@@codysmith66 All the more reason to have a bunch of useless traits. The reason why traits are hard to get isn't because of the number of turns a game is in, but the fact that over time useless traits+legedary lords going extinct preventing you from getting those traits.
@@holysword876 It's a simple matter to revive a dead faction. Cause a rebellion in the territory, and a rebel army under the banner of that defeated faction will spawn. Very time consuming, which is why it usually takes this many turns to make that happen. Possible, but a pain in the arse
What old AI are you referring to? If you mean TW2, then I had a Malus one-man doomstack go up against pretty much the same army type as the one in this video, and when surrounded by hundreds of dwarves in melee ON FOOT, Malus was getting shredded from all sides by thunderers, and even organ guns... with pretty much no friendly fire to the dwarves. He is just that much taller even on foot.
The AI behaviour almost seems like the missile units are missing their innate 'Guard Mode'; since their behaviour seems the same as a player-controlled missile unit without it enabled.
Probably this. In even battles where I think my missiles might be weaker than the enemy's, I will wait till they target mine and move them back a bit at a time and they will walk forward to stay in shooting range. Eventually, they crash in the frontline and stop shooting :/
Guard mode simply does not function like its supposed to or even did in wh2. As a player my guard mode missiles will constantly run into melee while getting LOS blocked or just for fun.
I think it might also heavily depend on the battle difficulty. For me the ai has been quite competent. But I might have a mod that makes it stronger not 100% sure
@@ragnarok6723 I havent played in about a month, so I'm not up to date on the last changes, but in my experience guard mode only works if the manual target you select is on range at that moment and then moves away. If you order something out of range or line of sight, guard mode does nothing. Happened a lot on WH2 sieges with artillery
Dismounted one man doomstacks tend to get knocked around a lot by cavalry and monsters. Shure, they don't really take any damage, but they aren't able to dish any damage out themselves.
I had a huge problem with Malus Darkblade in one of my campaigns where he was pretty efficiently levelled up by the AI. Up to the point where I could have destroyed his whole army and the rest of my forces had problem with finishing him up.
I remember fighting him with daniels army, defeating malus's army and just running away from malus after he'd transformed until he died from his degenerating health lol. Fighting Malus is a losing strategy xD
In that case you should ignore Malus completely, and focus on his army to trigger the army losses, but if Malus is unbreakable somehow then you should just abandoned your cities and run away from dark elves xD
Yeah at that point I’d recommend defeating his attached army before retreating. Follow it up by drowning him in an auto resolve. Doesn’t matter what traits or if he would slaughter in the actual battle as long as you have enough meat the auto resolve will give it to you.
He's not only the best one man Doomstack, he is the easiest to make. Get the sword of khaine, let the possession rise to max, and you're basically there. He can deal with almost anything. Get some extra items and traits to take him to 11/10, but as you said, it's overkill.
Well point to be made that boosting his damage is still important so the fights don't drag on forever. That's where the 11/10 kind of do matter imo, gets boring fast anyway though.
@@TheRewasder97 I found Von Carstein vampire hero doomstacks to be the most fun. You still have a few entities to control and actually do something during the combat instead of just watching the enemy blob slowly break down.
I love the phrase "a little bit possessed". And yeah, even without cheese, having a unit so much as touch enemy missile troops seems to break the AI in my experience.
Nah, back in TW2, I had a Malus one-man doomstack, and it worked just fine without SoK. A bit weaker, but well-worth not skipping on the Warpsword and not having to get the SoK. Unbreakable is not necessary for someone with 85+ leadership, regen, and extreme resilience.
@@dnielzcx5490 I don't think Malus needs unbreakable. He never got damaged to the point of getting close to wavering. In matter of fact, he never got below 99% of his HP.
@@Riwillion Wasn't there at some point an issue in WH2 when if you don't make Malus unbreakable, as a one-man army he would rout during transformation to Tzarkan, since for a second you lose all your units on the field?
22:49 when attacked in the rear he loses 60% melee defence. That makes it below 50. Standard hit chance is 35, minimum is 8, so it matters against units attacking in the rear with a melee attack of 15 or higher. I am sorry that I improperly showed of morathi (should have grinded I mean) because she actually had 100+ melee defence and nerfed enemy melee attack by ~15 by her abilities. Against physical things in a blob, she actually would do comparable to malus except way quicker because magic.
The AI in WH 3 seems a lot better with focus firing vulnerable units, especially large entities with low armour, which is giving me some trouble in my KuGath campaign. Aside from that, it doesn't seem much better or worse than in WH 2. The problem in the video doesn't seem to be with the enemy AI specifically but with the behaviour of missile units in general (including the player's) where if they don't have a clear shot at a target they will move towards it which usually ends up with them getting into meele. But as long as this issue doesn't occur, the AI is a lot better at prioritizing targets with their ranged units.
today i learn that these round things above the armies in the prefight screen are banners you can assign to some units, i always wondered what those things over enemy portraits were, now i know.
@@andregon4366 well I got about 340 hours in tww3 but I didn't play the ones before it. I am still learning new things every now and then, like ctrl+up or crtl+down to change the armies shape and make them either longer or wider.
@@InquisitorShepard Took me about the same amount of time and I only learned that from a LOTW video. Three are so many things like that in this franchise that in retrospect seem obvious but they never actually tell you.
@@jackryan5880 pretty sure damage resistances actually apply to direct damage as well. a big part of why some undead characters like Luthor Harkon sometimes lasts so long after army losses kicks in is because his insanely high magic/spell resist actually allows him to resist the damage inflicted by crumbling and disintegrating. pretty sure Malus can do the same thing with Tzarkan's damage (it's just harder to notice since Tzarkan's damage was likely set up with that resistance in mind while Luthor just has the same crumbling/disintegrating damage as all the other undead that don't resist it)
I've gotten enemy-artillery to waste ammo in my Wood-Elf campaign by first shooting them with my hero enough to aggro the artillery, but not enough activate the whole army.
I am thinking it might not be an AI problem that sends the Missile Infantry into melee, but rather the AI getting boned by the exact same weirdness as the players, and simply not realizing it. Baisically it's the change to the missile units base AI that opened up a weak spot, not the actual enemy AI getting worse.
Dawi scout : Sir we lost more than 3000 good soldiers there Thorgrim Grudge bearer: "What?! We need a completely new book for this genocide, And who did this to us?! Dawi : Sir ... Sir ... an elf!!!! Thrgrim : !!!!!!!!!?????!!!!!!😵💫😵💫😵😵👹👹👹
I haven't played Warhammer in a while and generally been losing interest in the game. But when watching videos, it's the soundtrack that makes me wanna come back. Not the gameplay, but the soundtrack, high elves' and dark elves' specifically.
Playing a Kroq Gar campaign a while ago and for some reason Malus Darkblade went on an absolute *TEAR* in the North. By the time I was vassalizing the Empire(I use mods), I looked North and realized the majority of the Chaos Wastes was owned by Hag Graef. Sent some heroes to look around and realized Malus SOMEHOW owned everything from Naggarond to Kislev. Biggest battle between us was a 3v3 battle. Kroq-Gar, Tiktaq'to and a Life Slann vs Malus, a Black Ark and another of his armies. It was a fucking massacre. THE bloodiest battle I have ever fought in TWW3. I had other mods that enabled AI armies to have decent army compositions so Malus actually had some decent armies of Executioners and Black Guard, with cavalry and shades as well as several monsters. I thought it was going well. And then Malus transformed into Tz'arkan. Ripped through four regiments of Temple Guard, two Scar-Veterans on Carnosaurs, three Ancient Stegadons AND Kroq-Gar all on his own. Absolute barbarism. I ended up losing that battle and by the time I was able to recruit/redeploy other armies out of Lustria and the Chaos Dwarf territories to the Empire, Malus had nearly wiped the Empire out. In a plot twist to end all plot twists, I only managed to turn the war around because ARCHAON declared war on Malus.
Really glad to see legit one man doomstacks without trait manager. Was getting tired of seeing "theory stacks" which would realistically involve not using LLs for 150+ turns trying to hunt out these traits
I think this outcome could become achieved or improved by removing the Sword of Khaine, (So(c)K), and putting Malus' Warpsword of Khaine, (WoK)(confusing), swapping in the armour of destiny or a better armour item for Dark elves and comitting to the fight this way to avoid the side effects of The So(c)K. Given the load out in this save file shown in the video, Malus had 91% ewarsave with 15% Physical resistance. Swapping the So(c)K for the WoK gets you to 71% becasue engaging in melee combat grants +5% Wardsave in addition to regenerating health as is the special effect for Malus' WoK. You round off your missile resistance by combining inherent missile resistance with your accumulated Wardsave. You can achieve maximum physical resistance capacityas the original sender did with defeat traits and items. In battle, Malus' ability "The Blood Price" adds an additional +20% Wardsave, Base and Armour-Piercing weapon damage temporarily which shall come in handy against other powerful legendary lords or Daemons. The total Wardsave of 91% should resist most of the damage over time the ability focres Malus to sustain which is a godo trade off the the damage he would have sustained to magical attacks had he not activated the ability. More over, transforming to Tz'arkan grants and additional +10% Wardsave, making up more of what is lost when reserving use of the So(c)K, raising the baseline to 81% Wardsave, ignoring the short damage resistance boost granted by "Bloodstorm".
I remember on my high-elven run, I had to deal with this guy invading one of my keeps and nearly single-handedly wrecking the place. I managed to win though, not by surrounding him and trying to kill him, was never going to work with how he was outhealing all my damage, rather I just moved my forces out of the way and let him charge the flag, then had my own infantries stand in the capture zone out of range from Malus, who didn't persue the nearby soldier. Thus ending the battle in a draw, to which the Ai decided to retreat from the keep, lol.
I would say Azazel is still the best, because he has his own magic, doesn't need the sword of Khaine, can fly and is a small target. Villitch is the very best of course, because he's in literal godmode, but that will get nerfed if it hasn't already.
If I recall, Malus gets 5% ward save from his legendary sword. So w/o the sword of Khaine he still gets 71%-81% ward save depending on his form. Not capped but very respectable.
Traits are kind of a flaw I see in the one man doomstack rating. Nakai and Kroq'gar are quite out of the way to obtain, there is a maximum to the traits you can have (all traits, not just defeat) and if you get too many from fighting too much you can't get more, and the factions could be dead by the time you actually reach them in the first place (ESPECIALLY Nakai). It's not like they're not good traits but I do think at that point a trait manager isn't uncalled for just to defeat a luck factor and a fatigue factor. Imagine going 50 rounds and hitting critical mass and going to fight Nakai or Kroq'gar and they've already been wiped out, game couldn't tell you because you didn't send heroes to spy on them.
What I got out of this, is it doesn't matter if the AI is worse or not. The best builds are the still the best builds. I do think they are trying to make the AI better in WH3 but programming AI actions isn't super simple. It's easy to poke and prod at their every decision as a the player but just even make a pseudo code decision tree for an AI to use in a single battle and you'll start to see what I mean. There's a ton of possibilities and humans are great at adapting(especially humans that have played thousands of hours of a specific type of game like Pro gamers have).
I think a testament to how hard it is to make AI for strategy games is the fact that most of them had AI cheats in some form, sometimes much more blatant than in TW Warhammer.
CA Developers "We've finished the aesthetic changes you asked for... Now can we begin working on the gameplay" CA Management "I'm not weeping, I should be weeping!"
In my opinion, they've managed to make the ai less fun for the cheesers, exploiters, one man armies because it's not how the game was to be played. I can understand people want to just destroy and have little to no opposition, campaign would takes months with armies of poorer quality than doomstack. I like certain doomstacks but I am casual, I love the big armies, I like to include all units, I like the challenge that brings more strategy working with these larger micromanaging armies than the "Throw in and forget". This is Total War, not God of War. I know people don't have time, but for me, this is more fun.
Don't agree at all really. I think the ai is not much less fun, it's jsut bad in a different way, my issue is that they have not fixed anything. For example Instead of shooting single small lords, who can jsut dodge shots, they don't shoot them at all, so they can just harass the enemy lines early and get a big headstart, especially if its a caster and you use forest. So it does not help at all regarding the "God of War" point. Also don't agree with the Doomstack long campaign thing since I only play on very hard or legendary, neber build doomstacks and can't even fathom taking months to ocmplete a campaign. And my favourite armies were like few heroes, some monsters, bunch of fireleech bolas, skink backline and melee frontline. Last thing I played a few weeks ago I painted the whole map with Oxyotl, which is a very hard campagin cause i.e. legendary Chaos invasion is something that will pop up only in YOUR territory with like 24 armies just in the first wave and "waste" a lot of time, took me barely 20h of playtime. If you only play 4h over every weekend, yo ucould do that in 5 weeks, and I know not everybody is that fast, but it's a really favourable example since playing 4h per week is lower than most players and most never paint a map and would only play like halfway and the latter turns take the longest. But either way, you do you/everybody shoudl jsut do what is fun for them.
@@AGenericFool the God of War was referencing the 1-man army. And missile units not targeting small targets, I thought that's an *upgrade* for them actually using their ammo efficiently rather than wasting. Stop the cheesers. Yes, no one wants to waste a month on a campaign when most can't with time or patience, I know I don't go all the way, I've a 1000+ hrs on WH2 and I finished maybe 4 campaigns total, just I like early game more so. Take my opinion with a grain of salt, I can see the ai have not improved a whole lot, but to me it seems they've been made to not benefit cheesers. The endgame crisis throws big armies against your big armies, with strategy or overwhelming power, play as you wish, im fighting with all tactics in mind and not just throwing 1 man or unkillable monsters
I ALWAYS HATE fighting Malas in the campaign because he just rips through my troops. My only hope half the time is to pray to God the auto resolve is a win. I will take a dumb amount of losses through auto resolve before actually fighting him because it's such a pain in the ass. Somehow I have actually fought him in campaign when he had SoK and unbreakable. It was an absolute nightmare to deal with.
I feel like it must be possible to make a better Malus using some of his unique items and followers, and not the sword of Khaine. Gonna give it a bash on my next playthrough. If you havent tried it, an malus only 1 man campaign on VH can be quite fun. Gets a little frustrating and slow at times but once you're rolling its great. The Ai is definitly better when not cheesing IMO. Also I love your new tutorial vids, but its really jarring how different our battle styles are. Thats one piece of constructive feedback for those, is maybe provide suggestions to what might be options if not cheesing in battles. Again please take that as an attempt at constructive FB, the vids are amazing, its like watching your WH2 lets plays before the negativity trolls started plagueing you.
Zhao Ming can get more weapon strength, can cast spells, has a smaller hitbox, it has a mortis engine and can fly. Its just better all around not to mention he dosent need the sword of Khaine.
Yeah, pretty much the only reason for the sok here is for the spell, if you get some more melee defense, drop some wardsave would be okay, plus you kill them faster so you don’t need as much longevity
@@dostayer3369 Wth are you talking about? Bejeweled dagger + 25% Celestial Dragon Banner +20% Trickster+Preservation + 26% Iron ward + 5% = 76% without the Sok or the blade of Slaneesh with witch he is far above 90%.
Had to fight this op lord at the beginning of my demon prince campaign... I came back from wh2 after a very long pause and didn't know about his ability. My face when I saw him going back to full HP and whipping my lord 😅
I remember when wh3 was released and people were thinking Malus was going to get knocked off his throne and I just chuckled my Slaaneshi arse off because Tzarkan is simply too strong for that shit
Malus is an absolute nightmare to fight on the campaign map. I play with recruit legendary lords mod and If I kill of his faction he just keeps coming back again and again. Best way to take him out is auto resolve.
Pretty sure the AI has improved. Waited a bit (1 year) before buying warhammer 3 and just played warhammer 2 on that time. The first faction I played was Cathay and the AI definitely seemed to respond better to missile units and magic. They also tried to get past lines to slaughter your artillery/missile units. If anything, warhammer 2 AI either "went around" your formation to try and do this and just derp out at some point or charge miserably at your front line trying to get past them. In my experience, the AI utilizes the tiniest gaps in the formation to get through it. Kinda annoying but also nice. They still do derp out in warhammer 3 but it isn't as bad as it was in 2. Only took a few battles to get adjusted to AI behavior though and soon enough it felt normal. Can definitely say the AI improved but it's easier for us to adjust to their adjustment than the other way around.
Hmm having the Warp Sword of Khaine available as a quest weapon, I don't think the Real SoK is necessary. Didn't really need it in WH2 either really. Too much hassle imho. Yeah you lose Wardsave until transforming. But you still have Physical resistance, can swap the Armor for Resistances (SoK = 25 Wardsave against 5% Warpsword + 10% Armor = 81 Wardsave). And after Transformation you gain the other 10% anyway.
I feel like Zhao-Ming could still potentially be a stronger choice if fully kited out but I'm not certain. Constant mortis engine effect from the catalytic Kiln, Magic, same double health pool but no HP decay that you get with Malus once you pop Tz'arkan, larger base health meaning the effect is compounded, ability to get to to 90% ward save with Sword of khaine (and 90% physical resistance without it), innate regen that you don't have to hunt for Isabella with, and the ability to fly. The main downside I could see is the size of the dragon form makes it weak to missiles unfortunately. Obviously at that point it's somewhat moot as both are strong enough to take out basically anything that could possibly be thrown at them but it does feel to me like Zhao has the edge
Didn't even need the Sword of Kaine. Grab Wurzhag, gets Malus to 25% phys, didnt see the spell resist. Get an Azhag for 30% spell resist. But I will vent something! Knowledgable is overpowered, but better give Malus a 40% Ward Save Full Possession ability. Lol.
Another example of worse Ai behavior compared to 2 is that skirmish units such as pistoliers or marauder horsemen get caught by melee. In warhammmer 2 they would run away and skirmish and would never be caught by slow moving infantry but in warhammer 3 they bend over and let it all happen
Even not so upgraded, Malice is an absolute ass to deal with. I hate being on his receiving end, but it does make me want to do a malice campaign, despite the worse dark elf mechanics.
Props to the guy for going back and rebuilding a legit one
Or took more effort to make it look legit ;)
@@Vyleea Yeah I suspect the same thing too. The list of neat defeat traits at the end really really makes it look like a trait managed lord lol.
@@holysword876 Well he IS 225 turns deep into a campaign.
@@codysmith66 All the more reason to have a bunch of useless traits. The reason why traits are hard to get isn't because of the number of turns a game is in, but the fact that over time useless traits+legedary lords going extinct preventing you from getting those traits.
@@holysword876 It's a simple matter to revive a dead faction. Cause a rebellion in the territory, and a rebel army under the banner of that defeated faction will spawn. Very time consuming, which is why it usually takes this many turns to make that happen.
Possible, but a pain in the arse
Old Ai : Does not shoot one man commander
New Ai : *GOES INTO MELEE WITH RANGE UNITS*
What old AI are you referring to? If you mean TW2, then I had a Malus one-man doomstack go up against pretty much the same army type as the one in this video, and when surrounded by hundreds of dwarves in melee ON FOOT, Malus was getting shredded from all sides by thunderers, and even organ guns... with pretty much no friendly fire to the dwarves. He is just that much taller even on foot.
Better than shooting your own units with the arrows
@@Riwillion previous AI in WH3.
@@Riwillion THAT'S GOING INTO THE BOOK, WAZZUCK!
@@harsteu Skavens would like a word with you.
"Allied units: 1/2". Surprisingly clever, even though I'm sure it's just a thing with coding transformations as two units.
Tzarkan: Sometimes, Malus Darkblade, you scare even me. And I'm a demon.
Malus: Good.
8:02 Dwarven Lord on the right: "Don't mind me, i'm just an infiltrated slann here".
Not sure if this thing has been approved by the engineering guild
@@Yetidelamontagne definitely approved by the old ones.
The AI behaviour almost seems like the missile units are missing their innate 'Guard Mode'; since their behaviour seems the same as a player-controlled missile unit without it enabled.
Probably this. In even battles where I think my missiles might be weaker than the enemy's, I will wait till they target mine and move them back a bit at a time and they will walk forward to stay in shooting range. Eventually, they crash in the frontline and stop shooting :/
Guard mode simply does not function like its supposed to or even did in wh2. As a player my guard mode missiles will constantly run into melee while getting LOS blocked or just for fun.
I think it might also heavily depend on the battle difficulty. For me the ai has been quite competent. But I might have a mod that makes it stronger not 100% sure
@@ragnarok6723 I havent played in about a month, so I'm not up to date on the last changes, but in my experience guard mode only works if the manual target you select is on range at that moment and then moves away. If you order something out of range or line of sight, guard mode does nothing. Happened a lot on WH2 sieges with artillery
Malus in Wh2: the best one-man doomstack and army of one
Malus in Wh3: still the best one-man doomstack.
That's what's is the stability.
"That is what is is the stability"?
"That was what was is the stability"?
"That was what is is the stability"?
WH3*
@@sagittariusa9012 thanks for pointing out that mistake.
Malus memeblade never dies
"That is what is is the stability."
This one.
Dismounted one man doomstacks tend to get knocked around a lot by cavalry and monsters. Shure, they don't really take any damage, but they aren't able to dish any damage out themselves.
in this case it's against dwarfs though
I had a huge problem with Malus Darkblade in one of my campaigns where he was pretty efficiently levelled up by the AI. Up to the point where I could have destroyed his whole army and the rest of my forces had problem with finishing him up.
Always have that problem with vlads dumb ass wipe out 99% if good army and he's just whomping my troops
I remember fighting him with daniels army, defeating malus's army and just running away from malus after he'd transformed until he died from his degenerating health lol. Fighting Malus is a losing strategy xD
In that case you should ignore Malus completely, and focus on his army to trigger the army losses, but if Malus is unbreakable somehow then you should just abandoned your cities and run away from dark elves xD
Yeah at that point I’d recommend defeating his attached army before retreating. Follow it up by drowning him in an auto resolve. Doesn’t matter what traits or if he would slaughter in the actual battle as long as you have enough meat the auto resolve will give it to you.
my way of dealing with AI unkillable units
-bring 3 stacks, autoresolve
He's not only the best one man Doomstack, he is the easiest to make. Get the sword of khaine, let the possession rise to max, and you're basically there. He can deal with almost anything. Get some extra items and traits to take him to 11/10, but as you said, it's overkill.
Well point to be made that boosting his damage is still important so the fights don't drag on forever. That's where the 11/10 kind of do matter imo, gets boring fast anyway though.
@@brohvakiindova4452 Indeed, that's why I usually prefer casters for one man doomstacks, they make killing infantry fairly easy.
@@TheRewasder97 I found Von Carstein vampire hero doomstacks to be the most fun. You still have a few entities to control and actually do something during the combat instead of just watching the enemy blob slowly break down.
I love the phrase "a little bit possessed".
And yeah, even without cheese, having a unit so much as touch enemy missile troops seems to break the AI in my experience.
Hrm. If you did this without sword of khaine, you could use Malus' own Warpsword of Khaine for regen, and wear armor chosen for wardsave.
i think SoK, is there for unbreakable, unless he gets gotrek defeat traits, or gets his unbreakable from other place. SoK will always be there
Nah, back in TW2, I had a Malus one-man doomstack, and it worked just fine without SoK. A bit weaker, but well-worth not skipping on the Warpsword and not having to get the SoK. Unbreakable is not necessary for someone with 85+ leadership, regen, and extreme resilience.
@@dnielzcx5490 I don't think Malus needs unbreakable.
He never got damaged to the point of getting close to wavering.
In matter of fact, he never got below 99% of his HP.
@@Riwillion Wasn't there at some point an issue in WH2 when if you don't make Malus unbreakable, as a one-man army he would rout during transformation to Tzarkan, since for a second you lose all your units on the field?
@@luxource Not sure if it ever existed, but definitely wasn´t the case when I played that campaign.
22:49 when attacked in the rear he loses 60% melee defence. That makes it below 50. Standard hit chance is 35, minimum is 8, so it matters against units attacking in the rear with a melee attack of 15 or higher.
I am sorry that I improperly showed of morathi (should have grinded I mean) because she actually had 100+ melee defence and nerfed enemy melee attack by ~15 by her abilities. Against physical things in a blob, she actually would do comparable to malus except way quicker because magic.
Malus is second to none when it comes to durability. With Morathi you would need a lot of min-maxing to get all the desirable traits.
Losing defence from being attacked in the rear sounds like a very Slaaneshi trait lol
@@Killerthealmighty it does double their charge then...
He's so full of unit value!
Massive props to the guy fully building this out
The AI in WH 3 seems a lot better with focus firing vulnerable units, especially large entities with low armour, which is giving me some trouble in my KuGath campaign. Aside from that, it doesn't seem much better or worse than in WH 2. The problem in the video doesn't seem to be with the enemy AI specifically but with the behaviour of missile units in general (including the player's) where if they don't have a clear shot at a target they will move towards it which usually ends up with them getting into meele. But as long as this issue doesn't occur, the AI is a lot better at prioritizing targets with their ranged units.
You need me Darkblade....
Without me... We both die here!
Hate is our gift to one another...
Malus.
I just love how insane deep your knowledge about this game goes.
Yeah his ability for calling the army losses is uncanny.
Malus: "Oh yeah, drop the bombs on me"
T'zarkan: "WAIT, THATS KILLING THE DWARVES"
today i learn that these round things above the armies in the prefight screen are banners you can assign to some units, i always wondered what those things over enemy portraits were, now i know.
I hope you're new to TWW because this has been a thing since 1
@@andregon4366 well I got about 340 hours in tww3 but I didn't play the ones before it. I am still learning new things every now and then, like ctrl+up or crtl+down to change the armies shape and make them either longer or wider.
@@InquisitorShepard you know you can also drag the units around to change their shapes and directions
@@InquisitorShepard Ctrl+left or right on the arrow keys rotate the troops too.
@@InquisitorShepard Took me about the same amount of time and I only learned that from a LOTW video. Three are so many things like that in this franchise that in retrospect seem obvious but they never actually tell you.
The Rat man in me really wanted to drop a doomrocket on that stack.
Yes Yes
Considering that transforming will max out ward save, sword khaine seems to be overkill
True, but the transformation is an internal hp loss fwir, ward save only applies to incoming damage.
@@jackryan5880 pretty sure damage resistances actually apply to direct damage as well. a big part of why some undead characters like Luthor Harkon sometimes lasts so long after army losses kicks in is because his insanely high magic/spell resist actually allows him to resist the damage inflicted by crumbling and disintegrating. pretty sure Malus can do the same thing with Tzarkan's damage (it's just harder to notice since Tzarkan's damage was likely set up with that resistance in mind while Luthor just has the same crumbling/disintegrating damage as all the other undead that don't resist it)
I've gotten enemy-artillery to waste ammo in my Wood-Elf campaign by first shooting them with my hero enough to aggro the artillery, but not enough activate the whole army.
I would be interested to see a vid or series where Legend walks us through how he goes about making a one man doom stack, from start to finish.
They’re gonna need a new Great Book of Grudges for this one!
Gives "mountain of dwarves" a new meaning.
Really been loving your content as of late. Not sure what has changed but been watching every video
That pause for the "Legend Total War here", I was waiting on the edge of my seat and about to check my audio, good 'ol LoTW
Loving this series on when Khorne shed his first tear.
lmaoo he starts dealing 21% of all damage taken back to the attacker
I am thinking it might not be an AI problem that sends the Missile Infantry into melee, but rather the AI getting boned by the exact same weirdness as the players, and simply not realizing it.
Baisically it's the change to the missile units base AI that opened up a weak spot, not the actual enemy AI getting worse.
The cartoon arrow pointing to the heap of bloody corpses is one of my favorite thumbnails ever.
What a legend, and Malus is pretty cool as well
Dawi scout : Sir we lost more than 3000 good soldiers there
Thorgrim Grudge bearer: "What?! We need a completely new book for this genocide, And who did this to us?!
Dawi : Sir ... Sir ... an elf!!!!
Thrgrim : !!!!!!!!!?????!!!!!!😵💫😵💫😵😵👹👹👹
I haven't played Warhammer in a while and generally been losing interest in the game. But when watching videos, it's the soundtrack that makes me wanna come back. Not the gameplay, but the soundtrack, high elves' and dark elves' specifically.
The dwarf army 'We have you outnumbered 800 to 1! Malus 'I like those odds!'
Playing a Kroq Gar campaign a while ago and for some reason Malus Darkblade went on an absolute *TEAR* in the North.
By the time I was vassalizing the Empire(I use mods), I looked North and realized the majority of the Chaos Wastes was owned by Hag Graef. Sent some heroes to look around and realized Malus SOMEHOW owned everything from Naggarond to Kislev.
Biggest battle between us was a 3v3 battle. Kroq-Gar, Tiktaq'to and a Life Slann vs Malus, a Black Ark and another of his armies.
It was a fucking massacre. THE bloodiest battle I have ever fought in TWW3.
I had other mods that enabled AI armies to have decent army compositions so Malus actually had some decent armies of Executioners and Black Guard, with cavalry and shades as well as several monsters.
I thought it was going well. And then Malus transformed into Tz'arkan.
Ripped through four regiments of Temple Guard, two Scar-Veterans on Carnosaurs, three Ancient Stegadons AND Kroq-Gar all on his own. Absolute barbarism.
I ended up losing that battle and by the time I was able to recruit/redeploy other armies out of Lustria and the Chaos Dwarf territories to the Empire, Malus had nearly wiped the Empire out. In a plot twist to end all plot twists, I only managed to turn the war around because ARCHAON declared war on Malus.
Nice. Thanks for all the great content Legend.
Hail to the king, my favorite character in lore
Lol. I am coming here after watching your video where you crowned Miao Ying as the new 'best one woman doomstack".
When I read the title I instantly knew it was going to be Malus!
Really glad to see legit one man doomstacks without trait manager. Was getting tired of seeing "theory stacks" which would realistically involve not using LLs for 150+ turns trying to hunt out these traits
I think this outcome could become achieved or improved by removing the Sword of Khaine, (So(c)K), and putting Malus' Warpsword of Khaine, (WoK)(confusing), swapping in the armour of destiny or a better armour item for Dark elves and comitting to the fight this way to avoid the side effects of The So(c)K.
Given the load out in this save file shown in the video, Malus had 91% ewarsave with 15% Physical resistance. Swapping the So(c)K for the WoK gets you to 71% becasue engaging in melee combat grants +5% Wardsave in addition to regenerating health as is the special effect for Malus' WoK. You round off your missile resistance by combining inherent missile resistance with your accumulated Wardsave.
You can achieve maximum physical resistance capacityas the original sender did with defeat traits and items. In battle, Malus' ability "The Blood Price" adds an additional +20% Wardsave, Base and Armour-Piercing weapon damage temporarily which shall come in handy against other powerful legendary lords or Daemons. The total Wardsave of 91% should resist most of the damage over time the ability focres Malus to sustain which is a godo trade off the the damage he would have sustained to magical attacks had he not activated the ability.
More over, transforming to Tz'arkan grants and additional +10% Wardsave, making up more of what is lost when reserving use of the So(c)K, raising the baseline to 81% Wardsave, ignoring the short damage resistance boost granted by "Bloodstorm".
That's gonna make the bigest grudge ever!
Malus (attacks) - Call an ambulance
Dwarves - Have you lost your mind?!?
Tz'arkan (smirks) - But not for me
Having a lot of fun with malus in TW3 didnt fully realise why it was so much better, like the analysis.
the smattering of dwarf bodies looked like a smash burger
I remember on my high-elven run, I had to deal with this guy invading one of my keeps and nearly single-handedly wrecking the place.
I managed to win though, not by surrounding him and trying to kill him, was never going to work with how he was outhealing all my damage, rather I just moved my forces out of the way and let him charge the flag, then had my own infantries stand in the capture zone out of range from Malus, who didn't persue the nearby soldier.
Thus ending the battle in a draw, to which the Ai decided to retreat from the keep, lol.
@aola wili I've positive you replied to the wrong comment there.
I would say Azazel is still the best, because he has his own magic, doesn't need the sword of Khaine, can fly and is a small target.
Villitch is the very best of course, because he's in literal godmode, but that will get nerfed if it hasn't already.
Villitch will be nerfed. He's powerful in MP battles as well
Doesn't even need winds of magic. Edgiest man alive for the win.
Malus Darkblade known as "Alfa and Omega", "The Beginer and The Ender of time", only realible one-man army.
the vamps would have a field day with that pile
If I recall, Malus gets 5% ward save from his legendary sword. So w/o the sword of Khaine he still gets 71%-81% ward save depending on his form. Not capped but very respectable.
That's a nice Dwarf carpet you made there.
Traits are kind of a flaw I see in the one man doomstack rating. Nakai and Kroq'gar are quite out of the way to obtain, there is a maximum to the traits you can have (all traits, not just defeat) and if you get too many from fighting too much you can't get more, and the factions could be dead by the time you actually reach them in the first place (ESPECIALLY Nakai). It's not like they're not good traits but I do think at that point a trait manager isn't uncalled for just to defeat a luck factor and a fatigue factor. Imagine going 50 rounds and hitting critical mass and going to fight Nakai or Kroq'gar and they've already been wiped out, game couldn't tell you because you didn't send heroes to spy on them.
Thanks for going back and making a new one random guy
I do love a Malus stack
What I got out of this, is it doesn't matter if the AI is worse or not. The best builds are the still the best builds.
I do think they are trying to make the AI better in WH3 but programming AI actions isn't super simple. It's easy to poke and prod at their every decision as a the player but just even make a pseudo code decision tree for an AI to use in a single battle and you'll start to see what I mean. There's a ton of possibilities and humans are great at adapting(especially humans that have played thousands of hours of a specific type of game like Pro gamers have).
I think a testament to how hard it is to make AI for strategy games is the fact that most of them had AI cheats in some form, sometimes much more blatant than in TW Warhammer.
With blobs like these it's hard to imagine anyone doing better than Teclis.
Above maximum health. Lol. Great find
This doomstack in wh2 was the first video of yours I watched.
19:57 yeah, looks balanced.
CA Developers "We've finished the aesthetic changes you asked for... Now can we begin working on the gameplay"
CA Management "I'm not weeping, I should be weeping!"
In my opinion, they've managed to make the ai less fun for the cheesers, exploiters, one man armies because it's not how the game was to be played.
I can understand people want to just destroy and have little to no opposition, campaign would takes months with armies of poorer quality than doomstack. I like certain doomstacks but I am casual, I love the big armies, I like to include all units, I like the challenge that brings more strategy working with these larger micromanaging armies than the "Throw in and forget".
This is Total War, not God of War.
I know people don't have time, but for me, this is more fun.
Don't agree at all really.
I think the ai is not much less fun, it's jsut bad in a different way, my issue is that they have not fixed anything. For example Instead of shooting single small lords, who can jsut dodge shots, they don't shoot them at all, so they can just harass the enemy lines early and get a big headstart, especially if its a caster and you use forest. So it does not help at all regarding the "God of War" point.
Also don't agree with the Doomstack long campaign thing since I only play on very hard or legendary, neber build doomstacks and can't even fathom taking months to ocmplete a campaign. And my favourite armies were like few heroes, some monsters, bunch of fireleech bolas, skink backline and melee frontline.
Last thing I played a few weeks ago I painted the whole map with Oxyotl, which is a very hard campagin cause i.e. legendary Chaos invasion is something that will pop up only in YOUR territory with like 24 armies just in the first wave and "waste" a lot of time, took me barely 20h of playtime. If you only play 4h over every weekend, yo ucould do that in 5 weeks, and I know not everybody is that fast, but it's a really favourable example since playing 4h per week is lower than most players and most never paint a map and would only play like halfway and the latter turns take the longest.
But either way, you do you/everybody shoudl jsut do what is fun for them.
@@AGenericFool the God of War was referencing the 1-man army.
And missile units not targeting small targets, I thought that's an *upgrade* for them actually using their ammo efficiently rather than wasting. Stop the cheesers.
Yes, no one wants to waste a month on a campaign when most can't with time or patience, I know I don't go all the way, I've a 1000+ hrs on WH2 and I finished maybe 4 campaigns total, just I like early game more so.
Take my opinion with a grain of salt, I can see the ai have not improved a whole lot, but to me it seems they've been made to not benefit cheesers.
The endgame crisis throws big armies against your big armies, with strategy or overwhelming power, play as you wish, im fighting with all tactics in mind and not just throwing 1 man or unkillable monsters
I'm going to have nightmares of meeting this 1 man doomstack in campaign.
I ALWAYS HATE fighting Malas in the campaign because he just rips through my troops. My only hope half the time is to pray to God the auto resolve is a win. I will take a dumb amount of losses through auto resolve before actually fighting him because it's such a pain in the ass. Somehow I have actually fought him in campaign when he had SoK and unbreakable. It was an absolute nightmare to deal with.
Malus: You don't understand. Your troops are not yours to kill.
Malus piling up grudges just like he piles up corpses
I feel like it must be possible to make a better Malus using some of his unique items and followers, and not the sword of Khaine. Gonna give it a bash on my next playthrough. If you havent tried it, an malus only 1 man campaign on VH can be quite fun. Gets a little frustrating and slow at times but once you're rolling its great.
The Ai is definitly better when not cheesing IMO.
Also I love your new tutorial vids, but its really jarring how different our battle styles are. Thats one piece of constructive feedback for those, is maybe provide suggestions to what might be options if not cheesing in battles. Again please take that as an attempt at constructive FB, the vids are amazing, its like watching your WH2 lets plays before the negativity trolls started plagueing you.
Zhao Ming can get more weapon strength, can cast spells, has a smaller hitbox, it has a mortis engine and can fly. Its just better all around not to mention he dosent need the sword of Khaine.
He can't get the ward save though, which is the thing which makes a one man doomstack viable...
Yeah, pretty much the only reason for the sok here is for the spell, if you get some more melee defense, drop some wardsave would be okay, plus you kill them faster so you don’t need as much longevity
@@dostayer3369 Wth are you talking about?
Bejeweled dagger + 25%
Celestial Dragon Banner +20%
Trickster+Preservation + 26%
Iron ward + 5% =
76% without the Sok or the blade of Slaneesh with witch he is far above 90%.
Malus is such a badass character
"Local edgy schizo earns himself ten thousand grudges"
Had to fight this op lord at the beginning of my demon prince campaign... I came back from wh2 after a very long pause and didn't know about his ability. My face when I saw him going back to full HP and whipping my lord 😅
Thanquol approves of this video
I honestly looked at the thumbnail not knowing it’s lotw and thought this was an infected scalp
I remember when wh3 was released and people were thinking Malus was going to get knocked off his throne and I just chuckled my Slaaneshi arse off because Tzarkan is simply too strong for that shit
I never want to face you in a battle brother, peace be with you .
"We need to get to these artys, or they are going to shoot their own troops" lmao :D
Malus is an absolute nightmare to fight on the campaign map. I play with recruit legendary lords mod and If I kill of his faction he just keeps coming back again and again.
Best way to take him out is auto resolve.
At least the game gives him some respect...unlike his ending in the books. -.-
i played little of dark elves, but this dude is so easy to control and conquer nations...
Pretty sure the AI has improved. Waited a bit (1 year) before buying warhammer 3 and just played warhammer 2 on that time. The first faction I played was Cathay and the AI definitely seemed to respond better to missile units and magic. They also tried to get past lines to slaughter your artillery/missile units. If anything, warhammer 2 AI either "went around" your formation to try and do this and just derp out at some point or charge miserably at your front line trying to get past them. In my experience, the AI utilizes the tiniest gaps in the formation to get through it. Kinda annoying but also nice. They still do derp out in warhammer 3 but it isn't as bad as it was in 2. Only took a few battles to get adjusted to AI behavior though and soon enough it felt normal. Can definitely say the AI improved but it's easier for us to adjust to their adjustment than the other way around.
Hmm having the Warp Sword of Khaine available as a quest weapon, I don't think the Real SoK is necessary. Didn't really need it in WH2 either really.
Too much hassle imho. Yeah you lose Wardsave until transforming. But you still have Physical resistance, can swap the Armor for Resistances (SoK = 25 Wardsave against 5% Warpsword + 10% Armor = 81 Wardsave). And after Transformation you gain the other 10% anyway.
imagine Tz'arkan fully controls Malus and can tranform into a Daemon Prince form
the only campaign where going out of your way to make a single entity army is fun and lore accurate is skarbrand
I feel like CA can and should do a battle AI overhaul at some point.
Perfect strategy game!
This is so wounderfully op
19:55 this goes into the Book!
What other lords could be 1 man doom stacks? First time ever I see this, this is kinda cool and I want to try it :D
I feel like Zhao-Ming could still potentially be a stronger choice if fully kited out but I'm not certain.
Constant mortis engine effect from the catalytic Kiln, Magic, same double health pool but no HP decay that you get with Malus once you pop Tz'arkan, larger base health meaning the effect is compounded, ability to get to to 90% ward save with Sword of khaine (and 90% physical resistance without it), innate regen that you don't have to hunt for Isabella with, and the ability to fly. The main downside I could see is the size of the dragon form makes it weak to missiles unfortunately. Obviously at that point it's somewhat moot as both are strong enough to take out basically anything that could possibly be thrown at them but it does feel to me like Zhao has the edge
Didn't even need the Sword of Kaine. Grab Wurzhag, gets Malus to 25% phys, didnt see the spell resist. Get an Azhag for 30% spell resist. But I will vent something! Knowledgable is overpowered, but better give Malus a 40% Ward Save Full Possession ability. Lol.
That's going in the book.
truly he was a total war: warhammer 3
Another example of worse Ai behavior compared to 2 is that skirmish units such as pistoliers or marauder horsemen get caught by melee.
In warhammmer 2 they would run away and skirmish and would never be caught by slow moving infantry but in warhammer 3 they bend over and let it all happen
Only Zhao Ming can rival Malus as One Man Doomstack GOAT
Teclis in WH2 and Zhao in 3.
8:06 floating toilet seat incoming
Even not so upgraded, Malice is an absolute ass to deal with. I hate being on his receiving end, but it does make me want to do a malice campaign, despite the worse dark elf mechanics.
Malus with the big phallus
Sigvald sycophants in shambles
That's going in the book...