Consulates, use them. Its heck alot better to build a consulate than have a level 1 village until the end of times.

As for skeletons, they're immune to poison! It angers alot of spiders. Once had an spider uprising event happen for the first time only for them to be screwed over by the fact I was running nothing but skeletons.

Don't ever underestimate consulates, slow growth is way better than zero growth even when there is many people who would love to disagree with me

How do those consulates work? "immigrate to an undead city today, get rid of excess flesh! the most effective dietary cure known to man!"

haha, made undying female pikemen at start, at midgame i got 3 more armor rating on them and killed epic strength stuff no problem my Pokey Girlies (yeah its the name i gave em) are invincible the 50% physical resist is like having endgame plate early on

The AI does not yet build outpost upgrades.

That and the Consulates is a very overpowered upgrade imo.

You can have groups with 6 memebers (undying corps?) very early in the game, in my game this was very powerful.

I can suggest to play Patchwork mod. Undead AI is one of the strongest and aggressive there, if not the most dangerous AI opponent.

1. Undead's growth is static. That is, if growth of city is 2+, it's 2+ til it reaches the population limit unlike food. With that and morrigan's call, the population growth can get out of control very easily if you get a couple of death shards.

2. No unkeep on troops = you can rush projects more frequently.

3. 50% physical resistant female ghosts.

4. Spells like haunted army is quite strong for early-mid game if you have plenty of mana source. Very good way to kill strong-deadly monsters in early game if used correctly. Even better if you are sorcerer with skeleton summoning.

With no unkeep, very linear population growth and 50% physical resistance troops make Undead the strongest late game faction for being very weak in early game.

i know that 50% physical resistance is quite strong, but the early struggle is quite strong and makes for a chore of a game. being early game UP and lategame OP isn't really fun / balanced. also i just tried some short starts with the dead and haven't played against them yet, but it would suprise me if the enemy AI will do such a great job and not end up being swallowed quite easily. ladder would be a shame to have, especially because they are a dlc race.

yeah but the main problem is with the AI, it can't handle the dead faction! last game i was first rank in terms of power rating over at least all the races i encountered (50% of them). the other undead race was at the button with around 15% of my rating (not kidding you, i was like 33 and the undead was 6, all other races were 26 - 31).

why add another faction, when the AI isn't teached how to handle the new gameplay.

and its really frustrating, i want challenging opponents to play against and now i paid extra dollar to have another interesting race and now everytime i have at least one race in the bucket which underperforms severely.

yeah, i am forcing myself to play them cause i bought them some days ago. to be honest i regret it to some degree, now if i want a game with some challenging opponents, i have to manually add them which to some degree dampers the exploration part because i know which races i will encounter.

the AI should just focus on recruiting a bunch of troops and play more agressively. also it wouldn't hurt to give the dead a spell to change every shard to a death shard (and teach the AI how to use it).

as it stands now, stardock published a dlc which the AI handle, very bad job.

i just hope that stardock will find the time to repair their dlc, i am sorry but if i pay for an extra faction then please let also the AI be able to handle the faction. this is a singleplayer only game!

C'mon, the next DLC will let you have a trophy wife. I mean, what could be better for gameplay than that?!?