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 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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Mar 25, 2017 19:09
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Prologue A map of the Old World, with a few things out of date.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 |
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Mar 25, 2017 19:10
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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.
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Mar 25, 2017 20:46
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Turn 0.5   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). 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 |
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Mar 26, 2017 01:10
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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.
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Mar 26, 2017 01:12
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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
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Mar 26, 2017 01:46
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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 |
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Mar 26, 2017 06:45
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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.
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Mar 26, 2017 06:49
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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.
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Mar 27, 2017 17:34
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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 |
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Mar 27, 2017 21:57
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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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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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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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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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E: Accidentally posted the next update before the video finished uploading
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Mar 31, 2017 06:09
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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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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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President Ark 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" They're going to tease out the Skaven a bit but there's already the steam page up with some more info: http://store.steampowered.com/app/594570/ "Meanwhile a fourth, secretive race stirs, their motives obscured by sinister plots and machinations. The time for revelation is nigh… Four races, four outcomes, a single goal: control of the Great Vortex, for good or ill."
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Mar 31, 2017 21:14
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Turn 7 The hooded necromancer our scouts saw fleeing Waldenhof with a crippled force turned out not to be Zelig. We may have done them a favor by wouding him. Only a von Carstein could've pulled off a maneuver like this. What looked like a cowardly retreat into Stirland has raised the dead in untapped empire lands where we haven't been raising ourselves and circled around to catch Fort Oberstyre off guard. We do have barely enough dark magic to raise a lord at the fort and try to raise dead but it would be costly.  Instead, Vlad gives the skeleton warriors he's been preparing to Isabella while she gives him most of her fell bats. Vlad is going to defend Fort Oberstyre himself as it'd be embarrassing for him personally to lose an inch of ground to the Tempelhof brood. The skeleton warriors will be needed on the soon-to-be eastern front and we have enough flying creatures in Isabella's army.  Vlad lays an ambush within the zone of control of the ruined fort. If you hover over a settlement, that's the area where an army can reinforce the garrison or vice versa so even if the ambush fails we'll still be protecting the town. Vlad's zone is the pictured red aura. ---  The adopted son gets one final chance to grovel for his life.  If you click the little map icon to the left of the fight battle button it'll bring up a preview of the terrain. Sometimes it's nice when deciding if you want to retreat. I forgot to get any screenshots of the garrison but I think it's just 5 units of zombies/skeletons. The battle bar is pretty even here. If Templehof had been destroyed already Vlad would be swinging it even harder but the vampire trio should be enough. --- The Battle of Eschen - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbk4rC9sR4A When the battle starts, they've got a pretty wide army. I've got mine more compact for a reason. When you're the vampires you usually want to have a dense army so you can heal as much as you can with every AoE nehek and so items like the +34 melee attack staff will hit as much as it can. When you're attacking the AI will usually make you come to them unless you have a ranged advantage and it seems like an air advantage might cause it too. There's no reason for me to run up to them if I can easily take out their bats first to start picking off the units on the wings of their lines with flying units. After the air battle starts they run up. It's easier to give the right orders if you're on defense so when Mannfred runs up alone the vampires are sent to intercept him. This is why the von Carstein start is easier than the Vampire Count start, because even just Isabella and one of the vampires hitting him is enough to take Mannfred out pretty quickly, and when you can put Master of Beguilement on him there's almost no risk of losing your lord in that situation. Mannfred goes down quick but the Varghulf is made of tougher stuff. If the AI was a bit smarter they would've kept the varghulf with Mannfred and then it would've been throwing Isabella and the other vampire around like ragdolls. It's spirit leeched but with regeneration it's healing off a lot of the hits we're giving but once the staff of damnation is up a lot more attacks by the zombies and skeletons will start connecting and it's a death by a thousand cuts. You can see when the staff is activated by a pink/red glow on models. Invocation of nehek appears as a long green wisp of light/smoke above the unit. Death magic hexes like spirit leech are purple, shadow magic is usually gray. I don't know why they held 5 skeleton warriors in reserve until the battle is almost over. Just when they're about to start crumbling because of army losses they start running to the fight. If they had used those skeletons they might've been able to overwhelm my right pocket of troops which was pretty low until Isabella was able to run over after the varghulf died. I don't think I've seen that happen before so they may have gotten bugged out somehow. It's hard to say how this battle would've went without the staff of damnation. It's a really strong item, but if you have Vlad with you while taking on Mannfred for the first time it would probably be even easier. This is why we had to wait for Mannfred to leave Drakenhof though. This would've been a defeat if we tried to take him on at the same time as the Drakenhof garrison.  ---  With that we unlock the direpack regiment of renown, wolves that are made a lot more effective since they have some improved stats but also anti-large damage so they're better at helping lock down enemy cavalry or monsters. I forgot to recruit the regiments of renown for the fight but the Konigstein Stalkers are raised after the fight to help shore up army losses.   "Though most Undead are no more than stumbling thralls, these warriors have achieved renown due to their effectiveness in melee."   In the custom battle lobby, you can compare the stats of two units. The +40 and +9 is a comparison with skeleton warriors. They have the same amount of models, hp, but the stalkers have picked up armor from their dead enemies and have +40 more and +9 more leadership, melee attack and melee defense, along with having poison tipped attacks. --- All three vampires rank up from the fight. Isabella picks up Curse of Undeath. It's a passive that will trigger on everything in Isabella's army now while she's casting a spell. It acts like an invocation of nehek and when you're raising a lot of zombies and skeleton warriors it sort've adds up.  Melissa von Carstein, the death vampire gets Life-Leeching which is another passive that will add more winds of magic to the pool and increase the flow from the reserves.  Emmanuelle von Carstein is given Expansionist which increases growth when you pray. I want to unlock this to get to Influential.   With three points invested into Influential you get +3 vampiric corruption in the province that hero or lord is in. Emmanuelle started with ghoul whisperer so she already has +3 corruption. Once she maxes out Influential she'll have +6 corruption and will be the first of many vampires sent to saturate the Empire with corruption. Some skills have three tiers, that's why there's three circles, some only have one. If you hold the mouse over each circle it'll tell you what each tier does. ---  We'll have to thank Mannfred after he's gone. Wiping his army out triggered 'Famous Battle' so now starting next turn we'll permanently see a much different raise dead pool here. You want at least one of these in Sylvania or nearby so that you can raise an army up quickly in an emergency. --- Since we occupied Eschen this time we can't move again and Vlad waits to see if Templehof is going to make a move on Fort Oberstyre so the turn ends. On the AI's turn, the necromancer lord that Mannfred raised the turn before keeps recruiting. I was worried because if he walked into Eschen he would've been able to raise dead and would've had access to all the better units that will be in Eschen's raise dead pool now. AI factions that are playable will always take their turn right after the player, then the nonplayable factions, so Vampire Counts will always take their turn before Templehof. Zelig has had enough and sees the battle of Eschen as the time to start negotiating.     We're starting to feel bad for Zelig. He recovers from the wound we gave him, takes back control of his army and tries to do the right thing by attacking the Moot but is repulsed and loses most of his army, and since Vlad's ambush roll was succesful Zelig doesn't see him and ends the turn a short jaunt from Vlad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gFnCwVqbWs Trujillo fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Apr 1, 2017 |
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Apr 1, 2017 18:18
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Doopliss posted:These awesome combined LPs convinced me to pick this game up at full price, because I'm dumb and missed the sale. I've been playing along with the Von Carsteins on Hard, and am running into a pretty big roadblock in that Imperial peasants don't seem to like me for some reason. I help myself to one meager province, build every order/corruption building I can and prance a bunch of heroes around to push corruption further, and public order is still deteriorating with a full stack hanging out in the capital. I'll probably break even on order soon once the buildings get upgraded, but corruption is hitting diminishing returns and this seems like a pretty unsustainable way to conquer the world. Any advice? Should I just be subjugating people and giving them their towns back? Can you even give people towns in this game? Did you get the corruption boosting technologies in the bottom right tree or influential on your heroes? You could try turning off taxes for any rebellious provinces but rebellions aren't always a bad thing, as long as no one else is pressing you. Killing the rebels gives your heroes ranks and will give a lot of dark magic. Rebellions will slowly build up after they've started. Unless they think they can overwhelm the town they spawn next to with the army they start with, rebels will usually sit outside the city and raise more troops for a few turns before attacking or laying siege. Every turn that the rebels muster, you'll gain 20 order. So you can gain ~60-80 order while the rebels sit and gather strength. If you have an army defending with the garrison, especially if it's walled, you should always be able to beat rebels. Walls and towers are a pretty big advantage. Then after you kill the rebels the province gets a military crackdown bonus to order so it should be a while before the next rebellion so you can move your army somewhere else until they're close to rebelling again. The rebellions won't stop until the province is really corrupted so there's no need to rush in expanding. E: Also, are there still human held towns in the provinces you're trying to corrupt? They'll usually fight back against corruption which is why you might be getting diminishing returns, or you might need more heroes with vampiric corruption. Trujillo fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Apr 1, 2017 |
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Apr 1, 2017 18:30
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Turn 8 Speaking of halflings, the Moot beats Zelig to within an inch of his life and his army is looking just as pitiful. A single unit of bats might be able to take on Zelig's army here so it's autoresolved. ---     Zelig finally bows to the inevitable after his unforunate expedition into Stirland and becomes a vassal. Since he's a schemer I'll probably avoid calling him into any wars until he starts to get Stockholm syndrome. Your vassals have a chance to betray you by refusing your call to arms if you call them at the start of a war and if you have negative relations that probably makes it more likely.  The relations penalty from all the fighting between us is -161 but making them a vassal adds 100 or 110 so it'll start to even out as turns pass and the military actions -161 goes down. Making Templehof a vassal may not be optimal but the advantage is that even with a small territory they'll field a few armies of skeletons and zombies to help defend Sylvania and they'll send out agents too. Ostermark, the Empire province north of Sylvania is hard to defend for a few reasons so by vassalizing Templehof you can have them deal with it and the dwarfs/greenskins who might come from the northeastern mountain passes. You'll still get the commandment bonus for eastern Sylvania but lose out on the buildings there.  Most of the dark magic carted off from Waldenhof a few turns ago is given back as gifts to help them rebuild their city and undead militia now that they've kissed the Carstein ring. ---  The skirmish against Zelig's depleted army ranks Vlad up and he gets The Hunger. He'll regenerate hit points while in combat so now he'll be even harder to kill. Every unit has a percentage cap on healing per battle that'll appear as a | on the health bar when the max healing is getting close. ---  Making Templehof a vassal gives a border with the Slayer's Keep Karak Kadrin.  They're defensive, reliable, hold grudges of course, and they're also underdogs. They're only at war with the Red Eye tribe of goblins that infest the mountains to the far north.  Ornery Backslider, the top gobbo of the tribe has the best trait in the game, Vampiric Influence, "can be easily swayed by vampires during diplomacy." They're at war with Ostermark, Karak Kadrin and an Empire province I don't have contact with yet. Instead of going after Zhufbar once Sylvania is united, I'll try to relieve the Red Eyes by attacking Ostermark and Karak Kadrin at the same time. I've played a few Vampire Count campaigns and sometimes this tribe gets vampiric influence but I've never seen them survive since they're totally surrounded by Kislev and the Empire to their west and Karak Kadrin to their south and there's no other greenskin tribes nearby to take any pressure off them. Their current strength rating is higher than Karak Kadrin's so hopefully that's a good sign. If the mountains to the east of Sylvania were infested by Vampiric influenced goblins after everything that isn't nailed down is taken back to Sylvania, that would be the best case scenario. That way they can take the fight to the main dwarf faction which isn't as easy for vampires because of the attrition you take getting there and it means the dwarfs won't colonize the mountain holds turned into ruins. ---  Eschen's raise dead pool after the battle with Mannfred. 19 units in the pool for now, a full army if I had enough souls to raise them all. The units in the pool will improve with better recruitment buildings built. Pretty sure I didn't raise dead here. With Mannfred's army gone there's no immediate threats and the standing army should be enough to take back Castle Drakenhof.  Since the necromancer is standing with his army outside the walls of Drakenhof, if engaged it'll draw the garrison out from the city. Usually the weaker army sitting outside the city would run away but the power bar is slightly in their favor so he stands his ground.    "Stalwart defenders of the crypts, Grave Guards possess a fighting skill beyond that of the usual wights." Grave Guard and Grave Guard with Great Weapons (not seen yet) are the highest tier undead infantry. They have high armor, silver shields meaning they block 55% of missile attacks from the front, and decent defensive stats. They're a little lacking in melee attack but their high defense allows them to hold the line and when backed up with regeneration will outlast living infantry, although you'll want the armor piercing greatsword version of grave guard when fighting against highly armored infantry like Dwarfs and Empire greatswords/Chaos warriors. The earlier you get grave guard the better. The tier 1 and 2 units that other factions will make their armies up of in the first 20-40 turns won't stand a chance against grave guard. They also have a small anti-infantry bonus.    "Devilish chariots imbued with dark and eldritch power, driving the Undead to greater, more macabre acts." Corpse Carts are a support chariot that regenerates and gives a +8 to melee attack and defense to any friendly units in a 40m circle. There are three versions of the corpse cart and they have different auras but this one is the cheapest and only has the attack/defense buff. They're being pulled by zombies so they move pretty slow but the aura is worth it.  At one point in this video I start showing a part of the interface that controls what does and doesn't show up on the battle interface.  To get to this, I'm pretty sure you just hit the arrow in the circle at the center right edge of the screen. If you check a box, that means it'll show that when you hold down the space bar, but if you hit the lock then it'll always show it. One of the most useful ones is locking hide foliage if you want to see what you're doing better in a forest fight. Battle of Drakenhof - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgvEN4YUcB4 This is the closest battle so far and shows why I had to ambush Mannfred away from Drakenhof. Since the garrison is reinforcing the necromancer they start the battle split up so the necromancer and his small army are taken out first. Even with most of the enemy army dead, the grave guard hold out for a while and would've been a lot more difficult to deal with on top of the walls and supporting a real army. They crumble here because the rest of their army is gone. The vargheists came close to being wiped and Isabella's army is reduced to half strength but the only units lost are two fell bats and the Vampire Counts have been broken for good. Now Isabella can waltz proudly into her ancestral home.    Or not! Somehow twelve measly fell bats escaped the battle and flew back to the Castle preventing us from taking it without building a ram, even though I have more vargheist than they have bats. This is pretty stupid and I don't know how it happened but these bats are soon going to be drawn and quartered by skeletal steeds for delaying Isabella's triumph through her hometown. ---  At the now quiet Castle Templehof, the sawmill chain is taken to tier 2 to give more income and timber. The trees that used to belong to Zelig will eventually be sold back to him once he agrees to trade. ---  The political map at the end of turn 8. The only visible territory that's changed hands is Templehof's. The elector counts of the Empire are neutral towards us because of all the fighting against Templehof and the Vampire Counts but our treaty with Templehof is probably going to sink it. Zhufbar hates us because Dwarfs have a stronger built in aversion to the undead. Zhufbar is defensive though and dealing with the greenskins at Grom Peak so they're not likely to cause trouble. ---  On the AI's turn, because we had to lay siege to Castle Drakenhof, the tiny remnants of the Vampire Count army, now lead by a Strigoi Ghoul King, were able to raise dead and make for Schwartzhafen. If there was no garrison building here I'd be worried but the crypt horrors will be enough to keep this last gasp of the Vampire Counts from getting anywhere. Trujillo fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Apr 5, 2017 |
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Apr 5, 2017 04:06
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The fight against Drakenhof's garrison should be the last major Vampire on Vampire battle besides rebellions, and at least rebellions will spawn with varied units. I think vampire mirror matches are probably the most boring matchup in the game, especially when it's nothing but skeletons and zombies, so glad to be past that phase of the campaign now.
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Apr 5, 2017 04:19
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Zebrin posted:I noticed that it basically boiled down to "bury the other side in chaff, then assassinate the leadership." Yeah that's why I think it's the most boring matchup, in the early campaign and multiplayer. Future battles should have more going on than two identical looking skeletons stabbing each other. It's why I tried to focus on showing charges instead of the infantry battles.
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Apr 5, 2017 16:20
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Turns 9-11 --- Turn 9  "They are stronger than us, smarter than us, live longer than us, and far better looking than us. They are our superiors in every respect, and the taxes are lower when they rule. When they come back I will be the first to welcome them." - Hanskarl Denk, Sylvanian This is one of the events that will pop up randomly. With 100% vampiric corruption in Sylvania you usually won't have to worry about rebellions so at this point it would never hurt to welcome the refugees for more growth.  ---  The ram is finished so the battle of the twelve bats can begin.     This is the last Vampire Count settlement so we have the option to subjugate them and make them a vassal but Drakenhof is too good to let Mannfred decide what to build there. ---  The first tier of the winery chain is built in Eschen over a demolished cemetary. Now the vines will be twice as haunted.  ---  Seizing Drakenhof ranks Isabella and her attendants up and now the Barded Nightmare mount is unlocked. In some cases putting a hero on a horse will lower their combat stats a bit but the extra speed makes up for it and it's required to take this mount to unlock the next one. Putting them on a mount also gives them more mass so they can't be knocked around as easily. ---  Now that they don't have any territory left, the last Vampire Count will start to take attrition. ---  All the dark magic won from battles and sacking has been put to use developing Sylvania but there's not enough of an economy yet to afford a bloated army so the fell bats in Vlad's army are all set free into the mountains of Zhufbar.   A throng of dwarfs are assembling on the new border. The blitz into Zhufbar will have to be stalled. Vlad and Isabella might be able to scrape by against a single of their armies but two would be overwhelming. Turn 10  The recent migration may have been Stirlanders sensing what was brewing on the Wissenland border. This means Stirland probably won't be using their armies to garrison the Moot anymore. ---  The second tech in the Book of Blood is finished. Going straight down the middle to get to Spread Vampire Covens. Each province will give +1 vampiric corruption to each neighboring province and it stacks so it'll help spread to your own and neighboring faction's provinces. Blood is Power is another good choice to get more dark magic income from cities but on higher difficulties it never hurts to start spreading corruption as early as you can.   ---  The von Carstein economy has been a war economy and now that Templehof surrendered and the Vampire Counts turned to ash we'll need someone else to terrorize. Zhufbar is still having a clan reunion right across our border so Isabella moves in the direction of Karak Kadrin to see if they'd make an easier target. The strongholds of the Red Eye greenskibe tribe that they're fighting are a long way from Karak Kadrin so they could be seasons away. By moving into a settlement, your casualty replenishment rate will go up so Isabella stops over in Eschen while Vlad runs down the last Mannfred loyalist.   ---  The second item picked up, Crown of Command, gives one unit 'unbreakable' for a certain amount of time which for most factions would prevent them from running. It probably stops crumbling for Vampires but I forgot to get a shot of the effects box. Not as useful as the Staff of Damnation since it's a single target item.  "While they started off as destitute nobles of Stirland, once becoming Undead, the von Carsteins have accumulated great wealth. The treasuer is in charge of the master's vaults." ---   Since some of their army retreated after the first battle it was two battles and Vlad ranked up twice. Coven of Undeath will start giving experience to every unit in the faction, including garrisons and Cloud of Horror for a little extra campaign movement.  The vampire heroes rank up too and both get more points into influential. Turn 11  The ruined sawmill at Castle Templehof is up and running itself and the tangled vine patch in Eschen starts its first vintage. At Drakenhof, a Cemetary is demolished since all recruitment can be done in western Sylvania. The two main options you can build at Drakenhof tier 1 are the gold mine and the mausoleum.     The gold shaft is built first since more dark magic income will be needed to support more vampires heroes anyways. They have an upkeep of around 220. The mausoleum will be built soon after when the second building slot opens up at Drakenhof. Each tier upgrade of the main settlement chain will open up a building slot until it maxes out. ---  The royal couple ends the turn by inching their way to the Slayer Keep with still no dwarf reinforcements in sight.
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Apr 7, 2017 04:21
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Turn 12 A Templehof vampire lord takes a tour to the mass grave of Eschen where Isabella destroyed Mannfred and starts raising up his own army from the remains. I didn't know if the AI would take advantage of neighboring battle sites but this is the first thing Templehof has done since becoming a vassal so I'm optimistic that Templehof will be a useful vassal. Since they only have one settlement, their recruitment options are limited but they'll always be able to raise up better units from Eschen's battle site. ---  After Vlad and Isabella start to march on Karak Kadrin, Ostermark takes the opportunity to try to take the fight to the Red Eye goblins. The terrain in some spots of the map will slow down your army. Even though they're not that far on the map it would take two turns to reach them through this swamp so the advance into the Peak Pass carries on. ---  Templehof hates us, but they hate Karak Kadrin even more so they approve. I was worried because they're schemers and currently hate the von Carsteins too so there was a chance they might stab us in the back. I thought I'd be able to just not invite them so they don't have the chance to betray me but I guess you can only choose not to call allies to war and not vassals.  The fighting ability of the average dwarf is a lot higher than the ability of this ragged skeleton army. Even with Vlad and the Vampire twins the bar is heavily in their favor. I have a feeling it would be winnable despite what the bar says. The only good melee fighters they have are two dwarf warriors. Dwarf ranged units are decent melee combatants but would get overwhelmed by the amount of skeletons. But Isabella is waiting nearby to reinforce and Vlad raises a few zombies to get their towers' attention while the skeleton warriors advance. Wall towers will usually shoot at whatever's closest so the zombies will catch crossbow bolts and bullets for the real units.  Even though they're doomed I wanted to post a video to at least show some of the dwarf units. Battle Five - Assault on Karak Kadrin - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vrxzm1r6hY The battle starts with the vampires hitting the gate down. Any unit can attack the gate and bring it down eventually. The skeleton warriors and spearmen scale the walls with ladders which would usually lead to them getting massacred if this keep was being defended by more than a skeleton crew. Not much to say about this one, other than pointing out how many kills one of the dwarf warriors got. This is why Zhufbar couldn't be attacked before, because a real dwarf army would turn Vlad's to dust.   ---  Isabella's character tree so far. Took Children of the Night here because with two points invested in this skill you'll get +1 vampire hero capacity. Can't afford to recruit that many vampires yet so taking this skill now probably wasn't necessary but there's not anything that important that you need to get to first. Vlad and Isabella are already really strong so you can afford to take some utility early. ---  "Drakenhof is the sprawling ancestral fortress of the von Carstein bloodline. Ever since the coming of Vlad it has been the de facto political centre of Sylvania." The dark magic gained from sacking the Slayer Keep is put to immediate use in expanding Castle Drakenhof. Taking it to tier two will give a better garrison, more income, growth and unlock the second building slot. The number next to each tier is how much population surplus you need to upgrade to that tier. Each level of population surplus requires more accumulated growth to get to than the last. ---  The undead caravan carrying dwarf gold and precious gems to Drakenhof stops at Waldenhof and Zelig is allowed to keep a chest for himself. He's not impressed but it'll raise relations some and encourage him to build a bigger army.  Turn 13   A great army by Templehof standards. Too many wolves but it's better than what he had when he was independent thanks to the Eschen battle site. ---  This random event fires at the start of the turn. It takes a brave peasant to walk up to a von Carstein castle with torches and pitchforks. Too bad we can't draft them into our armies but there are some mods that allow vampires to recruit human levees. ---  The Bloody Spearz swear allegiance to the black orc warboss Grimgor Ironhide.  There was a battle here two turns ago between the Bloody Spearz and the Zhufbar armies that were seen mustering. Not sure who won but I'm guessing it was Zhufbar since the Bloody Spearz got confederated. The battle leaves a marker but hopefully we'll never have to go as far into the mountains as Grom Peak.  Grimgor is currently the strongest force in the world and is at war with two other Greenskin tribes and three Dwarf clans. In most of the campaigns I've fought since the Dwarfs and Greenskins got a booster pack DLC "The King and the Warlord," the dwarfs have wiped out the greenskins almost every single time but it looks like Grimgor has some momentum going.   It makes no difference to us. Grimgor has the unreliable trait so it'd only be a matter of time before he tore up the non-aggression pact anyways. ---  Zhufbar is now strength rank 54, which means they barely have an army right now. If they won the battle against the Bloody Spearz they don't have much to show for it except for a lot of vulnerability. ---  You can't sack and raze a settlement in the same turn so Vlad returns to Karak Kadrin to root out the dwarfs from Peak Pass. Since they were just sacked the battle is autoresolved.   ---  Vlad's character tree so far. The rank up goes into Children of the Night. ---  The ruins of Karak Kadrin. There's a mod that makes ruins give off a small percentage of vampiric corruption but I don't remember what it's called. Karak Kadrin still holds Gnashrak's Lair, a settlement further into the Worlds Edge Mountains that we don't have vision of. ---  Isabella raises the dead in Eschen and doubles the size of her army in anticipation of a war against Zhufbar now that their blood is in the water.   Vlad can't move since he razed Karak Kadrin and it took all of Isabella's movement to reach the Eschen region so the turn ends. ---  On the AI's turn, the Broken Spearz army, now taking orders from Grimgor, marches into Sylvania, most likely on their way south into the badlands. It's a shame they confederated because now it looks like they were the winner of the battle against Zhufbar and probably would've been able to take it for themselves. Grimgor isn't yet at war with Zhufbar though so they pass the lightly defended stronghold to go on a death march through Sylvania. Trujillo fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Apr 10, 2017 |
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Apr 10, 2017 00:38
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Turn 14  The first instance of peaceful diplomacy the von Carsteins have engaged in since their return to power. The Red Eyez are easily swayed by vampires and like us even more now that we've taken the war to Karak Kadrin and forced the stunties out of their fortress. ---  Gnashrak, the former leader of the Bloody Spearz. Isabella goes to garrison her ancestral home in case the greenskins turn north and declare war.  ---  The pride of Ostermark is off fighting goblins in the mountains, a filthy and thankless task. When they come back out of the mountains there may not be an Ostermark to go home to. ---  On the AI's turn, the greenskins keep going southwest, to a pass in the mountains south of Schwartzhafen. Bats and wolves pick off stragglers to hurry their exit out of Sylvania for the sake of its citizens who still have a pulse. Turn 15  The Red Eyez capitalize on our assault on Karak Kadrin and are able to end their clan.  A sign the Greenskins are gaining even more momentum. A Waaagh! happens when a Greenskin army over 17 units wins enough battles that it attracts a waaagh. A waaagh is a second army that spawns under AI control but will follow your main army around and can be given war coordination targets. Since the dwarf units are so much better at fighting than every other faction early on you need a high numbers advantage to beat them and now the Greenskins might have it. ---  The peasantry is under the protection of the von Carsteins, as long as they pay their taxes on time and don't go wandering around at night. ---   Ornery agrees to military access. He was 'maybe' on a defensive alliance but wouldn't go for it. I probably should've tried bribing him because of what happens to him in a few turns. --- The time seems ripe to start the invasion of the Empire so a declaration of war is sent to Ostermark as Vlad crosses the border into Essen.   Templehof obeys and the province of Ostland answers Wolfram's call to arms, but it's looking pretty grim for Ostermark. They were already at war with Kislev, Talabecland and the Red Eyez. Now they're almost completely surrounded by enemies and their soldiers are on a distant trek through mountain passes full of goblin dung. ---  Before they have any time to react, Vlad crosses the border to sack the town of Essen and prepare it for annexation by Templehof. This is an even more lopsided battle than the last one but it didn't feel right just auto-resolving the first battle against the Empire so here it is. Battle Six, Raid on Essen - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFdbqeBocSs Spoiler: Vlad wins  The first banner we've gotten so far is taken in the sack of Essen. It'll give 25% more magic resistance to a single hero, unit or Vlad himself. There's a few different types of banners the Vampires can get. This one is okay because a lot of spells are magic damage and some units have magic damage attacks, this will reduce them both.  ---  After Essen is sacked, Vlad goes into the raiding stance just outside the town. That way they won't take attrition for standing in non-corrupted lands and will still be in range to encourage Templehof to take the town for themselves. By standing by it Vlad can reinforce their attack on the town when it's their turn.  Taking influential on the vampire heroes and attaching them with Vlad is giving 8.6% corruption per turn. The percentage a province will be corrupted each turn will start to go down as the overall percentage of corruption goes up but it's a start. ---  Zhufbar starts to rebuild out of Oakenhammer. Isabella is moving into position but if Zhufbar gets much stronger she won't be able to take them on without Vlad's help. ---   You can assign a vassal or ally a war coordination target, which can be an army or settlement that they'll prioritize attacking. It usually works. --- On the AI's turn, Zelig runs straight for it and since it's 3837 vs 150 the battle is auto-resolved.    Zelig starts to carve out his own necromantic fiefdom under Vlad and Isabella's guidance.
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Apr 10, 2017 03:35
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Doopliss posted:I was sort of hoping for a lesson in "how to not get hosed by those omnipresent dwarf bastards", but watching them get beaten up by Greenskins seems like a decent second prize. I also totally underestimated the value of keeping Templehof around as a pet - I missed that you could assign war coordination targets. Godspeed, our filthy cheating AI friend. The dwarfs might turn it around, it's still pretty early, but it's not looking good for them. The way to deal with them though is to build an army with all armor piercing attacks. Even if the greenskins eliminate the main dwarf clan there'll probably still be more of them to deal with in the western mointains. And yeah, keeping Templehof as a vassal seems like a good idea but they are schemers and opportunists so they may just be building their own strength and biding their time. Herr Tog posted:Well this is goddamn amazing and I wonder what, if anything, you will do about chaos and waaaghs If the greenskins take over they'll probably start flooding into Sylvania but as long as they're still fighting the dwarfs that should keep them occupied for a while. As for chaos, the quicker you expand the faster they'll show up so we'll see if they come before Vlad and Isabella make their assault on Altdorf.
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Apr 10, 2017 15:10
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Doopliss posted:My issue is less beating them on the open field and more that they can strike into my heartland at pretty much any time. And while I'm trying to slowly wade over to their towns through the mountains, another one will likely declare and make my life miserable elsewhere. Compact isn't compact enough to deal with this crap, even with three stacks. Could be I should forego vassalizing Templehof to avoid antagonizing them and just bribe the hell out of every dwarf faction I share a border with, or maybe I should just swallow my pride and drop to Hard mode until I have a better feel for the campaign's broad strokes. If you take out Zhufbar and Karak Kadrin, it'll be tough for the main dwarf faction to get a foothold in those mountains. When you colonize a ruin it depletes your army because your troops are the ones colonizing so if you can hit them right after they've moved into a ruin it's an automatic victory. You can try taking the Border Prince town south of Schwartzhafen and striking out at the dwarfs from there if they're giving you trouble. ZearothK posted:If there are Waaaghs it will be a good thing, Long Victory for Vampires requires genociding the Dwarfs; and Orcs & Goblins are a much easier fight than Dwarfs for Vampires anyway. The Vampire Counts have to take out the Dwarfs but the von Carsteins just need to take out the three main Bretonnian factions and the Empire for their long victory, just the Empire for short. Mzbundifund posted:What's the advantage of vassals at all if they're able to just ignore it and break the treaty whenever they feel like it? Vassals aren't treacherous by nature, it's just that Zelig has the traits "Schemer" which makes them more likely to break treaties and "Opportunist" which I think makes them more likely to attack you if you're weak but I'm not sure. The advantages to having them are they've now got two armies going despite not having a lot of land because of their base income. They'll also be a buffer between Sylvania and the Varg and Skaeling who are very annoying tribal Chaos raiders that come from the north. Templehof will eventually get agents too and send those out to raise hell and spread corruption. Relations with them are almost positive which will probably lead to them not back stabbing me once relations are high enough but I've never tried to keep a schemer as a vassal so who knows.
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Apr 10, 2017 17:01
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Mzbundifund posted:Ah, ok. How long does it take for the "military actions against Templehof" relations debuff to decay? It was -161 on turn 8. It seems like it decays at 5 per turn so by turn 40 it'll be gone if the rate stays the same. Doopliss posted:Interesting. In the past they've been relatively on-the-ball about recolonizing , but maybe I haven't been insistent enough about striking deeper. I'll try to be more stubborn about bringing the Dwarfs low before directing my attention elsewhere and funneling the raid money into Sylvania. I haven't done a campaign as the vampires since the game came out about a year ago so my advice there might be out of date. I think one patch notes said they increased the AI's priority on colonizing so I could be wrong.
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Apr 10, 2017 17:21
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Turn 16 Vlad gets the first quest in his line just after Templehof occupy the objective so in a few turns it'll just say "quest aborted" and skip to the next part of the quest. These will eventually lead to quest battles which give unique items for that legendary lord that usually have faction-wide boosts. Sometimes the reward is also a hero. Some of the objectives will require a hero to walk to the opposite end of the map so it can be tedious to do the objectives. There's a mod that takes out all the objectives and just gets right to the battles. When you're able to do the quest battle, you can teleport to the spot for 5000 currency if it's too far to march which is useful for the undead because you'd take attrition marching halfway across the world to the battle site. ---  The Feasters in the Dusk, a regiment of renown crypt ghoul is unlocked. They have stalk and vanguard deployment. Stalk means that they can stay hidden even while moving through any terrain and are only revealed when they get close enough to an enemy unit. ---   Baleful Rituals finishes and research starts on spreading vampire covens. The +1 corruption in adjacent provinces stacks so it'll help spread it quicker to your own provinces and your neighbors.  As of now there's no noticeable corruption outside of Sylvania but Zhufbar, Averland, Stirland, Ostermark and Peak Pass will start getting 1-2 corruption per turn once it finishes. At 50% vampiric attrition or higher your units won't take attrition marching through the province even if you don't own it. ---  The first objective assigned at the start of the campaign is finished. The influx of dark magic is put to use in constructing the Mausoleum of the Mad Count and upgrading the gold-mining operation and upgrading Eschen to a tier two settlement.   "Now is the time for Fell Bats to blot out the sun, for gloom to fall upon the lands of the living and the Long Night to begin. The von Carsteins' dominion shall extend far and wide if the prophecies in the Liber Noctus are to come true." The second chapter objective starts, which is to occupy/loot/raze/sack 10 different settlements for even more dark magic. ---  The insatiable and wolf like Elector Counts are starting to tear the Empire apart. The mad count of Averland takes the Moot from Stirland after all the men that Stirland could muster are shot to shreds by the guns of Wissenland outside their capital.  Stirland's dead will soon rise to take revenge on their invaders. --- When Templehof took Eschen, more provinces were revealed on the map.  Kislev's outer line of defense, Fort Jakova is now in sight, along with the Red Eye stronghold of Karak Ungor.  "Kislev is the northernmost nation of men, living between the civilized nations of men and dwarfs of the south and the barbaric tribes of the Chaos Wastes to the north." Kislev is a nation of men but currently no friend to the Empire of men, being at war with Ostermark and Ostland. The von Carsteins are also at war with them both so they're ambivalent towards us. They start with a lot of land and are currently the 8th strongest faction but they'll suffer for being so close to the Chaos Wastes later on. --- Since Ostermark is fighting in every direction, Vlad leaves the northern war effort to Zelig and goes south to rejoin Isabella as she prepares to take the war to Zhufbar.  They've gotten an army back together pretty quickly, but Oakenhammer is a minor settlement without walls and a small garrison so if they stay there's a chance for victory.   --- Turn 17  "We have warred with the mortal usurpers of the Empire many times before; now we will teach them a final lesson!" Conflict of Men is a huge bonus, +16 to all unit leadership while fighting humans for the next 8 turns starting when war is declared on Averland, which the game gives 8 turns to do. ---  Zelig slinks his way up to the Ostermark capital of Bechafen to find it already under siege by The Grand Duchy of Talabecland.  ---  The main army moves back behind the walls of Zhufbar when we approach but now Oakenhammer is lightly protected and rich. If you hover the mouse over any settlement that your race can't occupy, it'll tell you how much you'll get from sacking it. Sacking Zhufbar itself will only give ~1800 dark magic but Oakenhammer is worth ~4303.     Vlad surrounds the hold of Zhufbar but the power bar isn't looking promising. Fighting defensive siege battles is the dwarf's strongest suit and Vlad's army is too weak on its own. Oakenhammer is totally exposed to Isabella though so when she joins back up with Vlad after sacking the dwarf town the bar might move.   The battle is autoresolved but that was a mistake as the vargheists take most of the damage which is not what you want right before running to a close battle.  Isabella fills the three spots in her army with three regiments of renown: the tithe, the feasters in the dusk and the konigstein stalkers.  Isabella force marches to reach Zhufbar but even with her army reinforcing Vlad it doesn't seem it'll be enough. You need to catch them outside their walls unless you have a strong enough army to be able to assault. The skeletons would barely make it to the walls so the siege is broken and Isabella and Vlad start making their way back into Sylvania and out of the range of the Zhufbar garrison. Turn 18  The Mausoleum of the Mad Count finishes, allowing recruitment of Vampire heroes. The first to be recruited, third in the pecking order is Hildegard Helschnicht, an uncompromising shadow vampire. With the Mausoleum, Vampire heroes will come recruited at rank 4 which allows you to start them off with two points in Influential. Eventually with Vampire Crypts, a tier IV and V building, they'll start at even higher ranks. --- At the start of turn 18, tragedy strikes.  Our formerly soon-to-be pet goblins are groveling at Grimgor's feet. Now that he's confederated with the Bloody Spearz and the Red Eyez, Grimgor controls the whole mountain range to our east with the exception of Zhufbar's lands and the ruins of Karak Kadrin. ---    Not any day? After hearing that, the von Carsteins send a mortal servant to treat with Zhufbar. Grimgor is getting too much strength behind him. If he takes all the dwarf lands for himself Sylvania will be covered in orcs. The longer the greenskins and dwarfs fight each other the better. Taking out Zhufbar now would give Grimgor too much free space so a peace treaty is signed with Zhufbar along with a non-aggression clause. They have the reliable trait so that means they don't like to go back on their word. Signing peace so quickly after declaring war will hurt the von Carstein reliability rating. If your reliability rating is too low, the AI won't want to make deals with you. It'll recover over time and this is the first time anything has been done to hurt our reputation and the von Carsteins are already diplomatic pariah anyways.   ---  Temporary peace with Zhufbar means Vlad and Isabella can turn west to the setting sun of Averland. --- Turn 19  War between Clan Zhufbar and Grimgor. Whoever wins, we lose. --- "Not many men can be said to have waged wars against forests, swarms of bees and half-imagined fishmen, so it is not without good reason that Marius Leitdorf is known as the Mad Count." Not to be confused with the Isabella's father, the Sylvanian Mad Count, Marius Leitdorf of Averland is paranoid and distrustful of the other Electors. He oversees the recent addition to his domain personally. The second stack isn't an army yet, just a single General of the Empire.   Isabella raises up another unit of fell bats while waiting in Schwartzhafen. Vlad goes into ambush in the forests outside the town. Wouldn't want to startle the cattle into stampeding away when they're right where we want them.
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Apr 14, 2017 03:12
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Turn 20 "When a Vampire Count discovers a large seam of gold, he will send his minions forth to scour it clean." The gold mine upgrade finishes at Drakenhof which increases the income made from it. ---  The mad count is given one final choice, to serve the rightful Emperor and Empress in life or in death.    He chooses death. ---   By declaring war on Averland, the Vampire Wars event triggers which gives a big enough leadership buff to nearly guarantee victory in the upcoming battle. --- Isabella and Vlad raise up some regiments of renown to shore up their armies just in case.    "Hurling itself into the fray, the pack's teeth close around limbs and do not let go." The Dire Pack is a slightly huskier version of the wolf pack, with 9 more leadership, 10 more melee attack and 8 more defense. They do anti-large damage which the regular wolves don't so they work well in combination with cavalry.   "Zombies: shuffling, mindless, ambling towards their foes - on an uneding quest for flesh." The Tithe is the regiment of renown version of zombies. There's 200 zombies in The Tithe compared to 160 for normal zombies. They have 9 more leadership, 2 more speed and slightly better weapons with 5 more melee attack and 6 more melee defense and 6 more charge bonus. They also have a 15% resistance to physical damage that zombies don't have. It's the trait icon in the bottom left corner of the unit card. ---  Before the von Carsteins can reach him, the lone general of the Empire makes a run for it, forcing Count Leitdorf to face the combined power of Isabella and Vlad alone.   Battle Seven - The Moot - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H392ikwSDVU -To skip to the action, go to 4:30, the battle takes a while to get going On legendary, battle realism mode is turned on which means you can't see the power bar or the mini map, so I take a while to merge Vlad and Isabella's armies instead of attacking straight away because I can't see the balance of power. There's just too many undead to deal with and they're overrun, too many in fact that it causes the animations to start stuttering when the whole battle is in view. I haven't seen this before but I played through a lot of turns in one session and I noticed it in a couple of the replays from it. I think something else was running and lagging my computer that time as it comes up in a few replays but not again. It strangely stops when their army completely routs.    The battle leaves a marker, 3041 casualties.  The Moot is sacked for 1571 dark magic and then re-occupied on the same turn.  The half-lings flee in terror as the von Carstein banner flutters over the Moot, but not to Averland. With Averland's army stacked up in corpse piles at the feet of the von Carsteins, Averheim and Grenzstadt are overcome with fear and the mustering bells start ringing in panic when word of the battle reaches them.  Greater Sylvania ---    On the AI's turn, Karak Hirn, a dwarf clan who are friends of Averland and inhabit the mountains south of them, will soon be joining their friends on the corpse pile.
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Apr 14, 2017 04:19
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Well this sucks, was playing ahead and now the game keeps crashing every time the dwarfs take their turn, and because it's legendary there's not an older save I can go back to to try to avoid whatever is causing the crash.  Now I'll just fast forward and post replays of the biggest/closest battles like this one:  Might as well skip to the end if it's going to end at turn 70 anyways. Trujillo fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Apr 15, 2017 |
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Apr 15, 2017 03:29
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wiegieman posted:Did the Chaos invasion happen? Lots of wardecs/ treaties breaking at once can crash the game. It happened a few turns before. I've tried reloading the save and trying to do more stuff in the campaign to try to somehow avert it but it keeps getting stuck on either saving or the dwarfs doing something.
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Apr 15, 2017 03:34
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Doopliss posted:I'm very sorry to hear that - it was a high quality LP, and I was very much enjoying it. Still, I'd understand if you didn't want to run through the whole campaign to turn 70 again to pick it up again. I could start a new campaign and run it up to turn 70, but I'm thinking though since I only actually posted up to turn 20 maybe I should just do a new campaign and get to turn 20 and pick up from there. The only thing that would change is what all the other factions outside Sylvania do during the first 20 turns.
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Apr 15, 2017 04:23
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I think it is possible to get backups of legendary saves. I'll try to remember to start doing that in round 2. It may have been caused by the custom map mods that were on in the beginning and then turned off or maybe it was a bug with the chaos invasion, but just in case this time it'll be purely vanilla. Risen from the grave (again)  Starting a new campaign, here's how things diverged between turns one to twenty:  Zelig has ruin-dweller this time instead of opportunist so he'll make an even better vassal now. --- When Isabella laid siege in the old save to Castle Templehof, one of the Vampires was kept in Schwartzhafen to pray and increase growth. This time I brought both vampires with Isabella and it made Templehof too afraid to fight me so they let Templehof and Fort Oberstyre get taken and ran to Waldenhof.  Mannfred took Eschen again, but this time Templehof's army was still on their feet so they attacked Eschen on their turn and failed, causing a massive 4897 casualties. When Mannfred was then destroyed by Isabella on turn 8, it lead to a raise dead pool which included one of every undead unit in the game and dozens of skeletons. That's pretty crazy to have in Sylvania at turn 9.  ---  The Red Eyez managed to take Karak Kadrin themselves early on, but the Red Eyez don't have the Vampiric Influence trait this time around so they hate the von Carsteins. ---  There are random events that will give you certain types of agents. Necromancers are great early on because they can reduce build costs in a province by -20% when they're deployed and the only way to get them otherwise is to build an expensive tier IV building, the necromancer tower. -20% may not seem like a lot but in a full campaign you'll probably use at least 1-2,000,000 dark magic so it adds up.  The necromancer's first utility skill lowers costs by another -10%. Necromancers deployed in provinces will get traits eventually that improve the income of the region they're standing in so you want to keep one deployed outside Templehof and Drakenhof, and any other well developed province capitals, but then also having one or two to shuffle between the provinces before you start a wave of construction. They can also attach to armies and fight in battles. They have access to the lore of Vampires and can use a skeletal horse, or corpse carts as mounts. When they use the cart mounts they get access to the corpse cart auras. ---  Averland declared war on around turn 5. About turn 12 I watched them lay an ambush near the Moot and intentionally walked Vlad into it, killed them and took the province of Averland. You can see the AI lay an ambush if you're watching a stack move and suddenly it disappears but you have to have the AI turn speed set to normal instead of fast or you'll probably miss it. I keep it on normal for this to take screenshots. ---    Political, relations, vampiric corruption --- Instead of constructing Sylvania the same way, I invested first in western Sylvania and built an Ancient Armoury at Castle Templehof to unlock grave guard as soon as possible and built the level two cemetery in Fort Oberstyre since you need both to recruit grave guard.         The ghost fence is the first tier garrison building that you can build only in provincial capitals. It improves tower attacks and gives an increased garrison and some better defensive siege stats. The tier III and IV versions will give even stronger tower projectiles and a stronger garrison. If you take a province with low corruption and don't want to keep an army garrisoned there constantly or are worried about nearby factions, building the ghost fence will make the town able to repel most rebel stacks on their own, especially if you raise a lord at the town before it's besieged. ---  Isabella has a much stronger army already this time around with a core of grave guard, with room to raise elite units from the killing fields of Eschen.  No Staff of Damnation this time but the Helm of Discord is about as good, and the ironic 'Lively' trait that was gained for some reason gives more campaign range. I'll probably show what all of these items do when they come up.  --- Trujillo fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Apr 15, 2017 |
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Apr 15, 2017 18:04
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ZearothK posted:And welcome back! I'm not sure but I think they do count for the missions to occupy X amount of settlements so probably counts for Imperium.
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Apr 15, 2017 18:30
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