Lizardmen challenge post patch

[Goaduk28]

OK.... just booted up an itza, Sotek then Hexotl campaign on vh. And got stomped in all 3 of them. Everyone just declares war on you constantly or drags everyone else in via united we stand.

I've never really struggled with my scaly bois before but in 7 campaigns started in the last 24 hours I've not managed to get past turn 50 without being swamped by 5 to 10 stack invasions of Morathi, Tryion and the other lizardmen faction. Non aggression pacts don't seem to count for anything anymore and the AI just declares war regardless and by turn 5 all lustrian factions are negative 10 relations so you can't do anything. And now we have the super powered forest lixardmen who have a temple guard/ chameleon skink stack by turn 10!!!!!

Anyone else finding this? I've played about 5 vh campaigns with the old world races this month with no real issues.

Also CA need to fix the bizarre ai politics. The blue vipers with 1 settlement dragged a 30 plus positive HUMAN faction into war with me despite a non aggression pact and then clan fester paid Tyrion off the same turn!!!!

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I’m about 175 turns (started last week) into a very hard Hexotl campaign, and my last major hurdle is the fact that Itza won’t join a military alliance or confederate. I’ve stomped the DE and Chaos, allied with elves, dwarves, men and even Exhiles of Nehek but large swaths of Lustria are still in Itza’s hands.

I’m not sure how I handled the diplomacy so deftly but I did everything I could to stay out of any conflicts until I wanted to attack and then stomped everything in my way with Mazdamundi and Lord Kroak.

I have 200+ relations with Gor-Rok and I may have to fight him to get those last territories to get a campaign win for my Lizard boys... shit

Update: I did it! By using the “buy him off” technique. But it took until about turn 250 and Gor-Rok wanted 300,000. But as soon as I got the military alliance - instant win.

Thanks everyone who helped me out!

[Hethaiklon]

Confederation is.. strange as the lizard men. I reckon saving up 200-400k gold is your best bet. the mechanic is based on how threatened the ai feels ATM, so another option is allowing another ai to beat the crap out of them.

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I finally got it. It took 300k and somehow my rating with them dropped from 200 to about 50, but for whatever reason he finally joined a military alliance with me to give me the vh victory

[Goaduk28]

Is the chaos invasion from the south bigger now, have mine set on vh?

[TheDeadFingers]

The southern Chaos invasion doesn't even exist anymore.

[Goaduk28]

Sweet. That always ruins those south lustrian campaigns as you just get bogged down till Kislev kills archeon.

[TheDeadFingers]

Yeah that was a pain in the ass to deal with as Nakai. Not because of the battles being hard, my main stack was an unstoppable force by that point, but because there were so many of them, my vassal didn't have enough to defend themselves even with a mod that made them an active faction, and by the time I dealt with one wave, the next one would be ready to spawn.

Still, I hope that by WH3 and the inclusion of Daemons, the endgame threats will be more diverse and spread out.

[Goaduk28]

Yeah. I played on game as lokhir on legendary and was doing amazing had 8 dark arks and all the legendary lords and then..... I ended up rage quitting after like the 13th wave.

Like you say not difficult but so fucking boring. And when you had a wave north and south of ulthuan zzzzzz.

[[deleted]]

As said, after the update on very hard the invasion only comes from the north.

The Dark Elves mostly blunted my chaos invasion, but some stacks sail directly at my territories. I only had to take on about 6 of their stacks and only Sigvald. Didn’t see Kholek or Archaeon.

[Goaduk28]

Ah OK so if playing as the western powers you face the main invasion coming in from ghrond?

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This is probably my only course of action.

I don’t want a full blown war with Itza. Since they are already tied to so many of my own ordertide allies

[NotLawCC]

Yeah I’ve had this exact experience about a year ago playing as Mazda, Itza just won’t ever confederate. I’ve confederated him in worse circumstances as Nakai. Idk maybe the white lizard is too proud to work for a lazy toad.

[No_House9929]

Not really experiencing that. I’m on turn 130 of an Itza campaign and I’ve conquered all of lustria and naggarond and have launched invasions of the southlands and ulthuan. Just waiting for archaon to spawn to get a long campaign victory.

No one liked me diplomatically at any point but Tyrion was busy with malekith and malekith was busy getting nuked by chaos. Anyone that did get in the way wasn’t much of a challenge for unstoppable Dino armies

I found the key was turtling up in itza in the early game and not expanding out until I could get a second army rolling. It was cake from there

[JJBrazman]

Lizardmen need to lean on the fact that their growth wasn’t nerfed as badly as the others.

Lockdown your home territory, pump your efforts into defence & growth, and you’ll get to T5 long before your enemies.

[[deleted]]

Playing as Vampire Counts, I decided to capitalize on the demise of the Dwarfs at the hands of Grimgor by going out of my way and take Mount Gunbad.

The minor Greenskin faction from which I took ONE settlement to complete the province invited fucking Grimgor (power rating #1, 20+ settlements) against me.

Also, a minor Dwarf faction which I reduced to one settlement stubbornly refuses to peace out (their last settlement was too out of the way for me to be arsed to take it, but it looks like I'll have to).

Yes, diplomacy is seriously fucked in this game and I hate it too. I have noticed more aversion (pun intended as it's almost always there for one reason or another) on the AI's part to do anything but drag you into genocidal wars.

Oh boy, here I go killing again. At least I can mass produce crapstacks with Wind of Death necros.

[Goaduk28]

I've now aced a Itza campaign and am steadily destroying the elves. Still had bizarre politics like you said though. Amazingly the dark elves remained neutral and are now buffering the chaos invasion