Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Empire

This is the tactics page for the Total War: Warhammer version of The Empire.

Why play The Empire?

• Because who doesn't love the sight of normal, everyday humans beating back the supernatural through sheer force of arms?
• A difficult, but very rewarding playstlye that rewards unit cohesion and combined arms tactics.
• Guns. Lots and lots of guns.
• Because the Karl Franz memes are too god damn good to not play them at least once.
• Humanity, fuck yeah!

Pros

• Jack of all Trades: There's not a single department anyone can say you're bad in. The Empire can be played in a variety of different ways that can be viable from gunlines to infantry brawls to skirmish tactics. No plan is off the table for The Empire.
• Gunpowder: Gunpowder units are powerful in this game and can easily swing a fight in your favorite if they are allowed to do their thing. Handgunners and Cannons can make any army regret coming to the field if used well. Their artillery is amazing for its cost and can blast most things into kingdom come.
• Flexibility: As explained before, The Empire can bring a variety of tactics to the table, which can make them hard to predict. They have an answer for just about every race in the game, and while they have some uphill match ups, they can get together a few lists against everyone/
• Cavalry: A very strong Cavalry faction, up there with the best (which kind of detracts form the whole "Jack of all Trades" thing mentioned above) Empire Knights are amazing for their price, and Demigryphs can take on just about any other cav unit one on one and win.
• Powerful Legendary Lords: The Empire has some of the best named characters in the game. Karl Franz and Volkmar can be a massive asset to any battlefield, and Gelt and Wulfhart can be used to amazing effect as well.
• Magic: You have access to every generic lore of magic in the game, including Metal if you pick Gelt as your lord.

Cons

• Master of None: The main downside of most Jack of all Trades factions. Everyone in the game outclasses you at something. Sure, your State Troops are crushing those Men-at-Arms, but you're cav just got ran over by Grail Knights. You're heavy cav chased of those Wild Riders, but now Waywatchers are putting out more value than your missiles could dream off. Yeah, your gunline and artillery are carving up the Chaos Warriors, but know that they are in melee you can kiss your frontline goodbye. You need to make up for your weaknesses when going up against certain factions.
• Poor Infantry: Unless you're going up against the worst of the worst in terms of infantry factions, you are probably not winning the frontline without support. Infantry is mainly there to buy time for your other elements, not win on their own.
• Difficult to Learn: most newer players pick Empire in multiplayer due to their relative ease of campaign in single player, only to learn the are hard as hell in Multiplayer. The Empire is a faction that requires time and finesse to play perfectly, and aren't something you can pick up and play.
• DLC Locked Content: You don't have it as bad as some factions, but you do have some missing stuff you would like on the battlefield. Also, you are the only core race to never get a FLC lord, meaning if you are committed to not buying DLC, you're stuck with Franz and Gelt (not that they're bad choices, but more options are always good)

The campaign und unique mechanics (The Old World)

The Empire pretty much fills out the entire northern part of the old world, giving you a very secure starting position with either Gelt, Franz or Volkmar. The main passageways into the Empire itself are guarded by the imperial forts from the south and west, and by Kislev from the north.

At the start of the game, The Empire is fractured into many pieces, called the Elector Counts. Each of the Elector Count factions have Fealty, which shows how loyal the individual EC is to your faction. If their fealty reaches zero, they secede from the Empire, causing you to declare war on them, if it reaches ten, they will offer you a confederation, causing you to take direct control of their lands and existing armies. If you control the main capital of an elector count province, you can make one of your lords the Elector count of that province, giving that character a unique bonus as well as the Runefang of the province, a very good Epic Melee weapon with a unique active ability.

Balancing this out is a unique resource called Imperial Authority, which represents how strong your faction is in the politics of the Empire. You basically want it to be at least 1, afromentioned Elector Count events will give you more at the cost of either money or prestige. Prestige increases when you win battles or through events, as well through controlled regions.

As is befitting for the most basic faction in the game, the Empires economy is neither terribly bad, nor excels in anything. For most of the early campaign, you will most likely deal with getting some elector count seats under your belt as well as fighting off the Vampire Counts. You will not expand a whole lot early on. Your overall victory conditions are to bring all of the Empire provinces under your banner and defeat Archaon.

Lords

Legendary Lords

• Karl Franz: So Franz is your beatstick Legendary Lord and my lord is he good at his job. Thanks to his items he is widely considered one of the best non mage lords in the entire game. First off, Deathclaw is able to give him control of the skies and once you have it it should be what he's on for the entire game, campaign or multiplayer. Ghal Maraz also gives him +16 anti large and armor piercing, making him a damn scary monster killer, and wields the Riekland Runefang, which grants an AOE leadership and attack buff to his troops. Combine that with fear and terror and Franz can be a goddamn nightmare for a lot of factions to deal with. His only real weakness is that if your take him you're pretty much forced to being a Lore of Life mage due to how squishy he is. Aside from that, damn good choice for campaign and multiplayer.
• Balthasar Gelt: So Gelt is not only the only lord level mage you have, he's also your only access to the Lore of Metal. The Staff of Volans gives you a crazy amount of magic to play with, meaning you can get quite a few castings of Final Transmutation off in order to delete blobs. Plus, the fact that he can ride a Pegasus means he is decent at keeping himself out of trouble, though if someone gets their hands on him he's probably going to be in trouble. All in all he's a decent pick in multiplayer, especially against heavy armor or factions who love to blob, but there are just better options for you. In campaign he can get some crazy buffs to magic, so he may be worth confederating.
• Volkmar the Grim (DLC): So if you want at least a semi decent chance at winning the infantry fight, you got to bring Volkmar. On his War Altar of Sigmar he can be a crazy powerful lord to assist your state troops. While you may see his lack of armor piercing and wonder how the hell he's going to deal with armored troops, remember that it's his abilities that make him so good. He's got a buffed version of Shield of Faith and Soulfire meaning he can really buff up your infantry troops and deal with blobs fairly well. In the end though, Jade Griffon is what makes him so amazing, as replenishment makes him ungodly hard to kill. Combine that with the fact that he can cast Banishment twice with no winds of magic use, and you got a buffing, blob destroying beast who can turn your infantry fights from a surefire loss to a possible win.
• Boris Todbringer (DLC....Kinda): So our boy Toddy has an odd way to unlock him. You'd think he'd be the FLC choice for the Empire but no, CA did something kind of stupid. He could only be unlocked after beating the Eye for an Eye campaign you get when you buy Call of the Beastmen in game 1, and even then only in custom battles and multiplayer. Meaning you have to own game 1, buy the Beastmen DLC, complete a crappy mini campaign and then you can bring Toddy to multiplayer but not make him playable on campaign. Yeah, it's pretty dumb. Good news is Boris is pretty good in combat. His runefang gives him passive regeneration meaning that while he doesn't do as much damage as Franz, you don't have to babysit him nearly as much. Still has terror and a good leadership bomb ability, so can be very good against low leadership faction.
• Markus Wulfhart (DLC): Markus is your choice if you love kite builds. With vanguard, stalk, nets and TWO different sniping abilities he can take a large target and burn it down pretty darn fast. Armor piercing anti large means he like fighting factions that rely on big armored monsters, so if you're against someone who loves them, he will do wonders. His biggest problem is his lack of mount options meaning that he is pretty prone to getting gooned out and dying to any decent melee character who realizes he can't get away. He can do some great damage and help out your skirmishers with nets and buffs, but if your opponent wants him dead it's honestly not that hard for them to get him that way.

Generic Lords

• General of the Empire:
• Arch Lector (DLC):
• Huntsman General (DLC):

Heroes

• Empire Captain:
• Witch Hunter:
• Warrior Priest :
• Wizards:
  • Amber Wizard:
  • Amethyst Wizard:
  • Jade Wizard:
  • Grey Wizard:
  • Bright Wizard:
  • Celestial Wizard:
  • Light Wizard:

Units

Melee Units

• Spearmen:
• Spearmen(Shield):
• Swordmen:
• GreatSwords:
• Halberdiers:
• Flagellants (DLC):

Missile Infantry

• Free Company Militia (DLC):
• Crossbowmen:
• Handgunners:
• Archers (DLC):
• Huntsmen (DLC):

Cavalry

• Empire Knights:
• Reiksguard:
• Knights of the Blazing Sun (DLC):

Missle Cavalry

• Outriders:
• Outriders (Grenade Launcher):
• Pistoliers:

Monsters Cavalry

• Demigryph Knights:
  • The Royal Altdorf Gryphites (Demigryph Knights)(ROR)
• Demigryph Knights (Halberds):

Chariots

• War Wagon (DLC):
• War Wagon (Mortar) (DLC):

Artillery

• Great Cannon:
  • Hammer of the Witches (Great Cannon)(ROR)
• Helblaster Volley Gun:
  • The Sunmaker (Helstorm Rocket Battery) (ROR)
• Helstorm Rocket Battery:
• Mortar:
• Luminark of Hysh:
• Steam Tank: