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Thread: Kurgis & Co's Guide to CoW Factions

  1. #1

    Icon4 Kurgis & Co's Guide to CoW Factions

    Any posts other than faction guides will be moved from this thread. Please do try and keep this thread clean. If you want to comment, click here. Thank You
    -The Holy Pilgrim

    Hello and welcome to a series of guides for the factions in CoW. Currently these will be for the 1.3 version of the mod, this does not make them totally accurate to 1.4, but as time allows will be updated.

    Obviously as with any guide - it is just that, a guide. Constructive comments are welcome just put them in the thread THP has highlighted at the top and authors will update the sections where appropriate - bare in mind no two games of CoW are similar - i've just recently played Averland where Karak Kadrin has hold out for 25 turns and still going, new to me . Equally, writing an army strategy guide for each faction would be a vast undertaking so i'm keeping that a bit deliberatly light with just a few ideas that I or others have used with some descriptions of troops for people to get a flavour of what can be done.

    Therefore the guides can't be a complete "do X,Y,Z you will win" guide, they offer ways that have worked for people on that play through. The overview I wrote as for the Empire, Kislev, Dwarves, these are some notes that can be written once as they apply to all - plus a few little bits for all factions.

    This front page will contain links to each faction as they are written:

    Purple denotes recent guides for 1.4

    Recent Updates: Dark Elves by 3MKA

    Menwati's Start-up and some basic stuff for 1.4 guide
    Overview for Empire, Kislev, Dwarves (plus some info for nearly all factions) (Written 25/11/10 by Kurgis)
    Mercenaries (Written 30/11/2010 by Maha Moggalana)
    Kislev (Written 25/11/10 by Kurgis)
    Dwarves (Written 26/11/10 by Kurgis) Dwarves 1.4! Dwarf 1.4 pdf
    High Elves Expedition (Written 27/1/2011 by Rexmundi) Elves 1.4 Note
    Slaanesh, Tzeentch, Nurgle, Khorne (By menawati)
    Dark Elves Expedition (By 3MKA Dec 2011)
    Orcs and Goblins (Written 13/12/10 by Bradford)
    Night Goblins (Written 27/11/10 by Bradford) Yes, Night Goblins are gone in 1.4 but the guide stays for 1.3 players and maybe the future
    Sylvania (Written 26/11/10 by Bradford - this is the old 1.3 version) Sylvania 1.4! Sylvania 1.4 Additional!
    Grand Principality of Reikland (Started 27/11/10 by The Holy Pilgrim) 1.4 Reikland Notes
    The League of Ostermark (Written 29/11/20 by Kurgis)
    Grand Duchy of Talabecland (Written 26/11/10 by Maha Moggalana)
    Grand County of Averland
    Grand Barony of Nordland
    Grand Barony of Hochland (By Ichon Oct 2011)
    Grand Duchy of Middenland & Middenheim
    Grand Principality of Ostland
    Grand County of Wissenland (Written 9/12/10 by Kurgis)
    Grand County of Stirland
    Border Princes (Written Nov 2011 by Ichon)

    If anyone wants to write a section PM me once its done and posted so I can update this frontpage for easy access for everyone. Big thanks to all the people below who've written guides/notes for CoW:

    Acknowledgements: Bradford, Maha Moggalana, The Holy Pilgrim, odyseusz79, Rexmundi, menawati, slamdunc, Elitewolf, hacjiny, Ichon
    Last edited by Kurgis; December 16, 2011 at 05:15 AM. Reason: Border Princes note added link to frontpage

  2. #2

    Default Overview

    Overview

    Difficulty: First and foremost, in my opinion, play to your own level. If you are comfortable playing on M/M - play that, don't try to play tougher levels unless you're ready for them and the time commitment you need to play at higher levels (lots more battles to fight on the game map..). All the factions I describe below I played at M/M as that is right for me with the time I have - I have and can play successfully at harder levels but nearly always choose M/M as the best reward for me for the time I have to play. Simply, you play to enjoy, not beat yourself up over or claim you are uber.

    CoW is a difficult mod - it is not easy by any stretch of the imagination but with thought and using your troops well on the battlefield you can get victory - just don't expect an easy ride in the process! Saying that there is nothing more rewarding than triumphing against seemingly crazy odds with your little band of men and generals who are all too easy to get attached to..

    Money: This can vary by faction but an easy rule is this - on the first turn build as many merchants as you can and send them out. If money is tight remember that the Brothel and Grain Exchange are free to build as long as you have at least zero coin - so stack them up in your cities build queue at the start of the game even if you have money to build recruitment facilities for example - if money is low or approaching negative you can just switch to them until money returns. You cannot queue them up if money is negative so best to try and do it always if you take a settlement and think money problems are around the corner. Best to build something even if you then just switch it out a turn later.

    There are three main locations I know of to make money from merchants:

    Warpstone next to Mordheim in the centre of the map - 2 locations (Green crystals)

    Brynduraz mines next to Mt Gunbad in the SE corner of the map - 3 locations but only 2 are accessible to merchants (Blue crystals). The Gomril mine next to them is not to bad if you are non-dwarf faction either.

    1 Warpstone and 1 Gold mine in the very very far north/north east of the map.

    The last location may seem too far - it isn't. If you are only looking at 75 gold per turn from wool or furs for example and it takes 10 turns to get your merchant up there - yet you get over 1000 gold per turn - you're up straight away and for every future turn. Certainly though go for the other two locations first.

    Sometimes you won't hit these spots before some other faction - no problems just approach them with the Fog of War covering them - your merchants will move the others off without trying to buy them out and potentially failing! (At Mordheim try and move on the right hand (easternmost) warpstone first as this will preserve the Fog of War on the left hand one). Be ruthless - you need the money from these sites not anyone else If you are squeamish about this (you're squeamish and you're playing a Warhammer mod!!!?? ) send them the money from your diplomat at a later date.

    Obviously there are far more locations - glass, silver, gold are good ones and it also depends on whether your empire already has some of these trade goods and distance to how much you get. Those 3 locations above (and therefore 6-7 sites) will net you anywhere from 6-20k per turn. Make them yours. Experiment and search the maps for others, what is good for one faction is several hundred gold per turn worse for another.

    Of course without merchants your main drain on gold will be your army - so use it! You can go into the red and its the games way of telling you get out and take something or get ready for incoming. Use the free upkeep in cities/castles wisely. I tend to use a split of spearmen/archers as defense for cities (although as it can take time to get fletchers workshop + practice range for awhile it may be just spearmen) so you have a fair standing force that is free once recruited. There are a variety of forts or beastman camps dotted around that will give you free upkeep for ANY 5 units so use them as well where possible to "store" more expensive troops like artillery, cavalry etc if you are desperate for gold.

    Taxes: Ramp it to very high everywhere you can especially early in the game. Exceptions would be very small villages you may want to grow but you will tend to find the growth rate is very good anyway even on very high taxes.

    Espionage: Some people like not to use agents. All power to them. I prefer to kill and spy my way to victory as they are just tools of the trade of total war to me, just like spears and swords and merchants. If you have them, use them - the AI will against you where it can. Can you kill the Orc shaman and stop Waaaarrrghh's? Kislev has next to no artillery - spies to open the gates? Is that a horde approaching - how can I even the odds? Espionage is your answer - and towers.

    Lets start with towers. I cannot stress enough how important it is to know when an enemy is coming for you. Once you see them you can click on the stack and the yellow range indicator will tell how far it can go next turn. This is of immense tactical help - if needed you can then send out sacrificial units to slow down a stack for a turn which could be vital. For scripted events this may allow you to get assassins in place to pop generals and make upcoming battles easier (or the horde to go elsewhere!). Always place them one or two places away from the road - but always around your borders (crossing points) and the internal road structure. Don't rush out to fast if money is tight try and time it right with your finances and use a local general to a settlement so he can run out place a tower (or two) and dive back into cover of the walls (and to gain that slight boost in settlement income) before turn end.

    Why away from the road? Well bandits and rebels will migrate to towers so you want them off the road to stop cutting off trade and maybe two places off to allow your military free traffic. But this is why I say maybe one or two places - sometimes those rebels will hold up a stack of chaos an extra turn if the tower they are occupying is one place off the road as they run into them - really it is down to experience in how to place them.

    Agents. Use them. Be ruthless. Kill all incoming generals you can, kill targets on sites you are attacking - preserve your men by making fights easier = less retraining = less men moving to recruitment points and so on. This extends to your allies as well - kill everything for them to if you can afford to spare the agents, remember you are in this together! (At this point I should add this kill everything approach can lead to difficulties sometimes for your allies. Kurgis's approach to this is "tough love" and the next door factions cities are liberated by K forces and the original targets of HIS cities breathe easier and re-elect him see individual factions for examples, Averland is a good one for this).

    I use spies extensively to keep an eye not only on unfriendly factions but how friendly factions are doing - has Nordland been overrun and you need to liberate those cities? Is Karak Kadrin holding out? These are important things to know because fail to keep an eye on what's happening not too far from you and you could be on the receiving end of some nasty surprises...

    Recruitment: No not a catch all section but a tip really. If you are pushing on another factions borders (i.e. non-empire and you are empire faction or just taking a neutral castle) to try and hit the 70% conversion, recruitment can be quite tough. You need places of worship, priests and time. Or, build a stables and Knight of Blazing Sun/Morr/Panther/White Wolf etc as they do not have the 70% requirement. Nor do mercenaries, so the Dog of War camp should be high on your agenda when you can. If you think its going to take you a long time to convert the population it's better to build those facilities to recruit them than spend 4-6 turns building basic City Watch/Practice Ranges. They become specialized recruitment places - leave your original towns to do the general troops.

    With money being tight for a lot of factions you really need to think what recruitment facilities to build - it's always worth building the facilities that allow free upkeep, generally spearmen and archers as this is freeing up money and allowing you to have standing garrisons which gives you stores of troops to rotate into armies as units are pulled out for retraining. In reality you will have to stagger it and think carefully about the needs of your territory to start with balanced alongside how much gold you have.

    Grand Theogonist Crusades - Empire Only: If you don't start crusades yourself i've only seen two launched - Drakenhof, Sylvania capital castle, and then later Orc Warboss Camp, Orc & Goblin city in the eastern part of the map. The problem with just leaving the AI to select these is there are far better targets to choose. For instance: Orcs will probably take both Grunberg just south of the Imperial Capital, Altdorf and Hochsleben just to the south of Averheim, the Averland capital. Now leaving even one of these in Orc hands is a recipe for disaster, before you know it the revolting Greenskins will have multiplied and they'll have a mini orc empire... in errr well, the Empire!

    But before you rush off to hit the Crusade button its time to think a little, as what target you choose can have some serious ramifications - heres an example from my recent Wissenland game:

    Grunburg I attack and take with a stack as its right next to one of my main cities - I call Crusade against Hochsleben even though its close as there's 3 Orc stacks in the vicinity (and I want extra empire troops to help kill them giving my stack clean run at the walls) and they've made it Orc capital - which is seriously bad news as it will be priority to be upgraded and the longer its left the more cleaning up you will have to do The effects of this were three-fold. 1) Nordland died as everyone crusaded to help me crush Hochsleben which left me sending an army up to help stabilise Middenheim against Beastmen/Chaos. 2) Ostland got reduced to its capital and needed a stack from me to get it back on its feet from Chaos/Dark Elves (I gifted all Cities back to it, Salkaten(2nd crusade target around turn 18)/Norden/Frenburg) 3) Ostermark got battered by Orcs and died quickly once Chaos Undivided hit as Orcs were everywhere - I couldn't afford a third/fouth stack to help here in time before CU hit.

    Now before everyone PM's me saying Nordland always die - this is not the case, (well not always!) but I have no doubt my choice of Crusades was having an impact as I had spies monitoring what was going on in other territories - certainly in some cases it was hastening allies getting beaten as they had an army away when they were getting hit themselves by Chaos etc. Certainly no matter what empire faction you play you are going to need to think carefully about where to call it. It can help hugely but care is needed. Then again, its best you call them otherwise you might get the idiot Grand Theogonist calling crusade against Drakenhof when the Dwarves hold it... (happened in a recent Averland game). Either way, there will be little you can do as you roll your eyes as an Empire general turns up with no/little supporting troops and gets used as pinball until killed - best way to stop this is always try and help on a crusade if possible for your own situation.

    To sum up - use with care but use them to at least have some effect and try and keep an eye on the consequences that may be unfolding beyond your lands viewing distance..

    Defending against Crusades - best see the Sylvania and Orc and Goblins guides.

    Waaaaaarrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhs!! - Orcs and Goblins only: Playing against the Orcs i've only seen Altdorf called as Waargh target. This may be because as an Empire player i'll throw entire schools of assassins at the Shamans when I see them until they are dead Still if it does get called Reikland can usually defend against it without help as those Orc stacks have a lot of Empire to cross and I usually help out with the odd visit in the night/pick off a stack with an army etc.

    Calling a Waargh. I have limited experience playing the Orcs as they smell but.. on Turn One I call a Waargh straight off against Averheim. Then I send all 3 stacks on the Waargh from the Border Princes region. Why here? Well its one of the richest places of all, its close to your 3 stacks, it has other immediate targets to take, you rip Averland to pieces and it gives you the income you desperately need when starting to prep for dwarven invasion. After that, I would use Waarghs as - What big leap do I want to make for my orc forces? Using them you should quickly be able to take out Wissenland and rip the heart out of the Empire to the rear, whilst leaving the other northerly factions to get wasted by Chaos Undivided then you move in and mop up the entire map - well thats theory anyway - if any Orc players want to PM me with their strategies that are different from this, please do so I can update this bit

    Edit: See Bradford's Orc guide here for more tips on Waaarrrrghhh's etc and alternate uses.

    Chaos Undivided: Well this is what you're playing for really - hordes of gibbering Chaos fiends who've heard that the climate/shopping is better "Down South" (Joke for all British viewers - especially us Northeners ).

    Turn 50 is your target. Beyond this point your preparations had better be ready - no matter what faction you are and where you are on the map its going to impact you. Basically whats going to happen is this:

    The Archaon with an ultra elite stack of the finest Chaos troops, plus 4 stacks (one for each Chaos God type) with their Gods finest troops, plus a huge (40+ is not an exaggeration) amount of "stock" Chaos stacks are going to spawn in various places and with some "waves" to them. (I say some as i'm not sure if its scripted like this or it feels like it due to spawning further into Empire on successive turns - need clarification). The Archaon heads to Middenheim in every game i've allowed him - or its where i've found him which seems in keeping with the story Chaos Storm is based on. A lot of other stacks have target settlements they go for - if they fail others will try - don't just think you've won once thats it. Obviously whichever faction you've picked - you will get some treatment as the enemy AI always gravitates towards you at some point.

    Now I don't want to go into to much detail especially if you're thinking of downloading this mod or i'm scaring you It is beatable and so I will only describe some rough strategies and its upto you to halt the juggernaut (and counterattack and forge your own Empire of course ). It is a race against time - with turn 50 firmly fixed in your mind everything you do must have one eye on this. The usual route for Chaos Invasions is Kislev, Northern provinces -> Middenheim/Altdorf -> the rest, in simple terms. So if you've picked a faction in the frontline your priority is defense of your major settlements (all if you can afford it), with counterattacking armies where possible (the Bretonnians are great for this). Second line - defense again as it won't be long before its you, plus take out as many stacks approaching your borders to slow things down . Third line - get stacks out there and help the others!!

    Also of course there are other ways of pitching in - spies to force CU settlements to rebel so forcing them to go back and retake them, assassinate anything that looks like a Chaos general to make fights easier/hope they become rebels/confusion. Some people seem to say killing Archaon ends the invasion - in none of my games where he's died has this happened. Must just be me It can feel like a real grind taking them down but a tipping point will occur where really its mopping up time and you are on your way to victory.

    I'll say it again, i've kept this section deliberatly light as its what the campaign is about - I don't want this to become to much of a spoiler - find out for yourself use your 50 turns wisely.... Don't let my doom and gloom here put you off - this mod is one of the best in my 20 year computer gaming history i've played, its challenging, rewarding, and a rich and well thought out homage to Games Workshop's excellent, dark, Warhammer world - and that readers is how it should be

    A final note before you rush off and read some of the guides - Give rep and respect to our spikey Russian friends who made this mod and continue to bring it on, and the others who add to this great work.

    A lone dwarf scurries through the bones up the pass to Karak Kadrin. Spotted by the ever vigilant guards he is quickly shown in to see Ungrim, the Slayer King..

    "Well Kurgis, who is responsible for the dust cloud approaching our walls?" The scruffy dwarf brushes himself off. "Well sire, it seem the Chaos incursion has begun - no Orcs this time boss". Ungrim raises himself from the throne with a grim smile "TO ARMS SLAYERS! DEATH TO THE UNCLEAN DOGS!"

    All around a huge roar echoes around the battered fortress, dwarves rush to their posts and the forges sing with a renewed urgency. Ungrim places his hand on the Dwarven hunter who has brought the news "At last Kurgis, a foe that may yet test our mettle in battle, Gotrek will be pleased".

    "Sire, it will take them a week to climb over the Orc bones"...
    Last edited by Kurgis; December 15, 2010 at 10:08 AM. Reason: Note about Waarghs added

  3. #3

    Default Kislev

    Kislev

    Intro: "Kislev eh? From what you've heard, it's cold, miserable, always raining unless it's snowing and they're all completely mad". Something Rotten in Kislev pg 5.

    Welcome to the frontline of CoW, you'll be fighting tooth and nail with few breaks against Chaos and Orcs and maybe the odd Dark Elf for good measure. Probably one of the most fun filled factions in my opinion due to its varied tactics required. Kislev is the frontline against Chaos sitting to the north east of the Empire's borders, comprising of mainly plains but bounded by forests to the east and south.

    Difficulty: Hard

    Strengths: Excellent cavalry of all types. Solid foot troops with grenadiers for good measure. You will be fighting offensive sieges with no artillery, defensive sieges, field armies and all cavalry armies - totally varied experience. Troop types don't require 70% Ursun religion making recruitment easier. Cool music.

    Weaknesses: You're on the frontline! Money will have to be carefully budgeted. Can feel overwhelming at times. What artillery? Next to no mercenaries and no way of recruiting them at the start of the game.

    Starting Position: You start with 3 cities, Kislev (your Capital), Erengrad, Bolgasgrad and need to take Praag, Vitevo, Fort Ostrosk and strangely Skaelings Settlement for your victory conditions. You can safely ignore the last one for awhile . You have two forts to the north of Bolgasgrad with a general in each and some more troops. You start with what seems a nice sum of money - it won't be there in two turns so spend wisely. I would suggest a stables in Bolgasgrad, upgraded roads for the other two, 3 merchants, 1 spy, 1 assassin and ram the tax rate up.

    Kislev is well developed and in fact is your only recruiting area at the start, hence why I would suggest getting a stables in Bolgasgrad - once the initial build is out the way it's quite cheap to get the next level and this will then free up the retraining of cavalry from Kislev to a more central location. Of course this also frees Kislev to build/retrain more advanced troops. Develop the basic recruiting facilities asap as money allows but you will probably need (and want) to build the basic merchants camp in new settlemnts to get more merchants first (and its free). Archer recruitment facilities are a priority where you can.

    Unit Types: (* indicates a unit that can have free upkeep in a settlement)

    Infantry - Kislev Spearmen*. Basic grunts with bonuses against cavalry, free upkeep with first recruitment facility.

    Kislev Halberdiers*. More basic grunts, wall of spears approach to fighting.

    Kreml Guard. Your heavy infantry, inspire nearby troops and have powerful charge. Fantastic troops that you will need to hold the walls and take on the toughest of the enemies foot troops.

    Droyashki. Hide anywhere troops, excellent morale. I havn't really used them much but surprise function could be useful in certain conditions.

    Kossars*. Basic archers, free upkeep after the first turn in settlements that can recruit them. Very effective when experienced as hand to hand troops once out of arrows.

    Streltsy. Firearms, with the very useful armour penetration. Good in field armies if positioned and protected well. Not so good in sieges - see Kvassnics below.

    Kvassnics*. Grenadiers, requires a Tavern to recruit so I reckon quite a few people who have played Kislev will have missed these Exceptionally useful in sieges for causing havoc.

    Cavalry - Ungols. Horse archers and as all horse archers great if used correctly.

    Winged Lancers. Your basic heavy cavalry unit. Superb cavalry with powerful charge and look damn good on the battlefield to! You will be using plenty of these for cavalry charge - pull out, repeat etc

    Chekists. Mounted gunmen effective against armour. These guys excel at killing heavily armoured foot troops (think Chaos Warriors, Black Orc killers).

    Gryphon Legion. Heavy cavalry. These are slightly better than your Winged Lancers but require several turns to recruit therefore I only use them if I get a few if rewarded from missions or to try and balance the heavy cavalry portion of my army to avoid overloading my recruiting centres when retraining troops.

    Sons of Ursan. Bear cavalry! Recruiting one of these will give you a general unit. They frighten nearby enemy foot troops so combined with a heavy cavalry charge can break formations rapidly

    Artillery - Uragan Mortar. Strangely you need 70% EMPIRE faction to recruit one of these - even in my Kislev game on turn 81 owning a lot of the empire i've never been able to recruit one of these. They do seem to be recruitable though. Edit: See here for Maha Moggliana's fix for the mortars. Thanks!

    Mercenaries - Despite the fact you can't build a Dog of War camp - take a settlement with one in and you can recruit ogres and Ragnar's wolves (if you recruit Ragnar - he was the only merc general I have ever been able to recruit).

    Strategy, Battles, Invasions:
    The Cavalry army. Without a doubt with the distances you will need to cover (despite building the best roads you can), and the quality of your cavalry means you will need a cavalry army to fight like demons all over the place. Initially formed of whatever the hell you possibly have, try and get it to full stack status as money allows without compromising the defence of Kislev or Erengrad (Bolgasgrad is defended by the cavalry and whatever is free to keep there). Your tactics are simple - charge, pull out, repeat. Use your mounted missile troops to soften up harder units or spear units or circle round and snuff out artillery. Combined with the presence of your general unit with bears this can break an awful lot (especially if they have no proper general). Perfect this as you will need to do this - a lot.

    Well on your second turn you get a the forewarning of just what it's going to be like. An army auto takes Praag for you (and promptly kills your income - told you it wouldn't last long) and you are warned that two invasions are on the way. Now what you try and do with Praag is upto you - what I do is withdraw all the cavalry and reinforce it with the foot troops from the two forts. My goal here is to inflict as much pain as possible on the invading Tzeentch force - specifically I fight a battle based around the town square (with stakes covering all entrances). The goal here is to kill all 3 Chaos generals and all their cavalry - any destruction after that is a great bonus. Why this approach? Will I generally then counterattack the following turn with a spy into Praag (which in my last game successfully rebelled to my control the following turn and my cavalry army which consisted of two generals and every cavalry unit I could scrape together then defeated the remaining Tzeentch forces in the wild. If you need to assault Praag to get it back run one archer unit over from Belgasgrad to power a ram.

    Note: Not sure on the timing of the next two - I think it was Khorne against Kislev then Tzeentch against Erengrad in that order.

    Get that cavalry army rebuild asap as its needed - 3 Khorne invade and aim for Kislev itself - the cavalry army must intercept one stack and with whatever foot army you can afford at Kislev defeat the other two (you may also get a few cavalry units in from the cavalry army for active defense - rebuild rapidly then reinforce Erengrad heavily and defend that - got your breathe back yet? Built those towers I was on about in the overview? Assassinated many incoming generals yet? By this time you should be falling in love with your roaming cavalry army and the start of many many crosses for heroic battles that are cropping up (I must point out at this point my cavalry army was only about half a stack to 3/4's full - it was all I could realistically afford).

    Inbetween this actively use whatever foot troops you can to expand taking Vitevo first then Fort Ostrosk (cavalry army took it plus whatever few foot troops you need to garrison it after) just to get what income you can and get those merchant buildings underway. Of course whilst you have been battling Chaos tooth and nail your next enemy is approaching just out of sight - I am of course referring to the epic struggle for Karak Kadrin. You really need a spy to cover the land from Karak Kadrin heading to Ostermark and Vitevo - you will need to run the cavalry army down or use the Tzar and whatever you can from Kislev to defend Vitevo against some truly spectacular odds if Kadrin falls early until you can afford to send an army to take Kadrin yourself and then take over its defense (I was lucky in my game a Waargh was declared on Altdorf and I assassinated Grimgor around turn 40 heading through Ostermark territory quite by chance).

    If possible try and take an empire city or two. In my game the Orcs took Ostermarks capital and I took it back the following turn, promising to myself I would give it back to my valiant allies - like hell I did! That income saved me and allowed me to take Kadrin which staved off the orcs further east Always look for opportunities like this for good quality empire cities - why? Well these are places you can then defend easily against Chaos Undivided and of course give you some serious gold - enough to hire the defensive army whilst your cavalry army hunts down (your general really really must have night fighter by this time) Undivided stacks that are going for your Cities - head west mopping up the Undivided cities they have taken from the empire once your own core lands are secure. Keep fighting at Karak Kadrin

    Random Tips:

    Remember to get that Tavern so you can recruit Kvassnics.

    Be very careful with your generals early on, losing any (other than one defending Praag) can be difficult as its 3k gold plus turns to recruit a new unit (that's 3 Winged Lancers) - you want a general in every town and your cavalry army must be lead by a general with Ursan cavalry. Plus you may have a small mobile southern army to fight orcs. Recruiting Ragnar early on is a bargain even though you won't be able to retrain his units - just kill them off and use him as a settlement general.

    Kislev really wants the Sergeants Guild, Bolgasgrad the Horsebreeders if it ever gets chance, Erengrad Woodsman, Praag Merchant - thats the ideal. I ended up with both Kislev and Bolgasgrad getting Sergeants guilds - I wasn't arguing.

    Whilst the main Chaos Undivided invasion lands on the Erengrad/Empire border - expect a stack or two to come down to attack Praag from the north - but that's what those warning towers are for - I tracked it all the way in (its general died as soon as it was spotted) and waiting for it was the cavalry army that had headed north at the last possible point from fighting around Erengrad - it retrained on the way up in Bolgasgrad and on the way back down and was straight back in the action. Bolgasgrad needs that stables at the start.

    Sometimes at the start of the game I have started by building free buildings where possible to get one turn out of the way then switched to the roads and stables etc - this way when money is tight I can go back to building them when I have no gold. Same with Vitevo, Ostrosk when you're fighting off the initial Chaos incursions.

    Try and do any missions you can in little breaks in the fighting - especially if its saying "best units possbile" as this kept giving me Kreml Guard which were vital to defending Kislev and Erengrad. In fact the few you start with ended up being carefully pulled off walls when down to few men etc as I needed them retrained so badly.

    Several tips from odyseusz79: If you're desperate for gold you can always demolish the racing circuit in Kislev for 6,400 gold - but bare in mind you can't get any racing traits for generals then.

    Amber at Erengrad gives a 3-4* merchant 900-1100 gold. By contrast Warpstone at Mordheim gives a 4* 1500 gold so they are a good alternative for Kislev especially if you don't like the micro management needed to send them far away.

    Forts: Remember to use these to store high upkeep troops if you need gold.

    Cavalry: See here for a different small use

    Conclusions:
    A fun filled faction to play despite the immense difficulty and balancing act for a large part of the early game - just shows how well designed and balanced this CoW faction is - a lot of thought and testing must of gone into this. You will learn to hate orcs for constantly threatening Vitevo and the Tzar has to go with only spears and archers. Gaze on the overall campaign map with pride at the 30+ heroic victory markers that are yours.

    "Alex of Praag, 10 star general and leader of the Kurgis Kislev Cavalry Army - all of Kislev salutes you for your heroics" - Inscription on the 100' tall stone Winged Lancer figure erected by the Tzar Kurgis at the triple junction where the Erengrad, Bolgasgrad, Kislev roads meet. Note: Payed and carved for by the resettled Dwarves of Karak Kadrin.
    Last edited by Kurgis; December 19, 2010 at 03:34 PM. Reason: Added a few tips from Obyzseuz79 and some bits of text

  4. #4

    Default Re: Kurgis & Co's Guide to CoW Factions *Just begun first faction done 25/11/10*

    Vampire Counts

    Intro:

    "Surrender and serve me in life, or die and slave for me in death." ~ Vlad von Carstein

    "Eight against one is hardly a fair fight. Let's do something to redress the balance, shall we?" Mannfred von Carstein

    And interesting faction with a decent learning curve. It functions very differently compared to other faction in that your troops can regenerate or create new units after battles. The catch being is the the core troops are very weak.

    Difficulty: Hard

    Strengths: Undead Troops have moral locked so when they engage they will fight to the last man. Also after battle there is a chance that units will regenerate due to the fresh corpses of your felled enemy or create new units if the general has the necromancy trait. So one stack can fight many battles if they keep winning without need to stop and retrain. Elite units such as blood dragons are very powerful and can take on 3 to one odds against similar infantry/knights. You have access to spy's and assassins. Can get generic undead mercenary troops.

    Weaknesses: Basic troops types are weak compared to other factions and Elite units are expensive to train and upkeep. Also undead units cannot get free upkeep bonus in towns or castles. Only living troops if the town or castle that meets the requirements. Most units cannot hide. Very high upkeep costs on Elite units. Lack of elite missile troops.Limited Siege artillery. No merchants.

    Starting Position: 2 cities Waldenhof and Templehof, 1 castle Drakenholf (capital)

    Your starting position is a tough one as you are sandwiched in between 2 empire factions and dwarfs. Who will be attacking you constantly. So you must keep units behind to garrison your cities that will be able to handle multiple stacks attacking. Since you have no allies and many directions from which you will be attacked. All your cites are close together so defending them is easier then some other factions and luckily your cites start with roads already built to aid in moving armies around quickly for defense.

    Unit Types:
    Undead units can regenerate after winning a battle with a general with the necromancy trait. They also have a locked moral and very good stamina but Cannot hide.

    Infantry -

    Zombies- Horde unit, cannot run, low attack, no defense, very cheap upkeep. They serve as a speed bump so you can get your other units in place or are great for getting Siege Gear to the walls which cannot move fast by default. Also great for clogging up narrow streets while your other forces retreat to safer areas when you are defending a city or castle.They may be week in combat but if you have light armor on them they can be surprisingly durable. Can be used as suicide squads, make full stacks and send them on a suicide mission to weaken tough enemy armies of control forts and bridges taking advantage of their cheap upkeep. Can regenerate after battle with necromancy.

    Skeleton warriors- Light infantry with simple weapons, along with spear-men your main basic infantry type. Can regenerate after battle with necromancy.

    Skeleton Spear-men- Same as Skeleton warriors but they are strong against cavalry This will be the most numerous unit as it has the same stats as warriors but with the anti cavalry bonus. Can regenerate after battle with necromancy.

    Skeleton Archers- Lower stats then similar archers. Locked moral. Can regenerate after battle with necromancy.

    Free company infantry - Human(free upkeep), compared to your skeletons they have a high attack and can get free upkeep. Great to charge with after your skeletons or zombies have tied down the enemy.This unit CAN hide. weak to missile fire.

    Spearmen - Human(free upkeep), better stats then the Undead spear-men strong vs cavalry. Can get free upkeep. Great for garrisons.

    Halberdiers- Human can use spearwall strong vs cavalry. Great defensive unit.

    Swordsmen- Good armor and attack stat.

    Free company archers- Human, better stats then the undead archers.

    Empire archers- If you can use them, they can use sharpened stakes.

    Elite infantry -

    Grave guard warriors- Bonus attack vs armor. High defense stat. Good attack. Can regenerate after battle with necromancy.

    Grave guard halberdiers -Bonus attack vs armor. Good attack but lower defense stat then warriors strong vs cavalry. Can form spear wall. Good attack. Can regenerate after battle with necromancy.

    Blood dragons-Well armored, 2 hit points. Undead with high attack and high defense skills. One unit of these is as good as several core units in any army. And as good if not better then any elite unit in the game. Very expensive to recruit and upkeep the unit however. Can regenerate after battle with necromancy.

    Cavalry -

    Skeleton cavalry- locked moral, light cavalry unit with lower stats the other factions light cavalry. Cheap unit. Good for engaging the enemy so you infantry can get in place or coming in from the flanks to engage Missile troops or Siege weapons. And sweeping around behind the enemy formation to attack the rear of the unit to cause it to panic. Can regenerate after battle with necromancy.

    Elite cavalry-

    Black Knights- Locked moral. Good stamina. Bonus damage vs armor. Good defense and attack stats. Cavalry charge. Great for smashing lines of troops with high armor values. Charge into a formation do some damage and pull away to do it again and again. Can regenerate after battle with necromancy.

    Mounted Blood dragons- Just like their infantry counterpart one of the hardest hitting units. Can rip apart other armies equivalent units with ease. Well armored with 2 hit points each. High attack and defense stats. Can regenerate after battle. Might charge without orders. Powerful charge.

    Vampire body guard- Mounted Blood dragons with a general with a slightly higher attack value then normal blood dragons. Might charge without orders. Can regenerate after battle with necromancy. New recruited generals will not have the necromancy trait or be vampires at the start.

    Siege war machines-

    Screaming skull catapult- Catapult squad of three with flaming projectiles, which are good for setting guys on the walls on fire while taking them down. Sort of low accuracy but can be affective against horde armies and is the only siege weapon vampires have. If you use them to bring down a wall bring at least two if not three units. It can also frighten enemies. Can regenerate after battle with necromancy.


    Stratagem Note: You are in a race against time. You will need to minimize costs and bring in money fast. You do not have merchants and will have to capture cities to start brining money in to offset the astronomical cost of your starting armies upkeep. To make new units early you will have to win battles to create new troops since you will be in the red after turn two at least. And by turn 10 you will have empire and or dwarfs attacking your cities. So you will be be stretched thin to put it mildly.

    Battles strategy: This is primarily a close combat melee army. Nothing two fancy get close and personal with the enemy at the end of your blade.

    The bread and butter of the undead is its cavalry, Black knights and blood dragons charging into and enemy will devastate most armies. The key to maximize this is to tie down the opposing units so they cannot move. For that you have your hordes of weak but fearless troops. Use your infantry to tie dow the enemy while your cavalry out flanks them.

    If you want to play with infantry forces you have three awesome units in Grave guard, Grave guard halberdiers, and Blood dragons. With the Grave guard halberdiers you can have zombies march in front of them absorbing fire while advancing with a pike wall since both will move slow as one cant run at all and the other can only march when in formation. For other armies using skeletons or skeleton cavalry to tie the enemy and absorb missile fire while grave guard and blood dragons get into position for devastating charges.

    Grave guard halberdiers are also amazing at holding streets and gates in castles and cities due to spear wall.Especially against high armor units like Dwarves and Chaos.

    Your ranged units are sub par compared to other factions. You wont win any ranged fights. Primarily use archers for defense of cites and castles. If you must bring archers to battle bring undead archers that can regenerate. You will want to bring them in an all infantry force to deal with fast moving units and skirmishing units if you have no cavalry.

    In short use the weaker units such as skeletons and zombies to shield and protect your elite units so they may get a primary charge or counter charge.

    In a siege you will want to use Siege towers and rams only if you are not using Screaming skull catapults. Most enemy infantry on the walls can easily repulse skeletons with ladders and getting your elites shot up and beaten down using ladders is costly. So use cheap units like zombies and skeletons to push siege towers into position then pull them back and have your elites that were stying safely back run to the towers after they are in place. Or have them rush in after the ram has opened the gate. In battles for castles with multiple walls and gates make extra rams.

    Use human units as garrison forces, as if things go bad you can make a last stand with them at the capture zone where it will make them fearless. Human Halberdiers in pike wall with archer support can turn battles around. And human swordsmen are good at holding walls.

    Zombie suicide squads, make stacks of zombies and send them into battle against large stacks that you want to weaken. They have cheap upkeep so its easy to have massive squads of them laying about. Or sitting a full stack in a captured fort or on a bridge to block enemy movment. You tend to cause more casualties if you manually do the battle then with and auto battle.

    Starting turns Guide:

    Spend all your money turn one otherwise it will just vanish, might as well get something before you have no money. And it will be many turns before you have come out of the red. The undead can be made or broken on turn one. So if you have only 200 gold left Spend it on a tower. Spend every bloody coin dont let them go to waste on expenditures. Turn 2 you should be -3000 or so.

    Turn one 1- Set tax rate to auto first and foremost. This way as you capture towns they will set the maximum tax rate for you. Reduce cost as much as possible.

    Waldehof- Build a Town hall. Recruit Free company infantry(free upkeep) and Skeleton archers.

    Drakenhof- Build paved roads, Recruit Screaming skull catapult, x2 grave guard infantry of your choice, and one skeleton archer unit.

    Tempelhof- build human spear-men (free upkeep) and skeleton archers, send the three experienced free company units to Waldenhof so they can get free upkeep.

    Each city starts with a large amount of Undead warriors and spear men and black knights. You will have 2 generals with 1 unit of Blood dragon infantry each just south of Templehof.

    IMPORTANT, do not forget to recruit the units you can get in the merc tab turn 1. You will need those extra units to capture and keep cites until the point you have a positive cash flow.

    Read Both of the following turn sequences completely as at points the two following sequences for the two separate armies you will use to capture cities will send troops to one another.

    Turn one, Send the Blood dragons to the general with the highest command. Have him move North of Templhoff to Mordheim. Send him all the black knights from the cities, as well as 4 units or more of the experienced skeleton warriors and the two grave guard infantry from Drakenhof. You want to leave at least 3-4 slots open when using a vampire so new units can be made after successful battle.

    Turn two for this general you will besiege Mordheim with this unit. The enemy rebels tend to attack you rather then wait in a siege.This rebel army is usually full of heavy infantry so Use the cavalry to hit them hard while they are trying to come out of the gate while your own infantry catches up. Keep pulling back and charging with cavalry taking advantage of the Black knights good vs armor ability with charge bonus. Keep doing this and work around the flanks for the second and third charges after your infantry is in place with your cavalry if possible. Your black knights repeated cavalry charges will carry you through on this battle along with your two units of Blood dragon infantry and grave guard with skeleton infantry as buffer. Have your units ready to attack the enemy generals unit if they can. Killing him will cause the army to route shortly after and your faster cavalry units will be able to run down much of their army. Before it reaches the Capture zone. When the fight is over you should have generated a unit or three and have restored some of your losses in your main units.

    Turn three, send the smaller unit of blood dragons two the general besieging vorderberg, Head north with all the black knights, blood dragons and grave guard through the forest towards the City of Kiel. Besiege and capture it as well. Should have it by turn 4.

    Turn one, For the other general move Next to Templehof on the north side. Have him recruit All the mercenary undead units. Send the skeleton Archers and Skeleton cavalry to the generals stack near Mordhiem. Then send the rest of the skeleton warriors from cites to the stack right next to templehof. Leave skeleton Spear-men behind to garrison.

    Turn two and Three, Have them head east towards the city of Vorderberg this city is full of Undead so no matter what they will not run and you will have to fight to the death. To make it easier when you attack have three battering rams made and have your two zombie units attack the sides of the city while your main force attacks the front gate. The enemy will split the army up to cover all three gates. making it easy to overwhelm the main gate. If you are lucky you will wipe out the forces at the main gate and be able to rush to the capture zone. Leave your general in it and split your units up from the main gate and send them down the streets the rebel skeletons will be racing down to decontest your control. hold them in place like this and let the timer run out.

    Turn 4 Head east again towards the empire city of Krugenheim, leaving behind a garrison in Vorderberg thats just enough to keep the city from rebelling. It usually has only one or two units in it defending. It should be a quick capture but you will need a decent sized force as it is usually counter attacked buy a full stack within a turn or two but you should win the fight.

    Buy Turn 5 you should have enough cities to be generation a positive cash flow it will take another 5 to cut out the deficit though.You will be left to fight with what you started with until turn 11 or 12, less if you got some missions that give cash as reward. You will need to leave sizable garrisons in Drakenhof as dwarfs tend to attack it with a full stack 50% of the time. And the empire sends two full stacks too the city of Woldenhof after about turn 10. Templehof only needs a minimal garrison so be ready to send units from it to support Drakennnof or Woldenhof if they are attacked. Your army in Keil should be good to take out one of the empire stacks even though they are full of spear-men.

    Once the two empire stacks are defeated You can take the city just north east of Woldenhof, and Can send an army from Drakenhof to take the dwarven castle to the south. From hear on you should have a positive cash flow and be generating new units. Especially assassins and spy's. So the rest is up to you.

    Tips: Protect your vampires with necromancy ability as new generals will not start out as vampires and necromancy. You have to make your starting vampires last. It becomes much harder to run the undead without being able to regenerate your Units. Your army may have locked moral but you will find it much harder without them due to the lack of regeneration and the vampires difficult economy that runs in the red especially near the start. Use human units that can get free upkeeps to garrison your cities and castles. Everything you can do to reduce the money you spend every turn especially if you want to use blood dragon units.

    If you can help it dont merge your starting experienced units. Once you have a positive cash flow send them back to cities that can retrain them. While you replace the front lines with newer created inexperience units. Or combine two units that will leave a small left over unit and send the smaller unit back to retrain.

    When using a non vampire general without necromancy you should bring a full stack and leave no open spaces as the troops will not be regenerated nor will you spawn new units.

    When you have money check the Mercenary recruitment tab to see if it has unread troops available.

    Always send in your less experienced troops first let them absorb the brunt and send in your more experience units after. So the experience units will have to regenerate less.

    Conclusions: You have lots of units that will never route, which makes up for their stat weakness. Amazing elite infantry. Powerful elite cavalry. And an army that can regenerate after winning battles. Its a rough start since you cannot make or build anything for the first few turns. And surrounding factions will outnumber you and be able to outspend you because of this. But once you do get in a stable position you will be able to go on the offensive.

    Chaos undivided event you have spy's and assassins. If that dosent work try to ambush Archeon with an army of all blood dragons and kill him.

    I played this on Very hard - so this guide will work well for any difficulty.

    Mannfred pursued the Imperials back to Middenheim, surrounded the city and prepared to begin a siege. On the day of his planned attack, he spoke to Emperor Karl Franz "As my sire called out to your ancestor, so shall I call out to you. Surrender the city to me, and you will all be spared. Resist and you will all die".
    Last edited by Bradford; December 09, 2010 at 04:36 PM.

  5. #5

    Default Re: Kurgis & Co's Guide to CoW Factions *Just begun first faction done 25/11/10*

    Grand Duchy of Talabeland

    Intro : No
    Difficulty: Normal

    Strengths: There is no script battle in your regions , you only encountered script battles to help other factions .(it’s a huge advantage compare with ostland or nordland) . Your position is at the center of Empire , so you can help other factions defend their land pretty quick .
    IMO, Talabecland is one of the three strongest Empire factions , the remains is Reikland and Averdland .
    Weakness: No
    Starting Position : You start with 3 cities :Talabheim (capital) , Lieske , Krugemheim and need to take Volgen , Welleborn , Kiel for your victory conditions . There is a fort of beastmen in the south of Talabheim , take it immediately for 5 slots of free upkeep
    Talabheim is well developed , you can recruit cannon and pistolier in the first turn !!! So if you complete a mission with reward is “some of the best units” you will have 4 pistoliers or 4 cannons in early game . Wow .
    And remember that your merchant just need 3 turns to approach the warpstone at Mordheim .

    Unit Types:
    Infantry :
    Empire Spearmen* : , good again cavalry
    Swordmaster : unique troop of Talabecland . Only stronger than Empireswordman a bit .
    Empire Halberdmen : spine of your army . You should have 4-6 units of Halberdmen in your army to hold the line .
    Greatsword : Elite infantry . Use them to deal with elite infantry (chaos warrior , black orc , …) of your enemy .
    Warpriest of Sigmar : There is 1% per turn for you to have one unit in the whole campaign . It will appear near Altdorf(Reikland) as a general so don’t worry if you lost dozens of warpriest after a battle . Just keep the general alive and the unit will regrow .
    Empire Archer* : basic archer , good against light infantry have 1-2 unit to defend your city is not a bad ideal
    Empire Crossbowmen : crossbowmen , of course . Good against heavy infantry . It’s my favorite missile unit .
    Empire Handgunner : firearms . Good in field armies if positioned and protected well
    Nuln Engineer : Excellent unit . Only cavalry and multi hp infantry can reach their line . Fight in close-combat is bad but their damage in missle is devastating . There is 1% per turn for you to have one unit in the whole campaign . It will appear near Nuln(Wissenland) as a general
    Bright Wizard : Your savior . Fight in close-combat is bad but their damage in missle is devastating . There is 1% per turn for you to have one unit in the whole campaign . It will appear near Altdorf(Reikland) as a general . They will complete wiped out if meet a charge of enemy cavalry so protect the general well .

    Cavalry
    Pistoliers: Mounted gunmen , break morale , fast moving . Recommend to have two units in your stack .
    Knight Panther : the fastest cavalry in the Empire (The only cavalry faster than Knight Panther is Silver Helm of High Elves). But don’t use them to charge at chaos knight or you will get a massacre . It is the best cavalry to flank enemy , not to fight in close-combat .
    Inner Circle Knight : Recruiting one of these will give you a general unit . Have boost morale ability . Very few (15 in huge size) so don’t use them if not necessary

    Artillery:
    Empire Mortar : mortar , good in field battle or bombard the square in siege battle .
    Empire Great Cannon : cannon , normal fire to bring down all kind of wall and grapeshoot to kill all kind of unit .
    Hellblaster : rocket launcher , good against infantry . But I never waste money to buy that unit . Cannon is more useful .
    War Altar of Sigmar : work like a Greatcross in vanilla game . Have boost morale ability .

    Mercenaries : Talabecland don’t have “native” mercenary like Reikland(Altdorf Company of Honor) Stirland (Dead’s head) or Ostland(the musketeer) . After build mercenary camp , you can hire all mercenaries available for Empire faction and Orge too .
    Orge is a good shock troop so buy them while you can (their recruitment is not permanent)
    You can read details about all mercenaries captain in other guide (of Holy Pilgrim or someone else) .
    I have only one thing to say : Hire all mercenaries captain you can before other Empire factions hire them.

    Script battles
    Play as Talabheim , you will have some script battles , each script battle will give you a stack to help defend your allies .The script battles I have encountered are :
    - Defend Middenheim(Middenland) from Beastmen (the easiest battle)
    - Defend Grunburg(Reikland) from Orc (but when I click accept button , the script doesn’t working)
    - Defend Wolfenburg(Ostland) from Khorne followers (you will have a stack of Grand Theogonist as reinforcement so the fight is not so hard . I don’t know why but sometime the Khorne stack runaway , and the weird is even the script battle is not take place , your extra stack still appear near Wolfenburg)
    - Defend Kislev(Kislev) from Khorne followers (pretty hard because you and garrison of Kislev must fight against two full stack of Khorne)
    - Defend Dietershafen(Nordland) from Khorne followers (you are a genius general if you win that script battle)

    Strategy, Battles, Invasions:
    Early campaign : Talabheim will become the place to recruit elite unit like greatsword and pistolier and panther knight . Don’t waste money to buy cannon , you will have 4 cannon if accept the script battle of Middenheim . Lieske is the place to recruit infantry like swordmaster and halberdmen , and don’t forget spearmen (for free upkeep) . Build a mine in Krugemheim , it take 8 turns and 6000 gold but after build it , you will get 500 gold each turn .
    Take the castle in the east of Talabecland and Volgen , Welleborn , Middenstag in the west . You can take Kiel later .
    Middle campaign : Because have many town to build , I don’t think you can field more than two full stack . So you should choose one of the following option :
    - Send one stack go to the west and get rid of the beastmen (beastmen will never get destroyed even if you kill their faction leader and take all beastmen settlement)
    - Send one stack go northwest to help Nordland
    - Send two stack go northeast to help Ostland (there are many chaos followers in there)
    - Send one stack go southwest to take Grunburg from the Orc (Reikland always lost Grunburg)
    - Send one or two stack go south to help Averdland
    - If Ostermark in trouble , you can send one stack to help them .
    - Send all army you can go south east to take Mordheim and ravage Sylvania (all always leave Sylvania one last settlement , don’t destroy them completely . Because like beastmen , they will arise with several full stack if get destroyed)
    - Call the crusade to : Warboss Camp and destroyed the Orc once and for all with all your stroop .

    Remember that in early and middle campaign , no one try to attack you , so your only work is help your allies from destroyed and expand your land , upgrade your town . But in later campaign , everything will change .

    Later campaign : In late campaign , if your faction is weathy , strong and expand through all the map , I have nothing to say . Play as you like , enjoy the beautiful life until turn 53-54 , when Chaos Undivided events will occur and 20-30 full stack of Chaos followers will appear in your land .
    A full stack of Bretonnia Knight will appear near Nuln to help you fight against that disaster . But I must tell you that fight against Chaos Undivided through strength is useless . Use 5-7 full stack to hold the Chaos followers at bay . Mountain battle , bridge battle , use everything you have to keep your faction alive . send spy to the shore of Ostland and find the leader of Chaos Undivided - Archaon . If you kill Archaon , then the Chaos Undivided will finish and the Old World is your . If Archaon is not killed , then you are the one who get finished .
    I encountered Chaos Undivided once (play as Sylvania) , and after kill 14 stack of Chaos followers , I quit the campaign . So good luck if you meet Chaos Undivided .

    Chaos Undivided is the cause of the name “Storm of Chaos” of the campaign , so after Chaos Undivided , there will be no difficult for you to finish your game

    Play as Empire faction , my favorite formula in field battle is : 1 general , 4 crossbow , 8 halberdmen , 2 elite infantry (swordmaster , greatsword , mercs pikemen) , 3 knight order (panther knight , knight of blazing sun , …) , 2 pistolier
    In attack siege battle : 1 general , 2 crossbow , 4 swordmen , 2 spearmen(if enemy have cavalry in their city) , 4 halberdmen , 2 elite infantry , 1 knight order , 2 pistolier , 2 cannon .
    In defend siege battle : 1 general , 4 crossbow , 10 halberdmen , 2 elite infantry , 2 pistolier , 1 cannon

    Tips:
    1.Everyone think that when defend their town , they should hold enemy at the wall . Nooooo . At the gate , use your troop hold two road and fire cannon (with grapeshot) at the remain . The casualty will up to hundreds . And cannon’s shoot is break morale , so if you combine them with pistolier , enemy will flee in no time
    2.Accept every script battle to get extra troop . If you think you can’t win the battle , then flee .
    Conclusions:
    Play as Talabecland is not too bad . If you need encouragement and detail guide , there is an aar name “Taal’s blessing” in the sub-forum .
    Last edited by Maha Moggalana; November 27, 2010 at 05:11 AM.
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    This is Total War !!!

  6. #6

    Default Re: Kurgis & Co's Guide to CoW Factions *3 factions done 26/11/10*

    Dwarves

    Intro: Dwarf Proverb: "To lack gold is to lack a pit-prop against the cave-ins of misfortune, to lack a shield against the arrows of spite". Dwarfs: Stone & Steel pg10

    You'd best like defending sieges if you play the dwarfs because you will be against some manic odds. Slow movement and no cavalry force you to adapt field armies and master a new way of war. Whilst Kislev may be the frontline against Chaos it's you who are the frontline against the Greenskins - but hey that's as it should be, this is your opportunity to settle some scores from the Book of Grudges... not to add to that list..

    Difficulty: Hard -> Very Hard on higher difficulties

    Strengths: Supreme foot troops of the highest quality. Same goes for the Artillery. Brilliant on the defence - which you will be. Money is a lot easier than other factions but still requires some care early on.

    Weaknesses: Troops are very slow. No cavalry. Limited mercenaries. Defending sieges can become very repetitive. Plague - lots of plague. Long build times for advanced buildings.

    Starting Position: You start with 5 castles of various size and situation and two forts outside Karak Eight Peaks. The strategy section will go into detail over each one and the threats they face. All start far more developed than the majority of Empire cities. For victory you need to keep them and retake Mount Gunbad, Karak Varn in the south, Karak Vlag and Karak Ungor to the north of Karak Kadrin.

    I normally send one unit of hammerers from the capital towards Zhufbar. The units from west fort to the capital, the other fort units go inside Karak Eight Peaks and get a few towers built so I can begin to see incoming threats. The slayer outside Karak Kadrin heads right down the road towards Orc territory and builds one tower there then more as he heads back to Kadrin so I have full coverage. Note the mountain "roads" that allow you access north/south - you will want towers to the north of Kadrin to keep an eye on the Night Goblins. If you are unsure of what I mean by roads - once you have moved the Hammerer unit full distance to Zhufbar (to expend its movement points) then try and send it to Kadrin and beyond to see what I mean.

    Build 5 merchants at Zhufbar and Karaz-A-Karak as you are in close striking distance of good sites - although you won't get much from the Brynduraz at Gunbad its better than nothing (245g ish with a 1 skill merchant). Build as many basic units that give you free upkeep as you can. Make sure all holds are building, if possible, buildings that can give you more troops or the elder halls or halls of grudge therefore access to some elite troops. Kadrin > Karaz > Eight Peaks > Zhufbar > Hirn in order of importance.

    Unit Types: (* indicates a unit that can have free upkeep in a castle)

    Infantry - Miners. Armour penetrating grenadiers and you will want at least one unit per castle where defending to cause havoc around the gate or finish off Siege towers (see Mortars). Not bad for field armies as well to help break elite enemies (Black Orcs etc)

    Warriors*. Basic grunt unit that once trained equals other races basic elite troops. Can use stakes.

    Axes*. Basic grunt unit, higher attack, lower armour than warriors but with bonus against cavalry, also can use stakes.

    Rangers. Crossbowmen with armour penetration. Can also use stakes and have a bonus vs Cavalry.

    Longbeards. Inspire nearby troops. Good defence, first of your elite infantry.

    Longbeards with Axes. Inspire nearby troops, powerful charge, bonus vs cavalry. The offensive version of normal Longbeards.

    Hammerers. Powerful charge, bonus vs cavalry. Superb elite troops that can take on just about everything especially once upgraded.

    Ironbreakers. Armour penetration and stunning staying power - long time to get to recruit them but amazing gate defenders.

    Quarrellers*. Armour penetration and stakes. Basic ranged unit - slightly cheaper upkeep than Rangers.

    Thunderers. Armour penetration and stakes. Firearms unit. Good in field armies - not in sieges.

    Hammerers Bodyguard. Same as hammerers gives you a general.

    Slayers. Powerful charge and bonus vs Cavalry. Excellent offensive unit and good for chopping stuff coming out of towers.

    Artillery - Bolt Thrower. Can impale several people. Never used one.

    Grudge Thrower. Catapult with area effect. Never used one.

    Cannon. It's a cannon - grapeshot, explosive etc good for takings settlements and field armies.

    Mortar. Amazing killer offensive unit. Also useful in siege defence for taking down siege towers - 3 mortar hits take a tower to 90% damage - hold off on the killing shots until the men/orcs/vampires are swarming up inside.

    Organ Gun. Multi-barrelled troop killer. Very expensive so never really used one as it has limited shots before Hand to Hand is joined. Possibly could be good on gate defence in a siege but never tried it.

    Mercenaries - Ogres when you can get a Dog of War Camp. One merc general - Long Drong and his Pirates. Worth recruiting and running round from Skaelings settlement all the way to Karak Kadrin. Disband the ship as its stuck. All firearm equipped but can fight in hand to hand if needed.

    Strategy, Battles, Invasions:
    On turn 2 you will get a notification that Vardek Krom is marching on your capital and the Greenskins are coming to. Wonderful. But let's break it down by starting settlement after some notes on free units and siege defence:

    Free units: Always try and have 5-6 quarrellers then the remainder 2-3 Warriors, remainder Axes as your free garrison. You always want one Miner unit as well and 1-2 mortars for incoming siege tower killers. Rest as soon as you can fill up with whatever elites you can - vary the types so retraining isn't a strain. For example build elder halls in Kadrin so you aren't trying to rebuild 5 Slayers every other turn.

    Siege Defence: Stakes in front of the gates and close to the gatehouse walls (that you think engines may break down) to help against cavalry rushes. High damage units like slayers and ogres to beat off siege towers, at the start warriors etc will have to defend against ladders but be prepared to move men round to get the best defenders in place. Remember your troops are slow so place reserve units close to where you think they will be needed. Mortars can hit 90% if they all hit a siege tower - don't finish it off until the enemy are inside climbing it! Obviously some fights I start straight on the inner wall with just one unit on the outer wall to force enemy siege engines to fire then go for killing grounds around the gates of the second line. If its two stacks - fight from the second line and prepare if need be for final wall defence.

    Karak Kadrin: Here you are the guardian for Ostermark and Kislev from the Orcs and boy will it be tough. Orcs come from the east, Night Goblins from the old dwarfholds to the north. You will need to have a full stack here as soon as possible (asap). Build basic units then get rid of them as you build elite units this helps with retraining. Balance retraining to get the worst rebuilt first if you can't rebuild all before the next stack comes in and places you under siege. Use the slayers that keep coming here as sacrificial slow down units by blocking orc stacks coming along the road to buy you time to perfect your defence. Always pay ransom for the bodyguard as this should keep the general alive and available for more blocking tactics. If a small orc stack comes along and places you under siege - counter attack and drive it off, don't let it build into a full stack (unless you're still rebuilding from a previous siege). Towers are absolutely needed here so you can judge accurately what's arriving and how many turns you have. Eventually you can start to construct a second stack that must be heavy on artillery to drive north and start to take back the dwarven holds - rotate troops back to Kadrin to be rebuilt (as long as it isn't under orc threat) to keep the momentum going. If you can't beat down all the stacks in the way - do what you can retreat, rebuild, try again - Kadrin's survival is the priority at all costs.

    Its worth noting this about Kadrin - as a player faction you are sucking up a lot of orc attacks and this allows the Ostermark AI to pressure Sylvania (as it needs those settlements for its Victory conditions) which eases pressure on Zhufbar - and anything that helps Kislev anywhere is good as the AI really has it tough.

    Karaz-A-Karak: Similar to Kadrin get a full stack asap - your first opponent will probably be the Savage Orc boss - make sure he dies to hurt orc recruitment. Always keep Karaz full and try and have a few spare units loitering for when Vardek Krom arrives - keep these one place from the citadel to make sure you only face 1-2 stacks - then he's easily beatable. Eventually combined with troops from Zhufbar you can put together a stack to take back Karak Varn (I take this before Gunbad to give me a line against orcs in the empire) especially if Sylvania is defeated or being beaten heavily. Then go for Gunbad as that is a much tougher proposition - head north through the mountains rather than the road through the plains so orcs don't interfere.

    Vardek Krom extra notes: He arrives on or around Turn 24 and takes several turns for his stacks to wander through orc lands (the Orcs don't seem to attack him at all). I tend to line up one unit on each square in front of Karaz-A-Karak (full stack inside of course!) and one to the west as this seems to force a smaller battle with only one or two stacks getting a chance at you per turn. Also depending on how things are going and what generals you have, you can run a stack out of Eight Peaks into the valley (and especially if your general has Night Fighter) have a go at trying to take out a stack or two that way - don't use the Prince though - use a normal general. Don't fight defensive on the field they have Hell Cannons, killing generals is always a priority here. Following turn retreat behind the forts, retrain away. This is one reason I rate building at Eight Peaks higher than Zhufbar as a priority - until Krom is out the way.

    Karak Eight Peaks: Empty the two guard forts - do not store units in them if enemy are close by as they will siege them and then the way to Eight Peaks is open - this is disastrous. Towers are your friends everywhere here to judge this. Around turn 6-7 you will be attacked by 2 Night Goblin stacks. You get given 2 dwarf miner units so make sure there is room inside for them (doubt you will have a full stack anyway at this time). Make sure you have 1 unit directly west of the castle as this will block one stack allowing you to defeat them one after the other with ease - in fact I auto-ed the battles as I lost so few men that way. Eight Peaks then becomes a recruiting ground when possible to build stacks for taking other settlements (or sticking it to Tzeentch/intercepting incoming orc stacks). After the goblins are dealt with send one miner unit to Karaz-A-Karak - saves building one there.

    Zhufbar: I always shift one hammerer unit here at the start as you may get sieged by a full stack of Sylvania - keep it well defended and they seem to prefer easier pickings and leave you alone. DO NOT take the castle though until the Empire crusade is over otherwise you can get Empire factions attacking you (same with a crusade against Orc Warboss Camp). Once you have Varn under your control and roads updated you can rapidly build a defence force for those 2 and the capital and keep it hanging around the lake if need be. Always, if you can, take Drakenhof if it goes neutral or you spy a chance (after a failed crusade) - its gold income - don't develop it - always destroy the graveyards/mausoleum. Garrison should be small - sometimes when Sylvania comes back they only siege it one turn then leave - you can then put a full garrison in to bleed Sylvania of all those elite troops (using mortars I killed 400 blood vampires in siege towers at the walls...) because they may swing south to Zhufbar after where you can finish them with the new defence army - always think of it as a protective outpost/temporary gold generator to Zhufbar only. Muradin the lord here is a grenadier unit and can fit in between the gate towers If he dies a new one gets elected eventually.

    Karak Hirn: The forgotten hold. The worst developed of the starting locations - just keep it with a free upkeep army and one miner unit plus generals. Nearly always the orcs will take Hochsleben and all of a sudden this place needs defending although the orc attempts are half hearted - try and get this to build income stuff or leave it not building if you have little gold - you just have to defend with what you can here - the other holds are more important. Towers again give you a view if the orcs are coming along the mountain road. Eventually as money allows, you will need this to move up a gear so it can retrain advanced units if you're trying to take Hochsleben etc to keep the orc presence in Empire down - best make sure your finances are stable before trying that (take Gunbad first - get that to defend status and always build mines at Gunbad first thing - gold making machine)

    Plague: The bane of a dwarf player. There is very little you can do except grit your teeth - stop production of units and switch to other cities. You need to stop to rebuild your units rapidly once the plague has passed. Building sewers seems to have minimal effect but you will need to do it as the game moves on as you will start to struggle with keeping the settlements happy - you cannot afford any rebellions.

    Random Tips:

    Keep Eight Peaks forts empty if in doubt! This combined with Drakenhof being taken will allow you to strip Eight Peaks and Zhufbar settlements of non-upkeep units for an offensive stack - Karak Varn time

    Forming an offensive stack: This can seem quite difficult when you're constantly under pressure. The trick is to use what you can afford to spare IF you need to rebuild a settlements defence force - therefore don't build a stack that has lowered all your recruitment to "next unit in X turns" with none available. Let me make this clear: If I can recruit 3 quarrellers at Zhufbar I only want to recruit 2 so that last one is a retraining reserve so to speak if the settlement is attacked whilst the offensive stack is off doing its job. This obviously only occurs early in the game.

    You always want cannons to drop walls and mortars - if your production settlements are not under threat - rotate your ready built defence mortars out and rebuild them when you get gold. Use Zhufbar, Karaz-A-Karak, and Eight Peaks to build your first stack. With towers you can run non-artillery units over the valley to Karaz walls if the roads are clear then move them to the grouping stage in between Zhufbar and Karaz-A-Karak. This also allows you to use the offensive stack if needed to back up one of the settlements whilst Eight Peaks is safe behind its forts.

    Missions: Nearly every mission I get is take a Border Princes settlement - I only do these once I have taken Karak Varn as only then can I get a dwarf defence force together from Karaz and Eight Peaks from Orcs approaching from the east - and - this may slow down putting a stack together to take Gunbad which will definitely divert orc attention from the border princes area. So it may be best to ignore them until you can get Varn and Gunbad. At the very worst these missions may ask you to strip defence troops just as another full stack of the enemy descends on you!

    Active defence: If a tiny orc force is close to your settlement and you can't see too much in the way of upcoming stuff - batter it! Divide and conquer for hells sake!

    Karak Kadrin: Fight my fellow dwarves! FIGGGHT! FIIIIIIGGGGGGGHHHHHHTTTTTTTTT! Oh and just when you think you'll get a real break along will come Chaos Undivided and yes they come here to - always keep a full stack here or recruitment to fill any gaps in one turn.

    Mortars in siege defence: Placing Mortars in a siege defence is a fine art - if you don't know how to do it, try it, and if it doesn't work reload a saved game - it can be difficult. Example: In the dwarven citadel map just outside the third line of walls entrance is a ramp - I place my two mortars here and defend the second wall - this gives them firing power inside the first wall. Obviously no use for stopping towers but then i'm already giving up the first wall so their towers are useless. If you have a castle you need to find a location that fire can clear your outer defensive wall - trial and error will get you your best location - sometimes I don't bother hitting the towers if it's just orc boyz pushing them for example i'll prefer to try and drop numbers overall by hitting the formations as they draw up waiting for the ram to do its work at the gate.

    Siege Defence 2: Always read carefully what units are attacking - Chaos Chosen, Black Orcs will nearly always be on towers and so on. Carefully check your placements so you don't have to move troops around on walls to much as this cuts down on crossbows firing time. Sometimes I sacrifice a dwarf unit (warriors/axes only) out from a second line defence to try and disrupt enemy siege units moving to attack my second walls - buys you valuable time and lives and can then force the gate and ladder only battle you really want. Hammerers always on the gate entrance/breaches if you can or Ironbreakers later on.

    Offensive Stacks: 2 cannon, 2 mortars, 2-4 Thunderers, 4 crossbows, rest infantry with as many elites as I can afford. Don't be precious though if needed - send it out to grind out what it can - level a Night Goblin hold but can't take it? - no worries, just kill what you can then pull out, re-siege and come back to finish the job with rebuilt better units. You can of course try and send maybe a 2/3rds to 3/4's stack and tempt the Night Goblins to attack out and slaughter them that way.

    Dwarf Surface Towns: Leave 1-2 basic units and a general - you can't build much or do much with them.

    Conclusions: Hmm wall of text Not a faction all people like to play but I quite like it - very different. Of course it does help that "Kurgis" was my old WFRP Dwarven Bounty Hunter from when I was a kid - soft spot for Dwarves ever since
    Last edited by Kurgis; December 01, 2010 at 12:05 PM. Reason: Wrote more about beating Vardek Krom - few tweaks to cities text

  7. #7

    Default Re: Kurgis & Co's Guide to CoW Factions *4 factions done 26/11/10*

    Night Goblins *Will only be playable in 1.3.1 version of game, being taken out of 1.4 as an independently playable faction*

    Intro: "In ancient times Red Eye Mountian was a powerful Dwarf realm called Karak Ungor or Delving Hold. Since the fall the old Dwarf empire its has become the most notorious Night Goblin Stronghold north of Mad Dog Pass. The name of the Ruinous stronghold is taken from the Red Eye Tribes whose crude symbol is daubed on the old dwarf gates and the rocks near by. The sign of the Red Eye is that of the biggest and most dangerous confederation of goblin tribes whose warriors raid far into the eastern provinces of the Empire."

    Though being taken out as playable by themselves in 1.4 this guide may be helpful for those that want to play goblin horde style. So it will still be useful in some manner. Or for those that want to play them and have a separate folder for 1.3 they swap in when they want to play them like I will be doing.

    A very hard if not the hardest faction in the game, especially on higher difficulty settings. If you want a challenge this is it. You will have to fight all battles manually if you want to win many battles. You cannot play them like standard Med2 armies you must play them like Night Goblins. Outnumber your enemy 2 or three to one. Plan around using multiple army stacks to take out one enemy stack. Bury them in a green tide.

    Difficulty: Very Hard faction

    Strengths: Massive Hordes of cheap infantry. Strong Squig herd units. Easy to manage economy. Strong in desert terrain. Able to produce lots of units very fast. Cheap buildings for fast advancement progression. Strong against cavalry due to massive units of spearmen and Squig herds.

    Weaknesses: Most of the infantry is significantly weaker then other factions. You must make up for this with numbers and tactics. If your general dies your entire army can route within seconds. Limited choice of troops. No spies, merchants or assassins.

    Starting Position: 4 castles- Karak Ungor (capital), Karak Vlag, Gunbad, Karak Varn

    Your starting positions are very far apart and unable to support each other in a significant way. And you have no ability to make roads. Karak Ungor and Karak Vlag in the the north of the mountians are never under any threat in a signifigant way so you dont have to worry about them till much later in the game. Also both are reletivly close enough to each other to support each other if they are attacked. Each city starts with a good amount of experienced and upgraded troops. Make them last.

    The other two castles, Karak varn and Gunbad will be under attack early in the game. Gunbad from dwarves and Karak varn from Empire, Vampire counts and Dwarfs depending on whats going on in that region. Since they are not able to easily support each other if at all. You have to churn out troops early and often in those two cities. Plan for each city to work independently of each other.

    The reason its very hard is even though you can hold onto and defend your land expanding beyond your starting area and competing with other factions long run is very hard.

    Unit Types:

    Mostly infantry, Night goblin types get a bonus when fighting on desert terrain. And have higher moral then the standard goblin units. Almost all units can get free upkeep if building requirements are met. So other then some elite units you will get maximum use of free upkeeps so I wont list which have free upkeep since its almost all of them. In most cases you will want to take night goblin units over standard goblins due to better attack values. Night goblin infantry units are also weak to missile fire.

    Infantry -

    Goblin Warriors- Standard goblins, Have a weaker attack and charge bonus then Night goblins but a higher defense value. Cheaper to make and upkeep.

    Night Goblin warriors- Has a Higher attack then standard goblins and a better charge bonus. Slightly weaker defense.

    Goblin Spearmen- Bonus vs cavalry, Weaker attack the night goblin spearmen, but better defense. Good for using as garrison units for the higher defense. Cheaper on cost and upkeep then Night Goblin Spearmen.

    Night Goblin Spearmen- Higher attack and charge value. Good vs cavalry. Slightly less defense then Standard goblins.

    Goblin Archers- Cheap and very weak unit. You will almost never choose these over night goblin archers as they are weaker across the entire stat line.

    Night goblin archers- Have a better attack value then every standard goblin type in melee combat. And a better defense then the Standard goblin archers. This melee value is key since once they are out of ammo you can use them as effective (for night goblins) melee units.

    Elite infantry -

    Night Goblin Netters- Have a weak Javelin attack but a highest attack and defense value of goblin infantry. they can sit behind your infantry lines and throw nets at incoming attackers and then counter charger to support the Main line.

    Squig Herds- The main power house of your forces your heavy hitters. Squigs have a very high attack value and a bonus vs cavalry and cause fear. If the handlers die they run amok. But these are the units that will chew through even the toughest armor and will devastate calvary units. Sit back and send them out. They tend to be slow and getting the hang of sending them out at the right time is key. You can send the squigs out and pull the handlers back to safety. They are powerful enough to rival most other armies heavy units but they need protection to be deployed correctly.They cost a lot to purchase and upkeep by goblin standards but you will want to bring at least two units in every army.

    Mercenary ogres- Get a dogs of war camp you can recruit them. If you do so recruit as many as you can as fast as you can. They will greatly augment your fighting force with some heavy hitters. 3 wounds each with High attacks and charge value.

    Cavalry -

    Wolf riders- Fast cavalry with Lower then average stats for equivalent units but they have a good missile attack and can shoot while on the move. Great for harassing enemy and taking out Siege weapons and flanking. They are overall very useful being both good at range and melee in the goblin horde.

    Squig riders- More like an elite heavy infantry unit since they only move about as fast as infantry but they also get cavalry impact hits so they can bust a line open if you time it right. Though slow if you can get them to flank or work around the rear you can charge an enemy unit from the back and break their moral same as any other cavalry. They have a higher attack and defense value then other troops in your army. Plus counting as a size larger when defending a gate and the enemy is forcing their way in they can counter charge and push them back. So having one or two in a garrison is worthwhile if you force a fight at a gate. Be mindful of units strong vs cavalry as they will get taken down fast by them. Can charge without orders.

    Siege war machines-

    Spear chucka - Squad of 4 balista with a good damage output but not very good at taking down walls. They would only work well against gates. And with multiple walls you will run out of ammo. They are good though for use against large armies with high armor targets or are slow. More use as long range support then as a siege weapon.

    Rock lobber- Three catapults, Two units or more will break down any wall and get you into your target with ease. Counter fire from enemy archers can be a pain however.

    Generals body guards-

    Squig Riders- but they have a ranged attack with the same power as wolf riders. And better attack and defense. The general having a ranged attack is very useful as it keeps him out of combat and you dont need to risk losing him but he can still help in the battle. Every little bit helps. Can charge without orders.

    Can also be good if you have multiple generals in stack as the unit is good on its own merits. They add more range options and some hitting power. They are only half as large as a squig rider unit but they have better stats and a general to dish out more damage then a standard unit and cause more damage long run with the ranged attack. And you only have to worry about the main general dying.

    The Kings unit is a squig herd. So he can sit back and send his squigs out far away from where he is.

    Stratagem Note: Just like in classic warhammer Goblin armies need to outnumber the enemy by 2 to one. In CoW that means you need to fight two stacks to their every one stack when engaging on an open battle field. Which is easy to do since goblins are cheap and fast to make. Remember Its two stacks to one in every battle you want to fight One goblin stack is about half as good as one other factions stack. So two it is for a fair fight.

    Battles strategy: You dont have any amazing solo melee units the entire army has to fight as one to win, You must use your main strength which is NUMBERS. When attacking and enemy its best to use two stacks to every one enemy stack. Let the Ai controlled stack engage the enemy while you attack from behind the enemy. Or engage the enemy so you the Ai armies can get in range to attack if you think your army can hold on that long. The Ai generals will not die easily since they have missile weapons so their armies will stay on the field longer. You will find two stacks to one is a very even fight.

    If you see half a stack enemy unit you want to engage you need to have a full stack for another example.

    Also take full advantage of terrain. If there are hills put your spear chuckas on them you must maximize your units effectiveness. If the enemy is attacking you and far away let them come to you. If you are attacking set you wolf riders to Ai and let them harass the enemy with ranged attacks while you maneuver your troops into battle. Keep Squig herds behind spearmen then unleash them on the strongest enemy unit. Or if the general can be engaged send them all after that general.

    A Stack should have at least 5 spearmen 2-3 archers and 2-3 squig herds, 2-3 wolf riders in an offensive stack. And the rest with whatever you want. The main line of troops will be the spearmen with everything else behind them or on the flanks. You may have the weakest troops in general, but you can make up for this with your numbers and keeping your formations of spear men tight to unleash squigs on them. Even the toughest units in the game can be brought down buy a squig heard.

    If you can set up your stack you plan to be AI controlled with lots of infantry and let them swarm the enemy while you control units like spear chukas and squig herds so you can maximize their effect.

    Keep your general safe the goblins more then any faction folds almost immediately when the general dies or flees. They have ranged weapons to keep them away from the enemy.

    Siege Defense:
    This is mostly to help give ideas. What works for me may not work for you.

    In a defensive battle you will never be able to hold the first set of walls. goblins are just two weak to repel most other troops on a wall battle. by sending out units to attack units carrying other siege engines leaving the ram one alone. To make them use a ram and fight at the gates. Where you can use your mass of goblins to plug up the gate and let the burning oil do its work. If you are attacked by multiple stacks and they have siege weapons you need to choose a place to force them to fight. In castles its much easier as they usually have more choke points you can defend and only one means of access to the control zone. In a city this is much harder as you will have to keep back some forces in the control zone to defend it from AI going around you. Most times you will not be able to defend a city if its more then one stack. But if you can get the majority of them to focus on one street you may be able to hold the city by a timer victory. Its best if you can hold your squigs back till the enemy generals can be attacked. Killing them usually makes it harder for them to re-siege you again.

    In most castles you will put all your infantry at the entrance point to the control zone your massive numbers will allow your to hold off several armies at once. With archers shooting them and waiting for their generals to come to the fore of the fighting. When the generals are anywhere to be seen you focus all ranged attacks on them and all squigs on them. Normally you will run the timer out. I have one many multi stack sieges with my weak goblins this way. Your battle is the clock not then army you are facing in many sige defenses.

    Most units you recruit have 250 soldiers in them. These are great for plugging up city and castle streets so no enemy can get by or your flanks taken. Take advantage of that to its maximum. Numbers is and advantage in narrow streets even over quality.

    Siege Offense:

    Squigs cannot use ladders or towers. That is the first thing you must understand about using goblins to attack a settlement or castle. Your only heavy damage unit is useless in this situation. Normal goblins trying to use ladders will get annihilated. Siege towers not much better. Breaking through a gate, low moral kills your troops and makes them run from burning oil. Waiting for you tech tree to let you have rock lobbers, it takes a while. So what is one too do? Well unlike other armies you dont want to actually try and take the walls. Forcing your way in isnt the only way to fight. You can just wait them out. Each turn doing damage to them.If you can make them wait for multiple turns it weakens them a lot. When they try to sally forth you can engage them before they are completely out of the city as they exit the gate. Meaning you get the charge on them while they are too busy trying to form up their units and use your squigs.

    Goblins have cheap upkeeps and their cites put out a lot of gold compared to that upkeep. So you can easily sit a stack in siege on a city for many turns while their units lose men. While most other factions cannot afford a lengthy siege goblins can and must do it. Try to have your stack bigger the the city or castle you are besieging as they tend to charge out if your stack is small and you need to weaken them. Or have another stack sitting right next to your primary one to help you if they charge out.

    You will want to make at least 2 rams just in case. But every turn make sure you make siege towers. If or when the enemy attacks you to break the siege and they will be a tough enemy to fight if you built a lot of towers you can drop them pull back to just behind them. This way you can use them as cover from missiles and when the enemy attacks it will break up the formations and create choke points to hold. Imagine having 10-15 siege towers as a wall to prevent them from getting a solid charge on you. They will have to come after you since if they charged out they lose if they dont beat you.

    Secondly if you have 10 siege towers and one or two AI army stacks supporting you and you need to take the city fast. You can use all those towers you built and put them in place all around the castle or city for your Ai armies to use and back off and let them do the dirty work or attack from a different side while the enemy is busy with your back up hordes.


    Your playing goblins so play sneaky play cleaver.


    Tips:

    Make an effort to capture established cities that will give you bonuses you cannot get on your own. Capturing Zufbar will make it so that units you produce there have weapons upgrades, any bonus to attack for you is a god send. Empire settlements will have grain exchanges roads and dogs of war units to get mercenary ogres and more money then you would normally be capable of on just a goblins build tree.

    DO NOT! do auto battles when playing goblins. Most of the time even with superior numbers you will automatically lose. You have to do all the battles if you want to make sure you win. Many times i hit auto on a situation I thought i could not lose which left me mad when it said i did indeed lose. Well the computer does not calculate how well you yourself play and that matters a lot for the goblins.

    Make sure to build Da bosses hut in your cities so you can recruit new generals to lead your stacks.

    Dont start a war with Orcs early. If they have a city you want in the early game let them have it. Their onslaught in addition to all the other factions attacking you is not something you want early on. Let sleeping lions be. At least until you have established a large horde.

    Starting turns Guide:

    Turn one 1- You will need to make a boyz hut in each city, it will take two turns to complete. But you cannot recruit or get free upkeeps until they are built. Set auto tax if you dont want to manually adjust all your taxes. Send out your generals to make a tower but leave enough movement to get right back to the castle. Not all of them start with enough loyalty, several times they go rebel on you if you leave them out.

    Turn 3- Your cites can now recruit basic goblins. Karak Ungor and Karak vlog wont need an additional troops since nothing bothers them where they are. Focus on building Population generating or population pleasing buildings to help generate more gold. After this turn other then the Dwarven attack on Gunbad its pretty fluid on what can happen and what you do since you will have more then enough gold coming in to do whatever you want. Build Da boss huts though as you will need lots of extra generals to hold towns and lead sieges and battles.

    At Gunbad and karak Varn Start making Troops as many and as fast as you can. Gunbad in particular will need as many as you can make as withing a few turns it will be attacked by two stacks of dwarves. You need to make sure you keep Gunbad as it produces a lot of gold. And karak varn will randomly be attacked by the surrounding factions. You need to hold Karak varn as this will be the city you will primarily expand from south into the border princes and west of it there are rebel settlements.

    Gunbad defense- make squig herds when you can. Make sure you have plenty of spearmen. When the dwarves attack its pointless to hold the walls as they have siege artillery. Pull back to the crossroad that are just before the control zone. Have equal amounts of spearmen and Warriors sit at the end of each Street leading into that intersection. Netters just behind them with fire at will enabled. Archers and all squig units sit in the Control zone. The Dwarves will take down the walls and enter the city. They will come from both sides of the intersection but they will not be able to get to through that mass of spearmen. You are fighting against time. You have to hold on until the timer runs out. But during the fight the dwarf generals will normally join in the melee when they do you send your squigs at them and kill them. And have your archers keep pouring fire into the mass of dwarves your spearmen are holding back. If you kill both generals its likely you will not see another dwarf attack on gunbad for a long time. But due to the slayers you have to wait until the timer runs out before the battle is over. Once it is over set your units to retrain.

    Karak varn- Once Gunbad is secure from this castle is where you will want to expand your empire. Build watch towers so you can see everything going on around you.

    To the west is the city of Hornou, dont bother with it vampires take it and if you take it they attack you for it.

    But further west of that is the city of Pfongzig, and south of which is an empire fort. Siege this city with a full offensive stack when you can build one and leave a full defense behind. Further west of Pfongzig is Three Towers castle, full of undead so you will want to wait till you can put two stacks on it.

    To the east is Zufbar a dwarvern stronghold. Pay attention to when it becomes vulnerable. many times it is left with a minimal garrison if you can take and hold it you can make troops with weapons upgrades.

    To the south is the lands of the border princes. Here you will be doing a lot of waiting for sieges to end. You dont want to assault them as many cities have experienced garrisons. Best to weaken them as much as possible. Border princes cities to take are Akenlorf, Broska, Vidoudan, Zenres. Once you have these cities you will be able to march north and take on the empire interior.

    Once you get rolling by turn 30 you have enough forces that you can take on chaos army scripts.

    Conclusions: A very tough army. That requires your attention and time to play. Many times you must plan many turns ahead to get where you want to be. For the most part other then the attack on gunbad by dwarves your cites are not attacked that often. But taking on other factions with only squig herds as a main damage unit is tough especially in sieges since squigs cant climb towers or ladders and get burnt to death by oil. But you fly under the radar of other factions till you are ready to strike. Its usually not until turn 15 before I start taking other settlements. If you play this faction in multi player you should let a person playing goblins Out number you two to one in units to be fair.

    You can win most battles if you plan ahead for them. Its the ones you were not expecting that you have to worry about.

    Currently playing on med difficulty at turn 30 and control 13 territories including Praag which I took from a chaos army. I plan to take on the chaos storm with a horde of goblins. And show undivided whos the boss.

    Update: Chaos undivided took praag, but at the cost them large portions their armies.

    Note: I had no squigs in praag when they came and I did not have a full army in the city I had three spots open. Goblins Dead in praag 2354. Chaos warriors Dead 1248, just with goblin spearmen and warriors. Funny thing is they ran down the timer buy pushing my goblins out of the control zone with their cavalry. Still had like 200 left fighting when time was out. But with Spearmen some warriors and archers and grit I was able to take on Three to one odds and though I lost the following turn my full stack with 5 squig herds took the city back on the following turn, thank god they made all those holes in the walls for me. This stack came from the fort south of praag where i was free up-keeping my squigs. If Praag was a castle i would have held it im sure.

    When you win battles with them you feel like you have accomplish something.



    Forethought, Patience and Planning and a bit of Sneaky is the key too Goblins.
    Last edited by Bradford; December 13, 2010 at 11:28 PM.

  8. #8
    The Holy Pilgrim's Avatar In Memory of Blackomur
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    Default Re: Kurgis & Co's Guide to CoW Factions *5 factions done 27/11/10*

    Reikland



    Intro

    Reikland has it easy compared to some of the other factions of the Empire. They have a well-rounded military, they have a good income, and best of all, they are closely aligned with the Grand Theogonist, meaning you have reinforcements next to your most important settlements, Altdorf and Castle Reiksguard, at all times. This will be a big help when you are invaded by enemies.


    Military

    Let’s talk about Reikland’s military shall we?

    Playing as Reikland- Reikland has a very well rounded military that can adapt to take advantage of many different situations. They not only have virtually every type of unit in the game (something of which most of their opponents lack), but they have the funds to make them. Their armies can get fairly large, especially with leftovers from the many scripted battles you will fight. This makes their army size pretty formidable. Also, make sure you know your opponents strengths and weaknesses. If you’re fighting Khorne, don’t go into prolonged melee with them. Their Berserkers will tear even your Reiksguard to pieces. Instead, use ranged weapons to wear them down, and then strike them hard with a well placed cavalry rush. If you are fighting the Elves, be sure to have spears and cavalry to take on their masterful horses. If you fight Tzeentch, be sure to put your Greatswords and Reiksguard to use. Diversity is your weapon. Use it well.

    Playing Against Reikland- Unlike most of the other factions, Reikland doesn’t have any obvious weaknesses. Their armies can fit into just about any situation if used right. But that doesn’t mean that they are unstoppable. That couldn’t be any further from the truth. Due to their knack for staying balanced, they don’t have many specialty units. That means you can use their strength against them. Use your special units to counter what they’re good at. For example, if you are Khorne, stay at very close range with their infantry. Don’t try and fight on their terms, fight on yours. Their infantry are good, but not as good as the Blood God’s. That goes for any faction. If you’re Tzeentch, wear them down in a fire fight. If you’re the Dwarves, bombard them with artillery. Don’t let them choose the battles, because if they do, you will lose.

    Unit Roster:

    Common Empire Troops- These units are found all throughout the Empire and can perform many tasks. While they may not be the best units in the game, they do help in times of need. Not only do they provide numbers, they are also easy to replace and cheap to upgrade into more formidable fighting machines.

    Empire Swordsmen- Basic Empire soldiers that are best used for getting rid of spear units and holding a city’s walls.

    Empire Spearmen- These are best used for protecting archers from charging cavalry and holding the line whilst your Swordsmen (and possibly something better) to rush to dispatch of the enemy.

    Empire Halberdiers- While have lower stats than their Swordsmen and Spearmen counterparts, they make up for it in their ability to deal with heavily armored foes such as Chaos Warriors or Black Orcs.

    Empire Archers- These units are the most basic ranged units the Empire has to offer. They are cheap, can cause quite a bit of casualties amongst unarmored foes, and they can plant stakes in the ground to further protect them from cavalry.

    Empire Crossbowmen- While stronger than their archer brethren, they cannot plant stakes into the ground (thus are susceptible to cavalry charges without spearmen nearby) and have a slower firing rate than the faster shooting Empire Archers. They are, however, much more effective at taking down armored opponents from a safe distance.

    Empire Handgunners- Handgunners are what every army in the Empire needs. They may not be able to shoot over the heads of those in front, plant stakes, or even skirmish, they excel in taking down foes that no arrow or bolt can dream of. They are very much needed when facing hordes of Chaos Warriors or other heavily armored opponents.

    Pistoliers- Pistoliers are very fast moving cavalry wielding the trademark of the Empire, guns. They can easily out run most, if not all, cavalry and leave infantry in the dust. They pick off enemies with their trusty pistols that are more effective at taking down armored foes than any arrow.

    Greatswords- Greatswords are one of the best infantry units any Empire faction can muster. They wield large two-handed blades that can take down most opponents with ease. They also have much better morale than the lower tier units such as the Empire Swordsmen and the Empire Spearmen. They are a great asset to any Imperial army.

    Unique Units- These units are the not found in any other Empire faction. They symbolize Reikland and are better than their lesser counterparts. They may be expensive and less numerous, but they more than make up for that in skill and morale.

    Dismounted Reiksguard- These are the best heavy infantry units the Empire can field. Not only do they have excellent armor and can shrug off arrows like they were nothing, they can also inspire nearby troops to fight harder and cause them to take less morale damage from fire arrows or pestilence bombs gifted by Nurgle’s Plaugebearers. They can also stand toe-to-toe with more elite units than the Empire Swordsmen or even the Greatswords can.

    Carroburg Greatswords- Carroburg Greatswords are basically beefed up Greatswords. They can take more damage than the average Greatsword and can dish out more.

    War Priests of Sigmar- These are the hardest hitters in all of the Empire. They have more health than the average soldier, they can crush armored enemies like tin foil, and they can inspire allies to a greater degree than the Reiksguard. They cannot be trained unfortunately.

    Reiksguard Knights- Reiksguard Knights are the Dismounted Reiksguards of the cavalry world. They are better than most, if not all, Empire cavalry, including the Inner Circle Knights. They have a ton of defense, good attack, and an excellent charge. Their only downside is that they are very expensive, but they are definitely worth it.


    That's all for right now. More will come soon.
    Last edited by The Holy Pilgrim; November 27, 2010 at 12:50 PM.

  9. #9

    Default The League of Ostermark

    The League of Ostermark

    Intro: A sombre and mysterious place, the Eerie Downs holds a palpable dread for the folk of the Mark; too well do they know the tales of engulfing fog and voices that whisper words of madness into the ears of travellers lost upon them...

    See here for Thokran's stunningly written AAR "The Glory of Ostermark" if you want inspiration to play this faction!

    Welcome to the most easterly of the Empire's provinces a land ravaged by Chaos, Orcs, Mercenaries and anything else that is attracted by the Wyrdstone that remains around its ruined capital of Mordheim.

    Difficulty: Medium (If you are aggressive)

    Strengths: Black Guard of Morr. Easy finances if you are aggressive throughout. Two well developed starting locations. Empire faction so varied troops galore including lots of mercenary generals.

    Weaknesses: Hope the dwarves last longer than turn 7. Only two starting settlements. Front line position against Chaos with Orcs and Sylvania to deal with too.

    Starting Position: You start with only two settlements, Bechafen and Nagenhof although both are well developed and a general and Morr cavalry unit in a fort to the south. You need to take Mordheim, Kiel, Nachtdorf and Grenzburg. You have 7-8 turns before a large Chaos Invasion of Bechafen so use your starting troops well and be ready. I would get Nagenhof to build a Knights Panther then Black Guard of Morr castle to help with recruitment and for Bechafen you have a range of options - highways as you will note both provinces have a long axis or more military minded buildings to get recruitment further going.

    Build merchants, spies, assassins on turn 1 as all three types will be used. Merchants to the warpstone at Mordheim of course. You will want a spy to keep an eye on Karak Kadrin at all times - if you can spare it, one assassin here can help the dwarves by killing all orc generals as they come up the road - but the chances are Kadrin will still fall just around the time Chaos invades..

    Unit Types: (* indicates a unit with free upkeep in a settlement)

    Infantry - Spearmen*. Basic unit with a bonus against cavalry

    Halberdiers. As above but far tougher than they seem - a good staple of your battleline early on

    Swordsmen. Have high morale and until Greatswords can be recruited in numbers your main "offensive" foot troop

    Greatswords. Excellent morale and about the best hand to hand troops you have - due to limited recruiting it can be best not to rely too heavily on these as retraining so many can be detrimental

    Archers*. Basic unit but can use stakes whilst they may not seem effective - don't be fooled their rate of fire and ability to fire directly over obstacles is very useful

    Crossbowmen. Effective versus armour so great in field armies/siege defence for pin-cushioning those heavier troops

    Handgunners. Effective versus armour. You need to use these differently as they can't fire over troops (unless using terrain) but great in field armies. Defence is far worse than other missile troops.

    Artillery - Great Cannon. Explosive shot, grapeshot, normal shot - it's a cannon folks! I prefer mortars for field armies but you can't beat these for attacking settlements (in conjunction with mortars ofc)

    Mortar. Ahh the mortar, still the most useful of the artillery. Defensive and offensive weapon for all combats. (see the Dwarves guide here if you don't understand what I mean)

    Hellblaster Volley Gun. Looks great but requires a real art to use. Due to cost I rarely build any but can have uses in defensive sieges. In field armies very difficult to use and get off more than 1 to 2 volleys.

    Cavalry - Pistoliers. Effective versus armour and with excellent morale. These are great skirmishing troops for weakening heavily armoured troops then running down routing units.

    Inner Circle Knights. Inspire nearby infantry, powerful charge, give you a general when recruited.

    Knights Panther. Fast cavalry, excellent morale with a powerful charge. Does what cavalry do best - charge, pull out, rinse and repeat to break the enemy.

    Black Guard of Morr. Frighten enemy infantry and have excellent morale, unique to Ostermark. Do NOT have powerful charge but used well these are your greatest asset. See tips.

    Others - War Alter of Sigmar. Inspire troops with excellent morale. Useful in the centre of an infantry line to stiffen resolve.

    Mercenaries - Ogres. Ogres rock, just point them in the direction of the enemy or use them to defend walls.

    Deaths Head's. High morale with a bonus versus cavalry, unique to Ostermark. Amazing halberdiers, if you can recruit enough, these make an armies centre line very tough indeed, but as they are mercs tough to keep retraining large amounts.

    Free company Men-at-Arms and Archers. Can have upkeep in a settlement but cost is higher where not - use them, kill them off over time and to fill out an army if you can recruit any in a province.

    Strategy, Battles, Invasions:

    Chaos Invasions: Around turn 7-8 a large amount of Chaos stacks begin to approach and even more will appear from the west to (hope you've got towers everywhere to track all these!). If possible you will want to have taken Grenzburg asap as if you don't Kislev will - place it under siege until you can get cannons in place if needed (-1 command for "Questioning technology" trait is nothing).

    Assassinate any and all Chaos generals you can - although this can be difficult as they can be a lot tougher than rebel generals. You will get a free stack of Free Company, this in conjunction with whatever field army you have plus the defenders of Bechafen will have to take out 4-5 Chaos stacks. Stay next to Bechafen as Chaos will get an auto attack here so you want two full stacks ready at all times - send anything that can be repaired and is very weak off to Nagenhof as they will soon need troops to...

    You will get a large sum of money along with the free stack so where you were tight for cash you will suddenly get building underway again. Ignore the Talabacland stacks they do not help you! Obviously these gutless cowards have read Maha Mogglana's guide!! about retreating In fact even worse they will probably go off and take Kiel which you need! Don't worry about Kiel though - you've got other problems..

    Orc Invasions: Not scripted just "natural". Karak Kadrin normally falls rapidly - you will know because you have a spy right outside the walls right? Hopefully you've also got towers all across so you can see any progress of orcs stacks into your lands. One of the few factions where I don't take the Beastman fort straight away as the orcs tend to go for it and this delays them - quite often they go for Vitevo - good, leave it to Kislev to take back. Rapidly, move a stack across from fighting the Chaos hordes and start building/re-training a second stack - the first will probably be so damaged just fighting off orc stacks you won't be able to take Kadrin. You must take Kadrin though to use as your blocking point so you can expand south - hence the second stack.

    Expansion south: You will want to take Mordheim and the surrounding towns so it's time to fight vampires - assassinate anything that looks like a general. Check to see if Sylvania has taken Zhufbar and Hornau with spies - if they have drive all the way to Drakenhof and level its production (in conjunction with Crusade if you can time it). You may need to keep Nagenhof's production free to rotate damaged units out of Kadrin until you can convert it to 70% empire religion. If you're struggling for cash at this point use the beastman fort and normal fort to store troops created for your push south until its ready to leave.

    Random Tips:

    Black Guard of Morr are key to your success. Despite not being as good as Knights Panther as straight cavalry they excel at charging engaged infantry in the back - use one on each flank to roll up an enemy line after it has engaged your own battle line - works a treat!

    Espionage is key for Ostermark - you don't want orc/chaos generals, sylvania vampires making life difficult for you - with two large starting territories then defending Kadrin you desperately need to see what threats are approaching.

    Ostland - you're probably going to be so under threat that you won't be able to directly aid Ostland - but miraculously if they fall - find troops from where ever and step in to grab those settlements! You're going to be frontline against Chaos Undivided when it comes anyway

    Field Armies - Grenzburg will take a long time to recruit anything other than basic troops - so your early field armies will be of whatever you can recruit - don't waste time once you have beaten the initial chaos wave offs - throw stacks together (one exception is to always try to have 2 units of Black guard of Morr) and be agressive - the earlier you can take Kadrin, the faster you can convert it to self sufficient unit defense. Therefore you get a real taste of a varied field army - not the ideal type you'd like to have. In some ways this is better as you get a better appreciation for units and how to use them - try it you may be surprised

    Seriously go and read Thokran's AAR for more tips about how to fight as Ostermark - it won awards for a reason..
    Last edited by Kurgis; December 01, 2010 at 11:46 AM. Reason: Added bit about field armies

  10. #10

    Default Re: Kurgis & Co's Guide to CoW Factions *7-ish factions done 29/11/10*

    Mercenaries

    This isn’t a faction . This is the extra unit you can recruit if you have the Mercenaries Camp(Dogs of War Camp) in your city . There are four type of mercenaries :
    Mercenaries Captain : pay 5000 gold , the Mercenaries captain will appear near your capital with 3 units of his own . Then in next turn , all settlement have Mercs camp can recruit unit of this captain . If the Mercs Captain is killed , you can’t recruit his troop anymore . (I don’t know it is true or not , but look like if you lost the captain , all his troop in your army will disband )
    Unique Mercenaries : Some factions have their own mercenaries (You don’t need hire captain to recruit them) , the only requirement is have Mercenaries Camp in your settlement .
    Common Mercenaries : Even if you don’t have unique mercs and don’t hire any mercs captain , you still able to recruit those unit if have Mercenaries Camp .
    “Not permanent” Mercenaries : there is only one mercs of this type , this is Orge . You can’t recruit Orge as normal even if you have Mercenaries Camp . Maybe this turn , they appear for you to hire , next turn they disappear . Maybe in 20 turns you have no Orge . Maybe they will appear in your barrack for 10 turns .

    List of Mercenaries :

    Mercenaries Captain :
    1.Voland
    Unit : Voland’s Venator
    Type : Heavy cavalry
    Faction : All Empire factions
    This is the best mercenaries you can hire . Voland’s troop can fight in equal with any Knight Order .

    2.Eric Ragna
    Unit : Ragna’s Wolf
    Type : Heavy cavalry
    Faction : All Empire factions , Kislev
    2hp cavalry

    3.Luka Braganza
    Unit : Braganza’s Besiegers
    Type: Heavy Crossbowmen
    Faction : All Empire factions

    4. Pirazzo
    Unit : Pirazzo’s Lost Legion Pikemen & Pirazzo’s Lost Legion Crossbowmen
    Type: Pikemen & Crossbowmen
    Faction : All Empire factions
    You have 2 type of troop for just 1 captain .

    5. Leopoldo di Lucci
    Unit : Leopold’s Leopard Company
    Type: Pikemen
    Faction : All Empire factions

    6. Bronzino
    Unit : Bronzino’s Battery of Galloper Guns
    Type: Lightweight Cannon
    Faction : All Empire factions
    Fast-moving cannon , have grapeshot , good in field battle or defend your city .

    7. Maximilian Damark
    Unit : Marksmen of Miragliano
    Type: Crossbowmen
    Faction : All Empire factions

    8. Roderigo Delmonte
    Unit : The Alcatani Fellowship
    Type: Pikemen
    Faction : All Empire factions

    9. “Ragged” Rico
    Unit : Ricco’s Republican Guard
    Type: Heavy Pikemen
    Faction : All Empire factions
    The best pikemen in CoW

    10. Hernan Cotrez
    Unit : Bandolleros Gringos
    Type: Heavy Handgunner
    Faction : All Empire factions
    The Bandolleros Gringos is infantry , but Hernan Cotrez's bodyguard is cavalry .

    11. Rykarth the Unbreakable
    Unit : Chaos Dwarf Warriors , Chao Dwarfs Blunderbuss
    Type : Heavy Infantry , Heavy Handgunner .
    Faction : All Chaos faction

    12. Ruglud Bonechewer
    Unit : Ruglud’s Armored Orcs
    Type: Heavy Crossbowmen
    Faction : Orcs & Goblins . (Night Goblin can't hire this captain)
    The only crossbow troops worship Gork and Mork

    13. Long Drong
    Unit : Long Drong’s Slayer Pirates
    Type : Heavy Handgunner
    Faction : Karaz Ankor (Dwarves)
    This captain will appear near the shore of Sea of Claws .

    14*.Gotrek Gurnisson
    Unit : Gotrek's Slayers (bodyguard)
    Type : Heavy Infantry
    Faction : Karaz Ankor (Dwarves)
    Anyone read series novel Gotrek & Felix will know about him .
    This is a special mercenary general . Pay him 1000 gold and you will have a Slayer general . And nothing more !!!
    (Thank Kurgis for remind me about this general)

    Unique Mercenaries :
    1.Unit : Altdorf’s Company of Honour
    Type : Halberdmen
    Faction : Reikland
    Better than Empire Halberdmen

    2.Unit : The Death’s Heads
    Type : Swordmen
    Faction : Ostermark
    Have shieldwall and bonus against cavalry

    3.Unit : The Swords of Ulric
    Type : Swordmen
    Faction : Middenland

    4.Unit : The Fireloques of Ferlangen
    Type : Handgunner
    Faction : Ostland
    Better than Bandolleros Gringos

    5.Unit : Van Klumpf’s Buccaneers
    Type : Swordmen
    Faction : Reikland , Nordland , Ostland .
    Require port in your city

    6.Unit : Sterntower Marksmen
    Type : Crossbowmen
    Faction : Wissenland

    7.Unit : Grundel’s Defenders
    Type : Spearmen
    Faction : Wissenland

    8.Unit : The Drakwald Patrol
    Type : Spearmen
    Faction : Hochland

    9.Unit : Helhunten’s Redeemers
    Type : Halberdmen
    Faction : Stirland
    This unit is halberdmen but don’t have spearwall formation (still have bonus against cavalry)

    10.Unit : The Deathjacks
    Type : Archer
    Faction : Stirland


    Common Mercenaries
    1.Unit : Free Company
    Type : Light Infantry
    Faction : All Empire factions and Sylvania

    2.Unit : Free Company Archers
    Type : Archer
    Faction : All Empire factions and Sylvania
    Better than Empire Archers

    3.Unit : Ungors with spear
    Type : Spearmen
    Faction : All Chaos faction

    4.Unit : Gors
    Type : Infantry
    Faction : All Chaos faction

    5.Unit : Bestigors
    Type : Heavy Infantry
    Faction : All Chaos faction

    *Sylvania don’t have Mercenaries Camp but you can recruit Free Company and Free Company Archers in your settlement.
    Sylvania General can buy mercenaries : Zombies , Skeleton Spears , Skeleton Warriors , Skeleton Archers , Mounted Skeleton as vanilla M2TW


    “Not permanent” Mercenaries :
    Unit : Orges
    Type : Heavy Infantry
    Faction : All factions (except High Elves , Dark Elves and Sylvania) can hire Orges
    Last edited by Maha Moggalana; December 01, 2010 at 11:30 AM.
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    ▂▄▅█████████▅▄▃▂
    I███████████████████].
    ◥⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙▲⊙◤
    This is Total War !!!

  11. #11

    Default Grand County of Wissenland

    Grand County of Wissenland

    Intro: "The brightest spots in your so-called jewel were undoubtedly fashioned by Dwarvish hands. The rest is typical shoddish Mannish work..." Nargond, Dwarf Sewer Jack Forges of Nuln, pg 14.

    The most south-westerly of the Empire factions, you would think you are safe as the rest of the Empire acts as a buffer. But this is Warhammer my friends, no one is truly safe from the Chaos and Greenskin filth...

    Difficulty: Easy - a good starting faction if you are new to CoW

    Strengths: Your cannons are vastly superior to other Empire factions. Easy finances made easier by being aggressive. Two well developed starting locations. Empire faction, so varied troops galore including lots of mercenary generals. Can go in many directions.

    Weaknesses: You may feel safe - you aren't. Continual Beastmen incursions. Prioritise where you are going or you may get overstretched.

    Starting Position: You have 3 settlements, Wissenburg (capital), Nuln and Wusterburg, you only have to hold these for victory (plus of course take X amount of others). All your settlements have field army units at the start - get building spearmen where you can to take over defense and get these together with more varied units so you have an offensive stack in the making. I would build a Knights of the Blazing Sun castle in Wissenburg, possibly in Nuln to, Fletchers workshop in Wusterburg (it already has a Practice Range).

    Build merchants, spies, assassins on turn 1 as all three types will be used. Merchants to the warpstone at Mordheim of course. Spies and assassins to start making life easier. Your main goal is to put together a field army and artillery (don't overload it with Handgunners - keep spares back for stack no 2.) - it will be needed.

    Unit Types: (* indicates a unit with free upkeep in a settlement)

    Infantry - Spearmen*. Basic unit with a bonus against cavalry

    Halberdiers. As above but far tougher than they seem - a good staple of your battleline early on

    Swordsmen. Have high morale and until Greatswords can be recruited in numbers your main "offensive" foot troop

    Greatswords. Excellent morale and about the best hand to hand troops you have - due to limited recruiting it can be best not to rely too heavily on these as retraining so many can be detrimental

    Archers*. Basic unit but can use stakes whilst they may not seem effective - don't be fooled their rate of fire and ability to fire directly over obstacles is very useful

    Crossbowmen. Effective versus armour so great in field armies/siege defence for pin-cushioning those heavier troops

    Handgunners. Effective versus armour. You need to use these differently as they can't fire over troops (unless using terrain) but great in field armies. Defence is far worse than other missile troops.

    Artillery - Nuln Great Cannon. Explosive shot, grapeshot, normal shot - it's a cannon folks but from the home of the Imperial Engineers! I prefer mortars for field armies but you can't beat these for attacking settlements (in conjunction with mortars ofc). This does far more damage against walls than normal Imperial cannons, two in a sieging army are fine for knocking down multiple walls/towers.

    Mortar. Ahh the mortar, still the most useful of the artillery. Defensive and offensive weapon for all combats. (see the Dwarves guide here if you don't understand what I mean)

    Hellblaster Volley Gun. Looks great but requires a real art to use. Due to cost I rarely build any but can have uses in defensive sieges. In field armies very difficult to use and get off more than 1 to 2 volleys.

    Cavalry - Pistoliers. Effective versus armour and with excellent morale. These are great skirmishing troops for weakening heavily armoured troops then running down routing units.

    Inner Circle Knights. Inspire nearby infantry, powerful charge, give you a general when recruited.

    Knights of the Blazing Sun. Fast cavalry, excellent morale with a powerful charge. Does what cavalry do best - charge, pull out, rinse and repeat to break the enemy.

    Others - War Alter of Sigmar. Inspire troops with excellent morale. Useful in the centre of an infantry line to stiffen resolve.

    Mercenaries - Ogres. Ogres rock, just point them in the direction of the enemy or use them to defend walls.

    Sterntower Marksmen. High morale with a bonus versus armour, unique to Wissenland. Slightly better than normal Crossbowmen - don't recruit to many for a field army, retraining can be difficult with to many.

    Grundel's Defenders. High morale with a bonus versus cavalry, unique to Wissenland. See the marksmen above. Trained up these can be fearsome.

    Free company Men-at-Arms and Archers. Can have upkeep in a settlement but cost is higher where not - use them, kill them off over time and to fill out an army if you can recruit any in a province.

    Strategy, Battles, Invasions:

    Overview: For once in CoW, you really do have options with what do to with your empire baring in mind a few home truths. You are going to get hit by Orcs but not for a long time (and this will change radically in 1.4). I see Wissenland's job as cleaning up, where possible, problems in the Empire - always keep an eye on whats happening further out. Your second eye must always be on Averland - if it falls for whatever reason you must be ready to rush in and take over as soon as possible (stop doing anything else and take over their settlements - see the Averland guide for how this will change your approach).

    Orcs: Orcs will take the Reikland settlement Grunsburg to the North - go and take it back, although try and time it so you can fight one stack in the field so you can use those gunners properly and make the siege easier. Orcs will always take Hochsleben from Averland to the east - off you go - take it back (launch a Crusade for this one to get other factions to fight orc stacks and make life easier). Its vital you take Hochsleben asap as the orcs will make it a capital and therefore build like mad here.

    Now what?: Well here it is time to clean up the Keep in the mountains close to Nuln (assassinate the General - leave a full stack in siege for 8 turns if needed, you're in no hurry to take it - don't burn it so it keeps the special buildings.. plus you get a useful freebie here but i'm giving no spoilers away on what it is ). Send stacks off to help other people out - I helped Middenheim out to keep the Beastmen down then Nordland against Chaos, and gifted provinces back to them as Averland died on me and I had to rush in and take over the settlements - this made me frontline all of a sudden at just the right time and I could easily keep 3 full stacks in the field expanding at will.

    Grimgor: On turn 46 you will get wind that the Orcs are aiming for Nuln. This is part of Grimgors approach through the south of the Empire to try and fight Archaon at Middenheim. During 1.3 version this is 3 stacks - assassinate all generals and they will wander off to the nearest orc settlement - kill them off otherwise they will probably kill Ostermark off. Note: the notes for 1.4 say this will be a lot harder, if this guide hasn't be updated for 1.4 get ready for a much tougher proposition.

    Chaos Undivided: You can easily have several field armies in motion - use them to start killing CU stacks and Orc stacks that wander past Mordheim, be prepared to have spies everywhere as with the distance involved you will need to be pro-active in where you go - eventually of course it will be you clearing up the Empire provinces.

    Beastmen: If you help Middenheim survive by taking out Issenbuttel and keeping its settlements you tend to get several stacks of horde-like beastmen in your lands - always keep one stack back to take them out plus use your city defense forces to continually wipe them out - shouldn't be to much of a problem, just gets a bit tiresome.

    Random Tips:

    No tips needed. Well ok a couple then.

    This is a good faction to start with, but use it to keep an eye on what happens with other factions so you understand what you will face when you play them.

    You are a support faction for the frontline factions - let them die out at your peril as the ensuing invasion may be to much if they don't fight well.

    If the Dwarves fall to Vardek Krom - expect Hochsleben to be threatened by them beyond the usual orc/night goblin threats.
    Last edited by Kurgis; December 09, 2010 at 02:35 PM. Reason: typos

  12. #12

    Default Re: Kurgis & Co's Guide to CoW Factions *9-ish guides done 9/12/10*

    Orcs and Goblins

    Intro:

    “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH”

    Need I say more. I didn't think so.

    Difficulty: Medium : Hard start but medium later on.

    Starting position with a majority of your starting troops very far away from your starting settlements. Many of which are expensive upkeeps that will put you in the red fast if you dont capture territory quickly. Similar to Vampire counts starting turns. Making the start hard. But you it is easy to take and hold territories thanks to being able to fill captured territory with cheap goblin units as garrisons and keep the main armies on the move. Or crank out lots of goblins to make suicide stacks or Stacks the support the main Orc units. Its a very flexible faction.

    You can Declare a Waaaaaghs (jihads) and get free upkeep for units participating and save money that way but it can end up spreading your army and territory thin leaving you vulnerable, so it must be thought out carefully and its not always best to do it early. Not to mention if you dont make progress towards the target you can end up with unit desertions which will cripple your Waaaaaaghs. Ill touch on that more when I get to the Waaaaagh section in strategies section. Make sure to read it.

    Strengths:
    Tough troops with two wounds. Good mixed variety of troops giving them great flexibility while not losing focus. Best when fighting on and open battlefield. Thanks to multiple wounds good at absorbing missile fire.Waaaaaaaghs! Very tough basic infantry on par with other factions more expensive infantry. Your archer units can fight on par with your normal infantry units but have less defense but giving you more options with your archers then other factions whose archers are terrible in melee combat. Get boosts in combat with warcry special ability. Some units get bonuses for fighting in deserts. Shamans to help spread the word of Gork and Mork and provide a unit that can scout around for you and allow you do declare the Waaaaaaagh!'s on a city/castle. Also large amount of the Army can get the free upkeep bonuses.

    Weaknesses:
    No outstanding missile troops. No standard troops that are effective against armor. Cavalry a bit slower and weaker then other factions with cavalry even with two wounds. Lack elite cavalry. Savage Orc boss dies you can loose large chunks of your armies. Start out with very undeveloped cities with low populations. Have to keep large garrisons in freshly conquered cities. Most units charge without orders which can make it hard to control the army. If the savage orc boss dies you lose your savage orcs until a new one comes along. No spies or assassins.

    Starting Position:

    Relatively out of the way starting cites in the badlands are close, but lack roads so travel between them making it much slower getting around then other races so defending can be hard. But it is easier to intercept incoming enemies and fight them in the open since they are slowed down as well. Start out with very undeveloped cities with low populations. Your main starting armies start out in the middle of the border princes and to get to your settlements you will have to fight your way through a lot of tough dwarf armies. While your settlements in the badlands have very few starting units to defend with. So its a very tough starting position that gets this faction a hard rating which gets easier once you have captured some territory. And or united your starting territories with your new territories. Unlike other factions your starting armies have very few experience or upgrades. This makes your start a bit rougher.

    Unit Types:

    All Orc units have Warcry which gives them a temporary boost to there attack values. Making them killing machines on a good charge. Also Orc units have multiple wounds. So even if their armor value is lower then equivalent troops from other factions they will outlast them in combat. Orcs all like to charge without orders so you have to keep an Eye on them or you will lose control of the battle fast. As your formation and Line falls apart due to their charges. several units get bonuses in deserts but it is rarely used so I wont point out which ones.

    Infantry-

    Goblin warriors- Free upkeep-Weak but large unit numbers and cheap and disposable a large horde of them can do serious damage. Due to low cost they make good suicide troops/stacks to weaken incoming enemy stacks. Low moral so tend to flee.

    Goblin spearmen-Free upkeep- Same as warriors but with a bonus vs cavalry, if you have to make one or the other make spearmen. low moral prone to flee. Fill out your free upkeep slots with Orcs and use the cheap upkeep goblins to fill out the rest of empty slots. Due to low cost they make good suicide troops/stacks to weaken incoming enemy stacks.

    Goblin archers-Free upkeep-Good for garrison archers, weak arrow attack but huge numbers make up for it in large volleys. Fill up garrison with tougher Orc units with high upkeep cost and then fill it out with cheap upkeep archers. Due to low cost they make good suicide troops/stacks to weaken incoming enemy stacks. Unlike Orc archers they can skirmish.

    Savage orc Boyz-Free upkeep- Stronger attack then orc boys but weaker defense. Mob formation cannot form up into ranks, makes it hard to use them to push enemy formations. And to place in siege defense battles that are not walls. Using standar orc boyz to engage the enemy you can have these guys counter charge and use their high attack value to break through. Due to the risk of them abandoning the army when the savage orc boss dies its best to use them aggressively or as shields to you your other units that will not leave if a boss dies.

    Savage orc arrer Boyz-Free upkeep- Mob formation makes them somewhat less effective then Other archers, especially when placing on hills to maximize Line of sight. But have a higher hand to hand attack value then other archers making them good for melee after they have spent their arrows. Cannot skirmish. Due to the risk of them abandoning the army when the savage orc boss dies its best to use them aggressively or as shields to you your other units that will not leave if a boss dies.

    Orc boyz-Free upkeep- Average stats expected of the basic unit but with two wounds each makes them tough units to crack compared to other factions baseline infantry. Giving them amazing durability.

    Orc Spearmen- free upkeep- Your only other unit with bonus vs cavalry, you will want to recruit them as often as possible as many factions use lots of cavalry. These should make up the majority of your garrisons forces.

    Orc Arrer Boyz-Free upkeep- Average missile attack damage. But have two wounds so can fight in hand to hand surprisingly well if the enemy breaks through your lines or out flanks you they can hold them back as well orc boyz since they have the same attack value but weaker defense.

    Elite infantry-

    Big Uns- Substantially tougher and harder hitting then other orc boyz. Outclassed by black orcs but not by much. Cheaper as well. On par with Chaos warriors units due to having 2 wounds.

    Black Orcs- The toughest armored unit in the ORC army and the Attack value not to looked down upon. Every Army Stack should have one if not two units of them as they can turn and orc Horde into an unbreakable green mass thanks to inspiration having them near gives other orc boyz. On par with Chaos chosen units if not better with multiple wounds.

    Black Orcs destroyers- The hardest hitting unit in the orc army with the highest standard attack value. Though they have less armor then standard black orcs. These guys will destroy ,as their name says, Enemy units. On par with chaos Chosen units if not better due to multiple wounds.

    Ogres - High attack value merc unit with three wounds each. But less useful in the Orcs faction who have Black or destroyers that do similar damage but have a much higher defense value.

    Ruglands armored orcs - Powerful crossbow missile attack, effective against armor, merc unit. Similar stats as orc boyz so can fight in hand to hand well. But they have effective against Armour Crossbow attacks. If you get the option to recruit them do so and make sure you get Rugland the leader to a well defend location and keep him out of harms way. The boon from his superior missile troops needs to be protected in an army with no other outstanding missile troop options. Similar to Protecting the Savage orc boss.


    Cavalry-

    Goblin wolf riders- Skirmishing light fast attacking cavalry with long range missiles. Good for harassing and flanking. Chasing down other light Cavalry.

    Boar boys- A good flanking unit with a good defense. But slower then other factions calvary. But they get the flanking job done. And have multiple wounds making them last much longer then other factions similar units in Hand to hand and especially vs being shot at. Do tend to die fast to strong vs cavalry units as they do not have as high a defense value as other factions cavalry. Charge in Pull back charge again. Repeat.

    Savage Orc Boar boyz- Good attack value and a powerful javelin attack but limited ammo. Those javelins can do serious damage to an enemy unit on the charge. Or even if you just let them fire them at will at incoming enemy while behind the infantry. This unit is the best reason to protect your Savage orc boss. The infantry and Archers might be nothing special but these guys are the best cavalry unit you Have. And the javelins make up for your cavalry being slower then other factions, even with very limited ammo. Plus multiple wounds is always a plus making up for the low defense a bit. Do tend to die fast to strong vs cavalry units as they do not have as high a defense value as other factions cavalry. Charge in Pull back charge again. Repeat. Due to the risk of them abandoning the army when the savage orc boss dies its best to use them aggressively or as shields to you your other units that will not leave if a boss dies.

    Generals
    Grimgor- black orc infantry bodyguards- Better stats then Black Orcs. And they are already mean as they come.

    Big un Boar boys- Very good stats and have multiple wounds effectively making it much more durable then Other factions generals. the are Stats are so much better then regular boar boys you can make them instead of them. They might lack the numbers but the better attack and defense can make up for or greatly supplement. As close as you get to an elite cavalry unit but low numbers. Heir gets more in his unit.

    Savage orc boar boys- Good stats and have multiple wounds effectively making it much more durable then Other factions generals. Also has the strong javelin attack. Seem to have more ammo then the the other boar boys, that or im seeing things. Must be protected, since if he dies the savage orcs will abandon your army same as when merc leaders die. And this can cripple your army and or options. Due to this risk its best to have your savage orc units leading the charges in battles as its better to let them take the casualties due to the risk of losing them at any time, and this will protect the numbers of your main troops who will not run off when a boss dies.

    Siege war machines-

    Spear chuka- Long range ballista unit with 4 machines, Use it on gates or as long rang support for your army in the open Especially if you can place it on and overlooking hill. Cheap and disposable if the enemy gets behind your lines. Though High experienced units can be surprisingly good.

    Rock lobber- Standard catapult (Trebuchet version) with long range. Good for taking down walls. When sieging you will want to bring at least two. Empire and Dwarfs have mortars You have this.


    Stratagem Notes:

    Your initial bulk of your armies will start out in the middle of the boarder princes. On turn one you can take three of the Border princes cities that very same turn. Then have them exit the city and join the Waaaagh you should declare on Averheim.Make da boyz huts in all cities you capture so you can crank out troops fast. This makes it very cheap to make tons of units in the Settlements in the badlands and border princes cities you captured. Letting you be able to defend against the Dwarves. The waaaaagh can then advance into the empire and capture cites and castles on the way to Averheim. Its best to leave the waaaaagh as Averheim to my experienced tends to haver three or four stacks sit around it when you declare the Waaaaagh All very experienced units at that. With a stack of the Theoginist backing them up. And your starting armies will not be enought to take that on. But you can capture several cities and build up your forces to take it at a later time.

    Or you can try and take the Dwarf castles and break them to create a contiguous empire and get two major money producing fortresses with lots of free upkeep. This can be pulled off by turn 2-3 if you plan it out right and shuffled your starting troops around a bit. This Will also cripple the dwarfs and other then a script or two make your life a whole lot easier. And your money situation wont have to depend on declaring Waaaghs that spread your empire and troops thin.

    Or you can hunker down in the border princes and build them up and expand later.

    Orcs have a very flexible number of ways to start. But if you dont capture territory fast you wont be able to advance very well in the later game.

    Battles strategy:

    Orcs have lots of Infantry units with lots of Wounds. They excel in taking on Enemies on the battlefields rather then sieges or Defense where they can make their numbers count.

    Waaaaaaaaaaggggh!
    You start them off with Shamans profile, and join them Under your generals profile when outside a city/castle.

    You have to manage this ability carefully. Its actually better to plan to take a city in route to the target and then leave the waaaagh more often then not as the targets tend to be far off or well defended half the time. Not to mention when it expands it can move off the original target to something far out of reach. And if you are not moving towards the target fast enough units will disband. Causing the Waaaagh to ultimately fail. When you have a stack leave the waaaagh make sure you have a city or castle you can send them to that very same turn or the entire army other then the general will disband the following turns. Very beneficial in that you get free upkeep while in a waaaaagh, so sometimes its good to make lots of stacks and send them off on suicide runs just to weaken the enemy especially when chaos undivided comes along.

    Open field
    Try to engage in fights as the aggressor as Orcs are best when on the charge. And their large blocks of infantry and their full power can be brought into use. They hit hard and can outlast the enemy. But you have to make sure to bring black orcs as their moral can be an issue compared to other factions. That inspiration bonus can make or break you. Savage orc boyz boar riders are awesome when they have room to maneuver and can do a a lot of damage with their javelins.

    Siege attack
    Two stone throwers to break a hole in the wall, and 4 or so Boar riders units to push the enemy out of the gap to get your infantry into the city/castle. And lots of infantry. Against cites or castles with only one wall you should just go right onto assault as it will take time for the enemy to get to the walls making it easier to burst through. Make multiple holes before attacking in a one walled situation. But in multi wall castles you have to spend a turn or two making Rams and ladders since your siege engines will run out of ammo most likely just on the first wall and not have enough for further walls. In that case its better to take additional infantry units. Send your savage orcs into the breach first and use the high attack value to kill as many enemies as possible and your regular boyz to finish off the weakened defenders with their better defense and wounds they will outlast the weakened units for the savage orcs charges.

    Siege defense
    Unlike Other factions Your archers are pretty good in Hand to hand Combat. This makes them very good at holding Walls, so you dont have to play around as much worrying about having Melee units on the walls to support them. They can Repel enemies very well by themselves allowing your to focus your infantry at gates and choke points or holes opened up by siege weapons. Pretty standard stuff. They dont have any special tricks since they lack cannons and mortars.

    Tips:

    Make shamans lots of them to help convert areas before you take them, as well as scout them out and to make sure the path is clear.

    Once you capture a city destroy all none essential buildings since it makes it harder on the enemy if they take it back and loads your coffers up. And if they take it back and build it up again thats more money for you when you take it back again. If you expect to not be able to hold the city Destroy all the buildings you can.

    Fill up your free upkeep slots with Orcs, and then fill up the rest of the citys garrison with dirt cheap upkeep goblin archers and Spearmen.

    Use waaaaaghs when ever possible, If you plan ahead you can use waaaghs to line up the city you actually are after that is in route to the target. And once you have that city disband the waaaaagh. And jump that army right into a city that same turn you disband so they dont all abandon you.

    When on the move with a horde or waaaagh its worth while to Exterminate cites you capture to bring the population under control. It will hurt in the short run but its better then stalling out your advance by leaving large garrisons behind to keep them under control.

    Build a shaman hut followed by a Da boyz hut when you capture a new city in that order. One to start the religion conversion process, the other to be able to retrain your armies and get free upkeep for troops.

    Your cavalry is a bit slower then other factions, so its best to bog down the enemy with your infantry while you maneuver them into position. And best not to take on other factions cavalry head on, even with two wounds your cavalry goes down fast. They die very fast to strong vs cavalry units as well.

    Protect Rugland and the savage orc Bosses. You lose them it hurts. Savage orcs will take a while to find a new boss and you wont have them until they do. And you loose Rugland and you lose your best ranged units.


    Conclusions:

    A very tough and mixed army that is not weakened by the variety of troops. Units are rather cheap in comparison to other factions. But you have to keep and eye on them as the army can end up split up and fractured due to their charging on their own.

    Still has a great deal of challenge to them though.


    "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHH!"
    Last edited by Bradford; December 16, 2010 at 02:46 PM.

  13. #13

    Default Re: Kurgis & Co's Guide to CoW Factions *10-ish guides done 13/12/10*

    Faction: High Elves

    Intro:

    Spread out over two towns, with hardly any possibility to assist eachother, therefor treat both towns as seperate "factions".

    One town is in the north east, surrounded by rebels, and chaos factions. This one is also slightly less developed than the capital in the north west.

    Difficulty: Hard to very hard

    Because of your spread out starting position, because of the need of allot spy's, small raid stacks and a quickly decreasing treasury.

    Strength: Archers, archers, more archers and.. um archers! Besides archers HE also has good armored troops. Overall the HE has very good, but a bit expensive troops. Generals quickly level up, 2 or 3 won battles and your general has lots of traits. The generals seem to be quite good at healing too, I often halved my losses after a battle. High morale armies, so far I haven't seen any unit flee at all.

    Weaknesses: A lack of income makes every move count, especially in the first 10-20 turns. Replenishing lost troops is hard, expensive and with few towns/cities, that have a high elven culture, very slow. Most of the battles are aimed at losing as few troops as possible in order to keep moving.

    Starting position: Spread out, with your capital under attack by 2 Dark Elves stacks in turn 3. And random attacks by invading chaos armies at your other town.

    Unit types: quite some versatile units, that can be used for various roles. "Only" one general with a special ability, compared to other factions who have 2.

    Infantry:

    High Elf spearmen, Free upkeep. The most basic of all the High Elf units, relatively cheap upkeep (only 200g upkeep), still a good unit, better then most other spearmen units.

    Swordsmaster of Hoeth, Very good swordsmen can fight on par with most elite infantry units (excluding special units). Surprisingly weak vs chaos hounds, I watched chaos hounds quickly killing of my precious swordsmen once. Since then I keep them well away from those drooling beasts!

    Lothern Seaguard, One of the most versatile units of the HE. Both archer and spearmen unit in one and on top of that very, very good attack and defensive stats. Not terribly expensive (340g upkeep). This unit is one of the main pillars of my HE armies.

    Phoenix guard, One of the best halberd units in the game, very usefull when defending a city, I hardly have any though, because you need a high tier city and barracks to recruit it.

    White lions, Can't really say, hardly used them as of yet, but statwise good.

    Ranged Infantry

    High Elf Archers, Probably the furthest firing archer unit in the game, can shoot at other ranged troops(who are on walls) withouth getting in range of them. Combined with their accuracy and damage the second pillar of any HE army.

    Lothern Archers, I have never seen this unit ingame, even though it has thesame requirements as High Elf archers, Maybe a bug? I'll report it.

    Shadow warriors, slightly better ranged stats than HE archers, and much beter melee stats. However expensive and since they are archers, your better off having two HE archer units than 1 shadow warrior unit.

    HE_mage, Very good unit obviously but very high upkeep (2200). Personally I rather have 10-11 HE spearmen/archer units.

    Cavalry

    Ellyrian reavers, Missile cavalry, good for running down light armored troops and to harass and distract the enemy. Not good vs spear units, well armored infantry/cavalry and chaos hounds.

    Silver Helms, Good heavy cavalry on par with most chaos cavalry, but use wisely, they are hard to replenish especially at the beginning.

    Dragon princes, The best cavalry HE can have, must say I haven't gotten them ingame yet. but stat wise the best.

    Tyranoc chariots, a double-edged sword, they can be very usefull, but be carefull how you use them. Very good vs spread out light infantry, just run right through them and you reap em down. less effective against a well organised heavy infantry unit, you often run aground and once that happens the chariots are a sitting duck. Another thing you should watch out for is that you don't run down your own troops, I haven't actually seen my own troops die, but it does throw them on the ground and thus wrecks their formation. If you don't have the space to manouver with them, put them behind the lines and use their ranged attack.

    Bodyguard units

    Phoenix bodyguard, One of the best halberd units in the game, very usefull when defending a city, and recruitable in both cities. I tend to recruit any I can get if it does not interfere with the recruiting of normal units. I use them as a cheap version of normal phoenix guards, but with a high hp general (after a few battles)

    Silver Helms bodyguard, Good heavy cavalry, but use them wisely as you only have two and you can only get new ones through adoption.

    Swordmaster of Hoeth bodyguard, never saw them but I reckon comparable with swordmaster of hoeth unit

    Siege war machines

    Eagle claw, Very good for sieges, especially vs towns, they make short work of wooden walls/gates. vs stone walls they are less good, but still pack a punch and can still finish off iron gates easily from a distance. They are also very good for killing off enemies that do not move (which happens allot in the northern siegebattles vs chaos)

    Battle strategies

    Open field

    Since your main objective is to minimize losses make use of those archers and eagle claws! the enemy will almost allways come at you because you'll have superior ranged forces. And if they don't, just shoot em dead! Basic formation is first row lothern seaguard, second row HE archers, third row melee units with cavalry at the flanks. Preferably on a hill/mountain. Once the enemy get's close move your melee line infront of your archers. Use your cavalry to char the side or backs of engaged enemies.

    Siege attacks

    There are two ways of handling a siege attack the first is to use your ranged to shoot the enemy from the walls, though it is unlikely that this will kill all enemies. Then try and find an easy to penetrate spot and storm the walls. This is only usefull when your archers outnumber the enemy troops or if the enemy troops are with several units on one part of the wall. Since the HE accuracy is rather high, they can make quite allot of cassualties.

    The other way is to send one ladder or ram unit around the town/castle and breach the gate/wall then sent in your cavalry and slowly increase it with more units. The enemy will often sent single units repeatedly to recapture the gate, making it easy to defeat the entire garrison.

    Siege attacks by raiding partys

    In general the garrison stays at the center plasa since there is usualy only one or two units in the town (often a single general unit). Just breach the gate with the eagle claw and shoot the enemies untill they are dead or come charging. Use your melee to fend off the charge.

    Siege defense

    put your archers and lothern seaguards on the wall and defend your gate with halberd, spearmen and swordsmasters of hoeth units. VS ladder or siege towers use your lothern seaguard to defend. If possible put your lothern seaguard on the wall at both sides of the gate so you can move them down to attack the enemy that is pushing through the gate.

    Strategem notes

    Your forces are centered around the two HE towns, in total you'l have about 2,5 stacks worth of units. One stack in your capital (north west) and one and a half stack near your settlement in the north east. Since you'll get atacked by Dark Elves between turn 2 and 3 you'll have to keep the capital army as it is. The army in the north east can move around more. Besides land units you'll start with 1 ship at both towns. Those ships can pritty much kill any other ships, which will be usefull especially in the northern sea.

    Second, don't worry about your negative balance for now, you can't fix it right away, and deleting units will make your position impossible. You can get a positive ballance relatively quick (I believe I came in th red around turn 12-13 and was back in black around turn 15-16. And I think you can even stay out of red at all quite easily, if you do everything the right way. Currently I'm at turn 25 and making 3-6k a turn, with 25k in the treasury)

    Third, you can only recruit units when it is not winter, this makes planning what and when you recruit units important. A little trick to be able to recruit even in winter is to have a long recruition queue. That way the queued units will be trained even if winter comes.

    The campaign

    Your first worry during the start of HE is to defend your capital town, there are some tips and tricks in this thread: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=419584

    There are two usuable ones in there

    The first:

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    Leave your capital, let the DE take your settlement and then attack the outside DE stack and the DE stack inside the former capital consecutively with night attacks (you can also try to attack the stack inside first and hope the other DE stack will siege and immediately attack you the next turn.


    Here is a trick I used:

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 


    There is a very easy trick to make the initial battle at your capital vs Dark Elves a lot easier. The trick gives you 4 units of swordsmasters of hoeth during turn 2. Before the DE invade!

    Step one:

    At your other camp (not your capital), send an army with 4 eagle claw units into your fleet and direct them to the bearsonics settlement (north west of your camp). LEAVE the 4 eagle claws units in your fleet! ONLY unload your archer, spearmen and cavalry units. This is imporant, cause alse the system won't give you a mission to attack the beasonics settlement. Also do _NOT_ make the end destination of your army the bearsonics settlement, that can also stop the system from giving you that mission.

    Step two:

    End your turn whewhen your finished doing whatever alse. At the beginning of your next turn the game will give you a mission that you have to complete. The mission will tell you to capture the bearsonic settlement. The reward should say: some of the best military units currently available.

    Normally you wouldn't be able to capture it in one turn, but because you still have that fleet with 4 eagle claw's nearby, you can easily attack and capture the camp. (I won the batle with less then 3% cassualties, it's really a walk in the park since you have ranged units and they don't. They kept attacking me with 1 unit at a time, making them easy targets for my white helms)

    Step 3:

    Once you capture the enemy camp you are rewarded with 4 units of swordsmasters of hoeth at your capital. These will surely come in handy when facing the DE invasion. When I fought them I "only" lost 51% of my defence force. What made it even better is that one of their armies spawned with 90% of their troops ontop of a mountain, taking them atleast 10 mins to even get to the walls.


    It's up to you which one you use, or not to use any of them. I'm not a favorite of the first one, since during the first 3 turns you can't build barracks or ranges. These are important to the HE because they can only recruit uits during certain seasons.

    North eastern town

    Recruit spys and 1-2 ships at the north eastern town durin the first two turns. and build ranged and melee barracks asap. Use your boat to transport an army to the easterlings town to the north west. You can capture it the next turn with 0% losses (use arrows to lure single units out of town, then charge them down with your cavalry) Use thesame boat to find and destroy a red (forgot the faction name) chaos fleet (it should be either to the north east or north west (You probably won't reach it untill turn 2-3. Destroying that fleet is important, because the red chaos faction will use that to send armies to your town. Withouth the fleet they'll have to march south and pass some easily defendable mountains to the south of your town. They won't atack as much because of that either. sack the easterlings town and leave it defenceless and either march back over land or have a ship pick up the army and transport it back to your town.

    For the defense of the town I recommend leaving half a stack there at all times untill the deamon prince scripted army appears. Use the remaining units to create 2 raiding parties (mine consisted out of 1-2 eagle claws, 2-3 archery units (both HE archers and lothern seaguards) and 1-2 melee units for a total of 4-5 units. If you have extra general units replace one melee unit for a general unit. That way you'll get lots of very experienced generals. Put the armies in the ships and patroll the coastal waters of all the settlement of the most northern/eastern chaos provinces, don't bother with the southern coast of this sea.

    Use these raiding parties to attack the citys close to the sea (at most 2 turns marching) that have 1-2 units inside. Use the eagle claws to breach the wall/gate and if possible kill the units inside, if it's not use the ranged units. Only engage into melee if the enemy retaliates vs your ranged. Preferably use your general unit because he replenishes his guard free of cost.

    When you capture the settlement sack it and sell all the buildings inside. Each raid can make you 5-25k depending on the size of the settlement and the buildings inside. I only once gotten 25k since that was a citadel. This money should keep you out of the red figures. Keep raiding all througouth the game.

    Deamon prince invasion,

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    the deamon prince invasion, I think it accurs somewhere between turn 5-10, and spawns a relatively easy to beat chaos army, but with one insanely strong unit, the deamon prince. it will also spawn half a stack of HE units. You can fight with that alone, but I'll doubt you'll win. It's better to retreat and use the half stack in your town to combine both armies. then attack it. Use your archers to kill the entire army and then slug it out with the deamon prince, do mind the deamon prince alone, can and will kill 50% of your army


    After the deamon prince invasion keep a full stack in your town, by now you should be able to recruit enough units anyway.

    Capital (north west)

    During the first & scnd turn recruit merchants and "monks" at the capital, sent them to the obvious places. Defend your capital against the DE after turn 2. Once you repelled that attack follow the instructions of the scripted mission, once you completed that, gain controll over the near rebel towns and finally the DE camp. Once your strong enough go for marienburg (that is a money making pit (with me at turn 25 it makes 4k). Do mind have a strong full stack army with reinforcements for it since two DE stacks will attack you the turn after you capture it.

    Once you did all that the rest is yours, you can attack the beastmen and further expand your empire, or build up an invincible army for the scripted events to come..
    Last edited by Rexmundi; January 28, 2011 at 09:55 AM. Reason: added drago princes and tyranoc chariots, strategem notes and battle strategies

  14. #14

    Default A beginners guide to CoW and the Empire

    A beginners guide to CoW 1.4 and playing the Empire

    This guide is meant for people who are new to CoW but who have played vanilla M2TW and maybe other popular mods such as 3rd Age.
    I will cover the main features of CoW, highlight some things you may find confusing at first and then give a small summary of the Empire factions.

    I thought a guide such as this may be useful to people who need a bit of a primer and are a bit lost as to what is going on - just like I was at first.


    Part 1 - choosing a faction

    Well, you have navigated to this thread and there are many great faction guides here so take your pick.
    Most of it refers to older versions of CoW but it's still very useful.

    There is a lot going on in CoW in terms of scripted encounters and world events (see later) and you need to learn the pattern of these events and how they affect each faction so I would recommend one of the easier Empire factions for your first try - Reikland, Talabecland and Wissenland are all good first choices.
    Send spies out, watch how the story unfolds, how and when the enemy moves across the map.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    Example - 'oh a crusade is called against Sylvania on turn XX, I better be ready for that if I play the vamps'.



    Part 2 - WTF is going on....have those 10 stacks of Orcs got a teleporter or what ?
    ...or, as an alternative title 'World events and Scripted battles'

    You are probably familiar with the missions to build structures, take settlements and do crusades in vanilla M2TW. CoW has those, but lots more besides.
    Depending on which faction you play you will encounter certain scripted events at certain times.
    You may get a warning about a few scripted stacks of XX faction moving towards your capital, elves in boats may land on your doorstep, you may be given a unique elite unit, a Waaagh may be declared on you (orcs crusade) and thousands of scripted greenskins will suddenly appear on the map bound for their target. You may also be taken directly to a scripted battle with no way of backing out - some of these are tough but with the upside that you get to keep the army that was scripted for you (tip - if it's too hard just surrender on the battlefield to keep the stack then come back to fight another day).
    There is also the main theme of the mod - the Storm of Chaos - during which the chaos factions unite and set their sights on empire lands. I'm not going to go into detail on that but it is pretty epic and you better be ready for it

    The scope of these scripted events may seem unfamiliar at first and also the odds may seem quite unfair in some circumstances but after getting used to them I'm sure you will find they add a lot to the gameplay and make things a lot more fun.
    If you wish to play in a sandbox mode without the world events check out http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=336405 (I haven't used this submod but it may be what you are looking for - don't think it's 1.4 compatible yet though).


    Part 3 - differences to vanilla M2TW and some other mods

    This a short list of some things in addition to the scripted events that may be different to what you are used to and may seem confusing at first.

    - The factions you are allied with, neutral to and at war with are set by the game. You may be offered alliances through scripted events. So....don't even bother and try to arrange ceasefires with chaos or ally with neutrals using diplomats.
    - Building trees are unique. Examine the building browser carefully. It isn't as straightforward as building all tiers of barracks to get all melee troops available to you. For example - for some factions certain troops require certain armories to be built.
    - Not all factions can use merchants. For those factions that use merchants they are very important as there are certain resources on the map that give huge amounts of revenue.
    - Good and bad harvests which affect your income.
    - You can recruit bodyguard units which create generals for you (this is in addition to the usual M2TW features such as adoption).
    - There are quite a lot of settlements and regions which provide additional recruitment possibilites to your normal roster. For example, you can recruit certain high elf units in Mordheim if you are playing Empire.
    - In addition to the usual mercs you can hire in certain regions there are unique mercs which may offer their services for a one off fee. If you hire these you get a general and some units, then you can retrain and create their units in Dogs of War camps which you must build.
    - Some buildings cost zero gold to build. If you think you are going to go into the red you can queue these up to be built.
    - Elves cannot recruit units without a port in a settlement as they are expeditionary forces. Also they cannot recruit in winter, however queued units will still be created.
    - Random chance to receive certain faction dependent elite units on each turn.

    There are lots of other features and stuff that may be new to you but those I have listed are the ones that struck me as noteworthy in my first few plays.


    Part 4 - a guide to the Empire

    So, you have chosen to play an Empire faction for your first playthrough - good choice.
    Every Empire faction has a rounded unit roster, allied factions nearby, decent finances (usually) and some well developed settlements.

    In general the Empire factions vary in difficulty depending on their location. The south western and central factions are easier to play than those in the north and east as they are away from the front lines and can be seen more as support factions. It won't be plain sailing however as you will still get beastman incursions, scripted invasions and calls to help defend allied settlements.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    Don't be complacent if you choose Wissenland tucked away in the east as the greenskins will call a Waaagh on Nuln at some point (you can cope with it if you are prepared).
    Note that the north western factions will bear the brunt of the Storm of Chaos.


    - Units

    The sheer number of units available to the empire is quite overwhelming at first when you include the faction specific and settlement specific ones and the mercs so there are certain choices to be made.
    In general prefer the vanilla units above the specialised faction units even if the stats may be slightly lower as they will be easier to retrain throughout your region and when you expand.
    For example - one faction has their own special pikeman unit..empire halberdiers are cheaper, easier to retrain and do the job almost as well.
    Some special units however are worth investing in such as those for Reikland (the reiksguard).
    Depending on which faction you play and which settlements you hold there are also various types of dwarf, high elf and mercenary units you may recruit. In most cases the empire equivalents are nearly as good and easier to maintain but if you really wish to run high elf archers or dwarf warriors in an army you do have the option.

    - Ranged
    - empire archers - basic archers, average stats, free upkeep
    - free company archers - basic archers slightly worse than empire archers
    - empire crossbowmen - basic crossbowmen, good vs armour and a decent alternative to handgunners if you prefer
    - handgunners - good firearm troops, effective vs armour and for breaking morale

    - Melee
    - empire spearmen - basic spear troop, good for garrisons, free upkeep
    - greatswords - good for a flanking attack and carving up light infantry but prefer halberdiers to hold the line
    - empire halberdiers - cheap, very effective to hold the line, spearwall, bonus vs cav and much tougher than their stats may suggest especially when experienced and upgraded (IMO the heart of any empire army)
    - empire swordsmen - medium stat swordsmen, good basic troop
    - free company infantry - basic light infantry
    - ogres - available at certain times if you have a dogs of war camp, 2hp troops that are tough as nails, great for storming walls or backing up halberdiers

    - Standard cavalry
    - pistoliers - very effective skirmisher gun cavalry with high speed to run down fleeing enemies

    - Siege weapons
    - empire great cannon - reasonably accurate and good versus both buildings and troops, scattershot mode deadly if you can use it effectively (prefer grudgebringer cannon to these if you can get the appropriate merc called Morgan)
    - empire mortar - very useful and effective cannon which lobs shells high into the air over obstacles
    - hellblaster gun - rocket battery gun,looks good in theory but doesn't seem to fire reliably

    - Other
    - War altar - raises morale of your troops, may seem not that useful at first but comes into its own against some chaos troops which lower morale

    - Knight Order heavy cavalry

    Check the building browsers for each settlement to see which types you can recruit. You need to build specific residences which have steep pre-requisites to enable recruitment. You usually start with one or two types of knight residence already built.

    - Knights Encarmine - dual-wielding shock cavalry with very high attack, medium speed but with a low charge bonus
    - Knights of the White Wolf - high attack medium speed cav with 2-handers and a very strong charge bonus but lower defense than some knight order cav
    - Knights Panther - fastest heavy cav in the empire, good charge but not great for extended fights
    - Black Guard of Morr - robust cav with decent charge and medium speed, ok for extended fights, lowers enemy morale
    - Knights of the Blazing Sun - robust cav with decent charge and medium speed, ok for extended fights
    - Coldfire/Inner Circle Knights - pretty much identical to the KotBS above
    - Knights of the Gold Lion - pretty much identical to the KotBS above
    - Knights of the Bull - pretty much identical to the KotBS above
    - Knights of the Raven - good horsearchers which are also decent for charging into melee - the general units of these use guns instead of bows (I think these are unique to Stirland and require a Black Guard of Morr residence)

    - Mercs

    At certain times you may be offered a mercenary captain to hire for a one off payment of 5000 gold. If you agree then you will recieve a decent general with a few of his troops. You can then hire and retrain these troops at Dogs of War camps in your settlements but if the general dies the mercs will disband and you will not be able to recruit them any more.
    Some of these are better than others and some are more suitable depending on how you play.
    See - http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...57#post8525857

    - Special elite units

    Every turn there is a random chance that you will be awarded a general with 1 stack of elite troops. You cannot refuse. If you don't want the troops (some have high upkeep) delete them.
    You may be given any or all of these at some point but you can only receive each type once so look after them.
    I am not sure about all retraining options but you can retrain warrior priests if you have the top tier temple in a settlement, if in doubt try to retrain these units at your largest city or fort (usually your capital).
    This may seem obvious but you do not have to keep the elite unit in the same army as the general provided - some of those generals have very high chivalry so are ideal to place in cities.

    - Bright Wizards - devastating ranged unit vs troops but very frail in melee so protect them, these have 2 modes of attack - normal fireball and AoE fire rain
    - Steam Tank - very strong cannon tanks with high accuracy and good defense, these are great for smashing walls and turrets and can obliterate most of an enemy troop with one hit
    - Witch Hunters - good ranged attack using pistols and strong in melee
    - Warrior Priests - very strong melee unit with a chanting ability to inspire nearby troops
    - Nuln Master Engineers - elite handgunners, deadly barrage at medium range

    There is also a chance that you may be awarded a master spy or assassin with very high stats.

    - General strategy

    Some of these tips, such as troop composition, relate to the way I play and you may obviously prefer different methods

    A standard empire army of 4 heavy cav, 2 pistoliers, 2/3 handgunners or crossbowmen, cannon, mortar and the rest of it halberdiers can cope with pretty much anything.
    I throw in some ogres, swordsmen or archers sometimes depending on the situation.
    I tend to play quite defensively and prefer the enemy to come to me while using pistolier cav and heavy cav to harry them but if you like to play more offensively and push into the enemy it's probably best to replace those halberdiers with swordsmen and greatswords.
    If you have the steam tank you don't really need a cannon as well in that army.

    Your main battles in early game will be against beastmen. These have no ranged units and large forces of them are easily whittled away with cav charges and pistoliers before they even reach your line.
    You may also meet some Sylvanians. These aren't too hard to handle but be aware that their morale is locked so they won't break. Cav charges destroy their skeletons and your halberdiers can cope with most of their elite units with some support but be wary of their elite cavalry which is very strong (vampire black knights or blood dragons are very dangerous).
    Greenskins may also be part of the menu early to mid game and field very large armies.
    They are tough (even their archers) but repeated cav charges will break them and they break easily if you get their general. They usually travel with trebuchets so take these out with your cav early on as they can put large dents in your army.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    If you see a shaman unit kill it at all costs as they will launch devastating magic bolts with unlimited range at your forces (actually that goes for any elite ranged unit such as dark elf sorcs and chaos magi - kill them asap).


    As for chaos their basic armies aren't so bad but later on they can be very tough.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    After the chaos undivided event they can contain a selection of elite forces from all four chaos factions.
    Their cav is strong and will eat yours up if you try to stay in extended combat, their infantry is strong and their demons are strong. Target their generals (better still assasinate them before you attack), throw expendable stacks at them to weaken them before your main army attacks and try to use allies.

    Your map strategy obviously depends on which faction you choose but grab all the rebel and beastmen settlements you can and start building up for the main Storm of Chaos event.
    Aim to eradicate (or help eradicate) Sylvania early on.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    A crusade is called at some point against them so that is a good time to pile in.

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    You may also need to provide help against the Waaagh that will be called against Nuln and help the northern factions against dark elves.

    Your basic aim is to police the empire region in general so it is in a fit state for when chaos comes calling in droves.

    If you want to train up your warrior priests or other prized units such as knights order then seek out a sylvanian army which has some zombies. After you have dealt with the main force you can let your chosen units chew through the zombies that are slowly shuffling your way with little or no risk. They will gain ranks rapidly (and believe me when I say that a unit of warrior priests with 3 gold chevrons is like having 63 Chuck Norris clones on the battlefield).


    Well that's it really.
    I have tried to cover the main things that confused me when I first played CoW and also to provide some general empire tips.
    Hope it was helpful to anyone new to CoW.
    Last edited by menawati; February 09, 2012 at 01:21 PM.

  15. #15

    Default Re: Kurgis & Co's Guide to CoW Factions

    Sylvania 1.4 Guide

    Firstly read Bradfords excellent Sylvania guide - http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...88#post8499088.
    It is pre-1.4 but most of it is still relevant.
    My guide is written mostly from my own experiences but I must pay homage to his guide.


    Part 1 - Basics

    Sylvania is a province located in the east of the Empire that is the home of the von Carstein bloodline of Vampires.
    It can be a tough faction to play (especially at the beginning) as most of your basic units are quite weak, your economy is bad (no merchants) and you are at war with every other faction.
    However, if you can ride it out and slowly grow you will become a force to be reckoned with in middle to late game.


    Part 2 - Strengths and Weaknesses

    Strengths

    - your undead troops have locked morale so that they will never break.
    - your elite units are very strong
    - some generals have the necromancy trait which will recover losses after battles you win
    - in most regions you can recruit basic undead merc troops for zero gold (with maintenance cost)

    Weaknesses

    - elite units very expensive and slow to recruit
    - weak basic troops
    - vampirism trait (see later)
    - everyone hates you and you are at war with them


    Part 3 - Starting Position

    This has changed from 1.3.
    At the start your main demesnes are located in the east of the empire region with 1 castle (Drakenhof) and 2 towns (Templehof and Waldenhof).
    You also now have 1 castle in the far west of the empire near Wissenland called Blood Keep.


    Part 4 - Early Campaign

    Blood Keep is relatively safe. Wissenland may try to attack but not if you keep a large garrison.
    When you have the finances raid the Wissenland towns nearby and try to hold them if you can. The mid-term aim for your western force is to take Nuln and Wissenberg as these are real honeypots for your economy.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    A good strategy is to bide your time and wait until the greenskins start hitting Wissenland and then take advantage.

    Over in the east however things aren't so cosy.
    Try to grab Mordheim nearby and maybe Eicheschatten/Hornau in the south west before things get tough. Don't waste money on any elite units apart from Vampire Knights (these are your key to victory during this period).
    Dwarves will hit you from the south, empire will nibble away from the north and west and you may get Orcs having a pop at you from the north-east.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    Quite early on two scripted empire stacks will appear north-west of Drakenhof and start moving towards it.

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    And then when you think you may be starting to get a handle on things there will probably be a crusade called on you and all hell will break loose.

    This is the hardest period in the game for you. At times it may feel like you are slowly being worn down to oblivion but keep at it because there is light at the end of the tunnel.
    Use the necromacy generals, throw suicide stacks to weaken the enemy, keep at it.
    If you can weather the storm it slowly gets easier as you expand.


    Part 5 - Mid to Late Campaign

    So now it's time to go on the offensive. I recommend you slowly eat away at the southern band of the empire, including the dwarf karaks, to eventually unite your east and west regions. Some of these lands may be in greenskin hands by now but they will all fall beneath your undead legions
    You may also wish to keep the Border Princes in check down to the south as they may become annoyingly persistent - maybe send raids to sack their lands.
    Your economy should be looking pretty healthy by now especially if you have taken the rich Wissenland settlements near Blood Keep so running some elite units should not be a problem.
    Destroy Averland and Wissenland and maybe Stirland too (you need Wurtbad for your victory condition) and defend your northern borders from the empire and your southern borders from border princes and orcs.
    Aim to dominate the south empire before the Storm of Chaos happens.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    When chaos comes the best outcome for you is chaos and northern empire whittling away at each other with you ready to pounce and pick up the spoils. Try to attack whichever side seems to be dominant and play them off against each other.

    You could also take Zhufbar to the south as a buffer to the dwarves and greenskins.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    Why not strike out north ? Well, you do want the northern empire factions to bear the brunt of the Storm of Chaos so you can mop up afterwards don't you ?




    Part 6 - Scripted Events

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    Apart from the Storm of Chaos and the Grimgor invasion the main scripted event you will encounter is the crusade called on Drakenhof or Mordheim quite early on. These settlements will be a popular target for later crusades as well.


    Part 7 - Units

    Your unit recruitment is based upon both graveyards and normal barracks. You can recruit human troops from barracks and undead ones from graveyards. Bear in mind that this provides two sets of free upkeep slots.
    As mentioned before the morale of all undead units is locked so they will never run from a fight. This is a huge advantage especially when facing units that lower morale.
    The stats of your base units may look bad but when upgraded they can prove surprisingly strong.

    Undead Infantry - regenerates with necromancy
    - zombies - large amounts of very slow and weak troops, great for drawing enemy fire, blocking streets, using for rams, basically the proverbial cannon fodder
    - skeleton warriors - basic undead light infantry, not so bad if upgraded but will be decimated by a cav charge
    - skeleton spearmen - basic undead spearmen, not so bad if upgraded but will be decimated by a cav charge, free upkeep
    - grave guard - elite heavy infantry, very resilient and can chew through heavily armored foes such as black orcs
    - grave guard halberdiers - strong elite halberdiers , spearwall, these are also effective against armor so are fine vs orcs and chaos warriors (cheap empire halberdiers are just as good for holding a line and actually seem better vs a cav charge :S)
    - drakenhof guard - elite 2 handers, great for flanking, effective vs armor
    - cairn wraths - fast moving 2hp troops wielding big scythes, can frighten enemy, effective vs armor
    , great shock troops
    - spirit hosts - 2hp ghosts, a cheaper alternative to cairn wraiths with lower stats
    - von Carsteins - fast moving 2hp elite vampires with high attack, great stats but very slow recruitment
    - von Carsteins Bodyguard - stats as above but will also create a new general for you

    Human Infantry
    - free company - basic light infantry, free upkeep, ok in emergencies
    - empire spearmen - basic spearmen, free upkeep, good for garrisons
    - empire halberdiers - cheap, very effective to hold the line, spearwall, bonus vs cav and much tougher than their stats may suggest, don't be afraid to use these instead of undead especially vs foes which use heavy cav

    Undead ranged - regenerates with necromancy
    - skeleton archers - basic archers, free upkeep, good for garrisons
    - skeleton crossbows - basic crossbowmen, effective vs armor, not a bad addition to an undead army

    Human ranged
    - free company archers - basic archers, free upkeep
    - empire archers - basic archers, free upkeep

    Undead cav - regenerates with necromancy
    - mounted skeletons - basic light cavalry, ok for charging soft targets and chasing down runners
    - vampire black knights - very good elite heavy cav, good charge, good vs armor
    - von Carsten cavalry - 2hp elite heavy cav, very strong unit but for cost vs effectiveness prefer vampire black knights

    Siege
    - screaming skull catapult - pretty mediocre siege engine, low damage and accuracy, you will need 2 or 3 of these to break a wall

    Random elite units - you have a random chance to receive these every turn
    - Necrarchs - very powerful mages, their nukes can obliterate troops fast, weak in melee so protect them, these come with a general
    - Blood Dragon Knights - very strong 2hp heavy cav, these come with a general, can regenerate with necromancy
    - Blood Dragons - very strong elite 2hp infantry with high attack, these come with a general (you get these in same stack with the Blood Dragon Knights), can regenerate with necromancy
    - Knights of the Black Grail - very strong 2hp cav, no general they just appear in your capital, can regenerate with necromancy


    Part 8 - Battle Strategy

    Read the section in Bradford's excellent guide - http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...88#post8499088


    Part 9 - Tips

    Your siege engines are very poor so try to siege with a force weak enough to entice the enemy out (this isn't hard as the ai considers your skeletons very weak) or do the old trick of attacking an army next to settlement to attack both them and the garrison force then take the empty town (make sure you kill all runners).

    For an undead army leave a couple of slots free as necromancy can award a new unit.

    Protect your generals with necromancy as new ones won't have the trait.

    Fight at night if general has vampirism trait (-10 to leadership in the day). However, your main battle generals will gain ranks pretty fast so it won't be long till that -10 is offset and they become strong in the day too.

    Most of the lands you will take have high Empire Pantheon religion. This doesn't hinder your recruitment options but causes unrest in towns. Use copious amounts of priests to help convert to Vampire Cult.
    Last edited by menawati; June 01, 2011 at 11:38 AM.

  16. #16

    Default Re: Kurgis & Co's Guide to CoW Factions

    Chaos Undivided 1.4 Guide

    Preamble - As of time of writing this there are no chaos guides on this thread at all. I have played all four chaos factions to some degree (Khorne and Slaanesh extensively and the others not so much) so I thought I'd do this write up.
    Some of you may be experts on individual chaos factions so any corrections or additions such as scripted events would be very welcome (will attrib. to you if I include it). Please post any on here http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=405700



    Part 1 - Intro

    Difficulty - Medium (easier if you are aggressive)

    This guide is a summary of the four chaos factions and how to unite them.
    Once you unite them you will be able to recruit the units from all four factions including the demons.
    I will do a short section on each of the base factions and outline the main differences and then show you how to unite them under one banner.
    You can of course play a chaos faction totally differently extending in all directions with no aim to achieve Chaos Undivided but you will be missing out on extra units and..erm...a chance to be brown?


    Part 2 - Chaos Strengths and Weaknesses

    Strengths

    - strong heavy infantry
    - strongly armoured heavy cavalry
    - very effective skirmishing troops if used carefully
    - some very strong demons

    Weaknesses

    - heavy cavalry is slow
    - demons very expensive to recruit and maintain
    - no long range units unless you get lucky and are awarded a random elite sorc unit
    - no spearwall pikemen
    - armies lack mobility compared to most factions
    - limited finances with no merchants


    Part 3 - Faction Summaries

    - General
    The chaos factions can all recruit an identical core of basic troops such as the 4 marauder types and the chaos warriors and knights. They differ in the types of demons they can recruit and the stats of their elite Chosen infantry and cavalry.
    At one end of the scale is Nurgle, the most defensive of the four factions. Their Chosen have 2hp but are very slow and have low attack. At the other end of the scale is Tzeentch and Khorne with faster moving 1hp Chosen with higher attack stats. Slaanesh are somewhat in the middle of the scale.
    Even with this small variance the chaos heavy infantry and cavalry is in general slower but more heavily armoured than most factions' equivalents.
    Just to qualify this....when I say Tzeentch has faster moving and more attack oriented troops I mean within the confines of comparing only chaos factions - dark and high elf infantry and cavalry are much more mobile than most chaos units, elite dwarves are tougher, empire has more versatility etc etc

    - Slaanesh
    Far north-western corner. You will have to cope with strong scripted High Elf expeditionary forces on your doorstep as well as possible encroachment from Nurgle. Possibly the easiest of the four factions to play once the elves have been dealt with as you can slowly move east fighting on one front.
    You will be gifted Salzenmund in empire lands as a script early on which will prove a challenge to keep hold of but provides a potential base to eat away at the empire and achieve your victory conditions.
    Probably the most versatile chaos faction due to the demons (they are the best demons imo due to their speed).
    - Demons
    - Daemonettes of Slaanesh - very fast and strong 3hp demons with high attack, great shock troops
    - Mounted Daemonettes - fast moving 3hp light cav, very effective

    - Nurgle
    Nurgle armies are the slowest moving of the chaos armies but are the most resilient - your chosen infantry and knights are 2hp troops. You will have to cope with High Elves at the start and are bordered by Slaanesh and Tzeentch which are both hostile. An early target should be Citadel of Change to knock out Tzeentch before dealing with the elves. Subsequently take over Slaanesh while guarding your eastern borders then when you have secured Slaanesh lands move to take over Khorne (or vice versa if you prefer).
    This is not the faction for you if you like dislike slow moving armies.
    - Demons
    - Nurglings - a large mass of slow low grade troops (I could not find a use for these)
    - Plaguebearers - 4hp high attack melee demons, slow moving but when they reach their target there isn't much that can withstand them

    - Tzeentch
    Tzeentch armies are based more on attack than Nurgle ones and move faster. Probably the hardest chaos faction to play at the start as Khorne and Nurgle will be very aggressive plus high elves landing near you. I advise attacking on one front while defending the other, I prefer my attacking front to be east while defending against Nurgle with possibly a quick grab of Citadel of Decay right from the start. If you are lucky the elves and slaanesh/nurgle will cancel each other out for a while which lets you build up.
    - Demons
    - Horrors of Tzeentch - 2hp ranged demons with decent attack, cannot make formation so cumbersome to use, weak in melee
    - Flamers of Tzeentch - similair to the horrors but these can make a formation and have a stronger attack, ideal for firing from behind your line
    - Screamers of Tzeentch - 3hp stingrays that are great as shock troops, lowers morale

    - Khorne
    This is the chaos faction that starts with the most rebel settlements nearby. It is similair to Tzeentch in that it is one of the more offense oriented chaos factions. You will have to cope with scripted dwarves and possibly high elves. The most logical way to expand if you wish to unite chaos is obviously west while maybe sending expeditions south.
    - Demons
    - Bloodletters of Khorne - strong 3hp melee demons with high attack, medium speed
    - Bloodcrushers of Khorne - 3hp heavy cav with high attack and good charge


    Part 4 - The Early Campaign and Chaos Undivided

    The pre-requisites for uniting chaos are that you must own all the settlements across the top of the map having destroyed the other chaos factions. Also you must own Kuls Settlement in the east (I'm not 100% sure if this is true but the event has never triggered for me unless I have Kuls Settlement).
    Once the event triggers you will be informed by a pop up message and your faction flag will change to brown. You will also receive Archaon and Krom generals with some troops.
    You will now be able to recruit all the demons and Chosen from all four chaos factions.



    Part 5 - Mid to Late Campaign

    So you have united chaos under one banner and it's time to stomp your way across the map.
    Your victory conditions include empire settlements whatever faction you chose to play so that's where to head - you possibly also need to destroy Kislev so pillage your way across their lands with a few armies.
    If you were scripted an empire settlement early on and kept hold of it your victory conditions are is obviously easier to achieve.


    Part 6 - Units

    Recruitment is fast and cheap for your basic units but quite slow for heavy units such as chaos warriors and chaos knights.

    Infantry
    - marauders - your basic light infantry, good support troops, free upkeep
    - marauder desolators - light infantry with long axes, bonus vs cav but won't withstand a cav charge, free upkeep
    - chaos warriors - strong heavy infantry, slow moving but very robust, weakness to strong cav charges
    - chaos warrior halberds - halberd chaos warriors, bonus vs cav but no spearwall
    - ogres - sometimes available in dogs of war camps, good 2hp troops but imo doesn't add much to a chaos army that it doesn't already have
    - slaanesh chosen - 1hp elite infantry, low attack but very high defense, medium speed
    - nurgle chosen - 2hp elite infantry, slightly higher attack than slaanesh but lower defense, slow moving
    - tzeentch chosen - 1hp elite infantry, 2 handers, high attack but lower defense than other factions, medium speed
    - khorne chosen - 1hp elite infantry, dual wield, highest attack and lowest defense of all chosen, medium speed

    Ranged
    - marauder axethrowers - fast moving skirmishers, short range but armour piercing axes can really hurt, free upkeep

    Cavalry
    - marauder horsemen - light cavalry javelin skirmishers, armour piercing javelins very effective but these can't auto-skirmish so you must micro manage them, not bad in melee vs soft targets and they are fast moving
    - chaos knights - strong heavy cav, quite slow and not that great for repeated charges but will last well in extended combat
    - chosen knights of slaanesh - 1hp elite heavy cav, low attack but very high defense, medium speed
    - chosen knights of nurgle - 2hp elite heavy cav, low attack but very high defense, slow speed
    - chosen knights of tzeentch - 1hp elite heavy cav, low attack but very high defense, medium speed
    - chosen knights of khorne - 1hp elite dual wield heavy cav, high attack but lower defense as they don't use a shield, medium speed

    Siege
    - hellcannon - not very accurate but will do a lot of damage to buildings and troops if it hits

    Heretics
    These are human troops that you can sometimes recruit at some settlements previously owned by other factions.
    (Note: these require non-chaos leather tanners and/or blacksmiths to recruit - if the settlement doesn't already have those buildings you might as well destroy the non-chaos barracks and range because your chaos smith buildings do not count)
    - heretics archers - basic archers, free upkeep
    - heretics crossbowmen - basic crossbowmen
    - heretics spearmen - basic spearmen, free upkeep
    - heretics halberdiers - similair to empire halberdiers but no spearwall

    Other
    Depending on settlement there are also some northmen or beastman mercs you may be able to recruit.

    Random elite units - you have a random chance to receive these every turn :-
    - Tzeentch Sorcs on Discs - very strong long range magical attack and good melee stats (unique to Tzeentch)
    - Sorcerors of Tzeentch - very strong long range magical attack, slow moving and weak in melee (I think all chaos factions can get these)
    - Sorcerors of Nurgle - very strong long range magical attack, slow moving and weak in melee, Nurgle only


    Mercs
    Rykarth the slaver - he is usually offered to you quite early every campaign, make sure you take him as his blunderbuss troops can be devastating if used correctly against massed enemies (for example if you blast a packed mass of enemies as they leave a castle gate you will obliterate a huge chunk of them and make them rout).


    Part 7 - Battle Strategy

    Chaos armies are in general slow moving juggernauts. Fast moving enemies can be irritating to fight as most of your units have low mobility. Your advantage usually lies in that once you get in your opponents' face you will grind them down.
    Obviously these tactics are a personal opinion and you may have superior methods.

    Your main opponents will be...

    High Elves - Can be a horrible fight especially if they stand on a hill and wave at you. They are much faster and more mobile than you and their archers will cut your faster troops such as marauders to pieces.
    Run your cav into them while avoiding extended fights with spears to disrupt their line while you get your heavy infantry into their faces ASAP. They tend to use a lot of seaguards - dangerous at range but weak to your infantry up close. Once the melee commences get your heavy cav in extended combat with their cavalry.
    If you see High Elf Mages squash them fast.

    Chaos - Irresistable force meets immovable object. Try to exploit the relative weaknesses of your opponent. For example, if you are playing Nurgle you want a long slow slugging match because your Chosen will outlast theirs. Marauder horsemen and axe throwers usually approach your front line early, nullify them fast as they can hurt you if left to skirmish. Be aggressive towards their heavy cav and try to stop them charging you - pin them down with your cav until your marauder desolators or chaos halberdiers can get there to cut them up. Marauder horsemen javelins are also good against heavy cav but try to keep them out of melee.
    Demon types can also play a large role - mounted daemonettes add huge mobility and are great for charge and repeat, plaguebearers are really good for taking down chosen and melee general units.

    Empire - Similair tactics as against high elves. They often use a lot of archers but it's usually a much easier fight. Cav charge their forward ranged units while you maneouver. Pick on their general early especially if he is a slow greatsword unit. Your heavy cavalry will have an edge over theirs in extended combat but may need support if they are one of the stronger Knight Order types.

    Kislev - The main danger is their cavalry which is very mobile. Winged Lancers will hurt you if you let them charge too much, they are very fast but try to intercept with your heavy cav which will destroy them in an extended fight. Try to catch their mounted skirmishers in melee with fast cav such as marauder horsemen or mounted daemonettes as they can hurt your infantry - you may not be able catch them with your slow heavy cavalry and they will just skirmish while whittling you down. The bears can hurt if you let them charge - pin them down while bringing up chaos halberdiers if you can. Keep your cav away from their halberdiers which will fall easily to your normal infantry. If they have ice mages kill them fast as they will rain death on you from above (their attack is similair to mortar fire). And be wary of their grenadiers. A really fun faction to fight.

    Dwarves - They are as slow as you and they want you in melee as their elite infantry is better than yours.
    Your main advantage over them is your cavalry. Charge any ranged units they have as soon as possible then use skirmishers to wear down their infantry before engaging. After battle is met charge them from behind with cavalry.

    Night Goblins - A good source of experience for your troops, if you can't beat these uninstall . No that's not very helpful. Their morale is low, cav charges break them quite easily. To speed up the mass breaking of their army kill the poor little generals bouncing along on space hoppers (well, squigs actually). The main thing to watch out for are their wolf riders as their arrows can hurt.

    Orcs - Their armies can be quite large and difficult to flank. Their spear units will usually go for your cavalry so I usually try to draw them away from the centre with marauder horsemen. Punch your heavy cav into their forward archer units while bringing in the infantry then withdraw and try to get behind them and go for their general and any trebuchets. When they have been dealt with charge their infantry from behind who by now should be engaging your infantry. Mounted daemonettes are very useful here because of their speed. Be wary of shaman mages who have unlimited range and will take chunks out of your army - get to them asap with mounted daemonettes or marauder horsemen.


    Part 8 - Scripted Events

    Slaanesh

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    You should be offered an alliance with the Dark Elves quite early in the game. If you accept they will take 20k from you and give you a quest to take certain settlements within 20 moves. Over the next few moves you will be given scripted armies near some of the settlements you need to take as part of the quest, two in the north empire, one near Vargs Settlement and one near the high elves in the east. The odds are stacked against you and this early in the game it will cripple your finances.
    If you can succeed with all the scripted battles and succeed on the quest then well done but this is what I did - fight the Salzenmund siege with minimal losses then win the other scripted battle just north of there then bring all your troops into Salzenmund and lick your wounds. Take Vargs settlement with the army there and hold it. Suicide the army near the Elves settlement. Now defend Salzenmund (can be tough) but if you see any empire cities nearby with low garrison sack them for cash.


    Nurgle
    Section TBA.

    Tzeentch
    Section TBA.

    Khorne
    Section TBA.


    To include Dark Elf Alliance quests.
    Contributions needed.


    Part 9 - General Tips

    Play to chaos strengths. You may be used to totally outmaneouvering your opponents using higher mobility factions such as empire and elves but this is harder to achieve with chaos because you move slower. It certainly is possible but you are better off getting in the enemy's face ASAP and accepting the losses. Possible exception is when you fight dwarves - exploit their lack of cavalry.

    Most chaos heavy cavalry is slow moving with low charge bonus which does not make them very good for charge and repeat. Unless they are facing spears or pikes leave them in combat for a while once they have engaged as they have heavy armour and will survive well.

    Demons look nice but don't recruit them early on as it will cripple you financially.

    Chieftan buildings add huge public health and happiness bonuses - build them early.

    Sacrificial Altars are cheap and allow gladiatorial games to be held at any frequency with no income change. This makes controlling happiness at settlements very easy.

    The main chaos citadels have garrison scripts if you siege them (ie. it will automatically fill up with troops when you siege and end turn).
    You can get around this by avoiding the script - attack immediately using hellcannons or attack an army alongside the settlement to draw out the defenders into the same battle.

    The high elf main towns also have garrison scripts. Also make sure to have supporting troops nearby because if you take these settlements a scripted high elf full stack will immediately land there and siege you the next turn (I don't know if this is always the case but it has happened for me more often than not).

    Armies move slowly across the northern wastes - use ships along the coast to resupply armies.

    Some of the settlements across the far north allow you to build Chaos Dwarf Mines. These can boost your income by a lot (over 1000g per turn in some cases).
    Last edited by menawati; June 01, 2011 at 11:44 AM.

  17. #17

    Icon6 Re: Kurgis & Co's Guide to CoW Factions

    Hi guys! This is my first ever post as ive just recently been able to get this great game working and have being playing with the high elves without any success until recently. Ive found a really easy and quick way to sort out and put your economy in the green within the first ten turns and easly survive the chaos and dark elves attacks within the first 20 turns .Right, here goes!
    1)a) When you start the first thing to do is take you boat from you capital, take it north and pick up your small army in the rebel territory, move it back down to your capital and pick up all troops and characters there.
    b) Next in you high elven camp in Norsca move all troops and leaders into your boat
    I know, it sounds like madness but bare with me!!
    2)a) ok, now ur boat with your southern army, head straight to Marienburg and capture it. Best way for me was to wait till they try and come out and kill them. Capturing Marienburg as a MUST! The gold generated for me at turn 10 is now 9k gold and can hold 10 troops without upkeep for preparing armies.
    b)In the north, move you boat with troops inside all the way along the coast to the west until you get to the dark elves camp, takes about 3 turns and capture.
    3)a) Now that you have marienburg you can now train troops and upgrade towns. Its pretty easy to capture the surrounding beastmen towns with small armies, so attack wichever you like.
    b) Rec merchants in Marienburg and grab up all those lovely trade resourses nearby
    4)a) now, at somepoint around turn 10 I think the chaose attack your camp in norsca and an Elf army spawns, retreat from teh battle and let teh chaos attack you town and capture it. at this point a new army with spawn which you will use in conjunction with your army that retreated away to re-capture it. While this is happeneing bring 90% of your army at the western dark elves camp you captured by boat all teh way back and use these armies to expand you northern teritories.
    b) In the south between turn 15 and 20 teh dark elves attack you capital, as you willl have no troops there they will capure it, then leave it almost undefended, so all you have to do is send up a small force by ship and retake it, easy!
    5) Finally send a small force, around 8 troops with most being archers to the dark elves camp in the sarls land and capture it.
    6) With these steps done you should now have a great econemy due to Marienburg with which to upgrade all you town to increase economy and troop numbers. PS, ignore teh mission to capture the camp and kill the general, you'l need the troops to capture Marienburg!

    If anyone would like to comment on my strategy please do, good or bad haha and if you have any advice for me, please feel free to let me know, thanks!

  18. #18

    Default Dwarves 1.4

    Dwarves 1.4

    Intro: Dwarf Proverb: "To lack gold is to lack a pit-prop against the cave-ins of misfortune, to lack a shield against the arrows of spite". Dwarfs: Stone & Steel pg10

    You'd best like defending sieges if you play the dwarfs because you will be against some manic odds. Slow movement and no cavalry force you to adapt field armies and master a new way of war. Whilst Kislev may be the frontline against Chaos it's you who are the frontline against the Greenskins - but hey that's as it should be, this is your opportunity to settle some scores from the Book of Grudges... not to add to that list..

    Difficulty: Medium -> Very Hard on higher difficulties

    Strengths: The music you get to listen to! (original Conan music - very epic) Supreme foot troops of the highest quality. Same goes for the Artillery. Brilliant on the defence - which you will be. Money is a lot easier than other factions but still requires some care early on.

    Weaknesses: Troops are very slow. No cavalry. Limited mercenaries. Defending sieges can become very repetitive. Plague - lots of plague. Some long build times for advanced buildings. Troops are very expensive.

    Starting Position: You start with several castles of various size and situation. The strategy section will go into detail over each one and the threats they face. All start far more developed than the majority of Empire cities. For victory you need to keep them and retake Mount Gunbad, Karak Varn in the south, Karak Vlag and Karak Ungor to the north of Karak Kadrin.

    I normally send one unit of hammerers from the capital towards Zhufbar. The rest to Karak Eight Peaks. The slayer outside Karak Kadrin heads right down the road towards Orc territory and builds one tower there then more as he heads back to Kadrin so I have full coverage. Note the mountain "roads" that allow you access north/south - you will want towers to the north of Kadrin to keep an eye on the Night Goblins. If you are unsure of what I mean by roads - once you have moved the Hammerer unit full distance to Zhufbar (to expend its movement points) then try and send it to Kadrin and beyond to see what I mean.

    Build as many merchants at Zhufbar, Karaz-A-Karak and Kadrin as you are in close striking distance of good sites - although you won't get much from the Brynduraz at Gunbad its better than nothing (245g ish with a 1 skill merchant). Warpstone and Gold seem to give dwarves the most return, although your merchants at Mordheim can get knocked "off" the site a lot by attacking armies, so it might be better to seek out gold sites which are quieter. A rough guide to merchant income (for Dwarves) is Warpstone/Gold -> Glass/Silver/Amber -> Dragon Bones -> Brynduraz/Mammoths -> Anything else.

    Try and send one general east towards the Dark Lands (where the Orcs come from) as a tower at its most eastern point will allow you to monitor what happens at Mt Silverspear and this is very useful as well as the fact that a good few towers between Karaz-a-Karak and Eight Peaks will give you good warning of incoming orc attacks.

    Build as many basic units that give you free upkeep as you can. Make sure all holds are building, if possible, buildings that can give you more troops or the elder halls or halls of grudge therefore access to some elite troops. Kadrin > Eight Peaks > Zhufbar > Karaz > Ziflin > Hirn in order of importance. Zhufbar's importance will decline rapidly once you've fended off the initial vampires.

    Unit Types: (* indicates a unit that can have free upkeep in a settlement)

    Infantry - Miners. Armour penetrating grenadiers and you will want at least one unit per castle where defending to cause havoc around the gate or finish off Siege towers (see Mortars). Not bad for field armies as well to help break elite enemies (Black Orcs etc)

    Warriors*. Basic grunt unit that once trained equals other races basic elite troops. Can use stakes.

    Axes*. Basic grunt unit, higher attack, lower armour than warriors but with bonus against cavalry, also can use stakes.

    Rangers. Crossbowmen with armour penetration. Can also use stakes and have a bonus vs Cavalry.

    Longbeards. Inspire nearby troops. Good defence, first of your elite infantry.

    Longbeards with Axes. Inspire nearby troops, powerful charge, bonus vs cavalry. The offensive version of normal Longbeards.

    Hammerers. Powerful charge, bonus vs cavalry. Superb elite troops that can take on just about everything especially once upgraded.

    Greatbeards. Excellent Morale. Powerful charge. You get only one unit of these, free, close to the start of your game. They can be retrained at a castle/city where you have a well developed warrior hold. I'm unsure which level unlocks this but I believe its either Warriors Chambers (lvl3) or Ancient Hall of Warriors (lvl4).

    Ironbreakers. Armour penetration and stunning staying power - long time to get to recruit them but amazing gate defenders.

    Elders. Armour penetration. Long range missile attack. Excellent morale. Not a missile unit as such, your premier all powerful infantry unit. Very expensive to recruit.

    Quarrellers*. Armour penetration and stakes. Basic ranged unit - slightly cheaper upkeep than Rangers.

    Thunderers. Armour penetration and stakes. Firearms unit. Good in field armies - not in sieges.

    Hammerers Bodyguard. Same as hammerers gives you a general.

    Slayers. Powerful charge and bonus vs Cavalry. Excellent offensive unit and good for chopping stuff coming out of towers.

    Artillery - Bolt Thrower. Can impale several people. Never used one.

    Grudge Thrower. Catapult with area effect. Never used one.

    Cannon. It's a cannon - grapeshot, explosive etc good for taking settlements and field armies.

    Mortar. Amazing killer offensive unit. Also useful in siege defence for taking down siege towers - 1 mortar can destroy a tower - hold off on the killing shots until the men/orcs/vampires are swarming up inside if you're feeling lucky!

    Organ Gun. Multi-barrelled troop killer. Very expensive so never really used one as it has limited shots before Hand to Hand is joined. Possibly could be good on gate defence in a siege but never tried it.

    Flame Cannon. The ultimate killing machine. Its range is quite short (for an artillery piece) but it can easily break orc units on its own. Placement in the battle line needs care as it can fry its own operators on angled hills.

    Mercenaries - Ogres sometimes are recruitable when you can get a Dog of War Camp. Good for tying up others elite troops or defending walls - but as the Dwarves you hardly need these.

    Long Drong and his Pirates. Worth recruiting and running from northern empire all the way to Karak Kadrin. All firearm equipped but can fight in hand to hand if needed.

    Bugmans Rangers. Bugman and two ranger units (plus beer!). If you recruit these (and you should) be warned that they appear east of Karaz-A-Karak in the Darklands so it can be difficult to keep em alive if there are a lot of orc stacks in the area.

    Gotrek and Felix. Gotrek is a slayer general whilst Felix is an elite spy. Both are vitally useful for you.

    Strategy, Battles, Invasions:

    Free units: Always try and have 5-6 quarrellers then the remainder 2-3 Warriors, remainder Axes as your free garrison. You always want one Miner unit as well and 1-2 mortars for incoming siege tower killers. Rest as soon as you can fill up with whatever elites you can - vary the types so retraining isn't a strain. For example build elder halls in Kadrin so you aren't trying to rebuild 5 Slayers every other turn.

    Siege Defence: Stakes in front of the gates and close to the gatehouse walls (that you think engines may break down) to help against cavalry rushes. High damage units like slayers and ogres to beat off siege towers, at the start warriors etc will have to defend against ladders but be prepared to move men round to get the best defenders in place. Remember your troops are slow so place reserve units close to where you think they will be needed. Mortars demolish siege towers - don't finish it off until the enemy are inside climbing it! Obviously some fights I start straight on the inner wall with just one unit on the outer wall to force enemy siege engines to fire then go for killing grounds around the gates of the second line. If its two stacks - fight from the second line and prepare if need be for final wall defence.

    Karak Kadrin: Here you are the guardian for Ostermark and Kislev from the Orcs and boy will it be tough. Orcs come from the east, Night Goblins from the old dwarfholds to the north. You will need to have a full stack here as soon as possible (asap). Build basic units then get rid of them as you build elite units this helps with retraining. Balance retraining to get the worst rebuilt first if you can't rebuild all before the next stack comes in and places you under siege. If a small orc stack comes along and places you under siege - counter attack and drive it off, don't let it build into a full stack (unless you're still rebuilding from a previous siege). Towers are absolutely needed here so you can judge accurately what's arriving and how many turns you have. Eventually you can start to construct a second stack that must be heavy on artillery to drive north and start to take back the dwarven holds - rotate troops back to Kadrin to be rebuilt (as long as it isn't under orc threat) to keep the momentum going. If you can't beat down all the stacks in the way - do what you can retreat, rebuild, try again - Kadrin's survival is the priority at all costs.

    Its worth noting this about Kadrin - as a player faction you are sucking up a lot of orc attacks and this allows the Ostermark AI to pressure Sylvania (as it needs those settlements for its Victory conditions) which eases pressure on Zhufbar - and anything that helps Kislev anywhere is good as the AI really has it tough.

    Karaz-A-Karak: Always keep Karaz full and try and have a few spare units loitering for when Vardek Krom arrives - keep these one place from the citadel to make sure you only face 1-2 stacks - then he's easily beatable. Eventually combined with troops from Zhufbar you can put together a stack to take back Karak Varn (I take this before Gunbad to give me a line against orcs in the empire) especially if Sylvania is defeated or being beaten heavily. Then go for Gunbad as that is a much tougher proposition - head north through the mountains rather than the road through the plains so orcs don't interfere.

    Vardek Krom extra notes:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    5-6 stacks of Elite chaos. Arrives around turn 40+. I tend to place one unit on each square in front of Karaz-A-Karak (full stack inside of course!) and one to the west as this seems to force a smaller battle with only one or two stacks getting a chance at you per turn. Also depending on how things are going and what generals you have, you can run a stack out of Eight Peaks into the valley (and especially if your general has Night Fighter) have a go at trying to take out a stack or two that way - don't use the Prince though - use a normal general. Don't fight defensive on the field they have Hell Cannons, killing generals is always a priority here. Following turn retreat, retrain away.


    Karak Eight Peaks: Towers are your friends everywhere here to judge threats to Eight Peaks. Around turn 6-7 you will be attacked by 2 Night Goblin stacks. I auto-ed the battle as I lost so few men that way. Eight Peaks then becomes frontline as the Orcs seem to go for this over your capital. Make sure this is always well defended. Eventually after several fights (keep killing those Savage warbosses to weaken the orcs) you may spy a chance to attack Mt Silverspear as the Orcs tend to take it them empty it of troops - I would try and take Karak Varn first then Silverspear though as you may face a lot of orc attacks trying to get to it.

    Zhufbar: I always shift one hammerer unit here at the start as you may get sieged by a full stack of Sylvania - keep it well defended and they seem to prefer easier pickings and leave you alone. DO NOT take the castle though until the Empire crusade is over otherwise you can get Empire factions attacking you (same with a crusade against Orc Warboss Camp). Once you have Varn under your control and roads updated you can rapidly build a defence force for those 2 and the capital and keep it hanging around the lake if need be. Always, if you can, take Drakenhof if it goes neutral or you spy a chance (after a failed crusade) - its income - don't develop it - always destroy the graveyards/mausoleum/kennels. Garrison should be small - sometimes when Sylvania comes back from the dead they only siege it one turn then leave - you can then put a full garrison in to bleed Sylvania of all those elite troops (using mortars I killed 400 blood vampires in siege towers at the walls...) because they may swing south to Zhufbar after where you can finish them with the new defence army - always think of it as a protective outpost/temporary gold generator to Zhufbar only. You can of course take it - then give it to one of the northern empire factions like Ostland/Nordland as this is useful to keep them alive during the Chaos Invasion.

    Muradin the lord here is a grenadier unit with an elite skill and can fit in between the gate towers.

    Karak Ziflin: Looks quiet over here right? Wrong! Several times i've had to fight off beastman sieges here but its still a very low priority hold. Try and help Wissenland to take the Beastman camp and then help out to take the Sylvania keep to the north as soon as possible. Any beastmen that then spawn will try and head to a more distant hold and so won't be a threat. Try and get this place to be able to build elite troops as you may be needed in the future....

    Karak Hirn: The forgotten hold. Just keep it with a free upkeep army plus general. Nearly always the orcs will take Grenzstadt and all of a sudden this place needs defending although the orc attempts are half hearted - try and get this to build income stuff or leave it not building if you have little gold - you just have to defend with what you can here - the other holds are more important. Towers again give you a view if the orcs are coming along the mountain road. Eventually as money allows, you will need this to move up a gear so it can retrain advanced units if you're trying to take Grenzstadt etc to keep the orc presence in Empire down - best make sure your finances are stable before trying that (take Gunbad first - get that to defend status and always build mines at Gunbad first thing - gold making machine)

    Plague: The bane of a dwarf player. There is very little you can do except grit your teeth - stop production of units and switch to other cities. You need to stop to rebuild your units rapidly once the plague has passed. Building sewers is pretty vital to delay plague from hurting you as long as possible. As they are also quite cheap and spur growth these are very useful to build now, especially if money is short.

    Random Tips:

    Generals skills: Your king and his heir have a skill. the slayer king, Ungrim, and the other slayer you start with Garangrim also have a skill. These are combat skills that are really useful. Try and station these people at key settlements that are going to see lots of fighting or in offensive armies to help break the enemy in sieges in the difficult break through the walls phase. Muradin at Zhufbar also has a "slowing" skill that seems to be of some use in a field army - slowing the enemy to your speed. All merc generals have a skill as well, but any new slayers who journey to Kadrin do not. Once you have recruited Long Drong I shift Garangrim south to help down there in an offensive army.

    Forming an offensive stack: This can seem quite difficult when you're constantly under pressure. The trick is to use what you can afford to spare IF you need to rebuild a settlements defence force - therefore don't build a stack that has lowered all your recruitment to "next unit in X turns" with none available. Let me make this clear: If I can recruit 3 quarrellers at Zhufbar I only want to recruit 2 so that last one is a retraining reserve so to speak if the settlement is attacked whilst the offensive stack is off doing its job. This obviously only occurs early in the game.

    You always want cannons to drop walls and mortars - if your production settlements are not under threat - rotate your ready built defence mortars out and rebuild them when you get gold. Use Zhufbar, Karaz-A-Karak, and Eight Peaks to build your first stack. With towers you can run non-artillery units over the valley to Karaz walls if the roads are clear then move them to the grouping stage in between Zhufbar and Karaz-A-Karak.

    Missions: Most are rubbish asking you to "acquire" a settlement. A lot seem to focus on the Border Princes. Its not worth upsetting the Princes (unless they take Varn before you) as they may ally with you and the Empire at a random point and considering the amount of Orcs in the southern part of the Empire you may have your hands full.

    Active defence: If a tiny orc force is close to your settlement and you can't see too much in the way of upcoming stuff - batter it! Divide and conquer for hells sake!

    Mortars in siege defence: Placing Mortars in a siege defence is a fine art - if you don't know how to do it, try it, and if it doesn't work reload a saved game - it can be difficult. Example: In the dwarven citadel map just outside the third line of walls entrance is a ramp - I place my two mortars here and defend the second wall - this gives them firing power inside the first wall. Obviously no use for stopping towers but then i'm already giving up the first wall so their towers are useless. If you have a castle you need to find a location that fire can clear your outer defensive wall - trial and error will get you your best location - sometimes I don't bother hitting the towers if it's just orc boyz pushing them for example i'll prefer to try and drop numbers overall by hitting the formations as they draw up waiting for the ram to do its work at the gate.

    Siege Defence 2: Always read carefully what units are attacking - Chaos Chosen, Black Orcs will nearly always be on towers and so on. Carefully check your placements so you don't have to move troops around on walls to much as this cuts down on crossbows firing time. Sometimes I sacrifice a dwarf unit (warriors/axes only) out from a second line defence to try and disrupt enemy siege units moving to attack my second walls - buys you valuable time and lives and can then force the gate and ladder only battle you really want. Hammerers always on the gate entrance/breaches if you can or Ironbreakers later on.

    Offensive Stacks: 2 cannon, 2 mortars, 2-4 Thunderers, 4 crossbows, rest infantry with as many elites as I can afford. Don't be precious though if needed - send it out to grind out what it can - level a Night Goblin hold but can't take it? - no worries, just kill what you can then pull out, re-siege and come back to finish the job with rebuilt better units. You can of course try and send maybe a 2/3rds to 3/4's stack and tempt the Night Goblins to attack out and slaughter them that way.

    Dwarf Surface Towns: Whilst you can't do much with these, you CAN retrain troops in them (and garrison - free upkeep). You need to build the basic warrior and engineers buildings to get free upkeep. This also works if you take an Empire town - if they have built upto a Royal Armoury, you will be able to rebuild even Ironbreakers. Building Elder halls helps to keep them from rebelling as well as getting rid of corruption. You cannot recruit at Blood Keep but I have not managed to take Brass Keep from Middenheim to see if recruitment is allowed there.

    Norse Dwarves:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    There are two Norse dwarf holds, Kraka Ornsmotek and Kraka Drak and one very old Dwarf hold in Chaos lands - Karag Dum. These all have dwarf structures so if you manage to take them give you your recruiting bases for these more northerly areas. I'll leave you to find them yourselves
    Last edited by Kurgis; August 19, 2011 at 11:07 AM. Reason: Spelling

  19. #19

    Default Re: Kurgis & Co's Guide to CoW Factions

    When Chaos Storm hits, make sure you have the entire Southern Empire. By then you should have a massive income, which is very good. Get your best generals (those with necromancy) and give each a full stack of skeletons and zombies, with 3 or 4 archers (one must be empire archers for the stakes) and a screaming skull catapult. A unit of cavalry comes in handy too for riding down the fleeing troops.

    What you're gonna do is station a stack on each bridge between Waldenhof and Blood Keep. Keep another full stack in the nearest city, making full use of free upkeep. When Chaos attacks, you'll be able to hold them off with bridge battles, setting up stakes with the empire archers to kill the cavalry and then just throwing your undead against the Chaos forces while firing the catapults and archers at the chaos on the bridge.

    Because of the Necromancy trait, your generals will keep a large chuck of his army alive to fight the next battle. But after one or two battles you will need to switch out the stack on the bridge with the stack in the nearest city, and then you can retrain the stack which was previously on the bridge. Generals without necromancy will obviously have to switch stacks faster, so you might want a third stack in reserve, and keep them on the sides.

    Oh, and in my game I was neutral with chaos. Dont know if that wasn't bugged, but I declared them war and then we fought, so this obviously only applies if chaos should be at war with Sylvania. although it also works very well at keeping the Empire out of your lands.

    And a general tip:
    Whenever you have money to spare, and a lot more income then expenses, train stacks of zombies(20x40=800 gp/turn). If you have very very much mony, train stacks of skeleton warriors(20x80=1600 gp/turn). Train them in towns with armourers, weaponsmiths are a bonus but not as important. Station these stacks throughout your lands, but especially around Grenzstadt and Drakenhof, as a sort of First line of defence. When the Orks appeared Grenzstadt I immediatly hit them with six full stacks of fodder, severely weakening them. The survivors were banded together in another stack and sent themof to attack yet a seventh stack. The most important thing is to take out the siege engines, since those things cause a lot of damage.
    By the time my actual armies hit they had barely any siege engines left, and four of their armies had been absolutely obliterated by measly skeletons and zombies (although I must admit I changed zombies to give them two hitpoints, I dunno how good they are without that. If they suck, just recruit skeletons)

    It's important to remember that although skeletons aren't as tough as other basic troops, they will never flee. This makes them excellen suicide troops, and allows them to kill more in an army without a general then human troops. I wouldn't recruit spearskeletons or archers since those have a much higher upkeep, which does eventually add up.

    Even though you don't need armourers or weaponsmiths to build your undead, build them wherever you can. A +3 to armor and +1 to attack is a relatively large bonus for skeletons and even more so for zombies, who have no armor from themselves and a low attack. It significantly increases their staying power. Offensive armies should be completely made out of skeletons who are fully upgraded as soon as you have built armouries and weaponsmiths. Unupgraded skeletons are still good as garrison or emergency soldiers, but switch them out for upgraded ones as soon as possible

    Final tip: NEVER disband an undead unit. Gather any unnecessary units and put them in suicide stacks. Keep on churning out suicide stacks untill you are starting to lose money due to construction and upkeep. With the exception of a too high cost (which will never happen if you have a lot of provinces) you can never have too many skeletons!

    That's what I have on playing Sylvania.
    I salute those who took the Hungarian Phrasebook simply because of the quote!

  20. #20

    Default Re: Kurgis & Co's Guide to CoW Factions

    Simple Battlefield Tatics for Reikland in 1.44

    As an main faction and emperor's homeland, Reikland is good for both strategic matters(like economic issue) & tatical matters

    Reikland's army doesn't have BEST unit via all classes. their gunners are weaker than dwarves, cavaries are weaker than chaoses, infantries are weaker than other strong infantries. BUT, empire's army is best army though out the Whole CoW Campaigns because of their combinations. playing as an empire, dont spam certain units like chaos. always combine them. that is most important issue.

    1. Units

    1) infantry
    imperial infantry has great moral with high defence value, but it is hard to crush the enemy. they can hold the line as long as you want, but you should help them to vanquish their foes. basic usage of imperial infantry is Anvil & Reserve

    Anvil
    most of imperial pikemen, spearmen, harberdier can use spearwall formation, which is most powerful formation all through the MT2's system. concept of Spearwall is making deadzone in front of formation. most of enemies are hard to go through that spear zones. well, some tough units like demons or choas warriors can push over the line. yes, pikes can be destroyed because they have second weapon, but harberdiers and spearmen doesn't have second weapon so they can tussle with enemy heavy infantries while they can form as an spearwall formation. because of that formations, high morals, strong defence value, they can hold the line. they can act like an Anvil. make imperial infantry to hole the formations and defence your powerful shooting guys.
    Recommended Anvil units: every units which have spearwall formation(especially, Artdorf honored company is great choice)

    Reserve
    some of imperial infantries like sword/shield styles and greatswords are powerful when they tussle with enemies. choosing reserve troops is quiet easier than choosing an anvils. you can use any of your troops. reserve acts in many ways. block charge enemy aiming your shooters. reinforce your formations, detour to side of enemy and surround them. they help anvil team to crush the enemy. they act like a semi-hammers
    Recommended Anvil units: every unit can run and good at fighting without formation(especially, greatswords)

    2) Shooters
    empire has powerful shooting armies. powerful artilleries with good handgunners. at least you should have 4~6 handgunners in your army(gun>>>>>crossbow>bow). if you can recruit dwarf thunders, use them. they can shoot over the your infantry's head so place them behind the anvil formations.

    about artilleries, you can have 4 types.
    mortar: weakest of all imperial artilleries(but they are powerful. just among the other artilleries). howtzer so easy to place in your formation. efficient ammo use. good for long battle
    great cannon: powerful. good for both construct and units(using blasting fire). straight fire weapon so hard to place in formation.
    hellblast: super-power! good for crushing enemy units. straight fire weapon so hard to place in formation. using ammo so soon
    hellstorm: uber-power! good for erasing enemy units. howtzer so easy to place in your formation. using ammo too quickly. cometimes occur aiming error]

    choice is in your hand.

    3) Hammers
    empire's basic tactics is anvil-hammer with gunpowders. Reikland has gal-maraz in their cavary; Reiksguard. as an emperor's bodyguards, Reiksguard is most powerful cavary in CoW. yeah maybe chaos chosen knight has higher spec, but those babarians doesnt know how to use lances, Empires can. as a powerful lance chargers, Reiksguard is great hammer to crush the enemies.

    2. Usage
    use your anvil line to hold the enemy. reserve to help the line and destory the enemy if you can. cook them with your powerful gunpowder units. then smash the enemy with your lance-charging-gal maraz. battle over heroic victory gaining stars The end done!

    next time, i'll get some screen shots for further formation tips thks

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