Malakai Makaisson Start

[Psychomeld]

Any tips or tricks? His start is insanely brutal with the amount of factions declaring war on you and from all directions. Can barely push out from starting province. Tried pushing west, but the epidemius declares war and is a nuisance, then the chaos dwarves declare war to the east. You just can't hold settlements. Might have to try and just push east instead of west cause it feels impossible to defend.

[chronobomb]

I think VH is easier than Normal because you get more opportunities for battle which let's you build your AOR (Age of Reckoning) bar easier. You need the bonus army for getting 100%. Also the units are very good and only 50% upkeep if you 100% the AOR.

Always target LL's as they will be the ones to declare war. You want them to declare war is it doubles your grudge points. you collect.

Do not make Alliances or Pacts or confederate anyone but major factions as your AoR will become unobtainable. Everywhere you view starts adding more grudge points to your bar, so don;t explore until you naturally go that direction.

Build nothing but economy buildings to get a second army asap. I Usually recruit 2 lords in the first 5 turns to start working on their skills and prepare them for their own armies.

Help Boris secure the chaos wastes to protect your north. I helped him get his province secured and he became a great asset.

[Psychomeld]

What do you do about the skaven, throgg, and azazel in the beginning? I can afford a second army fine with just prioritizing econ buildings except for the barracks, but a third is difficult even with the AOR assistance in a possible third.

[Psychomeld]

I'm thinking I might have to restart again, but take out the skaven, and azazel but sell azazel's settlement to kostaltyn and focus on going east. Hopefully throgg starts getting bullied by wulfrik so i can ignore my west flank.

[Kazaanh]

Get 1st region fully then bumrush to hellpit. They only have skavenslaves/clan rats with 1 or 2 rat ogre mutant.

[shoobers]

Take your province, kill thrott first thing to take the stress off of Kislev so they can hold vs. Chaos to your NE. Then start trekking into the frozen wastes to the west.

[Incubo]

I am about 30 turns in on very hard/hard and I actually went west first. Dealt with Throgg and currently defeating Azazel. Most of norsca is at war with me but I have a second army that is defending around the middle of the norsca territory (forgot the places name).

Epideiums has left me alone as they seem to like me killing norsca. I am sure that will change soon enough though.

I put only defensive and money making buildings for the places I have captured and let Malakai have most of the military buildings for the spirit of grungi. You should be able to get to level 3 of the airship fairly quickly. That and the grudge system if you can at least get to 50% gets you even more emergency use units. I could field part of a third army if needed but so far I just have the two.

Make sure you are doing that first adventure with the high elves and getting all of the side quests with it done. Grape shot is extremely good especially early on.

[Psychomeld]

So restarted the campaign again, and I ended up finding going east did ultimately work out better. Epidemius did declare war along with all the other ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, but defending your original province is way easier than the norscan lands. Took malakais army to deal with the Chaos dwarves in the east. Getting that initial grudge army is really important.

[pascal.difolco]

Originally posted by Psychomeld:

Any tips or tricks? His start is insanely brutal with the amount of factions declaring war on you and from all directions. Can barely push out from starting province. Tried pushing west, but the epidemius declares war and is a nuisance, then the chaos dwarves declare war to the east. You just can't hold settlements. Might have to try and just push east instead of west cause it feels impossible to defend.

Yeah tried that too, but west isn't good, crappy settlements, crappy terrain, and the more you go the more enemies join to gangbang you
Think you have to go south to Hellpit and Kislev

[NewEden]

You have an "I win" button in terms of spirit grungni and you start with gotrek and felix, how is his start brutal lol

[pascal.difolco]

Originally posted by NewEden:

You have an "I win" button in terms of spirit grungni and you start with gotrek and felix, how is his start brutal lol

Not on the first turns, but by turn 15-20 it's pretty hard to defend vs 3+ enemies with multiple stacks, Wulfric, Throgg, Azazel, Epidemius, Throt, etc
You can only afford 1 army "and a half" (a weak 2nd army) at that time

[Psychomeld]

Originally posted by NewEden:

You have an "I win" button in terms of spirit grungni and you start with gotrek and felix, how is his start brutal lol

As the other poster said, it isn't the battles that are hard. Its the amount of armies you are surrounded by and the lack of armies you have to defend against them all.

[Meowdison]

The entire stack of chaos armies and norseca will all be fighting you in that position, and even things like chorfs/skaven can join in on the fun too

[Psychomeld]

It is definitely not a recommended start for new players thats for sure lol. If the Kislev ai was better, it would be easier on the player, but unfortunately you are basically on your own against the northern factions. Kostaltyn is maybe the only one that can provide a decent enough of a distraction

[Cacomistle]

I find that the answer is the same on every single faction in the game. You spam a bunch of units, build limited infrastructure in any settlement that's not clearly secure, and rely on the insanely overtuned benefits of post battle loot this game has to carry your weigh through. If the ai runs away from you, just go kill their stuff, they'll wander around sacking T1 settlements (that you don't even need to bother repairing) in the meantime and at some point you can just recruit another army to finish them off.

In the case of dwarves, your main army will kill everything even with T1 units. Then you recruit your secondary army whenever the ai inevitably tries to backcap your settlements by adding just enough grudge units and/or regiments to beat their army, then counter attacking and killing them (and disbanding any regiments of renown you recruited so you can instant recruit them later), and making sure that you wipe factions out completely before moving onto the next faction.

If you do that, then being at war with several ai doesn't really matter. They won't have anything important to destroy, while you get loads of rewards for fighting them. And you'll probably just get something like a T3 barracks (or at the very least a T3 settlement to build a production structure in) from conquest. Not that you even need it, dwarf warriors and quarellers (T2 barracks is one of the few military structures I think is genuinely worthwhile) can easily beat everything.

At some point, you'll just start skyrocketing in income since you'll have taken over so many territories, acquire enough trade resources that lots of factions will want to trade, and have access to the province commandment that increases trade. At that point you can start upgrading all your military infrastructure (if you haven't gotten it already from conquest, seriously by like turn 40-50 you can often get a T4 settlement from conquest).


Also you might actually want to take gotrek and felix out of malakai's army. His army already wins fights cause of the spirit of grungni (especially if you can afford to upgrade it to stay around longer). Gotrek and felix can make a second stack win fights easily.


I don't think this is a good solution btw, but I genuinely can't get a better one. Every time I sit around upgrading stuff, I get bored. It takes too long, because you can't afford it without post battle loot, and its so easy to have your progress in a way reset because the ai just backcaps you at the wrong time. I feel so ridiculously poor whenever I don't spend all my money on units, but if you mass army you both make more money than building infrastructure, and you get rid of threats to your infrastructure.

[Psychomeld]

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

I find that the answer is the same on every single faction in the game. You spam a bunch of units, build limited infrastructure in any settlement that's not clearly secure, and rely on the insanely overtuned benefits of post battle loot this game has to carry your weigh through. If the ai runs away from you, just go kill their stuff, they'll wander around sacking T1 settlements (that you don't even need to bother repairing) in the meantime and at some point you can just recruit another army to finish them off.

In the case of dwarves, your main army will kill everything even with T1 units. Then you recruit your secondary army whenever the ai inevitably tries to backcap your settlements by adding just enough grudge units and/or regiments to beat their army, then counter attacking and killing them (and disbanding any regiments of renown you recruited so you can instant recruit them later), and making sure that you wipe factions out completely before moving onto the next faction.

If you do that, then being at war with several ai doesn't really matter. They won't have anything important to destroy, while you get loads of rewards for fighting them. And you'll probably just get something like a T3 barracks (or at the very least a T3 settlement to build a production structure in) from conquest.

At some point, you'll just start skyrocketing in income since you'll have taken over so many territories, acquire enough trade resources that lots of factions will want to trade, and have access to the province commandment that increases trade. At that point you can start upgrading all your military infrastructure (if you haven't gotten it already from conquest, seriously by like turn 40-50 you can often get a T4 settlement from conquest).


Also you might actually want to take gotrek and felix out of malakai's army. His army already wins fights cause of the spirit of grungni (especially if you can afford to upgrade it to stay around longer). Gotrek and felix can make a second stack win fights easily.

That might be a fair point for Gotrek and felix though you can get 2 other legendary heroes fairly easily ontop of gotrek and felix where it won't matter too much early game.