Quick Questions

1. your capital is placed but subsequent cities can be placed where you want or razed

2. there are Shard worlds in exiled mode... each shard has a terrain type. that perk just means if you select it you'll 100% start in a "dead" shard, which has undead hostiles, lands suited to undead race, etc. There are dead shards either way but you won't normally start on one

And your capital could be moved to another city later on in the game (via the special spell you have to research first).

Just bought mine as well and waiting for it to be installed.

Do achievements work with some/all mods?
Do you need to play a certain mode (like campaign) to get achievements?
I play alot of CKII and some EUIV where you need to play Ironman mode with no mods altering the checksum to get achievments.

Wow, this is an old thread.

To answer your questions red,

Yes, achievements work with mods, in fact mods can actually even edit achievements. Which is what I did with one of my mods to fix a broken achievement.

No, you do not need to play in any specific mode. Any of them work fine.

For future reference, perhaps create a new thread next time? Instead of necroing a really old one.

Which, I think, makes sense, it's always good to have one of these.
In my current game, I (as undead, I'm quite new and only arguably experienced with Monsters, but that was on an easier difficulty) my possible options for a third world (after my second one was an Elven world, no less) are a Lava world full of Tormentors and a Dremer world (and a very poor AI world which I conquered and am in the process of filling up with junk cities). After wasting 30 or so turns trying to gain a foothold by enclosing Tormentors in mountains, I decided to bail out of there and go and terraform the Dremer one instead when a fourth of these bastards appeared out of nowhere when I was sieging a neutral Svart city in there (that somehow never got attacked by the junk that's all over that world).
If that world happens to contain an important portal (haven't found one in the Dremer world yet, and I don't think there's that much land left in the fog), how in the world am I going to get there? Any advice on taking on nasty worlds with undead? Only thing I have that doesn't outright get nuked are a High Blademaster and Royal Guards, these would die in two turns, my native troops all look like they would die in one hit from a single Tormentor. I only have undead cities (and access to Koatls, Elves and those Guards through "resources"), but at least there's a holy site in the Dremer world I may be able to take within maybe 5-10 turns.

Edit: Marked the question that wall of text is based around on

Liches, Liches and more Liches (ie. Undead Krypta temple units). Their range and damage makes them absolute monsters for taking out tough AI critters, as long as the targets aren't immune to Death damage. Vampires can work very well if the targets use Elemental damage and aren't immune to Death. Or buff up a couple of ranged Heroes (Invisibility + Flight is good for defense), making sure you have a mix of damage types.

You should be able to make progress as long as you focus fire. And don't forget to toss in a spell of your own to help out.

What WingedKagouti said, liches are your friend. I also like to terrafom all the terrain into death terrain using Krypta's spell. Heals undead and damages everyone else.

Okay, I will try going for Liches, then. I was stomping all over any (non-Flying, and through retaliation even flying melee) surpremes I met in that monsters game with Wolves of Helia, but those were already nothing short of excellent as Court Werewolves, and compared to that all those undead units I've been using so far feel ... sketchy at best, too easily screwed over if the wrong unit walks around the corner (while the wolves would even then still do a good job as HP sponges).

Also I keep getting screwy world generations with the dead, my last game I was trapped with 3 cities in a tropical world behind a wide river full of Krakens and Serpents blocking me from the portal, took me ~70 turns to get past that and then the second world (desert) was already crawling with monsters (mainly minotaurs) so bad, I quit when I lost my healer hero to fricking Nightmare Wolves (I suspect the foolish AI on the other side of that world had triggered a portal quest involving them and got whooped) and, after retreating, and assembling my forces to focus them down, my most experienced and "buffed" (not that I had a lot of useful things in that starting world) Elder Vampire by just coming out of the fog, both in one hit.
Outland -> Elven -> Volcanic + cul-de-sac Dremer world and an AI Autumn world is not quite as bad, but still gives that "everything trying to kill me"-feeling... all the more rewarding if I actually end up pulling through, of course.

If you have those Wolves of Helia still, I would say they would probably do pretty good in the lava world as well. Since they are immune to elemental. Looks like they main thing the Tormentors are weak to is spirit. If you didn't raze the Svart city you mentioned, you could use it to build Dragomorts. Good damage, flying, and best of all their main attack is spirit.

^Those were in another game. But the Liches are doing fine - I ended up finding a portal in the rest of that Dremer world, killing about 8 Shadow Dragons in a Shadow World (Which apparantly had been discovered earlier by the AI and therefore was absolutely swarming... and boy, did that AI have problems with Wolf and Ogre spawns in its third world, too, there were like 30 units) I lost nearly all of my old army for the first two but fortunately researched Resurrection and started spewing out Liches around this time... still lost some good units forever because, but since I got a foothold, it has been going very smoothly, I just put said AI (Es Kaliborn) out of his misery. It's a huge map, so there's stil a lot to do, even after 200(?) turns.
Ended up just ignoring the hell world, I do have one lich on guard duty to protect the one by now fairly big free city I have in there from demons, but it's not really worth it and he's screwed if one of the Tormentors comes that way, anyway. It does reduce the risk of hell creatures invading that elven world I actually moved my capital to though - some time earlier, Shadow Bats and Dragons were spilling over into my plains-of-death-ified Dremer world once the portal was open, too. (that actually was the main reason I lost all of my old army except for one very old veteran Royal Guard (who's still alive even now).

One thing I wonder though: In a Let's Play, I saw the guy often raze big cities and receive Settlers for it. I read that this was nerfed and you will now ("now" being at some point before I started playing the game) only get Settlers for razing sufficiently big cities without the "recently conquered", but I never seem to get any settlers. I razed a Level 5 Fortress that helped me take the Shadow World to replace it with a Free City and a level 10+ Svart city that was out of unrest (the city itself was terrible, but would have been decent with different buildings and a bit south, and I wanted to try those Dragomorts (my first game actually was Svart, but I only ever built basic units for some dumb reason, so I never used these), got nothing from either. I had razed another Fortress before, but that was level 2 and I at that point I thought, maybe they have to be level 5. What's up with that, was getting settlers from razing cities removed entirely?
I'm also not having many backyard spawns at all even though I don't remember changing spawn rate settings, are they rarer on Huge maps or is it because other worlds are absolutely crowded?

Last I recall, you only needed 2 pop in a city to get settlers on raze. I did hear about them changing it, but this is the first I've heard of it not working at all. I might have to go check this out.

As for the spawns, is the event still triggering and you're just not getting many of them showing up? Or are the events not triggering very often? Either one could be attributed to luck, as it's fairly random where and when things spawn. But map size or crowed-ness shouldn't affect it.

Shidan said:

Last I recall, you only needed 2 pop in a city to get settlers on raze. I did hear about them changing it, but this is the first I've heard of it not working at all. I might have to go check this out.

As for the spawns, is the event still triggering and you're just not getting many of them showing up? Or are the events not triggering very often? Either one could be attributed to luck, as it's fairly random where and when things spawn. But map size or crowed-ness shouldn't affect it.

Click to expand...

It depends I think. I swear sometimes it's 2 pop to raze and get settler, other times it's 3. Maybe depends on race I have no idea when you can raze a city to get a settler if you don't like the location of the city is in.

Mmh, in the case of that big, not revolting city I got no settler for, I actually went back to my last autosave when I started playing again and saw I had razed it one turn too early, probably got fooled by "End Turn" only doing scheduled units moves rather than actually ending my turn again. Oops. But now it makes sense at least.
I guess Fortresses just don't give back settlers then? Maybe that goes even for all special cities? I wonder.

As for spawns, it was really weird. I got almost nothing in my worlds for 150-200 turns (maybe 10 units, seriously - there was lots and lots of stuff anywhere I went, but once I had pacified a world...), but now that I have reached Ainadra, it went up drastically and I'm getting multiple spawns every few turns. Even got one Surpreme right next to my former/original capital (that is now a free city because it just wasn't economically viable anymore, I had built too much junk near the start) - was only a lousy Lunar Wisp, but still.
Still weird, in my previous games (on normal size and easier diff.), I was constantly being bugged by stuff way before I got that far.

Yeah, the sudden increase is normal. They never explicitly say it, but that's the last lieutenants challenge. Destroy the citadel in Ainadra to stop it. And don't go through the portal after that until ready, as it will start another round of spawns. This time, a lot stronger ones.

My only guess on why you had no spawns, is that it was just not picking tile near you to spawn them. I've had matches where it like never spawns anything near me, but they're spawning everywhere for other players. And vise versa.