Warhammer 2- Total War Help Needed

[Sloanzilla]

I’m a competent Warhammer 1 player- I mean I’m not a “I played on legendary while blindfolded aren’t I amazing?” type, but I can win any given campaign most of the time on middle difficulty levels.
I’m getting spanked in the second game. I’m trying Tyrion, because I’m told that is the easiest. I have a good army and a good kingdom, but here are my issues. Any tips are appreciated.
• Some of the dark elf uberlords are just so darn powerful. It seems like magic is more powerful than the first game and heroes are more one man armies than ever before. I’ve had battles where I generally played my cards correctly, but some ultra elite hero casted 5 buffs on himself and singlehandedly wipes my army. Even buffed out Tyrion has been butchered a couple times in seconds.
• The computer seems better at moving across the global map than me. I take every single thing I can to increase my campaign movement, but I somehow still wind up playing chase across the continent. I do wish you could use block army on boats. Does the computer have some advantage of being able to leave march back into normal?
• I’ve done an OK job protecting my side of the island against the various factions that keep invading- while expanding to critical resources areas but that’s the extent of my resources. I can’t do those two things while also activating a ritual that sends 5 chaos armies my way. Does falling behind on the rituals mean game over, or can you just invade the leading faction in the end? I have more than enough fragments- I just am never in the position to deal with a huge chaos invasion on top of other battles.

[Thomas Cardew]

Magic is definitely more powerful which works both ways. Blobing up is extremely easy to punish with vortex skills now, make sure your bring your own mages and spread your units out more. Avoid long straight lines as a side shot from hydra/dragon can waste an entire unit in one shot. Conversely, try to get the enemy to blob and line up those side shots yourself. Dealing with the enemy lords depends on the lord and circumstances. Tyrion is great duelist and can 1v1 if you can set it up. Concentrated archer fire works but you might need to kite the lord with another unit, once engaged with your troops and surrounded your archers tend to stop firing. Lore of light can be used to net the enemy in place while your archers melt them. Other lores offer debuffs or buffs for your own heroes, if your lords are mounted be sure to break off and charge back in for the damage bonus frequently.

The computer is just inhumanly good about knowing your movement range. Due to the zone of control system, it's capable of force marching to something like 90-95% your movement range. Then when it's your turn you can move next to them but don't have quite enough movement to get to the center of their zone to attack. It's annoying and just something you get used to. Block army works on land but not sea, but you can usually catch them as they make landfall. Otherwise try to offer fights that are winnable but the AI thinks it can win to bait battles. If you get lightning strike, 6 point blue skill, and are good at fighting you can charge into 3 armies and beat them all 1 at time. Sieges are actually your best friend as the HE. It's quite easy to defeat a garrison and 1-2 occupying armies if your besieging them with lots of archers which you probably have as HE.

There's no reason to rush the rituals on the vortex map. You can if you want but you don't need to. Even if the other factions finish all of their rituals before you, you get a chance to fight them one final time. If you win, they lose and can't do any more rituals leaving you free to finish yourself or do a conquest victory. Even with that said, you can slow the enemy down a lot with a 10k intervention army razing a few settlements. The AI also launches the rituals as soon as it gets enough fragments regardless of how overextended it is. It's quite possible to punish knock the DE out for a dozen+ turns or completely by timing an invasion, intervention, and chaos incursion at the same time.

[Sloanzilla]

That was a massive help- thanks, especially knowing that falling behind in the ritual race doesn't end the game. I don't dislike the mechanic, but the DE's chaos ritual spawns seem to just sort of wander around and let them finish the ritual.

The movement range thing IS frustrating

[Thomas Cardew]

A few more tips specific to the rituals. The spawns are mostly random but are effected by your armies and site locations. It will try to place them between your armies and the target cities. Sending a decent army into enemy territory to sack and occupy towns can generate a lot of cash and take pressure off from other factions. Even a cheap army of 4 spear man, 2-4 artillery, and 6+ basic archers can take most enemy garrisons with minimal losses. While they're busy chasing that army you can deal with chaos force back home. If a couple of your armies on another continent this can result in them spawning on the edges of your empire instead of the heart Not something to be relied on but helpful. I frequently get 3 armies spawned on land and 2 on the sea which gives you time to defeat the first ones and then intercept the rest.

Another thing is to be sure to fight the minor settlement garrison battles yourself. It might feel like a waste of time but most of the chaos armies spawn with 1-3 units of artillery. If you can use the garrison cavalry units to snipe those before they get to your province city you can usually win the defending battle. Be sure to build walls in every city if you aren't already for the upgraded towers and garrisons. Mage towers are great, you get a defending mage and another agent slot. Hire every entrepreneur trait mage you can regardless of lore and send them to chill in Lothern for extra cash. A few other obvious things, start the ritual at the beginning of your turn not the end. Have or be ready to raise an army in each ritual city. In general, you want to be able to attack the enemy instead of letting them attack you with reinforcements. Particularly against the skaven because of their annoying ambush bonus.

Speaking of skaven, it's helpful to fight skaven near map edges if you can. They're supposed to route early and then come back, but if you route them next to the map edge, they don't come back. Of course, your routing units can also flee too so use with caution.

[Zombimode]

One thing to note about interupting other factions rituals: the ritual fails iff* the factions does not controll all the ritual sites when the timer for the ritual expires. Temporarily losing controll has no effect.
Keep that in mind if you plan of disrupting the enemy

*that's a shorthand for "if and only if"

[Thomas Cardew]

One thing to note about interupting other factions rituals: the ritual fails iff* the factions does not controll all the ritual sites when the timer for the ritual expires. Temporarily losing controll has no effect.
Keep that in mind if you plan of disrupting the enemy

*that's a shorthand for "if and only if"

Same is true for the player, only turn 0 matters. Don't worry if you lose a site as long as you take it back. And it just has to be occupied/colonized not built.

[Corsair14]

I found Kroq-Gar to be the easiest followed by Mazimundi. I don't know, I guess I prefer lizardman troops. The campaign will snowball on you though if you don't make steady progress but that holds true for both ME and the vortex campaigns. Its rare I don't have at least one army on the move.

I actually have found the high elf campaign somewhat difficult due to the snowball effect and having one of the high lords go psychotic and start taking the map before I am ready.

[GloatingSwine]

I’m a competent Warhammer 1 player- I mean I’m not a “I played on legendary while blindfolded aren’t I amazing?” type, but I can win any given campaign most of the time on middle difficulty levels.
I’m getting spanked in the second game. I’m trying Tyrion, because I’m told that is the easiest. I have a good army and a good kingdom, but here are my issues. Any tips are appreciated.
• Some of the dark elf uberlords are just so darn powerful. It seems like magic is more powerful than the first game and heroes are more one man armies than ever before. I’ve had battles where I generally played my cards correctly, but some ultra elite hero casted 5 buffs on himself and singlehandedly wipes my army. Even buffed out Tyrion has been butchered a couple times in seconds.

The only Dark Elf lord who should stand a chance in melee with Tyrion should be maybe Malus Darkblade if he pops T'zarkan. Tyrion is one of the best standup fighters (and overall lords) in the game. Just make sure you get your quest items and aren't also getting shot to bits by enemy ranged or ganged up on whilst you fight.

For general tips levelling up melee lords, you want to take the blue line first, then the unique stuff at the top, then the red line, and the personal combat stuff last. Fighty lords tend to be fighty enough to do their jobs for quite a long time without putting points in there.

Whilst you're levelling up a skill line you want to take just enough to get you to the next block each time, and on the blue line almost all factions want to take Lightning Strike as soon as they can (Exceptions exist like Skaven, Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts). The AI loves to move its armies around together on the campaign map, and Lightning Strike lets you fight them separately as long as you're the attacker. As High Elves you also want to take Wary for ambush defence. High Elves do not like being ambushed.

On army compositon, you generally don't want more than 4-6 melee infantry units in an army for most factions. You want to be able to shoot stuff because ranged units can all deal damage and do it without being hit back, but melee units only the models in combat actually fight. For High Elves I liked to do 4 spearmen/2 swordmasters, a couple of Elyrrian Reaver Archers, and fill out most of the rest with bolt throwers and sisters of avelorn (the best archer unit in the game don't @ me waywatcher fans, but you need Queen and the Crone* to recruit them, otherwise just archers are fine). Always have a mage in your armies, High Elves really benefit from Light wizards for Net of Amyntok, but if you don't have one then most of the others are pretty good too, and a Handmaiden with the Resistant trait if possible.

Cavalry, sadly, is not very good in Total War Warhammer, morale shocks are very mild and mostly won't make units break unless they're stuffed anyway, so if you're not Bretonnia** deprioritise them for your armies because they won't pull their weight for the amount of micro you have to put into them. I like skirmish archer horsemen though, they can snipe war machines and get the AI to commit more valuable units to chasing them around.

It also helps to know that in TWW2 you can redirect your wind spells. Click and hold when you choose your target and you can choose a direction for the wind spell. If you're used to TWW1 this will be new and the game doesn't tell you about it.

• The computer seems better at moving across the global map than me. I take every single thing I can to increase my campaign movement, but I somehow still wind up playing chase across the continent. I do wish you could use block army on boats. Does the computer have some advantage of being able to leave march back into normal?

It doesn't have any particular movement advantages, but it does know exactly how far you can move and exactly where you can't reach. Also, march stance/full speed ahead is the same movement range for everyone, it doesn't matter how much movement range you have, that only increases your normal move range.

However, there is something you can do about this. The AI has perfect information and knows where all armies on the map are all the time unless they are in ambush stance. If an army is in ambush stance the AI will immediately forget that it even existed, and so it won't try to run away from it. Giving it an easy target like a town it wants to besiege will make it go and do that so you can jump on it. (For this reason you should also always build walls on any city that you reasonably expect to be attacked, the AI always stops to build siege equipment). The alternative is a weak army standing next to the one in ambush stance so they try and make the attack and either get ambushed or have to fight both armies anyway

Now, you can't do this at sea, but you also don't really need to. The AI is dumb and cannot attack ports with black arks the way it is supposed to. So you can ignore black arks, don't chase them around, just let them drive impotently around the seas.

• I’ve done an OK job protecting my side of the island against the various factions that keep invading- while expanding to critical resources areas but that’s the extent of my resources. I can’t do those two things while also activating a ritual that sends 5 chaos armies my way. Does falling behind on the rituals mean game over, or can you just invade the leading faction in the end? I have more than enough fragments- I just am never in the position to deal with a huge chaos invasion on top of other battles.

You don't have to worry about the rituals much, and you shouldn't do them if you're not stable and well protected. The AI is quite slow at doing them and even if they do get to the final one you get a quest battle to stop them, and if you win that then they're knocked out of the race for good.

Also, if you've got TWW1 then install Mortal Empires and play that. Even all the TWW1 races you're used to will be better in TWW2 (apart from Greenskins until next friday).

Now, cheese for the cheese god!

Spoiler: Warning, contains cheese

Show

If you really want to play the High Elves unleashed, you want to get 6 or so nobles who just roll around farming influence, you want to be able to get 40 influence a turn. You spend that influence recruiting mages with the Entrepreneur trait. Doesn't matter what lore they use, just get Entrepreneurs and park them in your richest province. Every one gives you a huge income boost for that province and a 3% global income boost.

Because you have 5 lores there'll always be an Entrepreneur, and every one compounds with all the others to turbocharge your economy way beyond the point of sanity and balance.

The absolutely cheesiest way to do it is to leave a high elf faction in control of one of the gates on Ulthuan and nothing else. That's a valid target for influence farming that nobody else will care about you taking hero actions against.

* The best DLCs to get if you don't have any are Rise of the Tomb Kings, The Queen and the Crone and The Prophet and the Warlock. Though The Warden and the Paunch is 10% off if you preorder it.

** Repanse is free, and Bretonnia are fun to play. Need replenishment though.

[Thomas Cardew]

Comments in italics.

On army compositon, you generally don't want more than 4-6 melee infantry units in an army for most factions. You want to be able to shoot stuff because ranged units can all deal damage and do it without being hit back, but melee units only the models in combat actually fight. For High Elves I liked to do 4 spearmen/2 swordmasters, a couple of Elyrrian Reaver Archers, and fill out most of the rest with bolt throwers and sisters of avelorn (the best archer unit in the game don't @ me waywatcher fans, but you need Queen and the Crone* to recruit them, otherwise just archers are fine). Always have a mage in your armies, High Elves really benefit from Light wizards for Net of Amyntok, but if you don't have one then most of the others are pretty good too, and a Handmaiden with the Resistant trait if possible.

Note that this really only true for campaign. The AI gets lots of combat buffs which make its melee much stronger than yours and resistant to breaking depending on difficulty. If you plan on going into MP don't bring that much range as you can't protect them. Sisters being the exception because they have really good melee stats but are generally too expensive to field a full of army of in MP. In campaign expense matters a lot less than slot efficiency due to army upkeep penal

Cavalry, sadly, is not very good in Total War Warhammer, morale shocks are very mild and mostly won't make units break unless they're stuffed anyway, so if you're not Bretonnia** deprioritise them for your armies because they won't pull their weight for the amount of micro you have to put into them. I like skirmish archer horsemen though, they can snipe war machines and get the AI to commit more valuable units to chasing them around.

If you do want to use them, recruit in pairs. The first goes in and fights for about 10 seconds, then the second unit comes in. Rotate the first out a bit then charge in again. It's super micro intensive and generally not worth the hassle IMO. Sending them to counter other cavalry or to sweep archers if you can pull it off is the easiest use.

It also helps to know that in TWW2 you can redirect your wind spells. Click and hold when you choose your target and you can choose a direction for the wind spell. If you're used to TWW1 this will be new and the game doesn't tell you about it.
This includes Tyrion's sunfang spell

However, there is something you can do about this. The AI has perfect information and knows where all armies on the map are all the time unless they are in ambush stance. If an army is in ambush stance the AI will immediately forget that it even existed, and so it won't try to run away from it. Giving it an easy target like a town it wants to besiege will make it go and do that so you can jump on it. (For this reason you should also always build walls on any city that you reasonably expect to be attacked, the AI always stops to build siege equipment). The alternative is a weak army standing next to the one in ambush stance so they try and make the attack and either get ambushed or have to fight both armies anyway

It's well worth spending a few turns on any lord in ambush stance if you can spare the movement. You'll gain a trait which gives 5% success chacne and 10% defense chance. Basically all the lord stances give you a minor boost to that trait if you do it for several turns.

Now, you can't do this at sea, but you also don't really need to. The AI is dumb and cannot attack ports with black arks the way it is supposed to. So you can ignore black arks, don't chase them around, just let them drive impotently around the seas.



You don't have to worry about the rituals much, and you shouldn't do them if you're not stable and well protected. The AI is quite slow at doing them and even if they do get to the final one you get a quest battle to stop them, and if you win that then they're knocked out of the race for good.

Also, if you've got TWW1 then install Mortal Empires and play that. Even all the TWW1 races you're used to will be better in TWW2 (apart from Greenskins until next friday).

Now, cheese for the cheese god!

Spoiler: Warning, contains cheese

Show

If you really want to play the High Elves unleashed, you want to get 6 or so nobles who just roll around farming influence, you want to be able to get 40 influence a turn. You spend that influence recruiting mages with the Entrepreneur trait. Doesn't matter what lore they use, just get Entrepreneurs and park them in your richest province. Every one gives you a huge income boost for that province and a 3% global income boost.

This gets nerfed with the next patch but is still worth it

Because you have 5 lores there'll always be an Entrepreneur, and every one compounds with all the others to turbocharge your economy way beyond the point of sanity and balance.

The absolutely cheesiest way to do it is to leave a high elf faction in control of one of the gates on Ulthuan and nothing else. That's a valid target for influence farming that nobody else will care about you taking hero actions against.

For added cheese, keep a lord with a small but sufficient army next to it. You can sack it every turn and the AI will dutifully rebuild and get minor replenishment giving you a super easy fight for free xp. You can easily farm several lords to level 20 for that sweet immortality or higher with more turn investment

* The best DLCs to get if you don't have any are Rise of the Tomb Kings, The Queen and the Crone and The Prophet and the Warlock. Though The Warden and the Paunch is 10% off if you preorder it.

** Repanse is free, and Bretonnia are fun to play. Need replenishment though.

It's also probably worth waiting till Warden and Paunch launches to buy any other DLC, they'll likely go on sale then.

[GloatingSwine]

Note that this really only true for campaign. The AI gets lots of combat buffs which make its melee much stronger than yours and resistant to breaking depending on difficulty. If you plan on going into MP don't bring that much range as you can't protect them. Sisters being the exception because they have really good melee stats but are generally too expensive to field a full of army of in MP. In campaign expense matters a lot less than slot efficiency due to army upkeep penalty.

Oh yeah, campaign and multiplayer are totally different contexts and what's effective is different between them. The question was about Campaign though, so that's what I answered about.

It's also worth noting that unit scale changes things a lot. The smaller the unit scale, the more powerful magic and monsters are.

On smaller unit scales, all damage stays the same, but the hitpoints of everything get smaller. Either because there's less models in the unit or because its hitpoints scale down.

Most large monsters do enough damage to kill an infantry model, and hit the same number of models no matter the unit scale, so they'll kill proportionally more of the unit each time on smaller scales.

Meanwhile spells do the same amount of damage too, so not only do they kill more of a unit as well the amount they do to the scaled down hitpoints of single entities is proportionally much higher as well. Spirit Leech barely tickles on Ultra unit scale, but it seriously hurts on Small.

(CA claim the game is balanced around Large, but the magic/monster/infantry balance generally comes out better on Ultra).

Edit: This also applies to cavalry, they're more practical in multiplayer because the opponent has as much micromanagement load as you do and so won't be perfectly responding to everything, giving cavalry much more opportunity to work.

[Sloanzilla]

thanks again for the help- it's a great game, btw

Oh, I think whoever wrote the auto-complete code was drunk. It's so far off it doesn't even seem to be logical.

[Resileaf]

The auto-resolve balance of power calculates battles as straight, no-frills fights without any tactics but just both armies hitting each other with numbers. Unless you have an enormous number advantage, it will always do worse than if you fought it yourself. If I'm not mistaken, higher difficulty levels will also give it a nudge to the AI side.

[Thomas Cardew]

The auto-resolve balance of power calculates battles as straight, no-frills fights without any tactics but just both armies hitting each other with numbers. Unless you have an enormous number advantage, it will always do worse than if you fought it yourself. If I'm not mistaken, higher difficulty levels will also give it a nudge to the AI side.

Yes the AR generally penalizes the player, particularly when ambushed or seiging, especially if you didn't build equipment. There are certain times it does better. It tends to over value cavalry compared to actual effectiveness and gives a decent bonus to defending sieges. For example, the first battle of Repanses vortex campaign is much easier to AR than fight. You take practically no losses in AR despite the enemy comp being horrible to actually fight. The other big thing is AR tends to completely eliminate units while even if you take more losses fighting manually you are highly unlikely to completely lose a unit if you win, since the unit would break and flee before dying.

[Sloanzilla]

Finished the high elf vortex campaign. The chaos/spoiler spawns are pretty easy once they start taking place off of your main continent.
A full on invasion of dark elf lands was a lot of fun. There was then a slog near the end there where fighting off endless lizardmen became really tedious, to be honest. I switched to armor piercing and was winning the battles just fine, but there were just so many stacks of angry dinosaurs to kill that each turn was taking forever. South America is ‘Uge! Colonizing another 20 provinces while fighting 8 battles a turn against suicidal lizardmen doesn’t sound very fun. I think I’ll stick with the short campaign victory. Skaven next!

[GloatingSwine]

The Lustriabowl is real. Loads of LLs packed in together and territory that's a bugger to travel through.

It's kind of even worse in Mortal Empires because it's a bit squished up and you can't sail around it so you have to walk the long way through to the back end.


(I'm currently trying to finish up a Skaven campaign with Biggest Brained Rat Ikit Claw on Mortal Empires. I've basically won but need the game to admit it by getting my corruption up and taking one more capital, which I can get instantly by confederating Moulder but Archaon's chomping their lands and my armies are busy with the Empire, so I need to wait.)

[Thomas Cardew]

Uggh Lustria. I'm doing a Tretch vortex campaign and I'm just getting into Lustria proper. At least I have the underway, I hated playing Teclis because it was just slugging through miles of Jungle and swamp, only to have to inevitably turn around because of Random Malekith/ Overpower Rogue Army/ Skaven Underway Army/ Ritual Army. All while carving a path through endless Lizards and Skaven.

Tretch is unironically playing almost exactly like my previous AA campaigns. Cleared the DE subfaction to my east and AA, smash Morathi before she can get to be a problem. Turn and rush to hit Malekith just as he finishes carving through Clan Karond. Hit Naggroth (city) just as the AI manages to start another ritual effectively giving me 3 free invasion armies. Finish off Malekith only for him to confederate with Malus and running away to SE corner. Deal with a pop-up incursion as Malekith confederates Crone while I carve my way across the North while simultaneously opening a front against Mazda in North Lustria.

Only major map difference is I allied with the Drowned instead of that TK lord, and I actually wiped my ally when starting the Southern push since the climate was favourable and I didn't want to deal with vampire corruption everywhere. Also no on wants to trade with me so there wasn't really a point in keeping the Drowned alive for like 1k a turn when I could take their cities and get more than that for free.

I'm currently slugging my way through Lustria while tossing up undercities at all the HE gates. I haven't decided if I want to just ritual rush to finish or invade Ulthuan. Pulling my Alith Anar move of YOLO tracking Malekith down and putting a final arrow in his eye doesn't feel right. Also it's super annoying spending 10 turns just to get there with half health from sea attrition.

[Sloanzilla]

Skaven Questions!

1. I can't find a guide that even mentions the mid-tier archer units- gutter runners and so forth. Is Skaven really all about just rushing to artillery?

2. How does the Skaven Corruption mechanic work? Should I still shoot for 100% and just accept the consequences?

3. There are like 14 undercity options. I assume I pick one of the ones to lower the risk and then go with whatever I want (food/money/movement)? Which ones are generally considered the most worthwhile?

I'm not a huge fan of having armies that are constantly fleeing so far, but I do like the catapults. Also, engineers are the single best hero in the game. Under cities are a fun mechanic and the food thing isn't really that difficult.

[GloatingSwine]

Skaven Questions!

1. I can't find a guide that even mentions the mid-tier archer units- gutter runners and so forth. Is Skaven really all about just rushing to artillery?

2. How does the Skaven Corruption mechanic work? Should I still shoot for 100% and just accept the consequences?

3. There are like 14 undercity options. I assume I pick one of the ones to lower the risk and then go with whatever I want (food/money/movement)? Which ones are generally considered the most worthwhile?

I'm not a huge fan of having armies that are constantly fleeing so far, but I do like the catapults. Also, engineers are the single best hero in the game. Under cities are a fun mechanic and the food thing isn't really that difficult.

1. There's an important question to be asked, and it's this:

Do you have The Prophet and The Warlock?

If you don't, then you'll probably be making some use of gutter runners as skirmish troops, they're fast, they slow enemy units trying to catch them, and their damage is OK.

They're not really an "archer" troop in the classic sense of standing behind the lines and supporting infantry, Skaven infantry, even Stormvermin, won't stay put long enough to let them work, so get used to having a chaotic mess of rats all over the place and leverage your ambushes to let you jump on and morale shock the enemy so they run away just as much as you.

And yes, Plagueclaw Catapults are fantastic, probably one of the most all round useful artillery units in the game.

If you do have Prophet and the Warlock it makes Skaven approx. 10x more fun and effective because it gives you Ratling Guns and Warplock Jezzails. Which lets you build a turbocharged army of mad science rats with automatic weaponry supported by a frontline of disposable summons from Plague Priests and buffed by your engineers. (Lore of Plague is one of the most effective magics in the game).

2. Technically Skaven corruption is bad for everyone, including Skaven, but they have some really powerful public order buildings so you don't really need to care, just stick up temples of the horned rat everywhere and corrupt away. Also every skaven building produces upkeep, and you should always build walls in every settlement to get warp bombs.

3. Undercities are generally a good source of money and food. The other options are pretty situational and/or gimmicky. It's nice to get a percentage of the income of a fat city like Lothern though. (But be wary when you do it, Tyrion has no chill and will almost certainly declare war on you, and when he does he will not let it go).

[Sloanzilla]

hey thanks- everyone and their dinosaur seems to want to declare war on me anyhow, so that's nothing new.

It is a very micro-heavy faction at this point. I miss just letting my sea guards fend for themselves while I focus my time on my phoenixes and Tyrion.

I'll download that DLC. I did for the elves because I got so tired of the Everqueen not being willing to confederate. Then I discovered her archers...

[GloatingSwine]

In that case yeah, Skaven ranged is all about mad science guns and catapults, the slinger units need not apply.

[Thomas Cardew]

Yeah vanilla skaven ranged isn't really a thing. You can work in like 1-4 warpfire throwers in the early game for killing power against light troops, but they're are super short range, cause friendly fire, and generally micro intensive. Warpfire throwers also can't man walls so they're almost useless for defending in sieges. Warpfire throwers are replaced by posion and death globe throwers at higher tiers, they're less finicky but still micro intensive. They do great at killing things but their short range means you need to engage with melee units first then bring them in. For vanilla skaven, you're generally just better off with Menace from Below and artillery spam.

Skaven corruption sucks for everyone but you don't take attrition from it. You can either spam public order buildings and forget about it, in which case it's just a nice defensive bonus as it controls the number of uses of Menance from Below and makes your territory harder to hold for invading armies. Or you can lean into it. You can raid your own territory for food which costs public order as does your corruption. A warlord with an stack of skavenslaves costs basically nothing in upkeep costs, particularly if you pick up 'Life is Cheap.' You can then start farming rebellions. Raid for food, spawn a rebellion, fight it manually for extra food, rince and repeat. This is very effective early game as it lets you rapidly expand with food, save early build slots, and get free exp on your secondary lords.

Undercities options depend on what you want to do with them. Food, income, and research are the best uses IMO but don't underestimate the benefit of faction wide bonuses from things like Warpstone Refinery, the extra winds can really help out low level heroes. Also it's quite worth it to spend the time YOLOing your DOOOOM engineer across the map to Sartosa and/or the maelstrom. These are cities you probably won't want to take yourself until very late in the game if ever and are hardly ever lost/razed by the AI. Thus you can safely toss in your special +50 xp turn +10% research +1 warlock engineer slot building. They also produce a decent chunk of income if you decide to risk discovery with those buildings.

[Sloanzilla]

Got the battle micro with my main army down pretty well, though now and then a pack of high hit point dinosaurs are too much.

The Last Defenders seem to keep pulling 20 stack armies out of their but- I'm in an eternal war of attrition with them.

[Thomas Cardew]

Got the battle micro with my main army down pretty well, though now and then a pack of high hit point dinosaurs are too much.

The Last Defenders seem to keep pulling 20 stack armies out of their but- I'm in an eternal war of attrition with them.

Don't be afraid to raze settlements. Particularly as skaven since you can re occupy at higher tiers. It slows down their advance as they'll have to reinforce from further back.You can bait an army into weakening itself razing settlements and hiding in ambush or moving. The AI will colonize the ruins tossing half their hp away.

Alternatively, having a weak or empty lord is great to keep with you. They act as bait for ambushes, occupy cities to save your main army hp or movement, or can eat the global recruit timer of you need to reinforce.

Also, it's a great to be able to catch armies in their cities if you can. Particularly, the lizards as you can sweep their walls, then take them to safely blast the dinos in peace.

[Sloanzilla]

Was actually going to ask if there's a mod that makes the AI smarter in terms of colonization, or rather not colonizing.

[GloatingSwine]

There are mods that make it avoid provinces with low habitability more, but not ones to stop its unholy lust for recolonising ruins in general.

[Thomas Cardew]

Just as an FYI most of the DLC seem to be on a steam sale until June 1st. Not the best deals ever but it's probably a good time to pick up anything you really want like the Queen and Crone or Prophet and Warlock.

[Brookshw]

Just as an FYI most of the DLC seem to be on a steam sale until June 1st. Not the best deals ever but it's probably a good time to pick up anything you really want like the Queen and Crone or Prophet and Warlock.

Queen & Crone any good?

[Blackhawk748]

High Elves are weird, though if you don't mind manually doing fights just making an entire army out of like 4 Heroes and the rest being Sisters of Avelorn and a pair of Ballista is a hell of a Doomstack that will shred the opponent with a bit of micro.

I found Kroq-Gar to be the easiest followed by Mazimundi. I don't know, I guess I prefer lizardman troops. The campaign will snowball on you though if you don't make steady progress but that holds true for both ME and the vortex campaigns. Its rare I don't have at least one army on the move.

I actually have found the high elf campaign somewhat difficult due to the snowball effect and having one of the high lords go psychotic and start taking the map before I am ready.

Gor Rok was the easiest for me because Lord Kroak is a floating nuclear warhead. And Saurs Warriors are an amazing battle line.

Yeah vanilla skaven ranged isn't really a thing. You can work in like 1-4 warpfire throwers in the early game for killing power against light troops, but they're are super short range, cause friendly fire, and generally micro intensive. Warpfire throwers also can't man walls so they're almost useless for defending in sieges. Warpfire throwers are replaced by posion and death globe throwers at higher tiers, they're less finicky but still micro intensive. They do great at killing things but their short range means you need to engage with melee units first then bring them in. For vanilla skaven, you're generally just better off with Menace from Below and artillery spam.

The Rattling Gunners and Jezzails are sad that you ignored them. Skaven gunline is horrific.

[Thomas Cardew]

If you like HE yes, you're basically playing with one hand tied behind your back without it.

1) You can't confederate with Averlorn without it. That means you either (1) kill her, which is a tedious waste of time/ resources which takes up your early/mid game when you'd be better off killing DE in Naggrond or eliminating VC or anything more useful. (2) Ally with her, and deal with an uncontrollable AI ally.

2) You don't get your 4th hero class, handmaidens. These are hybrid soldiers with some solid army buffs but can also get economic traits, which makes getting your economy rolling that much faster instead of having to wait for more T4 cities to build mage towers.

3) You're missing a huge chunk of your roster. Sisters of Avelorn are the HE late game archer with armor piercing/ magic attacks. Basic archers start to struggle with the high armor of other factions late game units. A HE 1 lord, 1 mage, 2 artillery, 16 sisters army is an offensive powerhouse capable of beating most anything with few losses. If you don't want to go full range, you'd still be better off with sisters over archers as your ranged units.

4) Most of the HE regiments of renown are from queen and crone. These are instantly recruitable max level upgraded versions of basic troops. Fun toys but not make or break.

There's DE units to and the Crone isn't a bad lord, but it's not as game changing as the HE stuff.

The Rattling Gunners and Jezzails are sad that you ignored them. Skaven gunline is horrific.

I specified vanilla Skaven, the gunner teams are in the DLC

[Brookshw]

Gor Rok was the easiest for me because Lord Kroak is a floating nuclear warhead. And Saurs Warriors are an amazing battle line.

No doubt, dinosaur people are pretty durn sweet. Trying Lord Harkon in the vampire coast is a pain, those lizards just shred all you first few tiers of melee units and leave your ranged running for it. Better to take to the seas and go raiding.