CA's Total War: The Celtic-Han-Lizardmen alliance that never was

[Corvinus85]

Post to your heart's content your playthroughs in any of the Total War games, discuss issues and upcoming games and updates in the series.

Mentioning Total War Arena will get you banned. 

[Toth]

So I take it we have been bullied out of the videogames thread? Tch...

Anyway, in regards to you saying that Bretonnia is going to turn stale in the endgame... well, sure, I am a bit concerned about where the hell I still am supposed to get that 1200 chivalry from that I still need to win. You get only like 30 for burning down a village (once again, what is it the Bretonnians understand under chivalry?!?). But it's not like nothing is happening after the Tomb Kings were gone. The Empire straight away asked me to help them deal with the giant Skaven territory in the south that had taken over the lizardmen cities. The elves in the meantime asked me to help out with some orc settlements... and to top it off, my completely unprotected western shore has been attacked by Dark Elf corsairs under Malus Darkblade, forcing me to pull back one army from my pest control expedition in order to face them.

Anyway, here also have a picture of Henri posing during my Charge of the Rohirrim quest: https://s12.directupload.net/images/201123/qsk8xzm8.jpg

(not sure that is healthy for the back of his Hippogryph though...)

Amusingly, I already started wondering where else to crusade to once my initial continent is pacified. There is that super terrifying Dark Elves blob controlling the entire north eastern continent, but the climate penalty is absurdly high, so I don't think I can reasonable go there straight away. I think the safest choice would be taking my rather massive combat perks against undead and go bully the vampire coast. Given that they have actually started invading Ulthuan and destroyed one of the High Elves factions there, I guess some support is direly needed...

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, Toth said:

So I take it we have been bullied out of the videogames thread? Tch...

Anyway, in regards to you saying that Bretonnia is going to turn stale in the endgame... well, sure, I am a bit concerned about where the hell I still am supposed to get that 1200 chivalry from that I still need to win. You get only like 30 for burning down a village (once again, what is it the Bretonnians understand under chivalry?!?). But it's not like nothing is happening after the Tomb Kings were gone. The Empire straight away asked me to help them deal with the giant Skaven territory in the south that had taken over the lizardmen cities. The elves in the meantime asked me to help out with some orc settlements... and to top it off, my completely unprotected western shore has been attacked by Dark Elf corsairs under Malus Darkblade, forcing me to pull back one army from my pest control expedition in order to face them.

By Empire, do you mean those Sundeburg guys on the coast?

Yeah, I guess keep fighting wars, win decisive or even heroic battles, and you'll get to 1200. If you look at the lore of Bretonnia, you can see how massive hypocrites the Bretonnian nobles really are. The reason why their infantry sucks is in keeping with how crappy peasants are treated, for all the talk about honor and chivalry.

1 hour ago, Toth said:

Anyway, here also have a picture of Henri posing during my Charge of the Rohirrim quest: https://s12.directupload.net/images/201123/qsk8xzm8.jpg

(not sure that is healthy for the back of his Hippogryph though...)

The Mountain-That-Flies

1 hour ago, Toth said:

Amusingly, I already started wondering where else to crusade to once my initial continent is pacified. There is that super terrifying Dark Elves blob controlling the entire north eastern continent, but the climate penalty is absurdly high, so I don't think I can reasonable go there straight away. I think the safest choice would be taking my rather massive combat perks against undead and go bully the vampire coast. Given that they have actually started invading Ulthuan and destroyed one of the High Elves factions there, I guess some support is direly needed...

Fighting the Vampire Coast will really make for some asymmetrical fighting. 

It's rare when the High Elves need help, especially against those pirates.

[Heartofice]

Oh my god will you guys shut up about Total War!! Soooo boring.. go somewhere else.. duuhhh

Anyway, I think Bretonnia is the only total war campaign I’ve ever actually managed to finish. It’s one of the few factions that doesn’t just encourage you to blob up and paint the map, which is why I enjoyed it.
 

All total war games have serious issues with the end games, where it becomes some monotonous trek to take out lots of little locations. Because Bretonnia is just about getting chivalry and doing a battle, it was actually quite fun.

You’d think then that I’d be happy to do vortex map campaigns and finish them, but the vortex itself is a hugely dull slog. There are a handful of factions with interesting enough mechanics to make it quite fun. Snitch comes to mind

[Slurktan]

39 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Oh my god will you guys shut up about Total War!! Soooo boring.. go somewhere else.. duuhhh

Anyway, I think Bretonnia is the only total war campaign I’ve ever actually managed to finish. It’s one of the few factions that doesn’t just encourage you to blob up and paint the map, which is why I enjoyed it.
 

All total war games have serious issues with the end games, where it becomes some monotonous trek to take out lots of little locations. Because Bretonnia is just about getting chivalry and doing a battle, it was actually quite fun.

You’d think then that I’d be happy to do vortex map campaigns and finish them, but the vortex itself is a hugely dull slog. There are a handful of factions with interesting enough mechanics to make it quite fun. Snitch comes to mind

Play the Wood Elves.  Their campaign is not like that either.  We shall see if its changed to that after this patch.  Tomb Kings and Vampire Pirates also play differently in that there is an inherent end game.

[Heartofice]

15 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

Play the Wood Elves.  Their campaign is not like that either.  We shall see if its changed to that after this patch.  Tomb Kings and Vampire Pirates also play differently in that there is an inherent end game.

I tried many times. Hopefully it will be more enjoyable with the new patch. Previously there was something very off flavour about how the game encouraged you to play. 
 

As Wood elves I kind of wanted to turtle, stay in my forest and just go hunt some beastmen etc. But you didn’t get enough amber from that, confederations and alliances were really hard to come by. Really to win you needed to take over the world and paint it green, even though you don’t have real settlements.

I think this should be fixed now

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Oh my god will you guys shut up about Total War!! Soooo boring.. go somewhere else.. duuhhh

Anyway, I think Bretonnia is the only total war campaign I’ve ever actually managed to finish. It’s one of the few factions that doesn’t just encourage you to blob up and paint the map, which is why I enjoyed it.
 

All total war games have serious issues with the end games, where it becomes some monotonous trek to take out lots of little locations. Because Bretonnia is just about getting chivalry and doing a battle, it was actually quite fun.

You’d think then that I’d be happy to do vortex map campaigns and finish them, but the vortex itself is a hugely dull slog. There are a handful of factions with interesting enough mechanics to make it quite fun. Snitch comes to mind

I just wish they did periodic crusades for Bretonnia, called Errantry Wars. So at every chivalry threshold, you get the opportunity to launch one against one of the races that are typical enemies. And the ancestral Bretonnian lands should be held as part of the victory conditions

The Vampire Coast in the Eye of the Vortex can, in theory, be finished with just one city, and you can make money out of pirate coves and treasure hunting. The Tomb Kings are all about finding the Books of Nagash. (In Mortal Empires, the victory conditions are more traditional)

I finished the game at least twice with the Empire and Lizardmen, once with High Elves, Dwarfs and Bretonnia, and I could have finished with Dark Elves and Greenskins but got bored. I think I finished a Wood Elves campaign in WH 1.

I do like what they tried to do with the Vortex campaign for the main four races - make it a contest that you can actually lose if you don't keep pace.

I actually got serious only once with the Skaven. I never really liked their roster until they reworked that faction, too, adding the Under-Empire mechanic, and adding more interesting units. Playing with Clan Skryre and its Forbidden Workshop was fun, and actually challenging, as all the good factions were strong, and they all hated me, and the End Times didn't help at all, as Chaos got sent packing once again.

I'm looking forward to trying the Wood Elves again.

[Toth]

19 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

By Empire, do you mean those Sundeburg guys on the coast?

Sudenburg, yes. They are scraping by with just two cities after wrestling one of them back from the Last Defenders lizards.

19 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

Yeah, I guess keep fighting wars, win decisive or even heroic battles, and you'll get to 1200. If you look at the lore of Bretonnia, you can see how massive hypocrites the Bretonnian nobles really are. The reason why their infantry sucks is in keeping with how crappy peasants are treated, for all the talk about honor and chivalry.

I am aware of there lore.^^ I was just wondering... being hypocrites and having to squeeze every last penny out of their peasants to finance their lifestyle of constant crusading is one thing, but gaining chivalry mostly through torching cities? That sounds a bit... orky... I would have thought at first that you could gain chivalry by the regularly occurring decisions where doing something remotely nice for the peasants always comes with a stupidly high penalty, but turns out it has no effect on my chivalry whatsoever.

19 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

The Mountain-That-Flies

And a nicer Mountain to boot, at least according to what little you learn of him. Kinda makes you wonder how a duel between them would look like... but no, having a monstrous brute face a proficient monster hunter from one of the most outrageously deadly settings conceived makes for a fairly lopsided fight, even if you take away all magic items and the Grail enhancement from Henri.

19 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

Fighting the Vampire Coast will really make for some asymmetrical fighting. 

In that they are a shooty faction with lots of cheap chaff units, while I can only charge them down?

19 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

It's rare when the High Elves need help, especially against those pirates.

I can only say that when I sent a paladin around Ulthuan, I saw two stacks of Pirates of Sartosa wreaking havoc and later got the message that Yvresse got wiped out.

[Corvinus85]

3 hours ago, Toth said:

In that they are a shooty faction with lots of cheap chaff units, while I can only charge them down?

Yes, a shooty faction with strong artillery and monsters, but no cav. Still, I would be careful at what you charge with your knights. 

[Jon AS]

The VC factions aren't all that dangerous to the player, but the AI often struggles against them because they tend to have really good autoresolve. They are however crap at holding territory so usuall they get pushed back eventually and the two with capitals on the Lustrian continent tend to get destroyed at some point. Noctilus and Sartosa usually stick around unless the player makes the decision to deal with them.

[Corvinus85]

@Toth Steam autumn sale on. Now would be the time to get WH 1, too.

[Toth]

8 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

@Toth Steam autumn sale on. Now would be the time to get WH 1, too.

Eh... I must admit, I was rather hoping for it to be included at some point in a Humble Bundle alongside some DLC. This year I already spent more than enough money on games... and like you guys said, I haven't tried out quite a few of the other TWW2 factions yet and am severely lacking the time to do so anyway.

[Toth]

Holy shit! Is it just my playthrough or is the AI generally really bad at keeping the Skaven in check? I've been pushing hard into the jungles in the south, but there is ruins EVERYWHERE, no matter where you look! The entire southern half of my starting continent is just Clan Mors by now! Wonderful...

Right now I have three armies advancing down there. One taking the coastal route in the west, two going straight through the jungle down the middle. Apparently moving in pairs doesn't matter much for the Skaven. In my last turn I suddenly got attack-ambushed by Queek Headhunter and 3100 rats, with one of my armies of only 900 units caught flat-footed and surrounded. Remember that Lord of mine who managed to so hilariously defeat the lone Tomb King heroes trying to attack him? That was his army! He is still level 10, so I haven't been able to make him immortal yet and was really scared that Queek, being such a ridiculous hero-slayer, will kill him. And he nearly did, but I successfully managed to pull him away in time. My Paladin wasn't quite so lucky.

Well... I must say, that was a super stressful battle, but I am glad the Skaven seem to have absolutely nothing whatsoever to counter the charge of armored knights. Seeing each of my three units of Grail Knights I brought make 300 kills with barely any losses was absolutely glorious. And despite it looking really dire towards the end when my archers ran out of ammunition, my Knights of the Realm getting whittled down and my Paladin falling, I seem to have triggered that army loss penalty and the last wave of rats just completely broke. Pyrrhic Victory is fair enough, though oddly enough I only lost one Knights of the Realm and one spearmen unit, even my Paladin popped up fine with one hitpoint for some reason (I guess he got captured...). At the same time that I managed to survive this onslaught and kill Queek, another full Skaven army popped up from the underground nearby. So now I must admit I'm a bit unsure how to proceed. I pulled my ambushed army back to recover my losses, but I wonder whether I should push onwards with just Repanse for the next city to strike before Queek respawns. Or whether I should hold the line instead and hunt down whatever Skaven armies I can find in the area, since my western army can still advance while I'm doing this. One thing is certain though: I need more Grail Knights! XD

In the meantime I had sent one army to patrol the coast in the north and hunt down that dwarven pirate fleet that attacked me a whole lot earlier. Tough buggers, I only managed to do some guerilla warfare there because I can't seem to be able to crack them in one go. At least I rid them now of all their artillery and flamethrower units (bloody hell are those nasty) and am confident that I can crush them in my next attack.

[The Winged Shadow]

Send a hero out to scout the ruins, which should reveal any armies in and around it. If you a see a weak sauce army outside the a ruin, you can bet top dollars that it has another army sitting inside the city! Plus garrison. Skaven don't tend to build walls so you should be able to take cities with ease. Beware their towers though, they can be quite powerful. I'd be super aggressive against Skaven if you have a life mage in your cav army who can heal up your cavs each battle (heal up at the end of the battle). One of the reason all Cav armies with life mages is so effective, specially as Bretonnia has pretty rubbish replenishment (except the Lady).

And I would be super cautious with archer/artillery heavy armies, if you have any. Those are fucked if they get ambushed by Skaven. Get some heroes to scout if you haven't started doing that. Scouting is essential against Skaven. Hopefully you picked up Lightning Strike by now, that should help thinning them out after a gank or when they are revealed outside their cities/

[Corvinus85]

The Skaven do have the Stormvermin with halberds which are good at resisting charges and taking out cavalry. Must not have been many in that army.

[Corvinus85]

CA released a video that covers most of all the changes coming to WH tomorrow. If you're in the middle of a Mortal Empires campaign, you might have to drop it, and start anew.

 

[Toth]

Finally! Yesterday I managed to empty my evening to play a few more turns! Meaning I can afford to respond because I actually have something to tell.^^

On 11/29/2020 at 2:08 PM, The Winged Shadow said:

Send a hero out to scout the ruins, which should reveal any armies in and around it.

Oh, thanks for the tip, I didn't know heroes had that ability. Even the paladins?

On 11/29/2020 at 2:08 PM, The Winged Shadow said:

I'd be super aggressive against Skaven if you have a life mage in your cav army who can heal up your cavs each battle (heal up at the end of the battle). One of the reason all Cav armies with life mages is so effective, specially as Bretonnia has pretty rubbish replenishment (except the Lady).

Funny, I'm actually trying to add a life damsel into every army of mine because I figured Grail Knights are actually worth using healing spells on. In that regard, that Skaven attack ambush I mentioned above was actually the very first time I had one on the field and she made a terrifying difference. Even though I was taken aback that her 'passive healing' doesn't mean a healing aura, but instead that everybody on the field gets healed every time she uses a spell. Magic is... nasty.

Case in point, I just had another battle with her and a very experienced Skaven spellcaster as the opposing general. The bastards tried to tunnel their way below the city where the ambushed army from earlier was still sitting recovering their losses and given that underground armies get wiped when defeated and this one contained quite a hefty amount of armies of renown and artillery, I thought it might be worth to intercept them.

I was very annoyed when two of my cavalry charges were obliterated by green ball lightning popping up the second they engaged with the enemy and then watching even a whole Grail Knights unit getting zapped to death. Magic is just ludicrously overpowered. And those were my only losses! I lost 100 knights and defeated an army of 1700 and somehow the game said "Pyrrhic Victory" because I lost so many Grail Knights... and maybe because my archers did most of the work, with all six units of them ending up having 150 kills each. It's frankly insane how the best way to utilize your archers is by having your general run circles ahead of the army...

On 11/29/2020 at 3:28 PM, Corvinus85 said:

The Skaven do have the Stormvermin with halberds which are good at resisting charges and taking out cavalry. Must not have been many in that army.

Ah yes, I have seen some of those by now, but honestly haven't figured them be scary, only when there is a huge pack of three units of them converging on one cavalry unit, then I pull back and look whether I can find a juicier target to charge. So far the sniper units have been the most nasty enemy against my cavalry (aside the spellcasters from above).

In any case, other than that not much happened. I pushed further into Skaven territory, but interestingly the Last Defenders recovered thanks to me killing so many rats. I saw them retaking two of their cities, but unfortunately for them the dwarves insist I should go out of my way to clobber them down again.^^

There was also a scene of a Beastmen army spawning at the edge of Repanse's view. I was already expecting to get attacked and prepared for defense when suddenly the Beastmen messaged me: "If you give us 100 gold, we will attack the Skaven for you!"

Oh... okay... that is unexpected! And... surprisingly cheap... okay... go ahead, just do your thing. You're welcome!

I then watched their army turn around and torch the Skaven village next to them, then disappear into the horizon. Two turns later I get the message that they have been wiped out. Now that was random... Unfortunately I didn't even get the village, a Sudenburg army was quicker and colonized it.

But hey, it's somewhat strange that the Warhammer Total War is the first Total War game that I am playing in which diplomacy is not totally broken. But I'm not complaining.^^ I still think it's the funniest shit ever that my Repanse is besties with Imrik, even though according to lore Imrik is such a prick even other elves have trouble dealing with him. The Knights of Caledor made me join their war against Naggaroth and while I struggled to get armies into the water to defend my coasts, Imrik himself did and is right now busy smashing every Dark Elf fleet that comes into sight of my harbors. That's nice! I'm in turn preparing an invasion force against the three Dark Elf islands in the south. We'll see how that goes.

I wonder, given how bad I am at managing magic, I guess Teclis would be a neat next campaign if I ever manage to finish Repanse. I still haven't managed to get 1000 chivalry after 110 turns, I still can't see how I can get 2000 before conquering the world...

[Slurktan]

2 hours ago, Toth said:

I wonder, given how bad I am at managing magic, I guess Teclis would be a neat next campaign if I ever manage to finish Repanse. I still haven't managed to get 1000 chivalry after 110 turns, I still can't see how I can get 2000 before conquering the world...

Teclis is fine as a mage but his campaign is a slog due to just fighting rats and VP and the occasional Lizardmen.  Basically for magic you want a good mage hero.  So elves or Lizardmen are delightful there.  I think Rats are the same but honestly never played them.  If you want something different playstyle to Repanse try Go Rok of the Lizardmen.  You get lots of infantry plus monsters and he starts with literally the best mage in the game in Lord Kroak.

[Corvinus85]

On 12/4/2020 at 10:23 AM, Slurktan said:

Teclis is fine as a mage but his campaign is a slog due to just fighting rats and VP and the occasional Lizardmen.  Basically for magic you want a good mage hero.  So elves or Lizardmen are delightful there.  I think Rats are the same but honestly never played them.  If you want something different playstyle to Repanse try Go Rok of the Lizardmen.  You get lots of infantry plus monsters and he starts with literally the best mage in the game in Lord Kroak.

The newly added Queen Ariel might give Kroak a run for his money. She is powerful.

@Toth Are you able to recruit regiments of renown with Repanse?

[Toth]

43 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Are you able to recruit regiments of renown with Repanse?

Oh... am I supposed to?

You made me google that and apparently in order for Bretonnians to get regiments of renown you have to register your game at a website. CA's DLC policies never fail to baffle me...