Warhammer Total War: Warhammer 2

[Maculo]

considered that positioning does barely anything, worsened by the claustrophobic maps, all it's left is fatigue and it should play a bigger part. i use a mod which tinkers a bit with combat mechanics and give skeletons perfect vigor. fighting them is finally frightening, the longer the fight takes the closer they are to victory no matter what. fighting uphill, literally, should be a killer. hell, up to the '60s taking a hill has been has been a fundamental tactical advantage. all it changes in warhammer instead is being able to pull -maybe- one more archer volley, which is barely noticeable, if at all.

While I agree that the maps leave much to be desired, I wouldn't say positioning barely matters. Fighting or shooting downhill increases damage up to 30%, whereas fighting uphill can reduce damage up to 30%. Combine that with fatigue (having the AI chase you uphill), and your front line could last much longer, particularly single entity units.

 

[Average Manatee]

The issue is that hills are so small that you can often only have a few units actually getting an advantage while the rest of your army is either on flat ground or themselves fighting uphill. There's not many maps where hills are actually big enough to get most of your army in a line on a hillside. And if you try to arrange your army to follow the contours of a hill you end up having units getting flanked.

 

[Delterius]

TBH I already get so much milleage out of square defensive formations that if the hills were always huge I'd never even get close to losing a battle.

 

[kris]

Yeah, Handgunners are amazing. The only real problem with them (and thunderers for that matter) is trying to find a good formation that allows you to still have a front line whilst not blocking lines of fire.
I've used Chevron formations, but they always felt odd to me.
It is possible to build a gunline army and just have artillery and handguns, but that always makes me nervous; if the enemy does manage to reach your lines you're screwed.

Not needed against Large as they can shoot over your men. this is why they are extra useful against Vampires.

 

[Maculo]

The issue is that hills are so small that you can often only have a few units actually getting an advantage while the rest of your army is either on flat ground or themselves fighting uphill. There's not many maps where hills are actually big enough to get most of your army in a line on a hillside. And if you try to arrange your army to follow the contours of a hill you end up having units getting flanked.

While that is true, 30% additional damage (or a 30% debuff on the enemy) is substantial imo. I can see why CA limited convenient hills in each map (it to a point), otherwise ranged units would be even more ridiculous.

 

[Serious_Business]

Outside of monsters and plague monks, I found that higher tier melee units under-performed relative to artillery and ranged.

I never found a good use for plague monks. In my experience they are too expensive to serve as meatshields, and too squishy to do any heavy lifting. I'd rather just roll with verminos.

Otoh when it comes to other high tier-melees, I had quite a bit of success with death runners. Death runners and assassin heroes are great at removing enemy artillery or shanking gits in sieges, especially since skaven have neither cavalry nor flying units.

It has been a long time, but I thought Plague Monks had a debuff aura of some type, which allowed the frontline to survive a little while longer. Maybe I am thinking of the hero unit.

It's the leadership : plague monks are shock units but they work as a frontline because they don't break like other skavo. With the Grimhammer mod they buffed that shit right up, plaguemonks have 100 leadership base ; it's all lore friendly I assume, but even in vanilla they are the highest leadership skaven unit. They also have pretty decent health. With Skrolk especially there's no reason not to use them, you get a discount. Otherwise it's debatable. They are less costly than stormvermin.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Finished the Tomb King campaign as Settra. The first 30 or so turns are a disastrous slog, but they quickly snowball as they start getting new armies and then you can just spam skellies at everyone. Pretty fun faction, I just wish that their magic was more fun even if it was really good, apart from the vortex spell (as usual..). Out of all the units I tried only the Necrosphinx felt really meh. Dude's just way too squishy even when you babysit it with a Necrotect.

 

[thesheeep]

Finished the Tomb King campaign as Settra. The first 30 or so turns are a disastrous slog, but they quickly snowball as they start getting new armies and then you can just spam skellies at everyone. Pretty fun faction, I just wish that their magic was more fun even if it was really good, apart from the vortex spell (as usual..). Out of all the units I tried only the Necrosphinx felt really meh. Dude's just way too squishy even when you babysit it with a Necrotect.

I also found Tomb Kings one of the most fun factions to play due to the limitations you have for higher-tier units.
They honestly should have that mechanic for every faction (and Lucky's Overhaul basically does that).

 

[Hobo Elf]

Finished the Tomb King campaign as Settra. The first 30 or so turns are a disastrous slog, but they quickly snowball as they start getting new armies and then you can just spam skellies at everyone. Pretty fun faction, I just wish that their magic was more fun even if it was really good, apart from the vortex spell (as usual..). Out of all the units I tried only the Necrosphinx felt really meh. Dude's just way too squishy even when you babysit it with a Necrotect.

I also found Tomb Kings one of the most fun factions to play due to the limitations you have for higher-tier units.
They honestly should have that mechanic for every faction (and Lucky's Overhaul basically does that).

Can't say it's the most fun (yet) since I only got the game during the sale and I've only tried 4 factions, but out of the 4 it was the top tier one at least (HElves, DElves, Bretonnia and TK). Biggest problem is choosing what to play next.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

They honestly should have that mechanic for every faction (and Lucky's Overhaul basically does that).

SFO too, and it's quite flexible, for all the races you can have faction limitation like tomb kings, army limitation akin to tabletop, both or neither. i always play with both.

 

[Delterius]

Finished the Tomb King campaign as Settra. The first 30 or so turns are a disastrous slog, but they quickly snowball as they start getting new armies and then you can just spam skellies at everyone. Pretty fun faction, I just wish that their magic was more fun even if it was really good, apart from the vortex spell (as usual..). Out of all the units I tried only the Necrosphinx felt really meh. Dude's just way too squishy even when you babysit it with a Necrotect.

Lore of Nehekara is boran ngl, but Khatep and his being an artillery piece combined with sandstorm kinda makes up for it.

 

[Danikas]

SFO too, and it's quite flexible, for all the races you can have faction limitation like tomb kings, army limitation akin to tabletop, both or neither. i always play with both.

That's the best option I hate fucking doomstacks.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

well, it's not a perfect system either

don't mind the 102, it's a visual bug.

 

[thesheeep]

Finished the Tomb King campaign as Settra. The first 30 or so turns are a disastrous slog, but they quickly snowball as they start getting new armies and then you can just spam skellies at everyone. Pretty fun faction, I just wish that their magic was more fun even if it was really good, apart from the vortex spell (as usual..). Out of all the units I tried only the Necrosphinx felt really meh. Dude's just way too squishy even when you babysit it with a Necrotect.

I also found Tomb Kings one of the most fun factions to play due to the limitations you have for higher-tier units.
They honestly should have that mechanic for every faction (and Lucky's Overhaul basically does that).

Can't say it's the most fun (yet) since I only got the game during the sale and I've only tried 4 factions, but out of the 4 it was the top tier one at least (HElves, DElves, Bretonnia and TK). Biggest problem is choosing what to play next.

So you mostly played high mobility factions so far. I'd go for a very aggressive faction next.
Like Norsca, especially with Throgg it's just a blast to play as he is so damn powerful.
Or go for a highly defensive faction, like Dwarves.
Swarming factions like the undead (Vampire Coast for ranged swarmers), Skaven or Goblins with Skarsnik are also fairly different IMO.

 

[Dwarvophile]

They honestly should have that mechanic for every faction (and Lucky's Overhaul basically does that).

SFO too, and it's quite flexible, for all the races you can have faction limitation like tomb kings, army limitation akin to tabletop, both or neither. i always play with both.

or simply use the Unit Rarity mod. I wouldn t play Tw2 without it

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Just4Fun 6 Jul @ 9:35pm

The AI does not build a sufficient number of recruitment buildings, and most AI factions will not have enough territory anyway. Also the AI has no idea about the limits and there is no way to teach it, so applying the system to the AI would just totally cripple it.

 

[thesheeep]

Just4Fun 6 Jul @ 9:35pm

The AI does not build a sufficient number of recruitment buildings, and most AI factions will not have enough territory anyway. Also the AI has no idea about the limits and there is no way to teach it, so applying the system to the AI would just totally cripple it.

The AI also doesn't usually build doomstacks, though.
What it does tend to do sometimes is go crazy with a single unit, like a Lizardmen army with 50% temple guard, or a Norsca army with 50% cav, or an Empire army with 90% handgunners and pistol riders* (forgot the name).
These armies aren't necessarily strong, but they are highly unusual to fight (and your army might just be ill equipped for such one-sided opponents) and often get crazy bonuses in auto resolve as well.

In most cases, though, I'd say that AI armies are relatively well-rounded.

* I actually fought that as Beastmen. What a nightmare. I did win, of course, but with heavy losses and after just a few minutes, both armies were all over the place as all of their units ran away from all of my units.
And of course, it was two armies (2vs2), both with that crazy ranged-only setup.
It was just too much to micro (basically had to micro every single unit) - giving the AI quite the advantage over me.

Made me realize that this game really needs a "select next idle unit" hotkey, something like this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1961243473

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i was answering to the dude suggesting the use of a broken mod.

 

[Kabas]

Restarted the Empire campaign, but as the Baltazar Gelt instead:
-You can't form a lot of trade agreements like you can with Franz
-This auto-resolve bar is talking shit to me, didn't have any problems in taking on that walled greenskin settlement
-Vlad decided to arrive as early as turn 3 at my terriotory to raid and talk shit, so i kicked his ass and returned that town to averland elector. Finished off the Mountain greenskins right after that
-Really struggling with the public order here, western skaven quickly became sort of priority target just for simply existing near me
-Don't have any problem with money though
-I figured out that the trick is to avoid confederating early and just avoid overexpanding until you can deal with public order, corruption and stuff
-Had a few back and forth with Vlad over that one Averland town before going in for the kill, alwayes returned this town to Averland because it doesn't seem like Ai has any problems with public order compared to me(one of the main reason not to confederate early with anyone)
-After 30 or so turns i am slowly eating away at Sylvania. Took the Drakenhof castle while Mannfred was busy with his northern neighbors

So far i tried 4 races, i terms of fun i would rate them like this:
Dark Elves<High Elves<Greenskins < or = Empire
I wouldn't call the Elves boring to play as or something like that(Using that bombarding phoenix you start with as Tyrion was fun), i guess i simply didn't enjoy the Vortex race aspect of their campaigns. Seems like many people don't enjoy the vortex race from what i see.
Greenskins were the only race with which i didn't have any public order issues.
I like how varied your options start to feel once you hit a tier 3 as an Empire and i don't own that Hunter and the Beast dlc so it's not even their full roster. It makes me want to experiment a lot.

 

[Maculo]

Seems like many people don't enjoy the vortex race from what i see.

Vortex can be a nice change of pace, but I found it over-relied on scripted events. The Vortex campaigns began to feel predictable, whereas in Mortal Empires I could see varied outcomes.

Also, the Vortex ending reward felt lackluster. I had hoped you would obtain a Verminlord, Kroak, super saiyan Malekith, etc. to stomp around the map.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Seems like many people don't enjoy the vortex race from what i see.

because you either have three full kitted armies for every region you own AND are willing to savescum or you're going to lose some cities once you start a ritual on the later stages. it'd have been a whole lot better if the chaos and skaven armies you summon were stronger and even more numerous, but went only for the three cities doing the ritual.

 

[Delterius]

imagine giving a shit about vortex things

- settra the imperishable

 

[Nahel]

because you either have three full kitted armies for every region you own AND are willing to savescum or you're going to lose some cities once you start a ritual on the later stages. it'd have been a whole lot better if the chaos and skaven armies you summon were stronger and even more numerous, but went only for the three cities doing the ritual.

Chaos stacks spawning inside your territory close to your only empty city (because far from the rituals and the borders that your armies are guarding) ruined vortex for me. Just retarded and not fun.

 

[Maculo]

because you either have three full kitted armies for every region you own AND are willing to savescum or you're going to lose some cities once you start a ritual on the later stages. it'd have been a whole lot better if the chaos and skaven armies you summon were stronger and even more numerous, but went only for the three cities doing the ritual.

Chaos stacks spawning inside your territory close to your only empty city (because far from the rituals and the borders that your armies are guarding) ruined vortex for me. Just retarded and not fun.

Unless CA changed it, you can see which cities/regions will be targeted before activating the ritual and shift your forces accordingly.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

no, those are not the targeted cities, those are only the cities whose loss will make you fail the ritual, meanwhile chaos and skaven troops can spawn ANYWHERE. often right inside your territory, and will raze EVERYTHING they can.