How do you expand your empire?

[The Layup Legend]

I founded a 2 city empire and shadowed the entire neighboring empire, declared war expecting them to turn to my side since their people essentially follow me already, but instead got steamrolled by hundreds strong armies destroying my 4 member army.

First day on this game, but any guide on what to do here?

[Meat Vegetable]

I recommend leaving Dark Empire for when you understand other mechanics better. If you accidentally have the change to convert a faction into a dark empire, do so and just use your monarch to go and cause riots and such. But overall you should spread out your heroes, make sure you move them, hide them when needed. You want spread you shadow as the snake as fast as possible.

Just think, "how could I cause as much chaos as possible." If a dark empire happens to help that goal then go for it, but don't go in wanting to do that from the start.

[Velorien]

I'm confused by the Dark Empire mechanics as well. I played the tutorial scenario with the Dark Empire. I declared war on the neighbouring kingdom. 50 turns later, I won thanks to the damage my agents were doing in preparation for the invasion... which never happened. At one point, a small enemy army wandered into my territory and did some damage before disappearing. Eventually, one of the DE cities raised an army as well, but it never got out of its starting city. That was the extent of the war. What am I missing?

[Olgol2]

Unfortunately, the Dark Empire is more of a 'finishing move' than it is a early game strategy. The usual process is to corrupt a large nation and then convert it into the dark empire for the massive victory point bonus. Unfortunately, nations cannot voluntarily join the Dark Empire like they can the alliance, so there isn't much point to enshadowing targets before you invade them.

That said, you can expand the Dark Empire by having your Monarch declare a crusade against a nation. The target will fight back, but you can swing the fight in your favor by using 'embrace defeat" on fully enshadowed cities to halve their army and reduce their defenses to 0.

[Typical_Name]

Originally posted by Olgol2:

Unfortunately, the Dark Empire is more of a 'finishing move' than it is a early game strategy. The usual process is to corrupt a large nation and then convert it into the dark empire for the massive victory point bonus. Unfortunately, nations cannot voluntarily join the Dark Empire like they can the alliance, so there isn't much point to enshadowing targets before you invade them.

That said, you can expand the Dark Empire by having your Monarch declare a crusade against a nation. The target will fight back, but you can swing the fight in your favor by using 'embrace defeat" on fully enshadowed cities to halve their army and reduce their defenses to 0.

Actually they can, and I know this since I have seen the national action for them to do so (at least for elves), though I don't know under what circumstances they would.

Also, the 1.0 patch significantly nerfed the amount of victory points you get from the dark empire, probably for the reason you mentioned.

[Velorien]

What I'm trying to understand, as a new player, is what war is meant to look like in this game. Surely it's not meant to take 50 turns for the Dark Empire to start raising a single army after declaring war?

[The Grand Mugwump]

Well, a city's army strength is based off its prosperity and population size (which is based on habitability) along with other factors like military fervor. This means that cities with docks, that are on trade routes and/or are in the "green belt" at the middle of the map with the highest habitability will be the cities with the strongest armies by far.

This means that if you take 5 cities in the frozen north, all of their armies put together will not be a match for one army from the south. It's important to prioritize the right cities to turn into your dark empire.

And if a city's army is destroyed, the ruler of that city has to do a local action to found another army, which requires money, which scales heavily with prosperity and population size. So if you turned a backwater into your dark empire, it will take them a long time to raise the funds to create another army if it is completely destroyed.

[Akylon]

Yeah, Dark Empire really requires you to understand a lot of what's going on in the game. You can easily screw yourself with stuff like Malign Catch in your future backyard messing with the sanity of your own rulers, which cripples an otherwise good city.

So imo, DE is something you need to actively plan to do, otherwise it's not going to end well.
I personally use witch covens if I want to get one.
Make a prophet for the coven, station them in the coven spamming influence on repeat and get arbormancy, temple building, plague curing (if you do plagues) and the awareness decay thing. Those are all kind of passive things you do, in the meanwhile use your agents to rob rulers away from the future Empire, corrupt one of the witches and dump your gold into her.
Use her to micro-preach and temple build, after enshadowing key cities.
Try getting holy sites corrupted as well, pop dark worship and the ward removal. When you got enough of an income gain for the coven for it to just do its thing autonomously, you can discard the agent witch after dumping all her gold into the coven itself. Keep getting that money though, since it'll cripple your enemies, while boosting the coven.

And that's just preparations. It'll still be easy to dispatch the Empire, if you haven't crippled the neighbors. Also the Chosen One will hyperfocus on it, if that's the only thing you're doing, so gotta do stuff across the map as well.
But if done correctly, it can be a powerhouse.

(those are all non-god specific things, strategy might change due to powers available... but imo Vinerva is the best for Dark Empires, just purely due to her grove abilities - requires some micro to make the best of it though)

[AFatalPapercut]

Originally posted by Velorien:

I'm confused by the Dark Empire mechanics as well. I played the tutorial scenario with the Dark Empire. I declared war on the neighbouring kingdom. 50 turns later, I won thanks to the damage my agents were doing in preparation for the invasion... which never happened. At one point, a small enemy army wandered into my territory and did some damage before disappearing. Eventually, one of the DE cities raised an army as well, but it never got out of its starting city. That was the extent of the war. What am I missing?

I actually invaded and ended up losing Progress lol, but I was consistently going up to 93% prior to that. I went from 93 to 60 something lol. I'll try again without actually invading this time and see what happens.

[Gandalf The Queen]

Originally posted by Olgol2:

Unfortunately, the Dark Empire is more of a 'finishing move' than it is a early game strategy. The usual process is to corrupt a large nation and then convert it into the dark empire for the massive victory point bonus. Unfortunately, nations cannot voluntarily join the Dark Empire like they can the alliance, so there isn't much point to enshadowing targets before you invade them.

That said, you can expand the Dark Empire by having your Monarch declare a crusade against a nation. The target will fight back, but you can swing the fight in your favor by using 'embrace defeat" on fully enshadowed cities to halve their army and reduce their defenses to 0.

You can have an enshadowed empire lower all defences and half the hp of their armies

[Rafe]

I think you might have a wrong impression of the game. You're not building an empire, you're playing a god controlling his cultists. Setting up a dark empire can be a help in that, but generally doesn't win you games on it's own unless you can start it off very strong without the alliance being formed.
Just mentioning it since i made the same mistake. Focus on the actual way to victory first. ;)

[forrestomintero]

first of all, you want to fully enshadow the largest country in the game before making the dark empire. Cities only join the dark empire if the city ruler is over 90% enshadowed, and is part of the country whose capital you used. This means you need to make a concerted effort to target every city in your chosen country for enshadowment. Only after you've done this should you think about starting the dark empire. If you can take at least 70% of the largest country, then it's a near guaranteed win. make sure the capital you use is the capital of that kingdom.

The dark empire is a late game move. It's something you plan around, use your last agent slot for the empress, or even suicide an agent to free up a slot. You can have the dark empire do some military conquests, but for the most part that's not the point. By the time you form it, it's more for a sudden large boost of victory points, and less about actually doing any empire building.

[serpentcross]

The dark Empire expands by conquest. So turning a 2 cities nation into a DE is easy to do but makes the DE very vulnerable.
The monarch has an amazing ability to cut in half an army and destroy the defenses of a city (welcome defeat) which definitely makes the DE able to punch way above it's weight, but it needs full infiltration.
In general you don't need the DE to be the biggest country of the map, but you want the DE to be a country that has a specific path to engulf smaller neighbors.
a 3 city country with a couple of 1 city country neighbors and a 3 or 4 cities country close to it is ideal, you can eat all the fishes that are smaller than you and snowball from there.

There is several ways to weaken a nation you are going to conquer by ruining the cities that support it's armies. Plagues, devastation, unrest, madness, famines, banditry, climate change. Just keep in mind that if you are not going for the last sprint where you try to conquer the last few cities to win the game you might want to ruin those cities in a way that you can reverse without much effort. You want a functioning city to make your empire stronger at the end of the war, not a pile of ruins.
For example, if you manage to have the farming communities razed around a city it will be absolutely devastated by famine, but once your empire take it, rebuilding a village with it's farming community is a monumental task.
Same for turning the area into a desert or a glacier. That land will be easy to conquer but won't do you much good anytime soon.

Also, take advantage of ongoing wars (or even better cause the wars yourself). A rival nation can be bigger than yours, but if their army is already busy fighting on the opposite border they won't be able to defend from you. This is also valid for Orcish hordes that you can control. Take control of an orcish horde, set them up for war, have the orcs attack first, and after they sent all their troops to war against the orcs declare war with the dark empires. Their troop will probably not make it in time back before you eat a few settlements for free, and even if they do they would be weakened by the fight with the orcs.

Using tactics to trigger a civil war in your biggest neighbor is also a way to both cut to size and weaken a neighbor as the splinters of that nation will both be at war with their former king and could be eaten individually.

Of course triggering a civil war is complicated and an advanced strategy but treat it like a step by step learning curve to become better and better at the game.

Basic tactic is build a DE that can snowball by eating smaller neighbors and wait for neighbors already engaging in war

just above basic is doubleteaming with the orcs.

Intermediate is learn how to cause the wars in the first place (to learn about that I would suggest familiarizing with the Courtier Agent and the Heirophant. But also pay attention at all the ways in which a building can gain menace. Neighbors would become motivated to go to war if a neighbor has a building that generates menace.)

Advanced is Triggering civil wars (Courtier, Dissident and Hierophant. In general you want actions that raise Political instability in the capital and political agitation in the subject cities) in general if you have any way top do it you want rulers (both in the cities and in the capital) to love gold and ambition and despise co-operation

Also, one slow, somewhat expensive but extremely safe way to expand your dark empire is to have unsettled land around it. Sometimes the npc rulers will do it by themselves but you have the options of buying a settlement flag (I don't remember how is actually called) in the empire capital and use it to build a new settlement. you could technically destroy settlements of your neighbors by means other than war and then have your dark empire swoop in and grab the ruin to build their own towns and villages without any need to go to war.

And last but not least, holy orders.
I feel like there is literally nothing in the game that holy orders can't do, they are just that powerful.
Give whatever religion is popular in your dark Empire the Crusader faith tenet (you don't even need to corrupt the holy order to do it) and priests will boost your troops.
If you have an agent that count as a member of that holy order (either born in it or a fully enshadowed priest you recruit) you can manually control it and ensure both that the task is done often and that all of your Dark Empire is converted to your faith.