Musings on getting the most out of the early game

[Truper]

Personally, I don't find patrolling for dollars on the early turns to be worthwhile. The loss in population can be significant, and you will eventually lose more than you gain - although there is certainly something to be said for having higher income *now*.

As for prophets, it depends entirely on nation. If I'm playing a nation with level 4 priests, you can be sure I'll recruit one on turn one, and prophetize him on turn 2. I love having a prophet who can Smite - it just feels so *right*. On the other hand, if I'm playing Man, which has no high-level priests, I'll ususally make the starting Castellan my prophet.

[quantum_mechani]

Truper said:
Personally, I don't find patrolling for dollars on the early turns to be worthwhile. The loss in population can be significant, and you will eventually lose more than you gain - although there is certainly something to be said for having higher income *now*.

As for prophets, it depends entirely on nation. If I'm playing a nation with level 4 priests, you can be sure I'll recruit one on turn one, and prophetize him on turn 2. I love having a prophet who can Smite - it just feels so *right*. On the other hand, if I'm playing Man, which has no high-level priests, I'll ususally make the starting Castellan my prophet.

The thing about turn one patrolling, by the time the expense catches up with you, it should have easily paid for itself with faster expanding.

I very much agree about prophetizing though, it all depends on the nation. If you are playing Niefelhiem, not many people are going to pass up a Niefel Jarl prophet. And if you are Man or Ulm with nothing particularly eye-catching to prophetize, you might as well do starting scout or commander. That is an interesting choice in itself though, scout prophets can stealth preach and spread dominion where you want it later, but they have a tendency to die when moral supporting early battles.

[WraithLord]

Very good thread.

Except for patrolling I'm using all the other tactics. By now they are routine for me, I hardly give them much thought by now

I have a couple of things to add.

-> Prophetizing. For nations with level four priests I usually wait a few turns before recruiting a would be prophet. Early on I prefer to use gold for mercs, troops and cheap researchers.

-> Assassins.. For nations with assassins, a possible expansion strat. is assassins with skull talisman (the one that makes skeletons). They are very useful vs. easy to medium level indies.

-> RB pretenders. I usually research evoc 1, alter 2 with pretender. Then script it to quickness, 4X fire arrows. Then I use in following pattern: search province (expansion army attacks another province); join army and attack new province; This way I end up both using the pretender for searching and the turn wasted for him to move to a new province is at least used for support.

-> Decoys. I use different ones depending on indie composition. For archers use high prot. troops. For xbows use fodder.

-> Site searching. w/o RB pretender always use the long range detection spells. They are most cost efficient choice between manual search and accashic records. With RB pretender, combine RB search and long range spells.

-> Patrolling. Like others I find the long term pop. (hence income) loss to outweigh to short term gains. However this is very general. For sure there might be specific cases when it's worth while to patrol.
I wonder what is (avg.) pop. growth rate for a province with 200% tax rate that is heavily patrolled to be kept in unrest level of 0.

[Ironhawk]

izaqyos said:
-> Prophetizing. For nations with level four priests I usually wait a few turns before recruiting a would be prophet. Early on I prefer to use gold for mercs, troops and cheap researchers.

I used to wait but I hardly do, anymore. Having an L4 or L5 priest is nice but I find that it is sort of overkill in the early game. If you build your indy-killer forces right you can do fine with SoCs for a long time. Plus you can spend the money you would on a powerful priest (usually expensive!!) and that turn's time at the fort to build another researcher. Usually I will just prophetize my starting military commander. Then later on, if he has no good heroic ability, I just kill him off and prophetize a powerful priest or an SC.

[Emelio Lizardo]

Humm, I set all my provinces to 90 percent on the idea that I might promote population growth or migration (anyone know if this actually works?). Never bothered to make a prophet until the first ArchAngel, by which time everything on the map was dead or 'gentled down'. This was playing Ulm, indy 9, and I just churned out smiths, spys and Arquebus men/siege bowmen. In a few turns i had my neighbor ai's capitals in raging anarchy, and with little income for the rest of the game. As for sites, I created a special group for that purpose and constantly upgraded them until they could find anything. Thoughest things to find are those pesky level 4 unholy sites. Oddly, the ring of wizardry will upgrade unholy on your basic moundfiend but not holy on your basic holyroller. But that's much later, I just made do with earth & fire for a long time. I do very much agree that hiring mercs early is a must do, if only to kill em off so they don't come back to haunt you later.

[Endoperez]

It doesn't improve population growth, unfortunately. It is a good idea to lower the taxes until unrest goes below 5, however. After that, the unrest doesn't affect your income or resources, and you can up your taxes to 100.

F1 screen is a great help on this if you haven't already noticed. Press Tabulator (<- -> above Caps Lock) to change whether you want to see commanders or not. Tabulator also hides researchers on the main map.