Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Drazhoath - Chaos Dwarfs Campaign Overview, Guide And Second Thoughts Part 1
Hello everyone. In this guide I will cover:
- Victory conditions, faction and climate;
- Starting location;
- Diplomacy and outposts;
- Mechanics of the race and faction;
- Province edicts and army stances;
- Buildings and research;
- Lords and skills;
- Army compositions;
And give you my final notes on the specific faction. Hope you enjoy it.
If you prefer to watch the video, here it is:
https://youtu.be/gDqwfUAuNcs?si=LviszOJHtq5frI7P
If you prefer to read, here we go:
VICTORY CONDITIONS:
Short victory:
Destroy the factions of Clan Rictus (Tretch) and Knights of Caledor (Imrik).
Occupy, loot, raze or sack 35 different settlements.
The reward is that major relic missions become available, workload requirements for raw materials cost -15% and Raw materials consumed by buildings -15%.
This is quite a short campaign, and you get good "growth" and income bonuses, really, which is quite thematic and it allows better continuation into the long campaign.
Long Victory:
Achieve the short victory;
Occupy, loot, raze or sack 80 different settlements
Hold the settlement of Zharr Naggrund
Destroy the factions of Karaz-a-Karak (Thorgrim), Karak Kadrin (Ungrim), Grimgor's 'Ardboyz (Grimgor).
The reward is three unique items, very good to ensure you have some nice lords all buffed up while you pursue domination victory.
The long campaign is quite decent, it will cause you to expand into different directions, though, but for the most part it should be fine.
Drazhoath is the Sentinel of Ashes, and benefits from:
Armaments cost -10% for all unit capacity upgrades in the Hell-Forge;
Armaments output: +10%;
It is a small but decent deal of benefits, as it always helps you tech up a bit faster, getting more of your precious elite units.
Climate is negligeable, since they can go anywhere without any penalty, further enhancing this faction's ability to dominate the whole map easily.
STARTING LOCATION (see screenshot):
Your starting province is a 3 settlement province, quite in a precarious position since you are surrounded by legendary lords.
Typical expansion is thus to finish off the initial slaven and high elven enemies, and then turn on the Vampire Counts and Nurgle nearby. With a solid base in the south, you will be able to continue into other goals.
It is also possible that you try to get into the North and subdue your brethren, or into the mountains, but given the short victory conditions, at one point you are bound to try and control the southern areas.
DIPLOMACY AND OUTPOSTS (see screenshot):
You are Chaos aligned, really, so Norsca, Warriors of Chaos, Monogods, Beastmen... they sill likely be friends or at least neutral to you.
You will always be fighting vs Greenskins and Dwarfs, given how much they hate you really. That also implies that the Skaven and Ogres may be your best bet for allies and outposts... enemies of our enemies and all that.
Therefore, for the most part you can aim to get some of Skaven's weapons teams or artillery, and some monstrous infantry from the Ogres. Your armies are already very powerful, but some fun combinations are always possible.
MECHANICS OF THE RACE AND FACTION:
First, we have the three unique settlement types - Towers, Outposts, and Factories. Towers are only allowed in your province capitals.
We have the four unique resources:
"Labourers" are acquired mainly via battles or convoys, and are required to give you raw materials, working on the mines.
Raw materials are mainly produced via the mines and are used to construct buildings, convert into armaments or even treasury.
Armaments are generated via Raw materials at the Factory settlements and used mainly at the Hell-Forge, for increasing the unit caps or to improve your units for a maintenance cost.
Conclave Influence is gained via settlement buildings and is used to occupy seats at the Tower of Zharr.
Every different settlement type has its own building tree, so you should familiarize yourself with them in order to be certain of what you wish for a specific place. Remember that most advanced units can only be built at the Tower settlements, and that some resources may provide buffs to either Outposts or Factories.
Labour economy allows you to shift your Labourers among your province, in order to ensure maximum efficiency. Basically, it tells you when you need to have more labourers in any given place and to manage it.
Buildings can cost gold, raw materials, or armaments to complete. A steady flow of everything is required, and you can always spend some labourers to rush the work, allowing you to quickly grow your settlements if you wish.
Speaking of Growth - there is none. The Growth mechanic is instead replaced by different costs for the evolution of your settlement. Fighting to obtain more laborers and produce more raw materials is therefore key to ensure a healthy and growing province.
The Hell-Forge allows you to increase your unit caps for your better units, similar to how the Beastmen work. It also allows you to upgrade you units, giving them specific abilities or attributes, by paying a maintenance cost per unit.
The Tower of Zharr allows you to use Conclave Influence to gain seats or steal others'. Controlling all seats in a district will unlock the reward to ALL Chaos Dwarf factions. All of the seats and specific districts confer some nice bonuses, so plan wisely. You will further progress in the tower until you are later given the opportunity to claim a seat to confederate other Chaos Dwarf factions.
Labour actions allow you to spend labourers to gain Conclave Influence, gold, or control in your province. Quite simple, similar to the Dark Elves or Slaanesh mechanic.
Finally, Military Convoys are similar to Cathay caravans. You send out a convoy to exchange one currency for another, so you should check what you are in need of before proceeding. As the Convoy moves to the location, there will be events requiring your attention and decision making, including battles.
PROVINCE EDICTS AND ARMY STANCES:
Edicts:
Rush construction Labor cost - 10% and construction cost - 10%;
Recruit cost reduced by 20% and recruit rank +2;
Income from refinery buildings +10%, Armaments +10%;
Control +2, chance of plague spread reduced by 25%;
Overall they are quite thematic and help your economy in one way or another. Make sure that you are making the most of them depending on the current circumstance.
Army Stances:
Underway is great, not just by itself, but the fact that you are in between mountains makes it so valuable for the Chaos Dwarfs. In addition, underway battles will definitely be a powerful tool for you.
Encamp costs 50% movement and allows replenishment and immunity to most attrition, as well as global recruitment.
Raiding costs 25% movement, and it also gives you labourers, so do not neglect it.
Ambush costs 25%;
Forced march.
Typical bunch, but raiding giving you some laborers and the underway are of particular importance here, allowing some good strategic options.
Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Drazhoath - Chaos Dwarfs Campaign Overview, Guide And Second Thoughts Part 2
BUILDINGS AND RESEARCH (see screenshots):
Special building in your capital, that gives income, raw materials, armaments, as well as opens recruitment for Chaos Dwarfs and Chaos Dwarfs with Great Weapons.
You have 3 types of settlements. Towers (which can only be built in province capitals), outposts, and factories. Each has different building possibilities.
Towers:
Required for your advanced military buildings, that also cost armaments;
Infrastructure:
1 - Lord recruit rank and hero recruit rank (factionwide) + casualty replenishment rate;
2 - Income building.
3 - Control and Control in adjacent provinces, campaign movement range.
4 - Raw materials consumed per turn diminished
5 - Conclave Influence per turn, winds of magic reserves to all armies; diplomatic relations with other Chaos Dwarfs; recruit rank +3 to Bull Centaurs.
Overall, these are good infrastructure buildings, each with their uses and circumstantial. Be on the lookout for solving an issue by simply checking your building tree and realizing you have a possible solution there.
You require 5 buildings for full military, but remember you can only go tier 4 and beyond at Towers.
Outposts:
Main source of raw materials;
Has only basic Hobgoblin unit recruitment options;
Infrastructure:
1 - Raw materials per turn and Workload increase;
2 - Income (base) and income from post-battle loot (armies adjacent to the region)
3 - Campaign line of sight and control (meh);
Factories:
Main sources of converting raw materials into armaments;
Has 3 military buildings, only going to tier 3;
Infrastructure:
1 - Armaments per turn at the cost of Raw materials. Chaos Corruption.
2 - Income at the cost of Raw materials. Chaos corruption.
3 - Raw materials output for the local province. (great)
Special note that you can recruit a hero unit, the Infernal Castellan, in Factories. In addition, the Raw Materials output increase building may imply at least one factory per province is a good idea, specially in 4 settlement provinces.
Construction costs range from gold, to Raw Materials, to Armaments. Be prepared to juggle among all three as necessary.
RESEARCH:
In terms of Research, it is divided into three:
Industry, helping mostly your economy;
Sorcery, helping with magic, campaign buffs, some diplomacy buffs, etc;
Military, helping with upgrading your units and some campaign buffs throughout;
It is quite important to keep a nice balance, or to try and beeline specific technologies to ensure good synergies. For the most part, the ideas is that you are heavily rewarded from following an exact plan from the start, with adjustments in between.
LORDS, SKILLS, ARMY COMPOSITIONS (see screenshots below as you are reading through):
Blue line has replenishment rate and reduced attrition in the same skill and in the first part; great, but... given how Chaos Dwarfs have no climate issues, you may wish to depart from these. You have a skill increasing post-battle loot and labourers per battle, which is quite thematic and helpful for the campaign overall.
The Redline is quite good, granting good buffs that actually complement the forces or correct their weaknesses, such as giving melee attack for most infantry.
It is, however, quite expensive in terms of the amount of skills if you wish to field a variety of different unit types. Therefore, focusing on some unit types is a good notion to have.
At the same time, you have both low and high quality troops of the same type buffed by the same redline skill, which helps ensure that you can use it for your early troops and benefit from it later with your elite ones.
Drazhoath has bonuses for K'Daai units and Infernal Guard and Ironsworn. Combinations of those are therefore in order. You can have some fun around these, either solid infantry line and using the K'Daai in the flanks;
I like to bring one llamasu at least since he negates enemy magical attacks, and the K'Daai have tons of physical resistance, specially under Drazhoath.
You can of course have a missile focus, artillery focus, or even cavalry focus if you wish. It may be expensive if you plan to have many different unit types, as you can see from the yellow number beneath some of the combinations.
You can certainly have a more "Dwarf" style, with heavy infantry with missiles and artillery, which does great in battle. Or, instead, you can have a more Empire style focus, with artillery and cavalry in detriment of more infantry.
It is also important to note that the unit caps system will incentive you to have some armies using the spare units, instead of always fully elite armies. Therefore, I leave some options there.
You can also have some Sweeper armies, as I like to call, those that you send out vs minor enemies. These include only Hobgoblin armies, as they should surprise you with how effective they can be.
There are nearly endless possibilities with the Chaos Dwarfs, and you can of course have a nice magic focus too. So, as always, use whatever army you can conjure up, just ensure you have a bit of a plan for it 😉
FINAL NOTES:
Drazhoast changes the focus more into the Southern areas, and just the enemies alone will make it feel a bit more unique.
He also focuses on the K'Daai units a bit more, which is interesting and I encourage you to try it out, instead of the mass missile or bull centaur frenzy of Astragoth.
Your army consists of:
1 - Strong holding infantry;
2 - Great missiles and artillery;
3 - Great cavalry;
4 - Good monstrous infantry;
5 - Great single entities and flyers;
6 - Lacks some speed;
7 - Requires time to build up (due to unit caps, armaments production).
Replenishment is great, no issues with climate and most lords have good access to replenishment skills.
So, I hope this incentives you to try out Drazhoath the Ashen in Immortal Empires.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3206289541
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