Overview
The Skaven essentials you need to help you quickly understand and master a potentially difficult race to play as. These tips apply to all Skaven factions. Enjoy.
FOOD! – Skaven Basics and Essential Info
The most important thing to know about Skaven, their unique faction mechanic (like Influence for the High Elves or Slave Economy for the Dark Elves), is FOOD!
QUICK NOTE: I want this noted here for emphasis. ALWAYS SACK SETTLEMENTS for the money before you occupy them, unless tactical consideration dictates you must Loot & Occupy immediately instead. Example would be your army does not have the movement points to sack then occupy, and the army has suffered large losses and needs immediate replenishment in order to fight nearby enemies. You want to avoid being in this situation, because you REALLY want to SACK THEN OCCUPY. You do not keep any buildings once you occupy (eh, occasionally I’ve seen a building remain, but not often), so you want to get as much money as you can, you will need it to rebuild. Skaven economy kind of sucks (without the trick below that no longer works), SACKING is your money maker.
Skaven have the sweet ability to use food to increase the level of a settlement upon occupying or colonizing a settlement (not after).
Level 1 = no food cost
Level 2 = 20 food
Level 3 = 40 food
Level 4 = 80 food
Level 5 = 120 food
Each army you recruit, and each settlement that you occupy, costs you 1 food (undercities DO NOT appear to cost food unless you build certain under-buildings in them). There is a bar in the top middle of your screen that will show you what your food capacity is, how much food you have, and what percentage of your food capacity you currently have in food. You can raise your food capacity, and your food percentage will adjust accordingly. If you have 800 food capacity and only 400 food, you are at 50%.
Starving = 0-20% food capacity
Shortage = 21-40%
Normal = 41-60%
Surplus = 61-80%
Plentiful = 81-100%
You start with 105 food capacity (100 + 5 from starting settlement). Every settlement you occupy increases your food capacity by 5. But remember, it is also costing you 1 food.
You NEVER want to be Starving, the negative effect is brutal. You do not want to be in Shortage, but Shortage can be endured briefly if it forwards your goals significantly. +20 Growth from Plentiful is sweet, but being able to instantly have a Level 5 Major Settlement is better. Try to get your food capactiy to the max, and then right as you are about to have food going to waste, ideally you will be ready to occupy a major settlement and can spend 80-120 food to get it to Level 4 or 5, depending on your situation and needs. For example, if you are playing as Clan Skryre – Ikit Claw, and your goal is to secure all of Lustria, if you should capture the great city of Itza, which I believe to be a 10 slot city, that would be an excellent candidate for spending 120 food to level it to Tier 5 instantly. The minor settlements could be occupied at Level 1 or Level 2 to save food and they should be up to Tier 3 in no time.
At the start of your campaign, you probably will not be able to afford to make a captured Major Settlement Level 5, and even Level 4 may be rough. Towards the end of the campaign when you have 900 Food Capacity with 900 Food, you could probably capture and Level 5 four Major Settlements in the same turn and be ok.
FOOD FROM TECHNOLOGY:
In the Tech Tree, there are techs with “Plans” in the name. These can give you +1 food per turn and +30 food capacity, for a total of +7 food per turn and +180 food capacity. You want these tech ASAP.
Ruthless Plans = +1 Food per turn (no capacity increase), get this quickly at the start of your campaign
The rest of these give +1 food per turn and +30 Food Capacity:
Virulent Plans
Monstrous Plans
Volatile Plans
Oppressive Plans
Ingenious Plans
Plans within Plans
Be aware that each of these plans requires an associated building, a couple at the highest level of that building chain. Because of this, once you have the preceding tech researched and the necessary building built, these “Plans” tech only take 1 turn to research once available to research. Quick tip, Monstrous Plans requires the 1st level of the building that gives you Rat Ogres and Hellpit Abominations. Since it is easy to not have to use those units at all in your campaign especially if you are Ikit Claw, you can build that building, research Monstrous Plans, THEN demolish that building, and never have to build it again. Just make sure you demolish the building AFTER you research that tech.
FOOD FROM BATTLE:
Winning battles gives you varying amounts of food depending on the size of the enemy army or garrison. Beating small armies may give as little as 3 food, but beating a 20 stack should give you 20 food. 20 food appears to be the maximum you can get after 1 battle. Important to know this in case you are farming enemy armies for food, if 2 enemy stacks are together, you want to use lightning strike/ambush to defeat them 1 at a time to maximize your food gains.
Post Battle Victory Options:
Sell-Off gives you money at the cost of -5 replenishment.
Enslave gives you +2 food and some leadership.
Eat Captives gives you +Army Replenishment.
If I defeat a tiny army that will not give me much money and I’m in need of food, I will choose Enslave. If I suffered a large number of losses, I will choose Eat Captives. If I need money and I beat a large enough army to earn $1000+ gold, I’ll choose Sell-Off. Your situation will determine what the best option is.
FOOD FROM BUILDINGS:
Each MAJOR Settlement can build the “Arcane Generators” building at Tier 3, which when upgraded to “Warplightning Capacitors” at Tier 4, provides +1 food. Sadly, the Tier 5 building “Warpstone Reactor” still only gives +1 food.
Provinces with the “Pastures” Resource in a region allow you to build the Black Corn Swamp which gives +6 food. Provinces with “Exotic Animals” Resource Building will give +2 food if you build that building.
UNDERCITIES have the “Food” category of buildings, there are 2, Savenger Horde (+3 food) and Raiding Camp (+2). So you could potentially get +5 food per undercity. Read my section on Undercities for more info about how to set them up. You will need both “Concealment” buildings to have both of these “Food” building built. Note that if you deign other uses for your undercities, Scavenger Horde goes really well when paired with other building options, such as “Mineshafts” which gives a 10% to spread your undercities but at the cost of -3 food per turn. -3 food is a heavy negative that you want to cancel out.
OTHER SOURCES OF FOOD:
The Edict “Exploitative Planning” gives +2 food in that province. You want every province to be under this Edict once they are fully developed and you don’t need the Edict that gives growth and -10% construction cost.
Raiding with an army gives +3 food regardless of army size or location. You can raid your own region, although I do not recommend doing that in a developed and rich in income province, but if you capture a lone minor settlement at the edge of your territory, you could potentially have all your armies their raiding until you are ready to continue your conquests.
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NEW IMPORTANT NOTE! – post-Twisted & Twilight update, you have the ability to abandon settlements you do not want, which is a huge quality of life improvement for the Skaven, because settlements cost you that 1 food, and if you do not build anything in them to offset that cost, owning settlements that you do not want after sacking them while you wait for the AI to capture them hurt you, but hopefully that will not be as much of an issue now.
FOOD! continued
FINAL KEY NOTES:
Consider carefully your strategy before capturing a settlement instead of sacking and leaving it to “sack farm” later or razing it, especially if it is just a minor settlement, and before confederating with other Skaven. Each settlement costs you food. If you capture a lone Major Settlement at Tier 4 and build a Warplightning Capacitors building to offset the food cost, that is fine. But if you perchance capture 3 minor settlements in a 4 settlement province but are unable to capture the Major Settlement, so you are unable to build the Capacitors building or enact the +Food Edict, are those mere minor settlements helping or hurting you? Especially when you could have farmed them for money through sacking them over and over again.
Give the same considering to confederating. If you playing a Tretch and you confederate Queek or Snikch, do you really want to have to expand your focus to the opposite side of the map? And if you disband the confederated armies and sell all the buildings, that is a nice haul in lords and money, but then you have to wait for the AI to conquer all those settlement, while they continue to cost you food every turn. Now if Queek is on his last settlement and Kroq-Gar is about to exterminate him, by all means confederate him and then disband him and his army, sell all the buildings in the last settlement he owned, and let Kroq-Gar take it, and even if he does not, that is only 1 food, worth it for Queek. But know this: In my Ikit Claw campaign, I had wanted to capture all of Lustria, and then just have my armies raid Mazdamundi in “Central America” while I won the campaign by completing the rituals, but I messed up. Tretch Craventail had like 20 settlements in Naggaroth and desperately wanted to confederate with me, which was nice, but then I had all these settlements that I ended up wanting to defend, which ended up causing me to have to conquer Naggaroth, and I was busy with that when the High Elves started the Final Ritual, so I had to stressfully rush armies to Ulthuan to capture at least 1 High Elf ritual city to stop that while I caught up on my rituals. Very stressful, not recommended. Oh yes, and because I confederated Snikch, Settra ended up declaring war on me in order to complete his conquest of The Southlands continent, and ended up sending armies to attack me in Ulthuan. I could have stayed at peace with him if I had not confederated Snikch.
So choose wisely.
One more thing: At turn 184 in my Ikit Claw campaign, my food bar details showed that I had 130 settlements, with 895 Food Capacity. I had all research complete, so presumably 180 of that Food Capacity was from Researched Tech. Interestingly, I colonized 2 more settlements, and the food bar details still showed that I only had 130 settlements that were costing me food. So there may possibly be a cap on how much settlements will cost you in food? Note that I may have done that test using a save file from after I beat the Vortex Campaign, not sure if that might affect it.
ABANDON REGION!
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A new feature of The Twisted & The Twilight update is the ability to abandon settlements you do not want. To do this, click on the Regions’ Main Settlement Building, and at the bottom of the pop-up there will be a button you click to abandon the settlement on the next turn, pretty much the same process you would do to demolish the other buildings in a region.
This feature is FANTASTIC for the Skaven, because every settlement you own costs you 1 food. To counteract this, you need-must enact the “Exploitative Planning” edict (which requires you to own a whole province) and build the Tier 4 Infrastructure building “Warplightning Capacitors” in a Major Settlement. This requires a lot of time and money and may not be feasible to take a whole province due to diplomatic considerations.
So after you have sacked a settlement for the money and occupied it at Tier 1 for army replenishment (I definitely would not occupy it at a higher level and then abandon it, that is a huge waste of food), you can then abandon the settlement so it no longer hurts you food-wise.
SUPER IMPORTANT!!!: You can also use this feature to abandon Major Settlements, particularly single region provinces like Skavenblight and Hellpit on the Mortal Empires map that could take over 100 turns to reach Tier 5 from growth normally, and then immediately resettle the region at Tier 5 using 120 Food. Exquisite.
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SUPER IMPORTANT!!!: As fantastic as this feature is, there are major consequences for abandoning settlements, especially many at the same time or in rapid succession. The consequences for abandoning are:
When you “Abandon Settlement”, every province you own takes a
Devastation PO penalty of -5 (next turn only) and an
Uncertainty penalty of -3 (reducing by 1 per turn)
for every settlement you abandon.
So 3 settlements abandoned in a single turn generates a -15 Devastation penalty (one turn) and a -9 Uncertainty penalty (-1 per turn) in all owned provinces apart from Forts, which are immune.
All of the above is with a campaign on Hard, other difficulties may or may not have different numbers.
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For a guide on how to approach abandon/resettle-at-Tier 5, see the next section.
Hellpit Tier 4 on Turn 8
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All Credit to Reddit user “WarlockEngineer”. With all deference to his efforts, I’m going to copy the steps here for preservation purposes and in case you cannot access Reddit for some reason. See below:
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“Turn 1: Move south toward Fort Ostrosk. Set Hellpit to Expansionist Planning (this unlocks the rite you need).
Turn 2: Capture Ostrosk by rushing the gate immediately, occupy at level 1. Set Hellpit to Exploitative Planning. Activate Rite: The Dominating Scheme.
Turn 3: Sack Fort Straghov. Then move just below the Fort to save movement for the next step.
Turn 4: Sack Fort Straghov. Empty your growth vat for 10 food. Then move southwest and sack Zoishenk.
Turn 5: Occupy Zoishenk level 1.
Turn 6: Occupy Straghov level 1. Set province to Exploitative Planning. Demolish the 2 buildings in Hellpit but do not abandon the settlement
Turn 7: Move toward Hellpit. Abandon Hellpit.
Turn 8: You should have exactly 120 food, so settle Hellpit at level 5 and enjoy. If you didn’t spend any money yet you have enough to build every single military building plus generator, animal tamer, and the unique building on this turn.”
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Break down and remember the elements in the above guide and apply them to Ikit Claw and Skavenblight in Mortal Empires, and for every other Skaven campaign.
Public Order after T&T update
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The Twisted & The Twilight update significantly changed how public order works, and introduced the “Uncertainty” and “Desolation” modifiers in tandem with the “Abandon Settlement” mechanic.
All credit to “Humpard” for creating a Discussions post with this info:
“Public Order now provides bonuses and penalties per threshold for all factions.
The numbers are, at province Region Control –
100 to 75, a PO penalty of -12
74 to 50, a penalty of -8
49 to 25, a penalty of -4
24 to -24, zero change
-25 to -49, a PO bonus of +4
-50 to -74, a bonus of +6
-75 to -100, a bonus of +8
These are Faction in the PO popup window.
Tooltip the left-most icon (face) in the Province Effects section of the province information scroll or in the building browser for a popup. I have a province at -25 PO and it gets the +4 bonus hence why the numbers above differ from the tooltip by 1.
Where previously a province, if left alone would just keep going towards 100 or -100, now each one will trend towards a set value over time and hover around there.
So a province that is +100 PO now with an overall trend of -12 will (if nothing changes) eventually settle to around +24 without any outside action required and similarly, provinces in negative PO will try to get to -24.
As for abandoning settlements, every owned province takes a
Devastation PO penalty of -5 (next turn only) and an
Uncertainty penalty of -3 (reducing by 1 per turn)
for every settlement you abandon.
So 3 settlements abandoned in a single turn generates a -15 Devastation penalty (one turn) and a -9 Uncertainty penalty (-1 per turn) in all owned provinces apart from Forts, which are immune.
All of the above is with a campaign on Hard, other difficulties may or may not have different numbers.”
Source:
[link]
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SUPER IMPORTANT!!!
A previous update made a change to where, the higher the public order in your province, the greater the “Campaign Line of Sight” that your regions/province will have, and the less public order, the worse the “Fog of War” will be making it easier for enemy armies to sneak up on your settlements without warning.
Twisted & Twilight introduced further mechanics relating to public order. The higher your public order, the greater the line of sight and growth, and the more reduced the cost of building and recruiting. Examples I found on the web below:
Region Control: Low (-25 to -50)
Campaign line of sight +5% for local regions
Construction cost +2% for all buildings
Growth -10
Public order: +4
Recruitment cost +5% local armies
Region Control: Very Low (-50 to -75)
Campaign line of sight +2% for local regions
Construction cost +5% for all buildings
Growth -15
Public order: +6
Recruitment cost +2% local armies
That is all I found so far, if anyone can create a list and send to me, I will update the guide.
ECONOMY
UPDATED POST-RAVENOUS EXPANSION NERF, see “OUTDATED” section.
“I am never going to financially recover from this”
CA nerfed the Warlord’s Ravenous Expansion skills from max of +40% settlement income factionwide to a max of 4% now. Not worth investing in, especially given how good the other 2 exclusive skills were already. It may not even be worth bringing Warlords over Warlock Master’s now, except to either lead an even cheaper upkeep skavenslave stack or as an ambushing beast (so actually pretty good reasons, but you must plan around those specific skills if you are going to bother to bring a Warlord)
Right now, I have no economy tricks for you. Before I discovered the Ravenous Expansion trick, I was struggling to support 8 full doomflayer & artillery doomstacks. Afterwards I was supporting I think 15 stacks with at least +10-20k income. Then after the nerf, I checked the save, and I had -$93k income. That is how good Ravenous Expansion was.
Only advice I have is to decide on what territory you want to actually occupy, and of course build the settlements and focus on building the buildings that provide the most income. Decide on what areas would be good to “sack farm”, sacking the settlements then moving on and letting them recover, then coming back and sacking them again. And figure out if there is an area that you want to establish under-cities everywhere and build the +income buiidings there.
Original general economy overview:
The Skaven economy is pretty simple. Pretty much every building provides income, some more than others. You want a Warpstone Reactor in every Major Settlement (+50% income from all buildings and the +1 food). Breeding Pits and Scrap Heaps give the most income at 160 each. Resource building tend to cap out at 100. Military buildings can be 80-100. Ports give good money too. The richest province would be a 4 region province with ports, a Breeding Pit and Scrap Heap in every settlement (note that you would have not room for defenses), Warpstone Reactor in the Major Settlement, and the rest of the Major Settlement filled with the buildings that give the most income. The nice thing about this is the even built like this, this province should be able to supply good troops still. The Construction Cavern chain would give you Doomwheel/Flayer units and both artillery, which is all you need to build a doomstack.
UNDERCITIES
KEY INFO – Each 1 of your heroes you have in the region where you undercity is decreases the chance of discovery by 10%. Enemy heroes increase the discovery chance by 10%. This chance stacks, so 10 of your heroes in the region would decrease discoverability by 100. You need to remember this if you want to build “The Vermintide” or the “Doomsphere”. An undercity itself starts at 0 when it comes to discoverability. Undercity buildings can raise or lower your undercity’s discoverability. If your undercity is discovered then the AI can easily destroy it.
Undercities are 4 building slot “under-settlements” built under any Major or Minor Settlement that you do not own that also grants you line of sight over that settlement (until you build Deeper Tunnels). If you capture a settlement that has one of your undercities beneath it, you lose that undercity. If you capture a settlement with an enemy undercity beneath it, that enemy undercity may still be there. If a settlement is razed by you or an AI faction, any undercity beneath it will be destroyed.
Good cities to build undercities in would be Lothern, Galleon’s Graveyard, Naggardon, Hexoatl, Itza, the island settlements at the south and southeast part of the map, etc. The stronger the defenses of the city and the stronger the faction that owns it, the more likely your undercity will survive.
There are 4 ways to get Undercities (corrected from 3):
The Scheme of DOOOOM! gives you a DOOOOM! Engineer at your capital, which you can then send to a settlement of your choice to die upon creating an undercity while also creating a Warlock Laboratory (+1 Warlock Engineer capacity, +10% Reserach, +50 experience per turn for Warlock Engineers)
Warlock Engineer: The Warlock Engineer can establish an undercity once every 10 turns (the recharge restriction is factionwide, so you only need 1 Warlock Engineer running around creating undercities). The undercity will be 4 empty slots, no buildings will be already built unlike the DOOOOM! Engineer.
MINESHAFTS Undercity Building: If you establish an undercity by either of those previous methods, and you do so in a settlement that has neighboring settlements (so not on the island in the middle south of the map, Fortress of the Dawn or whatever), in the “MINING” building category of your undercity, you have the option of building the chain that results in “Mineshafts”, which has +40 chance of discovery, costs -3 food, and gives a 10% chance per turn to spread an undercity to another settlement. Given that via the two previous methods you could only build 4 undercities every 30 turns (every 10 turns with Warlock Engineer and every 30 turns not including travel time with DOOOM! Engineer), if you love undercities and maniacally want them everywhere, you will want to utilize “Mineshafts”.
ESTABLISH VIA ARMY: I completely forgot about this one initially, but if you win a settlement battle, one of the options you have is to Establish Undercity with your army. I don’t believe there is a cooldown for this? This ability combines sweetly with a “Sack and Raid” strategy of sending an army or 2 to an area you have no intention of ever occupying, sacking settlements then establishing undercities beneath them, and moving around doing this everywhere you can in that area making tons of income from sacking and raiding while building a huge under-empire (and in settlements too strong to attack, establish an undercity via Warlock Engineer or hope that the Mineshafts building spreads an undercity to it).
UNDERCITY BUILDING CATEGORIES:
NOTE – (+# disc) or (-# disc) will be referring to the affect on discoverability the building has.
ANNEXATION: Under-keep & Underway Nexus chains (both chains max at +50 disc) – I’m not sure what the point of these buildings are except if you plan to permanently raid and sack a particular enemy province and you want 1 or more undercities in that province supporting your armies from below.
RUINATION: Rat-king (+140 disc) becomes “The Vermintide”, and the Makeshift Workshop (+160 disc) becomes “Doomsphere”. Both options destroy the undercity. The Vermintide spawns an army under your control once it is completed (unit composition of this army is improved by certain tech in your tech tree) Honestly “The Vermintide” only becomes good once you have researched all the tech that improves it, and it will always be sub-par to the doomstacks you can build, but it could be useful for the right situations. The “Doomsphere” blows up the settlement it was under, very much like Nuking a city but from below ground, basically is razes a settlement without the need for an army to do it. This can be useful if you are facing a Tier 5 Major Settlement such as the Dwarves’ Karaz-A-Karak in the Mortal Empires campaign that has top tier defenders that you really, REALLY do not want to have to fight.
LANDMARK: The Warlock Laboratory (+20 disc) mentioned above. Good for boosting your research and the number of Warlock Engineers you can have.
FOOD: Scavenger Horde (+40 disc) gives +3 food, Raiding Camp (+80 disc) gives +100 income, 10% of the above settlements income, and +2 food.
CONCEALMENT: Kill Perches (-40 disc) and Deeper Tunnels (-40 disc, lose sight of region above your undercity). You are gonna need to build both of these in every undercity if you are going to be making serious use of your undercities.
MONEY: Ratkin Mafia (+80 disc) gives 50% of the settlement above’s income, so this one is good to place under Lothern, Naggarond, basically and really rich Major Settlemnt. The other building I didn’t note the name of but it grants a flat +400 income.
MINING: Mineshafts (+40 disc) costs -3 food but grants a 10% chance per turn to spread an undercity to a nearby settlement; and Subterranean Strip Mine (+80 disc) costs -2 food and gives +100 income, -3% construction cost factionwide and +8% to trade income factionwide.
MY KEY UNDERCITY THOUGHTS:
You will need to build both “CONCEALMENT” building first, and place enough heroes in the region of the settlement you are trying to destroy via The Vermintide or Doomsphere, if want either of those to successfully complete.
If you want to go crazy with undercities and potentially have them be very helpful to you, select a continent you do not plan on invading, then use a DOOOM! and Warlock Engineer to start up undercities there. Build both Concealment buildings, then build Scavenger Horde and Mineshafts. As the undercity spreads, keep building those 4 buildings, until an entire area is covered. Once an undercity is surrounded by other undercities and therefore there be no use for the Mineshafts anymore, demolish it and then build either:
Raiding Camp – for more food and income
Subterranean Strip Mine – 10 of these would give you -30% construction cost factionwide for your buildings. 20 would give -60%, 30 would give -90%. Would be hilarious if it worked, but remember that if the AI razes the settlement above then your undercity would be destroyed.
Money – Building the money buildings in settlements like Lothern could give you huge boosts in income, and I did that in my Ikit Claw campaign and it was definitely helpful, but once I figured out the “Ravenous Expansion Warlod” trick, I don’t feel like this is as necessary, especially since there are so few really rich cities that are also very unlikely to be conquered/razed by the AI.
Warlock Labs – more research and more Warlock Engineers is always nice especially if you go crazy with having Warlock Engineers in your armies. If you put 3 Warlock Engies in each army and you have 10 armies, you need 30 capacity for Warlock Engies. If you just have Lustria, even building a Construction Cavern chain in each province, you probably will not have enough capacity, and would need Warlock Labs to supplement.
AMBUSHING
Skaven are insanely good at ambushing enemy armies, particularly when attacking (especially since on difficulties below Legendary, you can save scum until you successfully ambush an enemy).
You should always get Route Marcher and put 3 points into the +Ambush skill in the Blue Line on your Lord.
On top of the +30% Ambush Chance skill in the Blue Line, Lords can have additional skills that boost their Ambush Chance:
Snikch = +30% from “Jump-Scare” skill (+10%) and the “Cloak of Shadows” quest item (+20%)
Tretch Craventail = +35% from “Master of Guile” skill (+20%) and the “Lucky Skullhelm” quest item (+15%)
Queek = +25% from “Violent Rise to Power”
Warlord = +25% from “Dastardly & Devious” (this locks “Ravenous Expansion” the +40% Income from Settlements skill which is the trick to ridiculous income I mention elsewhere)
Master Assassin = +15% from “Expert Ambusher” (ironic that this lord has the lowest +Ambush %…)
Warlock Master = None
Grey Seer = None
ARMY COMPOSITIONS
IMPORTANT – Heroes and Single Entity Units such as Doomwheels and Hellpit Abominations DO NOT benefit from the “Eat Captives” instant replenishment. They will of course replenish in your province and in your settlements like normal, and their replenishment is increased via the Assassin’s Replenish skill, but whereas other units could suffer many casualties but potentially be instantly replenished to full after “Eat Captives”, no such luck for Heroes or Single Entities. Keep this in mind when choosing which units to use in your armies.
Too Long; Didn’t Read (TL;DR) – Lord + 9 Doom-flayers + 10 Artillery; or, Lord + 1 Hero + 8 Doom-flayers + 10 Artillery; or, Lord + 3 Heroes + 6-8 Doom-flayers + 10-8 Artillery; or the best, Lord + Ratling Gunners/Jezzails + Artillery supported by Lord + 19 Doom-flayers.
Quick Note – Nastiest anti-infantry army composition is Gunners + Catapults, Nastiest anti-large/monstrous army is Jezzails + Warp Lightning Cannons
TL;DR continued – Do I really need an assassin for Replenish though if I could fully replenish an army with “Eat Captives”. And do I need a Plague Priest to nuke defenders if artillery can open the way for Doom-flayers to roll in and slaughter everything? So I think the best strategy would be main army of Warlock Master Lord on Doomwheel + W.Engineer + 8 Rat Gunners + 10 Artillery followed by Warlock Master Lord on Doomwheel + W.Engineer + 18 Doom-flayers. Should make both field battles and sieges ridiculously easy.
See my list of best units below to inform your army composition decisions. See the Hero section what benefits Heroes bring to armies.
I really like to have 8-10 artillery in my main attacking armies (main armies attack, supporting armies reinforce, preferably with fast units). 4 catapults and 4 cannons, 5 and 5, or 6 catapults and 4 cannons have done me well in my campaign. 8-10 catapults is great if the enemy is all infantry and even non-monstrous cavalry, and for fighting in hilly terrain. 8-10 WLCannons would also be good against infantry and in flatter terrain, but excellent if the enemy bring lots of large units. So what to fill the rest of the army with?
If you bring just 1 hero (such as Warlock Enginner mainly for “Increased Mobility”), that gives you 18 slots to play with. You could go 8 Ratling Gunners + 10 Artillery, 8 Art + 10 Gunners, or 9 and 9. Or go 8 art + 4 Jezzails + 6 Gunners. And so on. Bring 3 heroes, and that gives you 16 slots to play with. If I did this, I’d probably go with 8 Rat Gunners/Doom-flayers + 8 Artillery.
Another option is 2 artillery and then the rest being Ratling Gunners (or Gunners and Jezzails), with the artillery mainly just being there to force the enemy to attack you.
Now, the problem with an all Weapons Team (Gunners/Gunners + Jezzails) or Gunners + Artillery is that you have all this excellent shooting power that will normally annhilate what you come up against, but if you get ambushed, or fight on a terrible map for artillery and gunners, you may be screwed. Also, these compositions SUCK for Sieges. Even after the artillery takes down the towers and walls, the gunners don’t shoot through the gaps, and if you try to move them inside the walls, the defenders rush them and kill them.
Alternative – Doom-flayers/Doomwheels/Hellpit Abominations (doomstack units) instead of Weapons Teams. Artillery does the heavy lifting at range, and when the enemy gets close (or once you thinned the enemy out in sieges), attack with your doomstack units to finish the enemy off.
Best Choice – Main stack with Lord, whatever composition you choose of Ratling Gunners, Warplock Jezzails, Artillery, and heroes or no heroes; supported by a Lord + maybe 1 hero + 18-19 Doom-flayers/Doomwheels/Hellpit Abominations/Rat Ogres/Stormvermin/Clanrats (Shields) in that order.
The Issue of Heroes
Let’s assume you want to limit the number of heroes in your army to 3, so that with your lord making the 4th slot used, that leaves 16 slots for regular units. An army with Lord + 10 Artillery + 9 Assassins (or 9 Plague Priests) could be fun and strong, but man is it a time-consuming pain in the tush to select the hero skills as they level up, and you can only do this once you have enough provinces with enough necessary buildings, and you are limited to just a couple of armies built this way.
Assassin + Plague Priest + Warlock Engineer: This gives your army replenishment, increased campaign movement from the engineer, and the Plague Priest can nuke enemies on walls with Plague in sieges and when they blob up on the battlefield.
Triple Warlock Engineer: I don’t know if Increase Mobility stacks for ridiculous army movement range, but the increased damage and range they provide stack, plus with 3 of them you can cover all your units with “Ballistic Calibration”. If you are thinking that sounds great, why not stack more than 3 in an army, I read somewhere that you do not want too many in an army otherwise it will make units’ range too long and their shots will glitch and go straight off the map not doing anything.
Referring to Dwarf Master Engineers: “Downside of Range increases though: Some artillery actually has a hard cap on how far they can shoot in the game engine. No matter how far the range indicator was the actual projectiles would always come up short. With the Organ Guns and Dwarven Cannon it was readily apparent after 3 Engineers, not sure on the Grudge Thrower or Flame Cannon.”
All this time… I never realised that Engineer bonuses stacked… from totalwar
Anyway, back to 3x Warlock Engineers. With 3 leveled W.Engies with the right skills maxed (Triangulation and the Increased Range ones being the most important) and lead by a lord who has 3 points in “Blastmaster”, “Engineering Skill”, and the point in “Warp-Smart”, an army of Ratling Gunners and Artillery murders everything it faces, it is unholy.
Triple Plague Priest: Triple Arcane Conduit to regenerate Winds of Magic. Great for nuking defenders with Plague during sieges (even with 3x Arcane Conduit, make sure you get your Winds of Magic to 30 before using Plague and let it regenerate back up to 30 after each cast of Plague; too many uses at once kills your Winds of Magic pool). Also great for summoning clanrats to tarpit the enemy while your ranged units shoot the enemy to death.
Triple Assassin: I believe there is a 50% replenishment per turn cap, so 2 Assassins with their Replenish skill should be enough to reach that, but the idea here is that the assassins can kill enemy lords and heroes and even wreck enemy infantry units, while your range units rain hell. Great on battlefield, great during sieges.
Of course, you could just bring 1 hero, Warlock Engineer for Increased Mobility army movement range, Assassin for Replenish, or Priest for nuking defenders with Plague.
ARMY COMPOSITIONS continued
Your best units are:
Plagueclaw Catapult – Can fire from behind units and even small hills, disgustingly good against enemy infantry, as well as artillery and cavalry if they get hit. Also good against towers and walls.
Warp Lightning Cannon – straighter firing arc than the Plagueclaw Catapult so cannot fire from behind a hill, note this. Also good against infantry, but excellent against towers and walls in sieges, other artillery and large units like dragons and hellpit abominations and Warsphinx. With 4 of these I killed Malekith on his Black Dragon before he even got close to my forces in one my battles.
Doomwheel – One of the Skaven’s original “doomstack” units, it remains a doomstack unit, especially when supported by artillery.
Doom-flayers – Basically slightly lesser Doomwheels without ranged attacks, but has the benefit of getting replenishment from “Eat Captives” after battle.
– All of the above benefit from the Red Line skills “Engineering Skill” and “Warp-Smart”, which make them even nastier than they already are.
Ratling Gunners – Perhaps the ultimate “Gunline” unit. If you bring enough of these, and the enemy only has infantry and nothing to rapidly get to your gunners to keep them from firing, then the enemy are already dead at the start of the battle, they just don’t know it yet.
Warplock Jezzails – Even longer range than the gunners, they inflict a “shieldbreaker” effect which pairs sweetly with gunners against enemies with shields. They are anti-large, and 4+ of them can butcher monsters and lords. They are the infantry version of the Warp Lightning Cannon to the Ratling Gunners’ Plagueclaw Catapult.
Note – Warpfire Throwers, Poisoned Wind Mortars, and Warpgrinders are also considered Weapons Teams in addition to the above 2, Death Globes Bombardiers are not
– Weapons Teams such as the Gunners and Jezzails are affected by “Blastmaster” and “Warp-Smart” red line skills and are even nastier with them.
Death Globe Bombardiers – Disgustingly effective at killing everything, they would be horrifically overpowered if their range were longer. I was forced to use them in a siege battle and they won me that siege. Short range but they will rotate and “shoot” quicker than the weapons teams.
Hellpit Abomination – The other of the Skaven’s original “doomstack” units, a “causes terror” unit, goes excellent with artillery support.
Rat Ogres – The fastest Skaven unit and hard-hitting from the flanks, too squishy to be a doomstack unit, but useful in the right situation, such as a reinforcing army where you need to rush them up to protect your main army of artillery and weapons teams.
Quick Note – There is a tech tree skill that makes Clanrats the “Expendable” trait. What does that mean? Skavenslaves are expendable, which means when they rout their routing has not impact on the morale of other units, so your stormvermin will not start wavering/routing because the slaves in front of them just got annihilated. That technology gives this ability to clanrats so they too will not cause doom-flayers or stormvermin to rout if they break.
SIEGES
If you bring enough artillery, 8-10, and you have your whole force on one side of the map, use your lord to take siege tower fire while artillery does its work, you should be able to quickly take out the 2-3 towers facing your army, and from there, you can take down walls or gates at your leisure, bombard what defenders your artillery can hit, and then move in for the kill. Only issue is that Weapons Teams suck at attacking, so you either want this 8-10 artillery army to have 8-10 melee units that can finish the job inside the walls, or support your main army with a support army of such units.
HEROES
ASSASSINS: Assassins are incredible Lord & Hero killers, they are great against infantry too, and they have 2 very useful campaign effects, Replenish and Spread Public Order, and if you just put 6 points in those 2 sets of skills, you can max out their combat line (you could put 3 more into something like Specialist and still max the combat line, you just wouldn’t be able to also choose the missile and magic resistance skills). They are also your Assassinate, Assault Units and Assault Garrison hero.
WARLOCK ENGINEER: Increased Mobility skill increases your army movement range, stacks with the Lord movement range skills such as Route Marcher and Renowned & Feared. They also boost missile damage and range for all missile and artillery units, they boost missile infantry speed, they provide additional ammo, etc. They are absolutely fantastic support for ranged units. You can have 9 points in their campaign line (such as Increased Mobility, Steal Research, and Specialist), have all their Combat Support skills maxed (except for Missile and Magic Resistance skills), and have all their spells unlocked (but without the ability to overcast their spells).
Important note concerning W.Engineer spells: Putting 1 point into a spell like “Scorch” unlocks the spell for use in battle, 2 points gives the abilitiy to Overcast that spell, but know this; 2 points in a spell does not reduce the magic cost of the spell! Whereas on the Warlock Master Lord, putting 2 points into “Warp Lightning” reduces the base magic cost of that spell from 6 to 4, doing the same on the Warlock Engineer does not. So unless you really like Overcasting spells, you can skip putting 2 points into the W.Engineers spell skills.
Important note – This is your “STEAL RESEARCH” Hero. This makes for a difficult choice, because they are so awesome for boosting your armies, but at the same time a high research rate is critical for the Skaven, because you want to unlock all of the “Plans” tech ASAP to boost your Food Capacity. See the Research section for more info.
PLAGUE PRIEST: Pestilent Breath is ok and you can max it. Don’t waste a point on the first spell after that (Toxic Rain I think?), read closely, that awesome effect is only active for a limited duration after you cast a spell. Put 2 points in Vermintide and 1-2 points in Wither depending on if you maxed Pestilent Breath, you will come back to max Wither later. You want Magical Reserves, Max Plague, Maxed skill that summons Plague Monks, and Arcane Conduit. The main uses I found in my campaign is to summon clanrats to tarpit enemies while my ranged units rained death on the enemy, and to nuke defenders on the gatehouse with Plague during sieges because artillery and Ratling Gunners were unable to hit them.
RESEARCH
Every faction benefits from having all of their Technology researched, but some factions have more critical research priorities than others. Skaven have a critical research priority; unlocking the “Plans” tech that gives +1 food per turn and +30 Food Capacity. Here are some tips for this:
1)
Before you end your turn, make sure you are researching something. But, at the beginning of the next turn, before you fight any battles, stop your research (have nothing being researched). Now do everything you need to do in your turn, particularly fighting your battles. There is a good chance that one of the rewards for victory will be a “Hellpit Attendant” Follower. This follower gives +10% Research boost. Now start researching again before hitting end turn. Do this repeatedly, and with luck, you could get a lot of Hellpit Attendants to put on your Lords and Heroes to significantly boost your research rate. This is an old trick from Warhammer 1, and I know it works, because as soon as I researched everything in my Ikit Claw campaign and could research nothing more. I started getting ridiculous numbers of Hellpit Attendant Followers after my battles.
2)
Use your Warlock Engineers to Steal Research from enemy settlements. Aim to recruit at least 10 Warlock Engineers, put 3 points in “Specialist” so their actions are not so ridiculously expensive, and then put 3 points in “Steal Research” (or Steal Technology, whatever). I think they steal 20 research base and “Steal Research” adds another 10, so 30 total. Note this – After your agent has successfully stolen research a number of times, they will get a trait that gives an additional 5% research stolen when they successfully steal from a settlement, which means your Warlock Engineers will be stealing and boosting your research by 35% for 3 turns with every success. The number of turns stacks on 1 hero, so your hero will not steal more than 35%, but you could stack the duration to like 30+turns on one hero if you wanted. So with 10 heroes stealing research, you would have 350% bonus to Research, combined with the base of 100, is 450% Research Rate. Add to that Hellpit Attendants, Warlock Laboratorys, and the Construction Cavern chain (Tier 5 gives 8% bonus to research I think, so 10 of those Tier 5 buildings would provide 80% Research), and you could be well over 500% Research Rate, maybe even 600%.
LORDS
WARLOCK MASTER: Currently probably the best Skaven Lord (Master Assassin may be best when playing as Clan Eshin). Can get a Doom-flayer and/or a Doomwheel mount (Doomwheel is awesome, I haven’t tried him on a flayer yet), which makes him a beast in comabat. He can also unlock and use spells as well. Normal Blue and Red Lines are same as other lords.
^ Key skill choice on Warlock Master are the 3 exclusive skills at the top. He can get -1 turn to recruit and +1 rank for Doomwheel and Doom-flayer units; -15% upkeep for Weapons Teams; or -15% construction cost and time. Choosing 1 locks the other 2 skills.
Vehicle Engineer: -1 turn to recruit means that if you lost some doom-flayers and need to pitstop in province to recruit more doom-flayers, it would only take 1 turn to reinforce. This with Draftmaster means you will recruit these units at Rank 2 at least.
Weapons Engineer: -15% upkeep for Weapons Teams combined with -15% upkeep from Quartermaster makes for some cost-effective Gunners and Jezzails, particularly if you go mainly Weapons Teams with only 1-2 artillery.
Construction Enginner: At first I thought this was a poor choice, since the ideal would be to recruit 4 Warlock Master Lords with this skill but without armies and have them go around building up your provinces in half the time for half the cost (-60% cost and build time with 4 lords), but the ridiculous increased upkeep costs they would cause would negate their benefit. Then I realized you must plan around this skill. If every combat lord you recruit is going to be a Warlock Master, and you will run at least 2 of them together, and potentially 3-4 when making major pushes in a specific direction, even just 2 lords with this skill together gives -30% construction cost and build time. And if you do attack with 4 armies together, you could have 1 doomstack supported by 3 stacks of skavenslave slingers or clanrats (shields), or 2 doomstacks supported by 2 skavenslave or clanrat stacks.
Finally, obviously the Warlock Master on a Doomwheel/Flayer goes great with other Doomwheels/Flayers. A literal Doomstack.
PLAGUE LORD: Basically a Plague Priest with the ability to improve his army. Problem with the Plague Lord is the split focus. If you go up the Blue and/or Red Lines first, what good is he as a caster? If you go up his spell line to get Arcane Conduit and Plague, etc, great but that is at the cost of your army fighting skills from the Red Line, economy from Quartermaster, movement range and ability to ambush from Blue Line skills. It could be pretty sweet to bring a Plague Lord + 3 Plague Priests for lots of Winds of Magic and lots of using Plague.
WARLORD: Besides Snikch this character could be one of the best ambushers, because 1 of his 3 skills that lock the other two I think gives +25% ambush chance? Which combines with the +Ambush chance skill from the Blue Line, could make a Warlord built this way an ambushing machine. However, “Ravenous Expansion” is just too good to pass up, I literally went from barely affording 9 armies to having 17 doomstacks with $50,000+ income still and I could have kept boosting my income further. Also, as far as combat ability, even on his mount Bonebreaker I was not impressed by the Warlord’s combat ability. I would use the Warlod as your economy hack like I described in the economy section, and use other lords to lead you to victory.
MASTER ASSASSIN: I’ve barely used this one so far, he is good in a Snikch campaign because he can be used for contracts and I just noticed he has a skill that gives “Runners” units +10% missile damage in his army, which again in Snikch’s campaign is awesome due to how good Eshin “Runners” units are. For the other 4 Clans, I think the Master Warlock would be the better choice.
SCHEMES
IMPORTANT – When you use 1 Scheme, you cannot use the other for 5 turns. Plan accordingly, especially if you want to spawn the special heroes on cooldown.
The Dominating Scheme – 5 turn duration, 15 turn recharge – +3 food, +40 Growth, +2 Public Order, -25% Recruitment Cost
The Thirteenth Scheme – 13 turn duration, 30 turn recharge – Chance of +2 loyalty for Lords at turn start, +13 Diplomacy, -13% enemy hero success chance, +13% your hero success chance, Skryre Clanstone ability (-44% magic resistance in an area)
Pestilent Scheme – 30 turn recharge – Spawns a Pestilent Scheme Priest that can die to cause plague in a settlement (note that I’m not sure how effective plague is when used by Clan Pestilens especially after the Potion of Speed update, but I did not find it particularly useful as Clan Skryre. The main use I had for it was to use the Pestilent Priest to scout the map, and then kill him off once I was done with him)
The Scheme of DOOOOM! – 30 turn recharge – Spawns a DOOOOM! Engineer who can die to establish an undercity in a settlement with a Warlock Laboratory in the 1st undercity building slot for free.
FARMING REBELLIONS WITH ASSASSINS
You do not want to raid one of your rich & developed provinces, it gives you 3 food but I do not believe it gives you any money, in fact, it reduces your income.
Assassins have “Spread Public Order” skill, which with their base of 1, means that each Assassin can boost your own provinces by +4 Public Order, or reduce enemy province public order by -4 per hero. The idea here is to stack 10+ Assassins with maxed “Spread Public Order” in an army and then raid an enemy region. To decrease enemy Public Order faster, sack the settlement at the start of your raid, then let it repair. When the rebellion spawns, kill the rebels. You do not want the rebels to raze the settlement, so you gotta time your killing of the rebels to prevent them from razing the settlement; this is why you don’t want the rebels to spawn right after you sacked a settlement, with no defenders in the settlement the rebels will probably win and raze it. Even with the +20 or +40 Public Order from the rebels spawning and recruiting, with 10+ Assassins you should be causing -40 Public Order, so they should rebel almost immediately again.
Of course, if you capture a single settlement that gives no real income anyway so you do not care if you raid it for the +3 food per army, and plan to farm rebellions there, make sure you have NO Assassins in those armies, obviously, since Assassins boost public order in your own provinces.
On Very Hard/Very Hard, I do not think it is realistic to be able to cause AI provinces to rebel when they start at positive 100 Public Order with +44 Public Order per turn, like I saw with Naggarond in my Ikit Claw campaign. Then again I only had like 10 Assassins trying to do just that, but perhaps if I had 19 Assassins in an army raiding Naggarond, it might have worked. This would be more likely to work on a minor settlement you sacked that the AI is not really defending.
A good place to try this out would be if you do an Ikit Claw campaign, capture all of Lustria (South America), and then once you do that and want to chill for a bit, have your armies sack then raid those minor settlements as you enter “Central America” area south of Hexoatl, and farm the resulting rebellions.
OUTDATED – and so very sadly so
EVERYTHING BELOW IS OUTDATED!
Keeping the info on the guide to show you what was, so we can all mourn together.
“High Elves can get mages with the “Entrepeneur” trait. This trait is Overpowered on the High Elves; you can stack as many mages as you can recruit in Lothern to boost income to such a ridiculous degree, that I was able to afford 15-18 doomstacks in my High Elf Tyrion campaign. This is a High Elf “secret” economy boost that makes their race campaigns a cakewalk.
The Skaven Warlord lord is the Skaven’s “secret” economy hack.
Skaven Warlord needs to be Level 13 to unlock “Ravenous Expansion”. Ravenous Expansion when maxed provides +40% income boost to all of your settlements factionwide. The more of Warlord’s you get with this skill maxed, the more your economy will be boosted. But wait you say, every lord recruited increases your supply lines penalty especially on Very Hard difficulty, does that not negate their benefit? Correct, but here is the trick. Lords can be disbanded so that they stop increasing your supply lines (after 5 turns they will be available to re-recruit) but their traits and apparently skills remain active. So you can recruit a Warlord at Level 13, put 2 points into Ravenous Expansion and whatever else, then disband him, and the skill will still boost all your settlement income by 40%. I went from struggling with income at 9 armies despite owning all of Lustria with Tier 5 settlements and much of Naggaroth as well, to having 17 doomstack armies with $50k+ income per turn, and I could have kept increasing my income every turn if I kept recruiting then disbanding another “Ravenous Expansion” Warlord every turn, I just didn’t bother because I did not need to, I was crushing everything already.
How do you recruit a lord at Level 13? The highest tier building of the “Taskmaster’s Platform” building chain gives +1 Lord Rank upon recruitment factionwide. Also there are other special buildings in Lustria and elsewhere that also give a +1 Lord Rank as well. Get 13 of these buildings and there you go, instant Level 13 lord. By the time I figured this out, I was recruiting Level 20+ lords so I could also give them Immortality trait as well. Income boosting lords that can also be recruited to defend a settlement in a pinch. Phenomenal.”