Empire army composition.

[Shaggy412]

Anyone knows a good army composition for Empire factions? Are artillery and ranged units still as powerful as in TWW2?

What's your most versatile army you now use?

[DarkFenix]

Nice thing with Empire is you can do almost anything because their roster is so varied. You can go with a steam tank doomstack, traditional hammer and anvil with infantry and cavalry, skirmish-heavy with lots of pistoliers and outriders, gun line supported by artillery and heroes, pike-and-shot army with largely infantry and ranged...

So long as you're sensible with unit proportions relative to who you're fighting, you'll win.

[Trolleur_Durden]

Outriders with grenades are awesome against armies without ranged units like VC.

[Fuzzyballs01 ꦙ]

depends on the enemies

[kilen]

My standard missile based army with empire faction is 5 handguns, 4 hunters and 5 hellstorm rocket batteries plus 5 battlepriest/captain for crowd control and 1 mage (or2 sometimes, one fire, one life healer for the heroes, but not always).
Although that takes a moment to build.
And it’s not invincible (in L/VH).
In wh3 it’s far less impressive than ranged armies were in wh2 due to the dps significantly reduced.
It still work, but it’s not as deadly as it was.
In wh3, I think throw multiple armies of whatever you can recruit in it with the purpose of escorting couple of really good ones you only care for (like battlepriest doomstack or steam tank doomstack, things like that, or one of these standard ranged army, etc), and no matter what happens to the canon fodder is the way to go.
I also used nearly full stack of free company militias with Volkmar and it worked okay (+ several battlepriests in it, important detail), at least it works decently until turn 80-90, against late game it’s not enough by itself I think.
But it does the job.
Anyway the best strategy is to not care too much of your units and accept the losses if it’s to save the couple good armies where heroes are, etc.
Usually 1 good army has at least one (or 2 if possible) canon fodder army nearby.
Or just several contingents like half stacks or a bit less, based on what remains from previous battles in these canon fodder armies.
But you need to be flexible and adapting to the situation with the empire.
That’s the main thing…

[epicbod]

You can cheese them the same way as Brets given what I’ve seen. Have a line of 4 or so ranged flanked by 2 tanky heroes and lord front and center. 2+ artillery behind. Line up knightly units behind so you have a big arrow. AI will come right down the middle. As they come at your archers or whatever, Pin them in blobs with your characters as you smash them with artillery and swing your Calvary out and around. You’ll then be able to finish them off with well placed charges in the flanks and rear.

This tactic works so well with Brets your Knights hardly get to do anything half the time..

I expose this because I’m sick of it. Lords and heroes shouldn’t be immortal tanks for their armies, even in Warhammer. They should fight within their regiments like in the good old Total War days.