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what exactly is the slaaneshi cult trying to accomplish with the sexless lizard lawbots anyway
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Sep 4, 2022 12:00
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Francis posted:what exactly is the slaaneshi cult trying to accomplish with the sexless lizard lawbots anyway sex
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Sep 4, 2022 12:04
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I know it's too late probably in the lifecycle of this game to make stuff like this likely but I wish there was a little more malleability in some units, like Wulfrik for example, his whole thing is him fighting stuff until he finds someone worth fighting properly in a one on one, so in a siege I imagine he should be able to fight on the ramparts with his men, which he starts out being able to do but then obviously once he levels up he gets the mammoth which makes him much better at certain stuff but also unable to do that. I know you can unequip mounts in the campaign layer but it'd be useful if you could have some of the lords on mounts get off them mid battle (and possibly get back on them later) so like Wulfrik could swan dive off his mammoth into the melee and any Norscans nearby would get a buff to their melee because it hypes them up, or use it as a tower to jump onto the walls while the mammoth goes about doing it's thing. Malekith, Imrik and any of the big flying monster lords could do the same thing, jump off them to then have something flying about bombing stuff while they get down to killing on the ground. Maybe I'm just weird, I prefer the aesthetic/feeling of the lords when they're just dudes in armour with a sword slashing through enemies but you're giving up a lot keeping them like that when they have the option for other stuff. Even regular cav being able to hop off their horses as a unit might be useful sometimes, you could do that in the old historical ones right?
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Sep 4, 2022 12:04
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Slaanesh is a pervasion of one goal above all others, a mastery to the detriment of everything. Lizards are a race of subs. Very slaaneshi.
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Sep 4, 2022 12:05
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Real Cool Catfish posted:Ways I beat Malus back in WH2: Thanks (and Kanos too), sounds like there's some options. I was surprised that he never suffered from army losses, maybe I just need to be more conservative with my ammo. I think the worst thing was he started the battle on about half health, and I'd always known the health bar to have the line on it meaning that's the maximum he can heal back up to, plus he's meant to take damage himself... but no actually none of that matters and he can just head back up as high as he wants. My poor Pigbarter, lynchpin of Imrik's eastern empire! Also can anyone advise how I can get trade routes going with Imrik in Mortal Empires? I have tons of trade goods but no trade routes, can't make trade agreements with anyone except some vamps who won't a veot...
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Sep 4, 2022 12:06
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noo, I can't have sex with you I must follow the great plan uwu
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Sep 4, 2022 12:08
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ninjahedgehog posted:Playing as the Empire and I don't know if I'm an idiot or WH3 is doing something annoying that 2 didn't. Not that I know of. In 3K you could simply click and drag your units and they would default into the most sensible position; e.g. an infantry core with spears at the flanks and a cavalry screen. Now that feature's gone, and AFAIK you can't even save army formations so you're stuck having to fiddle with deployment from scratch every time you enter battle.
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Sep 4, 2022 12:10
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Marmaduke! posted:My poor Pigbarter, lynchpin of Imrik's eastern empire! Also can anyone advise how I can get trade routes going with Imrik in Mortal Empires? I have tons of trade goods but no trade routes, can't make trade agreements with anyone except some vamps who won't a veot... Draft heroes you don't need as lynchpins of army and send them into the fog to meet new factions. You will also automatically meet Cathayan factions as their caravans pass through your land to reach the Empire and so on. You can send the hero east to meet more Ogres, Cathay and Nakai faster, west for the Dwarves and Empire, and south for the Tomb Kings. Very hard west to the donut. Be aware that the more people you meet the more some of them will hate and dec on you. Doomykins fucked around with this message at 12:28 on Sep 4, 2022 |
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Sep 4, 2022 12:10
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thebardyspoon posted:Even regular cav being able to hop off their horses as a unit might be useful sometimes, you could do that in the old historical ones right? There is a mod for Warhammer 2 that uses Malus/Tz'arkan's transformation mechanic to allow mounted lords & heroes to "transform" into their dismounted version.
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Sep 4, 2022 12:25
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Everybody should play at least a short campaign as Ghorst, for the fun and to experience the intoxicating powerlevel. It's definetly going to get hit by CA's nerfbat soon, so enjoy it while you can.
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Sep 4, 2022 12:35
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PerilPastry posted:Not that I know of. In 3K you could simply click and drag your units and they would default into the most sensible position; e.g. an infantry core with spears at the flanks and a cavalry screen. Now that feature's gone, and AFAIK you can't even save army formations so you're stuck having to fiddle with deployment from scratch every time you enter battle. ? That 100% exists. It’s a gameplay option so I guess it could be off for you. I think you want that on and the person you quoted wants it off, as I assume that’s what’s putting his ranged behind. I’m pretty sure deployments do save somehow/sometimes, too. I know I’ve done some weird things where all my units are bunched together on one side and then that’s the default deployment for my next battle. Idk exactly how it works tho. Anno fucked around with this message at 12:54 on Sep 4, 2022 |
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Sep 4, 2022 12:46
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Anno posted:Are people just right clicking to move units? If I’m moving a unit I either formation-drag or occasionally drag it a path. No idea if that matters or not. don't tell me you haven't furiously right-clicked in a general direction repeatedly to try and convince the 3/4 of models that aren't engaged in melee to stop standing around waiting for the other 1/4 to disengage and finally start moving where you want Comrade Blyatlov posted:My second [campaign] as Kairos I was at war with everyone, all the time. yeah same, though i figure it's kinda like this for any of the chaos demon factions. my kairos campaign after beating the local garbage high elves and lizards was war decs from tiqtaqto, oxyotl, mannfred, an kroqgar within 10 turns, though teclis and volkmar waited another 30 or so for some reason (volkmar was at least far away). having finally conquered the southern jungles and killed everyone nearby other than oreon, settra, and inexplicably strength rank 1 khalida, oxyotl finally conquered antarctica and sailed north to conquer my rear end hell, even the goddamn minor tzeentch faction in antarctica dec'ed on me. i think the only people that asked for a NAP were, god knows why, the minor nurgle faction next to them
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Sep 4, 2022 12:48
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VSOKUL girl posted:don't tell me you haven't furiously right-clicked in a general direction repeatedly to try and convince the 3/4 of models that aren't engaged in melee to stop standing around waiting for the other 1/4 to disengage and finally start moving where you want Unless they’re fighting a single entity or the lines just met and are still nice and neat I don’t even attempt to disengage melee battles unless there’s another unit also fighting whatever it’s fighting. Once all the models get tangled up they just have to sort that out themselves.
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Sep 4, 2022 13:00
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Anno posted:? That 100% exists. It’s a gameplay option so I guess it could be off for you. I think you want that on and the person you quoted wants it off, as I assume that’s what’s putting his ranged behind. The WH3 version of autoformation is extremely anemic comparsd to 3K, it's literally just missile front / missile back. Deployment formations save IF the army composition doesn't change at all - and recruiting or unit losses resets it.
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Sep 4, 2022 13:24
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Francis posted:what exactly is the slaaneshi cult trying to accomplish with the sexless lizard lawbots anyway more like slann-esh
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Sep 4, 2022 13:32
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Lol at having war declared on you as a chaos faction. War decs are a precious commodity. War decs fund my infrastructure.
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Sep 4, 2022 13:35
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Slaaneshi cultists encourage skinks to smoke lots of weed thereby slowing productivity.
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Sep 4, 2022 13:47
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i think kroxigors would be more into weed tbh. skinks definitely do meth
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Sep 4, 2022 13:58
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I'm pretty ready to pronounce Be'lakor as the definitive "if you only play Chaos once, play this guy" faction. Besides he himself being a huge shitwrecker monster, he has the fullest access to the daemon roster of all of the WoC lords(he can actually use warband upgrades to get exalted daemons of all the gods) for by far the most customizable and varied experience available(that doesn't involve subjecting yourself to playing Daniel), he's centrally positioned on the map but not far from a strong economic base so his campaign has enormous amounts of freedom, and he can crap out teleport portals to link up his provinces, which is extremely useful and lets you do wild crusades. All of the WoC lords are varying degrees of great now, but I think Be'lakor really marries all the best aspects of the new WoC systems and the existing monogod rosters into one great package.
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Sep 4, 2022 14:07
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no Gifts though. i like gifts
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Sep 4, 2022 14:08
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Kanos posted:I'm pretty ready to pronounce Be'lakor as the definitive "if you only play Chaos once, play this guy" faction. Besides he himself being a huge shitwrecker monster, he has the fullest access to the daemon roster of all of the WoC lords(he can actually use warband upgrades to get exalted daemons of all the gods) for by far the most customizable and varied experience available(that doesn't involve subjecting yourself to playing Daniel), he's centrally positioned on the map but not far from a strong economic base so his campaign has enormous amounts of freedom, and he can crap out teleport portals to link up his provinces, which is extremely useful and lets you do wild crusades.
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Sep 4, 2022 14:09
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Ravenfood posted:Is he limited in how he recruits any of the mortal warriors? Nope, his mortal recruitment/upgrading is fully functional. peer posted:no Gifts though. i like gifts This is honestly the only thing he actually gives up for all of his incredible bonuses, yeah.
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Sep 4, 2022 14:31
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Kanos posted:I'm pretty ready to pronounce Be'lakor as the definitive "if you only play Chaos once, play this guy" faction. Besides he himself being a huge shitwrecker monster, he has the fullest access to the daemon roster of all of the WoC lords(he can actually use warband upgrades to get exalted daemons of all the gods) for by far the most customizable and varied experience available(that doesn't involve subjecting yourself to playing Daniel), he's centrally positioned on the map but not far from a strong economic base so his campaign has enormous amounts of freedom, and he can crap out teleport portals to link up his provinces, which is extremely useful and lets you do wild crusades. Everyone should wait to play Be'lakor and Archeon as the patch coming this Tuesday is going to give them some sort of confederation mechanics with the other WoC.
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Sep 4, 2022 14:34
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Muscle Tracer posted:The WH3 version of autoformation is extremely anemic comparsd to 3K, it's literally just missile front / missile back. There's a mod that allows saving unit formations and they deploy relative to the commander's position. Highly recommend it. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2795767181
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Sep 4, 2022 14:40
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I did not have Kugath/ghorst Hellwar on my list but drat if it hasn't happened every time now
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Sep 4, 2022 15:15
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Which endgame event is everyones fave? I dislike all the "Occupy these multiple areas across the world" ones.
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Sep 4, 2022 15:17
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ZearothK posted:There's a mod that allows saving unit formations and they deploy relative to the commander's position. Highly recommend it. This is pretty great. Now if there only was a mod that saved control groups for every army so I didn't have to assign them every battle.
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Sep 4, 2022 15:26
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I'm currently in a "zombies vs the boyz" hell war with Grimgor, and Archaon just showed up. So either we're both hosed or he has a poo poo stack and is going to hit a wall of green or a wall of rotting flesh. It's fun to watch Grimgor useless beat on zombies for a week while Ghorst overcasts Danse Macabre and the rest of Grimgor's army dies. It's not so fun to have to do that all day just to ensure you don't lose half of your army. Also Mannfred and the Red Duke are doing some rat genocide now. Has anyone ever had Wind of Death crash the game because I cast it on a lot of rats and the game was like "well now I have to take you to the Hague" and the game froze. 
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Sep 4, 2022 15:28
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Alright folks somebody wanted a summary of how my idiot moron "look at how easy this game is I hold 50 provinces before turn 100" brain handles this game so I found my old WH2 Diplomacy Tips and I'm gonna go at it again for WH3. Feel free to use the scroll wheel on your mouse to realize sooner rather than later that I didn't put any pictures in this post. Diplomacy: TWWH3 IE The Everywhere Bowl Edition The Basics We've all been there. Your LL stack is pushing in Sigmar's chosen direction to take land that always belonged to you whether or not the residents knew it, your buildings are going up and will be ironclad in garrison defenses in 1 more turn, you have a bunch of cool friends and now with WH3 you can't wait to make a wacky gimmick theme army of Skaven Guns and Anybody Anything Else. Then some Beastmen run around raiding your land and threatening a rebellion in 3 turns, the guy 10 power rating above you declares, dashes in from fog of war, sieges your town and disables completion of the garrison, and two of your friends are going to war and you need to pick one and watch your reliability turn blood red because Khorne has just declared your heartland as the sight of his new favorite bloodbath. Unless you're open palm slamming Karl Franz and playing This Is Total War with wardecs on every other faction you will want to know Diplomacy. Diplomacy is how I graduated to exclusively playing on Very Hard or Legendary Campaign difficulties. Diplomacy is how I push my armies to the limit, overstretch wildly and don't get punished for it. The #1 advantage to Diplomacy before huge fancy alliances and confederations is very simple: control how many people hate you and how many wars are going on. It's easier to attack, advance, expand and build up provinces in one direction then to do that while 3 other directions run at your heartland or decapitate any minors you aren't babysitting. The fastest way, guaranteed, to lose in the sandboxes of ME and IE are to be at war with too many people too soon and to be stabbed from all sides, bleeding out as you blubber "et tu, Tretch?" and he takes your laurel wreath. First thing's first is control your aggression. Taking land because it is convenient, because it's next to you and you like complete provinces, is foolhardy. Your new borders have new neighbors. Your old neighbors hate you, so make a point to "clean your plate" and fully obliterate enemies or beat them until they accept peace so you can obliterate somebody else and then get back to them(the war gives them enough negative rep to never truly forgive you.) If you're not lucky enough to be a corner or map border faction you have multiple directions jackasses can run in from and take your land. So I recommend you start the game, take a quick look at who is nearby and tolerates or likes you and try to get NAPs with them every turn. Be consistent. Don't jeopardize good neighbor borders because you want to take "just one minor settlement to complete the full province." Every faction you attack that has treaties with others is feeding negative reputation to those factions. An ideal diplomatic start is to decide you're going to kick your beat up your southwestern neighbor to convince your western neighbor that you're bros for life. Now if anybody wants to attack you from the west they're more likely to be too busy wardeccing their neighbors and the guy on your west before they can even reach you. You don't need Alliances for this, the big bulky land between you and them is all the discouragement they need. Now you can take everything to the east in relative peace. Control Starts Early When you poof into a new campaign I want you to note who you start at war with, you're virtually always going to bowl them over and take their land for your starting province. Now hit that diplomacy button and look at who you are aware of and conversely who knows you exist. WH3 gives us Quick Deal and I want you to be checking that bad boy religiously every 1-2 turns until you've got your empire and a short history of its long-time friend set up. Once you have your starter province look around you. Are there any natural barriers? A big mountain range to your north so only Underway factions can approach? Are there two people at war to your east, a LL and a minor? Maybe there's a three settlement neutral minor to your west, and an ocean to your south. Quick Deal and try to get Non Aggression Pact with that LL, or that big neutral. Make a friend. If you can get the treaty easily and the value is already positive then look over who they're fighting already, think ahead a bit, ask for some free money and snatch it up. If you're within .1 to .5 points of it consider giving them cash to get it. Once you get any treaty the rest are typically easier because the treaty itself gives positive reputation, NAP being the first step to the holy trinity: NAP, Trade, Military Access. These low committal treaties are all you need to turn somebody into a campaign long ally. A lot of new player mistakes happen here. You have 2 out of 3 settlements in a province and this triggers your military campaigner brain so you declare on that LL. You might defeat them narrowly, take all that nice land, get set up real pretty with neat borders but somebody who naturally hates you declares at the same time and attacks from an open side. The people that LL was fighting dec on you and occupy your attention since newly taken land needs time to get the garrison back up, at least. Your greed led you to get into 1-3+ avoidable fights so that you could click Issue Commandment once! Look over your allies. Look at their reasons for liking or hating you. Pay very close attention to those other icons on the bottom right side of the screen telling you who they know and are dealing with. Get those easy treaties. Identify a safe direction to push in and use the veil of diplomacy to cover 1-3 of your other sides. Your goal here is to control your greed and keep a cool head. Make Big Friends But Hold No Feckless Alliances The holy trinity is so good because it can be dropped at any time with almost no penalties, particularly to reliability. They'll be mad you dropped treaties and you have to wait ten turns to declare to preserve your reliability but that's nothing compared to misplayed alliances. So you size up your neighbors, pick a winner or two, get those NAPs and fight somebody they don't like(i.e. aren't trading or allied with.) If they're at war with them even better, and if you can't get NAPs then "coincidentally" beating up the same guy is a fast shortcut to lifelong friendship. You can also as of WH3 take an ugly settlement in a bit of border gore and give it to somebody for free or even charge them for it, they'll read it as a wonderful +30-50 buddy points gift. You have friends now! Between your new buffer state buddies and the natural defenses of the terrain you're sitting pretty. One defensive stack on your border chokepoint and your LL can run wild. Now keep it under control going into mid game! Factions cannot declare on you if they've not met you short of a few very specific events. That's why you get to know people you have no choice but to meet and minimize your early expansion. That's why you don't send heroes and lords to explore without a very specific purpose. The more people you know the more RNG chances of trouble. If somebody declares on you from afar there are two bad possibilities. Nothing happens but they feed negative rep to anybody they have treaties with or they do that and send a crazy suicide squad halfway across the world to attack you. Having nice stable blocks of 2+ province buddies by your side fighting their own forever wars that keep things well clear of your breadbasket heartland provinces while you expand to a corner/map border is the dream. HOLD IT. I can see what you're about to do. "If we're all such good friends, we should use Alliance treaties." No! Never rush into an alliance without understanding the risks and NEVER stack multiple alliances, accepting as many as you can because "we're all friends here." There are two types, Defensive and Military. I will virtually never have a military alliance. I consider having more than one defensive alliance a big risk. I'll usually hold 1-3 defensives at most with my biggest, most stable neighbors who ideally aren't neighbors with each other. I've done this and still had them declare on each other later. When two alliance members who are also allied with you(or if you have two separate alliances with each) declare on each other you get a lose/lose choice: side with one, break with the other. There is no magic third button that tells them to get along or else. You might try to get a linked buddy blob going but it's never 100% safe. The more alliances you have the greater the odds of idiocy and the only preventative cure is to keep careful track of who they're fighting. If Thorgrim is fighting Skaven, Greenskins, Vampires and a few of those are significant LL-led factions(Queek, Wurrzag, Vlad) then you've got really good odds of befriending Cathay who are fighting Ghorst, Vilitch, Snikch, etc and it'll be a loooong time before they consider attacking one another. And even then they may still do it one day. The only mil alliances I've seen hold are the more natural ones(i.e. Empire/Dwarves Ordertide) or spontaneous ones like how I had two separate 4 faction alliances form of the various Chaos Demon/Warriors of Chaos armies in my Tretch campaign. If you must enter an alliance then at least commit and have members who are involved in a lot of fights as the AI weighs how many tough wars it is in before taking another on. Military Alliances are even harsher because every time your friend declares war you're invited to do so too or get those awful, awful broken treaty anti-buddy points and Red Reliability, the kiss of diplomatic death and a 30-50 turn invitation to play on This Is Total War difficulty going forward. Ugh. What makes the holy trinity work so well is that other than getting and declining alliance offers between end turns you don't have to do anything to maintain them. If you're doing well and your strength rating rises and your reliability holds your friends will want to stay your friends in most cases. Even if they don't they'll let you know in advance by breaking treaties and even then they often won't declare for long periods of time. Misc Ideas(Reliability, Strength, Babysitting) The most important thing for Diplomacy is to maintain your Reliability rating, which you'll do naturally if you follow the earlier advice and don't make Machiavellian land grabs. Your Reliability will almost always crater to that hateful red Very Low when you war dec early or break an alliance. Discontinue treaties from the diplomacy screen ahead of time(break, wait 10 turns) and mind who you ally with in the first place. When your Reliability is low you will be almost entirely unable to make any new treaties with anybody you don't have hundreds of positive reputation with and everybody will view you as a worthy target for war decs no matter how strong you are, which encourages others to help defeat you, which eventually leads to you being at war with 10-20+ factions as the rest steadily drop treaties with you. At least it'll be an exciting campaign if you're already winning and at strength 1! Even if they are part of your victory conditions consider befriending powerful factions near you that you have mutual enemies with. You can set yourself up with a powerful economy, march some doomstacks over and blitzkrieg their core land to seal the win any time but you can't guarantee a secure start, especially on specific difficult LL starting positions. If you're going to nuke your Reliability then it better be for an even more important and well considered reason than why you went into those Alliances in the first place. Or at least a really fun and thematic reason, like wanting to hold all of a continent because it's yours, damnit. If you are doing well your strength rating should naturally rise. If you are not and it stays low or you have to make due with a single army for awhile then be wary. The AI is more likely to declare on you if they perceive you as weak. This is why rapid expansion can backfire, having a stronger built up economy and a garrison in every settlement can do a lot to keep enemy eyes focused on killing each other because you're too scary. Even then if you tank your reliability they'll find moral justification to challenge a powerful scoundrel like you. Remember that while you're keeping tabs on who is allied with who, keep tabs on who fights who. You can get away with lower defenses and not expecting a wardec from an enemy who while powerful is also currently fighting 3 other powerful factions. And now that you know that, maybe attacking one of them will make you a new friend, hmm? Strength Rating is a good number for gauging who you should care about, especially those powers rising to the top ten in your campaign. If you see a multi-power tide forming consider if you're too close to them for comfort or if you can join up, at least by getting the treaty trinity with as many of the individual members as possible. My last little thought here is that as you get better at watching the affairs of your neighbors you may notice some of them getting blown out. If you have power to spare or your LL/doomstacks are in the area then consider blasting through your mutual enemy and gifting them back the land. An anemic buffer state won't last long and a small, weak buffer state won't protect you from enemy visibility near as much. If you neglect your friends for too long you'll soon have enemies at your borders and have to defend them yourself! Sic Transit Gloria Mundi Is that really it? Well what makes Warhammer such a fantastic sandbox is how many hundreds of factions are at play with dozens being relevant and ideally no two campaigns ever playing exactly the same. You know the fundamentals so use them to make your early games safer because once your economy and elites are online you're much more free to do whatever you like. Diplomacy is a shield against failure spirals and early game dogpiles. As with all advice in this game once you're good enough you can get flexible and work around it. Control your aggression and greed. Make a few powerful friends. Don't get roped into more commitment than you want. Be consistent and maintain your reliability. Pause frequently and study the state of regional powers and their relationships with each other. You can win by fighting who you want when you want but it sure is easier when somebody else does 50% of your border defense for you. And WH3 lets you build outposts and play with their units too! And here's a big secret: the AI cheats. But what if those cheats benefitted you? What if every minor faction neighbor and friend you had generated 1-3 stacks they can't afford and squatted in their capital all game, vastly discouraging enemy aggression? You could take that land, sure. Can you put 3 regular stacks on it to guard your border? Extras/Per Faction -A few end game crises change everything, such as Dawitide making all Dwarves hostile to everybody, or the Black Pyramid event making the usually passive Sentinels turn into the end game bad guy faction. Mind that pyramid and those karaks in your mountains. No, they won't care about prior relationships. -Remember that several factions are canonical jackasses in the lore and will not get along with at least half the roster, typically Chaos/Evil vs Order/Prude. Skaven, Vampire Coast, Vampire Counts, Chaos of any variety, Greenskins and so on. This is represented by innate aversions. There are also per faction rivalries such as Tomb Kings vs Bretonia, Dwarves vs Skaven, Tzeentch vs Nurgle, Slaanesh vs Khorne, Lizardmen vs Not Lizardmen, a lot of the VCoast LLs are set up to defeat each other for victory conditions, Aranesa hates Norsca, etc. Some Lords have special passive penalties at start such as Imrik having big-dicked his way through Dwarf lands as the biggest prima donna and having -negative rep with his starting neighbors. If you want to be friends with factions that dislike you you need to find a punching bag or bribe them fast. -There are also positive passive bonuses, though they are rarer. I've seen Tomb Kings start with +10-+15 rep because the Tomb Kings gave the Dwarves a good deal when the TK were alive and Dwarves never forget anything. If you see a positive bonus when you hover over the rep number and "why they like/hate us" pops up, capitalize on it. Although even with her passive +diplomacy bonuses I found Khalida had a high number of early aversions and undead malus declarations, stabilizing by mid game once I'd started thrashing people nobody liked such as Skarbrand. -The Empire cannot confederate Elector Count states normally, or all the other Empire sub-factions in the big valley bowl of humanity. The rule of thumb here is to keep your Imperial Authority at 3-4+ so you can confed and eat the -3 hit when prompted and to keep about 1000+ authority on hand at all times to put down ugly "dec a war on 1 of these 2, lol lmao" dilemmas. -Ogres and Tomb Kings are technically True Neutral. I found that Ogres can still start with aversions, though so far that has been to Skaven/Tretch. Zhao and Ogres have a high likelihood to get along and Greasus is positioned to get an enormous border buddy with him from the start. Tomb Kings make great neighbors because they are the only faction that likes great powers(or strategic threat as of WH3) more. If you start a game adjacent to Khotep, Settra or Khalida consider watching out for them a little and getting those treaties going, TK AI scale absurdly well into easy Top 10 power slots and are loyal as all hell. Be careful of buddying up to Arkhan who is a Tomb King with the aversion flags of a bad guy faction as well as being anti-Tomb King to the other three LLs. -Warriors of Chaos got enormous reworks and actual incentives to vassalize! Give it a try and consider deeply how much non-Dark Fortress land you want to hold and if you can give it to your little buddies instead for your precious buffer states. Make your enemies wade through dirty cheap rat bastard cheating AI stacks of Norscans to get to your breadbasket provinces. Otherwise remember: Chaos/Bad Guy aversions, people will get mad at you as you meet them unless you beat up their enemies and set up alliances. -With a sultry exception! Slaanesh gets a load of modifiers to encourage them to befriend and seduce Humans, Elves and whatever else you've put on your f-list and doesn't autodec. Just remember how fast word gets around if you start setting up treaties with other bad guy factions: they hate those guys, you're befriending those guys, they hate you. You'll likely have to choose to seduce humanity or go Chaostide. -Further Slaanesh exceptions include Morathi and Malus, who can use their specific gimmicks to start up something wonderful with demon factions they meet. Be wary of doing this with bad guy factions at war with other big Delf factions you want to buddy up to. And while I'm here in Dark Elf town there is a real honeytrap of a quest for Crone Hellebron suggesting you go to war with Morathi due to their canonical rivalry. This removes Morathi as an ally for obvious reasons but will likely get Malekith mad at you if they've made any friendships. Remember to always be scouting the situation before you make a hard declaration, I befriended Morathi as Hellebron in WH2 ME and it was the easiest Delf campaign of my life with my two enormous cheesy VH Delf deathball allies. -Nakai must vassalize as he goes. You can shake them down for money every several turns at least and you really want your buffer state game to be on point to cover them from the side your Godzillas With Boxing Gloves Doomstack isn't painting. -Bretonia has the easiest diplomacy in the game. Keep an eye on your neighbors that look to be doing well, don't go to war with them, research and confed them automatically and get bonuses for confedding. So simple even inbred nobility can do it. -Greenskins isn't as easy since you'll have to win fights but it is even more effective. Keep an eye on other Greenskin faction leaders, particularly LLs. Defeat them, take their stuff, get more powerful LLs for your forces. I once spent a ridiculous number of turns as Skarsnik using heroes to track Grimgor's stack in a ME round where he had 20+ provinces and 8+ armies. It took about 50 turns to not see him get auto-resolved somewhere before I could reach him but I eventually got the snipe and all that was his was now mine. -Norsca has the same krump 'em and confed 'em mechanic but Norscan land is notoriously harder to defend. Things have definitely changed as of IE and The Big Map but be very wary of how much land you take as Norsca early and that you're making every other sea-faring faction nearby inevitably aware of you. In ME this often led to Delf and Helf declaring and storming your terrible, long travel time land that you couldn't afford an extra 1-2 stacks to defend early game. The primary appeal of the Norscan Aggressive Diplomacy Action is to beat down a Lord with a really good elite unit(mammoth, frost wyrm) and be careful to break the leadership of the prize in question but to stop focusing on it and let it retreat. -Kemmler of the VCounts used to have an almost useless passive in WH2 to be friendly with Chaos that was removed by war decs as soon as Archaon spawned. In WH3 it is now possible to do anything with Chaos factions and you'll have loads of bad guy aversion points with many factions anyway so this is now a juicy bonus for getting big friends. -Some factions get inflated Strength Rating passively and this will change how they act and others react to them. Most notably are the Tomb Kings who will eventually get multi-army access and transfer their free recruitment to always having many armies with elites active, and the Dark Elves who will eventually pile up loads of Black Arks. -High Elves, Dwarves, Skaven and a few others have +Diplomacy bonuses hidden in their tech trees, rituals and hero/lord skill ups, such as Grey Seer Lords, Handmaiden of the Everqueen and so on. There isn't a limit to how many of these you can stack. Have ten high level Grey Seers? +100 Diplomacy with Skaven. More practically you'll want to consider grabbing +diplomacy bonuses early if you can, such as with the Dwarf tech tree, because setting up friendships that become big later is easier if you can just crack that NAP. -You can befriend some jackass wandering factions like Rogue Armies or Beastmen. Rogue Armies may even take settlements and become a power but for the most part these aren't great allies. They have a terrible tendency to meander around the land of people they're scared to declare on and raid them, they'll ignore your trespass warnings(but hey now you can dec for free any time) and they won't really follow orders or provide many ally benefits(the RArmies might but that's exceedingly rare to test.) In general you want to declare and obliterate these guys to keep your lands clear so they don't dec and surprise you at a bad time later by finding your one worst-defended settlement. There is a bug where Beastmen still generate money but have no use for it with all Beastmen units being free as of their WH2 rework so you can shoot for a NAP with Beastmen, ask them to balance it with gold and they'll give you 5k+, a real windfall early game. -Some factions are not "true" factions and will ignore virtually 100% of diplomacy. The two big ones are the Sentinels of the Black Pyramid of Nagash and Clan Carrion of Nagashizzar. They will squat on their respective super spooky landmarks forever until you feel like fighting them or you get the Black Pyramid Endgame Crisis. Other AIs do go to war with them occasionally so you may be able to use enemy of my enemy to get positive points with them but they'll be neutral buffer states without it so not much incentive here. Doomykins fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Sep 4, 2022 |
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Sep 4, 2022 15:28
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Gonkish posted:Yeah now that Malus can heal in Tzarkan form congrats he can't be killed. He was always an absolute monster, but HOLY poo poo now he's a one-elf doomstack. Give him even a little passive regen and he will never, ever die and he can and will take on entire armies by himself. The one time I tried Tomb Kings in WH2, the minor faction I started at war with somehow dragged Malus into the war and he rolled up on me just a handful of turns in I wiped out his whole army, but couldn't quite break his leadership, and it turns out whatever regen abilities he's got can outlast eight units of skeletons slamming him from all directions 
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Sep 4, 2022 16:16
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Vizuyos posted:The one time I tried Tomb Kings in WH2, the minor faction I started at war with somehow dragged Malus into the war and he rolled up on me just a handful of turns in In those kinds of trash vs combat lord situations I find it best to slam the units in one at a time, let the unit take a big chunk of damage and then retreat it and replace it. The big advantage to this is having your units standing around doing nothing will decrease their fatigue back to nil so they’ll be at top stats while the lord will be at max fatigue and eat a load of debuffs (something like -30% to melee attack amongst others?) Also figure if they’re less crowded, there’s less chance of the lord getting max utility from splash damage if there are only a few models in the direction they happen to be attacking.
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Sep 4, 2022 16:33
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Falcorum posted:Where do you usually go at the start of a Skarbrand IE campaign? I feel like going north is a bit of a trap because that river immediately north of your start slows you down, and there's a lot of space between settlements there, meanwhile the TKs are just recolonizing the spots you razed. Go South, the settlement density paired with the incredibly squishy factions there turn it into a buffet for Skarbrand. I was hoping for a huge fight with Kroq-gar and his Saurus but when I found him all he was doing was recruiting skinks and squatting on tier 3 settlements with no recruitment buildings. Also drat auto-resolve. This was a throw away decisive defeat and then this happened. 
99pct of germs fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Sep 4, 2022 |
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Sep 4, 2022 16:37
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As Settra I declared on the black pyramid faction due to a mission so I could get cash... They came out of the pyramid when Arkhan came to raid me and sieged Khemri, I was within range and had just gotten my second army up and with some skeletons. NOW SETTRA RULES THE BLACK PYRAMID AND ARKHAN IS NEXT
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Sep 4, 2022 16:45
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Doomykins posted:-Further Slaanesh exceptions include Morathi and Malus, who can use their specific gimmicks to start up something wonderful with demon factions they meet. Be wary of doing this with bad guy factions at war with other big Delf factions you want to buddy up to. And while I'm here in Dark Elf town there is a real honeytrap of a quest for Crone Hellebron suggesting you go to war with Morathi due to their canonical rivalry. This removes Morathi as an ally for obvious reasons but will likely get Malekith mad at you if they've made any friendships. Remember to always be scouting the situation before you make a hard declaration, I befriended Morathi as Hellebron in WH2 ME and it was the easiest Delf campaign of my life with my two enormous cheesy VH Delf deathball allies. Of note is that Morathi and Hellebron's short campaign victory objectives include killing each other, and the short win condition for dark elf factions gives you an extremely juicy +3 to all recruit ranks globally forever, which allows you to recruit rank 7 dudes for maximum redline bonuses from black arks fresh(+3 black ark building, +1 draftmaster, +3 win con bonus). It's probably worth murdering your opposite number(and also Malekith, if he gets angry about it) and focusing your alliance efforts somewhere else.
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Sep 4, 2022 16:53
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Kanos posted:Of note is that Morathi and Hellebron's short campaign victory objectives include killing each other, and the short win condition for dark elf factions gives you an extremely juicy +3 to all recruit ranks globally forever, which allows you to recruit rank 7 dudes for maximum redline bonuses from black arks fresh(+3 black ark building, +1 draftmaster, +3 win con bonus). It's probably worth murdering your opposite number(and also Malekith, if he gets angry about it) and focusing your alliance efforts somewhere else. Good points with the victory cons but personally I'd say it depends on how the campaign shakes out. If you want to raid and conquer the donut it can be a real downer to spend the first 50+ turns conquering your starting continent because Malekith is usually a Big Deal. Plot your ideal campaign path, I guess! If you taking the Delf homelands by force sounds fun then go for it. A bad dec on or from Malekith(got this early as Valkia) also drags Malus into it every time and I forget exactly how to finagle wars with alliances one member at a time other than getting the dec in before the alliance and Malekith/Malus is a T1 deal. If nothing else you certainly can't declare on either if you're having a hard time on another side of your land. As juicy as those victory bonuses are my ME Hellebron campaign was a walk in the park far more for having the infinite income AI deathball of Malekith on my side. I started at the top of the donut for Sword of Khaine and he and Morathi had 4+ stacks and arks on the southwest side. Armies you control cost you money. Armies the AI control don't cost much of anything, lol cheats. You can get a victory when endgame crisis pops(or do it via conquest if you really want to) so the question is if the Malekith deathball is worth those vic con bonuses. Hell, I had the same issue with Khalida. Settra gave me an 8+ settlement buffer to my west from Arkhan all game, definitely worth more than my vic cons. It was also blessed coincidence that I got the Nagash event which he absorbed the brunt of.
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Sep 4, 2022 17:24
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 there's more than 4 choices per chaos gift slot, I'm glad I learned this at like turn 22 instead of 100Cool, you can fill your pool with units like Furies and Bloodletters to 4/4 with the gift and then swap it. This system rules. Got two full stacks with 16k banked and -1.9k a turn going, time to race the red! Doomykins fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Sep 4, 2022 |
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Sep 4, 2022 17:36
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Vizuyos posted:The one time I tried Tomb Kings in WH2, the minor faction I started at war with somehow dragged Malus into the war and he rolled up on me just a handful of turns in Yeep that sounds familiar! I retried the fight against Malus that I had been struggling with and drafted the RoR White Lion unit and just broke him before he went mad. He and one unit survived so I went after him with my survivors, and after he unleashed the beast the fight was reduced to my Archmage with 6 White Lions vs Malus Darkblade. His speed was slightly higher than hers but I just had to flee around the map for a few minutes with him snapping at her heels until his health slowly drained away. Thanks, thread! Epilogue: I don't know if it's just coincidence or just the AI being really smart, but the Lizardmen popped up a few turns later and stole his last two settlements after I'd done all the hard work. Classic coldbloodedness!
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Sep 4, 2022 17:53
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Kanos posted:I'm pretty ready to pronounce Be'lakor as the definitive "if you only play Chaos once, play this guy" faction. Besides he himself being a huge shitwrecker monster, he has the fullest access to the daemon roster of all of the WoC lords(he can actually use warband upgrades to get exalted daemons of all the gods) for by far the most customizable and varied experience available(that doesn't involve subjecting yourself to playing Daniel), he's centrally positioned on the map but not far from a strong economic base so his campaign has enormous amounts of freedom, and he can crap out teleport portals to link up his provinces, which is extremely useful and lets you do wild crusades. OK sold
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Sep 4, 2022 17:59
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I'm really enjoying the flexibility of Khorne to have powerful and thematic T1-T2, as well as Valkia being a really good Lord that isn't just Skarbrand Jr. She reminds me of Khalida: she's not the best in any one field but she's so uniformly excellent and flexible that she can support an army in multiple spots and ways across any battle.
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Sep 4, 2022 18:01
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In my Sisters campaign Malekith actually liked that I was at war with Morathi with no prior interactions between them. I just assumed that was always the deal since he resents her in lore I think. Also, a funny bug I encountered was that I confederated Drycha and had her hang around to do the Rite of Rebirth for her tree, but the armies spawned to attack it were of her Wargrave of Woe faction and started neutral. I attacked one with Drycha and the game crashed from the contradiction. So now I just have these random Treemen standing in my territory doing nothing.
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Sep 4, 2022 18:02
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