2884

Chaos is a little obnoxious. They’ve tried to fix it up over time, but it was the first DLC faction and the first attempt at a horde faction and the duct tape definitely shows. Tips for playing Chaos:

  1. On turn 1 demolish the marauder recruitment building and never build one again. Marauders suck and Chaos only works if the stack is made of troops elite enough that the AI is afraid to pick a fight. Baseline early game troops for Chaos is Chaos Warriors, and an upgrade to Chosen should be a priority ASAP. They will form the bulk of the armies for most of the game.

  2. Keep stacks close enough to cover for each other, use the buddy system, and prioritize recruiting more stacks. As Chaos techs up they start to get ridiculous bonuses to sacking cities so they can actually get really rich doing that. Running an income of net thousands negative per turn is no big deal to Chaos.

  3. Your first 3-4 lords should prioritize the blue line skill that improves horde growth. When it’s time to spawn a new horde don’t recruit a new lord. Instead fire the lord from the current well-developed stack and replace them with a freshly recruited lord. Then in 5 turns when the original higher level lord is available again you recruit them to lead a fresh stack. The fresh stack will then benefit from the growth bonuses of the higher level lord’s blue line skills immediately.

  4. Make smashing the Empire a priority. If they get rolling then Chaos can’t beat them. Like at all. They can recruit new stacks faster than a Chaos player can smash them. It’s super aggravating.

2885

Yea, that’s like the opposite of my army composition. It’s all mostly Marauders as i try to work up the tech tree.

2886

For Vampire Coast early armies I’d recommend teching up to Rotting Prometheans right away because they are excellent at holding the line. Use the rifles as @Tortilla suggested as well as maybe a mortar or two and some cannons. You also want a Mourngul Haunter to help your lord kill single entities and a Lore of Vampires caster if your primary lord doesn’t have it because Invocation of Nehek is non-negotiable for Vampire factions.

Vampire Coast has extremely powerful endgame units if you can get to them.

But long story short rush the crab building and the artillery building and you’re pretty much good to go until end game if you are using your casters correctly.

2887

Yea, my Chaos campaign just died.

Part of the problem is that i really hate the Chaos lineup. I hate Chosen and ordinary Chaos warriors because they always underperform; I like lighter, more mobile forces. Trying to do that with Chaos works well for a while but i just can’t figure out how to transition away from that. Part of it i guess is that it feels like twinking if i have just a big stack of Dragons; i never, ever play that way. I like those “well balanced” army compositions to fault, i think (like, here’s my 4 heavy infantry, and 8 light infantry, and 4 ranged units, and 4 cav, ect.) That’s not what Warhammer wants me to do with Chaos though.

I think the other problem with the Chaos campaign is that while Warhammer kind of encourages save scumming, if you lose your main stack ever, you’re campaign is over, effectively. You’ll never be able to quickly rebuild a unit generating stack fast enough. So basically with Chaos if i lose a battle, i lose the campaign. That… kind of sucks for lots of reasons.

It’s probably also why i’m so elf-y in my normal playthoughs; i just vastly prefer the elf mobility and ranged options.

2888

Must be a playstyle thing. Chosen are arguably the best heavy infantry in the game. One on one in a melee a stack of Chosen with Halberds should beat any other non-Lord unit. And most lords. Just make sure to back them with a Hellcannon or two so that the enemy feels compelled to close in to melee.

2889

I’m sure it’s a play style thing. I hate Dwarves for the same reason.

2890

Yeah, in my chaos play through I used mostly chosen with a little ranged support. I forget the exact units I used, but on normal, it wasn’t even a challenge for me once I got rolling. I did let the empire get out of control, and it took forever to crush them. It was very boring, but I eventually hit the basic victory conditions and ended my game without much of a challenge anywhere.

I did prioritize horde growth as mentioned here, and I did destroy the marauder building so I could get chosen asap.

2891

Yea, I just don’t like heavy halberds ;). When I play Dark Elves I never use Black Guard… because they suck. I mean like 20-30 kills a battle. Horrible. They’re only good vs Cav. Even when I had them plugging a hole in a city defense and were wailing on Trolls, they barely held the line. Bleh. Give me fast shooty things!

2892

Well, that might be the problem. Heavy infantry are not in the game to kill things… your heavy infantry is always there in order to keep the enemy pinned down, so that your Shooty guys can do their thing (and sometimes the cavalry - though shooty guys are always preferable).

2893

Sounds like you prioritize offense over defense. I’m guessing a lot of cavalry and ranged then? That works well right until it doesn’t and you need to scale a wall or hold out when outnumbered. Then your forces crumble fast because of fragility. And you’ll spend a lot of time healing if you take only the fragile guys and don’t have a tanky front line. It’s certainly a valid way to play, I just don’t care for it personally. I’ll grind it out for minimal losses usually. Though even I find the dwarven style grind-it-out to be tiresome.

2894

Thinking on it i actually think this has more to do with scarcity and the early game. In Total War games for the longest time there’s been this gating of high level units behind a ton of expensive, hard to build buildings. Effectively this means that (at least to my psychology) i’m playing a horrible, broken game with crap units until i can unlock the “real” units of the game. Which in effect means i don’t like playing factions with bad Tier 1 units, because (at least in the historic games) I would run essentially Tier 1 and mixed Tier 1 armies until the end of the campaign.

So i’d like to play a giant army of Black Guard, but it takes forever and ever to get there - basically by the time I get the opportunity to field them, i’m already on track to win or lose the campaign. And since all they do is hold position, which i already have units for, to let my Crossbows or Magic users to damage, which they’re already doing, it feels like a huge let down compared to the power spike I expected. OTOH, Executioners can do one thing really well - cut down Tier 1 troops unsupported on their own. Or if i do get Black Guard, i end up getting like 4 of them across all my armies… not really a huge change in the way the game plays.

That’s the problem with Chaos - lose a horde, lose the campaign. If a horde dies, all the investment in its production chain dies. At least with cities if an army dies the infrastructure remains. But i need to get ahead now, so i invest in getting better Tier 1 troops, because that’s faster… but that’s also a dead end.

2895

I think we can all safely expect a significant Warriors of Chaos overhaul in game 3. Maybe even a few more units. Hopefully they find a way to make Horde gameplay more interesting. My guess is they’ll allow Warriors to build cities in some select locations and they will be very powerful. But that’s 100% speculation on my part.

As far as high tier infantry goes… the problem with it is that single entity stuff is way better when the going gets rough. The times you get in real trouble in TW:W are when 3 high tier enemy armies come at you out of the fog of war you either lazily or overconfidently didn’t scout. To do their job infantry have to be in combat and they will lose models which makes them less effective. But that Hydra keeps on going and has regen to boot btw, so you can just pull him back and let him sit out of combat for 2 minutes and he’s ready to go again for wave 3 as the enemies come at you relentlessly.

2896

My vampire coast game flamed out. Pretty much was at war with almost everyone. They all declared war on me, not the other way around. Only had my sea base, the galleon graveyard. Had to keep an army there full time because it would be attacked otherwise. Could only have one other army.

I did have a lot of pirate coves, but never could really hold land (I didn’t really try, just would sack and establish a pirate cove. Treasure maps are not worth doing IMHO. The salary for a hero to find the treasures is a net negative considering how many turns it is between finding a treasure.

I think I just do not know how to play evil races. Everyone hats you and I always end up at war with far too many factions. I like to try vampire coast again, but I do not know what I would do differently. Maybe put more effort into capturing cities instead of just sacking and establishing pirate coves?

Off to my Tomb Kings attempt #3.

2897

Yes, just play them as a normal faction. Keep your reliability high, kill the people who are going to inevitably declare on you. Make trade agreements with whoever you can and leave those people till later when you are unstoppable and reliability doesn’t matter. Just use heroes to establish a cove every 10 turns or whatever. Same deal as Skaven, don’t do it on cities you plan on conquering in the short-medium term.

Edited to add: the Pirate Cove/Undercity mechanics aren’t really designed as a playstyle, just a bonus.

2898

Vampire Coast early is, imo:

A gun line. Usually handgunners/hand cannons. A few deck gunners.
Some meat. Usually polearm deckhands, but any melee that can hold for a bit works. Not too many, you’re mostly about the gun line.
A mortar. Maybe 2. Early on mortars are huge.

Then it’s just a matter of repositioning to shoot things the meatshields are tanking from the flanks. Handgunners are also meat shields at the end of the day. Everything is a meat shield early other than mortars, but ideally you want the good meat doing the blocking while everyone shoots things.

Don’t discount Vampires or Mornguls heroes either, they can generally hold their own. Wights are a force multiplier, they buff ranged and basically everything is ranged. Also they can reload artillery. A lot. Their damage is actually good as well.

Also make sure you get Lore of Vampires ASAP. Being able to drop Invocation of Nehek and trigger Curse of Undeath is as important to Coast as it is Counts, and it’s harder for you to get access to it since you don’t have a bunch of Necromancers farting around to do it for you. Getting Wind of Death is never a bad thing either. It’s basically why Counts are playable.

Later on most people replace their meat with Rotting Prometheans (ideally gunnery mobs) since they can hold well, are fast enough to intercept things and are low, big model counts which means your gun line can still shoot whatever they’re fighting pretty well.

Very early on Bloated Corpses can kill entire units easily, just make sure they aren’t near you when they die. Hide them and then have them run at a unit once it’s too close to react.

Basically the most of the army early is replacable with Raise Dead. If you lose handgunners, odds are you can just summon new ones at full health. If not Gunnery Mobs work. Deckhands if it’s dire, though those get phased out quick.

Mostly you want to give your artillery time to rack up kills. Mortars and later Queen Bess can wipe out a ton of stuff.

When it comes to the melee game, it’s a lot harder. Most units are hammers, not anvils at the end of the day. Depth Guard are better than they used to be, but they’re still mostly garbage and need to be with a swarm of zombies to have much hope of making it through a fight with their terrible unit count. Polearm Depth Guard to deal with rogue dinos is really the only ones I consider at this point and honestly by then you can have Necrofex’s which can just shoot said dinos in the face. They can also shoot flying crap, which the Depth Guard mostly watch kill everything.

Eventually most fights you’ll kill everything before it can get into melee with you unless it’s like a dragon or phoenix, but it takes a while getting there. Fortunately disposable troops are a thing you’ve got in spades and most of them carry guns, which is better than skeleton warriors or zombies by quite a bit.

2899

Keep in mind Galleon’s Graveyard has one of the largest and strongest garrisons in the entire game. And it causes massive attrition to anyone trying to get to it. Past a certain level, it’s basically uncapturable by the AI unless they bring 2-3 stacks to do it and even then odds are good they’ll lose.

But yeah, avoid getting into fights with everyone. And take territory as a rule. At least stuff you can defend (taking territory on say Ulthuan early might be iffy). The Dreadfleet is widely regarded as the “most piratey” of the Coast because of Fortress Galleon’s Graveyard. You can basically wander off and do whatever you want. If someone comes to the Graveyard, hire a quick leader, raise some dudes. It will take them 2-3 turns to start to siege you. By then they’re basically facing 2+ stacks behind walls (and not crap stacks, GG’s garrison is mostly high tier and plentiful). And you’re fast on the ocean, so your main stack can probably get back before they can attack and almost nothing is standing against that + GG’s garrison.

2900

So for vampire coast, try and capture and hold land? Ok, next time Ill try that.

2901

Generally, yes. The reality is that holding land is really strong.

You CAN play horde-lite, but it’s a rougher game imo because odds are your economy is weaker and your enemies are stronger - because planting a pirate cove or sacking hurts them a little bit, (mind you coves don’t steal income iirc) but conquering all of someone’s production permanently hurts them. And then they cease to exist.

Basically you can pick the best option depending on the situation, but as a general rule conquering just works better with how the game systems work.

2902

Been trying a Vampire Coast game myself. The victory objectives require province control anyhow, so taking territory becomes mandatory it seems, even without it being generally useful. I do love their ranged units. More interesting IMO than the (admittedly awesome) High Elf archery dudes, and the fact that they are, well, already dead and can be recycled is very useful. Noctilus is a bad ass on the battlefield, once he gets his mojo going, and those melee-focused heroes, the blue guys, are pretty good.

But man, mortars and siege artillery. I don’t have Bess yet but those earlier artillery pieces are awesome. Took an Elf city with walls without needing an siege gear. Just blasted the gate and the walls, sent in the two lords, and that was it. Of course, I lost every other unit, but eh, next turn, there they were again.

2904

Just wait until you get queen bess then. Have a gunnery wight supporting her with the more powder action to keep it firing. Remember Bess is unlocked via ritual then recruited via regiment of renown tab (just in case you weren’t aware).

I generally have Bess and a couple of other mortars together with a wight and that does enough to weaken the front line for my meat shield to slow and ultimately tarpit the attacking force. I don’t care about friendly fire with zombies, they’re expendable.

Also with their combat skills levelled up, a gunnery wight becomes a very strong ranged attacker in his own right.

Yes you want land as Noctilus, but when it is land you can’t keep then sack and pirate cove and move on. That’s generally best for places where there is low vampire corruption.