Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Orion - Wood Elves 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 Orion of the Wood Elves.

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

Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Orion - Wood Elves 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.

If you prefer to watch the video, it also supports me:

https://youtu.be/FGsI1O8RUkI

If you prefer to read:

VICTORY CONDITIONS:

Short victory:

- Complete the Ritual of Rebirth in Athel Loren;
- Occupy, loot, raze or sack 30 different settlements;

Reward is hero capacity +3; this helps ensure you can have heroes early to midgame without having to spend too much on buildings for hero capacity, or to have some scouts available.

This is still a pretty lengthy campaign, as we will see when speaking of mechanics.

Long victory:

- Achieve the short victory;
- Occupy, loot, raze or sack 70 different settlements;
- Win the Defence of the Oak battle
- Perform the Ritual of Rebirth;
- Perform 8 rituals of the Worldroots Healing.

Reward is +10 hero recruit rank, which helps ensure your heroes, specially casters, are great right as you recruit them.

This is quite a long battle, the 8 rituals will take quite a long time, but it is definitely a fun experience.

Orion is the God-King of Athel Loren, and he enjoys the following benefits:

- He enables the Wild Hunt event. (more later);
- Upkeep cost -8% for Orion's army for each active war;
-Upkeep cost -4% for all other armies for each active war;
-Campaign movement range +50% in Worldroots stance;

These are quite crazy unique buffs. Orion has the potential to have 0% upkeep, and being able to keep it that way for quite a long time (or until it is no longer a problem). Adding to it, everything screams "aggressive/expansionist" with Orion, more movement, the Wild Hunt... Just join Khorne and thrive in war 😉

Climate is excellent, as there are no penalties anywhere; it is only overshadowed by the fact that there is little interest in owning places that are not in forest areas, but more on that later.

STARTING LOCATION:


While it may appear you start in the middle of the map, Athel Loren is quite unique and it is one of the most defensible locations in the Warhammer World. Mainly, the attrition alone makes it really hard for any invaders to try.

Typical expansion routes are... different. Initially, of course, you may wish to cleanse the area around the first tree. But after that point, it is really up to you. Where you wish to travel and clean trees... it is up to you, and one of the reasons why Wood Elves feel so unique.

You can always capture settlements outside of the Woods, but they are not as productive. Friends and foes will be influenced by how you proceed on the campaign map.

DIPLOMACY:

You are quite Order oriented, but you are most likely going to have to fight them eventually. Wood Elves are sort of on their own, and can be hated by everyone else, so be careful.

Still, if you choose to engage in diplomacy, good outpost opportunities with Dwarfs, Empire, and Bretonnia would be nice. Great Artillery and cavalry units will definitely make your already powerful armies awesome.


MECHANICS OF THE RACE AND FACTION:


Wild Hunt. This is a unique event to Orion, which gives:

1 - Better bonuses for Lords in offices;
2 - campaign movement range +25% after razing a settlement;
3 - Cooldown -10 for Deeproots teleportation (try to use it while the Hunt is on!);
4 - Speed, melee attack, and charge bonus for Orion.
In essence, Orion's faction works amazing as an aggressive faction during the hunt. You should definitely take advantage of it whenever it is available.

Trees. Everything is based around the magical forests. You will need to control everything around them in order to heal them, regardless of who owns the territory (which creates the difficulty in diplomacy overall); Once you accumulate 100 forest health, you can begin the Ritual of Rebirth (500 in Athel Loren). Defend the region, and you get amazing rewards.

The Rituals of Rebirth give you powerful rewards, all different from forest to forest. Check them out in the early game to see what you desire for your faction, choose wisely and you will be able to steamroll everyone easily. Most of them also have diplomatic bonuses with some factions, so you can steer into different alliances and possibilities as you wish.

Deeproots allow you some amazing replay value. You can teleport to other forests, and thus, choose where you wish to focus your campaign and steer your actions towards those locations. You have a cooldown with this teleport action between trees, so plan wisely on who you send.

Amber is tied to technologies. Heal a forest and you can invest in a specific technology, very straightforward.

Offices provide mostly specific army or lord buffs, which allows you some interesting army compositions later on.

You are one of the few factions that can build the Shrine to yield the Sword of Khaine (although anyone can gain it via combat, I like to thematically consider them for it). It is a very interesting campaign when you decide to do it, and go against everyone.

Ariel is a specific Legendary Hero that you can obtain and who is definitely similar to Lord Kroak, you put her in any army and she will do wonders.

Quick note on the mechanics: Synergy. Spend your time checking for synergies, and it is well spent. Say you travel first to the Witchwood, and you heal that forest and build the Temple of Anath Raema. Now you have +10% missile strength in all armies. You research Wisdom of the Ash with the Amber you got there and you have +35% ammo in all armies.

Your lords have "Rain of Spines" skill for +8% reload time reduction, and "Obscuring Canopy" for ambush chance and Missile Strength +10% during ambushes to your army... you see the idea? Add that to redline skills and other buffs and your armies are the envy of anyone. More for you to discover.

PROVINCE EDICTS AND ARMY STANCES:

You do not have province edicts. You already have quite good bonuses really with the trees and rituals of rebirth, so don't worry. You can also consider the minor settlement buildings sort of edict-based, more on that later.

Army stances:

Worldroots is similar to other underground stuff, but you benefit from Orion giving it quite a long range.
Encamp costs 50% movement and enables replenishment as well as global recruit and immune to attrition;
Raiding costs 50% movement and immunity to attrition;
Ambush costs 10% movement (!) and you also have a reduced chance of being detected by enemies (note: ambush detection is not the same as ambush chance)
Forced march;

Overall this is quite thematic. Wood Elves are encouraged to safeguard their forests, and are known for being great at ambushes. It is definitely quite a nice playstyle to go for.

Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Orion - Wood Elves campaign overview, guide and second thoughts (continuation)

BUILDINGS, RESEARCH:


Outside of the trees you have almost nothing; some buildings that help you around the provinces, and act kinda like edicts, if you think about it. It is mostly good for fast growth.

Your settlements also have no walls. They have lots of building slots.

You need 5 (6 with casters) military buildings. All fairly easy to build in one province, and you do require an armory for some units.

All your main provinces will be very powerful. Expensive, but profitable later.

Infrastructure:

1 - Income, resource, growth and replenishment;
2 - Income (lots) and resource;
3 - Income, resources, control and growth (all provinces).

Overall, note how the buildings are great because you will not have a lot of them overall. Plan wisely which ones you get first as they will have quite an influence in your overall campaign.

Research is quite good, and it has the nice idea that you need Amber for some powerful techs that can shift the entire playthrough. Therefore, careful planning can give you tons of synergy.

LORDS, SKILLS:

Blue line has 15% replenishment(!). Definitely overlooked by CA, so try it before they nerf it (others have 6%!);

Upkeep reduction as well in the blue line, as if Orion's buff was not enough 😉

Redline appears to have mostly a division between Elves and Trees. There are good combos with both, but it is rather expensive overall.

4 Heroes, with Branchwraiths giving replenishment. All heroes are very powerful and provide specific bonuses to some units in your armies, such as Waystalkers giving base missile damage.

ARMY COMPOSITIONS (see images below):

Redline skills have all missile units in just one, and there is a division between elite infantry and trees. It is not the best in terms of effectiveness, though.


Orion gives bonuses to cavalry and the basic reduced reload speed, so some combinations on more cavalry units or more missile based are all possible. He has an interesting ambush focused idea with just cavalry that may prove quite fun (although terrible in sieges);


He can also have Guardian ability when Ariel is in his army, but I would refrain from that since Ariel can make any normal lord and army shine as well.

The Ancient Treeman has skills that give tremendous value to tree kin, so of course some compositions with those are in order.


Finally, I showcase some basic sweeper armies as well as some nice ideas for base armies. Notice the lack of effectiveness of the redline skill distribution as you may have to spend a lot of skill points to buff every unit.


Remember, as always, that Outposts can greatly change these armies too, and you should definitely try out some nice compositions based on those (like heavy cav or artillery).

FINAL NOTES:

One of the most interesting campaigns for certain. You do not get an empire in the same sense of other factions, and fighting in different places at the same time gives this faction and campaign a huge replay value.
Orion specifically you can get amazing low or 0 upkeep, so try it out and see what happens.
In addition, the synergy potential that I mentioned above is great, and gives you the feeling of having a nice plan that totally rewards you, which is something I personally love.

Your army consists of:

1 - Good infantry;
2 - Great missiles;
3 - Good cavalry;
4 - Good monstrous infantry and single entities;
5 - Decent flyers;
6 - Lacks artillery;
7 - May be micro intensive;

Replenishment is good, plus the climate helps a lot. One of the easiest factions to keep fighting and going. So now, yes, time to follow Orion into his next Wild Hunt!

Let me know your thoughts, as always, thank you!

[Diaz Ex Machina]

Thank you very much, you're doing a wonderful job

[SusaVile]

At the time I was not making specific armies for the secondary lords; now I have a few.
Glade lords do not really add much in terms of specific army buffs though, just the basics that every lord gives.

Here are my updated 6.0 army composition ideas:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12AKC8tcegVSbBtILFHWR62a2_J7fuNxV

[Diaz Ex Machina]

No Glade Lord armies? Are they that bad as Lords?

[SusaVile]

thanks guys

[Aspect]

Well organized and very informative, great guide

[jonassa]

Thanks for the guide, it's very helpful