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Stephen9001 posted:This reminds me, Legend of total war (unless I'm misremembering) is doing a Tyrion campaign, and one of the first things he did was dismiss the starting pheonix on the grounds the upkeep is too high, and is more efficiently spent on more archers. I don't care if he seemed to prove that was in fact the mechanically optimal choice, if you decided to replace a monster you get to start with with more archers, you are terminally boring. He's playing on legendary (most other streamers/youtubers seems to be playing on hard/very hard). He's utterly crushed the other Ulthuan factions, has a great economy currently and two solid armies to work with. He's almost ready to invade Naggarond at around turn 70. I've only noticed a couple of minor mistakes in his entire campaign so far (recruiting and disbanding a 60 influence lord a few turns later was pretty silly), but otherwise he's really showing how to do well on legendary. The phoenix in the starting army has a huge upkeep (500 or so?) and probably won't pull it's weight against other armies comprised of archers and spears. Money in this game seems to be harder to come by and is seems like armies need to be constantly on the move, so I don't see the point in having a unit that can't simply be replaced early on anyway. Legend of Total War is an arsehole, but he's still the only Youtuber worth watching, for people interested in seeing a good player taking on the highest difficulty.
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Sep 26, 2017 23:04
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Orcs are green and aborigines aren't. What a silly comparison!
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Sep 26, 2017 23:30
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Stephen9001 posted:I already admitted that he seemed to prove dismissing the phoenix for more archers was the mechanically optimal choice (he's certainly good at the game) but that I believed the decision meant he was terminally boring. So yeah, watch Legend if you want mechanically (near) optimal play, but the rest of us get to acknowledge how soulless such play is. You never see people upload legendary campaigns where they hosed up and died, because High Elf replenishment sucks and the 20% health phoenix ended up doing it's best dead parrot impression after being shot to death. It's fun to explore the game on very hard sometimes, and play with silly army compositions (Gelt's artillery army  ). I'd rather do that myself than watch someone else do it though.DO IT TO IT posted:Heir of Carthage and PartyElite are the only TW youtubers worth watching. Heir of Carthage is legitimately terrible (both on the campaign and battle maps). He seems utterly obsessed with his Lothern Sea Guard and spends most of his time broke as gently caress. I'm still watching because I have a week off work and more Warhammer content  , but gently caress me he's awful. How do you forget that your opponent has a second mortar.
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Sep 26, 2017 23:59
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'The best they got' against an AI is always an army of giants (or equivalent), so final battles are always going to be fairly one sided.
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Sep 27, 2017 00:22
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ElichTV (on Twitch) is worth watching. He's gotten early access fairly late, but has actually managed to keep ahead of the AI on rituals during his first campaign, and has done an excellent job of understanding the lizardmen.
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Sep 27, 2017 01:00
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Eimi posted:So my impressions from last night mostly revolve around the ritual mechanics being nothing but unfun bullshit. It seems you are heavily heavily punished for even taking your 'home' territory, in this case Ulthuan. The map is too big or your movement speed is too slow. The ritual armies spawn with siege weapons so all those defenses you put in place are meaningless. I know people have managed to win with Tyrion, so I'm kind of wondering what was your strategy? Did you just stick to Lothern/Caledor/the one with Shrine of Asuryan? What were your army comps? Did you just stick with spearmen/archers to get enough armies to cover all your territory? I'm really scrambling to come up with a strategy that lets you do the fun thing of unifying your starting position while also competing with the stupid rituals. Do you just ignore the rituals and just go wipe out the other factions? Finished a High Elf campaign on very hard this morning. Cavalry is basically useless unless you're chasing down war machines (stuff doesn't break on the higher difficulties, so rear charges aren't as effective as they should be). Best starting armies are the cheapest spearmen/archers, and three or so bolt throwers. Ditch the phoenix, it's poo poo and not worth the upkeep. I'd focus on maxing out his blue line (making sure to grab both the upkeep reduction and replenishment). It's worth sending out a hero to find factions to trade with. Outer rings aren't worth taking directly until you have significant forces, although the ritual site to the south west may be an exception if you want to stay ahead of the AI. They're all fairly vulnerable to raiding by other factions and it's better to have trade agreements with neighbours initially anyway. I ended up doing a sort of pendulum move, by taking Tyrion's army and capturing the region with the White Tower. They then headed back clockwise, while recruiting a second cheap army to more easily crush the remaining cities. Headed out via the north gate to take the less than ideal terrain, and the second ritual site. I tried taking and holding Albion, but it's not worth it, and I ended up just letting it die to rebellions. Still worth taking out Skaeling, but I'd just head straight for Naggaroth after razing the area if I was doing it again. Did the rituals to win, but won't bother again. It's easy to disrupt enemy rituals by sending over a couple of armies, and you may as well just conquer them while you're there anyway. I won't spoil the ritual mechanics, but I'll say they're not especially interesting and feel like a cheap way to hinder the player. There is no way to really prepare for what happens, unless you own significant territory outside your starting continent and can afford to have multiple armies sitting at home doing nothing (even then there is probably no guarantee of holding onto all your territory). For future campaigns I'm just going to play for domination, and murder anyone trying to complete the ritual instead. Beer Hall Putz fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Sep 29, 2017 |
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Sep 29, 2017 19:41
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MonsterEnvy posted:I would say an easy fix for the ritual would be a change to the spawned chaos armies AI. Namely that they will always focus ritual settlements and ignore the rest. As that seems to be the big problem everyone is having. Getting them to focus ritual sites would mean they suffer the same fate as the AI intervention armies. Once you realise the ritual is more of a story mode than a real win condition it's fine. It's basically like playing the first Warhammer game, except you have to send a few Empire armies into the badlands to stop Grimgor sneaking a victory. If they just make it a bit easier for the AI to complete the final ritual, then the campaign would be really great.
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Sep 29, 2017 20:23
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Upkeep on new armies has been increased to an absurd level in this game, and those armies generally need to be doing something useful. You can go for ships, but it's basically gambling on the treasure negating the absurd upkeep penalty. They seem more of a thing to grab while on the way to somewhere else.
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Sep 29, 2017 20:40
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:People keep talking about how easy High Elves are, but I am losing in the campaign map because I don't have any money and both my provinces are on the verge of rebellion all the time. It's about turn 25 with Teclis, I wiped out the Xeti Guardians and took the ritual resource site from the Dark Elves but their capital is fortified. I have a stack of 15-20 Sea guard and archers, and have leveled up all the best spells. My settlements are all green buildings but I still can't stabilize. What gives?! Very Hard difficulty. - Teclis is a harder start than Tyrion. - If it's turn 15-20, you can't afford an army full of Sea Guard. Early High Elf armies should be basic spearmen and basic bowmen only (can squeeze in 1-3 bolt throwers if you can get them, but it's not worth waiting around for the building to complete). Ditch the phoenix (on both lords), it won't pull it's weight. - Fortified settlements are easy to take as the high elves, as you can usually position your archers away from the bulk of tower damage and massacre the defenders. - If your main army is cheap and effective, then you can quickly recruit a throwaway lord + a few units to defend against a rebellion. Capitals have strong garrisons and the AI is hopeless. The trick is to keep your early armies cheap, so you can keep moving and upgrade what you're taking. Beer Hall Putz fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Sep 30, 2017 |
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Sep 30, 2017 23:00
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Eimi posted:Is the Phoenix being bad only a thing on VH? On hard the fire one Tyrion gets has worked out great for me. The enemy archer AI is terrified of it, so just by flying over them they run away and stop shooting. The bombs can rack up decent hp damage the terror it causes is useful. I do agree that after that the best army is nothing but spearmen and archers, which is loving boring as hell. But it works and sadly money doesn't let you do anything else. They cost something crazy like 500 gold per turn upkeep. High elf replenishment and early economy are both dreadful (not sure why people are complaining about public order). Bombs are useful for gate guards, but archers are always going to perform better for the cost early on. The real problem is they're going to get injured fairly often and waiting for replenishment just isn't worth the extra turns with a main army. They also suffer from the same problem that cavalry does on higher difficulties. Nothing breaks until it's pretty much dead and your 'anti-infantry' cav gets murdered after charging in, because said infantry outnumber them and don't give a poo poo.
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Oct 1, 2017 00:01
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Someone needs to mod in automatic victory for the AI if they complete the final ritual, then invoice Creative Assembly for fixing the campaign.
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Oct 3, 2017 20:47
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SunAndSpring posted:What happens if the AI finishes the last ritual? You get an extra five turns and a free teleport to a 'final battle' against a single AI army. The battle is uphill, but it's still not difficult and you also get friendly AI armies to fight with you. On legendary I could probably do it with a lord and 5-6 units. Once you win, the AI faction is removed from the 'race' and can't try to complete the ritual again. It's basically impossible to lose the campaign in any way, other than by losing on the campaign map
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Oct 3, 2017 20:55
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Dongattack posted:So really you can just ignore rituals all together and just do the ~FINALE BATTEL~ for the 3 other races or however many there are and play like normal? Yep exactly. You're actively penalised for doing your own ritual, both with invasions and diplomatic penalties. There is no reason to pay any attention to the enemy rituals, as they'll simply never complete them. The AI also seems to target ritual resource sites for invasion, so it's probably best to never bother to claim them either. The best comparison I can think of is like playing the original game where the Chaos invasion never happens, you have to take over the entire map to win. (or I guess you could use your crushing economic might to station three armies around each of your ritual cities and just auto-resolve to win if you get bored of domination)
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Oct 3, 2017 21:51
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Five cannons and five catapults, plus an engineer kills basically everything before it can reach the lines anyway. AI seems to be doing a weird dance thing to try and avoid incoming projectiles and doesn't attempt to move forwards. Stormvermin are really only worth taking to protect the flanks and destroy the occasional wavering unit that staggers into the gun line at 10% health.
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Oct 9, 2017 04:54
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Ammanas posted:The first game is a lot better, that's a nice reason to play it first. I agree. More varied victory conditions and the Chaos invasion was far more threatening/exciting than anything in the vortex campaign. The best strategy now just seems to be turtling and maintaining good relations with your neighbours (probably the same race and automatically liking you due to ritual mechanics). There is just no tension. 
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Oct 9, 2017 20:08
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Will have to see how they compare when the combined map comes out obviously, but I'd put money on the Skaven just due to the absurd range engineers give the cannons. Hellcannons seem to trade badly from what I've seen so far (although it's hard to tell, because the AI is really hopeless at using them).
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Oct 10, 2017 19:50
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Siets posted:Hello Hams Friends. I come seeking aid and advice on military strategy and tactics to assist my glorious lizardmen in their eternal quest to be regarded as Cool Hipsters by the Old Ones. Telling you exactly what to do would probably spoil the campaign and be a pretty lovely thing to do really. I'd suggest picking a victory condition and just going for it (don't try to combine domination and the rituals). To interrupt the enemy ritual, you only need to have razed (has to stay that way) or held one of their three cities before the timer expires, so sending a single army over may be worth if if that's your aim. Personally I'd just focus on building up maybe 5-8 provinces and just take the rituals as they come. If the AI looks like it's going to win, just play the campaign out anyway. Saurus with shields and the occasional spear with a couple of the healing crystal dino-thingies is pretty much unstoppable. Not too expensive compared to it's absurd power level either (maybe add some other big things to stop it being boring).
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Oct 11, 2017 20:08
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Grumio posted:The fact that the elves keep telling themselves this shows how dumb they really are Ritual murder of slaves isn't a very Khorne way to do things. Siets posted:How much do you value temple guards for their armor? I'm unsure how to evaluate armor and armor penetration in this game as I frankly do not really understand how it works within the games mechanics. They're over costed really. AP is a great stat, but I don't think Temple Guard pull their weight in the campaign. The AI really can't do much about the sheer number of high HP bodies that a shield Saurus army fields anyway. The major downside is that auto-resolve seems to hate the army composition and will lose units against undead skeleton spears 
Beer Hall Putz fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 20:32
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toasterwarrior posted:Man, once you kill off your main rival as either Queek or Kroq-gar, the game really starts dragging if you're playing tall and just farming ritual resources. And IMO, on VH, playing tall is pretty much a necessity because lol you're not defending all your poo poo with the massive upkeep increase per new army. At least Kroq-gar has a forever-war with the vampires (wading through corruption to kill them is far too much effort). All of Queek's neighbours like him once the lizards, beard-things and elves in the local area are all dead. He becomes an end turn button presser, while you raid your own provinces for money/food. I left a couple of heroes to scout out problems in the north and watched a few of Tyrion's armies get swallowed by the desert. Cult of Pleasure sent out one sheepish looking army all game, which got crushed by two bored rat armies the instant they waded ashore. It's easy to defend the Chaos/Skaven invasions since there isn't much ground to cover and you end up super wealthy due to not suffering the upkeep penalty all game. 
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Oct 15, 2017 20:41
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Really couldn't be bothered with playing the Vortex Campaign on anything tougher than very hard, and thought I'd cheese Mortal Empires by playing Brettonians on legendary. It now takes 2000 chivalry to trigger the final battle, they messed with the income so I'm always poor and High Elves are basically psychotic. 
Beer Hall Putz fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Oct 26, 2017 |
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Oct 26, 2017 23:31
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 Mortal Empires. I did it.  Things we have learned today - Breaking military alliances is not good in a mode where success is mostly based on diplomacy. - Kill the Dwarves, or be the Dwarves (who thought letting those fuckers capture everything was a good idea!). Mortal empires is fun, but gently caress doing that again till old Norsica is removed. 
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Oct 27, 2017 23:32
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Ravenfood posted:For Queek, which of the three Warlord skill trees unlocked at rank 13 are people thinking are the best? Initially the endless growth one seemed like a no-brainer and obnoxiously broken (+50% income from settlements factionwide iirc) but that only applies to the 50 you get from the settlement, so it basically means you just get 25 more per settlement. On the other hand, further reducing the already really stupidly cheap skavenslaves isn't that great, though the armor on them is okay I suppose. Which leaves the +ambush and agent bonus tree. In general, my agents are ahead of my armies so I wouldn't get too much benefit from the cost, and I've been investing in both the +ambush blue line and going for Lightning Strike (as a backup for when ambush fails) and to finish the blue capstone, so even more ambush chance seems unnecessary. I suppose I could just not go down the blue line, but +vet is so nice to have now that the bonuses for rank 7 units are so good. I've mostly settled on using the endless growth one figuring that the more warlords I have, the more capturing each settlement gains me, (and vice versa) but wasn't sure at all. It's hard to say that certain army compositions are good or bad in isolation. There are different ways to go about things depending on your win condition really. - For a Vortex Campaign, it's best to focus on making Queek a melee monster. I really don't like his blue line (other than Route Marcher obviously, but even that seems kind of redundant given the move buff from the engineer), and his legendary lord branch is full of just utter poo poo. Rend & Slaughter is probably worth getting and maybe Violent Rise to power for the public order bonus (but probably not). He wants the artillery/Stormvermin buffs in his red tree (including the rank 7+ points obviously), but otherwise it's really a case of dumping everything else into combat. He'll do a fine job of 1v1 vs any other lord on the campaign and you only really need to make sure he's not getting stunlocked. - The AI just can't cope with massed artillery. It likes to do clever weave movements to avoid shots, except it isn't really that clever when the player has taken 10 artillery pieces. I didn't do cheap armies, but core was five catapults/cannons + an engineer. Fill the rest of the army with something sensible. Some stuff will occasionally limp into melee range, so I padded it with Stormvermin and a few skirmishers to protect the flanks. Doomwheels are kind of bad, but they can do a fair job at running over flanking enemy troops if you don't mind paying way over the odds. I don't know why anyone would use slaves for any reason in a proper campaign army (no you don't want to shoot your own troops even as Skaven!). I haven't tried a domination style campaign with Skaven, so you may want to make different choices if so. I won on VH by only taking around half the continent and murdering the elves/dwarve/lizards in the area. Bit boring, but effective
Beer Hall Putz fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Oct 29, 2017 |
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Oct 29, 2017 19:27
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I haven't tried Skaven in Moral Empires yet (so I may or may not be an ignorant dummy), but unless they've radically changed things the principle should be the same. The non-artillery units in my armies really struggled to get gold chevrons over quite a long campaign, so you could probably pad it with pretty much anything once you've hit the critical mass. Good luck through, they seem like a hard faction to use in a ME campaign!
Beer Hall Putz fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Oct 29, 2017 |
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Oct 29, 2017 20:04
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Settlement restrictions was good because the game is nigh-impossible to correctly balance on the strategic map, and the Dwarves constantly crushing the Greenskins wasn't allowed to spoil the campaign (unless your victory condition involved killing them I guess). The climate system just allows the developers to be lazy with world building and results in tedious late-game slogs against the campaigns last remaining hyper-power. It'd be perfectly acceptable to have a Dark Elf domination victory just involve them consolidating their hold on the north, then taking Ulthuan. The campaign would be a better length for players, and it'd stop the usual Cult of Pleasure confederation polluting the rest of the map.
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Oct 31, 2017 21:57
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You can dodge them mostly. There is typically a glowy effect before the spell actually goes off. e: Be mindful when forming up your army and unit ranks also. Square blocks of troops are often better in combat, but longer/thinner ranks are good for avoiding missile fire and blocking choke points. Beer Hall Putz fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Nov 1, 2017 |
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Nov 1, 2017 20:57
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The Bramble posted:What is the secret to playing Empire on VH? I do great in battles, but the campaign map owns me. It seems like taking Marienburg after securing Reikland is the right move, but after that it just devolves. Opportunistic war decs from Brettonians, Nordland, more easterly provinces, even the loving dwarves! I cant get anyone to be my friend or trade with me, outside of a couple NAPs. - Securing Reikland and dealing with the Orc faction (can't remember if they're even still there) to the north/small Beatmen force is probably 90% of the game's difficulty till Chaos shows up. If you can be aggressive and get that done by turn 7-8, you're in excellent shape (you'll need a small spare army to deal with Beastmen). - The AI respects military strength and bribes. The order factions generally don't backstab unless they're far more powerul than the player, so it's worth begging/bribing/declaring war on the Cult of Pleasure in exchange for non-aggression and trade agreements. It's often worth raiding Reikland for rebellions if there isn't a close war target, and using the money for bribes. - Confederating is often inferior to keeping a minor faction alive. - Priority has always been removing the vampire factions before Chaos shows up, but the Dwarves may now be a big target too (dunno haven't tested yet). Skarsnik is difficult and with not much reward for killing him, but it can be decent insurance to take him out early if you're playing legendary (being at war gives good diplomacy bonuses too). - The capitals of Talabecland and Hochland are arguably the best strategic point in the game to fight Chaos from and they're well worth going for (they have a tendency to get burned down, so it's usually fairly easy!) Beer Hall Putz fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Nov 2, 2017 |
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Nov 2, 2017 20:40
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The Bramble posted:Thanks to everyone with the advice on Empire campaign strategy, I appreciate it. It's such a fascinating start compared to the (mostly new world races) ones I've done at this difficulty so far. Far more variety in how things can play out, and a lot more tension. Unfortunately it kind of highlights one of the weakest parts of the game, and that's the diplomacy. Despite the many, many modifiers that can affect your relationship with another faction, it sheds almost no light on what motivates the AI to do the things it does. It boggles the mind how hard trade agreements are to make, or why someone will sign a NAP but another guy who likes you more won't, or what circumstances you can get a confederation under, or what the AI personalities actually do, considering how many "defensive" AIs start wars of aggression with me. Diplomacy is actually fairly straightforward and should be fairly predictable after a point. - Most important modifier is your relative strength rank to the AI faction you're dealing with. It's mainly based on model count (not how good those models actually are), so people do things like stuff armies full of zombies. A good example with Dwarves is that you can so some fun quarreller gimmick armies (Lord + free hero from the quest, then fill the rest of the army with them). Model counts for quarreller units are lower than warriors, so you'll instantly find it harder to get good diplomatic outcomes than if you used a normal army composition. Belegar's start can be extra hard because he needs to fill out his army to give him diplomatic protection from the fairly powerful local factions, but he's extra poor due to the upkeep penalty. In an early Empire campaign it's good to fill a lord's stack as quickly as possible and have at least half an army in reserve, even if it's costly in terms of upkeep. - Diplomacy is kind of snowbally and paying large amounts for trade/NAPs is worth it, because relationship modifiers for having long-term positive relations tend to be fairly strong. If you can get a trade agreement with Bretonia, then at worst you'll probably have to deal with a war declaration from a minor Bret faction (that won't do much anyway and should be swallowed by a confederation eventually). First action in the first few turns should always be to open the diplomacy menu and having a look at how relationships are developing. - People try to offer the AI things it doesn't want and then get frustrated because it keeps saying no. Check for things you wouldn't normally think of, like agreeing to declare war on far away factions in exchange for agreements. - Declare war on factions nobody likes. Beastmen, Crooked Moon, Mousillon, etc - What does confederation actually give you? Can you defend this new territory you're taking? Does the faction have an army left and is it fighting a mutual enemy? Is there an important strategic reason to confederate now (like grabbing Stirland to provide a corridor to Sylvania)? It's not easy to confederate and you can't really reliably do it unless you're playing a faction with funky diplomatic bonuses. Nice if the option appears, but not really worth putting much effort into getting in many cases. e: Also be very wary about defensive/military agreements, especially with minor factions. Most diplomatic action between turns tends to be them begging for it and you telling them to gently caress off. Beer Hall Putz fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Nov 3, 2017 |
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Nov 3, 2017 21:59
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