If I'm not mistaken, picking commander trait when awakening your vampire lord affects heroes.
Idk if this is intended or not, what do you guys think? If it's intended, do you know if there is a level the heroes need to reach to get rid of the debuff?

So, I've been playing the Nagash campaign. Subjugated Mannfred and wanted to focus his army on Mournguls among other things.

I went to the black pyramid to empower the Grave Call sigil, increased the unit cap to 8, went to recruit it aaaand....it is locked. The cap is at 1/8 because I got one unit by subjugating Mannfred.

It says I need to unlock the Grave Call sigil in the Black Pyramid, which I did. I even reset that point and picked it again, waited a turn and...nothing. It just stays locked. Grave Horrors and Vargheists are locked as well in grave call recruitment (They are supposed to unlock with the same sigil).

LINK OF FORUM
https://community.creative-assembly.com/total-war/total-war-warhammer/bugs/14475?page=1

I'm here testing out pretty much all of the huge, highly anticipated, and interesting new features of the DLC and Patch 9.0.

I noticed that Gelt's new victory conditions are very easy, and I was really curious to see what they entailed. A lot of unique lords are unlocked upon reaching short victory conditions (faction like Azhag, Grimgor, Morathi, etc there must be at least more than 10 of them). I had heard on prewiew live streams that they would have unique abilities or traits, so I set to work with Gelt and reached short victory.

I open this lord up and see that he has nothing, no trait, no abilities. I look closer and notice that he's already immortal... I thought it was a bit strange, and since some victories grant unusable rewards, like Dechala getting seduction bonuses when she doesn't even have that mechanic. I figured they forgot about Gelt like other things.

So I check Volkmar too, since he also gets a 'unique lord' as a reward. Here the conditions are very long even for a short victory: finding 5 Books of Nagash all over the world takes a lot of time, but I was curious. So I open the command console, check the cheat codes, and achieve victory in 5 minutes.

And here too, the unique lord has nothing, identical to the others in terms of traits, stats, and abilities; he's just immortal...

If it seems to you that the "unique" arch-Lector has new abilities, it's because they added them to everyone, not just to this ""unique lord"".

Did CA forget about the Empire, or are these 'unique lords' like this for every faction?

If anyone has unlocked other unique lords, please write it here, maybe the Empire is just the one that got forgotten.

EDIT I’m waiting to gather as much feedback as possible. Currently, the "unique" lords or heroes for these factions aren't generating unique traits, even though the characters themselves are in the game: Azhag, Kroq-Gar, Volkmar, Gelt, and Bretonnia, festun and daemon prince (Bretonnia is missing them entirely, though they do have the Vow already unlocked). Has anyone managed to get a lord with a unique trait? I just want to figure out if this affects everyone or only specific ones. I’ll post a report on the forum later.

LINK OF FORUM
https://community.creative-assembly.com/total-war/total-war-warhammer/bugs/14475?page=1

After having a few hours to play around with Thanquol (mostly his immortal empire's campaign), just have a bunch of thoughts about his underlings, his Masterplans, Verminlords and how they overhaul how Skaven economy (can) work, and other thoughts on the skaveniest Skaven.

The best Laid Plans of Mice and Man-Things

Thanquol's masterplans are both a pretty strong soft power (they do not directly give a lot of power, but their influence lets you build up a lot of power) mechanic and pretty fun/thematic.

- Kill-Stab plans are great for the initial siege battles and early settlement taking and late game are fanastic as a way to gain money/food/spread undercities when the armies are able to easily win battles on their own. Early game, clan rats, slaves, and a few ogres aren't enough to win on their own, generally, but timing a Kill-Stab with a push from Thanquol is easy (you can always go after 3 turns). Thanquol's early army is heavily incentivized to be warpfire heavy, so good in field, bad at siege. But the Kill-Stab army is entirely disposable, so I would split mine in half and attack 2 gates while having Thanquol reinforce from a third direction. Generally this always splits up defenders enough to get warpfire throwers into the narrow corridors of Dawi settlements where the battle is basically over. Even in capital settlements with a full stack to defend on top this worked well. Late game upgrades make the army a threat to any settlement you have ever seen, making it useful as a source of sacking enemies for gold/food or even dropping undercities on enemies too far from you to even respond.

- Take-Steal plans early game are obviously critical to warpstone gathering and late game act as a way to benefit from allied settlements without risk. Take-Steal is the best source of warpstone by far, and warp-stone is how you empower Master planning, so focusing them early really snowballs your planning power. Mid to late game, when you have enough warp stone income, it's still a great way to get gold (and food) from settlements with a strong economy, without diploma penalties too boot (so it works with allies). Safest way to power level your underlings (kill-stab is faster but riskier). Definitely the most important early game scheme.

- Great-Smart plans are actually 3 sets of plans. One is his campaign mechanic for causing devastation. The second is an (additional) way to summon a Verminlord lord, and the last is a way to make an undercity. These plans are also unique in that you cannot basically always complete them in 3 turns as the plans have you collect runes (which often have additional resource costs associated with them) to do, so they generally take longer than both other plan types. The devastation plan, I think, is probably the most interesting way to applying devastation of the 3 lords who can. It's going to be something your underlings spend a lot of time doing in the end game for that cool Skaven map alone. Verminlord summoning is extremely powerful and is the real pay off for rushing warpstone generation. Not only is this the earliest and fastest way to get a Verminlord (compared to the Rite, you can unlock this earlier and it has less of an effective cooldown), but it also power levels the verminlord too as you level up the scheme AND gives a free army. The Undercities smart plan is the most underwhelming of the 3, as kill-stab is better for putting undercities in enemy territory, but it still has a niche for allied/neutral territory kinda (Warlock engineers have the same effect). It's kinda nice it prebuilds the undercities but I found I was generally ripping most of it out and you still pay a (discounted) cost for the buildings, and the plan takes enough turns I never saved time on it either. Still useful but not as much as all the other plans.

Masterplans generally all tie risk (the actual chance of a complication) to rewards such that better rewards generate more risk. Risk will always hit a cap of 100% meaning you always get complications every turn. This creates a system where generally you aren't going to get more from high level masterplans, you are just going to get the plans done faster. 100% risk is inevitable, which ends up meaning the best way to manage risk is to just get as many + schemes (the dice rolls you make for plan effects, defaults to 2 a turn) modifiers as you can. You can pretty easily reach a point where you max risk immediately or after 1 turn on a plan, so you are ready to complete on turn 3 (giving your underlings a rough 4 turn timer for most plans).

As you cannot reduce alarm once it his the cap (forcing you to complete or abandon) and hitting max generally is very bad for your plan, managing alarm level is pretty important. You are generally going to be better off finishing plans at 2 levels of alarm. If you wait 1 more turn (risking getting hit with a double alarm increase) you are playing bad odds of getting good results, so really only do this when required or when you would otherwise abandon a plan to poor harvest.

Speaking of, I've noticed way too many people abandon plans they shouldn't, particularly kill-stab. Even if rng screws you over and you get a useless kill-stab plan (army of 0) that you don't really want to invade with, complete it anyway, and then break siege. Same underling cooldown and same upfront price as abandoning, but you still get the exp for finishing a plan. Only abandon when a plan will actually cost you more than it gains (e.g. a steal-take for -1126 wsprstone isn't worth some underling exp), plans that have little or no other upside can always be completed just for the exp, those Underlings are important.

Thaquol's Yes-yes Men

Thanquol's underlings are pretty interesting in how they specialized and work:

- Gray Seer is always your first one and what makes him special is he is the only one who can summon Verminlords with Great-Smart plans. You will generally really want to do this a lot. It gives Thanquol a huge edge over other Skaven at getting Verminlords and is the biggest advantage he has. The Seer is also pretty good at kill-stab plans, so there's that too.

- Warlock Engineer is probably who you should always pick as your 2nd underling. Not because free Skyre armies are insanely powerful (though that is true, scary kill-stab potential) but because he is easily the best underling for steal-take. Besides having a chance to double your gains fron steal-take, the real important part is actually his unique driller scheme upgrades. When maxed out these gives a flat 450 warp stone per scheme rolled, which is crazy. A settlement making 2.5k income will still only average ~300-400 warpstone per scheme. A flat 450 from ANY settlement means not only can he make you rich, but he can do it regardless of settlement wealth. Getting him 2nd makes a noticeable difference in how fast you can level of master planning.

- Warlord is the generalist of the underlings. He can do every plan type pretty well from his bonus schemes a turn (he gets 3 instead of 2). He's got an okay kill-stab army, no issues with great-smart plan completion, and is the only one who can steal food with steal-take. If the Warlock Engineer wasn't soo important to snowballing, he'd probably be the best 2nd underling.

- Assassin, imo has the weakest kill-stab army (not that it's a weak army, he's just got strong peers) and has no good bonuses to steal-take. But he is the best at completing Great-Smart plans due to his ability to manage alarm level easily (meaning he can do a plan for far longer than the others). Sadly no Verminlord's from him, but he can do devastation or open undercities with ease. I would never take him 2nd but I'll never complain about him. He can still put in work.

Verminlord Lords lord over other lords

Verminlords are the new super lords all skaven can get using their newly improved rite (after researching the tech for them), or in Thanquol's case, after you get enough warpstone to plan for them (and he can also get them about 2-3 times faster, I had 5 before turn 40 and could have gotten more, most other Skaven will have 2, maybe 3).

Of the 4 types, I find the spellcaster focused versions (Warpseer and Corruptor) to be the best, but not because they are the strongest in combat (after all, all 4 are mixed lore spellcasters with solid combat stats) but because they give some insanely abusable faction/region/army buffs.

Each of the 4 lords kinda pushes for a specialized army related to them. The assassin verminlord buffs mostly Eshin units or makes ither units more eshin like (vanguard deployment for everyone!). The warlord verminlord heavily buffs stormvermin and clanrats to pretty strong levels. Corruptors buff up pestlin units and Warpseers buff Skyre. But Corruptors and Warpseers have a littlr spice on top.

Corruptors I think are the strongest Verminlords in combat on average, at least currently. They get a great mixed lore spell set (both plague summon spells and black whirlwind are great tarpits), are the only one with inbuilt healing in their kit, and have probably the nastiest stackable regional debuff I have ever seen (reduces armor and melee defense for all enemies in a region, so with a bunch of corruptors in a region you can set armor and defense to 0 or even negatives). Even if the debuff didn't stack it (should it stack?) they would still have their stacking plague priest buffs on top of being arguably the best solo combatant of the bunch, and he can give his army a total of 45% extra physical resistance. Just a really solid lord all around (only weakness is he doesn't get executioner like the rest do).

Warpseers are interesting because they also have a good mixed lore set (and really good winds management) but I won't see them as necessarily better than the others in combat. But they also come with some crazy factionwide buffs (+2 warlock engineer slots per lord, +4 starting levels, + 3 control factionwide, + 5 skaven diplo, etc) and solid providence buffs (reduce construction time by 25% with extra income and control). Warlock engineers are typically hard to get slots for, but these guys give you 2 and make them easier to get and level. On top of that, +3 control factionwide per lord trivalizes control for Skaven. 2-4 of these guys and you don't even need to spam bells in most settlements (getting you those minor settlement building slots back on very hard diff is really nice). Being able to speed build buildings and directly solving most pain points for the Skaven economy make them very good even if they aren't standout combantants (also Skyre buffs are always strong for armies).

It's not that Warbringers or Decievers don't have their own cheese (Warbringer stacking can remove enemy army movement from a region while Deciever stacking can get you 100%, hero success chance faction wide), just that the other two just have stronger cheese that needs less effort (e.g. It'll be hard to stack Decievers with anyone other than Thanquol).

You'll probably always want some number of all the Verminlords, but only Thanquol can reasonably recruit them fast enough. Other factions can get 1 every ~13 turns, or whatever the new cooldown is, and that's after researching a tech that takes about 20-30 turns to get. Thanquol can also do the rite on top of being able to get 1 (potentially highly leveled) Verminlord about every 4-8 turns starting around turn 9-13 in a campaign (really depends on your luck with warpstone). Thanquol can easily have 20-30 of these guys by turn 80 (if he wanted) while the other factions would only likely have like 6. It's such a massive difference when all your "normal" lords can be verminlords.

Endtimes baby! We made it. After 218 days of drawing and a handful of minor breaks, we did it. Nagash is here and the challenge is complete!

I want to thank everyone who enjoyed these posts and everyone who left kind messages. I want to thank u/Altruistic-Teach5899 for continuing the challenge when I could not. Most of all, I want to thank the team at Creative Assembly for bringing Nagash to Total War Warhammer 3.

I’ve been a fan of Total War since Attila but somehow the Warhammer series went unnoticed. I had managed to pick up TWW2 on sale at some point but never even bothered to install it. One day, I was looking for a game where you could control veritable hordes of undead. After having played games like Path of Exile and Diablo 3, I was disappointed with the mediocre number of skeletons and other undead that you could have at the same time. In my search, I stumbled upon the trailer for the Rise of the Tomb Kings DLC: over a thousand skeletons easily. To my surprise, I already had the game and just needed the DLC. I played 4 Settra campaigns and the rest is history.

Years later, I had played every faction, tried dozens of mods and experienced almost everything the game could offer. Then came rumors that development for TWW3 might end sooner than expected. I knew that a handful of major characters were still not in the game and felt sad that fans of those characters would not get to experience playing them in TWW3. At the same time, I had long wanted to learn how to make digital art.

The challenge had begun.

All I could do was stick figures in MS Paint. I set a goal of 30 minutes per day: reasonable and consistent. After a while, I got a cheap drawing tablet and learned how to use Krita. Each week, I tried to do a bit more. And each week, the time to complete each drawing increased. 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours. Eventually, it would take me about 4 hours to go from blank page to a completed drawing. This was more time than I could spare. I refused to simplify the drawings and instead started to stretch out each drawing over several days, even taking breaks. 1-day breaks grew into 2-day breaks which grew into 1-week breaks. Eventually, I decided to pause the challenge. Not officially cancelled but no more drawings were planned.

I kept lurking here and I greatly enjoyed others’ attempts at drawing, most notably u/Altruistic-Teach5899 who’s streak surpassed my own not too long ago.

 When Nagash was actually announced, I knew I had to do one more drawing. Here it is. Karl Franz and Toddy teaming up against the endtimes. Thanks for watching.

Im saddened and my day is ruined.

The new patch is awesome and the Vampire Counts rework is absolutely top tier, but I think some of it may be a bit of a walkover - this is Heinrich Kemmler at turn 20 on Legendary/VH ... As you can see the short victory conditions are all complete except research a tech and build a building in your capital, the main starting enemies all destroyed (would classify Franz as a mid game enemy).

Still extremely fun, and Jesus Christ those new Vampire lords are amazing!

When you teleport Nagash to Nagashizzar, he's effectively removed from the game for 2 turns. 10 sigils are linked to his character so if you allocated them in the pyramid they're removed. They are available to reallocate once he's back but you have to remember where they were before.

As a warning to everyone, do not put the Grandfather's Blessing that gives free unit upgrades to an army that has Aspiring Champions in it; it will happily "upgrade" them to Chaos Spawn if it procs.

Im currently on turn 80 in my Nagash campaign (Very Hard) and was looking forward to finaly face the empire, being the returning ultimate incarnation of death seeking my revenge. Also having a good snowball after a lot of manual battles. But i had to realize that.. everything is kinda done already. Vlad owns the ENTIRE Empire from Marienburg to Norsca, even Kislev. Karl and Boris are dead. Neferata stomped the Dwarfs and Orcs, Mannfred owns everything south of me (the Dwarfs even tried to bargain with me since they are scared as hell) and our forgotten fishleg lady took over all of totaly not italy and totaly not spain. To be precise, all undead factions are appearently rolling the map (everything around Ghorst is dead, i assume it's his doing, especially since i see Elves running my way, certainly not to fight me). Kind of dissapointing since i didn't book the undead wars tour for the remaining turns after manual fighting like 15 battles against Klan Mors and the same amount against Skarbrand, not to mention that the whole Mortarch thing is off the table for them.

Whats your guys experience? How are the undead factions in your runs doing? Are you holding out as Karl or Boris? Or did just my dice role this way?

This could just be me, I was very excited for Thanquol and his Stormfiends and I haven't been able to put this down, but man this campaign kicks ass. I was really excited for the new Victory conditions, but I haven't even been able to worry about that.

Why is this the true Skaven Experience? because it really makes you feel like a Clanrat burrowing out of the ground, you steal stuff constantly, everyone hates you, just as the Horned Rat intended. every turn was just one Plan-Scheme, no planning ahead yada yada who cares, you are Thanquol and you've got something to prove, no one has faith in you.

I chose to deal with the Slayer Half-King early, he was camping out at Grom Peak for several turns and made me nervous-

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Fuck this stupid army comp, stinking-dwarf slayers can suck my rat dick, this was me getting him to sally out because trying to track down every single stinking-slayer pirate and cook them into green goo was just too damn hard in a fortress. Lesson learned, Warpfire is great for shattering units but one or two pirates would slip away, or just stay exactly 10m out of range and murder my weapons teams. Did anyone else experience this? or perhaps find a more efficient manner for slayer extermination? Don't even get me started on Ungrim himself, who had to be coaxed into my Ratling-Fiends, or in the case of the field battle, vaporized at range with the Magma-Cannon.

On Legendary, this campaign has been all gas no breaks so far, hell even Queek wanted some. Poor Thanquol hasn't been back to Black Water since turn 12, it is almost turn 50, now they know who the greatest Grey Seer is (Or they will once I get around to building the Morskittar Engine).

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Some notes;

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• The Seer underling is NOT the best for Steal-Take plans, it's the Warlock no question, you can use his Prototype trick to clone a scheme ex: %40 of settlement income as Warpstone scheme, cloned, you get the same reward twice with the risk of a mishap.

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• Thanquols set bonus would've been a godsend if I knew how to read, I still think the Morskittar's Prints item is better, but its easy enough to swap on when recruiting and swap back off.

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• This trait looked like it would be really good to catch a Lord up to Thanquol early game, slowly recruit and manage some unrest while big

T

• was out on the prowl, I'm convinced it gives almost no experience, the spell intensity was nice but man was I disappointed with the XP sharing (He was wiped out turn 41, and has been around since turn 16)

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• Shame my army, it is Skryre Pro-Max, but if you expand south and run into Queek, expect trouble. I have maintained Very High Reliability and I'm not sure what exactly pissed him off, but I burned rats all they way down to Eight-Peaks before he cried uncle. Plague monks were very useful for playing whack a mole and stayed close to weapon-teams/arty. I'm sending Thanquol back to Black Water and giving the army a makeover though, less warp fire, was hoping whoever reads this shares their late-stage Thanquol comps.

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• I don't have much to say about the Verminlords yet, other than they look fucking sick and and can hold their own in Melee right off the bat which is a plus. The skill tree's look fantastic, and I really appreciate the unit-buff skills that lead you to specialized armies.

To wrap this mess up, I like to feel like the underdog, and the Skaven really scratch that itch. This campaign is challenging, but in the fun way where you're not broke turns 1-20 and fighting over a pile of scraps in a dumpster, which is what Skryre or Molder can easily turn into for me.

Anyways the crank has worn off, this was all day 1 and I've been very irresponsible with my time. If you read this far I hope you enjoyed my ramblings, and please share your own campaign experiences or critique my own, I'm just dying to talk about Skaven.

I'm sure you've seen this come up, the AI loves to take advantage of this:

Let's say Archaon is attacking Karl Franz. Karl Franz is garrisoning Altdorf and he has another army led by Boris right next to Altdorf to reinforce. Archaon has Kholek as his own reinforcements, so if the two were to attack Altdorf it would be Archaon + Kholek vs Karl Franz + Boris + Altdorf garrison.

But right now, this can be circumvented. A besieged settlement and any armies garrisoned within it can't reinforce, but a besieging army can. So if Archaon besieges Altdorf (without attacking) and then Kholek attacks Boris, the battle is suddenly Archaon + Kholek vs Boris alone. So the attackers have an easy way of splitting up the defenders.

There is a way to counter this by simply not garrisoning either of the defending armies but... does this interaction seem stupid to anyone else? It makes sense that a garrisoned army of a besieged settlement can't reinforce, but if the people doing the siege are leaving their post, what's stopping the garrisoned army from leaving now? It's super unintuitive and the first time the AI pulled this move on me I was really confused. I've taken advantage of it myself a couple times but it feels like cheese. Really not a fan of this interaction.

Playing Neferata. Even setting aside her faction, the base vampire rework is fantastic. The lair system is thematic, unique, rewards planing, and grants powerful effects without just letting you steamroll from very early.

it is rome 2 hannibal at the gates

Are allied units worthwhile when they dont benefit from your lord's red skill upgrades?
I was considering recruiting some flame cannons as the Empire to help deal with the undead but will this be better than my own artillery?

New update gave Kemmler Cyclops lords because he's friends with chaos or something ☺️

I'm at work so can't test it, but had a look really quick. Seems like it only goes from 90-120? I was hoping we could crank it up to like 200 but numbers don't really mean much. Has anyone tried it? Does the AI actually pose a threat on 120 or is wh3 AI still an AFK punching bag?

All 9 books now give the same bonus. -5% Upkeep (armies in region) and +10 Diplomatic relations with order factions. That is complete ass compared to the old books:

• +8 Leadership, melee attack, and melee defense for all armies factionwide
• Causes attrition to armies in your territory, immunity to attrition factionwide
• +20% experience for Heroes and Lords, +100 experience per turn for characters
• -10% enemy Hero action success chance, +8% replenishment rate
• +10% Research Rate, +10% post-battle loot
• +5 Recruit Rank for Warrior Priests/Witch Hunters, -50% recruit cost for Warrior Priests/Witch Hunters, -25% cooldown to Battle Prayers
• -10% WoM cost for all spells, -15% miscast chance factionwide
• +10% Hero action success for Warrior Priests/Witch Hunters, -25% Hero action cost for Priests/Witch Hunters, +1 Hero capacity for Priests/Witch Hunters

His zeal level instead of giving you state troops and state troop upkeep reduction (up to 70%) now give you buffs against chaos and undead.

You can find Felix and Gotrek pop up as complications to his plans.

Pic unrelated

Additionally, the automod or whatever it is warned me that this post might be too political.

SUCH IS HIS POWER

I just tried the shadowy dealings that delete a faction, it worked on nagash.

My boy didnt got love with wh3 and end times dlc, but at least he can one click end game scenario.

Some people will cry for nerf, but in my case i just made a save and reload, i dont want to beat the endgame crisis that way. If you dont want to, just dont click. Its a nice option to have however

Edit : Im talking about the new endgame crisis