Epidemius Immortal Empires Campaign Review

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[@jamesmcdonald1108]

Will you be covering Gelt and Franz since their campaigns are very different now?

[@erensametkaratas6593]

Seconding this! Especially Gelt

[@maskdanger]

I love Gelt campaign now

[@James-sk4db]

He’s on Pat leave so probably queued these all up weeks ago, so don’t expect an answer soon But I hope so.

[@Krispe]

Would love to see him do this as well

[@ZZuluZ]

Yes pls!

[@AROSP]

Really enjoying the recent content, it's great that you're reviving this series each time new LL's drop. Got to echo the other commentors asking about campaign reviews for Gelt and Franz. I think their current starts + new mechanics are enough to warrant a revisit for both! Cheers Legend.

[@Chandichada]

I am one of those passive players. And i love Nurgle. Thank you for your review.

[@antcig]

There is a very good plague to spread against a particular foe. One the plague symptom reduce the healing cap by 50% normally, and 100% when boosted. If you managed to spread it against a Vampire faction you are removing around half of their maximum health and some of their magic since they will still try to heal themselves in manual battle. The problem with Epidemius campaign mecanic is that you naturally should be maxing it in the mid game since infection is plentiful and the limiting factor of your army should be gold rather than infection. Spreading max plague on the border of your settlement will make sure you have the boost at all time.

[@N4chtigall]

I wish that plagues had more "active" effects instead of just plain +/- stats. Like chance of nurglings spawn on units death or something like that. Anyway I still think that Epidemius is enjyoable and Nurgle rework made the race much, much better. Before that they were so boring that I have played them once or twice and I was done. Now I finished both Epidemius and Tamurkhan campaings and soon I will come back to them again.

[@jays.6843]

Tamurkhan is also so violently overpowered that it makes his campaign a complete blast to play. He's just a one-maggot steamroller once he gets his mount.

[@Zebo12345678]

Yeah I was thinking just the other day, that the negative effects of plagues should both scale with nurgle corruption and have in-battle effects. There should be plagues that spread more nurgle corruption than others, and plagues that use that corruption to create powerful battle effects. Things like reducing speed by a percentage scaled to local corruption, or giving the plagued enemy army a regeneration contact effect (so that when they attack your units, you get a rebate on the damage you take) or just something as simple as reduced physical resistance which could go a long way. I have basically no complaints with the positive effects from putting plagues on your own armies and settlements.

[@Xiteri]

For this particular lord, with enough plagues "tallied" up , anything in combat will actually take damage over time in melee, as long as you keep up enough of them, certainly adds more incentive then just the basic plagues, however, something like the campaign hexes from mother ostankya still are more powerful / targeted on a per-unit focus, but she does not have the army/wide damage over time as this does.

[@narutoxley]

Damn, Daniel's getting the IRS on his ass...

[@oooeee5556]

Archaon with the Hellcannon declaring war on you:

[@jaredcullum117]

If nothing else, Epidemius was nice to confederate when playing as Tahmurkahn. Just set him up with a bunch of Plaguebearers and use him to help conquer Kislev and Norsca.

[@TheWujuStyle]

Legend: Epidemius is the first free LL in Warhammer 3. Belakor: Am I a joke to you?

[@UrbanArmada]

Wasn't Belakor an unlockable lord like Boris?

[@tigermunky]

I have to say that in my Kugath campaign, both Tamarkand and Epidemius have carved out fairly good empires, with 17 settlements each. once I finished conquering Cathay, they were both ready for confederation. BOOM! I get a healthy portion of the map for doing nothing. However, I agree with Legend in principle. Usually, the factions you'd like to confederate with play like trash.

[@kyledabearsfan]

Followed your tips on not trusting auto resolve and I'm having a lot more success turning those "impossible" fights around. I may not be great, but I'm better than I thought I was.

[@Xiteri]

Also for this lord, the damage over time for everything in melee, and the summons make things more satisfying, and I loved the exalted plaguebearers with the huge ammo boost, and then fully upgraded unclean ones to blight boil many blobs, and are likely not counted in auto resolve at all. I think my high point, was taking down thunderbarges with plaguebearers and marauder throwing axes (before having good access to soul grinders or an airforce) , with Warriors of chaos however, I don't think I have built a rotfly at all, as they got other options, like the basic manticores, or screamers of tzeentch are cheaper and anti-large, more suited to fight gyros early.

[@jvd7374]

Hey @LegendofTotalWar, if you recruit a new lord turn 2 in the Forest of Decay and just force march him upwards you will always be in time to reinforce the Daemons of Chaos in the siege versus the Tzeench faction. With Epidemius you get lucky maybe one in ten times; this is a guaranteed cheese assist.

[@itzrixis1919]

Played a 170 turn campaign with him. Tamurkhan got wiped out really early before I even realized and missed a chance to confederate. It's okay though, I had a good time with the exalted unclean one. The biggest struggle was fighting against malus early, and then fighting the sisters of twilight who had a bunch of flying missile units and I had almost nothing to kill them. Personally I really enjoyed his campaign. I ended my campaign after wiping out mazdamundi and the entire elf donut.

[@punkboy448]

To use plague aggressively you gotta agressively use map agent to spread it first. I know plagues seems low impact at first, but as a slow faction, you have to step back to see the bigger picture. At this point you have an income ready for at least 3 more decent army, but I'd be curious to see what cheapstacks can do to the Empire if they are supported by plagues. If you infect some agents and use their actions on army or settlements, it can pay for itself and rack even more loot and potential vassals to cover your ass.I think it also utilize plagues more in an active way. Maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but now I'm curious and I'm trying it. I really love this serie and I'm refering to it from time to time when I try something new. Really helped me in my N'kari campaing. Thanks Legend !

[@Xiteri]

Tech Tree duration and immune duration will help massively, also taking care of getting rid of Legion of Chaos, as they get their bowelsteep on many places otherwise.

[@dualmonkeyx]

You mentioned "once you've defeated Malus it's easy from there", well... My preferred start as Epi (Leg/VH) is attacking Malus turn 3 right as he's conquered the nearby settlement. It's a really hard fight where you have to prevent him transforming. I have won the fight where he transformed fairly late but had to kite a lot after army losses because he's unbreakable. Then its just mopping up his black ark and anything else. It's one early difficult fight that saves you so much future hassle. Then the world becomes your oyster.

[@adrienwarad]

- covering the world with plagues (abusing cultist faction bonus distance on campaign) buffing hard the count makes you using a lot of invocations in battles for epidemius, the final stages are very violent when you stabilize it up - when announced, his campaign was the least appealing of all the nurgle one to me, but when i played it, i really loved it far more than tamurkhan and kugath - you can do pretty nice negatives stuff on enemies as you can do very nice positive one (i always play very hard campaign, hard battles), most important is to make them durable and able to switch targets constantly, even when they start in your area so you infect the most non-nurgle people as possible - as a master administrator character for nurgle, you have to get your administrating mastery through the whole campaign, very thematic and making the whole fun ! => i really like his start position, but i still feel it would have been more unique and fun to have nurgle in lustria start ^^ (i love to kill lizards, hate them) about the whole DLC: my best love without any hesitation is elspeth from very far ! second is epidemius (also, epidiuem color is perfect on chaos dwarf units, good yellow), then tamurkhan (nice but i like only some chieftan, so i never use the whole mechanics) and last malakai (even reworked, i still never like normal dawis, and i still on every pages of their book of grudge each time im involved :D )

[@Sanguis3k]

I think you were spot on with this one, I quite enjoy Epidemius but given how much he relies on plagues which you correctly said were too passive and not really that powerful on the strategic side of things really limited my perceived options, quite often I'd run the same -ammo option with maybe a change on the other two when I was fighting most other factions. I think plagues do with an overhaul but I wouldn't want them to be things that cause colossal attrition or really were game breaking unless it's becomes more of an effort to spread them but I think some more strategic effects such as -move speed / map move range or -missile range or accuracy would be a more interesting choice. Maybe even a menace below type plague option that lets me cause nurglings to spew out of my enemies would be interesting

[@Xiteri]

Main thing I noticed that will help the plagues a lot, is by getting rid of the Legion of Chaos, as they will take their plagues / immunities, instead of yours.

[@Lockerus]

Epidemius is the one Lord I haven’t played, blew my mind to hear he isn’t a spell caster.

[@Ax_Dj0]

We need re-evaluate Gelt campaign, his campaign mechanics are better than Elspeth now

[@darthioan]

Who is we? And what does re-evaluation mean?

[@ImperialMindMusic]

Google it 🐱

[@Ax_Dj0]

@@darthioan I'm sorry I'm not native in English language, I should clarify. We (as Legend viewers) need to see a new review from him on Gelt campaign, new start position, new mechanic, some changes in skill tree, diplomaticy, etc.

[@mr.joesterr5359]

Bro just google english words lol. Ur being weird. ​@@darthioan

[@darthioan]

@@Ax_Dj0 Thank you. It makes sense now!

[@jobvermuyen5382]

His upgraded tallyman of blades ability is actually way better then what he had previously or the cultist his ability. It make it so that he can summon 2 exalted plaguebearer anywhere on the map that dont degrade. With his faction effect you can get more uses, so iirc, you can get like 4 free exalted plaguebearers every battle anywhere on the map. I did find that very strong!

[@AOGamingXII]

I was gonna try to do the campaign without purchasing the DLC at first, but later in the episode, I decided to purchase. You can basically rack up a lot of settlements/Provinces in a short amount of time. I took out the Tzeetch Faction and Demon Prince in Episode, Took out Malus and the Subtle Torture Faction Episode 2. Haven't played that many FLC, but Nurgle(Epidemius in this case) was kinda fun. I didn't have this type of experience with Ku'gath before update 5.0. Ya ever want to watch my Epidemius Campaign just come over to my channel to watch them. I won't post any link here out of respect for LoTW, he's the reason why I got so good in Legedary/Very Hard Difficulty.

[@bastianrhone9390]

i kind of realized in my recent kugath campaign that its always more worth it to boost you're own army with plagues. beat up army? boost there replenishment. need money? reduce upkeep and boost money. ect and a lot of the positive effects have negatives for opposing army's but nothing that will single handedly kill anything. for kugath i focused on reducing his upkeep and boosting growth. boring but effective i do wish the plagues did more in his battles. like the different combos giving in battle effects besides the normal stuff every nurgle caster can do.

[@chapter_brother5437]

The main problem with plagues is where exatly u want to balance them. Make them too OP and players gonna scream whenever they got one. Make them underwhelming against your foes so ppl gonna focus on own bonuses and feel passive about them.

[@R3GARnator]

Plagues were devastating in pre-Warhammer Total Wars tho.

[@chapter_brother5437]

@@R3GARnator so they were in Warhammer II while enemies advanced on your own land but some lonely rat showed up to say hi-hi!

[@masaheimoi]

I think there are two big problems with debuffing your enemy. First is that it is difficult to say how big deal it was, especially with economy and growth. Second is that when AI gives your army the plague, it will affect affect you for several turns, unless you sit around doing nothing waiting for it to pass. When you give plague to enemy most likely outcomes are either that they sit around doing nothing for several turns, or you kill their army.

[@theStamax]

I haven't tried him yet but excited to give it a shot. I kinda like plague bearers conceptually and finally having a lord where it pays to get them early is a big plus for me (kugath getting anything beyond nurglings until late in the campaign is a real waste of coin and time)

[@lucifenxarthos625]

Did you see my mail about how to keep Gelt's original province while choosing to return to the empire?

[@ZZuluZ]

Do tell!

[@lucifenxarthos625]

@@ZZuluZ Short answer - you only give back provinces IN CATHAY - meaning if you grab one outside cathay (from ghorst or the ogres with a single province) you can hire a general there after you get transported. Second part, you only give back settlements you... own - but your goal is just to destroy that one cathay faction. Now if an... accident happens and all your settlements get abandoned the turn before, theres nothing you can do about that... aside from resettling them with your freshly recruited general. Either raze the last town of that faction to settle it, or conquer it and give it back so he can defend you from that side.

[@CapybaraConnoisseur89]

What I did was get Volcano Heart and I sold it to Daniel and made Military Alliance then I put smackdown on Malus Darkblade, got Sorcerer Lord and Melee Lord following me. I just focus on Plaguebearers because they get boost obviously and can be extremely powerful with Epidemius. I had a lot more success with him on VH/VH.

[@cap258]

personally I took the route of finishing the early game enemy and then I went immidiately for Darkblade, made friends with the demonprince and killed darkelves and norsca until I invaded the empire and kislev. To be fair his aoe damage aura does decent damage with that he is actually pretty good against infantry.

[@midnightrose23]

I think the plagues have a lot of potential in MULTIPLAYER campaigns, for those people that play them often, and the even smaller amount of people that play against their friends instead of with them, but generally I agree. Plagues mostly are better at giving the player benefits than actually doing snything to AI

[@theheatinferno8420]

Tamurkan was pretty aggressive when I played Kugath recently. Weird.

[@senshibat8920]

Good Series of looks. Good on you mate. Im glad not to see the Plague fathers bois turn and spray on the green and pleasant land. the plot would purchase some twisted khorne;3

[@aleckazamproductions8139]

Comment to support: Hoping you'll give us a historical once a week or so ❤

[@shrillcrayfish6168]

I feel like pleagues should be something a town needs to actively take care of maybe. And if they dont an army starts forming of like infected people. Till it reqches a Viral load or something. Then spawns a weak army

[@skeenerbug601]

These campaign reviews are much more useful when they're shorter and don't describe whatever did or didn't happen in your latest campaign. The first IE campaign review you did was 2:20, this is 18:35. Surely there's a happy medium between 2 mins and 20 mins yeah?

[@ewennnn]

This dlc was very good, not overpriced and you can get them separaterly if you want. Hope they keep going that way !

[@angryroy6277]

Yeah, they definitely made it a point to make it easy to confederate when playing Nurgle. You get a ton of those ancillaries that increases relations by +15 and like you said, they tend to not do much anyway.

[@josstroeven2380]

would plagues need to be doing +/- 50% or more to be usefull or worthwhile then? its one of those things that could cripple the player when against nurgle or make everything a cakewalk when playing as nurgle

[@fosterbennington6405]

Fighting alongside him there is a really good idea, normally I just attack him first instead and fight him at that spot and then take the settlement

[@parttimehero8640]

I'm curios to see the future FLC LL I really hope CA uses them to fill some lacks in other factions. In addition I hope that CA will just copy more the the mechanics already in the game!

[@filada05]

Great vid as always! I feel like Nurgle received some long awaited interestimg features and might be now more fun to play. Also, on another note: could someone tell me how to join Legends discord server? I have recently found out he has one but I dont know where is a link to it. Is it just for patrons?

[@Zotok990]

I played epidemius for about an hour. I'm glad he's here but as a deamon, why not play ku'gath imo. They both are similair in their demonic bonuses and plague creation. I find ku'gaths start position far more challenging and interesting. Ku'gath has many friends or enemies. epidemius has about two. Danny and malus. The nurgle rework is pretty good but I don't care for the cooldown the beneficial plague bonuses. I'd like to have the plus building growth and income more avaiable but whatever, Small issues. FAR FAR better than before when you had to progress through the tech tree to fully infect one providence. With all of ku'gath's global plague bonuses. I hope to see more active use of spefic faction based resources imo. Maybe something like skulls can be consumed to speed up local recruitment or more capacity for khorne. More uses for devotees. Tzeench is pretty good so far. Helps create more player input for problem solving.

[@Dobader]

“Sitting on a toilet or whatever” …Skibidimius? 🤔

[@LancePeebles]

His summons don’t disintegrate after a set time with the upgrade Another thing is you want to prioritize numbers of plagues rather than quality of them? He’s actually supposed to be fairly aggressive in the mid to late game with plagues because you’ll never be able to passively get it very high so you have to use cultist and be aggressive

[@official_kden]

In my current Epi campaign i had to confed tamurkan early because he got smashed. If he is below his quest item level while you confed him he cant get it btw. The quest just never shows up for the black cleaver. Bug for sure

[@snaker9er]

havent tried epidemius yet but tamurkhan was an absolute beast with kayzk

[@invictus7736]

You can just keep Volcano's Heart and not take the province capital and later on you can trade it to vassalize the demon prince

[@Frewer63]

They need to rework Karls campaign now. The mechanics are almost pointless due to the fact that there's so many aggressive enemies around that 5 turns in most of the elector states are owned by either Wargrove, Norsca, Kislev, Wood Elves, Beastmen, Vampire Counts or Greenskins - making your entire prestige system mostly useless. It also bugs out a lot and gives you negative rep for 'attacking an elector state' even though they're the ones who attacked me, after I colonized their ruins and had low enough control that a rebellion spawned with Boris and attacked me.

[@LancePeebles]

Any guide that you could make for Daniel now that he has a new start location (he no longer gets a province capital as his starting settlement)

[@Xsorus]

His faction mechanic gets to be wild later on

[@alializade5094]

you missed one of his skills in his personal line a very good one as well the renitent skill

[@thijsv948]

I personally noped out of his campaign pretty quickly tbh lol To be fair, I had little experience with Nurgle, so it was between him and Kugath anyway (didnt get the DLC), and I still needed to figure the faction out, so coming back to WH3 after a while and immediately jumping into VH/VH might have been on me lol. But I just struggled to get started. Starting against Tzeentch with a faction that can't replace losses in the early stage made it tough, and afterwards I didn't really know where to go to, probably cause it was more high stakes if you happened to lose. Pile his specific mechanic on top of that that isn't really going to do much for a lot of the early campaign made me switch to Kugath pretty quickly. Cause he, on the other hand, has mechanics that might not add something truly epic, but at least it is immediately at its maximum effectiveness. Paired with a much clearer direction that you can go in (Ghorst and then Cathay or Greasus), I felt it worked much better. With epidemius he felt more thrown in somewhere randomly like that'll do. Might give him a try again later, but Kugath just felt so much more fun.

[@quintonmaldonado8368]

I like the old world mod that starts you out in the plague lands...it's by chaosrobie but is being updated before playable

[@nightrunnerks]

Not sure if its relevant to mention, but i had to link my Steam account to a "Creative Assembly" account in order to gain access to Epidemius and the other free content.

[@kodiakjak1]

Ive played 6 or 7 short campaigns since thrones, across a bunch of races. Tamurkhan has lost to kholek every time so far. On my chorf playthrough he was gone by turn 5. VH/VH only qol mods (no gameplay/stats)

[@hereisjohnny1875]

Updated Empire unit tier roster when?

[@saltiney8578]

The AI way overvalues trading settlements its kinda silly, like I can smash half of someones empire and give them back 2 settlements and now were buddies again

[@meowmeow9326]

attrition plague can be supger good when also sieging the army

[@joncarter3761]

Tbh I still don't like Nurgle factions, it's better for sure but I hate how they recruit troops. Until that is changed I won't be using any troops, just heros because they can be recruited at any time and it's pretty easy to increase caps as long as you're aggressive at the start.

[@FrozenFreeze-l3l]

Thanks legend❤

[@daithomas1430]

With the changing of the ways you can force wars, to destroy them can't you?

[@UkeRocket]

“FLC is usually subpar to paid content.” /laughs in Alith Anar

[@stalliontv8788]

Ogres need help bad, felt so useless being Greasus fighting Tamurkhan and his 6 LHS

[@mr.joesterr5359]

Cant wait for gelt review

[@rickylahey657]

"I have destroyed entire races" - legend hahaha ha blood hosts are great

[@p1553d0f]

I don’t like the new plague mechanics. Attrition was the only useful (detrimental) symptom and now you have to wait 3 turns every time you use it

[@themotive1547]

interesting after the official release

[@sliceofdice9135]

by turn 40 i had 50 factions infected. one maxed out plague will spread like mad.

[@Majestic_Dwarves]

i love Epidemius he is my numer 1 nurgle lord and i dont like khorne i hate playing khorne soo..yeah he is very good for me

[@gregoryshinn9805]

Thanks for the video

[@acheron16]

Even on Normal plagues are way too weak against the AI. They're insanely annoying when the AI uses them on you, but not the other way around.

[@Ikaros0153]

I absolutely HATE nurgle mechanics, so epidemius having almost no pluses and his mechanic not viable "early" campaign (which for nurgle factions feels like forever) it was the most painstaking thing to even accomplish the short victory. Tldr nurgle sucks farts

[@anthonykrejci9515]

Nah you just a scrub. Nurgle is great

[@orfanclub6288]

When legend doesn't call daniel daniel :(

[@jaime7204]

Covid was never so relevant until you posted this

[@LuckyAJC]

need a franz and gelt video

[@Eliwood29]

Isnt Belakor the first FLC LL in WH3?

[@BucketOfCoins]

Nah belakor came with tww3 as an unlock reward for beating the base campaign

[@gHGhej]

​@BucketOfCoins Rewriting history there, yes he was a shadow of a lord but with CoC, he become a full legion in his own right.

[@Eliwood29]

@@BucketOfCoins Ye he was a lord for the RoC campaign for winning it but he got his own FLC WoC faction for IE when the CoC DLC launched which at that point made him the first FLC LL

[@BucketOfCoins]

his faction is flc, he was already in the game and usable

[@gHGhej]

@@BucketOfCoins Poor Boris and Duke then if they are LLs 🤣

[@darthtom100]

Be'lakor was actually the first FLC lord in WH3. (At least promoting him to LL status) Much more unique and interesting than Epidemius imo, there's a lot going on there. Epidemius definitely gives me "last minute LL" vibes.

[@Kerenos93]

Belakor was included in the base game, same as Boris. Where did you download Belakor from?

[@darthtom100]

@@Kerenos93 Not as a LL. He was originally a reward for beating the RoC campaign. When CoC was released he became a LL with his own faction.

[@Kerenos93]

@@darthtom100 so updates to existing characters are now counted as downloadable content?

[@Kerenos93]

He was still a legendary lord leading an army. He could not be downloaded separately like the actual FLC lords.

[@darthtom100]

@@Kerenos93 Yes.

[@Shredow2]

sup minute gang

[@zanderaw]

This franchise has fallen to abysmal depths. These games are quite literally pay to win now - and not cheap P2W either. Every update if you don't buy the DLC you're forced to sit there and suffer as the AI recruits the new OP power creep units. For contrast, although Paradox DLC is expensive they at least don't shove it in your face - the AI gets only the enabled units, and in a multiplayer campaign EVERYONE has access to the host's DLC. To say nothing of multiplayer battles, where it's even clearer. When you add something as strong as a thunderbarge to multiplayer and gate it behind a $9 paywall, I don't see how you escape the pay to win allegations. I suppose they don't - they just think it's ok. And apparently it is ok, because you all keep buying it. This company is a dumpster fire and if their games weren't so unique they'd have been run out of business years ago. I have nothing good to say about them at all. It has been downhill since Rome 2.

[@jonasfull]

easy answer disable ai cheats

[@Scaphism36]

First?

[@sako5751]

Narrowly before the bots :D

[@Scaphism36]

@@sako5751 close enough I suppose

[@tinoc6451]

Nurgle stinks

[@NuStiuFrate]

I don't get how Legend is so positive with Epidemius. He is pointless and boring as hell, what a waste of dev time. There's barely any reason to play him instead of kugath.

[@donkey9113]

His start position is way more fun than kugaths, plus he can easily confed maggot kin and tamurkhan

[@Majestic_Dwarves]

i dont agree i play him and he is very fun for me i never feel boring or pointless xD

[@SheepyPanda95]

Hello there ladies and gentlemen, I'm planning to buy Warhammer 3 when I save enough money for it. And obviously I also need to buy the several DLC's. So just wanna ask, as someone who never plays multiplayer, which DLC's are worth to buy or I really need to get? I know it's weird asking this question here but any answer is appreciated!