Posted September 30, 2016
The Campaign
The world of Warhammer is not known for being a peaceful place, and its oceans are no exception.
Where there is territory to be fought over, the nations of man will do so. Where there is plunder and fighting there will be Orcs and when the powers of Chaos are waxing their horrific legions will spill forth.
Regions
The ocean is split up into regions of control, as you explore the world they’ll appear on your map along with information about who controls that region and how strong their grip is on it. If a nation controls a region expect to see its navies patrolling around - if you fancy a spot of piracy be careful if they’re nearby!
Human (and human-ally factions like Elves and Dwarfs) have a diplomacy system which controls how they react to other nations. If the diplomatic situation breaks down they’ll start attacking each others ships, and eventually declaring all out war.
If two factions are at war, they’ll start to launch raids and invasions into the other faction’s territory - as ships are destroyed the control of the region is weakened. Weaken it enough and the invading faction can capture the region.
Ports play an important part in this - they provide control to their neighbouring region (increased if they have a good supply of timber, weapons and food for the work crews). In the event that the region a port is in is captured by the enemy they become blockaded, and attacked and possibly even captured.
Chaos, Orcs, Skaven
There are also less diplomatically-inclined factions at work in the world - these are less inclined to bicker and argue over territorial waters and are just here to destroy. Starting with small raids on the ports as time goes on larger forces will come into play. Regions will fall under the control of the invader factions (though it’s more of a ‘watch out, here be chaos’ than a legal border!) and if they get to the ports they’ll raze them to the ground.
Orcs are a little different in that if they smash up enough bits of ship in a region they control they’ll build themselves a port - mainly so they have somewhere to put all the junk they find on the human ships.
The Player
All of the above will play out by itself, but there’s plenty of room to get involved - if you want to start smashing up the Imperial navy you can do that (though maybe invest in a larger ship and hire some allies first). Weaken a region enough and their greedy neighbours, even if currently peaceful, are likely to swoop in and take advantage. Each port now has a military outpost (Imperial ports have a “watch tower”, it varies per faction) and here you can pick up diplomatic missions which can help soothe or increase tensions between the various factions. Delivering Kislevite spies to Imperial ports (or vice versa) can quickly escalate their starting hostilities into war.
The military outpost also provides somewhere to hand in pennants for a bounty - each ship kill will reward you with a pennant for its faction, and any port hostile to that faction will pay in gold.
Be careful playing politics though - if the rampaging Orcs and the forces of Chaos aren’t resisted you might run short of places to dock, plus all the human ports offer bounties for killing their ships. You’ll also find the human nations will find the idea of peace so much more
appealing when half the ocean is swarming with chaos.
The world of Warhammer is not known for being a peaceful place, and its oceans are no exception.
Where there is territory to be fought over, the nations of man will do so. Where there is plunder and fighting there will be Orcs and when the powers of Chaos are waxing their horrific legions will spill forth.
Regions
The ocean is split up into regions of control, as you explore the world they’ll appear on your map along with information about who controls that region and how strong their grip is on it. If a nation controls a region expect to see its navies patrolling around - if you fancy a spot of piracy be careful if they’re nearby!
Human (and human-ally factions like Elves and Dwarfs) have a diplomacy system which controls how they react to other nations. If the diplomatic situation breaks down they’ll start attacking each others ships, and eventually declaring all out war.
If two factions are at war, they’ll start to launch raids and invasions into the other faction’s territory - as ships are destroyed the control of the region is weakened. Weaken it enough and the invading faction can capture the region.
Ports play an important part in this - they provide control to their neighbouring region (increased if they have a good supply of timber, weapons and food for the work crews). In the event that the region a port is in is captured by the enemy they become blockaded, and attacked and possibly even captured.
Chaos, Orcs, Skaven
There are also less diplomatically-inclined factions at work in the world - these are less inclined to bicker and argue over territorial waters and are just here to destroy. Starting with small raids on the ports as time goes on larger forces will come into play. Regions will fall under the control of the invader factions (though it’s more of a ‘watch out, here be chaos’ than a legal border!) and if they get to the ports they’ll raze them to the ground.
Orcs are a little different in that if they smash up enough bits of ship in a region they control they’ll build themselves a port - mainly so they have somewhere to put all the junk they find on the human ships.
The Player
All of the above will play out by itself, but there’s plenty of room to get involved - if you want to start smashing up the Imperial navy you can do that (though maybe invest in a larger ship and hire some allies first). Weaken a region enough and their greedy neighbours, even if currently peaceful, are likely to swoop in and take advantage. Each port now has a military outpost (Imperial ports have a “watch tower”, it varies per faction) and here you can pick up diplomatic missions which can help soothe or increase tensions between the various factions. Delivering Kislevite spies to Imperial ports (or vice versa) can quickly escalate their starting hostilities into war.
The military outpost also provides somewhere to hand in pennants for a bounty - each ship kill will reward you with a pennant for its faction, and any port hostile to that faction will pay in gold.
Be careful playing politics though - if the rampaging Orcs and the forces of Chaos aren’t resisted you might run short of places to dock, plus all the human ports offer bounties for killing their ships. You’ll also find the human nations will find the idea of peace so much more
appealing when half the ocean is swarming with chaos.
Post edited September 30, 2016 by evilfraser