Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Miao Ying - Grand Cathay 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.
For those that prefer the video:
https://youtu.be/HL0RwYiAgqw
For those that prefer to read:
VICTORY CONDITIONS:
Short victory:
- Maintain control of 6 provinces, including the 3 Bastion provinces/settlements;
- Occupy, loot, raze or sack 30 different settlements;
Reward is +3 hero capacity for all heroes. You only have 2, which diminishes the usefulness of this, but it helps in two ways: avoiding to build too many buildings for the hero slots, and one more way of trying to balance out yin/yang.
This is a pretty straightforward and easy campaign, all provinces quite nearby, an excellent campaign for anyone getting started and having a go at the new mechanics of the game.
Long victory:
- Achieve the short victory;
- Occupy, loot, raze or sack 70 different settlements;
- Destroy 6 factions, including Puppets of Misrule (Vilitch), Heralds of the Tempest (Kholek), The Blessed Dread (Lohkir) and Clan Eshin (Deathmaster Sniktch).
- Maintain control of the Bastion provinces.
Reward is +10 hero recruit rank, which is great to ensure your heroes start with some spells to use them in battle.
The long victory changes quite a bit and it will require a long time, specially because you will need to go into uninhabitable terrain and fight a lot of powerful foes.
Miao Ying is the Ruler of the Northern Provinces, and she diminishes the overall corruption by 2, has +10% leadership when fighting against Daemons of Chaos, and +20% ammunition to all armies.
To be honest, this feels underwhelming, a bit more focused on the Realms of Chaos campaign; would love if she would have a different set of buffs for the Immortal Empires. Ammunition is good and helps her overall.
Climate is quite average, as to even achieve the long victory objectives you will most likely have to conquer some of the northern chaos wastes and suffer from the uninhabitable grounds there. It is not the easiest faction to dominate the map with if that is your intention, since most regions fall either into unpleasant or uninhabitable.
STARTING POSITION:
Your starting position is quite defensible, one of the strengths of this campaign, you are cornered into a nice niche. You can defend it easily and once you get the Bastion up and running, you basically only have one direction to defend.
It is just a 2 settlement province, while nearby ones are 3 settlement provinces. Absence of a 4 settlement province close by is significant as it implies you might have to focus on hybrid (economy/military) provinces throughout the game.
Typical expansion should always imply taking over the Bastion and defending it. Control all of Cathay and only then focus on other objectives. Should you decide to take an early fight to the Northern Chaos Wastes, just be wary of the poor climate there.
DIPLOMACY:
A fairly nice addition to the order tide factions. You should focus on allying and trading with others, such as Empire, Kislev, High Elves, Bretonnia, Dwarfs. The issue is that they are very far away and almost none have a decent presence nearby, so some alternatives with the Ogres and others may have to be taken at some point.
Enemies are pretty much anything evil or chaos, Warriors of Chaos, Norsca, Beastmen, Ogres, Greenskins, Dark Elves, Skaven... you have no lack of enemies nearby.
Outposts should perhaps focus on anything bringing in though cavalry such as Kislev, if they are still alive, or tough infantry from Dwarfs. However, unholy alliances with the Vampire Counts may happen (because you will fight their enemies) so there are some choices for you.
MECHANICS:
- Yin and Yang. Get used to those terms, you will see them everywhere. The harmony mechanic is one of the most interesting in the game, it forces you to balance out nearly every aspect of the game. Buildings, technology, characters, and even events. There is not just one way to do this, but your focus should be at the end of every turn to try and predict how your faction will be next turn, and rearrange things.
- There are good bonuses for being perfectly balanced, but even when a bit towards Yang or Yin you already have some nice decent benefits.
- The ivory road, or the caravan mechanic, is used for some good-old fashioned gold. It is also nice to get some events going and learn about distant lands; it may fall under attack, though, so be wary of its pathing.
- The Bastion is quite interesting, although it may yet become obsolete soon. It will spawn some enemies to attack the wall over time, and you should build some defenses there, soon your enemies will fall over it easily.
- The compass is basically a set of buffs you can choose for a specific duration. While you redirect towards one area, the other areas lose their focus. These are mainly:
1 - Replenishment rate and supplies;
2 - Growth and income;
3 - Corruption decrease and enemy leadership reduction;
4 - Control and the extreme attrition to enemies beyond the wall;
Keep an eye out for which ones will be more necessary in accordance to the current situation.
- Small note for how Yin and Yang works in armies. All units are either one or the other, and benefit from the presence of someone from the other alignment. This implies a full stack of only Yin or Yang units may not be as useful as having mixed units, so have that in mind (of course, always up to you)
PROVINCE EDICTS AND ARMY STANCES:
Edicts:
Control +4 and reduced chance for a plague spreading -40%;
Research rate (!) +7%
Enemy move range debuff -20% , corruption debuff -5, melee defence buff +5;
Income from trade tariffs factionwide +5%;
Recruitment cost -5% and local recruit capacity increased +1.
Army stances:
Channeling for 10% movement;
Encamp for 50% movement, enables replenishment and global recruitment, immune to most attrition;
Raiding for 50% movement, immune to most attrition;
Ambush for 25% movement;
Forced march.
Very standard ones, special note to the research edict. Pop a few whenever you have an important research and always ensure that it actually lowers the amount of turns (otherwise it is rather wasted).
BUILDINGS AND RESEARCH:
Nan-Gau has two special buildings, one focused mainly in siege defensive capacity, the other just a trade building.
Full military requires 6 buildings, with 5 that need to be in the capital. At tier 3 you have moderate armies that are decent with research, but it is fairly important you reach tier 4 and 5, for celestial units and single entities for example.
Infrastructure follows the Yin-Yang principle, so you will be required to at least plan it out well in the beginning.
For Yang you have:
1 - Growth and reduced construction costs;
2 - Income;
3 - Control and extra ranks for peasant spears and archers;
For Yin you have:
1 - Growth and income;
2 - Income and income from trade;
3 - Control, replenishment rate, and recruit cost severely reduced for peasant spears and archers.
Be mindful of how this changes your balance during the course of the campaign. The good thing is that they are just slightly different from one another, which should help you have good decisions overall.
Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Miao Ying - Grand Cathay Campaign Overview, Guide And Second Thoughts (continuation)
Research is quite amazing, turning the low peasants into solid units by the endgame. I will not show too many in the army compositions, but you will be surprised how even low level peasants with full buffs can do against good enemies.
Research also follows Yin-Yang, so be wary of where you are going to be at in terms of balance once you complete the research. You can always stop it and resume whenever necessary, remember.
LORDS, SKILLS:
- Miao Ying gives quite decent campaign buffs as well as focusing on missile units in her armies. She is both a nice melee lord and caster, and is very powerful in battle.
- Redline skills are expensive for what you get, so a bit of planning helps out.
- In terms of blue line, it may prove expensive too; replenishment and upkeep reduction are in the second part, as well as the lightning strike option, and there is nothing really interesting in the first part of the blue line.
- Lord Magistrates have interesting abilities to use on their units, while your caster lords have different lores of magic depending on whether they are Yin or Yang, but all are useful.
- You do lack a replenishment hero, which implies somewhat an issue with how quickly you can replenish overall.
ARMY COMPOSITIONS (see images below):
- They are divided mostly into categories, which implies if you wish to have different sets of units, it may prove expensive overall.
- Miao Ying buffs missiles units greatly, so I give you some typical ideas for her. Note how for the second option, even with just 3 units, you still have to spend 15 redline points for the whole army;
- All the next 3 armies focus on Celestial Dragon Guard units as a staple, being a good frontline and anti-large; then we can have some combinations of cavalry and artillery or missiles, albeit a bit costly in terms of redline skills.
- Finally, a typical sweeper army to get Jade Warriors going without spending too much money, maybe adding artillery or like in the example some Sentinels for fun.
- Remember, like always, I like to have a melee hero and a caster but nothing wrong with having different compositions around that and number and type of heroes. I do not select a specific lore, as you may like a different one, so the one you see is really just the default idea.
- Note how expensive overall your armies may be to completely buff them in the redline skill line, as it is not easy to get a balanced composition without spending too many skills.
FINAL CONCLUSION:
The faction has one thing: an amazing synergy potential. When you are balanced in harmony, you have quite some nice buffs that help throughout. In addition, armies rely on the other units to have their best day at work 😜
Everything in this campaign does one thing: it gives you the sense that your actions do take part in a greater plan. I love that feeling, it is so addicting.
One of the probably easier factions to start with, but difficult to master. It does bring a good point to take this one a bit slower and improve on it based on your own conclusions.
Your army consists of:
1 - Good Holding infantry;
2 - Great missiles and artillery;
3 - Good flying units;
4 - Good single entities;
5 - Good magic users;
6 - Average melee capabilities;
7 - Somewhat weak in anti-large, specially anything outside infantry (although that one is great).
Replenishment is rather average, buildings and other sources should be your best bet for most of the game.
I believe now it is time for you guys to fight for Miao Ying. Have fun, let me know your thoughts below.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2940459225
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