I've been playing the Aristrakh to get a feel for them and I'm not sure about this civ.
First, they spread wasteland which is cool. On the other hand, defilers can only be built on natural resources which are your only source of wood, leather, and seeds. And until they upgrade, they provide only 1 each. You'll be lucky to get many workable ones because of how resources are placed randomly. This dictates where you build your cities more than anything. You almost have to give up on building anything that requires wood or seeds which limits not only your cities but also mana generation which you absolutely need for summons because of your base undead units.
Their undead units are piss poor since they don't even get bonuses from tech. They aren't even stronger than comparable units of tech level to compensate. This means that until they get to late game with immortality-level tech, they have no units that scale.
The fact that they don't get exp is something I can work with since they are cheap and you have more of them, but they need to be more hordelike with cheaper costs and more unit support or let them get tech bonuses. As they are, aristrakh cities are forever stuck replacing units and falling behind in infrastructure. So we have a civ that relies on summoned units until late game but can't get many summons because their cities don't provide enough mana because they can't build those mana generating buildings.
Then we get to the Vampire Palace vs Necropolis choice, which isn't even a choice. Vampire Palace gives you access to 5-6 different end game units. The Necropolis gives you access to one and it isn't even good. The dracolich gets no tech bonuses, it's unique aura and traits cannot make up for 5-6 different units, and finally, blocks access to Nikephoros who has the same unique aura. Necropolis should not block construction of the vampire palace since you can only have 1.
Finally, this may have just been an issue for me, but I can't build the tomb lord. I researched the spell required for the tomb lord, and I still couldn't ever build it.
Aristrakh need fixes.
First, they spread wasteland which is cool. On the other hand, defilers can only be built on natural resources which are your only source of wood, leather, and seeds. And until they upgrade, they provide only 1 each. You'll be lucky to get many workable ones because of how resources are placed randomly. This dictates where you build your cities more than anything. You almost have to give up on building anything that requires wood or seeds which limits not only your cities but also mana generation which you absolutely need for summons because of your base undead units.
Their undead units are piss poor since they don't even get bonuses from tech. They aren't even stronger than comparable units of tech level to compensate. This means that until they get to late game with immortality-level tech, they have no units that scale.
The fact that they don't get exp is something I can work with since they are cheap and you have more of them, but they need to be more hordelike with cheaper costs and more unit support or let them get tech bonuses. As they are, aristrakh cities are forever stuck replacing units and falling behind in infrastructure. So we have a civ that relies on summoned units until late game but can't get many summons because their cities don't provide enough mana because they can't build those mana generating buildings.
Then we get to the Vampire Palace vs Necropolis choice, which isn't even a choice. Vampire Palace gives you access to 5-6 different end game units. The Necropolis gives you access to one and it isn't even good. The dracolich gets no tech bonuses, it's unique aura and traits cannot make up for 5-6 different units, and finally, blocks access to Nikephoros who has the same unique aura. Necropolis should not block construction of the vampire palace since you can only have 1.
Finally, this may have just been an issue for me, but I can't build the tomb lord. I researched the spell required for the tomb lord, and I still couldn't ever build it.
Aristrakh need fixes.