Re: prepping for beginning expansion
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually, higher settings benefits the AI as well, as the AI shows up with bigger armies that they need to accumulate to conquer indies at 6+. This also means more national troops, and less mad rushes with militia armies who are either insufficient to conquer indie provinces, or get killed in the process. If by "benefit" you meant that they get more provinces more quickly, that's true, but they get to use them better and more thoroughly (as well as their home province) on higher settings. In my experience, in its current state the AI plays best (as in - provides the best opposition) with indies at 6-7, rich world and sites at 50.

Re: prepping for beginning expansion
 

Wel actually I usually word it the other way. That higher indept settings benefit a human player more than the AI. A human usually does better at avoiding the hard ones and prepping for the others.

Re: prepping for beginning expansion
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've found that the AI benefits as much, if not more, than the benefits the human reaps for high indies: High independent settings force the AIs to build up more before making attempts, so when they encounter you, they'll be better armed. However, higher indies also tend to slaughter the AI's entire army at times.....as a result, some of the AIs won't survive this phase and will be culled from the herd: The herd, as a whole, however, is stronger for it, as the AIs are then less crowded in and do not cripple themselves on fruitless internecine warfare.

On the flipside, the human benefits from a reduced risk of an early-game AI dogpile. If the human player is wielding an super-SC pretender, the AI's dogpile will be stomped into the ground anyway, but a higher independent setting gives more viability to noncombatant pretenders: It also tends to make it more likely that the human player survives....and faces a smaller number of tougher AI nations.

So, overall, a higher independent setting benefits an individual human more than an individual AI players, but higher independent settings, collectively, benefit the AI players more.

Re: prepping for beginning expansion
 

To give you specific advice, cpbeller, I think we need to know more about the problems you are having. What do you typically do with your starting army and/or 1st turn builds? Can you take out one or two indie provinces but then you're left with too weak of an army for more? Or are you having trouble right out of the gate? Is there some sort of pattern to how your battles, particularly your losses, go?

Re: prepping for beginning expansion
 

the game i am playing at the moment, it is turn 19, i have control of 5 or 6 provinces. Indeps at 5.

I had a very bloody battle and lost 37 troops about 4 turns ago taking a high income province (no knoghts, but heavy cav). I won that battle only because of my Wind Riders taking out their 2 commanders, forcing the indy army to route (thank God for that, my army was getting slaughtered).

I have secured the provinces surrounding my capital, but have now come in contact with C'tis on the south-eastern border (they are still 2-3 provinces away from me, but my dominion has spread enough so i can see them). Also, R'lyeh is on my north-western border, right next to a key province of mine (connects one land mass to another). R'Lyeh only has 50 troops right now (Lobo Guards, Slave Troopers, Crab Hybrids & an Illithid Lord).

I guess, I have trouble with all of it. I personally think my early expansion hasn't been so bad until that large battle, losing 37 guys. What I have a lot of trouble in though is formations (for one thing).

Also, building a good army with such low resources. With the resources my capital can use (71 resources), I can only build 2 elite troops per turn, and that doesn't include commanders.

I am currently nearly right in the middle of the map, with water directly north (bordering me), and open land to the south, and especially to the east (C'tis).

Here is the game info:

- using Golden Age Arco, Arch Mage (4 Fire/4 Air/4 Water/4 Earth/1 Death).

- the Forgotten Realms map (huge map, over 400 provinces)

- Indeps set to 5

- magic sites set to 50 (I think)


I think that is pretty much it....the thing i really have a difficult time is the formations, and building units (what kind exactly, and getting the most out of my resources).

Re: prepping for beginning expansion
 

Well cpbeller, I think you have already learned the lesson that independent's with heavy cav can be a tough fight. I generally avoid those guys early in the game.

I've never played Golden Age Arco but I have looked at it some and I do seem to remember it needing a goodly amount of resources. Which is unfrotunate, because it does sound like you have low resources in your capital. Part of your difficulties this game may be bad luck in your starting location. But I am also guessing that you took a fort with a low admin value and/or scale settings that diminished your resources, neither of which sounds like a good idea with Golden Age Arco.

So what I am saying is: With a different nation and/or more congenial settings, you would probably be having an easier time of it with the Independents.

As for how to arrange your battle formations, that depends entirely on what you're bringing to the table and what you expect to be fighting. The best general advice I can think of right now is:

Put cheap, expendable, units in front of your best troops to soak up early arrow fire, lances, and nasty stuff like that.

All other things being equal, large Groups of units are less likely to rout than small units. Also, if you have powerful units with not-so-good morale (chariots?), you can put one of the chariots in a group with higher morale units to make the chariot less likely to run away than if it was in an all-chariot group.

Hold and Attack Rear is often a good order to use with flying troops like Wind Riders.

Re: prepping for beginning expansion
 

Golden Age Arco does seem a bit rough. If memory serves, Sloth is mandatory (not unreasonable for a philosopher-dominated society http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ), but your myrmidon heavy infantry, while very nicely equipped, require substantial resources; and your icarids are fairly expensive for their fragility.

With that sort of setup, a few things come to mind. Bear in mind the caveat that I haven't poked at this theme much at all...

Hire mercenaries. This would might be less cost-effective in an MP game if there's a bidding war. Your initial bottleneck for getting an early army is resources, not gold, so this seems like a good choice. Heavy horsemen, heavy infantry (including the Ship Wreckers), the pike formations (God's Justice, perhaps others) come to mind. You have no archers, if memory serves, just slingers, so Farstrikers would fill a gap but you would still need some infantry as a screen. Farstrikers can be useful against lightly-armored folks like barbarians, but likely won't do much against heavy cav. Chariots can also work well against lightly-armored.

Consider aiming for Riches from Beneath. It's an Earth enchantment that will significantly boost your resource production and thus troop production if you have the gold to match. Later on you'll probably be able to supplement your human troops with living statues and mechanical men, and a couple of your heroes make superb heavy infantry (Pathos the Son of Titans comes to mind as somebody that shine with good equipment, and the Asterios Monster in the Maze is another candidate for better gear).

If you go heavy inf/chariots, I'd probably put the heavy infantry pretty far back and center, on hold/attack, and chariots massed on one flank and even further back, on hold/attack archers or rear. Any light infantry should be put closer to the front to attract missile fire. And don't forget to bring along Priestesses for the after-battle healing. Later on mystics may provide good fire support, but you may not have researched enough yet. *shrug*

The one pain I remember from my Last go with it was the irritation that, according to Acashic Record, my highest magical income was in Death, and Arco/GE is weak in death and blood magic until you boost a Priestess and start summoning Lamia Queens.

Re: prepping for beginning expansion
 

I always thought that you are supposed to have sceptics in your resource-rich provinces to get rid of the sloth... Somewhat risky, but helps atleast a little. but as you would have to have them in the neightboring provinces too, and you couldn't turn them of, it would need quite a lot of micromanagement.

Re: prepping for beginning expansion
 

I like the idea of using Skeptics to reduce the Sloth in your own provinces, but that requires you to zero the Dominion, right? Not a very good idea, to me.

From my own experience with GE Arco, there are a couple of ways to go about playing them, at least early game.

One is to focus on Wind Riders. They ARE a good Sacred unit. The reasoning behind it is that you are only able to hire 3 or so Myrmidons a turn at the beginning, and you can hire 2 or 3 Wind Riders a turn, if you do it right.

Another is to try to mitigate the damage done by the Sloth scale. I normally play on Rich (no matter who I play), which certainly mitigates the problem. The other idea is, as others have said, pick a high-admin castle. Let me give you my 'standard' Pretender for Arco, standard or Golden Era.

Lady of Fortune
Water-4, Nature-4
Order-3, (Sloth-1 for GE), Growth 1, Magic 1
Castle Fortification
6 Dominion

(Note that you have 40 extra points in GE to play around with.)

This gives access to the Nature rituals (Gift of Health, etc.), good events in whatever province the Lady is in (which makes it more palatable for her to site-search), and actually a credible SC later in the game. If used to site-search, she's finding all of the Nature and Water sites, which are both useful. Nature gives you gems that you'll need for the Nature rituals, and Water gives you gems for Clams.

You also gives you a plausibly decent Bless effect. Taken together (and assuming you Berserk), you get a +1 to ATT/DEF/PROT/STR. While you can have the unfortunate problem of berserking Priestesses, that problem is minimal, IMO.

Anyway, just some ideas I had. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Scott

Re: prepping for beginning expansion
 

It seems to me that GE Arco is designed to not be able to have many quality troops. My first impulse when playing a nation is to get the best troops in the largest quantities and buff them so that they are a force to be reckoned with - but I think this approach is fundamentally the wrong one with GE. It seems to me that the way to go is with strong elemental attacks - multiple mages casting direct-damage elemental attacks, while protected by a small bodyguard of myrmidons. Of course this isn't an early game strategy, but with the philosophers and a magic scale you can get to mid levels of evocation fairly quickly.

later game it should be possible to get some tough-guy summons (kings and queens of the elements come to mind) to bolster your offense.

The other thing that strikes me about GE is that it lends itself to multiple castles in a big way - firstly to get as many myrmidons as possible, and second, because your defense does not lie in standing armies, but in castle walls - with your engineers you can hold an enemy army at bay.

So I'm thinking for GE a cheap castle, but with a decent admin and defence value, and a strong magic scale to get research done quickly and decrease opponents MR, and a pretender who can forge path-enhancing items for your mages.

Note that I haven't actually tried this out yet, but I think something like this would maximize GE's strengths.