Thoughts so far

[peasant]

Well, have been playing for a couple of weeks now, SP only. Messing around to try and learn the game - it is fun, could finally replace MOO2 as my default 4X game...!

So far (playing up to 40-45 turns against AI) the two nations I can get to grips with are Tien Chi (default) and Caelum (default)

I tend to turtle, because like to see the cool stuff in a game (I mean, in Civ1 the chariot rush was interesting once, but much preferred to win by getting to Alpha Centuri...!)

Tien Chi has access to most magic paths, which is good, and favours bringing order to the world... Plus Celestial Soldiers are gooood. I'll try Arco again, as they should be good magic Users, but dunno, just hasn't gelled yet.

Caelum suit me because of their strategic speed and flexibility - being able to relocate your forces fast makes up for a lot of strategic mistakes, and the relative weakness of their troops.

YMMV

[Taqwus]

Tien Chi gets breadth indeed. If you can make your way to Staves of Elemental Mastery (+1 air/earth/fire/water) or Rings of Sorcery (+1 nature/death/astral/blood) or Wizardry (+1 elemental, +1 sorcery as well... but expensive) they can be quite formidable mages.
You do still need to worry about things like Magic Duel, however; a powerful astral mage could threaten Celestial Masters since every CM starts with (low) astral. A Banner of the Northern Star would help.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by peasant:
Caelum suit me because of their strategic speed and flexibility - being able to relocate your forces fast makes up for a lot of strategic mistakes, and the relative weakness of their troops.

YMMV

For someone so new to the game you jumbed on some important points. Too often new players are asking for set-in-stone recommendations and then are unhappy when it doesnt work as well as they hoped. But a major part of this game revolves around finding the nation which best allows the tactics you do well with. We all end up with different favorite nations and different favorite tactics within those which is great about this game

Caelum has advantages in quickly finding the enemy before they can powerup. Having a flying sneaking priest is useful in stopping damaging domains from getting out of hand since you can get there quick and preach against them without having to fight your way there. As you noted they can quickly reinforce troops, items, gems. With "Call of the Winds" for quick support they can do well jumping across the board leaving sections of strong independents between their provinces to slow down the enemy. They can start wars against nations which have no way to attack back.

However, they need to make use of mercs and independent troops in order to do the province-to-neighbor-province type of expansion. And those troops can be susceptable to cold so you have to watch your dominion. Make sure that the province you attack from and the province you attack to are fairly equal in scale effects.

[ April 07, 2004, 15:54: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]