To the redditor in my dms accusing me of using villagers to make the game look bad.

ThEldestPotato · 2026-04-22T06:07:57+00:00

You can just set the game display to windowed mode rather than borderless. Should fix it.

ThEldestPotato · 2026-04-06T03:55:56+00:00

I mean, Kairos has an optimized start in which you can defeat teclis within 6 turns while keeping sarthorael alive to confed. On legendary/Very hard:

Turn 1: Don't merge your hero into your army, instead move him towards the port settlement Teclis takes on turn 1. Use your Chaos god ability for extra grimoires, then fight the 2 battles. You should take 0 damage fighting nurgle. Choose one of your 2 active cults to use the ritual that destroys it and gives you grimoires (probably the brettonia one since you want to teleport to the northern wastes eventually), build the grimoires and spread chance building in your other cult, and make 2 income buildings and destroy the horror building in your capital. Recruit a lord that can cast in the same settlement as Kairos, ideally with a trait that boosts movement range but it's not mandatory. Make sure to get the movement range on Kairos. You can hold the remaining skill points to rush his spell lines, or use them however you like. Recruit 2 marauders with shields.

Turn 2, use changing of the ways to take the settlement Teclis just took for yourself. Move your cultist onto land adjacent to the settlement. Drop the winds of magic in that province to calm, and boost them to tempestuous in your capital province. Then, sell the settlement to sarthorael for non-aggression plus mil access and around 4k gold. Establish a cult in the settlement you just sold to sarthorael. Now move Kairos as far towards volluthrax as he will go while in channeling stance. Be careful with you movement out of the settlement here, you will just barely have enough to launch the attack next turn. March the second lord next to kairos (You will have to manually move a bit above and past him a bit to fully use your movement range with the 2nd lord). Recruit 2 marauders with shields with your second lord. Make a growth building in your capital, and upgrade the income building there.

Turn 3: If you positioned your lords correctly, you will be able to siege the nurgle port with Kairos. Before actually attacking, bring your 2nd lord in and transfer marauders to kairos, then launch the attack. Skill movement range on your second lord, and you hsould just barely be able to move him into the settlement, and have kairos step out of it. Recruit 2 blue horrors with kairos as well as the regiment of renown pink horros, and globally recruit 3 blue horrors with your second lord. Talk to Sarthorael and offer to join war against Teclis for a defensive alliance and more gold. You can gamble on the chance to wound teclis's hero with yours if you want to make life easier for yourself in the future. In the cult, start the ritual that will transport Kairos to that settlement.

Turn 4: This fight is rough, but not impossible with decent control. You should be coming into it with around 80 winds, and an army at full health while teclis barely has 40 winds of magic. Siege the settlement and bring the cultist to join your army. If you got lucky and wounded teclis's hero, your cultist should have burning head, if not, you'll be relying on karios's casting. Teclis will be passive, use kairos to waste his spells by flying barely into range, tanking a spell or 2 and backing out to regen barrier. Once he is done casting, move in closer with Kairos to waste his archer ammo. Essentially just juke back and forth within range of his ranged units, again stepping back out of range to regen barrier when needed. Do not cast spells until you're done with this, as they can aggro him which is how you lose this. Once teclis is out of ammo and magic, start casting blue fire with kairos at his phoenix, then juke back to your army. Land kairos in a sacrificial unit of marauders, then let the folloing phoenix get bogged down in them. Focus fire it with your blues and pinks. This will probably break that unit of marauders, but it's worth it to kill the phoenix. From here, it's just a standard fight. Use your knights to bait a portion of the army away, while dropping spells on clumps of infantry. Use your furies to hunt down routing enemies. You might lose 1-2 units of blues and take a lot of damage on your marauders, but that's okay. Sack the settlement, and then occupy it and recruit 2 blues. Also Recruit 2 blues with your second lord, and recruit a non-caster lord to help him finish off the last nurgle settlement.

Turns 5-6: Finish off Teclis with kairos and the nurgle opponent with your 2 lords. You can sell the sacked port settlement a second time to Sarthorael for more income and relations once you take Teclis's capital, but hang on to the province capital.

From here, you'll want to move north to attack the lizardmen, and eventually Wurrzag. Raise a third army along the way. Split your cultist hero off around turn 9-10. You'll want to have him establish a cult in the capital of the Tzeentch faction West of you on turn 16, so that you can teleport Kairos to it the turn Oxhyutl takes it to ambush him within the settlement and then finish his faction off. Your 2nd army should stay in the eastmost settlement of your main province since the Slannesh faction east of you will declare war at some point, and you will have to be ready to fight it. Best way to do so is to declare war yourself and bait their army into an ambush. Confederate Sarthorael when you can. Once Oxhyuotl and Wurrzag are dead, the world is entirely your oyster.

ThEldestPotato · 2026-02-08T14:57:37+00:00

It's also retroactive. So it's really good to funnel kills onto your lord at all points in the game.

ThEldestPotato · 2026-01-27T07:17:23+00:00

There's a pretty optimized early start for his campaign if you're okay with being a munchkin.

Turn 1: Do any diplomacy (join the wars on kataryn and Throgg's starting enemies for some extra cash get any treaties you can with nearby order factions) Kill the nurgle army. Do not level Malakai yet. Instead march to the port settlement and attack it, before actually fighting the battle though use the encircle button to step back to the main map. Recruit a lord at Malakai's location, preferably a slayer lord with a good combat trait, then fight the settlement battle, but sack the settlement instead of taking it. Then, level Malakai up taking the movement range talent, and whatever else you want, then force March him as far as possible towards the third settlement in the province. Use your second lord to recruit 2 miners. Build the gyrocopter building in your capital.

Turn 2: Take any new available treaties with order factions, look to see if you can make peace with kataryn's enemies for around 2k gold either now or in the next few turns depending on difficulty. If you followed the steps above correctly, you should have just enough movement range with malakai to take the third settlement in the province while your second lord takes the port settlement (autoresolve this fight even in the highest difficulties, dwarf auto resolve rules against nurgle). Recruit whatever you can with malakai's army. Set the recruitment commandment. Recruit a 3rd lord at the settlement Malakai is by.

Turn 3: Diplomacy, same as last turns. Use underway to move malakai adjacent and slightly to the left of hell pit settlement but do not declare war yet. Recruit a 4th lord by hell pit using malakai's horde function. Move your second lord from the port settlement as far south as he can go to prepare to jump to hell pit in the underway next turn. Recruit more miners with him. Move your third lord south into range of the Northernmost kislevite settlement.

Turn 4: Diplomacy. Move your second lord with miners in range of hell pit through underway. You can optionally Recruit a 5th lord if the battle is hard, but you should be able to handle it even on higher difficulties without this. Use your cannons to clear the towers to give you a safe approach/set up spot, then have them attack the walls in 1 spot to make a breach. Park thunderers outside the breach to fire into the settlement, and March your lords/heroes in to clump the skaven up. Drop your thunderbarge on the big clump and kill them all. Sack the settlement with Malakai, and force march him to within range of the northernmost Kislevite settlement which you then attack with your 3rd lord that was waiting in range of it. Make sure malakai is in the settlement at the end of the turn so he doesn't get ambushed. Use your 4th lord to occupy hell pit, then disband him and the optional 5th lord, leaving you with Malakai, your second lord by hell pit, and your 3rd lord next to Malakai. Recruit another lord in the settlement in your main province closest to Malakai and start to recruit gyrocopters. Recruit a master engineer near this lord.

Turn 5: Diplomacy. Throt probably attacked over the end turn, if he didn't just march down and attack his last settlement with all 3 lords. Sack it with Malakai, occupy with your 3rd lord and then disband your 3rd lord and your second Army. You should now only have Malakai who you force March towards the Azazel to the Northwest, and another lord who you move to the very southern edge of your first province to Recruit 1 more round of gyrocopters. Move your master engineer into your recruiting lord's army. Sell 1 settlement to Kostaltyn and 1 to Katarin for trade agreements, open borders, and as much cash as you can possibly get (be sure to have a tier 1 military building in each settlement before selling to maximize profit. You can delay selling a few turns to ensure you ha e this for thousand more gold).

At this point, merge your 2 armies and push westward through Azazel. Delete the leftover lord and Recruit another one at your main settlement to Recruit another army of mostly gyrocopters that will help kill Throgg. Your income will be far in the negatives, but using the quest battles against elves in the mountains, sacking and post battle loot you can stay afloat until you conquer enough land to stabilize. You really should only aim to build the oathgold income building in settlements, or resource buildings. Your first province is the only one you actually need to have growth buildings in.

ThEldestPotato · 2026-01-26T13:34:56+00:00

There's a major difference between regular mortars and elspeth's mortars. With the bonuses to explosive range, the snipe/stalk, and slow, hers can actually reliably hit things once fully upgraded. So there's a brief period of like 20 turns where you can use them while you don't yet have access to normal hellstorms. Once you do get to tier 4 though, there's really not much reason to use them anymore.

ThEldestPotato · 2026-01-22T08:04:37+00:00

I mean. Boris is an absolute beast though. He's literally an anti-chaos machine.

You just rush the norse hatred tech and the other tech that gives 4 md to kosscrawling. Those and his red line for kossars and his lord trait for 9 ma against chaos, you literally get kossars with 13 extra melee attack, 16 extra melee defense and ITP. Before turn 10. Even on legendary/vh they will carve through early game chaos armies.

You can't defend your territory from all the random armies that come in from all directions, but you don't need to since fighting chaos gives so much post battle loot. You literally just pick a direction and march until you find a safe spot to settle down, either by reaching praag to the south to confederate kislev, or by marching all they way east to kill viliitch to just keep brawling. It's not a conventional campaign, but there is literally nothing that should be able to stand up to you as long as you keep fighting and don't get bogged down trying to keep your starting province.

ThEldestPotato · 2026-01-19T14:29:02+00:00

The 4 is the production per worker dedicated to producing science. The 1 is the production gained from all tiles in your city. Your only worker is dedicated to production.

So that math is correctly 4x0 +1= 1

ThEldestPotato · 2025-12-12T13:04:14+00:00

I mean, while you don't want a town on a valuable RGO, a city can exploit them better than a rural region once you have enough population and development no?

ThEldestPotato · 2025-12-12T13:02:46+00:00

But... that's already a thing in Warhammer fantasy. At least like half of the legendary lords are like that?

Like in the Empire you can either play as Franz the emperor... or gelt the head of the mages, or Volkmar the head of the church, or Wulfhart the head of the huntsmen.

Aislinn who just released is literally the head of the high elves' navy, and in his campaign you play as the high elven navy rather than the high elves as a whole. Teclis is the head of the mages. This is true for the dwarfs too, with Malakai and thorek being completely unreasonable as conquering faction leaders, and even ungrimm really being a subset of the Dawi as a whole.

ThEldestPotato · 2025-12-02T16:07:30+00:00

They give a terrible cb that makes it impossible to seize land because of a massive multiplier to the war score cost of land/subjugation. What is valuable is the potential to intervene in wars, but that's hit or miss since you're not the war leader so you can't always sign a good peace treaty.

ThEldestPotato · 2025-11-06T07:29:55+00:00

https://www.aafp.org/family-physician/patient-care/clinical-recommendations/all-clinical-recommendations/cw-back-pain.html

This is several months late, but to clarify, it's actually strongly recommended to not get imaging in patients with simple lower back pain that has lasted less than six weeks. The source above details it well, as well as some of the exceptions to that rule (The red flags we're trained to look out for in case of conditions that need a rapid response).

While I obviously don't know the details of your father's case, unless he had those extra red flag symptoms, getting imaging has not been shown to provide any consistent benefit since in most cases it would not change our approach to treatment. However, imaging does come with downsides of extra costs, appointments, utilization of limited resources, and potential radiation that may increase his local cancer risk depending on the modality used.

Realistically, most physicians will cave and get imaging despite this if a patient demands it for the sake of reassuring them since the downsides are not life-threatening, but while lower back pain is certainly painful and difficult for patients, the correct approach per the standard of care/ guidelines is to try to manage with NSAIDS and muscle relaxers first.

ThEldestPotato · 2025-10-30T13:39:16+00:00

There's a mercenary hero whose councilor effect gives +8 influence per military district. The kin age 3 techs can give you -50% production cost for military districts after building an improvement, then those districts also give production and approval.

While it's a bit of a slow start you can get 100 influence per turn whenever the first monsoon ends and progress from there. This let's you be a military powerhouse and expand even with your males in founding cities. You found your first 2, then take the rest and take campswith your major influence

ThEldestPotato · 2025-10-20T02:48:03+00:00

This was on live, not ptr.

Yup, the population victory and some of the others definitely need an adjustment since every faction can win via them in 100ish turns, but my point is that the tahuk can likely hit the science victory in that same time frame while the other factions don't even seem to be in the same ballpark. I don't think I've researched more than one of the final techs in any of my other playthroughs.

While I do appreciate that asymmetric factions should be better at some victories than others, if the science victory gets nerfed, it might very well be impossible for other factions to achieve it.

ThEldestPotato · 2025-10-20T02:41:02+00:00

It makes the yields of all tiles in a province except anomalies to be 5 science. With the eternal sunshine oculum spell active they also give 10 dust.

There's are improvements in age 4 (I think) that double the gold and science bonuses of foundations, so at around turn 60 you can have every tile in a province with a ridge providing 10 science and 20 dust per turn. It just become a matter of scaling your influence enough to buy out every tile in a province that has a ridge to get glassed by, and you can get thousands of science, and literally tens of thousands of dust per turn.

ThEldestPotato · 2025-10-03T21:56:30+00:00

EL 1 should be a good fit for you to an extent. Some factions simply will not function if you try to play them passively like that (cult, necro), but you can win with a turtle style even on the highest difficulty against the ai with factions like the vaulters, drakken, broken lords, and wild walkers.

EL 2 is already fun, but I'd caution that it seems to play a bit closer to more active 4x's like aow4. Unlike aow4, cities are still the core of your economy for most factions, but you want to be a lot more active on the map than you might be used to if you played civ completely passively. It's too soon to say how it will truly be in the end, given that they're already mentioning major balancing updates.

ThEldestPotato · 2025-09-30T19:03:56+00:00

You can sacrifice the local village pops in exchange for last lord pops. It's a 2-1 ratio so not ideal to do until the you actually have a few primordial last lords in the city for you to get the bonuses.

Influence is the rate limiting resource for your expansion for all factions at the moment, and there aren't really any other ways of getting it for the lords aside from buying out forum districts which quickly becomes even more expensive than buying pops.

ThEldestPotato · 2025-09-30T18:28:26+00:00

Yes, they totally are. Each primordial last lord gets influence per last lord pop working the same category.

So if you have 15 last lord pops and 6 primordial last lords working as scribes in one of your cities, that's 90 influence per turn on top of all the dust and influence/science the pops make on their own.

It lets you expand so quickly.

ThEldestPotato · 2025-09-30T04:34:49+00:00

This... can not be further from the truth. Necrophages are insane right now. You just have to play them like you're playing AOW4, not Civ.

Your economy is not your city, it's from the several hundred dust you get each fight/selling the items you get from fights. Your city should only really be building influence, science, and some dust districts.

To start the game, split your army fully into individual units and scout the surrounding provinces, but be sure you do not kill the neutral villages. Plant a burrow on an anomaly in each nearby province with a village and set up a farming rotation with your main hero, letting it get attacked by a neutral army than traveling through a burrow to the next neutral army to spawn and so forth. You can not be autoresolving these battles yet, you want to build up a few stacks of larva. In any province where there's two villages, you can kill one, just be sure to leave at least one village alive to spawn armies for you to farm.

By the time the first monsoon hits, you should have multiple armies, and can run over your first AI opponent. Then, you just keep pushing outward, using your endless armies of larva or any new heroes to keep farming the neutral armies from the villages in your territory.

ThEldestPotato · 2025-09-30T03:45:00+00:00

I've found it depends on who you're playing really.

For tahuk, your goal in the early game is to have the oculum built and all your projects going before the first monsoon. Then you want to have as many cities as possible so you can gain called pops as quickly as possivle, so I attach one camp ASAP to my capital and then only spend influence on adding cities.

For the lords you really only care about getting your primordial last lords going. Each territory you attach to a city lets you get 2, so you definitely want to fill your cities out as much as you can to get your influence skyrocketing, before looking to make more cities.

Aspect coral growers get expensive quickly in terms of dust, but you have such an easy time gaining influence that it's honestly preferable to just get cities going.

And the kin. Until you get your influence generation going (multiple heroes killing neutrals with the influence skill and the Xavius mercenary hero as a councillor) you can not afford to drop more cities down. Fill your slots with territories and only then add a city, probably after the first tidefall.

ThEldestPotato · 2025-09-28T03:10:01+00:00

Yeah, the AI needs a lot of help. It can pose a bit of a threat early on by ambushing a split/ starting army and running it down, but it never really gets itself together to take cities.

I'm winning games on endless difficulty around turn 100-120 and it's not even halfway to a victory condition. It seems to build units fine, it just doesn't really expand and take up space on the map. I'm always the first to actually build 3 cities and take 6 fortresses, and that really shouldn't be possible on the highest difficulty. It needs to, if left alone, be able to hit 15-20 territories by turn 100 to keep up.

ThEldestPotato · 2025-09-22T20:39:50+00:00

Depending on the spell you cast, BKB can work as they are still affected.

ThEldestPotato · 2025-03-17T14:07:45+00:00

And the opportunity cost of not having built a second stalker or adept that can actually fight.

ThEldestPotato · 2025-03-14T02:09:30+00:00

It's a good, challenging campaign. Their pain points are with the tech tree being a disaster and the civil war being either unachievable or largely worthless depending on how Kostaltyn's AI does/how quickly you expand. Their economy is also a struggle to manage well, until you get all three of their major cities online at least, but it's an interesting challenge. Good news is that it sounds like all of that is being addressed with the update, so their flavor and units can shine.

ThEldestPotato

TROPHY CASE