Btw how the heck does the AI have such a high success rate with convincing factions to join them? Seems like every other turn the dwarves are absorbing another faction despite me wiping them out faster than they can pop up.
OI I KICKED 'IM IN DA NUTZ SO 'ARD HE SAW GORK N MORK YA NO 'OW 'ARD YA GATTA KICK A GIT TA MAK 'IM SEE SUM WUN ELSES GOD?
So far I've beaten the long campaign as the Empire. You just try to build up your forces for the inevitable Chaos invasion, occasionally grabbing some territory if someone decides to declare war. Or rebuilding since everyone loves to raze towns in this game. Or you could get another Empire province to join up. Helps if they are already getting beat up by someone. I sent my 2 legendary lord led stacks to wipe out the VC so I wouldn't have a 2 front war, and to get a few more provinces under direct control. I had the Reikland Runefang quest, which required me to become an ally with Nordland. Well they are not a very diplomatic faction, those Nordlanders, and since they were so keen on staying alone, they died alone. But there was an alternative way to get the quest done. Basically it restarted with a different objective. Ended up getting that, then Ghal Maraz, and finally the Silver Seal for Karl Franz. Balthazar Gelt only had time to get 1 quest done before I won. Chaos + various Norscans killed off Kislev, Middenland and Nordland. I killed off the Vampire Counts. The Dwarfs handled the greenskins well enough, I helped a little with that. The Ghal Maraz quest made me have to defeat 5 greenskin armies, I had to march down to Karaz Azgal just to find any left. I'd sack the forts and my Dwarf allies would follow behind and take them over once they saw an opening. Eventually I rallied the rest of the Empire, every Dwarf faction left, all the Bretonnians, the Border Princes and Estalia into a grand allied coalition. Everyone but Tilea, the gits. I hope the Skaven eat them. With the ally system you can tell them where to strike. The rest of Chaos was overwhelmed by fighting basically the entire southern half of the map at once. Once I rebuilt the northern Empire cities and had control over all the provinces, I got the victory screen. Working on Dwarfs now. Grimgor may be tough but I send him running roughly once every 10 turns. Always comes back for more though.
I don't think anyone has given you an answer to this yet. I have come across this once in the 60+ hours of playing. I was playing Chaos and came up against a Empire army with a Captain on a warhorse supported by 19 units of pistoller cavalry.... The next worst I have seen was Chaos armies stacking one or two unit.... As I was conquering the north, a lot of the Chaos AI armies I went against tend to really focus on spamming Warhounds and Marauders. It was only towards the end of my northern conquest that I began to see trolls and chariots make it into the ranks. I think the reason why I was seeing these kinds of armies, was simply because I was looting and razing cities which had the advanced buildings in them before the AI could produce a army with those units in them.
I've seen this from both sides. I assimilated an Empire faction...Marienburg I think, that had an army of 1 lord and 12-14 pistoleers. I filled it out with knights, gave the lord a warhorse and used it as a mounted support army. Which I needed, because there was a Norscan with an army of nothing but mounted marauders and chariots and it really messed up my infantry based armies. Could not get them to stand still and fight, and they would gang up on my own few mounted troops.
The game has certainly come a long way compared to its predecessors. I remember resenting getting Rome II early because of the bugs, thankfully I haven't experienced this in Warhammer. i enjoy playing the game and I am really satisfied with them. Now there are a few bugs and fixes that need to be addressed. The End Turn Game Crash occasionally makes an appearance (Empire Campaign got to Turn 90 and cant get passed it due to continuous game crash). *Knocks On Wood* Hopefully, none of my other late game campaigns decided to do it. The AI heroes versus Player Heroes could also use a bit of tweaking. AI like to field a lot of them mid to late game and these heroes can and most often are really and I mean REALLY aggressive... I have played different campaigns and regardless of faction some of armies just have massive bulls-eyes on them, and they are stocked by one or two heroes for several turns, and all they do is Assault the Units/Patrol. I find them an annoyance when I am playing the 4 normal factions, but when playing Chaos.... they can be a nightmare, and its not uncommon to see a high level player hero fail to assassinate or be unable to assault a low level AI hero. Finally, AI diplomacy is still so-so. I find it a flip of the coin and often I just avoid diplomacy all together unless they approach me. Aside from these bugs, its a pretty solid Total War game
