Nagarythe: the Original Edgelord High Elves

Not to be confused with Yvresse: Edgy High Elves 2.0. This is a guide to Nagarythe as a subfaction, and assumes some familiarity with the game and with high elves in general, although I try to explain things clearly.

Last update: Patch 3.0.

Introduction

Nagarythe seems to be one of the less popular High Elf factions. This is a shame, because although it hasn't seen a proper update to bring it in line with more recent factions, it remains (in my opinion) one of the two strongest High Elf faction choices. (The other one is Yvresse, because Mistwalkers are pretty great.) That's not to say that it's easy early on, just that it has some of the strongest endgame once all high elf factions have been confederated.

But Alith Anar is one of the worst legendary lords in the game, you say. He's a ranged lord, and everyone knows ranged lords suck. He doesn't even get a cool mount to make up for it. He doesn't even get a mount at all!

Well, no, he doesn't. Let's put aside the issue of whether Alith Anar is any good in battle for now. With or without decent combat presence, he brings some of the best campaign buffs of any legendary lord.

Starting with his faction leader effects: along with a respectable buff of 10% to campaign movement range for all armies (not to be underestimated - there are good reasons Route Marcher is a must-pick early skill) and a 1-turn reduction to global recruitment time (very useful, as it means any unit which can be locally recruited in 1 turn can also be globally recruited in 1 turn), Alith Anar's lords have access to a distinct set of stances not shared by other High Elf factions.

These new stances are Stalking (which replaces the default stance), and Use Shadow Realm Pathways (an entirely new stance). Nagarythe also possesses the Marked for Death faction mechanic, and consequently replaces the Invocation of Hoeth rite with the Invocation of Morai-Heg. Finally, Nagarythe is the only faction which can recruit shadow-walkers, the premier high elven skirmish archers - this is done via a unique building, the Aesanar Camp, which also empowers friendly agents and hinders enemy armies in the local region.

I won't go into high elf economic cheese strategies. I'm not the best person to explain them - heck, I don't even like using them.

Suggestions for amendments and additions are welcome! My experience with the faction skews more towards Warhammer II than III, and although it's one of my most played factions, I'm sure I still have a lot to learn about it.

Stances

Stalking
Stalking functions identically to the Skaven stance of the same name. It's a move-and-attack stance which has a chance of triggering an ambush on attack. The chance is affected by the lord's ambush success chance, which can mean almost every fight is am ambush. While Stalking cannot trigger when attacking towns, and is not entirely reliable, it is very useful - both as an alternative to Lightning Strike which doesn't tire your army, and for its utility in balancing autoresolve in your favour.

Do note that when fought manually, ambushes can be beneficial or detrimental to the ambusher - while they allow you to flank a poorly-positioned army, the central positioning of the enemy army offers less ground to retreat across for your skirmish-based armies, and armies which rely heavily upon artillery may struggle to find a long stretch of open ground to draw the enemy across while bombarding them. Stalking stance cannot be toggled, so if you want to avoid triggering an ambush, attack in Lileath's Blessing stance instead.

Use Shadow Realm Pathways
Use Shadow Realm Pathways is an extremely powerful stance. Much like the underways stances of dwarves, greenskins, and wood elves, it spends all of an army's movement to teleport to any point within a certain range (affected by modifiers to the army's campaign movement range, including temporary modifiers such as the reduction from Block Army or from having disembarked from a boat with low movement remaining the previous turn). Also like typical underways stances, it confers immunity to attrition, making it an excellent stance for pushing quickly into hostile environments (though unlike Encamp stance, it won't enable replenishment).

Unlike typical underways stances, Use Shadow Realm Pathways does not allow interception. This means that you can teleport near or directly through hostile armies or settlements with no risk of an intercept battle.

While the main uses of Use Shadow Realms Pathways are ignoring attrition and bypassing obstacles (from movement-consuming swamps to mountains to oceans to inconveniently-placed enemy forces), it also has a slightly less obvious use: if one of your armies is attacked in Use Shadow Realm Pathways stance, the battle will be fought in an underways battle map. This guarantees a long, straight, narrow tunnel which is perfect for artillery- or skirmish-based armies, as well as standard archer-heavy high elven armies which benefit greatly from the narrowness of the map. However, you can't attack in Use Shadow Realm Pathways, and there's no easy way to force the enemy to attack you, so you shouldn't expect to fight in underways battles on a regular basis.

A final note on Underways stances: maximum movement range sometimes does not display correctly, allowing you to teleport further than the highlighted circle indicates. This bug is purely visual (you can still command the army to move beyond the range shown, and your mouse cursor will reflect the true range), and seems to happen when you select an army that is currently not in underways (or equivalent) stance and change it to underways stance. If you deselect the army that is now in underways stance and reselect it, the movement range will display correctly.

Marked for Death

Every 20 turns, starting on the first turn, Nagarythe receives a list of three targets which are Marked for Death. These are semi-randomly selected from among all legendary and generic lords, heavily weighted towards factions which you are at war with, as well as factions which the game perceives as likely future enemies (typically dark elven and chaos factions, although belligerent high elf factions may find themselves on the chopping block).

If your faction kills or wounds a target Marked for Death within 20 turns of the Mark being issued, you will receive gold and Influence. Many targets will also confer a factionwide buff for 20 turns - this buff always provides diplomatic bonuses with High Elves, and has other effects depending on the target. Duplicate buffs extend the duration by 20 turns, rather than stacking. Most Dark Elf legendary lords provide unique buffs. If the target is killed or wounded by another faction, or if they are not killed or wounded within 20 turns, the Mark on them is cancelled and no reward will be issued.

If all three targets are wounded or killed, either by Nagarythe or other factions, you will receive a new set of targets even if the full 20 turns have not elapsed.

To assist in killing targets far from friendly territory, Nagarythe receives the Invocation of Morai-Heg, which summons a Hand of the Shadow Crown (henceforth Hands). Hands are agents which cannot be embedded into armies. Their only hero action is an assassinate with a 100% success chance. If the target is not immortal, they are slain. If they are immortal, they are wounded. Hero action success chance modifiers have no effect on the chance - it is always 100%. The Hand is also killed in the process.

The Invocation is easy to unlock (only requiring the Reaver Patrols commandment to be issued over a province for a single turn, after which you can change the commandment to something more useful), but quite pricy. It's generally worth it if it will allow you to slay a Marked target in a reasonable frame of time, but do note the 250-gold upkeep cost on Hands. There is no limit on how many Hands you can keep active at once - the only limiting factors are the cooldown of the rite and the costs associated with summoning and upkeeping them.

Though the obvious (and primary) use of Hands is to assassinate Marked targets, they do have a few side benefits. Unsurprisingly, they can be useful in a pinch to deprive a problematic army of the lord leading it - this should generally be followed up by attacking the army on the same turn, before the lord can be replaced. The downside of this strategy, aside from the sacrifice of the Hand, is the loss of any trait associated with defeating the enemy lord. They can also be used to take out enemy agents, but I do not recommend this - if enemy agents are so problematic that you would consider expending a Hand to deal with them, they're likely to also be numerous and/or immortal, and you're best off just wiping out the faction they're associated with.

Hands also share a few uses with general-purpose agents. Although they cannot perform other actions, they do passively spread public order (or reduce it in enemy regions), and they can be used as scouts, either to spy on enemy regions or to establish diplomatic contact with potential allies. Due to high elves' relative lack of easy access to agents in the earlygame, this may be your only way of making early contact with the other high elven factions which should serve as your trade partners and eventual confederation options.

Early Strategy

Like all high elf factions, Nagarythe lives and dies by its trade economy - your money comes from your elven trinket buildings. Like Knights of Caledor and Order of Loremasters, you don't start with diplomatic contact with the main high elf island, so you'll have to suffer and fight (or scout with heroes) for your trade partners.

Your early Influence should come from killing your Marked for Death targets. Save it for recruiting lords and heroes with powerful traits - this is general high elf advice. Later on, you'll have influence income from outposts and embassies, so killing your Marked for Death targets will be less important, but the extra cash and Influence never stops being nice.

Like many starting armies, Alith Anar's is woefully inadequate for even your starting challenges. You'll want to expand it as soon as possible. I recommend one of two strategies: either swell it quickly with archers and spearmen as you advance, or slow down, build an Aesanar Camp, and settle in to recruit shadow-walkers instead of archers. The recruitment time and cost of shadow-walkers are considerably higher than archers, in Alith Anar's army they cost only marginally more upkeep, and they will serve you far better. Don't dismiss your shadow warriors, but don't hire more either - they're roughly equivalent to archers in cost and overall usefulness.

In Total War: Warhammer II, building an elven forge early on was critical. In Warhammer III, this is no longer the case - all legendary lords are now siege attackers, so you will not need an eagle claw bolt thrower to attack walled settlements in a single turn. In addition, artillery is far weaker in sieges than in the previous installment, so eagle claw bolt throwers are really not as useful as they used to be.

Instead, I would recommend rushing Aesanar Camp early on and recruiting shadow-walkers until you have 6-8 of them. After that, focus mostly on economy and public order buildings, but do consider getting a basic infantry recruitment building to tier 3 - spearmen are adequate in the earlygame, but you'll want to transition to shielded Lothern Sea Guard or Silverin Guard as soon as finances permit. As with most high elven factions, which you use as your frontline is largely a matter of preference - Silverin Guard are tougher and will last far longer, but Sea Guard's missile attacks enable a strategy of shredding the majority of enemy units before they reach your lines.

Ideally it's best to only fight one faction at once, but in practice this is difficult since your neighbours are all dark elves who hate your guts. Even so, you're best focusing your conquest on one faction - or at least one direction - at once. As soon as your territory is too large for Alith to hold all your borders at once, you'll want a secondary army - this is more important than upgrading your frontlines.

Your second army needn't be a full 20-stack, and shouldn't have more than one or two shadow-walkers units at once, since they're so expensive outside of Alith's army. Its purpose is to hang out in ambush stance outside vulnerable settlements, and try to ambush invading armies with your settlement garrison reinforcing. A core of spearmen and archers is more than sufficient. I like to use archmages to lead these defensive armies (usually high or metal magic) since they become quite powerful at high levels, but all high elven lords are viable so long as you pick good traits.

Don't worry too much about heroes in the earlygame. It's nice to have them, but high elven hero recruitment buildings are high-tier and expensive, and generally do not provide other utility. Focus on your economy and making sure you have enough armies to defend your borders, instead. When you do reach the point where you can afford hero recruitment buildings, I recommend getting a light mage for Alith Anar's army - Net of Amyntok is a great spell which can do a lot to support any high elven army, but is especially useful in covering your skirmishers. Metal is also a strong choice, as Plague of Rust can do a lot to help your shadow-walkers kill armored targets. High, Life, and Fire are all generally good high elf magic choices, and pair well with a frontline of Silverin Guard who can hold long enough for blasting magic to be highly effective.

Your quest battle is middling in difficulty. Don't bother rushing - your unique items are nice but not game-changing, and definitely not worth charging down to northern Ulthuan and ruining your borders by trying to own land there. Even if another high elf faction ends up owning the Shrine of Khaine, you can still complete the quest step to own it through diplomacy with them. If you insist on sailing down to Ulthuan, I recommend committing to it and abandoning your lands in the north - just take the province of Nagarythe on the north of Ulthuan and use that as your new base of operations.

Early confederation as Nagarythe is a tricky proposition, and I don't recommend it even if you can pull it off, since lands on Ulthuan are just far enough from your capital to be hard to protect but just close enough to be within sailing distance of your enemies. Plus it's not even favourable climate for you. You'll want to own Ulthuan in the long run - it's too much of an economic powerhouse to pass up, once properly built - but it isn't an earlygame goal.

Just like every other high elf faction, you should be spamming Invocation of Vaul whenever you can for the magic items. It's not critical if you're short on cash, but some of the items you can get from it are very nice (Diamond Guardian Phoenix is a personal favorite).

Most of your neighbours hate you, because they're dark elves (and skaven, norscans, and beastmen). The three notable exceptions are Heralds of Ariel, Exiles of Nehek, and The Ancestral Throng. (There's also a minor ogre faction near The Ancestral Throng, but they usually get wiped out pretty early on.) Unfortunately, they usually all hate each other, so odds are good you'll have to pick one to befriend and go to war with the others. Heralds of Ariel have the nicest legendary lord defeat trait for Alith (missile damage, yay), so I usually befriend one of the other two (Exiles are the easiest relationship to maintain, since Tomb Kings will like you more as you become more powerful, but Tomb Kings are also a relatively weak faction in AI hands and will not hold their ground as well as the Throng).

Early Battle Tactics

Your battle strategy in the earlygame should involve keeping the bulk of your army far back while your skirmishers (shadow-walkers and shadow warriors, as well as Alith Anar) make use of their vanguard deployment to begin the battle in firing range of the enemy. Skirmishers should harass and retreat until they reach your main army, at which point they retreat behind your frontlines and serve as ordinary archers. Your fast melee units (such as the starting great eagle, and monsters or cavalry if you choose to recruit them) should run interference for your skirmishers, intercepting fast enemy units which try to engage your skirmishers in melee. Avoid engaging in prolonged melee unless your fast units are winning decisively and the bulk of the enemy army isn't close - the objective is to protect your skirmishers, not to start a brawl.

Your best tool for delaying the enemy and protecting your skirmishers is Alith Anar's decoy ability. It's no tougher than Alith Anar, doesn't deal damage (until you get the skill which changes that), and doesn't benefit properly from buffs and gear. However, it's completely expendable, and has the same AI target prioritization level as Alith, so it can work wonders to tie up enemies and get them to turn their unshielded backs to your archers. Its cooldown is long, so if you want to get two uses of it in before the battle lines meet, the first one has to be very early. Alith Anar himself is fragile by legendary lord standards, but don't be afraid to have him tie up a single cavalry unit personally - assuming your shadow-walkers are in range, they should be able to rout or kill it at range pretty quickly.

Keep Alith between your shadow-walkers and the enemy. His shots are more effective when he doesn't have to arc them, and unlike the shadow-walkers, he doesn't lose effectiveness as he takes damage. It's also best if enemies shoot him, since he's a small target with decent missile resistance. Keep him near the shadow-walkers, though - between the Shadow Crown, Stone of Midnight, and red-line buffs, he does a lot to improve skirmishers who stand near him.

Once the frontlines meet, general principles of high elven line combat apply. Bring your archers around the sides to shoot enemy melee in the sides (provided there is no enemy melee or cavalry that hasn't engaged yet and poses a threat to them), smash the enemy in the backs with your own cavalry, monsters, or damage-dealer infantry, or blast along the lines with dragons or damaging magic.

Before you have technology or lord skills to increase their ammo capacity, your shadow-walkers and shadow warriors will routinely run out of ammo in extended fights. This is normal - just have them charge in and flank enemy infantry once their ammo is depleted.

Enemy lords are a tough proposition with Alith Anar as the best melee duelist in your army. The solution? Try not to fight them in melee. Alith Anar's ranged attack isn't bad against anything, but it excels versus single targets - he can easily kill the enemy lord with ranged alone and still have ammo to spare. Shadow-walkers can help out if desired - their arrows are very accurate and relatively high-damage, and the slowing effect on the poison is helpful for kiting. Do note that they're not armor-piercing, so while they're adequate against armored targets, they only truly shine at assassinating lightly-armored targets.

If you must fight an enemy melee specialist in close quarters, ensure that you do so in the middle of your own infantry. It's best to have Alith Anar and your great eagle gang up on them (though it's alright to keep one out of the fight if the other has far more health remaining). Don't be afraid to use shadow-walkers in melee for the surround - their melee attack and defense are quite high, and the poison on their attacks will help out a lot.

When dealing with enemy artillery, it's best to use your eagle to take it out. If that's not possible for some reason, stealthy skirmishers are also capable of it, though they'll be slow about it - rather than deploying them with the main skirmish force, deploy them off to the side and have them sneak around and engage the artillery in melee once the rest of the enemy army has left it behind. Shadow-walkers can be used similarly to capture points in siege battles, though you should always be cautious of being caught in melee.

If something is in range, you should probably be shooting it. As a rule of thumb, prioritize enemy damage-dealers over line troops (meaning enemy ranged should usually be shot before enemy melee), shoot large targets before small ones, and prefer enemies which don't have shields pointed your way.

Alith Anar

I did say I would get into Alith Anar's viability in battle, and here we are.

Naked at level 1, Alith is a poor melee combatant. His 65 melee attack and 400 weapon damage are adequate, but his 45 melee defense and low armor-piercing damage tend to mean he does poorly in duels. He's generally fine in the midst of friendly infantry against generic lords, but put him up against another legendary lord and he will struggle.

He's not entirely a lost cause in melee, though. Sure, he'll never be a Tyrion, but with some skills propping up his melee defense (and preferably also a few legendary lord defeat traits for his melee stats), a higher-level Alith can do very well for himself against most legendary lords, only losing out to specialized melee monsters, and he'll shred generic lords.

However, melee just isn't where his strengths lie. His greatest strengths aren't in combat at all, but let's look at his ranged. 320 missile strength seems underwhelming at first glance - you've probably seen other ranged single entities with similar numbers and poor performance. Sure, it's nice that it's armor-piercing, but it's still single-target, right?

Wrong. Alith was at one point fondly nicknamed 'a[n eagle claw] bolt thrower on legs' - while his projectiles may nominally be arrows, in practice they behave like artillery shots. They pierce, have knockdown, and are easily capable of killing at least half-a-dozen infantry models with a single shot. This, combined with relatively high projectile speed, gives him a versatility other ranged lords lack - his greatest strength is in sniping armored single entities, but he's by no means bad at shooting infantry or cavalry. (Don't bother shooting beefy, low-armor targets like giants or Nurgle monsters with him unless you have no better targets - his raw damage isn't that high, and your shadow-walkers or even basic archers will make mincemeat of them.)

Alith even carries enough ammunition to take out more than one enemy lord or hero, if the need arises - I've almost never seen him run out of shots, although admittedly I do use him in melee to protect archers. Note that while Alith's arrows can hit multiple targets, this only really happens when he fires the arrow directly - if he arcs the shot, the projectile speed will be far lower and the arc means that he is unlikely to hit multiple targets. (In fact, he's unlikely to hit at all when arcing his shots, unless the target is completely stationary - try to avoid having him shoot at anything he doesn't have a direct line of sight to.)

His speed is nothing to sneeze at, either - it can reach mid 50s with just skill tree improvements, and a banner can bring him into the mid 60s. He doesn't have a mount, but he doesn't really need one, either - as it is, he's one of the fastest things in the game that doesn't get shredded by anti-large units. (I discount harpies and warhounds because they get shredded by everything, including anti-large units.)

But Alith's true strength isn't in his personal combat abilities - it's in what else he brings to the table. I've discussed his excellent faction leader effects already, but let's take a look at what he does as a lord.

His lord effects provide +25% ambush success chance to his army (nice to have with Stalking stance, and also makes your regular ambushes more consistent early on) and -50% upkeep cost for shadow-walkers. The latter is pretty big - with the reduction, they cost only a little more to upkeep than basic T1 archers, while being far more powerful.

His skill tree is also pretty interesting. The blue (world map) line is nothing to write home about - ambush success chance at tier 2 is unusual, but otherwise it's a very standard high elf tree. I recommend taking 3 points in Wary and 1 in whatever other tier-1 skill, then spreading your tier 2 points between Elven Healing and Ancient Cunning depending on personal preference (Lightning Strike isn't very important for ambush factions). Renowned & Feared is a solid choice, and if you're like me and prefer to rush the blue line first, it can be worth delaying your progression into Alith's unique tree to pick it up.

Alith shares a red (command) line with generic Princesses - standard unit upgrades, and reload time reduction buffs for nearby ranged units instead of Rally and Stand Your Ground, which is very nice to have on a ranged-heavy army. I recommend takiung Bow Master and Militia Master, followed by Favourable Winds and optionally Immovable Force (if you're using Silverin Guard as your frontline).

His personal combat line is a fascinating hybrid. You'll probably want everything on it in the long run, but the best early choices are Valour of Ages (it'll apply to most of your early enemies) and Deadeye. Blade Master is viable if you want to focus on melee; Indomitable isn't really. Hard to Hit is very nice to have at tier 2, and any other tier 2 skill is reasonable to pair with it (yes, even Expeditious Endeavour - if you stack enough speed buffs on Alith, you can easily get him running at the speed of heavy cavalry, enabling him to position very aggressively and escape things he really shouldn't be able to).

Of Alith Anar's unique skills, almost all are strong, and most are worth picking up as soon as you reach the required level. Enemy leadership reduction has always been a strong stat (see traditional lizardmen pompous skink doomstacks), and fear is always nice to have. Ruthless provides a much-needed buff to your shadow-walkers' ammo and speed, Sworn to Vengeance makes your armies stronger against your commonest enemy as well as giving you an economic boost, and Spectre shores up your ambush success chance (which helps to justify not taking many points in Ancient Cunning) as well as melee defense (which is much needed). Renegade is very strong - the factionwide boost to missile strength is very strong, but some people don't like the diplomatic hit since it makes confederating harder. Hold off on taking it until you have your treaties sorted out if it bothers you. Shadow King is also incredibly useful on higher difficulties - the effectiveness of +4 global public order cannot be overstated, and the improvement to Mislead allowing to deal damage is a nice bonus.

Infiltration is a very debatable pick - you might think Stalk would be a good ability, but often you'll end up using Alith to deliberately draw enemies to chase or shoot at him, so invisibility can be actively detrimental - I recommend passing on it, although it's a matter of personal preference. No Rest for the Wicked has been reworked since Warhammer II to provide movement range after winning a battle - this feels less useful, but the added mobility is still valuable, and Perfect Vigor is excellent if you haven't picked up Campaigner by the time you hit rank 12.

You'll likely want to pick up Speed of Asuryan at some point, but not early on - both speed and melee defense are worth maxing on Alith. Ward of Loec is also good to have, since Alith's job often involves getting shot at so his infantry doesn't have to.

Shadow-walkers

Shadow-walkers recruit from Aesanar Camps. There's not that much to say about the building - it's quite a nice defensive building* due to the bonus ambush success chance on your armies and the slowing effect on enemy armies, and can help out tremendously if your agents are getting bullied by enemy agents. But its primary purpose is to let you field shadow-walkers.
*I don't recommend prioritizing them over trinket-makers or walls in most cases, but they can be a good addition to any heavily contested province or recruitment base.

(As an aside, yes, it does let you recruit shadow warriors as well. But they suck. Alith Anar gets no upkeep reduction for them [this is confirmed to be a bug], they have poor melee stats, their attacks do not poison, their damage is lower, and they're less accurate. They still cost 213 to shadow-walkers' 275, which would be bad enough on its own, but they even take the same 2 turns to recruit. Shadow warriors are inferior shadow-walkers, and there's just no justification for recruiting them.)

So let's talk about shadow-walkers. They're ranged skirmishers, with the impressive range and above-average speed characteristic of high elves. Their melee attack is unusually good for ranged units, and while their melee defense looks bad, it doesn't factor in the bonus from Martial Prowess - unless they're almost dead, they will perform much better in melee than their defense implies. Their hefty +12 bonus vs infantry also ensures that they can do good damage against anything man-sized other than elite infantry, and even those will take damage if hit in the backs.

But they're squishy, with low health and poor armor, and melee is simply not what they're designed for. They're meant for ranged, and they perform admirably there, with high missile damage and a relatively quick reload. Their ammo capacity is a little subpar without buffs, but tech and red line skills will fix that. Their ability to fire while moving makes them excellent skirmishers, and the speed reduction from their poison makes them difficult to catch. Their main weakness is their medicore armor-piercing damage, but like basic high elf archers, they are surprisingly lethal even against armored target so long as you have enough of them. Stalk means that they can comfortably be used to perform tasks normally reserved for cavalry, such as sneaking around to capture points or flanking to deal with artillery.

Shadow-walkers are arguably too accurate, especially at higher veterancy ranks. To explain: ranged units in Warhammer III, as previous games, fire at where an enemy unit will be based on its current speed and direction of movement. There's some random spread based on the unit's accuracy. But if the target changes speed or direction, perfectly accurate shots will miss. Inaccurate units, on the other hand, will still hit some shots since they hose the entire area with projectiles. This is particularly noticeable versus single entities.

Shadow-walkers should generally be treated as archers, but can act as melee as a last resort - either if they're out of ammo, or you have no other frontline units to protect your archers. Try to avoid using them in melee against large targets, as their bonus versus infantry makes up a large portion of their melee effectiveness. Since they're squishy damage-dealers, it's best to have them hit enemies in the backs and sides while they're tied up fighting another friendly unit.

Shadow-walker doomstacks are viable if that's your thing, but I can't really recommend it. Without the upkeep cost reduction from Alith Anar, they're comparable in cost to sisters of avelorn, and they just don't measure up - sisters' armor-piercing magic fire arrows already outclassed shadow-walkers' poison arrows and ability to fire while moving in Warhammer II, and both fire and magic attacks were buffed considerably in the transition to III.

[(Steelclaw)]

@SkeletalArm While I'm not certain what changes you're referring to (I don't think I was actively following patch notes at the time), this Reddit thread from two years ago seems to indicate that Alith Anar's Stalk stance did indeed get nerfed alongside the same thing happening to Skaven, coinciding with Nagarythe's start position being moved to the Monoliths on the Vortex map: https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/m7xy4c/alith_anars_stalk_stance_also_got_nerfed/

[SkeletalArm]

Not a bad guide and it got me to think about playing high elves again. I remember a change to how stalking worked for the skaven, but I don't remember if that change was applied to Alith Anar or the beastmen factions. Do you know if it was?

[(Steelclaw)]

@sewnutty Thank you for the feedback! I agree with most of your campaign advice (especially Tyrion and Hellebron), and that's a fair point about Aesanar camps - I admit I don't spam them myself, so I may have accidentally oversold them, and I'll amend my section on them. Re: vassaling other High Elves: I don't believe it's possible to vassalize factions as High Elves without mods, but do let me know if I'm wrong on that!
Happy New Year! :)

[sewnutty]

6) Get a few white lions of chrace (axe wielders) and place them on a hill/forest depending on need. Place Shadow Walkers in front of them stealthy. The Ai will charge archers or cavalry to get easy kills on these units while sending the rest of their army to engage others. Your clearly superior archers will kill them off if not seriously wound them enough to get your axes to charge and finish the job before joining the rest of the battle.
[CONCLUSION]
I hope this helps you and others and may you have a prosperous new year!

[sewnutty]

3) Not much we can do to reduce upkeep, but we can reduce recruitment cost. Unfortunately you wont get to the extremes of -60% cost for Empire (certain units), Skaven (all units), and -85% for Vampire Counts for grave guard.
4) If one is willing to invest: a fire mage or two can be used to give all of your Shadow walkers fire damage on top of their poison, but beware that while the archers are hidden your mages are wide open to artillery or cavalry charges. Unless, you want that of course.
5) Crone Hellbron (until she is confederated) will spawn blood armies that will hunt you the player down. It is likely only to be 1 or 2 in total before she starts kissing someone else's blood slick boots, but caution or eradication is advised to reduce the enemy's number of immortal generals.

[sewnutty]

I recommend getting Shades with Greatweapons (i'm kidding unless in Co-op).
You make a few good pointers, but i disagree on the usefulness of the Aesanar Camps mostly due to them taking up valuable land that could be better utilized. Unless the Aesanar Camp in question is on the frontline against a difficult enemy or in a dedicated military province it honestly is just a waste of gold when you could build more trinkets to help your poor, poor income.
Some general pointers from my end:
1) When scouting trade partners Confederate Tyrion with influence ASAP he will consume all said trade partners as an AI. His towns being safe money havens are icing on the cake.
2) All elven trade partners should be vassalized via influence to double dip into their treasuries. On Legendary, this could net you a few grand potentially. It will also stop some diplomacy BS from the AI due to vassal restrictions.

[DomasTheft]

This is fairly detailed and well explained. Maybe i should try this lonely elven edge lord.