Chaos is a little obnoxious. They’ve tried to fix it up over time, but it was the first DLC faction and the first attempt at a horde faction and the duct tape definitely shows. Tips for playing Chaos:
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On turn 1 demolish the marauder recruitment building and never build one again. Marauders suck and Chaos only works if the stack is made of troops elite enough that the AI is afraid to pick a fight. Baseline early game troops for Chaos is Chaos Warriors, and an upgrade to Chosen should be a priority ASAP. They will form the bulk of the armies for most of the game.
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Keep stacks close enough to cover for each other, use the buddy system, and prioritize recruiting more stacks. As Chaos techs up they start to get ridiculous bonuses to sacking cities so they can actually get really rich doing that. Running an income of net thousands negative per turn is no big deal to Chaos.
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Your first 3-4 lords should prioritize the blue line skill that improves horde growth. When it’s time to spawn a new horde don’t recruit a new lord. Instead fire the lord from the current well-developed stack and replace them with a freshly recruited lord. Then in 5 turns when the original higher level lord is available again you recruit them to lead a fresh stack. The fresh stack will then benefit from the growth bonuses of the higher level lord’s blue line skills immediately.
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Make smashing the Empire a priority. If they get rolling then Chaos can’t beat them. Like at all. They can recruit new stacks faster than a Chaos player can smash them. It’s super aggravating.