I think the hardest part of malekais start is the fact that expanding to the north is kind of impossible due to climate so in the early game you either have to have a defensive force to hold them off or go on the offensive and gift the territory to boris so that he can act as a shield faction towards the northeast.

Hipster elves. Cracked me up haha. Good points on vampire counts. Never thought of how good they have aged

I just like the Franz campaign with the Open that Gates decree, just allows me to rush a level 5 Altdorf so quickly, meanwhile the other empire ai is so passive while I have to drag their sorry asses. They can't even flog a dead horse.

When I started an Alith Anar Campaign recently, I was very intimidated by my starting location. Even though I beat Cylostra and the starting Dark elf faction very easily, I took a look around my situation and I was sandwitched between Belakor, Malekith, Taurox, Valkia, SIgvald and Hellebron. I breathed in, realized that this region isn't safe to build up because anyone at any point can raze my exposed settlements and beelined straight to Ulthuan after the first fights, and took Nagarythe and smashed N'Kari, to have a stable foothold in the North. Then I returned and took everyone on, one step at a time. Reclaim Nagarythe as fast as possible, before Avelorn does. It is your rightful capital after all. That's the secret to this campaign.

@astari24

10 күн бұрын

I have done that, but I have also taken them all on at once and won. It wasn't easy, but it was way more gratifying as an accompliment

@SkottVFX

10 күн бұрын

@@astari24 playing whack'a mole trying to defend a coast from every possible direction with 2 armies forever doesn't seem so gratifying to me. Why make things harder for myself? the game does it already

@astari24

10 күн бұрын

@@SkottVFX You win the long game of chess on a harder difficulty. Maybe you are not a Total WAR Veteran like myself, but I need a challenge. Going to Ulthuan is like putting that campaign on Easy campaign/easy battle difficulty. I have done it 2-3 times and it was zero fun Playing whackamole for a bit, you should eventually be able to create a 3rd army to place pressure somewhere for them to respond or simply use a weaker, smaller 3rd army as a garrison while a strong army storms into their weakness Two very powerful moves you can use in any campaign 1) Use armies that solely operate from sacking the enemy. This will pay for their upkeep. This is a way to field an army that your infrastructure cannot sustain itself 2) Use ambush on weak regions that the enemy wants to sack. Ensure you are within reinforcement range of your town. Or just simply ambush along the border WITHIN your territory so that you replenish after the battle, but BEFORE getting back to your turn

@SkottVFX

10 күн бұрын

@@astari24 Won't read all that. Instantly ignored after the "I am a veteran and you are not" comment. But sure, have fun

@astari24

10 күн бұрын

@@SkottVFX Take care young man. You will go far in life with that attitude.

Chorfs are great campaigns for veterans! Unfortunatley I played them so much I can't really do it anymore without getting bored. I do agree that Vlad is a difficult one now, in most timelapse tests for immortal empire Reiland, Nuln and the dwarfs (minus Malakai) become the dominant empires.

@Grivehn

14 күн бұрын

Id say Vlad was always difficult. You have no natural allies anywhere nearby, and a whole lot of enemies. You can befriend Chaos or Greenskins, but its a tenous alliance at best the AI will seek to get out of, even if you manage to keep it for a while. Replacing Gelt for Elspeth didnt make it any easier for sure. Nor did it the fact the world opened to the east, instead of cozying up in the mountains back when it used to be the edge of the map.

@Derp_Skilz

12 күн бұрын

Vlad as a ll is so strong that it all does'nt matter. You just have to manually fight battles.​@@Grivehn

@Grivehn

12 күн бұрын

@@Derp_Skilz He cant be in all places at once. But I agree that manually fighting (not like autoresolve leaves you another choice) vampire battles yields much better results. Him having vanguard is also huge, sadly its just him afaik.

Appreciate you Costin. Keep it coming.

I think for the vampire counts it really hinges on who you deal with first. I rolled over Elspeth early and easily on VH/VH as I thought she would be the biggest threat and then ran into a never ending flood of all the slayers which did test me for a fair bit.

I tried Drahzoath on very hard / very hard once. I started out by trying to eliminate Stretch, and while it was slower than expected, Grimgor declared war on me and proceeded to blockade my convoys with powerful armies. To make things worse, the ogres rolled in on my unprotected capital and lost me the game

@IroskTheOrc

14 күн бұрын

People actually lose campaigns? 💀

@Grivehn

14 күн бұрын

Pretty much anyone starting on the Darklands does so without allies and gets it really hard, but Drazhoath is a special hell for sure. Lived it myself. Maybe Tretch is worse, because he's such a non-entity of an LL.

@Aisriyth

14 күн бұрын

i've played tons of drazhoath campaigns and i generally disagree with anyone who thinks they are hard, Chaos Dwarfs are only hard for maybe the first 20 turns and then your economy starts rolling and it gets dumb how strong they are. I think a lot of peoples issues with chaos dwarfs particularly with Draz is literally grimgor. I've made it a habit of making sure he is controlled or killed ASAP regardless of who I play but Zhatan and Astragoth can do it much faster then Draz.

@Derp_Skilz

12 күн бұрын

​@@Aisriythagreed. There are no difficult campaigns in this game tbh. It is a shame..

Love the video and I tried a Malakai campaing last week and boi is Malakais campaign roughhh. Taking out Thrott early is essential but then you have to instantly deal with Throgg but when your army moves west, the Chaos Dwarfs from the east says hi. Then once Throgg is dealt with, Wulfrick declares war on you, and to the North Epidemius declares war on you and the Dark Elves also hate you but conquering the northern territories suck cause its uninhabitable. Man, my first time in this campaign was miserable. Patch 5.03 just dropped so I'm gonna give Malakai another shot

This is a great video. I’d love to see it done for Old World too.

I absolutly agree with about everything you said about malakai, I had to play with close to 0 or even negative income for most of the early stages because of the costant aggression for all sides. It was nontheless the most fun I had in a long while Tipp: make sure to take Hell Pit at turn 5 and straight go to Azazel after, the problem with this is you need a second army to ward of Throgg

@Grivehn

14 күн бұрын

Agreed and its pretty much how I did it myself. Killing those two means you pretty much wont have to worry about your south, and can expect a strong Kislev to (if the AI gods willing) aid you on the Chaos North at least. Malakai having the heroes of Gotrek, Felix, Ulrika, starting slayer hero and Garadrim is a really powerful core, and rushing the Spirit of Grungni to not disappear makes Malakai's army (whatever that army even is) pretty much unbeatable. The problem is indeed he cant be in all places at once. Your other armies will look like chumps in comparison, even though dwarfs are anything but. A good enough midgame stack can and will autoresolve most things the baddies throw at you cuz... dwarf autoresolve goes brrr. But there is not a lot of fun in that necessarily. Malakai is kinda forced between putting out fires and dealing with his adventures for a good while.

Let me tell you. I played malakai managed to get first 4 age of reckonings to the max on Legendary/Very hard i had 65k grudges thorgrim had double of mine :D and i think i was doing pretty well. So yeah they need something to change because it feels weird playing dwarves rn. It's better if the other dwarves are doing bad because its going to be easier to confederate and even if the faction is destroyed you can still confederate them and revive them.

@nicky640

14 күн бұрын

You know what? The rework just launched. Gonna play it now 😊

N'kari has a unique way of play i really love: you can start ANYWHERE on the map ! you can move from turn 1, 2 or 3 to bretonnia or even northern chaos wastes (even rushing all landmarks there !) so you can move and settle elsewhere and play a real new campaign ! => and yes i hate ulthuan

I did a Malakai run on VH recently and while it was crazy and fun, it also was a bit annoying. Often you are just hunting the next big threat and the territory you are operating in is super huge, it's a bit whack a mole style.

Keep up my dude

0:54 this

Empire campaign is now easy mode. I intentionally have made it harder by taking Marionburg at the start. I felt like WTH, might as well take Bretonnia too. Wiped Hemmler out and a few other Brets. Went up and buried Belakor in a tomb. Started a new army to liberate Ulthuan from evil scum. I now have a 3rd army that is beating Vlad into submission with the Empires best Helblasters and Nuln riflemen while Karl Franz is taking a vacation up north to subdue Norsca relieving pressure from the West of Kislev so they can stabilize and push out northeast Legendary campaign difficulty, normal battle difficulty

Funnily enough, in my first campaign returning to total war I played Drahzoath. And sure enough, grimgor was wiped out by the AI by turn 35. There goes my 1/1000. Pity is was on normal difficulty

It's funny because in my campaign with gelt Grimgor declared war on me just before I teleport to the empire and my big bro from Cathay destroyed is faction by turn 40 all by himself 😂

Playing Tamurkhan now. So next one is Karl Franz I guess 😅

Just finished Malakai campaign and after taking Hellpit on turn 4/5 it was pretty much smooth sailing. Yeah a lot of stuff. Coming for you but that is just more experience. Maybe first 10 turns is pretty hard.

Nice nice !

Little feedback I would like to provide is that maybe the excessive saturation of the video could be culled a little. I understand you're likely playing with post processing like Reshade or others but on video the colors are cranked up to 11 :D

I still think Kairos is one of the hardest campaign starts out there. @ Costin Can you still confed Sathorael early? I restarted the campaign like 5 times cause i cannot fight Teclis early within the first 3 turns until Sathorael gets whiped out. It feels like an early fight vs. Teclis in ToD is harder than before.

@dawidwozniak8196

14 күн бұрын

Tried a Kairos campaign once and the thing is... you almost don't need units, because of how strong your spellcasters are. The only challenge I've encountered was defeating Teclis, but that's only one hard battle, in most other battles enemies were half-dead already when they reached my units because of how many spellcasters Tzeentch can put in one army. I recommend 3 spellcasters per army (you will still have enough winds of magic to cast spells with them constantly), 6 pink horrors, and the rest some meat shields to protect the horrors and maybe flank the enemy. Place yourself as far from the enemy as possible, fly over the enemy with your flying casters and massacre them with spells. If they are waiting for reinforcements put a caster or two there and play vortex and bombardment spells on their spawn point. You can even put Kairos in melee for a short time with his damage reduction ability to allow enemies to blob around him and kill more of them with spells. Most of the battles I've fought had minimal unit losses, so I haven't felt weak Tzeentch replenishment at all and even with 3 spellcasters I was quite often ending a 4 minute battle with 80+ winds of magic, that's how insane their magic replenishment is.

Malakai's campaign was super easy for me, the units he has are just so broken early game you can solo all bad guys by rushing them. Throt, Azazel, Norscans, Astragoth and Daniel were dead by turn 35...

Nkari rule is, always fight in the trees... the elfs are f shooting you and if they fight you there, most of them arent strider

Did this man just call ogres a difficult race? Yeah they are boring but imho they are pretty strong, especially leadbelchers

Ah yes. Settle 140.000 grudges in 10 turns or no growth for you! The mechanic is so dumb. Why tf does it count potential grudges on the other side of the map i would take several ages to get access to.

@Costin_Gaming

14 күн бұрын

Yeah it can be a tad ridiculous, but 140k? I've never gotten higher then 40 and only when I had vision on a lot of the world.

@theburningnurse1210

14 күн бұрын

​​@@Costin_Gaming my fist campaign with malakai got me to more than 100k grudges by my 5th age of reckoning. With only belegar confederated and no vision over any other dwarf faction or distant allies or wars. Didn't even have knowledge over belakor or sigvaul. Dwarves are basically broken until they fix that

@maesde

14 күн бұрын

I played a RoC campaign with Malakai and while I definitely liked the idea, I was twice able to reach 4th level (almost maximum once), then twice 3rd lvl, and twice 2nd which is a bother. Then I chose to skip it once, and was able to finish the campaign by then. I really like the idea, but to avoid it being a huge bother, there needs to be either more time, or lower requirements or both. Or perhaps rework so lvl 2 gives you neutral bonuses.

@evolveking175

14 күн бұрын

They just hotfixed it a couple hours ago

Wtf is this quality?!