[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by vfb

Sorry, I may have misunderstood you. If by "expansion", you mean "expanding against your neighbors who already ate up all the indies", then it's not a problem.

If you're talking about expanding against indies, which is what I usually take "expansion" to mean, then waiting for a Const-4 item or spending all your 1st year money on forts is just going to get you killed.

That is not at all what I am saying. With a N9 bless, 3-4 spiders take any indy. And with the blessing I proposed you can easily afford

O3, r1, h2-3, g3, magic 3, luck x.

Each turn you can build an expansion team of 3-4 spiders and a bless monkey.

In fact, since you start with a priest and you can make a prophet you have a leg up. The spider commander prophetized will solo most provinces.

Use the starting troops to patrol, and set the tax rate at 120.
Your income most of the time will be roughly 600 or so.

If you go light on your initial expansion teams (3 spiders) your cost is less than 300.

This means that on turn 3-4 you easily have enough money to build your first fort.

I may be misremembering, however, my remembrance says that sorceresses are 190 for 7 rp. Regardless, you need the second fort to make the eyes of the lord (unit with patrol bonus?). Churn them out to lead troops, and to patrol.

Machaka units (other than spiders) are all resource intensive, and fairly uniformly, crap. However, your spiders are pretty darn good against thugs and SC's.

If you push forts, (while not interfering with your regular expansion) you ameliorate the glaring weakness of machaka pd.

Like I said v, I've got no problem hitting 15 with this strategy, with a 2nd fort built and third on the way in the first year.

What strategy are you promulgating? (and sorry I came across snippy).