Why is Zephon so passive?

[sIg3b]

Is it only me or does Zephon never build a second city? It also spawns few units, just builds up its first city, otherwise does nearly nothing, even on hard?

[Wendek]

Zephon and the Anchorite are NPC factions who spawn with two settlements (pretty far apart usually) and can't build another one in normal circumstances. Chieftess is also a NPC but her Reavers can create cities, in fact she'll start spamming them if you're about to kill her. Not sure if I've seen her build more if she still has her two initial cities though.

That said, I do notice Anchorite and Chieftess are more agressive than Zephon most of the time, but I've certainly seen it launch large-scale assaults especially in the lategame.

[Underscorecow]

I also noticed that zephon is always very defensive and likes to ball its units up.

[Kaysoky]

The number of settlements does depend on the map size and density settings. If you crank up the density, there can be pretty absurd numbers of starting Zephon/Anchorite/Chieftess cities. I've also seen Chieftess build multiple cities in my games.

Anchorite has the trait that their units wander around and Chieftess sends reaver raids. Zephon doesn't have a similar trait, so I guess it does appear passive in that regard.

[XenoxXx]

huge map 3 settlement

[Hydra]

Yea it was kinda disappointing for me when Zephon got wiped out quite early in my first game considering its the namesake of the game.