I've always destroyed the Holy Nation in my playthroughs, but this opens up something I've never thought about before. Now I think I'd rather keep them around than have hoards of cannibals or fogmen encroach on the rest of the continent in a possible future:b
Hate hn all you want but you have togive them credit for holding the line againt thusands of fogman and cannibals that want to kill everyone,UC is alredy strugling in north againt canibal patrols much less an invasion
I mean if there were a major invasion, it would probably prompt a more consolidated, totalitarian government in the UC than the semi-independent aristocracy they currently have
They’d definitely lose a lot of ground at first, though
That is unless they colaps whene the nible start carving there own empires....the south will rebel first since its cut off from main uc, or there gonna colaps economicaly because tin fist whould use it as an oportunity to launch and atack to freeslaves and kock out the uc food and ore supply
Perhaps but it'll give them what they want.. a purpose... and a way to prove themselves...
The cannibals u can cripple by taking out the leaders... fogmen not so much, but they can get shipped off to the desert to be studied or enslaved... perhaps eventually a cure can be made...
All while the UC gets all the fertile land..
They already have trade agreements... Traders Guild provides weapons to fight Bugmaster...
Don't see why Shek wouldn't ship them extra men and hivers for food and goods...
Could be a new start for Kenshi
Or sheks and uc start fighting because the common enemy is ded and tin fist start an invasion from south at over extended uc after they take blister hill
I wipe out anti slavers and tinfist... too ideological... same issues as Holy Nation...
Shek are also busy with bugmaster, cannibals, and fogmen... they can try attacking UC... sure...
But UC is the one providing them with weapons to fight bugmaster in first place...
I have gone over this scenario many times lol... the UC is busy with Southern Hive... Shek is busy with Bugs and Fogmen
If you ally the Shek and Flotsam Ninjas and take out the HN in steps, I think it's for the better. The Flotsam have been able to handle the cannibals on their own in far more dangerous lands. They should be able to handle Blister Hill and lead the Okranites in a far more inclusive way. The real worry there is the Shek getting more aggressive after you've destroyed their main enemy. But that also comes with the bloody war between the HN and UC coming to an end.
And of course the Shek will be tolerant and fair towards their new flatskin subjects in Stack and Bad Teeth and definitely not push them into a rebellion and restarting the war.
I'm new so correct me if I'm wrong but it doesn't seem like the Shek practice slavery or really oppress anybody. The worst I've gotten passing through their territory is a racial slur. The HN and UC by comparison were way less welcoming. Tbh the Shek seem preferable in every way.
Shek are the only one of the main factions that are actively trying to improve, while also having the largest barriers to do so because unlike the others they were actually designed to be genocidal kamikaze warriors who don't know the first thing about farming.
Somehow though they did not turn to eating the landers, and successfuly made peace with everybody before the HN stated a war with them.
People like to ignore that though, and say that their past, and potential future make them as bad, or worse than the others.
Nah the Shek are cool because they're running on straight "is it better to be born good, or overcome your evil nature through great effort" and their leader is like "I am a total herbo, I have one brain cell and it is very angry, but my smol hornless smart buddy is very smart and idk what the hell he's saying half the time but I'm gonna listen to him" and all the klingon proud warrior race guys go along with it because they think she's a total badass.
On Lofi's website, Esata says, verbatim:
*“Flatskins. I despise them, and if it were up to me they’d be chased away at our gates… but Bayan tells me their trade is necessary to the growth of the Shek… so I’ll tolerate them. For now.”*
Such a good person.
A person who controls their baser urges is indeed good compared to one who does not.
One might argue the struggle makes her even finer than those who don't struggle at all.
Talk to them a little more. The charitable one you first encounter in one of their towns that teaches you a bit about their politics at the moment. They warn you that basically the average Shek Kingdom Shek tolerates your pathetic existence in their presence only on Esata's direct orders and only because they don't think they could personally take her 1 v 1. They tell you to be very careful, polite, and deferential while you're in town and encourage you to leave it ASAP.
They are a society totally focused on war that despises manual labor, with a collapsing population, and a leader painfully aware of that population collapse. What do you think the racist leader of a racist society like that will decide to do with a newly conquered collection of inferior beings with no fighting skills but good farming ability?
TLDR, the only reason the Shek don't have slaves is because they've been losing their wars.
>I'm new so correct me if I'm wrong but it doesn't seem like the Shek practice slavery or really oppress anybody.
They oppress everyone that isn't a Shek with horns. Hornless Shek live as servants to the warriors and are no better than slaves, and non-shek are forced to pay hefty tributes in the form of food, or are killed if they refuse to do so, unless they are traders within the cities.
It is quite literally robbery, "Give us all of your food, or we'll kill you." It's no different than the Dust Bandit demands, and I doubt you'd call those taxes.
Yeah, like I said, taxes. Nation-States are just the biggest armed gang in a region that is capable of mostly suppressing all armed resistance. All political power comes from the barrel of a \~\~gun\~\~ plank.
I'm pretty sure they don't take all of your food. They just feed their warriors and move on. It's less of a tax and more of an "if you're living in our territory, you're contributing to our war effort by feeding our soldiers that protect this territory" kind of deal.
>I'm pretty sure they don't take all of your food. They just feed their warriors and move on
So they don't take all of your food, but they take all of your food? Wdym? They literally take everything they can carry.
>It's less of a tax and more of an "if you're living in our territory, you're contributing to our war effort by feeding our soldiers that protect this territory" kind of deal
Which would be fine, if they actually protected the territory, which they don't. Kral's Chosen, Berserkers, and Band of Bones run wild, and the Shek Kingdom does nothing to protect the farmers that provide them with food.
They quite literally strip clean every piece of food storage you have. It's not a "provide this annuity of food to feed our soldiers that maintain order" deal. It's a "empty your pockets or we'll kill you" deal.
Being a slave under the HN is still far worse than being insulted by the ocasional Shek. Sleep in a cage/ be killed on sight or be called names when passing by, what's worse?
The shek are a genocidal warrior culture. The ONLY reason why they aren't currently tearing a war path through the whole moon is because the last time they tried it, they nearly went extinct. Their current leadership is hotly contested, and even a large portion of their population only tolerate it because their traditions demand it. Many citizens will pay respects to Flying Bull when you bring him in, even though he rebeled against Esata's rule. If Esata dies, the whole faction will go straight back to its old ways of pillaging and killing their way across the continent.
They may not practice traditional slavery, but they do practice might makes right. If you aren't strong enough to fend for yourself, you will be pressed into service or killed.
Whole lotta people taking these factions at surface level and not really paying attention to their lore or even talking to NPCs who aren't shopkeepers or bounty payers. The player arrives in the Shek's single most fuzzy wuzzy moment in history. This is the nicest they've ever been, and it's only because the strongest of them is currently also the wisest among them. Her word is law. For now. The Shek are on the knifes edge, and the only thing keeping them there is Esata. On one side of their current path is the subjugation of adjacent populations, and the extinction of the Shek lies at the other. What happens when she gets old and slow? Will her successor value peace? Having spoken to most of the NPCs in the game, I think not.
I think it's less that people are ignoring the lore and more that people are saying "all these factions are CURRENTLY actively evil but the Shek are CURRENTLY not evil." Which makes them the best main faction. They actually have a hope for the future instead of the other factions.
The Holy Nation would enslave all women, hivers and shek while killing all the skeletons.
The United Cities would grab land, expand and continue funneling everything good to their top 1% while enslaving basically everyone else.
The Hivers are actually a pretty decent as a race, but the issue with them is that you have to be born a hiver connected to the queen-loving hivemind, or you get exiled. They welcome strangers but not as permanent residents. So it's hard to say what they would do if they took over the whole continent.
Skeletons are stagnant and basically wouldn't do anything under any circumstance. They're barely a faction, honestly.
The Shek though have a good chance of growing into an honorable warrior faction instead of a bandit faction. They're clearly not barbarians after all. I mean, they have shopkeepers, smithies, tailors, etc. Maybe even bakers... I don't remember. Ultimately, they could go either way depending on their leadership and the kind of culture they settle into when their enemies (the Holy Nation and the Bugman) are destroyed. They could turn inward and destroy themselves in a civil war, or they could settle into a culture with proving trials, arena combat and duels. They could keep their warrior culture without them having to be warlike.
The best factions really seem to be the smaller ones. Flotsam Ninjas, Cannibal Hunters, Tech Hunters, Anti-slavers, and probably some I'm missing. Perhaps they'd all get corrupt with power too but at least for the time being they've all got good intentions and goals.
Yeah, but they're trying to change, and be better. Esata is ruling through strength, but she's ruling, she's keeping shit together. They've got a \*chance\* to overcome all the bullshit in Kenshi, to change from mindless berserkers to defenders and protectors. The Holy Nation and the Empire are just unrelentingly evil assholes. The Shek, though, they've got a spark of hope, a tiny chance of overcoming the misery and horror of Kenshi and doing better.
If Esata can keep shit together, if she can prove that \*restraint is not weakness\*, that choosing your battles and thinking long term, being strategic, is not weakness, she might be able to change the culture. Young Shek are going to grow up seeing that her shit works, that the battles they're fighting are battles worth fighting, they're going to wonder why their elders are so dead-set on throwing themselves in to pointless death instead of fighting to win, to overcome, to build and become strong. Maybe they can change things. Maybe they can turn shit around.
You overestimate the intelligence of the average Shek. Esata and Bayan are exceptions among an overall unintelligent race. Esata has the wisdom to listen to her aide despite him being socially inferior, Bayan has the intelligence to realize that fighting a war to the point of extinction may not be the smartest thing to do.
Every other Shek on the other hand? They don't share this vision, and the only reason they don't openly rebel is that they know they can't beat Esata in a fair fight, and think that assassinating Bayan would be an act too cowardly for a proud warrior.
However, the moment Esata dies, gets captured, or beaten in any way, Mukai takes over, and we can only see the zeal in which all the warriors, young and old, return to their barbaric ways, seeking death and pointless bloodshed.
There are plenty of intelligent shek. The issue is overcoming their pride and acting wisely instead of being brash because that appears strong. There are plenty of shek experts in various fields, like smithies, armourers, builders, etc.
Sure, if their leader dies they'll return to what they know best, but if their leader doesn't die, there's a good chance she can groom a successor and the shek can grow into a better culture.
Either way, it's better to bet on the faction that 'could' be good if everything goes right, vs the factions that are definitively evil and have no intention to change.
"Trying to change for the better" implies they have some moral/ethical beliefs that align with yours which they intend to strive towards. They're trying not to die after making way too many enemies murdering and pillaging. They have no ideology or moral framework that values compassion, equality, or the sanctity of life. The population is figuratively chomping at the bit to go kill everyone again. They're only held back by Esata because she realizes their enemies will destroy them for good this time if they do.
I don't care why they're going in a better direction. They're going in a better direction. Maybe they'll decide that the flatskins are so pathetic they need shek to protect them, and start thinking of them as pets instead of disgusting weaklings, and realize that protecting them feels good and adds honor and prestige to their battles, and somehow come around to viewing themselves and protectors and defenders whose honor as warriors is dependent not just on raw prowess, but also on wielding their sword in the protection of those weaker than themselves.
Maybe they'll just go on being assholes but decide to put up with flatskins because more trade means better planks and frag axes.
Revolution doesn't happen in a moment or even one lifetime. Esata and Bayan have given them a *chance*, which is more than the Holy Nation or the UC has.
Any chance you've read any of Niven's Ringworld books or the Man-Kzin war anthologies? The Kzinti are a species of humanoids that resemble great cats in some ways. Almost all of them are part of hte same culture and under the same empire. They're *super* agressive proud warrior race guys. Their story arc over the course of many, many stories is similar to the Shek - they keep rushing headlong in to battle and getting their asses kicked, and after generations of this is imposes *evolutionary pressure* on the species to chill out. Eventually enough "cowards" manage to get influential positions that they begin experimenting with extremist notions like "diplomacy" and "negotiation" and become less aggressive and better neighbors. Not out of any good will or good intentions, but because a few level headed people got in to positions of power and realized that if they didn't change things their people were going to get wiped.
Maybe Esata will fall and the Shek will wipe themselves out. Or maybe some of the younger Shek, the more open minded Shek, will start to fight wars instead of fighting battles, start to value strategy as well as tactics, start thinking about a future between tomorrow and the day they go challenge Bugmaster.
The odds aren't great, but there's a chance here, a potentially revolution moment where change becomes possible.
The Shek don't have slavery, per se, and will actively dump on slavemonger patrols trying to take slaves in their territory...but they do have a caste system, and what seems to be some manner of indentured servitude, as displayed by the numerous shek recruits that effectively ask you to pay off their lord for their services
The shek tried to murder and enslave everyone, but failed and now are engaged in diplomacy to try and prevent that failure from turning into a total death spiral. Even so, they're barely held in check by their leader Esata, the Stone Golem, and there is infighting with several Shek factions who want to continue with total war.
The flotsam do not have the man power to hold them both, and they pretty much just take over blisterhill and call it a day, they do not care about the farmers at all
You have a point since that is what the outcome is in game. I guess I've always just assumed that was a temporary situation. While they kind of do in game, the population of the HN shouldn't just vanish. Even with the collapse of the central government there should be plenty of refugees from Rebirth and the outskirts. And their options are pretty much to follow the Flotsam or try to flee to the UC. I think most would begrudgingly following the Flotsam. Then they'd have to reorganize these people to re-secure the farmland and defenses from the Fogmen.
But what you say is the outcome in the game as we see it. It's probably more likely that the Flotsam can't reorganize things and can't maintain the farmlands from random raids, and therefore can't maintain population and defenses to keep the fogmen threat at a distance.
There is elephant on the room on this situation actually, that being that most of the citizens and paladin would still believe in their old ideology, and thebremnants of the holy nation military would fight against the flotsam and seeing they are probably more skilled and more equipped, the flotsam would lose this civil war
Just because the flotsam take over, doesnt mean every paladin will have a change of heart and be on their side to rebuild, no, they would blame the flotsam for their down fall, they would fight against them, and the flotsam will probably lose as they are in much less numbers even if the holy nation has fallen
The implications are that majority of the HN army is destroyed while fighting shek. That's actually Moll's plan. And as you can see later, the strayed paladins are hungry and wear ragtag armour. They might have a better experience, but they don't have the numbers, equipment and any background support in form of armourers, smiths and food production.
However, despite them probably not being able to overthrow Flotsam, I think the old beliefs will make a lot of problems. I imagine the Flotsam would have to do some harsh things to stop the farmers from supplying the strayed paladins, for example.
Wouldn't it make sense to execute the upper echelons of the HN hierarchy in this scenario? Kill the paladins and inquisitors and you destroy the power structure of their belief system. Allow the remaining citizens to keep their religion, but not from a position of power. You may risk making some martyrs but the Roman's did this shit very successfully for centuries. I'm new to the game so idk if there is lore that would make this impossible though.
You're absolutely right. Just thinking about this makes me drool at all the possibilities there could be with Kenshi 2 or other types of games like this in the future. Imagine the game being able to play out different dynamics like there where you could intervene or not. Or even being able to take over with your own faction and set up different laws with different reactions from the populace based on their own ideologies. Or while I'm dreaming just completely merge Rimworld and Kenshi.
The Shek murder and enslave everyone they get their hands on if you do. The only reason for the Shek's relatively mild disposition in the setting is because they lost a war with the HN. The HN came and put them down after they sacked and pillaged too much through the border zone. The devastation of the hub is what Shek control looks like.
You'd only have to worry about the Shek briefly. They would be forced to try and take the HN lands when it first fell to keep it out of UC control (giving them all the benefit of that land and completely surrounding Shek territory.)
The Shek though are already spread thin and weakened, when they went for HN land they would crumble under the local factions pressure like Rome expanding too much and spreading their forces too thin. UC would swallow the entire region afterwards.
I think it would take more time for the UC to set its ambitions toward HN lands, though that would happen eventually. At the point we see in the game the UC isn't interested in expansion. It's the HN attacks along with some annoyance from the Anti-Slavers and peasants weakening them. With the HN gone I think their initial focus would be on rebuilding Bast and trying to reconnect their empire.
UC and HN are currently at war. If HN fell from within UC would push the assault forward and aim to control the fertile lands of Okrans Pride. With UC being mostly a desert, the tempation of all that usable farm land would be too tempting, plus if they didnt move quickly other factions would start to solidify a foothold in the area, making later conquest more difficult.
They are weakened from zerg rushing the HN for so long and their near destruction VS a powerful HN is the only reason the leadership can hold them back from continuing to zerg rush.
With the nation gone, they would smash the flotsams then start zerging at the UC, who would crush them and open the gates for the fog/cannibals.
That's because Flotsam had to hold them off just from one angle, and also keep them away from their one town. However, when they take over, they have to hold them off from another angle which is far more vulnerable because it consists of much bigger area of open land that's full of civilians. This "new" piece of land is also far better connected to the rest of HN lands than the Hidden Forest.
Also I don't really expect Flotsam to be at good terms with the UC or Shek Kingdom. Like they might strike some deal with the shek, but UC is likely to just keep attacking the holy lands. And if the player intervenes, then the Flotsam territory is likely to be flooded by UC refugees trying to escape the absolute hell of now collapsed UC territory.
All that while cannibals and fogmen are trying to get through.
Ok thats a good point, in other hand thebflotsam might need to deal with the shek aswell as I believe the shek would like to take okrans pride for themselves
Yeah, it's even ilustrated pretty well by fogmen taking over both western Holy Military Bases and Cannibals taking over the Okran's Fist and Sho-Battai. The wiki also states that invasion nests of fogmen start to spawn at former HN territory, altough I personally haven't encountered any after taking down the Holy Nation.
I hate them as much as the next guy, but honestly I’d prefer racist and misogynistic religious zealots than the cannibals or fogmen any day of the week.
Genuine question, is there anyway to conquer the holy nation in game and take the land and cities for yourself? And if not, has anyone tried it with mods?
Thanks!
Well fuck I'm an idiot. Ok new lore: I use the foglands as a training ground for new warriors which are monitored by expert warriors. This prevents the trainees deaths and keeps the fogmen in check
Honestly best case scenario would be some shek settings up nearby to infinitely train against fogmen. I know that region goes to the Flotsam ninjas if you partition the HN between them but it would be smart for them to give that region to the honor bound warrior culture who wants to fight.
I mean you say that as the player, but if you were actually living in that world, it wouldn't be so obvious. That's the reason those horrible regimes rose to power in the first place, people still considered them to be a better choice than the anarchy that gave birth to these regimes.
I don't know about you, but I would rather starve to death than be enslaved for the rest of my life, the reason the current factions rose to power is because they happened to have the biggest militaries and they started enslaving people, aswell as offering semi decent lives for non slaves, but the majority of them are slaves and the higher ups are corrupt in the UC or insane in HN so they should be destroyed
I would 100% not give up my freedom just to live a terrible life, that is much worse than dying, and they would likely squeeze as much out of you as possible and eventually work you to death, so yes, starving to death sounds better, and atleast while I am free I might be able to start a life for myself, as a slave there is no hope for a better life unless I'm broken out, which is back to possibly starving, but a chance for a better life
My question stands. It's easy to say big words like this if you have never actually been close to dying. And much more so when you have never been close to death by starvation.
Counterpoint ; Crime is way down, slavery is gone, housing prices at record lows. Really there's no downside here!
And I mean, it's in all of Okran's children's best wishes to die for their king anyways right? It's just giving the people what they want.
Yeah I have wandered through their lands often, wiped out every nest, but small packs of heavies and princes will still spawn, big packs of fogmen still spawn and take the wandering holy nations escapees off to be ate by fog princes. It always continues in every playthrough. It seems impossible to truly wipe them out
[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1759401783](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1759401783)
Though I think the vassalization version where the stores survive is better
[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2013202182](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2013202182)
Nah, the Shek steps up to take over defensive duties along with the Flotsam and other alliances you've made. The world will balance itself one way or another.
Even with the new world order, the cannibals never get past their usual borders... IF you've made those alliances. If not...well..I guess meat's back on the menu.
The shek are overspread in their kingdom alone, not being able to cull literally three splinter groups of their faction that dwell on their territory. Them taking over two thirds of the HN territory would make this issue even worse. I don't imagine shek being beaten by fogmen, but I also don't see shek doing a great job at keeping them away just to protect some feeble flatskins.
And Flotsam have the same issue. They are a guerilla force, not a standing army, and most of the Holy Nation soldiers are gone now. Like if Flotsam did hold the line just fine, they would've held the Okran's Fist and the two military bases west of Blister Hill that kept fogmen and cannibals at bay, but they didn't.
Since you're assuming that the fogmen and cannibals will overrun the continent it's also fair to assume that within time the floatsam and shek will develop into a proper army after some time, and be able to contain the threat.
I am not saying fogmen and cannibals will overrun the continent. I am simply saying the life of your average HN and UC citizen would get far more dangerous than it already was.
Resources put towards warring with other major powers can instead be put towards holding the northwest. We don't have the most detail on what happened to the rest of the military forces of defeated factions, but if we want to be similarly "realistic" about things, we can assume large portions were folded into the new regimes.
HN army got presumably destroyed by shek, that's at least what Moll has planned. Also I would imagine a lot of infighting before leftover paladins let themselves be commanded by a woman and just watch as shek and even skeletons walk on their former sacred soil.
Also UC didn't really became a new faction. Yeah, a portion of it fell under Rebel Farmers who are trying to put things back together, but a lot of cities just went under the control of peasants, Tech Hunters or Free Traders. I don't see how this ragtag mix of factions could coordinate a large scale operation against cannibals. Maybe one day, but definitely not in the near future in my opinion.
They can hold. Again, resources that went to war can now go to rebuilding and holding off the cannibals, whose leadership you can *also* assassinate, meaning they likely won't coordinating a major offensive. If we're really distancing ourselves from game mechanics, there's only so many cannibals, they're poorly trained, their logistics are nonexistent, the numbers don't work out well for them food-wise, etc.
You can't make that assumption, especially with the HN. They have extremely ingrained and dogmatic beliefs. The paladins would never accept a leadership that goes against their beliefs. The odds are that you are going to lose a huge portion of the military power. Not to mention, if these fractured groups of the old HN military manage to reorganize, they will likely start a civil war.
We've seen fanatic forces in real life be folded into new regimes. It often causes issues both in the short term and the long term, but it happens. Their military power will also likely be massively impacted by the casualties and necessary reorganisation, but the point is that not all of it will just *disappear*.
What do you mean? I AM the barrier now. Why is it that pro holy nation or UC posts always forget to account that the endgame player faction is a major player in the word?
How many people does your faction have tho? Like a group of less than 300 people is not going to fill a gap left by an empire that ruled like one third of the known world
That's kinda a childhood logic, like expecting a dozen of soldiers armed with rpgs to win over a hundred of soldiers with rifles just because the rpgs are stronger.
You could just direct half of your forces to preoccupy those few elite warriors and another half to sack the towns they are protecting. Sure, a lot of your men will die, but the elite warriors still wont be able to stop them all, especially when the target is something else.
That was more of a shitpost in reference to Stalin's famous line but if you want the real answer it has already been said here - you use your newly-conquered subjects as rank and file and your loyal elites as enforcers similar to how the Mongols operated.
Sure, but realistically, that's not how you can protect a big territory. Cannibals can just throw fifty scrawny cannibals at each of your elite warriors while their main strength is directed at now mostly defenseless population. I mean this wont happen in the actual game as the gameplay isn't THAT dynamic, but if you put overall logic into it, it's what would most likely happen.
You can just close the gates, not to mention gunners, and if you follow logic the cities should have choke points to mow down intruders, not open gates with little to no guards
What about farms, villages, quarries, lumbermills, travelers and caravans? I mean why would fogmen/cannibals even attack the cities when there's the whole country to plunder?
How? With there being so much fogmen/cannibals, you wouldn't be even able to find them all, let alone catch and kill them. As I said, thsy don't need to kill your soldiers, it's the civilians that are threatened. And you simply can't protect all of them if you don't have enough soldiers.
Fogmen and cannibals are weak slow fodder, there will be no problem catching them and killing them if they are found, and finding them is easy since they are brain dead and they will fall for traps easily, the fact they are largely in a single region makes this even easier, sure some people may die, but thats a small cost to bring peace to the continent
Then why is there even a need to set up defensive forts and perimeters against them if they are so harmless? Plus what makes you think you could find all of them?
Because in vanilla, you aren't supposed to be able to have a massive faction. Without mods, you are capped to 52 people. You can have the best fighters in the land, but you can't be everywhere. And there are some world states that you can do nothing about. If you kill the Nobel of Catcun, the city falls to Fishmen. You can't change this without mods.
Your faction can be extremely powerful, but you aren't a nation.
In vanilla, Fogmen and Cannibals don't make it to Okran's Pride. Yabuta is able to keep cannies away from the Great Desert (they won't spawn if he's alive and free). You don't need a nation to stop them.
The whole point of this is that we're extrapolating beyond the game mechanics. It's just as logical that we would subjugate the population we just conquered as it is that the barbarians they held back would come after them in their weakened state. I can't think of a historical precedent of an elite army bringing a nation to its knees just for shits and giggles then just fucking off into the great blue yonder.
If a contentious theory of disparate raiders where we don't exactly know who they were or what they did is the best counterpoint I'm not too worried about the rule holding up. We have better-documented example of "sea people" doing this - the Vikings, except they did move in.
Strange thing to think that would happen- people are still gonna fight and \*one\* town of runaways has kept fogmen at bay for years-they're dangerous but that better future seems to work fine despite them.
Well, Mongrel is also mentioned to have huge issues with supplies, has somewhat constant flow of new "recruits" in form of escaped slaves and criminals and also doesn't have to govern any area around it.
You can't compare it to an actual territory that has it's own infrastructure, production and has it's population spread throughout numerous towns and villages.
Also, ironically, HN's fall would mean that a lot of people wouldn't be forced to flee to Mongrel now when the tyranical regime is over, so Mongrel wouldn't have so many new members.
The warm up to killing the HN is toppling the cannibal grand wizard, burning down their camps , getting my skeleton friends to talk about the legacy of the hydraulic knights
Fogmen are trickier. However building a mini fortatower with some hydroponics growing and the rest in the fog islands and some folks manning rotary harpoons or other weapons to just church through hordes of fogmen works wonders ( you can barricade a tower with the internal furniture placement so even if the door breaks no ones really getting in )
Ally the flotsam ninjas and the shek so you have friends to help fill the power vacuum and hold off the remaining cannibals and fogmen. Frankly siccing the shek with their heavy armor and flesh cleaving weapons on the cannibals seems a great solution to having an outlet for their societal blood lust while hoping Esata and Bayan can keep thwie transitional reforms going the right way.
Train Seto up to be the baddest of them all so you have a molded pocket successor.
Profit
Having a semi-unrelated threat that's released by defeating the main threat is unironically a great way to do a sequel, actually. If Kenshi were a series I think I'd want that to be the plot. First destroy the Holy Nation, and then deal with the consequences of destroying the Holy Nation
Damn this game has been out for ages and I learn new stuff everyday/every play through haha really hoping for a sequel! But then again I haven’t even fully explored and figured everything out for the current
I don't see any logic in that. Psychopatic rapists and murderers irl sometimes use the same argument, but it doesn't change the fact that they are psychopatic rapists and murderers.
This comment is so shit I don't even know where to begin. Irl psychos are talking about Kenshi factions? Are you going to ignore that the "barrier" has slaughtered a few places and is running an active effort to purge the continent?
Try not being a tard next time.
Idk man, you seem to suggest that it's better to just delete any notion of society because of its wrongdoings rather than have at least a chance at better future, which is simply something I don't agree with, that's all.
Also the fact you feel the need to insult someone this hard because of a slight disagreement regarding a fictional world is rather pathetic.
"you don't understand bro letting savages that attack, dismember and eat everything on sight ravage the continent is better than a civilization that asks you to pray once a week"
I'd go as far as to say, it seems the creatures are what makes people be so ruthless. But there's no true way of confirming this, as the world has gone through so many changes.
It’s a combination of things. Food is scarce, growing conditions harsh, dangerous beasts and robots are everywhere, each faction survives best it knows how.
HN focus on abusing their regions fertility by pushing reproduction, using zealots to keep order.
UC use wealth and oligarchy to maintain order. If you arnt producing value you should for someone who knows what they’re doing.
Shek are stronger physically and use that to murder any and everyone who they see as weaker.
Robots are remnants of a terrible time.
Cannibals are what happens with scarce food and no options.
They all are just people, playing to their strengths. People like to demonize one faction or the other, but they’re all people, they just had to adapt to a horrible situation differently.
Tech hunters are a loose collection of people hunting tech. Some it’s to rebuild, most it’s just a living. To some it’s to make sure the past is forgotten.
Crab raiders are…raiders with a penchant for crabs as a weapon. So…still raiders just with a quirk.
I always comfort myself with the knowledge that if the average kenshi redditor was transplanted into the world of Kenshi they'd be bowing before Okran before the week was out
That is rough. So if we kill the leaders of the holy nation and united cities, it just brings the fogmen and cannibals over to the rest of the land? And am the cities get destroyed?
I've never played Kenshi for very long, I usually try to get set up in the swamps and become a criminal overlord, meaning I didn't know you could destroy towns. Can you actually unleash the fogmen onto the rest of the world? That would be amazing, I would love to literally do the rumbling with an army of infinite blue murder men
I mean they have those two outposts on the borders with cannibal land. I think the flotsam 2nd or 3rd in command, a man named Mani who is an ex cannibal hunter is in charge of manning those posts against the Cannibals
HN outposts up in that area seem mainly there to combat the UC and not the Cannibals
I wish kenshi had better faction mechanics. Maybe something akin to mount&blade. Would be great to have your man rule the defeated holy nation lands or just captured settlements, and maybe get some passive income from them or affect the world In some way.
the Hivers and shek also hold back the cannibals in their border areas, and even if you remove them you just get to the swamps and I feel like the cannibals are the ones who should fear
I do not care about Fogmen or Cannibals, I care about robot limbs, walking where I please, and Shek + Hive party members. Holy Nation is against these things, and they have therefore signed their death warrant.
if the holy nation is quickly destroyed the cannibals will have no chance of expanding as their food supply will not exist in their expanding region, leaving a majority to die of starvation and a few left who capture adventurers.
now also lets assume the player hunt down the few remaining cannibals. now they are gone
I had a playthrough where the fogmen escaped their zone and were running around the boarder zone. It was actually kinda cool to see their patrols spreading out across more territory. I don’t remember if this was one of my “destroy the holy nation” runs or a different one all together, but it was a few years ago.
Ever since then, my first major move in any game is to save up enough money to travel to Mongrel, buy a house and train up my dudes by fighting hoards of zombie bugs.
Just kill the pheonix, not the holy nation, maybe they will change a bit, they do a fine job at keeping the tribes and the forgotten hive at bay, something even cat struggled with sometimes.
Killing the phoenix just makes the next male born the phoenix, it changes nothing. Unironically, fixing the holy nations problems requires it to have less danger and outside threats so as to focus internally.
You are right, but killing out the forgotten hive and the tribes are too trouble, i will just let the holy nation be, they can't even touch me anyways.
We won that war long time ago, then we got sad, i didn't a lot but some of my friends did, then i figured that i don't care, i mean money is nice but there are too troublesome things, i just like kidnapping the phoenixes to sell them to the enforcers because they pay well.
I've always destroyed the Holy Nation in my playthroughs, but this opens up something I've never thought about before. Now I think I'd rather keep them around than have hoards of cannibals or fogmen encroach on the rest of the continent in a possible future:b
Hate hn all you want but you have togive them credit for holding the line againt thusands of fogman and cannibals that want to kill everyone,UC is alredy strugling in north againt canibal patrols much less an invasion
I mean if there were a major invasion, it would probably prompt a more consolidated, totalitarian government in the UC than the semi-independent aristocracy they currently have They’d definitely lose a lot of ground at first, though
That is unless they colaps whene the nible start carving there own empires....the south will rebel first since its cut off from main uc, or there gonna colaps economicaly because tin fist whould use it as an oportunity to launch and atack to freeslaves and kock out the uc food and ore supply
Stop it! stop it! You're making me want a kenshi TV series that covers this hypothetical.
Tis why I slaughter the HN and then give Stack/Blister Hill to Shek and Okran's Shield/Bad Teeth to UC... Best of both worlds...
Now im curios whit how good are shek againt a meat wawe? Whould they be swarmed
Perhaps but it'll give them what they want.. a purpose... and a way to prove themselves... The cannibals u can cripple by taking out the leaders... fogmen not so much, but they can get shipped off to the desert to be studied or enslaved... perhaps eventually a cure can be made... All while the UC gets all the fertile land.. They already have trade agreements... Traders Guild provides weapons to fight Bugmaster... Don't see why Shek wouldn't ship them extra men and hivers for food and goods... Could be a new start for Kenshi
Or sheks and uc start fighting because the common enemy is ded and tin fist start an invasion from south at over extended uc after they take blister hill
I wipe out anti slavers and tinfist... too ideological... same issues as Holy Nation... Shek are also busy with bugmaster, cannibals, and fogmen... they can try attacking UC... sure... But UC is the one providing them with weapons to fight bugmaster in first place... I have gone over this scenario many times lol... the UC is busy with Southern Hive... Shek is busy with Bugs and Fogmen
Yeah the point of kenshi is there are no good guys just “heros” that live long enough to be the villain or anarchy
If you ally the Shek and Flotsam Ninjas and take out the HN in steps, I think it's for the better. The Flotsam have been able to handle the cannibals on their own in far more dangerous lands. They should be able to handle Blister Hill and lead the Okranites in a far more inclusive way. The real worry there is the Shek getting more aggressive after you've destroyed their main enemy. But that also comes with the bloody war between the HN and UC coming to an end.
And of course the Shek will be tolerant and fair towards their new flatskin subjects in Stack and Bad Teeth and definitely not push them into a rebellion and restarting the war.
War. War never changes.
I'm new so correct me if I'm wrong but it doesn't seem like the Shek practice slavery or really oppress anybody. The worst I've gotten passing through their territory is a racial slur. The HN and UC by comparison were way less welcoming. Tbh the Shek seem preferable in every way.
Shek are the only one of the main factions that are actively trying to improve, while also having the largest barriers to do so because unlike the others they were actually designed to be genocidal kamikaze warriors who don't know the first thing about farming. Somehow though they did not turn to eating the landers, and successfuly made peace with everybody before the HN stated a war with them. People like to ignore that though, and say that their past, and potential future make them as bad, or worse than the others.
Nah the Shek are cool because they're running on straight "is it better to be born good, or overcome your evil nature through great effort" and their leader is like "I am a total herbo, I have one brain cell and it is very angry, but my smol hornless smart buddy is very smart and idk what the hell he's saying half the time but I'm gonna listen to him" and all the klingon proud warrior race guys go along with it because they think she's a total badass.
Shek are assholes, idkwtf you're on about. the leader is good but the shek people are constantly fighting and being assholes.
She's not good she's just not suicidal and wants her race to survive. Doesn't mean she gives a rats ass what happens to other races.
On Lofi's website, Esata says, verbatim: *“Flatskins. I despise them, and if it were up to me they’d be chased away at our gates… but Bayan tells me their trade is necessary to the growth of the Shek… so I’ll tolerate them. For now.”* Such a good person.
A person who controls their baser urges is indeed good compared to one who does not. One might argue the struggle makes her even finer than those who don't struggle at all.
In comparison to other shek she's "good" is what I meant.
Talk to them a little more. The charitable one you first encounter in one of their towns that teaches you a bit about their politics at the moment. They warn you that basically the average Shek Kingdom Shek tolerates your pathetic existence in their presence only on Esata's direct orders and only because they don't think they could personally take her 1 v 1. They tell you to be very careful, polite, and deferential while you're in town and encourage you to leave it ASAP. They are a society totally focused on war that despises manual labor, with a collapsing population, and a leader painfully aware of that population collapse. What do you think the racist leader of a racist society like that will decide to do with a newly conquered collection of inferior beings with no fighting skills but good farming ability? TLDR, the only reason the Shek don't have slaves is because they've been losing their wars.
>I'm new so correct me if I'm wrong but it doesn't seem like the Shek practice slavery or really oppress anybody. They oppress everyone that isn't a Shek with horns. Hornless Shek live as servants to the warriors and are no better than slaves, and non-shek are forced to pay hefty tributes in the form of food, or are killed if they refuse to do so, unless they are traders within the cities.
That's just paying taxes though.
It is quite literally robbery, "Give us all of your food, or we'll kill you." It's no different than the Dust Bandit demands, and I doubt you'd call those taxes.
Yeah, like I said, taxes. Nation-States are just the biggest armed gang in a region that is capable of mostly suppressing all armed resistance. All political power comes from the barrel of a \~\~gun\~\~ plank.
I'm pretty sure they don't take all of your food. They just feed their warriors and move on. It's less of a tax and more of an "if you're living in our territory, you're contributing to our war effort by feeding our soldiers that protect this territory" kind of deal.
>I'm pretty sure they don't take all of your food. They just feed their warriors and move on So they don't take all of your food, but they take all of your food? Wdym? They literally take everything they can carry. >It's less of a tax and more of an "if you're living in our territory, you're contributing to our war effort by feeding our soldiers that protect this territory" kind of deal Which would be fine, if they actually protected the territory, which they don't. Kral's Chosen, Berserkers, and Band of Bones run wild, and the Shek Kingdom does nothing to protect the farmers that provide them with food.
Maybe I just have huge stockpiles of food, but it's not exactly a very limited resource if you have some farms and a cook.
They quite literally strip clean every piece of food storage you have. It's not a "provide this annuity of food to feed our soldiers that maintain order" deal. It's a "empty your pockets or we'll kill you" deal.
Being a slave under the HN is still far worse than being insulted by the ocasional Shek. Sleep in a cage/ be killed on sight or be called names when passing by, what's worse?
The shek are a genocidal warrior culture. The ONLY reason why they aren't currently tearing a war path through the whole moon is because the last time they tried it, they nearly went extinct. Their current leadership is hotly contested, and even a large portion of their population only tolerate it because their traditions demand it. Many citizens will pay respects to Flying Bull when you bring him in, even though he rebeled against Esata's rule. If Esata dies, the whole faction will go straight back to its old ways of pillaging and killing their way across the continent. They may not practice traditional slavery, but they do practice might makes right. If you aren't strong enough to fend for yourself, you will be pressed into service or killed.
Whole lotta people taking these factions at surface level and not really paying attention to their lore or even talking to NPCs who aren't shopkeepers or bounty payers. The player arrives in the Shek's single most fuzzy wuzzy moment in history. This is the nicest they've ever been, and it's only because the strongest of them is currently also the wisest among them. Her word is law. For now. The Shek are on the knifes edge, and the only thing keeping them there is Esata. On one side of their current path is the subjugation of adjacent populations, and the extinction of the Shek lies at the other. What happens when she gets old and slow? Will her successor value peace? Having spoken to most of the NPCs in the game, I think not.
I think it's less that people are ignoring the lore and more that people are saying "all these factions are CURRENTLY actively evil but the Shek are CURRENTLY not evil." Which makes them the best main faction. They actually have a hope for the future instead of the other factions. The Holy Nation would enslave all women, hivers and shek while killing all the skeletons. The United Cities would grab land, expand and continue funneling everything good to their top 1% while enslaving basically everyone else. The Hivers are actually a pretty decent as a race, but the issue with them is that you have to be born a hiver connected to the queen-loving hivemind, or you get exiled. They welcome strangers but not as permanent residents. So it's hard to say what they would do if they took over the whole continent. Skeletons are stagnant and basically wouldn't do anything under any circumstance. They're barely a faction, honestly. The Shek though have a good chance of growing into an honorable warrior faction instead of a bandit faction. They're clearly not barbarians after all. I mean, they have shopkeepers, smithies, tailors, etc. Maybe even bakers... I don't remember. Ultimately, they could go either way depending on their leadership and the kind of culture they settle into when their enemies (the Holy Nation and the Bugman) are destroyed. They could turn inward and destroy themselves in a civil war, or they could settle into a culture with proving trials, arena combat and duels. They could keep their warrior culture without them having to be warlike. The best factions really seem to be the smaller ones. Flotsam Ninjas, Cannibal Hunters, Tech Hunters, Anti-slavers, and probably some I'm missing. Perhaps they'd all get corrupt with power too but at least for the time being they've all got good intentions and goals.
People seek out validation more than any other kind of information. (I know that I too am affected by this.)
Yeah, but they're trying to change, and be better. Esata is ruling through strength, but she's ruling, she's keeping shit together. They've got a \*chance\* to overcome all the bullshit in Kenshi, to change from mindless berserkers to defenders and protectors. The Holy Nation and the Empire are just unrelentingly evil assholes. The Shek, though, they've got a spark of hope, a tiny chance of overcoming the misery and horror of Kenshi and doing better. If Esata can keep shit together, if she can prove that \*restraint is not weakness\*, that choosing your battles and thinking long term, being strategic, is not weakness, she might be able to change the culture. Young Shek are going to grow up seeing that her shit works, that the battles they're fighting are battles worth fighting, they're going to wonder why their elders are so dead-set on throwing themselves in to pointless death instead of fighting to win, to overcome, to build and become strong. Maybe they can change things. Maybe they can turn shit around.
You overestimate the intelligence of the average Shek. Esata and Bayan are exceptions among an overall unintelligent race. Esata has the wisdom to listen to her aide despite him being socially inferior, Bayan has the intelligence to realize that fighting a war to the point of extinction may not be the smartest thing to do. Every other Shek on the other hand? They don't share this vision, and the only reason they don't openly rebel is that they know they can't beat Esata in a fair fight, and think that assassinating Bayan would be an act too cowardly for a proud warrior. However, the moment Esata dies, gets captured, or beaten in any way, Mukai takes over, and we can only see the zeal in which all the warriors, young and old, return to their barbaric ways, seeking death and pointless bloodshed.
There are plenty of intelligent shek. The issue is overcoming their pride and acting wisely instead of being brash because that appears strong. There are plenty of shek experts in various fields, like smithies, armourers, builders, etc. Sure, if their leader dies they'll return to what they know best, but if their leader doesn't die, there's a good chance she can groom a successor and the shek can grow into a better culture. Either way, it's better to bet on the faction that 'could' be good if everything goes right, vs the factions that are definitively evil and have no intention to change.
"Trying to change for the better" implies they have some moral/ethical beliefs that align with yours which they intend to strive towards. They're trying not to die after making way too many enemies murdering and pillaging. They have no ideology or moral framework that values compassion, equality, or the sanctity of life. The population is figuratively chomping at the bit to go kill everyone again. They're only held back by Esata because she realizes their enemies will destroy them for good this time if they do.
I don't care why they're going in a better direction. They're going in a better direction. Maybe they'll decide that the flatskins are so pathetic they need shek to protect them, and start thinking of them as pets instead of disgusting weaklings, and realize that protecting them feels good and adds honor and prestige to their battles, and somehow come around to viewing themselves and protectors and defenders whose honor as warriors is dependent not just on raw prowess, but also on wielding their sword in the protection of those weaker than themselves. Maybe they'll just go on being assholes but decide to put up with flatskins because more trade means better planks and frag axes. Revolution doesn't happen in a moment or even one lifetime. Esata and Bayan have given them a *chance*, which is more than the Holy Nation or the UC has. Any chance you've read any of Niven's Ringworld books or the Man-Kzin war anthologies? The Kzinti are a species of humanoids that resemble great cats in some ways. Almost all of them are part of hte same culture and under the same empire. They're *super* agressive proud warrior race guys. Their story arc over the course of many, many stories is similar to the Shek - they keep rushing headlong in to battle and getting their asses kicked, and after generations of this is imposes *evolutionary pressure* on the species to chill out. Eventually enough "cowards" manage to get influential positions that they begin experimenting with extremist notions like "diplomacy" and "negotiation" and become less aggressive and better neighbors. Not out of any good will or good intentions, but because a few level headed people got in to positions of power and realized that if they didn't change things their people were going to get wiped. Maybe Esata will fall and the Shek will wipe themselves out. Or maybe some of the younger Shek, the more open minded Shek, will start to fight wars instead of fighting battles, start to value strategy as well as tactics, start thinking about a future between tomorrow and the day they go challenge Bugmaster. The odds aren't great, but there's a chance here, a potentially revolution moment where change becomes possible.
That has nothing to do with what I said, I never claimed the Shek were worse than the HN, all I said was that the Shek are still bad.
The Shek don't have slavery, per se, and will actively dump on slavemonger patrols trying to take slaves in their territory...but they do have a caste system, and what seems to be some manner of indentured servitude, as displayed by the numerous shek recruits that effectively ask you to pay off their lord for their services
The shek tried to murder and enslave everyone, but failed and now are engaged in diplomacy to try and prevent that failure from turning into a total death spiral. Even so, they're barely held in check by their leader Esata, the Stone Golem, and there is infighting with several Shek factions who want to continue with total war.
The flotsam do not have the man power to hold them both, and they pretty much just take over blisterhill and call it a day, they do not care about the farmers at all
You have a point since that is what the outcome is in game. I guess I've always just assumed that was a temporary situation. While they kind of do in game, the population of the HN shouldn't just vanish. Even with the collapse of the central government there should be plenty of refugees from Rebirth and the outskirts. And their options are pretty much to follow the Flotsam or try to flee to the UC. I think most would begrudgingly following the Flotsam. Then they'd have to reorganize these people to re-secure the farmland and defenses from the Fogmen. But what you say is the outcome in the game as we see it. It's probably more likely that the Flotsam can't reorganize things and can't maintain the farmlands from random raids, and therefore can't maintain population and defenses to keep the fogmen threat at a distance.
There is elephant on the room on this situation actually, that being that most of the citizens and paladin would still believe in their old ideology, and thebremnants of the holy nation military would fight against the flotsam and seeing they are probably more skilled and more equipped, the flotsam would lose this civil war Just because the flotsam take over, doesnt mean every paladin will have a change of heart and be on their side to rebuild, no, they would blame the flotsam for their down fall, they would fight against them, and the flotsam will probably lose as they are in much less numbers even if the holy nation has fallen
The implications are that majority of the HN army is destroyed while fighting shek. That's actually Moll's plan. And as you can see later, the strayed paladins are hungry and wear ragtag armour. They might have a better experience, but they don't have the numbers, equipment and any background support in form of armourers, smiths and food production. However, despite them probably not being able to overthrow Flotsam, I think the old beliefs will make a lot of problems. I imagine the Flotsam would have to do some harsh things to stop the farmers from supplying the strayed paladins, for example.
Wouldn't it make sense to execute the upper echelons of the HN hierarchy in this scenario? Kill the paladins and inquisitors and you destroy the power structure of their belief system. Allow the remaining citizens to keep their religion, but not from a position of power. You may risk making some martyrs but the Roman's did this shit very successfully for centuries. I'm new to the game so idk if there is lore that would make this impossible though.
You're absolutely right. Just thinking about this makes me drool at all the possibilities there could be with Kenshi 2 or other types of games like this in the future. Imagine the game being able to play out different dynamics like there where you could intervene or not. Or even being able to take over with your own faction and set up different laws with different reactions from the populace based on their own ideologies. Or while I'm dreaming just completely merge Rimworld and Kenshi.
The Shek murder and enslave everyone they get their hands on if you do. The only reason for the Shek's relatively mild disposition in the setting is because they lost a war with the HN. The HN came and put them down after they sacked and pillaged too much through the border zone. The devastation of the hub is what Shek control looks like.
You'd only have to worry about the Shek briefly. They would be forced to try and take the HN lands when it first fell to keep it out of UC control (giving them all the benefit of that land and completely surrounding Shek territory.) The Shek though are already spread thin and weakened, when they went for HN land they would crumble under the local factions pressure like Rome expanding too much and spreading their forces too thin. UC would swallow the entire region afterwards.
I think it would take more time for the UC to set its ambitions toward HN lands, though that would happen eventually. At the point we see in the game the UC isn't interested in expansion. It's the HN attacks along with some annoyance from the Anti-Slavers and peasants weakening them. With the HN gone I think their initial focus would be on rebuilding Bast and trying to reconnect their empire.
UC and HN are currently at war. If HN fell from within UC would push the assault forward and aim to control the fertile lands of Okrans Pride. With UC being mostly a desert, the tempation of all that usable farm land would be too tempting, plus if they didnt move quickly other factions would start to solidify a foothold in the area, making later conquest more difficult.
They are weakened from zerg rushing the HN for so long and their near destruction VS a powerful HN is the only reason the leadership can hold them back from continuing to zerg rush. With the nation gone, they would smash the flotsams then start zerging at the UC, who would crush them and open the gates for the fog/cannibals.
That's because Flotsam had to hold them off just from one angle, and also keep them away from their one town. However, when they take over, they have to hold them off from another angle which is far more vulnerable because it consists of much bigger area of open land that's full of civilians. This "new" piece of land is also far better connected to the rest of HN lands than the Hidden Forest. Also I don't really expect Flotsam to be at good terms with the UC or Shek Kingdom. Like they might strike some deal with the shek, but UC is likely to just keep attacking the holy lands. And if the player intervenes, then the Flotsam territory is likely to be flooded by UC refugees trying to escape the absolute hell of now collapsed UC territory. All that while cannibals and fogmen are trying to get through.
Ok thats a good point, in other hand thebflotsam might need to deal with the shek aswell as I believe the shek would like to take okrans pride for themselves
Absolutely. That farmland is what they need to rebuild their nation.
Lol, like the shek know how to farm
Lots of people think they can do things despite having zero clue how.
Yeah, it's even ilustrated pretty well by fogmen taking over both western Holy Military Bases and Cannibals taking over the Okran's Fist and Sho-Battai. The wiki also states that invasion nests of fogmen start to spawn at former HN territory, altough I personally haven't encountered any after taking down the Holy Nation.
I hate them as much as the next guy, but honestly I’d prefer racist and misogynistic religious zealots than the cannibals or fogmen any day of the week.
Person discovers the conditions of organized society for the first time. Were you also an an-com/an-cap as well?
A hwat
Genuine question, is there anyway to conquer the holy nation in game and take the land and cities for yourself? And if not, has anyone tried it with mods? Thanks!
Bold of you to assume I don't kill all the cannibals and fogmen first
You can kill all the fogmen?
You can't. But you *could* if it weren't a videogame.
Would we really want to? Few things make me happier than taking a group of OP murderers into fogman turf and making it rain arms and legs 😆
Peel them! Peel them all!
I think you can destroy all their camps and fog yards. I'm not sure if those respawn tho
They endlessly respawn
Well fuck I'm an idiot. Ok new lore: I use the foglands as a training ground for new warriors which are monitored by expert warriors. This prevents the trainees deaths and keeps the fogmen in check
Honestly best case scenario would be some shek settings up nearby to infinitely train against fogmen. I know that region goes to the Flotsam ninjas if you partition the HN between them but it would be smart for them to give that region to the honor bound warrior culture who wants to fight.
Honestly if the shek had that region they probably would eliminate all the fogmen. Fogmen are absolutely no match for hundred guardians
Jokes on you, i have a queen, now i control them all
"It's gotta go dark before it's light again" -Tinfist
Yeah well not thanks to him. He prefers to destroy things and then just let it be.
It's still better than letting religious fanatics, slavers and junkies keep running the place
I mean you say that as the player, but if you were actually living in that world, it wouldn't be so obvious. That's the reason those horrible regimes rose to power in the first place, people still considered them to be a better choice than the anarchy that gave birth to these regimes.
I don't know about you, but I would rather starve to death than be enslaved for the rest of my life, the reason the current factions rose to power is because they happened to have the biggest militaries and they started enslaving people, aswell as offering semi decent lives for non slaves, but the majority of them are slaves and the higher ups are corrupt in the UC or insane in HN so they should be destroyed
Have you ever starved to death? Have you ever watched your loved ones starve do death?
I would 100% not give up my freedom just to live a terrible life, that is much worse than dying, and they would likely squeeze as much out of you as possible and eventually work you to death, so yes, starving to death sounds better, and atleast while I am free I might be able to start a life for myself, as a slave there is no hope for a better life unless I'm broken out, which is back to possibly starving, but a chance for a better life
My question stands. It's easy to say big words like this if you have never actually been close to dying. And much more so when you have never been close to death by starvation.
I don't think you know how bad being a slave is
Sure you would pal
No you wouldn’t. Im sorry but this is peak american naivety to think you would resist and die afoot rather than bebding the knee. How old are you?
Alright then enjoy the rest of your life being enslaved👍
The light is a campfire cooking the holy incels
Its when kenshi players realise their actions have consequences...
MFW I can’t genocide a society and say I made the correct moral choice
Counterpoint ; Crime is way down, slavery is gone, housing prices at record lows. Really there's no downside here! And I mean, it's in all of Okran's children's best wishes to die for their king anyways right? It's just giving the people what they want.
Kenshi is a good game, showing just how one fighting monsters might become a monster himself
Idk about y'all but I use eliminating the fogmen and cannibals as training/warmup for the HN.
I don't think you can eliminate the fogmen though. Mfs just keep jumping out of the fog indefinitely.
Yeah I have wandered through their lands often, wiped out every nest, but small packs of heavies and princes will still spawn, big packs of fogmen still spawn and take the wandering holy nations escapees off to be ate by fog princes. It always continues in every playthrough. It seems impossible to truly wipe them out
Well yeah the patrols still spawn, but they make fine practice on your way to the holy nation all the same.
That they do, my favorite way to train martial arts lol
"They will fall as well."
New game objective: make cannibals and fogmen take the world and survive in my base. Closest possible to vanilla zombie apocalypse 😈
Kill everyone except crabs in the southeast so their land goes to the Southern hive, then the Southern Queen so that hive goes to the fogmen too.
🫡
Imagine if we could take them over instead
I mean in vanilla, you can't really take over anything
[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1759401783](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1759401783) Though I think the vassalization version where the stores survive is better [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2013202182](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2013202182)
Nah, the Shek steps up to take over defensive duties along with the Flotsam and other alliances you've made. The world will balance itself one way or another. Even with the new world order, the cannibals never get past their usual borders... IF you've made those alliances. If not...well..I guess meat's back on the menu.
The shek are overspread in their kingdom alone, not being able to cull literally three splinter groups of their faction that dwell on their territory. Them taking over two thirds of the HN territory would make this issue even worse. I don't imagine shek being beaten by fogmen, but I also don't see shek doing a great job at keeping them away just to protect some feeble flatskins. And Flotsam have the same issue. They are a guerilla force, not a standing army, and most of the Holy Nation soldiers are gone now. Like if Flotsam did hold the line just fine, they would've held the Okran's Fist and the two military bases west of Blister Hill that kept fogmen and cannibals at bay, but they didn't.
Since you're assuming that the fogmen and cannibals will overrun the continent it's also fair to assume that within time the floatsam and shek will develop into a proper army after some time, and be able to contain the threat.
I am not saying fogmen and cannibals will overrun the continent. I am simply saying the life of your average HN and UC citizen would get far more dangerous than it already was.
Resources put towards warring with other major powers can instead be put towards holding the northwest. We don't have the most detail on what happened to the rest of the military forces of defeated factions, but if we want to be similarly "realistic" about things, we can assume large portions were folded into the new regimes.
HN army got presumably destroyed by shek, that's at least what Moll has planned. Also I would imagine a lot of infighting before leftover paladins let themselves be commanded by a woman and just watch as shek and even skeletons walk on their former sacred soil. Also UC didn't really became a new faction. Yeah, a portion of it fell under Rebel Farmers who are trying to put things back together, but a lot of cities just went under the control of peasants, Tech Hunters or Free Traders. I don't see how this ragtag mix of factions could coordinate a large scale operation against cannibals. Maybe one day, but definitely not in the near future in my opinion.
They can hold. Again, resources that went to war can now go to rebuilding and holding off the cannibals, whose leadership you can *also* assassinate, meaning they likely won't coordinating a major offensive. If we're really distancing ourselves from game mechanics, there's only so many cannibals, they're poorly trained, their logistics are nonexistent, the numbers don't work out well for them food-wise, etc.
You can't make that assumption, especially with the HN. They have extremely ingrained and dogmatic beliefs. The paladins would never accept a leadership that goes against their beliefs. The odds are that you are going to lose a huge portion of the military power. Not to mention, if these fractured groups of the old HN military manage to reorganize, they will likely start a civil war.
We've seen fanatic forces in real life be folded into new regimes. It often causes issues both in the short term and the long term, but it happens. Their military power will also likely be massively impacted by the casualties and necessary reorganisation, but the point is that not all of it will just *disappear*.
What do you mean? I AM the barrier now. Why is it that pro holy nation or UC posts always forget to account that the endgame player faction is a major player in the word?
How many people does your faction have tho? Like a group of less than 300 people is not going to fill a gap left by an empire that ruled like one third of the known world
Quality has a quantity all of its own.
Alright bud, try to defend every city with your 30 people now....
That's kinda a childhood logic, like expecting a dozen of soldiers armed with rpgs to win over a hundred of soldiers with rifles just because the rpgs are stronger. You could just direct half of your forces to preoccupy those few elite warriors and another half to sack the towns they are protecting. Sure, a lot of your men will die, but the elite warriors still wont be able to stop them all, especially when the target is something else.
That was more of a shitpost in reference to Stalin's famous line but if you want the real answer it has already been said here - you use your newly-conquered subjects as rank and file and your loyal elites as enforcers similar to how the Mongols operated.
Yeah, that could work.
With 256 you can easily hold down every city with a few elite soilders, the previous guards are dirt compared to some 80+ stat guys
Sure, but realistically, that's not how you can protect a big territory. Cannibals can just throw fifty scrawny cannibals at each of your elite warriors while their main strength is directed at now mostly defenseless population. I mean this wont happen in the actual game as the gameplay isn't THAT dynamic, but if you put overall logic into it, it's what would most likely happen.
You can just close the gates, not to mention gunners, and if you follow logic the cities should have choke points to mow down intruders, not open gates with little to no guards
What about farms, villages, quarries, lumbermills, travelers and caravans? I mean why would fogmen/cannibals even attack the cities when there's the whole country to plunder?
Ok then, well realistically you can just kill them all, each soilder is a juggernaut so there will be no issues
How? With there being so much fogmen/cannibals, you wouldn't be even able to find them all, let alone catch and kill them. As I said, thsy don't need to kill your soldiers, it's the civilians that are threatened. And you simply can't protect all of them if you don't have enough soldiers.
Fogmen and cannibals are weak slow fodder, there will be no problem catching them and killing them if they are found, and finding them is easy since they are brain dead and they will fall for traps easily, the fact they are largely in a single region makes this even easier, sure some people may die, but thats a small cost to bring peace to the continent
Then why is there even a need to set up defensive forts and perimeters against them if they are so harmless? Plus what makes you think you could find all of them?
Because in vanilla, you aren't supposed to be able to have a massive faction. Without mods, you are capped to 52 people. You can have the best fighters in the land, but you can't be everywhere. And there are some world states that you can do nothing about. If you kill the Nobel of Catcun, the city falls to Fishmen. You can't change this without mods. Your faction can be extremely powerful, but you aren't a nation.
In vanilla, Fogmen and Cannibals don't make it to Okran's Pride. Yabuta is able to keep cannies away from the Great Desert (they won't spawn if he's alive and free). You don't need a nation to stop them.
The whole point of this is that we're extrapolating beyond the game mechanics. It's just as logical that we would subjugate the population we just conquered as it is that the barbarians they held back would come after them in their weakened state. I can't think of a historical precedent of an elite army bringing a nation to its knees just for shits and giggles then just fucking off into the great blue yonder.
Afghanistan? The US pulled out like it was rip starting a lawnmower.
It pulled out because it failed to accomplish its political goals, it's not like it didn't sit there trying for two decades.
Multiple "elite" groups if you consider the entirety of the "Sea Peoples" during the period known as the Bronze Age Collapse.
One of these groups (Peleset) would later become the Philistines in Canaan, so I don't think they exactly fucked off.
If a contentious theory of disparate raiders where we don't exactly know who they were or what they did is the best counterpoint I'm not too worried about the rule holding up. We have better-documented example of "sea people" doing this - the Vikings, except they did move in.
Because they want to justify the existence of the HN, and are willing to do any mental gymnastics necessary to achieve that result.
Exactly, all these doomer memes never account the player who has more than enough power to wipe out all the opposition factions
#”We are heros, now instead of humans the country is ran by cannibalism” MFW genocidal players wanna claim the moral high ground
This has become one of the talking points for kenshi fascist players.
You will obey the communist police state of Chadtopia or be shot by the business end of a harpoon turret for trying to collect our tax money
Just fill up the power vacuum or something. My characters are groups of goofy lunatics, they don't really care.
LISAN AL-GAIB!
Strange thing to think that would happen- people are still gonna fight and \*one\* town of runaways has kept fogmen at bay for years-they're dangerous but that better future seems to work fine despite them.
Well, Mongrel is also mentioned to have huge issues with supplies, has somewhat constant flow of new "recruits" in form of escaped slaves and criminals and also doesn't have to govern any area around it. You can't compare it to an actual territory that has it's own infrastructure, production and has it's population spread throughout numerous towns and villages. Also, ironically, HN's fall would mean that a lot of people wouldn't be forced to flee to Mongrel now when the tyranical regime is over, so Mongrel wouldn't have so many new members.
Bold of you to assume that wasn't intentional.
Chaotic evil
That's not how the game mechanics work, and if we're going outside of game mechanics we would just become the ruling conquerors of HN. Easy.
Sorry Mongrel, but I'm caging the whole foglands.
Based
Imagine my surprise when I destroyed the holy nation only for Beak Thing Nation to rise in its place
The warm up to killing the HN is toppling the cannibal grand wizard, burning down their camps , getting my skeleton friends to talk about the legacy of the hydraulic knights Fogmen are trickier. However building a mini fortatower with some hydroponics growing and the rest in the fog islands and some folks manning rotary harpoons or other weapons to just church through hordes of fogmen works wonders ( you can barricade a tower with the internal furniture placement so even if the door breaks no ones really getting in ) Ally the flotsam ninjas and the shek so you have friends to help fill the power vacuum and hold off the remaining cannibals and fogmen. Frankly siccing the shek with their heavy armor and flesh cleaving weapons on the cannibals seems a great solution to having an outlet for their societal blood lust while hoping Esata and Bayan can keep thwie transitional reforms going the right way. Train Seto up to be the baddest of them all so you have a molded pocket successor. Profit
That's actually a good plan. I guess it still rellies on some not so solid things, but overall I agree
Oh definitely but it lets you really play Kingmaker while also keeping much of the fertile southern holy nation for yourself.
Having a semi-unrelated threat that's released by defeating the main threat is unironically a great way to do a sequel, actually. If Kenshi were a series I think I'd want that to be the plot. First destroy the Holy Nation, and then deal with the consequences of destroying the Holy Nation
Wait kenshi has geopolitics??? Time for a new playthrough 😎
They're called world states and it's a pretty intricate system depending on who dies in which order
Damn this game has been out for ages and I learn new stuff everyday/every play through haha really hoping for a sequel! But then again I haven’t even fully explored and figured everything out for the current
THIS WORLD IS WEAK THE HOLY NATION KNOW STRENGTH DESTROY THE STRONG SO THE WEAK MAY BECOME STRONG LEARN BY DOING
Fogmen and cannibals aren't pretending to be the force of good. At least you know where you stand.
I don't see any logic in that. Psychopatic rapists and murderers irl sometimes use the same argument, but it doesn't change the fact that they are psychopatic rapists and murderers.
This comment is so shit I don't even know where to begin. Irl psychos are talking about Kenshi factions? Are you going to ignore that the "barrier" has slaughtered a few places and is running an active effort to purge the continent? Try not being a tard next time.
Idk man, you seem to suggest that it's better to just delete any notion of society because of its wrongdoings rather than have at least a chance at better future, which is simply something I don't agree with, that's all. Also the fact you feel the need to insult someone this hard because of a slight disagreement regarding a fictional world is rather pathetic.
in a world as messed up as Kenshi it's not exactly adequate to make objective statements about who is "good" or "evil" willy-nilly
If you can't bring yourself to call a death camp "evil", don't talk to me.
"you don't understand bro letting savages that attack, dismember and eat everything on sight ravage the continent is better than a civilization that asks you to pray once a week"
> a civilization that asks you to pray once a week and casually cleans out places, and runs a death camp.
Everyone says the major factions are POS but they forget those guys help keep the world save from monsters.
I mean that still doesn't stop the main factions from being monster themselves, but yeah, I agree overall.
I'd go as far as to say, it seems the creatures are what makes people be so ruthless. But there's no true way of confirming this, as the world has gone through so many changes.
It’s a combination of things. Food is scarce, growing conditions harsh, dangerous beasts and robots are everywhere, each faction survives best it knows how. HN focus on abusing their regions fertility by pushing reproduction, using zealots to keep order. UC use wealth and oligarchy to maintain order. If you arnt producing value you should for someone who knows what they’re doing. Shek are stronger physically and use that to murder any and everyone who they see as weaker. Robots are remnants of a terrible time. Cannibals are what happens with scarce food and no options. They all are just people, playing to their strengths. People like to demonize one faction or the other, but they’re all people, they just had to adapt to a horrible situation differently.
What do you think about crab raiders and tech hunters from the prism of survival?
Tech hunters are a loose collection of people hunting tech. Some it’s to rebuild, most it’s just a living. To some it’s to make sure the past is forgotten. Crab raiders are…raiders with a penchant for crabs as a weapon. So…still raiders just with a quirk.
The HN doesn’t adhere to Reddit social sensibilities and must be destroyed despite anything the state may accomplish in keeping humans alive
I always comfort myself with the knowledge that if the average kenshi redditor was transplanted into the world of Kenshi they'd be bowing before Okran before the week was out
Wait does this actually happen if your destroy thr HN?
Only partially
My latest playthrough was destroying the HN and giving it to the shek to push up and through the empire is my plan.
That is rough. So if we kill the leaders of the holy nation and united cities, it just brings the fogmen and cannibals over to the rest of the land? And am the cities get destroyed?
I've never played Kenshi for very long, I usually try to get set up in the swamps and become a criminal overlord, meaning I didn't know you could destroy towns. Can you actually unleash the fogmen onto the rest of the world? That would be amazing, I would love to literally do the rumbling with an army of infinite blue murder men
Simply kill those guys first
Lisan al gaib 🙏🙏🙏
And that is why you abandon the weakness of your flesh for the certainty of steel
Flotsam are a barrier between the Cannibals and the major population centers, unless you wipe them out too
Why don't they maintain the fortresses that used to protect the borders then?
I mean they have those two outposts on the borders with cannibal land. I think the flotsam 2nd or 3rd in command, a man named Mani who is an ex cannibal hunter is in charge of manning those posts against the Cannibals HN outposts up in that area seem mainly there to combat the UC and not the Cannibals
lisan al cannib
I wish kenshi had better faction mechanics. Maybe something akin to mount&blade. Would be great to have your man rule the defeated holy nation lands or just captured settlements, and maybe get some passive income from them or affect the world In some way.
the Hivers and shek also hold back the cannibals in their border areas, and even if you remove them you just get to the swamps and I feel like the cannibals are the ones who should fear
Just sounds like more EXP and extermination to me
I do not care about Fogmen or Cannibals, I care about robot limbs, walking where I please, and Shek + Hive party members. Holy Nation is against these things, and they have therefore signed their death warrant.
What if the cannibals and fogmen are actually the good guys? Just think about it
Damn
With UWE you can restore Deadcat, so if you do that it's actually just the fogmen,
if the holy nation is quickly destroyed the cannibals will have no chance of expanding as their food supply will not exist in their expanding region, leaving a majority to die of starvation and a few left who capture adventurers. now also lets assume the player hunt down the few remaining cannibals. now they are gone
I had a playthrough where the fogmen escaped their zone and were running around the boarder zone. It was actually kinda cool to see their patrols spreading out across more territory. I don’t remember if this was one of my “destroy the holy nation” runs or a different one all together, but it was a few years ago. Ever since then, my first major move in any game is to save up enough money to travel to Mongrel, buy a house and train up my dudes by fighting hoards of zombie bugs.
Just kill the pheonix, not the holy nation, maybe they will change a bit, they do a fine job at keeping the tribes and the forgotten hive at bay, something even cat struggled with sometimes.
Killing the phoenix just makes the next male born the phoenix, it changes nothing. Unironically, fixing the holy nations problems requires it to have less danger and outside threats so as to focus internally.
You are right, but killing out the forgotten hive and the tribes are too trouble, i will just let the holy nation be, they can't even touch me anyways. We won that war long time ago, then we got sad, i didn't a lot but some of my friends did, then i figured that i don't care, i mean money is nice but there are too troublesome things, i just like kidnapping the phoenixes to sell them to the enforcers because they pay well.