Haven’t had a chance to really play yet. How are impressions of the new stuff for those of you with some decent hours in it?
I’ve not really spend enough time with it to say for sure. But it’s looking really good. Har Ganeth are quite interesting to play with.
New Dwarf start is fun but challenging, as you don’t have nearly as strong an economy at the start.
Anyone have any idea how to get more sisters of avelorn?
Ohhh I didn’t know there was a new dwarf run! I tried pointy-ears because i wanted the new sword.
Build the thing that lets you build them?
I assume they’re on the tech tree someplace. Worst case scenario look at the capital of Avelorn (on the islane) for a unique building that unlocks them. I haven’t played her yet since I was playing Tyrion last time I played and was kind of High-Elf-on-Ulthuaned out.
Ah I found it, it’s a new level 3 building.
The new high elf start (Queen) is challenging for sure. But the Sisters of Avelorn unit is super great. There is a building for them (I think tier 3). No tech needed. They are indeed the best archer unit I have ever used in the game.
I am going to have to restart this campaign. The problem is you are fighting a lot of battles and yet you still have to consider the vortex.
I’m playing Mortal Empires. I’m currently planning to confederate Husbando Tyrion and then give him the sword. Let’s see what happens, confederation is weird in warhammer.
I assumed (maybe wrongly) that the new elf Queen in Averlorn started in the same spot mortal empires wise. I may check on that. That’s a tall order where she starts (plus mechanic) in the Vortex campaign.
It’s pretty easy on Mortal Empires. That’s an attitude map. You start with 2 of the provinces to the south. I’m the green with a red heart flag? The other provinces belonged to the orange Dark elf.
I opened trade with tyrion and the chariot queen to the 9 o clock. I tend to hate betraying and killing people so I think I’ll wipe out the elfs that don’t like me and then move on to dark elflands. The maps I hate the most are the ones where you start with one ally close by that you really, really, really should kill first.
edit: I did play the Crone a bit, she has a weird mechanic to send fleets of mercs out. I assume I have to expect them showing up soon.
The discounts available now have me seriously tempted to pick this up. I have the first one only, but never got too far. I have meant for a long time to gather up TW:W2 and all the DLC I missed and then do a massive PC upgrade that includes a SSD (load times are murder).
So as temptation strikes, can anyone help with these questions:
- How many hours is a mortal or vortex campaign? I know I am not going to play 60 hours times multiple races.
- Does all the DLC just mesh and I don’t need to worry about when it came out or for which release (1 or 2)?
- I remember Party Elite having a basic tutorial series, has it been updated or is there a better source for coming up to speed in W2?
- Is there some consolidated information somewhere about what is the unique mechanics of each race?
- The hardest, but most common one…what DLC should be prioritized? If it helps, I visually like big evil monster things so already huge Goblin spider mounts, dragons, trolls, scorpion constructs, etc. all call to me, but Empire or Elves really, really don’t. That said some mechanics were confusing to me as a new TW player (Chaos horde, Undead souls, etc). These two things seemed to work against each other and left me APed out of much play time with the first game.
- Does everything in 2 surpass 1 now? I.E. It is just a better experience to do mortal campaign or vortex and skip the original mini factional campaigns or previous big campaign?
It depends. For Eye of the Vortex on Normal difficulty, with a normal or easy starting position lord, I think it’s about 20 hours for me to complete the campaign. The harder lords and difficult levels tend to take longer, or I fail. Mortal Empires has short and long victory conditions. The short might be possible in 30 hours, the long campaign for most races is murder though.
As of yesterday, yes. Only the Warhammer 2 races (High Elves, Dark Elves, Lizardmen, Skaven and Tomb Kings) are available in Eye of the Vortex. Everything is available in Mortal Empires.
In game, the lord selection UI tells you the key differences. I think there’s at least one wiki around that summarises it for you.
For a monster lover, I’d say Norsca is a great choice. But you don’t need DLC, Lizardmen are a great monster focused race. Almost all the newer races have at least a few nice monsters though.
Basically yes, except that Mortal Empires can take a long time (see above). Eye of the Vortex is really nice campaign to get you unto the game, more focused and directed that the sprawl of Mortal Empires, but you can only used the W2 races…
This was the first few turns of my legendary / very hard playthrough.
Turn 1 merge handmaiden and immediately kill the town to your west. Sack and then immediately occupy (always do this if you have movement to spare, literally no downside, free gold). Hire your 3 units (primarily archers)
Battle tactics are to use Alarielle and handmaiden in front, followed by tree dudes. People in general underestimate just how much lords can tank, even the non-fighty ones (note: against the AI, don’t try this vs humans - even when the AI has good killers/duelists they often use them poorly). Horsies do their flanking thing. Continually drop heals. Also take the time at the end of the battle to keep dropping heals.
Turn 2 move east. Your units should be healed to full health if you did the turn 1 fight optimally. Hire your 3.
Turn 3 kill east town. Hire your 3. Elfqueen should be level 3 with at least 1 level up invested into earth blood.
Turn 4-6 move west to gate. I ended up with 17 units (4 spears [2 hired], 7 archers [7 hired], 1 sisters, 1 dryad, 1 treekin, 1 elfqueen, 1 handmaiden, 1 horsie) so it looks like I force marched the entire way.
Turn 7 kill the gate. Pick one side of the map (left is better I think). Abuse the fuck out of tower and archer line of sight - the AI does not compensate for the fixed firing angle of their archers on the wall. Alarielle and the handmaiden up the walls first to tank, followed by spears and dryads. Don’t bother with the gate. Unfortunately the tree kin and horsies are useless here (even if they kill the gate there’s black guard which do and will murder them due to anti large anti armor). Remember you’re abusing line of fire so your archers should have free reign to fire on the wall without any retaliation. Keep dropping overcasted heals, etc etc.
Recorded the replay of that battle so you get an idea of how to abuse the AI. I ran my sisters up the wall so they could fire into the backside of the wall fight and into the troops the AI stupidly keeps on the ground not contributing, unfortunately they did get caught in the melee for a long time. If that didn’t happen this would’ve been over much sooner.
Turn 8-11 Heal then move down towards the big city. The AI had its stack in Chrace, so I was able to take a lolchokepoint battle at the bridge as he tried to move back. Normal field battle is also winnable. Point is to not let it garrison (though even then you could still win by again, abusing the crap out of the siege battle AI). Captured the city on turn 11, rest was mop up. Then it’s on to do whatever you want.
Also during all of this be making trade deals and NAPs and crap. No alliances, wait for the initial batch of elf fratricide to be declared (you don’t want to be pulled into anything).
Thank you for your feedback Richard. I watched a bit of a Vampire Counts lets play today and I tinkered with the early part of a Manfred campaign in W1 last night. I think your input has me leaning towards just giving it a go.
I’ve definitively enjoyed movies, table top games, and turn based video games with this sort of high fantasy war spectacle. I even like the GW world. I really should like TW:W, it just seems to leave me as a deer in the headlights or something. Sometimes I just load up a skirmish and really enjoy swinging the camera through the battle, but at the same time feel like so much is moving. And being just skirmish, the end result feels a bit hollow. I want to see the army write its own story with experienced units or heroes with skills and gear, but the campaign seems to not hold me. Maybe I just need to do some wiki surfing then press on to the “ah ha” point on a race.
Maybe I’ll get it and try Tomb Kings or Lizards in Vortex.
I guess a few bonus questions for anyone that wants to throw their two cents in:
What races do you enjoy? Which don’t work for you? Why?
@Chaplin, try playing entire battles on super-slow and pausing as needed. That’s what I ended up doing for my last few campaigns.
I think this is a totally reasonable reaction, tabletop Warhammer already went for the maximalist approach that just includes everything and the kitchen sink into it’s melting pot. But at least you only have to start off looking at one faction, Total War just throws so many mechanics and units and special powers at you all at once. It’s both what I love about the game, and the biggest turn off.
You should definitely try playing one of the more straight forward starting points on the Eye of the Vortex campaign. Say Mazdamundi or Tyrion. I think CA have dramatically improved the on-ramp compared to the original TW Warhammer.
I absolutely loved the Lizardmen, particularly in the late game where everything is big dinosaurs. There’s just something about smashing into little rats with a host of dinos carrying mage frogs and super weapons.
The faction that I really wanted to love, but still haven’t quite got there is Empire. Their gameplay feels a little off for me. Also I wish they had a lord that starts somewhere other than Altdorf.
Tyrion is a great start. You just focus on unifying Ulthuan and he’s kind of a badass.
Queen Kalidha in both vortex and mortal empires. Fun starts and when you sorta “get” how Tomb Kings work (took me awhile) they are great fun.
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Elfs. Make seaguard. Seaguard are archers with spears. They are the easiest thing to play. Turn skirmish off. Actually, turn skirmish off by default, only turn it on for horse archers imo. 1 hero 19 spear archers. Kill everything.
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Wood elfs. Very slow to start. You’ll only have 1 army for a while but it’s a punch above weight army. No attrition if you play the big tree. You only ever build up 4 core wood elf regions. Every other region is a tiny temporary buff and it doesn’t hurt to lose it. This means you just crusade and do whatever you want. You want to go north to exterminate the Scandinavians? Sure! You wanna go back to Donut island and pacify the phoenix throne? Yeah!
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Dwarves. I love dwarfs, all of them. Infantry that won’t break. Crossbowmen to kill stuff. Cannons to kill stuff. Make your formation, kill everything as it approaches.
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Lizardmen: Very strong frenzying infantry. Run up, kill stuff. Your two choices are Mazda the mage (who melees quite well on a magic floaty throne) and the other guy who’s even more into dinosaurs and smashing stuff.
Hard to play:
- Skaven. I just don’t get it. I know arti are your killers but I can’t get skaven arti to work.
I personally found Wood Elves brutally difficult to play. Even harder than Skaven.