Total War WARHAMMER II |OT| The age of dwarf is over. The time of the Waagh! has come!

[Anno]

 

[Zoidn]

The patch notes are now available as well. https://www.totalwar.com/blog/total-war-warhammer-ii-the-total-waaagh-update/

 

[Rygar 8Bit]

I'll just post this here as well if any new players are looking for a bit of help with the combat. I'll add more to it tomorrow, but I need to go to bed now.

Grouping is key.
Before the battle starts make the formation you want, preferably armored and units with shields (you can see if they are on that unit info scroll on the left side of the screen. The green text under Thorgrim says he's Armoured and a Melee Expert) in the front with ranged in the back and a few melee on the sides (I tend to put spear or halberd units back there to help fight off cavalry or monster units that will try and kill my ranged) to either defend your ranged or move in when needed on the front lines. Also try and put your army on top of a hill any chance you get, you get bonus for fighting downhill and the enemy take a penalty for attacking uphill.

After you have them set up the way you want press cntrl + A to select your whole army then cntrl + G to group them (You can cntrl + any number if you want to assign different units to different groups, but you really don't need to. Maybe at most your cavalry units.) Once they are grouped click that lock to lock their formation.

Once I do that I always turn on Guard Mode (that shield icon on the bottom) so my units don't chase and break formation when the enemy I'm fighting runs away. I also turn off Skirmish Mode ( Icon on the bottom right) so my ranged units don't run away if they are engaged by enemies in melee. When my ranged are attacked I'll bring another unit in to help them or I'll have other ranged units attack who ever is attacking the other ranged units.


I'll edit this in a second let me play this match real quick and I'll update this with some more basic combat tips. Need pictures of these stunties crushing these Chaos.


Here I just let them come to me and let them tire themselves out charging me and paused it (top right corner of the screen, slomo that is right next to the pause icon is also a good tool to help new players manage the battlefield. Everything will be super slow giving you time to see where you need to move units where or who to attack) when they were about to get to my army so I can counter charge them with my fresh frontline units. Don't select your whole army, just your front line and double right click the unit you want them to attack so they charge in and get a charge damage bonus. Also sending my melee lord against the enemy melee lord to duel and and tie him up so he doesn't go killing my units.

Pausing will also allow you to see badass stuff like this.

But lets say you don't want to sit back and wait for the enemy army to get to you then what you'd want to do is hit 1 to select your whole army then hold cntrl + single right click (double right click if you want them all to run, avoid this over long distances it will tire your whole army). This will have your whole army walk forward in formation, and it will have each of your units target a different enemy unit to go after. It'll look like this with all the red lines being your units each going after a different enemy unit.

When they get close to the enemy pause the game then select your frontline units and double right click them on enemy front line units to charge and get a charge damage bonus.


This is one of the best things you can do in a battle, breaking a units morale to make them flee. Notice the white bar under the units green and red bar (health bars) this Feral Manticore has taken so much focus fire that it has lost of it's white bar and has broken so now it will run until it musters enough courage (leadership) to return to the fight with a highly reduced white bar. There's a couple things you can do here
1. Have a unit chase the broken unit until it flees off the side of the map, and leaves the battle.

2. Let it flee and use your units to focus on a different enemy unit, preferably used to flank an enemy unit. Until this Manticore regains enough leadership to return. My favorite thing to do is just wait for them to come back and as they are running back to the fight I just light them up with 2 ranged units and normally break them all over again. If they break enough they will get a status called Shattered. It makes it so no matter what they can't get any leadership back and will run off the edge of the map and flee the battle.

Here's a poor caster getting shattered.

Another key offensive is getting behind enemy lines with any fast units you have, normally cavalry, or if you have em flying monster units. Artillery need to be dealt with fast and shut down.

Basic front line tactics, use any idle units you have or cavalry and get around the enemies back as they are fighting your other units and then charge them from behind to get a bunch of bonuses. Enemies that are attacked from behind or flanked on the sides will take extra damage and take a big hit to their morale. Here I moved some idle Ironbreakers who just fought off some Chaos on the sides then I circled around and attacked these guys from behind.

And then I won. As you can see I didn't do anything crazy, my army pretty much did everything themselves with some minor micro management and I barely lost any troops. I won before I even finished getting shots of other things I wanted to show. So I'll do that perhaps tomorrow I need to go to bed.

 

[oracledragon]

Should happen soon.

It's a range of turns based on your empire's size (so if you're doing well it will happen sooner) with a min and max range, IIRC. Don't know if it has any other conditions.

I'm trying to find the exact info but failing. 😔

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It seems like this mechanic is not that well documented, so lots of guessing on how it works. I did manage to find what looks like some good info on it though on some Steam posts (https://steamcommunity.com/app/594570/discussions/0/3140616601477935187/, https://steamcommunity.com/app/594570/discussions/0/3865717170943713897/?l=finnish). A summary:

• There are two Chaos invasions that happen in the Mortal Empires campaign
• The first happens at "Imperium Level 7" (42 points), approximately mid-game. This invasion never ends, and any time there are less than 2 stacks of Warriors of Chaos, more will spawn.
• The section happens at "Imperium Level 10 (70 points)", approximately late-game. This is the one that includes Archaon, and if you defeat it, you have "peace".
• The following parameters influence the points needed for the Imperium Level:
  • 2 points if you still own your original capital city
  • 1 point for each capital city you own
  • 1 point for each region you own
  • 1 point for each region one of your vassals own
• If you don't have the correct Imperium Level, there are turn timers as well:
  • Mid-game invasion: turn 100+
  • Late-game invasion: turn 150+
• There is apparently some randomness to the turn that the invasion starts, up to a 20 turns to begin when the conditions are fulfilled.

I think some of the confusion around the turn timers and conditions are because apparently there used to be a turn timer (not indicated what the limits were) as well as higher Imperium Level requirements to spawn the invasion. At some point CA removed the turn timer, so it relied on only Imperium Level. Then later in the Resurgent Update, they lowered the Imperium Level to trigger the invasions as well as restored the turn timer (https://www.totalwar.com/blog/total-war-warhammer-ii-patch-notes-the-resurgent-update/).

For my campaign I have 42 settlements across 11 provinces, of which I have 13 provincial capitals, plus 1 more for my starting capital. So I should have :

Settlements = 42 points
Capitals = + 13 extra points
Home capital = + 2 points
TOTAL = 57 points

Still, not a well documented or seemingly well understood mechanic... since all of the controls are in the LUA files I'm a bit surprised there isn't a mod that shows that your Imperium Level is for Mortal Empires (or perhaps there is and I just could't find it).

 

[Interested Observer]

I asked yesterday which faction to play next, I've settled on the Lizards which is cool, but just this morning I saw this video and if I had any doubt before it is 100% gone now. I will follow the great plan.

 

[RazzMahTazz1319]

Trailer is up on youtube

 

[Toño]

They added another FLC though Total War Access, the Glade Captain for Wood Elves.

Edit: Updated list.

-Skavens-
Legendary Lords:

Throt the Unclean (with Vortex and Mortal Empire campaigns)​

Heroes:

Packmaster​

Ghoritch (Legendary Hero)​

Skaven Chieftain (Free-LC)​

Units:

Brood Horrors​

Mutant Rat Ogres​

Wolf Rats​

-Wood Elves-
Legendary Lords:

The Sisters of Twilight Naestra and Arahan (with Vortex and Mortal Empire campaigns)​

Drycha (with Mortal Empire campaign) (Free-LC if you have the previous "Realm of the Wood Elves" DLC)​

Lord:

Spellweaver​

Heroes:

Queen Ariel (Legendary Hero)​

Glade Captain (Total War Access Free-LC)​

Units:

Zoats​

Great Stag Knights​

Bladesingers​

Glade riders with spears (Free-LC if you have the previous "Realm of the Wood Elves" DLC)​

 

[Hella]

New update:

The Asrai Resurgent Update is now live!
Changes to the Forge of Daith
We've heard your feedback on the Forge, and have implemented a preliminary set of changes to deal with the most prominent gameplay issues:

• Items will now revert back to their previous upgrade level after Reforging expires, rather than their base level
• The 'Naestra leaves' option that appears when Daith offers to reforge a completed item with now reduce the timer until the next new item is offered by 2 turns

In addition, we've done a balance pass on all the items offered by the Forge. All items have had their stats tweaked, and Reforged items will now be significantly stronger, so they are viable choices in comparison to permanent upgrades.
Changes to offices
With the Wood Elf offices, we generally sought to avoid too many factionwide effects as these tend to promote recruiting Lords purely to fill a slot, then disbanding them. While this is appropriate for some factions – such as the Empire, where filling the Elector Count seats is the goal of the campaign – for Wood Elves we wanted to focus on offices as a tool for customising Lords and enabling alternative strategies and playstyles.
In this context, Durthu's offices were meant to complement a more defensive playstyle where your Treemen lords would passively buff their local region while defending it, whereas Orion's were designed to promote a more 'spiky' playstyle focused on expansion and contraction, with multiple armies running alongside each other to maximise bonuses.
In retrospect, the effects were probably not strong enough to have the desired effect. As such we have added adding the following:
Orion

• Master of Scouts and Herald of the Hunt: +30% income from raiding to local forces
• Master of Drums and Master of Supplies: +25% income from post-battle loot to local forces
• Talon of Kurnous, Spirit of the Hunt, and Master of the Hunt: +15% razing income to local forces

Like other effects, these are doubled in strength during Wild Hunts. If several Lords with the same effect are in the same region, the effects will stack
Durthu

• All non-faction-leader Office slots provide -20% upkeep for all units while in owned territory

Bug fixes and improvements

• Fixed an issue where Ariel would not spawn in the Eye of the Vortex campaign after manually fighting a Forest Encounter
• Fixed a bug responsible for various issues (e.g. some cases of unresponsive Forest Encounters, the Forge of Daith not firing)
• Drycha's quest chain will no longer abort if Middenheim is captured instead of raided
• Coeddil now has the Immortal trait
• Fixed a crash that could occur when escape was pressed after starting a ritual
• Custom battles no longer crash when loading with more than 20 Clan Moulder units are selected
• Removed some legacy advice that triggered on constructing the Oak of Ages which could cause soft-locks if the player completed a Ritual of Rebirth at the same time
• We have fixed a problem which caused unresolvable Forest Encounters issues. However, this will not fix existing broken Forest Encounters. As such, we're removing the Forest Health penalty from 'unresolved encounters' so that these broken encounters will not permanently hinder campaigns
• The Wood Elf version of the Gaean Vale main settlement chain now has correct effects and unlocks the correct number of settlement slots
• The level 4 and 5 Tree Spirits building (and the level 3 version for Drycha) now grant +1 recruitment capacity for Dryads
• Orion's Lord Effects now also apply to Great Stag Knights
• Ariel's Chosen will now correctly apply its melee attack increase effects during Forest Battles
• The Stolen Power trait awarded from Drycha's quest chain now correctly grants physical resistance to Tree Spirit units
• Archaon's faction effect now correctly increases weapon strength per rank
• Wood Elf factions are now much less likely to refer to each other as traitors when they have positive diplomatic relations
• We en-baubled the Oak of Ages but the dryads ate them all
• The Lost Plateau region now correctly has a Heathland UI indicator
• Throt will no longer be forced into a Military Alliance with the Wood Elves after completing his Vortex Final Battle
• Doomfire Warlocks once again use a weaker version of Doombolt for their bound abilities
• Settra is once again Undead when on his Chariot of the Gods mount
• Coeddil, Ariel and Ghoritch now have zero upkeep, bringing them in line with other legendary heroes
• The hidden army ability used to grant siege attacker is now actually hidden. The Power of Placeholder was too great to be handed out so freely
• Fixed an issue that prevented the multiplayer leaderboards from being reset correctly. The multiplayer leaderboard has not been reset with this update
• Various localization fixes

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87.3 MB update that's taken like 15 minutes to apply 😥

 

[Chucat]

Happy to hear it!

By the way, what difficulty do you all use in your campaigns? I'm thinking to jump from Hard to Very Hard, but I'm not sure what are the main differences between these difficulties. If its main difference is giving more money so the AI can make endless stacks, I think I'm good with Hard lol

Click to shrink...

I did a mod for this so I can pretty much just spit numbers at you, I'm just running a find replace for player/AI, but it SHOULD still all match up.

Difficulty goes (Easy/Normal/Hard/VH/Legendary)

Campaign (Mechanical Changes)

- The AI will gain 0/0/100/250/500 passive experience per turn for all units.
- The AI's buildings are 0/-50%/-60%/-70%/-80% cheaper to construct
- The AI has a lower resistance to occupying territory (10/40/50/60/70)
- The AI can recruit units that cost 0%/30%/50%/60%/70% less
- The AI has 3/4/5/7/9 bonus replenishment for all units.
- The AI's characters have 10/10/12/14/16 bonus replenishment.
- The AI has 0/0/-10%/-15%/-20% less upkeep for all units.
- The AI suffers -30%/-50%/-60%/-70%/-80% less attrition in all territories
- The AI is immune to Horde infighting
- The AI has 2/3/4/5/6 global recruitment slots and 2/2/3/4/4 local recruitment slots
- The AI has 20/40/60/100/125 bonus growth in settlements
- The AI has 5/6/7/8/9 bonus growth for hordes
- Colonising costs 0 money (it will still consume troops)
- The AI will gain 10 influence per turn and have a 0/0/25%/50%/50% reduction in the cost of Intrigue Actions if they are playing High Elves.
- Slave rites are free for the AI on all difficulties.
- The AI generates 4/6/8/10/12 of their ritual currency per turn in the vortex campaign.
- The AI has a 60% reduction in the decline of their Slaves
- The public order penalty for slaves is reduced by 20%/30%/40%/60%/80%
- The player has a +1/0/-2/-4/-8 change to their public order.

The player also gets a negative multiplier for their units in autoresolve (-0.01/-0.05/-0.07500001/-0.1/-0.15) and the AI gets some bonus for siege equipment or something.

Campaign (AI Changes)

This one is a bit harder to explain but basically there's a list of priorities the AI will choose from to do things. Hard AI adds in two tasks that are pretty much "go and gank the player"

Battle Changes

This one is modified by the BATTLE difficulty, difficulties are laid out by Easy/Normal/Hard/Very Hard

AI gets -4/0/4/10 more morale.
Player gets 4/0/-2/-4 more morale
AI gets a 0.8/1/1.1/1.15 multiplier to Charge Bonus and Melee Attack
AI gets a 0.9/1/1.1/1.15 multiplier to Melee Defence and Melee Damage
AI gets a -10/0/10/20 bonus to missile reload speed.

So in conclusion, the AI gets cheaper buildings and units, bonus growth and experience, near immunity to all attrition, bonus recruitment slots, and just general better units.



I tend to play on VH/N but that's mostly because I want the cheevos. If I could pick whatever I want, I'd probably do Normal or Hard with Normal Battle Difficulty.