1) Is there a way to reliably influence heroes likes and dislikes beyond blood magic spamming for combat. I know the hierophant can add some bad influence to rulers but found nothing on heroes.

One of the gods (Iaster) has a way to directly add likes and dislikes to heroes through his tome. He is a grea second god to experiment with because of that. He's also tons of fun and very powerful. If you can make a hero flee from battle you can also make them like or dislike danger and combat more.

2) Is there an agent that can take the ruler influencing beyond what the hierophant can do. Was wondering if there was a way to make them like shadow or bring the bad traits a hierphant can give to level 2.

There are multiple ways you can affect personality, however most of them are opportunistic. When a hero or ruler is mourning it can trigger events that allow you to shape their personality by spending power points.

3) Does the baroness have a role beyond being your "hero killer" once you establish your dark domain? For a vampire she feels really limited in her roles, was expecting hr to be able to turn heroes or make vampire covens etc.

Yes. The Baroness can become the prophet of a holy order and turn them into a vampire cult. After that you can create a doctrine that will get Acolytes to spread the "gift". The Baroness is also relatively good at influencing holy orders, due to her high Command. This also makes her a good commander during battle. I also find that she makes a decent replacement for the Monarch. Not only do you get an achievement for this because it's flavourful, but because the Baroness is usually either: protecting your land or is hanging around the front line, you will most likely find more opportunities to use the monarch powers with her. Also, her high command helps with that as well.

4) Any agent that fits the "vamp/seductress" role? Like i tried finding a way to have some heroes really like one agent then have the agent get killed by the chosen one in the hopes of a vendetta or just hatred being declared.

The trickster has a trait you can pick that makes the 2 nearest heroes like her. Strategically place her on the map near 1 or 2 heroes of powerful houses and then suicide her against the chosen. Some heroes also belong to families (including the trickster), so you can use them to fuel vendetta's

5) Can a civil war break out if the ruling house hates one of the houses in its kingdom, i managed in the demo to cause the empire you start in to fracture into three through some shenanigans causing a house vendetta. However i tried the reverse making the ruling house hate another house in the kingdom but it never lead to anything, but i thought maybe its an issue of limited time.

I don't believe this causes civil war. The monarch will just bully the ruler in question. This can make them dislike the ruler, though, which can help with starting civil wars.

6) What exactly can i do to stop the chosen one from trying to save the ruler i worked so hard to corrupt beyond attacking him or using that geomancy spell. Kind of annoying to have to drop what im doing to stop him quite frequently.

There are 2 primary ways from the top of my head (besides the once you mentioned). The CO's motivation to redeem a monarch is based on the nation's power and how enshadowed it is already. It's usually best to wait to enshadow the capitol until you already have a solid shadow foothold in their nation.

The other thin that will help is to simply distract the CO with other stuff. CO's that LOVE combat and danger are great, because they will waste time fighting orcs and bandits. This also gets them to rest a lot, which you can combine with poison if you really want to slow them down.

As a quick bonus: Sometimes it is nice that the hero redeems rulers. It's a rather time consuming activity, so you can use it as a distraction in order to do other stuff. Redeeming a ruler also has a cooldown.

7) Is the family and heir system better in the full game? In the demo it seems really weird, like one unrelated guy seems poised to inherit half of the entire kingdom despite the ruler or duke having children. Also for some agents they suddenly become part of certain families with no input on my part, is there a way to control that or is it random.

I haven't played the demo, so I don't know if it is different. Families are still quite messy in the base game, though.

These are the things that I can come up with from the top of my head. This game is very deep, so I'm sure I've missed a bunch of stuff. People on this page love talking about this game and helping new players, so feel free to spam us with your questions and observations :)

The Courtier is the best/easiest way to start vendettas.

!) Ok cool, still kind of wish there was a agent whos job focus was that.

2) Hmm, i get it shouldnt be too easy but im not a fan of the rng aspect

3) Ok that is cool, the description described her as ruling with an iron fist but i didnt really see any ruling on her part not even her own little home (do hope she gets a bit of that in the future at least in the dark empire). What kind of things can you do with holy orders? Can you use them to influence the likes and dislikes of rulers and heroes?

4) Yeah i noticed, havent played with it yet but definitely plan on doing so. Still do wonder if theres a plan for an agent type that can do that but more "controlled". Like the classic "fake friend" in some stories, they get close to the people that are important influence them etc.

5) Aw nuts, but how do they bully them exactly i dont recall seeing any national action the ruler can do to focus on a specific ruler. (i did make one game where the three dukes under the queen hated her with a passion, were ambitious and they constantly messed with her she could do nothing)

6) I have tried making the chosen one like combat but no luck so far. I did not know it took into how corrupted the nation is into account. I just tried it and i saw a big difference, the entire nation was corrupted chosen one didnt even try. (It was ironically his home nation)

7) Ok hope they do clear that part up a bit, feels messy. Seems like "spousal" killing also doesnt seem to have any more impact than casual one.


Been trying out more stuff actually almost won the demo (under 201 turns) through a rather silly strategy. But i checked the monarchs traits and i got to say i feel like the 3rd one feels too "restrictive" i mean you have to go wait until the territory is 100% enshadowed before you can make it work and unless you have a lot of connections at once i dont feel like this trait really is worth it. THe second one is also super misleading, i thought it meant that any settlement in the dark empire got 6% enshadowement as long as the monarch was alive and in the dark empire, but its just a 6% for the settlement he is in the dark empire.

Also been trying to make use of the dissident but i just cant figure him out. His bigger abilities are so restricted by the location of the cities in regards to the capital so if you luck out and the cities are super close he becomes crippled.

Originally posted by timlagor:

The Courtier is the best/easiest way to start vendettas.

I noticed he is very good at making characters hate each other but the vendetta is harder as you are a bit more limited in ways you can kill heroes while making sure the vendetta is targeted at right person.

Targeted vendettas are easiest by making your noble agents part of families and having them suicide rushing the target. You can then use the courtier to start a vendetta.

Holy orders can do a lot of things, but they don't change likes and dislikes. They can spread shadow, weaken wards, spread disease, lower awareness, create madness and much more. They can also do the opposite. Witch covens are usually the easiest to start with, but you have to help spread their influence.

Originally posted by Raziel:

Targeted vendettas are easiest by making your noble agents part of families and having them suicide rushing the target. You can then use the courtier to start a vendetta.

Holy orders can do a lot of things, but they don't change likes and dislikes. They can spread shadow, weaken wards, spread disease, lower awareness, create madness and much more. They can also do the opposite. Witch covens are usually the easiest to start with, but you have to help spread their influence.

Yeah i still havent figured out exactly what decides which house they are a part off. Prob a good idea to suicide them when they no longer viable but definitely not spawn them in just to do that waste of points.

The holy orders sounds like a lot of fun but a double edged sword. Shame they dont slowly overtime influence rulers (like a holy order of violence would encourage combat liking.)

They can influence rulers, just not their likes and dislikes. One of the tenants makes believers more likely to go to war with rulers of different faiths.

I also haven't figured out exactly how to influence which house the leader becomes a part of. I believe it has to do with the characters that are assigned to a node, but I'm not exactly sure. The cursed might be a decent candidate if you want to pull this of short-term, since she's also a noble. Her utility seems to be strongest early game, due to her unique trait.

Holy orders can influence a few likes/dislikes of rulers. The abyssal faith moral tenet will cause rulers to like/dislike deep ones, which influences the rate deep ones spread considerably. There is also a xenophobic moral tenet which will cause rulers to dislike/hate the race of a character that generates menace in their settlement.

Say how effective is the commanding battle thing for agents and heroes. I had an army of 133 strength go up against an army of 177 gave the 133 army 52% command advantage and it still loss and i didnt see the damage it was doing go up.

Hopefully you were commanding the right side in that battle. Commanding armies and geomancy empower spells work for me in army battles.

Originally posted by The Grand Mugwump:

Hopefully you were commanding the right side in that battle. Commanding armies and geomancy empower spells work for me in army battles.

I was for sure, but didnt see any real change to the damage. Also been trying to make use of orcs but struggling. Every time i manage to destroy one tiny kingdom all the others start declaring war on me. Am i mean to do retreat to the hills after each war? I got that orc fortress multiply each others strengths and all but they either act so stupid attacking one at a time (like i had cases where 3 armies were sitting in the camp one was getting attacked the other 2 did nothing but looping the "attacking army" objective") or going off to some random spot. Kind of wish the armies would follow where there warlord is and the warlord can generate a good proper army rather than the rather crappy one he can get. Hell if you wanna lock that behind certain things im fine with it like hes gotta have a manticore head he becomes a super warlord and can create a good proper horde on his own.

Orcs alone will always get dogpiled. If you look at the motivations that human, elf and even dwarf nations have to declare war on orcs, one of them is based on the orc's "threat." As the orc armies become stronger, the other races will try to destroy them before their armies become unstoppable.

Basically, the orcs are a dead end by themselves. However, there are ways to help the orcs out. One of the most powerful is to create a human dark empire and send an orc warlord belonging to the subjugated orcs to the dark empire's capital. The orcs will become an overwhelmingly powerful ally if you provide them with the support of a human dark empire.

You can also focus on causing lots of civil war so no human nation is big enough to wipe your orcs out once they become too threatening. Everyone is very unlikely to declare a second war if they're already at war with something else.

Also, fortresses do not multiply each other's strength. The army strength from a fortress is based on the total orc industry in its and adjacent tiles. Though having more fortresses will make the orcs stronger overall, since each fortress can spawn its own army and changing a camp to a fortress or other orc building doesn't impact their industry.

Originally posted by The Grand Mugwump:

Orcs alone will always get dogpiled. If you look at the motivations that human, elf and even dwarf nations have to declare war on orcs, one of them is based on the orc's "threat." As the orc armies become stronger, the other races will try to destroy them before their armies become unstoppable.

Basically, the orcs are a dead end by themselves. However, there are ways to help the orcs out. One of the most powerful is to create a human dark empire and send an orc warlord belonging to the subjugated orcs to the dark empire's capital. The orcs will become an overwhelmingly powerful ally if you provide them with the support of a human dark empire.

You can also focus on causing lots of civil war so no human nation is big enough to wipe your orcs out once they become too threatening. Everyone is very unlikely to declare a second war if they're already at war with something else.

Also, fortresses do not multiply each other's strength. The army strength from a fortress is based on the total orc industry in its and adjacent tiles. Though having more fortresses will make the orcs stronger overall, since each fortress can spawn its own army and changing a camp to a fortress or other orc building doesn't impact their industry.

Yeah been trying that, just that in the demo even the smallest empires have a single army that is 3 times bigger than any orc army i can get. Maybe its not like that in full game but in demo its like that. The main issue i have with orcs is in the demo at least they have like 2-3 tiles to themselves with zero room to expand. So my armies are super limited and have no way to make them better.
I did try to cause wars between nations but again at least in the demo the kingdoms are so reluctant to go to war even when i give them the right traits and hate of the other rulers.

When i said they multiply each others strength that was me using bad vocabulary, but yeah i understood that each orc settlement connected to a fort will cause the army to be proportionnally bigger the hiigher industry in that settlement and neighouring ones are. I do wish there was a better way to keep the warlord alive or "upgrade" him. Tried giving him a shaman as support but as soon as he invades like one kingdom heroes go absolutely nuts for him and even with 2 ogres and a bird or orc warrior he gets killed. (Armies do nothing to stop the heroes or their escorts.) Honestly overall the orc ai needs to be better and maybe give them a small expansion. (Like once they get to a certain size the warlord can be turned into a new type of warlord but keeps all his levvels and such.)

Something fun I discovered is that orc armies will attack escorts that enter their territory, if you give them the chance to anyways. Leading the hero + escorts into orc territory will usually spark a conflict, but your agent has to be far enough away that the hero+escorts can't just attack them before the orcs can respond. If the orcs do intercept the escorts, that will leave the hero leading the escorts defenseless against your agent.

I also have no idea what version number the demo is. The last time I heard, it was significantly behind the release version.

If you are really concerned with the CO's meddling just hire the Spellbinder and imprison the CO for life.