Total War: Warhammer

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NickAragua
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by NickAragua »

What have you played so far, other than the vampire counts?

I've played through as the empire, bretonnians and dabbled in dwarves and orks.

Bretonnians are pretty interesting - your melee infantry units are just awful, and if you have too many then you start taking economic penalties. Their archers aren't bad, especially the upgraded version with poison/fire arrows. Your main firepower is cavalry, which is great until you have to do a siege. Since storming walls with crappy infantry is a non-starter, your best bet is to bring catapults to make breaches and soften up the guys on the walls, then send in the cavalry. I learned a lot about hit-and-run while playing as these guys. There's only one "natural enemy" in the area, that being Mousillon - other than that, to expand, you either need to start beef with the border princes to the south or head north and start picking on the empire. Or, I guess, send your guys north and take over the Norsca area, but that's a huge pain in the ass with all the attrition.
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GreenGoo
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by GreenGoo »

Just the counts. I have a save game from when I first bought it that is Greenskins, but I don't remember anything about it and I never got far in any case. This is the longest/farthest game for me at this point.
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Blackhawk
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Blackhawk »

Lesse, you're finishing a faction with no morale issues, no ranged, great infantry, average cavalry, and meh artillery.

My votes would be:
Bretonnia - Best cavalry anywhere, lots of ranged, so-so artillery, poor infantry, morale issues. If you play them, make sure you read up on managing cavalry and their charge bonuses, plus which cavalry is meant to sit and fight and which is meant to charge in, hit, run away, and charge back in.
Empire - Middle of the line. Decent everything, not amazing anything. No huge strengths, but no glaring weaknesses. That means you get a little of everything.
Greenskins - Extremely aggressive army with great monsters and huge numbers. Low morale in some cases, but particularly easy to rally (they run, but they always come back.) Lots of variety and fun theme.
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NickAragua
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by NickAragua »

The Empire is your basic "infantry-archers-cavalry" faction, with plenty of confederation options and potential trading partners. Their main twist is that most of their ranged infantry have firearms, meaning they fire in a straight line. So you can't stick them behind your melee infantry like you can do with elves or whatever. However, if you engage the enemy with melee infantry then get your riflemen out to the side, the flank attack is devastating. Cavalry is average, and there are almost no flying units to speak of. The empire will also bear the brunt of the chaos invasion.

Orks, I don't have much experience with.

Dwarves are, as you'd expect, all about camping out in place and whaling on approaching enemies with artillery and firearms. They almost never rout and are tough as nails, but, unlike the other factions, you have no cavalry, so you can't really run down escaping enemies. They do have a couple of flying units. They'll mostly be fighting orks, but vampires (as you've discovered) are also a common enemy. Chaos doesn't come up to the mountains much.

So if you like maneuver warfare, try Empire or Bretonnians. If you like turtling, Dwarves are good. If you want to head into the unknown, then it's time for a good old fashioned WAAAAAGH!
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GreenGoo
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by GreenGoo »

Blackhawk wrote: Wed Apr 03, 2019 12:34 pm Lesse, you're finishing a faction with no morale issues, no ranged, great infantry, average cavalry, and meh artillery.

My votes would be:
Bretonnia - Best cavalry anywhere, lots of ranged, so-so artillery, poor infantry, morale issues. If you play them, make sure you read up on managing cavalry and their charge bonuses, plus which cavalry is meant to sit and fight and which is meant to charge in, hit, run away, and charge back in.
Empire - Middle of the line. Decent everything, not amazing anything. No huge strengths, but no glaring weaknesses. That means you get a little of everything.
Greenskins - Extremely aggressive army with great monsters and huge numbers. Low morale in some cases, but particularly easy to rally (they run, but they always come back.) Lots of variety and fun theme.
Once I had blood Knights all I did was cycle charges. Well, that was a constant anyway. Vampires really have some tanky monsters, great anti-infantry infantry and I hear nothing but good things about blood knights (to me they seemed a bit fragile, if you can believe it. I didn't *always* charge them right into spears :wink: I stopped using black knights as soon as blood knights were available. Black knights were brittle! ). Vargheists are like flying shock troops. Barring extreme forms of missile fire, they could rear charge almost anything.

I might try the greenskins. One thing I didn't do that I would do differently next time is be more aggressive. Of course I'm gonna bump the difficult up a notch so being more aggressive might be a mistake (for me). Trying to take walls from dwarfs was insane. I literally just bashed my way in and waited for them to come down where my monsters and knights to get at them. Trying to take dwarf walls with grave guards was an exercise in grinding everyone to dust, including myself.

I'm just not a fan of human races in games like this (including 4x's). I might try bretonnia but missile cavalry seems really fiddly and probably expensive.

I need a faction with at least one unit that is crazy good, even if it's crazy expensive. I don't want to have a lot of money with the greenskins and nothing to spend it on, with an army of subpar gits, at least compared to other factions elite units.

Oh, and the game seems to give all ai factions access to the DLC units, so that's a fun way to apply pressure to buy. Nothing like going up against some crazy OP elite unit with rookie vargheists, for example.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by GreenGoo »

Total War stuff on sale at Humble Bundle. Not sure it's cheap enough for me though. 12 bucks for the beastman dealie, 4-5 bucks a race, 2 bucks a leader. Those are sales prices. Imo they are too high for regular pricing, let alone sale prices, but I guess people are willing to pay it.

Chaos as a playable race is only 4 bucks. Wood Elves are 10. I might be able to let go of 15 bucks. Heh. Maybe. Items are sitting in my cart waiting for a decision, which I will make...later.
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NickAragua
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by NickAragua »

From what I read, Norsca are fun. I bought Chaos but never even started it. I haven't read anything good about Beastmen.

I enjoyed playing as the wood elves, but it's pretty tough and there's a lot of maneuver warfare involved. But their ranged units are unbelievably good. And also, they play a lot different than many of the other races - you only build "regular" cities in the big forest, everything outside is small expendable outposts.
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Blackhawk
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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I was getting absolutely stomped as the wood elves until I read some tips. The main thing I've discovered is that they expand by diplomacy. They only start with one city, and can't conquer others the regular way. But once they upgrade the Great Oak and can confederate, they can add the cities of the other wood elf factions. And each of those cities has more build slots an oomph than some whole regions for other races. So I've been locking down my borders and keeping my armies at home for defense while doing research and making allies with the strongest factions that will have me. Each ally automatically gives me bonus resources. So either I've figured out the secret to the wood elves, or I'm falling way behind the other factions and am about to get curb-stomped.
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GreenGoo
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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Finally got around to finishing off the Empire, which gave me the short campaign victory. I've whittled the dwarfs down from 33 settlements to 15, but those 15 are all in the badlands. With no way to recover lost units down there, it will be an absolute slog to kill them off. Especially since they have a number of well fortified settlements, and taking those is always a grind, meaning losses, meaning running all the way back north to recover, then raiding my way down south again so I don't attrition before slogging through another settlement. 15 times seems...daunting. I have like 10 full armies so I guess I could kill 5-7 settlements before having to run North again, but man. On the other hand, I am unlikely to ever do a long campaign again, so this is the closest I ever likely to be to a long campaign victory. Not finishing it off seems wasteful.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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My wood elf campaign is nearing its completion. Early on was a learning curve, as I usually play more warlike races, and the wood elves conquer through diplomacy. I was weak, and I was broke. I couldn't take over any settlements (wood elves simply aren't capable), leaving me with only one. But the wood elves have a short tech tree, and you quickly research techs that give you +40 Diplomacy with one faction at a time. Once you get to the end of the branch, you get another that gives +30 to all factions. That's a +70 Diplomacy to every faction in the game. I'm sitting at a full military alliance with all of the Empire, Dwarf, and Brettonian factions, and could easily add the southern provinces, greenskins, and undead if I had the urge. And by the time that happened, I had upgraded my great oak (the central resource/settlement/gimmick) enough that I could confederate with other wood elf factions. It apparently has them set so high that they're almost guaranteed to accept, too. It took about 12 turns to go from one wood elf city to four, and each wood elf city has 10 building slots - more than some whole provinces.

Now I'm sitting on a +5,000 income, three full armies, a lord in every one of my settlements, and 100,000 in unused currency. I've mostly been fighting the vampire counts, with the occasional beastmen incursion to push back.

At this point I'm sitting with my great oak at level 4/5, and I have 11 of the 12 amber I need to max it out, which triggers the endgame option for wood elves.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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I'm currently playing a Wood Elf campaign as well. My approach for dealing with the early weakness was to raze a couple of cities for the cash rather than seeding them and trying to defend them. That gave me a large enough nest egg that I was able to beef up my forces and run with a negative cash flow for an indefinite amount of time.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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Max Peck wrote: Thu Apr 11, 2019 1:41 am I'm currently playing a Wood Elf campaign as well. My approach for dealing with the early weakness was to raze a couple of cities for the cash rather than seeding them and trying to defend them. That gave me a large enough nest egg that I was able to beef up my forces and run with a negative cash flow for an indefinite amount of time.
What I did was keep an extra general nearby with no troops. I'd raze it when my army took it, then have the solo general follow up and colonize it. It usually razed for twice as much as it cost to colonize and rebuild. And since I was colonizing with a solo general, it didn't draw on any troops. After the first few outposts, I quickly made peace with and then allied with all of the Brettonian factions with the exception of Carcassone (doing so would have pissed off my other allies), then rushed toward the techs that give you Diplomacy with the Empire and Brettonia. As soon as they were my allies I had a buffer against invaders. I also powered toward the buildings that let you put a treeman into the council allowing trade with non-wood elves, which helped finances considerably. Before too long I had full military alliances going with Brettonia and the Empire, which took care of my money needs, plus gave me probably 20-30 amber.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Max Peck »

Oooh, I never thought to do that lone-general approach to colonization. I'll have to give that a shot. It seems especially useful for Wood Elves, since there is really no advantage to taking a settlement intact, given that you don't get to take advantage of most of the buildings anyway.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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The main thing about the lone-general approach is that it takes a lot more money to colonize a razed settlement than it does if you have a full stack. So you're basically trading money for time spent sitting there, regenerating.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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Max Peck wrote: Thu Apr 11, 2019 11:41 am Oooh, I never thought to do that lone-general approach to colonization. I'll have to give that a shot. It seems especially useful for Wood Elves, since there is really no advantage to taking a settlement intact, given that you don't get to take advantage of most of the buildings anyway.
I was not aware. I'd probably bring a stack, then, too.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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Right, use the cheapest, most numerous spear infantry. No colonizing with elites. :D
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Freyland »

NickAragua wrote: Thu Apr 11, 2019 12:15 pm Right, use the cheapest, most numerous spear infantry. No colonizing with elites. :D
That makes sense in theory, but in reality efficiency rarely allows such luxuries. Normally armies are mixed with various troops, and I can't imagine taking the time to trudge another army away from their front to colonize something, nor can I, as modded dwarves, choose to field an army just for colonizing. Heck, I often times don't have the luxury of using the province edict that makes buildings cheaper because I unexpectedly have the money *now* and I don't want to lose a building turn to wait for the edict to turn over to the new one.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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NickAragua wrote: Thu Apr 11, 2019 12:15 pm Right, use the cheapest, most numerous spear infantry. No colonizing with elites. :D
What difference would that make? Recovery/healing/whateveritscalled is percentage based, isn't it? Unless you mean something about not using small units/single units due to colonization costs being tied to total army population, rather than the number of units in the army?
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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The principle is that a) basic spearmen unit types tend to have larger unit sizes and b) cost a lot less in maintenance. I'm pretty sure the cost of re-colonizing a settlement depends on the number of individuals in the re-colonizing army, but I could be wrong. Either way, b) still holds. So if you actually have a dedicated engineering corps stack, it's cheaper to use peasants than "grand knights of the eagle order" or whatever.

In practice, I don't do that, either, precisely because of what Freyland said. My armies need to be out killing things, not sitting around settlements waiting to regenerate. So I usually eat the cost of re-building from scratch with a spare lord or don't bother with razing/re-settling at all.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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When I was migrating to more advanced troops I was somewhat reluctant to disband units that had combat experience, which meant I created an army just to move all my bats and spearmen to so that the leaders with lots of levels could fit more advanced troops. So for a short time I used that army to colonize. I also had some concerns that individual models had their own experience, meaning that colonizing resulted in newbies replacing the vets that disappeared. I've since stopped caring (although I think my theory is wrong) so now I just colonize with whatever is nearby. Saving turns is WAY more important to me than any other resource in the game at this point. That's not always the case though, especially early on, so I can understand having a colonizing strategy can be effective.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Freyland »

Merging less experienced troops with more experienced troops will possibly affect rank. Healing will not.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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Ok, wood elf campaign is done in 160 turns. They're a very different experience for me, as I tend to play defensive armies with a lot of armor and artillery, forcing the enemy to stroll through barrages of arrows and boulders, only to smash into an immovable front line. It was interesting playing a race that had no artillery and had to maneuver constantly. I really had to improve my game.

I think I'll catch my breath for a little while, but I'd still like to see how the lizardmen, tomb kings, and the vampire coast play (although I don't have the vampire coast DLC yet.) I'd also like to try the greenskins at some point.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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Blackhawk wrote: Thu Apr 11, 2019 4:21 pm Ok, wood elf campaign is done in 160 turns.
I'm approaching something like 350 turns in my Vampire game. I think there are 8 dwarf settlements left, 2 of which are actually in the mountains rather than the badlands. Now this is the long campaign victory conditions but it's still unreasonably long. It's essentially my first game though so I had a lot to learn. I still only have something like 10 armies while my income is over 30k a turn, meaning I could have sped this up long ago with more armies. I might actually top 1 million in the bank before this is over.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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killed all dwarfs finally.

Started Greenskins with Grimgor on hard.
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