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The demo has tutorials and a short campaign.
Here is an intro to Warhammer Fantasy: https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/155077/intro-into-warhammer-lore
same with your overall economics with building & manage your empire.
i agree, shogun 2 demo would help to get into, but if your not willing to learn, it's not your type of game.
Also, they have great artillery units and great missile units crossbows for anyttthing lightly armoured and shooting from behind your guys and guns for shooting from in the front line at armoured targets and the missile units can still fight in close combat too.
No cavalry, so no worrying about advanced flanking strategies.
No spells, the much simpler rune magic instead.
and of course, brilliant infantry units.
In army terms, you want to try and get a "full stack" which is 20 units. Then, focus on getting a second "full stack" to reinforce it for the max 40 units you can take into battle.
Thank you for an answer that isn't telling me to go play another Total War game. I want to play *this* one, not spend money on one I don't want to play right now.
This doesn't help. I don't know how to effectivly lead troops on the field ((I keep getting Phyric victories)) or how to build up units because like I said, the tutorial doesn't do a good job explaining.
I don't have the Chaos DLC and unless I really enjoy the base game I will not be purchasing any DLC for it.
https://www.youtube.com/user/ZerkovichVsThePeople
He does a really good job going over all the aspects of the game and has in-depth overviews of each faction.
Set up on a rise with a forest nearby if you can - this is good because the enemy cavalry moves slower when going uphill, loses stamina and because charging attacks are calculated (at least in part) on unit speed - so uphill means less charge damage. You want the forest because it allows you to hide routing units or keep 1 to 2 units of stronger infantry in reserve to crash into the enemy once the fight is joined. Units that are in woods are concealed unless an enemy gets too close.
Don't just take basic dwarven warriors - they're good units, but they're not the best and not good vs everything. You'll want to set up with your ranged units tightly in front of your melee units and a solid defense of melee units with the middle empty. As your enemies advance, let your ranged units fire into them until they are getting close to charging, then move your ranged units behind the melee wall.
From then on its a matter of rolling up the enemy. This means crushing a handful of weaker enemy units fast to free up your own units, which will then fall into the flanks and back of more enemy units, creating a snowball situation where more and more enemy units get overpowered.
The dwarves are fantastic at this because they can use ranged units and artillery to take out and weaken key units, which then will fall quickly to your elite dwarven warriors. Even the basic dwarven unit has a robust health pool, a high armor stat and a shield - allowing them to last for a long time in melee, giving you time to take out some units and get the ball rolling.
This should help you out for quite a few beginner battles - as you advance in game you'll unlock more hero units, unit types and technologies that will make the fights more complicated (and more fun), but this should suffice for your first few battles.
As to the campaign: you'll want to build garrison buildings in your smaller towns for the beginning. A garrison in a walled city - especially dwarven garrisons - will often be able to fight off an entire stack of mediocre orc units on its own, so you need to rush the walls. ^^
Try to have the walls, make sure to build plenty of buildings that boost income and trade goods and as you gain more settlements (5 or more) you'll want a second full army. You can use it to stack up with your first army so you outnumber the enemy or you can have it hold your territory while your main army is out extending your borders.
As for the lore and setting: Google - Warhammer Fantasy Wiki as keywords, and get lost in countless wiki articles about all kinds of things ^^
Because just playing the game sometimes isn't enough. I'm staring at the world map right now and I feel my brain short circuting. I have no idea what anything is or does or what needs to be done and the game doesn't give you much help. In my original post, I specifically sai I *don't* want to be watching YouTube videos and I agree, playing a different game to learn is really stupid too.
It was the elves, under their great king Aenarion, who managed to push back against the chaos hordes. Thanks to an amulet given to them by the dwarves (and unknowingly to them, the magical help of the lizardmen, first lieutenants of the Old ones and the best magicians in the world), they used a great ritual to create a vortex that sucks the magic out of the air and throws it back to the native dimension of the demons. Thanks to that, the demons dissipated because they need magic to materialize in our dimension like a fish needs water. During the conflict, Aenarion got corrupted because he used the sword of Khaine, the elven god of murder and destruction, so his lineage has been cursed since then. His son, Malekith, whom he had with a sorceress corrupted by Slaanesh (her name is Morathi), later rebelled against his father successor (the elven kings are elected amongst their princes, each prince coming from his own royal line) and when his coup was thwarted, he launched a great ritual to undo the vortex and release the chaos armies. He failed because the archmages who are suspended in time at the heart of the vortex to maintain it launched a counter spell. The clash of magic destroyed Ulthuan, the home of the elves, during an event known as the Sundering. Huge tidal waves drown a lot of elven kingdoms under the sea. Ulthuan has rebuilt since then. Malekith fled to the continent of Naggaroth with his armies (who became known as the dark elves) and managed to cause a war between the elves and the dwarves (little mountainfolk, great builders and engineers, great fighters and smiths, with the ability to use rune magic, who worship their ancestors and record EVERY slight in books to have them payed one day. If you even cheated a dwarf of a copper coin, you can totally expect to have a dwarven army under your heirs windows a few centuries down the line) by mascading his troops as High elven troops and attacking the dwarves. The dwarves was so fierce that to this day neither kingdom has fully recovered. The phoenix king (the title of the king of Ulthuan) ordered the elves across the world to come back to Ulthuan to help in the war against the dwarves. The elves of Athel Loren, a forest near Bretonnia, refused to do so because of the special link they had with this magical forest and the forest spirits that inhabited it. They ended up creating their own kingdom, the kingdom of the wood elves. They are led by Orion, living incarnation of the elven god of the hunt Kurnous, and enjoy an alliance with the treekin led by Durthu, eldest surviving member of his race. Both are playable in the game. They are neither good nor bad, and from time to time they enjoy hunting humans. The real bad stuff they seal in a special part of the forest, though, and they dislike Chaos as much as the next guy.
As for humans, their major civilization at the time was Nehekhara, down south (you won't have it in the first game but the corresponding land can be found in the second game). It was an egyptian look alike civilization, with pyramids and the promise that their kings could rise in paradise to rule for all eternity if they were mummified and entombed in pyramids. But one day, Nagash, a powerful mage/priest and brother to the king of Nehekhara, captured dark elves and tortured them to learn the secrets of dark magic. He used it to invent necromancy, killed his brother and seized the throne before using slaves to create the Black Pyramid of Nagash, a building able to distort the Winds of Magic to make him more powerful. He also happened to discover the secrets of immortality. That ended up causing the local kings of Nehekhara to rebel and drive him out of his kingdom. But later, Neferata, queen of Lahmia, used magical knowledge she stole from Nagash's pyramid to recreate his immortality. But Nagash didn't write everyting down so she only managed to turn herself and her closest allies into the first vampires. Their nature was discovered by the other kings of Nehekhara who razed her city to the ground and forced her and her allies to flee north, where Nagash enslaved them through magic so they would become his aides. They waged war against Nehekhara but Vahanesh, one of the first vampires, managed to use his force of will to get himself killed. Since he was the focal point of the spell enslaving the other vampires, they were instantly freed and flew as far away from Nagash as possible. Vahanesh later resurrected thanks to a ring offered to him by Nagash and went north. Nagash was rightfully angry and used a terrible ritual, cursing the very land of Nehekhara, poisonning its rivers, making the inhabitants die of old age in a matter of hours. He then captured Alcadizaar, the king of Nehekhara, and brought him to be tortured in his castle. The Skavens, a race of ratmen who live under the surface of the earth and want to conquer the world, feared Nagash so they freed Alcadizaar and gave him a powerful cursed weapon with which Alcadizaar killed Nagash while he was concentrating on a powerful ritual to destroy all life and resurrect everyone as undead servants. Alcadizaar then took Nagash's crown and tried to go back to Nehekhara but died on the way. Nagash's crown was then picked up by marauding humans and in the end fell into orc hands (one of the legendary lords you can use in the game as an orc has the crown, who is whispering to him). The spell Nagash used ended up resurrecting all the kings of Nehekhara as undead and powerful mummies and they were quite a bit angry at Nagash and the vampires for the mess they did. To this day, going back to Nehekhara is pretty much a death sentence for vampires. The five original vampires who managed to survive all those events each created their own bloodline: Vahanesh renamed himself Vlad Von Carstein and took centuries later the title of count of Sylvania (an Empire province) through marriage with Isabella Von Carstein and founded the line of the Von Carstein (your average Dracula-like vampires). Vlad was later killed when he tried to get chosen as Emperor and then to conquer the Empire thanks to a betrayal by his child Manfred Von Carstein (not that Manfred is his son, just that Manfred was vampirized by Vlad. Manfred later tried to become emperor himself and failed). Isabella, Vlad and Mannfred are all playable in the game. Aborash, one of the best fighters in the lore, founded the Blood Dragons bloodline, a bloodline of vampiric knights set on finding the best foe to match their martial strength against and who only vampirize the best fighters around (Aborash is one of the two vampires to have found a way around the need to drink blood: the secret is to drink a dragon dry of his blood).Aborash is still roaming the world somewhere, not really talking to his descendants (he didn't give them the secret to the cure either). You can use blood dragons cavalry as a vampire count in the game. The strigoy were founded by Ushoran, the little brother to Neferata. They are a cursed lineage, because when Ushoran tried to create an haven for the vampires (the Strigos empire, out of the city of Morkhain, in the valley of Strygos, hence the name of the line) , his jealous sister managed to convinced the other lines to wage war against him and pushing the mortals to do so as well until an orc army razed the Strygos empire to the ground. His descendants had to flee and hide, dwelling in caves, sewers and cemetaries, drinking the blood of the dead until they degenerated into semi-feral vampires. You can recruit strygoi lords and heroes as a vampire count in game. The other two bloodlines aren't playable in game: the Lahmia were founded by queen Neferata and are the "seductress" style of vampires (they are named after the city Neferata used to rule). Neferata is ruling her bloodline from her secret dwelling of the silver pinnacle, near Bretonnia. The Necrarch are a reclusive line of sorcerer vampires founded by W'soran. W'soran was the only vampire to not have betrayed Nagash back in the days and he still uphold his vision of a dead world ruled by the undead. His descendants are powerful necromancers but are all totally mad, often with paranoia and delusions of grandeur. W'soran was killed and blood drained by his main disciple who was later also killed and blood drained by his main disciple: Zacharias the eternal. Unfortunately, W'soran is pretty close to the immortality found by Nagash and as such he is actually possessing the body of Zacharias (and he managed to discover the same secret as Aborash so he doesn't need to drink blood anymore). The teachings of Nagash spread through books and, though it is forbidden pretty much everywhere in the world saved from those controlled by undead, you can find necromancers pretty much everywhere where there are humans.
The empire was founded by Sigmar Eldenhammer, who later became a god, by uniting the roaming tribes far to the north of Nehekhara, pretty much just south to the lands of chaos (the empire is pretty much central europe while Nehekhara would be where the Sahara is). Sigmar had an alliance with the dwarves, who gave him Ghal Maraz, his legendary hammer that Karl Franz can use in game, and the runefangs (powerful magical swords that he gave to the elector counts). Sigmar fought against the Norscans, the orcs and a resurrected Nagash and founded the largest known human empire in the world. The empire has a peculiar political system where at the death of an emperor, each count (the position is inheritable) can be chosen by his peers as the new emperor through an election process. Karl Franz is the current emperor at the start of the game. Vlad Von Carstein maried to get the title of count elector and tried to become emperor, only to be infuriated discovering the deads don't have voting rights. The empire has an age old alliance with the dwarves and often take in dwarves cast off of their holds, which allows it to have quite good war machines and engineers, including the mastery of black powder. The city of Nuln has the best school of engineering short of the dwarven holds. Back in the days, a chaos invasion also threatened the Empire and Teclis, the most powerful archmage of Ulthuan, came with a few other archmages to help them. He taught the human mages how to handle magic properly, only to discover that they lack the ability to use it as an efficiently as the elves: the elves can use all the Winds of Magic at once in harmony, which gives birth to High Magic. But Humans can't do that, if they try they get corrupted by chaos and become mad or worse. So Teclis taught the human mages to use only one of the 8 type of magic each, giving birth to a less powerful but more manageable magic. In doing so, he founded the Imperial College of Magic in Altdorf, where each of the 8 schools of magic choose through duels a patriarch to lead them. Those 8 patriarchs then duel amongst themselves to choose the High Patriarch, leader of all imperial mages. The current high patriarch is Balthazar Gelt, master of the lore of metal, and he is a playable lord in the game. The main religion in the Empire is Sigmar's church but it is far from being the only one, several other divinities existing and each and everyone of them being hostile to Chaos. You have Ulric, god of winter and wolves, Morr, god of death, ...
The greenskins are a race that spawns through spores. They love to fight, they exist pretty much only to kill other things, and most of them are pretty stupid. They venerate the two gods Gork (the brutal but cunning god of war of the orcs) and Mork (the cunning but brutal god of war of the orcs). They infestate the southlands (pretty much the equivalent of middle east) and the mountains where they have waged war against the dwarves for centuries (the dwarves are having troubles: one dwarf warrior can kill several orcs but they are outnumbered and while orcs can resplenish their armies quickly, the dwarves can't). They have a special kind of magic, basically their shamans use the powers generated by the excitement of nearby orcs to cast spells. Savage orcs are orcs that have become stronger but stupider because of heat that affected their spore maturation. Dark orcs are orcs that are more intelligent and organized (and use real armour) because they have been messed with by dwarves who have turned to the worship of chaos.
Bretonnia is a land of chivarly and piety, based on a romanticized medieval France, founded by Gilles Le Breton around the worship of the lady of the lake, a diety pretty much unknown everywhere else. They adhere to a strict code of chivalry and honour and are in search of the Grail, a mystical artifact held by the Lady. She will only give access to it to the most chivalrous of the knights who then become living saints, the grail knights. Every child with magical ability in the kingdom is sent to the Lady. The female ones come back as the Damsels who are both priests of the lady and sorcerers. The male ones aren't seen ever again. A legendary figure of Bretonnia is the Green knight, a sort of immortal warrior with incredible martial abilities who appears either to save Bretonnia from a powerful ennemy or to test knights. A lot of people think he is Gilles Le Breton, founder of the kingdom, to whom the Lady would have given immortality. The current king of Bretonnia is Louen Leoncoeur. Bretonnia is threatened by orcs, wood elves and beastmen but also by the duchy of Mousillon, a duchy where the traitors to the bretonnian crown, the necromancers and such gather. It is led by the red duke, a bretonnian duke turned blood dragon vampire. Bretonnian have, in the past, sent crusades across the world including one against Araby, a southern kingdom who was once under the thrall of a powerfull Sultan who, under the advices of his skaven allies, tried to conquer the world.
Ogres were once living far to the east, near the equivalent of China until they had a disagreement with the local Dragon Emperor who sent a meteor on their land to punish them. The meteor was made of warpstone (magical energy made solid) and was seemingly sentient. It created the crater known as the Maw and tied itself to the ogre race, giving them an insiatable hunger. The ogres ate everything in their land until hunger pushed them west, where they fought the legendary skytitans living at the top of mountains, and then pushed into the lands of the empire and the orcs. The surviving skytitans became slaves to the ogres and after centuries of inbreeding, lost all their intelligence and became the modern giants.
Norsca is the land to the north. They are based on vikings. The majority of the tribes venerate the Chaos Gods, but not all of them. Some of them trade with other humans but a lot of them also raid the settlements of other countries or rival tribes, including Bretonnia and the Empire. They field a lot of monsters, courtesy of the Chaos gods. In the lore, the most powerful of their warriors are called to the north, closer to the polar gate where the influence of chaos is stronger, to be turned into chaos warriors. Amongst those, the best then become chaos lords and at the end a god can give them immortality, turning them into a demon prince. The chaos gods are a fickle bunch, though, and the gifts they give can be seen as curses by their servants. Maddness is often the fate of those that go too far down that path. Some even get turned into chaos spawn, abomination whose gifts have mutated them into something that would make the hardiest puke on sight.
The humans are a race vulnerable to the influence of chaos and sometimes their children are born with mutations. If those children manage to survive to the ensuing mob, they gather into the herds of the beastmen, bestial abominations worshipping the chaos gods and living in the dark corners of the world, waiting to topple human civilization. Sometimes, beastmen aren't born of humans but of normal animals. They can also reproduce amongst themselves. In the Empire, witch hunters will kill a mutated child on sight, without even pausing to think about it and without feeling remorse later on.
And last, the big bad: Chaos. The invasion of chaos after the Old Ones disapperance has been stopped by the elves but Chaos is only weakened. Their demons still materialize in the world of man, possessing the weak-willed wizard or leading armies of their own kind to conquer the world of man. There are ranks amongst demonkind and at the top are the Greater demons, direct servants of the gods: the Bloodthirster of Khorne, a towering mountain of muscles in a bronze armor, borne aloft by leathery wings, running on hooved legs, decapitating ennemies with an axe as tall as a man in an orgy of violence, shooting at the sky in delight at the death of its ennemies. The Keeper of Secrets of Slaanesh, a sinuous abomination who kills as if it is an art and whose mere sight can turn entire regiments of knights of Bretonnia into traitors to their king and their true love. The lord of Change of Tzeentch, powerful sorcerers with the ability to divine the future and looking like a mix of an eagle and a man, they manipulate mortals through tortuous scheme all for the glory of their master, and they talk in riddle that could turn the most intelligent scholar mad. The Great Unclean One of Nurgle, huge masses of rotting flesh, spreading disease while an innocent joy like a deranged Santa, and taking care of the army of little demons taking refuge into the crevices of their mass. The Chaos Gods have several powerful servants, first of which is Archaon, the Everchosen, a former templar of Sigmar turned warrior of chaos, who is destined to unify all the forces of Chaos across the world to destroy this world for the pleasure of the chaos gods.
There may be some mistakes and I may have forgotten some things but it should get you going.
Of cpurse, I had 4 years of TW experience by the time Warhammer 1 came, and I instantly found it easy.
So to the OP I suggest this: go through the different campaigns and learn how each faction plays. TW does take time to learn, it might even take months, but eventually the strategies will come naturally. There is no easy way to learn a total war gane, they were originally designed for a niche market and therefore are hard to learn and even harder to master, and that's what sets it apart from other strategy series
Add me if you're interested, or kindly decline i don't mind.