The looming excitement that might be TW warhammer II

You're not supposed to, but when you're in the early game and have 2 maybe 3 cities you're not going to be able to field much more than 6-7 "special" units. And splitting that up over multiple armies doesn't really work. So you tend to either get 1 decent army and a couple of armies that are just basic skeletons, or you get a couple of armies that are 90% basic skeletons and have 1-2 random "special" units.

Imho it's a more general issue with TW warhammer though. The idea that certain units are "elite" late-game units leads to some weird inbalances throughout the game as you end up in a situation where units that are basicly core-units in the tabletop are inaccesible till the late-game for no clear reason (e.g.Lizardmen's big dino's, Empires melee cavalry & artillery, Vampire's big monsters, most hero units in general, they all require Tier III buildings despite being core to the strategy of their respective factions). In general unit progression in TW warhammer is weird, Tomb king's unit progression is just even weirder.

Trade (and diplomacy in general) is nearly Always a disaster in TW games. Unless I have an ungodly lead over the enemy they refuse to cooperate (and once you have that lead suddenly everyone wants to ally… my last playthrough on the empire I ended up allying about 90% of the world with me holding half of that on my own…)

Imho, the whole battle-loot income mechanic is poorly executed. It gives way too much money and to balance that out they lowered passive income way too much. I get that it's "total war" and they want to discourage turtling. But they've managed to create a situation where if your economy is weak you're kinda screwed. You won't have the income to upgrade your stuff, but without upgrading your stuff you won't be able to actually fight the enemy as the AI fields double your armies and filled with elite nonsense.

Yeah, if at any point you do get an economy going with them you do have it easier than others. It's just that getting there is a pain. Building stuff that costs 10.000 when you get 200-300 per turn is rather tedious

 

EoTG, it has a giant laserbeam of doom it's hilariously destructive.

I found using 2 hunting packs + 2 big ones tended to make a nice combo. The small ones provide saturation fire to ensure stuff actually gets hit (and more importantly knocked down) the big one provides the big hits. Also, the big one can actually hold it's on in melee. The hunting packs get slaughtered if anything actually reaches em. But yeah, overal the ancient salamander is underwhelming. With it's slow rate of fire and only 1 projectile at a time it simply doesn't get enough hits in before the enemy reaches it. Not to mention that 1 lucky dodge means you lose like half your potential shots... The hunting packs at least have volume of fire to avoid that issue.

 

All Salamanders fire in arcs, yes. You can definitely place them behind other units of infantry.

The same goes for the Engine of the Gods; the laser beam is essentially a bound wind spell similar to stuff like Vangheist's Revenge or Winds of Death. The actual stegadon itself is just an Ancient Stegadon, I believe with the greatbow.

 

IMHO Stegadons are more fun when used aggressively, that is in melee, as they produce much more kills than from afar and they can fire shots while moving. Watch out for the halberd guys though, but you should usually make them busy with your Saurus

EotG reference: https://totalwarwarhammer.gamepedia.com/Ancient_Stegadon_(Engine_of_the_Gods)

 

Maybe because of the nerf it received. Prior to the nerf it was wrecking face in multiplayer.

 

Salamanders fire in arcs, and the EoTG basicly just has a vortext type spell, but it goes in a straight line instead of randomly so you just pick a starting position and point it in the right direction.

Meh, it was underwhelming from day one.

Also, haven't they split up multiplayer and campaign balancing yet? Cuz multiplayer always has wonky balance due to the lack of technologies & the fact that humans can take advantage of certain mechanics that the AI simply can't (while on the other hand the AI is the absolute king of micro-management and thus a pain to fight when he has skirmishers).

That is actually also important, in multiplayer/custom combat I found salamanders to be even less impressive due to the lack of technologies. On the other hand, red-crested skinks performed way better when I tested them in custom combat than compared to when used in the actual campaign.

 

Basiladons with arks are very nice to tie down an entire flank on their own. Only downside is that the ark is an active that you basicly just want to cast on CD. Imho, one of the biggest downgrades in TW warhammer, you can't put stuff on auto-cast anymore.

I'd phase out the chameleons eventually, you're not going to outshoot proper archers & against heavily armoured targets like chosen they won't really achieve much anyway. But seeing as you have no temple guard yet it's probably not that late in the game.

 

That seems to be an excessive amount of Chameleon Skinks I'd say. They don't perform that well. You'd be better off trading those in for something like Temple Guard or more Saurus Warriors. Even some Cavalry.

 

Meh, our cavalry is fairly underwhelming. Plus we have a load of big dinosaurs which effectivly fullfill the role of line-breakers and actually have staying power. Just use those instead.

Chameleons work, untill you start facing loads of doomstacks with heavy armour. Then they simply don't achieve anything anymore. The poison is still nice, but just means the enemy'l take slightly longer cutting up your average sauri warriors

Also yeah, shooting in the back causes more damage, avoids shields & has a morale impact. If the enemy is lightly armoured it's devestating even with the chameleon's puny darts.

 

those things are so annoying..

 

meh, the idea isn't terrible, but since you can't move the pieces around and just have an awkward picture it doesn't really work well. It's very easy to screw em up slightly cuz you have to do the entire thing mentally and the squickly lines aren't exactly thin. So being off by a couple of degrees can mean a very different anwser.

 

I literally always get that riddle when I'm already tired after a day, so usually I take a screenshot, launch Krita, cut wheels to layers, rotate, job's done