Need New Advice

[Vacien]

I'm fairly bad at the campaign map and around turns 10 to 20 no matter what faction I'm playing, I end up in a war with another faction sporting about half of it's tier 2 units (Red Duke, Chaos Lords like Epidemus, The Skink Terradons) which proceeds to body my army then roll my settlements. I don't know what I'm doing wrong as I've played Vampire Counts, Empire, Cathay, Warriors of Chaos, Skaven, Beastmen, Demon's of Chaos, and Ogres with almost the same result each time and it's becoming demoralizing. Even when I'm building an extra stack of disposables it seems impossible and I'm fighting all these battles, no auto resolve.

My only victory so far that I have ever played was Vilitch and it's purely cause he can cheat Chaos Spawn at his start, I'd like to get further but this is feeling more and more like a wall I can't beat.

[Farsha]

The description is kinda vague.
But seems you need to build stronger army faster or get more efficient in battles.
Look up some guides on youtube how to start a campaign and how to be effective on the battlefield.

Both vamps and nurgle should be counterable with ranged units early on with minimal losses.

[dot]

Maybe give more info. Idk, what's your philosophy in the game? when do you build? what do you build? when and who you decide to war on? what is your plan when you are outnumbered? etc etc ... and well, then many factions tend to have its own twist on these things changing the strategy even if it is a little bit. Maybe start with one campaign with a faction you really like and want to beat, and share how goes as it goes, what do you do and all that. Others might be able to help you more like this.

[Vacien]

Guess closest example I can give is my last Heinrech Kemmeler game (think he's the necromancer). I started out by fighting the initial lord they have you set against and taking his province piece by piece with my only loss being the dogs. I pumped my money into the growth building and started up a second lord with nothing but zombies just to help bulk out the first army. I went after the dwarf outpost south of him and managed to beat it with no major losses.

Around that time I challenged a bretonian group south of those dwarves and started a battle that resulted in a set of ghouls dying and my prized ghost cavalry (i forget the names but the blue ones) thanks to grail knights and my inability to get them to move once they collided with a unit. I beat the bretonnian and got a pair of Balefire Corpse carts. Around this time the Red Duke kept jumping back and forth from the province I had just taken so I moved to take his only province.

One murder blob later and I lost most of my army to a large group of graveguard which I understand why they knocked me down but I wasn't sure who else to go after. Grom's orcs I feel would cut through my chaff and I wasn't as confident going after Louen as the Red Duke was getting more upset from me attacking Bretonians so he seemed like'd come back after me.

I will say I tend to give up once my main stack dies, but the main thing i try to build is either growth or money early so I can fund either a second army or some better units (though I usually don't get far enough to use better ones).

[Farsha]

Honestly never played Kemmler.
But if he’s like other vamps it would spam crapstacks with lords and heros doing all the heavy lifting.
Pretty sure people used to spam skeleton warriors armies supported with necromancers that would just outnumber everything.

Try this:
https://youtu.be/zYoGmhPPMjs?si=KfHyMR2412wYY5-8

[Vacien]

Appreciate that, in regards to trying a faction I like, I'm a big fan of giant monsters so I'm trying to do Kholek Suneater. So far going okay, just removed the starter ogres and Orcs are throwing everything at me so worried on that front.

[Farsha]

Kholek I can help with jist finished vh/vh campaign with him.
WoC are all about dark fortresses and making vassals, specially Kholek whi get 5% stronger snd bigget for each vassal.
Sack everything that is not a dark fortress, then occupy it and give it to a vassal.
Vassalise everyone with Kohlek around 10 vasals he really becomes a god on the battlefield.
I’d take Tamurkam out as early as possible then go back and get the fortresses that go east towards Cathay and watch Grimgor if he gets big deal with him also asap, he’s a great vassal, he can win the campaign for you almost.



As for army get nurgle sorcerer and nurgle exalted heroes to heal kholek.
Units, aspiring champions are great with undivided tech tree and eventually Shaggoths for Kohlek.
After few vassals it becomes very easy campaign and Kohlek becomes unkillable machine.

[Vacien]

Managed to beat the tusked Sunz 2 armies they tried to go out at me but thanks for the suggestion. Going to take one outpost from them then round towards the dark forts so i can start collecting them.

Update: I guess I was already at war with Maggot host (Tamarkand)? It didn't give me any update that he declared war on me and now I have to turn around to fight him. Feels like another lost...

[Farsha]

If you beat him in battle he has the best defeat trait in the game for you.
+3 capacity to all heroes.

Tamurkan’s early army should be beatable for Kohlek. Take his fortress first and leave him with a minor settlement, once you beat his last settlement you can subjucate him into being your vassal.

If you struggle so much really look up some guides on youtube how play and fight.

[Vacien]

Reloaded Save and had taken the battle, praise fire skull for it cleaned up so much of his army while my dogs played distraction for Rot knights. I beat him and now hopefully I can wipe them out.

[Rubyeyed]

The best, premium tip I can offer is - ambush stance is your best friend. If your army is undetected AI will always fall for it because to the AI the ambushing army just vanishes from the world and if there is nobody there it will try to take some settlements.

[AurumHawke]

Originally posted by Rubyeyed:

If your army is undetected AI will always fall for it

It doesn't, but there are cases where it still takes the bait.

[Farsha]

Originally posted by Rubyeyed:

The best, premium tip I can offer is - ambush stance is your best friend. If your army is undetected AI will always fall for it because to the AI the ambushing army just vanishes from the world and if there is nobody there it will try to take some settlements.

AI spams heroes and can take you out of ambush easily if you don’t know how it works exactly and count turn order.

Specially when you vasalisse and not whipe AIs out like WoC need to do, heroes are every where. Even friendly heroes and armies take you out of ambush stance.

With strong armies like WoC, I’d say get lightning strike on your Lords and just wipe enemy stacks one by one.

[Aas]

If this consistently happens around round 20 it's likely that you are running into the starting armies of other legendary lords.

Every legendary lord starts with some stronger units to play with and to give them an easiser start in the early game.

Most of the time the AI is able to hold onto these units for the early rounds.

This can make round 20 diffucult because in most cases you just defeated the easy enemy you are supposed to attack and don't have a strong army yet.




It's hard to give specific advise but some general tips on the top of my head:


- try to fill up your army with units here and there if possible so that you have a stack of 20 units early

- try to hold onto your own strong starting units

- secure the province of your starting position and wipe out your first enemy

- don't make to many new enemies, do not declare random wars, if possible only one war at a time, only wars with dangerous enemies that will likely attack you anyway or wars you can win quickly

- if you are under threat of multiple possible enemies try to reduce the number of possible future wars by making non-aggression pacts for the time beeing, trading settlements can help you start off with diplomacy and/or attacking mutual enemies

- try to get your back at the wall with your settlements, like reaching mountains, ocean or the end of the map

- if enemy armies are running away from you ambush stance can help

- you can sacrifice new settlements as bait to weaken enemy armies and catch them after they conquered them, don't heavily invest in settlements on the edge of your realm that are under threat of beeing destroyed in the next couple of rounds, this is still a warzone, settlements come and go

And one good thing:
Once you defeat the strong starting units of a legendary lord they can't recruit these strong units after that right away.
This means if you are able to kill these units it gets easier.

[Chillum]

Originally posted by AurumHawke:

Originally posted by Rubyeyed:

If your army is undetected AI will always fall for it

It doesn't, but there are cases where it still takes the bait.

One cheese tactic I employ alot is using a small army to bait for the main army.

I always recruit a second lord asap, and just follow my main army with him, he reinforces for experience, and if i come across a hard fight i just leave him in raid next to my main army with it in ambush. I started using this with skaven originally but it works extremely well with all factions that can recruit a second army early.

As for vampire specific advice, I like to rush flying cav. Zombies to hold them flying cav to rear charge the entire battle. Once a few battles have been won using lore of vampires can be a tide turner on its own.

[Vacien]

Thank you for the advice even if I was a bit vague on the details. So far I've been doing the Kholek campaign and managed to hit the point of autoresolving many battles and pushed into Cathay at this point (this is also one of the few campaigns where Grimgor is sorta weak).

I think my main issue I find is aside from legendary lords I fight, a lot of the other starts aren't corner or wall starts and I often seem to get stabbed in the back or worried I'll get stabbed in the back, try to patch it up and it bites me horrendously in the ass.