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Trujillo
Jul 10, 2007


Total (War) Warhammer






"Addictive turn-based empire-building with colossal, real-time battles, all set in a world of legendary heroes, giant monsters, flying creatures and storms of magical power."

They're not lying. The first time I skipped school as a kid was the day after I started playing Rome: Total War when it first came out. I just couldn't stop, and now I'm even more hooked on Total War: Warhammer. Don't let the bad steam reviews fool you. Some of the DLC is pricey but the base game is great even without any. There's a lot of people who got this game for $12 from last month's Humble Bundle and it recently had a steam sale too so I thought I would do a Let's Play/game mechanics explanation/Vampire tutorial all-in-one.

Starting as "the cold terrible beauty" Isabella von Carstein on Legendary difficulty with the main goals of giving the petulant usurper Mannfred von Carstein his final death and turning 'Emperor' Karl Franz into a zombie, and maybe stopping the end of the world if I get around to it. Vampires are a pretty good faction for new players, especially because they're rewarded for their casualties in a way, but they're also my favorite faction so they're a good fit for a tutorial.

This campaign was originally going to be modded, but the save started crashing and it couldn't be continued so it had to be restarted as a vanilla campaign around turn 20. I'll be posting footage of the battles and screenshots of the campaign side along with explanations of every mechanic/feature that comes up.

Got the idea from Mukip's Empire LP you can find here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814238&pagenumber=1

Trujillo fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Apr 27, 2017

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Trujillo
Jul 10, 2007
Prologue - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687#post470695768

Turn 0.5 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687#post470703880
Turn 1 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687#post470712214
Turn 2 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687#post470758135
Turn 3 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&pagenumber=2#post470805846
Turn 4 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&pagenumber=2#post470837892
Turns 5-6 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=2#post470886204
Turn 7 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post470924613
Turn 8 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&pagenumber=4#post471047533
Turns 9-11 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&pagenumber=4#post471120760
Turns 12-13 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&pagenumber=5#post471202111
Turns 14-15 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&pagenumber=5#post471206057
Turns 16-19 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&pagenumber=5#post471345401
Turn 20 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&pagenumber=5#post471347157

The Divergence - Having to start a new campaign and what came out different in the first 20 turns - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=6#post471387613

Turns 21-24 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=6#post471493864
Turns 25-26 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/newreply.php?action=newreply&threadid=3814687#post471769454
Turns 27-40 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&pagenumber=7#post472111664
Turns 40-57 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&pagenumber=7#post472302814
Turns 57-60 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&pagenumber=7#post472415922
Turns 60-70 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&pagenumber=7#post472572368
Turns 70-80 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&pagenumber=8&perpage=40#post472833633
Turns 80-90 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&pagenumber=8&perpage=40#post472838743
Turns 90-100 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&pagenumber=8#post473567004
Turns 100-115 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&pagenumber=8#post473590877
Turns 115-125 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=8#post473680962
The Last Turns 125-141 - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3814687&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=9#post473734969

Trujillo fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Jun 27, 2017

Trujillo
Jul 10, 2007
Prologue

A map of the Old World, with a few things out of date. Crooked Moon has replaced the Necksnapperz in the mountains between Bretonnia (shaded yellow) and the Empire (shaded red) and the von Carsteins (us) have taken over Schwartzhafen in southwestern Sylvania (purple).



The available factions:



We're going to choose the von Carsteins. The game will tell you this is the hard start but they're actually in a pretty strong position. They start with two vampire agents which can make a crucial difference in the early vampire-on-vampire wars because the low-tier vampire units are basically fodder so Vlad, Isabella, and the two vampire agents working together can tear apart early vampire armies all while healing off the little damage that zombies and skeletons do to them.





The two starting lord options for the von Carsteins are Vlad or Isabella. You can recruit the one you didn't pick on the second turn, but the faction bonuses and additional starting units are different. Vlad starts with a unit of blood knights which are one of the best cavalry in the game. Isabella starts with two regular crypt ghouls and a black knight, not great in comparison but Isabella is able to have +3 vampire agents and has access to a building you can build in Castle Drakenhof that lets you recruit vampire agents at tier 1. With any other vampire lord you have to wait until your major settlement is tier 4 and then build a really expensive building (vampire crypts) to get a vampire agent, and then you have to build more of them to expand the maximum you can have. Isabella's advantage is that she can get a lot of them early and I'm pretty sure she has abilities that raise the stats of vampires. Either way, they're useful for spreading vampiric corruption to neighboring provinces which is important on legendary especially because of the disorder you get from the difficulty penalties that leads to rebellion. Having some rebels is good because you get souls and experience for killing them but it becomes difficult to expand quickly if you're having rebellions everywhere at once.






Neighbors and other factions of note:

The Undead



The Vampire Counts
- Mannfred von Carstein, jealous of Vlad's position, robbed him of the ring that gave him his immortality before the battle that would have given him the Empire. "It is claimed that when Vlad died, Isabella was fighting atop one of the gate towers of Altdorf. Protected by a ring of Grave Guard, she battled against the self-declared Emperor Ludwig and his Greatswords. When the Wights suddenly collapsed around her, Isabella realized that her beloved had been finally destroyed and his necromantic power undone. So stricken was Isabella that she turned from the men battling against her and flung herself from the tower. Isabella's body was impaled on the stakes below, before crumbling into dust." Now Vlad and Isabella have risen again, and the traitor Mannfred is hiding in Castle Drakenhof, the ancestral seat of von Carstein power. Mannfred will need to be erased from history. You could confederate Mannfred if you wanted, or you could ally him and let him expand north, but mercy and forgiveness don't seem like Vlad or Isabella's strong suits.



Mousillon - The Red Duke, a Bretonnian lord turned Blood Knight, escaped his centuries long imprisonment and took control and corrupted the port-city of Mousillon, although his imprisonment has driven him insane. On living Bretonnians he sees the faces of his long dead rivals taunting him. I'm going to help him kill them all in any way I can. I want to weaken Bretonnia since they're a natural ally for the Empire and as a vampire you can confederate Mousillon or any other undead faction with the right conditions (good relations, stronger army than them, and especially if they're close to being completely wiped out) which gives me control of everything they have, including the Red Duke and he has a pretty strong unique ability.



Templehof - This upstart necromancer somehow has 66% of Sylvania under his control, so maybe he'd make a decent vassal once he learns his place. He starts at war with Mannfred so it should be pretty easy to take advantage of that and hit one of them while they're roaming the haunted hills of Sylvania hunting for the other. My goal is to take Western Sylvania from him and then vassalize him, especially if he has the ruin-dweller trait. That makes a faction much more likely to colonize a razed town or settlement, so they'll take the scraps that I don't want. It's tempting to take all of Sylvania for myself but if I make them my vassal they'll always have 2-3 stacks of fodder around to help, along with agents they'll send out to corrupt and assassinate. That and it's a pretty lonely old world for the undead so it's nice to keep one around.



Dwarfs

Zhufbar - Zhufbar is our only Dawi neighbor at the start. Usually they have a rough time dealing with the orc tribes in the mountains around them so after uniting Sylvania I'll probably turn my undead host towards them. They're Dwarfs so I can't take their cities, only sack or raze them, but I want to create a no-mans-land buffer between me and the rest of the Dwarfs. Dwarfs and Greenskins can only take mountains and Badland settlements. Vampires, Bretonnians and mankind can only take human/undead cities, and beastmen and warriors of chaos are hordes who can only raze, while wood elves can take any settlement but the only place they can build their real buildings is the forest of Athel Loren. I want to hurt the dwarfs and root them out whenever I get the chance. If the dwarfs as a race win against the Greenskins early then the dwarfs will start to snowball and cause an avalanche in Sylvania because they won't have any enemies left but me so I'll get all their attention. If the greenskins win, they're as despised as I am so we may even be able to ally, although deals don't hold much sway over Grimgor Ironhide.



Humanity

The Empire - In an illegal and rigged vote, the Elector Counts of the Empire recently installed the boy Karl Franz on the throne that's rightfully the von Carstein's. The main objective of the von Carstein campaign is to destroy the Empire, along with controlling a certain amount of regions. Karl Franz can confederate other Empire counts, but is currently dealing with a secessionist movement in his capital province, and hordes of beastmen and greenskin lurk the outskirts of Reikland, waiting for a moment of weakness. If he confederates with any of the Elector Counts on my border, we may have an early war. Whether or not he can unite the Empire depends on his success and the starting traits of the Elector Counts. Some of them get a trait called 'Underdog' which makes them more likely to want to join the Empire directly and confederate while some of them have a trait that makes them distrustful of the Emperor.



Averland - A land of sweeping pastures and cattle, the Averland province is our southwestern neighbor, and we'll turn them into cattle if they refuse to recognize the true Emperor and Empress. They shouldn't pose much danger to my claim. The Elector Counts love to squabble with each other instead of recognizing and uniting against the true threats.



Ostermark - The northeastern march of the Empire of Men, Ostermark lies to the north of Sylvania. The towns and settlements here are very spread out so it's hard to defend effectively. If I vassalize Templehof, I'll likely let them rule Ostermark themselves as it's more trouble than it's worth exposing myself to raiders from the frozen north and the might of Kislev when my real ambition is westward.



Stirland - Our western neighbor, a backwater Imperial province closely linked with Sylvania through history and geography. Although their capital, Wurtbad, is a fair distance from Sylvania, they have a minor settlement "The Moot" which would make a nice early acquisition. According to them, Sylvania is their jurisdiction, but most Stirlanders don't dare enter Sylvania without a large armed guard. The deep fogs of the Sylvanian woods are said to sometimes trap a soul within them, forced to wander forever.

Trujillo fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Mar 25, 2017

ZearothK
Aug 25, 2008

I've lost twice, I've failed twice and I've gotten two dishonorable mentions within 7 weeks. But I keep coming back. I am The Trooper!

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2021


Vlad was the first lord I won a legendary campaign with, back when he was part of the main Vampire Counts faction, looking forward to the power couple's efforts!

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you
Glad another is going.

Angry Lobster
May 16, 2011

Served with honor
and some clarified butter.
Vlad and Isabella are OP as heck, looking forward to see them wrecking faces.

madmac
Jun 22, 2010
I haven't actually gotten around to taking Isabella for a spin, looking forward to seeing how your campaign develops.

Inexplicable Humblebrag
Sep 20, 2003

i look forward to vampire count sieges where sixteen vampire heros effortlessly scale the walls, slaughter the inhabitants, and raise a billion zombies

Mordja
Apr 26, 2014

Hell Gem

Trujillo posted:

I may use a few mods that make cosmetic changes and mods that give minor settlements unique battle maps for more map variety but nothing that changes the game in a major way. I'll be posting footage of the battles and screenshots of the campaign side along with explanations of every mechanic/feature that comes up.

Wait, they've figured out how to get maps into the campaign already? Sweet!

Can you write up a list of what mods you'll be using btw?

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


Mordja posted:

Wait, they've figured out how to get maps into the campaign already? Sweet!

Can you write up a list of what mods you'll be using btw?

They didn't just figure it out, the devs made a map tool. Mod support for this game is pretty good.

Mordja
Apr 26, 2014

Hell Gem
I know about the mapmaker, I just thought it didn't have campaign integration yet.

Trujillo
Jul 10, 2007

Mordja posted:

Can you write up a list of what mods you'll be using btw?

Better, Thicker Smoke Mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=700659207
Black, Black Orcs: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=692816421
Dirty Zombies: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=760237805
Ghastly Ghouls: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=851130271
Grand Campaign Custom Maps: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=877551324
Mousillon Redone: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=829824447

All of these are just texture changes except for the maps. Haven't played many of the custom maps yet but the ones I've seen have been pretty reasonable and don't seem to break the AI in any way.

I'll be taking the first few turns and posting them later today.

Mordja
Apr 26, 2014

Hell Gem

Oh poo poo! That's a lot of maps. Any idea if this'll slot in with a campaign in progress?

Ikasuhito
Sep 29, 2013

Haram as Fuck.

MonsterEnvy posted:

Glad another is going.

We're duel wielding warhammers!

Yvonmukluk
Oct 10, 2012

Everything is Sinister


Yay, another Total Warhammer LP!

As somebody who's started out with the Von Carsteins for myself I'm curious to see what you'll do with them. The fact you're looking to vassalize Templehof is already a departure from my run, I just wiped out all comers and claimed all of Slyvania. I should really pick up that campaign again...

Yvonmukluk fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Mar 25, 2017

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


Because of AI buffs on higher difficulties, vassals can be more valuable on Legendary than taking the properties for yourself. I think you still count as controlling the whole province for commandment purposes.

Trujillo
Jul 10, 2007
Turn 0.5 :drac:



Faction Bonuses -

Because both Vlad and Isabella are lords they can't be in the same army but when they reinforce each other they give each other +15 melee defense and attack.

Raise Dead is a mechanic that all vampire factions have access to. It creates a second pool of units that you can instantly recruit from like mercenaries. In regions where a great battle has been fought there will sometimes be a permanent marker on the map that improves the tier and number of dead you can raise. Famous battles are usually when there's +2500 casualties but not every time. I'm not sure what exactly triggers it because I've had battles with +3000 casualties and it doesn't trigger.

---

The campaign is legendary difficulty, meaning that the AI gets bonuses to their campaign numbers and stats in battle but also makes them more aggressive. It also means I can't pause and the save is ironman. I can't find the exact changes but I found a CA employee sum it up on their forum:

quote:

"In battles, there's a mix of either skewing stats in favour of the player (easy) or the AI (hard).
For example:

Morale Easy
Player +-0
AI -8

Morale Very Hard
Player -5
AI +10

There are similar modifiers to both melee and ranged stats.

Apart from that, the main driver of battle difficulty variance actually stems from campaign. For example, on harder settings campaign AI will bring better armies and build up more pressure on the player." - CA Ato

So that means that if I have an equal number of skeleton and zombies than the enemy it's going to be pretty tough because of the difference in leadership and combat stats. What gives you the decisive advantage is the Empress and her cousins:





Isabella von Carstein - Legendary Lord
-Starts with no items or followers but does have the Dark Retinue trait which gives +10 melee defense and attack to vampires embedded in her army.
-Starts with two abilities, Invocation of Nehek which is a spell that heals and revives units on the battlefield and Master of Beguilement which is a huge reduction to enemy melee attack for 44 seconds.

Master of Beguilement - I'll prioritize putting this on the enemy lord when they get into combat. They're the biggest threats that I'll face early on so this will buy me some breathing room. Vlad has the same skill so if they're in the same battle it can be chained.



Invocation of Nehek - Lore of Vampires The lore of Vampires is what necromancers and all Vampire lords have access to. I'll show each spell when it's unlocked through the character tree, but we start with Invocation of Nehek. Using the regular version of this spell, it heals and revives models in a single unit for 22 seconds. Vampires are unique in that their heals will bring back models. The Lore of Life that the Wood Elves, Bretonnia and the Empire can access has heals but not resurrections. This is the staple of an undead army because of its overcast. Some spells have the ability to upgrade the spell in exchange for a 50% miscast chance that causes damage to the caster. You can blow up your own lord with a miscast if you're not careful. When you overcast this ability, it makes it into a 30 meter aoe instead of a single target so you can heal your whole army at once if it's in a small enough area. The cost goes from 6 winds of magic to 11 but it's worth it. It was at least a hundred hours into the game before I realized how to overcast. To overcast double click the ability icon. If a spell has an overcast, you'll see the blue upgrade symbol in the spell browser above the cost and cooldown. Click it and it shows what the overcast will do.



---

Melissa von Carstein - Vampire (Death)



Traits like sanguine are randomly generated at the start on heroes but this is a good one to have for a vampire. Because of Isabella's trait she'll have 75 melee attack while in Isabella's army. Speaking of melee attack, I should probably explain what it is.

Combat Stats

Melee attack is weighed against melee defense to see if an attack lands. There's a bit of rng mixed in and a base chance to hit so reducing an enemy to 0 melee attack doesn't always mean they'll miss. The amount of damage done on a successful hit is determined by weapon strength. If you hover your mouse over the bar you can get more information about whether the damage they do is armor piercing. This is Isabella's weapon damage for example:



Armor adds to the chance that non-armor piercing damage and missile attacks will miss. Leadership for any other faction is how much a unit can take before it runs away but for the undead when you're out of leadership your troops don't rout, instead they start to crumble and disintegrate. A damage tick starts when an undead unit is below 0 leadership and if the battle turns too much against them they all disintegrate. That's why it's extremely important to protect your lord as a vampire count and to kill the enemy's. When a lord dies, they stop giving a leadership buff to the units around them and all remaining units take a pretty big leadership hit on top of that. Vampire armies will turn into dust and blow away without leaders binding them together.

Speed is pretty self explanatory. Charge bonus gives your units a boost to their stats for 10 or 15 seconds after they charge. Cavalry have much higher charge bonuses which is why you want to rotate them in and out every 15 seconds or so if you can extract them without taking unnecessary damage on the way out. There's last stat is a hidden one, accuracy, but that's for missile and artillery of which the undead have none so we can ignore that.

---

As a practitioner of death magic, Melissa von Carstein starts with Spirit Leech, which is a health draining spell that works well against single targets. It can be overcast to do more damage.



---



Vampire heroes are agents that can embed in an army to fight in battles; pray which is when you deploy them in your own territory to raise growth by a base of +20 and inhibit lowers it in enemy territory by the same when you deploy in their borders; demoralise army which lowers their leadership; assassinate enemy heroes or lords; damage settlement walls or buildings; and they passively spread corruption. Other types of heroes that the vampires can get are banshees, wight kings and necromancers and they all have different actions that will be explained later. Vampire heroes can also boost army replenishment through their skill tree.

---

Emmanuelle von Cartstein - Vampire (Shadows)



Emmanuelle practices the lore of shadows and has the Ghoul Whisperer trait which gives +3 vampiric corruption. Lore of Shadows casters start with Melkoth's Mystifying Miasma, a cheap damage spell that works better against a unit that isn't a single model. It doesn't do much damage but it's a pretty low-cost spell. It can be overcast but from what I can tell overcasting it only raises the range and not the damage. I'm glad she has the ghoul-whisperer trait because with some more experience she can unlock +3 more vampiric corruption so I can place her where I want to invade next to pave the way for the royal couple.



---

Vampiric Corruption

At the start, only three provinces have any vampiric corruption: Western Sylvania has 100%, Eastern Sylvania has 100% and Lyonesse has 50% because of Mousillon. Without high corruption in a region, rebellions will happen at a pretty regular pace and vampire armies take attrition when marching through foreign lands without vampiric corruption (unless you move in the raid or channeling stances but they slow you down). There's also a leadership and casualty replenishment buff that the undead get in corrupted territory. The impacts of corruption:



---



Isabella's starting army is made up of two units of crypt ghouls, one unit of black knights, four units of fell bats and two vargheists.



"Crypt Ghouls are barely sentient but they can fight, using their claws and makeshit weapons to rip men apart." A tier II infantry, crypt ghouls will do well against other low tier infantry. The icon next to their melee attack number means their attacks poison, reducing a lot of the enemy's stats. When mixed in with cheaper infantry, crypt ghouls can do surprisingly well for their tier and cost because of their poison attacks and relatively high weapon strength. They have almost no armor so missile attacks will thin them out pretty quickly.





"Atop their skeletal steeds, Black Knights destroy enemy battle lines with powerful cavalry charges." A slight exaggeration. Black Knights have a very low charge bonus for cavalry at 26 and the rest of their stats aren't great. Against most other cavalry they'll perform poorly but they'll help me clear out skeleton warriors and zombies in the early battles through repeated charges. The bronze shield next to armour means they'll block 30% of all small arms fire that hits them from the front. A silver shield is a higher percentage.



"Fell Bats fall upon their enemies in a seeting mass; in numbers, they become overwhelming." We start with four fell bats so we'll see if there's any truth to that. The role of fell bats is to tie up enemy cavalry right when they're about to charge, swarm over the enemy's line to stop their missile troops from firing or to kill an enemy wizard if you have at least two bats attacking them. They have okay melee defense but 0 armor so they're suited for hit and run attacks to distract the enemy. Isabella can unlock upgrades to bats' stats through her character tree and technology so maybe they can be made effective enough to warrant bringing more than a few.



"A vampire reduced and twisted to savagery, Vargheists swoop in from above and rip battle lines to pieces." With a whopping 100 weapon strength and the frenzy ability (the sixth circle below their stats with the claw marks) they will make mince meat of most unarmored infantry, but with such low armor themselves you have to make sure they're not engaged for too long.



A unit with frenzy will get big boosts to their attack while their leadership is at least 50%.

The next update will be turns 1 and 2. I just wanted to get some explaining out of the way first.

Trujillo fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Mar 26, 2017

Trujillo
Jul 10, 2007

Mordja posted:

Oh poo poo! That's a lot of maps. Any idea if this'll slot in with a campaign in progress?

I'm not sure but my guess is that it would be fine to turn on mid-campaign.

madmac
Jun 22, 2010

quote:

I don't remember this ability affecting all enemies in a -100m range. If that's true this is a much more powerful ability than I realized. Most heroes don't even have as much melee attack as this ability takes off so you're nearly shutting down enemy damage in one area for 44 seconds.

The effect wording is a bit wonky but what it actually means is that it targets one enemy within 100 Meters of the caster. The wording for AoE abilities is different.

quote:

Armor adds to the chance that non-armor piercing damage and missile attacks will miss.

Strictly speaking, what armor does is roll for 50% or more of your full armor value, and then reduces non-armor piercing damage by that percentage. EG Isabella has 90 armor so for any given successful attack against her she reduces non-armor piercing damage by anywhere from 45-90%.

I really like how Isabella's posse of Vampires gives you the full spread of possible magic lores for Vampire Counts right out the gate. Granted Lore of Vampires is so powerful you don't especially need anything else but Death and Shadow are still very potent lores that open up some interesting options.

madmac fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Mar 26, 2017

Trujillo
Jul 10, 2007

madmac posted:

The effect wording is a bit wonky but what it actually means is that it targets one enemy within 100 Meters of the caster. The wording for AoE abilities is different.

Thanks, just fixed that part

John Charity Spring
Nov 4, 2009

SCREEEEE
Worth noting that Isabella's army skills boost Vargheist armour significantly, so like you note with the bats, the Vargheists become even better units as Isabella levels up.

Also in future, when you're taking screenshots of the spells in the spell browser, I think you should click the little overcast symbol so the tooltip in the spell browser will show what overcasting does (in blue text).

This is good so far, gonna keep an eye on the thread!

Mzbundifund
Nov 5, 2011

I'm afraid so.

Trujillo posted:

The next update will be turns 1 and 2. I just wanted to get some explaining out of the way first.

I really appreciate this - I've never played the game and this sort of post helps a lot understanding the mechanics.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Whereas I appreciate it because I have played the game but didn't get very far due to getting kinda bogged down in the mechanics, and so this'll all be very helpful when I take another stab later.

Nanomashoes
Aug 18, 2012

Also overcasting spirit leech just increases the range, not the damage IIRC and is almost totally useless once you get a mount.

Trujillo
Jul 10, 2007
Turn 1 - Opening Moves





We have our first objective: to make people stop thinking we're Stirland's bastard child. Once we occupy, sack, raze or loot two settlements we'll get a influx of dark magic.

---



The victory conditions. Long victory includes destroying the Bretonnian dukes and controlling Mousillon either directly or through alliance/vassalage. It's a lot easier than wiping out the dwarves which is one of Mannfred's objectives.

---

This is currently our view of the world. A large mountain and giant skull rocks split us off from the rest of western Sylvania so to get there we'll have to pass through Mannfred's territory in eastern Sylvania or The Moot which is the uncorrupted home of the half-lings but they're not represented in-game at least yet.




To the southwest is Grenzstadt, an Averland settlement. To the east of them are the dwarf holds of Zhufbar but their capital city is east of Castle Drakenhof and out of my vision.




---


As the first order of business, Isabella sends out emissaries to all the neighboring realms, demanding their fealty. Everyone who refused will die at least once, and they all refused.



Both Mannfred and Zelig are schemers and opportunists. Schemer makes them more likely to backstab you and break deals and opportunist increases their likelihood of attacking you if you're weak (I think). Zelig doesn't have the ruin-dweller trait unfortunately but I still want to make him bend the knee and kiss the ring. I have no interest in diplomacy with either faction right now as uniting Sylvania under the von Carstein banner is my first goal and Mannfred must be destroyed.



Both Empire provinces that border me are distrustful of the Emperor and defensive. That somehow worked out perfectly as it means they probably won't try to expand into Sylvania and at the same time they likely won't be swearing fealty to Karl Franz so I don't have to rush in and take Stirland and Averland until I'm ready to absorb more territory.



Zhufbar is also distrustful of other dwarfs. The only way I could have had a better diplomatic setup at the start was if Templehof had ruin-dweller. Usually when a faction is on the brink of total destruction like I plan to on pushing Zhufbar to, they'll confederate with the main faction, but now I can toy with Zhufbar all I want and there's a good chance they'll stubbornly take it. They also have 'holds grudges' and 'reliable' so they're hesitant to break a deal or forget the horrors we'll soon be inflicting on them.

---



The next move is raising the dead in western Sylvania. Available are two zombies, a skeleton warrior and a skeleton spearmen. We take them all because they're really cheap and the only infantry we have is two crypt ghouls and ghoul defense and armor is too low to let them be the focus of attacks.



"Driven not by skill, but by a desire to feast on flesh, Zombies are good, terrifying fodder in melee." One third of that is true, they are fodder. I'm not sure if their combat stats are lower than Bretonnian peasant mobs but probably, which would make them the weakest unit in the game. They're still useful to bring in my armies right now because I'll take anything I can get.





"Little more than shuffling bones with swords and spears, Skeletons perform a dutiful, if not exemplary, job in the battle lines." I really like the skeleton warriors and spearmen, in part because they march in perfect synchronization and they're modeled off the skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts. Their combat stats aren't great now but can be raised through corpse carts, technologies and certain skills. At some point I'll want to replace skeleton warriors with grave guard as the core of my army but they'll do for now. The spearmen have a damage bonus against large foes so anything cavalry size or bigger like monsters and giants they'll do extra damage to, which makes skeleton spearmen always relevant for vampire counts since I don't think there's any other anti-large units in their roster besides blood knights which I won't be seeing for a while. You can tell a skeleton spearmen does anti-large damage by the icon next to weapon strength. If you hold the mouse over it it'll tell you how much exactly they do.



---

We have one building slot available in our capital and our only town of Schwartzhafen. It's a minor settlement which means it caps out at tier III so tier IV and V buildings can never be built here and the amount of slots I get is three. In every province there's the capital which has six slots (wood elves get 10 in each forest settlement) and then there's 1-3 minor settlements. Only province capitals start off having walls. Walls are added to minor settlements through the level 2 garrison building or just by having a level three settlement for Bretonnian factions adds them automatically. I'm going to want walls in all my minor settlements so they can't be immediately attacked and burned down in the same turn. If the enemy has to lay a siege it'll give me time to reinforce and clear them out. Schwartzhafen starts off as a tier II minor settlement with the first second tier building in the forest chain, which makes me able to recruit wolves, bats, and vargheist but nothing else yet.





I want to put the empty land to use on the first turn. There's a lot of buildings available but the two I'm debating building are the cemetary and the corpse pile.





The cemetary lets me recruit skeleton warriors and zombies and eventually heavier infantry and some cavalry while the corpse pile is the first garrison building and the first step to getting walls around Schwartzhafen. I decide that because Templehof already has a cemetary in Fort Oberstyre that I might be able to take over then I might as well get the corpse pile. There's also the cairn circle I can build which unlocks corpse carts and crypt ghouls for recruitment which would be useful but the third building in that chain is a tier IV so I want to build that chain in a province capital. The lychyard which improves growth would also have been a good move but I'd rather play it safe and start with the garrison building to start the process of getting walls around our capital as soon as possible.

---

The vampire tech tree is divided up into four unholy books:



The Lahmian Book of Blood - Said to be transcribed from scrolls of Neferata herself, this grave codex instructs recently-sired Vampires in the art of infiltrating, influencing and spreading the Vampiric curse across the world. This grimoire gives me more dark magic income from my cities, more vampiric influence spread in my provinces and to my neighbors, boosts to my agents and diplomatic bonuses. I'll probably go deepest into this one first because I want to start spreading corruption as soon as I can.



The Book of Arkhan - Also known as the Tome of Bone, this dread volume, authored by Arkhan the Black, is filled with his secrets for instilling vigour and other deadly abilities into zombified and skeletal vessels. This is usually the path I go down second. It gives various buffs to skeletons, grave guard, zombies, but I may go for one of the other books second since Isabella has skills that buff the forest beasts.



De Noirot's Blasphemous Bestiary - For centuries, this tome of beasts has been required reading for Necromancers who wish ultimate control, training and mastery of the dread creatures that lurk by the graveside. This one helps out bats, wolves, vargheist and terrorgheist and compliments Isabella well because of skills that will be shown later.



Liber Necronomica - A text of powerful binding and one of the Nine Books of Nagash. It contains countless rituals to ensnare wrathful spirits, summon ghoulish creates and imbue such fell things with dread power. The Liber Necronomica is all about crypt ghouls, crypt horrors, and ghosts (cairn wraiths and hexwraiths) along with some general buffs like a campaign movement range extension and a siege bonus.

I decide to start with the Lahmian Book of Blood because I want to research 'spread vampire covens' soon to soften up my neighboring provinces for conquest.

---

Now that everything else is taken care of we can move our army.



I decide just to run straight north into Mannfred's territory for a few reasons. #1 is all I can recruit in my territory right now are bats and wolves. Not the most effective units, so instead by running into Mannfred's territory I can steal the dead from cemetaries in eastern Sylvania which gives me almost a full army and deprives Mannfred of corpses. I'll also be in a position to reach either Castles Drakenhof or Templehof by turn 2 depending on which way I go. If I sat in my own territory and recruited I wouldn't be able to reach Castle Templehof till turn 3. Factions won't like it when you enter their lands without a military access agreement but Mannfred's days are numbered and his opinion of us is irrelevant.







By embedding the two vampire heroes in our army, we now have a full stack of 20 units in position to strike at whoever looks weakest as we end the first turn.

Trujillo fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Mar 26, 2017

Trujillo
Jul 10, 2007

Mzbundifund posted:

I really appreciate this - I've never played the game and this sort of post helps a lot understanding the mechanics.

Night10194 posted:

Whereas I appreciate it because I have played the game but didn't get very far due to getting kinda bogged down in the mechanics, and so this'll all be very helpful when I take another stab later.

Good to know that it's helping. When I do battles I might eventually do narration over them to explain what I'm doing and why but for now I'm just going to write it out.

Nanomashoes posted:

Also overcasting spirit leech just increases the range, not the damage IIRC and is almost totally useless once you get a mount.

Yeah you're right, for some reason I thought it said that on the spell browser. And I already did the first battle and overcasted it like a chump.

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


Overcasting Spirit Leech used to increase its damage, but VC players were casually sniping enemy leadership every match so now it doesn't.

DarthRoblox
Nov 25, 2007
*rolls ankle* *gains 15lbs* *apologizes to TFLC* *rolls ankle*...
For reference, the chance to hit is something like 40% + Melee Attack - Melee Defense. That puts the 5 melee attack of zombies in perspective - if whatever they're attacking has anything more than the slightest melee defense, the zombies aren't hitting poo poo.

CommissarMega
Nov 18, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Well, zombies were the most useless units in the original tabletop- they were meatshields, nothing more. That being said, from what I hear (never played as or against them meself) at only 3 points a model and raise dead spells allowing them to grow even beyond their initial size, they were great for plonking caster heroes in. Since VC heroes in the TT were hella expensive (but still worth their points to boot) and skeletons were hard to paint, I can see people taking hordes of those guys in their games, but not why you'd want them in Total Warhammer if there were any other choice.

John Charity Spring
Nov 4, 2009

SCREEEEE

CommissarMega posted:

Well, zombies were the most useless units in the original tabletop- they were meatshields, nothing more. That being said, from what I hear (never played as or against them meself) at only 3 points a model and raise dead spells allowing them to grow even beyond their initial size, they were great for plonking caster heroes in. Since VC heroes in the TT were hella expensive (but still worth their points to boot) and skeletons were hard to paint, I can see people taking hordes of those guys in their games, but not why you'd want them in Total Warhammer if there were any other choice.

They're almost always the most plentiful units available when you use Raise Dead and if all you want is to provide bodies for the front line they work very well. There are so many in a unit that even if they all get killed their killers tend to be tired out from doing it, making them vulnerable to your actual good units. And ease of replacement makes them completely expendable. If you get various techs and buffs they can even take some enemies down with them.

Mordja
Apr 26, 2014

Hell Gem

CommissarMega posted:

Well, zombies were the most useless units in the original tabletop- they were meatshields, nothing more. That being said, from what I hear (never played as or against them meself) at only 3 points a model and raise dead spells allowing them to grow even beyond their initial size, they were great for plonking caster heroes in. Since VC heroes in the TT were hella expensive (but still worth their points to boot) and skeletons were hard to paint, I can see people taking hordes of those guys in their games, but not why you'd want them in Total Warhammer if there were any other choice.

Mostly you wanna summon them in the middle of a group of archers, in front of charging cavalry, or in the rear of an engaged melee line. You usually don't want to actually take them in an army.

Sindai
Jan 24, 2007
i want to achieve immortality through not dying
Oh neat, another one. I'm interested to see how battle tactics differ between these guys and the Empire.

ThingOne
Jul 30, 2011



Would you like some tofu?


The Peasant Mob has better stats than the Zombies but the Zombies are unbreakable and cause fear so they end up winning.

Trujillo
Jul 10, 2007
Decided to go without the custom settlement mod because I was reading the mod's steam page again and it has some problems with walls, and since they're done by a lot of different mapmakers some of the maps are pretty stupid.

Had the next update written since yesterday, just waiting for a battle to finish uploading to youtube.

Trujillo
Jul 10, 2007
Turn 2

"Surrender and serve me in life, or die and slave for me in death." - Vlad von Carstein





At the start of the second turn, Vlad is able to be unleashed upon the world. He's a legendary lord and every army is required to be led by a lord. If Vlad goes down in battle I'll have to temporarily replace him, but legendary lords and faction leaders will be back 3-4 turns later after being "wounded" in battle. On the first turn being raised, a lord has no movement points so Vlad can sit on the sidelines for now. Every new army will make my unit upkeep more expensive across the board. Some factions don't have this penalty but it means Isabella is going to soldier on without Vlad for now. Since he would take a few turns to catch up to Isabella on the map it would be better just to recruit him from my first conquest and save myself some dark magic.



During the AI's turn, Mannfred moves north and sacks the Templehof town of Eschen that's hidden from us by the fog. To get back into his own territory he enters the forced march stance which you can tell by the icon above his banner. In forced march you get 50% more campaign movement but are unable to attack, you lose all ambush defense and if you're attacked while in forced march all your troops will start the battle tired and their vigour will be capped at tired instead of fresh. As units run, shoot, or swing they'll get more tired over time which gives a large penalty to the unit's fighting ability with each decreasing level of energy, and huge penalties when you get to the point of exhaustion. Some units have a trait that makes them immune to vigour loss and some lords and units have skills and traits that slow the rate your troops get tired. The undead don't get tired so it's called something else for them but it's the same effect.

Once Castle Drakenhof is secured, we can build the Mausoleum of the Mad Count, Isabella's father, which lets me recruit vampire heroes and expands my vampire limit and improves the rank they start at. There's also a gold mine in Drakenhof's region which would should be minting coins with Vlad and Isabella's faces, but the castle is well defended.



It has a unique garrison of 14 units, 4 of which are grave guard, a heavier armored infantry, and 2 are vargheists. I could assault and overwhelm the garrison with numbers but if Mannfred is behind the walls with an army then I'll need more than what I've got now to liberate Drakenhof. When looking at a province window, the city first on the left is always the province capital. When there's a rebellion in a province and you own the capital the rebels will start outside the capital, but if you don't own the capital it's random.



Western Sylvania is much more ripe for the taking. The garrison is a lot weaker and the Templehof brood have marched their armies east to defend against Mannfred's next move so I detach one of the vampire twins and send them ahead to see where exactly they marched to.



Zelig is trying to put out the fires in Eschen himself. I know they have one more army somewhere but I can't see it yet.



"Welcome, masters, - an agreement would be wise, after all, we both need to further our plans." The muckraking necromancer suggests an agreement. Since he's already acknowledged that we're his masters we humbly suggest he becomes our vassal.







War were declared. "It makes little difference to us." Isabella moves quickly to besiege Castle Templehof.





Since nothing in our army has the siege attacker trait, we have to build a ram before we can launch our assault, even though any unit can melee attack the gate down with enough swings. Most infantry also will have ladders you can use to scale the walls. Doing this is risky for them because they'll lose vigour climbing the ladders and will arrive on top of the wall in a very piecemeal fashion, giving rampart defenders an edge. I could build siege towers which will unload my whole unit onto the wall together but it takes two turns to build a pair of siege towers and all we need here is a ram so we can assault.





The power bar that estimates how the battle will go is pretty heavily in our favor so one of the vampires is sent back to Schwartzhafen to pray to double its growth and the turn ends.



When it's Templehof's turn, their second army, lead by a vampire lord named Dieter the Stickler comes heading straight for us. He has to force march to get in range of Isabella which will play a role in the battle to come. Once Dieter gets close enough to be able to join the fight, Zelig scurries over and engages.





Dieter's army and the garrison, which has no lord despite the vampire pictured



Despite the reinforcements, the power bar is still in my favor. You're allowed one retreat as long as you're not in certain stances and it would probably get me out of range of the castle's garrison but I'd rather deal with them all now in one place. You can't retreat a second time if you're re-engaged on the same turn. Auto-resolving is an option but I'm only going to do it when it's in the 98-100% range against trivial garrisons or rebellions. Now we'll see who has the better grimoire.

The First Battle of Templehof - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuR37As8hV0 (to skip the deployment phase, go to 1:40, to skip to the fighting go to 2:30)



In the video, I hold the mouse over the tooltip that explains winds of magic, mana basically. You start with a certain random amount and it slowly refills. In campaign battles you can gamble for more, if you lose you get less. Some skills and items improve the rate you get it. I also hold the mouse over the lock which explains what happens when you lock a unit group; they all move together at the same speed and if I give an attack order while the group is locked it's like giving an attack move order, they'll run that way and engage the enemy. It's not perfect because a lot of the times it doesn't update properly so units won't charge properly so it's good to set individual orders before the lines clash. If you want to assassinate someone or you want a whole group to attack one unit, turn the lock off or they won't always attack what you're aiming for.

There's not much going on tactically in vampire mirror matches. I throw my infantry at theirs, and try to get my heroes hitting theirs. I put my zombies in front to absorb the initial charge and because I really don't care whether they survive or not they're easily replaceable. Although once the battle gets going I move the zombies to their own control group because I don't want my skeletons to move at the pace of zombies. With the Templehof army split in three, I need to get to Zelig as fast as I can and destroy his little pocket of troops before the other two reach me. Since Dieter the Stickler had to force march to be able to reinforce, his army starts off having not much vigour left which is why he walks to the fight. That's important because Dieter is the strongest thing Templehof has on the field.

First I send my bats and vargheists to hit Zelig's lone group of wolves so hard they immediately start to crumble. Zelig casts an overcast invocation of nehek on them even though they're the only one taking damage and miscasts. When you see a blue puff of smoke, that's a miscast. Zelig does a few more miscasts which makes it easier for my air force to crush him into the dirt.

I make a few mistakes myself I overcast spirit leech which I shouldn't, this is before I knew it didn't do extra damage anymore on overcast. I probably should have tried to split Isabella and the death vampire up to get at least one of them onto Zelig but they get caught up on skeletons. It's alright though because necromancers are very fragile and the bats and vargheists are able to take him out. After Zelig is "wounded," Castle Templehof's garrison arrives. Isabella and her kin stomp their way through them while Dieter is still slowly walking to the fight. If he ran, his troops would be at the lowest level of vigour and be useless anyways so I'm not sure if it would've gone better if they ran. Isabella stands by and watches Dieter's execution. One less treasonous vampire in Sylvania. With his death, the rest of Templehof's forces immediately turn to ash. Their force is spent and I pick through their corpses to add to my own shambling horde.



"You have won the battle. But do not celebrate too much, for the gods will look ill on he(r) who came so near to defeat." The loyal zombie on the left is smirking because he knows that this is baseless Templehof propaganda. Templehof have risked everything they have on this battle and Isabella's army comes out of it without having lost a unit.

Trujillo fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Mar 27, 2017

Mukip
Jan 27, 2011

by Reene
Getting Vlad straight away is nice.

Stephen9001
Oct 28, 2013
I feel I should state that despite the fact the message only appears on turn 2, you can in fact recruit the other half of the marriage (regardless of who you start with) on the first turn.

I can have moments of... eccentricity and sometimes be quite curious about things. Please forgive me if I do something foolish or rude.

Dmar
Aug 19, 2004
yarg
Awesome. More warhams for me :hellyeah:

I've only recently begun playing as VC so I am very interested to see this campaign.

Indecisive
May 6, 2007


Stephen9001 posted:

I feel I should state that despite the fact the message only appears on turn 2, you can in fact recruit the other half of the marriage (regardless of who you start with) on the first turn.

i beg to differ



(screenshot taken an hour ago on an unmodded game)

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Stephen9001
Oct 28, 2013

Indecisive posted:

i beg to differ



(screenshot taken an hour ago on an unmodded game)

Huh, they must have changed it with the latest update, I certainly know that when I started a Von Carstein campaign as Vlad last week I could instantly recruit Isabella.

I can have moments of... eccentricity and sometimes be quite curious about things. Please forgive me if I do something foolish or rude.

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