Warhammer: Total War

Tony EH

Is this 1 or 2 you lads are playing?

ancapailldorcha

Tony EH wrote: »

Is this 1 or 2 you lads are playing?

2. Specifically Mortal Empires.

Dave_The_Sheep

Turn times are a nightmare though.

degrassinoel

Dave_The_Sheep wrote: »

Turn times are a nightmare though.

That's pretty much why i give up every campaign in MEmpires after turn 100, it's ridiculously long even with a high spec machine

That said, the standard WH2 campaigns are really good

Gbear

Having a blast so far with WH2.

I'm not sure why but I've gone from auto-resolving nearly everything in 1 to happily fighting in 2, and it's been hugely rewarding.

I started off with Tyrion because I figured it'd be vanilla and I'd learn the new mechanics. I seemed to be running away with it by turn 100, especially seeing as the 2nd most powerful faction is my best buddy Avelorn and she's screening all the Dark Elves and mopping up the Norscan gob****es.

With that pretty much sewn up I went for the dino-boys with Kroq-Gar. It's thrilling to steamroll 2000 skaven with a third as many dinos and only lose fifty or a hundred troops. With Grymloq I've three carnosaurs and anything big get's mauled in seconds, and once they're gone I can just leave them to rampage and blast the enemy lines apart. Temple Guard are absolute brick **** houses and they've got something mental with buffs like 130 leadership. Lizardmen aren't great at range but they're so fast and they're so good at sniping artillery or siege towers with their high single target damage artillery, that doubles as a rampaging dinosaur, that it hasn't really mattered to far.

That's going well but I've a tricky chaos army to deal with that I can't quite figure out so to change tac I've started a Ungrim Ironfist ME campaign and having 10 slayers is massive craic, and the man himself hits like a truck.

I'm not sure what's changed but I'm having far, far more fun with the new game and I'm engaging with the mechanics in the RTS layer far more.

killanena

Gbear wrote: »

Having a blast so far with WH2.

I'm not sure why but I've gone from auto-resolving nearly everything in 1 to happily fighting in 2, and it's been hugely rewarding.

I started off with Tyrion because I figured it'd be vanilla and I'd learn the new mechanics. I seemed to be running away with it by turn 100, especially seeing as the 2nd most powerful faction is my best buddy Avelorn and she's screening all the Dark Elves and mopping up the Norscan gob****es.

With that pretty much sewn up I went for the dino-boys with Kroq-Gar. It's thrilling to steamroll 2000 skaven with a third as many dinos and only lose fifty or a hundred troops. With Grymloq I've three carnosaurs and anything big get's mauled in seconds, and once they're gone I can just leave them to rampage and blast the enemy lines apart. Temple Guard are absolute brick **** houses and they've got something mental with buffs like 130 leadership. Lizardmen aren't great at range but they're so fast and they're so good at sniping artillery or siege towers with their high single target damage artillery, that doubles as a rampaging dinosaur, that it hasn't really mattered to far.

That's going well but I've a tricky chaos army to deal with that I can't quite figure out so to change tac I've started a Ungrim Ironfist ME campaign and having 10 slayers is massive craic, and the man himself hits like a truck.

I'm not sure what's changed but I'm having far, far more fun with the new game and I'm engaging with the mechanics in the RTS layer far more.

High Elves are a pretty strong all around meta faction. They steam roll campaigns because they have the potential to answer all treats with their roster. Have very strong infantry, Cav, Magic, Missile and of course dragons.

Also being able to influence other factions into being friendly with you or hating another faction etc is extremely helpful.


Id say strongest factions in the game right now are Lizardmen>High Elves>Vampire Counts.
Lizardmen maybe not so much in campaign (unless playing against them and having to fight army stacks of just dinosaurs xD) but definitely in multiplayer or just custom battles.

ancapailldorcha

I do wonder if the High Elves (& Dark Elves) are overpowered. They have everything but artillery.

My Bretonnia ME campaign has had a few wobbles. Namely the fact that I didn't realise how f*cked up their economy is. Saw a helpful post on Reddit and built farms everywhere which resolved the issue. Think Chaos might be round the corner.

Annoyingly, the Elves despise me and have declared war. Tyrion bought over a full stack of Archers and Lothern Sea Guard. Was an awful lot of fun having Louen, a Paladin and a load of peasants bury him while my archers dismantles the sea guard and my cavalry mopped up the archers.

Fortunately, that was the only excursion over.

Gbear

I think strong missile units seem to have the best outcome against the AI. They seem to have the biggest problem dealing with kiting units like Waywatchers or Sisters of Avelorn.

But the High Elves are, I think, even better than the Wood Elves with the Lothern Sea Guard doubling as a shield wall.

They don't have the depth of artillery but the Eagles Claw is massively flexible.

I came up against Count Noctilus early with a Necrofex Colossus and was bricking it, and a couple of them with AP bolts melted it. Similar story with other horrible monstrosities like Hydra, Giants and such.

Another thing I've really loved playing with that I didn't touch before was magic. It felt a bit like busywork, but with a Heavens Skink Priest for the lizardmen, and their resilience and tendency to look after themselves pretty well, I've had more headspace to focus on using direct damage spells, and it's so satisfying to mulch nearly a whole unit's worth of skaven with Comet of Cassandora. I used to make good use of Dwarven runepriests and the likes because there's an element of fire and forget, and Orion and Throgg have some good bound spells at the start that i'd have a crack off but I wasn't getting hundreds of kills with spells like I have been with my good little Skink boy.

ancapailldorcha

Do you mean in autoresolve or in actual combat?

Aye, the Eagle Claw catapult is very versatile. I got good use out of it.

I remember sending an army to claim treasure out on the sea. They had a rotting leviathan so I had to devote about a quarter stack to that alone and lost.

Twenty Grand

I think the High Elves are fairly overpowered in campaign.

Seaguard have decent range and can easily take a charge.

They've no real standout fantastic units, but their basic units outclass most other armies. I've found they have a tough time in the late game.

Gbear

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Do you mean in autoresolve or in actual combat?

Aye, the Eagle Claw catapult is very versatile. I got good use out of it.

I remember sending an army to claim treasure out on the sea. They had a rotting leviathan so I had to devote about a quarter stack to that alone and lost.

In actual combat, especially the kiting ones. The big problem is cavalry and monstrous units but once you can pin them they melt to the Sisters of Avelorn.
They're a phenomenal unit.

There's something hugely satisfying about seeing a cloud of arrows from a bunch of ranged units fall on one unit and the little red bar evaporating.

ancapailldorcha

What is kiting?

The Sisters are absolutely incredible. They just melt stuff and Spearmen are excellent for being such a low end unit.

degrassinoel

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

What is kiting?

Making a unit/s chase you while you whittle it down at range or run to back up units and obliterate it. Like kiting in WoW or whatnot, tag, run, hit, run, and eventually kill it.

Sounds cheesy, but it's a genuine military tactic and specially suited to cavalry and skirmisher units, or any fast movers. Handy for taking some pressure off your front lines, and if you're especially good at it, specific units that you don't want to engage straight away or need to kill quickly.. ye know yerself

killanena

Kiting is a gaming term where you agro and fire at an enemy while maintaining a distance between them and you.

Like running with a kite.

ancapailldorcha

Has anyone had any crash issues recently? Apparently, if you or the AI destroy a Vampire Coast faction while they have pirate coves, the game crashes as it doesn't know how to handle it. I'm over 100-turns into an ME campaign.

Gbear

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Has anyone had any crash issues recently? Apparently, if you or the AI destroy a Vampire Coast faction while they have pirate coves, the game crashes as it doesn't know how to handle it. I'm over 100-turns into an ME campaign.

CA have apparently said they're trying to push out an update to fix it before Christmas.

Pretty poor bug to have left in tbh. Incredible that it passed through testing. They must have known it was there.

There are various mods to remove agents, make their AI not work and so on, to avoid them making pirate coves as a fudge until they fix it. Maybe check the subreddit to find a particular recommendation.

I was getting quite a lot of other crashes for no particular reason, so I switched from DX12 to DX11 and it's been fine since. Luckily I haven't encountered the Pirate cove bug.


I've been grazing through various playthroughs. I find that when you get to late game, it can get a bit exhausting and a change of pace can be nice. I've been playing a Kroq'Gar Vortex campaign and I'm right at the end of final rite now, around turn 180, but battles are often quite epic affairs and it can take 10-20 minutes for a turn, so it's nice to get back to the start and try some new mechanics once you've done a few turns of that.

I had an epic battle yesterday between Alith Anar and a supporting army with about 30 units between them and 3 full stacks of Tomb Kings. Shadow Walkers, Sisters of Avalorn, Bolt Throwers and Alith Anar sniping monstrous units, heroes and lords, while the spearmen and Lothern Sea Guard wore them down and held the line. 1500 odd of mine vs 5000+ of their shambling hordes. I kinda cheated by playing most of it in slow motion. It's bloody hard to spot their lord units in real time though. The last one was squirreled away in the middle of 4 stacks of Skeleton Warriors right until the end so I had to kill most of them before they broke and disintegrated.

ancapailldorcha

Cheers G. I'm nearly 150 turns into my Bretonnia campaign which was touch and go for a while. Really don't want to abandon it.

I was on the subreddit but nobody seems to have any fixes.

Gbear

Ask and ye shall receive.

The Festag Update Beta brings a number of improvements, changes, fixes, and balance changes to WARHAMMER II, along with a major skills update for the Lords and Legendary Lords of the Old World that appear in WARHAMMER II’s Mortal Empires campaign.

Characters of the Old World now get Red Skill Trees comparable to their New World counterparts in WARHAMMER II, plus numerous tweaks and changes to their existing skills, traits and abilities. Character mounts have also been standardised to unlock at specific ranks. These are all detailed below.

Alongside a fresh balance pass for specific battlefield units, the Festag Update Beta also features some important bugfixes, including a fix for a crash that occurred when a Vampire Coast faction owning Pirate Coves was destroyed, and a fix that ensures Exhaustion is applied after a Hero has established a Pirate Cove.

Spectator Mode has also been updated with new functionality. Again, please see below for full details.

It says its a beta so maybe it might open up some new bugs. Be worth checking in with the subreddit to see how folks are getting on.

Of course, with a game like this, it might take 20 hours to find a game-breaking bug.

Fair ****s to the dev team. It's not their fault it was rushed out buggy but they've done a great job of fixing it within a month of release.

ancapailldorcha

Gbear wrote: »

Fair ****s to the dev team. It's not their fault it was rushed out buggy but they've done a great job of fixing it within a month of release.

Is it not them who should playtest the game?

Do you know if current campaigns would need restarting?

Gbear

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Is it not them who should playtest the game?

Do you know if current campaigns would need restarting?

They recommend it but I'm not sure. The details are probably in the post.

They would be responsible for testing, but not for deadlines. I doubt it was them pushing out an unfinished product but rather senior management.

Maybe they made a balls of development, but as good as CA are at continuous development of their game, they're notorious for pushing out undercooked ones at launch.

That's a management problem, not a dev problem, so I think it's fair to credit them when they clean up after the mess management created.

ancapailldorcha

By the way, you linked this site.

Here's the patch:

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/the-festag-update-beta

Gbear

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

By the way, you linked this site.

Here's the patch:

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/the-festag-update-beta

Ta, fixed.

I'll polish off my Kroq'Gar game first and then sink my teeth into it.

ancapailldorcha

Fair enough. Does it say when it gets released properly?

I really don't want to restart my campaign.

Gbear

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Fair enough. Does it say when it gets released properly?

I really don't want to restart my campaign.

I don't think so but probably after Christmas. This was about plugging holes.

I'd say finish whatever campaign you can before activating the beta, but if you've got a pirate cove bug that's blocking you, all you can do is try the beta and see if you can still play it afterwards.

Otherwise you'll probably have no choice but to restart. I might recommend a different faction to avoid feeling the sense of frustration from retreading the same ground.

There was another bug whereby there was over flow on hero action success chances, so if you went to 0% chance, it would go back around and become 100%.

It'd be rare enough that you'd need to have chance to fail on a hero + exhaustion, + wariness on the defending heroes, but for Clan Angrund, whose ethereal Ancestor Heroes have a massive bonus to avoid wounding/assasination, it made them almost guaranteed to be killed every time.
Good that they fixed that as well, because that was a pain in the arse or a silly exploit if you could get it to work.

ancapailldorcha

Twitter has mentioned the new year which is a bit late if the patch creates new bugs. Think I'm going to try and finish my current ME campaign.

Never noticed the one for hero success chances. Don't know how common these are but I do somewhat regret plundering one of the VC factions. If this were more common, it might have made the news. Maybe the VC being something of a horde offsets the losing last settlement being the deathblow for most factions.

I'm really annoyed by this. Don't know if I should blame CA like most on the forums or SEGA if the latter are making them rush content out the door.

Remouad

Started a new Mortal Empires campaign with Grombrindal.
Haven't played a Dwarf campaign in a while. They have some great low tier units.

What I'm finding is that no one wants to confederate. Trusted friends with Barak Var and Clan Angrund but all they want is a military alliance.

Don't remember it being this hard to confederate in Warhammer 1.

Any Tips?

Gbear

Remouad wrote: »

Started a new Mortal Empires campaign with Grombrindal.
Haven't played a Dwarf campaign in a while. They have some great low tier units.

What I'm finding is that no one wants to confederate. Trusted friends with Barak Var and Clan Angrund but all they want is a military alliance.

Don't remember it being this hard to confederate in Warhammer 1.

Any Tips?

How's your power rank and reliability rating (they're under your icon in the diplomacy screen)?

Some factions are tricky to confederate with. You may well need 3 or 4 armies for every one of theirs, or wait for them to lose a big battle. Standing army is the main indicator for power level.

ancapailldorcha

Remouad wrote: »

Started a new Mortal Empires campaign with Grombrindal.
Haven't played a Dwarf campaign in a while. They have some great low tier units.

What I'm finding is that no one wants to confederate. Trusted friends with Barak Var and Clan Angrund but all they want is a military alliance.

Don't remember it being this hard to confederate in Warhammer 1.

Any Tips?

If you want to confederate, don't form military alliances as I think they'll feel less incentive to merge with your faction.

Remouad

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

If you want to confederate, don't form military alliances as I think they'll feel less incentive to merge with your faction.

Yeah I knew that alright. Defensive alliances only.

ancapailldorcha

Remouad wrote: »

Yeah I knew that alright. Defensive alliances only.

It looks like something that was changed from the original to be a bit more challenging. Wish they could have put in a refund skill points feature as the AI doesn't often make good use of those.

Anyway, I managed to finish the victory conditions on my Bretonnian campaign. What I didn't see coming was how much fun high tier cavalry with upgrades was so I ploughed on only for the Dreadfleet to stick a Pirate Cove in one of my settlements.