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For example, Grunberg has an expensive breeding stables which heavily buffs your cavalry and missile cavalry units and also has livestock farms, which give better growth than normal wheat farms. Some towns have unique buildings, with special effects. You’ve also got two Orc factions nearby who like to cause trouble. That means definitely wiping out the Vampire Counts, and almost certainly killing off Archaon, the big boring suit of armour who heads up the Chaos faction. This province is situated in the West of the Empire, and you need to regain the whole place to get the Short Victory. The Empire starts in a single region-Altdorf-but can swiftly and easily regain the other regions in its province. Piss off the dwarfs or the humans by fighting any of them, and you’ll have a lot more problems to handle. Neglect the East and South for too long, and you’ll have big armies on your doorstop. However the Southern Greenskins and Eastern Vampire Counts aren’t that far away, and are very willing to push into the Empire proper once they’ve established themselves. The Dwarfs and Brettonia even have a grudging respect for the Empire, which can blossom into an alliance when Chaos attacks. They also don’t have a huge cultural axe to grind against them, unlike the Vampire Counts and Greenskins. Though their neighbours aren’t allied, they aren’t exactly hostile (save perhaps for Graf Todbringer in Middenland) and they’re mostly desperate to survive. The humans of the Empire might have the easiest start of any of the Total War factions.
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