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[Frumple]

It can be? As near as I can tell, the shoggoths will refuse to eat the last city standing, and if you don't enshadow it, you do indeed lose. That said, it is rather notably easier to enshadow the world's population when the world's population is confined to a single city and most of the nobility have been eaten. Real easy to enthrall a society when said society's leadership consists of like four people.

... now, if they actually ate the last city for you, and you don't have anything left to corrupt, well. The win condition's been digested, and there's nothing more you can do. Technically, you'll lose. Think of it as a morale victory.

[etgfrog]

So standing stones are interesting, if you can find 3 independant nations to the north or south of the map, you get those then build standing stones. Once you knock the temperature too far either way cities will disappear on their own. The AI tends to freak out alot about that and send investigators everywhere.

[Criptfeind]

Hum, I've been struggling to seal the deal on the corrupt via infiltration strategy. I did a vampire+fishman on an island thing that the tutorial pdf talks about, and although the fishmen became really strong and were able to attack any coastal cities with impunity, and the vampire turned the largest empire into a xenophobic military republic with himself at the head and started expanding, the map was just too big for me to actually translate this to a win. The evidence against everyone in the republic but the vampire started mounting so high that outside countries (and even the suspect nobles themselves) were getting suspicious, and so I shadowed the vampire and started shadowing the second largest empire with fishman raids, but everyone declared a crusade against the vampire empire. I eventually shadowed the whole of the vampire empire and 40% of the second empire, in addition to taking over a few city states and burning down a few others, but then the light bearers appeared and all the little crusades overwhelmed the vampire republic, basically merging about half the map into a massive lightbearer ruler republic as the vampire republic fell after taking out half the minor nations. My vampire was promptly promoted to head of the new republic, presumably for his great service as the only innocent in the old corrupt republic, as the light bearers got to the work of executing all the innocent broken lords. But it was too late, apparently once a lightbearer kingdom, always a lightbearer kingdom, and despite my shadowed vampire being in charge it was still purging shadow from their land. In the end I manged to shadow 44% of the world, 2/3s of the required amount, before the lightbearers took over and the number started dropping.

I think my biggest struggle was ultimately figuring out a way to prevent all the little outside countries from banding together against me, without any ritual buildings I didn't have any way to stop their investigations or turn them against each other once the evidence started mounting higher and higher short of trying to burn them down/assassinate their lord with the fishmen, who could do that a little bit but not to enough of them at once. Perhaps I should have instead tried to focus all the evidence against one lord and once in a while executed them? I'm not sure. Maybe I'll try again with a lord of the broken instead of a vampire in hopes that they don't have constantly mounting evidence.

[etgfrog]

The fish village helps turn nations against eachother, you can also build the church to do a ritual raid on cities that can kill the leader. If you get caught up in the lightbearer kingdom, declare independance using your highest ranking character. You could also get all the top 6 spots then break the kingdom into 5 pieces which should remove the shadow purge.

Even though it isn't well documented, you can press 5 to see if anything has evidence against any of your characters. The alter then tranquility greatly helps stop your population from sending messages and they generally don't rebel against it.

[Majestic7]

It seems that different cities have different amount of building slots, correct? Does that or the maximum amount of defences ever change? Can I grow cities somehow? Are there any news farms or other stuff like that ever built?

In a way, I can't help but think the time limit is too short. It would be cool to play a creeping corruption taking a century to matter, now the time scale is just too fast.

[Zangi]

The game does indeed 'feel' short.  Especially since you can get up to all the crazy in a few clicks.  Which isn't bad, but it is a click to wait till you could react to things game most of the time.
Plus lordlings are perpetual, till murdered.

[Frumple]

Hum, I've been struggling to seal the deal on the corrupt via infiltration strategy.

I think the time or two I've managed a plain enshadow via diaspora type win, I did it primarily through refugees and intentionally getting the cities of my enthralled lords conquered, preferably faster* than anything can manage to suss out the lord was the problem... and even if it isn't, after much of the lower nobility has been fairly well shadowed. If you can basically get the shadow chain to self-propagate, you're in good shape. Making small nations into what amounts to corruption bombs for larger ones, as they conquer cities and integrate parts of the leadership, seems pretty effective. You don't so much directly infiltrate as lace the world with hotspots and let things spread from there, and the fleeing refugees that spill out while a particular city is heating up just helps things (especially if you're using tranquility or dribblers, from what I've noticed).

... I guess basically, what I'd say try is, instead of stopping the small nations from banding together, take some time before you start in on the big one to make them a source of corruption. Hard burn sequential enthralls (getting them killed before moving on, to keep costs down) to make yourself a mess of messes. If they're spreading shadow, it doesn't really matter if they've banded together and are taking chunks out of your nation, 'cause that's still a net win for you

*There was one fun bit where I had a single lord end up getting like three separate nations destroyed/conquered, by repeatedly ruining the city they were in and being subjugated, the promptly working their way into another leadership position and doing it again. People knew the guy was working for the darkness, even, but their nations didn't tend to last long enough to vote for an execution, or were small enough the enthralled's vote could split the execution decision :V

A continent or two ended up getting mostly burned down trying to kill that guy. Was kinda' hilarious.

---

... though I do have to admit, I've used the interpersonal/political stuff basically never, usually just focusing on enthralling/enshadowing one or two city lords and then beelining for population conversion. After that, the passive effects of that seem to work fairly effectively -- if you aim straight at it, even if you spike evidence through the roof and get the entire world to jump you, the damage will already be done by the time the armies arrive. Oddly enough, if fleeing refugees and conquered populations aren't exactly human, the shadow seems to have a relatively easy job of spreading, heh. Or in other words, infiltrating an already compromised population is a lot less trouble.

[Sergarr]

Wow, this game sounds like hell of a lot of fun, judging by the descriptions here. And it's actually, you know. A game. That can be played. That's so bizarre.

[Frumple]

Eeehhh... tbh, describing what happened is kinda' more interesting than actually doing it. Game's got a fair bit going for it, but it's still pretty sparse and a bit clunky in places. Enjoyable and can already make for some nice after action reports, but I wouldn't call it a hell of a lot of fun, quite yet. Definitely a unusually solid foundation, as early-ish development stuff goes, though.

[Fewah]

So after they launch the kickstarter and succeed im expecting a 2year + wait time with very few updates like That Which Sleeps right?

[Frumple]

Hey, you're probably better off expecting that regardless of whether it happens or not. 'Bout the only direction your opinion can change at that point is along the path of pleasantly surprised.

[forsaken1111]

So after they launch the kickstarter and succeed im expecting a 2year + wait time with very few updates like That Which Sleeps right?

Well we're already better off than TWS as there is a working playable prototype

[Mephansteras]

I'll have to try out the demo at some point, just to see for myself where it is at.

[Egan_BW]

PTW?

[Neonivek]

Am I the only one who hopes in the future that you can play more than just the Darkness? Even if the gameplay is VERY similar between the different characters, that they still have differing things that affect the overall gameplay?

>_< sorry I am being really mean to a game.

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Actually finally playing it... It might be a good idea.

It is great to have options, but I wonder if having only certain tools available in certain games might be the better way of doing it.