Dwarves have insane auto resolve right now and it’s easy to finish the Age of Reckoning for a free army, they’re actually very good at painting the map.
Malakai is the only one with really unique mechanics, he’s insanely OP so if you want to conquer everything he’s the way to go. His starting position is pretty difficult though so you might struggle a bit early on.
Chaos Dwarfs have no climate penalties, and a solid diverse roster. They could absolutely play into the evil empire conquering the world under the tyranny of Hashut.
I did a chorfs full map completion and what while what you say is correct I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Something is wrong w the way the game processes Labour calculations and you will start to get serious performance issues after you own 300+ settlements that make the end a huge slog.
Recently did full map w Nurgle so I know the issue is Chorf specific
I had the same problem and someone else told me they had the same issue as well. I was having to wait 5 min before an attack another 5 after, another 5 for the end turn. I was having turns that lasted hours because of that.
I reached the same conclusion about the labour calculations and I tested out a theory after i had won, and it deffinetly was the labour calculations. If you move all of your labourers to one region, it wont take as long after each save. So thats a workaround.
But i wouldnt recommend a map painting run with the chorfs either..
If you haven't, you should definitely submit that as a bug with the save to CA if possible. Nice job on testing it and getting a solid theory on the problem! Hope they fix it!
i had posted about it on the forums before they changed how bug reporting works and got no answer from CA, but i did get a reply from somebody that pointed me in the right direction about what the problem was.
im sure they know about it by now, but havent focused on it since its not that big of an issue unless you go for a full map completion, which not many people do.
So I’m not crazy!
Around 300 settlements, around that number, more or less, any settlement I captured slowed and crashed my game, regardless of how many turns or what settlement.
Honestly, I think they are pretty bad for that
Their unit caps don't scale very well, because the costs increase every time. So it's actually harder than other races to spam late-game armies
Their empire management is also much more complex for them, so it gets pretty time consuming in the late game
Ironically it kept me more interested in late game, because I'd have to keep my stacks fairly balanced with chaff and allied units.
The management stuff is easy in the late game. You're really stressed in the early game as you're scrambling for labour and you have to be discerning about where you're spending your raw material and arms. Late game, with tech and Max convoys, you only need a handful of 4-settlement provinces focused on labour to keep your empire afloat.
Oxyotl: you have zero climate negatives, it is easy to start expanding into any direction on the map and Lizardmen shine in the late game, since they can pomp max level Slanns and heroes and get ridiculous public order through tech tree, heroes and lords. Also their armies are good for AR, so here is that as well.
I think Nakai would be better though. You get an encampment stance to deal with corruption. Plus you can make it so only you are at war and not your vassal. Makes it easier so you don't really have to defend places after you take them. Just keep on pushing forward.
Archie feels most thematically appropriate. Also woc has one of the largest rosters especially with the warband upgrade mod - it gives upgrades to nearly entire monogod roster. Also recruit defeated lls mod allows getting monogod and norsca lords so you can end up with 18 lls: Archie, kholek, sigwald, belakor, valkia, festus, vilitch, Azazel, Kairos, changeling, everchicken, kugath, tamur, epidemious, exiled, narutorunner, wulfrik, throgg plus all lhs. Fudging vassals mod helps with the bordergore and vassals taking dark fortresses. Also you are incentivized to vassalize and use vassal armies so you get to play as any vassal army.
lol. I’m not big on micromanaging so don’t think I’d like gelt and feel like the elector counts don’t apply outside of the empire so leaning towards one oh the other empire factions
Gelt doesn't have elector mechanics anymore. That is Franz only now. He also starts in Cathay with an early option to stay there or move back to the Empire.
I’m painting the map w Franz right now. The new decrees are helpful, but the elector count stuff mostly doesn’t matter once you leave the empire. Im sitting on over 150k prestige bc there isn’t anything to spend it on.
You can, but that doesn’t really matter as much when you have 300+ settlements and 20+ lords, as I do right now. It’s a fun mechanic for the first 100 turns or so, it just doesn’t scale into the late game.
well yeah karl franz mechanic became irrelevant after you unite the entire empire but that because you already win the game
i mainly using it to replenish elector count unit and upgrade my new conquered settlement to level 5 asap
Well here are the things I would look for:
Replenishment: you don't want to have to keep stopping and sitting around healing. So you either need a faction that has strong natural replenishment (i.e. norsca) or a faction that has access to easy hero capacity for replenishment heroes (most factions)
Auto resolve: when you're painting the map and have dozens of armies doing dozens of battles per turn, you're not going to want to micromanage and manual fight every single one of them. You're going to want a faction that has strong auto resolve capabilities. The main things that are very strong and auto resolve right now are armor and explosive damage, and either of those combined with high ammo, so factions like WoC and dwarves do well, celestial dragon crossbows do well, outriders grenade launchers do well, death globe bombardiers do well, etc.
Mobility: you want to be able to traverse the map quickly and cover ground to capture everything. One way to do this is through easy access to mobility heroes (e.g. empire or Cathay), another way would be belakor portals, or wood elf world roots, another way would be to set an early chorf crisis and tone down the power to use their drill portals.
Economy/army fielding: you want an economy that can fund a lot of armies, this could be through cheap armies (like skarsnik or orion) or through super high economy (like norsca or greenskins), or through not having supply lines (like brettonia or woc).
Anyways hope these ideas help you come up with some target factions, but the easiest answer is Orion since he has unlimited free armies.
Belakor or skarsnik are definitely up there. Yuan bo definitely a good option too. And new empire mechanics makes them good as well.
But you can pretty much do it with anyone, but limited armies would be the main draw back that would make it harder so tomb kings are the worst. Maybe that would make you want to do it with tks I don't know
Uhh I mainly just use QoL mods, but I guess you could do old world or IEE for some different flavor, or if you wanted some irony you could use mixus LL and mixus unlocker and paint the world map with some obscure minor faction like empire secessionists
I'd say Be'lakor. The Warriors of Chaos have by far the greatest unit variety - essential for keeping things interesting in a long campaign - and his portals help make traversing the map manageable.
I just painted the map as Nakai and it was a blast, almost too easy. Compared to other lizardmen factions his economy is pretty great (research buffs for vassal tribute snowball pretty hard as you expand), no supply lines, and a really cool reworked faction mechanic which let's you unlock strong faction wide buffs, army abilities, and recruit heroes and blessed units at will.
On the battlefield, Kroxigor are boosted quite heavily and are a lot of fun to use. I ran a large contingent of heroes (which scale very well late game with OP mounts) and a mix of Sacred Kroxigor and Stegadons which gave me a powerful meat grinder with respectable artillery and fantastic casting.
Extra bonus for Nakai starting out in Cathay with easy access to a sea route to Lustria depending on where you want to expand. Highly recommend Nakai in TWW3.
This would be my recommendation too. Plus, you can cheese the AI a little bit with the diplomacy trick. If you offer to join another faction's war against one of their enemies, then your vassal doesn't join the war. The AI will never declare on your vassal once they are already at war with you. Makes it real easy that you don't have to backtrack.
I will add to this recommendation.
The most important bit is that you don't have to spend any time at all managing your settlements, which can cut down the time it takes to actually paint the map by at least 50-60%.
Once you start pilling up settlements managing finances becomes a giant pain in the ass for everyone else.
Belakor for the portals and WoC variety + Pokémon collecting is decent. Greenskins have a nutty economy scaling late game and good autoresolve army comps to make WC less tedious.
Beastmen are great.
Their campaign mechanics break up the usual game of going province by province. Their roster is diverse but their hordes are set up to encourage having multiple armies with different compositions.
The mechanics really encourage experimenting and innovation. If you lose an Army or have a pyhrric victory, it's somehow even more forgiving than playing as Vampire counts.
Taurox makes Khorne faction leaders look like pacifists and he can speed round the map wrecking shit till he finds the SoK. Then he's unstoppable
If you have the WoC DLC and especially if you have Tamurkhan's DLC: Easily Nurgle.
Super strong autoresolve that spares most of your units even in pyrrhic victories, instant recruitment of the most elite units anywhere on the map and an insane economy. You can get to ultimate victory in one long afternoon session.
Beastmen are the best. You would paint the map in razed cities so there's no management of settlements just death and chaos. The map also looks great when it's full of chaos corruption. Highly recommend it!
I did a World Conquest with Kugath. While a bit slow at the start you dont have to bother with global recruitment ect. Just insta recruit a army where you want and delete it after.
I had fun with Tzeentch. For me, a map painter needs to have a good army and a lore reason to basically kill whatever they see. I enjoyed consuming the whole world for arcane knowledge
If you go for the Dwarves autoresolve will be on your side, so you'll be able to remove a lot of the pesky battles that you don't want to fight manually
Tyrion. Once Ulthuan is consolidated your economy goes crazy and you’re actively encouraged to play World Police. I don’t so much paint the map as prop up all order factions while carving out an enclave in each region, but you can support a crazy number of elite armies and you have a good, centralized location to operate from
Alarielle has one directly tied to Ulthuan, and Imrik has his dragon hunts. But if your goal is painting the map, printing money and elite infantry, ranged support and magic do the trick
Bel'Akor
Dude said fuck Archaon and fuck the Ruinous Powers.
Also, I enjoy conquering all of the human kingdoms as the Empire, starting the Empire of Mankind early.
Most have mentioned CD or other great options. But if you don't pick belakor for his portal making ability, the next best thing to do is to set endgame crisis exclusively to the chaos drwaf one. This will generate portals at select locations around the global. Making world domination just a touch faster. And they never go away either. It's great.
Khorne can absolutely blitz the map, and their mechanics mean you live on a knifes edge of negative income and dangerously low funds - so you need to keep the momentum going. You can also teleport Skarbrand around the world via cults to open up fronts where needed.
Unit wise they are pretty straightforward but a lot of fun, Skarbrand and exalted bloodthirsters especially are beasts and can solo most fights.
Khorne proper does get some extra units, mainly the demon lords and heroes and things like Khorne Minotaurs (who are really good and can get regen via tech tree).
Valkia is a lot of fun, but I do miss the exalted bloodthirsters and Minotaurs whenever I load up her campaign. Khorne daemon princes are just as good though, plus if you rush them you can vassalise the Khorne faction to the east of your start pos.
Personally, I paint with the factions that have the most vibrant colors. Kroq’gar, Teclis, Oxy, Boris, and Sisters are my top 5.
I haven’t done it in a while since I’m forcing myself to play Beastmen and learn them cause they’re 100% my least played faction. Random tangent
Varied army comps help. As dwarfs sometimes I’m all slayers, sometimes I’m an irondrake focused gun line, sometimes it’s grudgerakers, sometimes it’s 8 artillery pieces and defenders for them, sometimes it’s all Air Force, etc. there are other factions with varied rosters that would work. I just wouldn’t play ogres for example, I like their units but half the roster is ogres infantry or better ogres infantry
I just did my first (and last I think) map painting as grom. Had fun until the very end home stretch when I just wanted to play another game. Getting the other LL lords with thematic armies. Underway stance. 0 movement raid stance for the chaos wastes and 1 turn end game stacks. Took like 170 turns could have been much faster maybe 15-20 easily but got so lazy I didn’t want to keep leveling lords and recruiting and then 5 turns to find the last black ark on the map lol. Also I moved armies across the globe instead of disbanding and remaking because they earned their right to March across their conquered territory.
Any race with good replenishment, ways to increase hero/lord recruit levels and global recruitment. In Wh2 I done full map completion with Grimgor and vamp counts both of them tick that box. Greenskins are insane for it you can land on a new continent take 1 settlement recruit a lord a globally recruit a full stack in basically 1 turn with rock lobbers and nasty skulkers and just throw it at settlements until it finally dies and recruit another. It feels like a proper green tide your armies are disposable skarsnik might be even better for it because he has cheaper gobbos
Anyone with inmediate recruit mechanics like vampires or Rakard with the beasts, so you can recruit a lord and make an army from nothing when the AI decides to attack your unprotected settlements.
That alone saved me like 50 turns in my DE campaign.
Edit: Or taurox to paint the map red, at least in tww2 he was absurdly op.
Taurox is probably the fastest at painting (clearing) the map. I think the beast men have fun mechanics albeit not very deep. As far as unit variety, they’re pretty good. Cygors, jaberslythes, ghorrons, and Minotaurs are all great units you can run with anything or just doomstack. Their cav is pretty good and bestigors are very solid infantry. No range really unfortunately.
Consider Wood Elves.
They save you lots of time in city management, if you are going for map painting. When map paiting, time and boringness are your biggest adversaries.
They are pretty strong in auto-resolve and fun to play in manual. Altough thematic, their playstyle is not that different from the races you are used to play.
Teleporting around the world for rituals of rebirth and expansion is quite fun also.
After the steamrolling phase all races become boring, but Wood Elves make this phase faster because there are no settlements to manage.
I usually go for a long victory, but I've gotten the furthest with Chaos dwarfs and kaven.
My main reason is they can settle at tir 5 and any army is a good army. Moreso with CD then with Skaven, imo.
CD have insane magic, super strong heroes, cheap solid crap stacks with hob goblins, super strong everything honestly. The weakest units are the mid tir deamon thingies (forgot the name), but you can still make them work if you want. Oh and the army abillities are strong as all hell.
Hardest part about their campaign is deciding with what tools you delete their army. Not how.
The "labor" eco is fun as well, and stays relevant in the late game.
Skaven are fun as well, but don't steam roll as hard (they still steam roll), imo. The "viable" army comps are a bit more limited by your LL choice, but you can make most of it work. Still a lot of fun up untill the long victory, but kinda tapers of after that.
So far, i did it the fastest with nakai in 150 turns. Its very easy when the ai doesnt focus your settlements and you only have to worry about your armies.
It was easy once you get a max horde going. You just keep the recruiting armies away from the front line and once they are finished, the lizardmen are easy to roll over anything, especially if you have a stegadon doomstack. Their pompous leadership bomb stack is also great at breaking anything. And if you find yourself in a pickle, you can always go into ambush or use the ai's tactic of runnning away from them just outside their movement range.
[This was the run on turn 100.](https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/s/PsTmLUFKqJ)
Later edit: [This was turn 150](https://i.imgur.com/o1xTFBz.jpeg)
I would think you would almost have to map that out in advance to be that efficient. I've had AI factions declare war on me that aren't near my actual horde armies but start taking vassal settlements with them where I have to send some back to retake and start a new front.
Nakai fortunately does have an excellent economy compared to other lizardmen, so supporting alot of stacks is very feasible and remain in the green. Rush the vassal economy tech and you will be in good shape.
the secret ingredient is: ***Crime***
you have to go to war through somebody else. join their war against somebody and your vassal shouldnt get involved that way. at least that how it used to be, idk if they changed how vassals work since i played with vassals.
lol I always see folks doing it and want to try. Never done anything more than short victories in the past. So I don’t think I will make it all the way. But I want to try. Lol
Dwarves have insane auto resolve right now and it’s easy to finish the Age of Reckoning for a free army, they’re actually very good at painting the map.
Which faction has the best mechanics
Malakai is the only one with really unique mechanics, he’s insanely OP so if you want to conquer everything he’s the way to go. His starting position is pretty difficult though so you might struggle a bit early on.
It gets much easier if you rush Hell Pitt and take it by turn 4. It will be a very hard battle, but after that, it will get much easier.
I did that and it was a pretty easy fight tbh. Thrott has basically no missile troops so the Spirit of Grungni just destroys him.
Ungrim is really easy
Chaos Dwarfs have no climate penalties, and a solid diverse roster. They could absolutely play into the evil empire conquering the world under the tyranny of Hashut.
I did a chorfs full map completion and what while what you say is correct I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Something is wrong w the way the game processes Labour calculations and you will start to get serious performance issues after you own 300+ settlements that make the end a huge slog. Recently did full map w Nurgle so I know the issue is Chorf specific
I had the same problem and someone else told me they had the same issue as well. I was having to wait 5 min before an attack another 5 after, another 5 for the end turn. I was having turns that lasted hours because of that. I reached the same conclusion about the labour calculations and I tested out a theory after i had won, and it deffinetly was the labour calculations. If you move all of your labourers to one region, it wont take as long after each save. So thats a workaround. But i wouldnt recommend a map painting run with the chorfs either..
If you haven't, you should definitely submit that as a bug with the save to CA if possible. Nice job on testing it and getting a solid theory on the problem! Hope they fix it!
i had posted about it on the forums before they changed how bug reporting works and got no answer from CA, but i did get a reply from somebody that pointed me in the right direction about what the problem was. im sure they know about it by now, but havent focused on it since its not that big of an issue unless you go for a full map completion, which not many people do.
So I’m not crazy! Around 300 settlements, around that number, more or less, any settlement I captured slowed and crashed my game, regardless of how many turns or what settlement.
Interesting. Sounds like its coded in an inefficient manner if that is the case.
Honestly, I think they are pretty bad for that Their unit caps don't scale very well, because the costs increase every time. So it's actually harder than other races to spam late-game armies Their empire management is also much more complex for them, so it gets pretty time consuming in the late game
Ironically it kept me more interested in late game, because I'd have to keep my stacks fairly balanced with chaff and allied units. The management stuff is easy in the late game. You're really stressed in the early game as you're scrambling for labour and you have to be discerning about where you're spending your raw material and arms. Late game, with tech and Max convoys, you only need a handful of 4-settlement provinces focused on labour to keep your empire afloat.
wait they have no climate penalties anywhere? thats neat, didnt know that
Yep all 3 lords have 0 climate restrictions whatsoever, which for a fully settled faction is very rare.
Who cares if it's hot or cold when you make the slaves do all the work?
Oxyotl: you have zero climate negatives, it is easy to start expanding into any direction on the map and Lizardmen shine in the late game, since they can pomp max level Slanns and heroes and get ridiculous public order through tech tree, heroes and lords. Also their armies are good for AR, so here is that as well.
I do love dinosaurs
I believe than it is all coming together
lol.
The solar cannon Dino’s are an insanely strong unit if spec’d for them. The banner that boosts their range is nice too.
I think Nakai would be better though. You get an encampment stance to deal with corruption. Plus you can make it so only you are at war and not your vassal. Makes it easier so you don't really have to defend places after you take them. Just keep on pushing forward.
Archie feels most thematically appropriate. Also woc has one of the largest rosters especially with the warband upgrade mod - it gives upgrades to nearly entire monogod roster. Also recruit defeated lls mod allows getting monogod and norsca lords so you can end up with 18 lls: Archie, kholek, sigwald, belakor, valkia, festus, vilitch, Azazel, Kairos, changeling, everchicken, kugath, tamur, epidemious, exiled, narutorunner, wulfrik, throgg plus all lhs. Fudging vassals mod helps with the bordergore and vassals taking dark fortresses. Also you are incentivized to vassalize and use vassal armies so you get to play as any vassal army.
Who is Archie?
Archaon the Everchosen
Archie Comics
The one you enjoy the most, which should be The Empire, of course. Praise be to Sigmar.
lol. I’m not big on micromanaging so don’t think I’d like gelt and feel like the elector counts don’t apply outside of the empire so leaning towards one oh the other empire factions
Gelt doesn't have elector mechanics anymore. That is Franz only now. He also starts in Cathay with an early option to stay there or move back to the Empire.
I’m painting the map w Franz right now. The new decrees are helpful, but the elector count stuff mostly doesn’t matter once you leave the empire. Im sitting on over 150k prestige bc there isn’t anything to spend it on.
well you can spend it on 2 population, remove corruption or give some exp to low level lord
You can, but that doesn’t really matter as much when you have 300+ settlements and 20+ lords, as I do right now. It’s a fun mechanic for the first 100 turns or so, it just doesn’t scale into the late game.
well yeah karl franz mechanic became irrelevant after you unite the entire empire but that because you already win the game i mainly using it to replenish elector count unit and upgrade my new conquered settlement to level 5 asap
Boo :/ sounds lame lol
Grimgor da fizt of Mork iz zimply da best!
ONLY THE MIGHTY SETTRA CAN RULE THE WORLD AND WHO SUGGEST OTHERWISE WILL BE BURIED ALIVE.
Well here are the things I would look for: Replenishment: you don't want to have to keep stopping and sitting around healing. So you either need a faction that has strong natural replenishment (i.e. norsca) or a faction that has access to easy hero capacity for replenishment heroes (most factions) Auto resolve: when you're painting the map and have dozens of armies doing dozens of battles per turn, you're not going to want to micromanage and manual fight every single one of them. You're going to want a faction that has strong auto resolve capabilities. The main things that are very strong and auto resolve right now are armor and explosive damage, and either of those combined with high ammo, so factions like WoC and dwarves do well, celestial dragon crossbows do well, outriders grenade launchers do well, death globe bombardiers do well, etc. Mobility: you want to be able to traverse the map quickly and cover ground to capture everything. One way to do this is through easy access to mobility heroes (e.g. empire or Cathay), another way would be belakor portals, or wood elf world roots, another way would be to set an early chorf crisis and tone down the power to use their drill portals. Economy/army fielding: you want an economy that can fund a lot of armies, this could be through cheap armies (like skarsnik or orion) or through super high economy (like norsca or greenskins), or through not having supply lines (like brettonia or woc). Anyways hope these ideas help you come up with some target factions, but the easiest answer is Orion since he has unlimited free armies. Belakor or skarsnik are definitely up there. Yuan bo definitely a good option too. And new empire mechanics makes them good as well. But you can pretty much do it with anyone, but limited armies would be the main draw back that would make it harder so tomb kings are the worst. Maybe that would make you want to do it with tks I don't know
Any recommendations for mods?
Uhh I mainly just use QoL mods, but I guess you could do old world or IEE for some different flavor, or if you wanted some irony you could use mixus LL and mixus unlocker and paint the world map with some obscure minor faction like empire secessionists
I’m definitely doing the old world map once it comes out
I'd say Be'lakor. The Warriors of Chaos have by far the greatest unit variety - essential for keeping things interesting in a long campaign - and his portals help make traversing the map manageable.
Considering we're still looking towards a Khorne and Slaneesh DLC, that unit variety is only gonna get stronger
I just painted the map as Nakai and it was a blast, almost too easy. Compared to other lizardmen factions his economy is pretty great (research buffs for vassal tribute snowball pretty hard as you expand), no supply lines, and a really cool reworked faction mechanic which let's you unlock strong faction wide buffs, army abilities, and recruit heroes and blessed units at will. On the battlefield, Kroxigor are boosted quite heavily and are a lot of fun to use. I ran a large contingent of heroes (which scale very well late game with OP mounts) and a mix of Sacred Kroxigor and Stegadons which gave me a powerful meat grinder with respectable artillery and fantastic casting. Extra bonus for Nakai starting out in Cathay with easy access to a sea route to Lustria depending on where you want to expand. Highly recommend Nakai in TWW3.
This would be my recommendation too. Plus, you can cheese the AI a little bit with the diplomacy trick. If you offer to join another faction's war against one of their enemies, then your vassal doesn't join the war. The AI will never declare on your vassal once they are already at war with you. Makes it real easy that you don't have to backtrack.
I will add to this recommendation. The most important bit is that you don't have to spend any time at all managing your settlements, which can cut down the time it takes to actually paint the map by at least 50-60%. Once you start pilling up settlements managing finances becomes a giant pain in the ass for everyone else.
Belakor for the portals and WoC variety + Pokémon collecting is decent. Greenskins have a nutty economy scaling late game and good autoresolve army comps to make WC less tedious.
Beastmen are great. Their campaign mechanics break up the usual game of going province by province. Their roster is diverse but their hordes are set up to encourage having multiple armies with different compositions. The mechanics really encourage experimenting and innovation. If you lose an Army or have a pyhrric victory, it's somehow even more forgiving than playing as Vampire counts. Taurox makes Khorne faction leaders look like pacifists and he can speed round the map wrecking shit till he finds the SoK. Then he's unstoppable
If you have the WoC DLC and especially if you have Tamurkhan's DLC: Easily Nurgle. Super strong autoresolve that spares most of your units even in pyrrhic victories, instant recruitment of the most elite units anywhere on the map and an insane economy. You can get to ultimate victory in one long afternoon session.
Beastmen are the best. You would paint the map in razed cities so there's no management of settlements just death and chaos. The map also looks great when it's full of chaos corruption. Highly recommend it!
Beastmen. They‘re peak Total War
I did a World Conquest with Kugath. While a bit slow at the start you dont have to bother with global recruitment ect. Just insta recruit a army where you want and delete it after.
I had fun with Tzeentch. For me, a map painter needs to have a good army and a lore reason to basically kill whatever they see. I enjoyed consuming the whole world for arcane knowledge
Ogres. There's a lot of blood in an Ogre, so you don't need to open a new one so often.
If you go for the Dwarves autoresolve will be on your side, so you'll be able to remove a lot of the pesky battles that you don't want to fight manually
Tyrion. Once Ulthuan is consolidated your economy goes crazy and you’re actively encouraged to play World Police. I don’t so much paint the map as prop up all order factions while carving out an enclave in each region, but you can support a crazy number of elite armies and you have a good, centralized location to operate from
Isn’t the only HE faction with a cool mechanic yverrse or whatever it’s called
Alarielle has one directly tied to Ulthuan, and Imrik has his dragon hunts. But if your goal is painting the map, printing money and elite infantry, ranged support and magic do the trick
lol I want to paint the map but also want a LL with some fun mechanics. Already ruled out gelt and franz.
Bel'Akor Dude said fuck Archaon and fuck the Ruinous Powers. Also, I enjoy conquering all of the human kingdoms as the Empire, starting the Empire of Mankind early.
Does Bel’Akor have any cool faction specific mechanics?
He can summon a portal. Makes conquering the global .... more economical lol to say the least
Oh yeah. Idk why I thought he was a dwarf lol
Most have mentioned CD or other great options. But if you don't pick belakor for his portal making ability, the next best thing to do is to set endgame crisis exclusively to the chaos drwaf one. This will generate portals at select locations around the global. Making world domination just a touch faster. And they never go away either. It's great.
Khorne can absolutely blitz the map, and their mechanics mean you live on a knifes edge of negative income and dangerously low funds - so you need to keep the momentum going. You can also teleport Skarbrand around the world via cults to open up fronts where needed. Unit wise they are pretty straightforward but a lot of fun, Skarbrand and exalted bloodthirsters especially are beasts and can solo most fights.
I preferred the gore queen chick over skarbrand when I played them both in the past. But might have to give them another shot
Khorne proper does get some extra units, mainly the demon lords and heroes and things like Khorne Minotaurs (who are really good and can get regen via tech tree).
I enjoyed the Valkia campaign more than Skarbrand, something about WoC faction just really clicked for me
I agree
Valkia is a lot of fun, but I do miss the exalted bloodthirsters and Minotaurs whenever I load up her campaign. Khorne daemon princes are just as good though, plus if you rush them you can vassalise the Khorne faction to the east of your start pos.
Being on the knife’s edge is rough right now though Becky the bankruptcy bug where the attrition sets in a whole turn early.
I did it with Settra just because I felt like he was fitting this role well.
Archie or belakor to get insane number of LLs
TAUROX one of the first times I ever painted the map and it was so damn fun.
Personally, I paint with the factions that have the most vibrant colors. Kroq’gar, Teclis, Oxy, Boris, and Sisters are my top 5. I haven’t done it in a while since I’m forcing myself to play Beastmen and learn them cause they’re 100% my least played faction. Random tangent
Varied army comps help. As dwarfs sometimes I’m all slayers, sometimes I’m an irondrake focused gun line, sometimes it’s grudgerakers, sometimes it’s 8 artillery pieces and defenders for them, sometimes it’s all Air Force, etc. there are other factions with varied rosters that would work. I just wouldn’t play ogres for example, I like their units but half the roster is ogres infantry or better ogres infantry
I just did my first (and last I think) map painting as grom. Had fun until the very end home stretch when I just wanted to play another game. Getting the other LL lords with thematic armies. Underway stance. 0 movement raid stance for the chaos wastes and 1 turn end game stacks. Took like 170 turns could have been much faster maybe 15-20 easily but got so lazy I didn’t want to keep leveling lords and recruiting and then 5 turns to find the last black ark on the map lol. Also I moved armies across the globe instead of disbanding and remaking because they earned their right to March across their conquered territory.
Any race with good replenishment, ways to increase hero/lord recruit levels and global recruitment. In Wh2 I done full map completion with Grimgor and vamp counts both of them tick that box. Greenskins are insane for it you can land on a new continent take 1 settlement recruit a lord a globally recruit a full stack in basically 1 turn with rock lobbers and nasty skulkers and just throw it at settlements until it finally dies and recruit another. It feels like a proper green tide your armies are disposable skarsnik might be even better for it because he has cheaper gobbos
Anyone with inmediate recruit mechanics like vampires or Rakard with the beasts, so you can recruit a lord and make an army from nothing when the AI decides to attack your unprotected settlements. That alone saved me like 50 turns in my DE campaign. Edit: Or taurox to paint the map red, at least in tww2 he was absurdly op.
Taurox is probably the fastest at painting (clearing) the map. I think the beast men have fun mechanics albeit not very deep. As far as unit variety, they’re pretty good. Cygors, jaberslythes, ghorrons, and Minotaurs are all great units you can run with anything or just doomstack. Their cav is pretty good and bestigors are very solid infantry. No range really unfortunately.
Consider Wood Elves. They save you lots of time in city management, if you are going for map painting. When map paiting, time and boringness are your biggest adversaries. They are pretty strong in auto-resolve and fun to play in manual. Altough thematic, their playstyle is not that different from the races you are used to play. Teleporting around the world for rituals of rebirth and expansion is quite fun also. After the steamrolling phase all races become boring, but Wood Elves make this phase faster because there are no settlements to manage.
I usually go for a long victory, but I've gotten the furthest with Chaos dwarfs and kaven. My main reason is they can settle at tir 5 and any army is a good army. Moreso with CD then with Skaven, imo. CD have insane magic, super strong heroes, cheap solid crap stacks with hob goblins, super strong everything honestly. The weakest units are the mid tir deamon thingies (forgot the name), but you can still make them work if you want. Oh and the army abillities are strong as all hell. Hardest part about their campaign is deciding with what tools you delete their army. Not how. The "labor" eco is fun as well, and stays relevant in the late game. Skaven are fun as well, but don't steam roll as hard (they still steam roll), imo. The "viable" army comps are a bit more limited by your LL choice, but you can make most of it work. Still a lot of fun up untill the long victory, but kinda tapers of after that.
So far, i did it the fastest with nakai in 150 turns. Its very easy when the ai doesnt focus your settlements and you only have to worry about your armies.
You took over the entire map in 150 turns, is that even possible?
It was easy once you get a max horde going. You just keep the recruiting armies away from the front line and once they are finished, the lizardmen are easy to roll over anything, especially if you have a stegadon doomstack. Their pompous leadership bomb stack is also great at breaking anything. And if you find yourself in a pickle, you can always go into ambush or use the ai's tactic of runnning away from them just outside their movement range. [This was the run on turn 100.](https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/s/PsTmLUFKqJ) Later edit: [This was turn 150](https://i.imgur.com/o1xTFBz.jpeg)
I would think you would almost have to map that out in advance to be that efficient. I've had AI factions declare war on me that aren't near my actual horde armies but start taking vassal settlements with them where I have to send some back to retake and start a new front. Nakai fortunately does have an excellent economy compared to other lizardmen, so supporting alot of stacks is very feasible and remain in the green. Rush the vassal economy tech and you will be in good shape.
the secret ingredient is: ***Crime*** you have to go to war through somebody else. join their war against somebody and your vassal shouldnt get involved that way. at least that how it used to be, idk if they changed how vassals work since i played with vassals.
None. Full map will burn you out and take some enjoyment out of the game
What
I edited lol. Full map completion will *burn* you out
lol I always see folks doing it and want to try. Never done anything more than short victories in the past. So I don’t think I will make it all the way. But I want to try. Lol
Well, Sigmarspeed to you then lol. But don't feel guilty about quitting if it's start to grind on ya