Why is the Followers of Nagash Campaign so Hard?

[David McMurdo]

Veteran of both tabletop Warhammer and Total War. I was really looking forward to the Followers of Nagash campaign because Nagash was always my guy in the tabletop campaign. But I hate it. It's near impossible even just to take that first Bretonnian city.

The only way I've found to do it without sheer luck is to wait around thirty turns until you've recruited two full armies and then just have them go up together to overwhelm the Bretonnians. The problem is that waiting that long and managing two armies both on the campaign map and in battles is very, very boring.

I noticed that in the patch notes for the upcoming patch on the 11th it states that Bretonnian garrisons will then have the correct number of men. What does that mean? I hope it means that they'll be greatly reduced, because I fail to see how a city that doesn't even have a wall has over 1000 men in their garrison, which is what makes this campaign near impossible.

It really doesn't help that the undead generally have nothing but a disadvantage. The fact that they're immune to psychology means nothing because binding is the same thing by another name, only worse. So even though my army is composed of horrors from beyond the grave, they might as well be normal people, because enemies are quite happy to stand toe to toe with them like they would anyone else. Fear doesn't seem to do anything.

I've tried building chariots, I've tried using a casket of souls, I've tried recruiting those tougher warriors whose name I can't remember, but the Bretonnians will always overwhelm me.

So is there any way to do this campaign without the boring approach of wandering around with two armies? That isn't fun.

[Viksteri]

My problem wa sthe Dawi not bretonnians. Your strenght is numbers so you overwhelm them and crush them before they have huge stacks

[David McMurdo]

Originally posted by Viiksivallu Memer:

My problem wa sthe Dawi not bretonnians. Your strenght is numbers so you overwhelm them and crush them before they have huge stacks

That isn't even an option. They have huge stacks from the very beginning.

[Gungnir]

Im on their campaign right now, I killed the bretonnians off completely by turn 14, and killed the dwarves by turn 23 once my second stack got fluffed up. Its easy to beat the bretonnians, just dont be afraid of losing lots of units, besides your scorpion.

[Ben Argo]

What difficulty? I haven't played as Arky fur a while but I don't remember having much trouble

[Wyvern]

Originally posted by Blaúr Gandakallar:

Im on their campaign right now, I killed the bretonnians off completely by turn 14, and killed the dwarves by turn 23 once my second stack got fluffed up. Its easy to beat the bretonnians, just dont be afraid of losing lots of units, besides your scorpion.

This^
Brettonians are easy pickings because their leadership is trash and arkhan has spirit leech, just snipe a lord and watch them run like pansies. Dwarfs are a smidge tougher, but ignoring the possibility of getting an alliance with them(ive actually had this happen before) you can always use soulblight, chariots and ushabti, just try to have an "inferior" army so that it baits AI to sally out and fight you, since sieging with early game TK's is a pain.

Also, being undead is a huge advantage compared to living unit morale. Crumbling does almost nothing, ItP means you dont have to worry about fear/terror and having fear+terror of your own is devastating vs low LD factions, especially if you land rear charges to force quick routs. Honestly, I consider arkhan to be about on par with settra for ease of play, if not easierc.

[Humble]

Keep Scorpion alive is must in early game, if you lost before build a building that proved scorpion and other great monster, it's good chance your game is risk game overs if you are not hurry build those, very hard to making money for tomb king in early of game, always get hand on money till you got a powerful units you can build, then jar first and only took money if you need it after build that allow you build powerful monsters. As someone said overwheling number is must for tomb king before build powerful units.

[kamikharzeeh]

for brets, tomb guards should do the deal; thing is, the brets got buffed, and became occassionally pretty strong. also everything seems to confederate way faster than it used to, that one is a bit weird.

just "rush" tier 3 if possible and try to bring enoguh spears for their cav early on. i didn't play them for a while, but sometimes u sadly just have to sit it out, literally. raiding, sacking .. hit and run strats before u can effectively flood them help too.

i mean, followers of nagash lack any real connection to nagash - arkhan isn't a bad lord but not necessarily strong, just a regular good wizard of his lore. the spells are pretty strong but yeah. next issue, chaos bois will likely harass you directly i guess, once it begins.

for dawis, the monster units do it. my aces were the boner giants and the ushabti greatbows, outside of that i only brought archers and tomb guard, later on included the sphinxes and hierotitan ofc.

[Humble]

Arkhan is good force on hero stuff, anti hero and anti leaders with magic along little bit buffed hero, but nothing more.

[kamikharzeeh]

current state of the game is bugged anyways. chaos tends to never end since unless u're dwarves or humans and have acess to swift roflstomp archaon, they will bug out in chaos wastes -> eternal "shield of civilization" -> if ur not inside that, at some point the whole world basically will declare war onto you.

.. i liked that bug at my empire camp, but it is a bit mad at my clan skryre one now. mean arkhan outside of vortex is not recommendable atm. brettonia does better since their patch and will with the triggering of "an age of discovery" begin to hate u , unless u manage to eradicate all peasants before ~turn 70-80, which is not very likely.

at least khemri (arkhans nemesis faction) is superbad atm apparently. in my skryre camp i saved them and "gave" them their capital back, and in my empire one i'm acutally not sure if they even lived till turn 150. (i "finished" that one with long victory at that point - shield of civ cheated this a bit, since you get military allies with every force of order easily)

[Gentlest Giant]

I think Arkhan has a really strong early game, and the TK army roster functions very well against the Brettonnians.
In an earlier thread on this very topic I got coaxed into posting a video of a functional early game method. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od8wPPMQjtA&t=2s

[Hanzo11]

This is one of my favorite campaigns to play because I'm a Arkhan/Nagash fan. It can be tough in the early game to gain traction. I have had luck raiding the bretonian lands to coax out their army into an attack. Defeating them away from their garrison makes for a somewhat easier fight. The added income from raiding will also slightly boost your crappy early income. I have to agree with the others here saying the dwarf faction presents a bigger issue due to their higher armor

[What Up Doc]

sounds like your not using terror enough, rush hexwraiths as mobile terror bombs and you should be good.