Dwarves vs artillery factions

[animal blundetto]

Does anyone have any tips for playing dwarves vs a faction that can outshoot them? Namely chaos dwarves with dreadquakes and vcoast with bess. Both units basically delete anything they hit, outrange cannons and I just can't theorize any strat to deal with them

Things I've tried:

- gyros. Get outpaced and one shot by any flying melee unit. Also any army with spammable "cannot move abilities" (skaven) renders them completely unusable too
- cannon with snipe rune. Enemy just sends units at it immediately despite snipe. As you can't keep anything near it (because dq and bess outrange it and so will just delete whatever you use to protect it) the crew instantly dies when caught
- gyros with strollaz. (stalk, vanguard) Just doesn't work, they don't kill fast enough to hit and run
- 3/4 engis shooting it. Sort of works, but they always get taken out in the process as they're not that tanky

So far the only reliable strat I've found is running in with a fully stacked Ungrim/Grombrindal and manually beating down all their artillery, but doing that every time is boring as hell

[Lamp]

Use an engineer to boost your cannon range.

Multiple engineers will also stack their boosts to speed, not sure on which other stat boosts stack normally. Makes gyrobombers (which can fire while moving) 100x better: More ammo, more damage, jet speed, can reload at the engi's etc.

Just keep the base of your army very far back and focus on microing the gyrobombers. Should be able to outpace pretty much everything. Anything that does make it to your infantry/engi/cannon core will be really banged up.

Artillery aside, for dealing with large hordes of enemies, (that will make it to your ground units in varying health,) I'd get some dwarven heroes with regeneration items spaced out well in front of a thunderer firing line. The enemies attack the heroes and swarm around them, the rifles have good firing angles the whole time, step 3: profit.

[Raiden]

I am going to have to try this. I am suffering as above with the artillery fire and gyros.

[A.Pot]

Bring Gyrobombers and Copters to flank and shoot enemy artillery or get them to draw fire so you can move them about to evade that enemy artillery.

[Holeypaladin]

You could make some Empire or Bretonnian allies and add their cavalry to your armies. Royal hippos in particular should be very good at sniping artillery.

[Aleera]

Before the engagement, swoop around with gyrocoptors. Especially the bomber will demolish a dreadquake / queen bess.

I cannot stress enough how good it is to have gyrobombers in your build as Dwarfs.

[animal blundetto]

Originally posted by Lamp:

Use an engineer to boost your cannon range.

How do you do this?

[Lunos]

Have you tried rangers with stalk and vanguard deployed behind enemy lines? Also you can probably recruit some cav from Empire or other allied factions and just flank it.

[Lamp]

Originally posted by donald the duck:

Originally posted by Lamp:

Use an engineer to boost your cannon range.

How do you do this?

The engineer heroes have a line of skills that boosts ranged units. One of those is a bonus passive that gives all ranged units +10% range. It's not huge, but it's something. (That bonus doesn't stack.)

The gyrobombers get more use out of multiple engi's with that stacking speed buff + the other buffs.

[Triple G]

Originally posted by Lamp:

The engineer heroes have a line of skills that boosts ranged units. One of those is a bonus passive that gives all ranged units +10% range. It's not huge, but it's something. (That bonus doesn't stack.)

The gyrobombers get more use out of multiple engi's with that stacking speed buff + the other buffs.

I think it´s only a bonus for the engineer. He gives other buffs to the army, like reload reduction and accuracy - or ammo - or perhaps missile strength, but not range. Other factions have heroes which add to the range. And there aren´t many factions which out-range the dwarfs anyway. Probably only these two units can be a thread to a dwarf army in single-player, while i doubt that the AI would manage to win the battle, even if they decimate, or even destroy the one or other unit.

[Lamp]

My bad, I must be thinking of... rats?

[Aleera]

Originally posted by Triple G:

I think it´s only a bonus for the engineer. He gives other buffs to the army, like reload reduction and accuracy - or ammo - or perhaps missile strength, but not range. Other factions have heroes which add to the range. And there aren´t many factions which out-range the dwarfs anyway. Probably only these two units can be a thread to a dwarf army in single-player, while i doubt that the AI would manage to win the battle, even if they decimate, or even destroy the one or other unit.

You are correct.
Dwarf engineers used to have a 10% range boost, then it became a 10% aura. Now they no longer have any range boost other then their own with deadeye.

Dwarf engineers give army wide buff to missile strength, ammo and movement speed.

Originally posted by Lamp:

My bad, I must be thinking of... rats?

Yes, Warplock engineers have a +10% range aura in their skill tree.

[Whatever100500]

Cannons to out-shoot them. Didn't re-test in wh3, but in wh2 dwarven cannons out-shoot any other artillery in 1v1 duel, except a high level hellstorm (level boosts accuracy, which is what hellstorm lacks initially).

The reason "why" isn't really dwarves being that much superior at shooting though. It's because dwarven artillery has more spacing between guns and higher morale (to keep shooting while taking losses). In other stats, empire cannons are almost same thing. But better spacing means that dwarven cannons are significantly harder to hit.

In a way Skaven are exact opposite - their artillery has good stats on paper, but artillery pieces are huge AF. They lose any artillery duels because of this.

You could also try gyros to shut down enemy arty. Note that actually killing the arty with crap dps of gyros takes forever. You just distract them for the most part (with melee, if needed - gyros don't do notable melee damage, but are tanky). And if enemy has any flyers, they will shut this plan down too.

[Filthy Pollo 🐔]

Originally posted by Lamp:

Originally posted by donald the duck:

How do you do this?

The engineer heroes have a line of skills that boosts ranged units. One of those is a bonus passive that gives all ranged units +10% range. It's not huge, but it's something. (That bonus doesn't stack.)

That's not true, Dwarf enginner does not boost +10% range to all ranged units. I assume you're playing a mod, especifically SFO.

[Aleera]

Originally posted by Filthy Pollo 🐔:

Originally posted by Lamp:

The engineer heroes have a line of skills that boosts ranged units. One of those is a bonus passive that gives all ranged units +10% range. It's not huge, but it's something. (That bonus doesn't stack.)

That's not true, Dwarf enginner does not boost +10% range to all ranged units. I assume you're playing a mod, especifically SFO.

To be fair to Lamp. Dwarf Engineers used too. He might not have noticed / remembered that they changed it.

[Filthy Pollo 🐔]

Originally posted by Rianne:

Originally posted by Filthy Pollo 🐔:

That's not true, Dwarf enginner does not boost +10% range to all ranged units. I assume you're playing a mod, especifically SFO.

To be fair to Lamp. Dwarf Engineers used too. He might not have noticed / remembered that they changed it.

It's from Warhammer 2 about the Dwarfs second rework.

Master enginner has the same skills since first version of Immortal empires in WH3.