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I'm not quite sure, there seem to be a lot of points in your post that really surprise me. IIRC Malekith is a full faction melee LL, so unless "pretty bad" means "gets beaten only by absolute monsters like Teclis and Kholesh" I'm a bit confused.
Another point is that DE usually have very high income because of slaves. If you only have one province I can understand that you run into problems, but DE can easily create provinces that beat everything but Bretonia-Marienburg-cheese income wise. Sack those cities! IIRC I had multiple provinces with 10k+ income. Just make sure you block receiving slaves in provinces without good money generators.
Your skillbuild sounds fine, TWW2-LLs blue line is extremely strong and while I think that the army line easily beats magic and melee, investing a bit into magic isn't terrible (and much more fun than going double passive).
As a general rule of thumb in Malekiths run go east as soon as the Norsca let you and conquer that gold province to the right of you, which should resolve most of your income problems. If you don't have to deal with Chaos don't deal with them, their provinces are barely worth it.
I more and more tend to just ignore my own faction, make treaties and rush to other areas as literally any race I'm playing. It's more profitable to have trade pacts with my own race, let them protect my borders and whether I'm killing HEs or DEs or Skaven or Lizards doesn't really matter for my army, so it doesn't slow my expansion speed much. Morathi's corruption can be a pain, so I'd make an exception for her if she blobbs and as mentioned earlier I'd definitely take that gold east. It's a bit easier to ignore DEs as Morathi, but HEs aren't that far off from Malekith either.
If you want to be efficient rushing anything past t3 is a waste (with any race). The only spot i'd consider it if I was trying really hard was probably the chaos waste for the -corruption buildings. But high tier units are barely more cost efficient, especially for DE who can beat most t5 armies with t2 thanks to that high AP. Also having a t5 army instead of two t2 armies slows your expansion speed a lot.
If you build a 5k building you could have built an entire army or supplied it for a day instead.
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You don’t really need more than dreadspears and darkshards in your Malekith stack. Malekith is stupid strong, and darkshards are op for where they are on the tech tree.
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On VH, Dreadspears do quite bad against anything that is not large. I've had way better results with Bleakswords and only 2-4 spears. Corsairs on the other hand are strong and the dual wielding sort chew through any non-elite infantry. Crossow corsairs make for excellent mop-up units if you don't want to use cavalry (since Dark Riders are kinda bad and Cold Ones rampage).
I have yet to play a full legendary Malekith campaign since the new update, but from playing the first 30-ish turns it seems easier than ever. Har Ganeth holds well against Norsca, so the east is safe as you start friendly. That means you just need to watch out for Mung (who should fall in a few turns), and then you can dedicate your armies to pushing south.
For lords I like making my second lord use a budget army for a long while, giving him the battle skills for low tier troops and darkshards. Don't be afraid to send him on a one way sacking trip, you can make so much money by sacking settlements.
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What exactly do you guys do as Malekith overall? Do you loot&occupy? sack? raze? do you sit him on enemy land and pillage?
I always feel pressured to expand as any faction in TW:WH. It just feels bad if Mum or Hellebron have these big chucks of map to their name and me as Malekith I barely control 2-3 provinces. Even if I am technologically more advanced than them and my armies could beat theirs in a straight up fight.
Maybe after securing those provinces I should set sail to Lothren and establish a forward base there as Malekith? Somehow I am really bad at making money with him =/
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With Dark Elves I always loot&occupy for slaves. For everyone else it depends. Sacking might seem nice at first, but often times the money you get is not enough to offset building things again; keep in mind demolishing buildings gives money too. It falls down to growth. Sacking reduces settlement level by 1. Occupying (even without looting) almost always reduces level by 1. So sacking and occupying means you can lose 2 levels on a city, meaning it will be vulnerable. Walls are very important to help in holding new regions, be they from the AI or from rebels.
That being said, I always sack to fund my recruitment province. You want the core of your elite armies (an elite army is one you are confident you can win against any other AI army 1 on 1, even if it is a costly victory against good quality enemy armies) asap. For DE, that means a ton of Blackguards, so you want t4 asap. Growth is really important, but so are walls to deter potential enemies.
What is a potential enemy? Anyone who doesn't have non-aggression + trade with you, as well as at least 1 other comparable enemy to fight. The AI loves to gang up on the player (big bonuses > they see themselves way ahead of you in terms of strength > other AIs have similar strength because of said bonuses too > guess who they want to pick on).
In terms of actual Malekith, just slowly go south. There's fellow DE to fight, as well as Khatep and Tretch. Ulthuan should wait until you have 2-3 armies, as Chaos will pop around 25-30 settlements now and you need to be ready for them.
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On June 25 2018 01:43 akatama wrote:
On VH, Dreadspears do quite bad against anything that is not large. I've had way better results with Bleakswords and only 2-4 spears. Corsairs on the other hand are strong and the dual wielding sort chew through any non-elite infantry. Crossow corsairs make for excellent mop-up units if you don't want to use cavalry (since Dark Riders are kinda bad and Cold Ones rampage).
I have yet to play a full legendary Malekith campaign since the new update, but from playing the first 30-ish turns it seems easier than ever. Har Ganeth holds well against Norsca, so the east is safe as you start friendly. That means you just need to watch out for Mung (who should fall in a few turns), and then you can dedicate your armies to pushing south.
For lords I like making my second lord use a budget army for a long while, giving him the battle skills for low tier troops and darkshards. Don't be afraid to send him on a one way sacking trip, you can make so much money by sacking settlements.
You’re not supposed to rely upon the dreadspears to kill anything. You just need them to hold the line while your dark shards and Malekith do the killing. Later on, hydras are great for turning flanks and starting routs.
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Agreed to occupy+loot. I only sack when I really need the money right now.
I agree to xDaunt that at least on VH dreadspears, shards and 3 artillery deal with anything below t5. It only starts running into trouble when the enemy starts fielding (4+) heavy fast monsters or super heavy shock cav or has way better artillery.
Haven't really tested legendary yet, but the only hard thing on VH with any faction is surviving the first 10 turns till you can finance the second large army. And that is way easier since they nerfed the call to arms chain-mechanic.
I still think upgrading from the trash army before you can field a third one is inefficient anyways, since getting pulled apart is the biggest problem on higher difficulties imo. Especially as DE who don't fall over against high armor.
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I used to stick to Dreadspears too but later on I tried Bleakswords and Corsairs. The results were considerably better.
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Btw, helstorm rocket batteries are fucking awesome now.
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On June 25 2018 06:39 akatama wrote:
I used to stick to Dreadspears too but later on I tried Bleakswords and Corsairs. The results were considerably better.
What's your melee infantry to archer-ratio? I have no doubts that bleakswords and corsairs massively outperform dreadspears vs infantry, but since i play sometimes 6:10:3 (spears:archer:arty) all my damage comes from archers and that just crushes most stacks. I think I've won 1:1.5 battles without LL vs HE with trash armies without shield-shards when HE t3 mass seaguard/archer is probably the hardest counter-army at that point in time.
But I could see something like 4:2:10:3 or 4:4:8:3 still be better, haven't really tried bleakswords much.
But I've tried playing like 8:8:3 and switched my center Infantry for xBow Corsairs and it got way better at chasing for a little price increase with little change in efficiency else. The main reason for picking up corsairs for me were the fact that they are really easy to build at the front thanks to the arcs. To be fair I wanted arty anyways though, so t3 infantry building is more or less a must have.
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I got Warhammer 2 a few weeks ago and just finished my lizardmen vortex campaign. Sauros were great at the start but even in normal difficulty, I felt that they really struggled at the end, probably because of the lack of AP damage. If I could do it again, I would just completely replace them with temple guards in the midgame.
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Don't let the lack of an AP tag fool you, Saurus have decent AP damage. The tag only appears if over half the unit's weapon strength is armor piercing. Saurus have a whooping 50 weapon strength, with about 40% of that being AP (so around 20 damage). Most other infantry has between 30 and 40 weapon strength, and AP units have around 70% of that as armor piercing.
A simple Curse of the Midnight Wind can help with highly armored infantry, as well as dinosaur support (Horned Ones, Carnosaurs and Stegadons). This is even more applicable on lower difficulties, as the price difference between Saurus and Temple Guards can actually let you field more armies.
Another thing to consider is how the battle skills for Saurus and TG are different.
On the topic of Dark Elves, I don't like Bolt Throwers all that much. Don't get me wrong, they are a solid piece of artillery, but a handful of battlefields from Naggarond are absolutely terrible for them. I tend to only bring one as a siege attacker before hydras and dragons are available and maybe 2 on an army I want to have easy sieges with.
As for Darkshards, I tend to run 6 or 8 early on. I am an infantry man, I like winning the middle.
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I usually run 8 Dreadspears, 6 DarkShards, 2-3 Reapers, Rest is for heroes.
Lategame I just switch Dreadspears for Black Guard
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On June 25 2018 06:49 xDaunt wrote:
Btw, helstorm rocket batteries are fucking awesome now.
They weren't before?
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On June 28 2018 00:08 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2018 06:49 xDaunt wrote:
Btw, helstorm rocket batteries are fucking awesome now. They weren't before?
They weren't a big enough upgrade in dmg over mortars to take their niche given that mortars could fire into melee and were better in sieges.
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Can somebody give me a detailed lowdown on how chaos invasion now works in mortal empires? And do they attack and/or get attacked by other factions?
I seem to recall people talking about how awesome shades are on previous pages. Are they still good for replacing darkshards on elite stacks later on?
I mostly didn't use missile units in my lizardmen campaign. Going to have to figure out how to do sieges again using missile troops and defensive infantry. With the lizards, I just had my infantry climb the walls while my dinosaurs break down the gate and rush all the dinosaurs and cavalry into the opening.
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On June 28 2018 00:08 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2018 06:49 xDaunt wrote:
Btw, helstorm rocket batteries are fucking awesome now. They weren't before?
Most of their damage is AP damage now. This means that they absolutely destroy all infantry, and not just lightly armored infantry. I have 4 rocket batteries in each of my stacks. I can pretty much erase most any infantry unit in one volley. Anything that's left will be so badly damaged that a handgunner volley or a cavalry charge will finish it off. If enemy units stack up, I'll wipe out multiple units. In open field battles, damage spells from wizards are almost redundant. I'll just send my general right into the middle of the enemy army and then focus all of my rocket batteries on the blob that coalesces around him. It doesn't take very long for everything to evaporate.
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On June 28 2018 00:41 andrewlt wrote:
Can somebody give me a detailed lowdown on how chaos invasion now works in mortal empires? And do they attack and/or get attacked by other factions?
I seem to recall people talking about how awesome shades are on previous pages. Are they still good for replacing darkshards on elite stacks later on?
I mostly didn't use missile units in my lizardmen campaign. Going to have to figure out how to do sieges again using missile troops and defensive infantry. With the lizards, I just had my infantry climb the walls while my dinosaurs break down the gate and rush all the dinosaurs and cavalry into the opening.
Chaos invades once you hit a certain imperium level (ie once your empire gets big enough).
Yes, shades are better than dark shards, but they are super expensive. I'm not sure that they are that much better to warrant the replacement. Plus, I really like using dark shards with shields to deal with enemy range spam. Shades aren't quite as good at that.
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On June 28 2018 00:41 andrewlt wrote:
Can somebody give me a detailed lowdown on how chaos invasion now works in mortal empires? And do they attack and/or get attacked by other factions?
I seem to recall people talking about how awesome shades are on previous pages. Are they still good for replacing darkshards on elite stacks later on?
I mostly didn't use missile units in my lizardmen campaign. Going to have to figure out how to do sieges again using missile troops and defensive infantry. With the lizards, I just had my infantry climb the walls while my dinosaurs break down the gate and rush all the dinosaurs and cavalry into the opening.
Chameleon skinks are awesome on a lizardmen campaign. Countering them require better missle troops or cavalry, and the AI usually can't do it effectively, so you just run them around shooting at the back of enemy formations or kiting when they decide to chase.
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On June 27 2018 08:27 akatama wrote:
Don't let the lack of an AP tag fool you, Saurus have decent AP damage. The tag only appears if over half the unit's weapon strength is armor piercing. Saurus have a whooping 50 weapon strength, with about 40% of that being AP (so around 20 damage). Most other infantry has between 30 and 40 weapon strength, and AP units have around 70% of that as armor piercing.
A simple Curse of the Midnight Wind can help with highly armored infantry, as well as dinosaur support (Horned Ones, Carnosaurs and Stegadons). This is even more applicable on lower difficulties, as the price difference between Saurus and Temple Guards can actually let you field more armies.
Another thing to consider is how the battle skills for Saurus and TG are different.
On the topic of Dark Elves, I don't like Bolt Throwers all that much. Don't get me wrong, they are a solid piece of artillery, but a handful of battlefields from Naggarond are absolutely terrible for them. I tend to only bring one as a siege attacker before hydras and dragons are available and maybe 2 on an army I want to have easy sieges with.
As for Darkshards, I tend to run 6 or 8 early on. I am an infantry man, I like winning the middle.
I tend to rush to Ulthuan very quickly and they help a lot against the archer-spam. Most battlefields in Ulthuan are good for them. But I agree that they aren't very good when there's a lot of cover or hills/mountains.
Also since I play DE without cav I like to sit on a hill and let them run into my arrows, which doesn't work if i'm up against better long range options. Eaglebolts also deal some additional losses once my enemy breaks, something my pure infantry army is very bad at.
Totally agree to everything you said about Saurus.
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EPT
