.com.unity Forums - Macahakan Musings + Patroling

Here is post I put up on the Google group which may prove more interesting to people here.
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Been having a little play with Machaka and Patroling.

Aran map, indie 5, rare events, 454 dominion for victory.
Order 3, prod 1, Growth 3, heat 2, misfortune 2,
Ceremonial faith
Dominon 7, 80 pt 40 admin castle,
Lord of the Desert Sun, Fire 4, Nature 4

Having previously concentrated on Spider Knights with mixed results
this Version was intending to use Hopilites and Black Hunters. The
Spider Knights main problem was their lack of speed on the
battlefield.

First attack was t.3 which is a bit slow but after my pretender
stopped researching and joined in things speed up.

Fireballs combined with Eagle Eyes and a decent base precision are
deadly - they work even when your own army is not fire resistent. Pity
none of the mages start with 2 fire 1 nature.

In battle the Hopilites hold the center while the blessed Spider
Knights do their thing - seems to work well and casulties in early
expansion are light.

Things turned tricky fairly early on due to an exposed starting
position and war with a poweful Pangaea was unavoidable. For a few
turns things looked dodgy but by sieging, retiring, then re-sieging
Pangaea's castle things have worked very nicely and at present I am
overrunning Pangea's empire, preparing for war with Marignon,
fortifying vs Van, and hoping Tien Chi stays quiet a bit longer. Its
turn 19 and I am well ahead in gold and gems but will have to push my
dominion hard for the win.

In general Machaka seems fairly versitile and the race design I'm
trying a little slow but quite resilient. Might try attacking earlier
with the Lord of the Desert Sun now I know how he works.

Patroling.

And now the interesting bit. I figured I'd try patrolling as who
better to do it with than Macahakan Eye of the Lord in a growth +3
race? One sacred dude with low upkeep and reasonable cost counts as 15
patrollers - enough to maintain %120-130 tax early on with the free
one you start with. I even tried recruiting another and they sure do
butcher the population.

So for curiosity here is what I found testing a Version with growth 0
(for simplicity) when patrolling efficiently:

Tax of 130% kills 290 people a turn on a starting population of ~30K
Tax of 160% kills 570 people a turn on a starting population of ~30K

So 10% extra tax kills 0.33% of your population - 100 people from a
starting pop.

An extra 30% tax is worth 70gps in a starting province of ~30K, -3gps
for upkeep of patroller, and loses you 290 people who produce ~2.2gps
per turn and 67gps in 30 turns.

I hope the maths is right.

Upkeep becomes a greater proportion of income the less rich the
province patrolled and purchase cost of furthur Eyes is significant
but they do have alot of other uses in a Ceremonial faith race.

I used patrolling at 130% on my home province for the first 10 turns
on the theory that the gold boost early is worth the long term loss in
income. Increasing your gold early brings extra bonuses through a
faster starter so if the simple investment sum is that by taking the
extra gold at the beginnning you start losing out on the deal after
turn 30 then this is a reasonable call as you may lose nothing in the
long term. As the game goes on and you approach the end
patrolling/taxing becomes more lucrative as the long term repercussion
diminish. You could argue that the start and the end are the best
times to patrol. In the middle its probably beter to use the Eyes as
preachers.

Growth makes up for the losses of patrolling but in an odd way
increases the problem - population in a growth race has greater value
as it slowly compounds so killing it hurts more. With the long term
value of population in a death dominion diminshed does this make the
costs of patrolling less as population is worth less in the long term?
Or are the costs of patrolling greater in practice due to the
compunding affects of your population dieing off?

It will take me some time to figure out what to make of it all so
feedback, ideas, and criticisms of my reasoning are welcome.

Cheers

Keir
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Footnote

I continued playing and quickly took out Pangaea with a cunning ruse to lure them out of their Castle. Then I took a pounding from Vanheim!

The Van hit me with an army of ~200 with Hirdmen in the middle, Huskarls outside them, Skin Shifters outside them, Van back on both flanks on attack rear supported by Valkryie on hold and attack rear at the back. It was a tough fight but my rear and flank defenses failed to keep my mages alive, thought they killed/routed the Van and Valk, and in the end the Vanheim infantry centre broke my Hopilites due to all the magical support it was getting.

Due to the Glamour effect of the Van/Valk I had little idea just how tough their army was beforehand.

At the same time Tien Chi attacked and Marignon destroyed the big indie distracting it and leaving it bordering no-one but me - Noooooooooo. I think I made some bad calls in my initial conquests leaving me to vunerable to any set back.

Guess I'm not going to win this one by turn 40. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Oh well full game should arrive any day.

I figure people who arn't seeing big AI armies are not playing on the "right settings" as I have seen multiple in most games.