"If you spam artillery, you're just blowing stuff up before it reaches you. You're not actually playing Total War, you're playing Space Invaders. Think about it" I feel attacked.
"If you spam artillery, you're just blowing stuff up before it reaches you." Hmm, yes, the floor here made out of floor. So me using artillery in an artillery focused faction is me NOT playing the game correctly?
@@bello9740 I think the point he's making is its fine to do so but you might find as much fun or be able to expand what factions you can play. I also know he's fairly multiplayer focused as well and that probably won't work as well in multiplayee.
@@Shadowcam00 Ok cuz i found the game in Eneba for 5€ im not gonna spend 50€ for it in Steam cuz i just bought another rts game called Northgard so... Im gonna buy it from Eneba.
Honestly i would recommend starting with either the high elves or greenskins. They both get access to pretty much every unit type and magic so you learn a little bit of everything. Empire requires a strong understanding of combined armed and the dwarf lack of mobility and magic can be a challenge to overcome.
I am torn on Greenskin recommendations. Their starting area is not very fun to play in (very movement and guess heavy if you don't know how to scout with agents and so on .. ) and I always feel like greenskin campaigns end up with you spamming boys ..than biguns ..than black orcs and some spiders / catapults. Never found the non melee orc units very usefull in campaign :|
@@XenomorphsWrath ive found use of trolls in general and early boars worthwhile though I wasnt actually thinking about campaign with this. It was more just good armies to learn the game with. If campaign is considered then yeah i would be a bit sceptical of the greenskins start, the badlands are a mess to fight in, though it would teach the importance of agent scouting.
Wood elves of course, preferably a no-tree build. Once you learn to play with units that die from getting bitten by a mosquito everything becomes easy lmao
i played them first in warhammer 1, i played way to defensively and the greenskins wiped me out, then i played more aggressively and won, main thing really is to suck ass once and learn then kick ass the second time
@@Lickicker So did I, but I do think they were easier before the Greenskins got their buff. I also think a lot of these reviewers underestimate how much fun winning is. There are a lot of players still playing because they have won with the dwarves and no one else.
The worst faction to start with is wood elves i think. they just play extremely different. I dont agreee with his point that the dwarves are the worst since you play against other factions and you see that they have faster units etc and that you have to use them
Lizardmen will teach you things about the game you really need to know.. specifically do Mazdamundi (NOT Kroq-gar, which protects you from learning how to contend with a restricted budget and still create enough power in your armies to get things done) You must contend with very expensive upkeep and enemies that can take advantage of your weaknesses. Learning how to manage that is an important first step in understanding how things fit together. It also forces you down a path of dialing in your economy QUICKLY. If you don't, you won't do much for the first 60 or so turns. Hint: lots of skinks die in the first part of the campaign. And by 'lots' I mean, crimes against skink-manity level losses. It is all totally do-able.. but the first time was a bit of a shock coming from earlier Total War games where good tactics along with a balanced roster help make things work without tons of casualties. Early game Lizardmen aren't balanced in their capabilities.. so knowing how to work them and get things done is important. The general in me hates all the casualties, but this is the lay of the land early game for the Lizardmen. Early game feels like World War 1 attrition warfare.. a bloody and brutal affair.
@@louis930408 lol i ambush at sometime with all my armies any race its cause i wanna bait em out of towns... Lizardmen are good asf at defending walls though on my khalida playthrough it took me forever to take one of the lizardmens city way far north not long ago i was like damn die already lmao and i busted walls down and everything.. im in a stalemate with expedition dude atm
I wouldn't recommend Empire for beginners. It's a Swiss Knife for sure, but if you build your composition wrong or get countered you'd be left fighting with a knife against a sword.
i think that is what is supposed to make them good for beginners though. Good both for learning and experimenting. If you spread yourself too thin and try to do everything as the Empire, you'll fail. You have to lean into -some- strength, but as the Empire, this can be any strength, so you can get practice with all the various styles in the game (cav/infantry/missile/artillery focus). If you don't pick one or some you'll see why that's an issue - and applies to every faction. However, this also means you can try them all out. Spam artillery and infantry to support. Spam missiles and artillery and have barely enough infantry. Or just spam infantry. Or just spam cavalry. This allows you to try out each of these different styles without having to learn entirely different factions. Though to be honest I think that the High Elves are one of the other best options just because of the simplicity of some of it. Just go spearman/archers and you're good for a very long time. But it's not the same as being good for learning and building good habits.
Isn’t that why you would really, really want to play as them because it would teach you how to...what is it the young’uns are saying these days...”git gud” fast?
Are we talking fighting with what kind of armour? If both of you are wearing fullplate the dagger against the sword isn't really that big of a disadvantage
IMO Lizardmen are good to start with if you played past titles of TW, they are well rounded and their good early infantry can hold well untill you figure out what's going on and allow you to take your time when casting magic, also they have lord Kroak 😁
As a complete beginner, I agree. I never played a Total War title before but I managed to bumble my way into a vortex victory with Tiqtak'to's Terradon bombing squad. Also the slowdown button is a lifesaver.
@@mohamedAshraf-ln9hu Thanks, his name was funny to me so it was hard to resist picking him. I'm trying Repanse now, but I'm quickly finding that I suck at microing cavalry, lol.
I remember when I first started playing warhammer 1, I tried (and failed) as the empire over and over again, and then when I switched to playing as the dwarves, I won first time. And I must say your guides have been extremely helpful in helping me learn and improve my skills at this game, honestly thank you so much and keep up the good work!
Personally, I think the High Elves are the best faction for a new player. Strong in every area and at every price point. Strong defensive and offensive infantry, both as standard and elite. Great light, medium, and heavy cavalry, great ranged with archers, great monsters in multiple varieties, a fantastic selection of lords, and amazing access to magic. Access to great healing with Alarielle is also a great safety net to help recover from micro mistakes.
My recommendation for he is to play tyrion first, he got a really good starting point if you choose to ally with other he. Allarielle need to deal with chaos invasion and death night army from the north, imrik and teclis are surrounded by 2 skaven clan that somehow within 20 turns always confederate and declare war on them.
My only counterpoint is that they're so easy and OP in campaign, that it could put players off by being boring, or encourage bad habits (ie; what Zerkovich said about the Dwarves)
@@GamePandaXXL Well, they are simply more experienced and superior to any other race, and yet they try to save the world(rather than destroy it, like the dark elves). Guess that no one's perfect, after all...
These dwarf comments are so true though. I started with the dwarves, then switched to the undead... needless to say that didn't go over well. It took a long time to figure out how to be so hyper aggressive.
10:25 "you're just blowing up stuff that's descending onto you before it reaches you, which means you're not playing Total War at all, you're actually playing Space Invaders" LegendOfSpaceInvaders: am i a joke to you?
@@WompWompNootNoot ikr. if anyone tells you you're wrong for playing the way that suits your personal style/is the most fun for you, then they are an idiot. "waah, it's not the way they were meant to be played!" too bad.
I think the hardest part about the dwarves is they play the most similar to older total war games and thus are familiar to people who play the old games. That was part of the reason I play such a static defense with most factions is because it is hard to break from the strategies I have used in previous total wars.
Give Rome 2 a spin.. each faction has its own way to go about battlefield objectives. Hellenistic is as you describe.. static and defensive. But barbarians are much more vanguard deployment and in your face. And Rome is about maneuver. Most total war factions emphasize maneuver over static defense with the exception of pike based factions, since pikes necessitate a defensive posture. That said, you don't have to use pikes, and many don't (successor kingdoms in Rome 2 also allows the use of thureos spear units or high level hoplite units which are both high level spears with typical high level defensive stats.. they are faster than pikes but are meant to hold the line so that your flankers and skirmishers can do their thing). Dwarves are very static.. no flankers.. so it is simply an attritional style.. since they can out attrit when things are even or even a bit against them. That is different than any of the historical titles (and I know, I've played most of them + the warhammer titles). So it is NOT that the dwarves mimic the other games. The issue is that the dwarves are tactically simple in comparison to ANY other factions in any historical title you care to look at.
You: Entering the police station. "Hello, I'm a necrophile and here to turn myself in." Police: "O-k... have you desecrated any bodies or committed any obscene acts?" You: "No." Police: "Then go home and call a therapist. Being a necrophiliac isn't a crime. Just stay away from the graveyard and don't act on it ok?" You: "Oh, right. Sure."
The Empire is a good faction to learn AFTER you learn some other factions that are VASTLY different from the Empire. The best way to learn the Empire is to play the Greenskins, Vampire Counts, Beastmen/Chaos/Norsca, and Bretonnia. Greenskins: How to rip apart an enemy defensive line that out firepowers you. Once you learn that, you learn how to fight against that. You know which vectors they come from, where your lines will be weak, how to deploy your cavalry to counter that. Vampire Counts: How to summon and magic your opponent. Learning where the summons come from is important. Also learning fire and magical damage. Beastmen/Norsca: How to fight big monsters and take them down (because using big monsters lets you know their strengths and weaknesses). Bretonnia: Cavalry and weak infantry. And how to support them. After playing those four, play the Empire and learn its artillery specialties and gun cav.
I've been playing the game for about a year now and I'd send him the video. I think he laid out everything in a really simple and informative way all in a short time. Hope your friend enjoys the game either way!
awesome video, tho 1 critique, when showing faction flags like at 0:31 it might have been better to also show underneath the flag the actual name of the faction too, because as a new player i don't recognise even half of the flags :S
Reminds me of that meme where a Bretonnian Knight is comforting a Sister of Battle saying “Don’t worry, we’ll get updates to our books” And the next panel has the sister putting flowers on Bretonnia’s grave.
@@Delta040301 We suffer together, brother, but a Grail Knight never gives up, and neither shall we. Our knights were once unquestionably the greatest warriors on tabletop. Our time will come again. It will be a time when we are truly an elite cavalry faction rather than a mediocre cavalry horde faction. Blood Knights and Demigryphs will see our shining lance tips in their nightmares as they rightly should!
I started with Dwarves and tried to attack all the time. But I did not have a good grasp of the keys. I finally started turtling and letting my ranged weapons tear the incoming armies apart. This gave me a chance to learn movement mechanics without having to move all over the battlefield. I could then practice more complex unit movements during fleeing enemies. I have a much better understanding now and will be moving to another faction. I think that alone helped me get through more frustrated learning points. Even if you only play their campaign for the first few grudges it will help you start another harder army in my opinion.
My main faction is tomb kings, I like that they have preety balanced roster and you can do with them what you want Monster doomstack-they have one of the strongest monsters in the game Skeleton spam -they can build infinate amount of skeleton spear man and wariors with no cost Or mage spam-they have ascess to very strong kinds of magic
I'm on my first warhammer 1 campaign, 50 hours into the dwarf campaign i watch this video XD As someone who is used to medieval and rome, the lack of cavalry/flanking was the first thing i noticed
I Started with the Dwarves And still Main them All the time. LOVE their Defensive power, high armor and their Rune magic. But when I tried out Lizard and Chaos I had 0 problem. Dwarf players can't get a break on this channel
A good guide but I disagree with the starting faction challenge rating. The ratings are NOT up to date and often enough misleading. Saying Hard is a little bit tougher at the start often enough is wrong. You should absolutely disregard the challenge rating and build your own picture.
@@SAMagic I agree. It is as much of an indication of what new players can do as much as absolutely misleading. The best advice is to just pick anything that sounds good to you and hit start. You will probably get your ass kicked but figure out what works and waht not and go on from there.
High Elves I'd say are the best to start with, as far as I know they have something in every category of unit and aren't the worst in any of them. Great if you want to learn the core mechanics of the game before going for a more specialized race.
I'm in love with zombies so had a bloody nightmare learning vampires from the get go, fast forward a few years and I'm so glad I stuck with them as I now know how to play aggressive in comparison to when I just played rome 2. I'm no pro by any means but I'm just happy I got to terms with aggressive playstyles. I think sitting back and defending is so lackluster and you really don't feel like you're involved, more like just a spectator. I too would encourage anyone to give any aggressive faction a good go until you get good with it, it's a very rewarding experience and was a complete game changer for me good luck guys
vampire counts work as first race - it's a bit iffy but it works. Forces you to a tall play which is probably wise with most factions so it's not bad. Vampire COAST on the other hand ..oh boi ...stay away if you don't have experience with this game...
@@XenomorphsWrath I'm a casual player so I won't pretend to be more knowledgeable then Z. However personally if I had a friend who does not have a preference one way or the other, I recommend Dwarfs because they are simpler. Nothing is worse then playing as a faction only to get bent over by the AI and just take it and such an experience might turn them away.
@@XenomorphsWrath I have 800 hours in the game and still can’t play Vamp coast lol. I don’t understand their roster at all, they have no good frontline. ( I play SFO)
@@stalliontv465 The trick with them is to pretend you don't have a frontline. I quickly ended up with 6-7 "frontline" units and a bunch of ranged and artillery. I am sure there are other ways to play it but this ...worked ^^. The grenadiers are really strong, the traditional frontline is .. well .. Zombies. They stand, they die, they do nothing else.
@@JasperLane I too started as dwarf but switched off rather quickly since I noticed that I was just autoresolving (Tww 1 autoresolve was horridly strong) - it stayed a bad habbit until TWW 2 came out and I started playing skaven which forced me into battle and I noticed having alot more fun that way ^^
I tried a bunch of races to start with and ended up settling on The Lizard Men to cut my teeth on. I think that the whole morale system is one of the trickiest mechanics for new players. And so having a race with very good morale /endurance made it easier to come to terms with the other facets of combat without being derailed by morale.
The Dark Elves were the first faction I played - they have a balanced unit roster and a strong economy based on slaving, so it was easy to build effective forces without running over budget.
Got 1 and 2 , started with beastmen in one. On the bright side, I feel like I improved rapidly, on the downside, it took me a dozen campaigns to even come close to success. Then I got to two and found the gors immensely buffed
*Me, a newb, taking notes:* Dwarves yes.... I see.... play dwarves and turtle..... and play empire with lots of artillery, I see.... good point, yes.......
Honestly I feel like theres one thign you can learn from dwarves, Target prioritzation, the most important thing to consider as the dwarves is "What should my Missile units be shooting at, and what should they not be shooting at"
I have officially been living under a rock. Wood elves DLC on the way? My favourite faction and I didn’t even know about that?!? This is why having a family and a job and being boring is just really not advisable in the slightest. I mean, I love my kids and wife. But if they think they’re going to see me after the DLC hits, they’ve got another thing coming!
@@georgemorley1029 if you buy the DLC you get one WE lord and some WE units along with more shiz for an unconfirmed race, if you buy the WE original DLC and this new one you get another WE lord and a legendary hero. I think.
I did actually start to play TWH with the Dwarfs, simply because dwarves have always been my staple go-to race for many reasons in any games that feature them. But I did indeed notice that it was a very easy run. And so, once I had my fill of the dawi, I decided to go the complete opposite spectrum of morale: The Skaven. While the dwarfs felt like a safe way to get to grips with the basic mechanics and learning how the controls of the game work, my first full playthrough of the Skaven really thought me some valuable lessons on tactics, while still being able to enjoy a faction with wonderful firepower. And I will say that the way the skaven forced me to think has made me get more creative with dwarfs to varying degrees of success, but always to great enjoyment.
I do have a problem with him saying "playing actual total war" when playing lots of artillery is playing total war. You don't get to dictate what is actually playing it But I do understand the point, but it is a total valid way to play. Me and my bro play like that all the time.
Honestly, I rarely watch your videos, but when I switch one on.. I just cannot leave 'till it ends (maybe that's why I watch you so rarely now). Awesomly structured answer and explanations. Very noob friendly and at the same time informative. Great job, as always!
For your thoughts on dwarfs and empire: Wouldn´t it be good, to have easy battles for a new player? So he/she can focus on the world map first and learn the real basics? Or is this video just about the battle learning?
Great video Zerk. How about some specific campaign recommendations with an overview and tips? "Start as Grombrindal, smash the orcs, trade with people" and so on. This could give new players a comfortable starting point.
The first faction I played in the Total War Warhammer series were the Tomb Kings because of aesthetics and their theme appealed to me at the time. Coolest-looking faction out there in my humble opinion
I’m currently playing my first somewhat successful campaign with the lizardmen, and I kinda have the feeling that the problem you mentioned for the dwarves, I mean the “The stats carry you” part, can be mentioned for the lizardmen too. I don’t want to mitigate the success I have in this campaign, but the most intense war I had was one against the Skaven (we were the strongest 2 factions at the time). Although I definitely played a lot around with cavalry and missile and even won a tough siege battle as attacker, where I was outnumbered, I feel like the main reason I won was the fact that when it comes to unit vs unit, the Skaven are hopelessly inferior. Of course they have the numbers advantage and the Ratlings were very tough to deal with, but I’m not sure how much this victory was actually “worth” when it comes to me learning the game. I feel like I just had to throw my units against theirs and because the stats of mine are so much better, there was not much to worry about.
High Elves is easily the easiest faction to play with (gamewise) especially Lothern because they have a very basic unit composition and a safe starting point. Literally the only factions you have to worry about in the early game are fellow elves, giving you enough time to learn the game mechanics and systems and the building effects too. You can play offensive, defensive, or just hang around. the only threat that will ever come your way would be the factions that got big by turn 200, otherwise, you can literally just watch the game unfold without worrying about anything.
when you watch this and think to yourself "damn my first nation was dwarf, and damn i did hard spam infantry, and damn after that i too played Empire with shit tons of arty, wow am i this bad?"
Another tip for newer players if you don't want your first experience to be misrable go with an order tide faction. Nothing will turn a player away from a game faster then a frustrating experience and seeing there hours wasted because it just so happens all the ordertide factions decided to band together and form a club that will annihilate any non order faction is far from ideal. It might not seem like an issue if you want to learn the game but a player playing well and having a fun campaign suddenly facing down a tide of dwarfs, elves and empire soldiers can do a lot to kill someone's interest in returning to the game. So basically highelve's are imo the best start for the reason stated above.
One aggressive method as skaven that seems to be very effective is clan Hamer and Anvil army with Wolf rats hammer, ground all the Wolfrats tie down their army with infantry, then flank and focuse down units one by one with your wolfrat blob, a mass of Wolfrats charger the rear of a unit can break most units almost instantly, from their they access in deleting fleeing units in a matter of seconds, however they can also break units easily just by the amount outnuming the enemy, they are also good at running down cav and stuff, generally keeping Wolfrats from being tied down and engaging selectivity to quickly delete isolated or tied down units avoid large groups of enemies, they are also good at flanking and killing artillery and ranged units.
After 20 or so attempts at online battles with Tomb Kings and 0% winrate, I must say I'm surprised to hear that they are considered to be one of the strongest factions currently. But that just shows how bad I'm currently x)
These shooting snakes are really overpowered. Just like Arkham's ability to rise skeletons against enemy artillery. Tomb Guard sucks in multiplayer battles.
I personally found success with the dark elves at first and its mainly due to their strong missile and magic. When i started with the game and the chaos invasion begun i mainly struggled with their units because they are so heavely armored units in the roster. However because the dark elves missiles constists out off crossbow units that are armorpurcing i found succes with them (he he shades go brrr). Additionally they have very strong lores of spells to make use of like fire, dark, shadow and death. This helped me discovering how much a well placed spell can turn the tides of the battle.
Thank you, was thinking of purchasing this game. This insight will probably makes the game a lot more enjoyable when i play it for the first time. While letting me having the pleasure of discovering the finer mechanics of the game on my own.
i love elves, they are my favorite faction in the fantasy world, their way of life really impresses me so you can tell i'll go for the high elves because they are more royal like to me than the others
I just started this game and then noticed this video. The two races you recommended not playing were almost the first race I chose. Surprisingly the downside for the dwarves was the reason I was going to choose them, their defense would make up for my lack of skill.
Great review, just starting to really get into this after playing part 3 and it being a bit buggy, I'm trying part 2 again and loving it. thanks for the info and a well put together video!!!!
I tried high elves my first couple times around. First with Tyrion, and second with Alarielle. I played very aggressively with Alarielle in 230 turns I had full domination and won vortex. Confederated with order of loremasters and the other one in the south east corner of the map, and beat and wiped out everyone else. On my third campaign currently and playing Empire with Karl Franz. My approach to him and my empire armies is to almost play like I would when I played napoleon or empire back in the day. Having multiple firing arcs with your lines, using artillery, and plenty of cavalry to hit flanks or take out their dangerous artillery almost right away or at least asap. The only thing that’s different is their troops aren’t gonna stand in a line and let you take pot shots at eachother. So moving a couple units (especially hand gunners) to the extreme flanks and moving them out from behind infantry once the front lines engage so that I can get the like of sight- wins battle after battle. Even in sieges - just letting them gun down enemy troops on the walls then sending up my melee units to take out whatever’s left is greag
Started with Dwarfs and Lizardmen, but Tomb Kings and Vampires have become a favorite. Raising hordes of cheap chaff is so satisfying. "Oh no! I lost two 20 stack armies!" "Anyway..."
Empire in my experience was acthually a fantastic faction to learn the game with. Much like the high elfs they are incredibly versatile and offeres a lot of cool units that makes you try out different playstyles. - From artilary spam to gunpowder line of sight management all the way to scermish cav and finally cavalry. Its not quite so space invaders either artilary fights while indeed one sighted does teach tarpit and similar strategies to buy time.
I would recommend Dark Elves, they are all around good faction to learn and have a great variety of units and special abilities and such. They are the faction I started with and loved!
I completely agree, the only problem is high elves having much more stronger units in the overall strengh. After watching a certain video I tried stuffing my army with artillery. I know dark elves aren't supposed to defend all the time, and that it's wrong but it works almost all the time. Only faction that will put up a good fight against you are the wood elves with their excellent ranged units. And after you level up Malekith he becomes a one man army
Empire was one of my first factions and it was very rough. But if you're not easily discouraged, I think Empire is a good way to learn the importance of magic and artillery (without doing artillery spam). I essentially shunned magic as much as I could (mainly by doing autoresolves) but when my campaign started involving more Empire vs. High Elf match ups, the match up forced me to learn how to micro magic users because sisters of averlorn absolutely shred the empire by out ranging all non-artillery missile units and decimating front lines if unchallenged. Empire vs. Dwarf match ups forced me to really look at handgunner placement and calvary positioning. As you may have noticed, I ironically did not learn how to really play empire until I betrayed all of its in-lore allies (the chaos "invasion" had already been crushed at this point) because the match-ups are pretty bad unless you figure out how to be flexible with empire play (again, without artillery spam).
Great video.. count me among the players that used dwarves first, then switched and had to figure out what I didn't know.. I come from other total war games.. which didn't help at all (the archers in most of the games previous were good, but not super-powerful like the high elves (as a first instance)). This is a fantastic game for sure. The campaign even on normal is no pushover early game.. and getting things right takes real learning effort and good micro.
It is unreal how much you have called me out in 6 minutes. I legit screwed myself over maining Dwarfs and Empire, to the point that I was uncomfortable selecting all my units for a simple charge when trying out Norsca for the first time.
I will suggest Greenskins Skarsnik. In battle, Skarsnik relies on light infantry tactics, strategic ambushes and sneaky pincers. Goblins as line infantry really forces you to be paranoid about your flanks and ingrains in it a habit to protect your flank. Besides Skarsnik comes with fast and light cavalry with fast chariots requiring strategic micromanagement. As a plus it also have semi decent catapults for artillery pieces. And who doesnt love doom diver piloting its just fun. In campaign you have to make hard strategic choices like abandoning cities you cant defend getting rid of high threat factions before they grow. Playing Skarsnik is very much about knowing where to win and where to lose in the campaign map you cant have everything because your just gobbos. You will also need to be mindful of your unit abilities and your mage debuff at the right timing.
Zerk still salty about dwarfs I see Also sounding a lot like my school teachers did whenever I found a shortcut for something "But you won't learn anything that way yada yada..." Please zerk, I'm here for total war don't give me school flashbacks
When I first tried the game, I was just mesmerized at the amount of heroes and factions. I tried high elves first, since one of there heroes had a dragon, I fails miserably. Then I went for vampires, cause I love necromancy and the fact that you can just raise your army is amazing, the I got washed up by other vampires and empire. On a third try, I went for Malus and ohhh boy, that was a lot of fun, you don't get stuck between some powerful enemies, and you have pretty op heroes considering his ability, so for the first time, I just washed out the whole continent and completed his quest, and adding to the whole great stuff was dark elves faction mechanic of earning a lot of money by tide rolling every enemy.
Zerkovich : "realize that if you are turning it into space invaders, you are not learning anything" *Camera zooms in on my Empire campaign with about 15 full stacks of tanks and rocket batteries with a few mages* Guess I'll do the next one a bit differently then
@@azureprophet Well, I'm pretty sure he was talking about factions to start with in the campaign (but I might be wrong) because in the multiplayer, if you stack 10 rockets or something like that and you don't immediately get curb-stomped into oblivion by a cavalry charge then it is a god damn miracle
@@rellek4053 I don't know man, I find something almost poetic in watching your ennemies come at you with 4 full stacks against only one of yours and melt before they can even reach you. The kill counts in the thousands on the hellstorm rocket batteries are always satisfying xD
@@azureprophet oh, he said nothing about fun. He only talked about learning. I put so much cheese in my first campaign im at 95 settlements in turn 86 now, after 250 manual battles, and lost only 2 npc ally units. Cheese is fun! But should i ever stray into the multiplayer section, someone else will have fun 😁
High or Dark pointy ears are both fairly good starting point. High might be better since the front line can be tankier but either 1 gives you strong infantry and range letting you focus that early game learning on 2-4 unit types at a time.
"dwarves are the one faction you shouldn't start out with" Me, having started with the dwarves 180 hours in-game ago: "Well, that would have been nice to know a year ago"
Started with dwarfs in warhammer 1 last month and completely understand what you’re saying then swapped to clan skryre on warhammer 2 last week got completely destroyed twice early game but slowly learned to just use my infantry to delay while the god tier ratlings did work may not be the way their best played but getting there
Actually the best way to play skaven in campaign is getting hero and arty (includes weapons teams) spam. Jezzails, rating guns, warp cannons and plague priests. You spam a unit, bog the enemy and shot it to hell. That's legend of total war's build for legendary difficulty runs BTW. It won't work for multi-player though
I was dropped on my head as a child on purpose multiple times, so I main Beastmen.
Some would say you were mutated by the "ruinous powers"!
Solid reason to do so to be honest. Mainly because I can't think of many others :D
Good roleplay, Guts.
Feelsbadman
New chapter dropped a few hours ago fellow berserkchad
"If you spam artillery, you're just blowing stuff up before it reaches you. You're not actually playing Total War, you're playing Space Invaders. Think about it"
I feel attacked.
10:00
"If you spam artillery, you're just blowing stuff up before it reaches you." Hmm, yes, the floor here made out of floor.
So me using artillery in an artillery focused faction is me NOT playing the game correctly?
Then attack back from the other side of the map.
@@bello9740 I think the point he's making is its fine to do so but you might find as much fun or be able to expand what factions you can play. I also know he's fairly multiplayer focused as well and that probably won't work as well in multiplayee.
*Laughs in Plagueclaw*
Not recommending the Dwarves?
That's going in the big book...
Dwarves are like elephants.
They never forget...
@@cultofthevoid5677 Also, they have big noses and are fat. This comment has my consent.
Hey i want to ask this should i buy Total war warhammer 2
@@bobthebutler YES
@@Shadowcam00 Ok cuz i found the game in Eneba for 5€ im not gonna spend 50€ for it in Steam cuz i just bought another rts game called Northgard so... Im gonna buy it from Eneba.
> Orcs
> Sneaky
> WAAAAAAAAAAGH! (but silently)
play skarsnik, sneak aracnarok spiders close to the ennemy line :)
@@flexprime2010 Play 2v2 with a Vampire Coast friend and sneak BLOATED CORPSES to the enemy line!
@@jabloko992, paint bloated corpses in red so they could run FASTAAAAR!!!
@@dmitryd8036 Or purple if I recall correctly, given that I thought that was the stealth one. I fully admit I may be wrong though.
Dat bee wut da gobbos be for.
Honestly i would recommend starting with either the high elves or greenskins. They both get access to pretty much every unit type and magic so you learn a little bit of everything. Empire requires a strong understanding of combined armed and the dwarf lack of mobility and magic can be a challenge to overcome.
Also the high elves are pretty OP considering their bs unit roster so their campaign (especially Tyrion on Vortex) is the easiest
I am torn on Greenskin recommendations. Their starting area is not very fun to play in (very movement and guess heavy if you don't know how to scout with agents and so on .. ) and I always feel like greenskin campaigns end up with you spamming boys ..than biguns ..than black orcs and some spiders / catapults. Never found the non melee orc units very usefull in campaign :|
@@XenomorphsWrath ive found use of trolls in general and early boars worthwhile though I wasnt actually thinking about campaign with this. It was more just good armies to learn the game with. If campaign is considered then yeah i would be a bit sceptical of the greenskins start, the badlands are a mess to fight in, though it would teach the importance of agent scouting.
I was thinking the same thing
Lol turtle as dwarves. Use artillery spam.
Wood elves of course, preferably a no-tree build. Once you learn to play with units that die from getting bitten by a mosquito everything becomes easy lmao
i go broke af
Clan Moulder, Skavenslave only.
Ascend to the *N* dimension.
Ah yes, the Viet-cong faction
@@fernandocarriel5635 _"Why are the trees mumbling about warpstone?"_
Jesus, the dwarves just can't catch a break in this channel can they? Poor little guys.
its going in the book
Thats a grudging
well, the dwarves actually got a good amount of money tbh
"Pitying the dawi? Thats going in the book."
@@BobtheJill lol! Omg, where's that from? Its driving me insane! Is it Futurama?
"If you want a cavalry charge don't go with Skaven" Hehe DoomWheel go Broom-BROOOM
"Warpstone bullet-projectiles are just remotely delivered-sent cavalry yes-yes"
I think those are more chariot than cavalry, tbh. Small model count, high mass per model, heavily reliant on charge cycling: Chariot.
@@iraqiwalker1436 Chariots are cav for people with class
@@Batmack Settra approved
And they die die DIE YES YES
"You might enjoy Lord of the Rings so you play Dwarves"
Hey, that's me!
"Well, the dwarves are the worst to learn first."
Damn it
I learned them first and I believe I turned out fine, but each person has their own thoughts on the subject ^w^
My first faction was the Vampire Counts... And I had to fight the dwarves x.x
i played them first in warhammer 1, i played way to defensively and the greenskins wiped me out, then i played more aggressively and won, main thing really is to suck ass once and learn then kick ass the second time
@@Lickicker So did I, but I do think they were easier before the Greenskins got their buff. I also think a lot of these reviewers underestimate how much fun winning is. There are a lot of players still playing because they have won with the dwarves and no one else.
The worst faction to start with is wood elves i think. they just play extremely different. I dont agreee with his point that the dwarves are the worst since you play against other factions and you see that they have faster units etc and that you have to use them
I started with Lizardmen cause the six year old in me was frothing at the mouth at the sight of the carnosaur I’m not good at them but still
Yea high elves and lizard bois are probably the best to start with
I went straight for Lizardmen as well, got bodied pretty hard
Lizardmen will teach you things about the game you really need to know.. specifically do Mazdamundi (NOT Kroq-gar, which protects you from learning how to contend with a restricted budget and still create enough power in your armies to get things done)
You must contend with very expensive upkeep and enemies that can take advantage of your weaknesses. Learning how to manage that is an important first step in understanding how things fit together. It also forces you down a path of dialing in your economy QUICKLY. If you don't, you won't do much for the first 60 or so turns.
Hint: lots of skinks die in the first part of the campaign. And by 'lots' I mean, crimes against skink-manity level losses. It is all totally do-able.. but the first time was a bit of a shock coming from earlier Total War games where good tactics along with a balanced roster help make things work without tons of casualties. Early game Lizardmen aren't balanced in their capabilities.. so knowing how to work them and get things done is important.
The general in me hates all the casualties, but this is the lay of the land early game for the Lizardmen. Early game feels like World War 1 attrition warfare.. a bloody and brutal affair.
As lizardmen you really have to learn ambushing a lot. Once you ambushed couple of armies early game then it’s a cake walk
@@louis930408 lol i ambush at sometime with all my armies any race its cause i wanna bait em out of towns... Lizardmen are good asf at defending walls though on my khalida playthrough it took me forever to take one of the lizardmens city way far north not long ago i was like damn die already lmao and i busted walls down and everything.. im in a stalemate with expedition dude atm
I wouldn't recommend Empire for beginners. It's a Swiss Knife for sure, but if you build your composition wrong or get countered you'd be left fighting with a knife against a sword.
i think that is what is supposed to make them good for beginners though. Good both for learning and experimenting.
If you spread yourself too thin and try to do everything as the Empire, you'll fail. You have to lean into -some- strength, but as the Empire, this can be any strength, so you can get practice with all the various styles in the game (cav/infantry/missile/artillery focus). If you don't pick one or some you'll see why that's an issue - and applies to every faction.
However, this also means you can try them all out. Spam artillery and infantry to support. Spam missiles and artillery and have barely enough infantry. Or just spam infantry. Or just spam cavalry. This allows you to try out each of these different styles without having to learn entirely different factions.
Though to be honest I think that the High Elves are one of the other best options just because of the simplicity of some of it. Just go spearman/archers and you're good for a very long time. But it's not the same as being good for learning and building good habits.
Isn’t that why you would really, really want to play as them because it would teach you how to...what is it the young’uns are saying these days...”git gud” fast?
I usually get a general, a wizard and a captain, 3 artillery 3 cavalry and the rest melee with ranges
@@Manchevo Get Franz on Deathclaw or Volkmar on Altar. It's far superior to the general. Franz vs Monsters and Cavalry, Volkmar vs infantry.
Are we talking fighting with what kind of armour? If both of you are wearing fullplate the dagger against the sword isn't really that big of a disadvantage
IMO Lizardmen are good to start with if you played past titles of TW, they are well rounded and their good early infantry can hold well untill you figure out what's going on and allow you to take your time when casting magic, also they have lord Kroak 😁
As a complete beginner, I agree. I never played a Total War title before but I managed to bumble my way into a vortex victory with Tiqtak'to's Terradon bombing squad. Also the slowdown button is a lifesaver.
@@GrandNothing WOW, you started with Tiqtakto among all people, you sure got guts man. 😊
@@mohamedAshraf-ln9hu Thanks, his name was funny to me so it was hard to resist picking him. I'm trying Repanse now, but I'm quickly finding that I suck at microing cavalry, lol.
@@GrandNothing yeah it needs alot of ins and outs and ins and outs, the important thing they don't get stuck.. GL man.
Stegadons and characters riding canasours ftw!
No feral canasours tho try and avoid rampage on single entity units as much as possible.
I remember when I first started playing warhammer 1, I tried (and failed) as the empire over and over again, and then when I switched to playing as the dwarves, I won first time. And I must say your guides have been extremely helpful in helping me learn and improve my skills at this game, honestly thank you so much and keep up the good work!
Personally, I think the High Elves are the best faction for a new player. Strong in every area and at every price point. Strong defensive and offensive infantry, both as standard and elite. Great light, medium, and heavy cavalry, great ranged with archers, great monsters in multiple varieties, a fantastic selection of lords, and amazing access to magic. Access to great healing with Alarielle is also a great safety net to help recover from micro mistakes.
Counterpoint: They are all dicks pretending to be nice.
Every other race is at least honest about that.
My recommendation for he is to play tyrion first, he got a really good starting point if you choose to ally with other he. Allarielle need to deal with chaos invasion and death night army from the north, imrik and teclis are surrounded by 2 skaven clan that somehow within 20 turns always confederate and declare war on them.
My only counterpoint is that they're so easy and OP in campaign, that it could put players off by being boring, or encourage bad habits (ie; what Zerkovich said about the Dwarves)
@@GamePandaXXL Well, they are simply more experienced and superior to any other race, and yet they try to save the world(rather than destroy it, like the dark elves). Guess that no one's perfect, after all...
@@justthunderbolt40 So? Still no reason to be a dick about it. They dont even like themselves. Every high elve faction hates the others
Looks like someone is gonna fill the entire book.
These dwarf comments are so true though. I started with the dwarves, then switched to the undead... needless to say that didn't go over well. It took a long time to figure out how to be so hyper aggressive.
I started with the dark elves, then went to chaos, then vampire coast. Next I'm doing green skins.
Yeah Dwarfs are the worse race to learn the game with, it's totally not recommended.
10:25 "you're just blowing up stuff that's descending onto you before it reaches you, which means you're not playing Total War at all, you're actually playing Space Invaders"
LegendOfSpaceInvaders: am i a joke to you?
oh boy someone send this to legend i wanna see his reaction
That has to be a direct jab at rocket doomstack lol
I'll never understand giving someone shit on how they should play single player
@@WompWompNootNoot ikr. if anyone tells you you're wrong for playing the way that suits your personal style/is the most fun for you, then they are an idiot.
"waah, it's not the way they were meant to be played!" too bad.
If its dumb but it works does that make it bad. You gotta go with what works.
I think the hardest part about the dwarves is they play the most similar to older total war games and thus are familiar to people who play the old games. That was part of the reason I play such a static defense with most factions is because it is hard to break from the strategies I have used in previous total wars.
Give Rome 2 a spin.. each faction has its own way to go about battlefield objectives. Hellenistic is as you describe.. static and defensive. But barbarians are much more vanguard deployment and in your face. And Rome is about maneuver. Most total war factions emphasize maneuver over static defense with the exception of pike based factions, since pikes necessitate a defensive posture. That said, you don't have to use pikes, and many don't (successor kingdoms in Rome 2 also allows the use of thureos spear units or high level hoplite units which are both high level spears with typical high level defensive stats.. they are faster than pikes but are meant to hold the line so that your flankers and skirmishers can do their thing).
Dwarves are very static.. no flankers.. so it is simply an attritional style.. since they can out attrit when things are even or even a bit against them. That is different than any of the historical titles (and I know, I've played most of them + the warhammer titles). So it is NOT that the dwarves mimic the other games. The issue is that the dwarves are tactically simple in comparison to ANY other factions in any historical title you care to look at.
Welp, off to the police station then I guess
See you there
I thought he said "playstation"! That sounded weird...
@@DzinkyDzink I heard playstation too lol
You: Entering the police station. "Hello, I'm a necrophile and here to turn myself in."
Police: "O-k... have you desecrated any bodies or committed any obscene acts?"
You: "No."
Police: "Then go home and call a therapist. Being a necrophiliac isn't a crime. Just stay away from the graveyard and don't act on it ok?"
You: "Oh, right. Sure."
@@UnknownSquid so they would stop us from playing Tomb Kings?
The Empire is a good faction to learn AFTER you learn some other factions that are VASTLY different from the Empire. The best way to learn the Empire is to play the Greenskins, Vampire Counts, Beastmen/Chaos/Norsca, and Bretonnia.
Greenskins: How to rip apart an enemy defensive line that out firepowers you. Once you learn that, you learn how to fight against that. You know which vectors they come from, where your lines will be weak, how to deploy your cavalry to counter that.
Vampire Counts: How to summon and magic your opponent. Learning where the summons come from is important. Also learning fire and magical damage.
Beastmen/Norsca: How to fight big monsters and take them down (because using big monsters lets you know their strengths and weaknesses).
Bretonnia: Cavalry and weak infantry. And how to support them.
After playing those four, play the Empire and learn its artillery specialties and gun cav.
A friend is going to try the game soon. May have to show them this.
I've been playing the game for about a year now and I'd send him the video. I think he laid out everything in a really simple and informative way all in a short time. Hope your friend enjoys the game either way!
@Not so Sneaky stabba you want them to waste their money?
Empire is the best to start,
Tomb kings was my first
I wish i have friends to play this game :(
awesome video, tho 1 critique, when showing faction flags like at 0:31 it might have been better to also show underneath the flag the actual name of the faction too, because as a new player i don't recognise even half of the flags :S
With all the DLC, the Skaven are practically the most flexible faction simply due to sheer roster size.
That expects new players to shill out on dlc for a game they just picked up. It also requires a different mindset.
I just noticed for the first time that everyone has a shield icon except Dwarfs, Skaven and High Elves. This random fact annoys me to no end. :p
Dark elves have a corset
Great. Now I'm pissed too.
Lizardmen don’t have a shield
@@gooeygo2515 they have a mesoamerican-esque shield as their icon
I have 500h why am I watching this?
Same I'm sitting at 1253h into this game, I just enjoy what this guy thinks is the easiest for newbies :)
1400 h. That’s nothing compared to LegendofTotalWar... Dude has over 10,000!
@@michaelplurad8670i dont like him, Lion Heart and mr smart donkey videos are way more enjoyble
@@guglielmo_arte_naturale nothing to do with “liking”. That’s just insane to have that many hours sunk into one game!
Same, I'm just not very good and often choose difficult factions because I'm a bit of a masochist.
15:30 Poor Bretonia.
In Tabletop they also didnt get love for a very very very long time.
Reminds me of that meme where a Bretonnian Knight is comforting a Sister of Battle saying “Don’t worry, we’ll get updates to our books”
And the next panel has the sister putting flowers on Bretonnia’s grave.
@@rellek4053 Bretonnia is my favourite faction and I looked that meme up. I am sad now.
@@Delta040301 We suffer together, brother, but a Grail Knight never gives up, and neither shall we.
Our knights were once unquestionably the greatest warriors on tabletop. Our time will come again. It will be a time when we are truly an elite cavalry faction rather than a mediocre cavalry horde faction. Blood Knights and Demigryphs will see our shining lance tips in their nightmares as they rightly should!
@@rellek4053 By the Lady, that was beautiful. Bretonnia will rise once more.
@@rellek4053 I'm sure, that you'll find your Grail in reburth of Fantasy Battles named "Warhammer old World"
Glory to the true knights!
I started with Dwarves and tried to attack all the time. But I did not have a good grasp of the keys. I finally started turtling and letting my ranged weapons tear the incoming armies apart. This gave me a chance to learn movement mechanics without having to move all over the battlefield. I could then practice more complex unit movements during fleeing enemies. I have a much better understanding now and will be moving to another faction. I think that alone helped me get through more frustrated learning points. Even if you only play their campaign for the first few grudges it will help you start another harder army in my opinion.
My main faction is tomb kings, I like that they have preety balanced roster and you can do with them what you want
Monster doomstack-they have one of the strongest monsters in the game
Skeleton spam -they can build infinate amount of skeleton spear man and wariors with no cost
Or mage spam-they have ascess to very strong kinds of magic
its not at no cost anymore!
"Blast my enemies to Scheiße". made my day.
Hit the unit so hard it turns to shit :D
Watching this vid after my first ever campaign. As the dwarves. 50 hours in. I feel personally attacked
"Beastmen can be played defense too"
*Throwing rocks intensifies*
I'm on my first warhammer 1 campaign, 50 hours into the dwarf campaign i watch this video XD
As someone who is used to medieval and rome, the lack of cavalry/flanking was the first thing i noticed
I Started with the Dwarves And still Main them All the time. LOVE their Defensive power, high armor and their Rune magic.
But when I tried out Lizard and Chaos I had 0 problem.
Dwarf players can't get a break on this channel
A good guide but I disagree with the starting faction challenge rating. The ratings are NOT up to date and often enough misleading. Saying Hard is a little bit tougher at the start often enough is wrong. You should absolutely disregard the challenge rating and build your own picture.
True but in the context of a brand new player then they're an indication. Hope CA update that though it won't be a priority to them.
@@SAMagic I agree. It is as much of an indication of what new players can do as much as absolutely misleading. The best advice is to just pick anything that sounds good to you and hit start. You will probably get your ass kicked but figure out what works and waht not and go on from there.
High Elves I'd say are the best to start with, as far as I know they have something in every category of unit and aren't the worst in any of them. Great if you want to learn the core mechanics of the game before going for a more specialized race.
I'm in love with zombies so had a bloody nightmare learning vampires from the get go, fast forward a few years and I'm so glad I stuck with them as I now know how to play aggressive in comparison to when I just played rome 2.
I'm no pro by any means but I'm just happy I got to terms with aggressive playstyles. I think sitting back and defending is so lackluster and you really don't feel like you're involved, more like just a spectator.
I too would encourage anyone to give any aggressive faction a good go until you get good with it, it's a very rewarding experience and was a complete game changer for me good luck guys
I really think the most balanced starting faction to learn is probably Empire or High Elves. They've both got a little bit of everything.
"There is no wrong answer, you're only playing with yourself" Zerkovich - 2020
It was a bit to close to heart though
Z: Their is really only one faction that is bad at playing first.
Me: Vampire Cou-
Z: Dwarfs
Me: Excuse you?
vampire counts work as first race - it's a bit iffy but it works. Forces you to a tall play which is probably wise with most factions so it's not bad.
Vampire COAST on the other hand ..oh boi ...stay away if you don't have experience with this game...
@@XenomorphsWrath I'm a casual player so I won't pretend to be more knowledgeable then Z. However personally if I had a friend who does not have a preference one way or the other, I recommend Dwarfs because they are simpler. Nothing is worse then playing as a faction only to get bent over by the AI and just take it and such an experience might turn them away.
@@XenomorphsWrath I have 800 hours in the game and still can’t play Vamp coast lol. I don’t understand their roster at all, they have no good frontline. ( I play SFO)
@@stalliontv465 The trick with them is to pretend you don't have a frontline. I quickly ended up with 6-7 "frontline" units and a bunch of ranged and artillery. I am sure there are other ways to play it but this ...worked ^^. The grenadiers are really strong, the traditional frontline is .. well .. Zombies. They stand, they die, they do nothing else.
@@JasperLane I too started as dwarf but switched off rather quickly since I noticed that I was just autoresolving (Tww 1 autoresolve was horridly strong) - it stayed a bad habbit until TWW 2 came out and I started playing skaven which forced me into battle and I noticed having alot more fun that way ^^
THAT'S A GRUDGIN
I tried a bunch of races to start with and ended up settling on The Lizard Men to cut my teeth on. I think that the whole morale system is one of the trickiest mechanics for new players. And so having a race with very good morale /endurance made it easier to come to terms with the other facets of combat without being derailed by morale.
The Dark Elves were the first faction I played - they have a balanced unit roster and a strong economy based on slaving, so it was easy to build effective forces without running over budget.
man, the dwarf rant went on so damn long
Got 1 and 2 , started with beastmen in one. On the bright side, I feel like I improved rapidly, on the downside, it took me a dozen campaigns to even come close to success. Then I got to two and found the gors immensely buffed
*Me, a newb, taking notes:* Dwarves yes.... I see.... play dwarves and turtle..... and play empire with lots of artillery, I see.... good point, yes.......
Honestly I feel like theres one thign you can learn from dwarves, Target prioritzation, the most important thing to consider as the dwarves is "What should my Missile units be shooting at, and what should they not be shooting at"
I have officially been living under a rock. Wood elves DLC on the way? My favourite faction and I didn’t even know about that?!? This is why having a family and a job and being boring is just really not advisable in the slightest. I mean, I love my kids and wife. But if they think they’re going to see me after the DLC hits, they’ve got another thing coming!
They got until December, they recently informed in reddit that it got delayed by Corona and home office
@@alltaken21 Well they won’t get me back til next Easter.
@@georgemorley1029 if you buy the DLC you get one WE lord and some WE units along with more shiz for an unconfirmed race, if you buy the WE original DLC and this new one you get another WE lord and a legendary hero. I think.
Pretty sure that the other race is skaven. Not sure tho. I think clan moulder.
You're a man child.
10:36 - ah, great reload animation right there.....
On Dwarves: Never have I been so offended by something I 100% agree with.
I did actually start to play TWH with the Dwarfs, simply because dwarves have always been my staple go-to race for many reasons in any games that feature them. But I did indeed notice that it was a very easy run. And so, once I had my fill of the dawi, I decided to go the complete opposite spectrum of morale: The Skaven. While the dwarfs felt like a safe way to get to grips with the basic mechanics and learning how the controls of the game work, my first full playthrough of the Skaven really thought me some valuable lessons on tactics, while still being able to enjoy a faction with wonderful firepower. And I will say that the way the skaven forced me to think has made me get more creative with dwarfs to varying degrees of success, but always to great enjoyment.
I do have a problem with him saying "playing actual total war" when playing lots of artillery is playing total war. You don't get to dictate what is actually playing it But I do understand the point, but it is a total valid way to play. Me and my bro play like that all the time.
Honestly, I rarely watch your videos, but when I switch one on.. I just cannot leave 'till it ends (maybe that's why I watch you so rarely now).
Awesomly structured answer and explanations. Very noob friendly and at the same time informative. Great job, as always!
For your thoughts on dwarfs and empire: Wouldn´t it be good, to have easy battles for a new player? So he/she can focus on the world map first and learn the real basics? Or is this video just about the battle learning?
Great video Zerk. How about some specific campaign recommendations with an overview and tips? "Start as Grombrindal, smash the orcs, trade with people" and so on. This could give new players a comfortable starting point.
The first faction I played in the Total War Warhammer series were the Tomb Kings because of aesthetics and their theme appealed to me at the time. Coolest-looking faction out there in my humble opinion
Hey I'm going to get the game this week and tomb Kings I want to play them first is it a good idea as a new player?
@@brandonmccann15They can be tricky. They have a weird unit cap mechanic.
I feel bad for Gelt at the start of this video, man was made to walk through a medieval drainage ditch... he's gonna need new boots...
This video shall be recorded in the great book of grudges
I’m currently playing my first somewhat successful campaign with the lizardmen, and I kinda have the feeling that the problem you mentioned for the dwarves, I mean the “The stats carry you” part, can be mentioned for the lizardmen too. I don’t want to mitigate the success I have in this campaign, but the most intense war I had was one against the Skaven (we were the strongest 2 factions at the time). Although I definitely played a lot around with cavalry and missile and even won a tough siege battle as attacker, where I was outnumbered, I feel like the main reason I won was the fact that when it comes to unit vs unit, the Skaven are hopelessly inferior. Of course they have the numbers advantage and the Ratlings were very tough to deal with, but I’m not sure how much this victory was actually “worth” when it comes to me learning the game. I feel like I just had to throw my units against theirs and because the stats of mine are so much better, there was not much to worry about.
I tried orcs first.
On hard mode (both campaign and battles).
I’m finding it hard.
I played dwarfs years ago on normal on the first game.
I have a hardtime on first Skaven campagn, your vídeos helped me to learn some strategies
High Elves is easily the easiest faction to play with (gamewise) especially Lothern because they have a very basic unit composition and a safe starting point. Literally the only factions you have to worry about in the early game are fellow elves, giving you enough time to learn the game mechanics and systems and the building effects too. You can play offensive, defensive, or just hang around. the only threat that will ever come your way would be the factions that got big by turn 200, otherwise, you can literally just watch the game unfold without worrying about anything.
Tip -
Learn landed factions first before going hoards.
But that might get the "I *can* lose this army and rebuild it"mode of playing.
nothings more fun than crushing lategame armies with 4 stacks of gobbos
Bretonnia was my first factions, and I feel like I had an easy time
Hearing you rage about the dwarves so much, made me want to play a game with the dwarves.
when you watch this and think to yourself "damn my first nation was dwarf, and damn i did hard spam infantry, and damn after that i too played Empire with shit tons of arty, wow am i this bad?"
Another tip for newer players if you don't want your first experience to be misrable go with an order tide faction. Nothing will turn a player away from a game faster then a frustrating experience and seeing there hours wasted because it just so happens all the ordertide factions decided to band together and form a club that will annihilate any non order faction is far from ideal. It might not seem like an issue if you want to learn the game but a player playing well and having a fun campaign suddenly facing down a tide of dwarfs, elves and empire soldiers can do a lot to kill someone's interest in returning to the game.
So basically highelve's are imo the best start for the reason stated above.
Hey what a rude comment i love Tomb Kings because i overall love the ancient Egypt theme.
One aggressive method as skaven that seems to be very effective is clan Hamer and Anvil army with Wolf rats hammer, ground all the Wolfrats tie down their army with infantry, then flank and focuse down units one by one with your wolfrat blob, a mass of Wolfrats charger the rear of a unit can break most units almost instantly, from their they access in deleting fleeing units in a matter of seconds, however they can also break units easily just by the amount outnuming the enemy, they are also good at running down cav and stuff, generally keeping Wolfrats from being tied down and engaging selectivity to quickly delete isolated or tied down units avoid large groups of enemies, they are also good at flanking and killing artillery and ranged units.
After 20 or so attempts at online battles with Tomb Kings and 0% winrate, I must say I'm surprised to hear that they are considered to be one of the strongest factions currently. But that just shows how bad I'm currently x)
These shooting snakes are really overpowered.
Just like Arkham's ability to rise skeletons against enemy artillery. Tomb Guard sucks in multiplayer battles.
I personally found success with the dark elves at first and its mainly due to their strong missile and magic.
When i started with the game and the chaos invasion begun i mainly struggled with their units because they are so heavely armored units in the roster. However because the dark elves missiles constists out off crossbow units that are armorpurcing i found succes with them (he he shades go brrr).
Additionally they have very strong lores of spells to make use of like fire, dark, shadow and death. This helped me discovering how much a well placed spell can turn the tides of the battle.
I started with Vampires and decimated everything.
Thank you, was thinking of purchasing this game. This insight will probably makes the game a lot more enjoyable when i play it for the first time. While letting me having the pleasure of discovering the finer mechanics of the game on my own.
You don't recommend starting with dwarfs. But who said I was planning on playing any other faction?!
"They have wronged us!"
-Every Dawi main after seeing this video (including me)
i love elves, they are my favorite faction in the fantasy world, their way of life really impresses me so you can tell i'll go for the high elves because they are more royal like to me than the others
Haha Im the total opposite. When straight for the tribalistic lizardmen when I picked up this game. It's got something for everyone.
I just started this game and then noticed this video. The two races you recommended not playing were almost the first race I chose. Surprisingly the downside for the dwarves was the reason I was going to choose them, their defense would make up for my lack of skill.
"Many play the Normal and Easy initial starts for your first campaigns"
*Laughs in Imrik and Durthu as my first campaigns*
Great review, just starting to really get into this after playing part 3 and it being a bit buggy, I'm trying part 2 again and loving it. thanks for the info and a well put together video!!!!
I started with the skaven and i'm litterally unable to play anything else xD
Same
I learned playing Dwarfs and now I know no other strategy than "make big line, wait for bad guy". I'm really bad at the game.
"You wont learn how to play other factions if you spam empire arty or dwarf armies"
Me who spammed high elf archers in checkerboard formations: :)
I tried high elves my first couple times around. First with Tyrion, and second with Alarielle. I played very aggressively with Alarielle in 230 turns I had full domination and won vortex. Confederated with order of loremasters and the other one in the south east corner of the map, and beat and wiped out everyone else.
On my third campaign currently and playing Empire with Karl Franz.
My approach to him and my empire armies is to almost play like I would when I played napoleon or empire back in the day. Having multiple firing arcs with your lines, using artillery, and plenty of cavalry to hit flanks or take out their dangerous artillery almost right away or at least asap.
The only thing that’s different is their troops aren’t gonna stand in a line and let you take pot shots at eachother. So moving a couple units (especially hand gunners) to the extreme flanks and moving them out from behind infantry once the front lines engage so that I can get the like of sight- wins battle after battle. Even in sieges - just letting them gun down enemy troops on the walls then sending up my melee units to take out whatever’s left is greag
Started with Dwarfs and Lizardmen, but Tomb Kings and Vampires have become a favorite. Raising hordes of cheap chaff is so satisfying.
"Oh no! I lost two 20 stack armies!"
"Anyway..."
Empire in my experience was acthually a fantastic faction to learn the game with. Much like the high elfs they are incredibly versatile and offeres a lot of cool units that makes you try out different playstyles.
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From artilary spam to gunpowder line of sight management all the way to scermish cav and finally cavalry. Its not quite so space invaders either artilary fights while indeed one sighted does teach tarpit and similar strategies to buy time.
I would recommend Dark Elves, they are all around good faction to learn and have a great variety of units and special abilities and such. They are the faction I started with and loved!
I completely agree, the only problem is high elves having much more stronger units in the overall strengh. After watching a certain video I tried stuffing my army with artillery. I know dark elves aren't supposed to defend all the time, and that it's wrong but it works almost all the time. Only faction that will put up a good fight against you are the wood elves with their excellent ranged units. And after you level up Malekith he becomes a one man army
Empire was one of my first factions and it was very rough. But if you're not easily discouraged, I think Empire is a good way to learn the importance of magic and artillery (without doing artillery spam). I essentially shunned magic as much as I could (mainly by doing autoresolves) but when my campaign started involving more Empire vs. High Elf match ups, the match up forced me to learn how to micro magic users because sisters of averlorn absolutely shred the empire by out ranging all non-artillery missile units and decimating front lines if unchallenged. Empire vs. Dwarf match ups forced me to really look at handgunner placement and calvary positioning. As you may have noticed, I ironically did not learn how to really play empire until I betrayed all of its in-lore allies (the chaos "invasion" had already been crushed at this point) because the match-ups are pretty bad unless you figure out how to be flexible with empire play (again, without artillery spam).
Great video.. count me among the players that used dwarves first, then switched and had to figure out what I didn't know..
I come from other total war games.. which didn't help at all (the archers in most of the games previous were good, but not super-powerful like the high elves (as a first instance)).
This is a fantastic game for sure. The campaign even on normal is no pushover early game.. and getting things right takes real learning effort and good micro.
This brings me back to the release of warhammer 1 where we had like 10 lords in total, look at the lord selection now. I need to start playing again
It is unreal how much you have called me out in 6 minutes. I legit screwed myself over maining Dwarfs and Empire, to the point that I was uncomfortable selecting all my units for a simple charge when trying out Norsca for the first time.
Easily my favorite warhammer 2 expert. Keep the content coming man!
The enemy threat removed before it even reaches your frontline? I call that a great success
Watching mortars land on infantry never gets old.
That is until the Invocation kick in. Thanks for the free ammo though :)
@@alexanerose4820 *Laugh in ratling guns/Eltharion´s skill of infinite ammo*
I will suggest Greenskins Skarsnik.
In battle, Skarsnik relies on light infantry tactics, strategic ambushes and sneaky pincers. Goblins as line infantry really forces you to be paranoid about your flanks and ingrains in it a habit to protect your flank. Besides Skarsnik comes with fast and light cavalry with fast chariots requiring strategic micromanagement. As a plus it also have semi decent catapults for artillery pieces. And who doesnt love doom diver piloting its just fun.
In campaign you have to make hard strategic choices like abandoning cities you cant defend getting rid of high threat factions before they grow. Playing Skarsnik is very much about knowing where to win and where to lose in the campaign map you cant have everything because your just gobbos. You will also need to be mindful of your unit abilities and your mage debuff at the right timing.
Zerk still salty about dwarfs I see
Also sounding a lot like my school teachers did whenever I found a shortcut for something
"But you won't learn anything that way yada yada..."
Please zerk, I'm here for total war don't give me school flashbacks
When I first tried the game, I was just mesmerized at the amount of heroes and factions.
I tried high elves first, since one of there heroes had a dragon, I fails miserably.
Then I went for vampires, cause I love necromancy and the fact that you can just raise your army is amazing, the I got washed up by other vampires and empire.
On a third try, I went for Malus and ohhh boy, that was a lot of fun, you don't get stuck between some powerful enemies, and you have pretty op heroes considering his ability, so for the first time, I just washed out the whole continent and completed his quest, and adding to the whole great stuff was dark elves faction mechanic of earning a lot of money by tide rolling every enemy.
Zerkovich : "realize that if you are turning it into space invaders, you are not learning anything"
*Camera zooms in on my Empire campaign with about 15 full stacks of tanks and rocket batteries with a few mages*
Guess I'll do the next one a bit differently then
I think they mean multiplayer. Cheese the crap out of campaign it’s fun.
@@azureprophet Well, I'm pretty sure he was talking about factions to start with in the campaign (but I might be wrong) because in the multiplayer, if you stack 10 rockets or something like that and you don't immediately get curb-stomped into oblivion by a cavalry charge then it is a god damn miracle
Yeah he meant campaign. I always use balanced armies in campaign because doom stacks just aren’t fun
@@rellek4053 I don't know man, I find something almost poetic in watching your ennemies come at you with 4 full stacks against only one of yours and melt before they can even reach you. The kill counts in the thousands on the hellstorm rocket batteries are always satisfying xD
@@azureprophet oh, he said nothing about fun. He only talked about learning. I put so much cheese in my first campaign im at 95 settlements in turn 86 now, after 250 manual battles, and lost only 2 npc ally units. Cheese is fun! But should i ever stray into the multiplayer section, someone else will have fun 😁
High or Dark pointy ears are both fairly good starting point. High might be better since the front line can be tankier but either 1 gives you strong infantry and range letting you focus that early game learning on 2-4 unit types at a time.
To me, dark elf are easy to learn, because without u realize, u already start cyrcle of war - slaves - repeat
"dwarves are the one faction you shouldn't start out with"
Me, having started with the dwarves 180 hours in-game ago: "Well, that would have been nice to know a year ago"
Not recommending Dwarves?
It seems we gotta add someone to the book boys
Started with dwarfs in warhammer 1 last month and completely understand what you’re saying then swapped to clan skryre on warhammer 2 last week got completely destroyed twice early game but slowly learned to just use my infantry to delay while the god tier ratlings did work may not be the way their best played but getting there
Actually the best way to play skaven in campaign is getting hero and arty (includes weapons teams) spam. Jezzails, rating guns, warp cannons and plague priests. You spam a unit, bog the enemy and shot it to hell.
That's legend of total war's build for legendary difficulty runs BTW. It won't work for multi-player though