For military-oriented faction, Necrophage doesn't really benefit from going into wars. I found more success playing primarily peacefully as them and using agression only as means of policing (hindering other players, so they don't snowball). Main reasons why I think like that:
#Current Necrophage prefer peace
modest laurel
- Consume is bad. It gives too little to be worth the trouble. Fighting cities is hard and annoying and your only reward is some gold that can't even be spent to replenish your armies. Also, time wasted consuming the city is time not spent fighting minor factions - so, consume is basically a detriment to empire's development.
- Necro like small battles. It doesn't matter, whether there was 1 or 8 enemies in a battle - you always get only one larvae. Wars usually end in a few big fights and therefore will result in player being low on units. When clearing minors and conducting sieges both give similar rewards, choosing latter is unpreferable.
- Losing units is expensive. There never is such thing as "too much corpses" - creating another farmer-army, investing into Matriarch's eyes, Tails or Feedholes, all are better ways to spend your resources, than replenishing loses. Wars are also quite risky for Necro: while any other faction can just quickly rebuild their army in case of failure, Necro can only build larvae, that still require additional meat investments. And getting meat requires spare farmer-armies, that could otherwise be put onto battlefield. So, either Necro doesn't bring part of its army to battle and is therefore at a disadvantage, or they go all-in and risk getting destroyed by counter-attack.
- Not much need in preemptive strike - Necro can send their armies wherever they want and still get back to their capital in case of attack in a matter of single turn. So, there's rarely a situation when Necrophage player is forced to attack someone to ensure their safety. If someone attacks - you can always take fight on your territory, where you're protected by Matriarch's Tails, militia and burrows, that allow you to throw all the army to defense instantly and then immediately get back to farming after all is finished.
- There are always minor factions around. Not having enough targets to attack is rarely an issue in this game. Minor factions have worse armies, they fight dumber than actual players, they won't strive for revenge, while rewards are just as good as if you fought actual army.
- Necro can keep up economically. Post-rework Devour the Land is a decent tool, that allows Necrophage to do fine economically, if not disturbed. They are not on the same level as Last Lords, but they aren't really outsiders in terms of economy. At the same time, going into war harms you as much as your opponent and will reward you less in case of victory (not like there are good rewards for defeating Necro, but at least they get ONE city, you don't even get burrows). If bugs mind their own business and their opponents do their own business, it's not like bugs are getting into any severe disadvantage.
- Aggression relies on titanium, but it is hard to get. Necrophage don't earn as much gold as LL, they don't have any unique resource-granting bonuses as Kin and they don't expand nearly as fast as Aspects. It means that player will generally be at titanium disadvantage almost all the time. Considering that both ranged units and behemoths can't be built for dust, titanium-starving Necrophage will only have feeders and drones at their disposal. Great for clearing small armies. Not great for rushing.
My ideas on how to improve it:
- Make consume better. More resources (maybe with scaling from feedholes), some corpses on top (so losing units in harder fights doesn't hurt that much). Taking city is a risk, would make sense if it gives better rewards, than easier options. Right now, even taking undefended cities isn't beneficial, as it takes a long time, better spent to actually develop economically.
- One larvae per fight disincentives Necrophage from taking big battles. One larvae per enemy stack seems like more reasonable reward to me. It won't really increase gains from fighting minor factions, but fighting major armies wouldn't hurt as much with this change.
While I wouldn't call Necro a weak faction, this part of their kit doesn't deserve to be underwhelming. It makes little sense to me, that Kin, faction focused on defense, and Aspects, faction focused on diplomacy, benefit from wars more than all-devouring swarm. I feel like it hinders faction's fantasy.