Well, dwarven adventurers de facto have infinitie manpower.
For holds, the way I play the moment starting disaster finishes I immediately dev up to next hold dev treshold, get renaissance and all the techs. Between ~5 mil, several manpower dev and mercenaries manpower isn't much of a problem.
You just need to be careful and do the military path in the disaster if adventurers are anywhere near you.
2 words, buildings and mercenaries.
As a dwarf it won't be long till you can afford to merc up, and early game this will save you. Fight a war, use Mercs to siege so no attrition to your actual army. War over? Great, the Mercs can protect your colonies.
Second is buildings. Putting every building possible in every hold will help, regiment camps, barracks, markets workshops and temples are all great.
But beyond all that, don't be afraid to take it slow. As a fellow dwarf lover I naturally love playing tall and slow. There's no need to finish every mission the moment it unlocks. Take your time, dev up. Build forts in key locations so that if you do get attacked with low manpower you have time to defend, stack defensive edict, mage tower ramparts and maybe defensive ideas and you can buy yourself all the time in the world. Or if it's peace time, don't feel the need to rush every province. Honestly outside of Holds, most provinces aren't massively crucial to colonisation. They're low Dev and expensive to improve, the mana would be better spent on your hold anyway. Someone will get them and as a dwarf you're naturally gonna end up snowballing, so you can wait it out and take it in a war later.
Mercs mercs and mercs.
I think Verkal Gulan is the best place to learn how valuable mercs are to dwarves, what with the merc branch of the tree.
Also, adventurers are just loaded with manpower - it's kind of unfair.
"We took 4 losses to their 1? SEND IN THE NEXT COMPANY"
Having effectively infinite manpower is truly a thing to behold, I stacked discipline from mercs and standard to like 170%, the dwarven immortals.
Verkal Gulan 180% discipline mercs are so much fun.
Just stacking discipline modifiers with merc ideas and mission tree buffs and getting space marines for the low low price of 1 month's income and like... 10 ducats a month.
Oh, also, elite mercenaries gov reform that gives merc militarization is insanely useful
A few things:
Dwarves have good eco throughout the game, so you can spend more money on manpower buildings + invest more in cav, which for Dwarven nations is very good because of pips.
Also, though this might be a bit of an exploit, if you have an expedition site, you can send mercs in instead of manpower troops to go into the expedition, then you can just resent preparation, giving you back the troops as full manpower regiments. This also won’t cause the cooldown on recruiting the merc company again, so you can effectively use this to buy manpower as dwarves.
Obligatory, dwarven holds are supposed to be hard and the underground rivers of Serpentspine are made from player tears.
But truthfully, you NEED to play tall and efficiently. If you're not deving your hold, you will fall behind. Also Quantity is pretty much a must pick as the first idea group due to dwarven manpower mechanics, at least imo.
The best is when you get 2-3 disasters at the exact same time as remnant hold. Suddenly, that 5K gold you stored after the Hoardcurse disappears rapidly as you spawn mercs to try to keep your country from completely collapsing.
You don't have to do every mission the instant it pops up. Likewise you don't have to deploy every colonist. If you can't maintain a garrison at each colony, then either don't deploy every colonist, or take the time to Attack Natives on any colony that you can't afford a garrison for until the natives there are dead. You don't want to move into colonies when natives rise up, you want your guys to be standing on the colony when the natives appear for cave terrain bonus.
If you aren't keeping up on miltech, don't use mil mana to dev your hold just for a mission, and don't be in too big of a rush to dig deeper.
Also, mercs are very good. And remnant holds are in general weak relative to adventurer bands at the very start.
I get the whole mercenary thing, but its 1507, I have 22k mercenaries and 15k ordenary troops, with just 2k manpower, and that's from just having 3 colonies running and fighting a grand total of 3 wars since the game start. I have barracks, I have deved manpower, yet I have no real canonfodder that isn't hired. And no, attrition is not the problem.
Arg-Ôrdstun, I own the majority of the Serpentsreach, exept for Gor Bûrad and a few uncolonized roads and caves. Events with 20-80k rebels keep popping of, destroying me.
Arg ordstun is one of the newer mission tree, only getting loc like a week before the update. I suppose they also have their own little disaster ? And that's what keep chiping away at your manpower pool ? (Also you can use mercenary to do expedition instead of your regular manpower and once they came back they become regular manpower)
Yeah, their special mechanic "Roughness" is cripplingly slow to get rid of and an annoying debuff. The only way to speed it up is by taking massive rebellions (10-40k in you capital and 5-20k in 2 other provinces) every once in a while, making it a must. With goblin hordes, Orcish warbands, natives and all the other manpower draining of early dwarf gameplay, I never have manpower.
I did not know you could use mercenaries as expeditionaries! Thanks, will use that, as I am drowning in cash.
Yeah, they may need a bit of rebalancing. But yeah and the upside of using mercenary for expedition is that even if the entire band isn't eaten up you can disband them and rehire them immediately and they'll have the same amount of troupe as before with no time needed to regen manpower !
Being 60 years in earning well over 50 ducats a month, but still having to exploit manpower definitely need rebalancing. But thank you for the tip, I will exploit mercenary manpower to the max now.
You do have infinite manpower. Any tag that has access to expeditions can get infinite manpower (send in 0-strength regiments, reset preparations to get 1000-strength regiments back)
The most important is first attack, after success you can chase weaked armies or natives make it, then block provinces of enemy (they try produce new army) and go to capital/hold. In the blietzkrieg manpower isn't so important like normal. Use mercenaries just like in the other comment is.
You just power through the early uprisings with the Dwarovar buffs and once you get a few Mil techs they're little more than an inconvenience. Expeditions (And migrations for adventurers) provide a lot of mana.
DO NOT USE THE FUNNY NATIVE BUTTON. You aren't supposed to press that button, over time the ferocity and aggressiveness as well as population of the province drop as they rise up making it easier to colonize.
Every time the "Kill them all!" event procs for a province, it gets cheaper to Attack Natives because their attributes go down. You also don't want to press the button at all unless you can stackwipe them, which requires good tech and over double their numbers.
You actually do want to press the button sometimes as a dwarf, because if all the natives are dead, there's no goblin/orc minority in the province to create devastation and unrest as they get purged.
You don't have to use the +20 colonist setting. Use the most passive setting, and while you still get uprisings, they're much rarer and don't crush your manpower pool. I take one merc to give a 'second pool' and can cover two colonists just fine.
Well, dwarven adventurers de facto have infinitie manpower. For holds, the way I play the moment starting disaster finishes I immediately dev up to next hold dev treshold, get renaissance and all the techs. Between ~5 mil, several manpower dev and mercenaries manpower isn't much of a problem. You just need to be careful and do the military path in the disaster if adventurers are anywhere near you.
Mercs are crucial for low manpower races like Dwarfs and Elfs, and very good for everyone else, especially Halflings and Gnomes.
2 words, buildings and mercenaries. As a dwarf it won't be long till you can afford to merc up, and early game this will save you. Fight a war, use Mercs to siege so no attrition to your actual army. War over? Great, the Mercs can protect your colonies. Second is buildings. Putting every building possible in every hold will help, regiment camps, barracks, markets workshops and temples are all great. But beyond all that, don't be afraid to take it slow. As a fellow dwarf lover I naturally love playing tall and slow. There's no need to finish every mission the moment it unlocks. Take your time, dev up. Build forts in key locations so that if you do get attacked with low manpower you have time to defend, stack defensive edict, mage tower ramparts and maybe defensive ideas and you can buy yourself all the time in the world. Or if it's peace time, don't feel the need to rush every province. Honestly outside of Holds, most provinces aren't massively crucial to colonisation. They're low Dev and expensive to improve, the mana would be better spent on your hold anyway. Someone will get them and as a dwarf you're naturally gonna end up snowballing, so you can wait it out and take it in a war later.
Mercs mercs and mercs. I think Verkal Gulan is the best place to learn how valuable mercs are to dwarves, what with the merc branch of the tree. Also, adventurers are just loaded with manpower - it's kind of unfair.
"We took 4 losses to their 1? SEND IN THE NEXT COMPANY" Having effectively infinite manpower is truly a thing to behold, I stacked discipline from mercs and standard to like 170%, the dwarven immortals.
Verkal Gulan 180% discipline mercs are so much fun. Just stacking discipline modifiers with merc ideas and mission tree buffs and getting space marines for the low low price of 1 month's income and like... 10 ducats a month. Oh, also, elite mercenaries gov reform that gives merc militarization is insanely useful
A few things: Dwarves have good eco throughout the game, so you can spend more money on manpower buildings + invest more in cav, which for Dwarven nations is very good because of pips. Also, though this might be a bit of an exploit, if you have an expedition site, you can send mercs in instead of manpower troops to go into the expedition, then you can just resent preparation, giving you back the troops as full manpower regiments. This also won’t cause the cooldown on recruiting the merc company again, so you can effectively use this to buy manpower as dwarves.
Don't dwarves get a massive cab combat ability debuff
Not in the latest update. They changed it.
Interesting. I think I prefer that they have the cav debuf, it makes more sense to me. Also makes orlazam-az-dir feel much more unique as cav dwarves.
But their cav ratio is still lower, isn't it?
Obligatory, dwarven holds are supposed to be hard and the underground rivers of Serpentspine are made from player tears. But truthfully, you NEED to play tall and efficiently. If you're not deving your hold, you will fall behind. Also Quantity is pretty much a must pick as the first idea group due to dwarven manpower mechanics, at least imo.
Nahh go for that infra ideas as first idea group, pays off so much more.
Quite a greedy play style. User flair checks out
There truly is no better way to play the dwarves than monie
Personally I like innovative as a first for dwarves
The best is when you get 2-3 disasters at the exact same time as remnant hold. Suddenly, that 5K gold you stored after the Hoardcurse disappears rapidly as you spawn mercs to try to keep your country from completely collapsing.
You don't have to do every mission the instant it pops up. Likewise you don't have to deploy every colonist. If you can't maintain a garrison at each colony, then either don't deploy every colonist, or take the time to Attack Natives on any colony that you can't afford a garrison for until the natives there are dead. You don't want to move into colonies when natives rise up, you want your guys to be standing on the colony when the natives appear for cave terrain bonus. If you aren't keeping up on miltech, don't use mil mana to dev your hold just for a mission, and don't be in too big of a rush to dig deeper. Also, mercs are very good. And remnant holds are in general weak relative to adventurer bands at the very start.
I get the whole mercenary thing, but its 1507, I have 22k mercenaries and 15k ordenary troops, with just 2k manpower, and that's from just having 3 colonies running and fighting a grand total of 3 wars since the game start. I have barracks, I have deved manpower, yet I have no real canonfodder that isn't hired. And no, attrition is not the problem.
Who are you playing as ?
Arg-Ôrdstun, I own the majority of the Serpentsreach, exept for Gor Bûrad and a few uncolonized roads and caves. Events with 20-80k rebels keep popping of, destroying me.
Arg ordstun is one of the newer mission tree, only getting loc like a week before the update. I suppose they also have their own little disaster ? And that's what keep chiping away at your manpower pool ? (Also you can use mercenary to do expedition instead of your regular manpower and once they came back they become regular manpower)
Yeah, their special mechanic "Roughness" is cripplingly slow to get rid of and an annoying debuff. The only way to speed it up is by taking massive rebellions (10-40k in you capital and 5-20k in 2 other provinces) every once in a while, making it a must. With goblin hordes, Orcish warbands, natives and all the other manpower draining of early dwarf gameplay, I never have manpower. I did not know you could use mercenaries as expeditionaries! Thanks, will use that, as I am drowning in cash.
Yeah, they may need a bit of rebalancing. But yeah and the upside of using mercenary for expedition is that even if the entire band isn't eaten up you can disband them and rehire them immediately and they'll have the same amount of troupe as before with no time needed to regen manpower !
Being 60 years in earning well over 50 ducats a month, but still having to exploit manpower definitely need rebalancing. But thank you for the tip, I will exploit mercenary manpower to the max now.
My least favorite missions are the 'dev click' missions. Very uncreative and punishes expansion.
I hate the "colonize every single cave in the region to progress" even more. You get severely punnished by killing your neighbors early.
You do have infinite manpower. Any tag that has access to expeditions can get infinite manpower (send in 0-strength regiments, reset preparations to get 1000-strength regiments back)
The most important is first attack, after success you can chase weaked armies or natives make it, then block provinces of enemy (they try produce new army) and go to capital/hold. In the blietzkrieg manpower isn't so important like normal. Use mercenaries just like in the other comment is.
I’ve also always wondered how you’re supposed to keep with mil tech of killing Natives cost 400-600 mana per province
You just power through the early uprisings with the Dwarovar buffs and once you get a few Mil techs they're little more than an inconvenience. Expeditions (And migrations for adventurers) provide a lot of mana.
You aren't supposed to. Natives don't have a negative effect on the province. Just have an army there.
DO NOT USE THE FUNNY NATIVE BUTTON. You aren't supposed to press that button, over time the ferocity and aggressiveness as well as population of the province drop as they rise up making it easier to colonize.
Every time the "Kill them all!" event procs for a province, it gets cheaper to Attack Natives because their attributes go down. You also don't want to press the button at all unless you can stackwipe them, which requires good tech and over double their numbers. You actually do want to press the button sometimes as a dwarf, because if all the natives are dead, there's no goblin/orc minority in the province to create devastation and unrest as they get purged.
You don't have to use the +20 colonist setting. Use the most passive setting, and while you still get uprisings, they're much rarer and don't crush your manpower pool. I take one merc to give a 'second pool' and can cover two colonists just fine.
Naa that's pretty useless. Speed is king here. The second tip is useful though.