Skip to main content

Total Warhammer: Dwarves and their grudges

My biggest mistake with the dwarven campaign in Total War Warhammer was not really playing it until after I had already spend a lot of time with other factions (Empire, Bordelaux and Vampires). Having a good grasp of the basic game world and game mechanics from those other campaigns the only challenge remaining is dealing with the strengths and weaknesses of the dwarves themselves.

Dwarven strengths: 

Even low level dwarven warriors are very tough  and tend to win battles just by standing still and letting the enemy come to them.

Dwarves have easy access to some of the best ranged troops and artillery in the game.

The dwarven economy is very strong so it is easy for them to make lots of money.

The dwarven building tree is very streamlined that and allows a player relatively quick access to high quality units.

The dwarven starting position is easy to defend with nearby access to weak green skin armies and settlements for early game combat experience.

Dwarves have a huge technology tree that is chock full of good things. You can buff up your already tough warriors to a huge degree as well as getting massive buffs to your economy.

Dwarven weaknesses:

No cavalry.

No magic

They are slow.

They are very slow.

In the multiplayer game dwarves are considered one of the weaker factions hampered by their lack of mobility but sadly the AI doesn't seem to be able to exploit this so dwarves are a very easy faction to play. Easy doesn't mean fun unfortunately because their lack of mobility leaves you with very little choice of tactics. Dwarves play a slow defensive game using artillery to taunt enemies to dash themselves against the  impenetrable ranks of dwarven warriors while dwarven ranged troops rain death from a distance.  They win these battles very easily but it isn't a whole bunch of fun.

There are nice things about the dwarven campaign: The book of grudges is a lovely idea that is well executed. If anyone wrongs you (eg conquers a settlement or raids your lands) it goes into the book and gets added to the list of offenders you must punish. If the AI was better I could imagine dwarven attributes could lend themselves to some epic last stand defence battles but sadly it isn't and increasing the difficulty level just increases the number and stats of enemies not their intelligence.

Perhaps I am getting burned out of TW Warhammer. Certainly this campaign isn't keeping my interest. There are some interesting mods out there (Steel Faith Overhaul has caught my interest) but it may just be time for me to move on.

Comments

Jayedub said…
I really need to get to playing this game, I bought it at launch and played only a few hours. I did mess with the Chaos which was fun at first but probably something I should have waited to try till I learned more of the game mechanics.
mbp said…
Strongly recommend giving it another go JD but I definitely don't recommend starting with Chaos. They are a horde faction which means they play by special rules. Dwarves are the usual recommendation for beginners because they are tough as nails and have a fairly easy campaign but if you have played strategy games before them Empire is possibly a better choice. They have lots of enemies so they definitely have a harder time of it than the dwarves but they are the most rounded faction in the game so you get to try a bit of everything when playing as empire.

Popular posts from this blog

Android Tip 3: Sharing a Folder between multiple users of an Android device

Android has allowed multiple user logins for quite a while now. This is can be very useful for tablets which are shared by family members. Normally Android erects strict Chinese walls between users preventing them from using each others apps and viewing each others files. This is a useful security feature and ensures your kids don't mess up your work spreadsheets when screwing around on the tablet and should also prevent them from buying €1,000 worth of Clash of Candy coins on your account. Sometimes however you really do want to share stuff with other users and this can prove surprisingly difficult. For example on a recent holiday I realised that I wanted to share a folder full of travel documents with my wife. Here are some ways to achieve this. 1. If you have guaranteed internet access  then you can create a shared folder on either Dropbox or Google drive. Either of these has the great advantage of being able to access the files on any device and the great disadvantage of bein...

Portal 2 two screen coop on one PC.

I mentioned before that I intended to try Portal 2 in "unofficial split screen co-op mode. Well split screen on a small computer monitor is a recipe for a headache especially when the game defies gravity as much as portal. However a minor bit of extra fiddling allowed us to drive two seperate screens from one PC. The Steam forums describes a complicated method of doing this that I couldn't get working so this simpler method which worked for me might be of use to someone. 1. First I followed the instructions in this post to get split screen multi-player working: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1847904 A minor issue not mentioned is that you need to enable the console from the keyboard/mouse options menu I am using keyboard and one wired Xbox360 controller as suggested. Getting the controller to switch to channel 2 was tricky at first but as Chameleon8 mentions plugging it out and in again during loading works. The trick for me was to do the plug / p...

Lotro: The Forgotten Treasury

Throg joined a Kinship group for the Forgotten Treasury instance last night. It was an enjoyable change from the solo questing that the now level 55 dwarf champion has been mostly doing so far in Moria. Some members of the group had tried and failed to clear the Treasury before so we knew it would be challenging but we were lucky enough to have a well balanced group with Guardian, Minstrel, Lore Master, Hunter, Burglar and Champion (Throg). Throg (level 55) and the minstrel (53) were both below the 56ish level of the instance but the others were all higher so it more or less balanced out. [SPOILERs ahead] It is a well designed enjoyable instance set in a circular chamber with balcony around. As you enter, a boss absconds to a locked side chamber with his treasure leaving the fellowship to clear trash ringed around the balcony. Once the trash are cleared you have access to a puzzle which must be solved in order to open the locked door. Clearing the (including six mini bosses) also get...