Making use of longbeards instead of ironbreakers?

[Skyler712]

The title says it all. The only thing i can think to replace ironbreakers is the nice atk/def/magicdef they got from the red line tree but... again IB tends to overpower LB with their own skills from the same red line (and tech. IB tends to give more buffs to ironbreakers than Longbeards, making then even more useless).

So, unless you are against a heavy magic army, longbeards are just a cheaper version of IB and wasting 4 skill points is not worth (well, tbh with belegar campaign are quite usefull for midgame until u got 8P).

So, any ideas that maybe i could forget? Thanks!

[Sn3z]

It is quite possible that Ironbreakers are under tiered in the campaign and its compromising at-least the shield and axe Longbeards. But I think we would need other changes if they were to go to T5.

However the best thing thing I can come with up is since longbeards replace dwarf warriors, if you on a budget and running say 5 Longbeards just replace 2 with Ironbreakers and keep them on either flank, greatweapons should be your front-line so do the same thing with hammerers. Even on higher difficulties you really don't need a-lot of Ironbreakers and hammerers.

[Cacomistle]

There are a few reasons you would go longbeards.

The biggest and most obvious is dwarves have slow growth and they're probably the easiest faction in the game past early game. I end up rolling dwarf warriors till like turn 60, simply because greenskins armies are a total joke and once you take out base greenskins and get tech/red bonuses for quarellers. There's just no incentive, especially because next I often fight Sartosa who basically only deal damage with ranged armor piercing, and that's actually almost worse vs dwarf warriors than thunderers and ironbreakers.

Honestly, I don't build ironbreakers at all. I win the campaign of quarellers, maybe build a stack or 2 of longbeards and thunderers before the campaign is realistically unlosable, and then when I finally reach t4 I just go for flavor armies.

If you have the money for both there's never a reason to bother with longbeards, but if you have the money for both then Greenskins are probably dying out and dwarfs have no other enemies now that Vampires lose to empire (and they're in one of the safest locations in the game to chaos).

Also, dwarf armies win off the billion damage thunderers and artillery do. It honestly doesn't even matter what your front line is.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Sn3z:

It is quite possible that Ironbreakers are under tiered in the campaign and its compromising at-least the shield and axe Longbeards. But I think we would need other changes if they were to go to T5.

However the best thing thing I can come with up is since longbeards replace dwarf warriors, if you on a budget and running say 5 Longbeards just replace 2 with Ironbreakers and keep them on either flank, greatweapons should be your front-line so do the same thing with hammerers. Even on higher difficulties you really don't need a-lot of Ironbreakers and hammerers.

Nah,.dwarves have the slowest growth in the game. There'd be plenty of time for longbeards to shine if you fought a faction other than greenskins (who never get a stack capable of beating your t2).

[Sn3z]

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

Also, dwarf armies win off the billion damage thunderers and artillery do. It honestly doesn't even matter what your front line is.

If your using the tiers correctly it does matter, middling missile/artillery units are basically reduced substantially or can be outright removed in late game armies this is what the tiers would incentivize and switch to more advanced artillery/missile units is preferable, if you don't as you say even recruit IB that much then why be against a T5 move? Growth is simply very situational you can slow it down or speed it up.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Sn3z:

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

Also, dwarf armies win off the billion damage thunderers and artillery do. It honestly doesn't even matter what your front line is.

If your using the tiers correctly it does matter, middling missile/artillery units are basically reduced substantially or can be outright removed in late game armies this is what the tiers would incentivize and switch to more advanced artillery/missile units is preferable, if you don't as you say even recruit IB that much them why be against a T5 move? Growth is simply very situational you can slow it down or speed it up.

My point is more along the line that high tier units are overrated. Yes, the game incentivizes high tiers because of additional ukpeep making low tier units more expensive than their actual cost.

But, because you're playing against a crappy ai, and you're playing as a faction with a focus on ranged units (neither legendary dificulty or 95% of the red skills give ranged damage resistance), you can take an army half as expensive as the opponents and still win.

To me, recruiting units like ironbreakers is good for new recruits. But if you've got a level 7 longbeard and a level 7 thunderer, you're beating 2 chosen with that. And if you combine in a couple artillery for the aoe and how much the ai clumps in larger battles and all that, you can honestly win a 1v2 vs 2 chaos stacks. There's not a higher bar unless you get in a war with high elves or something (in which case you probably won already).

Ironbreakers are an unnecessary upgrade at that point, and I find the opportunity cost of recruiting them too be too high for already existing and perfectly functional armies (it would basically be deleting my lords army and recruting him again at my capital, which is like 10-15 turns of movement/recruitment and losing all my chevronned ranged units, unless I run him back with the chevron ranged and recruit with another lord but then I'm paying like 20-30k in upkeep). And honestly, killing the greenskins alone gives you like 40 settlements with 4 gold mines (counting mount gunbad twice) and 2 diamond mines, and they'll never get to black orcs if you take their capital which is literally in the province next to you. If you actually get stuck in your capital that long, then you don't have enough stacks for additional upkeep to matter and longbeards have more hp per cost and are therefore better as a pure meatshield

To answer your actual question though, the reason I don't build ironbreakers much is because they fill a similar role to longbeards and dwarf warriors, and I've been using those for the past 60 turns. I'd rather build hammerers and giant slayers, you know units that do something other than function as a mobile wall. You spend all campaign playing the same battle over and over again, that is watching units tied up on dwarf warriors die to quareller fire, then watching units tied up on longbeards die to thunderer fire), you end up not wanting to then watch units tied up on ironbreakers die to organ gun fire. I'd build ironbreakers if there was more to functionally differentiate them from longbeards. But there isn't. They're just longbeards with higher defensive stats. And while they technically have higher damage cause of the bombs, its completely irrelevant when you have thunderers doing quintuple their base damage.

Hence, ironbreakers aren't a necessary unit and moving them to T5 would do nothing but make the "run around with trash melee carried by stupid ranged dps" strat even more prominent. I'd almost think skipping upgrading your capital past t3 would be worth it at that point if it weren't for the fact that you get the upgraded diamond mine and toolmaker.

[Storm Runner]

you want ib in your main stack the auto resolve loves them (like high MD units in genral) they also have charge VS all so are good vs GW chosen sword masters and executoners and the blasting charges are nice vs chaff inf (zombies/clanrats and there like)

[strike478]

Originally posted by Sn3z:

It is quite possible that Ironbreakers are under tiered in the campaign and its compromising at-least the shield and axe Longbeards. But I think we would need other changes if they were to go to T5.

However the best thing thing I can come with up is since longbeards replace dwarf warriors, if you on a budget and running say 5 Longbeards just replace 2 with Ironbreakers and keep them on either flank, greatweapons should be your front-line so do the same thing with hammerers. Even on higher difficulties you really don't need a-lot of Ironbreakers and hammerers.

Ironbreakers should cost 5 more G per turn. Probably it wouldn't be sufficient nerf but it is better to decrease scale of problem than act like there were no problem at all.

[funkmonster7]

So, late game, should I replace my thunderers with organ guns? Should I still be using quarrellers? I personally found thunderers kind of hard to set up firing line, especially if the map disadvantages me. Hard to explain but I basically had a situation a few days ago, while playing Dwarfs, where at deployment phase, the box that I'm allowed to set up my army cut a hill in half. So I could either position behind it and my artillery can't shoot because everything's hidden over that hill; or I could set up halfway through that hill in the front and half my thunderers won't have clear LOS.

I did use a gun formation, the chevron or V-shape one. It works wonders, if thunderers can get the shots off.

[Sn3z]

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

To answer your actual question though, the reason I don't build ironbreakers much is because they fill a similar role to longbeards and dwarf warriors, and I've been using those for the past 60 turns. I'd rather build hammerers and giant slayers, you know units that do something other than function as a mobile wall. You spend all campaign playing the same battle over and over again, that is watching units tied up on dwarf warriors die to quareller fire, then watching units tied up on longbeards die to thunderer fire), you end up not wanting to then watch units tied up on ironbreakers die to organ gun fire. I'd build ironbreakers if there was more to functionally differentiate them from longbeards. But there isn't. They're just longbeards with higher defensive stats. And while they technically have higher damage cause of the bombs, its completely irrelevant when you have thunderers doing quintuple their base damage.

Hence, ironbreakers aren't a necessary unit and moving them to T5 would do nothing but make the "run around with trash melee carried by stupid ranged dps" strat even more prominent. I'd almost think skipping upgrading your capital past t3 would be worth it at that point if it weren't for the fact that you get the upgraded diamond mine and toolmaker.

They replace Longbeards... Ofc they are similar they a direct upgrade since they an advanced unit that alone is reason to get them, they also allow you shift out of longbeards and miners with blasting charges, but those units are over tiered as it stands.

Late game Dwarf armies get more potent artillery/missile units, you also have hybrid rangers the reason dwarf must shift is because of back-line issues in the late game this is basically what's going on from the tiers perspective, that's irrespective of how you fight the AI(corner camp), stack buffs, blob it to abuse to staying on lower tier armies. Your just playing the game your way and ignoring the tiers that's great but saying there's no no need to get X is not constructive, the OP is actually saying there's no point in Longbeards ironically. I trying to bridge some gap all while.

Originally posted by strike478:

Originally posted by Sn3z:

It is quite possible that Ironbreakers are under tiered in the campaign and its compromising at-least the shield and axe Longbeards. But I think we would need other changes if they were to go to T5.

However the best thing thing I can come with up is since longbeards replace dwarf warriors, if you on a budget and running say 5 Longbeards just replace 2 with Ironbreakers and keep them on either flank, greatweapons should be your front-line so do the same thing with hammerers. Even on higher difficulties you really don't need a-lot of Ironbreakers and hammerers.

Ironbreakers should cost 5 more G per turn. Probably it wouldn't be sufficient nerf but it is better to decrease scale of problem than act like there were no problem at all.

You mean 500 more gold per turn?

Originally posted by funkmonster7:

So, late game, should I replace my thunderers with organ guns? Should I still be using quarrellers? I personally found thunderers kind of hard to set up firing line, especially if the map disadvantages me. Hard to explain but I basically had a situation a few days ago, while playing Dwarfs, where at deployment phase, the box that I'm allowed to set up my army cut a hill in half. So I could either position behind it and my artillery can't shoot because everything's hidden over that hill; or I could set up halfway through that hill in the front and half my thunderers won't have clear LOS.

I did use a gun formation, the chevron or V-shape one. It works wonders, if thunderers can get the shots off.

Firstly I was probably the first person to come with the rudimentary checkerboard that idea was posted as soon as militia was added to Empire, but I will chiefly say these complex formations are pointless, they just allow you to fight the AI in a singular manor and largely ignore much of tiers because the AI is very predictable. Plus formations dictate a need for X amount of units to make them viable this ♥♥♥♥♥ with how you transition your army in mid/late game. Its making the game very shallow where it otherwise has some interesting things going on with the tiers.

Thunderers have no correlation with artillery pieces, advanced artillery pieces replace lower tier artillery pieces, thunderers and quarellerers have no higher tier transitions, you could argue quarellerers have the great weapon variant that's more a move across rather than up, then we have rangers which are sitting in really bad spot being in T3 the stock ones. Dwarf late game have gyro's and irondrakes which is what I believe you would start the process of replacing Q's and T's with, also throw in a bugman, it really comes down to what your army composition looks like numbers wise, most people spam quarellerers and dwarf warriors in the early game so that skews how you view the tiers, you will start to find ways around not bothering with X as is the case with cacomistle. Instead of stacking buffs try to spread out put red skills into melee or ranged and use dwarf tech on the opposite etc...

[Chrenergros]

Ironbreakers are just unkillable. That's all. More hp per unit, more armour, more MD and a good range attack before the engage. They hold better while doing ok damage. Usually u don't need mich of them because it will be a overkill, but 2 or 4 in an army that will hold the most dangerous units (like monstrous infantry, heavy infantry like chosen or monsters) are welcome.

[Tenhys]

Originally posted by Skyler712:

The title says it all. The only thing i can think to replace ironbreakers is the nice atk/def/magicdef they got from the red line tree but... again IB tends to overpower LB with their own skills from the same red line (and tech. IB tends to give more buffs to ironbreakers than Longbeards, making then even more useless).

So, unless you are against a heavy magic army, longbeards are just a cheaper version of IB and wasting 4 skill points is not worth (well, tbh with belegar campaign are quite usefull for midgame until u got 8P).

So, any ideas that maybe i could forget? Thanks!

Ironbreakers possess explosive projectiles to reduce infantry/cavalry charges' effectiveness, stronger armor and huge melee defence.

Longbeards, albeit having inferior stats, possesses "Immune to Psychology" and "Encourage" trait.

The first serves well as a living wall of iron against armies with exceedingly powerful infantry and, to a certain extent, greatly armoured monsters - stalling them while your missiles, AP infantry and Slayers gets in the fray. While the second typically looks after making a mockery of the Undead and any unit with the "Fear" and "Terror" trait - making them very hard to break through.

So it essentially depends of what kind of ennemy you are planning your soon to be army to face :

If facing Norsca, Chaos Warriors, Lizardmen, the Elves (all), Skaven, Empire or Bretonnia, bring Ironbreakers.
If facing Vampire Counts, Vampire Coast, Tomb Kings or Beastmen, bring Longbeards. (Beastmen infantry is overall weak enough for the Longbeards to be all you need. Sadly for the Beastmen...)

[Green Raven]

Originally posted by Tenhys:

Ironbreakers possess explosive projectiles to reduce infantry/cavalry charges' effectiveness, stronger armor and huge melee defence.

Longbeards, albeit having inferior stats, possesses "Immune to Psychology" and "Encourage" trait.

The first serves well as a living wall of iron against armies with exceedingly powerful infantry and, to a certain extent, greatly armoured monsters - stalling them while your missiles, AP infantry and Slayers gets in the fray. While the second typically looks after making a mockery of the Undead and any unit with the "Fear" and "Terror" trait - making them very hard to break through.

So it essentially depends of what kind of ennemy you are planning your soon to be army to face :

If facing Norsca, Chaos Warriors, Lizardmen, the Elves (all), Skaven, Empire or Bretonnia, bring Ironbreakers.
If facing Vampire Counts, Vampire Coast, Tomb Kings or Beastmen, bring Longbeards. (Beastmen infantry is overall weak enough for the Longbeards to be all you need. Sadly for the Beastmen...)

This. It depends on whom you are facing.

Though I have to say... I just love Ironbreakers. Theres something about a living wall that chucks frag grenades that speaks to my soul.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Sn3z:

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

To answer your actual question though, the reason I don't build ironbreakers much is because they fill a similar role to longbeards and dwarf warriors, and I've been using those for the past 60 turns. I'd rather build hammerers and giant slayers, you know units that do something other than function as a mobile wall. You spend all campaign playing the same battle over and over again, that is watching units tied up on dwarf warriors die to quareller fire, then watching units tied up on longbeards die to thunderer fire), you end up not wanting to then watch units tied up on ironbreakers die to organ gun fire. I'd build ironbreakers if there was more to functionally differentiate them from longbeards. But there isn't. They're just longbeards with higher defensive stats. And while they technically have higher damage cause of the bombs, its completely irrelevant when you have thunderers doing quintuple their base damage.

Hence, ironbreakers aren't a necessary unit and moving them to T5 would do nothing but make the "run around with trash melee carried by stupid ranged dps" strat even more prominent. I'd almost think skipping upgrading your capital past t3 would be worth it at that point if it weren't for the fact that you get the upgraded diamond mine and toolmaker.

They replace Longbeards... Ofc they are similar they a direct upgrade since they an advanced unit that alone is reason to get them, they also allow you shift out of longbeards and miners with blasting charges, but those units are over tiered as it stands.

Late game Dwarf armies get more potent artillery/missile units, you also have hybrid rangers the reason dwarf must shift is because of back-line issues in the late game this is basically what's going on from the tiers perspective, that's irrespective of how you fight the AI(corner camp), stack buffs, blob it to abuse to staying on lower tier armies. Your just playing the game your way and ignoring the tiers that's great but saying there's no no need to get X is not constructive, the OP is actually saying there's no point in Longbeards ironically. I trying to bridge some gap all while.

Originally posted by strike478:

Ironbreakers should cost 5 more G per turn. Probably it wouldn't be sufficient nerf but it is better to decrease scale of problem than act like there were no problem at all.

You mean 500 more gold per turn?

Originally posted by funkmonster7:

So, late game, should I replace my thunderers with organ guns? Should I still be using quarrellers? I personally found thunderers kind of hard to set up firing line, especially if the map disadvantages me. Hard to explain but I basically had a situation a few days ago, while playing Dwarfs, where at deployment phase, the box that I'm allowed to set up my army cut a hill in half. So I could either position behind it and my artillery can't shoot because everything's hidden over that hill; or I could set up halfway through that hill in the front and half my thunderers won't have clear LOS.

I did use a gun formation, the chevron or V-shape one. It works wonders, if thunderers can get the shots off.

Firstly I was probably the first person to come with the rudimentary checkerboard that idea was posted as soon as militia was added to Empire, but I will chiefly say these complex formations are pointless, they just allow you to fight the AI in a singular manor and largely ignore much of tiers because the AI is very predictable. Plus formations dictate a need for X amount of units to make them viable this ♥♥♥♥♥ with how you transition your army in mid/late game. Its making the game very shallow where it otherwise has some interesting things going on with the tiers.

Thunderers have no correlation with artillery pieces, advanced artillery pieces replace lower tier artillery pieces, thunderers and quarellerers have no higher tier transitions, you could argue quarellerers have the great weapon variant that's more a move across rather than up, then we have rangers which are sitting in really bad spot being in T3 the stock ones. Dwarf late game have gyro's and irondrakes which is what I believe you would start the process of replacing Q's and T's with, also throw in a bugman, it really comes down to what your army composition looks like numbers wise, most people spam quarellerers and dwarf warriors in the early game so that skews how you view the tiers, you will start to find ways around not bothering with X as is the case with cacomistle. Instead of stacking buffs try to spread out put red skills into melee or ranged and use dwarf tech on the opposite etc...

I mean as for the actual discussion, what I said is perfectly to the point. Longbeards are a transitional unit, but its not actually necessary to transition out of them.

I mention the fact that you don't "need" to transition into higher tier because a lot of people think its some sort of cut and dry "always upgrade" situation. And I don't believe it is. Saying I'm not being constructive because I think something different than the common line of thought (or more likely because of some issue you had with the wording where you thought I was saying something way stupider than this) is unconstructive. Note when I say "need", I mean "need". The literal definition. Not that you should never build ironbreakers ever, that's ridiculous as they're obviously better overall campaign units.

I know that you can upgrade units as the game goes on. I know ironbreakers are a better version of the same role as longbeards. That does not automatically make them the superior choice.

To be clear though, I think what gets in the way of just spamming pure ironbreakers is logistics. Its literally just the fact you have to recruit them. Even once you have access to both, longbeards can be spammed out from a lower tier building, which makes them a lot easier to build on reaction. You can build them on the front lines as a second stack to supplement a stronger army, or as a reaction when a new enemy declares war on you, or things like that.

Also unrelated to our discussion, but you were not the first person to come up with the checkerboard, and I'm literally 100% sure of that because you're talking about its creation in this game. Total war had guns and ranged units before this game. The first time someone came up with this was probably one of the game testers for the first total war with ranged weapons.

Similarly not important, but bugmans rangers are an upgrade on quarellers in almost all situations. I'd call stuff like quarellers to irondrakes or thunderers to organ guns sort of diagonal upgrades.

[funkmonster7]

Eh, no one mentioned Ironbreakers have charge defense vs all aka. Expert Charge Defence?

That means even bruiser infantry will have a hard time fighting them from the front. Even assuming the enemies didn't eat grenades in the face first.

[Tenhys]

Originally posted by funkmonster7:

Eh, no one mentioned Ironbreakers have charge defense vs all aka. Expert Charge Defence?

That means even bruiser infantry will have a hard time fighting them from the front. Even assuming the enemies didn't eat grenades in the face first.

Correct. I forgot to mention it (thought i did wrote it alongside the explosives projectiles.) Mea Culpa on that one.