cool since it's all a bit more manageable and streamlined. I'll add Tomb Kings to the long and growing list of fun WH2 factions.

So the idea in the campaign for Tomb Kings is to ignore the Vortex race and search for the Books of Nagash. They are scattered about the map, some held by armies, some tucked away deep in the recesses of various cities. Nine in all, but only five are required for the campaign. Once I had found the fifth one, the final battle arrives. It pits Settra's army, along with two half-stack allies, against two full stack enemies. As the battle unfolds, the enemy gets reinforcements, and they come from all directions, which is always the thing that rips my tactical plan to shreds and makes for a chaotic mashup. In this battle they received FOUR FULL STACKS of reinforcements! Sorry for the spoilers, but that is insane! And they all came at the same time. Are you kidding me? When I saw this I was sure that the battle was lost, I wasn't certain of the outcome before this happened, let alone with this massive influx of fresh troops with their own titans and sphinxes. Somehow we managed to win. But only just.

This is the setup at the start, there is no deployment phase and I have no control over the allied armies.




And this is the final tally. Epic,ain't it?



The Tomb Kings stand Supreme!

After 3 months, and err, hundreds of hours, I finally burned out on Warhammer yesterday. I ended up playing as every race aside from Vampires, Beastmen and Chaos, which leaves me with a few reasons to return. If they release a Skaven DLC, which is in the works, I will give it another go. In the end I only found a couple of factions to be not my thing, most were fun and interesting.

I will now say for certain that Warhammer 2 is my favorite TW title. I like most of them, but WH2 stands above for me.

My favorite faction was Clan Mors, Queek Headtaker. Going in I would have picked any other one, but in the end it's the faction I enjoyed playing the most.

This is a great game. I had hoped to generate some discussion, but it wasn't to be. However, if anyone down the line gets in to it don't hesitate to crank this thread back up.

Clearly a man of my word, I am back

CA did indeed release a Skaven DLC, The Prophet and the Warlock ($9) that adds new mechanics and new Legendary Lords for the Skaven and the Lizardmen. Since the Skaven proved to be my favorite faction to play I bought this one and fired up a Mortal Empires campaign as Ikit Claw. He is the Skaven engineer/technocrat lord. His schtick is gadgets and technology. Excellent ranged weapons, including the 'Ratling Gun' lol.

So new units and weapons, new tech abilities and all Skaven factions get a new 'underworld' campaign mechanic, which allows them to build a subterranean lair beneath other factions' cities, to siphon off resources or raise armies unseen in their midst. The ratmen are fiendish. Anyway, a good addition to the game, new Skaven stuff is very welcome for me. Perhaps even a bit OP, but not every campaign needs to be a struggle

And Ikit Claw has tactical nukes, called Doomrockets. I fired one off in my first battle (they are limited, about one produced every four turns) and it sent 6 or so regiments hightailing it for the exits, they were shattered, and some just gone. And it partly missed as it's the first one I fired, and I didn't yet know the on-call delay, and the moving mob moved out from under it a bit. Still, a devastating weapon to have in the arsenal.

The Skaven are my favorite race to play, in what I feel is the best Total War game, so picking up this DLC was just a matter of time. I'm interested in Three Kingdoms, but not at $60, so picked this up instead.

RIP Airdrop, you were about the only one here who played this game.

Well, easy it was not, I misjudged

I played a Mortal Empires campaign as Clan Skyre (Ikit Claw) on Hard/Hard as I always do. The start position for this campaign is tough. I started well enough, capturing the whole neighboring province. But the food mechanic put the brakes on and for the next 100 turns I essentially fought off enemies while developing my infrastructure and expanding my web of undercities.

The undercity thing is really cool. Using agents an undercity can be established below any city. There are four building slots, which can be used for a large number of things. Food, money, and more can be gained. It can be used to spawn a strong army right next to your target, which is very Skaven. But each building increases the detectability so you need to balance what you build against the risk of being found out. Fun to play with.

I reached number 4 strongest faction, but eventually humans declared war and their extensive alliance snowed me under. The Dwarves were their allies and the strongest faction by far, and in the end I could not fight them all off and I quit the campaign. My main issue was everyone hates the Skaven and I had no worthwhile (and nearby) allies and no trade partners.

The faction is a lot of fun, the units and weapons are great. I simply got snowed under by an alliance too big to resist. I was too cautious early on, didn't expand enough and in the end the four armies I could support were too little.

Another installment of my Warhammer 2 series. If you've read through the thread you'll know I've played as most of the races, and many of the factions. But there are a lot, and it would take a long time to get through them all. One race I've dabbled in, but never really got too far off the ground is the Lizardmen. They lack a certain appeal for me, but I like mixing it up and experiencing as many of them as I can. Plus, they were fleshed out a bit in the DLC I mentioned in the last couple of posts. So why not? Let's give 'em a go.

This race has four playable legendary lords, as well as a number of factions that cannot be played. Lizards are 'good', defenders of order within the Warhammer world. Start locations are varied. Militarily they feature strong early-game infantry, poor ranged options and fairy strong cavalry. They lack a strong late-game infantry like many factions have. But the start is always so important in a Total War campaign, so they are well positioned to get off the ground quickly.

The main strength of Lizards are the monstrous units, in this case dinosaurs! Stegadons, Bastiladons and Carnosaurs, which simply wreck sh!t. Of the two lords I started with, each has a dino in the starting army. Lizardmen also have a nice selection of flying units. The fact that they have access to their second strongest infantry at tier one (Saurus warriors) and tier 2 (shielded Saurus) gives them a big advantage over most of the enemies you'll face in the early going. A half stack of these can roll through a stack and a half of Skaven clanrats and slaves without much trouble. This means you don't need to turtle or take it slow while teching up, and can go on the offensive right off the bat.

As with all factions, the upper-tier units require buildings, and that will take a while. In my current campaign it took more than 50 turns to recruit my first dino, so it's very important to preserve the ones you're given at the start. Of course I managed to lose mine in an auto-resolve battle, didn't even notice and then played 40 turns without one. Don't be like me

Carnosaurs are the apex, but also require a tier 5 building. If you haven't brushed up on your dinosaurs recently, a Carnosaur is a bi-pedal like a Tyrranosarus. Very fast, very strong. Crashing one of these in to the flank of engaged enemy infantry is a delight. The carnosaur will flip enemy soldiers in to the air and grab them with it's mouth. It's awesome. By the time your infantry is being outclassed, you're adding these dinos to your armies and they more than make up for it.

Ranged options are limited and fairly poor compared to other factions like the Elves for example. Javelin units are the mainstay early game. As with all TW jav units, range and ammo are very limited, but they do OK in melee once they've run out of ammunition. But considering other factions have awesome archers, artillery and the like, the ranged options for the Lizards are rather weak. Battle style with these guys is smash mouth, not surgical. You won't have the ability to focus-fire targets like many others can do.

The first lord I tried was Kroq-Gar, who leads the Last Defenders faction. A very strong melee lord (he gets a Carnosaur mount at level 18!), he is hamstrung by his start position. He starts in the extreme southeast corner of the map. This is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because things are often chaotic in a WH2 start. But Kroq-Gar needs to just defend and fight in one direction, with no threat from the back. A curse, because once you've taken the starting area, you can get boxed in a bit with few options for expansion. Very few trade options as well.

That's what happened to me. I blitzed though the first 50-70 turns, taking town after town, wiping out my enemies. But then I found I was hemmed in by both the terrain and allies. I could have migrated, or sent expeditions out like I did in my Queek (Skaven) Vortex campaign, but instead I decided to try a different lord on the other side of the world.

And that was Mazdamundi, a big fat lard-ass toad who floats around on some sort of magic carpet or something. He is a caster, not a melee lord. While he doesn't appeal to my usual style, his start position does. He starts in the jungles of Lustria (South America), which is much better than the corner that Kroq-Gar starts in. A lot of trade and expansion possibilities. Nearby potential enemies are Dark Elves, Skaven and Vampires. Of course this also means you are more vulnerable to attack.

The start is difficult, or I found it so. I did a bit of reloading before I got it right. But once I did the campaign took off and I've been the strongest faction for most of the game (about 75 turns in, Hard/Hard settings). Corruption (Chaos/Skaven/Vampiric) is a big challenge at higher settings, but on the battlefield I've had a lot of success with these armies. As a 'good' race I easily get alliances and trade deals with high elves factions (and others) , the exact opposite of my runs with the Skaven factions. This is a shot in the arm militarily (war-co-oridination mechanic) and financially.

I won't say that the Lizardmen are among my favorites, but they are interesting, and as always in this game, different. I love ranged weaponry in TW, and that's a weakness here, but it's fun to get out of my comfort zone and try new stuff and hunt a few achievements along the way.

Edit: The top-tier foot infantry, Temple Guards, are strong. Not equal to the very best infantry in the game, but now that I have played with some I see they are better than I had indicated. They do require two top-tier buildings to recruit, so it takes time to get to them, and recruiting provinces will be limited as a result.

I was going to post an update on my campaign, but it's over already

Slow, difficult start, being assailed from all directions. It's difficult to get traction when you're in constant battle from the off. But once I did get a handle on it, things snowballed. Aside from the first 20 turns maybe, I was ranked #1 throughout the the game. I swear, CA programmed something like this

if (isAlly){
// then:dumbass mode

As an order faction I could easily get trade agreements and alliances with the High Elves, which included Lothern, which, in every run I've done are always right at the top of the heap, usually the strongest faction, and often by far. But here -- since they were my ally and I was counting on them -- they did one stupid thing after another. I had to send a rescue operation repeatedly to save their butts as they kept losing provinces and especially their amazing capital. Fun on one hand, annoying as heck on the other. At one point they had the second most provinces (largely through confederation) but were ranked #62. Because they had no armies. Good grief. I've played a lot of TW2 campaigns and never saw them do anywhere near as poorly. They were eventually confederated by a faction with two provinces. Weird.

My Lizardmen though were steamrollers. They crushed everything in the way and were easily the strongest faction when victory came around turn 155. The AI just isn't much of a match for a good player, too easy to exploit them I think. If you can establish your faction, the AI is in trouble. Getting the high tier units, especially dinos, meant that the AI doesn't stand much of a chance on the battlefield. But that's true of most factions. High tier armies in the player's hands are hard to beat. If you're going to lose one of these campaigns, it'll be in the early going, or getting rolled by an uber-alliance, like in my Ikit Claw run.

I had read lots of comments that confederations were nigh-on impossible as Lizardmen, but I was able to, so maybe something was changed in this regard.

I had a good time with the lizardmen, I like the area they are in. But on the field of battle I prefer other races. Dinos are cool, but the whole vibe doesn't really suit my style. Nice change of pace however. So I want to try another, and would ask for recommendations, but err, yeah, no one here

Vampire Counts are one I have yet to do. No appeal really. Their corruption makes the map look sh!tty, and well they are nasty. But I didn't think I'd like the Skaven either, and they turned out to be my favorite. I'll bounce it around and pick a new one. Haven't tried Greenskins yet either.

Not so fast.... So I didn't actually win the campaign. It was late, and an achievement popped and I didn't catch which one it was. Assumed it was for filling the final objective. But it was not. There is still one faction that I need to kill off, Cult of Pleasure (Dark Elves) led by Morathi. They are directly north of my territory and we've been skirmishing throughout the campaign. Her schtick revolves around Chaos corruption, so it is difficult to invade due to the high attrition this causes. Encampment stance can be used to nullify it, but that cuts your movement points in half, so it's slow going. But she is down to her final settlement now, we've razed all the others. I thought I had won at turn 155, but now it's turn 175.

In the mean time, the Doomtide arrived, seemingly endless waves of full stack Chaos armies, who spawn just off my southeastern coast and attack relentlessly. It is quite the challenge, and a bit annoying after you've dealt with the first 3 or 4 waves of six to eight fullstack armies. I had conquered and confederated the entire Lustrian continent, and this invasion has so far razed five of my coastal settlements and cities. The armies I am defending with are battered and in need of refit. Not sure I could do much about another wave if it comes. But I will cobble them together best as I can and meet them on the field of battle until only one of us is left standing.

Losing these five cities means that previously completed objectives (own certain provinces) are no longer met, so they will need to be recolonized once more if I want to get a victory. I won't rush this until it seems the invasion is over. Colonizing a razed city costs about 3/4 of the soldiers in the stack, so they are very vulnerable until they can replenish. Best to wait for the storm to blow over. Doing so also means the invaders would be compelled to move inland to keep attacking me (or further north along the coast where my cities are better developed (walls) ), giving me a better chance to trap them, ambush them and defeat them in detail or at the walls, Or such is the plan

The territory I hold is so vast that it is a massive challenge to defend it all against seaborne invasion of elite doomstacks. This mechanic provides a stiff late game challenge, but it is a bit annoying. These waves spawn in the same locations over and over, meaning most of the world's factions never have to deal with them. But since I hold the territory adjacent to this one spawn location, it's left to me to deal with it again and again. My lords gain levels, item and followers, and the pay is good. Plus it gives me something to do with all of my late-game armies.

But I'd much rather the challenge come from powerful AI factions than a scripted mechanic that repeats ad nauseam with cookie-cutter enemy stacks of elite units. I'm ready to move on to a different faction, but I want to achieve a victory. I'm still motivated, but wavering

Not sure who I am talking to, just sharing my thoughts and experiences. Thread's gotten some views, so someone's reading it. Unless that's just my clicks

The invasion of the final objective-faction (Cult of Pleasure) went well, until they were down to their final settlement, at which point they confederated another faction, which meant killing them just got longer. Next turn they were themselves confederated by Malekith and with that they were 'dead'.

My chaos wave rant was a bit of a short-runner as the next wave I killed was the final one. Once Archaon the Everchosen spawns, then the waves seem to stop. That allowed me to recolonize my razed lands. So now, all objectives are met save one. Archaon himself must be killed. But he is very strong, and his armies too. And he has decided to await developments by encamping in the Chaos Wastes way up north (instead of blitzing the world as he should). I've set him as the war coordination target for all of my allies and half the world has mobilized against him. But until we can hit him with successive armies he'll just shrug it off. He's too strong to be killed by AI stacks one at a time. So I have also mobilized, sending my leader's army and another all the way across the (huge) map to add to the assault. When, and if, he dies the campaign will be won. It has all come down to this. I hope I get a crack at him myself.

Victory! Many armies were converging on Archaon's position, including mine, on turn 195. During the AI turn, three stacks from the high elves hit Archaon's stack and killed him. I would have reached there the next turn, but in the end my assistance was not needed. With that, all objectives for the campaign were met.

The lizards are a good faction. Strong roster lacking good ranged options. They need to fight like the VC fought in Vietnam, grab 'em by the belt. Get in close straight away to nullify the enemy's range advantage, or at least make them hit their own troops too.

I'm not a big fan of the legendary lord for Hexoatl. He's a caster and although I've had success with other caster lords, with Mazdamundi I felt I struggled to get the best out of him. Never felt like I used him effectively. In the end I had ten armies, and the other lords were split between magic and melee. With melee lords I feel more comfortable, far less micro, just wade him in to the fray and let him swing his weapon. WIth casters, it's constantly checking cooldowns, and there's a miscast chance, a mana pool, and overall I like the simpler melee lords. Fully-specced casters are probably more powerful in the end, if more difficult to use well.

But for example Mazdamundi has a spell called Net of Amyntok. This locks the unit(s) you hit with it in position, making a follow-up cav charge devastating while the enemy can't react. But it makes the player a lot busier coordinating it all. The other lizard lord I played, Kroq-Gar, is a melee lord, and I would prefer him over Mazdamundi except for their start positions. The dinosaurs were a lot of fun though. A nice assortment of them to choose from, and they were the difference makers in a number of battles, especially the more difficult quest battles. On hard/hard settings the AI isn't terribly strong, but a few battles could have gone either way if it weren't for the strength and staying power of the dinos.

Another campaign victory with yet another faction. The lizards don't really fit my style, but were fun to play. I love the asymmetry that each faction throws at you in this game. Each one play very differently, and keeps it fresh and interesting.

I've started a new H/H ME campaign as Lothern (high elves). This was my very first WH2 faction, and I noticed I quit that run before victory to try other factions. So giving them another go to tick that one off the list. This faction has a lot going for it, good roster, great start position. useful campaign mechanics and bonuses. Not a hard one, but as I hadn't actually won a campaign as them I decided to give them another go. Kinda wished I had made it a Vortex campaign, but it'll do.

I'm blowing through these campaigns. Haven't finished it yet, but the Lothern campaign is going very well.

This high elves faction has a lot going for it.

Roster is well balanced. They have tier 1 spearmen, but those are quickly outdone by the Sea Guard, which are hybrid missile/spear troops that are very useful early to mid game. Their late-game, high-tier infantry is a match for any.

Archers are a strength, not only are they good, but they have a range advantage over other archers. Dark Elves get AP on their archers, which high elves do not. But that long range is highly valuable, and even more so as you tech up.

Cavalry is excellent, and they have phoenix and dragon units, which, while not as strong as other monstrous units, are absurdly cool. The only roster weakness is artillery. High elves get a bolt-thrower, which is OK, but nothing compared to the artillery options of the Skaven or Dwarfs for example. It's most useful for compelling the AI enemy to charge you and your arrow rain..

So they play traditionally, with a good balance, hammer and anvil works great. The legendary lord, Tyrion, is a melee beast. Once he is high level I think he could eventually chop down entire armies on his own. Lothern also gets special choices for additional lords, ones that are better than a typical generic one.

In the campaign, Lothern gets a cool mechanic that lets you spend influence on diplomatic relations. You can increase or decrease relations between any two factions. Want two nations to go to war? Make 'em hate each other. Want to get a trade agreement with a reluctant faction sitting on the fence? Butter 'em up a bit and they might agree next turn. Lothern also has a good start position. They start as the Gatekeepers of Ulthuan, which is the island in the center of the ME map. With just one settlement, and enemies at your doorstep, the opening moves must come off. But once you've taken control of the province, things start to look much better indeed.

Confederations are fairly easy to get, and with the influence mechanic you can bend them as you see fit. By turn 100 I had confederated all surviving high elves factions. This easy expansion, combined with a good start position, plentiful trade agreements and strong, balanced roster makes Lothern one of the very best factions in the game. I'd recommend them as a good choice for a new player's first campaign.

High Elves campaign done and dusted.

I feel like I should bump the difficulty to very hard, but the penalties and AI bonuses bother me. It's the age-old complaint that difficulty should come through better AI rather than stacking bonuses or maluses like most games do. As much as I like this game, I see the AI doing stoopid sh!t all the time. Better AI would be so nice to have.

One of my main complaints would be that 'order' factions have a terrible time dealing with corruption, especially vampiric and chaos corruption. They never get a handle on it, I'm guessing they don't build or gain untainted bonuses like the player will. So they take terrible attrition. Here's an example of what I see all the time.

Bretonnia is at war with the Wood Elves. The Wood Elves' home forest imparts attrition on any army that enters their lands. So Bretonnia, who are very strong, want to attack a settlement that's a short distance beyond the border. A player will stop at the border, so he ends his turn outside of the attrition zone. The AI though goes just over the border and runs out of movement points, meaning they cannot use encampment stance to avoid attrition and they suffer the effects at the end of the turn. Now weakened by the losses, the stack moves to the target but realizes I guess that they now lack the strength to attack. So they sit taking attrition for another turn. Then the defending stack comes and crushes them. A player would have taken the settlement, the AI fails.

A second issue I have, and one that would give the AI a big boost, is that the AI doesn't have a good plan when it comes to which buildings they build. The player can plan it out so their full roster is recruitable, and they get the buildings that give faction-specific bonuses or other goodies. So, AI stacks are often low or mid-tier troops simply because they didn't build the right stuff, and can have some silly compositions, like 16 crossbows and three agents.. Large empires seem to do OK just because with so many towns they have a better chance of getting the right buildings. Small or tall factions don't.

This is standard TW level stuff. All of the games suffer from these sorts of things. CA build great games, but I feel with a little more attention to the details they could be far better.

This 'having my own thread' thing is awesome

Hard to believe this game gets so little love 'round here. But even the historical titles are hardly discussed. Panzer and F/O talk about the games, but that's about it now that Airdrop has passed. Warhammer 2 is really an excellent TW game. I wish folks could put aside the fantasy aspect and give it a go. WH2 is 50% off for the Steam Summer Sale. If you've been on the fence, now's a good time to give it a try. I took advantage and picked up the Curse of the Vampire Coast DLC on sale.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/835670/Total_War_WARHAMMER_II__Curse_of_the_Vampire_Coast/

A few new, completely different factions to try!

I started a new save, this one as the Dreadleet on Very Hard. Actually I started on Legendary, but had forgotten that means no orders can be issued when paused, actually nothing can be done while paused, like scoping the battlefield, zooming out to take it all in, checking morale on enemy units and so on. While I like the challenge, I also value the ability to pause and look around, so I restarted on very hard. Things happen too fast on legendary for me, and it Iacks the sense of control needed to both fight well and enjoy myself while doing so.

So these new factions are vampire pirates. They have unique campaigns and mechanics, completely different from any others. In essence, they are hybrid hordes and normal factions. The faction leader gets mechanics very similar to hordes in Attila. You build up your ship, which allows recruiting and other bonuses in the same way any city does. But it's mobile. So if you want to spend the campaign pillagin' and plunderin', sackin' and razin', you can do it easily. There is no need to ever settle or occupy.

I played Dreadfleet in the Vortex campaign, and the objectives are different from most races, the ones that are racing to control the Vortex. The Vampire Coast factions instead are attempting to control an ancient seamonster. In order to do that the player must complete missions, such as obtain a weapon (win a battle), and defeat various pirate captains to obtain their sea shanties. When all have been gathered, a final battle is fought to win the campaign.

What this means is that the player can really do anything he wants. You can conquer and expand, or simply sail your fleet around doing piratey things. Like the Skaven's undercity mechanic, the Vampire Pirates have a Pirate Cove mechanic. Using agents, or through battle, pirate coves can be constructed on any settlement. These can be used to siphon money, or other benefits for the pirates. In this way, you can maintain an income without ever actually conquering anything. Sack, raid and cove your way to riches.

There are a host of other new mechanics and features, new units, agents that hunt for treasures and tech trees. There are 'Offices' you can assign your generals to, like the Empire have, but with better bonuses. Vampire Coast factions have a cool roster. They are similar in some ways to the Vampire Counts from WH1. They have the raise dead ability for instant recruitment, and their troops never break. Cause they're already dead I guess. But unlike the VC, these new factions have gunpowder! Great artillery and missile units. Infantry isn't the best, but with strong ranged units and monstrous units the infantry isn't as key as with some other factions.

I enjoyed the first 100 turns of the campaign. I chased objectives, raided and pillaged and eventually took a province to give me some territory. Battles were fun. But after a while I felt like I had little aim. It wasn't strategic like I want it to be. No plans for conquest of distant targets, few enemies to defend against. Maybe a pirate's life's not for me. I plan to try another campaign with a different faction and treat it more like a conventional campaign, with conquest and expansion, while having the pirate ship to aid in these endeavors and still do pirate stuff on the side to gain infamy, money and experience.

After a year of playing this game off and on, time to take stock. I've played campaigns as the following factions, though some were never completed, and some played more than once.


Clan Skyre
Clan Mors
Khemri
Naggarond
Dreadfleet
Vampire Coast (starting tonight!)
Last Defenders
Hexoatl
Lothern
Loremasters
Von Carstein
Bretonnia
Dwarfs (Thorgrim Grudgebearer)
Dwarfs (Grombrindal)
Empire

I think that's it? Plenty more to go....

As mentioned, I decided to try a different Vampire Coast DLC faction, oddly enough it's the Vampire Coast

Another pirate faction, but this one starts with a settlement, The Awakening, on the northeast coast of Lustria. Having a province capital as the starting town is quite useful. Instead of playing full-bore pirate, I'm doing a hybrid sort of run, conquering and expanding ashore, while ploughing the high seas in search of riches and scurvy dogs to fight.

Roster is the same as the Dreadfleet I played first. Units offer a nice mix of ranged, melee and monstrous, but lack cavalry. The legendary lord, Harkon (shown above) is awesome. A lot of work goes in to these Legendary Lords, for their skills, spells, unique traits and so on. But most of them I develop little affinity for. They are just the sharpest tool in the drawer. However a few I take a real shine to. Queek Headtaker, the skaven lord for Clan Mors, is one. I loved his whole act, from the voice acting, to the 'personality', his abilities, his bring-it-on attitude. My favorite one so far.

Harkon is another. He has a 'fractured mind' ability, if you can call it that. His madness means that at random times a different personality will take over, changing his unique skills and traits. "The Mad", "The Coward", "The Bad", "The Narcissist". This occurs with no warning, always keeping me guessing, and adapting to the new guy in charge. Fun. This has it's own quest chain, and eventually if you meet all the requirements, you'll reunite his mind. I have yet to achieve this so don't know what benefits this imparts.

He carries a pistol, and it's awesome watching him take aim and firing a devastating round that rips through the enemy ranks.

On the battlefield I rely on the artillery to weaken the enemy. Good gunner units help too. Infantry is not a strength. The high-tier units, called Depth Guard, are awesome. But their unit count on ultra is just 60, whereas most other factions have 80 to 120 in theirs, and with all armies capped at 20 units, every swinging deck matters. And there is no shielded version so they are vulnerable to missiles. The lower tier infantry, called Zombie Deckhands, have a unit count of 160, but they aren't very strong. I keep a few in the army to bolster the Depth Guard. Overall, the infantry is underwhelming. The aces up my sleeve are units called Bloated Corpses. They are literally suicide bombers. You can walk them in to an enemy unit and they explode, using up the unit, but dealing high damage. Properly timed, this is a battle-changing ability.

The units are also Aquatic, meaning they don't suffer penalties from fighting in shallow water, so that is a key terrain piece on any map when playing these factions.

Monstrous units tend to be the decider in many battles. With middling infantry units, having strong, tanky monstrous units is good. Giant crab-like creatures called Rotting Leviathans are devastating to closely-packed infantry lines. But my favorite is the Necrofex Collosus. See the thing in the shot above that looks like a cross between a ship and a titan? That's the Necrofex. It has ranged attack, massive melee attack, causes fear and is armor piercing. Awesome.

Like the Skaven, this faction has become one of my favorites despite the fact that before playing them I wouldn't have thought they would be for me. The Vampiric Corruption mechanic is great for helping defend your lands. Non-vampire invaders suffer terrible attrition to it. Allowing the enemy to come to you, then counter-attacking after a round or two of attrition works so well. I really enjoy the campaign play, the ability to play the hybrid style, and the feasibility of playing tall. The pirate coves mechanic lets you support a growing army, without needing to expand your territory along with it.

It's to CA's credit that they keep coming up with interesting, unique factions. I now own every DLC made for Warhammer 2 (and some from WH1 which can be played in the Mortal Empires campaign alongside the WH2 factions), which says it all really. I've enjoyed a lot of Total War titles. Atilla and Napoleon probably my favorites, with honorable mention to Shogun 2 and Med 2. But none of those games are anywhere close to WH2 in the sheer variety and scope of what they have in Warhammer 2. The replayability is sky-high as a result. I listed the factions I have played in the last post, and it's as many as I've played in any three historical titles probably, Medieval 2 excluded. In those games, switching factions means some differences, but in many ways they are very much alike, aside perhaps from the hordes in Atilla. But in WH2 every one is very different. I've been harping on this 'factionality' as I am calling it. But it's what makes this game so compelling, and so much fun to try a new one.

Edit: Errata correction: I do not own the Beastmen DLC, oops

Hey DBond! I just started playing WH TW quite recently. Bought it during Christmas sale. I'am during my first campaign with the Empire. I have to say it's guite difficult and i had to restart couple of times. Little money, only one army to afford after taking first province, Beastman, Greenskins, problems with public order and vampiric corruption. Just another day at the office:)

After the Empire i really would likr to play as Norsca and of course Vampires. When i'am done with those, then i will get Warhammer 2.

Cool mate, Empire was the second faction I played with, although I bought WH2 first, then picked up WH1 in order to play the Mortal Empires campaign, which stitches together the maps from both games and is an epic campaign with all of the factions on the map. I played a couple of WH1 campaigns, but mainly bought it to have those factions playable in ME.

If you like Warhammer, I reckon you'll love Warhammer 2. It's better in a lot of ways, subjectively, and the ability to still play whichever 'old world' factions you want is a neat bonus. Plus, WH2 has the Vortex campaign, which shakes up the traditional blob-fest type campaign play that the TW series is known for. I really like it, though not everyone does.

Beastmen are one faction I've yet to play, and I never did pick up their DLC for WH2. I have almost all of the rest of it.

From WH1 my favorite faction was the Dwarfs. From WH 2 the Skaven, but on both games there are so many options, the replayability is high. Each faction is so unique, and as I've gone on and on about in this thread, this factionality has a huge appeal for me, as you never feel like switching factions is more of the same, ya know?

I picked up the Shadow and the Blade DLC, but for now at least I am skipping the Hunter and the Beast.

As mentioned, there's been a massive improvement in the turn times in Mortal Empires. Very nice.

New Skaven faction, Clan Eshin, is cool. The other three LLs in the above mentioned DLC don't hold much appeal for me at the mo.

I was thisclose to having someone to discuss Warhammer with when Cheyenne made his post. So close, and yet, so far

I played Clan Eshin in Mortal Empires. They are a pretty cool Skaven faction, with stealth and subterfuge their calling cards. But the starting position is pretty poor. A one-province start on the east coast near the lizards, goblins and dwarfs. Proximity to Queek is nice, and the two of you can team up to cause mayhem. Eshin's drawbacks though are hard to overcome at the start, particularly the fact that non-Eshin units cost double, which hurts until the economy is banging. And Skaven economies never quite bang like the best of them, since most of the world hates you and won't agree to trade deals.

I noticed I had not gotten two achievements, one for winning a WH2 campaign with an Old World faction (from Warhammer 1) and had not won a WH2 campaign as Dwarfs. So two birds with a single stone and played as Grombrindal, conquering and confederating my way to victory on turn 160 (Hard/Hard). That was cool and all, but what really jumped out at me was how powerful both Queek of Clan Mors, and Franz of the Empire became. Far better than in any of the previous dozens of WH2 campaigns I have played. Not sure what was changed through DLC or patches that would benefit them so much, but clearly it did.

One more note, not only are CA pumping out DLC, with new mechanics and legendary lords, they are also expanding the Mortal Empires map, adding additional territory to accommodate these newcomers. Seriously, anyone who likes Total War games has to play this campaign. It's epic. There has to be 150 factions on the map at the start, and others can emerge through the course of it. Battle royale, TW-style.

With the recent up-tick in Total War discussion around here lately, it got me thinking about it and I fired up Warhammer 2 once again. No new DLC since February that I can see.

The hard part is deciding on which faction to play. My DLC soup gives me 45 legendary lords to choose from. Some of those are free DLC, but most are paid, either through the game or paid DLC. There are a few DLCs I have not gotten, like the beastmen, so there are several more LLs I don't have. 45 is a lot though, and gives plenty of range of choice. So which to play?

I fired up the last campaign I was playing that I didn't finish, the Clan Eshin Skaven run. I had mentioned the struggle I had economically in that run in my last post, but after loading it up I noticed it was on Very Hard, and that would explain it. For me to have any hope for success with VH campaign difficulty I need a faction with clear opening advantages, like Tyrion, Malekith or Kroq-Gar. Very Hard is OK once I've gotten 50 turns in. But openings at that level are difficult for me, and it often all goes to sh!t, requiring save-scumming or restarts and that's not how I want to play.

Hard/Hard has always been my sweetspot, but I wanted to get the achievement for winning a Skaven campaign on VH or Legendary. It's not impossible, but I don't think Clan Eshin is the right one to do it with. Their starting location in Mortal Empires is bad. Cool mechanics and I want to give them a proper go, but at lower settings to make it less of a chore. This new DLC faction is all about subterfuge and back stabbing and have a Shady Dealings mechanic to do it. They also have a +200% recruiting premium on the types of units I want to field which is a drawback. I think if I give them another go I'd do it at Medium/Hard because otherwise the AI will always have superior stacks since I can't afford to match their better infantry units. Skaven have excellent ranged weapons, but their infantry is sub-par, so it's important to at least have the best ones.

Another run I had aborted was also Skaven, as Ikit Claw of Clan Skryre. This faction is one of the coolest in Warhammer. They have a Forbidden Workshop mechanic that lets you built weapons and improve them, including a weapon not unlike a tactical nuke. It is devastating and a bit OP, though how many you can build is restricted so you only have them now and then. Skaven are rats, and even though it probably would have been my least favorite race coming in to the Warhammer series, it became my favorite after playing them all. And as rats might do, they can burrow underground. They can travel across the campaign map, using the Underway, ignoring terrain like mountain ranges, and bypassing enemy armies unable to do the same. A devious and fun mechanic that adds a whole new aspect to map movement. Dwarfs and Orks can also travel this way, and this leads to some interception battles in huge underground caverns with no retreat option. Like TWs version of a cage match.

And aside from the campaign map, the Skaven also have a mechanic called the Menace Below, which can spawn a unit of slaves anywhere on the tactical battlefield. It's easy to see how this can be used, raising them in to an enemy artillery battery, or stand of archers. Mayhem ensues. Now, imagine using a Menace Below on and advancing army deployed in line abreast, who both outnumber you and are much stronger. Every unit nearby decides to get their licks in on this unfortunate mass of wavering rat-slaves that have appeared in the midst. That makes one very unlucky unit of shattered rat-slaves ground zero for the tactical nuke strike. The aiming point, if you will, now surrounded by the ill-disciplined enemy infantry.

Boom, chaka

And the odds are now a bit more even. That's how the Skaven play, expendable fodder backed by overwhelming ranged firepower, and supported by a web of undercities, siphoning food and money from the unsuspecting factions above. And that's a lot of fun.

I took a flyer on this one in the Steam Sale. It's not that I'm a Warhammer guy, the best I can say is that I'm aware of the existence of the franchise. But I've always been intrigued by the Total War series. I have a good friend who is a big fan of it, and hearing him talk about it has made me curious. I picked up Napolean in a Steam sale ages ago (~$5 for the "Definitive Edition" which includes all DLC), but never really gave it a go. I tried the tutorial a couple of times but never really did much more than that. I've also picked up Shogun 2 (it was a giveaway at some point so I nabbed it) and Rome II Emperor Edition (not sure how that one wound up in my collection, but there you go.)

From what I've read online, Warhammer 2 is considered by many to be the high water mark of the Total War series. I've been keeping an eye on it, and gave into temptation late one night during the sale and promptly lost even a few more hours of sleep to it. I am finding the tutorial to be much more approachable, I feel like I have a handle on the campaign, at least the strategic layer. The tactical is what is killing me. I'm in need of a good lesson or video series on battle management - not just the initial deployment, but what to do with my units during the actual engagement.

So any good tutorial videos or guides out there you can suggest?

Which faction are you playing? There are very distinct differences from one to the next, and how I approach the battle depends on what my faction's strengths and weaknesses are.

Early on you won't have much of your recruitment unlocked. At this stage it's standard TW fare, form a line of infantry, with ranged units deployed close behind them. Cav out on flanks, maybe hidden in some trees. Once the lines are in contact, slam the cav in to the rear of the enemy units and keep cycling, don't let the cav get bogged down in melee, their strength is in the charge. Army composition is important too.

Once the enemy infantry is engaged, I will try to work my ranged units around the flanks to shoot more bad guys than good guys. Flanking is powerful in TW. I might keep a couple of infanty units in reserve, using them to either stiffen wavering units, or if things are going OK, work them around to surround one or more enemy infantry units. Morale breaks can chain down the line, so if you can get one enemy unit to rout, it can snowball down the line. Killing or wounding the enemy leader is the best way to break the enemy, but that can be difficult depending on who that is.

Sorry I can't recommend any videos, not sure I've ever watched one.

Artillery is important. Not only for the damage it can do, but because it tends to compel the AI to come to you.



Not around here, as there is a decidedly historical bias. I get it, but I think people are missing the best TW title of them all as a result. A few years ago I gifted a copy of WH2 to someone who as far as I know never played it. That was a disappointment. I've played most TW titles, and like all of them, but for me WH2 stands above, for reasons I have outlined in this thread.

As for videos on WH2, I would watch Legendoftotalwar's stuff. He exclusively streams WH2 for the past year, and made a ton of WH2 content before that as well. There are tons of battle tips for pretty much every faction to find there

Thanks, Vaderini. I'll check him out.
I'm playing the High Elves with Tyrion. So far I've had mixed results in battle, albeit one battle I had was using the garrison at a city rather than my main army. They didn't stand much of a chance but we gave 'em a bloody nose at least!

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.

Found that one on sale (~$5) so I grabbed it. I'll check into those Regiments and see what all the fuss is about!

The Greenskins on the east coast are giving me trouble. I can't quite seem to get a handle on how to take care of them in battle. Any tips?

Greenskins got a boost with the last DLC and seem a more difficult foe now, especially if their army has Black Orc units, which are strong. I think the key is your archers, how many do you field in each army? Are you up against one or the Legendary lords, and if so who is it? If the greenskins have a Waaagh it is quite difficult to beat them with a single stack.

I would look to try and bait them. Have a single stack within reach of their army, with a second stack right next to them in ambush. If the ambush works (not spotted) the enemy might attack, but find itself against two of your stacks. If they won't bite, try a half-stack as bait, with two armies in ambush.

My main goal when fighting difficult opponents is to incapacitate their lord. Focus-fire him with your archers and Tyrion. If you've gone down a melee path for Tyrion he is a good lord-killer. With their lord knocked out the rest become brittle.

I like to use mobile units to draw off some of the enemy, get them to chase, leaving a smaller portion to engage at first. If you have light cavalry or chariots they are good for this. Move them early out behind the enemy and off one flank, see if the enemy will go after them. Kite them away from your front line.

Flanking is especially useful in this game. Keep a reserve if you can and work them around the flank and envelop enemy infantry at one end of the line. They will suffer a couple of different modifiers (flanked, hit from behind) and will be much faster to waver and break. Low leadership units are especially vulnerable to this. Once both armies are engaged in melee, move your archers forward on the flanks to hit the engaged enemy from behind. And of course use your heavy cav to cycle-charge engaged enemy infantry and to disrupt enemy ranged units and artillery.

I'm up against Grom. I've killed him once, but he came back. I like the multi stack idea - the lord that killed Grom did so as a follow on attack after Grom tangled with Tyrion. For killing Grom, that lord now has a "causes terror in Greenskins" ability, I'll have to use that. I had put Tryion on the offensive with the idea that he is a superior fighter, but I'm going to have to go multi stack.

My problem has been their army comp is less on melee more on cav/ranged/monsters. I haven't figured out how to tackle that comp. I'll try your suggestions though, hopefully that will be more successful than I've been.

Grom's tough yes. He gets a cauldron mechanic which grants him and his army some nice buffs.

Grom's Cauldron

Bait and ambush works great in this game, if you can get the AI to bite. If the ambush army is placed between the bait and Grom, you'll even get an ambush battle out of it and then clean up. Of course terrain affects ambush chance so this isn't always possible to put the ambush army in front. Make sure the armies are within reinforcement range of one another of course.

When you click on an enemy stack it shows their movement range. Place your bait stack inside the edge of this if you have any other armies in range. When Grom attacks, retreat from the battle. Grom will not have the movement points to follow. Next turn hit his stack with all you've got.

Sisters of Averlorn make good anti-large units as they have AP damage, which your other archers do not (Dark Elves do). The magic arrows used by the Sisters ignore physical resistance, do extra damage to regenerating creatures (which some monstrous units have, like the trolls), and pierce armor. Spears (or Phoenix Guard) and Sisters can tag-team effectively against the monstrous units. Do you have dragons yet?

Do you have any allies in the war? Use the war co-ordination mechanic to hit them from two directions, or at least get your allies to fight where you need them to. Give them one of Grom's settlements as a target, or Grom's army itself. Distract or gang up.

Greenskins can use the underway, which can make them hard to pin down when and where you want to. If you can get an ally to hit them, even sacrificially, your army can clean up the remnants.

Avelorn and I managed to take out the Greenskins, and I never did run into Grom again so I didn't get much of a chance to try any of your suggestions. My battles have been either sieges or settlement battles I autoresolved because there was a very small garrison and and I didn't want to waste my time. After dealing with them a bit, I must say I look forward to play as that race at some point, if for nothing other than the flavor text of some of their units! There seems to be a quite a bit of "personality" to that faction. (Full confession, I picked up the Warden and Paunch DLC for the HE units and the opportunity to play Greenskins at some point when I found it on sale.)

My new nemesis is Skaven (I think, not quite sure). They took over a couple of my Saphery settlements, but I got one back. I'm currently reinforcing my army to get the second one back as well. They have two small-si stacks plus the garrison, I'll want 2 armies to take them on. I will try and bait the armies out of the settlement if I can to make the siege a little better but I am still rebuilding somewhat. Still, two stacks would seem to be a good way to go.

I've added Sisters of Avelorn as a replacement for depleted Lothern Guard units, and I'll upgrade my spearmen as well for a better front line. I'm waiting for some buildings to complete to be able to grab a dragon as well. I'm thinking I'll want to add a good Mage as well, I feel like I'm missing out without the ability to do some magic damage. I'll need a couple of Nobles to help out with my income too for the upkeep these new and improved units will bring with them.

I'm thinking Avelorn and Ellyrian have become too poweful for me to be able to confederate. I may have to take one of them on directly, which will hopefully make me strong enough to confederate the other. If I go that route, I'll use Influence to weaken their relationship to each other so they don't wind up allying against me, or better yet, one of them allies with me.

So far the game (or at least this particular run) seems to be one of constant warfare. In the ~100 turns I've got into this campaign, I may have spent at MOST 10 not in a war with somebody. Then again, the francise is "TOTAL War" so I guess that's to be expected!

Good work. I'd be interested to know if it actually is Skaven on Ulthuan. I have to say I don't think I've seen that in all my runs. I find one of the Norsca factions is likely to invade in that region, but maybe it is Skaven. They've changed so much, and added new factions and lords so things are constantly evolving. For what it's worth the Skaven are my favorite faction to play.

I started a Grom run when I picked up the DLC a few weeks back to see what his deal was. He is strong, and the cauldron mechanic is powerful. There are a number of GS lords to choose, but I think he is the top dog. Grimgor has good potential, but the others have much more challenging starts in both Vortex and Mortal Empires campaigns.

Sounds like you're having a good run full of action.

If you're anything like me you will eventually have virtually all of the DLC. I think there are only two I do not own.

Yeah, I'll get them all eventually. Probably as I play a race that gets stuff unlocked that way. Norsca has hit, briefly, on the NE shore of Ulthuan. They didn't bring much and the garrison was able to fend them off. It was actually a fun battle - 2 axemen and a Lord vs. the garrison of 3 spearmen and 2 archers. I killed off the Lord and ran off the axe units.

Double checked and its Morrslieb's Howlers, a rogue army. Has some greenskin units, but the lord/leader looks like rat - those are skaven, right?

OK, yes, the rats are Skaven. But that particular army, being a rogue one, is a mixed composition, fielding units from Skaven, Empire, Bretonnia, Greenskins and Chaos. Quite an eclectic mix I'd say

Oh joy. Well, I guess I get to see a few different units in action.

You sure will! They should have a doomwheel

Oh that sounds promising.

It's the "doom" part, right?

No, it's the "wheel" that gets me all squishy.

Morrslieb's Howlers are no more. I was able to reinforce Tyrion with another Lord (whose job seems to be chasing down goody huts and bringing reinforcements where they are needed) up to a full stack. I added some Silverin Guard as well as more Sisters of Avelorne. The rest of the army is a Lion unit (not the infantry, the actual lion unit whose name escapes me), Eagle Claw, Silver Helm, Heralds of the Wind, as well as Spearmen and LSG w/ shields.

I used Tyrion to bait Scalpake and another small army into a battle outside of Shadow Peak. Scalpake and friend had about 21 units, Tyrion was a full stack and his reinforcement was 14/20. Needless to say, much damage was done, and very little was left.

The following siege was one I probably should have just auto-resolved but it was close enough that I didn't want to lose anything important. After taking out the tower guns with my arty, my archers rained devastation upon any units on the wall. much of their army was routed before I entered the city. The artillery took the gate out, and I sent all my calvalry and infantry into the town square to capture it. There were some small skirmishes but nothing of note, and the city as well as the province of Saphery were once more safely in the grasp of Eataine.

My settlements in Northern Yvresse are dealing with some public order issues, as well as Norsca just across the sea, so that will probably be my next area of focus once I've tooled up my military (again.) I may fire off a ritual first though and deal with that first.

Yeah, the bait tactic works nicely to get the enemy away from their city and their garrison. Defeat the field army, then face the garrison on it's own.

I'm sure you know, but worth a mention, that you can disable taxes in a region temporarily to slow the public order drop after taking a province. If you can afford the drop in income it's quite useful. Then again, rebel armies make good field training, provided you can get to them quickly.

Yep, figured the taxes thing out already, though it didn't lower it enough to make a big dent. I went from -5 to -2 and I was at -95 in the province, so I bought myself a couple of turns but it will still rebel. And I will crush them.
But they are on the NE of Ulthuan and I am on the inner ring (inside of the mountains) so I have to go the long way to get to them, and it will take 4-5 turns, so they will be able to create a little havoc before they are crushed.

That's the sort of situation where the underway is so useful. You can simply burrow under those mountain ranges and pop up on the other side Dwarfs, Skaven and Greenskins can do this. Hella useful.

How many rituals have you completed?

You mentioned Heralds of the Wind. What are these?

That does sound awfully useful! I haven't done any rituals yet, which I may have to rectify soon I guess. I'm around 100 turns in.

Heralds of the Wind is a Regiment of Renown, basically a slightly buffed Ellyrian Reaver Archer.

My current army comp of choice is 6 Silverin Guards, 8 Sisters of Avelorn, 2 Silver Helms, 1 dragon, 1 Eagle Claw, a mage and lord.

Arrow rain!

Thanks for the info.

I thought I saw in one of your screens you had completed the first ritual?

No I have the way fragments to do it, but I haven't actually done it yet.

The first ritual has been started. I've got a few more turns until it's completed. So far I've had one Chaos army invade. After they razed one of my cities (almost losing to the inferior garrison in the process) Tyrion wiped them out with a full stack. My understanding is that the first ritual only spawns one invader - right? So i guess I can go about my business and let the ritual finish?

Meanwhile, I wound up confederating two HE factions - Nagarythe and Avelorne. I was surprised to get Avelorne, but I did. It cost me ton of cash though. I'm pretty much abandoning Nagarythe's former holdings - the Dark Elves are too powerful and it's too far away at this point to make a big push for it. I'll just bring Alith Anar to Ulthuan to help Alarielle and Tyrion take out Ellyrion. Once I have all of Ulthuan I may start looking to hit Naggarond.

I was thinking the first ritual was three armies, but it may be dependent on settings. I play on Hard/Hard. It may be one army either way, not certain.

No additional armies spawn after the start, but some could be hidden from view I suppose as they make their way there. Each successive ritual spawns stronger stacks. It's been a while since I was involved in the ritual race. I've been either playing ME, or factions that have alternative objectives in Vortex.

I'm on Normal/Normal, and it looks like only the one army will be spawned.

So Skaeling is screwing up my plans with Ellyrion by declaring war on me and getting all hostile. I had just put my armies in position for a multi-vector attack on Ellyrion holdings too. It was going to be glorious, but I don't want to give up my eastern holdings to those Norsca, so I'm pulling back and reorienting for an all out offensive against the Norsca.

Then on to Ellyrion.

Smash the Norscan swine! Those dudes are a royal PITA. They just keep coming until they are dead.

Sounds like you've taken nearly the entire starting island? Do you hold the volcano province just to the west of Lothern? I'm sure you do but that is a great dragon recruitment settlement of course.

Once done, you can jump across the seas to the west where there are more ritual currency sites. Either raze them to deny, or take them to boost your generation of the currency. Dark Elves are strong late game if they have not imploded. Their AP archers are not to be trifled with. Skaven and Tomb Kings in that direction as well, but maybe they've been killed off by now?

I've decided to hit the Ellyrion hard and fend off Skaelen as well. The force slider you see with the relative strengths of factions show both of them to be far inferior to me, so I think I can take them. Ellyrion has some settlements on the continent to the east too, but I'll hit them last. I'll divert a couple armies to Skaelin - I've got 6 or 7 since I confederated Avelorn and Nagarythe, and I'm still pulling in decent cash per turn. Once those insolent fools have been dispatched I'll take turn my sight toward the Druchii.

To answer your question, I do not have the volcano province yet - I have taken the northern city (Caledor's Repose) but not the Vault (which is the way fragment source). I should take that soon, as in when I sit down to play again. I'm not sure about factions much to the west of where I am (or to the East either for that matter). I will have to be a little more aggressive, as one of them just lit off their 3rd ritual.

Skaelen peaced out, but the Dark Elves are making their move. I think my best choice may be to see if I can end the war with Ellyrion and focus on the DE. They are hitting me hard in NW Ulthuan, and have a couple of armies on NE shore as well. I've had a couple of battles where I was outmatched but inflicted some heavy damage. I need to upgrade my armies a bit to put up a better fight - I'm recruiting Phoenix Guards for melee and Sisters for archers, along with some cav and artillery. I like to put a dragon in there as well.

This is going to be quite a war.

Yeah, that's my preferred composition too. I ignore Chariots beyond the one you start with. But PG + Sisters is strong. Add some Dragon Princes, a couple of Dragons and the lame but necessary Bolt Throwers and you have an army that is a match for any.

I like having a mage with my melee lords too. A little magic can go a long way it seems.

Yes, that is a combat multiplier. Good shout.

It's looking like I'll have to stick a fork in this campaign - I'm pretty much done. Peaced out with Ellyrion, but now Skaven is hitting me with 5 full stacks from the south, in addition to the Naggarond hitting me from the North and East. I just don't have the firepower to handle all that. I'll let it run a bit longer and see what happens, but it ain't looking good.

No worries, I've had a few campaigns where I threw in the towel due to massive alliances against me that would just make it a slog. It's a good opportunity to try out a different race in a different part of the map if you're so inclined. If you do and want any opinions on the other races and campaigns I'd be happy to help.

My very first run in WH2 was as Tyrion, and I did not finish it either (until I did another one much later on).

You had a good run and saw what the game's all about so a new run should go even better depending on who you pick maybe.

I'm thinking about playing as Grom....

As good as any I reckon, but he is one I have yet to really play. As I said earlier I started it but only played a few turns to see what he was all about. He looks strong, and the cauldron mechanic seems powerful. That would be a huge shift from High Elves and you'd get a taste of the factionality as I like to call it, or the singularity of each one. He also has alternative Vortex campaign objectives, which is a nice change as you'll need to invade Ulthuan and the High Elf faction included in the same DLC. And don't forget Mortal Empires, which is worth a go if you like huge TW campaigns (you've not seen anything like it in terms of scale this franchise). Plus you'll have a chance to use the underway. Armies using the underway can be intercepted, which results in a cage-match, with no retreat option. So I advise only using the underway with your strongest field armies unless you can be sure there's no chance of an interception.

FWIW, start positions (and the entire map really) change from Vortex to ME, so this as a good way to mix things up even if playing the same faction twice.

I wound up going Tomb Kings instead, but I get what you mean about the 'factionality.' I've only gone a handful of turns in but they play different, they tech differently, their endgame is different, their "management" if you will is different as well. I like the fact that even the interface has a different theme too. Nice little touches, the one thing they missed (and I'm really nitpicking here) is that they could have used faction specific lore on the load screens rather than the tutorial stuff. I don't particularly care about Warhammer lore, and until this game I couldn't have named a single WH race, but it would have been a nice touch.

Cool choice. I've just done one TK run, as Settra in the Vortex campaign. I really enjoyed that one. No recruitment or upkeep costs seems OP at first, but money was really tight so it sort of evened out. Great monstrous units. One good side effect of the no cost is that it's the only race where I use the global recruitment as much as local. New armies can be raised in just a couple turns. I also like factions/races that have a crafting mechanic like TK does. Fun to play around with.

The final battle of the campaign was a real b!tch, and I won it with a single Titan left standing. Those things are awesome. Even Settra went down, but the lone Titan was all that was left standing. Good stuff. Which faction did you choose?

I'm playing Settra - I'm seeing the money thing, it seems tight for the TK. I'm also thinking there's no reason to not have a full stack for any lord I run.
I've still only got the starting monstrous unit - a scorpion I think - but wow is it powerful! I beat the snot out of a few GS units all by itself.

It's been a while but as I remember it my early infantry were pretty poor, so the monstrous units were essential to win battles.

I agree, no reason not to have full stacks, and with lords limited by tech/buildings it's not like you have the luxury of lots of armies.

The alternative campaign objectives are cool since you can go at your own pace, not in a race like the Vortex factions.

Your recollection is spot on - the early infantry is really squishy, I did most of the heavy lifting with Settra and the monster. Archers were helpful too.

I'm thinking I may alter my approach - run a bunch of turns as TK and then move on to another race and go through all of them that way. Then I'll do the same with the ME races not in Vortex to get an idea of what they are like too.

Then I'll try to complete a campaign. Since this is the first TW title I'm give some serious play time too, it may be a better way to go than to just try and slog through a campaign. I'll have a little better idea of the opposing units after I play them for myself a bit too.

To be honest, the actual combat is what's giving me the most trouble. I'm getting the hang of it, but I tend to lose track of some units or get bogged down micro-ing others.

My first reaction is don't do that, as playing them all in short order would leave you with nothing new to look forward to. But then again, there are so many to choose from (I think my DLC soup gives 45 LLs) and there is new DLC regularly, and until that stops, there will always be new LLs to play. And with two campaigns to choose from, the replayability is high. So yeah, why not, right?

I'd be interested which one ends up being your favorite after you've tried them all. For me it was a surprise, as my favorites were ones I would not have guessed beforehand. I've played nearly all of them now, and frankly there have been only a couple that I didn't care for. Easy to please I reckon

A good point, but like you said, there are so many to choose from, esp with 2 campaigns. I'm eager to try a bunch of different ones and see which I find most interesting.

I will say I'm enjoying the TK so far. I'm finding the unit limitation an interesting mechanic, esp now that I've unlocked a second army. All of a sudden I can't get enough archers. And I've recruited a Legion of Legend - The Flock of Djaf, a flying war beast. I haven't been able to use it in combat yet, but hopefully soon.

If you do I'd be interested in your thoughts on each.

If I were to name a top ten factions for me to play, it might look something like this

1. Clan Mors
2. Clan Skryre
3. The Awakened
4. Karaz-a-Karak
5. Naggarond
6. Reikland
7 .Khemri
8. Eataine
9. Clan Pestilens
10.Hexoatl

Yeah, I like Skaven

What is it about Skaven that you enjoy so much?

Skaven are cool for a number of reasons. Their monstrous units are lame, but everything else is good, especially the ranged options like the Plagueclaw Catapult, Ratling Guns and Jezzails. Infantry is an interesting mix of solid heavy units (Stormvermin) and clanrats/slaves. The lower tier units are dirt cheap, and expendable really. It's not uncommon to just light up the whole mess when these units are engaged with the enemy infantry. You can always buy more slaves. The ranged units are pretty devastating.

No real cavalry, but there are the doomwheels which while not as strong as a full heavy cav unit, are great at harassment and have good staying power. Skaven infantry is faster than most races, giving you the mobility advantage, and most units can kite the enemy, and the Skaven have a few archer units that can fire on the run. Kite while firing is effective. Skaven's mobility gives you the ability to gain tactical position more easily.

They have a battlefield ability called The Menace Below, which will spawn a unit of rats anywhere on the battlefield, which is very cool in a number of scenarios. Like raising them in the middle of a stand of archers or an artillery battery. Lots more uses as well.

In the campaign they have some advantages as well as some restricting mechanics. Expansion is tempered by the food mechanic. Each new settlement or army costs one food, and if you go below the food threshold you suffer penalties. Stay above and gain some buffs. Some players don't care for it, but for me it adds some more strategy to the campaign which I like. One of their best campaign abilities is they always have a chance to get an ambush battle, from any stance. So you can attack another army and have it be your ambush, not just waiting in ambush stance for an enemy army to wander past.

And I also like the undercity mechanic. Skaven can build an undercity beneath any settlement. This can be used in a number of ways, to siphon gold, generate food, spread corruption or even to raise an army in the enemy's heartland. Vampire Coast factions have Pirate Coves which work in the same way.

I also like almost all of the Skaven roster. Aside from not having cav and good monstrous units, they have a very diverse and effective roster, with plenty of armor piercing and specialized units. Their best infantry is not among the best in WH2, but they fit in the fireteam concept I tend to roll with, and their mobility helps to even out their stat disadvantage. When the full roster in unlocked, a Skaven army is capable of taking on any composition due to the variety of damage and skills they have. Queek Headtaker of Clan Mors is my favorite. I dig his vibe, the bring it on attitude. No one really likes the Skaven, so you don't expect much in the way of allies,confed targets or trade agreements. But in the campaign and on the battlefield I find them the most fun to play. Us against the world, if you can find us.

Sounds cool, maybe I'll make them my next stop on the whirlwind tour! I'm still enjoying TK, but I see the mistakes I've already made in the campaign, so maybe it's time to move on to another faction.

I would be interested to see what you think if you do. I think there are currently five LLs to choose from, all with different characteristics and starting positions of course. I think the best ones to play are Mors, Skryre and Pestilens. Eshin I didn't care for too much, they have doubled costs for many of my favorite units, and Rictus starts in a poor position.

Queek's Mortal Empires start is labeled very hard. I didn't find it so (maybe some luck), but you do come up against Last Defenders (lizards) and a dwarf faction early on, before you've unlocked your roster. That is a challenge since they are much stronger at the start. Lizards and Dwarfs both have strong early armored units, which is difficult for the Skaven's squishy low-tier units to counter, and I try to rush Plagueclaws to help offset this. A good challenge

This sort of assymetry is a large part of Warhammer 2's appeal for me. Different opponents present entirely different problems, and effectively countering their compositions is one of my favorite parts of the game.

I'm seeing that with just hitting a couple of factions. TK plays way differently than Eataine did. The campaign priorities are different, and the mindset is different too. I don't mind whelping an army when I can just go and recruit replacements at no cost, esp if I can do a lot of damage to my opponent in the process. With Eataine, I was very conscious of my losses and tried to avoid situations that I didn't have a clear advantage. I also don't have a problem with recruiting a full stack as soon as I get a new lord unlocked. Again with Eataine, it was more of a gamble in terms of how much army can I afford - both recruitment costs and unit upkeep.

Odd thing is, money is no problem for me right now. I'm making pretty good cash per turn, whereas it seemed I was always scrounging with Eataine. I had a lot of income, but most of it was eaten up by my upkeep costs.

Yes, agreed on all points. And this is why I go on endlessly about the replayability

Empire is the most traditional (Warhammer 1, or "Old World" faction). They play more like a historical-title type faction. I've only played Reikland, but have done several times as I like their starting location.

Speaking of the historical titles, I'm also getting the urge to jump into one of the historical TW games I own just to get a different flavor of the series, but it's hard to put down WH.

Still cranking along in my TK playthrough. I've gotten most of the northern half of my starting continent. Along the way I eliminated a couple of Bretonnai factions, a couple other TK factions, a Dwarf faction (who was sitting on a city housing one of the Books of Nagash. Taking that city gave me the book. I gained another when I defeated a particular rogue army to the south of me. As it stands, the primary landholders of our continent are me and Clan Mors.

I'm going to have to go after them, as they have a city I need to conquer for another book. I'd like to clean them off completely, as the corruption is giving me headaches. I've had a bunch of rebellions pop up - easily handled but annoying. It doesn't help that I had an event fire in which I could either take a -10 diplo hit with all factions and a +8 public order or take a -8 public order and +10 diplo bonus. Since I was/am in the process of trying to get some allies to go after Clan Mors I took the public order hit and have had to deal with that.

Clan Mors has done some pretty heavy confederation, they've joined with at least two other Skaven clans. Fortunately, they just went to war with Eataine, who are currently #1 in the game (I am at 3, not sure where Clan Mors is right now). As my public order hit has just finished, I'm finalizing a couple of my armies (I've got 5 now) by upgrading some of the units. Once that is done (1 or two turns at best) I'll ally with the other groups at war with Clan Mors and do some war target coordination while I start my campaign. Hopefully the multiple fronts they are finding themselves on will keep them from focusing on me while I begin laying siege.

Watch out for Queek, he's a sneaky bastage

Have you used the war coordination thing? You can assign targets to your allies at war with the same faction. They don't always respond, but it's a good way to get your allies hitting the targets you want them to.

I'm sure - but he's been busy too. He's at war with practically all the top 10 factions. So naturally I'm going to take advantage of that! Of course that doesn't mean he's actively engaged with any of them I guess.

So far I've only been able to ally with one other faction who is at war with them. Apparently the enemy of my enemy is NOT necessarily my friend. I tried the war coordination thing a couple of times before with mixed results. I'll do it again just on the off chance it actually works.

If the faction you are trying to coordinate is strong with multiple armies they seem to respond most of the time. Smaller factions tend to ignore the request.

That would explain it.
So far the war goes well. Clan Mors is not making much of an attempt to defend their cities on this continent, so I figure their main territory is elsewhere. I've only had a single invading army show up, and most of the city battles are so one-sided I just auto-resolve.

The one army they sent did some damage though, they took out 2 of my lords and armies - those little buggers pack quite a punch. Both times my armies were ambushed while in March stance. They didn't stand much of a chance. I've built myself up to 7 full stacks, so this was more of an annoyance than a setback. All are back up and running now.

I've got a handful of cities to clear on this continent, and one more book available here as well. That will put me at 4 books. I'll bling out a few of my armies while travelling to get book five and then have the boss battle. Looks like I may see the end of this campaign after all.

Unless I get sidetracked by Troy...

Ah you're so close to victory! Don't get sidetracked too much until you've won. I want to see what you think of the final battle. Just one more book and then victory is within your grasp

The last battle is going to be ridiculous, isn’t it.

Yep.

Or, I thought it was. It was all going well, and then they got reinforcements and it became chaos. It's the one where I said at the end I had a single Titan left standing.

Skill cranking along agains Clan Mors. Man, that ambush ability Skaven has is deadly. I've lost multiple armies to him in a turn a few times. I've almost evicted him from the continent, there's only a few settlements left.
I'd love to just peace out from here and move on, but they aren't having it.

Skaven misbehavin'!

Yeah, that ambush ability is one of my favorite things about Skaven. When playing AS them anyway. Starting a battle with the enemy all bunched up for the march is perfect when you have such awesome artillery. Does Queek have your last book? Just one more to go right?

Still sitting at 3, though the rogue army carrying the 4th book is in the neighborhood of this nice Skaven city I've had my eye on. While I'm in the neighborhood, I figure I'll nab it.
I gotta get out of this Skaven war though. I've taken all the cities I want, now I have to get them off my back and out of this constant ambush thing. I'm not going to wipe them off the map (at least that's not the current plan), so it's time to move on. They're holding a grudge, though, and won't peace out.

Diplomacy in TW games sucks. In some titles it sucks not as much as it sucks in other titles. But overall? It sucks

Skaven have no friends. So they probably figure what's the point in striking a deal.

Imagine that Total War had diplomacy like EU IV. That would be cool.

You'd think they would want to cut their losses at some point though. Oh well, more exp for my lords, more conquest for me I guess.

I was thinking that adding the TW tactical layer into EUIV would be incredible.

True dat^

Combat is EU IV's biggest weakness I reckon. That would be fun to play them out, but we would have problems with scale, as some battles are 100k per side or whatever.

Can you pay Queek enough to get him to agree to a truce? Maybe you've not that sort of dosh on hand.

Imagine how long it would take to finish a game in EUIV with that?

I've tried bribing him, but not with an obscene amount of cash. Maybe I'll skip building for a turn or two and try sweetening the pot a bit more.

I had a little break from this game. Yestarday started a new campaign as Empire and I'am a bit surprised... I think the game became more difficult. It's turn 11 and Vampires already wiped two elector counts and there are more greenskins north of Altdorf... i think there was an update recently and made these changes... I find WHTW2 quite difficult even on normal. I think there are balancing issues, some factions are OP (skaven IMHO which I despise... (sorry DBond;)). Well, i think i'am going to have a hard time now...

Yeah, we're used to it

Empire runs are interesting because of their location. Sometimes VC snowball, sometimes Dwarfs and humans crush them. While I don't disagree that WH has balance issues (that's been true all along), the balance fluctuates between factions from patch to patch, and factions that were weaker before are stronger now. New factions are added and it changes the dynamic depending on where on the map they are placed. Beyond that, there is still a variance factor that means in some runs a faction is a steamroller and in others it never gets going at all. Some factions have inherent advantages that give them an edge, but I've seen the strongest factions get wiped from time to time.


You should be able to get alliances with Dwarf factions and use the war coordination thing to hit the VC from both directions. Grombrindal makes a good ally, usually. The key when fighting VC is to snipe their lords so that the army crumbles. Untainted bonuses and encampment stance are also vital when fighting the VC.

Ahh the Skaven. I've had better luck against them by changing my army comp to use more fast monstrous units to attack their missile/artillery. I've also been trying to end my lord movement by either being garrisoned or Entombed (Tomb Kings version of Encamped). I've still gotten ambushed while entombed, which surprised me a bit.

Well, I'm almost there. Grabbed the last book, and initiated the final battle. Unfortunately, I was running out of time so I quick saved it. When I get back, I'll be fighting that last big battle. I've re-tooled Settra's army to be much more monster heavy - I only have 4 or so infantry and about the same number of archers. I'm running 2 titans, the Legion of Legend Necrosphinx, the Regiment of Renown Necro Nights, a Casket of Souls, a couple of regular Ushabti and a couple of bow Ushabti (one is either the Legend or Regiment, not sure which), a Warsphinx, Settra, and a rank 40 Necrotect for some added magic and construct support.

Either later tonight or tomorrow I'll actually sit down and try fighting this battle. Any tips before I engage?

Good luck. I'd only advise you not to overextend and to maintain cohesiveness through the early part of the battle so you are ready for what comes later.

Good job getting so far.

Settra does not serve, Settra RULES.

The final battle wasn't as bad as I had expected. Starting off at 3v3 (though neither of my allies were full stacks), I chose to attack the right flank and use that army as support, leaving the army to my left to fend for themselves. They did a decent job, and only minimal mop-up was needed on the first wave. The second wave (3 more armies), I consolidated my forces around the right flank ally and and fought off the initial surge, again leaving the left flank to handle things for themselves. I needed to clean up a little bit more this time, but again they did an admirable job of holding their own.

During the battle, I began manueving to the center of the map for the final push. The last army I faced waited for me to come to them. They tried to bait me with a titan, but I sent a couple Knights after it and wound up dispatching it with little difficulty. As I marched my formation forward, they began to engage. I used my more mobile monstrous units to hit their flanks, while my front line held their infantry at bay. I had refrained from using my spells in the earlier battles, but now I started firing everything I had at them. Arkhan fell to Settra after he just abused every spell he knew - buffing his weapon, explosive damage, regen - Arkhan had no chance with the onslaught of physical and magical tools I had available. Couple that with a whip infantry hero I had spent the game building into a melee monster. Once the enemy lord fell, his army began to crumble, and it was simply a matter of letting it play out.

So thanks for the tip - I knew a second wave was coming so I leaned heavily on my allies to minimize my losses in the first wave. I also made sure I kept my main forces (ie infantry and archers) in a fairly tight formation so Settra could buff them and they could hold the line. I used my bigger monstrous units to wreak havoc on their backline, eventually hammer/anvil-ing their front lines when their rear units broke.

Fun campaign, I enjoyed the Tomb Kings. Now I'll take a little break and jump into a new faction. I'm leaning heavily toward Skaven, esp after tangling with them so much in this campaign. For the record, the Skaven war never ended. I stopped pursuing them after evicting them from my continent, and though they sent the odd army there to harass me, I never really did any serious engagements with them after that.

Congrats! Yeah, I didn't know the reinforcements were coming (and it was hard/hard) and I had a hell of a time winning that one! I was not in position to deal with the reinforcements who came from all directions and it was a very close thing in the end. I'm impressed you saw it through to the end. That's quite rare. Whichever achievement you got for winning the campaign I'm sure has a fairly low percentage.

The same sort of thoughts attracted me to the Skaven. I wasn't interested in playing the ratmen at all, but while playing other factions I took note of how they played, their units, their awesome ranged options, the trouble they gave me, and thought why not, let's give 'em a go. And they ended up being the faction I enjoy the most. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts, and if you need any tips let me know.

I'd suggest Queek or Ikit Claw, but whatever floats your boat. And besides that, things change a bit from Vortex to ME, although I would still recommend those two. Clan Pestilens is good too, and starts in Lustria (South America) and that means more lizards Queek has early war with Lizards too. Ikit claw does not. His campaign is cool, with the Forbidden Workshop mechanic and all the tech and toys.

Thanks! The achievement is "Walk Like A Nehekaran" at 7.4% of players.

I'll check out Queek and Ikit Claw, though I like the idea of Forbidden Workshop with tech and toys, so maybe Clan Skryre will be the one.

We are heading out of town for the week in a couple of days, I probably won't start a new campaign until I get back . No point in starting it and having to come back a week later and trying to figure out where I left off.

Walk Like A Nehekaran, lol. I got it too

Ikit Claw has tactical nukes. 'Nuff said

Sold.

Haha, yes indeed.

You'll also have the undercities which are cool, and very Skaven.

The key for me is to rush Plagueclaw Catapults and get Stormvermin as soon as possible as well. Queek gets Stormvermin bonuses.

Ikit Claw has some great ranged units, which can be upgraded by the Workshop. He gets bonuses for these units, called Jezzails and Ratling Guns. I think CA moved his start in Vortex to the Star Tower on the coast of Lustria. If so, more lizards straight away. In Mortal Empires, he starts at Skavenblight, one of the best settlements on the map due to how many building slots it has. But it's not the best position geographically, with Dwarfs and Wood Elves blocking northern expansion. Not too hard to beat the Vampire Pirates close by, but after that I find it more difficult to expand. I have not played Ikit Claw in Vortex I don't think.

You also have the Menace Below thing I talked about before. Raise a unit of slaves, allow the lizards to converge to beat the sh!t out of them, and then drop a tactical nuke on the mob

I've run into some of those units - I must say one of the attractions to Skaven is that their missile/artillery trails are very colorful!

I'm looking forward to it - I even picked up the Skaven DLC just so I'll have all the toys. I scoped out Ikit Claw's starting position - it's marked as "Hard" in the game, and he's on Volcanic Island in Vortex (that's what I'll play for now). Should be interesting.

Yes, that's the name of the province that Star Tower is part of. It's a very interesting part of the map. In close proximity you have a number of LLs. Luthor Harkon (Vampire Coast), Lokhir Felheart (Dark Elves) are nearby, and Skrolk is also close, which should help with an alliance and confederation. The Lizard faction Itza will DoW pretty quick I think, but you can handle them before they get too big. There's a minor Skaven faction too, but I reckon you'll want to go to war with them, despite your brotherhood.

Star Tower is a good settlement, and you have sea access right off the bat, and the coastal location means no direct threats to the east. Close by is the Altar of the Horned Rat which is a ritual currency location. Before Skryre was added, this was where Teclis started, and I know from playing him that it's a cool place to start a campaign. I have yet to run in to Felheart, but he's a dark elves pirate sort added in a free DLC, with a naval vibe.

Maybe I'll give this campaign a shot next time I fire up WH2. I think I would like this start better than Skavenblight.

While I was on vacation I spent a little of the down time checking out some of the other factions in this game. I played about 3-4 turns of a few, just to get a taste.
My initial impressions of a few of them are:
Vampire Coast - emo adolescents. Interesting units and art, the Lord "ship" that you can improve like a city is kinda cool.
Lizardmen - tanky units with a superiority complex, the geomantic web sounds like a cool concept, though I didn't play them enough to get more than a brief introduction to the concept.
Dwarfs - mad at the world - seems like they'd kick you in the shins if you brushed against them in the supermarket line. The Book of Grudges is a fun sounding mechanic too, I liked the flavor of these guys.
Greenskins - drunken Scottish soccer fans. Only interested in eating, drinking, and ruling the world. Didn't care much for them from the brief time I played them. I'll give them a longer go to be fair, but they were a little annoying and kinda meh.
Skaven - the scrawny kids who can't fight but are scheming to kill everyone with their brains. It's them against the world, and the world is in trouble. They seemed fun enough to keep playing a little longer. I'll keep this campaign going for bit longer I think. I LOVE the weapons lab, it's really fun, and the whole Skaven feel is interesting.

Haha excellent! Good assessment.

That's a grudgin'!

I forgot to add that when I was playing as the Dwarfs, the Mortal Empire campaign seems like it has a ton of factions in it. Even early game (granted on my laptop, which can't hold a candle to my gaming rig) the turns seemed a little slower going through all the other factions. I can only imagine what the late game turn times must be like, even with a number of factions getting snuffed.

One of the recent patches sped up the Mortal Empires turn times considerably. What I do is go to the camera settings in the upper left of the screen and set animation speed to fast (allied, enemy, neutral or whatever options are there). This speeds up the character movement during the AI turns. I set both agents and lords to fast speed while leaving my characters at default to have time to abort or re-route their movement..

I did indeed follow my own advice and started a Vortex run as Ikit Claw. And as I suspected, it's a more interesting start than Mortal Empires for Clan Skryre. It takes a few turns to really get going. I began by attacking the rebel pirate vampires within easy reach and then settled the ruins to complete the starting province. But this takes a lot of soldiers and so there are a number of turns spent replenishing and recruiting. On top of that it takes a number of turns to start researching technology, since it requires a building, which requires waiting a few turns for the population to allow upgrading the settlement.

I aimed to get plagueclaws and stormvermin as quickly as possible and by turn 30 I had two armies with those plus the jezzails and ratling guns. Eliminated Spitek and occupied Altar of the Horned Rat for the ritual currency. A good start and actually have a couple of allies and trade partners, which I found really hard to get for Skryre in Mortal Empires at the start. Got a number of workshop upgrades and built a second doomrocket but yet to use any.

I established four undercities by this point, although the one at Itza is gone since I took that settlement. Undercities are key, as they are a good source of both food and cash. I put them under the richest cities, like Lothern for example. You can opt to either choose a flat bonus (200 gold per turn at the first level) or 20% of the income. Each of these can be upgraded to a higher level and more income at the cost of higher detectability. I choose the 20% one so that my income grows as the AI improves their city. And obviously as long as the city has income greater than 1000 this option nets more money than the flat bonus one. In general I tend to go with food, percentage of income, the building that reduces detectability by 40% and the one which has a per-turn chance of spreading an undercity to a nearby settlement.

I have enough currency to start the first ritual, and two AI factions have already completed one, but I want to wait until I have a third army to be in better position to react to the chaos stacks.

I've strayed a bit from my campaign, alas Elite has been calling me lately.
I'll have to restart my Skaven campaign though. I admit I haven't quite gotten the hang of the undercities. How do you establish them? How much food do they provide?
I'll have to check them out again.

As Clan Skryre you start with an agent who can do it (warlock engineer). Just right click on any settlement you do not own to start one. They cost money, which increases with each new undercity. Then you can click on that settlement and you will be able to construct the buildings (four slots). There is a cool-down until you can build the next one.

You can also choose to establish an undercity when you are in the screen where you have the occupy/sack/raze options. And one of the rites spawns an agent who can either make an undercity or create an earthquake.

How much cash or food it generates depends on the level of the building you choose to put there. You must balance detectability.

The first level food building gives one food, the second level gives three. Other buildings cost food, so you have to plan it out so that you aren't costing yourself too much. That's why I tend to go with food/money so that I am gaining some of each. Once you look over the building options it will become more clear.

New DLC in the pipeline, out in a couple of weeks

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1315750/Total_War_WARHAMMER_II__The_Twisted__The_Twilight/

One new LL for Wood Elves and another new one for Skaven. As a Skaven player myself I approve, but it seems we get too many, where others are pased over too often. But surely CA knows what sells, so I'm sure there's a logical reason for this.

The Wood Elves one might be good. I don't like the standard Wood Elves gameplay, their campaign mechanics suck really. But if this DLC is like others, then maybe we will see an alternative campaign mechanic for the new faction, in which case I may give it a go. These DLC drops keep bringing me back like on a train schedule haha.

Map changes are coming too.

Cool, the map has really evolved over time, keeps it fresh. It's pretty amazing how much Warhammer 2 has grown over the past few years.

Just in time for WH3!
I'm feeling the itch too, I may fire up another campaign soon.

No idea when WH3 will see the light of day, but you know how I've talked glowingly about the Mortal Empires campaign in WH2. WH3 will have the same thing, but now combining three games! That's something to look forward to for sure.

If you fire up a new one tell me who you went with.

I'm leaning toward Skaven in ME. I haven't given that campaign more than a cursory glance, I'd like sink my teeth into it a bit more fully.

In a surprise to even myself, I've started an ME campaign as Reikland. So far I've just run a bunch of turns to refamiliarize myself with the game then I'll restart for a more serious run.

Good faction, the first one i played. Good roster, interesting position. It's a tough start for me usually, but once you've united the province it starts rolling.

Is this your first go with ME?

Yes, first serious go at ME. I tasted a Dwarves faction in ME, but only ran a few turns of it. I'm planning on giving it a good go through on Reikland. Initial take is that handgunners and Reiksguard are quite good in particular.
I've had lots of luck micro-ing the Reiksguard and hammer/anviling or attacking archers in the back line. They seem faster than cav units from other factions, though it's been a few months since I've played and it may just be me.

Good luck. Hope you'll post some updates of your progress.

When I play my composition is like this once the roster is opened up

Franz
Empire Captain
7 x Greatswords
4 x Reiksguard
2 x Handgunners
2 x Crossbows
1 x Mortar
1 x Steam Tank
1 x Helstorm

Handgunners are good yes, and I always want to have ranged AP if I can. I also prefer indirect artillery over cannon. Good cav faction. I like the Reiksguard a lot. Grenade outriders are auto-resolve stars if you use that feature at all.

Skaven are fun. You just have to watch your food. They don't get penalties to upkeep for multiple armies, but each army and town does use up food. You also don't get many options to build food producing buildings in your towns. You'll have to learn to rely on under cities and raiding, even if you're raiding you're own provinces. That just makes a rebel skaven army, which you then defeat and eat for more food.
Their army units and compositions are also very different from most of the other factions. After multiple failed campaigns and some time to get adjusted to them, they are now my favorite faction.

Good points. Undercities are key for me. Some starts have it better, with pastures nearby. Queek in ME and Ikit Claw in ME as well, both have pastures close by. Those help get it rolling if you can captures those provinces. Raiding is also good when teetering on the edge, but I rarely raid my own territory. Undercities though are the key to keeping food stocks high in my runs.

Skaven have become my top race too, but it didn't start that way. I thought they might be my least favorite, but once I got around to trying them I liked how they play. Queek and Ikit Claw especially. Eshin I didn't care for although I really want to. But their increased upkeep for many of my favorite units is a killer. Tretch has hard starts. Skrolk is hit and miss. Have had fun with him but the pestilence/plague vibe is a bit much with him. But Ikit Claw has awesome units and the workshop which is great. And Queek is just a great LL. I dig his whole bring it on attitude. A brave Skaven is fun. Always up against lizards and dwarfs from the off. Fun campaigns with Queek.

About the upkeep, or Supply Lines. Skaven are not immune so not sure why that would be in your games. I pay 15% for each new army. Might scale according to difficulty? Or changed since I've played last? Specific faction bonus that I missed?

That's my mistake, there is an army supply lines penalty it's just that every other army I have is usually skaven slaves with no upkeep so I don't notice it as much as with other factions.

Yeah, I suppose they're so cheap you hardly notice any increase

I've been playing Borderlands 3 a lot recently, and one of the load screen blurbs says

"Four is the correct number of times to say chugga-chugga before the choo-choo". True dat.

And that train is right on time with another DLC drop in Warhammer 2


Twisted and Twilight on Steam

More Skaven! Good grief, it's almost embarrassing at this point. But I am glad I happened to gravitate toward the race that CA love the most.

But the really interesting part of this DLC for me is a complete rework for the Wood Elves. I've never spent time with Wood Elves because I thought their campaign mechanics sucked. But now I just might. Players seem split over whether it's actually any good. I'll give it a go down the line.

Have to get back to my WH2 Empire campaign, DCS seems to be sucking my free time lately.
I agree, the Wood Elves mechanics seem kinda cool. I took advantage of the last sale to grab the WE DLC for WH1 so when I eventually pick up this latest one I'll have all the WE content.
Because that's just how I roll!

I'm on Warhammer hiatus too. I'll pick this one up eventually, but I got lots of gaming plates spinning at the mo, so it'll have to wait.

I think we might see WH3 within a year or so.

So many games, so little time....

Troodat.

And more all the time

Off topic, but I jut noticed that Cheyenne is now a former member, shown as unregistered. Anyone know why? Too bad, he's one of the good ones. We share similar tastes in gaming and I'll miss his posts. He gifted me a copy of Grigsby's War in the East which I liked very much and ended up doing a long AAR on here at SimHQ.

Not sure why or where you've gone mate, but happy trails.

WH III has been announced.
https://www.creative-assembly.com/blog/total-war-warhammer-iii-announced

And it's not Epic Exclusive! (Yet)

Looking forward to this one.

Concept art and renders, but revealing all the same

My gut feeling is that CA regrets making Troy an Epic exclusive so I don't think they'll make that mistake again.

Probably right Panzer. I want WH3 on Steam, so hopefully it doesn't change when and if Epic dangles buckets of cash in front of CA's offices.

Time's running out to try WH2 before we've all moved on to WH3. Any chance you'll give it a go?

And for anyone interested in Warhammer, don't forget the new game will have a new campaign, like Mortal Empires, but stitching all three games --including the maps and all factions -- together in one massive, epic, sprawling, fantabulous campaign. You gotta own all three games, not installed, just owned. It's going to be awesome, if they don't try to change it up too much and muck up the works.

In fact I was planning on trying it out this coming weekend. If I do I'll give you my input on whether I like it or not.

OK, hope you like it! If you need any faction recommendations, hints or tips just post 'em up.

I was originally gonna pass this up since I'm still having tons of fun with WH1 and 2's Mortal Empires campaigns, but the word on the street is they'll just add on to the map in the east and make an even bigger, grander map. If that's true, I will probably buy it when it comes out.

The word on the street is also the word three posts up. Haha, but agreed, it will be epic!

Guess Panzer never gave it a go. Oh well, nothing ventured nothing gained, literally. I'm gonna let that one go.

A good time to assess the state of Warhammer 3 I think, well, based on what little I know so far. A firm date has not been set, so not sure how long before release, only that it is slated to come out in 2021. Details are limited, but for those of us that play Warhammer I think that's OK, we know what to expect in a broad sense. This is a winning formula that has made CA gobs of cash and I don't expect much in the way of innovation or drastic changes. If it ain't broke and all...

But what we do know are the new races. And frankly I am not excited about them, other than as potential enemies (and occasionally, allies). My take on each:

Kislev -- Meh. These are the guys who say "kizzzlev" every time you click on them to annoy me. Essentially an analogue to Russia, this is the faction that never agrees to any deal, ever. Or so it seems. In Mortal Empires, they are in a perfectly lousy location, the first speed bump for the Chaos invasion, in lands that are barren, cold, dark and devoid of any redeeming feature. On an appeal scale of one to Jessica Alba, Kislev is a Bette Midler.

Dark Gods of Chaos -- I've never played a Chaos faction. These dudes are the tainted darkness, and while I've never shied away from questionable factions of ill repute, Chaos is just too far over the edge. I want to kill them, not be them. But I also once said that about Skaven and Vampire Coast, and look at me now. So jury's still out on this one, and may come down to the campaign, the mechanics and how Chaos rolls.

Ogre Kingdoms -- Honestly I don't know enough (who does?). They have the potential to be very cool and fun to play. They worship a hole in the ground, so they have that going for them, which is nice? In name of all that is holey? Guess time will tell. I hope I dig their vibe, as without them in my list I am running out of reasons to buy the WH3 lol.

Chaos Dwarfs -- Yes, dwarfs, not dwarves. OK, I can get behind this one, evil dwarfs. Rumor has it they will have some sort of crafting, engineering or similar, mechanics which I've enjoyed in other factions with them, such as Clan Skryre and Tomb Kings. So I can see finding something to like with this one.

Cathay -- Warhammer's China, with a mythological vibe. Based on mostly nothing, I am thinking this will be the one I gravitate to in WH3. I expect dragons, magic and gunpowder, a tantalizing cocktail of awesome. I may be disappointed in the end, or have a very skewed vision from reality, but I reckon this one will be my favorite. I like strong and diverse ranged options in any TW title and I'm guessing Cathay will fill that role for me.

Rumor has it there is a hobgoblin race/faction too, but it is unconfirmed by CA. Greenskins fall in my 'least favorite factions' bucket, and while there is no guarantee this faction would be similar, I'd be surprised if they weren't.

Those are all I am aware of so far, and surprises may be in store. And none of this takes in to account the new campaign(s), starting locations, map changes, unique mechanics and bonuses of individual factions and more that may have a telling effect on the new races and factions. It's more like my reaction to them as seen through the lens of WH2.

So where should I send the cleaning bill for my monitor and keyboard?

Sorry 'bout that

I had read an article some time ago about a new battle type. Not sure how it is integrated in to the campaign, but they were called survival battles I think, and you had to capture several points in order to summon a boss at the end. The enemy force was much larger than usual, wave after wave, but their troop quality was lowered, resulting in a massive pile of dead enemies.

I plan to get WH3, but I will probably wait at first, to see what the player base reaction is.

My guess is it's the special battles that pop up or WH3's version of the Vortex stuff.

Could be, but I will say I think these will be like WH 2's quest battles, or occupy that sort of space within the campaign.

Having finished a couple of campaigns in Rome 2 I was looking to stick with Total War, but something different from ancient Rome. I noticed on Steam there is yet another sale, this for Warhammer stuff, so I had a look. There isn't much I don't have for WH2, but there are a couple DLCs I had yet to buy. In the end, having run the rule over my options, I chose the Hunter and the Beast DLC . I'm not so interested in the Lizard side of this one, though maybe I will play it down the line. But the Empire faction sure seemed fun.

The faction is The Huntsmarshall's Expedition, with Markus Wulfhart as the faction leader. In the Vortex campaign, they have an alternative campaign like most of the DLC factions do. Recruitment is limited, but as you expand and fulfill objectives, the Elector Counts send reinforcements and in this way you can get the best units.They are also based in Lustria, which seemed a neat shift from the usual starting region for Empire factions. Lots of lizards, vampires and other foul creatures in this area. The main objective is to fulfill these objectives for the Emperor's Mandate, culminating in a final showdown against Nakai the Wanderer, who is probably pretty tough

So I thought it sounded interesting, with unique mechanics I have yet to see, and a new starting area and foes, with a campaign different from any other, although several factions do have alternative Vortex campaigns heading toward a climactic battle at the end.

One cool thing about this faction is they have a lot of units with Vanguard deployment, allowing some cool twists on battles. Stalkers, archers, deception and stealth, plus the usual Empire roster which is balanced and strong. Empire is the most 'traditional' faction, and a lot of fun to play.

OH, yeah, The Huntsmarshall's Expedition (henceforth abbreviated as THE) has chariot units. It's may not be well known, but I have an unreasonable disdain for chariot units. But, this War Cart unit basically saved my campaign. In the very first battle, my tiny starting army had to take on a lizard army with a stegadon. My units are way too squishy at this stage, and that dino could have wrecked me. But I sent he war cart out on a flanking maneuver as the enemy formation approached, which aggro'd the stegadon. My war cart I think was the same exact speed as the dino so I kept kiting it, with the dinosaur being fired on by the war cart. While the dino was chasing that unit I could deal with the rest of the army. And the war cart killed it!

So I like chariots a little more today.

Here's the blurb from Steam about part of the THE's campaign

"Emperor’s Mandate
As Markus Wulfhart expands Imperial interests in Lustria, his stature in the eyes of the Emperor grows. As a result, he receives a broadening range of increasingly advanced Empire units to aid in his expedition. As new territory is captured, his building options also diversify. In the Eye of the Vortex campaign, Markus will ultimately face the Spirit of the Jungle himself, Nakai the Wanderer, to decide who holds dominion over the jungles of Lustria.

Wulfhart’s campaign progress is measured by how effectively he fulfils the Emperor’s Mandate. Expansion, successful military operations and other campaign activities increase his acclaim, which is tracked on the Emperor’s Mandate bar.

The Emperor’s Mandate also dictates the quality of units available to Wulfhart via the Imperial Supplies system, which dispatches better units for him to recruit from time to time. As the Mandate bar fills, he will also unlock bonuses to further improve these units, plus new recruitment buildings.

In the Eye of the Vortex campaign, filling the Emperor’s Mandate bar will cause Nakai the Wanderer to issue a final, do-or-die challenge to Markus Wulfhart – a call to battle that will become the stuff of legend!"

This is proving to be an excellent campaign. Fun faction, and I like the unique mechanics. I've hardly recruited any units at all, with my field armies being filled out by the units provided by the Imperial Supplies mechanic and Regiments of Renown. As a result I've built military buildings in exactly one province, just in case they are needed. But they won't be.

It's a pretty free-form campaign, with no real objectives other than to increase acclaim to 100 in order to trigger the final battle. This is done by capturing territory and winning battles, raiding and so forth. So the player is free to expand as he sees fit. There is an alternative military objectives campaign, that requires eliminating certain factions, but I am not pursuing this. This is the Vortex campaign. Not sure where Wulfhart starts in Mortal Empires, but in Vortex the start is Scorpion Coast, along the northern shore of Lustria. This means Lizards, and lots of them, as we are essentially sandwiched by those factions such as Itza and Hexoatl (who would go on to confederate later on and have me surrounded). And to the east it's the vampire pirates of The Awakening, with all of their corruption. Or, it was

Lizard armies are some of the toughest fights in WH2. They are well-armored and have the very strong dino units, which are a b!tch to deal with on the battlefield. AP and anti-large units are key to counter them. Lizard ranged options are limited and cavalry too, but their melee/infantry stuff is some of the best in the game. It makes for classic WH2 asymmetric matchups since my infantry options are weaker, but I have artillery, good archer and handgunner units (armor piercing) and good shock, melee and ranged cavalry.

It's a campaign that has a nice narrative to it. One of the objectives is to 'locate' the Empire's hunters, special agents that are unlocked when performing certain tasks or entering specific provinces. They are strong and have cool backstories. Four in all, it's another recruitment that costs nothing (aside from upkeep of course), like the Imperial Supplies.

As you do battle and take territory you raise hostility with the jungle factions. It rises quickly and when it hits full, a full-stack top tier Lizard army is spawned nearby and beelines for your nearest city. This army is no joke and you have to stay prepared for its incursion. I don't have a robust economy, so can only field a few armies at this point, and they are spread thin covering too much ground. So when these enemy armies spawn it's a mad dash to intercept before they take down my settlements. Eliminating this army resets the hostility counter until it reaches full once more.

It's a cool faction with a fun campaign, even if to some extent it fails to bring the enemy diversity the game usually dishes out. Lots of lizards. But it also has the effect of conveying well the sense that your faction is really a expeditionary force of the Elector Counts. On your own in a foreign, hostile land. The 'support' you get from the homelands, in the form of new units, money and other assistance adds to the narrative.

Finished this campaign on turn 172. I'll add this faction too to my approved list

Good fun, this one. As mentioned I didn't get a shot at fighting many different races, it was almost entirely battles and war against lizards, but the vibe is cool, and I liked the unique mechanics of the Huntsmarshal's Expedition.

The campaign culminates in a final battle against Nakai the Wanderer, who it turns out is an ancient Kroxigor, or bad-ass dinosaur. This battle is like several others, such as the final battle in a Tomb Kings campaign. It's a huge mash-up. A couple things to note, and may help anyone who gives THE a run. The most important involves the Hunters I talked about earlier. There are four, and each of them brings a special ability to the final battle, such as ammo reloads or reinforcements. If all four are in your army, you get all the bonuses. I could see on the Hunters' unit cards that they had these effects. But it didn't say anything about whether these agents actually needed to be present in the final battle, or whether their special effects apply regardless. I guessed the former, but took two. I didn't want to sacrifice any of the units already in Wulfhart's army, so I split the difference and just took the two. The final battle was hard and I could have used the other two bonuses, but I made it anyway

The enemy forces were composed of four armies, three on the map at the start and a reinforcement army. This army is the one that poses the most threat, as by the time it arrives your forces are battered and probably have lost cohesion, as they chase routers, get pushed back or get separated in to individual pockets of battle across the map. Crucially, these enemy armies have many lords and agents, mostly bad-ass dinos. And interestingly they all bee-lined for my leaders. Usually they will get occupied by the infantry line, but here they all pushed right through and focused on my characters. It was a close-run thing in the end. It's easy to get lulled by the usual patterns of AI behavior, but here I was thrown a curveball which disrupted my carefully laid plans as well as occupied the units I count on to provide support through abilities and spells. Even still, after over 1000 hours of playing Warhammer 2 I got the achievement for using at least 10 different abilities in a single battle. This was because I had the two hunters, and I rarely have more than one agent in an army. And I needed every one of them to prevail.

Cool! I love your writeups, DB, even if I don't always respond, I am reading them!

Thanks kindly, JC. I appreciate the comment.

Every year it seems I go on a TW kick for about a month or so. I'm in it now, having played through a couple campaigns in Rome 2 and now those in WH2. So last night I thought I'd look in to player base reaction for the Wood Elves overhaul. I entirely disliked the old mechanics, the campaign sucked. But the comments I read made the changes sound great, so I bought yet another DLC when I saw that it was still on sale. The Twisted and the Twilight has Throt the Unclean for Skaven and the Sisters of Twilight for Wood Elves. The Sisters are a missile and mount faction with unique campaign mechanics that should fall right in my wheelhouse. At the very least the comments on Steam convinced me to give it a go. Steam says I have 28 DLC

The Twisted and the Twilight

When I loaded WH2 I decided I would clean out old saves, free up some space. I noticed my old save with Harkon of the Vamipre Coast wasn't ever finished, so instead of starting a new campaign just yet I fired Harkon up and played a number of turns. But this is a long-haul campaign due to the unique objectives and I'm still some way from finishing, even past turn 200.

But maybe tonight I'll take a dive in to the Wood Elves and see what they are all about.

Funny you should mention Wood Elves - I too picked up that DLC with the intent of give the faction a try.
I haven't had much of a gaming urge of late, WH2 is only one that is garnering any of my interest.

Well, if you're interested in my take on this DLC I am sure to provide it

I love ranged units, archer type especially in this game. This faction is good for these units, plus a dragon, good cav. Plus it has access to the underway which I like. And to top it off they have a crafting mechanic which I like in WH2 with the other factions that have a similar mechanic. Looks good, but I'll wait until I've racked up some turns to know for sure what I think.

I did indeed start this campaign in Eye of the Vortex. Too early to know how I will feel about it over a longer haul, but plenty to like so far, and maybe signs of a few things I don't. The campaign is very different, and it's the first one in Warhammer 2 I've played where playing tall is an actual thing. This isn't an expansion faction/campaign, but a defensive one.

The roster looks interesting. Some excellent archer units, and flying units, the Hawk Riders in particular are fantastic. I bet I could compose my armies of the lord and 19 Hawk Riders and never lose lol. But I like more balanced armies

Infantry is not very strong, at least not in the traditional melee attack/melee defense/armor ways. It's more about stealth, vanguard deployment, stalk and that sort of vibe. Battles are more fluid in terms of engagement and positioning, withdrawals and feints. A very different sort of thing than what I am accustomed to. Armor levels especially are quite low across the board. And I have seen no siege weapons or artillery in the building browser.

The main idea of the campaign is to heal your magical forest in preparation for the arrival of your god queen or whatever she is. I have not grasped the lore angle here yet. You heal the forest by winning battles within it, occupying the surrounding 'heathlands', performing tasks and completing missions. One of the most interesting of these is dilemmas that spawn within your borders, or just outside. If you move your army there you have the chance to fight among other options. In this way you can continue to heal the forest through battle, but without needing to go on the offensive. In essence, the game brings the enemy to you. This is handy for playing tall and defensive.

The tech tree is really nice, lots of good bonuses, with some techs locked behind an amber currency. The start is on the west side of the map, west of Kar Karond. It's forbidding terrain, mountain ranges and volcanoes, narrow passes and chokepoints. In contrast to my comments about the Huntsmarshall's Expedition's lack of diversity, the SIsters are surrounded by many races, including Tomb Kings, Dark Elves, Greenskins and Skaven.

I mentioned the underway earlier. I really like this mechanic, which is shared by a couple other races such as Dwarfs, Greenskins and Skaven. The ability to bypass terrain and jump past enemy armies is fun and versatile. It opens so many options and is especially useful in terrain with so many mountain ranges. But beyond that, this faction (and maybe all Wood Elves since the rework?) have the Worldroots system, which allows armies to travel between any magical forest on the map, with an ability cool-down timer. A fast-travel system if you will. Pretty cool.

To win the campaign you must heal two of these forests to max, and then face a final battle against Throt the Unclean. Most of these later DLCs have two factions, and in the end they face off against each other in a final showdown. Same deal here.

One little quibble I have is that the agents and armies fly about the strat map. That's cool yeah, but it also means that when idle they bob about, making clicking on them more of a struggle than I'd like. Too easy to miss and click the settlement behind. Minor, like I said.

Overall my early impressions are good. Throughout this thread I have praised what I call Warhammer 2's factionality, or how unique each and every faction is. With the Sisters of Twilight it goes farther, where not only is the faction unique, the entire way of playing is changed, from the campaign objectives, to expansion to even how I fight on the field of battle. And while in the end they may not prove to be my favorite, this sort of dissimilarity and deviance broadens the scope of play even more than it already was and that's good stuff.

And if you get tired of ranged units, try Throt the Unclean's monsters. 1 DLC, two totally different factions. Those differences in the factions and gameplay what I like about WH2.

Skaven's my jam, so I will probably play Throt at some stage, maybe even in Mortal Empires for WH3, which, I guess is coming out soon. Did you enjoy Throt's campaign? What's the scoop?

Some of the shine has come off my Sisters run. I'm 40+ turns in to it and things seem to be going well. But a couple of things are bugging me. The first of these is that I can only develop the magic forest. The bordering heathlands settlements I took can only have a level 1 main building and one other minor building it seems. They are 'Forest Lookouts' They provide a small buffer for my heartland, and give enemies other targets. But it means that all important buildings must be by necessity built in the magic forest settlement. There simply aren't enough slots to get what I want. So you might say 'get another magic forest DBond'. Well, I did. But the fast travel system has a long cool down, nine turns. So if I wanted to say recruit infantry and archers in one, and cav and monsters in another, it takes too long to return due to the cool down. I could put all recruitment in one, but then it makes no money or imparts other bonuses.

The second thing bugging me is when I took my second forest, (by colonisation; the little island in the top center of the sea in the center of Ulthuan) I was immediately hemmed in by Averlorn to the north, which hold the heathlands for this forest. They are neutral to me. Which is fine. But the 'forest encounter' thing that brings the enemy to you is spawning in those heathlands. Averlorn won't agree to any deals, in particular military access. So to get to this encounter I need to trespass, which in turn would sour relations and railroad me in to war with the High Elves, which would be bad, seeing as this location is surrounded by them, and with it would go all of those trade and alliance opportunities.

I'll keep going for a bit and see if I can get past this.

I mentioned the Worldroots system above. But I had it slightly wrong. Worldroots is the Wood Elves version of the underway. The fast travel system is actually called Deeproots.

I had been thinking about my next post, writing about how this campaign was the fastest and easiest of any I have played in Warhammer 2. I gotten past the things mentioned in the last post, including just blitzing Avelorn to claim those heathlands. I healed the forests, performed the rituals and had arrived at the final battle with Throt on turn 125, which is probably 30 turns faster than any other campaign I have played in WH2. And I don't think I did anything special or optimal, it's just a (potentially) short campaign if things go well.

And then I got absolutely crushed in the final battle. I laughed out loud at my futility, my utter destruction. It was the worst beating I've gotten, and by some measure. My forces numbered around 1400. The enemy was 3900. It was so bad in fact that I struggle to imagine a way to re-approach it. A different composition, or different tactics isn't going to put this right, A defeat so bad in fact that I think I'll just give it up as a bad job. Shame that, as I wanted to finish a campaign as Wood Elves. But that was an epic beat down, and Skaven stand supreme

I can't go down like that dammit

So instead of allowing Throt to have the final word on this one, I got to thinking about how I could achieve a more favorable result. What stood out is what I pointed out, that this campaign was over quickly. Well, not quite over, but at the end. And because of this, and the fact that as a defensive oriented faction, I hadn't developed the various bits and bobs that compose it. The Sisters are the lord for the final battle, and they were just level 20 or so, and I hadn't dropped a single point in to the red line (which buffs the lord's army). And Ariel, the god queen or whatever she is, had hardly been leveled up at all. As I saw in the final battle, she is the real key. And because I reached the end fairly easily, I hadn't even bothered to build all my recruitment buildings, and had no monsters, monstrous infantry or dragons. It seems that these things could help lol. Because the whole campaign was basically a defensive one, I fought fewer battles perhaps, and this means fewer points to level the agents and lords, and limits the XP gain and ultimately the veterancy of my troops.

And then I read a comment on reddit where someone posted his method for tackling this battle, and step four or whatever was "Now I summon the dragon"

Wut?

I would have liked to have summoned a dragon the first time 'round haha.

It turns out that the ease of this campaign saw yet another example of my suboptimal play, and I didn't pursue the Sisters quest chain. Didn't need the cash nor the fancy gear really, so I ignored it mostly. Well, at the end of this quest chain is a freakin' dragon you can summon. And if I understand correctly, can be swapped with the Sisters hawk mount, making the hawk a summon. That sounds like it might kick some Skaven ass. Problem is it requires occupying Karond Kar, which is owned by a massive Dark Elves faction, number one on the strength chart. Maybe some subterfuge is in order. Try to use my agents to destroy buildings and use untainted to drop their public order (it is Cult of Pleasure so they need Chaos corruption). Maybe spark a rebellion and snipe the city out from under them. I'd rather not go to war with them, the forest encounter spawned enemies come fast enough. Don't need to seek more enemies.

So if I want to finish this campaign it seems the way to do it is to play more. Fight battles, finish my building and recruitment chains, finish the quest. I'll have a stronger army with more buffs, a much better Sisters and Ariel (this one is especially important, and I'll go in to the final battle -- take 2 -- with her having far more spells and effectiveness). And hopefully, a dragon I can summon. CA clearly tuned this final battle for a more seasoned army than what I attempted to use the first time.

The deal with Throt is he has a mutagenic resource that's acquired by sacrificing your units and winning battles. These are used to mutate your units adding a small bonus to it. You can add as many as 10, but once you get go past the first mutation there's a chance it'll add a disadvantage mutation as well as the beneficial one. That chance goes up after each mutation applied. There's a couple new monsters added as well as the packmaster, an anti-large hero which buffs nearby units and can be leveled to summon more units to harass and delay the enemy. One of Throt's perks is reduced upkeep for the monster units, this combined with the mutations lets you field some crazy monster armies or just buff up regular skaven armies.

I can attest. There were many monstrous units in this final battle, and I was wholly unprepared to deal with them. When I return to it, soon, I will have units better equipped to deal with the enemy composition. Anti-large, charge defense and something that I think is called masterful charge defense, whatever that does. But it's a trait I picked up once I decided to season my army more. I will return with a much stronger force. I got beaten so bad that I never even saw the Chaos army that arrives later. But Ariel is the key. She will be far more capable for the rematch.

How did you like Throt's campaign wormfood?

I only play mortal empires so I cannot comment on the regular vortex campaign.

I still would have been interested in your impressions. It's cool.

I did the final battle rematch last night and it was easy. The massive increase in capability and strength in composition easily won the battle, and I lost about 150 soldiers in total. Throt himself led the charge and was melted by my Waywatchers before he got with 100m of my lines. He was the first to die and the rest soon followed.

Wood Elves/ Sisters have a number of excellent units. Infantry is a distinct weakness, at least toe to toe with most other factions. But the archers are very good, and even more so when supported by leader buffs. My Waywatchers for example had a range of 209 and missile strength of 66 for the final battle. That is really strong. But even so my shorter ranged archers called Deepwood Scouts with Swiftshiver Shards were much more lethal in the final battle.

I did not in the end finish the Sisters' quest so had no dragon summons, but did recruit one dragon. I recruited two tree kin and two treeman monster units to stiffen my weak spearmen and hold the line while my archers, cav, flying units and characters dealt the damage. It was a slaughter and that's one more faction and race with a completed campaign. With WH3 soon to be released? this may be my last one in WH2. Not sure really, but I think that means that beastmen and chaos are the only ones I never played.

Overall I had fun with this campaign, but it is a bit of a one-off. Most battle was artificial in a sense, just a never-ending parade of spawned enemies that beeline for the Witchwood and where I can just sit and wait for them to arrive (in ambush of course) before swatting them aside to await the next one. I held maybe 10 settlements in all, and even some of those were unnecessary. The tall aspect is cool, and this would make a great starter campaign for someone new to the game. Earlier I made a comment that this was the first real tall faction I've played, but on second thought that's not exactly true, as the Dreadfleet run was also a tall one, just my pirate ship. I'm glad I gave it a go and had a chance to try the new mechanics. It is vastly improved over the way it was in my view, but still not the most compelling campaign in Warhammer 2. I don't think I would play it again.

I didn't finish the Throt campaign (yet), but what it did was make me play the Skaven a bit different. Normally I'll play as clan Skyre or Eshin and use superior ranged units/weapons teams with some chaff to hold off the enemy or split them up so the ranged units can finish them off. With Throt and clan Moulder I find myself making mutated monster doomstacks. Put maybe a plague priest, a couple packmasters and then some broodhorrors or you're prferred skaven monster and go smash through armies.

Starting location for t he first couple turns is a bit easy. You're up North with only those Kraka Drak dwarves and Kislev to worry about. I'd recommend blitzing the dwarves as they can e a real pain to wipe out if you let them build up.
After that, you're options are to go after Norsca or the Empire, neither of which is an enticing option. Norsca is such a slog for worthless territory. And the Empire can be tough if you're not prepared. Chaos also seems to have a bias against the player and may choose to try to wipe you out when they show up at your doorstep.

New units are mutant rat ogres a bigger, meaner version of the rat ogre. This one is a single entity unit with armor piercing, anti-infantry and frenzy. Wolfrats, which are really reskinned Chaos hounds, coming in both regular and poison flavors just like their Chaos counterparts. The last unit are brood horrors these are very fast single units with armor piercing, very fast speed, deathblow and they cause terror. The brood horrors with the right mutations are down right scary. As I mentioned earlier, there's a new hero type Packmaster who provides buffs and can summon wolfrrats. They're not too bad to throw into melee in a pinch either.

Like many other DLCs those new units can also now be recruited into the other skaven factions on their campaigns. Those packmasters can help to tie down units when in Skyre weapon team armies.

Thanks and yes I saw each of those new units in the final battle. They gave me trouble, the first time But for the rematch I had really stacked the deck and these units were focus-fired and gone in seconds. The difference between my first attempt and second was amazing. Dark Elves and High Elves always were vying for archer supremacy in my mind, High with the range, and Dark with the early AP. But now Wood Elves stand at the top, especially with a high level lord and points in the red tree. Very strong. Waywatchers are AP and stalk to go along with that awesome range and missile strength. For the final battle I had just the four spear units as far as conventional infantry.

Not sure Throt is my jam. I'll probably still try him eventually. He seems sort of like Grom, which I had a look at but didn't play past a couple turns. You mentioned Eshin and I gave them a start or two but it didn't click. I think the fact that non-Eshin units are double cost gave me fits. I dig the subterfuge angle though, very Skaven. Wasn't crazy about their start location in ME, but it was close to Queek which can work out well.

Queek/Mors is my favorite Skaven, then Skryre, then the rest. I dig the Skaven vibe, love their versatile roster and awesome ranged options. Menace Below is an awesome tool. I recently downloaded a free DLC, Skaven Chieftain? But I have yet to use one.

Eshin could be fun, but they're in such a lousy start location in a zone you can't move very well in and two other skaven factions practically next door. I do like his bonuses to night runner and gutter runner units. Normally they're trash, but the warp damage and armor piercing mixed with their speed and low cost makes them scarier than they have any right to be. I loath fighting against them.

Exactly. That corner of the map can be difficult. I've gotten sort of hemmed in there as Queek in past runs, so much so that I just decided to migrate Queek to Lustria and start a second homeland there with some confederation. The terrain, allies and strong enemies can limit the options in a corner start. Eshin's a little to the north, but still at the edge with few directions to turn. I want to see what changes WH3 might bring and maybe I'll give Eshin another go.

I thought that would be it, that having just finished two more campaigns I'd give it a rest until WH3. But I had a bash around Steam and came away uninspired so I decided that my new goal would be to hit 100 WH2 achievements. And looking through them it was clear that I'd only be able to hit that with one race, Dark Elves, if I were to do it in one run. Dark Elves were the second one I played, and the first I completed a campaign with. So it's been several years since I've played them. Decided to go with Malekith in Mortal Empires.

I had not noticed the new option to turn off the Chaos invasion for ME before, so I did that for this run. That's pretty cool.

When I got back in to the game a few weeks ago with the Huntsmarshal's campaign I was bewildered that I could no longer find the map and map options. Took forever to figure out that it is now accessed by holding spacebar. Why did they change this? Not a fan.

The time is nigh! Warhammer 3 is close to dropping. Check out this video of the new map

Looks good DB thanks for posting the news.

No worries Russ, release date is set for February 17. I hope they nail it and don't feel compelled to alter the formula too much.

I'm looking forward to it, and would need to brush up again, but I recall my reaction to the new factions and felt underwhelmed. Of course you can still play the WH1/2 factions in Mortal Empires, but I'm hoping there are a few at least out of the new ones that I take to.

I'm looking forward to the Chaos Dwarves if and when they add them. They're like regular dwarves but with more bonkers vehicles and magic.

I'll say I'm not excited about the factions they've mentioned so far. That said, I ended up enjoying things like the Vampire Counts, Skaven, and Lizardmen much more that I thought I would. Maybe they'll surprise me here as well.

Yes, great point wormfood. When I started playing I had no interest in Skaven or the Vampire Coast factions (which actually came later), and these ended up at the top of my list, with Skaven my favorite of all. I'll buy WH3 for certain, but may wait a little to see what the fan reaction is, and let CA pop out a few fixes.

Warhammer 3 is out. Early word is that the game is good, but the performance is not. Poor optimization is what they're saying.

I watched a couple videos and I'm intrigued by some of the new mechanics. I think I'll wait for a patch, hotfix or two, let CA iron out the wrinkles, and give it a go down the line a bit.

I think Mortal Empires is not integrated yet.

Mortal Empires is not integrated yet.

I get a few stutters on my end with mostly the same settings as in Warhammer 2. I do know people with NVIDIA cards and ultrawide monitors and every load or cutscene the resolutions gets swapped back to 1080.
Several other people have reported crashes in the prologue, which can be skipped anyway.

I only messed around for a couple hours and it seems it could use a few patches. Cavalry does it's charge, then gets stuck much worse than in Warhammer 2 leaving them to get cut down by whatever they attacked. Archers seem to have a weird trajectory and they don't seem to shoot when it looks as though they should.

Good insight, thanks wormfood. Tell us more if you keep playing. Which faction did you start with?

The tutorial has you play as Kislev. I did start a campaign afterwards as the Great Orthodoxy (one of the Kislev factions), but only had time to do a couple turns.


Edit, mostly as a reminder to myself for things I need to double check:
1. Winds of magic seems to work differently. Maybe for other factions. For Kislev it just recharges and having an arcane conduit seems to just make it constantly recharge. There didn't seem to be a total pool it drew from like in WH2.
2. One of the prologue missions had you command a reinforcing army and attack the enemy from behind and take out their guns. Maybe it's a chaos thing, but those guns were fighting in melee moderately well, including firing the guns at close range causing them to flip around and bowl over my infantry.
3. Lore of Ice seemed to be broken. Many of the spells that should slow enemies or damage them didn't seem to work.

As it turns out that "artillery" was more of a zany warmachine, like a giant cannon on a motorbike instead of sitting on an actual gun carriage.

I replayed the battle and tried to snap a video of it:

Multiplayer is a mess. First, every half hour or so somebody gets disconnected and that player cannot rejoin until everyone quits.
Also, they made it so all the players have simultaneous turns, but everytime someone starts a battle a big pop up notifying everyone comes up and locks them out of doing anything else. It's a hassle when everyone is trying to attack something on the same turn.

Kizzzlevvv, that's how they said it whenever you clicked on them. Anti-social bastages, they were.

Thanks for the reports. I'm very interested in the game, but no reason for me not to wait a bit for some seasoning.

Those 'guns' or whatever they are are wicked in CQC!

The concensus seems to be that it is Denuvo that is tanking the performance. CA pulled a fast one really, by leaving it out of the review copies, then jamming it in there for release.

I'm going to wait for a while and see if they relent and remove it.

Warhammer 2 still has it I think, so unlikely, and maybe unrelated to any performance issues. I'm going to give it some times in the oven regardless.

Some other thoughts:
1) some of the default colors when fighting in the snow are a hassle. Normally when you hit space you can see the markers of the path your units are to take and the formation when they get there. That color on the snow blends in way too well and I'm not even color blind.

2) Other arty are also a bit beefy. Many of them are warmachines like I pointed out earlier. In Kislev's case they're pulled by bears that will fight back in close quarters. This means you can still send a sneaky trash unit around the map to hit their arty, but it's gonna get chewed upt and take awhile before it destroys the guns.

3) That lore of ice magic does seem to do something if you stack the same cast for the mobility debuffs. Maybe there's just a calculation error or a decimal in the wrong place somewhere in the code. Playing as the Great Orthodoxy, even after confederating Kislev, having the right research and buildings, I still cannot build frost maidens or ice witches.

4) I have to get out of ME mode, or maybe just wait for that mode to get added. The campaign spawns portals all over the map requiring you to keep armies nearby to squash them or they'll ramp up corruption and spit out chaos armies. Making building tall much better than conquering half the map. Change of pace from WH2 ME, but it's something I have to adjust to. It's a pain for a few more reasons since only your faction leader can enter the portals to complete the main campaign objectives and while they're off doing that, they're not on the campaign map. And there's a time limit to make it to a portal and complete the objectives, so if you're several turns from one of those, or have a plague that restricts movement or

5) The Nurgle faction is weird. You only build the tier one building and after a few turns it'll upgrade automatically to the next tier and so on up to the max, then it goes back down to tier 1. This can make building an army difficult as some units are not always available for recruitment.

6) The campaign map is actually rather large.

7) Provinces have been reworked. Now there's several who's territories are capped at 4 building slots and tier 3. There's more major towns that are their own provinces, but many of them are capped at only 6 slots.

I had been looking forward to WH3, and I'm sure I'll still pick it up. But some things are causing me to hold off. I really dislike the 'idea' of the chaos rifts or whatever they are that spawn enemies in your interior. Maybe I'd like it in practice for some reasons, but in theory this sort of thing is a big pain in the ass.

Thanks for the report wormfood, keep 'em coming please.

Patch just came out today. Looks like it's mostly multiplayer stability fixes, some crash fixes, and fixes related to gen 12 Intel CPUs.

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/tw-warhammer3-patch101/

I can forgive release issues, bugs, unintended or unforseen problems and the like. But what about the campaign? Total War games are campaign-driven. It's what it is all about, right?

I have yet to play (or buy), so my views are being formed by what I am reading. Here's the sort of stuff that is tempering my enthusiasm. I can't speak to the accuracy of these words, or whether this sort of thing applies to all campaign and factions, and anyway ME will be 'traditional' I suppose.

From Steam comments/reviews



I knew when I learned of the Chaos rift mechanic that I would dislike it. But maybe I don't understand it. We dealt with something similar in Vortex, but there you knew when it would occur, since you triggered it yourself by performing a ritual. It was still a pain in the ass, to suddenly have enemy armies magically appear at any point on the compass to penetrate your rear, and no one wants that

I try to avoid gaming the game when I can, but in those instances I would often 'tactically reload' after triggering a ritual, so I could see where the enemy spawns and then I could redeploy my field armies to intercept them and trigger it again, in much better position.

Chaos rifts are not predictable? Is there a warning of some type several turns in advance? It doesn't exist in a vacuum, and maybe not so bad. I mean if I'm rolling in florinducats maybe I can have a few 'home armies' as well as expeditionary forces? From what that guy said, that may not be possible due to limited funds, but this is the sort of thing I cannot say with no time yet in the game.

Word on the street from that last patch is that it broke the save files for most people.
Mine still work, but most of my friends who play it are unable to continue their campaigns.

If you haven't picked it up yet, it's probably best to hold off for another few patches or so.

To try to answer some of Dbond's questions,
There is be a warning a couple turns in advance, but I don't think there's a countdown to when it'll happen exactly.
Everytime it occurs at the same locations, but they're in almost every province (at least in the Kislev starting area).
When they pop up they immediately start tanking corruption and control (this game's version of happiness).
They'll spawn armies, but it takes about 3-4 turns before they start popping out. Although, each one will have an army at it to defend it. You can't just waltz up to it and close it without some kind of fight.
It would be so much easier to manage if the supply lines restrictions weren't so tough.

Biggest issues I have with it are:
1) it's a big pain in the ass and makes things tedious.
2) I wasn't aware they would happen on that extent on that first playthrough and expanded too much, too far and it wrecked my first campaign.
3) on another attempt I confederated a few areas and that also made me get too over extended and the loss of control and the corruption forced more armies to spawn and rebellions.
4) your faction leader can't help you defend if you want to win the campaign, since they have to enter a rift and they'll take most of the time those rifts are around to try and complete the tasks there.

It probably doesn't help that I only played WH2 exclusively in ME campaigns.

Yes, that is my current course. Wait and see.

I was one who really liked the Vortex campaign. I appreciated CA's attempt to address the issue of steamrolling, map-painting late game gameplay. It wasn't perfect was it? But it was a nice alternative, a campaign that instead of creeping border tide actually encouraged a more surgical type of war, giving specific targets (ritual sites). A mode where I could play taller and still do well, and a campaign where there was a clear attempt to ramp up the challenge as my empire grew in power and prestige. I could niggle over this or that, but it was clear what they were trying to do and I reckon mostly succeeded.

WH3? Not sure what they are attempting to achieve with the narrative campaign. But like I said I've not played it.

Haha, that was my conclusion too. Thanks for taking the time wormfood.



Are you saying you never played Vortex?

Never played it, ME all the way in WH2. WH1 just had ME style campaign, so I just stuck to that. I don't think I even picked up WH2 until is was out for a month or two after it came and the ME was patched in.

And that window has closed with the arrival of WH3? I can only recommend the Vortex campaign if you are ever inclined to return to WH2. A lot depends on which race you play (only four are involved in the Vortex race). Other races like Tomb Kings or Vampire Coast have alternative objectives in Vortex.

Man, you gotta give it a go at least once!

Time in the oven has not improved the WH3 soufflé. Of course I'm judging this by Steam comments and reviews. As we all know, this is a treacherous path to tread. But when you've been at this thing for so long, you become savvy in the arts of divination and deciphering. You learn how to cut the wheat from the chaff and (insert cliche here)

The more I read, the more I follow it, the more I see that WH3 missed the mark with the campaign. CA so clever they outfoxed themselves and built an entirely new campaign structure that fails to deliver. Somewhere above in this thread I am sure I posted something like "All CA need do is more of the same, don't try to change too much". But they have done.

I won't list the reasons (unless asked of course), as it's all in the Steam reviews for anyone to see. Warhammer is all about the campaign, it drives everything, compels my play time. But not now. Shame that, and I think I'll now be waiting for Mortal Empires and see if that moves the needle.

Still can't believe wormfood never tried Vortex even once. Do you think you ever will? Knowing that you've never played, and are obviously a seasoned WH vet, I'm especially curious to know your reaction to it.

I might give the vortex a whirl since I'm not a fan of this campaign in WH3. I might try to just finish of one or two of these factions I'm messing with in WH3, then shelve it until ME (or whatever they'll call it) comes out. Plus, I miss my skaven weapons teams and giant dinosaurs.

I missed it in the patch notes, but there's now an option in multiplayer campaigns to have turns work like they did in WH1&2 instead of simultaneous turns.

One of the factions in WH3 are the demons of Chaos, it's really just Chaos Undivided. When they conquer a city they can choose a chaos god to dedicate it to and are then able to build units from that faction. On the face of it, it lets you mix and match bits from the 4 chaos factions. Neat idea, but the tier 5 units, you have to make a choice and pick just one.
That stinks because my plan was to build an army of nurgle soul grinders and khorne bloodthirsters. Found out too late you can only pick one. That's probably for the best because it would just break the game balance if you could build tier 5 units from all the factions.

The real kick in the teeth though, is it bugs out all the time and prevents you from building any of the tier 5 units. I was going to try a couple more factions, but I'm definitely shelving this until this game's version of ME comes out. Until then it's back to WH2. The campaign is just a tedious chore and bugs like this just kill it for me.

It's a massive disappointment that this turned out to be the way it is. I haven't played it, so have to temper my comments. But you are just echoing what others are saying and it's clear that CA got it wrong this time.

Immortal Empires is now out, combine all 3 maps so the Skaven can rise again YES YES!

Good news. I think I had seen you mention this in a community hall thread and thought you had the name wrong -- it's mortal empires after all -- but now see you've got it right.

Thanks for the heads-up. I read there are 86 playable factions which is insane. I always gave WH2 very high marks indeed for it's replayability, due to what I've called throughout this thread 'factionality', for how unique each of them are. But now we've three maps stitched together and a third game's worth of factions added to the pile. It's epic.

But is it good? Have you started a campaign yet wormfood?

With this out now I reckon I'll be giving it a go sometime in the near future. The state of the launch campaign made me hold off, waiting for im-mortal empires. So now that it's here I'll pick it up soon I think.

I haven't yet really started it. It came out earlier in the week and I was away for work and for some reason it took all day to update yesterday. I briefly fired up a campaign just to see the map, take the mortal empires map of Warhammer 2 and add in everything Warhammer 3 added to it on the north and east. When you end that turn, there's almost 300 factions counting all the really small ones that the computer has to chew through. Didn't take as long as I expected though.

Edit: The siege maps are now after Warhammer 3, the defender gets to build more towers and blockades periodically and those minor settlements are not out in the open anymore, but in a little town. Makes it harder to just dominate with nothing but weapons teams and siege equipment.

I read that sieges are still not good, and that the AI cannot deal with pathfinding in the cities/forts. Nothing new really, but you'd hope after 20 years of this they'd work it out.

Attila is still my favorite game in this series for these sorts of battles, the settlement battles.

Well, if you get any farther in to a run let us know your impressions.

There's a few changes to the main campaign map compared to WH2's mortal empires, there's a few added towns and many of the four town provinces have been broken up into two or three town provinces.
When using artillery the enemy unit that was targeted now moves immediately when the guns/catapults fire making them much less effective in battles. This makes typical arty heavy armies like the empire, skryre, and dwarfs a bit harder. Particularly for skryre, mainstays like the plague claw catapults and poisoned wind mortars now don't hit squat.

I'm sold now on Warhammer 3, with Immortal Empires and plenty of patching seeming to get the game in to a good spot. Now whether to wait for a sale or take the plunge. I'm finishing a Rome 2 run and when that's over I might have to pull this trigger.

One thing about it though is the more recent the TW title the longer the load times. TW3K for example has some really long load times for battles. The older games are faster of course, but when you're fighting 100 manual battles these wait times add up. I'm concerned WH3 will prove the worst of the bunch, as the newest one in the pile.

Warhammer 3 is marked down 20% on Steam for the fall sale. I'll be picking it up, and I think I'll wait on the DLC as I should have plenty of lords to choose from for a while. Undecided on whether to start with the bad campaign or the good one

I may take a look at it myself. Good call on holding for DLC, but you gotta get "Blood for the Blood God," right?

Is that an effects patch essentially? Adds gore?

You never know and I'll probably end up with it at some point. Is there more to it? I'm new

Downloading now. Big download at over 100 gigs with no DLC. Had to free up some space on the hard drive.

Reading about start positions while waiting for it to download, and hopefully decide on the first lord. I think I'll go for Immortal Empires, henceforth referred to as IE, first. I will play the stock campaign, but enemies spawning out of rifts just cuts across my grain. So I'll go IE first, but who to play? Looking at the start positions, many familiar factions are where they've always been, so I hope I can identify a faction that appeals in a new spot on the map to mix things up. Maybe Queek's moved.

I know very little about mechanical changes for WH3 so this should be fun. Have Warhammer 1 factions been brought up to date? That would be great.

Immortal Empires is a free campaign but requires owning all three games on Steam (or other, same platform I suppose), for those who didn't know. It stitches together the maps from all three games and crams all those factions on to it. I call it battle royale, Total War style. After they added the Chaos Invasion toggle it was even better. Does IE have an end-game gimmick?

First impressions are excellent.

When I was running the rule over the various lords, one of the first I looked at was Cathay, who are like Three Kingdoms crashed in to Warhammer, and I stopped looking. A Chinese themed race, with some interesting unique mechanics. There are two lords to choose from, and I picked Miao Ying, the Storm Dragon instead of her brother Zhao Ming, the Iron Dragon. Miao Ying gets bonuses to ranged units and starts in the northeast corner of the IE expanded map. Her position along the Bastion means she is the sentinel guarding against the Chaos armies to the north. The Chaos armies attempt to breach one of the three gates in the wall to invade the realm. Miao Ying fights to prevent this.

Cathay has a number of unique mechanics that I like. The most central is Harmony. The goal is to maintain an equilibrium between the Yin and the Yang. Buildings, units, tech and more are aligned with one or the other, so what you choose is guided in part by the need to center the Harmony meter. Keep it centered and you get the best bonuses. So that's a neat mechanic to balance as the game goes along. There are a few more cool things that I'll get to eventually.

Load times were agonizingly long at first, and I had talked earlier in the thread, or another TW thread, about how I worried that as the latest TW game, it would have the longest load times, and it's true. But I set native res, as the game defaulted to 1080 and I'm on 1440. I also dropped texture quality from Ultra to High, and other small stuff like shadows to medium. The upshot is the load times got faster, but they are still fairly long, even the post-battle one. With such a huge campaign and so many battles to fight, these really add up over the course of the campaign. There are a few UI touches that I really like, such as resources shown in the building browser so you don't have to check somewhere else if the this settlement has one. Faction strength ranking is prominently displayed, diplomacy has the TW3K-type quick deal and during the AI turn (which goes very fast despite the massive number of factions) the factions are displayed witha number like 121/276 as each one's turn is calculated. 276! That's how many factions are in at the start. Madness. By turn 20 that number had dropped by 70, you can see as you watch the number of remaining factions drop as the smallest ones are gobbled up. WH3 also has the resolve turn button that takes you to each unit without current orders or towns where buildings can be built. I laughed as at the end of turn one the resolve button took me to my agent, which having just played so much of Three Kingdoms, I had forgotten about!

Cathay appealed to me because it is a new WH3 faction and starts in the newest part of the map. I also liked the roster, as it seemed to fit perfectly my style. I like ranged units, archers and at least one artillery piece to make the AI come to you. I like high melee defense over attack. I want my infantry to hold the line. These aren't the killers, just the shield. High morale, good armor, melee defense and the ability to stand and take it. And I need cavalry to disrupt archers and artillery and chase down routers. I don't use hammer and anvil charge tactics in Total War as much as I used to in the days of Rome 1 and Med 2. Cathay has all of these, plus flying artillery. A really nice, balanced roster with good options in all my key types. There's also a titan type unit I have yet to unlock, and my experience with Tomb Kings and Pirate Coast in WH2 shows these things wreck.

So yeah, I'm liking what I see so far. The campaign's off to a good start. I like the faction and mechanics, and the IE campaign looks really good so far. It's early, less than 30 turns done. But I think there's a massive amount of replayability here with so many factions in a new campaign that might just improve on what was so good about Warhammer 2.

I'm rather getting my ass kicked in this run. Maybe choosing to be the that sentinel against the Chaos tide was a bit ambitious

I carved out a small, round realm over the first 50 turns. Being so round it has the shortest possible front, theoretically making it easiest to defend.

But no.

The Great Bastion has a threat meter that I seem to have little ability to reduce. And when that meter hits "watch out below" many full Beastmen and Norsca stacks are whipped up out of thin air and here they come! I have multiple stacks invading through the breached gates to the north, as the Cathay faction who held them wilted and withdrew. Windy bastages!

More Chaos and Beastmen randomly appear out of the fog from the west to raze my towns (all that money invested!) and the Dark Elves of Fellheart (the number 1 faction in this run) send stacks from the east. I can't handle it quite frankly. Striking peace deals is right out as they are all so far from agreeing. I have four field armies which I can barely afford, to protect about 6 full provinces and it feels like no matter which way I send them, the next turn it proves to have been the wrong choice as the enemy exploits the gap I just left open.

I feel like I can deal with just about anything in these TW games, but full stacks out of nothing just kills me.

I agree - having full armies appear out of nothing in the middle of your secured territory is really annoying.
I took a flyer on it, and wound up starting the Prologue campaign as Kislev. A lot of voiceover and scripted stuff. Not a bad storyline, but they really dribble UI elements out slowly. I'm about 30 turns in, and it feels like a pretty good game so far. It feels a lot like TW2, not really sure what differences I'd notice though.

Yeah I'm going to give that campaign a go. Realms of Chaos. Apparently the idea is to build your doomstack army and not expand too much. That army then does all the lifting through the campaign as you venture in to the realms.

I had read that the bigger you grow the more bonuses the AI factions get. True?

Anyway, it's linear, and focused and I'll give it a go at some point. Just not sure how I'll take to the mechanics and objective in this one. My Cathay game is hanging in the balance, so I might switch it up.

The Prologue Campaign is a tutorial campaign I'm finding out. It's not quite the Realms of Chaos. You have no choice in what faction to play - you play Kislev. There's a storyline for it that isn't too bad. I figure I'll finish it off and then pick something else for the main Campaign, then give IE a whirl.

I have no idea if the AI gets bonuses based on your growth, as you progress, the enemies get a little bigger and badder, but that is probably to be expected in this type of campaign. It's very scripted, I don't think there's much replayability in it. The Realms of Chaos is probably much more open in that regard.

Yes, but doesn't that tutorial just lead in to the campaign proper? I think that's how it worked in WH2, the prologue took you through the early moves and then it just bled in to the main campaign. But maybe you don't want to play Kizlev.

Kizzzleeeevvvv

I righted the ship in my teetering campaign by loading a save three turns earlier and, wise to what was about to happen, dealt with it. Cathay once again controls all the gates and my borders are properly secured, if not literally so.

Immortal Empires is a massive campaign as we know, and it's in a really good spot. The action among the AI factions is insane, very aggressive, and actually effective. The campaign AI seems finely tuned to serve up a good campaign. Top dog changes every turn it seems as the fortunes of war favor, and then frown upon the various factions around the map. At turn 70 the pile has been reduced to the last 100 factions or so. There are also short campaign objectives, and I reckon, on Cathay's evidence anyway, they are the easiest yet. In this run I only have to hold six key regions, all of which I have already in my first 25 settlements, and to capture, sack or raze 30 towns which I've nearly done. I like campaigns that can be done and dusted in about 100 turns. There's a long option too which extends that 30 out to 70. Each faction will have its own objectives, but I expect they'll all be more or less in line.

Many features and mechanics return from Warhammer 2 and I forgot some of them after playing so much of Rome 2 and Three Kingdoms. One of these is the trait system, which I both like and wish were somewhat different. But the way it is means your lords gain massive amounts of traits and bonuses. Unlike many TW titles, traits are gained by what the lord does. For example if you put him or her in to ambush stance often, ambush chance bonuses are gained. Or if you win battles against Dark Elves, the lord get bonuses when fighting them. I like this a lot, and your lords become exceptionally powerful when they are used often. Defeating a Legendary lord grants another strong bonus unique to that character. My lords have so many 'effects' that you have to scroll quite a bit to read through them.

One of Cathay's mechanics as mentioned is Harmony, and it extends to the battlefield. Formation fighters is what they are, as Harmony is achieved when placed near other units, granting several bonuses including leadership and melee defense. That's how I play anyway so it dovetails nicely. I like the Cathay roster, it has a little of everything aside from monstrous units. Good infantry, crossbows and artillery.

One major change to WH3 that I was unaware of is an overhaul of the settlement battle mechanics, with supplies and control points redone, and where you can build defenses during the battle. Not sure yet how much better it is, but at least CA is looking at what has always been one of the series' missed marks. I'd say this is a step in the right direction? Maybe?

The Harmony mechanic I've talked about has proven to be not as cool as I thought, due to the fact that holding it in balance is fiddly indeed. Just one point either side of it breaks Harmony. Letting it go too far to one side is painful, so you have to be mindful of it. But it's too fine to focus on it and hold it steady on zero. Still, I like unique faction mechanics and this one fits the bill.

One more thing, Cathay has a unique mechanic called Caravans. These are armies that you delegate to travel to other factions to the west to conduct trade. You choose the destination and path, but the travel is automatic, broken up by events which you react to including bonuses, recruited units, sacrifices of your units to the hungry ambushing ogres, or fighting battles in real time. All routes go west and end around the Empire, Dwarfs, Vampire Counts region (WH1 Old World), and depending on relations with the various factions along the way, the caravan may be in peril. If it reaches the destination you get paid. It's a neat mechanic to keep the coffers filled and fight more battles along the way.

I'll let you know if the tutorial campaign leads to the regular one. I'm about 50 turns in so far, and units are still very limited. I'd like to finish the campaign but Kislev as a whole seems a bit underwhelming. I don't think all the goodies are rolled out for this mini campaign though. I've seen mention of a unique Kislev mechanic called "Devotion" which has not been mentioned thus far. It really does slow roll various mechanics though. I was about 45 turns in before I was able to pick a stance for my Lords army.

Update - just finished off the prologue campaign. It fleshes out some of the story you hear if you watch the cinematic opening to the Realm of Chaos campaign, but doesn't lead directly to playing that campaign. You still wind up in the main screen with all your options.
I think I'll take a crack at the Tzeentch and see what they are all about.

Thanks for the info. Either they changed it or a I forgot how it worked, which seems likely haha. Did you enjoy the run through? 50+ turns is a hell of a prologue.

My Cathay run is done and dusted on 97 turns. I should say Northern Provinces, as that's the faction. That was a super campaign. The combat is fantastic in this game.I played on normal/normal and honestly it felt like Very Hard/Very Hard from earlier games. Maybe it's the strength of the enemy armies and not anything to do with bonuses. But I fought some brutal, long-brawl battles in this run, and lost a fair few too. My enemies were mainly Chaos armies, and these are no joke. Stack building's in a really good place for the AI, I felt like I was seeing their best units, and with such a clear focus on Chaos in Warhammer 3 they are strong with some fabulous abilities. Did they just teleport? Forget the Underway, these dudes can just flash around the map. Many units have a blue health bar in addition to red, and what is this, magical armor? They also go heavy on monstrous units that are strong in battle. Some have regen and have amazing staying power. Luckily, Cathay has some good infantry that have 'charge defense against all' and that's one of the best abilities in the game. You need it

The achievements for winning a campaign in Immortal Empires either don't work, or CA decided that short campaigns are not worthy. Others work fine. I missed out on two Cathay achievements, both for 'occupying' a certain place, and surely it's because I got those locations through confederation. So something to be aware of if achievement hunting.

The Northern Provinces campaign is challenging since you have a constant war with the forces of Chaos, who don't fook around. Defending the Great Bastion to the north, while defending all points all while pushing out your borders will test your mettle. In my run I expanded mostly south and east, taking out Deathmaster Snikch and Clan Eshin along the way. The Blessed Dread were my main enemy though the mid to late game. When we went to war they were number 1 on the charts. When the run ended they were 97th out of 100. But Dark Elves are strong, great infantry, AP archers and the Murderous Prowess ability. But this sort of thing could be said about virtually every faction on the map. They all have their strengths, don't they?

Cathay have some very good foot units, the mid-tier Jade Warriors and Jade Crossbows carried me through the game. There is a also a 'sniper' unit called Crane Gunners which are like Skaven's Jezzails. Great focus-fire performers. Awesome against flying units like dragons. Awesome against anything. The top infantry, Celestial Dragon Guard, are a match for any in the game, but take two turns to recruit so I didn't make many since it's rare I could sit still that long. Artillery is also a strength, with a number of options including hot-air balloon-like flying artillery. Miao Ying starts with a Sky-Junk which did great work throughout the run. Sort of like a flying Helstorm. Iron hail Gunners hit super hard and are AP, but a really small firing arc means they are perfect for turning around the corner after the line is joined and ripping up the engaged units with flanking fire. They feel like a better version of Vampire Coast's Deck Gunners. The ranged options are really strong for Cathay.

Cavalry and monstrous units are the weaknesses. Just three cav options, and I rolled though nearly the whole campaign with just the light peasant horsemen. Used for archer and arty disruption and chasing down routers as these units won't do well in melee against a good unit. Top-tier Great Longma Riders are good. Very fast flying unit but I only had two by the end. No monstrous units in the roster, but you might get them through a new mechanic called Outposts, which you and your allies can build in your allies' towns, offering some recruitment options from your ally's roster pool. Terracotta Sentinels are the titan unit, and I had just two of these at the end and not many chances to use them. But this is the sort of unit that could win battles on it's own. Armor-piercing, causes fear, standard stuff for this type of unit (like Tomb Kings and Vampire Coast have).

So overall a really nice roster with good options in the key types, especially if you like ranged in TW like I do. They play a lot like Dwarfs. The IE start location means you'll be pitted against game-long top-tier enemies as you defend the wall. I was so impressed with the Chaos enemies' abilites to give me a difficult time that I'll need to play them myself haha. This is how I came to love Skaven.

It was good to get back in the TW groove, I haven't played it in a while and am not very experienced in the series as a whole either. But they dribbled things out a bit too slowly, and I didn't have access to the campaign map either, and that was frustrating. Faction specific mechanics were left out, which makes sense for a tutorial I guess. It may be confusing to a new player to learn X mechanic as Kislev, fire up a Realms of Chaos campaign as another faction, and not see that mechanic at all.

Good stuff on Cathay. I'm going to go for a Tzeentch campaign and see what's what with them.

I decided to play The Lost God prologue and I'm really enjoying it. About 15 turns in. I dig the ice queen vibe, even if Yuri's a prince. I think it's nicely done. Best tutorial I've seen in the series yet. And I can see now why you went past 50 turns. It's the yin to the sandbox's yang, but I'm OK with that, especially when it's so nicely crafted as this is.

Do you have all three games and Immortal Empires JC?

He was one of my main tormentors in that Cathay game. Strong in the AI's hands, and in the player's I suspect he can be insane.

The ice queen was cool, I embedded her in my army to good effect. She is also pretty good on her own. The tutorial is very well scripted, I agree. Make sure you let the dialog play out - sometimes there are events that fire after dialog and if you move too quickly they won't fire. I wound up having to go back to an old save because of this. Only lost a turn or so, no big inconvenience, but it had me going for a few minutes.



Yes, I do. I plan on giving IE a whirl at some point too.

Good advice, thanks.

I'm 40 turns in to the prologue, and you know, if I were just starting out in Total War this is what I'd love to see. That ship sailed nearly 20 years ago. Still, it's quite well done and each feature is introduced at a smooth pace to ease newcomers in to the game.

I also poked around the RoC campaigns, playing a turn as several different factions to get a feel for them. Mostly they were Chaos, and I just can't connect. Too foul, too evil. though I liked pirate zombies and rats just fine. But these Chaos factions don't seem to be for me, which I could have figured out before buying the DLC! Warhammer 3 is like Borderlands 3. Loved the gameplay, didn't care for the mains.

Having played Cathay already, I was left with one real choice. So I started a RoC campaign as the Ice Court, and the early going is fun. There have been some tweaks to this campaign since the release and maybe it's in a good place now.

I'm finding Tzeench interesting. They don't have great melee, but they have very good ranged units. The melee apparently catches up at the end though and become pretty serviceable according to what I've read.
They have an interesting mechanic, Changing of the Ways, which uses a unique currency - the Grimoire. Grimoires can be accumulated by various means - buildings, quests, etc. It's basically a collection of spells (Tzeentch is magic heavy)
which gives you some interesting options, not the least of which is flipping a settlement to you. There is a 10 turn cooldown, and it is a little expensive, but I've used it twice so far and it has been quite a nice way to gather some territories.
You can also establish outposts with allies, though I'm not sure of the exact mechanics behind that.

They have some pretty cool looking units too - I think they have a vaguely Skaven-esque feel to them in that regard. They are slow going in the early rounds, I can only recruit 2 units per turn rather than three, so growing the army is a slow process,
And like I said - they are a bit squishy. But the key I think is go slow and build both armies and settlements to the point you can start throwing your weight around with a bit more success. Probably best to avoid Cathay for now and focus on some of the
southern neighbors.

Those ranged units gave me some trouble in the Cathay run. The ones that fire pink-hued missiles were nasty. They must have short range (90?) as they had to move well inside my arcs to get their shots off. In that Miao Ying run my crossbows had 200 range, which is excellent, due to the buffs and skills I took. Just about any AI archer units would need to move inside those arcs!

One of the things I didn't like about the Chaos factions I ran through yesterday was the sounds they make when you click the unit on the battlefield. Total War has always had this, Equites! the men would shout in Rome 1. But those Chaos things squeak and chitter and I just couldn't deal lol.

Your run is RoC? I hope you keep reporting because I'd like to know how it's going for comparison.

Outposts are pretty cool. I like their potential, especially if your faction has glaring holes in the roster. I didn't use it much as Cathay, as my allies were same race and therefore have the same units. But the possibilities are good, and gives a real reason to look to ally a faction rather than end their existence. I hope to use it in this Kizlev run to obtain some of the Empire's artillery.

I was reading some stuff about my faction today and everyone seems to say that Kizlev is possibly the most difficult faction to play in this campaign. Might have been a poor choice, or maybe I can do well anyway. The fact is though that I struggled to connect with the others, aside from Cathay, thematically at least. I might enjoy their mechanics. But I'd like to finish RoC at least once so I've thrown in with this lot and let's see how it goes.

I'm about 30 turns in to the Ice Court RoC run, and so far so good. I like it so far, but the rotten part may lie ahead. Or maybe the stuff everyone complained about has been made better?

The first rift wave has opened, and this one's not bad at all. Actually, it feels like rebel farming. When the rifts opened I expected full Chaos stacks, but they are half stacks. If it's like Vortex, these are only the scouts, and the heavy hitters will be along in successive waves. I have yet to enter the realms of chaos as I only have two armies, and I want to leave two on the mortal sphere before taking the dive in to the portal, where the legendary lord is gone for multiple turns. I don't want to come back and find my empire has been ransacked.

Playing this one on normal/normal and it's all gone well so far. Katarin has a mechanic called the Ice Court, which is used to train new Frost Maidens and Ice Witches. It's kind of cool, because even though it takes six turns to train them, you get to select three traits along the way. Each trait choice is a binary one, so there's not a ton of leeway here. But it allows you to sort of customize these characters before they show up in the recruitment pool. This faction has another mechanic where we are in a race with another Kizlev faction for 'supporters'. The first one to hit 600 wins the race, gets some good faction bonuses and confederates the other. I found out too late that battles with other Kizlev factions give a -2 supporters and so I have fallen way behind in this race. But I think I'll nick it at the end

One thing I do like about RoC is the fact that you can play tall. Two or three provinces is all you need, to get income and recruitment sorted. Not sure if in the end I will like or dislike this campaign, the rifts are the worst part about it -- evidently -- and I have yet to see them. But that's next. My first Ice Witch has graduated from the academy. What I want to do is transfer Katarin's army, or most of it, to the new lord so that I can refill Katarin's army with her favored Ice Guard units and other late-game stuff. But I need a level 5 city and that takes time. Tall play is given a big boost by having two ten-slot cities, which are very rare in Warhammer and Total War for that matter, only the most sacred and famous ones have been ten, like Skavenblight or Karak Eight Peaks. It must be done here to these Kizlev cites for just this reason, supporting tall play. There is one more I am to take, some distance to the west along the seas. Erengrad or somesuch. But I hope to get this when confederating after winning the motherland supporter race. Even without it, this campaign is easily viable for tall play, and probably designed to be. It feels to me like you want to expand enough to be able to support at least three stacks, with one being your LL realm diver.

Since it's my first go at this one, I'm sort of in that half-space where I don't know the best way to go about things. For example should I enter the first wave? Other factions have already jumped in and one has succeeded. I am falling behind. But my army's a mid-tier one at this point, I have yet to build up to recruit my best units, and don't have artillery yet. Since this rift wave opened inside or about 30 turns I suspect it's expected you'll go in with a army like mine so I'll just do it. But then you wonder, which realm should I do first and plenty of other questions. Only one way to find out!

Building an outpost lets you build units from that faction that can be recruited at the city the outpost is built in. If you fully upgrade it, you can build anything that faction can. As Dbond pointed out it can let you fill in gaps in your roster. It is expensive and IIRC you can only do it while in the encampment stance.

As for jumping into the realms, you can usually skip the first one, sometimes two and not fall too far behind. If you do skip two, you better blitz the next couple until you're in the lead. The Slaneesh realm is a miserable long slog, mostly because it's long and you have tons of gates to go through, it just takes awhile. Khorn is short, but your army will usually fight a few battles in a short period of time....and those fights are against Khorne armies which can be tough. The Nurgle one is generally easy and short with the caveat that the army will take a ton of attrition, so you'll need something to mitigate that or some high casualty replenishment to allow a turn once and a while to recover. Depending on how often you gotta stop to recover, it can extend your time here. Tzeench is annoying due to the teleports.

Once you complete all the realms the final phase will start and you'll have a hard capped time limit to complete the rest of the game and that final battle can be tough.

Kostaltyn (one of the Kislev lords) has such a rough start due to his first couple provinces being a couple 4 slot towns. Even the capital is a little town. Makes it hard to build tall when you're limited to lvl 3 buildings and only a couple at that.

Thanks for that insight Wormfood. Which realm would you recommend first? I dropped two points so far in to Katarin's blue-line attrition skill, in advance of the nurgle expedition. Not much more to fight it at the mo. I can drop another point there. Can you do more than one dive per rift wave?

I turns out I did indeed miss the first portal. With about 8 turns to go before the rifts would time out, I did one of the quest battles to get Katarin her unique armor, to complete the set with her weapon, and give some bonuses before jumping in to the first gate. But it was such a brutal battle against Tzeench that my army was shredded and needed five turns to replenish. That would leave three to jump in the gate, but I guess the AI closed the few remaining gates and it was over with 5 turns to spare. So I missed it, and it's good to know it's not fatal to the campaign.

I was wrong about needing level 5 city to get Ice Guard and artillery. So I can start building these now and get ready for the next round of rifts. But it'll put a strain on to create that third stack and then refill Katarin's army. The rifts pop up everywhere, though there's a building line to reduce or eliminate these in that province. And the first wave was pretty beneficial to my faction. I only have two mortal world enemies, who are being blunted by Kostaltyn to the west. So these rifts spewing Chaos armies gave me targets, which I need to feed the Devotion and supporter race mechanics. Plus it trains up your lords and armies. And these Chaos armies only seem to look to raze, and I got two more settlements out of it, when a neighbor had them razed and I then colonized it before they could react. I gotta say this has been done to me a few times now in my few campaigns, so I'm just giving as good as I'm getting haha.

If these rift waves just grow stronger and stronger then it could get messy in a hurry. But that first one was good for the Ice Court.

I like Kizlev alot. Their roster is heavy on hybrids, and their ranged side is strong, as good as most mid-level archer units, plus they have good armor. Their ability to shred the approaching line and then stand up in melee is really good. I dig the whole vibe with Katarin's faction.

I think the Nurgle realm is probably the easiest. Usually by the time you jump in there you should have something to mitigate the attrition. The Teenzch and Slaneesh ones aren't terrible they're just a pain to get around. Khorne varies on your army. It's a bunch of fights in a small space, but since it's against Khorne armies you need to have an army ready to pummel them from afar so you don't take too many losses. If you have that, it's usually a cinch. So, to answer the question, if you have strong ranged and artillery Khorne, if you lack that or aren't sure do Nurgle as the first realms.

I haven't played in awhile, but back then there was not way to mitigate the chaos gate spawns, they popped up in every region every time. It was a pain. And since you had to whisk away an army to a realm and you're being attacked on all sides and from within made things a pain. The bigger you grew, the bigger your borders and the more internal gates you had spawn in. You were incentivized to build as tall as possible in as little space as possible and blitz the campaign before anyone else could build up. That and with the huge anti player bias it had at launch made it a hectic and not very fun campaign.

Yes, that tracks. Evidently they tweaked the player bias, but if so I can only cringe at the thought of what that must have been like, because even 'tweaked' the dog pile is real.

I praised the first rift wave as a gift to the Ice Court. The second has been less so. I had completely thrown out my 'stay tall' plan and expanded quite a bit, through conquest and confederation, including the Enclave which held Erengrad. All good. But during the second wave the rift spawns were everywhere, and the difficulty doubled with mortal-world armies running amok. Especially Festus the Leechlord. That dude sucks. With my entire realm under assault and therefore having little chance to reinforce beleaguered armies, the army I got from the Enclave confederation was trapped in Erengrad when two of Festus' stacks rolled out of the western fog. First, he spread plague through the province, then the two stacks sieged, won and razed this beautiful city on the sea. Well, that army was running 3500 per turn and I could use the money haha. Lost several settlements, and some were re-won with counterattacks, but overall my realm shrunk in wave number two. I had expanded out to get a buffer just for this sort of reason, and those towns are considered expendable really. I can always colonize them after the wave if another faction doesn't get to them first, and honestly it's fine if they do, and it becomes their problem.

But thankfully I managed to pull off the army transfer with Katarin's army and get it restocked with Ice Guard and artillery and took my first dive, in to Nurgle's realm on Wormfood's recommendation.The realms aren't quite what I expected, not sure what I did expect really. I dropped in and moved to the goal and saw the Poxmaker had beaten me here. We weren't at war and I followed him, fighting the battles along the way. Got the immunity and then the Pox dude reached the end and I was kicked out with nothing to show for it. Dammit!

So I reloaded a couple turns earlier and this time attacked the Pox dude and now I sit outside the final battle, and if I win will have my first soul. I went in with 30% attrition reduction through the blue-line skill and that part is fine. The attrition is minor at this level, and encamp stance overcomes it at the cost of your movement speed thought the rift. I think I've taken too long, being cautious and all, and have picked up some nasty debuffs to speed and melee defense ahead of the last battle. We'll see how it goes, but my army is a strong one, way better than the one the Pox guy showed up with.

So far I like this campaign fine. It's different, frantic and has a good pace. I can deal with all of the action, but I wish it was factions other than Empire I was counting on. Their armies suck and they stand little chance when under sustained assault.

Nurgle's rift is done and dusted. The final battle was awesome. I really liked it. You have to fight your way forward through several waves of strong enemies which spawn all around to get to the showdown with the boss, who was no joke. Survival battle I believe is what these are called.

My army was two Tzar Guard, four Strelsi, two cav, two Grom artillery, one Frost Maiden and Katarin, and the rest was Ice Guard. The battle, being fought over such a large space, felt distinctly operational. I moved forward at each stage, identifying which paths I wanted to defend, kept rear guards and flank security in place, and performed a sort of bounding overwatch movement through the map. Very cool. Warhammer 2 has similar battles at times, but this one was even better.

When we hit the final stage, the demon boss appeared with a few strong units and this dude was tough. Just when it appeared we might get the better of him, an entire new army popped out and I said aloud 'are you fock!ng kidding me?" But then I started to really take advantage of the new supply and reinforcement mechanics and I was able to prevail with three reinforcement elemental bears. The ability to rearm my missile troops (which is all of them as a hybrid army) and heal health, winds of magic and stamina was a massive help, and I'm not certain I would have won without this. That was great and I hope the remaining rifts are just as much fun.

The combat is fantastic in Warhammer 3. It's everything that was great about WH2 but better. The AI is still pants, and god I wish CA would make them fight like a player does. At least the AI is better at using their cav units in flanking maneuvers to turn your flank and get at your missile and artillery troops. Aside from the AI's unimaginative maneuver, the battles are great. The combinations of so many wildly different unit types, spells and single-entity characters is a lot of fun, and it all gets flipped around with a different race in the next battle, with new challenges to overcome. In WH2 I often attempted to tailor my armies to the foe of the mo, but in RoC that's impossible, as each successive battle is against a different race.

Also, there are many small little tweaks and additions to WH3, quality of life changes that I really like. When I'm playing, I think I'll have to mention this and that in the forum. But when I go to type it up I seemed to have forgotten what they are. Among them are occlusion outlines on units to better pick them out of jumbled units and foliage. Allies are now color coded. The campaign map effects flash above a character when moving about the map, showing which effects he or she will impart in this province, like public order or income boosts. The diplomacy UI is much better, and quick deal is among the best changes CA has ever made to Total War. When you mouse over the kills for each unit in the battle debrief it shows a damage/gold ratio so you can see which units are performing best according to their cost. Clicking a unit in your army and then mousing over another will show the attribute deltas so you can quickly and easily compare their strengths and weaknesses (maybe WH 2, TW3K and others have this too?)

There are a hundred of these little tweaks, and Warhammer 3 is surely one of CA's best efforts, even if some will dislike the RoC campaign. With Immortal Empires out now too there can be few complaints I reckon. I waited a while to pick it up as the early returns were not all that glowing. But CA has patched it and tweaked it and surely there is more to come.

Took a dive in to Slaanesh's realm on rift wave number 3. The next turn N'Kari entered the realm and I suspected a race was on to reach the center. Slaanesh is all about seduction and debauchery, and the realm tries to tempt you with extravagant gifts. As you travel down through each portal you are given two choices, continue deeper, or accept these gifts and be ejected from the realm. And these are temptations that are hard to refuse. One of them was 75000 gold, +5 ranks for all lords and 200% growth! I stoically rejected all advances and continued on.

A turn or two after entering I had a look to see if I was still ahead of N'Kari and she was gone! She must have fallen to temptation, and the realm was mine alone to traverse. Down through each level to face the final battle, which was similar to the one in Nurgle's realm. Another big survival battle, and I was more ready for what was to come and got through without much trouble, Katarin's army now bolstered by Regiments of Renown, a halberd unit with AP and anti-large, and a monstrous bear riders unit also with AP and anti-large.. Final kill tally was 5100 to 200, but of course my casualties are mitigated by the ability to heal my troops. I used the same sort of bounding overwatch movement order, but this time with an even bigger army as I took full advantage of the reinforcements on offer, and at the end commanded a 40-unit stack. Once again, the elemental bears were key, as I put them on the enemy demon prince and they did the job.

That's two of the required four souls. Two other factions also have two, and Khorne got his third in wave three, so he's the one to beat. His last soul will be Slaanesh, and hopefully he falls afoul of the seduction and I can catch up. Two factions have one soul and Greasus Goldtooth has yet to get any. So I'm looking good if Khorne takes a rift wave off. I am sending a patriarch agent to his realm, in order to follow him around and close any rifts he might enter and sabotage his efforts. Insurance.

Took a dive in to Tzeentch's realm. Before doing so I read about it and frankly it sounded like a nightmare, with portals everywhere leading this way and that, mistakes sending you back whence you came, chewing up the turns and allowing others to bypass you and take the soul, leaving you with nothing. The threads on reddit and elsewhere made me think this would be the realm that flipped my assessment. Now, I see what everyone was talking about sort of thing.

But after maybe four turns I was at the last level, fully healed and ready to rumble. I was able to 'reveal sigil' after each a battle and then just jumped down the portal that lit up and that was that. It all seemed straightforward, and ....easy. I hope I just got lucky, and that the player base isn't a group of brain dead morons. And we all know Total War attracts the best and brightest, so I must have been lucky It was too late to take on the final battle, so I'll take that up later.

My plan to follow Skarbrand around and prevent him using a portal didn't work the way I envisioned. It didn't hit me at first, but as my agents level up they get mounts. First, a warhorse and then a war bear. But the bear kills campaign map movement range, which didn't register right away and Skarbrand was leaving me in his dust. I just followed at a distance. At least I know where he is, a lot of good that does me. Anyway, after wave three ended, Tzeentch got his third soul so that's two factions I trail to. I swapped all campaign map agents back to war horses and their range returned.

Something I want to mention is allies and war coordination. Usually in Total War games I avoid striking any alliances. I think the AI is coded to become inept when the player's ally, in CA's twisted attempt to keep the player from allying the strongest factions and stomping the world. And taking allies makes mad the factions you otherwise might have not angered. So it also leads to more enemies, and the ally AI isn't going to do much to help you. So I usually forge ahead through my campaigns with the little or no alliances. But this time I went all in and allied every faction who asked, mostly Empire and Dwarfs. We are all in this together against the spawn of Chaos.

I've had some success using war coordination in other titles, like WH2. It really can be useful, but it always felt rather arbitrary, which I'm sure was due in part to the AI not being able to fill your requests. But in this run it has worked great. I don't abuse it, or ask the AI armies to do too much, travel too far or take on stronger enemies. But if they're near a settlement we should take I give them orders and they dutifully carry them out. Through turn 100 or so the evil factions to the south and west were rolling the Empire up. It appeared we would soon stand alone against the Chaos.

But the combination of war coordination and outposts has really paid off, and the Ice Court and her allies have been staging a counteroffensive, pushing back the enemy and reclaiming lost lands. It's been great. It took a long time to see any real benefit to the outposts. But eventually I began seeing Kislev units in their armies. War bears, Ice Guard, Kossars and more. This helps to bolster their ranks, of both field armies and garrisons, and the Allied recruitment mechanic allows you to get some top units even when you're not near your best recruiting provinces. It's really quite useful. In my case I've used it to get some artillery in my armies when I could not spare them to return to my recruitment centers. You need to be careful, as units you recruit from outposts are considered 'lent' to you. These units could be taken away if the alliance crumbles or the outpost is lost. You don't want to be deep in enemy territory and suddenly lose four units. So it's best used for home defense armies where the lost units can be quickly replaced.

Overall, this has been easily the most satisfying campaign for me from an alliance perspective. We are all in it together against the Chaos hordes, and for once it actually feels like it.

Finally, this campaign is so extraordinarily busy that Katarin has hit level 35 by turn 120. It's been rare for me to have characters hitting this sort of number. But when I finally found Skarbrand, I saw he is level 48! Good god man. All of the legendary lords are super high level already. I like this campaign, Realm of Chaos, and it's good I waited to pick up Warhammer 3 I think.

Nice writeup as usual, DB!

I restarted my Tzeentch campaign after I got a little bit of a feel for the faction. Their early game units are a bit squishy and recruitment is slow, so I've been playing more tall than I usually like to. I have however secured the Eastern Steppes province, which borders Cathay to the East and Norsca to the North.
To the West I have another Tzeentch faction, whom I currently have a NAP with, and to the South are some abandoned settlements. I'll grab those and gain another province.

To the SouthEast are some relatively weak Ogre factions. I have no beef with them as of yet and have no wish to have to defend that border in addition to NE (Cathay). They are also "Improving" in relationship to me, so I'll let that happen.

Norsca I'm friendly with for now, so I'll leave them be as well.

So my plan for now is to claim the 3 abandoned settlements in the "Road of Skulls" which will give me the province. I have two of the four in "Road to Damnation," and I want to get that one as well. One of these is owned by the Norsca faction that is also to the North, and one is owned by an Ogre faction.
I'll get them by using the "Transfer Settlement" power in the "Changing of the Ways." That won't give me any diplomatic blowback (at least I'm pretty sure it wont."

I'm about 20 turns in on the rebooted campaign. I see how diplomacy might be a bit more important in this game, as you noted, so I've been considering those requests much more carefully.
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Cool JC. Your ranged units are pretty good, at least as seen from the receiving end. Pink Horrors give me fits. Those barriers are also quite a neat trick. That's an interesting faction and thanks for the post.



Yeah, I think that's the way to go. I'm about 120 turns in and hold just five full provinces, and three of those are the ten-slot single cities that have no other settlements. So that's just 11 total settlements. Three singles and two four-settlement provinces. Beyond that I've taken a raze it approach, ringing in my realm with barren lands, or helping an ally to take those provinces. I've got enough to support four field armies and that's fine. Are there ten-slot cities in your region JC?

Yes it seems range and heavy magic is the key with Tzeentch. I still haven't gotten my head around the barrier. I think it's passive and I don't have to do anything to activate it but I'm not sure.




No, nothing that big yet. All the provinces I've encountered have been your typical 8 slot capital w/4 slot smaller settlements. I've actually got about 8-9 settlements spread about 3 provinces, and I'm moving to grab 3 that are abandoned which will give me control of Road of Skulls province. I'm only rocking 2 armies thus far (only one of which is a full stack), need get the income up before I recruit any more. All in all I'm enjoying the game.

Being pretty new to to TW titles, the biggest thing that's been frustrating me is the actual combat. I had a hard time tracking what was going on, making tactical decisions, etc. But I think the fog is lifting a bit, and 've found frequent Pausing to be helpful. I just finished wiping out a Cathay army in a battle that made me feel like I was finally getting the hang of it.

I pause a lot in combat, and it's one of the reasons I cannot play on Legendary, where you don't have this option. Well, you can pause it, but cannot issue orders, so that's out. Of course this isn't the only reason I don't play legendary

Composition is key I think. How you use the units is too of course, but army composition is key. I'm mostly unfamiliar with the units at your disposal, the traits they have. But in general I want to ensure I have armor piercing. And as an order faction I need anti-large because so many of the Chaos type enemies use these units, trolls and such. For me melee defense is key too, so the units can stand and take it. Shields if I can get them for missile defense. Not sure who your enemies are aside from Cathay, so maybe as Tzeentch you don't need much anti-large?

Magic is also a core thing in WH3. Matter of fact this could be considered the first run I've ever done in Total War where I am all-in on magic. I've used it plenty, but never really invested in the skills to enhance it. But in this run I have, taking skills to increase winds of magic and restoration, all the spells and over power tiers. And I use it liberally. It's fun. Katarin has a Frost Maiden in her army, who is level 31 herself. Between the two I have a number of damage spells, frostbite to slow enemies down, summons, healing and more. Battles are just more spectacular with all of this going on and it can be amazingly effective, battle-changing at times.

My current realm diver army is Katarin of course. At the mo, it is

Katarin --Mage type character with lore of ice
Frost Maiden -- support caster with lore of tempest (the academy allows you to choose the lore school and this was to offset Katarin's ice)
Ice Guard (Glaives) x 4 -- Hybrid ranged with anti-large, good stats across the board. High leadership, medium melee defense and attack. Medium armor. Special firearm ranged attack. Range is 99 with current bonuses and buffs
Ice Guard (Swords) x 4 -- Hybrid ranged with anti-infantry. Same stats as above
Streltsi x3 -- Blunderbuss unit with armor piercing, good armor and good in melee. Transferring them to another army since my infantry already covers the ranged. Range 154 with current buffs and bonuses
Winged Lancers -- Melee cav. Good charge, armor and speed. Causes fear. Shielded
Gryphon Legion -- Melee cav. Slightly more powerful and slower than the Lancers. Causes fear. Anti-infantry, shielded.
Oath-Brothers of Tor (War Bear Riders) -- Regiment of Renown. Monstrous unit. Armored, AP and anti-large. Causes fear. Unbreakable.
Dazh's Hearth-Blades (Tzar Guard - Great Sword) -- Regiment of Renown. Armored, AP, anti-infantry, flaming attacks. Has attribute to restore vigor in 35m radius. Unbreakable. Fire resistance
The Frozen Heart of Winter -- Regiment of Renown. Monster unit. Elemental bear. Can attack walls and gates. Unbreakable. Causes fear, causes terror. Passive hex abilities to reduce enemy weapon and AP damage plus speed. Armored and AP.
Little Grom artillery x 2 -- AP, armored and collision attack. Superior range. Getting 565 range with buffs and bonuses. Not a great damage dealer, but a great lord sniper. Range is about 100 more than most artillery. High shot speed. Provides leadership bonus.

That's a good mix. Armor piercing, anti-infantry, anti-large, ranged, monstrous, monster, magic and artillery. Feels like all the bases are covered with this composition. I am phasing out the Streltsi as mentioned and will replace them with probably bear riders when and if I get the chance. Only three RoRs for the Ice Court.

I'm still very much feeling through my enemies, but I haven't seen any large units as of yet. Besides Cathay there have been a few hordes - Khorne for sure, and I think some Chaos Warriors as well. They didn't have any large as I recall, but it's still very early in the game. Thanks for the help on army composition too. Right now I'm very limited in my unit selection (ie available to be recruited). I've only got two different melee units, so I'm taking the tankier one, an infantry missile unit, and a flying melee infantry unit that I more or less use as cavalry for flanking and attacking rear area units.



Agreed on magic here - and for Tzeentch it is a specialty. I've been taking the approach of just a few spells but spending all my points maxing them out. And of course spending points to increase winds of magic. And you are right - battles are a lot more interesting to watch with all the magic effects on top of the multicolored missiles Tzeentch has!

I had a look over your roster options. Obviously I'd need to play them to be sure. Often a unit that looks fantastic on the unit card proves far less valuable in combat. And of course you'll need to build the infrastructure to recruit them. That takes time, but when you can identify ahead of time which units to target, you know which buildings to prioritize.

One thing I noticed is comments about Tzeentch's 'replenishment issues'. Not sure what this means, but you must have some sort of drag on this?

And it's hard to know which spells will be good without trying them out. Again they can look great in the description, but in practice are hard to use or hit moving targets with. However, you have one spell that looks god-tier. Firestorm Vortex? This should just obliterate skaven armies You'd need the right lore school of course. Your LL and heroes look really nice.

As for composition, it appears you are quite limited in AP units, which sort of sucks. However! You have lots of warp fire and that stuff is awesome. Warp fire melts armor, and helps fill that gap. If I were playing I'd be looking to get warp fire on as many targets as possible so my non-AP units kill better. Warp fire is fantastic as skaven so I'm sure it is as Tzeentch too. Kairos has it and I'd be trying to rain his spells all over the battlefield. He looks like a fantastic damage dealer caster.

With the caveat that I have no idea really, since I've only opposed them on the battlefield, not played as them, I'd be looking at these units. I think all Daemonic units get damage resistance and do not rout and are immune to terror.

-- Pink Horrors and later Exalted ones. These are the units that cause me so much trouble. Look decent in melee as well. But their ranged capability would be invaluable in a mixed comp army

-- Forsaken. Line infantry. Damage Dealer and Frenzy helps offset lack of AP and poor melee defense. Get the tech that boosts their replenishment to offset that drawback to your faction.

-- Chaos Knights. Armored and shielded. Anti-infantry. Very high armor. Hard to think of a better hammer cav.

-- Doom Knights. Flying units have great mobility and these could easily replace standard cav. Armored and shielded. Barrier. Anti-infantry. This looks like a great unit and fun to use. Easy to get at the soft underbelly of archers and artillery with units like this.

-- Screamers. Monstrous unit with both AP and anti-large. With these two traits being rather limited in your roster, I'd want some of these to fill those gaps I think.

-- Flamers. Oh man. I don't know how long you'd need to wait to recruit these things. Monstrous missile infantry. AP, Barrier, Flaming attacks. Warpfire. Sort of a glass cannon and low ammo. But as a lord sniper? yes please. Helps fill artillery gap.

You've also got what looks to be a good chariot unit but I have an irrational dislike of chariot units.

So yeah, interesting roster. A line of Forsaken backed by Pink Horrors and flanked by the Chaos or Doom Knights. Screamers and Flamers to fill out the stack and add utility. Not sure which hero is best, but I'd probably want Kairos and one hero to add magic options (pick a different lore than Kairos if possible). Identify which type of hero and get him or her in to the army early to spend the whole run leveling up.

Of course I don't know at what point in the campaign such a composition would be feasible, but I think I'd be looking to do something like this. And of course don't forget about outposts. Make allies with factions that have units you'd want to add to your army to fill gaps or factions that just have units you really like to use. For example a Skaven ally that can give you Plague Claws to give you some more AP and anti-infantry artillery.

Wow, thanks for taking the time to check that out, DB! I'm very grateful for your insight!!

Right now my avail is Forsaken, which is my choice for melee, Blue Horrors, Pink Horrors, and Chaos Furies. I don't bother with the Blue Horrors, too squishy. So I"ve got Forsaken, Pink Horrors, and Furies in my armies. Again, only 20 turns in so choices are limited.
I'll be looking to add some of the others as I go.

Maybe it's useful, and maybe you will like other units. But yeah, I'm happy to talk about it anyway.

Which high-tier units did your lord start with?

I looked at the Furies, and those are good and necessary in the early stages. Vanguard can be situationally awesome.They should be able to take out towers and be good anti-missile units, but I think you'll eventually want to replace them if the economy allows.

I rather like the vibe here and might give them a go myself.

Those shields (blue health bars) on the Tzeench units are passive. You don't have to do anything. They fall before the actual HP and if you pull them from combat for a bit, it'll recharge on it's own. Helps with ranged and hit and run tactics for them.

Thanks wormwood! That’s what I needed to know!

Yeah, those barriers operate just like a shield in Borderlands, and refill when out of combat, which just means not taking any damage for a bit I think.

In my Kislev run Khorne went four for four in rift waves. Many said that the player missing the first wave wouldn't be a problem, and that the AI don't go four for four, but it's just my luck. So I need to do an interception. If I can intercept Khorne's army outside the Forge of Souls, I can defeat him and set him back 15 turns, giving me a chance to get my fourth and beat him back to the Forge. He took that fourth soul with just one turn left in the third wave, and not enough time for him to return and win the campaign. So I've had the intervening turns to keep leveling up. But now the fifth roar is imminent and I need to get it right if I hope to win the campaign.

And level up we did! Katarin is now level 42, and our faction has a number of characters well over level 30. Never saw anything like this in previous TW runs, in any game. It's a madcap campaign as Kislev.

I entered the Nurgle rift, and fought one battle. My army comp is a little weak, I didn't upgrade the Blue Horrors for Pink Horrors when I should have and am paying the price. I'll play it out though and see where it winds up.
Wish me luck!

Good luck. Look for the reinforcement mechanics when you hit the final battle and you'll be fine.

How do you intercept at the Forge? When wave five happened I jumped straight in to a rift with Katarin and warped to the Forge. But I just sit there. Am I to wait for Khorne to show up? Feels like I'm missing something. And while I sit here the turns are are ticking and I still need my fourth too.

I think if I play another RoC campaign I would jump in to the Slaanesh realm first wave. Go down to the bottom and take one of those gifts which would be incredible around turn 30!

Oh well, if I don't win this one no big deal. Gives me a reason to go again.

I mentioned earlier the supporter mechanic race with Kostaltyn. I won that race and we confederated. Not much territory, which I don't want anyway. But I got him as a lord and one of his RoR bear riders. Too bad he hadn't recruited the other two RoRs or I would have double now in my armies. Plus he had three Frost Maidens, which is great and I now have 7/4 for this agent. Agent play in WH3 is quite hectic. Assault Unit, Assassinate and Block Army are all really good in a campaign like this, although mine don't have Block Army. There's so much action that just about every agent and army do something every turn.

There's a third Kislev legendary lord, Boris Ursus. He starts the campaign prisoner, encased in ice. Kiselv gets a quest to free him, and I did so and he is a great character who imparts some top faction bonuses. This also unlocks him for playable campaign starts.

Finished the Realm of Chaos campaign on turn 163. I took a few turns at the end to replenish a bit or it could have been 160. Uncannny how many campaigns go 160 turns. Played normal/normal and with large unit size. Whatever is default, 60 in an average infantry unit and 45 in cav. I left it there thinking it might help with load times, which are long-ish.

I waited at the Forge and a couple turns later Skarbrand showed up, maxed out at level 50 and with an army sporting gold chevrons across the board. He was the leading AI faction in this run, and I reckon he might not have lost a battle all game. His army was jacked. But we smoked him. He has no ranged and just got shredded closing the distance. I expected a hard fight. From there, we could hop rifts straight to the Blood God one, get our fourth soul and then to the final battle with Be'lakor. Intercepting a faction with four souls, and defeating them, no longer sets them back 15 turns, they now lose all of their souls and have to start over. That has to really suck, and Khorne was out of the race effectively. Tzeentch got four, but I beat him to the final battle. That battle was another survival, against Be'lakor and a hard one, but Kislev units rock. I really enjoyed this faction, dig the whole ice vibe. Ursun is Kislev's god and so I'm glad I picked them, the story's a good one for this faction.

I've always liked hybrid units in Total War, but rarely felt I could rely on them. Eataine's Sea Guard, or those Jinettes that Portugal and Spain had in medieval 2. Good units, plenty of utility, but master of none and rarely strong enough to do either ranged or melee well enough to justify a spot in a 20-unit stack. Kislev's however are good at both. The mid-tier Kossars and the elite Ice Guard both shred enemy ranks. Ice Guard have good range, a strong missile and great melee stats. They have Frostbite to debuff enemy speed by 30%. Katarin gets -50% upkeep for Ice Guard and I fielded four glaives and four sword units, for a mix of AP, anti-infantry and anti-large. Only drawbacks are modest armor that I had no buffs for and no shields so they are vulnerable to missiles. But as missile units themselves they could easily counter and usually had superior range. Fantastic infantry, that can handle two roles with great results. I really liked the war bear riders and the elemental bears too. The latter was essential to winning the campaign as they could lock down the enemy lords, especially the daemon princes in the survival battles. Another standout was the Little Grom artillery. It's a single dude riding a big cannon sled pulled by a pair of bears. With late game buffs and bonuses this unit had a range of 563 and damage over 600. The rounds are very fast, but no explosives or other effects, so they aren't great anti-infantry. But against single entities they are excellent. Between these and the elemental bears I could focus down enemy characters and often at very long range. Against otherwise troublesome units like Soulgrinders, the Grom artillery was awesome.

Hybrid runs throughout the roster, even the Grom units had good melee attack and defense. I prioritize melee defense, and I'll attach a couple shots which show how much I was able to buff it. One is a glaive Ice Guard and the other is the Grom.

Katarin also achieved level 50 a few turns before the end, which is madness. So much XP to be gained in this campaign. As for the Realm of Chaos I really enjoyed it. Certainly worth a go. Play again? Yeah, maybe. I wish I found the remaining factions more compelling. But as a TW campaign it's focused, frantic and fun. Playing tall is a welcome change. I think choosing Kislev made it for me, not sure I would have enjoyed it as much playing a different faction but that's just speculation.

Attached. Check out the stats for these two units. The Ice Guard ranged numbers are better than most dedicated archer units. Strong missile and great range. Average armor -- but the melee defense makes up for it -- and probably results in decent foot speed. The deltas on the right of the unit card are in comparison to the sword version of Ice Guard. And also the great stats on the Grom.

After finishing that campaign I had a look about to select my next thing. When in WH3 looking at the playable options I noticed a few lords which I did not have, all Warhammer 1 and 2 DLC, so I went and grabbed all that was free, and there were several of those.

I resumed a Clan Skyre Vortex run from a year ago in Warhammer 2.Good fun. One of the free DLC I downloaded was new Regiments of Renown, and not sure if it came from that, but I drafted in a unit called Avalanche Mortars which is a Skaven Death Globe mortars unit. Wow! I fought a province capital defending siege battle, my army against a full Teclis stack and another 3/4 stack. The Avalanche Mortars were amazing. They fire multiple purple missiles which fly in a high arc, then as they fall, they burst like a cluster bomb and the bomblets then pepper all over the enemy formation. Incredibly effective against whichever unit decided to pick up the siege equipment abandoned by the last unit to be targeted by these mortars.

I also finished the Warhammer 3 prologue campaign. Veterans to the series needn't play it really, it's essentially a long tutorial. But it's well crafted and I think it's worth a go for any player. Turns go by super fast. Nice narrative, beautiful cutscenes. Kislev units. Nice work by CA here, and a great way for a new player to ease him or herself in to the game. The bigger battles are not easy though.

Another thing that caught my eye is the Silence and the Fury DLC for WH2. There are only a couple I never picked up, and this is one. Not too interested in the lizard lord, Oxyotl. But I'm intrigued by Taurox, a beastmen lord. I'm not sure there's a stronger single character in the series. Beastmen sort of sucked in the past, but CA reworked the faction and it looks like this is worth a go. Taurox gets some insane mechanics and bonuses, especially to movement and recruitment. Not really my sort of faction, but this might be too good to miss. So far, Attila is the only TW title to feature horde play that I enjoyed, but I think Taurox might be another.

A few days ago I searched melee defense. I wanted to read some opinions about which units shined here, and other related things. I found a reddit thread, and it was 432 replies. 432!, About melee defense! A discussion about the various factions and units, with opinions about which were best, how they compared. SimHQ used to be like this, long discussions about the minutiae of whatever the subject was. Rivet-counting, as it were. Those days are long gone. And while I appreciate those who do engage in these threads, I think this is the wrong forum for me. Not a new revelation, this site has been heading this way for years.

A few days ago JC made a post talking about his run. Finally, something about what others are doing. It's always seemed to me that SimHQ should have discussion about playing the games. That no longer exists for the most part. Folks post a quick comment. 'Game is good' 'Game is bad' and a video perhaps, which I don't watch. I want to read about the experience, the choices and decision making, the enjoyment or absence of. The posts and threads I write are this, my experience, opinions and details of what it is like to play the game or sim I'm talking about. EU IV, Falcon 4, Silent Hunter, Total War, Borderlands, Hitman, racing sims and on and on. But there's just not an audience here for it. For years I've posted anyway, hoping that folks were still reading, and getting something out of it. Maybe that's run its course.

I'm not seeking replies or opinions on this. But maybe you'll know the reason if I'm not around much any more. I'm offering something that no one is asking for, aside from me as this is what I hope to see from others. I won't let the door hit me

Melee defense is the end all be all of infantry units in WH for most armies. Provided you have good cav or ranged to actually do damage. They just need to tie down several units and stay alive while your damage dealers do their thing. It's kinda like alot of party RPGs, they're the tanks. That's also assuming you have infantry in some kind of mixed army. Doesn't really apply to all cav or monster armies. Those, you just cycle charge and never keep them in melee to need defense.

Next is ward save, if you can get some items, spells or abilities it drastically cuts down the damage those tanky units will take.

Armor though seems to have limited value above 100.

If you head for greener pastures DB let me know where you'll be hanging out. Personally, I enjoy your posts quite a bit. They are one of the main reasons I come to SHQ.

My run has stalled due to real life getting busy (as per usual this time of year) so my next update will be delayed. Too bad, I was just about to have the soul battle in the Nurgle realm. So I've got that to look forward to this weekend!

Good to know. I never thought of melee units as just being tanks. I'll have to keep that in mind! Unfortunately, early Tzeentch melee are paper thin - Blue Horrors start with an armor of 5!

Thanks, you are always supportive when I have my moments. I just want to see more discussion around here for the games and sims I play. It's not the people, but how few there are I think. Like last night I was looking to maybe start a new run in one of the Warhammers. There are only a few races I've not played for any real length of time, such as Greenskins. And I thought how cool it would have been if others here wrote posts like mine, so I'd know already the strengths and weaknesses of the units, the mechanics, opinions on starting positions, how that player prosecuted his campaign, which units he favored in his stacks, which neighbors proved most challenging and so on. Of course I can get this elsewhere, but that's not really my point. And really that's it, I want more players here talking about their campaigns, or whatever the game or sim might be. No one has an obligation to post anything, but if there's no discussion it isn't much of a discussion forum is it?

I've rather returned to Warhammer 2 for the mo. Honestly, the load times on my box in WH3 are brutal and I get tired of waiting. I loaded the prologue a couple nights ago to finish it up. This is a tiny campaign, yet the initial load took 5 minutes easy. Maybe something's wrong, but there are a lot of loadings to do in Total War.

Unable to pick a new run in WH2 (although I want to try out Taurox, but need to pick up that DLC) I resumed two unfinished campaigns. One Vortex run as Clan Skyre (Ikit Claw) and one Vortex campaign as Vampire Coast (Luthor Harkon). The VC run is about 220 turns in and I'm ready to fight the final battle. This is one of my favorite factions, like the Counts but with ranged and pirate ships. Vampire corruption is awesome. The Last Defenders (lizards) are the top faction in the run and we are at war. But they can't attack me, due to the massive attrition they take when entering my lands. I hold 4/5 of Lustria with five field armies! Just because the enemy, if they are bold enough to actually come at me, can easily be dealt with after a few turns due to how much attrition they've taken. They did one of their Rites of Primeval Glory, which spawns a dinosaur army, and that army came at me and just about melted before I decided to hit them. This corruption is one of the best defensive things in the game. So much so that I am now spreading it all over their lands and now they take attrition no matter where they are. It really puts the brakes on the AI's attacking intent.

About melee defense... yes that's important for me, and I almost always choose to buff to this over other choices. The ability to stand in there and take it is so important in battle. Like wormfood said, ward saves are even better, as they counter every type of damage, but those bonuses are more rare. It's essentially DR. Especially for my infantry line I want good melee defense as I rarely count on infantry to be the killers. That's almost always artillery, ranged, cav, monsters and characters that do the heavy hitting. Depends on the faction.

I agree about the discussions. I wonder if it’s this community has gone by the wayside, or folks have left for greener pastures. I know the site can be cumbersome at times, esp on mobile devices.

VC is a faction I’d like to have a run in as well. I’ve played a handful of turns as them but never really I committed. Overall I am finding more appeal in the WH2 races than WH3 I think. Seems like the variety and differences are more striking, while WH3 seems to have a lot of races with the same feel to them. At least to me, and this is a first impression. I can’t say that I’ve spent a lot of time in game yet so maybe it’s too early to pass judgement.

If nothing else, WH3 miht wind up being a conduit back to the TWWH games for me. I’d frankly lost interest the game, and gaming in general to be honest. But that has to do with some personal stuff I’m dealing with right now too. I’m glad for the distraction WH3 has provided though.

Vampire Coast is an interesting faction, isn't it? I couldn't get in to Vampire Counts, even though they have their strengths. I like a combined arms army, you know? Vampire Coast brings over some of the great things about the other VC, like raising the dead recruitment, which is really good when the campaign is sticky, and adds the whole pirate vibe. Vampire Coast doesn't have great infantry. The Depth Guards are good, but a really low unit count and no shields. They do the job, but I'd like a few more dudes in the formations. The Necrofex is fantastic, and the pirate lords are good. It's a diverse roster, but weaker than many factions I think. They shine though with campaign mechanics like pirate coves, the pirate ships, vampire corruption, recruitment. Perfectly viable as a tall faction, with the pirate coves, but in this one I expanded a bit, about 25 settlements, and most of Lustria. I mentioned how good the corruption is, to allow us to sit inside our borders snug as a bug.

Harkon is an awesome lord. Good spells, a kick ass gun, a fractured mind. The whole personality shift thing keeps you on your toes. I played this one in Vortex, and the objectives took a while to reach. Gaining the required Infamy took a while, and I finished the campaign on turn 236, which is longer than most Vortex runs I've done. Maybe the longest. Even though I think the roster isn't all that strong, unit to unit, the synergy of combining those different units, along with getting the whole army to max veterancy, allowed me to win the final battle, which is no joke, let me tell you. Because I went strong in to monstrous and monster units in Harkon's army, and with the Depth Guard having just 60 men, er, dead guys, I went in to the final battle with an army of less than 700. That's really puny. Especially when you consider what the enemy brought haha. We did get a handful of reinforcements, but man what a battle. Check out the attached screenshot. The Queen Bess artillery had 1023 kills!

Heroic victory, indeed

With the Vampire factions you have the invocation of nehek spell. Not only does it do a bunch of healing to either a unit or area, but it raises the dead back up as well. Best healing spell in the game by a country mile. Mass up those skeletons, buff them with a hero or two and drop those healing spells. Then your cav, monsters, wind of death, or whatever else you have can just wreck them from the sides or back. It is really weak against armies with lots of artillery, so you have to be a bit more careful with the map placement and maybe hide some fast units that can blitz them.

And then the vampire coast is a bit more fun because you can throw your own artillery and ranged units into the mix.

Yeah, like Queen Bess. I've played a hell of a lot of Total War down the years -- every main title now aside from the first two -- and I can't recall ever having a single unit exceed 1000 kills. Maybe it's happened and I just forget. But what a devastating weapon against massed formations.

You're right about Invocation of Nehek, which I used twice in that final battle and so some of those units look a lot healthier at the end than they might have. It was critical to winning this one I think. Plus the gunnery wight offers ammunition replenishment for the ranged units. Spells and abilities like Dead Eyes, Enchanted Ballistics, Extra Powder and More Powder all synergize so well with a ranged army. I'm hot and cold on installing heroes in my armies, for example as Skaven I rarely do. But for Vampire Coast it can be really strong, making those ranged units punch well above their weight. Those three artillery units, the Queen Bess and two mortars, accounted for 1600 kills. The battle was so mixed up that I had to remount the crews several times through the course of it. Get back on those guns you slackers.

That was a fun campaign, which I started back in 2019, and finished three years later

I've also played the Dreadfleet (Count Noctilus). I think if you want to play tall and just be a pirate this might be the better choice. Harkon starts with The Awakening as a settlement, so it made sense to take some territory as Vampire Coast. One thing about this run that I found interesting, is how well the AI Vampire Coast factions did. By the end they held 3/4 of Ulthuan including Lothern. They just smoked the High Elves. It was a tag team effort between Dreadfleet and Sartosa.

With Skaven it depends. Engineers increase movement speed of the army on the campaign map and when you add that to the underways those armies can really move. They also buff movement speed, range and damage of all weapons teams. Assassins are great at one on one fights against opposing heroes but will get butchered by anything else, but then they do add casualty replenishment. It's nice to have at least one of each of those in every army.
Packmasters get summons, they're not great but the ability to freely spawn a couple units to tie up units is great. Plus, if you're in a monster heavy army of mutant ogres and brood horrors, they give plenty of buffs to those. In an army like that I'll have 2 of them in it.
Sorcerers of Plague have some very powerful spells, Ruin is OK. I'll usually try to have at least one in an army, usually the lord commanding it.
If I do a weapons team army I'll sometimes have up to 6 heroes in it and the rest weapons teams. The heroes do the bulk of the fighting or summon troops to tie down the enemy army and the weapons teams and sorcerers rain death on everything.

I've had sieges in WH2 where poisoned wind mortars got over 1000 kills in a battle. And if you line things up right a vampire lord can do a couple wind of deaths and rack up 1000 kills easy.


And yeah, those gunnery wrights are mean and provide ammo and buffs to ranged units in those vampire coast armies. Always nice to have.

Quite right wormfood. I'm not doubting their effectiveness, maybe it's more that I like my Skaven armies with a lot of rats. Mass over precision. I use them embedded occasionally as Skaven, but more typically as campaign map agents.

One of my long-term goals has been hitting 100 WH2 achievements. I always have to invent little goals like this to keep up the momentum. I sit at 98 after getting three Skaven ones last night. One I do not have is winning a campaign as Greenskins, so I kicked off a new campaign, hard/hard as Wurzag in Mortal Empires. I don't think I've played as Greenskins before aside from a few turns as Grom after his DLC was released. A bit of a perilous start position, and at war with four factions. The confederation mechanic is pretty cool. Defeat another faction leader and you get to confederate his faction. That makes wars go quickly, expansion is fast at the start. This only applies to other Greenskin factions I'm sure. Did this twice in the first five turns and boom, just like that, we went from one settlement to about seven. Of course I can't hope to defend all of that territory as I have no money. Dwarfs and Princes to the north and west. Vampires and Tomb Kings to the south and east.

Wurzag has bonuses to Savage Orcs. Not all that crazy about the roster. Melee defense is like a dirty word with these dudes. They are 'aggressive' which means good charge, melee attack and foot speed, but no armor and low defense. Wurzag grants 15% DR to these units, but only in his army. I think Grimgor might be more my style. Black Orcs are the type of infantry I like. I don't much care for the desert bias either. Not sure how far I'll get with this run. Have you guys played Greenskins? Which faction do you like most?

I've also never done a run as Beastmen, and I think I'll pick up the Silence and the Fury DLC for Taurox.

Lol, yeah that confederation mechanic is a double edged sword for sure. So tempting to just take it, but if you do you have a giant, undefended border. And since your armies often need to keep fighting it might be better in some instances to not take the confederation and drag them out to earn you a bit more xp and money from the fighting.
I don't think I've ever completed a run as the greenskins though. Started a few but never really got on well with them.

Yeah, same, but I want to do, just to have done it. They don't seem to be my sort of thing, but there's value in that, stepping outside my zone and finding success anyway. And when it's all said and done I can at least know I played them all

The Taurox thing for example. His mechanics look to wreck. I mean, the way his momentum works is sick. It would be so far from my zone. But maybe that's the beauty of it?

Perhaps I'll try a start as each Greenskin lord, except Skarsnik probably, as he's completely fooked. Maybe get a feel and then go for a run. Finished an Ikit Claw Vortex run last night on, wait for it.... turn 160. Nuts.

I should have waited for a sale, but I bought the Silence and Fury DLC, because I just had to check out Taurox and the beastmen rework. It's Warhammer blitzkreig.

It's a Vortex run on hard/hard, and the Slaughterhorn Tribe is a horde that starts next to Venom Glade. And then you just raze the world. The game walks you through a bunch of explainer screens, covering all the beastmen mechanics, and there are quite a few. But the vibe is a rampaging horde that gets fantastic boosts to movement range and killing. As long as you keep on doing it. Even not knowing what I'm doing I killed off Karond Kar and razed like seven settlements inside the first six turns with just the starter army. Taurox is a beast haha.

So far I like this faction, especially the way you unlock items, gear, unit upgrades, tech and so on. Attila's the only TW title where I played a horde I liked, that was Ostrogoths, but these new beastmen are pretty sick. Still need to work out my favorite units, so I can focus the right horde buildings.

A razing horde is liberating, since you don't have to worry about defending anything but your armies, and I guess the herdstones. After clearing up Kar Karond, I turned north to hit Malekith and take him out before he can get started. Beating him in battle should give the trait to boost rading by 10% (though maybe it doesn't apply to beastmen) and grants frenzy. Taurox needs no help anyway, this dude wrecks. Sword of Khaine? Never used it ever, but with Taurox why not? He could probably solo sieges.

I think I might as well do a tour around the map, a big circle and just raze everything in the path. And while you can do this unfettered, there is an important mechanic tied to herdstones, which you plant in a settlement, creating a Blood Ground, and then gain currency by razing everything in that Blood Ground. Having done so you perform a Ritual of Ruin which grants new faction and other bonuses and the herdstone is returned and off you go to establish the next one. So the mechanics sort of tie you down for a short time to that region. Due to the insane movement, that won't be too long. A good human player could counter this I reckon, but the AI? Not sure about that, and with a top-tier army or two I think it might be a bit simples. But let's see.

I should have bought it on sale as I said not because of the ten bucks Silence and Fury costs, but because ten turns in it's time to recruit a second lord, and there are a few legendary lords you can recruit from the Warhammer 1 DLC that I never bought. So I had to buy that because Malagor apparently kicks as much ass as Taurox. And that DLC is twenty bucks! Bah, it's only money and together these two will kick some serious ass around the map.

Screenshot of my start. Look at all that devastation in just a few turns. There's one more razed town behind my army up top, and Hag Hall is the herdstone that created the Blood Ground which you then just go and wipe out. I think in the end I might feel like I want a bit more of a good game out of the AI, which many starts give you. Having looked over all of the skills, spells and upgrades I think this could be the sort of run you do when you just want to feel literally unstoppable. But I've only just started

I meant to address this before, but that's really good, especially with those Skaven mortars. I suppose part of the equation is which faction/race you're fighting, with some having much higher units counts than others. Like a campaign with Skaven enemies would give more opportunites for high kills counts than going against Beastmen or Chaos for example with their monster-heavy low count stacks.. I'm approaching 1200 hours in WH2 and of course I've used magic, but only now am I trying to do it right, focusing on it. Before I'd use native character spells and maybe drop a point here and there, or get items with spells on them. But that's never going to be all that effective even if some spells are OP regardless. I bet there are some spells I've skipped right over before that could have been big killers like the wind of death you mention.

Another thing I keep forgetting to post is while I was praising Vampire Coast earlier, their tech tree sort of sucks. Some good techs, but too many that award a single banner that can then be given to a single unit. Feels like a Warhammer 1 faction in the tech tree.

I'm about 60 turns in to the Taurox run and it's been fun, I'll call it Beastkreig. Wiped out Malekith, Hellebron, Alith Anar, Tretch, the Sisters of Twilight, Karond Kar and maybe a couple more. Speaking of magic, I'm not getting on with it well with the Slaughterhorn because my wizard heroes have very short range with their spells. The lores are good (Wild, Shadow, Death, Beasts), but with virtually no ranged units I find it difficult to use magic much as the lines are joined quickly. Wouldn't be a problem if the wizard had more range. But I don't want to march him out in to no man's land by himself to stand within the enemy's arcs. The melee heroes though are really good and I'm getting good results with those. The Lore of the Wild casters I have embedded can at least summon a cygor every battle.

Above, I was rather suggesting that some of Taurox's best mechanics were factionwide. But some, like the movement bonuses, are just for him. The other armies are considerably less powerful on the campaign map.

Recruitment works sort of like Tomb Kings, where you unlock new units and then unlock unit caps to be able to build more units, and new armies with better and better units. All recruitment is free, and there's no upkeep. Only new lords have a cost, paid in the Dread currency. As a result of this and the insane pace Taurox can maintain, his army is ridiculous already, stuffed with RoR's and top-tier dealers of death. I have three infantry units in Taurox's army, all RoR's, several monsters like the Cygor, and the rest are the excellent monstrous Minotaurs. With Taurox levelling up so quickly I was able to unlock his roster pretty fast, and with recruitment free it means I can try out all the units, and just swap in new ones if some fail to measure up. There's no regret to disbandment, as they're free (other than veterancy I guess) and the better ones can be given to another lord since his recruitment will be lagging behind. Taurox is level 30 after 60 turns. Minotaurs very quickly proved great performers so I've gone heavy on those units for Taurox.

My big circle plan was canceled when I realized I'm playing Vortex and not ME, so there's no Old World to wheel through. So I did a clockwise move through the northwest quadrant of the map and blitzed it all. This is a wild run. This is turn 55, and I'd be content with this as Malekith or someone over a whole Vortex campaign.

The goal in the Taurox campaign is to reach 500 Marks of Ruination.

Any settlement you capture can become a herdstone. At the start you have one herdstone that can be planted, and as you progress the imperium-like Ruination bar you gain access to more.

When a herdstone is deployed, that settlement sets a Blood Ground, encompassing several adjacent regions, each with a value determined by how developed the settlement is. Tier four and five capitals might be worth 10 or 12 points, while minor settlements are worth four. Once the Blood Ground is established, you then raze the other settlements within it. Each one you raze contributes its points to the total. Once at least ten points are won in that Blood Ground, a Ritual of Ruin can be performed (you just click the button). The more completely you raze the settlements in the Blood Ground, the more Marks are obtained with the ritual.

So the campaign consists of identifying good prospects for becoming the herdstone location. Ruins settlements are worth zero points, only occupied settlements are worth anything. If you raze a town and get the points, and then it is reoccupied, you can raze it again for more points. Once you've done all you can in the region, perform the ritual, collect your Marks, and reclaim the herdstone to be used somewhere else. So far my Blood Grounds have ranged between 18 and 32 Marks. So to get to 500 that takes quite a bit of rampaging.

I'm about 100 turns in now, have half the required marks, and have just invaded Ulthuan from the sea on the north shore. Tor Anloc is my herdstone, and this Blood Ground is the best yet, worth 70 points if I can get it all. But the High Elves are united and strong, have no other enemies it seems and its a tough nut to crack. They have reacted strongly to our incursion. Taurox is a match for any army, but my other armies are less so. Each of my armies is led by a LL, but the recruitment mechanics mean they are mostly mid-tier units in those armies. Good supporting stacks, but not able to strike out alone like Taurox can.

One amazing ability Taurox has is his rampage and momentum mechanics. It is possible to have a never-ending turn. I've not done, but the possibility exists if things fall right. I read a reddit thread where one player finished the campaign in six turns by maximizing this ability. He fought 159 battles in six turns.

When Taurox fights battles and wins, he gains momentum. Momentum decays by -1 each turn. So to maintain momentum you have to keep fighting. Regions with close, occupied settlements and many armies are the fertile ground. As momentum builds it fills a Rampage meter. Once you hit the first tier of Rampage, Taurox gains the ability to restore all of his movement at the cost of two momentum. If conditions are right, that renewed movement can be used to fight yet more battles, gaining more momentum, which can then be spent once again on restoring movement. With the right conditions it could theoretically be used indefinitely. I already find his campaign strong, and while I have used this a few times to great effect, I'm not too fussed about ending it quickly. But it is an amazing ability that allows this lord to raze the world, and fast.

The wind of death can be done anywhere the opposing army has tons of enemies. Its is the single most powerful spell in the game. And if you overcast it...and it doesn't miscast, doubly so.
The skaven mortar racking up those kills only work on sieges, mostly attacking. So it doesn't happen against beastmen and chaos....maybe on defense but things are usually moving too much for that.

Does Vampire Coast have it, or just the Counts? I probably was using it and didn't know what it was called. But I've never played a Counts campaign for long.

The Taurox run is done and dusted on turn 136. Having gotten accustomed to the mechanics when razing the northwest quadrant, we invaded Ulthuan and razed the whole island. For some crazy reason none of the High Elves were in any wars, aside from two with just Sartosa. So they could put their attention on us. But you don't stop Taurox. We razed 77 settlements. His army was ridiculous.

Field battles within a bloodground add to the marks points in addition to the settlements and we had one with 86 points. Ulthuan was a perfect target because there were so many armies, and close, well-developed settlements.

If you ever want to play a campaign where you just go postal, this is it. I like the concept of combined arms in Total War battles. This was not that. I had a nice mix of unit types, and tried to cover all the damage types like anti-large, AP and down the line. But every unit was a melee unit aside from two cygors (monsters who hurl boulders) and a wizard hero, who honestly I could have gone without. Another unit of minotaurs would have been better. But he leveled all the way up and so I kept him in the army to add some variety to the abilities on hand.

The beastmen roster is strong, There's vulnerability to missiles, as the faction has low armor and few shields. Only artillery is the cygor. I gave a run-out to every unit in the roster, but harpies and ranged cav I discarded, as well as most of the infantry. The jabberslythe too, whatever that thing is. Half the stack was minotaurs at the end, a mix of standard (anti-infantry), shielded (ranged defense) and great axe (anti-large). All are armor piercing, and I took the red-line skills for each lord to buff these in every army. Fantastic performers in 3D or AR. Using a monstrous and monster army is really effective because of the way damage is dealt by the enemy. The damage is spread around the unit, but it takes a while before one will fall. So even rushing a ranged stack will result in most units full strength but damaged when they hit their lines. And once you get cygors then the enemy comes to you of course.

Chaos corruption is as good as vampire corruption for keeping your borders snug, and it spread way faster too.

Not normally my sort of faction, but I can say that about quite a few of them, yet the game play, mechanics and unique things about them made for a fun campaign. It's too easy against the AI if I'm honest. If there were one faction I think I might be able to win a legendary campaign with it's the Slaughterhorn. And not just for how insanely strong Taurox's campaign and battle abilities are, but because a full stack of melee units requires less micro and with the battle restrictions in legendary, these armies would be easier to control.

Both vampire counts and coast should have wind of death. Look for a hero or lord with lore of vampires magic.
That also has the nehek heal spell. Be careful with the vampire coast though as some of the pirates and monsters aren't undead and can't be healed with it.

My apologies, as I only just finished a VC run last week and some of the heroes had lore of vampires, so I was using this spell too, only not so effectively as you.

I've kicked off a h/h Grimgor ME run, and let's see how that goes. That was the closest Ive come to losing the patsy battle you start with in just about every campaign. Haven't played in this part of the map in a long time. Underways are gold. Speaking of which, I was surprised to find I couldn't use the beastpaths when we invaded Ulthuan in the Taurox run. Is this disabled here for all factions that have this mechanic? I know I was using world roots in the Sister of Twilight run I did to get there, but that's not the same thing. Is it because it's floating in the air?

Grimgor is a top duelist, or so everyone says. Queek just declared on me so let's see if that's true

The start position at Black Crag is a good one for a campaign because you have Dwarfs and Skaven, both of whom can use the underway, and which have very different sorts of army compositions. I reckon Lizards aren't too far away. Not much special about the faction as an Old World original, but I think could be a good campaign from an operational point of view, especially in Mortal Empires. Grab all the neighboring province capitals, like Karak Eight Peaks, then turtle up a bit until I can get better units. With enemies who can just jump under mountain ranges, you have to stay agile in defense.

What a start Grimgor has. Not just the Dwarfs and Skaven that I mentioned. There are High Elves nearby (but Snikch killed them off), Vampires, Border Princes, lots of Greenskin factions too. Lizards just over there. This could have been a hard start, with so many enemies close by, difficult terrain to maneuver in (even with the underway), and just a couple armies to cover it. But I felt lucky, that few of them managed to send a stack to attack us. Queek came by for a visit, but was trapped by my two armies as they converged and he was knocked off in the Iron Mine. It could have been far harder, but there was no apparent player bias here, and the fact that everyone in the region is in a half dozen wars seemed to help me get my footing. The combination of both Queek and Snikch could be real trouble. But they have other concerns as well and it has helped considerably.

The Black Crag region is a good spot for legendary lord farming. Grimgor already has the defeat trait from like eight of them. And he is indeed a good duelist, and even has a trait that debuffs lords he targets, called You're Next.

Not much in the Greenskins roster stands out. As an OG faction they're a bit vanilla. Black Orcs and Big 'Uns make up Grimgor's front line. A stand of Arrer Boyz back up the line. The cav is pretty good, I really like the goblin wolf riders archer units, and I'm usually ambivalent about ranged cav. But maybe my favorite unit is the Doom Diver Catapult. I never noticed in all the time I've spent with Warhammer 2 that these are guided artillery. Great unit. Artillery is usually hard to use against certain targets, like flying units, moving cavalry and other artillery. But the Doom Diver has no trouble since the rounds (actually goblins with wings strapped to them who scream and go whee! in flight) home on target. Like a Hellfire missile these things.

How are those arrer boyz working for you? I find they're awful outside of the first several turns. I would almost rather just have more cav, catapults or frontline troops in their slot.

That's in WH2, right? If so, that's good. In WH3 Skarbrand starts out in that region and he wrecks everything in the area. It automatically makes everyone else in that starting location a bit harder.

Inadequately?

Yeah, Waywatchers they are not, but they have AP at least. Low accuracy according to the unit card. Grimgor has three of them in his stack at the mo. They aren't great, but I always want some of this in my armies if I can get it. A little veterancy helps level them out.

Yes, I'm playing Mortal Empires. It loads faster and I'm hunting a few achievements. Hit 101 during that Taurox run, got those for winning a battle while outnumbered 10 to 1, razing 30 towns, and for winning a beastmen campaign. Even though I've played many runs in ME, it's still a unique experience each time and I noticed a new settlement to the west of Karaz-a-Karak. something Forest I think. A wood elves settlement? That's fairly new, right? Even after all these years, there is still some motion in that ocean. That they keep refreshing it is great.

Actually, the Arrer Boyz are a decent unit when fighting Skaven, which we've done a lot of in this run so far. They have decent armor, weapon strength and melee attack which means they are able to counter the menace below units the AI loves to spawn among your archer and artillery units. Not top killers, but they give greenskins some ranged capability, some AP and are able to look after themselves.

This has been a fun run. Snikch took too long to really put the pressure on me as they dealt with the Callendor High Elves. They expanded quite a bit,but once I rolled Grimgor and a second army in their direction they could do little about it. Snikch's stacks are weak, mostly Skavenslaves and Grimgor rolled right over them. Snikch is dead. We also killed off Karaz-a-Karak to secure our northern flank. Wurzag was getting his ass kicked by Border Princes, so I allied him just in time so he would agree to a confederation so I could have him in my faction. He had about 9 settlements at one point and then just a few turns later it seems he was down to two. So I got him before he was killed off. Border Princes haven't turned to me yet, which is a surprise, and it's allowed me to finish the eastern offensive while building up a waagh. Those guys have four full stacks somehow, but it's all empire trash so I think we can handle them.

The plan is to bring my eastern armies back to the western front, initiate the waagh and use those double armies to sweep Border Princes off the map. I've done one waagh so far and it is really strong. Timing's everything, so I'll be sure everyone's in the right jump off positions before firing it and the thing should go.

It wasn't goblin wolf riders that I like as I said, it's the spider rider version, and it's a RoR. But they're fun to use. I'm having a good time on this run, this is a great part of the map in Mortal Empires. The terrain makes it all that much more difficult, and it's such a mish mash of races.

That plan worked magnificently. Greenskins are fun in a smash-em-in-the-mouth sort of way.

The waagh mechanic is very powerful indeed. For those unfamilair, Greenskins build a fightiness meter by fightin' and razin' and sackin' their way around the map. Once full, a Waagh can be inititated. This creates a free second army for every stack in your faction. The bigger the stack, the bigger the additional army is. Composition is mixed, and varies according to the lord leading the stack and the terrain, for example you'll get certain units when done near a volcano that you won't get elsewhere. So the quality of the second army varies a bit. But still, it's a second free stack for every army, nearly doubling the combat weight of each.

In this one I waited until I could position four stacks on the border with the Border Princes, who had abused the other greenskins factions and had expanded to 13 settlements, rising to number 4 on the faction strength chart. But we just swept them away. My four armies were closer to eight in terms of combat capability and long before the 20 turns the waagh lasts for we had eliminated them from the map. Greenskins, or Grimgor at least, can grow powerful with confederation mechanics, and an AI Grimgor usually does really well with this. But I've found the greenskins to be a great offensive faction and haven't bothered with confederation aside from saving Wurzag from elimination. Strong armies, the underway, the raiding stance and the waagh mechanics all make for a good faction on the march. Goblintide!

Greenskins Mortal Empires run is done and dusted on turn 150, short campaign victory. Honestly, that was one of the easier runs I've done in Warhammer 2. Partly it's due to how greenskins play and partly due to the AI enemies never really getting their sh!t together and putting any sustained pressure on me. Only Tomb Kings liked us, but it didn't matter. Grimgor is da best!

The interesting thing was that Reikland had 83 fookin' settlements last I looked. That's insane, and I don't think I've ever seen an AI faction grow that big in WH2.

Next up, Bretonnia, one of the last I have yet to win a campaign with. I chose Carcassone, and it looks like this is a turtle faction. Let's see how it plays.



That would do it. Don't need that dude roaming the badlands.

I got it in my head that I'd pursue some achievements in WH2 and then did that.

I still had all of the 'win campaign on very hard or legendary' ones to get. Hard/Hard is my usual jam, giving me the right sort of starting challenge. But honestly, even that is a little too easy past the first 30-50 turns. Very Hard is much more frantic, and the early game is much harder. But if you can get past that then it evens out. The AI still can build a lot of full stacks, and have gobs of money it seems. So I play more reservedly at the open, more defensively, because you have to be able to absorb the endless stacks that descend upon your lands. But eventually that can be overcome. In each case I identified a faction to play that had certain advantages that I thought would help get the harder campaigns over the line.

A few of those

Itza -- Mortal Empires VH run. If you've never played the lizards and used Lord Kroak, you really must. This caster hero is like having Ikit Claw's doomrockets. Kroak's spells are devastating against massed formations. Gor-Rok starts with Kroak in his faction, while other lizard lords can get him later through a quest chain. Advantage Gor Rok. Eventually took all of Lustria for the objectives, and went 262 turns in order to get the achievements for researching 50 techs and having ten geomantic loci. Standard lizard fare with this faction, not much special, -20% Saurus upkeep I think. Kroak is the shiny part here. Having him at the start is OP, and helps get this run going fast.

Slaughterhorn -- Legendary Vortex run. Not finished. But I knew if there were one faction I could win legendary, this would be it. And so it is proving. The Melee-centric vibe is good in restricted combat, far less micro than cav, ranged and casters demand. And his campaign mechanics mean that the AI struggles to really get going with lots of stacks. Taurox never takes times off.

Chevaliers de Lyoness -- VH Vortex run. I just can't seem to get on with Bretonnia. So I thought I'd give Repanse a go. I seem to fail to see the good stuff, or these just aren't for me. Shelved it after 40 turns. Might be back. I'd like to win a campaign with any of the Bretonnia lords. Had fun playing in Araby, so....

Clan Eshin -- Skaven are my favorite race, and I've done a lot of runs with the various factions. I did try Deathmaster Sniktch once in ME. But I didn't stick with it. Didn't care for the start, or the fact that my go-to units cost a fortune. 'Eshin' units suck. Or that's what I thought. But I gave Eshin a go in a VH Vortex run and had a blast. The start shifts from the eastern edge to the sands of Araby, surrounded by Tomb Kings and Bretonnia factions.This time I embraced the Eshin vibe, making stacks of gutter runners and playing kite the bad guy. At the end I had a single artillery piece, the RoR warp cannon in my entire faction. My units were super squishy rats, against much stronger foes. But through bonuses, both inherent and boosted, these trash units were untouchable. 70+ foot speed (as fast as most heavy cav), stalk (they are hidden until they fire) and the ability to fire on the run made for a very different sort of playstyle, with my ranged rats kiting slower, stronger units around the battlefield until they melted away. Good fun. Queek was always my favorite Skaven lord, but Sniktch might just have topped him. He's a fantastic duelist, and his armies fight in the most skaven way possible. His schemes in campaign too, very skaven yes-yes, but I didn't use them all that much. Once I had secured a snug tract of the desert it was a rather chill campaign too.

Heralds of Ariel -- Sisters of Twilight VH Vortex run. I knew from playing this before that it could be another chill run, playing tall and minding the forests. And so it was. Pretty easy campaign on higher difficulties. Fantastic roster for me as I love ranged units, especially archers.

Dreadfleet -- A Noctilus VH Vortex run. Again chosen for his ability to play tall, which works well on the higher difficulties. A pretty remote and defensible home, no need to expand and pirate coves fuel the campaign. Still ongoing, but near the end.


It had been interesting to see how these various campaigns play out among the AI. I had mentioned earlier a run where the Empire had over 80 provinces. That's nothin'. In one run the leading faction had 150+ settlements. And each campaign is seeing a different faction and race emerging as top dog. This variablity is one of Warhammer's best things. In the current Dreadfleet run it's Clan Rictus of all factions that are kicking ass all over the map.

You can now play the Immortal Empires campaign by only owning Warhammer 3. You get the full map and all the factions. However, you'll only be able to play as the WH3 factions unless you purchase more.

Smart move from CA. Immortal Empires has a good rep, but I'm sure there are folks who don't want to buy all three games. This should get those people over the line and playing WH3.

And the DLC evidently from the earlier games can stlll be purchased so players can play those WH1/2 factions even if they don't own the games, which will spark even more revenue.

Good move CA.

I got a little angry at WH3 last week. I had an update queued and since I haven't been playing I ignored it but it finally came up for auto install I guess. And it was over 100 GB! What the hell? I had to uninstall another game just to fit it on my drive. That is far too big for something I don't even know what it is yet haha. I wonder if it made it better? Not that I didn't already like it. But man what a massive update, bigger than virtually ever other game on my drive.

My DCS folder clocks in at 462 GB, with another 12 GB in the save games folder (though there are a lot of add on missions and mods in that one!).

New map for Immortal Empires maybe?

Yeah, I should check out what it actually is lol.

How's things JC?

The Steam download was over 60 gigs, but then it had to unpack or install 100 gigs and it took an age. So I said screw it and paused it thinking when I'm ready to play again I'll be in the mood to wait it out. But then it auto-installed again the next day and had started over. What the hell? So i had to do it twice but the second time I kind of had to or maybe it would start over again. Good grief, what we don't do to be PC gamers.

Which reminds of something I was thinking about the other day... I never ever defrag anymore so I guess it all comes out even.

Hi DB!! This is my busy time of the year, but the light is at the end of the tunnel. A couple more weeks and things calm down significantly, which is nice.

I hate seeing those giant downloads. Sometimes I'll run them just before I go to bed or before I go to work so it doesn't get in my way.

I think defragging is not as essential as it used to be, in fact I think its a no-no for ssd's.

My storage drive is 2 TB and it's been full forever now. I have to cull out a rarely played game every time I want to buy a new one, and now, with updates like this one, sometimes when I get a patch! Nuts. My first hard drive was like 250 megs.

Defragging used to be a ritual. I would defrag every time before a new game got installed, and once it was installed I defragged it again to sort everything nice and tidy like.