I don't feel like going through and updating every line I had about the economy trick, so here is a summary of the changes from The Warden and the Paunch DLC update:


Entrepreneur got nerfed to +15% local province income from 30%. Looks like it can still be beneficial, just sucks that you need to use even more Entrepreneur mages to accomplish the same thing, and even then your potential bonus income will not be as high.

Administrator got nerfed with less -build cost and -20% building turn time reduction from -30%. Basically what this means is that you will now need 5 Administrator mages in a Suitable climate to accomplish the same thing as previously, constructing buildings in 1 turn for free or nearly free. And if I remember correctly Hostile climates previously required 6? Administrators do build in 1 turn, so even more may be required now.

From what I understand, still use Nobles like how i advised, it is just that now Influence will be rewarded over a number of turns instead of instantly granting the 6 Influence you would get with max Secure Influence skill like you would previously, but I believe you end up getting more Influence overall.


What I have not heard is if you can continually spam Noble actions on a settlement for more Influence, or if doing that just resets the Influence gain from the most recent action, or if there is a cooldown to using Secure Influence. Will update once I play a campaign/Reddit advises me.

Use All your Nobles to Secure Influence (you are aiming for 100s of Influence) against a Settlement of a Faction you will never do diplomacy with, because this faction will hate you. You need this Influence to get 40 Influence trait Entrepreneur and Administrator Mages, 60 Influence trait Lords, and to make Diplomacy Easy Mode.

(!!! Obviously since you will be using your Nobles to spam "Secure Influence", you want to max the "Specialist" skill to reduce the cost of the "Secure Influence" action, and you want to max the skill that increases Influence gained when using "Secure Influence". This is the difference between 10 Nobles securing you 30 Influence per turn vs 60 Influence per turn !!!)

Use Handmaidens for their +Growth to get your provinces to max tier as soon as possible.

Use Loremasters of Hoeth to Damage Walls to make sieges easier, or just don't recruit any at all.

Use 3 Administrator Mages (6 for the terrible climates) to make all construction in a province free and take just 1 turn to complete. Use Entrepreneur Mages in Lothern or Tirannoc to make absurd income.

Great armies are Princesses (with the PUNITIVE Trait) with half Lothern Seaguard with Shields, half Sisters of Avalorn (if you own the DLC), and a bolt thrower (option of using Damage Walls Loremaster instead of bolt thrower or with), or a Prince with a full stack of Star Dragons.

Use Invocation of Vaul on cooldown, save scum to get good items.

Use Invocation of Isha when invading the snowy Dark Elf territory that causes attrition so you can march around there freely without worrying about attrition or having to constantly encamp. Can also use in Skaven/Vampire territory if there is a lot of that territory to cover.

I intend to make an Ultimate Miin/Max Overview Guide to cover the tips & tricks that apply to all factions, as well as guides for each of the factions. I want these guides to be some of the best resources for this game. If you see anything that needs to be corrected or updated, or think of something that should be added, please let me know and I will update the guide.


First, this guide will assume that you own The Queen and the Crone DLC, because you really want access to the Sisters of Avelorn and being able to confederate Alarielle makes uniting Ulthuan a lot faster and easier. Also you need the DLC to access the Regiments of Renown, which you won't need for your main armies, but they are great as emergency instant recruits for defending a settlement. Also, Handmaidens will be very important, see below. For reducing difficulty, I would argue that this DLC is as important to the High Elves as The Grim and the Grave is for the Empire, if not more so. Sisters of Avelorn shred armored units. Of course, if you love a challenge and hate paid DLC on principle, the campaign is still totally doable with adjustments, and I will make a summary at the end with some ideas for what army compositions to run if you do not have the DLC.

Second, I play on Very Hard/Very Hard (VH/VH) and this guide is meant to give you not just a high probability of winning your campaign on VH/VH, but winning as quickly and efficiently as possible. If you are completely new to Total War then I highly recommend playing High Elves as Tyrion on Normal/Normal with High Advisor Advice and doing the Introduction, as well as watching a bunch of the Youtube video guides on how to fight battles, etc. My goal is to save you from having a 300 turn campaign that you should have won by turn 180. My goal is to compile the best tips & tricks as a reference for if you take a long break and then come back to High Elves having forgot a lot of stuff.

Third, I may use the acronym LSG a lot. This shall stand for Lothern Sea Guard with Shields. LSG without shields can be useful in a pinch, but otherwise, LSG with Shields are plainly superior, so LSG shall always mean the ones with shields unless I specifically state otherwise.

Fourth, following this guide, you should not need to put any hero in any of your armies, with the possible exception of "Damage Walls"-built Loremasters of Hoeth. Having many Heroes on the Campaign map seems to be a burden on my PC and slows things down, and I have a PC that can play on Ultra settings. I have not confirmed if my PC slows down also just with lots of heroes standing around on the map un-assigned to armies, but this definitely seems to be the case when you have lots of heroes in armies. And I just find that managing heroes in armies can sometimes be quite annoying. For example, let's say you play Mortal Empires and you have an army conquer Norsca, but now you need it down south near Karak-Eight-Peaks (K8P). Since moving the army to K8P could take 10 turns or more, it makes more sense to just disband that army and create a new one closer to the action. But if you have heroes in the army and you disband the army, you still have to move those heroes back, unless you just want to leave them in Norsca and forget about them. And that could be a terrible waste of leveled heroes.

At the bottom I include a list of the Top Tier Traits for High Elf Lords and Heroes. Reference that list for what the trait does when I tell you to recruit a Lord or Hero with a certain trait.

Here we go...

Lords
I recommend the Campaign (Blue) Skill Line to start for all lords to start. Besides -15% recruiting cost, -23% upkeep, and +15% movement once you get to "Renowned & Feared", the middle Blue skill gives +1 to recruitment capacity in the province. And this skill stacks, so having 4 Lords in one province would give +4 recruitment capacity. This is very important, because High Elves only have 3 base recruitment slots. Get +1 slot if your province has +75-100 Happiness and gets the "Jubilant Populace" buff. +1 from the Tier 4 Ithilmar Smith building, and +1 per Lord with that Blue Skill. So normally, you will only have 5 or 6 (Lord with blue skill) recruitment slots, meaning it will take you at least 4 turns to recruit your army. You need that +1 recruitment capacity. This recruitment limit is also why I recommend on Tyrion, choosing the line that gives +2 global recruitment capacity. The other line makes him even more of a beast in combat, but if you give him a strong army like you should then he should be tough enough anyway to tank the enemy while your army does the heavy lifting.

If building a ranged army, recruit a Princess. After the Blue line, you want to go Red Line, getting everything that improves ranged units. A Princess with the right Red Line skills can give +30% reload to ranged unit, +40% if she has the Energetic Trait. And there is a Research that gives Lothern Sea Guard +15% reload, so LSG could potentially get +45-55% reload. Punitive Trait is probably the best hands down, followed by Energetic. Ardent is good if you have an All-LSG army and Punitive is not available. And using a Prince to lead a ranged army is just fine, a Princess provides a better boost but honestly an army of LSG and Sisters of Avelorn will shred everything while the Lord just sits on their hands anyways.

If building a melee army, recruit a Prince. You want Dragon-Willed Trait if you plan to make a full army of Dragons. Red Line is not as important for the Prince.
You want to end up putting either Lord type on a Star Dragon once high enough level. Always grab the Immortal Trait as soon as you hit Level 20.


I'll list the skills Heroes have for reference here so you have it and we can move on:
Noble - Replenish, Secure Influence, Assassinate, Assault Units, Increase Trade (Trash)
Handmaiden - Replenish, Growth, Damage Building, Hinder Replenishment
Loremaster - Damage Walls, Training, Public Order, Hinder Replenishment
Mage - Cleanse Corruption, Steal Technology, Block Army, Scouting


High Elf Lords and Heroes that cost no Influence have negative traits. Ones that have positive traits cost some influence, ones with the best positive traits cost a lot of Influence.

Lords with the Best Positive Traits cost 60 Influence
Lords with OK Positive Traits cost 15 Influence
Alaster the White Lion is the exception, he costs 30 Influence to recruit

Heroes with the Best Positive Traits cost 40 Influence
Heroes with Positive Traits cost 10 Influence

Influence
High Elves have a unique resource called Influence. You can get some from random events and other junk, but not anywhere near enough, so you have to go farm it. This is what your Noble hero will be for, farming influence. Here is what you do:

The Noble can perform the "Secure Influence" action against another faction's settlement, which earns 3 influence base for a successful "Secure Influence" action. You can put 3 skill points into the Secure Influence Skill, so each Noble can get you 6 Influence with each successful action each turn.

You are going to be using pretty much all of your Nobles to secure influence, especially at the start of your campaign. Therefore, you will not need Nobles with Top Tier (40 Influence) Traits, 10 Influence Traits will be fine (WITH THE EXCEPTION OF CONSCIENTIOUS, GET EVERY CONSCIENTIOUS NOBLE YOU SEE, EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO DISBAND ANOTHER NOBLE). You could even recruit Nobles with negative traits for no influence, especially if you are trying to recruit as many in a turn as possible to get them farming for you ASAP, up to you, but seeing negative traits annoys me so I never recruit them.

Your goal is to get 10 Nobles farming influence for you As Soon As Possible (ASAP), and I would even aim for 20 of them. You want to put 3 points in Secure Influence and 3 points in Specialist, and then choose from there.

Best settlement to farm Influence on? In the Vortex Campaign, 1st choice would be Fyrus, 2nd choice might be Sartosa. They are not in Ulthuan (High Elf Island) but are close enough that you can get your Nobles to them in a few turns to start farming. Fyrus is the best choice because Fyrus does not have a port, and is likely to be occupied by one of the Bretonnian factions that may not be able to expand beyond Fyrus. Meaning you can't trade with that faction, so it doesn't matter if they hate you, because all those Secure Influence Actions are really going to make them hate you.

Or, if there is a faction you want to be friends and trade with, and they hate another faction like, let's say the Dark Elves, you can send your Nobles to Secure Influence against Dark Elf settlements. The Dark Elves will hate you, while their enemies will love you.

You are going to be farming all this Influence primarily in order to get the best 60 Influence traits on your Lords, and the best 40 Influence traits on your Mages. However, Influence can also be used to influence diplomacy, to make it a lot easier to get High Elf factions to confederate with you, or to get opposing factions to what you want, which can save you immense amounts of time and gold.
Also note that if you follow the advice of using 20+ Nobles to farm influence, you are very quickly going to have a potential full stack of Level 40 Nobles at your disposal. An all-Chariot army can be very viable for field battles, and Nobles can get Chariots. Hint, Hint. Or 20+ Assassins to deal with agent spam.


Handmaidens and Growth
Handmaidens can become passive Influence gainers (2 per turn), but I think this slowed down my PC and the start of a Turn, so I don't recommend it. They take forever to level up to the point where you can get that passive Influence generation, and if you are using your Nobles right, you should be able to store up so much Influence that there is absolutely no point to investing in the Maiden's Influence generator. Maidens can also be great for Replenishing troops, and for boosting ranged damaged, etc. Lots of cool stuff for battles. Forget that, use them to get your provinces to Tier 5 in record time. Each Handmaiden provides 10 Growth base, and you can put 3 points in Stimulate Growth, for a total of 40 Growth per turn. 10 Maids in a province = 400 growth per turn. 20 = 800 growth. You could have even the worst climate provinces to Tier 5 in less than 10 turns, if even that long. Combine this with Administrator Mages, read more about that below. Again, you don't need 40 Influence Handmaidens, get as many 10 influence maidens as you can as fast you can and move them all together through your provinces maxing those provinces ASAP.


Mages - Entrepreneurs and Administrators (both 40 Influence traits)
Mages with Entrepreneur trait boost tax rate by 3% and income from all buildings in entire province by 30%, and. This. STACKS! I had 20+ Mages with this trait in Lothern (which was my recruiting province and hence not even my biggest income province) and by the end of my Vortex Campaign I was bringing in over $54,000 gold with FIFTEEN (15) Full 20-Stack Armies. When I deleted all those armies, I was bringing in over $253,000 gold. Once you get Tirannoc province to T5 and build the Palace of Tirannoc and building every income-providing building you can, putting all your Entrepreneurs in that province would probably provide even more income. Ignore the campaign skills for these mages, build up their Magic Skills to get Arcane Conduit and the best damage and healing spells, and you will also have a ready defense force to defend whatever province you put them all in.
Mages with Administrator trait reduce the cost and build time for building structures by 30%, and. This. STACKS! If you have the -10% build cost Province Commandment active, along with having 3 Administrators in the province, you can building ANY structure in ONE (1) Turn for FREE! This is true for Green and Yellow Climate provinces. For Red Climate provinces (like Nagarythe), you need 6 Administrators to build in 1 turn for free.

If you haven't figure it out yet, your goal is to get 3 Administrators in Lothern ASAP to build everything in 1 Turn for free as soon as you can, while getting as many Entrepreneurs as you can (you should be able to get 1 per turn as long as you have the Influence and mage slots available, there is usually at least 1 Entrepreneur amongst the 5 magic lores every turn), using as many Handmaidens as you can recruit to maximize growth while also pumping out Nobles to farm the Influence needed for all this recruitment. If you want Nagarythe to be Tier 5 ASAP, then you want to have a total of 6 Administrators. 6 should be all you need, the rest should be Entrepreneurs to maximize your income. And get as many Conscientious Nobles as you can so that subsequent Lords and Nobles recruit at a high rank.


Loremaster of Hoeth

See point 4 at the start. Understand that the Loremaster can be very strong once built up, but honestly, you could play an entire campaign without building a single one of these guys. HOWEVER, they might save your sanity if you run ranged-only armies, see further below. They are squishy until you max their Armor and Melee Defense skills and get Student of Hoeth. Their magic is cool and can be very useful but after my campaign I feel that their Magic skill line should come after their Combat line, and it takes a long time to level them up. I think that the best use for the Loremaster will probably be for Damage Walls. Here is how to use the Loremaster for Damage Walls:

Max Damage Walls and Specialist skills, bring him along in your army, use him to make holes in a settlement's walls so you can attack immediately without sieging even without siege units in your army (and this is still really useful even if you have siege units). One person's suggestion I saw was to use a Damage Walls hero, then besiege the settlement with your army but wait a turn, then put the hero in the army so he can join the battle. This is an inefficient use of time and will slow your campaign down. You use the hero to damage the walls, occupy the settlement which will end that army's movement for the turn, then next turn put the hero in the army before your army moves out.

Loremaster will cause 1 breach without any points in Damage Walls, and an additional 3 with the skill maxed, AND... After the Loremaster has successfully perform the action a few times, he can gain the "MIND OVER MATTER" trait, which cause the Loremaster to create an additional 2 breaches in the walls, for a total of 6 breaches. For smaller settlements, this effectively destroys all of the wall that is not behind the gate or towers, giving the defenders nothing to stand on.
Being able to just rush straight at the defenders through breached walls is of course useful for any army composition, but, this is particularly useful if your army is composed solely of ranged units, like LSG, Sisters of Avelorn, Shadow Walkers and Shadow Warriors. You would think bow units with their arcing shots would be able to easily slaughter the defenders on the walls, but those battlements (especially the one over the gate) really do provide some serious cover for the defenders. By destroying the walls, if any defender does climb up to whatever remains, they will be easy targets, and the rest should be easy pickings as well.

Army Composition

Tyrion's trait that reduces upkeep for spearmen and archers is ok at the start of the campaign, but for too long I kept him using a bunch of archers for the cost reduction, missing the forest for the trees. You should quickly upgrade to half LSG, half Sisters of Avelorn, or all LSG, or even all Shadow Warriors. Shadow Warriors could work well on Tyrion when they might not for other Lords because Tyrion can tank for them. Shadow Warriors can run and shoot at the same time, but they don't have poison to slow units like Shadow Walkers and they don't have Armor Piercing (AP). With Tyrion, you can run him along the enemy lines to draw Aggro while the Shadow Warriors shoot away, and if any units break off to attack your Shadow Warriors, they will run away, and as long as Tyrion can bog down the cavalry and fast monsters, they should shred the enemy. And Tyrion can slowly slaughter the heavily armored units that the Warriors struggle to pierce. Eventually, and especially for the Final Battle, you want to give Tyrion 19 Star Dragons, because the Final Battle must be fought by the faction leader (Tyrion), and 19 Star Dragons + Tyrion makes the battle a joke even on Very Hard, Very Hard.

Best Army Composition? Lord + 19 Star Dragons. Works against both Field AND Siege battles unlike other builds, and while a player could counter it, the AI will not know how to deal with it. How do you afford multiple full Star Dragon stacks?

Step 1: Have lots of Entrepreneur Mages in Lothern or your highest income settlement (which I think would be Tirannoc if you build it right)
Step 2: Own Caledor, and build the Hall of Dragons in it, which provides -25% Upkeep and -25% Recruitment Cost for ALL Armies Factionwide. So that's -25% cost right there.
Step 3: Make your Lords have Maxed Quartermaster and Renowned & Feared Skill for -23% upkeep on all units. You can also select the skill "Dedicated to Addaioth" for another -5% upkeep for Dragon units. That is -23% or -28% upkeep.
Step 4: Recruit Lord's with the Dragon-Willed Trait, which provides -25% Upkeep for Dragons.

Result: Assuming you have the Hall of Dragons and every Lord has Max Quartermaster + Renowned & Feared, that's -48% Upkeep Minimum, -53% with Addaioth, up to -78% upkeep with Dragon-Willed. I imagine that you should be able to afford 6-8 of these armies easily, which should be plenty to crush all opposition.


Best non-19 Star Dragon Army Build? Either Lord + 9 LSG, 9 Sisters of Avelorn, 1 Bolt Thrower (or 1 Loremaster of Hoeth instead of Bolt Thrower, although having a Bolt Thrower in your army is great for forcing the enemy AI to attack you even when they defend); or Lord + 8 LSG, 8 Sisters of Avelorn, 2 Bolt Throwers and 1 Loremaster of Hoeth with max Damage Walls skill to make attacking walled settlements easier (or 1 Bolt Thrower and 2 Loremasters to make sure you succeed at Damage Walls).

Benefit of going with Ranged Build over Dragons? Quantity of Armies. I was able to afford 15 armies EASILY by the time I won the Final Battle in my Vortex Campaign, and 1 of those armies was Tyrion with 19 Star Dragons, and I was still earning 54,000 gold a turn. 4 of these Ranged Armies reinforcing each other will annihilate anything in your way, allowing you to steamroll field battles and sieges alike.

Below are Hero and Lord 60 and 40 Influence Traits (Top Tier). Note that updates may have changed some of these slightly, for example, I think Energetic only gives a 5% Campaign Movement bonus now (skill very good though). I put what I consider the best traits right under the unit's name with a space separating the best from the rest:


Mage

Administrator -30% construction cost and time to buildings (local province)
Entrepreneur - income from taxes +3% faction wide, income from buildings +30% local province.

Conductor - Urannons Thunderbolt Upgraded -15% miscast chance, +10 WOM
Genius - +10% research speed, +10% hero action success, -10% enemy hero success (local province).
Incendiary: +100 charge bonus, +10 MD, +10MA, +100% weapon strength, flaming attacks
Limber - Speed +30%, MD +20
Negator - unlock upgraded Melkoth's mystifying miasma and Enfeebling foe.
Protected - 20% magic resist, 10% missile resist.
Protective - unlocks glittering robe upgraded and transmutation of lead upgraded.


Noble:

Conscientious: +5 diplomacy with elves and men. +2 lord recruit rank faction wide, +2 noble recruit faction wide, +1 rank for recruits (lords army)

Crushing - +10% Charge bonus (heros army)
Dangerous - +20 charge bonus, +10 MA, causes fear
Dynamo: +10% LD -20% attrition to lords army
Emollient: +5 PO local province, +1 PO global, +5% from entertainment buildings.
Frugal: -15% U/K lords army
Honed: +5 MA/MD Spearmen, Archers, LSG, silverhelms
Resilient: +20 Armour + 10MD
Vigorous: +5MD + 10% Phys resist.


General:

Punitive: +20% missile damage to army, -10% missile resist to enemy army.
Dragon Willed: -20% upkeep for dragons, -1 recruit time (min 1), +10% magic resist lords army.
Energetic: +10% improved reload speed, +10% speed, +10% campaign movement.
Ardent: -30% upkeep and +10% range for Lothern Sea Guard, Archers, Reavers
Efficient: -25% upkeep for archers, spearmen, seaguard, bolt throwers, -15% reavers and silver helms

Adept: +250 XP/turn to all units in army
Avaricious: 10% magic item drop, +25% sacking/looting income, +50% battle reward
Charmed: -5 to WOM, 10% magic resist, 20% missile resist, bound spell Amber Spear 3x/battle, 90s C/D
Dashing: +20% charge (lords army) -30% upkeep reavers and silver helms +20% weapon damage, +20% missile str to all reavers and silver helms in army.
Doctrinal: white lions, phoenix guard and swordmasters +10% LD, +10% weapon str, +5ma
Exemplar: -30% upkeep to chariot and eagle claw units. +10% speed. -1 turn recruit time to chariots (min 1 turn). Reload time reduction 10% eagle claw bolt thrower units.
Hawk Eyed: +30% range, +30% missile damage
Resistant: 5% missile resist, 5% magic resists, 5MD
Strong: +40 Armour, +20% weapon str.
Vigilant: +30% ambush success, +20% change of wounding in self defence, -10% enemy hero success chance local region, +40% chance of spotting armies.
Vigorous: +5 MD, +10% physical resist


Loremaster:

Fecund: +20 growth local province, +5 global, regeneration

Athletic: +12% speed, +10% success chance, +25 Charge Bonus
Bladelord: -20% upkeep, +10% charge bonus, -1 recruitment time (min 1) to blademasters and white lions
Conductor: Arcane Conduit, +20 WOM, -15% miscast
Disciple: +6 untainted local province, +15% weapon str vs. Chaos/Norsca
Exhilarated: +12MD to Phoenix, +25% magic item drop, +25% post battle income, +50% world root/underway interception,
Medic: -20% attrition, +10% replenishment local armies.

If you do not own The Queen and the Crone DLC:

Best choice would be Lord + 19 Star Dragons, but you could do Lord + 19 LSG, or Lord + Phoenix Guard and Archers. Just put more emphasis on moving multiple armies together to reinforce each other. Even against heavily armored Chaos Chosen, 2 stacks of LSG especially with Punitive Princesses should be enough to win, especially if you move units around behind to shoot them in the back.

Diplomacy and Trade

Naggarond Dark Elves (Malekith) , Hexoatl Lizardmen (Mazdamundi), and Clan Mors Skaven (Queek) are the factions that will be competing with you in the Ritual Race. You may engage in diplomacy and trade with these factions before starting the rituals, and I believe also while doing the first 2, maybe 3 rituals. But definitely once you start the final ritual, any of these 3 that you are not at war with, even if you are military allies with trade agreement, WILL declare war on you, and you will no longer be able to have ANY diplomatic relations with them. Also note that with every ritual you start/complete, your relations with Dark Elves, Skaven and Lizardmen will get a permanent negative qualifier, while you will get a positive qualifier with other High Elf factions. So unless you actively work to keep good relations, you will probably end up at war with the other Dark Elf, Lizardmen and Skaven factions as well, if you weren't already.


Reliability: In Shogun 2, as long as you canceled all your treaties with a faction before declaring war on them, you avoided major penalties like losing Honor or massive negatives with other factions. They definitely fixed that ease for Warhammer and Warhammer 2. In the Diplomacy Screen, under Tyrion's Portrait, their is your Strength Rating and your Reliability Rating. You want your Reliability to always be Very High. I have gotten Very Low while doing an Empire campaign, and I absolutely could not get anyone to trade with me. And that Very Low rating just would not go away. If you care about trade, be very concerned about Reliability. This means not breaking treaties too soon after making them (10 turns), or attacking too soon after ending a treaty (10 turns). Breaking Trade Agreements or attacking right after ending them hurts just as much as doing the same with Non-Aggression Pacts. Not sure about Military Access yet. Avoid Military and Defensive Alliances, if factions you have treaties with both of decide to fight, your Reliability is going to suffer either way, it is not worth it. Trade and Non-Aggression treaties and Military Access are fine, just make sure to end them only after they have been active for 10 turns and make sure to wait 10 turns after the end of the treaty before attacking that faction.

Effect of Attacking within 10 turns of a treaty: Between immediately and 5 turns, your Reliability will drop to Very Low (this very bad). If it has been 5-8 turns, it will drop to Low. If only 2 turns left before the 10 turns are up, it will drop to Medium. So if you really need to attack a faction, the trade-off could be worth it to attack just before the 10 turn timer expires, but you really want to avoid attacking immediately after ending a treaty and getting a Very Low Reliability rating.


Trade: I confirmed that if you do not have any trade agreements at all, you will not have any trade income. You must have at least 1 trade agreement in order to benefit from trade resources. If you are going to build a trade resource building, go ahead and max it out. You can how many of those resources are utilized by clicking on the income/trade button and hovering your cursor over the resource. After taking into account that Lords have the Merchant Lord Skill in the Blue Line, which gives +9% trade resources factionwide, I think you may just need 1 max tier building for each trade, and then just make sure all of your lords have maxed Merchant Lord skill.


I recommend trading with every High Elf faction you will either confederate or do not have to fight (Alarielle if you own DLC, Alith Anar, Teclis, the Elf factions at the bottom of the map, etc). Be careful about trading with Caledor, Tirannoc, Saphery, Yvresse, etc, you want their lands and they don't have Legendary Lords you need to confederate to get, so probably easier to just conquer them. Tomb Kings can be great trading partners because you don't need to fight them over the Vortex. Same with the Pirate and Human factions scattered about.

Vortex Campaign Specific

The Final Ritual takes 20 turns to complete, the rituals before it take 10. The Final Ritual spawns 6-7 enemy stacks when it first starts, AND AGAIN WHEN THERE ARE 10 TURNS REMAINING!!! This caught me off guard in both my Lizardmen and High Elf campaigns and cost me a bunch of razed settlements, don't let this happen to you. Also, once you complete The Final Ritual, you will then have FIVE (5) turns for your faction leader (in this case Tyrion) to fight The Final Battle, otherwise... The Final Battle Quest fails, and in order to get to fight The Final Battle, you have to restart The Final Ritual... all 20 turns... and 2 separate spawns of like 6 enemy stacks again... Not fun, so make sure Tyrion is ready to fight the final battle as the Final Ritual finishes with a full army of Elite units (I would just give him 19 Star Dragons, makes the Final Battle pitifully easy).


Doing the Rituals: Before you start a ritual, make sure you have an Army Stack in Lothern and another in Tower of Lysean. When you start a ritual, at least 1 Intervention Army is going to spawn to the left of Lothern (it may or may not happen immediately). While the Chaos Stacks that spawn elsewhere will spawn and sit for a turn before attacking, giving you an opportunity to attack them first if you have armies in the area, the Intervention Armies will immediately besiege Lothern and/or Tower of Lysean at the end of the turn they spawn. Most likely, eventually all 3 of the other competing factions will send an Intervention Army, so keep an army in Lothern until the third one spawns. Very Important, if a 2nd Intervention Army spawns, then the Tower of Lysean is in serious danger unless you have a stack in it. Tower of Lysean got razed in my campaign by an Intervention Army even though it was T3 with T3 Garrison and Walls, and despite the fact I had an army in Lothern. Glittering Tower should be safe, because as far as I have seen, the armies always spawn to the left of Lothern.


If you plan to win the game by doing the rituals, here is what I would do. Take all of Ulthuan, Max every Settlement with Max Garrison/Wall building. Do not capture any provinces outside Ulthuan, this just increases the likelihood a capital not in Ulthuan will become a ritual site. Have lots of income buildings and Trade. By this point you should have a bunch of Entrepreneurs in Lothern or Tirannoc, so you should be raking in the gold. Have as many full stack armies as you can while still raking in 10-20,0000+ gold. Making sure you have plenty of gold reserves, because when the enemy armies besiege your cities, your income is probably going to go negative into the Red. Sure you could have armies with 19 Star Dragons, but then you will probably not be able to afford as many armies. Stacks with half LSG and half Sisters of Avelorn should be great, but even stacks with 19 LSG should be sufficient, especially if you have multiple army stacks in the area where the Chaos stacks spawn. Click on the Ritual Button and see which 3 cities will be ritual sites. If you save scum, you can start the ritual, see where the stacks will spawn, reload your save and then surround that area with your armies. Be advised that putting too many armies in that area, especially right where the enemy stacks spawn, may cause the game to have the stacks spawn in a different spot. I would put 1 Army Stack in Lothern, 1 Stack in Tower of Lysean, and the rest in and around the other 2 Ritual Cities/Provinces. You can put the armies in the Settlements and let the enemy come to you (you'll need to make sure you have armies in every Settlement in every direction the enemy can go, because they will move in different directions to attack different targets), or you can pre-emptive strike the enemy armies in the field.


I want to emphasize that you need to either take out the enemy stacks before they can attack, or make sure you have an army in any settlement that gets besieged, because the enemy stacks will likely have artillery and be able to attack immediately, and they can be full of gold chevron elite units which can wreck your garrison, as I find the High Elf Garrisons to be quite lackluster. Chaos Chosen are going to wreck your White Lions of Chrace, and your Garrison Ranged Units are not Armor-Piercing. And if the enemy wins, they are going to Raze your settlement, which REALLY SUCKS if that is a Tier 5 Province Capital.


Funny thing is, if it were not for the Vampire Coast Pirate Cove bug or me wanting to unlock all the ritual videos and fight the Final Battle, it would have been easier and faster winning by Domination Victory instead of Ritual Victory. I annihilated the Dark Elves like they were nothing, and could have just rolled down from there conquering everything, if it weren't for the fact I could not risk annihilating a pirate faction and crashing my game. A Legendary Tyrion campaign would probably be pretty easy if you never did any of the rituals, just unite Ulthuan and then steamroll the Dark Elves then steamroll south, then finally east.

Mortal Empires Specific

If playing Tyrion in Mortal Empires, unite Ulthuan, then make a direction choice from there. I would probably steamroll the Dark Elves and capture all of "North America", then go south and conquer the rest of "the Americas" thereby securing my left flank, before turning east and deciding to start my invasion from the north, south or center of the Old World. Basically, look at your Objectives, figure out what you have to get a Short Campaign VIctory or Long Campaign Victory, and decide how you want to proceed going about that. But it will almost certainly always start with conquering all of Ulthuan.

I have not tried this but my next High Elf campaign I should. Create an army of Lord + 19 Bolt Throwers supported by 1-3 armies of fast units.

The bolt thrower army would start annihilating the enemy in the field, the reinforcement would come up fast enough to ensure the enemy do not reach the bolt throwers.

In sieges, the bolt throwers would destroy the towers and walls before the reinforcement mop up the defenders.

Options for the support stack(s) are:

Ellyrian Reaver Archers (normally I would say these would be a terrible choice, however, they are a fast unit that could get to and beyond the bolt throwers and they pepper the enemy while staying out the way of artillery fire)

Star Dragons (can breathe fire down on the enemy while staying airborne to avoid artillery fire)

Chariots

Dragon Princes

Shadow Warriors

Sisters of Avalorn

Heck, even just 3 stacks of pure archers supporting the bolt throwers would murder everything.

*If you are reading this but not game news updates, the Vampire Coast DLC introduced a bug where if you destroy a pirate faction and that faction still had an active pirate cove in another faction's settlement, it will crash the game, because the game does not know what to do with the pirate cove. So if you are planning to start a new campaign now, make sure you go to the game's Properties in Steam, click on "Beta", and opt into the "coast_beta" patch to fix that, or wait until the next big update. I'll remove this once CA fixes this issue for good with the next patch.*

^ This was a campaign killing bug that has since been fixed, but it is a good reminder that if you ever wanted to play a version of the game after Vampire Coast but before more recent DLC and updates, make sure you play with the Beta fix at least.