Total War: Warhammer Game Guide

Game Guide

Basics

Campaign Map

Tips & tricks

Starting tips

Moving around the map

War preparations

Mastering your faction

Developing settlements and provinces

Controlling public order and corruption

Diplomacy and trade

Empire

Characteristic

Units

Campaign Walkthrough and Tips

Developing Provinces

Dwarves

Characteristic

Units

Campaign Walkthrough and Tips

Developing Provinces

Grudges and travelling underground

Greenskins

Characteristic

Units

Campaign Walkthrough and Tips

Developing Provinces

Vampire Counts

Characteristic

Units

Campaign Walkthrough and Tips

Developing Provinces

Warriors of Chaos

Characteristic

Units

Campaign Walkthrough and Tips

Army

Managing your army

The size of the army and casualties

Battles

General information

Battle interface and issuing commands

Leadership and unit fatigue

Sieges

Heroes

Heroes and their recruitment

Using heroes and its consequences

Heroes and Lords - abilities and equipment

Spells and Winds of Magic

What are Winds of Magic

Types of spells and how to cast them

Copyright

Total War: Warhammer Game Guide

1st edition 2016

Text by Wiki Guide

eISBN 978-1-370772-15-5

Text & cover page Copyright© Wiki Guide

Legal Notice: This product is not associated, affiliated, endorsed, or sponsored by the game developers nor have they been reviewed, tested or certified by either. This guide is to be used as a reference. This does not modify or alter the game in any way. This is a written guide and not a software program.

No part of this book may be reproduced, copied, stored or transmitted in any form without prior written permission from the publisher

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author, editors, researchers, copyright holder, publisher and contributors.

Total War: Warhammer

The Total War: Warhammer guide contains all the information required to fully comprehend this extremely complex and demanding title. Here you can find practical advices concerning all the gameplay mechanisms appearing in the game - public order, corruption, or keeping a stable economy.

Additionally, the guide contains detailed descriptions of all of available factions in the game: Empire, Dwarves, Greenskins, Vampire Caunts and Chaos, coupled with their units, buildings, technology trees and the differences between them. Here you can also find hints concerning topics such as effective movement around the map, leading battles and sieges, governing provinces and diplomatic relations with other factions.

A new mechanism introduced to the Total War franchise, spells, was also described, together with the influence of the Winds of Magic as well as general tips on how to use spells to their fullest potential. What is more, inside you can find descriptions of all of the story-related missions for every faction in the game. The guide is closed with a list of all of the achievements, as well as information on how to acquire them.

The following guide was prepared based on the very hard difficulty level, but all the differences in difficulty levels will be marked in the guide.

Total War: Warhammer is the tenth installment of the popular series of games from the Creative Assembly studios, combining the elements of governing a country in a turn-based system with effective battles lead in real time. However, contrary to the previous titles of the franchise, the action of the game was set up in the dark fantasy world known from battle and role-playing games prepared by the Games Workshop.

The Total War: Warhammer guide contains:

A description of all the factions in the game: Empire, Dwarves, Greenskins, Vampire Counts, Chaos;

A thorough description of all of the key aspects of gameplay - movement around the map, governing your country, diplomacy and leading battles and sieges;

General tips associated with the gameplay, as well as with the new mechanisms in the Total War franchise - magic;

A detailed description of all of the story-related missions, for every faction available in the game;

Hints that might come handy in multiplayer games;

A list of all of the achievements, coupled with the information that might prove helpful to acquire them.

Basics

Campaign Map | Basics

In Total War: Warhammer the entire Old World can be found on the campaign map. This is the biggest and the most important continent in this universe and may bear some resemblance to Europe. A player can conquer this land by using one of the five in-game factions:

Empire- a strong faction of men (similar to the Habsburg dynasty from XVI century)

Dwarfs- honorable warriors living in the strongholds in the mountains.

Greenskins- wild groups of orcs, goblins and similar races from the wastelands

Vampire Counts- The undead led by the necromancers

Chaos- destructive and demonic forces [available via the pre-order or after buying a DLC]

Apart from that, the campaign map is filled with neutral factions controlled by the AI (some of the factions will be playable after other DLCs are published). Also, each of the factions (except for Chaos) is divided into smaller, individual groups. This means, that upon starting the game, the player starts the campaign having only one province. Thus, the first tours are spent on creating and maintaining the right relationships with the 'relatives'. The map below shows the starting position and the political situation in the Old World.

The main mechanics of the gameplay are mostly the same as they were in the other Total War games. However, two basic differences can be found:

There is no total conquer anymore - A limit has been imposed concerning the areas that one can conquer, in order to make the gameplay more interesting and difficult, but also to avoid some potential story plotholes. For example, greenskins cannot conquer anything beyond the mountains and wastelands on the south of the Old World (they can still plunder them however).

Winds of Magic - Magic is common in any type of fantasy and so it is present in Warhammer. Here, sorcerers and spells exist but their effectiveness varies depending on the location. If the Winds are strong in a particular area (depicted as colorful waves of energy hovering over the ground), casting spells can be easier and vice versa. It is advised to keep an eye on it before attacking an enemy.

It is important to mention the types of characters that play the crucial role in the campaign map.

Legendary lords - Faction leaders. Before starting a campaign, a player has to choose a character that will stand in the charge of the kingdom. All of the Legendary Lords differ between each other with their special abilities, artefacts that they can obtain during the missions and also with their goals required to win the campaign. They are also immortal, even if they are killed they are resurrected couple of tours later.

Lords - They are leading the armies to battle (Generals), lead the fleets (Admirals) and maintaining the provinces (Overseers). Each of the lords has different abilities which help him in taking active part in the battle and giving particular bonuses on the territories they maintain.

Heroes - They move on the map by themselves sabotaging and assassinating other heroes. They can also calm down the riots in the provinces and discover unraveled parts of the Old World. They can also be added to army in order to get more help from their abilities during the fight.

Tips & tricks | Basics

Given the fact that the games from the Total War franchise are extremely complicated and quite difficult, it's worth to look through the tips presented in this guide before (and during) you start your adventure with the game. Those will be most useful to the players that are new to the franchise, but even the most experienced players should find something interesting here.

War and expansion

Country and province development

Army and combat

Magic

War and expansion

1. Before you enter war with a faction make sure that your country is well protected and prepared for the task. You must make sure that the public order and corruption is in check, and that the borders of your country are safe. More on that can be found in the War chapter of this guide.

2. Don't ever fight with multiple factions at once. You might think that you have a huge advantage over all of the factions because you have numerous provinces under your control. However, you won't be able to protect all of them at all times as you won't be able to afford such a huge army. You should pick your enemies carefully.

3. If you absolutely have to fight with multiple factions, try to do so on a single frontline. It can happen that you want to declare war to a faction and its ally will join the fight. This is why you should pick your enemies carefully and try to attack those factions that either can't hope for an ally reinforcements, or at least with allies that will come from the side that you are hoping to expand, not attacking you in the back.

4. Never go to a war when your income does not allow you to. If you have a very small amount of gold in your treasure don't even think about war. During the expansion your income might suddenly go into a negative value and when your treasury will be empty the country will enter bankruptcy. More on that can be found in the War chapter.

5. Refrain from declaring war against factions whose settlements you won't be able to capture. If you can't capture a settlement and then the whole province, attacking an enemy has no point. The gold can be earner by using other methods and making new enemies will never pay off in the long run. Factions whose settlements can be captured by your own race can be found in the chapters about each faction.

6. Don't fight with faction that has a similar strength, or is stronger than your own. It doesn't mean that you will lose such a war, as with proper preparations you can defeat an enemy that is multiple times stronger than you. By going into such a war you will be exposed to attacks of other factions as you have to send all of your forces towards the enemy you want to fight with.

Country and province development

1. Keep the public order in provinces in check. There's nothing dangerous awaiting you unless the public order drops to -100, but you must make sure to reach the maximum, 100, as quickly as possible. This way you will have a lot easier job to keep the order in provinces in check, and the corruption will have a smaller influence.

2. Keep the corruption as low as possible. Keeping corruption on 0 is extremely difficult as there will be numerous heroes from the Vampire Counts and Chaos factions roaming your terrains, but you should try to keep it below 10%. Corruption can be decreased with Heroes, technology, Lords' abilities, as well as some buildings.

3. Capture whole provinces. Thanks to that you will be able to prevent the public order from decreasing because of fights over control of the cities. Additionally, you will be able to activate the Commandment, which will give the whole province a huge boost.

4. Construct military and high-leveled buildings in the capital of the province. The capital of a province is the one located on the left side of the province screen. It's the only settlement of the province that can be developed up to 5th level (all the others can reach up to 3rd), giving you access to all of the buildings and their upgrades. There's no point in wasting this precious space for buildings that can be constructed elsewhere.

5. Remaining settlements of the province should be used for economy buildings. The remaining settlements of a province can only be upgraded to the 3rd level, which is why they area ideal to construct economy buildings there - those that give you increased income, public order, growth, or allow you to produce goods to trade with other factions.

6. If the settlement is located on the border with a hostile faction, construct defensive buildings there. The best option is to build the second level of a wall there - thanks to that the enemies will have to use siege equipment to get through the walls and will have to defeat larger garrisons. In most cases this should be enough to prevent the enemy from attacking you in the first place.

7. Each province should have at least one building decreasing corruption. Those buildings work only in the province that they are constructed in, but they give immense boosts used to decrease the corruption of a land. A good choice for such a building is the capital of a province, where you will be able to upgrade the building to increase its effectiveness even further.

Army and combat

1. Refrain from using only the most powerful units in combat. Encounters with only heavy cavalry units will quickly end - with your defeat, as the enemies will have access to a number of units that can easily counter them.

2. Refrain from taking a large number of missile units with you. Aside from Dwarves where most of the ranged units are decent in melee combat, most of the missile units in the game become worthless as soon as they run out of ammunition. Your army should consist of a maximum of 20-25% missile units.

3. Refrain from taking too many artillery units with you. A case similar to the one described above. Despite the fact that raining artillery fire on the enemy might be tempting (and effective, if properly used), artillery units may quickly become ineffective when, for instance, an enemy reaches your army with his whole army. Firing at the enemy will now be connected with the possibility of firing on your own units.

4. Don't send your Lord alone into combat. Whether your Lord is an incredibly powerful combatant or not, Lord is only a single unit on the battlefield and can be easily killed when focused by enemies. When your Lord dies, the leadership (morale) of your troops will decrease severely and most battles will be lost.

5. Don't send mages into combat. Mages are extremely powerful when casting spells from afar, but they are useless when fighting in melee - even the weakest enemy units will be able to severely damage your high-leveled mages. You should keep them away from combat and use them to cast spells.

6. Pay attention to the leadership of your units. The leadership serves the purpose of the units' morale and if the bar representing it gets emptied the a unit will route from the battlefield and you will lose control over it. Additionally, routing units have negative effect on the morale of other units - in a worst case scenario your units may run away from the battlefield in a chain-lighting reaction.

7. Pay attention to the fatigue of your troops. Fatigue influences the effectiveness of a unit in combat (and in some degree the leadership - exhausted units have decreased leadership and are easier to route). Units fighting in melee will deal less damage (and take more damage from enemies), missile units will take longer to reload, and your cavalry won't be able to perform charges. If your units are exhausted, try to find them at least a few seconds of peace (when they are not moving and fighting), which will allow them to rest a bit.

8. Don't chase after routing enemies across the whole map. You won't be able to kill off the entire unit, and your own units will quickly tire and will lose their effectiveness.

9. Flank enemy units and prevent the enemy from doing that to your own. Flanking enemy units have a huge negative impact on their leadership - units