Dwarf strategy with Thorgrim Grudgebearer

[Evangeline_Blue]

I am really struggling with this faction on hard/hard. The initial part of the campaign, turns 1-3, go easy peasey. Quickly taking the entirety of the first province. I go for that early set piece battle, win, no problem. From here everything goes to pot.

Every game I have played so far, ends up the same. If I go North for the gold at Mount Gunbad, I end up with 3 or 4 Orc armies invading. If I go South, to get Death Pass, I end up with one doomstack invading from the North, and 2-3 large Orc armies bearing down on me in the South.

I'm really not sure what I am doing wrong.

I'm going for the early military techs, focusing on the infantry line first, then the archers. I get the first two techs in the 3 line, then 4 and 5 for the infantry, then I move to the archers with a similar strategy.

The furthest success I have had was out to turn 17 when I quickly moved South. I managed to grab the two Western cities of Death Pass, but, as I turned toward the 3rd city to the East...Yeah...Can you say Orc pile on? I got hit by two doomstacks from the North and the Southwest, then 3 doomstacks attacking my main army.

How do I expand and defend against those numbers. Even with a large army, I am getting hammered by repeated attacks on my main army.

Any advise is greatly appreciated.

I thank you all for your time in advance.

Eve

[Ben Argo]

You need to wall up the Silver road. Head north and take gunbad, maybe after sacking and then razing Karak drog.

If you can get a Lord with some hero support, you can use a half or quarter stack plus garrisons to fend off invaders.

Use your main LL to expand and do so slowly. Eventually you can clear up to Zhufbar and Kadrin for trade and confed. I usually take eastern Sylvanian for the gold, then start expanding south.

[Hannibal Barca]

orc are so fricken weak now take 1 stack and wipe out greenskins with in 20 turns. Your capital militia can repel all the rebel that pop up because they are mostly goblins. Black crag has gold you now own the 2 riches cities in the region.

[kekkuli]

Just go south and kill all greenskins. Then go north and do the same if there still are any. Dwarf campaign is arguably one of the easiest if not the easiest in game. Remember to upgrade your armies, use enough missile troops etc.

[Go0lden_Archer]

Don't focus on melee first in tech. Go for ranged. Quarreles are amazing. Take gundbad for gold mine. Go south wiping everything out. Orcs will be able to pose a threat to you only and if they get to black orcs, and even then barely. You got amazing artillery and amazing ranged troops overall, as well as very sturdy main line. Just less melee more ranged in armies.

[Evangeline_Blue]

Thanks, everyone! I appreciate your feedback!!

[funkmonster7]

Get Lightning Strike ability. You want that +10% campaign movement, then 3 skill points into the undergrowth/tunnel/whatever interruption (I think +30% chance to interrupt), and 1 point into -1 turn in siege (or public order/untainted if you prefer it, but 1 point is negligible really). Then Lord casualty regen, and finally Lightning Strike.

Orc armies rely on numbers, so if you LS them, they'll fall apart, even if they have a Waaagh army behind them.

If they tunnel in and you interrupt them, they don't stand a chance against you. If they lose the battle, entire army goes bye bye. (Same goes to you but you won't lose in a 1v1 even if they bring Big Uns, because Big Uns have no shields.)

If you beat them in one battle and won, they try to tunnel away, don't interrupt them unless they're going to a place you can't defend. Just let their low fightiness rot out their army.

Other than that, bring 6-8 Quarrellers, 4 Dwarf Warriors spread out as thin as you can in the front (or 4-model rows for the widest and most even spread - might be 5 models, I can't remember), one on each flank, 2 Dwarf Warriors in the rear. Ditch the Miners because they have low MA and MD, practically useless. That is 16 units. Plus Thorgrim, a Runesmith hero, a catapult (I forgot what it's called), and you can have either another Dwarf Warrior or catapult, your choice.

When you can, train up a 2nd army, even if it's not a full army. I find Runelords to be best, because they are actually better than Runesmiths. Their armor-buffing rune magic skill grants +60 armor, not the usual +30.

Don't auto-resolve battles. Manually fight them, don't kill the lords. As long as the Orc lords lose battles but are barely alive, their fightiness will plummet and they will have a hard time regaining it. If they raid their own lands, they get no income for that turn.

If they reinforce their garrisons, you just LS the city, or LS the reinforcing army and leave it half dead.

Don't take cities you can't defend.

If you build walls into every settlement, even Orcs won't dare to attack without waiting at least 1 turn. They rely on auto-resolve and AR favors armies hiding behind a wall, even though in a real battle, you'll probably lose... (But there are ways to cheese that battle, such as forfeiting the walls and force the battles into the narrow city layout, where your ranged units can end them and they can't do anything to you, even with their cavs.)

Siege battles can be cheesed but I don't know if economy in Hard/VH difficulty can do it that early. Basically, you bring 4 catapults, attack without sieging (or if you have time, you can build a few siege towers since it won't hurt to have a backup plan), park 4 catapults in one corner of the map, use them to smash one or two towers, then smash the archers on the wall, while smashing a hole in the wall. You only need one hole, because you will slowly march your army through that hole, backed by Quarrellers. Orcs don't stand a chance against that, no matter what they have (except Doom Divers and Rock Lobbas but they only have 1 in Grimgor's army by default).

Late game, it's even easier because you'll just use catapults to do all that, except the hole in the wall... You basically smash their Black Orcs before they can even get anywhere near you, because AI is too stupid to sally.

[funkmonster7]

I should play Thorgrim in higher difficulty than Normal. I was ranting about how they are too OP some time ago, but I forgot I can always switch up the difficulty. I should try it...

[Evangeline_Blue]

Thank you!!!!

[funkmonster7]

I might be wrong but if you reduce the army size that spawns the Waaagh down to below 17, that Waaagh army automatically disbands. Because Waaagh will only form when fightiness is above 80, and the army that spawns it needs to have at least 17 units. Beating that army half dead will pretty much guarantee the fightiness drop, likely below 80. But you should focus on wiping out their dangerous units first.

If you focus fire your Quarrellers - all of them - at a single Orc Boyz Big Uns unit, or even Grimgor's starting Black Orcs unit, they won't even make it to the front line before they make a run for it. Black Orcs are scary, but they have like 28 or 29 speed. Have your catapults aim at Black Orcs first, not Grimgor or even his Boar Boyz. Charge defense nullifies anything Boar Boyz can do to your units, even though they have armor-piercing. But once that Black Orcs unit reach your front line, Dwarf Warriors will suffer a lot of pain and death.

Black Orcs and Orc Boyz Big Uns have no shields, in exchange for a lot of armor. But from my experience, you can kill at least half of the Black Orcs with 8 Quarrellers firing on them.

Set Thorgrim and the Runesmith hero on Grimgor himself, make sure Runesmith casts that armor-buffing skill when fighting Grimgor. It's not to save Thorgrim or the Runesmith, but the Dwarf Warriors who are engaging Grimgor because Grimgor will eat them for breakfast.

No matter how strong Grimgor is, he can't face Thorgrim, Runesmith and Dwarf Warriors all at once.

I forgot earlier, but that last unit shouldn't be a catapult or Dwarf Warrior. It should be your default Hammerers. Keep them around, mostly as a bodyguard unit. Wade them into front lines to demolish anything with high armor.

You can use Quarrellers to shoot at enemy archers, but they can't do much damage against Dwarf armor and bronze shields so they are not the highest priority. Shoot at Boar Boyz, Nasty Skulkers (because they have armor-piercing damage), and anything that has poison damage like Night Goblin units.

Try to aim for a "firing-across" position. For example, you put 2 units of Quarrellers together, but 4 groups in total. Box them really tight, and command them differently in groups. Once the front lines meet, have your far left Quarrellers shoot at the enemy front line units at the far right, because shields don't block shots coming from the sides. Use your centre 2 groups to shoot at enemy archers and anything that doesn't have a shield.

You can also position your Quarrellers in a C formation, with the "mouth" of the C facing the enemy. Quarrellers' arc of fire will allow you to shoot over your front line's heads.

You probably know this already but make a formation at the corner of a map if you can, especially if you're the defender. They can't flank you since you have your back against the edge of the map, but they don't stand a chance from the front either.

Lastly, you can always try an ambush tactic. Recruit a fresh lord, give him nothing for an army, and put Thorgrim in a place on the map where he has 70% ambush chance, then park your solo lord behind Thorgrim, within reinforcement range (for both lords, note Thorgrim has a larger radius). Even if the ambush fails, usually the AI tries to use 2 armies to gank you, even if you only have a solo lord as a one-man army. This basically forces them into a 1v1 (that solo lord isn't really enough to make it 2v1). So, that Orc lord will lose the battle, get stuck with low fightiness for quite a while, and even lose that Waaagh army (maybe, not sure about this but I know this applies to player Orc armies so why not AI Orcs?).

The funny thing about AI Orcs is when they have low fightiness, they constantly suffer from attrition. So, they'll recruit a lot of units, but sitting in their cities rather than encamping (since their encamp stance forces them into raid stance as well, which means no gold generated in that province for the turn). While recruiting, their existing units will suffer attrition damage. Then they merge some units at some point, and recruit some more. They won't move out and raid something until they have a 20-stack again, and meanwhile, their fightiness drop to almost 0. They're infinitely stuck in that loop. Occasionally, they get out of it but your goal is to buy time until you get Longbeards and Longbeards w/ GW.

Also, Thorgrim must get the buff to ranged units first. Max that, and research the tech that buffs Quarrellers, but only Quarrellers. I think that gives Quarrellers +22% missile damage, that's a lot when you field 8 Quarrellers or even 6. Then rush the gold-making techs, so you can field more catapults to quickly end a siege battle at Black Crag.

You can build Tier 1 growth buildings in all your settlements, then garrison next. Then industry last, and upgrade the garrison building first for a wall. Then industry. Then demolish the growth building and build taverns in it for public order. The growth buildings are just to help you speed up the settlement growths so you can rush all the garrison buildings in the two towns to Tier 3. Once you get that, Thorgrim can leave that province and start bullying some Orcs...

Put Thorgrim in the middle region in your home province. When you see Orc armies coming, they are usually going for the far right settlement which probably doesn't have a wall yet. Put Thorgrim close to that settlement, set him to ambush stance. With some luck, you don't get discovered, and the AI Orc army will walk up to it, and get ambushed. Even if ambush fails, your 20-stack + garrison vs his 20-stack usually means an easy victory. Even Grimgor doesn't stand a chance in that kind of battle.

[Evangeline_Blue]

funkmonster, I think my head is going to blow up, but, I absolutely appreciate all of your advice! Doing a Snoopy happy dance!!!

[Inardesco]

Go north towards Zhufbar and Ungrim. Take the mountains till you meet Kislev then turn around and head south. Greenskins have to content with other dwarf factions so they never pressed me while I pushed north. Then push south towards Black Crag and Karak Eight Peaks while confedding the smaller factions. Best to confed Zhufbar and Ungrim before you confed the Dwarf factions on Greenskin frontier. Otherwise you might get overrun while also having to deal with public order issues.

Play tall. Longbeards + Thunderers and cannons deal plenty of damage to orcs.

[funkmonster7]

Originally posted by Evangeline_Blue:

funkmonster, I think my head is going to blow up, but, I absolutely appreciate all of your advice! Doing a Snoopy happy dance!!!

No problem. Glad to help. This game is big, after all. Tons of things to learn. I'm still learning, even after near 1k hours in WH1 and WH2 combined.

[ZeroOne]

I feel like a lot of people who responded to this haven't played the campaign on higher difficulty and/or aren't even reading what the OP says. Not sure how it played in 2019, I'm on legendary with max battle difficulty. The issue is the greenskins to the south "start" with two full stacks, one of which is comprised of better troops than you have available at the start, and that better army arrives in your territory on turn 4.
The greenskins to the north, similarly, will just outpace your military production and have two full armies when you can only support one. You start at war with both factions.
The key is the southern faction is also at war with Grimgor's 'Ardboyz, and GA will wipe them out if you are patient because that's part of their home region.
Make sure you take the fight against that first powerful army with the help of a garrison--there's a way to bait this by marching your army as if you were rounding the mountains to head into Red Fang territory then boxing them in after they use the underway to appear near Mount Squighorn--and after that victory, resist the urge to go destroy or capture Karag Dron. Especially if you can tell they still have a full army by checking their "power bar" against yours in the diplomacy screen.
Once GA wipes out that smaller greenskin faction, you are free to move north. But you may have more luck if you also take break their armies with the help of garrisons before counter-invading.

[stehorz]

A lord with a small army to defend tier two walls before can move out. Playing as grombindal l is easier. As already said to death, quarellers and corner camping will route the hordes of orcs. You can thin out your army a bit with miners to save money, they serve to reinforce your warrior shield wall blobbing them inside your lines

[Sn3z]

Originally posted by ZeroOne:

I feel like a lot of people who responded to this haven't played the campaign on higher difficulty and/or aren't even reading what the OP says. Not sure how it played in 2019, I'm on legendary with max battle difficulty. The issue is the greenskins to the south "start" with two full stacks, one of which is comprised of better troops than you have available at the start, and that better army arrives in your territory on turn 4.
The greenskins to the north, similarly, will just outpace your military production and have two full armies when you can only support one. You start at war with both factions.
The key is the southern faction is also at war with Grimgor's 'Ardboyz, and GA will wipe them out if you are patient because that's part of their home region.
Make sure you take the fight against that first powerful army with the help of a garrison--there's a way to bait this by marching your army as if you were rounding the mountains to head into Red Fang territory then boxing them in after they use the underway to appear near Mount Squighorn--and after that victory, resist the urge to go destroy or capture Karag Dron. Especially if you can tell they still have a full army by checking their "power bar" against yours in the diplomacy screen.
Once GA wipes out that smaller greenskin faction, you are free to move north. But you may have more luck if you also take break their armies with the help of garrisons before counter-invading.

Mass artillery is dwarfs new Sp meta, its critical at the start of campaign go like 7 artillery pieces use also a mixture of grudge and bolt throwers which can snipe out lords 4 bolt throwers can easily kill lords which leaves you in a advantageous position.