New Total War game: Warhammer

[visions]

F) Warboss has less health than most lords when Warboss is the only infantry Lord with Toughness 5 in the tabletop game

Dwarf, Chaos, Lizard, Vamp and Beastmen fighting lords all had T5. Tomb Kings too probably, can't remember.

Only squishy races had T4 or lower fighter lords (Elves, Men, Skaven).

 

[Hoodoo]

The shilling in this thread. I've never seen anything like that on the codex it's almost like you're getting paid. Thought we know better, fanboys can be this deluded.

Just pulled an all nighter at my bro's. Played chaos the entire night just to be sure I was fair when I trashed the game earlier. My last battle involved 40 units, very Epic. It also lasted exactly 7 mins. Oh well. I tried to immerse myself into the universe for my session, trying to follow the lore by first gathering the viking tribes then marching south with a massive host of vassals and personal hordes. It didn't work. And it's programmed not to work, even though it encourages you to try it.

-When I said the battle speed was in the same vein they followed since Empire it was an understatement. The battle speed is even faster. Damage is dealt extremely fast, generally whoever can make enough sense out of this mess to pull split second moskitos micromanagement will win. If your battle lasted more than 10 minutes it probably involved two full stacks of horse archers skirmishing each other.

-Army composition in the north is a joke. Horse archers can make up to half the AIs stacks. Fighting horse archers as chaos is not hard, it's a slug, an unfunny one. And you will do that a lot. There is no other way to deal with it as chaos than outfirepowering it with even more horse archers. Unless you want to pause every 2 seconds to manage 10 different micro ambush while you slowly corral the scattered enemy horses into the invisible gamey wall of the maps. Which I had to do once.

-The quests and objectives are irrelevant. They add Sawyerian bonuses in most cases, they don't contribute to the immersion because there's no surrounding story, writing or even complexity to them. Just go to place and sometimes kill village. GRURRRR.

-The game designers are disciples of Sawyerity. 3% charge bonus. Boo yeah. They're almost all like that.

-Immersion is only in the graphics and the intro. There's hardly any story to speak off. Little writing, no relevant progression. Just rape the lore and go south immediately. Empire can fall apart pretty fast when pressured by both chaos, vampires and greenskins and Kislev is a joke early on. I tried to be fairplay. 100 turns in and I still can't manage to unite Scandinavia into a reasonable amount of vassals. Because...

-...Because AI gets to generate a colossal host in any corner of the map they want. They are not impeded by economy, hero respawn times, nothing. They get to generate a hero, and if you let that corner of the map dark for 5 turns they'll come out with a full stacks. And you're limited to 2 armies if you want to be reasonably practical in the first 50 turns, then maybe a third one if you just want to ravage viking lands without trying to must one of those delicate vassal.
It's one thing to beat every single full stack the AI throws at you, it's another to be at 4 different corners of the map to prevent your vassals from getting gobbled by a single surprise stack from that one province the AI resettled back at the beginning.

-Battle AI is of course dumb, your challenge is just clicking on things fast enough to properly flank and surround the enemy on time. It's a fight with your mouse and keyboard more than anything. Also having to fly the camera to follow everything as units roll faster than a sports car. You can exploit the shit out of it if you have more horse archers.

-Visibility is sub par. Did someone call it the most advanced UI in recent times? It's very hard to distinguish allies from enemies or even your own units. Colors are not sharp, the surfaces on which they're printed are tiny, snow makes it even impossible to see the yellow lines on the floor.

-Some units just don't seem to be worth the cost. Dragon ogres, trolls, most monstrous units are terrible at tanking damage and don't deal it fast enough. So they're supposed to be used for flanking? Do we need more flanking units? A single charge of light cavalry in the flank or the back is enough to turn the tide of an engagement super fast (and break the moral of the enemy). Unless you're counting split seconds I don't get it. Single giant units are alright.
The chaos canon is a piece of shit. Pointless, it will end up doing more damage as you forgot to turn it off than it will do at the start of the engagement where it kills about half a unit before it reaches you. Not worth the cost. Haven't played a siege yet (no castles in the north) tho I don't have the feeling it damage walls, since its more like a slow energy ball.

-Abilities are a joke. Is there a way to put them on automatic toggle? You're going to want to press these buttons as often as you can and just aim at the biggest pile of enemy or allies. Every spells does one of the same 3 shits. The difference is just fluff. Winds of magic are just random crap you don't notice. Who is going to plan ahead using that as a variable when the whole game is spent sweeping one stack of AI after the other.

-Agent spam. It's as game breaking as people say it is. Starts slowly then becomes mathematically impossible to deal with.

-It's also a pain in the ass to substantially devastate any region because your efforts will be invalidated by the turbo resettlement the AI can and will pull on every sides as you become surrounded by factions. You think you're done with one side? Too bad you have to spend 10 years to go back because some German baron just managed to resettle half the empire from his tiny village.

All of these issues are blatant, they should be so obvious even at the drawing board stage, let alone in beta. Some of these have been found in previous titles and reported on and on. I have to come to the conclusion that Creative Assembly developers have low native intelligence and poor work ethics. With their crappy 3D map they could at least look at HOMM or AOW for solutions to avoid the endless back and forth, cats and mice game, it is likely that it is beyond their neuronal capacity to do so.

I'm probably missing even more horrible shit. I'm trying to forget about this campaign I left in suspension after all my efforts were invalidated by a single viking stack while I was busy fighting Kislev + Empire with only 2 armies on hand.

 

[Hoodoo]

Yes I'm angry. I lost an entire night worth of sleep for a game more infuriatingly limited than the release version of Europa Universalis 4

 

[varangos]

Has it been cracked yet?

 

[Galdred]

The shilling in this thread. I've never seen anything like that on the codex it's almost like you're getting paid. Thought we know better, fanboys can be this deluded.

Just pulled an all nighter at my bro's. Played chaos the entire night just to be sure I was fair when I trashed the game earlier. My last battle involved 40 units, very Epic. It also lasted exactly 7 mins. Oh well. I tried to immerse myself into the universe for my session, trying to follow the lore by first gathering the viking tribes then marching south with a massive host of vassals and personal hordes. It didn't work. And it's programmed not to work, even though it encourages you to try it.

-When I said the battle speed was in the same vein they followed since Empire it was an understatement. The battle speed is even faster. Damage is dealt extremely fast, generally whoever can make enough sense out of this mess to pull split second moskitos micromanagement will win. If your battle lasted more than 10 minutes it probably involved two full stacks of horse archers skirmishing each other.

Indeed, that is a good point, and my main problem with the game. Several mods remedy it, though:
Mostly the proper combat mod

-Army composition in the north is a joke. Horse archers can make up to half the AIs stacks. Fighting horse archers as chaos is not hard, it's a slug, an unfunny one. And you will do that a lot. There is no other way to deal with it as chaos than outfirepowering it with even more horse archers. Unless you want to pause every 2 seconds to manage 10 different micro ambush while you slowly corral the scattered enemy horses into the invisible gamey wall of the maps. Which I had to do once.

Indeed, but there too, another mod solves the problem:
Better AI army composition
That or autoresolve, because fights between 2 stacks of ranged cavalry is a torture indeed.

-The quests and objectives are irrelevant. They add Sawyerian bonuses in most cases, they don't contribute to the immersion because there's no surrounding story, writing or even complexity to them. Just go to place and sometimes kill village. GRURRRR.

-The game designers are disciples of Sawyerity. 3% charge bonus. Boo yeah. They're almost all like that.

Indeed. I ignored most of the quests. But note that they make some sense with Chaos, though, as Chaos gods rewarding you for amusing them is in line with the lore.

-Immersion is only in the graphics and the intro. There's hardly any story to speak off. Little writing, no relevant progression. Just rape the lore and go south immediately. Empire can fall apart pretty fast when pressured by both chaos, vampires and greenskins and Kislev is a joke early on. I tried to be fairplay. 100 turns in and I still can't manage to unite Scandinavia into a reasonable amount of vassals. Because...

-...Because AI gets to generate a colossal host in any corner of the map they want. They are not impeded by economy, hero respawn times, nothing. They get to generate a hero, and if you let that corner of the map dark for 5 turns they'll come out with a full stacks. And you're limited to 2 armies if you want to be reasonably practical in the first 50 turns, then maybe a third one if you just want to ravage viking lands without trying to must one of those delicate vassal.
It's one thing to beat every single full stack the AI throws at you, it's another to be at 4 different corners of the map to prevent your vassals from getting gobbled by a single surprise stack from that one province the AI resettled back at the beginning.

How so? I managed to unite Norsca between 60 to 100 turns in both games.
You don't need to babysit your vassals that much, except Bear tribe, you can use the diplomacy screen to order them to attack a given settlements. That's how I left my vassals do most of the fighting in Norsca, and raze Kislev by themselves. I only kited the dwarves litteraly to death to make it possible, and softened the Skaeling a little.
But the objection about AI rebuilding its armies instantly is a very valid one, to the point it can be more beneficial to leave a crippled AI stack wander aimlessly in your backyard than to destroy it to have it instantly replaced by a new one.
But razing the settlements after crippling the army usually does it, though (or asking your vassals to do it).

-Battle AI is of course dumb, your challenge is just clicking on things fast enough to properly flank and surround the enemy on time. It's a fight with your mouse and keyboard more than anything. Also having to fly the camera to follow everything as units roll faster than a sports car. You can exploit the shit out of it if you have more horse archers.

It is not great, and handles some combos badly, but I have found it more competent than in the previous total wars.
The thing is, if you have more horse archers, and mounted mages than the AI, to the point that your total ranged firepower is better than the AI's, there is litteraly nothing it could do to win. So the only thing it could do would be to instantly surrender. ie it can be a problem with army composition (not selecting enough ranged units, or fast units), but I don't see how it is supposed to handle your having more horse archers. when they can kite any cavalry until it is dead.
Ranged cavalry devastating melee armies is kind of historically accurate, but they also are useless in sieges.

-Visibility is sub par. Did someone call it the most advanced UI in recent times? It's very hard to distinguish allies from enemies or even your own units. Colors are not sharp, the surfaces on which they're printed are tiny, snow makes it even impossible to see the yellow lines on the floor.

We need standard bearers to be in the game!

-Some units just don't seem to be worth the cost. Dragon ogres, trolls, most monstrous units are terrible at tanking damage and don't deal it fast enough. So they're supposed to be used for flanking? Do we need more flanking units? A single charge of light cavalry in the flank or the back is enough to turn the tide of an engagement super fast (and break the moral of the enemy). Unless you're counting split seconds I don't get it. Single giant units are alright.
The chaos canon is a piece of shit. Pointless, it will end up doing more damage as you forgot to turn it off than it will do at the start of the engagement where it kills about half a unit before it reaches you. Not worth the cost. Haven't played a siege yet (no castles in the north) tho I don't have the feeling it damage walls, since its more like a slow energy ball.

Welcome to playing chaos, with its OKish infantry(well, Chaos Warriors are among the best infantry, but not really better than dwarves or Empire, and they have no ranged option, and a laughable cavalry to supplement it. Fortunately, it is not such a big deal in single player, but no one seems to pick chaos in MP).
Dragon Ogre Shoggoths suck a little less than Chaos Knights, so they make the bulk of your heavy cavalry for lack of better options.
Chosen are not cost effective at all, and their only use is to storm walls on siege towers.
The chaos cannon is bad, but as is most artillery currently. Its only use is to avoid your having to wait 2 turns to build siege equipment (you don't have the option to storm the walls immediately otherwise), if you have Dragon Ogre Shoggoth, or Giants to ram the door (Kholek Suneater can also ram the door by himself).

-Abilities are a joke. Is there a way to put them on automatic toggle? You're going to want to press these buttons as often as you can and just aim at the biggest pile of enemy or allies. Every spells does one of the same 3 shits. The difference is just fluff. Winds of magic are just random crap you don't notice. Who is going to plan ahead using that as a variable when the whole game is spent sweeping one stack of AI after the other.

Completely agreed on the abilities. Many would be better with an auto toggle (or activate whenever you charge someone if not in CD).
Regarding spells, it is not really true, you have:
Single target damage spells: very good for sniping generals
Single units damage spells: Fireball and fate of Brujna. Very mana effective
Vortex spells: Lol, so much skillpoints wasted for this
Area damage spells: same as vortex spells, but less random, so they are consistently horrible
buff/debuff spells(AoE or single unit): awesome and scale with unit sizes.

Some mobility/portal spells would be great indeed, as would be some spells to deny magic to your opponent, but there are more options than you male it sound. But many are downright horrible.

-Agent spam. It's as game breaking as people say it is. Starts slowly then becomes mathematically impossible to deal with.

It is ridiculous indeed, but with Chaos on Very Hard, it never got out of control in my campaigns, as I spent every occasion to level my own agents (I had 3 at level 30 when I finished, around turn 190), and culled most enemy agents.
It still remains an uninteresting element in the game, and I prefer the way it was handled in Shogun 1 and 2.
But several mods handle it pretty well IMO:
I use this one, now: Less OP Agents - (VASTLY FEWER CHAIN SUCCESSES)

-It's also a pain in the ass to substantially devastate any region because your efforts will be invalidated by the turbo resettlement the AI can and will pull on every sides as you become surrounded by factions. You think you're done with one side? Too bad you have to spend 10 years to go back because some German baron just managed to resettle half the empire from his tiny village.

Just send your vassals deal with it! It is what they are for.

All of these issues are blatant, they should be so obvious even at the drawing board stage, let alone in beta. Some of these have been found in previous titles and reported on and on. I have to come to the conclusion that Creative Assembly developers have low native intelligence and poor work ethics. With their crappy 3D map they could at least look at HOMM or AOW for solutions to avoid the endless back and forth, cats and mice game, it is likely that it is beyond their neuronal capacity to do so.

I'm probably missing even more horrible shit. I'm trying to forget about this campaign I left in suspension after all my efforts were invalidated by a single viking stack while I was busy fighting Kislev + Empire with only 2 armies on hand.

I agree with a lot of your issues, but I think you are overstating some, and several are already fixed by modders.
That said, why are you doing fighting Kislev with Chaos? You will only help the Vampire Counts by razing them, and they are not part of your victory conditions. Just order some of your vassals to periodically raze the Northernmost settlements, and send everyone raze Bretonnia and the Empire!
Even though your vassals are dumb, they will eventually resettle all of their razed settlements.
You can also order them to go after specific armies on the diplomatic screen, so it helps fending of Kislev.

 

[Hoodoo]

The problem with mods is that they aren't helpful to someone who likes to fire off the multiplayer side just as much as the single-player. It's frustrating to get used to a specific configuration, then start a coop campaign with someone who doesn't have them or even a multiplayer battle, and have to relearn everything over again. Plus I'm afraid of the AI becoming 100% broken with some of this stuff, whereas I would keep seeing rebellions everywhere, AI armies with 1 soldier in each unit due to bankruptcy and so on.

I got a feeling chaos does blow. A lot. So you're supposed to be that Attila kinda guy but no in fact you're the underdog with crappy viking units, limited armies, always bankruptcy and over expansive fragile monsters, somewhat decent infantry (I didn't find them that strong tho I could be miscalculating). I don't understand how you got your vassal to work that well in Norska. How many did you release? Who were they? Where did you start? I was trying to rush all releasable settlements because I didn't want one of my vassals to become too strong and rebel against me, but keep around 5 with limited power to divide and conquer. Then even as they grew powerful they started doing dumb things with their armies while Varg and Skaelling kept retaking every settlements, with always 2 full stacks at hand even at their worst. Then Empire lords starting raiding, Kislev came in with 40 units while my two armies were removed from each other. Dunno if I'll continue. I can always pull a napoleon and lightning strike his army in some major victory with Arthas, but even something spectacular like that would feel hollow as hell. Either I lose a lot of units, or I manage a super micro trick only to find out he replenished 2 new stacks 6 turns later. Keeping me on the edge and unable to finish off the vikings while more empire assholes come in

I don't think there is a single mod, that allows you to get the intelligence of the AI in legendary, without the major bonus to the AI in battle (or a limited one). And without the campaign map cheats too. Just a smart AI. No cheating

 

[Galdred]

Did you subjugate them? To have loyal vassals, you need to attack them twice in a row: the first time to awaken the tribe, and the second to subjugate them.
I focused on liberating the settlements allowing you to liberate a tribe ASAP. You can usualy tell from the name of the settlement whether it will allow you to awaken a tribe (I think there are 4 + the Varg and Skaelling that you can crush and subjugate).
The only times I had a vassal rebel was for the storyline chaos event around turn 100, and after Kislev razed two of their settlements, so rebellion is not a major problem IMO.
I even had one at the top military spot at some time, and they did not rebel. I think I had the Scarls (or whatever) at 30% of the Northern settlements, the Aesling at 55% and the other tribes sharing the remaining 15% ones.
The Skaelling will usually propose you an peace agreement, which should cover your vassal too. You should accept it while you and your vassals raze the Vargs, then choose between allying the Skaelling or subjugating them (I prefer the second route, but I suppose it doesn't change much).
The vassal behaviour made me want to bang my head against the wall on several occasions, but they eventually managed to get things sorted out in the North, and then, after some weird razing settlements exchange with Kislev in which nobody seems to care about defending stuff, they managed to cripple Kislev.
The nice thing with Chaos is that you have overpowered legendary lords:
Archaon is a beast, both in melee and ranged power, and Kholek can solo armies.
Mr Pinky is not as strong, but his quest armor allows him to regenerate which would be awesomeif the battles were not over so quickly, or if he could run away instead of being on foot, but it is still strong over several battles(even though it gives you an incentive to make battles drag a lot).
Chaos infantry is overpriced, but you can usually afford a full stack of Chaos warriors or better way before the AI can get a whole stack of elite units.
That said, I was 2 turns short of bankrupcy when I eventually went from the North to Bretonnia, their "economy" is really bad indeed.

 

[Hoodoo]

Yeah I did the trick. It's a real pain you have to resort to shit like that instead of just plain leaving you the option. How can they miss that it's like they haven't played their own game. I guess you got lucky? What were you doing with your main armies while your vassals were gobbling up undefended towns? Don't they ever get a massive enemy stack upon their towns while you were far away?

My main gripes with this mod http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=691006940&searchtext=battle+speed is that archers get double boosted. I don't understand why he decided to give them better stats after slowing down every melee units. Horse archers are overpowered as they are, almost impossible to properly deal with, do we need more?

I wish there was a mod that stopped armies appearing out of nowhere. Of all the AI cheats this is the worst and the modder who made the no AI cheats left that one out for some reason. Do you use those mods?

 

[Galdred]

I got lucky indeed, as Bearsonling did not get annihilated despite their inept defenses. And I suppose Vampire Counts put much pressure against Kislev. That and the ring of cheesy fireball supplemented by the staf of cooldown shortening I got on Kholek allowed me to murder the dwarves easily.
Other than that, I rushed the dragon ogre building to get Kholek ASAP, then gave him a stack of marauder cavalry, while Archaon got mostly Chaos Warriors after I sold his marauder building.
I sent Kholek to Bretonia by boat, while Archaon sacked the cost and got there by land (so through Kislev, Nordland, and whatever else was there).
Nordland and Kislev sent two large stacks twice. I set these as war targets for 4 of them, and the closest Kislev or Norland settlements for the remaining ones, I still had Kholek in the North to deal with the first wave, but I think the AI armies mostly died to attrition.
They razed 4 settlements, but the Norscans eventually resettled (that is another stupid oversight btw, there is no way to tell your AI ally to resettle its vacant city...You have to get him to have an army accidentally walk over there or whatever).

You are correct about archers: the foot ones are too weak, but the mounted ones certainly need no extra buffing. They can still kite to death any unit fast enough to catch them (they sure murdered my warhounds when they tried to catch them...), so you need 2 quick melee cavalry to deal with them.
The fact that your chaos knights advance slower than dwarf infantry (well, I may exagerate a little there, but not so much) certainly does not help dealing with the problem.

Regarding hellcannons, as the spells, they do not scale up with unit size (and they have a popcount of 1), so they definitely are much better for small and normal size than ultra.
They are the most inaccurate artillery, but also the most powerful.
I suppose you can get good mileage out of them by manually controlling them (insert key), but I haven't done so, and have only used them as glorified battering rams.

Spoiler

I will definitely give them a try on my next chaos playthrough (ie once a mod makes them better, even at a larger cost). This guy got 241 kills with his...

 

[Blaine]

The shilling in this thread. I've never seen anything like that on the codex it's almost like you're getting paid. Thought we know better, fanboys can be this deluded.

Thing is though, I agree with you on most points and have already covered many of them (unless you aren't referring to me, but I'm pretty sure you are).

-When I said the battle speed was in the same vein they followed since Empire it was an understatement.

Check, I've complained about this.

-Army composition in the north is a joke. Horse archers can make up to half the AIs stacks. Fighting horse archers as chaos is not hard, it's a slug, an unfunny one. And you will do that a lot. There is no other way to deal with it as chaos than outfirepowering it with even more horse archers. Unless you want to pause every 2 seconds to manage 10 different micro ambush while you slowly corral the scattered enemy horses into the invisible gamey wall of the maps. Which I had to do once.

I noticed this too on my Chaos campaign, didn't get absolutely massive horse archer spam myself, but 4-6 in most cases and it was a fucking pain in the ass. Having said that, the AI isn't obligated to make non-obnoxious unit compositions.

-The game designers are disciples of Sawyerity. 3% charge bonus. Boo yeah. They're almost all like that.

It's a substantial improvement over Shogun 2's much tinier bonuses, which is why I've never mentioned it. But yes, this is annoying.

-...Because AI gets to generate a colossal host in any corner of the map they want. They are not impeded by economy, hero respawn times, nothing. They get to generate a hero, and if you let that corner of the map dark for 5 turns they'll come out with a full stacks.

Yep, I've complained about this, vociferously. The AI gets to cheat so much that's it's impossible to gauge their capabilities or manpower by noting which settlements and buildings they have, or through any other method really. They just get magical free shit, so the benefit of your intelligence and the actions of your agents are severely reduced in usefulness. It's a HUGE, HUGE problem with the game.

Within a handful of turns, one (1) non-capital settlement belonging to the Greenskins faction, the only settlement they owned, produced a full doomstack of high-tier units without having the necessary buildings to recruit them, and also got a WAAAAGH!!! for no discernable reason.

-Battle AI is of course dumb, your challenge is just clicking on things fast enough to properly flank and surround the enemy on time.

True, although this is the best AI in any Total War title to date, so again I wonder why you're even in a Total War thread if you hate the poor AI so much.

-Some units just don't seem to be worth the cost.

I haven't complained about this specifically, but it's very true. The differences in damage/unit HP caused by unit size settings don't help in this regard.

-Agent spam. It's as game breaking as people say it is. Starts slowly then becomes mathematically impossible to deal with.

Yep, because of aforementioned massive AI cheating.

-It's also a pain in the ass to substantially devastate any region because your efforts will be invalidated by the turbo resettlement the AI can and will pull on every sides as you become surrounded by factions. You think you're done with one side? Too bad you have to spend 10 years to go back because some German baron just managed to resettle half the empire from his tiny village.

Yep.

Actually, the massive AI cheating that causes me to not have any way to predict or gauge what the AI is capable of or might be planning has caused me to drift away from the game. I'll probably only return when and if enough patches and mods appear to ameliorate at least a fair portion of the bullshit.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Within a handful of turns, one (1) non-capital settlement belonging to the Greenskins faction, the only settlement they owned, produced a full doomstack of high-tier units without having the necessary buildings to recruit them, and also got a WAAAAGH!!! for no discernable reason.

That made me sweat a lot yesterday but I was able to finish dwarven campaign at last. Probably stopped 6 WAAAAGH!! s in my first 50 turns...
Thank fully most of them was low life goblins so getiing rid of Big'uns and other urk infantry was enough to won.

 

[MoLAoS]

Within a handful of turns, one (1) non-capital settlement belonging to the Greenskins faction, the only settlement they owned, produced a full doomstack of high-tier units without having the necessary buildings to recruit them, and also got a WAAAAGH!!! for no discernable reason.

That made me sweat a lot yesterday but I was able to finish dwarven campaign at last. Probably stopped 6 WAAAAGH!! s in my first 50 turns...
Thank fully most of them was low life goblins so getiing rid of Big'uns and other urk infantry was enough to won.

On easy difficulty its possible to sweep the orcs and greenskins in a mere 50 turns with no WAAAAGH!!! against you. I mean owning everything south of the Black Gulf, the blood river valley, and all the way to the northern worlds end mountains.

The Empire of course is even simpler from Easy to Hard. A specific set of optimal actions to reclaim the Reikland and then a strong push south taking bastonne, artois, parvarron, and then the rest of Bretonia and then sweeping through the southern realms. Allying every mountain dwarf nation helps. You'll want to almost totally ignore the Empire. Maybe get some non-aggression pacts and trade agreements. The rest of the empire will fight off the northern tribes easily and even potentially hold back Chaos until you've swept up the Border Princes. Then you are so powerful nothing can stop you. You can max out on econ buildings throughout all of Bretonia and the Southern Realms allowing you to field massive armies. You'll also want to grab all the strategic buildings there. Those realms and weak and easily conquered.

 

[Blaine]

Cyberarmy Actually, I loaded my save to check. It wasn't just one doomstack they pulled out of their asses, it was one doomstack and two-thirds of a second doomstack.

A handful of turns before this screenshot, I had completely destroyed one of their armies via underway interception, and devastated another. I come back to see that, with one minor settlement containing no economic buildings (just the fort and a recruitment building), they've totally rebuilt the destroyed doomstack and are damned close to finishing another... and they have a WAAAGH!!.

Now, take a look at this screenshot of the campaign map. As you can see, Greenskins are surrounded by me to the north, their allies, Top Knotz, to the west, and that's it. They LOST battles to me a few turns ago, and haven't been fighting their allies... yet, they have a WAAAGH!!.

This is fucking stupid. Intelligence-gathering is USELESS in this game. It's almost impossible to gauge the enemy's capabilities or manpower, except to assume they'll get a lot of free shit and break a bunch of the rules.

I quit, until there are patches and/or mods addressing this bullshit. Yes, the AI has to use crutches to compete, but this is just ludicrous. I might do some Custom Battles from time to time, but the campaign can fuck off.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Fucking mushrooms and their spores man, they breed like rabbits.

Same thing happened to me against Vampire Lords and some southern human faction. While I was fighting VLs they managed to raise to stacks of doom in a turn... I know they can easly raise some dead (and special ones where critical battles happened) but that was pure bullshit. Fortunately I was stinkin rich and had 5 dwarven legions of doom with torpedos, gatlings and flame tanks, also my lord was a beast and he single handedly slaugthered 3 grave guardian units.

Southern human faction with 1 fucking settlement kept on sending doomstacks and agents all over the empire. Just a minor nuisance at that time.

 

[MoLAoS]

The 4 vampire realms consistently have the most powerful armies given their territory of any group, even better than greenskins. Although in Blaine's screenshot it seems like they might have more than one land.

 

[Blaine]

I never should have tried expanding south before completely destroying the VCs. I easily could have; earlier on I was running roughshod over that whole patch of yellow, sacking as I went.

 

[Galdred]

I think you need to consider this as some kind of solitary board game to enjoy that: with rules that makes no sense as a simulation, but just random challenges the game throws at you with a Warhammer dressing.
The AI getting free stacks is annoying indeed. I think the only hard limit is has is the number of lords it is allowed to field at a given time. Incidently, that is why vassals are so strong, they too can pull 2 stacks armies out of a miserable backwater minor settlement.

 

[Trash]

CA always liked to help the AI by having it cheat blatantly. In Shogun 2 the AI got the usual bonuses but also had another little dirty trick up its sleeve. It blatantly had its units updated out of the player's view. Pissed me off to no end when I learned about it. The AI has a stack of low tier peasant units, moves it into the fog and then one turn later it marches into your lands with a full on samurai ass-kicking doomstack.

There was a mod that removed that for the AI. Actually made the game much more enjoyable for me. Also made for more diverse AI armies since they weren't compiled by scripts anymore. Wonder if that mod is still around.

But anyway, nothing new that the AI cheats. Even this blatantly. It's however so unbalanced that it actively undermines the entertainment value of the game. And I'm pretty sure that apart from the usual monetary bonuses and so on and the agent stuff we also, once more, get to enjoy stack shennanigans like in Shogun 2. Hope we'll either get a decent patch or mods will fix the worst of it. I'm pretty sure I already saw a mod that eliminated AI bonuses.

 

[MoLAoS]

I never should have tried expanding south before completely destroying the VCs. I easily could have; earlier on I was running roughshod over that whole patch of yellow, sacking as I went.

WTF are you talking about? You are dwarves. WTF are you doing fighting vampires? Your task is simple. Capture both regions in the province with Mount Gunbad to the north. Maybe confederate Zhubar. Later you'll confederate Karak Kadrin but not now. Potentially confederate Karak Varr. Meanwhile press down through the province below Silver Road. Eventually you'll want to have 2 full stacks take Iron Crag. Then you'll have ~4 full provinces. Make sure to spam econ buildings and destroy the infantry building at your capital and let your minor settlement be the one to have that building. Ideally grab tier 2 infantry for crowbows. Keep shoving south to wipe out the Greenskins. Maybe confederate Karak Azul to help with that. Ignore the north and the vampires and slam the greenskins hard. They got a bonus stack a couple turns ago but I'm utterly smashing them. They'll be down to I think 2 desert provinces in a few turns. I'm not even on turn 40 yet.

 

[Galdred]

I think the core unmodded rules for stacks are something like:
AI gets several slots of units it can fill depending on some parameters. They are probably not tied to in game building, but maybe to turns.
But the AI will not disband its old units by itself, so if you make sure never to finish the peasants in the existing armies, I think you will keep facing them, except when the AI is allowed to field a fresh new army.

 

[Blaine]

Galdred What most appeals to me about strategy games of this scope and level of granularity is a desire to capture the feeling that I've pulled off something akin to what a hypothetical, mildly clever leader or general might have pulled off under similar conditions. I want to gather intelligence, form a plan, compose my units accordingly, direct them in the battle, and then receive my reward: the satisfaction of a plan well planned, and maneuvers adroitly executed. That's why I've tended to carry on about The Art of War in this thread. I don't harbor any delusions of grandeur; it's a guide that tells me how to conduct strategy properly. At the end of it all I'd like to feel that I've learned something, that I've channeled an experience that feels strategically authentic. It may not actually be authentic, but if it feels authentic, then I'm entertained and pleased, and that's what having fun is all about.

When the enemy can miracle up virtually whatever it wants at any time, and break all kinds of rules in ways I can't discern, then the intelligence-gathering aspect is largely wrecked. Aside from the importance of the character and wisdom of a general, intelligence-gathering is probably the #1 most vital point made in The Art of War. Everything else depends on intelligence-gathering, as well as plan-making, which in turn depends on intelligence-gathering.

I can't feel strategically pleased with myself if I have to skip all of that, assume the AI will do whatever it wants at any time, and just make vague, brain-dead decisions that don't remotely qualify as plans, basically: "I wanna take that patch over there, so... I'm goin'!". It's one thing for the BAI to be imperfect and make stupid mistakes. That's actually somewhat realistic: bad generalship. Bad generals are pretty common. But the strategic layer being fundamentally broken? Fuck that.

MoLAoS Fuck off m8, I trashed VC settlements to weaken them and get free shit around turn 60-70 on my way down to kill more Greenskins. I too left them alone for the first 60 turns or so. I don't know how much it actually weakened them though, since they probably just awarded themselves more free shit.

 

[Blaine]

Hope we'll either get a decent patch or mods will fix the worst of it. I'm pretty sure I already saw a mod that eliminated AI bonuses.

Yes, that's what I'm waiting for. There already is a No AI Cheat mod, but it's early days and I know it must still be crude. Hopefully, a patch or three from now and with some more nuanced modding, it will be made tolerable.

 

[MoLAoS]

Galdred What most appeals to me about strategy games of this scope and level of granularity is a desire to capture the feeling that I've pulled off something akin to what a hypothetical, mildly clever leader or general might have pulled off under similar conditions. I want to gather intelligence, form a plan, compose my units accordingly, direct them in the battle, and then receive my reward: the satisfaction of a plan well planned, and maneuvers adroitly executed. That's why I've tended to carry on about The Art of War in this thread. I don't harbor any delusions of grandeur; it's a guide that tells me how to conduct strategy properly. At the end of it all I'd like to feel that I've learned something, that I've channeled an experience that feels strategically authentic. It may not actually be authentic, but if it feels authentic, then I'm entertained and pleased, and that's what having fun is all about.

When the enemy can miracle up virtually whatever it wants at any time, and break all kinds of rules in ways I can't discern, then the intelligence-gathering aspect is largely wrecked. Aside from the importance of the character and wisdom of a general, intelligence-gathering is probably the #1 most vital point made in The Art of War. Everything else depends on intelligence-gathering, as well as plan-making, which in turn depends on intelligence-gathering.

I can't feel strategically pleased with myself if I have to skip all of that, assume the AI will do whatever it wants at any time, and just make vague, brain-dead decisions that don't remotely qualify as plans, basically: "I wanna take that patch over there, so... I'm goin'!". It's one thing for the BAI to be imperfect and make stupid mistakes. That's actually somewhat realistic: bad generalship. Bad generals are pretty common. But the strategic layer being fundamentally broken? Fuck that.

MoLAoS Fuck off m8, I trashed VC settlements to weaken them and get free shit around turn 60-70 on my way down to kill more Greenskins. I too left them alone for the first 60 turns or so. I don't know how much it actually weakened them though, since they probably just awarded themselves more free shit.

What difficulty are you playing on that Greenskins are still alive around turn ~70?

 

[Galdred]

Blaine, I agree that the level of rule obfuscation is insane in the game. It apparently did hinder the Empire in my last playthrough to be reduced to a single province, but it looks like each faction is hampered differently by losing settlements. Or maybe they have a base incomes that vary a lot. That said, intelligence gathering is still key in the game, especially if you are relying on lightning strike to equalize battles (but it might not work as dwarves, though, as they are too slow to make any good use of it).
I find the level of blatant AI cheating much less frustrating than the Realm Divide in Shogun 2. At least, you can still play one AI against another. After dozens of turns of Nordland refusing a NAP with me, I offered peace to the Skaelings which then turned against Nordland which is now begging me to accept them in my confederation.

TBH, I was about to quit the game when I united Norsca, and I found the diplomatic mini game refreshing compared to what I got in previous Total War.

 

[MoLAoS]

Blaine, I agree that the level of rule obfuscation is insane in the game. It apparently did hinder the Empire in my last playthrough to be reduced to a single province, but it looks like each faction is hampered differently by losing settlements. Or maybe they have a base incomes that vary a lot. That said, intelligence gathering is still key in the game, especially if you are relying on lightning strike to equalize battles (but it might not work as dwarves, though, as they are too slow to make any good use of it).
I find the level of blatant AI cheating much less frustrating than the Realm Divide in Shogun 2. At least, you can still play one AI against another. After dozens of turns of Nordland refusing a NAP with me, I offered peace to the Skaelings which then turned against Nordland which is now begging me to accept them in my confederation.

TBH, I was about to quit the game when I united Norsca, and I found the diplomatic mini game refreshing compared to what I got in previous Total War.

Lightning strike working fine for me as dwarves. Also all factions have a base income of 2500. Tells you right in the game income panel. That's easily enough to pay maintenance on a full stack.