Tips on astragoth expansion/economy for IE please

[Googley Eye'd Bastard]

Been trying to wrap my head around the whole new system for the chaos dwarfs, its been tough I know they are very strong I can feel it but I'm having a tough time on my astragoth campaign, I've tried to expand south into the orks land since I figure as a 4 settlement province would give the best factory but taking out the vampires caused ungrim and azhag to go to war with me.

I reloaded and ignored the silver pinnacle to focus on the dripping fang orks but then the saber skin ogres came down and became a nuisance while my min army was in the south. I feel like I might be missing something with the chaos dwarfs right now, specifically I feel like I over invested in resources and armaments vs gold production. I think now that I should be building the gold production buildings first in outposts, after all I need gold to upgrade them to gain more slots not armaments or resources.

Anyway if yall got any tips for this I'd appreciate it.

[Mania]

Alongside your main army of Dwarfs and blunderbusses, add a army of Hob Goblins alongside Gorduz if possible. They alone are easily enough to fight off the Sabre Skins.

I’ve it’s best to leave that Silver Pinnacle province alone, and just maintain your home province and the Skaven land to the east. Build tall-focus on holding and upgrading those two provinces as opposed to conquering near Ungrim’s territory. Zhatan usually will be able to fend off Ungrim and Azhag on his own.

[Barser]

Head east. Kick some orc and ogre butt. Get friendly with the chaos factions and other legendary chaos dwarfs.
Grimgor can be a bit rough to deal with though.

About the economy I am not sure yet of what is the perfect setup, but it seems to take a while to get going.

[SnarfYourSnarf]

For econ, I make border provinces 100% tower with factories. Factories have minor settlement battles instead of open field and don't require any labor (only for rushing building which is nice, but not necessary). It allows you to reserve labor for where its needed most. Also though I've mainly played Drazhoath so my tips are limited to more general stuff. It really depends on the features of each province though.

[Googley Eye'd Bastard]

Originally posted by Mania:

Alongside your main army of Dwarfs and blunderbusses, add a army of Hob Goblins alongside Gorduz if possible. They alone are easily enough to fight off the Sabre Skins.

I’ve it’s best to leave that Silver Pinnacle province alone, and just maintain your home province and the Skaven land to the east. Build tall-focus on holding and upgrading those two provinces as opposed to conquering near Ungrim’s territory. Zhatan usually will be able to fend off Ungrim and Azhag on his own.

Yeah I guess that makes sense, I suppose I was playing a little too much like a normal chaos faction, Ill focus on getting the 3 ork settlements and casually raid my neighbors till I can afford to push outward.

[NzFox]

The thing I have found that helps is at the start just ignore factories, yes you need some armaments but you can get those from the drill and trade resource buildings. You want to spam the raw materials as much as possible because then you can power level your towers, combined with the 'temple of hashut' this will give you huge amounts of conclave influence.
Mid game I tended to have a factory in each province due to the building that gives +30% materials and because by spreading the labours out a bit they cause less control loss.

As for starting army I use hobogoblins, thanks to the hero they are better in every single way than dawf warriors until you get enough armaments to start unlocking specific buffs, and they provide a good cheap defensive army to keep behind latter on when your main doom stack is out doing its thing.

[Akechi]

The best option for early campaign astragoth would be taking out the taking out the ogre faction to your east first then destroying grimgor cuz he will get powerful fast and destroying his factions is required for the campaign victory also, while u r dealing with grimgor or maybe after u defeat him kholek might declare war on u so be careful and take out grimgor fast, after u destroyed kholek's faction build your relations with archaon and zhatan to protect your newly conqured area (I destryoed the nurgle faction south of archaon's capital and gifted the two cities to him to make him like me) there are also ways to make woc like u more in the tech tree and also in astragoth's yellow skill line, then u can focus on your western and southern areas with ease.

[algame]

Yea I thought I would scoop up Silver Pinnacle early to power up a second eco province, and then for some reason I decided to attack Karak Kadrin, and oh boy was that a mistake.

I am now fighting Dwarves in the western mountains, Ogres are attacking me from the East and are rampaging through my first province, still have not been able to squash the orcs in the south, and just for the lols a Beastmen tribe spawned in my territory and immediately attacked me.

As I can only afford one and a half armies at the moment its quite an interesting situation. Seems like the Astrogath start you will get gang banged real hard if you are not careful, almost every faction around you hates or dislikes you.

[sevensided]

For Astrogath, the old cannon cocker's maxim seems to apply- "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast." I've tried three different starts with High Priest Bionicle, and the one I had most success with was a slower start were I spent a not insignificant amount of time building up two provinces.

After securing the home province, I squashed the saber ogres, but didn't keep the Sabre Mountain, instead handing it off to Kholek to make friends. Then I took the Blasted Wastes, and that's it.
I just sat on those two provinces, turning the home province into a material producing one, with two outposts and the tower. The Blasted Wastes I setup with factories and the tower. I can understand the urge to mix outposts and factories (and sometimes I will setup 4 settlement provinces with a factory, 2 outposts, and a tower), but generally I found it better to separate, so that the 'Higher Quotas' command will have more of an affect.

I generally kept the my laborer pool close to what was needed, siphoning off the rest to speed up buildings or build influence, and sometimes for influxes of cash. The convoys I sent out to gather all the rewards, then just focused on routes that gave big cash or labor for armaments.

I kept my armies raiding at my borders, and did not expand further, even when Grimgor declared war on me, until these two provinces were maxed out, and I had three armies- 2 with mostly Chorfs and some hobgob archers and wolf archers to fight with, and 1 army with hobgobs and Gorduz to raid with to keep labour incoming, and to backup the other two.

With that foundation, once I let loose, it was straightforward, but even then I expanded slowly. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

[kilen]

Very early campaign can go wrong extremely fast.
There is a bit of randomness involved (quite a lot in fact), and ofc luck… like, will you get caravans to jump on or not ?
Get the huge cash income drastically change the decisions you can take.
And also will sister of Lahmia get crushed by the Orks south, if it happens, immediately side with the winner for some cash and try to beat him on the race to get the settlements first.
But it’s hard to really say do this and do that and you win, many factors involved.
Careful thinking and certainly do not rush the first turns, opting for the best is highly advised.
It’s judgment call mixed with a bit of luck.
Nobody can really have the ideal solution.

Although there is also the other way, without cheating with savefiles, it’s such early in campaign that it’s not that big of a loss of playtime to retry until you have the best start you hoped for (for the 15 first turns)… but it breaks the immersion and the decision making process that makes strategy games so appealing and captivating, sooo I don’t think it’s the best way but it’s certainly a solution.
by retrying multiple times, you eventually gonna get it right at some point obviously…

Besides that, don’t forget to use the province edict the more you can.
-20% recruitment cost to build Astragoth’s army is certainly a good deal.
Same for the edict -10% for building structures in the province.
You wanna use them both and switch turn after turn to alternate between the recruitment of new troops with the next building to make and get the discount each time you can.
These things matter in very early campaign.
I play in L/VH and for me use these assets is mandatory.
But it’s certainly adds up and help in any level of difficulty, always good to maximise the effects of the edicts in early campaign.

In any case, very early campaign I would say don’t rush !
It’s not a race with yourself, you don’t need to do 10 turns per session and decide everything in a matter of seconds… take your time, check who think what of who, and who is in what relation with whoever else, then see how you can use that to your advantage, etc.
But it’s just common sense imo, not cheesy tactic or even exploit (exploit like raiding Zharr-Naggrund without repercussion from the conclave as I’ve seen in an other thread here sooner, it can be done for money but it’s kinda cheating and totally against the lore, but it’s surely an option if it doesn’t matter for you… everyone plays as he wants).

Anyway, Astragoth starting position and momentum is pretty rich of possibilities.
It will take several weeks before feedbacks start to reveal one or two ways that work much better than the others with an easy way of redoing the chain of events leading to the best start as possible.

I hope legend gonna make his campaign reviews about Chorfs soon, curious to see what he has to say about it.
But it will take a moment before we know for sure I think…

[Cacomistle]

I headed east into the mountains because ogres always declare war on me, so I just figured I'd kill them. I didn't get declared on from the north west or south.

However, when I finished off the ogres, I went south to try and kill grimgor, and Kholek declared war on me. So if you go that direction, either kill Kholek, or don't take the settlements from the faction he starts at war with. I'd say just kill him because he's a piece of ♥♥♥♥ anyways in almost every campaign I've played, and if you kill him you get a border with another chaos dwarf faction (or with villich who is actually willing to do diplomacy).

If you do kill Kholek, you might want to make peace with his vassals, because Archaeon is another one of those factions who just declares war on sight if you border him. I think because he's got so many other chaos factions nearby, he's never at war with anyone, and because he's never at war with anyone he's got nothing better to do than anti player bias.


I don't know whether it was luck that the vampires to the south didn't declare war on me ever though (I'm pretty sure to the north you can consistently non aggression with the skaven/norscans). My feel is that you should probably take out the ogres to the east, and then underway over the wall to kill grimgor because its incredibly likely he'll attack you the moment you border. Then you've got a better shot at non aggression with Kholek, and can defend yourself from vampires with a second stack if they do attack.

I don't know for sure the ogres declare war if you don't kill them early, but its happened almost every time I've had an undefended settlement bordering an ogre faction in any other campaign I've played. Maybe if you recruit the ogre caravan you can actually non aggression them. Then you could easily just go south and be safe from every other direction for quite a while.

Also I think the strongest thing to do early game is spam hobgoblins, cause they're quite good and then you can spend all your resources on income for more units. Kind of boring though.

[I'm too old for this]

One thing i will suggest is find the labor tab at the top middle of your screen and learn to use it. You can minus/add labor into various provinces to maximize efficiency as you expand! its usually changed at a cheap gold price and keeps those raw materials/armaments coming out at a good non-inhibited pace!