Total War: Warhammer

Toe · Post by **Toe** » Sat Nov 19, 2016 1:40 am

The way they release DLC makes it hard to not just sit on the fence for 6 months-year or so and wait till it all gets released for a reasonable price together.

Little Raven · Post by **Little Raven** » Sat Nov 19, 2016 3:10 am

Yeah, except that this game is SO GOOD that I preorder everything. I want them to keep making more.

Freyland · Post by **Freyland** » Sat Nov 19, 2016 12:55 pm

I'm in the "Sooo good" department as well, closing in on a thousand hours of play time, all of which is from after midnight (so, lost that much sleep? Yikes!). Using the SteelFaith overhaul mod, which addresses vanilla game weakness quite nicely. Btw as a reminder, you don't have to buy the dlc to have the races in your game as opponents, just if you want to play them yourself or the associated mini-campaigns.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Wed Nov 30, 2016 2:57 pm

I've been messing around with the new Clan Angrund start in the last DLC and enjoying it, although I think I got unlucky and am facing my doom soon.

They start in a really rough position with their capital in the Vaults west of the Border Princes. They have to deal with Greenskins holding most of their starting province as well as the Crooked Moon a little farther to the north. They also have a nasty penalty that until they take Karak Eight Peaks, their unit upkeep is at +50%. That means not only do they have to hold their ground initially, but they also have to try to take Karak Eight Peaks with only a single stack, or maybe with a second weak stack if you really push it.

The only big advantages they have are that their lord is pretty strong, plus they also start with 4 spectral heroes who even start above level 1 and don't cost upkeep. That means even though they generally only have one stack, that one stack hits way above it's weight between their lord's bonuses and the heroes.

I'm about 50 turns in and I've managed to secure all the Dwarven kingdoms in the west, and defeat the Crooked Moon, but unfortunately for me the Dwarves are in the process of being crushed by about 3 and a half stacks of Greenskins. I sent my army to try to help on the front and make a stab for 8 Peaks if I can, but I'm heavily outnumbered now, and orcs are besieging the Dwarven capital. I know I can beat any of their armies handily one on one, but it's going to just be a matter of me moving fast enough to try to engage them piece meal and not let them mass up after they take the last Dwarven settlements.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Thu Dec 01, 2016 11:42 am

Managed to get a couple more turns in last night before bed and, while not exactly coming up roses, I do have some hope.

The orcs have been besieging and sacking the dwarven capital and surrounding provinces raking in some huge money for a few turns, but in that time I raised a second army of quarrelers and infantry, and now my two stacks are marching north to try to beat the huge Greenskin army. I also had the first battle against them when Grimgor tried to use tunnels near my main army and I intercepted him.

Grimgor himself did some damage to me, and nearly took down one of my thanes, but I managed to rout and crush his army which helped even the odds quite a bit. There are still 3 partial orc armies that are keeping close together I'll need to contend with, as well as the thousands of gold the orcs got sacking the Dwarven capital, but at least if I can get my two armies up there I've got a shot at breaking the back of the orcish horde.

Freyland · Post by **Freyland** » Fri Dec 02, 2016 2:18 pm

Remember that the skill, "Lightening Strike" will allow you to hit a single army with that leader's army, regardless of reinforcements*.

*Not completely true; each level of the skill protects you from closer reinforcements than the last level, but honestly I've never had a time where I couldn't use the skill successfully.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Fri Dec 02, 2016 3:19 pm

Freyland wrote:Remember that the skill, "Lightening Strike" will allow you to hit a single army with that leader's army, regardless of reinforcements*.

*Not completely true; each level of the skill protects you from closer reinforcements than the last level, but honestly I've never had a time where I couldn't use the skill successfully.

Thanks, I always forget about lightning strike and I probably should have grabbed it sooner, but then I hadn't run into any multi-stack armies until I started engaging the Greenskins.

I'm pretty confident if I can bring the Greenskins to battle I'll win, but they've stated to counter my large army by sending out stacks that are just strong enough to take undefended cities to start harassing my rear. My older dwarven holds are all well forified, but the lands around Barak Varr I just liberated are ripe for the taking.

Hopefully I'll have some time to dig into it a little more this weekend.

Cortilian · Post by **Cortilian** » Thu Dec 22, 2016 3:36 pm

Currently 15% of on the Steam Sale. Any chance it will drop lower than that?

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Thu Dec 22, 2016 5:31 pm

I show 25% off.

Lorini · Post by **Lorini** » Thu Dec 22, 2016 6:07 pm

None of the DLC is on sale sadly.

$iljanus · Post by **$iljanus** » Thu Dec 22, 2016 6:20 pm

Lorini wrote:None of the DLC is on sale sadly.

Darn, but I can wait for the all the DLC you can eat sale in the summer...well hopefully there's a sale like that.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Fri Jan 06, 2017 9:28 pm

I started my first game as the Dwarves. I conquered the starting region, then moved on to the next region. By the time I'd conquered one of the settlements there, an ally had taken one of the others. I took the main town in that region (giving me only two of the three), and by the time I'd rebuilt my army, my allies had taken every single nearby settlement, leaving me with nothing to conquer. Since I only own five locations, I'm weak enough that the other dwarves won't consider joining a confederation.

ydejin · Post by **ydejin** » Fri Jan 06, 2017 11:53 pm

Blackhawk wrote:I started my first game as the Dwarves. I conquered the starting region, then moved on to the next region. By the time I'd conquered one of the settlements there, an ally had taken one of the others. I took the main town in that region (giving me only two of the three), and by the time I'd rebuilt my army, my allies had taken every single nearby settlement, leaving me with nothing to conquer. Since I only own five locations, I'm weak enough that the other dwarves won't consider joining a confederation.

There should be lots of Orcs further south of you, past the other Dwarven kingdoms. It's definitely not ideal. Since you'll be operating farther from your main base. But I can't imagine they all would have gotten wiped out by the AI factions, even by the middle of the game. It would be best if you were to gain military access from any Dwarven kingdoms you need to travel though, otherwise they'll give you a diplomatic penalty, which will make it harder to confederate with them later.

There's also nothing preventing you from attacking other Dwarves, although I've never had to resort to that with the Dwarves, and it may trigger other Dwarven factions to dislike you. I contrast with the Empire there's constant squabbling and fighting with other Empire factions and in fact in my experience you spend the early and mid-game mostly fighting other humans.

If you find out who the other Dwarves are fighting and join in the war, that will also boost your diplomatic standing with them.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Sat Jan 14, 2017 8:42 pm

I finished the long campaign as the Dwarves. If I had to do it over, I'd have stopped after achieving the short, as the long was just busywork at that point. Every enemy faction was either wiped out or reduced to irrelevance by the point I started on claiming three ruins and leveling one hero to finish the long version.

Now, to start again. Vampire counts or Empire, I think. I played the first one vanilla. I may take a look at the top mods and see if any of them are worth a spin.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Sat Jan 14, 2017 10:31 pm

I've barely scratched the surface of this game, but I'd love to know if there are good mods that deepen it.

Freyland · Post by **Freyland** » Sun Jan 15, 2017 12:10 pm

Steel Faith Overhaul. Lore-friendly mod that really improves gameplay. Very frequent updates. *Not* a unit mod; he added to variants to units already in the game but otherwise is avoiding adding units to avoid "diluting the pool", and feels CA will do a better job introducing units in the future anyways. Don't suggest running other mod's unit packs with this as the newly added units will not be balanced with all the changes he has made.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Sun Jan 15, 2017 1:41 pm

Freyland wrote:Steel Faith Overhaul.

Thanks! I'll take a look at it, although I'm usually very hesitant about overhauls. In my experience they tend to be made by people who are experts at the game and balanced at their own skill levels. His descriptions of ramped up Chaos and Savage Orc depredations, for instance.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Tue Jan 17, 2017 11:51 am

I'll give it a look too!

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Tue Jan 17, 2017 9:18 pm

When are they going to add Skaven...

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Tue Jan 17, 2017 10:39 pm

Probably this year.

Beastmen were in July, Wood Elves were last month.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Wed Jan 18, 2017 12:08 am

I'm hoping to see the High Elves. They were my first Warhammer army I ever completed, and the first full army I ever had fully painted.

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Wed Jan 18, 2017 1:08 am

Blackhawk wrote:I'm hoping to see the High Elves. They were my first Warhammer army I ever completed, and the first full army I ever had fully painted.

Same here. Loved me some High Elves. Especially with Second Edition (or was it Third?) magic.

Edit: It was 4th. Sheesh. They say D&D is bad with all of its editions!

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Wed Jan 18, 2017 1:43 am

I started running the with High Elves with 4th, too (I started playing with 3rd.) That's probably because 4th came with a great core for the army. I took a break after 5th when the game had devolved into a duel of wizards that just happened to have some troops nearby for scorekeeping.

D&D puts out a new edition when the industry changes or enough supplemental material has accrued to justify consolidation. Warhammer puts out a new edition every time all of the core customers have finished purchasing their armies and the cash flow starts to ebb.

Then again, there is Age of Sigmar, which is the new 'reboot' of the series and is... I don't know what.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Wed Jan 18, 2017 7:16 pm

Wow. I was making good progress with the Empire campaign, then within a period of about three or four turns, Chaos appeared and every single faction on the map declared war on me. Ugh.

Freyland · Post by **Freyland** » Thu Jan 19, 2017 1:06 pm

So you are Empire, Chaos appears, and everyone declares war on you? Even nations you were having good relations with? Something is off, because typically when Chaos shows up, the "good" nations get a relationship bonus ("shield of something or another), which quickly breaks down when Chaos is fully defeated.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Thu Jan 19, 2017 2:36 pm

Not every one. I had a treaty with one of the Imperial nations just north of me that held, but the Wood Elves, the Dwarves (like two of the three I've met), and about four other Imperial nations all turned hostile all at once, plus all of the Brettonian factions.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Thu Jan 19, 2017 3:11 pm

Wow. Two more turns. Now at 51. The Wood Elves just walked into my southern border with two 20-stacks. They razed one of my two southern towns in on the turn they appeared (the defending army was wiped out by 1 enemy tree monster, causing exactly 7 casualties to the enemy), assassinated all of the heroes in my main army with assassins so high that the system won't even let me attempt to assassinate them back, and dropped the other army onto my besieging army that was one turn away from taking over a province, forcing me to retreat.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Thu Jan 19, 2017 3:25 pm

I rolled back about 20 turns and will try something else entirely. Hopefully the Wood Elves won't come and roll me again.

Freyland · Post by **Freyland** » Fri Jan 20, 2017 6:34 pm

Are you using Vanilla or modded? Really encourage the Steel Faith Overhaul

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Fri Jan 20, 2017 7:12 pm

Freyland wrote:Are you using Vanilla or modded? Really encourage the Steel Faith Overhaul

The one that makes the Vampire Lords and Chaos even tougher?

Freyland · Post by **Freyland** » Fri Jan 20, 2017 9:06 pm

Well, yes. But I've not seen the behavior you described above, and the wood elves don't tend to go rampaging across the countryside. Playing on normal isn't terrible, I promise. I'm no TW veteran and I usually play on hard nowadays.

ydejin · Post by **ydejin** » Fri Jan 20, 2017 10:34 pm

Freyland wrote:Well, yes. But I've not seen the behavior you described above, and the wood elves don't tend to go rampaging across the countryside. Playing on normal isn't terrible, I promise. I'm no TW veteran and I usually play on hard nowadays.

My experience is similar. Playing a full campaign with the Empire after Elves were released, the Elves would wander around with a very large stack on the Empire side of the Grey Mountains. They would ignore the fact that they were completely violating my borders (and they didn't particularly seem to like me, and all attempts to create treaties with them failed). But they never attacked me. In fact, I'm not really quite sure what they were doing. They did seem to attack any Beastmen armies they came across, but other than that -- I'm not really sure what their objective was. They did manage to capture one of the Middenheim settlements, presumably from Toddbringer, which really annoyed me, because once I had confederated with Middenheim, I didn't have a full province. But other than that, they mostly just wandered around.

I played an Elf campaign (not yet finished, but I think around turn 100) and the other main Elf faction seems to be doing something similar -- big stack wandering around the Empire side of the Grey Mountains doing not much of anything.

On the other hand, like Blackhawk, I did have several factions declare war on me right after Chaos showed up, which seemed very odd. It wasn't until much later in the Chaos invasion, I started to get Chaos Invasion diplomacy bonuses and everyone started getting very friendly.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Sat Jan 21, 2017 1:57 pm

I'm hating the Vampire Counts with a passion. Any time they attack one of my settlements, it is a guaranteed loss unless I have an army in there. They just fly a terror unit past me and my entire army runs away. Every time.

Any attempt to retake it cripples my army with attrition.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Sat Jan 21, 2017 2:14 pm

And I just made an attempt to besiege a VC castle. They immediately sortied, flew four Vargeist units over my army, and my entire force just ran away while their troops ran us down. I had them outnumbered, outclassed, and had a balanced army. I lost 1,000, they lost 200. I have no counter, and Chaos is on their way.

/edit - and that was after I killed the VC leader. All I had to do was hold my numerically larger force against theirs for a few minutes while they dissolved.

Any tips?

baelthazar · Post by **baelthazar** » Sat Jan 21, 2017 3:12 pm

My first campaign was as the VC. I spent several hours trying to totally understand their mechanics, but ended up not exactly grokking the way they work. They seem to be reliant on extremely fragile but easy to replace and cheap troops, supplemented by a few very expensive specialty units. They also seem to be pretty reliant on hero magic. Their ranged units are pretty terrible but they also can run without too much trouble.

What was difficult to fully understand was their creeping attrition prevention stuff. Like Chaos, you have to prep your invasion with agents who spread undeath to places to avoid massive attrition. I was not exactly sure the best way to spread it other than the rare agents you get. The Empire also ripped through my armies with far smaller armies (although I basically overwhelmed them). I almost won a massive siege of the Imperial capital, but the empire's allies managed to strike at my heartland and I had put too many resources into my invasion of the empire to put up much of a defense.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Sun Jan 22, 2017 8:18 pm

The Steel Faith mod looks very impressive.

Does anyone know how it compares to the Radious mod for Warhammer? As total overhauls go, it seems to be the most subscribed.

Freyland · Post by **Freyland** » Mon Jan 23, 2017 11:27 am

SFO is designed to be very Lore-friendly, and truer to the tabletop game. I have not played Radius, so please note this statement is second-hand info, but what I have read now 3-4 times is that the Radius mod adds lots of units (some not even in the Lore) that tends to dilute the differences between the factions.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Mon Jan 23, 2017 11:39 am

Maybe Radious' changes are based less on Warhammer and more on what's been done to improve previous Total War games? I believe versions of the mod have been done for earlier titles.

I've played around just a little bit with Steel Faith, and I like what I see so far.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Wed Jan 25, 2017 9:42 pm

Well, I've finished the Empire long campaign as well. The secret to beating the Vampire Counts turned out to be making much, much heavier use of agents in assassinating the leader in every army they brought onto the field and eliminating their garrisons through sabotage.

By the time the big stacks of Chaos hit the field, my two assassins were so capable (and had so many good followers) that they were able to drop the Chaos lords before I engaged their armies. One tip I found that proved invaluable was to ignore the north early on. I built my core in the south, then pushed east to take care of the Vampire Counts. Chaos appeared in the middle of that process, but they were so preoccupied with the northern Imperial factions that they rarely made it into my demesne, giving me time to further strengthen my position. When they did show up, I'd made alliances with nearly every non-Imperial faction except the Wood Elves, so I just kept the Chaos armies' extra stacks busy with my allies (war target system) while my assassins sniped their lords.

Once I'd mopped up the Beastmen armies, the north was in ruins, so all I had to do was march single unit stacks around and colonize them all. I only had two problems at the end. One was the northern raiders, which were more of a pain in the ass than a real threat. The other was the Dwarves. By the time Chaos was gone, they'd confederated every other Dwarf faction save one. They then called on our alliance and demanded that I declare war on the Wood Elves, which would have been disastrous for me, as I had all of my armies tied up in the north.

I told them no.

They disliked that, to the tune of probably -200 diplomacy points, and my staunches allies had turned and declared war on me within four turns. Moral of the story: Don't piss off the Dwarves.

Luckily I finished in the north and won the campaign before they became a problem.

I think I'll play something else for a while and let Warhammer sit idle until I can afford the Wood Elves DLC (or something else comes along.) When that happens, I may give it a whirl with a gameplay mod.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Feb 27, 2017 7:26 pm

Got this as part of the humble bundle subscription. I payed around $11.50/mo for 3 months.

So far Xcom 2 and Total War: Warhammer have been the hallmark titles. Awesome.

I'm pretty sure you can buy the game outright on humble bundle for somewhere around 8 bucks right now as well.