Warhammer: Total War

started a new vamp game. figured out just by dividing my forces in three and having two attack their flanks makes a massive difference. took out templhof and am at war with the dwarves. looking at the map it seems i'm in kind of a ****ty position, right in the middle, i'm guessing i should invade south to build up in preparation for these chaos dudes? is the goal to wipe everyone out or should i be making long lasting treaties with factions?

picking up a lot of heroes randomly. what exactly do they do? I can't seem to move them either.

froog wrote: »

started another new VC game now i know what i'm doing a bit. it really is a tightrope walk trying not to overextend picking your battles and watching your back for chaos while trying to get some alliances going, every action affects relations with every other race. it's really absorbing. i can afford two good stacks now, i would need quite a bit more cities to afford a third. how many stacks should you have to tackle chaos head on?

Just watch the tech tree for East and west Sylvania. The West you want to build the Tree for Terrorgist or vahlgist because it has a bonus building for that branch. In East you want to build your Eithrals.

blackwave wrote: »

I've been playing as chaos, it's been fun rampaging through the southlands razing towns as I go. I have the destroyed Kislev and the Empire on it's knee's atm, but I signed a NAP with the vampire counts as they were quite strong and I didn't want to be fighting two front's. However while I was busy stomping the Empire, the VC's have been merrily rebuilding the towns that I razed and are now a massive threat to me and are close to cutting off my main horde from my two smaller ones. So I reckon I will have to leave the empire alone and declare war on the VC's and try eliminate them before the empire gets a chance to regroup which is a big ask. It's been great fun though as campaign, the Chaos Chosen are tough SOB's very rarely break and will fight to the bitter end. Would really recommend them for a playthrough but it is very tough at the beginning and when you raise your second horde in particular.

So I put a temporary halt to plans on destroying the Empire afterwards and decided to go after the VC's. I broke my NAP with the Vampire Count's and positioned my three armies to quickly crush their Northern expansion. I then declared war and then swooped in, I think I timed my attack perfectly as they had over extended themselves in their greed to take over the northern lands. I quickly tore through them and I reckon in about 6 turns I had them penned back in their homeland of Sylvania. Here's is were things got a little tougher and I actually encountered a lot of resistence but Chaos prevailed in the end and I put the final nail into the Vampire Count's coffin.

As my Blitzkrieg tactic was so effective the empire has not had much of a chance to rebuild, however they did manage to defeat my army led by Archaon while he was resting in preparation to take on The Empire again so I have had to fully restart his army again which is a pain. In revenge I killed a few empire armies and razed a few towns in the process. However Grimgor is now on my southern flank, so I think I might leave a weakened Empire for him to fight and waste his time on while I go put a end to snotty Bretonians who have escaped my attention for too long.

If there is any night owls like myself who can play between 12am and 5am add me on steam IrishRook
Looking to do a new campaign with someone or just some battles. Up to yerselves
Campaign would be played on Hard and I don't mind if its co-op with the mod or just vs.

froog wrote: »

it's a long hard slog in the endgame with VC, everyone hates me even the orcs and everyone is allied with empire so if i go to war with them i am war with the whole world. meaning i have to blitz a few empire cities faster than all my enemies can blitz me, then make peace treaties as i build up again.

I'm in the exact same situation. Empire is allied with everyone, so I can't declare war without everyone else getting on my tits. The Orcs are ... so so with me, but they seem to be doing OK bogging down the Dwarfs and I've taken out the Dwarfs near enough to me.

I got around it by declaring war on Kislev, which caused the Empire to declare war on me, but not all it's allies. Kislev only have the defensive with the Empire. They've four stacks to my two, but I've good fortifications in all my cities and if I can take a stack or two plus a few provinces then get them to pay me for peace I'll count that as a win and a means to build an unassailable position.

Now if only the Orcs would get their ass in gear.

Cormac... wrote: »

So whats the general consensus on this?

I tend to give Creative Assembly games a wide berth for a few months after release due to bugs/issues/exploits etc

How are people finding the balancing, optimisation etc

Rome 2 killed my interest in the series (I loved Shogun 1 and 2 and Medieval 2)

Buy it, and the Chaos DLC.

They did a fantastic job on this release. All the factions play vastly different from each other, but have somehow remained reasonably balanced.

The grand campaign for both the Dwarfs and Orcs (long and short) are really well done, chaos literally live up to their name and wreak havoc across the world.

The Quest battles and loot are so worth it.
Equipable loot will do in a pinch and you can even get stuff for melee "Lords" that can cast free spells..

The army and lord levelling system is masterfully done. Giving a true branching of Army skills, Magic and Physical Lord Skills.

The agents are great unless you are their target. They can be embedded and used in realtime with your entire army, their skill only being matched by your Lord(General) and in some cases, surpassing it.

It's graphically beautiful and reasonably easy on resources, much easier than Rome II.

Combat has been simplified, all those fancy formations have been replaced by 2 simple ones, Melee Front, and Ranged Front. However, you can make your own custom formations, lock them in and you're set.
You can also make units use "guard mode" and "Skirmish Mode"
Guard, being that when your unit kills or makes an enemy unit rout, they wont try to keep attacking it and break formation/battle lines. they'll stay put after it routs.
Skirmish is the same as it was in R2, only ranged units can use it, and they will retreat after firing a few shots/arrows etc.. from their target, or if no target is selected, they'll retreat from anything that's a threat.

Flanking is devastating.

Cavalry Flanking is utterly devastating.

Artillery is amazingly good if used right and defended. Think high ground.

Ambushes work properly.

And i've had one crash to desktop in over 100 hours played, and mainly because it'd been on literally all day.

Honestly, it's worth the 60 quid, it really is.

question - how do i get my army marching forward to stay in formation? when i select all and click to somewhere ahead, the formation gets all messed up.

I haven't managed to get flanking working too well, that or the armies I'm up against are harder to break than in previous games. They seem to waiver for ages and then eventually feel okay again. Sometimes they'll rout, run away for about 5 seconds and then just turn and charge back into the fight again! I usually have to kill everyone to win the battle.

First major update details are here
http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Total_War_WARHAMMER_Update_1

Includes FreeLC for the vampire counts cavalry - blood knights -

Update 1 is designed to add polish, increase stability, tweak AI behaviour, address some known gameplay issues and redress balance in a number of areas. This is the first in a number of updates, which means you may not see some changes you were expecting. For example, while multiplayer has seen some attention in this update, it’s in line for more focussed improvement, additional features and rebalancing in an upcoming update. Many of these changes are in testing right now, and as long-term stability and balance are of principle importance to us all, we don’t want to rush the process.

Full details on the above link

I played through a few campaigns, mostly greenskins and dwarfs though, and didnt notice much so i'd guess most of the work done is for the multiplayer side of things. That patch is going live today at 2pm too, so happy days

degrassinoel wrote: »

Buy it, and the Chaos DLC.

They did a fantastic job on this release. All the factions play vastly different from each other, but have somehow remained reasonably balanced.

The grand campaign for both the Dwarfs and Orcs (long and short) are really well done, chaos literally live up to their name and wreak havoc across the world.

The Quest battles and loot are so worth it.
Equipable loot will do in a pinch and you can even get stuff for melee "Lords" that can cast free spells..

The army and lord levelling system is masterfully done. Giving a true branching of Army skills, Magic and Physical Lord Skills.

The agents are great unless you are their target. They can be embedded and used in realtime with your entire army, their skill only being matched by your Lord(General) and in some cases, surpassing it.

It's graphically beautiful and reasonably easy on resources, much easier than Rome II.

Combat has been simplified, all those fancy formations have been replaced by 2 simple ones, Melee Front, and Ranged Front. However, you can make your own custom formations, lock them in and you're set.
You can also make units use "guard mode" and "Skirmish Mode"
Guard, being that when your unit kills or makes an enemy unit rout, they wont try to keep attacking it and break formation/battle lines. they'll stay put after it routs.
Skirmish is the same as it was in R2, only ranged units can use it, and they will retreat after firing a few shots/arrows etc.. from their target, or if no target is selected, they'll retreat from anything that's a threat.

Flanking is devastating.

Cavalry Flanking is utterly devastating.

Artillery is amazingly good if used right and defended. Think high ground.

Ambushes work properly.

And i've had one crash to desktop in over 100 hours played, and mainly because it'd been on literally all day.

Honestly, it's worth the 60 quid, it really is.

If anyone hasn't bought it yet, you can pick up the main gain + chaos DLC for a total of about €43 on kinguin.net