Warriors of Chaos seem to be really weak economically. Any Tips?

[Judge Cudge]

I do in fact build the Money buildings at my dark fortresses, and vassalize as many people as possible. But even with 5 dark fortresses and vassals, every WoC faction I've played seems to struggle to field so much as two reasonably strong armies.

Is there some trick to them I'm missing? As it stands they just seem terrible.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

Playing Archaon right now, the trick to the entire campaign is to just not go south and just head right for Malekith. Vassalize every single person you meet along the way and take every single fortress site you find. Put points into post battle loot and sacking loot and just sack every single city that isn't a dark fortress before you give it to your vassals as the level won't matter. You also can't sell the towns for much because the AI only cares about the gold per turn of the town and chaos outposts can't make money so don't bother occupying it unless it has a trade resource that has a buff you want.

For added cheese when you attack someone like Belakor you can attack the fortress that gives you a vassal for free first and instantly rob them of their vassal without ever having to fight said vassal. Those fortresses that give you a vassal will have a map marker on them indicating who you get.

You won't need a second army for awhile, so don't worry about having one until you can get Sigvald. Once you get him, send him after Belakor while Archaeon goes after Valkia. Once you get Belakor you can send him and Siggy to get Azazel and Festus.

The other big thing is chaos god authority which reduces upkeep costs of units with that authority. Between that buff and the lord buff that reduces upkeep you'll be okay on gold you just have to make sure you get lords that match the units you have.

[Enelith]

Originally posted by Grumpy Old Guy:

Playing Archaon right now, the trick to the entire campaign is to just not go south and just head right for Malekith.

... Don't you mean "head left/west" ?

[Païtiti]

Originally posted by Grumpy Old Guy:

Playing Archaon right now, the trick to the entire campaign is to just not go south and just head right for Malekith. Vassalize every single person you meet along the way and take every single fortress site you find. Put points into post battle loot and sacking loot and just sack every single city that isn't a dark fortress before you give it to your vassals as the level won't matter. You also can't sell the towns for much because the AI only cares about the gold per turn of the town and chaos outposts can't make money so don't bother occupying it unless it has a trade resource that has a buff you want.

For added cheese when you attack someone like Belakor you can attack the fortress that gives you a vassal for free first and instantly rob them of their vassal without ever having to fight said vassal. Those fortresses that give you a vassal will have a map marker on them indicating who you get.

You won't need a second army for awhile, so don't worry about having one until you can get Sigvald. Once you get him, send him after Belakor while Archaeon goes after Valkia. Once you get Belakor you can send him and Siggy to get Azazel and Festus.

The other big thing is chaos god authority which reduces upkeep costs of units with that authority. Between that buff and the lord buff that reduces upkeep you'll be okay on gold you just have to make sure you get lords that match the units you have.

As Archeon in Vanilla it simply doesn't matter where you go... You can go west and take everything up to Valkia. You can go east and take everything to the Great Bastion... You can go south and take the Badlands... It does not matter. The dark fortresses just pump out cash for little investement and your countless vassals... They all give you cash and you can trade with every single one of them making Archeon RIDICOLOUSLY OP in terms of economy. It is one of the easiest campaigns in WH3 for that very reason.

[Jerroser]

Unless they have nerfed the WoC income since they were release money should become a non-issue fairly quickly. One thing to bare in mind is that since you should only have the Dark Fortresses to manage you don't really need to worry so much about defending them and can afford to keep all of your forces on the offensive. It does help though to spend of few skill points on improving your raiding/sacking income though.

Personally I tend to prefer having an income that's just about balanced and using the income from victories to develop my Black Fortresses further, as well as train new units. Although I know there are some people who are very comfortable going in to the red if and using the sacking/looting income to support their forces.

[Judge Cudge]

Originally posted by Siodog:

If you concern youself for stopping people playing in coop because you have to fight you shouldn't do coops in the first place. We always play on Legendary and the fact we MUST fight more than 5+ times in a single turn is something we know we have to deal with because of autoresolve cheats for the AI. If you don't want this mod it there is no other way around right now.

Our larger coops campaings we even had to fight more than 20 times in a turn back with realms of chaos campaigns and players either help each other or move to do other things while others are fighting. Total war is not a fast game and coops/mp are specially slow.

I'd sooner field an in house ban on fightspamming civs then 'not play co-op' because of the turn pausing.

[Judge Cudge]

Originally posted by Jerroser:

Unless they have nerfed the WoC income since they were release money should become a non-issue fairly quickly. One thing to bare in mind is that since you should only have the Dark Fortresses to manage you don't really need to worry so much about defending them and can afford to keep all of your forces on the offensive. It does help though to spend of few skill points on improving your raiding/sacking income though.

Personally I tend to prefer having an income that's just about balanced and using the income from victories to develop my Black Fortresses further, as well as train new units. Although I know there are some people who are very comfortable going in to the red if and using the sacking/looting income to support their forces.

Whilst playing as Kholek on normal, and charging straight northwest taking forts at the pace I described earlier. I re-encountered Archeon the Everchosen with a strictly better army and like 4 pieces of purple gear on sometime in between turns 25-35. I fought out the battle, discovered that in the nearly entirely melee vs melee slogfest his numbers game was strictly better than mine and Archeon himself was functionally invincible.

I retried the turn and went around trying to take his other town/bait him out. I fielded a second army in which, by taking all and only the available units I had 11 guys on it and was hemmoraghing money. In this interim not fighting time, he took one of my forts, then the next time I double teamed him he still won against the full stack and the new 11 unit army.

During this time I had no money and was making 25 income per turn because of the second army.

*Another question, how do I give territories to my vassals? The propose offer button never exists whenever I am trying to trade a vassal a town associated with them, this despite the fact this should always be a great deal AND they're my vassal. What's up with this mechanic?

[Taifun_Vash]

They need a settlement besides the one you want to give them.

How you don't swim in money in mid game when you sack everything is a different question.
Simple get as many BFs as possible, sack every town and mayor settlement, except the BFs, if not enough get a darkelve as a vassal, give him his taken settlements back, he will produce a good income.
Last play through on very hard I had something like 1,2m in round 80 and an income per round of 20k.

[Judge Cudge]

Yeah I've more or less figured it out now. It was a combination of a couple things.

One the vassal money building sucks because vassals and their money suck, never build it.

Two the one tip about the chaos shrine giving money was great, it wasn't in the money section so I didn't realize it gave money. It's a must build. Build the chaos shrine. (after the normal money and growth building of course)

Three I hadn't yet fully figured out how their armies are intended to work, which is marauder spam then upgrading the marauders in most cases. This is the cheapest and most reliable method to get stronger without getting overly poor.

Four continuing off the last point, since their armies are all about the marauders and upgrading them, unless you have a specific other strat in mind, tech into making the marauders and things they upgrade into stronger (Chaos Warriors, Chosen, Aspiring Champions). Every inch counts considering your chief enemies are also WoC.

Five you can't give vassals an outpost with a broken main building, it just doesn't work. If the associated faction is not yet vassalized and you want them to have it, either raze the place and just snatch it post Fort capture, sack and ignore it, or cap it then repair the building once you've got the fort and give it to them next turn.

Six Archaeon the Everchosen is a brick shiethouse arsehole that even when gunning straight for him as Kholek and minmaxing your army specifically to fight his, you will lose on autocomplete against him on normal even if you catch him with his pants down as fast as possible. You need to be lucky, find him in a weakened non 20 stack state AND manually fight it out with decent competence to win. Otherwise you lose and he buttplunders you out of existence/stagnates you as you skirmish with him. After you beat him and follow the above steps money problems shouldn't exist anymore.

Seven even though the starting gifts suck, (well furies suck, the other two are fine) keep the gifts on at all times and just cross your fingers you'll get the souls from normal play because of the importance of the eye of chaos stuff happening.


That's pretty much what I've got so far, the most important things being building the chaos shrines, and marauders and their upgrades being your armies focus.

[MrSoul]

Rip and (loot) until it is done.

[Sarumoon]

Originally posted by dollars202:

Play Empire instead.

Play Dwarfs instead.

Seriously, is there any point to playing Chaos?Don't you just wander around and wreck everything? Maybe it;s fun once.. how is that replayable? Isn't it going to be the same every time?

To each their own I guess, but it is telling.

[Sarumoon]

Originally posted by Fear2288:

I haven’t played WoC since W2, but IIRC the key to making money is via sacking, raiding, and post-battle loot.

They’re not supposed to function like the Empire, or High Elves, or any of the other nation-building factions - you need to constantly be attacking and destroying everything that you can.

The idea is to keep your coffers full of money to counter-act the high amount of debt you’re probably going to suffer each turn via upkeep costs.

Ugh... nty.

[SpeaksTooFast]

Originally posted by Sarumoon:

Seriously, is there any point to playing Chaos?Don't you just wander around and wreck everything? Maybe it;s fun once.. how is that replayable? Isn't it going to be the same every time?

If you do it right you can go a lot of different ways with WoC. Their faction has arguably the most internal variety and their vassal system gives you options for conquest.

[BigRockWall]

Originally posted by Judge Cudge:

One the vassal money building sucks because vassals and their money suck, never build it.

You notice the undivided gift that doubles vassal income? As Archaeon i had over 50 vassals by end game, the vassal income was very good.

[Judge Cudge]

Originally posted by BigRockWall:

As Archaeon i had over 50 vassals by end game, the vassal income was very good.

I'm sorry to say that if the vassal income, once doubled, at endgame only evuentually becomes 'very good' it's bad.

8 Vassals worth of income is, under normal circumstances, worth less than 500 favor per turn.
If it get's better post turn 60 that's irrelevant to what I'm talking about.

[Beje]

Originally posted by Judge Cudge:

Yeah I've more or less figured it out now. It was a combination of a couple things.

One the vassal money building sucks because vassals and their money suck, never build it.

Two the one tip about the chaos shrine giving money was great, it wasn't in the money section so I didn't realize it gave money. It's a must build. Build the chaos shrine. (after the normal money and growth building of course)

Three I hadn't yet fully figured out how their armies are intended to work, which is marauder spam then upgrading the marauders in most cases. This is the cheapest and most reliable method to get stronger without getting overly poor.

Four continuing off the last point, since their armies are all about the marauders and upgrading them, unless you have a specific other strat in mind, tech into making the marauders and things they upgrade into stronger (Chaos Warriors, Chosen, Aspiring Champions). Every inch counts considering your chief enemies are also WoC.

Five you can't give vassals an outpost with a broken main building, it just doesn't work. If the associated faction is not yet vassalized and you want them to have it, either raze the place and just snatch it post Fort capture, sack and ignore it, or cap it then repair the building once you've got the fort and give it to them next turn.

Six Archaeon the Everchosen is a brick shiethouse arsehole that even when gunning straight for him as Kholek and minmaxing your army specifically to fight his, you will lose on autocomplete against him on normal even if you catch him with his pants down as fast as possible. You need to be lucky, find him in a weakened non 20 stack state AND manually fight it out with decent competence to win. Otherwise you lose and he buttplunders you out of existence/stagnates you as you skirmish with him. After you beat him and follow the above steps money problems shouldn't exist anymore.

Seven even though the starting gifts suck, (well furies suck, the other two are fine) keep the gifts on at all times and just cross your fingers you'll get the souls from normal play because of the importance of the eye of chaos stuff happening.


That's pretty much what I've got so far, the most important things being building the chaos shrines, and marauders and their upgrades being your armies focus.

Seems like the WoC are starting to click for you. I'm glad for you, hope you're having some more fun now playing them. I agree, Archaeon is a fckin monster and very hard to bring down. Also, check everything from Advanced Military buildings, the other stuff also gives some favor % extra income but it's lower than the Chaos Shrine, that one still remains the best to boost your early economy. Still, those will also be required more or less to get the max potential income.

I also kind of agree with vassal income, I don't think it's reliable enough early on (I also skip the vassal income building usually). It's just....small bucks. Not bad to have ofc, but definitely not enough to make it a main source of income. It does get better later on, but at that point it's just a win more and harder kind of stuff.