Playing as Forgotten

[ElPrezCBF]

I restarted the Forgotten campaign several times because they seem greatly handicapped by the tech dust requirements. On my first try, I researched empire mint followed by mill foundry to get a headstart in dust that's needed to fund further research. I got to the 2nd era first but my units were pretty weak against roaming armies because I still could not afford to retrofit them. I feel that not enough is done to balance the Forgotten tech handicap like say a population growth bonus to allow for more workers to be allocated to dust production, which is so needed to fund not only research but also retrofit armies. Or at least give the Forgotten dust tile bonuses to balance out their handicap. Does anyone have any good tips on how to play the Forgotten or does this faction still need more balancing? Appreciate any thoughts on this.

[ROFLpl0x]

I think a lot of people share your opinion, myself included. I predict a balance patch at some point in the (hopefully) near future.

[boozermonkey]

The faction sucks. Worst one by far by my experience. They are ~very badly~ handicapped right from the beginning until they get wiped out by weak factions that easily out tech them.

The strategy is actually fairly simple -- tech up as fast as you can at the beginning and get your spy in as fast as you can to build up to level 2 so you can start siphoning tech off. You only get one hero who can do that, and your best bet is to spy on a Vaulter or Mage faction because they will get the tech advantage quickly. Mean time you want to maximize your dust production because this faction needs dust more than any other while not having the tools to produce it as well as the broken lords or clans. That leaves you with the necessity of grabbing a dust lord hero governor as quickly as possible to increase dust production, but in doing that you also set yourself back pretty far in the short and medium term. Meanwhile you still need at least one more Broken hero for spying and raiding. All in all you are left juggling multiple balls all at once with both hands tied behind your back.

[boozermonkey]

You are also right about thier military units. They are pathetic in pretty much every way. The fact that you have to use them most of the time without a hero (again because you should be using your Broken hero for spying) is just icing on the cake. The Assassins litterally are just terrible and get wrecked easily by minor factions like Minotaurs or even Delvers. The Predetore marks by my experience do not seem to work, or if they do, the damage is still pretty pathetic even when stacked. Mysts are ~OK~ at best, but also inferior to what all other factions get.

Major rework needed for this faction. Not even joking here. They are ~terrible~

[ElPrezCBF]

Thanks for the comments. I was hoping I'd be wrong and someone would tell me it's not a badly balanced faction but well, here's hoping for the "magic patch" lol.

I actually had an early game plan where I'd ignore all wonders and go straight for Mysts to take out the nearest rival empire to fund my dust hungry research, but even retrofitting Assassins sets my tech back quite a bit, much more so obviously for the Mysts. In order for a dust hungry faction to progress reasonably, I think having bonuses whether directly in dust production or indirectly through growth or military production bonuses is critical especially at the start. Without these to balance the handicap, the Forgotten experience seems pretty broken.

[Ninthshadow]

Screw it, this settles it, I'm probably going to end up writing a guide for all the advice I end up passing out about the Forgotten. They may well be underpowered, but dear hell are they still playable.

Forgotten is a faction that requires you to think well beyond the box of conventional gameplay.

A few short bits:

- They aren't the Necrophages, stop playing them like it. Use the Diplomacy screen like it's going out of style. Be friends with everyone, until you stab them in the back. Pat them on the shoulder after like it was prank when it's all over.

- Buying techs: DON'T. Extreme early game, it's all good. After early Tier 2, it really isn't worth it. It's cheaper to buy it off another Faction. Buy from the science screen only what they can't give you, the Faction techs. All of them are worth it.

- Influence, not dust. Yes, you need dust. However you can get so much via trade deals and a well trained spy. Who are fuelled by... drum roll please, Influence! Think a little more like a Drakken and suddenly things make more sense.

- Heroes, Heroes and Heroes. Get that second hero from the story ASAP. When you 'restore' her, mid game she's a one woman army. If you keep your roster relatively 'pure', you can equip ALL your heroes with her blades. She is your Tanya, your Kerrigan.

- Scapel, not a hammer. Pick what you want carefully and take it. Fight smart, not hard. Take their capital then smile when you sign the truce. If you're in a fair fight, you did something wrong. Forgotten have no borders, so who cares if your maps a mess?

- Stick to the Shadows! Your units main stats are dissappointing. But they have stealth. For Endless sake, use it. See above. More importantly, use those spies! Shut down Watchtowers. Blow up the capital's walls the turn you declare war like it's freaking Waterdeep! You'll end the first 2-3 wars in a single turn.

Forget what you know! Ever considered having your army entirely decked out in resources you can't mine? Now you are.

Once you know the Forgotten, you see a city three regions deep into their empire, closed borders, a huge fortification level, knowing their army is kitted out in X resource you don't have in your territory and you say "Yeah, I can get that."

Lateral thinking my friends. Lateral thinking.

[Spyro]

I played on normal difficulty with them on my 2nd Endless Legend game and managed to win eventually from Dust victory (basically had supremecy anyway).

Early on i slightly struggled but only barely. I remember not worrying too much early on about getting tech, like only 1 every 7-8 turns.

[ElPrezCBF]

Thanks guys for the advice and feedback. Yeah, I guess it takes getting used to giving up the usual empire building strategy and going the parasite path. I don't want to win an expansion victory again on normal as it's too easy. I'm looking for a science victory although the "recommended" victory fpr Forgotten is expansion. But if it's going to be expansion again, so be it lol. Vaulters can wait. =)

[boozermonkey]

The problem is not in the play style. People want and expect each faction to be completely unique and totally different in terms of how each achieves various victory goals, so I doubt anyone really tries to play them like the Wild Walkers or Necrophages - I certainly do not. I think people expect for them to excel at the spy game, and they simply don't. This is because they only get one spy hero - for a long time.

Try not to confuse the notion that you don't need military, because in this game - you do! Every factions military needs to be strong enough for early expansion or at the least, the ability to take out a few minor factions. These guys struggle even with that. If you are in MP game then you are really and truly screwed because people ~absolutely will~ go for your jugular early with strong military rushes. They would be idiots not to because 1) Forgotten military is totally pathetic and, 2) Who wants spies in thier cities?

Seriously, if you believe you have some secret to playing this faction, YouTube it so we can all bear witness to the magic.

[ElPrezCBF]

Wow I never expected this thread to generate so much controversy! I never play MP, so I'm only looking for ways to help beat the AI with Forgotten. To clarify, I am not looking for a "magic strategy" because there's none. Every game is different depending on your settings. For example, I might well beat the AI easily on a small island map because I know the AI sucks at island hopping, at least on normal difficulty. But that's not what I'd call a challenge worth my play time.

While I don't believe in a magic strategy, I do adapt the tips I get from others in my playstyle. I also don't follow youtube playthroughs much because I have my own playstyle. But if someone has completed Forgotten on the hardest difficulty, please put it on youtube. I would be curious to watch because that's something special and would obviously provide some good ideas.

[Ninthshadow]

Originally posted by Idlihx10:

I'm looking for a science victory although the "recommended" victory fpr Forgotten is expansion.

It's splitting hairs but I believe their recommended victory condition is 'Supremacy', or 'take all capitals'. I'd say science victory as Forgotten is dang near impossible. Heck, elimination ( take everything) would be easier than that.

Between that hint, the (debatable) bonus to pillaging and getting luxury resources etc from neutral villages, Forgotten gameplay does acutally revolve on having a large army, although not necessarily a strong one.

I was going to write another large paragraph or three, specifically taking on "Forgotten don't excel at spying" and "Only get one spy hero for a long time". Pretty sure it'll be better off if I just dump it into a guide, then I'll only have to type it once. Basically, I disagree. Forgotten are pretty much undisputed kings of any 'Shadows' expansion feature, except perhaps the Privateer army.

I'm not really going to touch on multiplayer, it's not my area of expertise. I can see the point though, and I agree Forgotten would struggle in a highly competitive and aggressive enviroment.

One thing I think will dramatically change anyone's approach to spying however is changing the Score screen setting to 'Partial' under advanced settings. Especially in multiplayer!

I'm under the impression most players, especially those taking inspiration from youtubers use that stats screen a lot. Those line graphs are easy to take for granted. It makes the spying system so much more valuable to only be able to compare against empires you have a spy in. When your choices are use spies for it or go through the game blind, I think most would agree it's worth investing in. It even hides the Marketplace history for crying out loud!

With that setting turned on, Espionage becomes a huge part of the game. It's as vital to my settings now as most people probably find Pangea maps.

[ElPrezCBF]

Ah yes, my bad, their recommended victory is supremacy. Yeah, I can see why it would be near impossible to win a science victory as the Forgotten. By the time you can afford dust for the last era techs, you'd probably already win an economic victroy if not expansion/supremacy. What I'd like to see the Forgotten have is a faction specific "dust stockpile" that might make a science victory more feasible. Then again, I'd probably take the easy way and go for Vaulters unless there's a special achievement for Forgotten science victory (good luck to that lol).

[boozermonkey]

No. There are dust factions already - Broken Lords and of course the Clans. What this faction needs is a major reworking of the Spy system as a whole. They get one Spy at the start and it takes MANY turns to build up to big enough spy levels to really do anything, and then it resets so you have to wait even longer for the next tech. So as it is now, you sit around for a dozen turns or more just to pick up a couple techs at most and hope to not get caught. Meanwhile your expansion is seriously stymied by a broken military and craptastic dust and Influence production. At least if they boosted Forgotten to be more like the Cult, or give it mechanics similar to that with minor factions, then we might have something to go with here.
Pillaging for Forgotten is just not worth it, and as you say, they need a good army for that. The Stealth is nice, no doubt, but it does not offset their ♥♥♥♥ military. What good does it do you to sneak a pathetic army stack around so that you cant fight much with it? Your best bet is to use it to attach a city that your spy eventualy sabotages, but that is really an ineficient way to play an MP game, or even a game against Hard AI.
The Privateer thing for Clans is also overrated due to unit cost and the bonus they get is really not good enough for them to take on fully upgraded units. Sure, Clans can afford it in late game so its not worth the debate IMO.

[Evalis]

The forgotten need some seriously bigger bonuses to spying for that to be a viable victory route, and/or they should have science from tiles translated into dust. The broken lords at least don't have to devote citizens to the food category and they are arguably still awful, but the forgotten get no such bonuses and as someone already mentioned trading for techs often costs less dust, so how on earth is researching with dust helpful in the slightest?

The forgotten expansion comes with the ability to spy so I can't say I'm not a fan, but the faction itself seems hastily designed.

[ElPrezCBF]

Apart from dust bonuses, I think the influence cost from spying should be reduced for forgotten compared to other factions. I was shocked to see how my tech spying cost exponentially increased from 8 influence one turn to 20 only a few turns later! It might be something to do with my progression to the next era or settling a new city. Whatever the case, the influence cost is too much for them to spy even after I devoted at least 1 or 2 pop to influence every turn early on. Infiltration alone costs influence, which is on top of the tech stealing cost.

[Ninthshadow]

Originally posted by Idlihx10:

Infiltration alone costs influence, which is on top of the tech stealing cost.

It's little things like this I feel the need to mention the most. There are a few built in answers to this. This is why the Sanctuary Tech in Era 2 is vital. It allows free infiltration in winter. It also makes the winter clock dramatically more predictable.

With this in mind, you can dramatically cut the influence costs. It also allows you to plan assaults which are much harder to react to. Ever tried to move an army to defend a city during winter? Even with the movement items, unless it's a cavalry or flying stack, it's really not pretty.

The spy skill in the middle of the centre tree (past rapid recovery, which is also immensely useful) helps massively with the issue of spy opportunities being too slow. Between that and 'double or nothing', I have to agree with Idlihx10, the influence becomes more problematic than the frequency very quickly!

The thing that needs to be watched, is where the resources usually dedicated to science buildings etc go. Most players at some point in the game concede a whole city to science production. A Forgotten player's first instinct is to dump all those resources into dust instead. It takes some serious trial and error to realise how important it is to have say an 'influence city' instead of another one churning out dust.

Balance wise, the Forgotten are definately in one of the worst spots. Misunderstandings and lack of basic information on stuff as vital as dual wield makes it even worse and doesn't do them justice. Odd as it sounds, they may be bad, but they're not that bad.

Bugs might have left a terrible taste to boot. Did anyone else see the 'small' change that was snuck into the last patch?

Fixed an issue where the Era 3 exclusive Forgotten technology called "Learn from Others" was not properly giving the +3XP to all empire heroes per Infiltrated Hero.

By that point, you're probably looking at 3+ spies all bouncing experience to your entire academy (including each other!). That's 9+ XP a turn to all heroes, plus a bonus to your inflitrated ones.

That's a big bonus that accidently wasn't being applied. It should be much easier than some people remember to keep a Forgotten's academy far ahead of the enemy.