I have never won a sp game...

[BigJMoney]

Here is my newbie story. I had only played one game until I read this thread. It was Caelum as my first Empire (suggestions? good/bad choice for newbs?) I got hammered into dust. Reading this thread, I decided to play on that downloadable "Talis" map. As a side note -- THAT MAP ROCKS FOR NEWBIES! Ehem. Okay, so I went with Machaka, because everyone is saying Carrion Forest is pretty easy, etc. Also, I kept all the game options default; no easy research or ANYTHING to handicap the AI. I set up one opponent, an EASY AI Mictlan. I probably could have made it one or two levels higher, though. I used this Lamia Queen/Lamia strategy and I crushed them. They didn't even have a chance.

I was using a level 10 Nature only Dragon (50pts, woot!), so I could use my pretender to help in an emergency. I also took adv of his holy blessings, and started a 10 dark hunter army with my prophet. This was my main attack force for most of the game. At the end of the game (and only then!) did I build two forts near my enemy's front door and start pumping out troops to absorb casualties so my Lamias and Blessed Hunter Spiders could get their job done. Mainly armies made of light inf
(I think), but also Spider knights for a little more staying power.

From day 1 I was hiring Sorceresses for research purposes. I also had a Magic 3 dominion to help with this. Later in the game, this map had some sages I made use of, but I don't think it did anything because I had all my Lamias and Gift of Health already going. I did very, very little army recruiting in the beginning game, other than my holy regenerating, berserking spiders! I think I sent my starting troops to go with them, and maybe buffed them a tad. I know many of them ended up being 2 star grunts at some point in the game. I used no heroes effectively. I tried to; I even equipped them, but their attack AI along with soldiers was really crappy.

Naresh, the real trick for me was definitely playing on Talis. If it weren't such a boring strategy, I'd do it again against a HARD AI and see if I can do it. I think I'm going to diss Machaka for a while, though. I don't really like them :-P. From what I hear about Carrion Woods, I'd like Pangea even less. My next several games will probably be astonishing losses, but hey. Anyway, if you ever want someone to MP, I'd love to. Maybe even a co-op scenario! That would be cool.

=$= Big J Money =$=