Played for a bit and they are an interesting faction. The Warsphinx is carrying me early game though, it destroys either armies by itself.
Savage Orcs are no joke against the trash tier early units that TKs can field.
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).Savage Orcs are no joke against the trash tier early units that TKs can field.
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.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.
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.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.
nope, sorryViolet, did you save that battle against the lizardmen? I would love to watch it...
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 campaignwith Necroknights being only "good" and Sepulcral Stalkers being just pretty much bad.
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.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
This is it.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?
they just seem kinda not that great to me, but I suppose they are pretty similar to the other cheap flyersActually vultures have pretty high weapon strength for a skirmisher flying unit, (40) so they should easily dismantle artillery and archers.
They have generally poor melee stats tho.
ya, the giant type monsters are way stronger than anything else at the start of a campaignYeah 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.
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.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
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.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?
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.Can't decide what monstrous construct to take. Which one is the best? The Heortitan, the necrosphinx or the warsphinx?
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?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
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.
can player-controlled skaven armies switch their stance while under siege? I haven't played them much, still waiting for their unit DLC packI 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?
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
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
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 noticeSkaven 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)?
yup, but you can already start applying the vigour loss from far away, the other debuffs are only temporaryIs 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?
I'm still hoping they realize someday that some people have more than 1 friend they would like to play a campaign with.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?
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
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
thank you, corrected.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.
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
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.
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?
Never forget:Honestly I'm a little disappointed that the Tomb King's only have one chariot unit, and it's a fairly mediocre one at that. They are (being Ancient Egypt standins) the chariot faction after all.
Honestly I'm a little disappointed that the Tomb King's only have one chariot unit, and it's a fairly mediocre one at that. They are (being Ancient Egypt standins) the chariot faction after all.
oh, that's pretty disappointing. Draining their vigor was the best partPoison 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.
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 longThe 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.