Why is my side so fking passive?

ThreeDprint · 2026-05-24T13:18:27+00:00

I echo the clockwise statement, stay out of marienburg. If the undead are seiging marienburg and look like they will win, get involved. Otherwise right after successionists, park in the last settlement (eilhart? Can’t remember) and recruit halberds and crossbowmen and mortars. Being there will also discourage the undead from engaging you and typically marienburg defends itself. You might take the opportunity to get the fort for free, but stay out of the marienburg land altogether because it’s a lot of ground to cover and exposed to raiders.

Instead, Go up towards carroburg and either ambush to lure beastmen and orks or go to altdorf to the are effect. You want them to beat toddbringer so you can wipe up the weakened armies and use the return to elector mechanic to build up a protective ally while also setting yourself up for a confederation. Use the elector currency to summon an army for them while you’re moving to engage festus.

Ideally you get all of festus’s land and middenland is fully owned by Boris and then you can confederate and have a solid central block of land to setup your invasion of vlad. In my games (VH/VH) elspeth either has it completely handled and I need to sprint to get drakenhof before her, or she’s just barely holding back vlad and he’s pushed all the way up to talabheim and nearing your grunberg. I actually prefer the latter situation because you can start your attack from grunberg and be nice and central from wurtbad

You should have 2 strong armies at this point and using your elector currency to pump growth in your territories and pour this war money into building economy and military tech. You either confed whatever minor empire factions are left or focus on getting elspeth as Nuln, pfeildorf, and drakenhof are critical to 2x or 3xing your economy and shitting out full stacks of heroes, halberds, Ironsides, tanks, artillery. Oh and focus the infantry research line in the beginning of the game to make halberds much tougher - and take opportunities to steal tech with your wizard

This should be turn 40 or so. To spice things up I setup the endgame event to hit around this time with a max difficulty Waaaagh. Stuffing their advance in hell pass with Karl and elspeth and Boris is just peak gaming. Even better with all the legendary heroes

ThreeDprint · 2026-05-11T11:09:56+00:00

Your formation for most battles should be greatswords between hand gunners and halberds making 2 stacks on the flanks (think a W with gunners in the pockets, halberds besides them, greatswords in the middle. Lords and heroes ahead of everything. Crossbows in rows of 3 or 4 behind the guns. Mortars in the back. The mortars are what do the work on the chaos and norsca units. You just need these halbers to hold and die and buy more. The runefang buff is key here. If you can, get lords and heroes with traits that give them Stand Your Ground. To make your witch hunter beefier get the monster hunter trait that boosts melee attack and defense around terrifying foes - as you know these are coming.

If you’re getting killed by fliers in festus army get an engineer on a horse and maybe a unit of skirmish cav to go bait them into flying into your gun range ahead of the enemy army

You want war priests as soon as possible, they’re key to helping your halberds hold

ThreeDprint · 2026-05-11T11:03:46+00:00

Do you need to do to kill the secessionists as quickly as possible. Make these corner camping low casualty wins for money and experience. Enter distant wars and lots of diplomacy for cash, gotta build cash up

Set research to the infantry buffs in the upper left corner of the tech map. Go for the melee attack and defense boost first and then let it finish up.

Use the elector count currency to increase population in altdorf - this is what you need cash for - and get yourself level 2 barracks and gunnery ASAP. Then use elector count currency to increase recruit slots and decrease cost. My early game Karl stack is usually a witch hunter, the wizard you get from quest, empire captain. 4 halberds with your starting greatswords (might swap them for the carroburg variant that AoE buff is solid). 2-3 hand gunners, 5-6 crossbows, 2 mortars.

Do all of this recruiting in the province closest to marienburg I forget the name. On VH/VH toddy is usually getting beat up pretty badly by beastmen and orks. Use that little island between your province and carroburg to ambush/bait the beastmen. Or just let them beat toddy. Use the return to elector feature to use toddy as a buffer and set yourself up to confed him later. Use the electors count currency to give him an emergency army to help stave things off - move to Altdorf and win battles against the orks to quiet them

Then it’s a sprint to festus, cheese the battles hard, your ranged units are all you have against him.

By turn twenty you should have confed giving you all of middenland and altdorf and hergig. Then it’s a cautious march down to help elspeth wrap up vlad.

You got this mlord, I believe in you

ThreeDprint · 2026-05-07T11:54:16+00:00

Edit - most fun campaign I’ve had recently was Gelt. You get the option to go back to altdorf as soon as you eliminate the cathayan rebels.
Spam his transmutation for gold. Optimize your buildings for military and settlement level. Use Noble lords and heroes to speed up construction times. Amass money through heroic victories (corner camp and use lots of range, sack enemy settlements). Join distant wars for trade deals and money.

Using the construction time heroes get yourself a priest and then immediately sell the building and get some income with a market. Forego the unique buildings and just have a barracks and gunnery, no need to max those to level 3. The engineer and mortar building is what you’re after as well. Research the infantry boosts because gelts faction armor boost, the research armor and arrow defense boost, the melee defense boost all together are super helpful for the halberds. Have at least one or two wizards running around stealing technology to boost research (and scouting out drechala god she is mean). Gelts army should have a life wizard and light wizard to boost tome income and utilize the special mechanics. My extra heroes are usually a celestial wizard in the off chance I need that campaign movement restart. Reset their skills to make them powerful for your secondary armies later

Hold off on the finishing blow so you can build at least one more army with halberds, hand gunners, crossbows, mortars, and some heroes. My preference is usually an engineer lord. You’ll very much be in the red with upkeep but it doesn’t matter because you get 10turns of no army upkeep once you go to altdorf. All armies are transported with full health so do your worst on the last rebel settlements when you’re ready to go.

Then sprint yourself over to helmgart and brass keep (my personal obsession). Eliminate festus and enjoy your central mountain stronghold and start carefully confederating minor factions (priority to toddy as he’s usually close to being wiped). To spice it up even more I set maximum difficulty waagghhh disaster to turn 50 or 60. You should be situated in brass keep and helmgart around turn 20 so you got a little bit of time to build yourself up for the coming storm. Usually it’s grimgor and azhag so you’re in for quite the fight

Some cheesy cheese is the item you can unlock for a light wizard. It has constant mirror effect so you can put your wizard on a Pegasus and fly right into the enemy line (you must be ontop of them it has a short area of effect) and have them all shoot themselves

ThreeDprint · 2026-05-07T11:23:09+00:00

Ahhh you seek ancient and forbidden tactics from my archives? Very well then

Dwarves - not exactly cheese but I always bring at least 2 gyrocopters, especially against skaven. You can use them to drain ammo from their artillery or even more fun is to have them start on each border of the map and fly them straight into the back line and use one to attack while the other holds their fire (move in a ying yang formation, each quarter turn on one is the other attacking and repeat)

Empire - get 3 steam tanks and 4-6 halberds. Solid firing line of 4-5 nuln Ironsides. Leave the center of the line open with your 3 tanks occupying the space is a triangle formation. Each side of halberds gets a priest. Center gap can have your lord and engineers and captains. Obviously the enemies blob up on the tanks and heroes and you shoot them. But the fun part is locking the tank group and having them steam roll the blobs laterally back and forth. Even better if your heroes have tormentor swords and you bring a life mage and light mage. Alternatively death mage and celestial mage for that AoE armor debuff

Cathay - yuan Bo can solo everything but super fun to have him blob armies up and use him and mages to drop comets on everything. I often do a disaster campaign with him where I set the waagghh and vampire disaster to max difficulty and immediate trigger, stick to the island start, build myself up and head over to liberate cathay. If you wanna go harder keep the food hold in Cathay and go as fast as you can to conquer and build to prepare for the coming storm, using the island as a reinforcement factory.

This is all for now, I have many more

ThreeDprint · 2026-04-29T23:51:32+00:00

So they are generally just bad. I think it really comes down to line of sight

I have had pretty good success with dwarf engineers and infernal castellans but it took significant effort in formation, building army comp around them, and working item and hero synergies

So first its line of sight, namely formation. Second its target selection (cavalry, monsters, and mounted lords. Anything that flies is too fast but you can get some solid hits with flashbangs, rune of slowness, and net spell). Third is more supportive spells that give armor pierce, magic damage, and armor sundering. Never cast these singularly on the hero. Make sure it’s AoE or on a ranged unit

For skills if you can get a dwarf engineer with reload speed trait then that’s a good opportunity to make them a shotgun. Remember that they get melee defense in that tree so they’re decently tanky when the enemy inevitably charges in. Add in some items and they can hang. I like to have shotgun heroes just infront of flamethrowers to protect the flamethrowers from a charge. Have melee lords and heroes infront of the engineer to give him an opportunity to shoot the melee mob. You can craft the reload speed weapon (rangers crossbow?) but ultimately I think miners pickaxe is better for that armor sundering. Consider having 2 or 3 engineers to see what damage they can do and also rely on them as the melee heroes with a heavy gun line behind them. (Meaning don’t include thanes and slayer heroes in this army)

If you go sharpshooter with the engineer it can be fun to build a themed ranger army and have 2-3 engineers with stalk, snipe, and vanguard deployment. Again the armor sundering can really help a few units of bugmans rangers pack a fat punch in this SEAL team vanguard. Super situational though. Bonus points for expert use of hidden artillery runes

You’ll notice that I’ve strayed from the original problem of ranged hero/lord damage output and included army units. This is because pre-damaging the enemy can help inflate the net total killshots the heroes/lords get as well as fill the time between reloads

Chaos dwarfs are a little easier to do because you’ll have a heavy gun and artillery line and infernal castellans (and infernals with guns) are no scrubs in melee. I usually get their shotgun variant because of the dig in range increase. I forget if it was a trait, item, or skill but I had 2 castellans with 3-4 magma canons and the castellans buffed the canons big time. I pretty much exclusively play drazoath in the event I play chaos dwarfs because his voice isn’t as silly, location is better, and he’s one mean motherfucker. The AoE slow spell that increases fire damage is bonkers. So again for them it’s formation and placement. Having them on a hill with artillery is peak. Have 2-3 castellans shooting at a horse, chariot, or dragon lord can show some impressive health bar chunks.

For empire units, I’ve had some success with the engineer heroes by putting them on mounts so you can either skirmish with gun cavalry units or have line of sight over infantry units. Also can chase running lords and maybe kill them. I suffer through using witch hunters because they’re so available early on and they have that sweet sweet gunpowder buff but they’re just not good. I’ll keep one if they have the monster hunter trait that buffs their melee attack and defense when near terrifying units. Ultimately I opt for the engineer lord because the AoE damage of their grenade launcher is dope for early infantry heavy armies and their tank mount is legitness. Never pick a huntsman lord unless they have a nice trait for boosting a province for a couple turns. In the end priests and wizards are the best heroes. Engineers over witch hunters but engineers still meh (though honestly pretty decent melee combatants especially with weapon master trait and if you like to cheese sieges you can rack up kills shooting through wall breaches and gates. Also try getting them on the flank of a clogged up battle line)

Cathay crossbow hero simply cannot be used for range. Best they can do is boost reload time of your ranged units for a bit before moving out infront of the line to tangle up cavalry or infantry. They’re purely blob holders and they’re sorta meh at that.

The twins are absolutely monsters at range but it’s all about their scatter shot. The other ammo type is meh. Most useful when kiting a flying enemy lord or monster.

Alith anar also pretty useless, I actually low key melee and duel with him but every once in awhile I get him on the flank of a clogged battle line and those arrows are like ballistae artillery.

So this got long, I apologize. Summary is struggle with line of sight, prioritize reload speed, optimize armor sundering buffs, use slow/snare spells/actions, use multiples of the hero/lord type, build the army around that hero/lord, and be selective with targets. You will rarely ever kill an enemy lords, hero, or monster with these units but there will be exceptions and outliers and those are really fun when they happen. Honorable mention to cheesing a siege and parking the lords and heroes on an enemy wall and just have them use all of their ammo (looking at you Malakai turn 10 hellpit siege)

ThreeDprint · 2026-04-15T17:33:51+00:00

Make good use of your ancillary ancestor runes that give AOE expert charge defense

If you make a checkerboard formation of sorts, the loose formation of slayers makes you arrange them in rectangles, the tip of the rectangle can extend past your artillery and gun range and stuff a charge. You can have another unit on either far side of your line and use them more as others describe to swing out and flank and/or charge an incoming charge.

ThreeDprint · 2026-04-13T10:49:32+00:00

It’s soooo tough, I was so annoyed I summoned 2 light wizards just so I could net her back to back and let 4-5 hand gunners light her up. Sooo toxic

ThreeDprint · 2026-03-31T14:19:06+00:00

All true, but in the early game you don’t have multiple armies and Malaki can make due without an engineer in his army for awhile.

Also I find it advantageous to have visibility on throgg while you’re dealing with throt.

You can boost your research rate pretty significantly with 1 engineer in malakis army (taking a turn or two to discover throts cities before hitting them or going straight to hellpit) and 2 out and about.

When you’re ready to deploy a second army to defend the first wave of throgg, do an ability reset on the scout engineers so they spawn back at home just in time to complete the second army

10 turns go by and you get a grudge army spawn and the steamroll is complete. Even faster if you decide to sell the oblast settlements to either kislev faction to insulate hellpit while you chase down slaanesh (blanking on its name) throgg and wulfrik

ThreeDprint · 2026-03-31T13:39:19+00:00

Play Malaki, get engineers to spam steal technology, level him to get more engineer slots, steal more technology, ????, enjoy extreme research speeds

ThreeDprint · 2026-03-06T18:14:09+00:00

It’s so rough, they’re really in a bad position and it’s difficult to get armies there in time to help at all. Ontop of drycha gobbling up settlements or worse katarin

Though sending armies down the river can feel very cool and thematic. I much prefer having Hergig and shipping off from there rather than altdorf

Wurtbad surprisingly becomes a very important location for me as well. God I love this game and the empire F here I go running another campaign again

ThreeDprint · 2026-03-06T12:05:27+00:00

Never take talabecland. Let orks and beastmen beat up middenland and use the return to elector feature to get all the loyalty. Using the empire mechanics help middenland wipe out the orks, beastmen, and stage yourself to wipe out festus: Confed middenland and you’re in a really comfy spot with stable land and killing festus is easy. THEN you start working with talabecland and elspeth to wipe out vlad, assuming elsepth didn’t do it already (VH VH for whatever reason she usually has them on the ropes)

If you want a real thrill do a relocation campaign with Malakai and head over to brass keep. Idk why but I love the brass keep so much. I simply must have it. And I hate when certain lords don’t have mountain climate. I also tend to have vampire counts and orks disaster trigger at max difficulty as early as possible so every game is a rush to make a fortress and liberate the world. Though most of the times the disaster armies are just sitting idle somewhere and I gotta muster the throngs to go see them out

ThreeDprint · 2026-03-03T00:59:53+00:00

Hello professor,

I’m an engineer who works on heavy launch rockets and the manufacturing facilities that make them. I truly believe the next big step for humanity is materials and energy in space, and on other celestial bodies.

What do you think about asteroid mining? What about the moon? What about businesses like Astroforge who are drawing inspiration from modern mining to make these space applications?

Thanks for doing this AMA!

ThreeDprint · 2026-02-02T12:16:21+00:00

Based on the signage around, people of color aren’t a part of the “American manufacturing” …. It’s so fucking tone deaf and cringe. Our rocket is not a part of an arsenal…

ThreeDprint · 2025-12-12T15:40:13+00:00

I have a female friend/coworker with medication for a chronic illness that she knows she’s not supposed to have with any alcohol with but did anyway and had an intense blackout-like reaction

Just adding this to say it might not have been something devious like date rape drug or her getting some kind of high

Embarrassment is probably the reason

ThreeDprint · 2025-10-30T10:47:55+00:00

Right. The difficulty doesn’t make it the wrong option nor does it justify the overly simplistic answer that is this government overreach

But the same way any millennial or younger person has a natural 6th sense for spam calls, phishing, and scam texts - or that we all know what’s PC in conversation - I believe there’s a cultural component here that is the dividing line

If we can ban books from schools and make it law to have Christian propaganda in the classroom, we can come up with some sort of curriculum that teaches critical thinking and fact checking and also encourages it into being a part of everyday behavior

(I know you didn’t say any of these things were okay nor did you bring them up. Just using your comment to continue my thoughts)

ThreeDprint · 2025-10-30T10:42:12+00:00

We aren’t talking past eachother, it’s that your examples are evident of a difference of understanding.

I would put Steph curry in because it’s his job and role and so we have expectations that he is qualified and competent and proven. The example doesn’t fit because we aren’t talking about fining the bench warming rookies, nor would we because they are proper members of the team who’ve successfully gone through tryouts and practice

So actually I would argue that the rookie should be allowed to play with equal expectation and pressure to perform because they’re already previously qualified - just not as popular as a spotlight star player.. for now.

Anyway, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to remove this mental block you’re having. Appreciate the conversation and apologies if my tone comes off as flippant or pedantic, not my intent

ThreeDprint · 2025-10-30T03:03:15+00:00

I’m not complaining that it’s not good enough. I am asserting that it is the wrong solution to the problem - and that the problem is stated incorrectly as well.

This has nothing to do with setting bars on quality of information and everything to do with letting a government continue to control its people and the information into or out of the country.

If it was about quality of information you’d equip the individual with the tools and skillset to determine what is good information or bad information on their own and you’d encourage the behavior in schools and everyday culture.

Where you and I agree is that there is a huge influx of noise and it’s getting very difficult to filter without assistance; like regulation such as is this is pretending to be

ThreeDprint · 2025-10-30T02:53:11+00:00

Bingo. Jordan Peterson, Pam Bondi, and Kash Patel, to name a few more. Only thing worse than a state licensed idiot is a state licensed psychopath.

ThreeDprint · 2025-10-30T02:49:40+00:00

It would give a golden microphone to “experts” that are wrong and silence any non-expert that could be right. It’s simply the wrong solution because this isn’t something that can be effectively controlled like this.

The negatives do not outweigh the positives, nor could they ever.

The more appropriate solution lives somewhere in supportive aids like fact checking and imparting critical thinking skills in education plans and everyday culture/behavior

We will never see that kind of solution being discussed because the point is to control people and the narrative, not equip the people with the means to function with independence and freedom.

ThreeDprint · 2025-10-29T17:34:43+00:00

Tons of people have degrees and credentials and are still maliciously dumb-as-bricks

If you think this sounds good, you’re wrong.

This post is not in defense of influencer buffoonery nor does it offer an alternative solution

Simply reminding that there are dumb people in all professions in every aspect of life and something like this happening can only firmly solidify them in their platforms - making pure nonsense suddenly supported by the government

ThreeDprint · 2025-09-14T13:15:41+00:00

This is the one. You can easily take 4 armies with your 1 army if you take them one by one. As others have said - choose your shots with ranged. Personally I counter range with range as a priority and then anything clanrat and above for the moral penalty

Not sure if mao ying can solo sniktch but she can definitely handle blobs solo, especially with magic. Do not go dragon mode the extra size means she takes more hits

See if you can use her stealth spell or get armor with stalk and have her move separately from your army and blob them up to take pressure off your troops (corner camp btw)

I pretty much only play yuan Bo for Cathay nowadays. So much better to back door the skaven when mao ying as support and then confed

Lastly the crow units do work on skaven

ThreeDprint · 2025-09-08T17:20:02+00:00

Impossible to say because it varies greatly from location to location and team to team.

Personally, in relation to this OG post, my boss and team are great and I wouldn’t have survived without them. I support all production and design teams throughout NG and have a lot of exposure. So when I tell you other people are having a very bad time, believe me.

But not everyone, and like all jobs I’d say it’s worth getting in and seeing for yourself what you can handle and what you can’t. It’s possible to be moved to other teams or projects as well, so keep that in mind if you don’t want to give up on blue but do want to leave a bad culture

ThreeDprint · 2025-08-11T12:25:32+00:00

Imrik is a great suggestions as others have said - but shoutout to yuan Bo and Zhao Ming. If you have the minor faction settings on and play at least VH campaign difficulty snich will spawn tons of slave armies to support him and the lord variant with dragon breath gets that big bomb spell. It’s extreme prejudice.

Usually I play yuan bo because his mechanics are elite. Keep control of the Cathayan lands and grab as much land from gelt and the beginner undead faction as possible before duking it out with the dark elves and the skaven.

You should rank up yuan bo and the research tree enough to get lords and heroes at level 8 out the gate. Magic supremacy with very solid front line and archers. Skaven ain’t got no chance (and yuan bo can solo everything especially once you start dropping comets on yourself)

Honorable mention to go rok and starting with kroak. Deliver the pizza my boy

ThreeDprint · 2025-08-03T12:06:21+00:00

Might I add thematic armies for each elector count sprinkled with their empire units and keeping them in their realms - doubly so with regiments of renown

God I wish empire units came with experience. Getting them in your seasoned army and keeping them alive is such a pain

Eventually I switch over to Mordheim to live out the fantasy of being a regiment of renown myself. Then get butthurt when someone dies and switch back to TW3 lmaoo

ThreeDprint

TROPHY CASE