1971

I genuinely don’t think so. They are more expensive than spearmen/archer combinations, and the extra cost isn’t justified most of the time. I like having 2-4 covering my flanks. But using them as a core is very expensive, especially since they still don’t help against the things that give your basic troops issues (heavily armoured infantry). And Tyrion’s upkeep bonus does not apply.

Combined with Silver Helms and Reavers, they can be nice, as they both force an enemy engagement and can hold a line long enough for the rear charges.

1972

The one thing the AI does well is flank and get in your ranged line. The best thing about Lothern Sea Guard is that effectively you have no weak points.

I didn’t believe it until I did it. Not armor piercing ect but it doesn’t matter. You can win battles with 0 casualties over and over with that many missile troops that are also fixed against cab charges.

1973

Maybe I’m playing on a harder difficulty setting or something, but I find such a composition just falls apart when facing armies of Dark Elf Executioners or High Elf Swordmasters or Chaos Warriors.

It’s great against cavalry of all sorts though.

1974

Executioners pose like 0 threat because they’re slow and unshielded. Chaos Warriors melt vs 20 Lothern from the ranged spam despite having silver shields because they’re even slower (although obviously flanking engaged Chaos Warriors works best).

It’s when you see thing like 8 Black Dragons that the Sea Guard spam falls apart. So there is an upper limit to its damage output - arguable 20 Sisters would eventually be more unstoppable. But for a good portion of the early-mid game, i’d much prefer 20 Sea Guard to 10 spears + 10 archers, for durability of composition. With Spears / Archers, there’s a chance you get flanked/skelly spammed/flyer flanked, and suddenly your damage output collapses and there’s nothing you can do. Sea Guard are basically designed to stop the one thing the AI does well.

1975

Do you need to direct the fire of the towers, or will they automatically engage siege towers (as long as they are in their range cone)?

1976

They’ll engage things automatically, but iirc it’s REALLY hard to kill a siege tower before it gets to the wall. Like nearly impossible. You need at least 2 towers on it and then it will probably still make it. If you focus 2 towers on one siege tower it might drop, but they’re never alone so you’ll still have guys on the wall anyway.

Usually you’re better off having the towers just maul the guys not in the siege towers. Or their artillery/ranged/cavalry units.

1977

One was killed so I guess they were doing okay. :) I couldn’t really tell if it was them or my artillery units firing on them.

1978

Probably a combination. Artillery and towers can drop them. Assuming you can get the artillery to fire on them.

1979

Yeah, isn’t that annoying? Artillery is, in theory, fantastic on defense because fixed fields of fire and forced enemy lines of approach and time for the defenders to set up the artillery just-so to cover the approaches. In practice, in this game, artillery behind walls is horrible. They keep getting confused by the walls screwing with their lines of fire so they just start wandering around moving instead of firing, trying to find an open sight line.

1980

If one has played TW games, one is really not much of a newcomer to the diplomacy of this series - it’s been the way it’s been forever. And again - I basically disagree with your advice. You do want to wipe out some of the High Elf factions militarily, but attacking all of them is just bad strategy IMO. Firstly, because it gives you completely unnecessary wars, secondly because AI factions are often much more use as buffer states to keep AI enemies occupied than if you take control of them. Alith Anar is much more effective at occupying the Dark Elf and Skaven up North than you can ever be with the economy your Elves have for the first 50+ turns. He’s almost guaranteed to get ground down eventually as well, which makes confederation very easy with him. Secondly, recommending not doing diplomacy with the most diplomacy-oriented faction in the game doesn’t really play to their strengths.

My advice for High Elves would go a bit more along the lines of:

  1. Build up your economy first - though that is no different from any other TW game, so that is par for the course. Trade with every faction that wants to, unless you plan to attack them within the next 10 turns. HElfs can eventually make insane amounts of money through trade. Economy is King, and the High Elves can build the most insane economy in the game.

  2. Trade and Defend Ally with the three other Legendary Lords at least. Teclis and Alith Anar are based far away, so there is absolutely no reason not to, and Alarielle is at the other end of the island (so it will take a while to get to her anyway + she another good buffer against the Dark Elfs). Other Elf factions would depend on the situation - taking over Ulthuan is the priority.

  3. Get Shielded Lothern Sea Guard together with a Lord (Ardent?) who buffs them for your second army (IIRC, Tyrion has buffs for spear/archers, so he can keep those for a while longer). But shielded LSG can outfight spearmen and can almost outshoot archers. While a stack of spearmen + archers is cheaper, the LSG makes for a far more powerful and versatile stack (replace the spearmen first). A Buff Lord + 18 LSG + Artillery can pretty much melt anything but heavy-armor stacks and they’ll take significantly less damage in auto-resolve too (auto-resolve really hates low-level melee troops such as Spearmen). Or for a bit more cost-effectiveness, 6-8 LSG, 6-8 Archers, and some stuff to kill enemy artillery will do the job as well, and is probably more fun. IIRC, Lothern’s special buff to the Sea Guard recruitment means you can recruit them at quite insane xp levels pretty early too. HElfs armies are pretty overpowered in SP in either case, but LSG makes their mid-game armies insanely OP.

  4. Selects Lords who buff the Sea Guard, and skill them to lower the upkeep.

  5. Use nobles to farm influence (the High Elfs unique mechanic). Influence is key to getting good High Elf leaders as well as for the diplomacy which will save you both fighting and money.

  6. I wouldn’t really worry about public order very much; unless you’re playing on Hard/Very Hard, I can’t imagine it’s liable to be a terribly big issue. If you have trouble with this, take Tyrion down the Defender sub-skilltree of his, which buffs public order.

My 2 cents.

1981

Pretty much this - LSG are the easy mode unit of this game. Though a unit of artillery (to force the enemy to attack) and one or two units that can eliminate enemy artillery are useful.

1982

Picked this up. First TW game, but the basics seem pretty generic 4x stuff. The beginner tips here are greatly appreciated.

My big problem is - I haven’t played anything more graphically challenging than Antihero for quite a while, so I had completely forgotten about how my old graphics card died and I’ve been getting along just fine with the integrated graphics. So my $20 game might turn into a $150 game…

Probably related to the slow low-res view I have, in the only battle I fought so far - after figuring out how to find my army again after they founded a settlement at the ruins :) - I could not figure out how place my units or control where they headed during the battle.

1983

What other TW games are recommended at this point? I think I’ve seen Atilla recommended and Shogun 2, did Rome 2 end up in a good spot? Empire or Napoleon?

1984

Warhammer has the fun factions. Three kingdoms has the new ai with an actual working diplomacy and strategic ai (a first in total war)

The only other old game I’d play is Shogun 2 although Shogun 2 fall of the samurai is a better gameplay experience. I do miss the setting of Shogun 2 Which is the first civil war 1568. If the words sekigahara , musashi and nobunaga mean nothing to you get fall of the samurai

Medieval total war 2 has a classic well known Nations but it’s probably too old an engine to enjoy. I haven’t touched it in forever so I may be wrong.

I’ve played all the total wars at least 80 hours. Even Napoleon and empire which everyone in qt3 hated. Rome2 and Attila are disappointments. I really thought I’d love attilas setting but the campaign map is annoying. I kept trying to be the Anglos and conquer England.

1985

I still quite like Rome 2, but it feels a huge step backwards from Warhammer titles. The battles are just so much more fun.

1986

It’s super annoying and why a garrison with a mortar is vastly superior to one with supposedly “better” artillery. Because the mortar can fire until it runs out of ammo or is overrun. Everything else is a crap shoot or potentially completely useless.

“This garrison has cannons.”
“…”
“You can maybe shoot the dudes after they take over your walls a couple times!”
“…”

1987

Three Kingdoms is pretty good, but after Warhammer… it’s hard to go back.
“Dude with a spear” and “dude with spear that’s slightly better” aren’t as appealing as “dude with a spear” and “ratman lightning cannon powered by chaos-infused plutonium”.

1988

After Total War Warhammer 3, I’d like to see them revisit Medieval. It has been quite a while now since 2.

1989

This is a great summary of the “problem,” lol - I’d say if any of the time periods really interest someone, the games are worthwhile. But for gameplay and variety, Warhammer 2 is just too darn fun.

1990

I really enjoyed Three Kingdoms. A lot of great ideas.

But at the end of the day there are two factions. The Yellow Sky and regular dudes. Every “leader” brings like… one maybe two unique units (and those units are usually “guy on a horse that’s better”). Some don’t even have special rules of their own.

You can only build so many armies that are the exact same as you just built before you long for a dragon or dinosaur.