Re: Opening Gambit
 

IMHO (SP), you don't need more than one scout at the start. It's not like you're gonna be going far, or doing anything about distant lands. On the turns you're making more scouts, why not make, say, more researchers?

Re: Opening Gambit
 

There aren't very many nations for which the nation-specific scouts you can hire at forts are really better than the indy scouts. If you want lots of scouts (and that can be a useful thing), hire them in indy provinces without forts. I like to use indy scouts to build forts, too. Hire tough commanders and mages in your forts, maybe spies, rarely assassins, never scouts.

Re: Opening Gambit
 

aka putting all your eggs in the same basket.
Not only will you suffer much more should your mage die (even in SP - like really bad luck with a ninja attack or coming across Bogus's gang), but you also prevent yourself from having one more smiter on the battlefield. Instead of having one smite-mage + 1 other-artillery, you get only a single mage that casts a single of these spells.

Re: Opening Gambit
 

Some other starting armies have OK odds of a turn 1 conquest (MA Ulm in addition to Ashdod and Abysia), but would not really want to risk that over a single province.

Re: Opening Gambit
 

All, thank you for the constructive criticism :-) I do see what you are saying about "all eggs in one basket"

@JB I usually get at least one province where I can recruit indy scouts pretty quick, then I can switch to just recruiting researchers. Another thing about a lot of scouts is threat detection... the AI tends to may a bee-line right for the human player; I can detect the biggest armies fairly quick with a spread of scouts. I also locate the AI capitals pretty quick, and, if I have a spy recruitment capability, extra forts can generate those spies and mass them to instill unrest in the enemy capitals neighboring provinces. And if you are playing with the magic sites mod, there is one that can produce a flying, sacred assassin-seductress... pretty crazy against invading armies and all sorts of evil stuff :-)

Re: Opening Gambit
 

Fact is, unless your mage has two heads and the ability to act twice in a round, it's completelly useless for them to be able to cast Fireball (or whatever other spell he is able to) and Smite at the same time. He will use one, or the other, not both in the same round, so it's much better to have the commander be the prophet and cast the smites while your mage do it's stuff

If you don't recruit an scout in turn 2, you don't really lose that much, becouse as you say, you ussually are able to recruit indy scouts pretty quick from outside your castles. However, if you don't recruit a mage in turn 2, and that mage can research, say, 7 per turn, you'll be losing 84 research at the end of first year, 160+ at the end of second year, and 240+ at the end of third year. That's a pernament disventage: those are 1, 2 or 3 levels in magic that you wont have, and you won't be able to recover if you miss the chance to buy that mage in turn 1.
If you happen to buy 2,3,4 or more mages in the first turns, then the mistake compounds and you lose even more research. That research lost outweight, by FAR any extra adventage you might get from having a scout one or two turns earlier.

Re: Opening Gambit
 

Indeed.
Also, concering the AI, put 10 PD into every province as soon as you conquer it. It really makes them more peacefull. The beeline making happenes when an AI scout sees a Human province with less then 10 PD. The AI thinks "Yay free province" and beelines for it.

Re: Opening Gambit
 

With regards to hiring mages early, the contribution of a single mage over the long term is fairly irrelevant as a consideration. What you need to be worried about are your immediate goals. One mage won't make a huge relative difference between you and other nations. What will make a difference is your early fighting strength. If you can hire non-mage commanders that will significantly increase your early fighting strength, then it can still be a valid purchase. On the other hand, you don't want to purchase non-mage commanders if they'll interfere with your ability to research critical early spells. Basically, do the math first.

Re: Opening Gambit
 

1 mage in the long turn means 80 points of research (which are two level 1 paths, or 1 path from level 1 to level 2) in the first year, or 160 in the second year. If that's relevant or not, that's up to you to decide.

However, I was not advocating against expanding, I was advocating against buying scouts. Early expansion makes up for any research lost, becouse it allows you to get a bigger country, that it's the same that having extra castles, and extra castles mean extra research. There are a lot of situations where you wouldn't buy a researcher in the first turn. For example, with Ermor MA, you are almost bound to use your first mages as commanders, as you need mages to carry undeads. Several nations with heavy bless strategy need to buy a priest in the first turns as well, and some nations expand using SC chasis (like Nieflheim with jarls).

Early expansion is the single most important thing in the first turns, bar none. However, a lot of nations (most of them), need not to wast any castle turns on that. You can expand to your first province with your initial army, then recruit an indy commander there, and go back to get your second army when it's ready in turn 3. In the meanwhile, you should be buying a mage+troops each turn, if you can afford, or just troops, if you can't. That bassically depends on how cheap are your researchers.

Re: Opening Gambit
 

I'm with you on this one!

@Zorfwaddle (what a name! :) )
The way you described it, you talked about "alternating" your mage/scout builds, from the outset. That's up to you and your playing style, from a beginner's pov I was just saying I find it a waste of effort to produce many, early scouts against SP AI.