What single-race playthroughs have you tried?
Finished my Hiver playthrough, it degenerated to using my Prince starter, Silvershade, Beep and Green with ninja rags, pants, and swamp ninja masks to do nighttime raids to topple UC and HN quickly. HN in two hours and UC in six (partly due to the remoteness of the southern wing). I learned from HN to send all my Hivers out solo to do coordinated assassinations, although this ultimately caused other issues. Also I had two Eyegores active, both of which were permanently spawned in Heng city. I ultimately used an Islands of None base with a sunken gate to deal with the Eyegore raids while my assassin bugs kidnapped everyone.
Working on an all-female Shekthrough now. Managing food is significantly tougher than on Hivers, but having faster combat stats training is nice. I want to avoid assassination strats this time due to the mix of bugs, being too easy, and annoying waits; although I have two MA/stealth Shekinators training up to deal with Bugmaster early to get Seto and a Shek alliance ASAP. Assassins also have some nice properties for weakening cities and camps ready for a full assault. Not sure how I want to handle weapons, I might have to abuse turrets to train up DEX or just rely on brute STR stun damage on cleavers, MA and heavies. Currently abusing polearms though due to the cleave, fast animations and armour pen.
Currently doing a skeleton only play through with low spoilers (and limited knowledge from previous runs) and no reloads (outside of bugs) and severely limiting my use of repair beds. Also no cheese.
I started out earning some cats near a hiver village before I went north through the foglands solo and somehow dodged and outran the hordes of fogmen, with the aid of my trusty lantern. I spent some time defending the gates of Mongrel and even rescued some kidnapped HN escaped slaves from your parties fate.
Hearing rumours of adventures who head north never returning I naturally decided to venture…. North.
After witnessing the graveyard of… whatever those giant skeletons were, I continued north to eventually find Burn, then went to Worlds End looking for more recruits.
Leaving Worlds End I unwittingly ended up in HN territory and that nearly ended my run, fortunately a large pack of cannibals was nearby to distract the Paladins and I made my escape.
Travelling back south dodging HN patrols I made it to Shark in the swamps where I found my third Skeleton recruit now named Bender. I also picked some bar fights with rude patrons and stole everything those stone rats had.
Going south east I had both Burn and Bender downed by a vicious pack of Bonedogs, with Arch my starting character, managing to escape and circle around a few times to repair them.
Wanting to continue my journey I was fortunate to find a mercenary group and hired them for a day and continued deeper into the Bonelands.
Then from seemingly out of nowhere the near endless horde of Beak things appeared. There were far too many. Though the mercenaries fought bravely it was clear we were doomed.
My skeletons escaped into the sea while the mercenaries were devoured whole, including one mercs robot legs!
Their deaths made the escape of my skeletons possible.
Deciding to travel back West I spent hours sneaking back to avoid further Beak thing attacks. Along the way I found more meat bags (mercs) to hire.
I discovered the South Slave Farm and turned North, where I stumbled on an escaped hiver slave.
Despite my reassurance that I wasn’t a threat he attacked, unwise given my 3 skeletons and 8 shek mercs. He was promptly KOd after which I rendered first aid… while doing so I noticed a large bounty on his head.
I turned him in at the nearest city for the bounty as reward for attacking my skele boys.