Earlier this month we had a look at not only the campaign mechanics for the Tzeentch Chaos faction, but also general mechanics for Chaos as a whole. Following this information drop, Creative Assembly has today detailed the campaign mechanics for the first Chaos faction ever revealed in the context of Total War: Warhammer III – Khorne.
Surprising no one, Khorne factions thrive off war and destruction. Their principal resource is skulls, which you collect by doing just about anything. You can spend these skulls via Khorne’s unique tech tree, and use them to make a specific offering to the Skull Throne for massive buffs, among other things.
As you can imagine, taking over settlements is not really Khorne’s thing, but Khorne factions can still expand their territory. If you raise a settlement (and you should always raise a settlement as Khorne), then so long as you own another settlement already in the same province, ruined settlements will eventually be automatically colonised for free, providing another faction doesn’t try and claim it first. Of course, if they do, you know what you need to do about that.
Khorne factions get other unique options when raising settlements: Skulls for the Skull and Blood for the Blood God. The former gives you a massive injection of skulls for your pile, but the latter lets you not only replenish your forces – it also spawns a new army nearby.
This army can’t replenish or recruit, but it otherwise can go about rampaging as normal and costs no upkeep. The capabilities of these free armies can be improved via the tech tree.
Khorne’s initial Legendary Lord will be Skarbrand the Exiled One, leading the the Exiles of Khorne. While their specific mechanics have not been detailed, Creative Assembly has been mentioned that they suffer diplomatic penalties with other Khorne factions as well as everyone else because of their leader’s betrayal.
All demonic Chaos factions, apart from Slaanesh ones, automatically start at war with every other non-daemon faction except the Warriors of Chaos and Norsca. And Skaven, because rats.
Like always, there’s a lot to unpack here, so we highly recommend you go check out the dev blog in full to find out more regarding how Khorne works, especially the unholy manifestations and cult options which we haven’t mentioned yet.
Generally speaking, Khorne seems to embrace the original ideal of Total War games – total war. No need to worry about economics, or keeping the peasants happy and negotiating alliances. Just good ol’ fashion slaughter.
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