Total War Warhammer 3 Tips for Battle

Welcome to our Total War Warhammer 3 Tips for Battle. Part 3 of our Total War Warhammer 3 guide for beginners. Below is a list of articles in this series of guides:

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Today we will cover battle tips and advanced battle controls. We will not go into the basic commands, but we will cover some more advanced ones that I use that aren’t covered in the tutorial.

These advanced controls are vital because I use them very often but be aware I am not a battle master, but I can at least teach you what I know, which is the purpose of this guide.

Advanced Controls

The first thing that we will cover in our Total War Warhammer 3 Tips for Battle is grouping units. At the bottom of the screen, you will see the unit cards. These cards are used to select units and give you information on a unit, such as its health, what it’s doing etc.

A handy feature that is in the game is grouping units, so you select multiple units cards by holding down the Ctrl key while clicking on all the units cards you want to choose, and then if you hold down ctrl and click on a keyboard number, that will bind all those units to a group.

This means that instead of selecting all those units individually, you can choose them by pressing one of the number keys on the keyboard. It is much easier to move your armies this way at the beginning of a battle before the front lines are engaged.

So, I generally like to group my front-line infantry to group 1, combat lord and shock troops to group 2, missile units to group 3, wizard to group 4, cavalry or warbeasts to group 5 and artillery to group 0.

The advantage of grouping is that in the middle of a battle, you can quickly select the units you want without having to find them on the map, as sometimes, amid a big melee, it can be challenging to see your heroes.

Using this method, you will be selecting missile units and wizards a lot, so keep that in mind.

Another thing to remember is that locking the group can either be done by pressing the padlock symbol on the unit card for the group or by pressing ctrl + g.

This is more useful for using front-line infantry than anything else, especially if you are going on the offensive and attacking the enemy.

When your front line is about to engage the enemy, you want to have them in lock mode because if they are not and they are in a group when you select to attack a unit, all those units will charge into that one enemy unit which you don’t want to happen.

You don’t want this to happen because it will allow the enemy to encircle your entire front line and expose your missile units.

So, by grouping them and clicking to attack the enemy front line, they will stay in formation and charge forward to engage the enemy line.

After this is done and the initial lines have engaged, you probably want to unlock the group to select units individually. After the front line engages the enemy, this is no longer required.

Also, when you click to move a unit or group, if you hold down ctrl while clicking the move order, they will move at an average pace as opposed to marching, which is crucial as you want to conserve your units vigour so don’t march units around for no reason.

Use the ctrl key when moving almost always until you’re in charge range. Another valuable button for moving your entire army is the alt key. If you select the units you want and then move the mouse in a direction while holding the alt key, it will allow your entire army to stay in formation when moving.

It will also give you a visual representation of where your army will move to before you select, which is handy. Also, when you do this, after you move the mouse to move your units where you want them to go, hold down the Ctrl key and then release the left mouse.

If you don’t hold the ctrl key down, they will march into position instead of moving at an average pace. Another handy feature of holding down the Ctrl key is it allows you to rotate the ending formation.

So, let’s say you have two armies on your side in a battle, and the enemy has one. You might want to move one army in formation with the alt key but rotate them 90 degrees so that when they move forward, they will go straight into the enemy’s flank while the other army engages them head first like normal.

Most of the time, if you only have one army in the battle, you won’t be using the rotation feature and if you don’t want to rotate the formation, then after you hit the ctrl key, just let go of the left mouse button so that the army will move at average pace into formation.

Also, if you need to cancel a command you just made and want the selected units to stop doing anything, just hit backspace with them selected.

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Formations

So how should you set your army up? that’s what we will cover next in our Total War Warhammer 3 Tips guide. While there are different variations, the basics are to have at least six front-line infantries in a line at the front of your formation like you would see historical armies line up in the movies.

Next, on each flank of the front line, you will have at least one anti-large unit, like spearmen and halberdiers, to deter cavalry attacks on your sides. Now we have to talk about ranged units (just ranged, not talking about artillery yet).

One crucial thing different from the other total war games and historical battles is that you should stagger your front-line infantry in a criss-cross pattern. So you should still have a line of front infantry, but you should have them in a staggered line.

What I mean by this is that you should say to have your spearmen unit on the left flank in a regular position and then the next unit from the left off the line by moving them south a little so that you can’t make a straight line from the left side of the spearmen unit all the way the right side of the next unit.

Then you can put the third unit from the left flank on the same line, staggering the fourth from the left, and so on. This means there are no gaps in your line, but wind spells in the game won’t be able to target more than one unit at once.

You can also get creative with this, but if your line is staggered and then are no gaps, it should be good.

Some people say you should deploy missile units at the front of your formation so that they can shoot at the enemy as early as possible. Now, I will give you options rather than saying what you should do.

The traditional option is to have your missile units behind your front line because you can protect them better and make it harder for the enemy to get at them. The other option is to have them in front of the front line of infantry so that they can attack the enemy as soon as possible.

With the other option, you would move your infantry units through your missile units to engage the enemy front line when they get close enough.

Both have their pros and cons, but there are some things you need to understand about missile units. They have only so much ammunition, but just because you can shoot an enemy from a maximum distance doesn’t mean you should.

At the end of their range, missile units are less accurate and get more accurate the closer they are to the target. Still, the problem is if you wait too long to shoot at the enemy, they will engage with your troops, and you generally shouldn’t be shooting into an enemy unit in combat as it could hit your units.

You can get around this by manoeuvring your missile units to the flank or rear of the enemy unit and then shooting the enemy, as this will make the missiles more likely to hit the enemy. This is also why taking many missile units that suck in melee is terrible. However, they are still helpful to have around.

They can shoot at flying creatures and ranged cavalry and even take out a unit of two before it gets into combat. Also, they are great for taking down giants that you don’t want to engage your enemy front line, so they have their uses, but they are not the magic bullet.

So I’ll leave it up to you to decide about missile units, but that should give you enough to get started. They work well with a combined arms approach. Also, please don’t allow them to fire at will. Ensure you disable that, as you should always control your missile units and what they are shooting.

Also, if you tell them to fire on a unit and it breaks, immediately cancel the shoot command by hitting backspace; otherwise, they will chase the unit to get in range to shoot them, which you don’t generally want. If fire at will is on, they seem to fire at whatever they want, and it’s not always the best use of ammunition.

When deciding what to shoot, you should concentrate your missile fire on one unit instead of targeting multiple or leaving the ai to determine what your missile units shoot, as it’s better to destroy one unit than weaken three.

Also, make sure you stagger the lines for missile units and keep a bit of space between them. The reason is that you don’t want an enemy unit to be able to attack multiple missile units simultaneously, so spreading them out makes it harder to do this.

Total War Warhammer 3 Tips: Flankers

Next in our Total War Warhammer 3 tips for battle guide we will focus on the flankers, units which fly or move fast. This means cavalry, warbeasts, giant monsters, monstrous infantry and anything else with a fast speed.

Usually, two fights will happen in a battle: the struggle to control the front line and the struggle to control the flanks.

Protecting the flanks is essential, and this doesn’t mean just waiting for an enemy to come to you; you should aggressively defend your sides with both missile units and your flankers.

If you can destroy the enemy flankers, then you are then free to use your flankers to attack the enemy flanks and surround the enemy’s front line to break their line.

Now also, if you are playing as a rush army and have more units than your enemy, you can split your army/armies into two parts and attack them from two different angles, and suddenly you have a whole army of flankers.

Now a word of caution is doesn’t use your flankers to attack the enemy front-line head-on if you can. Their greatest strength is their mobility and the ability to hit the enemy where they want once they have destroyed the enemy flankers.

As seen historically by the Mongols, the ability to use mobility to attack an enemy where you want and retreat when not favourable is vital to using flankers.

It allows you to control which matchups they engage in so you can use their mobility to force better matchups or to strengthen your attack on the enemy front line.

Non-flying cavalry and warbeats should be placed on the flanks of your army or behind to be in a position to engage enemy flankers if you are playing defensively.

But if you’re playing offensively, try to position them initially so they can get behind the enemy force, engaging things such as enemy missile units, artillery, mages, and any other good matchups.

If they have vanguard deployment, even better as they can deploy around the map and employing them within terrain to hide them if you are playing offensively is also a fantastic way to use them

Total War Warhammer 3 Tips: Artillery

Next we cover artillery, artillery is a missile unit that often has a long range but fires slowly, so they should be behind your enemy lines and firing on the enemy as soon as possible.

Also, due to the range, you can pick your targets easily from the enemy army, so always choose the best target for the artillery you’re using. So anti-infantry artillery like mortars should be attacking infantry, and anti-large infantry like cannons should be attacking giant monsters or lords or failing that monstrous infantry or cavalry.

Also, be aware of what you’re artillery is shooting. You can press the space button to see what your missile and artillery units are targeting. If you pick a unit and you forget, and then the unit makes it to the front-line, you will be shooting your troops, which can be a very costly mistake.

So if you’re shooting a unit that engages your units, pick something else to shoot.

Well, that’s it for Part 3 of the Total War Warhammer 3 Guide. You can find Part 4 here: Total War Warhammer 3 Magic

Also, the affiliate link to purchase Total War Warhammer 3 from Steam is here: https://sovrn.co/vouhli4

Check out my links below, and thank you for reading.

Total War Warhammer 3 Tips for Battle

Advanced Controls

Formations

Total War Warhammer 3 Tips: Flankers

Total War Warhammer 3 Tips: Artillery

Links

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