The Wood Elves Lore, Army, Tactics, and New Mechanics

Indypride#7329

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZjMS82En28

As has already been discussed many times on this forum, its very likely the Wood Elves of Athel Loren will be the next DLC race for Total War Warhammer. I think at this point most of us are expecting that official announcement to come in the next few weeks. This video will cover the origins of the Wood Elf race and the effect the Sundering and the War of Vengeance played in their inception, their Legendary Lord choices, army compositions, tactics and unit roster.

My ideas for their race mechanics are relatively straightforward and straight from the lore, and echo some of the ideas I've seen on Reddit and TW Forums. Incorporating World Roots and the Wild Hunt are incredibly important in making the Wood Elves actually play like Wood Elves.

LEGENDARY LORD CHOICES: Durthu – Eldest of Ancients, Orion – the King in the Woods, and Prince Araloth – Lord of Talsyn are the most likely legendary lord candidates. The Sisters of Twilight and Drycha – Briarmaven of Woe are also lord choices in 8th edition, but they’re smaller players and I don’t really see them getting added, as much as I would love to see them. Orion is THE head honcho, a literal demigod Avatar who could have some really cool mechanics differentiating him substantially from any other legendary lord. Durthu is the most important forest spirit and one of only two remaining ancients, the other being Coeddil, still imprisoned within the Wildwood. And Prince Araloth is the champion of the Avatar of Isha, and lord of Talsyn, the realm that houses the Oak of Ages in the heart of Athel Loren. These three are without a doubt the most important Wood Elf lord characters, and most likely to be added as legendary lord choices. I really want to see Durthu brought to life though, he’s a gigantic Treeman with a huge sword and a special ability called Lamentation of Despairs where he literally shoots out manifestations of his endless sorrow in the form of ethereal spite creatures. Now CA is in a bit of a predicament, because the Wood Elves civilization, military, and economy all completely revolve around the changing of the seasons, and at the current moment, seasons don’t exist in Total War Warhammer. My hope is that seasons are introduced alongside the Wood Elves DLC, because it would make Asrai mechanics much more logical. Mechanics like the Wild Hunt, called by Orion every midsummer, where Wood Elf armies could get huge morale and attack increases while getting double the movement range, similar to Crusading armies in Medieval 2. Winter could cause debuffs to Wood Elf recruitment capabilities, preventing the player from recruiting forest spirit units like Treemen or Dryads. Winter could cause King Orion to disappear off the map for 4 turns, waiting to be reborn in the Spring, but to compensate, he could be one of the strongest lords in the game during the time he is awake, massively buffing Wood Elf military capabilities and economy.

NEW MECHANICS: There are two mechanics I think Creative Assembly HAS to implement to make the Wood Elves feel really unique, and accurately reflect the lore. The Wild Hunt is extremely important to Asrai culture and needs to be in Total War Warhammer. It should be implemented like a Blitzkrieg crusade mechanic, where the Wood Elves get a ton of battlefield and recruitment buffs and large increases to the amount of ground they can cover for a limited amount of turns. There should be a list of 2 or 3 settlements somewhere on the map that you’re tasked with looting or razing, you’ll have a certain amount of turns to get the job done, and then return to Athel Loren. It would be really nice if you got reduced or negated diplomatic penalties during the Wild Hunt, things like trespassing penalties shouldn’t be a thing, because it should allow you to strike out through neutral territory to get to your objective, and hopefully allow you to fight a variety of races. Otherwise you’d always end up running through Bretonnian territory and racking up diplomatic penalties, which would be annoying and always lead to war with your neighbors. The other mechanic I’d really like to see is something meaningful tied to the World Roots. The World Roots are the tendrils from the Oak of Ages that stretch throughout the Warhammer world, some of them reaching as far as Ulthuan, and these allowed Durthu to make contact with the Elves of Avelorn long before they ever came to the Old world. The World Roots could be tied to your spellweaver or mage characters. Basically, you send them out to a territory you want to attack, and for 5 or 10 turns they channel their magical energies, funneling them into the World Roots and effectively bringing them back online in that location. This action would create a portal, through which Wood Elf armies could effectively teleport, quickly striking out to attack a settlement, and then warping back to Athel Loren. At the same time, your economy could be tied to bringing these World Roots back online, creating magic forest wherever these portals spring up, supplying the world with powerful spirits that boost the amount of money you make. As the Wood Elves care much more about their connection with the natural world, rather than how much gold is in their coffers, I think it makes sense to have their economy based on this connection. The more World Roots and forest you’ve spread, the more “quote unquote” MONEY you make.

PLEASE GOD NO MORE CORRUPTION MECHANICS: I don’t want the forest spreading to be a corruption mechanic that leads to attrition or public order penalties for other factions. Enemy units should DEFINITELY take attrition in Athel Loren itself, but I don’t think that’s necessary in the regions you bring the World Roots back online. I think the idea of a “Forest corruption” mechanic is tired and rehashed, doesn’t make much sense given the lore, and would be a really bad gameplay choice. I have no desire to see Wood Elf armies marching through human lands “corrupting” it in the same way Vampire Counts or Chaos armies do. In fact I will literally cry if CA makes forest corruption the same as Chaos and Vampires. I'll be really, really sad. I dont want this to happen.

And I think the World Roots feature would answer how to handle the Wood Elves and the regional occupation mechanic. They cannot be a horde race, because they have many settlements in the realms of the great forest. But by the same token, they really shouldn’t be occupying human settlements or Dwarf holds either. This is why I think the World Roots mechanic could be so important. They buff your economy, encourage you to strike out and explore the Warhammer world, and interact and attack many different races. In this way they aren’t tied to any particular nemesis faction to occupy, its pretty lore friendly, but also makes sense in the scheme of Total War Warhammer gameplay as well.

Now the idea obviously needs refinement, there are I’m sure better ways to implement it, but I think the core idea of the World Roots is very sound and could make for a very interesting, dynamic, and diverse campaign. And its definitely a better solution than reskinning the already existing mechanics in Warhammer and trying to fit them somehow into the Wood Elves faction. I don’t need to see another Corruption feature or another Brayherd/Waaagh reskin.

I really want to see evolution and continuous improvement as these DLCs roll out, and that means not rehashing the same mechanics over and over. The Wood Elves should not play or behave like any other race currently in Total War Warhammer.

TLJBoky7612

watching it atm on Youtube haha

Pray#3234

Plz , give us leak plz.......

Setrus#7519

Araloth is so dull, no magic weapons, his story is about the least interesting of all the special characters and his hawk is the only interesting bit about him.
A way better elf choice for LL would be the Sisters of Twilight. 2 mount choices and 2 magic weapons, besides their more interesting special rules and the fact that they're representatives of the second part of the Wood Elf regime: Ariel the queen.
Agreed on Orion, not a massive fan but he kind of needs to be in, in what fashion I'm not sure. Since Athel Loren has its own weird cycle (and non-cycle, depending on where you are) I think it would be kind of cool to have the seasons take place within Athel Loren rather than everywhere else, make it a bit magical...
Durthu is another character I too would want to see. I'd prefer Drycha because she's more interesting, but I get why she's a low-chance choice.

On the Wild Hunt: I'd almost liked it if the Wild hunt was a spawned army of strong troops that are controlled by the AI and unlike waaaghs and such, it would be a very aggressive defensive ally you can't break away from. So it gets into fights that not necessarily drags you into the war, though makes those exposed to it dislike you, then fades away with the season, only to come back and prod someone else, most likely.

On the world roots: Still hoping they're connecting Athel Loren like teleporters to these things that seem to be spread across the map.

Also hoping that perhaps others can use them to go to Athel Loren with some form of powerful malus to make the forest a little more threatened (though not sure about that one) as well as being a way through which corruption can seep into the forest, forcing the WE to keep an interest in the outside world.

Yeah, don't want some kind of wood elf corruption either, to be honest.

So overall I'm pretty much in agreement with Indypride, bar a few minor things.

bishobola

new mechanics:

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH: forest elves stack will join your forces one you gight enough

Forest stance: special scenario and battle triggers if you fight during this stance.

some mechanic no one cares about, like for example forest corruption, forest grow as wood elves expand


yeah , beastmen originality level

Wesealfish

Indypride said:

PLEASE GOD NO MORE CORRUPTION MECHANICS:

The one thing we can be absolutely 100% certain of, is that the wood elves will definitely use corruption mechanics. The reason we know this is that every single race in the game does, will and must use them. Whether it is called undead corruption, chaos corruption or uncorrupted is a moot point, these are all just variations on a theme, different sides of the same coin. The only issue to debate is will they have a new corruption that is theirs and theirs alone, or will they have a copy paste of the uncorrupted mechanic.

twwatcher#9628

I don’t see re-using campaign mechanics as fundamentally a bad thing which can be dismissed as simply reskinning. Corruption is just a mechanism by which a factions influence can be quantified in areas they don’t necessary own - it’s a two edged sword. I would think CA would not want to keep adding to this just because they can but in relation to their overall vision of the game. For each brand new form of corruption counters need to be added and aspect such as the GUI become more cluttered.

Off topic, the Waaagh mechanic would suit a crusade type feature in my opinion, why come up with something new when you already have a mechanism and associated AI routines already developed.

Wood Elves do seem to pose quite a few issues in that they really don’t seem to fit in with the total war style of conquest. Maybe more suited to a mini campaign on a map more tailored to their geography while in the GC having limited/novel victory conditions, more a race to interact with rather than play several campaigns with.

Indypride#7329

Setrus said:

Araloth is so dull, no magic weapons, his story is about the least interesting of all the special characters and his hawk is the only interesting bit about him.
A way better elf choice for LL would be the Sisters of Twilight. 2 mount choices and 2 magic weapons, besides their more interesting special rules and the fact that they're representatives of the second part of the Wood Elf regime: Ariel the queen.
Agreed on Orion, not a massive fan but he kind of needs to be in, in what fashion I'm not sure. Since Athel Loren has its own weird cycle (and non-cycle, depending on where you are) I think it would be kind of cool to have the seasons take place within Athel Loren rather than everywhere else, make it a bit magical...
Durthu is another character I too would want to see. I'd prefer Drycha because she's more interesting, but I get why she's a low-chance choice.

On the Wild Hunt: I'd almost liked it if the Wild hunt was a spawned army of strong troops that are controlled by the AI and unlike waaaghs and such, it would be a very aggressive defensive ally you can't break away from. So it gets into fights that not necessarily drags you into the war, though makes those exposed to it dislike you, then fades away with the season, only to come back and prod someone else, most likely.

On the world roots: Still hoping they're connecting Athel Loren like teleporters to these things that seem to be spread across the map.

Also hoping that perhaps others can use them to go to Athel Loren with some form of powerful malus to make the forest a little more threatened (though not sure about that one) as well as being a way through which corruption can seep into the forest, forcing the WE to keep an interest in the outside world.

Yeah, don't want some kind of wood elf corruption either, to be honest.

So overall I'm pretty much in agreement with Indypride, bar a few minor things.

Yeah, to be clear I dont really want Araloth either, but I think he's a more likely choice than Drycha or the Sisters of Twilight. I dont think Sisters of Twilight will make it in because frankly, they would require more work and a new feature that allows 2 characters to share the same unit card/ have 2 models in one unit. I had been hoping to see such a feature introduced with Kemmler and Krell, but so far that has not come to pass. The extra work, and the fact that they aren't super popular or well known or big players in the lore, means they probably dont make it in. I would much rather have them than the buffed up Glade Lord Araloth represents though. Plus they can ride a unique Forest Dragon named Ceithin-Har or a unique Great Eagle named Gwindalor.

Regardless, I think Orion and Durthu will end up being the first 2 legendary lords, and we have nothing to go off of in terms of adding additional lords for DLC factions yet.

I was actually at a loss because I dont know what Durthu's quest chains would be. Orion has the Spear of Kurnous and Hawk's Talon, but Durthu has no magical items that I can see in 8th edition. Araloth has the Hawk but that wont be a quest I wouldnt think, and Drycha doesnt have items either. That's the only thing I think that gives the Sisters a slight glimmer of hope, that they actually have items that could be Quest battles and named mounts. Perhaps Durthu has items in previous editions they could draw inspiration from, but in 8th his sword isn't named, at least not in army book.

Maybe the Sisters will make it in after all, I'd definitely be happy if they did. Not sure if I'd prefer them over Durthu though. Durthu is pretty awesome ;P

Setrus#7519

Agreed on Durthu and Orion, but while you might be right that I'm being wishful thinking, I really think the sisters seem more likely than Araloth due to their items, mounts and what they represent...but agreed, lets hope for them over mr "A god told me I could be brave, so I did".

If they make 3 LL's, I would think a good combination would be Orion (the king), Durthu (the representative of the forest spirits) and the Sisters (representatives of Ariel, the queen). I'd love that.

HorseWithNoName

@Indypride I really like most of your ideas with the exception of the wild hunt targeting settlements, I would prefer it targeting armies (really like the "crusade" mechanics though. One idea to implement World Roots could be them only working back to Athel Loren except when there is a Wild Hunt. But I also like your idea of tying them to the mage class characters. I really hope we see some new mechanics in the game, they go a long way to make a faction feel unique (which can not really be archieved by reusing mechanics imo).

GRAY_HAT

HorseWithNoName said:

@Indypride I really like most of your ideas with the exception of the wild hunt targeting settlements, I would prefer it targeting armies (really like the "crusade" mechanics though.

That's kind of the bit I'm against, it is after all a "wild" hunt planning a direction and setting targets is far too controlled. Personally I think you should have targets like sack 2 settlements, kill three armies, kill 2K captives. With all the bonuses and what not.

@Indypride I feel you world roots solution is overly complex for a TW game (do this, then that, then wait, then only go there), quite lore friendly in a way but it would just get over looked as a wood elf army could stealth its way to an objective far more straight forwardly or even just ignore any reason to go there.
Remember that a spell-waver is a reasonable investment at the points of the game you would want to use world roots, to not have it for ~10 turns is not a winning plan.

Teleport system in general seems ok though.

Overlord87#6613

I like many of these ideas. In particular, I would love the cycle of season to be added. I'm not sure you can have Orion disappear in winter, from a gameplay point of view, it would suck for the player and would force you to switch generals at the beginning and ending of each winter. Troublesome. But he can get a severe debuff in winter, that would work.

What about winning conditions? I think exterminating beastmen is essential. But they keep respawning, right? Perhaps a horde slain by Wood Elves does not respawn. Or they have a way of preventing Beastmen from spawning.

Secondarily, once Skaven are added, they should be considered enemies to be exterminated as well.

I like the World Root concept. Perhaps restoring the network will end up being a series of quests with unique quest battles. That could be fun.

Finally, as all non-chaos faction, you would have the "Archaon dead" condition.

So your average WE campaign would be:
1) reunite the realm. Athel Loren should start fragmented, with beastmen roaming and what not.
2) once you do that, you start restoring the World Root, all the while chasing and defeating beastmen and skaven, protecting your own territories (since you can't conquer anything else) and dealing with the yearly Wild Hunt.
3) at some point you help fight back the Chaos invasion (that should at this point feature more beastmen spawning randomly in the world)
4) you finish cleaning up beastmen and skaven around the world.

It would be different and funny, I think, with a sort of "seek and destroy" feeling to set it apart from any other campaign.

I don't think we're going to see a "spread the forest" mechanic. It would suck, be completely against the lore, probably require a lot of work to allow the map to be covered in forest (and it would not look good anyway).

A note regarding Athel Loren itself: I can see it done as a separate map, accessible from the world map; or simply as a world region with three provinces and maybe nine settlements. In the latter case, there should be attrition and reduced movement for anyone entering it, except wood elves and beastmen.

#940261

Why do people dislike the idea of corruption so much? It's not the most elegant idea, but, honestly, there is not much going on in GC right now. Corruption is pretty much religion/culture, but with a graphical representation.

SiWI#8629

I disagree a bit with the likelyness of Durthu being a LL (at least at the start).

You see, the WE have 3 generic Lord choices,
Glade Lord (General character)
Spellweaver (Major Caster)
Treeman Ancient (monster lord)

Now we can assume we get all three (best case).
We can assume that Treeman Ancient gets cut, because he renders the Glade Lord a bit irrelevant and is hard to balance with him, similar to the Doombull of the Beastmen.
I assume that, also similar to the Doombull, they won't give us the Treeman Ancient at the start, because they are planing a Lord pack featuring WE. Why is that important for Durthu? Well... who would be the best possible LL to go with Treeman Ancient? Perhaps the guy who is one?
In fact:
I could imaging that the Lord pack after WE is one that features Durthu against Taurox, bringing the TA and the DB as generic Lord choices respectively (with a number of units missing and RoR's).

Hence I would guess that the twilight sisters, which have uniqueness compared (RANGE!) to other LL's and coolness factor to them, are more likely to be one of at least two starting LL's.

Orion is a grantee since he is the race leader without a doubt.

I like the idea to make the Wild Hunt also about movement.

Athen Lorel should be kinda a "safe zone" for WE where they get buffs, alot of them, and everyone else gets mali.

100% with you about corruption. It doesn't fit them and gameplay wise, another corruption? That messes in doubt with the mechanics of corruption.

Overlord87#6613

Greasus Goldtooth said:

Why do people dislike the idea of corruption so much? It's not the most elegant idea, but, honestly, there is not much going on in GC right now. Corruption is pretty much religion/culture, but with a graphical representation.

Because it would severely breach the lore. Wood Elves DO NOT spread their forest.

So far, CA has been reasonably respectful of the lore. I don't see them making a move like that.

Setrus#7519

Greasus Goldtooth said:

Why do people dislike the idea of corruption so much? It's not the most elegant idea, but, honestly, there is not much going on in GC right now. Corruption is pretty much religion/culture, but with a graphical representation.

I don't think I'm so much anti-corruption so much that I'm against making it too frequent. Right now we have Beastmen and Chaos spreading Chaos corruption and VC spreading their corruption...very bad stuff for the rest of the races. As such, to me, anti-corruption for the Wood Elves makes so much more sense...heck, they have trouble with part of their woods being blighted by corruption and always try to keep it back.
Plus, in this instance it's about spreading the woods and that just doesn't tickle my fancy.

bishobola

Empire - Summon the Elector Counts
Dwarfs - Muster the Throng
Greenskins - WAAAGH
Vampire Counts - Raise dead something dunno
Warriors of Chaos - Storm of Chaos
Beastmen - Brayherds
Wood Elves - Wild Hunt
Bretonnia - Errantry War
Skaven - Vermintide
Chaos Dwarfs - Rally Slaves or something
Ogre Kingdoms - something Mercenary
High Elves - Time of Need? dunno
Dark Elves - something Raid
Lizardmen - something with Spawning Pools probably
Daemons of Chaos - something like Chaos Rift

Yeah, I think every relevant faction could potentially have a WAAAGH mechanic

Wesealfish

For gameplay reasons I've posted elsewhere, I think territorial expansion for the wood elves is highly likely, and this will also most likely mean forest expansion. We also have the fact that Athel Loren is a strong contender for most attritional place in the Warhammer world. A forest corruption mechanic would probably be the easiest way to implement both these factors and tie them together, so I think this is also highly probable. An alternative could be for them to use uncorrupted and have any territory they occupy cause attrition much as undead territory does. I would favour forest corruption though as it allows for a more gradual advance or recession of the forest rather than "wood elves capture the territory so it's instantly forest now, wood elves lose the territory and the trees magically vanish".

I also think that forest expansion is not so rigidly prohibited by lore as some. Granted the denizens of Athel Loren have never attempted to expand the forest, but if it were to happen, I doubt you'd see Drycha or Durthu on the picket line demanding that it stop. Forest expansion isn't something the lore specifically prohibits to my knowledge, rather it is something that has never happened.

Whatever choices CA make I will be fascinated to see how it compares to the wide range of speculative ideas that have found their way onto the forum. There is certainly a very wide range of options for ways the wood elves could be implemented, and you can easily make a strong case in support of most of them, even those that are contradictory.

boyfights

if wood elves get three LL before beastmen have a third i'm going to eat my computer

boyfights

but not before i post so many words that it would take the combined forum membership a decade to read all of them. it'll be mostly swear words

SiWI#8629

@boyfights
then let's hope that my theory with the BM/WE Lord Pack isn't off

boyfights

@SiWi i can go for that, getting beastmen with the deal would make paying for wood elves a lot less painful

#940261

No, he will becoma an augmented human.

boyfights

HoneyBun said:

Good. It might put some meat on your bones

i could probably use the nutrients, my normal skeleton diet of cobwebs and cigarette butts is making it hard to get swole

Snotface#2790

I guess the biggest fear is

Wild hunt = Waagh mechanic.

World roots = underground stance mechanic.

SiWI#8629

My biggest fear would be different...

World roots = teleportation madness so many people ask for.
Making it similar to underground/beastpath stance would be a rather fitting solution in comparison and working gameplay wise. At the end the only real downside to this is that CA didn't create zones where those abilities work on the Campaign Map but make them work everywhere.
That would be a big improvement of the standpoint of feeling and variety. Thou it would "railroad" the races more.

Wild hunt being Waaagh similar would be odd. Unlike the Beastmen and Orcs, which are both famous for great numbers (and hence it fits both times) and a certain "snowballing", WE aren't famous for numbers or "snowballing" even inside the hunt.


One thing I think they will "copy" is the "morslieb" event circle with the difference that it would be season.

The Wildhunt should be connected to those (and actually, connected to Orion, since he kinda always leads them).

Naieth

I hope and expect the Sisters of Twilight get in in favor of Durthu. There hasn't been a female presence in the Lords roster so far, and Wood Elves are a great candidate. I've liked them since 6th edition, and thought their lore got a lot better in the 8th edition release. If they implemented a Legendary Lord that was actually twins it'd be very distinct and interesting.

I would like to see Durthu as a LL if we could have three, though. Drycha could also be interesting.

I agree nobody actually wants to see Araloth. You could take a recruitable Highborn, name him Araloth, and only really be missing the hawk.

Krabbz#7495

What I'm looking for the most is a separate map for Athel Loren that you could access from the GC map.
A separate map with all 12 kingdoms (12 provinces with multiples settlements in each). This would solve the "no conquering" race issue. Add lots of BM/GS/Dwarfs/Tree Spirits army spawns to challenge the player all game long.

This way Athel Loren would be a second map, with lots of things to do for Wood Elves. Add lots of objectives outside of Athel Loren like many people already sugested and their gameplay would be fun I think.

I also would like to see Twilight Sisters as LL. With Orion obviously, and Durthu later if there's only 2 LL at release.

For World Roots, they could do a stance similar to underway/beastpath but you could only access this stance in Athel Loren and various small areas all around the world. Teleportation but only for great distances. There's also World Roots in Nagaroth as far as I know.
This way It would be quite different from underway/beastpath but easy to implement.

Seasons could be a new mechanic for Athel Loren map only with various buffs/debuffs.





Finally, please no copy/pasted mechanics like Beastmen DLC.

GRAY_HAT

Krabbz said:

What I'm looking for the most is a separate map for Athel Loren that you could access from the GC map.A separate map with all 12 kingdoms (12 provinces with multiples settlements in each). This would solve the "no conquering" race issue. Add lots of BM/GS/Dwarfs/Tree Spirits army spawns to challenge the player all game long.

This way Athel Loren would be a second map, with lots of things to do for Wood Elves. Add lots of objectives outside of Athel Loren like many people already sugested and their gameplay would be fun I think.

balancing nightmare but ok, I'd be more than happy with a three region on GC and the full whack on the mini campaign.

Krabbz said:

I also would like to see Twilight Sisters as LL. With Orion obviously, and Durthu later if there's only 2 LL at release.

Sisters or riot all the way!

Krabbz said:

For World Roots, they could do a stance similar to underway/beastpath but you could only access this stance in Athel Loren and various small areas all around the world. Teleportation but only for great distances. There's also World Roots in Nagaroth as far as I know.
This way It would be quite different from underway/beastpath but easy to implement.

I think I understand what you mean a stance with unlimited(or much large than normal movement but only areas that say have trees in are accessible.
Seems reasonable might need some play testing as it could make them too powerful like setting up an ambush on the border of kislev the turn after chaos arrive.

Krabbz said:

Seasons could be a new mechanic for Athel Loren map only with various buffs/debuffs.

do the elves change their outfits for each season?

Krabbz said:

Finally, please no copy/pasted mechanics like Beastmen DLC.

but I like pasta.

herjan1987

Indy great video!

I would just like to add that the Warhawk riders you show are converted ones. Since they propebly have been made after the origanal models where discontunied.

The original ones look like this:




Otherthan that:

TheShiroOfDalton

My original idea for WE "corruption" wasn't that they spread "forest" or anything like that but that it represented their influence on human, particularly Bretonnian society. I also said that this influence should make it possible to channel resources from those factions towards the WE so that they'd have a way to grow without conquering additional territory. I still think something in that vein could work, with the WE armies being more concerned to attack hostile armies in the field, maybe some way to attack other stacks without having to actually declare war. Some sort of souped-up version of the BM ambush stance.