1844

Ok one more measurement. Mortal empires campaign at turn 82 – Joan of arc ….turn time: 22.5 seconds.

Unbelievable. I can’t even get a drink and take a pee between turns now.

Scott Lufkin: yeah my fault I switched it to dxbeta12. Back to 11 and its smooth as glass.

So in one swoop CA managed to make this game playable… My vote for Game of the year.

1845

I can see an argument for the Norsca; Wulfrik’s pretty fun, imho.

1846

I just did a playthrough as Settra (Tomb Kings) on Vortex. The campaign for me lasted, I think, 150 turns. That was going at a slow pace playing on Very Hard. The TK vortex campaign runs independant to the usual vortex events of the classic 4 races rushing to finish the ritual. The Tomb Kings just require collecting 5 scrolls that offer significant bonuses to your faction, and a battle from there.

Cheap chaff units offset with beastly constructs that smash and crash their way through enemy lines. Early game still tends to be spearwall with range behind, but using the initial construct to try and hammer against the anvil. Later game, I explored building armies to the strengths of the lords that can be unlocked via the tech tree. Playing with Ushabti, Chariots, Cavalry. They have a nice unit roster. Also being able to build items using canopic jars, and learning to get by with a lean treasury such that constructing buildings (developing settlements) is a real investment. Try not to lose cities in other words. Starting around Khmer, there are Orcs, other Tomb Kings, Bretonnia, Empire, Skaven and Dwarves factions to deal with while to the south leads to lizards.

1847

Played some more Repanse and was reminded how annoying fighting Tomb Kings is.
You can only go so fast since a random TK army of skeletons will appear out of the fog of war and take a city.

Also, this happened:

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He left shortly afterwards, but I was really not expecting to see him. He had that one settlement that eventually got taken out by a rebellion.

1848

Wow, Malekith is a long way from home… Yeah I’ve found with the new patch that the AI seems a little more aggressive this time around. I restarted my VC game in Vortex and I’ve got the starting rebels being helped with a neighbouring lizard faction from the start. Then Clan Skryre wants a piece of me even though pre-patch they would typically roll over and want trade agreements and alliances easily. And then Itza decides to have a piece of the action too.

1849

In my high elf vortex campaign, my allies (Chrace, Avalorn, Nagarythe) are doing a great job reclaiming the north from Nagarond. (Once they finished off Titanic, of course… go figure.) Granted, I’ve got all the other flanks secure, but it’s really nice having competent allies-- once I took out the dual armies of Makekith and the hag lady that was frustrating them they really exploded. I’m seriously considering not federating them.

We’ll see how they do when we move on to the lizards, who currently have power ranks 2 through 6 locked up.

1850

Based on your suggestion and my interest in the monstrous units, I am tinkering with the first few turns of Settra. It seems very different than the Skaven so far which I guess is a big feature of TW:W in general (faction variety). I will say that I am having a very hard time keeping my basic units alive. The spear and sword skeletons get wiped out pretty easy. I can’t seem to keep them all alive. I expected they would be chaff, but this is coming from Skaven with their own super frail units. Plus I am fighting Orcs so far and I expected them to run a bit more from my fear causing units.

1851

Skeletons are disposable, 0 maintenance units. Archers will be your main killers. Focus fire with them. Micro your chariot to move THROUGH enemy infantry (i think that’s alt click, i haven’t played in a while)

Later you get those anti-large monsters, they are very nice.

There’s dog archers later, those are monster archers who can melee.

1852

Yeah, the Tomb King basic infantry units are chaff of another variety; they’re literally free. While you want to protect your “specials,” don’t expect to have a whole bunch of high-leveled infantry units. Your power curve jumps dramatically when you can field a second army and raise your unit caps.

1853

@wisefool

Yes, I expect the skeletons are disposable. My issue is that it seems I need to burn a turn standing still (“beneath the sands” stance or in a city) to get more and they are dying (as in the card is totally wiped out). This seems to be slowing my campaign pacing over what I was doing as Skaven. That may totally be normal. I may also be doing it wrong, so I wanted to ask.

1854

I never really gave Mortal Empires a chance due to the turn time hate. As it is, I consider(considered) the Vortex turn times to be pretty dang long.

I was just recently playing Age of Wonders: Planetfall. The turn times on there are fairly crisp, but even then they get long winded once the map is explored and allies are sharing vision. Now coming back to Warhammer, things feel even FASTER in Vortex than AoW:P. That is pretty nice.

At this point, I am going to consider playing TW:W my holiday diet. The turns are fast enough that I can’t incessantly snack or reload snacks while the AI does its thing. The peeing is a problem though.

1855

I love the new turn time speeds, but to be honest I wrapped two co-op Mortal Empire campaigns under the original turn timers and thought it was totally bearable - probably due to the understanding of the sheer amount of simulation/number of factions. That’s what having a second screen and a Netflix account is for!

1856

Yeah, it pretty much is in the early going. I roleplay it as “convincing” your vanquished enemies to join your army, lol.

1857

  • Remember that TK units cost nothing to recruit. So make good use of the global recruitment option on the field. The other thing is just bring heaps of skeletons. Run full stacks.

  • Don’t be afraid to put Settra in the fight. Buffing him with his starting spell is going to help make a decent dent in the opposition.

  • Early game, your main damage will be the skelly archers. I almost always recruited up to max in my armies. An early stack would have 4-6 units of archers. As for basic skeletons, I almost always went with the basic skeleton warriors. I didn’t worry about the warriors with spears against the orcs. The main thing was having a front line that could hold against the orcs and then the archers would do the work. Use the speed of the Warsphinx or the chariots to your advantage to try and lure some orcs away from your main fighting force and get some early kills. The chariots need to keep rolling, so look for thin areas on the opposing lines to crash the chariots through so they don’t stop moving. They have a high unit count, and while stat wise they are crap compared to other nation’s chariots, they are move than capable of dishing the damage and disrupting opposition lines. The Warsphinx, well if you lose it, maybe reload. I could have it with a murderous 200-300 kill count at the end of battle. It’s high mass is great for letting it tear through dense unit accumulations, but don’t let it stay surrounded for long. Work to its strengths and it’ll make short work of the orcs.

  • To help preserve your skeleton warriors, get a Screaming Skull Catapult online fairly quickly. It ties with a point of upgrading only the main settlement first. You really, really need to get access to the higher tier of units as fast as possible. The catapults, yes. Nehekara warriors are a small game changer because it is skeleton warriors that can kill things. Then the Ushabti come online and they finally give your armies a killing edge. You do need to supplement Ushabti with chaff though because their unit count is so low. But they are more than capable of managing to open up flanks and send the army routing. The Ushabti are also reasonably quick.

  • Cavalry will be the biggest issue I had against orcs. The boar riders. That’s about the only time I’d consider an anti-large unit. Again, the Warsphinx can help deter a charge from the boar riders. I guess thinking about it, the Warsphinx was my utility unit in that whatever situation I found myself in, I could lean on the Warsphinx to make a difference.

  • I think levelling Settra, I focused on the blue skills first. So unit replenishment, movement, that sort of thing. I really, really wanted lightning strike as well. After that, I then looked at buffing Settra and also the skills that buff Tomb Guard as I knew those were the units I’d be fielding in his particular army.

1858

For anyone new to the game, this is an almost god-like strategic-layer ability where you can isolate an army and prevent it from getting any reinforcements (the option appears when you attack).

1859

The other break-ai option is ambush + bait with small army. Almost obligatory to catch stacks thought.

1860

I changed my Windows cursor to the Warhammer 2 cursor, it’s awesome.

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When hovering, instead of dumb normal hand icon:
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1861

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@ShivaX taking out the trash.

1862

Thank you for these tips. I am trying to put them to good use.

1863

Damn if there’s nothing more epic than watching a mob of Orc Boyz charging my thin line of Warp Throwers. You can almost here the rat seargent screaming hold, hold, hold as they come charging up and then whooosh as a torrent of green fire just obliterates them.