Funny that you were thinking about playing as them!

Continued the Beastmen march through human lands today, destroying several more settlements including two capital cities.

We also met the forces of Warriors of Chaos, lead by Archaon the Everchosen. Fortunately they were friendly (as friendly as chaos can be, anyway) so we left each other alone and continued hunting the remaining humans. Only a couple more factions to go before I unlock the final quest battle and can finish the campaign.

Preparing for a siege against the undead

A victorious Khazrak in the undead's city

Bray-Shaman

The Bray-Shaman's spells decimate the enemy

Preparing to assault the human city of Talabheim

Didn't need to bring a battering ram

Harpies on the walls

The defenders tried their best

Gors surge into the city

The Gorebull and Minotaurs claim the central plaza

The city is ours

Silly humans should just run whenever they see a horde of your guys approaching their city!

It's great when your troops are your battering ram. Wow, aerial units taking the walls is a fantastic idea!

Thought I'd give everyone a head's up - TW:WARHAMMER and some of the DLCs are 33% off on steam right now, and historical TW titles are 75% off.

Oh boy!! Thanks for the heads up!
*Runs to PC to look*

Got Attila, the Celts DLC, and Viking Forefathers DLC as WarHammer was still a bit more than Khajiit wanted to spend.

Good choice. You can find Warhammer slightly cheaper elsewhere, but it's only a year old so the price will likely stay high for some time (especially with Warhammer 2 coming soon). Unless you're a big Warhammer fan, Attila is the wiser choice.

Yeah I started the prologue and it's taking some getting accustomed to after playing Rome. Still pretty fun though!

So we started a campaign in Attila as the Ebdanians (Irish), and the very first thing we did was go take Segontium from the Western Romans. Now, we need to be able to raise and retrain troops on the main island but as far as Khajiit can tell, there's no way of doing that. Is there something this one is missing? We are aware that troops will replenish over turns, but recruiting more troops doesn't look possible.

You may need to build a barracks to recruit the troops from?

Khajiit figured it's a building he needs to build, but the building system is a lot different than Rome: TW, so this one isn't really sure what or how to get troop training. Guess for now I'll just have to ferry them over from Hibernia.

I am not sure how it works. I just fired up Atilla, and there is a Raise Forces button in the settlement overview area. But I can only recruit generals from it.

Ja, and then in turn your general recruits men, but when Khajiit's General is in Segontium, we don't get the option to raise troops. Hoping Haz can shed some light on what is going on.

Is your general in the same region as your recruitment building?

Lol, how do you know which is the recruitment building? In Ireland we've got a village (dwelling?), a farm, and an artisan. Oh and docks.

Different buildings unlock different recruits. If you hover over a building a little info tab should pop up - at the bottom of the tab it'll say 'allows recruitment of X'. Your village should allow you to recruit some basic units.

Click on your general, then click the shield+ icon on the bottom of the screen that says 'recruit units' and a list of available recruits should pop up. Your general can only recruit units from the local region.

Will try to post a screenshot later. My General is in Segontium and when the shield+ icon (raise troops) is pressed, there are literally 0 options for recruitment. Khajiit is guessing there is something he isn't doing, or some requirement he hasn't met, probably due to the fact he is in a former Roman territory.

Total War: Star Wars would be cool. Imagine the Battles of Scarif and Hoth in TW style. Or Twilight Company's Mid-Rim Campaign. It would never happen because of EA though.

That would be cool! The sheer scale of that would be daunting! Still say Total War: Tamriel would be cool. First Era preferably.

Game of Thrones Total War seems like an obvious one as well.

Agreed. They could even take a page from WarHammers book and do something similar to the necromancy of the Vampire Counts for the White Walkers.

If it's a former enemy territory, you have to convert buildings before you can use them. Maybe that's the issue?

That's probably it exactly. Khajiit has been reluctant to do that because it costs half of his treasury to do that and takes like 9 turns to complete. This one is wondering if it's not better to raze or sack a city and move on rather than try to occupy it.

*Update*
Building conversion required confirmed. Converted the main settlement part and was then able to recruit spears.

Glad it's sorted. Yep, some factions have bonuses when converting buildings, and others don't need to convert. It takes time, but having a place to recruit from on the mainland is really helpful for expanding your territory.



Beastmen updates continue.

Sad news today as Ghorros Heart-Render, leader of our second brayheard, was killed in battle against the Bretonnian king Louen Leoncoeur. With Ghorros dead and his brayheard destroyed, I effectively lost half of my faction. Before he was destroyed, Ghorros raised a second army, commanded by Morghur the Shadowgave (a legendary lord) which will take a long time to build up but should be even more powerful - Morghur is just as powerful as Khazrak.

Speaking of Khazrak, he completed a quest today and unlocked a legendary item - the whip named Scourge. His army now travels to Bretonnia to hunt down the remaining humans.

The Empire lands have all fallen to chaos, and the vampires are slowly moving in to all of the destroyed settlements. I have no problems with the vampires, and we're pretty content to leave each other alone for now.

Screenies from Khazrak's quest battle, an ambush against imperial troops:

Imperial general leading his column

My newly recruited Chaos Giant

Chaos Spawn alongside Minotaurs

Khazrak heads straight for the imperial general

the Gorebull leads his Minotaurs and Chaos Spawn into the rear of the enemy

Poison Warhounds pin down the Imperial Knights

imperial Demigryph Knights

the Chaos Giant towers over the melee

Bestigors chase down the fleeing imperials

Man that chaos giant/devil is biiiiig!

Those chaos forces and the Imperial demigryph Knights are cool looking!

R.I.P Ghorros Heart-render. Your heart-rending days are done.

It looks like the Chaos Giant is wearing a truck wheel. Or is that what happened to Flavor Flav?

Chaos Spawn are gross. They look like Fallout Centaurs.

Finished up the Beastmen campaign today. Hooray!

The last few turns were just a big game of cat and mouse with the last remaining humans. This gave me time to build up a really strong army for Morghur the Shadowgave, who managed to catch the last human army and wipe them out.

Eventually the humans ran out of places to hide, as any settlement I destroyed was quickly resettled by vampires or chaos tribesmen. The Wood Elves retreated back into their forests, and I was content to leave them there.

A good campaign overall, though I'm disappointed in myself for allowing Ghorros Heart-Render to be defeated. This is the first Beastman campaign I've done since Bretonnia was buffed and had new units added, so it was really interesting to have that new element to deal with. Very fun.

Some shots from Morghur's battle against Bretonnia:

The bulk of my force - Several units of Bestigors, supported by a giant and a Bray-Shaman

Morghur the Shadowgave - leading several units of Chaos Spawn

One of three Cygors - I had them dotted around the map so the enemy had nowhere to hide

Some knights attack a Cygor, only to be intercepted at the last second by some Chaos Spawn

The rest of the spawn attack the infantry

A plume of magic heralds the arrival of the Bray-Shaman - the humans were all grouped up around some buildings, which meant that the spells could hit several units at once.

More magic, and the Bestigors move in

Exit, pursued by Bestigors

No survivors


Total War Warhammer 2 comes out in a couple of weeks, so I might try and squeeze in a Wood Elf campaign before then.

Those chaos-spawn remind me of the creatures from the Resident Evil animes.

That Cygor has a big rock. I take it they are basically catapults?

The Beastmen variant of chaos spawn is definitely the most horrifying.

Exactly. Cygors have slightly less range than a dwarf cannon, for example, but do significantly more damage and can move a lot faster. They're also a lot harder to kill than your average siege engine crew.

Huzzah victory for the Beastmen!!

Khajiit is still learning the ins and outs of Attilla. Today this one was messing around as the Caledonians and got involved in a naval battle with the Franks, who we declared war on to help out our Saxon allies. They had boats filled with only like 400 men and my boats had over 1000. Not being very familiar with the mechanics of sea battles, it quickly turned disastrous for us. We won the battle, wiping out the small Frankish force, but the Franks killed so many of our men that it wasn't much of a victory (the very definition of "Phyrric victory").

Started playing Attila again. Ebdanians again. Started off good. Sent a force across the sea and took Ebocorum before the Caledonians could get there. Didn’t stop them from sending an army through my new land anyway and attack Lindum, *sigh*. Segontium became a base for Western Roman Seperatists who managed to build a decent sized army. We ignored them and attacked London which was lightly garrisoned and then pushed Rome completely out of the south of the island. The only hold fast of Roman culture was Segontium but before I could go there, a plague hit Hibernia and soon after a rebellion that destroyed my army there. So, obviously Khajiit still has a lack of understanding about how to manage a city in this game. Watched a video by a guy playing as the Picts and it seemed a bit easier so this one may try them today.

Was also thinking about the new “saga” games they are doing now. Khajiit thinks it would be cool if they did one set in Mesoamerica just before the Spanish arrived. It would work a lot like the Huns in Atilla. You’d have till the year 1519 to get your empire straight and then the Spanish under Cortés would “land” on the Yucatan, and proceed to steamroll the tribes that didn’t have their stuff together. Balance would be an issue for the Spanish faction, but Khajiit thinks it could be done by making Spanish units more expensive and in fewer numbers per unit. Think it could be a lot of fun!

Ooh! The Three Kingdoms game is going to be a full size game and not just a “Saga” game! So excited to get to play a Total War game set in Ancient China!

The Scipii just took Corinth like, 10 or so turns in at my newest Julii playthrough. That’s so ... unusual.

You stopped playing the Brutii?

Wanted a change of pace from phalanxes and chariots /shrug

Plus I wanted to see what the North was all about

The north is lousy with celts and germanics lol

Started a new campaign in Total War: Atilla, playing as the Western Roman Empire. It's the toughest campaign in the game (with the 'legendary' difficulty setting) and boy oh boy is it a challenging start.

WRE begins with control of everything west of Italy, as far north as Hadrian's Wall, and south to the northern coastline of Africa. You have 4 or 5 weakened legions, and very single barbarian faction declares war on you in turn 1. By turn 3 you'll suffer from widespread famine and plague. Trying to put out all those fires at once would be...tricky.

First thing I did was to recall all of my legions back to Italy. Lost a couple on the way but most got back safely, and settled in to defend our borders. The area to the north of Italy is brilliantly laid out with mountain passes acting as natural defences.

Second step was to deny the barbarian hordes an easy victory over my weakened settlements. Scorched earth policy enacted, more or less set fire to the whole of Europe and created a huge buffer zone of dead land. Now the barbarians have to spend resources to resettle and rebuild areas instead of taking them for free, giving me more time to sort things out at home.

Step three is to sort out surviving settlements in Italy. Removed all of the churches (Christianity really does more harm than good here, will convert to Greco-Roman Paganism when I can) and replaced them with farms and hygiene infrastructure. Also started rebuilding my existing legions.

Once all that was under way, it was basically smooth sailing. The barbarians threw themselves at me a few times but there's not a force on this earth that can shift my legions when they're on the defence. Special honours to be given to the late General Virius Flavianus and his Palatina Guards - they defended the gates of Tarentum against 1500 barbarians long enough for my reinforcements to arrive and push the enemy back. Their sacrifice shall not be forgotten.

Most of the barbarian factions have now retreated and settled for peace, leaving me with enough freedom to pursue the rebel and separatist Roman factions that have popped up. I would also like to deal with some of the wandering tribes that keep stopping by to raid me - mainly the Vandals and the Ostrogoths. They're not a threat at the moment, so I should deal with them while I can.

Roma invicta.

Joyous news today, the Vandals have been defeated. Not sure by whom, but they're gone and that's all that matters. Now I just need to...convince the Ostrogoths to get out of Italia and leave me in peace.

My legions continue their defensive efforts, with the 2nd Legion pushing east to sack a rebel settlement while the 3rd pushed east to sack a separatist town. The 3rd has been bolstered by a unit of Steppe Raider light cavalry which we managed to hire from a passing band of Huns - we'll be sure to put them to good use.

With food and hygiene problems settling down, I can turn my attention to building more religious buildings. I've officially changed the state religion to Roman Paganism, and with Mars's blessing we will soon be able to focus on building a wider selection of military buildings. I'd like to get some cavalry up and running before the inevitable Hunnic advance.

The only difficulty I've faced is one of my governors going blind in his old age. He can still govern effectively but if he has to take the battlefield to defend his town his troops may well suffer for it. (blindness inflicts several fairly harsh debuffs to a leader's stats). He's not on the front lines though so we should be alright for now.

Sounds like you have things well in hand, Haz. Good luck!

CARTHAGE! I should’ve played as them sooner, man! Their starting location sooooo fits my playstyle and I’m having fun just recreating the path Hannibal took to Rome.

I also starved out the Scipii by taking Messana (alongside Syracuse ofc) and blockading their Capuan port.

After several successive turns of me just devouring all they had to throw at my armies (their family tree was thinning; all their generals were up-jumped captains lol), they were the second faction after the Seleucids to be destroyed ‘cause Capua became a rebel city hahahahaha. I think I’ll do the same to the Brutii, just hamstring them from behind as they thin the ranks of the Greeks for me.

So what are the Julii doing? How far into the north are you, Spain or have gone into Gaul already?

I have sacrificed the races of the Spanish and the Gaul to Baal Hammon. All of their lands are mine now. The Julii are ... there, I guess. Dunno if they’ve gone North past Mediolanum.

Let me take a screenshot and send it to you on the Discord channel, more efficient that way kek

I had a lot of fun with Carthage. Elephants, good cavalry, and awesome infantry in the Poeni and Sacred Band. The only thing they lack are archers (slingers cannot angle their arrows in a high arc like archers can). I ended up modding a generic archer unit into the game for them when I last played them.

They’re as varied as Rome’s roster, yeah. I especially like the Iberian Infantry, the Libyan Spearmen and the Round Shield Cavalry. Something about their aesthetic just draws me in. That, or the fact that they’re underdogs compared to the Hastatii/Principes/Triarii. Always liked first tier underdog units, overcoming the challenge they face is sooooo satisfying everytime. They die like flies tho, which is sad.

Having archers would most definitely cover up that weakness Carthage has. They would make sieges a whole lot easier, both as an attacker and defender! That reminds me, I need to send an invasion force to Crete. Never really did take that island before in all of my play throughs; can you solely recruit Cretan archers in that region???

Yes, that is the only place you can recruit Cretan Archer mercs from. Handy to have some of those if you cannot build your own archers.

Are the Britons giving you any trouble up there?

None and none! Even though I’m at war with them and I’m campaigning on two fronts, I find the Julii to be more problematic with their upgraded Principes and Hastatii. At this point even the Britons’ chariots are trash and non-threatening; I just swamp them with my general and cavalry before they could get a momentum going on and poof! They ghost.

You should see my armies man, I have like 5 fully stacked legions! It feels awesome!