Naggarond is ruining this game for me.

[Represent]

I absolutely love this game. However, the last 20 campaigns I played in ME or Vortex has Naggarond just absolutely dominating. They are always stronger than any faction, confederate and grow super fast, seem to have never ending stacks. It's really ruining things for me. I don't want to play past 100-150 turns because Naggarond is always so insanely strong that you either have no hope of fighting them or you become their ally and they dominate everything and the campaign just becomes boring. On occasion the elves or lizardmen give them a run for their money, but always end up losing. Am I doing something wrong? Are there settings I can change or a mod I can get?

[Whitecrow]

Try using unnatural selection 2. It lets you strengthen or weaken ai factions of your choice

[matlajs]

Strange. hard difficulty. Malekith KO most times untill turn 70. Either by Hellebron, Rictus, Exiles and whatever minor scam is there. he is to much aggressive for his bad too early.

[Machine Spirit]

I agree, in all my ME games darkelves dominate unless I help the high elves early.

[TamoDogo]

Yeah since the patch the Dark Elves ruin the High Elves, and also the vamps ruin the empire too, order tide was nerfed big time

[JODEGAFUN]

Originally posted by Machine Spirit:

I agree, in all my ME games darkelves dominate unless I help the high elves early.

I have it most time that HE dominate DE, as in most of my games Hellebron and Malekith going to war aiganst each other.
Most time the vampire rule early game, if the Empire is not destroyed early they tend to lose over time.

[Nequis]

Well the High Elves more often than not just send their army to random places instead of Ulthuan and i've never seen any minor high elf faction field anything before getting annihilated/confederated.

[Legostyle03]

The AI that is opposite to your ideology (Order vs Chaos) always seem to do well. I think they gain some buffs to compensate for the other side having a player.

[Machine Spirit]

Ulthuan can't be defended effectively by the AI early game and to be fair sometimes I find it hard to defend early game.

I did a Chaos campaign recently where a small Ork faction held the Shrine of Khaine along with the sword for most for the early game, neither the high elves or dark elves were bothered about taking the settlement. I on the other had seen that as a valuable target but the AI doesn't seem to prioritise anything like that.

On a side note, Archeon still cant pick up the Sword of Khaine, is this a bug or a lore thing? It was possible when they released the Queen and the Crone DLC but it's not been possible in the last few updates.

[Dagy47]

Originally posted by Machine Spirit:

Ulthuan can't be defended effectively by the AI early game and to be fair sometimes I find it hard to defend early game.

I did a Chaos campaign recently where a small Ork faction held the Shrine of Khaine along with the sword for most for the early game, neither the high elves or dark elves were bothered about taking the settlement. I on the other had seen that as a valuable target but the AI doesn't seem to prioritise anything like that.

On a side note, Archeon still cant pick up the Sword of Khaine, is this a bug or a lore thing? It was possible when they released the Queen and the Crone DLC but it's not been possible in the last few updates.

only elves should have a right to touch that thing

[Toby Larone]

Originally posted by Dagy47:

Originally posted by Machine Spirit:

Ulthuan can't be defended effectively by the AI early game and to be fair sometimes I find it hard to defend early game.

I did a Chaos campaign recently where a small Ork faction held the Shrine of Khaine along with the sword for most for the early game, neither the high elves or dark elves were bothered about taking the settlement. I on the other had seen that as a valuable target but the AI doesn't seem to prioritise anything like that.

On a side note, Archeon still cant pick up the Sword of Khaine, is this a bug or a lore thing? It was possible when they released the Queen and the Crone DLC but it's not been possible in the last few updates.

only elves should have a right to touch that thing

He means claiming it when beating the elf carrying it.

Which is a bug that the last update was suppossed to fix but they seem to have messed up again.

[Natural_Effects]

Originally posted by "Brsuehs":

Yeah since the patch the Dark Elves ruin the High Elves, and also the vamps ruin the empire too, order tide was nerfed big time

I wouldn't even say nerfed, feels like removed. In 4/5 of my games, Grimgor always beats the dwarves and ends up top 5 strength rating if I don't stop him, one of the vampire factions or Norscan factions (usually a combination) beats the empire into the bottom 20 or out of the game, and either Naggarond or the Cult of Pleasure beats the High Elves and ends up top 5. I've seen the minor faction that spawn at Massif Orcal when you don't play Grom end up owning all of Brettonia. The Skaven usually come out owning Lustria, then the Vampire Coast, then the Lizardmen, who barely do any better than Lokir or Teclis these days. The only spot where order doesn't consistently get stomped without the player interfering is in the southeast, where you have 4 Brettonians, 3 Lizardmen, 2 Dwarves and a wood elf faction against Clan Mors. Tomb Kings end up siding with order down there most of the time too, so it's Queek vs 7 minor factions, Repanse, Kroq Gar and Tiktaq'to, with occasional backup from another minor faction plus Settra and Khalida. Kinda impossible for order not to win there, and they still end up getting stomped by the savage orcs early sometimes.

[wrought82]

yeah dark elves desperately need some strong neighbours. would help if they fixed aggresiveness etc of tomb kings and lizerdmen so exiles of nehek and hexoatl could be serious contenders but its maybe 1 in 20 games that happens.
I dont care how loreful it is put some dwarves up there, maybe some greenskin. im fine if DE take over their corner 60% of the time but 95%? come on...

[Represent]

I got super excited when I saw Nehek doing pretty good and taking most of the mountains. Then about 15 turns later Naggarond over runs them.

[Dogen45]

I'm not a great player, but in my experience Naggorond can be dealt with if you act early. For me its been as The Drowned. Keep your other neighbors sweet (not difficult if you're killing the dark elves for them), and just keep hammering away. Just watch out of the Exiles of Nehek. More traitorous than Skaven.

[Ol' Knife Ears <3]

Malekith starts off right next to Hellebron and not too far away from Mommy Milkers Morathi. He will eventually confed with them both; the punchline here is neither one of them will be weak, he will simply turn his 24 regions into 42, then into 58 and become unstoppable.

Take a look at the various confederation mods. As far as I've seen, the definitive way to stop a single faction from blobbing all across the map in an unfair manner is to simply turn off confederation completely. I don't like mods that alter gameplay, I'm 99% a cosmetic man when it comes to mods. Game balance is the dev's responsibility (or should be), not the modders, but...you've seen what good ol' CA is capable of.

Confederation was experimented with back in WH1 when the map was smaller, so it worked out somewhat. The scale of Mortal Empires allows it to run amok at times, also known as the Ordertide. So if you want the game's challenge to stay within the realm of sanity, just turn off confederation, and for yourself as well in the spirit of fairness.

Who knows, maybe CA will fix confederation come WH3. Hohoho, I made a funny.