The original thread

[tarenor]

hahah oh I know, i'm sorta like the Bank for my Allies and only supporting with Token troops. I sent a stack to aid in the Storm of Chaos against Altdorf and the Waagh against Averhiem cuz geez those ogre waagh stacks are dangerous and spread out after they take the target. What I've done is started creating Strong Points to garrison and resupply my armies Across the Old World. Albion, Brass Keep near Middenhiem, Saratosa, Vampire Coast, part of Estalia and the western coast of Araby. My Goal is to (hopefully and sort of Lore Breaking) vassalize the Dark Elves, After I kill Malekith ofcourse just so I don't have to keep defenses in Naggaroth then open up a front in Norsca to take some of the Pressure off the Empire. And most likely something in the south to aid the Stunties against the Ogre invasion.

[Elite KryPtik]

I'm always afraid to do that, spread out my territories, because I'm always worried about getting backstabbed. Unless you secure actual alliances with your neighbors there, in my experience they always find it necessary to take your region after you save them >

Got a WAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH to defend from on Nuln, which has an ogre stack. Sigmar grant me courage!

[sarpedon21]

if people want to paint the map their faction colour should play a chaos/undead faction or another mod altogether.AI is stupid and doesnt provide any challenge whatsoever so removing the stack spawn script will also remove any challenge from the game.

i played some battles in the 1.5 beta and have seen that the empire has been heavily nerfed across the board,all types of cannon minus the hellstorm rocket battery have lost half their pieces-halbediers lost their spearwall ability and now get slaughtered even against light infantry.
reikland lost their dismounted reiksguard which i believe is a tabletop unit,i dont want to jump to conclusions but the changes seem to have been made having multiplayer in mind.
also dwarven karaks are now blue medieavla castles,in 1.01 they had some very nice custom battlemaps.

[tarenor]

if people want to paint the map their faction colour should play a chaos/undead faction or another mod altogether.AI is stupid and doesnt provide any challenge whatsoever so removing the stack spawn script will also remove any challenge from the game.

i played some battles in the 1.5 beta and have seen that the empire has been heavily nerfed across the board,all types of cannon minus the hellstorm rocket battery have lost half their pieces-halbediers lost their spearwall ability and now get slaughtered even against light infantry.
reikland lost their dismounted reiksguard which i believe is a tabletop unit,i dont want to jump to conclusions but the changes seem to have been made having multiplayer in mind.
also dwarven karaks are now blue medieavla castles,in 1.01 they had some very nice custom battlemaps.

They have been tweaked with Multiplayer in mind, with while not completely lore accurate I suppose. does bring some bit of balance to the campaign. Halberdiers were nerfed I noticed but placing them in guard mode they still act as spear wall basically and can keep the enemy at more or less distance. The whole thing behind State Troops is the they are not suppose to be a match against heavy infantry, but hold the line for gunpowder/knights/greatswords/cannons to do their job. I found making sure they have good veterancy/Armor still makes them hella affective even if not on par as they were in CoW or 1.0. Also I've found with Mortars (one of my fave Arty, while only down to two cannons a unit are still very affective as they can kill 60+ with one shot, as they kill models instead of sharing a healthpool like later Total War games. so having more of them becomes Faaaaaaaaaar OP, despite my love for them. least in my opinion.

[bobachicken 13]

Can confirm the Orc stacks hitting my settlements as Reikland. It REALLY pissed me off at the time, and I ended up just cheating to auto-defeat them. If I wanted doom stacks spawning on my stuff I would play the(far inferior, in my opinion) base mod. Please get rid of that, I came to this mod because it allows you to play freely and go with the flow of the campaign map, without scripted BS spawning everywhere.

Maybe you could keep the spawning armies, but 1. make them rebels instead of faction troops 2. remove the siege order.
Empire Players would still have large armies to fight within their territory and a good reason to attack them, as the spawned army would be raiding the province, but they don't lose secure settlements in the midst of their realm just because of scripted armies and can prepare before attacking them.
Additionally the Ai factions do not have to pay maintenance for these armies

[Elite KryPtik]

Stack spawning, be it rebel or otherwise, is not fair or fun. You can fight huge armies when WAAAAAGGGGHHHHS and Chaos Incursions are called on you, which is almost guaranteed late game if you are playing a dominant Empire faction. Even without that there is plenty of challenge as it is, when the most dominant AI nations bring their armies to bear on you. Having to fight Vampire Counts, Greenskins, Skaven, and and Chaos Undivided all at once, like I currently do, is really challenging and fun. Its enough of a pain in the butt as it is having to deal with the normal passive rebel spawns, which can sometimes be absurdly strong in the Empire.

Also, the huge garrison scripts are still present on some settlements, although I think these are much less unfair than the army spawns immediately besieging your cities.

[tarenor]

Personally I enjoy the spawning. It's Immersive and offers a challenge even if it is a bit unfair. The AI is derp so it's understandable to make up for it by bigger numbers as long as it's done in moderation, which this has done so far reasonably compared to other games and Vanilla. For Example rebels always spawn in Ulthuan as Cult of Pleasure which is completely reasonable and I enjoy because it gives me an excuse to keep small forces situated around ulthuan using the free upkeep. or a beastmen or orc group popping out of the dark woods or mountains, cuz thats what they do. To each their own, but I like it.

[Elite KryPtik]

Yeah the ordinary rebel spawns are perfectly reasonable, and I'm ok with them. The problem I have is with Orc doom stacks appearing in the Empire and immediately sieging towns that I have only 2 battalions in, and other similar bs that is not fair at all, and not fun either. Artificial difficulty is NOT real difficulty, its just plain unafir and boring. So you lose the settlement just for you to take it back after a short time, which FORCES you to divert large amounts of your forces, significantly weakening your front line against the real, tangible threats. All it does is slow down the gameplay. Keep in mind you have 360 turns to take 80, thats right, EIGHTY regions to fulfill your victory conditions. Constantly having to send back armies to retake regions that by rights are yours only slows your progress and makes the campaign boring.

[ThatWhichThinks]

I agree with the idea to make any scripted stacks controlled by rebels and, like rebels, hang around and raid the province/block roads. The problem with spawned stacks as it is is that there is no warning and no action to take to stop it. When there is a Waaagh or Chaos Crusade, you know about it. Factions can declare war at random, but you can send spies into their lands to look for armies that could be threatening. Rebel spawns are random, but not an immediate existential threat (one of the two-stack orc spawns wiped out all of southern Reikland for me).

So, I suggest one of the following changes is made, if possible:
1) Make the scripted spawns rebels. Maybe put them right next to a city to simulate an attack and block trade, but don't actually besiege.
2) Send us a warning (through an event pop-up) about an incoming waaagh/ invasion 4-5 turns in advance. Also, don't spawn so many stacks at once. Two full stacks of high-tier Orcs and Goblins is a tough thing to fight!
3) Tie the scripted spawns to rebel provinces (I have no idea how difficult this would be) and inform the player of the dependencies. For example, Greenskins can periodically spawn in Reikland as long as that one province to the northeast is held by the Greenskin rebels.
4) If none of these changes are feasible, remove the scripted spawns. I was never sitting around bored thinking "if only there were unpredictable spawned armies to ruin all of my plans!".

I think the problem people have with random spawned armies is that so much of the player's deliberate planning is undone for no predictable reason. If the spawned armies were something we could deal with in time (but for which you pay a penalty for outright ignoring), had some warning about, or had some way to combat (so if we ignore the requisite provinces and get the spawned armies it's our own fault) it would be a lot better.


Edit: one random question I wanted to add: why bother using a valuable unit entry for shield-less Eternal Guard (Wood Elves). They are basically just slightly cheaper (but not by enough to matter), inferior variants to their shield-wielding brethren. I would suggest increasing their attack slightly or giving them better armor-piercing capacity to make them not completely useless.

[tarenor]

Add a warning i agree with, but even the rebel factions, but I prefer keeping the spawns and the sieges. We all play how we wish, and the modders will do what they wish. I Just love this mod.

[regnak999]

I agree with the idea to make any scripted stacks controlled by rebels and, like rebels, hang around and raid the province/block roads. The problem with spawned stacks as it is is that there is no warning and no action to take to stop it. When there is a Waaagh or Chaos Crusade, you know about it. Factions can declare war at random, but you can send spies into their lands to look for armies that could be threatening. Rebel spawns are random, but not an immediate existential threat (one of the two-stack orc spawns wiped out all of southern Reikland for me).

So, I suggest one of the following changes is made, if possible:
1) Make the scripted spawns rebels. Maybe put them right next to a city to simulate an attack and block trade, but don't actually besiege.
2) Send us a warning (through an event pop-up) about an incoming waaagh/ invasion 4-5 turns in advance. Also, don't spawn so many stacks at once. Two full stacks of high-tier Orcs and Goblins is a tough thing to fight!
3) Tie the scripted spawns to rebel provinces (I have no idea how difficult this would be) and inform the player of the dependencies. For example, Greenskins can periodically spawn in Reikland as long as that one province to the northeast is held by the Greenskin rebels.
4) If none of these changes are feasible, remove the scripted spawns. I was never sitting around bored thinking "if only there were unpredictable spawned armies to ruin all of my plans!".

I think the problem people have with random spawned armies is that so much of the player's deliberate planning is undone for no predictable reason. If the spawned armies were something we could deal with in time (but for which you pay a penalty for outright ignoring), had some warning about, or had some way to combat (so if we ignore the requisite provinces and get the spawned armies it's our own fault) it would be a lot better.


Edit: one random question I wanted to add: why bother using a valuable unit entry for shield-less Eternal Guard (Wood Elves). They are basically just slightly cheaper (but not by enough to matter), inferior variants to their shield-wielding brethren. I would suggest increasing their attack slightly or giving them better armor-piercing capacity to make them not completely useless.

I 100% agree with this post.

[Julianus Flavius]

When it comes to scripted spawns, I don't mind them as a concept but the way they are executed is important.
If possible, I'd like to see them tied to religion in a province. So, high Vampire religion = undead appearing. Same for Chaos. Also, say if you're playing as the Tomb Kings and you conquer Altdorf, the high Old World Pantheon religion (Along with the region - in the Empire, in this case) should see Empire troops in the rebel armies. In this way, the canny Chaos player could send priests to corrupt a region, causing it to suffer large-scale rebellions. I'm not saying the individual stacks should be huge doomstacks, but that, in the event of a non-chaos player having say 50 or 60 percent chaos in their region will make more chaos rebels spawn than say 5 or 10 percent.
Also, these rebellions should not be in the form of a siege-ready stack appearing and immediately assaulting the settlement. Especially not with siege weaponry. It should be a 5 or 10 unit army appears in the province, and if there's not troops defending the settlement, or if there's enough of these stacks around, then they lay siege like a normal army would.
With regards to randomly appearing orc doomstacks, I would be ok with it if it happened only when a province has a waaagh declared against it (thereby drawing non-aligned, represented by rebels, orcs and goblins to the place in advance of the main, "proppa" waaaagh) and again following the usual rules for armies - that is, needs to lay siege and construct siege equipment, rather than giving them the means to assault as soon as they spawn.

[regnak999]

When it comes to scripted spawns, I don't mind them as a concept but the way they are executed is important.
If possible, I'd like to see them tied to religion in a province. So, high Vampire religion = undead appearing. Same for Chaos. Also, say if you're playing as the Tomb Kings and you conquer Altdorf, the high Old World Pantheon religion (Along with the region - in the Empire, in this case) should see Empire troops in the rebel armies. In this way, the canny Chaos player could send priests to corrupt a region, causing it to suffer large-scale rebellions. I'm not saying the individual stacks should be huge doomstacks, but that, in the event of a non-chaos player having say 50 or 60 percent chaos in their region will make more chaos rebels spawn than say 5 or 10 percent.
Also, these rebellions should not be in the form of a siege-ready stack appearing and immediately assaulting the settlement. Especially not with siege weaponry. It should be a 5 or 10 unit army appears in the province, and if there's not troops defending the settlement, or if there's enough of these stacks around, then they lay siege like a normal army would.
With regards to randomly appearing orc doomstacks, I would be ok with it if it happened only when a province has a waaagh declared against it (thereby drawing non-aligned, represented by rebels, orcs and goblins to the place in advance of the main, "proppa" waaaagh) and again following the usual rules for armies - that is, needs to lay siege and construct siege equipment, rather than giving them the means to assault as soon as they spawn.

And this is even better.

[Elite KryPtik]

It seems allies can still backstab you. I was going about my business dealing with Vampire Counts when Dwarfs, even though they are literally surrounded by enemies and I'm their only bordering ally, decided to attack me. Players can't betray their allies, so thats definitely working, but try and fix the AI if you can. Reikland campaign just got even more interesting, now I'm going to have to kill off the Dwarfs, while simultaneously dealing with Skaven, Greenskins and Vampire Counts. Also, now Stirland is neutral with me, they broke alliance when Dwarfs attacked me, so they're almost certainly going to attack me too :/

[sarpedon21]

AI is hardcoded in all total war games to be stupid and do illogical things,like having 1 city left and not accepting peace or accepting and attacking you the next turn,its hardcoded to make the player no1 enemy for all factions especially on higher difficulty levels.it can be tweaked a bit with scripts but frankly its wasted time better for modders to focus on other things that can be definitely fixed/tweaked(thats my experience with the AI from vanilla/mods im not a modder).

anyone knows if its possible to reintroduce into the game the dwarf custom karaks from 1.01?i guess their models may be still in the game files.

[Cabadath]

So why do the Dark Elves and High Elves share so many buildings? Why are their so many lush and green trees in Naggaroth?

[Elite KryPtik]

It isn't hardcoded, thats just plain incorrect. I know for a fact that AI can be made to be unable to attack allies, because TATW does this, as do all of its submods. It's not a waste of time, because it would help the Empire stand up to Chaos quite a bit if they weren't always attacking eachother(which, granted, they don't seem to do anymore, so kudos to whoever fixed that) There are a multitude of other situations where not having allies backstab you are useful as well, which is why I think it would work so well. It's already halfway implemented with the player being unable to attack allies, all they have to do is fix it for the AI.

[WhiffOfGrapeshot]

The AI is LESS inclined to attack, and even if the Empire factions go neutral or declare war, if you don't hunt them down and instead send diplomats, they'll reform the alliance. Having no permanent alliances is a deliberate feature, since in Warhammer everyone fights each other to some degree, including Empire vs Empire and Empire vs Dwarfs, they just aren't permanent enemies.

[sarpedon21]

hey whiff,glad you are back!

[Jivaro]

Don't take this wrong, but all this, let's call, complains about the random spawn armies make me laugh really hard!
I suppose most of you never tried the base mod CoW, I strongly advise you all to give a go, at least the last Rage of the Dark Gods version, and try to survive a long campaign with any faction .

So nice that our Everchosen, Whiff, is back to enlighten us! I hope that everything is allright.