PBEM game: The first step (Running)

[Alneyan]

Some unsolicited advice: most nations stand to gain quite a lot by building forts here and there. A fort serves several purposes:

- If a province is protected by a fort, it cannot be taken in a single turn: at the very least, the attackers will need to spend two turns to take a fortified city, possibly more if the fort has a higher defence. A single turn may be all you need to bring in reinforcements: the Faery Trod spell (Nature) and Gateway (Astral) allow a commander to travel with all the units under his/her command. Faery Trod only works to reach forests, and Gateway requires a lab in the targetted province (Astral Travel lifts this requirement).

- Similarly, a province protects your buildings, especially the temples (automatically destroyed if you lose the province). Ideally, every temple will be protected by a temple, as otherwise some cheap raiders could make you lose those 200 gold coins, along with the usual expenses of defeat.

- A fort protects the units and commanders it contains. This can be a problem sometimes, as you cannot both research/forge/blood hunt and fight an attacking party. Still, your mages should be protected whenever possible, and you probably do not want your sages/blood hunters to be left in the open. Magical attacks can still reach commanders hiding in the fort however: those include Earth Attack, Mind Hunt and Flames from Afar/the Skies.

- A fort protects the sites contained in the province. If a province produces several gems a turn, you will likely want to keep it well under control, especially if you make heavy use of those gems. Sites giving large bonuses (a discount on all spells of a certain school) or giving nice independent mages should be protected with special care too.

- A fort allows you to recruit all your national units and commanders. Most nations can recruit good national mages outside their capital, freeing the main fortress to recruit your most powerful mage every turn. If nothing else, a fort could allow you to recruit that Assassin you so badly want, without having to sacrifice one turn of mage recruitment in the capital. Some nations will gain a lot from being able to recruit several mages every turn, while others will have so-so mages outside the capital (Man only has the Bard for example, while Caelum can recruit all its mages everywhere).

- A fort should increase income by a percentage equal to %admin, and will double resource production in the province; it also drains resources from neighbouring provinces. Lastly, if you are besieged, you will still get *some* income from the province (not much, but some), and you will keep all the victory points of the province.