Greenskins on Legendary; Feedback On This Starting Advice Please

Gotan

Hi all;

I'm trying to crack Legendary campaign for Greenskins on a vanilla copy of the game (No mods installed); I've been writing down my advice in the hopes that, once I can beat it legitimately myself, but what I experience doesn't seem to match any one else's... in that even with what I consider a perfect start, I can be drowning in AI armies I can't appease and my forces entirely destroyed by turn 10.

However, here's my advice I've noted so far; please tell me if you think it's valid, or if there's something I'm missing which will help other people to Make It ORKY;

Legendary Guide:

Turn 1.) Move Grimgor into Black Crag for local recruitment, which is 50% the cost of global.

Build Cave of Shinies. Don't bother with the other upgrade

Recruit as many Orc Boyz as you can afford

Go to diplomacy and offer Non Aggression, Defensive Alliance, Military Alliance to Bloody Spears, Crooked Moon, Scabby Eye and Teef Snatchas as well. You're trying to get them to be friendly in advance; it's so, sooo tempting to offer Confederation when it shows Green/High (Scabby Eye and Teef Snatchas can appear so on either Turn 2 or Turn 3) but the diplomatic penalty to all the other factions is not worth it.

The Penalty for Confederacy is -40 to attitude. If it makes you a Great Power, it's a further -10. And on Legendary, you don't have the forces to hold them all off when they get sulky. What you also can't do is Confederate more than one tribe at once to get them all in without sulking; And also if they're offering confederation suspiciously soon, they're likely under intense threat from someone else. Leave them too it, even if in the short term their conquerors aren't likely to bother you, that diplomatic penalty with everyone else dooms you long term.

Whilst diplomacy shows only Low/Medium/High chances, they do have weighting for what they are more likely to take within each of those 3; they are more likely to take the offer from top to bottom (Non Aggression before Military Access) but can sometimes refuse to take Military Access before Defensive Alliance. However once you get Defensive Alliance you can go back and they'll be more likely now to take Military Access too, as reputation updates (or degrades) as soon as the action is completed, which is why you can't confederate more than once per term, they see the penalty as soon as it's earned. But in turn, making one alliance with a faction further improves your reputation with that faction, so you can ask for more... You want to get as many of these as you can so the Orkz around you are fighting everyone else BUT you.

Almost always, Scabby Eye will take a Non Aggression on turn 1. These are your most likely allies in the future too.


Turn 2.)

Spend all your money on Boyz; You should have 19 queued up now.

Repeat diplomacy as above. Scabby Eye is likely Medium on Confederation, and will take it if offered here. DON'T OFFER IT.

Turn 3.) Buy 1 more Boyz on Grimgor

Buy a second Lord, making sure to choose one which has only positive effects. I tend to go for +% income, as this Lord will be acting behind the scenes more.

Because of all the troops in Black Crag, Obediance should be slightly positive for now. Once you start moving, keep an eye on this every turn as it will decay fast.

Continue with diplomacy with the Ork factions. For me, they normally don't take anything on turn 2.

Turn 4.) Buy 1 Ork Boy on the new Lord.

Continue Diplomacy as before. By this point you are aiming to have Scabby Eye in a Defensive Alliance (so you don't have to fight all their wars with them, but can still give them war targets), and as many others as possible with at least Non-Aggression. Unfortunately, there's no point attempting to give Top Knotz a cash gift to stay positive with you; you only get +10 diplomacy which drains away each turn and by the time they carve through the Scabby Eyes they'll still be too low and will attack you anyway.

At this turn you may see the Dwarves attack the Orkz to the North. Keep an eye on these. Also, try not to see the shields on Thorgrim's carriers as wheels, as once unseen, you'll never be unable to stop thinking he's driving around on some sort of dwarven clown car with wobbley wheels...

Turn 5.)

Purchase 1 more Orc Boy on the new Lord, it should complete next turn. Keep an eye on your income, it may be nearing 0 by now if you've spent more on boyz than suggested. Don't go into Negative if you can avoid it, we're pushing for the largest army we can get away with here.

Turn 6.) Gorfang should now be full of Ork Boyz. Move him as close to Gnash (Red Fang) as you can. Take the other Lord with you, and stand next to Gorfang.

Obedience in Black Crag will now be going down again. Keep watching this.

Continue Diplomacy as usual.

Upon Ending Turn, Gnash will attack you. Move his Banner to the Black Orkz, then Auto Resolve the battle. Auto resolve ALL the battles, it's far more efficient than fighting manually if you're only average at them like me, and against Dwarves, you just can't go toe to toe with them with Ork units at this level. Auto resolve is your friend, love him, embrace him.

Take +4 Leadership for this first win, then start eating captives to keep your armies refreshed.

If like me you roleplay a little, you can also rename the Black Orkz to "Da Immortulz" and the sole goblin spear unit to "Da Orijinul Grotz". I do that to keep track of them in case I can get the achievement for taking them up to maximum level cap, but they never seem to gain from combat...

Turn 7.)

Chase and finish off Gnash with both lords; then head as close as you can get to Valaya's Sorrow. We want to take this before Iron Rock because we both want to protect our Southern flank, as well as force Red Fang into peace as fast as possible.

Building up Gorfang?

I'm not an expert on this, but as we'll be auto-resolving fights constantly, I took Route Marcher first for increased movement on the main map, then started slotting points into Intimidating Prescence's tree, because I wanted the bonuses to the units themselves. Later on I'll probably boost Gorfang himself too with the Blade Master tree.

From those two fights you should have enough to purchase the next rank of Cave Of Shinies.

Turn 8 and onwards)

Conquer Sorrow; if you've built the Ork Boyz as suggested, you should have enough force to take it, even if he moves his main hero in there; which hopefully he has, as now you've a clear run at Iron Rock in the next few turns. Build Pile Of Shiny Stuff (treasure chest) in there as priority; if there's already another building in there, and it's not a Boss Tent or Shiny Stuff, demolish it to make space for both.

Start the other Lord heading back to Black Crag to recruit, and to get ready for the rioting orkz to turn up from disobedience; expect them around turn 11.

From here on, you'll have to play things by ear. The game for me has to play out perfectly to stand a chance beyond here. The following has to happen, or not happen:

Our aim is to knock the Dwarves to the north out first, because if you leave them they'll become an unstoppable powerhouse, often merging with the Barak Varr too. If Dwarves and Barak Var unify before we can take their capitol, and their main forces are together and anywhere they can interfere with you, quit and restart: They won't take a diplomatic penalty for unifying (unlike you and the huge number of Ork factions nearby), and you likely can't beat their combined forces this early in the game. They're also likely when combined to wipe out your only chance of an AI ally, the Scabbys.

You may have the option, from Defensive/Military alliances to send War Co-ordination targets via Diplomacy; don't be afraid to send their troops to areas most useful for you, at Legendary they won't be surving long anyway, either against Dwarves or the Top Knotz, and you desperately need to buy time to make yourself secure. Get them capturing cities between you and those two, if you can.

However, if you're fighting Dwarves, and only Dwarves, the rest of the Orkz will love you, and make things much easier for you. Which means weirdly, the key to surviving early game Legendary Greenskins... is diplomacy?! Datz not wut Gork or Mork wantz! Still, it seems to work consistently. One mistake I made later was allowing the crippled Scabbies to draw me into wars with the Empire factions; although I would take a colossal hit with them for abandoning them, it just isn't worth drawing in 2 more wars you just can't handle at the start. You need to be fighting just the Dwarf factions.

However the Scabbies in turn will often play themselves into a very poor situation; they know they're at war with the dwarves, but they'll open up a front with the Empire instead, sitting raiding them and leaving their forces across the waters...



You've got to get them fighting dwarves instead.

You ALSO need the Crooked Moons to either hold off the Dwarves attacking them, or if the city falls to get the Dwarves to agree to peace immediately after so you're not attacked from 3 different sides.

What actually happened on the next turn after that screenshot (Turn 9) was Karak Azul (dwarves, to the east) conquered Karak Eight Peaks, and then burnt Valaya's Sorrow down in one move (how do Dwarves run faster than orks?!), removing one of my allies and ensuring I needed to force them to take Peace to stand a chance. They'd normally accept Peace if you took Eight Peaks back with the units who just moved from Sorrow, or they take it and don't attack you successfully. However the second turn (turn 10) the Top Knots declared war on me too, and arrived at Sorrow having already beaten the other 2 ork factions in the south and become the No.1 power. So, this game was already a bust as I'm going to get swamped and even if I clear them all off (which I probably could do), I'll be massively behind the dwarves by the time I did, so it's time to restart.


Let's talk now about other basic tactics;

Combat:

As soon as you've removed Gnash from play, you'll find 1 Army won't ever be enough, but you can't really afford more than 2-3 in the field for most of the early game. Whilst it's tempting to have them operate independently, you'll find the AI is just massively stronger than you, and will pick off your forces if you do so. And there's always the chance that disorder will spawn armies nearby which will further harass and pin you down. Even camping inside a city won't help them, as the AI (including the rioting Orkz, when they get up to full strength) can take them down with a single army. Only Capitals are safe for a little while, but you get trapped inside whilst being besieged.

You can occasionally play "Whack A Mole" and take cities back from behind a rampaging army, but because they regain units in friendly territory faster than you do, in the end you'll slowly wear down more, and he'll turn around and kill you.

So, agonizing as it is, you need to keep your forces unified, together, and acting as a single "Big Hammer".


....

And that's as far as my notes have gotten so far. Of roughly 20 attempts yesterday (I did a marathon session), 75% end when I just get swamped by 5-6 armies all focused on me right at the start and I have no allies helping in any helpful way; maybe 25% end the same way, but around turn 50 when the massive production bonuses of the AI means I just can't play whack a mole fast enough, or dwarves from the north will march all the way down, past humans and confederated dwarves to attack me too (wut?)... but my best run was turn 84 when Scabby Eye and I conquered most of the South, but got defeated by 6-8 armies coming from a single Top Knotz city, whilst Chaos destroyed everything down to Iron Rock... and I still could only afford 3 armies made of Big Unz.

Hnngh.

So anyway, this is how I try and do a perfect start on Legendary. WHAT AM I MISSING FOLKS?

Waaaaagh

Just did a very hard campaign, which is similar expect the no saving part.
I started with attacking the army of the orc tribe next to you. After defeating them get back into your province to recruit new orcs. They will attack you in this turn, defeat them (camp their reinforcement) and get Iron Rock. Destroy the building in the capital to get a gold mine. Always try to peace out and get a non agressiv pact with the other orc and dwarf clans if possible. But keep the war with the dwarfs.
You only want to go north. You have to kill the dwarfs in less than 10/15 turns or the confederate with others and become a superpower. Just build one and a half stacks and get their capital. After that you clear the field slowly, normally no one from the north will attack you. I just build out the defenses in Varenka Hills/Barack Varr.
And get Boss Tent in every settlement.

Hope I could help you.

Gotan

Waaaaagh said:

Destroy the building in the capital to get a gold mine. Always try to peace out and get a non agressiv pact with the other orc and dwarf clans if possible. But keep the war with the dwarfs.
You only want to go north. You have to kill the dwarfs in less than 10/15 turns or the confederate with others and become a superpower. Just build one and a half stacks and get their capital. After that you clear the field slowly, normally no one from the north will attack you. I just build out the defenses in Varenka Hills/Barack Varr.
And get Boss Tent in every settlement.

Hope I could help you.

You're doing what I am it seems, except you're removing your unit building after the initial fights? Interesting, I'll give that a go. It's the "clearing people out slowly" part I still struggle with, as you don't seem to have time or space to do anything slowly at Legendary!

Weisskreuz#9125

Turn 1: Move close to the orcboss recruit 3 boys. Build Barracks 2. And build up economy.
Turn 2: Kill the Boss and the fight second army behind him. Fast march back to reg up(dont chase the second army)
Turn 3: Sack Valayas Sorrow
Turn 4/5: On your way to Iron Rock. Recruit 4 Archers and 2 Boys. (Build the replenishment builing(nothing else even if you can you will loose this city most likely) Idol i think)
Turn 6: Capture Iron Rock, 2 Boys+1Archer
Turn 7: You should get your Waagh.(you can build 2 boys and 1 archer disband goblin archers, but dwarfs could be able to upgrade the capital in this turn and the garrison is strong t3+)
Turn 8: Go for the dwarven capital, ignore the defense of Iron rock. Along the mountains or you risk loosing your waagh during an interception.
Turn 9-10: Going to Karaz a Karak.
Turn 11: Take it no matter the losses, just make sure you attack with your waagh.(you can win without)
Turn 12+: its up to you, you can pretty much do what you want.

This just works with Grimgor, Azhag is too weak and his army is much weaker than grimgors (the 3 units).

In battles charge in with grimgor and the AI will focus a lot on him, just focus doom diver+ archers on his location while your boys flank. He can take a lot beating but is not unkbeatable you need to find the timing yourself.

A second option is peace+ pact with dwarfs, works 100% (in several campaigns leg and vh) if you kill thorgrimms stack cause they have 0 units other than him at the start. They never broke the pact in my campaigns leaving you free to conquer the south, dwarfs are reliable even to greenskins.