Total War WARHAMMER III: Changing of Ways Guide (Tzeentch Campaign)

There are 10 Changing of Ways (CoW) actions you can perform, starting the campaign with Transfer Settlement unlocked and a further 9 to research. I will number the 9 in the order of how fast you can research them if you’re rushing them (bracket names are the tech’s name)

Reveal Shroud (Way of Deception) (1)

• Force Rebellion (Way of Deceit) (2) –> Force War (Way of War) (4)
• Track Army (Way of Time) (2) –> Halt Faction (Way of Manipulation) (4)
• Reveal Faction Intention (Way of Scrying) (3) –> Give War Coordination Target (Way of Fate) (5)
• Open Gates (Way of Prognostication) (3) –> Break Alliance (Temporal Switch) (5)

This also shows which two CoWs you can get if you rush one of the later ones (4/5). I’ll probably do another write up of the Tzeentch tech tree and what order I’d tackle it in.

Now for the meat of the guide: the constraints and my footnotes gathered from using and testing out the mechanics. I’ll go in the order they are presented in the menu, from left to right, up to down.

Reveal faction intentions: Every army in target faction (even those in the fog of war) will have a blue line pointing to their current objective (either to attack a hostile target or to retreat to/defend their settlements) Does not indicate if they are going to do rifts or try to shut it down (though you can infer if their faction leader doesn’t have a line and is within a turn or two of a rift). If you use this on another faction while the first one is active (Kairos can reduce the cooldown to the point where 3 factions intent are seen at once), it can bug out a little only showing the latest faction’s lines on the map, but if you select the earlier factions armies, you can still see their lines/targets (needs more testing)

Reveal shroud: Map hacks, exactly to the border of their territory and not an inch further. No diplomatic contact with owners of adjacent provinces, but it does make contact with factions whose armies or agents are on the revealed land. Use with care in the early game (for example don’t reveal shroud over Ice Court, they tend to have many armies and agents of the Darkland orks, Empire or Vampires on it, all of which automatically declare war on you, potentially limiting your ability to offer to declare war as a diplomatic lure to Skaven, Skragg or the Norscans. Does not reveal FoW over any kind of water, if you’re wondering where an army suddenly disappeared to, they either went into ambush or into the water.

Track army: only provides Line of Sight, not army composition. Does not work in Chaos Realms (you can target them but does not reveal FoW there, unless you’re in the Chaos Realms yourself, where you get LoS over them anyway). Target must be hostile to you. (Allies and neutrals cannot be targeted). Lasts 5 turns and works in neutral ground(rebel or unoccupied regions, and over the water) unlike reveal shroud.

Force Rebellion: instantly creates a rebellion army at target settlement, army does not grow even if there is a rebellion (the rebellion spawned by -100 control grows never the one spawned by this CoW). Can be useful for diverting an enemy army. If there is already a rebellion, the additional forces tend to trick the AI into thinking it can win the siege, and thus suicide into the garrison because it actually can’t. So it might not be worth to double up where a rebellion already exists. Some redditors have reported that if the rebellion spawns close enough to the settlement, you can attack the rebellion army and get the garrison to sally out, joining the fight against you. I have never personally experienced this so if any has, please comment below and share with us.

Halt faction: Dead stop on every army and hero. They cannot attack even when besieging (their settlements sallying out is untested), they cannot change stance, they cannot use rifts or get the soul. Very useful, pick your moment for it. Say the enemy is just outside of movement range in the Chaos Realms, make your move, use Halt Faction. Jump them the next turn.

Open Gates: Exactly as described, enemy walled cities have every single gate broken open once the siege starts. They will however position themselves as though they are not (remember they can see your army start position as defenders), but will instantly react to the gates being broken. So you will need to position your fast units in hiding if you want to back cap. Bring fast units and summons to block the lanes.

Break alliance: does what it says on the tin, breaks any defensive or military alliance between 2 factions, making them eligible for the CoW: Force War. The faction’s diplomatic ties are also heavily affected as though they had broken the treaty themselves. The consequences are of a campaign changing scale.

• The two factions lose the bonus of having a treaty (alliances supercede non-aggression, so they don’t even have a NAP) and suffer the penalty of breaking a treaty (easily 200+ points swing in diplomacy relations, not instantly but trending towards. There is also some immediate reduction for breaking the treaty)
• Furthermore recognition of friends and enemies according to the prior alliance is lost or even reversed. For example, Tzeentch is at war with Nurgle but not Khorne while Nurgle and Khorne are allied. Khorne would initially regard Tzeentch’s military actions against Nurgle as a negative in the diplomacy with Tzeentch. After breaking the alliance, they will count as a positive, even if the fighting happened in the past!
• As a result you will be able to use this to turn potential enemies into friends, potentially securing a flank or opening up outpost recruitment. I have yet to turn a faction from direct enemies to allies immediately, but it did help stop a newly declared war and slowly turned them to friends over 30 or more turns

  Final note you cannot break your own alliances this way.

Give War Coordination target: Target settlement/army’s faction must be hostile to the faction you are giving the target to. AI factions hostile to you tend to ignore this in favor of attacking you unless you are very far away. You cannot designate your own armies or settlements for the enemy. Can be used to give your allies target without spending allegiance points or on targets you are not mutually at war with, potentially weakening them and softening them up for betrayal or diplomacy.

Transfer settlement: settlement owner must not be at war with recipient. Cost is heavily influenced by Tzeentch influence in the target province and diplomatic ties between the 2 factions. Can be used to put factions into diplomatic contact with each other. Transferring settlements to other factions also opens up the possibility of trading adjacent settlements where they previously could not. (I managed to give Daniel a new home province in the Ogre mountains after he was made homeless by Kislev)

Force War: target factions must not be in a defensive or military alliance, no guarantees of direct miltiary action (Give War coordination target becomes available but even then, no guarantees) Diplomatic effects are mixed, tends to have the usual effects of war, but some factions that were initially friendly can revert back to peace if they remain passive and no third party interferes.

Grimoires (grims) are the special currency to spend to make CoWs happen. The game is fairly generous with them and you can acquire them in a few ways. That said, CoWs are also very costly, especially if Tzeentch corruption isn’t common in the areas/factions you are dealing with. Funnily enough that’s one upside of rifts; Tzeentch rifts help blast Tzeentch corruption randomly around the world, potentially in the targets of your CoWs, making it cheaper.

The first way to get grims is via buildings. Build the library building in the main settlement, maxing out at T4 for 14 grims per turn with strong winds of magic. Every resource (obsidian, marble or whatever) makes no difference to you, each tier of building is 5% province income and 1 grim per turn, maxing out at 3 grims per turn for each resource region. The best province near you is Imperial Road, with 3 resources, giving you 23 grims per turn when fully maxed out. You can further boost this using a character with the ancillary “Tzeentchian Philosopher” for +25%, as well as a lord with the skill “Scrolls of Destiny” for 3 extra grims per turn….and +100% of a province’s grim production. With supply lines being not quite as bad now, it might be worth if you have a level 10 herald of change (max recruit level is 7 right now) parked at imperial road, giving an additional 32 grims per turn for 300 + whatever supply lines additional upkeep.
(125% of 23 + 3 from that skill is 31.75, I assume they’ll round up)

The second way is through battles Battles are a great way to get extra grims, especially big ones, so don’t be afraid to use armies to attack rift spawns, it might even be worth to let rifts keep spawning armies and rebellions for you to fight and farm grims, experience and gold. Even if you lose the battle you will still get 5 grims a loss.

The last way to get grims is CHEESE (notice me pls Legend senpai) The cost of break alliance tends to be very high given the good relations between the factions. BUT you can acquire an ancillary called “Treacher” with 30% chance on lords winning a battle in your military (not just defensive) allies territory (thank you Cpecific for your ancillary guide). Each of these ancilliaries can be equipped on any character, and reduces the cost of Break Alliance by 30%. But if you have 4 or more equipped, you gain grimoires for breaking alliances (as reported by a redditor, I personally only got 3 so it was pretty low cost around 100+) The more above 4 you equip…. the more grims you get for every alliance you break (can’t make then break your own alliances with this CoW unfortunately XD) Just like cheese on pasta, put as much as you’re comfortable with and no more. Some people are lactose intolerant to some degree, so say a prayer for their souls and move on.

Kairos has some good perks in the blue line to improve your CoWs. For one he makes reveal faction intentions practically free (1-2 grims). Secondly, he can reduce the cost of all actions by 9%. Which is probably worth the 3 skill points especially in the midgame before you get your grimoire factories up and running. And finally, which makes the biggest long term impact, he reduces the cooldown of all changing of ways by 3 turns (also 3 skill points). Your cooldowns are all either 5 or 10 turns, reducing them to 2 or 7 respectively is huge. Say in 21 turns, without the skill you can transfer settlement twice. With it you can transfer thrice (assuming you’ve got the grims for it). Thats a 50% increase, a great deal for just 4 points in the blue line you were going for anyway to get that rare +6% casualty replen. But Kairos’ skill tree is a guide for another day, so go on and start Changing the Ways of your campaigns you madlads.