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Total War: WARHAMMER III > Guides > kw142 (Lie in Mid-July)'s Guides
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Cathay Tips (Updated)
By kw142 (Lie in Mid-July)
This guide covers all unique Cathay mechanics--Harmony, the Great Bastion, Caravan, Wuxin Compass, Matters of State--expansion tips and more. As of 06/11/2024, the guide has been updated for patch 5.0.4, including tips for DLC content. Feel free to share your thoughts or ask questions in the comment sections; I'll update the guide accordingly and credit you as well.
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Created by
kw142 (Lie in Mid-July)
Offline
Category: Characters, Gameplay Basics, Secrets
Languages: English
Posted
Updated
23 Feb, 2022 @ 10:41pm
11 Jun @ 4:27pm
9,886 Unique Visitors
223 Current Favorites
Guide Index
Overview
Introduction 
Cathay Territorial Expansion 
Zhao Ming Early Expansion Tips (RoC Campaign) 
Miao Ying Early Expansion Tips (RoC Campaign) 
Yuan Bo Early Expansion Tips (RoC Campaign) 
Mid to Late Game Expansion Tips 
The Great Bastion Attacks 
Diplomacy Tips 
Old/New Harmony System Comparison 
Harmony Managament (Old) 
New Harmony System 
Handling Chaos Rifts 
Caravans (Ivory Road) 
Wu Xing Compass 
Wu Xing Compass (Jade Court) 
Matters of State (Jade Court) 
Fortress City Benefits 
Commercial District Benefits 
Other Miscellaneous Tips 
Change Log 
Comments
Introduction
This guide is now updated for patch 5.04, covering all three Cathay factions. Suggestions are based on my experience; there may be more optimal approaches I have not discovered. Feel free to add more suggestions or ask questions in the comment section. I also play all of my campaigns on very hard, so the tips may be tailored a bit towards harder difficulties. Nevertheless, the tips should also be useful on lower difficulties.

Cathay has a strong defensive play style. The strategic location of their home settlements is quite safe if you can manage the Great Bastion--which is not hard due to how strong the Great Bastion garrison is, and there are many bonuses you can get for it from research, buildings, and character skills. Once you manage the Great Bastion, you can pretty much fight a one-front war as you fight through the Ogre mountains.

Harmony is a bit tricky to manage at first, but there are many hidden tricks to make it easy. I'll go through many helpful tricks I found. You want to always stay in perfect harmony for huge faction-wide bonuses. As of patch 5.04, harmony has been reworked, and each province has its own harmony management. Perfect balance is no longer always the best. I'll explain more in the new harmony section down below.

Cathay is still one of my recommended factions to play for beginners because of how safe its location is and how straightforward its units are. The tricky part is to understand how to manage the Great Bastion threat and the harmony system, which hopefully this guide will help.

My opinions of Cathay Factions:

Recommended for first playthrough:
Zhao Ming > Yuan Bo = Miao Ying

Early Game Difficulty (High to Low):

Miao Ying > Zhao Ming > Yuan Bo

Faction Strength:
Yuan Bo > Zhao Ming = Miao Ying

This is mainly due to Yuan Bo's exclusive mechanic, Matters of State. The mechanic may be confusing at first, but is very strong, even overpower in my opinion. There are a few sections in this guide about Matters of State.

When this guide was first created, Immortal Empire campaign was not released and there was only one campaign mode, Forge of Souls(Now called Realm of Chaos). Most of the original tips can be applied in both campaigns. I have also added Immortal Empire specific tips to the guide.
Cathay Territorial Expansion
Realm of Chaos Campaign:

Overall, territorial expansion for Cathay is straightforward since the majority of the time you can fight on one-front. Always Stabilize Cathay and the Great Bastion first, then I recommend expand in one direction down south against the Ogres. Or if you want to just play defensive, after stabilizing Cathay and the Great Bastion, just defend settlements, catch souls, and win the campaign; Cathay can play super defensive and win that way (Unless if you are playing as Yuan Bo, the Jade Court, which requires you to expand out to win the campaign.)

Another approach is to ally with the Ogres, fight the Chaos Warriors, Tzeentch outside of your Bastion Walls and fight the Chaos Dwarfs down further south. This approach is much harder, because you either have to deal with the Chaos land attrition, low replenishment, harsh climate or you have to march your army through a long distance before you can fight and claim settlements. Ogres are also not easy to ally at first if you are not playing as Zhao Ming.


Immortal Empire Campaign:

Cathay has a similar strategic position in Immortal Empire. The recommended expansion approach is the same: Stabilize Cathay region and the Great Bastion Wall first. Ignore the Chaos factions outside the Bastion Walls and just defend the wall when they attack. Expand west through the ogre mountains. You can ally with the Ogres or fight them. For the Empire faction in Cathay region, you can ally with; For the Lizardmen and Norsca, I recommend wiping them since they will likely turn on you.; For the wood elf, you can leave them alone since they usually just sit at their tree without doing anything.

If you are feeling ambitious, you can also send armies through the sea lanes, to expand on the west side of the map where the climate is also suitable for Cathay. This significantly speeds up your expansion process opening up more areas for you to take, if, you are up for the challenge to fight on multiple fronts.
Zhao Ming Early Expansion Tips (RoC Campaign)
Where and How to Expand as Zhao Ming Early on:

  1. First, expand north to annihilate the Skaven faction in the first few turns. Take a straight line up like the route marked in the picture below. You should be able to destroy them before they can raise any strong army. Recruit at the end of every turn. If you cannot get to the next settlement in one turn, position your army at the edge of you settlement, so you can recruit, replenish, and get to the enemy settlement in the next turn.

  2. After dealing with Skaven, there is a good chance that the Greenskin faction south of you will declare war on you. Ignore the Greenskin faction south of you completely. Your home capital, Hanyu Port is a natural defensive stronghold that blocks enemy armies from getting into Cathay. The Greenskin will come take a look at your capital and just run away because there is no way to siege it early on. Plus, if you allied with the nomad Cathay faction, they are probably going to destroy the Greenskins anyway.

  3. Time to take on the rebel Cathays! If you are playing on normal, you can probably just steamroll through the rebels. Siege for a turn if the casualty projection is really high. If you are playing on very hard, the first hard battle will be this next one where you try to take a rebel settlement with a full stack of army. Encircle and draw them out; never fight siege battle early on since they are so heavily favored for the defenders. This is the route I suggest you take:

  4. While taking care of the rebels, Kurgan Warband and Chaos will likely be sending in armies into Cathay. Ignore these Chaos armies as long as they are not next to a settlement conquered recently. Cathay's garrison armies are quite strong; these early stacks of Chaos armies cannot take down even the minor settlements, even on very hard, partly because they will never be full health full 20 units by the time they get to central Cathay where Zhao Ming's settlements are.

  5. For the rebels of Nan Yan Mines, declare war on them after you destroy the other rebel faction. Make sure you don't accidentally sign a non-aggression pact or trade agreement with them. You can position your army on the border next to their settlement, and wait till they are weak on troops to declare war and strike.

  6. The Tzeentch faction is your next goal. Terracotta Graveyard is the settlement you need to take to annihilate this Tzeentch faction. If you are on very hard, you want to do this as quickly as possible, because the Tzeentch faction can conduct rituals to give your settlement away to other factions!!! Sometimes they give the settlement to a faction you are not at war with, which is super annoying. (Save scumming does work since there is a chance for settlement transfer ritual to happen and the event chance in this game is not seeded.)

  7. After taking care of Tzeentch, Cathay and the Great Bastion should be stabilized at this point by you and your ally. Prepare for the first rift or further expansion down south if you prefer. Final settlements should look like this:
Miao Ying Early Expansion Tips (RoC Campaign)
Where and How to Expand as Miao Ying Early on:

  1. First take care of the rebels in the Cathay Region, take all their settlements in the first few turns. The more settlements you hold, the more income you can have late game, and the more armies you can sustain. Your starting army should be strong enough to storm through the rebel army and early settlements. Recruit at the end of each turn to make your army bigger and stronger.

  2. While you are taking care of the rebels, keep an eye out for the Tzeentch army at Terracotta Graveyard. They should not be able to attack and take your settlements early on, but to be safe, I recruited a second army with a few peasant units at the nearest settlement, just in case if they decide to attack.

  3. After taking all the rebel settlements, turn your main army back and take the Terracotta Graveyard, the Tzeentch settlement. At this point you should be safe inside the Great Bastion since there are no enemy faction adjacent to you.

  4. Prepare to take back the Snake gate next. Use a small army with few week units to capture the gate since when you settle into a deserted settlement, your army spends a good number of your units' soldiers to settle down. If you use your main big army, it will instantly drain a lot of your soldiers and weaken you temporarily before you main army replenish. I always capture deserted settlement with a small army if possible. Have your main army nearby, just in case if the Chaos/Norsca warbands outside the gate decide to attack you when you are settling down.
Yuan Bo Early Expansion Tips (RoC Campaign)
Where and How to Expand as Yuan Bo Early on:

  1. First take care of the Greenskin faction that is at war with you, take all their settlements in the first few turns. The more settlements you hold, the more income you can have late game, and more armies you can sustain. Your starting army should be strong enough to storm through Greenskin settlements. Recruit at the end of each turn to make your army bigger and stronger.

  2. Next, turn around and start attacking the skaven faction, Clan Eshin, who is fighting Zhao Ming. Surprise, the ruin settlements in the Cathay regions are all skaven settlements. You want to take as much settlements early and away from your potential ally (before they conquer them).You can start establish trade and non-aggression pacts with all Cathay factions at this point.

  3. While you are fighting against the skavens, keep an eye out on what Zhao Ming is doing. If Zhao Ming is about to take some of the lands from Disserter Lords of Jinshen, I recommend you run ahead of him and take those settlements for yourself as well.
  4. Keep looking for opportunities for positive diplomacy with other Cathay factions each turn. Before taking care of the rebel Cathay factions and skavens, you should be close to getting a chance for confederation. For non-Cathay factions that are close-by, be careful with signing any treaties with them (including trade). You may want to expand over their territories.
  5. One optional route that you may prioritize is to capture the Tower of Ashshair before Zhao Ming This settlement is required for your campaign victory since you have to build an astromantic relay over it to unlock one direction of the Wu Xing Compass. If you do not take the settlement early, Zhao Ming is likely going to take it. Then, you would either need to fight him or wait until you can confederate with him, which would come way later after you've confederated with most other Cathay factions. This is up to you whether you are comfortable with giving the settlement over to Zhao Ming. In my playthrough, I just waited until I confederated with him.
  6. After taking care of both the rebel Cathay factions and the Skavens, move north to take care of the Tzeentch faction, Sarthorael's Watchers.
  7. Then, help capture Snake Gate if it has not been captured; recruit or leave an army at the Bastion Gate for early invasions. I don't recommend leaving the AIs alone to defend them.
  8. At this point Cathay should be mostly stable. Start preparing for expansion through the Ogre mountains or take care of other non-Cathay factions left in the Cathay region if there is any left.
Mid to Late Game Expansion Tips
  • I suggest you do not expand past the Great Bastion into the Chaos lands, at least not early or mid game, for the following reasons:
    1. The chaos lands are completed corrupted with Chaos corruptions. Moving your army through these lands make you take heavy attrition damage. You army will likely be weakened by a lot before you even reach a settlement to attack.

    2. The corruption also affect your settlement growth. You have negative settlement growth in heavily corrupted regions, plus huge public order penalty. Therefore, it is very hard to hold a settlement in the Chaos region, close to impossible to upgrade these settlements within 20 or even 30 turns.

    3. These region usually have unsuitable climates as well, meaning increased building time, higher recruitment time, and lowered replenishment rate.

    4. Kurgan Warbands army are also scripted to spawn west of the Great Bastion. They will attack your settlement right away if they spawn next to it. In other words, everything may be fine when you ended the turn, but the next turn 3 full stack army may spawn next to your settlement and besiege it.

  • If you do decide to expand west into the chaos land, here are some helpful tips:
    1. When traveling through these lands, I suggest you march one turn and encamp the next turn, alternating between them to mitigate attrition damage. Raiding stance also prevents attrition when in enemy territories.

    2. When you decide to raze a chaos land settlement because it is too hard to hold, I suggest you do the following instead: Sack > Occupy > Abandon Settlement. These three steps can be done in one turn. This way, you get the max amount of money from sacking settlement while preventing your lord from taking attrition damage since at the end of the turn, your lord is technically garrisoning a settlement--which is being abandoned.

    3. Use your allies to help you expand into chaos land when you can't hold settlements. When one of your chaos land settlement is about to get razed by chaos army, trade your settlement to your ally who is not at war with chaos army. You can ally one of the Ogre faction and give the settlement to them. This way, the settlement will not get razed and the region's chaos corruption will continuously drop because a non-chaos faction is holding it.

    4. Build Bastion Pagoda to get immunity of Chaos Wastes attrition. This is a unique building you can build on each bastion gate. At max rank, it provides 90% chaos waste attrition immunity and at rank 3 it provides 50% immunity. You can easily achieve 100% immunity with one or two Bastion Padoga. Note this only works against chaos waste attrition, not other types like Nurgle, Tzeentch.

    RoC Campaign Specific Tips:

  • You don't have to expand out of Cathay. You can just hold the Great Bastion and Cathay, and focus on catching souls--finishing the campaign.

  • Expand down into the ogre mountains is the best option. These settlements are easier to govern and hold than chaos land in the west. And because of the terrain, you can hold choke points to safely push out in one direction, with no threat attacking your back while you are expanding.

  • After you unify the ogre mountains, go further south and control the bottom right corner of the map. For the lizard men on the island, I just allied with them; you don't have to push onto their island, and they won't come out and attack anybody.

  • After you control the east side of the map, you should probably already gotten all 4 souls and finished the campaign at this point, since you are likely more than 150 turns in. Otherwise, you can just hold and finish the campaign by catching souls or continue expanding westward if you prefer. Kislev, dwarfs, and Empires are easy to ally, while green skins, vampires, daemons, you should fight.

  • Agerock suggested that you could teleport your main army through rifts to the west-mid side of the map, where Empires, Kislev factions are. The settlements there have suitable climates and can be a valid choice for expansion.
    • Keep in mind this does take your main army away from Cathay and potentially have you fight at multiple locations.
    • Make sure all of Cathay is stabilized and Bastion gates properly managed before you send your main army away.
    • On very hard difficulty, this may be difficult since I found my hands pretty full just defending Cathay for the majority of the campaign, dealing with Bastion Attacks and Oracle of Tzeentch who kept sneaking past the mountain region travelling through impassable terrain into Cathay. And after destoying Oracle of Tzeentch, Khorne faction kept sending 4-5 armies trying to get through the mountain regions every few turns.
The Great Bastion Attacks
The Northern Provinces, Miao Yin's faction, has this unique campaign mechanic where you need to hold the Great Bastion--"The Great Wall"--against endless tides of Chaos/Norsca faction. For Zhao Ming, this is less relevant early game if you are letting your allies hold the Great Bastion gates. At first it feels intimidating, later it just feels like stacks of army suiciding into your walls like moth into fire. Plenty of memes going around about Cathay and Kurgan Warbands XD.

There is a threat gauge at the top of your UI:
Every turn the gauge goes up passively, you can conduct research, issue edicts, and construct special buildings to lower the threat level. Once the gauge is full, Kurgan Warbands are scripted to spawn stack of armies right outside of your wall. Even when the gauge is not full, small armies of Kurgan Warbands still spawn randomly and will look to siege your wall. Killing all Kurgan Warbands spawned on the map will lower the gauge by quite a bit.

Tips on Dealing with Bastion Attacks:
  1. If you are letting your allies holding the gates (mostly likely when playing as Zhao Ming), make sure you have an army nearby to reinforce in case if your ally can't defend a siege. Or just take the gates yourself when they fall, AIs can't hold these gates well late game.

  2. The gates of the Great Bastion have strong garrison, a single stack of Chaos/Norsca army usually cannot take it down. As long as you are upgrading the gates as the game progresses, you don't need to worry about Kurgan Warbands siege when the gauge is not full.

  3. When the gauge becomes full, you will receive a message about the Great Bastion attack begins. Then you have to make sure you have strong armies stationed on the walls. Wherever multiple stacks of armies spawned, make sure you have at least one strong army holding the respective gate. You should have time to move your army between gates since it usually takes a few turns for them to siege the gates.

  4. All-Out bastion attacks are avoidable if the threat gauge is maintained well (never get to full). You can set gate edicts to the one that reduces threat build-up, and periodically sweep Kurgan Warband armies outside of your gate. Each Kurgan Warband army destroyed before the gauge is full will reduce threat gauge by 20%. If you don't let the threat gauge get to full, Kurgan Warband will never spawn ridiculous amount of full stack armies to siege the gates.
    • Whether to let the gauge fill is your choice, just make sure you are prepared with garrison armies if letting the gauge fill. You do get a lot of experiences and money from successfully defending against all-out bastion attacks since the scale of battles are so grand (stacks of 20-unit armies crashing into your wall)

  5. On very hard, having a full stack 20-unit army on every gate is essential after turn 70-ish if you are letting the gauge fill. Depending on when the third Great Bastion attacks happen and how strong you are at the time, the timing of this varies, but should be at around turn 70. At this time, Kurgan Warband will start sending at least three full stack armies to siege each gate when the threat gauge becomes full. Here are my suggestions:

    1. To avoid fighting large stacks of armies, follow the previous tip to keep the threat gauge in check. If the gauge is never full, you will never have to fight against large stacks of Kurgan Warband armies.

    2. Fighting against more than one full army with just gate garrison is suicide. Because of the number disadvantage and how big the gate settlement is, garrison army will not be able to hold every choke point and will be outmaneuvered by faster Chaos units.

    3. Fighting against three or more full armies at once with a full army + garrison is still difficult. I suggest you avoid this situation. During the attack, Kurgan Warband will not have three or more full armies siege at the first turn. Usually only one or two army will reach your gate at first. I suggest you break the siege by attacking them before the rest of reinforcements arrived. Make sure you minimize casualties on your side and maximize casualties on their side to prepare for next turn when reinforcements arrive.

    4. Focus crossbows on Mammoths first, which are the only real threats in Kurgan Warband's army. Have two lines of melee infantry separating your ranged units and enemy units. Use spells on groups of enemies. You should be able to win every even-numbered fights with little to no lost.

  6. The gates have some super beneficial special buildings. One building reduces upkeep of local armies; at max level, the upkeep reduction is 65%. If you combine with lord skills and researches, the upkeep reduction can get above 80%. I suggest you just leave some strong armies on the gates. I kept full stacks of top tier units on those gates and had very low upkeep cost for them. And you will become no.1 power in diplomacy so fast because of this.

  7. Besides the upkeep reduction building, I built the growth and replenishment building, for fast recovery after sieges. You can also build a defense building for more supplies or a hiring building for top tier units. Also, tier 4 gates can hire Terracottas, they are super strong, terrifies enemies, and unbreakable.

  8. Bastion Pagoda is another unique and super beneficial building to build for Chaos Wastes attrition immunity. At max rank, it provides 90% chaos waste attrition immunity and at rank 3 it provides 50% immunity. You can easily achieve 100% immunity with one or two Bastion Pagoda. Note this only works against Chaos Wastes attrition, not other types like Nurgle, Tzeentch.

  9. If playing as the Jade Court, Yuan Bo's faction, Kurgan Warbands armies still spawns outside of the gates, even though there is no gauge at the top of your UI. There will not be large-scale Bastion attacks like when the gauge fills with Miao Ying and Zhao Ming. However, a couple full stack armies will still spawn periodically and they are hostile towards you.
Diplomacy Tips
Grand Cathay can have many allies and trade partners. There are many confederation opportunities as well. You should always be looking for an opportunity to conduct beneficial diplomacy deals.

General Tips
  1. Keep your reliability very high at all times. This makes diplomacy much easier for you; other factions are more likely to sign treaties with you. To keep high reliability:
    1. Do not do any aggressive actions against a faction which you have a treaty(any treaty) with. (Aggressive actions include: raiding, attacking, trespassing, threatening in diplomacy, agent/hero actions)

    2. Do not betray your allies. (Enter war with your military alliance when they attack; enter war with your defensive alliance when they get attacked. If both attack and defender are your allies, join the defender.)

    3. Do not break a treaty shortly after you signed it (10 turns).

    4. Cancel all treaties and wait for a while (10 turns) before you conduct any aggressive actions with a faction you have treaties with.

  2. After each confederation there is a cool-down (5 turns) before you can confederate again, and during this period you have diplomacy penalty with other Cathay factions.

  3. Before confederation, make sure you have strong economy and can hold extra territories. Confederation can sink your income badly due to new armies, agents upkeep. When this happens, consider whether you need the new army, the location of the new army, disband as necessary.

  4. Do not sign defensive alliance and military alliance mindlessly. Aggressive factions may bring you into unwanted wars very quickly, while factions adjacent to many hostile factions may bring unwanted war to you when they get declared war.

  5. Do not sign any treaties with factions your know you are likely going to war with.

  6. Give small money gifts to raise friendship with other factions.

  7. When a deal is close to being struck (small negative number), you can add payments to fulfill it.

  8. Build allied outpost if you economy allows. No need to upgrade it unless if you are rich

Cathay Diplomacy Tips:
  1. Befriend your fellow Cathay people. You can confederate with every Cathay faction at some point with ease, except for confederations between the two dragons--the Northern Provinces and the Western Provinces. Sign non-aggression pact, trade agreement as soon as possible with all of them.

  2. Choose to befriend some ogre factions. The ogre faction closest to you is a good option; it is likely fighting other ogres. Choose a ogre faction that is fighting other ogre factions if you want to take over ogre mountains. Ogre allies are useful to help you defend ogre mountains and fight against other ogre factions when you expand.

  3. Cathay has buildings increase trade income; sign any trade agreement you can (except not with factions you are going to fight against, chaos, daemons, vampires, some ogres, green-skins) even if you have to pay some money for it. A trade agreement with greater than -1 success chance is usually worth pursuing with payments.

  4. For further factions, befriend Kislev, Empires, and Dwarfs. You don't need to sign alliances if you don't want. Trade and non-aggression pacts are good to have with them.

  5. For settlements you captured that you do not want to hold or cannot hold, give them to your allies. If your settlement is about to be razed by enemy, you can give it to your ally who is not at war with the enemy. This prevents the settlement getting razed and helps your ally. Ogre ally is a good candidate to have chaos land settlements.

  6. In Immortal Empire campaign, try not to get into war with the Chaos Dwarf north of your Bastion gates too quickly. They help you clear Kurgan Warbands armies and other Norsca factions early on. In my playthrough, Chaos Dwarf killed Kurgan Warbands as soon as they spawned early to mid game, it was not until I am almost done unifying the Ogre mountains, did the Chaos Dwarfs declare war on me. By that time, my gates are well-upgraded and defended with armies, so they cannot really break through either.

Confederation Between Cathay Legendary Lords:

As of patch 5.04, confederation between Cathay Legendary Lords feel much easier compared to two years ago. I have not had trouble confederating with other LLs, playing as all three Cathay factions (Miao Ying/Zhao Ming/Yuan Bo). The tips and suggestions in this section should still help you achieve confederation, but overall confederation is not as hard to achieve as before.
CA designed it for the two Cathay Legendary Lords to be extremely difficult to confederate--giving a baseline evaluation of around -100 while the others are between 0 to -50. It is normal in your play-through to never have a chance to confederate with the other LL. To successfully confederate between Miao Ying and Zhao Ming--overcoming the huge negative baseline evaluation, mostly through strength evaluation--the following conditions need to be met:
  1. Have very good diplomatic relationship with the other LL's faction. Being "Trusted Friend" is important to make confederation more likely.
  2. Have "Very High" as your reliability, this raises all diplomatic treaty evaluations.
  3. Hold as much territories, armies as you can.
  4. Make the other legendary lord weak, preferably with only one settlement and no standing army left. (This is the most difficult one since there is no easy way to guarantee it.)

If you achieve all of the above conditions at once, you should be able to get a confederation evaluation betweem 5 to -20, where threatening should have a good chance of succeeding. Make sure you backup your save before threatening.
The above conditions are really difficult to achieve, I suggest you do not force it during your campaign and just ally with the other LL. It is more trouble than worth to dedicate a lot of time into this confederation that is designed to be close to impossible.

Some comments on how to achieve these conditions:
  • Expand fast early towards the other LL; fight the same enemy and take away the enemy territories before him/her.
  • When allied with the other LL, issue difficult war coordination target through diplomacy to make your ally's army suicide itself.
  • During rift openings, a common threat bonus of about +10 is applied for confederation. More likely to confederate during this time.
  • It is much easier to confederate as Zhao Ming with Miao Ying than vice versa.
    • Miao Ying is slower to take settlements than Zhao Ming early on. And Miao Ying will likely lose to Great Bastion Attacks mid to late game, she cannot hold gates very well and will constantly lose settlements and all armies to chaos. Zhao Ming's settlements on the other hand are closer to the center of Cathay where enemies cannot reach easily.
    • Same logic applies to Yuan Bo; it is easier to confederate as Yuan Bo than with Yuan Bo. Because his settlements are more protected and he is less likely to lose army.
Other suggestions:
  • chadhiggins6 pointed out in the comment section that there is a "main threat" bonus for confederation. It will provide another additional +10 evaluation.
    • Originally posted by chadhiggins6:
      The main thing your missing in the guide is major threat +10 bonus. Which you get when you and your ally are at war with at least one of the 8 major playable factions.
Old/New Harmony System Comparison
This section compares the old harmony system with the new harmony system and explains the difference. If you only want to learn about how the new harmony system works, feel free to skip this and the next section.


Comparison
Old
New
Maintain/Affect Level
Faction-Level
Province-Level
Changed By
Buildings, Events, Researches, Characters
Buildings only
Desired Energy State
Always Balanced
Yin or Yang or Balanced (there are situational benefits for all states)
Possible Benefits
diplomatic relations, corruption reduction, building income, construction cost, control, growth, army upkeep, battle ability
building income, construction cost and time, control, growth, army upkeep, movement range, research rate, recruitment cost, rank, and capacity

Comparing to the old harmony system, the current harmony system is more simple in terms of how harmony energy is changed. It is also more flexible in terms of what kind of benefit you want to obtain and where you want to apply them. However, it feels harder to maintain the harmony system now than before because you can only change energy through buildings.

Previously, a lot of factors can disrupt the harmony balance, factors including random event, heroes, armies, research, and infrastructure buildings. It is difficult to understand and keep track of at first but there are tricks like disbanding and recruiting idle heroes, which makes harmony balance very easy once you have a couple idle heroes.

The current harmony system is simple to understand with only infrastructure buildings affecting harmony. However, the harmony feels harder to manage because building infrastructure takes time and slots. This is especially difficult for newly acquired settlements with unsuitable climates. You may not have open slots; plus, building or converting infrastructures under harsh climates are very slow.

The province-level management makes it more flexible in terms of where to apply harmony benefits and what kind of benefits to apply. Management becomes more time consuming and difficult at the same time because you have to manage each province's harmony separately. When you are rapidly expanding, you may need to constantly monitor and manage multiple provinces' harmony changes at once.

The old, faction-wide, benefits when harmony is balanced also feels much stronger and more useful. Important and significant improvement of growth, control, income, construction cost, and battle ability is acquired all at once faction-wide. I personally prefer the old system much more.
Harmony Managament (Old)
As of patch 5.04 The harmony system has been reworked. Most of the information in this section is now outdated.
If you want to learn about the old harmony system, feel free to read this section. Otherwise, you can
skip to the next section for the new harmony system.

Harmony is a unique mechanic for Cathay faction. You have to manage Yin, Yang energy to make sure they are balanced. You gain massive bonuses faction-wide if harmony is achieved--balanced Yin and Yang. There are some penalties if you don't have harmony--imbalanced Yin and Yang. The greater the unbalance, the more the penalty. Your goal is to always maintain perfect harmony.


Yin Yang Energy Changes:

  • Each lord have either 3 Yin or 3 Yang contribution, whereas each agent/hero have 1 Yin or 1 Yang contribution.
  • Each green infrastructure building for Cathay also contributes either 1 Yin or 1 Yang energy.
  • Random events throughout the game will give you 6 Yin, 6 Yang, or 0 energy depending on your choice.
  • Each Cathay research gives you either 0, 1, or 3 Yin/Yang energy.

Tips on Harmony Management (Campaign):

  • Build infrastructure only when you know you can keep harmony:
    • Building infrastructure in pairs is a good practice. One Yin building and one Yang building built at the same time.

    • Leave building slots empty if building infrastructure right now will disrupt harmony. This also gives option to help balance harmony if you harmony is somehow disrupted.

    • Build uneven Yin-Yang buildings but balance energy through other means like hiring agents/heroes or research.

  • Hire, replace, dismiss lords or agents/heroes to rebalance harmony:
    • Build many agents/heroes recruitment buildings. Mid to late game, just hire/dismiss extra agents/heroes whenever you need to balance for harmony.

    • A lord counts as 3 Yin or 3 Yang energy. When a random events show up, and you want to choose an option that gives 6 Yin or Yang energy, replace a lord of that particular energy type with the opposite type. For example, if you chose +6 Yang event option, replace a Yang lord with a Yin lord would keep harmony.

  • Beware of when a research with energy is finishing and plan accordingly.
    • If a research is finishing next turn, prepare for it by building one or three opposite energy building, hire/dismiss extra lords or heroes.

    • if building infrastructure, make sure the building is finishing the next turn. Unsuitable climate can increase building times.

  • You can convert infrastructure to its opposite energy counter part in the building browser screen. The time it takes to convert the building depends on the level of it, one, two, three turns respectively. You can swing two energy towards Yin or Yang by converting an infrastructure building this way.
    • Originally posted by =(FGR)=Sentinel:
      The game doesn't say it, but if you go to the building browser screen on a settlement, you're able to convert Yin infrastructure buildings to their Yang equivalent at the same level and vice versa. This allows you to to not only swing the balance by two in either direction at will, but also lets you more quickly convert infrastructure buildings as your needs for a settlement or region change. Doing this converts them over after one turn per building level (1 for tier one, 3 for tier three) rather than 2-7 turns (one to demolish, 1 for tier one, 2 to upgrade to T2, 3 to upgrade to T3). The biggest advantage to this are dual purpose settlement configurations where you have two settlement setups with inverted, but balanced alignments that do similar, but distinct duties.
    • Originally posted by =(FGR)=Sentinel:
      To give an idea, I generally use two infrastructure-heavy settlement types: a "development" focused one (Yang civic building to reduce building costs and increase growth offset by a Yin Industry building for some income and increased trade value) and an "economy" focused one (Yin civic building to increase building income and a Yang industry building to maximize income). Using the above, I can start a newly-conquered region with development settlements, then when every settlement in the region is at the highest tier I simply convert the minor settlements to economy. Another example are border settlements, where you can convert a conscription building to either maximize control or give the local province a replenishment boost.


Tips on Harmony Management (Battle):

There is also a harmony mechanic during battle for Cathay. When Yin and Yang units are position close to each other, they gain stats bonuses in battle. Melee units are always Yang type, and ranged units are always Yin type. The range of applying respective Yin/Yang energy for harmony bonus is indicated as a black circle around the selected units.

  • You can use flying units to help activate harmony bonus. You can position your flying cavalry, Great Longma Riders, over your ranged units to activate their hamony bonus, or postion your Sky Lantern over your melee units to activate theirs. Not always the best solution, but can quickly activate battle harmony bonus when your ground troops can't get in position fast enough.


  • Lord/Hero do not actually activate battle harmony bonuses; they do not have an associated energy type in battle.

  • Some units have an attribute called Harmony Amplifier, which amplifies battle harmony bonuses to units around them. Theses units include lords, heroes/agents, and some war engines (Sky Lantern, Wu Xin War Compass). Multiple harmony amplifiers do not stack; only the strongest will apply.

New Harmony System
Harmony is a unique mechanic for Cathay faction. Each green infrastructure building contributes either a yin energy level or a yang energy level. And each province has its own harmony level. For example, if you have a province with 5 Yang infrastructure buildings and 1 Yin infrastructure buildings, this province will have a harmony value of 4 Yang, meaning this province is now affected with some buffs and debuffs for Yang-aligned harmony.
Balanced harmony gives income, upkeep, and movement range buffs, whereas Yin/Yang aligned harmony gives both some buffs and debuffs. Keeping perfect balance is no longer always the most optimal approach. Sometimes you may want to keep a province in Yin harmony for growth, and sometimes in Yang harmony for recruitment or research bonuses.

Tips on Harmony Management (Campaign):
  • For province that have high income, it is recommended to keep the harmony perfectly balanced to get the 25% income boost.
  • If you have a defending army that has high upkeep and is not expected to move out of the province, keeping the province in balanced harmony is also a good idea to reduce upkeep cost by 25%.
  • The upkeep reduction in provinces with balanced harmony can catch you off guard if you are not paying attention. Moving several high up keep armies out of balanced provinces can drastically reduce your expected income for next turn.
  • If you want to quickly develop a province, like a province that you just conquered with little income, align the harmony to Yin is useful for construction and population growth.
    • Be careful with how many provinces you maintain at Yin harmony though, because the research rate penalty can become quite significant very fast. During one of my play through, my research time for one item was at 80+ turns because I had too many provinces with Yin harmony.
  • There are three harmony "imbalance level":
    • 1-3 Yin energy is "Yin level 1"
    • 4-5 Yin energy is "Yin level 2"
    • 6&6+ Yin energy is "Yin level 3"
    • Same is true for Yang levels.



    • The more imbalanced a province is in one direction, the stronger the effects are (both positive and negative effects).

  • Towards end game, or if you have a huge treasury with no money concerns, you can switch some of your provinces to Yang energy level for research bonus to speed up the rest of research items.


  • if building infrastructure for its energy, beware of when the constuction will be finished. Unsuitable climate can increase building times.

  • You can convert infrastructure to its opposite energy counter part in the building browser screen. The time it takes to convert the building depends on the level of it, one, two, three turns respectively. You can swing two energy towards Yin or Yang by converting an infrastructure building this way.
    • Originally posted by =(FGR)=Sentinel:
      The game doesn't say it, but if you go to the building browser screen on a settlement, you're able to convert Yin infrastructure buildings to their Yang equivalent at the same level and vice versa. This allows you to to not only swing the balance by two in either direction at will, but also lets you more quickly convert infrastructure buildings as your needs for a settlement or region change. Doing this converts them over after one turn per building level (1 for tier one, 3 for tier three) rather than 2-7 turns (one to demolish, 1 for tier one, 2 to upgrade to T2, 3 to upgrade to T3). The biggest advantage to this are dual purpose settlement configurations where you have two settlement setups with inverted, but balanced alignments that do similar, but distinct duties.
    • Originally posted by =(FGR)=Sentinel:
      To give an idea, I generally use two infrastructure-heavy settlement types: a "development" focused one (Yang civic building to reduce building costs and increase growth offset by a Yin Industry building for some income and increased trade value) and an "economy" focused one (Yin civic building to increase building income and a Yang industry building to maximize income). Using the above, I can start a newly-conquered region with development settlements, then when every settlement in the region is at the highest tier I simply convert the minor settlements to economy. Another example are border settlements, where you can convert a conscription building to either maximize control or give the local province a replenishment boost.

    Tips on Harmony Management (Battle):
    There is also a harmony mechanic during battle for Cathay. When Yin and Yang units are position close to each other, they gain stats bonuses in battle. Melee units are always Yang type, and ranged units are always Yin type. The range of applying respective Yin/Yang energy for harmony bonus is indicated as a black circle around the selected units.



    • You can use flying units to help activate harmony bonus. You can position your flying cavalry, Great Longma Riders, over your ranged units to activate their hamony bonus, or postion your Sky Lantern over your melee units to activate theirs. Not always the best solution, but can quickly activate battle harmony bonus when your ground troops can't get in position fast enough.


    • Lord/Hero do not actually activate battle harmony bonuses; they do not have an associated energy type in battle. One exception is if your lord is a lord magistrate and you learned the skill "Harmonious Doctrine". A lord magistrate with this skill count as both Yin and Yang in battle.


    • Some units have an attribute called Harmony Amplifier, which amplifies battle harmony bonuses to units around them. Theses units include lords, heroes/agents, and some war engines (Sky Lantern, Wu Xin War Compass). Multiple harmony amplifiers do not stack; only the strongest will apply.

Handling Chaos Rifts
Even though Cathay is relatively safe after stabilizing the Great Bastion, and you can fight a one-front war down south, the chaos rifts can jeopardize the situation. In the Forge of Souls campaign, Ursurm roars periodically in pain. A few turns after he roars, chaos rifts will start opening across the map.


These chaos rifts are what you use to travel to the realm of chaos to claim demon prince souls. At the same time they bring horrible corruptions to nearby regions and chaos agents, armies can come through the portal to wreak havoc. Because these portals open up everywhere on the map, chaos army can get inside the Great Bastion through these portals. One needs to take care of them as soon as possible.

Tips on dealing with Chaos Rifts
  • As of update 5.0.4, the chaos protection building, Sky Lantern Lookout can be built starting at a level 2 settlements, and it prevents chaos rift from spawning in its province. This is super helpful, and I recommend building one in every province.
    • Per =(FGR)=Sentinel's comment, it is advised to leave a few provinces unprotected near your legendary lords for quick access to rifts. This helps going in rifts to stop other factions from winning when they have 4 souls before you.
      • These unprotected could be your own provinces; alternatively, they can be enemy provinces or ally provinces, AI do not build protection buildings, so in my campaign I just places my legendary lord in my ally's territory for access to rifts.
  • Close these rifts as soon as possible with agents/heroes or armies.

    • These rifts brings a lot of chaos corruption fast. Your army will soon take attrition damage in nearby regions and your settlements nearby will start experience huge public order, growth penalty.

    • Chaos agents, armies will start coming through these rift portals, wreaking havoc on nearby settlements.

    • Leave a portal for your legendary to go into the realm of chaos and claim demon prince souls.
      • You can have your legendary lord teleport between portals. You can use this to your advantage ; teleport your lord back to your capital for defense, or teleport into enemy territory for offense.

      • The location of the portal you used to send your lord into the chaos realm, is the location where the lord will come out of, so make sure your lord does not come out into danger by teleporting first back to your territory before going into the realm of chaos.

      • You can have an agent/heroes or lord close the portal right after your legendary lord goes in to the realm of chaos. That way, you lord still went in and the portal no longer spreads corruptions.
  • Spread out extra agents/heroes across your settlements to close the rifts.
    • Agents/heroes can close rifts for 1500 gold. Closing the rift this way do not require you to fight chaos army. Closing a rift with an army will require you to fight a chaos army, which grows in strength depending on the number of times rifts have opened before.

    • Agents/heroes also have more movement range than a typical army.

  • Rifts locations are always the same for a single campaign. Meaning you can prepare for new rifts from the second wave onward based on where they appeared last time.
Caravans (Ivory Road)
Caravan trading is a unique mechanic for Cathay faction. A caravan army bring cargo you buy to a far-away settlement and trade the cargo for a lot of money. It is a good way to generate additional income. The max amount of active caravan is just one, so you should always have a caravan army traveling.


Tips for Caravan Trading:
  • The caravan armies do not have upkeep cost, so you can recruit multiple as backups if you want.

  • Need at least two caravan. When a caravan reaches the destination, it has to return before it can go for another trade; during this time, if there is another caravan, you can dispatch it right away.

  • Try sending caravan to locations you have not traded at before. A magic items is gained after the first time you trade with a new location (Thanks to Commis4r for confirming this in the comment section.)
    • Some purple items can be acquired multiple times. And you can acquire multiple items from one location. The first trip to a location guarantees you an item, whereas later on you have a chance to get a purple item when you trade with that location again. I confirmed this in my recent playthrough, getting three items from trading with Drakenhof out of five successful trades. This is no longer true for patch 5.04. It is also unwise to repeatedly trade with the same settlement because the payout reduces significantly now if a trade was completely recently to the same location.

  • Hire mercenary to help your caravan is also an option to make your caravan army stronger. They have a small upkeep cost though.

  • You can change the destination/route of your Caravan midway if the new destination/route is still reachable. This was noticed and explained by Agerock in the comment section.
    • To do this, open up the Caravan menu and select a destination node that is not grayed-out.
    • You can also stop your Caravan by clicking on the current node of the caravan--where the caravan is at right now. This will make your active caravan stay in place until you select a destination again.

  • Various events happen randomly as the caravan travels:
    1. Army attack events:
      • Ogre asking you to feed one of your unit as food for them, or they attack. Look at the strength of the ogre army strength and your army's strength before deciding. In general, fight them if you can, but you don't want to fight if your army is weaker or if your army just fought previously and units have suffered medium or heavy losses already. Feeding one of your unit to the ogre is beneficial if so.

      • Enemy ask you to give them cargo, or they attack. Same suggestion as ogre feeding, fight if your army is stronger and have healthy status, otherwise give some cargo away.

      • Ambush attack. This type of attack is heavily favored for your enemy; you are likely to suffer heavy losses or even lose the army entirely. There is a caravan lord skill lowering the chance of ambush, but I don't recommend taking that skill as a priority.

      • Army attack opportunity where you can choose to fight or not, fighting them gives you a permanent buff to your army or lord. Always fight these if you can, since the reward traits given are usually very helpful for battles.

    2. Blessing/Unit addition event advice:
      • Third-party hero wants to tag along in your caravan. Always accept them. I have not seen any downsides from accepting them, and you gain a hero unit in your caravan army, which is a great addition.

      • Found lost allies. Usually gives you two options of different units to add to your caravan--three peasant unit or two advanced units. I usually take the advanced units, unless if my caravan is missing frontline melee, then I would prioritize peasant spears over jade crossbows.

      • Rare blessing event. Two permanent buff options available--one for cargo capacity and sale value, the other gives strong fighting traits and top-tier dragon guard halberd units. I usually choose the fighting buff and dragon guards since this makes your caravan super safe, and you caravan has to make to the destination first before making any money at all. I have not seen this event in 5.04

    3. Shortcut/Reroute event advice:
      • Shortcut for paying some money to local guide. Take these shortcuts if you can they are usually cheap and can potentially avoid you a fight.

      • Reroute option to avoid danger, adding an extra turn to your travel. I recommend taking reroute to avoid fights if possible, but if you are willing to take the battle risk for faster payouts, you can choose the other option.

  • If you send a caravan to Drakenhof, you will get a unique weapon that gives you passive health regeneration--Von Carstein Blade. Whipsnchains suggested in the comment section to send a caravan to Drakenhof turn 1 to get this powerful weapon early. Miao Ying equipped with this weapon has the potential to solo a lot of enemy armies.
    • Whipsnchains also confirmed in the comment section that he was able to solo Khorn and Slannesh rift with Miao Ying alone using Von Carstein's Blade.
    • Zhao Ming on the other hand, has a passives regen skill himself; he does not rely on this item, and is much better at soloing enemy armies himself with the Lore of Yang as his magic.

  • To level caravan lords faster, Agerock suggested you could use an ancillary from the final circle of realm of the dark prince--Personal Sycophant which provides the following benefits:
    -Unit experience gain per turn +100
    -Experience gain +200%
    -Campaign movement range +20%
    -Campaign line of sight +25%
    • Originally posted by author=Agerock:
      Items / ancillaries move at instant speed, so you can use the Sycophant on whichever hero or lord you're actively using. At the end of each turn, equip the Sycophant to your Caravan, as there is no option to swap equipment once an attack event has already triggered. I've gained anywhere from 3 to 9 levels from a single battle thanks to this Ancillary.
    • Note this is not a guaranteed reward from the final circle. I tested multiple times and was not always able to get this a reward.
    • Getting this ancillary does require you to leave the Slaneesh realm at the very last circle, which will stall the progress of obtaining souls. On higher difficulty, I suggest you limit the number of times where you don't obtain souls during rift openings to 2 or below. The late game armies inside the realm are really a pain to deal with and you are likely to have substantial casualties after each fight, forcing you to replenish and slowing down your progress.
  • You can also embed heroes into Caravan armies to help them fight and raise elemental mastery according to Drasca's comment.

  • According to Drasca's comment, Luminark Lens is a great magic item that synergize with Yang magic. This item can be obtained by completing a successful caravan trade with Altdorf. This item lowers local enemy armies' fire resistance by 40%, which will greatly increase Yang magic damage against them.

Wu Xing Compass
This section is being updated to reflect the 4 new compass directions that came with the new DLC. The Effects of the original 4 directions were also changed. Some of the information are marked as out-of-date in this section until updated.

The Wu Xing Compass is another special Cathay mechanic. Faction wide buff can be gained through setting the direction of the compass. There are 4 directions each with different bonus when direction is set to them. There are three energy gauge for three of the directions, which increases when the direction is set to the corresponding one. Depending on the level of the gauges, passive bonuses are also activated. These gauge automatically depletes overtime if not have the direction set. There is a cool-down for changing direction.


Tips for Wu Xing Compass
  • DO NOT set the direction towards Great Bastion when you are fighting against another Cathay faction early on--like the rebel factions. The bonuses actually applies to your rival Cathay factions as well. If you siege the rebels with this direction active, they get bonus supply points and the broken spell, Celestial Intervention, which will annihilate pretty much any unit it hits. As of Patch 5.04, Celestial Intervention is moved to Dragon Emperor's Wrath. Ancestral Warrior is instead available under Great Bastion direction now. And yes, the rebels will also get Ancestral Warrior skill if you set to Great Bastion direction. Although the spell, is not as strong as Celestial Intervention.

  • You don't have to change the compass direction every time it is available.
    • Changing directions help keeping the gauges up for multiple passive bonuses, but not all of the passive bonuses are very useful all the time.

    • For the majority of the campaign, I just left the direction towards growth (Celestial Lake), which in my opinion is the best, giving you 15% income bonus when direction is set that way.

    • Leaving the option of changing direction open is beneficial. Sometimes, you might get into a situation you want another direction's bonus. If you recently changed the direction, you will not be able to change to that compass direction due to cool-down.

  • Growth and Income boost (Celestial Lake) is always a good direction to default to.
    As of Patch 5.04, Growth has been replaced with control.

  • Change to enemy leadership reduction, corruption reduction (Warpstone Desert) direction when enemies are invading your settlements and you need extra help defending. As of 5.04, Warpstone Desert direction effect has been compeletely changed. It now gives bonus to Caravan cargos and recruiting Caravan masters. This is quite useless in my opinion since you can only change the direction every 8 turns and other directions give you much better benefits.
    • Originally posted by =(FGR)=Sentinel:

      Turning the Wu Xing Compass towards the Warpstone Desert when dealing with the rifts or an area of Cathay conquered by Chaos is pretty useful since weak winds of magic hurt Daemon armies and the corruption reduction lets you stabilize the territory faster.
      This is no longer valid because Warpstone Desert direction effects changed.

  • Great Bastion direction is a good choice when defending against Chaos siege. You gain a super powerful spell in battle, Celestial Intervention, which pretty much annihilates any enemy it hits. spell called Ancestral Warrior, which let you summon an anti-large ghost infantry unit anywhere on the map. More supply points is also provided at the beginning, and all armies in Cathay have increased replenish rate.
    • Note you only gain the spell Celestial InterventionAncestral Warrior as the defender during a siege or as the attacker when breaking a siege(enemy encirclement).
    • The Ancestral Warrior unit can be summoned anywhere on the map which is very helpful to flank or hit the enemie units from behind. You can also use them to intercept artillery or archers; just be ware that they are not very fast, so fast skirmishers will easily kite them.
    • The Ancestral Warrior unit loses HP overtime, so only summon it when you need it to fight right away. It starts taking damage at 56 sec and takes lethal damage at 86 sec.

  • Dragon Emperor's Wrath direction is another good choice when defending against Chaos siege. You gain a super powerful spell in battle, Celestial Intervention, which pretty much annihilates any enemy it hits. Depending on the current gauge value, untainted will also be granted to your settlements and extreme attrition will be taken by enemies outside of Great Bastion wall if the gauge is full.
    • Note like Ancestral Warrior, you only gain the spell Celestial Intervention as the defender during a siege or as the attacker when breaking a siege(enemy encirclement).
    • Celestial Intervention has a pretty large AOE; use it faraway from your units. I accidentally wiped two of my dragon guard too close to the AOE, even though I thought I placed the spell far enough XD.

  • Wu Xin Compass region bonuses only affect the Cathay homelands, not territories owned by Cathay factions. If you expand out of the Cathay region, into the chaos land or ogre mountains, your new regions will not get Wu XIn Compass's regional bonuses. Generally, Cathay as recognized by the Wu Xin Compass is all territories north of the mountain passes and east of the Great Bastion. The only regions outside that area impacted by the Compass are the Chaos Wastes territories adjacent to the Great Bastion, which get hit by the Emperor's Wrath ability. (Thanks =(FGR)=Sentinel for pointing this out in the comment section.) This is no longer true for patch 5.04. All the effects that Wu Xing compass gives, with the wording "Cathay-owned regions", apply to all the settlements you take on the map, regardless of their locations.
Wu Xing Compass (Jade Court)
Tips for Wu Xing Compass (As Jade Court)

The Jade Court, Yuan Bo's faction, besides the original 4 inter-cardinal directions, has 4 more compass directions that can be unlocked. To unlock them, player needs to first capture their corresponding settlements and then build astromantic relays over them.


  • To achieve campaign victory as the Jade Court, you are required to unlock all 4 compass directions and then face the final challenge, a final battle against Lizardmen who wants to prevent the completion of the ritual.
  • Two of the settlements for unlocking compass directions are within the Cathay region which is relatively easy to obtain. It may require you to confederate with another Cathay faction but confederation feels much easier now compared to two years ago. Check out the diplomacy tips section for some tips on confederation.
  • The other two settlements are harder to reach. Since they are relatively faraway from Cathay.
    • You could slowly expand out of Cathay through the Ogre mountains and then reach the settlements which may take some time.
    • Another approach that I took is to beeline for the settlements with two strong armies. I used the Matters of State Action, Diplomatic Deadlock, which allows your armies to travel through others' territories without diplomatic penalties. And raised war against the faction holding the settlements when your armies are right in front of them.
  • Each relay building take 5 turns to construct and requires the settlement city to be level III.
  • Be prepared to fight lizardmen invasions right after each relay building is completed.
    • Three invasion armies will begin an count down to spawn nearby as soon as an astromantic relay building is completed.
    • Each army will have a different countdown and spawn location, and you will be notified when the invasion is about to happen. You can also see these spawn locations on the maps with transparent circle indicators. A red circle means the army spawns the next turn, orange two turns from now, and yellow three turns from now.

    • Prepare at least one army nearby as the astromantic relay finishes. Moving your army over these spawn locations will trigger a battle against the coming armies. The earlier you move to these locations, the weaker the enemy armies will be. Try to intercept as many of these armies before they spawn to make the battles easier.
  • The best new direction in my opinion is Nongchang Basin, which reduces construction cost and time when active and also increases growth if you have gauge.

    • The caveat is that this direction cannot be unlocked until you take over Uzkulak from the Dwarfs/Chaos Dwarfs. This is closer to the middle of the map and likely your last settlement to take. By the time that I took over this settlement and is able to use this compass direction, I was pretty much at the end of my campaign. However, it will be very useful if you choose to go for the domination victory.
  • Another new direction that is quite useful is Dragon River, which makes you take 75% less attrition from all source and makes characters immortal. Combined with the attrition reduction in a lord's skill tree. I was running around Nurgle, Chaos land taking no attrition damage.
Matters of State (Jade Court)
Matters of State is a special mechanic for the Jade Court, Yuan Bo's faction. Special stone tokens are used to execute various beneficial actions. Some of these actions are extremely powerful, including finishing all constructions in one settlement instantly and the benefits you obtain from designating fortress city or commercial district. In my opinion, Yuan Bo's faction is one of the strongest for campaign, and definitely the strongest out of Cathay, because of this mechanic.


There are two types of stone tokens, Jade and Steel. Jade stone tokens are used for economic, diplomatic actions, whereas steel stone tokens are used for military actions. Each time an action is executed, the stone tokens used are transformed into "pending" tokens of the opposite type. The pending tokens are reactivated over time, and battles speeds up the process.

Matters of State Tips:
  • Save for 4 tokens of the same type and designate commercial or fortress city as soon as possible to increase total amount of tokens. Keeping doing this until you have a total of 8 stone tokens.
    • The 4-cost actions that designate a provincial settlement commercial or fortress area will increase the maximum amount of stone tokens by 1. The provincial settlement needs to be at least level 3.
    • You start with 4 total stone tokens and can go up to a maximum of 8 tokens.
    • Fortress city improves military and defense buildings. For a detailed breakdown of building improvements, please see the next section in this guide.
    • Commercial district improves capital, resource, and infrastructure buildings. For a detailed breakdown of building improvements, please see the section after next in this guide.
  • There is no limit to how many provincial settlements can be designated as Fortress or Commercial area. All improved building effects stack and a lot of them are faction-wide bonus that become overpowered very quick.
    • One example of this is the diplomatic bonus effect that commercial district capital gives. At level 5 each capital settlement designated as commercial district gives +20 diplomatic relation with all factions. In the screenshot below, the Chaos Dwarf faction is friendly towards me, even though we have natural aversion and I am fighting all his friends. Relationship problem? Just designate commercial districts and everyone will love you lol.
  • Both types of pending tokens are reactivated at a time. So it is optimal to have pending tokens on both side so you can regenerate two tokens instead of one at a time. This is less relevant early game since you want to save up for four token of the same type for increasing total stone token amounts.
  • Rush Construction action is especially useful and cost-efficient. Settlements with unsuitable climates increase building time, and rush construction can finish a 10-turn chaos land province upgrade instantly. The cost is only two Jade stone token, which is easy to have available mid-to-late game.

  • Diplomatic Deadlock action can help you beeline for the win condition settlement and avoid diplomatic nuisance or large-scale expansion.

    • Diplomatic Deadlock buff is permanent for the army selected, making it forever having no consequences for trespassing.
      • Supply Line action on the other hand, has a 7-turn limit, which shows how valuable Diplomatic Deadlock being permanent is.
    • Two of the settlements required for campaign victory are far from Cathay regions. Normally expanding to those regions or negotiating military access can be difficult and time-consuming. I used Diplomatic Deadlock on my strong armies and just went straight for the settlements, ignoring all the neutral factions on the way.
  • Levy the Provinces is another valuable low-cost action that completes one turn of recruitment instantly. This is useful when you need to defend unexpected attacks.

  • High cost actions may seem strong but sometimes using multiple low cost actions are more valuable. In my playthrough, I mostly focused on Rush Construction, Commercial District, Diplomatic Deadlock, and Levy the Provinces.

Fortress City Benefits
This section is a detailed breakdown of benefits from designating Fortress City from Matters of State action. This is exclusive to the Jade Court, Yuan Bo's faction.

If you set a level 3+ provincial settlement as Fortress City, the following building improvements will be added:

Building Name
Required Settlement Level
Benefits
Building Type
Training Camp
Level 1
Local recruitment capacity +1
Jade Barracks
Dormitory
Level 2
Local recruitment capacity +2
Jade Barracks
Jade Barracks
Level 3
Local recruitment capacity +3
Jade Barracks
Corral
Level 1
Recruit rank +1
Stables
Jade Stables
Level 3
Recruit rank +2
Stables
Longma Paddocks
Level 5
Recruit rank +3
Stables
Nan-Gau Forge
Level 2
Ammunition +3% (all armies)
Forge
Powder Magazine
Level 3
Ammunition +6% (all armies)
Forge
Fire Rain Silo
Level 4
Ammunition +10% (all armies)
Forge
Celestial Barracks
Level 4
Units recruited in this province has a permanent +10 armor bonus
Armoury
Celestial Armoury
Level 5
Units recruited in this province has a permanent +20 armor bonus
Armoury
Celestial Tower
Level 3
Hero action success chance +3% (all characters)
Celestial
Celestial Observatory
Level 4
Hero action success chance +4% (all characters)
Celestial
Celestial Beacon
Level 5
Hero action success chance +5% (all characters)
Celestial
Alchemist Tower
Level 3
Campaign line-of-sight +25% (all armies)
Sky Port
Mooring Tower
Level 5
Campaign line-of-sight +50% (all armies)
Sky Port
Ramparts
Level 2
Defensive supplies +1000 (local province)
Garrison
Cannon Emplacements
Level 3
Defensive supplies +1500 (local province)
Garrison
Artillery Batteries
Level 4
Defensive supplies +2000 (local province)
Garrison
Archer Platforms
Level 2
Defensive supplies +1000 (local province)
Garrison
Archer Towers
Level 3
Defensive supplies +1500 (local province)
Garrison
Sky Lantern Roots
Level 4
Defensive supplies +2000 (local province)
Garrison
Commercial District Benefits
This section is a detailed breakdown of benefits from designating Commercial District from Matters of State action. This is exclusive to the Jade Court, Yuan Bo's faction.

If you set a level 3+ provincial settlement as Commercial District, the following building improvements will be added:

Building Name
Required Settlement Level
Benefits
Building Type
Hamlet
Level 1
Income from all buildings +5% (local province)
Tradable resources produced +6% (faction-wide)
Diplomatic Relations +5 with all factions
Province Capital
Village
Level 2
Income from all buildings +10% (local province)
Tradable resources produced +8% (faction-wide)
Diplomatic Relations +5 with all factions
Province Capital
Town
Level 3
Income from all buildings +15% (local province)
Tradable resources produced +10% (faction-wide)
Diplomatic Relations +10 with all factions
Province Capital
City
Level 4
Income from all buildings +20% (local province)
Tradable resources produced +12% (faction-wide)
Diplomatic Relations +15 with all factions
Province Capital
Province Capital
Level 5
Income from all buildings +25% (local province)
Tradable resources produced +15% (faction-wide)
Diplomatic Relations +20 with all factions
Province Capital
Dock
Level 1
Campaign movement range +5% (all navies)
Port
River Port
Level 3
Campaign movement range +10% (all navies)
Port
Sea Port
Level 5
Campaign movement range +15% (all navies)
Port
Labour Conscription Bureau
Level 1
Construction cost: -3% (factionwide)
Civic (Yang)
Bamboo Scaffold Depot
Level 2
Construction cost: -4% (factionwide)
Civic (Yang)
Lumber Mill
Level 3
Construction cost: -5% (factionwide)
Civic (Yang)
Tea Parlour
Level 1
Hero recruit rank +1 (all provinces)
Civic (Yin)
Contemplation Gardens
Level 2
Hero recruit rank +2 (all provinces)
Civic (Yin)
Administration Centre
Level 3
Hero recruit rank +3 (all provinces)
Civic (Yin)
Wares Market
Level 1
Income from tariff +15%
Industry (Yang)
Merchant Caravans
Level 2
Income from tariff +20%
Industry (Yang)
Trade Exchange
Level 3
Income from tariff +25%
Industry (Yang)
Spice Market
Level 1
Sale value of cargo +10% (all characters)
Industry (Yin)
Gem Factors
Level 2
Sale value of cargo +20% (all characters)
Industry (Yin)
Goods Emporium
Level 3
Sale value of cargo +30% (all characters)
Industry (Yin)
Conscription Office
Level 1
Casualty replenishment rate +1% (all Yang armies)
Conscription (Yang)
Temple of Yang
Level 2
Casualty replenishment rate +2% (all Yang armies)
Conscription (Yang)
Yang Sanctuary
Level 3
Casualty replenishment rate +3% (all Yang armies)
Conscription (Yang)
Conscription Field
Level 1
Casualty replenishment rate +1% (all Yin armies)
Conscription (Yin)
Shrine of Yin
Level 2
Casualty replenishment rate +2% (all Yin armies)
Conscription (Yin)
Yin Lodge
Level 3
Casualty replenishment rate +3% (all Yinarmies)
Conscription (Yin)
Sawyer
Level 1
Construction cost -5% for wall and garrison buildings (faction-wide)
Marble Quarry
Marble Quarry
Level 2
Construction cost -7% for wall and garrison buildings (faction-wide)
Marble Quarry
Stone Mason's Workshop
Level 3
Construction cost -10% for wall and garrison buildings (faction-wide)
Marble Quarry
Spice Market
Level 1
Maximum cargo capacity +5% (all characters)
Spice Trading
Spice Trading Post
Level 2
Maximum cargo capacity +7% (all characters)
Spice Trading
Eastern Bazaar
Level 3
Maximum cargo capacity +10% (all characters)
Spice Trading
Exotic Animal Tamer
Level 1
Charge bonus +5% for cavalry units (all armies)
Exotic Animals
Exotic Animal Pen
Level 2
Charge bonus +7% for cavalry units (all armies)
Exotic Animals
Exotic Animal Market
Level 3
Charge bonus +10% for cavalry units (all armies)
Exotic Animals
Clay Pit
Level 1
Defensive supply +50 (faction-wide)
Pottery Production
Pottery Maker
Level 2
Defensive supply +100 (faction-wide)
Pottery Production
Kilns
Level 3
Defensive supply +200 (faction-wide)
Pottery Production
Herb Gatherer's Camp
Level 1
Vigour loss reduction -2% (all armies)
Medicine Production
Exotic Hotshop
Level 2
Vigour loss reduction -4% (all armies)
Medicine Production
Alchemy Workshop
Level 3
Vigour loss reduction -5% (all armies)
Medicine Production
Other Miscellaneous Tips
  • Cathay crossbows are very powerful and can out-range, shoot down enemies afar, they are the main damage output of Cathay's army. Hold down enemies with melee units and shoot with your crossbows. Protect them from Calvary and flying units with spears/halberds.

  • Lore of Heaven (astromancers) and Lore of Metal (alchemists) both have strong AOE spells. Use them on groups of enemies to do huge damage.

  • For army composition, I suggest at least 5 melee infantry units with at least 2 spear/halberd units, one or two siege engines, one or two calvary units, a spell caster, and the rest just ranged crossbow units. You can add in more high tier halberd(dragon guard) or Terracotta late game, but keep ranged crossbows as majority since they are the main damage output for Cathay. Below is one of my final troop comp:

  • Attrition reduction, casualty replenishment and untainted are good skills to take for lords if you are planning on expanding westward, because of how bad chaos corruption is outside of Cathay and if you don't close chaos rifts in time, chaos corruption can be a problem in Cathay regions as well.

  • For quest battles, note you can heal, buff, restock, and even replenish winds of magic reserve using supply points. The icon is at the bottom right of the UI and options change depending on the unit you select.

  • Note in quest battles, withdrawal button is changed to teleport withdrawal, and this version of withdrawal is super useful for the following reason:
    • Your unit immediately withdraws after 3 sec if the unit is not engaged in combat. The unit does not have to walk all the way to the edge of the map.
    • Your teleport withdrawn units can be recalled back in the reinforcement panel.
      • They quickly recovers back to full health after withdrawals.
      • Recalling them does cost supply points. The stronger, the more replenished the unit is, the higher the cost to recall.
    • Depending on the strength of the unit withdrawn, some supply points are gained.
    • One trick you can do is to recall the injured units which you brought into the quest battle right before the end. Then recall them back in when they are fully replenished before the end. When you get out of the quest battle, those unit will be full health, even though they may have suffered heavy losses mid-battle.

  • If you are not expanding south, keep an eye out for Kairos--Oracle of Tzeentch--who might sneak past the mountain regions to attack your southern settlements. It is easy to forget enemies can still attack from the south, when you have a seemingly impregnable wall on the west side (Thanks to =(FGR)=Sentinel for pointing this out).

  • Miao Ying's human form and dragon form have separate regeneration caps (Thanks to =(FGR)=Sentinel for pointing this out). If you give Miao Ying a passive regen weapon--Von Carstein Blade which you get from a successful caravan trade to Drakenhof, stack some ward save on her, and get the Talons of Night spell, she can solo most of the battles herself (Thanks to Whipsnchains for mentioning this).
Change Log
  • 02/26/2022 Added two tips to the Wu Xin Compass section based on =(FGR)=Sentinel's comment.
  • 02/27/2022 Added a section for battle harmony bonuses under Harmony Management. Also, added a small army comp tip under miscellaneous.
  • 02/28/2022 Added a tip to obtain Von Carstein's Blade under the Caravan section based on Whipsnchains's comment.
  • 02/28/2022 Added a tip about Miao Ying's separate regen caps on different forms under Miscellaneous based on =(FGR)=Sentinel's comment and my testing it out.
  • 03/01/2022 Added a tip about infrastructure conversion under Harmony Management section based on =(FGR)=Sentinel's comments.
  • 03/02/2022 Modified the tip about gaining magic items after caravan trades based on Commis4r's confirmation in comment.
  • 03/02/2022 Added a tip about teleport withdrawal in quest battles under Miscellaneous.
  • 03/03/2022 Added a tip about protecting your southern settlements from Kairos under Miscellaneous based on =(FGR)=Sentinel's comments.
  • 03/05/2022 Added some more information about obtaining purple magic items from caravan tradings under the Caravan section based on my recent testing.
  • 03/06/2022 Added a tip about not using Great Bastion direction when fighting other Cathay factions under Wuxin Campass Section based on my experience.
  • 03/06/2022 Added a section for Zhao Ming Early Expansion Tips. Added a tip about Zhao Ming's early confederation choice under the Diplomacy section.
  • 03/08/2022 Added a tip about Chaos threats during Zhao Ming's early expansion.
  • 03/11/2022 Added more information under The Great Bastion Attacks section based on very hard difficulty.
  • 03/12/2022 Added a tip under Mid to Late Game Expansion and a tip under The Great Bastion Attacks about Bastion Pagoda.
  • 03/14/2022 Added a section to talk about confederation between Miao Ying and Zhao Ming (the two Cathay Dragon LL) under Diplomacy Tips.
  • 03/15/2022 Added a tip about expanding using teleportation under Mid-Late Game Expansion Tips and a tip about leveling caravans using ancillary under Caravan section based on Agerock's comments.
  • 03/16/2022 Added a tip about changing routes midway under Caravan section based on Agerock's comments.
  • 04/14/2022 Added a tip about "main threat" bonus for Cathay confederations under Diplomacy Tips based on chadhiggins6's comments.
  • 04/15/2022 Added a tip about chaos protection building per patch 1.1 under Handling Chaos Rifts.
  • 04/16/2022 Added a tip about leaving a few provinces unprotected from protection building near LL based on =(FGR)=Sentinel's comment.
  • 05/07/2022 Added two caravan tips about embedding heroes and magic item Luminark Lens under the Caravan section based on Drasca's comment.
  • 06/09/2024 Updated the introduction section to talk about upcoming updates to the guide based on patch 5.04 (from patch 1.2 :D) A long two-year break without Warhammer III lol.
  • 06/09/2024 Updated the beginning Cathay Territorial Expansion section to discuss Immortal Empire campaign and added an alternative approach to Realm of Chaos campaign. Added pictures for both campaigns' expansion suggestions.
  • 06/09/2024 Created new placedholder sections for Yuan Bo expansion tips, the new harmony system, a comparison between old/new harmony system, and Matters of State. Marked diplomacy section as updating because confederacy felt much easier compared to two years ago. Marked Wu Xing Compass section as updating because of the new directions from the DLC faction, the Jade Court. Marked the old harmony section as outdated.
  • 06/09/2024 Updated all the outdated information in Wu Xing Compass section. Added a separate section for Jade Court Wu Xing Compass tips due to character limit.
  • 06/09/2024 Finished the New Harmony System section.
  • 06/09/2024 Reviewed and updated the Caravan section. Marked a few things as not confirmed/seen in 5.04.
  • 06/10/2024 Reviewed and updated Chaos Rift, Diplomacy, and Bastion Attack sections for patch 5.04. Added some comments about playing as Yuan Bo in these sections.
  • 06/10/2024 Finished the old/new harmony system comparison section.
  • 06/11/2024 Finished the section about Yuan Bo's early expansion.
  • 06/11/2024 Finished Matters of State section. Added detailed breakdowns of building improvements for Fortress City and Commercial Estate actions as separate sections.

    If this guide has helped you in any way, please consider rating it up! I would really appreciate your giving this guide a thumbs-up!
74 Comments
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kw142 (Lie in Mid-July)  [author] 9 Jun @ 2:01am 
For morale, some things that I can think of at this moment:
-make sure yin/yang harmony bonus is maintained on your units.
-don't expose units' flanks or rear.
-have leader/heroes nearby.
-most Cathay leaders\Heroes have skills in their skill tree that can be learned to provide/upgrade leadership aura
-gatemasters are especially good at buffing units around them; alchemists can buff allied units with armor and weapon enhancements. if your unit is not losing, the morale will be less likely to drop
-wardrums are also good buff units but need to be protected
-if you are not comfortable with sending leader/heroes into battle, keep them right behind the frontline also works for leadership bonus. Make sure they are using spells or actions to help when possible.
-there are also researches that help with units' leadership/morale stats.
kw142 (Lie in Mid-July)  [author] 9 Jun @ 1:58am 
Just came back after a two year break lol. I noticed a bunch of notifications for comments under this guide and the game has changed a lot since version 1.2. I will be updating the guide. And sorry for all the comments I missed.

There were questions about battle formation and unit stats. I don't know if I can explain them well enough since I mostly auto-resolve my battles. I usually out-macro and fight only with stronger armies. Only in cases where I want to reduce casualties or save some units I would fight manually. The new patch also seems to make growth much slower so you don't actually get to end-game units until turn 70ish, where as two year ago I would be adding Dragonguards to my armies by turn 50. I may suggest a few team comps that I currently use but I don't think I have enough experience yet to analyze all units. The new DLC units are cool and fun though, having lots of fun with Jade/Jet Lion pair in battle.
apalamen 22 Aug, 2023 @ 10:51am 
Cool guide.

I'm playing Cathay, they were great about turns 40-100. I had formed an uber unit of course. Now past turn 100+ all my armies seem to have a serious morale problem. They seem to flee when they get hit with 25-35% losses which is near unplayable when going against any fear units like Nurgle or Chaos.

Any tips on morale? Unlike other factions, I don't really see much in leadership buffs. I wouldn't mind fleeing auto once past 50%. Actually had units flee once they got past 15% damage so at this point the Cathay are unplayable for me, other than just retreat. Cathay are like paper, as I cannot send any leader into battle and trust that a minute later they wont end up dead if I'm not watching because for some reason they are squishier and dont flee soon enough.
Lampros 8 Apr, 2023 @ 8:49pm 
It would be nice if you can do a unit-buy-unit analysis and perhaps a few battle formations? ;)
Aetherion 11 Dec, 2022 @ 7:41am 
Hi thanks for the guide, looking forward to trying Cathay in IE after enjoying their RoC. Quick question on Harmony, I have noticed that when putting your own heroes in Caravans, and on the "return journey" these heroes no longer contribute their Yin/Yang to the counter, putting you out of Harmony. And when you recruit them, the counter goes again. Can you confirm at what point this 2 events happen and how counter that? For me I just have extra hero slots and recruit/disband when required.
ByTheNumbers 10 Oct, 2022 @ 10:08am 
Kind of wished I went toward the bastion and secured those areas instead of going after the two neighboring orc tribes after securing the rebels that were at war from the start. Figured AI Miao Ying would keep the riff raff away. Boy, I was wrong. The NE section of Cathay got overrun by the rat guys and the other NW region where the Bastion is got overrun by demons and such with AI Miao barely hanging on by a thread. I'm able to keep them at bay from my territory, but boy... it feels I'm in a grinding stalemate unable to free myself to go after objectives. Might have to scrap the run.
=(FGR)=Sentinel 24 Aug, 2022 @ 4:33pm 
Once Cathay is unified and the mountain/Bastion forces are established, the southern approaches are the next concern if you plan to secure all access. The Eastern Colonies, a set of islands within the Sea of Dread south of the Dragon Isles, sits within the only naval approach to Cathay from the west. Taking it from the High Elves and deploying an army or two to patrol the waters will make securing the approach much easier. From there you'd likely need to pick your next battle: push into Ogre country and try to take out the threats to your immediate west, crush the forces of Chaos amassing beyond the Bastion, or sail east and mount a counterattack on the Dark Elven and Lizardmen invaders.
=(FGR)=Sentinel 24 Aug, 2022 @ 4:29pm 
Zhao Ming will find himself having to deal with a direct access route between his territory and both the undead and Nurgle's followers. The area west of him will likely be a five way free for all between the forces of Nurgle, Vampires, Ogres, Greenskins, and the High Elves led by Imrik. To add to the complicated situation, is the Jungles of Chi'an, an magical forest belonging to a wood elf faction, between the Great Canal and the Serpent Estuary in the south. Altogether this gives 10-11 routes Cathay can be attacked from. Miao Ying will likely want to ignore the Bastion at the start to clear the Skaven, Greenskin, and vampire presence before driving Lokhir into the sea to secure northern Cathay. Zhao Ming will likely want to establish garrisons at the mountain crossings and secure Western Cathay. Beyond that, both will want to drive Nakai and the Lizardmen out before having a few armies watching the eastern approaches by sea.
=(FGR)=Sentinel 24 Aug, 2022 @ 4:27pm 
Secondly, Cathay's situation requires a bit of planning: the sea bordering the Chaos Wastes east of the Bastion are at the base of a cliff, preventing Vilitch from bypassing the Bastion to attack you, but it also protects Lokhir's flank. Vilitch can also use Tzeentch's Teleport stance, meaning that you need to be alert for that possibility. The game starts with all three gates held by the Imperial Wardens, who have a foothold in the wastelands beyond, so it should be safe for Miao Ying to focus on cleaning up northern Cathay. Lokhir and Nakai will typically lay waste to eastern Cathay if left unchecked, and beyond them are the travel routes that give easy access to and from the New World. The Sea of Dread to the south gives access to Cathay via both the Great Canal and a travel route into the Jade Sea.
=(FGR)=Sentinel 24 Aug, 2022 @ 4:26pm 
Some observations for the Immortal Empires beta:
1. Cathay is possibly the most expansive single nation (if we go by regional domain) in the Warhammer world, taking up about as much space as the Empire, Kislev, and Betonnia combined on the map. This gives them a great deal of theoretical power, but also far more strategic threats than in the Realms of Chaos Campaign. Lokhir Fellheart controls the northeast coast of Cathay. Nakai rampages through the southeastern jungles, bringing cities under the control of the Lizardmen. Kugath sits on the Dragon Isles southwest of the Mountains of Mourn and Grimgor lurks to the northwest. These are the biggest immediate threats.