I don’t regret purchasing any of the DLC, and I have all of it except the blood graphics pack. Both of the new races are great in their own way, and play very differently from the basic factions. The mid sized packs have a lot of quality of life style stuff- ranging from great units like the free companies for the Empire to the mighty Mortis Engine. I will say that the mini-factions in those DLC- the Goblin and Dwarf adventurer start- are probably the most difficult in the game. They’re really more for advanced players who want to try something different.
New Players guide:
So I just thought I’d give my opinion of how to start with the grand campaign for new players. Hopefully this is of some help to someone.
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The easiest start is probably Thorgrim the Dwarf King. Go ahead and play on normal- you can do it! Your first task is to secure your starting province, The Silver Road. From there you can either grab the wealthy Mt. Gundbad to the North in the mountains or get stuck in fighting Grimgor and the Orcs in the south. Whatever you do, be sure not to over expand: the Orcs can use the Underway just like you, so they can teleport through mountainous barriers to strike your income producing villages and pile up grudges.
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Next for something completely different: Manfred and the Undead! Make liberal use of the raise ability to pad out your army with expendable thralls, then smash the ersatz undead to unite your starting province. After that, you need to force a showdown with your siblings next door. Remember when fighting undead that they suffer particularly heavily from the loss of their leader, so target them with Manfred’s death magic and hit them as hard as you can with your leader and assorted troops. When their leader falls, you must try to chain rout their force as quickly as you can, so unleash bats and wolves to the rear of engaged units.
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The Empire plays very conventionally, but is surrounded by enemies and is closest to the fury of the Chaos hordes. You must unite your starting province with all haste, but bear in mind that you may be seeing early visits from Beastmen and even the occasional Orc horde. You must keep your strength up no matter what, because that will significantly affect your diplomacy with other Imperial states, and you intend to be confederations with or conquering them in the near future. Your strongest advantage is your four settlement starting province: make us of it by investing heavily in gold producing structures where you can, and use income increasing agents to build on that further. As soon as you dominate your starting province you should consider turning your attention to Marienburg: their port is a real prize. Be sure to go out of your way to smash Beastmen and Orcs when you can: this causes the Imperial provinces to like you more and may lead to early confederations. Keep abreast of the military situation, too, as provinces under threat are ideal targets for confederation as they look for a savior.
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Orcs: I found the Orcs the most difficult to play due to their Waaaagh mechanic. Essentially, Orcs want to be fighting all of the time, and get pissed off the longer you aren’t out there engaging in aggression. My biggest tip here is to not freak out over it. The worst thing that will happen is the need to beat up your boys a bit to keep them in line. Offensively, the cheapness of Orc troops leads me to grab a second stack early and fill it with auxiliary gobbos. I make frequent use of the sack option, too, and this leaves you pretty flush with cash. If you can get a chain of successes going you can unleash Waaaghs on the foe, which should ideally be pointed at vulnerable settlements to cause even more destruction. What I try to avoid is to fight large stacks of dwarfs with only a single stack of my boys… Dwarfs are tough as hell and you absolutely want numbers on your side when you fight them. Failing that, I try to catch large stacks in an ambush rather than fight anywhere near a settlement. Your troops absolutely will not match Dwarfs on the line, so be sure to encircle them and hit them from the rear while engaged for the morale damage.
Really? Wow, I find all that messing around in the mountains to be frustrating and the underways travel to lead to some blowouts for new players.
I’d say go Empire first, sure they’re the most vanilla of the factions, but that makes them feel more logical. And they still have plenty of crazy shit at higher tiers.
I really like Orcs, although I’ve only played the Savage Orc (free DLC) in the campaign. Their basic Savage Orc units are busted in the early game, and their lords get discounts on those units.
I think the starting position of the Empire sucks badly - they have a 4 settlement province that is impossible to protect without two separate armies. This makes starting ad the Empire (imo)
The Dwarfs only face danger from one direction: the South. As long as they expand slowly and are mindful of scouting to see underway attacks coming at their settlements, I’d say they are the easiest start. Their troops also have excellent morale and pack a real wallop, making them relatively more forgiving than other factions. Money isn’t as much of an issue with them either, especially if you can grab and secure Gundbad.
The Empire is under threat from potentially all sides, and also has Beastmen showing up with some regularity. I would not recommend them to a beginner for that reason.
The reason I think the Empire is harder is because they are surrounded. I have the same complaint in this game as I do in AOW3 in that I feel like armies can move way too far in a single turn. Because of that, you’re vulnerable to getting sniped from all four directions of the compass.
I started out as the Empire and while I wasn’t overwhelmed per se, I found it significantly easier switching over to the dwarves. It’s really nice being able to put your back to a wall.
am enjoying Bretonnia. I have confederated everyone except Bordelaux, managed to kill the Vampires of Moussilon, have 350 chivalry, it’s turn 54, and the Empire is a nice buffer against the Northern peoples. Pretty good position, and have 2 full armies and spare peasant capacity. am now thinking of which areas to keep military buildings in and which to switch to economy. I also have Marienburg.
I haven’t played TW in a year or more but so far Bretonnia feels…fairly easy. I am loving how the mechanics are designed and fit together. King Leon retreated from a battle, lost the Lady’s favour, then got defeated in a gloriously big battle against the Vampires (but it was okay because losing all those troops boosted my economy and I was able to bounce back much quicker than the Vampires, who lost 75% of their forces in that fight. I out attritioned the Vampires…?) and got labelled as an uncertain defender. If I defend I get all sorts of maluses.
Splendid stuff, bravo CA.
This did seem a problem with my first Empire game last year, but I played a new one more recently and most of my neighbours were friendly. I just had more options about how I wanted to expand. I thought they must have changed something, but maybe I just got lucky.
Empire is one of the roughest factions. You’re surrounded and nearly everyone hates you.
Dwarfs are by far the easiest. You have some of the best early game troops around and securing your area isn’t that hard. It only becomes difficult if Grimgor brings up a big Waagh early, but that rarely happens anymore.
Orcs are actually probably the next easiest. Once you get a Waagh you can just run roughshod over nearly everyone. Once you start getting multiple stacks with Waaghs very little can stop you. Remember you can just raid and get fightiness if you need to.
Yeah, you really can pick up a ton of traits as Brittonia it seems compared to the others (though maybe evreyone gets more traits now). Playing Carcassonne (Fey Enchantress) I have ended up the most ridiculously tricked out lord I’ve had yet. Picked up:
+15 leadership when attacking, 50% aura size when attacking
-5 enemy leadership
+20% damage, +10 attack, unbreakable (no morale effects)
And then with various items and skill tree + Bless of the Lady Buff, have
75% physical resist
65% magic resist
90% projectile resist
for an absurd uber tank
late to the dlc argument, but the people willing to pay for DLC are the ones making it worthwhile for the devs to put the stuff in for the people who won’t or can’t pay for the DLC. I’ve never understood people who play the heck out of a game get mad at the people who pay for their game to continue getting better.
Well other games have been exploitative or just annoying. Total War Warhammer is a best case scenario, I can’t imagine anyone getting upset about Creative Assembly’s approach to this.
You’d be surprised. But that’s gamers for you. Entitled to the hilt, I suppose. Kind of bums me out.
But I do agree CA is doing a great job supporting the game with a fine blend of free/small but meaningful/premium DLC and their patching and support has really been on point.
I played Bretonia last night for a couple hours, had a great time, loved the new mechanics unique to the race. Thought to myself, I’m pretty jazzed by the idea this was given to me for free.
I’ve been thinking of trying this out again. I started a campaign at release as the dwarves. The two main things that caused me to stop was that it felt a little too whack-a-mole-ish trying to defend my borders while still expanding and that there were a lot of battles that felt very similar to each other.
I expect that #1 may be able to be mitigated by either better play on my part or picking a different faction.My guess is that #2 is just the nature of Total War games. So if I give it another try, is there any particular faction that may help decrease the things I dislike about the game?
@robc04, in terms of number 2, don’t be shy of using autoresolve. Don’t feel as if you need to play all, or even most, of the battles.
Yeah, when I’m playing solo I tend to save the game and auto-resolve almost every fight. I think the game I won a long campaign (Dwarf faction) I probably played a dozen total fights and auto-resolved … 100 or so. That might not even be hyperbole.
Fight the earliest fights though, to get a sense for your units, and fight at least some of the easier fights to get a sense for tactics, so you know what you are doing with the tough fights or the ones the AI just will not win for you. There have been some of my favorite moments in gaming right here with TW Warhammer where I take a small garrison and actually hold out against a superior force. That shit never gets old.
OK, thanks @KevinC and @Scotch_Lufkin. I’ll try to make better use of auto resolving. I know this won’t make sense to most people, because, well - people should play games the way they get the most out of them, but I’ve always had trouble auto resolving things in games. I have trouble giving up control even when I think it may increase my enjoyment.
Maybe a good plan would be to start how Scott says - play the earliest fights then autoresolve. If I save before the autoresolve then I can always replay the battles where I feel like I could have done much better and then accept those results.
I’ve done just that. I also don’t like the big battles that involve 2-3 armies per side. I’m sure most people love the epic scale of it all, but to me it’s just too many units to manage for me to find it enjoyable (I don’t like making frequent use of pause, which would likely make it more manageable for me).
Other than that, I follow pretty much what Scott said. I play the early battles and get a feel for my units. I play battles whenever I unlock new units and want to experiment with force compositions. Other than that, I’m probably autoresolving 90% of the battles. As you say, they get really samey because, well, they’re the same. Your exact same army is going to attack a settlement garrison dozens of times over the course of a campaign.
That is also exactly how I am. I’m one of the few in Age of Wonders3 who prefer the 1 stack vs 1 stack battles over the larger encounters.