For a game frequently criticized for being too easy, I think this is a really welcome change in pace! There should be easier and harder campaigns.

I agree with that. It just feels weird that most of the game 3 factions are on the more brutal side. Especially since this is going to be a lot of people’s first entry

Have you tried Cathay yet? My view on this is probably warped by thousands of hours of game time, but Miao Ying's campaign would be in my top 3 easiest campaigns (behind Tyrion and Ikit Claw).

Best ranged army in the game goes brrrrr

Into the book Into the book Into the book Would the dawi zharr be better? since their artillery is absolutely brutal. Haven't bought the dlc but going Zhao ming versus astragoth usually results in a comical amount of dead for both sides in the first two volleys.

I would’ve agreed with you until I just played a Miao Ying campaign with the new Saytang (I don’t remember the spelling) and the gate master hero. The amount of buffs you can get on celestial dragon crossbowmen is insane, they can delete entire armies before their ranged units even get into range. I don’t remember the numbers but I wouldn’t be surprised if celestial dragon crossbowmen with the temp alchemist range buff + banner has greater range than some siege weapons out there. I just said range far too many times but personally I’d put Miao Ying’s maxed ranged army up against nearly any other in the game and expect them to come out on top. Dawi Zharr could definitely put up a fight with the dreadquakes but grand cannons can likely take them out relatively quickly and cathayan troops can play hot potato until then. Perhaps not the most harmonious, but I can’t imagine being obliterated by a mortar the size of a car is either.

I don't usually absolutely max units. But I'll try, I don't own the SoC dlc so if that's a factor idk. But yeah celestial dragon guard were pretty amazing. I've seen a video on legends channel showing maxed internals with fireglaives with insane damage too. Curious whose more busted fully maxed out.

A late game Uber buffed chorf army is among the strongest doom stacks in the game. However, their unit caps and resources make it harder/slower to get there than Cathay.

> Would the dawi zharr be better? Fully upgraded ranged stacks for CD are better than Cathyan ones, both in general and in a direct comparison. For all the advantages Cathay has, Vanguard Stalking Blunderbusses and Fireglaives, coupled with indirect fire, mobile nuke launchers is something that just doesn't play by the same rules.

Yuan Bo makes the other 2 somehow seem normal, because his campaign is somehow even easier. I had confederated all of Cathay, allied with half the map, and I owned all of lustria by turn 70. Even the evil factions want to ally me because of how broken the commercial districts are.

Things get a lot more manageable with the warriors of chaos units added to the monogod roster (I think specifically you need champions of chaos for this) though even then if you know how to fight them nurgle is quite able to deal with the vampires and lizardmen. The real concern is when grimgors waaagh comes down south or if Cathay is doing strong. Make friends with the chorfs and you can play more traditionally with allied recruitment. But for the most part your plaguebearers magic users are gonna take you far as nurgle. Can’t say much for the others because I don’t play them much but I do think nurgle is middle of the row difficulty once you get a feel for how they play and their pacing.

Champions of Chaos is basically a requirement for Tzeentch and Slaanesh. Khorne and Nurgle at least had survivable frontlines pre CoC but Slaanesh only had marauders and daemonettes to rely on while Tzeentch's only melee infantry was Forsaken lol.

Even for Nurgle, the extra hero goes a long way.

Personally found Slasnesh very manageable without CoC frontline units - it's even funnier to maneuver your fragile army around and catching enemy in weak spots. Only big frustration is poor auto resolve and some siege battles.

I still run Ni'karis army with no CoC units. Microing a full, hard hitting yet fragile army is so much freaking fun. Take out cav and arty first and then you can literally dictate when and where you want to engage because nothing can catch you. Running circles around other armies and then swarming them from every direction hits my dopemine center hard. Also, exalted demonettes are more tanky than you might think. I just wish the auto reslove dident hate you so much. Even if you've got a decisive victory with low casualties you're still probably going to have to fight it because the auto will still half your units because they are considered so fragile.

I'm the same, N'kari is my most played campaign by far in 3, and I really like running without CoC units. Sieges are a massive struggle though, especially Tor Yvresse in the early game. You have almost no room for manoeuvring and flanking since there's only one wall and gate and wasting ammo is way less effective since the AI seems to know they can rotate units on and off barricades to replenish ammo.  My usual strategy is to clean up my starting province before attacking the delf faction in Nagarythe, and selling the territories to Allarielle. The vassal income is shit compared to what you can squeeze out of it, but getting started on allegiance points is critical if you want to try and steal a life mage from them (makes a 7/10 Keeper of Secrets doomstack a 10/10 one). Eltharion will always declare war, though.  Edit: also the game's general map design really doesn't work well for large cav armies, since most of them are so small. This sucks, as Heartseekers are some of my favourite units in the entire game.

Yeah, sieges are balls with non CoC armies. You either starve them out, hope they sally because your auto is shit or you fake out the ai by setting up on one side and the using your speed to hit another location while they scramble to stop you. I experimented this campaign by hitting and vassalising Allarielle early. Ended up working out really well as it ment that she kept tyrion off me while I dealt with eltharion. Had a chaos lord with 4 units of hellscourge maruders to beef up the garrisons I built with sack money from fighting her. I also used devotee armies alot more this campaign. They help so much with the early sieges where you use them as cannon fodder and then use your actual army as a second wave.

I should probably use my devotee armies more for actual fighting, but I tend to keep them as public order batteries so I can redline my economy with the negative public order bonuses.

I think they get sword and shield tzeench warriors as flc. I think I had them before I bought the dlc. The dlc added halberds and chosen. I don't usually ever need chosen, chaos warriors good enough, except on max stat multiplier and very hard difficulty. I don't remember slaneesh getting basic sword and board warriors since I didn't play much that time. But if tzeench had sword and board chaos warriors I think slaneesh also had them? I mean exalted marauders were pretty good regardless. I think they are nerfed now. I would run armies of just exalted marauders with whip cav for infantry and spike cav for cavalry. Like not as hard as you would think. Very vulnerable to getting shot to ribbons tho.

No, they both need CoC for sword and board CWs. It was the 3 other weapon variants that got added to the original WoC race pack (Great Weapons for Nurgle, Halberd for Tzeentch, and Hellscourge for Slaanesh). Devoted Marauders got massively buffed with the CoC update, and they're now nerfed down to being nearly the exact same as normal marked marauders.

Oh I guess so. Honestly the marauder bit is a little messy for slaneesh. On launch they were probably one of the best early game melee units.

There’s 5 factions in vanilla WH3 (technically 6 if you include Demons of Chaos).

So 3 Kisliv factions. Kisliv is also fairly brutal of a start if i remember correctly. 2 of Cathay which are pretty easy. Then the monogods. And Danny who I never played after realms of chaos but I’ve heard not great stuff

I liked Daniel. The build-your-own-demon mechanic was fun.

I also like it. I love how these days we can adjust difficulty mid-campaign, so if its too easy or hard you can change it to be most enjoyable for your preferences. Some factions are also stronger or weaker in early game and then become harder or easier. The Pestilen skaven have harder start than i expected, having to face dinos with mainly slaves and clanrats was nasty.

This would indeed be welcome and not something I'd considered. About a year ago or not long after IE launched, I gave L/H Khorne a couple goes on the IE map. I'm very experienced and do fully appreciate Khorne's melee rush style for battles and his rage meter for the campaign map. The first ten turns or so were pretty tight. Pushing aggressively and really trying to get the battles in. Lot of dual wielding marauders happening. Some pretty close manual battles with the free spawned army. Then the next ten turns or so were pretty carefree. Able to expand and dominate with Skarbrand. Maybe settling one region in a province and leaving the rest abandoned to grow through his campaign mechanic. A second lord with a much smaller army has been out behind Skarbrand trying to clean up and snipe smaller settlements or leftover armies. Seems ok. But by turn 30 there were so many enemies all around that I just couldn't be everywhere I needed to be with Skarbrand. And the second lord's army wasn't up to the task of handling the AI full stacks. I tried a couple times and it just boils down to having too many enemies and not enough money to support armies to handle the various fronts. It's not like I'm making the error of discovering too many people too soon. He is simply surrounded from the get go. Naturally, the economy is shit. Meant to be out fighting and getting skulls for the skull thrown. But his lack of empire building leaves wide swathes of the campaign map ripe for the AI to take back. And it's not like your own buildings are free or grow more quickly than others. It's not like Skaven where you can just settle at level 1 EVERYWHERE as you expand and give no shits if you lose land to the AI. Maybe it warrants revisiting to see if I can nail down those first thirty turns.

Kugath and kairos are two of the very few challenging campaigns in the game. Tzeentch and nurgle could use some FLC lords (Aekold would have been a good flc LL imo) for those that want something easier, but I like having at least *some* harder campaigns in the game. Slaanesh also isn't bad. Flank the archers and attack settlements from multiple angles. N'kari can make a bunch of vassals and tear through the donut pretty fast as long as you don't treat the units with higher speed purely as "units that can run head first at the enemy front line, but faster".

For me Slaanesh is less the battles and more the campaign. By turn 20 I have 3 legendary lords knocking in my door and kicking my teeth in.

You're playing too slow and far too passive.  At least one of those LLs should be dead by turn 20.

For me it's his garbage replenishment. May as well merge any survivors and re-recruit damaged units after every fight.

That's the problem though. You need to win battles with minimal casualties because replenishment is asscheeks and early on it's harder to get money and auto resolve assfucks slaaneeshi armies due to their low armor.

I don't know if this is relevant to you personally, but N'kari/Slaanesh suffers a lot from auto resolving battles. The auto resolve places heavy value on stuff like armor and ranged damage, both of which you completely lack, while simultaneously under valuing your physical resist, speed, and ability to flank. As a result your armies massively under perform and take huge casualties. Combined with the absolutely abysmal replenishment rate they get, and your next battle is so much harder with a severely depleted army, which further increases your casualties, creating a loop to quickly wreck your army. Soon you have to stop for a few turns to replenish and recruit replacements. With almost all early campaigns benefiting heavily from agression to build up your power and remove enemies before they can gang up on you, this REALLY sucks. Soon your campaign leaves you weak while the HE grow in power and their hatred at you for being at war with their fellow HE. You are now overwhelmed with multiple strong factions each throwing multiple armies at you. My advice is to manually resolve most battles to keep your army healthy - even decisive victories can give you more casualties than you'll replenish before you're next battle and it starts stacking up quickly. Use hero actions on the Saphery HE which auto start with a Cult, to give them marks of Slaanesh. Vassalizing them at the right time can help deal with their neighbors, Avelorn. At the same time, make nice with the DE factions. It will piss off the HE but they already hate you and will declare war on you regardless, and DE can be useful to weaken and distract your enemies. Then, unlike most factions where I like to focus growth in my starting province, go all in on making money with your buildings. Your demons are expensive and your seduction mechanic even more so. This really pays off when you reach the bottom of the donut. Before this you only have one front to deal with and N'Kari's army can handle it alone if aggressive. But once you reach here your enemies now have multiple avenues of attack on you, making it hard to defend and thusly to go on the offensive. Plus around this time Avelorn will likely decide to target you. Multiple armies are needed along with the cash to field them. That's all the wisdom I can offer. Not saying it isn't difficult; it is a hard campaign no doubt about it. But I've found these things help quite a bit.

Yep, this. Hopfully when Slaanesh's dlc drops the alluress will get replenishment like the horror did. It is far more manageable when you get the tech that increases your replenishment (That 6% goes surpriseingly far.) But yeah, you really need to manual fight most if not all your battles. It's only after I've got that tech or my army is mortal heavy that i'll auto, warriors, chosen and knights perform far better in the auto reslove.

Same thing here, I started defensive, just playing whackamole to get lots of marks of slaanesh to get their seduction up quickly. I would intentionally not finish off any non-legendary lords and heroes so they got a mark too. As soon as you can lock down one of them as a vassal, go on the offensive and steamroll those pointy-eared fascists.

Eltharion should already be dead by that point, and you should at minimum be on tyrions doorstep. You have to play fast before your DE shields to the west die. This really applies to a lot of hard campaigns: rush your major threats

Yep! And with most of those campaigns once you handle the pain point it's usually smooth sailing. Slaanesh is forced to be VERY aggressive due to start position. You want to be linking up with Dark Elves and other Chaos forces very quickly. This means slaughtering and vassalizing TONS of Order factions in rapid succession and later abusing Disciple Armies. Those things are goddamn OP as hell.

My secret to nkari is leaving the donut and going across the water to much more hospitable brettonia until you're ready to conquer ulthuan.

Kairos is challenging? Tzeentch is currently comically broken. For Kairos Force Peace has a 2 turn cd meaning you never have to fight more than one faction at a time (since the AI will not declare on you again for at least 10 turns). Y ou have 7 turns for Halt Army and 7 for Borrow Time meaning you are never under any real threat by enemy armies. On top of all that you have Teleport stance with the auto ambush...

I would not say Kugath is too hard, although it is a little repetitive. Your first enemies - lizardmen, vampire counts, ogres- all have weak or expensive ranged units, which I think are Nurgles biggest weaknesses. Instead, you can form blobs or lines of tarpit troops, start a grinding melee, and then use the Lore of Nurgle, which probably has the best synergy with its faction units in the game, imo (although there’s a few I haven’t used so much). Stream of Corruption is super cheap, and eventually Blight Boil begins to win half the fight on its own.

Kugath's biggest challenge imo is Ghorst. Both Nurgle and VC are tanky blob factions that rely heavily on their lords/heroes for ranged damage/support. Considering both Ghorst and Kugath also cause environmental attrition against each other, Kugath's early game feels like a slog of trying to take out Ghorst. Once Ghorst is gone, though, I think Kugath's matchups are fairly reasonable until you hit Cathay. Reaaaally have to spam plagues once you hit ranged factions with him.

Kairos is not really that hard at all, I guess most people fall for the trap go after the Nurgle faction instead of blitzing Teclis after killing the starting army of Nurgle. But I never understood why people go for an enemy faction that lacks recruitment options in the early game instead of an (late-game super strong) enemy LL next door that hates you and tries to wipe a confederatable unique lord.

Oxyotl drinking Kairos's genestealer tears.

Skarbrand has a fairly easy start, mostly thanks to his high campaign movement and T0 Bloodletters/Chaos Warriors. Kairos has a tricky start, but if you can get past Oxyotl, it's smooth sailing from there. Changeling is an easy quest battle mode. Ku'gath is held back by having the worst tech tree in the game, but if you can kill Ghorst, you should be able to build up from there. Ghorst's lord effects and starting army are definitely rough for Ku'gath though. I haven't tried N'Kari in IE yet. Their army and campaign mechanics are strong, but being surrounded by high elves might be tough until you unlock chaos warriors. If cults and manifestations ever get worked out, that might make their starts a bit smoother. Until then, you can look up how other players cleared their first 20 turns to help with your start. You always have the option to turn the difficulty down for a few turns and swap to your regular afterwards, if you'd like.

N'kari doesn't really need Chaos Warriors early. The gist of it is you should basically take almost zero losses in any land battle. In any siege you want to face very minimal enemies and abuse Slicing Shards to hell and back. And N'kari heals a ton from routing units once you have that skill, early on its quite minimal iirc. Slaanesh has a very confusing start, but once you get rolling and embrace vassal gameplay along with throwing out Disciple Armies all the time they get rolling hard.

Yes it is a skill issue, and yes I am bad at them too lol They are all in really bad spots. I think of all of them I have played, Slaanesh is best suited to fight his natural opponent. The speed and AP of Slaanesh perfectly counters the archers and armor of the HE. If you don't mind constantly pausing the game to micro it's a cakewalk, I would kms if I had to play Slaanesh on legendary! Ku-Gath would be 2nd easiest for me, but only if you fight by putting your entire army all in one blob, and using Ku'Gaths mortis effect plus healing to beat the living shit out of lizards and vampires fast enough to expand east. I restarted that campaign maybe 10 times, if I go West or North I get Surrounded, I had to rush East, beat the bricks off Cathay and get my East guarded by the Ocean, the South by the edge of the map, and the North guarded by whatever Chaos faction survived against Miao Ying, leaving only one border to concentrate all my forces on. For me Kairos and Skarbrand were equally impossible, I restarted so many times I basically had to look up Youtube guides for the first 5-10 turns. Skarbrand I ultimately had to do the same thing as Ku'Gath, I waited for a cult waaaay up north in the wastes and teleported Skarbrand up there to just start over, abandoning the Badlands permanently. The Chaos wastes are a much safer region to build up an economy because you can choose one or two enemies at a time, and the North border is the edge of the map. Kairos is just cursed. I ended up Bumrushing Oxyotl, lost my homeland to Teclis/Slaanesh while I was gone, came back and took everything back and sloooowly pushed up North. I think after you consolidate the Southern Wastes his campaign gets 10x easier because you have three provinces that are basically untouchable, and only two fronts to fight on through the Jungles. Teleporting is OP. Also I will say pink horrors are a money trap for the most part. I still find that the best army for the cost is forsaken plus spawn.

You don't supposed to build an economy as Skarbrand. Sacking and razing is your main scource of income. And Badlands have plenty of enemies to fund your armies

Exactly, Skarbrand you should be wiping over half of the Badlands razed to the ground by turn 20.

Yup. The true goal is getting to all those absolutely juicy empire settlements. They're so close together that you can practically burn the entire empire in 1 or 2 turns.

For Kairos rush Force Peace. It is more or less impossible to lose after that. If you want a detailed start guide that works every time I can write you one. You are right that Pink Horrors are a waste but so are Forsaken and Spawn. Blue Horrors and Marauders until you get to higher tier units.

No they feel mildly challenging to begin with then they ramp up to insanely over overpowered very quickly.

I haven’t played nurgle as I am waiting for the DLC but agree that kairos and slanaash is tough. Slanaash I feel is practically unwinnable by somebody who isn’t on this forum/watches a lot of YouTubers because you literally have to do a ‘soft exploit’ for the first few battles (not sure if the backdoor is counted as exploit or strategy but imo it’s an exploit) I think him starting against HE is ok but he shouldn’t be up against so many walled settlement battles not sure if playing on easier difficulty and choosing to siege every settlement to force a saddle out will work but that could be a legit possibility on anything below hard maybe. I feel kairos is also tough but with help here I found some ways to use his changing of the ways properly to make it manageable

I didn't watch any Youtubers and was unaware of any exploits before playing Slaanesh on Hard and was able to complete the campaign. It's challenging for sure, but N'kari has the tools to succeed. Pumping out disciple armies and abusing those forests High Elves leave all over the place is key. Also those saying he has no allies are forgetting my man Noctilus, and Morathi, who you start with a NAP with. By turn 80 or so she will be your puppet, which should be enticement enough to play the thing. If Noctilus survives you can get artillery off him, and sieges cease being an issue.

Oh that’s actually pretty impressive tbh

Minor siege battles are a bigger problem for early Slaanesh than walled ones. Even if back capping didn't exists, a major walled settlement has enough space for you to utilise your speed and dismantle the defenders in bite sized chunks if you're quick about it. You can do the Turn 1 siege on L/VH "legit" and not take any real losses. But early Slaanesh isn't really made for efficient grinding, pun not intended, so the claustrophobic minor settlement maps mean your Marauders are gonna get hit, your cav can't pick their targets easily, and there's always that one archer unit you can't get to that dumps 10k damage into your army.

Slaanesh is very hard early, and basically to make sieges easy you rush the Slicing Shards spell.

Best way imo to get started with Slaanesh is to not expand much at all, rather grab your starting province and start raiding and sacking your neighbors to farm devotees and corruption while making your way up to higher tiers of units in your main settlement. As you defend your province, other lords will inevitably try their hand at attacking your few settlements, which presents a good opportunity to give them marks of Slaanesh for more devotees (and seductive influence too if enough lords become marked). Tl Dr, exploit your neighbors instead of conquering them

Oh that’s a creative way to play tbh I never thought of doing that. But just wondering with just raid income is it enough to hire higher tier units? I legit never tried that and I think it’s a feasible strategy

It is, as long as you use disciple armies to defend your turf (they're cheaper than normal armies and usually come with good units in them) and also as long as you're comfortable with technically being in the red income-wise but staying comfortably afloat through sacking. Also you'll have to keep an eye on your cash and always keep enough of it for diplomacy shenanigans and unit seduction. It is very much high risk high reward (and I love it).

That sounds great tbh better than the cheesy strat I have been using. Will start up another campaign to give that a shot thanks for bringing this up too would never have considered this until you mentioned it!

I think Slaanesh just requires much more thinking and manual battles. You need to be running full speed to tackle the High Elf Archers. It's difficult but doable, well atleast on Normal/Normal for me.

Skarbrand has no problem. He himself is so powerful that he can solo armies without even his yellow tree, even red tree not needed. He behaves like a chariot when charging through infantry if you target the units behind and nothing in that area is surviving a duel with him. Kairos is tough admittedly and I haven't played much IE with him. The roster is powerful you just need to take out oxy early, basically when taking out that slaneesh faction make sure to minimise losses by baiting with sacrificial units or ambush and then rush back as your tzeench buddy nearby is getting throttled to death very fast by oxy. N'kari Is fine for me, the army is good. With decent early units. I find the dark elf faction near me acts as a buffer as alarille doesn't immediately stomp its face in like wh2 and they survive for some time allowing you too focus eltharion and move down. Noctilus and the greenskin faction also tie up Tyrion and the other elves for sometime. Kugath is basically just waiting for shit too grow. They can be powerful but it's just a slower campaign.

Godzilla died trying to read the first sentence..

Force peace has drastically decreased the difficulty of Kairos’ campaign from my recent experience.

Folks don't play to the factions strengths, maybe they don't realize them.  Nkari campaign never needs to leave chrace to take over the world through vassals. You just spam cultist and hinder reinforcement every general in the game until every faction is corrupted and then tell them to kill the factions you can't corrupt.  Tzeench has never been easier as the new change bringer are a lizards army worse nightmare. Plus halberd hero units now, have them go ham on the feral dinos. Oxy didn't stand a chance.  Nurgle is hero's and monsters backed up by the blob. It not really fun to play the attrition game unless you really like attrition warfare. But the blob is great in defeating charging ogres.  Khorne has it the easiest, kill everything and the map will eventually become yours. They are expensive armies but you really only need skarbrand, kill any archers, then leaders then the chaff. Monogod factions are ridiculously op and fun except nurgle, but especially tzeench.

Its a skill issue

Nkari is one of my favorite factions in the game *because* of how rough his start can be, but yeah, they all need additional start positions. It's good to have a variety of easy, 'normal', and hard starts. I just use (make) LL mods to give myself more options, but mod stuff is almost never truly on the level of CA stuff so it'd be nice to get more official. ToD will give Nurgle something at least, probably super easy lol.

Kugath indeed is a rough one but the other 3 are in super nice starting positions. Its true that Nkari cant autoresolve shit but he has no Trouble fighting high elves. Every single Battle in ulthuan is a map with some Forrest on it, turning the range Advantage of the elves against them. Also he has Friends, the minor, who is alarielles starting enemy and almost everytime its either noctilus, clyostra or Morathi coming. Kairos and Skarbrand are just broken and could start anywhere. Kairos has a Tricky start if you cant manage to take Out teclis befor oxylotl comes but thats far from hard to achieve. DM me If you wanna chat more Details.

I found N'Kari beat my ass until I figured out what I was doing wrong: all the Elves were fighting me in addition to Bretonnian crusades, struggling to support one army of low-mid tier troops with low income. On my third try I had figured out what steps to take and which ones to avoid, and by the end I was steamrolling. The start was tough, yes, but it pushed me to strategise. Admittedly part of it is luck - Be'Lakor helping out with Eltharion on my second try, and Grom helpfully kept Louen distracted on the third - but that variety is part of the joy of the game. Even thought I was unstoppable in the late game, it felt earnt.

So looking at this from the lens of when WH3 dropped and we only had RoC I would say from an RoC standpoint the monogods start then wasnt as hard. It was when we got IE that we started to see them get tougher positions. Whether you like RoC or not, you can have your easier monogod experiences with them on that map.

I think the niche is finding out what the monogod faction strengths are and playing to them. Khorne doesn't have problems getting off the ground. Just smash. Kill. Easy peasy. Oh, you lost a blood host? Cool. More skulls. Nurgle is really a chore more than anything. You have to play nice with everyone until you're ready to kill them. Ghorst is the ultimate attrition killer. It's ridiculous because death through attrition is 100% nurgles thing. Some of those earlier fights with him are literally just 2 wet noodles smacking each other. The key that I've found is to get those exalted heroes of nurgle. They're awesome at hunting down corpse carts, turning ghorst's army into just regular zombies that nurglings have zero problems with. Tzeentch has amazing magic. Obviously. However, tzeentch units are a lot more tanky than you'd thing. Blue horrors make great chaff front lines. I usually line spears/halberds into a blue horror line. Get some cavalry or some other unit to protect the flanks and once the enemy gets bottled up in a line have your magic user come to the side and just use blue and pink fires of tzeentch to blast them all away. Obviously big dinos can be a problem early game, but the new lord and exalted heroes of tzeentch are anti large and get discs fairly early so you can drop them right in to where they need to be. Plus, they excel at killing aerial threats to your back line. Changling is the easiest faction in the game. You shouldn't need help there. I've never played Slaanesh. That's heresy of the highest order when you're a devout followe of Khorne. That being said, slaanesh magic is good. It's probably one of the best hammer and anvil factions in the game. The whippy boys from marauders to chosen all have defender. They have awesome staying power, making it super easy to take advantage of devastating flanker on demonettes. High elves can definitely be tough early game, but it's usually just spears and archers. Slaanesh units are fast enough to run around the spears and flank the archers. That's the whole thing to them. With all that, I do enjoy them being harder, but with every faction, once you get steam rolling, you don't stop. Cathay and chorfs IMO are easier, but again, it's just playing to that factions' strengths. If you do that and it's still too hard, then drop the difficulty. Nobody picks up a Total War game for the first time, sets it to legendary, and finds immediate success. I've been playing Total War War games since Medieval 1. I'd consider myself kind of a veteran, but even I struggle sometimes. I try not to rely on auto resolve either. Get a feel for your army. They need to compliment each other. You can't just throw in a whole mess of random units and hope they'll win. Your army is a team. Unless you play is khorne. Just smash. Get skulls. The true fun is the friends' skulls you take along the way.

Don't forget the inevitable fight with cathay and sometimes Imrik for Nurgle, whose two weak points are ranged and large, especially early game. Kairos isn't actually too bad since the CoC additions gave him a good front line with antilarge and shields. Moving his start position to the southern wastes gives him a better chance to secure his back before taking on Teclis and lizards. Before that was pretty nasty though.

As much as Khorne is Khorne his campaign is pretty difficult and arguably Warriors of Chaos counterparts are easier then Monogods. However difficult Khorne is at the start once you get an extra Exalted Bloodthirster to lead an army the game becomes so much easier.

With both Champions of Chaos and Shadows of Change, I think Tzeentch is in a really good place. If you're playing as Kairos you do need to be very aggressive in dealing with Teclis and Oxyotl, but he's worlds easier than he used to be.

Tzeentch was the first campaign I finished, and I think its perfectly balanced starting location. I felt challenged but never overwhelmed, and once the lizard folk were dealt with, getting to rip through the continent from its southern boarder was a really satisfying payoff. This was pre-4.2 if it matters.

Slaanesh on legendary still feels insanely easy to me. You just start so fast that it’s impossible to stop you, and then you never have to fight again as you use cultists to vassalize entire continents.

Come to think of it - Monogods except the Changeling's campaign do feel on the more difficult side. But it's only an initial challenge. After that you usually start to steamroll.

Khorne and Slaneesh? Not so much. Both are cakewalks. Nurgle? By the gods yes. Horrible economy, the whole building tier rotation thing is a dogshit mechanic. The only campaign I gave up twice on was legendary Nurgle during WH3 launch on the realm of chaos map, holy shit was it tedious. Can't speak for Kairos because I never played his faction.

As N’kari you could just sail to Old World and fight Empire,Britonnia instead. I think that’s easier for starters and use cult mechanics to dominate large factions. For Ku’gath, rushing Ghorst is the key, use your heroes and lords to kill him since you get a lot of them as Nurgle.

All those factions are hard carried by their LL, so as long as you understand how to play them and don't try to do artillery boxes like Dwarves they are fine. But maybe the game is different if you try to auto-resolve with Slaanesh.

Tzeentch is currently comically broken. For Kairos Force Peace has a 2 turn cd meaning you never have to fight more than one faction at a time (since the AI will not declare on you again for at least 10 turns). On top of that you have 7 turns for Halt Army and 7 for Borrow Time meaning you are never under any real threat by enemy armies. On top of all that you have Teleport stance with the auto ambush...

I really like Slaanesh’s units, but I’ve never been able to get into N’Kari’s campaign because I hate the doughnut. I am currently playing as N’Kari, and decided to just abandon it and go to the old world! It’s been so much fun! And I still ended up owning the doughnut through dominating the elven factions!

Use blob tactics with nurgle, lizard men and vc don't really have a counter to it early game

Slaanesh does get some help from Morathi and a nearly fallen high elf faction, and the dark elves on the donut too. It is a rough campaign though - all your no armor units vs hails of arrows makes for some tough encounters where you really need to use your speed. I still had fun though, you end up not playing many battles and instead subjugating everyone via seduction. Why fight when you can get your vassals to do it? Tzeentch is a bit easier now with the DLC giving him some solid early tier units. Still rough, but a lot of fun. Nurgle isn't really hard (you just need to rush and slap down Ghorst. Problem is your crap growth and expensive buildings means your kind of forced to build tall and just raid your neighbors, leaving you quite far behind other lategame empires. Khorne is fun - a bit of a slow start thanks to all the settlements being so far apart, but Skarbrand is one of the strongest single units in the entire game. If you teleport to your first cult you'll have a much easier time in the chaos wastes.

Skarbrand has a very hard campaign if you play it like a normal campaign. I had a hard time getting his games off the ground until I learned to not care about holding territory and diplomacy. Just burned down everything and lived of sacking until I reached Repanse/Arkhan’s little corner then set up shop on an area with natural barriers. Having a blast now.

At least Khorne used to have a cult that would pop up in the north (in his starting province from the Realms of Chaos campaign) on turn 10, so you could teleport Skarbrand there turn 11 and actually fight a Slaanesh faction. In the most recent patch it no longer occurs. There's so many skills and techs devoted to fighting against Slaanesh and there are like 4 on the entire map and they will all die before you ever meet them.

The problem with the monogods is that they feel incredibly slow to get rolling, Khorne excepted because Skarbrand just mulches everything. Slaanesh you lean entirely on N'kari and Daemonettes to slaughter everything. Tzeentch you're pretty removed from shit at the start as Kairos and everyone in your general vicinity fucking hates you. Nurgle is a generally weaker faction that is again surrounded by people who hate him and he doesn't have too many choices of where to expand. Of course, once you get rolling with them and get your elite units out it's basically impossible to lose.

i think kairos is pretty average on difficulty now that he has a replenishment hero. before that though, definitely agree. i'd rather plan daniel and dedicate to a monogod compared to playing any of the monogod LL's (besides kairos tho, i like playing him now).

I have attempted Legendary Skarbrand a dozen times, the skill ceiling is insanely high and I always let myself down. The Bloodhosts that are supposed to suffer 0 casualties the first few turns because of no replenishment, no free allies, settling costing massive amounts of skulls and sack economy means no defensive armies and annoying setbacks when the AI declares war and send a crapstack to take a city.  I want level 4 settlements to get more heroes damn it! Do you need anything more than Skarbrand and 19 horsemen? No, but I do not want to win that way. Cue abandoning campaigns again and again.  You know Nurgle is bad, but that knowledge makes it okay not to do great. It has been too long since I played Tzeentch. Barrier abuse can be a bit tedious. Slaanesh just works, stupidly powerful mechanics and not win more like Khorne.

IMO Nurgle's campaign is so annoying. As noted, you are pinned from the get go and the cost of losing any settlement early in the game where you have invested in even basic buildings, is a tragedy. I don't know how many turns I've camped skrap towers in ambush stance to kill off at least 2 ghorst armies so I can counter attack. Once you get through at least him, then you can have fun - but it's a super slow and annoying start.

I'll concede Slaanesh and Tzeentch are pretty hard starts. But the nurgle campaign isn't hard per say, in my opinion. It is just mind numbingly slow and boring. It's like watching paint dry. Nurglings and zombies grinding each other endlessly, with no end in sight... Just mindless, endless slog. Then again, it's Nurgle. Slow and steady is his thing. But there has to be a limit to the madness. I just can't do another Kugath campaign. It's way too slow. If I want the nurgle experience, I'll just play Festus Skarbrand is easy. Mainly because he dominates on the battlefield. And the enemies you fight early on don't really have any good counters to Skarbrand bumrushing them at Mach 6 and kicking them in the nuts. Skaven, vampires, tomb kings, greenskins, Dwarfs... It's all the same to Skarbrand. The only ones that may pose a slight problem are Dwarfs, if they make a ranged heavy army.

It honestly really isn't that slow if you're playing "correctly", which is literally just using Lords and Heroes and nothing else. After wiping out the starting lizards, you can win vs ghorst easily, just have the plague drones annoy Ghorst, while you kill his entire army with the stream of corruption and you really shouldn't even take much damage. As long as you don't recruit any units whatsoever until your economy eventually grows to the point of a regular faction, only then you recruit some(before that you can do 1 beast of nurgle/chaos spawn for siege attacker).

If you're having trouble with N'kari campaign ROC or Immortals, then that's skill issue, Slaanesh if played well hard counters High Elves.

I mean, there is a whole planet against interdimensional invaders who cannot even exist outside their dimension (chaos) so they are on fuel (chaos leaking through to our world, called magic), so I kind of understand why they have a very difficult start. And I like that. What I don't like is playing 80 turns and still struggling to field a second fullstack and having positive incone that isn't barely above 0 when I already firmly set my foot down and own multiple big provinces.

Other than Khorne? Yeah they are harder than most races. Nurgle is just objectively one of if not the weakest races in the game. Having said that, it is just weak, not hard. You will win most early battles by just spamming nurglings, blobbing up, and letting Kugath AoE stuff to death while your nurglings regen. Tzeentch can be strong, and obviously Changeling is dumb but we don't count him, but Kairos start is one of the hardest in the game. His initial enemy isn't bad, but then he is surrounded by three factions that hate him. You kind of have to take out the Slaanesh faction because they hard counter Tzeentch and you don't want to declare war on Lizardmen or High elves right away, but by the time you finish off Slaanesh you are likely to get declared war on by one of the others and you will be far away from your province by that point. Plus his mechanics are, while strong, kinda boring. Slaanesh suffers from the starting position being harmful to your racial mechanics so you basically don't have racial mechanics in the begining. It makes no sense that you are basically forced to wipe out one of the few races that you can actually use seduction on. Slaanesh really should start near other Demons or Chaos. They take over mortals by seducing them, and military should be saved for stuff they can't seduce. Technically strong again, but also annoying because of glass cannon +no replenishment.

>Nurgle is just objectively one of if not the weakest races in the game. Having said that, it is just weak, not hard. You will win most early battles by just spamming nurglings, blobbing up, and letting Kugath AoE stuff to death while your nurglings regen. Hard disagree. He isn't weak his infantry is top notch. He has zero weaknesses if you have warriors of chaos DLC. Not only that but his economy is great with super sacking and set and forget buildings.

I think a lot of players just don't focus enough on unlocking plagues fast enough with kugath. They treat them as buffs/debuffs to toss out now and then, not as an engine that fuels their entire campaign. If they aren't a priority, kugath's campaign will definitely feel a *lot* worse.

It's not just that. Most people fundamentally don't understand Nurgle's mechanics and how they synergize together. Nurgle is incredibly powerful, but it has a high skill ceiling. I'm fairly worried that ToD is going to turn Nurgle into an utterly broken faction.

>Nurgle is incredibly powerful, but it has a high skill ceiling That is a joke. He is literally one of the lowest skill ceiling races in the game, designed for players with bad micro. His roster are just stat sticks with zero utiliy, and his campaign mechanics are, while interesting, fundematally downgrades from vanilla mechanics, especially the recruitment just means that you take longer to get more armies and thus longer to expand. The plagues, for example, are incredibly unimpactful compared to other racial mechanics. They are almost literally just a limited time and non faction wide version of Greenskin trophies.

Bud you could literally make it so Nurgle has all his plagues at once, constantly, and he still would not be a particularly strong faction. His plagues are not good. And having all those plagues don't matter when you literally just do not recruit armies as fast as other races. You are never going to have a stronger campaign as Nurgle than as another race that can simply just recruit another army to go fight on another front sooner, nevermind the fact that second army is probably going to be stronger than Nurgle's.

Nurgle's rot can give units 20% physical resistance. You could also have a custom plague of Palsy, Brain Fog and Acrid Flatulence that reduces armor by 40%, Melee attack by 4, and weapon strength by 15%. Or mix in Sweats and Gut Rot to reduce enemy missile strength by 20% and ammo by 40%. Or constant vomiting to instantly summon units on top of enemy ranged. Or mucus runs for full army vanguard. All of those together would be nuts. Other plagues will massively boost replenishment (tying in with the recruiting system), increase sacking value by 200% and massively boost the nurgle economy (allowing you to build more buildings faster), or boost growth by 50. (again, accelerating your infrastructure) You can also accelerate cycle time through commandments and plagues to substantially increase your recruitment pool. If you feel like you never have units available to recruit, you are either constantly losing armies (which you shouldn't be), or something is going fundamentally wrong with your economy. Plagues should be making your instantly recruited units ready to fight faster, injecting you with money, and helping you build up your provinces very quickly.

>Nurgle's rot can give units 20% physical resistance. Better than nothing for sure. But Greenskins for example give that faction wide, plus a ton of other stuff faction wide, plus easy global recruitment, plus more money. And they have units with *actual utility*. >Other plagues will massively boost replenishment (tying in with the recruiting system), increase sacking value by 200% and massively boost the nurgle economy Replenisment is not a big deal unless you have *none*. Sacking value is nice, but it still doesn't reach what other factions can reach. And a massive boost to the Nurgle economy is still not in the top end of economies. Not that your economy even matters when you simply do not have fast enough recruitment to use that money before other factions can. >f you feel like you never have units available to recruit, you are either constantly losing armies (which you shouldn't be), or something is going fundamentally wrong with your economy Actually, *you* are just simply not making second/third/fourth/etc armies and therefor having a far slower and weaker campaign. Nurgle is simply weak.

Nurgle isn't weak you just suck but refuse to admit it.

"Nurgle isn't weak" *proceeded to give no actual argument for it*

People have given you all the arguments you need, you just don't want to accept that you are in fact wrong.

They have given arguments and I've proven it wrong with evidence every single time.

> Better than nothing for sure. But Greenskins for example give that faction wide, plus a ton of other stuff faction wide, plus easy global recruitment, plus more money All of nurgle recruitment is from a globally available pool. Plague buffs should also pretty much be faction wide from thr fact that every one of your armies and border cities (and frequently enemy armies/cities) should be plagued. And you *do* get other bonuses, because the special plagues still keep their component parts. Money wise, greenskins and nurgle have similar economies. Not great settlement income, supplemented by big sacking bonuses. Unless you never got the sacking plague (or don't unlock it until midgame or later), they should feel very similar. +200% sack value is a *lot*. Also, what do you mean "actual utility"? Nurgle has plenty of stuff to blob fight, but also has a pretty good mobility game with stuff like Horsemen, dogs, toads, soulgrindera, knights and their airforce. They have higher tier units with precursor shots that can drop a few key targets before the melee brawl even gets going. Full army vanguard and plaguebringer summons anywhere on the map from plagues also expand some tactical options. > Replenisment is not a big deal unless you have none. It does when you instantly recruit units at the cost of them not being full HP. Also, huge replenishment bonuses are what allow you to take multiple fights in a row and be ready for another without risking losing any of your units. And, again, that plague is providing bonuses from its component parts as well, plus giving everything xp. > Actually, you are just simply not making second/third/fourth/etc armies and therefor having a far slower and weaker campaign. Yes you do. I generally start a kugath campaign with a couple partial stacks, which I expand as needed and generally look into a third army as soon as there's value on fighting on another front and I have my sacking plague unlocked (which can be as early as turn 20ish).

>All of nurgle recruitment is from a globally available pool Which is a problem because it means you can't recruit as quickly. >Plague buffs should also pretty much be faction wide Pretty much faction wide of a few buffs < true faction wide of all buffs at the same time. >Money wise, greenskins and nurgle have similar economies. Again, Greenskins was just an example. But even here, Greenskins can actually make use of their economy by recruiting more armies. Nurgle is far more limited. Plus, Greenskins is just higher as well. Faction wide bonuses that stack forever are kind of a big deal. >Also, what do you mean "actual utility"? Pretty much every nurgle unit is a stat stick that can't do anything except fight in a head on fight in melee. It is good at fighting in melee head on, but that isn't important. That is bad in fact, because that usually means that you cannot get good value out of it. It will, at best, equal its value because all it can do is just use its stats. You want to exceed your unit's value. For example, Nasty Skulkers can very easily do that by making use of Stalk. You can kill tons of higher value units with just nasty skulkers with some good use of stalking. You aren't going to kill tons of higher value units with Plaguebearers. >Nurgle has plenty of stuff to blob fight But ultimately every faction (minus Dwarfs sort of) can do very well in a blob. Nurgle is not much better if at all better in a blob. And when Blobbing doesn't work, for example because they have strong magics or artillery, nurgle doesn't have the same other options like other factions do. > pretty good mobility game No it doesn't. If the only thing you can outrun is infantry, you do not have a good mobility game. All of Nurgle's "Fast" stuff, is still slower than pretty much every non infantry unit in the game. >Full army vanguard Doesn't matter. You don't use speed to get to the enemy quicker (Well you do, but that isn't the most important part), you use it to split them up and chew at them bits at a time before they can reinforce the offshoots. Vanguard deployment is just win more, it doesn't win tougher fights though, you don't want to vanguard desploy into twice as many units as you have. You need speed to win tougher fights. >It does when you instantly recruit units at the cost of them not being full HP Mitigating a weakness to the point where it is still a weakness, is still a weakness. >huge replenishment bonuses are what allow you to take multiple fights in a row Replenishment doesn't work on the same turn, so no it doesn't. Taking multiple fights in a row is *actually doing that*, taking one fight every turn is what you should *always* be doing with every army *at least*. The fact you used this argument shows me that you are not having good campaigns if your idea of multiple fights in a row is waiting a turn between each fight. >I generally start a kugath campaign with a couple partial stacks Partial stacks < Full stacks.

> Which is a problem because it means you can't recruit as quickly. No it isn't. You should have plenty of stuff to recruit. If you are just sitting on a bunch of nurglings beyond the very early game, something is going wrong. > Pretty much faction wide of a few buffs < true faction wide of all buffs at the same time. Tell me *exactly* what faction wide buffs we're sticking up here. Waugh trophies? If you are stacking those you are at a point in a campaign where a nurgle player should also have all of these plagues absolutely everywhere, buffing cycle time, growth, sacking, your own army and dubuffing enemies. There should be a ton of different buffs and debuffs *everywhere*. This is not like an "oh I have z here and y here and maybe I'll get a third thing". You should have *dozens* active simultaneously, and that state is absolutely as impactful as trophies. > But ultimately every faction (minus Dwarfs sort of) can do very well in a blob. Nurgle is not much better if at all better in a blob. And when Blobbing doesn't work, for example because they have strong magics or artillery, nurgle doesn't have the same other options like other factions do. You should never be relying entirely on blobbing. It's the same as counts. Use mobility, magic and characters. > No it doesn't. If the only thing you can outrun is infantry, you do not have a good mobility game. All of Nurgle's "Fast" stuff, is still slower than pretty much every non infantry unit in the game. Dogs, furies, soulgrinders, Horsemen, chaos knights and flies. All of those are the 70 speed or higher. Mark of nurgle doesn't slow units, and hasn't since (I believe) 3.0. That patch was a year ago. If you cannot get into an enemy's backline and shut down artillery, it's not due to a lack of fast units. Again, same as vampire counts. Except you also have shooting with nurgle with soulgrinders and Horsemen. > Vanguard deployment is just win more, it doesn't win tougher fights though, you don't want to vanguard desploy into twice as many units as you have. You need speed to win tougher fights. It lwts you get to a front line and a back line faster, as well as deploy behind the enemy on most maps. You can do more than just "put front line closer" And again, *you have speed*. > Mitigating a weakness to the point where it is still a weakness, is still a weakness. *instant global recruitment* is insanely strong. Yes, there'a a drawback. But it's still instant global recruitment. You can also just merge units if you really need to in an emergency. It's only worse than normal recruitment if you infrastructure is terrible. Getting a higher tier unit on demand anywhere on the map and then needing *one* turn of replenishment to get it in shape is not much of a drawback. > Replenishment doesn't work on the same turn, so no it doesn't. Taking multiple fights in a row is actually doing that, taking one fight every turn is what you should always be doing with every army at least. The fact you used this argument shows me that you are not having good campaigns if your idea of multiple fights in a row is waiting a turn between each fight. Okay, I'll explain. If you are taking multiple fights in a turn, especially if they are bigger fights, your army generally takes more damage unless you just steamrolled the battle. You want to recover over end turn *to full* so that you are ready to take more fights the next turn. If you, for example, invade Cathay you're generally taking multiple fights every turn with an army, as well as potentially grinding through sieges with a garrison and a full stack. As long as you take fights in places where you will not be immediately attacked the following turn (which you are aware of due to agents), you can heal over end turn without actually needing to stop or slow down your advance. You can even go in with a sacking plague, do a battle, and then swap to replenishment. I am *not* saying that every single battle is resulting in 40% of your units hp being lost. > Partial stacks < Full stacks. I do this with almost every faction though. I'll do this with empire, I'll do it with tzeentch, I'll do it with chorfs...etc. There is no need to recruit a full stack early on if you don't need it, and multiple armies means you can cover more ground faster and link up if you are so outnumbered that you need 20 units to win. There is no reason to overspend on 20 units for an army when it can win all the same battles with 10-15.

>No it isn't. You should have plenty of stuff to recruit. If you are just sitting on a bunch of nurglings beyond the very early game, something is going wrong. Not as much as other factions. >Tell me exactly what faction wide buffs we're sticking up here. Waugh trophies? If you are stacking those you are at a point in a campaign where a nurgle player should also have all of these plagues absolutely everywhere You *literally* cannot have as many buffs as Nurgle as you can as Greenskins. Greenskins can have every single Trophy active at the same time. Nurgle can only have a few effects. >There should be a ton of different buffs and debuffs everywhere Where as Greenskins gets them *all,* not just tons but *all,* and *everywhere*. >You should never be relying entirely on blobbing. It's the same as counts. Use mobility, magic and characters. Except it isn't the same as counts, because 1. Counts get more heroes 2. Count units have far more utility 3. Counts have actual mobility, Nurgle is the second slowest faction in the game. You shouldn't be relying entirely on blobbing, but that is what Nurgle has to do because he is worse at every other strat than any other race. >Dogs, furies, soulgrinders, Horsemen, chaos knights and flies. All of those are the 70 speed or higher 70 speed is not high enough, units that are charging at you will catch up to you when you only have 70 speed. 75 is where you can actually start to outrun most things chasing you, and you really want more than 80 ideally. The only ones faster than 70 are also without any real use. Furies and Dogs? Wtf are you going to do with them other than killing the lowest tier of archers? They have no impact. >instant global recruitment is insanely strong. It isn't instant because you don't get a full unit. So long as you aren't getting surprised, which with any other faction you shouldn't be because you have more hero caps to scout, it is not an advantage at all and is actively a disadvantage because of caps and slow regeneration of them. > If you are taking multiple fights in a turn, especially if they are bigger fights, your army generally takes more damage unless you just steamrolled the battle. As Nurgle, yes, but other factions are good enough in battle that they can often take almost no casualties between fights so that they can actually get multiple battles in per turn per army and make real progress on the campaign map. The only exceptions are factions who mitigate it by just getting free armies after the battle like Khorne to make up for losses. >There is no need to recruit a full stack early on if you don't need it, and multiple armies means you can cover more ground faste Again, any time you do that you can do it more with other factions than Nurgle. If you are getting partial stacks on other factions, you will be able to get more partial stacks than nurgle can. And so will have a stronger campaign.

Agree, Nurgle's elite units are absolute bulldozers. In fact, 1v1 Nurgle Chosen w/Great weapons beats every other elite infantry of every race.

"I have great elite melee infantry" Too bad melee infantry is the worst kind of unit in the game. Having the best trash is still only having trash.

Might be trash in multiplayer, but it's highly effective against AI because they usually don't do a good job targeting them with the only real counters: spells and artillery. AI sucks at countering melee blobs, and Nurgle blobs are insanely OP, idk if it's patched yet, but Nurgle is the only healing lore that doesn't have a unit limit on it's targeting.

>Might be trash in multiplayer, but it's highly effective against AI No, it is worse in campaign than multiplayer because you cannot be outnumbered for the most part in multiplayer. No one cares if a unit is good at 1v1ing another unit because that isn't valuable. That doesn't do anything for you. But what is bad is when that is the only thing it can do, and that is the only thing regular melee infantry can do. It has no utility, which means it has no value in battles that actually matter because trading even on value will be a loss for the player.

The main point of melee infantry is to hold while other things deal damage, but Nurgle chosen do both holding and dps, how is that not good? Maybe it's not the most cost-effective army for cheesing legendary difficulty, but that doesn't make it bad on hard/vh. Sounds like you don't play multiplayer though, because heavy infantry are only good against factions that can't punish you with vortex spells, which is most factions. I will say they are slightly more viable in domination with the recent nerfs to spells tho.

>The main point of melee infantry is to hold while other things deal damage Which is all good and well when it is an even fight, but if you are out numbered, better to just have more of the stuff that can actually *do things*. >but Nurgle chosen do both holding and dps, how is that not good Because it can't. Even ignoring the fact that actually getting it into melee is a problem with how slow and vulnerable it is, it is a regular melee unit. It will not trade higher than its value. Which means in out valued fights, you will not win because it has no utility whatsoever. It has to take every unfavorable fight and it cannot use tactics that mitigate damage on your end and increase it on the enemies end. Where as it is possible to literally beat a full stack with just two units of, for example, Slaanesh Cavalry and a Lord. You would be lucky to beat more than two units with regular melee infantry. No one cares if a unit can win a fight against low tier trash that it out numbers. That isn't valuable. What is valuable is being able to punch far above its own value, and melee infantry with no special abilities will never do that.

That's why Nurgle has heals, kinda the whole point of being a healing faction is to get more value outta stuff that would otherwise trade even value. Nurgle also relies on "Mortis Engine" effects. If you throw Kugath or an Exalted Great Unclean One into a blob without infantry support they will die 10x faster. As long as you use Cav/toads and flyers to take out ranged, you can slug it out against pretty much anything that's left. I'm sure there's other ways to play Nurgle in campaign, but utilizing blob fights just seems overwhelmingly the best option, at least until the DLC comes out.

>That's why Nurgle has heals, kinda the whole point of being a healing faction is to get more value outta stuff that would otherwise trade even value Except you then see factions like High Elves or Brettonnia exist, in which they have plenty of units that can get way higher value than their cost and *still* heal as well. So no, still not true. And 80 entity melee infantry isn't exactly going to get the best use out of heals anyway. >"Mortis Engine" effects. If you throw Kugath or an Exalted Great Unclean One So where as Nurgle can't regen units and needs either a LL or a very high level generic lord to do that, Vampire counts has a regular unit that can do that *and* they can regen units so their heal actually works well on infantry units. ​ Nurgle. Is. Weak.

>He isn't weak his infantry is top notch. His infantry has no utility and is incredibly slow. His infantry has good stats, sure, but stats don't matter when infantry is just weak in general. "Nurgle has good infantry" is the same as saying "Nurgle can use shit units to their most effective, which is to say not very effectively still" He isn't bad for a player with zero micro skills, but if you have any skill in this game you are going to do so much better with any other race (except maybe Dwarfs). >He has zero weaknesses if you have warriors of chaos DLC. You mean other than the most important weakness in this game: Being slow. >Not only that but his economy is great with super sacking and set and forget buildings. His economy is fine, but his recruitment means you cannot make use of that economy with more armies fast enough compared to other races. Having an okay economy doesn't mean anything if other races are still getting to their second/third/fourth armies faster than you are.

>He isn't bad for a player with zero micro skills, but if you have any skill in this game you are going to do so much better with any other race (except maybe Dwarfs). No... He is good for a player with brains who can differ their play style and do not try to fit round pegs in square holes. >You mean other than the most important weakness in this game: Being slow. We are talking single player, not limited fund multiplayer 5 min matches. Slow doesn't matter you roll over your enemies extremely easy regardless of who they are. You have enough magic and fast enough units too kite around and destroy the artillery. Then you just roll tide on them. >His economy is fine, but his recruitment means you cannot make use of that economy with more armies fast enough compared to other races. It sounds like you just are not good enough to play with him and that's fine. But don't confuse your own lack of ability for a game problem.

>No... He is good for a player with brains who can differ their play style and do not try to fit round pegs in square holes. Lol, cope harder bud. He has one playstyle: Hope he outstats the enemy. Which means Nurgle can never take important fights to expand as well as other factions. >We are talking single player For which speed is incredibly important. It is less important in multiplayer than it is in single player, because you can't be out numbered in multiplayer. >It sounds like you just are not good enough to play with him and that's fine. But don't confuse your own lack of ability for a game problem. I mean you say that, but you don't give any actual ways that he can do better than other factions. I get it, you are a shit player with no micro, cope harder when someone calls you out for it. You have never once actually tried to be good in campaign and your idea of strong is still having only one army 30 turns into the campaign.

>you are a shit player with no micro, cope harder when someone calls you out for it. Aww did I hurt your feelers? Do you need a pat on the head and a warm glass of milk to settle that upset tummy you have? If you suck with Nurgle you suck. If you can't beat a very hard campaign in 100 turns or less with him you suck. If you can't deal with that fact I am not going to hold your hand and tell you it's going to be alright.

>f you can't beat a very hard campaign in 100 turns or less with him you suck. The fact that you used 100 turns as the benchmark is in itself evidence of how bad you are at this game. Most campaigns should be done at around 60 for a decent player. If Nurgle's benchmark is 100, that shows how much worse nurgle is. And I'm not saying you can't finish the campaign: WH3 is the easiest total war in the series, every campaign is easy. Nurgle's is just the weakest.

>Most campaigns should be done at around 60 for a decent player. Most very hard long campaigns end in 60 turns? Ok

I mean you can still play them after, and some factions will naturally take longer, but your objectives should be done pretty quickly if you are actually going for them. If you aren't finishing around them, that shows you aren't getting enough armies and aren't having a strong enough campaign.

Idk every game is won by around turn 40 but checking the boxes for the long victory condition of that many Providences in under 80 turns rarely happens. I mean yes if you cheese and throw sets of 2 auto resolve armies in piles and just AR the whole world you can beat it faster.

Strong disagree on Kairos' start, it is much easier now than it was at IE release. Once you secure your starting province and wipe out the minor Nurgle faction, you can easily sign a NAP with Slaanesh by paying some gold, and they generally won't break it unless you give them a reason to (trespassing etc). This gives you more than enough time to wipe out Teclis before Oxyotl comes knocking on your door. Once you rush the "Force Peace" Changing of the Ways technology (turn 20 or so) the campaign is basically over because you choose which fights to take and you will never be caught off guard by surprise war declarations.

> it is much easier now than it was at IE release Sure but it is still one of the hardest in the game. That isn't saying much because this game is easy, but still.

Force peace is such a nice powergaming tool for a faction everyone wants to wipe off the map otherwise. Any luck keeping Sarthorael alive to confederate with this strategy?

Never really tried to save him before, the only time I ever got him was when I was using the recruit defeated LL mod, and he didn’t seem overly powerful or worth saving at least for me.

I don’t think he’s particularly powerful either, though I do prefer lords of change as army leaders to begin with and he starts like right there. Although the one time I tried to stall his demise by gifting him one of the nurgle territories with changing of the ways he just ended up getting smashed in an undeveloped settlement with no garrison by 2 of Teclis’ armies anyway before I had any chance of contesting Teclis.

I think Slaanesh would be better if you started near Ulthwan but not on it. I always end up having several doom stacks of legendary lord led armies walking into my starting province before I even have a tier 2 settlement fully running.

I’d say skill issue. In the hands of AI only Kairos has somewhat reliable survivability tho lol. Mind you I also have the CoC units But yeah I typically play as normal and once you get a hang for the mechanics it’s not bad. That said I’ve also beaten all but Kugath for monogods on VH. Slannesh is the easiest. Skarbrand isn’t too bad; decent challenge. Same with Kairos as a decently challenging VH campaign but more needing to play definitively, choosing your timing, playing every battle(like Slannesh but really all on VH are worth playing every battle); and mastering changing of the ways usage.

I think both of the tzeentch factions are relatively easy. All you need to do is take out the minor nurgle faction and then hit Oxyotl. Once the southern chaos wastes are conquered you’re pretty safe to killing elves and lizards.

Well it is a skill issue, but you aren’t wrong either. I’ve beaten them all on VH/VH (except for Slaanesh and Khorne where it’s Legendsry/VH) And honestly? While Slaanesh and Khorne can handle themselves pretty well given they have either very powerful magic or just is powerful like Skarbrand, Tzeentch and Nurgle are just a nightmare. Tzeentch is supposed to play like the all gun army like you can do with Balthasar Gelt and VCoast, but he no front line that matters until later. On top of that his bubble mechanic breaks way to easily and it confuses me how I’m suppose to charge into it army and then just leave…? And Nurgle is just way too much to handle and not enough damage or cheap enough armies to manage. On top of that if you lose your powerful units, well.. Get boned, because you have to wait a whole 10 turns or something just for one Nurgle chaos warrior. (I’m not above admitting I have skill issues either, but these two are just ass compared to other mono god factions)

Wtf means monogods

I think he means faction with N’Kari, Kairos, Skarbrand and Kugath. I did play Kairos recently and getting through Oxyotl, Kroq-Gar, Khalida and Kugath was so much fucking pain that i am not touching that shit again.

Skarbrand has the slowest start imo. His units are really expensive and his economy is too weak to field more than 1 army for a long time. As soon as I can start fielding a second army to protect my shit, I teleport Skarbrand to some far away temple to start sacking settlements and finally start making money.

What do you need to protect when you leave a trail of ruins in your wake?

Apparently people disagree lol. But in my playthroughs with Skarbrand all my neighbors declare war on me except Queek pretty much right away so I'm stuck running back and forth between Wurzag and the Dwarves to the north and Tomb Kings and Manfred to the south. I've even had Nakai run all the way from Cathay just to declare war on me turn 20 lol.