Warhammer Total War: Warhammer 2

[Average Manatee]

TKs just abuse the autoresolve with skellie spam. It does depend a lot on which faction you're playing and where they start, they certainly aren't equal. However, Pirates or Tyrion or Gor-Rok are easy mode on any setting.

TK Skellies are definitely not auto resolve-abusable. They get completely annihilated by even mediocre AI armies on legendary/very hard. I literally put this to the test just a few pages back as Arkhan where a single settlement minor Brettonian faction was able to throw 2 stacks of peasants which would have wiped my two stacks of mostly skellies in auto resolve. Furthermore Tomb Kings are hard capped on number of armies (I think?) so once you grow big and are fighting on multiple fronts you need actual quality. Vampire Count skellie spam is way, way stronger since you can actually just run everywhere with 80 unit armies only needing to pay for the lord.

Honestly don't see all the rage about Tyrion. He's not that good. Alarielle is just better in general and has a much easier start due to early access to and boosting the most powerful high elf archer in the game. Alith Anar has way better potential if you get a decent start (ambush on attack is the most abusable shit in the game). Both the new high elf lords look like they might be better too but I haven't used them.

Pirates are really just objectively inferior to Dark Elves since Black Arks are vastly better than their ship-things. Dark Elves also have a much better army, easiest economy in the game (literally scales up the more you fight), and all the Dark Elf starts are in corners or on the map edge and so are strategically superior to starting in the middle.

Gor Rok is pretty ridiculous. If Kroak doesn't get at least 1000 kills per fight its probably because you weren't fighting 1k enemy units.

I'd throw Tehenuain and Ikit Claw up there as very OP starts so long as you get past a slightly rocky early game. Also Repanse as just a general cakewalk through an easy area.

 

[Fedora Master]

I knew orcs had issues with replenishment but... woah

 

[BrotherFrank]

I have a pretty long list of mods I sent someone else, but what are some of your favourites?

Since been mainly playing total warhammer/shogun 2 on coop the last few years I'm not quite as well versed in mods for the older titles as I used to be so take all I say with a grain of salt in case my nostalgia goggles blind me.

Medieval total war 2:
There's a bunch of total conversion mods covering the Elder Scrolls, Legend of Zelda, Game of Thrones and...Warhammer. The latter was around long before CA went ahead and made an actual warhammer title, something that used to be considered a wild delusion by optimistic stoners. Is interesting to compare and contrast the two, and if nothing else got introduced to two steps from hell thanks to this mod since a lot of their songs are used in the ost which fits the setting perfectly.

For vanilla runs, stainless steel is considered the gold standard.

Rome total war barbarian invasion:
I actually do have a saucy suggestion for this one. Know how the xpiratez mod for xcom could be seen as being nothing more then a smut mod by judgemental folk yet is an insanely well thought out mod with good gameplay? There's an equivalent for total war, the amazons mod!
Whether this falls into the or category will be subjective but if you didn't already know about that one, now you do.

Empire Total war:
Darth mod is a must have for this one, straight up enhances the game in every way including better ai.

Shogun 2:
You can find mods for this one easily enough on steam workshop so won't bother posting links. But overall whilst there's lots of little mods there ain't really many big ones. There's a portugal invasion mod which lets you play euros and go gun heavy in relatively balanced way (at least compared to other mods which have a similar premise like the various flavors of otomo mods) but it didn't feel very high quality tbh. For S2 I'd just suggest a general skill mod to spruce things up (custom general skill tree set/eriks improved general skills/agents and general skills, pick ONE) , qol stuff like 12 turns per year and then whatever tweak mod you want to fix aspects of the game that annoys you.

Oh there's also a darthmod for this title too but it's not as needed to fix the base game as with Empire and I recall there being controversy over some of the balance changes the author did.

On a more salty note, there was going to be a total conversion anime mod (obviously the worth of this endeavour will be vary from person to person) but the mod author kept getting bullied and harassed over it until finally gave up and removed the mod from the net forever.

Total war rome 2:
Seems you already know about DEI so nothing to add to that other then one day I will sit down and finish a full game of it. Having battles last for 30mins-1 hour to sometimes even more then that might be realistic but also means a heck of a time commitment.
I tried a bunch of other overhauls but can't really remember the nuances of what they do, only DEI stuck in my mind due to its sheer autism.

mod links

https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-elder-scrolls-total-war
https://www.moddb.com/mods/hyrule-total-war/downloads
https://www.moddb.com/mods/game-of-thrones/downloads
https://www.moddb.com/mods/call-of-warhammer-beginning-of-the-end-times
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stainless-steel
https://www.moddb.com/mods/amazons-total-war-refulgent
https://www.moddb.com/mods/darthmod-empire

 

[Average Manatee]

View attachment 13276

I knew orcs had issues with replenishment but... woah

Grom gets way more ridiculous. There's a certain bonus he gives to goblin archers that is just silly. I'm not sure if its possible to ensure you get the right ingredients early game, if so it would be up there in the top 5 strongest starts.

One thing I dislike is that I don't think replenishment bonuses apply to the Waaagh! armies. Or otherwise something is up that causes them to replenish slower. They tend to get ground down if you are fighting constantly.

 

[Iron Balls McGinty]

Curious, what difficulty the rest of you play on? At the moment I'm using Hard/Hard, doesn't leave things feeling warped (but I'm still kinda getting back into TW / catching up after missing out everything from Shogun through to Thrones of Britannia (and shamefully also Medieval 2); so I figure I'm still a bit of a scrub relative to a lot of people).

Also, it's only with 3K that BAI difficulty actually starts to affect to AI itself and not just buffs, right?

I have the most fun on VH/M, though I play at H/H if using a horde faction as I find it works better.
I wish the battle difficulty made the AI play smarter or harder, it just gives silly bonuses to stats and makes some units completely useless.
I can play the High Elves on Leg/VH though, sister spam for the win.

 

[Fedora Master]

I think the devs missed a great opporunity for some Gordon Ramsay memes with Grom. "Itz ZOGGIN RAAAAAAGHHH!"

 

[exe]

I have to agree with whoever said you should only play Total War games on Normal/Normal. Higher battle difficulty means more cheesing and having to rely more on archer/cav/artillery/monster because who wants to see your elite infantry trade 1:1 with trash. Higher campaign difficulty fucks the auto-resolve and the AI spams more shit, which means you burn out quicker with all the manual battles.

Concerning mods, for M2TW don't forget Third Age and it's superior and still updated submod Divide and Conquer. It's at v4.5 now and I had a blast playing the Khazad-dûm expedition campaign. I second the The Elder Scrolls mod, which is really well done and you can even play as Dagoth Ur and his zombie hordes and break out of the ghost fence and drown Morrowind in zombies.
There is also a Gothic mod, which is ok if you like Gothic. But like the Warhammer mod is made by russian, so expect 100% autism difficulty, which the AI getting tons of free money, armies spawned in and garrison scripts.
Then there is of course the infamous PlanetWar mod. Where you get everything from Doom monsters, to Na'vi, to Klingons, to Predators and Aliens, lots of dinosaurs, bunny girls, random assortment of SW aliens, Godzilla, snowmen, monkeys, Shrek and last but not least, Teletubbies riding T-Rexes (actually one of the best units in the game). It's actually decently balanced and everything more or less works, definitely worth a try, even if only to have some fun with custom battles.
For RTW, back in the day I really like Roma Surrectum 2, and there was also a shortish Crusade mod that was really fun. There is also a LotR mod called Forth Age, but I haven't played that one yet.

 

[A horse of course]

Finished the Eltharion campaign. The new resource/upgrade mechanics are a nice addition to pursue on top of the usual stuff without becoming annoying busywork, though they become useless once you've fully upgraded the hideout. Would've been nice to have something to spend the extra supplies on. The final battle continues the Warhammer team's obsession with completely divorcing quest battles from the rest of the campaign. Grom's invasion should've involved him spawning with a couple of waaghs on the lower east side of the map and working his up through Yvresse towards the capital, which would make your preparations more relevant (particularly the ambush buffs from the Mists of Yvresse). But no, gotta teleport to a scripted battle where absolutely nothing interesting happens, as usual.

At least make Grom a more significant threat if you pick Yvresse, or something. In my campaign I waltzed up and down eastern Ulthuan whilst he got beaten up by NPC factions for 100 turns, until I finally bothered to sail down and wipe out his last 2 settlements.

 

[Maculo]

My first dragon taming opportunity on my Legendary/Normal Imrik is Ymwrath....the hardest one.

 

[Fedora Master]

KEEP PUMPING THE GOBBOS
I wanna see how fucking strong I can get these little shits. This isn't even their final form!
27% Physical Resistance!

 

[Average Manatee]

Use Nasty Skulkers, they are way better due to AP damage.

Mine have ~70 melee attack with their Opportunist procced (which almost always happens), 40 charge bonus, 31 damage, along with +10 vs. large and +10 vs infantry which is kind of funny and just means that they really have 80 melee attack and 41 total damage. I specced mine for straight damage rather than tankiness though (since they have stalk they don't get targetted by ranged units much). Seeing non-spear goblins annihilate Black Knights and Grail Knights is funny.

 

[razvedchiki]

best medieval 2 mod is europa barbarorum 2, if you name yourself a strategy player that is.

 

[Fedora Master]

best medieval 2 mod is europa barbarorum 2, if you name yourself a strategy player that is.

I always found the EB mods to be too autistic.
Those fucking unit names, my god.

 

[A horse of course]

best medieval 2 mod is europa barbarorum 2, if you name yourself a strategy player that is.

I always found the EB mods to be too autistic.
Those fucking unit names, my god.

Those who cannot appreciate seventy different flavours of Spearmannii are not worthy of historical titles.

 

[Dwarvophile]

best medieval 2 mod is europa barbarorum 2, if you name yourself a strategy player that is.

It's really good but it didn't feel like they attained this level of smooth yet highly tactical combat Europa Barbarorum 1 had. But I haven't play it since 2016, so it probably got better.

If you want to see what autism can look like in M2TW, then try Byg's Grim Reality Enhanced realism mod AKA "read the manual".

 

[Fedora Master]

I think I broke the autoresolve.

 

[Maculo]

I took a break from my Legendary/Normal Imrik campaign. Around 50 turns in, I was fending off multiple Skaven stacks (Snikch) to the west, when 3 full Greenskins stacks came from the east. If I peel away to fight the Greenskins and save my capital, Snikch will recover and take my sole port (trade routes to Lothern). If I had to start over, I would have disbanded the dragon princes and white lions asap (maybe the dragon too) and ignore the dragon quests. Gold income was a consistent problem for me, and trade income was subject to disruption.

I switched to Legendary/Normal Eltharion and it is much smoother than Imrik so far.

 

[Olinser]

So one thing that appears didn't really make it into the patch notes is that a LOT of items got pretty significantly rebalanced. Obviously they've been listening to feedback that a lot of the so-called 'rare' items were worse than commons.

Like Obsidian Blade.

Used to be +10 armor piercing weapon damage (a JOKE), and enabled Magic Attacks (also a joke), it was literally worse than the commons that give +attack/defense.

Now it's +100 armor piercing weapon damage!!!!! and +8% weapon strength, so it's actually pretty legit.


Meanwhile the OP ward save/physical resist items got nerfed (20% to 17% on Talisman of Preservation, for instance).

 

[Average Manatee]

Think we can consider the era of the ordertide to be over

Spoiler

Granted I killed Brettonia and am finishing off high elves but the Empire and Dwarves just got their shit pushed in all game with no help from me.

Gave Grom the Sword of Khaine, he has 65% ward save/8% phys resist/35% missile resist

I think I broke the autoresolve.

Yeah its kind of hilarious in-battle too when your trash infantry regenerates about as quick as they take damage in melee.

 

[A horse of course]

People forget how wildly the campaign balance has swung to-and-fro over the course of the different patches and DLC. Vampires were pushing in Empire's shit for months after the Pirate Coast release. I played through more than one unmodded campaign in which Altdorf ended up being conquered by Kemmler.

On top of this, CA keep repeating the same stupid mistake of creating wildly overpowered DLC/FLC characters, presumably to make them more exciting, then having to go back and juice up older factions to keep up. The reaction to Grom right now is the perfect illustration of this - on r*ddit, /twg/ and such, people are going crazy sharing stories of how comically OP they can make trash-tier gobbos, like spears beating Swordsmasters of Hoeth and archers blowing up Dragon Princes. This only rewards CA for pandering to the lowest common denominator (anyone reading this thread, for example).

 

[Agame]

People forget how wildly the campaign balance has swung to-and-fro over the course of the different patches and DLC. Vampires were pushing in Empire's shit for months after the Pirate Coast release. I played through more than one unmodded campaign in which Altdorf ended up being conquered by Kemmler.

On top of this, CA keep repeating the same stupid mistake of creating wildly overpowered DLC/FLC characters, presumably to make them more exciting, then having to go back and juice up older factions to keep up. The reaction to Grom right now is the perfect illustration of this - on r*ddit, /twg/ and such, people are going crazy sharing stories of how comically OP they can make trash-tier gobbos, like spears beating Swordsmasters of Hoeth and archers blowing up Dragon Princes. This only rewards CA for pandering to the lowest common denominator (anyone reading this thread, for example).

Yea, every patch version of the game has had a different 'Tide', seems like CA are incapable of having a remotely balanced ME campaign. Maybe by WH:3, maybe... MAYBE!?

Tbh I would be happy if it was Chaos Tide, instead of the current wet fart that is the chaos invasion and seems to survive about ten turns. At least a Chaos Tide would be lore friendly compared to this fucking kumbaya good guys dominating and the Empire, Brettonia, Dwarves and Elves all sitting around holding each others dicks.

Maybe if someone at CA played the TT game and realized that the order factions actually fight each other to? Its a goddamn Total War game for fucks sake...

 

[A horse of course]

People forget how wildly the campaign balance has swung to-and-fro over the course of the different patches and DLC. Vampires were pushing in Empire's shit for months after the Pirate Coast release. I played through more than one unmodded campaign in which Altdorf ended up being conquered by Kemmler.

On top of this, CA keep repeating the same stupid mistake of creating wildly overpowered DLC/FLC characters, presumably to make them more exciting, then having to go back and juice up older factions to keep up. The reaction to Grom right now is the perfect illustration of this - on r*ddit, /twg/ and such, people are going crazy sharing stories of how comically OP they can make trash-tier gobbos, like spears beating Swordsmasters of Hoeth and archers blowing up Dragon Princes. This only rewards CA for pandering to the lowest common denominator (anyone reading this thread, for example).

Yea, every patch version of the game has had a different 'Tide', seems like CA are incapable of having a remotely balanced ME campaign. Maybe by WH:3, maybe... MAYBE!?

Tbh I would be happy if it was Chaos Tide, instead of the current wet fart that is the chaos invasion and seems to survive about ten turns. At least a Chaos Tide would be lore friendly compared to this fucking kumbaya good guys dominating and the Empire, Brettonia, Dwarves and Elves all sitting around holding each others dicks.

Maybe if someone at CA played the TT game and realized that the order factions actually fight each other to? Its a goddamn Total War game for fucks sake...

A lot of people have speculated, pretty reasonably imo, that at some point into Warhammer 3's Mortal Empires (or whatever they name it) they'll switch out the endgame Chaos Invasion for mix of several different doomstack events, like Nagash (TK, VC and VCo units) Warpgates (Daemons of Chaos, Beastmen) and a beefed up Archaon (WoC, Norsca, a bit of the other Chaos stuff). Maybe it'll be randomized depending on which factions are dominant or player-controlled, or maybe they'll have multiple "tides" instead of the big WoC/Age of Peace event like it is atm.

As for the whole Ordertide/Destructiontide balancing problems, it's just exacerbated by the setting. TW games have suffered from the mid/late-game snowballing problem since 2000, with Atilla being probably the only title to have come remotely close to solving it (and even then failing with the Sassanids), but with Warhammer you can't even have the randomization of historical titles since certain factions will always band together or be in opposition. This really wouldn't be such a challenge in a Mount-and-Blade style Warhammer game, since conflict between Order factions can easily be simulated with border skirmishes, raids, field battles and such without leading to major shifts in the balance of power. When you try to do that with TW, you get situations like in vanilla Warhammer 1 where the Dwarves would raze half the Empire. It's a tough situation to deal with, but as always we can always rely on CA to take the laziest, low-cost, lowest-effort approach to try and solve it.

 

[Agame]

A lot of people have speculated, pretty reasonably imo, that at some point into Warhammer 3's Mortal Empires (or whatever they name it) they'll switch out the endgame Chaos Invasion for mix of several different doomstack events, like Nagash (TK, VC and VCo units) Warpgates (Daemons of Chaos, Beastmen) and a beefed up Archaon (WoC, Norsca, a bit of the other Chaos stuff). Maybe it'll be randomized depending on which factions are dominant or player-controlled, or maybe they'll have multiple "tides" instead of the big WoC/Age of Peace event like it is atm.

I would love to see them adopt the Battle Brothers system, where you have various 'End Game' scenarios that happen every 100 turns or so. That way there could be all kinds of crazy shit like giant skaven invasions, ork Waaaghs coming from off map, maybe tie it to how dominant a faction is, so if orks have been removed from the map a big Waaagh could spawn to give them a chance to repopulate.

As for the whole Ordertide/Destructiontide balancing problems, it's just exacerbated by the setting. TW games have suffered from the mid/late-game snowballing problem since 2000, with Atilla being probably the only title to have come remotely close to solving it (and even then failing with the Sassanids), but with Warhammer you can't even have the randomization of historical titles since certain factions will always band together or be in opposition. This really wouldn't be such a challenge in a Mount-and-Blade style Warhammer game, since conflict between Order factions can easily be simulated with border skirmishes, raids, field battles and such without leading to major shifts in the balance of power. When you try to do that with TW, you get situations like in vanilla Warhammer 1 where the Dwarves would raze half the Empire. It's a tough situation to deal with, but as always we can always rely on CA to take the laziest, low-cost, lowest-effort approach to try and solve it.

Funnily enough M&B 2, at least around launch (I stopped playing it and havnt checked back since) had the EXACT same problem that TW has, one faction quickly dominating and taking the whole map. I guess its kind of an inherent problem in grand strategy design when you have all or nothing wars, and of course the snowball problem in TW where power begets power, you take a settlement and your enemy is weakened and you gain power, there are no systems in place to slow expansion like say EU4.

 

[A horse of course]

A lot of people have speculated, pretty reasonably imo, that at some point into Warhammer 3's Mortal Empires (or whatever they name it) they'll switch out the endgame Chaos Invasion for mix of several different doomstack events, like Nagash (TK, VC and VCo units) Warpgates (Daemons of Chaos, Beastmen) and a beefed up Archaon (WoC, Norsca, a bit of the other Chaos stuff). Maybe it'll be randomized depending on which factions are dominant or player-controlled, or maybe they'll have multiple "tides" instead of the big WoC/Age of Peace event like it is atm.

I would love to see them adopt the Battle Brothers system, where you have various 'End Game' scenarios that happen every 100 turns or so. That way there could be all kinds of crazy shit like giant skaven invasions, ork Waaaghs coming from off map, maybe tie it to how dominant a faction is, so if orks have been removed from the map a big Waaagh could spawn to give them a chance to repopulate.

As for the whole Ordertide/Destructiontide balancing problems, it's just exacerbated by the setting. TW games have suffered from the mid/late-game snowballing problem since 2000, with Atilla being probably the only title to have come remotely close to solving it (and even then failing with the Sassanids), but with Warhammer you can't even have the randomization of historical titles since certain factions will always band together or be in opposition. This really wouldn't be such a challenge in a Mount-and-Blade style Warhammer game, since conflict between Order factions can easily be simulated with border skirmishes, raids, field battles and such without leading to major shifts in the balance of power. When you try to do that with TW, you get situations like in vanilla Warhammer 1 where the Dwarves would raze half the Empire. It's a tough situation to deal with, but as always we can always rely on CA to take the laziest, low-cost, lowest-effort approach to try and solve it.

Funnily enough M&B 2, at least around launch (I stopped playing it and havnt checked back since) had the EXACT same problem that TW has, one faction quickly dominating and taking the whole map. I guess its kind of an inherent problem in grand strategy design when you have all or nothing wars, and of course the snowball problem in TW where power begets power, you take a settlement and your enemy is weakened and you gain power, there are no systems in place to slow expansion like say EU4.

Yeah Bannerlord had that problem on launch, but it was immediately obvious and they quickly took steps to address it. TW games by their very nature (turn-based rather than real-time, the scale focusing on entire regions rather than individual villages/castes) struggle with this issue.

 

[Average Manatee]

Grom done

Spoiler

All things considered it was kind of a hard start just because of the area. All of the high elves got called into war against me by like turn 20 just due to how shit the relations are. Then the wild elves declared war (never attacked). Then, presumably because half the map was against me, everyone else saw me as an appealing target and I was regularly attacked by opportunistic random nations across the map. And basically no one would ever be willing to peace me out, ever. Dunno if that was due to relations (greenskins are hated by everyone and Grom is super hated by elves) or just the fact that the AI thought the odds were stacked against me. The fact that I never had to deal with the empire was a blessing, the Vamps attacked me around turn 100 but it was not too bad.

Never got the ingredients for fighting Centaurs (guess beastmen didn't spawn with the right stuff), dwarves (forgot to sack, sacking is dumb), vampire coast, or finishing an elf crusade (must have been a bug, did two). I mostly used the +8 public order and -8 enemy leadership bonuses for the end game though.

Looking at how the objectives work for Grom, I can actually get Long Victory in only a few more turns sieging the Galleon's Graveyard so I suppose I'll do that.

I do kind of feel like Grom makes Skarsnik obsolete. Both are goblin-focused lords in close to the same part of the map. Grom just happens to be better in literally every way. Only difference is that Skarsnik's objectives are for him to go east and Grom's are to go west.


The Greenskin tide is due to the Waaagh! ability that the AI is completely unequipped to handle, 40+ AI units running around will demolish any AI. The fact that AIs like Grimgore still confederate constantly AND confederate on defeating enemy leaders only exacerbated the incredible snowball in my game. Not sure how the vamps dominated though or what change might have helped them out. For reference Grimgor ended with 54 settlements and the vampire counts a combined 48. Would be funny to search around Grimgore's territory for the ork himself and just attack that specific stack to confederate the whole thing in one go though.

re: snowballing, the game already has the supply lines penalty to punish large factions from scaling their armies to territory at a linear rate. Problem is the AI doesn't take this penalty.