How do you play Nuln ( Or any ranged focus faction?)

[DaniTheHero]

I've put hundreds of hours into the game and beaten it on Very Hard with almost all races, but I'm struggling to effectively run ranged-focused(Especially Gunner and Artillery) armies, and as such always avoided them.

I've been trying again, and every battle with Nuln feels like a long, frustrating struggle.
The Empire's frontline is doesn't seem sufficient , especially the early-game units.
Gunpowder units need direct line of sight (unlike Elven archers), which makes positioning a real challenge. It's a nightmare to keep them firing, keeping them safe and avoiding friendly fire(especially for the artillery)
The frontline gets broken too easily, completely compromising the defense for your gunners. Early-game Empire just doesn't have the strength to hold its own in melee combat, and the gunners are left vulnerable. And fighting any battle that you are even slightly outnumbered (like a settlement battle with a stationed army) is simply impossible
Also, early on Espeth is fairly weak and can't really dual anything.
Sieges are particularly brutal. With half your army composed of gunners, you're essentially unable to attack, and the melee units aren't strong enough to take and hold key points.

It seems like you are pretty much railroaded into specifically only fighting Vampires early on, and playing very very slowly.

[yuzhonglu]

Go full outriders and pistoleers and drop the front line. It's useless.

And get a mod that removes all siege battles.

[Sovereign Star]

Main problem is each battle tend to put you at really garbage angle to position guns and artillery, you do need to rely on pistoliers early game, and upgrade will allow them to restock ammo with said gunnery calvaries.

You have to play a lot of kiting and shooting with Elspeth, while unlike generic Empire roster, Company Militia is better choice to hold the frontline, since early game you're facing just Vladdy boy and potentially Changeling (kill him once and that's it, he's gone for good.)

If you don't mind, can also get 1 Master Engineer Lord to help Elspeth, plus comes with free restock x 4 as well, these handsome beardy nerd taller than SHORT counterparts are packing explosive grenade launchers erasing infantry with no problems.

[Commancho]

I haven't played Empire since WH1, but I love range focused armies. I've completed recently a domination campaign with Vampire Coast in WH3. From my experience:
- its better to go full range (no holding line)
- missile armor penetration is super important in the late game (don't confuse it with standard armor penetration which is for melee altough its not stated clearly)
- deploy all ranged units in zigzag line formation to avoid friendly fire & being stuck in melee
- if you really need some holding line would suggest to use tanks as Empire (or monster artillery as other factions)
- units with the longer range are always more prefered (as long they have missile armor penetration trait)
- units that have 100+ soldiers can be extremely good even if they suck in melee (as long they have missile armor penetration trait)
- use hill advantage, don't deploy units in forests, take your time placing units
- use pause often and give attack orders manually
- prioritize enemy monsters and lords with your infantry
- priortize enemy infantry and artillery with your artillery

[Commancho]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3451533888

I usually keep my ranged infantry near my artillery. Its very important to have keep distance ability disabled and to have hold the line enabled, so my units will not move or break the line and they will search for another target within their range automaticly, if the current one is dead or has moved out of range.

[Yellowdragon]

I use 3 light wizards and spam the net spell.

[Commancho]

Originally posted by Frederik:

small correction, the armor piercing trait just means a unit has above a certain % armor piercing damage, and it works the exact same way for melee and ranged. armor piercing damage is not reduced by armor, while base damage is reduced by armor. the trait on the card is there to tell you at a glance what a unit can do, but it doesn't actually mean anything special other than high AP damage

Interesting, but I've noticed that units with missile piercing trait do way more damage at range than units with just standard armor piercing trait. The diffrence was between enemy army being able to get into melee and not being able to due to casualties destroying their morale. Ahhh also there is one more important trait to keep your eye on - Shieldbreaker - but only a few units in the vanilla game have it (altough you may play with mods).

[kilen]

Frontline troops (infantry) are not the best choice to do crowd control before your gunners. Use melee heroes to do that, they don’t prevent your gunners to fire at the targets and the friendly fire you gonna take is much reduced.
Also in the deployment phase of the battle, pay extreme attention to the terrain and line of sight for your ranged units.
Little bumps can ruin an efficient fire line if you are not careful.
Also don’t use ranged armies in provinces where there are lots of obstacles or limited flat terrain (ie no ranged armies in Athel Loren or extremely wooden areas, etc)
Send these ranged armies in parts of the map where there are less obstacles, use melee elsewhere as much as possible.
And pay much attention to entry points and directions from where your ranged reinforcing armies will join the battle and enter the map if more than one army is involved.
You can change the direction from where the reinforts enter the map at the cost of a delay, but sometimes/often, it’s a lot more important to get them in the fight from the rightful angle, even if it’s a bit later.

Ranged armies are more of a glass canon than anything else, everything must work perfectly for them to shine.
You need to plan ahead before the battle on the campaign map and be cautious in which fight you send them (and against what type of armies too), it’s certainly a lot more tricky than using melee armies.
Only experience can make you play it right with ranged armies.
You should also watch YTbers videos on how to proceed in the first place if you just start to use them.

It’s worthy it in some situations but extremely vulnerable in others.
Up to you to know that before the battle begins, but it takes time to learn that ofc…

[Furious Imbecile]

I'd suggest looking up Zerkovich or any other TWWH youtuber who does guides like Enticity. They have useful tips on how to get started with gunpowder units.

[Basarab Laiota]

i dunno. whenever i play Empire, I end up spamming tier 0 Archers for 60 turns while Karl Franz recruits a Reiksguard stack. the gunpowder units in this game feel like poop.

[angelofdeath]

early on use the LL and heroes to face tank everything while using handgunners and what artillery you can. rush the nuln ironsides and the hochland long guns. once you start building up your blackpowder damage you get more schematics which allows you to buy the amethyst nuln ironsides. use the them and a couple of the hochlands and eventually the amethyst rocket launchers with a couple of the elector count tanks and you wont need spearmen anymore. hochlands focus the enemy lords and heroes or more dangerous units, nuln ironsides their remaining infantry after a rocket barrage and they will route. elspeth in my eyes is better than clan skryre in every way as on a per volley weight ironsides are better than rattling gunners. rattling gunners can win only because of the suppressed. shorter ranges dont help much for the rats either

[Oni-Lyrics]

I'm sure people have better plans but for me the frontline will always be most important. For ranged factions like that I tend to abuse the strength of the unit rather than the amount. So for Nuln I'd abuse the gunnery school and amethyst units. Keep the usual empire frontline, drop a bit of cav in favour of extra gun powder and utilise say... two or three of them to win.

So rather than doing a line of say 5 handgunners do just 2 or 3 and have them pick off strong targets and work your way down.

[Mr Robert House]

You can recruit pretty fast as empire, so ill often grab a backup army of replacement infantry to make sure im not outnumbered. Heroes make the best front line though.

Halberds are actually pretty good, unfortunately empire dont get any high armor shielded units.

[kekkuli]

Once you upgrade your gunpowder units through the unique mechanic of wissenland, make long rifles&ironsides&hellstorms along with some mages you'll get it.
You don't need melee infantry at all at this point, you can just use a couple of heroes or steam tanks if something gets close. And if you play right nothing should get close.

Use Elspeth to harass and spam some spells on the approaching enemy. Fully upgraded hellstorms alone are absolutely insane and should kill most enemies before they reach you. Long rifles are excellent at taking out enemy lords and other priority targets. Ironsides have truly disgusting firepower when fully upgraded and will take care of the rest if something gets in their range.

[FizzMan]

Are you kidding me? XD

Ranged factions are the easiest in the game, especially Nuln, they're insanely OP.

[DIGGANOBZ]

If you are having problems with sieges it is because your army composition is just wrong, Empire needs lots of artillery, like 3-5 hellstorms. It just melts walls and towers.

Ranged armies also requires special formations like a chevron formation or gap formations where each frontliner has a gap for the gunners to shoot around the edges when they are engaged. It is also important to understand what the unit does so you dont spam the wrong unit.

In general there are 4 types of ranged units, archers, gunners, long range gunners, and artillery. Long range gunners should be used as anti-large/lord while artillery should be used to harass the enemy into attacking your army and the rest should be the ones to dish out the damage, usually. It kind of flip-flops between your gunners/archers and artillery when it comes to who will be the main DPS units.