Cheats and Exploits: Legendary Shenanigans

This guide is a list of cheats, glitches and cheesy things you can do in the game, ranging from the fairly benign art of city spread to outright cheating. There will also be a list of basic strategies for when you don't want to go whole hog on the cheats.

The Cheats

Based initially on Rocket!'s Elemental: Fallen Enchantress cheat list.
To enable cheats, right click on Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes and go to properties. In the Launch Options line, type "cheat"

The cheats largely remain the same, with a few tweaks here and there. I will also be providing tips for certain cheats on strategic uses of them.

• Ctrl+A: lets you choose an animation to play for the target (taking damage, defending, etc).
  
• Ctrl+B: Automatically finishes any and all city upgrades and construction attached to your city, including Outpost upgrades. Think of this as a better, free Rush for construction. Makes expanding your city towards resources much quicker and easier.
  
• Ctrl+C: Copy selected unit. Specifically, it only copies the first unit in an army. And when copying sovereigns, champions, or scions/henchmen, it copies the level they are currently at, but any traits or gear that they weren't initially spawned with will be lost. So if you copy a level 20 Bacco who started at level 3, he'd have his hammer, but be missing 17 traits. This cheat goes really well with...
  
• Ctrl+D: Take immediate control of selected unit. City or character. Doesn't work in Tactical combat.
  
• Ctrl+E: Grants every Champion/Sovereign you control the ability to use every spell in the game. Note that champions still cannot cast Sovereign-only spells.
  
• Ctrl+F: Have Children. Creates one or more children of your character, as well as a random character of the opposite gender as a spouse. Sometimes doesn't work. The spouse is a level 1 general hero. When your children grow up, they become general champions as well. Or you can use
  
• Ctrl+V: Instant adulthood. What it says on the tin. One of your kids is now a full fledged champion. Repeat for the other kids.
  ++++NOTE: IF YOU HAVE NO KIDS, AND NO TARGET SELECTED, THIS IS INSTEAD AN AUTOMATIC VICTORY CHEAT.++++
  
• Ctrl+G: Turns the Grid on and off. Yes, that's it.
  
• Ctrl+H: Gives 100 Mana to the faction that controls selected unit, and turns that unit into a rainbow spectacle.
  
• Ctrl+I: Selected Champion gets all equipment and items, including quest items and unit armor sets. The full armor items cannot be sold or actually worn, so trading them onto a "mule" champion (a copy works wonderfully) is the only way to get them out of your inventory.
  
• Ctrl+J: Selected City Immediately completes all training. This is your better Recruitment Rush.
  
• Ctrl+K: Kill Selected unit. Doesn't work in tactical mode. Be careful not to use this on your Sovereign, as it will cause an immediate game over.
  
• Ctrl+L: If a target is selected, brings up lighting controls for that character. IF NO TARGET IS SELECTED, IMMEDIATE GAME OVER.
  
• Ctrl+M: Immediately gives 1000 of every resource, 100 fame, and nothing to research.
  
• Ctrl+N: Starts a new game.
  
• Ctrl+P: Grants Experience Points equal to a full level-up to Champions and Sovereigns, and half a level up to Units and Henchmen/Scions This is affected by Experience Gain increasing items and Traits, like Sovereign's Scepter, Potential, Etc.
  
• Ctrl+R: Completes all researches, except the "Refined" ones.
  
• Ctrl+S: Quicksave.
  
• Ctrl+T: Teleports selected Character/Army to target location. Can be used in World and Tactical views.
  
• Ctrl+U: Turns the Fog of War on and off. Great in the early game for locating a good spot to settle your capital, and to easily spot those libraries to snipe early research from your opponents. NOTE: Ending your turn with the FoW off will immediately have your opponents detect you, so if you want to avoid interacting with them for as long as possible, turn it back on before ending your turn.
  
• Ctrl+W: gives any of your cities stone walls. Purely Cosmetic.
  
• Ctrl+X: Toggles the UI on and off.
  
• Ctrl+Z: Automatically ends turns. no real benefit to this one.

GLITCHES AND TRICKS.

CONGA LINE, CONGA LINE, THAT RESOURCE IS MINE - MAKING A MEGACITY

This is a relatively well-known thing, but in the options you can choose to manually place city improvements. Also, any resource node, ogre camp, or shard you have built an improvement on that is right next to a city improvement will be absorbed into that city on the turn following the end of its construction, making your enemies have to crush your city, or cast a lot of earthquake spells to destroy it. So what you can do is hopscotch two city improvements (merchant/black market, scrying pool/merchant) out to whichever node you're after, to a maximum of eight large grid squares away from your city center.

• build your first improvement
  
• rush it or let it completely build.*
  
• build your second improvement out from your first improvement, then demolish your first improvement.
  
• rush it or let it completely build.*
  
• build your first improvement out from your second improvement, then demolish your second improvement.
  
• repeat until you reach your goal or the city limit.
  *do note that you can use Ctrl+B instead, which can allow you to reach resource nodes within a turn if you're good/lucky enough.

Regarding adding certain resources to your city

When you have a resource node within your "City limits", or a 17x17 grid centered on your main city tile, you can make a duplicate of the final tier of the resource generation building, so long as it is either an Elemental Shard, Iron, or Crystal.

• Make sure city building placement is set to manual in your options.
  
• Get a portion of your city proper up next to the resource, through snaking, or just naturally.
  
• Build the resource building up to tier 2 (Elemental Shrine, Smelter, Crystal Mine).
  
• Select the Tier 3 from your city build menu (Elemental Temple, Foundry, Crystal Trove) and attempt to place it.
  
• If you have sound on, you should have heard the sound it makes when you begin constructing the upgrade, and see it in your build queue, but also still see it as an option in your build menu.
  
• With the upgrade still selected, hit build. You should see the duplicate upgrade appear in the queue.
  
• Note that this trick can expand your cities' borders, allowing you to continue a snake run for your city limits with less time spent waiting to absorb a resource into your city.

Snaking, the Monument, and your foes never getting any shards, iron or anything ever again.
If you snake with the Monument, every empty spot that it was built upon will still count as a monument for the purposes of Zone of Control size. Snaking a long way with it will allow you to cover the ENTIRE MAP in your influence with just a single city, if you're dedicated enough. Enemies cannot take control of nodes within your Zone of control, and their zones will never expand because your Control is so much higher than theirs.

DEMOLISHING YOURSELF TO DEMOLISH THE COMPETITION

The humble Demolish option in your cities can be used to duplicate ANY resource node that has multiple stage buildings. That's EVERY SHARD, Iron, Crystals, and Wild Grain.

Step 1. Get a structure down on your target resource that is within 8 tiles of the city center (the tile with the name over it), and get it absorbed into your city proper, so that clicking on it activates that city.
Step 2. Demolish that structure. If the city walls/fencing is still around the empty lot, and you can still activate the city with that space, then congrats.
Step 3. Click the spot to activate the city, then click again after a brief pause. This should bring up the base resource site (iron ore, a shard, etc). Build the resource building again.
Step 4. Upgrade the building ONCE, either by the city's build menu, or by cycling through to that building proper and clicking the upgrade button. If you can upgrade again after the first click, then you know it worked.
Step 5. Before you go spamming out fifty Fire Temples, there's something you may want to do to save yourself some headache in the build menu for your city. Check your city info to make sure that you only have a single instance of the building you want to upgrade from on that spot, ideally by having your other resources in the city maxed out at the moment. If you see that you have, say, a dozen Fire Shrines, and you've only got the one shard location in your city, then cycle click through that spot and use Ctrl K to kill all but one shrine, as well as any altars.
Step 6. Mass upgrades, preferably in small chunks so your computer doesn't lag itself out of existence. Once you've reached whatever goal you've set for yourself, cycle through that location again, find the shrine, smelter, or what-have-you, and Ctrl K it out of existence.

NOTE: SINCE THIS TRICK STACKS SHRINES AND THEIR PARTICLE EFFECTS, IT CAN GENERATE AN INTENSE AMOUNT OF LAG EVERY TIME YOU MOVE OVER THE CITY. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND NO MORE THAN 5-10 RESOURCE NODES PER TILE, AS WELL AS MAYBE TURNING DOWN/OFF PARTICLE EFFECTS.

Building a better Troll Faction - Alignment, Race, and Benefits

When it comes to breaking the game over your knee with the aforementioned cheats, glitches, and sneaky moves, not all factions are created equal. Here's a breakdown and reasoning why from personal experience.

WHICH WAY TO GO? - CIVILIZATION CHOICES

Both civilization types have their cheesy goodness, so let's go over them.
Empire: The Shard Duplication glitch makes Morrigan's Call spell grow your cities super fast, sometimes too fast for the game to track, leaving them stuck at stage 1 even though they have over 1500 population. You can use population sacrifice/kill spells to fix this bug by dropping the current population under the stage 2 threshold. And Sions can be made into hit squads far better than your average troops, especially under the Dead (see below).
Kingdom: Yes, cities will not grow as fast since Morrigan's Call is now useless. HOWEVER, some unit enchantments like courage are Life based, and can turn your usual tank units into walking - or riding - fortresses. And Henchmen are straight-up better Sions because they can be given weapons like Bacco's Hammer, the Lightning Longbow, Air Elemental Spear and Windhammer which all give level-based damage increases. They can also actually cast spells.

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST - PICKING YOUR RACE

PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER

• Amarians. - Primary selling point for them is their stat bump from shards. Specifically the Initiative one. With the double shrine trick they can get crazy fast, well, crazy fast. Also Soul Spark is ridiculous when a level 50+ Amarian squad is tossing it. This race
  
• The Dead - I know, I know. "The Dead? The -2 Initiative Dead? Top Tier?" Yes, but only as an empire. The reason? The Undying Curse Trait. Slap it on a Sion, save it as new, train it, make him a Commander, powerlevel him to max his traits, and feed him foes. Then laugh as the Research and Gildar perks are multiplied by six for just a single unit. Three groups of six can also make the basic militia in your cities into freight trains of unstoppable death.
  
• Men - Specifically in Kingdoms. Henchmen are the better version of Sions, and ridiculously busted at high levels.

REALLY GOOD

• Wraiths - Dodge is great in combat situations, and Wraith touch scales to level.
  
• Mancers - The extra move is good for Ctrl+T teleporting around the map sniping Lost Libraries with your commander and clearing creep camps fast, and the accuracy per level stacking with Discipline and Champion's Helm can do wonders with Rabisu's Horn and Bacco's hammer on a Warrior Champ or seven.

DECENT

• Quendar - Flametongue and Furnaceborn are per-level damage abilities and can be devastating. It's just a shame so many things are resistant or immune to fire...
  
• Ironeers - The entire race gets half of the Hardy commander trait, with their Champions getting the whole shebang. And their increased Tactical Spell cost can be offset by either cheats or a metric ton of Shard Temples.

LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE

The other races are not bad by any stretch, but they don't bring anything to the dirty pool table.

TROG-TIER

Ohh boy, that berserk is so worth not having any racial traits whatsoever.[/sarcasm]. Don't pick trogs.

FUN FOR EVERYONE - FACTION TRAITS

So, you're going to make a cheese faction, but you need to figure out which strengths are REALLY worth it with all this power at your fingertips. Never fear, I am here.

• Free Research Strengths - Adepts, Civics, Scholars, Warriors: These can generally be avoided as they just give a free tech to start, except maaaybe Scholars for that +10% Research bonus if you're not auto-researching everything immediately.
  
• Different Weapon Strengths - Archers, Assassins Tools, Defensive, Enchanters, Axe Mastery, Great Hammers, Wanderlust - Generally not that great, though Assassins tools does pack a sword with Backswing that can make Sions and Henchmen into absolute nightmares. Archers should also be mentioned, as the Ram's Horn Longbow on an Assassin Sion can handle armies pretty easily. The extra quests that Wanderlust provide aren't all that impressive or useful. BUT YOU DEFINITELY WANT ENCHANTERS FOR THE SCRYING POOLS. Free City Enchantment slots are always good.
  
• Spell Unlocks - Betrayers, Death Worship, Flesh Bound Tome, The Decalon, Gravetouched - No. Ctrl+E is all that is needed for anyone to cast everything, including item spells.
  
• New Units - Binding, Cult of a Hundred Eyes - Binding is okay since the Crow Demons have spears that deal damage with levels, Cult can be largely ignored.
  
• World Influencers - Heroics, Legacy of Serrane, Master Smiths, Slave Lord, Stealth, Undead - Mostly useless, Undead would be good for it's lack of unit Wages, except everything else about it is pretty terrible, including not being able to get rid of the farm tiles.
  
• Unit Modifiers - Lucky, Master Scouts, Quick, Tough, Warrior Caste - The only Bad one here is Warrior Caste because the level cheat exists. Lucky and Quick are both amazing for being in combat, as any Initiative boost is good, and the 25% accuracy and dodge have great synergy with Acrobat and Discipline Traits. Master Scouts making your units ignore most terrain movement penalties is great, although with time and patience, you can turn almost all terrain in your territory into plains with the raise/lower earth spells. Tough isn't bad or good, though a Town or two with Guild Grocers can easily stand in for it.
  
• The Armors - Masterwork Chain and Light Plate - They're free. Take one, or both if you feel like it.
  
• Weaknesses - Honestly, it's up to personal preference what to take if you're going for four. I personally avoid Weakness to Magic, No Armor, and Uneducated most of the time.

My personal go-to loadout for an Empire is Amarians or Dead with Lucky, Enchanters, Master Scouts, Quick(Amarians), Binding(Undead), and Rebels for the Weakness. For a Kingdom, Men, with Enchanters, Lucky, Master Scouts, either Quick, Assassins Tools, or Archers with Rebels for the Weakness.

Meet the New Boss, Lame as the Old Boss

So now the final piece of the puzzle. How do you kit out your leader for maximum cheesy goodness.
Well, I'll let you in on a secret. It doesn't really matter. Most of their strengths and weaknesses, when measured against the sheer cheese that you can now put out, are just inconsequential. Don't believe me? Let's go through it all.

The spells

Unless you're actively avoiding the Ctrl+E all magic cheat, the only spells you really need to worry about in general are Earth, FIre, and the Allegiance specific one. All of these can come on non-Sovereign champions. Most of the Sovereign Only spells are either not locked to an elemental discipline, acquired through research or a quest, or come as a part of a Faction Strength like Death Worship or Graveseal.

Profession

Armorer, Noble, Warlord, and Warlock. These are the only ones that aren't made obsolete by a cheat. Noble and Warlord are both mitigated somewhat in that if you're cheating with the rush cheats or max research/resources, they become useless, except if you're using the race of Men, then Warlord makes spamming Henchmen so worthwhile. So Armorer and Warlock are the only halfway decent ones for everyone else. The former for it's defense buff to EVERYONE, and the latter for increasing your Sovereign's spell damage.

Talents

Anything per season or per level is good, with Hardy losing some ground if you're playing The Dead. Sovereign Bond is good because you get a second source of Sovereign spells, if you need them. Tactician isn't terrible, unless you plan on making your Sovereign a Commander. Cautious, Might, Wealthy, Treasure Hunter, Lifeblood and Misandry are all weak. Might is outclassed by the fact that there are a few weapons - and armor pieces - that increase damage with character level.

Weaknesses

Provided you're actually going to NEED that seventh point, take Weak or Cowardly. It shouldn't matter if you're going full cheesemode anyway.

Starting Equipment

Largely Unnecessary, since you can press Ctrl+I and pick anything you want.
However, notable bowls of awesome are Bacco's Hammer(For Warriors and Defenders), the Lightning Longbow (for Assassins), and the Dancing Blade for Mages and Commanders. Warriors and Defenders also get access to Champion's Armor, which is generally great barring the gauntlets, which should instead be the Star Forged gauntlets, since Lightning Immune foes are relatively scarce.

EXAMPLE EMPIRES AND KINGDOM

Altarian Kingdom

Amarian Empire

Dead Empire

You're a terrible person and so am I

So there you have it. Every tip, cheat, and shenanigan I can think of. Now go use these and feel bad about doing so. Or don't, I ain't your nanny.

Later.

[[WEDC]grandmasterB]

damn didnt know about this, and not planning on using it (ez enough tbh) still cool you added it

[Sturm]

aw, man.

[R10is]

@Sturm
Well derp on my part. So many 4x games have multiplayer that it SOMEHOW slipped my mind that this is one of the ones that doesn't.
I blame my chaotic work schedule.

[Sturm]

you're saying you can play this game with other people? how?