Hello everyone. In this guide I will cover:
- Victory conditions, faction and climate;
- Starting location;
- Diplomacy and outposts;
- Mechanics of the race and faction;
- Province edicts and army stances;
- Buildings and research;
- Lords and skills;
- Army compositions;
And give you my final notes on the specific faction. Hope you enjoy it.

If you prefer to watch the video, it also helps to support me. Here you go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhi05hzkIkw

If you prefer to read, here we go:

VICTORY CONDITIONS:

Short victory:

- Destroy the factions of Hag Graef (Malus), Ursun Revivalists (Boris), and Masters of Innovation (Malakai);
- Occupy, loot, raze or sack 35 different settlements.

The reward is +30 Winds of magic per turn to all armies, great of course to ensure all your casters have enough power during the course of the battles.

This is a difficult short victory, one that requests you to expand into different locations and actually engage with some pretty difficult foes. Still, one that you can definitely rush quickly if you know what you are doing, but be careful with creating too many war fronts.

Long Victory:

- Achieve the short victory
- Occupy, loot, raze or sack 80 different settlements
- Destroy the factions of the Ice Court (Tzarina) and the Great Orthodoxy (Kostaltyn)
- Hold the settlement of Talableheim directly.

The reward is +10 Lord recruit rank, as always it is great to ensure your new lords are very capable and you have some options.

A very difficult long campaign as well, since it forces you to go further south and ignore any potential enemies you may have done in the pursuit of the goals from the short victory. Expect to have multiple fronts of battle while going for this objective.

Epidemius is the Plagued Panjandrum, and gains the following benefits:

- Gains powerful rewards based on number of plagues on non-nurgle factions.
- Cycle time -1 for Plagueflesh Poppies buildings.
- Recruit rank +2 for Plaguebearers of Nurgle and Exalted Plaguebearers of Nurgle.
- Campaign movement range +25% for Plague cultists.

Overall, everything themes around the plagues and the plaguebearers, making this a very daemonic-centric gameplay faction too.

Climate is great, like for every Nurgle faction, since desert is really the only uninhabitable terrain and it is quite manageable. Expect this faction to be great for domination and full map completion as well.

STARTING LOCATION:


Your starting location is a 3 settlement province and you start with 2 already. It is great to turn it into your main military production, and you also have a nice resource to at least extend the duration of your plagues.

You have access to the sea, which implies always the possibility of getting some goodies early on for some extra money and items. Make sure you pursue that option whenever available.

Typical expansion is to conquer the initial foe and try to control a good portion of the Chaos lands (3-4 provinces). Whether you wish to go for Malus, Boris, or Malakai is up to you, but you definitely should consider rushing at least one of them.

DIPLOMACY AND OUTPOSTS:

Diplomatically you are part of Chaos, but that does not necessarily imply you are friends with all Chaos factions. Norsca and some of the Warriors of Chaos factions might like you, but do not trust any Tzeentch aligned ones at least.

In addition, Dark Elves, Kislev, Dwarfs, Empire, all will soon want you dead.

Instead, try to gain alliances with Norsca and Skaven, benefitting from their ranged units if possible or even their single entities.


MECHANICS OF THE RACE AND FACTION:

Nurgle factions revolve around plagues, and these have been reworked. You have to select the target settlement or army first, then choose three symptoms to create a plague. You need infections for it, your unique currency, to do so. These plagues generate bonuses for you, and debuffs for any enemy plagued.


You can also spend Infections to summon cultists that will spread plagues to enemy settlements and armies.

Nurgle forces are recruited from a pool of units that keeps replenishing. When they are recruited, they are not in full strength and need to replenish first, with the advantage that you can recruit plenty at once.


Nurgle buildings are also cyclical, meaning that they cost Infections the first time you build, and then they evolve alone with no further cost, depending on different factors that determine cycle time. With each cycle comes a different effect or units available to recruit. You can also use Infections to instantly cycle to the next level of a building if you need.

Unholy manifestations unlock depending on the level of Nurgle corruption around the world. The more, the better manifestations you can use. These include casualty replenishment rate, chance of a plague spreading, growth +200 and -20% recruitment, and giving a random plague to every settlement and army in a province.


Epidemius has the Tally of Pestilence, a meter, basically, which rises according to the numbers of enemies that are infected with plagues. The higher, the better for you, as you obtain very good levels including tons of research, the more the enemy is reduced to goo from all your plagues, hehe.


PROVINCE EDICTS AND ARMY STANCES:

Edicts:

Plague duration +1, chance of a plague spreading +10%
Control +4, growth +20
Rush cycle cost -10%, recruit cost -10%
Infections +5 per turn, nurgle corruption +2, adjacent provinces +1;

Army stances:

Channeling, costing 10% movement, granting +15 winds of magic per turn
Encamp, costs 50% movement, enables replenishment, global recruitment, immunity to attrition
Raiding, costing 50% movement, immunity to attrition
Ambush, costing 25% movement
Forced march

Overall, very thematic, if unfortunately slightly modified from the previous system that included an edict to reduce cycle time. Currently it is more set into extending the duration of plagues and spreading them instead.

BUILDINGS, RESEARCH:

You have a specific building in the forest of decay that gives Plague duration +1 and chance of spreading +20%. This is a must, to ensure all your plagues keep spreading well from the start.


You have 5 military buildings, and only two are required in a capital. In addition, the defensive buildings are the ones providing heroes and hero capacity.

Because of how the buildings work cyclically, you are not always able to recruit the specific units and must be on alert to ensure you recruit as they are available.

Infrastructure:

1 - Infections per turn, control
2 - Income
3 - Growth and Nurgle corruption
4 - Recruitment cost reduced, recruitment health increased.

A decent set of infrastructure buildings, but should be noted that you also have effects if your growth is more than 200 or if you are with 5 population surplus. Keep an eye on your growth to ensure you benefit from these.

Technology has now been reworked and it is much better. It is split into two areas:


Faction, with benefits for plagues, diplomacy, income, growth, etc.


Military, with benefits to your forces, split between infantry, beasts, and cavalry-flyers. It is now much easier and better to obtain benefits for the units you are planning to use right from the start.

LORDS, SKILLS, ARMY COMPOSITIONS:

Blueline has upkeep reduction in the first part, and replenishment combined with growth in the last part. A note for renowned and feared skill (last of the blueline) is how it has further upkeep reduction and +1 recruit rank to units, which is something Nurgle used to lack.

The redline skills are split into two different redlines, for the Heralds, and for the Chaos lords. Should be noted that Epidemius is a Herald.
They have some differences as to how a unit will become later on after all benefits, but typically with Heralds you might want to invest into daemonic units, while with Chaos Lords you might want to invest into mortal units.
Mostly, for Heralds' redline, units are split concerning their role, whether infantry, cavalry, flyers, beasts. Good combinations of benefits around melee attack and defense and resistances.


For Chaos Lords' redline, units are mostly divided between mortal and daemonic units, and there is a certain favouring of more armor and survivability, while still having some nice melee attack and weapon damage benefits overall.


In terms of Heroes, remember that Plagueridden are the ones with the replenishment ability, while Cultists have the summons. The Exalted hero also has the possibility for some extra replenishment for your forces if you feel you need it.

Epidemius shines with Plaguebearers and Plague drones as well as Pox riders. Anything that spreads plague; therefore, some unique combinations are possible with him, although I am a great fan of merging the daemons with mortals here.


Chaos lords typically work best with the mortal units giving them an extra physical resistance combined with the already good redline skills they have for mortal units.


Chaos Sorcerer lords have the possibility of trying to run some more basic armies with forsaken and chaos spawn, mainly to allow some flexibility and variety, although perfectly fine that you eventually evolve them into the chosen-chaos knights armies.


Finally, Heralds can have some armies based further in the daemons of Nurgle, which is always great to keep it thematic. You can attempt the last army that I show here as a reinforcing army, specially great for sieges because of all the flyers. Very fast which is quite unusual to say for a Nurgle army.


FINAL NOTES:

Epidemius is great to have a nice daemon-focused campaign, and one that greatly relies on plagues. If that is the style you aim for as Nurgle, then he is your guy.

His beginning can be tough in some circumstances, but survive it and you have a tremendously solid base of operations. His mechanic allows very good units and campaign benefits very early on, which is super helpful to make him a powerhouse. Combine with the unholy manifestations when you can and you maximize your gains.

Your army consists of:

1 - Great infantry
2 - Great cavalry
3 - Average missiles
4 - Great single entities
5 - Good flyers
6 - Very slow
7- Cycling recruitment system

Replenishment is great, one of the best factions for it. However, be mindful that all units start lower in health and accomodate for that factor. Note that no matter what your losses you are easily able to gather a full force very fast, use it to your advantage.

I believe now it is time to plague the world with Epidemius, of Nurgle.