Lets talk about Thorek Ironbrow and his start.

[Kharn Terrer]

So generally I know Dwarves are easy mode, I hadnt played as Thorek so I thought what the heck lets give him a go Dwarves are normally quite relaxing.
Well... the start of Thorek's campaign is anything but relaxing. Now we all know some of the more infamous campaigns that are hardmode but theirs generally some sort of campaign mechanic that makes it hard not like Thorek. You start off in a decent enough place with an A+ lord and decent troops. Unfortunately what they dont mention is you are beside at least 5 factions that hate you and are pretty damn good at the start of the game. Consequently I got war declared on me by Grimgor, Clan Eshin, Crooked moon, Hag Graef, Nagarond, The Cult of Pleasure, Kroq-gar and Beastmen all at the same time. Now its true I did have the High Elves and my Dwarves in the north. But the High Elves got destroyed pretty fast by Clan Eshin and the Beastmen and the Dwarves in the north got steamrolled by the Orcs. So it were me against the whole of the Badlands. How in earth do you guys play this campaign on Legendary this was on Hard and I had to restart twice. Its unreal how hard this campaign is cause of how amazing Orcs and Skaven are at the start.
Anyone else try this campaign? I managed it and completed it and once you killed off the Orcs it became easy mode but this is in my top 3 for hardest starts.
Anyone played him on legendary? How was it?

[Lack of Stuff]

Did you tank your reliability? Most of those factions will always declare war on you but it's unusual that they all do it at the same time unless they've allied, which would also be unusual.

[Kharn Terrer]

Originally posted by Lack of Stuff:

Did you tank your reliability? Most of those factions will always declare war on you but it's unusual that they all do it at the same time unless they've allied, which would also be unusual.

No, and I restarted as I said the same thing happened again. I got lucky in a way the 2nd time cause Kroq-gar, the Beastmen and the Skaven were too busy deleting poor Imrik and the Orcs were fighting Thorgrim and me but no it was utter hell. I was forced to corner camp the whole time cause it was wave after wave after wave of enemies. Honestly if I did have so many Quarrellers I would never have managed that.

[Lack of Stuff]

The only thing I can think of is Thorek needs to blitz Clan Mors immediately then the Silver Host. Hopefully this leaves Khalida as a small buffer from the North while you roll up The Last Defenders. I think you just need to be aggressive in eliminating your immediate rivals to be prepared for Grimgor or Eshin. Luckily Thorek is good for early aggression since he buffs Quarellers instead of the later gunpowder units.

Try NOT to meet factions. As long as they don't know you exist then they can't declare war on you. So maybe leave Imrik to deal on his own and keep your pacts limited to non-aggression and trade to reduce your sight.

[franz]

This is how the game works on any difficulty .
Dont explore too much in the start , dont make deals with friends early .

[Central]

with thorek i usually take my first two provinces (starting province and the province to the north) and than fortify those settlements.
meanwhile i move my main army to the south east, focus on the lizardmen first. their provinces are on the border of the map which makes it a lot easier to defend once you have them. after i have secured those settlements i slowly move north towards clan eshin, taking out enemies that are in my path one by one.

i dont really move west until i have taken everything between thoreks starting position and clan eshin's starting position. once you have that territory you have a decent border which cannot be attacked from the south or east which makes it a lot easier to defend.

another thing to remember is that as a dawi faction you have access to slayers from the grudges, combine them with RoR and you get a decent instant army if you find enemies on your doorstep. they can be a great addition to a garrison force to keep your lands clear of those enemies. so i always keep a decent amount of money in reserve so that i can recruit them when needed.

also i dont really see how it matters how it matters that you end up at war with Nagarond and The Cult of Pleasure, they are on the other side of the world they wont show up for ages.

the other dawi are by no means easy mode on legendary difficulty. sure they are powerful but they are also surrounded by enemies, meanwhile their armies cost a lot of gold to maintain. your armies might be very hard to beat but if you move south with any dawi than you get attacked from the north, east and west. you move west than they pounce on you from the north, east and south. this is true for every direction you move in.
there certainly are other races which are a lot easier. it is the regular dawi's starting position combnined with those enemies that surround them which excludes them as being easy mode.

thorek is by far the easiest dawi to play with thanks to his starting position, being on the border of the map at the south and close to the border on the east, preventing enemies from coming at you from those sides.

[grab these bandages]

I complete legendary campaign 2 times. First 20 turns just chill, farm rebellions and sack last city in Moors region, build walls in major settlements and then expand slowly without confederation. Vampires-lizards-orcs and eshin. Ofc research all what provide public order first.

[Kharn Terrer]

Originally posted by Central:

with thorek i usually take my first two provinces (starting province and the province to the north) and than fortify those settlements.
meanwhile i move my main army to the south east, focus on the lizardmen first. their provinces are on the border of the map which makes it a lot easier to defend once you have them. after i have secured those settlements i slowly move north towards clan eshin, taking out enemies that are in my path one by one.

i dont really move west until i have taken everything between thoreks starting position and clan eshin's starting position. once you have that territory you have a decent border which cannot be attacked from the south or east which makes it a lot easier to defend.

another thing to remember is that as a dawi faction you have access to slayers from the grudges, combine them with RoR and you get a decent instant army if you find enemies on your doorstep. they can be a great addition to a garrison force to keep your lands clear of those enemies. so i always keep a decent amount of money in reserve so that i can recruit them when needed.

also i dont really see how it matters how it matters that you end up at war with Nagarond and The Cult of Pleasure, they are on the other side of the world they wont show up for ages.

the other dawi are by no means easy mode on legendary difficulty. sure they are powerful but they are also surrounded by enemies, meanwhile their armies cost a lot of gold to maintain. your armies might be very hard to beat but if you move south with any dawi than you get attacked from the north, east and west. you move west than they pounce on you from the north, east and south. this is true for every direction you move in.
there certainly are other races which are a lot easier. it is the regular dawi's starting position combnined with those enemies that surround them which excludes them as being easy mode.

thorek is by far the easiest dawi to play with thanks to his starting position, being on the border of the map at the south and close to the border on the east, preventing enemies from coming at you from those sides.

So I am a little confused here, you're saying you dont move against Grimgore asap? If you allow Grimgore to expand and take over all the smaller factions and confederate all the smaller Orc clans you end up with a 20+ stack 60 region nightmare by turn 60.
I understand the fact that you have the corner to buffer you but virtually everytime I find Har Graef confeds with Cult of Pleasure then they start showing up on west like they are deliberately ignoring the Elves in that area to attack you. I had Malus Darkblade turn up after I killed him with the Sword of Khaine and an late stage nightmare army by turn 50 so I dont think this is entirely true.
Then we have the Beastmen and Clan Eshin, which declare war on you more or less everytime within 15 turns of the start. If you're busy fighting the Silver Legion/The Last Defenders/Tomb Kings even without the Orcs thats a really annoying amount of enemies on your doorstep.

So im not denying Thorek is the best LL cause of his buffs to Quarrellers as I said above I only got out of it because of how powerful his quarrellers were. But when you're surrounded by enemies and no allies you cant trade so you have to rely on the cash you make to start with which isnt great because of just how expensive Dwarf units are it becomes one hell of a grind.

[Central]

Originally posted by Kharn Terrer:

So I am a little confused here, you're saying you dont move against Grimgore asap? If you allow Grimgore to expand and take over all the smaller factions and confederate all the smaller Orc clans you end up with a 20+ stack 60 region nightmare by turn 60.
I understand the fact that you have the corner to buffer you but virtually everytime I find Har Graef confeds with Cult of Pleasure then they start showing up on west like they are deliberately ignoring the Elves in that area to attack you. I had Malus Darkblade turn up after I killed him with the Sword of Khaine and an late stage nightmare army by turn 50 so I dont think this is entirely true.
Then we have the Beastmen and Clan Eshin, which declare war on you more or less everytime within 15 turns of the start. If you're busy fighting the Silver Legion/The Last Defenders/Tomb Kings even without the Orcs thats a really annoying amount of enemies on your doorstep.

So im not denying Thorek is the best LL cause of his buffs to Quarrellers as I said above I only got out of it because of how powerful his quarrellers were. But when you're surrounded by enemies and no allies you cant trade so you have to rely on the cash you make to start with which isnt great because of just how expensive Dwarf units are it becomes one hell of a grind.

that is correct, i dont move against him until much later. he confederates so much anyway that i find focusing on him is pretty much pointless. when you think you have finally beaten him he confederates again. meanwhile you will end up taking half the map while hunting him down, getting loads of ai's to declare war on you because they dont like human players being on their border. you will face plenty of stacks no matter what you do, i prefer the method where i do not have to worry about the rest of my borders and being at war with the entire freaking world.

i establish my territory in the south eastern corner, with less borders to worry about i dont have to keep armies there anymore, in that territory i build up my dawi economy allowing me to recruit enough armies. with less borders to worry about and a good economy i can build enough armies to methodically take out the greenskins. it is a grind yes, but i prefer doing it that way.

i can understand if people focus him, taking him out later is a grind but i really dont understand how they achieve it without getting the entire world to declare war on them though. do they raze settlements instead of taking them?

[Kharn Terrer]

Originally posted by Central:

Originally posted by Kharn Terrer:

So I am a little confused here, you're saying you dont move against Grimgore asap? If you allow Grimgore to expand and take over all the smaller factions and confederate all the smaller Orc clans you end up with a 20+ stack 60 region nightmare by turn 60.
I understand the fact that you have the corner to buffer you but virtually everytime I find Har Graef confeds with Cult of Pleasure then they start showing up on west like they are deliberately ignoring the Elves in that area to attack you. I had Malus Darkblade turn up after I killed him with the Sword of Khaine and an late stage nightmare army by turn 50 so I dont think this is entirely true.
Then we have the Beastmen and Clan Eshin, which declare war on you more or less everytime within 15 turns of the start. If you're busy fighting the Silver Legion/The Last Defenders/Tomb Kings even without the Orcs thats a really annoying amount of enemies on your doorstep.

So im not denying Thorek is the best LL cause of his buffs to Quarrellers as I said above I only got out of it because of how powerful his quarrellers were. But when you're surrounded by enemies and no allies you cant trade so you have to rely on the cash you make to start with which isnt great because of just how expensive Dwarf units are it becomes one hell of a grind.

that is correct, i dont move against him until much later. he confederates so much anyway that i find focusing on him is pretty much pointless. when you think you have finally beaten him he confederates again. meanwhile you will end up taking half the map while hunting him down, getting loads of ai's to declare war on you because they dont like human players being on their border. you will face plenty of stacks no matter what you do, i prefer the method where i do not have to worry about the rest of my borders and being at war with the entire freaking world.

i establish my territory in the south eastern corner, with less borders to worry about i dont have to keep armies there anymore, in that territory i build up my dawi economy allowing me to recruit enough armies. with less borders to worry about and a good economy i can build enough armies to methodically take out the greenskins. it is a grind yes, but i prefer doing it that way.

i can understand if people focus him, taking him out later is a grind but i really dont understand how they achieve it without getting the entire world to declare war on them though. do they raze settlements instead of taking them?

This is an interesting method, so what turn roughly do you start moving against Grimgore and do you just allow the other Dwarves to die?
I've always made a rush to stop the other Dwarf Clans from being crushed because if Karaz-a-Karak falls you suddenly lose out on the LL from them and then they suddenly see you as a priority because "Kill all dem stunties".
How do you make gold in that corner? Theirs no possibility of trade and theirs no big settlements with rich pickings really. Theirs a couple of settlements that look ok but since its mostly all orange for living conditions you end up with the penalty on all of them.

[Central]

Originally posted by Kharn Terrer:

This is an interesting method, so what turn roughly do you start moving against Grimgore and do you just allow the other Dwarves to die?
I've always made a rush to stop the other Dwarf Clans from being crushed because if Karaz-a-Karak falls you suddenly lose out on the LL from them and then they suddenly see you as a priority because "Kill all dem stunties".
How do you make gold in that corner? Theirs no possibility of trade and theirs no big settlements with rich pickings really. Theirs a couple of settlements that look ok but since its mostly all orange for living conditions you end up with the penalty on all of them.

it really depends on the situation when i move against him, also it varies how quickly i move against him in terms of successive attacks. once you accepted the fact that it is a grind it does not really matter when you move against him any more.

like i said i move methodically, if other people declare war on me or if my borders are getting stretched i asses the situation, sometimes i take others out mid greenskin war first to keep my borders secure before making more moves against the greenskins, other times i find i have decent borders already and i keep moving against the greenskins.

there are some economic buildings in that area which you can make use of, besides that you can always find some trading partners to the west, wood elves to the west for example, in the beginning they dont like you but with some gold you can overcome that, toolmakers and a few docks also help.
orange territories are still good to take, you still make money of them.

i do allow most other dawi to die but i make good relations with the main factions, once they are close to dying i confed them and than allow their territory to be taken, i dont defend it until my borders are close to it. i need the LL's, i dont need their land. way to much trouble to defend it.