How to start Noctilus

[Sin]

Hi,
I got stumped on this one ever since they changed open sea tiles and Raise dead (You can no longer use it while at sea). How do you guys start him off now? Input would be appreciated.

[Viksteri]

I just attacked Lothirien and wipe them out all of them

[Sin]

Originally posted by Viiksivallu Memer:

I just attacked Lothirien and wipe them out all of them

Uhm..how? Without raise dead you can't even recruit basic ranged units on your way, so you would have to camp out on their lands hoping they don't eradicate you while grabbing what you can, unit wise. Probably ending up with mostly deckhand mobs and bloated corpses. Are you camping out at the mealstrom for artillery or how do you do that?

[TVMAN]

I fill up my stack at the graveyard before heading out and try to get mortars first, and then I go raiding and pillaging.

I normally avoid donut island though because early game elf stacks are annoying to fight for early game vcoast, so I'll go visit araby instead or tilea if playing ME.

Once I get some monsters and better ranged like deck gunners, then I'll go pay the elves a visit.

[Mack Yuu]

I've posted my thoughts on Noctilis/VCoast as a whole here. The short version is, Noctilis is pretty broken for the folks who want to play him as Warhammer's Davy Jones, sailing the high seas, never taking and holding territory except for Galleon's Graveyard, raiding coastlines and plundering coastline treasures. The inability to replenish in waters unless they're occupied or true neutral (middle of the ocean regions) combined with the inability to Raise Dead in water, plus the general problems with Horde growth being outpaced by settlement growth (or hamstringing your horde growth for a recruitment or infrastructure building), means that Noctilis cannot be played as an aquatic horde for at least the first 80ish turns of a campaign. You're either stuck hunkered down in GG waiting for the Reaver to get online, or you're forced to take land somewhere to actually get some infrastructure up and running.

So, if you're committed to taking land, the game's encouragement of Caledor is pants-on-head stupid. There are 0 ports, it wedges you between two or more nations that are going to become hostile towards you real quickly, and its regions are too spread out to adequately defend.

Your second option is going to be to blitz down Luthor Harkon and the Vampire Coast. As a fellow Vampirate, you don't need to build walls on the Awakening, giving you another 8+port province just like Galleon's Graveyard. You can choose to take the minor settlements as well, but on higher difficulties you'll find them challenging to hold; it may be better to just get the corruption infrastructure building and let rebels or whoever wants them have them. Personally, I think this is the best option, and I'll add to why below. You will probably need mortars to take the settlement, and so you may want to sack the ever-loving hell out of Pox Marsh to build levels on Noctilus while you wait for GG to get Mortars if you don't think you can just blitz it down with your colossus and ragtag army.

The third option is to beeline for Araby. I personally don't like this option; it's really far out to reinforce from Galleon's Graveyard should you need to, not to mention you risk getting hit by rogue pirates on the way should you try, and the few times I've tried this strategy, everyone's got one and a half stacks just sitting on their minor settlement by the time I get there. I wouldn't do this on Legendary, and I'd hard save before the first move in that direction on any other difficulty.

If you do manage to take Araby, you're in for a real treat (in Vortex, at least), because the way VCoast income infrastructure works is that the Plunder Pile increases the money earned by the minor settlement income infrastructure building, and Coast of Araby a 4-settlement province. However, it's a very spread out 4-settlement province...but you've supposedly got +40 diplomatic relations with one of your neighbors, suggesting that this is supposed to be a viable option. Again, in all of my attempts, it's been kind of a wet noodle of an option at best that landlocks you anyways.

The wildcard option is to go for Sartosa. It's way far out there, but it's a single-settlement pre-corrupted 10-slot province which, again, you don't have to build walls for, giving you the most out of all the building slots. And you can't confederate with Aranessa or Harkon, so you or someone's going to have to eliminate them anyways at some point (at least, on Mortal Empires), and order races are so strong that they'll never take and hold land of their own, so going to them for trade/alliance is, I dunno, kind of a waste.

If you somehow manage to take the Awakening and Sartosa, you'll have three settlements that are super defensible on their own, and you'll have full access to all of your rites, including the one that makes you money based on plunder piles, which can only be built in province capitals. To me, this is the smartest, safest option, if you wait for the armies to leave the settlements and then just mortar the hell out of everything inside before waltzing in to claim it for yourself. From a lore/gameplay perspective, I kind of hate it, but given the changes to campaign, I just don't see any other option. Yeah, there's Lothern, but that fight is one hell of a commitment for a settlement you could just grab a pirate cove on anyways and call it a day while the elves sort out their own problems.

[funkmonster7]

Really good answer above. Don't go for Lothern or any of the HE, I did that on my first few Noctilus runs, had tons of issues getting outranged and outmaneuvered, and outgunned when HE brings 10 Archers and 5 LSGs or something.

I found Noctilus kind of boring in campaign to be honest, because whether you like it or not, you will eventually have to take the fight to the HE, and you'll soon realize the special unit you have lower upkeep in your LL army happens to be the only thing that can fight toe to toe with HE armies... And it always plays out the same way. You lay pirate coves everywhere but leave Ulthuan alone, until you've amassed 17 Necrofexes, plus your own mount and 2 heroes to make it 20-stack, and run around looting and occupying every settlement, replenish, then find another to do the same and let Tyrion chase after you to recapture those blasted settlements. Or let rebellion handle it for you.

By the time I captured Lothern, I pretty much cbf to finish the campaign. Necrofex spam gets old very very quickly. (Very effective in siege though, the Treeman height of those walking artillery makes shooting men off walls very effective. If they go melee, they 'shoot' but won't use up ammo. Very sweet.)

[Sin]

Originally posted by Token Why Boy:

I've posted my thoughts on Noctilis/VCoast as a whole here. The short version is, Noctilis is pretty broken for the folks who want to play him as Warhammer's Davy Jones, sailing the high seas, never taking and holding territory except for Galleon's Graveyard, raiding coastlines and plundering coastline treasures. The inability to replenish in waters unless they're occupied or true neutral (middle of the ocean regions) combined with the inability to Raise Dead in water, plus the general problems with Horde growth being outpaced by settlement growth (or hamstringing your horde growth for a recruitment or infrastructure building), means that Noctilis cannot be played as an aquatic horde for at least the first 80ish turns of a campaign. You're either stuck hunkered down in GG waiting for the Reaver to get online, or you're forced to take land somewhere to actually get some infrastructure up and running.

So, if you're committed to taking land, the game's encouragement of Caledor is pants-on-head stupid. There are 0 ports, it wedges you between two or more nations that are going to become hostile towards you real quickly, and its regions are too spread out to adequately defend.

Your second option is going to be to blitz down Luthor Harkon and the Vampire Coast. As a fellow Vampirate, you don't need to build walls on the Awakening, giving you another 8+port province just like Galleon's Graveyard. You can choose to take the minor settlements as well, but on higher difficulties you'll find them challenging to hold; it may be better to just get the corruption infrastructure building and let rebels or whoever wants them have them. Personally, I think this is the best option, and I'll add to why below. You will probably need mortars to take the settlement, and so you may want to sack the ever-loving hell out of Pox Marsh to build levels on Noctilus while you wait for GG to get Mortars if you don't think you can just blitz it down with your colossus and ragtag army.

The third option is to beeline for Araby. I personally don't like this option; it's really far out to reinforce from Galleon's Graveyard should you need to, not to mention you risk getting hit by rogue pirates on the way should you try, and the few times I've tried this strategy, everyone's got one and a half stacks just sitting on their minor settlement by the time I get there. I wouldn't do this on Legendary, and I'd hard save before the first move in that direction on any other difficulty.

The wildcard option is to go for Sartosa. It's way far out there, but it's a single-settlement pre-corrupted 10-slot province which, again, you don't have to build walls for, giving you the most out of all the building slots. And you can't confederate with Aranessa or Harkon, so you or someone's going to have to eliminate them anyways at some point (at least, on Mortal Empires), and order races are so strong that they'll never take and hold land of their own, so going to them for trade/alliance is, I dunno, kind of a waste.

If you somehow manage to take the Awakening and Sartosa, you'll have three settlements that are super defensible on their own, and you'll have full access to all of your rites, including the one that makes you money based on plunder piles, which can only be built in province capitals. To me, this is the smartest, safest option, if you wait for the armies to leave the settlements and then just mortar the hell out of everything inside before waltzing in to claim it for yourself. From a lore/gameplay perspective, I kind of hate it, but given the changes to campaign, I just don't see any other option. Yeah, there's Lothern, but that fight is one hell of a commitment for a settlement you could just grab a pirate cove on anyways and call it a day while the elves sort out their own problems.

Thank you for the detailed explenation and link. It is sadly what I thought myself and hoped to avoid since at that point it might aswell be a Luthar Harkon campaign. Never the less, I appreciate the effort and the reflection on the different options. :)