Thoughts on the Greenskins after Legendary Mortal Empires Long Victory

Selakah#1254 · December 2018

Hi all,

I decided to spend my Christmas break playing a Legendary Greenskins Mortal Empires campaign. The Greenskins are a faction that I haven’t touched at all in Warhammer 2; the last time I played a Legendary Greenskins campaign was back in Warhammer 1, before the Beastmen DLC was released. At the time, they seemed like a fun, rushy faction that could crush and rout enemy armies in a hurry. They’ve always had simplistic campaign gameplay, which is something that didn’t bother me much at the time.

My goal for this playthrough was to achieve a Long Campaign Victory in Mortal Empires using Grimgor Ironhide. Why Grimgor? Because he is da best. That, and because I suspect the Greenskins are next in line for a rework, and I believe Azhag will be relocated somewhere up north. Why do I think the Greenskins are up next for a rework? Because CA changed Azhag’s icon and made it cooler. Really, that’s it. If and when that happens, I’ll replay this campaign, this time using Azhag.

At any rate, I have now gone through the exercise of achieving the Long Campaign Victory with the Greenskins. I said exercise because that’s what this turned out to be: a bloody exercise in frustration. Three years post-release of Warhammer 1, the game has seen a significant number of changes, improvements, new factions, new mechanics, and a hefty dose of power creep. The Greenskins as a faction remain largely unchanged from their day 1, vanilla selves. What little has changed for the Greenskins post-release amounts to bugs and some mechanics that were badly ported into WH2 from WH1, thus making the faction more frustrating to play.

A lot has been written and argued on these forums as well as on Reddit about which faction is most in need of an update. A large chunk of the player base is fully on board the Empire train. “They are the most simplistic faction!” they say. “They have no unique mechanics!” they say. All of this is true, but you know what? The Empire is playable and fully enjoyable for what it is. The Greenskins campaign gameplay is borderline unplayable, borderline broken and borderline non-functional. My opinion, having gone through this Long Camapaign Victory on Legendary, is that the Greenskins are in desperate need of a complete overhaul. It is currently a faction only a masochist would enjoy.

With that in mind, I’ll try to offer my opinion on what is wrong with the faction. All of this will be written through the lens of Single Player, Campaign Gameplay. I do not play multiplayer (but I do enjoy watching it!). Currently, the Greenskins are doing well in multiplayer. That will not be the focus of this writeup; please keep that in mind as your read through this (if you choose to read through this).

Campaign Mechanics

Let’s start with campaign mechanics. The Greenskins have three things you could consider campaign mechanics:

Fightiness and Waaaghs!
Raiding Encampment Stance
Underway Stance

The Fightiness bar and the Waaagh! armies that spawn at high Fightiness are the main campaign mechanic for the Greenskins. This mechanic is supposed to represent the green tide, and the fact that the more a Greenskins army fights and wins, the stronger and larger it grows. The way it works is the player engages in activities that raise the army’s flightiness. Such activities include fighting and winning battles, sacking settlements, raiding, and just taking a stroll through enemy territory (with Grimgor’s faction trait). Once the flightiness bar raises past a certain threshold, and provided the host army has at least 17 units, you get an instant Waaagh! army!

Sounds cool, right? A second army, free of upkeep! Well, in practice, I find the Waaagh! army tends to do a whole lot more to hinder your own faction and economy than it does in supporting you. Here, let me outline all the issues I have encountered with Waaagh! armies:

Waaagh! armies move on their own turn, meaning you can never use them offensively unless you first wait a turn for the Waaagh! army to position itself right next to its host army.
Waaagh! Armies are controlled entirely through a war coordination-like interface, which requires some sort of enemy target in order to make the army move. If there are no enemy targets, or you are not at war with anyone, this makes it impossible to strategically position your Waaagh! army for say, an upcoming war or an upcoming rebellion without having to move the host army first. You cannot use your Waaagh! army preemptively, you always must use it in reaction to something else.
This is a problem because Waaagh! armies will default into raiding stance when the host army is not moving. This results in the Waaagh! army raiding your own lands which negatively impacts your income and public order. In non-war periods, or when no enemy targets are nearby, this creates a burdensome gameplay loop of having to repeatedly move the host army around just for the sake of preventing the Waaagh! army from raiding your own lands.
When raiding enemy territories, the Waaagh! army will join the host army in raiding stance, thus reducing the amount of gold the host army raids for the player’s faction.
Waaagh! armies are considered minor factions for the sake of auto-resolve, which makes them very ineffective at attacking enemy armies or enemy settlements that belong to a major faction. Most major factions will completely crush your Waaagh! army with minor loses.
Waaagh! armies hyper-prioritize rebellions, disregarding their own target orders and getting side tracked just to kill that one rebellion that just spawned. This can be annoying when you need your Waaagh! army to be somewhere, but it chooses to spend its turn attacking a newly spawned rebellion despite having a direct target order, weakening itself in the process.
Waaagh! armies have inconsistent control rules. If the player initiates an attack with a Waaagh! army in reinforcement range, the player assumes full control of the Waaagh! army and all of its units. This grants the Waaagh! army any technology bonuses the player has researched as well as any difficulty modifier penalties or bonuses (such as the -4 leadership penalty on Very Hard battle difficulty). On the other hand, if the Waaagh! army initiates combat or is attacked by another faction with your army or garrison in reinforcement range, then the Waaagh! army will be fully independent, controlled by the AI and will received AI-related difficulty bonuses (such as the +4 leadership bonus on Very Hard battle difficulty). I feel like this should be one way or the other, but not this weird middle ground where the obvious choice is to avoid having to control the Waaagh! army at all.
For some reason that I assume must be a colossal oversight, other AI factions can target your Waaagh! army with a direct declaration of war. Since the Waaagh! army is considered a permanent vassal of the player’s faction, you will get dragged into the war and you absolutely cannot chose to break the defensive alliance with your vassal. This tends to be a problem, because other AI factions track their diplomacy score with your Waaagh! army as a separate number from your faction’s diplomacy score. A military ally could really like you, but completely despise your Waaagh! army and thus declare war on it, forcing you to break an alliance and go to war with an ally.

Now, there are some good things about Waaagh! armies. They can be used to quash rebellions when the host army absolutely must be somewhere else (and you will be doing a LOT of rebellion quashing on Legendary). They can be used to lure enemy armies out into the open and slightly weaken them, so that the host army can follow up with a counter attack after the Waaagh! army has been utterly crushed.

In its current state, however, the entire Waaagh! mechanic is a net loss for the Greenskins player. I feel there are two paths for CA going forward: 1) scrap the mechanic entirely (thus avoiding the sunk cost fallacy *cough* rampage *cough*) and bring it back as something else; or 2) address all of the bugs an all of the behavioral problems, thus making the current implementation actually usable.

If I were CA (and I am not), I would decouple Waaagh! armies from Fightiness and roll the Waaagh! army into a Rite for the Greenskins, similar to the Lizardmen’s rite that summons an army of dinosaurs. Of course, this would require CA implementing Rites for Game 1 factions, which is something that may or may not be on their radar at this point. An alternative would be to make it work like Hellebron’s Blood Voyage, where you have to spend currency to summon a fully AI controlled army that can be given a target.

Regarding the Fightiness bar itself, I feel this is a huge wasted opportunity. Currently, there are four stages to the Fightiness bar, and only the bottom two stages have a tangible impact on the army (attrition, and even more attrition!). There is virtually no incentive for the player to keep his Fightiness high, other than the promise of a Waaagh! army that could potentially be useful in the very early game for a key conquest. Other than that, the player can largely ignore the Fightiness bar and be on his merry way. The second that bar starts getting low (e.g. you are spending multiple turns recruiting), you are given the option to “quell animosity” and thus bring the bar up, at the small cost of some army losses.

Could we please get some bonuses to the army itself at high Fightiness? Something like replenishment bonuses, leadership bonuses and maybe campaign movement bonuses? Not only would this be loreful and flavorful, but it would create an actual incentive for the player to maintain high Fightiness.

Here, let me take a stab at this:

[0, 40) Fightiness: +20% Casualties suffered due to Infighting Attrition, -10 Leadership, -20% Army Movement Range, -20 Winds of Magic Reserve, +30% Misscast Chance, +15 Army Upkeep
[40, 60) Fightiness: +10% Casualties suffered due to Infighting Attrition, -3 Leadership, -10% Army Movement Range, -10 Winds of Magic Reserve, +15% Misscast Chance, +5% Army Upkeep
[60, 75) Fightiness: Nothing
[75,92) Fightiness: +5% Casualty Replenishment Rate, +3 Leadership, +5% Army Movement Range, +5 Winds of Magic Reserve, -10% Misscast Chance, -5% Army Upkeep
[92,100] Fightiness: +10% Casualty Replenishment Rate, +6 Leadership, +10% Army Movement Range, +15 Winds of Magic Reserve, -20% Misscast Chance , -10% Army Upkeep

Why winds of Magic and Misscast chances? Well, in the lore, Greenskin Shaman don't get their spellcasting ability from the winds of magic. Instead, they get it from the raw energy generate by a Greenskins army as it fights. When the army is doing well, the Shaman is able to channel this energy very well; when the army is doing very poorly on the field, the Shaman's head might just pop like a grape due to a misscast. I am not a lore expert, however, so someone please feel free to chime in and tell me if I am wrong.

Going back to the last two campaign mechanics, there’s really nothing much to say here. The raiding encampment stance used to be unique to the Greenskins until the advent of the Norsca faction. Unlike Norsca, however, the Greenskins don’t have access to a standard raiding stance. Quite honestly, I feel like the Greenskins deserve a standard raiding stance that requires 0% movement to activate, just like Norsca. The Greenskins are arguably as raidy and pillagy as the Norscans.

Economy & Infrastructure

Moving away from campaign mechanics, let’s talk a bit about the Greenskins economy and infrastructure buildings. The Greenskins have very simplistic and limited infrastructure, which is to be expected from a faction that is used to squatting on forts someone else has built (after enhancing said forts with piles of dung and war paint). This is perfectly fine; I do not expect the Greenskins to be master engineers. The Greenskins are also unable to trade, which is to be expected. The idea of a gaggle of goblins attempting to negotiate a trade deal with Lothern on Grimgor’s behalf is beyond silly. This is also very loreful and makes sense.

The issue is that the simplistic infrastructure coupled with the inability to trade combines to create a very, very weak economy. To put things in perspective, owning the entirety of the Badlands and its mountains, all of it developed optimally, is barely enough to support three (perhaps three and a half) Legendary-capable armies.

As the Greenskins, you are expected to supplement your economy with copious amounts of raiding, sacking and looting. I think this is perfectly fine, reasonable, loreful and flavorful. CA has tried to address the economy issue with the Raiding Stashes building introduced in Mortal Empires. This building provides stacking factionwide bonuses to raiding, post-battle loot and sacking. You are encouraged to have as many of these as you can possibly have. This creates another problem, however: you simply cannot field enough armies to be out there raiding and generating income, when your own provinces are suffering from rebellion after rebellion after rebellion, never mind the possibility of being at war with multiple factions due to aversion and the fact that they hate your guts for raiding their friends and allies.

The game is sending mixed signals to the player: you are encouraged to go out to raid, sack and pillage, but the second you do so your own territory drowns in rebellions. This leads me to the next, big issue: public order or “obedience”. The Greenskins have two sources of factionwide obedience: Dork’s Rock, a landmark building at Black Crag which provides +2 obedience factionwide, and Skarsnik’s Prodder, which provides +3 obedience factionwide. The tech tree provides no obedience bonuses, and there are no other landmark buildings within reasonable reach that can provide obedience. The Chief’s Tent line of buildings provides obedience, however the settlement needs to be developed up to tier 4 before the building can achieve its max of +10 obedience.

In short: until you confederate Skarsnik and get his Prodder, and until you build Dork’s Rock, dealing with obedience is going to be a nightmare. Don’t even think about settling unpleasant (yellow) climates; it just won’t be tenable. The second there’s even a slight spark of corruption, the situation goes from untenable to unplayable. Playing as Grimgor, you are going to have to juggle expansion with routinely coming back to Black Crag to crush Black Orc rebellions with your Orc Big 'Uns.

I feel like something has to be done to address the economic woes and the obedience woes. For obedience, it’s really pretty simple: make some of the other Legendary Lord weapons also grant obedience. Another +3 from say, Grimgor’s Axe or Wurzzag’s Bonewood Staff would go a long way. Alternatively, you can add technology to address the obedience issues. Regarding the economy, I have no idea; I certainly don’t want the Greenskins to be an industrious faction like the Dwarfs. My personal suggestion would be to make the Loot Pile line of buildings span 5 tiers, as opposed to capping at 3. That would be, in my opinion, very loreful as the bigger the Greenskin fort gets and the stronger its Warboss gets, the larger the pile of loot and shiny fingz he’s hoarded. Currently, this building caps at 400 gold. Making it cap at 600 or 800 gold at Tier 5 would go a long way here.

The final point to address here is Landmark Buildings. The Greenskins are perhaps the one race with the least amount of unique Landmark Buildings. Currently, they have two at Black Crag, with one more at Erengad. They are underrepresented in this regard and could use more landmarks. Perhaps adding landmark buildings to other faction’s main settlements? A “Sacked Imperial Palace” to Altdorf, a “Sacked Von Carstein Court Hall” at Castle Drakenhof, a “Sacked Throne of the High King” to Karaz-a-Karak, a “Sacked Pyramid of Settra” to Khemri, etc.

Replenishment

The absolute biggest problem with the Greenskins, currently, is replenishment. It’s so bad it deserves its own section. The Greenskins are currently the faction with the worst replenishment in the entire game. The only other faction that comes close to the Greenskins in terms of having bad replenishment is Bretonnia. Bretonnia can at least circumvent the replenishment problem by picking the Fay Enchantress for her +15% replenishment faction effect. And really, is there any other way to play Bretonnia? With the advent of the Vampire Coast and Kemmler’s new faction, the only way to confederate the other 2 Bretonnian LLs is to start as the Fay Enchantress, as otherwise the Enchantress and Alberic get quickly eliminated by Beastmen, Kemmler and the Dreadfleet. But I digress, we are complaining about Greenskin replenishment here, not the Vampire Tide or Bretonnia’s outdated confederation techs.

In terms of replenishment, the Greenskins lack:

A hero with the replenishment army ability
Lord-level replenishment skills
Technologies that increase replenishment
Any sort of campaign effects that increase replenishment
Replenishment bonuses from any of the Legendary Lord’s special quest items

In terms of replenishment, the Greenskins have:

The Idolz line of buildings, which adds 4% replenishment at Tier 3.

At some point during my Legendary Campaign, the Vampire Counts declared war on me right as I had finished a major series of battles against the Von Carsteins. On that very same turn, I got hit with the Unseasonable Weather random campaign event, which provides a factionwide -20% replenishment rate malus to all of my armies for 3 turns. This particular random event nearly cost me the whole campaign, as all of a sudden I had to find a way to deal with 7+ Vampire Counts armies choke full of Blood Knights, Varghulfs and Terrorgheists with my three badly wounded armies, while in the red. Not only did I have to find a way to wait out those 3 turns, but I then had to find a way to survive for 5 or 6 additional turns until my armies were replenished enough to be able to fight.

The Greenskins are in dire need of additional sources of replenishment. By lore, the Greenskins should have some of the best replenishment options in the entire game. The good news is that it’s very easy for CA to implement replenishment here without the need for an hero. As I have mentioned before, the Fightiness meter lends itself to this sort of thing; make armies with high flightiness gain replenishment bonuses. Some low-hanging 1-point replenishment talents in the Lords tree, like the Norscan Resilience 1-pointer, would also go a long way here. If the Greenskins rework consists of a single change, that single change absolutely has to address the replenishment problem.

Selakah#1254 · December 2018

Unit Roster

As far as I am concerned, there is only one unit in the Greenskins roster: Black Orcs. Really, that's it. There's nothing else. The Greenskins have no cavalry, no archers, and no monsters. It's all Black Orcs. If you play multiplayer competitively, you are probably scoffing at me right now. The Greenskins have a very balanced roster for multiplayer battles. The issue is that when you play campaign, there are no fund limits. You will often have to deal with Vampire Counts armies with 3 Terrorgheists, 5 Blood Knights, 4 Varghulfs and 9 Grave Guards; Norscan armies consisting of 10 War Mammoths, 5 Fimir and 4 Marauder Champions; Dwarf armies with 3 Organ Guns, 2 Great Cannons, 5 Iron Breakers, 4 Hammerers and 2 Giant Slayers; High Elf armies with 5 Star Dragons, 4 Frost Phoenixes, 4 Sisters of Avelorn and 6 Swordmasters of Hoeth; Vampire Coast armies with 4 Necrofex Colossus, 3 Rotting Leviathans, 6 Depth Guard, 4 Gunnery Mob and 2 Deck Gunners.

I honestly don't care how balanced the Greenskins are in multiplayer. When you are playing campaign and you have to routinely beat army compositions like the ones I have outlined above, the only possible answer you can come up with is to just toss Black Orcs at the problem, especially on Legendary difficulty. You can get a bit creative and add a couple of Giants or a couple of Arachnarok Spiders, but in general Black Orcs will outperform every other unit in the Greenskins roster. To be clear, I don't think Black Orcs are overpowered. They just happen to be the only thing that consistently works.

Let's just go over some of the ways Black Orcs are better than other units:

Boar Boy Big 'Uns and Savage Boar Boy Big 'Uns are anti-large, armor piercing heavy cav. On paper, they should perform well against monsters and other cavalry. In practice, they horribly lose most cav engagements. Black Orcs will easily sort out a unit of Blood Knights or Grail Knights and have enough juice left to go kill something else, while Boar Big 'Uns get completely obliterated. The standard Boar Boy cannot even beat a unit of goblin archers on Very Hard battle difficulty; it will get out-meleed by the goblin archers and routed, and this is after getting the charge. The only use I've personally found for Boar Boy Big 'Uns is to bog down very large monsters, such as Terrorgheists or Varghulfs, long enough for a unit of Black Orcs to arrive to do the actual killing.
Orc Big 'Uns and Savage Orc Big 'Uns are medium tier, anti-large, non-armor piercing, low armor infantry that is supposed ot be a step above Orc Boys. In practice, they are barely functional as a temporary stop gap on your way to Black Orcs. Their lack of armor piercing and low anti-large values makes them undesirable as a dedicated anti-large role. Their low armor values and large size result in them getting shredded by missile fire. Black Orcs are not intended to fill the anti-large role, but they outperform the Big 'Uns in this regard.
Archers - all of them. Very, very low accuracy. In multiplayer, the Rusty Arrerz are great! In single player, you only get 1 copy of the Rusty Arrerz, and they are on a 10 turn cooldown should they die in battle. I don't expect the Greenskins to have Wood Elf-tier archers, but in current state they are really only useful as an early game, stopgap unit. Lots of friendly fire, and their late-game niche of being able to snipe large, unarmoured monsters such as Giants, Varghulfs and Crypt Horrors is better filled by just having another Black Orc unit in the army.

Units that are worth having in your armies, but are not as good as Black Orcs:

Trolls. Until late game, I had 3 units of trolls in every single one of my armies. They are fantastic for shredding armor and consistently rack up a lot of kills. They can be equipped with leadership banners, and when highly vetted have decent leadership scores even in Very Hard battle difficulty. They are really only a liability against factions with Fear and Terror, but against the Dwarfs will do very well.
Giants. High leadership, tough to kill terror platforms. If you have been paying attention, you know that Giants have been continuously buffed by CA patch after patch. The issue with Giants is not in their stats, but rather in their AI behavior. You see, when you give an attack order to a Giant, it will stop at the edge of an infantry blob and proceed to club away at this tiny little edge of the infantry blob. Once the entities in that edge have been eliminated, the Giant will just stand there, dumbfounded and idle, doing absolutely nothing, unable to realize on his own that he can take 1 step forward and be in range of more infantry to kill. The only way to make a giant work is to manually path him into the dead center of the enemy's infantry blob so that he has lots of targets to club away for days. This turns a unit that I want to use as a fire-and-forget melee crusher into one that needs to be babysat to ensure I'm getting mileage out of it.
Arachnarok Spiders. Highly armored, highly mobile terror platforms. These things are what I replace Trolls with in the late game, and they do a fantastic job walking past the front line to reach the juicy back line to shut down ranged missile fire. Still, I really don't expect the spiders to get a lot of kills; they exist mostly to go at the vanguard, taking the initial ranged fire away from my Black Orcs.
Goblin Rock Lobbers. Two of these in every army just so I can cheese out Siege Battles by knocking down towers and walls. While we are talking about Greenskins artillery, just what the heck happened to Doom Divers? They used to have surgical accuracy at the dawn of Game 1, which admittedly was too much. Throughout the course of Game 1 they were nerfed to the point where they are not worth bringing at all. For a unit that is locked behind two expensive buildings and 7 technologies, these things really need to be made more useful.

With most races, you tend to have this dynamic where all of the roster is usable early on, and as you advance in your campaign gradually some of the early tier and mid tier units become unusable and you have to upgrade to higher tiers. With the Empire, for example, Swordsmen are very usable early on but eventually have to be replaced with Halberdiers and/or Greatswords. Even then, a mid-tier unit like Halberdiers remains very usable in the very late stages of a Legendary Empire campaign.

To be clear, I am not asking for every unit to be usable on Very Hard battle difficulty. It's just the Greenskins are unique in that a rather significant chunk of their roster is completely unusable right out of the gate. By the mid stages of your campaign, you are pretty much reduced to 5 or so units that work. Once again, this is not an issue in multiplayer matches where army compositions are limited by funds. In single player, it is incredibly difficult for your army of Orc Boy Big 'Uns to beat a legendary Dwarf army with Longbeards, Rangers and Thunderers.

On the Leadership side of things, the Greenskins don't fare any better:

Three Generic Lord Choices: Orc Warboss, Goblin Warboss and Goblin Great Shaman. With the [coast] beta and the revamp of the Old World skills, the Goblin Warboss has gone from completely useless to god-tier. Poison-infused Black Orcs? Yes please. The only thing the Orc Warboss offers is a Wyvern mount, which arguably makes him a liability due to the paltry low melee defence (20 or so, if I recall correctly). CA, I'm not advocating for the Goblin Warboss to be nerfed - I think it's great he's finally a viable campaign choice. Please give the Orc Warboss *something* to make him more useful. The Goblin Great Shaman currently brings nothing to the table, other than acting as a mobile version of the Goblin Shaman hero due to having access to a wolf mount.
Two Hero Choices: Goblin Big Boss and Shaman (both Goblin and Orc). The Goblin Big Boss is very valuable as a campaign hero, and borderline useless as an embedded hero in an army. The only thing it brings to the table whilst embedded is fast, poison attacks. The Shaman heroes are a necessity in an army, and both currently offer interesting choices, with the Orc Shaman perhaps coming out a bit ahead due to having access to a mount and reliable damage spells.

With the rework of the Vampire Counts, CA has opened the door for kitbashing new content together. With that in mind, I would *really* want to see all of the following (in my mind) very reasonable requests for the Greenskins:

[Hero] Kitbashed Orc Big Boss with the Training, Assault Units and Assault Garrison campaign abilities. A melee specialist with access to a Boar and Wyvern mount.
[Hero] Kitbashed Black Orc Big Boss with the Replenishment, Assault Unit and Damage Building campaign abilities. A highly armored, armor piercing melee specialist on-foot, with no mount choices.
[Lord] Kitbashed Savage Orc Warboss and/or Kitbashed Savage Orc Great Shaman, with unique buffs to Savage Orcs similar to Wurzzag. Wurzzag is the only Lord in the entirety of the Greenskins roster that lends himself to a non-Black Orc playstyle. The unique buffs to Savage Orcs as well as enabling magical attacks for the army makes having an army full of Savage Orcs actually viable, and very fun!
[Lord Mount] Arachnarok Spider Mount for the Goblin Great Shaman. This one is a bit overdue; how hard can it be? Just replace the generic goblin sitting at the top platform with the Goblin Great Shaman and you are done. Boom, instant high-leadership Arachnarok Spider with spellcasting ability.
[Infantry] Black Orcs with Shields. Please, I would love to have a way to deal with the Wood Elfs and other shooty factions without having to lose 80% of my army while hiding in a forest as I wait for Waywatchers to be out of ammo and stop kiting.

Considering the scope of the Vampire Counts rework and the fact that CA has something like 6 months to work on this together with the next DLC, these all seem very reasonable to me.

Going into the territory of "wishful" thinking, I would like to see the two missing troll varieties. Why? Well, the Greenskins are supposed to be THE troll faction. This is not actually represented in-game; out of all the factions capable of recruiting trolls, they are the only faction with access to a single variety of troll. They are currently missing their Stone Trolls, which are basically late game armored Trolls, and their River Trolls, which are a bit of a mid-tier Troll unit that would probably have a leadership debuff aura due to their horrible stench.

Given that enterprising modders have uncovered strings for Grom the Paunch buried within the game files, my suspicion is that at some point CA had planned on a Grom the Paunch DLC with the two missing troll variants, but that plan has very obviously been abandoned. At any rate, it would be very nice to, at the very least, get reskinned Norscan Ice Trolls as Stone Trolls so that the Greenskins can have a late-game, armored monstrous infantry unit.

Other Miscellaneous Woes

Terrible post-battle loot options. What the heck is up with Eat Captives barely restoring any health? The similar option for the Skaven restores loads of health.

As usual, auto-resolve woes.

The Greenskins get hit very hard with the auto-resolve, forcing me to manually fight most of my battles, even the tedious and simple settlement battles, to avoid lots of casualties and having to deal with the awful replenishment.

Wrapping it Up

I feel like, taken individually, all of the issues I have touched upon during this write-up are not necessarily game breaking. Plenty of factions have non-functioning or half-functioning campaign mechanics. Bretonnia has replenishment issues; the Empire basically has no campaign mechanics; the Beastmen share the same broken Waaagh! army mechanic, repackaged as Brayherds; The Wood Elves' Amber mechanic sends mixed signals to the player. Yet, all of these factions are perfectly playable and can be very enjoyable despite one or two broken mechanics. The issue is that the Greenskins have ALL of the broken, half-functioning, buggy and non-functioning mechanics. All of them. It's just too much.

I feel like the Greenskins rework will be the true test for CA. The entire faction is in shambles from a campaign perspective; it can be played, but it's an exercise in frustration and something you'd only really do for the challenge.

Itharus#3127 · December 2018

*realizes he is a masochist*

Cortes31#6909 · December 2018

Why can I like a post only once?

Hartassen#5898 · December 2018

Very well made post and while I personally don't care for the greenskins at all (they are frankly dominating as AI in legendary campaigns it's quite absurd) they are deserving of a re-work. I do hope they move azhag and grimgor away from black crag and up into the north where they belong and add some other orc lord and fill their roster a bit and make other general improvements for them.

Cadia101 · December 2018

On the subject of kit bash :
- Boys orcs with speares (for earlly game anti-large)
- Big Uns with shield (for mid game decent infantry unit)
- Goblin spear shukka (reskin dwarve bolt-thrower with goblin crew for long range anti large)

Selakah#1254 · December 2018

Hartassen said:
Very well made post and while I personally don't care for the greenskins at all (they are frankly dominating as AI in legendary campaigns it's quite absurd) they are deserving of a re-work. I do hope they move azhag and grimgor away from black crag and up into the north where they belong and add some other orc lord and fill their roster a bit and make other general improvements for them.

My hope here, at least for Game 3, is that Grimgor will eventually be moved out into the Dark Lands where he belongs, and Warboss Gorfang Rotgut will eventually become playable. Grimgor is the largest Black Orc alive, whereas Gorfang Rotgut is the largest non-Black Orc alive.

Rochaid29#5392 · December 2018

^ dis op here...is one the ladz..I understand your pain. It has been discussed here for a long time and this faction is simply lacking on almost everything and not fun to play.

steam_1645121400048jmklDe · December 2018

Yeah I love the Greenskins thematically and for giggles but I agree with everything except maybe the doom divers, I finished a GS normal ME campaign like 6 months ago and they always got a crap load of kills. But yeah they have to fix WAAGHs and give more raiding bonuses. I think one way to fix that is that you get public order bonuses from raiding after so much loot is acquired for so many turns so the player raids and pillages like they should without rebellions constantly. I also think MA, Speed, and MD should be buffed as fightiness increases so there's always an incentive to be fighty.

misunderstoodvampire#7653 · December 2018

I would love it if CA added Black Orcs with Duel Choppas and choppa and board. Would add nicely to end game variety

steam_164191850448yoMgfCp · December 2018

I hate greenskins let me tell you that I am more of a defensieve player

but yeah this needs fixing ASAP

Theo91#7431 · December 2018

Cortes31 said:
Why can I like a post only once?

So true. This post is so spot on. Please ca fix!

Bloodydagger#9716 · December 2018

Greenskins desperately need their Black Orc and Savage Orc hero/Lord variants.

Itharus#3127 · December 2018

Hartassen said:
Very well made post and while I personally don't care for the greenskins at all (they are frankly dominating as AI in legendary campaigns it's quite absurd) they are deserving of a re-work. I do hope they move azhag and grimgor away from black crag and up into the north where they belong and add some other orc lord and fill their roster a bit and make other general improvements for them.

They dominate as AI because they are totally saturated with AI only buffs. Ironically, they only seem to do well in battles with other AI though. Fight 'em yourself and they go down easy as AI, too.

mightygloin#2446 · December 2018

Selakah said:

Hartassen said:
Very well made post and while I personally don't care for the greenskins at all (they are frankly dominating as AI in legendary campaigns it's quite absurd) they are deserving of a re-work. I do hope they move azhag and grimgor away from black crag and up into the north where they belong and add some other orc lord and fill their roster a bit and make other general improvements for them.
My hope here, at least for Game 3, is that Grimgor will eventually be moved out into the Dark Lands where he belongs, and Warboss Gorfang Rotgut will eventually become playable. Grimgor is the largest Black Orc alive, whereas Gorfang Rotgut is the largest non-Black Orc alive.

Exactly what came to my mind too, good old warboss Gorfang had to be here. Actually i also made a post about his addition long ago. Summon da BOSS ladz!

Great essay by the way, fantastic feedback there.

fan3982173917524862#7883 · December 2018

Great post highlighting the issues GS have due to not being updated to game 2 standards.
I've tried to play their campaign in ME, but I've never finished one.

Bloodydagger#9716 · December 2018

OP needs to post this over on Reddit where the devs frequent a lot more. I'm not so sure Devs hang around here much. This post very much needs to be seen by the Devs.

Theo91#7431 · December 2018

Kelefane said:
OP needs to post this over on Reddit where the devs frequent a lot more. I'm not so sure Devs hang around here much. This post very much needs to be seen by the Devs.

Agreed, so well summarised

@CA_Duck please take note of post. I don’t mind waiting for updates but please make the next flc a huge GS overhaul that’s really carefully implemented

SakuraHeinz · December 2018

As a goblin player, is there a higher lvl of masochist?

TheShiroOfDalton · December 2018

SakuraHeinz said:
As a goblin player, is there a higher lvl of masochist?

Goblins are fine actually. It's Ork Boys and Big'uns that are underwhelming.

Bogdanov89#9316 · December 2018

Your ideas are awesome.

But CA will not implement awesome ideas because they require work and testing

Boombastek91 · December 2018

SakuraHeinz said:
As a goblin player, is there a higher lvl of masochist?

Just use goblin lord instead ork lord.
Goblin lord squig had 40 bonus vs infantry. And had 45 basic attack.
He is killing machine.
And he fix main vulnerable of ork late game army. He gave on 20 sec aoe 48% shield vs arrow.
And in campaing whole army poison attack.

Beast_of_Guanyin#8747 · December 2018

GS definitely need a lot of work.

I'd have them scrap WAAAAGGHHH armies in favour of simply having a reinforcement army join every battle. Take your stack to fight Tyrion and you're in green tide mode? X reinforcements join you.

Grom_the_Paunch#8146 · December 2018

Great read. A lot of effort went into this post and I agree with most of it. I do feel that higher difficulties are a messy area when it comes to game balance though. Factions are designed to play differently at normal difficulties. The difficulty malus affects different factions in different ways and throws balance out the window... Fixed-value penalties affect already low values so much more. Stats that are supposed to be balanced on a knife-edge for some factions become utterly terrible.

Black Orcs are the least orc-y thing in the GS roaster. They don't behave like orcs and goblins. They aren't unpredictable and bonkers. They're a little bit dull actually. That's sort of the point in them, really. Keeping order amidst the chaos of a green horde. Therefore it doesn't feel right to have more than a unit or two in each army.

Even if I play lower difficulties and use as many unit types as possible, I still don't feel quite like I'm using a diverse force of unpredictable idiots and nutters like I do in tabletop. The charm is still missing for me. Doom divers and fanatics make me smile, at least.

Proper animosity on the battlefield would make them feel more like greenskins for me. Have your units attack each other or ignore orders once in a while. That's orc-y (and goblin-y)! Sadly, I know the strategy "purists" and MP tacticians will hate that idea and shoot it down. Ha! Strategy and tactics! That was never how I played GS on tabletop. You can't do that. It isn't green!

Currently, I'm a GS fan who doesn't like playing this game as GS. The way they play feels wrong. Well behaved and weak orcs... It's like watching a wild animal being kept in a tiny cage. I also hate the AI Waaagh! armies and the whole mechanic.

Itharus#3127 · December 2018

Goblins upkeep is way too high if you're not playing Skarsnik, IMO.

Honestly their upkeep should just BE at the level it is for Skarsnik. If you're playing regular greenskins Goblins actually get cost prohibitive, especially as supply lines pile up.

Greenskins should frankly not suffer supply lines penalties.

KolaJ · December 2018

Good post. Was wondering whom try out next of the old world races. Guess I'll avoid Orcs for a bit.

Did finish a Vary Hard Beastmen campaign and had a way batter time with Brayherds.
I do see how having them raid you own lands would be a problem Beastmen totally avoid. Also I do often let rebellions grow for a couple of turns, and it would be frustrating to have the AI ruining that. Also, for some reason, I don't remember Brayherd raiding as being too problematic for my own raiding.
In the end of the campaign I was using them a lot to raze minor settlements which my main armies did not want to bother with. They excelled at the task, sometimes traveling over a substantial distance of 4-5 regions to a minor settlement I coordinated them to. But with Orcs, where you actually want to take settlements, I can imagine it is not as good.

So basically Waaaghs! booo - Brayherds yeeey?

Itharus#3127 · December 2018

That first sentence made me sad, KolaJ.

Nitros14#7973 · December 2018

I feel like replenishment for everyone else is way too strong and Greenskins is just about right.

Losing men in battle shouldn't be meaningless.

Itharus#3127 · December 2018

Nitros14 said:
I feel like replenishment for everyone else is way too strong and Greenskins is just about right.

Losing men in battle shouldn't be meaningless.

Except for Greenskins... it more or less is.

Greenskins and Skaven *should* have ridiculous replenishment.

It's actually the dwarfs and elves and men who have bad replenishment. Lizards, too.

Ituriel32 · December 2018

CA guys did not cope with nations focused on the number of cheap units.

So I do not play orcs, rats or vampires. here it must be said that only orcs are in such a desperate situation.
Because they have only black orcs and a big spider from elite units, while the rest of the units are trash.

Another problem that I have with this game is that in the late game, the army consists only of elite units.
I need that the armies include the basic units from which this breed is famous.
Empire - free campaigns, swordsmen, whips.
Rats - slaves and clan rats
Vampires - zombies and skeletons warriors
Orcs and goblins - orcs and goblins ...

The problem is the lack of cash limits in the campaign. Where the clashes are usually 20 or 20 units.
What is the point in giving an ordinary orc to the army when the opponent has an infantry line composed of Hammerers ??

I use mods to limit elite units. but it does not change the situation of orcs and goblins too much. Their basic units lose the 1-on-1 battle with units of other nations.

I always wanted the WHAAA mechanic to add additional units above state 20. So that the army would have 30 units fighting the army.

kevManiac#4754 · December 2018

A great post. There were some things I did not know, and CA should really look into this. Especially the Eat Captives, for that is just one numerical adjustment easily made, and changes the replenishment already substantially.
A third solution to the Waaagh! mechanic, could be that the player could get control of the Waaagh! army, giving a temporary army with some conditions (like can't get out of a radius of x meters, or can't replenish like the Blood Voyage). That could sove almost all the problems.
Given, players can abuse this (probably), but we are talking about Campaign and there are some cheese moves already (check Skaven Corruption to see if there is a Skaven in this ruin for example)

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