Goblins have changed

Ayer_qp

Hello everyone!

I wanted some confirmation to my little observations. I haven’t been playing for like a year and jumped at it again.

Currently I am playing as an empire (volkmar) in the mortal empires campaign.

I am having trouble killing goblins like skarsnik. It became much-MUCH more difficulty than before. Before I could kill them right after loyalists in first 10 or so turns without any sweat. Same goes with Gelt.

Now? Not so much. They have one fortress to the west of reikland in volkmar and franz campaign.

All of their melee units have shields. Some of their units are armored. All their heroes except spellcasters are armored and shielded. Only my artillery units do some damage and that’s it. Archers don’t cut it anymore. It is sad to see 20 kills on archers or crossbowmen after 20-30 minute battle. It was never like that before. Their archers (which even have poor accuracy trait) melt my shielded units like hot butter. Their archers score around 80 kills almost every unit if left unchecked. How? What is happening? Since I can build my artillery around turn 15-20 it is a bummer. And artillery did not guarantee the win. Goblins still manage to get up close and sometimes even overcome melee and archers under constant artillery fire.

I can’t kill their melee heroes at all, they charge at me, stay fully inside my blob and nothing. Half hp in like 10 minutes, can’t even punish it with archers. Because armored and shielded. It was never like this. Before I could melt them with my archers before they even got close. What is happening?

I did manage to win consistently but I ruined my game strategy a bit. I had to rush cavalry and swap almost 50% of my roster to melee cavalry (pistoliers die like flies, they were only good pulling their heroes). I had to micro manage all my cavalry to punish goblin archers while battle before they got to my army AND EVEN THEN they somehow managed to kill almost half my units and heavily damage my cavalry. But it manage to consistently win against them.

And what also bothers me is: they manage to get full army with up to 3-4 heroes in like 2-3 turns. I manage to win against their main army and in 2-3 turns it is all over again. Like nothing happened. It was never like this before. They aren’t even attacking anyone, just sitting in one and only their city.

What is happening, can someone elaborate? How did goblins become stronger than empire especially at range?

It is not a matter of skill, it is merely my observation of change. Previously it was very easy to wipe goblins even on higher difficulties. Now? Not at all.

Swapping half of your roster to kill one army is not okay on turn 10.

TL:DR: Goblin archers wreck face. Goblin melee melts empire melee. Empire ranged can’t do anything anymore. Only micromanaged cavalry rush and provides wins consistently. It was never like this before.

Ferestor

Did you play after the Grom and Paunch DLC? There was the GS rework wich makes them much better then before.

Eterlik

On what difficulty do you play?
If its not vh or legendary your basic melee units should be stronger then just goblins.
At least it sounds to me that you relay on archers to much (like a lot of people in this forum).
Also keep in mind, friendly fire is a thing. When 2 units are fighting and you shot from the back of your units. your units don't get their shield bonus while the enemys do and you deal a good amount of friendly fire dmg to your self.
I recomend once the frontlines meet move your archers so they can shoot into the enemy sides and ignore their shield bonus with it.

For their heroes, your lords should normaly destroy them.
Simply lure the hero in a unit of yours and then send your lord on them.(don't fight them in their units)

Normaly i recomment to bring 3-5 ranged units only (artilary inclusive).
rest frontline and 2-4 cav units
Also 1 caster hero/lord + single entity killing lord
This can normaly handle anything the Ai brings.

Jirzik

Goblins have been buffed.

They can hold until WAAAGH kick in and then they will murder through your ranks. If you don't underestimate them, they can be dealt with quite easily. Low HP, slow, pood defense against charge.

Gromgoblins could be very different. If Grom eat dragon meat all his goblin archers start shooting granades. They will act like grenade-launcher imps. guards from DoW. It can stop charging cavalry. Not only stop, 1v1 goblin archers can stunlock cavalry.

Ayer_qp said:

...

TL:DR: Goblin archers wreck face. Goblin melee melts empire melee. Empire ranged can’t do anything anymore. Only micromanaged cavalry rush and provides wins consistently. It was never like this before.

Using cavalry is good start. Add some magic and you are there. Good luck.

Ayer_qp

Eterlik said:

On what difficulty do you play?
If its not vh or legendary your basic melee units should be stronger then just goblins.
At least it sounds to me that you relay on archers to much (like a lot of people in this forum).
Also keep in mind, friendly fire is a thing. When 2 units are fighting and you shot from the back of your units. your units don't get their shield bonus while the enemys do and you deal a good amount of friendly fire dmg to your self.
I recomend once the frontlines meet move your archers so they can shoot into the enemy sides and ignore their shield bonus with it.

For their heroes, your lords should normaly destroy them.
Simply lure the hero in a unit of yours and then send your lord on them.(don't fight them in their units)

Normaly i recomment to bring 3-5 ranged units only (artilary inclusive).
rest frontline and 2-4 cav units
Also 1 caster hero/lord + single entity killing lord
This can normaly handle anything the Ai brings.

I am playing empire for artillery and normal-ish frontline. Archers are just temporary army. I don’t always rely on them but they do almost all the work in empire start. The strange thing to me was the vast difference. The archers could melt goblins before they got to the frontline. Now every goblins is shielded and have quite some armpit which archers are weak against.

Empire melee DO win 1v1 or even 1v2 but considering goblins have like 10 to 12 expendable melee it is always 1v3 or 1v4 which heavily damaged my melee.

Their archers somehow deal very good damage against my shielded melee while mine do not. THAT is my main eyebrow raise.

Heroes are real nuisance now. They do die reliable but take way too much time to kill without witch hunter.

The strange thing is: I played on hard and very hard before and they weren’t an issue. I am relearning the game again so I tried normal and it’s very hard battling them now. Goblin heroes and lords do die but the strange part is attacking them with all my melee and ranged units AND a lord still takes quite a lot of time.

I did find a strategy to beat them using around 6 cavalry units and micromanaging them at the goblin back lines. Pulling almost half their army. Still my main forces struggle with other half and suffer some losses. When it was almost lossless before. I think I’ve started playing right after grom dlc and it wasn’t as hard as it is now.

As I said I can beat them reliably but it severely damages my economy buying 6 to 8 cav units (around 700-800 gold each) and building stables early on. I might not get the money for artillery later on. And cavalry is useless in sieges which I have to do right after goblins.

Ah, also, the auto-resolve versus goblin armies became broken. It is almost always close loss or valiant defeat somehow. If it is a win it has high losses. Previously it was almost always a win.

Empire before strong artillery kicks in kinda sucks now. Before it was more of jack of all stats. Melee could hold the Line, archers dealt very good damage. Cavalry was meh. Artillery always was top notch. Now they strong with all those roles except artillery. You need a lot of buffs to make melee line work. Free company militia and archers deal very low damage now
Everything good about empire comes way too late. Like good artillery or gun units.

Yet I don’t see any direct nerfs to the empire in patch notes.

If I wanted to play cav faction, I would go bretonia

But yeah, you have confirmed my suspicion about some strong buffs. Now empire is not as easy as before. Especially with gelt which has alot of green skin enemies around. Thanks for the confirmation.

Sorry for my “little” rant

Ayer_qp

Jirzik said:

Goblins have been buffed.

They can hold until WAAAGH kick in and then they will murder through your ranks. If you don't underestimate them, they can be dealt with quite easily. Low HP, slow, pood defense against charge.

Gromgoblins could be very different. If Grom eat dragon meat all his goblin archers start shooting granades. They will act like grenade-launcher imps. guards from DoW. It can stop charging cavalry. Not only stop, 1v1 goblin archers can stunlock cavalry.

Ayer_qp said:

...

TL:DR: Goblin archers wreck face. Goblin melee melts empire melee. Empire ranged can’t do anything anymore. Only micromanaged cavalry rush and provides wins consistently. It was never like this before.

Using cavalry is good start. Add some magic and you are there. Good luck.

I agree. I had to change my whole roster to do battle with goblins. Had to ditch a lot of archers leaving only like 1 crossbow and 3 free company militia. Everything else is cavalry and shielded melee.

My main gripe is exactly that - I have to significantly change my whole roster and build stables which never was needed before. It damages economy quite a lot and can be very difficult if you don’t snowball.

It postpones artillery because on turn 15 I am left without much money. And cavalry is useless in sieges vs other elector counts which I always did after deleting goblins with empire.

Gobbos take too much resources and effort to defeat as an empire early on which damages long term strategy.

Fingolfin_the-Golden

Ayer_qp said:

Jirzik said:

Goblins have been buffed.

They can hold until WAAAGH kick in and then they will murder through your ranks. If you don't underestimate them, they can be dealt with quite easily. Low HP, slow, pood defense against charge.

Gromgoblins could be very different. If Grom eat dragon meat all his goblin archers start shooting granades. They will act like grenade-launcher imps. guards from DoW. It can stop charging cavalry. Not only stop, 1v1 goblin archers can stunlock cavalry.

Ayer_qp said:

...

TL:DR: Goblin archers wreck face. Goblin melee melts empire melee. Empire ranged can’t do anything anymore. Only micromanaged cavalry rush and provides wins consistently. It was never like this before.

Using cavalry is good start. Add some magic and you are there. Good luck.

I agree. I had to change my whole roster to do battle with goblins. Had to ditch a lot of archers leaving only like 1 crossbow and 3 free company militia. Everything else is cavalry and shielded melee.

My main gripe is exactly that - I have to significantly change my whole roster and build stables which never was needed before. It damages economy quite a lot and can be very difficult if you don’t snowball.

It postpones artillery because on turn 15 I am left without much money. And cavalry is useless in sieges vs other elector counts which I always did after deleting goblins with empire.

Gobbos take too much resources and effort to defeat as an empire early on which damages long term strategy.

Goblins are not too bad for empire.
But they are stronger and have better tools after their huge update.
It’s good.

Ayer_qp

On the small off-topic: considering balance changes should I play empire or vampire coast if want to focus on artillery now? Which one is more enjoyable artillery wise?

Fingolfin_the-Golden

Ayer_qp said:

On the small off-topic: considering balance changes should I play empire or vampire coast if want to focus on artillery now? Which one is more enjoyable artillery wise?

Both and dwarfs and skaven.
Honestly skaven have the most powerful artillery now.

peabodyestate

Dwarves for best artillery for me - it is complimented by that front line of shields with flamethrowers behind. Cannot beat that.

Ilike the change to Goblins - In truth they are actually exactly the same as before.... until you consider lord skills, legendary lord skills, research, scrap, cauldrons.

There is an argument they are far better than orcs now though - which probably isnt right. Also, the arrows are incredibly effective. incredibly.

Darthplagueis13

Are you sure you aren't playing a Head2Head campaign against someone using the Broken Axe tribe? Because yes, these are things that you can technically achieve with Goblins - When playing them. The AI usually sucks horribly at optimizing and using them.


Granted, Goblins have always been relatively good against massed archer spam. Goblin and Night Goblin melee units (except Nasty Skulkers) have and always had Silver Shields, meaning they've got a 50% chance of blocking all those missiles. The right scrap upgrades can get regular Goblins up to 50 armour, (up to 72 with a very specific synergy of scrap, skills on certain lords and technology).

Also, whilst Goblin Archers have terrible range, there's a lot of them in each unit, so they can dish out surprising amounts of damage if you let them get close.

Greenskins have two melee heroes: The Goblin Big Boss who has never had his survivability increased and should still die incredibly fast (just not to archer fire because silver shield) and the Black Orc Big Boss who is basically a tougher and more elite counterpart to the Empire Captain, so I reckon that's the one giving you trouble.

Ayer_qp

Darthplagueis13 said:

Are you sure you aren't playing a Head2Head campaign against someone using the Broken Axe tribe? Because yes, these are things that you can technically achieve with Goblins - When playing them. The AI usually sucks horribly at optimizing and using them.


Granted, Goblins have always been relatively good against massed archer spam. Goblin and Night Goblin melee units (except Nasty Skulkers) have and always had Silver Shields, meaning they've got a 50% chance of blocking all those missiles. The right scrap upgrades can get regular Goblins up to 50 armour, (up to 72 with a very specific synergy of scrap, skills on certain lords and technology).

Also, whilst Goblin Archers have terrible range, there's a lot of them in each unit, so they can dish out surprising amounts of damage if you let them get close.

Greenskins have two melee heroes: The Goblin Big Boss who has never had his survivability increased and should still die incredibly fast (just not to archer fire because silver shield) and the Black Orc Big Boss who is basically a tougher and more elite counterpart to the Empire Captain, so I reckon that's the one giving you trouble.

You are correct. Goblin big boss dies very fast. There also is duelist hero with unpronounceable name which despite the trait takes very long to kill en masse.

That’s the point. Previously even at the release of the goblin dlc empire ranged units melted melee and ranged goblins before they even came close to melee lines. Now - not at all. Empire Ranged units do almost nothing against goblins now. Also melee units even buffed by franz and his elector weapon fails in prolonged battle which is very strange to me.

Goblin archers have poor accuracy trait and yet they still manage to deal very significant damage to my shielded units (swordsmen).

I am not against the change I am just perplexed how much effort I need now to kill them early on with the empire. And since they are almost only early enemies to farm with empire, it is kinda disappointing. It requires to spend a lot of resources on cavalry which could have been spent on artillery to wage war against vampires and other elector count later on.

Darthplagueis13

Ayer_qp said:

That’s the point. Previously even at the release of the goblin dlc empire ranged units melted melee and ranged goblins before they even came close to melee lines. Now - not at all. Empire Ranged units do almost nothing against goblins now. Also melee units even buffed by franz and his elector weapon fails in prolonged battle which is very strange to me.

Goblin archers have poor accuracy trait and yet they still manage to deal very significant damage to my shielded units (swordsmen).

I am not against the change I am just perplexed how much effort I need now to kill them early on with the empire. And since they are almost only early enemies to farm with empire, it is kinda disappointing. It requires to spend a lot of resources on cavalry which could have been spent on artillery to wage war against vampires and other elector count later on.

Well, that's kind of the point of the changes, to make Goblins more playable so that they are more than just xp farms.

As for your melee, that's not an issue with Goblins, that's an issue with the game, specifically with melee infantry being utter garbage on higher difficulties because the AI gets stupid buffs.

Accuracy really doesn't matter all that much if you have large units fighting each other because even if a shot is gonna technically miss, it might still just hit the guy next to the intended target and well... Swordsmen only have bronze shields, meaning a 35% missile block chance to begin with. The Goblin accuracy only really would come into play against single targets like your heroes. Against infantry, they can just compensate by sheer volume of fire.

There's a number of things you can do to help with that:

1: As other people have already stated, cavalry is always gonna be decent, though they are expensive.

2: Positioning. That one's kinda obvious, but try to position your ranged units in such a way where they get to shoot into the sides or even backs of the Goblins, rather than just their front as only the front benefits from shields.

3: AOE's. Goblins tend of have low health per model and high unit density, meaning certain things are gonna brutalize them, such as all kinds of artillery, Outriders with Grenades and spells. The Empire has access to 7 different lores of magic, 8 if your include Balthazar Gelt with the lore of metal and 9 if you also include Warrior Priests with their battle prayers. This allows them to make use of various spells that are gonna be highly effective, such as Burning Head, Penumbral Pendulum, Banishment, Purple Sun pf Xereus, Flock of Doom, Pit of Shades, Soulfire, Gehennas Golden Hounds, Wind Blast, Chain Lightning, Final Transmutation and Dwellers Below. Iirc you get a random mage early on as a quest reward and no matter which one you get, they are at least gonna have one good tool for Goblin genocide.

Goblins are easy enough to deal with, you just need to make sure to consider them a genuine opponent rather than complete cannon fodder (though if you do have a cannon, that's gonna work fairly well, too).

Ayer_qp

Darthplagueis13 said:

Ayer_qp said:

That’s the point. Previously even at the release of the goblin dlc empire ranged units melted melee and ranged goblins before they even came close to melee lines. Now - not at all. Empire Ranged units do almost nothing against goblins now. Also melee units even buffed by franz and his elector weapon fails in prolonged battle which is very strange to me.

Goblin archers have poor accuracy trait and yet they still manage to deal very significant damage to my shielded units (swordsmen).

I am not against the change I am just perplexed how much effort I need now to kill them early on with the empire. And since they are almost only early enemies to farm with empire, it is kinda disappointing. It requires to spend a lot of resources on cavalry which could have been spent on artillery to wage war against vampires and other elector count later on.

Well, that's kind of the point of the changes, to make Goblins more playable so that they are more than just xp farms.

As for your melee, that's not an issue with Goblins, that's an issue with the game, specifically with melee infantry being utter garbage on higher difficulties because the AI gets stupid buffs.

Accuracy really doesn't matter all that much if you have large units fighting each other because even if a shot is gonna technically miss, it might still just hit the guy next to the intended target and well... Swordsmen only have bronze shields, meaning a 35% missile block chance to begin with. The Goblin accuracy only really would come into play against single targets like your heroes. Against infantry, they can just compensate by sheer volume of fire.

There's a number of things you can do to help with that:

1: As other people have already stated, cavalry is always gonna be decent, though they are expensive.

2: Positioning. That one's kinda obvious, but try to position your ranged units in such a way where they get to shoot into the sides or even backs of the Goblins, rather than just their front as only the front benefits from shields.

3: AOE's. Goblins tend of have low health per model and high unit density, meaning certain things are gonna brutalize them, such as all kinds of artillery, Outriders with Grenades and spells. The Empire has access to 7 different lores of magic, 8 if your include Balthazar Gelt with the lore of metal and 9 if you also include Warrior Priests with their battle prayers. This allows them to make use of various spells that are gonna be highly effective, such as Burning Head, Penumbral Pendulum, Banishment, Purple Sun pf Xereus, Flock of Doom, Pit of Shades, Soulfire, Gehennas Golden Hounds, Wind Blast, Chain Lightning, Final Transmutation and Dwellers Below. Iirc you get a random mage early on as a quest reward and no matter which one you get, they are at least gonna have one good tool for Goblin genocide.

Goblins are easy enough to deal with, you just need to make sure to consider them a genuine opponent rather than complete cannon fodder (though if you do have a cannon, that's gonna work fairly well, too).

Thanks for the comprehensive answer!

It is probably the mentality that they were cannon fodder before caught me off-guard. Now that actually adapted to them being somewhat strong it wasn’t as hard as before.

KN_Gars

So are you using any mods now or were you using mods before? Because what you describe simply does not match my experience of playing Empire on Normal.

Goblin Archers do not have a "poor accuracy" trait, I just checked both campaign and custom battles and they are noted as being "poor against armour", not as having poor accuracy. A look at the actual hidden stats shows the same accuracy and calibration distance % as the Empire Crossbows once you account for the shorter range of the Goblins.

Empire troops have always done poorly when faced with massed Goblin archers, low armour and bronze shields means that damage gets through and thanks to their numbers there is a lot of it coming your way. You have to hit them with counter-fire from your own missile troops with superior range (Archers are too short range unless you are good at micro) and artillery. You also need to disrupt the enemy backline if possible, Pistoliers are a cheap way of doing this thanks to their speed and vanguard deployment. On some maps you can even deploy behind the enemy.

Plain Goblins are tougher now if the AI actually uses the new tech tree which has a lot of buffs to Gobbos but early on it should only have unlocked a few of them. Properly buffed and supported Empire Swordsmen should still have an advantage unless you let them fight massivly outnumbered. Tech, the red skill line and buffs from Warrior Priests and lords/captains with "Hold the Line" is more than enough.

An alternative to artillery when dealing with lots of enemy chaff is Outriders with Grenade Launchers, they absolutely murder a lot of enemy infantry but watch out for friendly fire. They have saved me more than once when facing Norsca, Undead and Greenskins.

Itharus

Upgraded goblins are rather burly. It takes time to get there though. They also have (too good) armor scrap upgrades (that should be for da boys... no self respecting orc would let goblins have better armor!).

They have also always had great shields... soaking up arrers wit der 'eads shields is part of what they're there for. Shoot from the sides or rear.

Mortars should kersplatter them really easily, not sure what your issue is there.

Their leadership (until late game) is bad. Rear charge them... even pistoliers will scare them. BE WARNED HOWEVER -- If they counter charge your charging cavalry right now, your cavalry WILL GET SLAUGHTERED -- there is a bug. Even Reiksguard, charging from the front into charging infantry will take too much damage.

Your swordsmen, if buffed equally to the goblins, should always beat the goblins... Flagellants will as well. Not sure why you are having problems... are you on a higher difficulty? Starting on "Hard" battle difficulty, the enemy gets buffs. Hard is OK, and even preferable as some races. VH and L are punitive af and your melee units will be very weak in comparison.

Ayer_qp

KN_Gars said:

So are you using any mods now or were you using mods before? Because what you describe simply does not match my experience of playing Empire on Normal.

Goblin Archers do not have a "poor accuracy" trait, I just checked both campaign and custom battles and they are noted as being "poor against armour", not as having poor accuracy. A look at the actual hidden stats shows the same accuracy and calibration distance % as the Empire Crossbows once you account for the shorter range of the Goblins.

Empire troops have always done poorly when faced with massed Goblin archers, low armour and bronze shields means that damage gets through and thanks to their numbers there is a lot of it coming your way. You have to hit them with counter-fire from your own missile troops with superior range (Archers are too short range unless you are good at micro) and artillery. You also need to disrupt the enemy backline if possible, Pistoliers are a cheap way of doing this thanks to their speed and vanguard deployment. On some maps you can even deploy behind the enemy.

Plain Goblins are tougher now if the AI actually uses the new tech tree which has a lot of buffs to Gobbos but early on it should only have unlocked a few of them. Properly buffed and supported Empire Swordsmen should still have an advantage unless you let them fight massivly outnumbered. Tech, the red skill line and buffs from Warrior Priests and lords/captains with "Hold the Line" is more than enough.

An alternative to artillery when dealing with lots of enemy chaff is Outriders with Grenade Launchers, they absolutely murder a lot of enemy infantry but watch out for friendly fire. They have saved me more than once when facing Norsca, Undead and Greenskins.

No, I don’t have any mods at all. I can be mistaken about goblin archers having poor accuracy but I have certainly seen some trait with the word “poor”. My mind automatically interpreted it as “poor accuracy”. So that can be a mistake.

I did buff the melee units and played franz with his elector weapon which grants further melee buffs. But holding goblin horde with like 3 to 4 melee units became VERY hard.

My main surprise was that goblin archers are on par damage-wise with empire archers.

Pistoliers and outriders are kinda bad at that. They can pull enemy lines away but they deal very low damage and can easily killed by said archers or any type of greenskin cavalry. Empire knights are much better since they pack a punch can trade with enemy cavalry and almost certainly make goblin archers or melee rout after one charge. Had big success with them. But they are very costly and require a lot of resource. Especially early on. I had to swap almost 6-8 units to cavalry to reliably win against goblins. That was my main gripe.

AI sometimes uses scrap, so there is that.

I am aware how to defeat goblins, I don’t have problem with them at all later on.
My main point was that they are quite hard in the beginning of the empire campaign when I always just farmed them. Now defeating them requires resources which postpones artillery or other good units by alot of turns. And you are left with armies with cavalry when you really want to do sieges.

That is not a problem, not at all. But on higher difficulties 10 turns of development can mean very much.

So, yeah, they are not cannon fodder meant for free farming anymore in empire campaign especially as Gelt. Orcs on the other hand…

saweendra

i mean this what power creep gets you, to counter this you need more power creep. this is honestly not viable game design .

Itharus

I don't believe goblins are particularly inaccurate.

Orc Arrer Boys, however, have some pretty scattered fire if they're more than like 100m away or so. Get 'em to javelin range and they actually do respectably, lol.

Honestly... more ranged units should be like that... ranged units are too laser accurate in this game! Anything far away or moving fast (cavalry, not people) should have a pretty good accuracy debuff for the ranged unit doing the firing.

Chora

you’ve said that you don’t run too archer heavy but, reading between the lines of a lot of your responses, it seems like you’re running too heavy for that particular situation.

That’s kind of how range always works. Lots of range/artillery is great unless/until they reach you, then real fast it isn’t.

If you’re melee are getting swamped 4 to 1 and melting down, you could try a stronger line