Confederating with Franz is actually harder now.  Although, the penalties for doing so are not nearly as extreme.  I'm enjoying the Franz campaign thus far.  The imperial authority buffs seem fine to me.  Franz is significantly less stressful to play now.

woody75s#4456 wrote:

So i am predominately an Empire player. I have played 2500 hrs in WH3 and over 4200 hrs in WH2, mostly as Karl Franz by some margin so i know what to expect from a typical Empire campaign. The Empire certainly had a rough time pre 5.0 so i had certain hopes and expectations playing Elspeth. I think for the most part it's a good faction and i'm enjoying it, however there are currently some issues which i am sure will get looked at in the next few months.

The positives:

1) Elspeth seems to be a great LL. I say seems to be because i've barely used her so it's been hard to get a feel for what she is capable of. More on that later.

2) I love the whole Gunnery School theme and mechanic. Its very thematic for a Nuln based faction and feels like you are leaning heavily into the lore. It actually made me want to field units i never bothered with much before, and now have a new found love for repeater Outriders.

3) Imperial Authority is finally fixed. The whole fealty mechanic was unbelievably bad before so this is a vast improvement.

4) Buildings and recruitment have improved and tier progression feels better. Very glad they got rid of the armoury. Seemed ridiculous you would need it for certain units and not others. With very limited slots i am not sure some of the building will get used much still however. Im looking at you watch towers, inns and toll gates

5) Love the changes to wizards giving them individual skills based on lore of magic which is very thematic and exactly what they needed. I think they have been done very well. On paper i like the changes to Captains and W Hunters but have not really used them.

The negatives:

6) The first thing that really stood out was confederation. 

Basically it now seem trival to confederate Elector counts playing Elspeth and it saddens me. At turn 6 i could confed Stirland who was down to just Wurtbad while having no more than a trade & possibly an access agreement with and my strength rank being somewhere in the 90's. Turn 19 Talabec who still had 4 settlements and again my strength rank was low, with nothing higher than an access agreement in place. Averland at turn 30 with just a trade agreement. Franz, Boris and Nordland all thowing themselves at me by turn 40 without any military agreements in place. Where i feel it was too difficult to confederate before now it's just silly. 

To make matters worse Franz didn't confed anyone at all. As Emperor, unifying the Empire is his thing and he's just not doing it. Even in 4.0 when he was in trouble the AI would have him confed Elector Counts around him and you would see him gradually unifying the Empire, which is basically what you want to see. Playing as Elspeth and being able to confed everything at the expense of Franz feels wrong.

7) Vlad is having an identity crisis. 

So after grabbing Wissenland and Solland by turn 8. Vlad as expected declares war on me around turn 12. Not a shock in the slightest. He had at least 10 settlements, ranked 4th and i was somewhere in the 70's. So pretty much the same behaviour prior to 5.0 when playing as Franz. So not having much of an army at this point i waited for the onslaught and wave after wave of vamp stacks. Much to my surprise it never happened. For 12 more turns he barely moved, and when he did finally attack it was extremely underwhelming. There was none of the aggression he had before no matter who you played. To give some perspective by turn 50 he was only rank 12! Before 5.0 he would reach rank 12 by turn 8. Before i do think he was too aggressive but that was mainly due to instant recruitment being overtuned, now on this first playthough he feels broken.

8) Schematics drop rate needs fine tuning.

All was good at first. Battles giving roughly between 75-300 schematics per battle and the drop/spend rate felt about right based on roughly half my units being guns. A couple of big battles would get you enough for the cheapest upgrades. Now my understanding is that this drop rate is based on actually killing the enemy with those gunpowder units, so more gunpowder you bring the faster the gain.

Now the problem lies when you actually fight an enemy who also uses gunpowder. So in addition to the normal gains which seem fine as already mentioned, when fighting gunpowder armies on the post battle screen the execute captives option is replaced with a salvage munitions option and its ridiculously broken. I fought a rebel army with 19 Skaven Slave Slingers (not gunpowder) and 1 Master Assassin (gunpowder) and gained an additional +4200 schematics for the win, with the follow up battle netting me an extra +1215 schematics. So not only did i gain a ridiculous amount of schematics for just beating 1 lone gunpowder model, it also completely trivialises the whole schematic mechanic.

9) Disconect with Elspeth and gunpowder

Due to schematics being gained through gunpowder kills i found myself not actually using Elspeth for anything at all which is sad. In almost every battle i fought i made sure the heavy lifting was done though guns and artillery. The only time i used Elspeth was as a last resort or if there wasn't a good alternative using guns like during sieges and i think this really takes away from her campaign. One way to fix this is to make schematic gains independant of gunpowder kills but that doesn't really feel right for the faction.

Things im on the fence with:

10) Ironsides. I'm really not sure Nuln Ironsides feel/perform any better than Handgunners. Due to the smaller model count in the unit, i'm not seeing a whole lot of difference between Ironsides and Handgunners, and they don't really feel like they are a tier higher. The only way i was able to gauge their relative performances was that my starting Ironside unit was gaining ranks slightly faster than my hand gunners.  

11) Long Rifles. Yet to see them justify a unit slot. Kills/damage seem a little underwhelming for a tier 3 ranged unit, though i haven't used Jezzails or Crane Gunners that much so it may just be me not using them effectively.

12) Imperial Authority again. Yes its hugely improved from the old system but it was so broken before anything would have been better. Now you will barely notice Imperial Authority is there at all as it effects are trival.

I would assume it should be easy to confederate with Elspeth.  As half of the elector counts are so weak that they will be eliminated fast without doing so.  Usually once the main lord get injured in a battle they should be willing to confederate immediately.

Yeah, it  becomes too easy to scoop up schematics after a while and maxing out everything is trivial. The mechanic is also a carbon copy of Ikit's Workshop with all the same design mistakes which had already been fixed with Throt's flesh lab so this regression is unbelievable. Mechanics like this should simply not just act like a second research screen. Once again the mechanic is also not integrated with Elspeth's campaign goals which I find by now just lazy. Why have all of these special faction mechanics and then make them 100% optional?

I've still got issues with Empire post-ToD:

1) Elspeth's and Volkmar's AI nearly always die. Something needs to be done for them. Elspeth's AI seems to struggle against her starting minor Vampire Count faction. CA should give her all of Wissenland when not playing as her, like how Franz gets all of Reikland when not playing as him. Volkmar is suffering even worse, because if you're playing as Franz you can at least save Elspeth from dying, while Volkmar is isolated and surrounded by potential enemies. Like Elspeth's solution just give him the entire region of the Land of the Dervishes.

2) There's still no reason to keep the elector counts alive. In fact there's even less reason to help them now seeing as it doesn't matter which Empire faction owns the Empires land. So if they die, you're better off just keeping the land to yourself. I really wish CA made the elector counts unique lords, not true legendary lords, just not named generic lords with some different stats and skills. 

3) Volkmar and Markus need reworks. It's such a shame CA didn't give them a pass over as well. Volkmar's mechanic is so boring and takes so long it feels like he doesn't have a mechanic at all. Volkmar needs something else. Markus needs a lot more work to his faction and lord unique traits, his hunter heroes need more unique skills, his mechanics need to be better explained, and Lustria needs to have a map rework. Volkmar and Markus also need their elector count state troop unlocks moved to the tech tree like Gelt and Elspeth. It'd also be nice if Volkmar and Markus could come back to the Empire with a little quest like Gelt can.

4) There is no buildings that increase Lord, Captain, or Witch Hunter recruit rank. I really don't know what CA were thinking here. How is it fun to be recruiting level 1 lords 100 turns into a campaign? Why do the other heroes get recruit rank buffs but Captains and Witch Hunters don't? The academy building needs to come back and address these 3 oversights. 

5) The removal of the blacksmith chain was also a mistake. Moving local and global recruitment increases to the stable is not equal. You only get the maximum benefits if the stable is built in a major settlement, and you aren't going to be building stables in every major settlement. This has made army recruitment far slower than it previously was. It has also killed infantry armies in the campaign as you can no longer stack multiple blacksmiths for high rank infantry. 

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Jarms48#7854 wrote:

I've still got issues with Empire post-ToD:

1) Elspeth's and Volkmar's AI nearly always die. Something needs to be done for them. Elspeth's AI seems to struggle against her starting minor Vampire Count faction. CA should give her all of Wissenland when not playing as her, like how Franz gets all of Reikland when not playing as him. Volkmar is suffering even worse, because if you're playing as Franz you can at least save Elspeth from dying, while Volkmar is isolated and surrounded by potential enemies. Like Elspeth's solution just give him the entire region of the Land of the Dervishes.

2) There's still no reason to keep the elector counts alive. In fact there's even less reason to help them now seeing as it doesn't matter which Empire faction owns the Empires land. So if they die, you're better off just keeping the land to yourself. I really wish CA made the elector counts unique lords, not true legendary lords, just not named generic lords with some different stats and skills. 

3) Volkmar and Markus need reworks. It's such a shame CA didn't give them a pass over as well. Volkmar's mechanic is so boring and takes so long it feels like he doesn't have a mechanic at all. Volkmar needs something else. Markus needs a lot more work to his faction and lord unique traits, his hunter heroes need more unique skills, his mechanics need to be better explained, and Lustria needs to have a map rework. Volkmar and Markus also need their elector count state troop unlocks moved to the tech tree like Gelt and Elspeth. It'd also be nice if Volkmar and Markus could come back to the Empire with a little quest like Gelt can.

4) There is no buildings that increase Lord, Captain, or Witch Hunter recruit rank. I really don't know what CA were thinking here. How is it fun to be recruiting level 1 lords 100 turns into a campaign? Why do the other heroes get recruit rank buffs but Captains and Witch Hunters don't? The academy building needs to come back and address these 3 oversights. 

5) The removal of the blacksmith chain was also a mistake. Moving local and global recruitment increases to the stable is not equal. You only get the maximum benefits if the stable is built in a major settlement, and you aren't going to be building stables in every major settlement. This has made army recruitment far slower than it previously was. It has also killed infantry armies in the campaign as you can no longer stack multiple blacksmiths for high rank infantry. 

Agree with all your points. Concerning point 2 I wish they made it possible to vassalize, or when getting a military alliance with an elector count, you'll unlock the elector count state troop, runefang, and the elector buffs when playing as Karl. 

I've said similar for years now. Even have a massive suggestion thread for it (pre-ToD). 

I'd even be happy if they did something simple like this:

- Alliance unlocks elector count state troop. 

- Elector Counts become a unique type of Empire General with an additional Elector Count Skill Line. Could just be 3-5 new skills with some minor diplomacy, economic, army, or lord buffs.