Warhammer Total War

[TenTonHammer]

I wouldn't know I just started a GS campaigns after finishing my chaos runs while the sever is down

I had a great run in my previous GS campagin, wiped the blue dwarfs by turn. 24 and the green ones by 31 but my game kept consistently crashing on turn 38, probably because of the 70 ish mods I'm running

I kept losing WAAAGHs cause I auto merged to heal my units b/c of habit

Didn't know about the 17 unit threshold thing

[Dabbart]

GS can be simple at times. Once you get on a roll, it gets super easy to just keep on rollin'. But a defeat or 2 can set you back a staggering distance. Oh, and the Top Knots are a pain in the ass...

Dwarves, if you have an intelligent start can end up steamrolling people with your econ. I only played dwarves to turn 50 or so before I got bored with em. I hate their defensive style in combat.

VC was very hard my first playthrough. Once I got the hang of em, I was able to use my corruption as a first line of defense and just swarmed doom stacks of zombies to slow down the enemy as I raised a defensive force. That is, until I got plenty of battle sights to quickly raise up defensive armies...

Chaos is very dependant upon your strategy.

Emp was the most difficult imo. Surrounded by enemies, with no real way to protect your flanks over than diplomacy. On my 3rd play through with them currently, and pretty much going entirely defensive and just funding my allies to smash all my potential enemies. I even managed to make peace with the Norscans:P

overall, raising the difficulty and a few mods removed my boredom. VH has far enough for me, legendary the AI just gets too many "cheats" for me to even want to try and win.

My main gripe is quite simply that the enemy armies don't seem to lose movement for changing stances and can attack/raze while in forced march. Requiring you to use Hero's or multiple armies to stop the damn kiting. The only time the AI will attack me is when they have a perceived numerical advantage.

The patch that lessened the hero spam helped the game a lot btw. But I have found, the best way to enjoy the game is to enact house-rules that lead to this. I enforce on myself a max of 2 T5 units, 3 T4 units, 1 hero, 2 Siege weapons, and no more than 3 of any 1 unit type per army. Forces me to utilize "balanced" armies. Edit: I gave myself allowance on Disposable units(like goblins(not Night), and Zombies)

I bought the Beastman DLC the day it was announced, 1, cause I LOVE beastmen, I had a very small TT army that I mainly used in conjunction with my Chaos force. But I love their Lore. The cost isn't that big of a deal to me, the mini-campaign alone will give me a serious amount of play-time per dollar, nevermind the GC playtime from playing as beastmen and replaying other races! The mid game battle over Brettonia/estalia/border KDs will be far different with their inclusion, not to mention the Top Knots and orcs actually have a potentially serious competitor down there now...

Add to the fact, that I am happy to show my support for the game in the hopes that they choose to go above and beyond in all future DLCs/FLCs/stand-alone games. Will they? Who knows. They are a company, their number 1 priority is to remain solvent and make money. They make decisions on what to NOT imput based on that first and foremost.

Also, I fully expected that when it was all said and done, the entire Warhammer world in TW fashion was going to cost me around $250 bucks. 3 games at $50 a pop +DLCs and whatnot. $250 for the entire Warhammer world with every major race as a playable faction? Hell yea. I don't think of it as paying $20 for 90% of the beastman roster. I think of it as another installment on that payment for the game I REALLY want.

I guess I could describe my feeling as... Lay-away while I am playing the Beta...

[GhostofMarchmain]

Does anyone else feel like the grand campaign just gets a bit tedious?

I found it frustrating to learn the game at first (kept getting stomped early on because I didn't know what I was doing) but once I figured it out it just became a bit dull. I still really enjoy going back and watching some battle replays but eh. I dunno.

[Dabbart]

I find I enjoy the GC the most when I auto-resolve any "unimportant" battle. That actually lets me focus on the Campaign! after the third 15-20min battle I find that I tend to lose track of what is actually happening on a turn by turn basis...

As I said, I don't believe the game is complete yet. When all the races/land-masses are in, the GC will play entirely differently than it does now...

[Grumpbot]

TW: Warhammer is actually what got me thinking about WAR again and looking for a private server, which of course led me here!

I've been playing the hell out of it and have completed VH Empire, Dwarfs, Greenskins, and VC. Working on Chaos now.

There are a couple of things that have really kept the game interesting for me:

1. Use the "Better AI Recruitment" mod -- it leads the AI to recruit armies that are much more balanced. No more stacks of all light cav or half artillery that are easy to beat but annoying. While AI factions don't always end up with stacks of super powerful units, they do much more often with this mod than they do in vanilla. I've run into VC stacks where half the stack was top tier (3-5 total Terrorgheists and Varghulfs, 2 Blood Knights, 2 Black Coaches, 2 Hexwraiths) and the rest was solid stuff like Grave Guard, Crypt Horrors and Vargheists. Those battles can be an actual challenge.

2. Set the campaign difficulty to Very Hard, the battle difficulty to Normal, and self impose composition restrictions on all of your armies. I split each list into Core/Special/Rare like in TT and mandate each stack has to have 11+ core units, 1 lord, 0-1 hero, 0-2 rare, and 0-6 special, with the ability to swap hero and rare for special if you want. This ensures that you never have an all-elite army that can just faceroll any AI stack, and you sometimes run into enemy stacks that are MUCH more powerful than any single army that you can field, thus necessitating a lot more strategy.

The reason why I set battle difficulty to Normal is that the passive stat bonuses to enemy units on higher battle difficulties ruin the game balance in a way that makes units fail to function in their intended roles, particularly at low tiers. When a unit of dwarf warriors is losing in melee to a unit of goblin archers, something is wrong. Normal difficulty makes unit matchups actually make sense. It would be too easy, but the comp rules help balance it out and lead to a more robust experience. Of course, if you want the game to be a hell of a lot harder you can also do higher difficulty AND comp rules.

3. Only autoresolve battles where the outcome is a foregone conclusion. If it's anything close to close (based on the forces involved, not what the balance of force meter says), fight the battle. The only time I bend this rule a bit is if I am doing a siege attack that I know I can win without much difficulty and am pressed for time IRL as it takes a while to complete siege battles.



I'd be happy to share my experiences with this system for each race in depth and my category assignments if people are interested.

[Grumpbot]

My main gripe is quite simply that the enemy armies don't seem to lose movement for changing stances and can attack/raze while in forced march. Requiring you to use Hero's or multiple armies to stop the damn kiting. The only time the AI will attack me is when they have a perceived numerical advantage.

Two things really help solve this problem.

1. Build walls in every settlement. I hated doing this at first but believe me it's worth it. You will still get attacked at times but the enemy will stop for at least 1-2 turns to build siege equipment, giving you time to close.

2. Use ambush stance. I get the sense that players rarely use ambush because it's so hit or miss, but it really does work well against the AI, especially if you spec your lord for it. Sometimes the enemy will actually trigger your ambush and you get to really crush them hard, sometimes they just leave themselves in a position that is vulnerable to a conventional attack the next turn. You mention liking Beastmen a lot (I'm really looking forward to their playstyle too), so I think this strategy might be up your alley!

[TenTonHammer]

or you could just do what i do and use mods that remove forced march

[Dabbart]

Aye, I have walls in every settlement, double stacks with the stronger in ambush get's em alot. And you just have to "hero spam" yourself. Lvl up your hero's on enemy villages, it's real quick but a little expensive. I found a mod that increases movement inside friendly territory, this helps a LOT.

Also, Always get lighting strike quickly on Lords. Other than running multi-doom stacks, only way to deal with the devastation that can be Chaos...

I love difficult games. I HATE games where the AI cheats. Sure, buff up the enemy. That's fine, But make them at least play with the same set of rules I have too:( That's why I play with the conquer anywhere mod. It allows the AI to conquer anywhere as well... Side effect, is that Norsca can conquer anywhere on this Mod too...

[bobthehero]

Playing around with the Empire and the ''Empire of Sigmar'' mod. Great fun, I loved having Franz run around with a full-ish Reiksguard army (10 or so dismounted, 3 mounted, with artillery/ranged support). The rest of my armies are usually filled with Greatswords support by more specialised state troops and a variety of knightly orders, up to demigryph knights. All with artillery support, too.