TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER III
WHAT’S NEW IN THE BIGGEST GAMES Immortal Empires is a messy masterpiece.
Iwas vibrating with excitement when I fired up the Immortal Empires beta. Despite its diminishing returns, I really dug Total War: Warhammer III’s Realm of Chaos campaign, but it felt like a starter designed to whet the appetite before the mega campaign’s appearance. This is what I was waiting for. And, thank Sigmar, Creative Assembly has delivered.
278 factions and 86 playable legendary lords. That’s how many groups are vying for control of Warhammer’s war-torn world. And what a world. Tiny, one-settlement islands, archipelagos surrounded by shipwrecks, massive continents full of deserts, forests and mountains shaped like skulls—it’s a big place.
This collision of three games is, naturally, quite a bit larger than the already mind-bogglingly massive Mortal Empires, but adding all these extra races, factions and landmasses into the brawl does more than just fatten up the campaign. It’s also been remixed, with familiar factions moved around to make use of all this extra space and create interesting matchups. You’ll now find undead and dark elf pirates hanging around Cathay, for instance, who make excellent use of the rivers that cut through the empire.
Of the new additions, the Chaos armies leave the largest impact. Thanks to Warhammer III’s focus on daemons, Chaos quickly spreads in Immortal Empires, which will be good news for anyone who’s grown sick of the Ordertide. The elves, dwarves and humans were much more likely to work together and overtake the forces of Chaos in Mortal Empires. But now they have Nurgle’s plagues, Slaanesh’s seductive abilities, Khorne’s unrelenting armies and the magical powerhouse of Tzeentch to contend with.
In my first campaign, I picked one of the new Champions of Chaos factions, the Ecstatic Legions, led by the horny Azazel. The Champions of Chaos are a lot like the armies of the Chaos gods, and in Azazel’s case he gets a lot of Slaanesh’s tricks, but they also have plenty of their own, like the ability to elevate units. Troops can be transformed from mortal humans to Chaos-infused nightmares, while mortal lords and heroes can eventually become daemon princes.
Despite the fact that Azazel wants to turn the world into his personal sex dungeon, he’s not above diplomacy. In fact, it’s his superpower. Just like in the Realm of Chaos campaign, Slaanesh’s minions can seduce not just armies, but entire factions, building up their seductive influence until they can consume their target. This influence spreads by contact, both diplomatic and violent, so enemies and friends can be turned into vassals against their will.
POWER-UP
The advantage it gives you feels a lot more pronounced in Immortal Empires, thanks in part to the sheer number of targets you get. Great! I want to feel overpowered when I’m a daemonic monster on a conquest binge. And when I’m fighting said daemonic monster, I want to be terrified that my allies are going to fall to his influence. Given that this is in beta, we can expect balance tweaks to appear, but hopefully not so many of them that the wild asymmetry comes under threat.
Randomized mid- and endgame scenarios prove to be a much more interesting way to stop players steamrolling the opposition. These events shake things up by throwing a huge challenge the player’s way, like all the vampire factions rising up in an attempt to occupy their places of power and take over the world. When this one happened to me, I was mopping up the last holdouts of the empire. Ten turns later I was fighting for my very survival.
Empires can collapse in a few turns, and just as quickly old ones can come back from the dead. This constant cycle of death and rebirth sees borders perpetually undulate. A massive invasion with world-shaking ramifications could be happening on the other side of the map involving factions you’ve not even met. It should be too big, too unwieldy, and it’s certainly very messy and hard to wrap your head around—there must be a limit to the number of unique faction mechanics the human brain can juggle—but it’s all just brilliant.