Warhammer Total War: Warhammer III

[Bohrain]

Any recommendations for generating more income? I'm in about turn 48 of the Kislev campaign, I have about five trade routes set up, and I've been exploiting the diplomacy commands to demand payments from my surrounding allies, but it's still not enough. My two measly armies are still sucking up too many funds.

Generally speaking you are economically incentivized to spam cost effective ranged units and spellcasters that can wipe armies with AoE shit.
I think you can do fine with Kislev if you only use basic kossars in an army. They don't deal much damage on melee, but their melee defence is pretty high and it takes ages for them to rout. Put everything on a bit spaced out checkerboard formation so even if the enemy cuts through one unit they won't stop the entire backline from shooting. Similar thing works with all elven faction.

 

[Average Manatee]

In general I find that the income situation kind of fixes itself as long as you survive and settlements aren't destroyed by looting. Eventually you tier them up and they all produce good money, you fight more enemies that give you more loot, and you start capturing new settlements at tier 3/4 which quickly become mega profitable (and if you loot and occupy you generally get like 10k a pop).

Kislev is definitely one of the better trade factions, their primary settlement gives +30/50% trade goods at tier 4/5 and of course they have those nice global income/upkeep buffs from every trade good which does add up. But its adds up when you're big in the late game, it's next to nothing in the early game.

If you want to know your trade situation check this screen (hit the treasure icon at the top middle of the campaign screen):

Mouse over all of the goods and if you're already exporting 100% of them then more trade partners will be worth very little since you'll only get the base tariffs out of them which are pretty small. In general you don't need many trade partners to export everything unless you really produce a ton of something.

Kislev's kossaars are insane. They BUTCHER other armies when massed. I tried a Red Tsar campaign and flattened Archaon with 18-stack of kossars. Used chess formation

Yep, I did the same. He forced marched through my territory trying to fight someone else and I just wiped his bitch face off the map on like turn 5-7. If you destroy a LL's starting stack with advanced units they can't produce for a long time it will pretty well end their game and make them easy to clean up.

Only downside is that Kossars really don't deal with lots of armor well so you need Streltsi eventually (though the tech that improves their AP missile damage at least lets them cope a bit). But early game Boris has two bear units which can pretty well destroy Archaon and the odd large armored unit that doesn't counter large.

 

[razvedchiki]

how is it that you have 5 armies? supply armies are removed from 3?

 

[Average Manatee]

how is it that you have 5 armies? supply armies are removed from 3?

I have 7. Could have more but I was finishing the game and wouldn't have had time to make more.

Spoiler

Average army:

Income:

Average developed province:

Including resources this produces about ~3600 income, for an average of 900 per settlement. Regions with 2 resources do better, and those with resources that give -3% upkeep for armies are the best and are worth about 1k income per turn right now. So kislev does scale up to be a fairly high income faction once you get tier 4/5 and lots of settlements. It just takes time, unlike the true income kings like Bretonnia and Dark Elves who can get >1k income per minor region as soon as they hit tier 3.

Notes: the bear building giving furs is not economically very efficient but I build it anyway just because. The other one is important for the global recruitment slot. Like I said I don't build public order buildings so I get to farm rebels every 10 turns or so for a cool few thousand cash.

 

[Jaedar]

how is it that you have 5 armies? supply armies are removed from 3?

Assuming you mean supply lines: in wh2 it was around 10% per army, in wh3 it's around 2% per army (depending on difficulties).
Since it stacks multiplicatively, it's a LOT cheaper to have multiple armies in wh3.

 

[Crispy]

checkerboard formation

Ah, this is what's meant by "chess" formation. Makes sense, thank you.

 

[Average Manatee]

how is it that you have 5 armies? supply armies are removed from 3?

Assuming you mean supply lines: in wh2 it was around 10% per army, in wh3 it's around 2% per army (depending on difficulties).
Since it stacks multiplicatively, it's a LOT cheaper to have multiple armies in wh3.

I think the way it works is that Easy/Normal/Hard/Very Hard/Legendary = 1x/1x/2x/3x/4x, with x being 1% per army in WH3 but 4% per army in WH2.

WH2 was really silly in this regard since it made only doomstacks viable. 8 armies of low to mid tier units would cost as much as 5 or 6 armies of the best units a faction could muster due to the explosive cost increase. It also made all of the -upkeep bonuses virtually useless since who cares about -10% when your base unit upkeep is 200%. I will say that WH3 gets a little too easy on the economic side though. Once you get big and have armies constantly conquering new settlements it feels like your only limit on making new armies is the recruitment speed, not finances. But that's kind of the point where I stop playing games anyway, only supreme autists actually try to conquer the map.

 

[Crispy]

Once you get big and have armies constantly conquering new settlements it feels like your only limit on making new armies is the recruitment speed, not finances.

I could be wrong but in terms of the campaign I'm currently playing, there's a time limit factor involved. It's apparently a race to capture these daemons' souls in order to rescue the bear-god but I'm currently losing in this race.

So any advantage I can get to keeping, maintaining, and advancing my armies in general is a welcome one.

 

[Average Manatee]

Finished another Bretonnia game with lords and heroes only. Again, its amusingly OP constantly winning battles with like 6-14 units. Especially once you get more than a few paladins and good life casters.

Spoiler

With all the auras and stuff that the mob of paladins and lords brings in battle she has close to 120 MA/MD, 36% ward save, 20% phys resist, 40% missile resist. Perfect vigor of course is also amazing and life casters provide healing. The other characters aren't far behind. I feel like the unique weapons and stuff are actually weaker than some of the normal equipment you can have but I put it on her anyway.

Once you get big and have armies constantly conquering new settlements it feels like your only limit on making new armies is the recruitment speed, not finances.

I could be wrong but in terms of the campaign I'm currently playing, there's a time limit factor involved. It's apparently a race to capture these daemons' souls in order to rescue the bear-god but I'm currently losing in this race.

So any advantage I can get to keeping, maintaining, and advancing my armies in general is a welcome one.

Ahh, you're playing the Realm of Chaos campaign rather than Immortal Empires. Know that its generally considered to be pretty shit and is why WH3 was received poorly on release. Having your main lord and your best army spend half their time fighting annoying crap in the chaos realm gets old quickly and the "race" means there's not much incentive to conquer more of the map rather than bunker up in a few provinces.

You can kill the enemy lords before they do their ascension thing, you'll be prompted to warp right there and fight them shortly after they have all 4. You can also use the portals to warp all around the map and snipe enemy capitals and stuff.

 

[Gromoer]

Have they added unit caps for all factions?

 

[Crispy]

Each Lord can have a maximum of twenty stacks in his army, and you're limited by the number of Lords you can have, yes. There are mitigating factors, however. I think they're situational or faction-based.

 

[Elttharion]

Have they added unit caps for all factions?

No, you need mods for that.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

I noticed a few gentlemen here struggling with Nurgle/Ku'gath

 

[Average Manatee]

Not really THAT useful honestly. The problem with plagues isn't ranking them up, it's that it takes a lot of time to work when you want to nuke enemy armies or garrisons and you spend a lot of the infection points to generate plagues. Just infecting your armies isn't that useful because the buffs are weak (20% phys resist is seriously not that great unless stacked with other similar bonuses) and its not like you can move your army next to the enemy to infect them and then run away for 5 turns till they die.

What it really needs is for plague cultists to not die when they infect something and instead have them last for like 5-10 turns (plague duration) while they infect multiple provinces and armies. Without this you can only really use them well in very specific situations where you know you're outmatched but also have a few turns to wait for the enemy to die. Every other faction in the game just brings an army that is competent and wins without needing to wait. And if Nurgle encounters two of these fights in a row then have fun waiting 10 more turns to generate infection points for another plague cultist.

The fact that he managed to get Ratling gunners that quickly though... that's gamebreaking. Nurgle is one of the tankiest factions, what they need is something shooty and getting the best shooty almost as quick as a Skaven could build it themselves is pretty broken.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Need to mod in some gleaming white Pith helms I think.

 

[Bohrain]

The fact that he managed to get Ratling gunners that quickly though... that's gamebreaking. Nurgle is one of the tankiest factions, what they need is something shooty and getting the best shooty almost as quick as a Skaven could build it themselves is pretty broken.

I mean crumbling instead of fleeing frontline is definitely useful with ratling guns, but their major weakness is being outranged by archers and artillery. Nurgle doesn't really help in that department, since they lack the outranging units that force the enemy to close in like jezzails, plagueclaws and poison wind mortars.

 

[Caim]

So how about that Vampire Coast? Have had several times now that after installing a cove in a settlement after besieging it my man Noctilus walks into a corner that if I want him to get out of he has to run all the way around the place, losing a round to this bullshit. He even got fully stuck once so I had to raid the settlement again just to be able to escape.

 

[Average Manatee]

I mean crumbling instead of fleeing frontline is definitely useful with ratling guns, but their major weakness is being outranged by archers and artillery. Nurgle doesn't really help in that department, since they lack the outranging units that force the enemy to close in like jezzails, plagueclaws and poison wind mortars.

I was just going by how long their units can last in melee. Ratling guns do outrange most archers but yeah, he should have a jezzail or two probably. Nurgle does have the furies/rot flies to snipe artillery and soul grinders though I guess. I wasn't saying that Nurgle was the best faction to use with Ratling guns, but that Ratling guns are one of the best units to add to a Nurgle army.

So how about that Vampire Coast? Have had several times now that after installing a cove in a settlement after besieging it my man Noctilus walks into a corner that if I want him to get out of he has to run all the way around the place, losing a round to this bullshit. He even got fully stuck once so I had to raid the settlement again just to be able to escape.

Doing coves that way just sucks honestly. Starting a war, not killing the enemy, and having your lord spend time (=money) sieging and placing a cove in a province is just really not worth it. You're probably never going to be at peace with them and the minor advantage doesn't outweigh the cost both to make it and the penalty of being randomly attacked by full stacks out of nowhere from the sea. I think the only way that makes sense is if you abandon trying to hold land and just run some single doom stack fleets up and down coastlines. Which I guess is technically a viable way to play the game, you don't have to hold any territory, just loot and sack a bunch of different provinces. Probably a pretty easy way to win too.

If you want to make coves while holding land the only good way to do it is through the hero action which won't start a war. Problem is that only Fleet Captain heroes can make them and you're really limited on their number. They are also your only caster hero, so if you send your caster heroes out then your lord has to handle magic ontop of their red and blue line skills.

 

[copebot]

The fact that he managed to get Ratling gunners that quickly though... that's gamebreaking. Nurgle is one of the tankiest factions, what they need is something shooty and getting the best shooty almost as quick as a Skaven could build it themselves is pretty broken.

I mean crumbling instead of fleeing frontline is definitely useful with ratling guns, but their major weakness is being outranged by archers and artillery. Nurgle doesn't really help in that department, since they lack the outranging units that force the enemy to close in like jezzails, plagueclaws and poison wind mortars.

Soul grinders don't have giant range, but they have enough. So does Kugath himself as a unit. Nurgle casters on the fly mounts are also some of the best casters in the game because you can take the ability that lets them spam out an aoe damage ability endlessly and Nurgle magic is one of the best lores. That helps make up for the fact that you can't exactly close the gap quickly.

 

[Fedora Master]

CORNDOG!

DOOM'S CAR KEY!

e: The amount of stuff you get from research and the Tower of Zharr is insane.

 

[Fedora Master]

There's a mod that overhauls Ellyrion and it's really good: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2965870624&searchtext=

 

[fizzelopeguss]

 

[Crispy]

I hate to admit this but I had to give up on Normal difficulty in my Kislev campaign!

I'm approaching turn #80, and, while I thought I was doing okay -- I had amassed about six settlements and was hovering around 30K in my coffers with three lords all with full armies and some decent heroes, decent diplomacy lines open, decent trade, etc. -- but at some point apparently the A.I. noticed me and decided to gangbang my provinces into submission. I quickly lost one entire army, three settlements, and was looking at TPW right in the face. I think it all started once I miraculously defended my second-largest city from a full on siege conducted by that bitch, the Gore Queen.

Anyway, I just said, "fuck it," and turned the campaign difficulty down to Easy. I could almost immediately tell the difference and probably saved myself from having to start all over again, which, as anyone who knows me well enough won't be surprised about, I hate doing. I've invested too much time in this playthrough already.

So, go ahead and laugh; I deserve to me mocked for this, but, for what it's worth -- and this serves to ease the sting to my ego somewhat -- there are plenty of comments out there from others who are clearly as TW-style game challenged as I am to indicate that I'm not alone. Some even claim that turning the campaign mode up from Normal to Hard is actually easier, citing that the A.I. tends to send smaller waves of armies at you which are easier to handle and result in much faster level-ups.

 

[Average Manatee]

Managing the campaign map does require you to get a feel for how the AI and diplomacy works, along with managing choke points and knowing which factions get really aggressive and which can be mostly ignored. Never heard about this "hard is actually easier than normal" thing though. Campaign difficulty doesn't really change anything fundamental for the AI, it just gets free XP, unit discounts, growth bonuses, etc. A few factions do benefit from being able to fight larger armies constantly (e.g. skaven get more food and dark elves get more slaves) but I'm still not sure it would make the game easier overall.

If you're having problems fighting multiple battles in succession then you need to focus on replenishment rate more, the Kislev Patriarchs can add some and the blue line lord abilities add more. If you're having problems fighting single battles late game then you're probably lacking armor piercing damage to counter the higher tier units you start seeing. If you're having problems fighting on multiple fronts at once, well, that's just normal Total War problems.

 

[Crispy]

The thing that alarmed me the most was how rapidly some of the evil armies' Lords were progressing. There's some crazy cart-toting thing roaming around to the South of me that's already up to level 24, and as I first noticed it had gotten that far my main character was still only level 18.

However, she's up to level 20 now, thanks to easily being able to re-take two of my lost settlements, and progressing quickly. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to reverse my fortunes and establish dominance again before all the souls are already claimed, whose rate of having been claimed was also alarming me. It almost felt like the A.I. was cheating, but that's probably just me whining about it.

Edit: I forgot to mention, I may have been given some bad advice by Fedora Master. He told me through PMs (actually, I appreciate his input) to stay aggressive on the campaign map and not to worry about giving up a settlement. While that may work for someone whose playstyle is completely kamikaze, it almost led to my ruin.

 

[pickmeister]

I'm no TW veteran. The last one I played was Rome 15 years ago so take my opinion however you will.

But CA really fucked up balance in this one at several points:
1) Anti-player bias - AI goes out of its fuckin' way to ruin your day. It runs over the whole map to fuck up your settlements despite having enemies gnawing on its own provinces. Doesn't matter how lore unfriendly it is. The goal is to fuck your shit up.

2) I only played on Normal and Easy but from what I've gathered, the lower the difficulty, the less considerate AI is of its own possible losses in battle, meaning less carefree it is and therefore, the more aggressive it gets, fucking your shit up even more.

3) At some point CA decided that settlement garrisons are too large so they made them smaller, which might be fine. Unless, you couple it with my point number 2 and either you turtle in your base the whole game and get stomped later by doomstacks or you go on conquering and lose settlements you got earlier in the meantime.

3) Punishing mechanics against snowballing. Diplomatic penalty for too many trade routes, diplomatic penalty for having too many allies, diplomatic penalty for owning too many settlements and what have you. Diplomatic penalties for doing well, essentially.

4) Because CA is incapable of programming AI that might be at least slightly challenging, it cheats like a motherfucker (better economy, no attrition etc.). Just read the description of one of those cheats reduction modd. It's disgusting.

5) Put all these together with bullshit like rogue armies and the game is simply not fun.

I do realize none of these make the game unplayable but it ruins the immersion of it being Warhammer world and sucks the fun out, so I use following mods to take care of most of the stuff and make the game much easier and more enjoyable. I suck so it still offers a reasonable challenge for me.
Garrison Upgrade All-In-One - makes much larger garrisons. Conquering settlements requires bigger armies and isn't such a cakewalk. Might be more tedious but at least it makes sense now
Please Stop Cheating - removes most AI cheats
No More AI Attrition Immunity - title is self-explanatory. Might be already included in the previous one but I wanted to be sure because fuck AI running through portals untouched
No Diplomatic Penalty for "Too Many Trade Partners" - title is self-explanatory
[IE] Loreful Strategic Threat - works for IE only but makes strategic threat penalty actually make sense
No Rogues - removes rogue armies because I really don't enjoy non-sensical overpowered doomstacks coming into my territory at turn 10

 

[Crispy]

Anti-player bias - AI goes out of its fuckin' way to ruin your day

Yeah, the developer specifically mentions this in their "we know about these issues" list:

• [NEW] Continued reports of anti-player bias in campaign AI targeting

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1142710/discussions/2/3826413850811137613/

Maybe that's what I was experiencing. It truly was a WTF moment. If and/or when I decide to try the IE DLC in a new campaign, I'll probably try Normal with some or all of the mods you listed. Thank you.

 

[Average Manatee]

The thing that alarmed me the most was how rapidly some of the evil armies' Lords were progressing. There's some crazy cart-toting thing roaming around to the South of me that's already up to level 24, and as I first noticed it had gotten that far my main character was still only level 18.

However, she's up to level 20 now, thanks to easily being able to re-take two of my lost settlements, and progressing quickly. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to reverse my fortunes and establish dominance again before all the souls are already claimed, whose rate of having been claimed was also alarming me. It almost felt like the A.I. was cheating, but that's probably just me whining about it.

Levels on AI lords aren't really that important. What matters is army quality and experience. Which does go up over time, but if you can wipe them out then even when they come back in 10 turns they'll be a lot weaker.

Edit: I forgot to mention, I may have been given some bad advice by Fedora Master. He told me through PMs (actually, I appreciate his input) to stay aggressive on the campaign map and not to worry about giving up a settlement. While that may work for someone whose playstyle is completely kamikaze, it almost led to my ruin.

He's kind of right. Armies are expensive and you want to be getting value out of them. Wasting 5 turns waiting for an AI to attack with a 3k cost army means you spent 15k for nothing. But losing settlements and taking them back degrades them by 2 levels (1 for enemy capture and 1 for your recapture), which makes it very undesirable. Especially you should basically never lose the main settlement of a province and should upgrade the walls to protect it as much as possible and give you a few turns to relieve it when the enemy sieges. As long as you concentrate on getting the main settlement to rank 4 and 5 you're making good progress even if the minor settlments get taken once in a while. Some Kislev provinces for some reason have no main settlement though which is really weird and awkward.

Anti-player bias - AI goes out of its fuckin' way to ruin your day

Yeah, the developer specifically mentions this in their "we know about these issues" list:

• [NEW] Continued reports of anti-player bias in campaign AI targeting

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1142710/discussions/2/3826413850811137613/

Maybe that's what I was experiencing. It truly was a WTF moment. If and/or when I decide to try the IE DLC in a new campaign, I'll probably try Normal with some or all of the mods you listed. Thank you.

It's not really a problem in my experience. It was a big deal in WH2 but nowadays in WH3 if the AI is far away its only rarely going to attack you as long as it has nearby enemies. The AI does basically randomly declare war on anyone who doesn't have good relations and is weaker than them though so you should expect random wars from anyone who is negative in relations for you,

 

[fizzelopeguss]

I hate to admit this but I had to give up on Normal difficulty in my Kislev campaign!

I'm approaching turn #80, and, while I thought I was doing okay -- I had amassed about six settlements and was hovering around 30K in my coffers with three lords all with full armies and some decent heroes, decent diplomacy lines open, decent trade, etc. -- but at some point apparently the A.I. noticed me and decided to gangbang my provinces into submission. I quickly lost one entire army, three settlements, and was looking at TPW right in the face. I think it all started once I miraculously defended my second-largest city from a full on siege conducted by that bitch, the Gore Queen.

Anyway, I just said, "fuck it," and turned the campaign difficulty down to Easy. I could almost immediately tell the difference and probably saved myself from having to start all over again, which, as anyone who knows me well enough won't be surprised about, I hate doing. I've invested too much time in this playthrough already.

So, go ahead and laugh; I deserve to me mocked for this, but, for what it's worth -- and this serves to ease the sting to my ego somewhat -- there are plenty of comments out there from others who are clearly as TW-style game challenged as I am to indicate that I'm not alone. Some even claim that turning the campaign mode up from Normal to Hard is actually easier, citing that the A.I. tends to send smaller waves of armies at you which are easier to handle and result in much faster level-ups.

Your lords are everything in these Warhammer Total Wars.

As manatee mentioned, your most important skills to aim for are the army replenishment nodes. That lets you quickly bounce from settlement to settlement and battle to battle. You could have Sigmar himself leading your chad doomstack. But if it takes 4-5 turns to replenish to something usable then it's next to useless. You need to look at your unit buffs your lord gives as well, for example Chaos Dwarf Astrogoth makes an already powerful bull centaur model even more mental. Ranged and magic is also crazy powerful, but I think you'll notice the difference immediately on your next game when you priority for those blue line replenishments.

There's a decent amount to learn, nothing to laugh at.