Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
toasterwarrior
Nov 11, 2011
Another thing I love about Mortars is they knock units on their asses, armored or not. I imagine getting your formation disrupted every fifteen seconds or so will cause even Chaos Warriors to fight terribly.

Still, I do kinda miss the ability to heavily damage enemy cavalry before the melee starts...

toasterwarrior fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Aug 19, 2016

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Vox Nihili
May 28, 2008

Mukip posted:


Sadly, I found the first match barely watchable due to the poor lighting conditions of that map. In the second Dwarf vs Orcs match, Vox's deployment of his Dwarfs at an oblique angle was a good way to get some extra shooting time out of his artillery, causing a lot of damage to the Black Orcs. Vox's early scouting of the forest for hidden units was prudent, as was his targeting of the Hammers. Not sure what he brought 2000 gold worth of Orc archers for since it's hard to trade evenly with the shielded Dwarf Quarrelers; if anything I would have used them to target the Hammerers some more. He needed more troops to throw into the melee grinder since that's where he lost the match.

You didn't miss much in the first match, it was basically a case of the bigger hero/cav ball beating the smaller one and then rolling onward.

In the second match the key takeaway is that greenskin archers are almost completely ineffectual against standard dwarf units.

Endorph
Jul 22, 2009

greenskin archers are almost completely ineffectual in general.

night goblin archers are good, since they have stealth and poison, and that's about it.

ChickenWing
Jul 22, 2010

:v:

Every once in a while I want to post about something that I think is wrong but then I remember that all of my experience is with the campaign, on easy/normal and I sit in shame instead :smith:

Mukip
Jan 27, 2011

by Reene
:justpost:

Deified Data
Nov 3, 2015


Fun Shoe

Endorph posted:

using menstruating like that is kinda lame

Careful about telling manbabies their jokes suck if you don't want red text.

DeathSandwich
Apr 24, 2008

I fucking hate puzzles.

Kainser posted:

I really hope the Vampire legendary lord isn't Vlad.

My guess is that if the lord pack is empire/vc then empire is getting Grand Theogonist Volkmar (and by extension Arch Lectors as a regular lord choice), and VC is getting a Strigoi Ghoul King as their regular lord, and probably someone like Ushoran as their new LL.

TipsyMcStagger
Apr 13, 2013

This isn't where
I parked my car...
holding alt+ right click will allow you to artillery the ground?

GOD DAMMIT THIS WOULD HAVE CHANGED SO MUCH ABOUT MY ORC CAMPAIGN!!!

Double Bill
Jan 29, 2006

What should I be doing in 50-50 Greenskins vs Dwarfs early game battles? I'm so much worse than autoresolve, and it's always the same story i.e. I dominate their ranged but my melee line crumples like paper against theirs. Spears in middle or sides? What should my ranged be focusing on?

Endorph
Jul 22, 2009

Double Bill posted:

What should I be doing in 50-50 Greenskins vs Dwarfs early game battles?
doing it as little as possible until you can get at least a couple of units of black orcs

Nasgate
Jun 7, 2011

Double Bill posted:

What should I be doing in 50-50 Greenskins vs Dwarfs early game battles? I'm so much worse than autoresolve, and it's always the same story i.e. I dominate their ranged but my melee line crumples like paper against theirs. Spears in middle or sides? What should my ranged be focusing on?

Rock throwers wreck dwarves. Cycle charging trolls are also really good armor piercing. Cycle charging in general is good because orcs have a good charge bonus for their infantry.

Early game i like to repeatedly sack a goblin town to get a waagh and crush the main dwarf faction before they get more than a full stack.

Internet Explorer
Jun 1, 2005





The best I could do against Dwarfs early on was to make sure I had trolls that could harass their back line. The Dwarf infantry line was bad enough, but when they have their range behind them unmolested... good luck.

Double Bill
Jan 29, 2006

The problem is mostly that I'd like to try and match autoresolve's performance, but that doesn't really seem possible. Autoresolve can get a close victory out of early game full stack vs full stack, but I can't get even close.

DeathSandwich
Apr 24, 2008

I fucking hate puzzles.

Double Bill posted:

What should I be doing in 50-50 Greenskins vs Dwarfs early game battles? I'm so much worse than autoresolve, and it's always the same story i.e. I dominate their ranged but my melee line crumples like paper against theirs. Spears in middle or sides? What should my ranged be focusing on?

Dwarf tactics in combat heavily favor forcing you to fight on their terms. They want to park their asses in one spot and force your movement to their superior ranged/artillery lines and hardened melee. I know it's not really possible early, but if you manage to have more artillery engines than they do it forces the AI to come waddle at you. Once the main host breaks away from their artillery to meet you, you flank it with vanguard deployment wolf or spider riders to neutralize it.

Greenskin ranged combat against Dwarves (aside from siege weaponry) is a loosing game. Quarrelers are one of the most cost effective troops in the game and they will out shoot any ranged infantry you can field between their armor and their shields. You need to have a plan in mind to get them stuck in melee with your calvary as soon as it's expedient. The only exception to ranged combat being ineffective is with Night Goblins (see below)

Dwarves don't really have a good answer in the early game to calvary and flanks. Even something as humble as wolf riders are invaluable smashing into the enemy flanks causing morale hits. Boar riders are ridiculously cheap for shock cav and comes with anti-infantry/armor-piercing, their attack and defense is poo poo so don't keep them in an extended fight, just charge and charge over and over again. Slayers exist when you get closer to the endgame, but with the game's AI being what it is, it's kind of easy to draw them out and shoot them to death or tie them up with a generic infantry unit seeing as how they are the only unarmored dwarf unit. Also keeping with this: Keep in mind that the damage a unit gets from it's charge bonus ignores armor, which makes shock cav all the more valuable.

One of the bigger leverages you've got against dwarves your wide access to poison. Night goblins come with vanguard and stalk so it's comically easy to catch them in the flank or rear with a bunch of poisoned weapons to keep their damage and defenses down. Spider spears have surprisingly good staying power in melee due to the poison. Spider archers have poison on both their ranged attacks and their melee, so if they run out of arrows charge them in to get stuck into melee to keep the poison train coming.

Remember that Grimgor/Generic warbosses will chew up basic dwarf infantry like whoa. Just keep them away from miners and greatweapon units.

Goblin shamans baseline spell sneaky stabbing also works wonders to help murder dwarves since it's a pretty big attack and armor piercing buff.

A lot of people think getting a big wad of boys is the proverbial greenskin strategy in the early game. While it is funny, it's kind of ignoring the fact that the greenskins are the second most tactically flexible faction behind the Empire. Their options may not be as individually powerful as the empire but they have some neat tricks they can pull.

DeathSandwich fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Aug 19, 2016

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


Double Bill posted:

What should I be doing in 50-50 Greenskins vs Dwarfs early game battles? I'm so much worse than autoresolve, and it's always the same story i.e. I dominate their ranged but my melee line crumples like paper against theirs. Spears in middle or sides? What should my ranged be focusing on?

Only Black Orcs can stand up to dwarf line units. Usually you win those fights by having a waaagh with you. It's the major mechanic of the Orcs and you have to use it to win.

Endorph
Jul 22, 2009

Double Bill posted:

The problem is mostly that I'd like to try and match autoresolve's performance, but that doesn't really seem possible. Autoresolve can get a close victory out of early game full stack vs full stack, but I can't get even close.

Because autoresolve is busted. It doesn't recognize that dwarf warriors and quarrelers are a lot better than orc boyz and goblin archers, it just sees that they're both tier 1 units. You can't match autoresolve's performance.

Triskelli
Sep 27, 2011

I AM A SKELETON
WITH VERY HIGH
STANDARDS


Double Bill posted:

What should I be doing in 50-50 Greenskins vs Dwarfs early game battles? I'm so much worse than autoresolve, and it's always the same story i.e. I dominate their ranged but my melee line crumples like paper against theirs. Spears in middle or sides? What should my ranged be focusing on?

Some great answers already but I wanted to add that Goblins are not Spearmen. Goblins fill the same role as zombies where you send them in first to draw ranged fire and then tie up infantry while your Trolls and Boyz run in behind them and start cleaning up. The spears do not help against cavalry, and Greenskins in general do not have charge defense units. Not that that's a problem against Dwarfs but it may bite you when you have to face the Empire.

I dont know
Aug 9, 2003

That Guy here...
I didn't see a write-up for Bretonnian units in the opening post, so I figured I would create a quick one. Obviously this is written for multiplayer. Disclaimer, I'm not an amazing player so take everything with a grain of salt. If anyone has any corrections or suggestions let me know and I will update accordingly.

The Basics

Unlike generalist armies like Empire and Orcs, Bretonnia is a specialist army doing only a few things well and most things poorly or not at all. Part of this comes from the fact they are unfinished, and part is by design. Their cavalry is superb, but they lack a dedicated counter cavalry unit such as boar boy big 'uns or demigryph knights with halberds. Care must be taken when fighting these units as your cavalry will suffer greatly when matched against them. Bretonnia lacks elite infantry, but the basic infantry it does have is very cost efficient. If you can keep them from routing they will tie up far more expensive units for a sensible price. Finally, Bretonnia's amazing pegasus knights mean they are the indisputable kings of the air, make sure you use this advantage to the fullest. The key to playing Bretonnia is mitigating your weaknesses and leveraging your strengths.

Lords

King Louen Leoncoeur: Murder Machine, Lou to his friends. I pretty much only ever see him taken with Beaquis giving him excellent mobility, good stats, and one of the few sources of reliable armor piercing damage in the army. His unique abilities are also quite nice, 12% damage reduction aura, global offensive buffs for the army when his leadership drops, a sword ability that significantly lowers enemy defenses for 30 seconds, and regeneration that keeps in relevant even in the potions meta. Again, Beaquis offers one of the few sources of reliable armor piercing damage, making him clutch against high armor units.

Lord: The creatively named Lord of Brettonia is your only current alternative general. He is similar to Louen with worst stats but around 500gold cheaper price tag and the ability to take godly potions. Still gets a hippo option, armor piercing, and the damage reduction aura. Worth considering.

Heroes

Paladin: Basic combat hero, not as strong as some, but not as expensive either. Typically used in one of two ways. They can be dropped on-foot into infantry lines to provide extra bulk, providing encouragement to low moral peasants while tanking enemy heroes, monsters, and elite infantry. Alternatively, they can be put on a pegasus and used as part of Bretonnia's air superiority. Can take potions if desired.

Damsel: Basic caster, only available in Lore of Heaven variety. I haven't had a huge amount of success with their damage spells, so I mainly use them for buffing and debuffing when I do take one. Maybe someone else has a better idea of how to make the most of them.

Infantry

Spearman-at-Arms: You're core infantry. Get as many as you feel you need and then take 2 more. You don't have elite infantry, so if you don't have numbers, you're lines will collapse, guaranteed. Solid basic stats, combined with buffing opportunities spread among other units, allows them perform well above their 300 gold price tag. Anti-large lets them deliver a disproportionate amount of hurt against low armor monsters and cavalry. I always try to keep a damsel or paladin nearby to keep them in the fight, When they do break (and they will break) they rally reasonably fast, so keep an eye out and send them back in.

Men-at-Arms with Polearms: Anti large and armor piercing. Along with your general, these are the only other reliable way of dealing with high armor units. As they lack both shields and armor, they will wilt quickly if exposed to ranged fire of any kind. For this reason, I try to hold them back in reserve to protect my archers from flanking cavalry and only bring them up as needed once the lines meet. Correct use of these guys can win battles for you but be careful. At 550 gold they are not expensive, but they are not disposable either. If you lose all of them before doing substantial damage to the enemies armored monsters or heavy cavalry you may find you have a much harder battle to deal with.

Ranged Infantry

Peasant Bowman: Cheap and powerful ranged. They are not armor piercing so try to stick to unarmored targets, but with focus fire they can still perform decently against large armored targets in a pinch. Avoid the temptation to get too many, I would not get more than 4. These guys can do some serious work if you keep them protected. Like most ranged they will melt if charged or get caught by infantry. Keep them behind infantry lines and use your mobile units to intercept threats ahead of time.

Light Cavalry

Mounted Yeoman: Light cavalry. Honestly I don't see much use for this unit. While fast light cavalry does have a place, at 600 gold a pop these guys are just to expensive for their role. This is twice the price of wolf riders, for instance. While they do have better combat stats then other light cavalry it doesn't particularly matter for their role of attacking unprotected artillery/ranged or chasing already routing units off the battlefield entirely. I would rather find 300 gold extra to get more Knights of the Realm instead.

Mounted Yeoman Archers: Skirmishing cavalry. Unlike their melee counterparts they are priced inline with other skirmishing cavalry. Put them in skirmishing mode, vanguard deploy, and annoy your enemy. With luck, they will disrupt they enemies formation and divert his attention from more important parts of the battle. I don't typically use them, but they perform decently enough to at least consider. I would not take more than 1, however.

Heavy Cavalry

Knights of the Realm: Basic heavy cavalry. Matches up with similarly prices cavalry such as empire knights. Not a lot to say about these guys. Use basic shock cavalry tactics, keep cycle charging, avoid getting stuck in protracted fights, and steer clear of cavalry hard counters, and they will do right by you.

Grail Knights: Elite heavy cavalry. They cost a fortune, a single unit is worth as much as 5 units of spearman, but they have high stats and a charge bonus bigger than most chariots. Still, they are by no means mandatory, and the lack of armor piercing means that they do worst against somethings then you might expect. You have to ask if they are worth the price to you. However, they ruin ethereal unit nicely, so you will probably want them when fighting undead.

Pegasus Knights: Flying cavalry. Expensive, but well worth the price. Dominate the air game, and use their speed and flight to always be where they are needed most. When using these guys be sure to take the extra second to position correctly for a good charge. It isn't a problem to do so when in the air, and will give you much better results.

Artillery

Field Trebuchet: Throws armor piercing rocks at high angles. 440 Range means it is one of the farther firing artillery pieces, but the big problem with trebuchets is their terrible accuracy. Hypothetically, the rocks can do tremendous damage to elite units and monsters, but the chance of successfully hitting small and single model units is so low that they aren't really worth targeting. Basically, large infantry blobs are the only thing trebuchets can hit semi-reliably. While they can force the enemy to come to you, at 700 gold each, I'm not sure I normally get the value from them that I should.

Ok, that's enough :words:.

TipsyMcStagger
Apr 13, 2013

This isn't where
I parked my car...

DeathSandwich posted:

Dwarf tactics in combat heavily favor forcing you to fight on their terms. They want to park their asses in one spot and force your movement to their superior ranged/artillery lines and hardened melee. I know it's not really possible early, but if you manage to have more artillery engines than they do it forces the AI to come waddle at you. Once the main host breaks away from their artillery to meet you, you flank it with vanguard deployment wolf or spider riders to neutralize it.

Greenskin ranged combat against Dwarves (aside from siege weaponry) is a loosing game. Quarrelers are one of the most cost effective troops in the game and they will out shoot any ranged infantry you can field between their armor and their shields. You need to have a plan in mind to get them stuck in melee with your calvary as soon as it's expedient. The only exception to ranged combat being ineffective is with Night Goblins (see below)

Dwarves don't really have a good answer in the early game to calvary and flanks. Even something as humble as wolf riders are invaluable smashing into the enemy flanks causing morale hits. Boar riders are ridiculously cheap for shock cav and comes with anti-infantry/armor-piercing, their attack and defense is poo poo so don't keep them in an extended fight, just charge and charge over and over again. Slayers exist when you get closer to the endgame, but with the game's AI being what it is, it's kind of easy to draw them out and shoot them to death or tie them up with a generic infantry unit seeing as how they are the only unarmored dwarf unit. Also keeping with this: Keep in mind that the damage a unit gets from it's charge bonus ignores armor, which makes shock cav all the more valuable.

One of the bigger leverages you've got against dwarves your wide access to poison. Night goblins come with vanguard and stalk so it's comically easy to catch them in the flank or rear with a bunch of poisoned weapons to keep their damage and defenses down. Spider spears have surprisingly good staying power in melee due to the poison. Spider archers have poison on both their ranged attacks and their melee, so if they run out of arrows charge them in to get stuck into melee to keep the poison train coming.

Remember that Grimgor/Generic warbosses will chew up basic dwarf infantry like whoa. Just keep them away from miners and greatweapon units.

Goblin shamans baseline spell sneaky stabbing also works wonders to help murder dwarves since it's a pretty big attack and armor piercing buff.

A lot of people think getting a big wad of boys is the proverbial greenskin strategy in the early game. While it is funny, it's kind of ignoring the fact that the greenskins are the second most tactically flexible faction behind the Empire. Their options may not be as individually powerful as the empire but they have some neat tricks they can pull.

Listen to this guy, took me 7 failures of turn 20 to turn 80 to finally get my greenskin campaign on very hard going.

Someone recommended Goblins in the front with trolls directly behind a while back early on since a level 3 town will make these units no problem. This is a great strategy since you use the goblins as meat shield for the powerful trolls. extended fights the dwarves always win in leadership so you have to really out maneuver them.

Something else I started to do was use Goblin big bosses as a artillery destroyer same with goblin wolf riders.

In general, dwarves just have such good leadership that your Boyz army will start folding with 33% of their troops remaining.. so you lose 300 troop fighting effectiveness at orcs. I really feel there needs to be some sort of skill for orcs that is "Fight till you die gits"

Triskelli
Sep 27, 2011

I AM A SKELETON
WITH VERY HIGH
STANDARDS


TipsyMcStagger posted:

I really feel there needs to be some sort of skill for orcs that is "Fight till you die gits"

Like you mentioned, the Goblin Big Bosses are fast and have "Encourage" to rally orcs when they're routing, but an ability to smack a retreating unit back into the battle would be flavorful as all hell. It's not far off from a rule that Black Orc heroes/lords like Grimgor have on the tabletop.

Goatse James Bond
Mar 28, 2010

If you see me posting please remind me that I have Charlie Work in the reports forum to do instead
Fun fact: in keeping with the bullshit lore, orc short victory doesnt require Chaos being pushed back to the wastes, it only requires headbutting Archaon and calling it a day. :v:

Wave three was incinerating Sylvania, the last non orc power worth mentioning, when Archie decided it would be a good idea to try to solo Barak Varr and drowned in waaghs.

fnordcircle
Jul 7, 2004

PTUI
Vanguard Goblin Big Bosses as artillery-seeking-missiles is still so much fun I'm going to mention it again in case anyone has missed it. Deployed on the opposite side of the battlefield he will either kill all the artillery or tie up 1-2 units of infantry plus a unit of artillery and he can play some Benny Hill style shenanigans if you want to really micro him where he keeps going back and forth between artillery zig zagging between the infantry that has been tasked with trying to take him down.

Goblins are all the fun stuff in orcs anyways. Fanatics, Doom Divers, Big Bosses, forest goblin spider archers and arachnarok.

Mordja
Apr 26, 2014

Hell Gem
Hopefully they add squigs and squig accessories...

Korgan
Feb 14, 2012


For Greenskins, you've got poo poo morale. Make sure you're surrounding and flanking the enemy to give them leadership penalties and even things up. Poison attacks also have leadership penalties, use Night Goblin archers or spider rider archers vanguard deployed from behind and they'll ruin peoples' day.

As well as this, invest in the warboss leadership aura upgrades. It'll help your boys stay in longer, and you'll pick up further upgrades as you go through the campaign. My Grimgor ended up with a leadership aura that covered a quarter of the map. His boys usually fought to the death.



Attacking:


Besieging:

Meme Poker Party
Sep 1, 2006

by Azathoth

Korgan posted:

Besieging:


lmao

toasterwarrior
Nov 11, 2011
Don't even think for a hot second that Grimgor will not walk over to cave your coward head in from thirty miles away.

Gejnor
Mar 14, 2005

Fun Shoe

toasterwarrior posted:

Don't even think for a hot second that Grimgor will not walk over to cave your coward head in from thirty miles away.

Except yesterday when i managed to turn 2x Thunderers and 3x Quarellers with a Master Engineer buffing and shooting him as well right on his charging out of formation rear end. He melted under the hail of bullets and bolts.


It was glorious.

Korgan
Feb 14, 2012


Oh hey speaking of buffs, dudes having trouble with greenskins vs dwarfs, bring a shaman. Big Waaagh buffs will let you slaughter armoured dwarfs, Little Waaagh debuffs will make them run away especially combined with flanking and poison morale penalties. The damage spells seem meh but the buffs and debuffs will win you battles. Bring a shaman in every army.

Gejnor
Mar 14, 2005

Fun Shoe

Korgan posted:

Oh hey speaking of buffs, dudes having trouble with greenskins vs dwarfs, bring a shaman. Big Waaagh buffs will let you slaughter armoured dwarfs, Little Waaagh debuffs will make them run away especially combined with flanking and poison morale penalties. The damage spells seem meh but the buffs and debuffs will win you battles. Bring a shaman in every army.

I just wish they were easier to get, that shaman hut takes aaaages to get and its competing with other must have buildings as well.

toasterwarrior
Nov 11, 2011

Gejnor posted:

Except yesterday when i managed to turn 2x Thunderers and 3x Quarellers with a Master Engineer buffing and shooting him as well right on his charging out of formation rear end. He melted under the hail of bullets and bolts.


It was glorious.

The AI really needs to work on not sending heroes out of formation; I just turned Mannfred into swiss cheese because he charged ahead of his infantry blob and got dunked on by Franz and my Handgunner line. Granted, his army was like 80% zombies and so would have amounted to nothing anyway, but his heroic charge didn't help.

Soup du Journey
Mar 20, 2006

by FactsAreUseless
I read somewhere that the quality of undead available via raise dead is affected both by the number of bodies you drop and the number of recruitment buildings you have in your empire. Is that true? If so, does anyone know how significant the latter effect is? If I have like 4 provinces worth of troop building chains in my empire, will I come across grave guards and black knights and oh boy oh boy maybe a varghulf in battle sites that feature a couple thousand corpses? Because I did a little trial run of the viet cong the other day and the best I found in a site that size was some ghouls and dogs, which was just :sad:

Meme Poker Party
Sep 1, 2006

by Azathoth
Heroic Mannfred not lore friendly.

Nasgate
Jun 7, 2011

I dont know posted:


Field Trebuchet: Throws armor piercing rocks at high angles. 440 Range means it is one of the farther firing artillery pieces, but the big problem with trebuchets is their terrible accuracy. Hypothetically, the rocks can do tremendous damage to elite units and monsters, but the chance of successfully hitting small and single model units is so low that they aren't really worth targeting. Basically, large infantry blobs are the only thing trebuchets can hit semi-reliably. While they can force the enemy to come to you, at 700 gold each, I'm not sure I normally get the value from them that I should.

Ok, that's enough :words:.

Dwarves are slow, move in tight formations, and heavily armored.
If they bring more artillery than you, you win because of how easily you can take out artillery with your cavalry. If they bring less artillerry then they lose the melee hands down.

Might also be worth one or two against chaos and orcs(arachnoroks are hard to miss)

Trujillo
Jul 10, 2007

Doctor Schnabel posted:

I read somewhere that the quality of undead available via raise dead is affected both by the number of bodies you drop and the number of recruitment buildings you have in your empire. Is that true? If so, does anyone know how significant the latter effect is? If I have like 4 provinces worth of troop building chains in my empire, will I come across grave guards and black knights and oh boy oh boy maybe a varghulf in battle sites that feature a couple thousand corpses? Because I did a little trial run of the viet cong the other day and the best I found in a site that size was some ghouls and dogs, which was just :sad:

I've been able to raise black coaches (can't wait for a patch that makes them even slightly worth it) and terrorgheist around turn 20 after a very bloody siege in places with no buildings. I haven't tested it but I've started the VC campaign over a lot and haven't noticed buildings having any impact. When I'd get to the point where my infrastructure in Sylvania was built up enough that I want to start making grave guard the core of my army I'd start throwing my stacks of zombies and skeletons at walls and intentionally barely winning and would usually get high tiers units after that. It can be finicky though in what it gives you.

Trujillo fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Aug 20, 2016

Atlanton
Mar 23, 2013
On Legendary, I'm finding the VC strategic side of things to be super simple, but am still struggling on the battle side of things.

I just really don't understand undead leadership and how I should be taking advantage of it. I feel like all of my skeletons are wavering within the first minute of melee, even against basic infantry. Even my elite units have incredibly mediocre leadership in a sustained melee. The vampire lords kick rear end, but they can only do so much before their army routs around them and then they rout even though they're regenerating and at max health...

Do I just need to win harder on the campaign map?

Decus
Feb 24, 2013

Atlanton posted:

On Legendary, I'm finding the VC strategic side of things to be super simple, but am still struggling on the battle side of things.

I just really don't understand undead leadership and how I should be taking advantage of it. I feel like all of my skeletons are wavering within the first minute of melee, even against basic infantry. Even my elite units have incredibly mediocre leadership in a sustained melee. The vampire lords kick rear end, but they can only do so much before their army routs around them and then they rout even though they're regenerating and at max health...

Do I just need to win harder on the campaign map?

On VH and especially Legendary you need to be leveling your general's "+leadership aura" and "+aura size" skills. This is doubly important as Greenskin's or VC.

Until you can do this one cheesy sort of strategy you can use is to keep your stacks small and only full of good units. Units dying is what tanks your Lord's leadership, but if you didn't bring more units to die then so long as they can regen/keep slowly killing you can win with just them. This is super degenerate and lame and boring but can help you out until you get the +leadership and aura size up and running which hopefully triggers more +leadership and +aura traits as you play.

For vampire elite units with any sort of speed you want to be cycling them out of melee to recover their leadership. And you also want to be managing the number of units you're using as expendable without the expendable tag--bringing skeletons over zombies if you haven't invested in their tech tree or general skills to make them better--since their deaths will be tanking elite unit morale unnecessarily.

Trujillo
Jul 10, 2007

Atlanton posted:

On Legendary, I'm finding the VC strategic side of things to be super simple, but am still struggling on the battle side of things.

I just really don't understand undead leadership and how I should be taking advantage of it. I feel like all of my skeletons are wavering within the first minute of melee, even against basic infantry. Even my elite units have incredibly mediocre leadership in a sustained melee. The vampire lords kick rear end, but they can only do so much before their army routs around them and then they rout even though they're regenerating and at max health...

Do I just need to win harder on the campaign map?

Are you using overcast invocation of nehek? It AOE heals so if your warriors are wavering it'll raise their leadership since damage lowers leadership it'll help delay crumbling. It's also good to get the leadership buffs on your lords relatively early. Usually you win the early battles with zombies/skeleton warriors/spearmen just through sheer numbers. Surround the enemy, pick away at them with your elite units and use nehek to heal those units and charge them at once from all directions. Adding wolves and bats to your armies is also pretty useful early on. Even if they don't seem good at fighting they have their roles. Bats can interrupt charges or distract missiles units/kill siege units and wolf charges to the back can help turn the infantry fight and can make sure that running enemies don't come back to the fight.

For the campaign map, I've found that simultaneously getting walls up in all of Sylvania as quickly as you can and getting at least one stack that's a core of grave guard should see you through the early/mid game. You can unite Sylvania in around ~6-7 turns with the right moves and then can sack the dwarves to your south/east or the empire provinces to the west and invest the souls you get from sacking into building up walls and recruitment buildings in Sylvania.

Trujillo fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Aug 20, 2016

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
Any advice for starting as Malagor? He seems way shakier to get rolling than one-eye does.

Also, is it a crazy idea to delete the Gor building in one army so I can build a war hound building cheaper?

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Aug 20, 2016

madmac
Jun 22, 2010
Malagor is not that tough really. Go for spells early before worrying about reduced upkeep, and take the fight to the Top Knots aggressively. You get bonus objective money for wiping them out and you don't want to let them build up and then chase you to the ends of the earth, it won't end well.

You'll be leaning on your Giant superhard in those early fights, so baby him and keep his HP up. Mass a poo poo load of Ungors, including at least four units of archers to keep the savage orcs in check. Once the Top Knots are dead, go straight for the Border Princes and just freestyle your way through the campaign from there. Make sure to sacrifice captives as much as possible to unlock Khazrak, you can't beat the campaign without using him to beat the Fall of Man battle.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Choyi
Aug 18, 2012

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Also, is it a crazy idea to delete the Gor building in one army so I can build a war hound building cheaper?

Yes, that is kinda crazy.
I assume you want the war hound building for Khazrak's quest. If so I always find that either one of the Beastmen horde I confederate with have just the amount of warhounds needed for the quest or the building already set up in their stack. And the times they don't have it built or have dogs with them, AI horde often come with tons of growth surplus once I confederate them.
Ungor's and Gor's are the backbone of any army you field, unlike Warrior's of Chaos which you can eventually transition out of marauder units in favor of the Warrior/Chosen building tree.

  • Locked thread