Yes, but the AI need to be able to play 'the dead' as well.

Agreed. AI needs to be programmed to deal with outposts too.

Hmmm. A post above gives a viable strategy on playing the dead successfully.

Another post says, "it won't work!"

Guess who I gave Karma to?

I shall eagerly await your expert guide.

I agree the dead are a blast to play, which is why I want to make them more viable.

In Patchwork mod https://forums.elementalgame.com/450250/page/1/ Undead can survive and expand under AI management. They have additional sources of growth and additional Undead Heroes. All races have +1growth. Undead also have this bonus. Also Undead have growth bonuses +2, +3, +4 from their racial buildings that add graves. Graves are source of growth for Undead now.

I'm going ot postpone the guide for today because RNG keeps on giving me death/life shard starts with Morrigan X.X and I wanted to make one guide without them around! Oh well. Gonna attempt it tomorrow and hope wahtever rng I've been getting resets.

They shouldn't change the faction just so the AI can play it, rather fix the AI. All it needs to do is cast Morrigan's Call on cities, only settle city spots with at least one Essence and play extremely aggressively (much like Yithril). It can't be that hard? 

As for Eric's guide... sigh. If you can put two and two together you can see that the Dead have a problem with growth. Unless you happen to spawn directly on a death shard you're looking at +1 growth only (from Tower of Dominion) for the first 60+ turns of the game. This is absolutely disastrous as it means the ability to produce Pioneers is severely hampered. This creates what you could call a turn disadvantage for the Dead where they're constantly behind the other living factions who all have the equivalent of a 30ish turn lead in terms of growth during the critically important early game. The 10 or so total population you'll gain from killing local area bandits don't even begin to make up for the growth loss.

You can go ahead though, Eric, your Consulate strategy guide should provide for amusing (if tragic) reading. Alternatively, you could do as I would hope: Stop trying to defend a broken concept and instead join me in coming up with good suggestions on how to fix the faction. That would be a much more productive use of your time.

@ webusver: Thanks for linking your Patchwork mod, it looks brilliant!

Wouldn’t it be cool if they made a low-growth race that had some special advantages to make up for it. For example, this race would be able to win battles others couldn’t tackle. It would be challenging to play as you would have to carefully consider whether to build another pioneer (as opposed to just cranking them out with a normal race). You would have to consider whether and when a new city site is viable rather than settling every spot you find as fast as possible. You would start slower than other races, but managed carefully, pity the other factions once you got your empire rolling. To make this even cooler, make this an undead race. [/sarcasm off]

Of course, some will say this race is too hard to play or that it’s out of balance. At least we can probably agree that the AI needs improved programming to handle this race’s nuances. If that’s not realistic, I’d like to have the option to make the undead a player-only race so I can still select random races when starting a game. I will concede that the undead race is a challenge to play. However, this being a single-player game, I guess I don’t see that as a problem. Furthermore, if needed, you can always lower the game's difficulty while learning to play this race.

Back, my attempts to create consulate guide has been unsuccessful because I keep on rolling maps rich in LIfe/Death Shards. Ah. Gods of RNG. You never fail to amuse me.

Anyways At least I got one map where it isn't heavy in Death shards. The war, I was forced into it anyways; normally I play passive. But Yithril is hyperaggressive so I had to go and take him out.

Yithril dow'd me. Not me dowing him..

Blessings of the dead upon me.. as I found the Fortress of Calebethon upon a 1 food 5 production forest tile not the 2 essence tile.

At the beginning the production boost is way more important than some silly essence tiles unless its a 4 or 5 essence tile. Thus i settle my first village on 5 production tiles if I can.

Then after it hits level 2 or 3 is when I start to spam alot of skeletons/banshees.



As I start the research on Consulate tech... I got dow'd by yithril on same turn as I started Cooperation tech. I give up on peaceful start, and start sending my skeletons/banshees towards their territory with me capping several outposts on the way!



And with well timed summon of a single skeleton, it pulls whole enemy formation into disarray as they lemming to gank it because it's the weakest unit in my army thereby allowing my fragile skeletons and butcherman enter their territory with little resistance and amass swarm bonuses.

Meanwhile I have my Bacco's army level up by slaying monsters and doing quests in the area and kill a random questing hero from Yithril.

Then I discover why Yithril is running away with the game....

hahaha

No wonder why he became so hyperaggressive and dow'd me.

oops I forgot to take a screenshot of Ahilga before I capped it but, this is the screenshot of my set up.

Yes that is correct, I'm still using Basic Spears + skeletons plus a unit of butcherman in my main army. up against tons of militia, several units in chaimail and angry juggernaught in southeast of the screenshot.

After three horrific wails from Morrigan in a row, while skeletons held the trog horde back at the positions as shown in the screenshot..

Yithril Troops start to run away from the battleline in attempt to reach safety and a game of chicken began between my skeletons and his juggernaught, The juggernaught made one mistake of staying one tile too close to me after several turns of attack moves and retreats and ended up getting caught by my skeletons and locked down by terror ability.  Until the result is as you see this.

Battle was quite close, exciting seesaw fight.

But it was only inevitable that they would fall to the dead..

With Capital down, my Bacco raced to other city from Yithril and attacked it..

Enemy attack might as well be at 153 because of my Banshee's -50% physical damage it takes reduction ability.

It was very one sided.

With this, the claim of dead being helpless and unable to defeat anyone at the beginning of the game is disproven. IN the meanwhile through the war against Yithril, I have razed a city and settled two new towns. With one which is already a conclave due to fall of Ahilga.

My Consulate strategy comes into play if you start isolated at minimum. It will allow you to have minimal army for monster slaying/questing while focusing all the production in setting Consulates up and expanding. It doesn't quite happen if you start next to yithril though because you will be forced to make alot of soldiers to defend yourself.

Plus it seems like you don't understand how helpful a consulate can be. With one of them attached to a village then it will have 1 growth! Two equals two growth! Three equals three! At minimum every single village without a essence for morrigan's call will get a consulate built and set up. I aim to set at least one up for each village I settle. It's a slow start but can snow ball after enough turns pass.

And if you MUST have alot of consulates set up fast, do it in a fortress first because they have the highest production and with about 5 growth after five consulates.. that's alot of skeletons being found from the land and summoned to help you expand.

Edit: Might as well add in the latest screenshot of my the dead playthrough.

I rolled through Tarth and Gilden with no problems, even when I was wielding the basic spears. Tarth/Gilden couldn't land a hit on my ghosts to save their lives and they ended up dead. Then blood season happened and thus war against everyone. I'm going amok and ripping magnar apart at the moment, razed three of their villages just now. I have achieved a significant point lead at the moment and is constructing two new armies right now.

Just because consulate is expensive to build doesn't mean it isn't a viable strategy. I've had games where I didn't have a single death shard so I relied on consulates and got by just fine.

Heck you could make your first city a town so you can have very high growth by the time where slums come online and it would allow alot of pioneers to be sent out. I like the undead the way they are, they're a hoot to play.

Also, I suspect 2nd biggest reason why ai tend to fail is because they look at scout and see that it's a banshee unit then went omg -50% physical damage reduction?! I RULE THE WORLD and spam nothing but scouts while forgetting about their crappy staff weapons. I suspect undead ai completely lose their minds at banshee scouts.

It will be great if in 1.6 patch that AI has been made to learn taht outpost upgrades exist and I think there might be no custom ai design units created so you have to play as them first and design the units. Because at first morrigan spammed nothing but scouts until I played them and created custom designed spearmen.

The most I've seen undead AI factions expand is create three new villages. And then stagnate there because they cannot build the consulates where if they had at least one consulate for each village then it would've let them get a level 2 city in 30ish turns at very least?

And since you accuse me of trying to destroy your suggestion, just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I'm a complete monster. You politician you.

And looking at your suggestion, i suspect it won't help the dead anyways because AI tend to not always pick the right enchantment for their cities. They might randomly pick scrying pool then randomly pick morrigan's call. Because alll we know the AI could cast scrying pool then cast Oppression spell or Meditation.

If stardock inisist on not teaching AI on how to use the outposts, then they need to at least teach the Dead AI to use a new type of building when built, adds +1 growth to their villages. Call it Necromancy Portal or something when built, adds +1 growth, nothing else. It's way more effective that way than making a enchantment that the AI might pick or not pick.

There we go, that's' the biggest reason why I disagree with your suggestion. Its too unreliable for the AI to use it.

On a side note, I notice the Undead units tend to play very poorly in auto-resolve (which is where most of the AI-only battles take place I believe), possibly in combat as well but I'm not too sure. Basically, Morrigan once attacked some of my Scouts, and I auto-resolved the combat (which I always do when my auto-explore Scouts get attacked by anything), only to win this time. Looking at the combat log, Morrigan basically kept spamming Terror while my Scouts hit him during turns when they resisted...

I think something about the way Terror is used by the AI might need to be revised. Otherwise, single-unit Undead armies will practically never win any battles

If I'm reading the xml file right (DLC04_Spells.xml), the AI will regard a target as worthy of Terror if the target level exceeds the caster level by at least 3.

That is kind of weird because I don't think my Scouts had a higher level than Morrigan when I won the auto-resolve.

I'll see if reducing AIPriority makes a difference. Result: Need to set AIPriority to 0 to prevent it from being used at all in auto-resolve. This will likely mean the AI won't use it as well in manual combat, but at least the Dead faction won't find itself unable to win many of its battles.

Another observation: Terror always seems to fail in auto-resolve. Instead of "Spearmen casts Terror on Bandit Captain", it'd say "Bandit Captain absorbs Spearmen's Terror" or something like that. Thus, in a situation in which I had Morrigan, 1 unit of Spearmen and 1 unit of Skeletons vs a single Bandit Captain, the rest of the battle consists of Spearmen and Skeletons repeatedly failing to cast Terror on the Bandit Captain, while Morrigan killed him eventually with a ranged attack. Note that this is not the same as resisting Terror - if successfully cast in manual combat, the combat details will reflect that Terror has been resisted, not 'absorbed'.

Web and Beguile seem to have the same issues in auto-resolve as well - they are always 'absorbed'.