How to Play
Necrophages
an In-depth Guide
Resource Specialization:
Military, Industry, Food
Main Victory Conditions:
Supremacy, Science
(No, I’m not smoking anything, yes Science because if you never stop building districts in every city and use Roving Clans governors to trade with your enemies across the world, you can get to a Science victory by Turn 70 without too much effort.)
Preferred Assimilations:
Silics, Urces, Magtay, Sisters of Mercy, Ceratan
Strengths:
- S-tier industry governor in starting hero, Feeds on Bones, but needs a region with 3 pacified rebuilt villages to get maximum benefit
- Has the ability to get a fast early start thanks to recycled stockpiles (1 recycled stockpile raises pop from 1 to 4 in one turn)
- Has immediate access to a Flying scout unit
- Districts are cheaper & you can build a new District every 1 pop instead of every 2 pop
- Start with Alchemist’s Furnace which means your Settlers can immediately start extracting by settling on the strategic resource
- Necrophage units wreak havoc on enemies thanks to Disease and are Disease Immune themselves
- Amazing synergy with Zujajuns from Magtay assimilation
- Free zombies thanks to Proliferators’ Parasitism
- Necrophage units have high initiative
- Arguably the strongest Dust Eclipse buffs in the game
- Free Battleborn per recycled stockpile spent AND +100% cadavers from battles
- More wars => stronger military because +10% Attack per war
- Can easily reach -100% military upkeep thanks to Cannon Fodder + Era 3 Military Empire Plan
- The only faction that can go above 8 units/army and above 8 garrisoned units/city (for example, if you start with 8 Proliferators in 1 army and you kill 8 infected enemies, you end up with 8 new Battleborn in the same army as the Proliferators, netting you a 16-unit army.
Weaknesses:
- Can’t Parlay with villages and fortresses for XP, Quests, and rewards
- Can’t make allies
- Can’t trade without Black Marketeer governors
- Can’t just Pacify villages so have to kill and rebuild every village
- Proliferators and Necrodrones are easy to kill
- Battleborn cannot be Retrofitted
- Falls behind in Science early game
- Low on Dust until Era 3
ELCP vs EL Vanilla:
- Necrophages no longer get infinite recycled stockpiles because sacrificing your own Militia no longer gives you cadavers.
- In exchange, you get 2 additional cadavers every time you kill a village, so killing 1 village nets you 1 cadaver per enemy unit killed + 2 cadavers from the village itself. In the early game this means 4 cadavers per village killed.
General Strategy:
It should be no surprise to any player that the Necrophages are a faction with a Military Focus. You want to prepare an Industry city [link to City Specialization guide] as quickly as possible so that you can begin snowballing your military presence and overwhelm your opponents.
Early Game:
- Obtain your first recycled stockpile by killing 2 villages by Turn 3-4. You don’t have to fight solo with your hero because it can be risky but if you do he gets more XP. Do not auto battles until mid-game after you have enough Industry to easily replace lost units.
- Search for any 3 village region with enough space for 20+ districts
- Kill all villages in your first 3 village city and rebuild them asap
- No specific build order as long as you build Mill Foundry first.
- Seed Storage and Sewer System are really important but you can’t take full advantage of the Slavery capacity from Feeds on Bones until all 3 Villages are rebuilt.
- Complete the 6 hex triangle (or 2 hex-wide line) in your Industry city asap
- Don’t neglect building Districts in every city!!! Your empire will be poopoo and won’t scale if you forget Districts.
- Get Feeds on Bones to Level 4 to unlock -24% unit cost reduction
- Research Proliferators, Hydrology, and Cannon Fodder early
- Send out at least 1 Proliferator squad in each direction (North, East, South, West) and amass tons of Battleborn
- Extract or buy resources in order to get Ka-Riss quickly
- Look for Magtay regions to add Zujajuns to your roster as a very good Disease archer (when you make elite units, I would make elite Zujajuns and Foragers first)
- Faction Quest tip:
- Diversify your hero hires and remember that your quest may ask you for a Wild Walkers/Vaulters pair or an Ardent Mages/Broken Lords pair. The best way to guarantee passing Chapter 5 quickly is to just have all 4 of these heroes ready.
Mid Game:
- Get enough Influence to unlock Military Empire plan level 3 for -100% military upkeep when combined with Cannon Fodder
- Now you can start building 40-unit doomstacks without having to worry about running out of Dust. The best way to do this is to start battles with a few Battleborn and reinforce them with a stack of 6 Proliferators. Once you get the doomstack rolling, it will sustain and grow itself.
- Now you can enjoy dealing 300-400 Fortification damage per turn to enemy cities when you siege with doomstacks
- Elite army [link to Elite Army guide]
- Just because you get to use Doomstacks doesn’t mean you shouldn’t build elite armies. Free battleborn are nice but they spawn at level 1 after battles and get outscaled and one-shotted by enemies that are already level 10.
- My favorite combo is 6 Palladian Foragers with shields + 2 Necrodrones, 8 Palladian Zujajuns or Proliferators, and 8 more any Ranged or Support unit
- If you don’t have elite Foragers yet, just use your doomstack to start battles and reinforce with elite Zujajuns
- Invade some fools and take the good cities, especially the ones with unique buildings like Canal Locks or Center for Mineralogy
- Try your best to keep every enemy alive but continuously at war with some crappy cities remaining. That way they will continue to give you +10% attack buff but won’t be able to fight back against you.
- Watch out though, other neighboring empires may try to eliminate the enemy you just weakened so you should protect them by going to war with their neighbors too and reducing your risk of losing the +10% attack.
- You may be tempted to just Declare War on everybody in 1 turn, but it’s not a good idea because that requires you to have a 2nd elite military force (16-24 elite units) stationed at home full-time for defense. Once you actually have 2 separate elite armies, you can declare war on the whole world. You might have to play a bit of whack-a-mole though unless every city is within range of a full garrison.
- I suggest invading Mykara and Forgotten first if they are not too far away because they can easily snowball to a victory out of nowhere. Try to weaken the Forgotten before they reach Era 5.
- Buy some Roving Clans heroes and max their Feet on the Street skill for +150% Ownership recovery rate. You also want Black Marketeer after that because as Necrophage, the only way you can trade with enemies is with Black Marketeer. If you don’t understand why you need to care about trading as a Military faction, read my trading guide here [link to Trade Routes guide].
- You can complete Chapter 6 with 1 Settler over 3 turns, just settle and salt. However, you’re probably going to be at war anyway so just go ahead and take some more cities to complete it faster.
- Make sure you research Uncommon Armor as soon as possible so that you can give Ka-Riss the Whispering Bracelets for Fast Learner 1 and level him up to 9 quickly.
- Buy a spare Necrophage hero and don’t assign him to anything so that you can complete Chapter 8 with him quickly.
- If you can actually complete your Faction Quest in Era 4 then it should be easy-peasy for you to win the game because now basically every attack is going to be a crit.
Late Game:
- Continue to invade every strong player on the map and beat them up just short of elimination.
- Pillage every enemy village and every extractor you see and you will never run out of luxury and strategics. This is another benefit of keeping your weak enemies alive so that you can milk them for resources.
- Settle every region and fill the world with your empire color. Spam Industry stockpiles and use them with recycled stockpiles to instantly build out your brand new cities.
- At this point it’s just a matter of time until you win Supremacy, Expansion, or Science.
- Make 100% sure that your capital is extremely well-defended at all times because you don’t want some fool to randomly come in behind and win Supremacy because you randomly lost your capital to them for 1 turn. I suggest you wall in your capital with many surrounding cities so that you have Watchtowers everywhere.
- Keep 2 spies in every enemy empire and spam Reveal Spies so that your enemies can’t drop your morale.
FAQ:
- Q: Can you freely attach and detach them from army to army without worrying about army size limits?
A: No, stacks above 8 units can only ever decrease in number unless via Proliferator zombification.
- Q: Is there any way that you can increase the level Battleborn spawn with, say recruit xp techs?
A: The only way to generate Battleborn above level 1 is to spend recycled stockpiles in a city during Dust Eclipse.
- Q: Does each Battleborn give +1 xp to hero attached as the general for that army? If yes, then power leveling hero with doomstacks seems viable just by sitting as a general on the army.
A: Yes, that is correct, same with leveling governors in a garrison too.
- Q: Would ranged heroes be best for doomstacks since they can give +2 movement to the army and they can increase Proliferator range so they aren't as vulnerable?
A: Doomstacks are usually the vanguard which means they must have a Support or Infantry hero for additional flags. If you have a doomstack reinforcing a doomstack then you could try a Ranged hero. Proliferators are Support units and none of the Support units in the game benefit from +1 Range from Ranged heroes.
- Q: Would Kazanji and Haunts be ideal for dealing with doomstacks?
A: Anything with AOE or Infantry Slayer, Disease Immunity, and/or healing/life drain can be good against Battleborn. Ended are great for the Infantry Slayer chain lightning and they are Disease Immune but Daemons get to use claws and they are tankier (but not Disease Immune). Probably the #1 counter to Battleborn are Scythers because Scythers also get to use 2-handed swords and obviously they have beam which is OP.
- Q: Are doomstacks effective at all late game, especially when people have elite level 10 units, or are they just farm for leveling enemy units and heroes?
A: Doomstacks lose effectiveness in military prowess the later the game goes unless you kickstart a new stack by creating a new army from an overfilled garrison of 8 Proliferators and a bunch of high level Battleborn. For low level doomstacks, just use them to siege minor undefended cities, split them up into smaller stacks to pillage, and use individual units as disposable scouts. Or you can just keep the stacks and use them to power level specific heroes.
- Q: Is there a way to maximize hero XP gain for commanding an army AND for fighting in the same turn?
A: Yes! As you may know, XP gain is equally distributed amongst all participating units and heroes. Simply have your commander step out of the army for a battle and then merge the army back into your commander before ending your turn. This way, your commander not only gets full solo XP for any kills during the battle but still gets to benefit from very high XP per turn.
