How to deal with Sylvania

[luckybeaver]

Ok first let me just say that the mod team have created an absolutely amazing mod. I just picked it up a couple of days ago and I am blown away by the amount of work and talent the creators have poured into this game in order to truly bring the Warhammer world to life!

That being said, I started a H/H Talabecland campaign in RotDG and I am getting absolutely thumped by Sylvania in the early game! I am not even on turn 20 yet and already I have multiple full stacks of Vampire elite infantry- Blood Dragon infantry and cavalry along with Knights of the Black Grail and other terrifyingly beautiful nasties, full upgraded mind you, barging through my Southeast borders. I got hit with some type of script where two full stacks attacked Krugenheim and since then the flood gates have been open. As its the early game I have basically no economy, and I can only support one stack (which consists of a pretty much all of my generals as well) to defend with. Normally this would be more than enough as I'm accustomed to winning heroic victories with substantially smaller armies in other mods and even earlier in my campaign. However the locked morale of the Vampire Counts is absolutely ing me over! At first I thought the game would work similar to the TT, so when you kill the Vampires the skeletons or the rest of the summoned dead would route but they dont, they stand and fight until they are all dead. To make matters worse every army I encounter is rife with veteran elite units that won't crumble like skeletons, and they reap a deadly toll on my forces no matter the circumstances. This makes literally every battle an ordeal that I can't afford to fight because even when I win I can't afford to replenish my losses and I don't have the infrastructure to allow me to replenish more than one type of a regiment every 3 turns. Moreover, the Vampire Counts just keep flooding my borders with more stacks I tried calling a crusades on some of their settlements to take the pressure off of me but so far its not working. Also to add insult to injury their stacks are flooding over the southern side of Mordheim and bumping my merchants off the warpstone, causing me to lose a ton of possible income!

Being new to the mod I really need some suggestions on how to deal with these Undead bastards. What should I do? How should I fight them? I need to reclaim my territories and I need to do so in the most cost effective way.

Thanks in advance for your help guys, I really appreciate it!

[Kahvipannu]

Unfortunatelly the game engine doesn't allow for killing entire army with the leader. Sylvania is a tough opponent, the thing is, you will lose settlements, but you will just have to get back up later. It's all about survival, and when you get the chanse, expand. There is great merchant resources to the east at the mountains too if bloodstones are under heavy trafic. About fighting them, just use strenghts of the Empire, Pistoliers, Siege-weaponry, specially Knightly-orders, etc. Empire has propably the best roster in terms of flexibility, and in overall. Also if you get lucky you can get Warriorpriests, Steam-tank, Regiments of renown, or something like that. I really don't know if there really is any special tactics against Sylvania, except fight them at day time if possible, (most) theyr generals get -10 command.

[GreatSword]

Go for the gold mine south of Marienburg. Go for the east warpstone only. Go for the blue resources just east of the mountains, northeast of border princes. Archers behind infantry , micromanage the entire battle, focus any units that arnt engaged in melee. Mortars/Helblasters as soon as you can, they change the odds dramatically. Pistoliers vs blood dragon and grail knights, harass harass harass. Do not let your knights get stuck in melee, charge and pull out, repeat. Halberds on spearwall, guard (its very strong), 4 ranks deep, spread out in a long line. Other infantry in reserve to fill gaps or sweep around the flanks.

[nhinhonhinho]

The Sylvania basically have no moral beside their mortal troops (Empire sword/halberd/archer) so unless you auto resolve then you mus kill every last of those undead.

Firstly try to get as many spearman, archer and if you can free company swordsman. Those guys are free upkeep in city.

Spearman/halberdier in the front with defensive mode on, shieldwall and pikewall. Have archer and handgunner behind and shoot. Your cavalry (generals, knights...) should try to get behind them and try to kill their annoying Nerach, Catapult as soon as possible, those unit kill more than anything else. Then charge the back of their army.

Get Mortal as soon as possible

If the renown appear then try to get them especially pikeman and Grudge Bringer. Grudge come with cavalry, infantry, xbow and cannon so you will have plenty of easy replenish troops for the rest of the game.

After a while I found myself rally mostly in mercenary, free upkeep troops and mortar.

[DavidtheDuke]

I actually modded the actual vampire units to have normal morale (not even excellent, except for blood knights), since they aren't exactly dead when it comes to their sense of self-preservation. Hell, the books I've read of them in Gotrek and Felix and the Sigmar novels had them running anytime the situation turned against them.

[luckybeaver]

I'm much farther along in my campaign now, the crusade I called on their main castle helped me immensely because it seemed to get averland, stirland and Ostermark into the fight as well where before they were just completely ignoring the hordes of undead rampaging through their lands; it allowed me to reclaim my territories and even some of their own while they were weak. It was just really tough in the beginning when i was stuck with basically one stack of basic units with no artillery and I was going up against multiple regiments of blood knights, mounted and unmounted mixed with knights of the black grail and other nasties. Plus, in the scripts that those elite armies spawn in there are almost always multiple stacks moving together towards a certain city/town, so it make it extremely hard to deal with two stacks at once when the first army wouldn't route and would instead bleed you for ever model while the second army came in and backed them up before I could regroup.

Thanks for the tips everyone, this mod is amazing!

[Cenk]

For the Empire factions, goal of this mod is to survive, until the end of Chaos Storm. And if you are neighbour of Sylvania, that makes things much harder.

About dealing with vampires, like they said above, get rid of their cavalries with your pistoliers. Place your army far to them as much as possible, so you get time to take down their cavalries until the engagement start.
Necrachs have the highest killing ratio among all units in this game. Destroy them asap. Do it with cavalry if possible. If not, focusing 4 units of archers on them is usually enough.
Their catapults will break your entire formation by routing your troops, get rid of them too.
After dealing with these key units, you can swiftly destroy the remaining infantries, by using hammer-anvil. Halberdiers and knights are best units for that job.

[Cambyses]

For the Empire factions, goal of this mod is to survive, until the end of Chaos Storm. And if you are neighbour of Sylvania, that makes things much harder.About dealing with vampires, like they said above, get rid of their cavalries with your pistoliers. Place your army far to them as much as possible, so you get time to take down their cavalries until the engagement start. Necrachs have the highest killing ratio among all units in this game. Destroy them asap. Do it with cavalry if possible. If not, focusing 4 units of archers on them is usually enough. Their catapults will break your entire formation by routing your troops, get rid of them too. After dealing with these key units, you can swiftly destroy the remaining infantries, by using hammer-anvil. Halberdiers and knights are best units for that job.

Have a high morale general and keep him ALIVE!!! and near the fighting, this will prevent your own troops from running away. Also keep your troops fresh, dont run them around or have them fight for a long time - as tired troops are more likely to run away. The undead infantry are extremely vulnerable to missile fire, including artillery - but Cenk is right, the real danger units are the cavalry. Do everything you can to kill them early, after that it should be pretty straightforward. The sylvania infantry are very slow and lack armour, but can overwhelm some troops in melee with enough numbers - so just avoid melee.

[Lord Baal]

DavidtheDuke, really? For what I known that would be only for the live troops (mercenaries and ex-empire regiments) and maybe the vampire masters. But anything else (skeletons, zombies, ghosts and whatnot) have no self preservation senses because there's nothing to preserve.I wonder if it could be possible to mod that once the general is death, the locked moral thing gets ommited for the rest of the battle. Probably not.

[Encablossa]

Pretty sure he means the units with vampires in them. Like the grail knights, necrarchs, vampire infantry and general units.