Im tired of people repeating "not melee on higher difficulties"

Guillermidas#6283

Really, I want to understand these people. Do they only watch streamers cheesing AI with all missiles and 3 heroes and echo the same tactic on their campaigns?

Yes, AI get buffed in VH/Legendary, but it is managable. From what I gather from maaaany discussions on forum / reddit, people tend to go Doomstacking, either full missile armies, or if not, heavy slow elite intantry like chosen/ironbreakers and artillery behind do the work. Not only you have a high upkeep underperforming army, but very boring as well, where you can simply sit behind, spam 2 spells and drink a coffee in the meantime.

Units like skirmishers or chavalry almost never see a play because they require micro. As an example, in my VH chaos campaign I had a frontline of chosen and 4-6 horsemasters as hammer and anvil. And guess who did all the killing? yup, the 0 upkeep horsemasters. Why is it so? It is the price+speed that makes the so good in manual battles. Chosen/chaos warriors or even elven tier1 spears can hold the line the required time to break their lines.

Yes, you can break leadership in VH, if you flank enemies from behind. The cheap price of these skirmishers makes AI not shoot them at all, which is their main weakness. If you have 4-6 of them you can use half to chase their missiles/artillery and with good micro, they dont shoot at all, using fake charges and good micro. The other half, you use them to shoot enemy frontline from behind and charge/go back/charge again till they break formations fast. Make sure you have some fear in your frontline as well, to reduce morale even more, and a strong magic user to buff/debuff or cast damage spells.

After all the combined forces outmaneuver enemy lines, they WILL flee. This is the part where Skirmishers works the best. Dont end battle. Chase them to death. Your skirmishers have around 80-100 speed, and usually shoot while moving, while fat ironbreakers or whatever is left of their army are very slow. Using all these steps can make a good skirmisher unit to make 150-250 kills in a huge battle (large unit size, not ultra).

If your army dont have fast light chavalry skirmishers, like skavens, you need to use stalk fast units, like deathrunners. Place them behind enemy lines at start of the game, and move directly to enemy artillery undetected. After you take them out, use them like I said before, half of them to chase missiles, the other to attack from behind, and stack those leadershipt debuffs.

Easy way to win AI on hardest difficutly without cheese tactics. Just hammer and anvil.

I personally dont find heavy chavalry that useful since AI tend to shoot the most expensive unit, and they usually are, which heavily reduce their numbers before they can do their job. Specially against elves, dwarfs, empire and skavens.

Regarding the frontline, I find best to have heavy intrantry with silver shields if available, so they can be the enemy missile targets, and survive long enough for the hammer and anvil to work. Some tier 1 race units work as well, if you have strong support for them, like a mix of 4-6 dreadspears and 2 hydras for terror spread+fire breath with darksshards behind as an example.

I used to cheese AI back when I started seeing how powerful it was. The game became boring as hell. Theres no need to win campaign in 120 turns, it is not a competitive game, and streamers do these not to lose battles in front of hundreds of people. You dont really need to use this same tactic to play, Total War is not a job.


EDIT: the purpose of these threat is not for me to state I am a great player. I am not. But to remark you can win AI on hardest difficulty avoiding doomstacking, and disclaim only Missile heavy focused army can be used. Additionally, it makes the campaign battles much more enjoyable and micro focused.

AxiosXiphos#9040

My solution: Play Legendary Campaign - Normal battle difficulty.

Your campaign is still challenging, battles are harder, longer and far more common against tougher and more numerous enemies but your troops still act how they should perform. Chaos warriors are still chaos warriors.

To me this is the best way to play - but i'm sure others have their own methods which are equally valid.

Tennisgolfboll#5877

What you did is cheese. And yes there are many ways to skin a cat.

Guillermidas#6283

AxiosXiphos said:

My solution: Play Legendary Campaign - Normal battle difficulty.

Your campaign is still challenging, battles are harder, longer and far more common against tougher and more numerous enemies but your troops still act how they should perform. Chaos warriors are still chaos warriors.

To me this is the best way to play - but i'm sure others have their own methods which are equally valid.

Im used to play VH/VH unless i change to legendary. I might give it a try.

One question regarding Normal battle difficulty. Does AI reduce their effectiviness using certain units?
I find in latest patchs AI use really well the chavalry, charging and going back after few seconds and then charge again, like it should. But I am not sure if it does this in Normal as well.

Guillermidas#6283

Tennisgolfboll said:

What you did is cheese. And yes there are many ways to skin a cat.

What part exactly? Only thing I abuse AI intelligence is regarding the price of skirmishers and their inabilitiy to shoot them because they are cheap units. The rest is straight melee combat and stack different leadership debuffs against an already buffed AI, which people state is "unbreakble".

Is, in fact, how you win in TT, making sure enemy flee, to shooting them from behind your lord.
My armies are mostly cheap infantry, skirmishers, 2 elite units at the backline to defend from flanking, no more than 6 missiles and around 2-3 monsters to spread fear through all the frontline.

Masarius#7206

Normal battle difficulty is not balanced. It favors player.

Hard = Equal
Very Hard = AI buffs
Legendary = Same as Very Hard

I almost soley play on VH/H and I have never yieled one of those ranged cheese armies or played that way. It is probably the most brong and uninspired way to play the game.

I tend to build balanced or themed armies. There are tons of military tactics to use. Hammer and anvil or proper use of stalk are valid ones, but there are others.

Tennisgolfboll#5877

https://youtu.be/gOHsnxbsvBU this shows how legend just throws his melee away. He could have used the hero and malekith dodging missiles and harassing and saved pretty every single melee unit.

After he says well melee didnt do much. Yeah no **** sherlock you just let them eat all missiles and stood there whole battle wiping his melee units etc

AxiosXiphos#9040

Guillermidas said:

AxiosXiphos said:

My solution: Play Legendary Campaign - Normal battle difficulty.

Your campaign is still challenging, battles are harder, longer and far more common against tougher and more numerous enemies but your troops still act how they should perform. Chaos warriors are still chaos warriors.

To me this is the best way to play - but i'm sure others have their own methods which are equally valid.

Im used to play VH/VH unless i change to legendary. I might give it a try.

One question regarding Normal battle difficulty. Does AI reduce their effectiviness using certain units?
I find in latest patchs AI use really well the chavalry, charging and going back after few seconds and then charge again, like it should. But I am not sure if it does this in Normal as well.

Nope this is a very common misconception with the difficulty settings actually; it doesn't affect the A.I. in anyway. The computer will perform exactly the same on Easy or VH battle. All it does it give flat stat buffs to A.I units (or your units in the case of easy mode).

The problem is the stat buffs are not very well balanced; they provide huge melee and leadership bonuses but no additional protection against ranged/magic. Therefore that is why you see people spamming mass ranged against legendary armies - the A.I is effectively getting very little benefit in this scenario. Effectively you might as well be playing Normal difficulty with this strategy as you are removing the advantage it gets.

Honestly I think battle difficulty breaks the game; the units were not designed to play under that format and the balancing is all over the place. Legendary Campaign - Normal battle however gives the A.I big bonuses on the campaign map (where it needs it) but it still has to play you on a level playing field in the actual battles. They will have bigger armies, more armies and better units/lords, in addition their units will have higher ranks from the ambient rank increases they get. However you can prevail using your own factions strategies to your advantage, play heavy melee with the melee armies, play ranged, play artillery. Every race/unit plays as it should do - you just face a bigger challenge.

Sorry for that rant - but I hope that gives some people the drive to give it a go. honestly it's the best way to play a challenging game of total war!

GettoGecko#7861

Don't bother with it, some people can't grasp more than hammer and anvil tactic and can't even execute it properly and they will call every tactic that works on vh battle difficulty cheese.

Tennisgolfboll#5877

Guillermidas said:

Tennisgolfboll said:

What you did is cheese. And yes there are many ways to skin a cat.

What part exactly? Only thing I abuse AI intelligence is regarding the price of skirmishers and their inabilitiy to shoot them because they are cheap units. The rest is straight melee combat and stack different leadership debuffs against an already buffed AI, which people state is "unbreakble".

Is, in fact, how you win in TT, making sure enemy flee, to shooting them from behind your lord.
My armies are mostly cheap infantry, skirmishers, 2 elite units at the backline to defend from flanking, no more than 6 missiles and around 2-3 monsters to spread fear through all the frontline.

Read my signature:

It needs to be pointed out that what people call "cheese" is just playing the game the way it actually exists not in some fictional way they think it is supposed to work

AxiosXiphos#9040

Masarius said:

Normal battle difficulty is not balanced. It favors player.

Hard = Equal
Very Hard = AI buffs
Legendary = Same as Very Hard

I almost soley play on VH/H and I have never yieled one of those ranged cheese armies or played that way. It is probably the most brong and uninspired way to play the game.

I tend to build balanced or themed armies. There are tons of military tactics to use. Hammer and anvil or proper use of stalk are valid ones, but there are others.

Sorry this isn't true. It was true in proving grounds (as they played around the difficulty names) but in vanilla total war - normal is where the balance is;



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z1SxYR85Dc

AxiosXiphos#9040

GettoGecko said:

Don't bother with it, some people can't grasp more than hammer and anvil tactic and can't even execute it properly and they will call every tactic that works on vh battle difficulty cheese.

No need to be hostile - people can play as they choose.

However the point i'm making about h/vh battle is that it unfairly buffs/debuffs melee units.



Because of this, on VH difficulty your melee units are suddenly useless whereas your ranged units perform almost identically as they do on Normal.

The thing here is that if you take a very ranged heavy build on VH (as you probably should do) then you are effectively ignoring the benefits that VH offers the A.I- the A.I will have a small leadership bonus and reload speed. Thats it. If you take a ranged heavy build you might as well be playing on normal - as that's the only stats that are really being affected.

My take on it is this;

Normal Difficulty;

Melee Heavy Army: Performs as expected.
Balanced Army: Performs as expected.
Ranged Heavy Army: Performs as expected.

VH Difficulty:

Melee Heavy Army: Performs far worse then expected due to huge melee buffs/debuffs.
Balanced Army: Performs moderately worse as melee components will suffer due to melee buffs/debuffs.
Ranged Heavy Army: Performs very slightly worse as melee buffs will only take effect if you are caught in melee. All other times your units will perform as expected.

So yes the game will always be harder on VH - but effectively all you are doing is forcing yourself to take ranged builds. I think what CA intended was players would still use balanced builds for VH and therefore the challenge would be more rounded - but if you are playing 'cheese' as some might call it then you are going out of your way to ignore any benefits the A.I. is given. Basically you are playing pretty much normal difficulty again. Your 'cheese' build would perform against a normal A.I. very similarly as it would against a VH A.I.

So my summary (IMPO) is that all VH does it make you not play many melee units - other then that the game might aswell be called normal.

Tajl#2208

AxiosXiphos said:

Honestly I think battle difficulty breaks the game; the units were not designed to play under that format and the balancing is all over the place. Legendary Campaign - Normal battle however gives the A.I big bonuses on the campaign map (where it needs it) but it still has to play you on a level playing field in the actual battles. They will have bigger armies, more armies and better units/lords, in addition their units will have higher ranks from the ambient rank increases they get. However you can prevail using your own factions strategies to your advantage, play heavy melee with the melee armies, play ranged, play artillery. Every race/unit plays as it should do - you just face a bigger challenge.

I play legendary/very hard and I think AI needs those battle buffs too. AI is not that good with campaign buffs and battle difficulty compensates that.

For example in my Grom campaign my buffed goblins can melee AI stormvermins just fine. My goblins have all possible buffs and AI just cant do it. Maybe against swordmasters those goblins doesn't work that well. But then I have black orcs with all possible buffs and they will do. With normal battle difficulty there would be no need for elite units as those buffed tier1 goblin spears would be able to kill everything. Even with very hard I have used full goblin armies and they work just fine as long as I don't try it against doom stack or multiple stack. Though not big problem if I lose cheap goblin army or two.

AxiosXiphos#9040

Tajl said:

AxiosXiphos said:

Honestly I think battle difficulty breaks the game; the units were not designed to play under that format and the balancing is all over the place. Legendary Campaign - Normal battle however gives the A.I big bonuses on the campaign map (where it needs it) but it still has to play you on a level playing field in the actual battles. They will have bigger armies, more armies and better units/lords, in addition their units will have higher ranks from the ambient rank increases they get. However you can prevail using your own factions strategies to your advantage, play heavy melee with the melee armies, play ranged, play artillery. Every race/unit plays as it should do - you just face a bigger challenge.

I play legendary/very hard and I think AI needs those battle buffs too. AI is not that good with campaign buffs and battle difficulty compensates that.

For example in my Grom campaign my buffed goblins can melee AI stormvermins just fine. My goblins have all possible buffs and AI just cant do it. Maybe against swordmasters those goblins doesn't work that well. But then I have black orcs with all possible buffs and they will do. With normal battle difficulty there would be no need for elite units as those buffed tier1 goblin spears would be able to kill everything. Even with very hard I have used full goblin armies and they work just fine as long as I don't try it against doom stack or multiple stack. Though not big problem if I lose cheap goblin army or two.

That's absolutely fine - and the great thing about SP is we can all play exactly as we choose! Personally I'm fine with the A.I getting campaign buffs but I like my battles to play on a level playing field (even if the A.I has bigger, stronger, elite and more armies).

fan3982173917524862#7883

Hammer and anvil, as well as utilizing skirmisher speed to your advantage is not always an option considering on higher difficulties the AI will outnumber you in battles and you are limited in how many armies you can field due to supply lines, so you will use a defensive position to try and deny the AI army to envelop you with it's numbers.

VH battle difficulty working against melee units and barely affecting ranged needs to be reworked, along with supply lines which need to go.

Outliner cases where melee units can get absurd buffs like Imrik's dragon princes and Grom's goblins are not the actual representation to how melee units perform in VH.

sadatus

In addition to the obvious reasons regarding melee performance, you have to also consider that in the higher campaign difficulties you often fight 3-4 battles in a turn with the same army and the only way to survive that is through healing or avoiding casualties.

You can heal to full with an army of single entities like monsters or with a low count like hipogrifs or treekin that can sustain a lot of damage before losing models. So with those kind of armies it is viable to play melee although less optimal due ti the debuffs.

With melee infantry if you don't play vampires you will lose models and won't be able to fully heal.

Melee units will always receive damage even if they are chosen against goblins, and after a couple battles you will start to risk losing units and even your army.

Ranged units deal damage without receiving any if played correctly thus allowing you to win battles unscathed and to win many battles in a row without problems.

GettoGecko#7861

AxiosXiphos said:

Because of this, on VH difficulty your melee units are suddenly useless whereas your ranged units perform almost identically as they do on Normal.

And thats the point where you don't understand the game mechancs and how they interact. Yes ranged units deal dmg but like in history their main tactical use is morale shock and making units flee to keep them out of the actual combat. The leadership buff on vh make AI units harder to rout so that in return they will stay longer in active combat.
On normal you can play a ranged only army and will win campaigns with that, you can't do that on vh. By your simplistic argumentation that should be prove enough that melee units must be far supperior to range, but the game is more complex than what you try to argument here.
On vh how you combine your forces is the key to victory and that normally includes the right mix of all roles a faction can choose from.

You can easily win l/vh campaigns with Throgs all Ice Trolls, Chosen armies, Kholek Shaggoths, LM Dino armies, VC and so on. There are many ways to play all melee armies on these settings but you will have a hard time to play a ranged only are even if you can pull it of with Orion its much more work than with melee only.

Guillermidas#6283

Tajl said:

AxiosXiphos said:

Honestly I think battle difficulty breaks the game; the units were not designed to play under that format and the balancing is all over the place. Legendary Campaign - Normal battle however gives the A.I big bonuses on the campaign map (where it needs it) but it still has to play you on a level playing field in the actual battles. They will have bigger armies, more armies and better units/lords, in addition their units will have higher ranks from the ambient rank increases they get. However you can prevail using your own factions strategies to your advantage, play heavy melee with the melee armies, play ranged, play artillery. Every race/unit plays as it should do - you just face a bigger challenge.

I play legendary/very hard and I think AI needs those battle buffs too. AI is not that good with campaign buffs and battle difficulty compensates that.

For example in my Grom campaign my buffed goblins can melee AI stormvermins just fine. My goblins have all possible buffs and AI just cant do it. Maybe against swordmasters those goblins doesn't work that well. But then I have black orcs with all possible buffs and they will do. With normal battle difficulty there would be no need for elite units as those buffed tier1 goblin spears would be able to kill everything. Even with very hard I have used full goblin armies and they work just fine as long as I don't try it against doom stack or multiple stack. Though not big problem if I lose cheap goblin army or two.

Thats exactly my point. You can abuse AI in melee just by buffing a bit your gobbos and they will hold the line against T3 units, and even win against most of them. In legendary, they cant, unless you bring support AKA mix them with trolls, magic buffs and spider gobbos flanking from behind.

If you go for black orks, they can hold the line well in VH despite the buffs, saying otherwise is just false. But they still need support to break enemy lines FAST. Hold the line is not enough, thats why AI needs some buffs and you debuffs, otherwise, there would be no difficulty at all. But people abuse AI programming using heroes to tank all the army and spam missiles and magic instead of trying a challenge battle. EZ.

The only problem I see with the difficulty is, not AI spamming armies all the time, but doing doomstacks as well. I really think game needs an option, just like "real battle mode", to simulate TT army building by "basic units" "special units" and "singular units" so armies have more variety. But only as an option for those who want more loreful variety armies, and make Fenix guard what they should in battlefield, powerful pink unicorns that almost never see the day, but they shine when they appear.

Game should be about outsmarting the AI in battle on highest difficulties, not abusing their obvious weaknesses with lightning strike for easy wins.

innerp

GettoGecko said:

AxiosXiphos said:

Because of this, on VH difficulty your melee units are suddenly useless whereas your ranged units perform almost identically as they do on Normal.

On normal you can play a ranged only army and will win campaigns with that, you can't do that on vh

im not argueing that melee is useless on VH, but that is entirely possible, depending on faction, and often the most efficient too. the melee debuffs should be lowered a bit and compensated with some ranged debuffs imo.

Guillermidas#6283

sadato said:

In addition to the obvious reasons regarding melee performance, you have to also consider that in the higher campaign difficulties you often fight 3-4 battles in a turn with the same army and the only way to survive that is through healing or avoiding casualties.

You can heal to full with an army of single entities like monsters or with a low count like hipogrifs or treekin that can sustain a lot of damage before losing models. So with those kind of armies it is viable to play melee although less optimal due ti the debuffs.

With melee infantry if you don't play vampires you will lose models and won't be able to fully heal.

Melee units will always receive damage even if they are chosen against goblins, and after a couple battles you will start to risk losing units and even your army.

Ranged units deal damage without receiving any if played correctly thus allowing you to win battles unscathed and to win many battles in a row without problems.

Yes, I understand the logic behind missile armies.

But there are more ways to deal with many armies:
You have agents, you can outmanouver them and choose where you want to fight (for example, defending a river), you positioning yourself next to their max movement range where an army has to march stance then avoid fight and charge in next turn only one of their armies, there's ambushes, or simply avoid fight and go straight to their recruitment cities and force enemy to go back and defend (a bit risky, but can work, depend on the situation).

Leping#7906

You play in very hard, in legendary difficulty a risky thing may turn in instant game over or a campaign ruined going forever

If you want your fun, like me, with thematic army, mouvement and risky moves, stay in VH.

But you can't judge an optimised playstyle from people who enjoy it and do wathever it takes to never be caught off guard and lose everything.

Guillermidas#6283

I played campaigns in Legendary too. Using skeletons free upkeep, some chavalry/bats for flanking and no WoD. Or same tactics comment above in other races.

Reason I dont play often on legend is just because I cant pause/reduce time when a battle is almost over, just to see combat animations and enjoy this beutiful game. The camera restrictions are very annoying.

Sultschiem#8734

The idea, that melee is useless on higher difficulty, is straight up nonesense.

What it does is make them less efficient in terms of campaign, as they take way more casualties, which reduces their effectiveness faster. Big monsters on the other hand are not affected by it, because they only become less efficient once dead/routed.

You need more work to make melee-infantry-builds work e.g. via magic and other skills.

Many players just play for "maximum efficiency", which makes them deem anything, that does not provide enough bang per x buck "useless".

I tend to ignore that and play my legendary campaigns without such cheese.

The only "cheese" i use is corner-camping with certain factions, if the odds are very bad, that's it, since the AI can use flankers WAY more efficient than any human could, so countering it is really hard when outnumbered enough.

If players want to cheese harder, doomstack etc. it is of no concern to me, but I want to do it "the proper way" and CA should make that possible.



Its essentially like "meta-builds" in mmos or mobas.... if too many high-level players keep spouting the same stuff, the masses will accept it as gospel and they will rip you to shreds if you argue otherwise, even if you can show data to PROOF them wrong...

I never liked meta-builds and usually did my own stuff, even in high-competitive settings and performed well enough to compete with meta-builds....yet the hate and salt you get from people, who buy into metas is ......

So don't bother ^^

Bereaver#4201

There are ways to make melee work on Legendary with many factions. The main thing is to choose something with high resists/Ward Save.

I had major success in Legendary heavy melee infantry runs:
1. Wurrzag got +50% replenishment for Savage Orcs units everywhere even in previous patch. I got away with destroying Chaos invasion AND destroying str. 1 Empire by using a lot of ambush and regenerating at the start of my turn. Savage Orc Big Uns are still mean even on Legendary, even if you can not defeat Chaos Warriors 1 on 1 , you can do it 2 to 1 lol
2. Hellebron - buffs SoS so much that they rarely die - a lot of MD,MA, WD and poison.
3. Kroq'Gar - just throw Saurus with spears till everything dies. You need to bring several Saurus stacks of your own together, but they are really cheap with all upkeep skills/tech. Just do not spread out too much
4. Vampire Counts - they do not really have that much choice lol, but buffed with Necro/Mortis Engine/Corpse Cart Grave Guard can hold its own even on Legendary. You can get quite low upkeep for Mannfred.
5. Dwarfs - massed IB are actual killers. They have satchels and they never die even when exhausted.
6. Cylostra - she buffs Syreens resist to rarely ever die in battle, Syreens debuff enemy MA and you can use Vampire Captain to heal them with Nehek.

Also while not exactly infantry, some melee cavalry can and will devastate enemy armies:
1. Grail Guardians - have Perfect Vigour, insane armour, MD and high WD. They will hold even against Chosen with Halberds and maul everything else.
2. Dragon Princes - Imrik makes them Gods. You do not really even need dragons (maybe for sieges, but Fire Mage+Imrik can kill most garrisons themselves).

Of course, some may say that is not the most efficient way to play on Legendary, but it is not as unforgiving as most think. You can recover from most losses anyway, even if you lost your stack. People just should accept that they can and will sometimes lose armies on Legendary.

Rasmus242#8560

AxiosXiphos said:

GettoGecko said:

Don't bother with it, some people can't grasp more than hammer and anvil tactic and can't even execute it properly and they will call every tactic that works on vh battle difficulty cheese.

No need to be hostile - people can play as they choose.

However the point i'm making about h/vh battle is that it unfairly buffs/debuffs melee units.



Because of this, on VH difficulty your melee units are suddenly useless whereas your ranged units perform almost identically as they do on Normal.

The thing here is that if you take a very ranged heavy build on VH (as you probably should do) then you are effectively ignoring the benefits that VH offers the A.I- the A.I will have a small leadership bonus and reload speed. Thats it. If you take a ranged heavy build you might as well be playing on normal - as that's the only stats that are really being affected.

My take on it is this;

Normal Difficulty;

Melee Heavy Army: Performs as expected.
Balanced Army: Performs as expected.
Ranged Heavy Army: Performs as expected.

VH Difficulty:

Melee Heavy Army: Performs far worse then expected due to huge melee buffs/debuffs.
Balanced Army: Performs moderately worse as melee components will suffer due to melee buffs/debuffs.
Ranged Heavy Army: Performs very slightly worse as melee buffs will only take effect if you are caught in melee. All other times your units will perform as expected.

So yes the game will always be harder on VH - but effectively all you are doing is forcing yourself to take ranged builds. I think what CA intended was players would still use balanced builds for VH and therefore the challenge would be more rounded - but if you are playing 'cheese' as some might call it then you are going out of your way to ignore any benefits the A.I. is given. Basically you are playing pretty much normal difficulty again. Your 'cheese' build would perform against a normal A.I. very similarly as it would against a VH A.I.

So my summary (IMPO) is that all VH does it make you not play many melee units - other then that the game might aswell be called normal.

You aren't "forced" to take ranged build. It'll be easier but if you wanted EASY why not just play at a lower difficult? I've played VH/VH making mixed armies and I don't see a problem. You still have way better spell usage, ability usage, flanking usage and tons more factors. Your heroes also snowball with more focused buffs / items etc.

I can agree it's bad that the difficulty affects melee more than ranged because it creates an unnatural shift but you can still play the game and enjoy it as long as you don't go full min-max.

GloatingSwine#8098

AxiosXiphos said:

Because of this, on VH difficulty your melee units are suddenly useless whereas your ranged units perform almost identically as they do on Normal.

The thing here is that if you take a very ranged heavy build on VH (as you probably should do) then you are effectively ignoring the benefits that VH offers the A.I- the A.I will have a small leadership bonus and reload speed. Thats it. If you take a ranged heavy build you might as well be playing on normal - as that's the only stats that are really being affected.

The other thing is that in a ranged unit, all models deal damage. In a melee unit only models actually in contact with an enemy will deal damage.

So ranged units will make the enemy dead faster than melee units, and because the biggest morale effects are from damage taken and damage taken quickly, massed ranged fire is also effective at breaking morale all on its own without having to micro charges and such.

Tayvar

AxiosXiphos said:

My solution: Play Legendary Campaign - Normal battle difficulty.

Your campaign is still challenging, battles are harder, longer and far more common against tougher and more numerous enemies but your troops still act how they should perform. Chaos warriors are still chaos warriors.

To me this is the best way to play - but I'm sure others have their own methods which are equally valid.

Yea, the AI not playing fair with resources and having more armies is better than the AI stats cheats.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NotPlayingFairWithResources

Guillermidas#6283

Sultschiem said:

The idea, that melee is useless on higher difficulty, is straight up nonesense.

Many players just play for "maximum efficiency", which makes them deem anything, that does not provide enough bang per x buck "useless".

Its essentially like "meta-builds" in mmos or mobas.... if too many high-level players keep spouting the same stuff, the masses will accept it as gospel and they will rip you to shreds if you argue otherwise, even if you can show data to PROOF them wrong...

I never liked meta-builds and usually did my own stuff, even in high-competitive settings and performed well enough to compete with meta-builds....yet the hate and salt you get from people, who buy into metas is ......

So don't bother ^^

Wow man, you must be a sibling of mine! The worst thing is these people, specially on mobas, report you straight at the start of the game for "throwing" their game, but in the end they feed while you outperform with your niche build. So many people are like sheeps. Not just in gaming but in politics, and many more things and its disgusting.

Bereaver said:

There are ways to make melee work on Legendary with many factions. The main thing is to choose something with high resists/Ward Save.

I had major success in Legendary heavy melee infantry runs:
1. Wurrzag
2. Hellebron
3. Kroq'Gar
4. Vampire Counts
5. Dwarfs
6. Cylostra

Theres a hidden jewel I absolutely love and worked wonders for me on Legendary, very lorefriendly too.
A huge mass of battle pilgrims with Fay Enchantress, shouting "For ze lady!" while they charge into a huge mass of monsters. They are really great with her buffs, red skill tree and healing. 4 grail knights to flank, the blessed trebuchet you start with and some poison archers to help your frontline. From all my legendary campaigns, it was the one I have most fun with. The problem is they perform really bad against heavy armour, particularly Chaos Warriors. But the rest of "Evil" factions are cake walk.

capybarasiesta89#4722

Tennisgolfboll said:

https://youtu.be/gOHsnxbsvBU this shows how legend just throws his melee away. He could have used the hero and malekith dodging missiles and harassing and saved pretty every single melee unit.

After he says well melee didnt do much. Yeah no **** sherlock you just let them eat all missiles and stood there whole battle wiping his melee units etc

I really like Legend but I don't agree with him always especially on Melee infantry part and skeleton spam, it doesn't always work later on Skeleton Spam is not viable you have to replace them otherwis AR will screw you up every time.

Guillermidas#6283

englisharcher89 said:

Tennisgolfboll said:

https://youtu.be/gOHsnxbsvBU this shows how legend just throws his melee away. He could have used the hero and malekith dodging missiles and harassing and saved pretty every single melee unit.

After he says well melee didnt do much. Yeah no **** sherlock you just let them eat all missiles and stood there whole battle wiping his melee units etc

I really like Legend but I don't agree with him always especially on Melee infantry part and skeleton spam, it doesn't always work later on Skeleton Spam is not viable you have to replace them otherwis AR will screw you up every time.

I neither agree on Legend on his armies, too much cheese for the cheese god. But he really is good at playing this game.

But regarding skeletons, I think they can work well in Legendary. I, at least, had no trouble at all, till turn 100. But they need, as every other intrantry in the game (specially low tier), good support from monsters/chavalry. If you play with Isabella, she is great buffing bats. With a hero vampire to lead them for leadership buff, you can snipe artillery and missiles at the very beginning of the battle so you only need to worry about melee combat, where vampires shine. Overwhelm with numbers, skeletons dont need to kill, just surround enemy so they cant scape.

The killing power is in vampires, fear and magic.

Djau#5149

Legendary Campaign - Normal Battle is the best way to play; and balanced for the most armies.