Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Vilitch - Warriors Of Chaos 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.
If you prefer to watch the video, it helps to support me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7lGST7kWp8
If you prefer to read:
VICTORY CONDITIONS:
Short victory:
Control the settlements of the Red Fortress, Bloodwind Keep, Fortress of Eyes, Wei-Jin and Nan-Gau. These are basically the nearby capitals.
Occupy, loot, raze or sack 35 different settlements.
The reward is +30 Winds of Magic per turn, great particularly for Vilitch and Tzeentch overall since they benefit a lot from magic.
Very easy campaign, very simple. The trickiest part may yet to be pushing over the Bastion, but that is also interesting to do.
Long victory:
Achieve the short victory condition;
Occupy, loot, raze or sack 80 different settlements;
Control at least 13 of a long list of settlements (mainly Legendary Lord's capitals), either directly or via Vassals/Allies.
The reward is +10 lord recruit rank, great to ensure you can recruit much better lords and have them be immediately an integral part of your forces.
This is a much longer campaign, my advice is simply to keep conquering and just keep checking for an opportunity to rush to the end if possible.
Vilitch is the Essence of Anarchy, and benefits from:
Vassals gain increased barrier hit points and spread Tzeentch corruption;
Has access to the Changing of the Ways (limited options)
Forces receive benefits for having high Winds of Magic
Converts a portion of own battle casualties into Souls
Has access to the Tzeentch Teleport stance.
Overall it is very thematic and very much a campaign focused on Deception and Magic.
Climate is non-important to the Chaos factions, as always, a perfect campaign to dominate the whole map with.
STARTING LOCATION:
Your starting location is very defensible, very easy. Starting completely from a corner, you have only two directions to go to, and you have time to expand and build a bit before progressing into further conquests.
Typical expansion will nearly always lead into crossing the Bastion, which should always be an interesting battle anyways.
Conquering all of Cathay and then... up to you. You may even decide to use the sea lanes to travel elsewhere.
DIPLOMACY AND OUTPOSTS:
In terms of diplomacy, it is very simple: you are part of Chaos, and only Chaos aligned factions such as Norsca or Chaos Dwarfs should likely be friendly.
Dark Elves may provide an ally, but Cathay, other Chaos factions, Ogres, Greenskins, Skaven... they will likely be more on your way to victory than anything else.
Thus you have to be selective on which allies you get or else they may end up having settlements that you may wish for yourself. Still, gaining missile troops from either Dark Elves or the Chaos Dwarfs, as well as their flyers and artillery pieces should be a good deal (note the issue with Chaos Dwarf units in outposts).
MECHANICS OF THE RACE AND FACTION:
Souls are a unique currency, harvested by fighting anything that is not Daemons. They are used for heroes and lords to achieve Marks of Chaos, and also for the Gifts of Chaos mechanic.
Speaking of Gifts of Chaos, they consist of a series of benefits that you can have active, that cost upkeep in terms of Souls (be mindful of this). They may grant you gifted units to recruit into your armies, in the specific case of Vilitch, these should be Tzeentch Daemon units, of course.
The Path to Glory is a nice way to grant traits to your Lords and heroes, or even have them ascend into Daemons. Very useful and customizable idea.
The Eye of the Gods offer a series of dilemmas, based on the number of active gifts. These offer powerful rewards, so be on the lookout for them.
Authority is a way to grant cheaper upgrades and upkeep, as well as replenishment to a specific alignment (counting Undivided as specific). Very straight forward way to customize your armies in the long run to whatever you prefer. As Vilitch, the main idea is of course into Tzeentch units, but you can mix Undivided as you please.
Your units recruit instantly from a pool, and you can upgrade them into a specific alignment or Undivided. This has a cost and will require technology to unlock.
In terms of buildings, you can only build up everything in the Dark Fortresses locations.
Vassals should be noted as a mechanic in itself. This faction works a lot with vassals, they gift you tribute, and you can create a lot of armies moving towards the enemies. Vassals also get barrier hit points.
Vilitch can access some of the Changing of the Ways, including Break Alliance and Spawnify. These cost souls to perform.
He also has the unique Teleport stance, useful to immediately move to a nearby location, just like the Underway stacnes, but you can still attack(!). This gives it amazing tactical possibilities.
You also receive some Authority and XP gains in regions with High Winds of Magic.
PROVINCE EDICTS AND ARMY STANCES:
Should be noted that these can be used with Vassals owning some of the settlements.
Edicts:
Tzeentch corruption +3, Tzeentch corruption in adjacent provinces +1;
Control -4 (!), Local warband recruitment +20% replenishment chance for Marauders of Tzeentch; Construction costs - 10% for all buildings;
campaign movement range -20% for enemies; enemy hero action success chance -20%; Attrition -20% when under siege; melee defense +5;
Chance of a plague spreading -40%; Research rate +10% (!), Chance of Winds of Magic changing in strength +25%;
An interesting set of edicts that do reflect how the faction plays out. Note the research rate, which is very useful.
Army stances:
Teleport, costing Winds of Magic but allowing you to move to a close location without issue and being able to attack.
Channeling for 15 Winds of Magic per turn, costing 10% movement;
Encamp costs 50% movement, enables replenishment and immunity to attrition;
Raiding costs 25% movement, gives unit experience per turn, immunity to attrition;
Ambush for 25% movement;
Forced march;
Very straightforward but with some twists here and there. Note the unit experience on raiding, do not overlook it.
Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Vilitch - Warriors Of Chaos Campaign Overview, Guide And Second Thoughts Part 2
BUILDINGS, RESEARCH:
The faction has a rather unique approach because of the Warband Upgrades mechanic.
What you unlock is just the basic version of the unit to be easier to upgrade from that. It also provides unit capacity for those units, with other income benefits.
You have 6 military buildings, and infrastructure ones:
Growth and replenishment that reaches insane levels;
Income and Factionwide post-battle and sack income;
Control, income from buildings, and corruption;
All of these are very good, but of course, you are limited to where you can have a Dark Fortress.
As for the Minor settlements, they do provide some province wide benefits from their buildings:
Winds of Magic and replenishment;
Warband upgrades cost decreased;
Magic drop chance and souls gained from battles increased;
Garrison, with defensive bonuses;
Useful to have at least one or another in your provinces, I would say; not necessary to have everywhere, you can gift settlements to your vassals or allies if you wish.
Research changes for Vilitch and the other Champions of Chaos, so he has a rather unique tech tree mostly around the mechanics of the faction and having more Tzeentch Authority, corruption, etc. Certainly a cool one. It changes what units obtain, which in turn creates differences between all the Warriors of Chaos factions in terms of how units end up in battle in the lategame.
LORDS, SKILLS, ARMY COMPOSITIONS:
Authority is what gives you replenishment and upkeep reduction, but you also have replenishment in the blue line.
Blue line includes bonuses for the Warband upgrades, which is nice. Increased experience gained is rather important for the Warriors of Chaos because of their Warband mechanic, as units need to have experience to be upgraded.
Redline is one of the best and less expensive. They are streamlined into Mortal and Daemon units for the most part, so you can have some nice combinations for very few skill points.
The redline skills for the units are difficult to put into just one slide, so forgive me above if it is not exactly visible.
Vilitch only gives some Forsaken and Spawn benefits, nothing to really build an army with, but I will try. To keep it thematic. Certainly there are better ones, but you can have some fun in the early to midgame with these.
For Chaos Lords, they do give some nice physical resistance so combinations of Chosen and Knights are great. I also added one that is lower quality to showcase a midgame army or sweeper army.
Then we have some specific combinations for the Chaos Sorcerer Lords, trying to use some of the Flyers and monsters, as well as seom other combos for fun. Try those out.
As always, lord choice and hero choice and how many is up to you. All I advise is a caster hero and a melee/support hero, but it is placeholder only, do as you please 😉
FINAL NOTES:
Vilitch is quite a different playthrough due to the focus on Magic but also his starting location. Similar to Valkia but on the other side of the map, it is very defensible and you can get the feel of "bane of the world" as you just are able to go forth and kill and sack and spread corruption in your path.
Having access to some of Tzeentch's mechanics implies that you do have some control, including diplomatically, of what is happening in the world, and it creates a nice campaign in itself. Particularly noteworthy is the Teleport stance, which is an amazing tactical recourse that you will likely benefit throughout your campaign.
Your army consists of:
1 - Great infantry
2 - Great cavalry
3 - Average missiles
4 - Great monsters and single entities
5 - Good flyers
6 - Relies on upgrading units
7 - Requires time for the elite troops
Replenishment is great due to climate, which helps to cement all Warriors of Chaos factions as a great campaign for Total map completion.
Time to follow Vilitch the Curseling for the Glory of Tzeentch, just as planned...
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3216452482
More Total War: WARHAMMER III guilds
- All Guilds
- Esoteric fixes for Game crashes
- Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Grom the Paunch Greenskins campaign overview, guide and second thoughts
- Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Mannfred von Carstein - Vampire Counts overview, guide, second thoughts
- Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Helman Ghorst - Vampire Counts campaign overview, guide and second thoughts
- Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Malekith - Dark Elves campaign overview, guide and second thoughts
- Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Valkia - Warriors of Chaos campaign overview, guide and second thoughts
- Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Throt - Skaven campaign overview, guide and second thoughts
- Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Greasus Goldtooth - Ogre Kingdoms overview, guide and second thoughts
- Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Be'lakor - Warriors of Chaos campaign overview, guide and second thoughts