I'd rate dwarfs higher more mid tier due to it depending on the faction you chose and when and if you fight them. I've seen some insane ai doomstacks early game too like round 12
When I recently played as Avelorn and crossed the Phoenix Gate, N'kari still had only his starting settlement and his only army was garrisoned in it. I declared war on him, one battle and poof, a legendary lord gone.
Playing Eltharion and picking off N'kari early and throwing him in the forever box makes him quite a nice little exp farm for lords and heroes early since he can get quite scary for you units when he has a few levels. Getting rid of him though makes the rest of the lords and heroes a much bigger push over.
Yeah, I like this a whole lot better. I like the campaigns, but. The constant ' thank you for your superchat' interruptions make it so incredibly unfocused that I can't watch them.
I've actually seen N'Kari become one of the biggest threats I've ever seen in a total war game. He had taken all of Ulthuan and vassalized Morathi and Malekith so basically all of Ulthuan, Nagaroth, and Lustria were controlled by N'Kari.
Remember when they updated vampire count ai to be hyper aggressive and all of a sudden the empire would just get rolled by them early game? They should do that again for certain factions.
What they should do is build a system like Unnatural Selection into the game for players to customize their threats. Add some preset configs for people who don't know specifically what they want.
If I remember correctly, didn't they change this, so playing as Karl Franz wasn't the most painful thing in your life? Also they should've kept it because that's what Vampire Counts do.
I would add Wood Elves to Extremely Dangerous, just because of their armies. They are the single most powerful faction on the battlefield when controlled by the AI, bar none. Because the AI can micro 40 units at the same time without a problem, it is perfectly suited to take advantage of the strengths of the WE armies. When you go up against them, they scatter and take up 20+ shooting positions with insanely high missile damage units and by the time you cycle through them and click on all of them for one of your units to attack, the first-third units on the flank you started the clicking on are already dead, because they got distracted by whatever bullshit and 2 waywatchers eradicated them in 3 volleys. Getting rid of them is a massive pain in the ass, they may not have a lot of territory, but they are super aggressive. They will punch you in the face, send annoying armies out and when you get to them, they are sitting in a settlement with a garrison of 20 units with a full stack on top of that. Fuck those guys.
This is why you retreat all your imperial and bretonnian armies until the WE armies meet your new cavalry doomstacks. Alternatively, you install a playable minor factions mod and play as Scourge of Aquitaine just to f* with all elf factions. Exaggerated ofc but you get the idea.
The bloated corpses explode when they have less than 100% hp, due to how in auto resolve you can now have bloated corpses end battles with 10-20% hp for some reason. Just make sure to regen them fully if you want to use them
The reason they'll have about 10-20% hp is the self revive mechanic all Vampire troops have. As for the blowing up part, that only happens at 20% hp and below. So if your campaign is still early and your bloated ones come back, they'll always be in their self destruction threshold for a turn or two.
As a Dwarf-Fan I kind of miss the old times in WH2, where the dwarfs under AI-control will start to paint the map in the late-game That was fun to watch
The dwarfs do that in my recent campains. Last time, i played as skarbrand and just walked over to cathey and conquerd it. Now the dwars send like 10 armys to me but only if i get near them.
I hated the Dawitide. Whenever i consolidated as Empire and went south to help my bearded brothers, everything south of the Border Princes was already blue and they were sitting at strength level 1 comfortably around turn 60. It made for a very boring late game when you played order factions.
The hilarious thing about kugath's starting position is that his faction, all about live and stuff, is immediately stalled by the tank enhanced unliving hordes of stagnancy that is hellman ghorst. To see a faction filled with such life and joy as Nurgle get stiffled by what on all accounts might be the truest avatar of german bureacracy is both sad AND hilarious. Sadrious.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 I’ve done that before, but by the time I kill their army, my army is too weak to make them crumble and then those two just kill whatever I have left by themselves.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 done that before once. Turns out with their army entirely destroyed the duo still stand tall and kill everyone anyway. Now I make sure to have some fire damage when fighting them be it Bretonnian archers, knights of the blazing sun, or a fire caster and buffing my units with the sword of Rhuin
Tomb Kings are an easy A tier Pros: Basically guaranteed and zero maintenance Good monsters for most armies Cons: Pretty bad as actual military allies You will probably have to give them a settlement or two to get good units, they're passive af usually
In tearms of units: (edit added mostly DE, changes for VCounts and Beastmen) - Empire - Hellstorm Rockets, Outriders and heavy cav - Kislev - War Bear Riders, Streltsi - Bretonnia - cavarly, a lot of cavarly and flying cavarly - Cathay - worse Empire units, because Ying and Yang mechanic won't stack with your main faction troops. Maybe Teracota Sentinel? - Dwarfs - Longbeards, Ironbreakers and Troll Torpedoes, Slayers if you have high unit replenish - High Elves - Sisters of Avelorn for low-ap armies, their units are mostly too expensive to be useful - Wood Elves - Waywatchers, Sisters of the Thorn, Treemen Dark Elves - Shades, Sisters of Slaughter, Black Guard of Naggarond, Hydra and Doomfire Warlocks - Ogres - Stonehorns, Leadbelchers, Scrap Launchers and Ironblasters - Greenskins - Black Orcs, Trolls, Rogue Idols, Doom Diver Catapults - Lizardmen - monsters, most of them - Tomb Kings - mostly constructs, maybe Tomb Guard - Vampire Counts - Mortis Engine, maybe Zombie for the Empire (but keep in mind that their undead aren't that great without Vampire/Nehekara magic) - Vampire Coast - Depth Guard, Deck Gunners, artillery and Necrofex Colossus - Norsca - Mammoths and Skinwolves - Skaven - Weapon Teams and Plagueclaw Catapults - Warriors of Chaos - useless, because you won't have Warband mechanic in other races - Beastmen - high-tier units from herdstone, they are all free to unkeep - Daemons of Chaos - mostly Greater Daemons and Soul Grinders - Khorne - Bloodletters, Bloodthirsters if you are lucky - Nurgle - not sure if you give you anything at all, didn't check - Tzeentch - their units work quite well in their own faction, but I don't find them useful in the rest armies. Maybe Pink Horrors for WoC - Slaanesh - Seekers of all kinds
I would have liked to see the rogue armies being covered like this. I've had so many disasters where one will spawn deep in my territory midway through a game and then blast a settlement immediately, while it's being upgraded to t5 and bork my economy and tech and force me to recruit a whole non-trivial army to deal with them. But some are worse about it and some are worse to clean up.
I've had a few rogue armies completely derail my campaigns when they strike early enough. Yuck. Hate that. But when they hit me later in the campaign, it's just a nuisance. It never does enough damage to my income to cause problems, but I *do* have to build an army or two near them to put out the fire eventually, although in my current campaign I've left two rogue armies wandering around deep in my territory for about 20 turns, now. They seem to like sacking something once, raiding a few turns, and then sacking something else. So I just repair and rebuild, and... *shrug*. It is what it is. They'll die when my next army passes through.
@@NileRoan I had that happen to me when I was playing Thorek Ironbrow somewhen in the mid game. And fkin hell, loosing few levels in dwarfs cities hurts a lot. Not to mention that it completely derailed my income as I was pushing it when fighting Clan Mors (quick war to avoid them getting too strong). They spawned 2 armies, raided Khorne and went berserk in my province. Pain.
Yeah WoC kinda KILLED any chance of the empire lasting longer than 20-30 turns. I've never not seen Festus and Vilitch just eat whoever they spawn next to
@@spartacus6256 To my experience that really depends on how the Vampires, Empire and Festus interact. I have seen Festus picking a fight with the Vampires several times and for whatever reason the Empire and the VCs tend to focus on killing Festus instead of fighting each other if that happens.
There seems to be a few coin flips in the early game for certain factions and whether or not they snowball wildly out of control, N'Kari being one of the big ones. In my experience, when you play as someone who starts very far away, by the time you make it to Ulthuan they're either long dead or owns the donut.
Yeah, he can snowball like no faction i have ever seen. I got to him once around turn 120 and he had whole donut vassalized, Morathi and Malekith as well and they conquered half of Lustria by that time.
My largest campaign has been Khalida for this exact reason. You go from dwarves and skaven which are quite difficult early (dwarves difficult early on because lack of armor pen early for tomb kings) and then go into lizards and eventually tzeentch with their annoying teleport stance that makes war absolutely brutal. It's a great campaign with difficult enemies at every stage of it!
Not sure what is wrong with my Ulthuan but 6 campaigns in a row the entire donut got overrun by a combination of N'kari, Not Davy Jones and Morathi. (In one of those I was playing sisters and killed Morathi, the other two still burned the entire outer donut and started working on the inside before I arrives and fought them back)
I fairly recently started a campaign as Tor Yvress, and N'kari was wiping the floor with Tyrion and Alariel. Only after I went in to help out did they start actually handling themselves because they were also fighting Not Davy Jones.
I've had the same experience. Which is suprising since he is surrounded by hostile factions, especially the 3956929472 lizards sprouting 4 full armies every turn early game... Very obnoxious to play as and against.
Depending on who, greenskins can be super deadly. Grimgor tends to control everything in the wastelands and mountains of mourn. It is hard to reach and kill off grimgore since he is so isolated from other LLs.
Whenever I play Imrik grimgore is like a monster in a horror movie. I know he's out there, I know he's getting stronger and I know he's coming for me. Its not an if, it's a when. The only question is if I'll be ready to deal with his 4 stacks with attached armies.
Highly situational but disagree on the dwarven thing, they are strong in a similar way in which Empire is strong - networks of alliances, relatively close together on the map, decent army compositions, very strong autoresolve. If I do not start close to them, usually all their legendary lords (except Grombrindal) expand so late game becomes fighting against all of them, from Kislev to Karak Zorn. By that time, their army compositions are quite solid and lords nigh unkillable (shoutout to Thorek). Playing as Valkia I got to Praag and now it is time to fight them all.
Great idea! Very well summarized, and sounds correct for Legendary. Personally Id like to say some of these factions present way more challenge lategame than others. Cathay and Lizards tend to stick around until lategame and occupy their respective starting zones (that if Miao can deal her threats... not always ofc.) Greenskins and Skaven also often rule over Badlands area, or maybe even Ghorst does. Empire rarely tends to absolutely fall from what I seen, despite the constant threats from most sides. Dwarfs also can stick around in their mountains and become a nuisance to remove. Naturally Chaos also wont kick the bucket on their own - Chaos Wastes almost always has to be wiped by the player if he is so inclined. Elves still a threat even lategame, not easy for anyone to wipe Naggarond, Ulthuan or Athel Loren. In turn, those guys wont be up to too much either though usually. Malekith just cant wipe out Valkia for over 200 turns in my games. Neither can Sigvald. Not even if the two unite against Valkia. AI just cant handle attrition well - or at all currently.
Agreed, with Lizards (especially Itza, Hexoatl and Ghosts of Pauhax) they have always been something of an all or nothing, where if they can take out a few key factions early on they will steamroll their corner of the map, but if they can't deal with those threats early they will get annihilated. I've also noticed that Clan Skryre almost never expands much, but if they survive the first 20-30 turns they will make Skavenblight almost unassailable.
@@The_Industry Aye, Lustria felt pretty balanced to me in Immortal Empires. I dont play on legendary though. Lizards also often get to war with the two humans, thus cement their demise. I've seen Skrolk and Rakarth get out winning of Lustriabowl just as much as Lizards. Skavenblight is a good spot to defend, with the nearby 2-3 capitals included. In Wh2, overwhelming force killed Ikit mid/lategame, but now pretty much no faction can scrounge up 3-4 armies just to take him out. Especially since those threats come from the Old World via land, but Skavenblight would be easier to attack from the sea. I have seen Brets and WE come close, but only seen Skavenblight fall once I believe in Wh3.
"The dwarves are not a threat, unless they come out in the endgame crisis..." Guess which race has come out for me in that event in the last two campaings...
I'd say that Daniel is at least "Dangerous" only because of the tzeenches ambush stance he can use. It's super annoying and really makes war against him harder
I think I will put the dark elves to be at tier "dangerous". Most campaigns I play, Naggarond is super aggresive. They wipe out and conquer the whole donut if not then Morathi will come with her Slaneshi corruption
In 2 of my 3 recently played campaigns, Nkari was an absolute powerhouse. Once he has a chance to get the sword of khaine, he'll just roll through ulthan like It's nothing. I actually saw him fighting morathi alongside malekith, it was quite funny. The same with lizardmen, Alberic and Marcus was in military alliance with GorRok and tehenhauin agaist mazdamundi lmao.
The only time the High Elves have been a pain for me is when playing as Noctilus, the Galleon's Graveyard is now closer to Ulthuan and all the HE declare war early and constantly sail to you
As a tzeentch enjoyer, I’d put lizardmen in the top. Between them summoning armies of dinos and the fact that the AI can just deploy blessed units like crazy makes them very aggravating to play against.
Thorek was a significant headache for me in a recent Skarsnik campaign (Encountered him in the early game with low level heroes and no monsters), as well as in an older Ku'gath campaign. I also still feel a sense of dread whenever I see Belegar and his ancestral heroes, but that might just be painful memories from WH2, rather than anything I've experienced in WH3.
Legend, this is the exact kind of video that helps me most. My friends love talking about stuff like this and it helps me create more discussion around the game and helps inform me on what AI to worry about. Also, vid suggestion, I would LOVE a Thorek Ironbrow campaign guide!!
An interesting list and I'd agree with most choices - vampire counts hold a very special place to me ever since a certain Blue Rose is doing everything to make my life as misserable as possible whenever I start near him. In later stages he is usually still alive and thriving and he tends to revive 80% of his armies all the time while being able to inflict ridiculous damage on infantry based armies. Skrag sometimes spirals out of control taking Estalia and the northern Wastelands which is quite the sight to behold. While experimenting a bit with the Slaaneshi Lords (Azazel and N'kari) I found Throgg and the Tzarina to be ridiculously strong pawns to use - the latter is able to regain control over Kislev and Reikland if you give her just a little bit of breathing room - even as a one settlement force vasall. I relay hope they tinker a bit with the diplomancy of AI factions, while the Elves where super dangerous because they confederate quickly I realy miss encountering "big" fusions of multiple legendary lords - maybe add this as an endgame scenario or make a ridiculous one like all non player human races get claimed by a Slaanesh faction as Vassals.
I’d agree wholeheartedly just off of your experience with the game. Only recently have I felt comfortable enough to up my difficulty to H/H. And even then I still struggle quite a bit with certain factions. Don’t think I have enough of experience with the game to really denounce any of your choices. Good video though and very informative! Keep up the good work Legend!
One beastmen faction completely destroyed my Kairos campaign. We were allies, and he was near the area in the south pole where the Slaanesh faction is. That province was my money making one, and I had my armies in the southlands and Lustria trying to take the fight to my enemies (Teclis and the Lizzys). The beastmen betrayed me and declared war. They started razing all my money making settlements. Tzeentch is pretty poor to begin with, so that completely crippled me. I have held a grudge against them ever since.
Dwarfs gave me some hell in my Ogres campain. It was easy at the begining, so I didn't rush to destroy them, just raiding and sacking. Then they came with 5 full stack armies full of irondrakes, gyrocopters and anti large - and made my campaing an nightmare. I was hoping you put them a little bit higher, but yes, it was acctually the only campain I've got problems with them .
in my current Imperial campaign, I was busy fighting Norscans, Greenskins, Ogres and Sylvania, as one tends to, then killing the Tomb Kings endgame event. During, Reikland dragged me into a war with the Dark Elves and N'kari, they had apparently taken over all of Ulthuan together. I am finally beating them and reclaiming Ulthuan with Franz and couronne, and i AM a new player, but the Dark Elves put a hell of a fight.
11:57 wasn't there the opposite situation, where in almost every campaign cult of pleasure was roflstomping Ulthuan by turn 50 and then sailing to the old world
Joyously I had allied with them early in a modded playthrough, but I saw Morathi and Malekith absolutely dominate in one of my campaigns, Malekith had reached all the way to Daniel with all of the north consolidated and Morathi had swept up the entirety of Ulthuan and into Brettonia by turn 100. Really brutal stuff.
14:50 In my most recent Malus campaign, I had conquered Naggarond, confederated Morathi, vassalized several Chaos groups and also conquered all of Ulthuan. I was now staging a 3-pronged invasion of Brettonia/Empire, which was going well. As my southern prong was finishing conquering the regions all around Skavenblight and preparing to invade the mountains and Wood Elf territories, Itza declared war on me. This was several turns after the Endgame Crisis started(Vampires), and it was here I noticed that Itza was Strength Rank 1. I was 3, behind Sylvania and Reikland. *Four* full Lizardmen armies sailed up to my 3 battered armies and their supporting Black Ark and absolutely rolled them up. Panic-built 3 more armies and re-recruited the Black Ark and sent it all down to discover Itza had diverted south to absolutely SMASH Settra's coastline. I conquered two of their cities, then basically sold one of their provincial capitals back to them to secure peace. A few turns later I gave them the other city(and severals tens of thousands of gold) for a non-aggro pact. Lizardmen scare me.
Playing as Drazhoath recently, Kugath was a MAJOR problem for me, he took most of the Mountains of Mourn and some surrounding territories, as well as spreading out to the Plain of Bones by ship. Kept sneaking in and taking settlements in my core provinces, too. Didn't finally defeat him until around turn 120-130. Helman Ghorst was a complete non-entity however, I never really saw him except very early game.
I agree with the ranking here. Especially with the skaven, early game they'll throw endless full stacks of skaven slaves and clan rats which you lack the crowd control to deal with, they also have strong heroes and lords, and the AI is really good at using lore of ruin lightning spells, a single faster can easily wipe out 5 or more of your units from long range. And if you leave them alone, their late game units are also very powerful, and it's very difficult to flank their artillery due to the speed they can deploy clanrats to tarpit your cavalry. AND there's dwellers below and their frequent ambushes on top of that. Tzeentch are also difficult to deal with, but I still give skaven the prize due to the number of stacks they deploy and the speed they can build them.
Everyone talks about how the beastmen don’t do anything, but in my last high elf campaign he had been running circles around naggaroth. There was only like 3 factions left with only a couple cities on the coast. Even Malekith only had one city left a ways away from his capital. It was nuts.
I play on normal and I've had the opposite experience with Dwarfs, they recruit a lot and just sit in their strongest city, I need so much force to take them out that I'd rather not antagonise them. Lizardsmen give me the most trouble in the early game, Saurus Warriors chew up my infantry while my archers are busy shooting a dinosaur. Also they invade aggressively but their home base is in an intravesible, swamp-ridden jungle full of even more Lizardmen.
totally agree with the weakness of the tomb kings, with repanse turn 60 i manage to beat two decent armies with good units like tomb guards or ushabti, using only 1 stack with tier 2 cavalry and a life wizard, and being in forced march.
Yeah. Really the only risk is if they have a few of their big monsters, like Tomb Scorpions or maybe a Necrosphynx. Even then, Tomb Kings as a whole, as an AI, are kinda super weak to player shenanigans. The main problem with fighting Tomb Kings, though, is that they're usually pretty reliable allies later in a campaign for trade deals or getting their good units in your armies
I’d put WoC at extremely dangerous because of how strong their armies are (on the battlefield and auto resolve), their very strong garrisons, and the fact that they occupy a lot of red territory for non-chaos factions so conquering them is time and resource intensive. You’ll also have to deal with their vassals if you go up against one. It’s one of those races that becomes a huge nuisance in the late game if you let them get there.
In my experience dark elves tend to still be pretty dangerous. For example in my last Sigvald campaign naggarond had by turn 80 taken almost all the north western territories, murdered Grombrindal and Khatep, and put Valkia on the back foot to where she only had her capital and a few cities of the mung norscans left. And I never got to see how much of lustria they actually took but it was enough that I never saw the end of it as far south as I went. It’s not like that every time but it happens often enough that I took notice
This is pretty much what I expected except with the dwarfs and tomb kings swapped with beastmen and ogres. As the ogres I never see get any camps going so get stuck with low tier units and the beastmen seem to just infinitely siege one settlement and wait for you to some and swat them away and that’s it. While the tomb kings are a pain to finish off as they end up with a pile of full stacks at their capital at the end of you don’t kill them quickly and the dwarfs are just a bit harder in early game before you get lots of armour piercing.
a few of these faction's biggest or only weakness is how little friends they have near them, which is often the saving grace against skaven and the vampirates.
I disagree with a few but, faction specific. The Dwarves annoy the shit out of me as Sylvannia. I go for wipe them out, and they under-pass travel beyond mountain ridges, forcing me to return to save my gibbets lol. Also, Durthu when playing as gelt or isabella, LOVES to enter the empire territory and will wait until you have no armies near him to declare war. I frequently see Drycha in the mountains near lahmian sisterhood's settlements as well. Morathi also tends to expand towards Ulthuan, and can be a major threat if you aren't paying attention to your west coast
I must have gotten the exception for N'Kari. I was Imrik, so I started relatively far away, but N'Kari vassalized Morathi early, and by the time I reached Ulthuan, Tyrion and Caledor had maybe two settlements between them.
I miss the days of Warhammer 2 when certain factions would naturally rise into superpowers. Sure, it was usually the same factions like Dark Elves or Dwarves or qhafjqrhrq Grimgor, but it was always an interesting challenge to overcome in the later stages of the game.
Funnily enough I'd say the dwarves can actually be a challenge - I have seen them confederating quite a bit, including legendary lords, which means that they can occasionally snowball like they did in Warhammer 2 if not whiped out early. In my campaigns Belegar Ironhammer in particular starts confederating other dwarves quite early on fairly regularly. That said - I think the "legendary lords don't confederate" thing is more of a Legendary difficulty mode issue because they definetly do confederate on Normal and hard (my preferred difficulties depending on the campaign I'm playing).
I hope the first DLC after Chaos Dwarfs is normal Dwarfs, they need a rework + an actual roster update. It's been two games since they've received one!
As a new player who tried playing Tzeentch, I found out how scary Oxyotl was the hard way (I decided to conquer the Slaanesh faction first and expected my alliance with the other Tzeentch faction to do something)
Lustrian lizardmen are nuts. They chimp out often, consolidate quick and start sailing out. They also make dumb random war declerations. Naggaroth rarely ever dominates because of being in the middle of a free for all so Cult of Pleasure often is the one chimpin out and conquering Ukthuaan along with Nkari and Dreadfleet.
I was turn 125 in a Kroq'Gar campaign and as I was pushing north through Brettonia. As I captured a settlement, it revealed nearby N'kari lands bordering it with SIXTEEN full 20-stacks all clumped up around 2 settlements... Then the next turn the vampire end game crisis happened and EIGHT MORE full stacks showed up on both of my other flanks, as well as another 4 stacks in the middle of my economic centered southern region..... I was like BRUHHHH. Took like 20 turns to stamp that out.
All of that depends. As a noob I've been run over by Beastmen, Steam rolled by Tomb Kings, High Elves, Lizardmen, & trolled by Skaven into a peace treaty. But thats only part of the story. I'm glad to have found out how to approach Tzeentch though, right on time.
I'd like to disagree with dwarfs, if you play as darklands/southlands factions that will go up against dwarfs, if they win skarsnik, they usually have so many towns they can push out a full stack in 1/2 turns, and i hate dealing with em, had lost battles where i wipe their army but their lords/heroes survive and don't break, had to use multiple peasant archer or skavenslave units just to melee them for 10 mins on max speed.
My most Skarsnik campaign had me have a very lucky experience against Queek and Grimgor. I made defensive allies with Queek and Grimgor before the two met each other, so Queek helped me take over the Southlands and start moving into the World's Edge Mountains... Until Grimgor declared war on Queek and asked me to join. I joined Grimgor, so this helped my rep with him and now gave me free reign to take over some of the settlements Queek previously took. Many, many, many rounds later Grimgor took over about a 4th of the world map on his own and my rep with him got good enough that I could do a confederation without my previous intentions to find him, backstab him, and do the Greenskin confederation. Holy shit I have so many settlements and armies now that just a single turn can take 5+ minutes.
I can generally relate to this tier list a bunch. As I'm slowly starting to become a bit better at the game, I've realized that certain factions do have a tendency to grow very big when controlled by the AI with no player nearby to stop them, but are not actually that hard to deal with if you have to fight them. I surely one hundred percent agree that Vampire Counts can be very annoying to fight because of raising the dead. But obviously, it'd be a bit of a different tier list just going by which factions tend to grow big when controlled by the AI. I'm curious what type of big AI blobs people tend to encounter, so everyone, feel free to chime in. From my experience, the factions that I do find to have a tendency to grow big when controlled by the AI are these: -one, often multiple of the Orks (except Grom for some reason, I don't see him blobbing much, maybe it's his starting position?) -High Elves are a special case, they tend to be kind of strong when attacking them because they chill on Ulthuan and appear as a fairly united front, but when they attack you it's usually not as bad in my experience, so they dont blob a whole lot -Dark Elves. I find that unattended, it's very often either Malekith or Morathi becoming pretty big. -I haven't had much trouble fighting them when I did (as you say), but Settra does have a bit of a tendency to get big in my campaigns -the most common one I've seen, Vlad. Weirdly, the other Vampire Counts not so much, but Vlad...Vlad just blobs all the freaking time in my campaigns. Plus, as mentioned before, he's annoying to fight because of the raising of the dead.
I often found myself having to deal with moderately strong Dwarf armies with a nasty skulker stack when playing Greenskins due to your economic limitations early on, which you can win with but it can take eons to play through each battle successfully that way, and they have underway movement to limit your attempts to strike at their underbelly (or they can return the favor). Otherwise I pretty much agree.
Love it! I find VC very annoying to deal with. Wood elves as well. I dread lizardmen, straight up strong and tough as you said. And Grimgor isn't someone I deal with because I don't want to. Scary Shrek has so much real estate so early on. In midgame It'd take a large unwanted expansion and efforts to shut him down, putting the player at risk, imo. I stay away if I can.
Slaanesh is never a problem unless I'm playing High Elves or a race with good High elf relations. Then they wipe. Playing as Imirik, confed the one faction on Ulth by turn 10. Slaanesh already wiped Yevesse, Chrace, had Alariel on the back foot, and beat Tyrion's armies back to back. Play as a Chaos faction, and all the chaos factions get wiped 20 turns in.
When I play around the north-west of the map (DE, Khatep, etc), Alith Anar usually becomes a huge threat, way above any kind of other HE lord, solely because of his ability to ambush when attacking. I've had situations where I had two lords both in 100% chance ambush stance, and Alith Anar still manages to detect both and ambush them in quick succession with 18 shadow warriors.
Vampire Counts are definitely my most hated faction. Was playing a game as Franz, and Kemmler attacked the fort four times in one turn, allowing him to take it by losing three times but only having like three units to fight on the fourth.
Only time I had problems with Kislev was vs a half-strelsi/half-armored kossar stack in a chokepoint battle as Norsca. Mostly my fault for not prioritizing getting 4 or so chariots so I could time their charge after the initial volley on some trash marauders then overwhelm them in melee. Any other time they were pushovers. I'd also like to add for vampirates to be careful vs their bomb infantry. Had them absolutely demolish some knights with a volley.
I've seen high elves snowball pretty hard when they are a military alliance with the player. I constantly find myself as strength rank 2 when allied with them as the wood elves.
I hope to see a video: Tier List of Trash Units buffed in Warhammer 3. Example: Swordmasters of Hoeth now have martial mastery modified to provide bonuses when above 25% health. They're too fragile to use as Frontline troops; the real value lies in ambushing and carving the enemy flanks. If only they'd get a Regiment of Renown version, one that also grants them magical attacks and frenzy and fear.
The LL that gives me, hands down the most trouble, is Wurrzag. He always seems to have a Waagh going and ample magic to smash my shit up. But it's weird as the AI in my campaigns doesn't seem to perform well against the others, but if I start as Yvreese down there he's a gigantic pain. Oddly enough who I see wipe out dwarfs most isn't him, but Skarsnik.
I mainly play WoC on Hard/Hard difficulty, specifically lot of Festus and Azazel. I find Wood Elves, Dark Elves and Dwarfs to be the most difficult to deal with. Daniel, other WoC, Vampires and Skaven get an honorable mention but never anything I could not handle. Due to my starting positions, I fight Kislev, Empire and Bretonnia very often and find them to be rather easy to deal with.
Skarbrand campaign. Tomb Kings railed me with like 5 armies at a time. Nothing i could do. Meanwhile Skaven kept sacking my capital, so no bloodthirsters for me.
Have to agree with the voices that would put Dark elves in the "Dangerous" Tier at the very least. They have been weakened due to the adding of the chaos teams in the north since Total War 2, BUT still have their Black Arks and still do their raids south. They also have a far better defended homeland than High elves that fewer players have access to - being in a corner has its own value. And in battle, I find it far, far harder to beat a Dark elf army due to their incredible early Darkshards as well as their murderous prowess ability. And honestly - all the Dark elf special character factions are hard to deal with. Lokhir kicks ass in Cathay when I play and Beastlord Rakarth is usually able to dominate the southern part of Lustria. I also think its way too harsh to put the dawi in "No Challenge" category. "Weak" would be fairer (and you can even argue for a weak "Moderately Tough team" maybe maybe, I think personally they are stronger than both Kislev and Slaanesh). They have multiple legendary lords, a strong (but surrounded) position in the mountains and while not super good at backing each other their garrisons are usually quite strong and their main hold well fortified. Beating them takes time, time you sometimes do not have. I think what you are pointing out are more exploits in the code rather that real weaknesses for the factions. Apart from that the list looks fine. Maybe lower Skavens one step to dangerous? Yes, they are a pain, but their field armies are pretty easy to beat..ish and, if you can do the war on your terms, you should be able to slowly reduce their settlements one by one. Honestly, if they are able to ambush you all the time and beat you up like nothing then you are expanding poorly. But i can see the case for the higher tier. And maybe reduce Bretonnia one step. I have so far never seen them snowball and while their starting positions are strong, their expansions are not.
The 2 I would have put a tier higher would have been warriors of chaos and the tomb kings because of their ability to spawn literal armies in as much as 2 turns, they might not be the best armies but they do have lots of them in the mid game
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I'd rate dwarfs higher more mid tier due to it depending on the faction you chose and when and if you fight them. I've seen some insane ai doomstacks early game too like round 12
I think thorgrim added your subscription to manscape to the list of grudges. Hahaha
Nice guide for "Unnatural selection" mod. Many thanks! Great job!
Tzeentch. his time freeze shenaniganses pisses me of. feathered m-fcuker!!!
You should do a tier list for mounts for both LLs, normal lords and hero, rank from must get mounts to makes the lord weaker
When I recently played as Avelorn and crossed the Phoenix Gate, N'kari still had only his starting settlement and his only army was garrisoned in it. I declared war on him, one battle and poof, a legendary lord gone.
Playing Eltharion and picking off N'kari early and throwing him in the forever box makes him quite a nice little exp farm for lords and heroes early since he can get quite scary for you units when he has a few levels. Getting rid of him though makes the rest of the lords and heroes a much bigger push over.
Damn you got lucky
I once saw N'kari lose the attack on chrace, he didn't get taken out, but chrace was still alive by turn 12 when I killed him of
Plus, if you're playing HEs then you're a hard counter to Slaanesh demon factions for sure
Lol I did the same!
As a person not so interested in live streams I have to say I love this Legend's video making era. Keep up the good work!
MAN I wish I could say that I am not-so-interested in Legend's livestreams... cuz I miss them A LOT. :(
@@narzgel_hoi4 Ikr? I miss having the stream on the background while doing some paperwork. 🥲
@@redpanda3339 exactly!
same here
Yeah, I like this a whole lot better. I like the campaigns, but. The constant ' thank you for your superchat' interruptions make it so incredibly unfocused that I can't watch them.
I've actually seen N'Kari become one of the biggest threats I've ever seen in a total war game. He had taken all of Ulthuan and vassalized Morathi and Malekith so basically all of Ulthuan, Nagaroth, and Lustria were controlled by N'Kari.
truly his day in the sun
I guess he is a all or nothing kinda demon 😂
Can happen every once in a while, but in most of my campaigns N'kari was dead by turn 20 to 30.
Sexy demons? In Ulthuan? Surely you jest
In my Kislev campaign suddenly brettonia canceled their allegiance... Turns out N'Kari had everything west and north of me vassalized.
Remember when they updated vampire count ai to be hyper aggressive and all of a sudden the empire would just get rolled by them early game? They should do that again for certain factions.
What they should do is build a system like Unnatural Selection into the game for players to customize their threats. Add some preset configs for people who don't know specifically what they want.
If I remember correctly, didn't they change this, so playing as Karl Franz wasn't the most painful thing in your life? Also they should've kept it because that's what Vampire Counts do.
Good times
I would add Wood Elves to Extremely Dangerous, just because of their armies. They are the single most powerful faction on the battlefield when controlled by the AI, bar none.
Because the AI can micro 40 units at the same time without a problem, it is perfectly suited to take advantage of the strengths of the WE armies.
When you go up against them, they scatter and take up 20+ shooting positions with insanely high missile damage units and by the time you cycle through them and click on all of them for one of your units to attack, the first-third units on the flank you started the clicking on are already dead, because they got distracted by whatever bullshit and 2 waywatchers eradicated them in 3 volleys.
Getting rid of them is a massive pain in the ass, they may not have a lot of territory, but they are super aggressive. They will punch you in the face, send annoying armies out and when you get to them, they are sitting in a settlement with a garrison of 20 units with a full stack on top of that.
Fuck those guys.
This is why you retreat all your imperial and bretonnian armies until the WE armies meet your new cavalry doomstacks. Alternatively, you install a playable minor factions mod and play as Scourge of Aquitaine just to f* with all elf factions. Exaggerated ofc but you get the idea.
@@acealinka489 you can play as a rogue army?
I make sure to always auto resolce against them. A Phyrric victory is so much better in AR compared to manual where it will be a close defeat.
@@redcrown5154 Everything is possible with mods. In WH II, that one mod even had victory conditions and a tech tree for them.
@@acealinka489 nice, but which mod is it?
The bloated corpses explode when they have less than 100% hp, due to how in auto resolve you can now have bloated corpses end battles with 10-20% hp for some reason. Just make sure to regen them fully if you want to use them
The reason they'll have about 10-20% hp is the self revive mechanic all Vampire troops have. As for the blowing up part, that only happens at 20% hp and below. So if your campaign is still early and your bloated ones come back, they'll always be in their self destruction threshold for a turn or two.
Awesome Friday cheese. Pungent and creamy hahaha.
As a Dwarf-Fan I kind of miss the old times in WH2, where the dwarfs under AI-control will start to paint the map in the late-game
That was fun to watch
I hate dwarves because of this.
The ordertide was a nightmare if you let it happen.
@@Person01234 after learning about the end times, it was very cathartic
The dwarfs do that in my recent campains. Last time, i played as skarbrand and just walked over to cathey and conquerd it. Now the dwars send like 10 armys to me but only if i get near them.
I hated the Dawitide. Whenever i consolidated as Empire and went south to help my bearded brothers, everything south of the Border Princes was already blue and they were sitting at strength level 1 comfortably around turn 60. It made for a very boring late game when you played order factions.
The hilarious thing about kugath's starting position is that his faction, all about live and stuff, is immediately stalled by the tank enhanced unliving hordes of stagnancy that is hellman ghorst.
To see a faction filled with such life and joy as Nurgle get stiffled by what on all accounts might be the truest avatar of german bureacracy is both sad AND hilarious. Sadrious.
Agreed 100%, but I would have also mentioned for the Vampire Counts that Vlad and Isabela can be virtually invincible in battle together.
Just kill everything besides Vlad and Isabella, so they crumble?
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 I’ve done that before, but by the time I kill their army, my army is too weak to make them crumble and then those two just kill whatever I have left by themselves.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 done that before once. Turns out with their army entirely destroyed the duo still stand tall and kill everyone anyway. Now I make sure to have some fire damage when fighting them be it Bretonnian archers, knights of the blazing sun, or a fire caster and buffing my units with the sword of Rhuin
nkari in my experience has only ever been a problem if morathi gets going and befriends him. Then nkari will come out of his shell
Back in the closet no jutsu required
Could you do an AI Military Alliance tier list on how useful they are as allies? It would be interesting to see
Agree, pretty interesting, especially for their unique troops.
Tomb Kings are an easy A tier
Pros:
Basically guaranteed and zero maintenance
Good monsters for most armies
Cons:
Pretty bad as actual military allies
You will probably have to give them a settlement or two to get good units, they're passive af usually
All F tier
Yes! That would be real interesting.
In tearms of units: (edit added mostly DE, changes for VCounts and Beastmen)
- Empire - Hellstorm Rockets, Outriders and heavy cav
- Kislev - War Bear Riders, Streltsi
- Bretonnia - cavarly, a lot of cavarly and flying cavarly
- Cathay - worse Empire units, because Ying and Yang mechanic won't stack with your main faction troops. Maybe Teracota Sentinel?
- Dwarfs - Longbeards, Ironbreakers and Troll Torpedoes, Slayers if you have high unit replenish
- High Elves - Sisters of Avelorn for low-ap armies, their units are mostly too expensive to be useful
- Wood Elves - Waywatchers, Sisters of the Thorn, Treemen
Dark Elves - Shades, Sisters of Slaughter, Black Guard of Naggarond, Hydra and Doomfire Warlocks
- Ogres - Stonehorns, Leadbelchers, Scrap Launchers and Ironblasters
- Greenskins - Black Orcs, Trolls, Rogue Idols, Doom Diver Catapults
- Lizardmen - monsters, most of them
- Tomb Kings - mostly constructs, maybe Tomb Guard
- Vampire Counts - Mortis Engine, maybe Zombie for the Empire (but keep in mind that their undead aren't that great without Vampire/Nehekara magic)
- Vampire Coast - Depth Guard, Deck Gunners, artillery and Necrofex Colossus
- Norsca - Mammoths and Skinwolves
- Skaven - Weapon Teams and Plagueclaw Catapults
- Warriors of Chaos - useless, because you won't have Warband mechanic in other races
- Beastmen - high-tier units from herdstone, they are all free to unkeep
- Daemons of Chaos - mostly Greater Daemons and Soul Grinders
- Khorne - Bloodletters, Bloodthirsters if you are lucky
- Nurgle - not sure if you give you anything at all, didn't check
- Tzeentch - their units work quite well in their own faction, but I don't find them useful in the rest armies. Maybe Pink Horrors for WoC
- Slaanesh - Seekers of all kinds
I liked how in Wh2 the major races would confederate but now in WH3 the map is just so overly static and only grimgor seems to get a large empire
I would have liked to see the rogue armies being covered like this. I've had so many disasters where one will spawn deep in my territory midway through a game and then blast a settlement immediately, while it's being upgraded to t5 and bork my economy and tech and force me to recruit a whole non-trivial army to deal with them. But some are worse about it and some are worse to clean up.
Rogue army tier list when
S class: College of Pyrotechnics.
I've had a few rogue armies completely derail my campaigns when they strike early enough. Yuck. Hate that. But when they hit me later in the campaign, it's just a nuisance. It never does enough damage to my income to cause problems, but I *do* have to build an army or two near them to put out the fire eventually, although in my current campaign I've left two rogue armies wandering around deep in my territory for about 20 turns, now. They seem to like sacking something once, raiding a few turns, and then sacking something else. So I just repair and rebuild, and... *shrug*. It is what it is. They'll die when my next army passes through.
@@NileRoan I had that happen to me when I was playing Thorek Ironbrow somewhen in the mid game. And fkin hell, loosing few levels in dwarfs cities hurts a lot. Not to mention that it completely derailed my income as I was pushing it when fighting Clan Mors (quick war to avoid them getting too strong). They spawned 2 armies, raided Khorne and went berserk in my province. Pain.
@@Vonadu "I'm sure I can rush them and win"
College: SHATTER THEIR SKY
I was expecting Legend to put everything in the No Challenge category 🤣🤣
Personnally I feel WoC, especially Valkia, to be super annoying
Good thing he tought about us, noobs. 🤣
Yeah WoC kinda KILLED any chance of the empire lasting longer than 20-30 turns. I've never not seen Festus and Vilitch just eat whoever they spawn next to
@@grandmagunsales2125 In my games festus has just been a turtle, 130+ turns in as belakor and he only took 2 other settlements.
@@wizardofcroz dang usually in my campaigns I see half of the empire has been taken by festus by turn 30.
@@spartacus6256 To my experience that really depends on how the Vampires, Empire and Festus interact. I have seen Festus picking a fight with the Vampires several times and for whatever reason the Empire and the VCs tend to focus on killing Festus instead of fighting each other if that happens.
There seems to be a few coin flips in the early game for certain factions and whether or not they snowball wildly out of control, N'Kari being one of the big ones. In my experience, when you play as someone who starts very far away, by the time you make it to Ulthuan they're either long dead or owns the donut.
Yeah, he can snowball like no faction i have ever seen. I got to him once around turn 120 and he had whole donut vassalized, Morathi and Malekith as well and they conquered half of Lustria by that time.
My largest campaign has been Khalida for this exact reason. You go from dwarves and skaven which are quite difficult early (dwarves difficult early on because lack of armor pen early for tomb kings) and then go into lizards and eventually tzeentch with their annoying teleport stance that makes war absolutely brutal. It's a great campaign with difficult enemies at every stage of it!
Not sure what is wrong with my Ulthuan but 6 campaigns in a row the entire donut got overrun by a combination of N'kari, Not Davy Jones and Morathi. (In one of those I was playing sisters and killed Morathi, the other two still burned the entire outer donut and started working on the inside before I arrives and fought them back)
..Morathi eats the Donut most of the time... no change from WH2 in that respect I guess then. 😂
I fairly recently started a campaign as Tor Yvress, and N'kari was wiping the floor with Tyrion and Alariel. Only after I went in to help out did they start actually handling themselves because they were also fighting Not Davy Jones.
surprised it was morathi and not hellebron
In my campaigns Kairos always seems to take over the entire southern part of the map. I was surprised by that.
I've had the same experience.
Which is suprising since he is surrounded by hostile factions, especially the 3956929472 lizards sprouting 4 full armies every turn early game... Very obnoxious to play as and against.
Depending on who, greenskins can be super deadly. Grimgor tends to control everything in the wastelands and mountains of mourn. It is hard to reach and kill off grimgore since he is so isolated from other LLs.
Whenever I play Imrik grimgore is like a monster in a horror movie. I know he's out there, I know he's getting stronger and I know he's coming for me. Its not an if, it's a when. The only question is if I'll be ready to deal with his 4 stacks with attached armies.
Highly situational but disagree on the dwarven thing, they are strong in a similar way in which Empire is strong - networks of alliances, relatively close together on the map, decent army compositions, very strong autoresolve. If I do not start close to them, usually all their legendary lords (except Grombrindal) expand so late game becomes fighting against all of them, from Kislev to Karak Zorn. By that time, their army compositions are quite solid and lords nigh unkillable (shoutout to Thorek). Playing as Valkia I got to Praag and now it is time to fight them all.
Super useful info I wouldn't have even considered to ask for. Legend just keeps hitting home runs with these videos
Great idea! Very well summarized, and sounds correct for Legendary. Personally Id like to say some of these factions present way more challenge lategame than others. Cathay and Lizards tend to stick around until lategame and occupy their respective starting zones (that if Miao can deal her threats... not always ofc.) Greenskins and Skaven also often rule over Badlands area, or maybe even Ghorst does. Empire rarely tends to absolutely fall from what I seen, despite the constant threats from most sides. Dwarfs also can stick around in their mountains and become a nuisance to remove. Naturally Chaos also wont kick the bucket on their own - Chaos Wastes almost always has to be wiped by the player if he is so inclined. Elves still a threat even lategame, not easy for anyone to wipe Naggarond, Ulthuan or Athel Loren. In turn, those guys wont be up to too much either though usually. Malekith just cant wipe out Valkia for over 200 turns in my games. Neither can Sigvald. Not even if the two unite against Valkia. AI just cant handle attrition well - or at all currently.
Agreed, with Lizards (especially Itza, Hexoatl and Ghosts of Pauhax) they have always been something of an all or nothing, where if they can take out a few key factions early on they will steamroll their corner of the map, but if they can't deal with those threats early they will get annihilated.
I've also noticed that Clan Skryre almost never expands much, but if they survive the first 20-30 turns they will make Skavenblight almost unassailable.
@@The_Industry Aye, Lustria felt pretty balanced to me in Immortal Empires. I dont play on legendary though. Lizards also often get to war with the two humans, thus cement their demise. I've seen Skrolk and Rakarth get out winning of Lustriabowl just as much as Lizards.
Skavenblight is a good spot to defend, with the nearby 2-3 capitals included. In Wh2, overwhelming force killed Ikit mid/lategame, but now pretty much no faction can scrounge up 3-4 armies just to take him out. Especially since those threats come from the Old World via land, but Skavenblight would be easier to attack from the sea. I have seen Brets and WE come close, but only seen Skavenblight fall once I believe in Wh3.
boris wiped archaeon and kholek in my sigvald campaign before I came in and started whacking, so there's that.
"The dwarves are not a threat, unless they come out in the endgame crisis..."
Guess which race has come out for me in that event in the last two campaings...
I'd say that Daniel is at least "Dangerous" only because of the tzeenches ambush stance he can use. It's super annoying and really makes war against him harder
Yeah dude can literally teleport across the mountain and attack you in an ambush
I think I will put the dark elves to be at tier "dangerous". Most campaigns I play, Naggarond is super aggresive. They wipe out and conquer the whole donut if not then Morathi will come with her Slaneshi corruption
In 2 of my 3 recently played campaigns, Nkari was an absolute powerhouse. Once he has a chance to get the sword of khaine, he'll just roll through ulthan like It's nothing. I actually saw him fighting morathi alongside malekith, it was quite funny. The same with lizardmen, Alberic and Marcus was in military alliance with GorRok and tehenhauin agaist mazdamundi lmao.
This is actually a pretty good idea for a list. Helpful and interesting both.
Love the tier list’s, they are top tier content
I feel like Chaos would be Extremely Dangerous if they bothered upgrading their units
For real, I almost never see them with Chosen or daemons.
The only time the High Elves have been a pain for me is when playing as Noctilus, the Galleon's Graveyard is now closer to Ulthuan and all the HE declare war early and constantly sail to you
I've found playing as Cylostra that the high elves above all others absolutely bumrush me when they take control of ulthuan.
"do not under any circumstance force-march near skaven" made me laugh so much
As a tzeentch enjoyer, I’d put lizardmen in the top. Between them summoning armies of dinos and the fact that the AI can just deploy blessed units like crazy makes them very aggravating to play against.
They are so obnoxious that i wish i could play as Skarbrand in Kairos position and beat them over and over simply for the pleasure.😈
Thorek was a significant headache for me in a recent Skarsnik campaign (Encountered him in the early game with low level heroes and no monsters), as well as in an older Ku'gath campaign. I also still feel a sense of dread whenever I see Belegar and his ancestral heroes, but that might just be painful memories from WH2, rather than anything I've experienced in WH3.
Legend, this is the exact kind of video that helps me most. My friends love talking about stuff like this and it helps me create more discussion around the game and helps inform me on what AI to worry about.
Also, vid suggestion, I would LOVE a Thorek Ironbrow campaign guide!!
An interesting list and I'd agree with most choices - vampire counts hold a very special place to me ever since a certain Blue Rose is doing everything to make my life as misserable as possible whenever I start near him. In later stages he is usually still alive and thriving and he tends to revive 80% of his armies all the time while being able to inflict ridiculous damage on infantry based armies.
Skrag sometimes spirals out of control taking Estalia and the northern Wastelands which is quite the sight to behold.
While experimenting a bit with the Slaaneshi Lords (Azazel and N'kari) I found Throgg and the Tzarina to be ridiculously strong pawns to use - the latter is able to regain control over Kislev and Reikland if you give her just a little bit of breathing room - even as a one settlement force vasall.
I relay hope they tinker a bit with the diplomancy of AI factions, while the Elves where super dangerous because they confederate quickly I realy miss encountering "big" fusions of multiple legendary lords - maybe add this as an endgame scenario or make a ridiculous one like all non player human races get claimed by a Slaanesh faction as Vassals.
I’d agree wholeheartedly just off of your experience with the game. Only recently have I felt comfortable enough to up my difficulty to H/H. And even then I still struggle quite a bit with certain factions. Don’t think I have enough of experience with the game to really denounce any of your choices. Good video though and very informative! Keep up the good work Legend!
I know is never gonna happen, but i would love to see this tier list for TW2.
Good content as always
One beastmen faction completely destroyed my Kairos campaign. We were allies, and he was near the area in the south pole where the Slaanesh faction is. That province was my money making one, and I had my armies in the southlands and Lustria trying to take the fight to my enemies (Teclis and the Lizzys).
The beastmen betrayed me and declared war. They started razing all my money making settlements. Tzeentch is pretty poor to begin with, so that completely crippled me. I have held a grudge against them ever since.
I've had the exact same experience. These days I just consider all beastmen kill on sight regardless of who I'm playing.
Dwarfs gave me some hell in my Ogres campain. It was easy at the begining, so I didn't rush to destroy them, just raiding and sacking. Then they came with 5 full stack armies full of irondrakes, gyrocopters and anti large - and made my campaing an nightmare. I was hoping you put them a little bit higher, but yes, it was acctually the only campain I've got problems with them .
in my current Imperial campaign, I was busy fighting Norscans, Greenskins, Ogres and Sylvania, as one tends to, then killing the Tomb Kings endgame event. During, Reikland dragged me into a war with the Dark Elves and N'kari, they had apparently taken over all of Ulthuan together. I am finally beating them and reclaiming Ulthuan with Franz and couronne, and i AM a new player, but the Dark Elves put a hell of a fight.
I love that description of Tyrion and him snowballing out of control it fits so well
11:57 wasn't there the opposite situation, where in almost every campaign cult of pleasure was roflstomping Ulthuan by turn 50 and then sailing to the old world
Doesn't seem like this guy knows what he's talking about sometimes
Joyously I had allied with them early in a modded playthrough, but I saw Morathi and Malekith absolutely dominate in one of my campaigns, Malekith had reached all the way to Daniel with all of the north consolidated and Morathi had swept up the entirety of Ulthuan and into Brettonia by turn 100. Really brutal stuff.
14:50
In my most recent Malus campaign, I had conquered Naggarond, confederated Morathi, vassalized several Chaos groups and also conquered all of Ulthuan. I was now staging a 3-pronged invasion of Brettonia/Empire, which was going well.
As my southern prong was finishing conquering the regions all around Skavenblight and preparing to invade the mountains and Wood Elf territories, Itza declared war on me.
This was several turns after the Endgame Crisis started(Vampires), and it was here I noticed that Itza was Strength Rank 1. I was 3, behind Sylvania and Reikland.
*Four* full Lizardmen armies sailed up to my 3 battered armies and their supporting Black Ark and absolutely rolled them up. Panic-built 3 more armies and re-recruited the Black Ark and sent it all down to discover Itza had diverted south to absolutely SMASH Settra's coastline. I conquered two of their cities, then basically sold one of their provincial capitals back to them to secure peace. A few turns later I gave them the other city(and severals tens of thousands of gold) for a non-aggro pact.
Lizardmen scare me.
Glad you got another sponsorship dude!
Playing as Drazhoath recently, Kugath was a MAJOR problem for me, he took most of the Mountains of Mourn and some surrounding territories, as well as spreading out to the Plain of Bones by ship. Kept sneaking in and taking settlements in my core provinces, too. Didn't finally defeat him until around turn 120-130. Helman Ghorst was a complete non-entity however, I never really saw him except very early game.
I think Lizardmen have really strong auto resolve when fighting against them, Especially in sieges
I agree with the ranking here. Especially with the skaven, early game they'll throw endless full stacks of skaven slaves and clan rats which you lack the crowd control to deal with, they also have strong heroes and lords, and the AI is really good at using lore of ruin lightning spells, a single faster can easily wipe out 5 or more of your units from long range. And if you leave them alone, their late game units are also very powerful, and it's very difficult to flank their artillery due to the speed they can deploy clanrats to tarpit your cavalry. AND there's dwellers below and their frequent ambushes on top of that.
Tzeentch are also difficult to deal with, but I still give skaven the prize due to the number of stacks they deploy and the speed they can build them.
"N'karii is probably the only legendary lord IN Slaanesh."
Ooof. Major chaos corruption from that one but also probably true.
Everyone talks about how the beastmen don’t do anything, but in my last high elf campaign he had been running circles around naggaroth. There was only like 3 factions left with only a couple cities on the coast. Even Malekith only had one city left a ways away from his capital. It was nuts.
I play on normal and I've had the opposite experience with Dwarfs, they recruit a lot and just sit in their strongest city, I need so much force to take them out that I'd rather not antagonise them.
Lizardsmen give me the most trouble in the early game, Saurus Warriors chew up my infantry while my archers are busy shooting a dinosaur. Also they invade aggressively but their home base is in an intravesible, swamp-ridden jungle full of even more Lizardmen.
This is so nostalgic, a tierlist video sponsored by manscaped. Please update some of your lists to be correct for 3 (:
totally agree with the weakness of the tomb kings, with repanse turn 60 i manage to beat two decent armies with good units like tomb guards or ushabti, using only 1 stack with tier 2 cavalry and a life wizard, and being in forced march.
Yeah.
Really the only risk is if they have a few of their big monsters, like Tomb Scorpions or maybe a Necrosphynx.
Even then, Tomb Kings as a whole, as an AI, are kinda super weak to player shenanigans.
The main problem with fighting Tomb Kings, though, is that they're usually pretty reliable allies later in a campaign for trade deals or getting their good units in your armies
I’d put WoC at extremely dangerous because of how strong their armies are (on the battlefield and auto resolve), their very strong garrisons, and the fact that they occupy a lot of red territory for non-chaos factions so conquering them is time and resource intensive. You’ll also have to deal with their vassals if you go up against one. It’s one of those races that becomes a huge nuisance in the late game if you let them get there.
In my experience dark elves tend to still be pretty dangerous. For example in my last Sigvald campaign naggarond had by turn 80 taken almost all the north western territories, murdered Grombrindal and Khatep, and put Valkia on the back foot to where she only had her capital and a few cities of the mung norscans left. And I never got to see how much of lustria they actually took but it was enough that I never saw the end of it as far south as I went. It’s not like that every time but it happens often enough that I took notice
This is an excellent concept-just about the most useful thing I could imagine
This is pretty much what I expected except with the dwarfs and tomb kings swapped with beastmen and ogres. As the ogres I never see get any camps going so get stuck with low tier units and the beastmen seem to just infinitely siege one settlement and wait for you to some and swat them away and that’s it. While the tomb kings are a pain to finish off as they end up with a pile of full stacks at their capital at the end of you don’t kill them quickly and the dwarfs are just a bit harder in early game before you get lots of armour piercing.
a few of these faction's biggest or only weakness is how little friends they have near them, which is often the saving grace against skaven and the vampirates.
I disagree with a few but, faction specific. The Dwarves annoy the shit out of me as Sylvannia. I go for wipe them out, and they under-pass travel beyond mountain ridges, forcing me to return to save my gibbets lol. Also, Durthu when playing as gelt or isabella, LOVES to enter the empire territory and will wait until you have no armies near him to declare war. I frequently see Drycha in the mountains near lahmian sisterhood's settlements as well.
Morathi also tends to expand towards Ulthuan, and can be a major threat if you aren't paying attention to your west coast
I always like it, when you do Tier Lists.
Good video!
I must have gotten the exception for N'Kari. I was Imrik, so I started relatively far away, but N'Kari vassalized Morathi early, and by the time I reached Ulthuan, Tyrion and Caledor had maybe two settlements between them.
Have never watched so many of your videos mate was never a fan of the live streams, sick content my guy!
I miss the days of Warhammer 2 when certain factions would naturally rise into superpowers. Sure, it was usually the same factions like Dark Elves or Dwarves or qhafjqrhrq Grimgor, but it was always an interesting challenge to overcome in the later stages of the game.
Is there a reason why CA cannot implement EVERY/ANY INDIVIDUAL faction (player choice pre campaign) can be the Endgame Crisis?
Clear, simple and straightforward breakdowns. Thanks for the tips.
Funnily enough I'd say the dwarves can actually be a challenge - I have seen them confederating quite a bit, including legendary lords, which means that they can occasionally snowball like they did in Warhammer 2 if not whiped out early. In my campaigns Belegar Ironhammer in particular starts confederating other dwarves quite early on fairly regularly.
That said - I think the "legendary lords don't confederate" thing is more of a Legendary difficulty mode issue because they definetly do confederate on Normal and hard (my preferred difficulties depending on the campaign I'm playing).
"Now this is an interesting one." First words of literally any commentary about Tzeentch ever.
I hope the first DLC after Chaos Dwarfs is normal Dwarfs, they need a rework + an actual roster update. It's been two games since they've received one!
immortal empires faction strength tier list next ? ❤ :0 great video love the channel and straight forward approach
"N'kari gets triple-teamed by Tyrion. Eltharion, and Alarielle".. kinky
As a new player who tried playing Tzeentch, I found out how scary Oxyotl was the hard way (I decided to conquer the Slaanesh faction first and expected my alliance with the other Tzeentch faction to do something)
I love it when you talk about how ai factions behave and interact
Tier list! Yay! The part with your wife opening a box that says "it's a whole new balls game" was kinda weird but still great video!
DWARVES?! NO CHALLENGE?! THAT'S A GRUDGING!!!
I think he play Skarbrand too often. 😆
Lustrian lizardmen are nuts. They chimp out often, consolidate quick and start sailing out. They also make dumb random war declerations.
Naggaroth rarely ever dominates because of being in the middle of a free for all so Cult of Pleasure often is the one chimpin out and conquering Ukthuaan along with Nkari and Dreadfleet.
I was turn 125 in a Kroq'Gar campaign and as I was pushing north through Brettonia. As I captured a settlement, it revealed nearby N'kari lands bordering it with SIXTEEN full 20-stacks all clumped up around 2 settlements... Then the next turn the vampire end game crisis happened and EIGHT MORE full stacks showed up on both of my other flanks, as well as another 4 stacks in the middle of my economic centered southern region..... I was like BRUHHHH. Took like 20 turns to stamp that out.
Great video. Really appreciate it for when your trying to plan out a campaign.
All of that depends. As a noob I've been run over by Beastmen, Steam rolled by Tomb Kings, High Elves, Lizardmen, & trolled by Skaven into a peace treaty. But thats only part of the story.
I'm glad to have found out how to approach Tzeentch though, right on time.
I'd like to disagree with dwarfs, if you play as darklands/southlands factions that will go up against dwarfs, if they win skarsnik, they usually have so many towns they can push out a full stack in 1/2 turns, and i hate dealing with em, had lost battles where i wipe their army but their lords/heroes survive and don't break, had to use multiple peasant archer or skavenslave units just to melee them for 10 mins on max speed.
Slanesh in my game... turn 100 still alive and well. They even corrupted the everqueen
My most Skarsnik campaign had me have a very lucky experience against Queek and Grimgor. I made defensive allies with Queek and Grimgor before the two met each other, so Queek helped me take over the Southlands and start moving into the World's Edge Mountains... Until Grimgor declared war on Queek and asked me to join. I joined Grimgor, so this helped my rep with him and now gave me free reign to take over some of the settlements Queek previously took. Many, many, many rounds later Grimgor took over about a 4th of the world map on his own and my rep with him got good enough that I could do a confederation without my previous intentions to find him, backstab him, and do the Greenskin confederation. Holy shit I have so many settlements and armies now that just a single turn can take 5+ minutes.
I can generally relate to this tier list a bunch. As I'm slowly starting to become a bit better at the game, I've realized that certain factions do have a tendency to grow very big when controlled by the AI with no player nearby to stop them, but are not actually that hard to deal with if you have to fight them. I surely one hundred percent agree that Vampire Counts can be very annoying to fight because of raising the dead. But obviously, it'd be a bit of a different tier list just going by which factions tend to grow big when controlled by the AI.
I'm curious what type of big AI blobs people tend to encounter, so everyone, feel free to chime in.
From my experience, the factions that I do find to have a tendency to grow big when controlled by the AI are these:
-one, often multiple of the Orks (except Grom for some reason, I don't see him blobbing much, maybe it's his starting position?)
-High Elves are a special case, they tend to be kind of strong when attacking them because they chill on Ulthuan and appear as a fairly united front, but when they attack you it's usually not as bad in my experience, so they dont blob a whole lot
-Dark Elves. I find that unattended, it's very often either Malekith or Morathi becoming pretty big.
-I haven't had much trouble fighting them when I did (as you say), but Settra does have a bit of a tendency to get big in my campaigns
-the most common one I've seen, Vlad. Weirdly, the other Vampire Counts not so much, but Vlad...Vlad just blobs all the freaking time in my campaigns. Plus, as mentioned before, he's annoying to fight because of the raising of the dead.
Really great video !
I often found myself having to deal with moderately strong Dwarf armies with a nasty skulker stack when playing Greenskins due to your economic limitations early on, which you can win with but it can take eons to play through each battle successfully that way, and they have underway movement to limit your attempts to strike at their underbelly (or they can return the favor). Otherwise I pretty much agree.
Love it!
I find VC very annoying to deal with. Wood elves as well. I dread lizardmen, straight up strong and tough as you said.
And Grimgor isn't someone I deal with because I don't want to. Scary Shrek has so much real estate so early on. In midgame It'd take a large unwanted expansion and efforts to shut him down, putting the player at risk, imo. I stay away if I can.
Slaanesh is never a problem unless I'm playing High Elves or a race with good High elf relations. Then they wipe.
Playing as Imirik, confed the one faction on Ulth by turn 10. Slaanesh already wiped Yevesse, Chrace, had Alariel on the back foot, and beat Tyrion's armies back to back.
Play as a Chaos faction, and all the chaos factions get wiped 20 turns in.
When I play around the north-west of the map (DE, Khatep, etc), Alith Anar usually becomes a huge threat, way above any kind of other HE lord, solely because of his ability to ambush when attacking. I've had situations where I had two lords both in 100% chance ambush stance, and Alith Anar still manages to detect both and ambush them in quick succession with 18 shadow warriors.
Vampire Counts are definitely my most hated faction. Was playing a game as Franz, and Kemmler attacked the fort four times in one turn, allowing him to take it by losing three times but only having like three units to fight on the fourth.
Only time I had problems with Kislev was vs a half-strelsi/half-armored kossar stack in a chokepoint battle as Norsca. Mostly my fault for not prioritizing getting 4 or so chariots so I could time their charge after the initial volley on some trash marauders then overwhelm them in melee. Any other time they were pushovers. I'd also like to add for vampirates to be careful vs their bomb infantry. Had them absolutely demolish some knights with a volley.
I've seen high elves snowball pretty hard when they are a military alliance with the player. I constantly find myself as strength rank 2 when allied with them as the wood elves.
I hope to see a video: Tier List of Trash Units buffed in Warhammer 3.
Example: Swordmasters of Hoeth now have martial mastery modified to provide bonuses when above 25% health. They're too fragile to use as Frontline troops; the real value lies in ambushing and carving the enemy flanks. If only they'd get a Regiment of Renown version, one that also grants them magical attacks and frenzy and fear.
The LL that gives me, hands down the most trouble, is Wurrzag. He always seems to have a Waagh going and ample magic to smash my shit up. But it's weird as the AI in my campaigns doesn't seem to perform well against the others, but if I start as Yvreese down there he's a gigantic pain. Oddly enough who I see wipe out dwarfs most isn't him, but Skarsnik.
I mainly play WoC on Hard/Hard difficulty, specifically lot of Festus and Azazel. I find Wood Elves, Dark Elves and Dwarfs to be the most difficult to deal with. Daniel, other WoC, Vampires and Skaven get an honorable mention but never anything I could not handle.
Due to my starting positions, I fight Kislev, Empire and Bretonnia very often and find them to be rather easy to deal with.
Skarbrand campaign. Tomb Kings railed me with like 5 armies at a time. Nothing i could do. Meanwhile Skaven kept sacking my capital, so no bloodthirsters for me.
I love your tierlists videos ! So interesting
Have to agree with the voices that would put Dark elves in the "Dangerous" Tier at the very least. They have been weakened due to the adding of the chaos teams in the north since Total War 2, BUT still have their Black Arks and still do their raids south. They also have a far better defended homeland than High elves that fewer players have access to - being in a corner has its own value. And in battle, I find it far, far harder to beat a Dark elf army due to their incredible early Darkshards as well as their murderous prowess ability. And honestly - all the Dark elf special character factions are hard to deal with. Lokhir kicks ass in Cathay when I play and Beastlord Rakarth is usually able to dominate the southern part of Lustria.
I also think its way too harsh to put the dawi in "No Challenge" category. "Weak" would be fairer (and you can even argue for a weak "Moderately Tough team" maybe maybe, I think personally they are stronger than both Kislev and Slaanesh). They have multiple legendary lords, a strong (but surrounded) position in the mountains and while not super good at backing each other their garrisons are usually quite strong and their main hold well fortified. Beating them takes time, time you sometimes do not have. I think what you are pointing out are more exploits in the code rather that real weaknesses for the factions.
Apart from that the list looks fine. Maybe lower Skavens one step to dangerous? Yes, they are a pain, but their field armies are pretty easy to beat..ish and, if you can do the war on your terms, you should be able to slowly reduce their settlements one by one. Honestly, if they are able to ambush you all the time and beat you up like nothing then you are expanding poorly. But i can see the case for the higher tier. And maybe reduce Bretonnia one step. I have so far never seen them snowball and while their starting positions are strong, their expansions are not.
The 2 I would have put a tier higher would have been warriors of chaos and the tomb kings because of their ability to spawn literal armies in as much as 2 turns, they might not be the best armies but they do have lots of them in the mid game
Kislev pretty strong against you at the start of Moulder campaign, when Kostaltyn and Katarina both attack you.