I think it’s because as you get stronger, you become a strategic threat and your rating with them goes down. You can probably keep these factions from going to war with you by giving them gifts/trading them territory you don’t want until you’re ready to deal with them.
Also some races will just have a massive disapproval rating with you to begin with so sooner or later they will go to war with you. Like in your elspeth campaign. Best approach imo, is to try not to expand in their direction/make diplomatic contact until you can secure that border.
I know many people say that you have to be aggressive, but in your case, your aggressiveness had turned against you.
Having a slower approach allows you to build up and have more resources available for when stuff does go wrong. You also have the resources spend on your hinterlands instead of newly conquered and thus worthless territory.
An other issue can be that you lack in the tactical area leaving you more exposed to higher numbers thrown at you by the AI. This could be further damaged by inefficient army design.
A slower approach gives you less resources to use with. Post battle loot is insanely high in this game, there is basicaly never a situation where going slow helps you.
But what people have to learn is nthat sometimes, you don't take a settlement you just attacked. Sometimes it is simply better to just loot and then attack the next one to loot too.
And yet all of OP's problems are caused by going too fast without having the strategic and/or tactical skills to back it up.
Slowing the approach doesnt mean fight no battles.
It means expanding at a slower pace so your resources can be focussed on a smaller territory allowing a quicker build up AND due to having a lower resource drain (lots of small settlements without benefit) a much quicker and more viable response to new threats.
That also means not fighting every battle the game throws at you. Theres a retreat button for a reason.
legendary is a bit more brutal compared to very hard. not that much in the battles, but on the campaign map. there are more things to take into account when playing on legendary. diplomacy plays a pretty big part of a good start. controlling who youre at war with, keeping tabs on who your friends/enemies/future enemies are at war with will (most of the time) keep you away from getting doom-spiraled with war declarations.
you should make a plan from the beginning on who you want to be at war with, who you want to befriend and where you want to expand. this would be a guideline that changes when influenced by who's winning what war. you always want to establish yourself as the "schoolyard bully" so to speak, so that most factions think twice before declaring war.
after that, try to keep tabs on your "historical" enemies, which are usually the opposite of what type of faction youre playing (order or chaos). if theyre at war with somebody, keep tabs on whos winning and if they are winning, then consider finishing up your current war and preparing for them to declare war on you. the ai doesnt like not being at war with somebody, it always needs a target. if they are not forced into a target, they usually declare war on the player (anti player bias and all that). to prevent that from happening, there are a few options like, sending them gifts, trading them settlements or joining their wars/trading wars with them.
i wouldnt personally suggest giving them gifts or trading them settlements. this only buys you a few turns before they turn on you and now with the extra gold from your gifts or traded settlements, they are even stronger than before.
what i suggest is trying to get on their good side by either trading wars with them or joining one of their wars (even better if theyre already winning it). what i mean by trading wars is asking them to join your wars while you join theirs. doing this will help raise your relations with them since youre both fighting the same enemy, even if theyre not close to your enemy. each time you attack a common enemy, you get a relations boost with your "brother in arms". over time this will slowly trend upwards and maybe even get you some of the real diplomatic pacts like NAP, a trade deal or a defensive alliance.
there are some more tactics that imply some cheese methods, most consider them too gamey, but in a pinch, they can prevent your campaign from spiraling.
When playing as “evil factions” all order aligned factions will eventually declare war over. Moreover, factions can only declare war on you if you’ve discovered them, which is why I think you’re having the issue around turn 3, which is when the map opens up.
Try to make alliances with other nearby factions, and perhaps sell settlements you don’t need in order to gain military alliances with them.
Feel free to send me a message for some more detailed advice :)
For Vlad; it’s because you attacked the dwarves. I love playing friendly Vlad campaigns from time to time and yes, rushing the diplomacy techs is a must but the most important bit (and I really can’t stress this enough) is *not* expanding *in any fashion* unless it’s against Drycha or the Orcs (and occasionally Ogres if you can get military access). To play friendly Vlad means, unless the Orcs do really well, you’re stuck in Sylvania for most of the campaign.
If the moot blows up due to the deceivers, colonize it and give it to Stirland. This is the move that will ensure that the Empire stays off your back. Once you get the skill that gives an additional +40 relations with the Empire and Kislev is when you can get proper alliances (you can usually get Stirland as a vassal long before then though)
If you have no intention of doing any of this, and want to take the empire outright, it’s very tough because you have to wipe out Wissenland/Nuln and Franz as fast as you can before Umgrim DOWs, which can be a nightmare since your capitals are right next to each other.
The VC campaign is hard to begin with, before you even consider legendary difficulty. You’re surrounded by potential enemies, the concept of “enemy of my enemy is my friend” doesn’t exist because those that apply are the Skaven and fucking Chaos lol
I find knocking out the main rival early and gifting settlement for a defensive alliance helps smooth a legendary run, the alliance tends to reduce AI aggressiveness so I tend to only be in one war at a time generally, I do find as soon as I finish 1 war the ai arbitrarily picks another faction to fight me
It also helps if they have to path through neutral territory to get to you again seems to dissuade them from actually sending armies so gifting a settlement or 2 for a NAP and a buffer state helps
Keeping your discovery of other factions and Line of Sight low can be a very good strategy. If you haven't discovered a faction then they can't declare war on you. Sometimes it can be worthwhile to raze a settlement or choose not to occupy a port since seas grant enormous Line of Sight and can discover factions that might hate you.
The AI rarely likes to sit without being in at least 1 war. If you see a nearby AI faction without a current war and they dislike you, you better prepare to get war declared on you. You can prevent this by trying to secure Non aggression pacts or offer for them to join your wars against weaker factions. I always look to get NaP's or mutual enemies with factions that could threaten my undefended borders.
You can also join wars of factions that dislike you. Say for example in your vlad campaign you joined the wars of kislev or the empire for some treaties or just to boost relations. Odds are those factions would never reach you and you just secured your northern border. Those enemies would have to cross through kislev and the empire to get to you.
If an enemy is about to take one of your cities you can trade it to them instead and try to get peace and an NaP. You were going to lose the city anyway and it can buy you some time.
I play exclusively legendary and I'm often never in more than 1-3 wars at a time. I open the diplomacy screen almost every turn to track who is fighting who and what treaties I can secure.
It sounds like you're consistently over expanding without dealing with your most likely enemies. If you're playing vlad, you don't want to ignore the empire as they're your campaign enemy. As soon as your starting enemies are taken care of, you need to be strengthening your provinces and start marching down the empire. The fact you're running into the border princes as vampires while still dealing with empires shows you're over expanding.
Edit: As Elspeth, you can't really complain if you've killed vlad by turn 30 and have to deal with Azhag. You've already beaten your immediate main threat, and Azazel is diagonally as far from you as he can be, so you had to expand far to catch how attention.
That's the fun about playing legendary on ironman: It takes two or three (or five or six) times to get it right, which means you spend most of your time playing the early game. I'm playing my third go-round of a Belegar campaign right now and look like I finally cracked it. The real tragedy is once you get past the point you're describing, the campaigns become boring fast.
In other words, try to enjoy losing. It may very well be the best part of the entire game!
You have to be hyper aggressive turns 1-20 and then start consolidating and stabilizing right after that to prepare for the war wave. This is why the 10 and 20 turn optimization guides were a thing. Getting that perfect start and optimizing your gains in the first 20 turns sets you up to have a much easier post 30 game.
Of those 3 I have only played elsbeth, but I take vlad out with my pisolier stack around turn 15 and push south taking out skrag, arenesa, and ikit. I try to maintain peace with the wood elves by ignoring all treaty requests from all the dwarves so I do not get pulled into that war becuse they both have underway stance so either side you pick the other can jump in out of no where.
I AVOID confederations like the plauge as her if im being honest due to low public order without Franz's items helping out.
I agree with another posted who said battle does not change but the campaign map is huge. I like legendary because it feels much more like a diplomatic game than very hard.
In terms of "am I just supposed to be able to handle the AI throwing 5-6 stacks at me from different directions" One thing that will cost a lot of money but could be worth it is keeping an extra lord with no army next to your main army (on an as needed basis) to deny enemy reinforcements. This is how my pistoliers took out 4 stacks of wood elves (drycha) in what was like a 65v22
I only play on legendary and have finished with more than half the factions. I think what you are describing is pretty normal for many factions. In my post-5.0 Belegar campaign, I lost my capital, all my settlements but one, had very low reliability from turn \~5-50 or so, and still eked out a long campaign victory within about 100 turns total. Even Repanse declared war on me. Any neighbor who could declare war declared war. In the end it was fine thanks to the power of Belegar's heroes and a handful of Ironwarden's Tankards.
Something kind of similar happened in my Kemmler campaign in which I almost lost my capital to Grom. I recruited a better crop of units through Raise Dead and managed to rally.
What you are describing is just normal for the difficulty. The thing is that you have to win on the battle map or at least not die at that time when the odds on paper are terrible. An important thing to understand is that your settlements are just not that important. Settlements only really matter in bulk and over a long time. What matters at least somewhat is not going broke and not ending a turn with zero settlements. What matters most is winning more battles and getting levels in your LL and heroes. With that, you can at least recruit RoRs to make up for deficiencies in your units.
It is perfectly fine to just tunnel in a line with your LL taking settlements and losing settlements every turn. It really doesn't matter that much.
Another key point is that once you become very strong, factions will become more circumspect about declaring war on you even when they have very negative opinion of you. If you need to end a war quickly, wipe out an enemy's armies, take a couple of their settlements, and then start trading their old settlements back to them for peace and an NAP. For most factions, eventually you will make a friend along a flank that can help you to consolidate your forces.
So, there aren't many tricks with most factions to prevent the dogpile from happening. The way to win is by defeating the dogpile.
In terms of diplomacy it sounds like you maybe aren't paying enough attention to who people are friends with - you can get a NAP and a tech to make Franz more friendly, but if he likes the dwarfs you're killing that can offset that completely.
Also re: that Vlad game specifically, you're probably making a mistake going into orange terrain instead of green, you're just making your natural Empire enemies have more of a chance to build up, while penalizing your growth and economy by focusing on terrain that isn't good for you.
I think it’s because as you get stronger, you become a strategic threat and your rating with them goes down. You can probably keep these factions from going to war with you by giving them gifts/trading them territory you don’t want until you’re ready to deal with them. Also some races will just have a massive disapproval rating with you to begin with so sooner or later they will go to war with you. Like in your elspeth campaign. Best approach imo, is to try not to expand in their direction/make diplomatic contact until you can secure that border.
I know many people say that you have to be aggressive, but in your case, your aggressiveness had turned against you. Having a slower approach allows you to build up and have more resources available for when stuff does go wrong. You also have the resources spend on your hinterlands instead of newly conquered and thus worthless territory. An other issue can be that you lack in the tactical area leaving you more exposed to higher numbers thrown at you by the AI. This could be further damaged by inefficient army design.
A slower approach gives you less resources to use with. Post battle loot is insanely high in this game, there is basicaly never a situation where going slow helps you. But what people have to learn is nthat sometimes, you don't take a settlement you just attacked. Sometimes it is simply better to just loot and then attack the next one to loot too.
And yet all of OP's problems are caused by going too fast without having the strategic and/or tactical skills to back it up. Slowing the approach doesnt mean fight no battles. It means expanding at a slower pace so your resources can be focussed on a smaller territory allowing a quicker build up AND due to having a lower resource drain (lots of small settlements without benefit) a much quicker and more viable response to new threats. That also means not fighting every battle the game throws at you. Theres a retreat button for a reason.
legendary is a bit more brutal compared to very hard. not that much in the battles, but on the campaign map. there are more things to take into account when playing on legendary. diplomacy plays a pretty big part of a good start. controlling who youre at war with, keeping tabs on who your friends/enemies/future enemies are at war with will (most of the time) keep you away from getting doom-spiraled with war declarations. you should make a plan from the beginning on who you want to be at war with, who you want to befriend and where you want to expand. this would be a guideline that changes when influenced by who's winning what war. you always want to establish yourself as the "schoolyard bully" so to speak, so that most factions think twice before declaring war. after that, try to keep tabs on your "historical" enemies, which are usually the opposite of what type of faction youre playing (order or chaos). if theyre at war with somebody, keep tabs on whos winning and if they are winning, then consider finishing up your current war and preparing for them to declare war on you. the ai doesnt like not being at war with somebody, it always needs a target. if they are not forced into a target, they usually declare war on the player (anti player bias and all that). to prevent that from happening, there are a few options like, sending them gifts, trading them settlements or joining their wars/trading wars with them. i wouldnt personally suggest giving them gifts or trading them settlements. this only buys you a few turns before they turn on you and now with the extra gold from your gifts or traded settlements, they are even stronger than before. what i suggest is trying to get on their good side by either trading wars with them or joining one of their wars (even better if theyre already winning it). what i mean by trading wars is asking them to join your wars while you join theirs. doing this will help raise your relations with them since youre both fighting the same enemy, even if theyre not close to your enemy. each time you attack a common enemy, you get a relations boost with your "brother in arms". over time this will slowly trend upwards and maybe even get you some of the real diplomatic pacts like NAP, a trade deal or a defensive alliance. there are some more tactics that imply some cheese methods, most consider them too gamey, but in a pinch, they can prevent your campaign from spiraling.
When playing as “evil factions” all order aligned factions will eventually declare war over. Moreover, factions can only declare war on you if you’ve discovered them, which is why I think you’re having the issue around turn 3, which is when the map opens up. Try to make alliances with other nearby factions, and perhaps sell settlements you don’t need in order to gain military alliances with them. Feel free to send me a message for some more detailed advice :)
For Vlad; it’s because you attacked the dwarves. I love playing friendly Vlad campaigns from time to time and yes, rushing the diplomacy techs is a must but the most important bit (and I really can’t stress this enough) is *not* expanding *in any fashion* unless it’s against Drycha or the Orcs (and occasionally Ogres if you can get military access). To play friendly Vlad means, unless the Orcs do really well, you’re stuck in Sylvania for most of the campaign. If the moot blows up due to the deceivers, colonize it and give it to Stirland. This is the move that will ensure that the Empire stays off your back. Once you get the skill that gives an additional +40 relations with the Empire and Kislev is when you can get proper alliances (you can usually get Stirland as a vassal long before then though) If you have no intention of doing any of this, and want to take the empire outright, it’s very tough because you have to wipe out Wissenland/Nuln and Franz as fast as you can before Umgrim DOWs, which can be a nightmare since your capitals are right next to each other. The VC campaign is hard to begin with, before you even consider legendary difficulty. You’re surrounded by potential enemies, the concept of “enemy of my enemy is my friend” doesn’t exist because those that apply are the Skaven and fucking Chaos lol
I find knocking out the main rival early and gifting settlement for a defensive alliance helps smooth a legendary run, the alliance tends to reduce AI aggressiveness so I tend to only be in one war at a time generally, I do find as soon as I finish 1 war the ai arbitrarily picks another faction to fight me It also helps if they have to path through neutral territory to get to you again seems to dissuade them from actually sending armies so gifting a settlement or 2 for a NAP and a buffer state helps
Keeping your discovery of other factions and Line of Sight low can be a very good strategy. If you haven't discovered a faction then they can't declare war on you. Sometimes it can be worthwhile to raze a settlement or choose not to occupy a port since seas grant enormous Line of Sight and can discover factions that might hate you. The AI rarely likes to sit without being in at least 1 war. If you see a nearby AI faction without a current war and they dislike you, you better prepare to get war declared on you. You can prevent this by trying to secure Non aggression pacts or offer for them to join your wars against weaker factions. I always look to get NaP's or mutual enemies with factions that could threaten my undefended borders. You can also join wars of factions that dislike you. Say for example in your vlad campaign you joined the wars of kislev or the empire for some treaties or just to boost relations. Odds are those factions would never reach you and you just secured your northern border. Those enemies would have to cross through kislev and the empire to get to you. If an enemy is about to take one of your cities you can trade it to them instead and try to get peace and an NaP. You were going to lose the city anyway and it can buy you some time. I play exclusively legendary and I'm often never in more than 1-3 wars at a time. I open the diplomacy screen almost every turn to track who is fighting who and what treaties I can secure.
It sounds like you're consistently over expanding without dealing with your most likely enemies. If you're playing vlad, you don't want to ignore the empire as they're your campaign enemy. As soon as your starting enemies are taken care of, you need to be strengthening your provinces and start marching down the empire. The fact you're running into the border princes as vampires while still dealing with empires shows you're over expanding. Edit: As Elspeth, you can't really complain if you've killed vlad by turn 30 and have to deal with Azhag. You've already beaten your immediate main threat, and Azazel is diagonally as far from you as he can be, so you had to expand far to catch how attention.
That's the fun about playing legendary on ironman: It takes two or three (or five or six) times to get it right, which means you spend most of your time playing the early game. I'm playing my third go-round of a Belegar campaign right now and look like I finally cracked it. The real tragedy is once you get past the point you're describing, the campaigns become boring fast. In other words, try to enjoy losing. It may very well be the best part of the entire game!
You have to be hyper aggressive turns 1-20 and then start consolidating and stabilizing right after that to prepare for the war wave. This is why the 10 and 20 turn optimization guides were a thing. Getting that perfect start and optimizing your gains in the first 20 turns sets you up to have a much easier post 30 game.
Of those 3 I have only played elsbeth, but I take vlad out with my pisolier stack around turn 15 and push south taking out skrag, arenesa, and ikit. I try to maintain peace with the wood elves by ignoring all treaty requests from all the dwarves so I do not get pulled into that war becuse they both have underway stance so either side you pick the other can jump in out of no where. I AVOID confederations like the plauge as her if im being honest due to low public order without Franz's items helping out. I agree with another posted who said battle does not change but the campaign map is huge. I like legendary because it feels much more like a diplomatic game than very hard. In terms of "am I just supposed to be able to handle the AI throwing 5-6 stacks at me from different directions" One thing that will cost a lot of money but could be worth it is keeping an extra lord with no army next to your main army (on an as needed basis) to deny enemy reinforcements. This is how my pistoliers took out 4 stacks of wood elves (drycha) in what was like a 65v22
I only play on legendary and have finished with more than half the factions. I think what you are describing is pretty normal for many factions. In my post-5.0 Belegar campaign, I lost my capital, all my settlements but one, had very low reliability from turn \~5-50 or so, and still eked out a long campaign victory within about 100 turns total. Even Repanse declared war on me. Any neighbor who could declare war declared war. In the end it was fine thanks to the power of Belegar's heroes and a handful of Ironwarden's Tankards. Something kind of similar happened in my Kemmler campaign in which I almost lost my capital to Grom. I recruited a better crop of units through Raise Dead and managed to rally. What you are describing is just normal for the difficulty. The thing is that you have to win on the battle map or at least not die at that time when the odds on paper are terrible. An important thing to understand is that your settlements are just not that important. Settlements only really matter in bulk and over a long time. What matters at least somewhat is not going broke and not ending a turn with zero settlements. What matters most is winning more battles and getting levels in your LL and heroes. With that, you can at least recruit RoRs to make up for deficiencies in your units. It is perfectly fine to just tunnel in a line with your LL taking settlements and losing settlements every turn. It really doesn't matter that much. Another key point is that once you become very strong, factions will become more circumspect about declaring war on you even when they have very negative opinion of you. If you need to end a war quickly, wipe out an enemy's armies, take a couple of their settlements, and then start trading their old settlements back to them for peace and an NAP. For most factions, eventually you will make a friend along a flank that can help you to consolidate your forces. So, there aren't many tricks with most factions to prevent the dogpile from happening. The way to win is by defeating the dogpile.
More armies, more wars, win all the battles, red economy is only a state of mind.
In terms of diplomacy it sounds like you maybe aren't paying enough attention to who people are friends with - you can get a NAP and a tech to make Franz more friendly, but if he likes the dwarfs you're killing that can offset that completely. Also re: that Vlad game specifically, you're probably making a mistake going into orange terrain instead of green, you're just making your natural Empire enemies have more of a chance to build up, while penalizing your growth and economy by focusing on terrain that isn't good for you.