Warhammer Total War: Warhammer 2

[Lacrymas]

That is slightly better, but it's still stacking 2 types of units with a rogue dragon out of 31 with one of them being ranged. Using just 10% of the roster is dubious at best, and he would get better results with more ranged either way but that's another issue.

 

[Tyrr]

Of course most HE armies will be somewhat range heavy.
Look for a Greenskin or Beastmen playthrough for more melee compositions.

edit: he plays Beastmen right now on Twitch.

 

[Mitleser2020]

14 Sisters of Avelorn with 2 units of artillery. Higher difficulties discouraging the use of melee infantry is part of the problem. Difficulties also need an overhaul.

Note that his main army at that time, Imrik's army is a dragon army without any missile units, not even a missile hero.
It does not have to be missile unit armies all the time, even if you play the range-focused high elves.
High elf armies centred around mages and single-entity monsters are also competitive.

 

[Tyrr]

The last time I watched Legend he was riding in front of the enemy army with his lord for a few minutes until the AI had used up all ammo.

 

[Lacrymas]

Note that his main army at that time, Imrik's army is a dragon army without any missile units, not even a missile hero.
It does not have to be missile unit armies all the time, even if you play the range-focused high elves.
High elf armies centred around mages and single-entity monsters are also competitive.

Single entity doomstacks aren't much better than all ranged tbh. If you aren't stacking Sisters of Avelorn at endgame, you are stacking Star Dragons. Compare that to something like Rome or even Troy where you can't stack high tier myth units even if you want to and ranged units are shockingly bad during sieges.

The last time I watched Legend he was riding in front of the enemy army with his lord for a few minutes until the AI had used up all ammo.

He still does that.

 

[Mitleser2020]

Single entity doomstacks aren't much better than all ranged tbh. If you aren't stacking Sisters of Avelorn at endgame, you are stacking Star Dragons. Compare that to something like Rome or even Troy where you can't stack high tier myth units even if you want to and ranged units are shockingly bad during sieges.

Blame the lack of unit caps. It is really mostly that.
Note how Legend of all people praised Settra's Tomb Guard, Tomb Kings melee infantry because TK do have unit caps and therefore have to utilize more of their unit rooster than many others.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yeah, Tomb Kings are probably the best designed and playable race in the game, shame it's not so with others. Let's hope something will be done with WH3 and CA haven't just created 6 races and dubious QoL improvements like that blog post of theirs suggests.

 

[Average Manatee]

This is what I came across and thought it represents the current meta because it's from a week ago -

Very hard campaign/very hard battles.

The high elf playthrough I skimmed was from Legend of Total War's very recent attempt at being undefeated.

Skipped around a few times on that beastmen video and saw multiple defeats. See 1:30:00 for example, where an army of low tier empire trash destroys her despite her lord and hero doing almost 500 kills on their own. Beastmen archer armies are awful if fighting anything real. This is more a side effect of the beastmen mechanics where they can just continually re-summon crap armies out of nowhere and grind factions down and it doesn't matter if they lose battles, but these armies WILL lose any battle against even mid tier AI armies.

Also I'm not sure how you can say there is a "meta" for a single player game. You can play however you want.

I haven't tried a high elf melee army but I also fucking hate high elf faggots so I'll never try it. I've done pure or almost pure infantry melee for the whole campaign as Empire, Greenskins, and Dwarves. If you include monstrous melee units then I've done that with Norsca (trolls), Skaven (brood horrors), and Greenskins (also trolls), and I'm not even considering top tier single entity monsters, only ones you can get reasonably quickly.

Here's another stream with the dark elves that's currently live -

It's ALL ranged ALL the time. I don't understand how this guy hasn't burnt out from constantly doing the exact same strategies and tactics. I get bored within half an hour when I employ these tactics and I can't force myself to go beyond turn 15ish with Alith Anar because it's so boring and I wish I were playing any other TW game, like Troy or Rome.

He's not burnt out because he's a streamer who probably makes a 6 figure salary spamming archers in a computer game.

 

[SmartCheetah]

A Beastmen ranged army? How? The only beastmen archer is the ungor raider with pathetic range and no AP damage. Unless you are spamming Cygors, which still probably isn't that good. Beastmen armies are all about Minotaurs.

And again, I have succeeded with melee-based armies just fine on the highest difficulty. You need to know what to do, pick the units that can stack the right buffs, and get good engagements. I can't guarantee that it will work for all races or units (e.g. fuck trying to win with stormvermin or vampire coast melee), but most races with decent to good melee units can run melee armies and win.

Yeah, bestmen have shitty archers (altough, those archers are way better than regular Ungors) but they also have amazing Centigors. We have a little 9 people league and in the last season I was playing as Beastmen where I took 2nd place. I won most fights mostly because of Centigors. You can faceroll AI with them, and even players are having a hard time countering those fast bastards.
Cygors are actually pretty great if you have some centigors to harass the enemy from the flanks. Most of the time AI (and sometimes players) will focus on those damn centaurs instead of going for pretty hard hitting artillery.

Also: Legend of Total War guy is super weird or just does that because of money flow. Dude spent so many hours on this fucking game that he probably has no life outside of his room. He keeps playing faction after faction on hardest difficulty, using most cheesy tactics (which make the game pretty unenjoyable - eg. putting unit on another unit in the corner of the map vs. big armies) but he won't touch multiplayer. At least I havent seen him playing MP. How he's not getting bored with this game is beyond me. His subscriber count is probably the sole reason he keeps doing what he does.

 

[thesheeep]

How he's not getting bored with this game is beyond me. His subscriber count is probably the sole reason he keeps doing what he does.

He pretty much said as much in some stream.
Although he also said that he will do much less "win this impossible battle for me" stuff as he's just getting so bored by it.

Either way, it's true that just going for maximum cheese each time is not fun at all.
Also the reason why I'd never play on Legendary. Hard is probably needed to give the AI some buffs, but the number bloat in VH (which is identical to Legendary for battles, except you can pause) just forces you to go maximum cheese...

 

[Average Manatee]

You can do Legendary campaign/Hard battles if you want. Though if you don't like imbalanced battles you probably want to not do that. The thing about campaign difficulty is that aside from economic and production bonuses it will also give all AI armies constant XP per turn, which is why you see those AI lords attack you with rank 9 armies that shit over your units in melee. Half the problems melee have in Legendary/VH games isn't coming from VH combat difficulty but from AI with rank 9 units vs. your rank 1-3. Which is why I always say that one of the keys to using melee on high difficulties is getting a way to directly hire rank 7+ units. Once you have rank 9 units buffed by the redline bonuses and tech the combat system and counters become close to functional again, and you streamroll rank 1 units the AI just created or that are defending settlements.

Also: Legend of Total War guy is super weird or just does that because of money flow. Dude spent so many hours on this fucking game that he probably has no life outside of his room. He keeps playing faction after faction on hardest difficulty, using most cheesy tactics (which make the game pretty unenjoyable - eg. putting unit on another unit in the corner of the map vs. big armies) but he won't touch multiplayer. At least I havent seen him playing MP. How he's not getting bored with this game is beyond me. His subscriber count is probably the sole reason he keeps doing what he does.

If you listen to him talking about any potential balance issues he'll always go "whatever I don't care if melee or cavalry sucks CA can buff it if they want". I'm pretty sure he 100% doesn't care at all anymore about how the game actually plays. All he cares about is that he makes money being the guy who always wins on legendary difficulty and as long as ranged cheese and other cheese like using a lord to waste all enemy ammunition exists he'll do it forever while people pay him. Every faction that is easy to win as = fun for him and every faction that is harder = bad for him.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

I'm glad he exists, Just watching their biggest 'creator' for 10 minutes highlights just how fucking shockingly CA have allowed their games to degenerate. There's literally no hiding from it.

Historicals are dead, and THIS is what we're left with. Shameful display.

 

[Lone Wolf]

but he won't touch multiplayer

He did play some TWWH1 multi. There's a YTube video of him playing in a tournament against Prussian Prince and beating him 3-0.

 

[Fedora Master]

Paying close attention to how growth and expansion works on VH this time and the cracks in the system are really visible - More proof that CA doesn't play the game on VH or Legendary themselves. Depending on the faction you can blob up and basically finish your campaign (excluding retarded requirements like "Destroy Grimgor and his 50 settlements") without ever seeing any of the high tier units. The undead factions are especially bad with this, it takes at least 100 turns to even get decent amounts of constructs for TKs or make high level units for VCs available at all, mainly because of growth and money issues. The game manages to be both too slow and too fast at the same time somehow.

 

[Parabalus]

Paying close attention to how growth and expansion works on VH this time and the cracks in the system are really visible - More proof that CA doesn't play the game on VH or Legendary themselves. Depending on the faction you can blob up and basically finish your campaign (excluding retarded requirements like "Destroy Grimgor and his 50 settlements") without ever seeing any of the high tier units. The undead factions are especially bad with this, it takes at least 100 turns to even get decent amounts of constructs for TKs or make high level units for VCs available at all, mainly because of growth and money issues. The game manages to be both too slow and too fast at the same time somehow.

This has been my experience as well, usually the first (and often only) units of the higher tiers are the RoRs, since in most cases your main lord gets a level a turn.

 

[MuckMan]

Paying close attention to how growth and expansion works on VH this time and the cracks in the system are really visible - More proof that CA doesn't play the game on VH or Legendary themselves. Depending on the faction you can blob up and basically finish your campaign (excluding retarded requirements like "Destroy Grimgor and his 50 settlements") without ever seeing any of the high tier units. The undead factions are especially bad with this, it takes at least 100 turns to even get decent amounts of constructs for TKs or make high level units for VCs available at all, mainly because of growth and money issues. The game manages to be both too slow and too fast at the same time somehow.

Darren from "Republic of Play" worked for CA and he himself says that CA only tests and balances on Normal campaign and battle difficulty as well as large unit scale.

 

[Lacrymas]

The game isn't balanced on any difficulty at all, so that point is moot ;d

 

[underground nymph]

It took me 196 turns to finish Thyrion’s Vortex on legendary. Was the easiest of vanilla campaigns due to the diplomacy mechanic.
298 turns to finish Malekith’s. It was tough, especially in the beginning.
Never finished Mazdamundi’s one, it’s just too fucking hard. And I don’t like the appeal of this faction.
Now I am at 200th turn of lord Skrolk’s one and I think I will need another 100 turns to finish it if everything goes well. And everything doesn’t.
Overall I find legendary pretty fun except sometimes it’s just fucking frustrating.

 

[Fedora Master]

300 turns is just way too long. It's purely artificial too because at that point you're just mopping up that one faction that blobbed out of control. Although there are victory condition mods that help a lot.

Funnily enough the victory conditions for the newer factions like VCoast and revamped Beastmen are far more sensible.

 

[underground nymph]

And everything doesn’t.

Yeah it’s just became nonsensical. Three DE factions steamroll every fucking thing, I have to fight three, four times a turn just to slow them down a little. The only thing that could have helped me is a strong ally, and Queek was a good contender. I made a mistake calling him when I was attacked by Malus and he’s now being raped by Setra from north and Malus from south. Eh I guess I’ve done with this.

 

[Lacrymas]

The victory conditions overhaul seems to have reasonable victory goals.

 

[Jaedar]

The victory conditions overhaul seems to have reasonable victory goals.

I used version two of this mod. It's definitely miles above the default game, but it's not perfect. I still ended a lot of campaigns before victory because I had done all the hard objectives and the only things remaining were waiting 10-20 turns for cities to grow so I could build the correct amounts of tier 5 buildings.

I saw they made v3.0 recently though, and I think v2 was made before they rebalanced and slowed down city growth, so it might be this is no longer an issue.

I'd recommend it either way. The normal victory conditions are insanely bad for almost every faction.

 

[underground nymph]

Am I alone in liking the Vortex campaign?

 

[Fedora Master]

Vortex works best when you ignore the Vortex mechanics.

Makes me wonder what kind of dumb shit they're going to have in wh3 at launch before they can get the whole map ready.

 

[Raghar]

Am I alone in liking the Vortex campaign?

It has great map they should keep and just connect it to WHI map. And starting locations make sense. Aside of that... ME is superior.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Am I alone in liking the Vortex campaign?

vortex map is better, and tighter victory conditions instead of "chase this last army for a decade" are better. vortex campaign is retarded.