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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
Sometimes elves will put the sword of khaine back into its place before it gets too strong
otherwise no you gonna have to spill elf blood to get it. why wouldn't you it's the sword of khaine kill everyone UNLIMITED POWER!
You have to own the Shrine of Khaine settlement which is in the northern tip of Ulthuan, and then you move a lord to that settlement to pull it
Note:you can own the sword without owning the shrine and vice vers
Beware of that artifact, I destroyed one of my the campaigns with Tyrion when I attacked an ally for the Sword of Khaine and as a result I brought about the apocalypse in Ulthuan.
This was on my very first playthrough with High Elves where I was on friendly terms with almost all the elven faction on the island (using those early influence points) and as a result had very lucrative trade deals (which was a rather sizable sum early game). Even had defensive/military alliances with some of them. There were occasional raids from Sartosa from the south east and Norsca from the north east, who were having bouts with two elven faction on the east. Then from the west, there were occasional attacks from the dark elves.
I had two armies moving to help clear out Sartosa raids and also help one of the elven faction reclaim their settlements from Norsca, it all was going fine until I saw Alarille after her post battle state against one of the AIs (probably against Norsca or the high elves) and jumping about north east of the island along the borders of her region with the Sword of Khaine. Moved my armies towards Alarille in the following turns until they were right next to her, declared war (breaking treaties), defeated her and claimed the Sword of Khaine.
Then all hell broke loose, literally!.
There were too many things happening in the such a short span of time that I had hard time keeping track of them.
- My diplomacy rating dropped to unreliable.
- Some of the elves with whome I had military alliances, I dragged them into war with other half of the elves on the island.
- At the same time another raiding party from Sartosa came up and destroyed one of the elven faction bordering east of me.
- Norsca ate the elven faction they were fighting since the beginning.
- I had inadvertently started one of the rituals which spawned chaos units who made me to deploy two armies into the inner ring of the island on the east (destroying my upkeep).
- My income was lower since I got two elven factions destroyed and was at war with the other half of the island.
- Dark elves were in full aggressive mode with one of the elven faction on the west and also attacking Alarille (probably the Crone).
- Things were made complicated when I forgot that Saphery didn't like me either and were burning along with the Chaos spawn who blatantly seemed to ignore everyone else when you start the ritual.
- Diplomacy turned to even worse when I kept choosing to keep the Sword of Khaine as it grew in power and hard time finding trading partners outside Ulthuan.
- An expedition with two armies to reach different shores outside of Ulthuan also failed as the Dwarwii pirates and the other one on the west literally destroyed the expedition, specially the Dwarwii one where the old grumblers/long bears were stubborn as DAMN even with few living units and made my army rout.
- All the territories on the outer ring of Ulthuan was beyond reach and basically fucked, except for Lothern.
I abandoned that playthough with fond memories that the entire series of chaotic and mindless events after claiming the Sword of Khaine was awesome and it probably needs to end there as a cliffhanger.
That's actually pretty awesome. But I will definitely be careful if I make a play for it.
So it seems the fix for the VC/VCoast/Lizardmen/Beastman wont be coming from CA for a while, but on the workshop its been fixed through this and eventually the community bugfix:
Are there any mods that you guys recommend? Like QOL or performance or anything else you find a must :)
Only one I use is Grimhammer 2, a total conversion mod. It really spices up the vanilla game with new features, mechanics, and more variety.
Of course, Rosé Fighter's linked mod above is basically required right now. The one army bug is pretty vicious.
Yes!
Brutal Battles- Units are more tightly formed, and there are some minor collision changes that enhance how the units brutally charge each other and clash. IE Spearman have tighter formations, initial charges really get things like cavalry units in there. It's very subtle!
GCCM/Custom Maps- https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1182188528
Adds a bunch of maps across both Vortex and Mortal Empires. Adds alot more maps to do battle in, although *some* maps has the AI act wonky. The link is for the main mod but there is a collection of mods to add.
Dryrains Reskin Overhaul- https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1167252881
Adds lore-friendly reskins/additional skinning for alot of units across multiple factions. Adds alot of more variety to the units and armies.
Less Blood/Less Gore- https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1573602662
If you have the Blood/Gore addon, this one tones it down because it can get pretty ridiculous having the vanilla add on.
Immersive Battle Banners(No longer updated)- https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1159967423
Changed the banners to be more lore friendly/stylized. Unfortunately it has been abandoned, but still works for the forseeable future.
Rebanner II- https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1170705545
Adds more "Banners" for use with more interesting effects
Building Progression Icons- https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1161902443
Basically instead of every icon having the same picture for a tree, it changes them up in a way that is representative of the in-game art and gives you a nice UI change.
Alternative Lighting- https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1266710724
Some example screenshots, but it makes things a bit...not duller, but darker? More color balanced? I think it looks nice!
And of course, the mandatory one-
One Army Bug Fix- https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1962003012
Basically the last update broke things with the Vampire Coast/Vampire Counts/Lizardmen, in which they only recruited one army(Lizardmen being the exception because every 20 turns or so they could do their rite to summon an army). What this meant is that both in the Vortex and Mortal Empires, They would get completely obliterated fast. Right now it's pretty mandatory.
There is also a community bugfix mod, but it's in the process of being updated.
Another ones I personally always have active are:
Total Unit Resize II - Makes lord Characters and such less huge so they don't look so weird next to normal troops
Save Camera Settings - Saves the camera settings, don't have to adjust them again every new campaign
Better Camera - Lets you zoom in and out more
Total Unit Resize II - Makes lord Characters and such less huge so they don't look so weird next to normal troops
Save Camera Settings - Saves the camera settings, don't have to adjust them again every new campaign
Better Camera - Lets you zoom in and out more
Someone else re-uploaded the mod and said they're going to care for the old modder's stuff going forward.
Thanks for this.
I was wondering why the Lizardmen only appears to have one army roaming about in my Khalida playthrough.
Dear lord this game!!! Sooo addictive!!! Wish I have tried TW games earlier... Well right now I'm at turn 100 and have finished two of the rituals as HE. I have like 80-85% of the starting island. Did some influence maneuvering and also a few confederations with HE. Now problem is I feel spread too thin :( I have 5 armies and one hero and I also have quite a bit of penalty/upkeep for multiple armies around 2k I think.
Also chaos corruption have spread like everywhere on the west side and I get causalities when I travel there, even on my own soil. Also money is really tight right now and I trade with everyone I can.
Playing on normal and I also can't seem to win a reasonably even battle without phyrrhic victory. My armies consist of light armor archers, spears, lothern shields, 2 dragons and some glaives (can't control cavalry well, also lack of gold).
So yeah, any tips, do I have too many armies? Should I concentrate on one enemy at a time (tried this but others backstab me in the east). Can't stop playing...
Also chaos corruption have spread like everywhere on the west side and I get causalities when I travel there, even on my own soil. Also money is really tight right now and I trade with everyone I can.
Playing on normal and I also can't seem to win a reasonably even battle without phyrrhic victory. My armies consist of light armor archers, spears, lothern shields, 2 dragons and some glaives (can't control cavalry well, also lack of gold).
So yeah, any tips, do I have too many armies? Should I concentrate on one enemy at a time (tried this but others backstab me in the east). Can't stop playing...
Around the mid-late game, which is roughly where you are, you should be marching with a spare stack alongside your main army. It's relatively difficult to get out of the pyrrhic victory loop without a dominating army, so the solution is to just have two stacks and auto-resolve, or play it out if you're happy to control 40 units. It gets boring but there are still big battles to be had, its just a solution for the fodder armies that you have to chew through.
For Chaos, that should be the chaos invasion - if you wipe out the armies that spawned the map-wide corruption should stop.
Your army at this point should be a little more teched up, at least one main army. spears and lothern sea guard are great but you'll want to supplement with some high tier units is possible. If cav are completely out of the picture then I'd just put in a couple swordmasters of hoeth or white lions of chrace. You don't want your entire frontline to be filled with them, but their armor piercing is useful against high armor infantry.
I assume you mean raising an army per province and not keeping armies around a province.
I don't know about other people but I don't have any hard or fast rule on that. Early on I might try and raise a second army after two or three full provinces, but it really depends on the race's economy and playstyle. Once I'm in the mid game and I start confederating it just goes really fast and it largely depends on how many wars I'm fighting and how many fronts I have to cover. I'll typically be fielding 4-6 armies, most of them coupled up especially if I'm up against another major faction with a similar Strength rank.
Some of it also depends on factions. TK should be getting more armies whenever they are available, for instance. VCounts, especially Kemmler, can easily have supporting armies of nothing but free skeletons/zombies. Bretonnia doesn't pay the scaling supply lines penalty so you can afford more armies or even just using single lord armies early on as support.
High elves have generally expensive armies, so you don't want too many of them. Spearmen are not bad bud against better infantry they are expected to die because they are made for holding a position, not doing damage.
Generally, any Greatswort/greataxe/dual wielding infantry unit will make mincemeat out of spear units. Since you are short on cash i wouldn't kick all spear units out but consider helping them out with white lions or swordsmen of hoeth.
Basically you hold the line with spears and send the heavier infantry in the spots with the most dangerous attackers.
Also, if you don't want to use cavalry use your dragons to rearcharge. This makes enemy formations flee more quickly and you have fewer casualties. Also, if you angle the breath attacks from the side on engaged enmies you'll do lots of damage with minimal friendly fire.
Lastly, consider adding mages to your armies. A mage of life, which is basically the healing school, is an easy way to keep your troops alive without too much added micromanagement.
My rule of thumb is i should be always earning at least 2000. I won't raise an army to decrease it beyond that unless absolutely necessary.
The reason i chose 2000 is because most buildings up to tier 3 cost rarely cost more then 4000. This means that if i conquer a city i can at the very least upgrade 1 building very 2 turns.
Alongside the above if i am not at war with anyone I also disband low chevrons units. Any money i'm not wasting in upkeep can be used to invest in creating more money
Well shoot :(
after turn 100 shit hit the fan, twice :( As I have mostly the whole island (Ulthuan) and have only 6 armies I was spread thin. My biggest enemy is Naggarond and they are by far the strongest faction on my map. They have like 10 armies that I can see and they dislike me a lot (300+).
First time I started 3rd ritual and got owned by Chaos hordes. I reloaded and tried to get a better hold of my lands, and this time raised couple of more armies and concentrated them on the side where Chaos spawned the last time. Aaaaaaand nope Chaos spawns on the east this time. They raze stuff and I try and scramble over there to stop them. Buuuuuut my dear friend Malekith arrives with 4-5 armies and completely decimates my west coast.
So now I can go back even more, turn 60 something, but I don't think I can handle this many enemies all at once, and I don't know if I should go after Malekith earlier or what. This is my first time playing TW games and aside from being very addictive this feels very hard for me, even on normal.
I have watched a few YT videos and tutorials but it kinda didn't help :) So any advice would be greatly appreciated. Perhaps this campaign is already lost and I should restart completely?
after turn 100 shit hit the fan, twice :( As I have mostly the whole island (Ulthuan) and have only 6 armies I was spread thin. My biggest enemy is Naggarond and they are by far the strongest faction on my map. They have like 10 armies that I can see and they dislike me a lot (300+).
First time I started 3rd ritual and got owned by Chaos hordes. I reloaded and tried to get a better hold of my lands, and this time raised couple of more armies and concentrated them on the side where Chaos spawned the last time. Aaaaaaand nope Chaos spawns on the east this time. They raze stuff and I try and scramble over there to stop them. Buuuuuut my dear friend Malekith arrives with 4-5 armies and completely decimates my west coast.
So now I can go back even more, turn 60 something, but I don't think I can handle this many enemies all at once, and I don't know if I should go after Malekith earlier or what. This is my first time playing TW games and aside from being very addictive this feels very hard for me, even on normal.
I have watched a few YT videos and tutorials but it kinda didn't help :) So any advice would be greatly appreciated. Perhaps this campaign is already lost and I should restart completely?
The later rituals are designed so you loose some stuff, so don't feel too bad about that.
The reason they spawn somewhat far away from your base is so you have time to damage your enemy as much as possible before they reach your heartland.
That means: build walls in every settlement. Max out the walls on the big doors too.
And also: fight the enemies on your walls. Siege battles are hugely advantageous for the defender. Even with a small force you can kill a lot of troups. Don't let these auto-resolve even with bad odds!
Have an army in your capital when you trigger the ritual. Armies will spawn right next to it, especially the later rituals.
Lightning strike is a high level lord ability that guarantes that only one army is involved in the fight. This can be helpful as well.
The reason they spawn somewhat far away from your base is so you have time to damage your enemy as much as possible before they reach your heartland.
That means: build walls in every settlement. Max out the walls on the big doors too.
And also: fight the enemies on your walls. Siege battles are hugely advantageous for the defender. Even with a small force you can kill a lot of troups. Don't let these auto-resolve even with bad odds!
Have an army in your capital when you trigger the ritual. Armies will spawn right next to it, especially the later rituals.
Lightning strike is a high level lord ability that guarantes that only one army is involved in the fight. This can be helpful as well.
I think my biggest issue is that my armies are weak and also that I suck at fighting. I was watching some videos of people playing on VH and even Legendary, and they break much larger armies in minutes while I can't seem to do that even after I give them heavy losses. Is there a dedicated TW forum like civfanatics for Civilization?
TWCenter and the official forums. But both are havens for the weird right-wingers that love map games. The official subreddit meanwhile is generally helpful and at least decently moderated.
If you're looking to improve in battle I always recommend going over to Zerkovich's YouTube channel and looking through the playlists. Lots focus on battle tips and correcting mistakes you might be making and are mostly quite short.
Would dropping difficulty to easy help? Or should I stick with normal and learn to deal with it?
Whats your campaign difficulty and battle difficulty? If you feel comfortable in the campaign map, have you thought of knocking down the battle difficulty to easy/very easy?
Personally if you feel battles are too hard i'd drop the dificulty. The dificulty just buffs or adds penalties. The AI will remain the same.
I think the only difference in AI is in VH/legendary campaign dificulties where the AI HEAVILY focuses on the player. The AI on those dificulties will come for the player even if there is a weaker easier target nearby.
One other recommendation is to abuse the slowmotion/pause button. As someone that has very little skill in RTS i almost play total war as a turn based game because everything is too fast for me.
Imo, it's worth it to learn the battles on normal. Using the battle speed options, as others suggested, should make the battles easier without crippling the AI.
Doing this helps with managing things like cavalry or monsters that are more demanding to control - while still requiring you to use them appropiately.
That's only if you enjoy learning this stuff though. Pick easy if you aren't having fun on normal.
Also, the game lets you set campaign and battle difficulty separately. Easy campaign setting means you'll have less armies to fight.
I started my first campaign with Normal difficulty and then raised it to Hard (because I felt that the AI tends to ignore you a bit in normal until you directly declare war on them and the provinces are too easy with public control).
Note: I always kept battle difficulty at Normal.
Stick with Normal and also consider having some hero's on the campaign map (may be its a bit late if you are not doing this already at turn 100). Like some mages have a HUGE perks by just being present a province, one of them decreases the construction time/costs by 30%, one of them increases income in province. If you have multiple of those mages in a single province, the effects add on each other and gives you a very large leeway for handling money.
More money you can save or generate per turn, more stronger armies you can have.
As for myself, I restarted my first HE Vortex Campaign after a disastrous one the first time ( #1,956 ) and on the next one..
- I chose not to get the Sword of Khaine (ha!)
- I chose not to conquer the entire island of Ulthuan
- I chose not to confederate the other HE factions (because I wasn't ready to handle the huge mass of land where movement from the bottom to top burns a lot of turns).
- Sent an army to help a HE faction clear out the Norsca to the east
- Sent two armies to defeat the raiding Sartosa army, siege Sartosa and occupy it
- Sent armies to Naggarond and make Malekith run for his life, until the game decided that he has to some how stay alive with a sole settlement at the south pole of the map
Learned from my first playthrough and made a better one in the second.
Malekith on the run in my playthrough, if it makes you happy..
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Quickmatch works again. I'm not sure if the armybug has been fixed.
i was playing FM
When i noticed a skaven symbol.
Is football a way to gather money to buy warpstone?
Are the top players skaven experiments?
Is there a skaven football league?
When i noticed a skaven symbol.
Is football a way to gather money to buy warpstone?
Are the top players skaven experiments?
Is there a skaven football league?
For those that don't know CA helps SI with the 3d engine; i guess the warhammer team is the one helping SI
There's no such thing as rat-men, certainly no rat-men playing the beautiful game. Take this man to the stockades
As a writing exercise to keep my skills fresh, I started to write a blog where I ranked the factions of this game from worst to best based on entirely objective, scientific methods (such as "Who is cooler?") You can find part 1 of this list here, and part 2 here. The last part, consisting of my top 4, is probably going to be in a couple of days, because of course I accidentally wrote far more than I thought I was going to.
Also, been messing around with the Malus Darkblade campaign, and that's been surprisingly fun once you get past his initial rough start. Being able to pop two elixirs to get to absolute minimum possession, then build a ton of stuff for half price has done great things for my infrastructure. It probably helped that I had access to an event that gave me 10,000 Gold the turn right after I chose to keep Hag Graef, but in Mortal Empires at least it seems like keeping that place is the better option than giving it up.
Also, been messing around with the Malus Darkblade campaign, and that's been surprisingly fun once you get past his initial rough start. Being able to pop two elixirs to get to absolute minimum possession, then build a ton of stuff for half price has done great things for my infrastructure. It probably helped that I had access to an event that gave me 10,000 Gold the turn right after I chose to keep Hag Graef, but in Mortal Empires at least it seems like keeping that place is the better option than giving it up.
I read in a golden plaque this afternoon that the lizardmen are the number 1. I'm sure you follow the great plan.
I agree with a lot of what you wrote. A few comments:
- you said you never played atilla. If you don't mind a hard game i'd recomend it. It is a completely different feeling to all other total wars. The focus on surviving instead of empire building makes it a very unique experience.
- you talk about having a hard time cycle charging. You can use the J key to withdraw cavalry from engagement. Also after a charge you should let the cavalry fight for around 10 secs.
- A small nit pick. No race has been "untouched" since the second game, much less those that came from the first.
- I think you never gave a true chance at Throg. His buffs to trolls are very downplayed by you while they are borderline OP. Trolls are a monstrous infantry that has regeneration and high AP damaged,their weakness is their low morale. Throg not only completely negates their weakness but further buffs their physical resistance. Throg + 5-6 troll units at 9 chevron rank can take down almost everything.Even tier 5 spearmen will have a hard time beating 2 troll groups at the same time.
- I LOLED at elves lores.
- I also agree that Vlad is amazing, super fun. He is also the only faction that starts with 2 LL. All others require a quest/objective/conf.
I am going to say i really enjoyed your writing. I wish i had your skill in english. My OT looks like crap when compared o your descriptions.
Thanks for reading! I do want to try out some of the older Total War games at some point, and Atilla being all about things being terrible all the time seems genuinely appealing (if divisive, given that someone else I know very much told me not to play Atilla) I'll probably end up picking that and Rome II up whenever they're on sale next. Really, the only Total War game I've been told in no uncertain terms to avoid like the plague is Thrones of Brittania.
Thanks for reminding me about pressing J to withdraw too. Like holding alt and then click-dragging to move, it's one of those things that the game never explicitly tutorialized but should probably become a crucial part of my game plan. I still only play battles on normal difficulty (I don't particularly like difficulty ratings that just help the AI cheat,) and I tend to hit the slow-mo button when things get hectic, but I have been seriously considering at least dipping my toe into competitive if only because it seems like a different game.
As for Throgg and Norsca in general, in retrospect I think I might've ranked them a little low. Fighting against Norsca in my Empire game, and having to deal with regenerating Skin Wolves and Trolls is a complete pain in the ass, something that I imagine makes Throgg even scarier. I do wish they had a more interesting generic lord than the Marauder Chieftain, but at least with the way confederation works for them you're almost assured to have access to both Throgg and Wulfrik regardless of who you start with.
Noraca is fun. What I did during my campaign was basically leave Norsca behind and migrated towards Brettonia's greener pastures. Amassed a hefty sum to build up my mammoth army then went back to Norsca to challenge whoever the current leader is and confederated all of it. I then went thru my shitlist (high elves basically declared war on me without provocation) and conquered/razed them.
Currently playing a Kroq-Gar VH vortex campaign and I don't have the Hunter and Beast DLC but got three Saurians from confederating with Hexoatl. I guess that's a good way of getting them. Or maybe I just got lucky since they usually like to confederate right after losing most of thier armies. Big Mazda did have a lot of debt and was on the verge of losing a couple of settlements tho.
Like, a DLC unit? That can happen because AIs have no unit restrictions.
I once confederated with some Empire faction and got access to a DLC lord without owning it at the time. Was kinda buggy in TWWH1 though; IIRC once he was dismissed I couldn't redeploy him.
Yea I figured CA would do this so you can get a little taste and the you buy it.
And after unleashing three dread Saurians on 3 Wulfhart stacks, yeah they are OP lol
I read the other two parts. Great reads! Reading third part now and will edit with my thoughts.