Some humble Tips and Advice for beginners

[CharonJr]

One minor general strategic hint (useful in all strategy games actually):

Try to take out the enemies ability to keep on fighting (i.e. recruit more troops) as fast as possible.

Here this means try to locate the enemies fortress and take the province it is located in as soon as possible (vs AIs this is the key to victory IMO since they only build 1 fortress).

You don't even have to take the fortress itself, just holding the province prevents the building of new troops (there) and usually nets you a very nicve additional income which you enemy will no longer get (getting stronger while weakening an enemy is always a good idea ).

CharonJr

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by CharonJr:
You don't even have to take the fortress itself, just holding the province prevents the building of new troops (there) and usually nets you a very nicve additional income which you enemy will no longer get (getting stronger while weakening an enemy is always a good idea ).

The holder of the fortress gets the income, while the holder of the province gets to set the tax rate.

[CharonJr]

Hmm, strange, I could have sworn that I have had fairly huge increases in income when I took a capital province even before taking the fortress, but this might have been coincidence then.

Thx for correcting me

CharonJr

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
The holder of the fortress gets the income, while the holder of the province gets to set the tax rate.

This is incorrect. The holder of the province gets both the lion's share of the income, and gets to set the tax rate. I have dozens of save games that can prove it.

[Kel]

Originally posted by Arryn:
The holder of the province gets both the lion's share of the income, and gets to set the tax rate. I have dozens of save games that can prove it.

Interesting. I assume they don't get the benefit of the administrative increase to the provinces income then ? (since they don't own the fortification).

Anyone have a more specific idea on what the "lion's share" might be, percentage wise ?

Just curious,
- Kel

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Kel:
Anyone have a more specific idea on what the "lion's share" might be, percentage wise?

The reason I used the phrase "lion's share" is because the defender does get an income also. But the defender's income is smaller than the besieger's, from what I've seen.

I think the attacker gets the province income, all of it, and the defender gets just the admin income. But this is just a guess. Some testing, or word from the devs, would help pin this down.

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

This is a good resource for beginners.

Please add a section on province defense. This is a part of the game that most beginners and many intermediate players don't know about or forget. Province Defense helps against restless natives, bandits, and invading armies. Any amount helps against restless natives to some degree. 5% or more helps against bandits. 10% or more helps patrol the province against enemy stealth units attempting to scout/spy/assassinate in your territory. At 10% I believe you also get a small squad of your base denfender unit, with one leader. At 20% you have two squads, and a pretty good defense against invading armies early in the game. The costs of PD escalates rapidly, so there is a point of diminishing return--which you have to decide upon. 0--10% costs 50 gold; 0-->20% costs 200gold; 0-->30% would cost 400gold (I think). Once you have paid, you don't have to pay again. You get the effects permanently--unless the province is taken from you!

Another tip is taxation. When you have a province with restless natives, you can reduce the problem by reducing taxes. Change your tax rate to 80% and people will start behaving themselves. Check back in a few turns--if you are back to 0% upset people, then change your taxes back up to 100%. Otherwise your province could get worse, and you could lose taxes and resources--and population--in the long run.

OTOH, these might be better in an intermediate manual, as newbies have enough to worry about with this extremely complicated game!!