Am I missing something, or do Orc infantry suck Gorks giant green balls?

[Corv]

Im playing an orc campaign on hard, and even against dwarf warriors Big'uns seem to be losing. Am I missing something?

[yan]

dwarfs are pretty hard hitting and high defense, they are just slow.

[Saint Landwalker]

Are you missing the fact that all Dwarf infantry is heavily armored and has high leadership?

[Corv]

Originally posted by Landwalker04:

Are you missing the fact that all Dwarf infantry is heavily armored and has high leadership?

No, Im saying that my middle of the pack unit is losing 1v1 to the dwarfs first unit, and was asking if I was making a gameplay mistake or somehow was neglecting a counter in the Orcs rostter.

[Gom]

Send goblin spears first to absord ranged fires and keep their front busy while your heavy hitters envelope their small-numbered army. Even better if you have some boar boys(goblin riders don't cut it vs dwarf I've found).

[Longtoke]

big-uns are just harder hitting greenskins, they still have low leadership / morale and take damage like anything else. Against dwarves especially they will suffer.

Black orcs are the elites.

[Gom]

Btw in this game Big-Un's are anti-large units and not that heavy duty for an armor-piercing role(even though they do have some).

Black Orcs are where it's at as far as AP infantry goes.

[What Up Doc]

comes down to armour, until you unlock black orcs, nearly all orcs have very low armour so will take ALOT of damage from missle which dwarfs have alot of, so then low tier units can polish your orcs off.

[Saint Landwalker]

Earlier snark aside, Gom and Bob have it right: Greenskin infantry just isn't that good at head-to-head smashin' against high-leadership, high-defense opponents. Their strength is in numbers and (relative to Dwarfs) mobility, so you'll want to envelop the enemies rather than smash through their faces. Goblins are a decent initial anvil simply because of how many of them there are, so they can swamp an enemy while your real soldiers hit the sides.

Another thing to bear in mind is that Dwarf Quarrelers will ruin any archer unit you can put in the field, and can even hold their own against early Greenskin cavalry, so you'll want to hit them relentlessly in order to rout them.

[Gom]

Yeah goblin spears are amazing for absorbing missile fires instead of your more expensive ones(which still have kinda low-ish armor till Black Orcs).

Just put a couple of them at the front in thin formation and they can take a lot of missiles.

[Imposter]

Big 'uns have no shields besides ork boyz and goblins (infantry wise) need to have a full line of shields in front formation with melee support in the back; ready to flank around fighting lines. Having Big 'Uns, however isn't required if you have Ork Boar to flank.

[Kaia]

You have it right - the general CA approach to greenskins has been "make them really bad at the job they're supposed to do, but make the unit big - it'll even out".

Of course it doesn't. Because if you can't hit anything, and when you do you can't hurt it, there being a lot of you just means more XP for the enemy unit. Boyz are hands down the worst example of this and why you never see orc armies in multiplayer picking anything lower than T3. They're completely outshon by every other faction's t1 units. Empire swordsmen have better stats, dwarves have better stats AND insane armor, undead have fear.

Orc Boyz are a perfect storm of low armor, low morale, low skill. The charge bonus just doesn't make up for it - its good for one swing.

Fortunately you start making up ground in T3 and 4 so competitive wise, the game isn't too bad. Bigunz do quite respectable damage (its not AP but there's a lot of it, so you can usually batter your way THROUGH medium armor) and Black Orcs are just murder on legs. Nothing really stands against them.

I suspect its the product of some very late-in-the-day heavy handed balancing attempt but it makes the campaign HATEFUL until you can get at those top tier units. Then you're allowed to have fun.

There're mods that seek to address this (mine, for example) with varying degrees of buffs to the low end orc units. Mine slightly improves Boyz and lowers boar boyz into T2 so you can get access to some AP before turn 60.

[Corv]

Originally posted by Kaia:

You have it right - the general CA approach to greenskins has been "make them really bad at the job they're supposed to do, but make the unit big - it'll even out".

Of course it doesn't. Because if you can't hit anything, and when you do you can't hurt it, there being a lot of you just means more XP for the enemy unit. Boyz are hands down the worst example of this and why you never see orc armies in multiplayer picking anything lower than T3. They're completely outshon by every other faction's t1 units. Empire swordsmen have better stats, dwarves have better stats AND insane armor, undead have fear.

Orc Boyz are a perfect storm of low armor, low morale, low skill. The charge bonus just doesn't make up for it - its good for one swing.

Fortunately you start making up ground in T3 and 4 so competitive wise, the game isn't too bad. Bigunz do quite respectable damage (its not AP but there's a lot of it, so you can usually batter your way THROUGH medium armor) and Black Orcs are just murder on legs. Nothing really stands against them.

I suspect its the product of some very late-in-the-day heavy handed balancing attempt but it makes the campaign HATEFUL until you can get at those top tier units. Then you're allowed to have fun.

There're mods that seek to address this (mine, for example) with varying degrees of buffs to the low end orc units. Mine slightly improves Boyz and lowers boar boyz into T2 so you can get access to some AP before turn 60.

Does your mod work with Radious, I am using that mod right now.

[PrivateXTC]

The Orcs are nothing but Gauls from Rome 2. Look hard, act hard but are ultimately bellends in a fight.

[Kaia]

Originally posted by Overlord:

Does your mod work with Radious, I am using that mod right now.

No idea, probably not however as Radious' modifications are quite wide ranging.

[Meneldil]

Originally posted by Overlord:

Does your mod work with Radious, I am using that mod right now.

If you're having issues, start by uninstalling Radious. As usual, it completely screws the game balance.