# Total War: WARHAMMER III Patch 8.1 Now Live - Product: Total War: WARHAMMER III (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/total-war-warhammer-iii) - Vendor: CREATIVE ASSEMBLY - Date: 2026-07-09 - Original notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1142710/view/714531147199025593 - Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/total-war-warhammer-iii/releases/2026-07-09-patch-8.1-now-live What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog. Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'. --- - **changed** — Campaign AI prioritization now controls which tasks are prioritized based on turns passed since campaign start, reducing army clustering and idling around settlements - **changed** — Defensive tasks for end game factions have reduced priority, making late game more dynamic as AI factions seek to expand and compete instead of defending - **changed** — Priority of tasks targeting enemy forces for end game factions increased slightly - **added** — Four new landmarks in Cathay: Village of the Tigermen, Monument of the White Tiger, House of Secrets, and Terracotta Road, providing various buffs and recruitment benefits - **added** — Two new technologies for Tiger Warriors faction: Tiger's Call reducing upkeep and recruitment cost while increasing missile damage, and Honed Senses reducing upkeep and increasing recruitment rank and speed - **added** — Goblin Big Boss, Goblin Great Shaman and Orc Warboss now have access to Chariot mounts in Campaign - **added** — Dragon-blooded Shugengan Lords now have personalised skill lines - **fixed** — Fixed an issue with Zhao Ming's goals triggering for Bhashiva around the Chaos Invasions - **fixed** — Fixed bug where removing one location at maximum capacity in the Garden of Morr panel does not cause available locations to repopulate Hi everyone, Patch 8.1 has now arrived in Total War: WARHAMMER III, with a primary focus on Campaign AI improvements, as well as introducing some new Landmarks, Technologies, and a swathe of bug fixes and adjustments across the board. As always, should you run into any new issues after updating to 8.1, don’t hesitate to report it over in our dedicated [bug reporting sub-forum](community.totalwar.com/wh3-support). See you on the battlefield! — Steve Coleman // Senior Community Manager --- ## **1. Campaign AI Improvements** With Patch 8.1 a number of Campaign AI changes and improvements have been added to the game: ##### **Campaign AI Prioritisation ** **What did we change?** There are certain Campaign AI tasks that lead to its armies clustering and idling e.g. focusing on defending key regions therefore, we’ve added a new mechanism that allows us to control exactly what the Campaign AI prioritises, depending on how many turns have passed since campaign start. Using this new mechanism we’ve de-prioritised tasks e.g. defending key regions in the late game, as contextually they are not that useful at this stage of a campaign anyway. **How will this change affect you in-game?** We expect this to solve a number of cases where Campaign AI armies are clustered and idle around settlements, and the mechanism we’ve developed make this tweak also allows us to more easily solve similar Campaign AI behaviour issues in the future. ##### **Campaign AI End Game Scenario Balance Update** **What did we change?** Utilising the mechanism above defensive tasks for end game factions have had their priority decreased, making the late game more dynamic and much more interesting to play as the Campaign AI will seek to expand and compete instead of turtling up and behaving reactively. The priority of tasks that target enemy forces is increased slightly. **How will this change affect you in-game?** End game factions should be less prone to idling and clumping around a settlement, and situations where multiple end game factions end up in a stalemate (not attacking each other, only defending) should decrease. ##### **Campaign AI Known Issues** There are a series of AI related issues that we are working on solving, including: - End game factions spawning before turn 40 are more likely to both exhibit and cause clumping behavior. - Multiple end game scenarios triggering at the same time can cause, regular factions bordering end game factions to clump up around their settlements. - End game factions bordering other end game factions clumping around settlements or near region borders (this can occur regardless of whether the factions are at war). - End game factions at war with other end game factions that share a border or fight over a contested province can form pockets of armies locked in a standoff (usually this manifests as one side encamping around a settlement, and the other - raiding in the same region). The chance this occurs is proportional to the autoresolve result - the more evenly matched the armies are in auto resolve, the higher the chance this will happen. - End game factions bordering a human of similar or superior strength ranking may fall back to owned regions and clump up. ##### **2. New Landmarks** Patch 8.1 adds 4 new landmarks focused in Cathay to add additional buffs and benefits when conquering in the east: ## [table equalcells="1" colwidth=",,,"] Settlement Tier Building Effects Name / Brief Village of the Tigermen III Recruitment cost: -15% for all Tiger Warrior units (factionwide) - Ability cooldown: -20% for innate abilities Guiding Strike, Master Strike and Predatory Instincts of Sawai lords (factionwide) - Spell intensity +10% for all Clawspeakers (factionwide) - Wound recovery time: -2 turns for Sawai and Clawspeaker Monument of the White Tiger [table equalcells="1" colwidth=",,,"] Shang-Yang III Income: +500 per turn - Unlocks hero recruitment: Alchemist - Hero capacity: +2 for Alch _[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1142710/view/714531147199025593]_