prepping for beginning expansion

[Scott Hebert]

I like the idea of using Skeptics to reduce the Sloth in your own provinces, but that requires you to zero the Dominion, right? Not a very good idea, to me.

From my own experience with GE Arco, there are a couple of ways to go about playing them, at least early game.

One is to focus on Wind Riders. They ARE a good Sacred unit. The reasoning behind it is that you are only able to hire 3 or so Myrmidons a turn at the beginning, and you can hire 2 or 3 Wind Riders a turn, if you do it right.

Another is to try to mitigate the damage done by the Sloth scale. I normally play on Rich (no matter who I play), which certainly mitigates the problem. The other idea is, as others have said, pick a high-admin castle. Let me give you my 'standard' Pretender for Arco, standard or Golden Era.

Lady of Fortune
Water-4, Nature-4
Order-3, (Sloth-1 for GE), Growth 1, Magic 1
Castle Fortification
6 Dominion

(Note that you have 40 extra points in GE to play around with.)

This gives access to the Nature rituals (Gift of Health, etc.), good events in whatever province the Lady is in (which makes it more palatable for her to site-search), and actually a credible SC later in the game. If used to site-search, she's finding all of the Nature and Water sites, which are both useful. Nature gives you gems that you'll need for the Nature rituals, and Water gives you gems for Clams.

You also gives you a plausibly decent Bless effect. Taken together (and assuming you Berserk), you get a +1 to ATT/DEF/PROT/STR. While you can have the unfortunate problem of berserking Priestesses, that problem is minimal, IMO.

Anyway, just some ideas I had.

Scott

[st.patrik]

It seems to me that GE Arco is designed to not be able to have many quality troops. My first impulse when playing a nation is to get the best troops in the largest quantities and buff them so that they are a force to be reckoned with - but I think this approach is fundamentally the wrong one with GE. It seems to me that the way to go is with strong elemental attacks - multiple mages casting direct-damage elemental attacks, while protected by a small bodyguard of myrmidons. Of course this isn't an early game strategy, but with the philosophers and a magic scale you can get to mid levels of evocation fairly quickly.

later game it should be possible to get some tough-guy summons (kings and queens of the elements come to mind) to bolster your offense.

The other thing that strikes me about GE is that it lends itself to multiple castles in a big way - firstly to get as many myrmidons as possible, and second, because your defense does not lie in standing armies, but in castle walls - with your engineers you can hold an enemy army at bay.

So I'm thinking for GE a cheap castle, but with a decent admin and defence value, and a strong magic scale to get research done quickly and decrease opponents MR, and a pretender who can forge path-enhancing items for your mages.

Note that I haven't actually tried this out yet, but I think something like this would maximize GE's strengths.

[tinkthank]

All good stuff here. I have a question, however.

Originally posted by Wauthan:

My own preference however is to use assassins. At indep 9 there's usually four commanders to deal with. It's very easy to create assassins that no regular indep commander has a chance to fight. Just give them a cheap magic object and they will usually develop a good heroic ability since you're still so early into the game. This is especially true for C'Tis who's assassins need very little spellresearch to be effectively unstoppable by indeps.

I dont have much success with assassins, although I never really gave Ctis much of a shot. What "cheap items" are you talking about, Wauthan? I cant think of a single trinket that would save my assassins, although I guess Ctis could get a Skull Talisman fairly quick. (But how do you use those assassins anyhow, set to "fire closest"? I dont understand Empoisoners very well -- any tips?) I only feel safe with assassins once they can equip summoning items (bottle of water, lifelong protection, etc.) or really good gear, otherwise they die on me to everything but priests. Tips?

[tinkthank]

Just retried Ctis -- cant get it to work.
Anyone have tips on Assassins early game (without auto-summon help from items)? General early-game assassin equipment help?
merci!

[Scott Hebert]

I don't know if this 'helps', but I do remember vividly thinking at one point that Empoisoners weren't 'all that'... and when I finally used them, they cast Decay and that was that.

I don't know much about C'tis, but I do know that Desert Tombs is an absolute bLast now. One small request I would make of the designers is to give Unholy-5 priests a 'unique' Reanimation ability. I believe that for BE/AE Ermor they are Lictors (already). Soul Gate could get Ghosts. As for Desert Tombs, the most thematic I think would be Banefire Archers. Just an idea.

Scott

[Jurri]

I have found the Enchantment level 1 spell "Animate skeleton" or preferably "Animate dead", if there are corpses available in the province, to be quite neat with empoisoners. Just set him in a far back corner with orders to summon skellies, and he can beat most commanders. Swarm is also nice, but you need a gem for that.

[Taqwus]

Luck charms, barkskin amulets aren't too expensive and can help (well, the barkskin won't help as much as on a human assuming that Empoisoners, as lizardmen, have some base prot; can't remember what it is 'tho). For somebody with decent prot (perhaps from Boots of Stone, say), the etherealness from a Robe of Shadows can be a big help.

If you think there's a decent chance the assassin will die, a weapon with powerful poison or a decay effect might be in order.

But the auto summoners are very useful (wraith crown in particular; but that's very expensive; against many non-flying non-lightning-immune opponents, a spirit helm might be the better buy, although harder for C'tis).

Later on, the Drain Life banner is just vicious... always-hits, affects even lifeless enemies, decent range, good armor-negating hp/fatigue damage, restores health/fatigue on assassin, and not blocked by any immunities.