Overview
Tips, tricks, and a general guide to playing as the Greenskins. This is not a step-by-step walkthrough. This guide is also still under construction.
Introduction
Over the course of this guide I’m going to try to explain the basics of playing the Greenskins, mainly my suggestions to avoid or manipulating the mechanics of the Greenskin race as they are not quite as traditional as most other Total War factions.
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>>>NOTE I am no longer updating this guide as I don’t really play Warhammer often enough to give you an educated opinion on how to effectively play the Greenskins as of the newest updates. Some stuff in this guide may still be viable or accurate but it was written at around the launch of the first Total Warhammer.<<<<
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I’ve played just about every Total War game extensively since the first Rome and I’m writing this guide having experienced roughly an entire Greenskins campaign.
I’ll be breaking this down mainly into tips and suggestions. I will not be holding your hand through exactly what you need to build and who you need to attack.
*NOTE* If I say stuff like “Max this talent tree out” or “Put all your points into this tree” I don’t mean every single point until you can’t spend anymore but I mean most of your points. If you’re putting points into Blade Master, go for the stuff that gets you the big damage. If you’re going for the Leadership tree, go for the ones that get your boyz big damage and morale. Use your judgement on what you feel is necessary.
Feel free to click and enlarge the screenshots.
If you are or know any Russian-speakers who would prefer to read the guide in Russian, the link is below:
Russian Translation:
русский перевод:
[link]
Huge thanks to Gascoigne for volunteering the time to provide a translation for those who need it.
Check out his steam page: Gascoigne
Greenskin Legendary Lords
Before you can begin your campaign, you have to pick a legendary lord. You can get both later in the campaign but you must pick one to start. Two options (at the time of this guide) are available. Grimgor Ironhide and Azhag the Slaughterer.
GRIMGOR IRONHIDE
I’m going to be upfront with you. Pick Grimgor. Pick Grimgor and put all the points you have when he ranks up into the blade master tree.
Grimgor also begins with signifcantly better units than Azhag does. Grimgor will get an elite group of Black Orcs, essentially the best infantry. A group of Boar Boyz as a great early game cavalry unit for harassment and anti missile. Finally, he get’s a Doom Diver straight off which is the best artillery the Greenskins can muster.
Grimgor also reduces upkeep for Big Uns and Black Orcs by -10%. This is huge because these units are expensive to maintain but late game you really want nothing but these units. In addition, Grimgor provides a +5% bonus to campaign movement range to everyone, armies and agents, which is a significant movement bonus.
AZHAG THE SLAUGHTERER
I would strongly recommend to avoid Azhag for your first playthrough. I’ve found that magic in this game is very situational and becomes useless once your winds of magic run out. Azhag does get a flying wyvern mount, Skullmuncha, but much later in the campaign and he is techincally an Orc Warboss, so you could build him into a solid melee character that also gets magic later in the game. Grimgor may not have a mount or magic but he is much more versatile and helpful early game. In my opinion, Grimgor gets much stronger than Azhag in the later levels but you should shoot for both during your campaign. However, I could be wrong on the late game notion as I have only played one campaign. I did get Azhag to roughly level 24 and I can say the magic can get pretty devastating, especially the Foot of Gork. But again, I just find magic hard to rely on when you run out of winds of magic or when it miscasts.
Azhag starts with pretty sub-par units. The Spider riders are a solid cavalry unit but goblin archers? Really? Goblin archers the lowest tier of missile infantry and can be quickly mass produced as soon as the game starts. Essentially a wasted slot. Big uns? Those are essentially going to be your bread and butter infantry later in the game so having them isn’t that big of a deal. I would definitely rather choose Grimgor and take the black orcs (with the immortulz banner), the doom diver, and the boar boyz.
Azhag also gains a +10% boost to income when sacking which is significant but situational, as in, it isn’t always going to be something you’ll be using. The +10 diplomatic relations with the Undead is also pretty situational. There’s only so many undead factions and by the time you reach them, it’ll probably just be the vampire counts anyway. You’re probably going to want to kill them instead of allying so this is also a pretty useless trait.
SUMMARY
So in summary, with what lords are available at launch, Grimgor is a much better choice. Magic is very situational even though Azhags has some of the best and Azhag doesn’t really bring the heat until he gets his wyvern Skullmuncha (which you can get on any Orc Warboss) or when he recieves his Crown of Sorcery and can start getting spells. Grimgor gets way better faction effects, significantly better starting units, and is a powerhouse even in the early game.
Greenskin Agents
The Greenskins have three agents, the Goblin Big Boss, the Night Goblin Shaman, and the Orc Shaman.
GOBLIN BIG BOSS
ORC/GOBLIN SHAMANS
!!!UNDER CONSTRUCTION!!!
Having a shaman in an army is always good. I’ve found they are better at providing field support rather than campaign map support, opposite of the Big Bosses who I feel provide better campaign map support. Shaman spells are great at disrupting battle lines in later stages of the game with AOE spells but also offer great buffs early game (Attack buffs to melee spec’d Grimgor mmm mmm mmm) and can provide much needed support against early air units with magic missiles. Goblin shamans provide similar support but have different abilites and stats. Experiment with what you feel is good for your after taking some time to look at both talent trees. I personally prefer Orc Shamans and I like to upgrade their spells for support in the field rather than give them campaign map abilities.
Greenskin Building Basics
I’m not going to go over every building you can build as the Greenskins. Most stuff is self explanatory. The tooltip will tell you what each building does and most just unlock certain units. Take some time to familiarlize yourself with the building browser to get an idea of what the Greenskins have. I will give you some advice on how to take full advantage of your buildings and have the most efficient builds possible. Let’s take a look at an example and perhaps I can explain better.
TIP #1
This is very important. Every level your central or fort building is indicates how many building slots you have and what level your building can reach. This means that a level III (3) fort will have 3 slots available to build buildings in and the highest level your building can reach is the level that it lines up with in the building browser. Some buildings require higher than a level III(3) fort so it cannot be built in a regular region, only in a capital region capable of building a level IV(4) and level V(5) fort.
TIP #2
Your provinces will consist of a number of regions, usually 3 or 4. One region will be the capital region and the other three will be regular regions. THE CAPITAL REGION’S CAN REACH A FORT LEVEL OF V(5). THE REGULAR REGIONS CAN ONLY REACH A FORT LEVEL OF III(3). This means that in a non-capital region, you cannot level some buildings to max level, so plan accordingly.
TIP #3
Going off of the second tip, you need to save the high level buildings for your capital slots. ANY BUILDING THAT DOES NOT REQUIRE MORE THAN A LEVEL III(3) FORT TO REACH MAX LEVEL SHOULD BE BUILT IN A REGULAR REGION CITY NOT A CAPITAL. For example, if you want to make Black Orcs, you need to level a musta field, the basic military recruitment building, to level IV(4). You will be unable to do this in a non-capital region.
TIP #4
Try to get a growth building early. The idol building only requires a level III(3) fort to reach max level so avoid making it in a capital region. Getting one of these early will allow you to reach a population surplus quickly and allow you to upgrade your forts, thus more building slots. In addition, the idolz will also grant you a greater replenishment rate for armies in that province.
TIP #5
Build a pile of shiny things in every single region, including your capital if you have room for it. These upgrade to a max level of III(3), only require a level III(3) fort and they give you a straight boost to your income which make them staple buildings in regular regions. In addition, if you have a Gem resource in your cities, BUILD THE MINES. Mines provide a huge boost to income and should be leveled up to max level as soon as possible.
TIP #6
You really don’t need the defensive buildings in most cases. Save those slots for Piles of Shiny things and upgrade those to boost your income. The only time I would build defense buildings is if you are in a dangerous area where you are likely to be attacked. Some of the last dwarven settlements you’ll be capturing are deep in human territory, so you’ll likely be surrounded by enemies on all sides if you haven’t taken them out already. Defenses are useful here.
TIP #7
Boss Tents are also great buildings to build. They can only be built from fort levels II(2) to IV(4) so plan this accordingly. This means you won’t be able to max it unless you build it in a capital province, but it’s OK to make them in regular regions aswell (they’ll only make it to level II(2) max). Boss Tents provide a great boost to obedience and will be critical in stagnating chaotic corruption when the Chaos come around. In addition, you will have access to Big Bosses everywhere.
TIP #8
When making military buildings, try to pair them with buildings that complement them. For example, early in the game in your first province, you should build a level IV(4) Musta field in Black Crag, your capital, to gain access to Black Orcs (the strongest Orc infantry). To get the most out of this, you can build a Mine in your province which gives you a reduction in recruitment costs and a veterancy boost to all new Black Orc recruits. This will give you powerful units very early.
TIP #9
GET A GOBLIN TINKERER AND GET IT TO LEVEL II(2) AS SOON AS POSSBILE. Research is free as long as you have a Goblin Work Bench/ Tinkerer building. You want one ASAP because you want to get researching ASAP. Once you reach about halfway down the tech tree, you’ll need a level II(2) bench which requires a level IV(4) fort to continue research. Plan for this accordingly, you don’t want to stunt your research or research usless techs because you didn’t make a level II(2) research building.
EXAMPLE
Let’s take a look at this shot of my province to put some of this into practice to show what I did. Keep in mind, this building browser is just for one region. You’ll need to click on each region at the top to see all the buildings for that particular area.
- Black Crag is my capital province. All my buildings there are ones that can only be built there or require a fort higher than level III(3). This way I can make Black Orcs, Giants, and Shamans which are some of the best units. In addition, I have a level II(2) Goblin bench which enables me to research further and make Doom Divers. I can recruit some of my best units here.
- In Iron Rock, I built the mine there to make my Black Orc recruitment cheaper and better. It was built in Iron Rock because it could be and saved Black Crag a slot to make higher level buildings. My idol was made in Iron Rock aswell since I can max it with a level III(3) fort and I made the Boss tent just for the extra obedience and Chaos resistance just because I had nothing to make even though I can’t max it. I could’ve made a pile of shiny things instead.
- In Karag Dron, I built the lumber mill for ♥♥♥♥♥ because I had nothing else to make, but the pile of shiny things was a must as I can max it with a level III(3) fort. Again, the Boss tent is great for the obedience and Chaos resistance because I didn’t feel I needed another military recruitment building there, though this is an option.
EXAMPLE 2
Let’s take a look at an example of what most of my provinces that I don’t need military recruitment may look like.
In this example, not all of my buildings are fully upgraded, but you can see how I focused on getting the piles of shiny things upgrade to level III(3). This is because this province isn’t going to be in any action anytime soon so I really just need it to generate income for me. The Boss Tents, again, are staples to keep obedience and stagnate corruption. The military building is for Savage Orcs as this is the only province to recruit Savage Orcs in and I would say is a must. Notice how the capital fort isn’t higher than level III(3) because I don’t need it to be. The income I get from upgrading it isn’t worth the cost.
TLDR: Build Boss Tents for obedience and Piles of Shiny things for money (mines if possible) in every province and upgrade them as high as possible. Try to make buildings that don’t require high fort levels in smaller towns instead of capital cities.
Greenskin Commandments (Edicts)
The Greenskins have provincial edicts or province wide bonuses once you own all the regions in a province. I personally have this flowchart in my head when considering provincial edicts.
- Early in the provinicial ownership, I likely just conquered the province. I choose the Growth and Obedience (1) edict in order to help keep public order if my army moves out. In addition, I want to province to grow quicker so I can reach population surplus and make more buildings.
- After the province settles down, obedience is high and buildings are built; I like to switch to the +5% tax extortion (2) for additional income as the growth and obedience is unecessary.
- Whenever I’m recruiting in a province, I always change to the recruitment cost reduction and additional recruitment slots (3) for obvious reasons. Once recruitment is done, I switch back to the usual edict for the situation described earlier.
Fightiness and WAAAAAAAGGHHH!!!
Fightiness and the WAAAGH!! mechanics is what makes the Orcs so unique. The concept is very simple to understand and very simple to manage once you know how.
FIGHTINESS
- Fightiness goes up when your army wins battles, destroys settlements, or raids territory (including your own). In the game, WAAAGH’s appear near your army once your army’s fightiness level reaches over 80. These WAAAGH’s are full army stacks that are AI controlled. As long as you keep your fightiness above 80 and have at least 17 units in your parent army stack, there will always be a WAAAGH linked to the parent army whose fightiness is high. You can issue commands or war targets for WAAAGHs to attack through the 4 button panel next to the Fightiness indicator if a WAAAGH army is present. Otherwise, the WAAAGHs will follow the parent army.
- Fightiness goes down in your army when they do nothing. If an army is not constantly killing enemies, raiding provinces, or taking settlements, fightiness will decrease. Losing battles also dramatically reduces fightiness, so don’t lose. If fightiness reaches 80 then dips below 80, the WAAAGH associated with the army will disband. Once fightiness reaches critical levels, your army will start to take attrition damage. This is a representation of your Greenskins getting restless and killing one another to satisfy their need for fighting.
Controlling Fightiness and the Secrets of the Raiding Stance
CONTROLLING FIGHTINESS
But Soli, what if I want to take time to recruit big boy units but my army is getting restless and killing each other while recruiting? What do I do?
I’m glad you asked. There are two things you can do.
- RAID. Raid enemy provinces. For veteran total war players, especially in Rome II, raiding may seem pointless. However, as the Greenskins in Warhammer, raiding is your lifeline. Raiding will
- Increase fightiness
- Increase leadership and defense
- Allow unit replenishment in any territory, hostile or razed
- Provide a small amount of free income
- Damage enemy public order and growth
- ALLOW GLOBAL RECRUITMENT
GLOBAL RECRUITMENT
Global recruitment in raiding stance (and camped stance in cities) will allow you to recruit units STRAIGHT to your army from any buildings that you have on a global scale. This means that if you have a sweet recruitment town halfway across the map, you can recruit those units to your army directly. The downside to this is it takes twice as many turns for the respective unit, and it is at a much higher cost (I believe double).
USE RAIDING STANCE ALL THE TIME. USE IT TO RECRUIT, REPLENISH, HECKLE, AND MAINTAIN FIGHTINESS DEEP IN ENEMY OR RAZED TERRITORY.
You also have a second option to control fightiness when recruting. Once your fightiness gets too low, your units will start to kill themselves and you’ll suffer attrition. Once this point is reached, you have the option to effectively decimate your troops to keep order. When fightiness hits critical levels, you can choose to kill a few units in order to keep fightiness high, buying you a few extra turns. The beautiful part? You’ll likely replenish those “decimated” units before your fightniess drops to critical levels again, meaning you can just sit and recruit, and when you get low fightiness, just decimate your troops. They’ll replenish (provided you have an idol or 2) and you can just keep decimating and replenishing until you have all the units you need.
Don’t feel like you ALWAYS have to fight, but it would be in your best interest as a Greenskin. Keep raiding and push youself to keep taking more territory so you won’t have to sit in town. Oh and try to level your Idol buildings to level III(3). Not only do they provide growth, they also help units replenish faster.
Keep moving, raiding, and fighting. Keep the WAAAAAGHHH going!
WAAAAAAGHHHH!!!!
- WAAAGHs can used to help reinforce armies and essentially give you double the military force at no cost to upkeep. When WAAAGHs appear at the right time (hopefully by your acord), set a war target to an enemy city, begin sieging the city with your parent army, encircle/continue the siege, and wait for your WAAAGH to get near you to gain their support in battle. You can autoresolve many battles this way.
- WAAAGHs can also be used as fodder. Set a WAAAGHs war target to a group of enemies. They may come out on top, they may not, but they’ll surely soften enemy numbers before your real army attacks.
- Make sure to keep your army size at 17 or more at all times. If you have an agent in your army and they move out to do agent work, be sure that your army size stays 17 or above. If it drops below, your WAAAGH will disband. Thank you to Mr. Steal for reminding me of this mechanic as it is very important.
- WAAAGHs can become damaged and lose units. If they lose unit stacks, they will replenish current units but WILL NOT RECRUIT NEW ONES. If you have been through a few battles with your WAAAGH, they may only have 4 or 5 unit stacks. To manipulate this to your advantage, try to let your fightiness drop below 80 and have your WAAAGH disband. Then, raise it above 80 and get a brand new, fresh, 20 stack WAAAGH army.
- The WAAAGH will only disband if your PARENT army’s fightiness drops below 80, so don’t worry about the WAAAGH army’s fightiness.
- WAAAGHs have problems.
- WAAAGHs will sometimes begin sieging a city before you do. This can make it annoying to take a city as the WAAAGH will try to starve the city out when you just want to fight the battle. They won’t come off of it unless you issue them another war target.
- WAAAGHs are there to…well…WAAAGH. They want to fight but they follow the guidance of your army. The WAAAGH will try to stay close to their parent army. However, if the parent army is sitting in a friendly town (replenishing, recruiting, etc.), they will sometimes RAID YOUR OWN PROVINCE. Whether this is a bug or intentional I’m not sure, but they will lower your public order and take your income even though they’re on your side =/ Keep your WAAAGHs moving and following a parent army. Or give them a nearby war target to seek out.
- Despite giving your WAAAGH a target, they sometimes don’t want to stray too far from the parent army (whether bug or intentional I don’t know). If you plan on keeping an army on one front and sending the WAAAGH to another area, they likely won’t go too far away. At least in my experience.
- A WAAAGH war target can only be set on ENEMY armies or settlements. You cannot tell a WAAAGH to attack a neutral or allied settlement thus requiring you to declare war before you can set the target. Try tresspassing into a territory you want to take with your WAAAGH close behind, then declare war and attack.
- You also cannot use a WAAAGH to colonise a razed town.
Corruption and the Underway
Corruption from the Vampiric Counts and Chaos is a ♥♥♥♥♥. Both will reduce obedience/ public order in areas which are afflicted by it (Chaos moreso as it is global as long as Chaos exist). Additionally, your armies will take severe attrition damage in provinces where corruption is too high (~40%) making it difficult to fight corrupt enemies like the Counts in their own territory as you’ll take attrition going in, and after the battle.
PREVENTING CORRUPTION AND MITIGATING ITS EFFECTS
BOSS TENTS
AGENTS AND ITEMS
The various agents and generals you have can be spec’d in a way that they reduce Vampiric or Chaos Corruption. Simply pick the talent from the tree if they have it available and they will reduce corruption in their zone.
Some items or retainers can also be equipped that further reduce corruption.
It has been brought to my attention that Shaman huts and hovels also provide a massive boost to corruption. These can only be built in your capital as the fort level required is IV(4) but can be integral in staving off corruption, especially when you don’t have much else to build. Also, they provide a place to recruit Shamans, give you recruitment slots, and also experience for Shaman recruits at the second level.
Thanks to Atlas for bringing this up
THE UNDERWAY
THE UNDERWAY AND CORRUPTION
The underway is a great tool to move through heavily corrupted areas without taking attrition damage. All the risks of interception are there, but you can actually move without worrying about taking attrition damage after a damaging battle. While raiding stance will let you replenish your army in corruption (at the cost of immobilizing it), you will NOT replenish while in underway but you will be able to move and avoid the attrition.
Occupy, Sack, or Raze?
The Greenskins are not the Chaos. They don’t need to raze every single settlement they run into just because they’re savage. On the contrary, all razing will really achieve is pure destruction and may slow your WAAAGH against the other races down considerable if you’re razing without careful consideration.
Greenskins can only occupy settlements that are of Dwarf or Greenskin culture. If you don’t know if a razed city is colonizable, hover over the fort building. If it doesn’t say dwarfen ruins or greenskin fort then you won’t be able to colonize it. Alternatively, send an army in and see for yourself directly or just hover over the settlement and read the tooltip.
OCCUPYING
Since you won’t be able to occupy every settlement on the map, only the greenskin and dwarf ones, here’s a rule of thumb. IF YOU CAN OCCUPY IT AND YOU FEEL YOU CAN SECURE IT FROM ENEMIES ONCE OCCUPIED, DO SO. This makes sense. The more settlements you occupy, the more buildings you can make. This means more income from more shiny pits, a larger buffer between your enemy and your capital, and a forward base to recruit more troops locally. As I said before, you can’t occupy every settlement, like the ones from the Vampire Counts, Humans, etc, so your settlements will become limited late game. This means you should capture as many as you can before you can no longer do so. Relative to your capital city, you’ll begin running into this issue when you start hitting the Vampire Counts in the North, the Empire to Northwest, and the Border Princes to the West.
OCCUPYING AND LOOTING
When you loot the town aswell as occupy it, you’ll take a larger hit to public order and your provincial instability will last longer which means the city will stay unhappy for a longer period of time before it settles down. The upside is, you’ll gain a sum of money (less than that of sacking) and also take the town. This is very situational. I very rarely use this and as the orcs, you’ll rarely use this too. The only time I would ever occupy AND loot is if you feel you can handle the hit to public order or plan on keeping the army stationed for an extended period of time to combat the provincial instability. In other words, not worth it.
SACKING
With a lord that has bonuses to income when you sack a city, sacking as the Greenskins becomes something you will really use a great deal. Here are my rules to follow if you want to sack cities.
- Sack all cities that you can’t occupy before you raze them. This will give you a huge lump sum of money.
- Sack cities you don’t plan on razing at the time. If you’re doing a quick hit and run on a settlement, sack it to grab a big sum of money and move on.
- Sack any cities if you feel you need that lump sum immediately to take care of your economical issues. Some cities can net you amounts as high as 30,000 gold. This is great for upgrading your buildings or mustering another army. And if you were going to raze it anyway because you couldn’t occupy it, why not take the money, than just raze it next turn?
RAZING
Once you reach the settlements you can’t occupy, the only way to destory it and take the owner out of the game is to raze the settlement. Here are my tips to know when to raze.
- Before you raze anything, I would suggest sacking it then razing it next turn. This will give you money and allow you to destory the settlement completely next turn
- Raze any cities that will take a faction out of the game if they are causing you trouble instead of razing. For example, lets say you captured the last city of the Empire. If they have agents and armies all around you, instead of risking them retaliating the following turn, just raze their city and take them out of the game.
- Raze cities if you want to prevent enemy armies who own the city from replenishing their troops for that turn. They won’t replenish since they don’t own the region any longer.
- Raze cities if you want to create a buffer between you and a bordering faction. Make them colonize the city if they want to take it.
COLONIZATION
When a city is razed, you need to send any army to colonize it. Colonizing will cost you a lump sum of gold and will take a LARGE percentage of your army. All units in your army will essentially take attrition damage.
- Like I said before, anything you can occupy, do so. Colonize what you can to open up more building slots for your faction.
- You cannot colonize human cities. Anything city that is not dwarfen or greenskin, YOU CANNOT COLONIZE. If you need to check if a razed city is colonizable, click on it and hover over the fort building to see what culture it is. Alternatively, hovering over it will tell you if you can colonize it.
- Be careful when colonizing as it hurts a large chunk of your army (they settle in the city permanently). If you’re colonizing near enemy territory, make sure you can replenish your colonizing army or have a backup army for support when the enemy attacks.
Greenskin Generals
The Greenskins have two types of generals to recruit. Orc Warbosses and Goblin Shamans. I don’t have a whole lot to say on this subject as it really depends on what army you’re trying to create and what playstyle you’re going for, but take my advice from my perception of the campaign I played.
ORC WARBOSS
I’ve definitely found the best success with the Orc Warbosses. I look at them as sort of mini Grimgor Ironhides. Putting your points into the Blade Master tree and developing a strong, melee oriented general is a big deal in this particular game. However, going for the red leadership tree is also a solid choice to help boost early morale with the shakier units like the basic Orc Boyz. I regard the last tree as something that should be reserved when you feel you have molded a solid warrior warboss or leader warboss general. It will give you the extra boost to income and campaign movement later in the game as your general develops. In addition, warbosses eventually gain the ability to equip a wyvern mount around early level 20s, making them even more formidable foes. Besides, if you really need magic, just embed a Shaman hero in your army.
GOBLIN SHAMAN
As I’ve stated before, I find magic to be situational and unreliable as a tool in the game. Goblin Shamans can’t hold their own in melee like an Orc Warboss can so I generally tend to shy away from Goblin generals. It’s always good to have one or two for the added support though. I personally found putting points into either leadership or the magic tree was the most effective. The later tiers of Goblin Shaman magic can be pretty significant and deadly.
SUMMARY
In general here is my advice in terms of Greenskin Generals. Pay attention to the inital perks that a general has.
- Hover over them all and find out which ones have very good perks before you just go for one kind of general. Avoid any generals that have negative perks. You’ll likely be able to find generals that only have positive ones so why take a bad general for no reason?
- Once you narrow down the generals that are good in terms of what traits they start with, think about what general you want leading your army. As I said before, I prefer the Warbosses as I feel they are more versatile and effective in battle. You can supplement their powerful melee abilities with a Shaman agent if you really need magic.
- If you really need to muster an army in an emergency and only have bad general, pick the least terrible one. But try to keep an eye out on the recruiting pool. If a better general shows himself, replace your bad one unless he has gained a signficant amount of experience.
- Look out for free generals. These are the ones you’ve recruited before. Even if they’re bad, if you’re conscious of your spending in that particular turn, go for the free general.
- A worthwhile investment to make is putting your points into the bottom tree where route marcher is located. Here you can get the talent “Lightning Strike” which serves as this Total War installment’s Night Battles. Using this will block all reinforcements an enemy army has (and your reinforcements aswell). This can be useful when attacking a group of enemy army stacks or when on the defensive from multiple enemy stacks.
- If you want the “catch all”, recruit Orc Warbosses that have positive traits and put points into their blade master tree.
Example of essentially the IDEAL greenskin general you want to recruit.
A NOTE ON UPKEEP
The more generals you recruit the more armies you’ll have (obviously). Recruiting a general not only means that you will have to pay the indicated upkeep and the lump sum to recruit the general (as indicated above), you will also have to pay a +2% increase in upkeep across all your armies. The idea here is to match your armies with your income. Don’t make too many or too few, but just enough. If you want to conquer, make more; if you want to build infrastructure, go easy on the armies. But as a Greenskin, you need to stay aggressive. Don’t sit by for too long. The game is called Total War and the Greenskins do that the best.
If you need to check your upkeep, simply hover of the icon at the top of your screen.
Greenskin Units – Melee Infantry Units
In this section, I’m going to give you my thoughts on the Greenskin units and which ones to use, how to use them in battle, their worth in upkeep etc. I’m not going to go over every single unit there is (I don’t think, but I might, there aren’t many) but if you read this section, you’ll get a pretty good idea of what you should go for. General rules for units:
- Try to take advantage of edicts, general abilities, or events that allow more recruitment slots or provide a discount to recruiting a certain type of unit.
- The same holds true for experience gain and upkeep cost reduction. Build your buildings to accomodate what units you’re making.
- Aim to reduce recruitment cost as you’ll take a much smaller hit to your overall infrastructure building when your units are cheap
Melee Units
Orc Boyz
Recruitment: 450
Upkeep: 112
Recruitment Time: 1 turn
Your bread and butter unit at the start of the game should be the Orc Boyz. Make them in a great amount to establish the heart of your early armies. Orc Boyz have fairly OK leadership, better with a general who is spec’d into leadership. They are very cost efficent and run with 120 orcs per units, which is significant. They also have less upkeep cost than the Orc Arrer boyz do. My rule of thumb for the Orc Boyz is to view them as fodder. They are good units, especially as starting units, but they’re not great. If you rely on Orc Boyz for a while, you’ll start to get stomped pretty quickly. You want Big Uns as soon as you can afford it. Use them if you need a quick army to defend somewhere as they only take 1 turn to produce or as a temporary auxillary force to help your main force, but don’t rely on them shortly after your establish yourself in the game.
Big Uns
Recruitment: 700
Upkeep: 175
Recruitment Time: 2 turns
When you can, Big Uns should be integrated as your bread and butter unit for most of the game. Big Uns cost more to upkeep (if you chose Grimgor, you’ll get an upkeep reduction) and recruit but are better in every way than the Orc Boyz. They will stay in a fight much longer and can take a great deal more punishment all the while dishing out more damage. They provide a solid backbone to the Greenskin army. Don’t view them as elite units, view them as the basic infantry you should be using for most of the game when you can start to afford it. Big Uns provide a great anvil to set a battle line and allow for your shock units to flank and deal the big damage. However, even by themselves, Big Uns can hold their own quite well.
Savage Orc Boyz and Big Uns
Recruitment: 550 (850)
Upkeep: 138 (212)
Recruitment Time: 1 turn (2 turns)
As Big uns are essentially an upgrade to Orc boyz, the same holds true for their savage counterparts. Savage Orcs boast faster speed and much higher damage output at the cost of no armor. Their warpaint awards them physical resistance but savage orcs are still demolished by artillery, damaging magic, or consistent ranged atacks. In addition, they have a much lower melee defense rating so keep them out of prolonged melee combat. My suggestion is to avoid making an army entirely out of savage orcs as you won’t be able to deal with certain enemy army compositions like range heavy or armored melee. Savages do more damage if their leadership is high so it’s important to be aware of leadership and general placement. The executing captives option is a solid for savage heavy armies as it provides a boost to leadership. In addition, when high in leadership, savages are immune to fear and terror effects. Use the savages as a flanking force of shock infantry to get in and deal massive damage to where the enemy is weak. Savages are also reasonably apt at taking down big units like giants or dragons, given the right circumstances and numbers.
Black Orcs
Recruitment: 1000
Upkeep: 250
Recruitment Time: 3 turns
Black Orcs are the terrifying elite endgame infantry of the Greenskins. If you chose Grimgor, you’ll understand the power of the black orcs from the start, especially when equipped with their Immortulz banner. Black orcs have it all. Immunity to fear and terror, exceptionally high damage and defense, suprisingly high speed, armor piercing damage, high leadership, and thick armor. They make unstoppable frontline infantry, able to hold their ground no matter what and cut through their enemies like butter, especially inferior enemies. Black orcs can also be used as devestating shock infantry to flank and deliver essentially killing blows to enemy units. Though expensive to recruit and upkeep, playing as Grimgor and building the black orc forge in Iron Rock early in the game will allow for a reduction in recruitment cost, upkeep, and free experience for your early black orcs. This can allow you to field a few black orcs at essentially the beginning of a campaign which can turn the tide of almost every battle, especially since your enemies will be fairly feeble at the start of the campaign. Once you reach higher levels of infrastructure and your economy is booming, think about replacing some of your Big Uns with Black orcs as your main-line infantry. An ideal late game army compositions consists of mainly black orcs with the aid of giants, doom-divers, and some misc. specialist roles.
Goblin Spears
Recruitment: 300
Upkeep: 75
Recruitment Time: 1 turn
Goblin spearmen aren’t very good. They come in unit stacks of 160, are very cheap to recruit and upkeep, and can do well against cavalry units as well as flanking attacks. However, they break easily, aren’t versatile, and don’t offer vanguard deployment or hiding like their night goblin counter parts. Avoid goblin spears almost entirely. Get rid of the ones you start out with as soon as you can and replace them with Orc Boyz or something better. The only real use I’ve found for Goblin spearmen is to quickly recruit them for a province that is having trouble with public order. As goblins are cheap the maintain, they can sit as a full stack to control obedience whilst not taking a huge chunk from your income.
Night Goblins and Fanatics
Recruitment: 400
Upkeep: 100
Recruitment Time: 1 turn
In terms of stats to other melee units night goblins aren’t really anything special. In fact, Orc Boyz are better melee infantry than night goblins. Night goblins also have some of the worst leadership of any Greenskin unit, just second to trolls. However, they shine because of their special traits. Night goblins can vanguard deploy meaning they can deploy outside the regular deployment zone. They also have stalk which means the enemy won’t see them until they get extremely close even if they are moving, making night goblins exceptional ambush and flank infantry. In addition, enemies attacked by night goblins are also poisoned reducing the damage they do but also their speed. This means if a night goblin gets the drop on an enemy, especially a missile unit, they likely won’t be getting away. Use night goblins as a tool to ambush, flank, and capitalize on weak points in your opponents line. Night goblins can make good backbones to all goblin armies which are apt at ambushing, surrounding, and playing dirty. Be sure to take advantage of their relatively low recruitment and upkeep cost. Avoid using night goblins as front line infantry and they’ll break quickly from poor leadership and defense. The fanatic version of the night goblin enables them to use spinning loons as they fight. This means that every once in a while, a goblin will propel forward while spinning a mace uncontrollably. This can wreak havoc in the enemy lines, especially if it is a unit that has a large number of units or units behind it as it causes a great deal of area damage. However, take care not to use it when on a flanking mission from behind as the loons are unpredictable. They will likely mow through the enemy and hit your anvil forces on the other side.
Greenskin Units – Missile Units
I’m going to preface this section of the guide with a mention of the building you can build in your first province if you take Karag Dron. There is a lumber mill available that requires a rank III(3) fort but will grant a recruitment cost reduction to archer units (among others) and a bonus to experience for those units aswell. Worth looking into building if you feel your armies will be archer or goblin spear heavy.
The greenskins don’t exactly excel in the missile department, but I’m going to talk about what units I prefer when I do use missile units. To be quite honest with you, I played through most of the campaign not using missile units very much since the options available to the Greenskins are dismal. The Greenskin missile infantry units, for the most part, suck eggs.
Goblin Archers
Recruitment Cost: 375
Upkeep: 94
Recruitment Time: 1 turn
Goblin archers are in my opinion probably the go-to early game archer units. They can’t quite hold their own in melee combat like the Orc arrer boyz can but if you plan your battles and army composition correctly, your archers shouldn’t be engaging in melee anyway. Although with less range, damage, and leadership the goblins shoot faster and more accurately than their orc counterparts as well as carry slightly more ammunition. Keep this in mind when deciding which ones to field in your army. The goblins are much cheaper to recruit, maintain, and also boast a higher unit count.
Orc Arrer Boyz
Recruitment Cost: 500
Upkeep: 125
Recruitment Time: 1 turn
Arrer boyz are an interesting mutt sort of unit. They don’t excel at melee combat but can be used in melee should the need arise and hold their own for the most part, most effectively in a flanking sort of manner or against melee weaker enemy missile units. As archer units, they are the best missile infantry for straight up missile damage and range, although that isn’t saying much. They boast higher missile damage and slightly longer range than their goblin counterparts but less ammo, slower rate of fire, and less accuracy. They cost more to maintain and recruit which really was a deal breaker for me when picking my missile units, the few times I did.
Night Goblin Archers and Fanatics
Recruitment Cost: 500 (550)
Upkeep: 125 (138)
Recruitment Time: 1 turn
Night goblins boast the exact same stats as the regular goblin archers do. The only difference is the fact that they shoot poison arrows and have the ability to vanguard deploy. The regular night goblins have the same upkeep and recruitment cost as Orc arrer boyz which makes them comparable cost wise. If I had to pick a ranged infantry unit, I would use the regular night goblin archers as their poison can slow down other missile units and reduce their damage. This makes it easy for your units to chase down stubborn skirmishing enemy missile units. In addition, if fired on enemy melee units, it will reduce their damage. Having the additional ability to vanguard deploy makes night goblins the most versatile and useful missile infantry in my opinion. The fanatics are a strange breed as they work the same as the melee units do. This means the fanatics will randomly start spinning forward with their loons. However, this makes them more of a curse than an asset as they cannot be placed behind your frontline after the battle initiates because they run the risk of plowing through your units. With the additional slight increase in cost and upkeep, I would avoid the fanatics, but you could have different mileage with them.
Savage Orc Arrer Boyz
Recruitment Cost: 550
Upkeep: 138
Recruitment Time: 1 turn
To be quite honest with you, I would completely avoid the savage arrer boyz. They have the exact same stats as the Orc arrer boyz in terms of missile stats. However, they just do more damage whilst in melee but at the expense of less missile defense and no armor whatsoever. This means their abilities to skirmish with other missile units are abysmal as they’ll drop like flies and they don’t do more missile damage for being savages. In addition, their frenzy ability where they gain more damage at high leadership only applies to melee damage. If you want savages, just go for the melee savage boyz and completely avoid savage arrer boyz. They are in my opinion probably the most poorly thought out unit in the entire greenskin army. Avoid them.
MORE CONTENT COMING
GREENSKIN GENERALS, ARMY COMPOSITIONS, BEST TACTICS, QUESTS, AND MORE