Warhammer Total War: Warhammer 2

[CthuluIsSpy]

You can waste all their ammo by dodging with a single unit.

Very effective with e.g. Morathi's hydra to clear out Alith's ranged stacks.

You know I tried that with Hellebron's Manticore and found that Organ guns had really good accuracy. They can also drop her health pretty quick. After that I kind of gave up using that cheese tactic.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I played the Malus campaign several times, but those playthroughs were pre Imrik, Greenskin buff, and dwarf buff. I may try it again soon.

Malus is a weird campaign, because those whisper quests are random and yet can make a huge difference, such as Urial (-20% to construction costs) and the life steal dagger.

I used Malus as a tarpit (don’t put him on Spite), spammed Darkshards (shades ASAP), casted magic over top Malus, and used tzarkan if Malus ever got low. After I leveled Malus and a mage hero up enough, I could go several battles without needing to worry about replenishment and somewhat ignored the sanity meter. Otherwise, I always kept Hag Graef.

Right now, I think you can keep Hag Graef and spam potions to level it to tier 3+ fast, because of the boost to population.

The whispers are cool, but some of the requirements are pretty obscene. One of them is kill 30k enemies within 20 turns. I don't see how you can do that in a mountain range where it takes like 4 turns to get anywhere.

 

[copebot]

Shade spam, magic (they're dwarves but hey, still does damage), hydras, death hags, other melee heroes, black dragons -- all that stuff should be able to kill ironbreakers. Normal dark elf melee infantry is just not gonna have a great time against dwarfs. Use your black ark abilities against their artillery to blow up the weapons and their crews. Overall dwarfs are a tough matchup for any elf faction.

Can't use the Black Arks in the badlands :/
That's the thing that's really killing me - even if I win the battle I take so much damage that I have fall back and re-recruit everything because Malus reduces ALL lords' replenishment by 60% and I have to fight in a mountain range which takes bloody ages.
It's an absolutely terrible area for Dark Elves to be in.
In theory I should be able to beat dwarfs, but their organ gun and quarrelers melt any fast unit that gets close and they are protected by melee. Hydras do perform wonderfully but they take three turns to recruit , they have expensive upkeep and I need to be able to apply pressure to multiple fronts because of the mountain range. Also the dwarfs are spamming slayers. Which isn't too bad but it acts as a distraction for the Ironbreakers to be bastards and ties up my ranged units.
Oh, and the Empire is attacking me from the North because they decided to conquer the East. Because Chaos is a fucking joke who can't do their one job.
So I have no replenishment, no immediate recruitment options, no black arks, no ability to actually force project because the supply line mechanic is fucking stupid and I have to fight on multiple fronts. I don't think CA really thought Malus's Mortal Empires start through.

Tactically it's not too bad, but logistically it's a terror because I just can't afford taking heavy losses against artillery and grenades.
I guess I'll try recruiting more shades, but I noticed they are a little squishy against Dwarf quarellers, and sometimes they field 4 of the fuckers.

How the hell am I supposed to fight Ironbreakers as Dark Elves? There's nothing I can use against them as a frontline because of their fucking grenades. They are also spamming Organ Guns and just camping with their gunline. It's turning into a real slog and the frustrating thing is that I nearly had the Dwarfs beat and then suddenly they started pulling stacks out of their arses.
Also the fact that the Chaos Invasion only screws over Dark Elves and just tickles the Empire is fucking retarded.

In one Malus Me campaign I had success with armies composed 2 hydras and the rest as shades (well, other than the lord, artillery, and heroes). I vanguard deployed the shades to be in range of the dwarven line at the start of the battle and focused on the artillery. Once the artillery was dead, I ran the shades back across the map to where Malus, hydras, heroes, etc. were waiting. At least then, the slow dwarven AI would trickle in and get killed. Not sure how well it would work with the new dwarven runes.

How did you deal with replenishment and economy? I sold Hag Greaf at the start and the north is a wasteland because of Chaos.

My opinion is that you should not push west of Crookback Mountain until your economy is very powerful. Even though it has some desert provinces, it's going to be more defensible for you to conquer the coastal regions south-southwest-west of the Dragon Isles all the way to Karak Zorn, and then to crawl north up the World's Edge mountains without pushing west to the Badlands. It sounds like you are strung out too far. The Dark Elves don't benefit that much from additional territory; they build tall rather than wide. Malus' mechanics might be making you try to go farther than you really need to. Fighting on multiple fronts on the offensive is something you generally want to avoid doing as any faction. What I always do when I have too many enemies is either to defend until one enemy gives up abusing ambush stance or to defend on one front and to push on another front until I can unify my stacks and push in a single direction. This method has served me well even on completely apeshit legendary difficulty campaigns.

Unlike with most factions, just winning battles as dark elves benefits your economy quite a lot even if you are gaining no territory. It should take a long time for you to max out slaves even in just 2 provinces, and until you have maxxed slaves there isn't that much of a reason to conquer a lot of territory other than to raise your agent caps.

Once you get into the mess around Karak Eight Peaks it's just going to be nightmarish fighting underway factions. You need lots and lots of force to push out at least on VH/Legendary campaign difficulty in that region. Makes me wanna start a Malus campaign actually with all the changes.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Thanks for the Advice. I guess I just extended too far then. I did actually spend most of the campaign bullying the Last Defenders until they got wiped out by Neferata, and she's my only trade partner. I already rolled back my save to before the Dwarfs started pulling stacks out of their arses from confederations, so I'll try to work from there. If that doesn't work I guess I've have to go back to when the Last Defenders still had land and take it.

I don't know how it works on Vortex, but the fact that you need to take 10 provinces for your strategic layer to not suck and wipe out both dwarfs and orcs to win is pretty tedious on Mortal Empires.

 

[Maculo]

Can you achieve the 10 province requirement through confederation? My thoughts for an upcoming Malus playthrough is to raze everything except for specific provinces and confederate to tick that box.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Can you achieve the 10 province requirement through confederation? My thoughts for an upcoming Malus playthrough is to raze everything except for specific provinces and confederate to tick that box.

Probably? I played with Chaos Invasions, so confederation isn't worth it. When I did finally confederate Malekith he had one shitty province in Norsca that was a turn away from getting dunked on by Throgg. CA really didn't think the Chaos Invasions through. Again.

 

[Raghar]

How the hell am I supposed to fight Ironbreakers as Dark Elves? There's nothing I can use against them as a frontline because of their fucking grenades. They are also spamming Organ Guns and just camping with their gunline.

Repeater crossbows? Or dragons?

 

[copebot]

Thanks for the Advice. I guess I just extended too far then. I did actually spend most of the campaign bullying the Last Defenders until they got wiped out by Neferata, and she's my only trade partner. I already rolled back my save to before the Dwarfs started pulling stacks out of their arses from confederations, so I'll try to work from there. If that doesn't work I guess I've have to go back to when the Last Defenders still had land and take it.

I don't know how it works on Vortex, but the fact that you need to take 10 provinces for your strategic layer to not suck and wipe out both dwarfs and orcs to win is pretty tedious on Mortal Empires.

Yeah with dark elves the value of any trade agreement is generally less than the value of that faction under the yoke of your slavers. With the geography of Malus' start position in particular, that whole collection of desert and jungle provinces east of the World's Edge mountains can be kept safe pretty easily. The only way you are making the central World's Edge provinces safe is by painting the whole map around them, especially if you are fighting skaven/greenskins/dwarfs. The nice thing about Malus' start position is that you start in the safest position of the whole world map. The bad part is that expanding in most directions exposes you to cascading clusterfucks in disadvantaged terrain with no coastline to help you.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

So the good news is that the Dwarfs are under control for now after reloading a save. Taking Karaz a Karak and Gunbad screwed their economy. They only have Zufbar and the Western Dwarfen settlements and I have Hellebron going around nuking them. They did pull a couple of stacks out of the ether but they've been manageable so far.

The bad news is that the Empire has now decided to invade the Badlands. I don't know if they'll declare war on me or ignore me and kill the Orcs instead so I don't have to.

 

[Maculo]

So the good news is that the Dwarfs are under control for now after reloading a save. Taking Karaz a Karak and Gunbad screwed their economy. They only have Zufbar and the Western Dwarfen settlements and I have Hellebron going around nuking them. They did pull a couple of stacks out of the ether but they've been manageable so far.

The bad news is that the Empire has now decided to invade the Badlands. I don't know if they'll declare war on me or ignore me and kill the Orcs instead so I don't have to.

I started (and failed) a new Malus campaign on L/VH/L, but I did something different. I followed the strategy to confederate Malekith on turn 2 and Hellebron on turn 7 (video posted in spoiler). You have the choice of continuing to fight in the Dragon Isles with Malus, or to disband and respawn him in Naggoroth. I elected to stay in the Dragon isles with a plan of sacking cities to help fund Malekith/Helebron; however, I got too cocky and lost my army. I was already spread too thin and just pushed my luck.

This strategy is meta-gamey, but I think there is something neat to it. You receive 3 legendary lords virtually off the bat. Furthermore, Malus' providing +100 population and +10 public order on legendary is nice. Also, full demonic possession grants +10 melee attack +10% to missile strength.

Spoiler

 

[Average Manatee]

Malus's eastern half is a pretty ass start position compared to canada which is excellent and plays to the dark elves strengths (have black arks hunting armies on the sea/supporting land battles/raiding shit while you make do with a relatively small land front). There's also no really great slave provinces around the dragon isles while the other dark elves start with excellent provinces. Amassing slaves in Malus's western region while fighting in the east is the way to go I think. Make sure you understand how the slavery system works and how to get down to 0% slave loss rate, because the good money is from a tier 4 province with strong unique economic buildings and 100% slave capacity filled. That will make you more money than whole other empires.

 

[Maculo]

Malus's eastern half is a pretty ass start position compared to canada which is excellent and plays to the dark elves strengths (have black arks hunting armies on the sea/supporting land battles/raiding shit while you make do with a relatively small land front). There's also no really great slave provinces around the dragon isles while the other dark elves start with excellent provinces. Amassing slaves in Malus's western region while fighting in the east is the way to go I think. Make sure you understand how the slavery system works and how to get down to 0% slave loss rate, because the good money is from a tier 4 province with strong unique economic buildings and 100% slave capacity filled. That will make you more money than whole other empires.

That was the plan...but I got too cocky.

Provided I can survive long enough to set Malus up with a shade army, I think this could work out quite well.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

So... I ran into a bug where Age of Peace never happens which means that there's a global +6 chaos corruption even though chaos is defeated, and Shield of Civilization is permanent which means that Order Tide is still going strong.
Despite not sharing any borders with Ulthuan, the high elves keep attacking me and dragging the tide into the war unless I bribe them 8000 gold every 10 or so turns.
The dwarfs are down to 7 settlements. I know where 5 of them are. I have no idea where the other two are but I do know that they march across the map with stacks full of hammerers and ironbreakers just to fuck with me.
Oh and the Empire has 100+ settlements.
Fuck this, I'm abandoning the campaign. It's not a lost campaign, but I'm not going to play another 200 turns to play whackamole with dwarfs, deal with permanent chaos corruption, and bribing the elves to fuck off and not get the Empire involved. Confederation is a shit mechanic, and Chaos Invasions still suck.
I like Malus, he's a damn fun general to use, but fucking hell his Mortal Empires campaign is tedious. I'd rather just play Malekith and confederate Malus to get him instead of going through that nonsense.

I might try again later and keep Hag Greaf, but turn off the Chaos Invasions because they do fucking nothing other than make High Elves stronger.
Chaos Invasions don't even work right for me - the other chaos legendary lords don't spawn, it's just Archaon and the bird, even on legendary (which is also the setting the bugged out on me). Do I have to buy the DLC or some bullshit?

 

[Olinser]

So... I ran into a bug where Age of Peace never happens which means that there's a global +6 chaos corruption even though chaos is defeated, and Shield of Civilization is permanent which means that Order Tide is still going strong.
Despite not sharing any borders with Ulthuan, the high elves keep attacking me and dragging the tide into the war unless I bribe them 8000 gold every 10 or so turns.
The dwarfs are down to 7 settlements. I know where 5 of them are. I have no idea where the other two are but I do know that they march across the map with stacks full of hammerers and ironbreakers just to fuck with me.
Oh and the Empire has 100+ settlements.
Fuck this, I'm abandoning the campaign. It's not a lost campaign, but I'm not going to play another 200 turns to play whackamole with dwarfs, deal with permanent chaos corruption, and bribing the elves to fuck off and not get the Empire involved. Confederation is a shit mechanic, and Chaos Invasions still suck.
I like Malus, he's a damn fun general to use, but fucking hell his Mortal Empires campaign is tedious. I'd rather just play Malekith and confederate Malus to get him instead of going through that nonsense.

I might try again later and keep Hag Greaf, but turn off the Chaos Invasions because they do fucking nothing other than make High Elves stronger.
Chaos Invasions don't even work right for me - the other chaos legendary lords don't spawn, it's just Archaon and the bird, even on legendary (which is also the setting the bugged out on me). Do I have to buy the DLC or some bullshit?

Well MOST of the ME campaigns are shit (and I say this as somebody with 100% achievements so I won with every race on VH). The main problem is that even the 'short' campaign victory requires wiping out multiple enemy empires and holding 8 capitals, which will generally take far, FAR longer than any other incidental goals the race may have. Christ, it got SO boring conquering the Miragliano/Sartosa/Skavenblight triangle as 8 different factions just because you needed more capitals. They REALLY needed to add the ability to choose from a selection of campaign goals for a ME campaign - and different starts BADLY need different campaign goals. Why the hell would the Beastman who starts way the hell down in the south have the goal of wiping out the Empire????? It literally takes 30 turns to GET to the Empire in the first place.

As far as the Chaos invasion goes - if the other lords didn't get killed by the AI and actually didn't spawn, it's because the size of the invasion depends on the difficulty and on the modifier you put on it. Smaller invasions don't include the full complement of Chaos LLs.

 

[Average Manatee]

I find the order races pretty easy and fairly quick in ME since you can just ally races for that achievement and whenever I'm doing well the ordertide picks up and overruns the map. Races that don't get ordertide alliances suck ass to actually finish campaigns though. They'll generally never be able to ally anyone other than tomb kings.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

As far as the Chaos invasion goes - if the other lords didn't get killed by the AI and actually didn't spawn, it's because the size of the invasion depends on the difficulty and on the modifier you put on it. Smaller invasions don't include the full complement of Chaos LLs.

That's the thing though, it was on Hard/Hard/Legendary. I should have gotten more than Archi.
What's even weirder is that according to the little Chaos Invasion indicator at the top Archi was also dead (even though I saw him spawn in the cutscene).

Malus's campaign objectives aren't actually too bad, it's just that his start is complete arse and if you don't rush down dwarfs they will confederate the Western holds which means you have to campaign from the bad lands to burn them down, all while they'll send their magic stacks of Ironbreaker and Hammerers that they can somehow afford when you have 30000+ slaves and can't field 4 stacks full of high tier units like they can.

I guess I'll play Lokhir next. His campaign start can't be as tedious as Malus's, right?

 

[Average Manatee]

Lokhir's immediate starting situation is complete ass because you have to deal with Skrolk in your starting province and Teclis likely to declare war on you and sail down to your port in the meantime. There's also a strong minor lizardman faction to the west who seems to prioritize coming at your province who will field a full stack of Saurus which is probably the most difficult early game stack you can face, and his province are really far away to walk to so fighting him leaves you open to anything attacking your home region. Skrolk and Teclis are also pretty ass because of these reasons. If you can deal with at least 2 out of 3 of your problems quickly it becomes a pretty strong start though, there's not much competition for the rest of Lustria.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Lokhir's immediate starting situation is complete ass because you have to deal with Skrolk in your starting province and Teclis likely to declare war on you and sail down to your port in the meantime. There's also a strong minor lizardman faction to the west who seems to prioritize coming at your province who will field a full stack of Saurus which is probably the most difficult early game stack you can face, and his province are really far away to walk to so fighting him leaves you open to anything attacking your home region. Skrolk and Teclis are also pretty ass because of these reasons. If you can deal with at least 2 out of 3 of your problems quickly it becomes a pretty strong start though, there's not much competition for the rest of Lustria.

Still sounds better than running into mountain and not being able to recruit shit or feasibly expand.

 

[copebot]

The discussion did inspire me to fire up a new Malus campaign earlier this week on VH campaign / N battle / VH chaos (or legendary I don't remember what I toggled it to) / Battle Realism with self-imposed ironman. I think it's pretty clear that Malus is intended to be one of the tougher Dark Elf campaigns. Right now, I'm at turn 63. This is what the map looks like (my territory in dark red).

I started off by making a beeline to Snikitch to try to wipe him out as quickly as possible. I consolidated the Dragon Isles by turn 7. By turn 16, shortly after a heroic victory against three stacks of rats, I assaulted Flayed Rock and was defeated. I think I could have won if I had assaulted the walls and not one of the surrounding stacks. I was just overwhelmed by all the junk. It's pretty remarkable that in the four turns since I defeated all their armies (they had 0 balance of power) they were able to recruit so many rats.

Fortunately, I was able to bounce back pretty quickly by just recruiting a new army. I finally took Flayed Rock by turn 30, with minimal resistance from the rats. By that time, Imrik was starting to probe near Pigbarter, so I swung around and batted him back going back and forth putting down a rebellion in Flayed Rock. I really, really did not want Snikitch to come back. The early defeat was really fairly painless -- really more of an opportunity cost.

I think I should not have drank so many potions in the first 20 turns. I went roughly from turn 20-60 without drinking a single one. It was fine until I recruited a non-black ark lord. I also probably could have used the ritual that gives you an agent sooner, since a high level wizard probably would have enabled me to get rid of Clan Eshin within the initial turns. Instead, I used it for a Death Hag (for the replenishment) and recruited a normal fire wizard from the Black Ark. The high elves did not really put up that much of a resistance because it seemed like they were split in war with the dwarven minor faction to the north. I spent until around turn 54 just sacking Darkhold and Ash Ridge Mountains to keep the high elves off balance and to level up Malus, the sorceress, and the death hag. Actually finishing them off at this point would only put me into contact with more factions and draw me into wars that wouldn't benefit me that much. At around that time, I also recruited a second stack to take Malus' old army and made a new hydra/shade/scourgerunner army for Malus in the now mostly-upgraded black ark. I left a secondary black ark with the old army in the north. I will keep recruiting black arks on cooldown even if they just sit in the little sea to just accumulate upgrades. I'm anticipating using them later on in the campaign by disbanding and re-recruiting it in the ocean.

Malus just reached the Serpent Coast last turn. It looks like those jungle provinces are shared between the minor Teotiqua lizardman faction and a minor skaven faction that I'll be annihilating next turn. Once those are dead, I will just go north to take on Lahmia. Once those provinces, Nagashizzar, and Karak Zorn are all taken, that'll be nearly the requirement to get the free potions. My secondary army is just going to push the high elves onto their last city and sack them for level-ups while they guard that entrance to my regions. Grimgor is bouncing around to the west and north, and I think he's probably won the conflict with the dwarfs, and I'm not eager to get into an offensive war with him while I am cleaning up the south. Once my goals in the south are done, I'll be able to consolidate my armies somewhat, recruit a third stack, and firmly decide on which direction to go.

In terms of economy, I've been just filling up the slaves at Dragon Isles. I went through a dilemma after taking Gnoblar Country as to whether or not to build it up or not, because I wasn't sure if the high elves would be able to sneak in through the west or not. Dragon Isles wasn't eligible to get to Tier 4 until turn 51 or so, so that really put a damper on the economy. My plan is to finish upgrading dragon isles, dump slaves in Gnoblar Country (at least it has 4 settlements even if it is orange terrain), and to then make a decision later as to what the third slave province should be based on the situation. I'm guessing Karak Zorn because it has a gold mine and is all mountains, but I may change my mind.

My overall plan is to take this entire corner of the map to fulfill the mission from Malekith. After that, it should just be a big victory lap to fulfill the other Long Campaign objectives. I would like to go straight west to beeline for the other coast, and then just crumple the map inwards from the coast as I crawl slowly and opportunistically up the World's Edge mountains to the north.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I'm actually finding the Lokhir campaign to be pretty easy so far.
Within 60 turns I confederated Karond Kar and wiped out the Awakening, Loremasters and Pestilens. Also, apparently I can recruit more black arks than I have ports now which is weird.
I guess I should have turned chaos invasions on.

 

[oldmanpaco]

So I'm trying this again. Only interested in the Mortal Empires campaigns. Any mods I should download or just go as is?

 

[Maculo]

So I'm trying this again. Only interested in the Mortal Empires campaigns. Any mods I should download or just go as is?

Maybe community bug fix mod to start. Otherwise, if you are sick of vanilla balancing give Closer to Table Top/Boyz Will Boyz and table top unit caps a try.

There also is Mixu’s legendary lords that gives more lords to try out.

 

[Jaedar]

So I'm trying this again. Only interested in the Mortal Empires campaigns. Any mods I should download or just go as is?

I use Pierce's better sieges. It makes siege battles slightly more tacticool and fun. Character skill queue is also a nice addition for the mid and lategame.

 

[copebot]

I'm actually finding the Lokhir campaign to be pretty easy so far.
Within 60 turns I confederated Karond Kar and wiped out the Awakening, Loremasters and Pestilens. Also, apparently I can recruit more black arks than I have ports now which is weird.
I guess I should have turned chaos invasions on.

I haven't played a Lokhir campaign to completion, but the thing that stuck with me was how long it took to get anywhere overland in Lustria at least on Mortal Empires. It felt tough to get into the fight quickly enough.

 

[Lacrymas]

Quick question - what is the optimal unit size in terms of gameplay? I keep seeing stuff like "CA balance the game based on the Large unit size" and I did see a comment from them confirming that, but it's from 2018 so I'm not sure how reliable that is anymore.