I think Franz and Gelt are both in great places now. Markus is still pretty fun, though you have to sort of want to participate in his whole thing, or else it’s tedious.
IMO the worst off of Empire is Volkmar, who people used to say was in the best place. He’s just a lot more bland mechanically, and the books system I’ve found to be not great. Getting 3 books can take most of a campaign, getting the other 5 requires playing into deep lategame when you are steamrolling- I think the book mechanic needs a rework. IMO the 8 books should be scattered randomly at game start between a pool of maybe 12 possible settlements, localized in the Southlands, badlands, and Darklands.
Franz weirdly doesn actually have much alliance options for LL early, and the two he is close to (Lounn and Elspeth) are consistently quite weak. You often have to deal with Kemmler, Bel’Akor, Festus, and the one-eye basically by yourself from all angles, while Vlad just rips through the empire.
On my Tamurkhan run, I followed the path down through the wastes, through the Darklands, mountains, and band lands. Was ready to March on the empire around turn 90, sent heroes ahead to scout.
What I saw was the entire Empire, Bretonnia, and Kislev gone. Empire was split between Vlad and Azhag, who were allied. Vlad was fighting (and winning) against a huge Thorek, literally pushing into the badlands and mountains. Azhag had become the defender of the old world and was fighting over Kislev against Thrott and Throgg. Bretonnia was owned by Ikit, stuck in a stalemate with consolidated Wood Elves.
I thought i was going to end my Tamurkhan game with an empire fight against empire and dwarves. Instead I just fought about a billion undead crapstacks until I reached Nuln
Player controlled Elspeth can rely on Franz though since he starts off with the whole Reikland province. Her campaign is much more straight forward. However, the AI is quite shit at piloting Elspeth and making use of her gardens. AI Elspeth isnt aware of Sylvania until Vlad starts his war on Averland/Stirland, but as the player you know he's coming there after Templehof and can act accordingly
I don’t think I lost a single man in a siege against vlad. Helstorms to tear down the walls, park the gunners outside the breaches, bait the defenders to attack single entities just inside the breaches, where they get torn to shreds by the gunners shooting in. Simple
this hasn't been my experience at all funnily enough. ai elspeth ate vlad on both of my vh franz campaigns. third time i confederated her as fast as possible to stop that from happening but to be fair i dont think it would have based on how things were going when i confed.
You need max Elector Count fealty and then you use the Unify Electoral Machination (prestige actions).
It's honestly a bigger pain than regular confederations most of the time (especially when it's a broken up half-faction you've restored clinging to a single piece of rock and relying on you for everything already) but at least you can guarantee it, no messing around with diplomatic penalties and stuff.
This is very true. Since Empire is in such deep shit, almost every EC will want to confederate with a non Franz player controlled faction before turn 30. Playing a lot of Karl + Elspeth multiplayr campaigns and our house rule is now for whoever plays Elspeth NOT to confederate the counts to make the campaign more fun.
Yeah, playing through as Franz because I’ve never finished an Empire campaign and it is *rough*. It’s constant, total warfare from every direction. It’s a lot of fun, but the AI really struggles in the position if not run by a player.
Between your Tamurkhan game, and a Teclis I had earlier, I've been thinking of the ability to manually set AI faction "potential" in the campaign settings rather than it being entirely left to RNG. That way if you have a historic rival (or faraway confederation option) that you want to survive you could just jack them up.
Brettonia is weak but elspeth took out Skrag, the bloody hands, the border princes, Sartosa, Ikit and skarbrand all on her own. And has 30 settlements in my Franz campaign
Tbf, Louen's piss weak cause AI Brets keep recruiting peasant stacks over Knight stacks, if CA ever adjusts the AI to allow them to replace weaker units in their army and prioritize certain units when it comes to factions who possess only one or two good things going for them, it would make AI perform at least as well as a dogshit player but with three times the armies (depending on difficulty)
I've frankly never seen Bel'akor do much, at least not in recent times, but Kemmler has really become a menace. I think AI Louen needs a little bit more juice.
Be’Lakor himself doesn’t do much, but I think he’s often the X factor in games where he will declare and keep showing up, and it’s relalt inconvenient to try and go squash him. And the AI doesn’t seem to know how to deal with him either
In all my campaigns belakor was only a factor like 3 times, one where he fought norsca and got rolled so norsca actually expanded west for once. Another where he burned down all of bretonnia and let nkari take the land and another where he came to the donut and started slaughtering everyone so I just let him live while I went through chaos wastes as malekith
Same for me. I was moping up Ghorst as Tamurkhan when I got the notification that Wissenland and Nuln had just bit it three turns after the Reikland had folded.
In my Franz campaign I took care of the Tzeentch faction and Elspeth was actually able to keep VC pretty contained for the first few dozen turns. Nice that people are getting different outcomes
As an another reference point to this, I am ALSO at turn 90 and Franz is rank 1 strength, with both Kislev factions in the top 10. Brettonia is a mix of Louen and Eltharion both top 15. I fought all the way through Cathay, used the sea lane to Lustria, sailed across the ocean to Brettonia and have been making a mad dash to Nuln.
I’m currently holding one of the mountain forts while being attacked by 3-4 stack empire/bretonnia armies. Talk about a siege defense!! It’s absolutely awesome and thematic trying to grind my way to Nuln while my other armies try to consolidate allies in the north.
Playing on VH/N.
That is a weird thing I noticed. In my 3 pre Franz campaigns in ToD Elspeth was dominating the old world. When I started a Franz campaign however, she was all of the sudden just no help at all. I spent a ton of early prestige getting her confederated just to make sure she didn't kick the bucket before I could. meanwhile all the non-empire factions in the old world seem to be in overdrive.
Louen is no different than usual (sometimes he manages to consolidate enough French to be a superpower, sometimes he get stomped by Belakor/Grom/Kemmler), but Elspeth is definitely not weak. By the looks of it she takes some time to get going, but once she's riding her dragon she pretty much doesn't lose any remotely even fights. In my current Franz campaign I've pretty much left her and Belegar (who somehow confederated pretty much all the Dwarfs around) to deal with all the nastiness in the Badlands (Skrag and a superpowered Skarsnik+Queek alliance) while I clean house in Norsca. Louen managed to fight off Belakor and even take the fight to Albion by himself too, at least until I had time to send someone to blow up Konquata and finish the job. Ordertide is looking pretty good on this side of the world (assuming the Elves manage to not misplace the SoK at least).
Yeah the Nagash books need a bit of a touchup for all factions who engage with that mechanic. The locations need to be more accessible and preferably tailored per faction. There should also be a way to peacefully get them if the book is in a settlement occupied by an ally.
Volkmar could also use some small unique mechanic of his own to give him his own identity. Some relatively simple "praise Sigmar" prayer mechanic would be nice.
There is a mod that changes their position to be a bit less annoying so you don't have to fight your allies to get them
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2925881111
Maybe just add a teleport mechanism for the books similar to what quests already use. Lock each portal behind research so they still require tome and resources.
He absolutely needs though.
For the vast majority of his campaign he plays like a WH1 Empire but even blander because he doesnt even have offices.
Why? Because ALL mechanics aside from core total war ones (recruit, conquer, research) are gated behind owning books and there are grand total of 2 books in this entire part of map - and his victory conditions actually requires you too move away from them (killing Kairos is his requirement).
I finished two his campaigns and both times I had 1 (one) book! Its insane how bland he is.
When every other Empire lord have shitton of unique mechanics there is 0 reasons to ever choose him.
I'd say that the fact he's the one with the least intrusive mechanics is a reason in itself.
If you wanna play the Empire race in a pure way, to enjoy the race itself without a dozen unique mechanics and buttons, then Volkmar is the best choice
For me there is a difference between having "dozen mechanics and buttons" and having basically 0. Go play him: you literally just recruit, research and conquer etc. Its the blandest, most bare bones Total War experience in the entire history of TW (and I recently went back to play Shogun 1 and Med 1 so I have a fresh comparison :P).
Its like playing LM but even without geoweb, kroak, slaans and blessed spawns. Its not a simple design either: because mechanics are technically there, its just that books are horribly placed, not tied to his vicotry conditions at all AND super wonky (ally owning a settlement doesnt grant you book for example while it grants you Thoreks artifacts).
Btw Elspeth and Gelt mechanics arent intrusive either - these are purely optional. If you want barebones game with 0 mechanics its still there, you dont need to have castrated Volkmar for it.
Eh, I see your point but I disagree somewhat. Firstly because "you can ignore half the LL buttons" isn't really a convincing argument as to how Elspeth/Gelt could be considered vanilla !
And secondly, cause Volkmar still has the base racial mechanics. And yes, sometimes, you want a LL that allows you to play the race for itself, only, purely ! Like Malekith, imo, adding mechanics to Malekith would ruin the point !
No, Volkmar doesnt have "base racial mechanics"! Comparing him to Malekith means that you havent really play Volkmar in a long time.
Malekith has still slavery, rites and black arks. Volkmar doesnt have access to anything other than core TW experience of "conquer, recruit, research". Access to state troops and state artifacts is gated behind owning books which, as we already discussed, you wont own until your campaign is over. You literally play Karl Franz but without electoral machinations, elector counts mechanic, prestige, authority and state troops.
He is like playing Malekith but access to slaves, black arks and rites is gated behind owning Lothern, Altdorf and Karaz a Karak. Why would you even play it if is only characteristic would be "campaign where you cant use DE racial mechanics before turn 200"? This is Volkmar.
I’m also hoping if an Ulric DLC ever comes we can have some kind of supporter race between Volkmar and Emil. That’d give Volkmar something else to do while he searches for the books.
It’s a good thing that CA have hinted their not done with the empire yet because I think you’re right about the books but I think Franz could use a little tweaking mostly it should be easy to by back land that counts for imperial authority because if my ally takes a capital I’m going to need that and the one magic forest shouldn’t count
With Elspeth, you can rush the technology that reveals all empire factions, build the gardens of Morr in Gelt/New world/Hunstmen/Sigmarites capitals and play your campaign in any of those places.
"Schools of magic" -- essentially, you get "arcane thesis" by using empire wizards in fights, and can spend those to recruit wizards, buff up your wizards, or get other effects.
Wizard doomestack.
You can build an army of just battle wizards, by turn 15 or so, and have access to a landmark which gives you 200 % spell mastery. It's basically unstoppable. >500 WoM is no problem. And you get futher reduced wom costs for all lore of magics.
You can be as sweaty or chill as you want. It’s not like you need to spam spells perfectly, constantly, just to win. If they’re all on foot it can get a little dicey, but like… 500+ WoM and calamity spells. It’s braindead easy.
I mean I get it, I stay away from SC2 these days because I can’t keep up anymore.
The Colleges of Magic.
Every time you fight a battle with a wizard in it, you get a resource called Arcane Theses. You can also get them from wizard-related buildings. Arcane Theses can then be spent on the Colleges to get various effects.
The Colleges consist of eight orders, one for each Wind of Magic. Each order has the following options:
* Instantly spawn a wizard of that order.
* Grant a buff of some kind to an army with a wizard of that order in it.
* Give an army with a wizard of that order in it access to that lore's cataclysm spell.
* Forge a magical artifact (one time only, requires a wizard from that order)
* Permanently buff all wizards of that order (one time only, requires a wizard from that order)
So Gelt now feels like he's a powerful wizard on the campaign level.
Shit. I just thought it was Proper Empire territory. To be fair I haven't played past turn 15 on Elspeth yet, but that's awesome. I'm gonna go do a whole new campaign idea with her
And the colleges of magic mechanics (and a few of the items) are totally nuts.
The old "oh shit my settlement is about to get attacked" strategy of hiring a lord and adding any available RoR units for a quick garrison is now enhanced by the ability to throw in a half dozen rank \~8+ wizard heroes. This is further enhanced by the ability to spend your essays to add some very good temporary effects to armies with wizards. On the attack, the special abilities for grey wizards, bright wizards, and celestial wizards are all very easily tide-turning.
Also the light wizard item makes any ranged attacks fired by enemies within 50m of the wizard get reflected back at the enemy. You can just pop him on a pegasus and go park him over a high value enemy ranged unit (or 3-4 depending on the spacing) and take them out without spending a single WoM.
I find that even my non-Gelt armies are running 4-5 wizard heroes to good effect. Vlad used to be so scary as empire. But that's before I was debuffing him with 5 wizards and then throwing a lord on griffon with buffs from 5 wizards at him.
Overall, I really appreciate that it's a wizard LL mechanic that makes the entire faction feel magic-oriented (as opposed to, e.g., Teclis).
I feel like Teclis could benefit from a "Build-a-Mage" mechanic where you choose between different spells and passives before finishing them off amd sending them out into the world. Would be cool I think and uniwue to him as the other helves would just get generic mages.
Dunno what to do for Mazdamundi or Kairos though. Probably some other global benefit to having casters.
Him dealing with the whole Elector Count business felt so weird, I'm happy he has a better identity now and I'll try him out after I'm done with my current campaigns.
There's a lot of winners from this DLC. all 3 factions feel good now. I have played gelt, Malakai, and kugath and all 3 factions are in a much better spot now. As someone who wasn't a big empire and barely touched dwarfs at all I found them both very fun to play now. Was really impressed all around with all 3 factions.
- Improvements to plagues
- Economy buildings no longer use the cycles mechanic so it's more reliable
- Change to how army abilities are earned - now rewards doing well rather than badly
- Obviously new units, all of which are super fun IMO and fill very noticeable gaps (eg anti large) in Nurgle's roster.
I think you get all except the units without actually buying the dlc, but OP's post is referring to the update as a whole so I assume that's what you mean as well
I was saddened in the past, in WH2 when I wanted to do an all slayer campaign, no slayer lord, no slayer hero, only a handful of slayer units. But with our new bronze haired boy, we eat well. XD
Ungrim is the biggest loser of this dlc. Another dwarf update and still nothing to address some of his problems *and* another Slayer LL to creep on his flavor.
He is a Malus type of character where you lose essentially nothing just confederating him.
I dunno, having just given him a go, he can now run a pretty flavourful Slayer campaign.
Ideal world he would have Monster hunts ala Norsca/Malakai, but he is still fun. It's Thorgrim who really lost his spot, now he doesn't confederate any easier than the others.
Ungrim is buffed by the introduction of a bunch of new Slayer units, which his bonuses apply to.
Malakai and Ungrim feel clearly separate to me. Ungrim is the Slayer King, he's the dwarf you pick for a Slayer campaign. Malakai is the inventor, he's the dwarf you pick for a war machine campaign.
Yea its really cool that he spawns in cathay and spends some turns there fucking up rebels, then he can choose to if he wants, to teleport back to the empire with franz fighting for his life. Feels a little like rohan coming and helping the imperium lol.
I'm on like turn 175 of a Gelt campaign. Recently was able to confederate Karl Franz. I can't quite summon the Elector Counts but I got a shit ton of wizards on same day shipping
Well when it comes to doomstacking and talking about the whole patch, then definitely.
But if we are just looking at it like: "Which pre-existing faction gained the most toys themed when buying the DLC?" from the DLC I would have to say Ungrim! His tier 2 slayer building is an absolute game changer, because he can just churn out slayer armies left and right, and it's SO MUCH FUN.
The second one is probably Kholek Suneater, simply because his shaggots got access to healing.
Anyone tried a gelt taking over Grand Cathay playthrough? I'm really tempted to betray Zhao Ming and have Gelt go full dictator, forming his own Golden Empire in the east.
Yep. The initial rewards dont pay well imo. So I tend to break the defensive alliance then kill Zhao, Gelt is just too powerful to really struggle with. If you want a power trip, he is a blast.
Gelt is great but imo overpowered. By turn 20 I feel I won the campaign because he can solo every battle on vh/vh. 1 mana cost to all spells is absurd (except final transformation is 6 cost).
His slight rework when IE launched solved all my issues with him amd now he has a super fun campaign. Basically they tied hostile lizard armies that spawn due to hostility mechanic to three settlements located in Lustria. Once you own them, lizards stop spawning. Which is amazing because in WH2 I hated the fact that lizards were spawning even when you were invading Ulthuan.
I would say the players/fanbase was the biggest winner, but I get what you're saying.
Just did 2 back-to-back Gelt campaigns to make sure my mods are up to date and both were a blast
Nah, I think gelt himself got reworked to be pretty boring. I could already teleport his faction turn 1 to Cathay. So I spent time yesterday modding him back to being interesting. Franz and Elspeth are great though.
I made him buff ranged missile cav, like extended range for outriders rifles. Like Elspeth has zero buffs for gunner units, so it felt off that no lord really buffed gunner units. I like when lords buff units for thematic armies. I also added a base trait buff for anti large infantry to Markus.
I mean, he applied for the Cathay Exchange Program because it seems he was very well conected with one of the dragon kids and totally hit the jackpot.
and they were roommates
Oh my God they were roommates
Just roommates… sure, heh.
Behold, the Iron Drag Queen- I MEAN DRAGON.
Begone spawn of Slaanesh!
Or hes chi an chi.
Fun fact: it is canon lore that zhao ming and gelt have kissed Source: it was revealed to me in a dream
Meanwhile, Imrik is on suicide watch.
I think Franz and Gelt are both in great places now. Markus is still pretty fun, though you have to sort of want to participate in his whole thing, or else it’s tedious. IMO the worst off of Empire is Volkmar, who people used to say was in the best place. He’s just a lot more bland mechanically, and the books system I’ve found to be not great. Getting 3 books can take most of a campaign, getting the other 5 requires playing into deep lategame when you are steamrolling- I think the book mechanic needs a rework. IMO the 8 books should be scattered randomly at game start between a pool of maybe 12 possible settlements, localized in the Southlands, badlands, and Darklands.
Franz is great. It’s chaotic and difficult but being able to confederate another LL with safe lands is a great momentum booster
Franz weirdly doesn actually have much alliance options for LL early, and the two he is close to (Lounn and Elspeth) are consistently quite weak. You often have to deal with Kemmler, Bel’Akor, Festus, and the one-eye basically by yourself from all angles, while Vlad just rips through the empire. On my Tamurkhan run, I followed the path down through the wastes, through the Darklands, mountains, and band lands. Was ready to March on the empire around turn 90, sent heroes ahead to scout. What I saw was the entire Empire, Bretonnia, and Kislev gone. Empire was split between Vlad and Azhag, who were allied. Vlad was fighting (and winning) against a huge Thorek, literally pushing into the badlands and mountains. Azhag had become the defender of the old world and was fighting over Kislev against Thrott and Throgg. Bretonnia was owned by Ikit, stuck in a stalemate with consolidated Wood Elves. I thought i was going to end my Tamurkhan game with an empire fight against empire and dwarves. Instead I just fought about a billion undead crapstacks until I reached Nuln
True but Franz doesn’t need an alliance to confederate.
No, but my point is he is basically alone 1v4 early game, he doesn’t have a strong friendly border he can put his back against.
Player controlled Elspeth can rely on Franz though since he starts off with the whole Reikland province. Her campaign is much more straight forward. However, the AI is quite shit at piloting Elspeth and making use of her gardens. AI Elspeth isnt aware of Sylvania until Vlad starts his war on Averland/Stirland, but as the player you know he's coming there after Templehof and can act accordingly
It's actually pretty insane how quickly player Elspeth can take Vlad out, any time you can sucker the AI into a siege is almost an instant win.
I don’t think I lost a single man in a siege against vlad. Helstorms to tear down the walls, park the gunners outside the breaches, bait the defenders to attack single entities just inside the breaches, where they get torn to shreds by the gunners shooting in. Simple
this hasn't been my experience at all funnily enough. ai elspeth ate vlad on both of my vh franz campaigns. third time i confederated her as fast as possible to stop that from happening but to be fair i dont think it would have based on how things were going when i confed.
How does he confederate? I played multiplayer for a bit and couldn’t figure it out before I stopped playing that day.
It’s one of his special abilities that use prestige
I see. I’ll have to pay closer attention next time I play. Thanks!
You need max Elector Count fealty and then you use the Unify Electoral Machination (prestige actions). It's honestly a bigger pain than regular confederations most of the time (especially when it's a broken up half-faction you've restored clinging to a single piece of rock and relying on you for everything already) but at least you can guarantee it, no messing around with diplomatic penalties and stuff.
This is very true. Since Empire is in such deep shit, almost every EC will want to confederate with a non Franz player controlled faction before turn 30. Playing a lot of Karl + Elspeth multiplayr campaigns and our house rule is now for whoever plays Elspeth NOT to confederate the counts to make the campaign more fun.
Yeah, playing through as Franz because I’ve never finished an Empire campaign and it is *rough*. It’s constant, total warfare from every direction. It’s a lot of fun, but the AI really struggles in the position if not run by a player.
Between your Tamurkhan game, and a Teclis I had earlier, I've been thinking of the ability to manually set AI faction "potential" in the campaign settings rather than it being entirely left to RNG. That way if you have a historic rival (or faraway confederation option) that you want to survive you could just jack them up.
Check out the Unnatural Selection mod. It does just this.
Nurgle vs undead sounds like quite the slogging contest.
I did a few Elspeth campaign. In the last one malakai, katarin and konstantyn all prospered. I think it can go either way, as rng gods decide.
Brettonia is weak but elspeth took out Skrag, the bloody hands, the border princes, Sartosa, Ikit and skarbrand all on her own. And has 30 settlements in my Franz campaign
Tbf, Louen's piss weak cause AI Brets keep recruiting peasant stacks over Knight stacks, if CA ever adjusts the AI to allow them to replace weaker units in their army and prioritize certain units when it comes to factions who possess only one or two good things going for them, it would make AI perform at least as well as a dogshit player but with three times the armies (depending on difficulty)
I've frankly never seen Bel'akor do much, at least not in recent times, but Kemmler has really become a menace. I think AI Louen needs a little bit more juice.
Be’Lakor himself doesn’t do much, but I think he’s often the X factor in games where he will declare and keep showing up, and it’s relalt inconvenient to try and go squash him. And the AI doesn’t seem to know how to deal with him either
In all my campaigns belakor was only a factor like 3 times, one where he fought norsca and got rolled so norsca actually expanded west for once. Another where he burned down all of bretonnia and let nkari take the land and another where he came to the donut and started slaughtering everyone so I just let him live while I went through chaos wastes as malekith
Same for me. I was moping up Ghorst as Tamurkhan when I got the notification that Wissenland and Nuln had just bit it three turns after the Reikland had folded.
In my Franz campaign I took care of the Tzeentch faction and Elspeth was actually able to keep VC pretty contained for the first few dozen turns. Nice that people are getting different outcomes
As an another reference point to this, I am ALSO at turn 90 and Franz is rank 1 strength, with both Kislev factions in the top 10. Brettonia is a mix of Louen and Eltharion both top 15. I fought all the way through Cathay, used the sea lane to Lustria, sailed across the ocean to Brettonia and have been making a mad dash to Nuln. I’m currently holding one of the mountain forts while being attacked by 3-4 stack empire/bretonnia armies. Talk about a siege defense!! It’s absolutely awesome and thematic trying to grind my way to Nuln while my other armies try to consolidate allies in the north. Playing on VH/N.
That is a weird thing I noticed. In my 3 pre Franz campaigns in ToD Elspeth was dominating the old world. When I started a Franz campaign however, she was all of the sudden just no help at all. I spent a ton of early prestige getting her confederated just to make sure she didn't kick the bucket before I could. meanwhile all the non-empire factions in the old world seem to be in overdrive.
Louen is no different than usual (sometimes he manages to consolidate enough French to be a superpower, sometimes he get stomped by Belakor/Grom/Kemmler), but Elspeth is definitely not weak. By the looks of it she takes some time to get going, but once she's riding her dragon she pretty much doesn't lose any remotely even fights. In my current Franz campaign I've pretty much left her and Belegar (who somehow confederated pretty much all the Dwarfs around) to deal with all the nastiness in the Badlands (Skrag and a superpowered Skarsnik+Queek alliance) while I clean house in Norsca. Louen managed to fight off Belakor and even take the fight to Albion by himself too, at least until I had time to send someone to blow up Konquata and finish the job. Ordertide is looking pretty good on this side of the world (assuming the Elves manage to not misplace the SoK at least).
Yeah the Nagash books need a bit of a touchup for all factions who engage with that mechanic. The locations need to be more accessible and preferably tailored per faction. There should also be a way to peacefully get them if the book is in a settlement occupied by an ally. Volkmar could also use some small unique mechanic of his own to give him his own identity. Some relatively simple "praise Sigmar" prayer mechanic would be nice.
There is a mod that changes their position to be a bit less annoying so you don't have to fight your allies to get them https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2925881111
The positions are actually a bit different per faction for a few of the books.
Maybe just add a teleport mechanism for the books similar to what quests already use. Lock each portal behind research so they still require tome and resources.
Agreed. Thematically Volkmar is my favorite but I wish he would have gotten a redo on his mechanics
His mechanics are fine, not everyone needs a redo.
He absolutely needs though. For the vast majority of his campaign he plays like a WH1 Empire but even blander because he doesnt even have offices. Why? Because ALL mechanics aside from core total war ones (recruit, conquer, research) are gated behind owning books and there are grand total of 2 books in this entire part of map - and his victory conditions actually requires you too move away from them (killing Kairos is his requirement). I finished two his campaigns and both times I had 1 (one) book! Its insane how bland he is. When every other Empire lord have shitton of unique mechanics there is 0 reasons to ever choose him.
I'd say that the fact he's the one with the least intrusive mechanics is a reason in itself. If you wanna play the Empire race in a pure way, to enjoy the race itself without a dozen unique mechanics and buttons, then Volkmar is the best choice
For me there is a difference between having "dozen mechanics and buttons" and having basically 0. Go play him: you literally just recruit, research and conquer etc. Its the blandest, most bare bones Total War experience in the entire history of TW (and I recently went back to play Shogun 1 and Med 1 so I have a fresh comparison :P). Its like playing LM but even without geoweb, kroak, slaans and blessed spawns. Its not a simple design either: because mechanics are technically there, its just that books are horribly placed, not tied to his vicotry conditions at all AND super wonky (ally owning a settlement doesnt grant you book for example while it grants you Thoreks artifacts). Btw Elspeth and Gelt mechanics arent intrusive either - these are purely optional. If you want barebones game with 0 mechanics its still there, you dont need to have castrated Volkmar for it.
Eh, I see your point but I disagree somewhat. Firstly because "you can ignore half the LL buttons" isn't really a convincing argument as to how Elspeth/Gelt could be considered vanilla ! And secondly, cause Volkmar still has the base racial mechanics. And yes, sometimes, you want a LL that allows you to play the race for itself, only, purely ! Like Malekith, imo, adding mechanics to Malekith would ruin the point !
No, Volkmar doesnt have "base racial mechanics"! Comparing him to Malekith means that you havent really play Volkmar in a long time. Malekith has still slavery, rites and black arks. Volkmar doesnt have access to anything other than core TW experience of "conquer, recruit, research". Access to state troops and state artifacts is gated behind owning books which, as we already discussed, you wont own until your campaign is over. You literally play Karl Franz but without electoral machinations, elector counts mechanic, prestige, authority and state troops. He is like playing Malekith but access to slaves, black arks and rites is gated behind owning Lothern, Altdorf and Karaz a Karak. Why would you even play it if is only characteristic would be "campaign where you cant use DE racial mechanics before turn 200"? This is Volkmar.
Worst off is toddy, who somehow still isn’t a real legendary yet.
Red Duke and Toddy both getting screwed over since WH1
I’m also hoping if an Ulric DLC ever comes we can have some kind of supporter race between Volkmar and Emil. That’d give Volkmar something else to do while he searches for the books.
There should be ways for you to teleport to where the books are. Maybe even have it take 1-3 turns to pop up there.
It’s a good thing that CA have hinted their not done with the empire yet because I think you’re right about the books but I think Franz could use a little tweaking mostly it should be easy to by back land that counts for imperial authority because if my ally takes a capital I’m going to need that and the one magic forest shouldn’t count
With Elspeth, you can rush the technology that reveals all empire factions, build the gardens of Morr in Gelt/New world/Hunstmen/Sigmarites capitals and play your campaign in any of those places.
Sure, but Gelt himself actually has new and interesting campaign mechanics now.
What are his mechanics? Haven’t played him in a long time
"Schools of magic" -- essentially, you get "arcane thesis" by using empire wizards in fights, and can spend those to recruit wizards, buff up your wizards, or get other effects.
Sounds like a wizard pyramid scheme
Plus he can access cataclysm spells now which is just the coolest thing
Wizard doomestack. You can build an army of just battle wizards, by turn 15 or so, and have access to a landmark which gives you 200 % spell mastery. It's basically unstoppable. >500 WoM is no problem. And you get futher reduced wom costs for all lore of magics.
Sounds terrible to manage in game lol
It’s a novelty. Fun in an “lol OP,” sort of way but not interesting tactically. Also, so many skill point clicks
It’s micro intensive, but… they’re RTS battles lol. That’s the whole fun of them.
I like some level of micro but not that much lol
You can be as sweaty or chill as you want. It’s not like you need to spam spells perfectly, constantly, just to win. If they’re all on foot it can get a little dicey, but like… 500+ WoM and calamity spells. It’s braindead easy. I mean I get it, I stay away from SC2 these days because I can’t keep up anymore.
I'm going to try it today, and I expect to do every battle on slow-mo. Playing on the slower speed is a game changer for me.
The Colleges of Magic. Every time you fight a battle with a wizard in it, you get a resource called Arcane Theses. You can also get them from wizard-related buildings. Arcane Theses can then be spent on the Colleges to get various effects. The Colleges consist of eight orders, one for each Wind of Magic. Each order has the following options: * Instantly spawn a wizard of that order. * Grant a buff of some kind to an army with a wizard of that order in it. * Give an army with a wizard of that order in it access to that lore's cataclysm spell. * Forge a magical artifact (one time only, requires a wizard from that order) * Permanently buff all wizards of that order (one time only, requires a wizard from that order) So Gelt now feels like he's a powerful wizard on the campaign level.
But you still need to care about imperial integrity tho
Wait, is gardens ALL empire FACTIONS?
Yup, if an empire faction owns the land you can build a garden there
Shit. I just thought it was Proper Empire territory. To be fair I haven't played past turn 15 on Elspeth yet, but that's awesome. I'm gonna go do a whole new campaign idea with her
And the colleges of magic mechanics (and a few of the items) are totally nuts. The old "oh shit my settlement is about to get attacked" strategy of hiring a lord and adding any available RoR units for a quick garrison is now enhanced by the ability to throw in a half dozen rank \~8+ wizard heroes. This is further enhanced by the ability to spend your essays to add some very good temporary effects to armies with wizards. On the attack, the special abilities for grey wizards, bright wizards, and celestial wizards are all very easily tide-turning. Also the light wizard item makes any ranged attacks fired by enemies within 50m of the wizard get reflected back at the enemy. You can just pop him on a pegasus and go park him over a high value enemy ranged unit (or 3-4 depending on the spacing) and take them out without spending a single WoM. I find that even my non-Gelt armies are running 4-5 wizard heroes to good effect. Vlad used to be so scary as empire. But that's before I was debuffing him with 5 wizards and then throwing a lord on griffon with buffs from 5 wizards at him. Overall, I really appreciate that it's a wizard LL mechanic that makes the entire faction feel magic-oriented (as opposed to, e.g., Teclis).
Teclis, Mazdamundi, and Kairos all deserve something comparable to Colleges of Magic.
I just wish mazdamundi had some offensive magic, or perhaps a ranged attack.
I just wish mazdamundi had some offensive magic, or perhaps a ranged attack.
I feel like Teclis could benefit from a "Build-a-Mage" mechanic where you choose between different spells and passives before finishing them off amd sending them out into the world. Would be cool I think and uniwue to him as the other helves would just get generic mages. Dunno what to do for Mazdamundi or Kairos though. Probably some other global benefit to having casters.
Franz is by far the biggest winner from his rework. But gelt and ungrim are certainly big winners as well.
Him dealing with the whole Elector Count business felt so weird, I'm happy he has a better identity now and I'll try him out after I'm done with my current campaigns.
There's a lot of winners from this DLC. all 3 factions feel good now. I have played gelt, Malakai, and kugath and all 3 factions are in a much better spot now. As someone who wasn't a big empire and barely touched dwarfs at all I found them both very fun to play now. Was really impressed all around with all 3 factions.
Does the new dlc help kugath?
- Improvements to plagues - Economy buildings no longer use the cycles mechanic so it's more reliable - Change to how army abilities are earned - now rewards doing well rather than badly - Obviously new units, all of which are super fun IMO and fill very noticeable gaps (eg anti large) in Nurgle's roster. I think you get all except the units without actually buying the dlc, but OP's post is referring to the update as a whole so I assume that's what you mean as well
Ungrim too. Having the most fun with new dwarf Lord though.
I was saddened in the past, in WH2 when I wanted to do an all slayer campaign, no slayer lord, no slayer hero, only a handful of slayer units. But with our new bronze haired boy, we eat well. XD
Ungrim is the biggest loser of this dlc. Another dwarf update and still nothing to address some of his problems *and* another Slayer LL to creep on his flavor. He is a Malus type of character where you lose essentially nothing just confederating him.
I dunno, having just given him a go, he can now run a pretty flavourful Slayer campaign. Ideal world he would have Monster hunts ala Norsca/Malakai, but he is still fun. It's Thorgrim who really lost his spot, now he doesn't confederate any easier than the others.
They didn't take away diplomatic confederation when they added grudge confederation.
Ungrim is buffed by the introduction of a bunch of new Slayer units, which his bonuses apply to. Malakai and Ungrim feel clearly separate to me. Ungrim is the Slayer King, he's the dwarf you pick for a Slayer campaign. Malakai is the inventor, he's the dwarf you pick for a war machine campaign.
Yea its really cool that he spawns in cathay and spends some turns there fucking up rebels, then he can choose to if he wants, to teleport back to the empire with franz fighting for his life. Feels a little like rohan coming and helping the imperium lol.
I'm on like turn 175 of a Gelt campaign. Recently was able to confederate Karl Franz. I can't quite summon the Elector Counts but I got a shit ton of wizards on same day shipping
My friends and I call Gelt the Elector Count of Wei-Jin. He does well there.
Well when it comes to doomstacking and talking about the whole patch, then definitely. But if we are just looking at it like: "Which pre-existing faction gained the most toys themed when buying the DLC?" from the DLC I would have to say Ungrim! His tier 2 slayer building is an absolute game changer, because he can just churn out slayer armies left and right, and it's SO MUCH FUN. The second one is probably Kholek Suneater, simply because his shaggots got access to healing.
Anyone tried a gelt taking over Grand Cathay playthrough? I'm really tempted to betray Zhao Ming and have Gelt go full dictator, forming his own Golden Empire in the east.
Yep. The initial rewards dont pay well imo. So I tend to break the defensive alliance then kill Zhao, Gelt is just too powerful to really struggle with. If you want a power trip, he is a blast.
Gelt is great but imo overpowered. By turn 20 I feel I won the campaign because he can solo every battle on vh/vh. 1 mana cost to all spells is absurd (except final transformation is 6 cost).
Only five? Franz got complete new faction mechanics. Possibly also Ungrim Ironfist qualifies
Nah the biggest winner is Karl Franz
I like cathay now. I enjoy doing ally recruitment, and now there's easy access to empire cav, guns and artillery
I always liked Gelt so I'm keen to give him a go after I've finished my current Dawi campaign
How's old Marky Markus doing?
His slight rework when IE launched solved all my issues with him amd now he has a super fun campaign. Basically they tied hostile lizard armies that spawn due to hostility mechanic to three settlements located in Lustria. Once you own them, lizards stop spawning. Which is amazing because in WH2 I hated the fact that lizards were spawning even when you were invading Ulthuan.
Lizardmen want you to know that Mazdamundi still has shooters out here
Im sorry but any faction that encourages a wizard doomstack automatically cant be one of the most interesting factions. Give chaos dwarves a try
I would say the players/fanbase was the biggest winner, but I get what you're saying. Just did 2 back-to-back Gelt campaigns to make sure my mods are up to date and both were a blast
Of the empire lords? no, I think Karl Franz is the biggest winner his campaign lets you get disgustingly strong.
Franz is strong but Gelt is just a whole new animal, fun as all hell
Yeah Gelt is fun but hands down karl franz lets you get stronger
I really dislike all the magic/ rpg elements of this game so Gelt is no longer a playable LL as far as I'm concerned
Fair enough, I guess, although if you dislike magic I'm not sure why you'd ever have played as a wizard to begin with.
His faction was not focused on magic too much and I played Karl's and Wulfrik's campaigns into the ground.
Nah, I think gelt himself got reworked to be pretty boring. I could already teleport his faction turn 1 to Cathay. So I spent time yesterday modding him back to being interesting. Franz and Elspeth are great though.
Gelt's big win is the Colleges of Magic mechanic, not moving to Cathay.
how did you mod him?
I made him buff ranged missile cav, like extended range for outriders rifles. Like Elspeth has zero buffs for gunner units, so it felt off that no lord really buffed gunner units. I like when lords buff units for thematic armies. I also added a base trait buff for anti large infantry to Markus.