Can't make out how to play with Dwarves... :(

[IronBrig4]

As the Dwarfs, I colonized one of the abandoned Dwarfish ruins WAY north in the Chaos Wastes. The Varg somehow didn't notice me until a few turns after, when my stack replenished itself. It was just a level 1 provincial capital and the stack wasn't even that formidable. Just a few thunderers and lots of Dwarf warriors (it was bequeathed to me when I confederated with another faction). But I'd used global recruitment to get some hammerers and gyrocopters with brimstone gun. Then two Varg stacks showed up and began the siege. I had a Thane in the area who assaulted units when he could.

At long last the Varg attacked. I thought the gyro units were just a cheap gimmick, but they're perfect for siege battles. The Varg didn't have many infantry but loads of cavalry and trolls. Their strategy was to rush the gates, break them down, and then charge in where their numbers would surely overwhelm my defending warriors. They charged forward and my thunderers and quarrelers mowed them down like it was the first day of the Somme Offensive. And still they came on. All they needed was one unit to reach the gates because then they'd be immune to any missile fire. That's where my gyrocopters came in. I put them just outside the gate and had them face towards the wall. They picked off every unit that made it past the gauntlet of firepower and the gate was damaged but stayed intact. I finished the siege without taking a single casualty.

Also, Dwarfs can travel anywhere via the underway without suffering attrition. They can wallop the Vampire Counts fairly quick, especially since the Dwarf legendary lords wreck von Carstein in seconds. I LOVE the Dwarfs.

[the_mango55]

One tip for the dwarfs (and empire probably) Is that the guns won't fire if they are behind a friendly unit, BUT they can all fire no matter how many ranks they have. What I've been doing is putting them really deep, basically a square formation, and sticking them directly on the front lines with the melee infantry. If you charge the enemy at the last second with your melee infantry they will usually be able to keep firing and won't be engaged.

Since I've started doing that I've been racking up more kills with my thunderers than my quarrelers, even against lightly armored enemies.

[jakeswe]

I totally lucked out on my Dwarf campaign. Allied up with Barak Varr and went straight for the Greenskins. Managed to beat Grimgor and take Death Pass before they even had the chance to react. Still they confederated the entire south and was very strong but Barak Varr, while taking the brunt of the action, somehow managed to take the entire western part of the badlands. By that point we had developed very good relations and they confederated. I think this was around 60 turns into the campaign. So after I killed off the last greenskins in the east I had alot of time to build up my regions and prepare for Chaos. Archeon never stood a chance. Didn't have to fight the other Dwarf factions except Zhufbar who everyone hated, they all wanted to confederate after Chaos started showing up.

[gary0044187]

You don't have to attack them, just wait for the top knotz to take one from them or for either side to burn one down. My biggest difficulty with dwarfs is that if I do particularly well, one of my neighbors does too well and I would have to break lore to attack them to get the victory conditions met.

[Magni]

You don't have to attack them, just wait for the top knotz to take one from them or for either side to burn one down. My biggest difficulty with dwarfs is that if I do particularly well, one of my neighbors does too well and I would have to break lore to attack them to get the victory conditions met.

Just wait until Archaon shows up. It gets stupidly easy to get full-on alliances or outright confederations with all other dwarf factions once the Shield of Civilisation modifiers for diplomacy kick in.

[gary0044187]

also, for field battles, I like to have 2 units of thunderers and one or more heavy infantry push wide and use enfilading fire to break units. That unit of infantry is there to guard them from any units that try to break off from their infantry line or any cav that tries to engage them. keep the quarrelers firing over the heads of your troops, but the thunderers can really wreck some morale when firing from the flanks. also, I prefer to mix my arty. two cannons for long range sniping of the enemy line, 4 organ guns for the lolz (with gunbad and a single thane you can build them at level 9, ever see an enemy general take a cannon ball to the face, or a unit get exterminated trying to flee from cannons? I have. also level 9 cannons are great for counter fire, especially against the demon cannons chaos uses, usually the two units of cannons I brought can kill one in 2-3 volleys, that accuracy is no joke).

Also, engineers are like gods on a gun line. 1, they are snipers, a highly upgraded engineer can reach out and touch single target heros at very long range, but 2, they are even better when used to buff the arty and guns of your force. also, spec one to increase marching distance for your army, only one though, because you can't assign more than one with that ability to an army. if you can get three to four with full arty buffs it will be like having twice the artillery on your force, and having snipers for dealing with any enemy generals, monster units, heroes, etc. if you are not using a nerf enemy agents mod, having a group of engineers on the stack also allows you to clean out any enemy agents moving to screw with you.

currently I use the engineers to buff arty in the armies, thanes are used for training and for recruiting purposes. only one is necessary at gunbad since all arty is already level 6 from there, 2 at kadrin produces slayers at level nine and all other infantry at level 8. I don't produce troops at the iron spots because between kadrin and gunbad, most of my needs are met. Yes, this implies that I don't build thunderers anymore at late game, that is because the engineers have made my level 9 organ guns do the job that thunderers used to do but at longer range, with less need to flank, though flanking is still an option with that many boosts to movement speed. runepriests are my most precious early game, their job is to provide population growth boosts to my regions, silver road first, then gunbad the moment I take it (and keep them there until it's size is maxed out), then kadrin, whenever I can either take it or convince the survivors to consolidate. after that point, they can either help my other settlements grow, go into vampire territories to reduce undead religion, or escort armies and deplete the regions of winds of magic. I absolutely love those guys for their utility, my only regret is I haven't gotten to see their omnipotent buffs in battle yet .

That said, enemy agent spam in my dwarf campaign isn't nearly as bad as others have suggested, but that is mostly because the moment I see an enemy agent, one of my escort agents or one of my engineers will assassinate them.

after several rocky starts I determined that starting as ungrim is better since you can get thorgrim much more easily and having a dude who can straight up solo grimgor early on is always nice. With him, slayers get included in my armies in the place that most people use hammerers. I purchase all slayers with ungrim only after the great shrine has been built so that with a couple of thanes they come out at level 9. Thorgrim's starting perks are less meaningful as the minor construction buff only occurs in one province, and by the time you are fielding iron breakers and hammerers, your economy should be a freaking juggernaut.

Money issues late game should never be a problem. even if you put walls and guard towers in every settlement, that still leaves 2 spots in the settlements for the two economy pieces (except for the ones that have ports... which then raises the question, should I use the trade piece there or the tinkerers?). Also, take gunbad early, use it to get your 2500 per turn, but even more importantly, build all artillery there. Kadrin, zhufbar, or black rock should be your infantry producer, pick one, turn all the rest into money makers. Try to get forges into your first 3 provincial capitols (not gunbad) for rune priests asap. And try to get engineer's guild places everywhere you can so you can field your sniper/cannon guys.

Technology, money boosters are a trap. I like to go first to high king's authority, by the time you grab it, you should have the guild's boost up to 30 growth per turn, and it will give you enough passive order to not have to build an order producer in most places. then to valaya's protection which usually coincides with that first 1 point in chaos corruption, and the vampire's first osmosis buildings, great way to counter those and delay having to build either the pubs or the super expensive slayer shrines everywhere. last game I got this around turn 50. then went straight to construction guilds, jury's still out on that choice, the build time really doesn't matter at that point (round 80-90ish) because all essential buildings have been built or are being finished by then, every remaining settlement will just be more econ buildings. Key here is to realize that the +% to x money making is all fluff at this point, if you have built as many econ buildings as possible and maintained trading partners everywhere you could (KISLEV Y U NO TRADE WIF ME?) you should be fine on money even without the massive econ boosts that tree is devoted to.

By that point research into buffs for warriors and minors is kind of a waste so I go straight through to retainer's vow's for buffs to the thanes, then proceed forward. ... I haven't gotten any further as I had propped up the two southern dwarven kingdoms and now both were strong enough to be absolutely wrecking the orcs. at that point I realized that I would have to do the rather undwarfly (in WH lore at least, in nordic tales, the dwarfs would betray each other without breaking a sweat) thing and forcibly conquer them to win the game, so I am starting again. I would love to get Radious' orc units without his whole mod so that the orcs could get a nice boost when coming after me.

Also considering doing the LL alternate start mod to start at Karak Kadrin to do the whole Slayer Army of Karak Kadrin (see the Storm of Chaos splat book from back in 7th edition), there is already a mod out there with Slayers with Great Weapons, and someone tried modding in Malakai, the Slayer Engineer. If i could make the slayer shrine there at least tier 2, with a lower cost, I might be able to pull it off (probably be easier to make a new building that counts as a lower tier version of that special slayer shrine there). TBH, I have been thinking of what it would take to include a possible trait that would turn a thane, rune priest, or engineer into a dragon slayer (with a minor change to their skill tree, but still essentially whatever class they had been), or a Lord into a daemon slayer, Or possibly create those classes from scratch and only make those purchases available at Karak Kadrin. This would make for a wildly different style of play for the dwarfs, with absolutely brutal battles (until they go up against a night goblin army that just kills them all with arrows before they even come into range).

Just wait until Archaon shows up. It gets stupidly easy to get full-on alliances or outright confederations with all other dwarf factions once the Shield of Civilisation modifiers for diplomacy kick in.

tbh, I already killed archaon and the other lords of chaos, apparently 4 engineers on a grassy knoll with that boosted range skill will bring them down rather quickly. felt bad for sigvald, he couldn't even move very quick. rest of the fight was not very tough, my machine gun style cannons massacred the hell cannons in quick order, and the organ guns turned the almost three stacks of mid to late game guys into meat paste rather fast. Enemy didn't even make it into melee. tbh, I have had harder battles against orcs, but maybe I got lucky in that the enemy reinforcements all came in from the opposite corner, so they all had to cross the same kill zone to get to me and with all that ammo, well... And I didn't even get a thanks from Talabecland for riding them of that threat . Or does that buff last after the chaos threat recedes?

[Chromium]

tbh, I already killed archaon and the other lords of chaos, apparently 4 engineers on a grassy knoll with that boosted range skill will bring them down rather quickly. felt bad for sigvald, he couldn't even move very quick. rest of the fight was pretty tough, except that my machine gun style cannons massacred the hell cannons in quick order, and the organ guns turned the almost three stacks of mid to late game guys into meat paste rather fast. Enemy didn't even make it into melee. tbh, I have had harder battles against orcs, but maybe I got lucky in that the enemy reinforcements all came in from the opposite corner, so they all had to cross the same kill zone to get to me and with all that ammo, well... And I didn't even get a thanks from Talabecland for riding them of that threat . Or does that buff last after the chaos threat recedes?

Chaos is seriously underpowered compared to Orks. They're paste when faced with Empire artillery, let alone Dwarven ones. When I first faced Archaon, I was pretty surprised at how easily he went down. Two handgunners firing at him, a Witch hunter accuse- and poof! No more Everchosen. Same with Sigvald and Kholek and the Lord of Change.

On the other hand, Grimgor always comes rolling in with 5+ stacks, can take out half an army in melee himself, tanks even cannon balls, and just won't die unless you take all 30+ settlements in the South. It's a nightmare.

[gary0044187]

well, it is kinda lore friendly, Grimgor turned on Chaos and slaughtered the army of Khorne (you know, the god of slaughter) with his black orcs. tbh, I am let down that there is no event in a grimgor play through where he sacrifices all his gobbos to gork or was it mork? and then starts fielding a full army of black orcs.

[Chromium]

The thing is Lore also says that Dwarven Karaks are pretty much untakeable unless a god takes an active hand in the business, and even skeleton garrisons can hold out against Orksih Waaghs for years.

Lore != Gameplay != Tabletop.

[gary0044187]

tbh, being lore friendly, we would want all settlements to have walls at the least, but that isn't very balanced for the player. haha, because I have one settlement that hasn't earned enough growth to get to the level 3 settlement it is level 2 main building level 1 towers. because of its lack of walls this settlement has been attacked by those moon goblins so many times that almost every unit in this garrison force is rank 7-9. I am worried that when I upgrade those units will lose their ranks.

[gyabo]

OP why not lower your difficult setting if your struggling playing as dwarf and learn to play as a dwarf. Dwarf have the 2nd highest moral infantry in the game but they got no cavalry until the gyrocopter but have decent range unit which is my main damage dealer. For lord skill focus on having tunnel skill to intercept some greenskin army then more leadership. Dwarf Lord aren't mean't to be like Manfred and Grimgor.

Then build a lot of guardhouse in all your territory and economy.

If you insist playing VH why not turtle?? Playing VH and Legendary you need to turtle until you got decent units. Developing a province gives more income than conquering one.

[vae victus]

I feel your pain. Dwarf battles were like "ok, I'll just create a battle line with infantry, put some ranged units in front, and flank with my....oh wait." You can build up a decent income in the campaign, but the battles can be aggravating.

Laughed so hard at this!!!! So true!!!

[gary0044187]

flank with your infantry, yes, it sucks having slow infantry flankers, but slayers are pretty fast for infantry, and any other unit is tough enough that if the enemy reacts to them they won't be guaranteed to die. I can't tell you how many times my gunners have gotten the flank volleys like in shogun 2, also, because you can fire from any depth, that makes life even easier. hell, with the multiple engineers stack I mentioned before, I have been able to pull off that flank quite well with organ guns, think that through for a second (though thunderers are quite fast in that army as well, I just don't field them since I already have 10 ranged units between my arty and engineers)

[Ichon]

Dwarf on Legendary are taking me a bit of getting used to. First playthru I tried to attack Black Rock directly- can make it there and lay siege with nearly full stack by turn 6 but the garrison is large enough to put up a decent fight and on turn 8 Grimgor with full stack and 2nd full stack show up. I didn't count on the 2nd stack that early. But then again by turn 12 there are already 2 Orc clans that have confederated with Greenskins giving them 14 regions. Not sure why Greenskins confederate so quickly on Legendary while Empire tends to fragment worse than ever even when I am playing a different faction all the way across the map.

Anyway, protecting Silver Road at least for awhile until can build garrisons seems mandatory. The AI knows from across the map when there are unguarded settlements and Greenskins, Vampires, enemy Dwarf clans will all show up to attack the single ungarrisoned settlement you have and while sacking etc isn't the end of the game it really slows growth while I find is extra important for Dwarfs to more quickly get to their mid game.

Battle I would say get away from Dwarf Warriors line as soon as you can- they can't win 1 v 1 against Orc Boyz or even sometimes Goblin spearmen on legendary without lots of tech improvements and Lord skills which can be spent on more important things. Slayers are about as close to cavalry as you'll get as a Dwarf- I try to get 2-3 units per army mostly to run down escaping enemy Heroes or high priority units which works pretty well until late game when most enemy heroes are mounted but by then you'll have artillery. Slayers are extremely weak to ranged though so chasing down Orc/Goblin archers is not a good idea- for those you just have to bring Quarrelers.

You can definitely win with Dwarfs early in manual battles but I feel like I am playing as the Greenskins, Dwarf Warriors routing or being rolled by Goblin spearmen and it is the only faction I can notice the bonus to accuracy damage of ranged when Goblin archers can kill entire Dwarf Warrior units from the front. The only strong units you have early are the Lords/Thanes. 1 or 2 of those can easily take out 2-3 enemy Goblins or Orc Boyz- stay away from Big Uns or anything AP though. I've even hidden my army in forest and let Lord + Thane fight until half HP then charge out of the forest to finish off the enemy.

[Carl Jung was right]

I had similar experiences as the thread starter, however from a different angle. I played a h/h campaign with Dwarves and had no trouble stomping through the map, even after a very dodgy and slow start. However I can't form an overall positive picture of the campaign because of some game breaking design features and easily fixable AI fuddles that should not have been allowed at launch. Sure I had a fun time, but it came at a cost of hefty doses of dealing with ingame stupidity and suspension of disbelief.

Let me explain. If you don't believe it when I say that long ranged units are absolutely broken in this game if used right, try standing an elite unit in front of artillery and allow it to get shot. Even if no troops die directly, a good chunk of their HP is guaranteed to be missing with each hit. This includes cannons and even grudge bearers, since these can shorten the combat lifespan of enemy monsters and elites by a significant amount (this is called a hard counter mechanic). Since the "logic" behind combat is that units are blobs whose attacks inflict a set amount of HP damage to the entire enemy unit, as opposed to individual soldiers, the preponderance of ranged units tend to decide battles in this game. At first I kind of enjoyed this mechanic, but as time worn on, I grew very frustrated with it. It might be coding convenient, but it doesn't simulate a battle scenario in any logically fluent sense. Imagine if you had a unit of monsters where each one would get hurt by cannonballs that didn't even hit them. I didn't know they were so emotionally bonded to one other that they received physical hurt as a whole group every time the buddy next to them got flattened by an incoming mass. Those units of trolls and chaos spawn must really love each other... Or maybe the devs forgot that TW isn't supposed to be Warcraft, with its single unit based HP/damage mechanics...

There's also another reason why I often found my face buried in the palm of my hand - the AI loves to build all-ranged stacks with little variety in between. Seriously, most of the orc armies and WAAGH spawns that I encountered had at least 8-10 archers in them, if not more. It's not uncommon to see a stack of 10 archer troops and 6 wolf or spider mounted bowmen. Dwarves have an extremely vexing time dealing with these stacks unless they have a missile majority of their own. It's extremely obnoxious. I've lost battles that I could have otherwise won because cheap, tier 1-2 archers would eventually chew at my warrior and great weapon battle line.

Eventually I just filled out my force with ranged units as well. Thunderers with great weapons soak up the front damage, and Quarrelers shoot overhead (with the damping effects of plunging fire apparently significantly reduced) or outflank from the sides. Since for every unit of orc boyz, the AI build 2-3 units of ranged trash, they get absolutely curbstomped. I had no good chance to fight against the best that the Orc faction had to throw at me, even nearly 100 turns into the game. When the success of your tactical planning in battles is determined overwhelmingly by unit composition, it doesn't make for the most fulfilling experience.

After I was finished with the Orcs, fighting Chaos was like a breath of fresh air - they had no ranged units, excepting the odd annoying Hellcannon. However, the real reason why I found the Dwarven campaign so easy to complete (compared with Attila or S2TW at least) had nothing to do with my level of skill. Even on VH, I found it extremely easy to "break" an enemy faction because the AI has no idea how to build or plan for a defensive strategy, and my further experiences with the Orc and Chaos campaign only served to confirm this. As soon as I managed to overcome the frontal armies facing me, I took over nearly 3/4 of Orc territory in a few turns with a single full stack, while Grimgor camped out in the Dead Lands, raiding Savage Boyz settlements. Unlike previous games, there's no concern over provincial instability following an occupation (i.e. newly captured provinces revolting against the yoke of a foreign species), because Dwarven genetical engineering is so potent that it can implicitly transform greenskins into honest loyal dwarves in a single turn.

[♘Top Hat Zebra]

Im not 100% positive, but I am pretty sure that every individual soldier in a unit has their own health pool, and that the health bar above them is only a representation of all of their health pools combined.

[Magni]

Since the "logic" behind combat is that units are blobs whose attacks inflict a set amount of HP damage to the entire enemy unit, as opposed to individual soldiers, the preponderance of ranged units tend to decide battles in this game.

But that is absolutely not how it works. Yes, you do get a healthbar showing the entire current hp of the unit. But that's just a summary. Hitpoints are still tracked individually for each entity within the unit. You can end up with units at half health missing near half their men or units at half health that are at almost full numerical strenght because they received a lot of AoE chip damage scattered all over the various entities, depleting healthpools throughout the unit without actually killing anyone.

And ranged superiority hardly decides battles by itself - else Vampires and Greenskin would never win a batle given that one doesn't ave missile units and the other has mostly garbage missile units.

[Emperor Arcturus Mengsk]

Every unit has it's own healthbar, you can clearly see that if you cast a fireball on a group of trolls, the troll that gets hit is the one that dies, always.

If it worked like you said a random one would get knocked out.

You can also test that out by casting a bombardment spells on one of your units by targeting the spell so it will hit exactly 1 guy in the group corner, the spell won't deal as much damage as it would if you aimed it in the middle of the group!

[Flinn]

Moved to the Strategy & Tactics forum

[Didz]

I'm 156 turns into my dwarven campaign and not having much trouble on Hard difficulty. But it is my third attempt, and the first two campaigns went belly-up pretty quickly, due entirely to poor strategy on my part.

First Attempt: I basically got swamped pretty quickly.
Lesson Learned: Be careful who you ally with. I discovered that every alliance brings with it obligations and the more allies you have the more enemies you accumulate. In my current campaign I've been very careful NOT to ally with anyone who is at war with factions other than the greenskins. This has allowed me to focus entirely on eliminating the greenskins first without having to cope with undead incursions to from the north. e.g. I have avoided a two front war. Having dealt with the greenskins (permanently) I was then free to accept allies at war with the Undead, and deal with them, but by then I had confederated all the southern holds and was much stronger.

Second Attempt: This campaign started off well but I eventually found myself unable to hold my own on the battlefield. My holds were simply not producing the high quality troops I needed and I was losing ground as a result.
Lesson Learned: This basically came down to poor build strategy on my part. My son seemed to be doing much better in his games and eventually he explained how he developed his holds by deliberately constructing granaries and other growth building first just to kick start the process. It's also much more important in Warhammer TW to specialise in your build strategy so as not to waste building slots on duplicate buildings across your Empire. There is a good Dwarf guide on steam that I used to help me choose what to build where. As a consequence I was able to grow my holds much faster and construct the military buildings I needed to train the tougher units I wanted.

General Combat Tactics: Ok! basically dwarves are slow but tough. So, forget the heroic charges across the battlefield, at best you are going to manage a steady stomp.

The best tactic is the 'Dwarven Box', e.g. find a good spot, hunker down in a box formation that protects your flanks from the inevitable mounted flanking units and let the enemy come to you and die on your axes and hammers. It's not very exciting, but it works. Hills, slopes and ridges are you friends as they allow your missile units to fire over your shield walls. Also forget chasing the enemy down once they're beaten. The best tactic is to wait until their flank attacks have died and then unwrap your box and swing your flank guard units around to envelope the enemies front line units. Box them in before they break and you can annihilate them rather than watch frustrated as they run away.