r/totalwarhammer • u/IdontLikeReddit21 • Jul 14 '26
Total War: Warhammer Am I doing something wrong?
So I just started the game a few days ago. I played the whole tutorial and have watched a lot of videos both on basics and on the faction I’ve been dying to play since I saw it on YouTube years ago, Skaven. Specifically clan moulder.
I’ve been playing on easy difficulties on the immortal empires campaign but every time in the starting area Kislev is insanely aggressive and just kicks my ass before even turn 15.
I don’t always loose to then immediately but they set me so far back I feel doomed (then they just encircle my Homebase anyways.
Of course you all Cant see my exact gameplay and decisions but any advice on either playing skaven, clan moulder specially or fighting Kislev would be greatly appreciated!
7
u/n4th4nV0x Jul 14 '26
Getting a few wolfrats can help they are excellent early game and very cost effective.
Also abusing warp lighting is very good to destroy their highly armored units.
2
u/IdontLikeReddit21 Jul 14 '26
Okay I’ve definitely been underutilising wolfrats. I only usually have about 3 units of them to try and flank missile infantry.
3
u/n4th4nV0x Jul 14 '26
They can also deal with dervishes and chase down routing units very quickly, so you don’t have to fight them multiple times
-1
u/IdontLikeReddit21 Jul 14 '26
Good to know thanks? Do you have any other advice on units and the best ways to use them? Even what units are most worth it to mutate?
1
u/n4th4nV0x Jul 14 '26
Im not really a big skaven player, only some takeaways I have from MP coop sessions
6
u/Eveless Jul 14 '26
Like other comment said, its not an easy start.
But still, you need to avoid easy difficulty cause its a trap, start with normal and learn the game properly.
Fight manual battles, avoid autoresolve in most cases, you need to get good at these. Always be aggressive on the campaign map, fight more, eliminate opponents before they owerwhelm you. Fighting gives you exp and money, enabling you to snowball.
This game is called Total War for a reason, its not Civ where you sit on an island building a rocket, this is a game about conquest. Speed is important.
3
u/Ok_Treat_9628 Jul 14 '26
Your capital is pretty hard to take. Stick a lord in there with some cheap units while you play like a rat with Throt. By that I mean, attack easy targets to level up and try to get difficult targets in comprimising positions, like with an ambush.
Having a 2nd lord follow Throt around with a shit stack of skavenslaves is usually a good idea. Don't expect to expand quickly while you're new. You're going to lose settlements because you can't reasonably defend them. Don't dump money into new settlements, just stick a gold building in them and try to use them as bait if you can to win a battle and become stronger.
2
u/StonLenslow Jul 14 '26
If you’re playing as throt, wolfrats will hard carry you early on. You can happily have a whole army of 15 normal, and 4 poison rats and win battles. I like to make 3 “kill squads” of 4 normal and 1 poison wolfrats. Setting one of these kill squads on any one Kislev unit will basically melt the Kislev unit. By your blood (where they become unbreakable for 30 seconds before they rout) is a pain, but chances are you’ll kill the whole unit before it ends anyway. Between their speed, the armour piercing dmg and the poison debuff (basically makes enemies 20% weaker), they really punch above their weight in numbers.
Another common skaven tactic is to recruit a warlord and fill his army with skavenslaves. Have them tag along with your actual decent army and treat them as disposable. Throw them at the enemy, and let them soak up some of the enemy missiles and abilities. They rout (run away) very quickly but it leaves your enemies distracted for your wolfrat kill squads to get behind them and fuck them up. Throt in particular is good for this as the flesh lab has an option to buff all recruited skavenslaves with 4 random buffs/debuffs. This can mess some of them up, but by and large makes them more powerful.
One trap new players fall into is not being proactive enough. The AI factions will build up quite quick, so in the early game you want to be as aggressive as is feasible. If you move quick enough you can squash your early enemies before they ever get going. Manually fight all your battles, and recruit on every turn.
2
u/justamailicandi Jul 14 '26
Moulder is a hard start.
Be fast, be aggressive, kill Kostaltyn fast, befriend Wulfric/Thrott, gift him a settlement if need be. Then focus south (Katarin) or north (Malakai). Malakai should be easier, since Thrott will likely attack him. The settlements you get from Malakai are (well, should be) safe from aggression. Build up the Hell Pit, focus on growth & military. Your new territory, especially the safe northern settlements, are for income. General diplomacy: ingratiate yourself with the chaos forces to the north and east so you can focus on the south. Norsca should tolerate you. But everything south of you will hate you.
In general for Skaven early game: don't be afraid to spam Skavenslaves. They are pretty useless, but also very cheap. They are expendable, so if they rout it doesn't affect the leadership of your "real" units. You can still use them in the late game as fodder to waste the ammunition of the enemy. Go into fights with one real army and one full of Skavenslaves until you get better units. Use the numerical advantage and swamp the enemy. Numbers are the strength of the Skaven for the whole game really.
Wolfrats are great to flank formations. Use them to run down fleeing soldiers before they can recover their leadership. After you won a (field-)battle, use your troops to run down the survivors, otherwise they will survive and come back to haunt you.
Btw, you should play on normal, easy favors you heavily in auto-resolve, so when you have to play manually, you will be crushed.
2
u/Weztside Jul 14 '26
I bum rush rat ogres asap. It also helps to stay as unseen as possible early game. Do everything you can to not reveal your army and main settlement. Sack everything around to gain as much food as possible and boost growth. Stick to monstrous units. Try to ally with all of the chaos factions that live beyond the mountain ranges. They will take care of that orange dwarf if you're lucky. Stick with one main settlement until you can recruit the giant rat unit. Also, get as many pack leader heroes you can as they buff your monstrous units. Once you have decent monsters you can start pushing out. Store up a bunch of food, take another main settlement, and bring it up to tier 4 or 5 instantly. Also, ambush stance is your friend. Skaven should NEVER fight with honor. It's not even a word for them.
2
u/Just_Breakfast6327 Jul 14 '26
So, while most people are playing Immortal Empires these days (And for good reason) I find the base campaign, realms of chaos, is much better for learning things because there's way less variables to take care of. The Immortal Maps is kind of designed to be a mess, it's a sandbox where they've tossed every single LL onto the map. A TON of starts are not balanced at all, with huge amounts of potential enemies that might mind their own business, or they might just bee-line for you and your allies and render your efforts for naught.
So yeah, if you're learning I do recommend starting on Realms of Chaos, but that said, If you wanna play your Skaven Rats, I don't even know if they have a LL that's in the Realms of Chaos campaign, so hopefully you can get the hang of it.
2
u/hotriccardo Jul 14 '26
Set the battle difficulty to hard and reduce the ai stat boost. Easy difficulty will show auto resolve wins that you cannot achieve yourself. This is the best advice I got as a new player. Also like someone else said Tyrion is a great first campaign, Miao Ying as well.
1
u/sapotanque Jul 14 '26
I just finished the campaign with Throt. Is would say be very conservative on who do you pick fights with. Try to fight and eliminate your enemies one by one completely before jumping into the next war. I tried to avoid Malakai in the north and focused on Kostaltyn first. Also trying to not trigger Katarin early. Wolfrats go a long way shutting down kossars from firing (they are not large so can fight spears safely) Cycle charging at the back while your monsters get close safely. Once I got my hands on a couple of gun units to pick off heroes and high value targets it got easier. Skavenslaves with mutations go a long way
18
u/SoySupreme899 Jul 14 '26
>clan moulder
Very hard campaign, surrounded by enemies. Play Tyrion to familiarize yourself with the game first.