Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Archaon Everchosen - Warriors Of Chaos Overview, Guide, 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 also supports me:
https://youtu.be/2lDIvcvhOw8
If you prefer to read:
VICTORY CONDITIONS:
Short victory:
- Destroy or vassalise the Ice Court faction (Tzarina Katarin)
- Maintain control of 2 provinces (starting one and an adjacent one)
- Occupy, loot, raze or sack 35 different settlements.
The reward is winds of magic +30 to all armies. This is great as it will allow your casters to always have some nice reserves and magic is very good for the WoC.
The short victory is quite short indeed, you should be able to achieve this rather quickly and then proceed into other goals.
Long victory:
- Achieve the short victory conditions;
- Occupy, loot, raze or sack 80 different settlements;
- Control 13 specific settlements scattered throughout the map, either directly or via vassals or military allies. There are 34 in total, so should be fine, although still lengthy.
The reward is lord recruit rank +10, which is nice to ensure your armies are always led by competent generals.
The long victory deserves its name. It may be difficult to set up a path for it, so my advice would be to play it out a bit, just take care of any imminent enemies, and carefully keep an eye out for a good path to end it.
Archaon is the Everchosen and thus he enjoys the following bonuses:
- Maximum active gifts: +1 for Gifts of Chaos undivided;
- Research rate: +10% per each vassalised faction (!)
- Diplomatic relations +10 with Daemons of Chaos, Warrios of Chaos, Beastmen and Norsca for each vassalised faction (!)
- Souls: +25 per turn from each vassal faction.
Basically, the more vassals, the more you become an overwhelming unstoppable force of nature. Even 5 factions vassalised would already prove to be a great buff, and he can get many more in no time.
Climate is all yours, as there is no issues whatsoever for Archaon's faction. One of the best factions to dominate the whole map.
STARTING LOCATION:
Your starting location is rather good, tucked into a corner, mostly, so you have a decent place to organize and expand onwards.
Typical expansion routes completely gets you over to Kislev, as all signs point there. However, once you achieve that, it is up to you and it becomes more of a sandbox experience. It is not of the best in that regard, as the objectives spread out into the whole map.
DIPLOMACY:
It is tricky. On one hand, you are chaos and everyone other than norsca, other chaos, beastmen, will hate you, really. However, you can have tons of vassals and it is easy to obtain them so at one point the factions that were your enemies will become your vassals.
For the most part, good outposts will be with any ranged factions, Skaven, Vampire Coast, or even Norsca should help you out with some interesting compositions for your already massive variety.
MECHANICS:
Souls are your 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 the Gifts of Chaos, they consist of a series of buffs you can have active, that cost you upkeep in terms of souls. Be wary of it. These can be unlocked via the tech tree. In addition, they may grant you gifted units to recruit into your armies.
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 will 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 a specific one too). Very straightforward, you should plan out your army composition and ensure that your authority matches it, simple. Great way to customize your armies in the long run.
Your units recruit instantly. You can then upgrade them using the Warband upgrades mechanic into a specific alignment or undivided versions, this has a cost and will require technology to unlock (one of the reasons why Archaon is powerful due to his fast research and souls per turn). In addition, note they will need to have specific unit rank, so experience in your forces is very detrimental. Don't lose units lightly.
In terms of buildings, you can only build up everything in the Dark Fortress locations. More on that later.
Finally, vassals are truly a mechanic in itself for Archaon. Vassals gift you tribute and give you immense buffs with just the research and souls. You can then work with them to focus enemies down and create a never-ending tide of armies against them.
PROVINCE EDICTS AND ARMY STANCES:
Edicts can be used with vassals owning some settlements in the province, btw:
- Chaos undivided corruption +3, in adjacent provinces +1;
- Enemy move range -20%, enemy hero action chance reduced -20%, attrition reduced when under siege -20%, and melee defense +5 (self-explanatory: use when under attack);
- Reduced chance of plague -40%, hero recruit rank +2, recruit cost reduction -10%;
- Control (negative) -4, local warband recruitment replenishment rate +20%, construction cost reduction -10%.
These are interesting as they play into the factions mechanics, which is quite cool. Most likely I would use the warband recruitment for the most part, and the others situationally.
Army stances are fairly typical ones:
- Channeling for more winds of magic, with 10% move required;
- Encamp costs 50% move, enables replenishment, immune to attrition;
- Raiding costs 25% movement, immune to attrition and an often overlooked unit experience gain, which is important for your unit upgrades (!)
- Ambush costs 25% movement, nothing special;
- Forced march
Very typical, but note the raiding importance for your unit gaining experience. Experience for Warriors of Chaos is kinda like a unique currency, make sure you have at least some passive way of obtaining it.
Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Archaon Everchosen - Warriors Of Chaos Overview, Guide, Second Thoughts (continuation)
BUILDINGS AND RESEARCH:
They have 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 and specific buffs. Be sure to check them out.
6 military buildings and 3 infrastructure ones, so you may not build every single one in your Dark Fortresses. You must choose wisely.
Infrastructure:
1 - Growth and replenishment that reaches insane levels;
2 - Income and factionwide post battle and sacking income (!);
3 - Corruption, control, income from all buildings (including allied and vassal adjacent regions)
Note: remember Norsca has insane value from ports. Plan accordingly.
You are limited to the locations of these Dark Fortresses, but you should be able to have one every few points of interest.
As for the minor settlements, they do provide some province wide buffs:
- Winds of magic and replenishment;
- Warband upgrades cost decreased (important)
- Magic item drop chance, souls gained from battles;
- Garrison style building with basically siege defense buffs.
These are situational useful, so make sure that you build them accordingly. Definitely not necessary to have everywhere.
Research is divided into the 4 branches of Chaos. Each will include unlocks for different units, and plenty of them will add specific abilities to your already existing units, such as giving magical attacks to all chaos knights. Check them out to plan your compositions wisely, and ensure you keep in mind the general idea: have fun 😉
LORDS, SKILLS:
- First, remember that Authority is what gives you replenishment and upkeep reduction (2 of my favorite things for any Lord).
- Blue line has some buffs for the warband upgrades, including cost and of course more experience, which is great. Units need experience to upgrade, so it is nice to have an option to facilitate it.
- Redline is one of the best and less expensive. They are streamlined into mortal and daemon units for the most part, so you can definitely have great combos for very few skill points allocated. Note that Dominating presence gives you experience per turn too.
ARMY COMPOSITIONS:
- Below you will find the redline skills for the units of the Warriors of Chaos roster. The most extensive one, so forgive me for trying to get everything in the same page;P
- The interesting note is how these skills affect unit types, so you can definitely have fun with customization and just keep upgrading units within the same role without having an issue with the redline skills you have chosen, because they affect them throughout their typical upgrade path. Same skill that upgrades marauders goes all the way up to chosen, and that helps so much.
- I will show some army compositions but that is the fun part, go crazy with it, adapt to the enemy, etc. That is the real fun of the campaign, find out your own crazy army compositions that you want to try out.
- Archaon buffs warriors and chosen, as well as chaos knights, so nothing wrong with going the typical hammer and anvil idea with him with crazy powerful infantry. His first army is undivided, but nothing wrong if you want to change that (be mindful of the authority, though, may not be optimal).
I then showcase a Nurgle+Slaanesh composition, and a Khorne+Tzeentch comp. Then a Khorne+Nurgle with some other units, maybe a filler army to have some fun with. Or even a Khorne+Nurgle but with warriors and knights, plus some skullcannons if you can muster them.
It may prove difficult to obtain those units, or time consuming. But whatever you plan out, the idea is that you aim there. While you reach it, you will experience a TON of different armies and customization, which is in my opinion part of the greatness of this faction.
FINAL NOTES:
Customize. If DoC was customizable, they enhanced with with the WoC by a light-year. Different faction leaders will have different choices, but Archaon has everything, really.
The replay value is then into what army compositions you will put yourself into. Are you going more into a Khorne vibe, or Nurgle, or Slaanesh? Do you want Magic and shields, through Tzeentch? Or maybe dual like I have done, or a trio. Depends on Authority, for certain, as well as other stuff, but who knows you can pull it off.
Your army consists of:
Great Infantry;
Great cavalry;
Good missiles;
Great monsters and single entities;
Great flyers
Relies on upgrading units (can be slow)
Requires time to get your elite troops out.
Replenishment is great as well, because the climate helps a ton.
And there you go. Please do comment with your experience, I am interested to see. I did not play that much yet, but I am so eager to try out everything with the WoC.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2940472576
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