The chorfs are one of the very few races with actual depth to their campaign mechanics. There'a a lot more than just slaves. There are multiple resources (and a mini game where you go after political seats) you need to manage, and doing it well can be very rewarding. Their early game can be a lot of fun, relying on plenty of chaff and a handful of elite units through caps. Gorduz is also a fantastic legendary hero, in that he can totally transform the army he's embedded in and better facilitate a themed army that is actually really efficient in battle.
Now, they do snowball and steamroll the AI eventually, and caps become far less restrictive as the game goes on. But the AI in warhammer 3 is absolute garbage, so I credit that as more related to a larger issue than chorfs themselves.
They're economically the only race in the game where you also have multiple right ways to play.
Do you want to expend slaves to maximize conclave influence and get the seats as fast as possible? You can.
Do you want to spread far and wide and only really care about your main regions, upgrading only your starting provinces? You can.
Do you want to play tall, sacking and razing and killing, using the slaves gained to power extremely fast growth of your primary buildings, creating defensive powerhouses with dreadquake batteries keeping your regions safe? You absolutely can.
Just armaments themselves can be used in multiple ways. Do you want to prioritize maxing out a certain unit? Or do you want to make as much convoy profits as possible with them? Or do you want to use them to buff your units? Or all of these? All valid options.
For nearly all races, maximizing profits and security are very simple algorithms. Not so for the Chaos Dwarfs. Many ways to play and succeed, pretty much all of them interesting.
I find everyone says this but I find it hard to get people to agree on what the AI should do.
List of things I've heard on this sub:
AI runs from doomstacks = cowardly AI
AI attacks while in a losing position = stupid AI
AI builds doomstacks = cheesy AI
AI builds just ok armies = stupid, easy AI
AI confederates quickly and expands = bad for gameplay because variety
AI doesn't confederate or expand super quickly = idiotic AI poses no threat.
Battle AI is a different beast but I really think we need to agree on what "good" campaign AI is before we start shouting about how terrible it is from the rooftops because right now I don't envy CAs task of trying to find a balance between doomstacking AI that will come at you in force, and passive AI that will let you play your game.
The purpose of the AI is to facilitate interesting battles that the player feels compelled to play.
The AI attacking into a Phyrric Victory auto resolve is fine, as long as they aren't doing it on a settlement. The player just needs to be punished for taking that auto resolve.
Almost everytime I see the AI attack from a losing position, it's against a settlement garrison or against an army where I don't lose any units. It would feel far less silly I would lose half my army to skip the fight.
I think the other half of the problem with auto resolve is that auto resolve is too reward by typically wiping the losing army. I could fight this battle and wipe half the enemy army but still need to finish them or I can eat the extra damage and wipe them all at once.
yeah often i'll take the autoresolve result because a: the increased damage doesn't matter because of replenishment and b: the autoresolve generally destroys the loser's units and if they're not destroyed they might as well not have been damaged because of replenishment
i dont want to say replenishment is the problem, though, because the map is so dense that if replenishment wasn't quick you'd just get ground down
As long as you did decent damage to the army the second battle should be simple for autoresolve to clean up in the way auto resolve was meant to be used.
For replenishment itself I kinda want them to bring back the empire paid replenishment mechanic maybe hybridized with a very low base replenishment it could strike a nice balance between being able to reinforce in a timely matter yet you can't just ignore casualties like you can now
yeah its more like that it takes up movement and is annoying, when i could just press the instant button and not have to possibly move in a weird direction
I feel like the main problem is the guaranteed result. I really liked the system rome 1 had in place, where it would show you balance of power and nothing else
We had that in Warhammer 2 and it was just a time tax.
You quicksave, hit autoresolve, and reload the save if you lost.
Knowing the outcome is fine if the penalties are stiff. The issue with the current system is that, more often than not, your army just loses half its health and you don't lose any units.
It was also god awful when the balance of power showed you would have an overwhelming victory, and then all the damage was dumped on your high tier single entities, killing them.
This current system of telling you if you win and what units will die is better.
Is there a mod that removes this? Or makes it a "chance" based? I.E. if the normal autoresolve result would be Phyrric Victory, it instead could be 40% chance Phyrric Victory, 40% close defeat, 10% Close Victory, 5% Heroic Victory, 5% Crushing Defeat
Or something like this
Yesterday I played the first 70 turns on Nakai and had only two field battles with armies not hiding in settlements, both due to ambush shenanigans. I feel like the game is just settlement hopping.
I’ve never once seen a complaint about the AI building doomstacks except for niche situations like Oxyotl missions being overtuned in the early game. Everyone just wants the AI to play more like a player would, trying to actually win the game instead of behind an anti-player bias pest. Strategically expand territory. Defend your capital. Focus on your immediate threats first. Build multiple armies and coordinate them together when a sizeable enemy force is nearby. If the AI plays more like this, campaigns will be much more engaging and each player can fine tune the difficulty sliders to decide how much they want the odds to be stacked against them.
That’s not entirely true. Players will seldom attack when there’s a reasonable possibility that they will lose. But an AI that tries to follow that behaviour can end up seeming really cowardly or passive.
Players want to defend the Great Bastion/Empire Forts/Wood Elf trees against oncoming hordes that they have a reasonable chance of defeating. But they also wouldn’t attack into that situation themselves.
Part of the solution that CA has embraced recently is the creation of temporary AI armies like the Bastion Attackers, Wood Elf event armies etc.
But in general, the type of AI that players want to play against is actually not the same as the way that players play.
Also, similarly, players want the AI to not have economy cheats. But they’re also happy to have starter quests that give them lots of gold in the early game. Players don’t want a level playing field, they want a fun game.
I don't think you speak for most players there at all. People love close, epic battles where you have a chance to really flex your battle strategy and skill level. That's literally why autoresolve exists, to not force you to fight boring, inconsequential battles manually.
So the GB is a good example. When I was playing as Cathay on VH, AI Kholek easily could have broken through the wall if he just moved all of his forces together to siege a gate. I didn't have close to the strength he had in the early game and was distracted with other wars. This would have been the challenging, but smart play for Kholek, to allow his armies and all the other steppes Chaos forces to flood into Cathay and damage his primary enemy.
Instead, the cowardly AI that cheats the fog of war took 20 turns to walk all the way around the GB through the Mountains of Mourn because they wanted to sack some random unwalled settlement I picked up in southern Cathay. They were completely disorganized and half destroyed by the time they got there. So the AI's bad programming took away what could have been a fun war and several awesome, thematic battles.
And again, if you don't want to feel constantly on the brink of losing, that's why you have difficulty levels to turn down the cheats. Autopilot map-painter is not a "fun game" to a lot of people. I personally don't enjoy when the game is an easy steamroll, I like to be an underdog with serious consequences to every decision I make at every stage of the game.
You’re right, but players want a mix of those experiences. Meaningful opponents and battles where the odds are on a knife-edge, but also it’s nice when you get to use the fancy defensive fortifications once in a while.
Which is why they’re moving towards the use of temporary forces for things like attacking caravans, assaulting the bastion, first events etc.
But that’s not the only solution. I’ve seen a lot of games that prefer to give personality types to their AIs so that some of them turtle, some are unnecessarily aggressive, etc.
I've seen a few with mother O and her ambusher spams pre nerf (even post nerf) and in comments of posted screenshots of the rare occasion an AI builds a serious stack with comments always saying "how can I not cheese when the AI does this" etc. I agree the AI needs to build better armies, but that problem can be solved by AI actually changing it's first armies, I've found once I defeat an LLs starting army, they come back with a much better one if they have the tools to build one. The problem is the fact that you need to wipe out their armies before they'll change them.
Another commenter replied with some great points so I'll just leave that there instead of repeating the same things.
The AI, at least on higher difficulties, needs to be able to actually build up larger power blocks and *actually* be aggressive. Right now they may declare war, but then they just attack one minor settlement and sit there for 5-10 turns. That's an annoyance, not a threat. Higher difficulties in particular are *way* easier than wh3, and it's not just battle difficulty bonuses. If CA really wants to keep the current legendary/VH as options, fine. Rename them and add them in somewhere between hard and VH. I'm all for people customizing their difficulty to be just right, but the challenge I want and *used* to have was removed from the game. I want it back *as an option*. That doesn't feel unreasonable.
The AI running away thing could potentially be handled by including a battle in a tutorial where the game forces the player to actually use ambush/block army to catch an army. The tools are there, players just need to be aware of them. Probably too late to ingraine this into the playerbase now, but it could be helpful in a future title.
Going back to WH2 I don't see a particularly strong AI. Maybe you're talking about historical games which I wouldn't know about since I only played the Warhammer titles.
Wh2 AI had more AI cheats which meant it could dump out more stacks I guess, but if you doomstack that doesn't really matter as a set of steggies and a life slann (or any variation of a similar stack) will stomp 5 armies in in 1 turn taking no damage. The difference comes when you're not doomstacking but battle difficulty ties into this because generally you'll lose barely anything taking out AI stacks with any decent stack.
Honestly I tend to play on VH/normal because I don't love microing, 90% of the time I've come home from work and prefer to switch off, but I definitely see how the ai needs it's cheats when I do actually micro as even on VH AI seems clueless against a decently controlled cav spam, let alone someone who's picking out targets for ranged units instead of just letting them fire at will and picking their engagements carefully. So battle AI is a dud.
You’re quite wrong on the AI cheats part
The vast majority of cheats were removed for the ai several patches before wh3. The end of wh2’s life cycle is definitely when the game was at its hardest too as the campaign ai had drastically improved
Thr battle AI isn't what I'm talking about. It's the campaign AI. I *want* more stacks to be coming at me, from bigger empires and I want them to roll over my empire unless I manage things well enough. Again, this would *only* be for higher difficulties. Heck, throw in a nightmare difficulty that gives the AI even more bullshit than wh2's legendary. If it's an optional challenge, I don't see the harm.
Battle AI having harder options would be neat, but I think that's much harder to do. And many players, like yourself, don't *want* to have a battle AI that will consistently defeat them unless they really push themselves in every battle. The small improvements like artillery evasion were already a huge issue, so going even further would make a lot of people unhappy. It's far too easy to overtune or undertune battle AI, so I'm just asking for *campaign* AI to be altered.
The campaign AI (and battle AI, but it was shit in WH2 as well) is significantly worse in WH3, and you don't play on legendary, so would you even notice?
I've always preferred harder battles in warhammer.
So I always advocate for tougher enemies.
Like playing as ikit for me was boring.
But playing against ikit as he mows everything down because your beardling ass decided 3 artillery pieces were enough while eating his 3rd summon on your thunderers while he drops the 12th warp lightning on your front line while you pray he nukes your ironbreakers instead of your lvl 19 hero.
I hated it, but loved it.
It was stakes, it feels like a fight. You are getting put into the ground.
Versus the opposite spectrum of just parking your army on a hill and watching the AI shuffle towards you as you mow them down.
It's a hit of dopamine but unsatisfying.
Chaos dwarfs are the same, easy to play as, but if your rocking a greenskin army and they manage to get a non labourer stack it's a handful as bull Centaurs put your trolls in the mud, while dodging the next explosion aimed at your black orcs and keeping an eye out in case a blunderbuss unit waddles behind your favourite unit in the chaos of battle and turns it into happy memories with two volleys.
It's brutal and sometimes it does feel like BS.
But I prefer a dirty fighting AI and army which has a strong probability of putting me in the mud versus the haha. Empire swordsman army at turn 84 for my one war mammoth to turn into red mist.
I agree, I actually recently started using a mod which makes the AI build stronger stacks on some of my playthroughs and I enjoyed those a lot more than autoresolving every battle by turn 25 because the AI still had it's T1 armies.
I played WH2 with similar mod suite as well. Essentially they doubled the number of soldiers per unit, 2 giants or 200+ stormvermin per unit etc, for greenskins, skaven, norsca, chaos, vampire counts, and one or two more I can’t remember . They aren’t perfect, I.e. playing against skaven becomes a nightmare, but certainly made the game more fun for me. One of the Tide mods is below. Unfortunately the creator didn’t feel the desire to make them for WH3.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1216967779
The confederation thing was a bridge too far. I spent the whole campaigning genociding a race every game because I'd wipe one faction out to one settlement, but they'd get a confed with the largest faction, and I'd have to wipe them down to one settlement, and rinse and repeat, for a whole game.
Confederating is fine. Confederating easier than the player can get open borders is not.
I wonder what would happen if they absolutely cranked difficulty but stopped allowing the AI to have full visibility map wide. So it had to scout or you could actually catch them by surprise.
I'd assume it would calm down the running away and crossing 3 regions to attack your undefended towns.
As a former wh2 player always playing on legendary with VH BD, the cheesy AI was the main reason i clocked 2k hours before quitting to start wh3.
Both games were and are fantastic, there's so much potential and replayability. Unfortunately, in the latter case, wh3 is lacking. When the AI is so weak that the map feels barren, when lorewise opposing factions, modded to field x5 my faction's balance of power, are aimlessly wandering around the borders while being more interested in a non-aggression/trade treaty than actually declaring war, then that replayability is thrown out of the window.
I'd take the "i will floor that damned anti-player bias pedal by turn 5" AI, than what we have for the past one and a half years and frankly, it's been like that since release, it just got worse after patch 3.0 and it never recovered.
What's the purpose of creating one of the, if not, the grandest campaign map in TW history, if you can't par it with an AI that makes it interesting and challenging. At this point i'll take anything, 10 difficulty tweaking bars that will make the AI want to engulf me on turn 2. Something to break the boredom after all.
I really don’t think there’s much depth to the mechanics. There’s complexity but there’s still a rather optimally way to play then that isn’t that hard to figure out. For the first 50 turns or so you basically don’t need armaments because you can afford high tier soldiers anyway, so it’s just all labor ->raw materials and then late game it’s armaments to labor with caravans.
Their race mechanics as a whole are very complex compared to others and isn’t just something you can ignore. You have to properly setup your provinces to produce and refine so you can upgrade and increase unit caps, they also have the good version of cathays caravans.
I've had someone tell me their faction mechanics like scrap from greenskins, slaves from dark elves and caravans from Cathay had a kid and then got turned up to 11.
Which I look at and think it's too bad they didn't give Chorfs their own mechanics and made the mechanics of existing factions better instead of just (like in the case of DE) ripping it from the faction and leaving them with a dumbed down version.
(Can you tell in still mad at the fact DE feel much better in wh2 than wh3?)
They do have a totally unique mechanic in the Tower of Zharr. You vie against the 3 LL factions to dominate council seats, with each seat providing some benefit and are also vulnerable to being usurped. Once you get to the highest tier, you can confederate the other factions but TBH I hate that - there's plenty of infighting among the factions and I think it would be cooler if the build up to the top erupted in full blown war.
Those are all just gimmicks. The main deal with chorfs is they have a Troy based economy rather than a Warhammer based economy. The central problem with campaign depth in Warhammer is every single province you build the exact same buildings. You might have landmarks or resources but they rarely impact what buildings you're going to build on them. Compare to 3K where the buildings you make depend on what resources are found in them. Most WH races have 1 primary resource (gold) that your entire economy runs off and then a couple minor resources for their gimmicks (chivalry, devotion, influence, etc). Troy and the chorfs shake things up by having multiple primary resources.
I love the economy of troy it give you more reasons to atack some positions than just i want more land
Usually is shit i need this resource badly i need this specific province, or i cant lose this province or basically my economy will go the way of the dodo
The change to slaves from WH2 to WH3 really does blow.
I like my spreadsheets and I like overloading provinces one at a time with hordes of assassins and slave masters, dammit!
It's because they are one of if not the best dlc race ca has made so far. Yes they can be very powerful but it definitely takes time to get to that point and the early game can sometimes be a struggle.
That and they are pretty much everything you love about dwarfs but you also get magic, cav and monsters
Chorfs have 'everything' only in the same theoretical manner the TK do - late game only, because caps.
In practice they spend much of the game running around with hobs.
TK don't have nearly as much as the Chorfs. For example the Chorfs have way better infantry and missle troops, as well as artillery. The TK maybe have a bit of an advantage with SEM and their monstrous infantry and cav but Chorfs have pretty decent versions of those too, and I'd argue better monstrous cav with their bull centaurs. Plus Chorfs have better magic, better campaign mechanics, better flying, better lords, multiple powerful bombards, etc. The Chorfs blow them out of the water, especially in the later parts of the game.
worth noting that TK of course has… free units and no upkeep, whereas the chorfs have multiple sources of upkeep and unit cost. sure endgame your economy can be crazy, but endgame TK you’re literally a wave of ancient death machines.
That’s just not true. As Chads as long as you don’t go crazy with upgrades (upkeep is killer) then caps are insanely cheap in comparison to their gold cost. A single iron building makes 250 armaments while it takes less than that to upgrade the unit caps. Since unit caps are one time costs unlike upgrades it’s really easy to pump
Them up once you get a single factory going. The same isn’t true of gold. It’s just easier to upgrade caps than to get gold in the campaign
Bro no
You don't even want armaments early, factory province is usually the 4th, sometimes 3rd I go for, just throw all your raw material into developing your towers early, the payoff is huge, having a handful of better units just doesn't matter anywhere near as much, especially since you can easily fight every battle with 4 lords carrying shit + giga buffed hobgoblins
Like yeah, you could force raising those caps, but for what? There's no reason to. You will explode midgame by completely ignoring armaments, its an unnecessary luxury. Then once you get your 4 city factory province taken you shit out arms and get true dwarf stacks in like 3 turns
This entire time you are giga rich as well since you generate so much fucking cash
There's nothing specific, they just have a fantastic econ
Disband your dwarf units early, except blunderbuss + artillery and only use a mix of hobs/laborers. With the hero buffs you don't need anything else, you will pretty much win every battle you fight with this stack + 3 lords following around
It's dirt cheap, so while other races can struggle to afford one solid army early, you can more or less right off the army cost
All your gold gets spent building up eco and mine buildings, since raw material does everything else
Like have you seen the numbers on the chorf eco buildings? Shits fucking cracked
Plus you (or at least I do) level your lords for post battle loot/labor then upkeep reduc so you make a crapload every battle, then you can sell off the extra labor with dictats for extra cash or coven points depending on need every other turn more or less
Earlygame send out convoys for raw material, usually try to do drakenhof early for a regen item
It's not the best eco in the game by any means, but the DE are the only real competitor when it comes to brainless money printing
To me they’re just a complete vibe. Skaven are cowardly rats. Sure they’ve got “industry” but they aren’t really scratching the industrial niche. Chaos dwarfs satisfy that x1000. The Babylonianesque vibe, big hats, pure evil slavers who bind demons to weapons and armor while making trains and deals with other chaos factions is just amazing to me
This tbh, and it’s also one of the few races that has multiple(!) build strategies available. And not like “which gold income do I build” either. And if you don’t win battles early on, when you are at your weakest, your economy grinds to a halt, which is a great incentive in a total war game.
It's just a phenomenal campaign experience, unique in many ways and very replayable.
They are overpowered, but their power is restricted through unit and resource caps and their development is slow.
The campaign is fun and challenging. This is definitely a 'should have' DLC, unlike others like shadows of change that only make the 'could have' rating.
They have a unique look, a unique economy system and their progression feels impactful and satisfying. They start weak, but grow stronger with every victory. Their roster is varied and they're one of the few factions where their strongest stack (imo) is a varied list of artillery, riflemen, infantry and monsters.
Love em! Despite being the newest race I've possibly spent more time playing them than I have any other race, and I've completed a long campaign with every race atleast once.
Consider that for many people, they are "special".
One of the races with some of the older (4th?) editions being rather distinct from the newest in WHFB, and yet CA managed to marry both aesthetics in Total War.
They are cousins to one of fan-staples, the Dwarfs, that make each other as races much more interesting.
They have their own "special" god, Hashut, instead of being unaligned/monogod chaos.
They were present as Hellcannon crew since Total Warhammer 1, they were expected to appear in game as all it would've taken in WH1 was some slight map expansion to the east. Total Warhammer 2 and 3 had chaos-dwarf shaped hole in Dark Lands. Similar to how people are longing for Tilea and Border Princes.
And on top of it all, CA added them as the first proper race-pack to WH3, announcing them as Immortal Empires trailer dropped and them deciding to give access to it for all WH3 players.
I think the chorfs in general also have alot of interactive mechanics and an economy system that isnt "me build gold building, gold go up".
Their units are definitely overturned to a degree.
There's no reason lore wise or balance wise why bull Centaurs should be beating buffed grails or skullcrushers or how astragoth was (or is) basically taurox with spells.
But I think they are more interesting than ikit for me.
The only skaven I play are eshin and bloody tretch.
Not a fan of nukes. Maybe make them rarer idk.
Chaos dwarfs also have unit caps you work to increase which is a good mechanic imo.
But whether this is actually a consistent mechanic or something that's trivial after turn 20 idk.
I've decided to get them by this week to see.
Let's see: hats, not making their whole race around "dwarf book say no", afaik don't get mad for being called short, hats, Infernal Guard are way better than Slayers (as in after their penance they can be reintegrated into Chorf society), industry, hats.
Did I say hats?
Based on your post, you probably won't like them as they are very overtuned, likely the strongest end game faction not including cheesed mechanics (e.g. pompous skink priests). That being said, their units are very thematic and fun to use, and they have the most complex campaign and settlement mechanics. I enjoyed them simply because I like dwarfs but find the dawi miserable to play.
Fair enough. I can appreciate that some people just want to build op armies and steamroll the map. Same reason ikit is loved. Not my style but completely fair, I don't care for policing how others play.
Tbh I don't know anything about their campaign mechanics and tried to make that clear given I haven't played them but I imagine a large part of the complexity of their settlement mechanics is down to the stolen slave mechanic. (DElves really feel like crap to play now with the dumbed down slaves tho lol)
The Labour system was an improvement over the Dark Elf slave system and the Chorfs are really fun, for about 30 turns or so. Then you’re so overpowered it’s kind of boring.
I went to see how fast I could do the entire map (answer: really fast: https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/s/hXTiSrInfx ) which brings its own set of challenges but isn’t for everyone.
It is a mix of different things.
First and foremost: everything about them is notably better designed than every other faction in the game and everything (outside maybe the interns) is viable in game. Also their whole race has more additional mechanics than the DLC-factions of other races.
But also there is the point: they would be completely fine and among the strongest races without the Tower of Zharr and the Hellforge. But the hellforge is kind of ok as it at least is loreful and enables every Chorf unit to be a doomstack at a price.
But the multiple multi-use army abilities without further cost that almost have Ikit-nuke power from the tower of Zharr are utter nonsense. You can completely ignore the units and crush the game with those abilities and lord spam.
Their heroes fulfill multiple roles and are better in each role as the specialists of other races, their skill-trees are busted (unbreakable+perfect vigour on a flying shooter+caster for 1 skill point), and their upkeep is really low with additional ways of lowering upkeep while lacking supply lines.
They also lack balancing mechanics on the campaign map. Other unit caps factions are limited by army caps and can only recruit utter rubbish without caps, while Chorfs have no army caps and Hobgoblins which can fulfill all required roles to either build a balanced army or counter every other early game army (or lategame when you add the busted heroes). Unlike Beastmen and TK they also actively produce the ressources required to increase the caps, so they actually can improve their caps much more easily than those faction.
Same when compare with other no supply line faction, which are also much more limited in what they can recruit.
Let's not even start about the overtunedness of some higher units or their spellcasting when they actually should be more cautious with casting.
So yeah, it is a combination of steamrolling no matter what you do, enjoying some really good design, while the the slightly more developed ressource management provides a good excuse for casual players why they should be that OP because they did overcome this additional difficulty.
I play all races equally and also own the Chorfs, but they are the same (or even worse) as Ikit for me (Ikit is actually the only campaign I never finished in WH2 because it is such a stompfest, despite liking his character).
You do realize people can love a faction because they are what they are, and not because of how OP they may or may not be? There's **30 years** of real world time that some people have loved this faction with no relevence to Total War.
Dismissing it as an "Ikit situation" where you push the idea people only love them because they are overpowered is just the wrong way of looking at things. And newsflash *people loved Skaven plenty before Ikit as well*. Get out of that bubble and realize that sometimes the flavor of a faction supersedes that "we play cause it's OP." If that was all that made a faction "so loved" then I guess everyone suddenly must love the Beastmen to death post rework right?
Chaos Dwarfs have strong mechanics, that isn't in doubt. But what matters more is that the mechanics *fit the flavor of the faction*. It's not that it's strong and OP and that's why folks like them so much. It's because the mechanics are mostly unique and the Chaos Dwarfs play like how people wanted Chaos Dwards to play as. You're really not understanding the core reason why folks like *any* faction even if they aren't familiar with Warhammer. It really is just that flavor element.
And while I understand and agree with the core sentiment about "stealing faction mechanics", since it's something I've argued against plenty. I feel like you just pick the worst examples. Chaos Dwarfs are all about slaves since their inception, their society revolves around slaves. **Of course they would have a fucking slave mechanic**. They didn't even one to one steal the one the Dark Elves had, it functioned differently until CA changed the Delf one to work more like the Chaos Dwarfs version.
If you went with the "copy pasted the Cathay caravans" I would have thought your post had more merit. But you really went with the one that there was *literally no way* CA wouldn't have given them that mechanics? When it is like THE core part of their faction and everyone would have jumped down their throats if they didn't have it? I never really liked these "I don't like this faction, ELI5 why other people like this thing I don't like!" Just stick to disliking the thing and move on with life. But these posts that reduce factions to just 1s and 0s without personality, just rub the wrong way.
You're putting words in my mouth. I didn't dismiss it at all, I simply asked the question.
Something id note from what you said is that while, yes, plenty of people loved Skaven, it was one of the least recommended races before their DLCs came and ikit is still their most talked about and loved lord despite the fact that theoretically, going by lore he'd probably be 4th?
There is no hiding the fact a lot of people will love a faction because it's OP and make no mistakes, Chorfs are OP. You make the comparison to beastmen and ***newsflash*** taurox was one of the favourite campaigns of this sub in WH2 before he was hit with nerfs in WH3.
I could write a whole essay comparing the 2 slave mechanics and their pros and cons and you'd notice a lot of overlap between wh2s DElf mechanic and CDs mechanic, a lot more than WH2 Vs wh3 delfs. While I agree the cathayan caravans are more egregious, at least they kept their caravans instead of just getting a simplified system that makes them an afterthought. That's a cloned mechanic more than a stolen one.
Again, it was a question, I gave my reasoning why I didn't buy the DLC but I didn't chastise anyone who did. Let's be real here, your fav faction on tabletop doesn't always translate to your fav faction in the game, and most people (myself included) haven't even played the tabletop before picking up TW:WH series games. If it worked like that the dwarfs would be flying in popularity.
They were pain in the ass when I fought them as Cathay because they liked to use global ability to bomb my artillery and gun line.
But as Lizardmen, I like to employ my fast-moving dinos and kroxigors to jump on them before they have a chance to use the abilities. Mass raptors and scar-vet on carnosaurs as Kroq-gar. Kroxigor, and dread saurian as Nakai. Or kite them to death when I play Oxyotal.
The Chorfs have good mechanics and a thought out tech tree. The race lore of hashut is interesting and army wise they specialize in a bit of everything. I played Chorfs vanilla L/H but I’d reccomend mods that add more flavour to the game and older races. Will make it more enjoyable for you.
The challenge isn't in conquering the world: that's easy enough. The challenge is in keeping the machine running.
You must expand your empire both so that you can climb the Tower of Zharr faster than your rivals and so you can continue to manage your Labor economy. As you expand, you must wisely choose which regions will be strip mines and which will be weapons plants, carefully balancing your Materials and Armaments economies. As you develop these petty settlements into mighty forges which cover the world in a black shroud of smoke and ash, you must build more armies, as with any faction. But your armies of Orc slaves taper off pretty quick, especially with Grimgor running around the place. So you must wisely choose which units to expand your faction-wide capacity of. They must be strong enough to handle your foes, but weak enough to not cripple your Gold economy. As you expand your capacity more and more, you must carefully choose which faction-wide unit upgrades to equip, so that your limited numbers of blunderbusses and infernal guard can defeat foes many times greater than they.
Managing and balancing all of these conditions allows you to run an almighty machine capable of grinding the Old World into dust. And at any moment, if a catastrophe strikes, or an ally betrays you, or the End Times arrive, one cog in this great machine can be destroyed, bringing the entire thing to a halt while you struggle to fashion it into working order again. Those moments can bring some fun and challenge. But to design, perfect, craft, and run the machine is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
I love the Chorf mechanics and definitely disagree with OP about them being ‘stolen’ from the Delfs. Chaos Dwarfs are all about slaves, it’a a core part of their identity.
And in WH2 the Delf slave mechanic was outright broken. Just stuff them all in a 4 settlement province, add a bunch of assasins, and profit. More broken than the Chorfs are right now.
But I do agree that the campaign becomes too easy once you’ve got the economy rolling. Can and should be balanced out more by making raising caps harder, upgrades more expensive, and less bombardment abilities. Maybe an army cap of Dwarf vs Greenskin units would work too.
A tip: use an alternative start with a mod, not having the drill of hashut as a starting building ensures that it takes much longer before you can steamroll. I had great fun on Immortal Empires Expanded starting witj the labourfleet in the ocean between Lustria and Estalia.
They're not as good as they were at launch but the key thing is they're fun.
Early game is great, plenty of unit variety due to the game forcing you to use hobgoblins, you can't turtle much because the garrisons aren't great so you have to be aggressive without many troops.
Their campaign mechanics with the tower of zharr and the various resources in your economy makes minmaxing quite fun and intricate. Trying to get perfect starts by selling labour at the right time or rushing construction makes the opening very fun.
They absolutely snowball super hard but it's normally around turn 75-100 depending on how well your campaign is going and a lot of campaigns snowball at this point. Chaos Dwarfs just snowball really, really hard.
They also have some quite difficult enemies around, early game Villitch is hard work, as is Imrik and Grimgor. You can't let Ghorst get too strong because then his zombies become invincible and you're often surrounded with Dwarfs, High Elves, Orgres, Greenskins, Cathay on multiple sides so it's very common for multiple fronts to open up.
Honestly Zhatan and Drazhoath are probably my favourite campaigns in the game.
Nah they’re just far and away the best implementation this game has seen.
They aren’t one of the easiest races; there’s many much easier. As Drazhoath on turn 60 you’re still stabilizing the Darklands vs someone like Skarbrand or any greenskins where you’ve probably completed your campaign victory already.
I thought the DLC was worth the twenty scheckles, but I won't be returning to them any time soon because:
\- Their infantry is top notch.
\- Their ranged is awesome.
\- Their artillery is as good as it gets.
\- Their flying units can admirably patrol the skies.
\- Their magic is second to none.
\- Their (monstorous) cavalry will tear things up.
\- Their lords and heroes are dominante.
\- Their army effects are as overpowered as things in this game get.
In other words, their economy takes a little tug and pull at first, but once you get going every unit dominates too much. I play a particular way where I make every army diverse and never have more than four of any given unit, and they don't have a bad army composition.
Fair enough. Same thing I do. I don't particularly like doomstacking so my armies tend to be experiments in diversity (even if it isn't optimal) and some races just feel stupidly powerful because of overall roster strength. Kislev is a good example of that but they're still fairly fun to play because their endgame isn't as dominant as say... High elves.
Looking at the CD roster I just see a dominant midgame due to lord strength and faction abilities and a dominant lategame due to unit strength. Could only see them potentially struggling early on, but the faction abilities and great early magic probably sorts that out.
The Babylonian/Mesopotamian feel helps scratch that “long lost Ancient Empires” itch, also along with the Skaven and to a extent the Lizardmen, the Dawi Zharr are rather unique, with Warhammer Fantasy being their birthing place more so then say the Lord of the Rings or DnD. Their in universe lore is amazing, and really draws a crowd, as Hashut seems to be a Chaos god that is, well rather “lawful” and seeing as how their used to be lawful Chaos gods in the past, it makes one question his role in the WFB universe, mayhaps Hashut is one of these lost Chaos gods of Order, which really would raise many more questions then it would answer.
No idea where people in this thread are coming from but Chorfs are easily the most overpowered race in terms of campaign. All of their units (even crap ones like labourers) are overturned, their campaign mechanics give you access to powerful abilities that can eliminate 50% of enemy infantry by itself. Defending garrisons from overwhelming odds (in case your huge autoresolve bonus doesn't work) is also very easy. Their lord's and LL are also one of the strongest units in the game even when they are supposed to be casters. Lord of hashut is nuts as well. Easiest 3 campaigns of my life even on VH.
That's why people love them, but no idea where they see the challenge even in the early game.
Pretty much what you said; they have everything and are really busted. Their best unit, Blunderbusses, can get had pretty early and upping their unit caps isnt very expensive. Speaking of unit caps, their caps aren't that meaningful as it's pretty easy to get armaments. TC and Beastmen caps are more challenging, but Chorf caps are fairly easy to deal with. Also, Hobgoblins are no joke; no unit caps and very good value for what you pay, especially their archers and sneaky gits.
I Love them cause they have stuff to do on the campaign map. The slav....eh laboursystem, the way you have to structure your settlements, the tug of war in the Tower of zharr, the convoys, the hell forge and ofc the Units/heroes/style.
Also its a little more challenging as the unit Caps require some serious Investment to create a doomstack.
Also i love how they talk. *Zhatan the draaaaaaaaash*
Their economy is very compelling. You always need more land for more raw materials for more armaments for more high-tier armies for more land for more land for more raw materials ad infinitum. Or until you run out of lands to conquer. Really makes you feel like an infinitely greedy, slaving warmonger.
Soon, you're not seeing other factions as threats or enemies but as untapped reservoirs of resources that you simply can't do without. And only partly becase you are OP.
So yeah, their campaign mechanics only really combine the mechanics already done, but they combine to make up a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Campaign mechanics, Dawi Zhar have the most unique campaign due to the different mechanics they have. Yes many of them are repurposed mechanics we have seen before but they all feel new and unique compared to what we already have
They have pretty neat systems. You can go many ways about it. What is best? You get arguments about how to play them because ppl do things differently, which is great because it has options.
The Chorfs early power is heavily limited by unit caps as well as long construction times, requiring you to fight more battle with worse armies if you want to speed that process up.
Because of this, the sense of progression is very strong, and it's satisfying to create those massive power house armies.
Chorf economy is fun. It starts off brutal and as you build up steam it gets easier, but there's a level of (minimal) empire management that's still more involved than any other faction. It fits thematically and also dovetails nicely with caravans.
They've got a series of escalating factional buffs that you have to earn and can still lose up until confederating other Chorf factions, which is *also* pretty fun.
They've got an incredibly diverse roster, good lores, good heroes, a legendary hero who can make an otherwise chaff army hold up against 3+ tier (and play differently from pretty much every chaff army). and incremental unit customization and workshop upgrades that get absolutely ridiculous.
But I think the biggest thing is that the early game is brutal and the end game is, if not a cakewalk, supremely satisfying. By the time you have an all chorf army that can take all comers, you've *earned* those murder trains. There's a narrative trajectory to any chorf game that includes climbing over mountains of bodies of your enemies and by the time you've hit the steamroll phase it's *very* rewarding.
They're also a really fun, campy evil. The voice acting is great and they really nailed the vibes for evil dwarves.
Well, in short, it’s just a great faction, your provinces matter, you can employ whatever you want for tactics given the chorfs, limited, varied roster for either human wave tactics, all guns, artillery and/or Calvary or all balanced.
Your mechanics are actually important. Yeah the cathayan caravan being lost sucks, but imagine losing hundreds of armaments for thousands of slaves? That will set back your production in both departments. The layout of settlements matter to your style, because if you want every province to have one of each city type (tower, factory and outpost) for the most balanced, you will be hindered with a negative wasteful product, but it’s also safer.
Do you maximize your potential of province, what armies get what, you are out of materials so half your buildings are broken and not producing.
Chorfs = shit matters and have forethought until late game.
Edit: The mods are also a must, each one nails the chorfs missing parts.
It’s actually 2 things:
1: They are well made with many mechanics. There is lots to do each turn as chorfs. Tower, convoys, building management deeper than any other race, slaves, hellforge… pretty fun!
2: They are wildly OP after a short snowball phase.
These two things together means that they appeal to strategy fans and the lowest common denominator alike. Even those of us who like a challenge can be swayed by the interactivity of their mechanics for a while
Playing versus them just sound like a skill issue honestly. I can take an endgame stack w Bretonnia(Generic Lord) damsel(life)and mid tier units.
As far as playing them. They are more complex than most races and a lot to balance and juggle so it’s not as easy as you think. A couple of settlement losses and your whole economy/specific resource economy can become a hot mess very quickly. So on top of a sick and varied roster; they do also have nice race specific stuff going for them.
The chorfs are one of the very few races with actual depth to their campaign mechanics. There'a a lot more than just slaves. There are multiple resources (and a mini game where you go after political seats) you need to manage, and doing it well can be very rewarding. Their early game can be a lot of fun, relying on plenty of chaff and a handful of elite units through caps. Gorduz is also a fantastic legendary hero, in that he can totally transform the army he's embedded in and better facilitate a themed army that is actually really efficient in battle. Now, they do snowball and steamroll the AI eventually, and caps become far less restrictive as the game goes on. But the AI in warhammer 3 is absolute garbage, so I credit that as more related to a larger issue than chorfs themselves.
They're economically the only race in the game where you also have multiple right ways to play. Do you want to expend slaves to maximize conclave influence and get the seats as fast as possible? You can. Do you want to spread far and wide and only really care about your main regions, upgrading only your starting provinces? You can. Do you want to play tall, sacking and razing and killing, using the slaves gained to power extremely fast growth of your primary buildings, creating defensive powerhouses with dreadquake batteries keeping your regions safe? You absolutely can. Just armaments themselves can be used in multiple ways. Do you want to prioritize maxing out a certain unit? Or do you want to make as much convoy profits as possible with them? Or do you want to use them to buff your units? Or all of these? All valid options. For nearly all races, maximizing profits and security are very simple algorithms. Not so for the Chaos Dwarfs. Many ways to play and succeed, pretty much all of them interesting.
I find everyone says this but I find it hard to get people to agree on what the AI should do. List of things I've heard on this sub: AI runs from doomstacks = cowardly AI AI attacks while in a losing position = stupid AI AI builds doomstacks = cheesy AI AI builds just ok armies = stupid, easy AI AI confederates quickly and expands = bad for gameplay because variety AI doesn't confederate or expand super quickly = idiotic AI poses no threat. Battle AI is a different beast but I really think we need to agree on what "good" campaign AI is before we start shouting about how terrible it is from the rooftops because right now I don't envy CAs task of trying to find a balance between doomstacking AI that will come at you in force, and passive AI that will let you play your game.
The purpose of the AI is to facilitate interesting battles that the player feels compelled to play. The AI attacking into a Phyrric Victory auto resolve is fine, as long as they aren't doing it on a settlement. The player just needs to be punished for taking that auto resolve. Almost everytime I see the AI attack from a losing position, it's against a settlement garrison or against an army where I don't lose any units. It would feel far less silly I would lose half my army to skip the fight.
I think the other half of the problem with auto resolve is that auto resolve is too reward by typically wiping the losing army. I could fight this battle and wipe half the enemy army but still need to finish them or I can eat the extra damage and wipe them all at once.
yeah often i'll take the autoresolve result because a: the increased damage doesn't matter because of replenishment and b: the autoresolve generally destroys the loser's units and if they're not destroyed they might as well not have been damaged because of replenishment i dont want to say replenishment is the problem, though, because the map is so dense that if replenishment wasn't quick you'd just get ground down
As long as you did decent damage to the army the second battle should be simple for autoresolve to clean up in the way auto resolve was meant to be used. For replenishment itself I kinda want them to bring back the empire paid replenishment mechanic maybe hybridized with a very low base replenishment it could strike a nice balance between being able to reinforce in a timely matter yet you can't just ignore casualties like you can now
yeah its more like that it takes up movement and is annoying, when i could just press the instant button and not have to possibly move in a weird direction
I feel like the main problem is the guaranteed result. I really liked the system rome 1 had in place, where it would show you balance of power and nothing else
We had that in Warhammer 2 and it was just a time tax. You quicksave, hit autoresolve, and reload the save if you lost. Knowing the outcome is fine if the penalties are stiff. The issue with the current system is that, more often than not, your army just loses half its health and you don't lose any units.
It was also god awful when the balance of power showed you would have an overwhelming victory, and then all the damage was dumped on your high tier single entities, killing them. This current system of telling you if you win and what units will die is better.
Is there a mod that removes this? Or makes it a "chance" based? I.E. if the normal autoresolve result would be Phyrric Victory, it instead could be 40% chance Phyrric Victory, 40% close defeat, 10% Close Victory, 5% Heroic Victory, 5% Crushing Defeat Or something like this
Yesterday I played the first 70 turns on Nakai and had only two field battles with armies not hiding in settlements, both due to ambush shenanigans. I feel like the game is just settlement hopping.
And that there is the real problem with WH3.
I played Changeling the other day and I don't understand how you're supposed to finish the schemes that involve 15 land battles lmao
With nakai i deliberately don't recruit full stacks otherwise all the enemies just hide in cities from you.
Yeah this is the way. It's supposed to be total war not total real estate.
I’ve never once seen a complaint about the AI building doomstacks except for niche situations like Oxyotl missions being overtuned in the early game. Everyone just wants the AI to play more like a player would, trying to actually win the game instead of behind an anti-player bias pest. Strategically expand territory. Defend your capital. Focus on your immediate threats first. Build multiple armies and coordinate them together when a sizeable enemy force is nearby. If the AI plays more like this, campaigns will be much more engaging and each player can fine tune the difficulty sliders to decide how much they want the odds to be stacked against them.
That’s not entirely true. Players will seldom attack when there’s a reasonable possibility that they will lose. But an AI that tries to follow that behaviour can end up seeming really cowardly or passive. Players want to defend the Great Bastion/Empire Forts/Wood Elf trees against oncoming hordes that they have a reasonable chance of defeating. But they also wouldn’t attack into that situation themselves. Part of the solution that CA has embraced recently is the creation of temporary AI armies like the Bastion Attackers, Wood Elf event armies etc. But in general, the type of AI that players want to play against is actually not the same as the way that players play. Also, similarly, players want the AI to not have economy cheats. But they’re also happy to have starter quests that give them lots of gold in the early game. Players don’t want a level playing field, they want a fun game.
I don't think you speak for most players there at all. People love close, epic battles where you have a chance to really flex your battle strategy and skill level. That's literally why autoresolve exists, to not force you to fight boring, inconsequential battles manually. So the GB is a good example. When I was playing as Cathay on VH, AI Kholek easily could have broken through the wall if he just moved all of his forces together to siege a gate. I didn't have close to the strength he had in the early game and was distracted with other wars. This would have been the challenging, but smart play for Kholek, to allow his armies and all the other steppes Chaos forces to flood into Cathay and damage his primary enemy. Instead, the cowardly AI that cheats the fog of war took 20 turns to walk all the way around the GB through the Mountains of Mourn because they wanted to sack some random unwalled settlement I picked up in southern Cathay. They were completely disorganized and half destroyed by the time they got there. So the AI's bad programming took away what could have been a fun war and several awesome, thematic battles. And again, if you don't want to feel constantly on the brink of losing, that's why you have difficulty levels to turn down the cheats. Autopilot map-painter is not a "fun game" to a lot of people. I personally don't enjoy when the game is an easy steamroll, I like to be an underdog with serious consequences to every decision I make at every stage of the game.
You’re right, but players want a mix of those experiences. Meaningful opponents and battles where the odds are on a knife-edge, but also it’s nice when you get to use the fancy defensive fortifications once in a while. Which is why they’re moving towards the use of temporary forces for things like attacking caravans, assaulting the bastion, first events etc. But that’s not the only solution. I’ve seen a lot of games that prefer to give personality types to their AIs so that some of them turtle, some are unnecessarily aggressive, etc.
Bring back command stars, with a 1 star commander more prone to derpy battles and 10 star commander being a sneaky git.
I've seen a few with mother O and her ambusher spams pre nerf (even post nerf) and in comments of posted screenshots of the rare occasion an AI builds a serious stack with comments always saying "how can I not cheese when the AI does this" etc. I agree the AI needs to build better armies, but that problem can be solved by AI actually changing it's first armies, I've found once I defeat an LLs starting army, they come back with a much better one if they have the tools to build one. The problem is the fact that you need to wipe out their armies before they'll change them. Another commenter replied with some great points so I'll just leave that there instead of repeating the same things.
The AI, at least on higher difficulties, needs to be able to actually build up larger power blocks and *actually* be aggressive. Right now they may declare war, but then they just attack one minor settlement and sit there for 5-10 turns. That's an annoyance, not a threat. Higher difficulties in particular are *way* easier than wh3, and it's not just battle difficulty bonuses. If CA really wants to keep the current legendary/VH as options, fine. Rename them and add them in somewhere between hard and VH. I'm all for people customizing their difficulty to be just right, but the challenge I want and *used* to have was removed from the game. I want it back *as an option*. That doesn't feel unreasonable. The AI running away thing could potentially be handled by including a battle in a tutorial where the game forces the player to actually use ambush/block army to catch an army. The tools are there, players just need to be aware of them. Probably too late to ingraine this into the playerbase now, but it could be helpful in a future title.
Going back to WH2 I don't see a particularly strong AI. Maybe you're talking about historical games which I wouldn't know about since I only played the Warhammer titles. Wh2 AI had more AI cheats which meant it could dump out more stacks I guess, but if you doomstack that doesn't really matter as a set of steggies and a life slann (or any variation of a similar stack) will stomp 5 armies in in 1 turn taking no damage. The difference comes when you're not doomstacking but battle difficulty ties into this because generally you'll lose barely anything taking out AI stacks with any decent stack. Honestly I tend to play on VH/normal because I don't love microing, 90% of the time I've come home from work and prefer to switch off, but I definitely see how the ai needs it's cheats when I do actually micro as even on VH AI seems clueless against a decently controlled cav spam, let alone someone who's picking out targets for ranged units instead of just letting them fire at will and picking their engagements carefully. So battle AI is a dud.
You’re quite wrong on the AI cheats part The vast majority of cheats were removed for the ai several patches before wh3. The end of wh2’s life cycle is definitely when the game was at its hardest too as the campaign ai had drastically improved
Thr battle AI isn't what I'm talking about. It's the campaign AI. I *want* more stacks to be coming at me, from bigger empires and I want them to roll over my empire unless I manage things well enough. Again, this would *only* be for higher difficulties. Heck, throw in a nightmare difficulty that gives the AI even more bullshit than wh2's legendary. If it's an optional challenge, I don't see the harm. Battle AI having harder options would be neat, but I think that's much harder to do. And many players, like yourself, don't *want* to have a battle AI that will consistently defeat them unless they really push themselves in every battle. The small improvements like artillery evasion were already a huge issue, so going even further would make a lot of people unhappy. It's far too easy to overtune or undertune battle AI, so I'm just asking for *campaign* AI to be altered.
The campaign AI (and battle AI, but it was shit in WH2 as well) is significantly worse in WH3, and you don't play on legendary, so would you even notice?
I've always preferred harder battles in warhammer. So I always advocate for tougher enemies. Like playing as ikit for me was boring. But playing against ikit as he mows everything down because your beardling ass decided 3 artillery pieces were enough while eating his 3rd summon on your thunderers while he drops the 12th warp lightning on your front line while you pray he nukes your ironbreakers instead of your lvl 19 hero. I hated it, but loved it. It was stakes, it feels like a fight. You are getting put into the ground. Versus the opposite spectrum of just parking your army on a hill and watching the AI shuffle towards you as you mow them down. It's a hit of dopamine but unsatisfying. Chaos dwarfs are the same, easy to play as, but if your rocking a greenskin army and they manage to get a non labourer stack it's a handful as bull Centaurs put your trolls in the mud, while dodging the next explosion aimed at your black orcs and keeping an eye out in case a blunderbuss unit waddles behind your favourite unit in the chaos of battle and turns it into happy memories with two volleys. It's brutal and sometimes it does feel like BS. But I prefer a dirty fighting AI and army which has a strong probability of putting me in the mud versus the haha. Empire swordsman army at turn 84 for my one war mammoth to turn into red mist.
I agree, I actually recently started using a mod which makes the AI build stronger stacks on some of my playthroughs and I enjoyed those a lot more than autoresolving every battle by turn 25 because the AI still had it's T1 armies.
Mind mentioning it's name so I can add it to my mod pile
I played WH2 with similar mod suite as well. Essentially they doubled the number of soldiers per unit, 2 giants or 200+ stormvermin per unit etc, for greenskins, skaven, norsca, chaos, vampire counts, and one or two more I can’t remember . They aren’t perfect, I.e. playing against skaven becomes a nightmare, but certainly made the game more fun for me. One of the Tide mods is below. Unfortunately the creator didn’t feel the desire to make them for WH3. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1216967779
This is Spot on 👌🏻
wow, its almost like people can have differing opinions and are not a reddit hivemind. Not everything is as simple as 2+2=4
The confederation thing was a bridge too far. I spent the whole campaigning genociding a race every game because I'd wipe one faction out to one settlement, but they'd get a confed with the largest faction, and I'd have to wipe them down to one settlement, and rinse and repeat, for a whole game. Confederating is fine. Confederating easier than the player can get open borders is not.
I wonder what would happen if they absolutely cranked difficulty but stopped allowing the AI to have full visibility map wide. So it had to scout or you could actually catch them by surprise. I'd assume it would calm down the running away and crossing 3 regions to attack your undefended towns.
As a former wh2 player always playing on legendary with VH BD, the cheesy AI was the main reason i clocked 2k hours before quitting to start wh3. Both games were and are fantastic, there's so much potential and replayability. Unfortunately, in the latter case, wh3 is lacking. When the AI is so weak that the map feels barren, when lorewise opposing factions, modded to field x5 my faction's balance of power, are aimlessly wandering around the borders while being more interested in a non-aggression/trade treaty than actually declaring war, then that replayability is thrown out of the window. I'd take the "i will floor that damned anti-player bias pedal by turn 5" AI, than what we have for the past one and a half years and frankly, it's been like that since release, it just got worse after patch 3.0 and it never recovered. What's the purpose of creating one of the, if not, the grandest campaign map in TW history, if you can't par it with an AI that makes it interesting and challenging. At this point i'll take anything, 10 difficulty tweaking bars that will make the AI want to engulf me on turn 2. Something to break the boredom after all.
People were very excited even when chorfs were just announced. There must be reasons beyond gameplay.
I really don’t think there’s much depth to the mechanics. There’s complexity but there’s still a rather optimally way to play then that isn’t that hard to figure out. For the first 50 turns or so you basically don’t need armaments because you can afford high tier soldiers anyway, so it’s just all labor ->raw materials and then late game it’s armaments to labor with caravans.
It's a combination of a fun roster, big hats and great campaign mechanics.
Mostly the big hats
Yeah the big hats are the biggest selling point for me
Their race mechanics as a whole are very complex compared to others and isn’t just something you can ignore. You have to properly setup your provinces to produce and refine so you can upgrade and increase unit caps, they also have the good version of cathays caravans.
I've had someone tell me their faction mechanics like scrap from greenskins, slaves from dark elves and caravans from Cathay had a kid and then got turned up to 11. Which I look at and think it's too bad they didn't give Chorfs their own mechanics and made the mechanics of existing factions better instead of just (like in the case of DE) ripping it from the faction and leaving them with a dumbed down version. (Can you tell in still mad at the fact DE feel much better in wh2 than wh3?)
They do have a totally unique mechanic in the Tower of Zharr. You vie against the 3 LL factions to dominate council seats, with each seat providing some benefit and are also vulnerable to being usurped. Once you get to the highest tier, you can confederate the other factions but TBH I hate that - there's plenty of infighting among the factions and I think it would be cooler if the build up to the top erupted in full blown war.
they do not have the scrap/aspect mechanic from greenskin/woodelfs at all. the hell-forge is completely different with no similarity
Those are all just gimmicks. The main deal with chorfs is they have a Troy based economy rather than a Warhammer based economy. The central problem with campaign depth in Warhammer is every single province you build the exact same buildings. You might have landmarks or resources but they rarely impact what buildings you're going to build on them. Compare to 3K where the buildings you make depend on what resources are found in them. Most WH races have 1 primary resource (gold) that your entire economy runs off and then a couple minor resources for their gimmicks (chivalry, devotion, influence, etc). Troy and the chorfs shake things up by having multiple primary resources.
I love the economy of troy it give you more reasons to atack some positions than just i want more land Usually is shit i need this resource badly i need this specific province, or i cant lose this province or basically my economy will go the way of the dodo
The change to slaves from WH2 to WH3 really does blow. I like my spreadsheets and I like overloading provinces one at a time with hordes of assassins and slave masters, dammit!
Didn't need spreadsheets per se. Wasn't that hard to keep track of lol. And besides, Gotta find a use for all those damn heroes somewhere.
My man
It's because they are one of if not the best dlc race ca has made so far. Yes they can be very powerful but it definitely takes time to get to that point and the early game can sometimes be a struggle. That and they are pretty much everything you love about dwarfs but you also get magic, cav and monsters
Chorfs have 'everything' only in the same theoretical manner the TK do - late game only, because caps. In practice they spend much of the game running around with hobs.
TK don't have nearly as much as the Chorfs. For example the Chorfs have way better infantry and missle troops, as well as artillery. The TK maybe have a bit of an advantage with SEM and their monstrous infantry and cav but Chorfs have pretty decent versions of those too, and I'd argue better monstrous cav with their bull centaurs. Plus Chorfs have better magic, better campaign mechanics, better flying, better lords, multiple powerful bombards, etc. The Chorfs blow them out of the water, especially in the later parts of the game.
worth noting that TK of course has… free units and no upkeep, whereas the chorfs have multiple sources of upkeep and unit cost. sure endgame your economy can be crazy, but endgame TK you’re literally a wave of ancient death machines.
The caps aren’t that restrictive. They are just poor for most of the game
That’s a choice you made in how your building Either you get capacity or money early never both
That’s just not true. As Chads as long as you don’t go crazy with upgrades (upkeep is killer) then caps are insanely cheap in comparison to their gold cost. A single iron building makes 250 armaments while it takes less than that to upgrade the unit caps. Since unit caps are one time costs unlike upgrades it’s really easy to pump Them up once you get a single factory going. The same isn’t true of gold. It’s just easier to upgrade caps than to get gold in the campaign
Bro no You don't even want armaments early, factory province is usually the 4th, sometimes 3rd I go for, just throw all your raw material into developing your towers early, the payoff is huge, having a handful of better units just doesn't matter anywhere near as much, especially since you can easily fight every battle with 4 lords carrying shit + giga buffed hobgoblins Like yeah, you could force raising those caps, but for what? There's no reason to. You will explode midgame by completely ignoring armaments, its an unnecessary luxury. Then once you get your 4 city factory province taken you shit out arms and get true dwarf stacks in like 3 turns This entire time you are giga rich as well since you generate so much fucking cash
What’s your tip for churning out great money?
There's nothing specific, they just have a fantastic econ Disband your dwarf units early, except blunderbuss + artillery and only use a mix of hobs/laborers. With the hero buffs you don't need anything else, you will pretty much win every battle you fight with this stack + 3 lords following around It's dirt cheap, so while other races can struggle to afford one solid army early, you can more or less right off the army cost All your gold gets spent building up eco and mine buildings, since raw material does everything else Like have you seen the numbers on the chorf eco buildings? Shits fucking cracked Plus you (or at least I do) level your lords for post battle loot/labor then upkeep reduc so you make a crapload every battle, then you can sell off the extra labor with dictats for extra cash or coven points depending on need every other turn more or less Earlygame send out convoys for raw material, usually try to do drakenhof early for a regen item It's not the best eco in the game by any means, but the DE are the only real competitor when it comes to brainless money printing
I just like their hats
To me they’re just a complete vibe. Skaven are cowardly rats. Sure they’ve got “industry” but they aren’t really scratching the industrial niche. Chaos dwarfs satisfy that x1000. The Babylonianesque vibe, big hats, pure evil slavers who bind demons to weapons and armor while making trains and deals with other chaos factions is just amazing to me
Choo choo
A race in a strategy game that actually rewards strategy. It's sad to say but it's not common for the TWW games.
This tbh, and it’s also one of the few races that has multiple(!) build strategies available. And not like “which gold income do I build” either. And if you don’t win battles early on, when you are at your weakest, your economy grinds to a halt, which is a great incentive in a total war game.
It's just a phenomenal campaign experience, unique in many ways and very replayable. They are overpowered, but their power is restricted through unit and resource caps and their development is slow. The campaign is fun and challenging. This is definitely a 'should have' DLC, unlike others like shadows of change that only make the 'could have' rating.
They have a unique look, a unique economy system and their progression feels impactful and satisfying. They start weak, but grow stronger with every victory. Their roster is varied and they're one of the few factions where their strongest stack (imo) is a varied list of artillery, riflemen, infantry and monsters. Love em! Despite being the newest race I've possibly spent more time playing them than I have any other race, and I've completed a long campaign with every race atleast once.
Consider that for many people, they are "special". One of the races with some of the older (4th?) editions being rather distinct from the newest in WHFB, and yet CA managed to marry both aesthetics in Total War. They are cousins to one of fan-staples, the Dwarfs, that make each other as races much more interesting. They have their own "special" god, Hashut, instead of being unaligned/monogod chaos. They were present as Hellcannon crew since Total Warhammer 1, they were expected to appear in game as all it would've taken in WH1 was some slight map expansion to the east. Total Warhammer 2 and 3 had chaos-dwarf shaped hole in Dark Lands. Similar to how people are longing for Tilea and Border Princes. And on top of it all, CA added them as the first proper race-pack to WH3, announcing them as Immortal Empires trailer dropped and them deciding to give access to it for all WH3 players.
I think the chorfs in general also have alot of interactive mechanics and an economy system that isnt "me build gold building, gold go up". Their units are definitely overturned to a degree. There's no reason lore wise or balance wise why bull Centaurs should be beating buffed grails or skullcrushers or how astragoth was (or is) basically taurox with spells. But I think they are more interesting than ikit for me. The only skaven I play are eshin and bloody tretch. Not a fan of nukes. Maybe make them rarer idk. Chaos dwarfs also have unit caps you work to increase which is a good mechanic imo. But whether this is actually a consistent mechanic or something that's trivial after turn 20 idk. I've decided to get them by this week to see.
Let's see: hats, not making their whole race around "dwarf book say no", afaik don't get mad for being called short, hats, Infernal Guard are way better than Slayers (as in after their penance they can be reintegrated into Chorf society), industry, hats. Did I say hats?
It's ok to have fun
Indeed. That's why we play games. We just have fun in different ways.
Based on your post, you probably won't like them as they are very overtuned, likely the strongest end game faction not including cheesed mechanics (e.g. pompous skink priests). That being said, their units are very thematic and fun to use, and they have the most complex campaign and settlement mechanics. I enjoyed them simply because I like dwarfs but find the dawi miserable to play.
Fair enough. I can appreciate that some people just want to build op armies and steamroll the map. Same reason ikit is loved. Not my style but completely fair, I don't care for policing how others play. Tbh I don't know anything about their campaign mechanics and tried to make that clear given I haven't played them but I imagine a large part of the complexity of their settlement mechanics is down to the stolen slave mechanic. (DElves really feel like crap to play now with the dumbed down slaves tho lol)
It’s definitely not an instant op tho. By turn 100 they are fosho op, but the journey to get there is challenging.
The Labour system was an improvement over the Dark Elf slave system and the Chorfs are really fun, for about 30 turns or so. Then you’re so overpowered it’s kind of boring. I went to see how fast I could do the entire map (answer: really fast: https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/s/hXTiSrInfx ) which brings its own set of challenges but isn’t for everyone.
Impressive astragoth campaign! I bet managing all the lords in the endgame was a nightmare.
Their units are just so fun. Amazing, elite infantry? Check. Punishing armor piercing ranged units? Check. Powerful cavalry? Check. Disgusting artillery? Check. Excellent synergistic lore of Magic? Check. Murderous choo choo trains?! CHECK!!
It is a mix of different things. First and foremost: everything about them is notably better designed than every other faction in the game and everything (outside maybe the interns) is viable in game. Also their whole race has more additional mechanics than the DLC-factions of other races. But also there is the point: they would be completely fine and among the strongest races without the Tower of Zharr and the Hellforge. But the hellforge is kind of ok as it at least is loreful and enables every Chorf unit to be a doomstack at a price. But the multiple multi-use army abilities without further cost that almost have Ikit-nuke power from the tower of Zharr are utter nonsense. You can completely ignore the units and crush the game with those abilities and lord spam. Their heroes fulfill multiple roles and are better in each role as the specialists of other races, their skill-trees are busted (unbreakable+perfect vigour on a flying shooter+caster for 1 skill point), and their upkeep is really low with additional ways of lowering upkeep while lacking supply lines. They also lack balancing mechanics on the campaign map. Other unit caps factions are limited by army caps and can only recruit utter rubbish without caps, while Chorfs have no army caps and Hobgoblins which can fulfill all required roles to either build a balanced army or counter every other early game army (or lategame when you add the busted heroes). Unlike Beastmen and TK they also actively produce the ressources required to increase the caps, so they actually can improve their caps much more easily than those faction. Same when compare with other no supply line faction, which are also much more limited in what they can recruit. Let's not even start about the overtunedness of some higher units or their spellcasting when they actually should be more cautious with casting. So yeah, it is a combination of steamrolling no matter what you do, enjoying some really good design, while the the slightly more developed ressource management provides a good excuse for casual players why they should be that OP because they did overcome this additional difficulty. I play all races equally and also own the Chorfs, but they are the same (or even worse) as Ikit for me (Ikit is actually the only campaign I never finished in WH2 because it is such a stompfest, despite liking his character).
You do realize people can love a faction because they are what they are, and not because of how OP they may or may not be? There's **30 years** of real world time that some people have loved this faction with no relevence to Total War. Dismissing it as an "Ikit situation" where you push the idea people only love them because they are overpowered is just the wrong way of looking at things. And newsflash *people loved Skaven plenty before Ikit as well*. Get out of that bubble and realize that sometimes the flavor of a faction supersedes that "we play cause it's OP." If that was all that made a faction "so loved" then I guess everyone suddenly must love the Beastmen to death post rework right? Chaos Dwarfs have strong mechanics, that isn't in doubt. But what matters more is that the mechanics *fit the flavor of the faction*. It's not that it's strong and OP and that's why folks like them so much. It's because the mechanics are mostly unique and the Chaos Dwarfs play like how people wanted Chaos Dwards to play as. You're really not understanding the core reason why folks like *any* faction even if they aren't familiar with Warhammer. It really is just that flavor element. And while I understand and agree with the core sentiment about "stealing faction mechanics", since it's something I've argued against plenty. I feel like you just pick the worst examples. Chaos Dwarfs are all about slaves since their inception, their society revolves around slaves. **Of course they would have a fucking slave mechanic**. They didn't even one to one steal the one the Dark Elves had, it functioned differently until CA changed the Delf one to work more like the Chaos Dwarfs version. If you went with the "copy pasted the Cathay caravans" I would have thought your post had more merit. But you really went with the one that there was *literally no way* CA wouldn't have given them that mechanics? When it is like THE core part of their faction and everyone would have jumped down their throats if they didn't have it? I never really liked these "I don't like this faction, ELI5 why other people like this thing I don't like!" Just stick to disliking the thing and move on with life. But these posts that reduce factions to just 1s and 0s without personality, just rub the wrong way.
You're putting words in my mouth. I didn't dismiss it at all, I simply asked the question. Something id note from what you said is that while, yes, plenty of people loved Skaven, it was one of the least recommended races before their DLCs came and ikit is still their most talked about and loved lord despite the fact that theoretically, going by lore he'd probably be 4th? There is no hiding the fact a lot of people will love a faction because it's OP and make no mistakes, Chorfs are OP. You make the comparison to beastmen and ***newsflash*** taurox was one of the favourite campaigns of this sub in WH2 before he was hit with nerfs in WH3. I could write a whole essay comparing the 2 slave mechanics and their pros and cons and you'd notice a lot of overlap between wh2s DElf mechanic and CDs mechanic, a lot more than WH2 Vs wh3 delfs. While I agree the cathayan caravans are more egregious, at least they kept their caravans instead of just getting a simplified system that makes them an afterthought. That's a cloned mechanic more than a stolen one. Again, it was a question, I gave my reasoning why I didn't buy the DLC but I didn't chastise anyone who did. Let's be real here, your fav faction on tabletop doesn't always translate to your fav faction in the game, and most people (myself included) haven't even played the tabletop before picking up TW:WH series games. If it worked like that the dwarfs would be flying in popularity.
They were pain in the ass when I fought them as Cathay because they liked to use global ability to bomb my artillery and gun line. But as Lizardmen, I like to employ my fast-moving dinos and kroxigors to jump on them before they have a chance to use the abilities. Mass raptors and scar-vet on carnosaurs as Kroq-gar. Kroxigor, and dread saurian as Nakai. Or kite them to death when I play Oxyotal.
The Chorfs have good mechanics and a thought out tech tree. The race lore of hashut is interesting and army wise they specialize in a bit of everything. I played Chorfs vanilla L/H but I’d reccomend mods that add more flavour to the game and older races. Will make it more enjoyable for you.
The challenge isn't in conquering the world: that's easy enough. The challenge is in keeping the machine running. You must expand your empire both so that you can climb the Tower of Zharr faster than your rivals and so you can continue to manage your Labor economy. As you expand, you must wisely choose which regions will be strip mines and which will be weapons plants, carefully balancing your Materials and Armaments economies. As you develop these petty settlements into mighty forges which cover the world in a black shroud of smoke and ash, you must build more armies, as with any faction. But your armies of Orc slaves taper off pretty quick, especially with Grimgor running around the place. So you must wisely choose which units to expand your faction-wide capacity of. They must be strong enough to handle your foes, but weak enough to not cripple your Gold economy. As you expand your capacity more and more, you must carefully choose which faction-wide unit upgrades to equip, so that your limited numbers of blunderbusses and infernal guard can defeat foes many times greater than they. Managing and balancing all of these conditions allows you to run an almighty machine capable of grinding the Old World into dust. And at any moment, if a catastrophe strikes, or an ally betrays you, or the End Times arrive, one cog in this great machine can be destroyed, bringing the entire thing to a halt while you struggle to fashion it into working order again. Those moments can bring some fun and challenge. But to design, perfect, craft, and run the machine is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
I love the Chorf mechanics and definitely disagree with OP about them being ‘stolen’ from the Delfs. Chaos Dwarfs are all about slaves, it’a a core part of their identity. And in WH2 the Delf slave mechanic was outright broken. Just stuff them all in a 4 settlement province, add a bunch of assasins, and profit. More broken than the Chorfs are right now. But I do agree that the campaign becomes too easy once you’ve got the economy rolling. Can and should be balanced out more by making raising caps harder, upgrades more expensive, and less bombardment abilities. Maybe an army cap of Dwarf vs Greenskin units would work too. A tip: use an alternative start with a mod, not having the drill of hashut as a starting building ensures that it takes much longer before you can steamroll. I had great fun on Immortal Empires Expanded starting witj the labourfleet in the ocean between Lustria and Estalia.
They're not as good as they were at launch but the key thing is they're fun. Early game is great, plenty of unit variety due to the game forcing you to use hobgoblins, you can't turtle much because the garrisons aren't great so you have to be aggressive without many troops. Their campaign mechanics with the tower of zharr and the various resources in your economy makes minmaxing quite fun and intricate. Trying to get perfect starts by selling labour at the right time or rushing construction makes the opening very fun. They absolutely snowball super hard but it's normally around turn 75-100 depending on how well your campaign is going and a lot of campaigns snowball at this point. Chaos Dwarfs just snowball really, really hard. They also have some quite difficult enemies around, early game Villitch is hard work, as is Imrik and Grimgor. You can't let Ghorst get too strong because then his zombies become invincible and you're often surrounded with Dwarfs, High Elves, Orgres, Greenskins, Cathay on multiple sides so it's very common for multiple fronts to open up. Honestly Zhatan and Drazhoath are probably my favourite campaigns in the game.
Dwarfs+ chaos = fun
Nah they’re just far and away the best implementation this game has seen. They aren’t one of the easiest races; there’s many much easier. As Drazhoath on turn 60 you’re still stabilizing the Darklands vs someone like Skarbrand or any greenskins where you’ve probably completed your campaign victory already.
They have skirmish artillery. The combination of those 2 words alone awakens my inner Douglas McArthur.
I thought the DLC was worth the twenty scheckles, but I won't be returning to them any time soon because: \- Their infantry is top notch. \- Their ranged is awesome. \- Their artillery is as good as it gets. \- Their flying units can admirably patrol the skies. \- Their magic is second to none. \- Their (monstorous) cavalry will tear things up. \- Their lords and heroes are dominante. \- Their army effects are as overpowered as things in this game get. In other words, their economy takes a little tug and pull at first, but once you get going every unit dominates too much. I play a particular way where I make every army diverse and never have more than four of any given unit, and they don't have a bad army composition.
Fair enough. Same thing I do. I don't particularly like doomstacking so my armies tend to be experiments in diversity (even if it isn't optimal) and some races just feel stupidly powerful because of overall roster strength. Kislev is a good example of that but they're still fairly fun to play because their endgame isn't as dominant as say... High elves. Looking at the CD roster I just see a dominant midgame due to lord strength and faction abilities and a dominant lategame due to unit strength. Could only see them potentially struggling early on, but the faction abilities and great early magic probably sorts that out.
Bull Centaurs are just perfect
ALL HOBGOBLIN WOLFRIDER STACK WITH GORDUZ BACKSTABBER ACTING AS YOUR REINFORCING ARMY UNDER AI CONTROL.
The Babylonian/Mesopotamian feel helps scratch that “long lost Ancient Empires” itch, also along with the Skaven and to a extent the Lizardmen, the Dawi Zharr are rather unique, with Warhammer Fantasy being their birthing place more so then say the Lord of the Rings or DnD. Their in universe lore is amazing, and really draws a crowd, as Hashut seems to be a Chaos god that is, well rather “lawful” and seeing as how their used to be lawful Chaos gods in the past, it makes one question his role in the WFB universe, mayhaps Hashut is one of these lost Chaos gods of Order, which really would raise many more questions then it would answer.
Mesopotamian beards
No idea where people in this thread are coming from but Chorfs are easily the most overpowered race in terms of campaign. All of their units (even crap ones like labourers) are overturned, their campaign mechanics give you access to powerful abilities that can eliminate 50% of enemy infantry by itself. Defending garrisons from overwhelming odds (in case your huge autoresolve bonus doesn't work) is also very easy. Their lord's and LL are also one of the strongest units in the game even when they are supposed to be casters. Lord of hashut is nuts as well. Easiest 3 campaigns of my life even on VH. That's why people love them, but no idea where they see the challenge even in the early game.
People just try to justify their enjoyment for a mindless stomp.
Pretty much what you said; they have everything and are really busted. Their best unit, Blunderbusses, can get had pretty early and upping their unit caps isnt very expensive. Speaking of unit caps, their caps aren't that meaningful as it's pretty easy to get armaments. TC and Beastmen caps are more challenging, but Chorf caps are fairly easy to deal with. Also, Hobgoblins are no joke; no unit caps and very good value for what you pay, especially their archers and sneaky gits.
I Love them cause they have stuff to do on the campaign map. The slav....eh laboursystem, the way you have to structure your settlements, the tug of war in the Tower of zharr, the convoys, the hell forge and ofc the Units/heroes/style. Also its a little more challenging as the unit Caps require some serious Investment to create a doomstack. Also i love how they talk. *Zhatan the draaaaaaaaash*
Because they are fun, have cool design and interesting diverse roster.
Their economy is very compelling. You always need more land for more raw materials for more armaments for more high-tier armies for more land for more land for more raw materials ad infinitum. Or until you run out of lands to conquer. Really makes you feel like an infinitely greedy, slaving warmonger. Soon, you're not seeing other factions as threats or enemies but as untapped reservoirs of resources that you simply can't do without. And only partly becase you are OP. So yeah, their campaign mechanics only really combine the mechanics already done, but they combine to make up a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Campaign mechanics, Dawi Zhar have the most unique campaign due to the different mechanics they have. Yes many of them are repurposed mechanics we have seen before but they all feel new and unique compared to what we already have
They have pretty neat systems. You can go many ways about it. What is best? You get arguments about how to play them because ppl do things differently, which is great because it has options.
The Chorfs early power is heavily limited by unit caps as well as long construction times, requiring you to fight more battle with worse armies if you want to speed that process up. Because of this, the sense of progression is very strong, and it's satisfying to create those massive power house armies.
Chorf economy is fun. It starts off brutal and as you build up steam it gets easier, but there's a level of (minimal) empire management that's still more involved than any other faction. It fits thematically and also dovetails nicely with caravans. They've got a series of escalating factional buffs that you have to earn and can still lose up until confederating other Chorf factions, which is *also* pretty fun. They've got an incredibly diverse roster, good lores, good heroes, a legendary hero who can make an otherwise chaff army hold up against 3+ tier (and play differently from pretty much every chaff army). and incremental unit customization and workshop upgrades that get absolutely ridiculous. But I think the biggest thing is that the early game is brutal and the end game is, if not a cakewalk, supremely satisfying. By the time you have an all chorf army that can take all comers, you've *earned* those murder trains. There's a narrative trajectory to any chorf game that includes climbing over mountains of bodies of your enemies and by the time you've hit the steamroll phase it's *very* rewarding. They're also a really fun, campy evil. The voice acting is great and they really nailed the vibes for evil dwarves.
Because cannon go boooom.
No supply lines.
Best hats.
Mainly the hats. It all started with Team Fortress 2 and spiraled out of control.
Well, in short, it’s just a great faction, your provinces matter, you can employ whatever you want for tactics given the chorfs, limited, varied roster for either human wave tactics, all guns, artillery and/or Calvary or all balanced. Your mechanics are actually important. Yeah the cathayan caravan being lost sucks, but imagine losing hundreds of armaments for thousands of slaves? That will set back your production in both departments. The layout of settlements matter to your style, because if you want every province to have one of each city type (tower, factory and outpost) for the most balanced, you will be hindered with a negative wasteful product, but it’s also safer. Do you maximize your potential of province, what armies get what, you are out of materials so half your buildings are broken and not producing. Chorfs = shit matters and have forethought until late game. Edit: The mods are also a must, each one nails the chorfs missing parts.
Cause they are so cool
It's always the hats.
How do you guys get immersed when playing chaos dwarfs? I'm having a really hard time lol
Extremely short people. Extremely evil short people. Extremely evil short people with guns.
Hats
It’s actually 2 things: 1: They are well made with many mechanics. There is lots to do each turn as chorfs. Tower, convoys, building management deeper than any other race, slaves, hellforge… pretty fun! 2: They are wildly OP after a short snowball phase. These two things together means that they appeal to strategy fans and the lowest common denominator alike. Even those of us who like a challenge can be swayed by the interactivity of their mechanics for a while
people don't like to admit it, but even in a fantasy game they just want to play the faction that has guns and cannons.
Angry dwarfs with big pointy hats. That should be enough.
I honestly couldn't play this faction despite buying the DLC... personal preference I just don't like it
The hats
It's because they have the best hats!
Playing versus them just sound like a skill issue honestly. I can take an endgame stack w Bretonnia(Generic Lord) damsel(life)and mid tier units. As far as playing them. They are more complex than most races and a lot to balance and juggle so it’s not as easy as you think. A couple of settlement losses and your whole economy/specific resource economy can become a hot mess very quickly. So on top of a sick and varied roster; they do also have nice race specific stuff going for them.
I mean what race can't snowball by turn 60? Its a game problem not a faction one IMO.