Well, thats the end of my vampire campaign.
So Karl had like 6 full armies raiding at my top border for like forever. He could have killed me any time.
So I go after the border princes to the south and using that diplomacy trick I get a war with the princes. Then like 3 turns later, Karl declares war on me and pretty much steam rolls me. Not even close. I did face one of his armies with two of mine and I do not know what he had, but whatever it was, the power rating was like 90% in his favor.
Anyway, game over. When I played my chaos campaign, the vampires were kicking ass and taken names from good old Karl Fritz, but this time all other vampire factions got wiped out fast. Not sure what I could have done differently.
I guess Ill try scaven next after reading the above posts about them with the tunnel economy. Maybe vampire pirates after that.
So much for scaven. That didn’t last long. I think on turn 10 a giant lizard army came down and crushed one settlement, while a different guy crushed my other one, and then by turn 20, the lizard army came to my last settlement and crushed that.
If you are a newbie, friendly factions would be saurons, and Tyrion (elf). They are straightforward. Elf in particular has a very nice roster in which just about every unit is powerful. Their tier 1 spear + archers will last you a long, long time.
Skaven is weird. I’m guessing you were playing Queek (red skaven). Always ambush. Run. Have a lord as bait. Do dirty tricks. Skavenslaves are there to die. A few ranged units do all the killing, the clanslaves are there to hold them down while you do so.
Without watching your actual gameplay I have to make some assumptions, but if Karl Franz had 6 armies this wasn’t super early in your vampire campaign. You should be conquering a new settlement every 1-2 turns in the early game without fail, and you want to ramp this up as much as is practical. It seems to me you are getting out-expanded and snowballed which is the opposite of what needs to be happening.
If you are pressing End Turn just waiting for buildings to finish and cities to grow you are going to lose a lot. It isn’t a game that rewards tall gameplay.
It’s worth spending the time to figure out which faction clicks with you - there are so many factions, so many starting positions, and so much variety, that when you find that faction that works with your style in the battle map, you can figure out how to push forward in the campaign map (because you can win battles with difficult odds).
So a lot of new players like Dwarves - defensive, heavily armored, powerful artillery. Some people might like the ‘free units’ of the Tomb Kings. Some might like the hyper-powerful high end stuff of Chaos or Norsca.
Personally i’m just too elfy to stray too far from the world-tree. I prefer all the Elf factions (high, dark, wood) to most of the other races, primarily because they have very good ranged units. By far (for me) a big line of nothing but Lothern Sea Guard can easily, almost effortlessly beat, 80-90% of all other unit combinations. Dark Elves are more fun, but there’s an inflection point where the Dark Elves suck bad against High Elves - Corsairs just get pwned, as they say, vs. HIgh Elf cavalry, and massed cav in the early or early mid game don’t really have a natural counter as the Dark Elves. Wood elves are pretty range-y and with some tanky trees even better in some ways as a shooty civ.
I’ll agree with the other posters that High Elves are a good way to learn the game. Starting lord + 9 spearman + 10 archers isn’t a very expensive army but it should beat anything encountered in the early game.
I’ll also echo the sentiment that fast expansion is critical. There’s a built in timer (via the growth mechanism) that makes it very slow for your cities to grow up to bigger and richer cities. So the only practical way to boost income prior to turn 60 is to keep expanding. I’m not sure if I agree on the new city every 2 turns schedule, that level of aggression isn’t really necessary on normal difficulty, but I’d suggest a rough schedule of one new province (completely annexed) every 10 turns or so. If you can keep to that schedule on normal difficulty through the first 60 turns then you are well positioned to be a force in the endgame.
I’d also suggest that this game does have a bit of a steep learning curve so don’t be afraid to play on easy/easy or exploit autosaves if you are having trouble getting purchase. Win a few short campaigns with a variety of factions and get a feel for the map and the factions, then go back to normal/normal once you have a better sense of how things shake out.
I am playing a new belegar campaign. Man that’s gotten harder (sry I was a bit rude earlier in this stream).
So it is acknowledged by those that play this game that the Belegar campaign (the dwarven campaign sorta west of the empire) is pretty tough. Its difficulty has changed over the years as the map has changed.
But wow it is really tough now. If anyone is playing that campaign and forgives me for being a bit bitchy… pst here or holler at me. I have started that campaign on VH VH a few times and its just crazy hard.
Is that the one where you suffer penalties until you (re)capture karak 8 Peaks?
I remember giving up on that a while ago, then realising 2 months later I had been playing with some insane difficulty mods, which I only realised when I started up an Empire campaign (usually fairly easy) and couldn’t make any headway.
I am slowly getting better, as in, not sucking quite as much. My Lizardmen campaign (ME) is stalling a bit, though. The Vampires constantly harass me, and while I kill their heroes, and rout their stacks when they attack, the intense corruption leading up to their freakin mountain stronghold makes taking them out a super PITA. Just going to have to bite the bullet and rush two full stacks there and hope the attrition doesn’t kill too many lizzies on the way I guess.
Also, the Chaos invasion was defeated, I’m allied with like all the Dorfs (might as well, already at war with all the Skaven and Greenskins pretty much) , and I can’t seem to persuade the lizards to my south to confederate yet, despite hefty bribes. All in all, interesting.
I am still figuring out build priorities, though. I end up with no slots or duplicated facilities, and have to back track. Probably should, you know, plan that before hand next time!
A random piece of undocumented information is that you shouldn’t military alliance with anyone you want to confederate because the AI takes into account full military allies as its own military strength when making confederation decisions. Defensively allying them is fine.
I already beat the game with Tyrion in a vortex campaign. Sea guards are indeed good. I ran armies of nothing but sea guards and a few star dragons. It worked out well.
I did start a game with the Loremasters of Hoth. I did manage to take out the vampires and the guys below me that started a war, however, I wanted to remain friendly with the lizards so I didn’t want to attack them. To my east , across a sea is a desert, but all those places are unsuitable. Not sure where to go next, I put the campaing down and wanted to try something different.
Next up is the costal vampires. I am thinking of starting the one with the base in the middle of the ocean, which should be fairly safe I think. After that, I may try tomb kings again.
I tried them twice, but kept getting bogged down unable to expand and/or hold territory at the same time. Not enough armies with enough units to defend everything. I think next time around Ill just create a bunch of supporting armies of skeletons to support my main armies. I do not recall if leaders were a limit as well. Maybe I ran into some kind of max number of lords problem toon. I do not remember.
How does one manage this? Aside from the armies to capture them, if I do not stand armies in the newly captured settlements, then they will revolt after a few turns. It seems to take a good long while until they will not revolt without a standing army.
It depends. In the case of a Vampire Count Vlad start that I referenced earlier, you won’t have to worry about revolts in West or East Sylvania because of the corruption public order bonus. But after that you are going to have to raise a stack of zombies. I’d use your first blood kiss unlock to get a Von Carstein lord for the huge +casualty replenishment bonuses that will reduce downtime.
You can move the zombie stack wherever it is needed. Be mindful that rebellions always spawn at the capital of a province unless you don’t own it. You can raid your own territory to force rebellions faster so you can control the timing. You can turn off taxation for a few turns if you need to and buy yourself a round. Just remember to turn it back on.
Rush the 0% skeleton upkeep tech and then you’re really cooking.
+Campaign movement range and + replenishment are incredibly valuable stats because they let you waste less turns without conquest.
It just takes some getting used to, but it is doable!
I feel your pain! I’m playing a Dwarf campaign, can’t recall who, where you’re surrounded by Green Skins, and it’s brutal. So annoying when thay attack from underground. I had to stop because I wasn’t enjoying it. I fired up a Dark Elves campaign, but got distracted by other games. I find Quarralers tear things apart, the issue is their early melee units are kind of fragile until upgraded. And of course some siege.
Vampire Coast can be fun but they are also super confusing. They are sort of a horde faction in that their legendary lords can act like a mobile city (recruit troops, build buildings) but they can also conquer cities and build them in the traditional sense.
They are also the masters of siege artillery. If you have the patience, a few mortars, a gunnery wight, and maybe a cannon or a Queen Bess then any walled city will fall to you with virtually no losses. You just find a map corner where the siege towers can’t hit you, or knock down a tower ASAP to create a safe zone. Then you sit in your safe space and pound on the enemies with your mortars while they stay on/in their walls. Eventually they break and run and you maybe have to mop up a small handful of tattered enemy units with your troops. This will take awhile and the gunnery wight will have to keep using his ability to replenish ammo in the cannons. It’s both terrifyingly effective and dull.
It’s good to see data that confirms what most of knew all along. Beastmen have some interesting troops but their horde mechanics absolutely stink. Makes playing a beastmen campaign painful. Maybe they will get some TW:WH3 love since they sound like a faction that can plausibly pop up anywhere on the map.
The Empire and Skaven have the biggest share of the pie by a pretty significant margin at 17.4% and 15.6% respectively. With 15 factions, 6.66% would be the average if they were all played equally. Empire I knew would be the most played, and I suspected Skaven would be second but I didn’t think the next most loved campaign after that would be High Elves all the way down at 10%. That’s a surprisingly big gap.
Chaos, Norsca and Beastmen, 3/4 of the Game 1 DLC’s are the least loved by huge margins. None of these factions have more than 1% of the vote. The Wood Elves are doing nicely now but I suspect if this poll had happened before the last expansion, they would have been down in the gutter as well. It gives me faith that these factions can get brought up to par.
I’m pretty surprised at how unpopular the Vampire Counts are at 4.2%. I feel like I knew a lot of people with Vampire armies back in the day.
Ikit Claw looks to be the single highest played lord. Empire is a bit more played than Skaven but Ikit Claw has such a massive lead over his competitors in the Skaven roster that it more than makes up for the difference. Not surprising I suppose, he has nukes and machine gunners with infinite ammo. It’s a fun campaign.
