A lot of missions say "Sack something" (Like sack Altdorf). 2 problems: 1. The game doesn't tell you that establishing a cult is sacking 2. Once you have a cult, you can't sack anymore. You have to wait 12 turns to build a building that will destroy the cult. You can't even be discovered - I was discovered and the AI didn't remove my cult (Hell Pit), even though I wanted to.
What irks me greatly about establishing cults is that you lose movement. There's even a skill in his skill tree where you gain 20% movement if you win a battle, which works when you raze a settlement but not when you establish a cult! It just makes no sense to me.
Agreed. I think Horstmann would have been the way to go for a cult focused LL, with the changling being the paid LH, and the Scribes being the FLC hero.
I will say, I think the changeling shines in a multiplayer campaign. Since you have literally nothing to do, it gives you the freedom to go meander on over to your friends territory and romp around helping them out.
@@CultistOfkhorne that too! I usually play with my 2 40k buddies so he really seems most at home in a multiplayer setting. Where like you said, there's more than just emotionless AI to react to his mischief
A faction who hunt the changeling and can use hero to destroy your cult would be more funny and interesting, you play against an ennemy who has the right weapon to hurt you and you become more powerful the more chaos you can create and with all the scheme, you can become stupidly broken, like lot of LL who became broken when they activated the right conditions. At least, it will create a little challenge.
Changeling is like playing with a god mode on. While I enjoyed his campaign to the point I completed all the schemes I must say that I was disappointed by some features. Schemes rewards felt super lackluster. Civil war in empire? Lasted few turns while Franz reconquered everyone and ade peace and alliance with Gelt. Undead in Bretonnia? Conquered exactly ONE settlement and were wiped out by Bretonnians and WE. Lustria had no Skaven when I finished it so there were plagues and some rebellions but I cant see how they could fare against united Lizardmen continent. Force rebellion still doesnt work on legendary difficulty and no rebellion ever spawned will ever survive. Changing of the ways also had minimal impact. Diplomacy should be locked after that for 10 turns at least so factions cant peace or war right after you put them through it. Other than that I enjoyed the campaign it was way better than what Kairos has.
Honestly, my campaign was very unenjoyable. I'd just autoresolve a minor settlement, end my turn, fight a siege, end the turn. Most turns didn't even last 2 minutes, and the only ones that did were when I had to manually conduct a siege.
I found it fun at first but it quickly became extremely boring, it feels like nothing I do in this campaign matters at all. I've declared war on countless factions and they never retaliate because they can't see me half the time. Every turn feels the same, attack a settlement to make a cult and then end the turn. I enjoy playing battles with the character but his campaign is so dull it feels like I'm actually falling asleep just waiting for something interesting to happen, which it never does. I hope this campaign gets a serious rework in the future, maybe something like the herdstones or dark fortresses where you take control of one settlement and then your have cults expand out to the surrounding regions/province or something like that.
I agree that the changeling is too strong in being able to essentially hide in plain view. However the changeling to me seems like the perfect sandbox experience. You can just chill, build any army in the game, led by any legendary lord in the game, and change that composition from turn to turn at will. Additionally you are rewarded for keeping factions alive instead of killing them, meaning you can have an endgame experience where your favorite factions to fight have won all their wars from the economy boost you give them, and by undermining their rivals, leaving a stomping ground made up of only the fights you enjoy playing, with whatever units you feel like drafting today. I agree that the AI has basically no tools to counter the changeling, which makes for incredibly low stakes, but if thats not the experience youre after then id say changeling kinda nails alot of its aspects, despite being a major departure from the expected gameplay.
The problem is it's not really a sandbox experience, the entire IE campaign is a sandbox experience, if you are arguing the changeling is a sort of creative mode experience, I would again argue it isn't, and that it is actually more restrictive than regular campaigns. The problem is they tried to make it thematic, because you don't have settlements or an empire to defend, they wanted to give you more objectives with the schemes, but the schemes most times just feel like generic missions with powerful rewards. My first experience with these missions is that some are next to impossible to complete, because of how the A.I. is programed. I mentioned it in the video, but the A.I. will hide its armies from you in its settlements. Now there is a scheme where you have to win 10 land battles in the empire, the problem is that settlement battles don't count towards land battles. So in 50 turns of a changeling campaign where I spread to all corners of the map, I had only won 3 land battles and 20+ settlement battles in the empire. So the real issue I have with the Changeling is that it is just poorly designed for this game, and a campaign like this would need a lot more work and effort put into it to be as fun to play as other more standard campaigns. Now this is one issue that really annoyed me, but there are so many more that just make this campaign extremely dull and unplayable for me, and not just the fact it is an easy campaign.
@CultistOfkhorne I definitely agree that some of the schemes need more engaging requirements. Tho I do like how they are designed to be difficult to do more than one at a time and would like for that to stick around. And I really like that you get alot of quest battles as you complete the schemes. As for the empire theatre, I was able to get it by spreading corruption, sacking Altdorf, and getting feastus killed remotely. The land battles are definitely annoying to fulfill tho, and I think the only way you'd be able to do that would be to raze cities, trading your stealth in exchange for forcing the ai to leave to resettle it. My favorite bit about the campaign is the different playstyles it presents, you can just focus economy and easily be the richest faction. Or you can focus on being annoying and spawn endless chaos armies across the map. In my current run I just fired off about 20 of the sacking buildings and got a quarter million in a turn. The campaign doesn't present any real failstates, but the choices you have in how you build, where you choose to make your schemes, and trying to get new forms to suit army compositions you want to try are very satisfying. My least favorite thing about the campaign is having no way to lose. I was able to literally pass the first 50 turns and just wait in drakenhof for corruption to spread without even using the changing of the ways, and have a doomstack before even beginning to make plays. The exponential growth is cool, the waiting 50 turns to begin it is not. And in multiplayer the changeling would either be overpowered, or unplayable as players would be able to actually stack heroes and discover their cults, and waiting 50 turns to play in multiplayer sounds like torture.
Compared to the AI of games like Crusader Kings 3 or Europa Universalis 4, this game doesn’t feel populated. With those games I always feel like playing in an actual world, with this one I feel like playing against clueless bots. And it’s not just about the difficulty, but the feeling.
Kairos and Vilitch have better campaigns. At least with Kairos you're on a timer and lots of things can go wrong. Kairos and Aekold also make awesome team once you unlock him, dropping magic nukes on blobs that form around Aekold. He can't be killed.
What?? Love you guys but you are wrong from my point of view. This campaing is exactly what I wanted from a long time. You get easy recruitement of high tier units, no chance to loose, you can move ANNNNYYYWWWAREE around the world and make each at least 2 max 3 plays uniq (you can t posibly go for all 7-8 schemes in imortal empire in one campaing (must be insane 😅) Changeling is strong on his own, but when he change is even better. You have multiple roleplay posibilitys Is fun. Frankly, from all the lord Mother Ostankya has the least replayability. But I still like that she can jump in every forest on the map. I even got some challenge battles in Ulthuan against Alariel and her strong archer army plus sword of kayne. Some events from schemes are boring but some actualy are fun in a RP sens.
The campaign is already horrendously easy like you mentioned but the Mutalith Vortex Beast is just so strong that it feels like a pay to win unit. With the changelings unique line perks you can easily get a Vortex Beast to 70!!! upkeep from a regular 500 aswell it's just disgustingly powerful.
also in addition, you can easily get the technology which makes the teleportation ambushing stance free, which in addition with being invisible to AI means that 99% of your battles will be ambushes which is fun initially until you realise that you will never lose or be challenged by any army the AI makes
This is definitely a self guided campaign. I wonder if you got Ku'gath because he died? I could see getting legendary lords that die so you don't lose them. Forcing symbiotes to like you only to have the surrounding factions hate and kill them for liking a chaos faction is great fun. Yes I have played undercity expansion campaigns. I would disagree with changing of the ways though. People seem to transfer settlements to themselves and focus on factions they are at war with. I'd rather transfer a neutral faction recruiting center that might screw over a faction I don't want to grow. See Settra sieging Manfred with 2-3 armies? Transfer it to Thorek or lizards to potentially drag him into another War via trespass. While force war can be used to break up alliances you can also use it to create unnatural alliances via shared enemies. Forcing Skarbrand to fight clan mors in a campaign ended up causing him to ally with the dwarfs which caused the empire to leave the alliance. Watching Skarb and Thorgrim invade the Reikland together was special.
Even with the problems it has. I find this campaign to be one of the best in the game. But I suppose that I'm a pure casual player and I don't care much if it's not difficult. It has some problems though, mentioned in the video. For example the fact that some rewards and effect for the schemes can be lackluster especially depending on when you achieve them. I think for example that the Empire Grand Scheme is very hard to trigger at a time where the elector counts are still alive. This could be easily solved by making it so that the civil war is the equivalent of an Empire endgame crisis directed at Reikland or an Empire endgame crisis where all empire factions (except Markus and Volkmar maybe) are at war with each other (forever, like when you the player are the target of an endgame crisis).
I agree 100%. The issue is that too many fans are screaming "make what's fun not what's balanced" in the total war forums and CA is dumb enough to listen so with every new update we get they'll add in more and more unbalanced nonsense into the game. It's just plain bad game design. A game is no fun unless it's somewhat balanced and offers an actual challenge. The WH3 content doesn't reflect tabletop or lore either so honestly I have no idea what they're doing at this point. If it weren't for the much improved AI I would have just stuck with WH2.
I cannot stand the people who constantly say, “balance is irrelevant in a single player game ☝️🤓” First, that’s just blatantly false. I want a balanced experience even in single player. Second, the game has up to 8 player campaigns. It isn’t just single player…
It feels like the current workers dont know how to add new things to the code so they have have to make a patchwork abomination of old code for a new race.
