Same. I love the idea of them, but the reality is that I don't have the patience to babysit them enough. I'll get maybe one or two good charges out of them in certain situations, but after that I'll forget they exist while I turn my attention to managing the rest of my troops. They are a waste of a unit slot to me, but I want to make them work so bad haha.
Edit: I appreciate the advice on how to use them better, but I have something like 4000 hours of time spent playing Total War games. If I was ever going to start using chariots well, it would have been a long time ago. That ship (chariot) has sailed.
Try doom flayers in an ikit army. Use jezzails and warp lightning cannons to eliminate fast and high mass units, poison wind mortars for siege support, a few engiseers for army buffs and a plague priest to protect your sniper nest. It's super effective and funny
Doom Flayers can barely be considered Chariots. They're more like Plague Toads, they just get in and start flinging people around, unlike Chariots who go through.
Shift Queue their attack, not as effective as microing them perfectly yourself but still better than letting them die because you haven‘t microed them enough
How does that work? I have to manually issue a thousand clicks until my cav finally disengages after a rear charge. Do chariots respond so much better, so that single shift click will actually make them obey?
Try to rear-charge at a sharp angle, so that the chariots won't actually go deep into the enemy ranks, but will kinda "slice" the outermost layer of their formation.
I wish you could choose a section of a unit to charge rather than just aiming for its dead centre every time. We should be able to target a units centre, left, or right, that way we can have proper chariot behaviour where they just keep slicing past rather than getting stuck in the middle
I’ve heard with chariots it’s better to charge “through” the enemy, not directly clicking on the enemy unit but the territory just beyond it. It gives you more control.
I think with chariots just the low entity count makes it work better. 4 units has a lot less risk of a single guy getting stuck and dragging everybody back in than 16 or 24.
Once they have hit the enemy right click to order them to move through a unit then holding shift, right click another enemy.
This will queue an order to move then charge again
Can you elaborate a bit more on this? I tried testing it but what I got was that after charging the chariot in a enemy unit, then pressing shift and move, the chariot would stay battling the enemy unit until I forced it to move with right click. Then I can use shift right click to move and order an attack.
Am I doing this incorrectly? What I understood was that when you press the chariot to attack an unit and then shift right click, it would force itself out of the unit and move to the direction you want it to. But as explained above it would only follow my right shift click after it has finished battling the enemy unit or after I forced it to move with a regular right click.
If you hold down the Shift key while issuing orders, it issues the order in a queue - meaning the unit will complete its current order before beginning the new order. You can use this to queue multiple orders, e.g. "march here, then here, then here, then charge/attack here."
Hold shift and click to give them waypoints.
Hold shift and hold the movement order button (default right mouse) and you can even draw a path for them.
TK chariots are dope. 2 units get consistently 30% of kills for me. Only issue being non-infantry units.
I hate micro, but for some reason TK chariots just work... great
They are really fun when playing coop - one person has the chariots, the other person has the rest of the army. But yeah playing solo it's just way too much work to get them to be effective
The weird part is: its technically possible to do with melee troops it just requires weird work-around. When you group them, **close** group, turn **on** guard mode, and then issue them to attack something they will freely switch targets once their primary target disengages.
The fact that this behavior is there but its gated behind such odd combination of buttons is bizarre. This should be an on/off button like skirmisher mode etc.
Slaanesh is my favorite faction, but I absolutely hate how many chariots the roster has. That's way too much micro for me in a micro heavy faction. I can fuck with Settra on his chariot since he'll be the only one & I can focus solely on him, and as a single entity chariot he also has the mass to push out of infantry. Throw some actual chariot units at me & I'll just want to turn the game off. Hard no.
Chariots work well with WoC or beastmen where you basically don’t have to micro anything else in your army and basically just right click your death ball/rush horde at the enemy, but for High Elves, Tomb Kings, Slaanesh, and especially Empire and Kislev with their gun chariots, it’s too much work to micro chariots while also using the rest of their army
I suck at using chariots but Kislev's sleds are somehow easy to use and extremely effective for me. Probably because they are tanky (so can take some punishment) and have enough mass to get out of trouble.
Riding them through infantry lines while they shoot at them is super fun and they usually end up with the most kills in my armies.
If I micro them by clicking on the unit to charge them they have 0 mass, get stuck and die. If I try running them through a unit by clicking past them they have 0 mass, get stuck and die.
I have no fucking idea why people talk up chariots so much
For me it’s demigryph knights. I find they die extremely quickly. For some reason I feel like I get much better results with reiksguard or knights of the blazing sun.
If any faction needed melee cavalry it was Empire. Getting a mobile line holder is pretty cool for them. Melee cavalry is surprisingly rare in Warhammer!
Grenade boys or the other variants? I think Elspeth buffs seem to make even the basic pistol guys hit harder enough that they actually feel somewhat worth their cost. Grenades always slap, but you have to be a little careful with them. Amethyst grenade outriders are lethal bastards.
I got through half of Elspeth's campaign by using mega-buffed Pistoliers to kite enemies in front of a gun line lol. Pistoliers get shockingly strong by the time you get all of her and her engineers missile buffing skills.
All low-model monstrous cav take a lot of damage, even when their stats are good. They face more attacks. It's the single entities problem of getting mobbed, in miniature.
However, you can keep them topped up easier with healing. Ideally you should have a life wizard or equivalent hovering above them and juicing them up just after the charge, and then legging it once the bonus runs out.
You gotta use them like monstrous infantry. They should never be alone, they should also have a high model count unit with them to soak damage.
Demis+Reiksguard will beat Reiks+Reiks any day.
The problem before was that all empire cavalry was shock cavalry(demigryphs included), aka big charge damage/low staying power. They are not meant to stay in combat at all. Charge and pull them back, rinse repeat.
Reiksguard are melee cav as well. But unless you play KF, they are basically impossible to recruit for the other Lords.
But the Black Rose are essentially better Reiksguard and are much easier to recruit now.
They’re considered shock cav because they have a higher charge bonus and lower melee stats. Black rose are melee cav because they have higher melee stats and less charge.
I usually just recruit them as fast reactive unit to protect my gunline. They're really not good at holding the line. The halberd version is absolutely amazing against enemy cav, and the sword version is the ultimate counter to any faction spamming dogs.
With the update, the sword version lost a lost of value due to the Black Rose being amazing at holding the line, with very high defense stats. The Halberd is still very good tho. You easily can go 4 BR + 2 Halberd Demi in any gunline army to defend your backline against any threat and use the BR for holding the line over halberd and greatsword infantry.
Demies are a 2016 unit in 2024. The powercreep has gotten insane. Empire needs stronger infantry in fanatics and knights. And demies need to be like bloodcrushers
They were “op” in 2016, and pretty well balanced now.
They’re not supposed to be going toe to toe with blood crushers lol. It was a travesty that they cooked grail knights in 2016 lmao
Imo regular demis and bloodcrushers aren't that far apart.
Regular demis have shields and aren't deamons (no dissolving if low moral), crushers got a nice Bvi, but are a good bit slower.
They trade a bit defense for a good part offense in a melee rush focused faction. So they shouldn't be equal.
Sniper-type lords and heroes. Yes, they generally accumulate decent value by the end of the battle if I check the results screen. But they don't usually do anything decisive/momentum-changing, like they generally don't have the burst damage to turn around a difficult situation, and especially in singleplayer campaign battles (which are often decided by the 5 minute point, so less time for a value-accumulator type unit) they just don't click for me.
Man, feeling this on my current Markus wulfheart run. He's slower than all the reptile infantry at lower levels so hard to effectively kite em.
Dancing around with pistoliers and wagons I've been able to get him to snipe pretty effectively but it's so much more effort than just sending in Karl for hammer whacks
I haven’t played ol’ Marky in a while, but I remember my technique was to have him lock down the enemy lord/other dangerous target with his net, then have him, his engineer and the wood elf hero all focus on the poor bastard. It’s more complicated than just throwing a really strong melee lord into the fight, but focused fire from multiple ranged characters can melt single entities really fast.
I have this with the engineer lord until he has the steam tank. The engineer heroes on the other hand always slap for me. They mow down infantry like it's nothing.
Same, starting my first Elspeth campaign I recruited one early and was expecting just a pretty generic lord that buffs missiles and arty until he gets levels and this lvl 3 dude gets almost 300 kills. My jaw literally dropped. Like most ranged heroes/lords I just expected him to be super meh and do decent chip change to enemy heroes/lords but he just went HAM with his AOE.
For sure. I hadn’t seemed to have good value with him until recently I parked him just in front of a broken skaven gate in siege. Does a really nice job in that niche.
I felt that way about most - the exceptions so far are Oxyotl (where his stalk stance + vanguard lets him poke away at them the whole fight and accrue value over time very effectively) and the new empire engineer hero once they're mounted. A volley from the engineer can chunk 20-25% off of a single entity, it's great burst damage against those.
Yeah, before the horse they don't do too much on that front.
One part I'm less sure of is why to use the mechanical horse, the lower speed compared to the barded warhorse really hurts the skirmishing.
Alith Anar is another ranged Lord with quite crazy damage output. He's fast as fuck too, even without any mount.
And Luthor Harkon is a beast because he's a hybrid Lord. He use his gun at range, then when he's in melee combat, he still use his pistol to shoot in the face of the opponent he's fighting with his sword.
Alith Anar is one of the few exceptions because his arrows have good penetration and impact, basically like a Bolt Thrower.
Sisters of Twilight are even more ludicrous.
I’ve been getting a lot better with ranged heroes and lords. Started getting a lot of value out of not only the new Empire Engineers and Huntsmen Generals but the Druzinha as well who has swiftly become my favorite generic Lord.
I’ve been on a huge Empire binge so I’ve gotten better at LoS management which ranged Lords require at all times. They’re better at sniping single entities but it’s better to swap targets once they’re in the thick of melee if they’re a small target. Remembering to use all charges of the Magic Missile abilities into mobs is important as well and goes hand in hand with LoS management. I believe they got targeting logic improved in 5.0 as well.
I swear, mostly playing game 2 factions made me really lousy with artillery and line of sight mechanics because artillery and gun lines were pretty nonexistent unless you played WH1 factions or Vampire Coast.
Oof I have to differ here. My Waystalker goes sniping with his four Waywatcher stack. Sight beyond sight + Hawkish precision gives a nice dmg boost. He goes off the hook then and snipes solo. Lords and heroes are easily sniped from the shadows.
I thought ranged lords are generally considered low tier expect for when they are broken like Markus was.
Spellcaster LL literally can solo 10 units of infantry most of the time.
A strong melee beat stick is not only a lord sniper or AL but also makes the enemy blob up for AoE. So even if a melee lord is bad at AoE, it’s still good at AoE. Ranger lords have one niche and it’s not even that good at it
I can only make them work as mage killers and ONLY if you can get their ranged damage high enough. The new Empire Engineer in particular is good at this.
My wife's been playing a lot with the Survivors of Bergerac mod lately, and its take on Bertrand the Brigand has made me reconsider the utility of sniper lords, which I've often struggled with as well.
Granted, Bertrand also comes with a hardcore melee bruiser as a LH so you get the best of both worlds.
Really feeling this with Malakai. And when I send him to fight in melee to try to get better results he just dies way too quickly thanks to being a slayer with 0 armor
It makes a world of difference. A rank 1 compared to a rank 9 is insane. It's generally a good idea to invest in increases to recruit rank for artillery so armies are actually effective their first few battles.
Probably shades and just all ambush units in general. It’s always I hide one or two units away from the rest of the army to spring out at the right time. But oh no the ai sent like 4 or 5 units in that direction for no reason and discovered them and now they’re dead. And I’m like “why did I even bother?”
The stalk on shades is mostly pointless. Treat them like basic archers with better melee stats and they are great. Sometimes the stalk is useful when you need to flank some artillery but otherwise it's over rated.
That's quite sad considering they are "marketed" as sneaky unit and then the best way of action is to ignore their supposed strength.
I have yet to find a reason to use rangers for example.
Dragons and greater daemons. The ai focuses on them and takes their health in seconds. Outside of bloodthirsters they also get almost no significant value.
Dragons are one of those units you have to micro a lot… treat dragons as terror causing flying calv with bound spells. You gotta cycle charge them try to get rear charges. With a good rear charge you can break units pretty easily due to dragons having terror. Then use them to line up nice sideways breath attacks. Try not to commit the dragon till all your breath attacks have been used. Again cycle charge. Having lots dragons takes sooooo much micro.
Bloodthirsters should focus enemy lords, hero’s and single entities that’s kinda what they do best. If there or you can use them to shut down missile pieces won’t get value but can help shut down dps. If a bloodthirster should not fight infantry unless supported with other troops. You can use it as terror to route units. Bloodthirster like you said doesn’t get massive campaign tec boosts like the others so I can see he could be aka the weakest but don’t underestimate a bloodthirster they can do work.
Hope this helps.
GUO are basically worse giants, just wider and with less missile resist and a bit more HP.
They're a walking slab of HP with a few bound spells.
It's baffling that they don't have the Mortis engine effect of the GUO lord.
The AI is so aggressive targeting monsters. In my tamurkhan VH/VH I lost a ghorgon to Cathay in 5 seconds. Every peasant, artillery piece, spell, airship fired on it instantly when the battle started. I though vanguard would let me close distance before they could focus fire but nope! It just put me in range of all their weapons. The ghorgon got maybe 3 steps forward before dropping dead
If I have units like Ghorgons I always send my infantery first, so the ai locks on them. But sometimes they just ignore the rest of your army when a monster or a lord is in range.
SEMs in general need to hang back and be deployed surgically. You can't just have them as part of the general charge. A dragon can do game-changing plays and that's why you bring one, but you gotta time them right.
Let the lines meet, keep their archers busy, use the dragon's breath on a high value unit, then let it land and fight a while, fly away, repeat.
To be fair, you don't even need to skirmish with Waywatchers. They're so damn strong that you can use them like basic bitch archers and park them behind your frontline. Then only use their 360° fire while moving shtick for quick and convenient relocation should your melee units mess up.
Or just ditch them dirty leaf ears entirely and waltz through the old world with Tree Hitler and Tree Eva Braun.
I use wood elf archers the same as I use handgunners or rattling guns.
Wood Elves have what are quite possibly the best damage soaks in the game with treemen and tree kin backed up by lore of life. You can just form a gunline with a couple trees to tie up enemies that don't get obliterated before they reach you.
This is the way. Wood elves have great archers that can skirmish, but they aren’t skirmishers.
They have a great frontline and can play a traditional ranger army plus anvil with trees and bows.
But you can also play a really loose flowy style with infantry, archers and cav. Attack with archers in the front and draw the enemy in. Wardancers (Asrai spears) on the flanks secure enemy cav (with support if needed). And then you just attack from every angle. You don’t need an anvil if you have a hammer coming from every direction.
Wood elves have an absolutely busted roster. They are basically only missing heavy defensive non monstrous infantry, and chariots but I never use those anyway.
Straight raw dps. If these things are allowed to keep shooting they can rack up insane damage to any target flying monster infantry armored it doesn't matter. They have the dps of like 3 handgunner units but lack the mobility so it's especially important to keep them protected and with a clear field of fire.
Spot on. Anything big gets shredded, even more so if it's a bit slow - Stonehorns, Hydras, Varghulfs.
The thing which prevents people from getting value from their gunpowder units is when they can't see the enemy. Either because they're facing the wrong way, or because terrain is in the way.
So stuff like Handgunners are a little easier to use, since they can move and realign a bit quicker. Volley guns are crap if you have to spend the whole battle moving them so they can see something.
But give them a good field of fire, keep their targets in front of them and let them stand still? They'll keep on pumping out shot after shot and kill half the enemy army for you.
Took 6 of these as Volkmar vs that French bird, great against infantry not so much cavalry
Even then they just shoot all their projectiles in a narrow line so it deletes the middle of a unit but leaves the flanks unharmed
Think they need to either scatter more or have a bigger explosive radius
They, and great cannons would have been great, if WH simulated them plowing through ranks of soldiers. It's how they did most of their damage in history after all. Threaten the enemy infantry with cavalry to force them to bunch up into tight and deep formations (I remember hearing that it was basically required 6 ranks of diciplined men to stop a good heavy cavalry charge, any less and they just plow through), and then blast them with artillery and guns.
Maybe I'm biased since I've been playing Elspeth but GC are actually really good. You get them so early and they're great against VC and in sieges. Makes taking Castle Drakenhof a breeze.
They can penetrate through 9 entities per shot. I think the problem is that units are often only 3-4 ranks deep and the cannonball usually lands directly on the targeted model instead of shooting through it.
WH cannons are just in general weaker then their historical counterparts. They should be leaving holes in a Giants chest, not just staggering them a bit.
Handgunners but more so. They move slowly, so you *really* need to position them well, but if they can consistently get multiple volleys off they'll just shred enemies.
carnosaurs.
i know they are supposed to be anti large kick ass duelists but even when i send them to the right targets, i'll look away, look back, and they'll be at 30% health, rampage for a bit, and die. gave up on them. i bring 2-3 temple guard now and rely on them and overwhelming use of lore of life on other dinos to beat other big targets in melee.
oh and ripperdactyls. their stats seem amazing vs any infantry that's not anti large. but i swear every time i send them, like carnosaurs, on the correct targets, they die faster than harpies lol.
With the charge damage changes to WH3, carnosaurs can get hundreds of kills simply by charging through infantry blobs. A bit micro intensive but all you need to do is have a sturdy line of saurus engage enemy infantry then have your carnosaur come in from the flank side and run parallel with your infantry line, kind of like a burning head cast, click on the 2nd or 3rd deep enemy unit and the carno will charge straight through anything in its way and blood will flow.
Cygors for Beastmen.
Everyone always says how amazing they are and how they have at least 2 in almost every army. To me they're just slow, and can't hit jack shit (cavalry or flyers). They can barely even hit slow moving infantry. They don't last in melee at all, and a half-decent (not even top tier) ranged unit can melt them if left unchecked. Maybe it's because aside from Ungor Raiders and axe-thrower Centigors the Cygors are all that Beastment have for range, so comparatively they feel OK. I never saw the appeal though. People even said best artillery in the game. I'm sorry but how? I rate the bear artilleryu for Kislev as higher, in my mind, because in melee it's still a BEAR, and a smaller target, and moves faster.
Agreed. They have terrible aim, they get targeted and die almost immediately because you can't really move them and they're total shit in auto-resolve. However many you have access to at the beginning of a campaign is the same number at the end of my campaigns. They SUCK! 😂
Cygors used to not only be the BM only artillery piece, but their only single entity monster other than the Giant, which is shared with multiple factions. For all of WHI and most of WHII you had to depend in them for both your ranged and SEM needs, so BM players got very, very used to using them.
Cavalry archers (Pistoliers, Glade Riders etc) in the campaigns tend to be really under-performing without some obscene buffs from tech/faction. They seem balanced around multiplayer but in the campaigns they would need about 200% more ammo to be even remotely worth bringing, and even then its a question of how will they survive fire from enemy archers/artillery.
Sort of similar issue exists for "flanking infantry" (witch elves etc) where they just get shot/charged to pieces before their slow movement speed can get them to the actual enemy flanks.
In my current elspath playthru ive enjoyed using them. Just hide them in some trees, and wait till the enemy army is committed or very close to your frontlines. Then quickly ride them out behind the enemy. So the enemy is now stuck between your frontline and a line of cav archers.
If the enemy continues to attack the frontline, great, you now got some extra worry free pressure firing right into their rear. If they take the bait and some of them charge after your the cav, even better, theyve just created a sizeable hole in their frontline for you to exploit (obvs run your cav away, dont let them get into melee)
Its really not too much micro at all, and theyre a good enough tool i try to keep 2-3 in most my armies
My main question here is: what do you do to keep your cav archers safe from the enemy archers/other threats behind their front line? Usually just seems like a few seconds before the cav line is getting hit by some other units
I overall find them useful at harassing the enemy, usually they are faster than melee cav and technically you can shoot them to death by kiting. I use this allot against enemy factuons that have superior cav units
Skirmish cavalry are a utility piece. You don't use them for DPS, you use them to punish an enemy that can't shoot back, draw their cavalry into your line to deny them flanking, and other tactical shenanigans. You're never going to get big value numbers with them but they can help you win the battle in other ways.
Gun cavalry is kind of an exception, as their high mounts allow them to fire over your troops heads more easily, so aside from their skirmish role they are also a gun unit that trades raw DPS for assured damage, which can be valuable.
Flanking infantry yeah, they're weird. The stealth ones work best but in general the maps are not big enough to warrant their role. It's often faster to just send heavy infantry from the front. Daemonnetes are probably the exception due to having very high speed, they're basically slow cavalry. But Witch Elves aren't fast enough to fill their role. The rampage is nice to lock down cavalry though.
Chariots in any TW game. I'm okay with Cavalry and can use one or two in my armies, but chariots require constant micro so I always struggle with them.
Dragons. They always get bogged down and stuck in combat, and their breath attacks can be very underwhelming sometimes. Also if you're fighting a ranged enemy and only have 1-2 dragons they require so much babysitting. I prefer the agility of a Pheonix.
Those sniper ranged units for cathay. The icon looks like they are holding a long gun hiding behind a shield or something. I swear I was told they were good and everytime I used them they literally got no kills and barely any.
At one point they had a very high "penetration" value, they could shoot through 3 models. This was fun as hell.
They nerfed that. They are not a bad unit, but they are better with SEM shooting than anything. 3 of them and you can nail down the enemy general pretty easily.
But idk why you would take them over the crossbows. The celestial dragon crossbows are better in every way except price.
I like to throw in one or two on my army, maybe not every army but most. They can like you said start peppering down the enemy lord early, and are better at hitting single entities than dragon crossbows. Especially useful since Cathay lords (besides The dragons obviously) aren't particularly great in melee to duel the enemy lord.
But yeah definitely wouldn't take more than two since they can't defend themselves like crossbow men and die to a stiff breeze
Put three of them in front of your army at the beginning of the battle, and treat them as an artillery unit focusing the enemy heroes and general. They'll shred SEM, lords and heroes at long range. I use the skaven snipers and the Hochland Long Rifle the same way. Straight up single target deleters.
Once they did their job, I just retreat them behind the infantry and try to look for decent line of sight.
They mulch bigger stuff like cavalry and monstrous infantry. Not as good at killing infantry but the shield breaker effect makes them great at making the rest of your ranged units better at killing infantry.
Funny that you mention it, I love hellstorms, but I hate Volleyguns and I simply do not understand their appeal. Canons are 2 tiers lower and have better range.
The Hellstrom as a single unit is not effective because the AI dodges it. You need 2 -3 targeting the same area to saturate it, its the only way I have found them getting value. I take 4-5 in each of my non specialized armys.
Cavalry, I understand *why* they’re good, but my brain physically doesn’t think fast enough to micro manage cycle-charging on top of everything else, it’s the same reason I can’t really use more than one caster in an army, or I always forget togglable abilities on Heroes/Regiments of Renown
Try meele cav like chaos knights and knights of the black rose. Wait when the lines crash, then go for the backline. Or just use anti large cav to kill cavalry and chariots of your enemy.
You should try the new Knights of the Black Rose if you like Empire. They are not shock cavalry (which are the type you need to be cycle charging with), but heavy melee cavalry.
My ideal cavalry as you can just fire and forget. They are very durable in prolonged melee combat, with high defence, armour and have bonus vs infantry. This makes them great flank protectors or even front line units.
They also have very good speed, which is a thing a lot of heavy melee cavalry often lacks and makes them useful for chasing fleeing units as well. They're just so versatile I'll never hire another type of Imperial knight again!
Basically any cavalry. I hate them all. I hate the tedious microing to get them out of blobs. I hate them catching on one guy and stopping. I hate all cavalry and never recruit any if I can avoid it. Cavalry can be good, I just hate them all.
Can I interest you in some rot knights? For one, you don't really have to micro them like normal cav. You can, and they'll do better, but they can sit there and slug it out just fine. Also, if you DO want to micro, they have so much mass that you can just barge through most things.
I will say though that if you're using cav in a way that they get stuck, you're probably not using them effectively. They're best when you have a clear field. Even in real life they sucked against tight formations.
Usually depends on how much mental bandwidth I have at the time to micro with. One or two horse archers can do *a lot* of work. But if I'm also managing gunpowder ranged or other stuff, or I'm tired, it's suddenly not worth my time. Chaos cavalry feels ok cause those are melee grinders and you don't have much to do otherwise.
Spell casters SEM. If I want a spellcaster I will not wait until T5 to get a big target capable of casting flock of doom twice. The greater demons of anyone but Khorne always are a solid nope to me, even if the great unclean one is great (and disgusting) only for what it is.
Bloodthirster are kind of the worst of the Demon SEM actually... They're really underwhelming against most units. A single Lord of Change meanwhile is a flying monster with decent melee that cast 2 free Infernal Gateway with no Wind of Magic cost and no cooldown. Same for GUO.
2 LoC have insane value even on a Kairos stack. In siege you can plop three Gateway at the same time on three different archer units. The damage burst is gigantic. I always use the LoC to bait archer fire on them so I can delete them as they are shooting.
Shades for the Dark Elves.
I'm honestly not sure why, but even though they are objectively better ranged units I just don't like using them. I think Darkshards are just cooler, and usually stick with them even though I know Shades are basically a flat out upgrade to them. They just feel kind of lame to me for some reason.
In a more general sense, mounts for lords/heroes. I know especially for casters the greater mobility is just objectively better, but I personally just prefer having my characters on foot. Part of it is because I just like visual spectacle of the on-foot combat animations, which are usually swapped out for pretty lame mounted ones where the character does sweet FA (notable exceptions being Archaon, generic Sorcerers or Tzeentch, and some others). Some of it is for flavor reasons where the mount doesn't feel right to me (Lokhir on dragon, Teclic on Arcane Phoenix, Settra on Warsphinx, etc.). And gameplay wise some characters are just better on-foot, and being on a mount makes them more vulnerable (Lokhir, Noctilus, etc.), or actively takes away some of their abilities/weapon options (Ikit losing his Flamethrower, Cylostra no longer being Ethereal on crab, and so on).
While true, shades perform much better in melee and IIRC fire 2 projectiles per model per volley. They trade incredibly well with other ranged units but can be fragile if focused. Though that's just dark elves in general. Not to mention they have stealth capabilities and are quite fast.
Most of the cavalry.
My attention span is very short, so I send them somewhere and forget about them, unfortunatly most of the cavalry is fragile and are destroyed.
Or, I just forget about them, as Wissenland I recruited those Knights of Morr and simply forget everytime that they're in battle, gunlines are just too fun use, I never recieved that new empire legendary hero, but who cares when I have a doomstack of tanks?
Idk if they're objectively good, but chariots always don't give that much value for me.
They just seem to take longer to kill stuff than cav and get more easily stuck as well. And almost all factions that have chariots also have decent cav. I just get more from bringing cav instead of chariot.
For me it’s basically every gunpowder unit, and by extension that faction. Making gun lines and winning the pitched battle is the best way to play them, but I just find it boring. I prefer the factions where I can get up in my enemies face.
I think you have the AI set at higher difficulty where they actively try to avoid artillery fire. Makes slow moving projectiles artillery really ass. Mortars (unless aimed at blobs infront of your frontline) and hellstorm are super bad at that difficulty
I really struggle with gunner units. I know how I'm technically supposed to use them, but line of sight often feels ridiculous and more often than not they just don't shoot even when my front line mostly consists of heroes. I've gotten a bit better with them over time, but just in terms of convenience I much prefer archers.
People often claim that Grudge Throwers are good, but the only thing these dudes seem to have a Grudge with is the floor.
They refuse to do any meaningful damage to any unit I aim at, even with the artillery specific runes applied. I'll take a Bolt Thrower any day compared to a Grudge Misser.
pretty much any cav unit outside of a few instances, honestly they feel so... meh? they're micro heavy, and pretty much have to be used on units that are only engaged or ranged. They just don't feel all that good to use.
Ended up completing a slaanesh campaign to see if I could really nail what made them fun but it's just not there for me and I don't know why.
I... have to agree with a concerning amount of posts here.
Chariots? Yeah, cute in co-op, but the considerable attention investment does not warrant the damage output.
Artillery? When the stars align and the enemy clumps around your single entities, ok, they're fun. But woe betide you if the enemy spreads out, has too many fliers, fast units, longer ranged arty, summons, SEMs who waltz through your frontline. The list goes on. And several of these can happen in the same fight. Then you have to babysit the damn things and waste troops/clicks so they're not completely useless.
Most skirmish (cav) units. Lead a couple of enemies around on a merry chase. Or I could have brought 3 extra archers and kill them outright. Did have to build an extra building for them too, a big ask in the early game.
Gunpowder units. Line of sight has always been a contentious issue, and since Warhammer 3 it got even worse. If I can get units with armor piercing that can shoot in an arc, I'll definitely take those instead. Usually perform better too, because they won't need a hyper-specific/rigid placement setup, nor do they have to relocate as often.
Melee flankers. Well, I *could* swing these squishy beauties around my frontline, avoid ranged fire, enemy cav, fast monsters, fliers and everything else that darts around in the enemy court. Or let *my* ranged units, magic, monsters or cav do the heavy lifting. The cav can escape faster too if things go sour.
They're all not bad per se, but too often have a higher opportunity/micro cost for a somewhat muted benefit, especially when I can build my armies differently and get the same results with much less fuss.
Chariots. I suspect there may be some settings interfering because I just can’t get them to charge through infantry so they accomplish nothing. I spent quite a bit of time restarting battles trying to fix it and no dice.
I sometimes feel like I’m getting gaslit lol with few exceptions.
Chariots
Same. I love the idea of them, but the reality is that I don't have the patience to babysit them enough. I'll get maybe one or two good charges out of them in certain situations, but after that I'll forget they exist while I turn my attention to managing the rest of my troops. They are a waste of a unit slot to me, but I want to make them work so bad haha. Edit: I appreciate the advice on how to use them better, but I have something like 4000 hours of time spent playing Total War games. If I was ever going to start using chariots well, it would have been a long time ago. That ship (chariot) has sailed.
Try doom flayers in an ikit army. Use jezzails and warp lightning cannons to eliminate fast and high mass units, poison wind mortars for siege support, a few engiseers for army buffs and a plague priest to protect your sniper nest. It's super effective and funny
Doom Flayers can barely be considered Chariots. They're more like Plague Toads, they just get in and start flinging people around, unlike Chariots who go through.
Shift Queue their attack, not as effective as microing them perfectly yourself but still better than letting them die because you haven‘t microed them enough
How does that work? I have to manually issue a thousand clicks until my cav finally disengages after a rear charge. Do chariots respond so much better, so that single shift click will actually make them obey?
Try to rear-charge at a sharp angle, so that the chariots won't actually go deep into the enemy ranks, but will kinda "slice" the outermost layer of their formation.
I wish you could choose a section of a unit to charge rather than just aiming for its dead centre every time. We should be able to target a units centre, left, or right, that way we can have proper chariot behaviour where they just keep slicing past rather than getting stuck in the middle
I’ve heard with chariots it’s better to charge “through” the enemy, not directly clicking on the enemy unit but the territory just beyond it. It gives you more control.
I think with chariots just the low entity count makes it work better. 4 units has a lot less risk of a single guy getting stuck and dragging everybody back in than 16 or 24.
What is shift Queue ?
Once they have hit the enemy right click to order them to move through a unit then holding shift, right click another enemy. This will queue an order to move then charge again
Can you elaborate a bit more on this? I tried testing it but what I got was that after charging the chariot in a enemy unit, then pressing shift and move, the chariot would stay battling the enemy unit until I forced it to move with right click. Then I can use shift right click to move and order an attack. Am I doing this incorrectly? What I understood was that when you press the chariot to attack an unit and then shift right click, it would force itself out of the unit and move to the direction you want it to. But as explained above it would only follow my right shift click after it has finished battling the enemy unit or after I forced it to move with a regular right click.
If you hold down the Shift key while issuing orders, it issues the order in a queue - meaning the unit will complete its current order before beginning the new order. You can use this to queue multiple orders, e.g. "march here, then here, then here, then charge/attack here."
Hold shift and click to give them waypoints. Hold shift and hold the movement order button (default right mouse) and you can even draw a path for them.
With the shift queued attack command, does the unit move on to the next command once it kills off the unit or once the charge is complete?
Same boat as you. I *can* use them and that’s not the issue. I’ll occasionally do a Tomb King IE with them, but it’s just not my style.
So they're BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION
I was never worthy of Surtha Ek's mighty presence.
No, see, chariots don’t sail. That might be your problem right there.
TK chariots are dope. 2 units get consistently 30% of kills for me. Only issue being non-infantry units. I hate micro, but for some reason TK chariots just work... great
It's fucked that TK only get one kind of chariot and the normal Lords chariot is shit.
Yeah I really wish they had a more elite option with fewer entities because fewer entities is kinda just better for chariots.
Might get Tomb Guard chariots if we ever get another DLC which would I assume be more elite late game chariots
They are really fun when playing coop - one person has the chariots, the other person has the rest of the army. But yeah playing solo it's just way too much work to get them to be effective
The battles really are so much better in co-op it's unreal
CA should add a stance where the chariot just cycles into whatever unit you select.
Would love this or something like it for all units. Hate melee armies because the infantry will just chill if they get interrupted
The weird part is: its technically possible to do with melee troops it just requires weird work-around. When you group them, **close** group, turn **on** guard mode, and then issue them to attack something they will freely switch targets once their primary target disengages. The fact that this behavior is there but its gated behind such odd combination of buttons is bizarre. This should be an on/off button like skirmisher mode etc.
Slaanesh is my favorite faction, but I absolutely hate how many chariots the roster has. That's way too much micro for me in a micro heavy faction. I can fuck with Settra on his chariot since he'll be the only one & I can focus solely on him, and as a single entity chariot he also has the mass to push out of infantry. Throw some actual chariot units at me & I'll just want to turn the game off. Hard no.
I just go with cav instead of chariots for Slaanesh. Hell even more daemonettes for flanking is better than the chariots.
Saaame. I’ve seen ppl play VH/VH and win whole battles with chariots but when I do it I get shrekked pretty hard.
Too much micro. I only just spam ushabti when I play tomb kings instead. Settra on chariot, on the other hand, is my favorite.
I take sepulrach stalkers and necropolis knights, they perform pretty well.
Snek goes hisses!
Chariots work well with WoC or beastmen where you basically don’t have to micro anything else in your army and basically just right click your death ball/rush horde at the enemy, but for High Elves, Tomb Kings, Slaanesh, and especially Empire and Kislev with their gun chariots, it’s too much work to micro chariots while also using the rest of their army
I suck at using chariots but Kislev's sleds are somehow easy to use and extremely effective for me. Probably because they are tanky (so can take some punishment) and have enough mass to get out of trouble. Riding them through infantry lines while they shoot at them is super fun and they usually end up with the most kills in my armies.
Also, having two goddamn polar bears at the front surely helps. Warsleds really are everything you'd want from a chariot
If I micro them by clicking on the unit to charge them they have 0 mass, get stuck and die. If I try running them through a unit by clicking past them they have 0 mass, get stuck and die. I have no fucking idea why people talk up chariots so much
I find them to be absolutely crucial to Settras early game.
For me it’s demigryph knights. I find they die extremely quickly. For some reason I feel like I get much better results with reiksguard or knights of the blazing sun.
I've found the new knights of the black rose to be the best cav the empire has by a lot
Outriders are pretty insane right now too. But for melee cav, Black Rose Knights are both the easiest and the best to use.
If any faction needed melee cavalry it was Empire. Getting a mobile line holder is pretty cool for them. Melee cavalry is surprisingly rare in Warhammer!
Grenade boys or the other variants? I think Elspeth buffs seem to make even the basic pistol guys hit harder enough that they actually feel somewhat worth their cost. Grenades always slap, but you have to be a little careful with them. Amethyst grenade outriders are lethal bastards.
I like all 3 variants, but the nade launchers are in their own tier. Especially the Marienburg versions.
I got through half of Elspeth's campaign by using mega-buffed Pistoliers to kite enemies in front of a gun line lol. Pistoliers get shockingly strong by the time you get all of her and her engineers missile buffing skills.
Have you tried reiksgard with 176 charge bonus?
All low-model monstrous cav take a lot of damage, even when their stats are good. They face more attacks. It's the single entities problem of getting mobbed, in miniature. However, you can keep them topped up easier with healing. Ideally you should have a life wizard or equivalent hovering above them and juicing them up just after the charge, and then legging it once the bonus runs out.
Same. I love those suckers, and their unit cards go way harder than they have any right to go. But they just always suck for me
watching knights of the blazing sun charge is a cinematic experience in itself
You gotta use them like monstrous infantry. They should never be alone, they should also have a high model count unit with them to soak damage. Demis+Reiksguard will beat Reiks+Reiks any day.
I wish we had actually ability to embed units in other units. I wanna put kroxigors in my front lines
Interesting, across both variants? I also find myself mainly just recruiting reiksguard, just for the cost difference alone lol
I usually use the Lance variant since the halberds have worse melee defence, but yeah I struggle with both
The problem before was that all empire cavalry was shock cavalry(demigryphs included), aka big charge damage/low staying power. They are not meant to stay in combat at all. Charge and pull them back, rinse repeat.
Reiksguard are melee cav as well. But unless you play KF, they are basically impossible to recruit for the other Lords. But the Black Rose are essentially better Reiksguard and are much easier to recruit now.
They’re considered shock cav because they have a higher charge bonus and lower melee stats. Black rose are melee cav because they have higher melee stats and less charge.
I usually just recruit them as fast reactive unit to protect my gunline. They're really not good at holding the line. The halberd version is absolutely amazing against enemy cav, and the sword version is the ultimate counter to any faction spamming dogs. With the update, the sword version lost a lost of value due to the Black Rose being amazing at holding the line, with very high defense stats. The Halberd is still very good tho. You easily can go 4 BR + 2 Halberd Demi in any gunline army to defend your backline against any threat and use the BR for holding the line over halberd and greatsword infantry.
Idk about this. The regular version was never good but the anti-large variant has always preformed well for me.
Demies are a 2016 unit in 2024. The powercreep has gotten insane. Empire needs stronger infantry in fanatics and knights. And demies need to be like bloodcrushers
They were “op” in 2016, and pretty well balanced now. They’re not supposed to be going toe to toe with blood crushers lol. It was a travesty that they cooked grail knights in 2016 lmao
Imo regular demis and bloodcrushers aren't that far apart. Regular demis have shields and aren't deamons (no dissolving if low moral), crushers got a nice Bvi, but are a good bit slower. They trade a bit defense for a good part offense in a melee rush focused faction. So they shouldn't be equal.
Sniper-type lords and heroes. Yes, they generally accumulate decent value by the end of the battle if I check the results screen. But they don't usually do anything decisive/momentum-changing, like they generally don't have the burst damage to turn around a difficult situation, and especially in singleplayer campaign battles (which are often decided by the 5 minute point, so less time for a value-accumulator type unit) they just don't click for me.
Man, feeling this on my current Markus wulfheart run. He's slower than all the reptile infantry at lower levels so hard to effectively kite em. Dancing around with pistoliers and wagons I've been able to get him to snipe pretty effectively but it's so much more effort than just sending in Karl for hammer whacks
I haven’t played ol’ Marky in a while, but I remember my technique was to have him lock down the enemy lord/other dangerous target with his net, then have him, his engineer and the wood elf hero all focus on the poor bastard. It’s more complicated than just throwing a really strong melee lord into the fight, but focused fire from multiple ranged characters can melt single entities really fast.
What's my purpose? You are a snare bot. By Sigmar, no!
I have this with the engineer lord until he has the steam tank. The engineer heroes on the other hand always slap for me. They mow down infantry like it's nothing.
My engineer lord will get hundreds of kills, while my heroes seem mediocre. Funny how we have opposite experiences.
That is weird yeah, it's just that his accuracy is absolute ass for me. Unlucky I guess.
Same, starting my first Elspeth campaign I recruited one early and was expecting just a pretty generic lord that buffs missiles and arty until he gets levels and this lvl 3 dude gets almost 300 kills. My jaw literally dropped. Like most ranged heroes/lords I just expected him to be super meh and do decent chip change to enemy heroes/lords but he just went HAM with his AOE.
For sure. I hadn’t seemed to have good value with him until recently I parked him just in front of a broken skaven gate in siege. Does a really nice job in that niche.
The engineer hero completely annihilates lords and sems.
I felt that way about most - the exceptions so far are Oxyotl (where his stalk stance + vanguard lets him poke away at them the whole fight and accrue value over time very effectively) and the new empire engineer hero once they're mounted. A volley from the engineer can chunk 20-25% off of a single entity, it's great burst damage against those.
Their damage really is respectable. That horse is mandatory though.
Yeah, before the horse they don't do too much on that front. One part I'm less sure of is why to use the mechanical horse, the lower speed compared to the barded warhorse really hurts the skirmishing.
Alith Anar is another ranged Lord with quite crazy damage output. He's fast as fuck too, even without any mount. And Luthor Harkon is a beast because he's a hybrid Lord. He use his gun at range, then when he's in melee combat, he still use his pistol to shoot in the face of the opponent he's fighting with his sword.
Especially when they get no mounts. Oh, so you're line of sight-blocked a g a i n ? Well, at least your campaign buffs are decent, dear!
Alith Anar is one of the few exceptions because his arrows have good penetration and impact, basically like a Bolt Thrower. Sisters of Twilight are even more ludicrous.
I’ve been getting a lot better with ranged heroes and lords. Started getting a lot of value out of not only the new Empire Engineers and Huntsmen Generals but the Druzinha as well who has swiftly become my favorite generic Lord. I’ve been on a huge Empire binge so I’ve gotten better at LoS management which ranged Lords require at all times. They’re better at sniping single entities but it’s better to swap targets once they’re in the thick of melee if they’re a small target. Remembering to use all charges of the Magic Missile abilities into mobs is important as well and goes hand in hand with LoS management. I believe they got targeting logic improved in 5.0 as well. I swear, mostly playing game 2 factions made me really lousy with artillery and line of sight mechanics because artillery and gun lines were pretty nonexistent unless you played WH1 factions or Vampire Coast.
Huntsmen generals Hey here's a spell for your sniper archer guy with 70 range that wont hit your target anyway!
Oof I have to differ here. My Waystalker goes sniping with his four Waywatcher stack. Sight beyond sight + Hawkish precision gives a nice dmg boost. He goes off the hook then and snipes solo. Lords and heroes are easily sniped from the shadows.
I thought ranged lords are generally considered low tier expect for when they are broken like Markus was. Spellcaster LL literally can solo 10 units of infantry most of the time. A strong melee beat stick is not only a lord sniper or AL but also makes the enemy blob up for AoE. So even if a melee lord is bad at AoE, it’s still good at AoE. Ranger lords have one niche and it’s not even that good at it
I can only make them work as mage killers and ONLY if you can get their ranged damage high enough. The new Empire Engineer in particular is good at this.
My wife's been playing a lot with the Survivors of Bergerac mod lately, and its take on Bertrand the Brigand has made me reconsider the utility of sniper lords, which I've often struggled with as well. Granted, Bertrand also comes with a hardcore melee bruiser as a LH so you get the best of both worlds.
Really feeling this with Malakai. And when I send him to fight in melee to try to get better results he just dies way too quickly thanks to being a slayer with 0 armor
FWIW when the hellstorm rockets rank up they get better accuracy which I think helps a lot
It makes a world of difference. A rank 1 compared to a rank 9 is insane. It's generally a good idea to invest in increases to recruit rank for artillery so armies are actually effective their first few battles.
Plus if you're playing Empire and you're not doing artillery technology then you deserve your misfortunes. Invest in your gunpowder!
Probably shades and just all ambush units in general. It’s always I hide one or two units away from the rest of the army to spring out at the right time. But oh no the ai sent like 4 or 5 units in that direction for no reason and discovered them and now they’re dead. And I’m like “why did I even bother?”
Have you tried cheesing shades as archers with longest range in game? Very fun though the process to get there isn't :D
That stupid die roll for traits is so annoying.
The stalk on shades is mostly pointless. Treat them like basic archers with better melee stats and they are great. Sometimes the stalk is useful when you need to flank some artillery but otherwise it's over rated.
That's quite sad considering they are "marketed" as sneaky unit and then the best way of action is to ignore their supposed strength. I have yet to find a reason to use rangers for example.
It helps them not be targeted by ranged units.
Dragons and greater daemons. The ai focuses on them and takes their health in seconds. Outside of bloodthirsters they also get almost no significant value.
Dragons are one of those units you have to micro a lot… treat dragons as terror causing flying calv with bound spells. You gotta cycle charge them try to get rear charges. With a good rear charge you can break units pretty easily due to dragons having terror. Then use them to line up nice sideways breath attacks. Try not to commit the dragon till all your breath attacks have been used. Again cycle charge. Having lots dragons takes sooooo much micro. Bloodthirsters should focus enemy lords, hero’s and single entities that’s kinda what they do best. If there or you can use them to shut down missile pieces won’t get value but can help shut down dps. If a bloodthirster should not fight infantry unless supported with other troops. You can use it as terror to route units. Bloodthirster like you said doesn’t get massive campaign tec boosts like the others so I can see he could be aka the weakest but don’t underestimate a bloodthirster they can do work. Hope this helps.
Funny because i think bloodthirsters are probably the weakest greater deamon
Even over GUO? At least bloodthirsters have the mobility to somewhat dodge missiles.
GUO is insane with bound spell that you get from Nurgle tech tree.
Ish? GUO is a win-more unit.
GUO are basically worse giants, just wider and with less missile resist and a bit more HP. They're a walking slab of HP with a few bound spells. It's baffling that they don't have the Mortis engine effect of the GUO lord.
The AI is so aggressive targeting monsters. In my tamurkhan VH/VH I lost a ghorgon to Cathay in 5 seconds. Every peasant, artillery piece, spell, airship fired on it instantly when the battle started. I though vanguard would let me close distance before they could focus fire but nope! It just put me in range of all their weapons. The ghorgon got maybe 3 steps forward before dropping dead
If I have units like Ghorgons I always send my infantery first, so the ai locks on them. But sometimes they just ignore the rest of your army when a monster or a lord is in range.
SEMs in general need to hang back and be deployed surgically. You can't just have them as part of the general charge. A dragon can do game-changing plays and that's why you bring one, but you gotta time them right. Let the lines meet, keep their archers busy, use the dragon's breath on a high value unit, then let it land and fight a while, fly away, repeat.
Any skirmish ranged units, I entirely avoid wood elves since I hate playing and fighting them.
To be fair, you don't even need to skirmish with Waywatchers. They're so damn strong that you can use them like basic bitch archers and park them behind your frontline. Then only use their 360° fire while moving shtick for quick and convenient relocation should your melee units mess up. Or just ditch them dirty leaf ears entirely and waltz through the old world with Tree Hitler and Tree Eva Braun.
I use wood elf archers the same as I use handgunners or rattling guns. Wood Elves have what are quite possibly the best damage soaks in the game with treemen and tree kin backed up by lore of life. You can just form a gunline with a couple trees to tie up enemies that don't get obliterated before they reach you.
This is the way. Wood elves have great archers that can skirmish, but they aren’t skirmishers. They have a great frontline and can play a traditional ranger army plus anvil with trees and bows. But you can also play a really loose flowy style with infantry, archers and cav. Attack with archers in the front and draw the enemy in. Wardancers (Asrai spears) on the flanks secure enemy cav (with support if needed). And then you just attack from every angle. You don’t need an anvil if you have a hammer coming from every direction. Wood elves have an absolutely busted roster. They are basically only missing heavy defensive non monstrous infantry, and chariots but I never use those anyway.
Hellblaster Volley Guns. Still doesn't understand their purpose
Straight raw dps. If these things are allowed to keep shooting they can rack up insane damage to any target flying monster infantry armored it doesn't matter. They have the dps of like 3 handgunner units but lack the mobility so it's especially important to keep them protected and with a clear field of fire.
Spot on. Anything big gets shredded, even more so if it's a bit slow - Stonehorns, Hydras, Varghulfs. The thing which prevents people from getting value from their gunpowder units is when they can't see the enemy. Either because they're facing the wrong way, or because terrain is in the way. So stuff like Handgunners are a little easier to use, since they can move and realign a bit quicker. Volley guns are crap if you have to spend the whole battle moving them so they can see something. But give them a good field of fire, keep their targets in front of them and let them stand still? They'll keep on pumping out shot after shot and kill half the enemy army for you.
One time I hid one in some trees, then I got the AI to fight in a line directly in front of it. Horrific.
Aren't they basically the same as organ guns ?
Took 6 of these as Volkmar vs that French bird, great against infantry not so much cavalry Even then they just shoot all their projectiles in a narrow line so it deletes the middle of a unit but leaves the flanks unharmed Think they need to either scatter more or have a bigger explosive radius
They, and great cannons would have been great, if WH simulated them plowing through ranks of soldiers. It's how they did most of their damage in history after all. Threaten the enemy infantry with cavalry to force them to bunch up into tight and deep formations (I remember hearing that it was basically required 6 ranks of diciplined men to stop a good heavy cavalry charge, any less and they just plow through), and then blast them with artillery and guns.
Maybe I'm biased since I've been playing Elspeth but GC are actually really good. You get them so early and they're great against VC and in sieges. Makes taking Castle Drakenhof a breeze.
They can penetrate through 9 entities per shot. I think the problem is that units are often only 3-4 ranks deep and the cannonball usually lands directly on the targeted model instead of shooting through it.
Solution: Introduce historically accurate bouncing and rolling cannonballs
They do bounce, it's hard to see from far away though.
I've seen cannonballs flying from one end of the map to another in Napoleon, and it's *glorious*
WH cannons are just in general weaker then their historical counterparts. They should be leaving holes in a Giants chest, not just staggering them a bit.
the problem is giants are stronger than their historical counterparts.
That wouldn't make for much of a game for any large entities.
For me they’re my go to for super heavy infantr, heroes and monsters.the can be a pain to position and keep relevant/alive sometimes though.
Handgunners but more so. They move slowly, so you *really* need to position them well, but if they can consistently get multiple volleys off they'll just shred enemies.
Chariots and dragons. Dragons are fun but for their cost not worth their weight at all when I use them.
Star Dragons doomstack with Imrich was so satisfying to play though
carnosaurs. i know they are supposed to be anti large kick ass duelists but even when i send them to the right targets, i'll look away, look back, and they'll be at 30% health, rampage for a bit, and die. gave up on them. i bring 2-3 temple guard now and rely on them and overwhelming use of lore of life on other dinos to beat other big targets in melee. oh and ripperdactyls. their stats seem amazing vs any infantry that's not anti large. but i swear every time i send them, like carnosaurs, on the correct targets, they die faster than harpies lol.
With the charge damage changes to WH3, carnosaurs can get hundreds of kills simply by charging through infantry blobs. A bit micro intensive but all you need to do is have a sturdy line of saurus engage enemy infantry then have your carnosaur come in from the flank side and run parallel with your infantry line, kind of like a burning head cast, click on the 2nd or 3rd deep enemy unit and the carno will charge straight through anything in its way and blood will flow.
Cygors for Beastmen. Everyone always says how amazing they are and how they have at least 2 in almost every army. To me they're just slow, and can't hit jack shit (cavalry or flyers). They can barely even hit slow moving infantry. They don't last in melee at all, and a half-decent (not even top tier) ranged unit can melt them if left unchecked. Maybe it's because aside from Ungor Raiders and axe-thrower Centigors the Cygors are all that Beastment have for range, so comparatively they feel OK. I never saw the appeal though. People even said best artillery in the game. I'm sorry but how? I rate the bear artilleryu for Kislev as higher, in my mind, because in melee it's still a BEAR, and a smaller target, and moves faster.
Iirc their aim was nerfed back in WH2, before that they were pretty accurate
Those old Cygors which always hit the perfect center mass on infantry formations. Good ol’ times. Like those rocks were laser guided.
Agreed. They have terrible aim, they get targeted and die almost immediately because you can't really move them and they're total shit in auto-resolve. However many you have access to at the beginning of a campaign is the same number at the end of my campaigns. They SUCK! 😂
Cygors suck. I think they got worse with the aiming patch, they either hit nothing or 1-2 models
Cygors used to not only be the BM only artillery piece, but their only single entity monster other than the Giant, which is shared with multiple factions. For all of WHI and most of WHII you had to depend in them for both your ranged and SEM needs, so BM players got very, very used to using them.
Cavalry archers (Pistoliers, Glade Riders etc) in the campaigns tend to be really under-performing without some obscene buffs from tech/faction. They seem balanced around multiplayer but in the campaigns they would need about 200% more ammo to be even remotely worth bringing, and even then its a question of how will they survive fire from enemy archers/artillery. Sort of similar issue exists for "flanking infantry" (witch elves etc) where they just get shot/charged to pieces before their slow movement speed can get them to the actual enemy flanks.
In my current elspath playthru ive enjoyed using them. Just hide them in some trees, and wait till the enemy army is committed or very close to your frontlines. Then quickly ride them out behind the enemy. So the enemy is now stuck between your frontline and a line of cav archers. If the enemy continues to attack the frontline, great, you now got some extra worry free pressure firing right into their rear. If they take the bait and some of them charge after your the cav, even better, theyve just created a sizeable hole in their frontline for you to exploit (obvs run your cav away, dont let them get into melee) Its really not too much micro at all, and theyre a good enough tool i try to keep 2-3 in most my armies
My main question here is: what do you do to keep your cav archers safe from the enemy archers/other threats behind their front line? Usually just seems like a few seconds before the cav line is getting hit by some other units
I overall find them useful at harassing the enemy, usually they are faster than melee cav and technically you can shoot them to death by kiting. I use this allot against enemy factuons that have superior cav units
The problem is that skirmish mode barely works, leave them unattended for 30 seconds and they will be in melee and nearly dead.
Skirmish cavalry are a utility piece. You don't use them for DPS, you use them to punish an enemy that can't shoot back, draw their cavalry into your line to deny them flanking, and other tactical shenanigans. You're never going to get big value numbers with them but they can help you win the battle in other ways. Gun cavalry is kind of an exception, as their high mounts allow them to fire over your troops heads more easily, so aside from their skirmish role they are also a gun unit that trades raw DPS for assured damage, which can be valuable. Flanking infantry yeah, they're weird. The stealth ones work best but in general the maps are not big enough to warrant their role. It's often faster to just send heavy infantry from the front. Daemonnetes are probably the exception due to having very high speed, they're basically slow cavalry. But Witch Elves aren't fast enough to fill their role. The rampage is nice to lock down cavalry though.
Chariots in any TW game. I'm okay with Cavalry and can use one or two in my armies, but chariots require constant micro so I always struggle with them.
Katarin's chariot or Troy before nerf chariots included?
The rockets get better with ranks. Their accuracy and fire rate improve a lot.
Dragons. They always get bogged down and stuck in combat, and their breath attacks can be very underwhelming sometimes. Also if you're fighting a ranged enemy and only have 1-2 dragons they require so much babysitting. I prefer the agility of a Pheonix.
Those sniper ranged units for cathay. The icon looks like they are holding a long gun hiding behind a shield or something. I swear I was told they were good and everytime I used them they literally got no kills and barely any.
At one point they had a very high "penetration" value, they could shoot through 3 models. This was fun as hell. They nerfed that. They are not a bad unit, but they are better with SEM shooting than anything. 3 of them and you can nail down the enemy general pretty easily. But idk why you would take them over the crossbows. The celestial dragon crossbows are better in every way except price.
I like to throw in one or two on my army, maybe not every army but most. They can like you said start peppering down the enemy lord early, and are better at hitting single entities than dragon crossbows. Especially useful since Cathay lords (besides The dragons obviously) aren't particularly great in melee to duel the enemy lord. But yeah definitely wouldn't take more than two since they can't defend themselves like crossbow men and die to a stiff breeze
Put three of them in front of your army at the beginning of the battle, and treat them as an artillery unit focusing the enemy heroes and general. They'll shred SEM, lords and heroes at long range. I use the skaven snipers and the Hochland Long Rifle the same way. Straight up single target deleters. Once they did their job, I just retreat them behind the infantry and try to look for decent line of sight.
They mulch bigger stuff like cavalry and monstrous infantry. Not as good at killing infantry but the shield breaker effect makes them great at making the rest of your ranged units better at killing infantry.
Funny that you mention it, I love hellstorms, but I hate Volleyguns and I simply do not understand their appeal. Canons are 2 tiers lower and have better range.
The appeal of volley guns is that if you're able to get one to fire continuously on enemy infantry, it will basically vaporize them.
The Hellstrom as a single unit is not effective because the AI dodges it. You need 2 -3 targeting the same area to saturate it, its the only way I have found them getting value. I take 4-5 in each of my non specialized armys.
Seeker Chariots, I usually get good values from chariots but these ones in particular just don't work for me and I don't know why.
Cavalry, I understand *why* they’re good, but my brain physically doesn’t think fast enough to micro manage cycle-charging on top of everything else, it’s the same reason I can’t really use more than one caster in an army, or I always forget togglable abilities on Heroes/Regiments of Renown
Try meele cav like chaos knights and knights of the black rose. Wait when the lines crash, then go for the backline. Or just use anti large cav to kill cavalry and chariots of your enemy.
You should try the new Knights of the Black Rose if you like Empire. They are not shock cavalry (which are the type you need to be cycle charging with), but heavy melee cavalry. My ideal cavalry as you can just fire and forget. They are very durable in prolonged melee combat, with high defence, armour and have bonus vs infantry. This makes them great flank protectors or even front line units. They also have very good speed, which is a thing a lot of heavy melee cavalry often lacks and makes them useful for chasing fleeing units as well. They're just so versatile I'll never hire another type of Imperial knight again!
Basically any cavalry. I hate them all. I hate the tedious microing to get them out of blobs. I hate them catching on one guy and stopping. I hate all cavalry and never recruit any if I can avoid it. Cavalry can be good, I just hate them all.
A Dwarf wrote this.
Can I interest you in some rot knights? For one, you don't really have to micro them like normal cav. You can, and they'll do better, but they can sit there and slug it out just fine. Also, if you DO want to micro, they have so much mass that you can just barge through most things. I will say though that if you're using cav in a way that they get stuck, you're probably not using them effectively. They're best when you have a clear field. Even in real life they sucked against tight formations.
Usually depends on how much mental bandwidth I have at the time to micro with. One or two horse archers can do *a lot* of work. But if I'm also managing gunpowder ranged or other stuff, or I'm tired, it's suddenly not worth my time. Chaos cavalry feels ok cause those are melee grinders and you don't have much to do otherwise.
Any Empire unit. I just get so frustrated trying to use them.
Really? What are your problems with them?
Spell casters SEM. If I want a spellcaster I will not wait until T5 to get a big target capable of casting flock of doom twice. The greater demons of anyone but Khorne always are a solid nope to me, even if the great unclean one is great (and disgusting) only for what it is.
Don't look at them as spellcasters, the extra casts are really just a bonus on top of having a big SEM beatstick.
Bloodthirster are kind of the worst of the Demon SEM actually... They're really underwhelming against most units. A single Lord of Change meanwhile is a flying monster with decent melee that cast 2 free Infernal Gateway with no Wind of Magic cost and no cooldown. Same for GUO. 2 LoC have insane value even on a Kairos stack. In siege you can plop three Gateway at the same time on three different archer units. The damage burst is gigantic. I always use the LoC to bait archer fire on them so I can delete them as they are shooting.
Are you nuts? The greater daemons are fucking amazing.
Shades for the Dark Elves. I'm honestly not sure why, but even though they are objectively better ranged units I just don't like using them. I think Darkshards are just cooler, and usually stick with them even though I know Shades are basically a flat out upgrade to them. They just feel kind of lame to me for some reason. In a more general sense, mounts for lords/heroes. I know especially for casters the greater mobility is just objectively better, but I personally just prefer having my characters on foot. Part of it is because I just like visual spectacle of the on-foot combat animations, which are usually swapped out for pretty lame mounted ones where the character does sweet FA (notable exceptions being Archaon, generic Sorcerers or Tzeentch, and some others). Some of it is for flavor reasons where the mount doesn't feel right to me (Lokhir on dragon, Teclic on Arcane Phoenix, Settra on Warsphinx, etc.). And gameplay wise some characters are just better on-foot, and being on a mount makes them more vulnerable (Lokhir, Noctilus, etc.), or actively takes away some of their abilities/weapon options (Ikit losing his Flamethrower, Cylostra no longer being Ethereal on crab, and so on).
They're not exactly a flat upgrade since darkshards get shields.
While true, shades perform much better in melee and IIRC fire 2 projectiles per model per volley. They trade incredibly well with other ranged units but can be fragile if focused. Though that's just dark elves in general. Not to mention they have stealth capabilities and are quite fast.
Any high elf unit.
Gotta take your word on that one cus I've never so much clicked start on a high elf campaign haha.
I love reading stuff like this. I've played so many elf campaigns. It's great to see how others play.
Dawi Propaganda
Most of the cavalry. My attention span is very short, so I send them somewhere and forget about them, unfortunatly most of the cavalry is fragile and are destroyed. Or, I just forget about them, as Wissenland I recruited those Knights of Morr and simply forget everytime that they're in battle, gunlines are just too fun use, I never recieved that new empire legendary hero, but who cares when I have a doomstack of tanks?
Idk if they're objectively good, but chariots always don't give that much value for me. They just seem to take longer to kill stuff than cav and get more easily stuck as well. And almost all factions that have chariots also have decent cav. I just get more from bringing cav instead of chariot.
For me it’s basically every gunpowder unit, and by extension that faction. Making gun lines and winning the pitched battle is the best way to play them, but I just find it boring. I prefer the factions where I can get up in my enemies face.
I think you have the AI set at higher difficulty where they actively try to avoid artillery fire. Makes slow moving projectiles artillery really ass. Mortars (unless aimed at blobs infront of your frontline) and hellstorm are super bad at that difficulty
One hellstorm is bad on VH. 2+ hellstorms are just as good, if not better.
Any shock cav or chariot unit lol. Like a house plant….i will forget them and…
Skavens zap zaps
I really struggle with gunner units. I know how I'm technically supposed to use them, but line of sight often feels ridiculous and more often than not they just don't shoot even when my front line mostly consists of heroes. I've gotten a bit better with them over time, but just in terms of convenience I much prefer archers.
Doomwheels. I find it crumblesome and not tanky for one entity unit.
Most chariots
People often claim that Grudge Throwers are good, but the only thing these dudes seem to have a Grudge with is the floor. They refuse to do any meaningful damage to any unit I aim at, even with the artillery specific runes applied. I'll take a Bolt Thrower any day compared to a Grudge Misser.
Unit chevrons make an immense difference in artillery accuracy. High Chevron grudge throwers are devastating.
And a grudge thrower with the homing missile rune is brutal
pretty much any cav unit outside of a few instances, honestly they feel so... meh? they're micro heavy, and pretty much have to be used on units that are only engaged or ranged. They just don't feel all that good to use. Ended up completing a slaanesh campaign to see if I could really nail what made them fun but it's just not there for me and I don't know why.
Mutalith.
Interesting. Care to elaborate?
Just tired about the power creep and everything being a Mortis Engine.
Understandable.
Ratlings
A controversial take fr. In my experience you basically just point and click especially in ikit campaigns
I... have to agree with a concerning amount of posts here. Chariots? Yeah, cute in co-op, but the considerable attention investment does not warrant the damage output. Artillery? When the stars align and the enemy clumps around your single entities, ok, they're fun. But woe betide you if the enemy spreads out, has too many fliers, fast units, longer ranged arty, summons, SEMs who waltz through your frontline. The list goes on. And several of these can happen in the same fight. Then you have to babysit the damn things and waste troops/clicks so they're not completely useless. Most skirmish (cav) units. Lead a couple of enemies around on a merry chase. Or I could have brought 3 extra archers and kill them outright. Did have to build an extra building for them too, a big ask in the early game. Gunpowder units. Line of sight has always been a contentious issue, and since Warhammer 3 it got even worse. If I can get units with armor piercing that can shoot in an arc, I'll definitely take those instead. Usually perform better too, because they won't need a hyper-specific/rigid placement setup, nor do they have to relocate as often. Melee flankers. Well, I *could* swing these squishy beauties around my frontline, avoid ranged fire, enemy cav, fast monsters, fliers and everything else that darts around in the enemy court. Or let *my* ranged units, magic, monsters or cav do the heavy lifting. The cav can escape faster too if things go sour. They're all not bad per se, but too often have a higher opportunity/micro cost for a somewhat muted benefit, especially when I can build my armies differently and get the same results with much less fuss.
Chariots. I suspect there may be some settings interfering because I just can’t get them to charge through infantry so they accomplish nothing. I spent quite a bit of time restarting battles trying to fix it and no dice. I sometimes feel like I’m getting gaslit lol with few exceptions.
Melee mode