Total War: Warhammer - Overall Guide

Everything you need to know about Total War: Warhammer

Introduction

Thanks for taking the time to read this introduction to the Total War: Warhammer Overall Guide. In this guide you will learn a lot about the game mechanics, lore and will learn some usefull tricks for battles. Multiplayer sections will be included at a later date, same with modding sections. If anyone wants to help contirbute then you can ask and prove you know what you're talking about with either previous guides or modding work.

I hope you have questions and suggestions for new sections, if you want to know how to complete specific achievements then please asks in the comments, we will answer there (so the guide doesn't get stupidly large!) and if you wish to support fther guides by us then suggest othe rguides we could make, favorite this guide and give it a rate up. Lets try to get this guide to the number one spot!

I hope you enjoy this guide and that you are ready for WAGGGHH!

Is it worth the buy?

Jeez where do I start? I personally am not the best fan of the game, but I do realise I bought it and I'm stuck with it. I was expecting more from the release as everyone said it was better in graphics and ran smoother on release than any other Total War game to date. Now I suffered from lag and poor graphics (however I have made some improvements to these issues).


There are actually some very good upsides to this new Total War release, such as...

• Very exceptional voice acting, you will be scared the first time you end the turn as a Vampire Count and hear "Are you ready...?" or something like that being said in a whispering Dark Brotherhood style door voice. Units make some great comments and the campaign voice acting has some vareity.
  
  
• Great factions all round. I love Dwarves from my favourite author Markus Heitzs and his "The Dwarves" book series (favorite this if you know the book!) so for me I loved seing a visual representation of my favorite race. I also love Vampire Counts as nothing reminds me more of "The end is nigh" than a horde of decaying, rotten flesh!
  
  
• Great tech tree, honestly you will love the tech tree in this, it is the most complex one they have done to date! (That is for the Vampire Counts, the Greenskins have nearl no variety in tech tree, Dwarves have a little of a tech tree and Humans have a restricted one, meaning you need advanced buildings).
  
  
• Great Roleplay potential - If you are like me you will like to roleplay as these WarHammer factions, doing what they would do and generally let your Dwarven race stay to themselves in their mountains and let the turns go by. The best thing is the game doesn't penalise you for this, it actually endorses it by adding regional occupation, which means you can't "paint the map". Now the devs realised his wouldn't be everyones cup of tea so they did allow that to be removed by modders so don't worry.
  
  
• Great modding community - Like in every Total War Game there is out there a great Community for the game. Total War Warhammer is no exception, and I don't mean this because I'm technically a community contributor. So buckle down, watch the videos, broadcasts, stare at the screenshots, read the guides and enjoy the talk!
  
  
• Feeling of approaching doom - I don't know why but in WarHammer you really get this feel of doom coming over the land. Continous war destroys the might of nations, Chaos hordes harass the good men of the North, Vampires Counts spread their curse across the lands, Greenskins amass their hordes in the South East, ready to march on the Dwarves for the second time.

Yet to every Total War Game there is some weaknesses -

• Poor Graphics - For me alone I think this is, I know my computer can handle it but it doesn't seem to affect the poor graphics. I have done what I can be bothered to do, I'm content so don't try to give advice, I'm done trying, I just want to sit back and enjoy this game!
  [For those who have great computer specs, the graphics are incredible though]
  
  
• Same old auto-resolve form mid game - This has always been an issue of mine, my experiance is limited because the game becomes so easy to steamroll the map I just Auto-resolve, missing all the fun, which means I finish a campaign halfway through conquering the map.
  
  
• Glitches! Oh my god they can ruin your fun! I was playing a Dwarf battle and my Dwarves had no feet, the Orcs I was fighting only had heads, the rest of their bodies were hidden under gorund because they couldn't adjust to the slight hill they had moved up onto.... Flipping hate glitches.
  
  
• Why Yorkshire? Those bloody Dwarves remind me of Yorkshire and I hate it. Ever seen game of Thrones and thought "Doesn't Sean Bean sound Yorkshire?" or watched Pixels and thought "Why do Londeners sound like they can't speak English?" well these Dwarves sound SO Yorkshire you'll hate it, you'll hate them and you'll never open negotiations with them because of their Yorkshire accent making them unable to sound English.
  
  
• No confederations for Vamps - Okay, why? Why do Vampires hate unity that badly? The Southern Vampires from the Vampire Counts LOVE you, so why do CA want to make you seperate form each other?

Note: These are hit and miss for a lot of people, some people get them constantly, some of them never get them at all. Some of our authors got amazing graphics and cool visuals, without any glitches at all. Others of us have had our games riddled with them, and there does not appear to be a pattern to whether or not you'll get them.

What faction is best for my level?

New to strategy: Vampire Counts - These blood sucking Vamps sadly don't include any Vlad or hot female actresses like in the film Vamps. However you do get a lot of new troops every turn that require no waiting to recruit. You also get some pretty badass units later on. Your growth is just stupidly good, you're Vampiric Corruption is high no matter what, it never seems to lower and even though EVEYRONE HATES YOU, you will still do a pretty good job of defeating them. You can't confederate and there is only two other Vampiric contenders so you won't need to learn how to confederate.


New to total war: Dwarves - These little bearded freaks of nature are simple in their needs. Kill Greenskins and reclaim their lands from the same creatures they wish to kill. Their troops are heavy infantry with a variety of long distance crossbowmen and artillery. Your starting army is enough to retake the Silver Roads with ease. You won't find youself struggling with coin at the start, even on hard, but you will find yourself coming into contact with enough large Orc armies for me to call this a difficulty level of: New to Total War


Intermidiate: Empire - They are the most similar to historical armies of previous total war. Capable of fielding a very diverseforce, let it be made of footmen, cavalry, missile troops, missile cavalry, siege weapons, their strength lies in their ability to play a lot of different strategies. Your starting position is a bit difficult, as you're surrounded by potentiel enemies, but your victory conditions are relatively easy : protect the empire at all cost. The empire states will join you in your struggle against chaos when the situation become desesperate, so you actually don't need to conquer them to win. Wiping out vampire counts and chaos should be relatively easy, provided you managed to still have an Empire with you !


Hard: Greenskins - Yes Greenskins might actually be considered hard as you are playing a small force of barbarian creatures that EVERYONE HATES, yeah surprisingly devestating the Old World, killing dozens of thousands of Humans and Dwarves leads to them hating you. You have the Red Fangs, Top Notzs and Dwarves on every side of you, the Dwarves with their axes and the other Greenskin with their WAAAGHH. You have poor technology and poor economies because... Well you're Greenskin.


You're just crazy hard: Chaos - These chaotic creatures that like to make you an angry hateful creature (we arn't talking about children here) are the hardest faction in the game according to the faction choosing screen. Their units are powerful , they strike fear into all their enemies hearts and you'll want to wet yourself with a barrel of water when you see them. They start off as a horde in the Nordic provinces of the North, ready to lay waste to the Human lands. Defeat your weakened foes, traverse enemy lands and choose who to defeat next!

Lore: Vampires

They Vampire Counts date back to the times of beginning for the Vampires. They were around 2 and a half thousand years before the rise of Sigmar, and will be around for much longer than the imperial monarchs. This evil lurked in the desert wastes, a place called Nehekhara, their home. Many settlements dotted the landscape around this place.



The Von Carstein has always been the head of the Vampire Counts, dating back to Vlad Von Carstein, who definitely is not Vlad the Impaler or Dracula.


Settra, aking of one of the cities in the region, considered himself all powerful, he conquered the lands of the other cities and said he would cheat death, this mad king had made the whole region obsessed with finding a way to cheat death, causing, ironically, Necropolis to show up in various areas around the region.


He got his desire, a couple of extra, fleeting years of existence. Eventually, he died, and was placed in a great pyramid. It was now that the first Vampire was born, Nagesh. He desired to learn as much as possible about Death magic, inevitably leading to his own undead existence.


Another big name is Queen Naferetum, the first of the Vampires (baring Nagesh). She was tasked by Nagash to corrupt the minds of the innocents in the main region while Nagesh went to deal with wars in foreign countries, against Dark Elves.

-Nefertum normally
- During battle on the side of Nagesh

When the Vampires became prominent in the surrounding provinces there was strife among them. Nagesh and his wrath drove the surviving vampires away from their homes, and into the bellows of the old world.


Vlad came around much later, he was born a happy man, but like all Vampires, he suffered a disease. This desease didn’t just kill him, take away his soul and make him immortal, it made him mad, arrogant and selfish.



It was now that the Vampire Counts declared war on the Empire of Man, aiming straight for Sigmar's Throne. It is evident that the Vampire Counts failed in their ambition, but they struck a mighty blow to the kingdom of man.


It is why the mortal humans dreaded a second coming of the Vampire menace. This fear bore fruit when Konrad Von Carstein brought about a second Vampire War. Yet again the humans repelled the Vampires, but at a high price.



And now here we are. The third Vampire war is on the rise, Mannfred Von Carstein knows of the Imperial weakness, he knows they are divided and he will strike at the heart of Sigmar's Throne! He will not sleep, he needs no sleep! He will not eat, he needs no food! He is undead… His power will crush all….

Lore: Greenskins (Orcs)

Greenskins, what does that mean? Where did the term come from?


Well the term is used by all civilised Warhammer civilisation, such as Dwarfs, Humans and Vampire Counts. It is a collective term that is used to represent Orcs, Goblins and other green menaces to civilisation.

They are extremely primitive in their workings and are renowned for their warrior like attitude. They violently slaughter innocents and lay waste to foreign lands for no other reason than the delight they gain from death and destruction.

However this delight we gain from warfare has led to a division within our mighty race. We fight among ourselves like rats, like all menaces to civilisation. We show no organisation like the hordes of Chaos. Due to this division it is unlikely we will ever reach our potential of sweeping over the foreign lands in a tide of Green slaughter.

The time Our people arrived is unknown, it is believed to be pre-history, the only way us "accidents" are believed to of come around is by a mistake of one of the “Old Ones”. The first time we actually even hear about about ourselves in books is during the time of the Dwarven Golden Age, shortly before their Catastrophe known as the Time of Woes.

It was at the Time of Woes that the our kind had occupied a large swath of land Southeast of of our Campaign map in Total War: Warhammer. We attacked the once mighty Dwarves from below and above, reigning death and destruction on a still proud race.

This was known as the Goblin Wars, from 1449 c - 250c. Our Goblin allies were most numerous during this time and therefor our Dwarven and Human foes thought it an appropriate name.
But let’s get this out there… That was a long bloody war. Also, I understand why Thorgrim Grudgebearer has the Greenskins in his book!

The large mountains of the Dwarves was believed to be a barrier between the evil of the Greenskins and the civilisations of the Humans. However when our hordes of Greenskins smashed through the Dwarven defenses the War on Humanity began, 250 c - 1 c.

It was now that the Dwarves and Humans allied and trade began to flourish. However the Humans were not unified and as a resultedly, they could not put up a valiant enough effort to turn the tide of war in their favour (bloody humans can’t do anything right!). It was also the time iron works were introduced to Humans.

When all hope for the Humans seemed gone a leader arose and unified the pitiful humans on a mighty resurgence of power. This man was known as Sigmar Heldenhammer and threw him the tides evened out in this endless conflict that ended in 1c.

Once there was a situation where a Greenskin army bigger than your wildest imagination captured the Dwarf king while he was going to meet the Human king. It was HeldenHammer who saved him.

The most famous battle between our kind and Humans though is Black Fire Pass, where Lord Sigmar arrived just in time to save the day, entered single combat with the our warlord and when the our Warlord was defeated after four straight hours of constant battle the Orc army fled.

The defeat of the our army at Black Fire Pass was the turning point towards victory. The Humans were united, liberated even from the scourge of the Greenskins. The Dwarves were left in peace and times prospered.


However there is a resurgence in the Greenskin armies… Armies are being amassed and Waaaghhh comes towards Humanity and the Dwarves yet again!

This is where our story begins...

Lore: Humans / Empire

Of the Human nations of the Old World, the most important by far is that of the Empire of Man, more often called simply The Empire, forged by the warrior-king and ascended deity Sigmar from the primitive Human tribes of barbarians who inhabited what became the lands of the southern Empire more than 2500 years ago. Although not as skilled in craftsmanship as the Dwarfs or in magic as the High Elves, the people of the Empire are not beholden by the limits of tradition to the same extent as the Dwarfs or High Elves and continue to progress culturally, technologically and magically. Having yet to succumb to any threat, external or internal, it is the faith, the sense of righteousness, and the unconquerable spirit of its citizens which gives the Empire its strength, as well as the ruthless efficiency of its military and religious orders.


The greatest nation of the Old World, the Empire of Man is ruled by an Emperor and is composed of the descendants of the ancient tribes of Mankind united by the great Human warrior Sigmar Heldenhammer after the Battle of Black Fire Pass. Sigmar was deified after his death by his people and his promise of eternal aid from the Empire for the kingdoms of the Dwarfs still stands today. This action solidified the relationship between Men and Dwarfs and planted the seeds for the burgeoning Empire through trade between the two races. Today, the Empire is led by Emperor Karl Franz I, who rules from his court in the Imperial capital city of Altdorf.

There are ten provincial states in the Empire, each ultimately ruled by an Elector Count who owes his or her power to the unifying figurehead and ultimate authority of the Emperor. It should be noted that the Empire is not truly a single, centralized nation-state, but instead a confederation of individual, feudal states united only by the common tongue of Reikspeil, a shared faith in Sigmar and a mutual Imperial culture. The Imperial states correspond roughly to the ancient tribal territories brought together by Sigmar when he united the tribes of Man beneath one crown to defeat the Greenskins of the Old World.


The southern Imperial states - Averland, Reikland, Stirland, Talabecland and Wissenland - resemble a broad chalice, partially surrounded by near-impassable mountain ranges from which drain the mighty rivers which are the lifeblood of Imperial trade. To the west of these are the Grey Mountains, beyond which lies the Kingdom of Bretonnia and the Wood Elves' magical forest of Athel Loren. To the south are the inhospitable Black Mountains and to the east the World's Edge Mountains that mark the eastern extent of the Old World.

To the north, the rolling hills and rapid streams of the south and east are gradually transformed into the forested lowlands and deep waterways that define the heart of the Empire. The vast forests that comprise the central and northern Imperial lands stretch almost unbroken across the countless leagues from the state of Reikland to the northern border with Kislev and the shore of the Sea of Claws. The Great Forest, Drakwald Forest and the Forest of Shadows are all essentially part of the same dark, untamed wilderness, with the green blanket of trees punctured only by the abrupt mountain range known as the Middle Mountains. These lands are divided into the northern Imperial states - Hochland, Ostermark, Ostland, Middenland and Nordland. The inhabitants of these northern states generally have to deal with much greater hardships and military threats than those of the more civilized south, being that much closer to the daemons, Beastmen and other dangers of the northern Chaos Wastes.

The life of a citizen of the Empire of Man is a perilous one, for there are foes within every shadow and enemies around every corner. Secret Chaos Cults abound, or at the very least, there are rumours of them running rampant, as well as the legendary rat-men that some call the Skaven. No one is certain who is trustworthy, and fear and paranoia are omnipresent in the isolated settlements that dot the Empire's provinces outside of the major Imperial cities.

Lore: Dwarves

Dwarves once lived in caves and fought for scraps of food in the southlands. Then, their ancestor gods rose up, decided life was pretty sucky, and taught dwarves the crafts of mining, farming, metal working, and rune magic. Then, finding that the south land's section of the World's Edge Mountains were not nearly as mineral rich as they might have liked, they lead their people north into the Old World, and settled in the mountains with more mineral wealth than the rest of the world combined.

Things were pretty awesome for a while, but everything changed when the Fire Natio- I mean Chaos attacked. The Dwarves had to bunker down, and then fight their way out of their own holds as demons invaded through the shattered gateways of the Old Ones at the poles of the world. Using crazy awesome rune magic, their own holds were basically anti-demon fallout shelters, and they could use their own armor and weapons to kill the demons and drive them out in what was more and more a set of phyrric victories over the unending waves of demons, until they reached the coast lines, and met up with the Elves, who told them the cause of all this.

Then one of the dwarven ancestor gods went north to kill as many demons as he could and try to stop them at the source. Nobody knows what happened to him, and it doesn't much matter, because the Elves, being Elves, managed to save the day by sucking all the excess magic in the world into a giant vortex that kept their island of not-atlantis from sinking into the ocean from the damage that the Demons had done to it. Even still, the dwarves remember this ancestor god, Griminir, through the tradition of Slayers, who likewise shave their heads to a single mohawk before going out to die trying to win against insurmountable odds and worthy foes.

The Dwarves entered into a golden age following this period, expanding to dominate the old world, but mostly ignoring everything that wasn't undergroud or in the foothills of their mountains. They drove out the Orks and Goblins that had inhabitted this part of the world, out right ignored the mutant beastmen in the forests between the Worlds Edge Mountains and the Grey Mountains, and all but forgot about the dwarves who lived north and east of the World's Edge Mountains who decided to begin worshipping chaos instead of fighting it.

The Dwarves would continue to rule like a bunch of badasses, until Dark Elves (a splinter of the Elves we mentioned before, who were High Elves) decided it would be hilarious if they started killing off dwarven trading caravans and making it look like the High Elves did it. The Dwarven High King of the time was a bro, and thought there might be something screwy, and so sent an Ambassador to the High Elves asking for reparations rather than an outright war. The High Elves, rather than explaining it was probably their ♥♥♥♥ cousins living in Not-Canada, beat the ambassador half to death, shaved his beard off, and sent him back with the message that they MIGHT consider it, if the Dwarven High King groveled before the High Elf king and begged for it.

The Dwarven High King was not amused, and recorded the worst grudge ever in the Great Book of Grudges, their oldest history book in which the slights against their entire race were recorded in the blood of the High Kings. The Dwarves proceeded to kick the asses of the High Elves so hard that the High Elves were driven entirely from the Old World, and their own King was killed, which the Dwarves felt was enough payback to nix the now 300 or so year old grudge.


This war was so draining on the Dwarves, that when a bunch of mutant ratmen, called Skaven, to the south of the Grey Mountains decided to set off a giant earthquake bomb to open up tunnels to allow their overpopulated race to expand from their warrens, the Dwarven Kingdom literally shattered to pieces. Further, volcanoes going off in the east and south obliterated the lands the Orks had been staying in, and drove them towards the old world, simultaneously driving Human Tribes before them. The Dwarves let the Humans pass through to live in the forests and low lands of the Old World, and fought a desparate battle of survival, every hold out of contact with the others mostly, against both skaven and greenskins, just to hold onto their lives.

It was a few hundred years after this that they began to reestablish contact with their other holds, and form trade between the World's Edge Mountains and the Grey Mountains, and this was the Silver Age of the Dwarves, because things were pretty slick. Their High King, however, got captured by Orks while traveling, and was rescued by a young human tribal prince known as Sigmar, whose bronze blade couldn't pierce the armor of the ork warboss, and came periously close to dying every time the flaming axe of the massive ork flew at him. So the High King broke free, and fought his way to the warboss' tent, where he picked up his super magical warhammer, and threw it to Sigmar to use. Sigmar then used the warhammer to beat the Ork, and the friendship between Man and Dwarf became nearly set in stone.


The Dwarves began to uplift humanity, teaching them metal working, supplying them with weapons, and warning them of the depridations of Chaos. They then had a super awesome battle at Black Fire Pass, destroying the largest greenskin horde in history, and things were pretty awesome for a long time until the Empire, founded by Sigmar at that battle, started to war with each other a couple thousand years later (Seriously Manlings, get your ♥♥♥♥ together, can't even last two millenial without a dustup over who is incharge.)
Then Chaos invaded again, and was barely repulsed by a reunited Empire, who had gotten the help of the Dwarves to fight back, and the help of the Elves to establish the colleges of magic to allow humans to safely weild magic without becoming corrupted by it. The Dwarven High King at the time was greviously wounded, and his sons dead in the conflict, so set a massive challenge to the greatest dwarven lords and thanes to prove themselves worthy of being his successor. The challenge lasted a century or two, and at the end of it, when they all reconvened, it turned out the badest ass dwarf was Thorgrimm Grudgebearer, who had not only reestablished contact with the Dwarves far to the north, beyond Kislev, but rescued them from terrible ♥♥♥♥, purged several dozen fallen holds of the skaven and/or greenskins in them, and recovered dwarven artifacts and runes thought lost forever. He also went a step further than any of his competitors, saying not that he would wipe out the worst grudges in the Great Book of Grudges, but that he would attempt to strike the ENTIRE BOOK clean within his lifetime.

And that is where the Dwarven Campaign begins.

What alliances mean what

This has been copied and pasted from the Attila: Overall Guide. May be some minor differences, if you notice them please point them out and we'll fix it as soon as!

Which alliances mean what?

Now some of you might not truly understand what alliances mean. First look up what the word alliance means and then laugh when they don't include different forms of alliance.

•Non-Aggression-Pact: this means that any act of aggression (declaration of war, trespassing ect) is not allowed, of course you can break this treaty but at a much higher diplomatic penalty than before. This is the first step of a long road to friendship, or a way to trick an enemy into a false sense of security... Of course that is if you don't care about how people think of you.

•Defensive Alliance: will mean that if you get invaded they will defend you, if they get invaded you can defend them. Depending on your relationship with the faction will determine your chance of success in having your allies help you. This is a great way to make your enemies afraid to invade, if you ally with a strong faction then a weaker faction that is still stronger than you might not invade, a great way to prepare for war is to make allies!

•Military Alliance: is a different sort of alliance, they will join you in a war if you invade another and vice versa. This is a great way to increase your chances of winning a war but the thing people forget is that a military alliance is not a defensive alliance and your allies will not join you if you get invaded so the question is can you afford for a defensive ally to become a military ally? Sometimes when I have a defensive ally that I am using to keep an enemy at bay my ally asks me become a military ally but this I have to deny as it will ruin my own plan.

•Make Tribunal State: means that they are basically a client state or subjugated. They will do whatever you say,defend you and pay you taxes. I do not believe they go to war with you if you invade, for that you need to subjugate by taking the last settlement. Rome did this a lot in Gaul.

Army units

Here is where you'll be greated with a small rundown of the quality of each factions unit types, such as Cavalry, Infantry and missile troops. You will not be told of each individual unit in the game because if you was we would be here all day and I don't think anyone wants to, perhaps you'll be told of the best units of each faction in another section another day.

Cavalry Units:

Empire - The Empire has a speciality with Cavalry, drawing it's auto-resolve chances form their cavalry superiority. They have a wide range of cavalry and each are very powerful charge units.


Dwarven - Dwarves have no cavalry.

Greenskin - Greenskin have no cavalry of sorts, instead they us eboars and the boars are just as powerful as your average mid-tier Empire cavalry.

Undead - Undead have some very special hex-wraiths that strike terror into the hearts of their foes. Very powerful undead cavalry, not much variety in my opinion but all cause terror. They also have caoches...

Infantry:

Empire - The Empire has some aweful early game infantry. Later on they are more powerful and have a massive variety of infantry. Helberds, swords etc. They rout quickly do early game units and cause little damage when on hard. They drop like flies to high tier foreign culture units like Varghiests and terrorgiest.



Dwarven - The Dwarves focus nearly all on infantry. They are the best in the land with their Irondrakes, longbeards, hammers and thunderers! No one can beat a Dwarf in a fight. Dwarven infantyr can also be used in sieges to take on city gates. Those units are miners, keep out of mellee.


Greenskin - Greenskin has a little variety of infantry, but not enough to boast about. They are very strong if using Orks and numerous. Goblins have even moe troops in bt are more likely to rout.


Undead - Undead have wonderful infantry, great design, exceptional noises made and their capabilities in battle are second only to the Dwarves. They are virtually unkillable late game. However you need to use up a lot of city slots ot get late game units.

Missile:

Empire - The Humans have a good amount of variety. These units will rout easily for any faction but Humans will inflict greater damage than any other faction, especially with guns. We all know of their steam tank, their best unit.

Dwarven - Dwarves have little to say about missille. They do have some great mortors, grudge throwers and Dwarven Crossbowmen. These Dwarves make anyone retreat in fear. You'll be needing to recruit large number sof missile, around 6 per army, just to face off against Greenskin spam armies.

Greenskin - Greenskins like to use their Goblins and Arrer Boyz to kill your troops while they fight against the few actual Mellee units the AI spam army will have. Kill these first as they have the ability to turn the tide of battle in your favour. They will often recruit 5 of these per army.

Undead - Ha ha ha.. Undead archers...

Monsters:

Empire - The human race are whimpy beings with no monsters to my knowledge. I've never seen any. However... They do have a tank!


Dwarven - No monsters.

Greenskin - These monsters are giants that'll scare pretty much any war veteran Dwarf to the bone. You'll hate facing thes ein battle and that is why you need to ally with whoever is the Greenskin enemy.



Undead - Terrorghiest, Varghiest, both flying monstrosities. What of the ground? Well you'll have more than enough! The undead have plenty of undesirable beasts!

Air:

Empire - The Empire has the Enola Gay dropping Atomic Bombs on its... Oh.. Sorry, no they don't.

Dwarven - Dwarves have Gyrocopters that'll blow the enemy to Alaska! If you are in Alaska then it'll just blow them. These are very powerful late game units that'l be recruitable only with the right combination of buildings in your city.

Greenskin - Greenskin air units are non-existent as far as I'm aware. Can you image a greenskin flying?

Undead - Technically the flying units for Undead are Monsters, so we've already discussed them. They have no normal flying contraptions.

Army Formations - Pre-Set

Two simple formations are pre-set by CA because they couldn't be bothered to make any better ones (We're onto you CA!)

Mellee front line: Places all your mellee units onto the front with missile at the back line. This is useful for when you are going to be charging head on into enemy lines and need that full whack at the enemy, however in general it is not as good as the Missile front line.

Missile front line: Basically the revers eof the mellee front line. Missile at the front with mellee at back line. This can be useful for withering down charging enemy units as they charge at you. However it is best when skirmish is on for your missile troops.

Army Formations: Player made

Arquebusiers Gunline

What I call an arquebusiers gunline consists in a formation where holes are created to allow gunners to fire into the melee.
Both the Empire and Dwarves can use this formation.




Melee line
Hold the enemy and destroy the enemy infantry. Made up of greatswords, swordsmen, or halberdiers

Handgunners
Shoots enemy monsters, armoured units, heroes.

Anti-large
Advance to infantry line when needed to defend against large units, or to protect arquebusiers from flanking force. Made up of halberdiers or spearmen.

Cavalry on flanks
Demigryphs used to push a flank

If enemy use ranged units, handgunners should move in front of the melee line.
If enemy has ranged dominance, advance and charge into melee is necessary.
Depending if the army has flanking cavalry or not, the anti-large line can be put in front of the handgunners line.

Strengths
- Can use handgunners to inflict casualties on key units
- Balanced composition

Weaknesses
- Very weak to death magic, especially wind of death
- Weak against artillery
- Weak against enemies that manage to push to the gunline (bats)
- Weak against massed missile troops

How to move units in formation

Often people can be annoying and ask some very weird questions that no one likes to hear. Good thing we read these questions not hear them. How people don't know this I don't know.

Select your entire formation, then use the arrow keys to move them. Or you could create a formation group and click and drag the formation over to whever you want (just like moving a single unit)

You can rotate a formation by pressing CTRL + the arrows key.

Sieges - How they work on Warhammer

Sieges break down into two types. Village Sieges, and "Crenelated" Sieges. Village Sieges are literally any settlement that has a normal title banner , rather than a crenelated title banner (For those not versed in medieval terminology, crenelations are the little teeth at the top of a castle wall).

Village Sieges play out as normal battles. You can encircle the settlement to cause attrition to those within, and to eventually starve it out, but usually there's no point to this unless your force is a rediculously tiny one.

Crenelated settlements have an actual siege battle. You want to spend time building siege equipment like battering rams and siege towers. Keep a careful eye on your infantry stats, sometimes you can completely forgo a battering ram if you have the right kind of units. For example, Dwarves have Miners, and with a pair of those in an army they can break through a gate faster than a dwarven battering ram is capable of, as well as capable of reaching it faster, and being harder to hit than the battering ram is by towers. Siege towers however are always useful, and in general you want somewhere between 3 and 6 of them.

All crenelated settlements are protected by towers. Depending on how upgraded the defenses are, towers will use bullets/arrows, cannon shells/boulders, or explosive barrels for fire/poison damage, or some combination there of. Towers are very tough, and will be able to destroy your siege towers and your units if you do not dedicate resources to destroying them. All units in this Total War game automatically carry ladders with them, you will not need to construct them and carry them to deploy them, but units climbing up ladders will take significant deficites to their stats while actually climbing the wall until their unit (or rather, all of the surviving members of the unit) reach the top of the wall.

Sieges - On the Attack

Use your artillery to hammer and destroy the enemy defensive towers, while marching your siege towers forward, or if approaching enemy armies have forced your hand, then your normal soldiers. Have expendable units near the fore, as they will eat the damage of the archers on the walls for your more expensive units that will actually be taking the walls.

Set up missile troops to rain fire on the units up at the top of the walls, harrying them as your own troops take the top. Do not use direct fire units such as those equipped with rifles. Use flyers, arc fire weapons, and similar to the best of your ability. Using artillery to soften up the tops of the walls is also a viable tactic if the enemy has no reserve forces, and simply waiting out the enemy while your artillery works through their ammo reserves is a perfectly valid tactic.

Once inside the walls, you want to either strike your units for the capture point at the heart of the map, or to drive off the enemy entirely. The former strategy is only viable if you are significantly outnumbered, or the enemy's formations are gratuitously out of placement. Most of the time, by the time you can even begin to move your units to the capture point, you'll have driven off the enemy defenders into routing.

It's also possible to take control of towers and gates and such, but usually this is only viable if you can send your units down to undefended portions of the walls. Towers are so dangerous that it behooves an attacker with artillery to take them down in the opening act of the siege battle if those towers can fire on them.

In the case of armies such as vampire counts, who have no artillery but lots of flyers, your fliers will take on the role of harassment that your artillery would have. If you have no artillery, or missile troops, build up as many siege towers as you can, do not try to take the city without them unless you significantly out number the garrisoned units. Use flyers to harass artillery and the units behind the walls, and charge your units as fast as you can to take the gates and let your cavalry in through the gates to begin sweeping the city streets.

When you manage to take the walls, get your melee troops down onto the ground as quickly as possible, and then move your missile troops onto the far side of the wall to fire down into the city on the defenders. The height advantage will allow them to attack without any threat to your own units.

Sieges - On the defense

As the defender, set up your artillery either to cover your gates in the case of short range artillery, or well back from the walls, so that they can arc shots over your walls and into the incoming enemy. Set up units near your towers to activate them, as they will be essential to your defense. Put your leaders and heros close up and behind the walls, especially at the gates to hold them if you're short range artillery isn't aimed at said gates. You want to avoid them being killed by enemy artillery even by chance shots, and you want them at the most critical defense points, close up on the walls so their leadership auras will help the defenders on the walls.

Use your own artillery and your towers to focus fire on any siege equipment the attacker has. If you can destroy those, then it will make taking the city significantly more difficult for the enemy. Next focus fire on the missile troops or really tough nut infantry. Ignore the cavalry. Cavalry cannot use siege towers, mount the walls, or otherwise threaten your city except at the gates, and are a non factor unless you've lost your gate. If you've lost your gate, pile in units to clog the opening, and hope you still have enough to also hold your wall.

If you have melee capable missile troops, such as Quarrlers, they are some of the best units to stick on the walls, especially when combined with strong defensive front line troops, who often do better down at the base of the wall to start, then put up on the top once the enemy begins to close. Always combine hard hitting, line holding, melee with the locations that appear to be where the enemy siege towers are going to land.

If you have no truly melee capable missile troops, then swap them back down onto the ground to fire up at the enemy's troops taking the walls, that way you can inflict maximum casualties when and if your own troops are slain, catching the enemy as they try to get down off the wall.

Upgrading settlements

Main chain line: You will need population surplus to unlock the next level of the main building of your settlement. The surplus increases per level in this order: Level 1: 1, Level 2: 1, Level 3: 2, level 4: 4, Level 5: 5. Your population surplus will take a few turns to go up, the first level is easy to reach but the later two are difficult. Level up your settlements wisely.

Minor buildings: Minor buildings require a certain level of your main city chain to upgrade, this does not cost population surplus (Unless Chaos!).


Cities: These can go up to level 5 and will give you your late tier units via the armoury type buildings.

Minor Settlements: Can only go up to level 3 and will be the place you rely on your economy and basic infantry troops. You don't want to waste spaces in big cities on buildings that can only go up to level 3 so you'll build them in minor settlements.

Regional Occupation - Who can conquer who

Dwarves and Greenskins : Mountains territories only. Can not occupy plains territories or Norsca settlements.

Empire, Vampire Counts, Bretonnia : Plains only. Can not occupy mountains settlements or Norsca territories

Chaos : Can not occupy any territory. Can subjugate norsca tribes.

Norsca tribes : can only occupy norsca settlements.

Creating a stable economy and military balance

You will want to have at least one income recourse per minor settlement in a region, you'll also want another growth and hapiness building per region. Since each faction has a different name for these types of building you'll have to work out what they are called for your faction. For the Dwarves you'll be wanting a Brewery and a Gold mine.

You will also want each of your basic army unit buildings in your minor settlements, this'll leave enough spaces open for the top tier unit buildings in the city of the region.

Make sure you have enough room for each of the top tier, purple buildings in your major city. This'll make your place a thriving military base with a positive public order.

Some advice for this is to not expand too quickly in a region as you'll struggle to maintain that public order penalty with just two breweries.

You might not want to make military provinces everywhere, such as on the forntier. You could do with scrapping the military buildings on your frontier (Only when large enough to have at least one military province). When you scrap the military buildings build defenses in your settlements, even your major city. This'll protect from invasion. However, you will have a couple of extra slots in the region, this'll be what makes you your money. Build more industry and use ti to propell the frontier forward in riches. You'll have high public order, high income and good growth. This'll allow you to prepare for a second expansion with your military.

Corruption

Someone proficient with the Chaos campaign should fill in more here since I'm not. - Snake

What is it useful for: It is really usefull for Vampire Counts to keep their Vampiric Coruption up high in their lands, they also have the ability to spread this corruption outside their own lands. High Vampiric Corruption leads to better public order for Vampire Counts and less attrition when in enemy lands with high vampiric corruption.

How to get and spread Corruption:
You have 2 main ways of spreading corruption. The first one and the easiest one to manage is through Buildings. Both Vampires and Chaos have access to buildings that gives a huge amout of local corruption. The main difference here is that Vampires can spread their corruption to neighbouring regions through their buildings.
As Vampires, always build a Balefire-building in your large settlements so you can build the max lvl one.
Build these buildings early, so you never run into a wall where you feel as if you have to just wait and do nothing.
The second way is through heroes. Every hero by default brings with it one point of corruption, which can be increased a lot with skills. For certain heroes it would be a waste to simply have them parked for that single reason. Look at your heroes other deployable skills to see if you can get as much as possible out of this mean while.
Vampires can in addition get some technologies that gives them free corruption, even to neighbouring regions which is a convenience. But it will never be enough to be something to rely on.

Attrition

Attrition is something no one likes to deal with. However WarHammer gives us some great ways of avoiding it:

• The Underways allow people to avoid attrition in enemy territory. As well as giving some eays ways to wipe out enemy armies if you are intercepting enemies that are using the underway (you'll be wiped out if you lose a batle that the enemy initiated if you're in the underway).

However attrition comes when you enter enemy lands that are hostile to you or the terrain is hostile. To avoid suffering greatly from attrition you should:

• Avoid snowy terrain
  
  
• Avoid staying in enemy territory for too long if you're not using the underway for whatever reason.
  
  
• If you're undead or chaos then avoid terriritory where your corruption isn't high enough to sustain your troops.

Eventually attrition will wipe out our whole army, including wounding your general! So make sure to use the avoidance tactics whenever possible.

The Underground

This is a bullet pointed list of the way the underway works:

• You cannot select anything further away than your movement range.
  
  
• You will appear where selected without being seen travelling
  
  
• You will always be intercepted when in range of enemy armies or settlements
  
  
• You will always appear down a narrow pathway facing the enemy
  
  
• if you're intercepted and lose you will have your whole army lost
  
  
• The underway was made by the Dwarves when they migrated to the Old World

Research - What to go for

Vampire Counts:
Best to go for the upkeep technologies first, you'll want to have large numbers in your armies so that you can attack each city with two or more armies, this is because until late game you'll be very weak (in the sense of unit strength).

After you have reduced your upkeep with technologies you will still have a little bit of time to improve your infrastructure before the Chaos invasion. Best to go straight for improving your units stats, look at the ones that improve stats for units you mostly have, don't waste turns waiting for technology that you wont use. A good example is the skeleton warrior +2 attack sort of techs you will see. Another is the fell bats. If you have Varghiests then don't improve fell bats, you shouldn't have low tier units in your armies at this point!

Dwarves:
Dwarven Technology is broken down into 2 paths and 2 subtrees.
Civic Tech: broken between Economic Stuff (Very important) and Social Benefits (Somewhat important).

Early game focus not on your military research, except those things that cut down on the recruitment and maintenance costs of your units. Dwarven units are already superior to almost everyone elses units right out of the gate.

Dwarves depend, most of all, on their infrastructure and economy. Shoot for Heavy Quern Stones right out of the gate, then aim for public order boosting technologies, and economy boosting technologies in equal measure. When Chaos crops up, hardline the technology tree right to Valya's Blessing, starting with ancestral tombs. These will enormously assist in holding off and slowing down chaos corruption.

When grabbing the public order boosting technologies, if you are making frequent contact with other dwarven cities, then also grab the diplomatic boosting technologies. Dwarves, more so than almost any other race, depend on making firm allies with their fellow dwarven neighbors and confederating with them in the long term, and grabbing these technologies early to raise their attitude towards you as quickly as possible is critical to having them guard your flanks against first the Vampire Counts, and then Chaos, as well as assisting in invading the greenskin territories.

When you have breathing room, grab first the technologies that boost your core artillery and ranged unit's ammo capacity, and once you hvae the anti corruption technologies, start grabbing the melee focused stuff, and really filling out the military technology tree. Things that boost your early game units are far superior to things boosting late game units, as your early game units will be with you for the entire duration of the game.

Empire / Humans:

Humans research is easy because you need to construct buildings to unlock the tech-tree. Usually you won't have many choices. Don't construct buildings for the techs though, buildings should always be made for the ... building.

Interesting techs are :
- Port techs. +10 growrth is particularly useful
- Armoury/Foundry, for military techs
- Temple of Sigmar : very important to research technologies reducing corruption and increasing public order.

Greenskins:

The Greenskins really have only one line available. I know you get those ones that seperate off the main line technologies, but they're pretty weak and not worth going for in my opinion.

You will need to construct buildings for the Greenskin tech, best to start with the tinkerers workshop and work from there. Since the Greenskin tech is so small and dismal I'll let you just research whatever you want, you wont need tech anyway, not with your WAAGH!

Surviving as the Vampires

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=691958045

Surivivng as the Greenskins

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=692334205

Surviving as the Dwarves

Dwarven Survival breaks down into a few basic paradigms. Economy, Defensive Tactics, Allies, and Grudges

Economy
You do not need to rush your late game unit production buildings. Even on the highest difficulties, it is fully possible to beat the game using nothing except Warriors, Quarrlers, Miners, Grudge Throwers, Cannons, and Thunderers. Long Beards also assist with this, so pushing for the last stage of the Sparring Grounds helps, but is not necessary.

Instead, always build your unique resource harvesting structures, don't be afraid to build trade depots, and always, always, always build the strategic structures such as the High King's Throne, or the Brightstone Mine, as they are invaluable to your economy and stability.

Do not run your armies at a deficite. It can be done, but doing so requires that you deploy them as raiding forces in enemy territory, which means you have to play the dwarves on the offense more than the defense. This is never as good as forcing the enemy to come to you. If you can occupy a settlement, you should, and then immediately set them up to start building up their garrison. The first level guard post for a normal, lvl.2 settlement, for dwarves, is fully capable of fighting off anything short of a double fully stacked ork army by itself if it can get the terrain advantage, even if it doesn't have a lord and the enemy is lead by a legendary leader (provided the legendary leader doesn't have any overwhelming psychological auras).

Defensive Tactics
Dwarves are at their strongest when they are fighting defensively. Use guard stance, never charge your units to move them across the field except when rushing to counter charge an enemy, if you move them at all ever. Force the enemy to attack you, and always try to fight from a difference in elevation so that your foe is always presenting themselves at least part of the time to your artillery and missile units.

Early on, having 5 quarrlers, 2 grudge throwers, and 5-6 warriors, and two sets of miners will see you through almost all battles. Set your warriors up in a semi circle around your quarrlers and your artillery, then put your miners on the flanks canted inward so as to react to flankers trying to disrupt your artillery. Once set up, turn on guard stance for everyone before beginning the battle. If you need to set up outside of your deployment zone, and this should be infrequent, then pause the game, and use the space bar to observe how you're setting up your units.

When on the attack, set up your units so that they are as close to the enemy as your deployment zone will allow, forcing them to come after you, as your artillery will threaten them and they can't just play the clock out running away from your units.

When on the defense, set up on the best possible defensive location in your deployment zone, and let the enemy come to you, as they must defeat you or the clock playing out will result in your win.

If possible, always fight underground, or lure the enemy into attacking you while underground, unless you are not playing with an army near full strength. Victory will utterly annihilate your opponents army, leaving them with no survivors, but be warned, the same will apply to you.

Allies
The other dwarven nations are your friends. Get borders with them, or trade depots near them, set up as soon as you possibly can, and then set up trade routes to the best of your ability. Trade, and unique resources, not only build up their attitude in favor of you, but bring in profit as well. Dwarves form late game confederacies, and their position means that early on, if you make buddies with Zhufbar, Karak Azul, Barak Varr, and Karak Hadrin, you will have potent allies, either to help you fight back against the green skins, or to hold your rear against the vampire counts and chaos. You want to confederate with them in this order: Barak Varr, Karak Azul, Karak Hadrin, and finally, Zhufbar. The grey mountain dwarves tend to dislike you, and you will probably have to kick their teeth in to own their territories and win the game. The northern most dwarves, if they survive the chaos and norsican raiders, are a toss up.

Grudges
This one is simple. Don't let grudges simmer, finish them off as soon as you can (even if it means breaking a treaty to do it), and reap the rewards. Grudges give you a nice fat wad of cash in most cases, and keeping them low boosts public order and the opinions of other dwarves, which feeds back into the allies section.

Surviving as the Empire / Humans

Guide made by Azzak, click here for a legendary walkthrough.



The Empire begins in a difficult position, surrounded by potential enemies - and future allies.

The goal of the Emperor Karl Franz is not necessarily to expand his own realm, but to protect the Empire. Why ? Because when the great chaos invasion comes at around turn 100, all remaining imperial states, bretonnians kingdoms and dwarves realms will rally to your cause.

As the Emperor, you have to secure the imperial borders. They are threatened by :
- vampire counts in the east. Must be killed for victory.
- chaos tribes in the north, across the sea
- chaos warriors invasions, in the north of Kislev. Must be repealed and Archaon wounded to win (turn 100 before he appears).
- a small vampire realm in the west, in bretonnia (Mousillon)
- orks tribes a bit everywhere in the empire. (Usually they don't last long).
- tileans, estalians and border prince in the south.
Orks tribes in the south are usually busy with dwarves.

These are your enemies, and you have to make sure they don't hold any imperial territory to win.

In the west, dwarves and bretonnian kingdoms may wage war on you. You don't have to conquer or raze them in order to win, but you might have to destroy them in order to survive. Do whatever you have to insure the security of your personal realm, but keep in mind they'll turn as allies at the end.

Imperial armies

Imperial armies are flexible. They field relatively average footmen, good missile troops, excellent cavalry (their demigryphs are even better than bretonnians grail knights) and impressive war machines.

However at the beginning of the game you are relatively weak : having access to only poor troops, weak cavalry and no artillery, you are probably going to struggle in order to win battles.
This is where strategy comes into play : you have to make sure you have superior numbers. Good thing for you, as the Empire has an excellent economy. To win, you need to have a lot of income, in order to field 2, 3 or even 4 armies at the end of the game. It's a good idea to wage war with 2 full armies at the same time when you have the income to support them.

Depending on the enemy you're going to fight, armies have a different setup.
- Against other imperials, use swordsmen as your basic infantry.
- Against bretonnians, use spearmen or halberdiers.
- Against vampires, use a combination of swordsmen and halberdiers.
- Against chaos, use greatswords and halberdiers.

Your cavalry should consist of Reiksguard as they are easy to obtain (Reiksguard fort with Armoury). This building even provide garrison - thus it's good to make it instead of stables.
Demigryphs cavalry are absolute beasts and will kill every cavalry and monster in the game without any issue, but it requires a lot of investment and money to make them. If you don't plan to make a very long campaign, Reiksguard will be enough. Otherwise go for the stables and ignore Reiksguard.
Pistoliers are weak against armor, so they shouldn't be used past early-game. Outriders are good but heavy in micro-management.

City-building
- Always upgrade your villages to level 3 and build defenses level 2. This will allow you to protect them and slow down the enemy. Upgrading can be done faster than you'd imagine. If you don't do this, believe me that protecting your territory while the enemy can conquer any settlement in one turn is a nightmare.
Be careful to not upgrade villages that are vulnerable to the enemy or you'll lose all your previous and pending upgrades.

- Money is everything : the more money you have, the more army/units you can field and the easier everything becomes. Apart from your starting region, you don't really need any other military production region. A basic setup is : city with fortified walls (very important !), cult of sigmar, tavern, and economic buildings. Villages can have taverns and economic buildings too.
Losing an army is not a disaster if you can still defend yourself, because you can use the sudden surge of money to upgrade buildings for even moar money.
Reikland region only needs to have barracks, gunsmith, armoury, and a Reiksguard fort if you want shock cavalry. You might want some barracks in other cities to recruit troops in a hurry, but that's all. Focus on economic buildings in all other regions.
This setup will allow you to recruit :
- Halberdiers and greatswords. These will be your mid-late game troops.
- Reiksguard
- Handgunners
- Siege weapons if you upgrade the gunsmith.
and basic troops.
That's more or less everything you need for a campaign.

- Cities with fortified walls will be able to withstand rebels and allow you to create relatively small armies to defend them.

- Build a cult of sigmar in every region - it allows you to fight back chaos corruption and preserve public order. It also make possible to recruit warrior priests, and they're very useful at keeping corruption low.

- Use special buildings when appropriate. Trade might be worthwile if you manage to get trade agreements from neighbour.

Diplomacy

- The key to diplomacy is vassalisation. Ai has a lot more money than the player, so use it well. When you can, make as many vassals as possible - as long as it doesn't penalize you too much. Capture cities first (because you need money), then make the last village vassal. It will even allow you to make commandements to the whole region, as if you had all provinces.
Note that even with one poor province the AI can field 2 full stacks, and it will happily resettle in any settlement razed by chaos. Vassals can also raid Norsca coast and raze it if ordered. Last but not least, they will kill any rebels attempting to capture your cities (as long as it's not too far away).

- Also, don't wage too many wars at once. Seek or Accept peace if you are not currently destroying that faction - don't take risks. Refuse to join wars if it's not in your interest. What if another enemy declares war on you and you get bogged down in 3-4-5 difficult wars at the same time? And of course, always ask for money.

- Secure key provinces necessary for your economy, then focus on external threats. Capture regions held by foreigners. Don't fight over existing imperial and bretonnian states if it's not critical for you. I finished my campaign with only Marienburg, Nuln, and Couronne provinces. Rest were either my vassals, or allied. Once Archaon invades, vassalize or ally all possible factions.
I didn't made any confederation, although it may be possible to win with this strategy.

Oh of course, it's mandatory to destroy all imperial/dwarves/bretonnians that are a threat to you. But don't overdo it, you don't need to kill everyone to win the game : just vampires counts and chaos.

Agents

- Imperial captains are created in barracks level 3. They are useful to keep public order positive. In battle they are melee-oriented.
- Warrior priests are created in cult of sigmar buildings. They reduce chaos and vampiric corruption. In battle they buff your troops and charge into melee.
- Witch Hunters reduce corruption, and counter enemy heroes.
- Mages decrease construction costs, and cast spells in battles.

Skills

- The first skill to rush is Lightning Strike (Blue, 2nd block). It allows you to attack enemy armies without them being able to use reinforcements. It's incredibly useful. You only need to spend 1 point there.
I also use Fervor (corruption reduction), Autoritharian (Public order bonus, but only 1 point spent there because it's just to unlock 2nd tree), and skills that lower upkeep and speed unit reinforcement.
The red skill "Honest Steel" that increase melee attack and defense for imperial troops is also great. (+12).

- For agents, I mostly took skills to counter corruption and augment happiness.

The Campaign

The campaign starts off with 4 playable factions or 5 if you have Chaos Warriors DLC. You have already been past the lore sections so let's not get into detail about how each faction got into their start positions.

The Norsca represent Sweden and are located in the North. They have a Dwarven faction located in the mountains with them. They are fighting Chaos from the word go. You do not play the Norsca tribe as of yet.

Down south we have the Greenskin tribes, with the mightiest Savage Ork Tribe: Top Notz. These will be fighting the Dwarves who are located in the Mountains North of the Greenskin Badlands. The Orks own most of the Mountains, the exceptions being 3 settlements that are walled and owned by Dwarven factions.

We have Estalia and the Boarder Princes south of the Greenskin badlands. They fight a hopeless battle against the Orks, using the sea that spares them to attack the enemy. They have two Dwarven factions just above them in the mountains.

Past the Southern Kingdoms, in the north-Western provinces of the old world (which is NOT Westeros) is the lands of Brettonia, a non-playable faction, of course. These lands are plaqued by war and death, so much that the third Undead faction is located there. Mousilin will plaque the lands of Brettonia, which is NOT Britain, throughout the game.

Just East of Britain is the Imperial lands of Marrienburg and The Empire. There are the Empire Successionists who are permanently at war with The Empire just south of Altdorf, the Imperial capital. The Empire is plaqued by war with other Imperial factions. There are two savage Ork tribes wondering around the lands of man, SkullSmashers located in the mountain region seperating Britain from Germany.

Then, further East we have the final culture, the Undead Culture. Von Carstien wages war on his Undead Templehof foes and desires the Throne of Sigmar. He is pited against the Dwarves at the edge of the map, the Greenskin who are south of the Dwarves and the humans who are west (with one faction of man being North of Templehof).

You then have Chaos, north of even the Norsca. They wage war on all of man, Dwarves, Undead, Greenskin, Brit, German, Fresh Prince and Sweedish man there is. They're basically the Huns but better looking and purposeful.

Quests - How They Work

Let us go on a Quest!

Oh yes, they exist in Total War now and we all secretly want to say we hate it. Thanks CA for bringing this extra distraction to the player during campaigns.

Quests unlock during the campaign when your character reaches certain levels. This then goes onto allow you to march over with the required character (the one who unlocked it) and fight these battles.

You won't use your own army, you'll use a pre-determined battle layout and will fight a pre-set battle. It is basically like Historical battles but unlockable in-game.

So what do I get for doing them? Well you get to unlock a special skill set specifically for that specific charcater. This'll make you Wahammer nerds get a hard on over some hammer, spell, mount or whatever CA dicided.

It'll tell you what the quest unlocks if you go to the Legendary Lords skill tree and go to the top of the skill tree.

Vampire Campaign Walkthrough

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=691958045

Greenskin Campaign Walkthrough

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=692334205

The Dwarven Campaign Walkthrough

Dwarves start off in a target rich environment, where you can expand easily without ticking off any of the dwarves you want to ally with too much. In fact, you expanding involves killing orks, so they'll like you for it. Just make sure to kill off the orks. The diplomatic and unit replenishment penalties make it not worth releasing them unless you're getting well over 1000 gold for their release.

If at all possible. Try to kill off Grimgor Ironhide's army within the first 20 turns of the game, if not the first 10. Give him 15 turns uninterrupted and he tends to build a Waaagh! and then force the Bloody Spears to confederate with him, meaning you start off the game surrounded and outgunned by him. The best case scenario is one where you manage to get him to attack you (or you attack him) during underground movement. Winning that battle will kill him, and destroy his starting units including the artillery unit he starts with which can be a killer if he gets too used to it.

Once you secure the holds north of you from various orkish monsters, you want to immediately expand into the Blood River Valley, and the 2 settlements that share a province with the Greenskin Capital of Black Crag. Do not try to take Black Crag until you make contact with Karak Azul, and have heavily foritified and gotten at least 2 or 3 well built armies together, and confederated with Barak Varr. Once you've done this, take Black Crag, and begin expanding south until you're meeting up with Karak Azul. Karak Azul will either be your best buddy, or a big liability at this point, in either case, do not let the Orks raise or colonize any Karak Azul Holds, retake them yourself if you don't see any Karak Azul armies on the map.

Once you've secured Karak Azul's territory, which is to say, taken every single possible location in the World's Edge Mountains south of the Rib Peaks, confederate with them, and start a two pronged assault west into the badlands. Use underway stance any turn you are not within attacking range of an ork army, and always get right up close to a settlement before attacking it using Underway stance. Orks can ambush you this way, but that just makes it easier to erradicate their armies when they attack you in the incredibly beneficial terrain of the underway with all it's hill, long thin maps, and generally, stuff that means the orks will spend almost their entire time in the sights of your artillery.

Swing one force of 2 armies down the coast from Blood River Valley, swing the other pair of armies along the southern edge of the map, skirting under the giant swamp. Underway movement will negate the attrition most of the time, and using this method, you can roll up the orks. Always take time to rest your forces in encampments or in captured settlements after each siege, and use your money to build up the defenses of the places you have captures. Also keep at least one army near 8 Peaks, or the Tears of Valyana, to intercept any sneaky orks trying to cut through the swamp to invade your massive mountain territories.

Once the Orks are rolled up, convert all of your coastal terrtitories, Blood River Valley, and anything north of the Silver Road into miltiary fortresses. Get your armies moved up and ready. Have one army set up guarding the badlands coast, one army (Read: 2-3 armies if you are fighting against a player controlled Chaos or Empire at this point, and same for player controlled Green Skins if they moved themselves into the Grey Mountains) setting up an ambush inside of Black Fire Pass (if you can get military access from the Border Princes or whoever owns it, otherwise sit them inside of the settlement just west of Karaz-a-Karack), and everybody else should be moving into the Rib Peaks or the passes into Zhufbar or Karak Hadrin. By this point, you will probably need to spend time building up good attitudes with them again, since you'll be a massive power and have lost clout with both of them from the confederation effects of taking Karak Azul at this point.

Turn everything else you have, and I mean literally every other province that is not:
>One of the two coastal provinces of the Badlands
>Blood River Valley
>A Province north of The Silver Road
into a purely economic power house. Tear down defensive structures, military buildings, military support buildings, all of it. You don't need them any more in these places, because nothing should be able to get past your defensive screen of armies. You should now be producing a rediculous amount of gold, which you should keep pouring back into your economy until everything is fully upgraded, using the extra bits to splurg on upgrading your armies, who should be camped in your various cities or encamped, or shuffling around so that they can swap and trade units out cheaply, whatever chaos is giving you the time to do.

Once your armies are in place, even before you have finished your economic redevelopment, confederate with Karak Hadrin (or reconquer it), and buy your second legendary lord, and kit him out with a really nice army, then turn the Karak Hadrin into a freaking fortress.

Once all of this is done, literally just underway stance move your entire set of non-defensive armies (AKA: everything north of Black Fire Pass) into the Manling lands, ganking every single chaos army you can come across, avoiding attrition from the underway movement, and generally just saving the day by having armies fueled by what should be approximately half the map.

Empire Campaign Walkthrough

This is an Empire walkthrough that works on all difficulties.

First steps : capturing Marienburg



The most important asset to capture at the beginning is Marienburg. It gives a lot of money, and because it only has 2 provinces you can easily vassalize it by capturing the last village.
However, it quickly builds troops and if its army does not get out of the city, you won't be able to capture it. It has a lot of garrison, and coupled with their army it'll make you cry.

So to take the city, you have to make the Marienburgian army move. There are 2 ways to do it.
(For this walkthrough you don't have to attack separatists at the beginning.)

Splitting Marienburg army

- Declare war on Middenland and raze their settlement north of Altdorf. Why ? Because Marienburg will try to resettle it.
Don't worry, Middenland usually accept peace soon enough along with its Nordland ally. Try to make peace every turn afterwards.
- Recruit a Lord and 3 swordsmen at Altdorf. You don't want to waste time.
- Upgrade barracks

- Capture the separatist village west of your location. Recruit 3 swordsmen.
- Move your lord to Karl location.

- Keep recruiting until Marienburg splits its forces.
- Attack and siege the city when it does.
- Once the city is yours, capture the village north of Altdorf again.
- Vassalize Marienburg when capturing their last province.

Make Marienburg attack Skullmashers Orks

- Same strategy as below, but don't raze Middenland province. Capture it or loot it.
- At around turn 6-7-8 (you need 20 units in total at least, with 3 more crossbowmen to take out Marienburg pistoliers) place your army at the frontier with Marienburg. Ask marienburg to attack Skullmashers, the ork tribe right west of them. Once they accept, wait for them to move their army. Attack their army while it is besieging the ork settlement.

if you find yourself idle while waiting for Marienburg to act, then by all means attack separatists.


Second step : Bretonnia




So this is where it becomes trickly. Bretonnia, or another bretonnian kingdom, might declare war on you. I went for Bretonnia right away and captured their capital.
Try to ally with Bretonnia enemies. I managed to ally myself with Bartonne.
Bretonnian armies are not difficult to handle : keep recruiting troops and you'll eventually destroy them with auto-resolve.

Dwarves might pose a problem ; ignore them as long as possible. You need more cities before taking them out. When you have the opportunity (after the conquest of bretonnia if possible) raze all their settlements in the grey mountains. Dodge their armies and try to not fight them at all.

Once you have Couronne and Marienburg, and razed dwarves settlements you have a good and secure foothold for your Empire. Spend some turns fortifying your villages and cities. Then you have to decide where to strike next - if you still have the time


Next target : Nuln or Southern bretonnia, Stirland... or more vassals

The first chaos invasion will be soon (around turn 50). You might have time to expand a bit more : I chose Nuln because its city is close to Altdorf, but expanding further into Bretonnia is also possible. Also look for imperial States with one province. It's the perfect time to attack and vassalize them.
If Vampires did expand, then strike back.
If you don't have time to expand don't worry. Focus on economic buildings, make sigmar cults in every region and make the armoury in Reikland. You will need greatswords.


Then you're on your own

If chaos raze your closest neighbours, protect your vassals. They will resettle. Use your garrisons to have better odds while fighting invaders. Also, use Lightning strike on your Lords to take out stacks of chaos one by one.
Always have 2 armies protecting each other if possible.
Try to destroy vampires counts before the great chaos invasion (turn 100), or shortly after.

Your goal is to survive until turn 100 with the Empire and Bretonnia (not as important as the Empire but still useful) as intact as possible. By intact I mean that imperial and bretonnian factions must still control imperial and bretonnians lands. Estalians/Tileans, Border Princes, Orks, Vampires Counts... are enemies that must be dealt with. Take them out first before attacking fellow imperials/bretonians or even dwarves. Then by turn 100 ally with your brothers in arms, make more armies, and crush the chaos in the name of Sigmar !

And when done, don't forget to smile.

Chaos Faction Walkthrough

To start off with, the Chaos Faction is a very population dependent faction as every single building costs a population point or more than 1. The first building you should upgrade/get is the t2 of your encampment which will allow you to have more pop growth and build higher tier buildings which allows you to get the Chaos Warriors which are a huge step up from the Chaos Marrauders. Another thing you should do, is attack Baersonling on Turn 2 or 3 as this will allow you to get some extra money and a skill point on your lord. The first skill point should go to the campaign map tree as the 10% movement speed is a good thing to get, and the next 3 skill points should go toward the skill that gives your lord a extra growth per turn. -to be continued-

Area benefits

This sections basically will describe what areas can produce special buildings: I.E the Dwarven holds often have mines available when you conquer them.

Mountains: Mountains are basically your gold mine. You'll love some gold mines that gives stupid amounts of gold per level. In some Dwarven Holds you can create special mines that gives over 1000+ Gold and are only allowed 1 level for that building. I don't care if you want to turn those location into military bases and need that space, screw the military, that's a lot of gold!

Forests: Forests will of course give you the tradable recource of Lumber. This will increase your trade value and make you a more desirable trade ally. This'll help you if you need to start making Neutral factions allies prior to the Chaos invasion.

Badlands: Badlands don't really give off much. The Greenskin badlands do give off some gold, but those are yet again in the more mountainous regions of the Greenskin lands.

Icelands: Icelands will give you ice related tradeable recources that will yet again inrease your trade value.

Raze, loot, sack, liberate, subjugate or occupy?

This has been copied and pasted from the Attila: Overall Guide. May be some minor differences, if you notice them please point them out and we'll fix it as soon as!

Sack, Loot, Liberate, Occupy, or Raze?

In this section I will go over the uses of the various post siege options.


Sacking:

•Sacking heavily damages all building in a settlement and generates gold for the attacker based on how many building there were and what level. The bigger and more developed a settlement is, the more valuable.

•When migrating sacking is a great way to generate extra cash without occupying and losing your migration status.

•Sacking is also useful when you do not want to over extend an empire or don't have a governor for the provice, but want money from it.

•Sacking is also useful is generating XP for a general as you can revisit the target settlement many times.


Loot and Occupy

•Loot and Occupy is most useful as a way to regenerate troops for an army that has suffered casualties when deep in enemy territory. After your army is full you can abandon the settlement to raze it, or simply ignore it and let it rebel. This action is not a good idea if you want to keep the settlement as it will cost more to repair than you made off the action.

•If you plan to loot and occupy be aware of your food especially late game as this action can be a large drain on your food. If you have less than 100 food income it may be better to sack.


Subjugate

•If you have a firm understanding of how diplomacy works, Subjugation is fantastic of expanding your empire. Subjugated factions count toward victory conditions, allow you to levy a variety of units, and pay tribute.

•Be aware of leader traits if you plan to subjugate a faction, leaders with "Rebellious" are more trouble than they are worth.

•You can only subjugate a faction at their last settlement, some may refuse outright, choosing death over subjugation. In this case subjugation is not an option.


Liberate

•Liberating a faction forces into a military alliance with you. This faction will count toward victory conditions as long as you stay allied to them.

•Liberation is a great way to remove a chunk of an enemy empire that you do not have to defend and will often help you fight the enemy they were liberated from.

•Be aware that liberating certain factions, such a Roman Empire, will make other factions angry with you.


Occupy

•If you want to bring a settlement into your empire this option is best, your army will not do extra damage to buildings and has reduced public order penalties.

•Be aware of your food status when you occupy especially late game. With tier 3 or higher city buildings having a cumulative drain of 200+ on your food, it can induce attrition.


Raze

•A razed settlement costs a lot of gold to resettle and often stay desolate a long time.

•Razed settlements reduce the overall fertility of a province by 1 to a minimum of 1.

•Razed settlements causes immigration to surrounding provinces which in turn causes public order problems.

•If you are looking to cause massive economic and public order problems for an enemy empire, razing is the way to go. It is very hard for them to recover from for many years. It can cause attrition to enemy armies through starvation and bankruptcy.

•Razing looks great, ;)

Voth

Multiplayer - What's the difference?

Multiplayer has two different modes: Co-op and Head to Head.

Co-op means both players only spectate when the other is either attacked or attacking. It prevents you from declaring war on each other and makes you militar allies, you can also see the other on the map as a result of this, so yeah, easy!

Head to Head: This is where ou don't have any treaties with each other, can't see the other player and can play as the AI when the other player is either attacked or attacking, so you can really screw up his / her campaign!

Multiplayer - Empire / Humans

In multiplayer battles the Empire is a solid choice.

They have very cost-effective troops, namely :

- The greatswords (950) are capable of beating chaos warriors (700-800), chosen (shielded) and rampage lower-tiers infantry units. However they are beaten by black orks (1000) and they are very vulnerable to large units (cavalry, monsters).

- The Demigryphs Knights are one of the best units in the game, particularly the Halberd version. For 1400 they are capable of taking down any cavalry or monster with ease (including those who cost a lot more than them), and charge infantry. You have to cycle charge against infantry, which means charge and then immediately order them to fall back. Cycle charging infantry can make them destroy a unit of Chosen with halberds (yes, that's supposedly their hard counter !). Icing on the cake, they are also very fast. Demigryphs have a lot of staying power in melee, but they are still vulnerable to halberds. Because of their low number, they are also vulnerable to artillery and armour-piercing missile troops.
Note : it's possible Demigryphs will take a nerf, considering how deadly (OP ?) they are at the moment.

- Handgunners (650) have armour-piercing attacks, and are devastating against top-tiers units, monsters, cavalry, and heroes. They're however very weak in melee. Protect them !

- Halberdiers (650) are somehow very capable medium tiers troops, capable of inflicting high damage on armoured troops and defending arquebusiers from cavalry/monsters. It's useful to always have some in your army.

- Karl Franz (1500 + Mount) is a duellist hero, capable of taking down most foes in melee. However, he's still vulnerable to magic.

- Greatcannons (800) are good artillery for the price, capable of outranging any other artillery and still maintaining precise fire.

- Outriders (700) w/grenade launchers (800) are very useful vanguard cavalry, capable of inflicting damage against either armoured or non-armoured opponents. Protect them with Demigryphs and you have the best cavalry and missile cavalry of the game.

The Empire has also weak troops, namely :

- Spearmen (300/400), both shielded and non-shielded version, will struggle to take down any armoured foe. They're also going to be destroyed by melee infantry. Their only usefulness is to take down non-armoured enemy cavalry, but not a lot of units fall into this category. They could be taken to increase sheer numbers of the army, but don't expect them to do any damage. In fact, to take down enemy cavalry and monsters you have a much better choice : demigryphs or halberdiers.

- Swordsmen (400), although better than spearmen, are still not the best troops around here. They are useful against other imperial forces as they will win against their halberdiers (650) but they will lose against any armoured foe. Still, a good way to increase your army count for cheap.

- Reiksguard (1200) is over-priced for what it does. For 300 more you could have the best cavalry of the game. Take Demigryphs instead.

- Empire Knights (900) are a bit more cost-effective choice, but they still pale in comparison to the demi-gryphs. Between having 3 Knights or 2 Demigryphs, the Demigryphs are vastly superior. Take Demigryphs.

- Pistoliers (600) have only 1 armour-piercing damage, which means they will not inflict any damage on armoured troops. For the price, you'd better take Outriders (700)/w Grenade Launchers (800)

- Crossbowmen (525), although useful, pale in usefulness compared to the arquebusiers. They can shoot over the head of your troops, but won't do as much damage. They will also lose to handgunners in a direct fight.

- Any siege weapon that is not greatcannon is not cost-effective. Mortar do little damage to armoured foes for nearly the price of a cannon (could be useful against other imperials though). Rocket artillery is not precise enough, and don't do enough AP damage for its price. The Repeater artillery is not precise and don't fire fast enough to inflict enough casualties for its price. The Luminarch fires too slowy, and being only useful against heroes you better take handgunners or witch-hunters. The Steam-Tank will crumble against missile troops and demigryphs.



Basic Strategy

- Choose if you want to be on the defensive or the offensive. On the defensive you need 1 or 2 greatcannons, and missile troops. On the offensive, focus on melee infantry and cavalry.

- Form a core infantry formation, with halberdiers, greatswords, and possibly some cheaper units for more bodies.
- Choose if you want any missile infantry. If you do, take some handgunners but don't over-do it.
- Take at least 2 Demigryphs with Halberds as your cavalry. They will be able to strike down enemy cavalry and monsters with ease. Be careful, they're your most precious units.
- Choose if you want any missile cavalry. They're not mandatory.
- Choose if you want siege weapons. If you do, take greatcannons.

Cavalry Strategy

- Take Demigryphs with Halberds, Outriders and 2 Outriders with grenade launchers.
- Your Demigryphs will screen your missile cavalry, taking down any cavalry or monster threatening them. If there is lot of missile troops you might have to charge them. Don't forget to cycle-charge against infantry.
- Your missile cavalry will focus on taking down missile troops and siege first.
Once enemy cavalry, monsters, missile troops and sieges are destroyed, you are free to play with its slower infantry.

How to use patch Beta

This is a simple little trick to show your friends: All you need to do is go to your Steam Library, right click on the game of your choosing, click on properties and on the pop-up icon click on the Beta option. This should be the third option on the pop-up. If you're not in game it will allow you to click on a selection tool, if there is a Beta Patch available then you can select it. It'll take some time to download and when finished you'll not be compatible for multiplayer with anyone who hasn't got it. Often with Total War these Beta Patches are big so if you want a multiplayer game don't install!

How to improve performance

• Make sure you have not selected Unlimited Videa memory, this may increase quality but it can drastically reduce performance.
  
  
• Lower your bloody settings dude! If you don't have a computer capable of managing the game graphics then you'll have to deal with stick figure quality troops that vanish when you charge them (Like I did once in Rome II when I had a cpuminer).
  
  
• Update your graphics drive. Look at how to do this on Google, I'm no technician so I am not going to go through a full walkthough here. I will say though that this will decrease lag drastically (it did for me!)
  
  
• Check your data files for trojans, viruses or Cpuminers. Trojans can hack into your system and be used to blackmail you, they can also decrease performance. Viruses can also cause decreases in your performance. Cpuminers are invisible and the only thing they do to you is take 30% (or more if it is advanced enough) of your RAM and other stuff your computer needs to run. It runs in the background so your electricity bill goes through the roof and transfers this free power to the man who put it there. I've had this once for nearly a month before I got rid of it, along with two Trojans at the same time! You cannot manually delete cpuminers so you'll need to go to a website called Bleeping Computer and download something called Rkill (just type in Google Rkill and look for the bleeping computer link URL underneath the website!)

bleepingcomputer.com/download/rkill - Or use this for simplicity!

Tips and Tricks

Here are some tips and tricks for improving screenshots, selecting units faster and more!

K: What K does is it removes the UI from your screen and makes the game more cinematic, improving the quality of your screenshots.

N: N will zoon in on wherveer your curser is but not cause "ghosts" on the screen. This increase the quality of your screenshots. Best used after K and from a slight distance.

Shift + select units: Hold down shift and click on multiple units to select them all. This makes creating your own formational lines faster and easier.

Spacebar: Hodk spacebar to see all your missile units range and the position of your troops (will show where troops will be positioned, not where they are if they are moving).

Listen to Game of Thrones season 4 soundtrack for really good affect.

What mods should I use?

Using mods is very simple. You simply browse the workshop look for something you find interesting hit subscribe on your chosen mod and you're golden, its that easy.
Modding your game can be a very rewarding (and free) way to enjoy and prolong your gaming experience in the way you want to. There's a mod for everyone.

Lore of Undeath

This is a mod that alters the lore of death and lore of vampires. It is merely one of many interesting wonders to discover on the workshop. Ranging from the very big overhaul mods to the little tweaks that make a big difference.






Mods can bring a lot of replay-ability to your games play with as many different combinations as you please. But there are things to take into consideration.

Things to know
Something to remember is that not all mods are compatible with each other. Any mods that alter the same tables and values will be loaded in alphabetical preference. A loading over Z. This is called 'Load Order' This can be changed by use of a 'mod manager' that allows you to move items in your mod list so that they load in the way you want, helping to solve some compatibility issues.

Install one mod at a time. When you hit subscribe launch your game and see if the mod has been enabled in your mod manager or total war launcher. After that launch your game and test to see if the mod is working properly. Do this for each mod you subscribe to.
You do this because it becomes a lot easier to detect when a mod has incompatibility issues or problems with the mod its self.

If there is compatibility issues you may experience crashing on start up or crashing on loading.
If there is a problem you can disable mods or delete them at any time on the launcher.
Let the mod author know if you think you have detected an issue. Please include any details you have discovered.

[blindseye]

Great guide! Can you add something about Heros!? LOL

[Guy]

so im playing as grombrodel the crack dwarf and im having trouble defending against waves of chaos marauders and skaeling coast raids. i had an easy time cleaning up the greenskins and i rule most of the southern world, but the chaos just keep fking coming. help? mass slayers? god help dawi

[Dmformom]

For someone who is not the "best" fan of the game, you certainly do love making guides.

[Azzak]

Ah my bad, I think you mention the normal demigriphs and not demigriphs with halberds if you compare them to Reiksguard.

In that case yes, reiksguard is a better anti infantry than normal demigriphs. Demigriphs with halberds still shine, normal demigriphs not so much.

[Azzak]

They are not as good as at release but they are still excellent.

They are not the strongest anti large cav in the game anymore (that goes to blood knights I guess, and some other units are better than demigriphs), but they are definitely worth to take. I include them in most of my imperial armies.

To give you an idea, at release demigriphs were the strongest cavalry by far and were destroying everything. The nerf got them from "GOD-POWER" to "Excellent".

[Train27]

Great guide! I just wanted to ask something: you mention in the guide that demigriphs might be getting nerfed. Considering the guide is almost a year old, I was wondering if demigriph knights are still so overpowered.
I've read on other guides that Reiksguard knights are better now.

Opinion on the matter?

[Kanthier]

Eh, no worries. kinda disappointed my guess was wrong, though, lol

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

You caught us! There are some sections that we thought would be easy to copy and paste. I brought them in from the Attila: Overall Guide. So that section was copied. Thanks for that information Ddraig, we'll quickly re-do that section to make it more relevant.

[Kanthier]

Oh, and steam tanks may be more to your liking if you use them as tanks instead of artillery pieces

[Kanthier]

the Raze, loot, sack, etc. section is inapplicable to TW:WH. looks like it was copied off one for TW: Rome (or 2)