Various Strategy Questions

[shatner]

I have only been playing for a couple of weeks but I can infer from the tone of the strategy guides I've read here that I play very differently from the pros. Now, I am just playing single player at the moment so I am still successful despite my flawed play-style but I'm finding it hard to "break through" to the next level; I wonder if I could get a few of the pro-tips spelled out more plainly. As such, I have a few observations of how I play and/or questions regarding the efficacy of a given strategy and I am asking the good folks of this forum to wade in with their advice. By the way, the vast majority of my experience is from playing MA and mainly playing Tien Chi, Mariginon, Abyssia, Pangaea and Arco.


1) I tend to like to build my castles two provinces apart (maximize resource draw) and prefer to build the bigger, more expensive fortifications because they pay off better in the long run. I also tend to emphasize capturing the provinces adjacent to my capitol before I move out to conquer provinces two or more moves away from my cap and build my auxiliary fortifications. How do you guys balance maximizing your capitol vs. building additional forts quickly?


2) I read about the opening games wherein people are capturing two or three provinces a turn. Unless I'm playing a nation with elephants/hydras OR have an awake SC pretender then it takes me quite a while to muster a second, let alone third, indy-conquest force. How do you all build a conquest force quickly and on a budget when you're playing a nation without huge tramplers like elephants?


3) I tend to rush construction 4, evocation/enchantment/alteration to some level to allow my mages to contribute in combat (evocation if fire heavy, enchantment if death heavy, alteration if nature or astral, for example) and then I research Thaum 2 for the site finding spells (or conjuration/evocation for site finding, depending on nation). I rarely focus on one school up to the levels 6 without back-filling the others. How much or little do you all focus your research and are there any branches you feel are crucial early on (construction-2/4/6? thaum-2?, evocation-3?)?


4) I tend to manually site search briefly and then go full in with remote site searching. It takes a LOT of castings (OR a lot research and astral gems) to fully search one province but remote searching can be automated and allows lowly casters (like a death-1 revenant) to actually find the higher-tier sites. Manual site searching is much cheaper in terms of gems and potentially in mage-turns because one Imperial Alchemist (for example) is searching for 5 types of sites simultaneously. But you have the expense of moving the unit every other turn and having them away from labs in case you suddenly need them to do cast or forge something. Is it worth the mage turns manually site-searching vs. remote site searching? What's a good balance between the two? Is it worth having a priest site searching for the odd holy site?


5) Virtually all strategy guides emphasize that summoned units will largely supplant your national troops as the game goes on. I have the hardest time making this transition, in part because I can get away with it against the AI but also because spending 10+ gems on a single unit (or small squad... I'm looking at you Vine Men) seems hard to swallow; I could be tricking out my commanders with those gems! Therefore, unless I need to fill an niche (like amphibious troops to take the fight to R'lyeh or casters to diversify my magic) I tend to spend my gems outside of conjuration. What summons are good early and mid-game? How much emphasis should be put on forging vs summoning, especially in the early-to-mid game?


Thanks everyone for the info and keep writing those strategy guides; they're informative AND fun to read.