Alright so I also bought this on sale (1+2) and now I'm looking to dip my toes in. I haven't really played any of the Total War games and I'm wondering how to best approach this.
Should I just start a campaign to fuck around and familiarize myself with everything? It all seems pretty overwhelming just looking at all the mechanics specific to the races and lords. I know the game suggests a difficulty for all the lords but are there specific ones that are especially suited to newcomers? Any general tips that are crucial starting out?
Generally speaking I am partial to the orcs but all of the factions look pretty cool honestly.
IMO the easiest starts are Tyrion (high elves) and Kroq-gar (lizardmen) in either vortex or mortal empires (ME). Honorablçe mention to gor-rok (lizardmen). Both of these campaign are easy for 2 reasons: very strong campaign bonuses AND a very strong LL, capable of taking down everyone.
Personally speaking I think Kroq-Gar is the easiest starting positions because the basic lizardmen units are very very strong (and kroq.gar gets a discount on them). A tier 2 saurus army can go toe to toe against armies that are tier 3-4. His starting position at a "corner" of the map allows you to focus on just 1 opponent.
Lizardmen weakness is a slow army with very limited range support. Lizardmen strenght is their HUGE health pools, extremely high leadership and very mobile and/or very high damage dinos. This effectively means that as long as your units turn the battle into a "meat grinder" you will win. So the "best" strategy for lizardmen is to jsut push for a melee fight while you micro manage 2-3 dinos to wreck the enemy key units.
The initial challnge comes from not having enough money to build/recruit units. As long as you can keep the skaven enemies on the defense you will win.
Tyrion is very easy BUT has a few chalanges at the start. HE have a very strong economy because they can manipulate any faction opinion. This means you can get a trade deal with most if not all good factions. Alongside this he starts in ulthuan which is an island that is mostly occupied with HE that generally speaking won't pick a fight with you. Your only problem at the start is Noctilus the vampire coast faction that occupies an island near ulthuan. While vampire coast armies are not good counters against the HE, noctilos enjoys sacking/rainding ulthuan. This means that if you don't take him out/force a peace/NAP then he will harrass and conquer any settlement without walls. Once you get over this initial challenge tyrion has the best starting position. He has a very rich and powerful home province that with lots of trade agreements gives him almost unlimited money. Alongside this by being in an island surrounded by friends he can carefully pick whom to attack first.
All that said I think that if you are used to strategy games you can just pick the faction that you rare the most interested in and start the game in easy/very easy dificulty. To my knowledge the only thing difficulty does is buffs/penalties. Once you have a grasp of the base mechanics increase to normal. My advice is to only go above normal if it is too easy for you because at the higher dificulties the AI is very keen on attacking the player.
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