Fortress to Province ratio
 

What do you think your ballpark ratio is on average, and in SP or MP? I'm probably at about 1:5 or 1:6 and play almost exclusively SP.

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

1:10 or lower, until the endgame when I'm steamrolling all the AI's forts. I play with the BI mod so forts are the main "factories" for unit production, but I don't really use them for guarding territory. Thus, they're often three or four provinces apart, which means one per 10 or 15 provinces.

-Max

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

Getting that 2nd fort up early can be useful though.

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

Absolutely. My goal in the early game is usually to get enough forts up that I can spend 50% of my gold or more on mages. I'm not happy until I can buy 3 to 5 mages per turn.

-Max

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

So..... Your early expansion encompasses 30-50 territories? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif


I generally saturate my forts over time so that few provinces lack a fort on their border. I still tend to be a bit slower at getting them started, but once I do, I consider them invaluable for stopping raiding strategies, and protecting against barbarians.

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

Forts seem to serve two purposes. 1: They increase the production amount that can be taken from the surrounding provinces; and 2: They slow down attacks on your territory.

I tend to build forts behind my front-line so that each fort is two provinces apart to maximise the production. My front-line is usually forts next to each other to slow down attackers.

The biggest problem I have is that by the middle game I usually only have 1 real army with all my attacking forces in it (around 8 commanders). If the AI attacks my territory with two or three armies they can basically take the whole lot in short time and I am just playing catch-up but never make any real in-roads. Question I have is how many armies do you guys build in relation to the number of provinces you own? And how much do you rely on province defence?

Also, by having just one army, when it gets wiped (and it always does) I am in a lot of trouble. That's why I try to build forts instead. How do you guys cater for this?

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

Well it's for that reason that I think it's easiest to learn the game using nations that have strong PD. So, you raise the defences on provinces that you aren't keeping active forces. The AI likes to minimize the forces that it needs to take a province, sometimes attacking with 8-9 soldiers in a force (not strongly blessed sacreds, like if it were a human http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif), so you just need your borders protected enough to stop that. However, the sooner you train yourself to manipulate smaller mobile forces, the better off you will be. Not just because mobility will win you a war that brute force can't, but because if you stick yourself only taking 1 province per turn, you won't grow very quickly.

And likewise, as you progress in the game, if you find that even a massive amount of your forces gets crushed, then you are not keeping up with the arms race. Start developing your use of mid-game magics and summons more deeply. Some of them aren't that big a deal, or worth spending gems on. But some of them can easily mean the difference between an embarassing loss, and a heroic triumph.

Also, with most nations, you'll end up looking at your excess castles not as troop factories, but as mage training facilities. Even if you are using a nation that has fairly weak mages in its noncapital castles, look at the limited paths you are getting, then explore the spell lists. You may find that there are 1-2 buffs that you can cast like crazy with enough cheap little mages, that all of your mediocre mundane infantry suddenly performs very very well in combat.

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

You're nitpicking, of course. Yes, my early expansion tries for 2-3 provinces per turn for the first year and a half or so, and 20 territories by the end of year 1 is probably a fair average. No, I don't have 3-5 forts by the end of year one, and I may or may not even build 5 forts by the end of year 3. It depends on a lot of things like whether I'm having to pour resources into a war with somebody or just buying mages and expanding, but especially early on I may build more forts than the 1:10 ratio indicates. The 1:10 is my guess at what my stable ratio is. I'm positive I don't have less than a 1:5 ratio because then all my forts would be practically touching.

-Max

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

Depends on the situation. I never have just one army, but if I'm in a war of attrition I may have only two or three. (The Army of the Potomac and Army of the Tennessee, as it were.) If I'm not fighting someone through a chokepoint I will probably have five or six that sometimes merge temporarily or permanently. The problem with having one big army, of course, is that when you lose it's usually because the enemy pulled out a surprise that you weren't ready for (like a pretender or a second army or a new spell or a battle that turns out to be in severe cold and a swamp so all your units get fatigued to death by his chaff). By using one big army you have a better chance in any particular battle, but you also have no way to recover if things go sour. (Well, there are still usually survivors that you can gather up.) You're also not forcing him to split his forces, and finally you have no mobile reserve in case somebody else attacks you along a different border.

The only really helpful thing I can suggest is to be 1.) constantly massing reinforcements at your forts that you can ferry occasionally to wherever they're needed, 2.) researching spells so that your librarians can defend the base (together with the PD) when needed, thus holding a border at the cost of slowing down research. It really depends upon your nation.

-Max

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

Not really. It's 4 forts in 20 provinces, which isn't a whole lot if you think about it. I'd load a saved game and do a rough count.

I'm just saying, usually when I play, at a 1:5 ratio apparently, I have a lot of extra gold even after recruitment. Since it's not like you're collecting interest on what you're banking or there's any reason to save up to buy something nice, it's probably best just to spend it all. But I can't seem to do that, so I was thinking maybe I'm not building enough forts?

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

Not being able to spend all your gold is more a function of scales and race than implimentation.

Some races its very very difficult. For me, with tien chi for example, I can never get my upkeep to be more than 12-15% of my income.

So in which case, the next time I play, I try to cut the order back one click. Nations with a sacred strategy, and usually those with high resource costs, I think are probably more the culprit than your playing style.

And remember - more forts = more income!

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

Hmmm, okay. I just checked my current game, and in early spring of year 3 (~24 turns in) I've got 30 provinces and 5 forts, one of which I took from EA Agartha.

Definitely it's best to spend most of your gold, although banking 10% as a strategic reserve isn't necessarily a bad idea. (If you can buy full production at all of your forts a strategic reserve is mostly unnecessary, but if you're using forts to produce mages the strategic reserve can fuel a troop buildup. It can also be useful to have gold reserved for plopping down PD at need.)

-Max

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

Prior to capturing new territories from other nations, my fort ratio is determined by the amount of free money I have. If, after recruiting all my best mages, and then all troops available I still have a significant amount left over, i will build another fort.

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

I usually build 1-2 additional forts myself in early game. Other forts I take over from other players. If I reach the "late game, too much money and nothing to spend it on" phase of the game, then I tend to put it into forts+temples, too.

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

In mp puting fort on all vp provinces is quite important to prevent quick wins by some teleport/sneak/flying thugs/armies.

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

I will build a few forts early on at key strategic points and to avoid having to move men over difficult terrain, but by late game, I just take them over from others. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif aka "We DO Not Sow".

By late game I actually find them a hindrance at times when for example I want my mages to be researching in a province, but also involved in defense. Having a fort makes that a problem and I have actually destroyed forts for that reason. Also, by late game, conventional troops are less relevant so I'd rather be spending my money on mages.

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

Some of you have mentioned in this and other posts that you aim to have 20 provinces by the end of year 1 (12 turns). How is this possible? The most I have got after the first year is about 6 or 7.

Can someone please explain (or point to a thread) that shows what you do each turn to get this?

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

Basically, a pretender that can take one province/turn from turn 3 or 4 forwards, preferably without any troops support. That will basically double your expansion rate.

Very high-power bless is another option, but it depends on a nation. Strategically fast (mapmove at least 2), resource-cheap sacred units are more useful than slow, resource-intensive sacreds, and having multiple attacks will double Water 9 or Fire 9 bless effectiveness, and quadruple Water 9/Fire 9 bless effectiveness. MA/LA Vanheim's mounted Vanir with F9W9 bless are perhaps the most common example.

Learning to expand well with national units is also important. Most expensive unit isn't necessarily the best, because numbers matter, and "missile units scale better than melee units". The latter means that even though X number of melee and missile units are both unable to conquer a spesific province, 2*X missile units can conquer it, but 2*X melee units can't. This works especially well with nations like MA Marignon, who can boost their crossbows with Flaming Arrows in middle-game.

Re: Fortress to Province ratio
 

Mercs can help in the early game because they don't cost extra resources, just gold. Other than that, it depends on your nation, but most starting armies can do pretty well against indies on the default settings (independent strength = 5) if you just toss in 10-20 missile units. A key point: use your Prophet or other priests who can cast Sermon of Courage or (even better) Sermon of Courage + Smite.

Beyond that, it's hard to get specific without talking about a nation and/or pretender build. Here's a link to a DAR (During Action Report) that I just started: http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/...-part-one.html

You'll see that it's early fall (Turn 6) and I own 7 provinces. I did take a good bless (E10N6) and one tough province (knights) was conquered using a blessed Adon after my mercs got slaughtered, but 3 of the 7 provinces were conquered using the starting army + Prophet + 1 turn's worth of slingers, plus one Ahiman Anakite. One province is of course my capital, and the seventh province was conquered by the aforementioned mercs on the third turn before they got killed against the knights and heavy inf. (Turn 1, Prophetize starting commander and send out scouts. Turn 2, look at intelligence reports and decide who's weak, send out troops. Turn 3, battles actually occur. In this case I took 2 provinces on Turn 3, none on Turn 4 (picking up troops) 1 on turn 5, and 2 on turn 6.) I'll probably try taking at least one territory per turn with both of my current armies until they suffer some kind of disastrous defeat, and build more armies at home in the meantime. One thing that can slow down expansion is getting too worried about casualties, and thus trying to build up overwhelming force before you attack. It's usually not necessary, and you can skip tough provinces in most cases and/or leave them as perimeter guards.

Really, most indies are pushovers.

-Max