True, but let's be real here, the dominance of missile infantry needs to be addressed regardless of any other adjustments to the balance of combat.

Stamina/Vigour no longer matters because units don't tire, ergo battlefield positioning no longer matters. You can simply sprint units wherever whenever.

At least in WH2, it definitely makes a difference. Units tire fairly quickly and the exhaustion has a huge impact on movement speed and combat performance.

Combat is so short lived that wider strategic maneuvers is no longer viable, because by the time you march to the point of contact the unit has already disintegrated.

Agreed on all accounts here. Slower combat would open up more tactical options.

Keeping units in reserve no longer has an impact, again because stamina is meaningless

I sort of agree here. Keeping units in reserve is seldom a smart choice, but I think it has more to do with the pace of the combat and the nature of the maps rather than stamina.

As for your other points, I can't say I have a strong opinion either way.

You should try using the checkerboard formation. It's highly effective against everything aside from armies heavy on range (especially artillery) and magic. Preferably, tuck your self in a defensible position such as the edge of the map, because getting flanked can be absolutely destructive.

https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/7ufew8/a_guide_to_gun_formations_in_total_war_warhammer/

This guide is mainly for guns because they are completely ineffective if you don't setup properly, but it applies to archers as well. Also, you can replace the melee infantry with heroes/monsters or even more archers and the formation will still serve its purpose.

I never use it because it shits all over Naggoroth without achieving much else. It skews the campaign in favor of the ordertide.

That's as far as the AI is concerned, for the player it's just a mild annoyance. Chaos armies are total pushovers by that point in the game, so the only real threat is to northern settlements if you happen to own any. Your actual armies should be able to roll all over them.

I personally agree that's it's a negative for most characters, but it does have some uses. Even if the character has super high leadership, if they get isolated and surrounded, they can break surprisingly quickly. Also, if you are up against a tough opponent and you are fielding a big army, army losses could potentially take effect while you still have a fighting chance. Unbreakable will prevent your character from shattering due to army losses, so you can keep on fighting. Another thing is, low leadership can disable certain abilities even if you don't actually break. Unbreakable ensures that your leadership stays high all the time.

Lastly, for undead characters, it's all positives with no downside whatsoever.

Sure, but I can also just start a new campaign and have real incentives to wage war.

Grimgor was at war with everyone including myself so he ended up dying pretty early, along with most of the other Greenskins. Subsequently, I had good relations with the Dwarfs and there was no reason to fight them at all, especially since their territory wasn't even valuable to me. I can't say I'm a big fan of starting pointless wars.

There is not doubt that they had buggy releases and some rushed features, but I wouldn't say unfinished. The overall quality of the last 3-4 DLCs was way beyond anything we had before and most of the bugs were/are minor. I just wish we didn't have to wait ages for the bug fixes.

It's extremely late. A few days ago I had a super anticlimactic ME campaign with Arkhan where I barely used some T4 units and hadn't even touched the T5 units at all before controlling all of the desert and getting short campaign victory. I built a stack with some Necrosphinx but never actually used it.

The early game was incredibly tedious, so it's a real shame that there is no proper climax.

Flies do dumb shit all the time. I don't know if it's their motor skills, brain, or senses that fail them, but they are surprisingly terrible flyers.

It's an expression, mate.

That's a bug? I thought it was just one of the random voices you can get.

I wouldn't be surprised if it conveniently referred to both. Bretonnia tends to borrow from both Arthurian legend and real French/Anglo-Saxon history.

I know they get bonuses, but it's still terrible.

As a player, you can get far better results than AR without employing cheese tactics. Hell, in many cases you can get a better result by simply jamming your army into the enemy's without using magic or any sort of advanced tactics.

Now I understand that AR shouldn't be too good for the player, but the AI doesn't have the choice to fight manually, so they should have a more lenient autoresolve when fighting other AI in order to balance things out. Whichever army is considered superior by AR should get additional bonuses to decrease the casualties.

Perhaps tweak the way AR works for AI vs. AI? That would be a way better solution than the blatant cheating.

Should we really include a unit that you can't reliably obtain? If Blessed units worked something like Elector State Troops, it would make sense to consider them, but right now they are just completely random and you can go through an entire campaign without getting the ones you need.

Wanna know a nice trick? If the faction you want to declare war against is already at war with another faction, go to that faction's diplomacy screen and ask them to join the war. It will bypass alliances.

For Greenskins I think it would work out okay because that building chain is pretty important and the units that compete directly with Giants are T4/T5. For Norsca and Chaos, I still don't think I would bother getting them at all. Giants are too slow for a Norscan army and with Chaos there is just no reason to waste growth on Trolls and Giants.

I've seen rakarth do pretty well so far, but alberic at war with franz? never seen that.

AI Franz occasionally goes to war with the nearby minor Bretonnian factions, which can potentially piss off the other Bretonnians. Marienburg's role in this is also quite interesting, since they always start the campaign at war with Corounne. If Franz develops good relations with Marienburg and they manage to survive, he tends to end up hating the Bretonnians.

Come on, there is barely anything going on right now and we are all waiting for WH3 news and/or Troy's release. It's not like these memes are taking the place of quality content.

r/meirl

That part is quite misleading. Big mounts usually have very high mass, more HP, and better animations compared to foot lords, so the lower melee stats are a minor tradeoff. Some of them will even give you AP.

Small horse-like mounts are generally not worth it (except for casters), though. Good speed and somewhat higher mass, but they are much worse in melee while also being more vulnerable to ranged fire. Chariot mounts are usually solid.

Like you said, it depends, but most of the time, at that stage of the game, you don't have enough winds to use more than a couple spells per battle which makes the maneuverability surplus to your needs. Sitting in the middle of your army and letting your winds recharge isn't any less effective than rushing to the enemy to cast spells while they march.

If the rest of your army is highly mobile or you have lots of winds, then yes, it is valuable to go for the mount ASAP. In some cases you also need the mount in order to bait the enemy into breaking their defensive formation and start marching towards you.

I understand the use cases, but in practice I rarely find the need to go for it.

In many cases, you still don't get much use out of it. Getting mounts early slows down your progress down the main line, which is especially bad for casters who usually need to rush Arcane Conduit ASAP. Not much point in giving my caster a horse before they are actually competent at casting, and by the time they are, the best mount is usually only a couple levels away.

Hardest part was defending my land against the smaller empire nations

That is precisely why his campaign is a total pain in the arse, especially on VH and higher. Since you were playing on VH, I'd say that you got pretty damn lucky if defending Norsca was nothing more than a mild inconvenience to you lol.

I played a couple campaigns by focusing on marauding Norsca with the Berserkers and Hunters just like you did, but both times they eventually turned into an endless grind because of the invaders on every corner. You can barely make any progress ravaging the Empire/Bretonnia when you are committing so many resources just to defend your homeland. A couple weeks ago I started a new campaign and employed a strategy that I saw mentioned here a few times: abandon Norsca asap and migrate to Couronne. You still have to play cautiously after migrating because you can't just go roaming around and leave your new settlements undefended, but defending a single province is way easier than defending an entire continent.

By turn 140 or so, I got my very first long campaign victory.