Karl Franz impossible?

[CapN'Brunch]

Turn 10, literally turn 10. The fecundites have destroyed hochland, Ostermark and osterland are gone. The vamps have marched all the way up to stirland. The black pit orcs and Beastmen have wiped out middenland. Wood elves have an army in the mountains and declared war. Imperial authority is at -7. Im all for a challenging campaing but this is ridiculous.

[KoboldUtopian]

I'm surprised by this comment. I just played Franz VH/VH because everyone said it was the most challenging and, um, I'm done by turn 30. Wiped the rebels and Kazrak by turn 10, took a detour to kill off those Black Pit orcs, confederated Boris and used his army to kill Kemmler, confederated Gelt, finished off Festus before turn 20 and wiped Vlad on turn 30. I've got +6 authority and 20k prestige. I know I got a little lucky by getting some authority early on because of returning settlements and there were a few tough battles in there, but this has got to be one of the fastest campaigns I've ever played. Now it's basically just picking random fights while I wait to confederate everyone else.

[fragreg]

Actually Fanz campaign will be difficult after the 200 or so turns... So yes, ofc the first 10-15 turns is hard. The 16-35 will be harder. Some relief will come at 50 or so turns, but the real mess will come after the short and long victory is achieved :P

[art_loots]

Reiklannd is fine, i've done it enough to d it easily you rush the main provice + fort in 5 turns and put a general without units in said fort to defend vs grom you dont need additional recruitment lord just helps out if grom sends and army with more hero's in it. after uniting reikland if boris ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up deal with BM which isn't to bad. the minor greenskin faction you can chose to deal with but not the biggest issue. then you deal with festus and your campaign is fine. this take ~15 and 20 if you wanna do it safe and slow. if it's to hard there is an option to do it on easier settings. just because you have an skill issue don't force that on players that actually like a bit harder campaign. THAT"S WHY THEY ARE LITTERLY THERE. stop cry and practice and in time you learn to do it aswell

[art_loots]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von fragreg:

Actually Fanz campaign will be difficult after the 200 or so turns... So yes, ofc the first 10-15 turns is hard. The 16-35 will be harder. Some relief will come at 50 or so turns, but the real mess will come after the short and long victory is achieved :P

this is kinda true but tbh i stop playing 99% of my campaigns after turn 150 cause it gets to stale for me

[KoboldUtopian]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von fragreg:

Actually Fanz campaign will be difficult after the 200 or so turns... So yes, ofc the first 10-15 turns is hard. The 16-35 will be harder. Some relief will come at 50 or so turns, but the real mess will come after the short and long victory is achieved :P

Ok, but what am I supposed to do between turns 30 and 200? Pick on Skrag?

[Daniel]

I don't know if you are into mods but Venris did a good job balancing some older races/factions, give it a try:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2792731173

[kekkuli]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Dani:

I don't know if you are into mods but Venris did a good job balancing some older races/factions, give it a try:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2792731173

Nothing balanced about sfo. Vanilla has way better balance. That being said, Karl Franz is marked as beginner friendly for a reason. Just take out the Khazrak and Festus early on and you are up for an easy campaign.

[srscorpion]

The balance in the campaign is a joke.

[nazgull2k1]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von CapN'Brunch:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von WALTUH:

Yeah it's doable

How? Ive restarted 3 times, every single time by turn 10 ive got 8 enemies with 2 doomstacks each at my door. and I can barely afford 1 army.

Welcome to the cheating ass AI from every TW game by CA. Its not even hyperbole. they cheat their asses off. They move further, ignore attrition, have zero restrictions on army capacity or gold generation. They suffer no losses from Chaos or Vamp effects, they suffer no losses from negative gold income, despite have -5000+ a turn, still have 6 full doomstacks running around without a single man dying.

I gave up on this crap ages ago. Now I occasionally do a multiplayer battle just for fun, and even thats drying up because of "lol i have a flying hero you cant hit with ranged so i'll fly around in circles till your out of ammo." idiocy and other exploits STILL unaddressed by CA.

[Holeypaladin]

How do you determine if a faction is impossible to play? By the short term victory conditions? The long term? Or by how easy/difficult it is to paint the entire map in your flag's color?

Karl Franz has a rather simple and easy short-term victory condition. The long-term is very annoying, however, as you have to confederate every single elector count... which will take over a hundred turns if you don't use exploits to gain the requisite Imperial Authority.

Painting the map as Karl is very, very difficult. Not only does he have the strictest climate preferences in the game, but he also has an underpowered unit roster that will struggle against WH3 factions unless you outnumber them greatly. You're practically forced to conquer your natural Bretonnian allies in order to build your economy, as theirs are the only nearby cities outside of the Empire (aside from Border Princes, which will make you the target of every Waagh in existence) with your climate preferences.

[Jevenix]

Karl Franz is one of my favourite factions. It has unique play style. Old world (Elector Counts) must be protected, not conquered. And then slowly assumed by confederation dilemmas. Ofc you don't want to just sit in Reikland whole campaign. Best way to expand is to Bretonnia and then go South through WE, Estalia to your Colonies (Araby and Lustria). Empire is Colonial Power. In Old world use Diplomacy, In everyone else Army. After confederation with Balthazar (what should be 1st confederation in order to keep IA positive) you can expand also to Sylvannia (Vlad) and Ostermark (Drycha).

[FizzyElf]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Holeypaladin:

How do you determine if a faction is impossible to play? By the short term victory conditions? The long term? Or by how easy/difficult it is to paint the entire map in your flag's color?

Karl Franz has a rather simple and easy short-term victory condition. The long-term is very annoying, however, as you have to confederate every single elector count... which will take over a hundred turns if you don't use exploits to gain the requisite Imperial Authority.

Painting the map as Karl is very, very difficult. Not only does he have the strictest climate preferences in the game, but he also has an underpowered unit roster that will struggle against WH3 factions unless you outnumber them greatly. You're practically forced to conquer your natural Bretonnian allies in order to build your economy, as theirs are the only nearby cities outside of the Empire (aside from Border Princes, which will make you the target of every Waagh in existence) with your climate preferences.

Every faction is possible to play but some of them are rather deceptive, the empire being the foremost amongst them as they are supposed to be the tutorial faction for all of the warhammer games which was okayish in warhammer 1 but in warhammer 2 that shifted as while their victory goals were still pretty easy, other factions that came with warhammer 2 would run you into the ground if they could start a war against you. Warhammer 3 ups the anti by adding a bunch of, thankfully lackluster, factions all around the empire with just enough power to wipe out the AI empire factions while being weak enough that on their own they are merely a small challenge for the player to deal with and even a novice should be able to contend with them rather quickly. CA in their infinite wisdom choose not to test and see if new players would actually be fighting 1 of said factions and never bothered to see if potentially having a bunch of moderately strong factions sitting inside of a uniformly modestly powered region was a good idea.

As it turns out, it was indeed NOT a good idea and so we now have new players getting obliterated by the AI in RNG hell campaigns while veterans of the total war franchise are taking advantage of the chaos (pun intended) to steamroll everyone in the region and prolonging the region wide war from 10/15 turns to 35-40 turns at the end of which the empire is mostly if not completely unified under the player's banner.

For new players, I highly suggest that you ignore CA's claims and play other factions instead such as the lizardmen or cathay as they are simple enough to understand for a new player while presenting a challenge which will in turn still force the player to improve without deleting them from the game in 10 turns because they don't understand how to wage a massive war from turn 1. The wood elves will also let you stick around in the campaign for a while and you could do a peaceful campaign with them and just obsurve what the AI does and how it expands and then use that to help a bit with another campaign (I wouldn't say wood elves is especially easy as they can get steamrolled pretty hard if you don't know what you are doing due to the way their faction growth functions but it is also safer than empire so... if you have the DLC you can but if you are DLC-less and just starting out, probably cathay, get around 50 or 60 turns in and then start dabbling with other factions.)

If you are dead set on playing Empire then I suggest taking advantage of the leading weakness in the region: skirmishing units, the vamps, nurgle, wood elf and empire factions in the region have a distinct lack of strong cav forces and still have more balanced loadouts for their stacks at this stage so an outrider and empire cav stack will run circles around them and easily allow for lord and unit sniping, allowing you to melt the enemy army and in the case of the vamps which seem to constantly poor out of vampiric swamp you can hard counter them with such an army as high mobility forces are very difficult for them to deal with early on as they lack cav and lack strong airborne units which means they have to rely on a lord or hero to use magic to hit your cav units at range. This strategy also cuts down on your unit variety which makes it easy to keep track of and use your forces in battle as there is only 3 or 4 unit variants in your army.
A video that uses this strategy though to an abusive degree (you could too if you want to or phase it out as you get more unit variety): https://youtu.be/IOlYuWuS0xU
Do not disband the starting army, give it to a spare lord and suicide it into what ever enemy forces show up (instead of disbanding them, get them all killed or nearly in battle and then disband whatever remains when you no longer have use of them.) Also use your agent to scout out and keep an eye on the enemy and bring him back into the army when a battle is soon to begin as you will want forewarning of the enemy AI's movements in the territory and later across the region (when you can afford extra scouting heros) so you can prepare for, break up and ambush enemy armies(not always in ambush stance, you can also ambush by simply hitting unaware AI armies or ones that are recruiting troops but ambush stance is still helpful for the ones that pose a threat).

I hope this helps a little.

[Filthy Pollo 🐔]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Dani:

I don't know if you are into mods but Venris did a good job balancing some older races/factions, give it a try:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2792731173

To be honest, Venris has claimed this mod is not balanced, just for fun.

[FizzyElf]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Filthy Pollo 🐔:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Dani:

I don't know if you are into mods but Venris did a good job balancing some older races/factions, give it a try:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2792731173

To be honest, Venris has claimed this mod is not balanced, just for fun.

Yep, though it would be nice if warhammer got a darthmod like empire and shogun that enhances the vanilla experience without shattering the game's balance.

[Balkoth]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Holeypaladin:

Painting the map as Karl is very, very difficult. Not only does he have the strictest climate preferences in the game, but he also has an underpowered unit roster that will struggle against WH3 factions unless you outnumber them greatly.

Legendary turn 119 Domination Victory (272 settlements). Could have done it faster but I was trying to win Long Victory and then the random Vermintide crisis instead of Domination initially. But wound up getting Domination before I could put the rats down.

Basically just spammed Halberdiers and Crossbowmen, could recruit an entire army per turn anywhere on the map in one turn with global recruitment.