Skaven under-cities and long campaign victory?

[HunZolka]

I'm not entirely sure of the under-city mechanics of the skaven. If I capture a settlement that has my under-city, then the UC is just destroyed with all invested, or am I missing something?

Considering the very high investment needed, it seems that it is always more sensible to just capture every enemy settlement (instead of leaving it with an under-city) because they seem able to spawn endless armies and very reluctant to make peace, even if they only have a few settlements left.

This way you pretty much have to own most of the map in order to keep it from being owned by the other big players, like Empire/Elves/Greenskins. How do you keep up with the food supply when you have a constant need to expand? Such a thing is not an issue with other races, but here I don't know how to solve it.

[Chaoslink]

Undercities aren’t something you build on your borders usually. They’re best built in far off lands where you’re never really going to capture the city yourself. This way you can invest in it without worry. Also, not every undercity is worth investing a ton into. If you build the building that automatically expands, then you’ll end up with quite a few undercities over time. If you just build a food building there, maybe the deeper tunnels that takes away vision to help hide them, you can keep your food levels up that way. The real key is to just keep food neutralized or slightly positive per turn and focus on sacking or fighting to get food. Your overall food should fluctuate wildly as you take over provincial capitals and boost them to high tiers. Look out for pastures or exotic animal resources too, they provide a food bonus as well.

[YMFTCTB]

you can make undercities with some heroes, so sending a hero to a place you dont want to expand to then making an undercity there is my main use for them

[Chaoslink]

The other thing they’re good for should you wish to change your playstyle, is a sort of one-city focus. This doesn’t mean that you just limit yourself to the one city necessarily, but it can allow you to spread enough undercities through enemy territory to get more clan rat summons, mobility and other benefits so you can just dash around in enemy territory, sacking towns for money and food, farming up lord and hero experience and all that fun stuff, while just defending a small empire. I remember when Ikit claw first came out I played a campaign where after 120 turns I only held Skavenblight and Miragliano yet I had some 6 armies of elite units and hundreds of thousands of gold. Undercities have been nerfed since then, but the point stands, they can allow you to completely mix up the playstyle and not worry about defending your lands while you go wage wars wherever you see fit.

[HunZolka]

Does the AI bother to destroy under-cities, I wonder? I have several now that was found, yet they weren't destroyed (Hard overall difficulty).

[Tarious]

Undercities cost money to destroy. If the AI is hurting, they're only going to destroy the undercity under the following conditions

1)You're sapping their gold income
2)You start building a vermintide
3)You start building a warpbomb

[kilen]

Originally posted by HunZolka:

Does the AI bother to destroy under-cities, I wonder? I have several now that was found, yet they weren't destroyed (Hard overall difficulty).

In hard it’s unlikely,
I play always in VH/VH and already there it’s pretty rare AI blow up my UC.
But I usually build UC only under very wealthy t5 settlements that I am quite far to conquer myself (quintex, marienburg, Couronne, Altdorf, and so on... only the richest one making at least 2500-3000gold per turn on that specific t5 settlements),
And usually on the time I conquer the world and reach these UC I made long ago, I never lost the UC, even one time... so at least couple tens turns later, even more.

Sometimes I loose one here or there in VH/VH, but it’s rare.

Well, note that I always build the buildings reducing detectability rate (-20, and -40 if I remember well)
Just to be sure my balance between detection and counter-detection of UC is at 60or80 maxi overall after I built the food building and/or the income buildings (200/turn, and for wealthiest cities only, +10% income/turn stolen).
If you do it that way and never reach 100pts of detectability, I am pretty sure you will never lose a UC from IA... specially in hard, the detectability is lower with difficulty setting.
But don’t forget it can happen if an other AI faction rase the settlement above as well, there are always risks to loose one or some.

Nevertheless, it’s always very profitable if you pick the best cities as targets to put a UC.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Originally posted by HunZolka:

Does the AI bother to destroy under-cities, I wonder? I have several now that was found, yet they weren't destroyed (Hard overall difficulty).

From my experience, they don't bother with them unless you start building the bad ones (doomsphere, vermintide).

[Threetails]

Originally posted by Tarious:

Undercities cost money to destroy. If the AI is hurting, they're only going to destroy the undercity under the following conditions

1)You're sapping their gold income
2)You start building a vermintide
3)You start building a warpbomb

Part of it, I think, also depends on diplomacy. If they like, they probably won’t destroy it. If they don’t like you, they’re more likely to destroy it.

[zefyris]

going to point it out, but you can't sap the gold income with undercities, you generate a % of his income but his income doens't get lowered at the result of it, it's not like raiding.