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Originally Posted by Black Sun Empire
When taking over independents, what is the best method?
Last night I attempted to play a game, with Nief (Sorry not sure about their full names yet). Sent my scout running outwards just to get a feel for what was around me.
Then I sent 3 armies out and about knocking off independents.
Normally with 6 (guys that turn into big werewolfs?)
Just an aside, how do I make them into werewolfs from the start? It normally requires them to get pissed off before they change.
So I am expanding lovely, then C'tis and some Caelum (sp?) are coming at me from both the top and bottom. I send my troops into the C'tis fortress and seige the thing, my god that takes forever, even longer when you don't know how to enter the gates.
My main problem is, I keep losing my other provinces, I will take one and lose one. My troops keep having problems with starvation as well, how can I fix that? Is there a trick to taking over independents?
Is it best to take the ones closest to your home first, then slowly work your way out?
Normally playing games very aggressively, I just rushed out and started attacking. I killed the C'tis god and they said they would do everything to stop me, does this mean I killed his pretender? How can I completely destroy the C'tis?
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There is no one best method that works for taking out independents for all nations, each nation has its own methods that work best for it. Niefelheim, using your example, is a classic bless nation and is usually played using blessed units to expand. That doesn't mean they can't be played effectively in other ways however.
Commanders that turn into werewolves have an ability to shape change in their action menu on the strategic screen (the same menu you tell commanders to do research from). I hope you understand what I mean by that because it might be hard for me to explain. Anyway, if you tell them to shape change there they will be in werewolf form before the battle. HOWEVER if you were talking about the skinshifters rather than skratti, then you can't start them in werewolf form - they must be "killed" first.
When you're sieging castles, you must first break down the walls. You'll get a message to that effect at the start of the turn. Then you open the action window thing for the commanders sieging the fort and change their orders to "storm castle".
I have found that when playing against the ai, it is really in your best interests to try to hold the smallest line of provinces bordering them possible and slowly grind their armies down through attrition while you build up enough armies to strike out at them while maintaining a solid defensive line. Unfortunately, since armies can pass through each other without fighting, in order to ensure that the AI does not get an army through you it's necessary to have another army behind your front line armies following them up. That said, what qualifies as an army can vary significantly. It may be that you can kill an AI army with one man, which makes the whole process much simpler. Also if you have more mobile armies it is less necessary to hold such a rigid line as you can quickly backpedal or move up fresh units to surround and destroy the ai army. There are also some tricks you can use to make yourself a less attractive target for the ai to attack, such as having decent pd on your borders with them, and having a high army count. However for general purposes both of those things are somewhat counterproductive.
There are a few ways to deal with starvation. First, make smaller armies :P You could also take growth scales, and your temperature scales affect provincial supply levels as well. You could build magic items that increase supplies in the province (all nature items, the sword requires earth too though). After that, your only options are units that don't need to eat or increasing the game's supply levels on game creation. It's usually a good idea to do this anyway when playing sp since the computer is highly skilled at causing its armies to starve under normal settings.
The way that usually gets the most provinces is to expand into the weakest indies first while taking provinces adjacent to your capitol when possible. Taking the ones adjacent to your capitol is helpful because it gives you extra resources to recruit troops with.
Yes you killd C'tis' pretender, but he can come back and probably will sooner than you'd think. You can kill C'tis by taking all his provinces and forts or by preaching away all of his dominion. Being super-aggressive can be hard to pull off against the ai because it's so good at swarming you with units and will cause issues in your backfield. Against players it's more possible, but risky.