Goblin doom divers - OP?

[Incontinenta Buttox]

Anyone else think these things are overpowered?

Being on the receiving end of even one unit of these is a very unpleasant experience, especially as dwarfs.

They have a high rate of fire
They do lots of damage
They are frighteningly accurate - more accurate than any artillery I have used in my empire, and dwarf armies. They are far superior to grudge throwers, which are quite useless in comparison.

It seems odd to me that greenskins have artillery with laser-guided precision.

[A Barbarian]

Having played both factions on hard, dwarfs and greenskins, I haven't really noticed an obvious imbalance (I am using KAMs battle mod btw). Grudge throwers also do pretty well according to the after battle stats where they usually are in the top 5 for kills. As dwarfs, faced with a doom diver catapult, I usually try to sneak 1 or 2 units through enemy lines at an opportune time to take it out.

[Karnil Vark Khaitan]

Anyone else think these things are overpowered?

Being on the receiving end of even one unit of these is a very unpleasant experience, especially as dwarfs.

They have a high rate of fire
They do lots of damage
They are frighteningly accurate - more accurate than any artillery I have used in my empire, and dwarf armies. They are far superior to grudge throwers, which are quite useless in comparison.

It seems odd to me that greenskins have artillery with goblin-guided precision.

fixed it for you ^^

[Incontinenta Buttox]

I also use KAM's battle mod.

When playing as greenskins those doom-divers are hilarious.

[KAM 2150]

Then you should have reported it in my thread as it might have nothing to do with vanilla warhammer, as most of arty did not yet have full overhaul ; P Only changes that were made to them so far were lowered realod rate and tweaks to damage, but the same as most of other arty units got.

[gary0044187]

Then you should have reported it in my thread as it might have nothing to do with vanilla warhammer, as most of arty did not yet have full overhaul ; P Only changes that were made to them so far were lowered realod rate and tweaks to damage, but the same as most of other arty units got.

KAM did you consider the Orc tech tree when you balanced by lowering their reload rate? from what I remember, the doomdiver tree includes a total of 55% reduction in reload times. This could mean that your rebalance is less than you expected later. You might consider modding the tech (especially that one with 35%) downwards. Just a thought.

Also, I love how accurate they are in vanilla... though watching 1/3 of a dwarf iron breakers die to a single pointy hat wearing goblin was both hilarious and pain inducing on normal unit sizes.

[Incontinenta Buttox]

Then you should have reported it in my thread as it might have nothing to do with vanilla warhammer, as most of arty did not yet have full overhaul ; P Only changes that were made to them so far were lowered realod rate and tweaks to damage, but the same as most of other arty units got.

Hi Kam,

Having never played the game without your mod, I wasn't aware if my observations were due to your changes or if its something inherent in the vanilla game.

As someone mentioned below, I suppose they are rudimentary guided missiles. Damn effective ones though!

[SPARTAN VI]

Anyone else think these things are overpowered?

Being on the receiving end of even one unit of these is a very unpleasant experience, especially as dwarfs.

They have a high rate of fire
They do lots of damage
They are frighteningly accurate - more accurate than any artillery I have used in my empire, and dwarf armies. They are far superior to grudge throwers, which are quite useless in comparison.

It seems odd to me that greenskins have artillery with laser-guided precision.

It actually makes perfect sense to me. Doom Divers are basically the Old World's equivalent of a guided missile. Think about it; they're literally launching a goblin in a wing suit whose only purpose is to pilot himself into the enemy. It doesn't get any more accurate than that!

As for how to counter them with Dwarfs, it's a bit of challenge since Dwarfs don't have cav to swoop in and put a stop to them. If you're early on in a Dwarf campaign like I am, you're probably lacking Gyrocopters/Gyrobombers. That means your best bet is to counter arty with your own grudge throwers or cannons; or bum-rush them Miners or Quarrelers; or try to deploy a vanguard unit of Miners further up and hidden (e.g. forest or negative slope of a hill) and charge the Doom Divers when the enemy's forces have committed to engaging your main force. Often times I'd rather focus on my opponent's heavy hitters (e.g. Black Orcs) than waste precious arty fire hammering on their artillery, which means I'm simply enduring the enemy arty. I take note of which unit they're targeting, which is usually my Hammerers, then deploy them in a wide and thin line to mitigate multi-kills from the divers.

[gary0044187]

yeah no shock columns when facing arty, that's for sure... but lets be honest, 100 rounds after I destroyed that doomdiver, I haven't seen a second yet. Lots of fanatics and black orcs and chariots and even armies of trolls, but absolutely no arty.

[KAM 2150]

Well, the accuracy would be the same, although I am not sure if with reduced reload speed I use, my damage changes would not stay the same overal.

[Ichon]

It doesn't seem that bad to me... only 1 that Grimgor starts with and then usually 100+ turns before you see many more and by that time Dwarf have Ironbreakers which are WAY better than anything Greenskins have.

[gary0044187]

hell, by then dwarves should have a few engineers in the stack to make their cannons fire faster and further. poor little grobbi never stood a chance.

[Chromium]

I've fought Greenskins multiple times. Except for my Dwarves campaign, I never saw them using any doomdivers at all. A few catapults- but very few.

Even as the dwarves, I didn't see any reason to believe they were OP or any specifically OP compared to the rest of the Ork roster. The faction itself is OP and needs nerfing.

[gary0044187]

no way, at the very least their tier 1 goblins and boyz need 10 more men per unit on normal and probably a +5 leadership boost. units are not particularly OP. It's just the Whaagh stacks early game have too many tier 2-3 units and are all rank 5 and of course, only the player is ready to fight a waagh plus almost full stack at turn 20-25. Biggest question, Chromium, is whether you maneuver during battle, or if you are letting the enemy control positioning at that point. If you can get some quarreler units to the flank of a line infantry fight and fire a few volleys into their rear, followed by an axe charge, you will do some significant damage to their morale. If you can bring down their warboss early as well (for normal warbosses, quarrelers are fine, for grimgor you need the thunderers or hammerers you started with and possibly your general), then even better. really good to have miners with blasting caps early, they will do some damage (their upkeep is the same as regular miners, but the blasting caps greatly increase their ability to effect enemy morale). Late game, a fight against orcs becomes laughably easy if you build your army right.

[Chromium]

Biggest question, Chromium, is whether you maneuver during battle, or if you are letting the enemy control positioning at that point. If you can get some quarreler units to the flank of a line infantry fight and fire a few volleys into their rear, followed by an axe charge, you will do some significant damage to their morale. If you can bring down their warboss early as well (for normal warbosses, quarrelers are fine, for grimgor you need the thunderers or hammerers you started with and possibly your general), then even better. really good to have miners with blasting caps early, they will do some damage (their upkeep is the same as regular miners, but the blasting caps greatly increase their ability to effect enemy morale). Late game, a fight against orcs becomes laughably easy if you build your army right.

Late game doesn't matter when the Orks are fielding Black Orks by turn 15. And please do tell me if there's a way to maintain 2 stacks for dwarfs before turn 30. It's not.

This apologism over TWW is getting ridiculous. It's a good game, the best since Shogun 2, but it's not perfect. Greenskins are OP. The player can struggle through. The AI can't. In every single campaign I've played- Empire, VC, Chaos- doesn't matter, they've overrun the South within 40 turns. Not once have the dwarves been able to stop. Not once.

And now please before mocking me about how I suck at battles (something that seems to be very common in these forums these days when asking for advice; I know this wasn't the norm back in the days), kindly share your thoughts on how can the AI dwarves stop AI grimgor from rolling over them all the time?

[gary0044187]

Late game doesn't matter when the Orks are fielding Black Orks by turn 15. And please do tell me if there's a way to maintain 2 stacks for dwarfs before turn 30. It's not.

This apologism over TWW is getting ridiculous. It's a good game, the best since Shogun 2, but it's not perfect. Greenskins are OP. The player can struggle through. The AI can't. In every single campaign I've played- Empire, VC, Chaos- doesn't matter, they've overrun the South within 40 turns. Not once have the dwarves been able to stop. Not once.

And now please before mocking me about how I suck at battles (something that seems to be very common in these forums these days when asking for advice; I know this wasn't the norm back in the days), kindly share your thoughts on how can the AI dwarves stop AI grimgor from rolling over them all the time?

tbh, I have only seen AI Dwarfs Hold up to the Waagh in two cases unmodded and 1 more modded. unmodded it's when I play Dwarfs and support the lesser southern dwarfn holds or Kazak Kadrin with the Legendary Lords alternate start mod supporting dwarfs and Barak Varr. The other case is when Grimgor and Top Knotz never stop fighting. The Dwarves are able to build up very quickly early. With Mods it changed when I added the "No AI Cheats Mod" or something like that. It removed the free public order bonus the AI gets. Now most greenskins spend half their time putting down greenskin rebellions in their own land if they expand too quickly, allowing the dwarfs to rebound (dwarfs seem to get more natural bonuses to public order).

One mod I would propose for when people are not planning on directly confronting the greenskins (cus lets be honest, once you learn to survive against Waagh it gets kind of fun wading through those tier 2 and 3 units) would be to create a sliding scale of power for the waaghs. first 50 turns make the waagh army smaller 5-10 units, no free ranks to start, and mostly tier one goblins and boyz. 50-100, a fresh waagh would start with 10-15 units, rank 3 to 4, and a mix of tier 1 and tier 2 orc units, roughly 50% tier 2. 100-150, make it 15-20 units, rank 5-6, with mostly tier 2 and some tier 3. finally after 150, all waaghs will be full stacks with tier 3 and 4 greenskin units rank 7-8 to start.

another solution would be to edit dwarf holds to all be like karak a karaz, with walls applied to the smaller settlements from tier 1. the upgrade for settlements would be changed from watch towers to the walls one and probably give them the same base garrisons that the original holds had. this way every hold will require a siege and possibly cause casualties to the waagh, giving the dwarfs time to survive. (or because we know how unlikely npc dwarfs would be to build those garrison buildings, we could add a single garrison unit to every building type. barley or pub give a warrior (upgrades to longbeard -> longbeard great weapon -> ironbreaker), slayer shrines give a slayer, forges give hammerers, engineer guild buildings a siege weapon, etc etc... I could probably whip something like that up tonight. I just don't know if that will work because we still see grimgor+waagh take undefended Kazak a Karak all the time. Even if it had 20+ units, would it still hold out?

I have to admit though, that my reasoning is entirely due to playing dwarfs almost exclusively, while I would be intrigued by all dwarf settlements having walls, improving their garrisons would not improve the challenge of playing dwarfs, which plays as a unique survival style campaign early on that is very enjoyable as is.

[Fallen851]

Artillery is just ridiculously accurate in this game, and with no spread formation, it leads to devastation. Load up a bunch of Steam Tanks versus Pegasus Knights in a custom battle and you'll see what I mean. The Tanks shoot them down like as if they shot laser guided missiles.

[craziii]

don't nerf my goblin bombs please.