Howbiabone supposed to do the start of Belegars campaign?

ASyrian#2378

More enemies than I can count and no money to get armies.
If i go straight for Karak8 im overrun on the way.
If I try to defend the start and my allies I get overrun there.
If I get a good moment with a few allies alive one of those random armies appears with random faction and simply steals one of my capitals....wtf is this game

razenb#1517

Recruit rangers -> rampage through the map-> profit

ameland#5391

It took me a couple of attempts to get a successful Belegar campaign and it is indeed a tough one.

Firstly conquer the start province and make sure to get trade agreements with your friendly neighbours. I get rangers asap then trash the building for an economic one. I also forego any artillery and build garrisons in each region and obviously the unique mine in Karak Izor. If money is a problem which it usually is, get rid of the Hammerers as they cost more or less the same as 2 Dwarf Warriors. Early game army of Warriors, Miners and Rangers is cheapest and being Dwarfs, very hardy.

Since the local Skaven, Vampire Coast and Ogres all inevitably declare war I have found it was best but time consuming to try to keep Tilea and/or the Border Princes alive if at all possible. Sadly Tilea usually and pathetically get wiped inside 5 turns so I instead to try to kill off Skrag so the Border Princes have a chance at survival. Conquer those enemy settlements and return them to the Border Princes as you will hopefully have an alliance with them by then.

Unfortunately there is a lot of putting out fires in the first few turns but once things settle down you can afford a second army and set off to conquer K8P.

This was a brief answer so happy to elaborate further if you like.

ASyrian#2378

ameland#5391 said:

It took me a couple of attempts to get a successful Belegar campaign and it is indeed a tough one.

Firstly conquer the start province and make sure to get trade agreements with your friendly neighbours. I get rangers asap then trash the building for an economic one. I also forego any artillery and build garrisons in each region and obviously the unique mine in Karak Izor. If money is a problem which it usually is, get rid of the Hammerers as they cost more or less the same as 2 Dwarf Warriors. Early game army of Warriors, Miners and Rangers is cheapest and being Dwarfs, very hardy.

Since the local Skaven, Vampire Coast and Ogres all inevitably declare war I have found it was best but time consuming to try to keep Tilea and/or the Border Princes alive if at all possible. Sadly Tilea usually and pathetically get wiped inside 5 turns so I instead to try to kill off Skrag so the Border Princes have a chance at survival. Conquer those enemy settlements and return them to the Border Princes as you will hopefully have an alliance with them by then.

Unfortunately there is a lot of putting out fires in the first few turns but once things settle down you can afford a second army and set off to conquer K8P.

This was a brief answer so happy to elaborate further if you like.

Where is Sartosa in your planning? Those are the first to attack me and Skabenbligh right after both with two armies skaven later with 3 if I capture Sartosa first.
Seema u doable with 1 army. And unnecessary hard at the start.

Nitros14#7973

I did this recently on l/vh.

Don't take the confederation offer of Karak Hirn it'll just drag you into more wars and you'll lose the new settlements right away, they're indefensible.

Got the dwarf warrior buffing red line skills and dwarf warrior tech. Early army was 4 rangers+11 dwarf warriors+heroes. Get master rune of spite crafted for belegar and master rune of gromril if possible.

Raze Skavenblight early, lose your army to do it if you need to, it's now in the Beastmen blood grounds of Morghur and can't be recolonized.

I then razed all of Sartosa. Conveniently Morghur was fighting Brettonia and Skrag was fighting Wurrzag and wasn't bothering me.

Next objective: Get garrisons up and conquer Karak Hirn + Karak Norn + their provinces. At this point Wood Elves attacked me so I had to raze Durthu's stuff.

Vlad was overrunning the Empire at this point so I sent Belegar to take Empire cities back and sell them to the Empire. Karl Franz will pay obscene amounts of gold to get his cities back. I think they paid me 30,000 gold for Castle Drakenhof when I eventually took it.

Now all set to go into the badlands and take Karak Eight Peaks.

ameland#5391

Where is Sartosa in your planning? Those are the first to attack me and Skabenbligh right after both with two armies skaven later with 3 if I capture Sartosa first.
Seema u doable with 1 army. And unnecessary hard at the start.

To be honest in most of my playthroughs Sartosa declared war a little later on. An alternative option can be to try to wipe them out asap rather than Skrag and then Skryre as suggested above.

Funnily enough, I started a new Belegar campaign tonight and had to quit the campaign pretty early on. I noticed something supremely stupid with the campaign, apparently enemy armies are only visible in your province when you have an army in your own province which can see the invading army. A full stack of Orcs appeared out of nowhere and razed one of the settlements. Surrounded by Sartosa, Ogres and 2 Orc factions against me and Tilea and the Border Princes dead, I gave up. Most of my Belegar campaigns have not been like this but it just goes to show how hard it can be.

It definitely feels like a campaign that can take 2 or 3 attempts at times.

ameland#5391

ASyrian#2378 said:

Where is Sartosa in your planning? Those are the first to attack me and Skabenbligh right after both with two armies skaven later with 3 if I capture Sartosa first.
Seema u doable with 1 army. And unnecessary hard at the start.

In most of my campaigns Sartosa declared war later than Skryre and Wurzagg and other Greenskins. It just goes to show how different each playthrough can be. It's certainly a viable tactic to eliminate Sartosa quickly, helping Tilea to survive and then dealing with Skryre.

I wouldn't recommend capturing Sartosa or Skryre settlements either, unless you have a local alliance that you can transfer the settlements to. Best to raze as for the most part they are not ideal habitats for Dwarven factions so you suffer penalties for occupying them. Of course you can occupy and then abandon them but I believe there are public order penalties for your faction for doing so.

saj1987#4378

One thing I find helpful is manuvering Orion into a war with Ikit or Morghur, it's easy most of the time and he usually takes care of your problem for you.

Lethaface#2060

ASyrian#2378 said:

More enemies than I can count and no money to get armies.
If i go straight for Karak8 im overrun on the way.
If I try to defend the start and my allies I get overrun there.
If I get a good moment with a few allies alive one of those random armies appears with random faction and simply steals one of my capitals....wtf is this game

git gud

Lord_Drakken#4065

I have played Belegar campaign 14 times since the IE release. Only a couple to completion. All on L/H. It is absolutely different every single game. One thing is certain. 2.2 made it much much harder so don't feel bad. Before 2.2 his campaign was too easy IMHO.

In my experience the Ogres do not attack early, so they can wait a bit. You can even sometimes negotiate with them. Ikit will declare war soon after Tilea falls. Sartosa will also declare war soon enough. Don't wait and be reactionary. Be proactive! Skaven and Vampires got it coming anyway!

My best strategy is this. I accept the confederation on turn one, jump the second army to the vaults and make trade deals with anyone I can. I build a barley field in Zarakzil and tear down the barracks in Karak Hirn. Emphasize first growth and then money making buildings everywhere you can. Don't worry about defending the black mountains. Usually the Empire will cover your northern holdings well enough for a while.

I combine armies on turn 2 and sack the second lord. Build growth in Zufbar and Hirn

Combining armies helps me be able to easily take Karak Izor on turn 3. Now I sack the miners and the hammerers. I think they are expensive and useless. I hire 3 more dwarf warriors, tear down the barracks, and next turn build a siege workshop in Zarakzil. I quickly move my army towards Tilea.

I hire 2 more grudgethrowers as soon as possible and tear down the guild workshop for a toolmaker. The grudgethrowers are the key to taking down both walled cities and to be able to deal with Sartosan artillery. My 20 stack army consists of Belegar, 4 ancestor heroes, 7 Dwarf warriors, 1 DW with GW, 2 Quarrelers, 2 Rangers, 1 Thunderer, 3 Grudge Throwers. Tactically I box up in most battles and let the ranged units do the killing. I keep the heroes out front to block as many units from reaching my dwarf warriors as possible. This army can usually take on 2 full stacks of anything the enemy can throw at me.

As soon as Aranessa takes down Tilea declare war and take Miragliano from the vampirates. Do not save Tilea. I doubt you could anyway, they are gone between turn 5 and 7 anyway. Miragliano will be the key to stopping Ikit claw from destroying the Vaults. Ikit will almost always try to take Miragliano and those walls can be put to good use stopping the Skaven. A second army with a few quarrelers can be useful here in Miragliano if Ikit is being aggressive. Usually when I get to rangers I swap them into Belegars army and use the thunderer and quarrelers in a defensive army.

I march straight down taking all of Tilean territory and capture Sartosa eliminating the Vampirates. I then move north to attack Skavenblight. Make sure to keep spread out in your first battle against Ikit's armies as a nuke is coming your way.

Take out Sartosa, Skryre, and Morghur's Beastmen out in that order. If you do this you can settle all of Tilea, Sartosa, Estalia, and Skavenblight for a very healthy economy pretty early in the game. The best thing is very few factions will ever attack across the sea into these regions! Now you are free to move East and/or North without having to worry about your South and West. This is the key to prevent playing whack a mole as Clan Angrund holdings are vulnerable from many directions and are tough to hold if you don't eliminate your nearby enemies quickly.

Good Luck! Belegar once again may be one of the hardest campaigns so have fun with it.

Coriendal#2786

Lethaface#2060

Git Gude, the cry of the keyboard warrior with nothing to add. Get a life, loser.

Strohhirn#5281

What has worked great for me:
Turn 1:
- get your first settlement and confederate in the event that follows
- recruit some dwarf warriors
- grab your second army and use the underway to teleport right onto the wild orks next to the empire fort
- declare war on the wild orks
- use the quick deal diplomacy thingy to get non agression pacts etc
- pass turn
The wild orks will attack you and you will be easily able to autoresolve them.
Turn 2:
- move both your armies towards the province capital (as close as possible, you SHOULD be able to have the secondary army in your province to get some recruitment)
- check diplomacy - give orin the minimum amount of money 2-3 times over the next couple of turns or he will declare war
- pass turn
Turn 3:
- siege capital, transfer units from secondary army to belegar
- get province capital (should be able to ar, but fighting manually has less losses)
- dissolve the second lord
- check diplomacy and recruit units
- pass turn
-Turn 4:
you should beeline towards sartosa - this way you should be able to save tilea and the border princes.
- use the underway to teleport directly to the settlement you took turn 1 (forgot the name) it looks like it's not enough movement, but it works
- pass turn
Turn 5:
- march towards tilea, try to move your runesmith out and back in for the damage buff
- recruit a second army
- check diplomacy and pass
Turn 6:
- Aranessa should be sieging miragliano by now
- march directly onto aranessa and declare war
- pass
Aranessa will stop sieging miragliano and either attack or mova away a bit
Turn 7 and onwards:
- autoresolve araenessa and mob up the other army
- take the town nearby (forgot the name, you have to fight it manually) and sell it to tilea for a military alliance
- start marching your second army towards tilea


from here on, you should be able to defeat the rest of sartosa without problems and then rush towards skavenblight ( i sold the other town from miragliano to tilea as well)
i managed to take skavenblight by autoresolving a nearby army. this way, you dont have to manually fight a city battle and take their nukes
mob up clan skryre and then kill Morghur.
if you got a defensive alliance with the neabry bretonians, try to get them to settly the nearby towns

afterwards you can turn your attention towards the ogres and wurrzag

have done this 2x on VH VH, worked both times

Itharus#3127

Your ghosts are insanely powerful combatants and will alleviate some need for units. You also get the option to confederate that one faction really early.

The only problem you'll face now is that minor settlements no longer have walls and you have a long travel time between regions in your starting province. God that was a stupid change. Why would they take away the ****ing walls?? It wasn't walls that was the problem >.<

Nitros14#7973

Itharus said:

. God that was a stupid change. Why would they take away the ****ing walls?? It wasn't walls that was the problem >.<</p>

Great change, now the AI can actually take your stuff when you don't have armies there. Makes campaigns a lot more nail biting and fun.

Let's be honest it's silly that in late Warhammer 2 the AI would often fail to take your walled settlements, which cost no upkeep, without you needing to divert armies to counter their offensive or literally do anything but keep taking more stuff.

endurstonehelm#6102

In the thread above are listed multiple different strategies that can be effective.

The way I did it was to rely on the 4 ancestral heroes to make your stack really tough. Then Recruit Gotrek and Felix. then send Belegar, the ancestral heroes, Gotrek and Felix to go take Karak 8 peaks (along with some troops). I built walls in my home capital and wanted the home to last long enough for me to take Karak 8 Peaks. Once I took Karak 8 Peaks, I didn't care whether the starting fortress survived. I didn't bother taking the rest of the starting province, although I did sack and raze the other settlements in the starting province.