How to counter Big Units?

[Gnade]

Hi,

can you give me some proper tipps how to counter big units like the arachnarok spider, giants or chaosgiants. Me and my friend had big problems against these.

I know there are Units like the Demigryph Knights (Halberds), Halberds Infantry, Slayers or Irondrakes. But we get them not to work in the right way to counter these big Units.

Do you need to bring masses of them? Or is it just that at the moment the Skirmish or Multiplayer battles are a little bit unbalanced and a patch is needed?

Best regards
Gnade

[SleepyNarwhalz]

Against large units never charge your halberds/spearmen at them. Any type of ranged works VERY well against big units and trollhammer torpedos absolutely wreck them. Make sure they are taking damage from all sides when fighting them and they dont have anywhere to run

[GenericNickname]

Depends on the faction that you're using.

Generally, there are a few strategies.

1)Use your own monstorous units
2)Focus fire with artillery (trollhammers, cannons and steamtanks especially)
3) Hold the line and pound them. Most monstorous units have nearly no armor, which makes ranged units great against them. Tie the MU's up with your best anti large infantry (halberds are your best bang for your buck) them focus fire your ranged units into them.
3.5) for demigryphs, you want to charge cycle them against the enemy.

-Slayers are functionally useless atm btw

[The Mighty Mulletman]

You can fire at big units when they're In combat with regular infantry so use this to your advantage and focus them down with whatever ranged you have to spare at the time. Some lords are also good for taking them head on.

[Argronok0]

Originally posted by SleepyNarwhalz:

Against large units never charge your halberds/spearmen at them. Any type of ranged works VERY well against big units and trollhammer torpedos absolutely wreck them. Make sure they are taking damage from all sides when fighting them and they dont have anywhere to run

How and why are Spearmen units ineffective against Giant Monster units?

[SleepyNarwhalz]

Originally posted by Lord Bear:

Originally posted by SleepyNarwhalz:

Against large units never charge your halberds/spearmen at them. Any type of ranged works VERY well against big units and trollhammer torpedos absolutely wreck them. Make sure they are taking damage from all sides when fighting them and they dont have anywhere to run

How and why are Spearmen units ineffective against Giant Monster units?

They're not innefective. They just dont take charge damage when they're braced.

[Deep Fried Jesus]

It's an unbalanced, ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mess, even today.

Originally posted by SleepyNarwhalz:

They're not ineffective. They just don't take charge damage when they're braced.

They're supposed to get a large bonus, which can be confusing to new players, but that's not really the problem. It can take two, or even three units to properly tie a giant, so factions with good monsters are always OP, while those without, like britannia and empire, are absolutely terrible. Go ahead and use your "exclusive" gunpowder units. They will never have the morale or damage value of a giant, can't tie, and are weak to being tied. Guess what giants are good at? Don't even get me started with Britannia and their cavalry. Creative assembly is run by slimey jews who knew exactly what they were doing when they balanced it this way. It immediately gets you to fork over your cash to play with the uber cool chaos factions, and their units which have little to no weaknesses, and kill everything.

The second I saw the new siege layout, I knew the game was designed to make gunpowder screwed, and the new monstrous units rape everything that moved. Forcing your units into a barrel to get shot at was always stupid, and I won't accept stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ excuses that it was a mistake or just clueless design. They knew exactly what they were doing, making vanilla units frustrating and boring, and DLC fun and intuitive.

[Lusandar]

It's normal for a unit that costs 500 upkeep (giant) to be able to defeat one that requires 163 (halbardier) but the halbardier will be incredibly cost effective in that fight.

Besides, you can just use net of amyntok to stop them right in their track and shoot them to death without them being able to fight back. It's pretty much all you need for empire.

Dwarves have trollhammers and gyrocopter (brimstone gun) that are great at dealing with them. Their slayers are incredibly cost effective as well if memory serves.

The terrorgheist can easily pick them off for vampire count and there's next to nothing the enemy can do about it because their charge bonus will take a massive chunk out of the monster's life and they can flee before anyone can fight them back.

Norsca has their anti-large marauder hunters that will kill them in just a few volleys.

etc. Every faction has an easy way to deal with them easily. The only one I can think of that might have a harder time is Greenskins.

[Wyvern]

Originally posted by Gnade:

Hi,

can you give me some proper tipps how to counter big units like the arachnarok spider, giants or chaosgiants. Me and my friend had big problems against these.

I know there are Units like the Demigryph Knights (Halberds), Halberds Infantry, Slayers or Irondrakes. But we get them not to work in the right way to counter these big Units.

Do you need to bring masses of them? Or is it just that at the moment the Skirmish or Multiplayer battles are a little bit unbalanced and a patch is needed?

Best regards
Gnade

In WH1 MP, the only MP faction that's pretty bad vs fast, tough monsters is the dwarves because they don't have the mass and snare buffs they got in WH2(where theyre very solid)

That said, your best bet vs big monsters is shooting or other large units. Antilarge infantry, while technically doing good damage for cost, is generally unable to keep up, and vs units like mammoths it tends to get stomped on and routed fast. Cheap spear units are a better investment than halberds, since they give you more area coverage and more mass gives you a slightly better chance of mobbing and stalling big units. Other methods of stopping your enemies are net spells/abilities, or slows like flash bomb on grombrindal or power of the dragonback on dragonback slayers. Then use massed shooting to bring monsters down. Handguns or Thunderers are usually the best choice, because theyre flexible vs any target and have good DPS for cost. Irondrakes with trollhammers are more specific and less flexible, but can paste big monsters pretty well.
As noted prior, most big, melee oriented monsters don't have good armor, so you can usually get away with non-AP missiles. The gobbo firing line hard counters norscan mammoths, and norscan javelins shut down a lot of large units too.

I wouldn't recommend artillery because it's easily disrupted and unable to flex to areas of need. Except vs mammoths, large units like cav or monstrous troops like skinwolves/dragon ogres tend to be effective as well, especially demigryph halberds, having the capacity to slow the monsters with their mass while dishing out obscene amounts of hurt. Finally, you can try to duel with your own single model monsters/lords. Kholek, Durthu(Treemen, surprisingly, vs anything that isn't well armored), arachnaroks, shaggoths and terrorgheists are all decent options.

Finally, it's true that MP in WH1 is kinda meh thanks to minimal unit limits. It makes cheese much more prevalent than in WH2, where unit limits were introduced.

[bbolto]

Originally posted by Wyvern:

Finally, you can try to duel with your own single model monsters/lords. Kholek, Durthu(Treemen, surprisingly, vs anything that isn't well armored), arachnaroks, shaggoths and terrorgheists are all decent options.

Sure, Kholek or Durthu are ideal, but any fighter-type supporting your infantry line and fighting the monster will be effective, thane, Empire captain, goblin big boss, what have you. Or just two-on-one them with a melee hero and your lord. That's usually what I do when I'm unable to otherwise counter an enemy monster.

Still better to fill the thing with arrows & bullets before it gets to your line though.

[zefyris]

Huh, there's something very simple here. If a large unit is anti infantry, if you send anti large infantry against it, then both side counter the other, so it logically comes down to either wich one received the most support, or which one is the costliest unit. Don't expect an anti large infantry unit costing 250 to be victorious against an anti infantry large unit costing 500, that would be stupid.

If the large unit is anti infantry, your best counter will almost (baring exotic counter measure like magic to keep it at bay) always be an anti large large unit. If it's an anti large large unit, then it's anti large infantry.
If it's a large unit without any bonus, any of the two should be fine, but too much difference in cost i nfavour of the opponent will usually give the win to the opponent.

And obviously, if it's armoured, anti large without armour piercing won't really help you.
Anti large means that they hit large opponent far more easily than normal, and deals more damage to him before damage reduction (but the most important part is that they hit more easily here). As well charge defense against large means that if they brace they will negate that scary charge bonus from the large unit, sure.
So getting hit far less during the charge, and hitting far more the opponent. Pretty big deal, except that if 70% of your damage is absorbed by armour because your troops mostly deal non armour piercing damage, then all your hits amount for almost nothing.

So check that large's unit specialty, and check its armour as well, and decide what you send to it afterwards. If you don't have any counter that doesn't get countered in the process, get ready to lose as much in value as the opponent will do.

like someone mentionned above, against single large unit, a melee hero works fine as well, especially if he's countering without being countered, just like above.
A mounted melee hero (and obviously melee lords as well) against an elite anti infantry unit will usually result in the monster being butchered, for example. So check the bonus on your melee heroes and send them to the right place. Sending them against the enemy hero isn't the best idea most of the time, especially if the enemy hero's size isn't what your hero is specialized against.

[Wyvern]

Not to be rude, but I don't know where this idea that heroes are good vs big single model monsters comes from. Any hero on foot will be little more than a speedbump vs a large monster, and will be ragdolled around while doing little if any damage of his own. If theyre mounted theyll hold a little better, but most single monsters have better melee stats and will trash your hero, or just shrug it off and ignore it, and usually the mass of a horse or pegasus still isn't enough to stop a big single model unit. Melee infantry is largely a terrible counter to big monsters, even anti-large ones, and are bottom priority for them. No player worth their salt will leave their single monster on melee infantry while there are other units that need dealing with. You need to defend the units doing damage, which are skirmish units for the vast majority of factions(unless youre countering with monsters and cav, but these may not be as viable depending on the situation). This is especially true for factions like Dwarves, Empire and Greenskins. In those cases you need mass or magic to slow the monster down long enough for your shooting to do the job, something heroes just dont do(for most part, a handful like the amber wizard or Chaos exalted hero/sorcerer being exceptions)

[zefyris]

You may want to try heroes with proper anti large before saying it's wrong. For example in game 2, a saurus hero on foot can single handedly destroy a necrosphinx. They have a +30 antilarge and plenty of AP, so it's no surprise.
OP didn't only talk about multiplayer, and vs AI it will work perfectly.
You're right about cycle charge being a problem in that match up, but that's vs player only and a whole other problem. it's no longer dealing with the monster that is a problem, but dealing with cycle charges, and cycle charge aren't specific to single large monster anymore.

[Wyvern]

Originally posted by zefyris:

You may want to try heroes with proper anti large before saying it's wrong. For example in game 2, a saurus hero on foot can single handedly destroy a necrosphinx.
OP didn't only talk about multiplayer, and vs AI it will work perfectly.
You're right about cycle charge being a problem in that match up, but that's vs player only and a whole other problem. it's no longer dealing with the monster that is a problem, but dealing with cycle charges, and cycle charge aren't specific to single large monster anymore.

This is WH1 forum, so I assumed he didn't mean WH2 heroes(this also discounts the bevy of snares and slows you can get on heroes like thane or runesmith, otherwise those are a very good choice vs big stuff) He mentions MP/Skirmish in the last paragraph, so I assumed he meant MP only, in SP it obviously doesnt matter because AI is too stupid to push past the front line. WH2 overhauled and revamped a lot of things though, it's why stunties are actually competitive there, while theyre arguably the worst faction in WH1 MP. I guess some clarification on whether or not OP means WH1 or WH2/Mortal Empires would be very helpful.

[Lusandar]

I'll just point it out:

This thread was started just two months after the initial release of tw:w and was recently revived by someone venting over his inability to deal with large units. It's kinda pointless to argue over what some guy posted 2 years ago when the game was much different and tw:w2 was far from release.