LOL - I’ve used the term myself and instantly understood, but I don’t know how common it is tbh
No, the rituals should be cast ASAP. You only really need to interfere with other races rituals if they are ahead of you. I am not bothering until the High Elves get to the last ritual or two. Then, even if I am not in contact with them yet, I will spam the hell out of those intervention armies.
You may have wasted some energy on your northern campaign against the dark elves, because their lands are unsuitable for your expansion. I’ve just been maintaining the Ruins directly north of the Mirror Pools, or whatever that north most province of Mazdamundi’s is called. I really like the new “suitability” system where if you are driven or desperate, you can colonize other habitats, but with a hit commensurate with how unsuitable it is for you.
I’ve been focusing on expanding south. I’ve left the humans as trading partners, and since we share anti-corruption goals, the shared provinces remain stable. Mazdamundi begins in the “neck” of that continent, and the rich belly lies south. I’m about to hit another Ritual Resource generating province, so that will hopefully bring me up to speed with the High Elves again. Dark elves are well behind and I think I am killing off the ratmen faction which hasn’t even completed the first ritual yet.
Exploring the surrounding waters is also profitable. One site gave me 10,000 gold. I’ve gotten a number of magic items from others. Treasure Hunting ruins is also important, as I received 250 Ritual Resources from one successful Treasure Hunt.
You can try to achieve a Confederation with the other lizard races, or just conquer them. I haven’t done much with them yet.
TLDR- keep the northern Dark Elves at bay, but expand south for the win.
One thing I appreciate with this game - the launcher has a ‘continue campaign’ button that loads straight into your latest save, with no main menu or splash screens.
Oh, never noticed that, going to see that at work for myself right now!
Unfortunately, you can send only one intervention army per ritual per race. It’s more a matter of timing- I managed to get one army to spawn in straight after a chaos army bulldozered a few armies out of the way. I then enjoyed the sight of watching a High Elf intervention force camp down with a chaos force on the ruins of a Dark Elf city. That would have made for some interesting friendly soccer matches.
I’m really enjoying this game, I see that they’ve taken a page out of Age of Wonder 3’s book to provide an active end-game. In my High Elf game, I have a small lead over the Lizardmen, I have the Dark Elves on the ropes and the Skaven keep on failing their first ritual. I don’t know who is spoiling it for them but I love the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any rubber-banding with the AI.
I’ll admit that the enemy intervention armies are a complete pain. They teleport right next to one of your cities and lay waste to everything, especially ungarrisoned nearby cities. Apart from that cheesiness, it gives the game a nice pacing. 30 turns of normal play and then 10 turns of tower defence. Rinse and repeat.
Thanks for the tip on the Intervention army. I guess I may need to head to High Elf country sooner rather than later.
During my third ritual, I had a High Elf intervention army besiege my capital. I was able to bring up one army to relieve them. A northern army was rushed together (I like the new blessed troop system as a replacement to Legions of Renown) to defend against a Skaeling army, two Ratmen armies and two Chaos armies. They were able to delay the horde until Mazdamundi could come crashing into them.
I’m impressed that the AI is keeping it competitive on Easy. The High Elves just finished their third ritual, and it looks like I have the narrowest of leads over them. I’ll jump to Normal next game, but that will likely require a better strategy.
I hope by the time I finish playing all four of the new races, they’ll have the combined map out. It also seems like a fair amount of the cool, new features from the sequel could be incorporated into the first games races.
Near as I can tell when you do the ritual doesn’t really matter does it?
You keep acquiring ritual materials, so if you delay it you… just do them in a row? Sure if you saved too long the 10 turns it takes to do it might be a factor, but holding off so you’re in a better position seems sensible to me.
Or maybe I’ve been misreading something, but so far this seems to be the case.
Yeah, I think you are right. It would probably be nice if they give you a more substantial boon, rather than the 5 turns of +4 Public Order.
You mean the vortex rituals? I was under the understanding that they were a Warhammer lore thing, but there is arguably similarity to the seals of power mechanic.
I’d be hesitant to say which game thought up random treasure sites first, but I first experienced them in Age of Wonders 1 myself, and the random sites in TWW2 seem similar in concept.
Skaven sound pretty amazing though, not least of all in that their cities look like ruins.
My current computer could barely get TWW2 to start so I’m waiting for the new one to arrive.
Looking at the TWW2 feature list it makes me wonder what Triumph Studios could do with a much bigger budget!!
I’m really blown away by this game. It’s too early to be making statements like this, but it might be my favourite Total War game. In fact, it may be the best strategy game of the last few years. I had no idea Creative Assembly had this in them.
I’ve outfitted all my gaming PCs with SSDs for a while now, but yea… Warhammer 2 is kind of unbearable without an SSD. That’s a very good (and surprising imo) point. 2 minute loading times between battles is killer.
Yeah, I struggle with that. I’ve taken to alt-tabbing to something else or looking at my phone. The load times w/o SSD are tough. Needless to say my next system is going to have one. ;)
Just a small gripe, but holy hell this game had an incredibly obnoxious new player / tutorial experience. Every turn and every action I tried to take, control of the screen is getting yanked away while Annoying Narrator Guy explains details of what’s going on and what I need to do. Then before I can even complete his instructed action (after clicking off 6 different tutorial prompts), he goes off on yet another topic (while taking control away again until I dismiss the dialog). I’m sure it can all be disabled so that’s not the issue, but as a new player I want to know about the new features, race mechanics, etc.
That unfortunately probably put me in a poor state of mind to dig into and enjoy the game. I tried the lizardmen at first because I love me some lizardmen, but I’m not sure they’re grabbing me. I found the first couple skirmishes against the Skeggi dickheads annoying as I tried to corner their ranged skirmish cavalry. All I had for range at the time was those crappy javelin units. After getting grouchy due to Annoying Narrator Guy, I think I was in a bad state of mind to chase around obnoxious cavalry peppering me with arrows. :)
Overall, seems like a nice improvement over Warhammer 1 though. I like the additions to the strategy layer thus far and the additional slots in Cities. I’m really looking forward to diving back in when I have a little more time (and maybe a nap ;) ).
Funny because I had literally the same experience. A nap fixed me right up :)
At the start, I just hit the riders with Javelins and the Dinosaur laser. That took care of them well enough.
Oh, and while we are talking about the Lizards, here’s my unconventional hot take: your line troops are so powerful, convince investing in Mazamundi’s blue line skills to help at the strategic layer. You’re gonna run into a lot of public order and corruption problems that he can really help smooth over. A skink priest helps, too.
I had the opposite reaction, I thought it was kind of cool CA went to the trouble to make a tutorial, a lot of times in the past they’ve given the impression they couldn’t be bothered explaining how this all worked. Basically fire Attila and good luck.
While that’s not a problem for me, I’ve been playing these since the beginning, but I could see how over time new comers would just be lost.
All that said, they could of course make it so you could just opt out. I didn’t notice if that was an option or not as I was amused to see how long the thing would go on.
Yeah, you can go into options and set how often tutorial stuff pops up, all the way to disabling it completely.
I like the tutorial and appreciate the effort, it was just over aggressive. It initially bombards you with so much stuff and interrupts everything you to do the point of being incredibly annoying instead of informative. It’s like this:
ANG: My Lord! Let me tell you about this game mechanic! See here in this corner? This represents that mechanic. Click on this button to interact!
Player: clicks the check on the prompt, then tries to click on the specified button
ANG: My Lord! Your mouse moved in the general vicinity of these other 7 features! Allow me to explain in a long round-about what they all do! And I will flash through and highlight every single element on your UI while I do so, at which point you will need to click the checkmark button on every single one to to proceed!
Player: tries to cli-
ANG: My Lord! You moved your mouse to another new feature! Allow me to…
Player: Wait… what the fuck was I supposed to be learning about with the first tutorial prompt?
I appreciate that you can turn off or tone down the tutorial, but this is the initial out-of-the-box experience. And as a new player, I did want to know about the new stuff. I’d give them an A+ for effort, but a C- on execution. :)
Like I said, minor gripe! Looking forward to digging back into the game this evening when I’m less grouchy (spending an afternoon with the extended family will do that!).
The High Elf campaign was easy-peasy. Running through the Dark Elves with Morathi and I’m wondering what the deal with trade goods is. It has taken 30 turns before I could even become eligible to offer a trade deal to anyone. My capital city is connected to a port, I am neighboring a variety of friendly nations and they are all ineligible to trade with. I have a variety of trade goods built up but they aren’t making me any money.
You mean the Tyrion one. Teclis is less easy. Teclis and Queek almost feel like another game entirely.
“Okay you start at war with this faction on an island that you can’t easily deal with.”
“I’ll go to the island.”
“Oh there is another faction that is also at war with you and right next to you. Also they’re stronger than you are.”
“Oh well I’ll start with them.”
“Oh, there is also a ‘neutral’ faction that will immediately begin raiding your capital and then declare war on you.”
“Okay… this is a lot to take in.”
“Oh, here comes another faction that hates you, they’re one of the strongest in the game at this point, they’ve declared war. Also you can’t move quickly to defend anything and the Dark Elves have started their ritual and you just secured the city that gives you resources for that.”
Teclis’ starting area is… horrific. You can’t get to the island easily to defend it, everything is swamp and desert and you have an lizard that starts with 3 cities and comes at you early, Dark Elves on an island that is hard to get to, but they can get from it to your northern city in 2 turns, a roaming army that usually starts raiding your home and then declares war and Clan Skyre which also starts like one turn away from your resource town and hates you (and then they get Confederated into Pestilens and you have a major player right on your doorstep).
Queek isn’t much better and once Kroq-Gar gets to you, you better pray you’ve handled the other 5 things or you’re toast as sea of lizards washes over you.
Man - I’ve been playing games for 35 years, but I apparently suck at them. I found the high-elf campaign difficult, being beset by all kinds of enemies by turn 5, making me hunker down and gain technology. I suspect the turtling is my issue, though. but thats probably also because I enjoy games more like an RPG experience, and kingdom / empire building.