Warhammer Total War: Warhammer 2

[Seethe]

Bloody game doesn't get consistent frames on my potato machine sigh. I can get 30-40fps with shitty graphics.

The game is horribly optimized. At least it's not Attilla. Try to disable 3D portholes in options and use 2D ones instead. For some reason, those portholes waste a lot of resources, and they're ugly too anyway.

 

[Kabas]

Finally encountered some little FPS problems during a battle against sizable enough skaven force and during a big siege against the dwarfs but i guess that was expected.
I am rather new to total war games, tried two new campaigns so far:

Malekith(Vortex campaign)
-This guy likes to complain about snow a lot
-I see that he is specialising in making use of basic dark elf units like shards and dreadspears, replacing some of those with Black Guards of Naggarond once those become avaliable. I guess that whatever you should add cavalry, Shades or Harpies depends on your taste.
-Not sure how long these tier one units can stay viable due to boosts from research and Malekith's leadership skill tree
-He starts with an artillery that have two fire modes, one of which is very good at clearing skaven infantry.
-That blade tornado spell is also good at this job
-I have no problem removing skaven at turn six but i am struggling with the deteriorating public order at my home province. Well, more accurately to say i was struggling until i realised that rebellion means that i can get more slaves for my economy. So, not really a problem.
-These witches are fragile, but they do give me kills as long as i put them against the right targets
-These vortex race mechanics are annoying. Wait until you farm enough ritual resource and then babysit your province for ten turns against the spawning chaos armies.
-I am too nice to start a war with my ally over a special ritual resource generating city, i guess Dark Elves are not the race for me.

Azhag the Slaughterer(Mortal Empires), i heard he has a very easy start
-This map is big
-Your mechanics encourage you to constantly seek fights so you can fill the Waargh meter
-Bullying the shit out of humies is fun
-Not being pestered with the ritual resource farming feels like a breath of fresh air
-I pretty much obliterated the Ostermark so that my Vampire friend can take over it's ruins
-After beating a few encroaching skaven i filled the Waargh meter and proclamed Karak Kadrin my target, this gave me enough bonus troops(featuring two Arachnarok spiders) for a siege.
-These slayers are damn tough to deal with, not sure what i should counter them with.
-Foot of gork is a fun spell
-This black orc boss hero was the mvp during this rather tough battle. Unfortunately, i lost him due to my clumsiness. Oh well, at least he was a fresh recruit so it's not that painful of a loss.
-I will probably confiderate my goblin neighbor(by force) and go expand my tribe into the south mountains. I will leave my western front to my vampire friend.

Behold, my shitty screenshots:

Btw, i lost those two spiders. Slayers managed to bring them down before dying heroically.

 

[Average Manatee]

-I see that he is specialising in making use of basic dark elf units like shards and dreadspears, replacing some of those with Black Guards of Naggarond once those become avaliable. I guess that whatever you should add cavalry, Shades or Harpies depends on your taste.
-Not sure how long these tier one units can stay viable due to boosts from research and Malekith's leadership skill tree
-That blade tornado spell is also good at this job
-I have no problem removing skaven at turn six but i am struggling with the deteriorating public order at my home province. Well, more accurately to say i was struggling until i realised that rebellion means that i can get more slaves for my economy. So, not really a problem.

Dark elves are unique (I think?) in that their tier 1 archers are armor piercing, so where other archers completely eat shit when forced to fire at armies of 80% damage reduction armor Dark Shards can annihilate them, and the ones with shields can do it while shrugging off counter archer fire. Empire and Dwarves are the same way with their gunnery lines that stay effective all game but obviously guns are a bit trickier to use. Shades are still incredibly good once you get their range upgrades though, since they also end up as melee monsters. On the other hand Malekith's spells aren't AP so you kind of want to get your fire sorceress to do most of the AoE work (Malekith can still use his magic to power her).

Rebellions also reduce slaves in the province they occur, so you don't really want them. Its sort of ironic that Dark Elves are one of the most in need of public order buildings. High elves need them too (and their public order builds are absolute shit, one of the reason I don't like high elves).

-These slayers are damn tough to deal with, not sure what i should counter them with.

They have no armor and crap shields, so any kind of ranged attacker or skirmisher chews through them like paper and any AoE spell will work at full effectiveness.

 

[Maculo]

Kabas,
-Darkshards are cost effective. You can outfit a new lord with Darkshards and easily defend your territory, etc.

-Dark Elf cavalry is not that great in campaign imo, or at the very least DE cavalry are outclassed by Shades and certain monster units.

-Dark Elf lords receive a name trait at level 10. One name option provides buffs to your armies. The buffs can be random, but for example “shadow dart“ buffs the hell out of shades and Darkshards.

 

[Kabas]

On the other hand Malekith's spells aren't AP so you kind of want to get your fire sorceress to do most of the AoE work (Malekith can still use his magic to power her)

What fire sorceress? My Malekith started his campaign all alone. (I did get a shadow sorceress through a random event involving one of my lords)
I did notice that some of the legendary lords start with a little different units depending on whatever you play mortal empires or race for the vortex map.

They have no armor and crap shields, so any kind of ranged attacker or skirmisher chews through them like paper and any AoE spell will work at full effectiveness.

I did notice that my Foot of Gork spell and goblin fire spider(small) riders from the waagh army did most of the damage to them. In retrospective, i made a lot of mistakes during this battle, one of which is my army composition.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i guess Dark Elves are not the race for me.

just finished my dark elf cthulhu campaign.
low level dark elves infantry is decent and hits hard, but it's going to sustain losses. it's the theme of the whole faction after all: once in battle you get enough slaps in the face you can hit back harder. before you can equip your best armies with those t5 monsters, you're going to replace a lot of grunts.
you're playing malekith then you're against similar armies, because both the orcs in the corner and the undead on the island aren't a big issue. the real threat are armies with durable infantry like the lizards, but then you'll develop so many higher tier stuff with fear and terror.
forget light cavalry, it's pretty useless, and those with crossbows too are not as good because they can't shoot 360°.
endgame? probably, by sheer chance, the computer once showed me the perfect strategy: it fielded 1 general and 12 manticores. yeah, he even had an incomplete army. it focused all of them on just a bunch of troops,, once those broke they automatically routed which created a chain reaction of pants shitting. in a matter of seconds i lost, with minimal losses.

 

[Maculo]

On the other hand Malekith's spells aren't AP so you kind of want to get your fire sorceress to do most of the AoE work (Malekith can still use his magic to power her)

What fire sorceress? My Malekith started his campaign all alone. (I did get a shadow sorceress through a random event involving one of my lords)
I did notice that some of the legendary lords start with a little different units depending on whatever you play mortal empires or race for the vortex map.

They have no armor and crap shields, so any kind of ranged attacker or skirmisher chews through them like paper and any AoE spell will work at full effectiveness.

I did notice that my Foot of Gork spell and goblin fire spider(small) riders from the waagh army did most of the damage to them. In retrospective, i made a lot of mistakes during this battle, one of which is my army composition.

You can recruit a sorceress (Fire) hero unit or a lord Supreme Sorceress of Fire. You can recruit a Supreme Sorceress from the start as a secondary lord that follows Malekith (can be your second army).

Sorceresses recruitment require the prerequisite building (higher tier).

edit: Keep in mind, each lord you recruit increases the supply cost of your armies. This can hit your finances hard if you are not careful.

edit2: Also keep in mind that DE lords have a loyalty mechanic. If the loyalty level reaches 0, the lord will rebel. Lords gain loyalty by recruiting troops, receiving items, winning battles, etc. It is not hard to maintain, but it is still something to watch for.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

loyalty is gained by raiding. loyalty has no reason to exist.

 

[Maculo]

I like the idea of loyalty, just not the implementation in game. For example, it would be nice for max loyalty to have a greater meaning in game. I think the VC loyalty quirks (extra loyalty for raiding) was a nice start, it just needed to go farther.

 

[Average Manatee]

I don't think I've literally every noticed loyalty mattering. Just recruiting units or winning battles raises it. What do you have to do to run out of loyalty normally, send a single legendary lord against an enemy army and repeatedly fail?

On the other hand Malekith's spells aren't AP so you kind of want to get your fire sorceress to do most of the AoE work (Malekith can still use his magic to power her)

What fire sorceress? My Malekith started his campaign all alone. (I did get a shadow sorceress through a random event involving one of my lords)
I did notice that some of the legendary lords start with a little different units depending on whatever you play mortal empires or race for the vortex map.

It might be only Mortal Empires that started with a fire sorceress. Shadow is pretty good though.

For PvE I'd say my general tier list is:

Highest tier: Fire, Vampires, Life (if you use lots of high-tier monsters to spam heals on), Light (if you have lots of ranged units and want to spam nets).
Next highest: Shadow, Skaven Plague, Orc Big Waaagh, Metal
Everything else not really worth using unless its a free hero.

And yeah, supreme sorceresses are amazing lords. On top of getting a caster to level up early once they get their dragon mount they are almost as good as the melee-focused lords since the mount replaces their base stats, I think they end up only like 5 MA/MD lower. So they can still rip and tear apart enemy backlines once you give them equipment, or assassinate mid-tier legendary lords on foot (since they'll get their charge bonus off).

 

[Maculo]

I have gotten close when I was gold starved and needed a “quick” defending lord (the enemy was just chilling on the sidelines). Granted, I just swapped that lord out with a new recruit with slightly higher loyalty.

 

[thesheeep]

I don't think I've literally every noticed loyalty mattering. Just recruiting units or winning battles raises it. What do you have to do to run out of loyalty normally, send a single legendary lord against an enemy army and repeatedly fail?

Raiding or recruiting units never raised loyalty for me, at least playing Vampire Coast.
Anyway, losing loyalty is fairly easy: Do nothing.

Especially in times when you are gold-starved and can't just fill an army, you'll have a lord sitting around doing nothing, especially if the purpose of that lord is defending your settlements (and then the AI just dicks around you instead of attacking).
Or just walking an army a longer way might lose you 2-3 loyalty as it takes a few turns.

Idk, that whole loyalty systems sounds like a nice idea, but the complete lack of information in-game in what really influences loyalty how much, it is just an annoying black box in effect.

With Skaven, you get non-stop events to raise loyalty, so that's never an issue there. With Vampire Coast, no such thing.
Do Dark Elves also have loyalty?

 

[Kabas]

Do Dark Elves also have loyalty?

Yes, they do. Events that affect their loyalty started poping up once i recruited my first lord.

 

[thesheeep]

Do Dark Elves also have loyalty?

Yes, they do. Events that affect their loyalty started poping up once i recruited my first lord.

Guess only Vampire Coast got the short end of the stick, then, with no events at all, neither negative nor positive.

CA being lazy about VC in general might be positive in this case, though:
With them, at least until you always pair two lords together later on, loyalty can be an issue.
That's actually one of the two reasons for VC to recruit/research their special admirals - they not only get the ship buildings, which are pretty great and your primary recruitment source, but they also do not have any loyalty value.

 

[Average Manatee]

I think loyalty only passively drops if your legendary lord is a lower level than your other lords. I've seen it before, just don't do that.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

that's only for malekitty.

 

[Average Manatee]

Its definitely for Malus too, I played a game where I transferred Malus to Hag Graef to be on garrison duty while a supreme sorceress of fire took over in the south east to annihilate 3000 skaven per battle with burning head and fire vortex, so she ended up way higher level. This is actually the only time my main LL has ended up underleveled, and it led to her constantly dropping in loyalty every few turns. I expect its universal for all lords with the loyalty mechanic.

It is actually annoying for Dark Elves because running Supreme Sorceresses for lords is arguably better than most/all of the actual legendary lords.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

not "too": only.

 

[Average Manatee]

You can literally look at Malekith, he has "increased chance of loyalty loss for lords of a higher rank than Malekith". The word "increased" means that there is a normal rate of loyalty loss for lords higher level than your leader.

 

[Seethe]

loyalty is gained by raiding. loyalty has no reason to exist.

The objectively best way to gain loyalty on Dark Elf lords, is to recruit a Khainite assassin', merge him into the lord's army, and give him the skill which has a chance to give 1 loyalty to the lord per turn(or maybe it was an innate ability, I forgot). You won't even need to care about loyalty after that. And it's fine because the assassins are good anyway, especially on caster lords which always need to have in the army a unit that deals high damage to single entity units, that have lots of hp.

 

[Kabas]

Would you screw yourself over if you decide to invest into a yellow(combat) skill tree on your legendary lord?
Heard that it's not good because your lord can only be at one place during a battle but there is just something romantic about this option.

 

[Danikas]

Would you screw yourself over if you decide to invest into a yellow(combat) skill tree on your legendary lord?
Heard that it's not good because your lord can only be at one place during a battle but there is just something romantic about this option.

Army buffs > Lord buffs

 

[Average Manatee]

With a 40 level cap you can afford a bit of the yellow line on anyone. It's just that, no matter how buff your lord is, if your army is weak then the enemy army will kill your army before your lord really makes much of a dent in them.

Also due to how the to-hit equation works low-% hit chance units (say 30 MA vs 30 MD) getting +10 MA change them from 40% CTH to 50% CTH, a 25% damage increase, while on a LL with 70 MA it changes you from 90% CTH to 100% CTH, only a 9% damage increase. And there's way more models of melee units making more potentially damaging attacks than a single LL can pull off.

Some LLs/races can afford to skimp on some red line or blue line upgrades. For instance skaven and other races that ambush in attack have little need of lightning strike. Some of the advanced red line bonuses are pretty shit and can be skipped.

Ohh and Brettonia can run around with lone lords specced as combat beasts supporting the main army since they don't suffer supply lines. Its pretty great.

 

[Maculo]

Would you screw yourself over if you decide to invest into a yellow(combat) skill tree on your legendary lord?
Heard that it's not good because your lord can only be at one place during a battle but there is just something romantic about this option.

I wouldn’t say screwed over, but I would typically save those for last. Magic, blue line (lightning strike, replenishment), redline (army buffs), and Legendary lord campaign traits can make a larger difference in the campaign. Once obtained, I personally go for defensive traits so that my lord can distract the enemy force for longer.

 

[karoliner]

I mentioned Europa Barbarorum in some thread here, and a couple of plebeans came to whine "is that the one where battles are so slow?". This is what modern CA does to your brain.

This isn't accurate, even compared to the old Total Wars EB is slow as fuck. Battles against mostly peasants armies could take close to 1 hour. Old total war was 20 to 30 minutes. Of course i agree modern total war is retarded a battle between 10.000 legionaries vs 10.000 barbarians literally takes 4 minutes and 40 seconds.