CoW 1.5.1 tips!

[digs_shayla89]

Hello, long time lurker here on the MTW2 forums, long time Stainless Steel player new to CoW 1.5.1. I started a campaign as Khorne and Sylvania and got absolutely destroyed within the first 10 turns. I was hoping that there are some of you still out there playing this and could give me some tips. Thanks!

[Thorn777]

Sylvania has crazy amounts of free-upkeep in ist two Castles. AI sucks in siege battles. Get AI to attack there. Skelletons also profit allot from the armor upgrades in Drakenhof, making total defense 1/3 stronger + some attack. Also recruit some skelleton archers for you free-upkeep garrison. Meanhwile hold back a few turns till your merchants get to the gromril or warpstone ressource. Build an offensive army to take Zufbar when the dwarves are busy to attack the night goblins. Try to spam graveguard Hellebardiers. They are very OP and recruitable in all your cities. Have not played further, but I was able to crush several stacks and expand this way.

Have not played chaos yet.

[MulletMan]

I'm running a Sylvanian campaign myself so I can offer a few tips there.

The early game is hard, Stacks coming right at you from all sides but it is possible to beat them.
From the first turn recruit 3 Black Knight units and as many skeletons as you can , you can train one Black knight from each of your provinces except Blood Keep. They'll be ready just in time. They're mighty powerful as well as Undead meaning you won't need to retrain so often.
Don't forget about your 'Mercenary' undead. They're free and that'll add a good 6-8 units to your forces.


Secondly when said stacks go come gang up on them. Take them one at a time with as many general-led stacks as you can muster and fight at night. Your vampire generals take a huge penalty for fighting during the day so it's best you attack rather than them.
When you do engage use Vlad or the faction heir as your main stack general, his Count bodyguard horse are a godsend in battle.

In battle your best tactic will be a simple hammer-anvil. Cheap Undead infantry to hold their battle line while your cavalry swing round the side (Clearing those pesky pistoleers,Deathjacks, Bright Wizards and ranged threats along the way) and cycle-charge their rear constantly.

Cycle Charging is when you charge in with a unit then order them to back off immediately after they hit so as to get the most out of the charge bonus with as little loss on your side as possible. (You can wipe out Minotaurs with this tactic using only 2 infantry units and 2 charger cavalry.)

Once their General goes down the route will start and the battle's won. Casualties will look back but you'll recover the majority of them thanks to the necromancy


Don't forget to order your re-enforcing armies to surround their army and hit them from all sides before engaging. Every extra body helps.

That should be it for the east.

Now for Blood Keep, don't do anything but train units till the slots are full. Don't try to take Nuln or the city in the south as when you do take either one a stack will spawn. Wait for them to come to you. In a siege you'll be fine. Their units will suffer under hot oil, arrows and a chokepoint.
The beastmen and Orcs will start pushing into the area eventually, Then you can advance and take the cities without much issue.

[digs_shayla89]

Thanks for all the advice. I'll have to restart my campaign after reading all that. I destroyed all the buildings in the 4 starting territories and moved south to establish a stronghold by taking the Border Prince regions... that didn't work out very well. The Dwarves and Stirland still hounded me all the way down there.

I also have a few other questions I was hoping could get answered. First off, how do the victory conditions for the AI work? I had the game inform me that Karak Aznor and The Principality of Reiksland were on the verge of domination or something along those lines and then the following turn a message popped up saying that I had failed to achieve victory conditions and was brought back to the main menu. Just wanted to know what was up with that.

Also, I sent an army to conquer the lightly defended Dwarven capital, Karak something, because it only contained a unit of Greatbeards, a General, and Dwarven Warriors. However, after a laid siege to the fortress, a whole army was there defending it, all with silver chevrons! Is that some kind of bug? I tried it after reloading the game and it still happened. Any way to avoid that? Thanks again in advance. This mod is awesome by the way, haven't had difficulties playing Stainless Steel even on very hard but Call of Warhammer is brutal.

[Bombiz]

what are the negative effects for fighting in the day and the positive effects for fighting at night? I ask because I've always heard this but never actually noticed a difference.

[Thorn777]

what are the negative effects for fighting in the day and the positive effects for fighting at night? I ask because I've always heard this but never actually noticed a difference.

When playing Sylavania it matters allot. Any of your Generals gets minus 10 command when fighting at day. Which can even frighten undead into breaking, I have seen it happen! But command also affects how good units fight. I dont bother with it for other factions to be honest. On occassion one of your Generals can have a nightfighter trait, but a + 2-3 command doesnt weigh up to the tediousness of not seeing your troops in battle, without the "Highlights troops" button in the UI.

For Sylvania it makes perfect sense though and Looks very cool. Whenever I played Elves or Empire and attacked Sylvania I only played nightbattles for Immersion purposses. Like what Vampire army would Sally out on a hot summer day, and the bigtime command effect and night atmosphere/disability also makes the Vampire Counts a real challenge at night.

[Thorn777]

Last thing is no bug but a gameplay feature to add challenge and immersion. Any key home-settlements of the AI, like that Dwarven Karak, Altdorf, Averheim etc, will spawn a stack inside the City/Castle when them is under siege. Of course ist a bit unfair, but if you come prepared with your own full stack then one of theirs is still just prey when you use siege Units, ranged units, and outflanking/surrounding and charges against the often helpless siege AI. One Thing most effective is taking enemies walls and stack them with your own archers, or/and catapult town center etc.

Only thing is that you have to come prepared with your own numbers, like it would be realistic when attacking a key stronghold of the enemy.

Again, grind enemies down in own sieges, attacking or defending. Also sallying out the first turn when your under siege is always effective when you do it right, by placing your archers on the wall and use one unit of archers to Lure the passive AI Besiegers towards your wall. That way you can thin them out or even kill the stack straight away. Just make sure that when you end the battle and AI still has Units left, that all yourunits end the battle inside your walls and the gate is closed. Otherwise the game makes you lose the battle.

Stuff like that, just cheat like a human, same way as the AI is cheating on ist Terms.

[digs_shayla89]

Thanks again for the helpful advice. Another thing... I hit the Storm of Chaos event around turn 60. A few turns later, as I was in the middle of a battle, the game crashed. This was around turn 64 if I remember correctly. After booting the game up again and trying to load my quicksave, autosave, and the Sylvania save, none of them would load. The loading bar would get full then the "Sigmar protect us" crash window popped up again. Is this a known problem? Are all campaign games going to bug out by turn 60 something? Or is this just a case of bad luck?

[Thorn777]

Thanks again for the helpful advice. Another thing... I hit the Storm of Chaos event around turn 60. A few turns later, as I was in the middle of a battle, the game crashed. This was around turn 64 if I remember correctly. After booting the game up again and trying to load my quicksave, autosave, and the Sylvania save, none of them would load. The loading bar would get full then the "Sigmar protect us" crash window popped up again. Is this a known problem? Are all campaign games going to bug out by turn 60 something? Or is this just a case of bad luck?

The crashes are the only Mayor downturn of this wonderful mod, but has become better with each Version. I deal with that by making designated 4 saves(besides autosave and quicksave, quicksaves are most corrupt btw) for each campaign, and after each end-of-turn, and before each battle, I save in one of the 4 saves. Each at a time, so there is some space inbeween them just to make sure, but not to much that you not have to redo more than 4 turns. If in a rare occassion the mod carshes after a victorious battle, I cheat and open console and type "auto_win attacker" or "Defender", just to prevent from redoing battles I already won.

This way, also the rare crashes are a minor Thing. You would prolly have to start a new campaign on your save though. Sucks. But try again with the 4 saves method.

[Strossi]

One more bonus of the night battle is that you see the enemies position lit up by their torches =D, hello pre-set interlocking fields of fire. But it is a nightmare fighting a night battle in a conifer forest, can't see .