Why EXPENDABLE units can actually be VALUABLE - Total War Tactics: Warhammer 3

[@adamperdue3178]

"We're just zombies, sir. We're supposed to be expendable!" Ghorst- "Not to me."

[@Hades_Space_Engineer]

Awwwwwww❤ *cough* It's : we are meant to be expandable *cough*

[@dododooooo]

Zombies are my favorite unit. I have them in all the armies, all the way into the end game. Bonus if you can buff them. Way more useful than other expendables imo. Only downside is they don't really have a chance to come back, if they routed. They just die. :(

[@adamperdue3178]

@@dododooooo I mostly play Coast and not Counts, but I also love me some zombies. Shove some guns into their hands, point them at an enemy, and the enemy is gone. That'll teach them for thinking zombies are useless.

[@cryptosporidium01]

Came here to write the same comment lmao

[@EagleScoutmano]

@@dododooooo are the skelebois still free? Because they have more effective HP vs front-facing arrows, which is (90% of the time) the main use of zombies/skellies anyway...

[@GreenHoleSun]

The lord: "show me that fork that you are going to use against those annoying blood knights" "It's just a regular fork, milord, the one that I use in the fields..." "It's a good fork, it will get the job done" said the lord, mounting on his hippogriph.

[@ingamingpc1634]

The funny part is in medieval times peasants would actually be taught to cut wood to properly create barricades against Knights those sharp barriers that if a knight were to try to jump over it would get impaled by the sharp wood getting killed these barriers were called tilt surprisingly deadly against Knights also because peasants were poor they didn't wear armor and had the cheapest weapons possible so they were faster than most units so if a unit of knights were to fall to a trap like this and some survived they would get swarmed and murdered by peasants horrible way to go trust me

[@psybanatheplatypus3184]

Wouldn't actually be murdering knights/men at arms, mind you, because anyone able to afford a horse and/or fancy armor would be a valuable captive and likely held for ransom.

[@X.Y.Z.07]

​@@psybanatheplatypus3184unless you're fighting the Swiss or Hussite 😅

[@WormsMaster100]

@@psybanatheplatypus3184 Tell it to Lithuanians at Grunwald lmao

[@darthplagueis13]

It should be noted that peasants weren't that common of a sight in medieval battlefields. One of the major reasons why many peasants gave up their freedom in exchange for serfdom is that by law, unfree people had no obligation to do military service, whereas free ones did. And at some points in time, there were almost no free peasants left in medieval Europe, leaving the fighting to be done by knights and their retainers, and later on you start seeing increasing numbers of men-at-arms being hired as mercenaries.

[@albertlofling7310]

"Dont leave your kids with this guy" Why do you think I sent him to war without armour or a proper weapon

[@CptRusky69]

Bravo

[@Scriptures_K]

He'd be made president IRL

[@albertlofling7310]

@@Scriptures_K why do you think I sent him before democracy was invented

[@animalxINSTINCT89]

Ngl I have made absolute miracles happen with gobbos. Once they get a couple of tech upgrades and you give them the scrap armor, they become INCREDIBLY tanky with 50+ armor

[@Hronic]

I love to have lord with main/strong army and 2nd lord with 19 zombies Zombies flank and attack from "behind" while main units charge from "front"

[@ZimBeckler]

because of the 20 unit limit thats the only way i feel comfortable doing it with primary armies, unless im early on

[@dac314]

Also, big shoutout to Skink Javelins, the most dangerous low tier unit in the game.

[@ktvindicare]

Skink Javelins are no joke one of the best units on the Lizardmen roster.

[@dac314]

@@ktvindicare easily. Cheap and easy to recruit, yet capable of astonishing acts of violence. And they get a LOT of campaign buffs.

[@hannestordengren1627]

Especially with Oxyotl, they can stay useful until late game

[@evanchan9983]

They really are insanely threatening. I'd also mention blasting charge miners as a terrifying low-tier unit.

[@dragonace119]

@@evanchan9983 Those things are nasty, even if they don't kill that many they still disrupt a formation and can cause a charge to slow down or fail outright.

[@TtotheCizzel]

Problem for me with expendable units is they take up an army slot and i like to keep those supply costs down

[@BearPawSwipe]

With the right mods, your vampires can summon a whole lot of zombies! I agree though, it does suck that they take up a spot.

[@theduke3778]

In the late game, yes, but in the early game they are valuable.

[@kuyakoiaguilar7767]

Create a expendable army. I usually have 2 combo army in tandem at all times. 1 main army.. And 1 expendable army. They move together. Confugure that general for cheap unitn build and its pretty much a free army

[@ShinigamiSamaH]

Expendable units are incredibly cheap precisely so you can spam them. It's better to fill up the slots with expendables and slowly switch them out with your mainstays rather than walking around with half a stack and basically asking to get jumped. A full stack with a lot of expendables also means you can take over settlements faster to get the economy up or rebuild ruins cheaper.

[@riccardocorradini6713]

Well this tactics is obviously targeted to multyplayer i think, as in single player like you sayd there is not reason to pick them

[@Pawg_Alf]

5:01 Skeleton artillery defending himself with the ol Razzle Dazzle

[@sonofthebearking3335]

😂

[@aiynar-1]

I absolutely love recruiting cheap ass zombies in my empire armies in co-op. Need a frontline anchor and "target" for your artillery? Get some zombies! Need to lock down some fast movers after they've hit your lines? You guessed it, zombies!

[@Weberkooks]

zombies can't lock anything down these days cuz of the cav changes

[@trizick5379]

@@Weberkooks ghorst zombies

[@WormsMaster100]

@@trizick5379 Ghorst Zombies are elite units

[@D_A_D_]

One that got missed: The Tarpit. Got a valuable enemy unit that you can't deal with? Make it fight one goblin for a few minutes. Then make it fight another goblin. Small single entities are the perfect targets for this, like Vlad or Prince Sigvald, as they don't have the mass to pull through low tier infantry. Yes they will win the fight eventually, but in the meantime the big expensive lord isn't really contributing to the fight while you can focus in their army. Tarpitting is also very useful for enabling fast flankers to get their dives off unimpeded. Tie up the enemy screening units so that they're busy fighting your goblins instead of screening your Boar Boys.

[@bbutler3230]

Good use for goblins is using them to concentrate trolls into, as trolls have poor leadership but won't lose any when goblins die

[@SkippD]

As a Ratling Gunner stan I wish we could shoot through expendable units..... you know, for the cause.

[@00yiggdrasill00]

given skaven culture I'm honestly a bit surprised that never made it into the game

[@ZorillaMyrid181]

"Friendly fire? We call those acceptable casualties"

[@akaon666]

There's mods that let you do just that.

[@earnestbrown6524]

"Looks like Meat is back on the menu Boys."

[@yaboykris2118]

@@akaon666what’s the name of the mod?

[@halvars90]

I love goblins, I have played many campaigns with mostly first tier goblins in my armies, they do suck but just the amount of them I can field paired with some elite units and the whaagh makes the goblintide into an unstoppable force. Greenskins and also skavens have been a favourite of mine to play recently.

[@Speshls]

im gonna be an expendable unit when ww3 comes around, so good to learn how ill be used

[@Steven-pb3zu]

5:01 Damn that one skeleton is shivering like mad, I think he is having flashbacks from his previous life as human.

[@aprinnyonbreak1290]

Expendable unit in life Expendable unit in death

[@BlingLingification]

This is why I still flagellant spam with Volkmar even in late-game. Flagellants are absolute beasts at holding the line because they're unbreakable, even as volleys of handgunner bullets and rockets hit them in their backs. They out-Skaven the Skaven!

[@zeldov5735]

you forgot about the main use : holding down units for them to catch magic/doomrocket.

[@jerubaal101]

"There's a lot of good useful ways to die. Jesus Christ...." I was concerned about where you were going with that for a half-second.

[@steel5315]

I was gonna make the same comment😂😂

[@OniGanon]

Not to mention pinning a unit in place so you can hit it with Comet of Cassandora or something similar.

[@SallinKari]

I mean I recall one army that was like... five rattling gunners, and rat slaves that took on decent full armies... It was pretty cheap, since no one could get through the mass of flesh while the gunners just slaughtered everyone... rat slaves included. Obviously they were eventually replaced, but early game I had only one settlement that could recruit gunners, they took a decent chunk of my economy on their own, so even decent units would overstrain it, and even better I didn't even have to build anything to replace full stacks..

[@huanggeorge9592]

I use expendable as meat shield/flanker/ baits/gap filler(if you have extra spot in your army just throw them in) and in campaign it’s an very cheap army to keep order of your settlements Oh also some spells will explode a unit to do damage around them or you can use them to pin down strong unit and use magic that has area effects

[@Xiteri]

Love expendable Chaos marauders (Gift of Chaos disables their replenishment, reduces upkeep by 50% and makes them and the horsemen expendable), they can either be rewarded for suriviving by upgrading them to Warriors, or either letting them die, or turn them into Forsaken and Spawns. Lizards also have the Skink Cohorts at 160 unit size and low cost , and surprisingly better then slaves, zombies or peasants at least at base stats, and skinks are definately fast.

[@R3GARnator]

The entire reason Vampire Counts have Dead Rise Again and Raise Dead is so that you'll always have disposable chaff to wear the enemy down with. I am particularly fond of using Vargheists as my special forces to supplement them and the lords/heroes.

[@TheTownGuard]

Trash mobs are also good for another strategy you showed us, Hammer and Anvil

[@SilverKnightXx]

What do you meeeeean, Ghorsts Zombies ARE the Elite unit in his Roster :D

[@pablonunalvares5391]

I hate fighting him as Ogres, a juiced up zombie takes half an ogre bull's life... It's just goddamn annoying

[@SusaVile]

I really like when I have a garrison that has just very low health units; I deploy them ahead of my main army just to get the first charge or first volley of the enemy and die.

[@voltagesr936]

A video that might be fun is a "Throt the Unclean, Flesh pit only" run, where you can only use moulder monsters and slaves that you get from the flesh lab. Idk how viable that would be, but I think it could be fun! Love your videos btw, super fun content.

[@Tyrgalon]

People really underestimate the power of buffed up hordes of lower tier units even in late game. For exampel halberdiers (not the lowest tier but still) are a much better massed frontline for a ranged focused empire army because greatswords get annihilated by charges, while buffed up halberds can hold for an eternity against anything that guns dont delete instantly (monsters etc).

[@EagleScoutmano]

Halberdiers are weirdly good empire melee units... They survive and deal decent damage- despite not having a shield and being technically inferior in stats.

[@anathardayaldar]

I always keep a second army of expendables to follow the main army. Their job is to just tire out the enemy. They can also detach small units to try different paths in an unknown territory. For that second reason, its good to keep units that are almost elimitnated except for a few guys left. They become very cheap and are great as expendable scouts.

[@Amenema]

Great video. Too many videos pretend this game is all about honorable duels & 1-v-1 fights and then base a unit's value on that. That's not how war works. Skaven's entire gimmick is focused around expendable skavenslaves/clan rats to make their otherwise bad individual units be able to setup or get into position to actually do their jobs. People who say trolls are bad don't use them alongside goblins. Just like how Kroxigars are a skink's best friend, the same goes for trolls & expendable goblins.

[@WeDoSomeTrolling2]

step 1: fight ikit claw step 2: hide all your units in a forest step 3: summon a unit on top of the enemy frontline (or backline whichever is scarier) step 4: nuclear friendly fire.

[@thekrausecollection15mmmin53]

Wanted to thank you immensely for your work. It’s entertaining, encouraging, funny, and brilliantly orchestrated. Wanted to just say thanks.

[@muhammadsaduddin308]

the problem with these unit is they cost a slot. That slot could be inserted by a more high value unit. Unless it's zombie that doesn't runaway and actually had 12k health with regeneration, expendable unit is usually doesn't worth it.

[@fenorlex1126]

What if you only have enough for 1 Expendable unit (theoretically)?

[@Amldihir]

Beastman with free upkeep and 0 recruitment cost: let's us introduce ourselves.

[@akaon666]

@muhammadsaduddin308 That's what usually ruins it for me too. Skaven slaves are probably the worst example as clanrats are already cannonfodder but generally do the same job more effectively. The difference in cost isn't that big and sadly these expandable units take up the same amount of slots in your army as proper units.

[@danedaner1357]

I feel like you could solve this by creating another army that follows your actual army around.

[@frankkobold]

​@@danedaner1357 well, another army means more supply cost. Unless you are bretonnia, but then it costs a peasant slot which could be an archer Zombies and skavenslaves slingers... Yeah, they work out. Besides that? Useless in campaign if you are at least average in skill level. Unless you go for a themed army/playthrough ofc, then everything goes

[@davyhotch]

They feel on brand for Skaven to pin tougher lizards in place so the mortar/ spells have an easier target.

[@hurleveur9606]

that squeleton be tripping at 5:00 also the kung fu elves are impressive how did I never notice that

[@Comicsluvr]

I'm always shocked when a good tactic from the TT game actually works in TW:W3. My VC armies ALWAYS have three units of Zombies in them. In a normal battle, I put one on each flank and one in the center in front. They eat missiles, slow flankers, etc. In battles where the enemy has reinforcements, I toss two units at the reinforcing side. They pull some of the new units out of line and sometimes (against another trash army) slow down a whole advance. A very good video, as always.

[@inductivegrunt94]

No one expects the expandable units to be a threat, and yet they are to those who underestimate them. Have them support the main units like they're supposed to and they might just win the battle. Because a sharp pitchfork or rusted sword wielded by a random peasant or Skavenslave is still a sharp object that can stab the enemy.

[@AntiTheory]

Another thing that I'm not sure you mentioned in the video is that units that actually have the "Expendable" trait don't inflict a morale penalty to other units when they take heavy casualties or rout, so there's no risk of having your good units break early when suffering morale shocks or your expendable infantry causing a mass rout if you just toss them into the meat grinder (unless you hit the army loss penalty, then you still will, but not for the same reason).

[@Inferno912]

Funny one and I like it ;) Love the looks of those units! I don't even play this game but keep watching, lol

[@michaelhansen5662]

A couple of people have already commented it but what is opportunity cost you save from taking this unit as opposed to a better version of the trash? Does the couple hundred gold a turn saved really help you out that much?

[@Tyrgalon]

Yes, just having more units than the enemy can help you do all sorts of stuff, and meatshields can be used to soak up ammo and charges without needing to worry about loosing them. Many factions also have a lot of skills and research that buff base tier units making them VERY cost effective in single player, having 1 trash army guarding the other side of where your main army is early game or to overwhelm the enemy at the front with has a big impact. I always have armies mostly of mega buffed lower tier units in my campaigns (depending a bit on the faction).

[@Goatboy451]

Goblin warriors = Anvil. Either Goblin wolfriders, squighoppers or nasty skulkers = Hammer in the rear. It works surprisingly well against a more expensive unit. 😀

[@storytsunami]

"All of you will probably die. But that's a sacrifice I am willing to make!"

[@Belodri]

Zerkovich, are you sure you're not a Tau Ethereal?

[@BierBart12]

Might as well be an imperial commissar

[@thescottsman1996]

If you are playing with the SFO mod, vigor matters a lot more. So if the enemy elites spend some time to chew up your expendable units, when you attackthem with the elites they are already tired.

[@fuchnorris6277]

thanks, great vids. would love to see you do the rest of the spell schools especially the empire ones

[@geemanamatin8383]

had a mod for greenskins that expanded there roster on warhammer 2. Had tow armies for the goblin campaign. One filled with snotlings that would make a wide line, trying to overwhelm, tireout, and outflank the enemy. The second my 'Elite' gobbo units ready to clean up whatever is left. Pretty useful setup since the snotlings were even cheaper to upkeep than goblins.

[@mcsmash4905]

i simply line them up in front of my army and then charge them straight at the enemy while the main force casual walks along , they will tire the enemy out and then comes the main force to finish the job which means several units of gobbos are recruiter after each major battle i just need enough of them to cover the frontage of my army when spread out in roughly 2 or 3 rows but then agian most of my armies are quite ˝boxy˝ as not spread out across the entire map , i preffer to charge my enemies head on to break their lines by sheer mass , unless ofc im playing a faction for which this style doesnt work , which is why im using orcs as an example

[@marcusgales8227]

You can also use them to blob up the enemy for the use of huge AOE damage such as C.dwarf quake mortars and scaven doom rockets. You loose a crapy unit but take out huge numbers of the enemy's

[@jarreththomson4535]

dont forget, the majority of ranged units in the game lose more balance of power than you do when they use missiles on goblins. gobbos best unit in game

[@droggy2834]

My Grom doesn't like using Orcs so the Goblin spearmen are my frontline, with the Scrap armour and buffs to get to that 70-odd armour plus various leadersip buffs stacking up they can see off stronger units while the Trolls make a mess.

[@isaacstandley730]

People forget on the campaign map, if you can afford an army of elites, you can probably afford two or three armies of balanced expendable and elite units which can cover a lot more ground.

[@almasyelesbayev736]

Slayer: I've lost my honour! I must die! Players: No. Slayer: WTF!?! Skaven slave: I was born 2 weeks ago! I want to live-live! Players: No. Skaven slave: WTF-F!?! Archaon: I will destroy the world! Games Workshop: Well, yes, but actually no. Archaon: WTF!?!

[@Kaid_Studios]

Skele catapult doing a jig at 5:00 made me chuckle.

[@SingAboutSwayze]

For everone saying that they take up a slot in your army, consider thar garrisons often have chaff infantry.

[@timothyrockwell2638]

The premade garrisons is one of the worst features of Total Warhammer, they are absolutely worthless most of the time.

[@ShinigamiSamaH]

Unless your army of actually good units made it there on time, the garrison is basically dead 99% of the time.

[@honorguard7616]

The garrison is 1. Free 2. Truly expendable 3. Useless in most cases without support as well as 4. Gets sieged down in cases 3 is not applied

[@dalekdalek4324]

I have another great use for those units: Lure. There are a million reasons why you want to lure the AI into moving his units to a certain position. The most obvious one: AoE spells. Send your skaven slaves far ahead, let the AI blop up to beat them into a pulp, then have Ikit Claw nuke the blop.

[@alurkingislander]

5:02 Savage move from the Ushabti Great bow. My dude is not getting up after that

[@unnamed1613]

Hellman Ghorst and his secondary armies with nothing but a Zombie doomstack is completly unfair even in the early game because Ghorst buffs the heck out of Zombies to the point where they have the stats of Tier III units. His secondary armies require a Mortis Engine to work properly, but just pile up those Zombies around the Mortis Engine/Ghorst and watch them sponge up damage, heal up to *3.000%* of their max HP before hitting the heal cap and kill even the most tanky units with Ghorsts faction wide poison damage on Zombies and skeletons. All while your entire army cost something in a 3 digit upkeep and is completly replacable within one turn plus a massive recovery rate on damaged units.

[@SUPERNICHOLAS88]

Great video as always! Another entrance for you in the Dammaz Kron. As always e.e

[@silverseer573]

Some factions excel at using them. Rictus, for example, buffs up Clanrats with one point of armor and base damage every level. At full XP, that's more than a 34% increase! Not too shabby. And Ghorst's zombies are... something else.

[@pablonunalvares5391]

I'm playing Ogres and my best performing army uses Gnobblar trapper's to soak the charge AND avoid ironguts getting enveloped. It's just a must have... I tried full Ogres and had a bad time with it. Poison laiden expendable units are just premium

[@ingamingpc1634]

Never mind the fact that Expendable units can be used to also flank your enemies keep your enemies distracted with a good unit that can hold off this stuff or even another Expendable unit and have the other Expendable unit going behind their back and attack them from the rear which will of course give a debuff to their leadership you can also do this with the Lord the point is if they're bogged down they're probably going to spend all their energy fighting and their leadership's going to go to shit and you can probably kill them hopefully

[@damsoyinc9235]

Gobbos doomstack with grom will always be my favorite army.

[@ChristophelusPulps]

The wasting enemies' ammo point feels weird to me, because I very, VERY rarely have battles where units actually run out of ammo before the end of the battle.

[@Enterprise4Life]

So whats the expendable unit for lizardman? Skink cohort with or without javs? Cuz they do very decently onced buffed

[@misterroberts344]

I love how gobbos look mean and gnobbos look kinda cute like a rly old man or one of those cats

[@shieldphaser]

Of course, if you are playing vampire counts then you can just make armies full of skeletons. The entire army is totally expendable and costs basically nothing to maintain, but they can still do some attritional damage, keep public order up in your tumultuous provinces and drain enemy units' stamina so that the garrisson can kill off an attacker more easily.

[@lazersify]

Lots of people not even considering multiplayer or the possibility of budgeting on harder difficulties

[@Tarico_]

Another note, expendable units being in combat with enemy valuable units lowers their vigor which can increase the odds for the rest of your army

[@dac314]

Currently doing this with Miners, since DWarriors are no longer tier-0. Theyre cheap, theyre bad in melee, theyre slow, but damn do they hack through city gates like nobody's business.

[@AzimovTube]

2:47 what is the key combination to drag and rotate like that without changing the unit formation?

[@stopdropPANIC]

hold alt to drag, hold ctrl to rotate

[@AzimovTube]

@@stopdropPANIC Thanks.

[@jameslong6776]

I almost always have a pair of poison warhounds in any army that can take them. If I can rout it, it’s getting wiped out!

[@IllustriousCrocoduck]

I think I'm going to build 2 or 3 stacks of gobbo slaves for my Zhatan campaign and just take them to all of his battles. For lore sake.

[@megaoptamas759]

play lizardfolk early game, need to kill high value targets get saraus warriors get jav skinks have warriors charge and lock down enemy line have jav skinks flank and throw, then charge into flanks win every fight

[@Mikisoq39]

WEF: "Zank you for ze tips on 'ow to manage ze filth"

[@aaronllewelyn1949]

You're a star buddy love the videos always gets me back to playing

[@morkaili]

That last part goes in the book, you damn T'au lover! :D

[@SlitherKing11]

Gobbos with Grom is one of my favorite things

[@MikeGuarino69]

Missed the best campaign use: Send out 2 peasant mobs to bait 4 enemy units each to buy time for your 12 missile units to pewpew on em at optimal range

[@GutsOfRivia]

The issue with expendable units is that armies have limited slots. They have a place early game but but turn 10+ I dont really see a use for em.

[@archdornan3694]

depends on your faction. as vampire counts i have zombie stacks up until the end game because they’re pretty much only there to soak up damage and make the enemy blob up for winds of death

[@GutsOfRivia]

@@archdornan3694 Fair enough I havent played VC in a long while so I might have just been playing factions where chaff falls to the way side quicker.

[@ktvindicare]

This isnt a problem in Warhammer 3. Just bring more armies. It was a big problem in WH2 because Supply Lines was a 20% upkeep increase per army which was insane. In WH3 it's much much less so you can spam additional armies of low tier stuff out and just bring extra armies of garbage around to follow your main army and provide them with cannon fodder when they need it. This is especially useful for Skaven and Vampire Counts.

[@jakubjanicki3989]

The problem with expendable units is that , regardless of how low their upkeep is, they have a great cost of actually taking a slot in your army, the is never a reason to put an expendable unit in your army as one of 20 units, if you can avoid it and take something that will actually have be useful. All the described uses of expendable units solve problems caused by taking expendable units in the first place, except maybe soaking up charges and sponging up enemy frontline attacks. With the charges being easily mitigated by attacking charging cav from the side with literally anything, this makes expendable units only useful for getting ground to dust instead of your stronger frontline units - which again, can be avoided in one a of thousand ways. Let's take the example of skavenslaves soaking up the cav charge so that that skulkers and boar cav can attack. The skavenslaves are almost completely unnecessary in this situation. Without them, enemy cav would charge the skulkers, but would be hit in the side by the board cav, which would stop the enemy charge, and then skulkers would join the fray and do their thing. Honestly, 99% of the time expendable units aren't worth the time to click to recruit unless you can't afford to upkeep frontline units, unless you're playing Bretonia and you get off on plowing heavy cavalry through your own peasants.

[@honorguard7616]

Mix in supply lines

[@necasperaterent29386]

Grom the Paunch - Goblin Doomstack. Helman Ghorst - Zombies. Volkmar the Grim - Flagellants. Trust me, you will never look at any of these units as being shit ever again.

[@thadmeboy1129]

"If I have more men than they have bullets eventually they'll run out of bullets

[@Majestic_Pot]

I was watching old videos with monsters and i am quite disappointed with Bloodthirsters, how about you guys? What would you think if Bloodthirster had abillity that gives him 1% whenever he strikes that he instantly executes an entity? :D

[@sim.frischh9781]

I still won´t go around with my army having Expendable Units in it when a bunch of heroes can do the same AND survive while doing some REAL damage, though that´s campaign tactics.

[@dimitristripakis7364]

A zombie unit can occupy a giant for the best part of the battle. That's the basic idea and indeed I have a good VC deck which spams zombies and skeletons while vargheists and black knights go around the enemy. Guess what, they are hit from the back while they are trying to kill the zombies. Add a lord on dragon who casts more zombies and regenerates wounded units and voila! = fun vs the AI 😂

[@nalthanzo4648]

As a Skaven supremacist, everything is expendable to me.

[@majorfallacy5926]

Eh, in campaign thanks to the 20 unit limit you're still better off ambushing/lightning striking with a doomstack or elite army rather than having 3 balanced army that include expendable units for the same price. Unless you're ghorst of course.

[@Sherudons]

Begin operation human shield. Though zombie only campaigns can be funny until the gpu starts giving you single digit fps battles.

[@skupipup]

Channel your inner Zapp Brannigan.

[@DvdV1337]

Im trying to play the game. I downloaded it, but the loading times are anything but short. Am i doing something wrong? I have it stored on a 500gb HDD. Is the hdd the problem? Need ssd for such a big game?

[@anonymoose219]

Unfortunately an SSD is probably the way to for a game like this

[@acheron16]

3:00 While this sounds good on paper, it only works if the enemy has less units than you, like on the timestamp, where the AI has 10 units while the player has 19. In campaign, this philosophy won't be able to be applied too much since outside of the first 5-10 turns, you're gonna face 20 stack against 20 stack.

[@skeith1543]

Works just fine. Just cause the enemy has a 20 stack, doesn't mean they have enough units to match your infantry. If they load up on artillery or archers their front will be hard pressed to keep your wall of infantry from over running and such. Worse case, just bring a second or third army of chaff.

[@Paulkrantz123]

I need a mod that adds an ask Zerkovich button

[@euricoaw1535]

never been this early, but are the Battle AI good now?

[@arthanor9631]

When was the last time you played? They did separate stat buffs from AI capabilities, so that's good and you can tune both. If you engage "normally", it's OK, but there's plenty of ways to cheese it still. AI difficulty is more about dodging artillery and spells than actual tactical acumen, though.

[@rollnycgaming2279]

On higher difficulties, they are. Obviously, the lower difficulties are meant to be easy so the AI doesn't play too tactically.

[@euricoaw1535]

@@arthanor9631 i don't actually own WH3, but i own most total war games, Except Three kingdom and Pharaoh. the recent title doesn't seems to have an actual improvement in the Battle AI so i stop buying total war series. just wondering how good is it now, so i could decide to try or not. my biggest issue is unit clumping and blobbing, they never reserving unit and recycle fresh unit and tired in and out

[@arthanor9631]

@euricoaw1535 well then I wouldn't say it has changed appreciably. It is better at dodging artillery and spells than WH2, has "better" target priority so it's harder to waste it's ammo, does use a main battle line and flanking units, but otherwise hasn't changed all that much. WH3 is for playing with/against more factions and reworks like Warriors of Chaos, Empire or Dwarves which improved a lot. It's not fundamentally different from 2. Recent chatter is that there is little improvement to AI because the guiding thought within CA is that players have fun when they "outsmart" the AI and they don't want "fair" matches. Hence it gets cheats to upkeep, recruitment and replenishment to cover up the huge losses suffered at the hands of the player, just so it can lose more, as that's what the players enjoy. I'd love to see a competent AI without cheats, but apparently that's not coming. 🤷‍♂️

[@SinerAthin]

Depends. In a field battle, the AI handles melee armies reasonably well. They'll usually make a super wide line, and make sure their infantry charge reaches your frontline at the same time as their cavalry charge attacks your backline. They tend to ignore single unit entities you migh try to tie them up with, and instead charge you. Often abusing units with high mass and collission to pull straight through halberds and spears to attack the ranged units behind them. Granted, it still struggles to use ranged armies properly, and really struggle with sieges. You can also confuse them with enough effort, though it'll take more work than it did in game 1 and 2.

[@martial8574]

Dying for the "greater good" i like this!

[@vacri54]

A second army full of expendables trailing a main army is a cheap way to really help with autoresolves

[@hounddogzepp]

I love all my units too much to consider them expendable 😅

[@szlachtazpoloni3499]

how can i draw like you on the map?

[@galaxygur]

TLDR; Use expendable units to soak up enemy fire, disrupt their backline, and waste their ammo, saving your valuable troops for the win.

[@jackalkhan5676]

All great movements require a few martyrs.

[@KanuckStreams]

Remember: Just because they are expendable does not mean they are worthless.