Total War: Warhammer

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Blackhawk
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Blackhawk »

I had one hell of a time with the Vampire Counts for a while. They'd just send a few units of fliers toward my army and my entire force would route without getting an attack in, even if I outnumbered the enemy forces 4:1.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by NickAragua »

Had one last battle against "Templehof" last night. My army stack vs two of theirs plus town garrison. Normally, I wouldn't even contemplate fighting at such odds but, check out the lineup:

Me: 4x swordsmen, 4x halberdiers/shield spearmen/spearmen, 3x Reiksguard, 4x crossbows, 1x handgunners, 1x mortar, 1x pegasus lord (Emperor Karl Franz), 1x jade wizard with beaucoup bomb spells.
Enemy: Army consists of about 80% skeleton scrubs, backed up by a town garrison with mixed slightly heavier infantry, a pair of flyer units and some big/fast guys. Plus two leaders.

Instead of attacking the castle, I choose to attack one of the armies stacked up outside the castle (that way, I don't have to fight the towers at the same time). I line up my guys in a convex arc facing the enemy formation, just barely within mortar range. Crossbows just behind the front line, handgunners up front. Reiksguard on both flanks. Emperor Karl Franz front and center due to his large command radius to a) help knock out enemy heroes and big guys and b) prevent the line from routing.

Because we're within mortar range, even though the enemy is technically on defense, they move towards me anyway. It's smarter than staying put and getting pounded to bits by the mortar, but charging towards my guys causes the enemy force to become strung out and separated from the reinforcements. And, again, it's mostly skeletons. My ranged units put a solid dent in the densely packed enemy formations and then they reach my line and get stuck in. My wizard zaps them but good with his combo area attack/area heal spells while the emperor works on the leader. As usual, Reiksguard charge around the flanks and nail the enemy line from behind once they're engaged with my front line. I still have to keep a close eye on enemy reinforcements, as a second large group of skeletons, flyers and fast moving ghouls closes in. Before they get there, I have the Reiksguard disengage so they don't get sandwiched and let the bad guys pile in. There are actually enough skeletons trying to pile on to my front line that I can still fire the mortar at them and not really risk hitting my own guys. Thanks to the emperor's leadership, the front line doesn't rout and the first enemy general dies.

In come the fliers, going right over my infantry line and disrupting my crossbows, while fast moving ghouls go around the side. As my infantry is mostly occupied with skeletons, I have to do some juggling - crossbows cover each other while the Reiksguard need to kite the ghouls. One of my Reiksguard groups gets sandwiched while I'm paying attention to the other one, so I send in my wizard (on horseback) to try to bail them out. Big mistake - the wizard gets caught in the middle of the melee and routed. While being routed, he suddenly loses about half his health and gets completely broken (but thankfully survives). The emperor really saves my bacon by flying back and forth to bail out units that are in trouble and taking out some big guys. To be honest, I don't know how much longer my troops would have lasted - the skeletons and zombies kept piling in while I had basically committed all my reinforcements and still wasn't quite done dealing with the flanking forces on one flank. Then, suddenly, as I'm executing a charge with the exhausted Reiksguard, I get a "victory is within your grasp" popup, all the undead banners start glowing and then the rotting bastards fall apart.

I can just picture everybody breathing a sigh of relief.

The emperor levels up and now has a Gryphon. We still lose a bunch of guys attacking the actual castle, but no matter - that's the last of the vampires. I really don't need these jerkwads hanging around in my back field.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Blackhawk »

Killing those generals is a great tactic against the Vampire Counts. Depending on composition, I'd devote my resources to doing just that. I kept a hero with Leadership bonuses to stay with the troops so I could use Karl Franz as a hero-hunter (and I built him with that in mind.) As soon as an enemy general would get in range, all of my missile units plus my Bright wizard would focus fire him. After a minute or so of that I'd shift them back to my troops, have Karl Franz pop any bonuses he had and land right on top of the poor bastard. I'd keep my front line full of spear-and-shield for the defense. Once the enemy general went down, it was just a matter of holding the line and minimizing casualties until they fell apart.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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Yeah, I'm still not entirely sure what causes the undead to disintegrate randomly like that. Is it just when the general panics or something? Because I've had fights where the general is still alive and kicking but suddenly everyone starts blinking and poof!
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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NickAragua wrote:Yeah, I'm still not entirely sure what causes the undead to disintegrate randomly like that. Is it just when the general panics or something? Because I've had fights where the general is still alive and kicking but suddenly everyone starts blinking and poof!
It is Leadership. Undead don't route, but if their Leadership drops to the point where other troops would flee, they start taking damage instead. It represents that they're being magically animated by the sheer will of their leader. Killing the general essentially nullifies their Leadership instantly, but you can lower it other ways, too.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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The vampires did me one last solid before fading into the night. Two parts of Western Sylvania were occupied by "Averheim", a somewhat recalcitrant ally of mine. Kept refusing to confederate and kept trying to drag me into wars with dwarves that I didn't want at all. Then, lo and behold, I notice their public order tanking, which means rebel vampire armies! Now, I could have been a good ally and helped those towns out. Or... I could let the vampire rebels raze them to the ground (turning the areas neutral) then have my guys re-settle the ruins.

Pro tip: don't use your main combat army to re-settle a ruined town. Five turns of unit reinforcement is no joke.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Blackhawk »

I kept a single leader with a stack of one unit of spear to run around and resettle for me.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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Last night, I had an amusing little diplomacy moment. Some dwarf jackasses from across the map keep asking me for a military alliance. I look at their diplomacy status and they're at war with the wood elves AND the mostly confederated Bretonnia. I imagine the Emperor's response was something like "Look - I've got three Chaos armies that have just plowed through Kislev and are besieging my northern border, two armies of Beastmen rampaging across my inner territory sacking towns, my eastern buffer Dwarf allies have gotten annihilated by Orks who are now pouring out of every mountain pass and orifice in the eastern mountains and on top of it all I'm still trying to stabilize public order in Western Sylvania. And you want me to start a new war with the elves AND bretonnians?" :roll:

Then they probably add me to the book of grudges, but, frankly, I don't care because they're going to get themselves killed anyway.

The good part is that I was able to crush the Beastmen, sack + raze a bunch of Ork cities and settlements and fight the Chaos force to a standstill up north near Bechafen. Now, the emperor's main army is heading north to join up with the decimated secondary army and wipe the chaos scum out, while I slowly raise a third army of higher-tier units featuring "Balthazar Gelt" as a leader, since I've gotten the Battle Wizard Academy up. Oh yeah, and we're going to crank out a Bright Wizard for some serious fireball action. Once we crush the Chaos guys, it's "just" a matter of securing the four remaining empire faction holdouts, of which there are four left (Ostermark confederated quite willingly thanks to their capital being under siege by Kislev). I'm highly tempted to let the Chaos guys run around and sack some more cities up north so I don't have to deal with this diplomacy baloney any more.

Seriously though, Kislev got steamrolled so hard. They had two 20-stack armies and full control of two provinces, and those three chaos armies just came down and, within a few turns, half of Kislev's settlements were burnt to the ground.

I also discovered a great use for pistoliers. Since they have a huge deployment zone, if I know the bad guys have artillery, I ideally want one squad per enemy artillery squad. As soon as the enemy force advances away from their artillery, run in from behind and take it out in melee. I used it to neutralize the chaos hellcannon so it only fired two or three shots. The first of which still killed about fifteen guys when it landed in the middle of a swordsman unit.
Blackhawk wrote:I kept a single leader with a stack of one unit of spear to run around and resettle for me.
That is a good idea and I immediately put it to use. The only problem is that having fewer soldiers appears to make the re-settlement gold cost go way up... but it still costs less overall than maintaining a full 20-stack of spearmen or having my army sit idle for four turns afterwards replenishing troops.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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I'm starting to get a better feel for the campaign map, which is where I'm really struggling to learn what goals I should have, what priorities those goals should have and how to go about them. I've started many campaigns just to mess around with each race (mostly dwarves, greenskins and vampires) to learn their mechanics and how they play.

Had a fun game last night as greenskins where a waargh! started and suddenly I had a second army stack to play with. I ventured too far afield into a province with too many competitors so I trashed a few settlements then returned to black crag.

I have a couple of questions that I'm sure are simple and probably easy to find answers to but what the hell, I'm gonna ask them anyway.

1) I only recently realized that as long as a building exists in the same province, it counts towards unit requirements. Meaning I can recruit a unit at a second settlement if the first settlement has the required buildings. Is this correct?

2) as part of 1), I believe "local" recruiting means "anywhere inside your territory whereas "global" means anywhere outside of your territory. Is that correct?

3) With 1) and 2) I guess that means as long as I'm in a province (somewhere, anywhere, not just in a settlement) I can recruit units "locally" as long as the unit pre-reqs exist in that province, somewhere, even spread out across multiple settlements. Is this correct?

4) Is vigour just how tired a unit is or something else? Can you reverse crumbling by boosting leadership (say with an ability/power or just moving your leader's aura onto a unit)?

I'm really weak with campaign map game mechanics and that's where I need to spend some time reading.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Sepiche »

GreenGoo wrote: 1) I only recently realized that as long as a building exists in the same province, it counts towards unit requirements. Meaning I can recruit a unit at a second settlement if the first settlement has the required buildings. Is this correct?

2) as part of 1), I believe "local" recruiting means "anywhere inside your territory whereas "global" means anywhere outside of your territory. Is that correct?

3) With 1) and 2) I guess that means as long as I'm in a province (somewhere, anywhere, not just in a settlement) I can recruit units "locally" as long as the unit pre-reqs exist in that province, somewhere, even spread out across multiple settlements. Is this correct?
Local means anywhere in the same province as the recruitment building, and yes, buildings in different settlements within the same province allow an army anywhere in the province to recruit those units. On a related note, if a building has a prerequisite, that prerequisite building can be anywhere in the province, not just in the same settlement.

Global is anywhere outside of the province that contains the recruitment building. So if you have a province, province A, and it has a building that lets you make archers, you can recruit those archers locally from any settlement in province A, locally from an encampment anywhere in province A, globally from another settlement outside province A, or globally from an encampment outside province A.
GreenGoo wrote: 4) Is vigour just how tired a unit is or something else?
How tired a unit is.
GreenGoo wrote: Can you reverse crumbling by boosting leadership (say with an ability/power or just moving your leader's aura onto a unit)?
Yup, crumbling is just the undead version of morale, so any boost to leadership would help with that, although if a unit is seriously crumbling, a few points of leadership might not make much of a difference at that point.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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Sepiche wrote: Local means anywhere in the same province as the recruitment building, and yes, buildings in different settlements within the same province allow an army anywhere in the province to recruit those units. On a related note, if a building has a prerequisite, that prerequisite building can be anywhere in the province, not just in the same settlement.
Ok, that's cool. Given the relatively small number of building slots, it makes sense that you can do some synergies between settlements instead of all buildings must be in the same settlement. Thanks for the info.
Sepiche wrote: Global is anywhere outside of the province that contains the recruitment building. So if you have a province, province A, and it has a building that lets you make archers, you can recruit those archers locally from any settlement in province A, locally from an encampment anywhere in province A, globally from another settlement outside province A, or globally from an encampment outside province A.
Yeah, that makes sense. I have only ever owned 1 province and part of another (that was mostly me just messing with another orc clan) that it never dawned on me that I could be in my own territory and still need to recruit globally. In hindsight it seems obvious.

I really haven't tried to play a full game yet. I'm just messing around with each race a little at a time.

The map seems insanely big.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Zarathud »

I'm loving the Dwarven economy. I have a few stacks rampaging through Vampire lands after conquering the southern Orcs. Tonight I have a quest and siege ready, then it's time to bring the rest of the Dwarves into the fold.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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The good part is that I was able to crush the Beastmen, sack + raze a bunch of Ork cities and settlements and fight the Chaos force to a standstill up north near Bechafen. Now, the emperor's main army is heading north to join up with the decimated secondary army and wipe the chaos scum out, while I slowly raise a third army of higher-tier units featuring "Balthazar Gelt" as a leader, since I've gotten the Battle Wizard Academy up. Oh yeah, and we're going to crank out a Bright Wizard for some serious fireball action. Once we crush the Chaos guys, it's "just" a matter of securing the four remaining empire faction holdouts, of which there are four left (Ostermark confederated quite willingly thanks to their capital being under siege by Kislev). I'm highly tempted to let the Chaos guys run around and sack some more cities up north so I don't have to deal with this diplomacy baloney any more.
So this was a terrible underestimation of the problems that the Chaos invasion poses. Hoo boy. Those Chaos guys just do not stop. Soon after defeating the first chaos incursion, four things happen.

- The chaos guys flood the nearby area with loose heroes.
- The "standard" northmen start getting pissy and heading south, swarming over Kislev's remaining minor settlements, but running away from any meaningful confrontation with my forces
- "Chaos Beastmen" also show up
- More "Chaos Warriors" armies show up

Between my armies and the dwarves, we manage to hold a stalemate while I bring up every possible army from the south, for a total of five nearly full twenty-stack armies. They're up against probably two or three times that number of combined Chaos, Beastmen and northerner tribe armies. With help from a dwarf army, we crush one Chaos army, but then the dwarves retreat afterwards. Well, thanks for that little help at least. The Beastmen are also defeated, while the northerners bide the time. Then, out comes Achaon the Everchosen and his buddy with two twenty-stacks of bad-ass elite chaos warriors and other nastiness. They run over one of the last two standing Kislev cities like it wasn't even there (it's in Troll Country next to a mountain), while I bring three of my armies together. Over the ruins of this destroyed place, we have our epic battle. I'm kind of tempted to upload the replay to dropbox or something - it was a complete clusterfuck and I'm frankly impressed I managed to pull out a victory.

To start with, I line up my army in my standard formation: handgunners up front with a line of melee units behind them. The chaos guys love to flank with fast moving units, so I keep some spearmen to the flank. Mortars and crossbows in the rear line, cannon and hellblaster volley gun to the left. Loose Reiksguard units in the rear to reinforce. The enemy lineup features a lot of chaos warriors of various kinds, a hell cannon, Achaon the Everchosen (a tough level 21 bastard), chaos chariots and cavalry and, probably the only weakness in their line, chaos trolls (their leadership is worse than a bretonnian peasant's so they rout when threatened with a stiff wind). My initial reinforcements consist of a similarly composed second army, which I position on the right flank, with the emperor taking position front and center while Gelt gets ready to throw down fireballs. The chaos force has reinforcements coming, but they're charging towards me which means they'll lag behind the initial army so I should initially have two to one odds to quickly take down the first army.

My ranged units make a solid dent in the chaos army, and then they engage. The "Chosen", "Aspiring Champions" and other such chaos warriors are simply tougher than my guys though, and I'm unable to properly flank them because their cavalry units and chariots do an excellent job of breaking through my line and keeping my rear ranks occupied. It's a standstill meatgrinder, but we're just about starting to gain the upper hand - subduing the enemy cavalry and chariots and getting ready to envelop the enemy melee units. That's when the second chaos army gets there. At this point, we're screwed. The front line starts routing, which means all my ranged units are screwed too. Then, three things happen that turn the battle around. One, reinforcements from the third army start trickling in way on the right flank, far enough away that I'm able to set them up in a good "improvised" defensive order. Two, some "outriders" (handgun-wielding cavalry) that I've inherited from one of the confederated empire territories show up on the field and are able to kite the chaos guys around and completely ruin whatever is left of their organized battle line. Third, my flying heroes are able to take out the enemy hellcannons, removing enemy ranged capability from play (although the emperor takes a spill, which will probably cost me later on).

The right flank reinforcements are able to rout a few of the loose, wounded cavalry units that come near them and, combined with the rallied remnants of my main army, we form a sort of defensive line. The chaos guys, instead of regrouping, come at the mostly handgunner and crossbowman formation one at a time, and leave much in the same way. I imagine part of the lack of regrouping was because they kept getting harassed by outriders set to 'skirmish mode'. Achaon the Everchosen and his hero buddy also decide to join the party, but I swamp them with melee units and repeated cavalry charges and they eventually go down. The Chaos army routs and we chase down as many survivors as possible.

Unfortunately, this battle puts 3/5 of my military out of action for several turns as we replace the frankly horrible losses we took. Meanwhile, there are a bunch of pissed-off nordling tribes just outside our territory waiting for their shot. The good part is that I've got wood elves and bretonnians coming up from the south along with an additional army of fresh elite units (greatswords, halberdiers, handgunners, reiksguard and a bright wizard). Still, between all the nordling 20-stacks and the beastman army still out there, it's going to be a tough slog. Hopefully the scripted army spawns let up at some point.
GreenGoo wrote:I have a couple of questions that I'm sure are simple and probably easy to find answers to but what the hell, I'm gonna ask them anyway.

1) I only recently realized that as long as a building exists in the same province, it counts towards unit requirements. Meaning I can recruit a unit at a second settlement if the first settlement has the required buildings. Is this correct?

2) as part of 1), I believe "local" recruiting means "anywhere inside your territory whereas "global" means anywhere outside of your territory. Is that correct?

3) With 1) and 2) I guess that means as long as I'm in a province (somewhere, anywhere, not just in a settlement) I can recruit units "locally" as long as the unit pre-reqs exist in that province, somewhere, even spread out across multiple settlements. Is this correct?

4) Is vigour just how tired a unit is or something else? Can you reverse crumbling by boosting leadership (say with an ability/power or just moving your leader's aura onto a unit)?
Based on personal experience and interpretation:

1. Right, buildings in a province allow you to recruit units to an army in that province, even if it's not in the same town area, using the 'local recruitment' option. Thus, you should just about never build duplicate military buildings in a province (and the game even warns you about it with a yellow exclamation point triangle if you try).

2, 3. Right.

4. Seems correct to me.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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NickAragua wrote: So this was a terrible underestimation of the problems that the Chaos invasion poses. Hoo boy. Those Chaos guys just do not stop. Soon after defeating the first chaos incursion, four things happen.
.
I have no practical experience with this but I did note that every strategy guide I've perused has something to the effect of "...and I leave so and so faction alive to act as a dam against the chaos hordes".

So I was aware, in a general way, that Chaos was a problem. I guess I'll have to experience it for myself before I internalize it though.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Lorini »

Please upload and link!!!
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Lorini »

That was really good!! Always great to have the tide turn in your favor, thanks for uploading it.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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Getting close to the end now. After the climactic battle against the Everchosen and his buddy, we re-settled the former Kislev province capital and used it as a base to quickly replenish troops. The various Dwarf factions, Wood Elves, Bretonnians and Kislev remnants really came through as well. The 'war coordination target' functionality makes having war buddies actually useful. Without it, they wander around doing their own thing, but give them a war target and they really mobilize. Between the lot of us, we defeated another three army beastman group (~70 vs 60 units), reinforced as the elves beat up another Achaon the Everchosen incursion (the dumb bastard wandered into our territory by himself so it wound up being about 70 vs 20), and the elves also lifted the on-going siege of Erengrad by the northern tribes. The Bretonnians and Dwarves didn't look like they did much, but they actually mopped up loose stacks of Chaos and Beastmen after they ran away. After another 60 vs 40 battle of empire vs Beastmen, those guys appear to have been wiped out (we'll see if they pop up again), so now it's just two stacks of Chaos too far to reinforce each other. They're up against four full stacks of my guys and another reinforcement stack coming from Altdorf, with steam tanks. With their Northmen buddies on the run as well, it'll take a lot of cheap BS spawning for them to win now. Meanwhile, in the south, the Dwarves have confederated with all but one Dwarf faction and have the Orks on the run. One town of Savage Orks remains, and thirteen Greenskin towns (to the Dwarves 35). So, we're in for a period of peace and prosperity after this mess is over. Unless the various groups turn to infighting after winning. Unlike a lot of other Total War games, I think I'm actually going to play this one to victory condition completion. It's managed to get me invested on a level that hasn't happened since the original Rome: Total War.

As a result of this particular game, I've become an ardent pistoliers/outriders convert. There's no better way to scatter an AI army's formation than by sending four or five units of ranged horse skirmishers at them. At that point, they either have to suck up the damage (which reduces their effectiveness when they hit my main battle line) or send units to chase the skirmishers down (which reduces their effectiveness when they hit my main battle line). And to think, I wouldn't have figured it out if I didn't inherit an army full of Outriders from one of the guys I convinced to confederate. You still need a good front line unit though and artillery/ranged guys to knock down enemy numbers, as even greatswords can't stand up to the elite chaos units.

Witch Hunters are incredibly effective assassins. While you can get a thug and a rogue for a +18% success boost to assassination, these guys also have a skill that boosts assassination success by an additional 15%. Too bad they have a two turn cooldown between murders. I've got three of them working the Chaos heroes over so they stop assaulting my units and such.

Bright Wizards are just as amazing as they were in Dark Omen. Unlike the Jade Wizard's stupid delayed area of effect green thing, the fireball homes in on your target AND burns enemy troops on the way. It's also super cheap to cast and has a quick cooldown (well, with that 50% cooldown reduction skill anyway). Can't wait to boost the guy's mana reserves for more fireball action. Already gave him a hedge wizard and another one that boosts mana reserves by 20, so he's squeezing out about seven or eight fireballs in the space of about a minute. Then he's tired and needs to take a nap, as burning chaos scum to a crisp is hard work.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Freyland »

After Chaos is defeated, the great people of the Old World start to eye each other's goods once again.....
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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At which point two of your allies will likely turn on each other, each asking you to join them. Whoever you say no to will then crawl up your rear and start choppy fun-time.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by NickAragua »

Well, that one's going to be pretty easy. The Dwarves and Empire don't compete for territory, so it's going to be Bretonnian peasant pancakes for dinner. And if those southern nations decide to start beefing, I've got a steam tank with their name on it.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by El Guapo »

How are the mortars? Those things were unbelievable in Dark Omen (and amusingly, one time the mortar actually managed to peg and kill a lone vampire lord walking around the battlefield).

Oh, and the flagellants. Do you get flagellants in this game?
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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El Guapo wrote:How are the mortars? Those things were unbelievable in Dark Omen (and amusingly, one time the mortar actually managed to peg and kill a lone vampire lord walking around the battlefield).

Oh, and the flagellants. Do you get flagellants in this game?
I want to say yes, because I just read about them, but now I can't remember if they were for this game or another warhammer game (what that game could be, I have no idea). Are the flagellants part of Bretonnia? 'Cause that's my first guess.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by AWS260 »

El Guapo wrote:Oh, and the flagellants. Do you get flagellants in this game?
http://whenc.totalwar.com/#/unit/wh_dlc ... gellants_0
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NickAragua
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by NickAragua »

El Guapo wrote:How are the mortars? Those things were unbelievable in Dark Omen (and amusingly, one time the mortar actually managed to peg and kill a lone vampire lord walking around the battlefield).

Oh, and the flagellants. Do you get flagellants in this game?
The mortars are excellent, in my experience. Each unit comes in a three-pack, and they work great for disrupting tightly packed enemy infantry, as you'd expect. They're also pretty accurate (well, either that, or the blast radius is big enough that I don't care about slight inaccuracy). They're not going to one-shot a vampire lord (unfortunately), but they're a solid addition to any army. Unlike a lot of other artillery, you can put it in the back of your formation so you don't have to worry about loose enemy cavalry killing them. There's also a screamer rocket thing, which fires twice as many rockets but with much worse accuracy (to the point where sometimes the rocket will fail to fly over the heads of your infantry).

The cannons aren't as good though, in my experience. You have to put them out in front or to the side of your formation and then either they're vulnerable to flanking attacks or you have to detach some guys to defend them. And they don't hit hard enough to make it worthwhile.

Flagellants exist and are reasonably effective, though I haven't figured out how to build them, I only inherited a batch from a faction I convinced to confederate with me. They've got crap for defence and attack, but they don't rout and there's a lot of them, so you want to use them to swamp enemy leaders or giant critters. Regular units wade through them with no problem.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Blackhawk »

I lived on the mortars in my Empire run. I kept two behind, plus a cannon and a volley gun on one flank. Woe betide anyone who came at me with tight formations.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Freyland »

Cannons only need a mild elevation and then they're good to go. Great for enemy large, tightly packed infantry and of course structures. Being flanked is the trade off of any artillery-- leave a set of cheap spearmen nearby and keep your third eye on the potential flankers.
Flagellants are best against anything that causes fear and terror. Ideally you tie up said enemy with flagelants and flank with anything else. Ideally this tactic will crush or route the target before their inherent fear affects the flankers significantly. Easier said than done of course. I suck at arranging appropriate matchups.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by NickAragua »

... and, the current iteration of Chaos goes out with a whimper, rather than a bang. My empire armies trap and individually exterminate Archaon and his buddy. Archaon escapes all by himself, only to be killed by a witcher... er... witch hunter the next turn. Since I've long since gained control of every other long campaign victory objective, that's game over. Now, everybody goes home and plans to stab each other in the back, while I hand off cleanup of the frozen north and annihilation of the remaining Orks to the next Emperor. Time for Karl Franz to retire somewhere picturesque, sit in a rocking chair and sip dwarven beer.

Man, that was a good game. They've really improved the Total War series with this entry - smart tactical AI, not terribly stupid strategic AI (although, really, who the hell puts a barracks that only goes up to level 3 into a province capital?), battle animations that look better than photo sequences of cardboard cutouts...

I'll take a break then probably dive in for another campaign. Thinking Orks or Dwarves. Had enough humans for a while, and I'm playing Bretonnia in a coop campaign with a buddy, and that's quite enough of them and their terrible peasants (yes, I know, they're all about the melee cavalry). Maybe crank the difficulty up to "very hard" (but not legendary, yikes). Definitely going to grab some DLC if it goes on *steep* discount, most likely the wood elves.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Zenn7 »

NickAragua wrote:... and, the current iteration of Chaos goes out with a whimper, rather than a bang. My empire armies trap and individually exterminate Archaon and his buddy. Archaon escapes all by himself, only to be killed by a witcher... er... witch hunter the next turn. Since I've long since gained control of every other long campaign victory objective, that's game over. Now, everybody goes home and plans to stab each other in the back, while I hand off cleanup of the frozen north and annihilation of the remaining Orks to the next Emperor. Time for Karl Franz to retire somewhere picturesque, sit in a rocking chair and sip dwarven beer.

Man, that was a good game. They've really improved the Total War series with this entry - smart tactical AI, not terribly stupid strategic AI (although, really, who the hell puts a barracks that only goes up to level 3 into a province capital?), battle animations that look better than photo sequences of cardboard cutouts...

I'll take a break then probably dive in for another campaign. Thinking Orks or Dwarves. Had enough humans for a while, and I'm playing Bretonnia in a coop campaign with a buddy, and that's quite enough of them and their terrible peasants (yes, I know, they're all about the melee cavalry). Maybe crank the difficulty up to "very hard" (but not legendary, yikes). Definitely going to grab some DLC if it goes on *steep* discount, most likely the wood elves.
Definitely not "steep" but all DLC (except the wood elves of course), is 25% off on Steam this weekend.

Personally, not know Warhammer fantasy factions particularly well (more familiar w/ the 40K universe thanks to DOW and a few other PC games), I thought the Beastmen would be a cool faction because I thought it would be all kinds of nature guys. In reviewing online, looks like it's just various minotaurs. No Centaurs, Satyrs, Nymphs, etc. Was thinking something like the Pangaea faction from the Dominions game series. That would have been cool to me. Just minotaurs... not so much. Once I get my new PC fixed, will dig into this, leaning towards Orks as interesting starting point. Played TW:Medival/Medival2, a couple times each. Other than tutorials, haven't tried any others (bought one of the package deals before Rome 2 - think I have Shogun, Empires/Napolean and Rome - first version of all). I do fine with the strategic portion but never could get the RTS portion down. I never seem to place troops right or fail to execute with them properly. And castle assaults usually fail. So I mostly did autocombats. Going to work on doing it manually with this though. So I can fully enjoy and appreciate the glory that is Warhammer! :)
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

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No, the Beastmen are not a nature faction. They're a Chaos faction. They're humans corrupted by Chaos with a mix of bestial traits and mutations that are bent on violence and an obsession with complete destruction of the civilized races. They're more about twisted monstrosities that are corruptions of man and nature.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Lorini »

Be sure to watch the vids that have been posted in the thread for RTS tips, they really help.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Sepiche »

Zenn7 wrote:No Centaurs, Satyrs, Nymphs, etc. Was thinking something like the Pangaea faction from the Dominions game series. That would have been cool to me. Just minotaurs... not so much.
They do have centaurs FWIW, but they're called Centigors. But yeah, Beastmen play a lot like Chaos, but with a focus on fast, hard hitting, lightly armored troops instead of slow, heavily armored troops.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Max Peck »

Wait, what?

Total War: WARHAMMER 2 – Announcement Cinematic Trailer

Seems a little soon, doesn't it?
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Sepiche »

Max Peck wrote:Wait, what?

Total War: WARHAMMER 2 – Announcement Cinematic Trailer

Seems a little soon, doesn't it?
They announced a bit back that they've been working on WH 2 for a while now, and just a week or two ago they announced they were basically done with DLC for WH1.

Seems reasonable to me to start releasing teasers and building hype.

Looks awesome to me!
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Max Peck »

I hadn't been following the franchise news. I was expecting a longer run of DLC rather than one-per-year sequels.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by NickAragua »

I'm in. As soon as it goes on sale. 'cause, never buy games at release and full price (barring exceptional circumstances) and all that.

I'm definitely looking forward to some Skaven action. The idea of a "grand grand" campaign map is also pretty neat. Plus, it'll be nice to see some elves other than the hippie pot smokers next to Bretonnia.

I'm actually a little more than half way through a coop campaign with a friend. He's playing Dwarves, I'm playing Bretonnia. Campaign objective is to take over or raze 80 different settlements. So far, I've confederated with all the Bretonnian factions and taken over Estalia (also knocked Mousillon out). After a failed campaign vs Tilea (where about fifty of my guys were unable to take down their main castle and army; fairly understandable as they had seven mortars and ten handgunners in addition to some melee and crossbows), I've spent a few turns rebuilding and will now send a sixty unit "expeditionary force" into the northlands to raze some cities there.

Meanwhile, the Dwarves are doing pretty well in the east, doing a mix of confederation and Ork stomping. The Orks are down to about three factions with a province or two each.

We had a pretty neat fight against an Ork Waaaaagh - two twenty stack armies vs two twenty stack dwarf armies - one main army and one composed of about half bolt throwers (inherited from a confederation). The Orks were heading for a Dwarf town. We started by hitting and routing one of the "forced march" Ork armies with the bolt thrower army (it was the only one in range) then pulling back to another nearby town with a forced march. Next turn, the Orks come down and wipe out the their target and sit down for a long re-charge. Not so fast there, fellas. Two turns later, the dwarf armies come in. The main army hits the weak Ork army with a lightning attack, causing them to rout out of reinforcement range. Then, we double-team the main Ork army and half-strength town garrison. Poor bastards barely make contact with the Dwarf front line before routing, despite the army being full of elite purple DLC units and all that stuff. The Total Dwarf losses, under 200. Ork losses, about 3000.

The Dwarf flamethrowers are freaking amazing. I'd hate to fight against them.

Meanwhile, the Bretonnians are... well, it's a different experience from playing the empire, that's for sure. Their infantry and archers are terrible, their knights aren't very good at sieges, you can only have a limited number of infantry units before you start seeing severely reduced income, and their hero variety is a little bit on the low side. But hey, at least I don't have "defeat Chaos" as a campaign victory objective.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Lorini »

They have done a fantastic job with the original, I don't mind a sequel this soon.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Sepiche »

NickAragua wrote:Meanwhile, the Bretonnians are... well, it's a different experience from playing the empire, that's for sure. Their infantry and archers are terrible, their knights aren't very good at sieges, you can only have a limited number of infantry units before you start seeing severely reduced income, and their hero variety is a little bit on the low side. But hey, at least I don't have "defeat Chaos" as a campaign victory objective.
The Brets go from weak in assaults to amazing based on how strong your aerial corp is. Get a few units of pegasus/griffon knights and a airborne hero or two and you can sweep the walls in short order. Clear a beachhead on the walls with your aerial troops, follow up with men at arms and archers to secure the walls and open the gates, then once the gates are open pour in your knights.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by NickAragua »

Sepiche wrote:
NickAragua wrote:Meanwhile, the Bretonnians are... well, it's a different experience from playing the empire, that's for sure. Their infantry and archers are terrible, their knights aren't very good at sieges, you can only have a limited number of infantry units before you start seeing severely reduced income, and their hero variety is a little bit on the low side. But hey, at least I don't have "defeat Chaos" as a campaign victory objective.
The Brets go from weak in assaults to amazing based on how strong your aerial corp is. Get a few units of pegasus/griffon knights and a airborne hero or two and you can sweep the walls in short order. Clear a beachhead on the walls with your aerial troops, follow up with men at arms and archers to secure the walls and open the gates, then once the gates are open pour in your knights.
Yeah, I'm going to have to invest in some higher tier stables soon. Luckily, Chaos and their Northmen buddies don't use fortresses so my "expeditionary force" should be ok.
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Re: Total War: Warhammer

Post by Blackhawk »

Interesting. I see the Lizardmen, the Dark Elves, and the High Elves, plus a tease of the Skaven. A suggestion that this will be taking place on the other side of the world from TW:W.

It's almost like they weren't selling enough DLC, so they decided to sell the rest as a new product. Although, to be fair, they didn't really have a place to start the other factions in (save for the Skaven), as the Old World was pretty much already full.
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