Mortal Empires big "good" Alliance Issue

[Ezekiel]

So when playing Mortal Empires (normal/hard difficulty) it usually happens that during the Chaos Invasion the "good" Forces ally with each other and become insanely strong in the Process. Not only as an Alliance but also individually. This affects High Elves, Bretonnia, The Empire and the Dwarves. I played on normal and lost count how many Armies each of these Forces fielded but it was surely about 15 full Stacks or even more for each one of them. And it does not matter if you kill about 5 of those Stacks each turn, they bring high Quality Reinforcements (Rank 6 to 9) within 2 Rounds. They attack very aggressively and you simply cannot save your controlled Settlements or save your Allies, no matter what you try. So basically if you have not wiped out at least two of those Factions until Chaos Invasion is over you ain't gonna be able to win the Campaign anymore. Some Factions are totally passive during the Campaign - I watched Luthor Harkon for example attacking the same City about 10 Times over and over again, winning each time but not taking the Settlement but flying away after eacht Victory. Dark Elves are turteling in Naggarond, Orcs loose super quick against Dwarves, Vampires have no Effect on the Empire, Chaos Invasion is a Joke and Bretonnia confederates rapidly and has no Problem dealing with Norsca Skaven or anything else.. So I played 4 Mortal Empire Campaigns with evil Factions to test the Issue and it always turns out the same. CA please fix this Issue.

[Ezekiel]

Originally posted by Shirome Artiste:

Kind of sort of. The age of peace "Aggressive/Treacherous" does get applied to almost all factions left on the map.

HOWEVER the way diplomacy seems coded the massive blob of militarily allied elves, dwarves, Empire provinces, Lizardmen and Berts will have such high relationship values with each other thanks to all the deals they've made with each other and their friends, combined with the fact that all of them are probably pummeling on a faction they all hate(E.G. norsca) that any faction that didn't get included in that massive alliance blob gets singled out for a vigourous beatdown first.

As such, the massive alliance superdoomstack will USUALLY first roll over visible Dark Elf, Greenskin, Vampire Counts/Coast, Norscan and Skaven factions(And occasionally Tomb Kings too) before INEVITABLY one of them attacks another and the massive alliance splinters into several smaller ones.


Mind you, it CAN happen that the alliance splinters near-instantly after ol' Archie kicked his final bucket because one of the big powers attacked a minor member of the alliance and all the big powers pick their side, but like I said above, usually the "evil" races are due a massive storm of doomstacks before the alliance finally breaks apart.

They might attack each other eventually sometime, yet not before you're not dead and gone.

[Tanaka Khan]

Originally posted by Ezekiel:

Originally posted by Tanaka Khan:

I had my last DE campaign fail due to the Holy Alliance. The stacks they were sending against me was insane, I'm talking 8 Emperors Wrath Steam Tanks, 6 Hellstorm Rocket Batteries in EACH stack the Empire would send at me.

That is one Thing for sure yet the issue is not only how the Stacks were built - but the sheer amount of stacks each of those 3 to 4 allied members throws at you at a relatively low difficulty.

Dwarves alone moved more than 15 of those perfectly trained stacks around and all the allies work perfectly together as if they were one faction. They typically all gang up on one faction til its gone then moving on to the next one.

I was just giving that as an example though. Coping 8-10 of those stacks comprised in that way add up. If they were trash mobs included I could probably handle them. But facing 8-10 Uber stacks from the Empire, HE's, Dwarves and Brets combined? Nope

[Inardesco]

Well, everyone agrees that Chaos needs a massive boost.

Personally I play with the x5 Chaos mod and that generally allows them to rek Empire but then slow down in Bretonnia while puppets and followers tend to destroy Ulthuan.

That is if I dont interfere.

[Grimmir82]

Originally posted by Tanaka Khan:

Originally posted by Ezekiel:

That is one Thing for sure yet the issue is not only how the Stacks were built - but the sheer amount of stacks each of those 3 to 4 allied members throws at you at a relatively low difficulty.

Dwarves alone moved more than 15 of those perfectly trained stacks around and all the allies work perfectly together as if they were one faction. They typically all gang up on one faction til its gone then moving on to the next one.

I was just giving that as an example though. Coping 8-10 of those stacks comprised in that way add up. If they were trash mobs included I could probably handle them. But facing 8-10 Uber stacks from the Empire, HE's, Dwarves and Brets combined? Nope

I just gave up my third attempt with the DE at very hard difficulty because of the craziness of those stacks, in addition to the good guys not killin Archaon and having to deal with stupid chaos waves every 5 turns.

[techsprite]

Yup, Dwarves, Empire and Bretonnia become one big giant alliance. Nothing stops Empire unless you are an enemy in their direct theatre. Lothern squashes the dark elves.

Except for one game where the dwarves were killed off early. But then Empire wiped out all vampire races early on, and eradicated Chaos with ease. Then simply filled in the void. (Chaos is a virtual nonentity now.)

[James Howlette]

IMO chaos (as in the AI faction in the campaign, not as playable faction or their army roster) needs a huge buff.

Considering they're lore wise a massive threat capable of literally ending the world (and eventually did), and that half the factions in the game form a giga aliance to oppose them, the 4 mediocre stacks that show up are actually laughable.

What should be happening is that the good factions form a giga aliance and either are barely able to hold back the tides of chaos or are shattered despite their best efforts.

Instead what happens is the good factions form a giga alliance, Kislev solos the four shoddy chaos stacks that show up before they can even hit the empire, and the alliance proceeds to just steamroll through everything completely unimpeded.

[Humble]

It's wasn't normal, before the hunter and the beast, on normal level, there was 3 stack army max each faction, and factions do not ally each other, but playing as dark factions, you had easier to make ally, but after hunter and the beast, everything changed, not only light or order factions ally each other to death, each faction now had 5 stackable army at least, if you beat them all, they get new one in few turn, in the normal level, so yes, that was not normal. They shouldn't do that to normal and easy level, but I had no problem if for hard level at least, but normal level, a.i each faction should had max 3 stack army even joined other factions into one.

[Cpt. Obvious]

there is one more issue besides the Shield of civilization. Introduction of strong Itza and the wandering gator finally crushed any hopes of Lustia cleaning itself from the lizard scum.
If the player is to start in the old world, he may be very sure in one and one thing only - there will come black day he'll have to deal with constant flow of savage coldblooded transports bringing to the civilized shores of scavenblight long forgotten practices of sacrifices to the snake god.

Originally posted by Humble:

but after hunter and the beast, everything changed, not only light or order factions ally each other to death, each faction now had 5 stackable army at least..

playing clan Mors h/h: empire is attacking me with 7 stacks and so is brettonia. lothern and mazdamundi send their love across the high seas so it is not so dramatic. this is fine, i assume to win in 600 turns ))

What actually annoys me is wood elves. They send their archer spam in some unspoken entante with bretonian grail knights spam )) so I fight them with the same armies. my problem is that if i choose to take sword&shield stormvermin as meat they are stomped by brettonians. And when i recruit halberdier stormvermin they are shot by sneaky elves ))
However I am going to win this campaign ))

[Fan.RoweAnnihilation]

Originally posted by Darth Reyns:

It is correct lore wise.

And whatever you have mentioned they are all meant to be that way.

Why would vampirates (or anyone) take on cities that they can't hold on to.

Malekith is supposed to be turtling in naggaroth building his armies and take on ulthuan. Not helping orcs halfway across the world.

Orcs skaven vampires they all have their own ends and as it is they all hate each other.

Good factions all have a common goal. So they work together. that means a campaign as vampires is more difficult than one as empire or dawi (from a diplomacy perspective)

That's the way it's supposed to work. Until you are not ready to deal with chaos invasion (and the shield of civilisation alliances) don't trigger it. You can build your strength and then go for it.

The key thing is to weak them initially. To avoid overextending in the beginning you can sack /raze order faction cities in the beginning. This will weaken them greatly. Don't take any settlements you know you can't hold on to.

This is such a pompous response to what OP is saying. OP is correct and I know because Ive already been trying your stupid strategy for months and it results in A. your army and empire being too stretched out and you pissing way too many armies off especially when it enters turns 200+ and everyones joined up anyways so grudges get carried over. Then your base that you havent defended because youve been pillaging gets destroyed.

Or B: you can leave them all alone so as not to atagonise them the entire campaign but eventually they wipe out every single bad guy on the map except you and they have aversion to you which increases the larger your empire (even if you are deleting entire factions with skitchs ultimate) so i found my self paying small, medium and large gifts to almost every other major faction near me every turn just to keep them happy. but they want to hate you, and skaven want to hate them so you can never form alliances with them. its stupid and dumb. its not fun. "Well thats the way it's supposed to work" Well then how it works sucks. Its tedious and lame. Give me a giant evil alliance to fight the good ones and that would be awesome. Or just no european unions at all but they need to fix this issue.

[Inardesco]

Begone necromancer

[wrought82]

if you trigger chaos invasions early enough they are a challenge for AI at least for empire, and they always attack empire and high elves. ive never seen chaos not be the strongest 3 factions when they enter except a few times when i am in top 4. order factions usually prevail if you dont interfere but they are always weakened so thats when you attack them - unless you use that time to expend in which case the next invasion happens immediately after and sometimes overwhelms evenhigh elves
playing evil take out at least 1 major power before they can ally if you can

But the stories you guys tell kinda make me want to try turtling, maybe aim for being the 5th strongest power throughout the game or something.

Even in beta and the nerfs to steamrolling there's still really no such thing as overextending; attacking gives you gold which leads to more attacks, just pick your fights (and friends) so you always have your armies facing the enemy and you dont need to think about defense.

[ZACWarrior]

If you don't start at war with all of them and want to fight one at a time, you can find a faction that they are at war with and ask to join their war against the faction you want to fight. This will allow you to declare war on a faction without declaring war on their allies. I've used this many times.

[Ezekiel]

Originally posted by Fan.RoweAnnihilation:

This is such a pompous response to what OP is saying. OP is correct and I know because Ive already been trying your stupid strategy for months and it results in A. your army and empire being too stretched out and you pissing way too many armies off especially when it enters turns 200+ and everyones joined up anyways so grudges get carried over. Then your base that you havent defended because youve been pillaging gets destroyed.

Thanks for the Support - yet I think the Issue is fixed meanwhile or do you guys still have those massive good Alliances ? It took them some Time to fix it though, resulting me dropping the Game for a couple of Months.

[Tanaka Khan]

Originally posted by LorD_Hesu:

I experienced seeing Norsca in Lustria at turn 50 its totally WTF! He brings full stack with full rank.

Perhaps they confederated with the Norscan faction that is in Lustria?

[kcaz25]

I use a mod that deletes the shield of civilization trait from the game.