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That was true as of last patch. You can recruit Isabella immediately but you have to wait a turn for Vlad.
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Mar 28, 2017 12:32
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genericnick posted:That was true as of last patch. You can recruit Isabella immediately but you have to wait a turn for Vlad. Wait, so if you play as Vlad you can instantly get Issabella, but if you pick Isabella you have to wait a turn for Vlad? That's... odd, to say the least. 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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Mar 28, 2017 12:47
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Vlad takes longer to get up and do his clothes/hair/make-up in the morning, thus if you play as him Isabella is already ready for the day but playing as Isabella means you have to wait for him to finish powdering his nose.
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Mar 28, 2017 12:58
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Being able to get the LL with Siege Attacker on turn 1 as Isabella would be even more busted. It's a legitimate balancing concern that I approve of.
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Mar 28, 2017 16:53
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Turn 3  ' The spoils from the battle. 1189 dark currency, 148 captives, the Staff of Damnation and the first rank on Isabella. Since undead don't run, they lost their whole army, from 2922 to 0, which includes the Castle Templehof garrison. Usually the AI is good about not attacking when they're at a big disadvantage but maybe they were desperate or thought the +1000 numbers advantage would be enough.  "This gnarled stave is carved from the blackened heartwood of a Hangman's Tree. It contains a powerful spell that fills nearby Undead with a frantic vitality." The lucky breaks keep coming. Staff of Damnation is one of the best items I could've asked for to drop from the first battle. +34 melee attack in a 40m aura will make even zombies have a little bite, for 25 seconds at least with a 90 second cooldown.  After the battle we have to decide what to do with the captives. Ransoming them would improve my relations with Templehof and all the other factions that like them (in their case, no one) but would worsen relations with their enemies, the opposite happens when you execute. Dominating them would replenish my units by 3%, but I execute them just in case there's a chance to fight Mannfred in the next five turns. The leadership boost will help even things out. If you hold your mouse over the dominate captives button it'll show you how much on the units cards they would be replenished by a yellow bar in front of the usual one.  A grave digger hears of Templehof's loss and starts following Isabella's war camp. Followers can be swapped around between lords and heroes but we'll keep this one with Isabella for now since he's our only follower.  Dieter has met his final death. When you're not a faction leader or a legendary lord, you don't come back.  Since there's no more garrison, Isabella walks into Castle Tempelhof without any opposition.  We can occupy which gives a one turn order penalty of -10 and another penalty of -3 that goes away by one every turn; loot and occupy which gives big order penalties and some dark magic or sacking which gives less order penalties and more currency than looting and occupying, or we can raze it. If you raze or occupy, you can't move that army again that turn but if you sack you can, and then you can walk back in if you have enough movement. Isabella's triumph through the streets of Templehof was sparsely attended so the city was sacked and re-occupied.  The only building left standing is the forest but it's damaged, tier 1 and I already have the tier 2 in Schwartzhafen so it's demolished to make room for something else. The hammer and nail icon is repair, the hammer is demolish. You get some of the building costs back to which is nice since I didn't build it.  The corpse pile finishes in Schwartzhafen which gives it a stronger garrison, which includes a crypt horror.    "Monstrous, mutated and savage, a Crypt Horror is devastating against the enemy frontline." Crypt horrors are a pretty popular pick. They hit hard and do poison attacks and a lot of armor piercing damage. They're good against units like empire greatswords and heavy armored infantry. The fifth trait which you can find below the combat stats is regeneration. Anything with the regenration trait will slowly gain their hp back during a fight but it gives a +20% weakness to fire damage.   "A pack of Dire Wolves is a lacerating mess of teeth in the melee, effective against enemy infantry." There were dire wolves in the battle but I forgot to do a little profile of them first. The second trait they have is vanguard deployment which means you can put them outside of your zone in the deployment phase to try to surprise or ambush the enemy. Their combat stats are pretty lacking and they're not actually good at fighting enemy infantry. Against zombies they might do alright but their role is more to flank and take out artillery or missile troops, to kite more expensive cavalry to keep them out of the battle or catching up to enemy cavalry and pinning them down so that your real cavalry can charge them. They're not that useful in sieges which is why I didn't stop to recruit any on the first turn but it's not bad to have a few of them in your army. With Isabella's first rank up, we get one skill point to spend on her character tree.  This is just the first half of it. The top left skill, The Hunger, is a trait for vampires that gives them passive regen but not the kind that gives them more fire weakness. The rest of the branch is buffs to combat stats. Above it are mounts, legendary items that you get from quest battles, and abilities that will be shown when they're unlocked. The second down, Invocation of Nehek gives -50% cooldown to that spell and opens up the first part of the lore of vampires. Raise dead is an always useful spell and it'd be nice to have in case of emergency but there's something else I want to get first. Aura of Supremacy is a leadership buff to my army and opens up the general path with give bonuses to certain unit's stats. The Ravening Beast helps bats I think and At Dawn They Sleep Vargheists, Dread Knights helps black knights and Dark Pact boosts your army's leadership when you're attacking. This is a good branch to go down but I go with The Restless Dead first. The Restless Dead gives Isabella 10% more campaign movement range and opens up the blue path which is more utility. Undying horde gives faster unit replenishment, Children of the Night will increase my vampire capacity with two points invested and lower hero recruitment cost, Darkling Skies gives a reduction to attrition damage and Ancient Cunning boosts ambush chance. I want to cover as much ground as I can early on to get things rolling so the movement range boost will help. With the von Carstein banner hanging over the gates of Templehof, Vlad has finished polishing his nose and is ready to reunite with Isabella.   Vlad has the siege attacker trait, which means he doesn't have to have any siege equipment before attacking a walled settlement. This could be my way back into Castle Drakenhof if Mannfred leaves to take Eastern Sylvania now that Templehof is scattered to the wind. He also has a trait not listed that allows him and everyone in his army to vanguard deploy. It's a stupidly strong ability that will make some quest battles really trivial down the line. As the undead, you don't have any ranged at all so you want to get into close range as quick as you can if you're under fire and being able to vanguard deploy your whole army puts you right in front of the enemy.  He also has a -4 leadership aura for enemy units which will help balance out the leadership gulf caused by the difficulty setting. On the "diplomatic" front, we meet two new factions, Ostermark the province we now share a northern border with and the Bloody Spearz greenskin tribe.   They're both underdogs but the Bloody Spearz are surprisingly the fifth strongest faction, so they may not have any need to confederate if things keep going well for them. They're at war with Zhufbar and the main Dwarf faction that we haven't had contact with yet. Unreliable means they don't hold up their deals and they're aggressive which makes them likely to invade. Usually this tribe goes out with a whimper or gets confederated. Isabella can't make another move since she occupied Castle Templehof and Vlad can't move since he was just recruited so we end the turn. On the AI's turn, I expected Mannfred to hit Eschen since Templehof is spent but he stays in Drakenhof and keeps recruiting. When he does eventually sally out I hope and expect he'll put up a better fight than the hapless Zelig. Trujillo fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 04:10
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So if you have the movement points, there's no reason not to sack the town before occupying it? Why is there a box around skills two through five in each category? Do you not need to get all of them to progress to the skill beyond them?
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Mar 29, 2017 06:10
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Mzbundifund posted:So if you have the movement points, there's no reason not to sack the town before occupying it? You need to put 4 points in one of those boxes before you can get later skills.
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Mar 29, 2017 06:32
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Mzbundifund posted:So if you have the movement points, there's no reason not to sack the town before occupying it? Well you make everyone more unhappy there if you do.
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Mar 29, 2017 07:49
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Mzbundifund posted:So if you have the movement points, there's no reason not to sack the town before occupying it? Well, you'll damage the town, meaning some buildings will be damaged or destroyed, so you'll have to build them yourself. At higher levels of town, I'm pretty sure this means the city level would be degraded by a whole extra level (Eg sacking then occupying a level 5 town will turn it a level 3 town, whereas just occupying would make it level 4), though I might be wrong on this. I can have moments of... eccentricity and sometimes be quite curious about things. Please forgive me if I do something foolish or rude. Stephen9001 fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 08:28
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It also means the town you occupy will be less developed as sacking destroys buildings and even lowers town level.
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Mar 29, 2017 08:33
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John Charity Spring posted:It also means the town you occupy will be less developed as sacking destroys buildings and even lowers town level. That's what I said, though admittedly in a significant amount more words. 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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Mar 29, 2017 14:07
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Sometimes when you occupy a town without sacking or looting it the settlement and buildings will go down a tier anyways. I'm not sure exactly what causes it which is why I sacked because if the buildings are going to be reduced anyways I might as well get paid. I think occupying without looting/sacking does lower the settlement tier by 1 and sacking and then occupying lowers by 2 but I'm not 100% sure. Castle Templehof was a tier 1 or 2 anyways so in that situation you might as well sack if you don't mind the extra disorder or if you don't want the buildings already there.
Trujillo fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 15:02
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Stephen9001 posted:That's what I said, though admittedly in a significant amount more words. You posted in the time I took to reply and I didn't notice it - it wasn't an attempted correction of you! I'm really enjoying this LP by the way (and generally having two Warhammer LPs active at once). Excited to see the tag-team power-couple fall on Mannfred soon.
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Mar 29, 2017 15:23
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John Charity Spring posted:You posted in the time I took to reply and I didn't notice it - it wasn't an attempted correction of you! "MANFRED VON CARSTEIN YOU WILL COME DOWN HERE THIS INSTANT! And then you will go to your room. Betraying your father and getting him killed is a 100 years grounding, young man." Followed by lecturing about 'What happened to your hair, you used to dress so well' and 'Please stop trying to sound like you chew gravel, it isn't fooling anyone.'
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Mar 29, 2017 15:30
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Night10194 posted:"MANFRED VON CARSTEIN YOU WILL COME DOWN HERE THIS INSTANT! And then you will go to your room. Betraying your father and getting him killed is a 100 years grounding, young man." Back before the Carsteins were their own thing, I loved the fact that when you took Vlad it gave you a text blurb to the effect of "Mannfred is sulking in the basement like the little pussy that he is."
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Mar 29, 2017 15:45
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Night10194 posted:"MANFRED VON CARSTEIN YOU WILL COME DOWN HERE THIS INSTANT! And then you will go to your room. Betraying your father and getting him killed is a 100 years grounding, young man." Poor Manfred. He went to so much effort to become the true heir of the Von Carstein name. And then the devs decided Momma and Poppa belonged in the game. The character's not awful! He's the kid who decided he was going to claw his way to the height of the Midnight Aristocracy never mind how many more powerful vampires he'd have to kill to do it, including dear ol' daddy. He studied his books, he backstabbed when appropriate, he put his hopelessly crazy murderbeast of an older brother in charge for a couple centuries to give him cover for safer backstabbing, and as of modern day is the first vampire since Vlad to make a compelling case re: being the actual Count of Sylvania. Konrad claimed the title, of course, but outside of Konrad's earshot he was considered more a roaming patch of hazardous terrain than any kind of actual rival for power.
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Mar 29, 2017 15:48
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Mannfred's a whiny bitch baby who caused the End Times and it's good Mommy and Daddy von Carstein have him locked up in the basement 
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Mar 29, 2017 17:26
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Ze Pollack posted:Poor Manfred. He went to so much effort to become the true heir of the Von Carstein name. And then the devs decided Momma and Poppa belonged in the game. Counterpoint: Manfred literally back stabbed the dude who was keeping the world from exploding during the end times.
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Mar 29, 2017 17:35
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Klaus88 posted:Counterpoint: Manfred literally back stabbed the dude who was keeping the world from exploding during the end times. I don't think anyone's actions in that piece of poo poo can be held against them because that was so goddamn far off the rails it's not worth considering. I like Manny as a character and as a villain. His cowardice and caution are actually kind of refreshing in a setting full of bravado and make a good fatal flaw; he's so obsessed with getting his plans perfect that he hesitates at every key moment. He's not undone by hubris, he's undone by his very real awareness that 'holy poo poo I can actually die'.
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Mar 29, 2017 17:47
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Night10194 posted:I don't think anyone's actions in that piece of poo poo can be held against them because that was so goddamn far off the rails it's not worth considering. Everything with Malekith for example.
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Mar 29, 2017 18:45
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Turn 4 The Schwartzhafen necromancers finish examining The Lahmian Book of Blood. You only get access to the rest of the branch when researching the books so I don't get any immediate benefit but can now start on the first real tech in the tree, Serve in Life or in Death. This gives me +10 growth everywhere and 15% more income from repression buildings: the gibbet and gallow. We'll need this to unlock the rest of this path which leads to faster corruption.    --- After the re-embrace, without wasting a moment that could be spent advancing his centuries spanning goal of becoming emperor, Vlad strikes out for the lightly defended Templehof settlement of Fort Oberstyre. But before he heads out, Vlad gives Isabella a gift of two bats and a dire wolf that he started recruiting last turn and Isabella gives Vlad a bodyguard of zombies. I wanted to recruit something last turn because the raise dead pool has been pretty dry (Zelig probably took them before he engaged me and it takes time to refill) and the only option I have right now are bats and wolves. The zombies are sent with Vlad as extra assurance. Vlad could solo their whole garrison but I don't want to take any chances, and because I'd be glad if the zombies died. There's been a dark magic deficit ever since Vlad entered the field. The evil graph is pointing downward.   ---  The odds look even but I don't think it's taken into account that Vlad has invocation of nehek and can heal the whole army and they have no healing it all. Since this is such a tiny battle I decided to just sum it up with screenshots instead of uploading a video.       ---  If you win the battle, there's a chance that some of your units that were wiped out will come back, in this case it's the zombies I was trying to get rid of to begin with but it's always nice surprise when it's an elite unit. --- "Warpstone is Dark Magic incarnate. Undead Lords, especially liches, will employ ghoulish hunters to find such precious ore." Vlad gets his first follower, a warpstone hunter which increases building income in the region he's in.  This is a follower that once my economy gets going I'm going to put on a necromancer or a banshee. Necromancer and banshee heroes deployed outside your castles will give a decent boost to income after you start to get maxed out settlements. It'll be a while before I'm able to recruit banshess or necromancers though so he can follow Vlad around. ---  Vlad sweeps the Templehof brood out of the fort but leaves it intact. I'll only get 660 from sacking this minor settlement and it has a building I want, the cemetary, so I can start recruiting skeleton warriors instead of relying on raise dead. ---  The Battle of Fort Oberstyre gives Vlad his first rank. The first half of his tree is mostly the same as Isabella's except for a few skills. Vlad has no mount options so he'll always be on foot, but he does have something better. Coven of Undeath gives experience every turn not just to Vlad's army but to the whole faction, garrisons included. Each rank of veterancy will improve their combat stats so it goes without saying that this is a massive skill. There's not many like it in the game. The skill unlocks at rank 4 too which isn't far off. His general path is also a little different. The Unliving Host gives attack buffs to zombies, skeletons and crypt ghouls and Creatures of the Night does the same to bats and wolves. Aura of Dark Majesty gives a bigger aura size, and any units standing in his aura get more leadership. To start with we go with the restless dead. The AI has a tendency to place their armies right outside of your movement range so you can't engage. The recent patch notes said it reduced this so we'll see but I'll take more movement either way. ---   By capturing Fort Oberstyre we finish securing Western Sylvania, which gives the benefit of being able to pick from one of four commandments that will boost the whole region.  Even though Sylvania already has 100% vampiric corruption, I want the growth to be able to upgrade Sylvania in less turns. The dark magic supply is running low so I can't afford to recruit, 5% taxes is barely anything right now and I'm not afraid of a rebellion so public order isn't needed yet. ---  This is why 5% taxes wouldn't make much difference yet. We start with a base income of +2500 and are collecting +566 in taxes from our cities so turning on Harvest Corpses at this point will only give me 28 more dark magic per turn. Having Vlad as a second army puts me in the red but leveling him up is a higher priority. Ever frugal, Vlad consolidates the four units of battle-tested zombies into two to save some upkeep.  --- The land Isabella wanted after she surveyed Castle Templehof is cleared by an army that never sleeps. A building slot opens up. The castle has a resource, logging, that gives me the option to build a unique building, Dark Lair, that can only be built in towns with the log. It'll lower the cost of recruiting forest beasts and will make any forest units recruited in Western Sylvania at least three bronze chevrons which is experience level 3 out of 9. With the evocation of nagash commandment which gives +1 rank they'd start off with one silver chevron. With Vlad's crazy experience ability this isn't as big of a deal as it was pre-Vlad but I'll probably build it eventually.   With it being a logging area, you can also build the timber chain which gives some income and timber which can be traded to get more income with any dwarf, empire, bretonnian, wood elf or undead faction that has a land border or sea port connection. They have to like you to want to sign a trade agreement though or be bribed enough. Most factions have a strong aversion to the undead built into relations but it is possible to be friends with the empire, dwarfs or most factions besides chaos if I made some effort but then I wouldn't have anyone to fight yet. When checking to see what the Empire provinces were up to out of curiosity, Averland and Stirland, the ones who are distrustful of the empire and the other elector counts approve of my war with Templehof and are both at maybe status if I wanted to offer them a non-aggression pact. With some gifts I could possibly ally them eventually and further turn them against the rest of the Empire but then I wouldn't share a border with the main Empire faction lead by Karl Franz, making conquering him a little awkward unless I swung north and then west which is a harder road. I could fill the lands of the empire provinces in between us with corruption but the Elector Counts, even if they were allied with me would build temples of Sigmar and recruit arch-lectors to reduce corruption so the best thing I can do is to take the southern bowl of the Empire for myself. It would be amazing if I could somehow turn elector counts into vampires after becoming full allies and corrupting their lands but unfortunately I'm not running Creative Assembly.  The other tier 1 building option we have is the Charnel Pit. "This mass grave acts like a locus for Necromancers and their ilk, for it contains many fresh bodies ripe for recruitment. This is what gets built for now but I'll probably demolish this too later once I get other sources of growth going. The von Carsteins may be bleeding dark magic but it's a slow bleed and we'll still have some saved up so the 100 extra income from logging isn't that needed and we have no one to trade the timber with yet. --- With news of her husband's success at Fort Oberstyre, Isabella sets off in the opposite direction to Eschen to see if Zelig has changed his mind about bending the knee.  Since this is such a massacre I autoresolved it. After laying siege but before the battle I checked if Zelig saw the error of his ways. Almost, he was willing to give me anything I wanted except vassalage so the city wasn't spared.  Since Mannfred just sacked this poor village on the first turn there's not much loot to be had but the destitute hovels are sacked anyways as part of the scheme to entrap Mannfred. Once Mannfred is confident in his army, he's going to leave Castle Drakenhof to take Eschen. It's an inevitability. By just sacking instead of occupying or razing it'll sit as unprotected bait for Mannfred to get him away from the powerful garrison and walls at Drakenhof. ---  You can tell he's mustering troops from the icon above his banner. Even though he's glad we've done his work for him in destroying Templehof's armies, now that we've united western Sylvania and we're 3rd in the world strength rankings, we start to get the Great Power relations modifier. The bigger you get, the bigger the relations malus so it gets harder to do diplomacy the more threatening you are in size. There are mods that turn it off but I think it makes sense.   We can't see what his whole army is made up of without getting closer but we do see our first Varghulf, one of Mannfred's elite starting units.   "Amongst its enemies, a Varghulf is a savage whirl of limbs and claws, devastating in melee. A Varghulf is a single model monster unit that does armor piercing damage, regenerates, and causes terror in addition to fear which all if not most undead units have. The difference between terror and fear is terror will cause units to break and run away, although they'll usually come back once they get away from whatever was causing the terror. Fear is a minor leadership penalty to any unit fighting it. The fourth trait icon from the left is terror, the third is fear. It also has siege attacker which means they can attack a walled city right away like Vlad can. The Varghulf doesn't have as much weapon strength as Mannfred but is very fast and its a huge unit so it'll have no trouble pushing aside any of my units and charging right through my lines, knocking even Vlad and Isabella around with its attacks. It'll probably be harder to take down than Mannfred and is likely to cause me the most grief out of his whole army. Its weakness is its low leadership. In the screenshot the leadership is being slightly buffed by a leadership aura so it's naturally even lower. You don't want to send a Varghulf out on a Rambo mission because they'll start to crumble as soon as they're surrounded most of the time. They do best when fighting among your own units so that your fodder will absorb some of the attacks. --- Isabella gets her second follower following the sack of Eschen and unlocks the first two Regiments of Renown.   The Vampire regiments of renown come with the Grim and the Grave DLC. RoR's are reskinned versions of troops that were in the game before but with better stats and some new traits. I'll go over the exact differences once I use them. They unlock at certain lord ranks, for The Tithe and Konigstein Stalkers it's rank 3 but now any of my lords can raise them from any friendly territory even if they're not ranked up. You can only have one of each at a time and if they're wiped out in battle they won't be available again for a certain number of turns, with the higher tier regiments not coming back for a lot longer. If Vlad falls for the trap set at Eschen then these two units will be recruited, but until then they cost more than their regular counterparts in maintanence so you'll want to hold off until you know they'll be put to use since they can be instantly recruited like with raise dead. After Eschen is picked clean, Isabella tries to force march to get back into western Sylvania so that my units will start to replenish. It looked like there was a chance I could reach but when she moved she came up a little short. It probably would've been better to stay near Eschen and go into the raiding stance but I don't remember if I had enough movement left (some stances like ambush, raiding, and channeling take a certain percentage of movement to enter) or if the raiding stance gives replenishment. I'll go more into detail about the different army stances when they come up but for now we end the turn. 
Trujillo fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Mar 30, 2017 |
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Mar 30, 2017 01:54
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Mordja posted:Back before the Carsteins were their own thing, I loved the fact that when you took Vlad it gave you a text blurb to the effect of "Mannfred is sulking in the basement like the little pussy that he is." I wanted to include that at the end of turn 3 but was disapointed when I noticed they changed it after loading Vlad and Mannfred's campaigns to get a screenshot of it. I know they were trying to explain what happened to Mannfred if you picked Vlad since they used to be in the same faction but it was a nice touch.
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Mar 30, 2017 02:11
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Channeling enables replenishment for Vamprie Counts, since their armies are all held together with black magic anyway. I like the flavor for their "civic" buildings, too: the Empire grows a province by building up the economy, but the Vampires grow their infrastructure by making it a more awful place to live, attracting necromancers and other unsavory types, and turning more people into vampires.
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Mar 30, 2017 02:19
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wiegieman posted:Channeling enables replenishment for Vamprie Counts, since their armies are all held together with black magic anyway. I like the flavor for their "civic" buildings, too: the Empire grows a province by building up the economy, but the Vampires grow their infrastructure by making it a more awful place to live, attracting necromancers and other unsavory types, and turning more people into vampires. In the WHFRP2e book for the Vampire Counts, it lists the only major exports of Sylvania as 'Misery, death.' The finest misery and death in all the Old World!
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Mar 30, 2017 03:33
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It takes a lot of work to get those peasants terrified and downtrodden enough to properly produce Dark Magic 
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Mar 30, 2017 03:54
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Night10194 posted:In the WHFRP2e book for the Vampire Counts, it lists the only major exports of Sylvania as 'Misery, death.' Actually, it is fear and death! Though misery and death sound better. Speaking of which, Sylvania is just a delight place to live in.  You're taking some amazingly beautiful pictures to introduce the units, Trujillo.
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Mar 30, 2017 15:53
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ZearothK posted:You're taking some amazingly beautiful pictures to introduce the units, Trujillo. Also the sequence of images at the beginning of Turn 3 was pretty clutch.
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Mar 30, 2017 16:08
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Thanks, started this as an excuse to post screenshots like that. It should start to move at a quicker pace soon with more action now that a lot of the exposition is out of the way and each turn will start covering multiple turns but there's a few more things that'll need to be explained like stances.
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Mar 30, 2017 19:30
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ZearothK posted:Actually, it is fear and death! Though misery and death sound better. Sylvania is just the best.
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Mar 30, 2017 19:35
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E: Accidentally posted the next update before the video finished uploading
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Mar 31, 2017 06:09
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quote:Ah yes the infamous Fluffy Von Carstien.
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Mar 31, 2017 14:11
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Turns 5-6 Mannfred continues to sulk in the in the dark libraries of Castle Drakenhof, searching for some long lost secret that may hold the key to victory. On the AI's turn, Mannfred doesn't move but keeps mustering more troops. He's close to having a full army now. --- Zelig "it makes little difference to us" the Necromancer has apparently snapped after his crushing defeat at Castle Templehof and has run for the hills, abandoning Waldenhof, the seat of the now panicked Templehof court. He runs into Ostermark, taking attrition but now he's out of our reach.  --- When Isabella's scouts send word that Zelig fled, she moves in to sack their new capital. At first I thought I'd auto-resolve this since the bar is almost completely in my favor but even if they don't stand a chance maybe it'll be cinematic.  The Battle of Waldenhof: https://youtu.be/RHbx-_h45KM?t=10s  A few things about this battle; instead of trying to manage everything and get good shots at the same time I just recorded a replay of the fight. Just got a new mouse so the movements might be janky at times but I'll try to work on that for the next one. Monster units also rumble the camera pretty heavily so that's not me and I might be able to turn that off. Once you get into a battle most of the time the balance of power bar is a lot more even than the pre-battle menu makes it seem. I think it goes by chance of winning on the campaign side but then when you go into the battle it's going to be different. When you heavily outnumber enough that the power bar is almost completely in your favor on the battle side then it's not going to be much of a fight but in this battle it's about a quarter or a third in their favor.  The vargheists and the black knights get their first experience chevrons. Their attack and defense should be slightly higher now. Isabella gets another follower, a warpstone hunter (4% building income) and she ranks up.  ---  At rank 4 I pick raise dead. Not to be confused with the campaign mechanic, you can use the raise dead spell 7 times in a battle per hero or lord who has it. It costs 3 winds to raise a zombie, and if you overcast it costs 4 to raise a skeleton warrior. Units summoned on the battlefield will automatically start to deteriorate as soon as they rise so units summoned aren't the most reliable but by casting this behind an enemy's lines you can give them the attacked from behind penalty to their leadership, and it can occupy missile units. You can also raise it under yourself if your lord is being chased. You can easily path through your own units but the enemy will get stuck fighting the zombies so you can slip away. This is the best thing I can bring now to help in the at hand battle against Mannfred.   --- Vlad and Isabella wait on the von Carstein side of the border with Eschen for Mannfred to make his move on the town. With the cemetary in Fort Oberstyre we can start recruiting skeleton warriors now so Vlad starts creating 3.  --- In the meantime, the shadow vampire who's been praying and casting invocations for our success at Schwartzhafen is sent to scout out the dwarf holds to the east.  Zhufbar has two growing armies and all of their territory intact. The greenskin tribes around them don't seem to be giving them any grudges. Rooting them out may not be as easy as predicted. The basic dwarf infantry, dwarf warriors, are much better than skeleton warriors and their leaders aren't as easy to kill as Zelig. Even with dead leaders most dwarfs will keep fighting to the bitter end. My main army as it is would probably lose to a full stack of dwarfs. I'll need overwhelming numbers before challenging Zhufbar. --- We end turn 5 there, and when it's Templehof's time to move Zelig runs even farther west into the woods of Stirland and out of sight. Maybe he plans on taking refuge with the Red Duke or setting sail for another continent.  --- Mannfred is one unit away from likely sallying out and conquering Eschen. He raises a second army and further degrades our dynasty by allowing a lowly necromancer in his service to adopt the von Carstein name.   --- Isabella spends turn 6 channeling on the Templehof border to restore her army and Vlad recruits three more skeleton warriors. The Forester's Shack is built in the new building slot at Castle Templehof to give a little more income.  The stances the undead have access to on the campaign map are: Raiding gives us some income when used in enemy lands and lets us move around non-corrupted areas without taking attrition, but your army moves slower on the map and it'll cause your army to start battles winded. It's a big diplomatic penalty when you raid a faction and it drives up unrest. If you want to encourage rebellions in your own territory you can raid yourself. You won't get dark magic but by killing rebels you'll get lord and hero experience and unit experience, along with some dark magic. Ambush stance will make your army invisible to the AI if it's successful and if they march close enough to you without detecting you an ambush battle can happen. In an ambush battle the enemy is in a straight line and you can deploy on either side of them. Different types of terrain have higher chances of a successful ambush and by taking Ancient Cunning on lords you can get 100% ambush chance in forests or mountains. You can hold the mouse over the terrain to see the ambush chance. Channeling gives a little extra replenishment and a bigger winds of magic reserve to work with in battle. I don't see any downside to using this before most battles but I always forget this stance exists. March I've already gone over a bit. You get 50% more movement range but it doesn't take any movement percentage to activate so you can walk in, sack a city and then march back into your own territory to heal.  --- Mannfred wants to parley. He offers a non-aggression pact, but makes the mistake of thinking we're going to give him even an ounce of dark magic in tribute.     --- There's not much else we can do now but wait so we end the turn. We won't have to wait much longer as on the Vampire Count's turn Mannfred the Cunning enters the trap.  
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Mar 31, 2017 14:19
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Forgot to include this. In the battle I mouse over the leadership bar of a crypt horror but here it is: When you put the mouse there it'll tell you exactly what's hurting their leadership and it's good to know all the factors. Certain things will boost leadership, like having the general nearby and having secure flanks. There's also a lot of spells that'll raise/lower it.
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Mar 31, 2017 15:07
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Is is possible to confederate with the Vampire Counts? Seems like it'd be easy to just box him in and grab Manfred as a lord when you're strong enough.
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Mar 31, 2017 18:26
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Trap is already sprung. What's up with that necromancer just abandoning his lands and making a run for it? Is that something the AI actually does?
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Mar 31, 2017 19:28
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You can't settle in the mountains, right? So the reward for challenging Zhufbar would just be sacking holds for cash and then razing them for border security?
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Mar 31, 2017 19:33
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Yup. Mind, border security is a good thing to have, dwarves are a pain in the rear end for the VC.
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Mar 31, 2017 20:01
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Beer Hall Putz posted:Is is possible to confederate with the Vampire Counts? Seems like it'd be easy to just box him in and grab Manfred as a lord when you're strong enough. It is possible and you'd also get a few more lords to pick from: the necromancers Helman Ghorst and Heinrich Kemmler. These are all the legendary lords the regular Vampire Counts have:    You could confederate them or just ally them and let them do whatever they want. If you want to meet the victory conditions one of them is you need to control Drakenhof either directly, through vassalage or military alliance. All three are viable options but Drakenhof has a really good building that only the von Carsteins can build so the earlier you get that the better. It might be hard to get them to confederate if they're not under pressure since I don't think Mannfred ever gets the underdog trait and they're usually not under pressure if you leave them alone. Maybe if you were a lot stronger than them and their army was wiped out in a battle with someone else they might want to confederate. Kanthulhu posted:What's up with that necromancer just abandoning his lands and making a run for it? Is that something the AI actually does? Not usually but I noticed later that they were at war with Stirland too now so they may have been trying to pick off one of their minor settlements and had to take a strange route to bypass me. And yeah, fighting Zhufbar is for loot that'll be used to start maxing out the buildings in Sylvania and so there aren't dwarfs in striking distance of Drakenhof. By clearing the mountains as much as you can you can take their wealth and invest it in Sylvania while you build up corruption in Averland/Stirland/Ostermark. Usually the dwarfs will have mostly miners and dwarf warriors early on which can be beaten if you outnumber them with enough skeletons.
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Mar 31, 2017 20:41
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In Total Warhammer news, they announced the expansion today and put out a cinematic trailer, it gets pretty good once the lizardmen show up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXxe897bW-A If you're wondering why there's so many dislikes on the trailer it's because for some reason people were expecting the reveal to be Total War: Mesoamerica or something and are angry that Creative Assembly is making this game alongside historical games instead of exclusively making purely historical games so they're signing petitions and trying to get a boycott going.  The expansion is adding Skaven, Lizardmen, and High and Dark Elves with Tomb Kings next. The two continents will be able to be played separately or on one map with all the factions so Vlad will really be able to take over the world now. There's also vampire pirates on the western continent that will hopefully make an appearance.
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Mar 31, 2017 21:09
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Trujillo posted:
i mean, they only confirmed lizardmen and the elves in this trailer but the bit at the end pretty much says "yeah skaven are also in this" which is great because i love those furry mad scientist crack addict bastards
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Mar 31, 2017 21:11
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