Warhammer Total War: Warhammer 2

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah, Drycha starts with Gryphon Wood, which is above Mordheim.
And yes, you are expected to take it from the Elves because that's the only way you can get it. Drycha cannot confederate with Elves, but she can confederate with Durthu.
Drycha isn't that weak early game (as long as you abuse ambush and fight in forests), but late game you find yourself really wishing CA gave her faction some tree spirit damage dealers, because tree kin and tree men are more tanks and dryads don't fair too well against high tier enemies. You do still get access to stuff like Waywatchers and Wardancers, but spamming them just feels wrong for an faction who's supposed to be about hating elves and loving trees. Especially when you consider the higher upkeep costs.

 

[Jaedar]

Played sisters in vortex campaign, victory in 89 turns and 27 manual battles. It was a bit tricky in the beginning, and I did do one restart (killing the starting orc factions becomes very difficult if they are allowed to hit their single camp upkeep cap). But after I got Ariel it was all smooth sailing. Only had one serious war, which was with allarielle so I could take gaean vale. The welf economy is pretty weak as people have said and in the end I had two armies, but they were both 50% t1 infantry but that's ok because glade guards are very strong when you have some good lords and disruptive magics.

I am considering playing them on mortal empires because I feel like I didn't try everything in this faction. Didn't have time for any treemen, forest dragons or the high tier elf units. I will probably wait for the forge improvements they promised though.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Oh god hovering over Drycha on the campaign map results in ENDLESS SCREAMING from her.

I'm playing as Drycha right now actually.
She's kind of fun, especially early game, but I noticed that when you start fighting against well armored units you tend to struggle, and the units that deal good damaged against armored units tend to have high upkeep due to the racial trait and have debuffs on top of it.
You pretty much need to take aspects to make it even, and even then that's not enough.

Yea, I can't confirm the "WE being easy" thing. Drycha struggles. The VC next door are a pain in the wooden ass.

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You need to use aspects. Aspects make a huge difference in performance, and as you aren't going to be using that many elves you need to squeeze as much performance as possible out of your spirits.
For undead I suggest willow (the one that gives melee defence and bonus against infantry at the cost of armor piercing) and birch (less physical resistance, more armor piercing and speed). Undead tend to have low armor but a lot of bodies, and whilst dryads are pretty tanky on their own the undead aren't going to route, so you have to kill them faster than they kill you before they grind you down through attrition and Nehek.
Birch I think would be useful against grave guard for similar reasons, though you might want to use your birches as a flanking force and engage with tree kin.

Also, take Lore of Life. Lore of Life is absolutely filthy normally, and extra filthy on tree spirits.

I found that 3 units of deepwoods are all you need for elves. Hide your army in a forest, put the deepwoods on the edge and use a flying unit as bait. The AI will approach, get shot at, chase the elves deep into the forest where they'll get jumped by the rest of your army who now have the stat bonuses from their passive. Should make it a lot easier.

You can use Deep Roots to teleport to any forest, not just the ones you control. So you can steal Gloom Wood pretty easily, which have a shitty garrison due to not being held by Elves.

Of course, I've been playing on hard / hard. If you are playing on Legendary or VH battle difficulty this might not be applicable.

 

[Fedora Master]

Ive been trying to do Legendary and it's an absolute pain. The AI bonuses on campaign just make it shit out gold chevron greatswords/grave guard forever and ever.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Ive been trying to do Legendary and it's an absolute pain. The AI bonuses on campaign just make it shit out gold chevron greatswords/grave guard forever and ever.

Yeah, Drycha is going to have a harder time in legendary than most wood elves, because legendary buffs melee stats and tree spirits are melee units.
Using aspects should remove some of the pain though. You're just going to have to cheese the AI by baiting them into ambushes and using forests. The good news though is that if you level up Drycha enough and get her special treeman hero, you get do some bullshit, like free units of dryads appearing anywhere of the map, or -75% price reduction on aspects.

You don't have to worry about taking territory at least, outposts make shit for money and are only good for buffing your great forest or acting as a staging ground for invasions. You get more money from razing anyway.

Funnily enough, taking Drakenhoff gives you 2 settlement slots, a gold mine and +10% to income faction wide, so that's nice I guess?

 

[Average Manatee]

For undead, anyone tried to start off the war vs. undead with a deepstrike on Castle Drakenhof? You can use underway stance to avoid attrition. Otherwise might try doing the event where you can a temp relation boost with undead and see if it lets you ally them.

Did get a decent start where I killed Ostermark but they invited Ostland to attack me when they had 0 settlements left and Ostland did a surprise raze of Gryphon Wood next turn. Will give it another try after a Moulder game.

Mass treemen should be decent vs. undead with life magic. It's just it'll suck vs. empire with all their gun shit.

 

[Fedora Master]

I like Skryre and Moulder... So Im playing Eshin because they can get the best of both. Heh.

e: Fucking around with various WE factions, I still think they're shit.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

So I noticed something weird with my Drycha game.
For a lot of my settlements I'm getting a negative penalty to public order from something called faction. Problem is though that there is nothing I could see in my faction that gives public order penalties across all settlements. What's up with that?

 

[Olinser]

So the patch seems to have SIGNIFCIANTLY increased the aggressiveness of AI.

They're not smarter or better, now they just build more armies and mindlessly throw them at you. In ME it's actually annoying as shit because it basically forces you to camp armies on their attack paths while you go about conquering the territory that are ACTUALLY going to win you the game.

Seriously I'm playing Norsca, and Ghrond/Sentinals literally throw an army at me every 3-4 turns. Same with the the idiotic elves. THREE different factions just keep sailing up on the same path with the same crappy armies that force me to just park an army on the SW island because I don't want to take the time to conquer the entire freaking island because that would let the Empire get out of hand.

God the ME campaign requirements are so stupid.

 

[Jaedar]

For a lot of my settlements I'm getting a negative penalty to public order from something called faction. Problem is though that there is nothing I could see in my faction that gives public order penalties across all settlements. What's up with that?

Not sure, but I saw it too. Public order with welf was weird in general for me, had no issue getting it positive in outposts but the actual trees were hard to keep from rebelling without an army/hero to keep them in line.

 

[tabacila]

For a lot of my settlements I'm getting a negative penalty to public order from something called faction. Problem is though that there is nothing I could see in my faction that gives public order penalties across all settlements. What's up with that?

Not sure, but I saw it too. Public order with welf was weird in general for me, had no issue getting it positive in outposts but the actual trees were hard to keep from rebelling without an army/hero to keep them in line.

The have added changes to public order, it's mentioned in the patch notes. High public order gives you some bonuses, but a public order penalty and low region control gives you some penalties and a public order bonus. For example on Normal the Witchwood at 100 public order has a -12 public order modifier per turn. When you select a settlement in province effects you can see an icon called region control that shows the effects that apply.
It makes reaching -100 or 100 harder. I guess they did this for the AI. I just wish the made rebellions have a chance to trigger at anything below 0 and not just at -100.

 

[Olinser]

For a lot of my settlements I'm getting a negative penalty to public order from something called faction. Problem is though that there is nothing I could see in my faction that gives public order penalties across all settlements. What's up with that?

Not sure, but I saw it too. Public order with welf was weird in general for me, had no issue getting it positive in outposts but the actual trees were hard to keep from rebelling without an army/hero to keep them in line.

The have added changes to public order, it's mentioned in the patch notes. High public order gives you some bonuses, but a public order penalty and low region control gives you some penalties and a public order bonus. For example on Normal the Witchwood at 100 public order has a -12 public order modifier per turn. When you select a settlement in province effects you can see an icon called region control that shows the effects that apply.
It makes reaching -100 or 100 harder. I guess they did this for the AI. I just wish the made rebellions have a chance to trigger at anything below 0 and not just at -100.

Yeah Public Order as a mechanic is stupid. On anything other than the high difficulties it's utterly pointless, and on the higher difficulties its so thoroughly predictable that unless you WANT rebellions, its laughably easy to control them, and if you DO want rebellions, you can predict exactly when and where they will occur.

 

[Jaedar]

, and on the higher difficulties its so thoroughly predictable that unless you WANT rebellions, its laughably easy to control them, and if you DO want rebellions, you can predict exactly when and where they will occur.

Rebellion farming does seem to be a strategy for some people, at least in the early game (free xp and cash for easy fights). I disagree on it being that easy to control though, especially if you neighbour something that gives corruption.

 

[Average Manatee]

Well Throt is disgustingly OP. You thought Ikit Claw was OP? Ikit Claw at least needs 15 or so high level units to wipe shit, and it sucks at sieges or being ambushed or w/e. Throt needs your legendary lord, your packmaster on a hound, plague priest, and literally only 3-4 more horrors to solo 1 or even 2 armies at a time. You get warpstone armor from your first battle (checked and it seems non-random, I get the same thing each time). Combined with packmaster and priest you have double regeneration and double mortis engine effect. Then you pick up the explosion ability for the horrors which is basically a mini-nuke that easily gets 300-500 kills per battle. It is obscenely easy. I have so much excess money from not needing more units that I have 6 lords raiding my own province for +2 food per turn each. Honestly bored to even continue, so back to drycha.

With Drycha my new strat is to get the +5 health for razing and just raze the same settlements constantly. First tree healed. Taking the tree of ages looks hard though, its a full siege of the tree then you get gangbanged by a stack and a half of Orion on your new tree. Considering I'm not hiring any elf units I think I'll need a doomstack for that, so will heal another tree first.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Well Throt is disgustingly OP. You thought Ikit Claw was OP? Ikit Claw at least needs 15 or so high level units to wipe shit, and it sucks at sieges or being ambushed or w/e. Throt needs your legendary lord, your packmaster on a hound, plague priest, and literally only 3-4 more horrors to solo 1 or even 2 armies at a time. You get warpstone armor from your first battle (checked and it seems non-random, I get the same thing each time). Combined with packmaster and priest you have double regeneration and double mortis engine effect. Then you pick up the explosion ability for the horrors which is basically a mini-nuke that easily gets 300-500 kills per battle. It is obscenely easy. I have so much excess money from not needing more units that I have 6 lords raiding my own province for +2 food per turn each. Honestly bored to even continue, so back to drycha.

With Drycha my new strat is to get the +5 health for razing and just raze the same settlements constantly. First tree healed. Taking the tree of ages looks hard though, its a full siege of the tree then you get gangbanged by a stack and a half of Orion on your new tree. Considering I'm not hiring any elf units I think I'll need a doomstack for that, so will heal another tree first.

It depends. If Orion confederated you're in for a fight.
If not, then all you need to do is confederate Durthu, take the two stacks he's going to have, walk over to Orion, declare one, put one army in ambush, the other army as bait, ambush his army and march on King's glade with two stacks. Repeat for the rest of Athel Loran. That's how I did it.

I actually found my Drycha campaign to be pretty short; it only took 124 turns. Most "short" mortal empire campaigns take about 200 turns because of the fucking stupid capital city requirement.
Even Vampire Coasts need to take land and city to win, which is stupid for an army who's supposed to just go around looting shit.
It actually found the Wood Elves more fun than Vampire Coast for that reason, because you really don't have to worry that much about land.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

I just wish the made rebellions have a chance to trigger at anything below 0 and not just at -100.

there's a mod for that.

 

[Average Manatee]

God, you can't even get knowledgable lords since you only get Treemen lords. This despite the fact that spamming life magic to heal treemen units is probably your best non-elf army.

Also razing is getting really annoying since it removes all your movement and leaves you in enemy territory unable to replenish. Wood Elves should really get some ability to heal in the heathland if its razed, or just ability to encamp at 0 movement or something. Despite this razing is definitely the right way to go, way more tree health quickly and you stay small so no one fucking attacks you. If I was using archer spam and therefore not having my army ground down to half strength every battle in melee it'd be incredibly easy to just continually raze->hide in ambush off the path->raze when they come back.

Incidentally, I think I might have found some cheese:

If this can stack then getting 4 of these bad boys (I think the cap for -resistance is -100%) and then doing dryads/treemen/zoats would be pretty good. Plus you'd have 4 shadow magic casters spamming double damage penumbral and pit of shades. Heck even Melkoth's might melt things (though it doesn't say it does magic damage).

Of course if you want to use elves then you can use freaking hagbane tip glade guard with this, which could very well be as or more powerful than waywatchers. For a tier 1 unit.

Unfortunately heroes can't get -5 local enemy leadership, sad that you can't stack that for the 0 starting enemy leadership cheese.

It depends. If Orion confederated you're in for a fight.
If not, then all you need to do is confederate Durthu, take the two stacks he's going to have, walk over to Orion, declare one, put one army in ambush, the other army as bait, ambush his army and march on King's glade with two stacks. Repeat for the rest of Athel Loran. That's how I did it.

How do you confederate Durthu?

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

God, you can't even get knowledgable lords since you only get Treemen lords. This despite the fact that spamming life magic to heal treemen units is probably your best non-elf army.

Also razing is getting really annoying since it removes all your movement and leaves you in enemy territory unable to replenish. Wood Elves should really get some ability to heal in the heathland if its razed, or just ability to encamp at 0 movement or something. Despite this razing is definitely the right way to go, way more tree health quickly and you stay small so no one fucking attacks you. If I was using archer spam and therefore not having my army ground down to half strength every battle in melee it'd be incredibly easy to just continually raze->hide in ambush off the path->raze when they come back.

Incidentally, I think I might have found some cheese:

If this can stack then getting 4 of these bad boys (I think the cap for -resistance is -100%) and then doing dryads/treemen/zoats would be pretty good. Plus you'd have 4 shadow magic casters spamming double damage penumbral and pit of shades. Heck even Melkoth's might melt things (though it doesn't say it does magic damage).

Of course if you want to use elves then you can use freaking hagbane tip glade guard with this, which could very well be as or more powerful than waywatchers. For a tier 1 unit.

Unfortunately heroes can't get -5 local enemy leadership, sad that you can't stack that for the 0 starting enemy leadership cheese.

It depends. If Orion confederated you're in for a fight.
If not, then all you need to do is confederate Durthu, take the two stacks he's going to have, walk over to Orion, declare one, put one army in ambush, the other army as bait, ambush his army and march on King's glade with two stacks. Repeat for the rest of Athel Loran. That's how I did it.

How do you confederate Durthu?

You get a mission at some point where you defeat Dwarfs 3 times. After that you get a choice between instantly confederating Durthu or giving Athel Loren health instead.
I don't know what spawns it though, I think its after a certain number of turns.

 

[Average Manatee]

I thought that mission only spawned after you got the oak of ages and upgraded it to the tier where it says it unlocks confederation. At least that was what it seems for sisters of twilight, is it different for Drycha?

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I thought that mission only spawned after you got the oak of ages and upgraded it to the tier where it says it unlocks confederation. At least that was what it seems for sisters of twilight, is it different for Drycha?

Yeah, with Drycha it just happens. I was nowhere near the Oak of Ages when it popped it. I think it triggered shortly after getting the quest for Drycha's unique hero option?

 

[Average Manatee]

Interesting, guess I should get that done

 

[Olinser]

Hmm, they also seem to have SIGNIFICANTLY decreased the amount of casualties the AI takes from corruption.

100% chaos corruption only causes 3% casualties - so its functionally useless now as anything but a public order affecter.

 

[Average Manatee]

Well its definitely not related to Drycha's hero. I just kind of got the mission. I think the Drycha hero quest bugged out too because I did it so late, because it never progressed. I had already annexed durthu and half the factions were dead, not sure if it relies on anything since the previous mission was something to do with the empire.

In any case, razing lots of stuff is definitely the speedrun way to get elves done. Despite the relative slowness and expense of Treemen I finished not too much slower than sisters of twilight (turn 93), and I actually ignored the main tree almost entirely because skaven had already taken over and fuck skaven. Especially when you are razing, because you end up damaged and exposed in a region with no healing for 3 skaven armies to force march to you and a 4th to ambush you. Also it's nice how you aren't really penalized by attacking your fellow wood elves rather than doing quests for confederation, since all you care about is their level 3 income buildings and therefore reducing their tree from level 4 to level 3 has practically no loss.

Stat-wise treemen do eventually get 30% phys resist, 50% missile resist, net 0% fire resist, and a constant mortis engine effect around them. Pretty buff but fighting battles was just fucking annoying. I either just sat there with a full treemen army tanking damage until they ran out of ammo or got some zoats and tried to run around. But zoats kind of fall off and die really quickly late game, so eventually the plan was just sitting there tanking damage while spamming healing abilities. In retrospect I probably should have beelined for tier 5 and picked up 4 or so dragons per army.

Sadly I can say that stacking -% magic resist apparently does not work at all. It only reduces magic resistance, if you want to get a damage bonus you need to stack +weakness to that element. So it's only useful against dwarves or other units with base magic resistance. Bummer. I did pick up a lot of "Forest Spirit" followers who each apply -5 leadership to local enemy armies and can be stacked 1 per lord/hero though. Coupled with Blight of Terrors that was around -20 leadership to all enemy armies, pretty good.

 

[Fedora Master]

Fuck Elgi!
Fuck Thaggoraki!
Make Bryn!

 

[Average Manatee]

>35 growth