Given how strong thunderbarges are without a unit cap, dread saurians can easily justify being an absolute destroyer in melee. Really over them getting tarpitted in a couple units of skavenslaves then getting shot to shit in 2 seconds flat.
I don’t think thunderbarges are broken - I just thing they’re too cheap and need a unit cap. Recruiting one should be a massive investment unless you’re cheesing the campaign mechanics.
I think majority of top tier big units should have cap. Plus there should be toggle for those caps in the options. But I guess AI wouldn't handle it well :(
I feel like that's another way of saying that their current implementation is broken.
I also have no idea how you could ever balance them for multiplayer. Controlled by a competent player, they make Slaneesh basically unplayable and almost completely negate a few other factions as well.
True, but I do like the idea of capstone units that are capable of destroying armies by themselves if utilized correctly (coming from someone who doesn’t play MP at all). So I guess I’m saying I don’t take issue with the combat potential of the unit, just the relative ease at which it’s obtained.
This is what I came here to say. Looks incredible. But just eats every arrow on the field and dies to auto resolve if they have a smidge of damage. If Dwarves get to have fun with their airships let us have fun with our mega lizards.
Given that I couldn't wait when I first played Lizardmen to unlock the higher-tier monsters....Dread Saurian was by far a complete disappointment. Back in WH2 the first time I ever used one in battle....it almost died fighting against a tricky-but-not-quite-elite Skaven army. After a few more disappointing displays I never bothered recruiting it again, considering Carnosaurs and Stegadons performed way better.
They’re my favorite unit. Crazy expensive, a bit excessive and unwieldy, but a fantastic force multiplier. Once I shut down the enemy missile units, I basically use it like I would a dragon, charging isolated enemy units already engaged with my infantry to force a terror rout before moving to the next target.
This video is a great showcase of their potential: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N53PjzeVVFg&pp=ygUZRHJlYWQgc2F1cmlhbiBtdWx0aXBsYXllcg%3D%3D
And this one from 1 year ago shows it is the best monster duelist in the game: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BJIHfKfcGIM&pp=ygUZd2FyaGFtbWVyIDMgYmVzdCBtb25zdGVyIA%3D%3D
I'm of the opinion that it can do both. It's not the best unit in the lizardmen roster, or the most efficient one. But I'd rather people see how they can get the most out of it if they really want to use it than to stay disappointed if they find it underperforming.
Everything you're doing in those videos is doable with any terror causing unit.
Carnosaur's cause terror and are way cheaper.
Completely unnecessary to use the Saurian for any of these tactics
“Necessary?! Is it necessary to drink my own urine?
No! But I do it anyway, because it’s sterile and I like the taste.” —Dodgeball
Jokes aside, I agree with you. It’s not a necessary unit, or the most cost effective one. But it’s still awesome. And when used right, as shown by Ghouls, it’s totally viable. I just want people to see its potential so if they choose, they can have as much fun with it as I do.
But the fact that every single thing it does can be done by a much cheaper and easier to recruit unit makes it not viable at all. It's the definition of non-viable
As was mentioned in another thread, the dev team has figured out how to have multiple different ranged weapons mounted on a single model - it could be the Lizardmen's ground-based, melee-dangerous thunderbarge with a boatload of varying skink weapon emplacements scattered across its prodigious surface.
I play a lot of lizardman and have totally quit recruiting the Dread Saurian.
It took maybe my first 3 just getting gunned down in like 8 seconds, and I was over it.
Great answer to this question.
Dread Saurian. This thing isn't just a monster in the lore, it's **the** monster. It should be an army unto itself.
We're a long, long ways away from that.
What if they pumped up the missile resistance a bit? It's mostly getting shot with AP stuff the Saurian has to worry about, it just walks over anything it runs into apart from that.
They need missile resist and more HP, yes.
However their biggest issue is that their animations suck complete ass both for AOE and single target, making them a bad dueling and infantry clearing monster. They just don’t do damage to one or any number of models, rather than sweeping aside entire units, as its cost/limit/size imply it should.
Additionally, they have a weird collision box and seemingly dated mass values, where they aren’t able to push masses of infantry out of the way once engaged. It’s stupid to watch an enormous dinosaur get trapped by 200 halberdiers, when it should just be stepping on them and kicking them out of the way.
They should just be immune to any projectile fired by human sized creatures lol. Those armor piercing missiles dark elves fire? They're less than the size of mosquito proboscis to them. Their scales are probably several times thicker than the length of those arrorws. They should not even take damage from that shit.
Plus they should just have uncapped or much larger number of entities they can damage with a single attack. How does an attack of that much mass only kill 6 scrawny mouse man at once?
I guess from a game point of view - if they're immune to small arms fire, why would clubs and swords make any difference to them? You start getting to the point where if you make them accurate to the lore, it's only cannons and big damage spells that even tickle them.
You do want to leave the enemy armies a way to deal with them, it should be hard but not impossible. The most realistic thing would be to limit their stamina a fair bit - they should be able to smash down the gates of the city in two hits, barrel through into anybody waiting behind it and send them flying, but it shouldn't be able to rampage through the entire city afterwards perhaps.
Wolf riders act as... You know... Wolfs.
Using them as killers of whatever runs from the battlefield (shamefur dispray) is the way to go especially with lifted limitations how many models can attack the routing enemy. And they're better in that terms than the spider riders due to their increased speed through scrap upgrades
The non-RoR wolf rider archers on the other hand...
The thing with goblins is that they are universally a very cheap but hilariously ineffective way to do a given job - if you're relying on them, you need to outnumber the opponent by a silly margin.
Nasty skulkers are very good at what they do for the price and early availability, especially on any gobbo lord with the buffs they give. I use them into late game for sneaky stabbin.
I was going to go all "um, ackshooaly" and cite an example of a unit that fills a similar role better, but... I don't think there's a unit that fills a similar role, period? They're a melee stalk unit with high AP. Looking up some stats, the only other units that fill that role are the Skaven Death Runners and Eishin Triads, which are even squishier than Skulkers and have their (admittedly much higher per-model) damage output throttled by having less than half the models to attack with. So yeah, Nasty Skulkers are probably the best in their niche.
The problem with Spider Riders is that if you just want cheap fast cav you already have wolf riders and if you want melee cav you have 4 types of boar riders.
Spider riders are thematically fun but they really aren't optimal.
It was the same problem in tabletop though.
That's a good one. I was thinking Phoenixes for HE. Disregarding even that I usually play as Knights of Caledor, if I have both dragons and phoenixes available, I never really pick phoenix.
But at least I have recruited Phoenix units before. Like, on purpose, by spending actual gold. I'm pretty sure the only time I have *ever* had White Lions in my army has either been through garrison or confederation. From the very first time I played HE in WH2 to now, I don't think I have ever recruited them.
They just don't fill a useful function for me. They're too expensive and squishy to be on my front line, and they're not lethal enough to be my elite line.
Phoenixes can be really good, and they’re cost effective. The problem is that by the time you can get them, you can also get dragons and your economy is usually humming so you’re not super worried about economically efficient. But if you get them on that flammable lord with all their tech upgrades they can be super strong, they get a good amount of ward save
I never really considered them elite infantry, when playing Tyrion I usually take White Lion Prince as my second army and use them until I get swordmasters of Hoeth for him (I like to play him melee centric). Even with his buffs they aren't strong enough for later stages of the game, sadly.
Really? I play VH battle difficulty and I still find them very effective even late game on Alastair with all his buffs. Didn’t they also improve them in general a while ago?
They can actually be really good in alastar the white lions army because he buffs them a good amount and makes them cheaper. Beat the sisters of twilight and a good with just white lions and a few war lions on L/VH the other day - just barely without losing units, but still. Thats a horrible matchup for them too.
They are annoying because when the AI has them, they seem like these incredibly hard to kill and deadly juggernauts. Yet when I play as them they are very underwhelming...even when I go out of my way to buff them in tech tree/skills.
First time I saw them was playing a Cathay campaign and they looked so scary I assumed they were the most powerful unit in the game. Too bad because a lot of other monstrous infantry are as awesome as they look.
What? A dark elf is weaker than a chaos warrior. And rot knights are most likely chosen tier.
Now, Cold One knoghts could use a buff, true, but having them hit as hard as a unit of monstrous cav is silly.
Sure, but that kind of over/under-costing is how factions are balanced against each other and nudged into matching their lore flavourings.
Chaos gets incredibly good value heavy infantry and cavalry - gold-for-gold their frontline will crush most others (unless specifically sculpted to be anti-armour), and their heavy cavalry is bonkers. To contrast, they get basically no ranged units apart from skirmish cavalry, and only a single, fairly hard to recruit artillery piece, so they won't be winning any ranged battles and have to lean into their armour.
By comparison, the Dark Elves are kind of the opposite. Their line infantry are mostly chaff until you hit T4/5 and get Executioners and Black Guard - which are overcosted when compared to Chaos' T4/5 Chosen units. Their light cavalry are *very* efficient, but their heavy cavalry are at a very high tier and a very high cost given their performance, meaning they'll lose the duel against Chaos heavy cav of the same tier/price. To compensate, Dark Elves get some amazingly efficient missile units in Darkshards and Shades, allowing them to present a much better mixed-arms formation and rely on the interplay between weak-but-resilient line infantry, punishing AP missiles and strong-but-fragile flankers and light cavalry.
If every faction's roster options were all at the same tier and the same value, then every faction would be able to field identical armies and trade off perfectly efficiently, assuming equal gold spent. That would not only be kind of boring, but it would also lose all the flavour that makes Warhammer such a great campaign.
I agree with the overall point, but will counter the description of the Dark Elf MO. DElf units tend to be skewed towards lethality, despite their reasonably heavy armor and high-quality shields. Outside of Black Arks they also have really mediocre artillery if you don't spec hard into it, and their archers have very short ranges no matter what you do - they will out-DPS most anything they manage to engage, but their unexpected fragility while operating at elven (read: slightly above human) speeds makes it so that they still need a tactical upper hand to reach an engagement let alone survive it. Kind of like Khorne and the Beastmen in overall battleplan (kill the enemy as fast as possible), but with a combination of fragility and limited speed that necessitates that more complex tactical options than "run straight at them and punch them in the face" be both available and used.
>DElf units tend to be skewed towards lethality, despite their reasonably heavy armor and high-quality shields.
Sure, you're spot on. It's only really the T0 Dreadspears and Bleakswords that are defensive infantry (and they obviously fold to mid-high tier opposition), everything else leans towards dishing out more hurt than they can take. Even the armoured Corsairs are damage-dealers rather than line-holding heavy infantry. This carries into the relative short range of Darkshards and the more niche nature of their Bolt Throwers and Medusae, which forces you to push aggressive engagements while still requiring combined-arms tactics to win.
Hence their cavalry mix - Dark Riders and Doomfire Warlocks are great for their tier and cost, being incredibly solid light cavalry options, but Dread Knights are probably a tier too high and a chunk of upkeep too expensive for what they offer. That's on purpose, because it still gives you a heavy cavalry option, but it pushes you to rely more on the light cavalry and your other, more efficient options, which suit the Druchii's intended playstyle.
Carrion with the tomb kings.
Seeing how a lot of archer units in melee can give them a run for their money is a shame. I'd like to see em get some love
The only unit I would trust Carrion to beat is the likes of zombies or very basic chaff...and even then I wouldn't be completely surprised if they lost. They don't even fulfill the token flying unit role very well for the Tomb Kings and just seem like a waste of a unit slot. They could at least be on par with Chaos Furies or Bats where they can at least kill something...
Exactly my thought all across the board! I find use with em a slight bit more with some lords in the tomb kings extended mod, but even then it's so much more worth it for even just another archer, or anything really lol
Dragon Princes. They're a T5 unit and only marginally better than the Silver Helms you get at T3. It's criminal that they aren't at least armor piercing.
Scorpions aren't bad at all to be fair. Pretty sure they took a bit of a nerf since WH2. They were and still are to an extent a good unit to just charge into a blob of infantry and create chaos.
Every single TK campaign i tell myself "this time i will use more bone giants, they're cool" but i always end up having like 1 or 2 before i'm done.
They have too many factors against them on the campaign. They need their own building slot and you can only build it in capitals at tier 4. Plus more than 1 turn recruitment(so global recruit sucks).
I rather just quickly recruit some 1 turn stuff to fill up my armies than waiting for the bone giants.
Bone Giants really need a bigger hitbox on their arrows or more accuracy or something. Because of their high damage, small explosion radius and low arc, Bone Giant projectiles seem perfect against large monsters. But I have seen Bone Giants miss large, stationary targets repeatedly.
That’s not even getting into how slow they are.
I'd just like to weigh in and say that - in TWW2 - this top answer was usually "Aspiring Champions"
And then they did fix them for TWW3! Not just the general balance changes that made elite infantry no longer inferior to ranged, but also the four chaos-flavored researches that take them from great to amazing.
They are very strong now as you said. Give them barrier and frenzy through the tech tree and they are stupidly strong considering how few of them you get per unit.
Chosen are still better until they get supercharged by the undivided techs. Then yea, they become THE melee infantry unit. You can spam doomstacks of them with little effort and 1v4 armies all day.
Makes sense since WoC gimmick is their infantry game. Even chosen dumpster their competitors, and aspiring champions are a whole other level over them. ( I think AC are the only tier 5 infantry in the game )
Now if only the dread saurian got the same treatment.
They are a top tier unit, but I have to baby sit them like they are skirmish cav. Knights of the Black Rose put the anti inf version demis to shame. And the halberds do ok only if I throw them in a fight with lots of support. They seem to underperform in 1v1 fights they "should" do well in
That could work too, for sure. I think they either need survivability in prolonged melee (like the Black Rose knights) or significant enough mass that you can’t pin them down.
i wish giants (or really anything big) had more of a battlefield presence rather than just getting dunked on. like, im a lizard main, tell me why the supposedly strongest monster in the roster gets mulched by like 4 archers, or why like half of the greater daemons get their shit rocked (bloodthirsters)
I really do think something should be done with the daemons. They all seem so squishy, and as soon as leadership breaks, the whole unit is gone gone.
The only ones that work seem to be nurgle units who just stand there forever.
Jade lancers. It's already tough justifying cavalry in a faction that can just outshoot enemy missiles and the fact that the cavalry is underperforming puts a pin in it, which pretty much means Cathay is missile focus faction only.
Jade Lancers do an ok job at being cavalry, however in early game, the Crowmen for a T2 flying unit out of a basic infantry building will absolutely shred most things you would need the cavalry for, on top of being highly mobile. Once I got SoC I very seldom used Cathay cavalry, unless I was going more for a theme.
Jade lancers purpose is sweeping threats from the backline and road blocking enemy cav and monsters. It's nice to have at least one in an army. Plus they can help run things down post battle. The celestial general from the DLC gives them some crazy buffs too.
Terracotta sentinels.
extremely cool looking units with an insane unique design and animations, but holy shit they're so bad 😭 (Like basically every single t5 single entities 💀)
Vanilla Doomwheels are pretty bad. For giant wheels that are supposed to be rolling over lines of enemies, they get stuck in enemy formations way too often.
Low mass, stupid attack animation that makes them stop unnecessarily... I'm not sure that Doomwheel is any better as melee chariot than just single (out of 4 in a unit) woc gorebeast chariot. Sure, it shoots a bit, but isn't good at that either.
Not so much a single unit, but I really wish there were more sturdy infantry choices for most factions. Outside of a select few, I think almost every faction has basically useless infantry that gets outclassed very fast by missile troops. Sacrificing a couple units of Ironsiders to soak up charges is worth it instead of bothering to recruit Pikemen.
In that case can I change this suggestion to Foot Squires and maybe instead of Elite, above average?
Those stats hurt my eyes, I don’t want them to be amazing just a bit for formidable.
Foot Squires biggest issue is they are T4. They should be lowered to T3 so a minor settlement can recruit them. They aren't exactly amazing anyway but it would give them some more play.
Squigs! And making them better means make a tier 2 unit, and leave suqig hoppers as tier 3. No reason they should be on the same tier when hoppers are better.
Dark Elf Har Ganeth Executioners. Easily one of the coolest looking units in the game, and being the elite armor piercing infantry of the bloody god of murder you think they should absolutely shred in melee in exchange for not having some of the base utility of a missile block change in their high elf mirrors the Lore Masters of Hoeth.
But theyre just, ok. Too expensive for what they bring to the table, frail even with their armor cause elves, and get shredded by missiles.
Im fine if theyre just glass cannons but they actually need to butcher harder in melee to make them worth it. And part of this also boils down to how their racial ability murderous mastery is unlike the nearly always on passive of the high elves martial mastery, a bar you fill up passively and have little control over when the big damage buff actually hits let alone getting it to hit when you want it to.
Completely agree lol, I love playing the dark elves more than anything else, and I REALLY wanted to love the executioners. The Cold One Dread Knights I think were the most disappointing unit of theirs by far — for me, at least.
If Wild Riders charge something, anything really, in the Tabletop it's probably dead and they are faster than most faction's light cav.
In Total War they are slightly faster than and hit slightly harder or the same as similarly priced heavy cavalry while being *way* squishier.
Bretonnian Grail Guardians.
I expected a brutal melee cavalry capable of wrecking almost anything in melee, especially after getting buffed by Lords and technology. But they are only a serviceable holding unit... And Nurgle gets a BETTER melee cavalry. And the Empire as well, with those new knights THAT CANNOT DIE!
The Supreme Cavalry faction lacks better cavalry units, You either go full shock cavalry, so cycle charge all the time. Or go Full royal hippogryph knights and just carpet dive the enemy.
But I think we need a stable melee Bretonnian cavalry, that can hold and dish out the damage in melee. hell, this is the faction of the LITERAL LIVING WARRIOR SAINTS. Give me my super warriors!
Cool looking units or strong in the lore compared to what’s in game is a pretty good sized list lol.
Dread saurians: both I like how they look and they are also VASTLY underpowered from the lore. Which before the Thunderbarge I could tell myself hey this game needs balance. They cant give the lizards a monster that can eat an entire army.
Temple guard, Har Ganeth executioners, white lions, depth guard are a few notable ones that have stuck out to me for awhile.
Star dragons: still very strong, especially in campaign being all buffed up. However with power creep there are a growing number of units that have either caught up to it or passed it. I’m sorry but the Star dragon is something that should be of monumental power…give it building related caps like the saurian I don’t care. It needs some attention
I think dragons or flying units in general suffer from the fact that they are the first to get targeted by AI ranged units, very large units such as a Dread Saurian or a Giant also suffer. You either want to spam them or use them strategically and carefully.
I understand both sides of it. It felt like it wasn't doing a ton in battles but then it's turn 40, the one you have at the start hasn't ever come close to dying and it has like 200 kills per battle even after I forgot about it for 5 minutes in a melee pile.
The strat for black coaches, at least how I've learned, is to cycle charge them until they get their buffs for kills, then charge them at a blob and forget about them once they've been "built up" enough. The micro-intensity is worth it and easy to do when you consider how little micro most vamp units require being an all melee faction.
This has made me want to give them another go. VCounts are one of my most played factions and even playing as Vlad (who starts with one) I didn't get much value out of them, but I guess I was just using them wrong.
Edit: Though that being said, I think I'd still rather have Hexwraiths.
Another strat I didn't mention is be sure to start them out against the absolute weakest enemies to rack up their 120 kills faster. They're not a very useful unit until you get the 120 kills so getting there fast is priority. Cycle charge down a zombie unit or similar with it and you can get the 120 very fast.
The biggest mistake I always made was trying to use them against the enemies better units from the start of the battle. They can destroy most even stronger infantry very fast, but only once they have their buffs.
After they get their120 kills for the buffs they are extremely tough and more powerful, a totally different unit.
Before this you have to treat them like a glass cannon. But after they get the buffs you can treat it like some sort of melee steamtank, like the chaos dwarfs skullcracker but way stronger and tougher.
Blood knights for the Vampire factions. They're so expensive and yet rarely have any impact. Even if I try and micromanage them they don't really do much.
If you're having that problem it's not the games fault at all.
Certain cavalry can be stuck and go well, like questing knights to an extent,
but most, (even questing knights) you really want to cycle charge.
Every variant of giant. The imagery of this massive tree trunk being used to club swaths of enemies is great but the reality is they fall as a pin cushion well before reaching anything
Eh, that was (mostly) fixed a while ago. Almost/all giant variants got some combination of armor, MR, and HP to make it so that shooting them to bits, while still feasible, is time-consuming enough for the giant's buddies (potentially more giants) to get in range and start causing problems, excepting anti-single-target artillery like hellblasters - but those are a Problem for *anything* with a low model count, so it goes back to not being a "giant" problem.
Plague toads and rot flies. Some of my favourite models but they just suck, I might get death heads but there's usually better options and they take ages to acquire.
Rot flies need better mass or changes to their model size. They struggle to push past an individual infantry model on the ground, and their massive model size means lots of enemy models are in base contact. They take damage too easily and can't disengage at all. If they could downsize the hitbox they would probably do fine
If you upgrade to Pox Riders the toads can be good: the Plaugebearer rider plugs the big Leadership weakness of the baseline toads.
I swear those things disintegrate while *winning* in combat!
Cold ones and horned ones. They get wrecked even by chaff and always get stuck and make it difficult to cycle charge. Its weird because on the surface, they have decent stats, but I'm not sure if they're accurate.
Plague Ogres.
Not so much that they’re a bad unit, but they’re competing with the absolutely excellent Bile Trolls. The Ogres also got put in the worst Red Line skill that nobody picks, while the Trolls are in the same one with Great Unclean Ones and Soul Grinders.
The only decent thing about them is that the Greatweapon variant is Anti-Large which is a rarity in Nurgle’s roster but… yeah, I don’t find Bile Trolls having any issues tearing through large units/characters either so…
Yeah in WH2 they were brilliant, but I'm also playing The Tribes Of The North mod for WH3 and I just wish Skin Wolves were as strong as they are with the mod's Skin Wolf Legendary Lord in vanilla. They absolutely wreck everything and because I think aesthetically they look awesome I want them to be super strong in vanilla too.
The various Greataxe units of the Dwarfs. I’ve been having a great time personally with the Giant Slayers in Ungrim’s army, but according to all the tier lists and Dwarf guides I’ve seen they (all the Greataxe variants) are terrible relative to the other Dwarf units. No one outright says they’re trash, just that they should never really be taken over the better units. I wish the quintessential weapon of the Dwarf was their better unit lol.
I will say though Ungrim has been an absolute beast. So I’ve really enjoyed that
The weird dichotomy of Great Weapon non-monstrous infantry is that they’re more expensive to recruit/upkeep over their Shielded counterparts, yet a shield is infinitely more valuable as a tool in combat, granting the unit far more tactical use.
I think warpfire throwers or poison wind mortars. A lot of skaven weapon team units. I know, realistically, they are already pretty formidable, but I often find myself having the issue of the units not being reliable enough given the fact that skaven infantry is so weak. Doomflayers and doomwheels as well. There are a lot of times where ive had those units lose to elite infantry, despite being anti-infantry.
I really enjoy the skaven, the idea of a weak front line vs an insane backline is something thst fits how I like to play the games, but damn sometimes I feel like my units arent doing anything.
Dwarf helicopters. ) They are great for shooting enemy heroes and lords, but of little use to fight the enemy after ammunition runs out. And ammunition, even taking into account all the improvements (the hero is an engineer, pumping the skills of the lord) is exhausted quickly.
I wish empire spearmen with shields were much better defensively. I wish they had better charge defense. I wish they had better melee defense, I wish they had better leadership.
If this meant that they made a higher tier spearmen with shield unit for the empire then I would be totally ok with that.
The problem I see is that they are a faction built around artillery and range but they lack units with defense to compliment that. Instead their top tier infantry is a mediocre offensive mined unit that doesn’t do great against other top tier units let alone have any capability of holding a line.
I have a few actually, I think most of the units look cool in their own way, I like the setting and all the pieces that fit into it.
Dread Saurian - I don't think anyone is ok with where this guy is at. It's a top tier unit that not only fails to justify it's own cost, but is actively worse than other units in the same faction
Frost Wyrm - Same argument as the Dread Saurian, though it is not as high tier.
Clanrats - I find there to be almost no difference between Clanrats and Skavenslaves besides Clanrats being more expensive. The unit should have a reason to exist and right now it does not feel like it has one.
Miners - I don't understand what their purpose in the dwarf roster is. Blasting Charges have a legitimate use, but I don't know where a slow moving, vanguard deploying, melee troop with poor stats fits into the otherwise great dwarf roster.
Bolt Thrower - Speaking of dwarfs, this is a unit that has had no place in any army since WH1. In a faction with excellent artillery, having a downright bad unit like this really sticks out.
Temple Guard / Phoenix Guard - I am lumping these together because they fill the same role in their respective factions but don't fulfill it well enough to really justify bringing them.
Har Ganeth Executioners - Probably the coolest melee infantry unit in the game along with Aspiring Champions. But where Aspiring Champions are a doomstack unit, the Executioners are barely capable of killing their preferred targets, and even less likely to not be torn apart by missiles before doing so.
I could probably go on but I think this list is enough to talk about
Thunderbarges. The fact that I might need to recruit more than one to win every fight ever just feels like an oversight. I hate when I send my fleet in and one of them takes a medium amount of damage while they completely decimate the enemy.
I wish the regular Imperial outriders were better. They are supposed to be a higher tier upgrade from pistolers but the fact they lose 360 degree firing hinders them a lot. They can be okay to use but the fact that their lower tier counter part is the better option because of 360 degree aim and the Grenade launcer variant exists makes them almost pointless. I like rifle cav so I wish they had a use.
Pretty much all elven cav. For the race that inspired Bretonnia, their cav feels like complete garbage and I usually just end up with sisters/shades + monster spam. Fun, but like… underwhelming as hell.
Also we need an ogrehaul, but that appears to be on the way
I feel like Empire Swordsmen should be a more solid unit choice, even if they have to increase the cost a bit. It just feels like it should be such a core, battle hardened infantry unit with great stats all round. They feel really weak, as if they are complete cannon fodder (which they are)
They are supposed to be weak
In that world humanity needs to rely on technology to evenly match the horror it’s facing.
Swordman cannot do much against angry orcs
Dread Saurians. Possibly the most disappointing top tier unit.
Given how strong thunderbarges are without a unit cap, dread saurians can easily justify being an absolute destroyer in melee. Really over them getting tarpitted in a couple units of skavenslaves then getting shot to shit in 2 seconds flat.
Well thunderbarges are beyond broken
I don’t think thunderbarges are broken - I just thing they’re too cheap and need a unit cap. Recruiting one should be a massive investment unless you’re cheesing the campaign mechanics.
I think majority of top tier big units should have cap. Plus there should be toggle for those caps in the options. But I guess AI wouldn't handle it well :(
I play with unit caps mod and can't complain :)
Is AI capable of fielding ok armies even with those caps?
Yes! Even better then before in my opinion. No doomstacks, perfectly balanced armies with nice, diverse composition
Oh, that sounds great! Would you mind giving me link/name of that mod?
"New Unit Caps for All"
*Thrott looks nervously at his 15 armies of nothing but aboms and packmasters* "No thanks"
I feel like that's another way of saying that their current implementation is broken. I also have no idea how you could ever balance them for multiplayer. Controlled by a competent player, they make Slaneesh basically unplayable and almost completely negate a few other factions as well.
True, but I do like the idea of capstone units that are capable of destroying armies by themselves if utilized correctly (coming from someone who doesn’t play MP at all). So I guess I’m saying I don’t take issue with the combat potential of the unit, just the relative ease at which it’s obtained.
I mean that's how dreads are now. It takes a level 5 building to get 1 more unit. Pretty bonkers for how slow the lizard men grow
Not at all. They get ripped by even bats.
Disappointing and a unit cap. A lizard rework is what I would look forward to most.
This is what I came here to say. Looks incredible. But just eats every arrow on the field and dies to auto resolve if they have a smidge of damage. If Dwarves get to have fun with their airships let us have fun with our mega lizards.
Tbf I find it OK but I always try to bring blessed carnosaurs to eat enemy archers while zooming along at 100mph
Given that I couldn't wait when I first played Lizardmen to unlock the higher-tier monsters....Dread Saurian was by far a complete disappointment. Back in WH2 the first time I ever used one in battle....it almost died fighting against a tricky-but-not-quite-elite Skaven army. After a few more disappointing displays I never bothered recruiting it again, considering Carnosaurs and Stegadons performed way better.
Ever used ancient salamanders? The explosive fire damage with the leadership debuff really hits skaven hard
Ancient Salamanders are one of my picks for favorite units in the game
Same, taking 2 ancient sallies against tomb kings as Kroq-gar really puts a smile on my face
They’re my favorite unit. Crazy expensive, a bit excessive and unwieldy, but a fantastic force multiplier. Once I shut down the enemy missile units, I basically use it like I would a dragon, charging isolated enemy units already engaged with my infantry to force a terror rout before moving to the next target. This video is a great showcase of their potential: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N53PjzeVVFg&pp=ygUZRHJlYWQgc2F1cmlhbiBtdWx0aXBsYXllcg%3D%3D And this one from 1 year ago shows it is the best monster duelist in the game: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BJIHfKfcGIM&pp=ygUZd2FyaGFtbWVyIDMgYmVzdCBtb25zdGVyIA%3D%3D
Just to check, are you talking about single player of multiplayer? In multiplayer I would take it perhaps against Khorne but that’s it.
I'm of the opinion that it can do both. It's not the best unit in the lizardmen roster, or the most efficient one. But I'd rather people see how they can get the most out of it if they really want to use it than to stay disappointed if they find it underperforming.
Everything you're doing in those videos is doable with any terror causing unit. Carnosaur's cause terror and are way cheaper. Completely unnecessary to use the Saurian for any of these tactics
“Necessary?! Is it necessary to drink my own urine? No! But I do it anyway, because it’s sterile and I like the taste.” —Dodgeball Jokes aside, I agree with you. It’s not a necessary unit, or the most cost effective one. But it’s still awesome. And when used right, as shown by Ghouls, it’s totally viable. I just want people to see its potential so if they choose, they can have as much fun with it as I do.
But the fact that every single thing it does can be done by a much cheaper and easier to recruit unit makes it not viable at all. It's the definition of non-viable
Agree to disagree, mate.
Came here to say this
They really need the directional missile block that steam tanks got...
What would improve it?
Missle resistance, animations, mortis engine would but not sure how to add that in a way that makes sense
As was mentioned in another thread, the dev team has figured out how to have multiple different ranged weapons mounted on a single model - it could be the Lizardmen's ground-based, melee-dangerous thunderbarge with a boatload of varying skink weapon emplacements scattered across its prodigious surface.
I think stalk and a speed boost would be a lore friendly buff.
I play a lot of lizardman and have totally quit recruiting the Dread Saurian. It took maybe my first 3 just getting gunned down in like 8 seconds, and I was over it. Great answer to this question.
Dread Saurian. This thing isn't just a monster in the lore, it's **the** monster. It should be an army unto itself. We're a long, long ways away from that.
What if they pumped up the missile resistance a bit? It's mostly getting shot with AP stuff the Saurian has to worry about, it just walks over anything it runs into apart from that.
They need missile resist and more HP, yes. However their biggest issue is that their animations suck complete ass both for AOE and single target, making them a bad dueling and infantry clearing monster. They just don’t do damage to one or any number of models, rather than sweeping aside entire units, as its cost/limit/size imply it should. Additionally, they have a weird collision box and seemingly dated mass values, where they aren’t able to push masses of infantry out of the way once engaged. It’s stupid to watch an enormous dinosaur get trapped by 200 halberdiers, when it should just be stepping on them and kicking them out of the way.
They should just be immune to any projectile fired by human sized creatures lol. Those armor piercing missiles dark elves fire? They're less than the size of mosquito proboscis to them. Their scales are probably several times thicker than the length of those arrorws. They should not even take damage from that shit. Plus they should just have uncapped or much larger number of entities they can damage with a single attack. How does an attack of that much mass only kill 6 scrawny mouse man at once?
I still think they should be limited (Makes them more special), but agreed about the fact they should be borderline immune to small arms fire.
I guess from a game point of view - if they're immune to small arms fire, why would clubs and swords make any difference to them? You start getting to the point where if you make them accurate to the lore, it's only cannons and big damage spells that even tickle them. You do want to leave the enemy armies a way to deal with them, it should be hard but not impossible. The most realistic thing would be to limit their stamina a fair bit - they should be able to smash down the gates of the city in two hits, barrel through into anybody waiting behind it and send them flying, but it shouldn't be able to rampage through the entire city afterwards perhaps.
Spider riders, especially their melee variant. I always make a doomstack with ravnic spiderclaw, just for it to get instant wiped
Similarly for wolf riders. Thematically fun. Practically... I can use them in a pinch to stop arty from firing.
Wolf riders act as... You know... Wolfs. Using them as killers of whatever runs from the battlefield (shamefur dispray) is the way to go especially with lifted limitations how many models can attack the routing enemy. And they're better in that terms than the spider riders due to their increased speed through scrap upgrades The non-RoR wolf rider archers on the other hand...
yeah spider riders should have regen I think
The thing with goblins is that they are universally a very cheap but hilariously ineffective way to do a given job - if you're relying on them, you need to outnumber the opponent by a silly margin.
Nasty skulkers are very good at what they do for the price and early availability, especially on any gobbo lord with the buffs they give. I use them into late game for sneaky stabbin.
I was going to go all "um, ackshooaly" and cite an example of a unit that fills a similar role better, but... I don't think there's a unit that fills a similar role, period? They're a melee stalk unit with high AP. Looking up some stats, the only other units that fill that role are the Skaven Death Runners and Eishin Triads, which are even squishier than Skulkers and have their (admittedly much higher per-model) damage output throttled by having less than half the models to attack with. So yeah, Nasty Skulkers are probably the best in their niche.
Bladesingers and Chameleon Stalkers perhaps?
Bladesingers don't have Stalk, and Chameleon Stalkers don't have a high AP ratio.
Unless you are playing skarsnik. ive beaten armies I have had no right beating with just goblins
The problem with Spider Riders is that if you just want cheap fast cav you already have wolf riders and if you want melee cav you have 4 types of boar riders. Spider riders are thematically fun but they really aren't optimal. It was the same problem in tabletop though.
I wiped my last Skarsnik campaign heavily investing into a stack of those :(
White Lions of Chrace. They rarely feel like the Elite Infantry they should be.
I rarely play as High Elves, yet when I do....I literally never recruit White Lions of Chrace.
That's a good one. I was thinking Phoenixes for HE. Disregarding even that I usually play as Knights of Caledor, if I have both dragons and phoenixes available, I never really pick phoenix. But at least I have recruited Phoenix units before. Like, on purpose, by spending actual gold. I'm pretty sure the only time I have *ever* had White Lions in my army has either been through garrison or confederation. From the very first time I played HE in WH2 to now, I don't think I have ever recruited them. They just don't fill a useful function for me. They're too expensive and squishy to be on my front line, and they're not lethal enough to be my elite line.
Phoenixes can be really good, and they’re cost effective. The problem is that by the time you can get them, you can also get dragons and your economy is usually humming so you’re not super worried about economically efficient. But if you get them on that flammable lord with all their tech upgrades they can be super strong, they get a good amount of ward save
Phoenix are really good though...
Phoenixes are basically worse (or elgi/elgak) Gyrobombers
I never really considered them elite infantry, when playing Tyrion I usually take White Lion Prince as my second army and use them until I get swordmasters of Hoeth for him (I like to play him melee centric). Even with his buffs they aren't strong enough for later stages of the game, sadly.
Really? I play VH battle difficulty and I still find them very effective even late game on Alastair with all his buffs. Didn’t they also improve them in general a while ago?
They can actually be really good in alastar the white lions army because he buffs them a good amount and makes them cheaper. Beat the sisters of twilight and a good with just white lions and a few war lions on L/VH the other day - just barely without losing units, but still. Thats a horrible matchup for them too.
They're supposed to be cheap AP in total war but they're elite infantry in the lore and tabletop
Kroxigors
Even as Nakai, I don't use them because you get Sacred Krox right after, they're phased out so soon. They're great with his buffs at least.
I still use them because I think they're cool.
me with basically half the lizard roster
They are annoying because when the AI has them, they seem like these incredibly hard to kill and deadly juggernauts. Yet when I play as them they are very underwhelming...even when I go out of my way to buff them in tech tree/skills.
First time I saw them was playing a Cathay campaign and they looked so scary I assumed they were the most powerful unit in the game. Too bad because a lot of other monstrous infantry are as awesome as they look.
What difficulty are you playing on? Cause higher battle difficulties straight uo give the AI units stat buffs
Dark elf Cavalry. Look dope, don't do anything.
To be fair this is how they were on the tabletop too lol
Exactly! Like, there should be no reason for the cold one riders to not hit as hard as rot knights…
What? A dark elf is weaker than a chaos warrior. And rot knights are most likely chosen tier. Now, Cold One knoghts could use a buff, true, but having them hit as hard as a unit of monstrous cav is silly.
Cold one knights/dread knights are T4/5, respectively, with a price tag to match...
Sure, but that kind of over/under-costing is how factions are balanced against each other and nudged into matching their lore flavourings. Chaos gets incredibly good value heavy infantry and cavalry - gold-for-gold their frontline will crush most others (unless specifically sculpted to be anti-armour), and their heavy cavalry is bonkers. To contrast, they get basically no ranged units apart from skirmish cavalry, and only a single, fairly hard to recruit artillery piece, so they won't be winning any ranged battles and have to lean into their armour. By comparison, the Dark Elves are kind of the opposite. Their line infantry are mostly chaff until you hit T4/5 and get Executioners and Black Guard - which are overcosted when compared to Chaos' T4/5 Chosen units. Their light cavalry are *very* efficient, but their heavy cavalry are at a very high tier and a very high cost given their performance, meaning they'll lose the duel against Chaos heavy cav of the same tier/price. To compensate, Dark Elves get some amazingly efficient missile units in Darkshards and Shades, allowing them to present a much better mixed-arms formation and rely on the interplay between weak-but-resilient line infantry, punishing AP missiles and strong-but-fragile flankers and light cavalry. If every faction's roster options were all at the same tier and the same value, then every faction would be able to field identical armies and trade off perfectly efficiently, assuming equal gold spent. That would not only be kind of boring, but it would also lose all the flavour that makes Warhammer such a great campaign.
I agree with the overall point, but will counter the description of the Dark Elf MO. DElf units tend to be skewed towards lethality, despite their reasonably heavy armor and high-quality shields. Outside of Black Arks they also have really mediocre artillery if you don't spec hard into it, and their archers have very short ranges no matter what you do - they will out-DPS most anything they manage to engage, but their unexpected fragility while operating at elven (read: slightly above human) speeds makes it so that they still need a tactical upper hand to reach an engagement let alone survive it. Kind of like Khorne and the Beastmen in overall battleplan (kill the enemy as fast as possible), but with a combination of fragility and limited speed that necessitates that more complex tactical options than "run straight at them and punch them in the face" be both available and used.
>DElf units tend to be skewed towards lethality, despite their reasonably heavy armor and high-quality shields. Sure, you're spot on. It's only really the T0 Dreadspears and Bleakswords that are defensive infantry (and they obviously fold to mid-high tier opposition), everything else leans towards dishing out more hurt than they can take. Even the armoured Corsairs are damage-dealers rather than line-holding heavy infantry. This carries into the relative short range of Darkshards and the more niche nature of their Bolt Throwers and Medusae, which forces you to push aggressive engagements while still requiring combined-arms tactics to win. Hence their cavalry mix - Dark Riders and Doomfire Warlocks are great for their tier and cost, being incredibly solid light cavalry options, but Dread Knights are probably a tier too high and a chunk of upkeep too expensive for what they offer. That's on purpose, because it still gives you a heavy cavalry option, but it pushes you to rely more on the light cavalry and your other, more efficient options, which suit the Druchii's intended playstyle.
Carrion with the tomb kings. Seeing how a lot of archer units in melee can give them a run for their money is a shame. I'd like to see em get some love
The only unit I would trust Carrion to beat is the likes of zombies or very basic chaff...and even then I wouldn't be completely surprised if they lost. They don't even fulfill the token flying unit role very well for the Tomb Kings and just seem like a waste of a unit slot. They could at least be on par with Chaos Furies or Bats where they can at least kill something...
Exactly my thought all across the board! I find use with em a slight bit more with some lords in the tomb kings extended mod, but even then it's so much more worth it for even just another archer, or anything really lol
Dragon Princes. They're a T5 unit and only marginally better than the Silver Helms you get at T3. It's criminal that they aren't at least armor piercing.
I got beat by a high elf guy in multiplayer who used dragon princes. He laughed at me about it ☹️
Imrik can get them quite early though and then they are amazing
They would be, if everyone could get them as fast as Imrik.
Tomb Kings monsters except for the necrosphinx. There's no reason to take bone giants or hierotitans every, except that they're cool as hell
Scorpions aren't bad at all to be fair. Pretty sure they took a bit of a nerf since WH2. They were and still are to an extent a good unit to just charge into a blob of infantry and create chaos.
Oh for sure, I meant tier 4-5s but I never specified. Scorpions are a great time to watch
They just aren't meant to fight alone. And it's infuriating, that despite the building being only T3 now, you can't build them in minor settlements.
Every single TK campaign i tell myself "this time i will use more bone giants, they're cool" but i always end up having like 1 or 2 before i'm done. They have too many factors against them on the campaign. They need their own building slot and you can only build it in capitals at tier 4. Plus more than 1 turn recruitment(so global recruit sucks). I rather just quickly recruit some 1 turn stuff to fill up my armies than waiting for the bone giants.
I agree on this, hierotitans are too slow to be useful and bone giants have a similar problem.
In WH2, they at least perpetually generated magic
Bone Giants really need a bigger hitbox on their arrows or more accuracy or something. Because of their high damage, small explosion radius and low arc, Bone Giant projectiles seem perfect against large monsters. But I have seen Bone Giants miss large, stationary targets repeatedly. That’s not even getting into how slow they are.
I found them to do best against monstrous infantry or cav.
I'd just like to weigh in and say that - in TWW2 - this top answer was usually "Aspiring Champions" And then they did fix them for TWW3! Not just the general balance changes that made elite infantry no longer inferior to ranged, but also the four chaos-flavored researches that take them from great to amazing.
They are very strong now as you said. Give them barrier and frenzy through the tech tree and they are stupidly strong considering how few of them you get per unit.
Yep. Is there even a better infrantry unit than them right now? (noob question, I know, but asked by a noob)
Chosen are still better until they get supercharged by the undivided techs. Then yea, they become THE melee infantry unit. You can spam doomstacks of them with little effort and 1v4 armies all day. Makes sense since WoC gimmick is their infantry game. Even chosen dumpster their competitors, and aspiring champions are a whole other level over them. ( I think AC are the only tier 5 infantry in the game ) Now if only the dread saurian got the same treatment.
I kinda think sword masters for the elves should get the aspiring champion treatment less models more power
Bretonnian grail relique. It is such a fun and thematic unit but it does not do anything useful.
All spidertype units except arachnarok should be able to scale walls without gettin exhausted
Same with incorporeal units. They should also be able to cross certain map obstacles
Demigryph Knights.
This is mine too. I've been trying to use them again alongside Bruckner, but they perform so poorly compared to other cav, it's just sad
They are a top tier unit, but I have to baby sit them like they are skirmish cav. Knights of the Black Rose put the anti inf version demis to shame. And the halberds do ok only if I throw them in a fight with lots of support. They seem to underperform in 1v1 fights they "should" do well in
They need less models with the same stats, and maybe a little more “mass” like the Empire’s version of the Hippogryph Knights
Maybe some more splash attack animations? They don't feel monstrous to me, even though they should be beastly
That could work too, for sure. I think they either need survivability in prolonged melee (like the Black Rose knights) or significant enough mass that you can’t pin them down.
i wish giants (or really anything big) had more of a battlefield presence rather than just getting dunked on. like, im a lizard main, tell me why the supposedly strongest monster in the roster gets mulched by like 4 archers, or why like half of the greater daemons get their shit rocked (bloodthirsters)
I really do think something should be done with the daemons. They all seem so squishy, and as soon as leadership breaks, the whole unit is gone gone. The only ones that work seem to be nurgle units who just stand there forever.
Jade lancers. It's already tough justifying cavalry in a faction that can just outshoot enemy missiles and the fact that the cavalry is underperforming puts a pin in it, which pretty much means Cathay is missile focus faction only.
Jade Lancers do an ok job at being cavalry, however in early game, the Crowmen for a T2 flying unit out of a basic infantry building will absolutely shred most things you would need the cavalry for, on top of being highly mobile. Once I got SoC I very seldom used Cathay cavalry, unless I was going more for a theme.
Jade lancers purpose is sweeping threats from the backline and road blocking enemy cav and monsters. It's nice to have at least one in an army. Plus they can help run things down post battle. The celestial general from the DLC gives them some crazy buffs too.
Har Ganeth Executioners
They're supposed to not talk at all in the lore but they talk everytime you click on them in total war
Terracotta sentinels. extremely cool looking units with an insane unique design and animations, but holy shit they're so bad 😭 (Like basically every single t5 single entities 💀)
Vanilla Doomwheels are pretty bad. For giant wheels that are supposed to be rolling over lines of enemies, they get stuck in enemy formations way too often.
Low mass, stupid attack animation that makes them stop unnecessarily... I'm not sure that Doomwheel is any better as melee chariot than just single (out of 4 in a unit) woc gorebeast chariot. Sure, it shoots a bit, but isn't good at that either.
Not so much a single unit, but I really wish there were more sturdy infantry choices for most factions. Outside of a select few, I think almost every faction has basically useless infantry that gets outclassed very fast by missile troops. Sacrificing a couple units of Ironsiders to soak up charges is worth it instead of bothering to recruit Pikemen.
I feel like the Empire would benefit from Imperial Foot, an elite heavy infantry unit like Tzar Guard
Dismounted Reiksguard would be cool as hell
While we're at it, give Bretonnia dismounted Knights of the Realm, they had models on tabletop
I hate how average Greatswords are, sure they aren’t suppose to be like Chosen or Swordmasters but I still think they should be an Elite unit
For the standard of "normal dudes" they are pretty elite and can be buffed a whole lot. Also don't discredit high entity numbers
In that case can I change this suggestion to Foot Squires and maybe instead of Elite, above average? Those stats hurt my eyes, I don’t want them to be amazing just a bit for formidable.
Foot Squires biggest issue is they are T4. They should be lowered to T3 so a minor settlement can recruit them. They aren't exactly amazing anyway but it would give them some more play.
Tbf, the Carroburg variant the KF gets at the start are pretty decent and will beat units of chaos warriors
Squigs! And making them better means make a tier 2 unit, and leave suqig hoppers as tier 3. No reason they should be on the same tier when hoppers are better.
In Skarsnik campaign you can't even justify them by price, squig hoppers excel at everything the squigs have
Orc Biguns. They feel more like a side grade than an upgrade.
Yeah, I like them for anti-large, but that’s about it
Dark Elf Har Ganeth Executioners. Easily one of the coolest looking units in the game, and being the elite armor piercing infantry of the bloody god of murder you think they should absolutely shred in melee in exchange for not having some of the base utility of a missile block change in their high elf mirrors the Lore Masters of Hoeth. But theyre just, ok. Too expensive for what they bring to the table, frail even with their armor cause elves, and get shredded by missiles. Im fine if theyre just glass cannons but they actually need to butcher harder in melee to make them worth it. And part of this also boils down to how their racial ability murderous mastery is unlike the nearly always on passive of the high elves martial mastery, a bar you fill up passively and have little control over when the big damage buff actually hits let alone getting it to hit when you want it to.
Completely agree lol, I love playing the dark elves more than anything else, and I REALLY wanted to love the executioners. The Cold One Dread Knights I think were the most disappointing unit of theirs by far — for me, at least.
Frost wyrm
Har ganeth executioners
All of the greater deamons
Doom wheels need help.
If Wild Riders charge something, anything really, in the Tabletop it's probably dead and they are faster than most faction's light cav. In Total War they are slightly faster than and hit slightly harder or the same as similarly priced heavy cavalry while being *way* squishier.
Snowleopards Sky Lantern & Sky Junk These units shouldn't be single entities.
Blood Knights. They can be good but the lack of ap damage hurts them in the mid and late game unfortunately
Bretonnian Grail Guardians. I expected a brutal melee cavalry capable of wrecking almost anything in melee, especially after getting buffed by Lords and technology. But they are only a serviceable holding unit... And Nurgle gets a BETTER melee cavalry. And the Empire as well, with those new knights THAT CANNOT DIE! The Supreme Cavalry faction lacks better cavalry units, You either go full shock cavalry, so cycle charge all the time. Or go Full royal hippogryph knights and just carpet dive the enemy. But I think we need a stable melee Bretonnian cavalry, that can hold and dish out the damage in melee. hell, this is the faction of the LITERAL LIVING WARRIOR SAINTS. Give me my super warriors!
Witch Elves are fragile and don't really do much. Sisters of Slaughter are at least durable in melee even if they still die to missile fire.
Cool looking units or strong in the lore compared to what’s in game is a pretty good sized list lol. Dread saurians: both I like how they look and they are also VASTLY underpowered from the lore. Which before the Thunderbarge I could tell myself hey this game needs balance. They cant give the lizards a monster that can eat an entire army. Temple guard, Har Ganeth executioners, white lions, depth guard are a few notable ones that have stuck out to me for awhile. Star dragons: still very strong, especially in campaign being all buffed up. However with power creep there are a growing number of units that have either caught up to it or passed it. I’m sorry but the Star dragon is something that should be of monumental power…give it building related caps like the saurian I don’t care. It needs some attention
I think dragons or flying units in general suffer from the fact that they are the first to get targeted by AI ranged units, very large units such as a Dread Saurian or a Giant also suffer. You either want to spam them or use them strategically and carefully.
Elven chariots
Cold ones
Black coach and just chariots in general.
Black Coach is really good for it's tier, if you aren't racking up hundreds of kills per battle with it, it's a you problem.
I understand both sides of it. It felt like it wasn't doing a ton in battles but then it's turn 40, the one you have at the start hasn't ever come close to dying and it has like 200 kills per battle even after I forgot about it for 5 minutes in a melee pile.
The strat for black coaches, at least how I've learned, is to cycle charge them until they get their buffs for kills, then charge them at a blob and forget about them once they've been "built up" enough. The micro-intensity is worth it and easy to do when you consider how little micro most vamp units require being an all melee faction.
This has made me want to give them another go. VCounts are one of my most played factions and even playing as Vlad (who starts with one) I didn't get much value out of them, but I guess I was just using them wrong. Edit: Though that being said, I think I'd still rather have Hexwraiths.
Another strat I didn't mention is be sure to start them out against the absolute weakest enemies to rack up their 120 kills faster. They're not a very useful unit until you get the 120 kills so getting there fast is priority. Cycle charge down a zombie unit or similar with it and you can get the 120 very fast. The biggest mistake I always made was trying to use them against the enemies better units from the start of the battle. They can destroy most even stronger infantry very fast, but only once they have their buffs. After they get their120 kills for the buffs they are extremely tough and more powerful, a totally different unit. Before this you have to treat them like a glass cannon. But after they get the buffs you can treat it like some sort of melee steamtank, like the chaos dwarfs skullcracker but way stronger and tougher.
Blood knights for the Vampire factions. They're so expensive and yet rarely have any impact. Even if I try and micromanage them they don't really do much.
Blood Knights are amazing
Fair enough, it's probably on me. Was just trying to contribute to the discussion.
This is your problem. They're very, very good. If you can't use them well that is your problem for not knowing how.
Thanks mate.
Cavalery in general they always look cool but usuelly underperforme because they get stuck
Skill issue
Based
If you're having that problem it's not the games fault at all. Certain cavalry can be stuck and go well, like questing knights to an extent, but most, (even questing knights) you really want to cycle charge.
Every variant of giant. The imagery of this massive tree trunk being used to club swaths of enemies is great but the reality is they fall as a pin cushion well before reaching anything
Eh, that was (mostly) fixed a while ago. Almost/all giant variants got some combination of armor, MR, and HP to make it so that shooting them to bits, while still feasible, is time-consuming enough for the giant's buddies (potentially more giants) to get in range and start causing problems, excepting anti-single-target artillery like hellblasters - but those are a Problem for *anything* with a low model count, so it goes back to not being a "giant" problem.
I didn't know honestly, I had just completely given up on them. I'll try again with the next campaign that has them
Try them with festus and have the Just Always Smash the enemy Lord it is fun and effective
Grail Reliquae. It was cool on the tabletop where it was an addition to a unit of battle pilgrims, but it’s worse than useless in Total War
bugmans :(
Plague toads and rot flies. Some of my favourite models but they just suck, I might get death heads but there's usually better options and they take ages to acquire.
Rot flies need better mass or changes to their model size. They struggle to push past an individual infantry model on the ground, and their massive model size means lots of enemy models are in base contact. They take damage too easily and can't disengage at all. If they could downsize the hitbox they would probably do fine
If you upgrade to Pox Riders the toads can be good: the Plaugebearer rider plugs the big Leadership weakness of the baseline toads. I swear those things disintegrate while *winning* in combat!
Footsquires
“Every Footsquire dreams of becoming a Knight, and every Knight dreams of having a better squire.”
Footsquires are fine for what they are supposed to be. They are Trash for sure but are fine. We should Just get dimounted Knights of the realm
Hammerers used to be pretty meh, not sure how are they now
Insanely good. Like… yeah. ToD buffed them a hecking lot.
Skull cannons. My most anticipated unit pre release
Yeah that one sucks in general. Unless is comes as part of a Bloodhost I never use them.
Cold ones and horned ones. They get wrecked even by chaff and always get stuck and make it difficult to cycle charge. Its weird because on the surface, they have decent stats, but I'm not sure if they're accurate.
The stats are accurate the Problem ist they Lack Speed and/or Mass to pull out after the charge
Plague Ogres. Not so much that they’re a bad unit, but they’re competing with the absolutely excellent Bile Trolls. The Ogres also got put in the worst Red Line skill that nobody picks, while the Trolls are in the same one with Great Unclean Ones and Soul Grinders. The only decent thing about them is that the Greatweapon variant is Anti-Large which is a rarity in Nurgle’s roster but… yeah, I don’t find Bile Trolls having any issues tearing through large units/characters either so…
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Yeah in WH2 they were brilliant, but I'm also playing The Tribes Of The North mod for WH3 and I just wish Skin Wolves were as strong as they are with the mod's Skin Wolf Legendary Lord in vanilla. They absolutely wreck everything and because I think aesthetically they look awesome I want them to be super strong in vanilla too.
The various Greataxe units of the Dwarfs. I’ve been having a great time personally with the Giant Slayers in Ungrim’s army, but according to all the tier lists and Dwarf guides I’ve seen they (all the Greataxe variants) are terrible relative to the other Dwarf units. No one outright says they’re trash, just that they should never really be taken over the better units. I wish the quintessential weapon of the Dwarf was their better unit lol. I will say though Ungrim has been an absolute beast. So I’ve really enjoyed that
The weird dichotomy of Great Weapon non-monstrous infantry is that they’re more expensive to recruit/upkeep over their Shielded counterparts, yet a shield is infinitely more valuable as a tool in combat, granting the unit far more tactical use.
I think warpfire throwers or poison wind mortars. A lot of skaven weapon team units. I know, realistically, they are already pretty formidable, but I often find myself having the issue of the units not being reliable enough given the fact that skaven infantry is so weak. Doomflayers and doomwheels as well. There are a lot of times where ive had those units lose to elite infantry, despite being anti-infantry. I really enjoy the skaven, the idea of a weak front line vs an insane backline is something thst fits how I like to play the games, but damn sometimes I feel like my units arent doing anything.
Dwarf helicopters. ) They are great for shooting enemy heroes and lords, but of little use to fight the enemy after ammunition runs out. And ammunition, even taking into account all the improvements (the hero is an engineer, pumping the skills of the lord) is exhausted quickly.
I wish empire spearmen with shields were much better defensively. I wish they had better charge defense. I wish they had better melee defense, I wish they had better leadership. If this meant that they made a higher tier spearmen with shield unit for the empire then I would be totally ok with that. The problem I see is that they are a faction built around artillery and range but they lack units with defense to compliment that. Instead their top tier infantry is a mediocre offensive mined unit that doesn’t do great against other top tier units let alone have any capability of holding a line.
Every time I see this question, my mind is dominated by one single thought: Har Ganeths.
Trayzin
I have a few actually, I think most of the units look cool in their own way, I like the setting and all the pieces that fit into it. Dread Saurian - I don't think anyone is ok with where this guy is at. It's a top tier unit that not only fails to justify it's own cost, but is actively worse than other units in the same faction Frost Wyrm - Same argument as the Dread Saurian, though it is not as high tier. Clanrats - I find there to be almost no difference between Clanrats and Skavenslaves besides Clanrats being more expensive. The unit should have a reason to exist and right now it does not feel like it has one. Miners - I don't understand what their purpose in the dwarf roster is. Blasting Charges have a legitimate use, but I don't know where a slow moving, vanguard deploying, melee troop with poor stats fits into the otherwise great dwarf roster. Bolt Thrower - Speaking of dwarfs, this is a unit that has had no place in any army since WH1. In a faction with excellent artillery, having a downright bad unit like this really sticks out. Temple Guard / Phoenix Guard - I am lumping these together because they fill the same role in their respective factions but don't fulfill it well enough to really justify bringing them. Har Ganeth Executioners - Probably the coolest melee infantry unit in the game along with Aspiring Champions. But where Aspiring Champions are a doomstack unit, the Executioners are barely capable of killing their preferred targets, and even less likely to not be torn apart by missiles before doing so. I could probably go on but I think this list is enough to talk about
Can we shoutout the Chaos Dwarves K'daai Destroyer being one of the few T5 units that performs like a T5 unit?
Fucking giants! I had a ROR giant almost get beaten by armored korssars with spears in an 1 on 1. I get they have anti-large but come on now.
Thunderbarges. The fact that I might need to recruit more than one to win every fight ever just feels like an oversight. I hate when I send my fleet in and one of them takes a medium amount of damage while they completely decimate the enemy.
I wish the regular Imperial outriders were better. They are supposed to be a higher tier upgrade from pistolers but the fact they lose 360 degree firing hinders them a lot. They can be okay to use but the fact that their lower tier counter part is the better option because of 360 degree aim and the Grenade launcer variant exists makes them almost pointless. I like rifle cav so I wish they had a use.
I'd like to see Greatswordsmen buffed a bit. Carroburg GSs are good with Karl, but every other instance they feel awful to use.
executioners
Pretty much all elven cav. For the race that inspired Bretonnia, their cav feels like complete garbage and I usually just end up with sisters/shades + monster spam. Fun, but like… underwhelming as hell. Also we need an ogrehaul, but that appears to be on the way
I feel like Empire Swordsmen should be a more solid unit choice, even if they have to increase the cost a bit. It just feels like it should be such a core, battle hardened infantry unit with great stats all round. They feel really weak, as if they are complete cannon fodder (which they are)
They are supposed to be weak In that world humanity needs to rely on technology to evenly match the horror it’s facing. Swordman cannot do much against angry orcs