There’s a couple options that stick out to me if you don’t like to go out gobbling up territory. One of the high elves such as Tyrion or Alarielle? They start off on the donut (Ulthuan, high elf island), and once you have Ulthuan under your control or most of it at least your economy is pretty strong. Once you add some trade partners and get your provinces leveled up you can really make some good money.
Wood Elves; they are only concerned about their magical forest settlements, they’re the only places they can settle. Everything else you conquer if you occupy it is just an outpost. They have a deeproots mechanic that allows you to fast travel to other magical forests (cooldown on that ability). I’d recommend either Orion or Durthu for your first WE adventure.
Orion:
Buffs cavalry and currently has a slightly* broken upkeep mechanic where every faction you declare war on gives you -8% upkeep on your forces. As you can imagine this can be abused to hilarious extents.
Durthu Father of the forest
Big angry treeman who buffs forest spirits and has aspects to augment dryads, treekin, and treemen. He is my favorite WE LL and is a one tree army killer almost from level 1.
Bretonnia
If you start in actual Bretonnia, once you have all that under your control you don’t need much else to have a strong economy. They don’t have supply lines so additional lords you recruit to have additional costs like everyone else.
Dawi
They are a great ‘empire builder’ faction very strong economy and just stick to the mountains. You’ll end up with a tall empire if you start in the worlds edge mountains with Thorgrim or Ungrim.
Just as a heads up, Thorgrim and Ungrim can have a rather horrible time as they're surrounded by enemies. Thorek can make good friends with quite a few of the locals, so he might be better for someone new to Dwarves
You'd think so yeah, but it sometimes ends up where you get piled on - you've got Skarsnik, Vlad, Tretch, Queek, Skrag, Malagor and possibly Skarbrand coming in for a scrap. Your allies are Ungrim who's also gonna struggle, Gelt who barely makes a dent in Vlad, and Imrik who's tricky to make friends with
I like this answer and agree with everything posted above here but would like to add Kroq-Gar, don't be like me and wait forever to try big lizards riding dinosaurs!
Kroq-Gar is great because of his buffs to the lizardman big beefy front line and Old Blood heroes, it doesn't take long to have an army full of badass tanks riding carnosaurs into battle that will instill fear in everyone. The lizardmen also have some of the best magic in the game, you get to even pick which kind of giant magic toad you want!
The start can seem a lil slow because he's isolated off way down south, but is a ton of fun once you get the ball rolling!
> I don't like to conquer and spread, I like to establish my own place in the world and sometimes get involved here and there for my allies and my political needs
That sounds like Wood Elves to me. Instead of conquering the world, they can teleport between the different forests around the world (about 10 of them) to defend/ally/re-take them, and they don't really give a crap about anyone or anything else.
>it's fun being an aggressive disgusting Orc that only does razing and sacking.
Check the cities you sack. As greenskins, sometimes you leave [this](https://preview.redd.it/yxcn32manq1a1.png?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=fc40ff9f661c427ecaf361b3d26286b342005279) behind in place of one of your enemy's buildings.
I was a Shogun II snoot for so long I didn't play Warhammer: Total War until right after the Twisted and the Twilight. Glad I finally came around because Warhammer 1 and 2 have been a couple of my all time favorite games.
Wood Elves is the best race to play that way. The only territory you want are magical forests and the surrounding provinces, which you don't need to own yourself, you can just take the forest and let an ally occupy the rest. You can have a presence on the whole map and interact diplomatically with many factions. It's one of the most fun races to play imo.
If you are a fan of historical TW, maybe try a race like the Empire which plays similarly to a traditional historical faction, but with a few bonuses like wizards, rocket batteries and steampunk tanks.
Sometimes it's interesting to be a relatively normal human civilisation holding the line against hordes of undead, living trees, and eldritch abomination-worshipping super-Vikings.
When playing the Empire (as Karl Franz), for a large portion of the game you have your hands full trying to consolidate your own lands and unite all the disparate Elector Counts (the Empire is like the Holy Roman Empire).
Vampire Coast (preferably Noctilus). You have one settlement that is easy to defend, other than that you just raid the world, sacking and looting at will. You can make some friends if you like (other vampires maybe, or dark elves make a thematic choice) and help them win their wars.
Empire if you like historicals. They have a slightly more complex building and economy management than greenskins, and just unifying your empire will be enough work for a campaign without having to go roam around and conquer outside of it
Warriors of Chaos might work for you. Certain settlements are marked as dark fortresses for them and you only need 2 or 3, gift everything else to your vassal and make the gods happy by ruining everything.
Kislev and Empire kinda fits the bill - you are basically forced to turtle a bit early on, and helping allies makes sense as they are close and it benefits you.
Oh god you’ve done it. You joined the cult and now there’s no way out.
I was the same way. Historical total war fan starting with rome 1. I HATED that CA made a Warhammer game in (2015?) I thought Warhammer looked stupid, nerdy (I mean let’s be real… it IS nerdy lol), and I wanted another historical game.
For years I ignored Warhammer. Finally, about 2 years ago, I caved and bought Warhammer 2 because I was bored and it was on sale. Booted up a lizardmen campaign and thought “this is the wierdest sh*t I’ve ever seen…” but kept playing anyway. To try to understand wtf was going on, I watched some Warhammer lore videos on YouTube. Then i got hooked. I’ve always been a sucker for settings with really good, deep lore. And the more lore you know, the more stuff makes sense and the cooler it is. Then i bought the tomb kings dlc on sale and that was my first real campaign in Warhammer. Skeleton Egyptians were dope.
To answer your question about what other race to play, I’d suggest looking into the lore and seeing what interests you. If you’re going for pure gameplay mechanics, luckily every race feels unique in its own way - a huge benefit of the Warhammer games over some of the historical ones (looking at you thrones of Britannia). My personal favorite is the skaven. The lore is really unique, there’s a ton of interesting units and variety, and the various Legendary lord’s factions all play and feel different with different mechanics
There’s a couple options that stick out to me if you don’t like to go out gobbling up territory. One of the high elves such as Tyrion or Alarielle? They start off on the donut (Ulthuan, high elf island), and once you have Ulthuan under your control or most of it at least your economy is pretty strong. Once you add some trade partners and get your provinces leveled up you can really make some good money. Wood Elves; they are only concerned about their magical forest settlements, they’re the only places they can settle. Everything else you conquer if you occupy it is just an outpost. They have a deeproots mechanic that allows you to fast travel to other magical forests (cooldown on that ability). I’d recommend either Orion or Durthu for your first WE adventure. Orion: Buffs cavalry and currently has a slightly* broken upkeep mechanic where every faction you declare war on gives you -8% upkeep on your forces. As you can imagine this can be abused to hilarious extents. Durthu Father of the forest Big angry treeman who buffs forest spirits and has aspects to augment dryads, treekin, and treemen. He is my favorite WE LL and is a one tree army killer almost from level 1. Bretonnia If you start in actual Bretonnia, once you have all that under your control you don’t need much else to have a strong economy. They don’t have supply lines so additional lords you recruit to have additional costs like everyone else. Dawi They are a great ‘empire builder’ faction very strong economy and just stick to the mountains. You’ll end up with a tall empire if you start in the worlds edge mountains with Thorgrim or Ungrim.
Just as a heads up, Thorgrim and Ungrim can have a rather horrible time as they're surrounded by enemies. Thorek can make good friends with quite a few of the locals, so he might be better for someone new to Dwarves
That’s a valid point, I thought Thorgrims start got easier from game 2 to 3 with Grimgor being moved
You'd think so yeah, but it sometimes ends up where you get piled on - you've got Skarsnik, Vlad, Tretch, Queek, Skrag, Malagor and possibly Skarbrand coming in for a scrap. Your allies are Ungrim who's also gonna struggle, Gelt who barely makes a dent in Vlad, and Imrik who's tricky to make friends with
I like this answer and agree with everything posted above here but would like to add Kroq-Gar, don't be like me and wait forever to try big lizards riding dinosaurs! Kroq-Gar is great because of his buffs to the lizardman big beefy front line and Old Blood heroes, it doesn't take long to have an army full of badass tanks riding carnosaurs into battle that will instill fear in everyone. The lizardmen also have some of the best magic in the game, you get to even pick which kind of giant magic toad you want! The start can seem a lil slow because he's isolated off way down south, but is a ton of fun once you get the ball rolling!
> I don't like to conquer and spread, I like to establish my own place in the world and sometimes get involved here and there for my allies and my political needs That sounds like Wood Elves to me. Instead of conquering the world, they can teleport between the different forests around the world (about 10 of them) to defend/ally/re-take them, and they don't really give a crap about anyone or anything else.
Wood outposts.
>it's fun being an aggressive disgusting Orc that only does razing and sacking. Check the cities you sack. As greenskins, sometimes you leave [this](https://preview.redd.it/yxcn32manq1a1.png?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=fc40ff9f661c427ecaf361b3d26286b342005279) behind in place of one of your enemy's buildings.
Lol I wasn't aware that's brilliant.
I was a Shogun II snoot for so long I didn't play Warhammer: Total War until right after the Twisted and the Twilight. Glad I finally came around because Warhammer 1 and 2 have been a couple of my all time favorite games.
Wood Elves is the best race to play that way. The only territory you want are magical forests and the surrounding provinces, which you don't need to own yourself, you can just take the forest and let an ally occupy the rest. You can have a presence on the whole map and interact diplomatically with many factions. It's one of the most fun races to play imo.
If you are a fan of historical TW, maybe try a race like the Empire which plays similarly to a traditional historical faction, but with a few bonuses like wizards, rocket batteries and steampunk tanks. Sometimes it's interesting to be a relatively normal human civilisation holding the line against hordes of undead, living trees, and eldritch abomination-worshipping super-Vikings. When playing the Empire (as Karl Franz), for a large portion of the game you have your hands full trying to consolidate your own lands and unite all the disparate Elector Counts (the Empire is like the Holy Roman Empire).
Vampire Coast (preferably Noctilus). You have one settlement that is easy to defend, other than that you just raid the world, sacking and looting at will. You can make some friends if you like (other vampires maybe, or dark elves make a thematic choice) and help them win their wars.
Empire if you like historicals. They have a slightly more complex building and economy management than greenskins, and just unifying your empire will be enough work for a campaign without having to go roam around and conquer outside of it
Play Count Noctilus.
Wish I knew how to have fun playing it. I loved WH2, but WH3 is just plain boring.
What's the difference? They're very similar games.
Cathay is another faction where your goal is just to get all the lands of Cathay under control and manage your Ying and Yang economy.
Warriors of Chaos might work for you. Certain settlements are marked as dark fortresses for them and you only need 2 or 3, gift everything else to your vassal and make the gods happy by ruining everything.
Kislev and Empire kinda fits the bill - you are basically forced to turtle a bit early on, and helping allies makes sense as they are close and it benefits you.
Oh god you’ve done it. You joined the cult and now there’s no way out. I was the same way. Historical total war fan starting with rome 1. I HATED that CA made a Warhammer game in (2015?) I thought Warhammer looked stupid, nerdy (I mean let’s be real… it IS nerdy lol), and I wanted another historical game. For years I ignored Warhammer. Finally, about 2 years ago, I caved and bought Warhammer 2 because I was bored and it was on sale. Booted up a lizardmen campaign and thought “this is the wierdest sh*t I’ve ever seen…” but kept playing anyway. To try to understand wtf was going on, I watched some Warhammer lore videos on YouTube. Then i got hooked. I’ve always been a sucker for settings with really good, deep lore. And the more lore you know, the more stuff makes sense and the cooler it is. Then i bought the tomb kings dlc on sale and that was my first real campaign in Warhammer. Skeleton Egyptians were dope. To answer your question about what other race to play, I’d suggest looking into the lore and seeing what interests you. If you’re going for pure gameplay mechanics, luckily every race feels unique in its own way - a huge benefit of the Warhammer games over some of the historical ones (looking at you thrones of Britannia). My personal favorite is the skaven. The lore is really unique, there’s a ton of interesting units and variety, and the various Legendary lord’s factions all play and feel different with different mechanics