2780

I certainly can see heroes for scouting, but other than that? You know, their hero abilities. I also play on normal. Its just I have found their use embedded to far outvalue their use outside of an army. Also I tend to be at my hero cap a lot, which means I can’t have an army with some kind of hero.

2781

As a general rule I like to have 2-3 (by late game) trained assassin heroes in the field near my armies or patrolling my turf. I really enjoy assassinating enemy wandering heroes before they can cause me static, and softening up enemy armies by removing their heroes.

Aside from that, it’s very situational. I often send out the first few mages I recruit to steal technology on enemy settlements if I’m doing well economically. Having them ping-ponging between enemy settlements doing a steal technology action can get expensive, but it has some very positive benefits. The obvious one is accelerating my progress on the tech tree quite noticeably, and the secondary one is that the mages start to level up really fast. For races like lizardmen where a high level mage gets really really scary because of the combination of high level spells and a cool mount, this is a really juicy bonus.

2782

Block to stop movement, spying on enemies is useful.

Assassinate is to remove enemy spies because you can’t ambush with enemy spies around I think?

2783

Agreed. Stop movement is huge if you are tired of chasing enemy armies all over the map, or just to let you avoid a 3 stack ambush.

Yes, you can work around it by having an army that the AI underestimates and/or using bait and ambushes, but it’s nice to have the extra flexibility.

2784

Steal tech stacks per hero unit and is very good once you get a few running it, you can easily be running double research speed. Alternatively, secure influence gain for high elfs is almost required.

The constant EXP gain from this also gets their other skills leveled up. A high level assassinate or damage units hero can absolutely wreck, and block army is situationally very powerful.

Finally, it is excellent diplomacy. It’s not uncommon to see something like “+50 agent actions against <faction AI hates>”

There’s other powerful options involving income via passive bonuses as well.

2785

This was probably the only way I was able to defeat the chaos invasion in one of my games (empire, iirc)–couldn’t handle all the stacks together, this let me take them one at a time.

2786

I used to take that approach against Chaos, but it was fiddly. I finally settled on a simpler but far less elegant option. I just recruit expendable armies with a L1 lord and a mix of halberdiers/xbowmen and throw them to their immediate autoresolve death to soften up Chaos stack while my real armies stay a bit behind them, mostly in ambush stance, ready to swoop in for the kill. Judicious use of ambush stance goes a long way towards solving Chaos whack-a-mole where they avoid you unless they have an advantage.

2787

Also, damn all of you to hell. All this talk about TW:WH2 is making me re-install it. Making me! I have no choice!

Maybe I’ll tackle finally trying to master Skaven. They have always been my weak point because I’m no good at wrapping my head around bootstrapping their economy and bee-lining to the good troops so I always struggle horribly in the early game.

2788

I like skaven!! do you have skyrie?

Get
1 General
1 Engineer

2-5 of each:

Priests (to tank, and summon guys to tank). They can also cast AOEs.
Machine gun guys
Jezztails (long range snipers)
Plague catapults

Jezztails become less useful compared to machine gun guys late game

==

Another genius idea was to make the 2nd army just for sieges. 5 catapults, 14 mortars, 1 machine gun guy? Mortars destroy everything on walls and all the troops

Without mortars you have to poke holes in walls and then micro manage your machine gun guys to go take out stragglers which gets tedious

2789

I don’t know what skyrie is? I have all the DLC for TW:WH2 so if it’s something in that then yeah I have it.

I don’t disagree with your late game army comps as suggested, it’s the early game I struggle with. So much of a TW:WH2 campaign is decided in the early game. A strong start and quickly taking the provinces around your capitol makes the rest of the game SO much easier. But in that early game it’s basically clanrats and slaves until settlements have grown to the point of supporting advanced military buildings to get me weapon teams and arty and lots of mages.

There’s so many possibilities in the early game with Skaven that I skirt analysis paralysis. Do I focus on building the under empire to secure a good food supply? Do I focus on spending food to boost conquered cities to high level immediately so I can jump right to advanced buildings? Should I be focusing on a few tough armies or just trying to win via weight of numbers? I’ve won as Ikkit and Skrolk before but never really felt like I knew what I was doing. I just felt I stumbled through the early phase of the game and eventually got going by luck as much as by careful planning and skill.

2790

I finally found a way to get a decent start, one that didn’t have me throwing in the towel really early. Lizardmen. These dudes rock.

2791

Under empire seems too expensive, at most I do 2 underempires.

I usually send one over to Tyrion’s capital to leech income but it spreads slowly and doesn’t seem to be worth it.

The last time i played skaven I did a change from normal. I started expanding less. I also used the +2 food for all province bonus instead of growth rate. Expanding slowly seems to be the habit I should get into. Just cheese it and
farm the same city for a while to level up your guy.

Don’t forget to make one general a warlock because you need one at level 15 for tier 3 Lab upgrade

As for a start, I normally used to go for the Tilea cities but I did differently this time. Go for the starting yellow human enemies, then I went up towards Brettonia and had fun there.

2792

Use javelin guys as your cavalry, go around the flanks tossing sticks up their behinds, then charge in :p

chameleon skinks are also good because they tank ranged fire nicely

2793

Depends on the hero and faction.

For almost anyone having a hero that can do Block Army is very useful, though often you can just pop someone out of a given army and have them do it in a pinch. A dedicated Assassination hero or two can also be very handy for protecting embedded heroes and weakening enemy embedded heroes (not to mention killing annoying heroes, especially the Skaven Rite heroes).

That said, unless it’s an exploit-based thing, they’re kind of meh for the most part (aka stacking Necromancers or the like for economic reasons). They can be super handy for running across the planet for various quest battle requirements. I’m not sending an army off to Lustria in ME with Ikit, but sending an assassin is fine.

Under empire pays for itself several times over pretty quickly. Either by hitting big money provinces or using the automatic spreading building to get free places which you can covert into money/food for next to nothing. Under empire income can easily exceed regular income and that’s before you start thinking about global bonuses that you can stack up.

It’s especially the case for Ikit due to his starting location, imo. Odds of you conquering most of the Empire or the like early are low, so getting free income from those places quickly adds up.

2794

The problem with under empire is that’s a long term investment with a pretty steep short term initial cost. That’s always made me wonder if the long term payout isn’t better by just sinking same amount of cash into armies and annexing provinces to get more income. Under empire buildings can have cash/food maintenance costs, especially the income-producing buildings. Which means the short term pain of developing a cash positive under empire can be pretty extreme. Being short on food and cash at the same time can really put the hurt on early-game Skaven.

2795

Except, other than large money cities, it really isn’t much a of steep cost.

The generic money making structures pay out better than just about any other economic building.
And that’s if you include the building to hide them.

Sure your undercity in Lothern might be a bit more expensive, but even there the payout is possibly equal to or greater than a Gold Mine.

Armies have upkeep. And Supply Lines make each of those armies cost more than they should. Plus they compound each other.
An undercity just generates money and pays for itself in about 10 turns in most cases. Eventually you’re making 5 figures a turn while they generate even more of themselves without your interaction. It’s a snowball effect of money (or whatever you need really).

Basically the question is “would you spend 5k gold to make 400 gold a turn and 2 food a turn?” And the answer to that question is almost always “God, yes, I would.”

Edit: Now if the question is “should I go hard into Undercities right away?” Probably not. If nothing else the cooldown wont really let you anyway. But it’s the real strength of Skaven economy and it’s neatly limitless once it starts rolling.

2797

I don’t think those numbers are right. Here’s my math on building an undercity:

  1. Establish the undercity. Barring the odd one created by a hero, mostly this will be performed by the mineshaft building spreading undercities from an existing undercity. The mineshaft costs 6k and has a 10% chance to spread every turn. Oh and a maintenance cost 100/turn. Each early mineshaft building will eventually spread 5-10 undercities before it runs out of room or the campaign is over. So each undercity costs 600gp (ish) just to establish an empty undercity. And that’s probably conservative.

  2. Once an undercity is established, we need to build up buildings to generate income/food. The raiding camp is the obvious choice and costs 4k but only generates 100-250 gold and 2 food a turn. Assuming the high side of that cash income to be generous it still takes 16 turns to become cash positive and isn’t moving the needle much on income, though the food is nice.

  3. The raiding camp has a really high discoverability, so there’s a decent chance it gets nuked before paying back our investment. We can fix that by spending another 2k on the deeper tunnels building to bring the discoverability way way down. So we do that, but now we’ve invested another 2k and increased our wait till payback even further while safeguarding our food income.

  4. If we want to pivot towards more income and little less food we can build the warp token mint. That costs 2 food a turn, so it offsets the food gain of the raiding camp. It does add +400 income a turn though, which is welcome. Problem is, it costs 4k to build that.

At this point we have sunk 600 (founding) + 4k (raiding camp) + 2k (deeper tunnels) +4k (warp token mint) = 10.6k into this undercity and are only getting 500-650 a turn and 0 food out of it. With construction wait times factored in it’s not going to pay back that investment for like 15 turns.

Am I missing a strategy or do I have a math error here? I really love the idea of spending 5k to get 400 gold/2 food a turn I just don’t see how that’s possible.

2799

image

Raiding camps are something you make for food, if anything.

You make the flat money buildings and then something to hide them. That’s it. If you have lots of money or need food you toss a food building in there and then maybe the other hiding building if you think it might be at risk.

You go:

Warp-token stash (1k to make, 200 gold per turn) Already the best economic return on investment in the game (other than maybe the Skaven weapon pile, but that takes a slot that matters someplace and doesn’t scale that well). Like if you do nothing else, you’re basically in Gold Mine territory.

Upgrade that to Warp Token Mint (3k to make, 400 gold per turn). Pays for itself in 10 turns. Actually less because it starts paying for itself immediately (W-TS is 1 turn, iirc).

If you think it might be in danger, you toss a Deeper Tunnels (2k) Now no one can ever find it. Discoverability is zero.

If you need food you can toss some food buildings in there and then Murder Holes and Kill-Perches (though now you’re making less, but such is the trade off). Or just make other Undercities that make food (or raid, take prisoners, Raiding Stash, etc, etc).

Mineshafts run until they’ve populated the area with free undercities, which are also just Deeper Tunnels/Warp Token Mints, then you sell the Mineshaft and toss whatever in there, or nothing. Either way.

But remember the base set up for “random town in the middle of nowhere worth nothing” is 6k over multiple turns for 400 gold. Which seems pricey, but is on par with Mariemburg’s ports, which are the best money building in the game to the best of my knowledge (or close to it if nothing else). And unlike Mariemburg’s ports, you don’t have to drop 6 at once, it’s like 3k, then 3k again.

Now this might impact food generation, but you can also just not make money and make food. Or make both if you have the cash. You’ll come out ahead 1 food and 200 gold if you just cram all the things into an undercity (Mint, +3 food, both detectability structures). Which isn’t amazing, but it has literally no upkeep. It basically will never be destroyed by anything and will generate income and food forever.

Also you reach a point where food is meaningless anyway. I pulled up a save to look at undercities and I’m currently generating +36 food. And that’s with 36 settlements and 8 undercities. My undercities are mostly in Big Money places like KAK, Lothern and Drakenhof, because I’ve conquered all my old undercity areas (including Mariemburg and Altdorf). This is a mid-gamish save even where I stopped caring iirc.

YMMV and all that, but 6k to generate 400 gold a turn in a place you don’t have to defend is a good return. It doesn’t cost you building slots, you don’t have to guard it, it just sits off someplace and makes you stuff.

2801

Pretty much. Armies that consist of like 15 skavenslaves, a leader and 3-4 plagueclaws can actually win a lot of fights on their own, much less with your Real Army reinforcing. The skaven doggos are actually pretty easy to get as well and can chew up units remarkably well for their cost, so I suspect my new Skaven Slumming stacks will start to include a couple of those just to tie up flankers or the like.

2802

Maybe that’s what I’m missing. I definitely see what you are saying about making a ton of cash if one is willing to go massively food negative with the undercities. I’ve always been scared of that. I don’t like the PO/Growth penalties for being out of food and I seem to spend the early game always deep in the red on food.