What if their intention is to challenge the player?
I’m pretty sure they are not random and they always spawn from the same places.
There’s gonna be some around Not-Italy/grey orc stuff.
The main chaos comes from northeast of map, past not-Russia. Probably next to the metal bands in Not-Sweden.
There’s some more but I can’t remember where. I assume the American continents and pointy-eared bastards get their own spawns to play with.
When TW games started using warscape (I mention this engine as the possible turning point because these magical stacks didn’t show up in any of my hundreds of hours in MTW2/R1/M1/S1 for example) is when I started seeing this “challenge”.
And amusingly if I had a dime for every thread started on the main TW forums or steam forums complaining about these magical stacks I’d be retired, haha. Unfortunately I"m not btw. ;)
Shogun 2 FOTS, pinnacle of TW series (ignoring warhammer) had magic spawn-out-of-fog-of-war stacks for sure.
I don’t really care what their intention was - I care about the implementation. And the implementation being a challenge vs being an annoyance is the difference between good game design and bad game design. This isn’t the former. There’s a reason why even when people try to defend this mechanic, they use the latter word.
Honestly, strategy, I am sympathetic to this. I didn’t like those spawns in the vortex campaign at first and they seemed to disrupt the flow of the game. However --I have learned to like them more now. If it helps any, recall that BEFORE you start channeling your vortex ritual, you can mouse over the blue button at the top. It should show you the three cities that will be channeling. (You probably already know this). I then coordinate my defenses around the channeling cities. I have a general idea where the chaos spawns will come from and can set defenses. I recall Avelorn campaign to be a harder one. Tectlis (sp?) is easier because the chaos armies can be run down the coast. Similarly, its the OTHER faction instant armies that can be a pain in the rear. “Expeditionary forces” pop up right next to a channeling city. I plan ahead thinking of the game as short (but longer intervals) expansion/contraction cycles. And of course these battles result in experience for your leader, which is always good.
I recall those durn hordes in attilla almost teleporting!
To clarify, I don’t actually disagree with you, just playing devil’s avocado. :)
OMG those throngs of rats. Rats, rats everywhere! With them attacking and running away constantly it is hard to stomp them out with such slow lizards. Any tips?
Also, I’m playing on Hard campaign with no mods for once (I usually cut down maintenance if I play on hard) and I’m going broke. Need help with this too!
Hit autoresolve.
edit: Okay, maybe use your javelin doods as your cavalry, since cold ones take a while to get up to. Then you’ll have to watch your saurus and stop melee instead of chasing those little bastards. Find the catapults and disable them. Kill the leader. That should be ok.
I’ll be honest, I don’t find fighting against Skaven to be fun at all. Even if I mop the floor with them, they’re just irritating and unpleasant to deal with. So I second wisefull, just autoresolve.
Break them, regroup if you need to and break them again.
The biggest issue lizards tend to have with Skaven is their artillery. Having some fliers or cav to run around and deal with them is usually a good idea. Skaven can’t generally win the infantry fight. If they run, let them, you don’t really have any backline that needs protecting (and if you do, odds are it can outrun most Skaven Inf anyway, probably while firing on the move).
I’ve been TRYING to play Belghar ironhammer (the dwarven faction that starts off with the ghost heroes and has to take karak 8-peaks). Wow is that hard on mortal empires. I need to rethink all of my strategies. I mean seriously hard.
And before someone pipes in and says “all you gotta do is kill the snake lady in the one city” please don’t. Anyways I don’t think there is a secret puzzle success there. That’s just freakin hard.
Everytime I’ve played it I just build up the city, probably take 2 regions (starting and skarsnik). Ambushes take care of those tunneling goblins. It’s still really tough thought, there’s invasions everywhere. I think i had to build walls and resigned myself to being poor.
Yeah, I suspect I might be hitting the worst experience first, since I’m playing Lothern, so also control Ulthuan. So I end up with the spawns randomly coming in one of four extremely spread out places (movement-wise). So, as a result, I’ve basically ended doing anything in the game for the past X many turns except sitting at home, because nothing can threaten Ulthuan and sending an expensive army out is one less army to help whack (or prevent) the annoying spawns while I rush towards the ending.
Incidentally, once I figured out the potential spawn points, my solution has been to keep one area “weak” (i.e., only one army within reinforcement distance, rather than 2), but instead have a bunch of nobles nearby to basically “Assault Unit” the chaos stacks. Since they don’t resupply, a couple of successful hero hits essentially cripple them for offensive purposes.
The Expeditionary forces are another thing… especially annoying because I’m only allowed to buy 1 such stack, while the AI will - without fail - purchase a new stack if I move out of intercept range from their preferred target city. Amazing spies they have.
Anyway, just griping. There’s so much to love in Total Warhammer, and the early game combined with the extreme faction diversity is just so much fun… so I’m just disappointed in the end-game being this tedious, which is (IMO) a step back compared to the first game.
Yeah Ulthuan is pretty damn bad for the Vortex spawns, because they spawn in any direction and oh yeah, completely ignore those decorative gates you have. It’s important to fire off the rituals at the start of your turn so you can react to the spawn locations. Even then it doesn’t always help because they also can spawn right on top of the target instead of some distance away (surprise! those armies you placed in intercept locations are now useless!)
I went off at them way earlier in the thread.
Heh … yes, my feelings exactly.
Got through the campaign, and now I have to decide what to go for next. Another Vortex campaign, mortal empires, and which race? It’s enough to give one analysis paralysis…
Wisefool I’ve been trying all evening. The new pirate expansion makes it harder. This is a tough campaign. I may have to step back and think about it.
I am not sure it is currently possible with the new pirate expansion. This is seriously hard.
So I just picked up the first one, no dlc no nuthin, and booted it up last night after putting in the new video card (sure is pretty). Any advice?
I started out as the Emperor (Franz Ferdinand? Hopefully I won’t run into any Serbian separatists) on normal, and did the tutorials. I’ve played most of the total war games, so a lot is familiar, but looking at the map I seem to be pretty well surrounded, which has often led to frustrating situations in the past.
I’m a little disappointed that other than the intro battle with goblins I’ve only been fighting swordsmen and spearmen with other swordsmen and spearmen, and now that I upgraded the one building I can get… spearmen with shields. But I’ll be patient. (I guess there was that one special battle I teleported to where there were siege weapons that did nothing because I immediately ambushed them… I was amused to hear the advisor say “wait for the right time” and I thought no, the right time is now, when they’re right next to me and I can walk up to the cannons before they rendezvous with their allies who are obviously going to come in over there…)
Anyway very much looking forward to the game!
Historically the Empire was actually pretty hard to play because, as you noted, you tend to be surrounded and get attacked by everyone. Try to keep from getting into too many wars is the best advice I can offer.
And get mortars and some cav out there fairly quick, since they can make a huge difference especially early on.
The Empire is probably the most “normal” faction in the game. If you still end up having issues, I recommend trying Dwarfs. They’re pretty one note, but that also helps ease you into things in a lot of ways. You don’t have to worry about magic or cavalry, just arty, crossbows and a solid front line.
The Empire has had a lot of changes in TWW2 for Mortal Empires, but I’m not sure how many of them are translated over to TWW1.
Thanks. I was actually leaning toward the dwarves, but ultimately I thought that (1) I wanted magic, dammit, and (2) I only know how to win TW battles with cavalry :).
I’ll try to play it cool and make it to the cavalry (the heavy cav they start you with is pretty great) and artillery.