The other races of endless legend will not allow you to have feeding grounds for your people, so you must make war or the dream will perish. In gameplay terms this is shown in that your food is limited unless you aggressively pacify a village (-1 food every terrain but +2 food for every pacified village.) This means you have some serious incentives to be on conquest from the get go. Also your heroes start with slavery trait that adds +1 food per pop per pacified village thus further amplifying this bonus, while your starting infantery gains last stand that allows them to come back to life even after they died in combat if you are victorious. If I where to compare Necrophage with endless space the closest thing would probably be hisso who need to invade to gain bonuses and is also highly dependent on successful battles.

As Necrophage you also get half the price of districts (75 industry vs 150 for your first) and you have a counter that gives you a food stockpile (netting a big food bonus when used on a city) for every 8 combats you win. You cannot have peace or trade with other nations so this means you need to plan your conquests. Also declaring war actually nets you +4 attack per unit so war is encouraged. And later on you will gain less upkeep in dust for your units (50% discount in era 2.) Finally you have a built in 5% regeneration rate on your units.



Starting position

He who meddles thus advice you to look for forests, rivers and everything industrial in your first hive since industrial production will allow you a quicker military, a quicker military in turn will allow you a quicker conquest of villages for your hungry people.



Early Conquests

Since you start with low defense units you have to be very careful with what combats you choose. I would argue it is wise to build up a military first and have only one city for the first 20 turns to get all the empire bonuses (you need 60 prestige for this) as with everything necrophage you expand and conquer in bursts so by turn 20 you should quickly expand and go on conquest, preferably you would have found another empire to get more food for your starving people.



Starting hero



Your starting hero is high hitpoint, high attack low initiative low defense and this in general characterize all infantry of necrophage. In combat this usually translates into having to have good position and attacking on preferable grounds, as to make sure you do the first strike with your high attack values.



Research early

In general since your unit have some glaring weaknesses like low initiative I would recommend getting glassteel accessories to boost initiative and make those high attack high hitpoint values more useful. Since you will have a low food early until you find villages seed storage that gives your cities a base food bonus can be very valuable. I would argue that if you do not find one or two villages that you think you can conquest very early (be weary of ranged high initiative villages unit as you will loose much hitpoints to these) you should prioritize seed storage If however you do conquer a village or two early then this has less priority and instead industry to actually build the villages are given more priority and thus mill foundry should be researched early.



Minor factions



When it comes to minor faction to assimilate i would argue that a village that helps boost your movement or combat efficiency could be more important than economy boosting villages since every village pacified gives you +2 food so you will gain more economy bonus simply by being successful in battle. Sisters of mercy can be a good village to get because your units have high hitpoints and the regeneration will shine when always on the conquest and a support unit fits very well with the rest of your army composition.



After your first empire plan

At this point you should definitively expand or conquer more cities. Keep in mind that settlers have a dust buyout penalty so you might want to industry build these while buying out militarily units and buildings. At this time you will also be able to have 8 conquest thus boosting food in your home city so after the first settler you should have a quick burst of growth from food bonuses. This again allows you to use your other bonus of cheaper districts so to add more base ind/dust/sci to your cities. Now since you cannot have any peace or alliances I would recommend you look into where your neighbors are and figure out who is your next target.



As a new player this guide was not ment to be an expert guide but just a general viewpoint on some strategies and thinking you might employ early in the game. Hopefully in time we will have more guides. With that I wish you good luck and may the one who meddles always be with you in your conquests.

Example gameplay 6 player large region game (first 20 turns)



Your first turn



In this game we have a nice choice of a bit food + industry on river to the northeast or a river and an anomaly that gives an approval bonus. This alone will push our new city to have a 15% bonus to food and industry so the choice is clear. Also settling near a border means that it will be quicker for our next city to be build as a settler needs to move to a new region. The city will net +7 industry from the terrain and 3 dust (low) while adding a whooping 18 science (strong start) this will allow you to quickly gain the base bonus buildings (+10 food dust science etc) so a good early science is strong.



Since the city is 1 turn away we actually choose to forfeit a round with the city. This is fine as the bonuses we gain is well worth the time we lost even considering snowball potential.



Turn2:

So we explored a bit - got 60 dust from ruins without having ruin tech (lucky) and we found a village. We can attack this guys early as they are same as us in having high attack high hp low initiative. lucky for us they have even worse initiative than we do as base so should be OK to attack.





In our main city we could choose to build a memorial that will give us +2 FIDS and +1 prestige or the base infantery unit that gives us the last stand ability meaning they come back to life as long as we win the victory. Since I think we can attack the village and win I will build memorial first.





So we managed to kill the units defending the village. Our count for a free food stockpile went +2 since we killed two enemy units and stored two bodies. (i think +250 food currently for a free food stockpile.) In our capital city we could now build pacify village and it would net us not only the bonus of the village (10% cheaper units but also the +1 population and the necrophage bonus of +2 food per pop for a pacified village. But since the cost is 115 industry and we for only 60 industry can gain more (monument) we choose to build this first. Also note that you want to use villages when it is harder to grow population (It gets exponentially higher in food cost for each pop.) so when to use them is a strategic choice.



Since our science is high I choose to go mill first (+ industry) then seed storage (+food) since I know we will finish both quickly due to our high science start.



Turn 3 we got a quest for a nearby region (faction quest so you will always have this type of quest) it would gain us spices (resource bonus when used) but we have to destroy a village and explore a ruin.



We also gained a level on our hero and I choose the +5 food bonus as I think with all the unit cost reduction I can build more units and thus use my hero in my city.



T4 so we got foundry (+6 indu +30% indu) and we will actually use the dust from our ruins to buyout this only next turn (we set it as first to produce) as even the cost is higher than waiting for say a reduction in buyout cost the gain in industry so early cannot be underestimated. Currently with no production it costs 160 dust for 80 industry (2x cost) so lets hope this is reduced due to one turn of production.



Turn 5 seed storage is done. We will go for slaves and volunteers (including VIPS hehe) to get cheaper buyout and then buyout the industry building. After this we will get more science from public library.



Turn 8 we finish the buyout tech and now the cost is a mere 63 dust for adding industry and we will ofcourse use this.





As can be seen on the screen I have scouted a bit and to the west I have found a tasty region with 2 villages, since village pacifying is powerful for necrophage this should go into your consideration of where to settle down early.



I bought out the memorial as well (57 dust) and set seed storage as next to build. We also got a crippling ruin that gave us mobs that we had to use last stand to win (both our inf died but came back to life as our hero managed to save the day.) but this means we need to get back to our city to heal and get more units.



T11 we choose to have empire mint so to add more dust and use the dust buyout ability further. Our hero is in city healing and we are building public library. Soon we will add more units and we need to prepair for empire plan at turn 20 so we should build a settler soon as well.



Turn 13 we buyout public library and set a district for next.



Turn 14 we finish mint - we go for sewage systems to add happiness. In our city now we prioritize prestige.



T16 I had a fight and my hero is wounded so I assign him to city to heal and add bonus (nice way to heal is to do something useful at the same time!) We add 8 prestige per turn since every 15 prestige gives us a big bonus for empire plan (up to 60 for a total of 4 empire plan choices.)







Turn 18 we add dust dredger for dust bonus on river. Arguably we chould have buyout the dust bonus as we the extra dust cost would be gained by faster dust bonus so I should have done this 2 turns ago when I could (I do use buyout now for 120 dust but adding 20% dust and 5 dust per turn.)



Our hero also gained a level and now adds 10% reduction in cost for units, together with the pacified village our settler is now 20% cheaper and will be even more cheaper with the empire bonus (25% less unit cost.) So as you can see we are setting our self up for a very strong period from turn 21 to 40 when the current empire plan will be in effect.



Turn 19 we have 49 prestige and will add +8 if we do more this turn. Since we cannot get to 60 we might as well do something else with prestige. It is recommended that you for a game you want to perform optimal consider carefully when to get prestige so you will achieve your goals. So in this game we set them to build settler and now the settler will be finished next turn so that is a good timing (ideally turn 19 so you can settle the same turn an new empire plan is voted in.)



So we choose everything but the science bonus (our science is strong and the cheaper units/buildings is more vital as it will add further early sci/food/industry that is much more than what the 20% overall bonus would give.)









Same turn now our settler is done and we are set for a strong game onwards. I hope that gives you an overall impression of one way of playing the early turns.



Our body count is at 5 out of 8 for a food stockpile bonus, our hero is rested and full of health, and our units can be built quickly (around 2 turns for stock infantery) so now is the time to both add more settlers and more villages and use food stockpile to boost our cities ahead while adding pacified villages to boost up our population numbers, I prefer to add the villages after building a settler since I usually want each village to add as much food for its population (remember population costs more and more food the higher the current population is) so this is why I waited with this. I have attached the savegame if anyone wants to continue to play this game (hopefully it works in alpha to load it.) While not a perfect start it illustrates the importance of dust buyout early, how industry and science matters and some concepts on how villages add population and how food costs per pop grows exponentially. I hope you learned something and I think in time we will all learn this game better. Anyways have fun and enjoy Endless Legend



Savegame:

Necrophages - Turn 20 example game.zip

Thank you very much for that awesome guide! A perfect example for Necrophages' early game strategy. First 20 turns can be tough but now I understand what I need to do to survive a lot better

Thanks buddy, that's very helpful. Might I say, I even came to a few similar conclusions regarding the Necrophages.

So what is the advantage of Necrophage?

hellheaven1987 wrote:
So what is the advantage of Necrophage?

+4 to attack to each unit for being in war, unkillable infantry, fast regeneration on all units, cheap districts, + 1 pop on pacified villages and food stockpiles for each 8 killed enemies. You can read about their traits in the Bestiary here: /#/endless-legend/forum/9-tips-tricks/thread/3860-endless-legend-bestiary

Hopefully we can adopt this guide to changes as the game evolves. He who meddles wants all necrophages to be sucsessfull in plundering the lands of auriga

I completed my first game just a few minutes ago. Necrophage all the way



When I captured cities that had a lot of districts there was no way for me to get them back out of rebellion short of salting the earth. I had happiness bonuses, but the negatives on some of the captured cities were around -150. At that low even sacrifices didn't help.



Is salting the best way to go, or are there other tricks to turn the tide of opinion.

This guide helped me a lot tonight.



The game is still a lot tougher to apprehend than Endless Space, which drastically limits your choices (and thus your errors), but I'm having a good time.