Skaven have trash infantry backed up by some of the best artillery in the game, plus some decent monsters and skirmishers.

Also, the changes to how habitability works makes the dwarves even more of a terror, and makes playing as the Wood Elves kind of bad. Putting the game on an SSD will make a big difference to battle load times (an essential one IMO), but not to turn times.

Mortal Empires has extremely long turn times, even on a high-end PC.

Anyway, the vortex campaign isn't awful, but it's repetitive, and there's a reason why the DLC factions- the Tomb Kings, Vampire Coast, and Nakai and Wulfric- can play on the Vortex map without engaging with the vortex mechanics. In other words, it's hard to truly lose the Vortex race, but the AI getting there first is kind of a moral defeat. If you do this- and it's quite easy- they become permanently unable to win. If one of the AIs beats you to the end, you have a chance to beat them in the final battle. You can go wide, but there's a lot of benefit to having a medium-sized empire, so that you can defend it a little more easily.

The Vortex campaign requires you to gather a special resource (which you mostly receive passively for holding certain special provinces) and performing rituals (which spawn deathstacks all over your land).

Regional capitals now have eight building slots (from six), and famous cities get ten.

You can still settle on the bad land, but those towns get big debuffs.

Instead of having certain parts of the map locked to certain factions, there's now a system where some land is easy to live on, some is mediocre, and some sucks, varying according to faction.

You can now aim Wind-type spells directionally by holding left-click.

Mortal empires map 2019