Underground and You: How to Cave Dwell Properly

[cayenne_spicy]

I see a lot of posts talking about how the underground sucks, and I thought I'd make a thread discussing how it doesn't suck as much as is claimed.

1. "Underground has less Ancient Wonders!" - Map to map, if you compare the entire surface with the entire underground, this is true. But, you also have to compete with all AI factions for the surface Ancient Wonders, since even the AI factions which begin underground tend to abandon the underground very quickly in favor of the surface. If you focus on spreading throughout the underground, you'll get as many (or more) wonders than any competing AI faction.

2. "Underground has less province specials!" - Also true. This is where your choices for culture, traits, tomes, and empire become important. More on that later.

3. "Underground is cramped with only small areas to settle and tunnels connecting them!" - Here's where underground becomes GREAT. Many don't seem to realize it, but the tunnels are valid targets for terraforming magic, and as soon as you terraform the tunnel it becomes a valid province for a city to claim. That's also true for the skinny sections of land that span underground rivers or stick out into underground lakes. Often, these provinces are BIG in size and touch 6-8 other provinces, making them uniquely beautiful for Special Province Improvements that benefit from surrounding provinces. Using these, you can get some pretty massive city-blob areas that can strongly benefit from those adjacency bonuses in ways that surface cities often can't achieve.

4. Like any other terrain in the game, your choices in culture, traits, tomes, and empire are important in the underground. If you pick options that support a strong underground play, you'll do well. If you don't, you're gonna have a bad time. But that's the same in any environment. Terraform spells are great underground to help you arrange your cities in ways to take advantage of the city-blob adjacency potential. Barbarian culture does well with being able to scout and outpost the many spots where you can find Ancient Wonders that have just enough space for the Wonder and one other province (the game is literally asking you to outpost there), and the tunnels that lead to those spots can eventually be built through so you can connect a city to there and dismantle the outpost. Or, Industrial also does well because underground provinces seem to have about a 50% chance of being able to be prospected, which jacks up your gold and industry in a way surface prospecting can't approach in volume.

5. Excavating often reveals enemies, and unlike resource node battles, the game can't force a good player to "delete" the battle (and therefore its rewards) if they want to stay good-aligned. Try this: Start with Ritual Cannibals and Ruthless Raiders. Who cares about the -20 alignment, if you plan to play good-aligned you can turn that around very quickly. Pick Tome of the Horde. Grab the first four Chaos empire skills (but not Rite of War) pretty fast. Believe me, between the resources you rake in from the extra battles, and the units those battles spawn for you, you won't miss the decreased terrain features, and your units will level up fast.

6. If you plan to play a long game, pick up some Astral books early on. Since the underground is low on Magic Material, but ripe with room to expand into numerous cities, you'll want to trade for access to Magic Material in the early game... but later on, you can become more self-sufficient with the Rite of Conjuration empire skill. Yes, this is still definitely a weakness because surface-focused empires don't have to be nearly as concerned with it. Want to game that empire trait a bit? Okay. Make temporary cities. Right now the AI doesn't generate much help from Vassals' armies, but vassals will give you free access to their Magic Materials. So before taking the Empire trait, settle four Outposts in spots where you've surrounded the Outpost province from being able to expand anywhere. Upgrade them all to Cities simultaneously, and the very turn they switch to Cities (and your economy halts because you're 4 cities over your cap), grab the Empire trait - hooray 4 extra magic material spots you wouldn't otherwise have had - and then release all four of those outposts as vassals who can't take over your territory but do still give you access to the magic material. Cheese.

7. Remember that unlike Master of Magic's dual planes, there's no spell that instantly teleports an army from the surface to the underground, which makes your underground empire extremely defensible. Set up an Outpost atop every passage to the surface, build a Teleporter on it, and park a scout unit atop the passage (on the underground side). If you do get invaded, you can easily yeet your armies to the appropriate entry area and surround the passage, forcing the AI to come down one army at a time and get murdered by 3 of your armies. When they run out of armies you can go back to peace pretty quickly if you want (or go surface-side and vassalize them if you want).

What do you do for your underground games that you've liked? I think it's a fun and interesting start, and so far it's a lot more fun than my typical surface start, which mostly consists of trying to rapidly spam outposts on top of every magic material in sight so that the AI doesn't rush to them and do the same (even though the AI should have no way to know where they even are, and should ♥♥♥♥ off out of my territory).

[cayenne_spicy]

Originally posted by Veg:

let me save you from reading this novel. You have to work three times as hard to make underground work so just ignroe it for a few patches.

Clutch your pearls harder that you had to read words. What you wrote wasn't helpful to anyone and you didn't post it for any reason other than to be rude to a stranger on the internet because on the internet you're immune to getting popped in the face. :)

[M0rgi]

I personally just dont find potential in underground other then being very defensible but those dweling on the surface will be significantly more developed and probably win by magic victory. I only go to underground if my scouts find good wonder next to tunnel. Might be fun to try underground game for roleplay sake but surface is way better overall then underground ins when it comes to efficient play

[Valore]

I'm waiting for a perk that upgrades excavation so you can dig out bedrock as well. Settling underground is fun, and other than the occasional bad spawn leaving you cramped, it's great for being defensive and just hiding away.

[cayenne_spicy]

Originally posted by Veg:

Originally posted by cayenne_spicy:

Clutch your pearls harder that you had to read words. What you wrote wasn't helpful to anyone and you didn't post it for any reason other than to be rude to a stranger on the internet because on the internet you're immune to getting popped in the face. :)

If you dont know enough about a topic to condense your thoughts down into readable sentences than it aint worth reading your novel to parse what you have to say.

You're still not saying anything that's helpful to anyone, and you're still being rude to a stranger on the internet with no cause or purpose. But that's okay. If it makes you feel good about yourself in a world in which the life of most people, including you, will probably amount to nothing, and where most people, including you, will be forgotten less than a year after they die, then go ahead and be rude to me and feel good about yourself for it. :D My life carries on just fine either way, so I'll just be glad that you're finding a way to cope with the misery of your personal existential meaninglessness.

[cayenne_spicy]

Originally posted by Denam Pavel:

I personally just dont find potential in underground other then being very defensible but those dweling on the surface will be significantly more developed and probably win by magic victory. I only go to underground if my scouts find good wonder next to tunnel. Might be fun to try underground game for roleplay sake but surface is way better overall then underground ins when it comes to efficient play

It's definitely not as good as above ground in most respects, that's true. But, it's also not an entirely miserable place to focus on in the game, if you build for it. :D

[cayenne_spicy]

Originally posted by Valore:

I'm waiting for a perk that upgrades excavation so you can dig out bedrock as well. Settling underground is fun, and other than the occasional bad spawn leaving you cramped, it's great for being defensive and just hiding away.

I doubt they'll make bedrock able to be dug through, at least in any official capacity (who can say what a mod might do, though). But once you get used to terraforming the passages, there isn't really much bedrock left that you can't use for something, particularly if you use Massive Underground so that there's a lot more space able to be dug into and most of the underground areas are connected.

[M0rgi]

Originally posted by cayenne_spicy:

Originally posted by Denam Pavel:

I personally just dont find potential in underground other then being very defensible but those dweling on the surface will be significantly more developed and probably win by magic victory. I only go to underground if my scouts find good wonder next to tunnel. Might be fun to try underground game for roleplay sake but surface is way better overall then underground ins when it comes to efficient play

It's definitely not as good as above ground in most respects, that's true. But, it's also not an entirely miserable place to focus on in the game, if you build for it. :D

For casual play sure. My guess its fun to teraform the ground but it still stands that of you wamt to be competetive you dont want to live there. Its extra handicap you can give yourself

[Howell-Barrex Soldier Ja'kala]

Originally posted by Denam Pavel:

I personally just dont find potential in underground other then being very defensible but those dweling on the surface will be significantly more developed and probably win by magic victory. I only go to underground if my scouts find good wonder next to tunnel. Might be fun to try underground game for roleplay sake but surface is way better overall then underground ins when it comes to efficient play

i have an game were my throne city has 6 wonders in it good luck getting that above ground

[Jimib4158]

hey couple questions, i hate the middle spawns i always get, want to try underground

if i do underground my capital, can it be connected to my upper-ground cities?

[M0rgi]

Originally posted by Howell-Barrex Soldier Ja'kala:

Originally posted by Denam Pavel:

I personally just dont find potential in underground other then being very defensible but those dweling on the surface will be significantly more developed and probably win by magic victory. I only go to underground if my scouts find good wonder next to tunnel. Might be fun to try underground game for roleplay sake but surface is way better overall then underground ins when it comes to efficient play

i have an game were my throne city has 6 wonders in it good luck getting that above ground

Its one in a million game then underground is just generally too restrictive never saw more then 2 wonders underground in resonable city area in any of games i played

[cayenne_spicy]

Originally posted by Denam Pavel:

Originally posted by cayenne_spicy:

It's definitely not as good as above ground in most respects, that's true. But, it's also not an entirely miserable place to focus on in the game, if you build for it. :D

For casual play sure. My guess its fun to teraform the ground but it still stands that of you wamt to be competetive you dont want to live there. Its extra handicap you can give yourself

For PVP, yeah, I don't recommend it. But in a coop game or singleplayer game, it's a fun change of pace, at least to me. :D Hopefully others who find the idea intriguing will use the tips I've provided to have a good time of it. I'm curious if others have ideas I haven't discovered, though.

I'm enjoying it in a pretty mellow game where my only victory condition is domination, and my self-given objective is to gradually have settled the entire underground, just for the fun of it (or perhaps, eventually, tedium, but if so I can always call it good and move on).

[cayenne_spicy]

Originally posted by Jimib4158:

hey couple questions, i hate the middle spawns i always get, want to try underground

if i do underground my capital, can it be connected to my upper-ground cities?

That's a good question! I don't think the game considers it a connection if you settle both the surface and underground version of the passage, but I can definitely see the logical basis for why it should.

Has anybody tried that?

[The Doctor]

Originally posted by Veg:

Originally posted by cayenne_spicy:

Clutch your pearls harder that you had to read words. What you wrote wasn't helpful to anyone and you didn't post it for any reason other than to be rude to a stranger on the internet because on the internet you're immune to getting popped in the face. :)

If you dont know enough about a topic to condense your thoughts down into readable sentences than it aint worth reading your novel to parse what you have to say.

Although you richly deserve one, I'm not giving your post a CLOWN award because I don't reward such behaviour with my points. Your inability to understand a short, well-organised text structured with a separate topic for each paragraph like an academic text tells us all we need to know about you and your level of education. And as an absolute certainty, he clearly knows far more about the topic than you. Perhaps your brain has been destroyed by an addiction to Tik Tok or some other similar social media brain rot where, as a result, your attention span is so short that you are unwilling to follow a long sentence without forgetting what was stated at the start, never mind a reasonable length, well-organised post, and requires you to reread such several times to make sense of it, thus your inability to understand the OP.

To the OP, that's a very good and helpful post and at least everyone else responding appreciates you making it.

[KellyR]

Originally posted by Denam Pavel:

Originally posted by cayenne_spicy:

It's definitely not as good as above ground in most respects, that's true. But, it's also not an entirely miserable place to focus on in the game, if you build for it. :D

For casual play sure. My guess its fun to teraform the ground but it still stands that of you wamt to be competetive you dont want to live there. Its extra handicap you can give yourself

Competition is the death knell of fun as always :D

[cayenne_spicy]

Originally posted by The Doctor:

Originally posted by Veg:

If you dont know enough about a topic to condense your thoughts down into readable sentences than it aint worth reading your novel to parse what you have to say.

Although you richly deserve one, I'm not giving your post a CLOWN award because I don't reward such nehaviour with my points. Your inability to understand a short, well-organised text structured with a separate topic for each paragraph like an academic text tells us all we need to know about you and your level of education. And as an absolute certainty, he clearly knows far more about the topic than you. Perhaps your brain has been destroyed by an addiction to Tik Tok or some other similar social media brain rot where, as a result, your attention span is so short that you are unwilling to follow a long sentence without forgetting what was stated at the start, never mind a reasonable length, well-organised post, and requires you to reread such several times to make sense of it, thus your inability to understand the OP.

To the OP, that's a very good and helpful post and at least everyone else responding appreciates you making it.

Support appreciated! Also, as an aside, The Doctor is 100% the best character on Star Trek: Voyager. :)