Let me add my thanks. I have more than 100 hours in this game and I never knew that…
Of course! It’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine that there is no in game documentation about Reliability and what it impacts (its a huge hidden diplomacy modifier. Why is it hidden? Who can say) or about how Confederations work. The only other thing you need to know about Confederations that isn’t documented that a faction is WAY more likely to confederate with you if the AI assesses that it is going to lose its current war.
So if a faction gets its main army stackwiped, that is the time to ask for Confederation. It makes sense, but it isn’t stated anywhere and it is a game mechanic you can replicate in testing. So like I said, a bit frustrating as these are relevant game mechanics.
What DLC includes the Wood Elves? Some of the DLC stuff is kind of baffling as to what is what.
er, Realm of the Wood Elves. :)
Then they got an overhaul in Warhammer 2’s latest DLC:
I believe the are benefits to owning the original as well, but I didn’t look into it much since I’ve owned the first one for ages.
Ah, didn’t look at the original Warhammer TW DLC. Do you have to buy both, though? Or just the latest?
That’s what I’m not sure about. I think you can play the Vortex Campaign Wood Elf stuff with the second DLC, but you still can’t play as the Wood Elves in Mortal Empires unless you own the original DLC? I’m sure there is a FAQ somewhere.
Heh, yeah, the hardest part about this game series is figuring out this sort of stuff. It’s like it’s own metagame. And not a good one!
A Reddit post indicates you could play Wood Elves with just the new DLC but only have what lords and starting locations that new DLC introduces - so no Orion, Durthu, or Dyrcha sounds like, as they came in the first DLC.
The stuff you don’t buy, of course, still exists in the game, you just can’t select it. I wouldn’t worry too much about the first DLC - the Sisters are awesome, play them, and if you still feel like playing yet more Wood Elf content, you can pick up the first DLC then.
Heh, I JUST read that same post. Thanks for the help, I appreciate it!
That one (at least) I picked up in gameplay… It’s narratively sensible, so I tried it and found it to work.
Clearly I really should have just done more research :)
ShivaX
2854
They’re all mostly based on razing your enemy out of the game, which basically doesn’t work.
I think that’s a large part of it.
Chaos and Beastmen being Hordes (which are terrible in countless ways) with small rosters sure as heck doesn’t help.
Norsca are fun until you start realizing you’ll never win because your enemies can never really die.
I’m a bad boy. The Lunar New Year Sale got me; picked up all of the Warhammer TW DLC on sale. Now I can (not) play the Beastmen.
All the enthusiasm in this and the TW3 Thread has motivated me to get stuck into TW2 properly (and the fact that my 3070 arrived last week for the extra pretty).
So picked up vampire coast and tomb kings on sale to fill out the world - and so far I’m having fun as high elves despite still flailing at some of the mechanisms.
Thanks thread!
There are a ton of videos on YouTube about factions, armies, how-tos, all sorts of stuff. Quality varies, and some are definitely more filler than anything, but I’ve learned a fair bit that way. Usually it’s either the economics that gets me, or a sort of decision paralysis where I can’t figure out where to go next and thus just sit there until I get wiped out.
Enidigm
2858
Probably the biggest thing about any and every Total War game is getting through that first 50 turn “hump” and making sure you’re not getting double or triple teamed, which means that ironically enough diplomacy is most important early on. It used to be a random factor - in Attila, for example, leaders were fixed but their traits were random, so once i rolled a Eastern Empire loving Persia and had a jolly game of stabilization compared to the usual chaos. In Warhammer the main thing isn’t to expand but to stabilize your diplomatic situation, which may mean playing nice with an amenable neighbor - or even going to war with a faction at war with said neighbor -, or it may mean sacrificing everything for an early rush to conquer weak nearby enemies.
Because every faction can generally put a whole stack in the field regardless of their size, three 1 province neighbors = 3 stacks you have to fight. OTOH, 3 one province neighbors also might mean 3 allied stacks to secure a flank.
Once you’re able to dig yourself out the hole you start in you can worry about all the other stuff Total War tacks on. It’s one reason why the harder campaign difficulty levels is just that much worse, because it means larger enemy stacks and less willingness to work together. I can’t emphasize how wildly different every game i play is with Morathi; sometimes i get triple teamed by Lizards, High Elves, and Vampires, and that’s… pretty much death, because i need three different army compositions and only have one or one-and-a-half stacks to play with, and other times i get lucky and the neighbors wander off and do other things. Factions with expensive basic units don’t have the option to cheese the auto-resolve with a second, discount rate stack to flesh out their forces.
strategy
2859
Finished up a Clan Moulder playthrough (fun, fun, fun), and decided to try Belegar of Clan Angrun, since it’s been a long time since I played Dwarves, and @KristiGaines has been talking so much about how tough that campaign is.
Whew, no kidding. That 50% increase in maintenance in the early turns is a killer - even on VH/H. After a few false starts, I finally broke the code to the early game by rushing 8 peaks which was protected by 2 full stacks - was able to defeat the first stack in battle, but that left me too weak to assault the fortress itself (500 low-tier dwarf troops vs 1800+ orcs/goblins behind walls does not end well), but I was able to besiege the town, so after a long 18-turn siege, I was able to reclaim the city. Problem is that in the meantime Grimgor has been running wild, so by Turn 70+ - even though I’ve built up a nice empire and confederated the main Dwarf kingdom, I’m now in a two-front war with Skaven and Grimgor, and those Waagh armies are just… painful.
Great fun, actually. It’s the first time I’ve played a TWH where I’m still not sure if I’ll win after the first 20-30 turns.
Good advice, thanks. My current Dark Elf (Malekith) campaign is still going at least. I talked the Crone into confederating which on the one hand gave me a ton of breathing space to the east and north but on the other hand damn near bankrupted me. I had to send those former allies and now homies off to, um, get a little bit killed beating up on Skaven until the upkeep costs got back into line. This involved suiciding with three lord/hero troops that I didn’t really want or need–so long, buddies, thanks for all the, um, fish?
I also abandoned some crappy settlements that either were inhospitable or like one of three in a province where the other two were not likely to fall my way. All of this got me into a much better position. Now I have to figure out though who to backstab, as I’m surrounded by either allies or recently chastised factions that signed peace deals with me when I needed the breather.
You be sure to tell me if you do… one strat might be to bee line to Karak…
Im 43 turns in and I am not doing terrible…
It is definitely a tough spot, and harder than it used to be,
So a year ago someone linked me a great video that had a guy bee line to Karak --its actually harder to do that now.
strategy
2862
Maybe it’s the difficulty level, but I do wish there was a little bit more to the diplomacy in this game. I would really love to have the possibility of bringing wiped out friendly-oriented factions back as vassals and I really, really wish that chastising factions was a general thing on VH. Very often I’m not really interested in wiping out a faction completely, but since the AI refuses to even consider peace unless it’s almost completely wiped out, one always ends up conquering much more than I’m really interested in.
Oh, bee line definitely worked for me. I conquered the starting province while recruiting up to 20 units, and then marched straight to 8 Peaks (the province gave me just enough gold to maintain the expeditionary force). Reached there around Turn 12, got attacked by one of the armies garrisoning there, beat it, and then besieged the other army enemy stack in the fortress.
Problem was that after the battle, I was too weak to assault the fortress, and unable to replenish. Fortunately, the big stack inside refused to sally out, so 18! turns later, when they started getting attrition, I could finally finish the job. Unfortunately, that put me right in the middle of the ongoing squabble between Snikch, Grimgor, and Thorgrim, which is not the healthiest place in the world.
I figured out one strategy to handling a Waagh though - lightning strike (finally a good reason to take that skill). Since the waagh army counts as reinforcements, hitting the Orcs with LS allows for much more reasonable 20v20 fights. Only problem is Dwarfs suck at destroying armies in normal resolution (no pursuit ability), so one still has to deal with the counterattacks later - including the Waagh forces. It did allow me to methodically destroy 3 of Grimgor’s 40 unit waagh stacks with Belegar and Thorgrim, though (although I lost quite a lot of units doing so), so I’m not beginning to push him back (it says something about how dire the situation is that the power balance remains in favor of the Orcs)…
Enidigm
2863
Just as an aside but the supernerds who stream Warhammer 2 every day and play only on Legendary difficulty all say Lightning Strike is the hands down the best skill in the game, since it lets you zero out armies one at a time.
