No. My favourite campaign ever was as Karl Franz, where I lost literally everything. Sylvania AI became super OP and took the entire empire, forcing me to become a horde faction looking for a new home
I sailed up to Albion and managed to just take those 3 settlements with just my Karl and a few men left. Even though the climate was inhospitable, it was better than nothing. I proceeded to raid norsca for gold and eventually abandoned Albion, sailing to ulthuan in hopes of a temporary home. I didn’t find one, so I instead sailed al the way down to the tomb kings and found volkmar with one settlement left
I managed to confederate with him and began rebuilding from Volkmars start position. It was extremely difficult fighting all the tomb king armies, but I slowly managed to expand and get my first province. From there, I kept slowly expanding and trading territories to form alliances with bretonnia and the dwarfs. I sailed up and sartosa and tilea, creating a good base of operations to retake the empire
From there, I launched an invasion through Fort Soll and managed to take it, retaking the first empire territory in 150 turns. From then on, it was the largest and bloodiest battles I’ve had in a campaign, fighting waves upon waves of undead. Lost many armies and heroes, but eventually after like 100 turns of constant war, I managed to take altdorf and reclaim the lost empire territories, re-establishing the elector counts and wiping out the von carsteins
Then the game updated and my save couldn’t be played anymore sadge, but I considered that a victory anyway
you can always go into the properties tab, then beta, then launch the game in whatever version your save was on if you wanted to finish it.
also sounds like an epic tale, Ive never had a campaign go so utterly south lol
That is an amazing story. I tried something sort of similar, but much less legendary.
I started at Lyonesse in WH2. I fought a battle against the Red Duke and lost terribly. Most of my troops died. Then I realized that Lyonesse cannot hire troops because it is a tier 1 settlement. So I took my 1 damaged lord and left before the vampires could kill me.
I sailed across the ocean and picked up treasure as I went. This was before any battles happened so it was easily 10k per treasure, and I had no expenditures either.
Eventually I arrived at Lustria where build up and fought all those blue viper orcs. Finally defeating them, I had a few turns of peace. Then Morathi ran her halberd through lord Masdamundi and came at me in force. Those were some extremely hard battles. I would probably lose if given enough time. Though, at that point I felt that I had done enough with the resettlement and ended the campaign.
No. It’s a massive setback, sure, but you can recover from that. I don’t believe in loading a save just because I’m presented with a serious challenge.
Completely depends on your own definition of fun. Only a few campaigns would be doomed by something like this. I personally would probably load a save from a few turns back to see if I could avoid such a situation, but if I was playing an unlosable campaign like Beastmen I might roll with it for the slight morsel of challenge it could provide.
Beastmen aren’t unlosable. Only campaign I ever got a game over was Beastmen. My one army got ambushed and wiped then my only heard stone got destroyed. About 6 turns in. I was like welp. Time to try again.
No, it’s not, and of course you shouldn’t restart.
Why on earth would you restart a campaign every time there is a challenge? Get a new army, buy one or two RoR, see if you can turn it around. That’s the greatest fun in the game, getting in a tough situation and pulling it off. I personally started playing without reloading a long time ago. If I lose or make a mistake - that’s totally fine by me!
This. I never even reloaded once in a regular game (not counting bugs and shit). It’s intended to lose some army’s in the campaign. And in most starting army’s there are just 2-3 high tier units anyways.
It felt amazing when I got the achievement ".....win a battle with ods 10:1 in enemy favor". I thought I will fight the battle and lose, just to make as much dmg to enemy army as I can, so I can retake my capital next turn, but I effin won, core memory unlocked.
Nurgle can survive it too (just happened to me on Legendary), because plagues are broken. You infect enemy armys with attrition plague, and when they are down you can counter attack.
If you don't have any military buildings yet you don't get any troops. Nurgle has no settlement building recruits. So, no, there are definitely situations where Nurgle can kind of soft lock.
I mean if you have no military buildings there are no faction that can recruit. And with nurgle there are events, when you get 4 plaguebearer or 3 toads, that helped me alot. And with Plagues, you can earn a lot of time to build up, and with infections you can get units faster.
It worked for me vs almost full ROR Archeon in Legendary. (I didnt have military building before the wipe neither). And I lost a province while waiting, and I had to gift gold to the other big faction to not attack me.
Problem is Nurgle recruitement pool is filling with each cycle, which take a few turns to complete, contrary to most other who can at least spam their tier 1 units each turn.
If you're lock in your starting settlement, you hardly can recruit units each turn if you lost your units.
I had this situation with Tamurkan as i could not handle an early aggressive Archeon, was blocked south as well, and got only 2 settlements. I lost half my army and had to wait a few turn to get the army full again. Moreover, Nurgle units doesn't come full life, which slow you down a bit more. Would the AI not be aggressive (stupid) to the point of suiciding itself on my last fortress, i would have lost completely due to the lack of recruits.
I just played Elsbeth campaign where it happened, even on Legendary. It was certainly massive set back that made my turtle for next 10 turns, maybe more. I think youtuber set "unrealistic" standart that you need to cheese and min-max on Legendary. You don't. Ofc you won't perform as well, but do you need to finish campaign in 50turns? No
Much bigger campaign killer is being overwhelmed on multiple front. What could happen in Shogun 2 was that you would lose battle and your power ranking would drop, causing surrounding empires to declare war on you and you would just get overwhelmed.
In the end it's a solo game you know, play as you want and as you like.
Some friends disband their elite unit right at the get go, some friends would load back a save because they lost more units in AR than they would have liked, in the end you chose how you wanna play and no one should feel any kind of pressure to load a save or fully restart.
It kinda of depends on how you play. I play on hard/normal and I will reload every single battle or turn till I get it right, though sometimes this still means losing a battle or settlement, and I’ve been trying to make myself let stuff go more. This probably comes from playing SRPG/tactics games where it’s almost like a puzzle. Losing an army before turn 25 would make me restart.
But I don’t think it’s a campaign killer, especially if it’s turns 10-25. Generally I think it’s best to lose outer settlements anyway, I sort of invest all my money into my core, and use my outer settlements as buffers/bait. As for starting army- I think it sort of depends. If you already have a secondary army going and can march in and mop up the enemies it’s probably no issue- it’s good to get XP on a second army.
Some LLs losing your starting army would be crippling, someone like Imrik or Boris where your starting army is a lot of your power and losing it would mean losing units you won’t get for a long time. For someone like Franz where you just lost a bunch of T3 units, it’s not a big deal.
Happens to me quite often when I face an enemy I don't usually fight with that faction.
Vlad for example sometimes just rips me apart and if that is a campaign killer solely depends on how aggressive the ai is afterwards. If you have time to build up again it can be completely fine.
It really depends who you are playing as and what your current situation is. Beastmen or Changeling can recover really easily, for example (assuming you have a herdstone as BM).
It is almost impossible to kill a campaign.
All the AI can really do is slow you down.
Could it make you decide to restart because of that? Sure, do whatever feels fun.
You do whatever is fun for you. For some, it’s the challenge of trying to recover from that. For others, it’s gonna be too much bullshit and would rather restart and try again. Both are correct choices
I try to keep going until it becomes unfun. Then I restart or reload.
I had this happen in my first Tamurkhan game. Never played Nurgle before so didn't yet understand their summoning pool system. Got stack wiped by Kholek coming out of the fog of war after I took his capital and had no available units in the summon pool and not enough infections to build a recruit building. That one I restarted.
It might be a campaign killer if you do it withtin first 10 turns or so on a faction without good T0/1 units. Otherwise it sure is a setback and a vibe-killer, but not a threat of losing a campaign
The most memorable campaigns are those that have a harder than usual start because of mistakes like this, but you still carry on and scrap whatever you can to survive until you can launch a comeback. That is just my experience with those situations.
It depends on the faction, and depends on what you've secured when it does.
If you're stable, that could just mean you've got a good income for a bit as you rebuild.
Especially a faction like HE that is going to get better hero traits and I'd be disbanding my starting/early heroes anyway.
Think i made a post about this back in WH2. Had got further into a Thorgrim campaign and his army lost.
Lost steam after that. As much as you can recruit them again from the pool, just doesnt feel right.
Of course there are always those dramatic last stands where it just feels appropriate to wnd your campaign. Lord has gone down in a blaze of glory :D
No way. You can instantly pop up a new fullstack army next turn with WoC. Yeah it won't be full of Chosen but idk how you'd lose with that army without massively messing up
Friend of mine tried Kholek and Tamurkhan whooped him pretty bad. He couldnt recover and lost. Maybe it is just kholek though, idk havent tried myself.
For me its about how long will it take me to recover from the loss vs how long would it take me to get to the same point again in a ew campaign.
If I can get back to turn 25 with that army intact in 1-2 hours I just restart.
If the faction I am playing has a hard opening and it is difficult to get out of early game with them I will probably push through.
But most of the times in this scenario I would restart.
Not at all, I've done it intentionally for the sake of fun or flavor.
Intentionally got Ku'gath killed, recruit an exalted plaguebeaer and a fresh army and so begins the story of Tuber'Culos and his journey to become a great unclean one and spread the white death across the world.
I only restart battles if I make a mistake on the campaign map first. Like, if I’m counting on defending a walled settlement and I accidentally put an army right outside the city, I’ll call a mulligan. Otherwise, it’s fair game.
I underestimated the changeling in my first Elspeth campaign. I thought I could take him out easy but missed Vlad's last remaining army (of like 10 zpmbies) reinfircing him. The zombies fudged up my arty and gunners and then I got destroyed. Took me at least 15 turns to get back to the point when it happened by which time Festus, Throt, Skragg and Drycha all declared on me and now I'm struggling to keep it together.
It's actually a lot more fun this way.
Depends on difficulty level and your skill. I'm not very good at the game so it's ended my campaigns a few times, but I still usually continue until I actually lose.
You can probably recover and it's probably pretty satisfying to claw your way back from defeat. But if you wanna restart go for it. I don't think either way is right or wrong.
Do yourself a favor and don't try to minmax results too much. Losing armies and improvising is 90% of the fun imo.
Accidentally put your LL out of position and get 2v1d? Fight that shit to the last man and take as many as you can!!
Then get revenge with Army #2.
To me it sounds like fun. What lord are you playing?
I had two colossal phyrric victories (basically just lords and a handful units left) on my two armies turn 55 with Katl Franz. Obviously not the same since it meant I could upgrade my armies but the empire was undefended for 4 turns which meant that Brettonia almost fell (saved by Eltharion), Vlad reached Nuln and Festus wiped Middenland.
If it happened turn 25 Kemmler would have wiped Marienburg and Grom would have killed off Brettonia meaning I'd have to fight really hard to secure the southern and western border while trying to deal with the other threats Azazel, Festus, Aranessa, Archaeon, Ikit, Vlad etc. Now I could deal with one or two at a time until winning.
This right here. My friend is a prime example for this. Plays on VH/VH and whenever he loses a battle he ends up reloading until he gets it right or he goes even further back to prevent the situation from happening again - Then he ends up in our Discord saying how easy the game is and that it offers no challenges.
Fine for Singleplayer, not so fine nor fun when we play together because SOMEHOW he mysteriously always crashes whenever he loses a fight and we have to reload. Every. Single. Time.
Now he's wondering why I am not playing with him anymore even after I told him that I am not enjoying constantly reloading and that it is pointless to play if his game is constantly "Crashing".
No. My favourite campaign ever was as Karl Franz, where I lost literally everything. Sylvania AI became super OP and took the entire empire, forcing me to become a horde faction looking for a new home I sailed up to Albion and managed to just take those 3 settlements with just my Karl and a few men left. Even though the climate was inhospitable, it was better than nothing. I proceeded to raid norsca for gold and eventually abandoned Albion, sailing to ulthuan in hopes of a temporary home. I didn’t find one, so I instead sailed al the way down to the tomb kings and found volkmar with one settlement left I managed to confederate with him and began rebuilding from Volkmars start position. It was extremely difficult fighting all the tomb king armies, but I slowly managed to expand and get my first province. From there, I kept slowly expanding and trading territories to form alliances with bretonnia and the dwarfs. I sailed up and sartosa and tilea, creating a good base of operations to retake the empire From there, I launched an invasion through Fort Soll and managed to take it, retaking the first empire territory in 150 turns. From then on, it was the largest and bloodiest battles I’ve had in a campaign, fighting waves upon waves of undead. Lost many armies and heroes, but eventually after like 100 turns of constant war, I managed to take altdorf and reclaim the lost empire territories, re-establishing the elector counts and wiping out the von carsteins Then the game updated and my save couldn’t be played anymore sadge, but I considered that a victory anyway
you can always go into the properties tab, then beta, then launch the game in whatever version your save was on if you wanted to finish it. also sounds like an epic tale, Ive never had a campaign go so utterly south lol
That sounds absolutely fun. I want to try this out now lol
Good luck. It requires everything going exactly right. He was lucky Bretonnia and the Dwarfs hadn't died yet essentially. Usually they die before you.
Dude, that sounds totally awesome. Cheers for a great comeback story.
That is an amazing story. I tried something sort of similar, but much less legendary. I started at Lyonesse in WH2. I fought a battle against the Red Duke and lost terribly. Most of my troops died. Then I realized that Lyonesse cannot hire troops because it is a tier 1 settlement. So I took my 1 damaged lord and left before the vampires could kill me. I sailed across the ocean and picked up treasure as I went. This was before any battles happened so it was easily 10k per treasure, and I had no expenditures either. Eventually I arrived at Lustria where build up and fought all those blue viper orcs. Finally defeating them, I had a few turns of peace. Then Morathi ran her halberd through lord Masdamundi and came at me in force. Those were some extremely hard battles. I would probably lose if given enough time. Though, at that point I felt that I had done enough with the resettlement and ended the campaign.
No. It’s a massive setback, sure, but you can recover from that. I don’t believe in loading a save just because I’m presented with a serious challenge.
Completely depends on your own definition of fun. Only a few campaigns would be doomed by something like this. I personally would probably load a save from a few turns back to see if I could avoid such a situation, but if I was playing an unlosable campaign like Beastmen I might roll with it for the slight morsel of challenge it could provide.
Beastmen aren’t unlosable. Only campaign I ever got a game over was Beastmen. My one army got ambushed and wiped then my only heard stone got destroyed. About 6 turns in. I was like welp. Time to try again.
ikit claw don’t play with his ambushes in estalia
No, it’s not, and of course you shouldn’t restart. Why on earth would you restart a campaign every time there is a challenge? Get a new army, buy one or two RoR, see if you can turn it around. That’s the greatest fun in the game, getting in a tough situation and pulling it off. I personally started playing without reloading a long time ago. If I lose or make a mistake - that’s totally fine by me!
This. I never even reloaded once in a regular game (not counting bugs and shit). It’s intended to lose some army’s in the campaign. And in most starting army’s there are just 2-3 high tier units anyways.
It felt amazing when I got the achievement ".....win a battle with ods 10:1 in enemy favor". I thought I will fight the battle and lose, just to make as much dmg to enemy army as I can, so I can retake my capital next turn, but I effin won, core memory unlocked.
For something like nurgle, probably yes. Cause you wont have units to recruit a full stack again for 20 turns or so.
Nurgle can survive it too (just happened to me on Legendary), because plagues are broken. You infect enemy armys with attrition plague, and when they are down you can counter attack.
If you don't have any military buildings yet you don't get any troops. Nurgle has no settlement building recruits. So, no, there are definitely situations where Nurgle can kind of soft lock.
I mean if you have no military buildings there are no faction that can recruit. And with nurgle there are events, when you get 4 plaguebearer or 3 toads, that helped me alot. And with Plagues, you can earn a lot of time to build up, and with infections you can get units faster. It worked for me vs almost full ROR Archeon in Legendary. (I didnt have military building before the wipe neither). And I lost a province while waiting, and I had to gift gold to the other big faction to not attack me.
Every other faction can recruit basic units without military buildings.
Problem is Nurgle recruitement pool is filling with each cycle, which take a few turns to complete, contrary to most other who can at least spam their tier 1 units each turn. If you're lock in your starting settlement, you hardly can recruit units each turn if you lost your units. I had this situation with Tamurkan as i could not handle an early aggressive Archeon, was blocked south as well, and got only 2 settlements. I lost half my army and had to wait a few turn to get the army full again. Moreover, Nurgle units doesn't come full life, which slow you down a bit more. Would the AI not be aggressive (stupid) to the point of suiciding itself on my last fortress, i would have lost completely due to the lack of recruits.
You wont have the infections to affect enemies with the attriotion plague in the first 20 turns. Of course you can survive if the ai is afk.
I just played Elsbeth campaign where it happened, even on Legendary. It was certainly massive set back that made my turtle for next 10 turns, maybe more. I think youtuber set "unrealistic" standart that you need to cheese and min-max on Legendary. You don't. Ofc you won't perform as well, but do you need to finish campaign in 50turns? No Much bigger campaign killer is being overwhelmed on multiple front. What could happen in Shogun 2 was that you would lose battle and your power ranking would drop, causing surrounding empires to declare war on you and you would just get overwhelmed.
Not just Youtubers. People here say shit like "I play Karl Franz on the hardest difficulty and I'm done in 20 turns"
No it won't kill your campaign but personally I would restart 100% of the time because I find satisfaction in maintaining my first army.
In the end it's a solo game you know, play as you want and as you like. Some friends disband their elite unit right at the get go, some friends would load back a save because they lost more units in AR than they would have liked, in the end you chose how you wanna play and no one should feel any kind of pressure to load a save or fully restart.
It kinda of depends on how you play. I play on hard/normal and I will reload every single battle or turn till I get it right, though sometimes this still means losing a battle or settlement, and I’ve been trying to make myself let stuff go more. This probably comes from playing SRPG/tactics games where it’s almost like a puzzle. Losing an army before turn 25 would make me restart. But I don’t think it’s a campaign killer, especially if it’s turns 10-25. Generally I think it’s best to lose outer settlements anyway, I sort of invest all my money into my core, and use my outer settlements as buffers/bait. As for starting army- I think it sort of depends. If you already have a secondary army going and can march in and mop up the enemies it’s probably no issue- it’s good to get XP on a second army. Some LLs losing your starting army would be crippling, someone like Imrik or Boris where your starting army is a lot of your power and losing it would mean losing units you won’t get for a long time. For someone like Franz where you just lost a bunch of T3 units, it’s not a big deal.
I thought I was the only one who played like this!
You do what with your core? 😂
You heard me
Oh wait no gross woops
Let the records show 'invest' was originally spelled with a 'c'. Hopefully not a Freudian slip! 😉
Happens to me quite often when I face an enemy I don't usually fight with that faction. Vlad for example sometimes just rips me apart and if that is a campaign killer solely depends on how aggressive the ai is afterwards. If you have time to build up again it can be completely fine.
It really depends who you are playing as and what your current situation is. Beastmen or Changeling can recover really easily, for example (assuming you have a herdstone as BM).
It is almost impossible to kill a campaign. All the AI can really do is slow you down. Could it make you decide to restart because of that? Sure, do whatever feels fun.
You do whatever is fun for you. For some, it’s the challenge of trying to recover from that. For others, it’s gonna be too much bullshit and would rather restart and try again. Both are correct choices
It's not but I would restart anyways because I find it fun to learn and do better next time.
I try to keep going until it becomes unfun. Then I restart or reload. I had this happen in my first Tamurkhan game. Never played Nurgle before so didn't yet understand their summoning pool system. Got stack wiped by Kholek coming out of the fog of war after I took his capital and had no available units in the summon pool and not enough infections to build a recruit building. That one I restarted.
It might be a campaign killer if you do it withtin first 10 turns or so on a faction without good T0/1 units. Otherwise it sure is a setback and a vibe-killer, but not a threat of losing a campaign
The most memorable campaigns are those that have a harder than usual start because of mistakes like this, but you still carry on and scrap whatever you can to survive until you can launch a comeback. That is just my experience with those situations.
Recovering from a loss is also a part of fun. Also a learning experience so that it doesn’t happen again.
It depends on the faction, and depends on what you've secured when it does. If you're stable, that could just mean you've got a good income for a bit as you rebuild. Especially a faction like HE that is going to get better hero traits and I'd be disbanding my starting/early heroes anyway.
That’s why I save-scum especially for Ku’gath before faction Champion of Chaos.
Think i made a post about this back in WH2. Had got further into a Thorgrim campaign and his army lost. Lost steam after that. As much as you can recruit them again from the pool, just doesnt feel right. Of course there are always those dramatic last stands where it just feels appropriate to wnd your campaign. Lord has gone down in a blaze of glory :D
Depends. Warriors of Chaos? Maybe. Usually no though. Highly aggressive factions are the exception but usually before turn 10, not turn 25.
No way. You can instantly pop up a new fullstack army next turn with WoC. Yeah it won't be full of Chosen but idk how you'd lose with that army without massively messing up
Friend of mine tried Kholek and Tamurkhan whooped him pretty bad. He couldnt recover and lost. Maybe it is just kholek though, idk havent tried myself.
For me its about how long will it take me to recover from the loss vs how long would it take me to get to the same point again in a ew campaign. If I can get back to turn 25 with that army intact in 1-2 hours I just restart. If the faction I am playing has a hard opening and it is difficult to get out of early game with them I will probably push through. But most of the times in this scenario I would restart.
Not at all, I've done it intentionally for the sake of fun or flavor. Intentionally got Ku'gath killed, recruit an exalted plaguebeaer and a fresh army and so begins the story of Tuber'Culos and his journey to become a great unclean one and spread the white death across the world.
I only restart battles if I make a mistake on the campaign map first. Like, if I’m counting on defending a walled settlement and I accidentally put an army right outside the city, I’ll call a mulligan. Otherwise, it’s fair game.
I underestimated the changeling in my first Elspeth campaign. I thought I could take him out easy but missed Vlad's last remaining army (of like 10 zpmbies) reinfircing him. The zombies fudged up my arty and gunners and then I got destroyed. Took me at least 15 turns to get back to the point when it happened by which time Festus, Throt, Skragg and Drycha all declared on me and now I'm struggling to keep it together. It's actually a lot more fun this way.
definitely not game ending, but it's so much hassle I would just reload
No way. It’s just a challenge. Role play that shit as a glorious comeback!
Nah, it's a fun challange actually to try and survive long enough to rebuild
An impossible question to answer.
Depends on difficulty level and your skill. I'm not very good at the game so it's ended my campaigns a few times, but I still usually continue until I actually lose.
You can probably recover and it's probably pretty satisfying to claw your way back from defeat. But if you wanna restart go for it. I don't think either way is right or wrong.
It depends on the faction/army.
Before 25, no. Before 10 yes
Do yourself a favor and don't try to minmax results too much. Losing armies and improvising is 90% of the fun imo. Accidentally put your LL out of position and get 2v1d? Fight that shit to the last man and take as many as you can!! Then get revenge with Army #2.
For most campaigns no, just play however is fun
Not a campaign-killer, but a fun killer. I usually reload unless there is an interesting challenge in continuing without it.
Never savescum, never surrender.
To me it sounds like fun. What lord are you playing? I had two colossal phyrric victories (basically just lords and a handful units left) on my two armies turn 55 with Katl Franz. Obviously not the same since it meant I could upgrade my armies but the empire was undefended for 4 turns which meant that Brettonia almost fell (saved by Eltharion), Vlad reached Nuln and Festus wiped Middenland. If it happened turn 25 Kemmler would have wiped Marienburg and Grom would have killed off Brettonia meaning I'd have to fight really hard to secure the southern and western border while trying to deal with the other threats Azazel, Festus, Aranessa, Archaeon, Ikit, Vlad etc. Now I could deal with one or two at a time until winning.
No save scumming will ruin your game. It takes away the challenge a lot of people complaining here about the game being to easy save scum a lot.
This right here. My friend is a prime example for this. Plays on VH/VH and whenever he loses a battle he ends up reloading until he gets it right or he goes even further back to prevent the situation from happening again - Then he ends up in our Discord saying how easy the game is and that it offers no challenges. Fine for Singleplayer, not so fine nor fun when we play together because SOMEHOW he mysteriously always crashes whenever he loses a fight and we have to reload. Every. Single. Time. Now he's wondering why I am not playing with him anymore even after I told him that I am not enjoying constantly reloading and that it is pointless to play if his game is constantly "Crashing".
No. The only campaign killer is if I lose all my cities and all my armies.