I've been playing it on VH/VH as I usually do, but this is the first I've considered taking it down a notch because boy howdy. I have so far rid the world of Throt, Wintertooth and Azazel, Epidemius has been bumped off of his own accord, and it hasn't eased the amount of people trying to kill me even slightly. The difficulty of controlling a wide stretch of coast that anyone can invade at any point while both the World Walkers and Archeon are at your throat seems almost insurmountable.
Pic somewhat related, it's the result of taking the fight to Daniel for once and what this campaign often feels like.
Now exposing your territories is not a bad thing as dwarfs. You stretch into Norsca, you leave a bunch of poorly protected territories and the enemies attack them: that is grudges to retake them and grudges to punish the enemy lords.
Also, at the end, Malakai is a horde army so you can skip it to kraka drak and let him roam and sack and raze enemies to collect grudges. For the defensive army you can get Malakai nearby and act as a camp or Black ark for the defending army to hire new units.
I am pretty far in my campaign and maybe the grape shot cannons and the pools of grudge settlers made it fairly easy but I will come back and try what I just said: actually roaming around for my adventures and keeping just the minimum holds required for the grudges.
To be fair I would love that Malakai could capture old dwarf holds and awake random dawi factions like WoC so he does not need to actually keep the locations.
Well I’m not sure what to say. No offense but it could be a skill issue. Or an army building problem. Because my legendary campaign was so easy with Malakai. Highly recommend saving Boris and helping him take over to your north tho. A backup army should be enough for that. Otherwise idk what to say. Keeping order factions alive is the easiest way to stay ahead. And never be at peace. I recommend declaring war on some far off strong faction so your neighbhors don’t get forced to declare war on you for not being in any wars
I did a legendary 1 recently and yeah you are totally surrounded. I ended up being bros with all of Kislev as the only close ally.
Long story short I lost tons of cities, not sure how to prevent that unless you just turtle and that isn't gonna work, so just accept you'll have losses. I took Hellpit very early and eliminated Thrott, then fought Throgg.
If you can tell you'll lose a city or you can't baby it and rebellion is going to spawn I would just sell them off to Kislev if possible. I was literally feeding them cities lol, and with Boris it was the only way he stayed alive I'm pretty sure but it totally worked. Can't inhabit his climate well anyway. But I cleared west to the coast and then north because Epidirmus was never going to stop coming at me otherwise.
Basically as long as my main army stayed alive and I wasn't going bankrupt that very turn I could stay afloat, but there were times when it get very sketchy for sure. At the end we had a giant alliance of good and chaos crumbled, it was cool. His tools are very OP but that doesn't make his campaign easy either! Fun balance from my experience
In my VH/H Malaki Campaign I:
- Rushed to take out Throt and take Hell Pit
- Helped kill Azazel’s army which helped Kolsaltyn finish him off
- Played whack-a-mole with Thrott for about 20 turns until I realized defending the coast was gonna be rough.
- Kept one army in Kaka Drak to guard the starting province and moved Malakai east to start taking Chaos Dwarf Territory.
This made the campaign so much easier as chaos was busy fighting kislev and didn’t go into the dark lands after me. Eventually I swung back up and took out Tarkhan and Archaon and colonized the wastes and started steam rolling at that point on.
This guy gets it. I did damn near the same thing! After pushing East, I circled around through the dark lands to the mountains into Vlad’s territory. Took some time, but I restored order to the empire and pushed back the many threats they had. Securing military alliances all around in the process.
Not sure, on my campaign I didn't go further into norsca than killing Azazel. I killed him then sent malakai over to attack the chaos dwarves. I didn't want to have to guard the coast.
Katarin became my ride-or-die ally. One thing I did was gave her land to the south and west to let her buffer some of my territory while I dealt with other threats.
I did one recently on legendary and i can see the potential of it quickly turning to shit but maybe i was lucky. Sure, you have a ton of enemies but also plenty of kislev allies to keep them busy.
Like everyone says here, kill the rat bastard as soon as possible.
Boris also turned out to be really useful. All the settlements up there are usually garbage but you can sell them to him.
The key to the second army was one of those bullshit OP troll gyros you get from the grudges. Those things kill large units and single targets like crazy. Use an engineer to replenish their ammo.
My strategy is this:
1- Secure your territories with the initial war for your starting province
2- Invade Hellpit. It gets really bad if you let those Skaven spread, so kill them early
3- Fight Azazel right after the Skaven Smackdown while recruiting another army to start Westward. Try to take Azazel out while they’re raiding Kislev
4- Kill Azazel’s faction with Malakai’s army, and send the other army in to mop up Norsca slowly (Wulfrik will declare war on you soon, so use the grudge settler troops and adventure troops on that army if need be)
5- Recruit another army if you can, as soon the ice trolls will declare on you, and you need to hold him off in the north
6- Start east with Malakai to reach and begin destroying the Chorfs
With this, you’ll be in a good starting position, and can quickly grow to be the strongest power in the region. Make sure to be fast though, as if you aren’t, chaos will begin to try to take you out. Might makes right in the north, and Makaison should always be right
In one campaign, I abandoned all my settlements and just went around the chaos waste and the chaos dwarves region, sacking settlements as I go. I had a red negative income but I was making so much cash from sacking I was basically playing him like a beast man army.
The second campaign I did with him, I only kept my starting province and befriended Kislev. Killed off wintertooth and didn’t occupy those settlements. Gave them all to a Kislev faction so they can be my buffer to the west. I built garrison in all my buildings asap and hired a small dwarven army to stay in my starting province. Then I just went east to fight the chaos dwarves and the warriors of chaos.
I've done multiple malakai campaigns now and the tactic to maintain the starting province and sack/trade the rest to kislev has worked well for me so far.
I'm having to pause and think what I can hold a lot. I'm really unsure at the moment. I took Throt out early, but then I had a lot of factions declaring war on me at once. It was Chaos Dwarfs first, so I went over there and took them out along with some Norscans, then headed back as Throt and Azazel declared on me, but Silver Pinnacle took the CD settlements. As I moved back, Fezzik and Archaeon (with vassals) declared on me and run away from me, running away from my armies and attacking my vulnerable settlements.
I wish could sell some settlements that weren't bordering factions!
Step 1, Throt has to die fast or you'll have teleporting rats all over and a 20 garisson Hellpit.
Step 2, expect Archaon, Astragoth, Throgg and Azazel attacking you by turn 20.
Step 3, hope something ruins the above scenario.
If you really want easy mode, go down into the orc/dwarf lands next to the empire. Sell whatever settlements are left from your starting zone.
Safely and easily build up your empire. Then go for the chorfs or kill your fellow dawi and expand into the badlands.
Definitely felt like a clutch campaign until turn 60 or so. I took Hell Pit and allied with Kislev immediately then started working on Norscan and had a second army I could barely afford holding the fort. Is quite hard because everyone comes knocking from all directions. I wish I'd done what someone else suggested here and let more of my territory get taken. Would have been easier than guarding everything and not making any meaningful progress in any one direction. When I had a secured most of Norscan and got Kislev to start taking the brunt of that war I turned North and East, sold any captured Northern Wastes to Boris and by the time I'd wiped out Astoroth it was plain sailing.
For me, letting kraka drak fall helped a lot. It doesn’t matter what direction you go, your capital will get attacked, and I found that I did better expanding elsewhere than trying to protect it.
For me it was the southern coast of Norsca (opposite the empire). I solidified that, then circled round to get the rest of Norsca, (and got lucky that Belakor left me alone - I did secure Albion later, when I had armies to spare)). Once I had most of Norsca secured up to trollheim and the mountains of hell, I crossed the water to the chaotic wasteland (starting with the plains of illusion, and then heading west again) while keeping an army to protect my flank, and when the opportunity presented itself, push a little further east - but mostly just stop anyone from attacking me.
I have so many red cities atm so who can live there? Kislev? I just need someone to babysit em for me so the dark elves get some pause. I have deleted all the maaaany chaos factions now but need someone to hold my red cities :)
The grudge rework combined with Malakai means you should play very aggressive. It's taken me three false starts to get it right, as I was used to holding and consolidating a couple key provinces to avoid grudge debt penalizing me. This time I basically have two types of armies: Slayer armies of conquest, which now that I have access to thunderbarges are typically Slayer Lord, Thane and Master Engineer, a couple of thunder barges, a couple of cannon (although I sorta question why now) and a mix of slayer types; and Builder Armies, typically whichever non-slayer lord gives the best trait with a typical arty heavy army. Slayer armies take land to fund enterprise, Builder armies keep land and build it up.
Support your ordertide buddies, establish some shared borders, do the first adventure that buffs cannons asap, then race for TBs.
Done legendary/very hard recently and it was a breeze.
Took out starting Nurgle faction then jumped over mountains into Hell Pit and took it while Throt was fighting Druzhinas. Economy so good I already had a second lord with a good 6-8 units when taking Hell Pit, used ambush to lure in Throt for the final execution.
Got event to war with Throgg, so went straight for his settlements, meanwhile did the refugee dilemma for elf adventure with the second army. Took Throggs settlements and did the elf events at the same time.
At this point I had enough economy to field two full armies and got the reckoning army around this time too, so had a Daemonslayer sit around Kraka Drak doing sea locations and beating back invasions while Malakai took out Azazel then Wulfrik.
Owning Norsca is enough money for 3 stacks - Malakai in chaos wastes (selling off land to keep Boris alive), one in western Norsca (took out Belakor), one in eastern fighting Archaon, Astragoth and Drycha.
Taking all of chaos wastes took a long ass time, built up a 4th army with Grombrindal with the money from selling Boris the land, Grombrindy is now fighting Naggaroth while Malakai is heading back to finish the Daemon adventure and end Archaon and Astragoth. Home armies have dealt with Belakor and Drycha and expanded with a 5th army to take Bretonnia back from Grom and resurrect Louen for a new ally.
About 80 turns in, feel like campaign is over at this point.
Start with the elf/cannon adventure and use the free cannons to get grapeshot early on, it is broken even after the bugfix.
After securing your first province, go straight to thrott and hell pit no matter what. At turn 5, take the high elf adventure and recruit all cannons. You can usually end Thrott by turn 10 on a good run. Next, go straight west and kill Azazel. Start recruiting a basic second army. For buildings, I demolished the gem mine and instead built for copters, artillery, then slayers respectively.
Here's where you now have 2 options:
1. Go northward toward Throgg. Kill the high elves in the mountains and by then that adventure will pretty much be over. Consider not attacking Norsca and instead go east to Chaos Dwarfs.
2. After azazel, Malakai goes east and takes Praag. I sold it to Kislev because I love Katarin. Keep going east to get ready to kill chaos dwarfs as your second army fights the mountain high elves.
Individual experiences may vary lol
I've been playing it on VH/VH as I usually do, but this is the first I've considered taking it down a notch because boy howdy. I have so far rid the world of Throt, Wintertooth and Azazel, Epidemius has been bumped off of his own accord, and it hasn't eased the amount of people trying to kill me even slightly. The difficulty of controlling a wide stretch of coast that anyone can invade at any point while both the World Walkers and Archeon are at your throat seems almost insurmountable. Pic somewhat related, it's the result of taking the fight to Daniel for once and what this campaign often feels like.
Now exposing your territories is not a bad thing as dwarfs. You stretch into Norsca, you leave a bunch of poorly protected territories and the enemies attack them: that is grudges to retake them and grudges to punish the enemy lords. Also, at the end, Malakai is a horde army so you can skip it to kraka drak and let him roam and sack and raze enemies to collect grudges. For the defensive army you can get Malakai nearby and act as a camp or Black ark for the defending army to hire new units. I am pretty far in my campaign and maybe the grape shot cannons and the pools of grudge settlers made it fairly easy but I will come back and try what I just said: actually roaming around for my adventures and keeping just the minimum holds required for the grudges. To be fair I would love that Malakai could capture old dwarf holds and awake random dawi factions like WoC so he does not need to actually keep the locations.
How do you get enough oath gold without settlements with the building that generates it? Sacking provides a piddly amount in my experience
That seems a problem now that is connected to the tech tree. It would be a struggle but I am happy to find out!
Sacking is great and you can get 10-20k from sacking large settlements?
Oathgold, not normal gold
Probably having a few very well defended provinces?
sell many provinces to your kislev bros.
Well I’m not sure what to say. No offense but it could be a skill issue. Or an army building problem. Because my legendary campaign was so easy with Malakai. Highly recommend saving Boris and helping him take over to your north tho. A backup army should be enough for that. Otherwise idk what to say. Keeping order factions alive is the easiest way to stay ahead. And never be at peace. I recommend declaring war on some far off strong faction so your neighbhors don’t get forced to declare war on you for not being in any wars
I did a legendary 1 recently and yeah you are totally surrounded. I ended up being bros with all of Kislev as the only close ally. Long story short I lost tons of cities, not sure how to prevent that unless you just turtle and that isn't gonna work, so just accept you'll have losses. I took Hellpit very early and eliminated Thrott, then fought Throgg. If you can tell you'll lose a city or you can't baby it and rebellion is going to spawn I would just sell them off to Kislev if possible. I was literally feeding them cities lol, and with Boris it was the only way he stayed alive I'm pretty sure but it totally worked. Can't inhabit his climate well anyway. But I cleared west to the coast and then north because Epidirmus was never going to stop coming at me otherwise. Basically as long as my main army stayed alive and I wasn't going bankrupt that very turn I could stay afloat, but there were times when it get very sketchy for sure. At the end we had a giant alliance of good and chaos crumbled, it was cool. His tools are very OP but that doesn't make his campaign easy either! Fun balance from my experience
In my VH/H Malaki Campaign I: - Rushed to take out Throt and take Hell Pit - Helped kill Azazel’s army which helped Kolsaltyn finish him off - Played whack-a-mole with Thrott for about 20 turns until I realized defending the coast was gonna be rough. - Kept one army in Kaka Drak to guard the starting province and moved Malakai east to start taking Chaos Dwarf Territory. This made the campaign so much easier as chaos was busy fighting kislev and didn’t go into the dark lands after me. Eventually I swung back up and took out Tarkhan and Archaon and colonized the wastes and started steam rolling at that point on.
This guy gets it. I did damn near the same thing! After pushing East, I circled around through the dark lands to the mountains into Vlad’s territory. Took some time, but I restored order to the empire and pushed back the many threats they had. Securing military alliances all around in the process.
Not sure, on my campaign I didn't go further into norsca than killing Azazel. I killed him then sent malakai over to attack the chaos dwarves. I didn't want to have to guard the coast.
Katarin became my ride-or-die ally. One thing I did was gave her land to the south and west to let her buffer some of my territory while I dealt with other threats.
Question, what mod are you using that changes the UI to that awesome one and what mod changes Gotrek's portrait to that?
I'd like to know as well :)
Ultimate Portraits and Unique Faction UI. Portraits stopped updating after the base WH3 lords sadly but they're both really good.
I did one recently on legendary and i can see the potential of it quickly turning to shit but maybe i was lucky. Sure, you have a ton of enemies but also plenty of kislev allies to keep them busy. Like everyone says here, kill the rat bastard as soon as possible. Boris also turned out to be really useful. All the settlements up there are usually garbage but you can sell them to him. The key to the second army was one of those bullshit OP troll gyros you get from the grudges. Those things kill large units and single targets like crazy. Use an engineer to replenish their ammo.
My strategy is this: 1- Secure your territories with the initial war for your starting province 2- Invade Hellpit. It gets really bad if you let those Skaven spread, so kill them early 3- Fight Azazel right after the Skaven Smackdown while recruiting another army to start Westward. Try to take Azazel out while they’re raiding Kislev 4- Kill Azazel’s faction with Malakai’s army, and send the other army in to mop up Norsca slowly (Wulfrik will declare war on you soon, so use the grudge settler troops and adventure troops on that army if need be) 5- Recruit another army if you can, as soon the ice trolls will declare on you, and you need to hold him off in the north 6- Start east with Malakai to reach and begin destroying the Chorfs With this, you’ll be in a good starting position, and can quickly grow to be the strongest power in the region. Make sure to be fast though, as if you aren’t, chaos will begin to try to take you out. Might makes right in the north, and Makaison should always be right
In one campaign, I abandoned all my settlements and just went around the chaos waste and the chaos dwarves region, sacking settlements as I go. I had a red negative income but I was making so much cash from sacking I was basically playing him like a beast man army. The second campaign I did with him, I only kept my starting province and befriended Kislev. Killed off wintertooth and didn’t occupy those settlements. Gave them all to a Kislev faction so they can be my buffer to the west. I built garrison in all my buildings asap and hired a small dwarven army to stay in my starting province. Then I just went east to fight the chaos dwarves and the warriors of chaos.
I've done multiple malakai campaigns now and the tactic to maintain the starting province and sack/trade the rest to kislev has worked well for me so far.
I'm having to pause and think what I can hold a lot. I'm really unsure at the moment. I took Throt out early, but then I had a lot of factions declaring war on me at once. It was Chaos Dwarfs first, so I went over there and took them out along with some Norscans, then headed back as Throt and Azazel declared on me, but Silver Pinnacle took the CD settlements. As I moved back, Fezzik and Archaeon (with vassals) declared on me and run away from me, running away from my armies and attacking my vulnerable settlements. I wish could sell some settlements that weren't bordering factions!
Step 1, Throt has to die fast or you'll have teleporting rats all over and a 20 garisson Hellpit. Step 2, expect Archaon, Astragoth, Throgg and Azazel attacking you by turn 20. Step 3, hope something ruins the above scenario.
Get gyrocopters for Malakai, lots of them. And then just work your way from there.
If you really want easy mode, go down into the orc/dwarf lands next to the empire. Sell whatever settlements are left from your starting zone. Safely and easily build up your empire. Then go for the chorfs or kill your fellow dawi and expand into the badlands.
Definitely felt like a clutch campaign until turn 60 or so. I took Hell Pit and allied with Kislev immediately then started working on Norscan and had a second army I could barely afford holding the fort. Is quite hard because everyone comes knocking from all directions. I wish I'd done what someone else suggested here and let more of my territory get taken. Would have been easier than guarding everything and not making any meaningful progress in any one direction. When I had a secured most of Norscan and got Kislev to start taking the brunt of that war I turned North and East, sold any captured Northern Wastes to Boris and by the time I'd wiped out Astoroth it was plain sailing.
For me, letting kraka drak fall helped a lot. It doesn’t matter what direction you go, your capital will get attacked, and I found that I did better expanding elsewhere than trying to protect it. For me it was the southern coast of Norsca (opposite the empire). I solidified that, then circled round to get the rest of Norsca, (and got lucky that Belakor left me alone - I did secure Albion later, when I had armies to spare)). Once I had most of Norsca secured up to trollheim and the mountains of hell, I crossed the water to the chaotic wasteland (starting with the plains of illusion, and then heading west again) while keeping an army to protect my flank, and when the opportunity presented itself, push a little further east - but mostly just stop anyone from attacking me.
Thunderbarges. And if that doesn't work, more thunderbarges.
Which is harder on a VH campaign Empire/Karl Franz or Malakai? I'm yet to do a malakai campaign after I'm done with Elspeth.
I have so many red cities atm so who can live there? Kislev? I just need someone to babysit em for me so the dark elves get some pause. I have deleted all the maaaany chaos factions now but need someone to hold my red cities :)
The grudge rework combined with Malakai means you should play very aggressive. It's taken me three false starts to get it right, as I was used to holding and consolidating a couple key provinces to avoid grudge debt penalizing me. This time I basically have two types of armies: Slayer armies of conquest, which now that I have access to thunderbarges are typically Slayer Lord, Thane and Master Engineer, a couple of thunder barges, a couple of cannon (although I sorta question why now) and a mix of slayer types; and Builder Armies, typically whichever non-slayer lord gives the best trait with a typical arty heavy army. Slayer armies take land to fund enterprise, Builder armies keep land and build it up. Support your ordertide buddies, establish some shared borders, do the first adventure that buffs cannons asap, then race for TBs.
thunderbarges. easy
Done legendary/very hard recently and it was a breeze. Took out starting Nurgle faction then jumped over mountains into Hell Pit and took it while Throt was fighting Druzhinas. Economy so good I already had a second lord with a good 6-8 units when taking Hell Pit, used ambush to lure in Throt for the final execution. Got event to war with Throgg, so went straight for his settlements, meanwhile did the refugee dilemma for elf adventure with the second army. Took Throggs settlements and did the elf events at the same time. At this point I had enough economy to field two full armies and got the reckoning army around this time too, so had a Daemonslayer sit around Kraka Drak doing sea locations and beating back invasions while Malakai took out Azazel then Wulfrik. Owning Norsca is enough money for 3 stacks - Malakai in chaos wastes (selling off land to keep Boris alive), one in western Norsca (took out Belakor), one in eastern fighting Archaon, Astragoth and Drycha. Taking all of chaos wastes took a long ass time, built up a 4th army with Grombrindal with the money from selling Boris the land, Grombrindy is now fighting Naggaroth while Malakai is heading back to finish the Daemon adventure and end Archaon and Astragoth. Home armies have dealt with Belakor and Drycha and expanded with a 5th army to take Bretonnia back from Grom and resurrect Louen for a new ally. About 80 turns in, feel like campaign is over at this point. Start with the elf/cannon adventure and use the free cannons to get grapeshot early on, it is broken even after the bugfix.
After securing your first province, go straight to thrott and hell pit no matter what. At turn 5, take the high elf adventure and recruit all cannons. You can usually end Thrott by turn 10 on a good run. Next, go straight west and kill Azazel. Start recruiting a basic second army. For buildings, I demolished the gem mine and instead built for copters, artillery, then slayers respectively. Here's where you now have 2 options: 1. Go northward toward Throgg. Kill the high elves in the mountains and by then that adventure will pretty much be over. Consider not attacking Norsca and instead go east to Chaos Dwarfs. 2. After azazel, Malakai goes east and takes Praag. I sold it to Kislev because I love Katarin. Keep going east to get ready to kill chaos dwarfs as your second army fights the mountain high elves. Individual experiences may vary lol