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Time to begin the long wait for the DLC that really matters, especially as I am part of a fanbase that really doesn't have enough representation for my faction. When Thanquol isn't on the campaign map all of the other LLs should be saying "Where's Thanquol?"
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Feb 12, 2022 22:45
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I refused to watch any TWWH3 streams or preview or muh lore videos exactly for that reason. I need to have some element of surprise in the game past seeing what armies and lords get in.
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Feb 13, 2022 02:07
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The AI is good enough that if it recognizes it has an advantage it will ruthlessly press it in battles. Your backline is exposed? Cavalry are coming. They've got elite frontline and you've picked a fight while yours is still soft? They're marching on you. They're always good enough to give you hell if you're unprepared. You really need to pay attention if they have access to map-wide summons, a good caster or faction-specific suicide bombs(Skaven, Delves, VCoast.) Hopefully they've fixed the comically bad Ambush AI bug from TWWH2 where they let you unload all your artillery into them and they never advance.
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Feb 13, 2022 17:32
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Warhammer Fantasy is about who has the best hat but did you ever consider that the canon strongest character does not wear a hat? Grimgrog......
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Feb 14, 2022 07:00
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Reminder that a lot of the "canon personalities" we love so much were created with TWWH. Nagash will get an all-star dialogue treatment, I have faith in this.
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Feb 14, 2022 15:21
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Triskelli posted:Cajun ogres demanding “When’s supper” would have been the absolute best The Maw demands silly dialect.
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Feb 14, 2022 23:35
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Cathay cool, game good. Taking my time and playing like an old man with responsibilities on the side but on VH/N and minor settlement fights really making me think and do moment to moment "I want to win" micro. Would be getting my poo poo slapped on legendary. The towers are annoying for the part of your brain that wants to take your time and not suffer attrition but it makes the map control really engaging. And if 4 iron hails focus on the same tower it dissolves, lol. Nice that arc fire and short range shooters get a SP niche boost with all the tight corridors and intricate minor settlement map design. Kinda see how Tzeentch is strong as hell but it's a lopsided strong. Taking Teracota Graveyard was tough but within acceptable losses. Barriers are proportional to remaining health the tool-tip says. Day 1 patch change? Also most Tzeentch units have sub 20 armor, getting yeeted by cheap peasant bowmen doesn't speak well to barrier shenanigans. A MP concern?
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Feb 17, 2022 18:32
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Anti-Hero posted:Neat. The only failure state is if you pick far too many fights at once. As long as you have a secure home province and a few turns to rebuild you can try again even if your best army gets deleted. The primary difficulty of higher campaign difficulty in TWWH2 is managing the numbers of foes you're at war with and how many angles you can be attacked from while you build your game winning momentum. It's also why some factions are drastically harder, a few campaign map misplays on the like of Norsca guarantees a painful death spiral. I don't want to spoil too much for you so I give you a really strong bit of newbie advice: DO NOT declare war on somebody in early game(before turn 50-100) because "eh, why not." I know border gore is offensive to the eye but you gotta clean your plate, so to speak. All my early problems came from pure greed and overextending.
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Feb 17, 2022 19:12
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Having a chuckle at Tzeentch rooting itself for 2 turns for "skrivers of insanity." First time was after I took Teracota Graveyard right before that sub-faction brought their 19 stack to help defend the city. They rooted themselves while suffering "no home" attrition.. Next time Kairos ran up to bang on my wall so I sent Meow to beat him up. He force marched away and rooted himself in force march. So I caught up, started the fight and his tired AI went insane at the sight of my army and the lone flyer sky junk. Most of his forces walked towards my combined forces checker pattern with 4 iron hail gunners before the normal front/melee split and Kairos flew ahead of everything to comically get shot to pieces, 100 to 0 in 5 seconds. I notice a silver rank sky junk can focus fire a single tzeentch unit down at artillery range even with a miss or two. The doomsaying of Tzeentch was really potent so now I swear a day 1 barrier patch nerf snuck in. It's a really fun bunch of nonsense and I'm enjoying a leisurely pace. There's a glut of new content, guaranteed big DLC and I'm sure the great balancing will begin. Speaking of balance Cathay's Yin/Yang building harmony is a little silly since you want to game it. +1 minors for extra income in a few settlements can't compare to the insane Balanced bonuses. You can do stupid poo poo like research every available tech to 1 turn remaining and hard swap it to drag out your balanced state and I find myself demoing buildings or leaving building slots empty just to maintain balanced.
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Feb 18, 2022 03:25
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Somebody asking if anybody started as Cathay, yo. I've had a really smoothh VH/N campaign up to Turn 33 so far by allying with Cathay, actually seeking confeds, tidying up what comes for my balance and armies, then keeping extra armies on the wall after the endless Chaos/Norscan armies break a wall and I get to resettle it for free. Now that I've got all 3 I've pulled Meow down south to decapitate the dissenters(stalled them with a half stack and some heroic pyrrhic victory microfests) and start painting my borders, maybe nail the rest of the confeds. I put really early gold into getting starting treaties with Zhao, I predict 2 LLs shortly. I might even skip the portal stuff, though I've been taking -attrition on Meow(-30% skills, -10% ancillary) in preparation. Just depends on how you get into them, I've been very low preview and streamer hype so I can discover how things work and maintain my sense of blind wonder longer. The issue is that I'm such a veteran VH/Legendary campaign diff guy that I know I can win if I maintain map momentum and keep building up so if the portals don't appear in my land or adjacent to Meow or with the Quest Battle teleport prompt.. lol at marching multiple turns into the northern buttlands. I really like the minor settlement fights. They really pull you out of your comfort zone but are totally manageable with TWWH fundamentals. You can also exploit the AI pretty easily if you want a boost, and I might change my tune when I get to campaigns without Cathay's strengths. But I was also a psychopath that liked major settlement sieges in TWWH2, I dunno, it's all just part of the game to me and my favorite battles are heavily micro intensive or in the case of WH2 I'd speed run taking them walls to keep it interesting after I stopped treating each siege like a puzzle to solve where I took as little damage as possible. My Cathay stacks tend to be an Empire approach with almost 50/50 melee/ranged where the melee screen for ranged, I've been able to approach and seize points steadily and set up good firing lines in every minor so far. My ranged is a bit heavy ATM because I wanted to try Iron Hails out, I'll probably go 60/40 melee/ranged when I get the time to pause Meow's stack and turn all of it to T3+. Some random Cathay thoughts: 1) Caravans are way too easy if you get even light RNG, I've had "you find lost dudes, recruit them at no cost?" events pop twice for two caravans fairly quickly and the ogres that try to rob them can never bring the numbers to be threatening because I'm +5-6 units over the base caravan size. I love the idea of the caravan of course, I think it's very fun to try to win half stack vs half stack battles since the game goes to hard 20 v 20(or more) eventually. Just needs a balancing pass or a separate pool of events as your caravan gets stronger. Feels too "can't lose" once your caravan lord has some quality skill points and is decked out in gear, especially since he feeds you amazing purples. 2) Cathay tech tree is pretty cool but easy to game and it's more beneficial to maintain Balance than to get any one benefit that +1 yin or yang would give. This also makes the building game for Cathay more interesting, if silly. Have totally spent time with empty building slots waiting for a pair to be open, a research to complete or to recruit a lord and immediately rebalance. Maybe they could make Balanced a little worse or even a little better but then bleed more benefits into being nearly balanced to smooth out the curve because right now there's +yin(bad), +yang(bad) or Balanced(Insanely Great) and I'd rather see ++Yin(Bad), ++Yang(bad), +yin(benefit, drawback), +yang(benefit, drawback) and balanced(good, bit better by comparison.) The yin/yang in battles is pretty cool and good to use, dunno about MP tho. 3) The wall is another cool idea I like for the same "chance to fight battles that aren't hard 20v20" and "playing siege but I defend for once." There are some silly problems: taking per turn attrition as the people holed up in a massive supremely well stocked defensible position because literally tariff's cavemen are banging their clubs on the worthless chaos ground outside, letting armies sneak past my solid wall because of the above, enemy heroes doing the same(there's a pair of tzeentch blob birds loitering in my Cathay and all my current heroes are army duty.) The real problem though is that like the caravans the threats don't scale. You can slap down -40% upkeep real easily and toss a 10 stack on each gate and just hoover up free money, items and reserve leveled lords as Kurgan 7 stacks unga bunga into their deaths endlessly. There's some 20 stacks out there from named WoC/Norsca factions occupying the lovely red clime towns but they never approach. Kairos did come by once but I mentioned how stupidly bugged Tzeentch AI is at the moment, Meow broke both his necks. 4) Maybe I like minors because Meow and presumably Zhao are pretty overstatted. Somebody mentioned in the last page that their Meow would get chunked randomly during sieges? I find that as long as you don't dragon recklessly she's very safe to solo large chunks of the enemy army, or to force them to split forces during minors. She can't cap, but I just walked up and decapitated their leader. I got a magic item to summon ancestral warriors twice a battle with a range limit so she can dissect and stall tons of units. I primarily stick with human form, you might get chunked randomly if you go dragon and become Large while also making it possible for a lot more units(and ranged) to attack you simultaneously. The old "don't reflexively put every Lord on a mount" problem of WH2. All stuff I hope to see smoothed over in balance patches. Doomykins fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Feb 18, 2022 |
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Feb 18, 2022 16:50
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Electronico6 posted:Dunno about this one. At some point they'll throw those 7 stacks into one gate, and let me tell you, nothing is going to save you from 20 mammoths and a billion axe marauders. Oh that's really cool, I feel better about my caravans getting swole and dumpstering ogre lunkheads. And I can graduate my wall defenders to full doom stacks eventually. Thanks for the heads up! It'd be lame if it was suicide cave man for 100+ turns.
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Feb 18, 2022 18:53
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1st_Panzer_Div. posted:This... does not match my Cathay play though at all. Normal battles difficulty may be boosting peasant spearmen vs ogres? The caravan raids could be a touch harder, but I haven't gotten any free units to add - that seems super advantageous. The item that spawns 2 immortal units sounds insanely strong. Sometimes you highroll loot and it makes the game too easy, it kinda sounds like that might be the case here? It's incredibly useful, though Meow also has a green for +12% ward save. There's also the guaranteed purples from the caravan and the game throws an alchemist at you for +magic find for an early freebie quest. Now the caravan pick ups, that was PURE luck and really blew the early scale. +3 dudes when you're being bullied by Ogre 6 stacks is a joke. You can even get like armor piercing gun-axe dudes from Kislev, my back up caravan(confed) got 2 of those on its first turn out.
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Feb 18, 2022 21:37
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tell me you play every campaign 30/70 ranged without telling me you always run 30/70 ranged Kidding aside a handful of cav is very useful in minor settlement fights because speed lets you claim open spots with a single unit quickly, speed lets you capitalize on smashing an exposed/over-extended unit, you can start them far from your main army and still get them to help with the fighting in a timely fashion, and they can retreat while drawing away the enemy. Any fast unit can do that but it just so happens cavalry are the default fast units. Cycle charge and flanking cav also do plenty of work. It's not like pausing the game and routing a medium-length line with some turns is complicated, you just can't have a big wave of 3+ cav roar through a city and crash into backlines. RIP City Sacker Mass Boar Boyz Greenskin strats. Also cavalry is totally viable or did we all collectively hallucinate our Brettonia campaigns? Maybe cav is really clunky at the moment because of some cavalry bugs, but there always seem to be cavalry bugs, don't there? The last big patch for WH2 was The Cavalry patch, a shame that didn't stick.
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Feb 18, 2022 22:19
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SirPhoebos posted:The optimal army composition is enough replenishment bonus to shrug off any losses short of a unit wipe. This guy gets it.
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Feb 18, 2022 22:32
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The 4% upkeep change to VH makes raising multiple armies a breeze, they've gotta be practically free on E/N/H. Always be taking/sacking cities and winning fights. A. B. C. A ALWAYS BE B C COLLECTING SKULLS. THAT BLOOD'S NOT FOR YOU, THAT BLOOD'S FOR CLOSERS!!
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Feb 18, 2022 23:05
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Chaos realms own pretty hard and the portals are a much better implementation of the Vortex invasions. I'm talking like 2 armies came out over 8 turns as I casually closed all the portals across 5 provinces. Also again the realms are cool as hell and I hope they're in IE as just an excuse to get into fights for crazy good loot and/or teleport across the globe. I went to my first one and since Meow tied Kairos' heads into a knot and kicked his rear end back into the antarctic by turn 20 I had his secretly good defeat trait, basically a flat 15% ward save vs Tzeentch armies if they're still up, I went into Tzeentch realm. Then I made an error in judgement trying to figure out how the sigil reveal works(camera zooms to the one it reveals, doesn't reveal it's mate, I killed some extra meatballbird 5 stacks, etc) and Greasus did a downhill sonic spin past me. I figured picking a fight with a neighboring Str 8 to my Str 2 was risky as I was still mopping up chaos, throwing out the last of the Skaven and Greenskins and expecting action on the wall to pick up. Then he got the god drat Soul 1-2 turns ahead of me. I was also hoping Kairos would bother him, being on top of him and all, but he took a wrong warp or vanished into the auto-resolve nether. I dropped 2 negative traits in 2 turns, 50% a turn is pretty good odds since you can use the same time to replenish and remake your army. I've remade my army. And confedded every Cathay faction except for Zhao, who'll come to me in time or a sufficiently huge bribe. My walls are T4 and my starting capital is T5. It's really good that I'm actively courting my neighbors and getting rewards for doing so instead of just trying to stockholm syndrome my 1-2 largest bordering neighbors into giving me buffer space. For the first time in 57 turns Tzeentch did something burdensome to me instead of to themselves, laffo. I guess those Norscan stacks are a bit more serious now, though I effectively have a 40 waiting on each gate.  Greasus you took my quest objective so I'm going to take your loving kingdom.
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Feb 19, 2022 02:23
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I've confedded all of Cathay short of Zhao and feel confident I can get him or he'll be a useful Mil Ally all game. Some thoughts: 1) Make sure you do the full Diplomatic dance, it's free friendship points. Trade and/or NAP, get the other, Mil Access, Def Ally, Mil Ally. Check your quick deals every turn. You might want to use a little money early on to crack the wall, I definitely spent 2k gold just to get Zhao to start this dance within my first 5 turns because he looked like classic "pain in the rear end rival, LL faction that goes big" war dec later if I didn't. Yes, allies can get you into ugly war decs and reliability traps if you have too many, blah blah TWWH2 caution in allies. All my friends were fighting the starting Greenskin and Skaven factions, Zhao got mad at the Ogres and they all seem reluctant to war dec each other because every Cathay faction(every TWWH3 non-demon faction?) starts at war with like 6 rogues/demon armies. There were 2 sub-factions that fought each other but I got the alliances in after their war dec so I didn't get the reliability trap. 2) The diplomacy screen has the same Def/Mil Ally features as TWWH2 but look at them closely, your ally can offer you missions near the "choose coordinated target" icon. I'd accept any missions here if they were a small or nearby foe I planned to fight at some time. You may also get credit for these automatically if you do them while they're available but not accepted, I got allegiance for busting a demon gate army that warped in but didn't actively look for the mission, I was just mopping up. 3) Be ascendant in power. I've been top 3 of Str all game. If you hold all 3 gates this is much easier because you can have 3 20 stacks camp them for the price of not even 2 full armies. Just be really careful about withdrawing more than 1 at a time from the gates to do stuff. All my confeds came as I eclipsed their number of settlements and/or armies dramatically, especially if they lost some of those armies. I got my most recent confed of an 8 settlement sub faction because they lost at least 1 settlement to a rebel ogres spawn that took and held the city awhile and at least 1 army to retaking that and/or demon gate spawns. Their willingness to confed skyrocketed in that window. 4) Remember you can't confed for 5 turns after a confed, you hard can't and they give you -40 rep with the entire faction for those 5 turns too. 5) Harmony. Balanced is a +40 friendship buff with Cathay factions. 6) The Long Term Bribe Game. Give at least a med gift every turn if your positive income can support it. You can still upgrade cities by winning fights/sacking big cities for income spikes. Don't do long term bribes at the cost of staying in the green vs your army upkeep. All that said you may be truly bugged which stinks but the process seems dramatically smoother this time around, like I'm playing a variant of Empire. I've just been doing well and picking up districts of my homeland like they're electors. Doomykins fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Feb 19, 2022 |
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Feb 19, 2022 15:36
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More Big Thinking on Cathay. Both new lores are great. Yin gets a cherry blossom ball that can travel down the entire enemy engaged front like Wulfric's boat and it bounces so big ideas for minor/major settlement fights right there. Yin also gets +2 Ancestral Warriors which combined with the 1 from Balanced is obscene. Cathay can summon tar pit as well as the Skaven, if not as often. Two Ancestral Warriors thrown down to stall the enemy front when they get into harmonized crossbows range is obscene. They're halberd dudes too so they can spawn in front of cavalry or big monsters and just grind them to a halt and leave free damage before desummoning at no cost to you other than resource/opportunity. Yang is city defender king. When the gate busts open and the enemy has a bunch of trolls and elites/chaff infantry trying to get through that narrow space throw down your wall of fire and dragon breath on top of it too. GG, no re. Super effective combo available by level 4. The free no-winds cost spells each get are sweet too. Swarm of Doom 4 times for free? It's free damage estate. Or earthblood, can't object to heals for the front. Frog Act posted:So do yin and yang need to be balanced overall or in every respect? Right now I have two yin characters and one yang technology - I tried adding a yang character but that flipped my harmony in the other direction because of their harmony multiplier. I’m researching the harmony balance - yang tech, that should make things harmonious, right? Hover over the icon at the top and leave yourself a building slot or two empty across your heartland to add a building when you need it, 1 turn build time and 400-800 gold cost. Or remove the super cheap supplementary buildings, 1 turn to get your Balance back. Balanced is so good that missing out on +peasants or +10 growth in a region to never drop Balanced is worth it, Balanced is a huge income and growth boost itself. If you want to preserve balance but keep researching go straight down the middle. New characters(Lords, maybe Heroes?) are like +3 to each. Major Settlement walls are yin or yang, minor garrisons/walls aren't.
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Feb 19, 2022 16:58
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  Oh my goodness the writers had fun with this game.  I had to close my game and open GIMP the second I got this. It's +8 leadership when fighting Ogres.
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Feb 19, 2022 17:48
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OK I got Zhao confedded, I had 120+ rep with him and he had 8 settlements, we've gotten along famously all game, I'm Str 1 atm. The tipping points are that he fell hard down to Str 57 but has been picking fights with Ogres and likely Str 8+ Goldtooth for 20 turns now so I assume his primary stack + 1 other good army got eaten. The trick is that I watched his likelihood to confed go from -70 to -40 to -12. I couldn't see a way to balance a -12 with 8k gold in hand, not enough for a large gift. I could have gone for long game bribing but decided to try the new threaten option next turn with a -14 likelihood. He bit, which is great, I just got a second Cathayan LL, whatever armies he has left and 3 whole provinces with VH AI Cheating growth built up. The downside is 1) if it failed we'd be at war and 2) my reliability went from a perfect Very High to Low. However I own all of Cathay, the Empire and Kislev are a million miles away, I'm at war with all Chaos, any other minors fear me and I just bodyslammed two stacks Kairos sent to try to cause trouble. The only meaningful neighbors left are Ogres and I still owe Greasus a "wiping out your entire faction."  Dunno how I'm gonna win the souls race being 1 in the hole but killing all my competitors worked in the Vortex!
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Feb 19, 2022 18:30
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Tzeentch has to stand still to shoot so sending expendables to close to melee while you set up your own shoot, flank or have real melee arrive after the peasants die works well. If it's an even 20v20 uhhh hope it's your LL stack, Tzeentch is pretty mean but lop-sided. Despite his shootiness he doesn't seem to carry bulk artillery around so outranging him works well. Also for god's sake don't forget about bronze/silver shields, you're fighting a shooty faction. You can get Jade Crossbows with shields at T3 on a cheap building chain. Worst part of fighting Tzeentch is Kairos + every sub can halt you. I'm really only at 5-6 halts in 85 turns but the bias is pretty clear and not really interesting, just "you're going slower" and moving through Mountains of Mourn without Underway is the Badlands all over again, especially if corruption is high. Would be more fun if Tzeentch did sneaky scheme poo poo like spawn a half stack of a random army(pull from allies if possible) to attack your LL stack/a capital with no diplomatic repercussions. Or at least limit full blown Tzeentch schemes to Kairos' faction, Meow doesn't get a choice on starting at war with 6 minor Chaos/Rogue factions and one is a sub-Tzeentch. All that said I stabilized the ogre offensive vs my southern border and finally got Meow down there as well as the second round of rifts closed and Zhao recovered from wounded(that explains the confed odds going so well for me!) Two front offensive taking all the mountains has begun. I'm 2 souls behind now but I feel confident I can punch everybody to death while the Advisor nervously tries to get my attention. Another big Cathay tip: the -upkeep Bastion Gates have covers a small zone around them. You can station 3-6+ armies there if you really god drat want to. I've got a 4th waiting there in case rifts or bullshit(ain't see random rogue army spawns in my territory yet) comes up so they can just run in and slap the rifts before heading back. I have 5 armies guarding the homeland and 3 on offense. Thanks 4% VH upkeep. The cheap -45% speed spell is real good. Really harshes the buzz of that one extra flyer/cavalry that actually might reach something valuable. Zhao rules and his VA is great, same for Meow.
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Feb 19, 2022 21:42
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Caster can't duplicate the +shooty benefits of Reloading Tactician, I think. Defending Tactician is better if you absolutely, positively have to hold a front with a well-timed buff and taking Caster down the full Red before you get their spells up could cramp your style. Tactician + Yellow Line will make him far better at surviving fights then the Caster, who has no Yellow Line for precious +Defense buffs. Spellcaster offense is better and their yin or yang passive on cast duplicates the "stand behind the front and support them" functionality of Tactician but it's Medium Melee vs Squishy Caster at the end of the day. And that's a pretty soft Medium without tank items. 40-50+ Defense vs 30ish is pretty meaningful and that's about it. Shakes up a bit with Longma(Caster) vs Warhorse(Shogunate), or the Shogunate can use a Sky Latern if you really want a set and forget Lord to proximity buff. Shogunate is probably mostly inferior unless you have astromancer/alchemists and demand soft min-maxing by not having a Caster Lord + Caster Hero in an army. Reloading Tactician might beat Caster passives but not good use of Caster spells so if you want to go full super shooty then Shogunate + Caster Hero for an army with full functionality. Shogunate could probably use a Skaven Chieftain/HElf Everything style touch-up where he helps your empire run better if you level him to 10+ but I wouldn't throw a leveled one away.
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Feb 19, 2022 23:52
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"Cathay does not have good caster choices/schools." Try casting Constellation of the Dragon in Yang, the biggest fire spell that does the explosion burst. Kills: 153 Damage Done: 40k Damage Value: 3350 gold It's not Malagor busted but them's some pretty good winds, 3 casts + a Fire Wall vs a Norscan 40 stack in the field. And the animation and sounds are  Gained 4 levels in a battle lmao
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Feb 20, 2022 05:54
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That turtle ram is kawaii as heck. Speaking of: Fat Man Falls Off Mobility Scooter.png. Artillery got the killing blow snipe as he routed during army losses. Best way to fight a slow unstoppable juggernaut is to never fight him, the Grimgrog Counter Plan. Took Great Hall of Greasus(hence the super busted garrison troops on the right side there) and Greasus showed up with a doomstack. Almost full monstrous gold chev big lads(minus 1 Gnobby Trappers), 3 Stonehorns, a scrap launcher, he's level 31 and red threat to Meow, dude melees for 682 damage a swing. Lots of stalling maneuver, ghost ploys and massed artillery strikes from the map giving me a defensive cliff. A little Cathay tech for you: you can get harmony no matter how busted the partner unit is. Drop super weakened units next to their partner and forget about them for the rest of the fight, if you want. I had most of those garrison guys perform stalls or protect flanks but I did ignore the 10% strength ranged for the most part. Teracotas are insane. They're tanky as hell unless the enemy focus fires mass AP ranged and their animations are so slick and cool. I love them so much. The ultra fast buzzsaw spin is the best. More amazing soundwork. Sadly my stunting must come to an end. It is insane to try to paint the map in Rifts Of Chaos. It's possible I'm sure but boy oh boy is it tiring. I'm no stranger to tough campaigns or stupid arbitrary map goals but the rifts are relentless and you end up with a lot of attrition zones you encamp through. You can't paint the Chaos Wastes which fair enough, but agh. It's that moment when you realize "I could go for the domination victory but that's gonna be a 300+ turn campaign." So I jumped back 15 turns to stabilize my southern boarders, take Meow home and upgrade to the Celestial Dragons doomstack to start smashing rifts and try to finish this before turn 200 instead.
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Feb 20, 2022 07:28
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ok ready for caring about rifts for real, reloaded from 15 turns back aaaand take 2: I'M THE BEST DAUGHTER EVER AND I AM HERE TO SMOKE OPIUM AND BEAT THE poo poo OUT OF TZEENTCH AND I ALREADY SMOKED ALL THE OPIUM
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Feb 20, 2022 20:21
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Heard that "Cathay infantry is weak" and real quick question: you're shadowing them with a ranged unit for harmony, right? Cathay infantry holds like Dwarves. It is a pain to keep it clean up the streets in a settlement when you're offense and advancing but the infantry isn't the problem. Almost got my first soul from Nurgle's realm after a break. As much as I love all these indepth tactical battles where my micro can do shenanigans like hold off a Tzeentch 20 with a Garrison 15 they're mentally draining so it's harder to binge WH3 than WH2! But then again I didn't really enjoy my auto-resolve auto-win campaigns when they happened so grass is always greener I suppose. The Chaos Realms need better pacing. You can't send me to a place where I need to fight multiple armies consistently, intercept and kill rival sub-doom stacks and have a quest event battle to cap it off while I have to snare myself to juggle encampment stance and then put filler in. The free refills are nice but you could give me 200% movement range in Chaos Realms and chop off 1/2 of the natural demon armies that come at you and it'd be much better and I'd still get into 3-5 fights. The most ridiculous poo poo is walking to one end of Nurgleland to tag the tree for immunity and killing an army in front of it, getting the immunity, end turn and the same army teleports back in behind me. Bruh.
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Feb 21, 2022 00:47
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Twigand Berries posted:“I’m so sick of siege battles!” I had fun with the Nurgle army fight, the Katarin fight, the Plaguefather fight and was a bit tired by the second Nurgle army fight when I got the immunity, then the same army respawned for my fifth fight before the Gardener. If another natural Nurgle army appears between me and the mansion then, uh.. well, that'll be a lot of fights. And I'm using some cheesiness to survive so much fighting since Meow can Legend-style Earthblood up wounded Teracota in any fight no matter how inconsequential. Chaos dangerous but it's a little much. Kanos posted:Their infantry hold perfectly fine but they have functionally no offensive power so in situations where infantry having offensive power is a big benefit(wall fights, street fights) they fall short. Cathay takes a lot longer to do the settlement/siege battles that comprise 70% of your fights, which is unfortunate. Yeah true their infantry aren't punching too hard though they have a nice availability of anti-large and get in some nice damage whenever it comes up which is pretty often with their common enemies. The ranged are pretty sick, I was using the iron hail shotgunners early game. The crossbows are pretty easy quareller tier as well.
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Feb 21, 2022 01:14
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you can sidegrade yin/yang buildings into their counterpart 
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Feb 21, 2022 01:24
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re 10v1: Cathay has a +20% ward save banner late in the tree. Blue Gambler's Armor for 10% ward, Blue Talisman for +16% ward, enchanted item to summon 2 units of Ancestral Warriors, Harmony in Balance for 1 summon of Ancestral Warriors, take Meow Ying and a Teracota up against some crap stack like Nurgle out of a pasive rift portal spawn. Blob 'em up and spam earthblood on cooldown, use warriors if you gotta/want to. The WH2 classic "50% ward save invincible Lord." Bless you goons for teaching me to use heroes to close portals. Yes I spent 100 turns closing every portal with 2-3 armies. At least it was good money and XP. I'm shooting down everything that spawns in Cathay 2 turns after they open. I could go paint the map.. but I really like the Chaos realms, for the most part. I didn't know how badly I wanted DOTA in Total War. I'm also a bit scared of Skrag who ate the entire Empire. He has 29 settlements. Really like the ideas and design of the Slaanesh realm but the actual gameplay is pretty badly balanced. I entered 1 turn behind Greasus and figured I'd kill him or he'd have to fight 1-3 Slaanesh stacks like the 6 that appeared along my half of the ring and I worked to dodge. Nah. He was 1 turn ahead and nothing spawned along his path. Nothing. And that's why I don't play on Legendary Campaign unless I'm feeling really loving pleased with myself. Reloaded and went to Khorne before breaking for the night. This is some good poo poo and it's gonna be even better after those polish patches. The Deleter posted:How do I do this? Juggling harmony on the campaign is like, the most "it's there" thing ever. Try right clicking it or going to the building browser, it'll have an arrow pointing to its counterpart. My current harmony trick is to research two techs up to the 1 turn remaining point and then learn them back to back, or to learn 1 and immediately build a 1 turn counterpart support building. Doomykins fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Feb 21, 2022 |
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Feb 21, 2022 04:29
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Did some experimenting and cut through Khorne's realm like a giant skull encrusted axe through a neck. My first mistake was actually picking fights. In my defense they put a vampire counts rogue army next to me and I laughed in braced halberds. This puts you in range of the one(1) actual Khornate army with high tier units that will give literally any doomstack some aches and pains. So I reloaded and shifted to the other side to beat the poo poo out of Daemon Prince and check the other rogue armies. I don't like the AI bias they get in chaos realms, even if my smug rear end is schooling Very Hard campaign difficulty. Prince comes in with 18 units, auto-resolves a rogue, I actually get close enough to sight that all his guys are at 50% HP. He runs to a corner, grabs a weapon, regens most of his health(???), maybe it's a refill prompt like Nurgle and I missed him auto-resolving another rogue but eh. The AI always wins these auto-resolves even with inferior armies, and I should know, I've physically pulled the teeth of having to withstand those Khorne doomstack approaches. It's really obvious that any AI force doing the realm dance will auto-succeed at it unless you crush them or they stumble into an apocalyptically bad AR. They even ignore each other half the time too. Really amplifies the design flaws in Slaanesh/Tzeentch realms. It makes the realm race kind of unpleasant when other people are in there or you're slightly behind because the only option is to ambush camp or rush and decapitate 'em while ignoring objectives until you've cleared the place/rifts are sealed/you can camp in the most dangerous places in the world you're explicitly not supposed to camp in. I figured out which rogue army I could beat in AR with almost no damage and just camped there by the Brass Citadel, felt kinda cheap but when a game gives me cheap I like to give it back. Being in encamp stance kept me topped off and as I learned in Nurgleland all these armies teleport back within 1-2 turns. Of course I had to get an extra fight at 59k/60k blood dollars. CA did good experimenting and pushing the envelope so much since WH2 was pretty well solved for me and if I want more of that I can still play it. IE will add to that further and give me an excuse to try the WH1-2 factions in WH3 land with WH3 toys which owns. So Realms of Chaos giving us a lot of wild poo poo is an admirable thing for the devs to do. There's a lot to polish and some things flat out wrong with it, of course. Tzeentch and Slaanesh realms need a little do-over so that it's possible to catch up if you aren't first into that realm. Khorne should probably be all mid tier rogue armies, the challenge is in cleanly fighting multiple times in a brawl, not running from the Khorne stacks like a chicken because it isn't possible to global recruit anything good if you need to fill a gap after a rough fight. Nurgle just needs to be a bit trimmer or have smarter respawn timings, 2 turn respawns in areas where it's impossible to get in and out in less than 2 turns is an obvious goof. I agree that it's unnecessarily clunky to move in realms a lot of the time, things like Tzeentch portals or Slaanesh gates should remember you have movement left. The army scaling needs some adjustment too. Campaign map rift armies are fine but realm armies scale too fast, especially since they assume you won't miss any early rifts. I think the best case scenarios are that for Realms of Chaos they add adjustable "difficulty" knobs like the Chaos Invasion in Mortal Empires got. And for IE they do Realms of Chaos lite, where you have a really dangerous taxi realm full of fights, insane loot and a chance to teleport across the world at a risk and a cost.
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Feb 21, 2022 07:21
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When you get your campaign stabilized by mid game and can get like 3-6k a turn you can burn for 2-3 turns when the rifts first spawn having heroes shut them is pretty painless. I'm definitely going to get a domination victory on a new faction I try. I wonder which one can paint the best? Cathay is pretty good for it but I'm 2 souls away from my first Cathay win.
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Feb 21, 2022 15:36
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The Chad Jihad posted:1) The realms trait is still really nasty. I get its thematic but re-jiggering the capital closest to where your hero will return is annoying. I would either have it automatically drop a step every turn once you're out and forgo the trait healing buildings, or if it has to stick around and be healed have it drop to the lowest level first. Or leave just a negative red trait that does nothing but has some flavor text if we want to go all narrative Any major province capital works. You don't mean your starting faction capital, right? quote:2) People seem to struggle with using heroes to clean up the portals, Maybe create some sort of province capital anti corruption building that prevents the local portal from opening, to help those people out Less a struggle and more no sign from the game that it's an option. It's really easy to play the game without heroes on the map since you're naturally guided towards how super useful they are in armies. The advisor really needs to clearly state on the first rift spawn "you only need to enter 1 portal, armies approaching a portal attract daemonic attention, a clever agent can seal the portal quietly at the cost of expensive reagents." Bam.
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Feb 21, 2022 16:03
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Oops. I'm a doomsayer now, Realms of Chaos is trash, where's the new Empires? Just had a game ending bug. No joke. So Rifts spawn and I head to Slaanesh for my 3rd soul. I'm first in, guaranteed win for me, gg no re to the AI. 2 steps from the goal I get the bad news: somebody else has 4 souls and is going to the Forge of Souls. Whatever, I'll be out in 2 turns. The advisor "helpfully" spawns a new set of rifts and two end game soul grinder doomstacks get out almost immediately. Sigh, but whatever, I've spent 20 turns building up 120k in gold and I'm out of buildings to improve. And I can't expand, literally, because whenever I do Tzeentch gives one of the neutral/ruins settlements I take to a Str 1-5 faction adjacent to me. At least he's not halt spamming me but they sure didn't think Tzeentch Campaign AI through. So Meow gets out, I head for a rift, of course the rift she returns through despawns so add +2 travel turns to reach a new rift. I'm gonna be 4 turns behind, I can't even see the Forge(and thus gauge how close the enemy is to automatically winning when they touch the Win Spot), I sure hope the devs thought to port me to the win spot to contest is. And I touch the loving rift. I raise the menu. TRAVERSE THE FORGE OF SOULS. ENTER RIFT Menu lowers. Meow doesn't move. Oh, that's odd. I have movement to spare so I move off and move on, try again. Nope. End turn, do it 4 times. Nope. Reload old saves, try again. Nope. Really? A game ending bug? All I can do is wait for CAMPAIGN LOST to pop up at random? gently caress off. I try to appreciate a robust challenge and all, I can see a lot of the good the devs tried to do, but this is how my first campaign ends? This is trash. Give me IE. Look, at least I had a lot of fun learning the new stuff and Cathay and playing as Meow was a blast. I can't wait to do it again in a good game mode. I can't believe Vortex has better and more reliable mechanics than Realms. At least in Vortex you could ignore the mechanic and you got a huge safety net to go spank the AI. You guys were arguing 1-2 pages ago that "a mechanic is bad if the given advice is to ignore it" but yeah, give me control and functionality over The Dev's Unrelenting Vision any day. If I need more challenge I can open palm smash Legendary/VH at campaign select. I want tough but fair so I did VH/N. I took everything on the chin and kept an open mind about the rough spots and the light bugs and it ends with a "push the release date back another 2 months" major bug. I went back to an old save before I entered Slaanesh's Domain and labeled it WAITFORFORGEOFSOULS. Maybe I'll go back to it in a bit, or a few days, or whatever, and see if the prompt isn't buggy from that save. Maybe it'll get patched soon. Maybe it won't be reproduceable and it'll fix the next time I try. But uggggggggggggh. Considering this could happen to anyone late game I'm actually half-tempted to wait entirely for IE and/or mods, it makes it pretty rough to want to try another faction out and to know falling behind once could be death. Seriously, this is a disgusting major bug. At least the campaign was fun until that. I guess it's a win in my heart. 
Doomykins fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Feb 21, 2022 |
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Feb 21, 2022 17:21
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It bugged me more to not know if an older save would fix it then to try it and realize my campaign is well and truly hosed. By good fortune I'm not on legendary so I went back to before entering Slaanesh's domain and sat on my hands for ten turns, giving up my 3rd soul to see if the bug would be reproduced. And it wasn't. I waited for the 4th soul to be claimed, the new wave of rifts to open and tried going to the Forge. It worked and now I can set up a cheesy camping army, I guess. So PSA: if you need to contest the souls(i.e. you're behind in the race and somebody is about to get their 4th) you have to sit out a rifts cycle. I assume my problem is that I was inside a realm and had my 1 permitted rift that roar and the game bugged and didn't allow me to go to "two", the second being the Forge. I guess finishing this campaign is back on the menu but god drat that is a serious QA gently caress up. Nobody ever had their LL inside a realm and an enemy faction got their 4th soul? It never came up? Come on. Ah well. Game rough. Doomykins fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Feb 21, 2022 |
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Feb 21, 2022 17:54
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Well I'm happy the reloading worked and I understand how to work within the painful constraints of the rift system but I had to abandon campaign since I need Meow heading a doomstack to get my other souls but I also need Meow heading a doomstack to camp the Forge and try to stop the enemy doomstacks that are pretty god drat doomy. Can't actually out-muscle Skarbrand without Meow there. Or possibly, perhaps. 3 Grinders, 7 Bloodletters, 2 Skullcannons, 1 Minotaur, rest are Exalted bloodletters or Chosen and then big S himself. Ouch. I did have a 19 Terracota stack in progress but my timing is off by too much. I'll take losing a VH campaign over bugging it out and try again sometime, I've lost tons of VH starts in WH2 while angling for the win with a race. I guess the real lesson here is don't fall behind on Souls, which is a shame, I threw the first rift to solidify my campaigning and my chickens sure came home to roost.  The game just assumes you did well and keeps scaling things up, this campaign must be hell to new or struggling players. Lots of death spiral situations.1st_Panzer_Div. posted:What's this you're talking about, heroes closing portals? If an army closes a portal it causes a fight but that's XP, Gold and Items to gain. If a hero closes a portal they do it quietly but it costs 1500 gold. 3-5 heroes can shut down even all of united Cathay in a few turns if you got the cash to burn.
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Feb 21, 2022 18:35
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Electronico6 posted:It happened to me. Was still in the Tzeentch realm getting my fourth when Greasus got his, though I still went to the Forge for the final battle fine. You do get your own "Rifts Open" event when you get the souls. I was getting my third so I guess the game didn't give me the flag to go to the forge and intercept, though the advisor reopened every rift in the world and told me to go run interception anyway. Trying Greasus out atm, some large lads here. Opening cutscene is pretty good for establishing how nerve-wracking it is to barter with Ogres at all.
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Feb 21, 2022 20:14
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Promethium posted:The campaign mechanics seem mostly fine to me apart from the desync bug. After getting the four souls the AI will take some arbitrary amount of time (for me it was about 70 extra turns, I think) before trying the final quest battle, and they can still fail that even if you don't intercept them, so there shouldn't be that much of a rush to directly compete with them in the same realms. Huh. I camped out my Cathay campaign before calling it as a lost and Skarbrand was in there within 4 turns of getting his last soul. Were you beating your enemies up on the campaign map too?
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Feb 21, 2022 22:31
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I was thinking the Chaos Realms should incentivize using rifts to go gently caress up people getting ahead of you outside of spite killing them or trying to do a full faction wipe. Maybe if souls could be intercepted or stolen? Gimme a reason to teleport across the world to accelerate winning the campaign or at least deal with the realms where if you don't show up first you've already lost.
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Feb 22, 2022 00:26
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It feels like you either can't fall behind, you have to stage it so that you and your competitors go to the same realm so you can krump em, or you delete their faction from the campaign map. Camping might work, you can swap the LL out and wait five turns to get them back while some generic Lord campaign the forge but end game doomstacks are pretty scary. Especially Demon factions.
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Feb 22, 2022 16:34
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On VH the AI certainly got a soul every time across 3-4 armies.Angry Lobster posted:Anyone has attempted a domination victory yet? Sounds tempting to just ignore the soul hunting, however map painting on such a scale means lots and lots of tedious siege/ minor settlement battles. Go to Slaanesh every time it's up and give yourself sickeningly disgusting purples and big treasury stacks to take the edge off. The hardest part is going to lovely Chaos red clime lands to wipe out dangerous factions unless you're Chaos yourself. There's some sincere relief in things like Ogres not having Underway Movement stance for their long winding compact trails mountain lands.
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Feb 22, 2022 19:21
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