Like in the 50 years after Monarchia, the Word Bearers went from being the slowest legion in the war effort, with a razed crown world, presumably suffering multiple censures, all while operating a general veneer of suspicion from everyone else in the Crusade, to the second fastest expansionary force, right behind Horus himself.

That's seriously fucking impressive work, reorganizing a warfare model focused on gradual assimilation into one of blitzkrieg expansion is hard enough, but doing it well enough to rival the poster boys of the Crusade, who were performing at maximum efficiency the entire time, in just 50 years is simply crazy.

Of course, Lorgar was just doing this in order to covertly prepare for rebellion against the Emperor, but still, daaaaamn.

For all this sub makes fun of lorgar, IMO he's probably one of the most competent primarchs in the entire crusade at actually doing his job as a leader.

So, it's relatively simple but needs assumptions. We will first say that Graia happens around the same time as Sicarius is overseeing Ventris's trial for Codex Breach, so Titus is Acting Captain. Graia happened after Kyras died so that the Blood Ravens could spare a squad and can use their new battle cry of None Shall Find Us Wanting. Sevastus Acheran, Cato's actual successor in command, was injured during Graia so Titus, third in line, was sent there. After Titus got arrested, Cato tore Leandros a new one for going to the Inquisition rather than a Chaplain or him as actual Captain. Cato went missing in the warp for about ten years in the Indomitus Crusade, Acheran succeeded him. Cato got promoted to Victrix Guard Captain at the Plague Wars after escaping with the survivors of his Strike Cruiser, then Titus returned after serving with the Black Templars until they could make sure he was clean and then sticking around during the mess with the Great Rift opening, became Primaris and was made Lieutenant as that's what he would be in the new initial Codex revision in issue until Guilliman finishes the Codex Imperialis.

Or SM1 devs just didn't pay attention to Company colors and we are forced to play mental gymnastics because of negligence.

Blazing hot take i know. I get really tired of moving the little chess pieces around for each of my 4 armies. Conceptually, the idea makes sense, but practically, it's a slog. That said, all the stuff from kingmaker that carried over I still really enjoy.

Personally I think if the crusade system was just management and not making each individual army its own character, I'd be a lot happier with the system.

40K Crusade League Game 1:

Necrons v Tyranid

Lord General Ramhotep of the Mephrit scanned the vastness of the holograph of space with furious intensity, his oculars whirring as he used a single finger to motion the floating simulacra to twirl and turn, shrink and grow. He wasn’t looking for something that was there, but for something that wasn’t. A splinter of Hive Fleet Leviathan had broken off from the main advance to gorge itself on sleeping Tomb Worlds. Nemesor Ashakhet had tasked him with finding this splinter group. All he had found so far were gutted tomb worlds. His finger stopped its dancing suddenly, and his oculars contracted. The holographs were not mere maps. They were a live, ever changing feed of actual space. Ramhotep zoomed into a small, still sleeping Tomb World. He didn’t see anything there. That was the interesting thing. There was no data feed from around the planet - no moons moving, no stray satellites or asteroids. The feed from the area had been silenced. Ramhotep stood, missives already sent to awaken select portions of his personal cohort; a large phalanx of Warriors, two small, but elite squads of Immortals and a small group of Deathmarks in case he ran into any stray Triarch representatives in his travels. He also reached out to Teos the Tinkerer, the old Technomancer in charge of Ashakhet’s vast canoptek forces. He asked that he bring some scarabs for quick surveillance of the world and, in case they ran into some tyranids, two of his towering Doomstalkers.

Once in orbit of the planet, Ramhotep ran sweep after sweep of the sensors dotting the planet’s surface that supposedly shared their telemetry in order to produce the detailed, living maps of the cosmos that the Necrons relied on. He quickly found sensors that had gone silent located over a four block section of the ruined civilization that draped this world. Wasting no time, he landed his troops.

There were four pylons, two on the western side of the downtown area, both located inside ruined buildings. On the eastern side, there was one on a broken street, near a crater just across from an industrial facility where the fourth resided. Ramhotep set his Immortals to the western side, to secure the pylon closest to where they landed. He set the Deathmarks just outside the building, looking down the overgrown avenues. Ramhotep himself, along with his large contingent of Warriors took to the factory to the east. Behind him, overlooking both contingents of forces, w

I could use some advice.

A single high-level general is going to be more powerful than 2 armies splitting the XP, but since I'm also trying for the secret ending, I need to keep an eye on the calendar. Is there enough calendar time for a single army to move around the map and fight all the demon armies?

Some of the building descriptions mention upgrading units. I never quite figured out if this applied to units that already exist in the field, or if this only allows for recruiting new more powerful units. In other words, once I've unlocked marksmen, do I throw the archers away or can they be "turned into" marksmen?

Since the mage general is pretty OP, should I focus on the buildings that increase energy and power, and don't worry about unit buildings?

In my last run, I had a dozen or more "free units" of different kinds that came from diplomacy, etc. I mostly just left in the capital or used them to explore the map. Are there any uses for these units? Mid-to-late game I needed large unit stacks to be effective, so 15 movanic daevas seems a bit pointless.

I also never really used the map skills for either buffing your army or debuffing the enemy army. I'm a bit of a hoarder so the "XX day cooldown" caused me to hold them until later (which turned into the closing credits of the game). Are some of these abilities better than others? Some good strategies to use them?

I've read that if there are demon armies still around at the start of Chapter 4, you can run into troubles in Chapter 5. So I planned on clearing the map completely by the end of Chapter 3. Can anyone confirm this?

Lastly, the biggest trouble I had (even despite the cheating) was when an enemy succubus stack would win initiative, charm a marksmen stack, which would proceed to decimate my own army before I had a chance to react. Is there a good counter to this? Or a way to raise initiative?

Thanks.

I haven't read every last warhammer 40k book, much less know all the lore. But I doubt the crusade was all that righteous right? Sure there were no doubt extremely dangerous factions and xeno races that were outright threats and HAD to be destroyed (especially the ones that apparently tricked lost colonies of humanity or took them as slaves etc after the war against the men of iron)

But there had to be a few that didn't have anything to do with humanity. Never enslaved them, never tricked them, some who perhaps even had good relationships with them or helped them during their collapse when the imperium had not yet formed and they needed help to survive.

But I doubt the Emperor, defender and leader of humanity though he is, cared as he unleashed the primarchs and space marines on them.

Did any of the space marines or primarchs or even the Emperor ever feel regret for doing this to them? Bringing war to their worlds just to gain them for humanity or "liberating" the humans on their worlds. Or did they just justify in their minds as "necessary" even when destroying innocent xeno races?

We get to Outland and Honor Hold and find a bunch of grey haired, half crazy veterans who’ve been living in a burned out hellscape for 20+ years. What did they do during this time? What allowed them to survive as long as they did? How many “split off” from the garrison to find new adventures or build new lives on Outland? Was there ever any infighting? How did the locals (Mag’har, fel orcs, Broken, Arrakoa, etc) interact with them, if at all? What were their goals - did they try to return to Azeroth, hunker down until help arrived, conduct sorties against the fel orcs? What was their survival rate from the Second War to BC? How did they reintegrate back into Azerothian society after BC?

And any other relevant questions. Thanks!