I liked the changes at first but I realized this new system is just heavily flawed. Skaven, Warriors of Chaos and other factions never run out of their ressources. Not upgrading your income buildings because they create problems? Thats just awful. I would rather play with the old system and just remove the slave exploits.
Perhaps I'm more sympathetic to cautious upgrade from older TW Titles. I do enjoy how the hunt for more slaves is now compelling but I'm getting the feeling perhaps it needs to be tweaked to become "less risk/less reward". Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It's great to learn the wider player base's experience!
@@ElvenPlotArmour My main problem was rapidly expanding and either finishing a an area or a long time to get to the next place. Either case multiple turns are spent with a reduced slave aqusition which can make you live slave check to slave check once you get back to the new frontlines.
@@ElvenPlotArmour Before the update you did not need to build walls as you could have many armies for defense and rebellions. Public order did not need to be managed and the rebellions were sometimes profitable. A big thing is the compatibility with the sword of khaine plummeted as dark elves now have one of the strictest penalties for public order. These tips help with the problems, but it’s really annoying in the late game having a bunch of unupgraded income buildings because you cannot use the notification to bounce around. Definitely an overall nerf as you could bunga out beforehand. I feel like morathi is relatively better now (still worse overall) because of expanded order buildings and better base income.
Appreciate the video and the points made. But... Think about it. He stated to NOT build up your economy buildings because... It hurts your economy. There's has to be a better way to implement this. I appreciate him giving tips on a way to make this work. I also enjoy the planning and strategic layer this adds. Just wish it wasn't at the cost of under-utilized infrastructure. Seems wonky.
@@SupremeGrand-MasterAzrael To answer both comments. The old system was deemed broken OP for not really doing much except changing your slave farm every 30 turns (which I admit is true). The new system is designed to give the player agency to obtain more slaves and manage their impact, but the big theme I'm seeing is there isn't enough control. I saw an excellent idea of allowing certain provinces to switch off their slave activities, thus removing that province's decline which would allow upgrading and more flexibility.
Mate your guides are just *chefs kiss* honestly probably got me back to my dark elves iv been having a ball with chaos just jamming chaos down people's throat an laughing
Have you tried spamming Slave Pens and keeping the slave count high to get global benefits (reduced construction time, reduced construction cost, higher income from all buildings)? I had some luck doing that on Morathi since she can potentially hold a lot of provinces (unlike Lokhir whose main buildings will be one-turn Black Ark constructions) and her corruption helps counteract the control penalties from Slave Pens and having a high number of slaves. And thanks for making such great content :)
Morathi's corruption is really good and underrated. Spamming Slave Pens really doesn't seem like a system that can ever catchup to the amount you can gain through combat (which increases over time as the settlements level up). I do think you could get a balanced economy using assassins and slave pens, but the reward for overdriving with high level buildings and capturing more workers I'd always picture as a the more lucrative and realistic result. I'd build the occational Slave Pen if I feel I'm capturing above my means, but it's more of a reactive choice in my own experience. The construction time is certainly nice though! Cheers for the support!
So far, I really haven't enjoyed the dark elf changes brought in 2.2. I already enjoyed balancing the slave economy pre-patch but now it feels so strict that I just don't feel like messing with the dark elves. I can totally see the changes feeling good for the very experienced players, but I'm not enjoying the extra tension it brought
This is a pretty common theme I'm seeing. Did you load an old save or start a new campaign? I feel loading a save balanced to the old system is instant collapse!
@@ElvenPlotArmour I did load a save from before the patch, and that's certainly what caused my so much issues. I'll give a new campaign a shot with these tips and see if it feels better for me. Thanks for the advice!
I'm thinking of proposing a new system where the player has provincial control of turning on and off the overdrive. Diminishing returns are a natural component for any faction, perhaps you're more referring to the fact an investment can feel harmful rather than 'sub-optimal'?
@@ElvenPlotArmour maybe you're right about diminishing returns for the time it takes to pay back the investment. But the slave value reducing by about 40% for at t3 compared to t1 is not okay imo. Having each individual workshop increase by 10 a rank means you make 175 per 10 slaves which is about 16.2% more efficient. Diminishing returns should be in the time it takes to pay off not in directly reducing your economic efficiency.
I suppose it is slightly unfair for me to rank it like that. As the extra gold from slaves is the same per slave at rank 2. But tier 3 directly decreases your slave efficiency. And the should reduce the upkeep by 20 or increase the gold by 100
Hero buildings should be build on land, not in Arks (as this doesnt' up the supply). If it's not busy, the growth and main building should be hammered as this allows rapid recruitment. Shade building is an auto include and if you want hydras and dragons, build that building and holding them in the ark will gain a number of cost reductions. Only hire corsairs in a crisis, or use a couple for flexibility in most cases and try to lower the cost with spears/Dshards.
I actually ran out of money for really the first time the other day playing Malekith. It actually took me aback because I typically manage my money well enough so this never happens until this update. I haven't really made up my mind about the changes but they do seem really punitive and have, perhaps an unnecessary learning curve to use effectively.
Why are they patching a SINGLEPLAYER experience to be worse? What justification is there to make it WORSE lol different? Okay. WORSE? At this rate I’m honestly pissed off that I bought the game. I could’ve just stayed with 2 and had a BETTER experience lmfao
One very real issue is if you load an existing campaign balanced on the old system, it will instantly crash upon loading into this system. You may very well be all over this but I found Malekith focusing on ports to be the real key to his power (I made the inland mistake first time). ruclips.net/video/V297pm5bmA4/видео.html
It'll get there. Overall, this latest patch addressed many other issues. I'm enjoying it far more now with less sieges, but is the game better than M.E. yet? Not yet. I think once they get off Beta it will be.
@@ElvenPlotArmour The thing is that you should not be punished by playing inland. You should be rewarded when conquering ports. Similarly, turtling for some time should not make you go into oblivion. I welcome the more reasonable economy of the DE now, but I don't think it is meaningful to make their main mechanic punitive if not perfectly followed. It destroys your freedom
Some of this seems counter intuitive and we lose the flexibility we had before. I prefer stability, but of course that's not plausible with this. I liked being able to not make as much money but being able to take my time.
It's easy to overlook just how powerful the T1 workshop is, and it's only 1 turn to build so it's very low risk. It's important to remember, it's not the end of the world if you go below 100. If you don't have several armies raised in a quiet period, your saved military can offset this advantage and you can max your growth edicts in your settlements without fear of any downside :)
@@ElvenPlotArmour True. I'm just a very cautious player and I hate instability. That said, Felheart's Campaign was my first go to in Immortal Empires, as he's my favourite Dark Elf, maybe even favourite Legendary Lord, and I had a blast. So maybe I'm just overreacting. I'm playing a Teclis campaign now, but I might have to hop back to the Dark Elves after and keep these tips in mind when I do.
Honestly, I prefer the old system: I do not reject the idea of a nerve because yes before, the black elf economy could really be too strong. But, the new system is very contradictory, at the beginning of the campaign, many slaves go to the trash because the ceiling is too low, the way to increase it is to expand its territory, But it also means more armies to defend it and especially more losses of slaves. In other words, we extend ourselves to have a higher threshold of slaves, but by doing that we have more and more trouble keeping our slaves. It is therefore necessary to continue plundering with fewer and fewer enemies in the countryside. Where other factions have a growing economy over time, black elves stagnate or regress. The interface is also bad, the old system with the management in the form of account book was much better I think, we can more easily judge our rate of loss of slaves. I don’t think CA will put back the old system, but a better balance between the ceiling and the slave loss rate, and adding a building that could reduce the loss rate I think would be a good thing. Thanks for the tips to avoid losing too many slaves, very good video!
Thanks mate, I think the system is onto the path toward something great, but it's not there yet. My grand suggestion (which combines several others I've heard) is to have the accounting book and be able to turn on/off slave activity in each province (similar to tax on/off). This way you can diminish the decline directly and have another tool to manage public order. The upside of this system is I must admit it's engaging and slaving drives decisions rather than being a background eco boost. Hoping they find the best of both worlds soon. Cheers for sharing your thoughts!
I think it is the opposite. It makes them way more fun. It encourages an aggressive playstyle, while at the same time demand you to temper your expansionism, focusing a bit more on the raid/sacking, than straight up conquest. You now actually have to think about what you are doing, rather than just waging mindless wars.
@@Briggsyy55 It only punishes you, if you expand too quickly(how many buildings you build that require slaves per turn) compared to how many slaves you can capture each turn.
“We made this change so that the way you have to play now is by basically not making any progress. You can’t upgrade your economic buildings (no other race in the entire game plays this way and for a very good reason. ITS RETARDED)
I'm finding a very mixed response, but they are passionately for or against, which I optimistically see as just some tweaking to get everyone in the same camp. Appreciate everyone sharing their ideas
I actually don't know how the system worked before the current one. Not upgrading buildings as a bit of a red flag for me since i prefer a building tall vs wide play style. I really like the incentive on looting, raiding and sacking tho. Imho they should even consider making Combat and raiding the only options for gaining slaves and balance the game around it. Maybe getting slaves through diplomacy would be a fun flavor like a peace treaty for 500 slaves (the trade partner could pay slaves in Form of gold or growth/ control) disclaimer i only played 1 campaign as morathy as of now
Thanks for sharing your experience. I think the Dark Elves by design need to play a bit wide (but not absurdly) and I like the ideals of the ruleset, they just need to fine tune it. The biggest hurdle seems to be when taking new territory and the impact of those new holdings' buildings have on your decline rate. It needs work but I think when all is said and done it'll be great. Either way, the Dark Elves are still overall in a more than decent place for now.
@@ElvenPlotArmour yup! So far I agree. Only mistake i did in m campaign is not building a slave pen to unlock black ark's. Should i build them in m capital or is a rank 2 pen good enough?
Check out my Malus Darkblade Stream. I tried an experimental run as Malekith but it ended up being a poor concept and turned into a grind. The Malus run showed how the slave and black ark systems can drive you forward!
It's nowhere near as complex in game as it's made to sound here. If you just hold off upgrading your workshops you can probably have a similar experience to WH2 for the most part :)
@@ElvenPlotArmour that's true, but then as of now, the way to upgrade your empire and cities, is to not upgrade your empire and cities, and that's really lame, almost as bad as the ambush stance only meta from last patch. Anyway if I want to do more bookkeeping I'll just clock in some extra hours at work. Dark elves gonna stay unplayed for a bit longer.
"In a way seem more punishing." NO, it doesn't SEEM more punishing. Doubling costs across the board IS more punishing. You show a game where you, an expert player playing on normal difficulty, have 29 settlements by turn 36. An expert player playing on normal difficulty can win as the Dark Elves! Everything's great then! The problem starts at the tactical battle level. If the AI is invading your territory with an army, and it looks at the autoresolve and thinks it's going to lose if it fights a battle with your army, it'll avoid battle with your army (as it should). For example, this is what is happening when the AI force marches so that it ends its turn a couple of pixels further from your army than your army can march and attack. If you are good at fighting the tactical battles then you can make a weak armies that the AI will think it can beat and it will attack you on its turn. You defeat its army with your tactical battle skills - getting a bunch of slaves right there - and putting yourself in a position on the strategic map where you can immediately go on the offensive, putting you in a position to sack the enemy's settlements for more slaves, etc. Nice positive feedback loop going on the strategic map because of things that are happening on the tactical map. If on the other hand you are average to mediocre at the tactical battles, like *cough* me *cough*, then your army (particularly, if it's the beginning of the game, your starting army that contains your legendary lord) is probably a bit better than the invading army, so the AI avoids battle with you. Not only does your army not fight anyone that turn, not earning any income, it also has to stay in your territory to defend your territory, which means that your army is not earning anything on the offensive, either. This is a situation that, once it gets started, tends to perpetuate itself, so you can not be earning any slaves for several turns in a row. So the way this mechanic works: if you're on the defensive, you're not getting any new slaves, which mean that most of your faction's special abilities go away. If you're not getting any income, it doesn't matter how good you are at managing income. if, on the other hand, you're playing a campaign where you're never on the defensive, then you're not playing at a difficulty level that's challenging to you. This is in a game that, for the most part, has a pretty casual strategic game. The potentially competitive, challenging part is the tactical battles. So why make this one faction punishing for casual players even on normal difficulty? I'm cynical no doubt, but CA are a business and they want to sell DLC's. If their metrics show that a lot of people are playing Dark Elves and not the Warriors of Chaos from the latest DLC, then these repeated nerfs to Dark Elves, completely coincidentally no doubt, are just perfect for getting casual players frustrated playing Dark Elves and motivated to buy the latest DLC. I'm sure that if I were to buy the latest DLC and play Valkia instead of Malekith, I'd have no trouble "mastering" the complex strategy of this game at all.
Hey mate, regarding the AI avoiding your armies, proceeding in ambush stance is an excellent way to avoid them dodging you. If it'll take 2 turns anyway to realch a settlement, adopting ambush stance is always a sure bet. I understand the scenario in this video may seem contrived, it was to see how the system scales, and where the trouble might be. Dark Elves won't be getting DLC for a loong time imho, they've already got 6 lords and are one of the strongest factions, ahead of many that need some love more. And yes, Warriors of Chaos are OP due to being DLC haha. They'll get brought back to Earth for the official launch I think. I feel IE has double compounded things because certain lords like Malekith have a much harder time. You're right, you do need to stay on the offensive, but even if you go below 100 slaves this is only 1/3rd to 1/2 of your revenue. I get that's a lot, but the base income and trade can still earn you a lot as well, along with the incredible cost saving of Black Arks. Dark Elves, I feel, will always be a rather advanced faction. Even in WH2, knowing how to use black arks, etc isn't something other factions prepare you for and these are the most decisive things when playing. Appreciate you sharing your thoughts. Who are you playing as
I was playing an archaic campaign. By turn 70 I had 4 doom stacks, I only owned 10 settlements or so, and I was making 60k income per turn. Why is chaos richer without even factoring in post battle loot, sack income, ect… it doesn’t make any sense lmfao as archaic I could literally have infinite doom stacks with no penalties and only having 10 fucking settlements lmfao I was getting 10k income per settlement. My vassals owning 30 regions gave me a MASSIVE 600 a turn lmfao what the actual fuck
@@ElvenPlotArmour Thanks for the reply! Sorry for jumping on you about the scenario - it was perfectly designed for the content of the video, which was all about the economics. And there were some tips in there that I hadn't noticed. My reply was just my frustration at the current situation coming out. I've been playing Malekith, and been trying to re-establish the Kingdom of Naggaroth with the six Dark Elven cities. (I saw your video about defeating Alith Anar in Karond Kar, and I admired your strategy - it was like a perfect set of opening chess moves - but it's not what I want to do with him.) Malekith got hit in the change from WH II to WH III on a lot of levels, e.g. the changes to the other LL's bring out their distinctive themes really nicely, but arguably one of Malekith's main distinctive themes was that he confederated everyone, and we know how that got changed in the new game. And Naggarond province being reduced to two settlements, and the area around Naggarond is being one of the worst places on the map for using Black Arks to support you. To add insult to injury, if Valkia's threatening your settlements in Ghrond province and Naggarond province, you have to move your troops off the Black Arks for the troops to be of any use, which doesn't help your economy. Yup, going below 100 slaves is just costing you your profit - you're still making enough base income to pay your armies (hopefully). So it just seems like it's costing you your income :) . In my 2.1 game, I actually managed to ambush Alith Anar with Malekith's army. And when AA came back with a new army, I ambushed that army, too. One limitation is that in the early campaign your armies are not very good at ambushing yet, and another is that if the AI is already within one move of a juicy settlement, hiding your army means that it will think it's safe to torch that settlement, and destroying their army afterwards seems a Pyrrhic victory. I'm thinking that in my next game I'm going to try the AI's trick of having a small army that it doesn't perceive as a threat closer to it, and then when the AI sits two pixels out of my main army's move, I force march my main army up to it and then attack with the little army the AI didn't think was a threat. We'll see how that works. My last two campaigns ended with the game crashing to desktop every time I tried to play a particular turn, so I'm taking a bit of a break until CA makes some improvements there. I think a good compromise would be for the building slave consumption and rite costs to scale with difficulty. E.g. if you're playing at Normal difficulty, pay patch 2.1 costs, scaling up until at Legendary difficulty you're paying the costs from patch 2.2 (twice the 2.1 costs).
Thank you for the guide but judging new slave system with Morathi's slaaneshi controll and economic buffs on normal campaign difficulty wont be accurate. This new slave system is indefensible for me. Nothing about it makes sense. -Slave pens should be organizing your slaves thus giving more money, capacity and control. -Black arcs and your raiding armies should be your main way to generate slaves, not your Khanite assassin generating 30 slaves per turn for some reason. -Workshops should have a slave workforce toggle. And maybe when using slaves, it could generate negative control. I hope there is still some DE fans exists in CA, so they can fix this mess with lore acurate and fun system. Or just bring back wh2 system. Im also hoping for a slave trade system after chaos dwarfs are added.
The Industry building will still generate gold even without slaves. It just wont get the boost. So long as you do not overexpand and overextend(ie, bursts your bubble), you should not risk getting to less than 100 slaves anyway. Rather than having to constantly turn various buildings "on/off" to min-max(which would get tedious with 50+ regions), you simply have to keep it above 50 mile... erh, 100 slaves. Slave Pens are, well, pens. You are massing a lot of people into a fairly confined space, which obviously would lead to revolts eventually. It is the old "slaves outnumber the masters 100-to-1" and it makes for a more uncertain environment every time they go back and forth from "work", thus reduced control. That said, it shouldnt be hard to still keep your control high enough to keep it positive. Part of a Khanite Assassin's job, is to find potential threats within your own ranks(and so they will be added as slaves). Upgrading the skill simply makes them better/more ruthless at that part of the job. And Black Arcs are already the main facilitator of your raids, as well as a huge part of your max slave capacity. It is in fact, your most important part of your economy, for various reasons.
Appreciate your thoughts and I agree any N/N difficulty run isn't a good test, but it's all I really needed her to get a grip on the changes. Honestly, on Legendary you get more battles which makes the accessibility and use of rite/diktats more useful, though less land to build workshops. I think an overview like you explained where you can toggle slave activities like a taxrate is a really fun idea and could be the tweak this system needs!
I think the direction of this new system is really wrong. I can say CA wanted to change it more systemetically and it might change mid-late game structures of DE play. But that's not the point they had to fix, I think. I would say there are no essential differences between both WH2 and 3. 3 system looks more cute but that's all. I think important point is ways to get slaves from the entire game. Early games for DE is very toxic and painful, especially for Malekith. It gives me feeling of stucking on something, stomped by money and enemies both. New slave pens are bad really. I think it must give ~100 slave for T4 and 50~60 for T2. Slaves are really rare and DE must have expert head hunters for these noble workers. I think there must be more various ways to get them. In this circumstance, early game is too harsh if faction has no chances to jump up to mid-game state. Late game is a little bit balanced than before but it's still boring. There is no fun to manage slaves.
Loving these takes (sorry for the late reply). The good side of things is managing the in/outflow and how that drives your decisions. The most commonly sighted downside, is the building upgrades and traps are simply too punishing and the stress far outweighs the reward, which I think has very true grounding. Part of it could be psychological as we tend to enjoy systems where we receive bonuses rather than if we're avoiding loss. Combine this with too many upgrades too soon and this becomes uncomfortable quite quickly. I'm thinking of making a video of amendments that address the common feedback I've seen. Biggest is individual province control over slave drive. This would allow the system to be managed in the moment instead of several turns ahead. Thanks for your comment.
I did a long campaign some time ago and if you keep fighting wars and enemy armies(and win) you wont have a slave issue. You may run low here and there if an army gets wiped by say a large dwarf stack that hates your guts(unless they made ai changes).
I actually don't mind the concept of a stressful economy. However the reward needs to be significant enough to justify the risk, as other factions' economic mechanisms aren't nearly as punishing and the DE's one isn't tremendously more rewarding which I feel is the biggest issue. High risk should give high reward, low risk should give low reward. DE used to be low risk high reward, which was indeed broken, but now it's shifted to high risk medium-ish reward which just feels bad even if you like or at least tolerate the new system for what it's trying to do.
Quite simply, I agree with this comment regarding the system's evolution. i'm really happy with it now. Diktats and fast building now feel fresh and hands on.
Its a very well done guide but unfortunately CA really screwed up the race. DE used to be my fav faction but now they just are not fun anymore. Too restictive and punishing and for absolutely no reward. I would not mind it if they gave them something in return for the extra headache but they did not, they just made things over-complicated. WH3 release, RoC, sieges and weird ass changes like the magic system or slave mechanic changes Im starting to get fatigued with the game tbh. Im starting to think that it might just have been sheer luck that WH2 turned out as good as it is. CA seems to just be fumbling around.
I've been having such a fun morathi campaign over the past few days. Added the ability to seduce units and dominate factions like slannesh for some extra flavor, but it hasn't even come up in 69 turns, just been building a giant hero doomstack. One mod added slannesh cultists for her as well, and I've reskinned all the heroes. Got like 12 heroes in her army for the morathi death blob of doom and her special perk for heroes plus auras. A couple black guard and sisters of slaughter for the heroes to fight amongst, and then you nuke the blob sight with soul stealer over and over again. I only took southern naggarond and the "mexico" area and I can afford her army plus another 20 stack with a mix of mid and early game units plus a black ark. Secure borders on all sides except for the donut I just landed on. I'm only playing on hard/hard tho, but I think it's good that it's challenging because the campaign lasts longer, and my point is that you can still afford a near-doomstack of heroes without hardly any territory with the new changes.
Always bummed to see someone having a hard time. Remember Mortal Empires wasn't very special on release and it became what it did. If this patch is anything to go by, big changes are coming and the game is with the DLC Team now and the reduced sieges show they're listening. That change alone has renewed my excitement!
I accidentally saw your vid, my initial view is that the picture moves too fast to follow, hard to follow each point made, too. Considering I have not played dark elves in wh3, it's even harder. Otherwise great to have more informational videos.
I have mixed feelings about this update. I do think this is how slave economy should work. While I don’t really agree with the nerf/ cost increase in rites and especially diktats. In your last video and your Malekeith guide, you mentioned the benefits of holding ports for DE. Mind I ask, does this still hold true for DE campaign? And since DE is designed for rapid expansion, what would you suggest about black arks, like what level of the main building should we prioritise, which building is more important to build first. Thank you in advance.
Dark Elves will always be a naval power and are definitely incentivised to go after ports. It's easy to forget, you don't *lose* your economy if you go below the quota. Ports are still lucrative even at 0 slaves, while providing areas for Black Ark support. Honestly, strong Dark Elf play hasn't really changed, but it's pushing you further down that road. The common dislike I'm seeing is how investing can be a 'trap'. I'm thinking of making a video of proposed changes, like provincial on/off for overdrive. Regarding Black Arks. If stationary go growth and the main building (which increases your recruitment & growth). An active black ark should have a barracks (early game) and/or shade building (mid game) as crossbows will comprise between 1/3rd - 2/3rds of your armies. Black Arks can also sack for more slaves and you'll never go without :)
As someone who hasn't played much DE before now this is really helpful. It feels like some of those artifact buildings should still be rebalanced I guess for the slave cost and income. Do you ever upgrade them later on, once the cap and economy hits a higher level?
Absolutely aim to upgrade them in due time. The latest patch has made the slave decline rates more linear, but the important thing is to consider if you're taking ports which will really push up the consumption. You'll soon get a feel for how fast you're burning through your numbers. Try to allow 10 turns to get to your next conquest and you'll be fine. Just remember, it's not the end of the world if you fall behind in numbers :) You can still use Black Arks or disband unused armies to lower your upkeep rather than earn more!
DE were my main in WH2 but I haven't played them yet in WH3. So what happens if you have zero slaves? From what I could see in this vid your economy buildings still give a semi-respectable amount of cash and slaves are just a bonus on top of that.
The economy doesn't crash by any means. You still make good money through trade and the base amounts. Having surplus slaves improves your freedom to use Rites or Diktats to help develop the empire. Wokrshops and Ports have roughly an extra 1/3rd income if you have above 100 slaves.
I think I'll cover it when there's more to cover. My "High Elf Changes" video dived decently into economy. In essence, the trinket makers are now a building you want everywhere, boosting tradables. Nobles with Emollient and Conscientious can now be put in Provinces like Titan Peak to produce more resources and the edict to bolster Trade Income is excellent. Ally with the powerhouse tradepartners for Outposts (which give Inf per turn, which helps keep them all happy).
In the meantime I'm building up my capital full of recruitment buildings and making slave pens everywhere too compensate for slave loss per turn. been playing it completely wrong.
This is a really helpful guide but I think largely cause a lot of this stuff is unintuitive, going for rapid fast expansion and keeping your income buildings low rank feels counterproductive when your settlements are so hard to defend and it feels like you need high income to recruit armies and make up for it. Slaves give big bonuses at high rank that feels like you should be going towards, building slave pens everywhere and getting a massive cap so you can really benefit from it but not having the public order to be able to handle the strain makes the way I think a lot of people want to and think they should play a lot less viable
Good points. One advantage that's easy to look over, is building a T1 Workshop only takes 1 turn and gives 300 gold. This is actually very good and even in riskier holdings can easily make it worth while.
I can get people saying this isn't a good system but I don't get this "it's not as involved" attitude. In the past you'd just shut off slaves in every province but your richest and send your buff heroes there. Now I check every single turn if I want to use growth, activate a diktat and/or ritual, double and triple check if I want to upgrade a port. Everything is all about it all the time.
I have to agree with this sentiment. The old system was significantly more passive in that you just leveled up heroes and redirected them to your worker province, but the argument is the skill in acquiring and applying the followers was legit and engaging. The new system forcing you to go outta slavin' is something I really like. It still needs tweaking but I really think they're on the verge of something great!
@@ElvenPlotArmour Something like setting a level between 1 and 3 of how many slaves you want to use up for the bonus so you can build up your economy buildings would be good.
Heya, got a quick question. I am playing as Lokhir Felheart. I have my starting major port and have managed to take two others, Bechai and Zhanshi. Including the Blessed Dread, that should give me a black ark cap of 4. However, I have been able to recruit 4 on top of the blessed dread, giving me 5. Which only makes sense if I take into consideration I occupied Shi Long for 1 turn before abandoning it. Maybe not such a quick question. My question, is does Lokhir felhearts black ark capacity depend on held major ports, or conquered major ports whether he keeps them or not? As in, for every unique major port conquered does that add to the black ark pool whether you keep the port or not?
Hey, honestly Lokhir's black ark cap has been a bit buggy and finicky since the previous game. Honestly, 4 black arks should have you more than set in the mid game, though don't dismiss the fun of using sealanes to pester Brettonia and those haughty high elves ;) Occupying for a single turn shoooould increase the cap - if it does, hats off to you for a crafty start! Let me know how it goes, it might make it into a Lokhir guide on the horizon!
@@ElvenPlotArmour I carried on that particular campaign but wasnt recording black ark cap. It always seemed to go up regardless of whether I held the ports for more than a turn. I will test the theory...for science. And yes, 4 going into midgame is very powerful and I get one through the sea lane as soon as possible to plunder lustria, ulthuan and brettonia (then a fleet to save Malekith's arse from valkia as I was trying to confederatebut the ungrateful git declared war). I'll let you know how the test goes
I did a run of 19 turns. By turn 6, had taken three provinces north of river giving 3 major ports, 3 black arks and capacity for 1. All expected. Sent blessed dread to shi long, captured and got red blades and 1 extra capacity. Abandoned shi long. Extra admiral still in pool. Captured bamboo crossing, no extra admiral. conclusion. You dont lose admirals if you dont keep the port, but you wont get another one for the next port - unless you retake the abandoned one. Possible use, simultaneous attack on multiple large ports that you've never been to, occupy over 1 end turn to get several admirals and then abandon - fleet gets bigger and territory remains same
@@johnsharp9964 Awesome, thanks for sharing that. The cap can fluctuate just like other hero caps tied to buildings. However, getting them on the map and starting to level does add value. You'll notice most of my walkthrus aim to provide early access to heroes as every turn they can level up generates power and value. You're a champion for sharing your science. Cheers. Feel free to the join the Discord - it's just 0 easy installments of $0
Tip #2 is really bad advice. You should build and upgrade your Workshops in every green region. Even if you run out of slaves for a turn every so often, they will still make you so much money. Even with 0 slaves, they make as much money as e.g. dwarven Workshops. And all you need is 100 slaves and they will make almost double that...
Interesting take and you make some good points. I did test that system by racking up a deficit, but I found having the excess to use on Edicts and Diktats to be well worth it. Your strategy is certainly viable and many seem to forget the DE economy doesn't just vanish at
i think the the new system is ok but we should get much more money for controlling and manage this stuff. for me it feels we need to invest more "work" in our economy with equal or even less gold then before. i loaded a game at turn 50 after patch and got rebels all over the map because i missed these changes and didnt controll my amount of slaves and losing massiv control. it coast thousands of gold losing seattlements and building new armys to get them back
Gotta disagree on slave pens . i build these in every capital and they allow for even more vast reserves for when needed ,plus that generation of slaves allows you to pace yourself better , more cautiously , which on higher difficulties is important so you dont end up with ordertide knocking on your door when not quite ready .
Appreciate your take and comment. While I personally don't believe they should take priority at every capital over other options, your approach can absolutely work very well. The tone I deliver here is perhaps to discourage the common mistake of "I build assassins and slave pens as my incoming slaves" which distracts where the focus really needs to be. I find the slave cap tends to increase naturally thanks to main buildings and black arks, with the odd slave pen. Late game, I would build slave pens prolifically, but much of the advice here is to help survive that mid game where it can really catch you (ie where I found people had most difficulty). Thanks for sharing your findings, always great to see success in different places!
Been having so much fun with harder dark elf campaign at the moment. Mod in some slannesh mechanics for morathi, like 2-3 mods for that and also reskins and new models for different heroes, so I'm cheating a bit. I still have a doomstack and another full army plus a kitted out black arc by turn 68 tho, half the territory you've got here and yet to invade the donut, so I wouldn't say the economy is too bad on just hard difficulties. TLDR: if a campaign is made artificially more difficult by CA, just lower the difficulty a notch from what you'd normally play and consider a mod. Balancing slaves is easy atm, just take captives every time for slaves and heals and then loot and occupy every time. Had slaves basically capped the entire time
The new slave mechanic sucks, norsca makes more money without the same bs, same for most races. It’s really just another reason I dislike dark elves (formerly my favourite race) in warhammer 3
Always sad to see someone go from enjoying to disliking a campaign. I'm thinking of pushing for the ability to toggle provinces on and off to get more control on the drain could be a good fix?
@@ElvenPlotArmour that would be good, since slave drain rate is increased when control is low, your slaves can be drained very quickly is an area is newly taken, and since its needed for growth and money it can ruin everything quickly. plus there is no micro or anything to fix it, and no actual reward for dealing with it, before there was more micro needed to get the most out of it, but if you put in the effort you got massive rewards in that you had infinite money. then there is other issues, like Nagaroth is just 2 settlements in the area now which weakens it as an area, Quintex has a worthless landmark, low income, high cost long time to build, local growth at tier 5, it just seems like the dark elves got so many nerfs for the sake of nerfs with no real buffs to compensate.
Sacking can certainly be profitable, and even preferable in some cases. The point I wanted to stress here was to not just occupy and miss out on obtaining more workers. Sacking then occupying can be effective, but is nowhere near what it was in WH2. If you're looking to expand quickly, Loot & Occupy hits a good "best of all worlds" approach - but that's not to disregard the benefits of sacking. Good luck in those campaigns!
@@ElvenPlotArmour realized I’ve posted twice. Lol must have come back around to your vid :). Still 100% believe that in most cases you will want to sack then occupy.
Making less money to make more money seems very dumb to me. I'd honestly rather just upgrade my economy buildings and forget the stupid slave system even exists.
This is a really common complaint I'm seeing. It was a common element of past Total Wars so I didn't look in too far, but if it's bothering a lot of people then it's certainly worthy of conversation.
@@ElvenPlotArmour it just seems pointless having T2 and T3 buildings, always getting building reminders when you can’t do anything. A different idea I have would be to make buildings “stronger” / buffed but have to have slaves to reduce building time and increase growth. I.e. normal buildings that are 2 to 3 turns to construct are 7 or 8 but by amassing slaves drops it to 3 or 4 turns (obviously the building is more powerful to account for this and building will increase slave decline (they fall off buildings etc)) so it’s not OP.
@@Briggsyy55 I really like the construction reduction idea. I feel the best solution is to be able to turn on/off provincial slave activity to have more control on the slave drain and subsequent PO issues.
@@ElvenPlotArmour I agree turning off the mechanic in provinces would work great. There needs to be a UI like the previous slave mechanic to show decline and what’s turned on and off to make it easier than scrolling individual settlements. It works for me and I would be happy with it but still not an amazing mechanic…
Not sold, higher lvl workshops offer same money but are not slave dependant, i would rather use slaves on dictats or rituals after a battle and have indep incomp
As of the latest patch they made the slave decline rate linear and much easier. A more passive approach as you propose is absolutely viable, but a stronger economy can absolutely be drawn from steady expansion. The hidden tool is diplomacy to divide and conquer without going to war with the entire world at once. You make a good point that is commonly overlooked: it's not game over if you're slaves drop below a certain point. I try to work off 5-10 turns of slave decline before needing new workers. This extra income can be spent on more buildings to boost that static income, should you run out of slaves.
@@ElvenPlotArmour I honestly dont see how, Tier 3 passively makes 400, Tier 1 makes 200 + 100(from slaves), you would need a base +100% slave income globally to be on par with base income. Further, if you are aggressively expanding/rading with some slave pits, you can easily offset slave decay. I stand by my opinion, it is much better to rush the economic buildings, use arcs for military recruitment and if you can not offset slave decay, then you spend them the same turn you get them either for dictats or rituals.
The way I see it, the Dark elf economy, without looking at slaves at all, is already pretty good. They have some of the best upkeep reduction of any faction, and Malekith(if faction leader) gets a big upkeep reduction on a lot of different units that are excellent for making cheap, but efficient armies(Dreadspears and Darkshards). They have a lot of income boosts from sacking and looting, as well as battles in general(skills and research). Their basic economy building still provides 200 gold regardless of what else is going on, and it is fairly cheap. So if you are still going broke, you probably spent too much, too fast, or are not using the other tools to their full potential. As stated in the video, slaves is just a thing that puts it all into overdrive, and accelerates various processes. The more you expand with a high-output slave economy, the harder the bubble will burst if you run out of slaves. So restraining and pacing yourself(in terms of sacrificing slaves) is key. High Elves have a similar issue, if in reverse. They gain a lot of benefits from trading(usually getting 20k+ from trading alone around turn 60-70, without really trying). But as the campaign goes on, they might lose(or declare war on) various trading partners, which means that their trade income will start to suffer. Suddenly, you might not be able to afford new armies, or even keep all the existing ones. So for the High Elves, ensuring that your trade partners are thriving and protected is important, while for Dark Elves, it is about constantly finding new battles and areas to sack or raid.
Play an warriors of chaos campaign. I’m 70 turns in as archaon and my per turn income after upkeep is 60k I have 4 full doomstacks and I only own 10 dark bastions. One dark bastion once is tier 5 can earn you 10k a turn lmfao what fucking sense does that make? We aren’t even talking about the MILLIONS of gold I get from battles every turn lmfao I could literally have an army to attack every individual settlement in the game all at once if I wanted to. This is turn 70 on a LEGENDARY campaign
Yea but the HE doesn't have to do constant accounting or be forced to halt development of their cities. Your main mechanic is a punishment that forces you to play a certain way. Heck, at least the dorfs get slayers when they fail to do their grudges. The dark elf gets disappointment if they capture a city and forgets to remove resource buildings. How fun😐
@@SupremeGrand-MasterAzrael Yeah I feel the WoC were delierately overtuned and will stay that way for a few months as an apology for neglecting them so long haha
@@jellydamgood Actually, when I play High Elves, I constantly pace myself, so that I time my larger building constructions with the rite that reduces construction cost. It saves me thousands on each activation. Because High Elf armies are generally much more expensive and generally gain much less value out of combat and conquest, while still having the most expensive structures in the game. Saying that it "forces you to play a certain way" is weird, when the entire point of the various races is that they play in a unique way. Skaven require constant food(and more and more of it, as they expand), Ogres require meat and camps, Bretonnia requires Chivalry(which is penalized through certain actions) and peasant limits, and Dark Elves require slaves(and dont even need to rely on it to get a good economy). By the time that the Dark Elves run out of enemies to sack and take slaves from, the campaign is already won. And rather than looking at it as a "punishment", look at it as a reward. If you manage it well, you completely outpaces every other economy currently in the game. However, if you ignore the intricacies of the mechanic, you wont get as much value out of your buildings and various other effects.
I liked the changes at first but I realized this new system is just heavily flawed. Skaven, Warriors of Chaos and other factions never
run out of their ressources. Not upgrading your income buildings because they create problems? Thats just awful. I would rather play with the old system and just remove the slave exploits.
Perhaps I'm more sympathetic to cautious upgrade from older TW Titles. I do enjoy how the hunt for more slaves is now compelling but I'm getting the feeling perhaps it needs to be tweaked to become "less risk/less reward". Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It's great to learn the wider player base's experience!
@@ElvenPlotArmour My main problem was rapidly expanding and either finishing a an area or a long time to get to the next place. Either case multiple turns are spent with a reduced slave aqusition which can make you live slave check to slave check once you get back to the new frontlines.
@@juiceyspice8671 You raise a good point. Also, without settlements everywhere the player needs time to build up as well, which was not needed before.
@@ElvenPlotArmour Before the update you did not need to build walls as you could have many armies for defense and rebellions. Public order did not need to be managed and the rebellions were sometimes profitable. A big thing is the compatibility with the sword of khaine plummeted as dark elves now have one of the strictest penalties for public order.
These tips help with the problems, but it’s really annoying in the late game having a bunch of unupgraded income buildings because you cannot use the notification to bounce around.
Definitely an overall nerf as you could bunga out beforehand. I feel like morathi is relatively better now (still worse overall) because of expanded order buildings and better base income.
Is there a way to play DE in WH3 without dealing with slaves at all?
Your guides are consistently some of the best around. My only complaint is that there aren't enough of them.
Appreciated mate. Thanks!
Seriously, this is a whole new level of informative and entertaining at once.
Appreciate the video and the points made. But... Think about it.
He stated to NOT build up your economy buildings because... It hurts your economy.
There's has to be a better way to implement this.
I appreciate him giving tips on a way to make this work. I also enjoy the planning and strategic layer this adds.
Just wish it wasn't at the cost of under-utilized infrastructure. Seems wonky.
Why was this change even made? What could possibly be the justification?
@@SupremeGrand-MasterAzrael To answer both comments. The old system was deemed broken OP for not really doing much except changing your slave farm every 30 turns (which I admit is true). The new system is designed to give the player agency to obtain more slaves and manage their impact, but the big theme I'm seeing is there isn't enough control. I saw an excellent idea of allowing certain provinces to switch off their slave activities, thus removing that province's decline which would allow upgrading and more flexibility.
Dark elves were my first campaign and I had so much money at the end I had 20 armies on the map and was still making 20,000 a turn
Mate your guides are just *chefs kiss* honestly probably got me back to my dark elves iv been having a ball with chaos just jamming chaos down people's throat an laughing
Thanks for the support! Chaos are finally having their day in the sun after years of sadness haha
Have you tried spamming Slave Pens and keeping the slave count high to get global benefits (reduced construction time, reduced construction cost, higher income from all buildings)? I had some luck doing that on Morathi since she can potentially hold a lot of provinces (unlike Lokhir whose main buildings will be one-turn Black Ark constructions) and her corruption helps counteract the control penalties from Slave Pens and having a high number of slaves.
And thanks for making such great content :)
Morathi's corruption is really good and underrated. Spamming Slave Pens really doesn't seem like a system that can ever catchup to the amount you can gain through combat (which increases over time as the settlements level up). I do think you could get a balanced economy using assassins and slave pens, but the reward for overdriving with high level buildings and capturing more workers I'd always picture as a the more lucrative and realistic result. I'd build the occational Slave Pen if I feel I'm capturing above my means, but it's more of a reactive choice in my own experience. The construction time is certainly nice though! Cheers for the support!
So far, I really haven't enjoyed the dark elf changes brought in 2.2. I already enjoyed balancing the slave economy pre-patch but now it feels so strict that I just don't feel like messing with the dark elves. I can totally see the changes feeling good for the very experienced players, but I'm not enjoying the extra tension it brought
This is a pretty common theme I'm seeing. Did you load an old save or start a new campaign? I feel loading a save balanced to the old system is instant collapse!
@@ElvenPlotArmour I did load a save from before the patch, and that's certainly what caused my so much issues. I'll give a new campaign a shot with these tips and see if it feels better for me. Thanks for the advice!
Diminishing returns on the workshops 100% needs to be removed. 150 gold per 10 slaves vs less than 90 per 10 slaves is a massive difference
I'm thinking of proposing a new system where the player has provincial control of turning on and off the overdrive. Diminishing returns are a natural component for any faction, perhaps you're more referring to the fact an investment can feel harmful rather than 'sub-optimal'?
@@ElvenPlotArmour maybe you're right about diminishing returns for the time it takes to pay back the investment. But the slave value reducing by about 40% for at t3 compared to t1 is not okay imo. Having each individual workshop increase by 10 a rank means you make 175 per 10 slaves which is about 16.2% more efficient. Diminishing returns should be in the time it takes to pay off not in directly reducing your economic efficiency.
I suppose it is slightly unfair for me to rank it like that. As the extra gold from slaves is the same per slave at rank 2. But tier 3 directly decreases your slave efficiency. And the should reduce the upkeep by 20 or increase the gold by 100
One question I’ve had since immortal empires released is how do I go about building up my black arks?
Hero buildings should be build on land, not in Arks (as this doesnt' up the supply). If it's not busy, the growth and main building should be hammered as this allows rapid recruitment. Shade building is an auto include and if you want hydras and dragons, build that building and holding them in the ark will gain a number of cost reductions. Only hire corsairs in a crisis, or use a couple for flexibility in most cases and try to lower the cost with spears/Dshards.
I actually ran out of money for really the first time the other day playing Malekith. It actually took me aback because I typically manage my money well enough so this never happens until this update.
I haven't really made up my mind about the changes but they do seem really punitive and have, perhaps an unnecessary learning curve to use effectively.
Why are they patching a SINGLEPLAYER experience to be worse? What justification is there to make it WORSE lol different? Okay. WORSE? At this rate I’m honestly pissed off that I bought the game. I could’ve just stayed with 2 and had a BETTER experience lmfao
One very real issue is if you load an existing campaign balanced on the old system, it will instantly crash upon loading into this system. You may very well be all over this but I found Malekith focusing on ports to be the real key to his power (I made the inland mistake first time). ruclips.net/video/V297pm5bmA4/видео.html
It'll get there. Overall, this latest patch addressed many other issues. I'm enjoying it far more now with less sieges, but is the game better than M.E. yet? Not yet. I think once they get off Beta it will be.
@@ElvenPlotArmour The thing is that you should not be punished by playing inland. You should be rewarded when conquering ports.
Similarly, turtling for some time should not make you go into oblivion.
I welcome the more reasonable economy of the DE now, but I don't think it is meaningful to make their main mechanic punitive if not perfectly followed. It destroys your freedom
Some of this seems counter intuitive and we lose the flexibility we had before. I prefer stability, but of course that's not plausible with this. I liked being able to not make as much money but being able to take my time.
It's easy to overlook just how powerful the T1 workshop is, and it's only 1 turn to build so it's very low risk. It's important to remember, it's not the end of the world if you go below 100. If you don't have several armies raised in a quiet period, your saved military can offset this advantage and you can max your growth edicts in your settlements without fear of any downside :)
@@ElvenPlotArmour True. I'm just a very cautious player and I hate instability. That said, Felheart's Campaign was my first go to in Immortal Empires, as he's my favourite Dark Elf, maybe even favourite Legendary Lord, and I had a blast. So maybe I'm just overreacting.
I'm playing a Teclis campaign now, but I might have to hop back to the Dark Elves after and keep these tips in mind when I do.
Honestly, I prefer the old system: I do not reject the idea of a nerve because yes before, the black elf economy could really be too strong. But, the new system is very contradictory, at the beginning of the campaign, many slaves go to the trash because the ceiling is too low, the way to increase it is to expand its territory, But it also means more armies to defend it and especially more losses of slaves. In other words, we extend ourselves to have a higher threshold of slaves, but by doing that we have more and more trouble keeping our slaves.
It is therefore necessary to continue plundering with fewer and fewer enemies in the countryside. Where other factions have a growing economy over time, black elves stagnate or regress. The interface is also bad, the old system with the management in the form of account book was much better I think, we can more easily judge our rate of loss of slaves.
I don’t think CA will put back the old system, but a better balance between the ceiling and the slave loss rate, and adding a building that could reduce the loss rate I think would be a good thing.
Thanks for the tips to avoid losing too many slaves, very good video!
Thanks mate, I think the system is onto the path toward something great, but it's not there yet. My grand suggestion (which combines several others I've heard) is to have the accounting book and be able to turn on/off slave activity in each province (similar to tax on/off). This way you can diminish the decline directly and have another tool to manage public order.
The upside of this system is I must admit it's engaging and slaving drives decisions rather than being a background eco boost. Hoping they find the best of both worlds soon. Cheers for sharing your thoughts!
I wish poeple would make a bigger uproar about this. This just makes dark elves less fun.
I think it is the opposite. It makes them way more fun.
It encourages an aggressive playstyle, while at the same time demand you to temper your expansionism, focusing a bit more on the raid/sacking, than straight up conquest.
You now actually have to think about what you are doing, rather than just waging mindless wars.
Not building and upgrading buildings because you are more punished for doing so just plain sucks ass!
@@Briggsyy55 It only punishes you, if you expand too quickly(how many buildings you build that require slaves per turn) compared to how many slaves you can capture each turn.
“We made this change so that the way you have to play now is by basically not making any progress. You can’t upgrade your economic buildings (no other race in the entire game plays this way and for a very good reason. ITS RETARDED)
I'm finding a very mixed response, but they are passionately for or against, which I optimistically see as just some tweaking to get everyone in the same camp. Appreciate everyone sharing their ideas
This video solved every Dark Elf problem I had. Thanks again!
Cheers mate! Glad it helped!
I actually don't know how the system worked before the current one. Not upgrading buildings as a bit of a red flag for me since i prefer a building tall vs wide play style. I really like the incentive on looting, raiding and sacking tho. Imho they should even consider making Combat and raiding the only options for gaining slaves and balance the game around it. Maybe getting slaves through diplomacy would be a fun flavor like a peace treaty for 500 slaves (the trade partner could pay slaves in Form of gold or growth/ control) disclaimer i only played 1 campaign as morathy as of now
Thanks for sharing your experience. I think the Dark Elves by design need to play a bit wide (but not absurdly) and I like the ideals of the ruleset, they just need to fine tune it. The biggest hurdle seems to be when taking new territory and the impact of those new holdings' buildings have on your decline rate. It needs work but I think when all is said and done it'll be great. Either way, the Dark Elves are still overall in a more than decent place for now.
@@ElvenPlotArmour yup! So far I agree. Only mistake i did in m campaign is not building a slave pen to unlock black ark's. Should i build them in m capital or is a rank 2 pen good enough?
are you ever going to do an campaign on your channel i love these tip videos but it would be nice wathcing you employ these tips in an actual series
He does stream about once a week. You can check his video list, there's plenty of streams in there and will be more in the future I'm sure
Check out my Malus Darkblade Stream. I tried an experimental run as Malekith but it ended up being a poor concept and turned into a grind. The Malus run showed how the slave and black ark systems can drive you forward!
Oof, this mechanic looks like work. How did CA manage to make the druchii so unfun?
Imagine patching a singleplayer experience so that’s it is WORSE LMFAO braindead morons. I regret buying the game at all
It's nowhere near as complex in game as it's made to sound here. If you just hold off upgrading your workshops you can probably have a similar experience to WH2 for the most part :)
@@ElvenPlotArmour that's true, but then as of now, the way to upgrade your empire and cities, is to not upgrade your empire and cities, and that's really lame, almost as bad as the ambush stance only meta from last patch.
Anyway if I want to do more bookkeeping I'll just clock in some extra hours at work. Dark elves gonna stay unplayed for a bit longer.
"In a way seem more punishing." NO, it doesn't SEEM more punishing. Doubling costs across the board IS more punishing.
You show a game where you, an expert player playing on normal difficulty, have 29 settlements by turn 36. An expert player playing on normal difficulty can win as the Dark Elves! Everything's great then!
The problem starts at the tactical battle level. If the AI is invading your territory with an army, and it looks at the autoresolve and thinks it's going to lose if it fights a battle with your army, it'll avoid battle with your army (as it should). For example, this is what is happening when the AI force marches so that it ends its turn a couple of pixels further from your army than your army can march and attack. If you are good at fighting the tactical battles then you can make a weak armies that the AI will think it can beat and it will attack you on its turn. You defeat its army with your tactical battle skills - getting a bunch of slaves right there - and putting yourself in a position on the strategic map where you can immediately go on the offensive, putting you in a position to sack the enemy's settlements for more slaves, etc. Nice positive feedback loop going on the strategic map because of things that are happening on the tactical map.
If on the other hand you are average to mediocre at the tactical battles, like *cough* me *cough*, then your army (particularly, if it's the beginning of the game, your starting army that contains your legendary lord) is probably a bit better than the invading army, so the AI avoids battle with you. Not only does your army not fight anyone that turn, not earning any income, it also has to stay in your territory to defend your territory, which means that your army is not earning anything on the offensive, either. This is a situation that, once it gets started, tends to perpetuate itself, so you can not be earning any slaves for several turns in a row.
So the way this mechanic works:
if you're on the defensive, you're not getting any new slaves, which mean that most of your faction's special abilities go away. If you're not getting any income, it doesn't matter how good you are at managing income.
if, on the other hand, you're playing a campaign where you're never on the defensive, then you're not playing at a difficulty level that's challenging to you.
This is in a game that, for the most part, has a pretty casual strategic game. The potentially competitive, challenging part is the tactical battles. So why make this one faction punishing for casual players even on normal difficulty?
I'm cynical no doubt, but CA are a business and they want to sell DLC's. If their metrics show that a lot of people are playing Dark Elves and not the Warriors of Chaos from the latest DLC, then these repeated nerfs to Dark Elves, completely coincidentally no doubt, are just perfect for getting casual players frustrated playing Dark Elves and motivated to buy the latest DLC. I'm sure that if I were to buy the latest DLC and play Valkia instead of Malekith, I'd have no trouble "mastering" the complex strategy of this game at all.
Hey mate, regarding the AI avoiding your armies, proceeding in ambush stance is an excellent way to avoid them dodging you. If it'll take 2 turns anyway to realch a settlement, adopting ambush stance is always a sure bet. I understand the scenario in this video may seem contrived, it was to see how the system scales, and where the trouble might be. Dark Elves won't be getting DLC for a loong time imho, they've already got 6 lords and are one of the strongest factions, ahead of many that need some love more. And yes, Warriors of Chaos are OP due to being DLC haha. They'll get brought back to Earth for the official launch I think.
I feel IE has double compounded things because certain lords like Malekith have a much harder time. You're right, you do need to stay on the offensive, but even if you go below 100 slaves this is only 1/3rd to 1/2 of your revenue. I get that's a lot, but the base income and trade can still earn you a lot as well, along with the incredible cost saving of Black Arks. Dark Elves, I feel, will always be a rather advanced faction. Even in WH2, knowing how to use black arks, etc isn't something other factions prepare you for and these are the most decisive things when playing.
Appreciate you sharing your thoughts. Who are you playing as
I was playing an archaic campaign. By turn 70 I had 4 doom stacks, I only owned 10 settlements or so, and I was making 60k income per turn. Why is chaos richer without even factoring in post battle loot, sack income, ect… it doesn’t make any sense lmfao as archaic I could literally have infinite doom stacks with no penalties and only having 10 fucking settlements lmfao I was getting 10k income per settlement. My vassals owning 30 regions gave me a MASSIVE 600 a turn lmfao what the actual fuck
@@ElvenPlotArmour Thanks for the reply! Sorry for jumping on you about the scenario - it was perfectly designed for the content of the video, which was all about the economics. And there were some tips in there that I hadn't noticed. My reply was just my frustration at the current situation coming out.
I've been playing Malekith, and been trying to re-establish the Kingdom of Naggaroth with the six Dark Elven cities. (I saw your video about defeating Alith Anar in Karond Kar, and I admired your strategy - it was like a perfect set of opening chess moves - but it's not what I want to do with him.) Malekith got hit in the change from WH II to WH III on a lot of levels, e.g. the changes to the other LL's bring out their distinctive themes really nicely, but arguably one of Malekith's main distinctive themes was that he confederated everyone, and we know how that got changed in the new game. And Naggarond province being reduced to two settlements, and the area around Naggarond is being one of the worst places on the map for using Black Arks to support you. To add insult to injury, if Valkia's threatening your settlements in Ghrond province and Naggarond province, you have to move your troops off the Black Arks for the troops to be of any use, which doesn't help your economy.
Yup, going below 100 slaves is just costing you your profit - you're still making enough base income to pay your armies (hopefully). So it just seems like it's costing you your income :) .
In my 2.1 game, I actually managed to ambush Alith Anar with Malekith's army. And when AA came back with a new army, I ambushed that army, too. One limitation is that in the early campaign your armies are not very good at ambushing yet, and another is that if the AI is already within one move of a juicy settlement, hiding your army means that it will think it's safe to torch that settlement, and destroying their army afterwards seems a Pyrrhic victory. I'm thinking that in my next game I'm going to try the AI's trick of having a small army that it doesn't perceive as a threat closer to it, and then when the AI sits two pixels out of my main army's move, I force march my main army up to it and then attack with the little army the AI didn't think was a threat. We'll see how that works.
My last two campaigns ended with the game crashing to desktop every time I tried to play a particular turn, so I'm taking a bit of a break until CA makes some improvements there.
I think a good compromise would be for the building slave consumption and rite costs to scale with difficulty. E.g. if you're playing at Normal difficulty, pay patch 2.1 costs, scaling up until at Legendary difficulty you're paying the costs from patch 2.2 (twice the 2.1 costs).
Thank you for the guide but judging new slave system with Morathi's slaaneshi controll and economic buffs on normal campaign difficulty wont be accurate. This new slave system is indefensible for me. Nothing about it makes sense.
-Slave pens should be organizing your slaves thus giving more money, capacity and control.
-Black arcs and your raiding armies should be your main way to generate slaves, not your Khanite assassin generating 30 slaves per turn for some reason.
-Workshops should have a slave workforce toggle. And maybe when using slaves, it could generate negative control.
I hope there is still some DE fans exists in CA, so they can fix this mess with lore acurate and fun system. Or just bring back wh2 system.
Im also hoping for a slave trade system after chaos dwarfs are added.
The Industry building will still generate gold even without slaves. It just wont get the boost. So long as you do not overexpand and overextend(ie, bursts your bubble), you should not risk getting to less than 100 slaves anyway.
Rather than having to constantly turn various buildings "on/off" to min-max(which would get tedious with 50+ regions), you simply have to keep it above 50 mile... erh, 100 slaves.
Slave Pens are, well, pens. You are massing a lot of people into a fairly confined space, which obviously would lead to revolts eventually. It is the old "slaves outnumber the masters 100-to-1" and it makes for a more uncertain environment every time they go back and forth from "work", thus reduced control. That said, it shouldnt be hard to still keep your control high enough to keep it positive.
Part of a Khanite Assassin's job, is to find potential threats within your own ranks(and so they will be added as slaves). Upgrading the skill simply makes them better/more ruthless at that part of the job.
And Black Arcs are already the main facilitator of your raids, as well as a huge part of your max slave capacity. It is in fact, your most important part of your economy, for various reasons.
Appreciate your thoughts and I agree any N/N difficulty run isn't a good test, but it's all I really needed her to get a grip on the changes. Honestly, on Legendary you get more battles which makes the accessibility and use of rite/diktats more useful, though less land to build workshops.
I think an overview like you explained where you can toggle slave activities like a taxrate is a really fun idea and could be the tweak this system needs!
I think the direction of this new system is really wrong. I can say CA wanted to change it more systemetically and it might change mid-late game structures of DE play. But that's not the point they had to fix, I think. I would say there are no essential differences between both WH2 and 3. 3 system looks more cute but that's all. I think important point is ways to get slaves from the entire game. Early games for DE is very toxic and painful, especially for Malekith. It gives me feeling of stucking on something, stomped by money and enemies both. New slave pens are bad really. I think it must give ~100 slave for T4 and 50~60 for T2. Slaves are really rare and DE must have expert head hunters for these noble workers. I think there must be more various ways to get them. In this circumstance, early game is too harsh if faction has no chances to jump up to mid-game state. Late game is a little bit balanced than before but it's still boring. There is no fun to manage slaves.
Loving these takes (sorry for the late reply). The good side of things is managing the in/outflow and how that drives your decisions. The most commonly sighted downside, is the building upgrades and traps are simply too punishing and the stress far outweighs the reward, which I think has very true grounding. Part of it could be psychological as we tend to enjoy systems where we receive bonuses rather than if we're avoiding loss. Combine this with too many upgrades too soon and this becomes uncomfortable quite quickly.
I'm thinking of making a video of amendments that address the common feedback I've seen. Biggest is individual province control over slave drive. This would allow the system to be managed in the moment instead of several turns ahead. Thanks for your comment.
I did a long campaign some time ago and if you keep fighting wars and enemy armies(and win) you wont have a slave issue. You may run low here and there if an army gets wiped by say a large dwarf stack that hates your guts(unless they made ai changes).
This is pretty much what the devs were after - keep you sacking and being cruel'n'deadly
I actually don't mind the concept of a stressful economy. However the reward needs to be significant enough to justify the risk, as other factions' economic mechanisms aren't nearly as punishing and the DE's one isn't tremendously more rewarding which I feel is the biggest issue. High risk should give high reward, low risk should give low reward. DE used to be low risk high reward, which was indeed broken, but now it's shifted to high risk medium-ish reward which just feels bad even if you like or at least tolerate the new system for what it's trying to do.
Quite simply, I agree with this comment regarding the system's evolution. i'm really happy with it now. Diktats and fast building now feel fresh and hands on.
Its a very well done guide but unfortunately CA really screwed up the race. DE used to be my fav faction but now they just are not fun anymore. Too restictive and punishing and for absolutely no reward. I would not mind it if they gave them something in return for the extra headache but they did not, they just made things over-complicated.
WH3 release, RoC, sieges and weird ass changes like the magic system or slave mechanic changes Im starting to get fatigued with the game tbh. Im starting to think that it might just have been sheer luck that WH2 turned out as good as it is. CA seems to just be fumbling around.
I've been having such a fun morathi campaign over the past few days. Added the ability to seduce units and dominate factions like slannesh for some extra flavor, but it hasn't even come up in 69 turns, just been building a giant hero doomstack. One mod added slannesh cultists for her as well, and I've reskinned all the heroes. Got like 12 heroes in her army for the morathi death blob of doom and her special perk for heroes plus auras. A couple black guard and sisters of slaughter for the heroes to fight amongst, and then you nuke the blob sight with soul stealer over and over again. I only took southern naggarond and the "mexico" area and I can afford her army plus another 20 stack with a mix of mid and early game units plus a black ark. Secure borders on all sides except for the donut I just landed on.
I'm only playing on hard/hard tho, but I think it's good that it's challenging because the campaign lasts longer, and my point is that you can still afford a near-doomstack of heroes without hardly any territory with the new changes.
Always bummed to see someone having a hard time. Remember Mortal Empires wasn't very special on release and it became what it did. If this patch is anything to go by, big changes are coming and the game is with the DLC Team now and the reduced sieges show they're listening. That change alone has renewed my excitement!
I just play WH2 Dark Elves instead! :)
I accidentally saw your vid, my initial view is that the picture moves too fast to follow, hard to follow each point made, too. Considering I have not played dark elves in wh3, it's even harder. Otherwise great to have more informational videos.
Appreciate the feedback. Welcome to the channel :)
@@ElvenPlotArmour this reply makes me subscribe for more WH content. Great attitude, appreciated.
I have mixed feelings about this update. I do think this is how slave economy should work. While I don’t really agree with the nerf/ cost increase in rites and especially diktats. In your last video and your Malekeith guide, you mentioned the benefits of holding ports for DE. Mind I ask, does this still hold true for DE campaign? And since DE is designed for rapid expansion, what would you suggest about black arks, like what level of the main building should we prioritise, which building is more important to build first. Thank you in advance.
Dark Elves will always be a naval power and are definitely incentivised to go after ports. It's easy to forget, you don't *lose* your economy if you go below the quota. Ports are still lucrative even at 0 slaves, while providing areas for Black Ark support.
Honestly, strong Dark Elf play hasn't really changed, but it's pushing you further down that road. The common dislike I'm seeing is how investing can be a 'trap'. I'm thinking of making a video of proposed changes, like provincial on/off for overdrive.
Regarding Black Arks. If stationary go growth and the main building (which increases your recruitment & growth). An active black ark should have a barracks (early game) and/or shade building (mid game) as crossbows will comprise between 1/3rd - 2/3rds of your armies.
Black Arks can also sack for more slaves and you'll never go without :)
Having played the chorfs a fair bit now labourers are far easier to manage and its easier with raidstacking atm.... Just wanted to put it out there
Hell yeah, brother. Love the videos, v informative.
Thanks mate!
As someone who hasn't played much DE before now this is really helpful. It feels like some of those artifact buildings should still be rebalanced I guess for the slave cost and income. Do you ever upgrade them later on, once the cap and economy hits a higher level?
Absolutely aim to upgrade them in due time. The latest patch has made the slave decline rates more linear, but the important thing is to consider if you're taking ports which will really push up the consumption. You'll soon get a feel for how fast you're burning through your numbers. Try to allow 10 turns to get to your next conquest and you'll be fine. Just remember, it's not the end of the world if you fall behind in numbers :)
You can still use Black Arks or disband unused armies to lower your upkeep rather than earn more!
@Elven Plot Armour thanks for your insight!
DE were my main in WH2 but I haven't played them yet in WH3. So what happens if you have zero slaves? From what I could see in this vid your economy buildings still give a semi-respectable amount of cash and slaves are just a bonus on top of that.
The economy doesn't crash by any means. You still make good money through trade and the base amounts. Having surplus slaves improves your freedom to use Rites or Diktats to help develop the empire. Wokrshops and Ports have roughly an extra 1/3rd income if you have above 100 slaves.
@@ElvenPlotArmour So people complaining that the economy is completely ruined are just being drama queens?
Nice. Are you going to do a high elf economy one as well? Or did I miss it?
I think I'll cover it when there's more to cover. My "High Elf Changes" video dived decently into economy. In essence, the trinket makers are now a building you want everywhere, boosting tradables. Nobles with Emollient and Conscientious can now be put in Provinces like Titan Peak to produce more resources and the edict to bolster Trade Income is excellent. Ally with the powerhouse tradepartners for Outposts (which give Inf per turn, which helps keep them all happy).
In the meantime I'm building up my capital full of recruitment buildings and making slave pens everywhere too compensate for slave loss per turn. been playing it completely wrong.
All good mate, plenty of trial and error is natural!
You need to be sacking more if you are having slave problems. You should have a pair of black ark that’s just hitting order faction ports.
This is a really helpful guide but I think largely cause a lot of this stuff is unintuitive, going for rapid fast expansion and keeping your income buildings low rank feels counterproductive when your settlements are so hard to defend and it feels like you need high income to recruit armies and make up for it. Slaves give big bonuses at high rank that feels like you should be going towards, building slave pens everywhere and getting a massive cap so you can really benefit from it but not having the public order to be able to handle the strain makes the way I think a lot of people want to and think they should play a lot less viable
Good points. One advantage that's easy to look over, is building a T1 Workshop only takes 1 turn and gives 300 gold. This is actually very good and even in riskier holdings can easily make it worth while.
I can get people saying this isn't a good system but I don't get this "it's not as involved" attitude. In the past you'd just shut off slaves in every province but your richest and send your buff heroes there. Now I check every single turn if I want to use growth, activate a diktat and/or ritual, double and triple check if I want to upgrade a port. Everything is all about it all the time.
I have to agree with this sentiment. The old system was significantly more passive in that you just leveled up heroes and redirected them to your worker province, but the argument is the skill in acquiring and applying the followers was legit and engaging. The new system forcing you to go outta slavin' is something I really like. It still needs tweaking but I really think they're on the verge of something great!
@@ElvenPlotArmour Something like setting a level between 1 and 3 of how many slaves you want to use up for the bonus so you can build up your economy buildings would be good.
Heya, got a quick question. I am playing as Lokhir Felheart. I have my starting major port and have managed to take two others, Bechai and Zhanshi. Including the Blessed Dread, that should give me a black ark cap of 4. However, I have been able to recruit 4 on top of the blessed dread, giving me 5. Which only makes sense if I take into consideration I occupied Shi Long for 1 turn before abandoning it. Maybe not such a quick question. My question, is does Lokhir felhearts black ark capacity depend on held major ports, or conquered major ports whether he keeps them or not? As in, for every unique major port conquered does that add to the black ark pool whether you keep the port or not?
Hey, honestly Lokhir's black ark cap has been a bit buggy and finicky since the previous game. Honestly, 4 black arks should have you more than set in the mid game, though don't dismiss the fun of using sealanes to pester Brettonia and those haughty high elves ;)
Occupying for a single turn shoooould increase the cap - if it does, hats off to you for a crafty start! Let me know how it goes, it might make it into a Lokhir guide on the horizon!
@@ElvenPlotArmour I carried on that particular campaign but wasnt recording black ark cap. It always seemed to go up regardless of whether I held the ports for more than a turn. I will test the theory...for science. And yes, 4 going into midgame is very powerful and I get one through the sea lane as soon as possible to plunder lustria, ulthuan and brettonia (then a fleet to save Malekith's arse from valkia as I was trying to confederatebut the ungrateful git declared war). I'll let you know how the test goes
I did a run of 19 turns. By turn 6, had taken three provinces north of river giving 3 major ports, 3 black arks and capacity for 1. All expected. Sent blessed dread to shi long, captured and got red blades and 1 extra capacity. Abandoned shi long. Extra admiral still in pool. Captured bamboo crossing, no extra admiral. conclusion. You dont lose admirals if you dont keep the port, but you wont get another one for the next port - unless you retake the abandoned one. Possible use, simultaneous attack on multiple large ports that you've never been to, occupy over 1 end turn to get several admirals and then abandon - fleet gets bigger and territory remains same
@@johnsharp9964 Awesome, thanks for sharing that. The cap can fluctuate just like other hero caps tied to buildings. However, getting them on the map and starting to level does add value. You'll notice most of my walkthrus aim to provide early access to heroes as every turn they can level up generates power and value. You're a champion for sharing your science. Cheers. Feel free to the join the Discord - it's just 0 easy installments of $0
Tip #2 is really bad advice. You should build and upgrade your Workshops in every green region. Even if you run out of slaves for a turn every so often, they will still make you so much money. Even with 0 slaves, they make as much money as e.g. dwarven Workshops. And all you need is 100 slaves and they will make almost double that...
Interesting take and you make some good points. I did test that system by racking up a deficit, but I found having the excess to use on Edicts and Diktats to be well worth it. Your strategy is certainly viable and many seem to forget the DE economy doesn't just vanish at
i think the the new system is ok but we should get much more money for controlling and manage this stuff. for me it feels we need to invest more "work" in our economy with equal or even less gold then before. i loaded a game at turn 50 after patch and got rebels all over the map because i missed these changes and didnt controll my amount of slaves and losing massiv control. it coast thousands of gold losing seattlements and building new armys to get them back
That's a great insight. Thanks!
Gotta disagree on slave pens . i build these in every capital and they allow for even more vast reserves for when needed ,plus that generation of slaves allows you to pace yourself better , more cautiously , which on higher difficulties is important so you dont end up with ordertide knocking on your door when not quite ready .
Appreciate your take and comment. While I personally don't believe they should take priority at every capital over other options, your approach can absolutely work very well. The tone I deliver here is perhaps to discourage the common mistake of "I build assassins and slave pens as my incoming slaves" which distracts where the focus really needs to be. I find the slave cap tends to increase naturally thanks to main buildings and black arks, with the odd slave pen. Late game, I would build slave pens prolifically, but much of the advice here is to help survive that mid game where it can really catch you (ie where I found people had most difficulty). Thanks for sharing your findings, always great to see success in different places!
Been having so much fun with harder dark elf campaign at the moment. Mod in some slannesh mechanics for morathi, like 2-3 mods for that and also reskins and new models for different heroes, so I'm cheating a bit.
I still have a doomstack and another full army plus a kitted out black arc by turn 68 tho, half the territory you've got here and yet to invade the donut, so I wouldn't say the economy is too bad on just hard difficulties.
TLDR: if a campaign is made artificially more difficult by CA, just lower the difficulty a notch from what you'd normally play and consider a mod. Balancing slaves is easy atm, just take captives every time for slaves and heals and then loot and occupy every time. Had slaves basically capped the entire time
The new slave mechanic sucks, norsca makes more money without the same bs, same for most races. It’s really just another reason I dislike dark elves (formerly my favourite race) in warhammer 3
Always sad to see someone go from enjoying to disliking a campaign. I'm thinking of pushing for the ability to toggle provinces on and off to get more control on the drain could be a good fix?
@@ElvenPlotArmour that would be good, since slave drain rate is increased when control is low, your slaves can be drained very quickly is an area is newly taken, and since its needed for growth and money it can ruin everything quickly.
plus there is no micro or anything to fix it, and no actual reward for dealing with it, before there was more micro needed to get the most out of it, but if you put in the effort you got massive rewards in that you had infinite money.
then there is other issues, like Nagaroth is just 2 settlements in the area now which weakens it as an area, Quintex has a worthless landmark, low income, high cost long time to build, local growth at tier 5, it just seems like the dark elves got so many nerfs for the sake of nerfs with no real buffs to compensate.
No no no. Sack, sack then occupy. The sacking bonuses are ridiculous.
Sacking can certainly be profitable, and even preferable in some cases. The point I wanted to stress here was to not just occupy and miss out on obtaining more workers. Sacking then occupying can be effective, but is nowhere near what it was in WH2. If you're looking to expand quickly, Loot & Occupy hits a good "best of all worlds" approach - but that's not to disregard the benefits of sacking. Good luck in those campaigns!
@@ElvenPlotArmour realized I’ve posted twice. Lol must have come back around to your vid :). Still 100% believe that in most cases you will want to sack then occupy.
Morathi and Rakarth used to be my favorite campaigns. I fucking hate the new mechanic and now I don't play DEs.
You're not alone there mate. The reviews are quite mixed, safe to say more change will come!
Making less money to make more money seems very dumb to me. I'd honestly rather just upgrade my economy buildings and forget the stupid slave system even exists.
The latest version has made it easier to avoid decline, but the economy can still hit mass wealth potential.
Not building and upgrading buildings because you are more punished for doing so just plain sucks ass!
This is a really common complaint I'm seeing. It was a common element of past Total Wars so I didn't look in too far, but if it's bothering a lot of people then it's certainly worthy of conversation.
@@ElvenPlotArmour it just seems pointless having T2 and T3 buildings, always getting building reminders when you can’t do anything.
A different idea I have would be to make buildings “stronger” / buffed but have to have slaves to reduce building time and increase growth. I.e. normal buildings that are 2 to 3 turns to construct are 7 or 8 but by amassing slaves drops it to 3 or 4 turns (obviously the building is more powerful to account for this and building will increase slave decline (they fall off buildings etc)) so it’s not OP.
@@Briggsyy55 I really like the construction reduction idea. I feel the best solution is to be able to turn on/off provincial slave activity to have more control on the slave drain and subsequent PO issues.
@@ElvenPlotArmour I agree turning off the mechanic in provinces would work great. There needs to be a UI like the previous slave mechanic to show decline and what’s turned on and off to make it easier than scrolling individual settlements. It works for me and I would be happy with it but still not an amazing mechanic…
Not sold, higher lvl workshops offer same money but are not slave dependant, i would rather use slaves on dictats or rituals after a battle and have indep incomp
As of the latest patch they made the slave decline rate linear and much easier. A more passive approach as you propose is absolutely viable, but a stronger economy can absolutely be drawn from steady expansion. The hidden tool is diplomacy to divide and conquer without going to war with the entire world at once.
You make a good point that is commonly overlooked: it's not game over if you're slaves drop below a certain point. I try to work off 5-10 turns of slave decline before needing new workers. This extra income can be spent on more buildings to boost that static income, should you run out of slaves.
@@ElvenPlotArmour I honestly dont see how, Tier 3 passively makes 400, Tier 1 makes 200 + 100(from slaves), you would need a base +100% slave income globally to be on par with base income. Further, if you are aggressively expanding/rading with some slave pits, you can easily offset slave decay. I stand by my opinion, it is much better to rush the economic buildings, use arcs for military recruitment and if you can not offset slave decay, then you spend them the same turn you get them either for dictats or rituals.
The way I see it, the Dark elf economy, without looking at slaves at all, is already pretty good. They have some of the best upkeep reduction of any faction, and Malekith(if faction leader) gets a big upkeep reduction on a lot of different units that are excellent for making cheap, but efficient armies(Dreadspears and Darkshards). They have a lot of income boosts from sacking and looting, as well as battles in general(skills and research).
Their basic economy building still provides 200 gold regardless of what else is going on, and it is fairly cheap.
So if you are still going broke, you probably spent too much, too fast, or are not using the other tools to their full potential.
As stated in the video, slaves is just a thing that puts it all into overdrive, and accelerates various processes. The more you expand with a high-output slave economy, the harder the bubble will burst if you run out of slaves. So restraining and pacing yourself(in terms of sacrificing slaves) is key.
High Elves have a similar issue, if in reverse. They gain a lot of benefits from trading(usually getting 20k+ from trading alone around turn 60-70, without really trying). But as the campaign goes on, they might lose(or declare war on) various trading partners, which means that their trade income will start to suffer. Suddenly, you might not be able to afford new armies, or even keep all the existing ones.
So for the High Elves, ensuring that your trade partners are thriving and protected is important, while for Dark Elves, it is about constantly finding new battles and areas to sack or raid.
Play an warriors of chaos campaign. I’m 70 turns in as archaon and my per turn income after upkeep is 60k I have 4 full doomstacks and I only own 10 dark bastions. One dark bastion once is tier 5 can earn you 10k a turn lmfao what fucking sense does that make? We aren’t even talking about the MILLIONS of gold I get from battles every turn lmfao I could literally have an army to attack every individual settlement in the game all at once if I wanted to. This is turn 70 on a LEGENDARY campaign
Yea but the HE doesn't have to do constant accounting or be forced to halt development of their cities. Your main mechanic is a punishment that forces you to play a certain way. Heck, at least the dorfs get slayers when they fail to do their grudges. The dark elf gets disappointment if they capture a city and forgets to remove resource buildings. How fun😐
@@SupremeGrand-MasterAzrael Yeah I feel the WoC were delierately overtuned and will stay that way for a few months as an apology for neglecting them so long haha
Excellent comment. Agree with the HE/DE sentiments!
@@jellydamgood Actually, when I play High Elves, I constantly pace myself, so that I time my larger building constructions with the rite that reduces construction cost. It saves me thousands on each activation.
Because High Elf armies are generally much more expensive and generally gain much less value out of combat and conquest, while still having the most expensive structures in the game.
Saying that it "forces you to play a certain way" is weird, when the entire point of the various races is that they play in a unique way.
Skaven require constant food(and more and more of it, as they expand), Ogres require meat and camps, Bretonnia requires Chivalry(which is penalized through certain actions) and peasant limits, and Dark Elves require slaves(and dont even need to rely on it to get a good economy).
By the time that the Dark Elves run out of enemies to sack and take slaves from, the campaign is already won.
And rather than looking at it as a "punishment", look at it as a reward. If you manage it well, you completely outpaces every other economy currently in the game. However, if you ignore the intricacies of the mechanic, you wont get as much value out of your buildings and various other effects.
Game is still bit too easy/passive AI. But its a great video and thorough as usual, good one mate.
Hopefully they keep gradually dialing it up each patch till they find that sweet spot. Cheers brother!