For Imrik's start I highly recommend going for Darkhold if you can, it has a unique building that lets you recruit dragon prince cav at T3 settlement instead of having to wait until T5
My struggles with Imrik start has brought me to your channel. Gotta say, the quality and depth of this guide is just amazing and I cant thank you enough
Such an awesome detailed guide. I am new to the game and my 1st Immortal empires playthru is with Tyrion High Elves. This guide has helped me with so much as I felt a bit lost. 👍
The lorthern sea guards with shields are my fav Frontline unit. They are jack of all trades so they are very self sufficient. They are perfect for holding the line cuz they have range themselves and also shields so they can keep taking pot shots at enemy infantry and then they have halberd and armor so they can hold the line. They even have shields so they can have shooting matches with enemy ranged. They don't really have any weakness so that allows my back line time to focus on problematic targets.
Love the guides, keep up the great work. One thing you neglected to mention about Alith Anar is that he also has a shadow walk movement stance. Basically its underway teleport for a High Elf. Pretty useful in some situations. I wish it was the same as the Tzeench though where he would ambush attack the target army with it though. It would make it much more thematic. I wonder if they will patch that in at some point for him.
It's worth mentioning that the lothern sea guard without shields will be globally recruitable in one turn if you build 10+ tier 3 ports. This makes them my go-to settlement defense panic recruitment option. I usually disband them quickly due to the expense.
Imrik in the campaign gets to be much stronger than Tyrion to the point you don't even need the Sword of Caine and can give it to another lord. He gets 5 power ups from all the dragons he beats up and that's in addition to his unique equipment and dragon mount. He even gets Regen and vigour recovery although he can't move while recovering. I usually send him to solo the enemy commander and then he stomps everyone else. Dueling is even better cuz he has an ability that nerfs the damage of the opponent to the ground, I use that and the enemy commander basically deals zero damage and just dies. Very few lords have that ability feels like cheating in 1v1 battles tbh. The main issue with Imrik are three things his start is among the worst ones in the game, you are surrounded by enemies all round and also need to fight Skaven which is the best race in the entire game. Secondly Imrik himself is very selfish, he has little to no faction wide buffs so while Imrik himself is godly his other lord armies are mid. It's basically Goku and the sidekicks when you play Imrik, he has to beat all the opponents cuz your other lords are just fodder with little to no buffs. Finally like I said Imrik himself is really strong so his army tends to be just decoration in the late game, with his unique dragons, his fire wizard and a life wizard you don't need anything else so all his army buffs aren't really needed, but then if you don't use them they're kinda wastedncuz they only work for him. Regardless I still like him a lot and is my fav Elf lord because Dragons are just that cool.
Nice guide overall! One thing that I believe you got flat out wrong is putting the more combat driven exclusive focuses of Tyrion and Alariel above their economic focuses. For Alariel the "aggressive" part of the focus tree really only gives minimal army bonuses and combat bonuses, which have minimal impact on a spell casting, non-fighting lord. In comparison the economic skills give 1. public order (you yourself mentioned that they struggled with it) 2. 5% bonus to settlement income (A lot stronger overall than 10% for a single army lol) 3. Better handmaidens and map wide recruitment (This alone is honestly better than the entire combat tree combined) 4. Better diplomacy (Minimal but still good on high elves) 5. 1 turn sister of avelorn (literally op as this is your doomstack in mid-late game). Otherwise, I found your guide quite helpful though!
The reasoning behind the military focus is that they are immortal and thus you can't lose them, making them the perfect commanders for offensive armies. The economic benefits are only good if you are defending or turtling up. It's not a huge difference but I personally like not having to build up new lords if I lose an army.
You can also catch lords in auto resolve....I've caught probably 15 or 20 lords in just my first 30 turns, which might not be alot.....but I hardly ever fight battles manually....I prefer auto resolve.
Great vid. I almost exclusively play high elves. Doesn't their playstyle fit their law? Weren't they essentially militia spear and bow, backed by noble elite units, with magic users and rare mythical creatures?
Wait did they get rid of the handmaiden global bonus trait? Hearing HE are bad at control was surprising to say the least but I haven't played them in TWW3 yet.
After 10+ Imrik campaigns in IE, I have found that the best strategy is to take the entirety of the initial province from the Clan Helhein dwarves, and once you've done that, go North immediately and eliminate Tretch Craventail and his Skaven. The orcs there are easy to beat. You now hold two full provinces. After that, don't go East. Get treaties with your ogre neighbors to secure your Eastern flank, then go West and eradicate Clan Mors, gifting the settlements you take to the Karak Azul dwarves in return for treaties. In WH3 (similar to WH2) Skaven tend to be the most aggressive and the biggest threat. Once you eliminate Tretch and Queek, and have friendly ogres and dwarves covering your flanks, go south and take the islands of the elven colonies. These are rich provinces that are almost immune from attack because they are so isolated. Use influence to confederate Teclis, who is almost always getting wrecked by Kairos. Once you confederate with Caledor, just keep your initial Caledor province, and leave it to the other High Elves to defend Ulthuan. After the first few turns, you won't even need to station an army in Caledor to hold your province.
I disagree completely. Take your province first, but go east. Take out the ogres in pigbarter, and secure the dragon isles, destroying kugath, and then destroy the vampires. Confederate Caledor, and then focus on expanding in Ulthuan and using influence on Tyrion. Soon as you get an opportunity to confederate Tyrion, do it. That makes it easier to eventually confed all of Ulthuan. Ulthuan is probably the richest region in terms of income that it's possible for a high elf to have. Imrik with the wealth of Ulthuan is unstoppable.
@@jacobwalsh1888 Confederating Tyrion is only possible if Tyrion is weak and threatened with enemies. This situation may not happen at all. Depending on the situation when you confederate Caledor, expanding in Ulthuan may not be possible at all without having to fight both Tyrion and Allarielle, making confederation with them very difficult if not impossible.
I have played countless high elf games. If you put money into an army on Ulthuan, you can head Tyrion off. Prevent him from expanding, and basically keep him weak. It has been possible for me on essentially every play through.
For some reason in all of my settlement battles the e enemy always sallys out? Is this a bug? I've yet to fight a settlement battle....I will say this I've only been playing for a month and I'm not sure if I've even attacked a large settlement so maybe thats why
The most important thing about the Noble is that it gives a pretty decent bonus to Casualty Replenishment to the army its embedded in. I try to have one in each army, though the effing late game assassins just looooove to target them. 😡 I also tend to kit them out to be tanky fighters and get some good bound spells on items to fly over the enemy army and dive down on their commander. You can stop enemy wizards from casting so many damn spells that way, and sometimes even kill the enemy lords/heroes with your noble alone depending on the level differences.
Eltharion gives insane boosts to spearman....maybe not insane, but pretty good. I found staying in the badlands was extremely exciting. I tried staying in ulthuan on a test run, and it was boring....on another test run I tried both, but that was tedious....so the badlands it was, and I dont regret it.
@@LordForwind how come when I declared war on tiktakto....the other local lizardmen broke their non aggression packs with me? They didn't even have non aggression packs with each other let alone any other kind of alliances. I mean I will say they havnt actually declared on me yet, but I wouldn't put it passed them to eventually get there. Now I'm kinda regretting invading him....even tho my military might is far superior at this point. I literally had half his domain under my control in just a few turns. I don't normally do this in my campaigns. I just got really bored with his, and decided I needed a challenge lol.
@@LordForwind ok...you have no idea how much I appreciate these faction guides. I've played alot of tot war games, but this one is far more complex than the others I've played. I'm hoping that a normal/normal first campaign won't be too difficult. I have battles down no problem.
I kind of ignored influence through most of my first playthrough of Immortal Empires with Teclis. At one point the Western Provinces pissed me off and I decided it was time to go wipe them out. Unfortunately, the Northern Provinces were not too keen on me stomping around and wiping out the other half of their civilization. I had 400 influence so I just started dumping a bunch every turn to improve my relations with the Northern Provinces as well as taking Western Province settlements and just gifting them to the North for even more brownie points. Before I had even finished wiping out WP, in just a few turns, the North had gone from -200ish to +250ish and was ready to become a military ally *and* I had elevated them to Rank 2 with all the settlements I gave them. (Don't worry, kept plenty for myself). Now I have a ton of highly profitable land to develop protected on the northern flank by the Rank 2 faction that is also a strong ally. It was so broken it almost felt like cheating. I literally trespassed and waged a protracted war on their ally on their doorstep and I was just like "here's some settlements and influence, we cool?" 🤣
In TWWH 2 I dominated the map with lower tier Missle/Magic Armies. In Fact I enjoyed to see how far I could push taking on harder Armies without using Dragons or other Higher Tier Units. I eventually had to put a few tankers on the front line to help the Spear units.... I just love shooting armies to death..... with focused fire storms
@@LordForwind I just started playing TWH 3 and am wondering is if the High Elves play any differently by in large...? And Thank you for your work on these guides.
As imrik by turn 10 I had 5 factions declare war on me....greasus, grimgoor, kohlek, helman ghorst, clan rictus, and the purple greenskin faction a few turns after that.
You're flat out wrong about high elf units. I routinely have armies with spearman and light armor archers into the late game, especially when playing Imrik. Their early game armies are not in the least bit weak.
Nah I'm not, just AIs can't build good armies. I will give you that they initial armies are better than some but they only shine once they get top tier units.
Apparently you can't read. I can crush late game tier 5 armies with Imrik, and have 12 out of 20 units be tier 1 spearman and archers. High elf units are actually the BEST tier 1 units in the game. Period.
