Research strategies

[theenemy]

What are the appropriate research strategies to use? Should you push your research for a particular spell or divide the research points to different schools in early game? Should one build a new fort as soon as possible to churn out national mages for research?
I'm asking this question because I tend to have problems with early research. Of course this matter is different from nation to nation but I want to get a general opinion.

[Aezeal]

push for spells you need

[kasnavada]

My opinion is that depending on the nation and opponents, there is a few spells that are mandatory.

As a rule, I would always get :
Trauma 2 for site searching spells, construction 4 for most basic magic items (enough to build up most thugs in mid game).
Then specific spells. For Pangaea, good early spells would be :
- panic,
- summon earth,
- invulnerability,
- if EA reinvigorisation / communion,
- carrion lady & summon king,
- self regeneration.

So, I research those.

Then I go for main spells, depending on the situation I face and the situation I'm in :
- mass protection,
- charm,
- a life for a life (if EA, maybe also for MA),
- construction 6 (necessary for more thugs).

Then I would go for a main strategy : bigger thug and SC with construction 8, elemental royalty, army of gold & lead, fairy court, unique demons...

If I got lots of fire magic for some reason (useful indies ?) I would start getting some evocation up so they can cast useful spells. If I have loads of ennmies that use archers I would get the storm spell and an air caster.

Basically, the path is :
- low level spells "mandatory" spells,
- anti-SC spells,
- my main strategy(ies) spell or any spell that might be useful with my units against my current enemy,
- I don't know, I always have a spell to ressearch.

Basically, I beyond to the "push your research for a particular spell" category.

Should one build a new fort as soon as possible to churn out national mages for research?

In some situations, indy mages are better than national ones for research. In that case, you don't need the fort !

[Meglobob]

Try to build a fort ASAP as it doubles your research/troop output and numbers matter early game but not at the cost of early game expansion. The indie provinces at the beginning are the easiest you are ever likely to take. So you want as many as possible.

Listing the spells useful to your nation is good, then you can optimise your research. Some nation guides already do this for you.

Wether your research is long term or short term depends on your neighbours and the chance of war vs peace. Long term is making a beeline for artifacts, elemental royalty, to name 2 examples, you want to be 1st. Short term research is evocation spells/thugs/summons that you need to fight a early/mid game war.

[Twan]

Usually building a second (and third) fort as soon you can is a good idea (but it may depend on income and threats of course -if someone start to rush you, it's better to build troops) ; and it's better to concentrate research in one school to have new spells fast than to split points (except the turn when you are going to reach the spells you wanted, and so start research in another school).

[Evil Dave]

To support research, I usually push for three forts. The one in the home province is for capital-only mages, who often are the only way to get particular paths for the nation. One other fort cranks out cost-effective research mages. The third is for national "support" leaders, usually spies.

Of course, the home form also has to recruit cost-effective mages and capital-only leaders sometimes.

[theenemy]

Thanks for your advice guys, it was really helpful.

[Micah]

I have to mostly disagree with Evil Dave...you should pretty much always be building mages at every fort you've got, making any sort of national leader is a pretty bad use of your fort. Once in a while buying a leader for a specific reason (mostly stealth) is permissible, but normal troop movement should always be handled by indies, losing mage-turns is a bad plan. Cost effectiveness of researchers should also be balanced against speed...generally a 210g mage with 10RP is gonna be a much better buy than a 100g mage with 5RP (counting magic scale and the same sacred status) since you're basically saving the cost of a second fort + lab by building the spendier mages. And yes, you should pretty much always be building your cap-only mages at your cap, if you've got them. Some nations' cap units suck though (LA marignon) so don't always worry about it.

[theenemy]

Well, I usually use 210 gold mages as battlemages/sitesearchers if they have many magic paths.