TURN 1:
Hugin is my starting Jotun Herse
Starkader is my Jotun Scout
Vaklidun is set to research Alteration with his 11 RPs
I plan to get Alteration 2 and maybe 3 for Quickness, Mirror Image, and Mistform, then go for Const 4 for making some clams, wraith swords, and other items.
I start in the NE corner of the map, which will help me in defense later in the game. I will scout W and S and determine which way I want my 1st main army to go first and send my 2nd army later in the other direction.
I recruit a Jotun Scout to send S and save the rest of my gold for recruiting a Niefel Jarl next turn.
Mercs:
Mercs available are Victor’s Villains with 10 men for 30 gold. Mercs are fun to use, but I will have my hands full just trying to get enough gold to form my first armies and get some research going so will only grab some mercs if someone like Orion comes along. I normally like to form my own armies and avoid mercs for the most part anyway plus I tend to forget them a lot and don’t re-hire when necessary.
Provinces:
J (207) Yldemir – Capitol
I (208) Farsen Forest - Forest
I (218) East Farsen Forest - Forest
I (202) High Yldemir - Forest
I (195) Oeversee – Forest
It looks like all surrounding provinces are forests, which should give me some decent resources for my capitol to draw from and some good sites with hopefully good nature gem income. I hope to have enough to forge rings of regeneration to prevent my giants from getting afflictions too easily and later plenty of bags of wine to keep my giants happy.
I send Starkader to (218) to check one of the nearest provinces. He will then continue on to the West and hang out around the nearest chokepoint to watch for enemy movements. My new scout I am recruiting will head South and monitor activity there.
I set the tax rate to 130 for a bit of extra gold and set Hugin to patrol with his 8 axemen.
Thinking ahead, I do some comparison between the Jotun Spearman and the Huskarl w/spear. I normally recruit only Spearmen, but will consider using the Huskarl and its lesser resource cost if I am in need of more units in a hurry plus the improved morale won’t hurt.
I have taken screenshots of my starting map position and the pretender list to see what pretenders I am up against and to notice the nation flags.
I will attach those here if I can get it to work properly
. Hopefully these files aren't too big. I may have to try to get Gimp going to try to reduce the file size.