I used to use them more, but laziness in large part has led me to just park them in my armies.
I’ve seen that swarming as well Kevin, and makes me think the AI is judging the odds. Maybe they need to tweak that math some.
I mean, I won’t complain too much. Getting swarmed by hero actions was fucking annoying in TW2, frankly.
Depends on the units. Marauders cost next to nothing and every faction gets like 4-5k a turn base.
But the AI generally gets discounts on stuff like upkeep.
You also get a base income. Everyone does. It so you can afford… well anything. Without it on turn one you’d be lucky to support your Lord, much less an army.
Yes, but it’s pretty rare compared to 1 (where they did it nonstop and could kill Lords). They taught the AI that it’s mostly a waste of money. Which it is.
It’s pretty rare that spending 500 gold to murder some random Goblin wandering around is worth it.
Now sniping a hero out of a strong army stack? Usually worth it if you can attack them soon afterwards. But even stuff like Assault Units is pretty meh and most stacks will heal from it so fast that it doesn’t matter.
I rarely run more than one Assassin in most factions. Heroes are just way better embedded in armies 90% of the time. Most hero actions have not much effect. Steal Tech, Block Army, Influence, establish Cults for Slaanesh and… that’s about it really. You maybe kill a hero you think might come for an embedded hero, but otherwise, they’re just money the AI is wasting wandering around.
I’ve had to kill them to help me ambush a few times because swarms of the things start to follow armies around and make Ambush fail. It’s decent for levelling up new heroes sometimes, but really a single battle often gives multiple levels for low level heroes and building a dedicated Hero Action guy is often just a money drain, unless you’re doing some weird province stacking with Boost Income or whatever.
Slaanesh, Skaven and Vampire Coast use them the most. Slaanesh to spread their debuff/cults and the others to make Undercities/Coves and Steal Tech. I’m sure there are others that can do alright with them. Lizards have a big, slow tech tree, for example.
I have noticed some armies do regenerate very fast, I’m not entirely sure what the cause is — Lord ability or embedded hero abilities perhaps, maybe faction differences? Right now I can do major damage to Markus Wulfhart’s army, but he can recover in basically one turn. Am understanding correctly though if he’s showing partly red and partly yellow on his individual units’ health bar, the yellow indicates what he’ll have after his turn is complete, whereas the red is what he has right now? If so, hitting him with an Assault Troops immediately followed by an attack that turn should still work pretty well.
In the right situation though such as an army moving across hostile terrain, fully kitted hero assault on units can really chew up an army. Garrisons seem to take even longer to recover, and I’ve got on Saurus Scar Veteran who seems to be able to take out well over half the units in a 11 unit garrison in one go.
Breach walls helps a lot too IMO. Plus you can have your heroes do a number on the walls and garrison and surround the city, wait a turn and then stick the heroes into the army — they won’t be as well spec’ed for combat admittedly.
Also I think in some situations the “Block Army” is a critical skill to have.
All of the above, but most Replenish is from embedded heroes.
Correct.
It can, but unless you have an army right on top of them, they’ll probably heal it. And it’s one unit, which rarely matters much. Odds are a good embedded hero will kill more value in combat. For newbie heroes it can work, but they also don’t do much damage. YMMV of course.
Block Army is the most important Hero skill in the game imo. Factions without it are often hell to even play.
Replenish embed is the only thing possibly bigger.
High level heroes just destroy things in combat, so any levels spent on other stuff is usually a waste of money unless you have tons of hero slots and cash. Like Skaven can have random rats doing crap because they have so many heroes it broke the UI in TWW2. But Vampire Coast is always short on heroes and needs them more than most factions, while also needing to seed Coves and wanted to hunt treasures.
Edit: Having 1 or 2 heroes dedicated to hero actions can be worth it, but it also costs quite a bit of cash. A dedicated assassin that can kill good heroes out of a stack can be really solid. But a dedicated combat hero… can probably kill those same dudes in an actual fight anyway, though admittedly he’ll take more damage in the process.
It’s not just one unit anymore, Assault Troops does across the board damage to multiple units. Unfortunately I don’t seem to have a save of my Assault Troops on Wulfhart, and my hero isn’t in position anymore – I’ll see if I can get a screenshot later today. But this is an example of damage to garrison. I think this is actually after two successful hero actions. This garrison was full strength before my hero got to it. I think this is pretty huge damage and will make way more difference than having a hero in the attack stack.
.
Okay here’s Markus after two turns of attack from two heroes. He started at full strength. One hero is heavily spec’ed for campaign missions and has maxed out the Assault Units skill. The other hero has no points in Assault Units at all – he’s largely spec’ed for combat. They both are fairly high level though – around level 20. Also Markus’s troops are surprisingly crappy. Possibly because of how The Huntsmarshal’s Expedition campaign mechanics work?
I’m also not quite sure why Markus’s regen capability changed. He moved to a different location on the map. I suppose it’s possible he had an embedded hero that left (or that I wounded). But in his previous location he could heal almost as fast as I could damage his troops. He is still in friendly (to him) territory and in fact, he’s currently sitting on one of his own cities.
Next step, attack the Garrison with the Heroes and then stick my army on top to prevent them from regenerating. Embed heroes into army and then attack (which in addition to improving my combat power also gains them XP).
I thought I’d share my first end-game experience with an utlimate campaign victory that felt like I really had to earn it. Upthread I shared my last Teclis campaign and how easy the Black Pyramid of Nagash was to squish when it spawned right near my front lines where I had my military force ready and waiting. This game was very different.
After my Teclis victory I was feeling comfortable with the map and opponents in Warhammer Africa, so I decided to start Tzeentch (Kairos) right next to the Teclis starting position. The start was a little rocky because none of my neighbors liked me at all and I rapidly got in a multi-front war. Happily Tzeentch has good low-tier troops and a stack of mostly pink horrors gave me enough faction strength that nobody wanted to get tooooo aggressive. Heck Teclis never declared war on me until I’d wiped the lizardmen and had him surrounded. After securing my starting location I started expanding on two fronts with one front to the north where I was trying to push to swallow Warhammer Africa while on the other front I was claiming all of Warhammer Antartica. By this point I had developed my starting province all the way and could churn out stacks of high tier stuff and support it with the income from all my provinces. I must say that I really like the Chosen of Tzeentch as they make a really meaty front line to shield all my flamers/horrors while they rain death on the enemies.
Towards turn 110 or so I got the warning of the endgame event, and it was the Vampire Counts one. By that point I’d linked up my borders with Skarbrand, who had all the badlands, and was busy grinding down Queek. My western front was just smashing everything in sight in Warhammer South America since that just just a short hop from Warhammer Antartica. With all that teritory I was swimming in gold. I figured smacking down some vamps would be a cakewalk. Hoh boy was I wrong.
The Vampire event fired and immediately Manfred was back with five mean stacks right in my heartlands. I’d anticipated that and had diverted/recruited to make sure I had forces in the area. He was smacked down with a minimum of fuss and muss. Since he spawned in an area where he had no settlements and the corruption was 100% Tzeentch and 0% vampire, attrition got him almost harder than my military. I figured the other Vamps (Ghorst/Vlad/Red Duke) would be as easy. Then I resumed my northern advance while my other front was consolidating Warhammer South America and wiping out the last vestiges of Skrolk and Wulfhart. As I pushed into the north edges of Queeks old territories, in the neighborhood of Black Crag, I ran into what I can only describe as a pack of stacks. Ghorst was rolling south with EIGHT full stacks and he wasn’t scattering them. They were moving as one mostly, though occasionally they’d split up four and four to take two settlements in a turn. My stacks were operating as singles or maybe in pairs, so I quick realized I was outgunned and tried to fall back to concentrate forces.
I was semi-successful in that I concentrated enough force that Ghorst didn’t want to rush me, but rather to raid and make the occasional push while at the same time holding a strong defense on his gains. The AI was doing a good job of coordinating and effectively using a force that large. We also had opposing corruption problems since my corruption could cause attrition for him but his could do the same to me. The corruption tended to blunt both of our advances. It quickly turned into a WW1 style stalemate where tons of people were dying while the front lines inched back and forth. I think we traded one settlement (Sump Pit) back and forth like five times. Eventually I thought I had him on the ropes . . . and then Vlad showed up with six stacks.
In the end, while it took almost 80 turns, I slowly won the war of attrition. I’m not sure I could have done it without my massive economy allowing me to just keep recruiting disposable stacks to throw into the grinder. Plus the Tzeentchian changing of the ways gave me a huge edge at key moments. Forcing rebellions to give him backline problems, gifting backline settlements of his right to K Franz, and most importantly the global “Halt Faction” effect to rob all his stacks of his movement for the turn. The latter was a lifesaver at several points where I found myself overextended on offense and just froze Ghorst’s armies so he couldn’t punish me for it.
I know I’ve had a lot of criticisms of the crap that they got wrong in TW:WH3 but I must say that’s the best endgame experience I’ve ever had in a total war game.
Great to here. I’ve bailed on my cathay and ork campaign before the endgame event fired. Perhaps I should have persevered.
I’m not sure if all endgame events are created equal. The Black Pyramid one that I saw as Teclis was laughably easy to beat, but then I caught it early and prevented them from growing out of control. The vampire one fires in fivelocations and the one I caught early was easily stopped but the ones far away had a chance to start swallowing territory and grew into total monsters. Typically in TW:WH games once one has control of (and income from) a couple of continents it’s all over but the tedious mop-up. Not so in my latest campaign at least, there was a big world war still to fight.
Plus, I didn’t mention this early, but the reason I was able to finally break Ghorst was that while I had him all tied up in a massive war on his southern border he got hit hard from the north by none other than Archaon. So that was a weird endgame flip from previous TW:WH games. I was super happy and relieved to see the black-flagged hordes of chaos come rampaging in from the north!
Games creating epic stories is what it’s all about.
I just finished a Hexoatl Short Victory. I don’t have a lot of advice on the start. Like you, I found the start a bit rough. As I said upthread, Morathi north of me could have crushed me at any point in the early game. She declared war very early on, but didn’t follow up on it. I’m thinking maybe it was because my lands are inhospitable to her just as hers are to me? Anyway, it was many, many turns with no sign of her armies anywhere in my area, even though I bordered her cities directly.
The Norscans took out that little Empire “New Colonies” faction. Someone else took out the Norscan colony across the gulf, not directly next to me. That left them with ~4 settlements/cities all right next to me. As I’ve talked about upthread, I had more difficulty getting rid of them than one might expect.
I then sat there with three provinces, Morathi north of me, much stronger than I was, and Empire Huntsmen south of me, stronger than I was, but nowhere near as strong as Morathi. I spent a lot of turns just building economy. I was planning to build the economy and then try to attack the Empire Huntsmen. The main issue for those that haven’t played this campaign, you’re basically bottlenecked in Central America, with no maneuvering room north or south of you.
Before I could attack south Morathi finally decided to come calling. I managed to take out her initial stack and then pushed north into her territory. Every time I took an inhospitable settlement I passed it on to the Wood Elves, which made them very happy with me. Between the two of us, we managed to wipe out Morathi.
The Empire Huntsmen to the south ended up being relatively easy. They seem to have really crappy troops – presumably due to how the Huntsmen is only supposed to get high level troops using a special mechanic. I don’t think I ever saw anything more powerful than Empire Knights, and mostly he was rolling around with Spearmen and Handgunners. Taking out all of Empire Huntsmen’s rather large empire, was almost enough to earn a Short Victory. I did need one more city, so I attacked the poor Bretonian Faction for one last city (I figured it was part of the great plan).
I will say that the Short Victory Conditions were pretty dull. Basically defeat the two minor factions that you start right next to, and then capture/raze 30 settlements. Probably the dullest of the Short Victory Conditions I’ve seen so far.
Sounds like our experiences were fairly similar! I didn’t know (or think to try) about transfering settlements. That’s a great idea about giving northern territory to the Wood Elves. I was just razing most of it.
Once I got past the start I got rolling but man it was a tough go at first. Being pressured in three separate directions is pretty rough when you can only afford a single army!
That’s a lot better than it used to be, so maybe they’ve improved it.
I’ve been playing Oxyotl and the Ghosts of Pahuax, and liking it. My first campaign got short-circuited when I switched PCs and for whatever reason cloud saves didn’t work (something about running out of space even though I kept deleting all the old files, whatever). Second one, the one I’m on now, is going well. I am playing on default difficulty because I’m a weenie, but it works for me as I’m not terribly fantastic at battle management.
Oxy’s hook is his visions of the ancients schtick, where once in a while he gets these premonitions of Bad Things that he can prevent by teleporting to locations where said Bad Things are supposed to occur, and whacking the Bad Guys before they can do them. Usually this involves killing an army, sometimes taking or razing a settlement, and occasionally moving to a point to ambush someone. Oxy can also build Secret Sanctums™, a chain of themed pizza restaurants, or, maybe, forgotten chambers from a mystic past that allow him to monitor and affect events around the map. If you build the bouncy house (or upgrade the sanctum to include a funky keystone of some sort), you can teleport there like you can to your capital (another benefit of the visions thing), but you can only have one of those active at any time.
This whole set up is wild because Oxy starts on the ass-end of the world, down where Warhammer’s version of Antarctica might be, except it’s like fire and ice and demons and stuff. Lots of Slaanesh. First order of business is taking over the southern continent, which depending on luck can be a breeze or a chore. The visions mechanic spits out armies all the time, and sometimes they are right up in your grille. Other times, though, and this is where it gets cool, they are a bajillion miles or leagues or whatever they use away, but you can teleport there, whack them, and then either stay and raise havoc or teleport back to your home base.
Once you build up your Oxy stack o’doom, usually Oxy plus the Keeper of the Plaques mage priest dude, plus 18 of your closest lizard buddies heavy on the blowguns with a few big ass dinos for heft, and get some levels, skills, and gear on Oxy, you can go to town. Knock out one or sometimes two vision things a turn until they’re gone, rest up, and do it again when they refresh. Meanwhile, I build up two to three other armies to cover the vast area you have to control. Luckily, once you get the south under control racking up income producing stuff is not that hard, and you get tons of trade deals. While all the demon dudes pretty much hate you (well, they hate everyone), many of the others factions aren’t devoted to your destruction at a cellular level and will make deals. You will be at war with all the barbarians/Norscans usually though because, well, the visions quests usually make you attack them whether you want to or not.
Oh, and there is Lord Kroak too. The quest battle to unlock him is a PITA, featuring like three waves of fairly substantial Skaven armies led by annoying spell casters, and you have to hold out until Kroak and his buds finally hear their alarm clocks and wake up. Be careful, though, because once, after like forty minutes of this, on the verge of an easy victory, I let Kroak go too far forward without my support (you can’t control him or his forces in this fight), and he got whacked, making me do the whole damn thing again. But Kroak is, well, Kroak is Kroak. Once you get him and level him up, he’s nigh-on unstoppable as a hero in your main stack.
Tactically, I always love the lizard dudes because one, lizards, and two, they have a good mix of forces with some really nice abilities. Their ranged and mixed melee/ranged units are solid, and relatively cheap, and their heavy infantry is tough as hell. Their special stuff and regiments of renown are quite good as well, and the spells heroes can get, especially the mass heals, are extremely helpful. Their offensive spells and buffs are pretty solid, if not spectacular, but in single combat heroes and lords are surprisingly durable too.
As usual though I doubt I’ll make it to the end, as I get bored and want to try another faction.
Wow, that sounds so different than a “traditional” campaign. Good for Creative Assembly for coming up with something new. I’ll have to say that while I really like the Lizardmen, the Hexoatl campaign was not really great (I think Warhammer Central America is just too compressed in this new map) so maybe I’ll try Oxyotl next time I’m hankering for some dinosaur action.
Completely agree, I felt like I had a lack of tactical and strategic “interesting decisions” throughout the campaign.
Yea the Western continents in general all feel very compressed in the ME maps while the East feels like it goes on forever. And I think Hexoatl got it worst of all. One of my few complaints about the IE map. I’d also love it if they had kept the Chaos Realms in to some degree as a place you could go for ridiculously difficult battles/powerful rewards instead of a campaign defining “you must do this to win” deal. Think it could have opened up the opportunity for CA to create some true doomstacks for you to face with your final doomstack and earn unique powerful rewards, yet kept it optional.
The Chaos realms were really badly implemented in the main campaign but that doesn’t mean they had to be.
Yeah, the first game I played of TW3 was as Cathay on IE and it was huge. I then tried Hexoatl which I was familiar with from TW2 and was kind of shocked at how compressed everything was. Cathay gave me an incorrect impression of how everything was going to be scaled.
Does Hexoatl have a sea lane they can use to flank Cathay?