@Phyrexian_Dude
The Empire is literally in the midst of a civil war with the current pretender to the throne being an utterly inept individual with almost no popularity, if at all, among the masses. If the emperor doesn't net some kind of win the common folks will abandon him en mass, more so if he lets the enemy do as they please. The only thing holding the shit show together are the nobles backing him and quite frankly I can't tell what the end goal is.
As for strategy their really isn't much beyond guerilla warfare, ancient warfare lean very heavily towards tight formations and going wide but that's a terrible idea in the face of modern weapons. They're stuck with trying different shit and seeing what works modern weapons might as well be magic and they have no fucking clue how to counter it. To their credit, armored orcs wasn't too bad of an idea given the options.
Also the empire fucked over their vassal states in the first few chapters.....rip.