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).

[Jimib4158]

Originally posted by 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?

yeah just wanted my capital away from everyone, like my fing middle starts are upper ground :(

[cayenne_spicy]

Originally posted by Jimib4158:

Originally posted by cayenne_spicy:

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?

yeah just wanted my capital away from everyone, like my fing middle starts are upper ground :(

You can have all your cities away from everybody if you stay underground. :D In my current game, my capital is in an area with 169 total valid provinces for expansion, with three directions of uninhabitable river branching off of it, each of which leads to areas that same size or larger. So I currently have 5 cities in the starting area, 3 vassals, and 5 other free cities (2 of which I'm working on vassalizing), and several outposts set up to make into more cities as I carry on my personal quest to fully settle this game's underground.

There's one AI who started underground and they have no interest in expanding underground. Eventually I'll go to war with them and vassalize their capital so I'm the only one down there.

[CrUsHeR]

Many don't seem to realize it, but the tunnels are valid targets for terraforming magic

Yeah unless you don't want to become a tree-hugging druid because you are playing a

<insert other class>

And with that the discussion is over. Until Triumph makes the underworld per se worthwhile to settle.

[cayenne_spicy]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Many don't seem to realize it, but the tunnels are valid targets for terraforming magic

Yeah unless you don't want to become a tree-hugging druid because you are playing a

<insert other class>

And with that the discussion is over. Until Triumph makes the underworld per se worthwhile to settle.

Not all terraforming magic is green. Some's orange or purple. You could play as a frosty troglodyte. :D

[flintfakeer]

Originally posted by cayenne_spicy:

Not all terraforming magic is green. Some's orange or purple. You could play as a frosty troglodyte. :D

Chaos also works. Slash-and-burn agriculture without the slashing. Bonuses, it works on multiple provinces per cast, no one will want your territory, it makes demonkin and fiends faster, and it is thematic!!!

[Lord Haart]

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.

And after he had written all dat, dare.

[Central]

@op
do not worry about people complaining about your "novel" text.
the text you wrote is actually pretty useful, i have send a link to one of my friends who has trouble with underground starts because you explain it better than i do. your text just requires a bit of effort to read it, but that is only because you where pretty thorough. the text you wrote is good and useful.

[Orion Invictus]

I didn't know about 3. Thank you, OP, that's really gonna come in handy. Do the terraforming spells also turn bedrock into passable areas, or is it just for the provinces?

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by cayenne_spicy:

Underground and You: How to Cave Dwell Properly
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).

I have bookmarked this last night and finally got some time to read this. My praise sounds like this: I think what you wrote is so good, it would be a pity if it gets lost here over time, and the content would benefit from better visibility. So I like to encourage you to put it in a guide: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1669000/guides/

From my personal experience people tend to underestimate what is "good enough" for a guide and what not. Well. The amount of bad guides I have seen tells me, I rather want to find this sort of information than all the video advertisements for YouTube channels made full of clickbait stuff.

A lot of things you mentioned I already knew before, and I really, really, really LOVE "to prove the mainstream" wrong by playing "niche stuff" the way they are meant to be played, instead of the way "how mainstream complains about it without having properly tried". What you wrote can be considered plenty of inspiration in that direction. Even more reason to encourage you to put it into a guide.

Anyroads, that is what I personally think. What you do about that suggestion and whether there will be more of this in the future, that is entirely up to you. Thanks for sharing!

[CrUsHeR]

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.

That's still an understatement.

If you start on the surface of a regular map, you can have your two expansion cities out by turn 10. Just send your lord and scouts out immedately instead of wasting time on treasure pickups. Or buy a second hero ASAP to do that.

Meanwhile in the underground, you can spend 30 or 50 turns excavating and not find a single spot worth building a city.

Then the surface empire already has 3x more cities and income, 3 hero slots, while the underground empire is playing an endless game of whack-a-mole with the excavated roamers.


Don't know why people are so fixated on the ancient wonders; a city with just a single wonder landmark isn't even remotely comparable to a full surface city with a bunch of magic and regular resources in the domain.

[Zak]

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?

I hope that the devs see this and consider allowing province expansion from a city or outpost on one level to the other level.

[cayenne_spicy]

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

I didn't know about 3. Thank you, OP, that's really gonna come in handy. Do the terraforming spells also turn bedrock into passable areas, or is it just for the provinces?

Unfortunately you can only use it on the same bedrock sections that are already eligible for excavation, so the ones that don't already have a tunnel into them that you can dig out will still be sitting there being a rude impediment. But, the ones that have a tunnel through them are often really big provinces. I've seen them having adjacency to 8-10 other provinces sometimes, though 6-7 is more common. But that's bonkers for production if you put a Central Quarry in that spot and surround it with quarries, and because you can expand your city in any direction a province is touching, you can really stretch your cities out in some unusual and unique ways to reach between different smaller caverns.

[cayenne_spicy]

Originally posted by Central:

@op
do not worry about people complaining about your "novel" text.
the text you wrote is actually pretty useful, i have send a link to one of my friends who has trouble with underground starts because you explain it better than i do. your text just requires a bit of effort to read it, but that is only because you where pretty thorough. the text you wrote is good and useful.

Thank you! Hopefully your friend has fun trying it out! It's an interesting and thematic option for a "different" sort of singleplayer experience (I don't really recommend it for PVP even if it's not as bad as people think, because as others have pointed out, "not as bad as people think" doesn't mean "it's balanced and competitive with other PVP options"... but PVP is always about the meta anyway).

[cayenne_spicy]

Originally posted by アンジェル:

Originally posted by cayenne_spicy:

Underground and You: How to Cave Dwell Properly
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).

I have bookmarked this last night and finally got some time to read this. My praise sounds like this: I think what you wrote is so good, it would be a pity if it gets lost here over time, and the content would benefit from better visibility. So I like to encourage you to put it in a guide: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1669000/guides/

From my personal experience people tend to underestimate what is "good enough" for a guide and what not. Well. The amount of bad guides I have seen tells me, I rather want to find this sort of information than all the video advertisements for YouTube channels made full of clickbait stuff.

A lot of things you mentioned I already knew before, and I really, really, really LOVE "to prove the mainstream" wrong by playing "niche stuff" the way they are meant to be played, instead of the way "how mainstream complains about it without having properly tried". What you wrote can be considered plenty of inspiration in that direction. Even more reason to encourage you to put it into a guide.

Anyroads, that is what I personally think. What you do about that suggestion and whether there will be more of this in the future, that is entirely up to you. Thanks for sharing! :mhwgood:

Thank you! I had thought of that, but, I want to give the devs some time to drop some patches before I do that, since it's possible there are aspects to the underground that presently aren't working as intended. I could absolutely believe it that the lack of magic material spawning in the underground is a bug issue, for instance, and if they fix that in an early patch, it changes a lot of things for the potential guide. Just as one example. :D

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by cayenne_spicy:

Originally posted by アンジェル:

I have bookmarked this last night and finally got some time to read this. My praise sounds like this: I think what you wrote is so good, it would be a pity if it gets lost here over time, and the content would benefit from better visibility. So I like to encourage you to put it in a guide: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1669000/guides/

From my personal experience people tend to underestimate what is "good enough" for a guide and what not. Well. The amount of bad guides I have seen tells me, I rather want to find this sort of information than all the video advertisements for YouTube channels made full of clickbait stuff.

A lot of things you mentioned I already knew before, and I really, really, really LOVE "to prove the mainstream" wrong by playing "niche stuff" the way they are meant to be played, instead of the way "how mainstream complains about it without having properly tried". What you wrote can be considered plenty of inspiration in that direction. Even more reason to encourage you to put it into a guide.

Anyroads, that is what I personally think. What you do about that suggestion and whether there will be more of this in the future, that is entirely up to you. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you! I had thought of that, but, I want to give the devs some time to drop some patches before I do that, since it's possible there are aspects to the underground that presently aren't working as intended. I could absolutely believe it that the lack of magic material spawning in the underground is a bug issue, for instance, and if they fix that in an early patch, it changes a lot of things for the potential guide. Just as one example. :D

Do not worry too much about such thoughts. But then also do not feel pressured by my words. I speak from experience while appreciating what you wrote. And if you make your guide now, even if there is a patch, let us say, next week - what I absolutely do not expect - it would just give your guide more creditability, especially when you maintain it with changes as you have in mind right now.

This thread is already proof that it would be worth it. And putting all the addition information from the discussion, altogether with your initial post, already makes a solid basis for a nice and interesting guide.