Grenyes
1951
Thank you! That was fast!
High Elves then, I’ll try with them first.
No worries, I have a lot of free time today for obvious reasons. You want any more pointers on specific factions or situations just ask.
Can’t say I agree with this completely. Do make deals with any of your own race factions that have Legendary Lords leading them, try to make sure they don’t get eliminated, and confederate them as soon as you can. Absolutely worth it, especially if you can get them early. LL are awesome and always have a lot of fun skills to play around with.
Yea, I’d strongly recommend trying to confederate Avelorn as Lothern. Alarielle is a very powerful legendary… lady. You can also make trade agreements with any faction you won’t be declaring war on in the next 7 turns on Ulthuan (the island you start on) You don’t want to tank your reliability rating, it has a huge hidden impact on AI war declarations. Just cancel the agreements when you are planning to attack in 7 turns.
Also I’d recommend disabling skirmish mode as a default, and only manually turn it on units you are going to actively be skirmishing with. I find having line archers on skirmish mode generally results in more negative outcomes than positive ones. Also, keep your archers on guard mode so they don’t chase enemies and run into melee range.
@Grenyes
As Lothern in Mortal Empires, you start out at war with the empires directly to your NW and to your E. The NW empire is the immediate concern, as they’re eyeing your capital.
This is a good point; skirmish mode is ostensibly useful for armies where one places the archers up front and the main line units behind. While that’s a perfectly fine way to work units (gets off shots early with that extra range), AI pathfinding is AI pathfinding and entrusting them to regroup behind after the enemy draws close in an orderly-ish manner is dicey.
Ugh, this game has now been updating for an entire hour. This is the first free time I’ve had in a week, and I might get to play for a couple minutes tonight…
Do you have the mod manager open? It won’t let you update your workshop content while it’s open.
No, I have no mods, and I don’t think I’ve ever opened the mod manager. It seems to be downloading and disk-usaging its way through gigs of data, though. I suspect part of the problem is that I only had ~30GB free on the SSD where the game is when the update started, so maybe it’s staging all the data on the slower disk.
It’s just weird, as the game hasn’t had an update for a little bit afaik. Could just be one of those Steam metadata things, perhaps. In that case, I’d bet you’re right.
Well, whatever it was, after an hour twenty, I was able to start it up. Go figure.
You aren’t wrong, but let’s be honest here: that’s kind of mean advice to give to a complete newcomer to the series. This is a daunting game and a new player needs to worry about things like “How to make army” and “How to win battle” and “How to build province” and “Rebellion, what is that?”
Earnestly advising a n00b that they must worry about confederating Legendary Lords, which is strictly optional and not in any fashion part of the victory conditions, is a tad on the cruel side.
Anyone who hasn’t beaten the game on easy with at least two different factions should completely ignore this. It’s all completely correct but pertains to more advanced level play.
This is quite good advice. To fill in the gaps in the explanation, “Skirmish mode” is when Archers will respond to enemies getting nearby by fleeing automatically. Then when no enemies are near they stop fleeing and resume firing. It’s a good idea on paper, but it’s crap on paper because it just means your archers mill around away from the battle and tend to turn and run when you need them firing the most. If you select an archer unit (or multiple units), there’s a few little buttons at the bottom that are archer-specific and are going to be lit up. One of them looks like a bow and is the fire-at-will button. Leave that on, it just means they automatically shoot at targets in range if you haven’t ordered them to do anything else. The one right next to it is skirmish mode, and I agree that turning that off makes archers a lot more useful. You just have to manually move them out of the way of danger if enemy melee units start to close in on them.
vyshka
1963
Finally getting around to playing with this, how do defensive towers in sieges work? Is the control area for the unit behind the tower? Playing as the dwarves and finished off the bloody spears, but the black crag have shown up and have a waaagh going. I survived their 3 stacks attacking my capitol, but they are already hitting another town with 2 more stacks a couple turns later. I think I can hit their army with my leader’s army and lightning strike will make it winnable, but it will be close. I guess I should’ve fielded another army since my economy is doing better.
Good learning game anyways. I stumbled into at least one war because skaven was moving by in the underway and I thought the rat was attacking me so I jumped them. It also probably was a mistake to get into alliances with the other dwarves since none of us were really in a position to help the others. That might be how I ended up in this fight with the black crag.
Strato
1964
Yeah, there’s a yellow box behind the tower, on the wall, that your troops need to occupy (at least only partially) to have control of that tower.
Grenyes
1965
Thank you all for your tips!!!
I intend to start a new game tonight (my tonight, CET) after the family reunion. Do you recommend trying first the Eye of the Vortex campaign or going straight to the Mortal Empires campaign (as was my intention)?
ShivaX
1966
Either can work. Some people recommend Vortex for first plays, but honestly the warping in armies are more a pain than anything imo.
Strato
1967
I think the Vortex campaign for the original 4 factions (Lizards, High Elves, Dark Elves and Skaven) is a little bit weak compared to what is available DLC wise with Vampire Coast, Tomb Kings, Huntsmarshall expedition. I won’t go much further than to say there is some degree of bullshit to tolerate when playing Vortex with the High Elves. Given the improved turn times with ME, it should be fine to dive into ME. The map is a little different compared to what is available in Vortex, but big all the same. Ok, it’s huge.
I’m thinking about tips to give.
Army composition; think about how much you are prepared to micro manage. Early game high elf armies are great - set up a spearwall and have archers dish out the damage, and use Tyrion to try and support a flank or get key kills on the commander. Later game when there’s chariots, dragons, wizards, other heroes to move and position, it’ll take a bit of brain energy. I always devise my armies around how much I’m prepared to manage on the battlefield, and generally never bring more than 1 or 2 spellcasters into a battle.
Recruiting more generals to increase the number of armies on the map is what will bite the hardest into your income. I forget what the percent increase is on normal (5%?) but be aware that the upkeep cost of each army will increase by that amount every time you recruit a new general. As the difficulty goes up, so too does the percentage upkeep rise with each general.
I had a spiel about strengths and weaknesses of various High Elf units, but I think it best to find your own playstyle and how much you are willing to micro on the field. But the fundamental composition will be spears protecting archers, and archers doing the most damage.
ShivaX
1968
Pretty much. Even if the spears become Phoenix Guards or Blademasters and the Archers become Sisters, it’s still the same basic setup. Maybe with a dragon flying around.
Tyrion gets reduced upkeep for basic archers and spears, and a number of buffs can be found on his red skill tree. It’s well worth picking them up.
As the campaign goes on, you will mostly want something to handle high armour - your basic units will struggle. But there are many options for what to do here.
Enidigm
1970
A 20 stack of Lothern Sea Guard w/ shields is easily the best thing you can have for most of the game.
