Early Expansion Question

Nikolai · #1 October 13th, 2007, 06:27 PM

It depends on where on map you are, how many provinces per player on map, and how soon you want to fight. And of course, on graphs on/off :-)

If you are in middle of map, with six neighbors, and have three times as much provinces, because of a super fighting non-flying pretender... you may be in trouble.

Velusion · #2 October 13th, 2007, 08:05 PM

I'm partial to always expanding as fast as possible and usually base my strategy/build around taking 2/turn by turn 4 and hopefully 3/turn by turn 7.

sector24 · #3 October 13th, 2007, 08:24 PM

Do you guys normally take a province on the first turn before seeing what's there? If you lost that would pretty much be a death sentence in MP wouldn't it? I only ask because one time the province next to my capital happened to have 3 dark vines and 3 bloodhenge druids along with 50 chaff, and blindly walking into that would be a very bad start.

I know it's very nation specific, but I don't see how some nations can support expansion like that. MA C'tis for example has relatively underpowered national units and a bless strategy isn't viable there. What kind of expansion technique would work for them? I normally recruit the elite lizard warriors, but I lose a few every battle and eventually I have to combine two armies into one. I've never been able to expand quickly with nations like that.

Velusion · #4 October 13th, 2007, 08:38 PM

Quote:

sector24 said:
Do you guys normally take a province on the first turn before seeing what's there? If you lost that would pretty much be a death sentence in MP wouldn't it? I only ask because one time the province next to my capital happened to have 3 dark vines and 3 bloodhenge druids along with 50 chaff, and blindly walking into that would be a very bad start.

Typically I won't attack on the first turn unless I have an awesome, unbeatable pretender. You are right in that losing your inital army or *gasp* your pretender is very bad on turn 1.

Quote:

sector24 said:I know it's very nation specific, but I don't see how some nations can support expansion like that. MA C'tis for example has relatively underpowered national units and a bless strategy isn't viable there. What kind of expansion technique would work for them? I normally recruit the elite lizard warriors, but I lose a few every battle and eventually I have to combine two armies into one. I've never been able to expand quickly with nations like that.

This is just personal preference on my part - I'm sure others disagree - but if the nation sucks (no bless - no easy way to quickly expand) in the early game I'll almost always take a pretender that can help with the expansion.

Ubercat · #5 October 13th, 2007, 08:54 PM

How do players maintain an expansion rate of 2+ provinces per turn early in the game? With the initial limitations of resources and gold, I typically don't have what I consider a reasonable beginning army until turn 3 or so. Plus, I often recruit a leader suitable for prophethood on turn one, raise him on turn two, and then he's ready to go with my first army on turn three. At that point you have no other troops and it will take another 3-5 turns to get a second force big enough to attack indies.

Bottom line, I don't see how you can have 12+ provinces on turn 12 without an awake SC pretender, or elephants.

Here's a related question. How would MA Shinumaya have the most provinces, about 7 turns into a giant MP game? Aren't their basic goblin troops just fast dying chaff? Isn't that too early to have their good summoned troops going?

Velusion · #6 October 13th, 2007, 09:03 PM

Quote:

Ubercat said:
How do players maintain an expansion rate of 2+ provinces per turn early in the game? With the initial limitations of resources and gold, I typically don't have what I consider a reasonable beginning army until turn 3 or so. Plus, I often recruit a leader suitable for prophethood on turn one, raise him on turn two, and then he's ready to go with my first army on turn three. At that point you have no other troops and it will take another 3-5 turns to get a second force big enough to attack indies.

Bottom line, I don't see how you can have 12+ provinces on turn 12 without an awake SC pretender, or elephants.

Here's a related question. How would MA Shinumaya have the most provinces, about 7 turns into a giant MP game? Aren't their basic goblin troops just fast dying chaff? Isn't that too early to have their good summoned troops going?

See I usually base most of my pretneder/design around surviving and thriving in the early game. So if my nation doesn't have great troops like elephants or I'm not going the strong bless route I'll usually take an awake pretender. Another plan is to take advantage of any good mercs out there. One way or another I'll be able to expand fast

.

In exchange for this I usually have below average scales (but never really horrible ones). And sometimes due to bad events or just bad luck I can't expand as quickly as I wanted to.

I'm sure not everyone agrees with my hyper-expansion ways though...

Szumo · #7 October 13th, 2007, 09:32 PM

For the MA Shinuyama question, i believe goblin shortbow archers are very cost-effective (as are monkey ones).

And the most important thing for fast expansions is to be able to take out indies without significant losses. Which means either combat pretender, good sacreds or lots of archers (preferably more than one thing from that list).

I try to take 1st province on 2nd turn, and start to take 2 provinces from turn 5 on. So i consider 20 to be decent result after 12 turns, anything less means you're not doing that well (may vary if map is crowded of course). If i run out of space during that time, i'll try to to secure NAPs with every of my neighbours except one, and rush that one to get his provinces.