Ku'Gath help?

[Faptor]

Git gud or just a bad start?
Im on turn 23 and 2 ogre kingdoms and helman ghorst are at war with me. Helman just sent 3 doomstacks through my islands and finally killed Ku'Gath after taking 2 cities. the Ogre on my left kept taking my southern most island city and basically halfed my army before I killed his army.

Is this normal to get absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ within the first 20 rounds or just a bad start?
Apparently Ku'Gath is built for the Big Ogre Bvll lol

Like, if it was just zombies and skeletons I would be alright with it but these were half crypt ghoul's (the really big ones, not just the jumpy zombie ones)

Holy.

Should I not even bother with the Lizardmen at the start and just go straight for Helman?

[Moot]

Monsters abound(youtube channel) has a good campaign that was uploaded in may. So it should be able to help ya. But essentially the biggest thing to beating helman early is to crush him by like turn 10-15.

you'll want a second weaker lord and to use kugath in ambush stance at the settlement just before the mountains but after shattered rock. After that, encamp stance and focus helman til he keels over.

Plague bearers are a good backbone of your army. A few flies to kill lords with adidas. Use kugath as a seige machine and adidas as your early caster. Rancid visitations is good.

also dont skip the lizardmen. Besides setting up your initial economy, you cant sail out to sea to attack helman. I tried. You just gotta take out one of his stacks early with decent aggression tactics. then hit him hard so he cant recover.

[Snidy]

I actually was bored and wrote a guide a few weeks back after beating domination legendary. but in short without reading everything below. take our ghorst first and early. catch him in an ambush with a second lord ideally. a chaos warrior/ the initial rot flies, or beast can take down ghorst with some skill because he usually trails behind the army and can be isolated if you corner camp and use trees to hide flanking units. for Ogres it's simple. Just always fight in the trees and it takes most their damage away.

Can say it's a campaign that takes getting used to and in the late game is rewarding but one you have to be very careful with.

1. Taking down Ghorst asap is easy enough if you separate him from his army with chaos warriors, rot flies, beasts, or toads
2. Do NOT be tempted to ally the skaven near you because everyone hates them.
3. Your campaign progression is almost guaranteed to go Ghorst > Greasus > Cathay > Lokhir/Snikitch > wherever after because it's a given they will declare war on you. Greasus is annoying because he tends to just be large distraction and mountain settlements are not ideal, I try to eliminate him asap. I gift ruins end to drazoath so i dont have to deal with Imrik early on and keep pigbarter because of the landmark .
4. The long victory objective is rather annoying requiring you to reach Kairos. In my campaign i chose to completely wipe out Cathay and close my entire eastern front first before dealing with Tzeench. I used sea paths in Cathay to pincer Kairos on the south pole from both sides to take him out as quickly as possible because of changing of the ways. At the end of the day +10 recruit rank for lords is not worth formulating your entire campaign to achieve this but instant daemon princes are nice if you can make it work.
5. always use infections as much as possible to quickly get the physical resistance and sacking plagues. sacking plague you can make away with 40-80k gold from sacking high tier settlements to feed your already expensive buildings. avoid using infections on cultists until you have a surplus of infections since they cost more.
6. in my campaign i realized you are one of the only factions in the area that doesn't have a major aversion to grmigor. I ended up vassalizing him by gifting him one territory and he became a power house. as a Military ally he is garbage since he will drag you into everything but as a vassal since you can control him diplomatically he is one of the only vassals that still retains enough aggresion and army building to be effective and can throw waaagh armies at whoever you want.
7. Battle/Army The thing that sucks about kugath is its a slow buildup to getting higher tier armies. The optimal way to play is building armies in phases. It's better to have several cheap armies to help paint the map than one that can easily spiral out of control on upkeep. MOST OF THE EARLY GAME FIGHT IN THE TREES ESPECIALLY AGAINST OGRES All your nurglings will outlast enemies that have missles/large units because of forest penalties.

Phase 1 Army/ Early Game: Nurgling spam/exalted hero/sorcerer lord/hero/ and cultists. Most cost effective solution especially because of the ancillary that reduces upkeep by 20% you can easily get. All your battles will be attrition based with a chaos sorcerer you should make sure has the passive nurgle casting ability that heals. Your primary damage dealer should be the sorcerer spamming stream of corruption on multiple units or have rancid visions to take down lords and entities. Really the only good way to deal with tough lords is to cast rancid visions several times and focus exalted heros on them unfortunately. You can sprinkle in a beast of nurgle as a good tank/decent damage dealer. Really you can help out your early game if you are able to get your hands on outpost units of Chorfs and recruit blunderbusses from Drazoath. They can snipe the tough units while your strong line holds out.

Phase 2 Start replacing nurglings with plaguebearers (unless Kugath)/ and sprinkling in 1-2 beasts per army. theres an ancillary that reduces plaguebearer upkeep by 20% too called leper lord. These units are much tougher than nurglings and the next most cost effective unit up. Beasts once again are great tanks that have passive regen.

Phase 3 soul grinders. Doesn't take too long till you can create these guys and pound for pound i think they do the most for the nurgle roster. I start inputting 1-2 of these in each army and sometimes have even 5 or more because they can widdle down enemy forces far away and really good at charging in to take out weak enemy formations too in melee.

Phase 4 (once you research 100% ammunition increase for exalted plagueberers) start recruiting exalted plague bearers in for normal plagueberers. These are not the greatest units in the game but cost wise they are the best choice imo for your meat shield general forces. The missle abiity is kind of bad without the ammunition tech but once that is researched they essentially become a good ranged unit that can tear through large entities and tough formations very well.

Phase 5 once you have all the unclean one techs including 1-2 of them in each army is a good idea. Without the bound spells I'd opt for soul grinders or something else but having 2 casts of every nurgle spell makes their cost very much worth it and can add alot of utility and damage. Although they are giant targets for artillery and missle units so i don't spam them.

For the rest of the roster
1. Toads are meh. Pretty flimsy and derpy
2. Rot flies i include sometimes as they are decently tough air units with good damage and good at taking out backline units which nurgle struggles with. However they are almost guaranteed dead if they get caught in melee in an unfavorable situations. Their pathing is too derpy to get out of combat. Good against Dwarves though imo because they are slow and you need to take out their artillery.
3. Chosen/Chaos Warriors. These are great units and would use them instead of plagueberers if it wasnt for their cost. Chosen cost twice as much as exalted plagueberers who have missle attacks on top of that. I really only like recruiting these super late game when my economy is out of control and im facing against a dwarf end crisis where you need good Armour piercing.
4. Chaos warshrines. Great units i include 1 in every army but if you have a cultist they fill this role already.
5. Chaos Knights. same situation as the other warriros. Very pricey but i recruit these sometimes just to have a flanking option more often then the other warrior units. Although the exalted hero, soul grinders, and other units can serve as flanking units too.

Lastly Princes > exalted unclean ones. Scaled is best trait for them. Best Kugath build is avoiding spells and going yellow/red/blue since you can get sorcerer hero anyway and kugath has no traits that make him a special caster.

In my campaign late game i just pushed from east to west after cathay and from south up after taking out Kairos. Best allies are Chorfs and dark elves. Skaven get too hated but clan mors is decent if any of them. In Lustria i make sure to vassalize Rakarth. Ideally Vassalize Grimgor/Chorfs if you can. Warriors of chaos are meh allies too.

[Spulls]

Can you befriend drazhoath? Once I managed to figure out how to get past ghorst, I felt he might be the next big new problem over ogres.

[Snidy]

you take ruins end from the ogres and gift it to him. then It's easy to befriend him

[Basarab Laiota]

It's normal.. awkward start.. I had the most fun in that campaign by sailing south towards Eastern Colonies on turn 2

[Faptor]

I actually was bored and wrote a guide a few weeks back after beating domination legendary. but in short without reading everything below. take our ghorst first and early. .

REEEEEEE
So Ive tried and apparently zombies beat demons.. I must try harder.
I can kill Ghorst NP but his hero pet kicks my flabby fat ass.

I always wondered why the world wasn't Ku'Gaths but now I know...some nerd with a handful of zombies.

Next try.. next trry...

[Snidy]

more in depth .

early on you should be able to afford one full stack and 1 additional lord. if you can get ghorst in an ambush using the secondary lord as bait... your initial province has forests where you get 80% ambush chance. Most likely you could autoresolve the ambush and perhaps just not even deal with the battle all together.

If you have to fight it though i like to have kugath with the main army of nurglings and such in a corner of the map and have kugath snipe from afar to have ghorsts army drawn to him in the corner.

As they travel across the map have the reinforcing army come in from the side (or place some toads in the forest if not reinforcing) and wait for the majority of his forces to engage the main army.

There will be a window of time where Ghorst lingers behind the main force is easy to seperate him. The plague drones death head can for the most part take his health down but likely not completely with their missles. if you are able to have a plague toad, exalted hero, or beast assist the drones taking down ghorst is very easy if you are able to hit him alone.

Also the secondary target should be the other cart that heals all their troops.

With kugath i just like going down his yellow line and having the plagueridden pick up the casting passive ASAP for army wide healing with stream of corruption. which will help alot against ghorst.

[Reaver79]

More heroes !.. Takes time to build troops on Nurgle, heroes are easy to get fast.. And nugle ones are quite strong imo.

[Snidy]

Originally posted by Reaver79:

More heroes !.. Takes time to build troops on Nurgle, heroes are easy to get fast.. And nugle ones are quite strong imo.

yea i think the exalted heroes of nurgle really carry their early game for awhile. they are really tough, hit hard, and get group healing. The cultists get warshrine for group healing too. Plagueridden should be the casters for your armies because kugath or the lords are whatever casters themselves.