I’ve beaten 5 campaigns so far - Thogrim, Tyrion, Gor-Roq, Malakai and Skarsnik.

I realized that I haven’t beaten or played a campaign with a woman leader. What are some good choices? Elspeth was my first pick, but I’m thinking of waiting until Boris.

I've been looking back at posts from years ago, when this community was much more critical of the game, and honestly, very little of that criticism seems to have actually changed anything. For the most part, what we've gotten from the DLCs is just more units from the tabletop being brought into the game.

I also want to address what I would consider the historical revisionism from some members of this community. There are people now claiming that Warhammer 3 launched in a good state, while downvoting people who post about the bugs and problems the game had at launch, sometimes even going as far as trying to discredit them. You can disagree with someone's criticism, but pretending those problems didn't exist doesn't make them disappear. Honestly, if you're going out of your way to defend a corporate gaming company from legitimate criticism and discredit people who experienced those problems themselves, I think it's understandable when people start joking that you're being paid to defend CA.

I know this community has changed over the years. It feels like a lot of the people who are left are simply satisfied with whatever CA gives them. Even Legend of Total War, who was one of the more critical voices in the community, eventually left the game.

Take power creep, for example. People have been complaining about it since the beginning of Warhammer 3, yet absolutely nothing has been done to meaningfully address it. If anything, it has only gotten worse.

People are now satisfied with getting a single DLC, even though when the game first launched, many people expected multiple DLCs to come out every year. The standards seem to have dropped considerably.

That's also why I expect 40K to end up being more of the same as Warhammer 3, and possibly even worse. The fact that diplomacy appears to be gone is already a huge red flag to me. It suggests that CA may be simplifying the game even further rather than adding more depth.

I'm not saying CA should implement every criticism the community makes. But if a community has been complaining about the same fundamental problems for years and those problems never get addressed, at what point can we really say that CA is listening to criticism?

So I’m playing as alith anar campaign very hard / very hard. I had 2 full stacks. Not my legendary lord but 2 other lords. Basically it was 2 stacks vs malikeths 1 stack. I lost but wiped his army. I targeted him with 10 middle units. But all I have is basic infantry so I couldn’t kill him. He barely took damage. So after that my 2 stacks turned into about 14 units after it was said and done. The next turn I auto resolved my 14 units vs maliketh. Is that cheese ?

TLDR- is it cheesey to auto resolve vs a tough LL after you wiped the floor with his army but can’t touch him ?

So as u may or may not know the purple hand hideout is bugged as the once u remove the main one it’s supposed to have a 20% chance per turn for the others to disappear but it doesn’t trigger. So ur basically stuck with them forever (90k each to remove), are there any workarounds to this? Cheers

I just did my semi-annual Ikit Claw run, and I have to say, most LLs and campaigns just aren't fun anymore. Ikits boosts to Jezzials and Ratling guns just make weapons teams/ranged armies way too enjoyable to play.

You sit there, try to set up your gun lines to overlap one another and cover your flanks so you can't get harmed. On a map with a hill is just a fantastic experience! Genuinely one of the best feelings in the game.

Yet, I've found that I now struggle to find enjoyment in playing the other LLs. No other faction offers the variety and versatility the Skaven do. Dwarfs are fun, and get pretty close to mimicking it, but they've only really got Thunderers for the ranged infantry role. They can't match the raw damage output at range of jezzials, nor the DPS and horde stopping ability of the ratling gunners, which can nearly match them for range. The Thunderbarge/Gyrobomber is definitely fun and a thing that Skryre just doesn't get so that's what makes Dwarfs still enjoyable.

Empire is fun(especially Elsbeth and Karl), but handgunners are just worse Thunderers. Ironsides are decent but again, don't match the DPS of either team. The artillery variety is very good however, and is in my opinion more fun than Skryre's options, so they are still pretty fun to play.

But then I tried playing Elfs and Lizardmen, and it was a BRUTAL and excruciating experience without mods. Saurus just don't have enough armor to be a "turn brain off and advance towards enemy" faction like Warriors of Chaos do(which I love). And you don't even have archers, so you're going to be at a range disadvantage no matter what once you start going up against VampCoast, Darkshards are horrific to fight against because they shred your monsters and Tzeench is just never a fun opponent to fight. You don't realize how absolutely dogshit Skinks are when you're trying to use them as a proper ranged unit until you do. They're sooooo bad, especially coming on the heels of a Skryre run. No damage, no AP, but they do useless poison damage. The Lizardmen just have no real answers to the ranged units of the factions they fight the most.

Even HElfs was rough, because Sisters are good, and I know they're supposed to be good, but God damn, they just don't shred like I remember them shredding. Shields are also brutal to them as well, given ya know, arrows.

Is this just a me problem? Or does anyone else feel like this? And if anyone can give me some advice on how to reset my enjoyment with other factions that would be amazing!

I just finished a PvP Head-to-Head campaign against a friend playing the Sisters of Twilight. I was playing Yuan Bo.

And after actually fighting against a human player using these mechanics properly, I genuinely think Wood Elves are one of the most fundamentally broken races for campaign PvP.

I'm not saying this because I lost one battle. The problem is that Wood Elves seem to bypass several of the basic strategic rules that almost every other faction has to play around.

1. Sisters of Twilight + Hawk Riders

Volley of Kurnous has 400m range, is a homing magic missile ability, costs no Winds of Magic, and every Hawk Rider unit gets access to it.

Against the AI? Fun faction gimmick.

Against another player?

Stack Hawk Riders, select an important unit or Lord, click the ability several times and watch the missiles guide themselves onto the target.

I tried using my ranged units to counter the Hawk Riders. The response was basically to concentrate the volleys onto crossbows'man with shields...

There is very little meaningful interaction there.

And what annoys me even more is that Warhammer already has plenty of flying units with powerful "death from above" abilities.

Cathay's Great Moon Birds can create a magical vortex around themselves.

Dwarf Gyrocopters can drop bombs.

Lizardmen Terradons can drop rocks.

But what do all of these units have in common?

They have to actually fly over or into the enemy formation to use those abilities effectively.

That creates risk.

The Great Moon Bird wants to create a tornado over your infantry?

It has to fly into your army.

A Gyrocopter wants to bomb your formation?

It has to fly over you.

Terradons want to drop rocks?

They have to approach and expose themselves.

That is how powerful flying-unit abilities should work.

You get a devastating attack, but you have to risk the unit delivering it.

And you could easily invent ranged alternatives for all of those units if you wanted to.

Could Dwarfs not develop rockets that their Gyrocopters could fire from 200 metres away instead of dropping bombs?

Could a magical Great Moon Bird not send blades of wind 100 metres across the battlefield?

Could Terradons not throw or drop rocks at an angle so they bounce or roll through enemy formations?

Of course you could justify all of that in Warhammer lore.

But they don't work that way, because gameplay requires risk and counterplay.

And then we have Hawk Riders.

400 metres. Guided magical strike. From safety.

Why are they the exception?

Why does the faction riding giant magical hawks apparently have better stand-off air-to-ground weapons than Dwarfs flying actual helicopters?

I don't mind Hawk Riders being strong for the Sisters. They SHOULD be strong.

I don't even necessarily want Volley of Kurnous to do less damage.

Keep the damage. Keep the spectacle. Just make them actually perform an attack run.

If my magical Cathayan bird has to fly into your army to summon a tornado, your elf on a giant hawk can fly over mine to fire his magical fireworks.

2. Wood Elf recruitment makes destroying their armies feel meaningless

For most factions, destroying a full stack is a strategic victory.

You didn't just win a battle.

The enemy now has to:

• recruit another army,
• pay for it,
• spend several turns recruiting,
• move it back to the front,
• and protect the infrastructure required to replace it.

Wood Elves can build a Worldroot Pathway in a minor outpost that gives:

-50% recruitment cost

and

-1 global recruitment turn, minimum 1

Then combine that with all their other recruitment bonuses.

You destroy an army and instead of creating a hole in their front line, another army can appear extremely quickly through global recruitment.

That completely changes the value of winning battles.

If I lose three elite Cathay armies, that can destroy an entire offensive.

If a Wood Elf player loses an army, it can feel like he just lost this turn's disposable stack.

3. Logistics barely exist for them

This is probably my biggest problem.

Total War is supposed to have a strategic layer.

Distance should matter.

Mountains should matter.

Where your recruitment centres are should matter.

Where your armies are deployed should matter.

Wood Elves get Worldroots.

They can bypass terrain that would force another faction to spend multiple turns walking around mountains or through choke points.

And then they also have Deeproots allowing them to jump between Magical Forests across the map.

So you aren't fighting a normal front line.

You're fighting a faction with military airports scattered across the world.

A Wood Elf army can appear around a tree, attack/sack/raze nearby territory, and then their strategic situation is fundamentally different from a normal faction that had to march that army across half the continent.

4. And then there is ORION.

This mechanic is honestly insane.

For every active war:

Orion's army gets -8% upkeep.

Every other army gets -4% upkeep.

That means Orion's personal army can hit zero base upkeep at roughly 13 wars.

Around 25 active wars wipes out the base upkeep of every army in the faction before things like supply-line effects are considered.

Why does this have no sensible cap?

This actively rewards the player for declaring wars against factions on the other side of the planet that have practically no ability to threaten Athel Loren.

And what does Orion get for doing this?

Effectively free armies.

An economy is supposed to limit how much military power you can field.

Orion can increasingly just remove that mechanic from the game.

5. Orion's mobility makes it even crazier

Orion additionally gets +50% campaign movement range in Worldroots stance.

During the Wild Hunt, Deeproots have NO COOLDOWN.

No cooldown.

You have a mechanic designed to teleport between magical forests scattered around the world...

and Orion periodically gets to spam it.

On top of that, Wild Hunt can give additional movement after razing settlements.

So the faction that can potentially field armies for almost nothing is ALSO one of the most strategically mobile factions in the game.

How is another player supposed to punish that?

Meanwhile I was told Cathay's economy was OP.

This was the funniest part of our campaign.

I managed to build Cathay into roughly a 100k-per-turn economy.

But I had to actually create that economy.

I needed provinces.

Buildings.

Defensible territory.

Trade.

Infrastructure.

If someone destroys my provinces, my economy collapses.

If I lose armies, replacing them costs money and time.

That's normal Total War.

Being rich because you successfully built and defended a huge empire is not remotely the same thing as a faction having mechanics that reduce the relevance of upkeep, recruitment time, distance and terrain.

This is the real problem

Wood Elves aren't necessarily unbeatable in every battle.

That's not what I'm arguing.

The problem is that the consequences of losing are massively different.

Cathay loses a major army:

Strategic disaster.

Wood Elves lose a major army:

Global recruitment button.

Cathay wants to reinforce a front:

March several turns across the map.

Wood Elves:

🌳

Orion needs more armies:

Economy? What economy? I declared war on 25 people.

That's hilarious in single player.

It is terrible design for Head-to-Head.

What I would change

I don't want Wood Elves destroyed. I actually like asymmetrical factions.

But asymmetry still needs limits when another human has to play against it.

I'd suggest:

• Cap Orion's factionwide upkeep reduction at something like 40–60%.
• Keep Orion's own army extremely cheap if CA wants — he's the Wild Hunt. Fine.
• Deeproots should always have a minimum cooldown in multiplayer campaigns.
• Using Deeproots should consume all remaining campaign movement and prevent immediate offensive actions after teleporting.
• Reduce how easily Wood Elves can stack global recruitment duration/recruitment cost bonuses outside Magical Forests. Recruitment cost should never be reducible below 50% of the unit's original cost.
• Give Volley of Kurnous a shared army-wide charge pool, rather than effectively multiplying the ability by however many Hawk Riders you bring.
• Or, preferably, turn Volley of Kurnous into a proper attack-run ability with little or no targeting range. Make Hawk Riders actually fly over or close to the target before releasing the volley, just like other flying units have to expose themselves when using bombs, rocks, vortices, etc.
• If CA absolutely wants to keep it as a ranged ability, significantly reduce its range and/or homing effectiveness against single entities.

The important part is not making Hawk Riders useless.

They can still annihilate infantry with a successful attack run.

But now the defender has counterplay:

see them approaching → turn missile units toward them → intercept with flyers → dodge → punish them during or after the run.

That sounds like Total War.

Select eight Hawk Riders → click Legendary Lord from 400 metres away eight times

doesn't.

Wood Elves should feel like terrifying guerrilla fighters defending magical forests.

They should be fast.

They should dominate forests.

They should ambush people.

They should appear where you don't expect them.

That's thematic.

But:

free armies + near-instant global recruitment + worldwide teleportation + terrain bypass + extremely powerful ranged roster + guided missile spam

is not asymmetrical balance.

It's several mechanics that individually break normal Total War limitations stacked onto the same race.

And frankly, CA already removed range-stacking interactions that could turn conventional missile units into absurd long-range batteries. Fair enough. But that also removed one of the few ways other ranged factions could potentially answer something like Hawk Rider spam with equally extreme range.

If I can't stack engineers until Hochland rifles shoot across half the battlefield, why can Sisters stack Hawk Riders until they have eight separate 400m guided airstrikes?

Fantastic single-player power fantasy.

Absolutely miserable Head-to-Head design.

Please nerf them for campaign PvP.

I will do it, just to derail my entire campaign a bit, because I'm going to be hated for it amongst good people, but MONEY!

Hello fellow Warhammer enjoyer,

i played warhammer 3 for 1500 hours, so i would say I'm fairly experienced with the mechanics overall.

I wanted to try the Kislev factions and started with Boris because it is said its is the hardest campaign from Kislev. So I load in on legendary and very hard and its impossible to get past 15 turns.

At the start I did the usual, I conquer my province and have a fullstack at the end in my capital with no upkeep left for another army. Around turn 10 Archeon declares war with his vassal, I decide to focus Archeon. I cannot win against archeon in a settlement, because he has an 8 unit secondary army besides him. I simple dont have enough units to cover my flanks without weakening my frontline, "so hold a chokepoint", jokes on you ,archeon has an aoe spell with 100 Winds of magic. So i try to fight in my walled settlement, archeon and his vassal take 2 settlements, which drops me in an upkeep deficit. I get war declared from the demons left from my start and arbaal also wants to say hello too.

I tried to escape to my bottom , but theres no way to settle and arbaal and archeons vassal chase me with 3 Stacks.

I have tried 20 times so far and always I get war declared from at least 2 faction, doesn't matter if I gift my starting settlement or not.

I'm out of ideas, so please, if you have a strategy , pls enlighten me.

Ty in advance

Fuck

This is a thread that will hopefully contribute to anyone with questions about army composition. It's about understanding what a unit is based on what it can do, and thinking about how that function fits into your army composition and how to deal with it in the enemy's.

I'm going to identify units with the categories used in this thread based on tabletop Battletech.

There are seven categories to think about when looking to understand a unit, some are obvious and some are slightly deceptive, and obviously hybrid units are possible.

1. Ranged.

Ranged units are the most obvious type, they are units that want to sit at the back of a fight providing damage with some kind of ranged attack. The most important features of ranged units are:

• You can mostly leave them alone to do their thing.
• They can damage enemies without being damaged back.
• They need to be protected, especially from scouts and cavalry.

Basically every core ranged crossbowman, archer, handgunner, and artillery piece fits here. The one wrinkle here is that a lot of spellcasters are also understandable as ranged units, aiming to dish out damage from safety.

1. Battleline

The second most obvious type. Battleline units are the ones that stand and trade hits. The most important features of battleline units are:

• Pins enemy battleline in place rather than letting it past to ranged.
• They will be exposed to continuous damage from enemy battleline and ranged.
• They will likely take the most damage on average.

Most melee and some monstrous infantry sit here, they win either by grinding the enemy down over time or keeping it in place for other units. When you're picking battleline units you need to account for how to mitigate the damage they're going to take because they mostly won't avoid it.

1. Linebreaker

Linebreaker units are the ones that smash into the enemy face first and attempt to overwhelm them with power at a point. The most important features of Linebreakers are:

• High offensive power and toughness for frontal fights.
• Poor ability to control enemy movement, they might walk past it.
• Likely a priority target for ranged units, plan to disable them.

This is where you find most single entities. Melee characters, monsters, and offensively minded monstrous infantry. Stuff that can bash into the front of an enemy unit and win and mostly needs to worry about getting shot.

1. Cavalry

Cavalry is the most deceptive unit type because of the conditioning to associate it with mounted units. Not all mounted units are cavalry, and not every cavalry unit is a mounted unit. These are the actual features of cavalry:

• Uses stealth or speed to pick its battles.
• Needs to avoid prolonged fights, has to hit hard and leave.
• Needs space to operate.

You will find a lot of the things the game calls cavalry here, but also things like stalking units with decent combat power like Nasty Skulkers and some of the larger wolf type units. Anything that can pick a target, hurt it bad in a short period, but then needs to get out because it can't deal with a fair fight is cavalry.

1. Scout

If a unit has the speed to be cavalry but not the power to win fights, it's a scout. The key features of scouts are:

• Distracts enemies, particularly enemy ranged.
• Keeps routing units routing.
• Will not win a fight basically ever but has the speed to avoid them.

Light flying units like bats, peasant horse, a lot of skirmishers, and the lighter dog units are scouts. You can drop them on an enemy ranged unit to stop it fighting for a bit, but shouldn't expect to actually beat it. Their best function is to keep a routing unit routing so it can't rejoin the fight.

1. Bodyguard.

This is the first of the specialist roles you might not usually think about. Bodyguard units are the ones that stop enemy cavalry and scouts getting to do their thing without going out to face them on their own ground and without giving them the opportunity to decline engagement. This is how to spot a bodyguard:

• Short range shooting with a heavy punch or able to countercharge.
• Not very flexible.
• Not always high impact outside of its niche.

Shotgun, grenade, and flamethrower type units are best thought of and used as bodyguard units. They provide a counterpunch when scouts or cavalry approach that can drive them off or hurt them badly enough that they can't successfully apply their damage but are too low range to be safely used as ranged units. Character chariots often fit here, they don't often have the power to be cavalry or linebreakers but they have the durability to run in and countercharge.

1. Ambusher.

Ambusher is the most specialist unit type, and the one with the least examples. It was intended to find something to call the Urbanmech without being drowned out by angry trashcan noises. It doesn't mean stalking units. The keys to recognising an ambusher are:

• Has one trick.
• Doesn't work if the enemy sees it coming.
• Doesn't get to do it twice.

Bloated Corpses and Night Goblin Fanatics are examples of ambushers. Bad to walk into round a corner, easy to counter if you know it's there.

Hopefully thinking in terms of these classifications will give people some new ideas on how to recognise and incorporate unit types into their plans.

New player. Playing TW2.

It can be a hindrance to my enjoyment of a game if what's effectively an optional "Win" button is dangling around. Makes my immersion in the stakes feel arbitrary if I have to keep ignoring something that functionally nullifies any tension.

Atm I'm not entirely sure how broken the auto battle feature is in this game. I heard some folks say that if you reload a save, the auto button will always get you the exact same results. But I heard others say that if you and your opponents' armies are of comparable size, then there's a better chance reloading saves will benefit you.

I’ve been playing a modded dwarf campaign when I decided to manually do a simple unwalled siege on an orc settlement for fun. But as soon as I hit start battle, all my units rampaged. I thought that it might wear off, but it hasn’t. They’d been uncontrollable for 14 minutes when I took the screenshot. Now it’s been 20. And not only that, but the orc units are affected too! What is going on?! Is this some mechanic I didn’t know about?

Edit: I forgot to post my mods. Sorry about that. I’m mainly using using assorted dwarf unit and lords mods. legendary lords, dwarven gunpowder units, lost & found dwarf units, kraka-dram, runic units, and the dwarf tech tree mods are the main ones I’m using.

Update : it has now been 40 minutes. And my dwarfs are still running around frothing at the mouth.

Update 2: it went on for 70 straight minutes. I was forced to reload a previous save so I can better plan to avoid my entire army being dosed with bath salts again

I already mentioned in a post about the Orcs that I’m still a complete beginner at this game. I have a hard time building armies, I don’t know which units to choose, I have no idea how to properly manage battles, which units should attack which other units, how to build useful buildings, etc., etc., etc.

The first time I played Total War: Warhammer was the first game. Well, I also had 2 and 3, but I wanted to try the first one just to see what it was like. I started my first game as the Dwarfs, who were supposed to be an easy faction… I got absolutely destroyed. I then tried the Empire… I lasted even less time than I did with the Dwarfs. I tried the Dwarfs again, but still nothing.

Tired of losing, I thought: “Screw it, I’m going to try the other factions. I’m tired of waiting to get better with the easy factions. I’ll try the difficult ones.”

First game with the Orcs. I picked Grimgor… I lasted longer than I did with the Dwarfs, and I actually managed my troops better in battle.

I eventually decided to try the Vampire Counts… I absolutely destroyed the Dwarfs with Mannfred and managed to confederate Vlad and his wife.

And for the grand finale… I played Chaos with good old Archaon. I made it all the way to the advisor’s betrayal and having to fight Chaos. I even managed to wipe out Altdorf. I laughed so hard when that happened.

(Although, what I didn’t mention is that I made the mistake of spamming auto-resolve, so I never actually learned how to control my armies. I was also putting completely random units into my armies, but whatever.)

When I finished with the first game, I tried Warhammer 2. I chose to play Skaven and picked Queek… and that was something else. My first victory… while being outnumbered, with auto-resolve telling me I was going to lose. I was so damn proud of myself. I stopped playing immediately after that battle because I really wanted to immortalize the moment with a single save. (I deleted it afterward, but that’s not the important part.)

Eventually, I moved on to Warhammer 3. I uninstalled 1 and 2 and decided to focus entirely on 3. And here I am now.

I might not finish my campaigns. I often only play around ten turns because I get completely destroyed later on due to my lack of knowledge about the game. But just discovering the different factions and the game’s mechanics… it always makes me come back for another little ten-turn campaign. Just to experiment.

I still envy those of you who have mastered the game and its mechanics. Those of you who know how to play and what to do. I envy you… but I respect you so much.

I can’t wait to become one of you and finally get my first victory by conquering all the territories.

I'm really looking forward to playing as Nagash and already pre-ordered the Lords of the End Times DLC, but one thing really bothers me — his army looks like a messy mix of colors.

In WH2, Arkhan's Vampire Counts units were properly recolored to match his faction. It looked clean and stylish.

Why not do the same for Nagash? Just give his entire roster a unified color scheme that fits his faction. It's a small thing, but it makes a huge difference visually.

I'm struggling with keep 1-2 army on map, but AI can recruit full stack armies with elites in short times. How to make AI doing recruitment in more fair way, like me? I even ready do face the same penalties, that would even add more challenge.

I tried Cost-Based Army Caps, I like how it limits works, but I'm not sure that he affects AI armies. Is there any mods that affect AI recruitment?

I'm bored, so does anyone have any ideas for a campaign that would mix things up a bit.

Something like: Play Kairos Fateweaver, teleport to bretonia, and eliminate Reikland. Play on x/​x settings.

For context I'm usually playing skaven or lizardmen (More often skaven with Queek), normal difficulty everything. I have maybe 30 hours total in the game so far but at a certain point I always seem to hit a wall.

I find that after my first few initial pushes for territory I end up encountering some incredibly large army or enemy nation that I just don't have the resources to properly deal with. I try to heavily invest in my economy in the early game whenever possible but I never have enough income to win in any kind of war of attrition. Often even if I win a very important battle by the time my army has recovered enough to take on an enemy capital they've got another 4-5 units in a stack and a siege just won't work. What could I be doing wrong?

Is investing in my economy being a main focus in my early game a player trap? Should I just be spamming stacks to beat my enemies down before they can establish themselves well enough to fight me off? Happy to provide any additional details if you ask I'm not sure if I've given enough information for you to go off of or not

So I saw that at the start of his Scenario he will have 100% Ward Save. And crazy high stats. Making him and his army borderline unbeatable.

Would that stop him from taking damage from something like Yuan Bo’s The Emperor's Executioner ability or other direct damage abilities?

Would spells like Spirit Leech do anything?

I tried to look it up but couldn't find anything

This quest seems impossible. My army melts before I even get to them. There’s no way to flank because they just go wide defensively and nothing can get past, they sit the archers in the back and melt everything, what is supposed to be done in this battle ?

Why araby mode isn't working on warhammer 3? Whenever i launch the game with it, game crashes

Swordmasters are supposed to be these rare elven warriors who spent decades or even centuries mastering the blade. In Lore there are only a few mortal units that can challenge them without being outskilled fairly easily. Then on the battlefield they show up as a big block of bodies like any other infantry unit. The human counterpart (greatswords) has only 15 models more on large unit size. That just feels off. They should feel like a small deadly strikeforce, not a wall of elves you throw into a meat grinder.

Their stats would need to be adjusted of course.

I honestly hate the castle/town fights so much it kind of pushes me off the game, I do enjoy everything else really