Update 4:
More news is finally starting to pour in as we’re approaching the launch of Immortal Empires. First off, Creative Assembly confirmed that the combined map will be available to play in August. No solid release date just yet but at least we now know the exact month.
If you’ve been following the Immortal Empires news so far, you already know that the mode will initially launch in beta. What does this mean? Well, we finally all the details. Probably the most important takeaway is that the mode won’t be implemented in bits and pieces over time. All the planned content from the three games will be available right off the bat, however, there will likely be quite a few visual and technical issues at launch. The mode will remain in beta until all these problems will be fixed.
So what exactly can we expect in terms of content? CA gave us an overview and it’s quite impressive. Here’s a quick look at what to expect when Immortal Empires launches:
- 86 playable Legendary Lords
- Be’Lakor gets his own faction
- New dedicated factions for old lords like Grombrindal, Ghorst, and Volkmar the Grim.
- 29 older Legendary Lords get new starting locations
- A few older lords get improved factions mechanics
- Sea Lanes (the ability to quickly move armies from one side of the map to the other)
- New dynamic end-game scenarios
- Revamped victory conditions
- Corruption rework
- 8-player multiplayer campaigns. Interesting to note that only the host of an Immortal Empires campaign needs to own all three games.
That sounds pretty good, but what about the Immortal Empires map? Don’t worry because we already know a lot about that as well.
Immortal Empires Map
Creative Assembly recently gave us a good look at the Immortal Empires map and it’s going to be just as massive as we expected. Perhaps even more so. According to the developers, the map will feature 554 settlements and 278 starting factions. That’s 38% more settlements and 52% more starting factions than Warhammer 2’s Mortal Empires.
The developers also talked a bit about the new Sea Lanes feature. It looks like there are going to be eight of them at launch. You can see them on the map below.
Update 3:
Immortal Empires now has a teaser trailer showcasing a bunch of the races across all three games squaring off against each other. We still don’t have a specific release date just yet but Creative Assembly did reiterate during the recent Warhammer Skulls festival that Immortal Empires will launch sometime during Q3. Assuming nothing changes until then, we can expect a beta phase before the combined map gets a full release. How long the beta will last is anyone’s guess at this point.
Update 2:
We finally have some concrete news regarding Immortal Empires straight from the horse’s mouth. Creative Assembly recently outlined the Warhammer 3 2022 roadmap and, among other things, mentioned that Immortal Empires is coming in Q3 of the year as part of update 2.0. We’re likely to see it towards the end of the quarter, so the tentative release date as of right now is around August to early or mid-September.
Immortal Empires will first launch as an open beta before seeing a full release at some point down the line. CA mentioned that work on Immortal Empires will be an ongoing project and that the mode will see many changes throughout late 2022 and beyond.
Update 1:
On March 18th Creative Assembly announced the first big update for Total War: Warhammer 3. The company confirmed that the combined map will be known as ‘Immortal Empires’ as opposed to ‘Mortal Empires’ again. However, the developers did not give us a potential release date just yet. In fact, they did their best to avoid talking about Immortal Empires altogether.
In the blog post detailing Warhammer update 1.1 CA seems to imply that Immortal Empires has been delayed. Same with the Blood Pack. Current estimates from the community put the combined map at two months away or more. That’s much later than we initially expected.
Original story:
Warhammer 3 Mortal Empires is an upcoming update that will greatly increase the game’s map size and number of playable factions. Long-time fans of the series are fully aware that the launch version of the game is just a small taste of bigger and better things to come further down the line. This includes not just patches and DLCs but also a brand new grand strategy map.
If you’re new to the series you’re probably wondering what all the fuss is about. After all, the game already has more content than either of the first two entries had at launch. How much more content can Mortal Empires add to the game? A LOT.
While we don’t know all the specifics just yet, we already have a pretty good idea of what to expect from Total War: Warhammer 3 Mortal Empires. Or ‘Immortal Empires’, as some have been calling it. We don’t actually know the official name just yet so we’ll probably keep alternating between the two names for now.
What Is Mortal Empires?
Mortal Empires is a grand strategy map that was originally added to Total War: Warhammer II and quickly became most people’s go-to game mode. The map makes all factions and Legendary Lords released for the original Total War: Warhammer available in Warhammer 2. This also includes DLC factions and lords. The caveat is that you need to own the original game in order to access Mortal Empires in the sequel.
As far as we can tell, Warhammer 3 Mortal Empires will work in a similar way. However, we’re not really sure whether we’ll need to own both of the previous games in order to access it. Our guess is that we will only need to own one or the other. But having both of them will unlock access to a lot more content.
Total War: Warhammer II alone has over 20 different pieces of DLC to choose from, many of which add new Legendary Lords and/or entirely new factions. Some of the DLC is free but a lot of it is not. We recently put together a handy Warhammer 2 DLC buying guide to help you navigate through it all. The guide also includes all the paid DLC for the original game.
When Is Mortal Empires Coming?
Developer Creative Assembly hasn’t given us a specific release date for Warhammer 3 Mortal Empires but we can make an educated guess based on when the original version of the map was released.
Total War: Warhammer II launched on September 28th, 2017 and was initially supposed to include Mortal Empires from the get-go. For one reason or another, that didn’t end up happening and instead, we got the map almost one month later on October 26th.
Total War: Warhammer III dropped on February 17th so we may end up seeing the Immortal Empires map as soon as mid-March. There are a lot more factions to account for this time around so it’s possible that CA will end up releasing it a bit later compared to the first version.
The company is also currently working on a number of patches and hotfixes aimed at improving the performance and stability of the game. That may end up delaying Warhammer 3 Mortal Empires even further.
Having said that, it’s unlikely CA will want to delay the map too much given that there is already a huge demand for it. I’d be surprised if we didn’t get it by early April at the latest.
If you’ve been struggling to run the game at a decent frame rate, make sure to check out our Warhammer 3 optimization guide.
What to Expect From Warhammer 3 Mortal Empires
The Total War: Warhammer III version of Mortal Empires is expected to be huge and encompass pretty much the entire map of the world of Warhammer Fantasy. We’re talking about 500 provinces spread across a number of continents, both old and new.
The Immortal Empires map was already leaked last week and although CA called it a “very old prototype”, there’s a good chance that it won’t change too much by the time it launches.
The Mortal Empires map for Warhammer 2 was also leaked before launch and CA said the same thing about it. But, as it turned out, the finished map ended up being almost identical to the leaked one, with some minor differences here and there.
The map above is currently believed to be the one we’re going to see in-game once Warhammer 3 Mortal Empires launches. Or a version very similar to it. Check out the original leak on Reddit for an upscaled version along with details of some of the biggest changes coming with the map.
