[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Sorry I forgot about the big bold print on the first page telling me not to do what I did with the load order.

Your facepalm was in vain, for you were not the who made the error. I added that after reading your post about the issue. So unless you can see into the future, you shouldn't worry about it.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Rereading that important first post, I noticed the request for a strategy guide. I don't have anything even vaguely solid or cohesive and some of the facts we're dealing with may change, but I'm going to see if we can start up a little dialogue on this.

I hope that we can get some discussion going. I'm not sure how to play Bretonnia myself.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

First off, let's talk pretender. I'm gonna go way out on a limb and say that an earth bless is an absolute must. E9 Cyclops is always a good bet, but you've got some brutal expansion tools so can skip the SC.

Yeah I agree about that Earth bless, you also need hammers for the thugging you're going to do. But about taking E9? I'm not so sure about that. Your guys already have great prot, and boosting strenghts only works for a point. No matter how much prot you have the word "AN" will spell doom for you. E9 is an expensive bless and I'm not sure if you get the full bang for your buck here.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

I'd say skip the SC because the other thing you'll need is astral, at least S4. One of the glaring weaknesses of Bretonnia is that you desperately need mid-level astral but have basically no access to it. E9S4 gives you all the forge options you're dying for; hammers, crystal coins, earth boots, starshine caps and, once boosted, rings. If we're decided on E9Sx, the stand-out chassis is a Great Enchantress.

Yeah, you need astral and earth. Trusting to get lucky randoms with Damsels isn't that great stragedy.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

As a side note, the Lady of the Lake looks like it both autosummons and domsummons Kydnides which is not something obvious from the description.

fixed in 0.83, thanks for reporting.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Scales. I'm not sure how I feel about several scales for Bretonnia.

Amen to that brother. Only scale I've taken everytime is Order.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Order/luck is pretty easily disposed of. You need lots and lots and lots of money, your PD can easily fend off various barbarians and knights and you've got some fortune teller action going. Order 3, misfortune 3.

Not sure I agree on misfortune 3, that's some serious bad mojo right there. Your fortune teller action isn't that good, I would take it as a minor bonus, not as an stragedy. T'ien C'hi this nation ain't. Perhaps for SP, since you can restart if your lab/temple burns on turn 2 or 3 (especially crippling for Breton), but for MPI never go over misfortune 2 and even then the constant barbarian and knight attacks are annoying.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Growth vs death. If you need points, death is sometimes attractive. You don't have any old age mages, but one of your strengths is that you've got pretty kickass chaff and can spawn them with considerable speed. In short, supplies might become a problem. Additionally, you've got God's gift to patrolling so I'd say growth is the way to go. The supply boost is nice, but you need money like you're an American car company and will probably be taxing at around 120-140% for large stretches.

Agreed, I often take death 1 or 2 with Breton, since your mages are quite young. But I can see the allure of the Growth scale considering your (quite clever) taxing stragedy. It's all good thought, since it's quite thematic. Bretonnian Knights are known for their courage and skill, not for their empathy towards the peasants.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Growth 3, to my mind. You'll get the cash to drop castles everywhere and pay for your stupidly expensive labs so that you can crank out your horrible research mages, bringing us neatly to ....

Magic. Your researchers bite the big one, so there's a natural urge to go magic 1 to offset this. On the other hand, you're going to be cranking out a 10 research Grail Damsel every turn from your capitol starting around late year one no matter how much they cost and you should have enough money to brute force your way through the research malus.

The last thing to consider is that your research goals are pretty spread out. All in all, I'd lean towards magic 1, but this debate is nothing compared to what scales you take for ....

Magic is a bit of no-brainer (and thematic, Bretonnia is the land of magical knights and monsters after all). I can't see a situation where you'd need 120 points so bad that you'd go from +1 research to -1. Not with your 220gp damsels.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Production. Wait, what? You've got knights. Hell, forget the regular knights. You've got 70 resource Grail Knights to buy! Nevermind the 100 resource Dukes. You've gotta take production 3... don't you? First and foremost, exactly how good are Grail Knights really? Well, they crush anything and everything in melee. With an earth blessing, 2 or 3 of them can smash a whole army of melee. The same can be said about the Dukes and Grail Heroes which you'll be recruit a decent number of from your many forts. Once counters to your Grail Knights start to come out (as early as evo 1), they look less and less appealing. Grail Knights, in my opinion, are too costly, too cap-only and too superfluous when you've got Dukes and Heroes.

Grail Knights are support troops, not a stragedy in themselves (although they work well for expansion). A force composed of just Grail Knights, although powerful, is easily counterable. But when you mix them up with peasants and regular knights, setting the Grail Knights at the back and buffing them up with flight, they show their true might. They take the heat off from your frontline troops and now-lanceless knights and can occansionally stumble and kill something important in the backlines while flying around.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

What about a regular army? We're assuming that you're pumping out Marquis and Dukes on the regular, the occasional Lord with a sprinkling of Heroes to round things out. The question, really, is how much chaff do you need and how good does it have to be?

The largest problem facing Bretonnia is how to actually kill things. It seems like a non-sequitur to bring this up in a scales conversation, but the other way to phrase it is 'what, exactly, do I want my army to do?' Does Bretonnia rely on its recruitable troops to do the bulk of the killing? Your mages are great at stopping incoming damage, but kinda suck at actually killing things. You've got moderate air access and conjuring up storms isn't something that'll hurt you very much, so you've got a little bit of traditional evocation firepower there. That's the end of traditional firepower for you.

Enchantment gives you some interesting possibilities. Foul vapors + serpent's blessing for one. You can stack weak AoEs (freezing mists has some really interesting possibilities) and drop some regen, your earth blessing and relief will let you keep casting for an extended period, you can put up defenses vs. most any elemental spells the enemy brings and barkskin + protection gives you a pretty solid line. The ever-popular fog warriors is easily within reach. The sheer number of standards around and tons of sermon-capable priests will keep your morale high. To sum it up, your mages are great at being a buff-happy Wall of No best suited to slowly grinding down an opposing force rather than making them disappear in a puff of evocational might.

How does this all relate to production scales? It creates the question 'are your national troops the answer to killing the enemy.' I'm leaning towards no. They're hard to mass, easy to counter (you've got no real way to buff them offensively), and the fewer troops you have of any quality, the less mileage you're going to get out of the battlefield enchantments you're sure to be throwing around. Not looking at mass knights means a neutral production scale or maybe even a point of sloth is option.

The way to kill things with breton recruitables is Lances. But since they are one-shot only, you need to aim them. Flight is great for sparkling your knights around the battlefield to bypass your opponents frontline lance-suckers. Since Breton lances allow for str damage, casting earth might (with a gem) will make the knights doubly scary. The way for knights to keep killing troops after the lance strike is exhausted is to outfatigue the enemy. With two attacks per guy,the knights should be able to score more critical hits on average. Spells like Sleep, Dessication, Numbness, Stellar Cascades and Orb Lighting spam allows you to fatigue the enemy quickly.

But taking low or prot and drowning your foes in men-at-arms freespanwn, supported by relief and casters, sounds also intresting. If you have a high E god, he could support this strat by casting "Curse of Stones", allowing your men-at-arms to actually kill something though critical hits. Doesn't Quaqmire increase encumberance too? Sleep Clouds from high N damsels could also exhaust the opposing troops.

But I think the question isn't about either-or. You can have both Knights and men-at-arms to use their abilities to the fullest. The chaff take the hits while the Knights kill stuff.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Enough about scales! A few other quick things: Unmounted KotR look to me to be overpriced. 2/3rds more gold than an Errant buys you a slightly improved standard which is kinda useful, 2 points of defense which is a little less useful since it's the 17 prot keeping them safe and patrol + castle defense bonuses which are useless.

The KoTR's (both footed and mounted) decrease unrest by 1 point each point in the province where they are. So they can theoretically actually make you money.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Conversely, mounted Errants seem less attractive. The same 10 gold per unit, now a lesser percent, plus 5 piddly resources buys you the same small stat boosts -and- 3 points of prot.

in 0.83 I made the Errants slightly cheper and KotR's slight more expensive. The increase and decrease was just 2 gold but makes the gold difference larger. Knight Errants are perfect for expansion and other situations where you just need lances, NOW. They're also good to wield against giant nations, since the Giants can damage your knights on shield hits, basically reducing your def to 10 something. Losing a Errantas is a lot more painless than losing a KotR.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Grail Heroes make me happy. They're your best bet for initial expansion; individual unblessed Heroes can take weaker provinces, leapfrogging to avoid knights etc, then quickly team up and circle back in pairs and trios to stomp knights once it's looking like you've grabbed what you can. After initial expansion, they can radiate out to various provinces and patrol. A single Hero on patrol can keep a province pretty comfortably at 120% taxes. If you're feeling a little cash strapped, crank it up to 140% with two Heroes on patrol. Growth, order and 140% taxes? Holy Freaking Income, Batman! Finally, in pairs they're great quick responders if any bad event takes over a province and with 3 flying map move, your once-spread patrollers can instantly converge in large numbers on any attacking force. On top of all that, the smallest gem investment makes them capable of smashing just about any opposing PD, giving you a significant raiding threat. Hero thugs + your large variety of remote attack spells? Mmmm.

Just a warning, this strat won't likely work in MP. High province count, low army count, high income and no research in graph will make you an absolutely uningnoreable rush target.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

All told, I think it'd be more interesting to see Lords generate 5 upgraded men at arms and Marquis make 3 yeomen. This would stratify the 3 commanders a bit more and add variety.

Unfotunately you can only mod the summons in instances of 1,2 or 5.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Finally, I can't envision a circumstance where I'd ever recruit halberdiers. Their attack is too low to actually hit anything with their big stick, so the damage increase is moot. Shieldless with no defense and only average protection, they'll die in droves and the siege bonus is outweighed by the difficulty massing them.

I reduced their res cost in 0.83, they now cost 10 resources.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Certain things about Bretonnia are pretty clear, but there's definitely a lot of unanswered questions out there. How do you kill things?

There is one way to kill things that does not necessarily take any killing at all. Make the enemy flee into nothingness, abusing their lack of courage and honor to decimate them. Your remote attacks and flying Grail thugs can easily take all retreat routes froman advancing army. Then use a force of N2 or higher maidens and Damsels to spam Panic and forcing them to retreat, into your provinces

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Can you use a combination of raids and remote spells to take turf while your forest of forts stalls an advancing enemy?

Certainly, I could see this working. See the castle stragedy quide for LA Man in the main thread, intrestring read.

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Is there a way to not get completely owned by Pythium?

Tough one. It's getting quite late here, so I can't ponder on this further. Perhaps some one else has some ideas?

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

Tune in next time, when someone with more smarts than me answers all these questions and more!

Yeah, we need more discussion. just because I made the mod doens't mean that I have all (or even the best anwsers) to stragedy questions.