Necrophages

This guide will give you a sense of general direction on how to play the Necrophages.
There are also tips and guidelines on Strategy, Military and Economy for you to consider.
I hope this guide gives you a deeper understanding and many victories while playing the Necrophages.

Necrophages

DIFFICULTY:

Necrophages are born to eliminate, thus suitable for the elimination victory. Meaning it's easier to achieve the elimination vicotry compared to the rest. To achieve an elimination victory you are required to destroy every other faction and all their remaining settlers. This victory is best achieved when the supremacy and conquest victory types are turned off. This guide will focus on what the race is designed to accomplish. If you find other uses for the race, please share in the comments below!

Traits

The given traits sort of force you to wage war and claim every piece of land. Luckily the growth is rewarded and you can start snowballing into an unstopable insect horde.



First of all you have been stripped of the ability to have any peace and any diplomatic effect, so war is the next best option. If you have claimed lots of regions you'll have plenty of resting points to use the Fast epimorphosis trait and quickly heal up. The more people you make angry hand have a war with the stronger your units will get.

Now the main mechanic of the necrophages is growth. You'll start off by having very little, but the more you fight and grow your cities and population the more food you'll have and will be able to grow even faster.

Technology



Available technologies will help you increase your army by double the size and help you out in end game to be able to sustain even more heroes. Alchemist's furnace will enable you to quickly gather strategic resources and upgrade your units for an early game fighting advantage. After growning fat and strong you'll encounter that your approval will be difficult to sustain. The Demanding Gods technology will solve this issue (temporarily) as you can boost approval and then grow the population back within an isntant.

Strategy

Build an army > Main quest 1/3 > Defeat an enemy > Expand > Grow your army > Main quest 2/3 > Defeat an enemy > Expand > Grow your army > Main quest finished > Defeat all enemies.

Early Game
The Necrophages may seem powerful at first. But they lose effectiveness through the mid and end game stages. Your goal is to keep your empire growing and pick off other factions one by one. Prioritizing your army is a must. The reason for this is because your only option is war and the other factions will expect a fight. Build as little buildings as possible, focusing on dust and industry. After that it's just being in the lead with your army. Make use of the time between battles to accomplish pieces of your quest line. You will receive rewards that will help you gain an advantage during your wars.

Mid Game
By this time you should have eliminated your first opponent to give you some breathing space. If you havent already then you're going to get in trouble. The more the game progresses the less space there will be. Meaning you'll start having war with multiple factions now. And if you're not ahead from the early game on you'll have difficulty defending or attacking multiple fronts. The other factions will form alliances and make a priority to take you out. Build up the next essential era II buildings then continue increasing the size of your army.

End Game
By this time the odds should be in your favor. You should have more that 50% of all the land and have a massive army. If you have the momentum, use it and finish the game before the remaining factions have the time to counter attack. If you're struggeling then your final option is to make an ever bigger army then before. Focus on key points to attack the enemy and punish their economy.

Once players notice that your army is growing out of control they will form alliances and take you out. You need to be clever in the way you attack your opponents. It's not a bad move to let someone live so you can change your attention to someone else. Just make sure they're weak and cant counter attack you in a short amount of time. If your enemies know how the Necrophages function they will prepare for war. So make sure when you're attacking, you're attacking with odds in your favour.

Please keep in mind that these are general directions. Each game will bring new challenges to overcome. The key to success is focusing on your end goal and not getting distracted by too many issues around you.

Military

As a rule of thumb I use 0 as the lowest possible stat and 50 as highest stat, without including HP and Speed

The Necrophages army is slightly above avarage stats wise which makes them effective early game. You can make them very powerful if given the weapons and armor technology upgrades. The tricky part is that it's an expensive investment. The Necrophages should be very agressive during tactical combat. You want to rush in and spread as much disease to apply maximum damage output.

You also start with two units making your tactical advantage a bit better as you can adapt more easily. Furthermore you'll get rewarded a hero fairly early if you follow the questline. The Necrophage heroes are tough and great fighters so make sure to include them in your battles.

Pretty much the cannon fodder and the unit to finsh off the battles. They're slow, tough and cheap. Once they reach the enemy they can spread some more disease and overwhelm the opponent.
















You should view it as your core unit. It has the best stats and is very effective against almost any opponent. You can use it as scouts and use blitzkrieg tactics to claim cities. It's only weakness is ranged units that have a bonus against flying units. The key is to fly in and land in between as many units as possible, focus on destroying the ranged units and claiming the high ground. The sweep strike back ability will damage all units around the Necrodrone once it is attacked.












This unit serves as a unit production factory. You simply hit as many enemies as you can to land a parasitism diseas on them. Once they die you will gain new units to fight with. Proliferators are slow and weak and are only useful if your army can protect them. Don't invest too much dust in this unit as you only need one of them per army.















Tactics

Be agressive and overwhelming with the necrofages, you want to spread your disease to all enemy units. Rush in with the Necrodrones while the Foragers march after them to finish of the enemy.

If we would think of a basic tactic to use during all of our battles it would look something like this:

Front
The necrodrones are the fastest and ignore terrain penalties. You can quickly close the gap and land in between the enemy units. Spread disease and create chaos.

Middle
The Foragers simply need to march directly to the enemy and help the necrodrones as quicly as possible. The Foragers basicaly close off all the exit routes of the enemy so they have to fight back and die as quickly as possible.

Back
Proliferators will support from the back and will stay there for the rest of the battle. Don't give them much attention. They are just there to shoot one or two parasite charged attacks. The best defense for them is to be offensive with the other two units.



The unit balance of your army and weapon choice should be something like this:

• Necrodrones - 50% Equip them to be very fast, durable and with the highest tier claws available.
  
• Foragers - 40% Maximum damage output. Armor isn't needed as the Necrodrones will be a more imporant target to the enemy.
  
• Proliferators - 10% No upgrades needed, not even default Era upgrades.

Economy

Dust and Industry will be our focus. We want to be able to produce many units and also sustain their upkeep. Exapand districts towards dust tiles and use food stockpiles to increase your population.
Research choices will be important as you'll lag behind after Era 2. No need to worry, we only need buildings for industry and dust. The rest of our research can go towards a better army. Don't forget to keep fighting so you don't run out of food. This shouldn't be a problem, but in case you're having trouble with it you can leave the minor faction villages alive so they always produce units which you can quickly take out to reaceive food stockpiles.

Economy Priority

• - To pay the upkeep of your massive army.
  
• - So you can produce that massive army.
  
• - Handy for declaring wars and having military bonuses with the Empire Plan.
  
• - You can prioritize this more, but you will lose dust and resources that could be spent on your units.
  
• - If you're killing you're fine.

Resources

Era I
Gold

• +5 Approval on cities
  
• -50% Dust on city upkeep

Wine

• +30 Approval on cities

Era III
Blood Crystal

• +10 Approval on cities
  
• +25% Attack on units

Quicksilver

• +10 Approval on cities
  
• +100% XP on units

Titan Bones

• +10 Approval on cities
  
• +50% Industry on cities

Era IV
Dustwater

• +10 Approval on cities
  
• +50% Dust on cities

Hydromiel

• +10 Approval on cities
  
• -75% Hero maintenance cost on Empire

Pixie Blood

• +10 Approval on cities
  
• +20% health regen on cities

Redsang

• +10 Approval on cities
  
• +100% XP on Heroes

Yes this is a bigger list than most other factions. But do understand that waging war is expensive and difficult. Keep in mind that you need to defeat all other players to win! Every military based resource that can help you win should be used.

[angel bird]

Is this game dead? probably. I still wanna talk about it though. I really fun tactic if you're short on dust as the necrophages is to use proliferators and then once you get the zombiefied units, sell them away for a quick profit.

[SuwinTzi]

One thing I'd like to point out, is that you gain a massive food boost for every pacified and rebuilt village in the region. It is more important to pacify the villages in the beginning, than let them spawn armies as food boost.

[Omgwtfbears]

Yeah, about that luxory resource list - it's kinda pointless. You're a necrophage, you can't trade for luxories so you take what you get.

[Schmeeda]

Great Guide

[DimensiO]

@neoghoul: No, I wanted to make more for all other vanilla factions but I couldnt find the time to make them or even play the game. So I lost track of all the patching and expansions and it would take me a long time to get up to speed again. If you're looking for something similar I would recommend analysing the strong and weak points of each faction. Abuse the strong points and improve on the weak ones. Go past each topic from strategy, Military and economy and fill in the blanks that compliment the faction. Hope this helps a little!

[neoghoul]

Beside the point, but are you working on one for the forgotten?^^

[Nozeminer]

Awesome guide

[Räko]

It's crazy how much these guys can snowball. My main army was too far away in the west and I only had two proliferators in the eastern reserves when I saw a couple of roaming armies coming, got the proliferators out, killed the roaming armies off and suddenly I had two big armies, fit for taking down the eastern enemies. Ridiculous...

[VVildcard]

Good guide dude!

[DimensiO]

@Mr. Worldwide Nothing major in my opinion. AI is still bad, but I hardly even play against AI. Only positive thing are the error fixes. I think we'll have to wait for the expansion to have something valuable.