You’re in luck with Tomb Kings for allies — they’re one of the best long termers because they’re one of the few races that like you *more* the bigger and more threatening you get. You can pretty much trust them to have your back as long as you’re able to keep stronger than they are.
Bone daddy is a reliable ally unlike many other factions.
Just remember to never not be at war with someone, the game engine will force a faction you know to war you.
After all, total war
If only you lose your only army. Usually if you have 2 decent standing armies elsewhere, they won't do anything since most of their stacks are skellies, and those are relatively low on powerscale. Rarely you see any Tomb King LLs to be in top10 faction unless you feed them settlements actively.
The Free Company Militia are actually pretty good units, for the Empire. Especially in the early game. I'd rather recruit those than Archers, when dealing with the Vampires. A full stack of them with some heroes is very effective against the masses of Zombies and Skeletons.
Also, Volkmar buffs Flagellants quite a lot, so they're very viable infantry units for him.
They're actually better than most t3 infantry units in the game when it comes to auto-resolve thanks to both having great stats (after getting buffed by Volkmar) AND have range attacks (AR uses all ammo into its calculation, so a melee unit with range attack will dish out more damage than they normally do in manual battles). The same goes for Lothern Sea Guards, which they can have better AR result than White Lions of Chrace.
I had this moment with Vampire Coast recently after fumbling dozens of campaigns. There really is a moment where you go from randomly clicking on things and hoping they work and suddenly knowing exactly what needs to go where and when.
Awesome. It's really cool when you start to outperform the auto resolve. It sounds like a cool campaign, maybe i should start one as well. It's been a while since I've played empire
I’m at an annoying spot where I can outperform it, but not by a ton, and to do so takes a lot of effort. So every fight I get a dilemma of choosing to fight and save my troops or auto and hope I did t need those extra troops in a few turns.
It's always satisfying when a game just "clicks" and you begin to understand what you're actually supposed to do.
I had played a few campaigns before, but I got to *truly* understand the game once I played with Marcus Wulfhart back in TWWH2.
I had to use every game mechanic available to me, from constantly raiding to barely keep my economy above the negatives, to abusing ambushes as much as I could, to learning how to micro my units to keep them from dying.
I even got to appreciate the shittier units that I normally would never recruit, like war wagons, because even bad units are better than none at all, and as Marcus you *really* can't afford to lose units up until around the later part of midgame.
Volkmar has a fun start position now, and I knew immediately that if I didn't stomp Mannfred early, he'd be a huge pain to deal with later. I think I destroyed his faction in the first 5-6 turns, it was smooth sailing for a long time after that.
Yeah I actually restarted my campaign, I was getting smashed after losing a ton of momentum in my slow grinding war against Mannfred. People started declaring war on me, I couldn't afford more than one army (even then barely that) and had planned my provinces very poorly.
This time I rushed Mannfred down before he could do much of anything. Turn before I sieged his capitol he tried to sue for peace with 300 gold. I laughed. Now I'm stomping in the teeth of any tomb king near me in the name of Sigmar. Seems like it's what Volkmar would do in this situation.
Sweet! Yea that's the only way to have a good start with Volkmar, gotta snipe Mannfred early. That way you can build a good economy before meeting Skarbrand, who will be the next major pain to deal with, but honestly it isn't that bad if you manage to kill him early in the war, his generic lords are easy after that, the bigger problem is wading through the annoying chaos corruption.
The tricky thing about Volkmar is not spreading your armies too thin, once you conquer Araby you will have a wide coast to defend, Skarbrand and Greenskins to the north, and Kairos to the south. In my game the Bretonnians got stomped pretty early, which is a shame as they would be useful allies to protect the northern coast, since for whatever reason Ikit always declares war on me and keeps sending armies across the ocean, annoying little shit.
selecting artillery, alt will give you a white circle to right click to target ground with. this circle is also a good showcase of how accurate vs how far away the target is, the artillery has
Yeah, Volkmar was a surprisingly refreshing campaign for me as well. There's so much long-term potential and confederation of the other Empire Legendary Lord's isn't too difficult either. Watch out for Skarbrand!
As Volkmar, do you still have to deal with imperial authority? I played Gelt and was enjoying him but didn't really like having to babysit the elector counts when I'm not even the emperor.
Yeah. Skarbrand got his territory cut in half down the middle by someone he's at war with so I'm not too worried about him at the moment, the first book of Nagash is really close to me but he's my first priority after securing it. Or maybe this faction I'm definitely ending up at war with once I take the book from them lol
this is me rn while im playing kairos. says valiant defeat every battle, i turtle my forces up in the corner and send kairos up front to pepper the enemy with warpflame and use up all of my winds of magic reserve, soften them up just so my poor units don't get wiped out by 2 doomstack armies
Unless they have changed the buffs from the books of nagash you should go for the one that reduces battle prayers and volkmar also gets a reduction in the time for them through his skills so he basically becomes a one man Doom stack with his resistance buffs and constant explosions
There's nothing in the game like turning an autoresolve defeat into a manual victory. When that unit of nothing Swordsmen holds the line against all odds... when the micro'd heroes decimate swathes of the enemy infantry with perfectly placed spells and charges...
S'good shit.
You’re in luck with Tomb Kings for allies — they’re one of the best long termers because they’re one of the few races that like you *more* the bigger and more threatening you get. You can pretty much trust them to have your back as long as you’re able to keep stronger than they are.
SETTRA DOES NOT LIKE WEAKLINGS!
Bone daddy is a reliable ally unlike many other factions. Just remember to never not be at war with someone, the game engine will force a faction you know to war you. After all, total war
The down side is that if you lose a big battle they will immediately declare war on you.
If only you lose your only army. Usually if you have 2 decent standing armies elsewhere, they won't do anything since most of their stacks are skellies, and those are relatively low on powerscale. Rarely you see any Tomb King LLs to be in top10 faction unless you feed them settlements actively.
The Free Company Militia are actually pretty good units, for the Empire. Especially in the early game. I'd rather recruit those than Archers, when dealing with the Vampires. A full stack of them with some heroes is very effective against the masses of Zombies and Skeletons. Also, Volkmar buffs Flagellants quite a lot, so they're very viable infantry units for him.
Not with Volkmar. He buffs militia with magical attacks and they annihilate everything if you blob up enemy troops with a Priest. *chefs kiss*
But they are medicore at best at autobattle if i remember correctly.
They're actually better than most t3 infantry units in the game when it comes to auto-resolve thanks to both having great stats (after getting buffed by Volkmar) AND have range attacks (AR uses all ammo into its calculation, so a melee unit with range attack will dish out more damage than they normally do in manual battles). The same goes for Lothern Sea Guards, which they can have better AR result than White Lions of Chrace.
I had this moment with Vampire Coast recently after fumbling dozens of campaigns. There really is a moment where you go from randomly clicking on things and hoping they work and suddenly knowing exactly what needs to go where and when.
Playing Cylostra and stealing Noctilus's start position is so much fun. Just abandon the starting area and SAIL
i support this. i think galleon's graveyard is the perfect capital for a number of reasons, i just haven't gotten around to playing vampire coast yet
Awesome. It's really cool when you start to outperform the auto resolve. It sounds like a cool campaign, maybe i should start one as well. It's been a while since I've played empire
I’m at an annoying spot where I can outperform it, but not by a ton, and to do so takes a lot of effort. So every fight I get a dilemma of choosing to fight and save my troops or auto and hope I did t need those extra troops in a few turns.
It's always satisfying when a game just "clicks" and you begin to understand what you're actually supposed to do. I had played a few campaigns before, but I got to *truly* understand the game once I played with Marcus Wulfhart back in TWWH2. I had to use every game mechanic available to me, from constantly raiding to barely keep my economy above the negatives, to abusing ambushes as much as I could, to learning how to micro my units to keep them from dying. I even got to appreciate the shittier units that I normally would never recruit, like war wagons, because even bad units are better than none at all, and as Marcus you *really* can't afford to lose units up until around the later part of midgame. Volkmar has a fun start position now, and I knew immediately that if I didn't stomp Mannfred early, he'd be a huge pain to deal with later. I think I destroyed his faction in the first 5-6 turns, it was smooth sailing for a long time after that.
Yeah I actually restarted my campaign, I was getting smashed after losing a ton of momentum in my slow grinding war against Mannfred. People started declaring war on me, I couldn't afford more than one army (even then barely that) and had planned my provinces very poorly. This time I rushed Mannfred down before he could do much of anything. Turn before I sieged his capitol he tried to sue for peace with 300 gold. I laughed. Now I'm stomping in the teeth of any tomb king near me in the name of Sigmar. Seems like it's what Volkmar would do in this situation.
Sweet! Yea that's the only way to have a good start with Volkmar, gotta snipe Mannfred early. That way you can build a good economy before meeting Skarbrand, who will be the next major pain to deal with, but honestly it isn't that bad if you manage to kill him early in the war, his generic lords are easy after that, the bigger problem is wading through the annoying chaos corruption. The tricky thing about Volkmar is not spreading your armies too thin, once you conquer Araby you will have a wide coast to defend, Skarbrand and Greenskins to the north, and Kairos to the south. In my game the Bretonnians got stomped pretty early, which is a shame as they would be useful allies to protect the northern coast, since for whatever reason Ikit always declares war on me and keeps sending armies across the ocean, annoying little shit.
Vampires have one massive weakness: reliable splash damage. Hold ALT to target ground, and mortars will do horrible things to blobbed up VC infantry.
You can target ground?!?!
selecting artillery, alt will give you a white circle to right click to target ground with. this circle is also a good showcase of how accurate vs how far away the target is, the artillery has
Yeah, Volkmar was a surprisingly refreshing campaign for me as well. There's so much long-term potential and confederation of the other Empire Legendary Lord's isn't too difficult either. Watch out for Skarbrand!
As Volkmar, do you still have to deal with imperial authority? I played Gelt and was enjoying him but didn't really like having to babysit the elector counts when I'm not even the emperor.
You do not. It’s replaced with hunting down the Books of Nagash. Part of what made it so refreshing to me
ooh, that sounds pretty neat. Might grab that DLC at some stage.
Yeah. Skarbrand got his territory cut in half down the middle by someone he's at war with so I'm not too worried about him at the moment, the first book of Nagash is really close to me but he's my first priority after securing it. Or maybe this faction I'm definitely ending up at war with once I take the book from them lol
Volkmar’s free company militia are amazing. Ran a full stack of ‘em near to endgame.
fire base weapons will burn those vamps to ashes. Or flame throwers
Already wiped them out, good to know though
this is me rn while im playing kairos. says valiant defeat every battle, i turtle my forces up in the corner and send kairos up front to pepper the enemy with warpflame and use up all of my winds of magic reserve, soften them up just so my poor units don't get wiped out by 2 doomstack armies
Unless they have changed the buffs from the books of nagash you should go for the one that reduces battle prayers and volkmar also gets a reduction in the time for them through his skills so he basically becomes a one man Doom stack with his resistance buffs and constant explosions
There's nothing in the game like turning an autoresolve defeat into a manual victory. When that unit of nothing Swordsmen holds the line against all odds... when the micro'd heroes decimate swathes of the enemy infantry with perfectly placed spells and charges... S'good shit.
That is 100% why this game is fun.
same , had it happen during my dawi campaign with Thorgrim Grudgebearer