Warhammer Total War: Warhammer 2

[Average Manatee]

Playing Repanse now, she has a really nice start and an easy campaign. Good public order bonuses + brettonia public order commandment + lack of any real big corruption nearby = can just blob and exploit Brettonia's superb economy (probably the best in the game when you factor in the lack of supply line penalties, plus they basically max out at tier 3). Tomb Kings are generally weak. Your back is to the relatively peaceful ocean. Unfortunately Repanse herself is gimped by not getting a better mount. Even with her powerful AoE spam ability Henri ends up with more kills than her once he gets a Hippogrpyh.

I'm at turn 60 right now with 1.7k chivalry and just annihilated the Tomb Kings (took black pyramid). Greybeard's prospectors are allies and are constantly walking up to fight the skaven in the badlands, which most likely is what's keeping them off me. Finally starting to get a Pegasae doomstack together but the campaign is almost over. Haven't even done the quest for Repanse's item because it basically requires a full cavalry force to save allied armies, which I haven't bothered building when fire arrow archers + trebs annihilate tomb kings so well. Also got two helms of discord which do amazing things to monstrous infantry who end up at 0/0 MA/MD.

 

[Inspectah]

Bros while fucking up markus with my saurus I had flashbacks of napoleon
Is it possible to go full gunpowder with any faction/lord? Playing on hard/hard

 

[Lone Wolf]

Empire, if you include the Electorate troops.

 

[Average Manatee]

Should be possible to beat most/everything with pure ranged gunnery, assuming you avoid getting ambushed. I'd rate the races Empire > Skaven > Dwarves

Empire: Helstrom rockets do most of the clearing. Handgunners/Helblaster/Outriders can wipe out single-entity units. A light wizard or two to cast Net of Amyntok. Grenade Launcher outriders can deal even with heavily armored mobs despite a lack of AP damage just because they are so powerful and the electorate grenade launcher has AP so it wipes out everything. Potentially a fire wizard to cast flame vortex and flame head.

Skaven: Catapults, Warp Lightning guns, Ratling Guns, a few Warpfire throwers who both do tons of damage and sort of pushes the enemy back. An engineer to provide global bonuses to the army (I think they stack so in theory you could use a lot more). Make sure to play Ikit Claw because the workshop stuff is very OP (infinite ammo ratling gunners!). Maybe throw in one of the casters who can summon skaven to delay enemies.

Dwarves: Flame Cannons/Irondrakes/Thunderers/Organ Guns.

Of course, the best strategy involves about 4-6 strong single-entity melee fighters who are untouchable in melee and bunch up all the enemies to be annihilated by artillery and spells. If you allow for this almost every race can easily wipe the floor with entire AI armies without a scratch. in my Repanse game her + her paladin hero + 3 other lords just sit around in the center of the undead hordes with 70-80 defence, perfect vigor, keeping Helm of Discord up as much as possible while 3 units of trebuchets got 75 kills per volley and two units of cav ran around the back to kill archers once the melee units were mobbed.

Also when it comes to sieges you generally want some indirect fire or things get really annoying/slow/requiring cheesy behavior.

 

[Olinser]

There does seem to be a bug with the Blessed Field Trebuchets though.

They claim no friendly fire - I have 100% confirmed taken significant casualties from them.

 

[Maculo]

Did CA buff Piercing Bolts spell recently? I do not recall it being that strong, but my fire mages nearly obliterated 3 stacks of Swordmasters of Hoeth with it.

There does seem to be a bug with the Blessed Field Trebuchets though.

They claim no friendly fire - I have 100% confirmed taken significant casualties from them.

Do dead peasants count as friendly fire though?

 

[digditties]

There does seem to be a bug with the Blessed Field Trebuchets though.

They claim no friendly fire - I have 100% confirmed taken significant casualties from them.

Interesting tidbit with that, when it comes to blessed field trebuchets the explosion does no damage. However the projectile itself will still maul your men, so do be careful with the target firing when you are shooting at a melee moshpit.

Source: The guy behind milkandcookiestotalwar telling me that; in fact if y'all have any other questions in terms of battle mechanics i could ask him for y'all.

Did CA buff Piercing Bolts spell recently? I do not recall it being that strong, but my fire mages nearly obliterated 3 stacks of Swordmasters of Hoeth with it.

There does seem to be a bug with the Blessed Field Trebuchets though.

They claim no friendly fire - I have 100% confirmed taken significant casualties from them.

Do dead peasants count as friendly fire though?

Piercing bolt is strong from some videos I've seen and has been that way vs slow targets such as infantry ( the ai likes to clump up and doesn't dodge too well so the losses will be dealt frequently). This however is something I'm not as familiar with as I just kill shit in this game without reading into the details unless if something bothers me such as the blessed trebuchets which led me to go ask people.



As for peasants, tbh on higher difficulties the knights are my disposable peasants when it comes to holding the factions that have the DLC power creep

 

[Inspectah]

Speaking of ff, how does shooting guns work? Do you have to have a clear line of sight to avoid shooting Bros in the the back of the head? Or does everything work like bows and bullets have dem bending enchantments?

 

[Raghar]

There does seem to be a bug with the Blessed Field Trebuchets though.

They claim no friendly fire - I have 100% confirmed taken significant casualties from them.

You were victim of unfriendly fire.

 

[Average Manatee]

Spoiler

Repanse ME campaign finished. Way too easy and quick if you are using your lords properly (groups of 4). Wasn't even really trying to push it, I spend like 25 turns with massive money surpluses just building loads of crap when I could have had 3 real armies running around rather than just one main army centered around Repanse. Note the dwarven allies carving into the badlands. Those guys are kind of ridiculously strong, I'm guessing its because there were so well protected by me and built up well + profits a lot from trading with me?

Spoiler

Dwarves are strength rank 1 lol. I was afraid the main dwarven race would confederate them and I'd lose the alliance and end up with a vaguely-hostile dwarve race ready to fuck my ass, but it never happened. Lots of them running back and forth to fight skaven and greenskins, glad they kept them occupied.

Did CA buff Piercing Bolts spell recently? I do not recall it being that strong, but my fire mages nearly obliterated 3 stacks of Swordmasters of Hoeth with it.

I don't recall it being that strong either, but I tested it shortly after the Malus patch and it did surprisingly well too. Not as devastating as Flame Vortex obviously but if you just want a contained AoE with no risk of FF it seems pretty good. Previously I would have rated Shadow magic to be top-tier since it had the unique aspect of a powerful stationary vortex but turns out Fire basically does as well or better at that too. I guess Fire magic should just be put in god tier for single player. The only magics that offer any real alternate usage is the healing ones and Air's net.

Speaking of ff, how does shooting guns work? Do you have to have a clear line of sight to avoid shooting Bros in the the back of the head? Or does everything work like bows and bullets have dem bending enchantments?

Groups of guns can shoot through their own unit no problem. You can make a unit as thin and deep as possible and the guys way in the back can still fire towards the front with no FF and at max speed AFAIK, though of course their range is going to be shorter than the guys in front.

If you need to fire over other units, you want:

1. The unit you are firing at to be really tall, or your firing unit to be tall. Generally horseback is fine either way and you'll do more damage to the enemy than you'll receive firing over infantry. This makes Outriders good.
2. Some kind of uneven ground. If both your troops and the enemy are on even ground then you want your gunners to be above them, if your gunners and troops are on even ground you want the enemy to be coming down from a hill onto your troops (though that's also kind of bad because the enemy gets bonuses in melee fighting downhill).

Most artillery can fire with other units inside its formation. This is helpful to counter the AIs who have summoning spells that they use to dump units in your backline.

Generally speaking if you want to maximize damage you want to be at the side of a formation of enemies firing straight down the line

 

[Maculo]

Piercing bolt is strong from some videos I've seen and has been that way vs slow targets such as infantry ( the ai likes to clump up and doesn't dodge too well so the losses will be dealt frequently). This however is something I'm not as familiar with as I just kill shit in this game without reading into the details unless if something bothers me such as the blessed trebuchets which led me to go ask people.

Maybe I am thinking of another spell with a similar appearance, but the Lore of Fire version is amazing. Piercing Bolts alongside Burning Head provides Lore of Fire some serious mileage.

Spoiler

Repanse ME campaign finished. Way too easy and quick if you are using your lords properly (groups of 4). Wasn't even really trying to push it, I spend like 25 turns with massive money surpluses just building loads of crap when I could have had 3 real armies running around rather than just one main army centered around Repanse. Note the dwarven allies carving into the badlands. Those guys are kind of ridiculously strong, I'm guessing its because there were so well protected by me and built up well + profits a lot from trading with me?

Spoiler

Strength rank 1 lol. I was afraid the main dwarven race would confederate them and I'd lose the alliance and end up with a vaguely-hostile dwarve race ready to fuck my ass, but it never happened. Lots of them running back and forth to fight skaven and greenskins, glad they kept them occupied.

Did CA buff Piercing Bolts spell recently? I do not recall it being that strong, but my fire mages nearly obliterated 3 stacks of Swordmasters of Hoeth with it.

I don't recall it being that strong either, but I tested it shortly after the Malus patch and it did surprisingly well too. Not as devastating as Flame Vortex obviously but if you just want a contained AoE with no risk of FF it seems pretty good. Previously I would have rated Shadow magic to be top-tier since it had the unique aspect of a powerful stationary vortex but turns out Fire basically does as well or better at that too. I guess Fire magic should just be put in god tier for single player. The only magics that offer any real alternate usage is the healing ones and Air's net.

I have not tried Flame Vortex in a long time. It's stationary similar to Pit of Shades? I really need to reread the descriptions.

 

[Average Manatee]

No, flame vortex isn't stationary. My point was that if you wanted a stationary blob annihilator you had to go shadows... until I figured out that Fire Bombardment is as good or better vs. stationary targets. Most bombardment spells absolutely suck. Kind of wish there was some summary of all the various lore spells since the descriptions are so vague and unhelpful.

Flame Vortex is an absolute rape machine. Don't even overcast it, all that does is double the duration and slightly increase the non-armor piercing damage. It already lasts long enough that 90% of the time it will be way off target by the time the normal duration is done and you don't even need more damage. Instead just use the normal version which instagibs basically all infantry that isn't Chaos Chosen at a very low winds of magic price point.

Not that Shadow's vortex spell is bad, its still OK. Shadow's line attack is also quite decent and even does ample AP damage when overcast. But I was testing to see what my Supreme Sorceress's lore would be and Fire is just heads and shoulders above everything. Line of cheap crap? Burning head racks up 250 kills (and its in the first skill section meaning you can learn it immediately!). Concentrated blob of heavily armored shit? Piercing Bolts overcast basically deletes them. HUGE concentrated blob of shit mobbing your heroes/dragons/etc? Vortex can hit 300 kills on greatswords. And these are all relatively cheap spells compared to the 20+ stuff like Purple Sun of Xereus (death) or Wind of Death (vampire) or Pit of Shades (Shadows). Flame Vortex is only 11 winds of magic!

 

[Olinser]

So in the process of chasing all of the Very Hard win achievements, I've noticed while the AI seems to be much more AGGRESSIVE, I think its actually stupider and easier to beat than it was previously.

Mainly because of the AI tendency to throw large stacks at fortified areas, but leaving effectively no defense in any of their cities while attacking. This makes it actually quite easy to set up a full army in a town on the border, wait for the enemy to attack it with 2 stacks, kill them, and then rush and take a full 2+ regions before they get any kind of armies back up.

And while it theoretically builds more balanced armies, its still terrible at using those armies in combat. It leaves ranged units totally unsupported in the back easy meat for flyers/cavalry, it just charges melee units straight forward and sits there while you circle another unit to rear attack, it kind of sort of tries to flank with cavalry but is really easy to bait into spears, and lords/heroes on horses spend 2/3 of their time wandering back and forth rather than actually fighting anything.

 

[Inspectah]

I Wonder if there is any kind of difference in ai for each faction or of it is Just Unit based. Markus and the rats seemed to at least try to kite my dinos, while greenskins Just blobed like the retards they are

 

[Maculo]

I finally installed Closer to Tabletop/Boyz Will Be Boyz mod, and the initial Repanse fight gave me a bloody nose on VH/VH. My initial impression is that defensive melee stats have dropped across the board and units are far more squishy. I am intrigued by the various unit traits, particularly those traits that interact with terrain. For example, chariots can be damaged if you run them into tree lines, and shades are buffed when in tree cover. I noticed that the modders left magic untouched, and I am curious whether magic is even more OP as a result.

So in the process of chasing all of the Very Hard win achievements, I've noticed while the AI seems to be much more AGGRESSIVE, I think its actually stupider and easier to beat than it was previously.

Mainly because of the AI tendency to throw large stacks at fortified areas, but leaving effectively no defense in any of their cities while attacking. This makes it actually quite easy to set up a full army in a town on the border, wait for the enemy to attack it with 2 stacks, kill them, and then rush and take a full 2+ regions before they get any kind of armies back up.

And while it theoretically builds more balanced armies, its still terrible at using those armies in combat. It leaves ranged units totally unsupported in the back easy meat for flyers/cavalry, it just charges melee units straight forward and sits there while you circle another unit to rear attack, it kind of sort of tries to flank with cavalry but is really easy to bait into spears, and lords/heroes on horses spend 2/3 of their time wandering back and forth rather than actually fighting anything.

You are correct, but I cannot imagine having to crack the Dawi tide if the AI played more defensively. On my VH/VH Malus campaign, the Dwarves would create 3 armies at a time, which would reach xp-cap and rush out. After defeating each rush, I had a few turns to take a lightly defended province and deny the Dwarves a rune-forge (increased recruitment capacity) before another wave hit. This would have been way more frustrating if a xp-capped army or two was just sitting in a province. Granted, Malus at full-possession can grind down an army, but it would have been a slow process.

 

[Olinser]

I finally installed Closer to Tabletop/Boyz Will Be Boyz mod, and the initial Repanse fight gave me a bloody nose on VH/VH. My initial impression is that defensive melee stats have dropped across the board and units are far more squishy. I am intrigued by the various unit traits, particularly those traits that interact with terrain. For example, chariots can be damaged if you run them into tree lines, and shades are buffed when in tree cover. I noticed that the modders left magic untouched, and I am curious whether magic is even more OP as a result.

So in the process of chasing all of the Very Hard win achievements, I've noticed while the AI seems to be much more AGGRESSIVE, I think its actually stupider and easier to beat than it was previously.

Mainly because of the AI tendency to throw large stacks at fortified areas, but leaving effectively no defense in any of their cities while attacking. This makes it actually quite easy to set up a full army in a town on the border, wait for the enemy to attack it with 2 stacks, kill them, and then rush and take a full 2+ regions before they get any kind of armies back up.

And while it theoretically builds more balanced armies, its still terrible at using those armies in combat. It leaves ranged units totally unsupported in the back easy meat for flyers/cavalry, it just charges melee units straight forward and sits there while you circle another unit to rear attack, it kind of sort of tries to flank with cavalry but is really easy to bait into spears, and lords/heroes on horses spend 2/3 of their time wandering back and forth rather than actually fighting anything.

You are correct, but I cannot imagine having to crack the Dawi tide if the AI played more defensively. On my VH/VH Malus campaign, the Dwarves would create 3 armies at a time, which would reach xp-cap and rush out. After defeating each rush, I had a few turns to take a lightly defended province and deny the Dwarves a rune-forge (increased recruitment capacity) before another wave hit. This would have been way more frustrating if a xp-capped army or two was just sitting in a province. Granted, Malus at full-possession can grind down an army, but it would have been a slow process.

I haven't played with that particular mod, but if it's trying to be tabletop then it most lik4ly hasn't lowered melee defense, but hp, to better conflate with wounds. On tabletop only quite tough models have multiple wounds, and most Bretonnian cavalry are single wound models. Take a hit and fail the armor save, the model dies.

If you don't route them on the first charge tabletop cavalry tends to get mulched pretty hard against even mid tier infantry.

 

[Maculo]

I haven't played with that particular mod, but if it's trying to be tabletop then it most lik4ly hasn't lowered melee defense, but hp, to better conflate with wounds. On tabletop only quite tough models have multiple wounds, and most Bretonnian cavalry are single wound models. Take a hit and fail the armor save, the model dies.

If you don't route them on the first charge tabletop cavalry tends to get mulched pretty hard against even mid tier infantry.

Interesting, I did not think to check the HP, but "mulched" describes my experience pretty well (not that this is a bad thing).

My difficulty with the Repanse battle is the 2 units of Black Knights and the unit of Cairn Wraiths. Those units appear buffed, because they do some serious work against my army. Particularly, the Black Knights seem to outpace my cavalry in terms of speed, and the Cairn Wraiths cut through my men-at-arms and squires.

 

[Olinser]

I haven't played with that particular mod, but if it's trying to be tabletop then it most lik4ly hasn't lowered melee defense, but hp, to better conflate with wounds. On tabletop only quite tough models have multiple wounds, and most Bretonnian cavalry are single wound models. Take a hit and fail the armor save, the model dies.

If you don't route them on the first charge tabletop cavalry tends to get mulched pretty hard against even mid tier infantry.

Interesting, I did not think to check the HP, but "mulched" describes my experience pretty well (not that this is a bad thing).

My difficulty with the Repanse battle is the 2 units of Black Knights and the unit of Cairn Wraiths. Those units appear buffed, because they do some serious work against my army. Particularly, the Black Knights seem to outpace my cavalry in terms of speed, and the Cairn Wraiths cut through my men-at-arms and squires.

Well again, not sure how close they actually got, but Cairn Wraiths are Ethereal. In a normal game I believe they ignore 75% of non-magical damage.

In Tabletop, Ethereal meant you were TOTALLY IMMUNE to non-magical damage (although they could take wounds through combat resolution and losing battles against significantly bigger/flanking units if they had enough rank/standard/flank bonus to resolution to outweigh any casualties the Wraiths inflicted that round). If that's true for this mod, it means that basically only Repanse can hurt them with her magic explosion ability, or by driving their morale down so they crumble. Probably the best strategy is to tar pit them with Repanse and use her ability in the center of the mass, then kill the rest of the army, and they crumble when you win the battle.

As far as the Black Knights, CPU cavalry tend to be really stupid. They always circle around the flanks and charge infantry units that get close to them, regardless of the favorability of the fight. Hust stick spears out to the side and let them charge them,. Dunno how much they changed with the mod, but Black Knights are incredibly weak without their charge bonus, they have some of the lowest base stats for cavalry there are. A base unit of Spearmen At Arms with shields WINS 1v1 against Black Knights. Or you can stick an infantry unit off to the side, let them charge them, then hit them with cavalry in the rear. They disappear in seconds.

 

[rashiakas]

Check out this doc https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lK7oNq1jIxItvno_CfqCR1RY-4m-mIGtuWy2S9gOvEM/edit it explains a lot. In this case, Black Knights ignore terrain and have Killing Blow wich is probably why they seem stronger to you.

 

[Maculo]

Well again, not sure how close they actually got, but Cairn Wraiths are Ethereal. In a normal game I believe they ignore 75% of non-magical damage.

In Tabletop, Ethereal meant you were TOTALLY IMMUNE to non-magical damage (although they could take wounds through combat resolution and losing battles against significantly bigger/flanking units if they had enough rank/standard/flank bonus to resolution to outweigh any casualties the Wraiths inflicted that round). If that's true for this mod, it means that basically only Repanse can hurt them with her magic explosion ability, or by driving their morale down so they crumble. Probably the best strategy is to tar pit them with Repanse and use her ability in the center of the mass, then kill the rest of the army, and they crumble when you win the battle.

As far as the Black Knights, CPU cavalry tend to be really stupid. They always circle around the flanks and charge infantry units that get close to them, regardless of the favorability of the fight. Hust stick spears out to the side and let them charge them,. Dunno how much they changed with the mod, but Black Knights are incredibly weak without their charge bonus, they have some of the lowest base stats for cavalry there are. A base unit of Spearmen At Arms with shields WINS 1v1 against Black Knights. Or you can stick an infantry unit off to the side, let them charge them, then hit them with cavalry in the rear. They disappear in seconds.

I will give that a shot. Normally, I use Cavalry to peal off/distract, but the Black Knights are raining on my Bretonnian parade.

Check out this doc https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lK7oNq1jIxItvno_CfqCR1RY-4m-mIGtuWy2S9gOvEM/edit it explains a lot. In this case, Black Knights ignore terrain and have Killing Blow wich is probably why they seem stronger to you.

Thanks, I was not aware of the Killing Blow on Black Knights.

Edit: I switched to SFO. The main improvement imo is that Tzarkan transformation is available immediately upon some level of possession. The transformation increases in power as the possession bar fills. I think this implementation of Tzarkan is slightly better than vanilla.

 

[Average Manatee]

OK I take it back, full-gun skaven has to be by far the most OP once you get going. Multiple Engineers + Ikit Claw workshop = absurd bonuses. Let me just compare the stats w/ 4 engineers to the "balanced" standard values.

Note that this is before the engineers use their AoE bonus to decrease reload time further (though min is 2s so ratling guns don't benefit) and give insane accuracy. After doing this the warp lightning guns had 3.3k DPS and sniped Malekith out of the sky in about 5 seconds from half a map away. Also kind of amusing is how they have a really high speed, so you can skirmish a whole army to death with warpfire throwers if you want. And their ammo is basically limitless at this point.

Edit: I switched to SFO. The main improvement imo is that Tzarkan transformation is available immediately upon some level of possession. The transformation increases in power as the possession bar fills. I think this implementation of Tzarkan is slightly better than vanilla.

That's definitely a lot better. As it was there was simply no benefit to being from 1 to 9 possession aside from the mostly negligible ward save

 

[Fedora Master]

I never realized engineer bonuses stacked. Hot damn.

 

[AgentFransis]

Gonna try something like that in my current Dawi game. Only trouble is that the engineer cap is increased only by the tier 5 upgraded workshop so it's gonna take time to stack.

 

[Average Manatee]

Skaven are the same in needing a T5 building, except as Skaven you can just get +20 food per turn from the undercities and immediately colonize everything at rank 5. Plus once you get to the point where you can hire level 14 lords you can hire infinite numbers of warlords, take the +xx% global settlement income skill, disband them, and thereby stack that for infinite money.

Honestly though I only started stacking 4 engineers in my main army in the late game, the full ranged setup w/ Ikit was OP as soon as I had a T3 (or maybe T4, can't recall) settlement and recruited 3 jezzails, 4 ratling guns, and 2 of each artillery. Unfortunately the dwarves are both slower to grow and their best stuff is T4/T5, so you won't be able to break the game by turn 25.

One nice thing though is that Dawi Master Engineers themselves are pretty awesome missile units, I'd imagine that 4 or more of them would have absurd range/accuracy/damage for sniping enemy lords. Skaven Engineers just sort of sit around in battle using ballistics calibration.

 

[AgentFransis]

Yeah they're pretty good. You can also craft them an item that gives +15 accuracy in AOE for an extra buff. Also there's the item that gives stalk and snipe for some artillery/lord sniping shenanigans. Haven't tried that yet.

Currently at turn 70 something and about to clean up the greenskins and transitioning into elite units. Been running mostly 8 longbeards, rest thunderers and artillery recently and it's quite solid when using a cheverons formation. Though of course you run into line of sight issues occasionally and the front line takes lot's of attrition. Switching to ironbreakers should fix that.