The “fire while moving” mechanic for the elves is making them a ton of fun to play at the tactical level. I’m sure it will get boring and repetitive eventually, but for now they have been my favorite to fight with. Being able to forward deploy the scouts while having most of my forces hidden in trees is making for some fun engagements. Harass, “retreat” to lure the enemy in to an ambush while my flying troops zoom out to take out any artillery that is setting up in the distance.
Not looking forward to advancing out to the deserts and plains of the primary ork lands. That will cause some problems for the glass cannons.
Played for several hours last night and still can’t really get an economy going. Starting to realize that the elves are meant to be peaceful with a lot of other factions so that they can use trade as their primary income source. When you take over cities, the only real economy options are +2% to building income or harvesting trade goods that are available. 2% extra isn’t much when I only really have 1 incoming building, and that is only bringing in 1k per turn. Trade goods though… plenty of those, and I was able to set up a couple that were bringing in 200+/turn. Going to start a free game with a goal of being at peace with everyone except the beastmen and orks. That is wildly different than I’m used to playing…which is what I like so much about these expansions.
I’m only a short way into an Elf Campaign and I’m having great fun so far, but as a number of you have observed, they are definitely the glassiest of glass cannons in the game so far. (The lower level units, at least). As satisfying as it is to watch them kite and maul slower units from range, you have to be constantly aware of cav charges, mismatches, units caught out of position, etc. When you make a mistake, the pointy eared little fellows just die so quickly. (I suppose this is all historically accurate – as Bruce Geryk might say). I think I’m still spoiled by my dwarf campaign where I sometimes felt I could send in my battle line, leave and go get a sandwich, and come back to do the mopping up. Yes, a totally different kind of play here that I’m maybe not quite quick and alert enough to manage. But great fun so far. (Love the amber resource stuff and the weird tech tree).
Boy, I hate these elves. Not at all what I would have hoped to play.
I have found that really, the only thing Total War AI does well is manage ranged units and send units to flank you. But, otoh, this is all it takes to utterly ruin me as Elves. I cannot put into words how much I hate the Elven archers; they are utterly useless. After a battle they may have something like 8 kills. What are you all doing this whole time, trying to wound them? Feel guilty about shooting or something? Because battles in Warhammer are just so, so fast, and units are fast, and maps are small, there just isn’t enough time to do enough damage to the enemy before they close ranks. So what I do playing Elves is just ignore the archers entirely and build nothing but melee units. But Elves suck at melee units. It’s just not fun. OTOH the AI wrecks me in mirror matchups; their archers will have like 70 kills a unit, mine barely get 10 or 20. But spearmen hardly get any kills, my wardancers hardly get any kills. Even when i’m winning it seems like i’m winning by breaking morale rather than actually killing anything. The only unit that actually does work are those deer cavalry.
Grr. Feel like i’m spinning my wheels with this game. Along with my hatred of all the campaigns. Multiplayer is fun, and the game is technically better in every way than Attila aside from campaign balance. But when i’m playing Attila i’m having fun.
I haven’t played Orion, but I’ve found it a very different experience playing the TreeLord. Dryads aren’t great holding a line, but you very easily access TreeKin and they are pretty damned good. The TreeLord himself is an incredible force in both melee and with magic.
I’ve had pretty good success with my elven archers. Please forgive me if you are already completely know everything I am about to say, but it is really important to cherry-pick your targets. They are only doing ~35 damage, so they should always be hitting the lightest armored opponents, and definitely not wasting ammo on anything actually Armored or Shielded. Dryads don’t have great armor, but TreeKin do and that lets you fire into the melee with impunity. Most of my spellcasters have had a nice spell that provides good missile resistance and a weapon bonus. The scrum becomes a slaughterhouse. I can’t remember how many kills I’ve been getting, but they are respectable.
And, since you probably know all that, I will just again suggest trying the TreeLord before completely forsaking the elves. You lose some elfyness, but you gain a mostrous leader stomping around with a giant glowing sword.
Oh, definitely, but focus fire only goes so far. It also doesn’t help that you’re painfully restricted as to what you can recruit in the early/middle part of the game in the Wood Elf campaign. My choices are basically Wardancers, Asrai Shields, and crap archers. What happens in practice is that the focus fired unit - Wardancers ect, die pretty quickly (sort of! my archers were still getting not near the kills the HP damage they inflicted would indicate) but then their 12 melee units would overwhelm my 6 melee units… and so I would die, because once they get around the front line, you’re dead.
The Beastmen are especially bad about this - your main antagonist in the campaign - because basic troops are actually faster than your archers, so once they get around your front line, it’s lights out. I ended up beating Morgul the Shadowgave (or whatever his name is) when he comes after your Big Tree by pure cheese - he enters on one side of a chokepoint on the map, and I Flock of Doomed his army with some units to tie them up, which felt almost worse than tower defense cheese in Attila. But average Beastmen armies vs garrison troops is just beating a red headed stepchild, i’ll fight manually and lose 4:1 units, even if the armies are the same size. In skirmish / multiplayer you can employ a much wider variety of units which flesh out your troops. But at the beginning the game asks you to defend your glass cannon troops with glass armored troops. And then the campaign annoyance of random armies popping out of the fog and razing your settlements is still a huge part of the Wood Elf campaign like it has been in every campaign. I think I once spent something like 60 campaign turns in an Empire campaign holding on to three or four settlements, because as soon as I would move an army, an Orc or Beatmen army would just b-line to it from the fog and raze it the second I left it undefended. In the Elf campaign i’m getting invisible Beastmen armies doing the same. I’ve never really got the pace of Warhammer campaigns down and i’m clearly not doing what the designers think I should be doing. It seems like it takes dozens of turns before I can secure a tiny handful of cities from random attacks. Or I can just kit out a bit stack or two and just send it marching forward, full knowing everything behind them is going to be ash in just so many more turns.
Looks like I was right about the range problems though!
So install Radious mods then, that slows down combat a lot, giving you more time to think, at the expense of balance.
Btw those elves bow heroes are insane, ranged damage in the 500+is nasty
I’m playing the Grand Campaign, as I heard the Elf campaign was pretty frustrating. The only non-Grand Campaign I played was with the Beastmen. I found it pretty fun, but it was pretty straightforward.
I also think there is a wide variety of outcomes in the Grand campaigns. I’ve had an extremely frustrating Empire campaign where I couldn’t get anything going because neighbors on either side of me would take turns declaring war on me. Then, in a second campaign, I had an extended period of peace that allowed me establish myself and not need to worry too much.
I had my biggest reverse in this campaign thanks to a very untimely Beastmen horde spawn. I believe it may have been Shadowgrave that beseiged my town and main army, leaving my secondary army exposed. Shadowgrave’s Brayherd attacked it and killed my second highest lord. Shadowgrave’s regeneration is a pain. I had two TreeLords pouding on him in one fight, and they could barely hurt him faster than he regenerated.
I did just have an awesome battle, and my archers stats certainly looked terrible. I was fighting two Chaos armies (34 untis) with a 14 unit-army and a well-garrisoned province capital.Thanks to Chaos being crazily armored, none of my archers had double-digit kills. They mostly just whittled away at the enemy wizard and four chaos giants. I really dig the importance of monstrous units and heroes.
The Elf assassin hero is very cool. Not only does his missile damage start in the 300s, but he is also a Duelist and was able to leap into the fray and allow my Tree Lord to make a tactical withdrawal. He’d been fighting both the wizard, Suneater and an occasional giant. The assassin finished the wizard, and with the help of a giant eagle put Suneater on the run.
As you said though, I didn’t kill that many of the enemy, as the majority of the enemy army routed. I should be able to put more of a hurt on them as my TreeLord and Treekin won’t be distracted by the giants in the next battle.
I’m seeing a whole mess of mods with the word “radious” in the name, many of which seem to do a lot of funky stuff. Can you link to one that just changes the game speed? Or do you have to go all in with the unit changes and whatnot?
There are two, radious and radious units, the rest I don’t know about.
It says it requires both to work, but I found balance to be very off unit wise, but heck, lots of variety atleast.
Biggest changes, 2 skill points per level, wastly reduced upkeep, and every army gets a huge number of units, that in my opinion messes with game balance.
That said, you like more , this is MORE!
Also slower combat, units will slug it out longer, giving you time to think, warhammer could have given us 90% game speed with sound, to solve this issue.
I don’t tend to run any mods on active development TW titles (losing your mid to late campaign saves a couple times when a patch shows up has a way of making me shy away from these things), that said, I heard mention of a mod that is meant to slow down the battles (this is hearsay of course, I’ve not used it):
And if this one doesn’t quite fit the bill (since they tend to go at finding solutions to problems through a variety of methods, some better than others), might want to do a quick search of the workshop and see if anything else is out there.
They took away the AI’s extra movement after razing cheats! This game is so good, and their system of adding in all of the new content as NPC forces whether you pay for it or not means the world is constantly evolving and growing without having to spend a dime… you just buy what looks cool. I love it!
Finished the elf campaign - once I grokked it I found it pretty easy. I play Wood Elves in the table top version of the game, so for me, they play just as they should. You need to move, bait, hit and run, “stick and prick,” and know what units do what. Wild Riders are devastating if you micro them right. The Glade Guard are fantastic shooters if you don’t let them get pinned down. Get Eternal Guard w/ Shields to hold the line, flank with Dryads, and shoot shoot shoot. Fight the enemy on your terms, not theirs.
I’m playing a grand campaign now with Drycha. This game is just so much win.
Man, the battles don’t really feel fast to me? Is there another Total War game that moves at the speed you guys are talking about? I feel like the battle length is great here - it doesn’t take long to get into a fight, or complete one, and yet it’s never so fast I don’t know what’s happening by any means. Maybe that’s because I play a lot of games like Pillars of Eternity? I do pause once in awhile to issue commands, when things start happening at the start of a battle and I want to make sure all my troops are in place and have targets assigned.
I think the Wood Elves are definitely a viable faction, I just find the early game in the campaign frustrating because I don’t have all the tools in the toolkit provided I need to make use of their strengths and override their weaknesses. And the whole monster armies randomly pillaging your lands mechanic is present in almost every campaign in Warhammer and which is honestly what aggravates me the most about Warhammer as a single player game.
I’m still not sure what these campaigns “want” me to do. Do i chase down and destroy these armies? Do I build tons of garrison armies? Do I fortify everything? What’s the “answer”? Camp for 50 turns and do nothing aside from reacting to circumstances? Just roll with the punches and rebuild my razed cities every couple dozen turns? Just leave everything outside a fortified settlement be destroyed? Even the West Roman campaign “makes sense” in the sense that I feel like I know what the campaign is asking me to do. I feel like the Warhammer campaigns punish me for being aggressive by sending armies to attack my unprotected settlements, but also punish me for being defensive by not being aggressive enough and expanding, but ALSO punish me for taking too long by sending lots of timed events of ever increasing difficulty. As an abstract question, is the campaign more challenging than any Total War game before, definitely yes. But I rage quit in Warhammer and have never done this in a previous Total War game.
Uhm you are faced with decisions and strategic problems , yes rage quit I think means the game is challenging you :) there is no right way, and in the end you must win your battles…
Wood elves do seem like a different beast, and on very hard they are the most challenging faction imho
[quote=“Scott_Lufkin, post:1018, topic:76263, full:true”]
Man, the battles don’t really feel fast to me? Is there another Total War game that moves at the speed you guys are talking about? [/quote]
Compared to MTW2 the battles in TWW are WAY faster. Speed of battle is something under constant discussion with all TW games. Some, myself included, consider pausing or running the game half speed a bit of a half ass solution to simply making the battle speed a bit slower. Personal tastes of course, so this conversation never goes anywhere.
This is also the point where someone joins in and says git gud or mod it man. To which I reply I prefer the game designed to be played the way I’m describing it because in my view RT and S are almost mutually exclusive to begin with, so more speed doesn’t result in more S. Again, personal tastes, and again, a conversation that goes nowhere.
