Playing Campaign. Total Noob. What am I supposed to do?

[yuzhonglu]

I'm planning to play Alarielle's campaign and just mass archers 'cuz archers are awesome (from the 30 minutes of game time with the other high elf hero).

However, the economy totally confuses me. What should I focus on and what's easy to learn?

[yuzhonglu]

Like, how do I quickly raise public order? Should I immediatley hire a second lord at the beginning and camp him at home base to raise public order?

Also, how do I boost my economy? What are the most important econ buildings at the beginning that i need to build? Is an army of pure archers viable?

[Voxrox]

Vortex Campaign I guess? First, every new Lord is costing money, and increases the upkeep you have to pay each turn. So at first - avoid recruiting a second Lord, its not necessary.

Priority always has unifying your starting province, kick out the Dark Elves. Try to get trade agreements with neighbouring factions, to increase income.

In your capital Province - the promenade building gives you Public Order and income. Also maybe raze the barracks and build one anew in a smaller settlement. If you are under no immediate threat, consider sending Alarielle on a short trip into the inner sea around the Vortex, sometimes treasures appear there. If you are lucky its an easy fight and money.

The biggest challenge soon is the Gate north - it can be tricky to take, but the longer you wait, the more likely it is that Dark Elves fortfy themselves even more. You also get a nice trinket for Alarielle if you conquer it ...

With that - you can expand anywhere. IF Saphery (the idiots east of you) play nice and don'T attack you, maybe first go north, trying to secure the Sword of Khaine which is located there. Even if you do not want to wield it - its saver if you control that province (Shrine of Khaine)

Economy: Ports are valuable, ressource buildings like for Wood, trade already mentioned. Elven trinket-building in at least one small town should be build. Also keep Alarielle moving about - she buffs towns she visited for some turns...Public Order and such.

For battles - well, archers ... have some. But going ALL archers? Nope. Mix it up, you need to be flexible. If you do not have a solid line of warriors, all the arrows in the world will not save you.

BUT! As soon as you get Lothern Sea Guard ... you might go that route. LSG are a mix of melee-capable spearmen armed with bows. And shields. They do not have the range of real archers, but can hold a line.

LAter however - you need heavy troops like Phoenix Guard and Swordmasters. Dragons as well. And the awesome Sisters of Avelorn should be your main archers

PS: Always check if you can confederate some neighbours. And make sure that all of Ulthuan is in elven hands - Alarielle profits directly from Ulthuan being all elven

[Chaoslink]

Public order takes two hits on capturing a settlement, and these hits affect the entire province. The first is conquest penalty. This is a single turn, very high reduction that increases in severity depending on the choice you picked when capturing. Occupy offers you no rewards other than the city intact (all captures reduce the city level by 1 and destroy buildings that there are no longer slots to support). Loot and occupy will damage buildings and incur a much larger conquest penalty but also give you gold based on what buildings and how high level they were in that city. The second penalty is the longer term unrest that decays each turn. Again, if you looted it, this penalty is higher. As turns pass, the penalty goes down until gone, refreshing (but not stacking) if you capture another in the area.

This is to prevent you from just steamrolling through lands without protecting what you capture. Keeping an army garrisoned in the town will help greatly, the more units in the army the more public order you gain. Characters can have buffs to local public order as well, and gain traits that boost it when they sit in towns with low public order. There really isn't a fast way of raising it. Mouse over the public order icons to see exactly what is affecting it and by how much. This will tell you what you might need to do in order to raise it.

Corruption will also hurt public order, and can make it incredibly difficult to take towns with a different corruption type than yours. Increase your race's preferred corruption type to counter other faction's corruption using abilities from lords, heroes, items, followers or buildings in the province. Untainted is the "corruption" for normal factions like The Empire or Dwarfs.

Hiring a second lord wouldn't do much as he needs an army to raise it. Raising the second army will also increase your supply costs, meaning all unit upkeep increases by 2% per lord. While it might help slightly as the lord gains the public order traits, the better option is to build the relevant public order buildings.

An army of pure archers works with Wood Elves, though as High elves you'll want some spearmen to fix the enemy so your archers can shoot uncontested. Lothern Sea Guards are archers that also function as melee units in a pinch. Turn off their skirmish mode so they hold their ground and you can run nothing but those if you like.

As for economy, you often want to focus your provinces in economy or recruiting. Pretty much as simple as recruiting provinces get mostly buildings that focus on giving you recruitment, often provinces with a unique building that buffs a unit type or has a resource like pastures that can offer reduced costs or some other benefit.

Economic provinces simply build mostly anything that directly generates income and any buildings that have boosts to income. Elven Embassies and Elven Gardens boost the income of particular income types like income from ports or income from entertainment. The buildings that actually produce income will tell you what type of income is being produced so you know if the boosts apply or not. The best provinces to focus on base incomes like this (aka "taxes") are ones with resources like gold that provide large quantities in income in addition to the normal available buildings.

The other way to boost income is trade. Each Trade Good building you build will supply you with a certain number of that good. Using the Trade tab of the Treasury (the bag of gold icon at the top of the screen) you can see what goods you are producing and how many, as well as the % of that good you are successfully trading away and how much each unit costs. So if you're producing 50 lumber which has a value of 10 and you're only trading away 20%, you're only making 100 gold. Obtain more trade agreements to trade away more goods. The bigger the faction, the more you can sell off.

Some buildings and effects will increase the money you gain from trade, or increase your overall trade goods produced. These buildings and effects are great if you have access to many trade good types and/or many trade partners. It is possible to make more money from trade than taxes, but trade can be unreliable if your partners confederate, get wiped out, disband the agreement due to hostile relations etc. I find it better to only confederate when the gain is really beneficial as it lowers the total amount of factions you are likely to trade with and therefore also lowers your maximum potential trade income. Trade can eventually make you enough gold to support something like 5-6 top tier armies. Trying to focus both trade and tax income is very beneficial.

[yuzhonglu]

Are Hero Chains (for reinforcement) any good? I got a 2nd lord just so I can put my handmaiden there and increase population growth. Also, he can reinforce, right? Like in heroes of might and magic, can you set up lord reinforcement chains?

[Chaoslink]

Originalmente postado por yuzhonglu:

Are Hero Chains (for reinforcement) any good? I got a 2nd lord just so I can put my handmaiden there and increase population growth. Also, he can reinforce, right? Like in heroes of might and magic, can you set up lord reinforcement chains?

They can. As long as they are in range of the little red circle you can see when mousing over lords or settlements, they'll reinforce. If attacking, you'll see yellow lines coming from the reinforcements if they are properly in range.

[Nylan]

If the hero is in an army nearby it will work, if the hero is sitting on the map all alone no, won't reinforce a battle.

[MythTrip]

Wowwww, impressive kindness here guys, great!!! Really wonderful to help a noob, we were all noobs at everything way back when.

Criticizing questions creates the social ice...everyones afraid of feeling stupid, so just shuts up..

[Adam Beckett]

I would still recommend watching a bit of seasoned Total War players playing the campaign beginning on YouTube.

Just for you to get a sense of the 'game flow'. Look for videos with high view count. You will stumble over people like "Zerkovich". Click on it.

https://youtu.be/asOXRoRPdoc

Also, one simple tip:

There are treasures all over the sea. Easiest money you can make early on! Just have one unit 'sail' and collect those.

[shde2e]

Originalmente postado por Adam Beckett:

Also, one simple tip:

There are treasures all over the sea. Easiest money you can make early on! Just have one unit 'sail' and collect those.

This. This is probably a better use of your second lord.
These treasures can give you thousands per turn, as well as magic items.

High elf economy relies rather heavily on trade and ports, so you'll probably want to find a lot of friendly factions to trade with.
You can use your sea treasure lord to find the rest of the High Elf factions in your big starting island, then go south or southwest to find the Lizardmen in not-South-Africe and not-Central-America.
Or research the tech that reveals most of the map (in the bottom right chain).

High elves don't really have buildings that give lots of money on their own, So you'll want to get the cities with ports (the ones with a little anchor next to their name), and trade resources (with the corresponding icons next to them).

High elves also unlock a neat tech to research when they build level 3 of a trade resource, which is a nice bonus.

I'd also reccomend taking Saphery at some point (who sit on a landmark that gives you really good mages), and Lothern/Phoenix King Guy, whose starting province has some really good economy buildings.

As for public order: The wine resource gives you a tech that gives global +2 Public Order, which is really useful. You can also just let the rebellion trigger and crush it. It spawns a rebel army which slowly grows, then attacks the nearby settlement. So if you beat the army, you're fine.

[yuzhonglu]

Thank you.

[yuzhonglu]

The mods that let your archer shoot despite friendly fire and LOS are really really important.

[Cacomistle]

Originalmente postado por Voxrox:

Vortex Campaign I guess? First, every new Lord is costing money, and increases the upkeep you have to pay each turn. So at first - avoid recruiting a second Lord, its not necessary.

Priority always has unifying your starting province, kick out the Dark Elves. Try to get trade agreements with neighbouring factions, to increase income.

In your capital Province - the promenade building gives you Public Order and income. Also maybe raze the barracks and build one anew in a smaller settlement. If you are under no immediate threat, consider sending Alarielle on a short trip into the inner sea around the Vortex, sometimes treasures appear there. If you are lucky its an easy fight and money.

The biggest challenge soon is the Gate north - it can be tricky to take, but the longer you wait, the more likely it is that Dark Elves fortfy themselves even more. You also get a nice trinket for Alarielle if you conquer it ...

With that - you can expand anywhere. IF Saphery (the idiots east of you) play nice and don'T attack you, maybe first go north, trying to secure the Sword of Khaine which is located there. Even if you do not want to wield it - its saver if you control that province (Shrine of Khaine)

Economy: Ports are valuable, ressource buildings like for Wood, trade already mentioned. Elven trinket-building in at least one small town should be build. Also keep Alarielle moving about - she buffs towns she visited for some turns...Public Order and such.

For battles - well, archers ... have some. But going ALL archers? Nope. Mix it up, you need to be flexible. If you do not have a solid line of warriors, all the arrows in the world will not save you.

BUT! As soon as you get Lothern Sea Guard ... you might go that route. LSG are a mix of melee-capable spearmen armed with bows. And shields. They do not have the range of real archers, but can hold a line.

LAter however - you need heavy troops like Phoenix Guard and Swordmasters. Dragons as well. And the awesome Sisters of Avelorn should be your main archers

PS: Always check if you can confederate some neighbours. And make sure that all of Ulthuan is in elven hands - Alarielle profits directly from Ulthuan being all elven

All good advice, but you really don't need units like phoenix guard.

I don't do mass archers cause its boring. But with sea guard getting such high md and elvws getting such ridiculous buffs to their archers, no other units are really required. I'm pretty sure their most cost effective stack vs late game armies is mass sisters with 5-6 sea guard line, and 2-3 bolt throwers to snipe artillery, and couple heros. Its cheap as far as doomstacks go, but will not lose to anything if you've got a decent level lord.

Honestly high elf late game is just really easy. Build anything you want, and if thars not working build anything you want plus 6-7 sisters.

[Chaoslink]

Originalmente postado por yuzhonglu:

The mods that let your archer shoot despite friendly fire and LOS are really really important.

Eh, not really. You just have to know how to position and order them. Keep them in square formations to limit their movement when orienting towards their targets, always fire towards your opposite flanks instead of directly in front so the arc bypasses your melee and your archers fire without worry and keep the formations spaced enough to rotate without intersecting. Look for opportunities to flank so your archers can fire directly into the enemy. Mods like that really aren’t necessary.