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Meme Poker Party
Sep 1, 2006

by Azathoth

Vargs posted:

Playing as Dwarfs, anti-armor artillery was always the worst thing to deal with. Gyros are the only thing that can really get back there and attack them, but gyros are late-game and also not so great. A single unit of handgunners would shut that down right away. You can try to shoot it with your own artillery, but it's such a small target that I find it takes foreeeeeeever and feels like a bit of a waste to finally destroy an artillery unit after it's already murdered hundreds of Dwarfs, while my own arty has been doing nothing nearly as productive.

I think the Dwarf standard anti-artillery strategy is "have more artillery so you win in a shooting match" and just blow up more of their guys than they can of yours rather than counter-shoot. A Dwarf army that is outgunned by the other side is a shameful army.

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Dandywalken
Feb 11, 2014

peer posted:

In other words it's Super Badass Anime Crap for nerds. Plus there's already a mod with some pretty good looking ones!

This is how I feel whenever someone challenges grail knight supremacy.

ChickenWing
Jul 22, 2010

:v:

Mobility owns dwarves. Have chaff to eat cannon fire, have cavalry to hit artillery and thunderers.

alex314
Nov 22, 2007

Just had a battle where Slayer King probably fell off the wall. I wasn't paying attention to him as he climbed the ladder and I've ordered some quarellers to nuke wall defending savage orcs and then I suddenly get "Lord wounded" message. He was at least at half HP.

Josef bugman
Nov 17, 2011

Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

ChickenWing posted:

Mobility owns dwarves. Have chaff to eat cannon fire, have cavalry to hit artillery and thunderers.

Also, if you are the AI, chariots to disrupt formation. Those things are a right royal pain in the arse.

Though I actually had a fantastic battle a few days ago. 3 full dwarf stacks versus the combined might of all three big chaos armies, the fight was so massive that I couldn't actually fit all my troops on the field at the same time. I think almost every single unit broke at least once, but managed to break the main three armies via killing their lords. The thing that won it was the fact that with all the dead of my own troops I suddenly got about 10 units of quarellers appearing on the field.

Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Jun 25, 2016

Sjonnar
Oct 22, 2011

alex314 posted:

Just had a battle where Slayer King probably fell off the wall. I wasn't paying attention to him as he climbed the ladder and I've ordered some quarellers to nuke wall defending savage orcs and then I suddenly get "Lord wounded" message. He was at least at half HP.

He fell through the wall. I had Grimgor do it - he climbed up the ladder, jumped over the ramparts, and promptly fell to his death inside the wall model. It happened again when i reloaded and played the battle again, sending him up the same wall, so it's an issue with some wall models, I think. When I sent him to a different wall following another reload, he was just fine.

Where did it happen for you? It was one of the cities in Blightwater or the southern badlands for me, I think.

Wafflecopper
Nov 27, 2004

I am a mouth, and I must scream

Had a huge battle last night, 4 stacks on each side, total of more than 10000 troops. I was playing vamps and had already beaten the end times invasion, but the real campaign end-boss turns out to be the Varg pouring into northern Kislev. I had 6k+ mostly skeleton warriors/spearmen but a decent number of Grave Guard and Black Knights and a smattering of bats and wolves. Varg were actually relatively balanced with a reasonable number of marauders forming an actual battle line. Aside from the scale, the battle itself was nothing too extraordinary, I was defending so I just corner-camped a hill (I got lucky in that my reinforcements all came in along the same two edges with the hill on their corner) and let them come at me. Horsemen were a problem at first since I didn't get any of my knights, wolves or bats in the initial spawn and had to wait until a few units got killed off. Some of the horsemen actually ran out of ammo and charged me. Varg morale eventually got so low from army losses that a stack and a half worth of their reinforcements shattered before even reaching my lines. Despite this victory and the subsequent destruction of the now scattered stacks and a couple more to boot they're still rated #1 for strength and have 2-3 stacks constantly on the border threatening Praag and its settlement.

terrorist ambulance
Nov 5, 2009
I really like outriders. They're not usually worth their upkeep as they die too easily to archers and often don't have enough effect, but fast armor piercing cavalry able to freely wheel around lines and shoot infantry blocks in the back is really fun feeling

Mazz
Dec 12, 2012

Orion, this is Sperglord Actual.
Come on home.

terrorist ambulance posted:

I really like outriders. They're not usually worth their upkeep as they die too easily to archers and often don't have enough effect, but fast armor piercing cavalry able to freely wheel around lines and shoot infantry blocks in the back is really fun feeling

I think they can be very, very good if you appreciate the whole moving around to shoot dudes in the back thing. They are basically handgunners with a shitload more freedom of mobility, which is actually extremely useful in that case since handgunners are only limited by their ability to position well.

You trade numbers for way more freedom to actually be where they need to be. I also found a place for pistoleers as a tool to kite the AI cav around in front of my other units so they die while contributing a lot less overall. Skirmish mode is pretty nice for them because they'll shoot as they run away.

Mazz fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Jun 25, 2016

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

Looking solely at the numbers outriders have 2/3rds as many dudes as handgunners but they each do half again as much DPS due to high fire rate. So it should even out.
...does being on a horse help them shoot over things? Since they're higher?

The Lone Badger fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Jun 25, 2016

Panfilo
Aug 27, 2011

EXISTENCE IS PAIN😬
I keep playing whack a mole with medium sized greenskin stacks that flee from my main force and constantly raid and sack recently acquired territories. I think I'm going to download the friendly territory bonus movement mod because it's really annoying. I can't seem to get the cash flow to build up defenses before the settlements get attacked.

My only boon is that the AI relies on wonky auto resolve chances; a nearly dead enemy Lord with a doom diver and 2 spearmen seems to get weighed really heavily in auto resolve. But even a basic settlement can vanguard deploy the 3 units of miners to bum rush the siege engine and finish off the Lord.

Gejnor
Mar 14, 2005

Fun Shoe
I can't stop making mods it seems, as ive made another:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=710063475

Tier 4 Racial Settlements at Start - With this, whenever you start a new game you'll start with a tier 4 settlement building as any of the settlement-bound races. I couldn't figure out how to do this for Chaos so its just Empire, Bretonnia, Vampire Counts, Greenskins and Dwarfs that get it for now.

Potentially OP, but a balancing factor is that all the main races get it, even the ones controlled by the AI.

Also i wanted to make something that speeds up the game progress somewhat.

Dandywalken
Feb 11, 2014

Using a 2X-attack speed mod. Cant say I hate it, tbh. Casualties are alot faster, which in my opinion makes sense in the setting.

Also its something of a soft-nerf to large monsters. Probably should have shield-using units melee defense increased though a bit to compensate for the power of hard hitters.

Dandywalken fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Jun 25, 2016

unwantedplatypus
Sep 6, 2012
I use pistoliers to attack enemy artillery and run down units after a battle. There's usually some worth in keeping one or two of them around until you get outriders. One thing I like doing with pistoliers is harassing VC armies. They're fast enough to kite every flyer, and due to the a ace complete lack of range they can shoot enemies from behind with impunity. Fell bats and vargheists have very little armor so they can take those down easily.

Pistoliers and outriders aren't terrible, just situationally useful right now. I think they should give a ranged damage buff to pistoliers, and a slight melee buff to both. Right now a crossbow unit can recover from a charge and route pistoliers and weaken outriders.

terrorist ambulance
Nov 5, 2009
Yeah I wish they weren't so terrible in melee. They're guys on horses with swords, why are they losing to lovely foot archers when they get the charge

Ra Ra Rasputin
Apr 2, 2011
Would it be possible to win as a empire campaign just turtling in your starting area for the first 100 turns, then use the shield of civilization when archaeon shows up to confederate and ally everyone?

Ammanas
Jul 17, 2005

Voltes V: "Laser swooooooooord!"

Dandywalken posted:

Using a 2X-attack speed mod. Cant say I hate it, tbh. Casualties are alot faster, which in my opinion makes sense in the setting.

Also its something of a soft-nerf to large monsters. Probably should have shield-using units melee defense increased though a bit to compensate for the power of hard hitters.

Wait. You want battles, which are already the shortest of any TW game to date, that almost entirely prevent tactical maneuvers and secondary adjustments, to be even shorter?

Ammanas
Jul 17, 2005

Voltes V: "Laser swooooooooord!"

Ra Ra Rasputin posted:

Would it be possible to win as a empire campaign just turtling in your starting area for the first 100 turns, then use the shield of civilization when archaeon shows up to confederate and ally everyone?

That's basically what happens if you survive the first ten turns.

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

Ra Ra Rasputin posted:

Would it be possible to win as a empire campaign just turtling in your starting area for the first 100 turns, then use the shield of civilization when archaeon shows up to confederate and ally everyone?

Maybe but you'll have to be quite lucky. And remember the cool down on confederation/public order penalty, and the likelihood of Nordland being razed to hell if you don't do anything to help.

unwantedplatypus
Sep 6, 2012
Say what you will, but they managed to capture the feel of being the emperor more or less spot on.

Dandywalken
Feb 11, 2014

Ammanas posted:

Wait. You want battles, which are already the shortest of any TW game to date, that almost entirely prevent tactical maneuvers and secondary adjustments, to be even shorter?

Yeah, I disabled the mod now having played with it for a bit. I just wish your dudes didnt stand around so much in melee, and kept on attacking. There's alot of time spend with individual units just sorta standing at the ready next to the enemy.

Got pretty far in the Dwarf campaign so far. Biggest annoyance was, of all things, Grimgors doom diver. I imagine you would hit it with gyrocopters when you get them, but yeah... Tier 5 for no discernable reason, especially with the quest requirements. Kinda preaching to the choir now though.

Dandywalken fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Jun 25, 2016

alex314
Nov 22, 2007

Sjonnar posted:

He fell through the wall. I had Grimgor do it - he climbed up the ladder, jumped over the ramparts, and promptly fell to his death inside the wall model. It happened again when i reloaded and played the battle again, sending him up the same wall, so it's an issue with some wall models, I think. When I sent him to a different wall following another reload, he was just fine.

Where did it happen for you? It was one of the cities in Blightwater or the southern badlands for me, I think.

South-western part of Badlands, the province capital. It must be a bugged wall then.

Athropos
May 4, 2004

"Skeletons are Number One! Flesh just slows you down."
Holy balls is the chaos start crushingly difficult on hard. I restarted it like 4 times and savescummed a bit to even the odds. Im playing with a heavily modded game but I spent like 100 turns running away from about 6 skaeling stacks just getting my single archaon army to like god tier levels with a level 30 Archaon and finally stood my ground and wrecked those stacks. All my attempts at raising another lasting army didnt work since I never had enough money to maintain two high tiered armies which is the only thing that would stand to Norscan spam. Im using the chaos divided mod which adds amazing unique units to the chaos and northmen roster, such as khorne berzerkers, nurgle plague guards and manticore knights but also give very good mid tier units to the Norscans (on par with the chaos warrior unit)and the AI just shits out full chevron stacks of those and chaos trolls with gold chevrons. So I spent the whole evening doing whack a mole awaken/subjugate up north while the skaelings followed me everywhere and got like 15 settlements.I managed to raise a second high tier stack with Sigvald and had enough momentum to crush the northern tribes. However my vassals are already breaking off with me I dont give a gently caress im going to Kislev. Im finally breaking out though but jesus christ the chaos campaign is very wierdly designed. Maybe I should have found a way to ally with the varg and skaeling instead of trying to clean up everything with one stack.

Athropos fucked around with this message at 07:57 on Jun 25, 2016

420 Gank Mid
Dec 26, 2008

WARNING: This poster is a huge bitch!

Athropos posted:

Holy balls is the chaos start crushingly difficult on hard. I restarted it like 4 times and savescummed a bit to even the odds. Im playing with a heavily modded game but I spent like 100 turns running away from about 6 skaeling stacks just getting my single archaon army to like god tier levels with a level 30 Archaon and finally stood my ground and wrecked those stacks. All my attempts at raising another lasting army didnt work since I never had enough money to maintain two high tiered armies which is the only thing that would stand to Norscan spam. Im using the chaos divided mod which adds amazing unique units to the chaos and northmen roster, such as khorne berzerkers, nurgle plague guards and manticore knights but also give very good mid tier units to the Norscans (on par with the chaos warrior unit)and the AI just shits out full chevron stacks of those and chaos trolls with gold chevrons. So I spent the whole evening doing whack a mole awaken/subjugate up north while the skaelings followed me everywhere and got like 15 settlements.I managed to raise a second high tier stack with Sigvald and had enough momentum to crush the northern tribes. However my vassals are already breaking off with me I dont give a gently caress im going to Kislev. Im finally breaking out though but jesus christ the chaos campaign is very wierdly designed. Maybe I should have found a way to ally with the varg and skaeling instead of trying to clean up everything with one stack.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=701170286&searchtext=varg

Norsca tribes get a building that lets them recruit fresh units with gold chevrons and gives them a crapton of income to fund huge stacks with (They get ~600 from a max level settlement compared to ~120 for most other factions)

That mod fixes them up to get buildings comparable to the other factions

Athropos
May 4, 2004

"Skeletons are Number One! Flesh just slows you down."

420 Gank Mid posted:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=701170286&searchtext=varg

Norsca tribes get a building that lets them recruit fresh units with gold chevrons and gives them a crapton of income to fund huge stacks with (They get ~600 from a max level settlement compared to ~120 for most other factions)

That mod fixes them up to get buildings comparable to the other factions

Wow thanks. This bullshit is out of control.

Gay Horney
Feb 10, 2013

by Reene
I hope adding the brettonia DLC makes the AI VCs do a bit better. If I'm not playing as them they usually just sit in their little corner if they don't get wiped out completely. Fighting a giant endgame VC empire as dwarfs or orcs would be really cool but you always end up fighting ultra-empire instead.

Vargs
Mar 27, 2010

Sharzak posted:

I hope adding the brettonia DLC makes the AI VCs do a bit better. If I'm not playing as them they usually just sit in their little corner if they don't get wiped out completely. Fighting a giant endgame VC empire as dwarfs or orcs would be really cool but you always end up fighting ultra-empire instead.

I'm not sure how brettonia DLC will help, but I completely agree. I feel like I hardly ever get to fight VCs. You get maybe a couple decent battles in their tiny realm and then that's it, they're done. They have to few settlements and they're so clustered together that you wipe em out completely before they can reform. Which is a shame because they're fun to go up against.

Kainser
Apr 27, 2010

O'er the sea from the north
there sails a ship
With the people of Hel
at the helm stands Loki
After the wolf
do wild men follow
There are tons of Dwarven/Orc/Imperial factions spread out over the map across plenty of provinces in comparison to the Vampire counts who only have their 2 provinces (well, and mousillon) so obviously you won't fight them a lot. There really isn't much they can do about that except overtuning the AI vampires.

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

Or have some human subfactions pull off their masks and reveal themselves to have been Secret Vampires all along.
(randomise which each game, like diplo traits)

Kainser
Apr 27, 2010

O'er the sea from the north
there sails a ship
With the people of Hel
at the helm stands Loki
After the wolf
do wild men follow
More factions in the future are going to have the same issue. Very few factions would realistically interact with the Chaos Dwarfs for example if they are added.

Living Image
Apr 24, 2010

HORSE'S ASS

It drives me insane that skirmishers don't automatically skirmish any more. I'm forever forgetting to turn it on.

toasterwarrior
Nov 11, 2011
I talk a lot of poo poo about Pistoliers, but I have to admit they were the sole reason I won an early-game fight against the Savage Orc horde that starts near you. Tied up and chipped down a Savage Boar Boy unit that would've murdered my flanks.

They still suck though, a Knight unit would've done the same but much, much faster. You really need to utilize combined arms as the Empire, considering that it's your most distinguishing advantage against every other race.

Kanos
Sep 6, 2006

was there a time when speedwagon didn't get trolled

Fangz posted:

Azhag's definitely Hard Mode Greenskins.

It's really sweet how Azhag starts off with worse stats than a vanilla warboss while also having an infinitely shittier starting army than Grimgor despite Grimgor being able to beat up an army singlehandedly. Seems like a legit, balanced, and reasonable payoff for the ability to eventually, a million turns down the road, start investing levels in Death Magic and getting a wyvern to ride.

Oh wait.

peer
Jan 17, 2004

this is not what I wanted
Azhag has great voice acting, though. Dis will please da iron hat!

Kanos
Sep 6, 2006

was there a time when speedwagon didn't get trolled
Azhag rules really hard("Hat's grumblin'.") and I wish he was better, just like I wish Gelt and Kemmler were better. Thankfully Molay's mod mostly fixes Gelt and Kemmler and Da East is Green mostly fixes Azhag(doesn't fix his poo poo questlines sadly), but I wish they were better in vanilla.

Perestroika
Apr 8, 2010

Kanos posted:

It's really sweet how Azhag starts off with worse stats than a vanilla warboss while also having an infinitely shittier starting army than Grimgor despite Grimgor being able to beat up an army singlehandedly. Seems like a legit, balanced, and reasonable payoff for the ability to eventually, a million turns down the road, start investing levels in Death Magic and getting a wyvern to ride.

Oh wait.

Yeah, their LL balancing is all over the place. If it was just Azhag vs. Grimgor it would be somewhat understandable. After all, if Azhag was as powerful as a regular Orc Boss in addition to having access to a very strong school of magic and a sweet mount, that might well completely outshine Grimgor, who's "just" more killy than a regular boss. But then you look over at VCs and Mannfred, who is not only murderous in combat, but also a better spellcaster than their dedicated mage LL, and that whole reasoning kind of falls apart.

Perestroika fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Jun 25, 2016

madmac
Jun 22, 2010
Gonna quote this guy from the official forums about how Searing Doom and similar spells work, because it explains a lot.

quote:

Bombardment spells (Cassandora, Urannon's Thunderbolt, Searing Doom, Bolts of Burning) function very differently. They basically spawn projectiles above the unit, which function in pretty much like any other projectile in game. You can futz with their gravity and make them do funny things like fall super-slowly - I think theoretically you could even make the Comet bounce or roll.

Searing Doom drops 50 projectiles (70 when overcast), each of which does 13 normal damage and 7 AP damage. So if all 70 hit, it would do 1400 damage to an unarmoured unit. That's slightly less than a volley of crossbow bolts from a unit of quarrellers that hits with every bolt. But that's a best case scenario. Many of the projectiles will miss, and because they fall straight down if they miss one model they miss all of them. And if (as may be the case) units that are knocked down or flying about don't take any damage, then any double-hits are wasted, too.

Even if the individual projectiles did way more damage it wouldn't make any difference. Since the spell only has a small area of effect, it can only hit a small number of models at any one time. Even if it killed the people it hit 100% of the time, great, but it's only 20 men out of 160, and all the excess damage is just wasted. You could, in theory, up the area of effect and the number of projectiles, which might make it more effective. But make the AoE too big and the projectiles are more like to miss. I can see why CA said that balancing magic for various unit sizes is tricky!

Cassandora effectively spawns an enormous cannon-ball above the unit, which then behaves like any other projectile. The actual Cassandora projectile has the highest damage of any projectile in the game, over 1000. It basically kills any normal model it hits and can knock a decent chunk of hp off a Lord or hero. It even does damage to walls and towers, about 14% per cast.

However, it's also quite small, and doesn't land exactly in the centre of the spell casting area - like other projectiles, it can go off target. It's quite possible to drop it on a unit standing perfectly still in the dead centre of the radius and have it miss them completely. But when it lands on regular infantry, it kills them flat dead. This part of the spell seems to be working fine.

However, the Comet also causes an explosion on impact. In theory this should do a lot of damage (144 AP when overcast, which is huge) but as per @rhinoinsomniac 's results, explosions seem to suffer from similar problems as vortexes.

There's some other interesting stuff there, apparently Purple Sun can actually do a shitload of damage against very heavy units like Chaos Warriors, but anything light enough to get picked up and thrown around basically takes nothing. Not that it makes those spells good really, but it's an interesting read.

Deified Data
Nov 3, 2015


Fun Shoe
How do factions become resurgent? This just happened to the Bloody Spears after getting wiped and now they're back again.

Jamwad Hilder
Apr 18, 2007

surfin usa

Deified Data posted:

How do factions become resurgent? This just happened to the Bloody Spears after getting wiped and now they're back again.

successful rebellion in their home province

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Ichabod Tane
Oct 30, 2005

A most notable
coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality.


https://youtu.be/_Ojd0BdtMBY?t=4
The mod that allows for coop within a faction is amazing and a must download.

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