Any Dark Culture Builds?

[ReverseRaven]

And I don't mean for fluff/flavor.

I mean has anyone come up with a build where the Dark Culture actually provides something that wouldn't be better with other cultures? For example, how Barbarians and Spider Mounts work great together due to Barbs having the T2 mounted archer or how Feudal/Industrious are great at building tanky demoralization strats.

Or how High + archer enchantments is really good. I dunno. I'm just playing a Dark Culture game and find nothing particularly compelling about them.

Also inb4 "this game has no builds because I play to turn 150 and everything is the same."

[Rude$t]

I think because of Warlocks, Dark builds really well into debuff builds. Dark and Pandemonium fit each other like a glove. Dark can also do some cheesy things farming hero kills/captures from free cities to generate lots of mana and knowledge.

Ferocious interactions with shock troops and knights really well. Balanced around doing one big hit. Night Guards work well with it too.

Mana Addicts and/or Ritual Cannibals can make up for your lack of support.

Druid Staff from Pantheon unlock is the ideal starting gear. AoE weaken. 2 stacks of strength for each weaken. Combine with an AoE on follow up turns.

Got a head ache tho. Might come back to go into my build later. But really you can do a lot. Sunder resistance. Apply status effects. Lots of Tomes can work with this game plan, work towards Pandemonium to double down.

[MEATSHED]

Dark is weird. Out of combat it focuses on knowledge but in combat it's probably the most aggressive faction in the game, what with its whooping 1 defensive unit (that for a pikeman is pretty aggressive), with most of their survivability coming from their ranged units applying weaken. For out of combat stuff, being able to ignore city stability is a cool trick for events, in combat frost weapons/arrows can be a nice pick up due to one of their culture spells slowing.

[ReverseRaven]

Originally posted by Rude$t:

I think because of Warlocks, Dark builds really well into debuff builds. Dark and Pandemonium fit each other like a glove. Dark can also do some cheesy things farming hero kills/captures from free cities to generate lots of mana and knowledge.

Ferocious interactions with shock troops and knights really well. Balanced around doing one big hit. Night Guards work well with it too.

Mana Addicts and/or Ritual Cannibals can make up for your lack of support.

Druid Staff from Pantheon unlock is the ideal starting gear. AoE weaken. 2 stacks of strength for each weaken. Combine with an AoE on follow up turns.

Got a head ache tho. Might come back to go into my build later. But really you can do a lot. Sunder resistance. Apply status effects. Lots of Tomes can work with this game plan, work towards Pandemonium to double down.

All good ideas. I did see the Druid Staff with Sap Strength which is why I wanted to try Dark out. I suppose one of the issues I have with debuffs in this game in general is I'm not sure why I'd bother except against single model units. Hard CC is a different matter but applying Weaken in particular seems like a questionable tactic when I can just use a damage spell to lower their damage output.

Originally posted by MEATSHED:

Dark is weird. Out of combat it focuses on knowledge but in combat it's probably the most aggressive faction in the game, what with its whooping 1 defensive unit (that for a pikeman is pretty aggressive), with most of their survivability coming from their ranged units applying weaken. For out of combat stuff, being able to ignore city stability is a cool trick for events, in combat frost weapons/arrows can be a nice pick up due to one of their culture spells slowing.

Good point. Hadn't thought about how I can just go ultra greed with events because stability can be ignored. It's interesting but super situational.

[rumpelstiltskin]

dark's debuffs are amazing. don't forget they all have cull the weak, which is +20% dmg + regen when hitting weakened units, and they have an aoe weaken+sunder as a starting spell. plus a sunder is a sunder - it means easier to land things like mind control.

[Sotnik]

Originally posted by MEATSHED:

For out of combat stuff, being able to ignore city stability is a cool trick for events,

How does Dark culture ignore city stability? Does it do by default? I only found OVERLORD'S TOWER which prevents from losing provinces, but it does not do anything with economic penalties.

[Pyro Penguin]

Originally posted by Sotnik:

Originally posted by MEATSHED:

For out of combat stuff, being able to ignore city stability is a cool trick for events,

How does Dark culture ignore city stability? Does it do by default? I only found OVERLORD'S TOWER which prevents from losing provinces, but it does not do anything with economic penalties.

town hall 2 does it

[Seswatha]

1) Vassal farming build (not exclusive to Dark but Dark helps). Settle cities, release as vassals, kill every turn with Knowledge Extraction and later Stolen Power for massive research and mana (also gold from selling corpses if you sell them, or more mana/souls). Currently the cheesiest build in the game (mixing in order for -1 turn to vassalize breaks it even more).

2) Chaos eater build. Again not exclusive to Dark, but Dark has access to a few extra tools for applying a lot of debuff stacks e.g. Baneful Hex or Warlocks and it synergises well with their roster. Chaos Eaters can deal insane damage with the right support. Dark Knights with their Dark Surge aren't bad either.

3) Eco boom build with a lot of cities + awakened tools + amplified minds + nature. Build quickly, grow a lot of pops, don't bother with stability buildings. One of the bes midgame economies but falls behind later.

If talking combat strategies in particular, Dark works well with a battlemage build into Chaos Eaters as mentioned, rushing people down with Dark Knights and melting them with Spur to Action/Dark Surge or just horribly outteching the enemy and allowing magic do the work.

[Sotnik]

Originally posted by Pyro Penguin:

Originally posted by Sotnik:

How does Dark culture ignore city stability? Does it do by default? I only found OVERLORD'S TOWER which prevents from losing provinces, but it does not do anything with economic penalties.

town hall 2 does it

Thank you, that changes everything :).

Originally posted by Rude$t:

I think because of Warlocks, Dark builds really well into debuff builds. Dark and Pandemonium fit each other like a glove.

Could you please tell if several stacks of Weaken are counted as several debuffs for Vessels of Chaos?

[Seswatha]

Originally posted by Sotnik:

Originally posted by Pyro Penguin:

town hall 2 does it

Thank you, that changes everything :).

Originally posted by Rude$t:

I think because of Warlocks, Dark builds really well into debuff builds. Dark and Pandemonium fit each other like a glove.

Could you please tell if several stacks of Weaken are counted as several debuffs for Vessels of Chaos?

Several stacks of any debuff count as separate debuffs for Vessels of Chaos and for Consume Chaos of the Chaos Eater.

[DesertRose92]

Dark does not have a support units but a tier 2 battle mage.
Mana Addict and Powerful Evokers lets you start with an additional support units or battle mage. As Dark only no support unit they get an battle mage.

What I am currently trying out is Dark with Mana Channelers, Mana Addicts, Wizard King and Tome of Pyromancy.
You get a summon that starts as Rank 3 and evolves into a Tier 3 units when it gets Rank 4.

[Qube]

Wolf Mounts are nice. AoE weaken howl triggers cull the weak, and you can use em for your dark knights. Take tome of beasts and use them in pairs adjacent to eachother for multiple stacking buffs with the beastkin race transform. Can take overwhelm tactics too ifya want to go all-in.

Otherwise yeah Warlocks are probably the best early game battlemage. Can work around them with powerful evokers etc. Use them with soulbinders to get you soul economy unlocked.

[snuggleform]

I have a couple suggestions based on my experience

1) go hog wild with population growth in a way you wouln't normally with other races. Once you upgrade to tier 2 townhall, happiness no longer penalizes your income. This means you don't have to watch your population growth, and you save a lot of time and resources with not having to build taverns/bath houses. So look into spamming cities, look into being a wizard king which normally suffers from lower stability.

2) invest in the Unicorn mount Body Trait and aim to spam tier 3 dark knights. This is what separates Dark from the other cultures in my mind. The other cultures mostly rely on some sort of ranged unit to doomstack (well ok barbarians is the one other exception), but Dark EXCELS at this heavy charging unit. With Unicorns, they ge the ability to blink, which means unprecedented mobility in tele-flanking enemy units. As a cherry on the top, dark knights have faster than usual movement on the world map as long as the full stack is all mounted. These guys are tanky, have enormous mobility + up front damage. Once you have 2-3 stacks of these guys even auto resolve will stomp most enemy builds.

This build also plays very very nicely with all the cavalry bonuses from the various Nature tomes. And Tome of the Horde "shrinking" your dark knights doesnt even penalize them since they are considered single unit entities so unlike with regular troops their damage won't decrease as they take damage.

[mourioche]

I just tried a dark culture with Tome of Faith (order).

Culture traits:
Mana Channelers (for late game)
Silver Tongued

- The first idea is of course to add a healer for the dark culture, which has no healer.
I know that players tell that dark culture can do without heal, but also if you add something that is missing from dark culture (heal, shield), you can obtain something powerfull.
In fact, dark culture is the only culture where the tome of Faith unit "Chaplain" is usefull,
If i take this tome with other culture, i do not use this unit.

- The second idea is to quickly gain vassals from free cities.
Dark culture, with its scout help for this.
Silver Tongued help because you begin with one more scout.
Silver Tongued help because you begin with one more whispering stone, and with 2 point on order you will quickly have an other one.
Faithful Whispers from the tome of Faith allow you to quickly have vassals,
And if a free city is at war with you... conquer it... you are dark.
And then, Silver Tongued allow you to deals commercials trade with all these free cities and vassals for free.
Very helpfull in start game, that match a dark culture which is strong at this stage of a game.

This idea seems to work... only tried it on one game, on brutal against several AI on FFA.

On my game i go mainly astral, and used:
Tome of Faith (order)
Tome of Evocation (Astral)
Tome of Scrying (Astral)
Tome of Teleportation (Astral)
Tome of Artificing (Materium, a shield unit, means to quickly attack cities)
And then high level tomes on Astral, but the game was over.

[ReverseRaven]

Originally posted by mourioche:

SNIP

You know what else is a powerful Dark Culture strategy? Thread Necromancy

[mourioche]

Originally posted by ReverseRaven:

You know what else is a powerful Dark Culture strategy? Thread Necromancy :hunky_skull:
:HappyMask:

Yes i know, but i wanted to try something else, something new...

I already played a necromancer, and dark is not my prefered culture (i played all others more); but with lots of hours of game, now i search others gameplays.