So where do we begin? You start off with 3 squads of Guardsmen and a unit of 3 Tech-priests Enginseers. Don't be fooled - the Enginseers will disappear the moment you found a city, and you must absolutely find a city or you'll be screwed. Once you do that, and survive the native xenos that inhabit Gladius (why are there Catachan devils, Kroot Hounds and Prospero Psychneueins on Gladius Prime?), you can begin to expand and aquire more resources. For the Imperial Guard, it's easy enough. We need food, ore, power, influence, research and loyalty.
Tip: Build your city on a tile with the most resource bonuses to take advantage of the city's increased income. Preferably between several outposts so that you can permanently acquire those outposts and not worry about the enemy snatching them away from you.
With that done, you can begin researching, and I suggest you start with the Manufactorum. Let's be honest. Your infantry is weak, fragile and lacks firepower. For the Imperial Guard, the best units are our tanks and flyers, so let's work toward that goal.
Chapter 1: Life in the Guard
There are two ways to win. One is simple enough - annihilate your enemies. Once you wipe the map clean of xenos or enemy factions, you automatically win the game. This is fun and more rewarding in its own way, not subjecting you to silly predicaments and annoying limitations. That said, the second way is not bad too - achieving mission objectives as detailed by a "narrative" campaign rewards you with stuff like ore or research or even increased firepower for your Sentinels.
In any case, you start off in Chapter 1: Life in the Guard. The first objective is to research and build a Manufactorum. Simple enough, right? Once you've achieved that, your next task is to build a Sentinel unit. Again, easy enough. While you do that, keep your infantry close to your city and make sure they're together. Isolated and alone, your infantry squads will be easily chewed out by the native wildlife. They are stronger together, where they can fire overwatch and overwhelm the enemy with lots and lots of las-fire. That said, I do encourage you to go search for outposts to gain bonuses to your resource income and extra income such as ore, power or food.
As your research grows, make sure you research the Sanctum Imperialis, which is a tier 3 research thing. This is a building that grants you 6 Loyalty, and you'll need it. A lot. Especially if you're not playing with any Loyalty bonuses. If your cities' Loyalty is in the negatives, your production will slow, and you'll lag far behind. Worse, your units and buildings will cost perhaps double. A Baneblade, for example, costs 160 ore if your Loyalty is positive, but 320 ore if your Loyalty is negative, so keep that in mind, as well as take twice as many turns to build. Building new cities cost 3 Loyalty from each existing city, and it's accumulative, so ensure that your Loyalty stays at a high value - not just positive, but high, because the higher it is, the more efficient and faster your production. Trust me, it's totally worth it.
With that out of the way, your last objective in Chapter 1 is to kill 3 units of xenos. While you might be tempted to send your infantry squads and new built Sentinels around to hunt the Kroot Hounds, Ambulls or Catachan Devils or even Enslavers, I would advise that you be more cautious. The xenos wildlife aren't the only things to watch out for - your opponents will be getting stronger and building new units such as tanks, deffkoptas, Tombblades, etc. and you do not want to lose your entire army to them. Instead, it might be better to turtle a little until you're able to research both a Tank Commander and Leman Russ tanks. Here's another tip. When you finally get Leman Russ tanks, you might want to build a couple more Manufactorums - do take note that you have enough ore, though. In any case, multople Manufactorums in the same city means that your Leman Russ tanks will build faster - with a high Loyalty value, this means your Leman Russ tanks will be built within 1 turn!
With about 3 to 5 Leman Russ tanks, you can move out and start taking care of the native wildlife while tackling any forces your opponents throw at you. Leman Russ tanks are among the most durable units in the game, and it takes a lot of firepower to bring them down. If your opponents' bases are undefended, you can even destroy them with your small squadron of Leman Russ tanks, thus denying them resources and production.
Chapter 2: Rallying the Remnants
After you wipe out 3 units of xenos wildlife, your next task will be to rescue 3 units of Guardsmen scattered throughout the map. Be careful - if you take too long, they will die. They are still vulnerable to native wildlife attacks and enemy factions' assault. Sentinels will be useful here, but you can just split up your tanks and go in whatever directions you see the gigantic yellow arrows are. The Guardsmen will actually shoot your units for some reason, which is why tanks are more useful to recover them. Once you get them, then you can celebrate. Keep in mind these Guardsmen have upgrades even if you didn't research them - they have medi-pack and both variants of grenades. I know I don't have them because I spend my resources on Sanctum Imperialis and Leman Russ tanks instead.
Chapter 3: A Palace Fit for a Priest
This is the reason why I advise you to build lots of Sanctum Imperialis to keep your Loyalty high. Whenever you build a new city, existing cities deduct 3 Loyalty points. You need high Loyalty to keep your production cheap, efficient and fast, so don't fall into the trap of building too many cities, only for your production to crawl to a stuttering halt because your Loyalty is -10.0 or something.
For this Chapter, you're supposed to Find a new city if you haven't already, build 2 Cogitator Stations - they don't have to be in the 2 cities, you can build both in the same city if you prefer. And the last objective is to issue an Edict. Take note that even if you research an Edict, you don't count as having started an Edict. You need to actually click on your city, glance at the bottom, right next to your production tab, where there is a list of your researched Edicts, and then click on the Edict you want to issue. These Edicts only last for a couple of turns and have a cooldown of 10 turns, so don't just spam them. It'll be bad if you used it, only to find out you need it when you're low on resources but it's on cooldown. Once you do that, the objectives for this chapter will be completed.
Chapter 4: Through the Storm
Simple enough. Secure 3 Artifacts. Basically you'll see these weird floating triangular relics on tiles, and you've to capture them by sending a unit next to them and then right-clicking it. It consumes a movement or action, so your unit can't shoot after acquiring the Artifact.
One advice is that you build the Cogitator Stations or issue the Edict after you've already secured the 3 Artifacts so that you instantly complete the objectives when this chapter comes out. Another, if you are unable to do so, is either build fast units such as Scout Sentinels, or get a Voidport and build Valkyries or other flyers to zoom across the map, capture the Artifacts, and then fly back before the enemy units can chase you down. Either way, prior to capturing three Artifacts, you will want to drag all your units back to your cities. Do not capture the Artifacts and complete this chapter if the bulk of your army is halfway across the map engaging the enemy or too far away from your city. You will need your army to defend your cities once this chapter is completed. For this reason, building a fleet of flyers such as Thunderbolt fighters and Marauder bombers is one great option so that they can fly back to your cities as quickly as possible after destroying an enemy city.
Chapter 5: Hold the Line
Yup. This is why I told you to bring your army back to your cities. Leman Russ tanks, Baneblades, Thunderbolt fighters, Marauder bombers, etc. Hold the line because this Chapter will literally throw waves and waves of Enslavers at you. Funnily enough they don't seem to enslave high-tier units such as Leman Russ tanks or Thunderbolt fighters so you don't have to worry. They will enslave infantry and even Sentinels, though, so ignore the enslaved units and kill as many Enslavers as possible. Once you do that, your units will be freed from the mind control.
Just a word of warning, there is a lot of Enslavers. You'll probably spend at least 10-20 turns fighting off waves after waves of Enslavers. If you've weakened the AI factions to the point where they only have one pathetic base left, they'll get annihilated by the Enslavers and you'll automatically win. Heh. In any case, dig in, keep your army where they are, let the Enslavers come to you (they'll eat lots of Overwatch, which is a nice plus), and exterminate the filthy xenos when they attack your base. Oh, for this reason, it's not a good idea to have too many cities because you'll be stretched too thin to defend them all. Maybe 2-3 cities will be enough. So surround your 3 or so cities with your tanks and flyers and you'll be golden. Enslavers are no match for Baneblades, Leman Russ tanks, Thunderbolt fighters and Marauder bombers. The only problem is numbers, but the worst you'll get is a tiring, tedious defense against the Enslavers' seemingly never-ending siege.
Once their numbers thin out and they appear to have stopped attacking your cities, you can slowly spread out with a squadron of flyers to hunt down the remaining Enslavers that ran away to unexplored regions. Do not send your whole army out, however. Make sure to keep the bulk of your army back in your cities, especially your first city - Baneblades, Leman Russ tanks, lots of Marauder bombers. For...
Chapter 6: The Better Part of Valour
The Tech-priest Enginseer is back, and he has revealed himself to be a traitor. Bastard. He'll be sending waves and waves of Kastelan robots and Hydras into your base, which is why I told you to keep the bulk of your army back to defend. Normally Baneblades and Leman Russ tanks will be enough, especially since your Flyers will be susceptible to his Hydras, but Marauder bombers and Thunderbolt fighters are great against Kastelan robots. Just make sure your target priority is spot-on and you should have no problem taking out the Kastelan Robots and Hydras. However, the annoying thing is that you've to complete this mission within 20 turns, which makes it a pain. Fail to destroy even one Kastelan Robot within 20 turns and you automatically lose the game. No, I'm not kidding. I lost once when one Kastelan Robot chose to run away into the fog of war and I didn't even know there was one surviving Robot there. I had to load the game and send my Baneblades up to hunt him down and destroy him, and...well, that allowed me to win the game. So yeah, once you destroy every single Kastelan Robot, Hydra and the traitor Tech-priest, you win the game. Congratulations!
Basically what happens is that the half-repaired ship the Tech-priest was trying to board detonates, destroying the artifacts onboard, and suddenly the Warp Storm is somewhat lifted, allowing your Astropaths to send a message through the Warp and to the rest of the Imperium. They receive a message that Roboute Guilliman has revived and is launching an Indomitus Crusade and you'll be receiving reinforcements soon to cleanse this planet of xenos. Good job, Lord General! You secured victory for Gladius Prime and the Imperium!
Total Annihilation
Of course, you could just ignore these attempts at story-telling and just wipe out the enemy. The best way to pull this off is not to build the 2 Cogitator Stations in Chapter 3, unless you're planning on spamming Hero Characters. Frankly, the Hero Characters for Imperial Guard are not that great, and you're better off focusing on increasing as many resources as possible and spamming Baneblades and Marauder bombers and Leman Russ tanks and Thunderbolt fighters instead. They fight much better than the Hero Characters.
Speaking of which, there sometimes is an optional quest to have a Lord of Skulls neutral unit running around, but honestly, it's not fun when he rolls up to your base and destroys it. On the other hand, if you have 4 Baneblades and a few Leman Russ tanks, you can actually destroy the bastard in just one turn of shooting. Otherwise you'll lose one Leman Russ tank a turn, which hurts a lot (but does free up some ore for your Baneblades, heh).
Whether you decide to have that or not, crushing the enemy AI and wiping Gladius Prime clean of the Orks and Necrons does have its merits and feels much more satisfying than dealing with a supposed traitor Tech-priest who randomly shows up from nowhere. Tip: The best way of taking out bases is to use tons of Marauder bombers and Thunderbolt fighters. Baneblades are powerful, but they should be used to take out the enemy ground troops and armies in wide, open spaces. Sending them into the enemy cities or bases would be extremely difficult because of chokepoints, narrow alleyways and restricted movement. Flyers are not bound by terrain and have much better movement so it's better to rely on your Flyers to surround your enemy's base and slowly take it out. Use your Flyers' agility to your advantage, take out the enemy units one by one, quickly send them to take up that tile until you've the base surrounded by planes, then shoot the base until it's destroyed. Meanwhile your Baneblades either defend your cities or engage the bulk of the enemy forces outside in wider, open areas. Of course, Basilisks will be a great asset with their great range, but they're pretty fragile, so be careful with them.
Anyway, congratulations! You've won the game!
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