I suggest reducing the cost to upgrade the undercities. A minimum cost of 140 food and 15 turns to get to level 5 seems somewhat slow and expensive. Trying to grow multiple cities seeems impractical.

Just started, and it may be that after a bunch of undercity food producers are built it become more manageable.

Following up, seems to me as currently configured this significantly slows down Skaven expansion as they ONLY capture cities at level 1, and the only way to speed it up to plant an undercity 10+ turns in advance, then invest a bunch of food and money to grow it, come by later and defeat the defenses (again) and capture it as a developed settlement.

But, you need a fairly advanced/developed economy to be throwing off a lot of spare food and money to dump into growing 1 or multiple undercities that may (or may not) pay off later.

If works in a campaign, first need a moderately powerful but disposable army to run around razing other peoples cities and planting undercities. But won't have enough food (or money) to develop (many/any) of them.

If it works, could have a big pop around turns 30-50 in the campaign but may get rolled flat before then.

Other races just capture cities already developed, simply grow them and move on.

Again, I like it, just think it will work better to reduce costs (food, money, time) to upgrade undercities. Maybe make upgrade costs adjustable in Mod Config Too, or just cut (in half)?

Thanks! Fun to see how it develops.

Hi marauderB, I thank you for your feedback !

If I understand well :

Building up the undercity main building is way too expensive, in time, food and money.

- For the food: I took for reference the food cost of the original colonization/occupation with food mechanic (20/40/80/120), divised by 2 (because it takes more time, and money to do it).
What I did not consider - and you point it out in your message - is that I accumulate the costs (10+20+40+60 = 130) through building construction ! It result on being more expansive than the 120 food from the original colonization/occupation with food mechanic !

I released an update with the food cost divided by 2 as you proposed : (5+10+20+30 = 65) which looks more fair.

- For the time : it takes to build it up from level 1 to 5 : 1+2+3+4+5 = 15 turns. It's indeed quite long compared to the original mechanic.
But it is relatively short compared of upgrading a province main settlement building from lvl 1 to 5 the regular way, which take maybe 40+ turns ime.
I also take in consideration that while you do it, you can't get progressively higher tier units, heroes, or harness money, compared to normal settlement building life-time.
But in the other hand, while you prepare your new Tier 5 or 4 settlement which will produce a lots of riches and strong units, you take no risk of being conquered/sacked/razed while doing it, because it's an undercity, so it's untouchable through the process. More than that, it doesn't need military presence or overpriced wall buildings and control building (in high difficulty) to exist.

Pros and cons seems to be even to me right now.

Lets bring a few examples to illustrate both options:

- If you just conquered the first minor settlement of your campaign, you can Raze&Expand for about 1200 gold and 4 food. You can then in 1+2+3 = 6 turns, turn it into a level 3 settlement, if you are able to afford the upgrades each turn, and get your T3 units turn 12* (because upgrading your miltary building from 0 to 3 take 1+2+3 = 6 turns too)

Or, if you don't want to rush, you can occupy it instead, to get a level 1 settlement with the growth/incoming skaven building, that can slowly grow into a level 3 settlement (as you take the entire province for more growth to speed up the process).

You can also mix both, and have like the main settlement razed&expanded to rush through to T5 or T4 tier, in which you construct the money building and the growth building, both boosting the economy of your minor province's settlement and adjacents provinces settlements. Meanwhile, the other minor settlements are occupied and produce money and growth for you and their own developement.

How I will define it right now : Undercity main settlement building makes you able to grow cities in a non-growth dependent way, that can be more expensive but faster than any faction early-game, regardless of danger until conversion. It also offer benefits to adjacents settlements buildings like growth, income% increase.

I tend to search a balance between the regular province building tech and undercity conversion tech to make them both profitable in their own way through a skaven campaign. An even mix of the 2 is my vision for now.

*(12 turn for your T3 military?) Through the process of thinking, I decided to change the value main settlement building time values to 1+1+1+2+3 = 8 to compensate the fact that you can't build military buildings while growing the city, and therefore it needs faster upgrading time. that majes your T3 military units available in 3+6 = 9 turns[/b]

Now about the effect of always getting T1 cities from the occupation options that tend to be a downside compairing to the other factions that can "steal" higher rank cities when conquering their neighbours in late game where there is lvl 5 or 4 cities to be taken.
Early on, taking T1 or T2 cities always result on getting T1 cities.
+Don't forget that non-skaven factions taking skaven settlements also bring the settlement to level 1, making it not so valuable to them, and easier to retake for you garrison wise. You can then build it again riskfree through undercity conversion, tho it will take some time.

Finally, the cost ! I used the exact cost values of the regular main-settlement building.
I don't have much to say about that. I increased the razing option income in the mod, helping to finance the first and second settlement building levels. I do stress the fact that undercity conversion is not the main way of doing things, and due to its advantages, it should also have its short-coming.

Money could imo be the reason to mix undercites with regular settlements, as regular settlements benefit from undercities (food grant bonus growth/control through food gauge, income%/building speed% through high corruption, and undercites' buildings grant income%/growth to adjacent settlements.

Therefore, all this extra money can be spent in undercities.

I will keep the settlement building prices as they are for now. I will wait for your feedback regarding the food and time reduction to see if it fix the rough developement curve. I will experience it on my side too, and I will be glad to debate it with you after our testing.

I invite you to test some hybrid combinations, or even convert undercities earlier to see the value that can be earned from doing so.

Again, thanks for your feedback, it really helps me to see my mistakes, and it helps balancing the mod to make it better for everyone to enjoy it.

Thanks - I appreciate your detailed thinking and planning!


Two questions:
- Confirming that If build an undercity, then capture top city, undercity is lost. (Making sure this is intended and not a mod conflict.)

- What happens if other races tries to build under, or if already have? (Dawi, Slanash,...) Any sense or intent for how conflicts are handled?


Will play around and see if I have anything more to add to your excellent work!

I have no idea if this is possible, but it's always irked me that when you discover an under city, you just pay gold to remove it. Could under cities have a garrison? That way when you discover them, you have to wipe them out with your cities garrison, an army, or pay to have mercenary forces help destroy them.

MarauderB :
1) It is as intended. Skaven settlement are "undercities" by definition because Skaven lives under city ruins (The Skaven settlement model is a ruin right?) So "undercities" in-game are the name given to Skaven cities that are under foreign territory, and are more like "hidden cities" in a way.
That is why, undecity conversion is way to turn a "hidden city" into regular one by overtaking the region. And thus, because they are basicaly the same thing, you cannot have an undercity under your own settlement.
Also, to prevent notion of "losing all the money you spent on buildings when converting" which can be frustrating, undercities buildings cost are really low, but as upkeep cost to compensate.

2) There is no conflict in that case. Other races foreign slots follow vanilla rules when the city is taken.
So when acquiring a city, you lose your own undercity, and inherit any inheritable foreign slots the previous city had.
(Note : that you can have multiple undercities, one per Skaven faction, under a given settlement. Same for cults and pirate coves. All of these are called foreign slots).

Thegreatconeage:
Welcome. I really like this concept. I think I have seen it somewhere before, maybe it was in SFO ? I will explore the idea of adding a similar feature in the future. Thank you.

Brief reply to 2nd the interest in a conflict mechanism to get rid of undercities (extending to cults would be great as well if you crack it).

I feel like cost of sacking and establishing an under-city and razing and establishing an under-city should be swapped. Reasons:
1) In this game razing always provides less money than sacking
2) There's an undercity building that buffs razing money already
3) I find 0 sense not to raze every city instead of looting because not only is it lucrative but also destroys my opponent's economy and creates a buffer zone which provides line of sight AND forces to spend turns colonizing before moving to the actual cities of mine

@Krinitz & @thegreatconeage I remember now, it was this mod from WH2 that made undercity battles possible!
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2314208594

I tried to rip off the mechanic for WH3, but the related code is not working due to engine changes between the two games... So, I gave up on the idea.

@Cutiegorgon Thank you for your constructive feedback.
1) You are right. The reason I originally chose that was to encourage razing, as a Chaos-aligned faction. Turns out it is unbalanced.
2) This undercity building’s effects will be replaced in the next update of Skavendom, so it will no longer be relevant.
3) Indeed, you are right.

TLDR: So count on me to make changes to it in the coming update.

Just so you know, I am halfway through this new update, but it's a huge chunk. So don't expect it anytime soon.

Not a fan of duplicated settlement outcome art.

Suggestion:
Swap raze/expand under empire or sack/expand under empire with this some other art, like this TWW2 event one:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/6G1Or

or these AoS skaven art
https://frontlinegaming.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/qcwh3qZf3g9pqY0D-846x625-1.jpg
https://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/dHWPK65BvTCy0N1L.jpg

@Reece sounds like a good idea.
I will look into adding the art you proposed in the next update.

Can I offer the suggestion that you up the tier 2 "safe" money making building to have even 50 more gpt? As it stands it makes just enough to be a net 0 with the other three slots taken up by a main building plus the food and mining buildings, but this means that you actually don't make any money off of the underempire. while i understand not wanting the underempire to be infinity money, I have found in my play that i end up with more food than I know what to do with and very little money when playing primarily tall.

@KrusherJr this is by design. Undercities are meant to generate only food (by raiding the resources of the unowned province) and multiply the money of adjacent regular cities (by transforming those stolen resources into Skaven currency: warp-tokens).

Undercities that are not adjacent to your cities are not "connected" to the under-empire tunnels, and thus cannot help the economy — with the exception of the Ratkin Mafia, which is an organized offshore branch.

Still, I note your suggestion, as a slight rework of the food system from the beta is planned.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.