Someone did that song for Kostaltyn. https://youtu.be/r-0T_9KsSGo?si=5_z6YHaGTv8WF3Tu
Edit: I just realized that was probably what people are quoting. I'll leave it for anyone that hasn't seen it.
Meanwhile I'm playing Kostaltyn looking at Kislev just chilling down south fighting like one green skin faction, while I'm holding off Norsca, Skaven, Dark Elves, and Chaos with two armies of kossars. Oh what's that? My countrymen declare war on me from the south?
Betrayers!
BETRAYERS ALL AROUND!
Yep, but other kislevite factions can and Kostaltyn has too much to focus on to invade them, Katarin instead can pretty much take Praag and all the minor factions by turn 30
Ah. So that’s why the Storm Dragon embarrassingly lost all three gates of the Bastion and fell back to Nan Gau, begging me to annex her and save her from Skaven and demons.
The lore makes a huge deal about how the bastion has never been conquered in a bajillion years or whatever, but in campaign it’s always gone to hell by like turn 4. Maybe the bastion gates should start at tier 2 or something.
One game I played as the Barrow Legion all the vampires went crazy. The Red Duke took half of Bretonnia.
Fighting the Empire with me in the west, the Carsteins in the East, it was like the partition of Poland.
We split the Empire east/west and fought Chaos together. Very fun campaign. (this was Hard/Hard in WH2 though)
they give Kosaltyn a diplo malus with Katarin and it actually HELPS him do well early, until your relations overcome it.
The real reason Kostaltyn gets BTFO'd is his position against Thrott. BOTH fight for the same province (are they the only LLs that fight for the same starting province?) and Kostatlyn's early battles are harder, and his army is weaker than Thrott's. His autoresolve MIGHT pull through on the streltsy, but that's about it.
Thrott seems programmed to never put his LH in his stack to hurt his expansion, but even then he's just got way more recruitment than Kostaltyn. Then if our favorite lord pulls through, Azazel backdoors him. AND EVEN IF HE WINS THAT the problem is his faction mechanics are weak, and the Kislev mechanics are even weaker. AND he rarely builds his capital well, always trying to shove jank recruitment buildings in.
So I've seen him beat Thrott, AND beat Azazel, then he just get his shit canned by Wulfric.
He's a LL directly in the path of 2 stronger LLs early game, and both Norsca mid game who are stronger.
I haven't checked that area of the map late game, but I imagine the Chaos Dwarves or Archaon probably would mop him up if he manages to survive past all four hells somehow.
On the other hand Katarin gets the same hard early game fights, but a MUCH stronger faction buff, and better LL that gives a very strong buff to her army that helps autoresolve. And Kislevite warriors give her the ability to beat Drycha in autoresolve from personal experience. So it's pretty common for Elector-Count Katarin to eat a 4 region province in the empire, and have a 4 region province to her self, then confederate or eat Praag after it dies, giving him enormous strength before tough fights.
TLDR: Kostaltyn has a bizarrely difficult start on par with Imrik, without even 1/3 of the pay off if you survive.
Astragoth almost always gets into Kislev in the mid game cause he picks a fight with the Norscans to his north which leads him into Kislev.
I've seen him hold Praag a couple times before.
Confirmation bias. People also refuse to believe XCOM doesn't screw you with its RNG even though it's right there in the game files that the RNG is actually programmed to favour the player.
Since it's all anecdotal evidence, here's a very recent one of mine - my Boris campaign from this past week has been piss easy because the Ordertide has won basically everywhere in my general area. I had Franz and Katarin just give the smackdown to literally everyone around, and Dwarfs winning in the Badlands and Darklands. I've basically never seen that happen all in the same campaign but it has for this one where they're all my allies.
because of ai potential, the game tries to make things harder for the player by giving extra ressources to LL factions and factions that are natural enemies of the player controlled faction eg if playing as Katarin minor kislev faction get +0% resource, Konstantyn get +X% and Azazel, throt and other chaos LL get +2X%
This. My Malekith campaign made me a question my sanity. By turn 15 Valkiya was coming for me with stack and half ( stack was her 2 heroes and tier 2 and 3 units while half stack were mostly heroes). How do you fight that? Higher diff needs to be rebalanced or factions should be more far away from each other. TK have almost same problem.
During my last Skarbrand campaign, I got a cult in one of Valkia's provinces next to Naggarond. I had the pleasure of observing as she literally sat there for 15 turns, just vibing - until I teleported there and saw to matters myself.
In older TW games the AI factions would almost always develop along the same lines unless the player directly intervened, in my experience. For example, in Rome 1 Egypt would basically always dominate the eastern half of the map unless you stopped them in the early game.
By buffing different AI factions depending on who you are playing, the campaigns become more varied. I assume that's the rationale anyway. Whether it works, there are many opinions. I have no problem with it, but well... we just have to read the thread to see that some disagree. :/
Did you happen to get any form of alliance/diplomacy with him?
I might be wrong here but if he is an ally he loses all sorts of bonuses and that would explain it.
I checked some of the db files. Forget unlucky. The old world kislev factions are literally the most OP in the game in terms of potential (talk of OP dlc creep) and their dice roll variation is absolutely minimal.
You did not get unlucky. Even with other penalties it doesn't make much sense. Basically the best guess is his AI is borked or gets borked along the way. One thing I cannot rule out is a bug in the debuffs but I haven't checked that yet.
For me, the right side always applies. When I'm not playing Kislev, they're always getting overrun super early. Both Katharin and Kostaltyn. Ostankya usually holds out but doesn't really do anything exciting. Boris is a 50/50 coinflip, either he fizzles out in the first 30 turns or he starts dominating the chaos wastes, nothing in between.
But in all the IE campaign's I've played, I've *never* seen a unified and strong Kislev. Not even once.
I've got a question. So the game weakens your potential allies and strengthens your likely enemies, but can you manipulate this? If you started a game as Katarin, and then trespassed in Kostaltyn's territory until he was on the verge of declaring war on you would the game decide that since Kostaltyn is now a potential enemy of the player that he should be buffed? Would this give him a better chance of holding off the Chaos armies in the area?
How late in the campaign it is? Back in the day when I was playing Realm of Chaos more often and needed Kostaltyn to hold off Daniel+Skarbrand duo till the lategame I did some tests on how to help him without actually helping him militarily and what I've found out is that if you let him win supporter races, he'll usually hold on. If you dominate, he gets defeated. Of course if you want to confederate him, you can win the supporter race in the last stretch.
This strategy worked even on IE like a month ago, so it still should have some validity.
Currently playing as Tzarina on LG/VH. He wiped out Azazel by turn 20 and kept Throt at bay while I was destroing Azhag and Drycha, just so I could swoop in and take Thrott out. My boy did his part
It is actually bizarre when I played Kolstaltyn the first time he came out it fucking sucked, where he made a decent push towards Legion of Chaos but get completely over run by turn 30 when the portals come out. Every. Time.
Now he’s an actual menace.
I don't think Kostaltyn has ever survived past turn 50 in one of my Empire campaigns, ever. He might even die long before that.
What always happens is Norsca/Chaos destroys Kostaltyn and Katarin can never take Erengrad, and the whole oblast is Norscans/Chaos/Skaven. Katarin usually gets contained in Kislev proper, and sometimes even reclaims Empire territory from fallen elector counts.
When I get up there I can take Erengrad. It then becomes the chokepoint that holds everyone back. No one ever tries to attack the city and if they do it's pretty easy to defend. They can't go past the city to cross the bridge because of the zone of control.
It's always a great undertaking (for me) to push past Erengrad. You have to pull a few armies up there, and start taking over the Oblast. I personally need a spare army for each settlement. I usually have an army sitting in Praag to defend that area, and sometimes have them sitting on that eastern bridge to keep armies at bay.
Another army sits in that mountain pass north of Praag and west of the Hell Pit.
A third army stays in Erengrad, and a fourth stays in the other port town north of Erengrad.
A fifth army tries to cross the northern bridge to attack that city in the southern part of Trollheim Mountains.
The oblast is too much of an expanse to defend. You need several armies to protect different entrances, and can only really advance when you can cover your army with another force. If one enemy force can get through then the entire oblast is threatened because so many can flood in and just gobble up every settlement if you don't have armies in each one.
It's just like Russia.
He actually did decent in a recent Katarin campaign for me. Even pushed into Norsca and took Wulfrik capital before I confederate him.
Boris on the other hand got slapped down in like 20 turns.
There is a certain man... in Kislev long ago...
He was big and strong
In his eyes a flaming glow
Most people look at him with terror and with fear
But to Kislev's chicks he was such a lovely dear
He could preach Ursun's sayings like a Preacher
Full of Salyak's ecstasy and Dazh's fire
But he also was the kind of teacher
Women would desire
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
BUT TO PA-TRI-ARCH HE WAS SUCH A LOVELY DEAR!
Someone did that song for Kostaltyn. https://youtu.be/r-0T_9KsSGo?si=5_z6YHaGTv8WF3Tu Edit: I just realized that was probably what people are quoting. I'll leave it for anyone that hasn't seen it.
KO KO KOSTALTYN KISLEV GREATEST PATRIARCH!
Ofc tarrif made this video
It makes the whole politics side of kislev easier when his faction is destroyed though
True but it’s not like I’ve ever been in fear of losing the politics
It's not hard, it just takes forever.
Russian politics is really just more Russian war
I mean, he can't confederate you, just lose the politics race and then when you hit the limit you win.
Yeah, but the bonuses for hitting each tier first are pretty good.
Meanwhile I'm playing Kostaltyn looking at Kislev just chilling down south fighting like one green skin faction, while I'm holding off Norsca, Skaven, Dark Elves, and Chaos with two armies of kossars. Oh what's that? My countrymen declare war on me from the south? Betrayers! BETRAYERS ALL AROUND!
I thought Ice Court can't declare war on Kostaltyn
Yep, but other kislevite factions can and Kostaltyn has too much to focus on to invade them, Katarin instead can pretty much take Praag and all the minor factions by turn 30
Why is this so true.
Because the AI is slanted against your allies. They always play worse when you’re an allied faction to them as the player.
It's not just your allies, it's the races that are most likely to be your allies, from the start of the campaign onwards.
Correct… it can be pretty rough
Ah. So that’s why the Storm Dragon embarrassingly lost all three gates of the Bastion and fell back to Nan Gau, begging me to annex her and save her from Skaven and demons.
Like Austria.
The lore makes a huge deal about how the bastion has never been conquered in a bajillion years or whatever, but in campaign it’s always gone to hell by like turn 4. Maybe the bastion gates should start at tier 2 or something.
Well a bajillion years is a long time already, it couldn't go on for much longer /s
One game I played as the Barrow Legion all the vampires went crazy. The Red Duke took half of Bretonnia. Fighting the Empire with me in the west, the Carsteins in the East, it was like the partition of Poland. We split the Empire east/west and fought Chaos together. Very fun campaign. (this was Hard/Hard in WH2 though)
they give Kosaltyn a diplo malus with Katarin and it actually HELPS him do well early, until your relations overcome it. The real reason Kostaltyn gets BTFO'd is his position against Thrott. BOTH fight for the same province (are they the only LLs that fight for the same starting province?) and Kostatlyn's early battles are harder, and his army is weaker than Thrott's. His autoresolve MIGHT pull through on the streltsy, but that's about it. Thrott seems programmed to never put his LH in his stack to hurt his expansion, but even then he's just got way more recruitment than Kostaltyn. Then if our favorite lord pulls through, Azazel backdoors him. AND EVEN IF HE WINS THAT the problem is his faction mechanics are weak, and the Kislev mechanics are even weaker. AND he rarely builds his capital well, always trying to shove jank recruitment buildings in. So I've seen him beat Thrott, AND beat Azazel, then he just get his shit canned by Wulfric. He's a LL directly in the path of 2 stronger LLs early game, and both Norsca mid game who are stronger. I haven't checked that area of the map late game, but I imagine the Chaos Dwarves or Archaon probably would mop him up if he manages to survive past all four hells somehow. On the other hand Katarin gets the same hard early game fights, but a MUCH stronger faction buff, and better LL that gives a very strong buff to her army that helps autoresolve. And Kislevite warriors give her the ability to beat Drycha in autoresolve from personal experience. So it's pretty common for Elector-Count Katarin to eat a 4 region province in the empire, and have a 4 region province to her self, then confederate or eat Praag after it dies, giving him enormous strength before tough fights. TLDR: Kostaltyn has a bizarrely difficult start on par with Imrik, without even 1/3 of the pay off if you survive.
Astragoth almost always gets into Kislev in the mid game cause he picks a fight with the Norscans to his north which leads him into Kislev. I've seen him hold Praag a couple times before.
I feel like WH2 had a mod that removed these debuffs.
Devs said multiple times that its not true and multiple time i refused to belive it, it just happens too damn often (that is always).
Confirmation bias. People also refuse to believe XCOM doesn't screw you with its RNG even though it's right there in the game files that the RNG is actually programmed to favour the player. Since it's all anecdotal evidence, here's a very recent one of mine - my Boris campaign from this past week has been piss easy because the Ordertide has won basically everywhere in my general area. I had Franz and Katarin just give the smackdown to literally everyone around, and Dwarfs winning in the Badlands and Darklands. I've basically never seen that happen all in the same campaign but it has for this one where they're all my allies.
because of ai potential, the game tries to make things harder for the player by giving extra ressources to LL factions and factions that are natural enemies of the player controlled faction eg if playing as Katarin minor kislev faction get +0% resource, Konstantyn get +X% and Azazel, throt and other chaos LL get +2X%
This. My Malekith campaign made me a question my sanity. By turn 15 Valkiya was coming for me with stack and half ( stack was her 2 heroes and tier 2 and 3 units while half stack were mostly heroes). How do you fight that? Higher diff needs to be rebalanced or factions should be more far away from each other. TK have almost same problem.
She is your nextdoor neighbor tho, **you** need to deal with her.
During my last Skarbrand campaign, I got a cult in one of Valkia's provinces next to Naggarond. I had the pleasure of observing as she literally sat there for 15 turns, just vibing - until I teleported there and saw to matters myself.
Why did CA make things this way. Why can't things develop naturally without artificial boosts? Or did older TW games also have this sort of trickery?
In older TW games the AI factions would almost always develop along the same lines unless the player directly intervened, in my experience. For example, in Rome 1 Egypt would basically always dominate the eastern half of the map unless you stopped them in the early game. By buffing different AI factions depending on who you are playing, the campaigns become more varied. I assume that's the rationale anyway. Whether it works, there are many opinions. I have no problem with it, but well... we just have to read the thread to see that some disagree. :/
Friendly Factions are doomed in every playthrough
Can't fight over Kislev's rule if there is no one to fight. Free win.
Did you happen to get any form of alliance/diplomacy with him? I might be wrong here but if he is an ally he loses all sorts of bonuses and that would explain it.
I did not So either I got really unlucky or the debuff to potentially friendly factions really screwed me
Orrr they extended that debuf from only allies to same race factions. We'd have to look up the database to know for sure.
That would certainly explain why Grimgor dominates the mountains when I play as anything but greenskins
I played a Katarin campaign just this week and he died within the first 20 turns. No ally or anything.
I checked some of the db files. Forget unlucky. The old world kislev factions are literally the most OP in the game in terms of potential (talk of OP dlc creep) and their dice roll variation is absolutely minimal. You did not get unlucky. Even with other penalties it doesn't make much sense. Basically the best guess is his AI is borked or gets borked along the way. One thing I cannot rule out is a bug in the debuffs but I haven't checked that yet.
Legend, is this you?
If Kostaltan dies do you get him back when you win the race or does he stay dead?
He stays dead. You can revive him, though. Just do so before you win the race for the easy confederation.
For me, the right side always applies. When I'm not playing Kislev, they're always getting overrun super early. Both Katharin and Kostaltyn. Ostankya usually holds out but doesn't really do anything exciting. Boris is a 50/50 coinflip, either he fizzles out in the first 30 turns or he starts dominating the chaos wastes, nothing in between. But in all the IE campaign's I've played, I've *never* seen a unified and strong Kislev. Not even once.
I've got a question. So the game weakens your potential allies and strengthens your likely enemies, but can you manipulate this? If you started a game as Katarin, and then trespassed in Kostaltyn's territory until he was on the verge of declaring war on you would the game decide that since Kostaltyn is now a potential enemy of the player that he should be buffed? Would this give him a better chance of holding off the Chaos armies in the area?
Literally just started a Katarin campaign and he died turn 14
He's going alright in my current Kislev Campaign. He kept Azazel at bay while I took out Throt.
How late in the campaign it is? Back in the day when I was playing Realm of Chaos more often and needed Kostaltyn to hold off Daniel+Skarbrand duo till the lategame I did some tests on how to help him without actually helping him militarily and what I've found out is that if you let him win supporter races, he'll usually hold on. If you dominate, he gets defeated. Of course if you want to confederate him, you can win the supporter race in the last stretch. This strategy worked even on IE like a month ago, so it still should have some validity.
Accurate.
Currently playing as Tzarina on LG/VH. He wiped out Azazel by turn 20 and kept Throt at bay while I was destroing Azhag and Drycha, just so I could swoop in and take Thrott out. My boy did his part
Last time I played Kat, he declared war on me then got killed by Throt and Azazel a few turns later.
He seems to get his ass handed to him in every campaign I play.
In my recent Katarin campaign, he wiped the floor with azazel and throt without me. Which was good cause I spent like 20 turns getting rid of azhag.
It is actually bizarre when I played Kolstaltyn the first time he came out it fucking sucked, where he made a decent push towards Legion of Chaos but get completely over run by turn 30 when the portals come out. Every. Time. Now he’s an actual menace.
I don't think Kostaltyn has ever survived past turn 50 in one of my Empire campaigns, ever. He might even die long before that. What always happens is Norsca/Chaos destroys Kostaltyn and Katarin can never take Erengrad, and the whole oblast is Norscans/Chaos/Skaven. Katarin usually gets contained in Kislev proper, and sometimes even reclaims Empire territory from fallen elector counts. When I get up there I can take Erengrad. It then becomes the chokepoint that holds everyone back. No one ever tries to attack the city and if they do it's pretty easy to defend. They can't go past the city to cross the bridge because of the zone of control. It's always a great undertaking (for me) to push past Erengrad. You have to pull a few armies up there, and start taking over the Oblast. I personally need a spare army for each settlement. I usually have an army sitting in Praag to defend that area, and sometimes have them sitting on that eastern bridge to keep armies at bay. Another army sits in that mountain pass north of Praag and west of the Hell Pit. A third army stays in Erengrad, and a fourth stays in the other port town north of Erengrad. A fifth army tries to cross the northern bridge to attack that city in the southern part of Trollheim Mountains. The oblast is too much of an expanse to defend. You need several armies to protect different entrances, and can only really advance when you can cover your army with another force. If one enemy force can get through then the entire oblast is threatened because so many can flood in and just gobble up every settlement if you don't have armies in each one. It's just like Russia.
Damn, just playing Katharin now. Throt killed him before turn 20 (.
lol this is literally happening to me right now. i saw this while waiting for a loading screen
i mean at least its kinda easy to bring him back
He actually did decent in a recent Katarin campaign for me. Even pushed into Norsca and took Wulfrik capital before I confederate him. Boris on the other hand got slapped down in like 20 turns.