Warhammer Total War: Warhammer 2

[Fedora Master]

 

[Average Manatee]

Battle balance seems way different. Did they say anything about massively changing the difficulty modifiers or something? It seems like Melee is way less weak than before on Very Hard.

Trolls seem really, really good now. I know they new trolls are slightly better in general, but its way way more than the stat improvements would suggest. Even goblin spearmen chaff put up a decent fight. In one battle a goblin spearman got 147 kills and only lost like 20 models. Granted I have constant 4 regen on them and the waaagh bonus once or twice during a big battle, but even mid-tier melee units used to be completely shredded on Very Hard.

Grom himself is a ridiculous beast of destruction. Like 900 damage with his axe buff ontop of 40 melee attack + 45 vs infantry + 90 charge bonus. Possibly the best starting hero wrecking ball.

The pump wagons disappoint. They seem to have next to no mass. Even goblins they can't charge though, and once they get stuck in melee they aren't really great. EDIT: And now I see that there's a pump wagon that has explicitly has better knock back ability, will try that.

 

[Ialda]

The Warden Imprisonment thing is triggering my autism. I feel like I need to fight pretty much every battle manually to make sure I capture and interrogate/execute every single Lord for the bonus xp/quest resources. Being a timed battlefield ability sucks though.

Fighting every battle manually was already a bore, but restarting a battle just because you fumbled your warden spell and threw it a second too late when the ennemy commander is already dead is priceless.

I'm discovering new levels of autism thanks to my bro Eltharion, and I love it.

 

[Maculo]

Imrik Legendary/Normal Vortex has been interesting. In about one turn, Greenskins and Wood Elves to the south declared war on me, Vampires to the north-east declared war, and a raiding Brayherd spawned on top of me with almost a full stack (5 minotaurs). All 3-4 started raiding my province.

I think my mistake is that I moved to colonize the fourth settlement to gain a full province. Instead, I think should have moved the other direction and killed the Vampire to the north a.s.a.p. Afterwards, I need to turn my attention to the Greenskins.

 

[Theodora]

Imrik Legendary/Normal Vortex

Curious, what difficulty the rest of you play on? At the moment I'm using Hard/Hard, doesn't leave things feeling warped (but I'm still kinda getting back into TW / catching up after missing out everything from Shogun through to Thrones of Britannia (and shamefully also Medieval 2); so I figure I'm still a bit of a scrub relative to a lot of people).

Also, it's only with 3K that BAI difficulty actually starts to affect to AI itself and not just buffs, right?

 

[ZVERMIX]

Imrik Legendary/Normal Vortex

Curious, what difficulty the rest of you play on? At the moment I'm using Hard/Hard, doesn't leave things feeling warped (but I'm still kinda getting back into TW / catching up after missing out everything from Shogun through to Thrones of Britannia (and shamefully also Medieval 2); so I figure I'm still a bit of a scrub relative to a lot of people).

VH/H or VH/VH is my prefereed one. When I'm trying out a new race I will go down to H/H, just to learn the mechanics.
Legendary is just too much of chore, and you pretty much have to cheese with many factions.
I just watched LegendOfTotalWar play Legendary Imrik. All he's using is a fullstack of archers with no melee units while tricking the AI to do dumb stuff in battle. Doesn't seem like fun at all.

 

[Theodora]

I just watched LegendOfTotalWar play Legendary Imrik. All he's using is a fullstack of archers with no melee units while tricking the AI to do dumb stuff in battle. Doesn't seem like fun at all.

should change his name from Legend to CheeseLord tbh

 

[Average Manatee]

I tested a 1v1 with greatswords in a custom battle and from what I can tell the difficulty modifiers must have been changed. Where before your casualty ratio (or more accurately damage ratio) in a completely even Very Hard difficulty melee fight was about 1:2, now its more like 1:1.5. I wonder if CA decided to take a second look at how difficulty should affect things when they rebalanced a race that was almost 100% melee-dependent. Balanced or melee-heavy armies should be more workable now, if you can make sure the various controllable factors line up in your favor.

I do generally play on legendary/very hard unless playing one of the obviously way too weak races (e.g. greenskins before this update).

Waaagh's are absolutely ridiculous. I can't imagine the hell that it must be being on the receiving end of one. Like, even single-settlement AIs can build 2 full stacks of junk shit. Imagine them Waaagh'ing, getting another 2 full stacks of decent shit, then suddenly that OPM has 80 units sieging you. Hopefully the AI is just generally stupid like with most things and pushes the Waaagh button as soon as it can rather than waiting till it has a proper set of prepared 20 stacks to use. Getting Lightning Attack will be even more important to snipe Waaagh armies. Thankfully you get get quite a warning.

Spiky Roller Pump Wagons are pretty decent. They are good for taking down a heavily armored infantry or two but really can't stand up for a long fight and aren't good enough to be worth it for mowing down chaff or chasing down enemies. Sending them head on into dwarven crossbowmen leaves them badly mauled.

 

[Fedora Master]

I only had an hour or so to test the game yesterday but I already like the new Azagh start. You can actually use the diplo bonus with undead since you're next to Sylvania. He also starts with "tech" that gives some extra AP and magic damage so you aren't SOL against dwarfs.

 

[BrotherFrank]

I'm still kinda getting back into TW / catching up after missing out everything from Shogun through to Thrones of Britannia (and shamefully also Medieval 2)

Oof and that's not even getting into the super mods for each title you've missed out on , lots to catch up on indeed.

Re: difficulty: Very hard/normal for me, feels like a nice cozy sweetspot.
Could handle harder battle difficulties but it triggers me when my slightly more vet unit loses versus its identical rookie counterpart because of difficulty buffs and normal difficulty means got more leeway to field non meta themed army comps and playing aggressively without resorting to cheap tricks or cheese. Ultimately that's my issue with harder battle difficulties, it doesn't actually make the game harder (as in the ai plays smarter) it just reduces the number of ways you can approach situations.

Would go legendary campaign difficulty were it not for not being able to save mid turn.

 

[Average Manatee]

Azagh does look cool. Gets freaking Wind of Death as a bound spell. Skarsnik is also quite good just because lots of cheap goblins = lots of waagh units, and melee rushing with mass nasty skulkers should be even more viable for dwarve-assassinating. Wurrzag of course was probably the strongest greenskin start before and even better now due to his better magic line (though the savage ork upgrades take longer to get). Still feel like Grimgore is kind of useless lol.

 

[Theodora]

Oof and that's not even getting into the super mods for each title you've missed out on , lots to catch up on indeed.

Re: difficulty: Very hard/normal for me, feels like a nice cozy sweetspot.
Could handle harder battle difficulties but it triggers me when my slightly more vet unit loses versus its identical rookie counterpart because of difficulty buffs and normal difficulty means got more leeway to field non meta themed army comps and playing aggressively without resorting to cheap tricks or cheese. Ultimately that's my issue with harder battle difficulties, it doesn't actually make the game harder (as in the ai plays smarter) it just reduces the number of ways you can approach situations.

I have a pretty long list of mods I sent someone else, but what are some of your favourites? Kinda impatiently waiting on DEI adding proper support for Empire Divided. In the meantime, I do love that they remade the old Alexander expansion for Rome 1.

And yeah, the battle thing bothers me as well... I don't know which way to deal with it tbh. I get kinda stressed out trying to decide what's right if I'm honest. ^^; H/N was what I used to.

Though it does make a difference to the AI intelligence on Three Kingdoms.

 

[A horse of course]

Daily reminder that if you play on anything other than Normal/Normal you should hang yourself.

 

[Fedora Master]

Daily reminder that if you play on anything other than Normal/Normal you should hang yourself.

The opinions of people who haven't even finished a L/L campaign are irrelevant.

 

[A horse of course]

You can't even do a real Legendary Campaign without cheesing the shit out of everything, so what's the point? Oh right, muh gamerscore.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Does legendary campaign involve even more pointless running around chasing stacks who are only interested in sacking your isolated cities? If yes, then I would rather hang myself indeed.

 

[Average Manatee]

Does legendary campaign involve even more pointless running around chasing stacks who are only interested in sacking your isolated cities? If yes, then I would rather hang myself indeed.

Forts exist. Movement range increase modifiers exist. Ambush stance exists.

 

[Fedora Master]

You can't even do a real Legendary Campaign without cheesing the shit out of everything, so what's the point? Oh right, muh gamerscore.

You can win legendary with almost the same approach you can win any other difficulty. It just takes longer because it's not very efficient.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Ai designed to piss you off as much as possible instead of being a real threat and actually playing the game and getting irritated by pointless shit exists as well.

 

[A horse of course]

You can't even do a real Legendary Campaign without cheesing the shit out of everything, so what's the point? Oh right, muh gamerscore.

You can win legendary with almost the same approach you can win any other difficulty. It just takes longer because it's not very efficient.

Can you link me to a youtube playlist of a Legendary playthrough that doesn't use cheese tactics?

 

[Jaedar]

Daily reminder that if you play on anything other than Normal/Normal you should hang yourself.

Eh, that's a bit harsh!

I play on Very Hard/Normal mostly. Doesn't really need any cheese. Mostly you notice the difficulty by the low public order, forcing you to put a lot of early money/build slots into order. And sometimes you get dogpiled by the ai, but that seems highly dependent on faction.

 

[Maculo]

Curious, what difficulty the rest of you play on? At the moment I'm using Hard/Hard, doesn't leave things feeling warped (but I'm still kinda getting back into TW / catching up after missing out everything from Shogun through to Thrones of Britannia (and shamefully also Medieval 2); so I figure I'm still a bit of a scrub relative to a lot of people).

Also, it's only with 3K that BAI difficulty actually starts to affect to AI itself and not just buffs, right?

I normally play VH/VH, and this is the first time I tried Legendary/Normal. While I lost my campaign (badly), I enjoyed it -- no save scum, no pausing, less gold/recruitment, less vision, and more aggressive AI. Certain battles could be difficult, but not because my melee infantry were instantly deleted off the map.

On higher battle difficulties I dislike the obsolescence of most melee units, especially in favor of archers, artillery, and certain monstrous units. I understand why those units are so efficient, but I find myself wanting to enjoy the rest of the army rosters.

 

[Theodora]

Uh oh, after BrotherFrank mentioning mods, I looked at TWC for the first time in gods knows how long and ... help.

Daily reminder that if you play on anything other than Normal/Normal you should hang yourself.

I get hating any battle difficulty over normal, but leaving campaign difficulty universally at normal... no. What's that term you keep using? "Weekender"?

On higher battle difficulties I dislike the obsolescence of most melee units, especially in favor of archers, artillery, and certain monstrous units. I understand why those units are so efficient, but I find myself wanting to enjoy the rest of the army rosters.

Yeah, I get that. It's a bit less obvious in Warhammer, but in any TW game no one really wants to see the equivalent to their First Cohort or Praetorians losing to some miltia rabble. I kinda ran with the idea of biting one's lip in the early days, until you've got experienced units messing everyone up. :D

 

[Average Manatee]

You can't even do a real Legendary Campaign without cheesing the shit out of everything, so what's the point? Oh right, muh gamerscore.

You can win legendary with almost the same approach you can win any other difficulty. It just takes longer because it's not very efficient.

Can you link me to a youtube playlist of a Legendary playthrough that doesn't use cheese tactics?

Anything Tomb Kings has to be fairly non-cheese due to unit limitations.

 

[Fedora Master]

You can't even do a real Legendary Campaign without cheesing the shit out of everything, so what's the point? Oh right, muh gamerscore.

You can win legendary with almost the same approach you can win any other difficulty. It just takes longer because it's not very efficient.

Can you link me to a youtube playlist of a Legendary playthrough that doesn't use cheese tactics?

Anything Tomb Kings has to be fairly non-cheese due to unit limitations.

TKs just abuse the autoresolve with skellie spam. It does depend a lot on which faction you're playing and where they start, they certainly aren't equal. However, Pirates or Tyrion or Gor-Rok are easy mode on any setting.