Shadows of Forbidden Gods – How to Win Without Powers and Gods

Even if you don’t especially know what you’re doing and waste a lot of time and resources, it’s definitely possible to win thrones3 without ever touching a god power. This is a worthwhile way to consider playing because some gods (vinera at present) can’t help you establish a foothold. All current gods automatically win once they get late seals open and can press buttons that give them free victory points, but if you set a custom difficulty high enough this might not beat the turn timer (unlikely though). Outside of extreme cheese (np. some ophanim plays) you’re probably going to be using part of these concepts to obtain a victory, regardless of your god. When things are less up in the air someone should write a better guide, but most of the mechanics from thrones2 aren’t in yet so this will likely be outdated within a month.

Przegląd: Churches and Farms, Witches and Orcs, Monarchs and Vampires

The basic difficulties you will face without a god are at the very start and the very end of the game. Zasadniczo, the tools that you are lacking are:

• No way to infiltrate quickly to get started
• No way to get free victory points to end the game

This guide was written immediately after winning a game with ophanim (reduced agent cap, taking a faith power on the supplicant, and never spreading faith), where I used no powers (my first time trying this), had an incorruptible alliance (my first time trying this, I wasted >150 turns testing how it worked), which I ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up big time and lost several agents early and was running under (my reduced) agent cap most of the game. This is where my victory points came from:

All shadow was initially generated by covens or the monarch’s 2% per turn power.

All settlements were destroyed by orcs, raiding periphery to cause famines or the daughter

I didn’t do anything to encourage the growth of deep ones besides killing and distracting all the heroes at the midgame

Krok 0: Zakręt 1

The very first thing you have to do is check where the chosen one is. This is where you don’t want to set up. If the chosen one gets near you at the start of the game you can very easily lose 100 turns of progress, and if you don’t pack up and leave straight away you can lose unlimited more trying to contend with their ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fast shadow clearing. Absolutely know where they are and avoid it.

This is also probably where the alliance will start.

Knowing where not to go, what you now want to find is the best location which has two things:

• A coven of witches
• A holy site close to that coven of witches

Krok 1: Obtaining agents

What you want is pretty simple: you need to have a 100% shadowed, 100% infiltrated holy site to desecrate so you can get the baroness. The baroness is a good earlygame orc subjagator but more importantly, she’s the fastest and most reliable way to kill everything on the map and mostly neuter heroes. Since you have no infiltrated and/or shadowed cities and deep ones are RNG, you’ll want to rush to her before you can start your midgame.

The start is pretty simple: you need to infiltrate the coven, infiltrate the monastery, and spam worship until you can desecrate, then desecrate. Once you’ve desecrated you’re halfway done. Następny, you want to secure a reliable source of orcs.

The fortresses above me were getting hammered (this one actually dies) but the orcs don’t get wiped so I can still get a warlord later. I’d already lost an agent being a moron at this point, so things are moving slower than they should.

Co ważniejsze, my next agent point can be spent on the baroness.

She’s going to spend her time spreading orcs until I get another agent point to get a warlord out. If you’re at your cap and have points you should suicide with an agent attacking a hero they can’t beat to get the baroness/warlord, the baroness is irreplaceable and the warlord is the only way to spread orcs off of islands or if they get wiped out.

Krok 2: Killing a lot of Heroes

Once you have both agents and can safely commend the baroness to her task, it’s time to kill every hero on the map.

There are already guides for this and the actual dance (the fast version with the baroness or the slow version with any hero) is involved and painful to go through.

Recent changes have made there many more military escorts and heroes much more likely to do tasks other than coming to fight you, so rather than getting it done within 10-20 turns expect it to take 50-100 and be mind-numbing the whole time if you’re used to 0.5 fightings.

All your methods of destroying settlements draw out military escort attacks, so this isn’t a negotiable step.

Krok 3: Farming Victory

Część 1: Cień

Spam worship on covens with high lore heroes. I would suggest having one for most of the game and then two once you have 5 szczeliny. You can’t avoid covens being razed, so make good use of them.

Once you have an enshadowed capital and free slot, spawn the monarch. Give them the any-settlement 2% shadow per turn power, and have them repeatedly lay low in capital cities that aren’t in the alliance until they rise to 100% shadow. This will enshadow the ruler and from there the rest of the country, or cause civil wars if the alliance comes knocking. Laying low prevents the monarch from gaining menace (or profile), so they can continue to do this safely.

Część 2: Destruction

There are three ways for you to destroy settlements. The plague is too slow and too finicky and can’t be done by multipurpose heroes (baroness, orc, monarch) so we’re not using it.

• Orki
• Famine
• Zmiana klimatu

You cause orcs by spreading them with the warlord and the baroness. Once you’ve enshadowed every major non-alliance nation, the monarch can stop using lay low and start using their high command stat to spread orcs.

You cause famine by raiding the periphery. Mostly in villages and cathedrals. The baroness is the best at this due to her huge might, but warlords are also good at it. Co ważne, this can be done fairly surgically to cripple societies that are surrounded by but not part of shadowed nations.

You cause climate change with the daughter and the survivor. The daughter can also raze settlements to speed it up if she’s safe, but you’re mostly better off just hanging around while things turn into deserts. The survivor should bring the snows on choice targets isolated in awkward places or if most of your covens have been destroyed, and otherwise should act as your main worship shadow spreader.

The earlier you can get out the daughter the better because she distracts armies from going to raze covens.

Rozwiązywanie problemów: The alliance

If the alliance can be enshadowed and infiltrated in your game rules, you can trivialize it by having the monarch hang out on it’s capital. This will enshadow the city and cause a civil war.
I wasted 150 turns watching this do nothing with the can’t-be-enshadowed setting. The value rises but it does nothing, the people stay at 0% magically forever, and it rises slower anyway. If you’re playing with the impenetrable alliance, you have to kill it with orcs if you need to wipe it. The alliance seems to cheat to survive famines, but still gets crippled by them and is very warlike so it’ll often be in many wars due to border provinces expanding into and contracting shadow.
Ogólnie, you don’t need to deal with the alliance to win. It’ll go to war with shadowed nations then keep taking and losing territory on its edges due to pressure from shadowed neighbors.