Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Throt - Skaven Campaign Overview, Guide And Second Thoughts
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.
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VICTORY CONDITIONS:
Short victory:
Destroy the factions of the Great Orthodoxy (Kostaltyn) and the Ice Court (Tzarina Katarin).
Occupy, loot, raze or sack 30 different settlements.
The reward is +3 recruit rank to all units, very useful for Skaven to ensure you have least better recruits right of the gate.
A very short victory indeed, with lots of flexibility in terms of your next expansions. The initial provinces from Kislev are right close to you and then you are free to go in any direction.
Long victory:
Achieve the short victory;
Occupy, loot, raze or sack 75 different settlements;
Control at least 7 of a long list of settlements, either directly or via allies. These are mainly mountain settlements or Skaven capitals.
The reward is +2 global recruitment capacity, which is good for Skaven because you might have some units dying here and there and of course it helps to have a great system of quickly replenish large numbers of troops.
Throt likes to Splice, Mutate, Multiply, Destroy!, meaning he gets the following benefits:
Has access to the Clan Moulder Flesh Laboratory;
Immune to Mountain attrition;
Hit points +10% for all characters;
Construction cost: -50% for Breeding stock, Pits of the Packmasters, Force-Feeding Chambers and Laboratory buildings;
Throt plays out much differently than any other Skaven lords, and the mechanics alone make this a much more interesting campaign.
Climate is really good for Throt, with only Ulthuan really being a pain. Overall, this is a fantastic campaign to have some world map domination if you choose.
STARTING LOCATION:
Starting location is a 1 settlement province, fairly defensible, with the biggest issue being that you do not get the usual advantage of Skaven with the number of recruitment slots per settlement in the province.
The nearby provinces are all 1, 2 or 3 settlement provinces, which does not help in having a solid military province.
Still, you do have good choices nearby to expand into and because of the three main cities of Kislev you will have no shortage of nearby province capitals to have your higher tier military buildings.
DIPLOMACY AND OUTPOSTS:
Diplomacy for the Skaven is always rather weird and many times depends solely on the starting situation. Since your goals set you against Kislev and you start at war with them, naturally you are bound to have better relations with Chaos and others.
Enemies will likely be Kislev, Empire, Dwarfs, but also Greenskins and Wood Elves, and later Vampire Counts.
Expect Norsca and Warriors of Chaos to be the best sources for some units, from the outposts.
MECHANICS OF THE RACE AND FACTION:
As for mechanics, undercities are a nice idea. They provide vision and you can generate food and income, as well as other bonuses for your faction. Make sure you do not build them where you are aiming to conquer though. The biggest idea is to later shift them into a Vermintide, but that costs a lot of resources and may still backfire.
Food is your unique currency of sorts, and it is important to keep finding more, specially if you wish to avoid the penalties. The bonuses are fine, but the penalties are really the problem you should avoid. Food can also be used to capture a settlement and turn it into a higher level, which ensures good strategic advantages over other factions.
Skaven corruption allows you more uses of the menace below, and grant you bonuses on that province. It provides food and public order when low, and public order penalties when high, but nothing too detrimental.
An additional mechanic is how the Skaven ambush on their natural stance. Every battle you initiate has a chance to become an ambush. Some army compositions are entirely possible just because of this single stance.
Rites:
Food per turn +3, Growth +40 to all provinces, Control +2 to all provinces, Recruitment cost -25%;
Diplomatic relations +13 with Skaven, Lords have a chance to gain 2 loyalty, hero action success chance +13%, enemy hero success chance -13%, and an army ability (healing);
Plague priest, who can be used to set a plague;
Warlock Engineer hero.
The rites are fairly decent, just ensure that you use them to maximize your faction's potential. They are rather cheap, so I would try to have one active at all times.
Throt's main mechanic is the Flesh Laboratory. There are two currencies to keep hold of:
Growth vat, acquired mainly passively and through battles.
Mutagen, acquired mainly via conversion of units and the growth vat. You can also purchase it with Gold via the laboratory tab.
The Growth vat also gives you a batch of units and mutagen by product.
The mutagen is what is then used to augment the Infantry and Monster units at the Laboratory. Spend some Mutagen and your units gain the bonuses, which are fairly substantial. However, there is a chance it will become unstable and thus will have to be "recycled" later on. Below the unit card you can see the chance of the next augment causing instability.
The augments are really substantial, and can drastically affect the whole gameplay. At the laboratory you can also improve campaign effects, and you unlock as you fill out Growth vats over time.
This alone makes the faction really fun to play as there are no two equal campaigns. It also ensures that you can use nearly every infantry or monster units just because of how much better they can get with the upgrades.
PROVINCE EDICTS AND ARMY STANCES:
Edicts:
Control +3, corruption -2;
Growth +20, construction cost - 10%
Recruit cost -5%, local recruit capacity +1;
Skaven corruption +3, food generated +2;
Overall decent ones, but for Throt, do not neglect the local recruit capacity at least early on. It might just be the key to ensure you get a full stack fast enough to counter early foes.
Army stances:
Stalking is the ambush while moving stance.
Underway, with all its strategy, allows you to move to a different location regardless of terrain.
Channeling gives you +15 winds of magic, but reduces your movement by 10%;
Encamp, costs 50% movement, gives you replenishment and access to global recruitment, and immunity to attrition;
Raiding costing 50% movement, gives you food and immunity to attrition;
Ambush, costs 25% movement. Advantage is that this is defensive ambushing.
Forced march.
Skaven have quite a nice set of army stances, nearly one for each occasion. The best is the stalking of course, which allows a lot of different army compositions if you focus on ambushing a lot.
Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Throt - Skaven Campaign Overview, Guide And Second Thoughts Part 2
BUILDINGS, RESEARCH:
Similar to the Greenskins, you have additional recruitment capacity with each settlement in a province. This implies that your best provinces for recruitment will be the 3 to 4 settlement ones, but there are very few 4 settlement provinces nearby, unfortunately.
For the buildings, starting with Undercities: they have a unique requirement which is discoverability. Keep that in check, and all is well. You also have a buliding to give you a Vermintide, a spawned army that will try to take over the settlement.
Hell Pit has 2 special buildings, the Depths of Hell Pit, giving food, control, growth juice per turn, corruption, and lots of recruit and upkeep benefits for Rat Ogres and Hell Pit Abominations.
6 military buildings, 5 of which must be in the capital for the fullest effect.
They have good combinations of units at Tier 3, though, including Stormverming, Catapults, Rattling Guns, Rat Ogres... They can be effective even at that point. Specially under Throt, your Wolf Rats become quite nice too.
All buildings generate income and Skaven corruption. Infrastructure divides into:
Growth, casualty replenishment rate;
Food, income from buildings;
Corruption denial, recruitment costs;
Control, hero and lord and unit recruit rank;
Decent ones, which you should also consider only to unlock the necessary research.
Speaking of research, it is fairly extense, with many locked behind buildings. They do benefit a lot of your units, quite adequately, and your campaign as well. It also adds a lot of units to the Vermintide mechanic, so in the end it might be worth it to try.
LORDS, SKILLS, ARMY COMPOSITIONS:
Blue line does not have replenishment, however, most lords have that skill in a better way in their specific skills. Throt is not exception.
They do have an ambush increase, which plays so well with the faction, as well as upkeep decrease allowing more armies overall.
The redline allows some crazy cool combinations without spending too many skills there. Definitely one of the most interesting rosters even based on just this fact. This allows you to spend skill points in other areas easily. For the most part for Clan Moulder you will spend a few in either infantry or monsters.
Throt enhances mainly monsters and has some nice abilities to chance the course of the battle, including healing and summons.
In terms of Lords and Heroes there is a lot to choose. A note here: I typically recommend at least one caster hero and one melee/support hero, but that is just to have a rule of thumb. You can easy any combo you would like, just plan for it.
Warlock Masters have some upkeep bonuses for Weapons teams, so makes sense to benefit from those.
Assassins favor night runners and gutter runners, so I leave you some compositions with them.
I also provide some compositions around the Grey Seers, some Plague monks and some monsters. You can try to mix in some weapons teams, or just a Monster-Weapons teams based army if you wish.
Remember that all these units can change drastically because of the Flesh Laboratory under Clan Moulder, so you have to imagine these units with some enhancements.
FINAL NOTES:
Throt is very much unique in playstyle. You can just go into Melee based forces, Monsters, Infantry, and still have enough variety to add in a couple artillery units or weapons teams for good measure.
His campaign is definitely filled with a lot of decision in terms of what units you are getting, which upgrades, and for the most part it will be great to see what combinations you can attempt during your playthrough. Definitely one of the few lords that you will never run out of different army compositions and units as they will all feel different from the others.
Your army consists of:
1 - Good infantry;
2 - Great missile infantry and artillery;
3 - Good monstrous infantry and single entities;
4 - Great heroes, and varied;
5 - No flying units;
6 - No real cavalry;
Replenishment is great, considering the climate, heroes, and mechanics. You can recover your forces quickly or get new units quickly giving you great momentum during a war.
Time to experiment with Throt the Unclean, of the Skaven.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3216406011
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