Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Zhao Ming - Grand Cathay 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 Zhao Ming of Grand Cathay.

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

Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Zhao Ming - Grand Cathay 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/Tb-erzINI34

If you prefer to read:

VICTORY CONDITIONS:

Short victory:

- Destroy the faction of the Dissenter Lords of Jinhsen
- Maintain control of three nearby provinces;
- Occupy, loot, raze or sack 30 different settlements.

The reward is +3 hero capacity for all heroes; since you only have 2 heroes, it is not as impactful, but it will allow you to have more heroes in your armies or scouts without spending too much on buildings.

This is a very straightforward and easy campaign to do, a good recommended one for new players to become aware of how the factions works out.

Long victory:

- Achieve the short victory;
- Occupy, loot, raze or sack 70 different settlements;
- Destroy several factions, including the Puppets of Misrule (Vilitch), Heralds of the Tempest (Kholek), The Blessed Dread (Lohkir), and Clan Eshin (Snikch).
- Maintain control of the 3 bastion provinces (either directly or via vassals/allies).

The reward is +10 hero recruitment rank, very decent to ensure they are stronger right out of the gate, as always, in order to proceed into domination.

A much longer campaign, requiring you to expand into most of Cathay while getting rid of several major factions. You will have to fight different races, so it may take quite sometime.

Zhao Ming is the ruler of the Western Provinces, and has the following benefits:

+20% max cargo for caravans;
Hero recruit rank +5 for Alchemists;
Upkeep -25% for Ogre Mercenary units;
Armor +15 for Melee units.

Overall, good buffs focused more on the melee part and the alchemists, and it is a nice change from the focus from Miao Ying.

Climate is quite average to bad. To obtain your objectives you will likely have to go into uninhabitable terrain. It is not the easiest faction to dominate the whole map with, since most regions are actually unpleasant or uninhabitable.

STARTING LOCATION:


Your starting location is a 3 settlement province, and you are nearly in the middle of things. Very difficult to defend from all sides, so you will need some alliances and treaties to be safe for a while.

Typical expansion is to go into the north or to the east, controlling all of Cathay. You may also go into the mountains, but those are unpleasant terrain, so be wary. Beyond the bastion is uninhabitable and chaos, so you may wish to just focus on other locations before, but it is up to you.

You always have the choice of going to the sea regions and to the sea lanes later in the midgame, for a different experience.

The Bastion is more of a Miao Ying problem, but for certain you need to keep an eye on it as well.

DIPLOMACY AND OUTPOSTS:

Diplomatically, you are part of the order tide. Empire, Dwarfs, High Elves, Bretonnia, all may become your friends. Goldtooth of the Ogre Kingdoms has good history with you and will be a nice addition to your friends list, to ensure nothing comes out from the mountains for sometime.

Enemies will be anything truly evil, chaos, dark elves, skaven, beastmen, norsca, ogres, greenskins... Nurgle and Nakai are close and may cause problems, as well as the Vampire Counts. There is a lot of variety of races nearby, so lots of different possibilities and campaigns may happen. Proceed with caution, and adapt to whoever gets ahead.

Outposts should perhaps focus on anything bringing in cavalry or monstrous infantry, for example, Ogres, Empire, Kislev are good examples of it.


MECHANICS OF THE RACE AND FACTION:

Yin and Yang. Get used to those terms, you will see them everywhere. The harmony mechanic is one of the most interesting in the game, it forces you to balance out nearly every aspect of the game. Buildings, technology, characters, and even events. There is not just one way to do this, but your focus should be at the end of every turn to try and predict how your faction will be next turn, and rearrange things.

There are good bonuses for being perfectly balanced, but even when a bit towards Yang or Yin you already have some nice decent benefits.

The ivory road, or the caravan mechanic, is used for some good-old fashioned gold. It is also nice to get some events going and learn about distant lands; it may fall under attack, though, so be wary of its pathing.

The Bastion is quite interesting, although it may yet become obsolete soon. It will spawn some enemies to attack the wall over time, but at least for sometime it will be Miao Ying's problem. Just be on the lookout for the obvious moment where you may have to intervene to help her out.

The compass is basically a set of buffs you can choose for a specific duration. While you redirect towards one area, the other areas lose their focus. These are mainly:

1 - Replenishment rate and supplies;
2 - Growth and income;
3 - Corruption decrease and enemy leadership reduction;
4 - Control and the extreme attrition to enemies beyond the wall;
Keep an eye out for which ones will be more necessary in accordance to the current situation.

Small note for how Yin and Yang works in armies. All units are either one or the other, and benefit from the presence of someone from the other alignment. This implies a full stack of only Yin or Yang units may not be as useful as having mixed units, so have that in mind (of course, always up to you)

PROVINCE EDICTS AND ARMY STANCES:

Edicts:

Control +4 and reduced chance for a plague spreading -40%;
Research rate +7%
Enemy move range debuff -20%, corruption debuff -5, melee defence buff +5;
Income from trade tariffs factionwide +5%;
Recruitment cost -5% and local recruit capacity increased +1.

Overall, lacking a growth one but having a good research rate edict is always nice.

Army stances:

Channeling for 10% movement;
Encamp for 50% movement, enables replenishment and global recruitment, immune to most attrition;
Raiding for 50% movement, immune to most attrition;
Ambush for 25% movement;
Forced march.

Very standard ones, wish they would have different army stances in accordance to yin-yang. Special note once more to the research edict. Pop a few whenever you have an important research and always ensure that it actually lowers the amount of turns (otherwise it is rather wasted).

Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Zhao Ming - Grand Cathay campaign overview, guide and second thoughts (continuation)

BUILDINGS AND RESEARCH:


No special buildings in your initial province.

Full military requires 6 buildings, with 5 that need to be in the capital. At tier 3 you have moderate armies that are decent with research, but it is fairly important you reach tier 4 and 5, for celestial units and single entities for example.

Infrastructure follows the Yin-Yang principle, so you will be required to at least plan it out well in the beginning.

For Yang you have:

1 - Growth +30 and reduced construction costs -6%;
2 - Income +300;
3 - Control +5 and extra +6 ranks for peasant spears and archers;

For Yin you have:

1 - Growth +30 and income from all buildings +6%;
2 - Income +250 and income from trade +6%;
3 - Control +3 , replenishment rate +9%, and recruit cost severely reduced for peasant spears and archers -80%.

Be mindful of how this changes your balance during the course of the campaign. The good thing is that they are just slightly different from one another, which should help you have good decisions overall.

Research is quite amazing, turning the low peasants into solid units by the endgame. I will not show too many in the army compositions, but you will be surprised how even low level peasants with full buffs can do against good enemies.

Research also follows Yin-Yang, so be wary of where you are going to be at in terms of balance once you complete the research. You can always stop it and resume whenever necessary, remember.

LORDS, SKILLS, ARMY COMPOSITIONS:

Zhao Ming is all about the melee focus, so your frontline and melee units will be far stronger than when in other armies.

Redline is surprisingly expensive considering how small the roster is. It is good to spend some time deciding which units you will be buffing up beforehand. They are mostly divided into categories, all infantry, all missiles, so the good side is you can invest early and have the advantage of just upgrading the troops while benefitting from the same skill point.


The blue line may prove expensive too, as it lacks anything really interesting in the initial part, and the second part has replenishment and reduced upkeep. You may wish to go for reduced attrition if you plan on a campaign into uninhabitable chaos wastes, for example.

The Lord magistrates have interesting abilities to use, while your caster lords have different lores of magic who are all useful. There is no replenishment hero, sadly, which implies it may be difficult to overcome any losses after battle.

For army comps, Zhao Ming himself buffs every melee unit, so here are some possibilities that still include missile units for the overall Yin/Yang buff too.


One idea is to use the flying missile units to be able to enjoy the buffs, or the more mobile Xbowmen; notice how expensive it is to even buff just a few units (yellow number below)

In terms of other compositions, nothing wrong with some Jade Warriors, I just included one army since likely you will want to upgrade those to celestial dragon units whenever possible.


Remember, though, that low peasant units will become very powerful. You can definitely have sweeper armies with peasant or jade based units just to engage minor enemies, while your strongest are facing off the true elites.

FINAL NOTES:

The faction has an amazing potential in terms of synergy. When everything is perfectly balanced, it feels amazing. Armies rely on other units to excel, which adds a bit of work in terms of maintaining formation.

Like the Miao Ying campaign, you have this distinct feel throughout the campaign that every action takes a part in the great plan, very good feeling, very addicting.
It is one of the most likely factions to be easy for a new player, but very hard to master. Build slowly, adapt, improve in time.

Unlike Miao Ying, thought, a focus on the south of Cathay and maybe using the sea lanes can provide a good replay value to this campaign. It is nice to focus on melee too for a change.

Your army consists of:

1 - Good holding infantry;
2 - Great missiles and artillery;
3 - Good flying units;
4 - Good single entities;
5 - Good magic users;
6 - Weak in anti-large outside of the infantry;

Replenishment is rather average, specially concerning climate. Engaging in adverse conditions will be tricky.

Still, I hope now you believe it to be a good time to play with Zhao Ming of Grand Cathay.