Endorph posted:

Doomwheels?

toasterwarrior posted:

OK, I love explosions and gunpowder as much as anyone so I'm probably biased, but something is hosed when a bunch of sticks and rocks cobbled together with twine by goblins is a significantly more cost-effective artillery piece than dwarf-made cannons and catapults. Seriously, it might take a while to research the full suite of Rock Lobba upgrades, but once that's done I get artillery that is way cheaper to buy and field than Dwarf artillery which needs a veteran Master Engineer, a tech upgrade, and a load of veterancy ranks to surpass goblin-made garbage!

And the funny thing is the Greenskins mainly win the fight because their rate of fire is batshit insane! I can actually run out of rocks to throw by the end of a pitched battle!

Chomp8645 posted:

It's all in the labor. You know how much it costs to hire guild-certified craftsmen? It's a lot.

Goblins though, they work for food. Because if they don't they are food.

Dandywalken posted:

Iirc Skaven got some weird small personal doomwheel thing at some point. Always struck me as out of character, but meh.

toasterwarrior posted:

EDIT: BTW, if you're fielding a Greenskin army full of heavy-hitters like Black Orcs and Big 'Un Boar Boyz, the shaman you'll want to take is the Night Goblin Shaman. Trust me on this; as fun as it is to summon a literal giant green foot to stomp on enemies, the debuffs of the Little Waaagh! are much more useful for your army's flexibility. For one thing, with some Spider Rider Archers in tow, you can actually stack enough speed penalties on horse skirmishers that your slow-rear end boar cavalry can catch up to them.

toasterwarrior posted:

One thing I'd like to see with Skaven is CA adapting the special rule table-top Skaven get that allows them to shoot into melee, likely causing a poo poo-ton of friendly fire. You know how even if you direct your ranged units to fire on an enemy that's being engaged by one of your units, if they don't have a clear shot, they'll still end up getting obstructed and mostly refuse to shoot? Skaven should just dump into the poor bastards, gunpowder Total War style.

Triskelli posted:

Well chaos cultists can summon demons wherever, it's just harder for demons to stick around away from the gates at the poles.

Plus we're not counting Chaos Dwarfs, Skaven, and the Slaaneshi Dark Elves in this "only humans spread chaos" calculation.

Von_Doom posted:

Doomwheels are more of a steamtank/chariot of doom type weapon. Rat swarms would fill out the fast attack bat type. Been a loooong time since I pulled out the old Skaven warbook. Don't think they do have a cavalry option though. Slaves, clanrats then Stormvermin for basic troops. Poison wind Globadiers/Grenadiers, Plague Monks, Censer Bearers for special units (Unlock with Clan Pestilens House Building). Clan Moulder building lets you do monster build (t1 rat swarms and giant rats, t2 Rat Ogres and t3 are abominations) and Skrye opens up tech and war machine units.
At least ambushers and agents would be easy with Gutter and Night Runners plus the assassin agent.

Hell just found this
http://warhammerfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Skaven

So yeah.... horde and low leadership army with nasty characters, monsters, magic and brutal war machines. Now I'm contemplating my hand at creating my first mod. Wonder how hard it would be to implement the slaves as a disposable tar-pit mob that wouldn't affect other units morale when they break?

Also, other than specialists (Jezzail, Ratling Gun, Runner's blowguns and throwing stars and war machines) I don't remember if they have much in the way of ranged. I want to say no. I remember characters can get warplock weapons, slings or blowguns. Don't think they used bows or crossbows.

Chomp8645 posted:

Nasgate posted:

I think rock lobbas are fairly sensical. Theyre stupid effective because of their armor piercing. Im pretty sure a giant rock achieving near terminal velocity is going to crush steel more easily and harm a larger area than a cannon.

Like, Doom Divers are waaaay better against savage orcs in my experience. As in the starting one outperforming two lobbas by two hundred kills.

The tech upgrade is pretty silly though.

TipsyMcStagger posted:

Been going hard on my VH Beastman "No auto-resolve" campaign. Up to turn 187, no factions are left except Skelling, Varg, Greenskins and the last bastion of vampire counts at templehoff.

I only have 22 settlements raised, which is going to pose a problem becaues Chaos is destroying things faster than I can.. I'm getting bogged down fighting stacks of undead and greenskins while they are mopping up all the settlements.

Anyways, Recruited 2 cygors in my main army.. thought they really sucked at first because i was getting so many ambushes that they were doing more harm than good.

Then I played a match of 3 stacks of horrible undead against my two stacks with 2 cygors and my god... watching one boulder throw dissolve a full unit of Grave Guards from 90 to 40... it's like WTF? I routed two grave guards before they even got to me.

Thanqol posted:

Getting rid of excess skavenslaves is the reason to go to war in the first place!

Bloodly posted:

I'm trying to think of how this would even work with the 'People are precious, EXP is GOD, if you're throwing troops away you'd better have a good reason' mechanics of the game. No costs? You get paid for replenishment?

Double Bill posted:

My new favorite thing to do as Greenskins is to let a rebellion take over a settlement and then subjugate them, to get a new buddy AI faction. I currently have four of them and it's great.

xthetenth posted:

Skavenslaves give xp. To everyone

Alternately getting shot in the back keeps them from routing .

Triskelli posted:

The solution I came up with with a friend was that Skavenslaves would cost negative upkeep. It might not put the army in the black, but they're there to keep your clan-rats and Stormvermin from breaking the bank.

toasterwarrior posted:

The negative, of course, is that Skavenslaves would make Goblins seem as stalwart as Ironbreakers. Too many Skavenslaves routing (and/or too many Skavenslaves in general) would lead to a massive chain rout.

Chomp8645 posted:

Hey I was probated when you posted these but they are some sick rear end screens dude!!!

NT Plus posted:

Also what are Chaos supposed to do about Gyrocopters? Chuck axes at them lol?

Endorph posted:

have a chaos lord on a manticore to chase them around

Triskelli posted:

Yeah, Skavenslaves should only be useful as extra bodies on the battlefield, I'm not sure if they should even be able to do damage. I do think whatever leadership penalty they give for routing should be much smaller than average.

xthetenth posted:

I still think that being able to commissar them is a vital gameplay mechanic.

toasterwarrior posted:

And VH Greenskins done. Fittingly, this was the most "fun" on the strategic layer since Greenskin victory conditions are much easier to get without overextending yourself like the Empire and Dwarf campaigns require you to do. Just sit pretty in the Badlands, sending out your boyz to terrorize the Old World and help out your idiot allies if necessary. You don't even get veterancy boosters like Captains or Thanes, so you can always just use global recruitment to refill your armies without losing out on "elite" units.

Lessons learned for future runs:

1. Probably drop the chariots for Spider Riders because poison is so useful. Missile cavalry is poo poo at killing, but Greenskin leadership is so bad you might want to kill them off ASAP so your riders don't chicken out. To do that, you're going to need some poison to slow and tire them out.

2. Little Waaagh! is excellent utility, probably better than Big Waaagh! because debuffs are cheaper and faster to cast than offensive spells that may or may not work as well as you want them to. Also, the Bad Moon vortex spell is loving nasty when overcasted (killed the most units in my final battle against the Empire!).

3. Offense, offense, offense. Don't bother cowering behind walls and keeping invaders out; that's your enemy's job. Sack their poo poo and make mad cash, and see if they can raise an army against you when all their poo poo is on fire. Hell, keep them alive to let them rebuild, and then sack them again until you're rich as gently caress and can afford to start your own ApORCalypse.

4. Strangle the Dwarves in their crib. You do not want those fuckers confederating. Burn and raze their poo poo, let your fellow Orcs colonize the remains. Fighting Greenskins is easier than fighting Dwarves.

4a. Corollary: Fighting them without Big 'Uns at the very least is probably the most trying thing you can experience in this game that isn't chasing missile cavalry. Hell, I might even go for Rock Lobbas first instead of Boar Boyz; they're faster to recruit and are kind of a bigger threat to Dwarves than your cavalry since you don't have to put them at risk to kill Dawi.

4b. Corollary again: fittingly, beating your fellow Greenskins to a pulp actually increases your chances at confederating them through a peace deal. Nothing like consolidating the entire Badlands after stack-wiping your rival tribe in one go.

Kinda want to run a Chaos campaign now, with the caveat of only using one mega-elite stack. Sounds a bit crazy, though.

TipsyMcStagger posted:

I hated greenskin campaign.. don't think i'll replay it.. maybe I just didn't play them correctly but it really, really sucked losing non-auto-resolve fights because your stack of 2000 units would have 700 units flee due to moral even with all the +leadership items/points you could do.

Fangz posted:

I think if you've lost 2/3 of your army you've kinda screwed up anyway.