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

[Toth]

Okay, change of plans. Because the spooky season has arrived I thought it fitting to pause my dwarf campaign for a bit and instead try out Tomb Kings. And because I hate myself and love punishment... I started out with Khatep in the Mortal Empires campaign, my first start in Naggarond... and god, what a painful start that got even more horribly painful thanks to the Beastmen update I'd wager. Because there are about three different Beastmen factions next to me razing settlements and setting up these weird red markers that prevent you from colonizing any ruins anywhere and the chaos corruption is so thick it shreds my whole armies as I tried to trudge my way towards those markers... and then retreat after beating the stack that defended it since I took too many losses to go on.

So now I got the brilliant idea to... go around these deadly mountain paths. By attacking Morathi and using her territory as my path. In a move that was already too late I guess? Because she instantly confederated with ALL the Dark Elves factions, leaving me dealing with a constant onslaught of high-quality Dark Elves stacks. I beat Malekith two times and four turns later after the last battle he all of a sudden appeared with a full stack of archers and cavalry while I only have... lots of skeletons... because my starting area was lost in the process, sacked by the beastmen while I was focusing both my armies on trying to take the city of Naggarond, meaning I'm 40 turns in and only just got to Tier 3 with one of my cities while I was too busy sacking Dark Elves settlements and conquering up to Har Garneth. Unfortunately Naggarond itself proved to have too good of a garrison to take with just base Tier 0 skeletons.

But hey, at least I have been able to make the weirdest most random group of allies with the Sisters of Twilight, Alith Anar, Tretch Craventail and... the Ironfrost Norsca raiders? Really? Those can make trade deals? I'm baffled every time to see the buff Chaos worshipping viking dude jovially inviting this dusty mummy to drink with him in the diplomacy screen. Unfortunately only Tretch has any motivation to help me fight Malekith.

[Corvinus85]

I started another campaign with the Empire to see if it's tougher to play with them with all the recent changes, and the answer is yes. Besides the usual suspects, you also have to deal with the much improved Beastmen. The Shadowgave starts on the northern coast and he usually devastates Nordland and Midderland, unless you can intervene. Drycha is a wild card. 

I think it's bullshit that you can't make any sort of alliance with the other provinces until you confederate. OTOH, if the AI plays with Reikland, they can make alliances. Cheater!!!

So I started with Volkmar instead of Karl Franz, but after I confederated Talabecland, I got Franz, too. The game is easy initially, as the Secessionists don't really pose much problem, but after it takes a dive. The Greenskins that come from Brettonnia are a constant nuisance, as they keep attacking the fort Helmgart. I have to maintain a lord with a few additional troops to ensure victory in all the battles. Volkmar doesn't offer the diplomacy bonuses Franz does, so it's harder to even make NA and trade deals with the other provinces. But I quickly recruited another lord and sent him on the seas to explore, which allowed me to make trade deals with most of the High Elf factions. That kept my economy afloat.

In a first for me, Marienburg completely annihilated Couronne within the first few turns, which robbed me for a trade partner. Strapped for cash, I had no choice but to declare war. It's not like you can confederate with them anyway. I took the city of Marienburg in a blitz attack with both Volkmar and Franz, but now have to prepare to defend against their counterattack. Meanwhile, I need to keep an eye of the vampires. They took Stirland, and it's only a matter of time.

[Toth]

Shit! I messed up! Even though it was so epic until then!

I mulled a lot over how I can possibly take Naggarond with just my skeleton spam, in the end I just sieged it and let Malekith attack me with his full stack + garrison units. My first try at that battle I set up Khatep's army at the other side of where my pure skeleton stack support army comes in, hoping to be able to fall into his back. Unfortunately this caused him to very unevenly split his troops, so while my reinforcements won their engagement, Khatep got overwhelmed and because Khatep died, somehow the second army just crumbled anyway despite Malekith almost having reached army losses as well and was down to just a couple of cavalry. But that gave me hope that the battle IS possible.

Second try, this time with my entire army in one corner of the map, taking the full brunt of Malekith's charge while spamming all my magic at him. This time it ended very well, with me having enough troops to simply roll up the entire battlefield from left to right once most enemies had been engaged. Malekith himself fell (again), the rest of his troops in retreat while my Nehekharan Lore Liche Priest was busy trying to resurrect some parts of my army. One thing I noticed and that at least somewhat gives me hope is how I watched the Dark Elves lines deal with the same morale issue that I had when fighting Tomb Kings as Bretonnia. The fact that all Tomb Kings units terrify the hell out of all enemies they go up again does wonders in reducing their efficiency and preventing them from just waltzing through my cheap skellies with the ease their stat difference would suggest. Still would have had a massively easier time with some cavalry and chariots because the number of darkshards was tough to deal with, I was only able to scatter them a bit or charge a couple of blobs with my Tomb Prince.

Unfortunately i messed up the siege. In the autoresolve it still would have made me loose almost my entire army (including my Hierotitan), so I reluctantly did the assault myself. I snuck up with my heroes at an unguarded part of the wall and hurled spells at them until I ran out of magic, but didn't do nearly enough damage. Kicking in the door I let my Hierotitan spearhead the charge and followed up with my heroes and skeletons. Unfortunately, somehow, while my heroes were already there, but my skeletons were still en route, the Hierotitan was engaged by a single almost depleted unit of Black Guard of Naggarond and instantly melted despite my Necrotect standing behind it frantically trying to repair it and my heroes hurling themselves at the Black Guard in a desperate charge, causing me to loose four of them. What the fuck?!? How the fuck are they THAT strong?!?

So... I now own Naggarond and the Cult of Pleasue has lost all their province capitals with that. I guess I can recover my losses as I mop up the stragglers, but loosing the Hierotitan hurts. Also the beastmen have further advanced north and are about to sack my capital. I'm soooo looking forward to grinding them into burger patties.

[Corvinus85]

In the latest TW blog, where they talk more about the Tzeentch faction, they also revealed a new important rework - reinforcements:

• Reinforcements are now on a timer, which I think is visible, not sure, and is dependent on various factors
• This makes winning battles when faced with multiple armies more doable, and the AI won't be able to take advantage of attacking you with a small army backed by a large army so easily, because you'll stand a good change of destroying the small army before reinforcements arrive.
• Lightning Strike is now a three-tiered skill. The first two tiers allows you to increase the time for enemy reinforcements, and only the third tier allows you to fight a battle against a single army.
• When you have reinforcements, you can pick from where they come on the map at the cost of added time.

I like this.

[Corvinus85]

Feast your eyes on this! 

 

[Toth]

Damn, Taurox just caused me for the first time to rage-quit in this game. What the hell? I started out with Khatep and somehow my entire game is only about failing to make any progress whatsoever in taking down Taurox.

After I kicked Malekith out into the snowy wastelands I sent one army down to now finally deal with the damn Beastmen who torched my home province that was (almost) reclaimed by another army (unfortunately Tretch was there first and colonized the smaller settlements) while I was busy sieging Naggarond, an army I then also sent to joing up with tmy army marching south. The Chaos corruption still shreds my troops, so I move at 50% pace and encamp every turn, only to get a full stack flung at me every single damn time. By the time I reached Venom Glade my troops in my main stack were already so beat-down that I had no hope to take the herdstone's ludicrously good garrison. So I parked my army in encampment mode and waited for the second army to join up with it. Result: The turn before joining up with the reinforcements my pitiful rest of a main army was bum-rushed by a full stack that was mostly archers and giants. Got absolutely slaughtered. I'm really stumped how to deal with this, especially that ridiculous garrison.

How come evicting the Witch King is a lot easier than dealing with a damn cow?

[The Winged Shadow]

1 hour ago, Toth said:

Damn, Taurox just caused me for the first time to rage-quit in this game. What the hell? I started out with Khatep and somehow my entire game is only about failing to make any progress whatsoever in taking down Taurox.

After I kicked Malekith out into the snowy wastelands I sent one army down to now finally deal with the damn Beastmen who torched my home province that was (almost) reclaimed by another army (unfortunately Tretch was there first and colonized the smaller settlements) while I was busy sieging Naggarond, an army I then also sent to joing up with tmy army marching south. The Chaos corruption still shreds my troops, so I move at 50% pace and encamp every turn, only to get a full stack flung at me every single damn time. By the time I reached Venom Glade my troops in my main stack were already so beat-down that I had no hope to take the herdstone's ludicrously good garrison. So I parked my army in encampment mode and waited for the second army to join up with it. Result: The turn before joining up with the reinforcements my pitiful rest of a main army was bum-rushed by a full stack that was mostly archers and giants. Got absolutely slaughtered. I'm really stumped how to deal with this, especially that ridiculous garrison.

How come evicting the Witch King is a lot easier than dealing with a damn cow?

Sounds like you may have over extended? What is your army composition?

Tomb Kings are kinda like dwarves in that you need to build tall at the start, wait for those additional armies to come online after research and then 2v1. During early/mid game, you will very rarely, if at all, have superior single army unless you put all your strong units in one army. Sounds like you are on top that bit as your are bringing your second army over, but the problem seems to be that you were in range of their army while encamping?

Stay away from their range and then going together might be a better way (not sure if taurox can ambush like skaven? if he can then you will need to be the attacker and do everything to ensure he doesn't attack during his turn). Might need to camp further out and scout with a hero so you can keep track of their army.

edit: Do you have some sort of forward base to get replenishment from? or atleast recruit skellies from? Wondering whether it would be quicker to merge+recruit units than encamp+replenish.

[Toth]

18 hours ago, The Winged Shadow said:

Sounds like you may have over extended? What is your army composition?

No argument there. I totally overextended and my army composition is crap because I keep funneling my money into upgrading cities and research instead of building any recruitment buildings. Also I just upgraded Naggarond to Tier 3 after loosing my only Tier 3 city a while back... to Taurox. -.- It's already turn 53 goddamn it and I have no constructs... But hey, at least I'm making 3000 gold per turn, which really isn't bad for Tomb Kings I guess.

And well, Khatep's main army is still marching the endless snow wastes towards Malekith's last hideout (at the same time exposing my coast to a Norsca faction that just declared war on me -.-), so I had been sending my B and C team. Basically my go-to army composition right now is as follows: One Tomb King, one Tomb Prince, Death Mage, Light Mage, maybe Nehakaran mage, two archers, two horse archers, one cavalry, rest filled up with spearmen and whatever Regiments of Renown I just had available.

This army worked extremely well against the Dark Elves with my light mage webbing up their Cold Ones riders and Witch Elves and the Death Mage sniping their lords with Spirit Leech and deleting their main army with his vortex spell while they are stalled by my spearmen and heroes. But the beastmen don't necessarily have much my light mage can web up except the giants, but since they always field at least two and they have more than enough health to soak up my arrows anyway, it only gets me so far. So my Death Mage ends up doing all of the leg-work. Also my Tomb King and Tomb Prince are useless against the Beastmen Lords and giants and get instantly deleted in a duel. The major concern however is that the AI fill their army with 50% archers, meaning I am drastically outgunned. In the first two battles I was able to use my cavalry very effectively to nullify their archers, but since cavalry barely replenishes in between battles, their numbers were soon down to single digits and therefore useless. I also can't use my go-to strategy of having one army encamped and the other ambushing because the ambushing army then gets shredded by attrition.

18 hours ago, The Winged Shadow said:

Stay away from their range and then going together might be a better way (not sure if taurox can ambush like skaven? if he can then you will need to be the attacker and do everything to ensure he doesn't attack during his turn). Might need to camp further out and scout with a hero so you can keep track of their army.

Possibly. My issue was that I couldn't go in just from the north but also had to come in from the west with the other army to prevent them from burning down my city in the Red Waste again like they did when all my armies were surrounding Naggarond. Also Taurox has a tendency to go to ambush stance if he isn't just sitting in his city and once tried attack-ambush, but thankfully failed, so scouting gets me only so much.

18 hours ago, The Winged Shadow said:

edit: Do you have some sort of forward base to get replenishment from? or atleast recruit skellies from? Wondering whether it would be quicker to merge+recruit units than encamp+replenish.

I can recruit skeletons in one turn just fine, but every other unit needs two turns, meaning two attacks that I have to brace against without them. So skeletons are not an issue at all, it's... well, just about everything else that I'm lacking.

Also no, a forward base I don't have exactly because of how the herdstone mechanic of the beastmen now works. Their entire neighborhood is surrounded with Chaos corrupted ruins that nobody is allowed to colonize as long as their herdstone still stands. And those ruins in turn are surrounded by ruins settled by Tretch who moved in in the wake of Taurox' rampages. And Tretch is allied with me, so I let him alone for the time being, even though it hurts that some of these towns he claimed belonged to me. Also Skaven corruption still causes attrition. In any case, all of this means my own holdings are three provinces filled with attrition away from Taurox's base.

I guess I would be fine leaving him until I got a bigger and better army, but it's endlessly frustrating because of how much in my face he is. He used to be only two provinces away until he flattened my entire starting province and I had to move into Naggarond instead. I had to deal with this bastard from the very beginning of my campaign, so it's irritating to think that you can only beat beastmen, who used to be such a joke, with endgame units because he has a garrison full of Tier 5 units in a minor settlement from the very beginning. And yeah, I can retreat and wait this out, but he's so close that I have to keep two of my three armies stationed there just to repel his constant attacks, crippling my advance anywhere else.

Edit: I'll be damned. So this is how this story ends: I retreat, with one of my armies now having the job of sitting around at the border to the ruined wasteland, the other army chasing a stupid Norsca army around that charges all across Naggarond, looting and sacking cities (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MKOKQobvCE ), all while Khatep with my third army travelled to Warhammer Fantasy Norway to burn down their home towns. Malekith (and by extension Hellebron) is now dead, somehow toppled by a dusty nerd searching for books, soon thereafter I get the message that Morathi also died by the hands of Alith Anar. So there are no Dark Elves left in Naggarond.
Taurox a couple of turns after my retreat paid me 1500 gold for a peace treaty. Baffled, I accepted. 10 turns later I get the message that his faction somehow got destroyed by the combined forces of Alith Anar and the Sisters of Twilight. So... that's irritatingly underwhelming of an ending. Well, I've sent my guard army onwards to colonize as many settlements as I can in the wake of this confusion, but I fear Tretch will likely be there first. Again.

 

[Corvinus85]

I decided to play some of the thematic campaigns for the Eye of the Vortex. I've only played a few as they were released, and I think the only one I ever finished was a Tomb Kings one.

I started with the most recent, and played with Oxyotl. The Visions of the Old Ones mechanic is fun and gives you plenty of good bonuses if you can complete them. It was hard at first, until I got my economy going, but as I kept beating the Dark Elves and the Skaven of Clan Moulder, and building new sanctums it got easier to the point when it was really easy. I destroyed Taurox's faction early on, which made fighting the final battle of the story against him amusing.

But that battle was glorious. While Oxyotl is interesting to play with because he focuses on Skinks, I wasn't going to fight that battle just with Skinks. Sure the Chameleon Skinks with the added coated darts that Oxyotl can give them are powerful, and the Chameleon Stalkers may just be one of the most useful light infantry units in the game, but I also packed Oxyotl's army with some of the most terrifying beasts the Lizardmen have. And they tore through the Beastmen like a dog tears through your favorite pillow. But the Battle of the Five Eight armies wasn't without loss. My faithful Oracle that was part of the army from day one fell in the thickest of the fighting; of course, he was lvl 40 by then and immortal, but the point is, I was sad. Bittersweet ending.

So the campaign is done. Which one to play next? 

[Toth]

3 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

So the campaign is done. Which one to play next? 

Doesn't that depend on what other campaigns you played already? What is in the final selection for you?

 

Meanwhile I didn't have much time to continue my Khatep playthrough. Admittedly, not much happened either aside of me clicking turns away and upgrading my cities. Naggarond and Hag Graef are now level 4 and I'm in the process of setting up my first construct producing buildings! Meanwhile Khatep got the Liche Staff in a quest battle against Beastmen that was an awesome initiation for his Casket of Souls and a couple of chariot units joining his army. Chariots rule! Like damn, they cut through the Beastmen like butter! Though I'm irritated at the regular quest to recruit a chariot that effectively forces you to disband one unit and immediately recruit it again. In any case, Khatep now sits in Warhammer Norway after a Norsca faction declared war on me and I had to make an example out of them so that the other Norscans stay happy trading partners, especially the hilariously friendly Canadian Mung clan.

Also Tretch suddenly got stupidly hostile towards me for having trade agreements with Alith Anar and the Sisters of Avelorn who they were now at war with. They kicked Alith Anar out of Taurox' territory while my armies were still stumbling around trying to snatch a couple of ruins. I then got the quest to declare war on Tretch and gladly complied, what with Tretch's territory partly consisting of pockets within my territory... also my starting position. My three armies rapidly advanced, taking settlement after settlement since his main army seems to be focused entirely on his war against Nagarythe.

[Corvinus85]

6 hours ago, Toth said:

Doesn't that depend on what other campaigns you played already? What is in the final selection for you?

I was merely musing 'outloud'. I was thinking of doing them in reverse chronological order from their release.

[Heartofice]

2 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

I was merely musing 'outloud'. I was thinking of doing them in reverse chronological order from their release.

Thats kind of how I approach it.. or try to. With Vortex campaigns makes sense to do the latest one first. So basically Taurox. Can't say I've ever managed to finish any though, there is always something else to distract me. The only time I finished a Vortex campaign I basically just kept hitting end turn towards the end.

[Toth]

Sigh... I HATE Skaven. Why does it always have to be Skaven I'm fighting? Every single fucking time...

I just managed to beat Tretch down to his last city, Hag Hall. Somehow he got FIVE full stacks with only Ratling Guns, Warpfire Throwers and Stormvermin that pretend to be as tough as Dwarfs skulking around. He counter attacked me after one of my armies took the Venom Glades, wiping it out. Somehow despite the battle being as close as it can possibly get with both armies at the end just throwing sticks and stones at each other, Tretch only lost one unit and instantly replenished the rest the next turn. When I counter-attacked the counter attack with my other two armies I managed to lightning strike two of his stacks, but then got ambush-attacked the next turn by three more stacks. That's when I quit and wonder whether to go back to my savefile before the first battle at Venom Glades and try to see whether I can turn that one around.

[kungtotte]

Life is 'ard in da badlands.

Got myself a greenskin ME campaign going and I'm beginning to think nobody likes me. I've been at war with at least one Skaven clan since approximately turn two and roughly every 5-10 turns I have to fight off their raiders, I am at war with Imrik who occasionally launches attacks from the east, I am at war with the Last Defenders who are trying to creep up from the south and raze my mountain forts, I am at war with the stunties who have managed to confederate almost every dwarven faction and block my advances north very effectively with their heavily armoured troops, and lastly I am at war with the border princes though they are on their last legs with just the one settlement and nearly no stacks remaining.

Thorgrim has just launched a big offensive with several stacks and razed some settlements as well as took a few off me, so I am rushing my troops there to deal with him. I have a few stacks with mostly orcs who I use as my heavy hitters, they're the ones to besiege walled or heavily defended settlements and go up against the 'eavies that the enemy bring. Then I have two stacks with mostly cheap gobbos that I use for battle reinforcements and for hunting down smaller raiding armies.

It was very easy to build tall with the orcs, and the constant back and forth has left me with not too many provinces under my control but with nearly every single tech researched, and a fully upgraded home province that can churn out half a stack of troops per turn.

The immediate plan is to sneak a stack over to sack and raze the final border princes town to knock out one opponent for good, and get two stacks up in the mountains to the south to reclaim razed settlements and to sweep out the remnants of the lizardmen, while I use my remaining forces to go after the stunties.

[Heartofice]

One of my many hundreds of campaigns going right now is my Clan Moulder ME one.

What I like about it is that it appears that I don’t need to paint the map to win. I think the issue I have with mid to late game campaigns is that there are too many armies, too many settlements, too many boring battles. I kind of prefer to keep it small.

So with Throt it looks like i don’t have any requirements to take specific lands , so can just wander round raiding and growing hell pit. I think CA have really learnt about improving their campaigns as they go on. 
 

Also really excited by the Nurgle reveal for WH3. That’s the faction I’ve been looking forward to. Some of the siege battles and quality of life changes makes me optimistic it will be a good game

[Corvinus85]

24 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

One of my many hundreds of campaigns going right now is my Clan Moulder ME one.

What I like about it is that it appears that I don’t need to paint the map to win. I think the issue I have with mid to late game campaigns is that there are too many armies, too many settlements, too many boring battles. I kind of prefer to keep it small.

So with Throt it looks like i don’t have any requirements to take specific lands , so can just wander round raiding and growing hell pit. I think CA have really learnt about improving their campaigns as they go on. 
 

Also really excited by the Nurgle reveal for WH3. That’s the faction I’ve been looking forward to. Some of the siege battles and quality of life changes makes me optimistic it will be a good game

If you really want to win without holding much territory, the Vampire Coast factions in the Eye of the Vortex are it

[Toth]

Ah, I just noticed I never resolved that Venom Glades battle I mentioned: After two more tries (and actually musing how to deploy my troops in my dream after I went to bed after my second defeat there) I finally managed to beat Tretch and somewhere down the line wiped him out. Of course while I was busy doing that, the first wave of the Chaos invasion started happening and of course they instantly went about razing my unprotected villages despite me building ludicrously expensive walls in there. My garrisons just suck...

But in any case, two weeks ago in a fit of madness I also bought Rome II Total War, curious how well the game fares now after all the updates. Until now I only fought two battles as Rome on Corsica and against the Ligurians. I... well, the game runs fine (and the loading times are significantly shorter than Warhammer II), but... god, the AI is dreadful.

The Corsica battle was me being corner-camping while being hopelessly outnumbered and yet the enemy somehow fared abysmally. Half their army was just standing around, some stacks somehow standing sideways in front of my armies (somehow managing to attack with their flanks), while the rest of their armies were blobbing up at my flanks, trying to force themselves through them while completely ignoring my center. So I just... moved said center forward, have them flank them and instantly rout them. That was weird...

Then in the Ligurian battle I somehow ended up on the opposite end. With me attacking in a siege, climbing the walls, but somehow my troops constantly disengaged from battle and returned to standing around idle in formation while the enemy slaughtered them. I had to constantly give them more and more attack orders to get anywhere and still lost far too many troops for such a pitiful enemy army.

Also I'm not sure I quite get the politics system yet... I have to balance all the factions, so just using my own family's characters is bad, right?

[Corvinus85]

I've played a lot of Three Kingdoms recently but I decided to quit my campaign after a deal breaking event and also because it was becoming a massive grind. I started a campaign in 182 with Liu Biao and went until 200. I had reached duchy level, I had obscene wealth, and enough food to feed all of China. The deal breaker moment was an event at a mountain pass fortress. For everyone not familiar, these are settlements that block an entire mountain pass. Even in battle there is only one way to attack them from one side. So I was holding this pass for a while, and my enemy, Yuan Shu, had already besieged it once. He was bringing more armies, and so was I, for what promised to be a major showdown in this pass. Only the game decided to shit on itself, and Yuan Shu pulled a Littlefinger and somehow attacked one of my armies that was on the other side of the fortress. I withdrew, and Yuan Shu found himself alone on the other side of the fortress with about 4 of my armies around him. Tough luck for him, but I was annoyed, and decided I had enough. The game has many great features, but it's not without its flaws. It could have been one of, or possible the very best TW, with a little more careful design from CA.

I went back to Warhammer II, and with Christmas approaching I decided the best choice was a ME campaign with Thorek Ironbrow, who goes around collecting items to use in the forging of great items that all the good Dwarf kids can enjoy. I am currently showing Grimgor why he's not getting presents.

That being said, Troy just released its final DLC with the addition of Rhesus and Memnon so I may jump into that.

In coming soon news, CA has been releasing more content info about Warhammer III, with the campaign map (sans Chaos Wastes & Realms) revealed today.

.

[Corvinus85]

Warhammer III will go even more RPG than its predecessors.

The additional Legendary Lord will be... a customizable daemon prince. This is CA bringing Chaos Undivided into the game with this LL being able to incorporate features of the 4 Chaos Gods. It even features a character screen similar to classic RPG games where you equip stuff on the character. This certainly will lend a degree of re-playability in this Chaos heavy game.

[Heartofice]

20 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Warhammer III will go even more RPG than its predecessors.

The additional Legendary Lord will be... a customizable daemon prince. This is CA bringing Chaos Undivided into the game with this LL being able to incorporate features of the 4 Chaos Gods. It even features a character screen similar to classic RPG games where you equip stuff on the character. This certainly will lend a degree of re-playability in this Chaos heavy game.

This is absolutely nuts! I saw a video of this working and its looks brilliant! The only downside is I want this for every single character and race in the game.