For a non-overhaul approach, the “10 slots in province capitals” mod also helps, as it gives more openings for the AI to get the needed buildings out there.
I started a Bretonnia campaign, about 12 turns in. The auto resolve seems to be less generous than what I’ve seen in videos and heard people talk about. I’m losing a solid 10% of my troops even when the odds are massively in my favor whenever I use it. Not a big deal, but just something that surprised me.
The building options almost seem overwhelming, at least in the capital province. I really have no idea which options to take. Can you build something in one city that requires, say, Fields, but Fields are in a different city in the same province? Or does that build tree require same cities?
Dependencies are all province-based. As an aside, some smaller settlements will have access to unusual/semi-unique buildings so keep an eye out for those.
So there’s that moment when you’re playing on easy and you get hit with 3 full armies on the exact same turn (turn 52). . . .
That sounds unusual, I mean getting hit by a stack doesn’t, but three at once on the same turn does.
Might make a point early on of building whatever is required to get some agents out on the borders of potential rivals who you suspect might be planning such a dastardly move so you’ve got some early warning.
Usually the best defense is a good offense taking out the nearby province that is the likely source of those armies.
It’s the undead and roaming beastmen. The undead sacked Artois south of Bretonnia and I ignored them, focusing instead on building up my province.
I’m with Dwarves, and there is a Waaaghh!! going into my direction. Any hints about how to deal with the green menace?
Keep in mind they can use the underground as well, so if they’re on the march they can reach your cities quicker than you may otherwise imagine.
Fortunately dwarves have same ability, so they can stay with them. When I played the dwarves, which was the first campaign I played in warhammer, I just did what I thought came naturally to them, I expanded pretty slowly, developed out the provinces to increase income to fund more units, took a few more provinces near my starting point so I had a scaled base to work from and then just counter punched them to death.
It’s not like either race being on the other side of the mountains has to worry about, well, pretty much anyone. No chaos, no empire, no vampires (much) - so really it’s just mano a mano w/ the greenskins.
Bottom line: just about every unit the dwarves field are tanks and so I just let the greenies come at me and beat themselves to death
I tried turtling up a bit playing as Bretonnia and let me tell you that doesn’t work so well with that peasant restriction, not unless you want to field very expensive upkeep units which I stupidly did and watched my per-turn income collapse. Learning by baby steps and lots of mistakes.
Might have to give the dwarves a try.
Everyone loves the dwarves (but me) so yea try them out. I think people like them because there’s no funny business about them, just blast em with cannon and get them to attack you.
Yeah, I’m near turn 60 and I can feel the dwarf style, turtling up in their mountains, with good garrisons and using their toughness, projectile weapons and good leadership to win against bigger armies in defensive battles, meanwhile you pass turns, and accumulate more and more money, improving something each time and advancing in your big research tree. The more turns pass while you expand slow but sure, the more you advance in the research tree, and its is bigger than other nation’s research tree so you win an edge against them on the long run. Combine that with raids to loot unprotected enemy settlements from time to time to pay your buildings, and it’s going pretty well.
That’s another thing with Bretonnia, no ransoms for big money. Hits your chivalry. So between that and the peasant restriction I ended up finding that faction harder to play than expected. Probably not the best one to pick for a first-time player.
[quote=“John_Reynolds, post:1271, topic:76263, full:true”]
I tried turtling up a bit playing as Bretonnia and let me tell you that doesn’t work so well with that peasant restriction, not unless you want to field very expensive upkeep units which I stupidly did and watched my per-turn income collapse.[/quote]
I’m playing Brettonia currently, they’ve got some unique game play features that are interesting, but also make them a bit more complicated, and makes it so turtling with them really doesn’t work too well as you’ve come to discover.
-
Income: they’ve got this weird mechanic where every unit is a severe drag on income, so there’s this number tracker in the top nav showing how far below or above you are in unit recruitment before it starts to suck the life out of your economy - this makes early unit recruitment hard, for the initial 5 or so provinces you need to take to form a base to work from you have to do it with one stack
-
Agents and heroes: these can have bonuses that lower the unit costs and make some of them not overly expensive or have no carry charge whatsoever - so you have to pay attention to the buildings you make that allow for agent recruitment because you need them, and you have to pay attention to both agents and heros when they level up that you make some choices that benefit you on costs of units
-
expansion - you can’t really head around the mountains and into empire territory, you need them as a buffer and besides, chaos is coming for everyone eventually, you need them as a buffer, so I headed the other direction and confederated or conquered everyone except the wood elves who I just tried to stay out of a conflict with - net: the starting point for Brettonia is problematic, you will have Chaos and every other northern faction like the Varg coming at you sooner or later (not to mention the beastmen now and again from near wood elves)
-
unit choices - these guys tend to be cav intensive, so unlike empire you can’t just gun your way through everyone, so the player has to be ok using this play style and in battles it’s tougher to use cav properly than line infantry and canons sitting back blowing everything to hell and back
-
province development - since they are chronically short on money i focused every province except one on money generation and the one that didn’t i used for military recruitment, while this isn’t necessarily a different strategy than what you’d use for any faction, with Brettonia and their odd peasant economy it’s even more vital you do this
Sorry for long response, just thought I’d call out a few things I’ve seen in my Brettonia campaign that make them challenging and interesting to play.
Oh, now you tell me. :D
I did a lot of that bulleted list very wrong. I think I’ll abandon that campaign and chock it up as learning pains. Probably give the dwarves a try next.
Yeah, the dwarves do make a good first campaign faction, their defensive character makes them nearly unbreakable on the battlefield and if you start’em slow they build to a nearly insurmountable momentum, and as I mentioned earlier, they don’t have trouble with chaos (who clearly do make some real mischief eventually for both empire and brettonia).
Let us know how the new campaign goes!
Brettonia campaign update (just by way of saying things don’t always go according to plan):
At 800 chivalry I was presented with the option of ridding the world of greenskins or chaos, I chose chaos since they were closer and for my sins I was presented w/ 5 stacks of high level death waving a black banner led by multiple level 22 heroes.
Instead of taking the fight to chaos I’m now fighting a scorched earth orderly retreat after having one entire army just utterly destroyed, I mean just flat out wiped off the face of the earth w/o so much as minor damage done to one unit on the other army. Needless to say, I’ll have to plan a bit better and bring like 2 armies to take this guy on, I guess that’s what you should expect from Archaon the Everchosen and a host made up of high chevron’d battle seasoned troops. Impressive and actually a bit scary.
P.S. This is turn 166, so if you’re ever wondering what chaos turns into if you don’t run into them head on in a campaign for say 100 turns (I’d only taken some glancing blows from chaos’ first appearance around turn 100), suffice it to say when they show up for real they come prepared (and you better be too). And two different vampire factions have joined in the fun, the varg are wandering around causing trouble with a couple stacks, all told, the world has just completely gone up in smoke for the armies of good. haha
I’ve sent The Lady to pound snow across the pond and squash some Varg. It’s slow going. Wood Elves get bitchy sometimes and send an army out, then we make peace and go back to being frenemies. Chaos is harder for Bretonnia because the AI makes giant stupid stacks of Trolls and Chariots, which in a multiplayer game would be hilarious, and Bretonnia does have plenty of tools for knocking that about, but in reality, have a hard time getting all the tech, buildings required, and skills necessary to field a nice army of spearmen/anti-large cav. I’ve killed off Mousillon, knocked Tilea about and then asked for peace, an offense they’ve never forgiven me for and now send stacks to raid me over in that former Estalia region, but whatevs, got bigger fish.
One question, you can only trade with your physical neighbours? I noticed I only can trade with two dwarven brothers, the others say I I can’t trace a path to their capital, but I should able to through the lands of said two friendly AIs. Is there an alliance level that allows for my ‘caravans’ to travel through their lands?
Nope, which is why any faction without a port is pretty well boned when it comes to trade.