Need Legion of D'tesh Help!

[Gavinn]

So, rife's website is down. This means that the wiki is down too. A search of this entire site via google returns only two threads with a few helpful scraps of information for a player new to the Legion of D'Tesh. The race doesn't appear in the fall further "manual", so I am assuming it was new to this mod? But I also can't find a link to a manual or civ-specific strategy guide for this mod anywhere either.

I've hundreds of hours logged in FFH, but only a few games in RiFE so far. This civ looks pretty entertaining but I find myself having to do a little too much trial-and-error to have much fun at the moment. Can anyone who has played these guys a bit help me out with a bit of a primer on strategies and mechanics specific to this civ? Or better yet, maybe toss up a full strategy guide for some of the civs that don't appear in the base FFH mod for a sticky? Or if there is already something like this and I'm just missing it, a link to that thread would work too!

An entire overview would be ideal, but here are a few specific questions I had.

Do I ash every resource that I can? (Seems to just be for "living" resources? ) Also, the pyre tooltip indicates that they increase research by 1%, but the few I've dropped around my capital in this particular game didn't appear to change my research output at all. Do I just need to stack lots of them before it will be noticeable?

Otherwise, what improvements am I dropping on my wastelands? Or do I try to run specialists?

How do "population cap" increasing buildings work? I assumed that this mechanic took the place of happiness for this civ (since they're undead and building carnivals, etc would seem a little goofy) but I plopped an Eternal Council in my capital and it didn't appear to affect the happy cap. I see no other "population cap" figure listed anywhere.

I gathered from another thread that I should pretty much rush to necromancy, spam death nodes, and build stacks of mages/chosen/lich etc for my warring? Does that sound right? I see they have an entire line of melee UU's. Not worth it?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Aurelazza]

It's been a while since I've played 'em, but here's what I recall:

- They're limited in the number of cities that they can build just like the Kuriotates. IIRC they can build a few more than the Kurios, but not by a whole lot.

- Most D'tesh cities don't get the Kurio 3-tile radius, however, with the exceptions being the city housing their palace, a second city with a national wonder whose name slips my mind at the moment, and presumably a third one if it manages to build the Thousand Slums.

- Their fort equivalent will eventually grow and provide an area of cultural control, allowing access to more resources.

- As a fallow civ, their cities will neither shrink nor grow due to food. The only way they can grow larger is by capturing slaves from living races and ritually sacrificing them to add population points.

- This means that the Slavery civic is your best friend, and you want your army to be largely composed of the disciple units you get from the melee tech line (the skeletons with an increased chance of capping a slave after winning a combat). At least in my limited experience.

- IIRC you can't buy slaves from the Undercouncil, as that would be insanely overpowered.

- The there's no display that tells you a city's population cap; I can't recall the the average's city's base population cap or any non-building factors that affect it, so all I can offer in this department is that you'll know you've hit it when slaves can't be sacrificed anymore.

- Yep, ash each and every plant or animal resource you come across, but save a horse/cow/camel or two for corrupted pastures and automatic nightmares. I don't find it that helpful to delve all that deeply into the horseback tech branch, but the nightmare's bonus is useful regardless, and they make a valuable trading commodity.

- Note that kelp can be turned into aquatic pyres, which don't provide ash but DO provide a helluva lotta commerce.

- Their mine equivalent goes on hills, crypts go where quarries usually go, and just about everywhere else. Crypts don't provide any major yield, but your arcane units can crack them open for something nice.

- Speaking of the arcane tech branch, it's what improves your plot improvements' yields and gives you your civ's hero, so focus on the arcane/melee lines and to hell with everything else.

- Early game growth depends on farming barbarians for slaves with the unique skele-disciple line, and perhaps a minor skirmish or two with a neighboring civ. Somewhere between the early game and midgame, when you're in a position where you could start a war and be guaranteed to slay a lot of the living, pop your world spell for a 100% slave capture rate.

- Death mana is indeed what you want to hoard. Be sure to get a single metamagic node though. Once you have a decent number of caster units and access to dispel magic, turn some of those death nodes into other node types for access to handy spells like fireball / rust / whatever else tickles your fancy. Teach 'em to a handful of spellcasters, then dispell and back to hoarding death mana.

- While the D'Tesh are awesomely designed and awesome to play, some of their units are not-so-awesome to look at. I'd recommend replacing a few art files with those from the Aristikrah from MoM

Hope that helps!

 

[Gavinn]

Thank you kindly.

 

[Ghostslayer]

I haven't played for a long time, but here are a couple of other tips.

- scortch is extremely useful as it allows to turn any terrain to wasteland

- the tower of necro is highly recommended as it will give all your undeads (read all your units!) the strong promotion

- your unit strategy is highly dependent on your leader. With Thanatos (my fav), focus on the recons, they are permanently invisible (except one turn after a fight) and get a poison bonus. Lord DT is more arcane oriented and the 3rd one (don't remember his name) is about disciples.

- arcane units are strong, but they dont gain experience automatically and are upgraded at a higher level. I think a melee unit can help them to boost their experience gain, but I do not remember the actual mechanism.

- avoid melee units. They don't gain experience after a fight (except with a commander) and part of they strenght is turned to death damage (which renders them rather weak against other undeads like Scions).

- always rase cities. You gain the equivalent of the city in slaves and a free settler

Have fun