Warhammer Total War: Warhammer 2

[Dawkinsfan69]

made by small indy dev

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

 

[zapotec]

To be fair, Total War games were never known for their amazing graphics, imo. I mean, we're not talking about Crysis here.
Keep in mind that we are talking about potentionally thousands of models on the field, with their own animations and what not.

What you should really be doing is comparing different total war games, or games that does something similar, as then you'd have a frame of reference to work with.
That said, it does kind of look like crap. I remember Shogun 2 looking better.

That's what i don't understand, why i have better performance during a battle than in the campaign map

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

To be fair, Total War games were never known for their amazing graphics, imo. I mean, we're not talking about Crysis here.
Keep in mind that we are talking about potentionally thousands of models on the field, with their own animations and what not.

What you should really be doing is comparing different total war games, or games that does something similar, as then you'd have a frame of reference to work with.
That said, it does kind of look like crap. I remember Shogun 2 looking better.

That's what i don't understand, why i have better performance during a battle than in the campaign map

Its the loading screens that I have a problem with. It takes like 5-10 minutes to load. That's just absurd.

 

[Delterius]

To be fair, Total War games were never known for their amazing graphics, imo. I mean, we're not talking about Crysis here.
Keep in mind that we are talking about potentionally thousands of models on the field, with their own animations and what not.

What you should really be doing is comparing different total war games, or games that does something similar, as then you'd have a frame of reference to work with.
That said, it does kind of look like crap. I remember Shogun 2 looking better.

That's what i don't understand, why i have better performance during a battle than in the campaign map

Its the loading screens that I have a problem with. It takes like 5-10 minutes to load. That's just absurd.

Yeah, I had to buy an SSD to make things bearable.

 

[Aemar]

Norsca is possibly the easiest faction to achieve total domination:

- it's much easier and faster for Wulfrik to unite the Norscan tribes than it is for Throgg for example. He also gets to ride on a War Mammoth which can be upgraded later to insane stats. A War Mammoth is easily the equivalent of a tank and by that I don't mean a Steam Tank.
- Norsca has access to the most powerful unique items in the game, due to the Monster Hunt mechanics.
- with proper preparations Norsca can obliterate Archaon and his goons faster than any other faction. Currently I've done that in 15 turns using only two stacks, Wulfrik and another lord. I could have achieved that even faster if I had spammed more stacks, which I didn't. Wulfrik can easily obliterate any Chaos stacks when 1vs1.
- choosing not to ally yourself with Archaon has tremendous boons after you defeat him. Upkeeping gets down to -75% without taking into consideration reduced upkeeping generated by special builldings and research. This allows to field countless stacks of Marauder armies without having to worry about upkeeping.
- money is never a problem.
- Norsca has access to some of the most powerful monsters in the game.

 

[GrainWetski]

Norsca is possibly the easiest faction to achieve total domination:

- it's much easier and faster for Wulfrik to unite the Norscan tribes than it is for Throgg for example. He also gets to ride on a War Mammoth which can be upgraded later to insane stats. A War Mammoth is easily the equivalent of a tank and by that I don't mean a Steam Tank.
- Norsca has access to the most powerful unique items in the game, due to the Monster Hunt mechanics.
- with proper preparations Norsca can obliterate Archaon and his goons faster than any other faction. Currently I've done that in 15 turns using only two stacks, Wulfrik and another lord. I could have achieved that even faster if I had spammed more stacks, which I didn't. Wulfrik can easily obliterate any Chaos stacks when 1vs1.
- choosing not to ally yourself with Archaon has tremendous boons after you defeat him. Upkeeping gets down to -75% without taking into consideration reduced upkeeping generated by special builldings and research. This allows to field countless stacks of Marauder armies without having to worry about upkeeping.
- money is never a problem.
- Norsca has access to some of the most powerful monsters in the game.

I can't imagine you're not playing the vanilla game. Everyone should already know vanilla campaigns are mindless shite that practically play themselves.

 

[v1rus]

Norsca is possibly the easiest faction to achieve total domination:

- it's much easier and faster for Wulfrik to unite the Norscan tribes than it is for Throgg for example. He also gets to ride on a War Mammoth which can be upgraded later to insane stats. A War Mammoth is easily the equivalent of a tank and by that I don't mean a Steam Tank.
- Norsca has access to the most powerful unique items in the game, due to the Monster Hunt mechanics.
- with proper preparations Norsca can obliterate Archaon and his goons faster than any other faction. Currently I've done that in 15 turns using only two stacks, Wulfrik and another lord. I could have achieved that even faster if I had spammed more stacks, which I didn't. Wulfrik can easily obliterate any Chaos stacks when 1vs1.
- choosing not to ally yourself with Archaon has tremendous boons after you defeat him. Upkeeping gets down to -75% without taking into consideration reduced upkeeping generated by special builldings and research. This allows to field countless stacks of Marauder armies without having to worry about upkeeping.
- money is never a problem.
- Norsca has access to some of the most powerful monsters in the game.

I can't imagine you're not playing the vanilla game. Everyone should already know vanilla campaigns are mindless shite that practically play themselves.

What would you recommend to remedy this?

 

[Parabalus]

I found Wulfrik's start to be one of the harder ones on Leg, had to make sure to get Surtha Ek's mammoth to be comfortable.

VC are probably more braindead for domination, with the -100% upkeep reduction you can field endless armies, with very +50% replenishment, AI also can't deal with blobbing in battles.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah, Vampires can get pretty filthy. That necromancy mechanic they have can enable them to instantly replenish losses after a battle. They only real limitation is that its dependent on unit size; You can only raise units from a grave site of a certain size, and your best units only unlock from sites with something like 3000-4000 dead. Which does not scale with the unit size setting. So if your computer is too crap to play with large unit sizes, you are going to have a harder time with vampires.

You can get around this though by having a disposable army of zombies accompany your main army, have them engage the enemy first while your real army either hangs back or comes in as reinforcements. It doesn't matter if the zombie army gets wiped, as they're only zombies and the general leading them is a low leveled scrub.

 

[GrainWetski]

What would you recommend to remedy this?

Only played a decent amount of SFO and CTT. CTT felt like vanilla outside of the battles which obviously isn't good enough.

SFO, you will have money problems and can't just attack everything with multiple stacks by turn 15, depending on faction of course but definitely true for Norsca. Well, in my experience but I don't play the game all that much so maybe people that are better can do it.

C&C/Lucky's Overhaul I haven't tried yet, but it looks very promising. I'll try it out whenever the Festag update is actually out.

When I tried the vanilla game after Vampire Coast was out, I was reminded of how stupidly easy it is since you get so much income. Which is fine if you just want to rush through campaign after campaign I guess. Can't do much about the AI being shit in battles besides not abusing their stupidity.

 

[Parabalus]

Yeah, Vampires can get pretty filthy. That necromancy mechanic they have can enable them to instantly replenish losses after a battle. They only real limitation is that its dependent on unit size; You can only raise units from a grave site of a certain size, and your best units only unlock from sites with something like 3000-4000 dead. Which does not scale with the unit size setting. So if your computer is too crap to play with large unit sizes, you are going to have a harder time with vampires.

You can get around this though by having a disposable army of zombies accompany your main army, have them engage the enemy first while your real army either hangs back or comes in as reinforcements. It doesn't matter if the zombie army gets wiped, as they're only zombies and the general leading them is a low leveled scrub.

You can just win most battles with skeletons (they're also free) + lord + ME + maybe a few decent units. Works great until you get to elves and their elite stacks.

Battle sites not scaling with unit size is a cool tidbit, I've been playing on large since that's the difficulty it's balanced for, will try ultra if I vamp again.

you will have money problems and can't just attack everything with multiple stacks by turn 15,

You can't do that in vanilla on higher difficulties either, because of the supply lines debuff.

 

[Raghar]

I tried queek first time blind in ME, and at turn 78, I had Temple of Skulls, while Kroq-Gar just occupied clan Mors headquarters.

For me the harsh problem appeared when Silver host was in war with last defenders, and Kroq-Gar went through Lamia defenses like knife through butter. I conquered dwarfs shortly before, which allowed Last Defenders to stop fighting with both dwarves and Silver host and concentrate on Silver host, which caused the massive problem. Meanwhile three different clans of dwarves layered space between vampires and Lamia.

At least Khemri are dependable and keep non aggression and military access as they promised. (On the other hand Lizardmen break peace treaty instant.)

 

[A horse of course]

I tried queek first time blind in ME, and at turn 78, I had Temple of Skulls, while Kroq-Gar just occupied clan Mors headquarters.

For me the harsh problem appeared when Silver host was in war with last defenders, and Kroq-Gar went through Lamia defenses like knife through butter. I conquered dwarfs shortly before, which allowed Last Defenders to stop fighting with both dwarves and Silver host and concentrate on Silver host, which caused the massive problem. Meanwhile three different clans of dwarves layered space between vampires and Lamia.

At least Khemri are dependable and keep non aggression and military access as they promised. (On the other hand Lizardmen break peace treaty instant.)

Don't forget factions like Silver Host count as "minor" (i.e. unplayable) factions on the campaign map and thus suffer autoresolve maluses against factions with LL leaders. In general, don't expect them to do much more than distract enemies.

 

[A horse of course]

I have about 470hrs in Warhammer II at this point and had never finished a Mortal Empires campaign until today. Just for the sake of it, I started a completely vanilla unmodded Bretonnia campaign since it's by far the shortest - the victory conditions are the same as Warhammer I - which was pretty stupid in retrospect since I'm not even on the "Festag" beta patch (supposedly fixes VC crash, overhauls Old World skill trees), but it gave me a nice opportunity to observe general campaign flow as of half-way (?) through the game's lifecycle (assuming we get Warhammer 3 spring 2020 or something). It really highlights both the best and worst aspects of the game and the combined map, since Bretonnia relies heavily on the game's diplomatic framework unless you want to punish yourself with a negative chivalry run (I did this in a heavily modded Warhammer I playthrough with killable Legendary Lords etc.), but is also the most (comparatively) lore-friendly and flavourful campaign for the combined map, since Bretonnia is all about Errantry Wars and far-flung crusades to the different corners of the map so as to assist your allies.

Wood Elves were screamingly obnoxious assholes the entire time and ended up getting chummy with the Skaven and Vampire Coast since they were constantly at war with either me, The Empire or Dwarfs (AI still ignores Defensive Alliances even if it brings them into suicidal wars with far more powerful factions or their own friends). I recall that in Warhammer I they slowly lost their aversion to other factions and gained a relations buff in late campaign, but they never went above -20 Aversion in 200 turns. They're definitely been scripted to be more defensive than the Warhammer 1 days of Tree Hitler and the infamous branchluss but it's still infuriating due to how difficult it is to strike back at them. Having to babysit Parravon and nearby settlements and then getting slapped with those stupid procrastinator/lazy traits is maddening. The random debuffs and shitty "dilemna" events Brets get hit with need to be tweaked. Player-controlled Norsca has some really annoying ones too but since their campaigns are usually more pro-active it feels like you can work around them more easily.

Norsca seem a lot more aggressive than I recall, and I had to fight off about seven or eight full-scale invasions until they finally made peace around turn 140 or so. This is probably why AI Bretonnia gets so little done in ME these days - they always get gangbanged by Mousillon, Kemmler, Norsca, possibly High Elves depending on how the alliances go, Wood Elves, Clan Skyre (which isn't even a regular LL faction!) and sometimes can't even take out Skullsmashers or Marienburg. I think they should start off at war with a much weaker minor Norsca faction, and Carcassonne should be buffed a bit. I don't know how to balance their relationship with Welfs since no Total War game can model border skirmishes properly. Maybe just give Welfs and Bretonnian factions some relations buffs and code the Welf AI to never settle anywhere outside Athel Loren. It worked a lot better in the mini-campaign from Warhammer 1.

Vampires are definitely overtuned to the point at which in every campaign Empire needs significant assistance to avoid being pigeonholed or wiped out by the Mannfred/Vlad avalanche. I love the faction but it's tiresome watching the exact same result every time I play. Hopefully we'll eventually see some buffs to the other Empire factions (i.e. Averland or Nuln getting a Legendary Lord and becoming a regular faction for autoresolve purposes) so there's more of a back-and-forth, instead of vampires reaching Nuln in about 10 turns.

The changes to the regional occupation system in Warhammer 2 finally make fighting the Greenskins viable as someone other than the Dwarfs. I had a lot of solid mid-game battles Grimgor back from No. 1 to No. 53 in strength ranking, though I would've preferred it if Dwarfs had actually done anything - Belegar never even got out of his starting location before Sartosa wiped him off the map (I'm still mad about how fucking stupid VC Sartosa is from a lore POV) and Thorgrim barely held on to his capital. I suspect Karak Kadrin is still using the rules for minor factions even after getting a Legendary Lord, as in every campaign I've played since the Dwarf update it still seems to take them hundreds of turns to advance beyond 3rd tier buildings, and they can't support more than 1 army. At best they're a distraction for the Vampire Counts.

Vashnaar's Conquest (the Delf/Chaos rogue army that shits massive Tier 3 garrisons everywhere they conquer) need a serious nerf. Aside from how OP Tier 3 Delf with Tier 3 Chaos is, spawning with a full stack in the middle of a faction's homeland really messes with balance. They had no effect on the campaign at all for me in this case, as for the first time they actually spawned in my territory rather than the AI's, so I wiped them out in 2 turns with a couple of garrisoned armies nearby.

Finally, I had several crashes during the mid-game, though I suspect they were due to Storm of Chaos scripts rather than the Vampire Coast bug. I was able to get past them via savescumming, though if one had occured after a Heroic Victory on the AI turn I would've probably ended the campaign right there. As usual, pretty fucking ridiculous that these crashes have been in the latest stable version for months now. Lazy assholes.

Here's some pictures of Orctonnians for those who read this far:

Spoiler

 

[Raghar]

Wood Elves were screamingly obnoxious assholes the entire time and ended up getting chummy with the Skaven and Vampire Coast since they were constantly at war with either me

Why not ally with them? As long as Skaven or VC don't devastate their forest they have no need to do anything against them.

The changes to the regional occupation system in Warhammer 2 finally make fighting the Greenskins viable as someone other than the Dwarfs.

What changes?

Finally, I had several crashes during the mid-game, though I suspect they were due to Storm of Chaos scripts rather than the Vampire Coast bug. I was able to get past them via savescumming, though if one had occured after a Heroic Victory on the AI turn I would've probably ended the campaign right there. As usual, pretty fucking ridiculous that these crashes have been in the latest stable version for months now. Lazy assholes.

When these crashes happened? At the start of turn?

 

[Luka-boy]

Here's some pictures of Orctonnians for those who read this far:

Spoiler

Ah, that's why they call him the Green Knight

 

[A horse of course]

Wood Elves were screamingly obnoxious assholes the entire time and ended up getting chummy with the Skaven and Vampire Coast since they were constantly at war with either me

Why not ally with them? As long as Skaven or VC don't devastate their forest they have no need to do anything against them.

The changes to the regional occupation system in Warhammer 2 finally make fighting the Greenskins viable as someone other than the Dwarfs.

What changes?

Finally, I had several crashes during the mid-game, though I suspect they were due to Storm of Chaos scripts rather than the Vampire Coast bug. I was able to get past them via savescumming, though if one had occured after a Heroic Victory on the AI turn I would've probably ended the campaign right there. As usual, pretty fucking ridiculous that these crashes have been in the latest stable version for months now. Lazy assholes.

When these crashes happened? At the start of turn?

Wood Elves are diametrically opposed to all Chaos creatures, and always side with "Order" races when vampires become too powerful. It's absurd for them to rampage through Northern Bretonnia, Reikland, the Vaults and the Grey Mountains to kill Dwarfs and men, but have +100 affinity with Clan Skyre and Sartosa.

Occupying any of the Dwarf/Greenskins settlements as Empire/Bretonnia/VC was impossible in Warhammer 1, if you failed to keep the Dwarfs alive and ended up fighting Greenskins, you had to inch through the badlands razing every single settlement and using encamp to restore men. It was almost like destroying Norsca but with ten times the number of settlements. In Warhammer 2 you just get various maluses for occupying the "wrong" climate, but they're still useful for staging points and reinforcements during campaigns, and if you have the money and time (usually mid/late game) it's perfectly fine to settle them permanently.

Most of them were at the start of my turn, which suggests they were related to the Chaos spawning scripts. VC crashes happened on the AI turn when another faction razed a settlement with a hideout.

 

[zapotec]

Well the alliances doesn't follow the lore, one time i got the Slayer king allying with orcs against my white dwarf

 

[A horse of course]

Well the alliances doesn't follow the lore, one time i got the Slayer king allying with orcs against my white dwarf

They've tweaked some of those oddities over the lifespan of W1&2. I believe at one point in time in W1 Wood Elves kept allying with Warriors of Chaos

Also the White Dwarf should've been patched to use the same mechanics as The Green Knight (using the Grudge system) instead of being an actual Lord leading troops around. It would leave the main Dwarf faction with a single LL to the Greenskin faction's two (plus the Wuzzhag faction right next to them), though.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I played a little bit of mortal empires as I wanted to run an Empire campaign and I see that you guys weren't joking about VC. I just conquered Marienburg and started lebensrauming Middleland and the undead are already at my eastern border with all the provinces having like 80% corruption and growing. Most empire minor factions are either dead or 1 settlement left.

And yeah, it cannot be overstated how retarded the diplomacy system in these games is. I remember when I tried playing high elves, on turn 2 the initial dark elves invasion faction invited couple of high elven factions into war against me to which they merrily agreed. I just rolled my eyes and pressed alt+f4. I also particularly like the numerical values assigned to different modifiers. Waging incessant wars against common enemies is like "eh, whatever", but accidentally crossing someone's territory on one turn without doing anything is absolute REEEEEE.

 

[thesheeep]

Is it just me or is the starting with Cumberelf (Teclis for those of you living under a rock) pretty brutal in comparison? At least when using Lucky's Overhaul (formerly Choices & Consequences, I think).

You can just so afford an army of a few spearmen + archers (forget about seaguards, too expensive), even after initiating trade with your buddies to the north.
I barely managed to beat the Dark Elven pirates to the south, with the closest phyrric victory ever.

Don't get me wrong, I liked that difficulty after the roflstomp experience that was Skaven (seriously, massive front of clan shields + globadiers & warpfire throwers behind just melts absolutely everything, nothing stands a chance).
But the difference in starting difficulty between the factions (of the same campaign difficulty description) is a bit strange...

In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have picked a shield-heavy anti-inf faction as my first target with nothing but archers & spearmen

 

[A horse of course]

Is it just me or is the starting with Cumberelf (Teclis for those of you living under a rock) pretty brutal in comparison? At least when using Lucky's Overhaul (formerly Choices & Consequences, I think).

You can just so afford an army of a few spearmen + archers (forget about seaguards, too expensive), even after initiating trade with your buddies to the north.
I barely managed to beat the Dark Elven pirates to the south, with the closest phyrric victory ever.

Don't get me wrong, I liked that difficulty after the roflstomp experience that was Skaven (seriously, massive front of clan shields + globadiers & warpfire throwers behind just melts absolutely everything, nothing stands a chance).
But the difference in starting difficulty between the factions (of the same campaign difficulty description) is a bit strange...

In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have picked a shield-heavy anti-inf faction as my first target with nothing but archers & spearmen

Off the top of my head Teclis is listed as a "hard" start in the selection screen, whereas Tyrion is listed as Easy (back when the game was released, HE was by far the safest start position once you dealt with the initial foes). He's in a very bad position climate-wise since a good deal of the nearby areas are classed as unfavourable or worse for HE factions. It may well become even more difficult once the new Lizardmeme/Reddit Rats pack hits.

I played a little bit of mortal empires as I wanted to run an Empire campaign and I see that you guys weren't joking about VC. I just conquered Marienburg and started lebensrauming Middleland and the undead are already at my eastern border with all the provinces having like 80% corruption and growing. Most empire minor factions are either dead or 1 settlement left.

And yeah, it cannot be overstated how retarded the diplomacy system in these games is. I remember when I tried playing high elves, on turn 2 the initial dark elves invasion faction invited couple of high elven factions into war against me to which they merrily agreed. I just rolled my eyes and pressed alt+f4. I also particularly like the numerical values assigned to different modifiers. Waging incessant wars against common enemies is like "eh, whatever", but accidentally crossing someone's territory on one turn without doing anything is absolute REEEEEE.

Get the mod that disables "Join War" for the AI and/or the player. Aside from the comedic value of Karak Zorn being invited to invade Karaz-a-Carak and such, it's a stupid feature that totally invalidates Defensive Alliances. There are also mods that prevent allies declaring war on vassals etc. but at some point you need to just stop trying to fix this shit and play the game, warts and all, sadly.

 

[Maculo]

Is it just me or is the starting with Cumberelf (Teclis for those of you living under a rock) pretty brutal in comparison? At least when using Lucky's Overhaul (formerly Choices & Consequences, I think).

You can just so afford an army of a few spearmen + archers (forget about seaguards, too expensive), even after initiating trade with your buddies to the north.
I barely managed to beat the Dark Elven pirates to the south, with the closest phyrric victory ever.

Don't get me wrong, I liked that difficulty after the roflstomp experience that was Skaven (seriously, massive front of clan shields + globadiers & warpfire throwers behind just melts absolutely everything, nothing stands a chance).
But the difference in starting difficulty between the factions (of the same campaign difficulty description) is a bit strange...

In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have picked a shield-heavy anti-inf faction as my first target with nothing but archers & spearmen

Teclis' starting point is definitely harder imo. I do not know how much the Pirate dlc changed that, but I recall being surrounded by angry Dark Elves, Skaven & corruption, Undead & corruption, and finally angry lizards. Teclis has decent spells, but I recall Tyrion being a tank you could rely on as a crutch. Also, I have not played recently, but I was under the impression CA changed the ocean treasure debris. It is no longer free 5,000-10,000 gold? That free gold saved my ass on my Teclis play multiple times, and I can't imagine how slow development is for Teclis is without the free treasure gold.

Kroq-Gar campaign pre-Tomb Kings also was pretty wild imo.

 

[Parabalus]

Is it just me or is the starting with Cumberelf (Teclis for those of you living under a rock) pretty brutal in comparison? At least when using Lucky's Overhaul (formerly Choices & Consequences, I think).

You can just so afford an army of a few spearmen + archers (forget about seaguards, too expensive), even after initiating trade with your buddies to the north.
I barely managed to beat the Dark Elven pirates to the south, with the closest phyrric victory ever.

Don't get me wrong, I liked that difficulty after the roflstomp experience that was Skaven (seriously, massive front of clan shields + globadiers & warpfire throwers behind just melts absolutely everything, nothing stands a chance).
But the difference in starting difficulty between the factions (of the same campaign difficulty description) is a bit strange...

In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have picked a shield-heavy anti-inf faction as my first target with nothing but archers & spearmen

Teclis' starting point is definitely harder imo. I do not know how much the Pirate dlc changed that, but I recall being surrounded by angry Dark Elves, Skaven & corruption, Undead & corruption, and finally angry lizards. Teclis has decent spells, but I recall Tyrion being a tank you could rely on as a crutch. Also, I have not played recently, but I was under the impression CA changed the ocean treasure debris. It is no longer free 5,000-10,000 gold? That free gold saved my ass on my Teclis play multiple times, and I can't imagine how slow development is for Teclis is without the free treasure gold.

Kroq-Gar campaign pre-Tomb Kings also was pretty wild imo.

The new update made it much harder since it added Harkon (who gives corruption, with the already existing skaven) and the Krakenlord.

The treasures now have battles, meaning you can't send a naked lvl 1 lord to claim them, you need a proper stack.