Total War: Warhammer 3 earned a full five-star review from NME when it launched in February, but the future of Creative Assembly‘s fantastical strategy game looks set to get even brighter with Immortal Empires. Set to launch in beta this year, Immortal Empires will fuse every map from the Total War: Warhammer trilogy into one giant game mode with new factions and features.
Due to the scale of this update, fans have plenty of questions about what will be included – in the run-up to launch, here’s everything you need to know about Immortal Empires.
Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires release date and beta
Creative Assembly has confirmed that Immortal Empires will launch in August 2022. No specific release day has been announced just yet, however this article will be updated when the exact date is revealed.
The first iteration of Immortal Empires will not be the mode’s full launch – instead, Creative Assembly has announced that it will first be released as a beta in August. Although players will not have to opt into separate branches of the game to access Immortal Empires – it will automatically be added to the live version of Warhammer 3 at launch – Creative Assembly has explained that the mode will not “truly be complete for years to come”, hence the beta tag.
Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires map
Although the release of Immortal Empires is still a month away, the campaign’s map has already been revealed. Immortal Empires will have the “biggest map any Total War game has featured to date”, and you can see the full map above.
This map features 554 settlements, 278 starting factions, and 86 legendary lords at launch – though Creative Assembly has shared that fans “can expect the number of playable legendary lords and races to continue growing” in the future.
The map will also include sea lanes, a new addition to the Total War: Warhammer series that will allow players to move their units across the map – meaning the size of Immortal Empires won’t be too difficult to conquer.
Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires starting positions
A map that size could easily prove very empty, if it hadn’t been crammed with factions and lords from all three Total War: Warhammer games. In the run-up to launching Immortal Empires, Creative Assembly has shared the starting position of one faction’s lords each day.
While not every lord’s starting position has been revealed just yet, the majority have been – you can see who has been announced in the below Twitter thread, which is updated each day with a new announcement:
Chaos strong. Gors strong. Humans, Elves, Dwarf—weak, weak, weak! Beastmen starting positions in Immortal Empires:
Khazarak the One Eye – The Black Pit
— Total War (@totalwar) July 8, 2022
The information revealed so far already promises some exciting new starting position – for example, Slaanesh’s faction leader N’Kari will now start on the Elven isle of Ulthuan, while Skaven assassin Deathmaster Snikch will begin his campaign in the new lands of Cathay. At time of writing (July 8) there are still several factions – such as Warriors Of Chaos and the Vampire Counts – whose starting positions are yet to be announced, so keep an eye on the thread in this article to stay updated.
Factions in Immortal Empires
Immortal Empires will be playable for anyone who owns all three Total War: Warhammer games, which means that every faction from the trilogy will appear. For any legendary lords or races that were released as downloadable content (DLC) across the trilogy, players will need to own their relevant DLC to play them on the campaign map.
As well as every returning faction, Immortal Empires will also give seven existing legendary lords their own faction – which can be seen below:
- Volkmar The Grim (The Cult Of Sigmar
- Helman Ghorst (Caravan Of Blue Roses)
- Grombrindal (The Ancestral Throng)
- Vlad and Isabella Von Carstein (Sylvania)
- Sigvald The Magnificent (The Decadent Host)
- Kholek Suneater (Heralds Of The Tempest)
- Be’Lakor
Additionally, Warhammer 3 antagonist Be’Lakor will also be given his own faction, which will allow recruitment from existing Chaos factions and allow the demon to corrupt defeated human lords.
Looking further ahead, there are plenty of characters that could bring their own factions to Immortal Empires in the future. When asked about the possible appearance of Nagash and Thanquol, two fan-favourite characters from the Warhammer universe, Creative Assembly told NME that “nothing is off-limits”.
End-game scenarios and victory conditions in Immortal Empires
When Creative Assembly outlined what would be included with Immortal Empires from day one, the studio teased two particularly exciting new features – “dynamic end-game scenarios” and “revamped victory conditions”.
End-game scenarios will be “randomised mid-to-late-game challenges” that are being introduced to combat players who begin to steamroll over their campaign toward the end. Though no details have been shared just yet, players can expect “Greenskin invasions or resurgences of the undead, as a few examples”.
Meanwhile, revamped victory conditions will mean that instead of every faction needing to conquer the same set of settlements to win a campaign, Creative Assembly has “simplified the victory requirements into more meaningful objectives while avoiding any arbitrary playstyle requirements”.
This article will be updated with news on Immortal Empires as it is released – in the meantime, you may like reading NME‘s interview with Creative Assembly on the past, present and future of Total War: Warhammer 3.
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