Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Karl Franz - Empire campaign overview, guide and second thoughts

Hello everyone. This is what I check out for when I wish to play a campaign, a very brief overview of what I believe will happen during the campaign, as well as my initial thoughts on matters such as diplomacy, expansion paths, army compositions, important skills for lords, etc.

In this specific one, I pick the Legendary Lord Karl Franz of the Empire.

Please do leave feedback and comment below, always keen to discuss the game with you guys.

Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Karl Franz - Empire campaign overview, guide and second thoughts

Hello everyone. In this guide I will cover:
- Victory conditions, faction and climate;
- Starting location;
- Diplomacy and outposts;
- Mechanics of the race and faction;
- Province edicts and army stances;
- Buildings and research;
- Lords and skills;
- Army compositions;
And give you my final notes on the specific faction. Hope you enjoy it.

https://youtu.be/Z8aO-ZJssCM



In case you prefer the transcript, here we go. I need to split it into two sections or it does not fit. Here is Victory conditions, faction, climate, starting location, diplomacy, and mechanics overview.


VICTORY CONDITIONS:

Short Victory:

Destroy the Empire Secessionists, The Barrow Legion (Heinrich Kemmler), Sylvania (Vlad von Carstein).
Occupy, loot, raze or sack 30 different settlements.

Reward is +3 hero capacity for all heroes. This is a nice way to ensure you continue to have heroes for your armies or for scouting purposes without having to worry in building their respective buildings everywhere to increase the limit.

Long victory:

Achieve the short victory;
Occupy, loot, raze or sack 70 different settlements;
Control all provinces of the empire either directly or vassals/military allies.

Reward is +10 hero recruit rank, nice to ensure that your heroes are always relevant. Particularly useful for caster heroes as it will ensure they have some spells right as you recruit them.

Both of these are quite brief. In the end of the long campaign you definitely have a solid base in order to continue your conquests into domination if you choose.

Karl Franz is the Heir of Sigmar, and benefits from:

Diplomatic relations with Empire;
Prestige +25% from battles;
Lord recruit rank +3;
Campaign move range +10%.

Overall some nice small buffs in each area, although I would say campaign move range is always a nice one to have, and diplomatic relations ensures a smoother early game.

Climate is average at best, suffering penalties in many terrain types. It is a rather difficult faction to dominate the map with, you should stick to the empire lands for sometime before going north or risk some replenishment, control, and costs problems.

STARTING LOCATION:

Initial province has 4 settlements, and it allows more options of which buildings to construct. Certainly a good hybrid economy/military province.

It is easy to conquer and very easy to hold on to. There are forts nearby that you should aim to control to maintain enemies at bay. Enemies will arrive from that direction, but also from the North and East. Be wary of anyone risking going through the forts while you stabilize the other fronts.
Typical expansion should go into East, North and West, mostly depending on enemies and the Elector Counts mechanic (more on that later). South is best to stop near the fort as well or risk overextending. Be mindful of going too far.

Back and forth will happen all the time. The more you expand the more enemies will show up, and it is a very large area to cover. Embrace that and fight through it for victory.

DIPLOMACY:
Part of the Order tide of Empire, Bretonnia, Dwarfs, High Elves, Kislev, Cathay. Embrace it, make friends with these factions, trade, help them versus their enemies, and get outposts from them.
Early enemies will be some Empire factions, Vampires, Beastmen, Festus. Later, Chaos and Norsca should arrive in force, and whatever endgame scenario you chose.

Best outposts are likely Dwarfs for heavy infantry and other missiles, High Elves and Bretonnia for air alternatives.(see image below)



MECHANICS:

Prestige is the unique currency, used to influence other empire factions towards or against other empire factions. This should not be overlooked, as it is a great way to ensure you can influence the others to shun a faction; then you can dive in to assist in a war or take their settlements without too much issue.

Imperial authority is something to keep an eye out while you expand. It will influence the other empire factions to either love you or hate you, giving you some rather poor buffs, or giving you some crazy debuffs. It is more important to control in order to avoid an early civil war. Mind you, mid to lategame this is most likely inevitable and you will probably even wish it, but timing is important.

Next we have the elector counts mechanic. Every state capital provides an assigned lord with specific buffs, an item, and elector count state troops. These are improved versions of your units. You may even wish to have an entire army composition based solely around those. Always remember to check if the lord you assigned to a specific state capital is taking optimal advantage of his buffs. NOTE: once you have all the state capitals, you can click the SUMMON THE ELECTOR COUNTS button, to make all state troops available to recruit.

Fealty is the degree of how liked you are with each Elector Count. Basically, keep developing diplomatic relations, and answer to the proper events to try and get specific ones to 10 - they will then offer to confederate, which is how you can do it.

The state troops themselves take some time to be added to the pool, but you can recruit them instantly. This may provide you with some tactical advantages to recruit someone in a hurry.

Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Karl Franz - Empire campaign overview, guide and second thoughts (part 2)

(continuation with Province edicts and army stances, buildings, research, lords, skills, army composition, and final notes)

PROVINCE EDICTS AND ARMY STANCES:

Edicts:

- Control +4;
- Enemy hero action success chance reduced -15%; chance of intercepting an army increased +25%; corruption decrease -2;
- Income from all buildings +5%;
- Recruit cost reduction -5% and local recruit capacity +1;
- Growth +20 and factionwide income from trade +5%;

It has pretty much the standards, I would love to have some research thrown in. Do not sleep on the chance of intercepting an army, specially if the Beastmen become an issue or if Wood Elves decided to come for you, it can help. In addition, for the forts you should have the growth and factionwide income to ensure you benefit from something there as they have no income.

Army stances:

- Channeling for winds of magic in exchange for 10% movement;
- Encamp for 50% move, attrition immunity, enables replenish and access to Global recruit pool. (and vs Beastmen and Skaven - ambush defense chance. One of the few defenses vs their pesky ambushes);
- Raiding for 50% move, immunity to most attrition;
- Ambush for 25% move;
- Forced march

The default stances, everything else seems done in variations of these. Very important to remember encamp whenever in any hostile territory to replenish and have a bit more defensive capabilities. Ambush is important to hide your army, not just try the ambush, luring the enemy into a bad position.

BUILDINGS, RESEARCH:

Altdorf has plenty of specific buildings, including castle reikguard to recruit reikguards and giving them some nice recruit bonuses, colleges of magic to recruit better battle wizards, and the imperial palace for some nice control factionwide, lord and hero recruit rank increase, and income for that province.

Military requires 7 military buildings, with 3 that are able to be built in minor settlements, including the armory. Your tier 3 units are decent, including all your missile infantry, cavalry, greatswords, but it is the tier 4 that makes the true power with the demigryph knights, cannons and helstorm batteries.

Wissenland will most likely become your artillery producing province due to its unique building; ensure you obtain it as you can.

Infrastructure:

1 - Growth and replenishment;
2 - Income;
3 - Control and hero unlock building;
4 - Campaign movement, growth, income from all buildings;

Very nice overall, allowing great flexibility. At least a bit of growth and income in the early game is important, while control is reserved likely for the higher difficulties unless you sack or loot frequently.

Research focuses on each aspect of the game, with many paths to choose, specially in terms of military. Focus cavalry, focus missiles or artillery, as you prefer for your playstyle.

Special attention to the diplomatic corps; these may result in different campaigns if you wish to try. I would recommend deciding one in specific to try for an alliance and some different outcomes.

Finally, there are a few that affect the Elector counts... by the time that they may be significant, the Empire lands may already be in your control, so perhaps it is not that useful, but up to you.

In general, focusing on anything that helps you build up income and your provinces is good, perhaps with a few improving specific units so you can get an edge in your early game.

LORDS, SKILLS:

Karl Franz is a great fighter, and his air mobility later on proves invaluable in an army without flying units.

Both the redline skills and blue line skills may prove expensive. Upkeep reduction and replenishment in the last part of the blue line, without anything remarkable in the first part.


Redline skills are quite expensive. It is rather difficult to have good compositions around them. You do have a nice Greatswords/Demigryphs skill line, which implies if you go for one, you might as well get the other units too.

Your heroes all have important embedded abilities, but the Warrior Priest provides replenishment and it is a great support hero, making him quite important for your armies in general. You have access to a lot of lores of magic, explore them and think of a specific composition around them and you should have a lot of variety in your armies too.

ARMY COMPOSITIONS (see below images):


I typically like to have a caster hero and a melee hero, but nothing wrong with having more or less, just ensure that you have a plan for it.
Karl Franz gives buffs to Reiksguard and Greatswords, so of course you can have those in specific compositions for him. You can always update those later on if you find some enemies being harder.


Then we have Huntsmen Generals who give buffs to Greatswords, Halberds, Spears, Archers and Huntsmen. Time to give him some different armies and see how well you can perform with those.


Finally, I give you some basic compositions and some atypical ones to just try for some fun. Note how expensive it is in terms of redline skills, specially when you try to create variety. These secondary armies should be used perhaps as sweeper armies, as I like to call them: those that are used to take minor settlements and against smaller enemy armies, while the more elite armies deal with any massive elite stacks from the enemy.

FINAL CONCLUSION:

Karl Franz made me realize how interesting the whole faction is. Army composition around great cavalry and missiles with average infantry, lacking single entities, but fun to use and deploy. You always need a plan, something that feels rewarding when you pull off, of course.

The early game is quite a pain. Plenty of enemies and the Elector Counts can barely defend themselves. The main issue is that the Elector Counts mechanic is most likely going to be over at one point if you take over the Empire lands, which is bound to happen. Should be noted that the debuffs from that mechanic disappear if they go into civil war, which means you may want to time the last of the Elector Counts being destroyed by then.

Replay value is however quite high even if just because of the sheer amount of possibilities in terms of enemies. Everyone appears to aim for the Empire, making it a ground for battle.

Your army consists of:

1 - Average infantry;
2 - Great missiles and artillery;
3 - Great cavalry;
4 - No single entities;
5 - Lacks flying;

Replenishment is good, but climate is a pain. A difficult campaign to go into domination, but certainly a fun one with all the army possibilities, outposts, and magic.

Disclaimer: In terms of the armies, I typically set one melee hero and one caster hero; you can choose any lore of magic you prefer, and any combination of heroes, be it Warrior Priests for support, Captain for a melee fighter vs enemy single entities, etc. Just make sure you have a reason you are following for it, and all is well.

In addition, nothing wrong with you going into 19 helstorm batteries, whatever is fun for you 😉. I just like to create different army compositions using nearly the whole roster.

Time to summon the elector counts once more!

[SusaVile]

A bit, but the rework has changed this quite significantly, he is much better to play now.

[Ciaran Zagami]

Karl sucks so bad because the death of all your crappy minor faction neighbours hurts your growth and control for some stupid reason

you just watch other people die and take penalties on their behalf

[CapN'Brunch]

Yeah the ai seems crazy aggressive toward Franz in particular. Literally have factions beeline their doomstacks towards reikland while other factions are conquering their territory.

[SusaVile]

@capN'Brunch true; I often recommend other campaigns for someone starting up. Tyrion, any Cathay campaign, Malekith, Grimgor, Thorgrim are much better overall in terms of challenge and how it eases up the person into the game.

[CapN'Brunch]

I dont know why its a recommended campaign. Tyrion i understand its a decently easy campaign. Franz though....

[SusaVile]

No worries, feedback is always welcome. Glad to hear you are enjoying and it is being useful. I am likely to have a specific one on Volkmar in like a week or so too.

[DarkArlin]

Thank you. I apologize for my previous asshole comment as well. Your guide has helped immensely with learning to play Empire, especially my first Volkmar campaign I've been struggling through. :)

[SusaVile]

There, @DarkArlin, hope it is better. Some brief overview with added information, if you have any specific questions let me know.

[SusaVile]

Sure, @DarkArlin. I always thought the other way around, people would prefer on video; I actually have these on Facebook already posted. Give me a second and I will copy it from there, and let me know if you prefer it that way.

[DarkArlin]

Not watching a video when I clicked a post to read. Can I get the subtitled transcription at the very least?