Strato
2051
Agreed, though aren’t handmaidens tied behind the Queen and Crone DLC?
In a somewhat similar vein, with the High Elf generals, it is better to go with the princess rather than the prince. The Princess comes with a Bow and ends up having more utility in battle compared to the prince who has to stay on the frontlines to have any impact.
Dwarves are great for learning the game but they are fairly one dimensional. Their whole strategy mostly revolves around setting up an immovable wall and pushing the opposition into attacking on the battlefield thanks to their siege. They have some great units, but not a lot of experimenting I found. Their heroes and lords have no mounts, there’s no magic to worry yourself with and their mechanics aren’t all that interesting, except maybe Clan Angrund. There is absolutely no spectacle when playing Dwarves. On the campaign map, again it isn’t anything amazing, though bumping the difficulty does add to the challenge, and also the grind as a result of holding off hordes of orcs initially before getting some traction.
WH2 is significantly better. I will say that my campaign at the Vampire Coast right now is exciting some 130 turns in. I’ll elaborate more on the ups and downs when I come close to completing it, but the way the Vampire Coast plays is wholly different to the way I usually play Total War games. In short, I’m less concerned about conquering large tracts of land and more focused on a few small settlements and sailing the high seas for loot and fame. Tomb Kings presented its own unique way of playing the game too - expand too fast and research slows down. Focus the limited wealth they have on building up key settlements first and keep in check over-expansion. Both those factions are of course locked behind DLC. For the base game with WH1, why not try Empire faction on Mortal Empires map? The Empire did get a makeover recently and have some nice unit variety to play around with. An alternative might be Vampire Counts (whom I’ve never played) that seems to encourage a more aggressive playstyle and their own unique faction mechanics. If you play Vortex campaign in WH2, then High Elves or Lizards is the place to start.
I feel like you might have misunderstood the Tomb Kings mechanics because additional settlements increase your research speed as Tomb Kings, not decrease it. You get 1% per settlement level. You decrease your research speed by unlocking additional armies in the research tree.
There’s no incentive to expand slowly and carefully with them or indeed any faction in the game unless that’s what you find fun to do.
The unique thing about the Tomb Kings is that their units cost no money and have no upkeep, but instead they are capped based on how many military buildings they construct. But they have an absolutely terrible economy to compensate, and their buildings are rather expensive.
edited to add: oh, and they have a neat crafting system that the dwarves kind of got ported over.
Strato
2053
Yeah, you’re right. That was a major brainfart on my behalf and I am totally wrong. I was thinking of the research screen where each Dynasty decreases research time. I got completely mixed up there. And it hasn’t even been that long since I played them.
The issue with rapid expansion is over-expansion and having no easy means to defend against rebellions or nearby AI’s who will jump on any weakness. I’ve found getting public order in check first is pretty necessary. It ties into a question that was asked recently about keeping vs razing settlements. In my playstyle, I’ll raze if I don’t think I can readily defend a settlement. And that was an important lesson I learned with TK when I’d push out fast, have the AI sneak through an army and sack a settlement that I decided to invest some of my precious income to, to try and access better units. Playing TK felt particularly like I was making decisive attacks where I could direct my armies, given that the number they can field is capped.
Enidigm
2054
The funny thing though is how all this comes crashing down with player intervention. I’ll kick off a Chaos campaign and after a couple of stack wipes the Empire starts to collapse even though I may only have a couple of cities taken, because it starts to lose everywhere else.
Enidigm
2055
I was shocked to discover this new area! It really feels like Terra Incognita. Even weirder is that the Tomb Queen is set up to expand over there. Theres even an island and some sea space!
Bobtree
2056
For what it is worth, I recently completed a normal/hard ME campaign as Repanse that saw somewhat different results. Much of what you described came true as the Dwarves and Empire defeated Chaos and the Greenskins were more or less wiped out. However, the Dark Elves (with both Marathi and Malekith leading factions) wiped out the High Elves and were making inroads into Empire territory when I ended the game at 2000 chivalry. The non-Repanse Bretonians were also wiped out. My actions didn’t influence any of that as I spent my time consolidating the South with a detour to take out Sartosa and the Skaven who had conquered Estalia.
Dug through the closet and found an old GTX-570. It is, uh, a bit better than the integrated graphics (Medium settings - I can actually see ground and troops now!). That’s why you should never throw anything away. My $20 game does not need to turn into a $150 game (well, $25 game, as I bought the HE DLC).
vyshka
2059
Anyone else experience crashes during ai turns? I’ve had it happen twice now. Seems like a fight between Empire and Chaos is causing it to crash :(.
vyshka
2060
That damn rat to the southeast. I had him almost finished off, and then he got another, much larger, skaven faction to join a confederation.
I’ve had a pair of crashes since the expansion, both during end turn resolution. So not just you.
Funny you should mention that, I am in the middle of my first campaign with it. The Greenskins have eaten the old world (I started as Exiles of Nehek, no interaction with the old world) using the default settings. So that is a nice change of pace.
That makes me want to play her
again… that ME campaign was sorta strange with her isolated. But if she has softer borders… she has some nice resources.
robc04
2063
I take it that if I’m going to play the Mortal Empires campaign I need to have both games installed?
Nope, just the second game.
Just picked up the two base games. Is there any reason to install WH1 since it isn’t needed for Mortal Empires?
Still thinking about picking up some of the DLC while the sale is on.
You’ll need to associate/register both games with the same CA account. Only way I know to do that offhand is to install and fire it up (which then prompts you to register them). After that for both, you’ll be able to get the “FreeLC” like Mortal Empires. No need to keep WH1 installed afterwards.
vyshka
2068
I guess Dwarfs aren’t a popular option to play?
They are, it’s more like nobody finishes campaigns. By the time you have killer stacks you get tired and just start a new campaign.
Be curious to see what campaigns ppl actually finish thought. I bet it’s the damn dagger ears.
ShivaX
2070
High Elves and Empire probably.
Tyrion especially probably has the highest completed campaigns, I’d guess.
