Warhammer Total War: Warhammer III

[Average Manatee]

For most factions I think getting some points in the red line is the best opening option. Better units = less casualties overall. But yeah, blue line replenishment is very important and the other bonuses (upkeep and the the finisher is usually upkeep + movement bonuses) are amazing. Unfortunately the first half of blue skills tend to be mediocre which is why start with red.

 

[Crispy]

Levels on AI lords aren't really that important.

I have to disagree with this strongly. I just spent two hours whittling down a level 26 wizard's army, should have gained the close victory condition, but because this thing was UNKILLABLE, it basically wiped out 85% of what I had left single-handedly, leaving me with a pyrrhic victory only, my level 20 lord incapacitated, her level 19 hero dead, and me basically ragequitting.

You can't let the enemy heroes reach levels far above your own. You just can't do it. I should have actually known this, because I thought I read somewhere that solo lords in this game are almost capable of ruining entire armies by themselves.

I'm not relying on ranged units as much anymore, and each of my ice queens is going to have a melee specialist at her side from now on.

 

[Average Manatee]

There's no lord in the game that 2 streltsy + something to act as bait (micro it so you have a clear line of fire) can't annihilate in a few volleys. Notably enemy lords generally only improve their melee attack/defense significantly by levels, phys/missile/ward resist tends to only come for equipment which is independent of levels, and those are the only things that reduce ranged damage.

Keep in mind that there's no inherent bonus from levels for lords, a level 40 lord with zero invested in their yellow line is just as weak as a level 1 lord. Minus the mount. Also if you're going to include a patriarch in your army expecting them to duel enemy lords... well patriarchs are kind of shit in melee

You can't let the enemy heroes reach levels far above your own. You just can't do it. I should have actually known this, because I thought I read somewhere that solo lords in this game are almost capable of ruining entire armies by themselves.

That's really, really hard to do. For the most part destroying armies like this involves dropping AoE magic around the lord while the lord just focuses on surviving. Taking down armies solo requires crazy high stats + resists + healing.

 

[Lacrymas]

Total Warhammer just tricks you into thinking it's more complicated than it actually is. It's very easy to do well even on the highest difficulty as long as you know how the game is actually played and not use random army compositions because the vast majority of units in this game are useless. Doomstacks of a single unit (mostly ranged) work from turn 1 for most factions and as long as you keep going and not wait around for the AI to accumulate armies, there really isn't much to it.

 

[Jaedar]

I'm approaching turn #80, and, while I thought I was doing okay -- I had amassed about six settlements

If it's turn 80 and you have six settlements, you are not doing well. You should have that by turn 15 or so.

If you're having trouble fighting multiple battles in a row, you are probably relying too heavily on melee units and haven't gotten enough replenishment increases from heroes.

 

[Bohrain]

In campaigns you usually want to have at least 3 regions that are well developed. But you need to plan your expansion a bit. Ideally your regions will be mostly surrounded by friends, while you advance on one direction. Some factions will always eventually declare a war on you and basically you want to remove them when they aren't that strong relatively speaking or require you to wage war on multiple fronts. Other factions are potential friends or non-threats, but you need to pay attention to diplomacy. If you do positive diplomacy like get a non-aggression pact with some random minor faction, it can potentially really fuck you over if they are hated by a strong faction. Always look where the faction is and who they are on war against. Military access with a remote weak faction can hurt, as it grants vision over their settlements and can make potentially hostile factions discover you and declare a war.
Also if you need to conquer settlements in climate that doesn't suit your faction, it can be beneficial to occupy them and trade the settlements to another faction who agrees to a non-aggression pact.

 

[Lord of Riva]

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 is completely correct though, expansion is key so you can boost your economy to steamroll then. Six settlements does not sound very much around turn 80, with the first 1-2 you should be able to hold a defendable front line while making your your economy stronger in the backline settlements.

Most of the time, the "walls" building type should be sufficient to hold the AI at bay, they slow their progress so much you can easily reinforce, I tend to have one Army on defense duty while 2 capture new settlements.

He is also right about not worrying loosing a settlement, you can recover them in a few turns, on normal the AI can field a single decent stack most of the time (save Waaaghs) once you kill them you can retake everything in a few turns.

 

[Fedora Master]

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.

In the early game when you have one or two provinces max, losing a minor settlement you just captured and haven't gotten value out of yet anyway isn't a problem. In fact, leaving an undefended ruined settlement is ideal to bait the AI out.

 

[copebot]

Started a new campaign on legendary as Cult of Sigmar last week. The beginning wasn't so bad. Killing Manfred early was kind of touch and go in a couple of the early fights, but I still managed to do it. Settra was actually a little tougher for me just because I did not really have a good answer to chariots. The problems started when I chased Skarbrand into the badlands after killing Khemri. Skarbrand himself wasn't so much the problem as was the clusterfuck of Clan Mors chasing me all around the badlands while Ikit kept pressuring my settlements on the wrong side of the not-Nile River. I wound up abandoning or selling all of my badlands and mountains settlements to the dwarves when Tiktakto and the wood elves declared war on me at the same time from the south.

Once I started moving south instead, I had a much easier time taking and holding settlements from the dinosaurs. The big problem with the badlands is that if you can't use the underway, it takes you 10 million years to traverse it, and if you dare to leave encamp stance, you get instakilled by skaven.

Fortunately, I got lucky, and the book of Nagash that is in the desert was the +8 MA/MD book. But that's the only book I've retrieved at turn 97. That thing makes all empire infantry like it belongs to a whole other faction. The Free Company in Volkmar's army are insane once you get Blessed Bullets. This is the first time I've played Empire in WH3, and I think my big mistake was not prioritizing getting to tier 4 faster for good artillery. It took me basically forever to get rocket batteries, but I could have spammed priests to get my growth up faster.

I lost probably 2-3 stacks to skaven ambushes in the badlands. I later lost another couple stacks in an incredibly stupid attempt to invade Sartosa (failing to be able to land a second army to help with the siege), in which Ikit sprinted two stacks hiding in nearby ruins to own the two stacks that I landed on the island to try to take it. Oh well. I'm gonna disagree with posters who say you cannot afford to give up settlements. If you can't defend a settlement, it's not worth defending. You can always sell it to another faction in return for agreements and cash. When you play the game more, you get a better feel for which settlements to upgrade and in what order. As long as you don't lose a lot of heavily upgraded core settlements, it's better to defend what you can than to try and fail to defend everything at the same time.

In this game, when I fled the badlands, the skaven chasing after me basically ceded their settlements to the dwarf blob which was allied to me. Anti-player bias can play to your advantage somewhat if you have allies because they abandon their settlements to try to kill you.

Even on legendary, you can lose a lot of battles, have lords/heroes die, lose major settlements and still bounce back.

 

[Average Manatee]

Fortunately, I got lucky, and the book of Nagash that is in the desert was the +8 MA/MD book.

That book is busted strong. I started a few times and every time it was somewhere super far away that I'd never get before the campaign was over, I thought it was hardcoded to be far away.

 

[Crispy]

Notably enemy lords generally only improve their melee attack/defense significantly by levels, phys/missile/ward resist tends to only come for equipment which is independent of levels, and those are the only things that reduce ranged damage.

This has to be it because I'm telling you I threw everything I had left at it including improved missile fire (albeit no streltsi units and I believe no AP anything) and at least two competent melee units and I sat there literally for an hour watching this wizard perform sweeping hand-to-hand attacks against my entire army which I was constantly refocusing on him as a target to unsure no one was bracing/idle/obstructed, while his own health went down by excruciatingly miniscule amounts. The animations showed this wizard tossing aside six or seven units at a time like some sort of WH version of Sauron. It was ridiculous. It got to the point that I was determined to see him dead just to try to glean some clue as to exactly why this wizard was such a melee world-ender. I wish the game gave you some clue as to what the enemy lords are wielding and/or equipped with so you stood some sort of chance against them (knowing what could and could not be effective) instead of wasting an hour or more whittling down their armies in order to finally engage them and win (or nearly lose) the battle. By the way, since he was unbreakable, it was impossible for the battle TO end until he was dead at zero hit points. His entire army was dead or 100% routed. He was completely alone. Fucking ridiculous.

I'll stop whining about it and load a previous save game to try to work out some better strategy against this guy, but to anyone else reading this who, like me, has never played this game before: don't dig yourself into a deep hole like I have. If you see a high-level enemy lord anywhere near your territories, especially one with a full army, call in help via diplomacy immediately, send every one of your own lords at him right away, but try to trap him and use extra heroes to chip away at his army first.

 

[Crispy]

If it's turn 80 and you have six settlements, you are not doing well. You should have that by turn 15 or so.

I acknowledge this and can only offer that this is my first time with a TW title. I'm sort of accustomed to turtling up in these types of games, and that kind of strategy will lead to my kind of problem in TW (apparently).

Trust me, all seemed to be going great until I realized how rapidly other (evil) factions were romping through the game. The entire southern end of the continent (with whom I made alliances) is doing poorly, including me. The fog of war and my own ignorance about not just whom I was going up against but also how MANY other factions were involved (all of whom are fat, juicy XP targets for all that evil A.I. to gobble up) contributed to a false sense of security. I find it odd how the non-chaos dwarves are also struggling, while the chaos dwarves are raping everything around them.

In any case, I am living and learning. I need to be both ruthless and conservative at the same time (!!).

Edit: I also forgot to mention that, if you're brand-new not only to the TW games but also to the Warhammer universe in general like I am, you don't even realize at the start of this game that you probably should ally with your surrounding human factions immediately to provide a much-needed buffer against chaos. I've even allied with the Orthodoxy now because even though they're rivals, they're still human. I also allied with the dwarves. Imagine trying to wipe all of them out first while also dealing with all the demons working their ways toward you. Or would that actually have benefitted me??

 

[Jaedar]

I'm sort of accustomed to turtling up in these types of games, and that kind of strategy will lead to my kind of problem in TW (apparently).

Yeah. Unless you are playing wood elves, you have to be aggressive. The ai spawns armies faster than you (and can afford more armies) and the only way to cow factions from attacking you long term is to be stronger than them (and even then it won't work if they actually dislike you a lot).

 

[Crispy]

I'm almost tempted just to re-start the campaign knowing now what I do, but my stubbornness won't allow it. I want to see if I can salvage this, even by resorting to Easy on the campaign difficulty. I refuse to lower the battle difficulty.

 

[Average Manatee]

Notably enemy lords generally only improve their melee attack/defense significantly by levels, phys/missile/ward resist tends to only come for equipment which is independent of levels, and those are the only things that reduce ranged damage.

This has to be it because I'm telling you I threw everything I had left at it including improved missile fire (albeit no streltsi units and I believe no AP anything) and at least two competent melee units and I sat there literally for an hour watching this wizard perform sweeping hand-to-hand attacks against my entire army which I was constantly refocusing on him as a target to unsure no one was bracing/idle/obstructed, while his own health went down by excruciatingly miniscule amounts. The animations showed this wizard tossing aside six or seven units at a time like some sort of WH version of Sauron. It was ridiculous. It got to the point that I was determined to see him dead just to try to glean some clue as to exactly why this wizard was such a melee world-ender. I wish the game gave you some clue as to what the enemy lords are wielding and/or equipped with so you stood some sort of chance against them (knowing what could and could not be effective) instead of wasting an hour or more whittling down their armies in order to finally engage them and win (or nearly lose) the battle. By the way, since he was unbreakable, it was impossible for the battle TO end until he was dead at zero hit points. His entire army was dead or 100% routed. He was completely alone. Fucking ridiculous.

I'll stop whining about it and load a previous save game to try to work out some better strategy against this guy, but to anyone else reading this who, like me, has never played this game before: don't dig yourself into a deep hole like I have. If you see a high-level enemy lord anywhere near your territories, especially one with a full army, call in help via diplomacy immediately, send every one of your own lords at him right away, but try to trap him and use extra heroes to chip away at his army first.

Just because the game calls someone "wizard" doesn't mean they necessarily aren't incredibly strong. For example Malekith literally is WH Sauron. If they are heavily armored than non-AP melee infantry are pretty worthless while non-AP missile units will take a lot, lot longer to whittle them down (though it is possible).

There's a button at the very bottom left of the screen next to the character portrait you can click to see enemy stats. Can't help you much more without knowing even their name.

If it's turn 80 and you have six settlements, you are not doing well. You should have that by turn 15 or so.

I acknowledge this and can only offer that this is my first time with a TW title. I'm sort of accustomed to turtling up in these types of games, and that kind of strategy will lead to my kind of problem in TW (apparently).

Trust me, all seemed to be going great until I realized how rapidly other (evil) factions were romping through the game. The entire southern end of the continent (with whom I made alliances) is doing poorly, including me. The fog of war and my own ignorance about not just whom I was going up against but also how MANY other factions were involved (all of whom are fat, juicy XP targets for all that evil A.I. to gobble up) contributed to a false sense of security. I find it odd how the non-chaos dwarves are also struggling, while the chaos dwarves are raping everything around them.

In any case, I am living and learning. I need to be both ruthless and conservative at the same time (!!).

Edit: I also forgot to mention that, if you're brand-new not only to the TW games but also to the Warhammer universe in general like I am, you don't even realize at the start of this game that you probably should ally with your surrounding human factions immediately to provide a much-needed buffer against chaos. I've even allied with the Orthodoxy now because even though they're rivals, they're still human. I also allied with the dwarves. Imagine trying to wipe all of them out first while also dealing with all the demons working their ways toward you. Or would that actually have benefitted me??

For the most part only "main" factions in the game tend to succeed because they get autoresolve boosts vs. minor factions. In Realm of Chaos campaign this means the Empire is fucked because they aren't actually a playable faction while the ogres down there are. Dwarves might persist just because they are tough to crack but won't be able to expand much. But yeah, you kind of want to get NAPs and trade treaties with everyone nearby that is possible. Checking Diplomatic quick deals basically every few turns is worth it.

 

[Crispy]

Just because the game calls someone "wizard" doesn't mean they necessarily aren't incredibly strong.

Yes, I agree, so what you do have to rely upon in gauging whether or not you should engage with A.I. lords is their LEVEL, which is what I was initially complaining about.

Higher and higher levels = possible inability for lower-level players to penetrate skill-based and better equipment-based missile and melee protection which equals lol fuck you, player. Sure, wipe out their entire army first but you still lose, noob, because you haven't invested in armor piercing yet, or any other number of Oh-My-God-I'm-Screwed scenarios.

Am I trying to say that metaknowledge is essential in this game?

- Don't turtle up
- Invest in this line first or else
- Don't declare war on anyone too early
- Ally with everyone around you unless you're really good
- Don't forget about the souls OOPS there goes another one

etc.

 

[Crispy]

Okay, here's the info on the guy:

Astragoth Ironhand, Wizard and Melee Specialist. Chaos dwarf, level 26. Too many abilities to list on the screen and the guy has two purple items. No wonder he whooped my ass. In fact, it's a minor miracle I actually beat him. NOW I'm tempted to re-load the save in which I won the battle, sacrificing the level 20 hero I lost, just to know he's been wiped off the map.

I didn't realize he was indeed so strong hand-to-hand. This is my Warhammer ignorance showing, and I've paid the price for it. I shouldn't have assumed that as a wizard he would be traditionally exceptionally vulnerable to hand-to-hand combat. Again, I'm learning.

Any other comments about him/the situation/general advice you can offer are welcome.

P.S. Should I consider re-enabling battle time limits to potentially avoid situations like the one that happened with this guy?

 

[Fedora Master]

The Chaos Dwarfs are very good at building "tall" or at least becoming tall fast due to the slave labor system. Razing and sacking will provide material and slaves to dump into rushing building upgrades. I spent most of the time with just two full provinces and used the ogres and dwarves as punching bags.

So turtling up is possible with some factions.

 

[Average Manatee]

Just because the game calls someone "wizard" doesn't mean they necessarily aren't incredibly strong.

Yes, I agree, so what you do have to rely upon in gauging whether or not you should engage with A.I. lords is their LEVEL, which is what I was initially complaining about.

Level has next to nothing to do with it. Just look at their stats. Plenty of level 40 lords can barely fight a single mid tier unit.

Granted you can't see their stats before you attack, so some basic knowledge of Warhammer lore or checking them out in a skirmish battle helps.

Am I trying to say that metaknowledge is essential in this game?

- Don't turtle up
- Invest in this line first or else
- Don't declare war on anyone too early
- Ally with everyone around you unless you're really good
- Don't forget about the souls OOPS there goes another one

I mean all knowledge helps. Though the whole soul thing and having half the world dead-set on fighting you for them is part of the rather bad Realm of Chaos campaign which is almost universally reviled.

The Chaos Dwarfs are very good at building "tall" or at least becoming tall fast due to the slave labor system. Razing and sacking will provide material and slaves to dump into rushing building upgrades. I spent most of the time with just two full provinces and used the ogres and dwarves as punching bags.

So turtling up is possible with some factions.

Yeah I think you can say that turtling works fine for some/most factions. But not if you are afraid of having your lord lacking levels or fighting multiple stacks from enemies who have expanded.

 

[Crispy]

I think I'm just going to retreat from that particular guy and call in Democracy air strikes on him until and unless he tries to attack my main stack holed up in a settlement, which will obviously put him at the major disadvantage. But even then I'd almost rather rely on the auto-resolve than fight him again and go through that nightmare. I'm also going to shift to streltsi and other more deadly ranged from here on out.

Also, I wouldn't be surprised to find, later, once I complete this campaign and play a different faction, that many of my previously-held stratagems aren't as ridiculously ineffective. Many have said this original Kislev setting is rather dogshit and I'm starting to see why. The cards are REALLY stacked against a newcomer like me, especially compared to and after playing the pathetically easy prologue.

 

[Average Manatee]

I think I'm just going to retreat from that particular guy and call in Democracy air strikes on him until and unless he tries to attack my main stack holed up in a settlement, which will obviously put him at the major disadvantage. But even then I'd almost rather rely on the auto-resolve than fight him again and go through that nightmare. I'm also going to shift to streltsi and other more deadly ranged from here on out.

Camp your army in ambush stance next to the settlement. You can ambush him and then the settlement can reinforce the battle.

Also, I wouldn't be surprised to find, later, once I complete this campaign and play a different faction, that many of my previously-held stratagems aren't as ridiculously ineffective. Many have said this original Kislev setting is rather dogshit and I'm starting to see why. The cards are REALLY stacked against a newcomer like me, especially compared to and after playing the pathetically easy prologue.

The campaign recommends playing Grand Cathay for your first game, which gives you a bigass wall to hide behind chaos from and is a lot simpler. Of course this kind of conflicts with the tutorial being for Kislev, but oh well...

Kislev is supposed to be the punching bag constantly overrun by chaos and barely holding on, so its just being depicted faithfully really. All of the starts are medium to hard difficulty in both campaigns with all of the chaos probably attacking and you just praying that some random asshole south of you doesn't also attack you while you're in the north.

 

[copebot]

Fortunately, I got lucky, and the book of Nagash that is in the desert was the +8 MA/MD book.

That book is busted strong. I started a few times and every time it was somewhere super far away that I'd never get before the campaign was over, I thought it was hardcoded to be far away.

It makes it so that swordsmen are actually competent (until they get hit by a spell). The book also impacts allied recruits, so allied recruit longbeards for example are sitting at 40 MA / 60 MD. A spearman with shield without chevrons is 30 MA / 54 MD for me at this point in the campaign without red line traits.

Nearing turn 100, I'm finally rolling up Kairos. It's kind of weird that they made him the short campaign victory when it really should be something like Manfred + Arkhan to fit with the Nagash theme. I had a really cool moment in which Kairos teleported on top of one of my armies, melted all of the troops in less than 60 seconds, but my Lord/hero goon squad managed to kill off a couple flamers and two Lords of Change that chased them away from the main body. The next turn, I recruited RoR and state troops with the survivors and brought in my nearby army with Gotrek in to get revenge. Felt satisfying. The interesting thing about this campaign is that apart from Volkmar's militia doomstack, everything can and will be obliterated by a faction that can ambush attack.

 

[Average Manatee]

It makes it so that swordsmen are actually competent (until they get hit by a spell). The book also impacts allied recruits, so allied recruit longbeards for example are sitting at 40 MA / 60 MD. A spearman with shield without chevrons is 30 MA / 54 MD for me at this point in the campaign without red line traits.

I'd want to see armies of Halberdiers with full redline and rank 9 to see how well they steamroll things.

 

[Lord of Riva]

Post some screenshots Crispy, your army, his army, your position, your potential reinforcement armies etc.

There is no reason one dude can be that problematic and I never checked the enemies lords level.

 

[zapotec]

UHm since patch 3.0 Malekith just spam shades like some people here that claims to be master tacticians