Total War: Warhammer

Started by Rayfer, July 17, 2015, 10:00:05 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Gusington



слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

JasonPratt

Messed around with my beloved Bretonnians last night, now that the last faction pack for a while has been dropped; but still waiting a bit to see when the Steel Faith mod will be updated for Tomb Kings. (It's on the way, but TK was just released so needs some more days.)

I think I'm going to call the video DAR, if I make one, WORLD WOE CARCASSONE. Or maybe CARCASSONE: TOTAL WAAAAAGHH.

("Have _you_ ever been playing that nice tile-laying game Carcassone and thought to yourself, this game's nice but it kind of needs world-ending monsters?! Me, too!"  :D )


I've also been fiddling around prepping for a campaign in Man-o-war: Corsair, aiming to sign up with the Bretonnians and see if I can help bring a peaceful alliance to the Old World coasts, for anyone willing to join up.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Gusington

Spent my off day taking care of daughters and dogs, cleaning the house, running and then watching the rest of the Punisher on Netflix, so now I am finally up to choosing a faction. I think I have finally nailed it...Norsca. Yes I think I want to play as Norsca. Enough humans to feel familiar but with just enough Chaos and evil to be interesting.


слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

Sir Slash

Who's your leader, Chuck Norsca?  :2funny:
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

Gusington

^I hope he's really a character in the game.

I haven't chosen yet...still reading about the different factions. Thing is I want to play as almost all of them in the first game...Norsca, Bretonnia, Empire, Dwarves (naturally), Vampire Counts and Chaos.

Hard choice.


слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

JasonPratt

#980
^ Pick something kind of easy to start with. Dwarves seem a good choice.

The Carcassone branch of Bretonnia is ranked hard, if I recall correctly, but at least one of the other two branches are normal. Naturally I'm starting with Carc, because if I'm going to be bossed around by the floating blonde lady I might as well sign up for that to begin with. ;)  :smitten:

One of the things about Carc (and Bret generally) is that you can spam crappy units up to a point -- an increasingly large point -- because your spammy units come from your worker pool. But then your spammy units cost less, too. But then your spammy units are spammy.

My starting concerns then, are:

1.) Stabilize my borders by getting out of my oversea war with the high elves (I don't even know why we're at war other than game balance), and by improving relations with the local elves (one of whose branches is at war with one of my branches, something I've also got to deal with eventually) and with the Quasi-Spaniards down south (whom nobody apparently wanted to play a campaign with, I guess.) This will require gold and deeds, no doubt.


2.) I'm going to try focusing on an ultra-mobile force of cavalry, speckled with some good-morale-and-skill infantry. Bret loves its cav, and Carc is no exception. I get some bonuses for cav cost upkeep, and can pick up more bonuses by specialization, so although this is a costly move in theory I'm planning for it to be more bearable in practice. Ideally I'd only have my infantry around to go root archers out of the woods. To facilitate this shift asap, I'm disbanding my raw peasant mobs, and changing my starting smithy over to stables as fast as I can -- as far as I can tell, none of my clerical infantry (so to speak) and none of my cav will need the smithy path, despite their armor and arms. Which is weird but convenient. As my starting army composition starts to shift over, I'll disband my slightly better peasants (archers and spears and swords) as they either wear out from casualties or haven't fought enough yet to level up. This strategy means I won't have spear foot troops, apparently (aside from what I start with plus garrisons). My archers will be limited to horse archers, too. I don't get good archers anyway, so I'm sure I can live with this: at worst, my archers can run away more effectively! (Those will be peasants unfortunately, but I'm willing to max my peasant economy safe-limit on 15+ horse archer companies.)


3.) I am assuming this will still be a relatively costly build, so I've got to work on improving my economy; also on improving my population growth which allows me to improve my economy faster (though at some delay since money and time is spent on pop growth first); also on improving my tech.


4.) I'm unsure what to do with lords and heroes. I mean, technically I know what to do with them, but I need a Lord for any armed group to travel, and I don't know that any of them will be fast enough to ride with a cav division. I suspect, although I can't be sure yet, that once I finish converting the smithy over to a stable, I'll stop getting what looks like armored footlords and start getting cavlords. Should I do prophetess ladies to lead forces? -- mainly only my eventual infantry divisions? -- or are they fast enough to keep up on the map? (Seems likely based on "damsel" hero movement but that might be misleading: my starting hero is a beast-magic damsel. Or is that randomly assigned? I think not.)


Any of this starting plan might have to be revised once the Steel Faith mod team upgrades to Tomb Kings, even though I somewhat doubt this will affect Bretonnia. But it might WILL DEFINITELY affect saves, so I'm trying to be patient and wait.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Gusington

Well I have good news for you Sir Slash...my first Total War: Warhammer campaign just ended in 9 turns. I think that beats your record by 1 turn. I had one battle, got spanked, then that army made a bee line directly to my one settlement and took it...game over  ::)

Now I am wondering: do I try again, turtle up like I usually do, and then attempt to conquer? I think that's what I'll do. This other northern tribe didn't look so tough but, well you know... L:-)



слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

Nefaro

Doesn't Bretonnia have the most boring/normal army list?

I've not played them yet, but browsing the faction units in custom battle setup makes them look comparably dull compared to the other factions.  Even The Empire.

Quote from: Gusington on January 24, 2018, 04:47:05 PM
Well I have good news for you Sir Slash...my first Total War: Warhammer campaign just ended in 9 turns. I think that beats your record by 1 turn. I had one battle, got spanked, then that army made a bee line directly to my one settlement and took it...game over  ::)

Now I am wondering: do I try again, turtle up like I usually do, and then attempt to conquer? I think that's what I'll do. This other northern tribe didn't look so tough but, well you know... L:-)

I think a big part of the difficulty in TW:Warhammer is learning how to best plan with your armies on the campaign map.  If you get careless, the AI will take advantage of you as if you were an attractive aspiring actress in Hollywood. 

Gotta be not only efficient in moving your armies around the campaign map, but also in knowing when best to use their special army stances.  Which can vary from faction to faction. 

Learning the building scheme in TW:W, which is closer to Shogun 2 than Rome2/Attila, along with the faction research & hero skill customization options was fairly easy.  Being ruthlessly effective at operating my armies on the campaign map has been the real learning curve for me.


Edit:
Time to begin a Tomb Kings campaign, methinks. 

<:-)

Gusington

^Me too. Started a new Norsca campaign and progressed to 15 turns. Learned to raid and learning the building browser. But I learned quick how a campaign can end after under 10 turns and not in a good way!

Question: not sure if any of you have played as Norsca. I feel you have, do the missions issued in the 'monster book' just occur in the background, passively, or does the player actually 'go on' these missions?


слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

Sir Slash

Gus... Did you throw your campaign in 9 turns just make me feel better about getting my ass kicked in 10 turns? What a great guy!   ;D   Damn. I thought Norsica were the badasses of this game. Kind of like Viking/Sons-of Anarchy. But it has been a very bad week for Vikings so... Seriously, this game has some of the best Campaign AI since Shogun 2 and the Battle AI will keep you on your toes. Mix in Magic and Flying Units and you've got a crazy mix in a fight for sure. If ass-kicking is inevitable, it's good to have it done in style.
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

Gusington

I wish I could say that I did it on purpose, but I can't :/

Started the same exact campaign again and found a lot of things to enjoy here, and noticed a ton of things I missed the first time. So now I am 15 turns in and will just sweep that 9 turn lost campaign under the TW rug.

Gearing up for a solid campaign now. Lesson learned - the campaign AI here is good, as you said above. Even the tactical AI is good. My whole downfall in that first attempt came from me thinking I could beat a larger army. Won't make that mistake again...

...who am I kidding, of course I will. But next time I will definitely be more ready. The tech tree here is great, btw. Can't wait to see the dwarven one.


слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd

JasonPratt

Quote from: Nefaro on January 24, 2018, 06:25:35 PM
Doesn't Bretonnia have the most boring/normal army list?

I'm going to say no: the Spaniards south of me have the most boring/normal army list. ;)

Relative to other playable factions, though, the Brets may have the most normal army. It still includes hippogriffs, griffons, a floating Enchantress as my main character (for the Carcassone branch), female wizards and prophetesses, and a green super-knight that basically can't be beaten. I'm honestly okay with the concept of mostly-just-regular-guys trying to deal with monsters and superhumans.  O0 (It's even entirely possible to field a Bret army totally composed of peasants, uptrained somewhat to asskicking levels, although personally I'm going to avoid the morale problems associated with that build.)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Nefaro

Quote from: JasonPratt on January 25, 2018, 01:22:51 PM
Quote from: Nefaro on January 24, 2018, 06:25:35 PM
Doesn't Bretonnia have the most boring/normal army list?

I'm going to say no: the Spaniards south of me have the most boring/normal army list. ;)

Relative to other playable factions, though, the Brets may have the most normal army. It still includes hippogriffs, griffons, a floating Enchantress as my main character (for the Carcassone branch), female wizards and prophetesses, and a green super-knight that basically can't be beaten. I'm honestly okay with the concept of mostly-just-regular-guys trying to deal with monsters and superhumans.  O0 (It's even entirely possible to field a Bret army totally composed of peasants, uptrained somewhat to asskicking levels, although personally I'm going to avoid the morale problems associated with that build.)
(my bold)

I just called it "boring" because I always prefer playing the more monstrous or mythical ones, in games like these.  Down to preferences, of course.

I get the impression that there are many people who prefer to start with the regular-ish or human factions.  It seemed to be the case for a number of people, here, after the first TW:W came out.  Hrmm.. what does that say about me preferring to be the baddies?  :-"

Jarhead0331

The Tomb Kings are interesting race to play. I haven't really delved into the m3chaincs that are unique to them, but in terms of units, I'm finding them a mixed bag. The low level rank and file units are extremely weak, but these do improve with time and research. The higher tier units start to get stronger and the giants are absolutely devastating. In the campaign, I started with a war Sphinx that is absolutely dynamite. The thing is unstoppable and just tears through enemy formations. It's turned a losing battle to victory on more than one occasion.
Grogheads Uber Alles
Semper Grog
"No beast is more alpha than JH." Gusington, 10/23/18


Gusington

Now 50 turns in in my Norsca campaign...it really is a totally different game than any TW I've played before. Has anyone played as the Norsca and completed a Monstrous Arcanum quest? I was attempting my first one last night and went to the location marked on the map, but found nothing...am I doing it wrong?


слава Україна!

We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

-JudgeDredd