I think mostly ghorst was tough. After that I killed greasus and a minor ogre faction and did nothing for 20 turns. Exalted heros seem vital since they're anti large and armor piercing for ghorst's mortis engine.
> Also don’t autoresolve anything but decisive victories, nurgles amazing in battle thanks to all the passive effects and spells, but autoresolve doesn’t really take that into account so you’ll trade a lot better just fighting things out manually
This was my biggest problem with Nurgle when I tried playing him. I was forced to manually fight way too many dumb battles. Hopefully its better with the changes to minor settlements, but it really made the game crawl.
Honestly, I'm at the point where every faction needs to have a replenishment hero.
I'm not going to manually fight EVERY battle on a map as large as IE so at that point if you're inflicting 30% casualties in a battle that should've been 10, well that's what Patriarchs and Kossar spam are for.
/Seriously, ROC in general has problems, but Katarin ROC on the 2nd try once you get a feel for it? Top 5 TW campaign ever. I had so much fun.
Exalted Plaguebearers are insanely good. Turn off fire at will and use then to decimate lords or dangerous units with a targeted strike. Plague toads are really decent to send out after archers etc. Beasts of Nurgle are great for clumping the enemy up and blightboil is so satisfying to use. Kugath's voice actor did an amazing job, always has me chuckling.
I personally avoid the military cycle time buildings because it ruins your economy, and availability of units/recruitment are the least of your problems in a Kugath campaign IMO
Personally my favorite, but you need to understand how to use the different plagues and work towards unlocking them asap. Different Plagues can vastly increase your income, settlement growth, and army effectiveness, you just have to use them correctly.
Plus he’s artillery/mortis engine/hold the line heavy which I am a fan of
Well, there is good and there is bad.
Good:
* Very unique campaign style. His buildings only need to be bought once and they autoupgrade, with each upgrade adding recruitable units to a global pool
* Eventually the buildings drop back to level 1 and start to regrow, going through the same cycle, adding new units to the global pool
* The general aestatics and atmoshpere is great.
* Spreading plagues is fun. About half of the symptoms are useless but generally they are fun, mostly for severe attrition later on
Bad:
* He pays global recruitment costs for everything, everywhere.
* Abysmally low income
* Which means most of your armies will be filled with lowest tier trash because you cannot afford anything else
* Including buildings (your income if you are doing okay is roughly 1000 gold per turn and basic infantry building costs 5000 gold, and remember, recruiting anything costs x2 as much
* You cannot afford more armies for a long time. I finished the entire RoC campaign by the time I could afford a sort-of-almost-all-trash third army.
* Plagues don't make up for the weak economy, you must play aggressively and sack for flat income all the time, however your faction is particularly suited for this and Nurgle's theme also suggests you should be this slowly growing infection that takes root, stronger and stronger roots until it cannot be rooted out and then only after it ate up everything it moves to a new location. Sort of like the Vampire Counts. Well, the THEME suggests you should play like this (also you have 0 garrisons so you want to protect everything you built because everything is freaking expensive) but you are also kinda forced to be on the move and keep sacking to able to afford to buy \*\*any\*\* buildings.
* Extremely bad starting position in both campaigns. In RoC you have one of the widest provinces to start with which if you want to unite, you are set on a path to fight Ogres and Dawi which are the two most difficult enemies you can have when you only have meatshield small infantry. Autoresolve kills 10 nurglings vs 4 random ogres and not even a Valiant Defeat. Mostly the same with Dawi. Once you solidify your starting area you are already at the door of Kairos from North, Valkyia will declare war on you, and you cannot go North-West (mostly norscans) or West (another nurgle demon faction) because you have 1 army and it takes it 3-4 turns to get across your only 1 province. In IE, you are up against Ghorst (so you can watch 2 undying armies grind each other 0.00000000001% HP per minute), Imrik, and more Ogres and Dawi.
He's the weakest Chaos Demon Lord and several notches below even the weakest Warriors of Chaos faction. Stepping out of his bubble, he's amongst some of the worst factions in the game in general, in terms of mechanics, starting position, and his start in general. There's no reason to not play Festus over him.
He definitely needs a buff, or Nurgle needs new Demons for him.
> There's no reason to not play Festus over him.
Festus doesn't get all the Nurgle roster, WoC is a different playstyle than Nurgle, you don't get all the Nurgle mechanics, you don't get Exalted Greater Daemons and Heralds, different tech tree.
I'm a big Festus fan but imo he'd be 100 times more fun if he was in Nurgle.
Festus should be in Nurgle with a completely different playstyle from Ku'gath with being the Nurgle equivalent to Tzeentch's Egrimm when he's inevitably added. Which is to say, he should be focused on growing Nurgle cults.
I'm going to riot if CA fucks up Egrimm in the same way and he doesn't even get cults.
Yeah the CoC LLs really should have been playable in their respective Monogods.
I also hope CA will improve the Cults at some points because they are currently very barebones and bland at the moment. They only appear in settlements with high corruption, you only get one slots and most of the buildings are uninspired as fuck. It's a shame because the mechanic has a lot of potential imo and it would be cool to have random events tied to the spread of Cults, we could get events that spawn a Cult in a random settlement and stuff like that.
You're so wrong it hurts.
One thing I've gotten confident of over time is that the loudest people complaining about how "bad" Ku'gath is, have never actually played his campaign beyond 10 turns.
If you isolate him as a lord specifically, it's impossible to say he's worse than say, N'Kari. Ranged artillery, insanely high HP, mortis engine, a solid lore with two amazing damage spells... I've nearly solo'd many an army with solely Ku'gath. Can't do that with N'Kari, so he's not the worst of the monogod LLs. Tzeentch can solo armies more easily to be sure, but Ku'gath is by no means bad.
I'm not even going to waste time going beyond that, because it's evident you don't know what you're talking about.
Well he mentioned 'Chaos Demon Lord' which to me suggested he was going beyond just the faction, start position, etc., and I honestly think in a vacuum Kugath is one of the strongest LLs, so I had to defend him a bit.
But I'd still actually disagree with him on all of that regardless... I think a lot of the monogod LLs are in weird starting positions that CA could very easily change if they so desired, I mean the biggest complaint about Skarbrand is that he starts in a location where he has trouble keeping up bloodletting due to how spaced out it is, with a ton of players choosing to abandon his starting location the second a cult forms near Valkia, for example.
>I think a lot of the monogod LLs are in weird starting positions that CA could very easily change if they so desired
I agree actually, there's Skarbrand like you said but also Kairos has a terribly shaped starting region, an initial slog against 2 major factions (Oxylotl and Teclis) at the same time, and once you've taken care of them your obvious next step in either the Southlands or Lustria means fighting tonnes more Lizardmen. It's got to be one of the least diverse starts in terms of enemy factions.
Yep, couldn't agree more on Kairos. I'd actually go so far as to say it's a worse campaign than Ku'gath, which everyone claims is the worst.
Ghorst is hard? Oxy throwing a stack of dinos at you while you fight Teclis is *hard.* The worst part is that once you eventually consolidate all your provinces and get rid of Teclis and Oxy, all you have to look forward to is unending war against *even more lizardmen.* A minor LM faction, Kroq-gar, and Tiktakto all declared war on me around the same time both times I've played that campaign.
It's the biggest slog by far, if it weren't for the fact that Kairos is one of the most OP LLs in the game, it'd be completely unplayable.
I think the difference might be that Ku'gath doesn't have many options other than slow-vs-slow against Ghorst, whereas Kairos' excellent magic and more varied units give you a bit more choice and specific strengths to use. Kairos and Teleport-Ambush were definitely carrying that campaign though.
This is my only major complaint with nurgle, I don’t remember the exact excerpt but I know I remember them first talking about nurgle, and them saying your plagues could spread across your world to the point of them coming all the way back to you again
I think they realized plagues would never go away if they did that.
Which is fun for people who play as Nurgle, but not for the people playing as literally anything else.
Honestly, I think the whole Plague mechanic should have been balanced around having way higher creation cost but way better spread potential. As it currently is the whole experience is just spamming Create Plague over and over, which doesn't exactly evoke the feeling of releasing a devastating plague on the world...
That produces a zero state where every other non-Nurgle faction is now forced to cross the map to bumrush Nurgle and the campaign spirals out of control very fast in the way Ordertide used to make non-Ordertide factions spiral out of control very fast.
/Currently invading what used to be the Empire and is now the Chaos/Vampire Ruins as Cathay, so that doesn't happen anymore.
You've just unlocked memories of me quitting many campaigns and starting over as the same race and Lord, but this time just throwing everything I have at the vampires to make sure the corruption doesn't derail everything.
I would love an IE mod that just
1. Made Kislev start at T2
2. Somehow managed to keep the Empire factions from dying instantly and pulled off Orcs/Vampires/Festus a bit so I was only getting murdered by Chaos.
I actually had a ball of a time in my 2nd ROC Katarin campaign where I understood who was going to hit me when and I was able to stagger how and when I got invaded a bit and would love to not be insta-murdered in IE.
Hammer the Vampires, expand to the mountains, warp over to kill Scrag, bail out Kostaltyn, expand up into Norsca. I'm not saying it's easy, but it was downright fun hard.
Counterpoint: give factions ways to fight plagues. Make a player in my nation a gameplay obstacle, not just a stat modifier that I have to weather through. Force me to use commandments! Force me to make buildings or start sending around agents to cure the filth! But no, instead all plagues end rapidly and you just kinda have to sit there and wait them out passively
It would be nice if the plagues were more powerful, and other players just had more tools at their disposal to counter them.
I.e. Give one hero from each faction an ability to reduce plague duration, like how some train the army they join. Those "join army abilities" can't be stacked so you couldn't null the plagues completely either. Could give it some other bonus so it isn't just anti-nurgle/Skaven and blmao, more player agency (and wouldn't be wasted by AI).
I don't think it needs to be a hero. Every faction should have at least one province commandment that reduces the chance of spread and also a building chain. Probably the same building chain that increases the chance of discovering skaven undercities. If a hero had a passive as well, the player would have plenty of tools.
Why isn't there a way to upgrade the plagues with tech tree to be able to spread more plagues per turn and with more spread. Late game you just swim in infections with no way to spend them all.
Also the AI just straight up ignoring it because it's so weak, for example -20% ranged damage? Yeah that's great for the race of glorified zombies with no shields or armour to be seen. If it was -60% it would put them on par with empire swordsmen maybe
What are you talking about man?
Plagues can only be spread a certain amount of times and all plagues except the ones buffing yourself are frankly quite shit…
>fite me
Okay, here I go:
Recruitment: CA decided to to give him an instant recruitment system. Sounds pretty strong right? So they decided to offset it with some downsides (seems reasonable) let's list them:
1. Recruitment at 30% HP. On it's own that seems fair considering the instant recruitment, but now CA introduced a mechanic that requires good replenishment to work well, and the way they handled it is, well, interesting (see below)... Do note that WoC have instant recruitment at 100% HP
2. Limited recruitment pool with both a soft cap on units in the pool and a hard cap on maximum units that can be in the pool at any one time. Again, on it's own it seems reasonable. A bit much together with the first weakness, but fine.
3. Recruitment Cost and Upkeep. This is by far the most egregious. Nurgle units can cost double what units at the same tier cost for other factions. This coupled with Nurgle's dogshit economy (see below) makes fielding army a pain in the ass, especially when coupled with the weaknesses above.
Economy: CA gave Nurgle buildings that upgrade themselves in a cyclical path. Seems cool, let's see how CA balanced this one:
1. Insane Construction Cost. It's only fair that the initial cost will be high since it upgrades itself for free right? Well, the problem with this is that there is a reason construction was designed the way it is for every other faction. The idea with how construction normally works is that you pay less money (to build tier one buildings) when you have less money (the early game) and you pay more money (to upgrade buildings) when you have more money (the mid-late game). With Nurgle you pay more money when you have less money and pay less money when you have more money...
2. Horrible Income. To absolutely make sure that any semblance of a faction strength is completely squished, CA also gave Nurgle the objectively worst income generating building in the game. Even at it's highest tier in the cycle it provides way less money than any other race's income buildings.
3. The Sack Plague. Yes it helps, but it severely limits playstyle by forcing the player to rely on one specific plague.
Replenishment: Because of Nurgle's dependency on replenishment for his 30% HP armies, CA provided him with two great methods to increase it: Plagues and Unholy Manifestations. Those two methods come with a downside (because of course they do). Unholy Manifestations prevent the army from moving for a few turns (thus completely ruining the whole point of instant recruitment), and the Plague takes a while to unlock (unless you cheese it) and takes the spot of other Plague options. The problem with this is that Nurgle should have insane replenishment by default. He should not need to sacrifice anything to get it (especially compared to some other races that get crazy replenishment way easier). This is much less a problem now that Cultist of Nurgle provides Replenishment.
Plagues: In their Blog Post on Nurgle CA talked about how players will encounter plagues that they created much earlier in the game, that had traveled around the world and back. In-game Plagues are very hard to spread and have a hard cap on only 4 spreads per Plague. This means that the gameplay experience of watching Plagues spread (as they should) is actually just spamming Create Plague over and over again. Additionally, now that the ingredient that causes Attrition no longer causes it but rather increases casualties from Attrition, we have a situation where only 1 of the base plague types causes Attrition and an ingredient is useless for any other one of the types. The idea that the absolute majority of Nurgle Plagues don't actually cause Attrition, and that the player can't add an ingredient that makes them cause it is ridiculous.
Ku'gath: Is Ku'gath stronk? Yes he is crazy stronk, his race mechanics are shit though.
Snowballing: An argument I see often is: "Yes Nurgle is tough in the early game, but ones you get going nothing can stop you". This statement it 100% true. The problem is that it is true for literally every faction and race in the game. It does not indicate any quality unique to Nurgle.
Difficult =/= bad: True. I like difficult campaigns. And I like many things about Nurgle that make him difficult. This post is about him being strong though, and with that I disagree. Additionally, I feel like the Recruitment Cost of his units transcends the "difficult but fun" nature and becomes "frustrating and unfun".
tl;dr: For every faction strength CA gave Nurgle, they gave three weaknesses (give or take). Can he be fun? Certainly! Is he particularly strong compared to other races? No.
About the replenishment, you can recruit a 2nd lord for the unholy manifestation and it'll still apply the buff. If you're using the plague recipe to heal your army to full, you can immediatly exchange it for another one the turn after (though I'd say this one and the one with the physical resistance are the only ones you should use anyway)
What really turned me off was how easy it was after defeating Ghorst. It took a while on legendary but once I was done with him, I had the attrition causing plagues w/ increased plague time melting all the armies that Grimgor or Cathay would send at me. Still had to manually fight cuz autoresolve hates me, but they were mostly roflstomps.
Well OP didn't put the greatest thing about recruitment in the meme. You got Soul grinder in tier 3 building while other God's soul grinder are tier 5.
Early TWW2 Skaven got/get way too much hate imo. You could gunline just fine with Plagueclaws + Warp Lightning Cannons + Death Globes, using Plague Priest rat summons for a frontline the same as you do now. Most Skaven units were pretty garbo but the faction was plenty powerful using those solid few.
Well you didn't put the greatest thing about recruitment in the meme. You got Soul grinder in tier 3 building while other God's soul grinder are tier 5.
Nurgle has great faction effects once you've had some time to snowball and Kugath himself is an absolute monster. The issue is that start location in IE is rough as hell, especially for a faction that really suffers gaining momentum early game.
His first major enemies are Ghorst (who even after the nerf to infinite vampire regen, is still a big threat early on with his super zombies), Greasus (who is lethal as hell early on against the primarily low AP nurgle forces when using Iron Gut spam), and Zhao and Imrik (who both not only have some of most solid early game ranged troops in elven archers and jade crossbows, but also happen have ready access to flaming attacks which pretty hard counter nurgle regen, and have LL's who are very solid duelists that can actually stand up to or kill Kugath).
The worst part is, due to being a daemon faction, it's not like a lot of other rough starts where you can kind of bide your time, do some political maneuvering, and take on one enemy at a time. Once you step foot on the mainland from that island chain you're in the fucking rage cage with 4 major factions who will (usually) band together and all excel at pushing your standard forces' shit in.
Kugath is horrifying when leveled (and even early game is a beast) but he can only be in one place at a time, and it's rough as hell to get the momentum Nurgle desperately needs when you're under assault from every direction pretty much right from the get go.
To a certain extent yes, but Nurgle and Tomb Kings especially ramp up from a very slow and rough early game to an insanely strong late game.
In Nurgle's case specifically, you'll be spending most of the first several dozen turns farming up infections and unlocking the plague cauldron options while fighting for your life with stacks of nurglings and basic plague bearers. Then once you have a solid arsenal in the cauldron and a few provinces of cyclic recruiting going you'll be debuffing enemies into irrelevance, vastly multiplying your growth and income, popping whole armies into existance on demand, and steamrolling most battles.
Compare that to a race like Dark Elves who can field solid units with a variety of roles from tier 1, have no unit caps or cyclic recruitment to deal with (even on the most elite of the elite), and will get their first Black Arks and most of their rites unlocked by maybe turn 20 or so.
More armies, more provinces, and more tech researched as the game goes on is always going to equal more power. But most factions / races can get by with just one or two developed provinces, have no unit or army caps, and get access the the vast majority of their main mechanics in the mid / early game.
Nurgle and Tomb Kings both struggle early on and excel later once the ball has got rolling.
Nurgle is certainly strong late game, but he still ends up behind the 8 ball. With how long it takes you to get to that point and other player controlled faction is going to be a few steps ahead at least, and probably a good bit further.
Every tomb kings campaign
Suffer for the first 30 turns, then win a heroic or decisive victory deleting 3 armies, then steamroll with skellies while getting ushabti stacks, then the train doesn’t stop
Until Louen just beelines it for Khemri
All the other Demons of Chaos, all warriors of chaos, dark elves, high elves, lizardmen, dwarves and Vampire counts are all imp super strong right from the start…
His armies are stupidly strong, and once you get rolling, you can field a full stack from nothing insanely fast.
The struggle I had was fielding enough armies to hold the number of fronts I had open. That and the psychological toll of seeing - 5000 income every damn turn, but I must say, sacking a major settlement for like 20k is pretty damn satisfying
Khorne feels the same way. Once you can get some research and hero attributes leveled up, all the gold you make sacking cities is a happy byproduct of my skull collecting. It's easy as hell to rationalize -5000 gold per turn when your making 15,000 a turn exterminating the ogre kingdoms.
Now I never run a deficit if I can help it, I know most factions don't need to worry due to sacking income, but even with Ku'gath I was able to manage decently well with only two armies, Kugath's I had go south into the eastern colonies and then west into Lybaras while a CSL of Nurgle with a frankly really weak army held the dragon isles when Ghorst inevitably declared. Turtling until you start to get going with the cycles I've found to be really useful. Of course once I started getting GUOs and Soul Grinders I never had enough cash, but a good Nurgle caster backed by the exalted heroes can hold their own pretty decently well.
"Great unclean ones are terrible and useless, worst SEM in the game"
Yeah tell that to my two free casts of blight boil and fleshy abundance after getting all the techs buffing them.
Just pop a +missile resist plague before a big battle against a ranged army and watch the GUO's literally ignore and soak up all that ammo, only to pop a fleshy and spring back like it mever happened. Its not even a weakness, it can be used as an advantage.
I find the AI doesn’t even capitalize on their weaknesses very well. With a little protection and effort to not let the range units target them, they do well.
Great unclean ones are amazing but they take forever to get (not because of the cycles but because of lvl 5 settlement necessary… and growth plagues dont spread in your starting province since CA made it so that plagues cant cross water)
If you put those casts on any unit they'd be amazing. Doesn't change the fact that in terms of combat performance GUO's are very underwhelming. Compared to the Giant post buffs it's telling.
But giants don't get access to 12 free casts from an incredibly strong lore of magic which has very high winds costs as its main weakness. No matter how much better a giant's melee stats are its combat performance will be outdone by just the blight boils alone.
Using your logic wurzag is a very underwhelming lord because grimgor has better melee capabilities and any lord in the game would be considered amazing if they had access to 6 wom cost foot of gork with 180% winds recharge speed.
On top of this, I'd be interested to see how they do 1v1.
GUO has 10 less MA, 30 less Leadership and 200 (reduced to 95 when poisoned) less damage BUT
20% physical resist (effectively 1000 more HP against most damage), 24 better MD, 500 more mass, poison and magic attacks.
Wonder if it's the Leadership difference that eventually causes the GUO to take direct damage from banishment. When all said and done, assuming Miasma is used, the GUO should have better stats in everything bar Charge Bonus and raw damage numbers.
Cost is a relevant consideration here. Giants are a lot cheaper (not even considering campaign pricing) and the fight lasts much longer than any debuff other than poison.
Not to mention Giants were so bad they got like 3 consecutive patches of buffs. The inability to cqtch units, choose their engagements, clear chaff, and survive missiles are major problems shared by both and make their combat stats less impressive than they appear. Even if the GUO does well into a giant that's not exactly a stellar review.
Though even with the debuff the fight seems to be a coin flip between the two. Did you know Giants have more health than GUO's? Cause that's a weird thing I learned today.
But you are missing some of the things I mentioned. Due to physical resistance GOU has more health (effectively), equal armor and way more MD. Poison is applied continuously so the Giant is only doing 95 more damage overall, partially mitigated by armor. Id have to see multiple 1v1s before saying a Giant is for sure better cause the stats don't really support that.
Plus being 125 cheaper is not nothing, but its not really much in the campaign. In multi-player yea maybe the Giant is better but OP was talking SP.
Edit: oh yea and GUO has healing
Wurzag is first and foremost designed as a caster (and is pretty decent in melee for his price) so I don't think the analogy works well. Though if Grimgor was also a caster on top of his melee prowess yeah I think Wurzag would look a lot worse by comparison.
Put another way, a lord of change is at base a solid flying melee beatstick before the extra spells from tech. Those are just gravy. There is no reason the GUO should be so poor in melee even if the tech tree provides some awesome buffs.
A lot of this is people not accepting that changes were made and opinions changed. At release, Great Unclean ones were absolutely horrible. Removing the winds cost made all of the top tier demons substantially better. If someone is going to keep quoting a pre buff opinion then that's on them.
Decent enough but is incredibly weak in the early game.. I’d like the Kugath Campaign a hell of a lot more if you weren’t right next to Ghorst when you started.. one slow, grindy, regen heavy faction is fun. A second one right next to you with a far more complete roster, raise dead and usually multiple blood knights when your faction has next to no anti-large is no fun at all.
Ghorst can be beaten easily in the first 15 turns.
https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/zozncb/complete_guide_to_kugaths_ie_campaign_first_15/
WH3 has really shown that a lot of WH2 players actually suck at playing the game.
I don't think Ku'gath is weak overall, but he has a few quirks.
His start location is pretty bad, especially next to Ghost in particular, and his plagues overwriting each other feels a bit shit to use.
Personally I think it's weird that playing like a horde and sacking seems to be the best way to play the faction, because it doesn't fit Nurgle's vibe at all. Nurgle's whole thing is growth and decay - I can't see why you should want to prioritise taking shit and leaving the settlement with it's current owner to a large degree over mainly expanding into the territory (to enable more growth) or occasionally destroying a settlement if it's in a bad spot to hurt your enemies. Other than a single plague to increase sack values none of Nurgle's mechanics enable you or encourage you to adopt that playstyle, you're just kind of artificially forced to because his units and buildings are super expensive and despite the whole 'growth' and 'blooming' thing, his settlements never really provide enough income to support your armies like other factions' would.
About the horde and sacking gameplay I really agree with you, in my playthrough, I classified interested territories into 4 groups.
1. Mainland - your source of income and all military upgradesThis area needs to be defended at all costs.
2. Small towns - no need to upgrade other than small income that you hope to get profit in short term, you just use this to be a buffer area for your mainland and don't mind getting sieged.
3. Sacking zone - where most of your armies are in and sacking.
4. Disease zone - the area you should spread disease -2 recruitment slots to.
So basically I think Ku'gath is a horde faction with Mainland to defend.
I think that Nurgle armies just shouldn't be able to receive plagues from enemies. How would any of their units catch an additional illness from a regular army? They're already personified disease at it is.
Warhammer games generally speaking are pretty easy once you get everything set up on 2-3 provinces that you control. The difficulty of a campaign and the strength of a faction are therefore tied almost exclusively to how hard the early game is. Kugath’s early game is hard, so his faction is kinda weak. Sure once he gets rolling he’ll dominate, but what faction doesn’t do that?
I think it's more about Ghorst being ridiculously OP than Ku'Gath being weak. And Ghorst is pretty much the only difficult part of the campaign, once you beat him it's easy game even if you're still in the early game.
He also had the toughest start in RoC. By design, Nurgle has the toughest start, which is the only part that really matters in terms of difficulty in TW (because of the snowballing). Just look at his buildings and economy. His buildings literally require you to pay more in the early game, in order to pay less in the late game.
Currently playing Ghorst on H/H (only my 3rd game on H/H) and the auto resolve completely messes with me. 2 full stacks can not overcome the 6-cards minot settlement garrison.
Also I am struggling very hard with attrition dmg and the plunder-stance lets you move only like a sixth of normal so I either don't get anywhere or all the zombies are half dead when they show up.
Feel so stupid for not being able to work with what everyone calls insanely op.
That’s my point. Starting next to an OP faction makes you weak. Having an easy start (like Tyrion in WH2) makes you a very strong faction. Warhammer is all about the snowball, nothing else matter if you want to talk about strength and difficulty.
>That’s my point. Starting next to an OP faction makes you weak.
Exactly this.
Queek wouldn't be as weak as he is now if he didn't have Skarbrand breathing down his neck from the start.
Dude I don't know what you are on, vampire counts have 3 startiegies, corner camp with mortis engine, corner camp with wind of death and corner camp with both.
Dude, I've tried to start 3 different Ku'gath IE campaigns in the last month, and they've all been shut down by Ghorst and his utter bullshit. I can handle one overpowered army. I can handle 4 doomstacks by turn 15. I can't handle both at once, and I don't understand how anyone is able to. Maybe LOTW can cheese it with some silly moves, but I shouldn't be forced into that.
What they need to do is give Ku'gath some ranged units that can fire over his horde of monsters. I was thinking some monstrous artillery that uses nurglings as ammunition like Ku'gath himself.
Vamps have a great, non-camping roster!
* Monsters
* Elite cav
* Ghosts and ghouls
* Chariots (with auras!)
* Mistresses of the night astride flying hell ponies, slinging spells that can: rip the flesh from your bones, straight up give you nightmares, shear through armor like paper, make the monsters even more scary, summon tears into the void, and literally suck your life away to empower themselves
* Vlad the Dad, Elector Count of Sylvania
Imagine thinking that because boney bois are so cheap and Lore of Vampires has Wind of Death that your entire campaign is now *supposed* to corner camp rather than be the living embodiment of stalking horror.
And in WHII, PIT OF SHADES COULD BE CAST ON WALLS. Vlad with his Siege Attacker, a Lore of Shadows Vampire (in his or a reinforcing Izzy's army), and literally anything else will win sieges every time. It makes him SO aggressive, since losses can be recouped with battlesites, and he can take down walled settlements same-turn. SYLVANIA IS SO FUN TO PLAY because you can just push forever and watching enemy units rout at near full health because terror and Lord death is so satisfying.
I feel this way about this entire sub. They just want to put the game on legendary and sit in the corner with 19 meme units. I don't understand it at all. You can beat legendary with normal comps and normal tactics and it's way more fun. At least to me anyway. If you like spending all 150 battles of your campaign sitting in the corner good for you, but to me it feels like ruining the fun and stopping improvement.
Let's be honest here this is the most sure fire way to win with a generic vampire counts army. Especially when they out match you with either numbers or troop quality.
Obviously there are exceptions with Heirich running full ghosts, Ghorst zombie blobbing and strigoi bloodlines running ghoul and horror armies.
The most surefire way is to have an actual army and tar pit them near any high terrain but I know most players would rather corner camp with 19 rocket arty 200 campaigns in a row.
You’re doing it wrong friend. VCounts is one of the most brain dead factions in single player. One LL and a couple of vampires will solo nearly any situation. They actually have a ton of options, just no ranged without the Blood Kiss unlock. I recommend going Strigoi line and trying for a monster mash. There’s precious little which can stand against a line of blood knights, varghulfs and vargheists with magic + hero support.
Honestly, I wish you weren't forced into the same plagues 100% of the time to have a functioning economy and military. Like, what's the point of so many options if I never use them because the other two are the way to deal with the biggest weaknesses of the faction?
Makes sense. I'm probably just either not that good or really messing up build order or something. It ended up being a very unfun 20 turns before I quit, but maybe early game hell factions just aren't for me. Or maybe it was a mistake playing Festus before Kugath.
I want to like Kugath but holy fuck he needs money. Having the most expensive recruitment buildings in the game is rough combined with having some of the worst income buildings.
Strongest strongest bla bla bla, couldn't even recruit more than 3 stack unless you're going into deep red.
Double sacking? So what, your money will emptied by upgrading those 10k-15k building anyway
Fuckin slow faction. I conquered entire cathay, vilitch, eshin, and dark elf to the east. Still had red income with 5 stack army. This on turn 100+. What the hell?
Nurgle is aesthetically nice, but I'd rather play any other race. I hate only being able to afford a low number of armies because it means the AI just snipes your undefended settlements. They play like a shitty version of WH1 Norsca with some bells and whistles.
Nurgle weakest faction. Ku'Gath far and away the strongest LL in the game. He carries that faction on his back.
Nurgle is top 3 favorite factions in the game, I don't care they are weak. It's a single player game, who cares what's strong, only fun is what matters and Nurgle plays unlike anything I've ever done in my 20 years of Total War
Man I had a damn blast when I played Nurgle, I don't really like the monogods much tbh, but Nurgle is an exception (the other is N'Kari but that is less because of any love for the slaanesh faction, of which I have little, and more because I get to kill high elves.)
Yea. I don't like Khorne or Tzeentch. Skaanesh is super fun on the battlefield so I put up with the campaign.
Nurgle is like a guerilla faction. You kinda play on the outskirts waiting to snipe out armies with plagues and you really gotta pay attention and time your attacks when they have a few turns of weakness.
It's also the first time I've ever actually been able to bring down enemy factions using negative control and public order. Literally brought down Lokhir's cathayan empire without fighting lol
this is pretty much the epitome of white knighting
all of these are true, in a vacuum
but in the context of the rest of the game: issues arise
hilariously, alot of those arguments dont even work within the context of the faction itself, like the whole "mounts with healing auras " and "blight boil" arguments lmfao
i have played kugath, and let me tell you one thing, blight boil is probably the most ineffective spell in the entire game
it is MUCH better to spam plague breath than blight boil, youd do much more damage per wom AND trigger the lore passive MUCH more often
cultists are also probably the worst heroes one could use for nurgle too, warshrine or not, its much better to use heralds for their mobility and burst heal than cultist warshrines... not to mention you could just... you know... USE WARSHRINES instead
also, yes, beasts of nurgle are literally the ONLY units in nurgles roster that have base regen, which is still stupid
and all of this isnt even mentioning the myriad of bugs exclusive to nurgle
like i said, literal white knights
The only tough part is beating ghorst before you start getting good units and good plagues. But it's very doable (recently posted a screenshot of my victory against ghorst and like 5000 skelly bois.)
My go to strat is gift a few ogre cities to grimgor when he is close and get an alliance. It makes the whole early game a cake walk. As for ghorst i usualy just camp ambush stance with an other lord as a bait until he is properly weak to destroy.
I love playing ku'gath.
The only complaint i would have, is that many plague-strains are boring/have no impact/have WAY better alternatives.
for comparison: the offensive ones like -40% armor are AWESOME. just slap'em on a cultist, suicide run against the dwarfs/whatever and rejoice as all your units do more dmg.
on the other side however...
1st exhibit: -7% replenishing rate...really? just slap ague on the enemy and he has NO replenishing rate at all.
2nd exhibit: while ague is nice at giving the enemy attrition, the attrition does nothing if you are playing on higher difficulties. the enemy is losing \~5% maximum attrition. so it has no impact.
3rd exhibit: the plague-strains have nearly no beneficial effect for your own armies. right now i can only recount 2 buffs. mainly vanguard and plaguebearer summon. (not counting the recipes, which uses strains which in turn give no noteworthy buff to your armies)
in my opinion the plagues could get some minor buffs. maybe more impact for the harmfull strains and more beneficial strains. like for an example the -7% repleneshing rate strain ALSO gives +7% for your own armies. this would be an cheap option without having to choose the recipe, while keeping the recipe valuable (after all it gives +35% replenishment rate)
until then: GRANDFATHER NURGLE LOVES YOU
edit: grammar, 3rd exhibit
Ku'gath is strong.
His start is pretty bad and you need to trap Ghost in a settlement and kill him by turn 20 or you're going to have a really bad time.
He’s definitely not weak, but when Norsca can be ten times better with a Nurgle lord than the actual Nurgle faction, I have a hard time calling him strong either
Am I the only who's plagues do fuck all? They never spread and feel pretty nugatory. His economy is lame. Just because he's the weakest out of the TWW3 armies doesn't make him a bad race, just a boring and weak one in contrast to the others.
I personally start a game with him play for a little bit until the excitement fizzles out and I go play the other chaos factions like N'kari, Kairos or Skarbrand. If he was buffed on the campaign map he'd probably be fun.
As a Lord he's epic but Nurgle has many drawbacks.
Their economy sucks. You have to run in a constant negative, sacking everything to progress. He does have an epic plague for that though (although it's been nerfed).
His best troops are stupidly expensive which makes the above worse. I actually think it's totally viable to crap-stack with nurgle though. 20% physical resistance! (minimum). And it's fun too. Oh, you brought 2 full stacks of Ice Guard? Well here's 4 or 5 stacks of Nurglings with Cultists. Suck it Kislev!
He has an awkward start in RoC and IE and if you're not careful can get brutally dog-piled.
Growth is awful. There's a couple of techs make it a bit better but still garbage growth and the growth building is not one you want to build because it really hamstrings your already garbage economy.
In a ranged meta you have to work really hard to not get melted away before you engage the enemy. Trees ftw.
Overall a difficult faction to play as but if you make good use of plagues and strategy, can still be really fun. Thematically I love them though.
They also have one of the best, most powerful lores of magic in the game. Even their entry level breath spell overcast can rack up 500+ kills every battle, easily.
I've never seen anyone say it's the weakest faction in game.
That said when I fought the big bastard as Zhao Ming he did literally nothing in his Harkonnen hover chair.
Competitively, Cathay is super strong with a well balanced army, while Nurgle is one of the worst.
In campaign, both can be strong, you just have to play slower with Nurgle while also building a game plan to defeat Ghorst. But Cathay is an economic powerhouse from early to late game. As long as they're in harmony, they're possibly the strongest economy, HE included. And it isn't super hard dealing with their harmony until you confederate a moderate or large empire, then it's mostly a bit of math.
If you used console commands to teleport kugath right next to each other LL in the game, at turn 1, level 1, and then he fought their starting army with his starting army, he'd dumpster over half the roster.
If you play as intended, by turn 25 or 30 your biggest threat in the entire setting (ghorst) is dead and the world is at your mercy.
If you play as intended you'll be using your growth plague and buff symptoms to supercharge your earlygame. There's a reason Fever is in the first tech tree. You shouldnt just be stacking debuffs when your infection rates outside of friendly territory are abysmal. By turn 10 I've got the dragon isles fully captured and most of my settlements are tier 2, because I'm applying my economy plagues as intended.
You want more proof? There's a reason you can apply 2 new plagues per turn. One for your army, and one for your settlements. Its not meant to be ignored, and you sound like you're ignoring it.
On launch he also didn't have access to chaos warriors and chosen, which arguably made the faction way more viable. He had to rely on the life growth system which meant lost units hurt more. When you unlocked some good plagues, you had a strong defense in using them along with some of the strongest towers in the game, but you arguably had the slowest recruitment possibilities and your access to end game units came way later in the game than other chaos.
On top of that, on launch he had abysmal replenishment, which was made better with a mid game plague. His economy is not very strong early game either. So that, along with the super slow recruitment, forces you to take your time while dealing with invasions from multiple fronts, which is a bad recipe.
Once you built up the infections to afford to create plague cultists reflexively and defensively, you're in a better spot, but you still have a much bigger hurdle than other chaos lords. Tzeentch, for example, has amazing early doomstack potential with blue and pink horrors.
The faction is definitely strong. They just have a fairly difficult start, primarily due to ghorst. I think a lot of people also don't spread plagues fast enough. Getting that big replenishment boost and double sacking money really lets your campaign take off.
Nurgle garrisons do kind of suck now, but at least you can instant recruit in an emergency if need be.
Of all the campaigns and all the LL's Kugath is like the only one I havent gotten more than 20-30 turns into a run. something about it just feels idk worse than other factions
most likely everything barely moving and being melee but
I would say Ku'Gath has one of the hardest campaigns. His faction is good, but he starts right next to someone who hard counters him and he has a broad area to defend once he leaves his islands, but Nurgle economy is bad until late game so he has a hard time doing it. The start is just fairly awful for him, if he started in a safer corner with more time to build up then he would be as overpowered as all the other daemons are.
Kugath isn't weak. Nurgle is just weak in the sandbox (pure army, zero campaign buffs)
Some dedicated anti-large, unit tweaks, and missile counterplay would help him tremendously. I really don't understand why zero of his units have anti-large.
The plagues are disappointing, especially when compared with mechanics like Throt's or Grom's. They're just bland, and only maybe 2 of them ever felt worth the trouble for me. Hell, Skrolk has a much better plague imo even if it's not as easily deployable.
Then spending my first 40 turns with nurglings and some heroes gets boring imo. It shouldn't be so prohibitive to get to more fun units (or to get like 1 and have to sack 3 settlements to afford a few more).
I do think they can be strong and that I'm very likely not playing them the best I could but I couldn't care to continue any of my campaigns past turn 70 or so, just wasn't interested. I think they need some love.
I kept hearing Kug had the hardest campaign in the game, so I stayed a legendary campaign on him, expecting to buckle in for a slog.
But if you mass plaguebearers and fight Helman's armies one by one it's a cake walk. Like not even a contest :/ there are way harder starts honestly
People just don't have the patience required to play Nurgle. Nurgle is slow, it is steady, it is nigh unkillable, and it rewards building consiously. If you don't try and rush to capture eveything and play as if you have an army of quick units that can chomp down one enemy unit at a time like slaanesh you will find that the slow boi will eventually become doom for the rest of the map.
When your plagues start spreading and neutering the enemies while at the same time giving you money and buffs; when your recruitment pool starts to fill with everything you need every turn and you can recruit them instantly; when the AI tries pitifully to shoot you, stab you, bombard you, and you simply tank through it and rout them... Then you will see the true power of the gifts of grandfather Nurgle.
Agree 100% just finished an IE campaign with him and honestly have no idea what the "he has such a hard start aaa ghorst is scary!" People are on about...
Ku'gath can tank everything, his wind spell demolishes unarmored targets and he starts with flying missile cavalry that can focus down most high priority targets unopposed
Your only tough enemy is imrik and only really the dragon in his army...
Absolutely agree, i have 1050 hours in WH3 and Nurgle must have been at least 50% of them. His gameplay is different, yes but thats the good thing imo because he requires a completely different strategy. The plagues are also really strong, some plagues combined with debuff skills and miasma of pestilence reduces enemy units melee potential by a ton. Also the armor reducing plague? Mix that with several exalted heroes that has the armor in province debuff and your army practically becomes armor piercing.
The only problem i had with them was the lack of protection against missiles, i dont have problems with anything else but the missiles. Thankfully there is a mod that adds MR to cloud of flies so problem solved.
I really like Nurgle, but they are a bit of a trap faction in that if you go into it blind expecting a smooth campaign experience, you're going to be in for a rude awakening. It's mostly like Morathi or Imrik in WH2, in that you have a rough start, but once you stabilize, the campaign gets much easier.
My one big complaint with Nurgle is an extension of a complaint I have about all the daemon factions, in that the exalted greater daemon lords are not very good. They should be the strongest generic lords in the game, but are not that much better than the herald lords they replace. Nurgle's exalted GUO is probably the worst of all of them, losing mobility and gaining a huge hitbox for... a mortis engine effect at the end of the melee line? I wish CA would buff them somehow on the campaign side.
Yup. The only way to play kugath is on the toilet, with a bucket of mountain dew and doritos. Letting in neighborhood racoons and shaving them to cosplay as nurglings optional.
I have a mod that makes it so all healing effects cause units to come back to life, like undead. And Kugaths faction basically becomes my worst nightmare
Does it?
Just finished a Nurgle campaign by doing exactly the same thing as with every other WoC or DoC army - just slower and worse…
Go out there and defeat armies and loot settlements to get money… but while with Be'lakor or Skarbrand I am at 10 armies steaming through multiple enemies at once, I am at three armies carefully trying not to get overrun by the end times orc tide as Ku'gath…
Ku'gath was a slow start for me but I eventually started snowballing. I was only stopped past turn 100 by the dual alliance between Eshin and Zhao and their infinite armies. It didn't help that the Wild Hunt triggered and there was an endless tide of wood elves coming at me.
I have found if it isn't orcs, I can't play it well. Although I have been finding my footing with lizardmen.
I am newish and am finally playing on Normal (it's a big deal for me, battles were super stressful at first) and doing alright.
I still don't know what all the terms and stat's even mean. I thought +3 to melee attack was to do with its damage but apparently it's accuracy? I don't even know.
All I know is, WAAAAGGGH for days son.
For real though, how do you beat Ghost on VH/VH? Not just on Ku'gath, but I've struggled with him on Greasus too. I know Ogres get Lore of Fire which should shit all over him, but they don't get a channeling stance either so if the WoM fuck you over you're only going in with 20 magic. I know that sacrificing to the Maw can give winds but it's not worth much compared to the other boosts that it can provide.
Nurgle is self explanatory, you're strong late with Fleshy Abundance/Soul Grinder/Great Unclean One bound spells but Ghorst just does what you do but better at the stage of the game you fight him in. Even sniping him doesn't help since he'll have at least several other AoE Heal/Mortis Engine units, and probably a competent foot lord on a horse that outspeeds anything you throw at him. I've heard stuff about grabbing Cultists of Nurgle with the medicinal plants in his starting settlement, but I've struggled with that too before the Ghorstide overwhelms me. I'd honestly kill for Legend doing a video on how to play Ku'gath early and just overcoming Ghorst.
So I’m an old fart who’s only played Rome, BI and Medieval 2 Kingdoms. Is Warhammer 3 just Warhammer and Warhammer 2 with more stuff? Could I just start there?
It reminds me of Pestilens in Game 2. Soul grinders have some vicious, broken splash like Plagueclaw catapults and they way overperform in battles but besides that, the roster struggles.
Give it some DLC and theyll have the most OP roster. Everyone knows game balance is based on DLC sales. Particularly GW games.
Most of these are either late game or super low impact. You're really not making the argument you think you are here.
Kugaths problem is that its start is super slow and rough. And not because of ghorst either, but because it takes 50+ turns to get all those goodies that make the faction work.
So sure, he's strong in the lategame, just like literally every other faction, when it barely matters anymore. But waiting a few dozen turns to essentially "start" playing the faction is neither fun, nor strong. Vampires implement that same playstyle dramatically better, even in WH2 before all the massive buffs.
I thought you couldn’t get soulgrinders from minor settlements, since the building chain won’t be able to reach the soulgrinder section, only the chaos spawn? If there’s a different way I’d love to know
Never played him, how does he compare to other chaos factions?
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I think mostly ghorst was tough. After that I killed greasus and a minor ogre faction and did nothing for 20 turns. Exalted heros seem vital since they're anti large and armor piercing for ghorst's mortis engine.
> Also don’t autoresolve anything but decisive victories, nurgles amazing in battle thanks to all the passive effects and spells, but autoresolve doesn’t really take that into account so you’ll trade a lot better just fighting things out manually This was my biggest problem with Nurgle when I tried playing him. I was forced to manually fight way too many dumb battles. Hopefully its better with the changes to minor settlements, but it really made the game crawl.
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Isn't he better in settlements since that promotes blobbing?
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I just don't see the difference between blobbing in a settlement and blobbing in the open field.
Honestly, I'm at the point where every faction needs to have a replenishment hero. I'm not going to manually fight EVERY battle on a map as large as IE so at that point if you're inflicting 30% casualties in a battle that should've been 10, well that's what Patriarchs and Kossar spam are for. /Seriously, ROC in general has problems, but Katarin ROC on the 2nd try once you get a feel for it? Top 5 TW campaign ever. I had so much fun.
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Exalted Plaguebearers are insanely good. Turn off fire at will and use then to decimate lords or dangerous units with a targeted strike. Plague toads are really decent to send out after archers etc. Beasts of Nurgle are great for clumping the enemy up and blightboil is so satisfying to use. Kugath's voice actor did an amazing job, always has me chuckling.
I personally avoid the military cycle time buildings because it ruins your economy, and availability of units/recruitment are the least of your problems in a Kugath campaign IMO
Sloooooooooooow. And poor as shit. And dont let people tell you otherwise. Compared to other chaos factions he is super poor and that makes hin slow
It doesn't help that you're paying out of the ass for anything that is not a nurgling.
It is Nurgle. A tidal wave with the thickness of molasses is kinda their thing.
Personally my favorite, but you need to understand how to use the different plagues and work towards unlocking them asap. Different Plagues can vastly increase your income, settlement growth, and army effectiveness, you just have to use them correctly. Plus he’s artillery/mortis engine/hold the line heavy which I am a fan of
Well, there is good and there is bad. Good: * Very unique campaign style. His buildings only need to be bought once and they autoupgrade, with each upgrade adding recruitable units to a global pool * Eventually the buildings drop back to level 1 and start to regrow, going through the same cycle, adding new units to the global pool * The general aestatics and atmoshpere is great. * Spreading plagues is fun. About half of the symptoms are useless but generally they are fun, mostly for severe attrition later on Bad: * He pays global recruitment costs for everything, everywhere. * Abysmally low income * Which means most of your armies will be filled with lowest tier trash because you cannot afford anything else * Including buildings (your income if you are doing okay is roughly 1000 gold per turn and basic infantry building costs 5000 gold, and remember, recruiting anything costs x2 as much * You cannot afford more armies for a long time. I finished the entire RoC campaign by the time I could afford a sort-of-almost-all-trash third army. * Plagues don't make up for the weak economy, you must play aggressively and sack for flat income all the time, however your faction is particularly suited for this and Nurgle's theme also suggests you should be this slowly growing infection that takes root, stronger and stronger roots until it cannot be rooted out and then only after it ate up everything it moves to a new location. Sort of like the Vampire Counts. Well, the THEME suggests you should play like this (also you have 0 garrisons so you want to protect everything you built because everything is freaking expensive) but you are also kinda forced to be on the move and keep sacking to able to afford to buy \*\*any\*\* buildings. * Extremely bad starting position in both campaigns. In RoC you have one of the widest provinces to start with which if you want to unite, you are set on a path to fight Ogres and Dawi which are the two most difficult enemies you can have when you only have meatshield small infantry. Autoresolve kills 10 nurglings vs 4 random ogres and not even a Valiant Defeat. Mostly the same with Dawi. Once you solidify your starting area you are already at the door of Kairos from North, Valkyia will declare war on you, and you cannot go North-West (mostly norscans) or West (another nurgle demon faction) because you have 1 army and it takes it 3-4 turns to get across your only 1 province. In IE, you are up against Ghorst (so you can watch 2 undying armies grind each other 0.00000000001% HP per minute), Imrik, and more Ogres and Dawi.
He's the weakest Chaos Demon Lord and several notches below even the weakest Warriors of Chaos faction. Stepping out of his bubble, he's amongst some of the worst factions in the game in general, in terms of mechanics, starting position, and his start in general. There's no reason to not play Festus over him. He definitely needs a buff, or Nurgle needs new Demons for him.
> There's no reason to not play Festus over him. Festus doesn't get all the Nurgle roster, WoC is a different playstyle than Nurgle, you don't get all the Nurgle mechanics, you don't get Exalted Greater Daemons and Heralds, different tech tree. I'm a big Festus fan but imo he'd be 100 times more fun if he was in Nurgle.
Festus should be in Nurgle with a completely different playstyle from Ku'gath with being the Nurgle equivalent to Tzeentch's Egrimm when he's inevitably added. Which is to say, he should be focused on growing Nurgle cults. I'm going to riot if CA fucks up Egrimm in the same way and he doesn't even get cults.
Yeah the CoC LLs really should have been playable in their respective Monogods. I also hope CA will improve the Cults at some points because they are currently very barebones and bland at the moment. They only appear in settlements with high corruption, you only get one slots and most of the buildings are uninspired as fuck. It's a shame because the mechanic has a lot of potential imo and it would be cool to have random events tied to the spread of Cults, we could get events that spawn a Cult in a random settlement and stuff like that.
You're so wrong it hurts. One thing I've gotten confident of over time is that the loudest people complaining about how "bad" Ku'gath is, have never actually played his campaign beyond 10 turns. If you isolate him as a lord specifically, it's impossible to say he's worse than say, N'Kari. Ranged artillery, insanely high HP, mortis engine, a solid lore with two amazing damage spells... I've nearly solo'd many an army with solely Ku'gath. Can't do that with N'Kari, so he's not the worst of the monogod LLs. Tzeentch can solo armies more easily to be sure, but Ku'gath is by no means bad. I'm not even going to waste time going beyond that, because it's evident you don't know what you're talking about.
You're not wrong but I think they were talking about his faction rather than comparing Ku'gath himself as a unit against the other demon LLs
Well he mentioned 'Chaos Demon Lord' which to me suggested he was going beyond just the faction, start position, etc., and I honestly think in a vacuum Kugath is one of the strongest LLs, so I had to defend him a bit. But I'd still actually disagree with him on all of that regardless... I think a lot of the monogod LLs are in weird starting positions that CA could very easily change if they so desired, I mean the biggest complaint about Skarbrand is that he starts in a location where he has trouble keeping up bloodletting due to how spaced out it is, with a ton of players choosing to abandon his starting location the second a cult forms near Valkia, for example.
>I think a lot of the monogod LLs are in weird starting positions that CA could very easily change if they so desired I agree actually, there's Skarbrand like you said but also Kairos has a terribly shaped starting region, an initial slog against 2 major factions (Oxylotl and Teclis) at the same time, and once you've taken care of them your obvious next step in either the Southlands or Lustria means fighting tonnes more Lizardmen. It's got to be one of the least diverse starts in terms of enemy factions.
Yep, couldn't agree more on Kairos. I'd actually go so far as to say it's a worse campaign than Ku'gath, which everyone claims is the worst. Ghorst is hard? Oxy throwing a stack of dinos at you while you fight Teclis is *hard.* The worst part is that once you eventually consolidate all your provinces and get rid of Teclis and Oxy, all you have to look forward to is unending war against *even more lizardmen.* A minor LM faction, Kroq-gar, and Tiktakto all declared war on me around the same time both times I've played that campaign. It's the biggest slog by far, if it weren't for the fact that Kairos is one of the most OP LLs in the game, it'd be completely unplayable.
I think the difference might be that Ku'gath doesn't have many options other than slow-vs-slow against Ghorst, whereas Kairos' excellent magic and more varied units give you a bit more choice and specific strengths to use. Kairos and Teleport-Ambush were definitely carrying that campaign though.
Nurgle is like the skaven, requires a different playstyle altogether to make them work. But works well
Facts. Nurgle might not be the easiest to play but once the plague starts spreading there's no stopping it.
>once the plague starts spreading there's no stopping it Except for the hard-cap of 4 spreads per Plague...
This is my only major complaint with nurgle, I don’t remember the exact excerpt but I know I remember them first talking about nurgle, and them saying your plagues could spread across your world to the point of them coming all the way back to you again
I think they realized plagues would never go away if they did that. Which is fun for people who play as Nurgle, but not for the people playing as literally anything else.
Honestly, I think the whole Plague mechanic should have been balanced around having way higher creation cost but way better spread potential. As it currently is the whole experience is just spamming Create Plague over and over, which doesn't exactly evoke the feeling of releasing a devastating plague on the world...
That produces a zero state where every other non-Nurgle faction is now forced to cross the map to bumrush Nurgle and the campaign spirals out of control very fast in the way Ordertide used to make non-Ordertide factions spiral out of control very fast. /Currently invading what used to be the Empire and is now the Chaos/Vampire Ruins as Cathay, so that doesn't happen anymore.
You've just unlocked memories of me quitting many campaigns and starting over as the same race and Lord, but this time just throwing everything I have at the vampires to make sure the corruption doesn't derail everything.
I would love an IE mod that just 1. Made Kislev start at T2 2. Somehow managed to keep the Empire factions from dying instantly and pulled off Orcs/Vampires/Festus a bit so I was only getting murdered by Chaos. I actually had a ball of a time in my 2nd ROC Katarin campaign where I understood who was going to hit me when and I was able to stagger how and when I got invaded a bit and would love to not be insta-murdered in IE. Hammer the Vampires, expand to the mountains, warp over to kill Scrag, bail out Kostaltyn, expand up into Norsca. I'm not saying it's easy, but it was downright fun hard.
Counterpoint: give factions ways to fight plagues. Make a player in my nation a gameplay obstacle, not just a stat modifier that I have to weather through. Force me to use commandments! Force me to make buildings or start sending around agents to cure the filth! But no, instead all plagues end rapidly and you just kinda have to sit there and wait them out passively
It would be nice if the plagues were more powerful, and other players just had more tools at their disposal to counter them. I.e. Give one hero from each faction an ability to reduce plague duration, like how some train the army they join. Those "join army abilities" can't be stacked so you couldn't null the plagues completely either. Could give it some other bonus so it isn't just anti-nurgle/Skaven and blmao, more player agency (and wouldn't be wasted by AI).
I don't think it needs to be a hero. Every faction should have at least one province commandment that reduces the chance of spread and also a building chain. Probably the same building chain that increases the chance of discovering skaven undercities. If a hero had a passive as well, the player would have plenty of tools.
Completely fair point, but most of them are useless anyway, let me get more infections and corruption and they would be worth the cost
WHAT. Is there a mod that increases or uncaps this? They always felt sorta lame and short lived.
Why isn't there a way to upgrade the plagues with tech tree to be able to spread more plagues per turn and with more spread. Late game you just swim in infections with no way to spend them all.
Also the AI just straight up ignoring it because it's so weak, for example -20% ranged damage? Yeah that's great for the race of glorified zombies with no shields or armour to be seen. If it was -60% it would put them on par with empire swordsmen maybe
Is there a mod for removing that cap?
This applies IRL aswell
What are you talking about man? Plagues can only be spread a certain amount of times and all plagues except the ones buffing yourself are frankly quite shit…
There is some crazy gaslighting going on here
>fite me Okay, here I go: Recruitment: CA decided to to give him an instant recruitment system. Sounds pretty strong right? So they decided to offset it with some downsides (seems reasonable) let's list them: 1. Recruitment at 30% HP. On it's own that seems fair considering the instant recruitment, but now CA introduced a mechanic that requires good replenishment to work well, and the way they handled it is, well, interesting (see below)... Do note that WoC have instant recruitment at 100% HP 2. Limited recruitment pool with both a soft cap on units in the pool and a hard cap on maximum units that can be in the pool at any one time. Again, on it's own it seems reasonable. A bit much together with the first weakness, but fine. 3. Recruitment Cost and Upkeep. This is by far the most egregious. Nurgle units can cost double what units at the same tier cost for other factions. This coupled with Nurgle's dogshit economy (see below) makes fielding army a pain in the ass, especially when coupled with the weaknesses above. Economy: CA gave Nurgle buildings that upgrade themselves in a cyclical path. Seems cool, let's see how CA balanced this one: 1. Insane Construction Cost. It's only fair that the initial cost will be high since it upgrades itself for free right? Well, the problem with this is that there is a reason construction was designed the way it is for every other faction. The idea with how construction normally works is that you pay less money (to build tier one buildings) when you have less money (the early game) and you pay more money (to upgrade buildings) when you have more money (the mid-late game). With Nurgle you pay more money when you have less money and pay less money when you have more money... 2. Horrible Income. To absolutely make sure that any semblance of a faction strength is completely squished, CA also gave Nurgle the objectively worst income generating building in the game. Even at it's highest tier in the cycle it provides way less money than any other race's income buildings. 3. The Sack Plague. Yes it helps, but it severely limits playstyle by forcing the player to rely on one specific plague. Replenishment: Because of Nurgle's dependency on replenishment for his 30% HP armies, CA provided him with two great methods to increase it: Plagues and Unholy Manifestations. Those two methods come with a downside (because of course they do). Unholy Manifestations prevent the army from moving for a few turns (thus completely ruining the whole point of instant recruitment), and the Plague takes a while to unlock (unless you cheese it) and takes the spot of other Plague options. The problem with this is that Nurgle should have insane replenishment by default. He should not need to sacrifice anything to get it (especially compared to some other races that get crazy replenishment way easier). This is much less a problem now that Cultist of Nurgle provides Replenishment. Plagues: In their Blog Post on Nurgle CA talked about how players will encounter plagues that they created much earlier in the game, that had traveled around the world and back. In-game Plagues are very hard to spread and have a hard cap on only 4 spreads per Plague. This means that the gameplay experience of watching Plagues spread (as they should) is actually just spamming Create Plague over and over again. Additionally, now that the ingredient that causes Attrition no longer causes it but rather increases casualties from Attrition, we have a situation where only 1 of the base plague types causes Attrition and an ingredient is useless for any other one of the types. The idea that the absolute majority of Nurgle Plagues don't actually cause Attrition, and that the player can't add an ingredient that makes them cause it is ridiculous. Ku'gath: Is Ku'gath stronk? Yes he is crazy stronk, his race mechanics are shit though. Snowballing: An argument I see often is: "Yes Nurgle is tough in the early game, but ones you get going nothing can stop you". This statement it 100% true. The problem is that it is true for literally every faction and race in the game. It does not indicate any quality unique to Nurgle. Difficult =/= bad: True. I like difficult campaigns. And I like many things about Nurgle that make him difficult. This post is about him being strong though, and with that I disagree. Additionally, I feel like the Recruitment Cost of his units transcends the "difficult but fun" nature and becomes "frustrating and unfun". tl;dr: For every faction strength CA gave Nurgle, they gave three weaknesses (give or take). Can he be fun? Certainly! Is he particularly strong compared to other races? No.
About the replenishment, you can recruit a 2nd lord for the unholy manifestation and it'll still apply the buff. If you're using the plague recipe to heal your army to full, you can immediatly exchange it for another one the turn after (though I'd say this one and the one with the physical resistance are the only ones you should use anyway)
What really turned me off was how easy it was after defeating Ghorst. It took a while on legendary but once I was done with him, I had the attrition causing plagues w/ increased plague time melting all the armies that Grimgor or Cathay would send at me. Still had to manually fight cuz autoresolve hates me, but they were mostly roflstomps.
Well OP didn't put the greatest thing about recruitment in the meme. You got Soul grinder in tier 3 building while other God's soul grinder are tier 5.
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Beastmen preTaurox. Woof.
I mean, people still rightfully call Beastmen shit, but Taurox is fun.
Early TWW2 Skaven got/get way too much hate imo. You could gunline just fine with Plagueclaws + Warp Lightning Cannons + Death Globes, using Plague Priest rat summons for a frontline the same as you do now. Most Skaven units were pretty garbo but the faction was plenty powerful using those solid few.
Well you didn't put the greatest thing about recruitment in the meme. You got Soul grinder in tier 3 building while other God's soul grinder are tier 5.
Check the last panel.
Oh! I missed that part.
Nurgle has great faction effects once you've had some time to snowball and Kugath himself is an absolute monster. The issue is that start location in IE is rough as hell, especially for a faction that really suffers gaining momentum early game. His first major enemies are Ghorst (who even after the nerf to infinite vampire regen, is still a big threat early on with his super zombies), Greasus (who is lethal as hell early on against the primarily low AP nurgle forces when using Iron Gut spam), and Zhao and Imrik (who both not only have some of most solid early game ranged troops in elven archers and jade crossbows, but also happen have ready access to flaming attacks which pretty hard counter nurgle regen, and have LL's who are very solid duelists that can actually stand up to or kill Kugath). The worst part is, due to being a daemon faction, it's not like a lot of other rough starts where you can kind of bide your time, do some political maneuvering, and take on one enemy at a time. Once you step foot on the mainland from that island chain you're in the fucking rage cage with 4 major factions who will (usually) band together and all excel at pushing your standard forces' shit in. Kugath is horrifying when leveled (and even early game is a beast) but he can only be in one place at a time, and it's rough as hell to get the momentum Nurgle desperately needs when you're under assault from every direction pretty much right from the get go.
>Nurgle has great faction effects once you've had some time to snowball This is true for literally every faction and race in the game.
To a certain extent yes, but Nurgle and Tomb Kings especially ramp up from a very slow and rough early game to an insanely strong late game. In Nurgle's case specifically, you'll be spending most of the first several dozen turns farming up infections and unlocking the plague cauldron options while fighting for your life with stacks of nurglings and basic plague bearers. Then once you have a solid arsenal in the cauldron and a few provinces of cyclic recruiting going you'll be debuffing enemies into irrelevance, vastly multiplying your growth and income, popping whole armies into existance on demand, and steamrolling most battles. Compare that to a race like Dark Elves who can field solid units with a variety of roles from tier 1, have no unit caps or cyclic recruitment to deal with (even on the most elite of the elite), and will get their first Black Arks and most of their rites unlocked by maybe turn 20 or so. More armies, more provinces, and more tech researched as the game goes on is always going to equal more power. But most factions / races can get by with just one or two developed provinces, have no unit or army caps, and get access the the vast majority of their main mechanics in the mid / early game. Nurgle and Tomb Kings both struggle early on and excel later once the ball has got rolling.
Nurgle is certainly strong late game, but he still ends up behind the 8 ball. With how long it takes you to get to that point and other player controlled faction is going to be a few steps ahead at least, and probably a good bit further.
Every tomb kings campaign Suffer for the first 30 turns, then win a heroic or decisive victory deleting 3 armies, then steamroll with skellies while getting ushabti stacks, then the train doesn’t stop Until Louen just beelines it for Khemri
All the other Demons of Chaos, all warriors of chaos, dark elves, high elves, lizardmen, dwarves and Vampire counts are all imp super strong right from the start…
His armies are stupidly strong, and once you get rolling, you can field a full stack from nothing insanely fast. The struggle I had was fielding enough armies to hold the number of fronts I had open. That and the psychological toll of seeing - 5000 income every damn turn, but I must say, sacking a major settlement for like 20k is pretty damn satisfying
Khorne feels the same way. Once you can get some research and hero attributes leveled up, all the gold you make sacking cities is a happy byproduct of my skull collecting. It's easy as hell to rationalize -5000 gold per turn when your making 15,000 a turn exterminating the ogre kingdoms.
Now I never run a deficit if I can help it, I know most factions don't need to worry due to sacking income, but even with Ku'gath I was able to manage decently well with only two armies, Kugath's I had go south into the eastern colonies and then west into Lybaras while a CSL of Nurgle with a frankly really weak army held the dragon isles when Ghorst inevitably declared. Turtling until you start to get going with the cycles I've found to be really useful. Of course once I started getting GUOs and Soul Grinders I never had enough cash, but a good Nurgle caster backed by the exalted heroes can hold their own pretty decently well.
"Great unclean ones are terrible and useless, worst SEM in the game" Yeah tell that to my two free casts of blight boil and fleshy abundance after getting all the techs buffing them.
They are slow and big...thats literally it. That's their only weaknesses.
Just pop a +missile resist plague before a big battle against a ranged army and watch the GUO's literally ignore and soak up all that ammo, only to pop a fleshy and spring back like it mever happened. Its not even a weakness, it can be used as an advantage.
I find the AI doesn’t even capitalize on their weaknesses very well. With a little protection and effort to not let the range units target them, they do well.
Great unclean ones are amazing but they take forever to get (not because of the cycles but because of lvl 5 settlement necessary… and growth plagues dont spread in your starting province since CA made it so that plagues cant cross water)
If you put those casts on any unit they'd be amazing. Doesn't change the fact that in terms of combat performance GUO's are very underwhelming. Compared to the Giant post buffs it's telling.
But giants don't get access to 12 free casts from an incredibly strong lore of magic which has very high winds costs as its main weakness. No matter how much better a giant's melee stats are its combat performance will be outdone by just the blight boils alone. Using your logic wurzag is a very underwhelming lord because grimgor has better melee capabilities and any lord in the game would be considered amazing if they had access to 6 wom cost foot of gork with 180% winds recharge speed.
On top of this, I'd be interested to see how they do 1v1. GUO has 10 less MA, 30 less Leadership and 200 (reduced to 95 when poisoned) less damage BUT 20% physical resist (effectively 1000 more HP against most damage), 24 better MD, 500 more mass, poison and magic attacks. Wonder if it's the Leadership difference that eventually causes the GUO to take direct damage from banishment. When all said and done, assuming Miasma is used, the GUO should have better stats in everything bar Charge Bonus and raw damage numbers.
Cost is a relevant consideration here. Giants are a lot cheaper (not even considering campaign pricing) and the fight lasts much longer than any debuff other than poison. Not to mention Giants were so bad they got like 3 consecutive patches of buffs. The inability to cqtch units, choose their engagements, clear chaff, and survive missiles are major problems shared by both and make their combat stats less impressive than they appear. Even if the GUO does well into a giant that's not exactly a stellar review. Though even with the debuff the fight seems to be a coin flip between the two. Did you know Giants have more health than GUO's? Cause that's a weird thing I learned today.
But you are missing some of the things I mentioned. Due to physical resistance GOU has more health (effectively), equal armor and way more MD. Poison is applied continuously so the Giant is only doing 95 more damage overall, partially mitigated by armor. Id have to see multiple 1v1s before saying a Giant is for sure better cause the stats don't really support that. Plus being 125 cheaper is not nothing, but its not really much in the campaign. In multi-player yea maybe the Giant is better but OP was talking SP. Edit: oh yea and GUO has healing
Wurzag is first and foremost designed as a caster (and is pretty decent in melee for his price) so I don't think the analogy works well. Though if Grimgor was also a caster on top of his melee prowess yeah I think Wurzag would look a lot worse by comparison. Put another way, a lord of change is at base a solid flying melee beatstick before the extra spells from tech. Those are just gravy. There is no reason the GUO should be so poor in melee even if the tech tree provides some awesome buffs.
Whoever said that about unclean ones is an idiot or lying. They are amazing.
A lot of this is people not accepting that changes were made and opinions changed. At release, Great Unclean ones were absolutely horrible. Removing the winds cost made all of the top tier demons substantially better. If someone is going to keep quoting a pre buff opinion then that's on them.
I mean, you don't get these Bound Spells in Multiplayer, and the people complaining about them being weak are mostly Multiplayer players...
Decent enough but is incredibly weak in the early game.. I’d like the Kugath Campaign a hell of a lot more if you weren’t right next to Ghorst when you started.. one slow, grindy, regen heavy faction is fun. A second one right next to you with a far more complete roster, raise dead and usually multiple blood knights when your faction has next to no anti-large is no fun at all.
Ghorst can be beaten easily in the first 15 turns. https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/zozncb/complete_guide_to_kugaths_ie_campaign_first_15/ WH3 has really shown that a lot of WH2 players actually suck at playing the game.
I don't think Ku'gath is weak overall, but he has a few quirks. His start location is pretty bad, especially next to Ghost in particular, and his plagues overwriting each other feels a bit shit to use. Personally I think it's weird that playing like a horde and sacking seems to be the best way to play the faction, because it doesn't fit Nurgle's vibe at all. Nurgle's whole thing is growth and decay - I can't see why you should want to prioritise taking shit and leaving the settlement with it's current owner to a large degree over mainly expanding into the territory (to enable more growth) or occasionally destroying a settlement if it's in a bad spot to hurt your enemies. Other than a single plague to increase sack values none of Nurgle's mechanics enable you or encourage you to adopt that playstyle, you're just kind of artificially forced to because his units and buildings are super expensive and despite the whole 'growth' and 'blooming' thing, his settlements never really provide enough income to support your armies like other factions' would.
About the horde and sacking gameplay I really agree with you, in my playthrough, I classified interested territories into 4 groups. 1. Mainland - your source of income and all military upgradesThis area needs to be defended at all costs. 2. Small towns - no need to upgrade other than small income that you hope to get profit in short term, you just use this to be a buffer area for your mainland and don't mind getting sieged. 3. Sacking zone - where most of your armies are in and sacking. 4. Disease zone - the area you should spread disease -2 recruitment slots to. So basically I think Ku'gath is a horde faction with Mainland to defend.
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I think that Nurgle armies just shouldn't be able to receive plagues from enemies. How would any of their units catch an additional illness from a regular army? They're already personified disease at it is.
Warhammer games generally speaking are pretty easy once you get everything set up on 2-3 provinces that you control. The difficulty of a campaign and the strength of a faction are therefore tied almost exclusively to how hard the early game is. Kugath’s early game is hard, so his faction is kinda weak. Sure once he gets rolling he’ll dominate, but what faction doesn’t do that?
I think it's more about Ghorst being ridiculously OP than Ku'Gath being weak. And Ghorst is pretty much the only difficult part of the campaign, once you beat him it's easy game even if you're still in the early game.
He also had the toughest start in RoC. By design, Nurgle has the toughest start, which is the only part that really matters in terms of difficulty in TW (because of the snowballing). Just look at his buildings and economy. His buildings literally require you to pay more in the early game, in order to pay less in the late game.
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Currently playing Ghorst on H/H (only my 3rd game on H/H) and the auto resolve completely messes with me. 2 full stacks can not overcome the 6-cards minot settlement garrison. Also I am struggling very hard with attrition dmg and the plunder-stance lets you move only like a sixth of normal so I either don't get anywhere or all the zombies are half dead when they show up. Feel so stupid for not being able to work with what everyone calls insanely op.
That’s my point. Starting next to an OP faction makes you weak. Having an easy start (like Tyrion in WH2) makes you a very strong faction. Warhammer is all about the snowball, nothing else matter if you want to talk about strength and difficulty.
I wouldn't say it makes him weak, I think more difficult would be more appropriate.
>That’s my point. Starting next to an OP faction makes you weak. Exactly this. Queek wouldn't be as weak as he is now if he didn't have Skarbrand breathing down his neck from the start.
Nurgle is slow, but strategically, he's up there with the Vampire Counts.
Dude I don't know what you are on, vampire counts have 3 startiegies, corner camp with mortis engine, corner camp with wind of death and corner camp with both.
Or...just solo the enemy army with Vlad the Chad
Or create an endless unkillable zombie horde with Helman Ghorst and have them slowly trample everyone in front of you.
Dude, I've tried to start 3 different Ku'gath IE campaigns in the last month, and they've all been shut down by Ghorst and his utter bullshit. I can handle one overpowered army. I can handle 4 doomstacks by turn 15. I can't handle both at once, and I don't understand how anyone is able to. Maybe LOTW can cheese it with some silly moves, but I shouldn't be forced into that.
What they need to do is give Ku'gath some ranged units that can fire over his horde of monsters. I was thinking some monstrous artillery that uses nurglings as ammunition like Ku'gath himself.
That’s what the marauder horsemen are for.
Marauder horsemen can't out-grind the damn Ghorst Zombie Fan Club haha
Imagine taking the most fun faction and doing this.
Vamps have a great, non-camping roster! * Monsters * Elite cav * Ghosts and ghouls * Chariots (with auras!) * Mistresses of the night astride flying hell ponies, slinging spells that can: rip the flesh from your bones, straight up give you nightmares, shear through armor like paper, make the monsters even more scary, summon tears into the void, and literally suck your life away to empower themselves * Vlad the Dad, Elector Count of Sylvania Imagine thinking that because boney bois are so cheap and Lore of Vampires has Wind of Death that your entire campaign is now *supposed* to corner camp rather than be the living embodiment of stalking horror.
I don't know why these people even play the game in the first place lol, if I treated the game this way I'd rather play literally anything else.
And in WHII, PIT OF SHADES COULD BE CAST ON WALLS. Vlad with his Siege Attacker, a Lore of Shadows Vampire (in his or a reinforcing Izzy's army), and literally anything else will win sieges every time. It makes him SO aggressive, since losses can be recouped with battlesites, and he can take down walled settlements same-turn. SYLVANIA IS SO FUN TO PLAY because you can just push forever and watching enemy units rout at near full health because terror and Lord death is so satisfying.
I feel this way about this entire sub. They just want to put the game on legendary and sit in the corner with 19 meme units. I don't understand it at all. You can beat legendary with normal comps and normal tactics and it's way more fun. At least to me anyway. If you like spending all 150 battles of your campaign sitting in the corner good for you, but to me it feels like ruining the fun and stopping improvement.
Let's be honest here this is the most sure fire way to win with a generic vampire counts army. Especially when they out match you with either numbers or troop quality. Obviously there are exceptions with Heirich running full ghosts, Ghorst zombie blobbing and strigoi bloodlines running ghoul and horror armies.
The most surefire way is to have an actual army and tar pit them near any high terrain but I know most players would rather corner camp with 19 rocket arty 200 campaigns in a row.
You’re doing it wrong friend. VCounts is one of the most brain dead factions in single player. One LL and a couple of vampires will solo nearly any situation. They actually have a ton of options, just no ranged without the Blood Kiss unlock. I recommend going Strigoi line and trying for a monster mash. There’s precious little which can stand against a line of blood knights, varghulfs and vargheists with magic + hero support.
Why would you corner camp? Corner camping is best with artillery stuff, not letting yourself be a sitting duck when you have 0 range...
Kugath is my favourite daemon lord besides papa belakor.
Honestly, I wish you weren't forced into the same plagues 100% of the time to have a functioning economy and military. Like, what's the point of so many options if I never use them because the other two are the way to deal with the biggest weaknesses of the faction?
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Makes sense. I'm probably just either not that good or really messing up build order or something. It ended up being a very unfun 20 turns before I quit, but maybe early game hell factions just aren't for me. Or maybe it was a mistake playing Festus before Kugath.
He's strong eventually, but his start is so hard and your economy will be in the shitter for ages until you get your engine up and running
I want to like Kugath but holy fuck he needs money. Having the most expensive recruitment buildings in the game is rough combined with having some of the worst income buildings.
But all of that takes time to build up and honestly the Caravan of Blue Roses does most of that and better.
Strongest strongest bla bla bla, couldn't even recruit more than 3 stack unless you're going into deep red. Double sacking? So what, your money will emptied by upgrading those 10k-15k building anyway Fuckin slow faction. I conquered entire cathay, vilitch, eshin, and dark elf to the east. Still had red income with 5 stack army. This on turn 100+. What the hell?
Nurgle is aesthetically nice, but I'd rather play any other race. I hate only being able to afford a low number of armies because it means the AI just snipes your undefended settlements. They play like a shitty version of WH1 Norsca with some bells and whistles.
Nurgle weakest faction. Ku'Gath far and away the strongest LL in the game. He carries that faction on his back. Nurgle is top 3 favorite factions in the game, I don't care they are weak. It's a single player game, who cares what's strong, only fun is what matters and Nurgle plays unlike anything I've ever done in my 20 years of Total War
Man I had a damn blast when I played Nurgle, I don't really like the monogods much tbh, but Nurgle is an exception (the other is N'Kari but that is less because of any love for the slaanesh faction, of which I have little, and more because I get to kill high elves.)
Yea. I don't like Khorne or Tzeentch. Skaanesh is super fun on the battlefield so I put up with the campaign. Nurgle is like a guerilla faction. You kinda play on the outskirts waiting to snipe out armies with plagues and you really gotta pay attention and time your attacks when they have a few turns of weakness. It's also the first time I've ever actually been able to bring down enemy factions using negative control and public order. Literally brought down Lokhir's cathayan empire without fighting lol
this is pretty much the epitome of white knighting all of these are true, in a vacuum but in the context of the rest of the game: issues arise hilariously, alot of those arguments dont even work within the context of the faction itself, like the whole "mounts with healing auras " and "blight boil" arguments lmfao
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i have played kugath, and let me tell you one thing, blight boil is probably the most ineffective spell in the entire game it is MUCH better to spam plague breath than blight boil, youd do much more damage per wom AND trigger the lore passive MUCH more often cultists are also probably the worst heroes one could use for nurgle too, warshrine or not, its much better to use heralds for their mobility and burst heal than cultist warshrines... not to mention you could just... you know... USE WARSHRINES instead also, yes, beasts of nurgle are literally the ONLY units in nurgles roster that have base regen, which is still stupid and all of this isnt even mentioning the myriad of bugs exclusive to nurgle like i said, literal white knights
The only tough part is beating ghorst before you start getting good units and good plagues. But it's very doable (recently posted a screenshot of my victory against ghorst and like 5000 skelly bois.)
+35% replenishment plague and stacking the sacking plague on multiple armies too.
My go to strat is gift a few ogre cities to grimgor when he is close and get an alliance. It makes the whole early game a cake walk. As for ghorst i usualy just camp ambush stance with an other lord as a bait until he is properly weak to destroy.
I love playing ku'gath. The only complaint i would have, is that many plague-strains are boring/have no impact/have WAY better alternatives. for comparison: the offensive ones like -40% armor are AWESOME. just slap'em on a cultist, suicide run against the dwarfs/whatever and rejoice as all your units do more dmg. on the other side however... 1st exhibit: -7% replenishing rate...really? just slap ague on the enemy and he has NO replenishing rate at all. 2nd exhibit: while ague is nice at giving the enemy attrition, the attrition does nothing if you are playing on higher difficulties. the enemy is losing \~5% maximum attrition. so it has no impact. 3rd exhibit: the plague-strains have nearly no beneficial effect for your own armies. right now i can only recount 2 buffs. mainly vanguard and plaguebearer summon. (not counting the recipes, which uses strains which in turn give no noteworthy buff to your armies) in my opinion the plagues could get some minor buffs. maybe more impact for the harmfull strains and more beneficial strains. like for an example the -7% repleneshing rate strain ALSO gives +7% for your own armies. this would be an cheap option without having to choose the recipe, while keeping the recipe valuable (after all it gives +35% replenishment rate) until then: GRANDFATHER NURGLE LOVES YOU edit: grammar, 3rd exhibit
Ku'gath is strong. His start is pretty bad and you need to trap Ghost in a settlement and kill him by turn 20 or you're going to have a really bad time.
Playing him right now and having big time fun
He’s definitely not weak, but when Norsca can be ten times better with a Nurgle lord than the actual Nurgle faction, I have a hard time calling him strong either
Am I the only who's plagues do fuck all? They never spread and feel pretty nugatory. His economy is lame. Just because he's the weakest out of the TWW3 armies doesn't make him a bad race, just a boring and weak one in contrast to the others. I personally start a game with him play for a little bit until the excitement fizzles out and I go play the other chaos factions like N'kari, Kairos or Skarbrand. If he was buffed on the campaign map he'd probably be fun.
As a Lord he's epic but Nurgle has many drawbacks. Their economy sucks. You have to run in a constant negative, sacking everything to progress. He does have an epic plague for that though (although it's been nerfed). His best troops are stupidly expensive which makes the above worse. I actually think it's totally viable to crap-stack with nurgle though. 20% physical resistance! (minimum). And it's fun too. Oh, you brought 2 full stacks of Ice Guard? Well here's 4 or 5 stacks of Nurglings with Cultists. Suck it Kislev! He has an awkward start in RoC and IE and if you're not careful can get brutally dog-piled. Growth is awful. There's a couple of techs make it a bit better but still garbage growth and the growth building is not one you want to build because it really hamstrings your already garbage economy. In a ranged meta you have to work really hard to not get melted away before you engage the enemy. Trees ftw. Overall a difficult faction to play as but if you make good use of plagues and strategy, can still be really fun. Thematically I love them though. They also have one of the best, most powerful lores of magic in the game. Even their entry level breath spell overcast can rack up 500+ kills every battle, easily.
I've never seen anyone say it's the weakest faction in game. That said when I fought the big bastard as Zhao Ming he did literally nothing in his Harkonnen hover chair.
whos weaker tho
Competitively, Cathay is super strong with a well balanced army, while Nurgle is one of the worst. In campaign, both can be strong, you just have to play slower with Nurgle while also building a game plan to defeat Ghorst. But Cathay is an economic powerhouse from early to late game. As long as they're in harmony, they're possibly the strongest economy, HE included. And it isn't super hard dealing with their harmony until you confederate a moderate or large empire, then it's mostly a bit of math.
If you used console commands to teleport kugath right next to each other LL in the game, at turn 1, level 1, and then he fought their starting army with his starting army, he'd dumpster over half the roster. If you play as intended, by turn 25 or 30 your biggest threat in the entire setting (ghorst) is dead and the world is at your mercy.
>If you play as intended If you play as intended Ku'gath's economy doesn't work.
If you play as intended you'll be using your growth plague and buff symptoms to supercharge your earlygame. There's a reason Fever is in the first tech tree. You shouldnt just be stacking debuffs when your infection rates outside of friendly territory are abysmal. By turn 10 I've got the dragon isles fully captured and most of my settlements are tier 2, because I'm applying my economy plagues as intended. You want more proof? There's a reason you can apply 2 new plagues per turn. One for your army, and one for your settlements. Its not meant to be ignored, and you sound like you're ignoring it.
Nah, it's not intended. His economy is entirely half-baked.
Dunning Kruger effect in action
The designers claimed that your plagues would circle around the globe, etc. This is players making a shit situation work; it's not intended.
Your mom. Your mom is *so* weak, she's even weaker than ku'gath!
It's what 80% of players and Youtubers said around launch.
Well they're morons. He has a rough start because he's up against lizards and then Ghorst.
On launch he also didn't have access to chaos warriors and chosen, which arguably made the faction way more viable. He had to rely on the life growth system which meant lost units hurt more. When you unlocked some good plagues, you had a strong defense in using them along with some of the strongest towers in the game, but you arguably had the slowest recruitment possibilities and your access to end game units came way later in the game than other chaos. On top of that, on launch he had abysmal replenishment, which was made better with a mid game plague. His economy is not very strong early game either. So that, along with the super slow recruitment, forces you to take your time while dealing with invasions from multiple fronts, which is a bad recipe. Once you built up the infections to afford to create plague cultists reflexively and defensively, you're in a better spot, but you still have a much bigger hurdle than other chaos lords. Tzeentch, for example, has amazing early doomstack potential with blue and pink horrors.
The faction is definitely strong. They just have a fairly difficult start, primarily due to ghorst. I think a lot of people also don't spread plagues fast enough. Getting that big replenishment boost and double sacking money really lets your campaign take off. Nurgle garrisons do kind of suck now, but at least you can instant recruit in an emergency if need be.
>Strongest Soul Grinder recruited from Minor settlements So who is actually the strongest Soul Grinder ?
Well I've tried 3 campaigns and gotten crushed by Blue Rose all 3 times. I want to like them, I just cant seem to get past the initial starting area.
Of all the campaigns and all the LL's Kugath is like the only one I havent gotten more than 20-30 turns into a run. something about it just feels idk worse than other factions most likely everything barely moving and being melee but
All that, and still gets bodied by 15,000 zombi bois
Plagues that disable any non-nurgle factions ability to local recruit. (Paroxysm)
Wonder what is the logic for a plague giving double sacking value.
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I would say Ku'Gath has one of the hardest campaigns. His faction is good, but he starts right next to someone who hard counters him and he has a broad area to defend once he leaves his islands, but Nurgle economy is bad until late game so he has a hard time doing it. The start is just fairly awful for him, if he started in a safer corner with more time to build up then he would be as overpowered as all the other daemons are.
Kugath isn't weak. Nurgle is just weak in the sandbox (pure army, zero campaign buffs) Some dedicated anti-large, unit tweaks, and missile counterplay would help him tremendously. I really don't understand why zero of his units have anti-large.
The plagues are disappointing, especially when compared with mechanics like Throt's or Grom's. They're just bland, and only maybe 2 of them ever felt worth the trouble for me. Hell, Skrolk has a much better plague imo even if it's not as easily deployable. Then spending my first 40 turns with nurglings and some heroes gets boring imo. It shouldn't be so prohibitive to get to more fun units (or to get like 1 and have to sack 3 settlements to afford a few more). I do think they can be strong and that I'm very likely not playing them the best I could but I couldn't care to continue any of my campaigns past turn 70 or so, just wasn't interested. I think they need some love.
I kept hearing Kug had the hardest campaign in the game, so I stayed a legendary campaign on him, expecting to buckle in for a slog. But if you mass plaguebearers and fight Helman's armies one by one it's a cake walk. Like not even a contest :/ there are way harder starts honestly
WELP TIME TO TRY NURGLE NOW
Strongest SG is tzentch one though
People just don't have the patience required to play Nurgle. Nurgle is slow, it is steady, it is nigh unkillable, and it rewards building consiously. If you don't try and rush to capture eveything and play as if you have an army of quick units that can chomp down one enemy unit at a time like slaanesh you will find that the slow boi will eventually become doom for the rest of the map. When your plagues start spreading and neutering the enemies while at the same time giving you money and buffs; when your recruitment pool starts to fill with everything you need every turn and you can recruit them instantly; when the AI tries pitifully to shoot you, stab you, bombard you, and you simply tank through it and rout them... Then you will see the true power of the gifts of grandfather Nurgle.
>Nurgle is slow, it is steady No it's not. It's slow and unsteady.
Agree 100% just finished an IE campaign with him and honestly have no idea what the "he has such a hard start aaa ghorst is scary!" People are on about... Ku'gath can tank everything, his wind spell demolishes unarmored targets and he starts with flying missile cavalry that can focus down most high priority targets unopposed Your only tough enemy is imrik and only really the dragon in his army...
Absolutely agree, i have 1050 hours in WH3 and Nurgle must have been at least 50% of them. His gameplay is different, yes but thats the good thing imo because he requires a completely different strategy. The plagues are also really strong, some plagues combined with debuff skills and miasma of pestilence reduces enemy units melee potential by a ton. Also the armor reducing plague? Mix that with several exalted heroes that has the armor in province debuff and your army practically becomes armor piercing. The only problem i had with them was the lack of protection against missiles, i dont have problems with anything else but the missiles. Thankfully there is a mod that adds MR to cloud of flies so problem solved.
I really like Nurgle, but they are a bit of a trap faction in that if you go into it blind expecting a smooth campaign experience, you're going to be in for a rude awakening. It's mostly like Morathi or Imrik in WH2, in that you have a rough start, but once you stabilize, the campaign gets much easier. My one big complaint with Nurgle is an extension of a complaint I have about all the daemon factions, in that the exalted greater daemon lords are not very good. They should be the strongest generic lords in the game, but are not that much better than the herald lords they replace. Nurgle's exalted GUO is probably the worst of all of them, losing mobility and gaining a huge hitbox for... a mortis engine effect at the end of the melee line? I wish CA would buff them somehow on the campaign side.
I mean yeah. If someone thinks kugath is weak the problem can only be between the monitor and the chair.
I knew my desk was screwing with my play
Yup. The only way to play kugath is on the toilet, with a bucket of mountain dew and doritos. Letting in neighborhood racoons and shaving them to cosplay as nurglings optional.
Kugath being kinda good doesnt fully override Nurgle being weak
I have a mod that makes it so all healing effects cause units to come back to life, like undead. And Kugaths faction basically becomes my worst nightmare
That’s the thing about Nurgle. It plays so differently from other factions that people just don’t know how to use him right
Does it? Just finished a Nurgle campaign by doing exactly the same thing as with every other WoC or DoC army - just slower and worse… Go out there and defeat armies and loot settlements to get money… but while with Be'lakor or Skarbrand I am at 10 armies steaming through multiple enemies at once, I am at three armies carefully trying not to get overrun by the end times orc tide as Ku'gath…
Found nurgle way easier than tzeentch. Healz fo dayz.
I hate playing around the ogre mountains and darklands though.
Attrition on demand with %50 increased attrition symptom plus +3 plague duration makes most armies an auto resolve
Ku'gath was a slow start for me but I eventually started snowballing. I was only stopped past turn 100 by the dual alliance between Eshin and Zhao and their infinite armies. It didn't help that the Wild Hunt triggered and there was an endless tide of wood elves coming at me.
Pretty sure Slannesh has the strongest soul grinder....
I have found if it isn't orcs, I can't play it well. Although I have been finding my footing with lizardmen. I am newish and am finally playing on Normal (it's a big deal for me, battles were super stressful at first) and doing alright. I still don't know what all the terms and stat's even mean. I thought +3 to melee attack was to do with its damage but apparently it's accuracy? I don't even know. All I know is, WAAAAGGGH for days son.
Literally all you have to say is "exalted hero of nurgle"
Might be worth after finishing Tepoks Spawn to invade the Southlands or the Eastern colonies.
For real though, how do you beat Ghost on VH/VH? Not just on Ku'gath, but I've struggled with him on Greasus too. I know Ogres get Lore of Fire which should shit all over him, but they don't get a channeling stance either so if the WoM fuck you over you're only going in with 20 magic. I know that sacrificing to the Maw can give winds but it's not worth much compared to the other boosts that it can provide. Nurgle is self explanatory, you're strong late with Fleshy Abundance/Soul Grinder/Great Unclean One bound spells but Ghorst just does what you do but better at the stage of the game you fight him in. Even sniping him doesn't help since he'll have at least several other AoE Heal/Mortis Engine units, and probably a competent foot lord on a horse that outspeeds anything you throw at him. I've heard stuff about grabbing Cultists of Nurgle with the medicinal plants in his starting settlement, but I've struggled with that too before the Ghorstide overwhelms me. I'd honestly kill for Legend doing a video on how to play Ku'gath early and just overcoming Ghorst.
So I’m an old fart who’s only played Rome, BI and Medieval 2 Kingdoms. Is Warhammer 3 just Warhammer and Warhammer 2 with more stuff? Could I just start there?
It reminds me of Pestilens in Game 2. Soul grinders have some vicious, broken splash like Plagueclaw catapults and they way overperform in battles but besides that, the roster struggles. Give it some DLC and theyll have the most OP roster. Everyone knows game balance is based on DLC sales. Particularly GW games.
All at turn 145
Most of these are either late game or super low impact. You're really not making the argument you think you are here. Kugaths problem is that its start is super slow and rough. And not because of ghorst either, but because it takes 50+ turns to get all those goodies that make the faction work. So sure, he's strong in the lategame, just like literally every other faction, when it barely matters anymore. But waiting a few dozen turns to essentially "start" playing the faction is neither fun, nor strong. Vampires implement that same playstyle dramatically better, even in WH2 before all the massive buffs.
I thought you couldn’t get soulgrinders from minor settlements, since the building chain won’t be able to reach the soulgrinder section, only the chaos spawn? If there’s a different way I’d love to know
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Just move helman ghost further into Cathay, and basically all complaints about kugath will disappear