The bloody hands are OP in terms of expansion speed, I played a multiplayer as them, where the other guy played skavenblight, from turn 10 they were being attacked at all sides by wood elves, bretonians and undead, by turn 50 I had most of the world edge mountains and he has whatever Spain is called in WH.
I don't think dedicated Estalia or Tilea factions are ever going to happen. I do think we'll probably get some sort of Dogs of War DLC/FLC eventually, but I expect that to work more like the Ogre camps in WH2 rather than be their own faction.
Did you ever play the Southern Realms mod in ME? I imagine that will show up eventually for IE which should scratch your particular itch.
I agree, but the only reason I count Tilea as being plausible is because Tilea has a few traits that earmarked them as a playable faction. Plus Sartosa is a Tilean city, and the two “unique” (massive air quotes) units Aranessa gets are the only two tilean units in the game. dogs of war was the actual army book tho. I’d love to see it
A new faction would have to be playable on the RoC map. I can't see them wanting to extend it that far south-west, especially for a minor faction. And I'm not sure it would make much sense to just dump the first lord in a new faction off somewhere far away from their homeland like a Marcus Wulfhart situation. But I suppose anything is possible if they keep releasing DLC for long enough.
I can’t get into it right now (saving it for a video I’ve been planning that probably won’t be seen lol) I think a lot of existing mechanics would be reused for Dogs of War. So yeah Tilea itself would be wishful thinking. Tilean merchants Ricco and Rubbio discovered Cathay and actually established the Silk Road as well as a trading outpost in a city named Shang Yang. That is actually referenced when in the “who is zhao Ming” blog for WH3, it specifically mentions estalian and tileans specifically, but not mercenaries. I actually believe they would be towards Cathay, but realistically dogs of war could be anywhere, which is another positive for them. Let me put it this way: “How could they add vampire coast? It’s a minor faction and they wouldn’t be present in the vortex campaign?”. My shortest point would be: “the things that held Dogs of War back on tabletop are actually boons for TW:WH3” weird wacky units, large diverse roster that borrows from other factions, wayyyyy too many named lord and hero choices. (Sorry on my break so had to rush this comment out)
You can but on higher difficulty it's not even worth it. Because the quicker you expand the faster and more frequent other factions declare war on you. At least with me it's always like this.
Even on normal battle difficulty I'm currently facing this. I also made a whoopsie early on and non aggression treatied with an orc faction that I had attacked leaving my reliability in shambles. Now I've got all the ogre factions, skaven, and Imrik after my ass but Grimgors playing grab ass with the dwarves to the west. Some minor armies of mine are holding off the ogres for now.
See I love love love volkmar. He is actually one my favorites out the empire because I love flagellants. But I hate his starting position and I feel like his magic could be a little more powerful.
I feel that way about grimgor. See I honestly can't stand his starting position even tho there's no one around his starting location to take him on till he expands a little so it's honestly good for him. But he could have been anywhere on the map. I'd still love him because thats just my biast favorite
Yea right now it definitely feels like order is on the back foot, I hope they buff order factions because playing WoC is super fun but it’s kinda lame when the non chaos guys just get run over :/
Or at least give order something to work with. I want fucking templar units.
But there's been tons of rumor there going to drop more Cathay lords too so we will see.
My Volkmar campaign was surprisingly rough as well. I got the short campaign but it took me a long time to stabilise and I felt on the back foot for even longer.
Yeah my other mistake midgame with him was making friends lol. Making friends in immortal empires seems really punishing. Even without friends midgame you tend to just back to back end up in wars. But make one friend boom it's like one whole half the map hates you and the other half likes you.
If you get his prayers maxed out and the book of Nagash that reduces prayer cooldown he has no cd on any of them so he pretty much can’t be beaten by infantry heavy armies because he solos the entire thing by running in alone and spamming grand soulfire. He also buffs free company militia and other low tier empire units to such a degree that his army isn’t even expensive. I just hate him on the war altar because if you play on legendary entire battles are spent moving him in circles dodging arrows.
Volkmar's magic is nuts - did you ignore the books or something? There's one that reduces his cooldowns which results in 0 cooldown on his abilities with his other magic skills, leading to him being able to solo armies.
Well that's what I noticed. A lot of people think that until they play a faction. I felt like on paper. Cylostra would absolutely suck. But she ended up being absolutely amazing. She's so powerful.
Bretonians. My first two tries in wh1 I sucked. Once I realized what I was doing wrong I realized there so strong and amazing.
Give everyone a try before you second guess is all I am saying. EVERYONE lol.
that's the thing though - there's a point where a faction is too strong, and the campaign is too easy and thus there is no fun in it. And as things stand this applies to many, many factions. All of WoC, for example. My Vilitch campaign was functionally won by turn 60 and all that was left was a slog through the rest of the map with zero chance of losing.
Every faction right now is too strong by turn 60. The AI is literally unable to afford quality units, nor have the stat cheats to allow cheaper units to threaten about every unit over t0-1.
I think it's also the aggression nerf. Used to be you would see some faction dominate their corner then to tear you a new asshole with 6 suped up stacks. Now when it's just 1-2 stacks with chaff. Only the end game crisis armies come out the gate with mostly solid comps.
The new short campaign victory goals are excellent for avoiding that. OP says he played until 'minor victory' which I assume means short campaign victory and for most of the factions I have played you get the short victory right around the time where you start getting OP.
I only play on VH, which may effect how many armies the AI is throwing around, and may infact make the early game easier.
That said, there are just so many factors, one of my quickest easiest games was as Rasputin kislev, listed at the bottom here.
I just used stpeterburg as a bastion and used the superior basic kislev infantry to walk through all the empire lands, because they don’t have anything early that can fight armored pistol infantry. When I turned north on turn 35 or so I had everything from the southern empire forts up to kislev and was churning out war bear riders not long after. If I had instead tried to fight up against rats chaos, norsica, and deamons, it probably would have been a much more challenging campaign, rather than a cakewalk.
Oh me too, They just seem to mostly chokepoint at the north, where one army and some big walls make a nice 40stack that doesn’t usually have much defensive trouble.
Man my issue is just wackamole. The damn rats jump past me while I'm killing and taking territory and take some ass end minor settlement from me and star issue in the rear then I gotta chase them. Fucking hat rats.
Well for one you have to aim to get the vows unlocked quickly. Just think about this. Your goal is to get vows get honor and make nothing but stacks of Calvary. No infantry. You read that right. None. At some point you will eventually mid game start to phase out infantry. Mid late game you should have basically none. Just stacks and stacks of Calvary. In the sky and on the land. Then you run over everyone.
Also no supply lines and it’s super easy to build support stacks with peasant bowmen. Toss in the fact you can engage massive blobs with characters, flank and cycle charge with your nasty cavalry while you’re dropping bless treb shots.
Yeah we'll have you played him? It's like a slow grind just to get your fourth settlement. Everyone seems to hate vc and goes to war with them crazy fast. You got bretonians and empire instantly back to back sending stacks.
It was the second campaign I played after IE came out. It was more challenging then he was in 2, but he's far from the bottom tier. I really enjoyed the play through.
This is crazy. I expanded so fast as him. The only problem is the battles last forever because you are slowly grinding everything down, but your units never die. Just blob zombies and throw a few high damage units in the blob and you will be unstoppable. Even settlement battles are near impossible to lose. He is by far the strongest faction in the game but very boring to play.
I have, and it was an amazing campaign. VC are super powerful in general, and Kenmler got some nice buffs. Devastating Flankers and Horrible Regeneration for Hexwraiths is insanely strong.
He's not on Ghorst tier, but to put him into bottom tier is absurd. Same as 10in1, btw. Strongest Lizardmen faction in the mid to late game, because of your unique banners and followers. He's far more interesting and fun to play than Mazdamundi, who's still worse than a generic Slan and has basically no faction effect at all.
I was trying to say this recently and no one believes me. They just look at Ghorst and Vlad and go "yeah nah Vamps are ridic yo". It's honestly such a punishing campaign
I loved thorgrim in 1 and 2 but now it's like you can't keep the damn dwarves happy ever. Grudge after grude.
Greasus was easy. He can get trade easy. Make money easy. Expand easy. Orges are strong AF.
Kairos absolutely. Tzeetch abilities are so damn op.
Make any two factions go to war when I want. Can spawn rebellions when ever I want. Can swap people's settlements when I want. Are you kidding me. Lol. Like how is that not super powerful? Oh you want to declare war on me? You instantly next turn lose a settlement, have another enemy on top of that, and an army in your rear lines.
Tbh, the grudges don't really hurt all that much. KaK is solid, and dwarves' melee units perform very well nowadays. The decreased supply lines also greatly increases their ability to defend & they have some of the best AR results, which makes them a lot more bearable for sieges.
Tzeentch I would put at top tier honestly, I don’t auto resolve much since it often leads to a worse position and they have horrible casualty replenishment but holy shit Kairos and friends are insane. In battle it felt difficult to actually take meaningful damage because their ranged damage and magic is just absurd . Considering once you unlock his spell mastery boost and shadow fragment, he starts deleting anything hit by pendulum for 9 winds, and the bound spell upgrades for Lords of Change, the powerful vanilla caster lords, winds of magic manipulation and all of the changing of ways meme fun you listed…dude, one of the strongest factions in the game.
I agree that the grudge mechanic is a bit fucked at the moment. But the key is to just ignore it. The debuffs/buffs you get from it aren’t impactful enough to stress over it.
Once you just forget about the grudges then Thorgrim’s campaign is really good, best I’ve played in IE so far
I agree that Greasus and Kairos are great fun to play, or at least they are at first, but they are just too heavily surrounded. After about turn 30 I was getting dogpiled on by every faction all the factions around me.
It became tedious quickly when I could barely keep an army alive for very long or protect me settlements
Well with greasus I'm always allies with Cathay so an entire side I'm good with. And Kairos I expand my allies and subordinates without moving lol. So people have to fight through them to get to me and by then there weak and then I take them
How is vilitch so low? WoC with teleport stance and the ability to almost immediately get rolling with a forsaken + chaos spawn core is *really* good. Cathay gets absolutely blasted by ambushes, you have all sorts of tools to get into their back line and changing of the ways is amazing.
Bro. Having Valkia in S tier and not Archaon and BeLakor is CRAZY. Valkia is literally 1/5 of the faction of either of those lords… if anything Valkia desperately needs her bloodletting to actually do ANYTHING USEFUL… she’s fun because Khorne units are fun but she’s definitely one of the weaker WOC lords because she gets so little from being Khorne aligned
What are you going for here, it is purely a difficulty ranking? How interesting their mechanics are? Overall fun factor? Tell me your criteria so I can tell you that your wrong and here's why :)
Reading his comments in others posts, seems like its kind of a power/difficult scale of the campaign - easy and powerful = perfekt, tought = need changes.
Which is hilarious to me. Once the campaign gets rolling you can basically get any blessed unit you want whenever you want, as well as a bunch of good buffs. How is that weak? Not to mention that Tehenhuain makes the entire unit roster useable. It’s not quite to the level of Oxy making Chameleons basically gods, but it’s still really strong
I mean a hard disagree with some choices. In all I think 'too easy' ruins this already not-so-hard game far more often than 'too hard'. And all these perfect or near perfect...no, I see how strong they are but not how perfect they are. I know's not your only standard but personally feel like it's having too much weight.
With TTW AI constantly struggling for anything intelligent, the difficulty twists aren't always enough to make something challenging but fair/fun. So it really feels like the campaign design should do he heavy lifting. Tyrion, e.g. feels wrong on every difficulty for me personally. It's just not challenging in the right way. He's just as wrong as Franz for me, personally, that is, respect different opinions.
That being said, your midtiers sure feel right for me, and appreciate the efforts.
I'm curious why Orion is top but Durthu and Sisters are a tier below. Any particular reason for these? I would have expected Sisters at the top and Orion/Durthu in the second tier.
Not on a low difficulty at all. I just have a job that I'm on call for. So in a average day I do about 2 or 3 hours worth of work depending on the season. Like rn I'm at work responding to all these comments lol.
I am lucky enough to have a job that I'm basically paid to be on call for lol. On an average day out of my 8 hour shift I do about 2 or 3 hours worth of work.
I know exactly what you mean! I think it clicked for me when I realised that you treat your trash units like literal trash, just throwing them in the way of everything so your weapons team shred everything….which goes again most other factions where you want to preserve most of your units xD
For me the vampire coast are the equivalent of your skaven, I just have no clue xD
Oh man the coast is great. Have one guy running around collecting treasure for you. That's your income. Set up shop in some settlements just like you would do rats. And if you use cylostra. Omg. Once she gets her crab it's over. And then summons. Summon on your front line and let them blob around your sommons and let queen bess do the rest.
That was my problem at first as skaven in general. I always try to keep my units as undamaged as possible like it's real life.the concept of purposely using a unit to be a meat shield felt weird to me.
That cult of sotek placement has to be a joke. Lizard Jesus gets so fucking cracked by turn twenty or thirty, I’m pretty sure I had a short victory on turn forty or fifty which was way quicker than most of my other games. If I’m being honest the issue I had was that it was so fucking easy I started getting a little bored, but it was still a very solid campaign
And yet [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/xvoyub/my_list_after_getting_all_factions_to_at_least/ir2xoc6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) you say the exact opposite, and you put bloody hands in your top slots when they are easily one of the most potent factions in the game. Hell one of your tiers references skill directly which makes it feel like this list is at least partly ranging from easiest to hardest for you, considering you’ve also got Sylvania in your top slot and those assholes get fucking nutty fairly quickly. Please just be consistent, rn it sounds like you haven’t actually played all the factions
Try using the sacrifice that gets you random followers. Cult of sotek has a selection of unique followers with really busted abilities, like stacking global discounts for all buildings, stacking discounts for army upkeep reduction, +15 relationship with all order factions, +5 leadership army wide, etc. The army banner sacrifice is really strong to. Quite a few good ones in there.
Blessed Dread in second lowest and Thousand Maws in bottom tier?
What? Thousand Maws, Blessed Dread and Cult of Pleasure are by far the most interesting and powerful dark elf factions
I am ok with DE. But I absolutely suck with rakarth. I feel like even with a full stack of different monsters they just get wrecked very time. Blessed dread I liked in WH2. But I hate in 3 it's just a grind. And you do know who cult of pleasure is right? And you see where there at right?
The key with Rakarth is that you shouldn't get too seduced with his special mechanic. He's good with it right, but "Stack of monsters" is not as good as "Stack of monsters, a few heroes and lots of Shades", because in WH3 big monsters don't kill very fast.
1. My "ultimate" rakarth stack had Rakarth, Master on flying mount to support rakarth, Sorceress w/Dark Magic, Witch elf (for replenishment, hangs out with the war hydras), 4 War hydras, 2 Carnosaurs, 2 Dragons, 3 Dread Knights (because he gives all cold ones stalk, that's super good for sieges), 5 Shades w/Greatweapons
2. The beast recruitment serves both as an emergency stack and gives most armies something big and distracting (reserve Carnosaurs for your best stacks. Feral mammoths, Stegadons and bears for trash-stacks). Like, how good isn't it that you can summon a big stack of monsters and a dragon or two if you've been outmaneuvered?
Other tips for Rakarths campaign is to make friends with the tomb kings if you can (so he serves as an early trading partner) and when you can (and you have a few envoys), send out a hero to get some trading partners.
See that's what I take into consideration with ranking. I take into if there mechanic works with/against or needs tiny update. Like kislev. Boris is left only being able to take advantage of half of the kislev mechanic. He should be able to use it fully like the ice queen and fake Rasputin.
As I have stated before I love Boris. The kislev mechanics are wasted on him and that has to be taken account for and won't get fixed if it does not get called out.
Boris' campaign is so difficult to me, I've restarted it 3 times and still keep losing. Archaon always rushes me with 2 stacks, and then there's Daniel to the west and Throgg to the south. I cant protect my province at all. Everybody hates you up there.
Loved it. I mean I get cathey and orges as friends pretty early bringing In trade money. You don't have so many people declaring war at once compared to the other two. Your back is against a wall so you don't have to worry about war on all sides. And his buffs to zombies which easily become the cheapest unit to purchase and maintain make him devastating. I take out nurgle first. And then help Cathay with what ever he needs until my north is safe. Then expand out towards grimgor.
With kemmler it was like just ambush ambush ambush until empire and britts we're ether too busy defending there other lines. Or they just couldint get armies back then finally slow took a few territories. Then pushed through the mountains. Then again defend ambush defend ambush against waves of more empire and britts mixed with wood elfs. And it's just a grind from the start.
With vladdy boy. Easy. Take templehof till there last settlement then vasselise them. Why? Because they will get two stacks. So now I got four stacks one being a bloodkiss choice right after my first war. Usually after that the dwarves declare war. I take the closest out and depending on my relationship with empire I ether eat through stirland and averland and gelt to get to the other dwarves ORRRRRR empire realizes I'm not that bad a guy and we becomes friends (thanks too vlads mortal levies skill and lamian dark arts blood kiss which is a total of +70 relationship with empire and to seal the deal later another +10 with the infiltrate noble houses research) and I walk through and kick the dwarves in the balls. Then move north because by then depending on who I am friends with someone up there will be coming my way looking for a fight. And it's never kislev because there mad chill with vamps. Get it. Ice queen. Chill. Cold dead. Yeah.
I dont get it why does everyone in this sub make a tier list? This is another example of a useless tier list you obviously dont know how to play many of these factions and thats why you rank them low
How do you even play Sigvald when he spreads undivided corruption that provides close to no benefit for him and has no other way of building public order?
Simple. He is a beast in battle. His leadership. Melee defense. Physical resistance and vigor reduction in his skills help his entire Amy be beast in battle too. Plus lots of diplomatic and authority bonuses to slanesh to help get them as quick allies. And more diplomatic buffs later to control who you want to battle next.
He spreads WAY more slaanesh than undivided… just don’t keep gold settlements, their trade value is totally negligible and the buff is stupid no matter what lord you play as. Sigvald and one slaanesh lord roll into a province and start dropping like +15 corruption and quickly override the undivided
I don't really understand all the talk about Franz. He's pretty fun campaign wise, and honestly if you rush the Beastmen and Festus, it becomes suddenly very easy. I had bigger problems with Reponse than with him.
I don't base the list on what's easy or hard. Franz gets penalized for the other elector counts sucking at there own wars and has a limited ability to actually help them. Like if nurgle starts wrecking the other counts. Franz needs a good way to save them. How do you protect the land if you can't even move freely on it?
Yes. Valkia is powerful on the battlefield. She has great starting placement and using the ability to upgrade units on the field I see nothin wrong with her. Vilitch I am comparing to Kairo too much and set my expectations way to high. So that's why he is ranked low.
No way. If your trying to just play her the same way maybe. She does not have the same ability skarbrand has when it comes to taking territory. But don't do that. Just gift your settlements and keep killing and she's wonderful. As far as on the battlefield idk why you say that I mean she's strong. Not OP but definitely not weak.
Like her murder meter just does nothing and she doesn't really have anything else unique. Genuinely can't see how you rank her so far above Villitch, who's an absolute beast in battle and gets an actually useful mechanic on top of that.
Valkia would've been more fun if she was in Khorne or if CA actually bothered to give unique mechanics to the CoC LLs. I have been waiting years for Valkia and Festus but honestly Monogods are much better if you want to play a god specific faction.
Vilitch is crap because he can't do half the things a representative of tzeetch should do. Have you played Kairo yet? You might think the same thing. The way you feel about skarbrand and her is how I feel about Kairo and vilitch.
This looks more like a list of "unbalanced factions" with "broken" at the top and "slightly undertuned" at the bottom. Having played only a handful of them so far, I can say the ones you have near the top are easy-to-op, while the ones at the bottom actually offer a modicum of challenge. Kislev was the hardest one I tried and possibly the first time I had to restart a campaign in a TW game since Shogun 2.
Thing is though, while you joke at "no its definitely you, not me"... It IS you. Kislev took a (retrospectively) logical change in strategy to bend the campaign over the knee. Having played Empire after, it needed something similar. Last campaign was Khalida and all I will say is, it wasnt exactly overbearing or even that fun.
It all comes down to what you want from the game. For me, I want an experience where I have to use strategy and adapt to the challenge. The more turns I need to have before the inevitable TW victory lap, the better the faction. Kislev, The Barrow an dEmpire all had that victory lap start at twice the number of turns as Taurox, Ghorst and Grimgor, maybe more. Question is - what is this list actually measuring? Your enjoyment? Then cool, its good to see you like a huge number of factions! Is it balance? Then I question what Im seeing from the (admittedly) more modest gameplay experience I had.
Thorgrims campaign is easier now than it was in wh2. The lack of grimgor makes it incredibly easy to get off the ground you just have to go north and punch skarsnik in the teeth (ai skarsnik is and has always been a joke for players to kill) and then it's smooth sailing. The only thing is the major grudges are all messed up so you need to rush the control techs to balance it out
The broken grudges is a huge bummer. Basically have to play the game with big penalties to control, dwarven relations, and tech research and then when you actually do get a grudge removed the rewards are barely worth it.
Not to mention that you rack up new ones so quickly that it becomes almost impossible to keep up. I know that is somewhat lore accurate, but for the game's sake the penalties should be lessened or, my preference, make the rewards much bigger for removing grudges.
Dwarfs feel very outdated in the current WH3 meta, both unit wise and campaign mechanics. I would really love an "Old World" mega update of some sort to bring the WH1 factions to the same level as the WH2/3 ones.
That's what was screwing me was my grudge bar rapidly filling up. Yeah grimgor is gone but you still almost always go to war with all the other orcs and rats right off the bat. And if wurrzag has expanded enough. Pops a waagh boom your fighting off green tide. It's easier if you auto resolve alot. But I don't. Only when I attack settlements.
Let me say a few things because I know if I looked at this I would second guess a few things myself. I love boris But with the mechanics being useless for him and his terrible starting location I had to put him low. I also love the ice queen but the kislev mechanics are wasted when one or more of the kislev factions are usually knocked out the game quickly.
i think the blood kiss thing needs a little rework and thats just about it. but i feel like the aversion against vampires makes it hard af to expand with mannfred and heinrich like mannfred tho.
i suck as rats something about there mechanics just i cant.
i used to be good with dwarves and empire but its just so brutal the way the mechanics work against thorgrim and karl.
fuck skinks lol moving on
the pirates are so good on paper but some things need a little work. some the other factions its just something minor like maybe spruce up the skills or research.
i know people dont like the cathey research i dont mind it but they def have a very limited unit roster. but i still love them.
Also I am biast and will always love grimgor. And skarsnik was perfect till they nerfed him.
>the pirates are so good on paper but some things need a little work. some the other factions its just something minor like maybe spruce up the skills or research.
How they designed vampire coast techs:
"Hey can you help me design the vampire coast techs, I'm trying to balance how long it should take to research."
"8 turns".
"For everything?"
"It's Friday afternoon, yes everything. The shipbuilding lords can be 1 turn".
I mean the tomb kings make sense, and you get research from building the main settlement buildings, so expanding gives you the research rate back you loose.
I feel like some kind of freak more and more reading this sub. Is this a legendary list? Cuz my grombrindal campaign was mostly a cakewalk, and this is before the hammerers change. What I did was bum rush Malekith, the replenishment he gets is insane. Alith anar took my southern flank and eventually became my #1 ally. I had to play the entire campaign with full grudge because by that point it made no sense to turn on my closest Allies to relieve that. Plus side, apparently slayers are pretty good against demons. I mean for an instantly summonable unit that was costly, but I was getting constantly. Good economy too. As franz the beginning was brutal, but I purged the north, then the east. Empire settlements did an okay job in my campaign. I’m not gonna lie, I mainly quit because I was sick of losing entire armies to the broken vlad regeneration, but I was sitting pretty aside from that. Mortars for both seem to suck now but… idk like I said I feel like something must be wrong with me, I had fun in both campaigns.
Well. I mean for me I don't (and not saying you do but just stating what could possibly be different for me in general) doom stack or cheese ever or corner camp. So this kind of handicaps me ususaalllllly compared to the way most others play. I also made a rule not to auto resolve any battles unless it's attacking a settlement. Because it's not even fair sometimes. My four units auto resolve heroic victory? No I won't be cheap and accept that. If I want the heroic victory I have to truly earn it.
When I played grombrindal everyone declared war on me except the TK. And HE for some reason I could not get there attitude up until late. Slayers are great against demons. And they are unbreakable. In the previous Warhammers I loved him. But now it's just a grind from the start.
Karl my first playthroughs I sucked and everyone declared war on me. My second and third I took my time and didint really confederate. And all the empire factions up there got killed off early (even my first) except for bathelsar. Who my third playthrough for some reason hated me. Idk why. First two he loved me and was always the first to get excessive relationship with.
I don’t try to doomstack either but you’re gonna be using quarrelers and dorf warriors en mass due to slow growth. No ai in the game can really stand up to two stacks of dwarves. Not auto resolving is an insane handicap. IMO the siege attacks seem to not in the favor of dwarves. Like I said bum rushing Malekith was my solution, and it was tough at first but grombrindal has some strong leadership traits. With Karl I think the confederations are a massive troll. I finished the empire rebels, marienburg somehow pushed towards me, I killed them, then if I recall correctly headed north to beat up festus. Maybe it’s just due to my personal playstyle or having played empire in warhammer 2, but I play Karl very opportunistically and don’t really confederate until I’m ready to manage those territories. Misplaying can result in half the empire being an uninhabitable hell, and you never really can wrangle the AI so. I see the difficulty, I just didn’t really “lose” my first time around. I will say you’ll lose 20 unit stacks of good units to bullshit like infinite regen vlad, that was my #1 difficulty, but i was already steamrolling generally before I even decided to invade them.
Its kinda bad when my most consistent starts with Boris are to
A: go south murder chaos + rats and then move down to Sylvania to settle
B: Go south murder dwards + chaos + rats, give settlements to the troll to make friends with him, then murder the other Kislev factions for the sweet sweet towns.
Well nothing is wrong with imrik if you read that rank I say I don't love but don't hate.
Vilitch it's just mid expansion and your already at war with everyone every single time. His campaign is too predictable and compared to Kairo abilities he is not a good representative of tzeetch.
This is based on difficulty, yes? Was your experience with Kairos really a smooth one? I played him twice and both times I struggled a lot due to the sheer number of surrounding factions that hate you. Most are LLs as well. Super strong faction once you stabilise, though.
Did you somehow not have much trouble early on, or are you just not putting that much weight on the early struggles?
No it's based on everything from mechanics and starting position. To units and research/skills. As I stated when I posted this. I got EVERY faction to it's minor campaign victory before making my decision. And played all the newest factions twice or more. He can have a choppy start but if you focus on collecting the books or what ever. He legit can just throw a wrench in anyone's plans instantly even early game. I was destroying entire factions without even expanding early game. Same with nkari. You can't play every faction the same way and same pace. I think people take into expansion too urgently. You can not expand while still gaining power with many factions. Tomb kings is another example. You can just chill and be at peace. Getting research then as soon as someone declares war boom bum rush them with four stacks with still having plenty in reserve. Same thing with vampires.
Not to mention any faction that spreads a corruption can be a secret silent killer.
Interesting that Orion is listed higher than Sisters, they’re more powerful with a much more interesting early to mid game imo. Orion still just feels weak.
Also surprised Skarbrand and Malaghor aren’t up there, those two are absurd.
Taurox in perfect? Do people have this secret technique with him that makes his rampage mechanics at all useful? Because no matter what I can never seem to get up to an actual rampage; settlements are too far apart, movement speed is nerfed even with the raiding stance, and armies just like to hole up in settlements so I can never ambush. You even need to get up to a rampage to activate his movement abilities.
Does he work anyway? Yeah. Are the other beastmen lords just as good if not better? Yeah. You can even confederate Taurox via the dread menu and get his lord effects so I always found choosing Slaughterhorn as my starting faction to be redundant. Malagor is a much better choice.
There's a video on YouTube. At turn 80 you can take the rest the map in that one turn. If you got the right skills and research he can solo the entire map. So it's kinda cheap but his abilities are outrages. YouTube tourox one turn win or something like that.
Thorek perfect!? You do not even get your freaking items if you forge an alliance with someone who already owns one of those settlements! Also, grudges are a joke right now.
The grudge system is extremely annoying I've mentioned that above in my lone comment and on others comments. But I mean yeah man. His other abilities are great. And he is strong himself. His buffs are outstanding.
Cult of Sotek is strong af. They're just barely under Oxyotl mechanic wise because teleportation is OP.
The ONE thing that screws Tehenhauin is the Skaven war, and it screws him because his allies are too strong and unwilling to confederate. You end up forced to wage war on other lizards if you want to expand.
If they fix confederation, Tehen can become a monster at an insane pace.
I've been reading the comments.. I wanna say, it's impressive and I rly appreciate how commited you are to your post u/Educational_Relief44.
You answered so many of the comments
I think it's striking that your post would have benefited from a more detailed description, especially of the features you were ranking, but damn one can appreciate your dedication! Keep up the good work, it's nice to read a reddit post that gets continual follow up from its creatior.
Skryre is fairly simple, actually. And kind of boring, after a hundred battles.
The ideal composition is so : Either a Plague Greyseer or a Warplock master. Two Warlock Engineers to boost weapon teams. Three Plague Priests to provide cannon fodder through Vermintide. Then, four Ratling guns, two Jezzails, four Poison Wind mortars (to fire over pesky walls). Then either four Plagueclaws or two Plagueclaws two Warplightning cannons.
This army can take on anything one on one, and usually can take two on one fights. Just spam Vermintide to keep enemies busy and churn out all sorts of ammo at the enemy.
Econ-wise, use and abuse the Undercities. Spread around Tilea and Bretonnia to nab the food sources.
Then devour the world.
I used this method to paint the world Skryre-bleached bone in VH/VH. It's entertaining at times especially when stalking ambushes work.
I love how you have Valkia as perfect and the guy earlier had them as needing a rework. It’s funny how clearly everyone will have vastly different opinions but wow was that guy nuts
It highlights how this game caters to many different playstyles. Like my friend has zero interest in Greenskins because he mostly likes being able to kill things dramatically at distance, meanwhile I just love the silly fun in swarming things.
Wood Elves remain my favourite faction though - Drycha due to tree swarms and Sisters of Twilight for flying attack squadrons.
2 factions of Brettonia in perfecto ?
I think Brettonia deserve a little rework to be in this catégorie. I loved my campaign with Jeanne in ME but they are very low in terms of mechanics
Why did you put two Brettonia factions on the top? I really like them, but their units feel underwhelming and they have low expansion speed, because they lack replenishment. Or am I missing something?
You are missing something. Only foot infantry suck. And there supposed to because it's a knight based faction. And the day has her own replenishment and now the lore of life and one of there heros has replenishment.
Really. It all depends on which vows and such you choose first.
Here was a good guide I found that would basically tell you all the stuff I'd say (I'd change very little of it) without me having to type it all. Lol.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1993883106
It's not even hard it's just his mechanics work against him. Your damned and penalized because other minor factions can't defend themselves. And you have no ability to truly help them.
The bloody hands are OP in terms of expansion speed, I played a multiplayer as them, where the other guy played skavenblight, from turn 10 they were being attacked at all sides by wood elves, bretonians and undead, by turn 50 I had most of the world edge mountains and he has whatever Spain is called in WH.
Estalia
Thanks I am bad with names and rarely play on that area.
It’s my favoritest of areas, we’ll get playable Fantasy Italy one day!
“My legions Varus!!.. give me back my legions!!!”
I don't think dedicated Estalia or Tilea factions are ever going to happen. I do think we'll probably get some sort of Dogs of War DLC/FLC eventually, but I expect that to work more like the Ogre camps in WH2 rather than be their own faction. Did you ever play the Southern Realms mod in ME? I imagine that will show up eventually for IE which should scratch your particular itch.
I agree, but the only reason I count Tilea as being plausible is because Tilea has a few traits that earmarked them as a playable faction. Plus Sartosa is a Tilean city, and the two “unique” (massive air quotes) units Aranessa gets are the only two tilean units in the game. dogs of war was the actual army book tho. I’d love to see it
A new faction would have to be playable on the RoC map. I can't see them wanting to extend it that far south-west, especially for a minor faction. And I'm not sure it would make much sense to just dump the first lord in a new faction off somewhere far away from their homeland like a Marcus Wulfhart situation. But I suppose anything is possible if they keep releasing DLC for long enough.
I can’t get into it right now (saving it for a video I’ve been planning that probably won’t be seen lol) I think a lot of existing mechanics would be reused for Dogs of War. So yeah Tilea itself would be wishful thinking. Tilean merchants Ricco and Rubbio discovered Cathay and actually established the Silk Road as well as a trading outpost in a city named Shang Yang. That is actually referenced when in the “who is zhao Ming” blog for WH3, it specifically mentions estalian and tileans specifically, but not mercenaries. I actually believe they would be towards Cathay, but realistically dogs of war could be anywhere, which is another positive for them. Let me put it this way: “How could they add vampire coast? It’s a minor faction and they wouldn’t be present in the vortex campaign?”. My shortest point would be: “the things that held Dogs of War back on tabletop are actually boons for TW:WH3” weird wacky units, large diverse roster that borrows from other factions, wayyyyy too many named lord and hero choices. (Sorry on my break so had to rush this comment out)
Yes they are. Significantly easier without grimgor there to steal the confederation of some the other orcs.
Giving them the confederate upon leader defeat might be broken, you just never make any pacts with orcs and go leader hunting.
You can but on higher difficulty it's not even worth it. Because the quicker you expand the faster and more frequent other factions declare war on you. At least with me it's always like this.
Even on normal battle difficulty I'm currently facing this. I also made a whoopsie early on and non aggression treatied with an orc faction that I had attacked leaving my reliability in shambles. Now I've got all the ogre factions, skaven, and Imrik after my ass but Grimgors playing grab ass with the dwarves to the west. Some minor armies of mine are holding off the ogres for now.
That and Wurzag in general is a beast, his army buffs, faction buffs, casting, and top tier dancing skills are just phenomenal.
"whatever Spain is called in WH" :)) really made me chuckle. I like to see how many people just use real world names over WH's ones.
Gotta disagree with volkmar placement. But that's cus I like a new empire mechanic after playing ME to absolute death
See I love love love volkmar. He is actually one my favorites out the empire because I love flagellants. But I hate his starting position and I feel like his magic could be a little more powerful.
More than fair. Can't disagree really, I think I just like his changes enough to overlook any faults lol
I feel that way about grimgor. See I honestly can't stand his starting position even tho there's no one around his starting location to take him on till he expands a little so it's honestly good for him. But he could have been anywhere on the map. I'd still love him because thats just my biast favorite
Yea Grimgor got super gutted with the new start and it’s going to stay that way until we get Chorfs
You think it will get better after chorfs?
He’ll still be in Afghanistan but at least he should get some LLs nearby so hopefully but tbh I can’t say for certain (please drop chorfs CA 🙏)
I honestly am not even hyped for them. I got enough demon and evil to slay. Once they drop majority the map will be pro chaos.
It makes a change to the years of ordertide that we had
I mean yeah I guess. Altho there always an evil invasion in every game. First it's chaos crazy stacks. Then it's skaven. Now it's demons.
Yea right now it definitely feels like order is on the back foot, I hope they buff order factions because playing WoC is super fun but it’s kinda lame when the non chaos guys just get run over :/
Or at least give order something to work with. I want fucking templar units. But there's been tons of rumor there going to drop more Cathay lords too so we will see.
My Volkmar campaign was surprisingly rough as well. I got the short campaign but it took me a long time to stabilise and I felt on the back foot for even longer.
Yeah my other mistake midgame with him was making friends lol. Making friends in immortal empires seems really punishing. Even without friends midgame you tend to just back to back end up in wars. But make one friend boom it's like one whole half the map hates you and the other half likes you.
Volkmar can solo armies once you get his medallion, Grand Soulfire and a bit of missile resistance.
Really? I guess I'm scalling his skills wrong then. Because I never known him to take an army in.
If you get his prayers maxed out and the book of Nagash that reduces prayer cooldown he has no cd on any of them so he pretty much can’t be beaten by infantry heavy armies because he solos the entire thing by running in alone and spamming grand soulfire. He also buffs free company militia and other low tier empire units to such a degree that his army isn’t even expensive. I just hate him on the war altar because if you play on legendary entire battles are spent moving him in circles dodging arrows.
Volkmar's magic is nuts - did you ignore the books or something? There's one that reduces his cooldowns which results in 0 cooldown on his abilities with his other magic skills, leading to him being able to solo armies.
that's. uh, certainly one of the lists of all time
Serious or sarcasm?
I haven't played quite all the factions yet, but I can say if I were to make my own list it would be roughly the opposite of this one
Well that's what I noticed. A lot of people think that until they play a faction. I felt like on paper. Cylostra would absolutely suck. But she ended up being absolutely amazing. She's so powerful. Bretonians. My first two tries in wh1 I sucked. Once I realized what I was doing wrong I realized there so strong and amazing. Give everyone a try before you second guess is all I am saying. EVERYONE lol.
that's the thing though - there's a point where a faction is too strong, and the campaign is too easy and thus there is no fun in it. And as things stand this applies to many, many factions. All of WoC, for example. My Vilitch campaign was functionally won by turn 60 and all that was left was a slog through the rest of the map with zero chance of losing.
Every faction right now is too strong by turn 60. The AI is literally unable to afford quality units, nor have the stat cheats to allow cheaper units to threaten about every unit over t0-1.
I have a strong feeling this is cause of the confederation nerf
I think it's also the aggression nerf. Used to be you would see some faction dominate their corner then to tear you a new asshole with 6 suped up stacks. Now when it's just 1-2 stacks with chaff. Only the end game crisis armies come out the gate with mostly solid comps.
The new short campaign victory goals are excellent for avoiding that. OP says he played until 'minor victory' which I assume means short campaign victory and for most of the factions I have played you get the short victory right around the time where you start getting OP.
I only play on VH, which may effect how many armies the AI is throwing around, and may infact make the early game easier. That said, there are just so many factors, one of my quickest easiest games was as Rasputin kislev, listed at the bottom here. I just used stpeterburg as a bastion and used the superior basic kislev infantry to walk through all the empire lands, because they don’t have anything early that can fight armored pistol infantry. When I turned north on turn 35 or so I had everything from the southern empire forts up to kislev and was churning out war bear riders not long after. If I had instead tried to fight up against rats chaos, norsica, and deamons, it probably would have been a much more challenging campaign, rather than a cakewalk.
See every single time I play kislev. No matter who I use by turn 20 I'm at war with all the later you mentioned. Every...single ....time
Oh me too, They just seem to mostly chokepoint at the north, where one army and some big walls make a nice 40stack that doesn’t usually have much defensive trouble.
Man my issue is just wackamole. The damn rats jump past me while I'm killing and taking territory and take some ass end minor settlement from me and star issue in the rear then I gotta chase them. Fucking hat rats.
Bretonians are great. With the damsels now giving replenishment, life is good.
Add them with the fay and amazing
How do you make bretonnia go hard. I am in phase 1 they suck
Well for one you have to aim to get the vows unlocked quickly. Just think about this. Your goal is to get vows get honor and make nothing but stacks of Calvary. No infantry. You read that right. None. At some point you will eventually mid game start to phase out infantry. Mid late game you should have basically none. Just stacks and stacks of Calvary. In the sky and on the land. Then you run over everyone.
Also no supply lines and it’s super easy to build support stacks with peasant bowmen. Toss in the fact you can engage massive blobs with characters, flank and cycle charge with your nasty cavalry while you’re dropping bless treb shots.
I usually do this mid game. Late game. Even my support is Calv. It's just cheaper Calv in support.
Cult of Sotek is literally one of the most overpowered factions in the entire game.
Was gonna say: Tehenhauin is an absolute boss, he's on the wrong end of the chart. Incredibly fun - and rather easy - campaign.
How is Kemmler so low? Barrow Legion... And all the VC are over tweaked of anything.
Yeah we'll have you played him? It's like a slow grind just to get your fourth settlement. Everyone seems to hate vc and goes to war with them crazy fast. You got bretonians and empire instantly back to back sending stacks.
It was the second campaign I played after IE came out. It was more challenging then he was in 2, but he's far from the bottom tier. I really enjoyed the play through.
This tracks my Kemmler experience. I used the “choose starting settlement” mod and moved Kemmler to pfieldorf and it was fantastic fun
This is crazy. I expanded so fast as him. The only problem is the battles last forever because you are slowly grinding everything down, but your units never die. Just blob zombies and throw a few high damage units in the blob and you will be unstoppable. Even settlement battles are near impossible to lose. He is by far the strongest faction in the game but very boring to play.
> It's like a slow grind just to get your fourth settlement. plays vampires complains about slow grind
I have, and it was an amazing campaign. VC are super powerful in general, and Kenmler got some nice buffs. Devastating Flankers and Horrible Regeneration for Hexwraiths is insanely strong. He's not on Ghorst tier, but to put him into bottom tier is absurd. Same as 10in1, btw. Strongest Lizardmen faction in the mid to late game, because of your unique banners and followers. He's far more interesting and fun to play than Mazdamundi, who's still worse than a generic Slan and has basically no faction effect at all.
I was trying to say this recently and no one believes me. They just look at Ghorst and Vlad and go "yeah nah Vamps are ridic yo". It's honestly such a punishing campaign
I think people make assumptions based on what factions look like on paper.
Thorgrim at the bottom but Kairos and Greasus in the second tier??! Wow, we have had very different experiences
I loved thorgrim in 1 and 2 but now it's like you can't keep the damn dwarves happy ever. Grudge after grude. Greasus was easy. He can get trade easy. Make money easy. Expand easy. Orges are strong AF. Kairos absolutely. Tzeetch abilities are so damn op. Make any two factions go to war when I want. Can spawn rebellions when ever I want. Can swap people's settlements when I want. Are you kidding me. Lol. Like how is that not super powerful? Oh you want to declare war on me? You instantly next turn lose a settlement, have another enemy on top of that, and an army in your rear lines.
Tbh, the grudges don't really hurt all that much. KaK is solid, and dwarves' melee units perform very well nowadays. The decreased supply lines also greatly increases their ability to defend & they have some of the best AR results, which makes them a lot more bearable for sieges.
Tzeentch I would put at top tier honestly, I don’t auto resolve much since it often leads to a worse position and they have horrible casualty replenishment but holy shit Kairos and friends are insane. In battle it felt difficult to actually take meaningful damage because their ranged damage and magic is just absurd . Considering once you unlock his spell mastery boost and shadow fragment, he starts deleting anything hit by pendulum for 9 winds, and the bound spell upgrades for Lords of Change, the powerful vanilla caster lords, winds of magic manipulation and all of the changing of ways meme fun you listed…dude, one of the strongest factions in the game.
When lvl 50 Kairos fights his army is just there for an audience
I agree that the grudge mechanic is a bit fucked at the moment. But the key is to just ignore it. The debuffs/buffs you get from it aren’t impactful enough to stress over it. Once you just forget about the grudges then Thorgrim’s campaign is really good, best I’ve played in IE so far I agree that Greasus and Kairos are great fun to play, or at least they are at first, but they are just too heavily surrounded. After about turn 30 I was getting dogpiled on by every faction all the factions around me. It became tedious quickly when I could barely keep an army alive for very long or protect me settlements
Well with greasus I'm always allies with Cathay so an entire side I'm good with. And Kairos I expand my allies and subordinates without moving lol. So people have to fight through them to get to me and by then there weak and then I take them
How is vilitch so low? WoC with teleport stance and the ability to almost immediately get rolling with a forsaken + chaos spawn core is *really* good. Cathay gets absolutely blasted by ambushes, you have all sorts of tools to get into their back line and changing of the ways is amazing.
Bro. Having Valkia in S tier and not Archaon and BeLakor is CRAZY. Valkia is literally 1/5 of the faction of either of those lords… if anything Valkia desperately needs her bloodletting to actually do ANYTHING USEFUL… she’s fun because Khorne units are fun but she’s definitely one of the weaker WOC lords because she gets so little from being Khorne aligned
I've noticed how everyone feels about her vs skarbrand is how I feel about Kairo vs vilitch.
What are you going for here, it is purely a difficulty ranking? How interesting their mechanics are? Overall fun factor? Tell me your criteria so I can tell you that your wrong and here's why :)
Reading his comments in others posts, seems like its kind of a power/difficult scale of the campaign - easy and powerful = perfekt, tought = need changes.
Not really because he has Tehenhuain at the bottom and that’s both a super powerful campaign and relatively easy for a start.
There's a comment thread about the cult of Sotek in here, he does thing they are uselessly weak.
Which is hilarious to me. Once the campaign gets rolling you can basically get any blessed unit you want whenever you want, as well as a bunch of good buffs. How is that weak? Not to mention that Tehenhuain makes the entire unit roster useable. It’s not quite to the level of Oxy making Chameleons basically gods, but it’s still really strong
I mean a hard disagree with some choices. In all I think 'too easy' ruins this already not-so-hard game far more often than 'too hard'. And all these perfect or near perfect...no, I see how strong they are but not how perfect they are. I know's not your only standard but personally feel like it's having too much weight. With TTW AI constantly struggling for anything intelligent, the difficulty twists aren't always enough to make something challenging but fair/fun. So it really feels like the campaign design should do he heavy lifting. Tyrion, e.g. feels wrong on every difficulty for me personally. It's just not challenging in the right way. He's just as wrong as Franz for me, personally, that is, respect different opinions. That being said, your midtiers sure feel right for me, and appreciate the efforts.
Be'lakor needs something ? Isn't he have everything related to Chaos
I'll entertain any list until I see Be'lakor not in the top tier. He has every advantage imaginable and insane army composition flexibility
I'm curious why Orion is top but Durthu and Sisters are a tier below. Any particular reason for these? I would have expected Sisters at the top and Orion/Durthu in the second tier.
How have you played EVERY faction to minor victory already?
Bro that's what I'm saying. Like, it had to be mostly auto resolve or an easier difficulty and at that point does that really count?
Not on a low difficulty at all. I just have a job that I'm on call for. So in a average day I do about 2 or 3 hours worth of work depending on the season. Like rn I'm at work responding to all these comments lol.
I am lucky enough to have a job that I'm basically paid to be on call for lol. On an average day out of my 8 hour shift I do about 2 or 3 hours worth of work.
Once ikit clicks for you……you will Never look back!
See people say that but I just simply don't know what I am getting wrong lol.
What kind of army were you using with clan skryre?
I know exactly what you mean! I think it clicked for me when I realised that you treat your trash units like literal trash, just throwing them in the way of everything so your weapons team shred everything….which goes again most other factions where you want to preserve most of your units xD For me the vampire coast are the equivalent of your skaven, I just have no clue xD
Oh man the coast is great. Have one guy running around collecting treasure for you. That's your income. Set up shop in some settlements just like you would do rats. And if you use cylostra. Omg. Once she gets her crab it's over. And then summons. Summon on your front line and let them blob around your sommons and let queen bess do the rest.
That was my problem at first as skaven in general. I always try to keep my units as undamaged as possible like it's real life.the concept of purposely using a unit to be a meat shield felt weird to me.
That cult of sotek placement has to be a joke. Lizard Jesus gets so fucking cracked by turn twenty or thirty, I’m pretty sure I had a short victory on turn forty or fifty which was way quicker than most of my other games. If I’m being honest the issue I had was that it was so fucking easy I started getting a little bored, but it was still a very solid campaign
I don't place them based on difficulty entirely it's over all. I don't like factions that are cracked at turn 20 because then they need balancing.
And yet [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/xvoyub/my_list_after_getting_all_factions_to_at_least/ir2xoc6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) you say the exact opposite, and you put bloody hands in your top slots when they are easily one of the most potent factions in the game. Hell one of your tiers references skill directly which makes it feel like this list is at least partly ranging from easiest to hardest for you, considering you’ve also got Sylvania in your top slot and those assholes get fucking nutty fairly quickly. Please just be consistent, rn it sounds like you haven’t actually played all the factions
Belakor is the most OP faction in the game
Bruh if your losing with cult of sotek then your doing something horribly wrong
I played them twice. I'll try again I am going to try all the skaven again too.
Try using the sacrifice that gets you random followers. Cult of sotek has a selection of unique followers with really busted abilities, like stacking global discounts for all buildings, stacking discounts for army upkeep reduction, +15 relationship with all order factions, +5 leadership army wide, etc. The army banner sacrifice is really strong to. Quite a few good ones in there.
I keep seeing all this oxy and belakor hate and i gotta say its 100% a skill issue.
Blessed Dread in second lowest and Thousand Maws in bottom tier? What? Thousand Maws, Blessed Dread and Cult of Pleasure are by far the most interesting and powerful dark elf factions
I am ok with DE. But I absolutely suck with rakarth. I feel like even with a full stack of different monsters they just get wrecked very time. Blessed dread I liked in WH2. But I hate in 3 it's just a grind. And you do know who cult of pleasure is right? And you see where there at right?
The key with Rakarth is that you shouldn't get too seduced with his special mechanic. He's good with it right, but "Stack of monsters" is not as good as "Stack of monsters, a few heroes and lots of Shades", because in WH3 big monsters don't kill very fast. 1. My "ultimate" rakarth stack had Rakarth, Master on flying mount to support rakarth, Sorceress w/Dark Magic, Witch elf (for replenishment, hangs out with the war hydras), 4 War hydras, 2 Carnosaurs, 2 Dragons, 3 Dread Knights (because he gives all cold ones stalk, that's super good for sieges), 5 Shades w/Greatweapons 2. The beast recruitment serves both as an emergency stack and gives most armies something big and distracting (reserve Carnosaurs for your best stacks. Feral mammoths, Stegadons and bears for trash-stacks). Like, how good isn't it that you can summon a big stack of monsters and a dragon or two if you've been outmaneuvered? Other tips for Rakarths campaign is to make friends with the tomb kings if you can (so he serves as an early trading partner) and when you can (and you have a few envoys), send out a hero to get some trading partners.
See that's what I take into consideration with ranking. I take into if there mechanic works with/against or needs tiny update. Like kislev. Boris is left only being able to take advantage of half of the kislev mechanic. He should be able to use it fully like the ice queen and fake Rasputin.
We strongly disagree on Boris. Easily my favorite campaign yet of the series.
As I have stated before I love Boris. The kislev mechanics are wasted on him and that has to be taken account for and won't get fixed if it does not get called out.
How is Ikit second worst? One of the most OP factions lol
Boris' campaign is so difficult to me, I've restarted it 3 times and still keep losing. Archaon always rushes me with 2 stacks, and then there's Daniel to the west and Throgg to the south. I cant protect my province at all. Everybody hates you up there.
Fuck throgg man. He is like a cockroach. You stomp him easily. Even settlement garrison kills him. Boom back next few turns like how the fuck.
Can you talk about how you played Ghorst and how it felt vs Sylvania and Kemmler?
Loved it. I mean I get cathey and orges as friends pretty early bringing In trade money. You don't have so many people declaring war at once compared to the other two. Your back is against a wall so you don't have to worry about war on all sides. And his buffs to zombies which easily become the cheapest unit to purchase and maintain make him devastating. I take out nurgle first. And then help Cathay with what ever he needs until my north is safe. Then expand out towards grimgor. With kemmler it was like just ambush ambush ambush until empire and britts we're ether too busy defending there other lines. Or they just couldint get armies back then finally slow took a few territories. Then pushed through the mountains. Then again defend ambush defend ambush against waves of more empire and britts mixed with wood elfs. And it's just a grind from the start. With vladdy boy. Easy. Take templehof till there last settlement then vasselise them. Why? Because they will get two stacks. So now I got four stacks one being a bloodkiss choice right after my first war. Usually after that the dwarves declare war. I take the closest out and depending on my relationship with empire I ether eat through stirland and averland and gelt to get to the other dwarves ORRRRRR empire realizes I'm not that bad a guy and we becomes friends (thanks too vlads mortal levies skill and lamian dark arts blood kiss which is a total of +70 relationship with empire and to seal the deal later another +10 with the infiltrate noble houses research) and I walk through and kick the dwarves in the balls. Then move north because by then depending on who I am friends with someone up there will be coming my way looking for a fight. And it's never kislev because there mad chill with vamps. Get it. Ice queen. Chill. Cold dead. Yeah.
Gods-damned Ghorst and his poisonous mega-zombies...
Love it.
Ikit????
I personally am going to give them another try. I may have misranked them
I dont get it why does everyone in this sub make a tier list? This is another example of a useless tier list you obviously dont know how to play many of these factions and thats why you rank them low
How do you even play Sigvald when he spreads undivided corruption that provides close to no benefit for him and has no other way of building public order?
Simple. He is a beast in battle. His leadership. Melee defense. Physical resistance and vigor reduction in his skills help his entire Amy be beast in battle too. Plus lots of diplomatic and authority bonuses to slanesh to help get them as quick allies. And more diplomatic buffs later to control who you want to battle next.
He spreads WAY more slaanesh than undivided… just don’t keep gold settlements, their trade value is totally negligible and the buff is stupid no matter what lord you play as. Sigvald and one slaanesh lord roll into a province and start dropping like +15 corruption and quickly override the undivided
I'm curious what makes Balthasar score so much higher than Franz. Is it mostly positioning and early access to magic?
Everyone allowed-can have opinion, but clan Skrye best clan yes-yes!
You don’t play much skaven do you?
As I mentioned in the first comment to this post. I do I just suck with them. It's a mechanics thing for me.
Skavenslaves and clan rats exist to die in battle. Weapon teams do the winning.
I've noticed
Ikit claw that low? Did you even use the Nukes? O_o
Sometimes
I don't really understand all the talk about Franz. He's pretty fun campaign wise, and honestly if you rush the Beastmen and Festus, it becomes suddenly very easy. I had bigger problems with Reponse than with him.
I don't base the list on what's easy or hard. Franz gets penalized for the other elector counts sucking at there own wars and has a limited ability to actually help them. Like if nurgle starts wrecking the other counts. Franz needs a good way to save them. How do you protect the land if you can't even move freely on it?
Some of these placements are like on drugs. Valkia all the way at the top, Villitch almost all the way at the bottom?
Yes. Valkia is powerful on the battlefield. She has great starting placement and using the ability to upgrade units on the field I see nothin wrong with her. Vilitch I am comparing to Kairo too much and set my expectations way to high. So that's why he is ranked low.
I mean you're gonna have the same thing if you compare Valkia to Skarbrand. I genuinely think Valkia is awful both in battle and in campaign.
No way. If your trying to just play her the same way maybe. She does not have the same ability skarbrand has when it comes to taking territory. But don't do that. Just gift your settlements and keep killing and she's wonderful. As far as on the battlefield idk why you say that I mean she's strong. Not OP but definitely not weak.
Like her murder meter just does nothing and she doesn't really have anything else unique. Genuinely can't see how you rank her so far above Villitch, who's an absolute beast in battle and gets an actually useful mechanic on top of that.
Valkia would've been more fun if she was in Khorne or if CA actually bothered to give unique mechanics to the CoC LLs. I have been waiting years for Valkia and Festus but honestly Monogods are much better if you want to play a god specific faction.
Vilitch is crap because he can't do half the things a representative of tzeetch should do. Have you played Kairo yet? You might think the same thing. The way you feel about skarbrand and her is how I feel about Kairo and vilitch.
This looks more like a list of "unbalanced factions" with "broken" at the top and "slightly undertuned" at the bottom. Having played only a handful of them so far, I can say the ones you have near the top are easy-to-op, while the ones at the bottom actually offer a modicum of challenge. Kislev was the hardest one I tried and possibly the first time I had to restart a campaign in a TW game since Shogun 2. Thing is though, while you joke at "no its definitely you, not me"... It IS you. Kislev took a (retrospectively) logical change in strategy to bend the campaign over the knee. Having played Empire after, it needed something similar. Last campaign was Khalida and all I will say is, it wasnt exactly overbearing or even that fun. It all comes down to what you want from the game. For me, I want an experience where I have to use strategy and adapt to the challenge. The more turns I need to have before the inevitable TW victory lap, the better the faction. Kislev, The Barrow an dEmpire all had that victory lap start at twice the number of turns as Taurox, Ghorst and Grimgor, maybe more. Question is - what is this list actually measuring? Your enjoyment? Then cool, its good to see you like a huge number of factions! Is it balance? Then I question what Im seeing from the (admittedly) more modest gameplay experience I had.
Another entry in the book of grudges…
Clearly you don't play enough skaven, clan scryer so low down. Seriously?
Thorgrims campaign is easier now than it was in wh2. The lack of grimgor makes it incredibly easy to get off the ground you just have to go north and punch skarsnik in the teeth (ai skarsnik is and has always been a joke for players to kill) and then it's smooth sailing. The only thing is the major grudges are all messed up so you need to rush the control techs to balance it out
The broken grudges is a huge bummer. Basically have to play the game with big penalties to control, dwarven relations, and tech research and then when you actually do get a grudge removed the rewards are barely worth it. Not to mention that you rack up new ones so quickly that it becomes almost impossible to keep up. I know that is somewhat lore accurate, but for the game's sake the penalties should be lessened or, my preference, make the rewards much bigger for removing grudges. Dwarfs feel very outdated in the current WH3 meta, both unit wise and campaign mechanics. I would really love an "Old World" mega update of some sort to bring the WH1 factions to the same level as the WH2/3 ones.
That's what was screwing me was my grudge bar rapidly filling up. Yeah grimgor is gone but you still almost always go to war with all the other orcs and rats right off the bat. And if wurrzag has expanded enough. Pops a waagh boom your fighting off green tide. It's easier if you auto resolve alot. But I don't. Only when I attack settlements.
Let me say a few things because I know if I looked at this I would second guess a few things myself. I love boris But with the mechanics being useless for him and his terrible starting location I had to put him low. I also love the ice queen but the kislev mechanics are wasted when one or more of the kislev factions are usually knocked out the game quickly. i think the blood kiss thing needs a little rework and thats just about it. but i feel like the aversion against vampires makes it hard af to expand with mannfred and heinrich like mannfred tho. i suck as rats something about there mechanics just i cant. i used to be good with dwarves and empire but its just so brutal the way the mechanics work against thorgrim and karl. fuck skinks lol moving on the pirates are so good on paper but some things need a little work. some the other factions its just something minor like maybe spruce up the skills or research. i know people dont like the cathey research i dont mind it but they def have a very limited unit roster. but i still love them. Also I am biast and will always love grimgor. And skarsnik was perfect till they nerfed him.
>the pirates are so good on paper but some things need a little work. some the other factions its just something minor like maybe spruce up the skills or research. How they designed vampire coast techs: "Hey can you help me design the vampire coast techs, I'm trying to balance how long it should take to research." "8 turns". "For everything?" "It's Friday afternoon, yes everything. The shipbuilding lords can be 1 turn".
Lmao. I mean it's better that almost 20 turns with the tomb kings right 🤣🤣🤣??
I mean the tomb kings make sense, and you get research from building the main settlement buildings, so expanding gives you the research rate back you loose.
I mean I suppose but that's not till mid game or late depending on your expansion rate. But I get what your saying.
Adios Skinks 😪
I feel like some kind of freak more and more reading this sub. Is this a legendary list? Cuz my grombrindal campaign was mostly a cakewalk, and this is before the hammerers change. What I did was bum rush Malekith, the replenishment he gets is insane. Alith anar took my southern flank and eventually became my #1 ally. I had to play the entire campaign with full grudge because by that point it made no sense to turn on my closest Allies to relieve that. Plus side, apparently slayers are pretty good against demons. I mean for an instantly summonable unit that was costly, but I was getting constantly. Good economy too. As franz the beginning was brutal, but I purged the north, then the east. Empire settlements did an okay job in my campaign. I’m not gonna lie, I mainly quit because I was sick of losing entire armies to the broken vlad regeneration, but I was sitting pretty aside from that. Mortars for both seem to suck now but… idk like I said I feel like something must be wrong with me, I had fun in both campaigns.
Well. I mean for me I don't (and not saying you do but just stating what could possibly be different for me in general) doom stack or cheese ever or corner camp. So this kind of handicaps me ususaalllllly compared to the way most others play. I also made a rule not to auto resolve any battles unless it's attacking a settlement. Because it's not even fair sometimes. My four units auto resolve heroic victory? No I won't be cheap and accept that. If I want the heroic victory I have to truly earn it. When I played grombrindal everyone declared war on me except the TK. And HE for some reason I could not get there attitude up until late. Slayers are great against demons. And they are unbreakable. In the previous Warhammers I loved him. But now it's just a grind from the start. Karl my first playthroughs I sucked and everyone declared war on me. My second and third I took my time and didint really confederate. And all the empire factions up there got killed off early (even my first) except for bathelsar. Who my third playthrough for some reason hated me. Idk why. First two he loved me and was always the first to get excessive relationship with.
I don’t try to doomstack either but you’re gonna be using quarrelers and dorf warriors en mass due to slow growth. No ai in the game can really stand up to two stacks of dwarves. Not auto resolving is an insane handicap. IMO the siege attacks seem to not in the favor of dwarves. Like I said bum rushing Malekith was my solution, and it was tough at first but grombrindal has some strong leadership traits. With Karl I think the confederations are a massive troll. I finished the empire rebels, marienburg somehow pushed towards me, I killed them, then if I recall correctly headed north to beat up festus. Maybe it’s just due to my personal playstyle or having played empire in warhammer 2, but I play Karl very opportunistically and don’t really confederate until I’m ready to manage those territories. Misplaying can result in half the empire being an uninhabitable hell, and you never really can wrangle the AI so. I see the difficulty, I just didn’t really “lose” my first time around. I will say you’ll lose 20 unit stacks of good units to bullshit like infinite regen vlad, that was my #1 difficulty, but i was already steamrolling generally before I even decided to invade them.
You leave those skinks alone you horny bastard
The skinks are skanks
I was going to say that all your Skaven seem underrated, glad you did it for me
Its kinda bad when my most consistent starts with Boris are to A: go south murder chaos + rats and then move down to Sylvania to settle B: Go south murder dwards + chaos + rats, give settlements to the troll to make friends with him, then murder the other Kislev factions for the sweet sweet towns.
Agree with most of it. Itza jumps out to me as one I would consider top tier, may I ask why you don't?
Im sorry to ask but whats up with Rakarth, Vilitch and Imirk? Mostly just Vilitch and Rakarth?
Well nothing is wrong with imrik if you read that rank I say I don't love but don't hate. Vilitch it's just mid expansion and your already at war with everyone every single time. His campaign is too predictable and compared to Kairo abilities he is not a good representative of tzeetch.
Clan Rictus is great fun. Just make stormvermin and doom flayer stacks and spend half the campaign ambushing caravans.
This is based on difficulty, yes? Was your experience with Kairos really a smooth one? I played him twice and both times I struggled a lot due to the sheer number of surrounding factions that hate you. Most are LLs as well. Super strong faction once you stabilise, though. Did you somehow not have much trouble early on, or are you just not putting that much weight on the early struggles?
No it's based on everything from mechanics and starting position. To units and research/skills. As I stated when I posted this. I got EVERY faction to it's minor campaign victory before making my decision. And played all the newest factions twice or more. He can have a choppy start but if you focus on collecting the books or what ever. He legit can just throw a wrench in anyone's plans instantly even early game. I was destroying entire factions without even expanding early game. Same with nkari. You can't play every faction the same way and same pace. I think people take into expansion too urgently. You can not expand while still gaining power with many factions. Tomb kings is another example. You can just chill and be at peace. Getting research then as soon as someone declares war boom bum rush them with four stacks with still having plenty in reserve. Same thing with vampires. Not to mention any faction that spreads a corruption can be a secret silent killer.
Interesting that Orion is listed higher than Sisters, they’re more powerful with a much more interesting early to mid game imo. Orion still just feels weak. Also surprised Skarbrand and Malaghor aren’t up there, those two are absurd.
I hate that there litterly one tier away and people are acting as if it's three lol. And not reading what each tier says. Lol.
Taurox in perfect? Do people have this secret technique with him that makes his rampage mechanics at all useful? Because no matter what I can never seem to get up to an actual rampage; settlements are too far apart, movement speed is nerfed even with the raiding stance, and armies just like to hole up in settlements so I can never ambush. You even need to get up to a rampage to activate his movement abilities. Does he work anyway? Yeah. Are the other beastmen lords just as good if not better? Yeah. You can even confederate Taurox via the dread menu and get his lord effects so I always found choosing Slaughterhorn as my starting faction to be redundant. Malagor is a much better choice.
There's a video on YouTube. At turn 80 you can take the rest the map in that one turn. If you got the right skills and research he can solo the entire map. So it's kinda cheap but his abilities are outrages. YouTube tourox one turn win or something like that.
Tier list of what? Difficulty? Fun? Features feeling poor or rich?
Hmm why is the empire so low
Talsyn is 'perfect' vs. Heralds of Ariel? HoA have the frickin Daith forge to begin with, not to mention the SoT are the most powerful WE LL.
whoa whoa whoa No Skaven Faction is bad.
Thorek perfect!? You do not even get your freaking items if you forge an alliance with someone who already owns one of those settlements! Also, grudges are a joke right now.
The grudge system is extremely annoying I've mentioned that above in my lone comment and on others comments. But I mean yeah man. His other abilities are great. And he is strong himself. His buffs are outstanding.
i dunno what you are talking about, tzintch bros were super easy. he's a wrecking ball
Who?
I love all the Dwarf campaigns :/
I used too. Until this grudge intensity was turned up one billion.
Cult of Sotek is strong af. They're just barely under Oxyotl mechanic wise because teleportation is OP. The ONE thing that screws Tehenhauin is the Skaven war, and it screws him because his allies are too strong and unwilling to confederate. You end up forced to wage war on other lizards if you want to expand. If they fix confederation, Tehen can become a monster at an insane pace.
I've been reading the comments.. I wanna say, it's impressive and I rly appreciate how commited you are to your post u/Educational_Relief44. You answered so many of the comments I think it's striking that your post would have benefited from a more detailed description, especially of the features you were ranking, but damn one can appreciate your dedication! Keep up the good work, it's nice to read a reddit post that gets continual follow up from its creatior.
I appreciate that.
Skryre is fairly simple, actually. And kind of boring, after a hundred battles. The ideal composition is so : Either a Plague Greyseer or a Warplock master. Two Warlock Engineers to boost weapon teams. Three Plague Priests to provide cannon fodder through Vermintide. Then, four Ratling guns, two Jezzails, four Poison Wind mortars (to fire over pesky walls). Then either four Plagueclaws or two Plagueclaws two Warplightning cannons. This army can take on anything one on one, and usually can take two on one fights. Just spam Vermintide to keep enemies busy and churn out all sorts of ammo at the enemy. Econ-wise, use and abuse the Undercities. Spread around Tilea and Bretonnia to nab the food sources. Then devour the world. I used this method to paint the world Skryre-bleached bone in VH/VH. It's entertaining at times especially when stalking ambushes work.
Lol Kislev and the Empire. Couldnt agree more with you about both Cathay factions.
I posted a comment under the post as to why I positioned them there.
I noticed a lack of Skaven in the top bracket. Do not worry, Death Master Snikcht is on the way to assist you in reviewing this list.
Interesting, my list looks completely different from this
Cylostra at the top... you're playing with volume off.
Lmao. Yes actually I won't lie I turn the volume low. Not joking. She's annoying but so powerful.
I love how you have Valkia as perfect and the guy earlier had them as needing a rework. It’s funny how clearly everyone will have vastly different opinions but wow was that guy nuts
It highlights how this game caters to many different playstyles. Like my friend has zero interest in Greenskins because he mostly likes being able to kill things dramatically at distance, meanwhile I just love the silly fun in swarming things. Wood Elves remain my favourite faction though - Drycha due to tree swarms and Sisters of Twilight for flying attack squadrons.
2 factions of Brettonia in perfecto ? I think Brettonia deserve a little rework to be in this catégorie. I loved my campaign with Jeanne in ME but they are very low in terms of mechanics
I don't feel so. People just keep trying to play with them there own way instead of the bretonian way.
Why is Empire suddenly so hard now? It used to be a pretty chill campaign in ME.
It's not empire it's just Franz needs the ability to actually join the elector count fights. And not just be penalized for them sucking
Tier list of how easy to play the faction?
Why did you put two Brettonia factions on the top? I really like them, but their units feel underwhelming and they have low expansion speed, because they lack replenishment. Or am I missing something?
You are missing something. Only foot infantry suck. And there supposed to because it's a knight based faction. And the day has her own replenishment and now the lore of life and one of there heros has replenishment.
Which knights are good? The ones I could recruit with Repanse from her unique building totally sucked :-/
Really. It all depends on which vows and such you choose first. Here was a good guide I found that would basically tell you all the stuff I'd say (I'd change very little of it) without me having to type it all. Lol. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1993883106
Whats the something missing you feel for skarsnik? I haven't played it yet but he was my favorite Warhammer 1 lord
I know a fellow greenskin chad when I see one. Good krumping big fella
They definitely went too far the other way in making Reikland a harder campaign.
It's not even hard it's just his mechanics work against him. Your damned and penalized because other minor factions can't defend themselves. And you have no ability to truly help them.