Are the HARDEST WH2 Campaigns still hard in IMMORTAL EMPIRES? - Warhammer 3 

Man Kislev has a massive fight for survival in Immortal empires. Throt, Throgg, and the demons/norscans just flow south while the empire watches Netflix

I hated Imriks start in 2, it wasn't that it was necessarily hard, but you just had to do it a very specific way to stop the enemies boiling over and just being a nuisance. You couldn't start a new campaign unaware of how to tackle it and flourish, you had to know which targets to prioritise and how enemies will react from turn one.

They need to change wulfrik so that his aggression meter doesn’t rise when he attacks non lustrian factions

8 peaks need to be 10 slots again, it was the last changes they made to the Warhammer 2 map, and it makes no sense to reverse that change. 8 peaks also needs at least one more settlement in its province because just two is too little growth for a faction capital.

Wulfhart's campaign is arguably my favourite in TWW2 - making friends with Orcs was hilarious

Been watching all your vids on immortal empires, love the way you showcase the info. Precise thorough and fun. Love it.

4:51 Love the description of conquering Eight Peaks. "Angrund cheeks rest upon the Eight Peaks throne once more!" lol

Just realized, why did 8 peaks turn into a 8 building instead of 10 like in warhammer 2?

Controlling karak eight peaks seems WAY less impactful now with how small its region it is. Only two provinces and not even a 10 slot for its major city? One of my favorite campaigns in Mortal Empires was Belegar turning the 4 province region of Karak 8 Peaks into a bastion of order amongst the greenskin tide, daring foes to come to my walls. Now instead of well sized, wealthy kingdom, its a piddly region that barely looks worth the effort.

Post greenskin rework Skarsnik was quite easy IMO as the goblin-tide was pretty much unstoppable, IE Skarsnik looks a lot harder.

I wonder what Morathi's campaign is like now. It was one of the harder starts in game 2, and now her starting area has way more factions nearby, although at least Alith Anar has moved further north.

I have a feeling Grombrindal will be a difficult start actually. Dark Elves have boatloads of early AP missiles, he's in an incredibly isolated position with no ports available on that side of Naggarond. The only potential friend he has is Khatep.

I will say that the beginning of my Imrik campaign was ROUGH. It always felt like one step forward one step back, but once I broke through the invisible line I'd dubbed " no man's land" I started to gain momentum and really conquer, it ended up being one of my most memorable campaigns in warhammer 2

I found Morathi the hardest of all campaigns, everyone just hates her so much and a lokhir campaign is sometimes tricky

Skarsnik should probably skip taking the bloody spearz cities and instead focus on beating their faction leader to auto confed, and immediately turn the now combined forces on karaz a karak. Holding the confederated lands is less important that the instant force multiplier of adding their army/armies to yours, and the faster you can bring the combined forces to bear the better this will work.

I LOVE Imrik's campaign in 2. He's such a beast you can pretty easily take that whole corner, fortify it, and then take on Grimgor. It's amazing what like 5 dragons and a high level fire mage can do.

Just finishing up Belegor campaign on normal/normal myself now and I did almost the exact same thing - made a beeline for 8 Peaks around turn 20. Once upkeep was reduced it was pretty straightforward after that. Just dealing with the Skaven tide now and then it'll be campaign victory.

Great video, searching for the hardest start in Immortal Empires sounds like an interesting idea for a video of it's own

I gotta say I'm thoroughly impressed with your sneaky retaking of 8 peaks.

Hmh. Not sure what to think about Imriks camapign. For me, one of the selling points for his campaign was the economic debuff you had without access to trade for a long time. It felt like a challenging handicap versus hard enemies, and I enjoyed it a lot.

i think what will make Belegor's campaign easier is that Skarsnik moved. One of the most annoying things was going for 8 peaks to have skarnik send army after army after your original provinces which would destroy your economy. So just Skarsnik moving is pretty big. And yea as you pointed out Grimgor and Clan Eshin being gone should make Imrik's campaign much easier. Plus his only threats that are close are Ku'gath and Helman ghorst and Clan Rictus. Those two should be pretty easy to take out. Skarsnik shouldn't be much different but seeing Markus is dealing with Skaven first instead of those FUCKING lizards.......oh my god. Those first few battles for Markus were such a fucking slog

Nice video :) Im def going too play Skarsnik, his campaign is so much more fun now :)

That's kind of a shame? I know Imrik especially got people to love him as his start was just that brutal it made him memorable and fun to strategise. Having some bastard hard campaigns is a good thing imo as I've found lord choice to be a far more interesting difficulty choice than the actual difficulty options CA implemented as they tend to just encourage range stacking. To pick three Vortex campaigns I played Markus on Hard, then both Eltharion, and Taurox on VH and the campaigns that resulted were VH, Easy, and Walking Simulator in that order in terms of actual challenge.

Amazing video as always I'd love to know how you have your Camera set up. 👍

@8:52 "I've got Plagues coming out of my arse" That's were most of my plagues come from so you're not alone!

Thanks for all of your hard work. I will say that Imrik's campaign used to feel intense, but still unique and fun! It took me a few tries to nail it, and even on a successful run it still felt like a slog. There was always still the option of evacuating back to Ulthuan, so I honestly didn't think it was so bad. I can see why they made these changes though, and I don't blame them.

Imriks campaign was one of my favourites. Just because you had to do everything right or else you were going back to the mud. I liked the idea of the Dragon Prince with his small army. Id always start with taking over the dwarves to the north, which gave me a whole territory and then move onto Snikch. He usually took out the Paunch or had him down to one castle. Id move my army deep into his territory and start moving backwards. My walls were usually enough to keep him out, or at least beat him down enough so he could be wiped out fairly quickly. Then id won that whole territory and move onto the Dragon Isles. Id have a couple dragons by this time and it went pretty easy from there on. The orks would eventually be an issue cos Grimgore would usually become incredibly powerful by then. If there were any dwarves left to the north of him id make friends with them so we could pincer movement. But I never had much luck with Skarsnick. I couldnt ever get past the starting position and dealing with the dwarves.

Imrik and Markus are characters I will surely revisit in Immortal Empires. Imrik used to be extra spicy in SFO, because the legendary dragon encounters got beefed up quite a bit and you weren't really supposed to take them on early in the campaign. Even if you could somehow cheese your way through them, the legendary dragons would ruin your already problematic economy in the early game. Much better to just take your free 2000 gold and move on for now.

14:21 For context I redownloaded warhammer 2 simply only because I wanted to replay the expedition campaign. (I was doing a kugath campaign in warhammer 3 and since the valkia trailer I've been feeling the immortal empire hype) And I got to say the hardest part about that entire campaign is the first battle. And if they simply just gave us that starting army (it is the starting army for a fact if you check bottom right) it would have been soooo much easier. In warhammer 2 the starting army was 2 swords men, 1 spearman, 1 wagon and 1 of each archer.

I remember my Imrik campaign on warhammer 2. I quickly took out clan eshin and hag graef then i had to deal with a faction up north. I then decided to spend some time upgrading my provinces and my army to prepare for the war against grimgor. I decided to declare war on him earlier than planned because he was going rampage on all of his neighbours. He was at the door of karaz a karak, karak kadrim and Krokgar had 2 settlements left and Queek had 3 settlements in the desert. I then had to kill 20 armies with 1,5 until i got able to really push inside his territory (around turn 100) while the 4 factions listed previously where taking big slices off. I started to push further into the mountains when i spotted a chaos army in my territory. In the end i had to kill 10 chaos armies that had go straight down onto me ...

Great content, is there a Video about the most difficult campaigns in IE?

Oh you were already in the book when you described Belegar as the "self-proclaimed" king of The Eight Peaks

Keep the videos coming !

The thing with Imrik, is tempo: you are surrounded by strong competitors, some of which have better mobility and more manpower. The dragon isles are a dead end you do not want to get bogged into, so take that asap, with 4 ports it provides a LOT of gold. (get PO and Industry, dw about growth) You can actually catch Kugath in the middle of his struggle with the lizard men, then take out the lizard men as they are dealing with Ghorst. Then take our Ghorst. Skaven down never came from the south west, but always from the North. They are a problem. Two armies can reasonably deal with them. You want the dwarven holds for their gold mines. So naturally, purge the skaven, purge the greenskin. One thing I did not do is get Darkhold early, but in retrospect I should have: dragon princes do WONDERS against units you encounter in early stages of the game (gobo, rats, zombies, plague bearers). Get it asap, but know that it's poking the skaven nest and harder to defend.

Love your vids, Zerk!

I played Belegar's campaign a little differently, basically taking Skavenblight -> Estalia directly after my home province, then taking Tilea, then i considered what to do next.

The mod that makes Imrik starting position the Dragon island while transfer Kugath in the forest of decay in the chaos wastes is much more fitting for them. By turn 20 you can get confederation with Eataine anyway, thanks to Noctilus rampanging through Ulthuan

There is still nakai, i really hope this time, he have a winnable campaign, the only way, I find in mortal empire is to play in chaos *5, let thé chaos destroy the world and then take out the chaos. Which was making nakai an easier campagn in chaos *5 than in normal🤯

Thanks for goodintroductionary work here. Would love to see you play a World Conquest Imrik campaign as well as a World Conquest Vlad campaign. Victory will be achieved by: Conquest, alliance, razing, vasselizing. Preferably on VH/H. No jumps or fast forwartds or just small glimpses. ALl complete campaigns, please. :-)

I wasn't watching the screen when you said it looks pretty and I just nodded my head then I switched to watching like 3 seconds later and was blown away. It looks completely different! Creative Assembly are on fire

16:32 "Perhaps longer than some other SHORT campaigns" Dwarves: "That's going in the book"

0:58. good: portraits for sacking, occupynig and razing are back

What I saw is capture settlement image return, hope WH3 factions also have their own.

Can you do more of these first 30 turn campaigns, morathi, tehenhauin, kroq-gar, clan Mors maybe

Belegar's start isn't as hard as people say it is but it can be really boring and passive if you wait around to grow your settlements. I got a lot of battles by cheesing with the Ranger units. I never take casualties in sieges by putting my army in one corner, get the rangers to climb walls and cap the victory point. On my first try Sartosa destroyed Tilea and then declared war on me, followed by Skraag destroying the Border princes and also declaring war. So on my 2nd run I took these 2 factions out early, traded all the settlements for a lot of money to the border princes. I then got 1.5 stack (economy was in negative but I had decent reserves) and went to help Barak Var fight the green skins. I sacked then looted occupied most settlements before trading them away to the other dwarves for more money. When I reached 8 peaks my army was a little worn out but Belegar and the heroes were high level so it was easier to let them go head first, get the enemy to blob and then destroy with wrath and ruin. Had a ton of money by the end of it and had a lot of battles too. If you don't wanna cheese like me then it would be a bit of a slow start

Oh thank god for Imrik's Campaign. He's my favorite lord, being the Dragon guy and all.

Absolutely loved Imrik’s Campaign in WH2, punishing start and having to manually play every single battle. but by the time I got 3 dragons every battle became a massacre and my campaign became a question of who should I destroy next using a single army

Belegar is probably harder but I found Thorgrim to be quite hard. Mount Squighorn region extends downward and the orcs (notably Grimgor) can raid and raze your settlements while youre busy dealing with the Bloody Spears. By the time youre done with them, Grimgor probably has like 10+ settlements snowballing like crazy between constant confederations and also just taking settlements on his own. I had to spend around 50 turns just to finally take him down then when I go to visit the Empire, all I see is a bunch of vampires. Then while Im dealing with the vampires, Malekith has conquered half of the world with his 30+ settlements allied with Morathi and her 20+ settlements skull fucking Couronne with their endless 20 stack armies and Sword of Khaine legendary lord.

Interesting video!

I like how every race can fight every other race seemingly right at the start

You’ll have to go over Imrik again after chaos dwarfs

@zerkovich is there still the graves of the dragon building chain for imrik campaign in his settlements?

I had a ton of fun with the Huntsmarshals, can’t wait to see wh3

It seems like the traditional Empire factions will have a tough start, especially with the Imperial Authority system. I doubt most of the elector counts wont survive long with the new factions introduced in the area, like Belakor, Festus, Vampires, Drycha, etc.

besides relocating Skarsnik, it doesn´t look very fun. I loved harder campaigns, I loved to play as Wulfhart and struggle to survive until the next batch of reinforcements would come. His campaign was about fighting Lizardmen, now they are practicaly not even there. Hope they will make it harder again before it comes out of Beta

Would you consider doing campaing live streams Zerk? You seem to play free of cheese and that is very refreshing for the community.

2:46 "I had no threats at all", There's a Skaven army sieging a settlement.

The cities looks great!!

What mod do you use to chnage the UI and give units the little green shade on the campaign map? Its very nice

I think the hardest campaign right now has Grombrindal all the way up in north. He has to deal with chaos from his north side, which's climate is red, so dealing with that early on is a pain in the ass. You have literally no ally, the closest thing to an ally is Alith Anar, who is getting reked around turn 30. Khatep will attack you eventually, because he allies with the sisters of twilight who will attack Alith Anar. And you need to ally Alith, in order to deal with the dark elves, which you can't let spiral out of control. Basically you're under constant attack from 3 sides.

Actually never found Imrik's campaign to be too difficult... You could get peace with the dwarves after securing ur province, then kill the greenskins and rats within around 20 turns and grab ur first dragon. Then Malus was free and you got yourself a nice safe little corner.

with skarsnik just overload with nasty skulkers they can do it all firstly they hide so ranged cannot shoot at what they cannot see and they are half priced and vanguard the amount of times ive found a small bit of land to the side of the map and sneaked in and killed all his misslies and arty while he is running down the feild to get my leader and stone thrower in sieges i just run and climb the walls before im even seen half my army is over it plus if you have two armies you can come in from both sides if you set out with a plan that every army is going to have 18 nasty skulkers you can buy two for the same price as everyone else you dont need to do much to settlements to make them work and you pretty much steam roll the world the only other unit i get is something that lets me do a siege in a turn like a big spider or a catapult so doubling up on fights becomes so much easier and its a huge surprise at first you think they cannot win but they take anything out especially when flanking and rear charging if your ever stuck as skarsnik then try nasty skulkers you will be amazed

The campaign map looks beautiful!

But what happened to Khalida? A campaign with a somewhat tricky start, now magnified no doubt to be harder. She was one of my favorite starts so for me it wasn't too bad, but a lot of people would get caught out in her start.

"Karak Fuckface", i lost it

It's nice that skarsnik doesn't have to fight dwarfs since turn 1.

Can you do a video on nakia campaign I remember his campaign being hard as hell

Skrolk did not appear on your-your list-video? The near-closeness of the cursed sotek spawn and undead toad-thing produces much fear-musk...

honorable mention for tomb queen Khalida, she started sandwiched between kroq daddy and queek, with only lybaras under her command and under attack from dirty vamps.

im curious, how are the bugman ranger now with the change of regeneration?

I think Tzeench is one of the hardest, because he starts surrounded by everyone -100 to him, so the people around him who some are meant to be natural enemies with eachother, dont care about eachother, peace/ally eachother and just B-line Tzeench. Its like putting an Empire faction next to Archeon lol.

Tbh I didn’t find Imrik too bad. At least when compared to skarsnik. Yeah, you can make a run on eight peaks fairly quickly by getting a few stacks, get a waaagh going etc. But if it fails for whatever reason, you’re stranded and screwed. Not to mention AI belegar so hard to put down. He has two full stacks at all times, usually military alliances with golden order to force you into war with them as well. by the time you kill one/two, three stacks and head down to kill belegar, he has another stack or two already rebuilt waiting for you. And that’s just the first 30 turns or so…

I hope 8 peaks doesn't stay all orkified after you recapture it as Belegar, but it seems like it does in this video. :(

Make a video with the new hardest factions to start as.

Gonna use that walk in siege cheese every time now

In bellagar I’ve done it 3 times now and every time my provinces start to be attacked by either the vampires, skaven, greenskins, or ogre factions. Not sure about the “no threats” that you mention…

Hi Zerk, great content. I know you care a lot about balanced armies, even in late campaign. You also did some great Viedeos, like the ones with "tree agne" and the tide of minor settlement battles. So some friend of me posted some interesting discussions on the total war Forum --> Warhammer--> Feedback & Suggestions --> Campaign (even though it also effects battles) balance & feedback: SIEGE BATTLES 2.0 - TWELVE EASY TO IMPLEMENT IDEAS FOR MORE REALISTIC AND STRATEGIC SIEGES WE NEED SPELL RESISTANCE FOR MOST ELITE INFANTRY! LITTLE CHANGE TO MAKE LOW-AND-MIDTIER UNITS VIABLE IN THE LATE GAME (NO UNIT CAPS!) HORSE-SIZED (AND SMALLER) FLYING UNITS SHOULD BE ABLE TO HIDE IN FORESTS So maybe you could look at them and make some sort of discussion video, where you discuss the ideas.

I'd wager that everyone's favorite Sotek worshipping Skink deserves to be in this video too

Maybe Boris will be the new player in the "hardest campaign" list. Or Settra.

It feels like lustria is just not even lizard man territory anymore. It’s just like everywhere else. It looks like it’s taken the run out of the lizardmen.

omg i did all 4 and Imrik is PTSD inducing, truly a puzzle

Gotta ask tho, is it a bug or something, that once you complete the objectives of the short campaign no victory screen is shown, nor you are notified in someway that you have won the short campaign. I played the empire and almost at the end of long victory i've checked and saw that i didn't even notice the short campaign is completed. Is this like just "play in your own consideration" kind of thing, just you decide when to stop playing without the game telling you you've won? and once you're bored just quit and start a new one? or is it a bug?

Agree I've started Imrik twice on 2 and failed both times. Can't get out of a deadlock of just defending against Eshin or Grimgor, never able to go for dragon battles. Tried belegar on Warhammer 1 and couldn't do it, tried it on 2 pre dwarf updates and couldn't. Trying it just now and not doing oathgold cheese. On turn 75 and on the doorstep of Valayas Sorrow after cutting a swathe across the badlands. I went for skarsnik early, farmed him a little bit for exp, resources, nearly lost cos he had another army of away from his start and while I was sacking his last territory he underwayed in and took one of me. After crushing him getting a rune of spite and that regen tankard for belegar, we headed south and smashed skavenblight, when chasing down ikrits last army and heading it off on brettoniias border the sacked skavenblight was taken by a random orc tribe. It's been orcy since but stuck between a strong fey enchantress and estalia. I sacked and razed a few Skaven towns and was able to have enough money to run on minus a while and pay some strong allies off to make lots of friends nearby. Whole campaign has gone better. Only a few reloads on tough battles when the bloody hands tried to waagh me out of Elkund. Seems way easier now you can make Belegar a regeneration equipped Mortis engine.

Skarsnik’s campaign feels so much better, I had a great time with his campaign

Nice. Never thought of Wulfheart's campaign as hard, I finished it rather easily on VH/H. The other three campaigns were very hard though.

I'm sure someone else will have a really tough campaign, more or less by accident. If I had to guess off-hand, I'd guess Mannfred or Malagor are the ones that are most likely to get dogpiled at the start.

Is Imrik's economy improved now that you have easier access to ports? And is the Caledor confederation option still available?

I actually found imriks campaign in wh2 very easy, long as you just rush east to wipe out the Skaven and orks there before even taking your starting province. The campaign gets tedious later as you are fighting through mountains against factions that have underway but its not exactly hard.

Do you get steam campaign victory achievements from playing on just very hard campaign difficulty, or do you need to also be on very hard battle difficulty?

I'd say Skarsnik really didn't trade up for an easier start, i'd even argue maybe he has about the same if not a big harder? But it depends on the AI, otherwise you're trading humans, dwarfs and woodelves for dwarfs, dwarfs and undead.

I’ve heard from I thing it was great book of grudges that immortal empires is in general easier than ME as the enemy factions seem a lot more passive and will barely ever attack you. Have you found that and if so how much does that contribute to these 4 being easier?

What's the hardest campaign / faction at the hardest difficulty level (battles & campaign) you can play?

I can't imagine playing campaigns where I'm not literally jumping to the next enemy city every other turn. patience be dammed!

Great vid as always mate. Markus and Skarsnik definitely had pain-in-the-arse campaigns. Seems not so bad, other than for Skarsnik now? Maybe just need to ally with your northern Orkz then rush Ungrim asap, so hard in the sense that if you don't know what you're doing, welcome to dwarf whackamole simulator.

As a true ruler of Eight Peaks, Skarsnik ofc, it's so much easier then before imo: just shitstack those nasty stalkers and let's go stab dwarves! The starting economy is better but don't build troll caves, not needed, better catapult. Once at Eight Peaks: no orcs neither they weak, we are stronk! We are gobbos! Aaaaargh!

In my opinion The hardest campaign in Warhammer 2 was High Queen Khalida. The first 20 or 30 turns were fairly straight forward and easy but the Lizardmen always attacked me and their armies were always way better. If I somehow managed to beat them the Greenskins were next and their armies were equally hard to beat if not harder.

"i've got plagues coming outta my ass but....... i'm okay"😂😂😂

ı must ask a question. is immortal empires campaigns hard as mortal empires campaigns. in wh3 most of my enemies not recruit much armies and not recruit high quality units. is it still same or now recruit more

As a new player fresh off HE Vortex Campaign going right into Belagar IE Campaign, on Normal, by turn 8, I had Aranessa, Ogres, and Orion all over me. Did my Belegar hurt them in a past life?

Atleast you know, when you get in book :D