Woodelves ruin Campaign

montgomeryflint

In every campaign I have played so far the wood elves have far and away been the worst part in every conceivable way. I am more scared to invade them than any other faction(that clearly makes sense right...), I am less scared of chaos invasion than fighting them, they do nothing which ads zilch to any play through, I have never seen them lose to anyone and I would rather bash my head into a wall than play out a battle with them. It also helps that the only useful advise on the forums is "make 4 stacks and auto resolve each battle".

I guess they were worse in the past and are getting an update currently. But god, I have no idea how you botch a race this badly.

Goatforce

I would say botched is an overstatement, but they certainly need work.

Them being isolationist is loreful, and to an extent a result of the "green tide" when they were first added. I hope with the patch they get more active but focus more on raiding and razing than empire building.

ArneSo

To the OP, WE are extremely powerful on the battlefield and have one of the best rosters in the game.

A good way to counter them is playing Clan Skryre with mainly using Skryre units.

Your ranged units will nuke them filthy hippies to oblivion and your Doomwheels and Doom-Flayers are good to bring down archers.

I managed to wipe out 3 WE doomstacks in one battle with such an Army.

Bretonnia is also quite effective against them because of all the Cav and heavy armour.

montgomeryflint

ArneSo said:

To the OP, WE are extremely powerful on the battlefield and have one of the best rosters in the game.

A good way to counter them is playing Clan Skryre with mainly using Skryre units.

Your ranged units will nuke them filthy hippies to oblivion and your Doomwheels and Doom-Flayers are good to bring down archers.

I managed to wipe out 3 WE doomstacks in one battle with such an Army.

Bretonnia is also quite effective against them because of all the Cav and heavy armour.

Thanks for the advice! Skrye will definitely be on my to play list.

Goatforce said:

I would say botched is an overstatement, but they certainly need work.

Them being isolationist is loreful, and to an extent a result of the "green tide" when they were first added. I hope with the patch they get more active but focus more on raiding and razing than empire building.

Yeah, I feel like they have to change something. Every campaign just feels like it is divided between normal play through and figuring out how best to not lose when invading the woodelves.

Ingr8

I always thought that artillery was the hard counter to the WE. A few mortar shells and or a rocket barrage should mess up their ranged units

MrDragon

MonstersAbound in his recent Clan Angrund campaign had a fun solution:
Recruit 1 stack of nothing but ironbreakers and recruit 1 stack with an engineer and nothing but irondrakes and flame cannons.
Move those two armies as a single unit around Athel Loren and burn everything to the ground.
It was hilarious. Literally couldn't see Durthu through the flames.

Vanilla_Gorilla

Do you want advice OP?

You need to tell us what you're bringing to fight them.

ShiroAmakusa75

Yep, they're terribly implemented and they're bound to get worse once they get their typical elf P2W DLC.

Ranged units as a whole need nerfing.

BillyRuffian

Side conversation removed. Please discuss the topic without discussing other users.

MaleAmazon

Wood elves have gotten wiped several times in my campaigns (legendary). They tend to do well and then eventually usually implode, even without my help.

That being said, fighting them on the battle map is a nightmare. But doable. Bring your strongest units with some preference for trying to counter their most dangerous units. Single-hero dance and make them waste their ammo if it is doable.

The problem with WE is that they are not isolationist, instead they love to declare war on you completely unprovoked, which is especially messy when you play Belegar.

GloatingSwine

montgomeryflint said:

In every campaign I have played so far the wood elves have far and away been the worst part in every conceivable way. I am more scared to invade them than any other faction(that clearly makes sense right...),

Don't then?

They can sit in their stupid forest doing nothing.

It's not like Athel Loren's even worth anything once you've got it, so unless your campaign objectives specifically require you to conquer it, leave it.

Polar_IceCream

Goatforce said:

I would say botched is an overstatement, but they certainly need work.

Them being isolationist is loreful, and to an extent a result of the "green tide" when they were first added. I hope with the patch they get more active but focus more on raiding and razing than empire building.

I strongly back this

Goatforce

ShiroAmakusa75 said:

Yep, they're terribly implemented and they're bound to get worse once they get their typical elf P2W DLC.

Ranged units as a whole need nerfing.

As I recall both HEs and DEs are strong without DLC. Also WEs have always been pretty damn good, with no DLC. Of course they have some bad matchups, but still.

I wouldn't say that, imo shields should be buffed, rather than ranged nerf, we should have some units and characters with gold shield, such as Tomb Guard, Ironbreakers, and Gor Rok.

Jman5

Being tough to invade is like the defining feature of wood elves. Not just in Warhammer but in the fantasy genre overall. It's balanced by the fact that they tend to stick close to their forest home so their empires are fairly small. In that regard, I would say they haven't failed, but nailed it.

What is it that is causing you trouble? Usually what frustrates people is them being hard to pin down as they run and shoot. I would say the three things you can do is beat them at their own range-game with artillery, get some fast movers that can close the gap, or bulk up on anti-range defense and just beat down the non-skirmishers.

Aside from just bringing more stacks, you can also bring along agents to soften up their armies/garrisons.

montgomeryflint

Vanilla_Gorilla said:

Do you want advice OP?

You need to tell us what you're bringing to fight them.

I don't think I am so much in need of advise, I think everyone understands that cannons and cavalry is generally good against large numbers of ranged units. I just curious if other people have similar experiences in campaign, of just getting completely bogged down by wood elves.

GloatingSwine said:

montgomeryflint said:

In every campaign I have played so far the wood elves have far and away been the worst part in every conceivable way. I am more scared to invade them than any other faction(that clearly makes sense right...),

Don't then?

They can sit in their stupid forest doing nothing.

It's not like Athel Loren's even worth anything once you've got it, so unless your campaign objectives specifically require you to conquer it, leave it.

They are right in the middle of everything, so it feels like a matter of time before you fight them. They are also an objective

MaleAmazon

I don't think I am so much in need of advise, I think everyone understands that cannons and cavalry is generally good against large numbers of ranged units.

Cavalry in WH2 is generally speaking not good vs anything. Fast monsters generally are. Cannons are often good, but not all of them, and what you put in the red line etc matters a lot.

Vs large number of ranged units, it is imo better to;

-Dance in front of them to make them waste their ammo on a single hero (yeah, it´s an exploit, never said you have to do it). Generally you have to be the attacker for this, otherwise they attack your whole army.

-Bring a fast flyer or some other suitable unit to fly across their army to make them bunch up, then drop area spells on them.

-Use magic.

Flanking is worse vs wood elver since they have several archers that can fire in any direction.

Anyway, they are strong, but so what? If you just want to beat them, autoresolve. If you don´t want to autoresolve, bring your best and have a challenge. And like stated above, their territory is generally pretty useless economywise. Sacking gives tons of cash and a not small amount of joy, otoh...

And I have never seen them take over the world and keep it. They often have no friends, and they don´t have proper settlements. I´ve seen them expand but not maintain their expansion.

misunderstoodvampire

I only play on hard but invading Athel Loren is always mus favorite part of the campaign no matter which faction I'm playing. Usually it takes only 4 armies

Krunch

The "Problem" with Total War Warhammer is that it can't really represent the sort of low level conflicts and raids that take place. Small battles that are just part of ongoing life, not even part of any real war, just a minor battle. Whether it be fighting beastmen raids, or an empire regiment getting ambushed by Wood Elves as they tread on sacred ground or whatever, these little battles that can take place in the TT and lore can't really be shown in game. Every battle typically has to be part of a much larger war as per the nature of the total war campaign. As such, the Wood Elves aren't really allowed to do much of... anything. If they were too expansionist people would be tripping over themselves complaining to CA that the Wood Elves are isolationist, but as it stands they just don't really do anything so most games there is an entire race that does jack **** unless you yourself poke them.

peabodyestate

My take on it is, the community as a whole generally feels like razing the tree of all things holy should award you with a cutscene or something meaningful. If that were to happen in say December, i would consider it problem fixed. As it stands, you still get a huge amount of dosh for sacking their cities.

montgomeryflint

Not to be an ass because I do appreciate the comments. But ironically rereading the comments is actually making me hate the wood elves more, haha. The most common piece of advise on here is: Ignore them. How is saying "ignore that part of the game" compatible with "that part of the game is balanced"?

Lore? How are building slots compatible with lore? Is not being able to build roads because I built a tavern "lore" compatible? So why is lore important now. Not to mention the fact you invade tons of inhospitable places from the Norscan north to the Vampire corrupted lands, shouldn't those be somewhat as hard?

I still think the game is good and I do appreciate the advice or just general comments in general. But god, can someone make a mod that just removes this abomination from the game.

psychoak

Wood Elves weren't actually isolationist.

Sure, they were "isolationists" from a political stance. but they also went crazy and ran around raiding their friends and neighbors, regularly, and used the World Roots to travel all over the world and defend "sacred" locations from invaders.

Do we need a WE tide? No. We do need the Wild Hunt though. If anything, WE AI should be completely irrational and just randomly run off and raid the **** out of people and burn everything in their path down on some quest to go raze some random target. Them sitting there looking stupid all game, declaring war on people adjacent to them, and STILL never leaving their settlements, is just annoying.

Of course, it's not actually difficult to kill them off, that's a myth. All you have to do is avoid the damage. Raid, encamp, or underway are the easy answers, you don't even need attrition mitigating abilities. After that, it's just a matter of actually having an army suitable to the job. Which isn't going to be a doomstack of unshielded elite infantry and large monsters that take crippling penalties in the woods.