So, Total War: Warhammer

[Theodoric]

I'm almost finished consolidating all of the Imperial provinces, so it's time to burn down Bretonnia and exteriminate the Dwarves. Both appear to have done pretty well while I was fighting chaos- Who should be my first target?

Head towards Bretonnia and be sure to conquer The Wasteland which is very profitable (going through the north means you can avoid Wood Elves until you're ready). Dwarves are best countered with attrition early on; spread vampiric corruption and vampire rebels will raze their mountain holds in the neighbouring provinces. It's important to get corruption high in the Zhufbar province as it opens up Castle Drakenhof to the Dwarven heartland. It's a slow process that requires a lot of hero activity; use your armies to mop op Bretonnia in the meantime.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

WAAAGH!!! I've finally completed the Grand Campaign as the Greenskins! Now to wait with bated breath for the release of Bretonnia and Isabella von Carstein!

[Forum Explorer]

Wiped out Vampire Counts, and well on my way to finishing off the other Undead faction. Took me slightly under 70 turns all things considered.

[shadow_archmagi]

MINOR CONTROLS DISCUSSION:

So, I grew up with Civ, where the "Select Next Army" button would select a random army that had not yet moved, and wasn't fortified or otherwise occupied. This could be frustrating, as sometimes you'd have five soldiers next to each other that you wanted to move in a strategically coordinated way, but the game would constantly automatically snap to a random boat on the far side of the world between each soldier.

Now, as I begin operation "A Banshee On Every Doorstep" in my attempt to make every province in Bretonnia at least 50% corrupt before I invade, I have many, many heroes. This has lead to extensive use of the "Select Next Army" button, which does not work the same way, and it took a couple seconds experimentation to figure out what was happening. The "Select Next Army" appears to select armies from right to left of the map; it orders them strictly by longitude. Note that it does this based off of current position, and regardless of latitude. Thus, it will generally select adjacent armies one after another, but since moving armies changes their longitude, they may not be selected in order, and units might be skipped.

IE:

Armies A, B, C, and D are sitting on the map, in that order. You move D west, so now it's ABDC. You hit "next army." From right to left, the next army is B. You move B south. You hit "next army" so it selects A. You move A east, so that the new order is BDAC. You hit "Next Army" and it selects D, which you already moved. You hit it again and it selects B, which you already moved. Satisfied that you've been through the full cycle, you end turn without touching C.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Can I earn achievements specific to a faction by playing a variant of that faction (for example, earning "Chief Spanna-Wacka" as either the Crooked Moon or Bloody Handz as opposed to just the basic Greenskins)?

[LCP]

Pretty sure you can, yeah.

[LCP]

Managed to get the perfect Foot of Gork in a ladder match today.







Wurrzag's a cheeky old sod isn't he

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Today's the day, people! FOR ZE LADEEE!!

[shadow_archmagi]

So, my Bretonnia test-game this morning got off to an awful start. I got a random event on turn 2 declaring that my entire civilization would have -20 obedience per turn for 20 turns unless I attacked the orcs. Defeating them gave Marianburg the chance to raise a 20/20 army, which meant that I couldn't siege their city without an even bigger army, but the peasant economy makes it very hard to field large forces early game....

I think I'm just going to start over and take Marianburg on turn 2 this time.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I'm guessing that's to goad you towards researching the techs that allow you to confederate with the other dukedoms. Bretonnia's campaign seems to be less about conquering the map and more to unify Bretonnia's traditional spot on the map and then develop your chivalry score until you win.

[Theodoric]

So, my Bretonnia test-game this morning got off to an awful start. I got a random event on turn 2 declaring that my entire civilization would have -20 obedience per turn for 20 turns unless I attacked the orcs. Defeating them gave Marianburg the chance to raise a 20/20 army, which meant that I couldn't siege their city without an even bigger army, but the peasant economy makes it very hard to field large forces early game....

I think I'm just going to start over and take Marianburg on turn 2 this time.

The way I did it was first quickly attacking the Orcs, then (under the cover of a peace treaty) waiting until Marienburg got into a war with their neighbours and got their army out. With your starting army plus a little bit more it's not too hard to take out Marienburg once it's undefended. Personally I've had a lot more problem taking Mousillon; undead are a hassle as Bretonnia and they can reinforce themselves very quickly with Raise Dead. Also the other Bretonnian realms are terrible allies, who love to attack random factions in the Empire and the South.

[shadow_archmagi]

The way I did it was first quickly attacking the Orcs, then (under the cover of a peace treaty) waiting until Marienburg got into a war with their neighbours and got their army out. With your starting army plus a little bit more it's not too hard to take out Marienburg once it's undefended. Personally I've had a lot more problem taking Mousillon; undead are a hassle as Bretonnia and they can reinforce themselves very quickly with Raise Dead. Also the other Bretonnian realms are terrible allies, who love to attack random factions in the Empire and the South.

Yeah, one rule I've learned from this game is to never sign defensive or military alliances. They just get you into bad wars every time.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Okay...you knew this was coming. With Bretonnia out now...what's a solid setup for a Bretonnian 20-unit stack? What's a good balance between peasant and knightly units to keep the Peasant Economy chugging along smoothly?

[LCP]

what's a solid setup for a Bretonnian 20-unit stack?

I've got no idea. Still figuring them out. The melee infantry seem very cost-efficient, but that's less of a draw in campaign than in MP. All the ground cavalry seem unambiguously good at what they do.

What's a good balance between peasant and knightly units to keep the Peasant Economy chugging along smoothly?

Anything that keeps your number of peasant units under the cap at the top of the screen? As far as I can tell the bonus from being 10 peasants under is exactly the same as the bonus from being 1 peasant under.

[shadow_archmagi]

King Louie is NUTS.

I just went after the BLOOD DUKE. I researched OH NO ZOMBIES so I had bonus leadership against undead, and then went to siege him... only to find out that he owned exactly one region and had accumulated two full-stack armies. On closer inspection though, both of his armies were entirely garbage units. So 40 units, sure, but that's like, 35 skeleton/zombies, 2 lords, 1 necromancer, and 2 bats.

Meanwhile, I've got two peasant mobs, two men at arms, four archers, two trebuchet, two grail knights, two errant knights, one pegasus, a heavenly damsel, and KING LOUIE. My damsel and my king are level 6ish.
---
The archers and trebuchets rain death onto the very slowly approaching horde, forcing the Red Duke to attack before his secondary army can reinforce fully. Louie personally instagibs the Red Duke (who was wounded from a battle with someone else at some point?) with his charge. The cavalry crash in waves against the zombies, while the peasant soldiers desperately try to hold the line. LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT! screams the Damsel, taking out half a squad with each cry. (And maintaining [ANGRY DEBUFF] wherever the fighting is thickest).

It's an easy battle. The Red Duke's forces disintegrate after killing less than half of my knights and peasants. Then the Trebuchet start firing again as the reinforcements emerge from the forest, and it starts all over. One of the grail squads gets wiped out. Louie's regeneration hits its limit. The archers run out of arrows and have to start slap-fighting the zombies. And then, miraculously, the game decides that I've 'won'. Every undead starts crumbling. There's a long, awkward pause where my army is standing surrounded by corpses but the "BATTLE END" screen hasn't come up, and then I see a lone necromancer run screaming and burning out of the forest. He rolls around on the hill for a bit and then dies- Uninjured by blade, but incapable of living without friends.
---
So now my main lord's army has damage resistance until and unless he retreats? Sounds rad.

But seriously, access to regeneration at such an early level, combined with easily-available damage reduction and an already-high armor value makes Louie very, very tanky. I look forward to what he's like at level 30.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Quick question about the Decree technologies Bretonnia can research. Are those cumulative, or do they have a unique situation where only one decree may be active at a given time, similar to edicts in a province?

Part of me doesn't like the idea of provoking the Wood Elves with the Forest's Edge decree, but it seems an inevitability, especially since Carcassone starts at war with them. It kinda contradicts the lore that implies the Lady of the Lake is a Wood Elf sorceress who manipulated Bretonnia's formation to create a nation of expendable humans Athel Loren could use as a shield...

[shadow_archmagi]

Quick question about the Decree technologies Bretonnia can research. Are those cumulative, or do they have a unique situation where only one decree may be active at a given time, similar to edicts in a province?

Part of me doesn't like the idea of provoking the Wood Elves with the Forest's Edge decree, but it seems an inevitability, especially since Carcassone starts at war with them. It kinda contradicts the lore that implies the Lady of the Lake is a Wood Elf sorceress who manipulated Bretonnia's formation to create a nation of expendable humans Athel Loren could use as a shield...

As technologies, they should be cumulative. Wreck those slendies.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I suppose the Bretons WOULD be offended at being manipulated...

[shadow_archmagi]

So, I haven't managed to get anyone to confederate with me as the Bretish. I've got the technology, and Artios's relationship is at 204... what exactly am I missing? Do I need to be overwhelmingly larger than them?

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I decided to start An Eye for an Eye, and I gotta tellya, cutting my teeth with the Greenskins to start with was a good idea. The Beastmen seem to play in a fundamentally similar way, just with hordes instead of settlements. Khazrak and Malagor are currently reducing Carroberg to ruin, though in reality it's more like a single army. Khazrak's horde is the actual army, while Malagor just has a pair of Ungor spear units that are mainly just there to act as meatshields for him, as he supplements Khazrak's main army with his spells.

[Vaz]

Don't forget to Raid to get your Required Gold. It is dead easy to do. A full stack of Ungor spears or Archers gives you some welly on the map and you get more when raiding with a full stack, especially with upkeep reducing techs.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

So now that Bretonnia's here, anyone think they've figured out who "An Old Friend" is for the final DLC?

[Leecros]

So I'm fairly new to Warhammer:Total War* with less than 50 hours into the game. I've managed to do a bit of derping around as The Empire and The Vampire Counts. Nothing really significant.

With the Bretonnia stuff released, I figured I would start a new campaign as Carcassonne(I've always had a thing for superpowered ladies, don't judge me). It's going pretty well, I managed to expand into the entirety of Estalia relatively early, because Khazrak One-eye went on a rampage through them and utterly destroyed them. I've also managed to Confederate Parravan and Bastonne.

Yet, despite all of this success and being very powerful, I'm having a really rough time trying to lure out and destroy the Wood Elves. They refuse to come out and fight me...even if I place a weaker army to raid their land and a strong army behind it to ambush. They dare not move against it. Neither do they muster for an attack which I can then counter attack them and any attempts of winning a siege against all of those archer units...even with my full strength...ends in disaster.

They aren't really causing a problem. Despite being at war with all of the elven factions, they have yet to must an attack outside of the Wood Elves making a move within the first 10-15 turns of the campaign. Yet I would really like to deal with them before I tried to take on a more powerful foe like The Empire, or send my troops south for a campaign against Tilea.

Right now, my plans are to just ignore them and continue to unite Bretonnia while working towards flying cavalry. That doesn't account for any surprise attacks from outside forces though.



*Nope, gonna keep calling it and every Total War game that in that order

So, I haven't managed to get anyone to confederate with me as the Bretish. I've got the technology, and Artios's relationship is at 204... what exactly am I missing? Do I need to be overwhelmingly larger than them?

I think you just have to keep playing nice with them and wait for the stars to align. Parravon Confederated with me pretty directly after I got the technology to do so, but Bastonne didn't until they began to lose a war against The Empire.

[shadow_archmagi]

So, one important thing to note about Bretonnia is that, where every other faction takes massive penalties for confederation, Bretonnia gets a bonus to public order. Everyone's happy when your country re-unites! I ended up going from a modest but small country to a united bretonnia in one turn due to a chain reaction- Once I confederated with Parravon, I was twice as big, at which point everyone recognized me as Biggest Bretonnia, Best Bretonnia, and were eager to confederate.

Bretonnia's endgame is also really odd- you literally only have to accumulate honor and win the Errantry War. My Errantry was against the greenskins, so King Louie had to wander off into the desert just before Chaos launched a major invasion. Despite the fact that my capital was partially on fire and surrounded by chaos enemies and we were on the eve of a massive siege battle, the people of Bretonnia declared that having removed orcs from the world was good enough and the history books would end the story here.


EDIT: Also, for anyone curious, I looked up how attack/defense/armor work.

Armor reduces damage by a random percentage, up to its value, minimum half its value. AP damage ignores armor.

Thus, if a dwarf thunderer (20 AP, 4 regular damage) shoots a zombie (25 armor) he'll deal 20 damage, plus 4*(1-(.13 to .25)), minimum 1. So in this case, he'll just always deal 21 damage.
If a quarreller (30 damage) shoots the same zombie, he'll deal 30*(1-(.13 to .25)) making his expected damage somewhere between 22 and 26. So against zombies, quarrelers have a slight advantage. Against an enemy with 50 armor, it'd be 15 to 22 damage.

(NOTE: I couldn't be bothered to look up the actual values for thunderer and quarreler.)

[Stuebi]

For those struggling to get rid of those nasty Welves as Brets. The recentpatch changed their AI to be mostly defensive, with random bouts of aggression in between (To represent the Wild Hunt). This means that they can be a massive pain to get rid off. The safest bet is usually to just ignore them until they either make a move themselves, or you're just straight up big enough to field 4-5 stacks and then brute force their settlements.

Very few factions actually like the Welves, you can also pretty easily war coordinate against them. Belegar Ironhammer in particular will usually start a Vendetta against them even without being prompted to do so. I've had games we're he razed King's Glade to the ground around Turn 5. No, I'm not kidding. Keep in mind that the Welf roster is heavily focused on Ranged Infantry. The Brets Cavalry strength counters that nicely.

As far as army composition goes. Brettonian Lords all have very nice trees. I found myself doing a 50/50 ratio of Knight Lords and the female lord variant (Usually Life, just because I still hold that it's one of the best Lores in the game). The Knight Lords mostly get a Knight focused army. usually anywhere from 5 to 10 cav units, 2-4 ranged units, and then filling up with regular Line Infantry. The Mage ladies get a more peasant focused build, since they got a nice Skill Tree for that. As far as combat goes, have the Peasant army be the one getting attacked / attacking, while the Knight stack reinforces.

Make sure that all of your Leaders get to engage and win fights as the main participant. Brettonian Lords can gain a LOT of different Vows and Buffs, ranging from bonuses to attack, defense and leadership. They can also gain negative ones from some activities, such as selling captives, staying in one place for too long, or fighting other Brettonian Factions. If you end up with a particularly annoying trait, or multiple, build a Grail Shrine. Lords stationed inside a City that has one have a chance to remove negative traits each turn.

Inside actual combat, split enemy armies up by circling them with your Cavalry, while your Infantry get's into position. After that, simply engage with your main line and then flank charge the enemy to death with your superior Cavalry. Make sure you use the Knights Formation abilities. Early on you wanna use Lance for the shock value, and then later on as battles start to drag, put them in Diamond for extra staying power.

I only really had problems against Chaos and Dwarves. Both of which tend to have high Charge Defense and quite a few armor piercing options, that are incredibly hurtful to your Knight focused late game.

On a final note, you wanna make sure your armies have the Ladies Blessing for difficult encounters. Make sure you think twice about retreating from engagements. That 10% Damage Resistance is incredible.

[Leecros]

For those struggling to get rid of those nasty Welves as Brets. The recentpatch changed their AI to be mostly defensive, with random bouts of aggression in between (To represent the Wild Hunt). This means that they can be a massive pain to get rid off. The safest bet is usually to just ignore them until they either make a move themselves, or you're just straight up big enough to field 4-5 stacks and then brute force their settlements.

This was ultimately how I handled them. They struck out with two of their armies at one point and I destroyed them and went on the offensive.

It took three separate incursions to remove them from the map, but Royal Pegasus Knights are a lot of fun to use.

I've yet to decide whether the Royal Hippogryph Knights are actually worth the extra cost. You only get 8(vs the Royal Pegasus Knights 24) and it has a worse charge bonus(50vs80) and Melee attack(50-52 not really a consequential difference). They also have less armor(60vs70) and are slower(85vs105). The only thing going in their favor is that they have way more weapon strength(114 vs 61) so when they hit, they hit hard and they have more hp(7192vs5712) which is, of course divided up between fewer units making them more tanky. This is all for a 56% increase in maintenance cost(450vs288). That means that for every 2 hippogryph Knights you have, you could have three Royal Pegasus Knights and still have some gold leftover.

[LCP]

Hippos are also armour piercing whereas pegs aren't, and cause terror.

[Leecros]

Hippos are also armour piercing whereas pegs aren't, and cause terror.

and Royal Pegasus Knights have Magical Attacks, Shields, and Vanguard Deployment.

I'm not saying that Hippos are better or worse than Pegasus. I'm just wondering if they're worth the extra cost. It seems to me like the Royal Pegasus Knights are more versatile and still pretty dang strong.

[LCP]

Most of those are just nice extras for the pegs, though, whereas I feel like AP/terror defines the role of the hippos.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Running into a problem with my An Eye for an Eye campaign. I'm finding I can't afford more than a single 18-unit warherd with Malagor all by himself as reinforcements. This is a problem when your enemies like the Cult of Ulric and Marienberg are chasing me around the map with two 20-man stacks each. I may need to start this campaign over, since I'm basically on the verge of bankruptcy and about to get massacred. What did I do wrong?