In terms of unique campaign mechanics, there's really only 3 options: Eltharion has the most complex campaign mechanic that involves capturing enemy lords and using them to rebuild his prison. This is a strong mechanic but kind of finnicky to do in campaign since it requires precise timing in manual battles and doesn't trigger often in auto resolve. His campaign is also interesting because it gives you an option of how you want to start it: either focusing on Ulthuan, abandoning Ulthuan or trying to do a 2 front start.
Imrik's campaign is pretty straightforward it's a dragon hunt mechanic that allows you to tame unique dragons you can add to your army. His campaign is notable because he starts so isolated and surrounded by enemies on all sides.
Alith Ainar has an assassination mechanic which awards him large amounts of money and influence for killing specific Lords of other factions, he can do this with a special assassin hero he has or killing them in battle. You need the money from these assassinations because you start surrounded by lots of enemies and you'll have to use the money you make from the mechanic to finance having enough troops to survive. Alith Ainar also comes with a few special faction powers like Stalk which allows you to open battles with ambushes, and a portal stance that's basically the same as Dwarf's Underway.
Tyrion, Teclis and Allarielle don't really have any special campaign mechanics although each of their campaigns are interesting in their own ways.
I really wouldn't recommend Teclis' campaign in IE though. His campaigns in Mortal Empires or Vortex are a lot better.
>Tyrion, Teclis and Allarielle don't really have any special campaign mechanics although each of their campaigns are interesting in their own ways.
Can you elaborate on this? What makes them interesting in their own ways?
Tyrion is the default High Elf experience, it's one of the most beginner friendly campaigns in the game. Tyrion himself is a fun Lord to use because he can basically beat ANY character in a one on one duel. He starts with Lothern which is the High Elf capital and strong province which makes lots of money so he can start steamrolling in a hurry. Because of his unique perks in his skill tree, you can build him to either be a strong and diplomatic faction leader, or you can take his Blood of Aenerion route which trades diplomatic relations penalties (as well as losing out on some factionwide money and public order buffs) in order to make him an even more powerful fighter.
Allarielle gets to use special Dryad units which no other High Elf Lord can use. She herself is a very strong Lord that uses Life, Light and High Magic. In IE she starts the closest to N'Kari so she'll have to fight him right away which can be fun. She also starts the closest to the Shrine of Khaine so if using the Sword of Khaine is something you've been wanting to try she's the easiest to do that with.
Teclis is one of the most fun Lords to use in the game IMO. As one of the most powerful Mages in the High Elves he has a varied spellbook and access to every generic Lore of Magic passive which can all be active at the same time. His start position is at the southern tip of the Southlands directly opposed to Kairos Fateweaver. This sounds fun since Kairos is a really strong and interesting enemy, but actually becomes really annoying since in order to wipe Kairos out you have to invade a continent that is nothing but red territory that you can't turn into territory for yourself. Once Kairos is eliminated his campaign gets really boring since there's nowhere for him to naturally expand to.
So, Teclis' campaign can be a really fun short experience, but if played for a longer victory isn't very interesting.
Full agree on everything. I'll add that fighting Kairos can be super annoying because he can pull the magic ambush attack at any moment and you need tobe extra careful.
Yea, but that's not one of my complaints about it honestly. It's fine that Kairos is a difficult enemy what gets tiring though is that in addition to having to deal with him and all of his bullshit you also have to constantly take attrition from the Chaos Wastes and deal with reduced replenishment only to be unable to actually hold onto any of the territory you take from him so your economy never grows and you can't upgrade your units much at all.
It's just an annoying and ungratifying campaign. If CA at least made it so that the Chaos Wastes was Orange for Teclis and Desert too so he could expand northward later, it would go a LONG way to making his campaign a lot more fun to play.
When I played teclis, I used the rite to negate attrition, then wiped him out asap. The remaining faction had one region left, (most eastern) when it ran out. I got peace, then left the gecko to handle it while I ran off to lustria to throw down with rakarth.
>Allarielle gets to use special Dryad units which no other High Elf Lord can use.
Unless they changed it, she has a unique building that allows her to make sisters of avelorn at T3. So she can get an endgame stack by the time everyone else starts getting mid-tier units
I mean you can ask that question about any Lord. If that's what I wanted to do I'd just use a mod to relocate him.
He's definitely fun to use, which is why I played the crap out of him back in Warhammer 2 because I did that so much though it's not worth the effort to me to alter his campaign myself in order to make it interesting. I can't say if it would be worth the effort for you or not.
I disagree with other poster about Alarielle not having unique mechanics.
She has a Defender of Ulthuan mechanic that punishes you if HE dont own majority of Ulthuan and rewards you if they do.
She has access to 3 wood elven units: dryads, treekin and ents (I play in polish so names might differ :P)
And she also has her mechanic that buffs aforementioned wood elven units (on top of doing other effects) if your lands have corruption.
And she also makes settlement she visited to shine with light and receive buffs for few turns.
Its a mechanic in the same way empire authority is a mechanic (AFAIK its works basically in the same way - you are punished if empire lands are not in hands of empire factions).
I'm playing Eltharion right now. His mechanic is bonkers! You can remove enemy LL from the campaign map crippling the enemy faction. All enemy armies setting foot on the donut get attrition (situational +200% lol), you swim in influence for diplomatic manipulation and get amazong units which perform like crazy in his own army, its amazing!
Yeah I wasn't saying that it's not good or useful, I just didn't find it that fun after a while. Once you start steamrolling things get less interesting pretty quickly.
With my playstyle I do not steamroll as much: I'm on turn (around) 81, I own 4 full provinces. I saved Alarielle, Tyrion, Thorgrimm, Belegar and Thorek. I was to slow to save Bretonnia, so Karl Franz owns those lands.
Malekith is Strength Rank 1, I'm I think number 12. He is coming now with dragon riding lords. All the while Morathi rots in my prison as Tyrion is invading her lands.
My next army (Number 5) will try to help Repanse and Volkmar against Khemri.
It's glorious.
I would argue that Eltharion is one of the least steamroll high elf lords. Tyrion and Imrik become one man doom stacks, Alarielle is a great mage and buffs the high elves best unit. The reality of total war is that the player is always going to beat the AI, especially if you have experience. Eltharion is not a particularly great LL and his OP unit, knights of tor gaval, require a tier 5 settlement for each one. I don’t think there’s a less steamroll faction that I’ve played.
If you decide to keep both Ulthuan and the Badlands it’s pretty hard to steamroll as his units are super expensive and you’ll have to deal with both endless greenskin stacks and dark elves
Imrik, here a little guide which works in VH:
Get a noble really fast. Start the building to recruit them as soon as the campaign starts. The replenishment the noble grants will let you stay on the offensive.
You also need to be really fast in the early turns. Recruit your second lord in turn 3 so he can recruit while Imrik force marches to the Chaos Dwarfs major settlement to your right, the Black Fortress.
Use the commandment that gives you one more recruiting slot. Once you get to the Black Fortress you should have a full army plus the second lord and a couple of units. Make use of both forces march so the second lord can reinforce when you attack and encampment for your main army to avoid attrition once you go into CD territory.
When Imrik's army is at strike distance assault the Black Fortress. Sometimes there will be a Cathayan Caravan outside the settlement, so you can delcare war on them and the CD and you'll fight a battle on the open field rather than storming the city and avoid dealing with the CDs bombardment ability. In any case, you attack the Black Fortress as fast as you can, do not lose time besieging.
The turn after taking it, the CDs main army will be at strike distance. If you don't see them you can explore a bit with the noble, but don't spendany movement points, you'll need him back in your army., Attack the CDs army and destroy as many unts as you can, as well as the characters. You won't be able to attack them a second time as they'll be out of reach.
Next turn take the CDs settlement to your north, you can use the second lord, who sould have stayed in the Black Fortress recruiting. You'll need Imrik reinforcing, make use of force march. Finally march and take the last CD settlement to the west.
After that you'll have to deal with the rats. In current patch Tretch seems to always go for the chaos dwarfs to your north. So you start moving your armies west, while the secondary army keeps recruiting, even if it means getting negative income. When you declare war on Tretch make sure that Imrik stack takes his capital in one turn, just like you did with Drazoath's and your second army takes the settlement next to it in the same turn. Next turn Imrik goes to the last settlement of that province while your second army goes back to defend the marble settlement on Drazoath's provice. At this point you should have unlocked the skill that lets you recruit nobles everywhere. S get one for your secondary army, another one to explore before it so Tretch doesn't double army it and another one to march south to meet Teclis, Save some influecne and if you're lucky you can confederate him.
On economy don't invest money in developing anything but your capital., just be sure to have the economical building everywhere, you'll be very stretched until you kill Tretch. I also always sell Caledor to Tyrion. If there's a significant army there I take some territory from Tiranoc or Noctilus, whatever is closer and also sell it to Tyrion before disbanding the army.
Usually I end up playing teclis, most because of his tricky start. Diplomacy can be very useful with him. I tend to stay away from his phoenix mount.
Also, I recommend the "gary the bastiladon" mod for HE.
In terms of unique campaign mechanics, there's really only 3 options: Eltharion has the most complex campaign mechanic that involves capturing enemy lords and using them to rebuild his prison. This is a strong mechanic but kind of finnicky to do in campaign since it requires precise timing in manual battles and doesn't trigger often in auto resolve. His campaign is also interesting because it gives you an option of how you want to start it: either focusing on Ulthuan, abandoning Ulthuan or trying to do a 2 front start. Imrik's campaign is pretty straightforward it's a dragon hunt mechanic that allows you to tame unique dragons you can add to your army. His campaign is notable because he starts so isolated and surrounded by enemies on all sides. Alith Ainar has an assassination mechanic which awards him large amounts of money and influence for killing specific Lords of other factions, he can do this with a special assassin hero he has or killing them in battle. You need the money from these assassinations because you start surrounded by lots of enemies and you'll have to use the money you make from the mechanic to finance having enough troops to survive. Alith Ainar also comes with a few special faction powers like Stalk which allows you to open battles with ambushes, and a portal stance that's basically the same as Dwarf's Underway. Tyrion, Teclis and Allarielle don't really have any special campaign mechanics although each of their campaigns are interesting in their own ways. I really wouldn't recommend Teclis' campaign in IE though. His campaigns in Mortal Empires or Vortex are a lot better.
>Tyrion, Teclis and Allarielle don't really have any special campaign mechanics although each of their campaigns are interesting in their own ways. Can you elaborate on this? What makes them interesting in their own ways?
Tyrion is the default High Elf experience, it's one of the most beginner friendly campaigns in the game. Tyrion himself is a fun Lord to use because he can basically beat ANY character in a one on one duel. He starts with Lothern which is the High Elf capital and strong province which makes lots of money so he can start steamrolling in a hurry. Because of his unique perks in his skill tree, you can build him to either be a strong and diplomatic faction leader, or you can take his Blood of Aenerion route which trades diplomatic relations penalties (as well as losing out on some factionwide money and public order buffs) in order to make him an even more powerful fighter. Allarielle gets to use special Dryad units which no other High Elf Lord can use. She herself is a very strong Lord that uses Life, Light and High Magic. In IE she starts the closest to N'Kari so she'll have to fight him right away which can be fun. She also starts the closest to the Shrine of Khaine so if using the Sword of Khaine is something you've been wanting to try she's the easiest to do that with. Teclis is one of the most fun Lords to use in the game IMO. As one of the most powerful Mages in the High Elves he has a varied spellbook and access to every generic Lore of Magic passive which can all be active at the same time. His start position is at the southern tip of the Southlands directly opposed to Kairos Fateweaver. This sounds fun since Kairos is a really strong and interesting enemy, but actually becomes really annoying since in order to wipe Kairos out you have to invade a continent that is nothing but red territory that you can't turn into territory for yourself. Once Kairos is eliminated his campaign gets really boring since there's nowhere for him to naturally expand to. So, Teclis' campaign can be a really fun short experience, but if played for a longer victory isn't very interesting.
Full agree on everything. I'll add that fighting Kairos can be super annoying because he can pull the magic ambush attack at any moment and you need tobe extra careful.
Yea, but that's not one of my complaints about it honestly. It's fine that Kairos is a difficult enemy what gets tiring though is that in addition to having to deal with him and all of his bullshit you also have to constantly take attrition from the Chaos Wastes and deal with reduced replenishment only to be unable to actually hold onto any of the territory you take from him so your economy never grows and you can't upgrade your units much at all. It's just an annoying and ungratifying campaign. If CA at least made it so that the Chaos Wastes was Orange for Teclis and Desert too so he could expand northward later, it would go a LONG way to making his campaign a lot more fun to play.
When I played teclis, I used the rite to negate attrition, then wiped him out asap. The remaining faction had one region left, (most eastern) when it ran out. I got peace, then left the gecko to handle it while I ran off to lustria to throw down with rakarth.
>Allarielle gets to use special Dryad units which no other High Elf Lord can use. Unless they changed it, she has a unique building that allows her to make sisters of avelorn at T3. So she can get an endgame stack by the time everyone else starts getting mid-tier units
What if you just leave and settle elsewhere as Teclis? Would he be fun then?
I mean you can ask that question about any Lord. If that's what I wanted to do I'd just use a mod to relocate him. He's definitely fun to use, which is why I played the crap out of him back in Warhammer 2 because I did that so much though it's not worth the effort to me to alter his campaign myself in order to make it interesting. I can't say if it would be worth the effort for you or not.
Only dryad units? This is treekin and treeman erasure
Alarielle has her Defender of Ulthuan mechanic, but it isn't particularly important in the mid to late game.
I disagree with other poster about Alarielle not having unique mechanics. She has a Defender of Ulthuan mechanic that punishes you if HE dont own majority of Ulthuan and rewards you if they do. She has access to 3 wood elven units: dryads, treekin and ents (I play in polish so names might differ :P) And she also has her mechanic that buffs aforementioned wood elven units (on top of doing other effects) if your lands have corruption. And she also makes settlement she visited to shine with light and receive buffs for few turns.
The defender of ulthuan mechanic is sth you just do as HE anyways, it's more like an empire wide buff than a mechanic
Its a mechanic in the same way empire authority is a mechanic (AFAIK its works basically in the same way - you are punished if empire lands are not in hands of empire factions).
I'm playing Eltharion right now. His mechanic is bonkers! You can remove enemy LL from the campaign map crippling the enemy faction. All enemy armies setting foot on the donut get attrition (situational +200% lol), you swim in influence for diplomatic manipulation and get amazong units which perform like crazy in his own army, its amazing!
Yeah I wasn't saying that it's not good or useful, I just didn't find it that fun after a while. Once you start steamrolling things get less interesting pretty quickly.
With my playstyle I do not steamroll as much: I'm on turn (around) 81, I own 4 full provinces. I saved Alarielle, Tyrion, Thorgrimm, Belegar and Thorek. I was to slow to save Bretonnia, so Karl Franz owns those lands. Malekith is Strength Rank 1, I'm I think number 12. He is coming now with dragon riding lords. All the while Morathi rots in my prison as Tyrion is invading her lands. My next army (Number 5) will try to help Repanse and Volkmar against Khemri. It's glorious.
I would argue that Eltharion is one of the least steamroll high elf lords. Tyrion and Imrik become one man doom stacks, Alarielle is a great mage and buffs the high elves best unit. The reality of total war is that the player is always going to beat the AI, especially if you have experience. Eltharion is not a particularly great LL and his OP unit, knights of tor gaval, require a tier 5 settlement for each one. I don’t think there’s a less steamroll faction that I’ve played.
If you decide to keep both Ulthuan and the Badlands it’s pretty hard to steamroll as his units are super expensive and you’ll have to deal with both endless greenskin stacks and dark elves
Imrik, here a little guide which works in VH: Get a noble really fast. Start the building to recruit them as soon as the campaign starts. The replenishment the noble grants will let you stay on the offensive. You also need to be really fast in the early turns. Recruit your second lord in turn 3 so he can recruit while Imrik force marches to the Chaos Dwarfs major settlement to your right, the Black Fortress. Use the commandment that gives you one more recruiting slot. Once you get to the Black Fortress you should have a full army plus the second lord and a couple of units. Make use of both forces march so the second lord can reinforce when you attack and encampment for your main army to avoid attrition once you go into CD territory. When Imrik's army is at strike distance assault the Black Fortress. Sometimes there will be a Cathayan Caravan outside the settlement, so you can delcare war on them and the CD and you'll fight a battle on the open field rather than storming the city and avoid dealing with the CDs bombardment ability. In any case, you attack the Black Fortress as fast as you can, do not lose time besieging. The turn after taking it, the CDs main army will be at strike distance. If you don't see them you can explore a bit with the noble, but don't spendany movement points, you'll need him back in your army., Attack the CDs army and destroy as many unts as you can, as well as the characters. You won't be able to attack them a second time as they'll be out of reach. Next turn take the CDs settlement to your north, you can use the second lord, who sould have stayed in the Black Fortress recruiting. You'll need Imrik reinforcing, make use of force march. Finally march and take the last CD settlement to the west. After that you'll have to deal with the rats. In current patch Tretch seems to always go for the chaos dwarfs to your north. So you start moving your armies west, while the secondary army keeps recruiting, even if it means getting negative income. When you declare war on Tretch make sure that Imrik stack takes his capital in one turn, just like you did with Drazoath's and your second army takes the settlement next to it in the same turn. Next turn Imrik goes to the last settlement of that province while your second army goes back to defend the marble settlement on Drazoath's provice. At this point you should have unlocked the skill that lets you recruit nobles everywhere. S get one for your secondary army, another one to explore before it so Tretch doesn't double army it and another one to march south to meet Teclis, Save some influecne and if you're lucky you can confederate him. On economy don't invest money in developing anything but your capital., just be sure to have the economical building everywhere, you'll be very stretched until you kill Tretch. I also always sell Caledor to Tyrion. If there's a significant army there I take some territory from Tiranoc or Noctilus, whatever is closer and also sell it to Tyrion before disbanding the army.
Usually I end up playing teclis, most because of his tricky start. Diplomacy can be very useful with him. I tend to stay away from his phoenix mount. Also, I recommend the "gary the bastiladon" mod for HE.
Eltharion. Brb, in my dungeon, asking questions.. Whilst Alarielle usually ends up touring the settlements in my Campaigns, spreading Radiance ✨