Re: Are there any existing guides discussing race specific startegies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">We don't all have always-on broadband access!
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Re: Are there any existing guides discussing race specific startegies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This is the 21st century, you should. Even in the remote boondocks of Wales! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Are there any existing guides discussing race specific startegies?
 

Against the computer AI the most consistant 'startagy' is to hire every mercenary company available, no matter the cost or which company becomes available. Sell gems if short on gold.

Mercs have a twofold benefit. They expand you military much faster than you ever could by simply training them, and most especially they have no upkeep. 100+ normal units can be a heavy load on your monthly payroll, but 100+ mercenaries have no upkeep at all. This more than compensates for the high initial hiring cost.

Mercenaries are always better than the equivalent trainable units because they come with experience and are generally skilled enough not to rout (the barbarian merc company is a notable exception). Also it keeps you away from buying the cheaper, less effective 'crap' troops every nation has at the start of a game; troops which become obsolete rather quickly.

Mercs are also rather cheap to maintain/re-hire as long as your expanding by one or two provinces a turn. In fact i think for most mercenary companies it costs the same or less to hire them a second time than it would to payroll an equivilent number of troops.

During this early phase try to hire few normal troops yourself, except for casters or researchers, to keep expenses down.

Doing this will quickly rack up hundreds of gold in the bank letting you go on a building spree and help strongly consolidate your holdings. By this time many of your merc troops will be depleted by attrition so you can being letting some of their contracts expire and so start to transition to a conventional military.

Against AI. Not vs. other human players. The AI doesn't seem very competitive on bidding for merc contracts on the lower difficulty levels.

Re: Are there any existing guides discussing race specific startegies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Are you sure about this? I've found the AI to bid rather aggressively on merc contracts, and most of them are already hired before the price drops to a range that's reasonable. Not so in any of the MP games I've found: Most of the time, the mercs go unhired for a few turns, which drops their prices into bargain-basement levels.

Re: Are there any existing guides discussing race specific startegies?
 

Dominions X has a fair number of Race specific Guides.

I suspect some of them may date from Dom1, but I bet they will still be helpful


Rabe the Antiquarian


http://www.dominionsx.com/guides.html

Re: Are there any existing guides discussing race specific startegies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I hire mercs as soon as they come on the market whatever their initial asking price, partly because if you wait the AI will indeed hire them up. AI tends to bid, as far as i can tell, about 1 over the current bid. So if a Merc company wants 400, and you bid 400, you'll almost always lose the bid (and likewise for rehiring). But the AI never really competes with you for a contract, thus my comment. If rampaging an AI with merc armies it won't bid 500-600$ for a 400$ contract to steal them from your service, something a human player is likely to do.

As long as your bid is 3-5% over asking price, you always seem to take the bid. In my current PBeM game mercs tend to have been bid upon rather competitively; one bid i made that was 100 over asking failed. Bidding is harsh in multi because your money may not be working for you if the bid fails, where instead you could be more dependably hiring casters or units, and the whole games' pace feels more pressing. Whereas with the AI your bid is assured if a bid is within the range above (at least at Normal and below).

[ March 12, 2004, 00:50: Message edited by: SelfishGene ]

Re: Are there any existing guides discussing race specific startegies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This is the 21st century, you should. Even in the remote boondocks of Wales! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Try telling that to British Telecom! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

See, I don't mean that we haven't bothered to get it, but rather that we cannot get it yet, unless we go for an insanely expensive satellite option.

BT won't upgrade our phone exchange to enable ADSL unless we get another two hundred or so people in the area to register their interest in Broadband, and most of the locals are old dears who think 'broadband' refers to some variety of hernia girdle. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif