Is Something Wrong With Chaos?

[ByzantinePowerGame]

Playing as Chaos I don't get any hordes, I have no swarms, it is turn 18 and I finally have a second army [only 14 units, my main army has 12, still trying to get both up to 20, in progress] and I am being swarmed by 5 full stacks from Kislev and 3 full stacks of Dwarves...

I really don't feel like I'm an overwhelming Chaos horde, or even a reasonably powerful Chaos horde.

Contrasting this with when I play as Vampire Counts or Bretonnia and I see Chaos pouring out with 7+ stacks of super powerful units that cut a swath through the best units that I have to offer.

Is there a reason the game is so unbalanced and inconsistent?


Is the AI actually bound by recruitment restrictions in the same way the human player is?


Is the AI also bound by monetary restrictions?

I end up quitting a large number of my games when it dawns on me that the AI appears to be cheating and is spamming huge stacks of armies that it shouldn't be able to afford this early on, and that it shouldn't be able to build in a mere 10-15 turns...

Also, the dwarves in the Chaos lands, I razed 2 of their 3 settlements in the first 6 turns and it took them to turn 9 to reclaim one of the two razed settlements, and they didn't get the other one back yet, so they went from 3 settlements to 1 and then finally back to 2... How are they able to recover and spawn so many stacks so quickly?



Imagine this is LOTR, I am Isengard, I am attacking Helms Deep, and the armies of Rohan outnumber me 6 to 1... It feels unrealistic and it isn't actually enjoyable since numbers are something Chaos relies on... Same for undead/vampire counts and orcs. When human enemies are outnumbering the undead, something is wrong with the game.


I actually fought a battle against dwarves, 3 stacks + a garrison, they had about 2800 soldiers, I had about 1100 soldiers, I lost all but about 100 soldiers and I managed to wipe out all but 300 of their force [which then routed and I won], so the battle ends, I am essentially exhausted with nothing left, and the very next turn, as I am trying to camp near their city and rebuild my shattered force, they attack me with 3 exhausted stacks + their garrison but they have about 1500 soldiers already, which happened almost instantly, and despite the fact that I killed two of their lords in the battle and those stacks should not have been around since the lords should have been unavailable.

[User29]

So, I guess I'll be the buzzkill for you

There is a reason the game is unbalanced and inconsistent, it's meant to be a challenge for the player, I'm not sure if you played Attila but the same concept applies. No Free Stacks for the player, he has to build them on his own

No, the AI gets more recruitment slots, but they do need the right buildings to RECRUIT the troops, now I put that in all caps because when they start off with their hordes they get elite end game tier units in those event spawned troops, if you kill them to the last man they will have to recruit based on their buildings or get more event spawned troops

No the AI gets a lot more base income than the player, a LOT more.

Yes they can afford a lot more firepower than the player to overcome their... eh, ineptitude compared to the human mind.

They can spawn stacks so quickly because they have so much more money and recruitment slots.

I'm sorry to have to tell you of all the bonuses the AI gets. You can turn it down to easy to make it more manageable, no shame in choosing the most fun option for you personally.

[ByzantinePowerGame]

Well when I wipe out 3 AI stacks + a garrison, using a lot of battlefield maneuvering on my part, and then the next turn I'm still totally depleted and they have enough to wipe me out, it feels like I haven't achieved anything and the game is throwing up artificial hurdles to my progress.

I don't mind a hard fought battle that depleted me, but I was expecting to be able to recover in place, build a few units, and raze the settlement I had just fought next to, because I had [so I thought] depleted 3 AI stacks and wrecked their garrison.

I would actually prefer an AI that is capable of matching me on a tactical level and doesn't just have to rely on overwhelming me.


When I was fighting the 3 stacks + the garrison, they came at me in a mostly piecemeal fashion. I conducted a classic "defeat in detail" against them, where I fought the first stack, then the second, and about halfway through dealing with the second stack the third stack set upon me, and as I was finishing defeating the second stack I was able to shift forces to flank the third stack.

The enemy could have merged all of their forces instead of deploying them in a piecemeal fashion. On the battlefield I just had to make sure to engage their first army early and then quickly finish it in time to engage the second army, and I didn't quite have time to finish the second army before the forces from the third army set upon me. They should have merged all forces as soon as possible and I would have essentially been unable to crack their line.

[User29]

We all would, but to be helpful, consider combing through the steam workshop to help improve your gaming experience, there are a lot of mods that make the ai better, and even more that remove/reduce the various cheats they have, I use quite a few myself

[God-Emperor of Mankind]

Just to clear something up here, Warriors of Chaos is not a "horde" army per say, they are a horde army because they have no real home, no cities no nothing and rely on beating the crap out of others to attract more warriors from other tribes.
But in terms of number of soliders, they are very much an elite army, tabletop and lore-wise, these are the best of the best(Chaos warriors and above that is, not the marauders who do come in huge numbers) on the planet.
So your LOTR analogy, actually that is correct, Warriors of chaos is usually outnumbered in the fluff 6 to 1 and will usually beat the living crap of them.

[Samittaja]

Just to clear something up here, Warriors of Chaos is not a "horde" army per say, they are a horde army because they have no real home, no cities no nothing and rely on beating the crap out of others to attract more warriors from other tribes.
But in terms of number of soliders, they are very much an elite army, tabletop and lore-wise, these are the best of the best(Chaos warriors and above that is, not the marauders who do come in huge numbers) on the planet.
So your LOTR analogy, actually that is correct, Warriors of chaos is usually outnumbered in the fluff 6 to 1 and will usually beat the living crap of them.

Oh Emperor who sits on thine Golden Throne. I ask you to grant me wisdom, for I am more into Warhammer 40k and have limited knowledge of Warhammer Fantasy lore.

- I've understood the Chaos forces will bring the Endtimes in limitless numbers. So the part of Warriors of Chaos being outnumbered is before the Endtimes, right?
- Is the elite status of Chaos Warriors trained, gained on the battlefields, or granted by the Chaos Gods, cursed be their names?
- Looking for some other Threads on Lore Discussions, apparently Chaos Gods, cursed be their names again, launch the Endtimes to have the final fun before the equally dastardous Undead would enslave all living beings. Why don't they just hunt down the necromancers and vampires to continue their fun, for they are powerful enough to destroy them in the first place?
- The Endtimes leaves the planet shattered. Who shatters it?

I require this knowledge so I can better fight the corruptive forces. Definitely

[drillmaster]

Well.... the End Times didnt happen. They re about to happen in the lore. As for warriors of chaos, well these guys come from all over the mortal world and they spend 3 lifetimes walking around the chaos waster in an eternal carnage amonst themselves. They bash each other for supremacy within their own warband or sometimes entire tribes and villages make war against each other. So this constant state of war creates some of the most brutal and insane killers in the universe. They are few but they are good. Thats the point. Chaos is a state of mind anyway. It can elevate a useless man into a whirlwind of death. But thats another story.

[Chlodwig I.]

Playing as Chaos I don't get any hordes, I have no swarms, it is turn 18 and I finally have a second army [only 14 units, my main army has 12, still trying to get both up to 20, in progress] and I am being swarmed by 5 full stacks from Kislev and 3 full stacks of Dwarves...

Turn 18 and a second army with 14 and first army with 12 Units... well thats fu.... fast I can't remeber any campaign where I would have had the money before turn 30-40 to even think about building a 2nd army.
On which Difficulty do you play.... I never ever met so much enemy armys at once in early game maybe 2 stacks with weak units maybe 3 but than not full stacks I never encountered 5 Stacks from one Faction.

[Baron of Hyrule]

- Looking for some other Threads on Lore Discussions, apparently Chaos Gods, cursed be their names again, launch the Endtimes to have the final fun before the equally dastardous Undead would enslave all living beings. Why don't they just hunt down the necromancers and vampires to continue their fun, for they are powerful enough to destroy them in the first place?

Hunting them down implies the undead are weak which is certainly not the case. Vampires easily equal all but the strongest of chaos champions and necromancers are as numerous and well hidden as chaos cultists. Then you have the Tomb kings which are a whole other ordeal as they are extremely deadly and curse those who slay them.(Settra, for example, unleashes a torrent of scarabs upon his death that devour his slayer and return to his tomb)

Also, vampires and tomb kings are nearly immortal in that having their souls fused to their bodies means that even if they are burnt to ashes they'll eventually pull themselves back together after a few centuries, though resurrection rituals are usually performed by their followers to speed the process up.

Then this happened:

Nagash consumed one of the gods of*Nehekhara*(specifically Usirian, the god of the underworld) as a pre-Chaos God snack, becoming not only an embodiment of Shyish the Amethyst (Death) Wind but also the force through which all Tomb Kings reincarnate. The Priesthood now have no choice but to join him. The Chaos Gods (including Tzeentch) have become fearful of him now as they believed what he did was impossible, realizing they're playing with an equal now. Only Bel'akor thinks it's according to plan.

So the undeath became a true part of the world and corrupted it. Necromancy grew rampant and all followers of death magic (meant to stop undead and sanctify the dead) transformed into wraiths as Nagash's will took over.

- The Endtimes leaves the planet shattered. Who shatters it?

Oh, it didn't shatter. The forces of chaos opened up three warp gates with the third being under Middenheim where the final battle took place. The forces of Order failed and the world was temporarily pulled into the realm of chaos where the daemons and dark gods were finally able to walk upon it.

All that was left when it exited the realm of chaos was the core of the planet.

I require this knowledge so I can better fight the corruptive forces. Definitely*

Well that certainly doesn't sound suspicious. Let's speak more of how chaos can conquer all while I point out precious artifacts of world-destroying power, love the horned helmet, by the way, really goes with that eight-pointed star you're wearing.

[Chewie]

Well when I wipe out 3 AI stacks + a garrison, using a lot of battlefield maneuvering on my part, and then the next turn I'm still totally depleted and they have enough to wipe me out, it feels like I haven't achieved anything and the game is throwing up artificial hurdles to my progress.

I don't mind a hard fought battle that depleted me, but I was expecting to be able to recover in place, build a few units, and raze the settlement I had just fought next to, because I had [so I thought] depleted 3 AI stacks and wrecked their garrison.

I would actually prefer an AI that is capable of matching me on a tactical level and doesn't just have to rely on overwhelming me.


When I was fighting the 3 stacks + the garrison, they came at me in a mostly piecemeal fashion. I conducted a classic "defeat in detail" against them, where I fought the first stack, then the second, and about halfway through dealing with the second stack the third stack set upon me, and as I was finishing defeating the second stack I was able to shift forces to flank the third stack.

The enemy could have merged all of their forces instead of deploying them in a piecemeal fashion. On the battlefield I just had to make sure to engage their first army early and then quickly finish it in time to engage the second army, and I didn't quite have time to finish the second army before the forces from the third army set upon me. They should have merged all forces as soon as possible and I would have essentially been unable to crack their line.

Just want to point out that what you did wrong here was, you won a big battle with lots of casualties but failed to take their city, which basically means their armies are replenishing casualties on friendly territory, while you as a horde obviously replenish casualties far slower in camp stance, and you didn't try to move away from their still 3 stacks (all 3 stacks simultaneously replenishing all their units quicker than you), and they attack you the next turn with a lot more troops than you. Even if all their units were shattered to like 10% of their men, potentially 60 units replenishing at the same time, you shouldn't be surprised or frustrated about what happened.

Killing a lord doesn't automatically wipe out whatever is left in their army. I don't know if your lord has ever died/been assassinated in a game, but when that happens the game makes you recruit a new lord right away. So same for AI, you kill their lord but army still exists, game forces them to recruit a lord for that army next turn.

About the enemy coming at you piecemeal in battle, the game restricts each different faction in a battle to 40 units max. So in a regular battle, you'll have the army that attacked on the field, and the next 20 units of reinforcements coming into the battle as soon as it starts. No more units will appear unless a whole unit is wiped out or routed off the map. If you attack a city with an army in it and it has no walls, the garrison AND the army in the city will both be on the field at the same time at the start of the battle. If you prefer for the AI to form into a big army, all you have to do is simply not attack (and make sure your artillery is out of range), wait for their reinforcing 20 units to form up with the 20 units already on the field.

You lucked out fighting dwarfs, they run slow and its perfectly normal to finish the first army before facing the second. Say you were fighting wood elves or cav heavy bretonnian stack, they'll probably be there before the first army dies.

Also, you say its turn 18 and you have 2 stacks, and this is not comparable to AI chaos that spawns on turn 60-100 with like 4 stacks? Of course you're not going to have access to the most elite units right away. Chaos warriors should be available to you early, and they massively outclass every other faction's starting units.

[ByzantinePowerGame]

Yeah, one of my stacks has about 7 chaos warriors, the other stack has 5 chaos warriors, the rest are a mix of light cavalry [missile cavalry], warhounds, and a few very elite infantry.

I am enjoying things, but not as much as with VC or Bretonnia.

I like struggle, but I like to feel I am making progress and not just spinning my wheels.

Like one time I was playing Darkest Hour as Germany, with a start in summer 1944. I gave a lot of ground in the Ukraine and Belarus, I fell back to the Vistula, I crushed the Allied landings in Normandy after I amassed sufficient forces to do this [I amassed these forces by robbing the East and giving ground, trading space for time], and then I crushed the Allies in Italy, leaving me with essentially a one front war. I wound up having to abandon Finland, falling back to hold a front in northern Norway, but my front-line from East Prussia through central Poland, eastern Slovakia, eastern Hungary, and into northern Romania, held firm, as fast as I could turn them out I got about 20 new brigade attachments into the mix to attach to key infantry forces, I kept moving armor back and forth from crisis area to crisis area, launching localized spoiling attacks to stifle Soviet offensives, and finally after several months I had 30 new militia divisions and 70 new infantry divisions to add to the mix... It was late 1946 when I finally made the war winning moves. I was able to advance, flank, encircle, and capture Odessa in the south, and in the north I was able to advance towards Riga, I launched flanking moves, and I was able to recapture the Baltic states, all in a space of time from about June 1946 to October 1946. I had held strong in the center during the winter of 1945-1946 and had slowly pushed the Soviets back away from central Poland and back into Belarus. Along the way I had suffered 3.5 million casualties and essentially exhausted my manpower reserve, with the Soviets suffering about 18.5 million casualties...

Anyway, it was a long and tough road, but I always felt like I was accomplishing something and was making "some" progress. 3 provinces lost here, 2 regained within 2 weeks and the next one is still being contested and is retaken later that month... Small encirclements on Soviets, leading to a massive encirclement. Ultimately I destroyed 250 Soviet divisions in about 9 separate encirclements over the course of 6 months. As of April 1947 I am in Leningrad, Rostov-on-Don, Sevastopol, Stalingrad, I have retaken almost all of Finland, I have encircled Moscow, and I believe I can safely say that the Soviets cannot recover. The Americans hit me with two nukes and are about to overrun the rest of Japan [they are presently in Kyushu], but such is life. I have one nuke but the tech trigger to unlock my ability to enable the "nuke" mission did not work for some reason, and I am trying to trouble shoot the problem so I can [ironically] nuke Hiroshima to save Japan [about 40 American divisions are massed in Hiroshima and the Japanese will not be able to hold against these divisions, if I can nuke them then Japan can retake Kyushu with ease].

[ByzantinePowerGame]

I've started a new chaos campaign, changed my strategy and playing style, and it is now turn 44, I have 3 elite stacks, and most of the oblasts of Kislev are in ruins. I crushed the dwarves in the chaos wastes, raids, sacks, and then razings [they were gone by turn 18], I made an ally via awakening a tribe and then I gave them a few medium size gifts to speed their building along [they have 4 stacks heavy with marauder infantry and some cavalry] and I have relied on my ally to "war coordinate" so they provide their 4 stacks to move along with my 3 stacks, and we have cut a path of total destruction across the northern oblast, troll country, and now we are moving into the south oblast. My main problem is having to frequently keep my stacks apart from each other so they don't suffer attrition from each other.

I will typically sack a city if it is worth at least 8,000 and then raze it within the next 2 turns, and then move on to the next city.

My 3 stacks provide me [amongst other things] a total of 18 chaos warriors and 16 followers of khorne. I have a very elite chaos war host. Many of my units have at least level 5 for experience, few are below 3, only a handful are 2 [the lowest].

[Chlodwig I.]

I still don't know how you can afford "3 Elite Stacks" with just some plundered villages, the upkeep should make you bancrupt in almost no time...

[ByzantinePowerGame]

I still don't know how you can afford "3 Elite Stacks" with just some plundered villages, the upkeep should make you bancrupt in almost no time...

I'm rocking a number of mods that increase tax income from buildings for all factions and cut upkeep for all factions.

I have an income of about 3,000 per turn and I get about 15,000 per turn from raiding/sacking.

With the increased trade mod, Kislev [as with everybody else] has increased trade and prosperity, so it is no hard task to sack a city in the North Oblast and pocket 17,000 from just one sacking.

[daelin4]

Is there a reason the game is so unbalanced and inconsistent?

Yes, because more people would complain about how easy it would be if you started a campaign with, or have much easier access to, several stacks of elite units.

Anyways it seems your real question is "Does/should the AI cheat?"

[Rickilicious]

I'm rocking a number of mods that increase tax income from buildings for all factions and cut upkeep for all factions.

I have an income of about 3,000 per turn and I get about 15,000 per turn from raiding/sacking.

With the increased trade mod, Kislev [as with everybody else] has increased trade and prosperity, so it is no hard task to sack a city in the North Oblast and pocket 17,000 from just one sacking.

Because of these mods, you've taken any type of pre-existing balance from CA out of the question(not necessarily bad) because the AI gets these bonuses in addition to the ones they would've normally gotten.

When I put on money mods, the most fun way to play is to have an elite army run around messing up the 3 AI stacks reinforcing each other, until I ultimately need 2 full stacks. But ya, adding money throws up the balance crazy on this game. Where the AI normally has 1 stack, they will have like 3 stacks instead, by turn 12. It's wild

[ByzantinePowerGame]

Because of these mods, you've taken any type of pre-existing balance from CA out of the question(not necessarily bad) because the AI gets these bonuses in addition to the ones they would've normally gotten.

When I put on money mods, the most fun way to play is to have an elite army run around messing up the 3 AI stacks reinforcing each other, until I ultimately need 2 full stacks. But ya, adding money throws up the balance crazy on this game. Where the AI normally has 1 stack, they will have like 3 stacks instead, by turn 12. It's wild

I can live with this, although it certainly makes things more interesting in some regards... Kislev has about 14 stacks and is [was] the #2 power in the game [now they're down to #4], I am still only at #14 but I am kicking them around hard via my prudent use of my 3 stacks, my reliance on help from 4 stacks of allied Chaos Norsca types, and my vassalization of some orcs [they provide a few more stacks].

[Chlodwig I.]

Well so that explains your problem, there is nothing wrong with Chaos its the mods you use.

[ByzantinePowerGame]

Well so that explains your problem, there is nothing wrong with Chaos its the mods you use.

Well on vanilla, when I did a VC playthrough, around turn 70 chaos poured out from the north with 4 elite stacks and there were some less than elite norsca. Then about 20-30 turns later they had 4-5 more stacks.

[User29]

Well on vanilla, when I did a VC playthrough, around turn 70 chaos poured out from the north with 4 elite stacks and there were some less than elite norsca. Then about 20-30 turns later they had 4-5 more stacks.

It's already been said that the AI Chaos faction gets a bunch of free stacks for the sake of an end game event, it's not comparable to the player chaos campaign