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Thread: Rattle Bones first impressions

  1. #1
    King Athelstan's Avatar The Wheel Weaves
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    Default Rattle Bones first impressions

    I've only played an hour and a half of the campaign so far, went for Settra mortal empires vh.
    Absolutely loving it so far. I can only recruit skelly spears and sword, and only just about fast enough to fight off the incoming Top Knotz armies, which they spam towards Khemri.
    My battles consist of me making a line of skeletons, and holding the line while my warsphinx and chariots runs around and actually kills stuff.

    I pushed back a few armies, and took the Top Knotz city north of me. They had another army, one that I previously defeated but had a lot of men left. With the garrison, they just about outnumbered me. My lines sorta broke, and sorta held, it ended in a mess. Settra was fleeing from the 5 remaining full-health Ork Arrer-boys, while my warsphinx was routing and chasing them off the map one by one. The battle ended with me taking the city, but at a great cost:
    I had Settra on 1/5th hp, the warsphinx on 1/2hp left and 81 Skeleton Warriors. I start recruiting more troops, but then I see a 7-unit army by the Top Knotz one turn away, which will probably move to recapture it when I press end turn. Mind you, I'm playing on ultra unit size, so the Skeleton warriors won't do much.
    Haven't touched that much on the tech and rituals and books so far, but looking forward to diving into it.
    How hows your experiences been so far?
    Proudly under the patronage of General Brewster of the Imperial House of Hader
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  2. #2

    Default Re: Rattle Bones first impressions

    Bored. Played about 100 turns of Khalida (VH), and all I've been doing for the past 60 is building up. Yeah, I have like 4 armies, and 2 and a half of them are pretty nice, making a decent amount of gold, multiple trade partners, but it's super boring. After finishing off the Lizardmen initially, I just started trade with Teclis and the other high elves nearby, and started expanding into clan pestilens territory. I got quite a bit of settlements doing so, but ever since I pretty much wiped them out the campaign has been a total dud. I can't expand now, because Teclis, my friend, blocks off the rest of the continent, and I can't attack the large lizardmen faction (who is also a friendly trade partner) that has a Book settlement, because Teclis is allies with him. Well, I can but I would be fighting an annoying war sure enough. Two large factions to send stack after stack at me. At least all Teclis has are armies full of sea guard as far as I can tell, the dragon and phoenix high elf armies are annoying as hell to fight. I might do it, just for some excitement. At least as the Tomb Kings you don't really lack for army quantity. Garrisons are pretty much trash, so you have to personally fight out, and defend everything until you get a bunch of constructs to show in your favor. May just restart the campaign and kill Teclis instead of befriending him so this doesn't happen again.

  3. #3
    Daruwind's Avatar Citizen
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    Default Re: Rattle Bones first impressions

    Try Settra or Arkhan. They have enough breathing room around for possible expansion, lot other TK factions to absorb. I had a few times quite similar start with Teclis and such campaign is super boring when you are locked between strong factions. But after that, this is Total War

    I´m trying Settra and having great time. New units, toys. So far it feels great as Norsca. Low tier units are proper trash, armies are limited so overall i have to be more carefull with campaign movement.
    Last edited by Daruwind; January 24, 2018 at 05:47 AM.
    DMR: (R2) (Attila) (ToB) (Wh1/2) (3K) (Troy)

  4. #4

    Default Re: Rattle Bones first impressions

    Quote Originally Posted by Daruwind View Post
    Try Settra or Arkhan. They have enough breathing room around for possible expansion, lot other TK factions to absorb. I had a few times quite similar start with Teclis and such campaign is super boring when you are locked between strong factions. But after that, this is Total War

    I´m trying Settra and having great time. New units, toys. So far it feels great as Norsca. Low tier units are proper trash, armies are limited so overall i have to be more carefull with campaign movement.
    It depends on who you are fighting really. Tomb King units are actually pretty useful, but your most useful units would probably be chariots and archers early on. Using Skeleton infantry as a holding force. If you are fighting Skaven like I did Nehekara warriors wipe the floor with skaven, even stand pretty well against early lizardmen, but you take heavy losses. Getting a lich priest is very useful if you can use your units to blob them up and drop some nasty AOE spells. Once you get about 3 provinces, you don't really need to worry about limited armies. With that many settlements you can field multiple decent tiered armies. Thing about tomb kings is they are very useful having specialized armies, so one being heavy on Ushabti etc., and another (Khalida) heavy on archers, sepulchral stalkers, etc. which works well with the unit caps. Province capitols are probably the most important settlements to have since they are the only ones that can really expand your construct limit.

    Gotta watch out for Tomb King rebels by the way, because they are absolute monsters in the early game. You might need a full stack early on to wipe out one TK rebel half stack.

  5. #5

    Default Re: Rattle Bones first impressions

    I´m trying Settra right now. So far I'm enjoying it. I find it take more than an hour and a half to really get into it. But I have no complaints.

  6. #6
    Påsan's Avatar Hva i helvete?
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    Default Re: Rattle Bones first impressions

    Played Khatep, pretty entertaining to fight back the Dark Elves and being allied with Trench, however once I beat back the DE from the territories I wanted and Trench got so powerfull he could take on the DE on his own, I realized I'm literately not gaining anything with this fight, so I sent Khatep book hunting in Lustria and eventually finished off with the book in the dwarf settlement near Arkhan (Which was a great fight) and won the campaign that way.

    The problem with Vortex campaign Tomb Kings is that your opjectives are static. Meaning that your sole real objective is to build up an army powerfull enough to take on the armies holding the books. Once you have stabilized into a area there is no incentive to keep expanding. Just go book hunting and win. Also since the books are static, you can never loose unless you are completely wiped out, which is very unlikely if you survive the early game. Especially since the other major factions are too occupied with the vortex rivalry to care fighting you. So you can essentially be friends with everyone.

  7. #7

    Default Re: Rattle Bones first impressions

    Quote Originally Posted by Påsan View Post
    Played Khatep, pretty entertaining to fight back the Dark Elves and being allied with Trench, however once I beat back the DE from the territories I wanted and Trench got so powerfull he could take on the DE on his own, I realized I'm literately not gaining anything with this fight, so I sent Khatep book hunting in Lustria and eventually finished off with the book in the dwarf settlement near Arkhan (Which was a great fight) and won the campaign that way.

    The problem with Vortex campaign Tomb Kings is that your opjectives are static. Meaning that your sole real objective is to build up an army powerfull enough to take on the armies holding the books. Once you have stabilized into a area there is no incentive to keep expanding. Just go book hunting and win. Also since the books are static, you can never loose unless you are completely wiped out, which is very unlikely if you survive the early game. Especially since the other major factions are too occupied with the vortex rivalry to care fighting you. So you can essentially be friends with everyone.
    Yeah, for sure. I lightly went over this in the other thread. I was able to have treaties with most major factions, and I manually had to declare on pretty much everyone I went to war with. The ai likes to wait and backstab you or sack and raise when you look weak, but as Tomb Kings with a very high strength rating and more than enough armies to cover every front, the ai doesn't dare. I was able to steamroller through the very large lizardmen, because they were too busy with the vortex as well.

    I think Tomb Kings need a threat to their victory conditions rather than having the rogue armies go on their static patrol patterns. Maybe enemies can take the books, and bring it to their capitol or some-such, or just have them rotate around more. It's not so bad in Mortal Empires since that's just domination with WH1 campaign mechanics, but they definitely need something more in Vortex. CA says they move around when you start a different campaign along with effects, and yeah, they kinda do but not enough. Tomb Kings snowball too hard.

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    Daruwind's Avatar Citizen
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    Default Re: Rattle Bones first impressions

    Actually i would love to see some link to Vortex objectives for other races. Like with every new level of ritual one book is "lost/destroyed/useless" or even sent to "enemy". Each time a random one. Or something like that.
    DMR: (R2) (Attila) (ToB) (Wh1/2) (3K) (Troy)

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    LestaT's Avatar Artifex
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    Default Re: Rattle Bones first impressions

    What I think is that there should be races amongst TK factions to get the books (if there is, I'm not aware) just like the other 4 races rushed to complete theirbown Vortex goal.

    Playing as Khatep in my 2++ turns now I only have 1 book and there's no rush feelimg to get the other books and currently mainly fighting in Naggaroth mostly against DE while allies with many other factions.

  10. #10

    Default Re: Rattle Bones first impressions

    In my game of the tomb kings the first book was taken by another faction and never seen in the game again. It was just gone.

  11. #11

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    I dunno how you people play on VH or Legendary. I find it incredibly tedious and frustrating, and prefer the relaxed casualness of Hard and Normal.

    Quote Originally Posted by LestaT View Post
    What I think is that there should be races amongst TK factions to get the books (if there is, I'm not aware) just like the other 4 races rushed to complete theirbown Vortex goal.

    Playing as Khatep in my 2++ turns now I only have 1 book and there's no rush feelimg to get the other books and currently mainly fighting in Naggaroth mostly against DE while allies with many other factions.
    Yeah, I ran into the same thing. The sixth book was taken and so I couldn't build the VC units. D:
    Last edited by Frunk; February 20, 2018 at 07:18 PM. Reason: Posts merged.

  12. #12
    King Athelstan's Avatar The Wheel Weaves
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    Default Re: Rattle Bones first impressions

    I won the short campaign after around 150 turns. I won by slowly building up my forces, taking a province or two, getting peace, rebuilding, and going on the offensive again, now I have 10+ constructs, 21 unit armies and plenty of money and units. My biggest limit at the moment is the army cap, at 8. I never bothered going for the books. I sent one army across the sea to the closest one, which was destroyed by Teclis after losing 70% to attrition. I did get one by the Black Pyramid of Nagash, after slowly draining them with sandstorms, as the army was 80% monster units. It gave me 50% boost to commandments which is nice.
    The Last Defenders and Dwarfes hate me, And they're both allied to Khaleda, my only ally. However, Dwarfs are being eaten by Vampire Counts. I'm the second strongest faction, but VC are 4 times as powerful as I am, they've taken all the Empire factions. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out, but I think I'll take a break before I come back. I feel the DLC is worth it, even after just the one campaign.
    Proudly under the patronage of General Brewster of the Imperial House of Hader
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  13. #13

    Default Re: Rattle Bones first impressions

    I enjoyed Khalida VH on ME quite a bit. Still haven't actually completed the victory conditions since I gathered 1 short of the necessary books and started purging Vampires from the world- of course Vampires have taken northern mountains, half the Empire, and all of Norsca and allied with Empire and Wood Elves who have crushed everyone else in the Old World north of the Badlands. With 9 armies fighting on 3 continents (purged Vampire Coast then those Elven Colonies were so lucrative got drawn into war there) even with higher tier armies(6 armies are almost all constructs, the rest Tomb Guard with handful of constructs with Chariots and archers) some of the battles are pretty tough).

    Wood Elves and Dark Elves particularly are interesting matchups due to the AP ranged/speed/flying/monsters.

    The map right now is Southlands divided between Khalida and Settra (allied with him for RP), Khalida has Vampire Coast and Elven islands of Lustria fighting vs an Alliance of Empire, Wood Elves, and Vampires controlling northern Old World. Wood Elves are in a war against Lothern which is allied with Hexotl and both of those are fighting Dark Elves who control most of Naggaroth. Khalida is fighting the 1 Lizardmen faction not following Mazdamundi and remanent High Elves in Lustria who were allied with Teclic (who has been forced out of Lustria and is nowhere in game anymore).

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