Total War: Warhammer III – Immortal Empires Festus / Warriors of Chaos Campaign Guide

Hello everyone. This is what I check out for when I wish to play a campaign, a very brief overview of what I believe will happen during the campaign, as well as my initial thoughts on matters such as diplomacy, expansion paths, army compositions, important skills for lords, etc.

In this specific one, I pick the Legendary Lord Festus, of the Warriors of Chaos.

Intro

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 campaign:

• Control the settlements of Middenheim, Praag, and Kislev;
• Occupy, loot, raze or sack 35 different settlements;

The reward is +30 Winds of Magic power reserve to all armies, great to ensure your casters are always effective in battle which helps to achieve other goals.

Fairly easy campaign, you do have to advance into somewhat two different locations, but it is fairly doable.

Long victory:

• Achieve the short victory;
• Occupy, loot, raze or sack 80 different settlements
• Control at least 13 of a specific list of settlements. These are mostly important settlements scaterred all over the world, so it might take some time to achieve this.

The reward is +10 lord recruit rank, great to ensure those lords are already effective upon recruitment for the domination game.

Festus is the Leechlord’s Cavalcade, and benefits from:

• Vassals gain poison attacks and spread Nurgle corruption;
• Can brew plagues;
• Gains +25 souls when plagues are spread;

Overall, these benefits guarantee a rather unique style of play for the Warriors of Chaos, specially with those plagues.

In terms of climate, like other WoC factions, you are free to expand wherever you wish. It has no effect on them, perfect for domination or map completion campaigns.

Starting Location

Your starting location is a 1 settlement province, very easy to defend, actually.

Typical expansion is to overcome the initial Empire factions around, and then to shift the direction into the Kislev area. It should not be difficult to establish some chokepoints to ensure you can move around without any issue.

Diplomacy and Outposts

Diplomatically, you are Chaos, of course. Beastmen, Norsca, they are likely to be your allies, while the Order factions should all attempt to destroy you at a moment’s notice.

Expect the typical Norsca outpost to be available and perhaps Greenskins or others fighting the Empire and Kislev.

Therefore, try to obtain some missile units or flyers from them to complement your forces.

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 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 this. These can be unlocked during the game. In addition, they may grant you gifted units to recruit into your armies. In the specific case of Festus, most of these will be Nurgle daemons, 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 customizeable 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 a specific). Very straightforward way to customize your armies in the long run to whatever you prefer. As Festus, the main idea is to go into Nurgle based stuff, of course, but it is still possible to mix with Undivided as well.
• Your units recruit instantly, 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 Fortress locations. More on that later on.
• Vassals should almost be noted as a mechanic in itself, as this faction works immensely with them. As vassals gift you tribute, you can work with them to focus enemies down and create a never-ending tide of armies against them. Vassals also get poison attacks and spread Nurgle corruption.
• Festus also has the ability to concoct plagues, so he gathers infections and can use the cauldron to infect armies or settlements, with the effects either benefitting your armies and settlements, or causing issues to the enemy.

Province Edicts and Army Stances

Edicts:

• Nurgle corruption in adjacent +1; Nurgle corruption +3;
• Control -4; local warband recruitment replenishment chance for Marauders of Nurgle +20%; construction cost -10%
• Campaign movement range -20% for enemies; enemy hero action success -20%; attrition -20% when under siege; melee defense +5;
• Growth +15; chance of a plague spreading +50%, plague duration +100%;

An interesting set that falls a bit more into how the faction plays out, quite cool.

Army stances:

• Channeling costs 10% movement for +15 winds of magic power reserve per turn;
• Encamp costs 50% movement, enables replenishment, gives unit experience per turn (!) and makes you immune to attrition;
• Raiding costs 25% movement, gives experience per turn (!), immunity to attrition
• Ambush costs 25% movement;
• Forced march.

Very typical, with the nice addition concerning the unit experience gains which play into the warband upgrades.

Buildings, Research

As for the buildings, you have a unique approach because of how the Warband Upgrades mechanic works.

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 buffs.

You have 6 military buildings, and infrastructure ones are as follows:

1. Growth and replenishment that can reach great levels;
2. Income and factionwide post battle and sack income;
3. 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 buffs:

1. Winds of magic and replenishment;
2. Warband upgrades cost decrease;
3. Magic drop chance and souls gained from battles;
4. Garrison sort of building with defensive bonuses.

Useful to have at least one or another in every province, I would say, but definitely not necessary to have everywhere. You can gift your settlements to your vassals for better efficiency.

Research changes for Festus and the other Champions of Chaos, so he has a unique tech tree mostly around the mechanics of the faction and having more Nurgle Authority and corruption, etc. Certainly a great one.

Lords, Skills, Army Compositions

Remember that Authority is what gives you replenishment and upkeep reduction. You still have replenishment in the blue line too.

Blue line includes some 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 definitely have great combos for very few skillpoints allocated.

Festus focuses more on giving immunity to contact effects to the army and its battle healing cap, so he can go into anything really. Nothing wrong with going top tier infantry and cavalry with him, or just adding some monsters or mobility for good measure.

For chaos lords, they do give some nice physical resistance so combinations of Chosen and Chaos Knights are great.I also added one that is lower quality to showcase a typical midgame army but also what you can use as a sweeper army too.

Then we have some specific combinations for the Chaos Sorcerer Lords, tyring to use some of those manticores and monsters, as well as a combination with Spawn and Forsaken for good measure.

Final Notes

Festus is a wonderful change of pace, as it happens with all the Champions of Chaos lords. You focus on Nurgle, their plagues, while embracing the typical Warriors of Chaos mechanics, which gives you a nice different campaign than every other lord.

Nurgle units are focused around causing poison and outlasting the enemy, so your armies definitely feel like they do not die anytime soon. This different playstyle has its benefits for certain and the conjunction with the plagues makes for a deadly combination.

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 as well, climate helps a lot.

I believe now it is time to brew some new diseases with Festus of the Warriors of Chaos.