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Hello thread! Played TW1 at release and was bored to tears about its awful campaigns (brettonia was fun at least when I came back to it), got TW2 recently. Doing a Lizardman/vortex vanilla campaign, am at the part of replacing most of my army with large dinos. I hate it. The fights are fun, but holy gently caress this campaign gameplay is running me up a wall. The Witch king is doing loops in my territory and I can't catch him, and even if I case him off I think my plan to win the game is to sit on my arse and watch the vortex meter trickle up slightly faster than everyone else? While googling various mechanics I've heard that the Tomb Kings campaign is less dumb, and maybe they give attrition in their territories so I don't have to deal with catch-the-rear end in a top hat? Should I ditch my Lizardman campaign and just do a TK one? Third option is maybe just go play all the quest missions, those are always fun.
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Oct 6, 2021 05:27
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Actual gameplay chat: For Khemri, it was a little heartbreaking when I remembered that campaign gameplay really doesn't favor cannon fodder (aka tabletop) style compositions outside of niche uses, its all about dem tech units. But I've been very stubborn and keeping ~3 units of skelly bowmen with my doomstack, and I still feel that they contribute a lot. I keep them individually square and have them rotate to cover flanks, and they always seem to find good things to shoot at regardless. But looking at the numbers, it seems that Usabti bowmen might be a 1:1 replacement? I know that the Usabti have different vulnerabilities when getting shot back at, but from a purely bowmen perspective I thiiink they perform no worse against any given target? I'm only using the RoR right now so it's hard to do direct comparisons, especially as the campain issue of grossly mismatched stacks keeps happening so it's hard to see things in action. Any experiences, firing angles woes etc? I know this is massively overthinking it, but honestly that's half the fun of TW.
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Oct 8, 2021 21:06
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Zore posted:The Ushabti RoR gets a unique AOE effect on their arrows. Regular Bow Ushabti don't, and their tradeoff with regular bow skellies is being better against low/single model enemies while being worse against blobs. AHA! That's it, thanks. I felt that's what the Usabti where all about, but I was looking at the wrong unit. -------- I've used trash stacks to swarm tower walls and stuff, but the existence of lightning strike ruins my brain. Also even with TK unit limits, I still get more Tomb Guards than I know what to do with. So I use semi-elite infantry to stand in front and die instead of basic skellies, and it feels wrong. Another related TK question: Chariot Archers by the numbers screen seem to have an absurd shooting value, much more than 3-4 skellies should have. I've never noticed anyone ever caring about being tickled by the chariots, but are they actually some secret anti-foo option?
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Oct 8, 2021 21:51
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Ushtabi bows have identical stats to non-Ushtabi bows if I remember correctly. Slightly worse, I think lacking anti-infantry if not explicit numbers. Also there's 9 models instead of 12. Doomykins posted:In general skirmishers cannot match regular ranged damage values because of the difference in unit numbers and firing efficiency. The skirmishers might deal good damage but they tend to shoot much more slower from fewer gunners in exchange for mobility. That said you should experiment with them, skirmishers are fantastic for things like shooting into enemy backs, pulling enemy units away from each other and dealing damage with no danger from slower targets. Also over a long period of time skirmishers will do just fine damage wise, ranged battles just tend to be decided by who can focus fire down priority targets faster, not who has done the most damage when every bit of ammunition is spent. Chariots don't kite though do they? No fire-whist-moving like the fast cav archers have, nevermind the sluggish chariot response. I just assume that the archer upgrade is there to annoying someone into approaching them so they get a clean charge.
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Oct 8, 2021 22:49
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I still can't believe that you're allowed to raid provinces and maybe even assassinate lords and that's not an act of war. Whoever said 'never sign any pacts' wasn't wrong.
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Oct 9, 2021 22:07
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Torrannor posted:They're both not acts of war in Crusader Kings, either. Difference is in CK you're allowed to loving murder the raiders, in TW you just kinda have to accept that they get to do it.
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Oct 9, 2021 22:25
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jokes posted:I thought lizards were gonna be a lot funner in practice but they ended up only being fun in concept for me. That's a very TW problem, as no matter what others say the game really does seem to push you into using high tech units. Monsters are implemented fine in the game imo, but not having overpowered Slanns and/or Engines of the Gods unlocked as part of your base army really skews the perception about what the faction's all about. I wonder what the game would feel like if some sort of multiplayer-esque balance trickled its way back into campaign. Like, each stack's upkeep is calculated exponentially, to favor having a mix of stuff instead of a doomstack on your LL? Or something, just to encourage more 'thematically appropriate' armies that aren't all about high tech > low tech.
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Oct 10, 2021 21:55
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I actually had the mutual alliance wardec problem in a TW1 game not too long ago, I think I said 'yes' to the war prompt (?) but what I distinctly remember was not having my reliability go down despite officially betraying one of the two allies. So maybe it got fixed?
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Oct 11, 2021 04:14
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I'm obviously way behind the rest of you on this as a newbie, but speaking of Walls: -There's a prompt to have units line the walls facing inwards, but every time I do that as the attacker my archers won't shoot down into the courtyard? -Why does combat take so goddamn long up there? I understand that the units will be winded if they used ladders, and their initial surface area is poor, but jesus. -Likewise, what's the 'right' way of moving your units around up there during fights? The game's interface keeps suggesting that my units occupy areas and line walls, I've been trying to avoid that and just clicking on unit flags to keep fighting, is that right? Side effect is I can never seem to block off the narrow passages and they flee too easily. -Can you break down the gatehouse? It has two HP values, but I can't seem to target the house itself once the doors are already open.
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Oct 11, 2021 22:13
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Kaiju Cage Match posted:And spider riders can't skitter up the walls for some reasons. Goddamnit that's literally their one redeeming feature on tabletop. Next you'll be telling me black knights can't just walk through the walls.
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Oct 11, 2021 23:00
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Just out of curiosity, how does a chaos god of order work exactly? Those are literally opposite terms in the English language. edit: Serephina posted:I'm obviously way behind the rest of you on this as a newbie, but speaking of Walls: Serephina fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Oct 13, 2021 |
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Oct 13, 2021 04:13
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TW2 is basically the same game, using the same engine, but with a few tweaks. It's objectively better, but only by many small margins. It's mostly a game about mashing super cool armies into each other, the campaign map is just an excuse to add an economic and logistical side to things. So no, no good diplomacy. (the most #1 asked question has got to be "Why won't they confederate with me??"). I've just checked what my 'short' campaign victory conditions for TW2 ME dwarves are holding all sorts of ridic poo poo, including the Maelstrom. Seriously, the short campain is hold every dwarf settlement ever, own chaos (natch), and sail across the sea. That really needs loving tweaking.
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Oct 13, 2021 05:46
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Dandywalken posted:What made Chaos bad in WHFB? On paper, their units seemed nasty. Were there rules that offset that? Terrible Opinions posted:Chaos demons had a huge number of random elements that made them essentially a coin toss army where your units could just die because of a die roll before the game even started. That's a very different experience than the meta was over here. Deamons where dominant and considered wildly OP in all 7th ed tournies, one local place even had a sucker's reward of a Bloodthirster model as a giveaway to whomever lost most matches to Deamons, it was that bad. Talking about favoritism is kinda a sticky thing. There's favorites in lore, bullshit mechanics, and model sales. How many VC armybooks came out rapidly after each other, since rule changes weren't favoring them but they where apparently a good seller so their armybook kept getting updated with new poo poo? Meanwhile Brettonia's Questing Knights are watching the aeons go by. Chaos/Skaven has someone with a hard-on for them in the fluff department, even if the Mortals handbook isn't great. Power level of armybooks seems to almost have been handed off to interns at times, crap like DE repeater xbows getting AP randomly, the entire 8th ed Dawi rulebook, etc. I'd not read into it too much.
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Oct 14, 2021 00:55
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Archonex posted:Pretty sure that Chaos Marines were at one point a thing in FB too. The implication being that the planet might be in the Eye of Terror or something like that. Obviously that got retconned for being too grimdark for Fantasy and undermining the entire legitimacy of the Fantasy setting if it was just a planet located in the worst part of the galaxy of Warhammer 40K's clusterfuck of a setting. FB predates 40k, so any attempts to merge the two are retcons by definition. The lovely merger was an attempt to fellatiate one fanbase by outraging the other, grimdark has nothing to do with it.
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Oct 14, 2021 23:05
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chaleski posted:Does anyone have any theories on how Slanaash will work mechanically? Even though I'm not THAT familiar with Warhammer I can get an idea about the other three factions pretty easily, but how do you make lust and hedonism into campaign mechanics? On the battlefield (aka tabletop) it's all about losing control of your units. Things getting baited into involuntary charges, etc. Campaign stuff could be siphoning a neighbor's pop growth, affecting control, stealing lords, etc.
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Oct 16, 2021 00:52
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Gyrotica posted:I think you’re right that Khorne (as depicted) is dull and Tzeentch is hard, but I would argue Slaanesh’s aesthetic is ‘figured out’ - it’s just that fully executing on it is impossible because it is too spicy to market.
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Oct 17, 2021 13:29
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Turns out the best way of forcing Fantasy players who had complete armies to buy more models wasn't to release new OP poo poo, but just to literally remove their entire army and get them to start again from scratch! Call me a dwarf with a grudge, but I will never give Age of Sigmar the time of day, gently caress them. I still have a mate who has a bunch of Lizardman and Bret stuff, we should do a round once lockdown lifts.
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Oct 20, 2021 10:46
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:The entire lizardmen range is in AoS, and brets and empire are in free cities or whatever it's called. Oh sorry, could you help me clarify something? What year did 8th ed. die, and when was the new LM book released? Fantasy Battles was sent to the abattoir and it killed the local scene so hard that people where writing their own rules to be able to keep playing. (Apparently they liked 8th less than I did? Or lack of Sanctioned tournies to standardize things? Never got that straight.) What was so wrong about FB that it couldn't be fixed, and the best course of action was to ditch it and release a new game entirely? (With new factions/models, hrmm). Yea, I get it, their business is moving product instead of supporting communities. Doesn't fuckin' mean people are happy when they ditch support for their products.
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Oct 20, 2021 11:27
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So I ditched my Mazamundi Votex campaign a few weeks ago, did Settra for 4/5 books (I should finish that, probably), and am now wrapping up my Thorgim extended campaign (boooring, wondering if I need to touch up the difficulty?) Suggestions for fun campaigns that are not Vortex wait-fests nor ME paint-the-map's? I did Bretonnia in TW1 ages ago and liked it, but I doubt enough has changed that it's worth revisiting just yet.
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Oct 21, 2021 01:44
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Sounds like a really niche roleplaying thing. You can vassalize them probably?
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Oct 22, 2021 11:19
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Hahaha get this guys, I'm actually gonna post about the Total War: Warhammer computer game!? Crazy, amirite?Doomykins posted:Buddy let me tell you about a little lady they call Le Lioness, which means The Lioness. But serious question; my last Bret game was with small unit sizes (I have performance issues), I've since learnt to use large units and just turn everything down, but I'm running into the trouble that I can't really field much cav at all as they all get tangled on each other. I mean yea yea peasant bowmen and trebuchets, but even running ~8 knights is too many as even a single unit charging in results in many models not fighting. I'm trying to cycle charge but there's still not a lot of space imo? The answer will eventually solve itself with newly improved RAF hippo knights to reach the backlines, but its still bizzare to see a horse pileup.
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Oct 22, 2021 16:49
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Should I be deploying far back then, to allow for time to flank? I've been kind of embracing a pseudo-vanguard bumrush thing to minimize time getting shot at. I mean, I know what flanking looks like as I've seen the AI do it aplenty when I played dwarfs, but for all their finessing around they usually arrive with half their army to the gunline. I'm also still trying to break a few bad habits of thinking in tabletop terms, stuff like "greatswords doesn't mean anything about general choppyness" and that "shoving two units of brets in front != instabreak"
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Oct 22, 2021 17:12
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I think the advice "walls for all minor settlements" is super valid as both 1) the AI overestimates walls and gives you respect and 2) by the time you know where you can get away with no walls, you no longer need that advice.
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Oct 23, 2021 03:19
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Legendary Ptarmigan posted:Note that due to their interleaving economy building system, brettonian settlements get walls automatically at tier 3 without the need to construct an additional building. Their option in that category just adds to the garrison instead. Between that and not having a supply line penalty that increases geometrically per additional stack, it makes them one of the most pleasant campaign map experiences in the game. I never got why anyone would ever make an effort to get the higher teir +econ buildings for Brets. Like sure, posion/fire bowmen, but the other bonuses the secondary building provides are negligible. I just build the teir1 stuff (usually both) and go spend the money elsewhere. Slots have a very real cost, etc.
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Oct 23, 2021 04:19
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Shmtur posted:Build up to the tier 3 money generation since it Yea, but the breakeven point is comical for that. lvl1 farms is $500 for 300gpt, and to upgrade that for another 300gpt is *6k*, minus the demolish refund. It will eventually pay for itself, but I'd rather just use the second slot for something useful in the meantime, even if only the lvl1 industry building. Gold is good, but early gold is better especially since all the bret low tier stuff is chaff and you really need to upgrade that stable building.
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Oct 24, 2021 04:00
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Isn't Belegar's entire thing is that he warpaths through the entire greenskin population on the way to Karak 8 Peaks? Shoulda seen that coming. edit: talking about autoresolve sillyness, I once had a guy sit in a province recruiting organ guns for my entire faction, as I hadn't needed the anti-armour until then and he was recruiting from the province that gave +6 ranks to artillery. On the way to the front lines a beastman stack ambushed him, and I just hit autoresolve out of frustration. 1 Lord, 16 organ guns, and 3 flame cannons took 0 casualties. Cough. Serephina fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Oct 24, 2021 |
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Oct 24, 2021 05:07
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At the risk of firing off another lore derail, that's kinda wild that a Norse Maruader, on his way to be approved by the chaos gods and get promoted to a Chas Warrior, has better stats than them. A lot of tabletop assumptions just do not translate, CA/TW's own mechanics take precedence which can be jarring.
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Oct 24, 2021 06:09
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Early in a campaign they won't have more than a unit or two of the good stuff that their LL starts with, which can be handled by polearms; everything else dies in a fire to basic archers or other AoE options. The only midgame armour they have are grave guards which can be ignored, and their lack of archers lategame lets you cheese them with all sorts of stuff (bring mass air, bring mass monsters, etc). Orrr just snipe the characters and watch them all crumble. No idea about multiplayer. edit: Actually, a good idea is to list the don'ts. Don't try to grind through their font line, even if you have elites. Don't let their large targets pick their own fights. Don't engage in attrition wars when the casters are still alive. Serephina fucked around with this message at 08:39 on Oct 24, 2021 |
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Oct 24, 2021 08:24
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Is chaos still rampaging downwards into other realms, and are all your provinces suffering from chaos corruption do the ongoing event? He'll be wounded for only a few turns before heading up another stack, keep killing chaos stuff. Chaos event over? (or never begun?) He's wounded, no worries. If you can't find him, just keep killing other chaos forces. He won't stay wounded if chaos is still rampaging, so they're basically the same objective. edit: ^^^ that is absolutely just you mate, I clicked that link before your post was up.
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Oct 25, 2021 15:15
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Yea I dunno, the Ogre Armybook was pretty open about Ogre society and had bits on child rearing etc. Much like the Empire troops, the models used for fighting are all men, and that is as big or as little of a deal as you want it to be.
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Oct 26, 2021 04:53
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^^ Seconding that request, that's kinda a stiggler for me that saps lategame enjoyment as I find my unit diversity goes out the window. I wish TW hadn't done the 'higher tier units are objectively better' thing.
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Oct 27, 2021 18:23
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Does the AI handle it well? Field reasonable armies, or does it get stuck halfway through recruiting?
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Oct 27, 2021 19:17
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Was anyone else disappointed with the spells in general in TW:W? Like, not the winds of magic or any mechanical implementation, but the simplicity and lack of variation if the spells themselves. For example, the first time I cracked open a wizard of Shadows I was looking forward to some Steed of Shadows shenanigans. Nope, no movement spells. Buff, debuff, direct damage, vortex - just like literally every other school, yaaay. (To be fair to Shadows there's some synergy with the aoe de/buffs regarding fear+leadership) But like, *every* main school has a huge amount of overlap, and the spell mechanics themselves are rather simple. I know that this is a game about carefully positioning dudes, and so any ability that (eg) moves guys for free with no counterplay* is a big deal, but we're on a computer and there's a lot of other funky stuff that could have been done but wasn't. I remember playing a warhammer fastasy game from the 90's where the mages had more hands-on spells. Like seriously, how many identical vortex spells do we need? *I know the TT had opposed magic steps but imo that's not needed in the video game, there are other attention draws in a RTS.
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Oct 28, 2021 03:21
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Kanos posted:Honestly the main purpose of confederating factions is to steal their LLs, so you could view that as the cost of recruiting Alarielle/Tyrion/Eltharion/whoever. Maybe I've been playing on too low a difficulty, but dorfs seem rather happy to confed the second their neighbor gets bigger than them. (Now that I've typed that, I'm never getting another unscripted confed again am I?) Diplomacy in the game is pretty rough tho, yea. The notification spam is particularly awful.
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Oct 30, 2021 18:28
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:AoS does gangbusters. There's more people playing it (before pandemic) in a given gaming store than I ever saw playing WHFB. Much like Storm of Chaos being an Archaon circlejerk, AoS being a failure is nerd telephone. The initial release sucked rear end but it got back on its feet and is, in fact, popular in every place that doesn't include WHFB grogs. I don't think grognards are saying that AoS is currently selling poorly, but rather that they preferred WHF to it. Regardless, that's not the point. People like Warhammer Fantasy. We are in the TW thread discussing the 3rd game of its successful series. Poeple love 40k. There are umpteen games out there using its fluff, all doing.. poo poo, actually, since GW sells their IP to the lowest bidder and we keep getting half-baked games. But the fluff is still popular! So, for the context of the post you're quoting, no, this isn't people poo-pooing AoS over the holy grail of TT fantasy, its saying that if you're taking a successful tactical Warhammer series and branching off from Fantasy, 40k is a no-brainer choice. See also: Dawn of War.
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Oct 31, 2021 06:31
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Azran posted:It was always so weird to me that they never followed up on DoW2 with a third installment. Offtopic but yea, it's been ages since we had a new Command and Conquer games, C&C3 was ages ago and and kinda tepid. Tragic, really! It's astonishing how capable big studios are at killing off their own franchises. It's not even a case of "this game is wishy-washy and kinda poo poo, oh well" as Tomb Raider kept plugging on for decades. You have to change everything and dump a crapton of money into making a game that nobody wants, then throw a tanty and bin the IP after the poo poo sandwich fails to sell. Amazing, really.
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Oct 31, 2021 06:53
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To be fair, Tzeench's gimmick in TT was everything that was wrong with the magic step amplified. Other than crazy RNG (because ~chaos~), Tzeench really didn't have time to reorient itself before the game got canned. Gives lots of leeway for future people to interpret it, which is a good thing right? Complaints about TW:W magic schools not being very different form each other can see my previous Wendys-drivethrough post on the matter (all magic schools are identical, oh well). Serephina fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Nov 2, 2021 |
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Nov 2, 2021 01:11
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Just to be clear here, we're complaining about one particular lore being slightly boring and suffering overlap, in a game where all 20 schools are massively overlapping and slightly boring, when said game that hasn't even been released yet?
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Nov 2, 2021 03:13
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Having just wrapped up a Thogrim game on normal a small while ago, some less obvious things also: Growth/development is good and needed, but getting a quick tech building that unlocks something strong can float you a long way before you need to invest in tech again. For Silver Road, I demolish the barracks in the main settlement to rebuild it in a small one (since it's only ever gonna need 3 tiers), and replace it with the ranged barracks asap. Faster you get grudge throwers for everyone, the faster any given stack becomes a real army. I agree 100% with stopping backbiter arseholes by spamming walls everywhere, but for dwarves its both less needed and less effective early game. If you take your Thogrim stack up north asap and build walls, what I find is that some jerk comes in, sees the walls, and just raids the province then walks off. Normally no biggie, except dwarves get grudges and if the RNG says that one random lord now wonders off across the map, that's gonna suck. Building a second stack just with warriors/quarrels/grudgethrowers, even if it's not fullsize, can chase raiders while holding the province. The AI maphacks horribly and knows exactly which provinces are undefended, but will refuse to suicide attack into one if it means your larger stack will catch up to it. The wall spam comes later imo, especially when expanding into orc territory. Of compositions: Everything dwarves fight for the first two thirds of the game has zero armour. Maybe the occasional snotwagon chariot, but basically Orcs, Beastmen, and Undead don't do armour, especially not low-tech. So keep the frontline with shields, and quarrelers never go obsolete. Like really, go ham on those quarrelers. Someone wrote a good effortpost on it before, but basically the smartest way to play the ME campaign is to manage who your neighbors are. If they can't see you, they don't hate you and can't wardec. Don't ally with anyone, ever, for any reason, and use friendly neighbors as buffers between people who'll get bored and attack you, aka Vampires. Non-aggression pack every non-orc, get military access, get trade agreements, tell them to go gently caress themselves when they want defensive pacts since they'll just suck you into their own wars. Be careful with confederations, as it removes a buffer and will get you new foes. Only ever confed when A) they're at risk of dying, and B) they have Legendary Lords you want. Otherwise, who cares? You can confed freely lategame once you're so impossibly ahead having new enemies isn't a problem.
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Nov 3, 2021 14:06
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I'm out of the loop; are they talking about infantry that lacks 'charge defence vs large'? Since I'd have assumed that CDvL removes the charge bonus entirely, hence collision damage etc. So it's a balance patch for people who where counter-charging with (eg) GW infantry? Also noob question: What's the best way to bloody well make sure you're bracing? Right click the unit to attack, then press backspace when they're close?
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Nov 3, 2021 15:04
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