Best campaign to play?

[Nats]

Ive owned WH1 and WH2 on Steam for a while and just downloaded WH3 on Gamepass. But only started playing them recently. So as a newbie to Total War Warhammer (but not Total war games generally) which is the best campaign to play now?

I started playing the campaign in WH1 but have read its old and out of date although I quite like playing Franz. So should I be aiming to play the Mortal Empires campaign in WH2 and choose Franz, and will I get roughly the same gameplay as the campaign in WH2?

I've also tried a bit of the Prologue in WH3 it seems interesting. But I've heard the campaign in WH3 is not that great?

Or is Immortal Empires the way to go now?

And what about the Vortex campaign in WH2? Not a massive fan of Elves factions or playing the bad guys really.

[Body of Eggs]

Franz is kind of a meme as the devs keep putting it under the "Recommended" starts for new players but in reality it's a very hard faction to master. Specifically, the reason for its difficulty isn't really because of the mechanics themselves but only because Franz has a LOT more enemies surrounding him by WH2 and even more in WH3. Many of those same factions have either gotten buffed or nerfed as patches released.

Mortal Empires Franz is alright but going into WH3 prepare for really buffed threats to spontaneously appear on your border when you're dealing with Archaon a lot earlier than anticipated. Plus, you'll be facing newcomers like Festus. The weakness in your elector counts and their inability to defend their own lands can make it pretty difficult at times since the Empire factions haven't really received a buff in WH3.

The campaign in WH3 sort of carries on from the prologue but only for one faction. I won't spoil it as it's a legitimately good story thread. The Realms of Chaos campaign is great when played once and then gets highly repetitive upon consecutive playthroughs as different factions, owing to it's streamlined campaign that's more focused on story. Arguably, it has the best compatibility with the prologue once you hit a certain part.

[Nats]

If I play Immortal Empires then will the other factions appear as AI controlled? Such as Vampire Coast and Norsica etc. Will I be able to fight against them even if I dont own the dlc? Does the dlc just add them as playable races?

[Who trains thy hands for war?]

Originally posted by Nats:

If I play Immortal Empires then will the other factions appear as AI controlled? Such as Vampire Coast and Norsica etc. Will I be able to fight against them even if I dont own the dlc? Does the dlc just add them as playable races?

correct

[Enelith]

Originally posted by Who trains thy hands for war?:

Originally posted by Nats:

If I play Immortal Empires then will the other factions appear as AI controlled? Such as Vampire Coast and Norsica etc. Will I be able to fight against them even if I dont own the dlc? Does the dlc just add them as playable races?

correct

Yes and no.
It's indeed correct, but remember you can't have access to your faction's DLC content if you didn't buy it (some DLC introduce new races altogether while some other expand the one you already have access to).

Edit :
Best example would be playing as one of the TWWH2's base game factions.

[swilhelm73]

I started with Slaanesh which was ok. Then I moved on to Kislev which honestly is annoying (the other order factions are useless)

[franz]

Alberic Bordeleux is the best.

[SqkaStxppvh]

Immortal empires in game 3 is better than game 2 at this point even with the bugs and balancing issues game 3 has it just has too many QOL mods and QOL updates/reworks to make game 2 not feel outdated to me at this point. People for example talk about unit responsiveness being an issue in game 3 with units ignoring orders but in my experience it was worse in game 2

I made it to turn 50 as karl franz and then 3.0 came out so I haven’t touched it since mostly playing chaos factions now. But if you enjoyed spamming multiple armies of halberds and handgunners with some steam tanks sprinkled in and wanna reunite the empire you can do that right now, but by the end of the year the Thrones of Decay dlc will be reworking empire and dwarfs

[Sarcastro]

Wood Elves on IE is nice. You are able to easily teleport around the world. You build your empire high rather then wide so it is easier to defend. It is fairly easy to get ally's in the game. Couple all these campaign advantages to an army that is really strong makes it a pretty easy and enjoyable campaign for a beginner.

[Tommytools]

If you have TW:WH1 & 2 on steam and TW:WH3 on XBOX game pass, you can only play the WH3 races in IE.

You need to have all three games on the same store to play the TH:WH1 & 2 races in TW:WH3 IE.

[fenlander]

Originally posted by Nats:

Ive owned WH1 and WH2 on Steam for a while and just downloaded WH3 on Gamepass. But only started playing them recently. So as a newbie to Total War Warhammer (but not Total war games generally) which is the best campaign to play now?

I started playing the campaign in WH1 but have read its old and out of date although I quite like playing Franz. So should I be aiming to play the Mortal Empires campaign in WH2 and choose Franz, and will I get roughly the same gameplay as the campaign in WH2?

I've also tried a bit of the Prologue in WH3 it seems interesting. But I've heard the campaign in WH3 is not that great?

Or is Immortal Empires the way to go now?

And what about the Vortex campaign in WH2? Not a massive fan of Elves factions or playing the bad guys really.

Do not play as Kislev. Their economy is broken.

[Lamp]

Immortal Empires is for sure the best iteration of TW:WH. Even if I didn't mind RoC's map/mechanics, the story is really dumb. Magic bear interchangeable motion-comic dumb.

However if you have the Chaos Dwarf DLC there's none of that nonsense and instead of cheap motion-comics they have high quality 3d motion-comics and a much, much better story than RoC. If you *must* play RoC and don't want to hate WH3 I recommend Slaanesh. I also recommend Slaanesh in general, fantastic faction.

What IE lacks is heart. Like the endgame for nearly all factions blends into nothingness. It needs at least 60% more sandbox to it, like a step towards TW: Three Kingdoms, and then another step beyond it. Multiple ways to advance in power while keeping the game interesting.

Like a noble house system for some factions, 'hero duel' style fights, but maybe without even having to initiate a duel. It does make sense that my master assassin Skaven would run up behind the enemy leader and initiate an actual 1v1 fight (animation.) Just maybe give it a system where they have situational awareness to deal with other attackers (regular units) interrupting that fight- so some characters are like Jackie Chan, others are a bit more clumsy.

Maybe add an optional realms of chaos situation? The outrage over RoC was that the point-of-the-game mechanics sucked, as did the map and the story. I don't think anyone would object to them adding some optional chaos realms to IE as a side thing. They've got all the resources at the ready to do so, the realms could have nearly all the features from RoC except without having to race for cheap useless demon souls.
Maybe defeating one realm's daemon gives you some kind of boon that you could risk losing when the next faction decides to check out that realm. Maybe if you're playing chaos you could set up in there (in some form) and be that plane's daemon?

Yeah there's a lot of things they could do to make IE better, but the development has been so slow and unreliable that it's alllll pipedreams.


Oh and rant aside: get mods. Like 1 or 2. CA took walls out of minor settlements when people hated their awful siege maps and minigame systems, (it was a pretty nonsensical decision that they have yet to reverse.) So you'll probably want any 'T3 walls restored' mod. Maybe a 'building only during deployment phase' mod as well. It's pretty fking wonky in vanilla WH3: sieges are like a cheesable minigame of pop-up towers and barricades controlled by plazas. So yeah, mods help.

[Nats]

I am trying the Radeous mod and a couple of other graphical ones and the camera mod. The Radeous mod makes for huge armies right from the start. I do think it's better than the vanilla game as the battles are more fun, but it's tough.

[Lotor13]

Originally posted by Nats:

Ive owned WH1 and WH2 on Steam for a while and just downloaded WH3 on Gamepass. But only started playing them recently. So as a newbie to Total War Warhammer (but not Total war games generally) which is the best campaign to play now?

I started playing the campaign in WH1 but have read its old and out of date although I quite like playing Franz.

In my opinion, it is just best to start WH1 with Franz

[Dallar]

WH2 has some very fun and short campaigns, mostly for DLC races. Taurox, Sisters of Twilight, wampirates - all great,give good feel of the faction and don't drag for too long.

In WH3 I'd jump straight to IE,as Realm of Souls campaign is not all that great. Be'lakor from Warrior of Chaos is an amazing pick, with his teleport and a massive choice of units and lords.

[Man of Culture]

I guess in the 'core' game of each title, Warhammer 1-3, is usually a smaller campaign map with unique goals or objectives and those can be somewhat limiting to people. Immortal Empires is what a lot of people play because it's the whole map, grand scale, lots of factions, lots of room for improvisation and freedom to do whatever you want when you want without having to worry about specific goals or timers if you don't want.

So it's up to you but the experience can be vastly different depending on if you do the special campaign or Immortal Empires for certain factions.

If you want a solid 'good guy' campaign without too many restrictions and a pretty potent faction I'd say go with Lizardmen and I'd pick Oxyotl. He has really strong campaign mechanics being able to basically teleport his army once per turn to a location of interest with something you have to protect/defend or navigate to a secret domain you can build in any settlement. And I believe you can always teleport back to your capital city. The only real downside is he starts at the very bottom of the map and does have to contend with two pretty strong factions early on being Dark Elves and Chaos but Lizardmen are so strong in general it shouldn't be a problem even if you're new.

If you didn't want to pay for any DLC or if that lord isn't available you can't really go wrong with a good old Dwarf campaign. Dwarves are extremely basic but extremely forgiving in terms of both campaign locations and mechanics. Just steer clear of Belegar. I'm not sure if he'd be in the game to play or not for you but he's got a really garbage start and has a pretty annoying campaign mechanic.