Trying Total War For the VERY FIRST TIME, PART THREE!

Real-Time Strategy newbie tries out Total War for the very first time! Chip takes a dive into Warhammer III in 2024 to see what all the fuss is about!
The cataclysmic conclusion to the Total War: WARHAMMER trilogy is here. Rally your forces and step into the Realm of Chaos, a dimension of mind-bending horror where the very fate of the world will be decided. Will you conquer your Daemons… or command them?
CPU: Ryzen 5 5600X
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3070

[@jamestarlos]

Hey, just wanted to say that I've been loving these first few episodes, it's been really interesting watching someone learn a game that I really love and enjoy playing myself! SInce you asked for tips, just a few: - In battle, the selection for 'melee front' and 'ranged front' doesn't have to always be enabled. Usually, melee units are set to melee and ranged to ranged combat from the get go. The front options are meant for if a group of selected units consists of both kinds of units. When selecting the option, it would then automatically place the melee guys in front and the ranged behind. - Don't forget recruiting. Since you've been struggling a little with keeping especially the ranged kosars alive, replenish your ranks at the end of every turn to bolster your numbers. Income is high enough that you don't need to worry about that right now. - When assigning skills you can hover over the text "Active ability" to see what it does. Great for the witch, you want to be able to assess what magic you want to use :D - Talking about magic, you can aim spells such as the ice sheet spell that the Frost Maiden has by holding down left mouse button and spinning the mouse, remember that everything does friendly damage ;) Of course there are plenty of other things to mention, but I think you've been doing great for a first time player, you'll learn over time and I can't wait to see you terrorize the world map as Orks in the name of Gork and Mork!

[@ChipHardbody]

Thank you so much! Friendly fire is definitely a thing I didn't know about until it REALLY messed me up! 🤣🤣

[@landsman420]

as someone with hundred of hours in this game, it's interesting to see a fresh perspective! Don't pressure yourself to be good, it's ok to struggle. Just try to have a blast :)

[@ChipHardbody]

Thank you so much! I'm definitely already having a really good time, and I expect my enjoyment to grow exponentially as I get better!

[@Mahrac126]

At 11:55, your income didn't go down. The AI's went down as a character that has a skill for it as the region.

[@ChipHardbody]

Ah, that makes sense!

[@marklathouwers3650]

This is really fun to watch. Following along as you learn all the game mechanics is a blast!

[@ChipHardbody]

I'm so glad!!

[@jdent8561]

The campaign uses "notifications" to move the story along. When you moved the mouse, you moved it over a different notification (notifications show up on the right side of the screen) and the game jumped to a different notification. The game considered this "skipping" the story notification so it played the cutscene that follows.

[@ChipHardbody]

Oh! That is very useful to know! Thanks again!!

[@mep1990]

The prologue battles are surprisingly hard for a tutorial, because Tzeentch is a hard faction to deal with for beginners, as it has a lot of powerful ranged units (even the blue horrors, which are classed as melee infantry, do have a missile attack with limited range but quite a lot of damage), which requires a lot of aggression, but coordinated agression. - The objective is to get into melee as fast as possible with as many of their ranged troops as possible in order to minmize the time you are under fire.In your case, if the initial enemy army had deployed closer to you, I would have charged straight in as fast as I could to defeat it or at least cripple it before the reinforcements came. - But the way they deployed made it hard for you to reach them in time before their reinforcements could join them, that's why what I would do is slowly and orderly approaching the enemy until you are just outside their range (you can check it by pressing space), and then charge at as many of their missile units as you can: if they are in melee they stop firing, and one on one, your infantry should win against any of their troops. - Their only strong-ish melee unit was the forsaken, so you could try to face them with one of your Tzar Guard units (as they are your best fighters and will take care of the forsaken easily). - This basic Kislev cavalry are quite weak, and will probably loose to anyone in that battle except perhaps the furies (which are quite weak themselves). An interesting way of using them would have been to try to position them at the enemy flank, right outside of the enemy missile range, right when you are approaching and about to charge. The IA tends to react to flanking threats by making a few units face that threat, so if you manage to make it do that while you are charging with your main line, there are fewer of the enemy missile units facing your charge, and thus you are taking less missile fire. You can then charge your cavaly against the pink horrors, who probably are on the enemy second line: while your weak cavaly will probably loose in melee against the pink horrors, having them in melee should prevent them from firing and give you enough time for your infantry to flank around and get to the pink horrors or pershaps defeat a couple of the blue horrors and thus break through to the pink ones, while your cavalry sacrifices themselves in melee so the pink horrors don't fire. - Also, while charging the enemy line, your Tzar Guard have shields, which means they are somewhat better protected against missiles, and you could try to put them in front of your spearmen when charging: the Tzar Guard would be the first to enter the enemy missile range and the enemy will probably focus on them, thus protecting the un-shielded spearmen. But the Tzar Guard are also your best fighters, so even if they have shields, if the enemy focuses fire on them, they are gonna get some damage, whether it's worth it to protect your spearmen or not is very hard to say, - The enemy general is a ranged and spellcaster unit, meaning that it shouldn't be as good in melee as a dedicated melee hero or lord (but there are exceptions), like Yuri, meaning that I would have tried to manouverB Yuri into dueling the enemy general in melee as fast as I could. - The enemy general is also a good target for your sleds: the sleds don't have a lot of men on them, meaning that they fire few shots per volley, but usually these units tend to have a lot of damage per shot, meaning that they are good at taking out single-entity units such as lrods or monsters, rather than firing at low-value, high number units. Because the sleds fire with gunpowder weapons, their projectiles are armour-.piercing, meaning that firing at the forsaken, who are somewhat armoured could also be a relatively good idea. However, in this case, you were too close for that to work, instead, the furies kept 3 or 4 of your units in melee while you were getting fired at, and if you are being fired at, you want to get to whatever is firing at you as fast as you can. - You had a good idea with luring the furies back into your infantry, while your two units of cavalry could have taken out that unit of furies, the infantry dealt with them way easier. If you manage to separate a few (usually fast) enemy units and bait them into attacking your meain force way ahead of the rest of the army, you should be able to defeat them very fast with your concentrated force, usually at very low cost, before the enemy main force arrives to attack you, it's a very easy way to get rid of some units that, if coordinated with the enemy army, could pose more of a threat. - About your use of magic, first the hex spell Ice Sheet. It affects movement speed, acceleration and charge speed. Outside of the prologue, one of Kislev's strength is their hybrid infantry: their units damage potential is mostly ranged, but they can hold their own in melee. That means that Kislev relies on dishing as much missile damage as they can before the enemy gets into melee with them and once the melee happens, hopefully the enemy will have been softened enough for your hybrid infantry to be able to defeat them in melee. That's why many of Kislev's Ice Magic spells lower enemy speed, so that your ranged units can dish more damage before the enemy gets to melee. But in this case, myou only have one archer unit and the sleds, and you are going against tzeentch, whose strength is in missiles, meaning that it is you who will be charging them, so reducing the enemy speed is useless, because it is only movement speed, not attack speed. So the Ice Sheet spell was kind of useless in this battle and using it was kind of a waste of winds of magic. Your other spell, the Ice Maiden's Kiss was way more useful in this situation, as it could dish considerable damage if used properly (demons have physical resistence, meaning that non-magical attacks are slightly weaker on them, so magic is generally good against demons). However, there are many types of damage spells, and most of them should be aimed carefully to do the most amount of damage. Direct damage, magic missiles, and some (but not all) bombardment spells are the only spells where you target an enemy unit and it should work fine, because most of the time they "lock" onto the target. Wind, breath, vortex, explosion and most bombardment spells on the other hand deal damage in an area on the ground, meaning that they don't lock into a unit, and you should aim th area of effect to get as many soldiers as possible inside the area of effect (with wind and breath spells, you can change the direction the area will expand to from the starting point through holding the mouse button and dragging in that direction), meaning that you want to place the spell in the most dense concentration of enemy soldiers as possible (while avoiding friendly fire as much as possible, of course), if you can hit multiple units with a single spell then great. And also if you aim those kind of spells that target an area and you want to hit a moving target, you should anticipate the movement and aim the spell accordingly, taking into account the delay of casting the spell. Also, it is even harder to properly aim area spells if your mage is not in range and has to move into range before starting to cast: what I would recommend in that case is starting to move in the right direction and once they are in range, aim and cast the spell. Hope this helps.

[@Silgidorn]

On the upside, starting with Tzeentch as the early enemy might learn a new player to not hesitate to be agressive, which might be a good thing. I've been playing total wars since Rome 1, I still need to unlearn to turtle.

[@lordkabal2010]

The prologe is teaching you some indeed, considering u started at the 3rd game lol....for some of us starting at the 1st game and seeing how its got better over time with more units and mechanics as 1 and 2 are quite similar then the 3rd one really changed a lot like the skill Lighting Strike use to block reinforcements fully with 1 skill point to what it is now still shocks me now as it was great fun taking multiple armies one on one at a time lol

[@funkyd3321]

Alright... He's learning formations. That's good. Getting the hang of it. I'll push forward a little bit more in the video and- OH NO! It's a slaughter!!!

[@ChipHardbody]

😅😅 Yeah....it all fell apart pretty quickly.

[@commanderknight9314]

I can easily recommend malleusgaming's total tactics videos as many are meant to help new players especially with gunpowder units.

[@ChipHardbody]

Ooh, awesome! I'll add that channel to the list, thank you!

[@apemonkey5060]

Excited to watch it!

[@ChipHardbody]

Thank you!!

[@fleezelight]

Subscribed.

[@ChipHardbody]

Thank you!

[@fleezelight]

@@ChipHardbody What difficulty are you playing on ?

[@ChipHardbody]

@@fleezelight The Prologue defaults to Easy, I believe. I couldn't figure out how to change the difficulty of it after I had already started. I definitely won't be playing on Easy when I get to Immortal Empires, though.

[@fleezelight]

@@ChipHardbody Appreciate the reply, I'm looking to start WH3 very soon and like you, this will be my first total war, this series has been great to watch as someone who just wants to see how the experience is. Props to you fella!

[@apemonkey5060]

Also i recommend you play kislev as the ice court for your first campaign it has some really good units and you can secure a province very quickly also if your first enemy offers peace do NOT take it and just take their settlements

[@apemonkey5060]

When you start your first real campaign i will tell you some tips

[@apemonkey5060]

Also do not put units on guard mode if you are attacking only if you are defending or corner camping

[@ChipHardbody]

I noticed in the settings it has Guard Mode set to "automatic". Gotta change that....

[@zaizvp90]

@@ChipHardbody a little clarification about guard mode, it's very useful for range units. It will basically tell your units to not chase the enemy if they move outside of the units range. not very good for melee, as they will often just "chill" in the middle of the battle (because they have very short melee range). I would recommend always turning it on for your range units, regardless if you are attacking or defending, this will prevent your archers from braking formation and go chasing after a fleeing enemy. especially important for artillery units as they have very long range and slow movment speed. there are few things as frustrating as noticing your artillery piece has spent the last 5 minutes moving into the middle of the battle instead of shooting because it's not on guard mode and have been chasing a broken enemy unit trying to flee from battle

[@ChipHardbody]

Ooh, good to know! Thanks for the information!

[@soytuynoyo]

The recruitment discount skill is garbage, and it's in all lords. Ignore it.

[@ChipHardbody]

Good to know!