First time ever winning as a Fryhtan

[Tungsten Whitmarsh Cadow]

I've tried playing as a Fryhtan before, but I don't understand how they work. In the last couple of days I tried playing them but I got wiped out every time. They're so slow to regenerate and some of them aren't very powerful in the beginning. A few villagers take a toll on a squad and then you can't make money.

If a Fryhtan puts down a lair next to a village and beats them into submission, you can collect your tribute if you have a general or ordo I should say, in the lair at all times. You can't build a fort next to a slave town and expect to collect taxes or be able to recruit villagers. If a human joins your kingdom, they can build forts and inns and you can hire generals and build science towers and take over the villages in the usual human way, but the villages are much more resistant and you'll probably have to beat them into being loyal to their human generals. They will work in mines, factories, etc. so you can make money to buy more spies and generals. Not sure if you can use money to buy life points and then with that, Fryhtan units. I did get a lot of conversions by dominating the enemy. I didn't make as much use of spying as I do when playing as human but that might be because I was on very easy and I quickly ran out of enemies to spy on. It made more sense to use Fryhtans to destroy everything.

I'd be interested to know if there are better ways to do things.

[Daya.Mar.Sana]

Of course there are better ways.

Get your troops to atleast 30 combat level first.. roughly.. and you want atleast half the lair.
Sortie them.. find any town you.. dont care so much about.. just go do the normal attack on it.
soon as it hits 0 your guys will stop, this is normal...

Now heres the trick to 'really' know.. if you want to do interesting things with Fryhtans.
First off remember TAB is stop attacking.. right click the town to attack it again until a guy comes out of it, hit tab as soon as you possible can after he comes out because his loyalty will drop like a stone otherwise. Congrats you got a human, now lets do some magic...

Find about two towns of the same nationality.. preferably one that is not the same as a bot out there in your game. Take your human, build a tower of science for/near each. Soon as thats done you can take your troops and beat up the town, but theres a trick you need to know!

As people come out of the town to defend it, the towns resistance can drop lower just from that, which can allow a worker to decide that they will try working for you, even while their city is under attack. So the idea here is you only damage the town enough for it to give you a worker in each tower of science.. You'll want to start research with farming, atleast thats what I find works best for this tactic.

Anywho once that one worker gets into that tower, that towns resistance towards you will endlessly start dropping, which means your guys attacking the town might as well just go back to their lair and heal up now and not kill off any more humans from that town.

Alternatively you can do this with a spy, but it takes much longer and costs money to do so. About money, well your lair should automatically gain new members if you have a few troops inside of it.. You can cancel the new trainee's to get some currency and lifepoints back, which comes in handy for waiting for the towns to drop to zero resistance. Its probably important to mention we want a general if we are to collect taxes from these towns. Or a lair connected to these towns of course to get the slave wages... I opt for the taxes and generals.

Why do you do that, you might be asking me now. Simple, slave towns cause more problems for fryhtans then normal towns would ironically enough. Because they are not actually your towns, other bots endlessly try to claim them, which also implies they endlessly attack you because your near their interests.

BTW I should mention this. Go into your ... pretty sure its kingdoms? its the one that shows all the bots, anyways go into the information tab for each one, find that allow attack and turn that off. Even if you dont do the above mentioned strategy to get people. Simply because this is one of the things that bots see that triggers their eventual "go to war with this person".

Anywho, you'll want to rinse & repeat this method to get no less then 80 humans in a town, preferably more obviously as taxes and/or mining is how you profit off this stategy. Not to mention some of the Fryhtans have very impressive defense structures they can build. With enough humans in towns, auto taxing them while they are happy, is a viable means of an economy in the game.

Now I'm sure I've confused someone atleast once, feel free to ask questions.
(PS : If you've read my other forum posts, you'll know about the hidden reputation value for fryhtans, dont go beating up any more human civilians with this strategy, you will regret doing so.)

[Tungsten Whitmarsh Cadow]

Thanks. That's a lot of info. Appreciate you taking the time.

Do workers breed and pay taxes as well as peasants? How about soldiers? Do soldiers breed peasants?

Sometimes my spy will carry out some activity successfully and repeatedly. I even get the message that the bribe succeeded or the assassination. (100% chance to succeed). And then the spy gets the ax. This is impressive programming if its deliberate. Even an idiot official could close in on a killer after 4 murders in the same small fort.

"I notice that you have high leadership abilities Mr. Dagger, and yet you have not had anyone make attempts on your life. And no one seems to know where you came from. You just sort of walked in one day."

[insane.tobi]

Late response, but... in general, only units physically present in a village will breed. Workers and peasants will, and I believe you can also bolster your population with spies should you really have to, but that is unlikely to give you a noticeable boost unless you really throw a lot of them into the village in question. Soldiers live in the fortress they're assigned to, so they won't breed new citizens from there. You can, however, have them return to the civilian life by sending them into one of your villages of their nationality. Do note that this will wipe their combat skill entirely, so you can't just keep a village of reserve soldiers around and insta-draft them back into service.

As for the spies... if memory serves, the 100% thing says "chance to succeed", not "chance to succeed without being caught". The mission is successful if the assassination target is dead, regardless of whether or not your spy made it out alive. I noticed certain actions like stealing information will almost always get your spy killed though, even if you pause the game and only peek at the info screen for an ingame second. The AI isn' t exactly bright when it comes to solving the murder mystery at Fort Nara, even if there is only one suspect (hint: it was neither the fort gardener nor Reverend Green with a pipe).

As for fryhtan victory... unless you want to essentially switch to human kingdom as Daya above stated, there are some simple things to keep in mind.

1. Your first lair can generally enslave one town if you spend your initial resources on breeding. You will have to carefully manage your troops though. Retreat a croul before it dies, they're valuable!

2. Pick a town of a nationality that does not have a kingdom to enslave first. There is bound to be one for each kwyzan in the game at the start, as the game creates towns of a nationality per player. This will delay the inevitable war for a bit.

3. You noticed it already - slave towns will only cough up tribute if a lair with an ordo is nearby. The solution is simple: have multiple lairs per town. This not only makes the place more defendable, but it will also make sure someone is always there to collect. Warning though: the tribute seems to be based on the average leadership skills of the ordos, so having a low leadership ordo and your all high linked to a town will drop the tribute for a while until the ordo caught up.

4. Initiative - someone building near your slaves and your troops are rested? Get him while he's not yet ready. Fryhtans are great at the game start, as new fryhtans will generally outperform newly recruited human troops, as long as you do not fight near their armed forts. Stay away from those things until your troops are more numerous and have a larger health pool to tank the counterattacks

5. Maintain your momentum - Fryhtan economy CAN be viable with slave towns only, but you're built for war. Try to keep it at one war at a time though, if at all possible.

6. After you enslaved 2-3 towns, you may want to refrain from killing civilians. Rebellions are good for you as the rebels may join your slave towns! Plus, your reputation will slowly increase over time, leading to people joining you. Your life point needs should easily be met by killing enemy soldiers at that point.

7. Make good use of any humans who join you - during your first war, you will almost always gain the loyalty of at least one enemy soldier. While they may be useless in a battle, you can tell them to build a village and become civilians again, especially the fresh recruits with 20 combat who only joined because you demonstrated your might by wiping out their general. This will give you some civilians to build inns and research towers with. Or, should you be lucky enough, a Seat of Power or a mine (plus factory/market). Slaves will work for you and buy from your markets, just like any town with a resistance below 50.

I have made a fair few Let's Play videos and streamed Seven Kingdoms II a while ago, you can find the footage on Youtube if you feel like seeing these points in action.