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Shadows of Forbidden Gods
Cheat Codes:
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Submitted by: David K.
40% of Rulers & Basic Gameplay Tips:
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Written by crawlers
You don’t really need the entirety of Vinerva, 40% is enough to win.
-=40% of Rulers=-
Garden of Golden Roses can be consumed twice by rulers, each granting 20%
Vinerva’s Gift. In the early game, it is vital that you quickly aim at
national rulers (not random other rulers) with this before the Chosen One
can make them aware. A few will be made aware anyway before you can get to
them, but by choosing the largest and most important nations, you can get
most of them to 40% gift.
Use black forest to bring them to 40% shadow – if they become aware after
that, they will not join the alliance but their shadow isn’t high enough
for the Chosen One to redeem them (needs 50%). Don’t try to push to high
levels of shadow yet, rather try to cover as many important areas with a
medium amount.
-=The One that Got Away=-
The Chosen One will alert a few national rulers before you can get to them
anyway. At this point switch using your powers to spread shadow in other
areas – try to spread it as far apart as possible and leave no significant
chunk of settlements without a bit of shadow nearby. Witch covens can help
here but don’t use dark worship yet.
Use agents to deal with those – I prefer to start with the trickster and
courtier for infiltration, and then for lore the harvester, survivor, and
heirophant (probably could replace this one with another). The infiltration
agents crack open the door for shadow, and then the lore agents push the
advantage. Malign catch, or simply fully infiltrating the city and then
enshadowing it can be a decent way to capture the aware rulers who won’t
fall for gifts otherwise.
Plague is an incredibly powerful tool to enshadow since it generates a lot
of death modifiers that can be used to ignore wards and enshadow aware
rulers. It isn’t necessary to bring them to 100% shadow, once they are high
enough other things can finish them off later in the game (such as desecrated
temples).
If you push a ruler past 50% shadow, the Chosen One will try to redeem him
if he is important enough. Doing this deliberately on a city you have fully
infiltrated or on a ruler where you have leftover gift modifiers to immediately
enshadow him afterwards is a good idea since this power has a 150 turn cooldown.
-=Apathy, the Apocalypse, and You=-
So all rulers of any nation that isnt incredibly tiny are slightly enshadowed
and there are low levels of shadow throughout the world. The shadow means the
rulers won’t join the alliance, so if it forms it will be in some backwater
nation with almost no land. Similarly, rulers are much less prone to responding
to menace, and thus it is time to put those lore heroes to use at witch covens
doing dark worship. Pick witch covens that are as far away from civilization,
or at least a ruler that isn’t at a bit of shadow, then spam dark worship.
Nations should be very slow to respond due to the corruption already inflicted
upon them, so massive amounts of shadow can be generated this way.
Vinerva’s Manifestation power can be used by giving gifts to random unimportant
enshadowed nobles to crank victory a bit faster. Ones at very high shadow are
quite willing to accept them. I got a win at turn 280 on normal difficulty
without using this.
How to Orc:
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Written by Lidhuin
This guide will show you how to win by using mostly only orcs to cause destruction
and mayhem.
-=Introduction=-
The purpose of this guide is to give tips and strategies that will aid a player in
utilizing orcs to their fullest extent, possibly winning while minimizing the use
of any other means to achieve victory. Orcs are not quite as obvious as other
strategies, and there’s a few pitfalls to avoid, but they can be fun. There may
be situations in which orcs are simply not in a good position to lead to victory,
although elves may change that equation.
Examples of strategies that can otherwise win by themselves include large dark
empires (especially with Vinerva), well-groomed plagues, blotting out the sun,
undead hordes, holy orders spreading shadow, a focus on deep ones (with or without
holy orders). The goal of this guide is to minimize the use of other methods to
achieve victory.
Orcs primarily contribute victory points by two means: Destruction of the world
population, and through that destruction increasing the victory points from deep
ones and shadow. Orcs must rely on some natural spread of shadow or some deep ones,
but can potentially destroy enough humans to win. I should know – I’ve done so with
every core deity, including the cordyceps.
-=Pitfalls=-
In order for orcs to be strong and powerful, they must have many orc fortresses or
other locations generating orc armies. There may be maps in which this is simply
not viable, especially if all the areas with 10%+ habitability are already taken
by humans. Note that elven cities are currently easy to raze as of March 2023, and
may provide opportunities for orc spread.
If orcs are adjacent to cordycep hives, they will raze the hive. Don’t place hives
adjacent to where orcs will be.
You will lose agents due to infamy. While you should learn about profile and infamy
management (from other guides), you should also accept this and make sure agents
that are to be killed are infamous.
Orc societies can gain menace, and that menace is adopted by uniting hordes. An orc
horde with too much menace (e.g. from razing 9 elven cities in a row) should be
allowed to be completely destroyed and replaced with a zero menace orc society.
The alliance has very strong armies. Even 20-30 orc fortresses can have a hard time
building up a force to counter the alliance. Generally don’t allow a large alliance
nation to form if you want the orcs to be successful.
Wars have time limits. You want your orc horde to be as centrally located as possible,
so that your orc hordes have enough time to actually cause damage to humanity.
Conversely, a distant horde is also more protected from human intervention – generally
I’d prefer a more central orc horde.
The First Daughter is a powerful ally and a terrible foe. The First Daughter reduces
habitability such that orc camps and fortresses will be destroyed. Keep that in mind
and keep the First Daughter away from orcs that you care about.
-=Orc Army Combat=-
* Geomancy
If your geomancers are supporting combat, they will also support any orc armies. As
your geomancers are not part of the orc hordes, they will be left alone by heroes,
allowing for an easy way to support orc armies, particularly with the survivor. Just
go from locus to locus to keep casting support combat and nothing else.
* Command
If your orc armies are generally successful in battle, they will still suffer attrition.
You can reduce your own attrition and increase opponent attrition by having your agents
command the orc armies in battle. High command can make an enormous difference in the
amount of damage dealt by the orc armies, which in turn reduces the damage taken by
orc armies. Orc raiding parties add both army strength and also the command of the orc
warlord to the battle.
* Orc Spelltwisters
Agents with lvl 2 in geomancy, death or blood magic can build orc spelltwister camps.
They create armies of about equal strength to orc fortresses, which also buff the orc
armies that fight with them. The difficulty is that most wizards have poor command.
* Witch Ravens
If you infiltrate a coven, you can recruit a raven minion. If an agent with raven
minions commands an army, they debuff enemy armies.
-=Orc Horde Management=-
* Uniting the Hordes & Orc Annihilation
Whenever there is only one orc horde on the map, regardless of if the cause is orc
hordes uniting or an orc horde being annihilated, a new orc horde (with orc fortress)
will appear in a location with 10%+ habitability (if such a location is available).
It is generally not worth it for the free orc fortress, but it means there’s little
penalty in having a non-developed orc horde get razed to the ground – you can always
spread them quickly and easily in the same region and build up orc fortresses. Hence
the note in pitfall that high menace orc societies without strong armies should be
left to burn.
It also means that if there is suitable wilderness on a different continent, you don’t
need orc shipyards to spread orcs across continents. Instead unite the hordes and have
them spread until you get them to where you want them to be. Maximize those odds by
spreading them everywhere you don’t want new orc hordes popping up.
-=Paint The Continents Red=-
Really spread that orc love. Welcome to the meat of the guide, now that we’ve gone over
the pitfalls and some crucial information about how orcs and combat works.
Here is your goal: You need to spread orcs and build as many orc fortresses as possible.
First of all, you have to kill an orc upstart to get a flag to either claim the camps
or to unite hordes (in which case the orcs must be at peace and you must have flags
from each horde). You can generate orc upstarts with an agent that has zero minions.
You can have an agent with minions on the same location, so that when your agent (or
the upstart) flees, you can follow up and kill the upstart quickly. Don’t worry about
suppression to start with, because you don’t want the orcs to be declaring anyway.
You also need gold to build the fortresses or spelltwister camps.
Your sources for gold include:
* Infiltrate a capitol city with capital. Infiltrating a large nation is better.
* Generate agents in cities, and enshadow the ruler, so the ruler gifts gold to the
agent. Make sure the agent is always poor.
* Send out orc raiding parties (the ones where you control an army, not the one where
your agent does a challenge) and hit cities with high prosperity and no army present
to defend it
* Mammon, but you’ll win long before orcs destroy the world.
* Spelltwister camps require a lvl 2 wizard. Ophanim is great at building them due
to his powers.
You want to infiltrate a capitol city for two reasons: Firstly, kings and queens can
tax nobles, and will do so quite readily if they’re poor regardless of their other
motivations. Thus, they generate a lot more gold, a lot faster, than most other places.
Secondly, it allows you to enshadow that particular ruler and keep them from joining
the alliance, as well as use political gridlock, or inflame tensions, and all the other
fun stuff that having a fully infiltrated capitol allows you to do. Try to time the
robbery to coincide with the collection of tax. An added benefit is that they won’t
be improving relations or annoying things like that.
Note that fully enshadowed rulers may gift gold to agents who have their home in the
same city as the ruler. They will generally only do so if they don’t dislike the agent
and if the agent has no money, and world panic must be high enough. In this case, you
don’t need to rob the treasury, but your agent can’t have need of gold (for example
to build orc fortresses).
Sometimes, orc raiding parties can also generate large amounts of gold, but this is
a lot riskier. If it works, great, but I don’t recommend planning around it. If you
do raid, aim for cities with high prosperity, try not to burn them all the way to
the ground (you don’t gain menace if the city isn’t razed), and try to avoid human
armies. The gold will appear in the orc capitol plunder.
You need the gold in order to build orc fortresses or spelltwister camps everywhere.
To start with, you just want to spread orc horde camps to everywhere you can, then
follow up with orc fortresses. Keep an eye on neighboring kingdoms to make sure a
low menace orc society doesn’t get stomped before they have a nice number of fortresses.
Once you start to reach the 15-20 number, there will be so many orc armies that humans
will have a hard time both defeating the armies and razing anything to the ground,
allowing the orcs to be a self-sustaining green plague upon the land. If you steal
from a large kingdom, you will almost certainly have enough gold, as you’ll need
thousands. If you don’t have enough gold, steal more.
You can, if you want to, declare war on human nations deliberately, but either the
orcs or human nations will usually do it for you. If you do decide to declare war,
make sure to check international relations first – make sure the opponent is not in
a defensive alliance with anyone else. Alternatively, encourage civil wars in large
human nations, encourage wars between elves and humans, or encourage wars between
human nations, so your orcs can pick up the pieces and smash them to bits.
Now, let’s assume that you managed to spread orcs as much as you could, you’ve built
all the orc fortresses you could, but you’re still blocked by either humans or elves
in expanding your horde further, and it’s just a smidge too weak to actually beat
their enemies. This is where orc raiding parties come in. Orc raiding parties, unlike
orc armies, can be controlled. So that village that your orc armies are ignoring
because they’re too busy fighting the human armies can be razed very expeditiously by
a orc raiding party. This will generate menace and there is a risk that your raiding
party will eventually be chased to death, but I find that this generally doesn’t
happen. Another factor to remember is that your raiding party can move away from
battle, and this will cause the army that attacked them to go home.
Note that some cities, fortresses and citadels tend to have very high defences. Try
not to waste time destroying them and instead let civil wars do the heavy lifting
there (or your regular orc armies). Elven cities are extremely vulnerable, but their
armies are powerful. Only raze them if the elven armies are busy elsewhere. Elven
nations are also easy to make xenophobic against humanity, and you may be better off
using the elves as cannon fodder against humanity early on, and only destroying their
cities later.
Once you’ve built as many orc fortresses as you can, it’s also a good time to organize
your orc hordes. Your aim with that is to organize as many as possible. The core
region gets +50% orc industry and all adjacent regions get +25%. Thus, a region with
six connections generates +200% orc industry, a region with one connection generates
only +75%. Each fortress looks to all adjacent regions to see what size army they can
muster, so a fortress connected by 6 regions can potentially have a 200+ strength orc
army. Caveat here is that orcs at war tend to recruit until they’re about strength
40-60 and then go to war, so the main benefit of the above efficiency is minimizing
how many organize actions you need to take (they do cost profile and menace).
Keep an eye out for cities with deep ones that are about to pop. You don’t want those
cities razed. You also want to try to encourage destruction away from enshadowed
cities, as you do still need victory points beyond destroyed population in order to
win.
-=Forbidden Gods Considerations=-
* She Who Will Feast
Infiltration power makes it easy to drive xenophobia.
Split shadow tends not to work in orc regions, and is risky in the capitol city,
as the Chosen One tends to redeem the sovereign. Act accordingly.
The awakened power synergizes very well with orcs. By the time you awaken, most
of the world should be in a weak enough state that you can destroy what little needs
to be destroyed.
* Iastur
Infiltration power makes it easy to drive xenophobia.
Madness is victory and will cause the collapse of the alliance from time to time.
Let madness do its thing.
* Vinerva
Somewhat challenging, but you can easily enshadow rulers and others in order to
rely on gifts of gold rather than robbing treasuries. You can then gift them gold
in order to give them more gold, quickly, for them to give your agents more gold.
Rinse and repeat.
* Ophanim
Despite that Ophanim doesn’t like such imperfect beings as orcs, Orcphanim has no
such compulsions.
Small theocracies will function well with orcs, allowing you to start an early
theocracy and have human nations be far more concerned about the orc hordes. Doubt
management is consequently easier. I don’t recall if it’s a concern, but do make
sure your orc hordes and theocracies don’t end up at each other’s throats.
Ophanim is also uniquely suited to building Spelltwisters, as low command wizards
can get +40 progress at the cost of 4 hp and 2 power.
* Cordyceps
Generally great synergy, just make sure that orc hordes aren’t adjacent to hives.
A well-built horde will consider a hive to be weak and will consequently declare war
upon it and raze it to the ground. The solution is simply as stated: No hives next
to orc hordes.
Tips for Dark Empire:
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Dark Empire really requires you to understand a lot of what’s going on in the
game. You can easily screw yourself with stuff like Malign Catch in your future
backyard messing with the sanity of your own rulers, which cripples an otherwise
good city.
So imo, DE is something you need to actively plan to do, otherwise it’s not going
to end well.
I personally use witch covens if I want to get one.
Make a prophet for the coven, station them in the coven spamming influence on
repeat and get arbormancy, temple building, plague curing (if you do plagues) and
the awareness decay thing. Those are all kind of passive things you do, in the
meanwhile use your agents to rob rulers away from the future Empire, corrupt one
of the witches and dump your gold into her.
Use her to micro-preach and temple build, after enshadowing key cities.
Try getting holy sites corrupted as well, pop dark worship and the ward removal.
When you got enough of an income gain for the coven for it to just do its thing
autonomously, you can discard the agent witch after dumping all her gold into the
coven itself. Keep getting that money though, since it’ll cripple your enemies,
while boosting the coven.
And that’s just preparations. It’ll still be easy to dispatch the Empire, if you
haven’t crippled the neighbors. Also the Chosen One will hyperfocus on it, if
that’s the only thing you’re doing, so gotta do stuff across the map as well.
But if done correctly, it can be a powerhouse.
Note: Those are all non-god specific things, strategy might change due to powers
available… but imo Vinerva is the best for Dark Empires, just purely due to her
grove abilities – requires some micro to make the best of it though.
How to Play as Ophanim:
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In Short: Ophanim’s description tells you the way to play Ophanim. You need both
shadow and faith in the world. Keep them separate from each other, especially at
the start of the game.
If the faith eats the shadow too soon, your faith will lose momentum and struggle
much more with doubt. Having both shadow and faith growing at the same time in
different locations is a much stronger approach.
You can start a theocracy when a city has >150% faith. All other cities in that
nation with >100% faith will join the new theocracy and start a civil war with
the remaining cities in that nation.
A theocracy will always follow the Ophanim faith holy order, and that is the only
way to make it appear in the world.
You can still manipulate the ophanim faith by going into holy orders (by clicking
on a different one) and scrolling through the holy orders until you find Ophanim.
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