Necrarchs

[Valar]

I was just wondering if they have been buffed intentionelly? I remember that they were potent but could be taken down by reaching them with many troops or lots of arrows. But now when i was playing Stirland they alone killed my army of ~1500 mix of stir river patrol, empire swordsmen/halberdier, hellhunters redeemers and greatswords. They are 10 vamps and they fire volleys in aprox 5 sec and each volley or maybe 5 out of 10 individual shoots kill a squad of 127 empire soldiers directly with huge splash. one volley killed 2 whole squads leaving no one alive. the battle was over in a matter of 30 sec 1500 dead not one single on the vampire side, and this was just one 500 sylvania patrol and they got armies with more necrarchs since round one...

edit: I also made custom battles test, and one single group of nercarchs totally wipes out and scares of remnants of whatever they meet, dwarven elite iron breakers, high elf swordmaster/lions/phoenix guard, all dark elfs elites, every single knight in empire, all manners of orcs and all favored of chaos. this is just to op for me, does anyone know how to reset them to old necrarchs?

[IrishBlood]

I'd sujest rushing them from the flanks with pistoliers and knights , completly swarm them. thats how i deal with most enemy mages. Its very costly, but not much else you can do really

[Valar]

You are of course right but, well they can easily kill of most cav with one volley and slay their morale as well, and the sylvanians got lots of other units who sometimes stand in the way so to speak, like thier black knights xd
And at this point of the game my economy as stirland can barely field one full stack with regulars and some elites , thats what freaks me out but ty

[Zing]

I would avoid fighting any mages without artillery.

[Tachi]

I've got a similar scenario, but i was fighting Magus. I tried rushing them with cavalry while they marched against me, then I found out that they can shoot while moving

[Reiksfart]

This is something else which is totally out of balance and needs fixing. Mages have to be somewhat powerful, but should still require an army to accompany them to win the battle.

This is what I achieved with the Sundering EDU when I built it. Their new projectiles and overall power level make them very effective, enough to be usable in every battle without ruining gameplay or enjoyment. I will do the same for my CoW submod and likely make mages recruitable at capitals with a long refresh timer.

Before that, I've always thought wizard units to be nothing but a cheap gimmick, which is fun for one battle destroying half or all the enemy army by themselves, but then you realise they do nothing for gameplay, just cheapens it and doesn't need any thought.

[Marcus Tullius Cicero]

Sounds like you need to hurry up and release it haha

[IrishBlood]

Sounds like you need to hurry up and release it haha

what he said!

[Valar]

yeah sounds good reiksfart

[Iguanaonastick]

As for fighting mages, in field battles I find that two units of pistoliers acting in tandem can kill them. Loose formation, one approaches directly, one skirts around a bit. As soon as they start aiming for the first (closer) unit that unit starts running and the second gets the charge order. Result: One dead unit of mages. One and a half dead units of pistoliers. Painful, but worth it. If the pistoliers have enough chevrons they can withstand a beating before they run away, though against Necrachs this happens far more quickly than against Chaos Mages so you basically have to hope the second unit gets in before they get a chance to switch targets.

Artillery can work but it's not terribly reliable. It also tends to kill most of the mages but leave one or two alive even on a direct hit. One or two mages are far less dangerous than a full pack, but they can still blast your units so it's not enough.

In defensive sieges I find mages are easy prey. Just put some archers on the walls and snipe them if they're in range. If they lurk outside of range they still have to navigate a maze of city streets to get to your troops which makes it easy to ambush them before they have a chance to unleash their power.

[Valar]

Yes the pistolier thing was smart , i rarely use them actually One thing i noticed is that if you got a foot army lets say 2000 spearmen which are worst empire troops according to me, you would definetly loose against a 500 sylvanian army with one group of necracrhs but i just re-loaded and autoresolved and won with like 200 loses xD

I guess tactics and preparation with spying then building correct units is the best or LoS mage blocking, but sometimes the terrain up even if you got pistoliers , like in the mountain regions near zhufbar wit sylvania and you cant really reach the mages without craming in tight which is a killer so to say

[Iguanaonastick]

True. But there's only one unit of Necrachs in the entire campaign, so you can afford to deal with them carefully. I see them as a fun challenge. (They'd definitely become a chore if there were more units, though.)

I should note though that empire Spearmen are very decent troops because of their shieldwall ability and two-handed animation. They're certainly tons better than free company and generally are surprisingly reliable.

As for pistoliers, they're one of the best Empire units there is. I highly recommend using more of them. They're also great for eliminating Hellcannon and Rock Lobbas before they can decimate your troops and I've lost count of the number of Chaos generals they've assassinated by pistol-shot. If Halberdiers are your shield and artillery and knights are your sword, pistoliers are the sneaky dagger you stab the other guy with somewhere very painful before he even realises the fight has started.

[IrishBlood]

True. But there's only one unit of Necrachs in the entire campaign, so you can afford to deal with them carefully. I see them as a fun challenge. (They'd definitely become a chore if there were more units, though.)

I should note though that empire Spearmen are very decent troops because of their shieldwall ability and two-handed animation. They're certainly tons better than free company and generally are surprisingly reliable.

As for pistoliers, they're one of the best Empire units there is. I highly recommend using more of them. They're also great for eliminating Hellcannon and Rock Lobbas before they can decimate your troops and I've lost count of the number of Chaos generals they've assassinated by pistol-shot. If Halberdiers are your shield and artillery and knights are your sword, pistoliers are the sneaky dagger you stab the other guy with somewhere very painful before he even realises the fight has started.

what he said Pistolliers are essential! also, if you have a half stack of them combined with knights or other heavy cav you can use them to help your allies, partiularly against grimgor and during the strom of chaos. I've scored many a heroic victory like that.

[Valar]

Well that's not true, I have seen and met about 3-4 units of necrarchs in my stirland campaign which is deadly, i saw three sylvania stacks have one unit each

Well i meant of the "empire" named soldiers , spearmen, swordmen , halberdiers Well i would call myself a foot commander, hate cavalry actually, even tough they pwn. I sometimes use generals with cavalry or some heavy knights to chase down routing enemies and charging keypositions but overall i go for allround "cheap" compared to cavalry armies and versatile and huge armies of halberdiers supported by swordsmen for flanking and archers/muskeeters/crossbowmen for hail of deaths and of course artillery, mortar behind halberdier lines is really good. Well that's how i play except when i got loads of cash in the end and can wait several rounds to recruit armies of elites for high cost I use alot of fatigue warfare, leting the enemys elites rush into the sturdy halberdiers which takes long time to beat if they even make it and then they are often very tired so then next line of halberdiers or swordsmen finishes them of, and i like to maintain several stacks of these armies!

[Iguanaonastick]

Weird to see so many. The player only gets one unit, that's for sure. (Unless you get really lucky with a quest-reward. I've had 8 units of bright wizards in one campaign, though fortunately those aren't nearly as overpowered.)

Perhaps in my games the vampires just didn't have the time to get more necrarch units via script. In both my empire campaigns I fought them when an early crusade was called on Drakenhof, which crushed the entire faction in short order.

[Ichon]

I always attack Sylvania early unless I am Dwarves. Even as Orcs and Chaos they are a focus of my armies early- 1 so they don't gain too much strength, and 2 they have a prime position.

[Valar]

well could anyone confirm that they have Sylvania has been boosted ? For at least in my new 1.5 empire campaigns they start at round 2 with several 4-5 fullstacks of elites, black grail knights, spirit hosts, blood dragons, necracrhs, black knights, grave guard etc

I did indeed call a crusade on them just to halten them, since they took vorderbergen and mordheim quite instantly ~round 4 and then went on encroaching on talabecland, stirland (me) and dwarf regions, the crusade could not kill them off since they had 2-3 stacks retreating to guard their homeland but it bought some precious time then my first stack got wiped by necrarch which is why i created this thread

[Iguanaonastick]

Hm. I haven't played 1.5 yet, and won't until there's a decent English translation, so perhaps that's the difference.

I've seen all the units you mention but never, ever more than 1 unit of Black Grail knights or Necrarchs or blood dragons. Well, come to think of it I think there were two blood dragon cavalry units in my last campaign, but one was defending Zhufbar all by its lonesome and were put down by firing squads without killing a single one of my precious troops.

[Ichon]

I've seen several Black Grail and Blood Knight cavalries in 1.4 but never more than 1 Necarch unless Sylvania lost all regions. The stacks that spawn have new one and occasionally the original survives and the armies merge. I've seen 2 Necarchs at least twice in 1.4 so maybe 1.5 gave Sylvania a little boost as well.

[Kurgis]

In my recent game of 1.5 with dwarves i've seen 2 lots of Necrarchs already (before crashes stopped it) and thats just what I've seen with the benfit of only having 1 spy (Felix) - it looks like they're getting scripted in with the new scripts that are firing.