Forgotten
Playing Forgotten is always exciting: sneaking between enemies’ territory, spying on other empires, pillaging villages and resources, backstabbing and making ambushes. This is the way of true ninja. However, against experienced players it is pretty hard to implement all these opportunities and your wish to divide and rule can be easily turned into disaster.
Picking this faction for a multiplayer game we need to understand well our strengths and weaknesses.
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Looking at these features we can say that Forgotten are good at force dominance and map control, but pretty bad at long distance economy war. Their efficiency is in catching off guard, fast and unexpected attacks, and safely pillages. They often focus on picking up some enemy’s cities, instead of making their own settlers. Midgame is their moment to shine, closer to late game they are starting falling behind due technology and economic disadvantage. Sadly spawning in the Tundra area often makes the game way more difficult for Forgotten from the start.
So, the best victory condition for Forgotten is of course Supremacy. If your playstyle is to be proactive and aggressive this faction fits you well. Although Forgotten can’t produce Science they can be pretty good at Science victory thanks to their trait. However it is hard to get that type of victory in a competitive game with experienced players.
Now let’s see how to manage them well on all stages of the game.
On turn 1 you need to check how far the closest ruins, villages and neighboring regions are. Split the army, it is better to search ruins with Hero to get more experience. If you can parley with some village on turn 1, it is better to research Language Square instantly hoping that you’ll get some nice quest and pacify it fast. Depending on terrain, anomalies, quests from the villages and ruins you need to decide if you want to stay in the spawned region or move to the neighboring area to get a better start. If you found a region with more villages (some quests can point it out) that can be pacified fast, better terrain where you can settle at turn 2-3, it’s better to move forward. Keep in mind that you must make a decision at turn 1!
When you have settled you need to build Founder’s Memorial and make +1 Population as fast as possible. Ideally, at turn 3 you need to make a new settler. Also you’ll get your Faction Quest which is the main key in this guide. You need to find the village from this quest and pacify it. That would be preferably if you could manage it before turn 10.
At the same time you need to get some gold from ruins with Assassins and Hero, discover neighboring regions and pacify the villages. You must find a good region for your next settler too. Keep in mind that at least one of your regions must have 3 (at least 2) villages that you can pacify fast. It will be your Industrial City in near future. Also notice that the best terrain for you is rich in Dust and Industry. Good timing for your second settler is turn 5-6, then you can make your third settler if you have another good region in the neighborhood. You can stay at two cities for a while if you feel that you can rush someone at turn 20 and you need to make an army quick or if your cities are good enough to grow tall and make the first two Wonders really fast. Anyway it is better to have 3-4 cities at turn 21, otherwise you can start falling behind in economy.
You don’t need to research new technologies while making the settlers, it’s better to stock your Dust for the Hero from the Marketplace, his price is about 250 Dust. You can research Mercenary Market before turn 9 though to check what exclusive Heroes are placed at the Market for now that only you can buy. First of all, you need a Governor Hero for your Industrial City. The best are Necrophages Heroes with Slavery capacity, Cultists Hero named Exid the Chosen, Wild Walkers Hero named Ipsa Wacha. All these Heroes provide good bonuses to Industry.
When you reach turn 10 it is time to choose your Empire Plan for the next 10 turns. You need to stock at least 20 Influence to this moment to boost your economy further. By default it is better to pick Economy and Population and Science and Industry bonuses. Sometimes it is useful to choose a Military bonus if you want to rush someone early though.
+3 Dust per Population can help you to stock more Dust and it’s really helpful for faster research, especially if you have 3 cities by this time. The point is that you’ll raze at least one city by turn 20, so you don’t really need to build something in that city and assign your Workers on Industry, it’s better to keep them on Dust.
+20% Cost reduction on Researches is also very efficient and this is why you don’t really need to research many technologies before turn 11. It is much better to stock your gold and then buy all technologies with a 20% discount. The only reason you need to research technologies before this bonus is to rush Era II by turn 10. It can be a very efficient strategy, but it has some nuances that you should know to use it properly.
First of all, you need A LOT of Dust to buy 7 technologies before turn 11 to unlock Era II Empire Plan and still have a Dust to buy Governor Hero. Also you need to stock at least 40 Influence by turn 10 to get a bonus that gives +33% Building production cost reduction. The main goal of this strategy is to snatch Wonders - Museum of Auriga and Industrial Megapole and to build Canal Locks much faster. From my experience it is the only reason to use Era II rush playing Forgotten. It is not as efficient as for Ardent Mages, because you can’t use Prisoners, Slaves and Volunteers technology to buyout buildings, you simply do not have enough Dust to do that and to buy technologies at the same time. So, your cities won’t grow so fast.
If you only have Dust to buy 7 technologies, which total cost is about 270 Dust, or to buy a Hero it is still better to buy Governor Hero. It is worth rushing Era II if you don’t have a good Governor Hero at the Market though. Anyway you need to stock about 540 Dust by turn 10 to use Era II rush at its full strength. With +33% Building production cost reduction bonus and with a good Governor Hero you can build Wonders very fast, but you still need resources for it, so please be sure you’ll get 20 Glassteel and Titanium somehow before rushing Era II. As you can see there are so many things to keep in mind to use this strategy well!
The last thing you should know before entering turn 11 is that you need to raze all your cities except the Capital by turn 10 to distribute your Empire Plan properly!
Let's keep going.
It is time to return to your Faction Quest. As soon as you pacify the village you need to find the ruins and defeat two Predators, you can do this with one Assassin and your first Hero, Third Builder Gula Yawa. Be careful positioning your units in the fight, you need some practice to not lose your army. You may often lose your Assassin in this fight, it’s ok, you’ll be rewarded with two Predators for free which you can sell or use as scouts for a bit. The next objective is to infiltrate the closest enemy’s city and reach Level 3 Infiltration, the reward will be your Army Hero Ziema. The Empire you need to infiltrate is likely the closest and the first enemy you want to attack and defeat. Your first Hero should be skilled as a spy to get the infiltration levels fast to be able damage enemy’s fortifications effectively later. Ideally, your timing to find Ziema is by turn 20. The reason is you want to strike your enemy between turn 30 and 40, so you need time to skill Ziema with Double or Nothing at level 2 to get strong Ziema with powerful blades and skill her later as Army Hero.
While trying to advance with your Faction Quest as fast as possible, you should keep searching ruins to get some Dust, scouting territory to see your enemies, and managing your cities. The Empire Plan at turn 20 is more important than at turn 10, so you need to stock a good amount of Influence to have a stronger economy. Your Empire Plan dictates the strategy for the rest 10 turns, so you have to think about your game plan in advance. It is better to have 120 or even more Influence by turn 20 if you have two cities including your Capital that you don’t want to raze, because each new city increases the cost of the Empire Plan.
If you have managed to do that you can pick both Tier II Science and Industry and Empire and Expansion. These bonuses are oriented on cities' fast development, so as I said earlier it’s better to have 3-4 cities by turn 21 to get the best benefits from it. If you want to rush someone between turn 20 and 30 you can pick Tier II Military instead of Empire and Expansion.
Sometimes it is very hard to stock 120 Influence, but you should try to have at least 80 Influence. In this case you still need Tier II Science and Industry, then you can pick +3 Dust per Population or +20% Unit Industry cost reduction depending on your game plan.
Speaking of city management, if you succeeded in finding a good region and buying a good Governor Hero for your Industrial City you should try to build Wonders even without Era II rush strategy. From my experience I can say that Museum of Auriga is often built by someone at turn 15-16, Industrial Megapole is often built at turn 21-22, so you need to keep in mind these timings when trying to participate in this risky race. Also my advice is not to build the Wonder if you can’t build it within 5 turns, otherwise you’ll lose too much time for nothing in case of failure. Imperial Coinage technology can help you to get resources for Wonders and boost the production with Industrial Stockpiles that you can buy at the Marketplace.
Most of the time you will enter Era II within Turn 11 and 20, so it’s better to discuss the technologies of this Era here. There are 3 exclusive Forgotten’s technologies you can research, all of them useful and at least one of them a must have, it’s a Myst. Myst is the best unit for scouting, pillaging and fighting, you don’t need to produce anyone else except Guardians once you have it. As I said earlier, you must research Imperial Coinage for new Marketplace options and Hydrology for Canal Locks, but besides this you need better Influence and Dust income. Glory of Empire, Central Market and Imperial Highways are your choice in Era II. In the picture you can see my research order in the current game, but the order can be various depending on what you need first in your game. Please keep it in mind! I’ll tell you about technology №17 later.
Another way to increase your Dust income is to buy a Hero that helps to produce a lot of Dust, so you always need to check the Marketplace. Sadly, Forgotten Heroes are not good at producing Dust, they don’t have strong skills for it, you need to search for Heroes from Roving Clans and Broken Lords. Potentially, Heroes from Roving Clans are the best at producing Dust, because the income from roads can be very high. They can produce up to 10000 Dust per Turn from one city in late game! So you need to find at least one Hero from Roving Clans and assign him into the city that will be containing the largest number of roads. Also it is important to have cities with a high Dust income from city tiles. The best Heroes for producing Dust are Jasah Murdap and Lord Peyton Quinn.
When Canal Locks will be built in your Industrial City you can start making armies of Mysts for scouting, pillaging and defeating enemies, but all of this will likely happen after turn 20.
Your global goal within these turns is preparing for invasion. For this purpose by turn 30 you should try to solve 3 important objectives: raise Ziema to level 4 to complete your current Faction Quest, enter Era III to start making level 3 units, make at least one army containing 6 Mysts.
As I said earlier, it is better to have at least 3 cities at turn 21 to not fall behind in economy. This is how your position can be, for example.
The best way to get experience for your Hero is to fight with Minor Factions, so you need an army at turn 21 to farm villages and roaming armies. The smaller your army is the more experience you’ll get on Ziema, but be careful to not lose your army in a fight!
In the meantime try to enter Era III as fast as possible. You can get more Dust for research by producing and selling units of assimilated Minor Faction. You can also make some scouts and use them for searching ruins, collecting pearls and pillaging. You should equip your scouts with Tier II Iron Talisman and Ring to get better movement and vision on them.
Speaking of pillaging, there are some tips to make it efficient. First of all, you must research Dust Sense technology from Era I to double your reward from pillage. Forgotten can pillage faster due their trait Practiced Pillage, so they need less units to do this safely. You need 4 scouts level 2 to pillage in 1 turn, or 2 scouts level 2 to do this in 2 turns. Later with level 3 units you can have only 3 scouts to pillage in 1 turn, but don’t try to pillage slower than in 2 turns. Pillaging is risky, because you can’t retreat if you have been caught and most likely you’ll lose your squad in this case. That’s why you should not invest in pillaging too much, it’s better to have 2-3 squads which can pillage in 1-2 turns staying untouchable. Always be sure that your enemy can’t catch up to your units while they are pillaging!
Of course you can also steal technologies with your spies. You must always check what technologies are already available for your enemy to plan which you can steal and which you have to buy out. Please keep in mind that if you steal technology the price on the next one to buy out will be higher, so it’s more efficient to buy out technologies first before stealing. The more spies you have the more infiltration actions you can do on other Empires. You need also check the Marketplace to buy more Heroes for spying, but they also have a price in Dust! You have to extract and manage your Dust very well if you want to win.
You also need Governors for the rest of your cities to increase their Dust, Food, Industry and Influence production. You already know the Heroes you need to search for to increase your Dust and Industry production. There are few Heroes left that can also be good Governors. Cultists’ Heroes have very good skills for the city and some of them also have Influence boost, for example Ozek the Chosen. Wild Walkers’ Heroes have skills increasing Industry production strongly, but Wayra Sigo has also good bonuses for Industry and Food himself. Necrophages’ Heroes have skills increasing Food production, though Strikes Far doesn’t have Slavery capacity he still has nice bonuses for Industry and Food as well. Use them as your Governors too.
When you reach Era III there is one exclusive Forgotten technology that will become available. It is Learn from Others and you must research it as fast as possible, because it helps a lot to level up your Heroes, especially if you have several infiltrated spies. This is technology №17 I wanted to tell you about.
It also helps to raise Ziema to level 4 faster, so sooner or later you will complete this part of the quest and get a new objective that will reward you with stronger Ziema at level 5 with refreshed skill points and a pair of powerful unique quest blades! But don’t hurry to achieve this goal if you are able to update your quest before turn 30. There is some trick that you must use, otherwise you can get into some trouble. The thing is that when you’ll help Ziema to find her blades in ruins the new Faction Quest will be added and it will ask you to reach some amount of Influence. The more Influence you have in stock the even more Influence it will ask you to reach. So, because you want to stock some good Influence for your next Empire Plan, getting this quest at turn 29 can be critical! The best moment to search ruins for your quest is turn 30 AFTER you have chosen your Empire Plan and invested all your Influence. In this case you will be asked for a small amount of Influence further and will complete this objective much easier.
As for Empire Plan, if you have stayed at 4 cities it will be a bit difficult to stock Influence to get bonuses from Tier III, though +30% Research Cost Reduction in Past Eras and +3 Movement on Units are very good for the next stages of the game. You should try to stock at least 400 Influence if you have 4 cities and 300 Influence if you have 3 cities, because you have to pick Tier II Military and Science and Industry bonuses, besides it is better to have Tier II Empire and Expansion bonus too.
Also it is better to make an army of level 3 Mysts, because they are obviously stronger than level 2 units, so you need to reach Era III first.
The last thing to mention is the appearance of Urkans that you can and should definitely tame by force or with luxury resources, if they have settled nearby. You can do it even with level 2 Mysts, but you need more than 6 of them and you will lose a lot of units. It is better to wait for Ziema with blades to attack Urkan, because she alone can deal A LOT of damage.
You should improve the skill Iron Taskmaster to the max for Ziema to have much more Lifepoints on your Mysts.
Starting from Mid game the timings are more variable, so it is harder to speak about defined turn periods. As I said earlier, Mid game is the time to shine for Forgotten, you should try to dominate your opponents and win the game by supremacy.
If you have managed with all timings that was described previously, your position in the game at turn 31 can be like in the picture, but to be honest it is a very rare and lucky situation. If you have two Urkans and two armies of Mysts with Heroes by this moment it is 90% you have already won.
If you have at least one army of level 3 Mysts with Ziema you can already find the opportunities to attack your closest or most dangerous enemy, because probably he doesn’t have a strong army to defend from you yet. It is better to capture the Industrial City of your enemy first to prevent reinforcements and to be able to make units fast from this city too. Please be sure that you can do it in a fast single shot, reducing the Fortification with your spy can help you a lot with it. Your objectives are the Capital, Industrial City and maybe a city that is rich with resources you need. Also be cautious about the Influence cost of your Empire Plan and your Empire Approval value, these indicators are guarantee for a good economy.
When you have entered Era III you should check what new resources you have in your cities from this Era. If you don’t have some resources that you need it is better to plan your expansion in regions that have it, it concerns enemies territories too.
While improving your economy, expanding and defeating your opponents you should keep completing your Faction Quest, the rewards are still very useful. Next step is to perform level 4 Decrease Population or Target Governor action with your spy, you will be rewarded by the Tower of the Consecrate, which will give quite a good effect to your cities. Try to complete it fast, you can even keep a spy with a high level of Infiltration in one of the cities.
After building 3 Towers of the Consecrate in your Empire you will get another exclusive technology High Seminary which will let you research Era III technologies with a 30% discount! It is highly recommended to get that reward within turn 30-40 or at least by turn 44-45 to not fall behind in development. It is too expensive to research technologies without this nice buff. You can also try to stock your Influence for +30% Research Cost Reduction in Past Eras bonus from Empire Plan and to build Era III Wonder Alchemic Institute, which will give + 20% Research Cost Reduction in Past Eras, so potentially you can have a 50% discount researching technologies of Era II and Era I. Having these bonuses you can enter Era IV without researching technologies of Era III too much and then have up to 80% discount for Era III technologies, sounds crazy! You can reach Era V very fast with this smart usage of research cost reductions.
Reaching Era IV doesn’t give you big opportunities, you won’t get any technologies from this Era you must have as fast as possible. Era IV is not as important for Forgotten as Era III, so you can stay in Era III for a while, trying to get the discounts for researching. You can enter Era IV after you get High Seminary and Tier III Science and Industry bonus from Empire Plan.
Era III has a lot of technologies that you want to research, given that it is the cheapest Era for you. Except for new resource extractors, first of all you need to improve your Dust and Influence income. You must have Dust Refinery, Dust Alchemy, Highway Outposts and Public Works. Plow Factory gives good effects for food production. Borough Government and Unexpected Allies can be very important for your cities’ defense. Skoros is one of the best Guardians in the game thanks to his Heal and Mind Control abilities, you must have him in your army. Also Era III alloys are much better than from Era II and not so bad even compared to Era V, so you can research it and equip your elite units with such weapons for the rest of the game.
Though you can reach Era V very fast, sometimes way faster than the other factions, it is more often that you will enter Era V after turn 50. Let’s call it a Late game and speak about the rest of the nuances in the next chapter.
Technologies of Era IV and V can be also very useful, but you should rely on your game plan and win condition that you want to get. If your opponents didn’t surrender by this moment, but you feel that you still can pressure them and win by Supremacy it is better to intensify yourself with powerful Guardians and stronger elite units. Guardians of Era V for sure are the most terrifying in the battle, they can smash a bunch of units and defeat even Urkans, but their cost is pretty high. Atmos should be equipped with Tempest and Shard of the Lost to make him very dangerous in defending himself and let him get more Blood Rage. Neros should be equipped with Vortex of the Polar Ice and Stone of the Core to make his Tsunami Charge more deadly and get higher Initiative to attack first. You also need to research technologies that give your units additional experience when recruiting them.
Sometimes though another win condition can be faster, smarter and more elegant than Supremacy. It is a Scientific victory! I think that Forgotten can be the fastest faction to get this, despite the fact that they can’t produce Science. Of course you need some luck to make such an amount of Dust to be able to buyout all technologies of Era VI. Such Legendary Deeds as Master of Markets and Glorious Father, Luxury Resources like Grassilk and Dustwater have extremely good effects for your Dust production, and without these bonuses it will take you a very long time to get Science victory.
If you have at least some of these deeds and luxuries you also need to research at least 3 technologies of Era V to also increase your Dust production, it is Town Criers, Commercial Espionage and Modernized Administration.
After researching Modernized Administration you will get a Customs Ministry city improvement that can be built only in one city in your Empire and gives an effect + 7 Trade Routes max on City. You should build it in a city with Roving Clans Hero as a Governor, because he gives a lot of boost to your trade routes. As soon as you reach Era VI you must research Dust-Driven Distillery first for sure. If you can research all Era VI technologies in the next 10 turns from the moment when you entered it, you will definitely be fine.
I will not describe Economic Victory, because you will achieve Scientific Victory faster every time.
If you have pretty low Dust production another win condition for Forgotten in a competitive match still can be Quest Victory or Wonder Victory, but it is very rare to happen, because it takes too long to make it. Try to finish the Chapter 8 of your Faction Quest by turn 60, when you will obtain 30 technologies from Era I to Era III all you need is searching ruins, pillaging and fighting enemies to finish the rest of the Chapters.
After that you need either to complete the Victory Quest or to build Temple of the Earth's Core. Keep in mind that to complete the Victory Quest you will be asked to wait for 4-5 turns 3 times! Be ready to play at least another 20 turns and to defend yourself while finishing objectives. As for building Wonder, it is better to build it in your Industrial City of course and to have a highly leveled Wild Walkers Hero as a Governor in it. You can also research Organized Labor in Era IV to produce Industry Stockpiles in other cities. Each Stockpile will give you +500 Industry that you can use in your Industrial City to build Temple of the Earth's Core way faster.
I will finish my guide here, that is all I wanted to tell you about Forgotten. You can see now how difficult but interesting it may be to lead them to your victory. Now play and have fun! Good luck!
