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[Teneb]

I'm a bit wary about the bonuses and maluses (heh) of going pure or possessed, especially given the bullshit bonuses the AI gets in combat (and the maluses (heh) that players get slapped with in the campaign) in high difficulties.

Now, if you're like me and run mods to take out that bullshit then you're fine... but they're blanacing it for vanilla and, well... it's got me a mite worried.

I like the Black Ark stuff though.

Normal combat difficulty + harder campaign difficulty is how I manage that.  Puts you up against harder odds but (AFAIK) all units behave according to their stats.

I don’t know the numbers but the changes on higher combat difficulties seem to disproportionately impact weaker units.  While your elites feel at about the same power level as before.  I don’t like it.

How it works is that higher battle difficulties buff all units controlled by the ai. All player units stay the same. Campaign difficulty gives the AI huge PO bonuses, so much that unless you run a mod to strip that out, they're immune to the effects of corruption aside from attrition.

Which is a shame, because higher difficulties, both battle and campaign, also improve the AI itself, making it smarter.

Also Repanse has a Steam Store page now.

She starts in Araby next to Arkhan in both campaigns, has a Legendary Hero in the form of a Grail Knight with a sword, buffs peasants and seems to be a melee specialist. She's also more effective against undead (RIP Arkhan) and has some sort of vague benefit to buying buildings in regions she owns.

[Mech#4]

The patch notes for the next update, called "The Potion of Speed Update", have been posted.

The major changes are:

- Renaming factions (So Empire is Reikland and Vampire Counts are Sylvania)
- New Legendary Lord portraits (Artwork instead of an image of the 3D model)
- Black Arks reworked (They can now attack coastal cities as well as other changes)
- End turn optimisations (Most noticable in the Mortal Empires campaign)
- Gotrek and Felix changes (Excempt from Supply Lines, duration to 30 turns, Gotrek distributes all XP he earns to other generals)


Some other notable things I'm seeing as I read through are:
- Skaven economy changed (Tier 1 and 2 Energy building removed and effects are now 30%,40%, 50%. Increase in income on all other buildings.)
- Bretonnian Heroes now gain immortality when achieving a Grail Vow
- The Cult of Sotek will now gain Sacrificial Offerings after battles, scaling with the enemy army’s strength. You may still gain 50 additional Sacrificial Offerings using the Mark for Sacrifice post-battle option
- Several changes to recruitment. Goblin spears and archers now on settlement. Dreadspears for Dark Elves now on settlement
  - Dark Elves: Dreadspears moved to settlement chain, Bleakswords to Tier 1 Barracks, Dark Riders (Repeater Crossbow) to Tier 1 Stables, Black Ark Corsairs to Tier 1 port
  - Dwarfs: Miners to settlement chain
  - Lizardmen: Skink Cohort & Skink Cohort (Javelins) to settlement, removed Tier 1 Skink Barracks
  - Norsca: Marauders to settlement
  - Vampire Counts: Zombies & Skeleton Warrior to settlement, removed Tier 1 Cemetery

-Clan Pestilens : New faction effect: Chance of a plague spreading +50%

- All previously hidden unique items are now visible in the skill tree of the relevant character
  - Hidden unique items now always trigger at a specified level instead of randomly generating
  - Hidden unique items now trigger in both the Eye of the Vortex and Mortal Empires campaigns
The items now made available are:

    The Shadow Crown (Alith Anar)
    Amulet Of Dark Fire (Crone Hellebron)
    Shieldstone of Isha (Alarielle the Radiant)
    Red Blades (Lokhir)
    Morgiana’s Mirror (The Fay Enchantress)
    Armour of Brilliance (Louen Leoncour)
    Braid of Bordeleaux (Alberic De Bordelaux)
    Moon Staff of Lileath (Teclis)
    Scroll of Hoeth (Teclis)
    Wand of the Kharaidon (Morathi)
    Armour of Midnight (Malekith)
    Heart of Avelorn (Tyrion)
    Amber Amulet (Morathi)`
    The Mace of Ulumak (Gor-Rok)

- Empire, Bretonnia, Norsca and Beastmen now correctly have a cooldown to their confederations when played by the AI (this goes a long way towards tackling good factions being too powerful in campaign) (( This is something I had noticed, the empire confederating turn after turn with no break))

[Jopax]

Played a few hours today, gotta say, holy shit, the difference is massive. I'm getting Vortex campaign levels of turn speed, maybe even faster in the first few turns.

[Mech#4]

Yes, it's a really nice improvement. The first turn for Skrolk on the Mortal Empires campaign the turn time took me about 23 seconds when it used to be about 1 minute 30 seconds to 2 minutes.

[Tack]

I dunno how I feel about all of the basic troops being on settlement now. I preferred that as a unique faction mechanic.

[scriver]

Unique faction mechanic for who?

[Naryar]

Bump, but well, it's on topic...

Went through a Beastmen play of Mortal Empires after getting the DLC. Difficulty was Hard/Hard, changed to Hard/Normal afterwards. Because fuck your leadership bonuses.

Man... the campaign is just an exercise in masochism. You realize after a hundred turns or so that you only have two or three armies else your savings plummet, and the other nations have much better economy and terrain control, can send you doomstacks and annihilate your armies - and your armies are your towns as well, so when you inevitably lose one you suffer much more than one empire losing a town. Especially when you get surprised by a doomstack when you run away from OTHER doomstacks. And most of their units are quite experienced too !

Also fuck Wood Elves. Really.

Also razing the badlands and being a nomad only means the dwarves extended south into a huge blue blob of an empire, and it's partly my fault. The nomad playstyle I adopted also means you can't really take advantage of chaos corruption, or only for some time before you have to move and raze other cities. Unless you work together with Norsca or the Warriors of Chaos.

Though the roster IS fun and playable. It has it's own defined weaknesses like having almost no armor, very limited ranged choices, and leadership being pretty bad but you're fast and in-your-face. Minotaurs are my favorite unit and Cygors are hilarious. Almost all the infantry having vanguard deployment (and your cavalry too !) and hide in woods means some serious ambush and flanking potential. Your base archer unit, while weak, is both invisible and has vanguard deployment. Also being hidden when mustering is pretty great.

I also enjoy the freedom that comes with horde play. Though having to spend population on most stuff is quite annoying, and having one army defeated is really, REALLY bad. And since I have to doomstack too to counter my enemies, losing one army can mean losing *several*. It's too bad I don't feel I can compete against the big landed empires.

Any experience with Beastmen, or Beastmen Mortal Empires ?

[Teneb]

I did a VH/N beastmen mortal empires run. You need to be an absolute coward and only hit targets that are undefended until you have your own doomstack.

Also, very important: rush the blue skills that give population growth and lightning strike (though this also applies to Chaos and Nakai). You will likely need to manually fight most battles because the auto-resolve loves murdering your troops.

As for the units themselves, the beastmen are pretty good in battle. Like you said, their main issue is lack of armour which can be mitigated by cycle-charging and bumrushing the enemy. Dot not over-estimate minotaurs, though, they are good but not that good. I usually keep just one unit of minotaurs (great weapons or regiment of renown if possible) as a way to break formations thanks to their rolling attack. Also get a giant for much the same purposes.

[Cthulhu]

Been playing High Elves on E/N.  Normally wouldn't play a game on easy but I've literally never won a total war campaign, mostly just due to longevity.  Did pretty well as Settra on N/N but I didn't deal with Tic-Tac-Toe early enough and he became a monster, started sending literal waves of dinosaur-heavy armies at me and I didn't have my necrosphinxes online or sufficient ushabti bows to deal with all of them.  I could take out one dinosaur doomstack but it'd exhaust my resources and I'd have to scramble to rebuild before the next one hit.

High Elves are interesting.  Normally don't play good guys, which makes their diplomatic situation a new one for me, sitting in the middle of this web of treaties and varying degrees of friendliness trying to figure out how to get everything under me without blowing it up.  I got pretty lucky, Alarielle randomly decided to attack Saphery on like turn 15, headbutting said web and turning every faction against her.  I grabbed a couple of her cities and Saphery just finished her off, so my biggest problem is off the table.  Dealing with Caledor now and starting to confederate the rest of Ulthuan.  Sartosa hasn't been strong enough to make any headway against us, but Scourge of Khaine is becoming a problem and there's a good-sized Norsca foothold which is becoming a problem for public order.  But Caledor will be down soon and then I can deal with that and I'll be Big Boss of Ulthuan and can start dealing with other shit.

[Persus13]

Nice. I took advantage of the free weekend to play this game and played an Alith Anar campaign (and a Skaven campaign with a buddy for a little bit). The nice thing about his start is that you're fighting dark elves most of the time, and all the high elf factions want to trade with you because you're killing people they don't like. Despite it being listed as hard, the only trouble I had was Naggorond confederating with the other two playable darkelf factions and fighting them off until they sued for peace.

[Teneb]

Been playing High Elves on E/N.  Normally wouldn't play a game on easy but I've literally never won a total war campaign, mostly just due to longevity.  Did pretty well as Settra on N/N but I didn't deal with Tic-Tac-Toe early enough and he became a monster, started sending literal waves of dinosaur-heavy armies at me and I didn't have my necrosphinxes online or sufficient ushabti bows to deal with all of them.  I could take out one dinosaur doomstack but it'd exhaust my resources and I'd have to scramble to rebuild before the next one hit.

High Elves are interesting.  Normally don't play good guys, which makes their diplomatic situation a new one for me, sitting in the middle of this web of treaties and varying degrees of friendliness trying to figure out how to get everything under me without blowing it up.  I got pretty lucky, Alarielle randomly decided to attack Saphery on like turn 15, headbutting said web and turning every faction against her.  I grabbed a couple of her cities and Saphery just finished her off, so my biggest problem is off the table.  Dealing with Caledor now and starting to confederate the rest of Ulthuan.  Sartosa hasn't been strong enough to make any headway against us, but Scourge of Khaine is becoming a problem and there's a good-sized Norsca foothold which is becoming a problem for public order.  But Caledor will be down soon and then I can deal with that and I'll be Big Boss of Ulthuan and can start dealing with other shit.

If you're playing as Tyrion (or Alarielle) then you want to take out Scourge of Khaine ASAP. Gotta watch out for Chrace sniping the Shrine of Khaine though. Beating up the Scourge will also make everyone love you.

Aside from that, unite Ulthuan and go to town on Naggarond (or if you are in Vortex just unite Ulthuan, maybe squash Sartosa and Dreadfleet so they don't bug ya, and do the rituals).

[nenjin]

I also did a Beastmen ME playthrough about a year ago.

It's basically as you describe. You're hamstrung for a large part of the early game by only being able to have two to three herds. Four was possible after like 150 turns and working my way up from the Badlands.

My biggest complaint was that the Orks simply would not fuck off. I could be practically in to Sylania and here comes two to three Ork doomstacks hell bent on destroying just me. All the other AIs would completely ignore them as they passed right through their territories to get me.

Using Beast Paths I was often able to evade for a little while, at least long enough so I could separate out my pursuers and get a nice 3v1 battle.

But in the end it felt pointless. In the time it'd take me to eliminate one doomstack, the Orks would spin up two to three more. Even after obliterating their northern most cities in the Badlands, they'd keep cranking out more units.

Other than that, Dwarves were my biggest hassle. They wouldn't aggressively chase me across the whole old world like the Orks, but taking them apart was an exercise in frustration sometimes. My eventual goal was the wipe out the dwarves and call it a win, which I basically did it. Got them down to one city, razed their most notable holds, slew most of their unique characters.

Despite all that.....I really enjoyed the Nomad gameplay too. Not being stuck to any one region, fucking with whoever I chose to whenever I chose to. And I dunno, there was something just really satisfying about how the Beastman experience played out along with their herd design, it was very thematic. Just kinda wish I got more space to breathe, but as soon as I'd start messing with anyone, I'd get sandwiched between them and the Orks and would have to flee or use creative map movement to keep my herds from getting surrounded and crushed.

[Cthulhu]

Yeah, I never had much fun with beastmen, though I like their style with the stealthy stances and mobile ambush, it's very thematic.  All the races are very thematic actually, I'm impressed by the way they capture a lot of the races' general feel even in campaign gameplay.  Orcs especially, all the minor orc factions are underdog so they confederate readily, add in the Waaagh! mechanic and you've got that proper orc feel, lots of infighting early on, stomping your rivals, building up towards a critical mass where all the tribes fall in one by one and you snowball into an apocalyptic green tide.  For hordes I prefer chaos.  Skaven have made the chaos campaign easier, at least it feels like that to me.  Clan Moulder is chilling right north of Kislev and as you knock their cities down they'll move in and take over the ruins, preventing Kislev from taking them back.  You can get a nice foothold of high-corruption territory to back into when necessary, and you can push ahead without worrying about armies appearing behind you.

[Jopax]

With the recent sale of all things TW:WH I grabbed the Hunter DLC since I've enjoyed both Empire and Lizards a decent amount before, plus getting all them new units to use is always nice. So I jump in to try out Nakai and holy shit what is this. Low movement range horde army, horrendous economy because you need to grab settlements to have any income, surrounded by enemies with like two-three friendly factions that don't have a murderboner for you, the bloody defenders are more of a hindrance than anything since they keep getting aggroed by everyone that finds them, which in turn drags you into a war with nearly everyone, all of that coupled with freaking Wulfhart and co running around with several endgame armies right off the bat that you need to dance around if you don't want to get deleted. And the game wants you to have multiple armies to cover all of this shit? How are you supposed to afford that, I was barely running one stack of saurus, krox and a few of the stegadons, it was fairly ok at murdering shit out in the open but sieges are fucking tough since your siege and missle options are very limited and not exactly cheap.

Edit:

And don't even get me started on fucking Kholis who spawns right on top of you with an army of highly mobile, armor-piercing missile units that just so happen to be perfect counter to your slow, highly armored melee focused army, and the game even tells you to go and fight these dudes ffs.

[Cthulhu]

May not be as useful early game, but the AI drastically undervalues mobile ranged units, so you can usually autoresolve fights like that to win them.  Really useful as Chaos against outrider spam.