I have no idea what I'm doing.

I bought this as I used to be very into WHFB and I am kind of enjoying it but outside of battles (and sometimes in battle) I have no fucking idea whats going on.

I've won three battles lost none, but every time I go back to the overworld I cant figure what to do, I'm up to turn 9 and I seem to be making no progress toward anything.

Like how do I take over settlements, or how do I garrison, or what the fuck good is diplomacy?

Would the total war tutorials out there help me with this? I've done some basic searching and not found any proper tutorials for Warhammer specifically.

I mean Total War isn't that complicated you'll get it. You're only on turn 9 of your first game. You could watch some tutorial videos (Doubt you'd need Warhammer specifically. Rome 2 should do) but really I'd just play the game and mess around with the UI etc.

As for diplomacy, If Total Warhammer is anything like Rome 2 it's pointless.

Alright, after a couple hours of this game (and many, many more hours in previous TW titles) I'll go over some basics that I've gathered after about six hours with the Dwarfs.

1) On the overworld, I'd say you want to basically ensure three things: That you are making money, that you have enough lords/troops to do what you want, and that your armies are marching towards stuff you wanna take or defend. Secondary concerns are researching new technologies, keeping regions happy, and then buying buildings in your towns

2) Settlements are seized when you attack them with an army and win. They have their own garrison by default but if you keep the army in there (moving in basically) it's part of the garrison too.

3) Diplomacy is more useful for Dwarfs and Empire than Orks or Vampires, because you can form confederacies and grab extra territory quickly without costly battles. You have to work up to this point though, starting with simple treaties like non-aggression and military access while working towards more serious treaties (that improves relations more). Diplomacy seems optional but highly recommended for some races and can take many turns of trial and error to see results

This game is pretty similar to older titles other than a few new mechanics (like corruption, grudges/elector counts, or magic in general) so old tutorials should be okay for learning the basics.

Does this one not have a mini tutorial prologue campaign? They were helpful in past games to get the basics.

@ninnanuam: @paulmako: It kinda does, as your adviser tells you about stuff when you first encounter it, and gives you a path to take early on. At least for the Dwarves. Only played 2 hours so far, but for now he has told me about recruitment, how to siege, what you can do once you take a settlement, how the "Grudge" system works (which in turn gave me a decent early indication what I should be doing), how to upgrade settlements etc. I also got an early quest in addition to some grudges. I feel everything is told briefly by your adviser, and the text usually contains a link which opens a more in-depth explanation.

So I guess my tip for figuring this out is: Listen to your adviser. Read his tooltips, click on through to find out more.
Also, hovering over buttons and text for a little bit often opens up a more detailed explanation.

Each faction has two or three leaders you can choose from when you start a campaign. Only the 'main' leader of each faction has a built-in tutorial prologue however.

I wonder if the OP missed the warning the game gives about this when starting the campaign perhaps.

Also, as I understand it, the different factions can only occupy settlements of some (not all) other factions.

Yea I started with Chaos, probably not the best move as they did clearly state that they were "hard". So I dropped them and started with VC. I've now taken east Sylvania and I have a lord in each town, but from here every fight seems like an auto lose I have about five troop types and an on the way to grave guard.

Its a little easier and I have been following the tips and listening to my advisor but its still a slog because while its telling me what stuff is it doesn't really tell me why I should care.

I don't have the game but I have played all of the other Total War games. Just don't get discouraged. They can be pretty overwhelming at times with all the stuff going on. It's worth sticking it through and figuring it out.

I don't find Total War to be that complex, but I've played the series from the beginning, so everything has gradually layered on and gotten more complex over time - I've only had to learn a couple of things each time. Does this game (I haven't got it yet) have an in game tutorial? Maybe watch Quill18 or Heir of Carthage on Youtube to get an idea of what the hell is going on.

I really wish the in game reference guide were accessible somewhere else. Seems like there's a good bit to dig into but browsing in game is a big pain as opposed to having it in a browser window. I hope I'm missing something but there doesn't seem to be anything but the most high level/marketing info online.

This is also my first total war after a decade of the minis. I figure on banging around for 10 hours, botching pretty constantly, then starting over. Worked with Civ 5!

Yea it would be great if the reference guide came out on ios

The tutorial is garbage, I can't believe they thought it was ok to have a 9 min video as a tutorial these days. This is my first real attempt at a Total War game and I just do what seems cool. I think a good rule of thumb is consider every possible action you can take on a given turn, and what consequence you can discern from that action. Can I attack something with my army? Can I build something in any of my towns? That kind of thinking taught me many 4X games in the past and that's an arguably more complex genre. Being ready to bend over to a vastly superior AI force is something you just have to get used to when learning a strategy game. Learn by doing, restart and do better.

I found the tutorial quests for the main dwarf guy, Thorgrim Grudgbearer, relatively good at giving some direction but yeah that skip over a bunch of fairly useful stuff. I can kind of see why they do because they want to get people who are interested in Warhammer into the game and the traditional way that Total War handles tutorials tends to be a slow slog but yeah.

They don't really explain how Social Order in provinces works very well. You get a popup from the advisor when social order is low that is telling you that you need to fix it but not really giving you great advice on how. This is compounded by the social order mechanics not really making much sense in Warhammer. In a traditional Total War game it makes sense if you are playing the Roman army and you occupy and loot a village of Greeks that the Greek citizens who live in that province are going to take a while to warm up to you but in Warhammer if I'm playing the Dwarfs and I am taking settlements from the Greenskins, I assume I kill all the Greenskins in that settlement before moving in. In my starting province I took back the Greenskin occupied settlements quite quickly but that tanked my social order, enough that a grudge got entered in my book to fix it. Basically the other Dwarfs in the province were pissed that I drove off the Greenskins which makes no sense. In order to fix it you have to garrison your armies in settlements in those provinces, build a bar, turn off taxes and try to add some skills to your Lords that provide order bonuses and then wait a bunch of turns before your Social Order number is in the positive.

@ninnanuam: The Vampire Counts have a slower play style as they have to slowly boost the vampiric corruption in enemy provinces with their hero units before they can really take over those provinces without suffering attrition losses to their armies. The Vampire Counts also lack traditional ranged units like siege weapons and archers, so they tend to struggle taking over major walled cities. They don't really play like a traditional Total War faction because of these reasons, so if you finding out that the game still isn't making much sense I would probably recommend giving the Dwarfs or the Empire a try as they are more straight-forward in how they play on the campaign map. Diplomacy for the Dwarfs and the Empire is also more useful as less factions hate you and are more willing to trade or ally with you, which gives you a lot of income.

The basics for any non-Chaos faction is to secure an early game economy by capturing several provinces to set up a decent economic base, then focusing on defending your territories with your armies while you upgrade your towns and cities to provide more income per turn. Early game you should only have one city focusing on military buildings while all other towns/cities have growth/income/public order buildings. You want to have just enough public order buildings to prevent rebellions, with all other slots focused on building up the economy to fund additional armies to allow you to make the next large territory expansion.

Ideally you would only have one or two enemies on a single front to worry about, so a lot of the fun part of Total War is figuring out how you want to accomplish that. As Vampire counts do you want to make peace with the Empire, take over your southern brothers to get their valuable towns/cities, and focus on the Dwarfs? Or perhaps the other way around? How far should you expand before suing for peace, and will your enemies be weak enough to agree to peace to give you the time you need to build up your economy for the mid game? All of these will vary from campaign to campaign even while playing as the same faction, which is what makes this Total War really fascinating. Don't be afraid to make several saves before important decisions to see how things work out, and also don't be afraid to restart campaigns.