Played for a bit and they are an interesting faction. The Warsphinx is carrying me early game though, it destroys either armies by itself.
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Total War WARHAMMER II |OT| The age of dwarf is over. The time of the Waagh! has come!
- Thread starter karnage10
- Start date
You ain't lying there - I started on normal and these Green skin bastards have been a stubborn thorn in my bony side. Only having one army is trickier than I anticipated!
Thankfully, the warsphinx is OP.
it looks to me like the TK snowball hard mid-game. I'm past turn 50 with 3 armies and, #3 in the army ranking, lots of heroes and ~1600 gold income, which just increases each turn because don't pay any upkeep. Late game, you can probably just shower everyone in gold to become friends with you
the only annoying issue is that it is kind of difficult to make emergency armies. Clan Pestilence snuck up to my capital in the south, which is completly undefended, while my armies were cleaning up Lustria. Well played, sneaky rats
the only annoying issue is that it is kind of difficult to make emergency armies. Clan Pestilence snuck up to my capital in the south, which is completly undefended, while my armies were cleaning up Lustria. Well played, sneaky rats
Gold seems to be the limiting factor for me atm. They really captured the feeling of an undead legion though. Take heavy losses but can recover really quickly. It's like a wave crashing on rock over and over again until you break through.
Been playing a few different lords and honestly the Settra orc start is probably the best(I haven't tested Arkhan though), both because Settra starts with basically the strongest units(Warsphynx is absurd and chariots can be surprisingly good), is a caster but not a squishy one so he can kinda kill stuff and buff the Warsphynx but also because a bunch of other choices aren't really much better. Settra also starts with a large settlement which gives him superior income. Savage orcs are pretty rough but they break easily to the constant Fear from the TK armies and the Warpshinx rampaging around, and skeleton archers match pretty decent against savage orc archers, as long as they don't get in melee range, plus you can use the chariots to mop them up/disrupt them(don't want to actually fight them in melee though as savage archers will actually beat chariots in melee, and it's not even close).
Khatep gets Dark elves who often field a fair amount of archers which decimate your stuff and when they proc murderous prowess(which they always do pretty quick against shitty skeletons since they mow them down so fast) their melee lines completely melt your skeletons, so you have to abuse his magic and the Hierotitan a lot. His starting position looks pretty garbage though so I think his difficulty might go up past the first few turns, haven't played him much.
Khalida gets Lizardmen but at higher difficulties with the stupid ressources, every army of lizards is basically 100% saurus with maybe a couple of skinks skirmishers and if you're unlucky some dino of some kind. Saurus warriors are unmatched in melee by crappy skeletons, so you have to work hard, and that's further emphasized by her starting units being probably the worst out of the 4 LLs, with Necroknights being only "good" and Sepulcral Stalkers being just pretty much bad. Khalida herself is the most apt of the 4LLs in melee so that helps, and she does have the best combat trait(everything has poison) but it's quite a challenge facing Kroq-gar army on turn 17 in ME when he has like 14saurus, 1blessed skink, 2skink skirmishers, 1 stegosaur, 1caster and himself. And in Vortex she also gets the same thing but without the dino and Kroq-gar, however she gets attacked on like turn 7 instead by a full stack of saurus.
I haven't checked Arkhan but I imagine him having a Scorpion and having Lore of Death(spirit leech+bjuna) should make it pretty easy, and he has better starting options for your melee lines I think with crypt ghouls?
So far my campaigns have been going pretty well but I guess I'm used to scrappy early game after playing Skaven with slave stacks. It seems TK basically has a fairly weak early, alright midgame but once lategame stuff kicks in they become an absurd powerhouse. Once you get a bunch of Necrotects leveled to get their +constructs slots and the construct buildings, you can start fielding a large amount of constructs without upkeep penalties so you just bulldoze your way through the enemy, or at least that's my plan since I'm not there yet.
Do Skeleton Archers have a hidden bonus to accuracy? Because they are deceptively powerful compared to their moderate stat-line.
And khalida just makes them so much better.
Also a key thing for TKs is to get your second Lord asap to get a full stack of free skellies right off the bat.
And khalida just makes them so much better.
Also a key thing for TKs is to get your second Lord asap to get a full stack of free skellies right off the bat.
I haven't found them particularily more efficient than other archers. Which isn't to say they're weak, every archer unit is really good I've found(besides maybe gobos unless Skarsnik is leading them), I always have heavy archer compositions early game since they tear apart stuff if you focus fire and have enough(4 is the minimum, 6-7 is usually what I prefer). They're definitely good for TKs since the other tier 1 units are pretty bad though, and getting 4archers with just one building is great.
Been continuing my Settra Vortex playthrough, I sailed north to get the 5th Book of Nagash(the +1 army one), only to find out/remember that since it was on the sea, I had to win an autoresolve and not actually fight stuff, which complicated things a lot since the book armies are pretty high tier and skeletons don't do great on autoresolve. The ~12turns planned adventure turned into 25turns of messing around, I had to make port by clearing out some dark elves out of the temple of khaine, recruited new stronger units(all the treasures I found on the sea on the way north and all the trade agreements with the high elves I discovered gave a massive boost to my economy so I ended up with a lot better units than when I left), recruited some new regiments from the mortuary, because it took longer than expected I actually unlocked a 3rd dynasty so I raised an army right there with just a bunch of skeletons and eventually confronted them on the sea. Balance of power was like 52% in my favor, I won and lost everything but Settra, my 2 other lords and my Warsphynx, so it went perfectly I'd say. Destroyed all the buildings in the settlement for money before leaving and set sail back south.
All the while I had left my lands entirely unattended, but no one bothered attacking me, I'm friendly/neutral with everyone around, other than the savage orcs you start at war with, there isn't much challenge in Settra's area. Once I'm done sailing back, I'll rebuild my armies even stronger and proceed to stomp the stuff around me that's not Tomb Kings. Feels good to be king.
Oh and the most important skill line right at the start is the Red Melee line that increases armor and melee defense for your basic units.
With that and the aura buffs from your lord, your skeletons should be able to keep a battle line vs most factions, letting you concentrate on chariot micro and microing your constructs.
With that and the aura buffs from your lord, your skeletons should be able to keep a battle line vs most factions, letting you concentrate on chariot micro and microing your constructs.
I have to use a mod for 2x skill points for lords. I just can't handle how many skills there are and how few points you get.
It's not really cheating because the AI gets the same amount of skill points, but it's kind of cheating because the AI doesn't always pick good skills.
It's not really cheating because the AI gets the same amount of skill points, but it's kind of cheating because the AI doesn't always pick good skills.
I went for the blue line on all my lords as I do usually, at least up to Lightning Strike. I find the skill to be too invaluable, and the points leading to it are pretty good(3jars per turn, +1public order in local for when I grab a new area, 10%campaign movement and the recruitment stuff). I'm a bit undecided on where to go next, usually I got for the last one too since it reduces upkeep but obviously it doesn't on TK, and gold might not be that useful to get the 15% from sacking/combat, so maybe I'll stop there. But Lightning Strike is just too good at fixing the AI camping a settlement with 3 armies and stuff like that, especially once you tech up.
I generally get the melee line after though. Sometimes get the archer line depending on races(I did on HE since I had like 8-10archers in every army) but I think I won't on TK because I'll tech out of archers on every army besides Khalida's and Khalida has both an innate 20% ammo and another 1pt skill that give even more ammo and +3rank to archers so it isn't worth it(the missile damage % is low, the main point of the red line archer stuff is getting more ammo since archers always run out of ammo in fights unless you have some tech/skill for it).
I think you get enough points now that they increase max lvl to 40 too. You can't max everything but that's kind the point, you can still take almost every line until the end though, so I haven't felt the need for a mod and I feel modding it would make the game quite a bit easier since the skill tree has a lot of very overpowered things in it. Only things I like to mod are camera speed in campaign and I wanted to get the no chaos mod for ME but apparently it wasn't updated earlier today so I'll wait. Maybe it isn't so bad after the changes they did, haven't played since.
nope, sorry
almost turn 90, and I just got my first non-starter tier 3 unit! I own most of Lustria now and spend all my gold on infrastructure, and there's never enough for military buildings. But I finally captured an upgraded city with a bunch of tier 3 and 4 recruitment options, thanks Skrolk. No more skellis and chariots only army
still haven't done a book battle yet, but I'm loving the TK gameplay. Compared to, say, the Empire, they're just so much more interesting to play. I like how they consistently up the complexity of each new race, it's hard going back to the game 1 ones
I find the knights to be really good, and I'm fan of the stalkers - they seem to be filling the anti-large role well, and I like to have them hang back and use their ranged attack if there are no juicy targets close by. The RoR ones deal swiftly with the Rat Ogres, no idea about the regular ones - I lost them very early in the campaign
starting with a monster would still be much preferable :p
so far, the vultures are the only unit I don't really use, other than the RoR ones. They are pretty damn fragile, and not very killy either. It's easier to just chariot your way through the enemy lines to their soft targets, and a chariot unit pretty much disables a normal war machine in one charge
Yeah maybe they're good anti large, problem is early on you don't fight a whole lot of large stuff anyway and they have absolutely abyssmal stats for everything else. The knights are solid cav, but they're nothing like a tier 5 construct which is why I wasn't really amazed by them, they still put in good work but if they get caught they die pretty quick like most cav, while you can let the constructs go wild and they'll generally be fine.
Overall Khalida has the worst starting units by a fair bit, but it evens out a bit because she's a much better early game LL with her other bonuses and her own stats, so it's not that bad, it's just you can't work your entire strat around the OP units. She's also the only one without any spellcasting until you get the free lich priest and if you don't RNG the right one(I wanna say death and nehekara are good at lvl 1, light is meh after the nerf and you need to get the net and I always disliked shadows), you have to wait 15turns to unlock another one.
That said I went and checked Khatep again and his campaign is probably harder in the long run. His climate affinities are terrible, he can only grab "pockets" of the land with large yellow climate regions around which sucks, especially with TK money being so low and the buildings still costing a bunch, having an increase to your building cost from wrong climate is a death sentence. Khalida can just conquer all of southern Lustria then cross the sea and be cool, while even crossing the sea looks like a pain for Khatep.
I don't have Warhammer 2 yet, but I have the first and currently playing Rome 2. Is there a Total War community thread on ERA?
autoresolve being extremely optimistic about Duke Jerrod's near future
freed Lustria of Clan Pestilens, which controlled the other half of the continent, on turn 100. I'm number one in the miltary ranking with barely a hand full of tier 3 units, and I could buy and tech for more army slots if I wanted to. Feels like I've entered the relaxing part of the campaign, I guess I'll sail around a bit and upgrade my armies before attempting the book battles
say, can you actually lose the campaign if the other factions finish their rituals first?
I got the light priest first. The net is still just really good, and I've always been a fan of banish as well. Those two spell will eat up all your power, though
another weird thing about Khatep is that none of the books are anywhere near his start point, at least on my map. Not sure if the positions of the books switch around with the LL
freed Lustria of Clan Pestilens, which controlled the other half of the continent, on turn 100. I'm number one in the miltary ranking with barely a hand full of tier 3 units, and I could buy and tech for more army slots if I wanted to. Feels like I've entered the relaxing part of the campaign, I guess I'll sail around a bit and upgrade my armies before attempting the book battles
say, can you actually lose the campaign if the other factions finish their rituals first?
they just seem kinda not that great to me, but I suppose they are pretty similar to the other cheap flyers
ya, the giant type monsters are way stronger than anything else at the start of a campaign
I got the light priest first. The net is still just really good, and I've always been a fan of banish as well. Those two spell will eat up all your power, though
another weird thing about Khatep is that none of the books are anywhere near his start point, at least on my map. Not sure if the positions of the books switch around with the LL
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Warsphinx is fuckin' bonkers, confirmed. Had a battle where literally the entire rest of the army got wiped out but the Warsphinx managed to route 'em. Fuck Savage Orcs.
btw, the Skaven still do the weird thing where they ambush you while being under siege. Had some tough 1v2 battles because of it, and the last time I was actually ambushed by the damn garrison force, they didn't even have a lord in the city. When it was my turn again, I just automatically got the settlement. Is this really intended?
any idea where I can check the combat difficulty settings in an active campaign? Everyone is complaining about the weak skeleton units, meanwhile the basic tier 1 & 2 chaff regularly dismantles stormvermin, death globe bombadiers and warp cannons armies. Now I wonder if I might have accidently switched the combat difficulty setting somehow
any idea where I can check the combat difficulty settings in an active campaign? Everyone is complaining about the weak skeleton units, meanwhile the basic tier 1 & 2 chaff regularly dismantles stormvermin, death globe bombadiers and warp cannons armies. Now I wonder if I might have accidently switched the combat difficulty setting somehow
Hmm that sounds a bit weird, on mine he did have a couple books relatively close, one in the dark elf lands just east and one north of Quetza which isn't too far off but after that it was pretty far. It felt only the books switched, not their positions, but I haven't checked enough and maybe there's a few different positions available.
Not sure if entirely intended, but the basic Skaven stance gives them a chance to ambush. So if the AI decides to attack you while you're sieging with the sieged army, and then get lucky they'll fight an ambush. Even if they didn't get an ambush, they would have been wiped and you would have gotten the settlement. The AI doesn't do it very often but I do sometimes when I'm confident I can crush the enemy army even without the walls and just want to get them away from me asap.
Well they have slightly different roles. Warsphynx is anti infantry and smash garbage units really fast, Necrosphynx is antilarge and should be better suited at killing say cav, other monsters or heroes/lords on mounts and Hierotitan is neither but does pretty well against both by having bound spells and stuff. I'd say it maybe depends on what other units you have, if you teched up to Necroknights with Halberds for example, I wouldn't bother with Necrosphynx since they're fairly similar in role and Necroknights will handle stuff just fine. If you're fighting factions with a lot of monsters(like Lizardmen), it might still be worth it to get a Necrosphynx anyway. Otherwise I'd probably get a Warsphynx. As for Hierotitan I think if you have a Death Lich Priest you can probably chain Spirit Leech a lord and just melt him, which would be pretty cheesy but pretty strong too(caster spirit leech, when it ends hierotitan free spirit leech, when it ends caster again). You might also want to check your available tech base on the Dynasties you unlocked to decide.
FLC updated! I'll update the OP later once i'm back home.
Don't forget to join the make war not love event for some free goodies!
Don't forget to join the make war not love event for some free goodies!
I have wondered about this. Mechanically speaking it makes "sense", skaven armies have a chance to ambush when they attack. When a garrison attacks it has the chance too. How do the rats manage to ambush a siege army makes 0 sense to me. How would the siege army miss the garrison leave the city?
It could be seen as an unexpected sally while the besieging forces are encamped.
Playing as Settra/Khemria. I'm starting to get into those higher tier units with TKs, just scanning over the units gets me excited to make armies. Need to conquer more places though. I want to maintain Numas as an ally but, well, they are taking up valuable real estate. I've sent an army south to retrieve a book from the orcs as well as clear the area of Wood Elves. Settra is going north to remove some Bretonnians from the area but they have a bit of a chaos problem. Damn attrition.
Playing as Settra/Khemria. I'm starting to get into those higher tier units with TKs, just scanning over the units gets me excited to make armies. Need to conquer more places though. I want to maintain Numas as an ally but, well, they are taking up valuable real estate. I've sent an army south to retrieve a book from the orcs as well as clear the area of Wood Elves. Settra is going north to remove some Bretonnians from the area but they have a bit of a chaos problem. Damn attrition.
can player-controlled skaven armies switch their stance while under siege? I haven't played them much, still waiting for their unit DLC pack
what's especially weird about this was that the garrison itself attacked me. There was no lord army anywhere near, no reinforcements, just the warlock engineer from the garrison leading the attack. But then again, it was kind of cool as well
that was honestly the real reason why I went to war with the Skaven. Screw those ratmen neighbors, they were messing with my public order in every province
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OP, the Tomb Kings' unique resource are Canopic Jars, not Canopy Jars. The TK being Ancient Egypt epxies and all, Canopic Jars IRL contained the viscera of mummified individuals, for their use in the afterlife. It's hilarious that you can harvest them undead or other Tomb King armies, where none of the skeletons have organs to speak of.
I was 87 turns into my Tyrion ME campaign when the update hit, so I'll need to wait for all my mods to update before I can resume my crusade across Naggarond.
I was 87 turns into my Tyrion ME campaign when the update hit, so I'll need to wait for all my mods to update before I can resume my crusade across Naggarond.
ok, so I'm playing on normal battle difficulty. At least I can say that the TK low tier units are not at all underpowered in singleplayer against the AI with no battle difficulty buffs. Sword & shield skeletons can go face to face with bleakswords with no lord buffs, well, aside from Khalida's army-wide poison passive. Nekharian warriors won against stormvermin numerous times, though not 1v1 of course
the best advice I have is to use all those chariots to their full potential. Run them into infantry that's not carrying spears, preferably from the back or flank, attack for a few seconds, press J to disengage or make them move through the unit, keep the wheels spinning and go from target to target while staying out of focused ranged fire. They rack up hundreds of kills with the standard Large army sizes. For the archers chariots, switch them to melee and disable skirmisher mode, they function effectively the same way as the normal chariots but fire arrows while moving. Their default unit settings are bad, they're not a real ranged unit
the best advice I have is to use all those chariots to their full potential. Run them into infantry that's not carrying spears, preferably from the back or flank, attack for a few seconds, press J to disengage or make them move through the unit, keep the wheels spinning and go from target to target while staying out of focused ranged fire. They rack up hundreds of kills with the standard Large army sizes. For the archers chariots, switch them to melee and disable skirmisher mode, they function effectively the same way as the normal chariots but fire arrows while moving. Their default unit settings are bad, they're not a real ranged unit
Yeah the game treats archer chariots like ranged cav when they should be used to cycle like shock cavalry (smash, disengage, smash). You'll get all the benefits of their archers + chariots massacring infantry. I put Settra's points into buffing my units, infantry and archers at this point, so they can take a much bigger punch now. Plus you can replenishment buffs from liche priests and necrotects. I haven't had a chance to test those out but I imagine you can get some nice sustainability out of those skeletons all said and done.
They're going to add multiplayer maps? Maybe they could, you know, add an actual multiplayer first and not the barebones shit we have now?
Skaven don't need to change stance to ambush, also garrisons can break sieges- I don't think that was the case in TWW1.
I haven't tried her(?) yet but the TK LL that makes everything poison seems OP to me. Does poison keep applying over and over so that a unit fighting some poisonous skelies is constantly at -20% attack (or whatever the poison debuff is)?
oh, that makes perfect sense. And I wasn't aware that garrisons can break sieges now, this never came up for me before, or I just didn't notice
the posion buff from Khalida (only female TK lord) doesn't stack, but is applied constantly with each attack.
draining the vigor of a units applies additional debuffs, so I always try to spread my archer fire across as many units as possible
Ghorst has the army buff too, but he's way weaker as a lord. Though he can summon GG, which is also nice
Is it just for archers? I thought it was everything. Seems like a big upgrade for any unit it effects.
Edit: Does the Vigour return after 10 seconds or is it a permanent loss?
Edit: Does the Vigour return after 10 seconds or is it a permanent loss?
yup, but you can already start applying the vigour loss from far away, the other debuffs are only temporary
e: being a rat must be hard. No one likes you
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I'm still hoping they realize someday that some people have more than 1 friend they would like to play a campaign with.
oh, that makes perfect sense. And I wasn't aware that garrisons can break sieges now, this never came up for me before, or I just didn't notice
the posion buff from Khalida (only female TK lord) doesn't stack, but is applied constantly with each attack.
draining the vigor of a units applies additional debuffs, so I always try to spread my archer fire across as many units as possible
Ghorst has the army buff too, but he's way weaker as a lord. Though he can summon GG, which is also nice
Poison was changed in WH2. It has no effect on vigor anymore.
It reduces weapon and missile strenght by 20% and speed by 24% for 10 seconds.
Afaik Poison was nerfed in War2 so it doesn't remove Vigour anymore. Still does the rest which is pretty substantial. It's not as great when only a few units have poison, but when literally every unit you have does poison, it means you're generally fighting at a huge advantage anyway.
Been progressing smoothly in my Settra playthrough. Just smashed the armies around the Black Pyramid, I kinda forgot about it but on my way to the crusaders I noticed it and figured I'd attack it, destroyed the 2 armies and the garrison in a turn pretty easily, even though the balance of power for autoresolve was vastly disfavorable. My Settra army is pretty brutal already and I just hit tier5 in Khemri so I'm gonna get some big constructs in a few turns, and I unlocked a good combat lord so I'm about to raise my 2nd "good" army that's not just skeleton warriors and free garbage chariots I got from various stuff+RoR I don't want in my random armies. Settra has like, Warsphynx still obviously, 4Ushabti, 2Great Bow Ushabti, 6 Tomb Guards with halberds, a Casket of Souls, Necrotect+Tomb Prince and 3 archers(one of which I just replaced with the RoR one that has armor shredding arrows). I'll replace some Ushabti with Necrosphynx, need to level my Necrotect so I get some more stuff too but that's a strong army. Love the Ushabti, they're so fast they might as well be cav, but they can actually stand in melee with most units and shred them.
Settra has some serious +level Tomb Princes passives too, it's like +6lvl on him alone(and +2 Tomb Princes slots), so I have a bunch running around assassinating/training armies it's neat.
The research rate penalty is getting pretty harsh though, need around 46turns to get the next Dynasty and there aren't a lot of ways to increase tech research unlike other armies.
Been progressing smoothly in my Settra playthrough. Just smashed the armies around the Black Pyramid, I kinda forgot about it but on my way to the crusaders I noticed it and figured I'd attack it, destroyed the 2 armies and the garrison in a turn pretty easily, even though the balance of power for autoresolve was vastly disfavorable. My Settra army is pretty brutal already and I just hit tier5 in Khemri so I'm gonna get some big constructs in a few turns, and I unlocked a good combat lord so I'm about to raise my 2nd "good" army that's not just skeleton warriors and free garbage chariots I got from various stuff+RoR I don't want in my random armies. Settra has like, Warsphynx still obviously, 4Ushabti, 2Great Bow Ushabti, 6 Tomb Guards with halberds, a Casket of Souls, Necrotect+Tomb Prince and 3 archers(one of which I just replaced with the RoR one that has armor shredding arrows). I'll replace some Ushabti with Necrosphynx, need to level my Necrotect so I get some more stuff too but that's a strong army. Love the Ushabti, they're so fast they might as well be cav, but they can actually stand in melee with most units and shred them.
Settra has some serious +level Tomb Princes passives too, it's like +6lvl on him alone(and +2 Tomb Princes slots), so I have a bunch running around assassinating/training armies it's neat.
The research rate penalty is getting pretty harsh though, need around 46turns to get the next Dynasty and there aren't a lot of ways to increase tech research unlike other armies.
Really not feeling the Vortex Campaign to be fair. The game is fun until you start the ritual, have to put your other business on hold and fight off full stack armies which randomly teleport onto the map. How does the Mortal Empires campaign compare?
Like the beastmen the skaven have a chance to ambush on their base stance.
If i remember correctly from my GS campaign you can change stances during siege, in wh1 i used it to evade atrition from the lack of fightiness; by changing into undergound stance you are imune to all attrition including fightiness. This way i could keep my armies defensive.
thank you, corrected.
WOW! i have been using the ranged chariots partly wrong.
Mortal empires is very different and more sandbox.
In mortal empires there isn't a ritual so your only objective is "conquer until you are tired". After having X amount of settlements the chaos invasion begins; most people don't like this invasion because it either is unfair or it is a slog to go through. In case you don't like it there are mods that deactivate it.
If what you don't like about vortex is the story/ritual mehcanic then ME will be for you. Do note that ME is bigger then vortex so the turn times are bigger.
oh, that's pretty disappointing. Draining their vigor was the best part
they actually have the exact same stats as the normal chariots, but with an extra ranged attack. It's a pretty minor upgrade
if you have enough cities and recruit priests, it never takes me more than 14-18 turns to research a new dynasty. However, at turn 120, I still haven't unlocked tier 5 yet, and all my gold mostly still goes into upgrading settlements and income producing buildings. Don't even have a scorpion yet, or used normal ushabti/knights/stalkers/Nekhara riders and the giant constructs in battle so far. I have the stupid tendency to stick with low and mid tier units for way too long
closing in on 10k gold per turn now, and 70 jars, I should be able to upgrade my military pretty swiftly soon. Quick general tip, build baracks and the chariot recruitment buildings in minor settlements. With the +2 global public order tech, you can tear down most of your obelisks to make room
is the Necrotect from the Rite a regular Necrotect that sticks around forever, or does he just have the campaign ability? Necrotects are really, really good