Tips for people that suck at the early campaign?

[Fel]

I love total war games but usually I can pick a faction that isn't going to be assaulted on all fronts and slowly build up my way (in normal difficulty of course, this doesn't work on legendary).

In this and the previous though, I always end up getting swarmed on at least 3 fronts by full stacks pretty early on.
Relying on garrison on top of a full stack army I can definitely take on those armies one at a time, and with the replenishment reward after winning it's not taking too many turns to fully replenish my troops.
But that army can only be in one place at a time and the 2 full provinces I manage to secure before the insanity starts end up getting crippled badly.

When I try to see how things go for others via youtube videos and such it doesn't seem like they get that storm of war declarations all at once like I do, at least not until later when they can afford to make a strong second army.

Even hero units that can stall enemy armies are based on luck so you can't rely on that too much.


It is pretty obvious that the fault is mine, either there is a way to not get all those wars declared on me out of nowhere or a better way to handle the defense.
Ideally I would try to get defensive buildings in every settlement but it needs to be tier 2 before you get access to those and that tier is pretty far for at least half of my territory when the insanity starts.

I have tried everything I could think of, including diplomacy but it doesn't seem to be working well and I always end up getting sent back to defend my capital and lose everything else, setting me back too much to be able to do much from that point onward.


Is there a good guide out there on how to handle the first 15-20 turns or something along those lines maybe?

[chronobomb]

Not sure which faction you play, but here is an example from my recent campaign:

Playing Vlad, Vampire Coast.

My natural enemy is The Empire.
The enemy I really don't want to fight are the Dwarves because early VC armies suck at taking heavy armor out. Especially High Moral heavy armor backed up by a lot of range.

So I look at Zufbar, Kazak, etc and see who they are fighting. I immediately declare war on those factions which boosts my rep with the Dawi.

The goal now is to keep a positive relation with them while cleaning up my Provinces. This means sending gifts, assassinating Greenskin (their usual enemy). Once I have all of Eastern, Western Sylvania and the province to the north, I lay into the orcs to my east. This gives me tons of rep with the Dawi and usually allows me to get Trading and military access treaties.

We still will end up enemies because my rep will take a huge hit when I start punching out the empire, so you need to have built your provinces into citadels and send them gifts to stay in the green while murdering the empire.

Every game plays out a little different, so it keeps things interesting.

[Arlen Tektolnes]

Steam's showing under 17 hours combined between this and TW1, so you've likely only started a couple of campaigns and therefore may have gotten exceptionally unlucky. It's not the most likely scenario, but this is possible.

General tips to avoid getting ganged up on:

1. Make friends. Figure out who nearby likes you or could be easily convinced to like you (bribes, killing their enemies etc) and sign NAPs and/or trade deals with them. Check this stuff every turn in the early game, relations can change quite rapidly.

2. Stop pissing people off. Hopefully you're already not declaring war on people with a bunch of allies, but this could easily be expanded to those with really good relations with all their neighbours. Acting against a faction lowers your standings with all factions that like them, so aim to attack the unloved first. Trespassing and agent abilities count, as well as the more obvious stuff like straight out attacking them.

3. Don't bite off more than you can chew. This means you should generally finish off a faction before moving to the next instead of just grabbing a few choice provinces from a load of groups. This also means you shouldn't take more land than you can protect. If you can only protect one province initially then that's fine, raze, sack and raid a neighbour to level up and make cash until you can expand more comfortably. If you have three provinces and one army full of really weak units then you just look like easy and lucrative pickings (because you are!)

4. Don't, uh, pick Morathi. Off the top of my head Tyrion, the Last Defenders and the main Bretonnian faction all have very strong starting positions.

Brets - Sign NAPs and trade with your countrymen while researching to confederate with them. Wipe an orc city early to stop the raids (or farm them for easy XP if you want to turtle for a bit). Consider taking Marienburg's province (The Wasteland) once you have a decent army or two, it's a good earner. Make friends with Reikland/Empire and you only really have to worry about pressure from Norsca in most campaigns.

Tyrion - Make friends with the western side of the island (at least initially), wipe the delfs occupying your province, start conquering counter clockwise one at a time. Remember that you can use influence points to make people like you more.

Last Defenders - Just wreck face tbh.

5. In times of peace it can make sense to fight the enemies of those you want to befriend, even if you have no interest in their land. Once you can spare a decentish army, consider sending it off to bother some distant orcs or rats or w/e, people will love you for it.

6. Generally speaking, attacking 'main' factions is often a bad idea in the early game, they're typically stronger and better liked then the minors. It's also often a good idea to focus on taking over land occupied by your own race first (notable exceptions being wood elves and the dwarves).

[Fel]

Steam shows low hours because I had a gaming laptop and played a lot during train travels (pure offline that is never counted in steam hours), the total war games are quite nice when you need to do something fun for 5+ uninterrupted hours.
It applies more to the first game than this one, in this one I tried tyrion, got wreaked as I explained above and rage quit the game entirely.
Recently I tried the skavens (the easy one) and messed up my priorities (it went bad really quickly after I lost most of my army) and I decided to try to pick a lord based on what I want from it instead of the "difficulty" so I ended up with morathi (I'm not going for her again until I have a better handle at the early game campaign map decisions but her gameplay in battle is pretty much what I wanted).

I'll try the brets or tyrion again since they seem like a good starting point based on the answers so far and I'll put a lot more efforts in the whole diplomacy (I still have the bad habbits from medieval 2 where I played the UK and never bothered with diplomacy, pelting everyone that declared war on me with arrows and artillery but this evidently doesn't work in this game since the AI will try to take advantage of openings a lot more).

Many thanks to everyone for taking some of your time to answer this, especially with many answers pushing the same points but with explanations on why and how.

[Hannibal Barca]

donot turtle , you have to constantly push and destroy your first enemy. Like with Norsca once you defeat Skealling youll get about 10-20 turns of nothing till Brets start sending stack , but you can take that time and attack them at home.

[Ben Argo]

I have a Tyrion guide for the first dozen turns. Hasn't been updated for the latest patch but it should mostly still work.

Add me and PM me for any clarification

[Raider Deci]

Dont stress things. Take your time, build up your provinces. There can be some factions where you need to take the initiative from the start but after that initial war consolidate, dont over-extend

And use your heroes if you have any, either for buffing your army or more importantly scout forward. You need intelligence so you can prepare defences.

Heroes are in my opinion the most powerful units in the campaign, and often grossly overlooked.

[Father Ribs]

Just to clarify, you are playing on normal? You reference watching some Legendary youtube guy...I don't watch LoW so I'm not sure, but Legendary uses a different playstyle than normal difficulty.

Turtling doesn't work unless you have good allies and a good position. Krok'gar has a good start, but strategically he's locked into a small area and by the time you've conqured that corner, Clan Mors, the dwarves or orcs, and the various Tomb Kings are going to be big.

High Elves is the most forgiving methinks, and their armies can hold a city quite well.

If you have to turtle as HE, don't stop until you and your allies own your whole island. Conquer full provinces. HE has a bunch of political choices at the beginning, but long-term you want to be friends with Ariel, Thrace, and Shadow Dude (he takes some work) to confederate their lords. There are two-three different factions on the island, so pick whoever is fighting those nations to target (ie: Calendor is an easy bed, as well as the faction that holds the tower of Hoeth).

First moves: Conquer the entirety of your first province. Practice a few starts to get an idea how far you can push an army, where your enemies are going to come from, who is going to go to war with who. Then you can either work through the inside of the island (attacking toward the Tower of Hoeth), or outside toward Calendor or East to help out that faction that usually gets invaded by zombie pirates.

If you fight the same factions the LL factions are fighting, that will give you a good diplomacy boost. The HE factions without named leaders that you ally with (like the eastern coast faction), you can decide to annex them, but I like to let them stand on their own feet as long as possible since their gold goes farther for armies and province development.

Also, if you are HE, something you definitely want to take advantage of is hiring heroes that reduce building costs and building time. If you want to cheese, three of those heroes in a province will make any building build in one turn and very cheap if not free. Granted...you need to make a lot of those political currency to get those heroes, so save up and when dilemnas happen, choose the one that gives the most political currency.

[Fel]

I know it's been a while but I tried the bretonian lady in the vortex campaign and between the much easier starting position (at your "rear" are two friendly factions and the initial undead you have to fight are incredibly weak against even peasant armies since they completely lack ranged options) it at least started well.

My main concern would be that confederating the brettonian to get the first province put me significantly in the red in income because it gave me 2 extra armies when I could just barely sustain my main army.
Playing armies with mass cavalry requires some learning compared to the "block the incoming melee with your own and pelt them with arrows/spells from the sides".

[KellyR]

Escrito originalmente por Fel:

Well, Tyrion and his army were undefeated (for obvious reasons since nobody nearby has OP units or legendary lords of that ranking near his starting city and his capital is just flooding your coffers with gold) but when armies popped up from 4 different sides I was pushed back all the way to the capital, and after defeating the invading armies in succession there and trying to re-take territory I was betrayed by my allies as well and I just rage-quit the game until recently.
It was in the first weeks after launch so maybe things changed a bit and I am just paying the fact that I mostly picked starting scenarios that are not "easy".

EDIT: It doesn't change the fact that most of it is my fault one way or another, I suck at these games even if I love how they play.

Try playing as the Dreadfleet. Noctilus gets to start on an isolated island in the center of the map, and you never have to conquer and hold anything else if you don't want to, so defending is easy. Just sail around sacking coastal cities and leaving pirate coves behind, it's great.

[Father Ribs]

I've only played one campaign with her, but early on, you don't need more than 2-4 calvary. Until your enemies get high tier, you're perfectly fine with mostly infantry.

Things to keep in mind with her...

- Heroes cost half upkeep. Max your # of heroes!

- Be aware stay below, your peasant cap. You can go over, but just 1 peasant over means you lose the 10% upkeep buff. It's not worth it except on very fast campaigns (ie bulking up armies with fodder troops for sieges).

- It seems that you can make infantry armies very quickly indeed! So don't have standing peasant armies. Make them when you need 'em. Remember the upkeep for a unit after 4 turns is more expensive than building new, barring no upkeep bonuses.

- Unlike other factions, you don't have extra upkeep costs for multiple armies. If you really like to do math, it may even pay to have generals in every province with financial buffs. It also means you can scout with armies which lets you check ruins for free, though they're more vulnerable than agents. There are things you can play with there.

- Vows are majorly important...and don't station knights with leaders who don't have the upkeep reduction vow for that tier of knight. Also, you can make a general/hero invulnerable at a relatively low level if you farm vows (siege with an army of paladins, make seaborne hunter-killer groups, etc.

- Confederating isn't a matter of if you can, but if you want to. Even if you confederate and put yourself in the red, you can cook off excess troops in a siege or just delete expensive units. Again, you can build armies fast, so you only need a core of troops, not standing armies unless at war.

[Imposter]

Bugs in the game, are one the largest problems this game suffers, and why people ‘suffer’ in campaign. Ever try to use NightGoblin fantics ‘special weapon’? It doesn’t work properly, maybe like 30% of the time, and dodgy for damage. It says ‘random’. RANDOM MY ASS when it sits there; does nothing, or never even appear, and corridors? Nope. A slight bump? Nope. There are some broken elements to consider, when playing the campaign. And that’s just one instance. This game is not ‘finished’ in its current state.