Ok, so I decided to get the DLC's for endless legend from steam today since they were all bundled up in one nice package. Naturally, one of the biggest ones I was eyeing was Shadows.



Naturally what comes next: try a game with the Forgotten. At first glance, the forgotten can spend dust to be able to do research, which is quite handy when combined with the fact that they gain dust from killing minor villages. Much to my dismay, some minor factions can absolutely wreck havoc on your early forces, which leads to hoping you get the right minor faction matchups in the early game. The costs for research, however, vastly skyrocketed the further on into the game it went, usually towards the end of the 2nd age it became pretty miserable to simply outright buy research. It was also at this point that I figured "hey, what about infiltration to steal research?" Being successful at stealing one age 2 tech, I was then booted out, with my poor leader slaughtered from a round up (should have seen that coming, although I was not aware people would be notified of my actions.) This does make me wonder how in the world your supposed to take advantage of consecutive actions, which does take awhile to initially get in place unless the notification is more generic and not a "they used this in X city!" Even then though, it becomes difficult since most people will put every city on high alert for the next couple of turns.



To me, the units felt like I was playing with a bunch of glass cannons, which makes sense with hit and run tactics. That said however, their ranged units far outweighed the usefulness of their others with the bonus of focus firing on enemy units. This, however, is what I believe leads to the unfortunate early game dealing with wandering minor factions or an early game aggressor.



Pillaging I feel is probably done right and is overall balanced. I could be mistaken on this, seeing as I feel I did a pretty bad job of it at first try.



Expansion and keeping up with other factions into the late game is what baffles me. They aren't quite like the Broken Lords where its one less resource to worry about; Its more of transferring the weight of science onto dust, making it more needed, but still having to juggle other required resources as well. While sticking with a couple of cities would be the best way to remain undetected, the general layouts they are given (forest like terrains are fairly frequent) make it difficult to properly have enough of the various resources and time to mass produce hit and run squads for pillaging. As a result, I often expanded with a good number of cities, but very few districts, building on only the most profitable of locations that yielded a nice balance of food, dust, and industry. However, due to the research issues mentioned earlier, into the 2nd age and proceeding into the 3rd, I find it difficult to keep up with opposing factions due to infiltration time, the possibility of my spies being caught, or the process of trying to accumulate enough gold to do it, which at that point i'd likely be better off purchasing another hero for infiltrations.



Overall, my feeling is that the Forgotten truly are interesting, however the lack of survivability on their initial units can lead to a very rough early game. The amount of time to invest your spy into the territory is almost forced on the Forgotten, which is a risk in itself compared to the dust cost until you get into the late game where dust boosting researches are more plentiful.



If I were to balance them, the main things I would consider...

1. Buffing the survivability of the Assassin slightly. This would make early game vs. early aggressors and minor factions a little easier on them to properly begin accumulating dust from destroying minor villages.

2. Allow the forgotten to have ever so slightly faster infiltration's into cities. It's their bread and butter, and its their one hope midgame to get past the hump until Dust Refinery and Dust Depository is obtained.



If able, I ask for any advice you might have to using the forgotten. Is there anything you have found wrong in my post? Is there something I could do better with as the Forgotten that I may have overlooked?

I think the key to playing the forgotten is to realise that they're still an empire, and still need to do empire things. You can't just survive from their specialities. Even though you can get free techs, it's still worth spending resources to get the ones you actually want to push you to victory, for example.



Re: research. You can get an early game boost by using the dust found, pillaged and extorted to get you ahead, but you have to realise that doing so makes future researches more expensive, so you're likely to hit a plateau until you get some steady dust income going in a city or two. This means that you have to plan a long time ahead with which techs you want to spend that valuable early dust on.



Infiltrating is great, and something you should always try. However, the key infiltration talent isn't the "+ seniority bonus" one, it's the "-cooldown on assignment" one. You should always check spy cities for roundups and move the spy on if they aren't going to be able to hit an infiltration milestone before the roundup completes. The exact time depends on game speed (i believe), and on fast I think it's only one or two turns. You can usually tell it's going to happen quickly by looking at the 'per person' income in the enemy city. That value halves in roundups. Even if your spy leaves they've still done economic damage, so don't consider it a complete loss.



Also, it helps to infiltrate empires with more than one city. This lets you do the actions that don't tell your opponent where your spy is until they fail. This lets you build up seniority without worrying about roundups.



The Forgotten, more than any other faction, relies heavily on their heroes. You need many of them, and you need them soon. Try to get a Governor with a good dust income and a general who can tank for your squishy units.



If you have the Guardians expansion installed it can be good and bad. There is an improvement in era 3 that makes your dust problems disappear if you have a desert/savannah city, but you also have the plague of savagery, which will make minor factions very painful to deal with. Still, tanking with a hero works pretty well.



Good luck and happy sneaking!





Oh, and pillage everything. Pillage your enemies. Pillage your allies. Pillage in cold war and in war. Pillage over the edges of closed boarders. Pillage right in the middle of the enemy empire while they've closed boarders to you and their armies are on the other side of the map, because you have stealth and you can do that. Use winter to your advantage, with the reduced sightlines to get even more pillaging done.



Then pillage some more. Myst are great for that.

ZenTractor wrote:


*snip*

Oh, and pillage everything. Pillage your enemies. Pillage your allies. Pillage in cold war and in war. Pillage over the edges of closed boarders. Pillage right in the middle of the enemy empire while they've closed boarders to you and their armies are on the other side of the map, because you have stealth and you can do that. Use winter to your advantage, with the reduced sightlines to get even more pillaging done.



Then pillage some more. Myst are great for that.

thank you for pointing that out, i started a new game and this time i started to pillage everything i could and for the first time playing the forgotten i am in the lead with 50 points above everyone else in the middle of era II

I don't have any idea how to play this even with pillaging and spying. Their units when you start the game are strugling with some neutrals- often dies. If your enemies are far away from you, you will be imprisoned in 2 era (when cultists or vaulters are in middle of 3 era probably). For me the main problem is that their units can't fight against minor races OR are too slow (even with item from 1st era) at the beggining so they can't expand fast enough. When I can't expand or secure my borders it is almost imposibble to made enough dust for rebuilding the army (which is dying frequently if im trying to def extractors) or explore the empire which you can try to spy or recruit enough spies to make even in tech with other factions. The problem's are even more hurting in multiplayer. I also find out that their start terrain often is not so good as vaulters or especially broken lords. I mean it's not always fitted for them which is sad.

How to play as Forgotten: A quick guide.



1. Start on a spot with lots of dust, a high amount on industry and some food. (3:2:1). Don't mind about science.

2. Research foundry and basic level 1. Later, focus just on your own exclusive research (Myst, Predator, pillage bonus...). You will steal any other tech unless you need it very hard.

3. Try to do your main quest. It will give you a lot of techs and an awesome hero.

4. Look for all enemy capitals, and leave a spy as quickly as posible in every capital.

5. Do not expand too much. Seriously, focus on 3 or 4 cities, you can't afford more cities. Be wise and don't waste your Dust.

6. Buy Heroes, a lot of heroes, and do spionage with them.

7. Pillage you enemies. Pillage your friends. Pillage your mama, pillage eveywhere. You can pillage in just 1 or 2 turns anything with a 3 troops army. Lots of money for you.

8. Choose your fights wisely. If you can totaly kill something, do it: it will bring you a lot of Dust or resources.

9. Surround a capital. When you are ready, destroy your enemy capital defenses with a spy, and attack from the shadows, and conquer that capital.

10. GG easy would backstab again.

It is working against bots if you have some luck with minor factions and terrain. But multiplayer games with opponent who can think and easily counter pillage/ early spying it is just pointless to play them. Even minor factions, especially with rage event are dangerous for your empire if you will not sacrafice some time and troops to destroy their villages. If you will destroy them you will lose time which is needed for visiting ruins and you will lose dust/ production for replace unit's because assasins dies easily early game.

I've found that the Forgotten are highly dependent on their initial hero when it comes to early game fighting (playing on serious). Assassins are cool units, esp when equipped with glory or death, however early game they are quite delicate. That and rushing the faction quest to get 2 predatores for free helps. I've found 2 assassins, 2 predatores, and a hero could take on all MF villages and even engage in early aggression against the AI with relative ease (with a bit of micromanagement to minimize damage), until you stabilize your economy and get things rolling (by turn 25-30+ on normal speed).



Also, I only buy a tech when I can use it instantly. There is no point in buying a tech for building an improvement / unit if my production queue is not empty. Which is why the very first tech I buy is parley, while the founder's memorial is building. If I'm lucky, I get easy and rewarding quests (if not, pillage).