Living Societies

Living Societies turns the ordinary kingdoms and queendoms of the world into a myriad of different society types with different cultures, economics, and tools to corrupt or ruin them, as well as introducing a selection of powerful independent “landmark” locations that can transform the strategies available to you.

New Societies
In addition to the base game monarchies, wood elves and holy orders, which have all received new options to control and corrupt them and their neighbours if their capital is infiltrated, Living Societies adds eight new society types:

-Merchant Republic: Republics can’t tax their nobles, and trade reduced army size for increased prosperity. Rather than having a stable capital, they hold elections every 60 turns, with the richest city becoming the capital for the next cycle.

-Raider Clans: Clans will routinely steal gold from neighbouring locations to grow their coffers and appease their nobles, making them very stable so long as they can maintain their raiding army, but risking angering their neighbours. If the capital is infiltrated, the player can start temporary wars choose neighbouring settlements to burn down entirely for even more plunder.

-Nomadic Khanate: Khanates contain a powerful Nature’s Bounty modifier that cycles throughout their lands, reducing negative modifiers throughout the entire Khanate while they are free from the location with Nature’s Bounty, and increasing them throughout the Khanate while they are present in the location with Nature’s Bounty.

-Mage Enclave: Enclaves extract food, security and population from their outlying lands, using it to fuel massive capitals with powerful magical defences. Through infiltrating the more-vulnerable outland cities, these defences can be altered or compromised.

-Pharoah Dominion: Dominions are ruled by powerful “Pharoah” heroes who have special quests to support their lands, but their rulers have weakened authority and are less able to manage their lands without help. The Pharoah can be maneuvered out of the way through challenges, or corrupted and recruited by desecrating the Pharoah’s altars.

-Dynastic Houses: The houses in a Dynasty each have their own tradition that empowers its members. You can mutate these traditions into harmful forms by desecrating their ancestral shrines, or deliberately alter the balance of power between the houses.

-Fey Elves: The Fey Elves trade power between the adventurous Summer Court and the reclusive Winter Court every 50 turns (though you can speed or slow this period through challenges). The Summer Court is outward-focused, growing its population and cleansing (or invading) neighbours, while the Winter Court is peaceful and concerned with healing its own lands.

-Umbral Elves: The Umbral Elves have learned balance with the shadow, and will absorb shadow from neighbouring lands to balance out at an amount based on their arrogance. Their ghostly cities can shift across the world in an instant to escape or confront the shadow, as well as to get the drop on their enemies during a war.

New Landmarks
On a normal sized map, the game will also spawn two powerful landmarks the player can exploit, randomly selected from the following:

-Thieves’ Guild: Infiltration will allow you to help yourself to their gold stockpiles, or spend gold to hire Spymasters who can slowly erode the security of even the most well-defended cities.

-Isolated Village: The villagers here practice strange rites that allow them to convert Plague, Devastation and Hunger to Madness and Death. If infiltrated, you can spread these rites to nearby locations and blanket entire societies in madness.

-Free Company: The Company fields a powerful independent army serving the highest bidder. If infiltrated, you can recruit Knight minions and order the army to serve whoever you wish.

-Grand Bazaar: The Bazaar includes a constantly-rotating supply of rare and expensive items and minions. If infiltrated, the items and minions become cheaper, the Bazaar can stock cursed items to lure heroes, or the Bazaar can simply be plundered by your agents.

-Standing Stones: Allows you to create and move a portal between any of its neighbours and any other location on the map, allowing for instant transportation and allowing for shadow to spread to far-off locations through the portal.

-Mage Tower: The Tower’s resources can be used to help your agents branch out into different schools of magic than their primary one, or to acquire magic components such as death, geomantic loci, or specially-cursed souls.

-Sealed Demon: If the wards on its seal are weakened, the demon behind them will tempt heroes with money, power and love in exchange for fragments of their souls – fragments you can then use to corrupt or ruin them.

-Dragon’s Lair: The local dragon is fiercely protective of its lands, but if lulled into complacency (or distracted elsewhere) you can cause it to devastate its neighbours in search of gold, or plant its treasures in cities to draw its ire there.

-Deceiver Temple: Allows the recruitment of loyal, serpent-like shapeshifters who can take the place of killed heroes and rulers with nobody the wiser.

-Haunted Crypt: A self-replenishing source of Death magic that allows any Death magic to perform unique rituals such as raising ghouls to draw death back to the Crypt from across the world, or raising powerful skeleton armies to fight alongside any other undead forces you’ve created.

-Fetid Grotto: A primordial soup allowing you to mutate any plagues on the map into new forms with new effects such as spreading madness, inspiring violent rage, and even acting as a symbiote that increases prosperity for your corrupted lands.

Fully Customizable
Living Societies includes in-game mod settings that let you tailor it to your preferences. If you like some societies and landmarks more than others, you can change the weights of how often they appear, increase the number of landmarks in general, or choose to play with only some of the mod’s mechanics without issue. To access the mod settings, scroll to Living Societies in the Mod Configuration window and click ‘Configure’.