Getting started..............

[Edratman]

The nation choices above are all good choices. You can pick many others, but I do recommend you stay away from blod nations. That's a complication that you can learn later on. One great way to start is to look though the nation guide sticky and pick a nation with a guide and follow the guide.

I would choose one of the prepackaged maps and set number of opponents so that there are about 30 provinces per player. That will allow you to expand through indies for a while and get some feel for the game.

The settings I recommend are AI- normal. Gold, resources and supplies at 300 and research to easy. This allows you, and the AI maximum build capabilities.

You need to learn how to distribute your commander purchases in castles. Trial and error is as good a method as any. This is not Civilization, you cannot do everything at once. You have to learn how to balance your army and commander builds. Castles generate only one commander per turn and you have to choose among battle mage, research mage, priest and military commander. Don't waste a castle turn buying a scout or assassin. The game is based on distributing limited resources and you need to learn how to choose well.

Another mistake I made was buying every indy troop I could. There is a factor called upkeep, look at it as tax, for troops and you will find that wanton purchase of cheap indy troops will erode available gold as the game progresses. The upkeep for sacred troops is less than that of regular troops, so in the long run they are the most efficient purchases. You will be better off just buying the best troops from your castles and filling in with indies for needs. Indy mages are almost always a wise purchase.

Do not fortify provinces away from your border with troops. Use province defense (PD), because PD does not have an associated upkeep. A PD of 10 is a good value.

As for magic use, the forum is the best source for optimal spell useage. The chaps playing MP games continually astonish me with the cleverness of spell useage, so look for these kind of threads.

Pretender creation is in itself a game within the game. Read the guides and follow them to start. Adjust as you learn. Just remember, many of the pretender build guide descriptions are geared to MP, which is an entirely different game with a emphasis on mandatory early expansion that is not necessarily applicable to SP.

Many players say the AI is weak. That is not true. Until you learn to play the game you can expect to lose a lot (I lost every game for 3 weeks). The AI is predictable and exploitable, but not if you play the game like CIV and think you can just amass the largest armies and hammer the opponents.

[das123]

I've had the game for about a year but still consider myself a beginner. I made the mistake of starting against a single enemy thinking that was going to be easiest. It's actually easier to play against two or three AI (I play on the small or medium random maps with the AI on Easy).

Some of the basic tips I picked up:

* Pick a couple of spells you want then research this strain of magic until you have them. Have a basic plan once you start the game.

* On the first turn or two, tax your home province at 140% and set your starting army to patrol. This will give you quick funds to build the army before attacking independents.

* Don't send mages out looking for magic sites. Use magic for the search.

* If you can't take an enemy castle, siege tax it at 200% until unrest is over 100. This way they can't make many troops. Then leave a small holding force and take-over the surrounding land. I think this also helps in starving the defenders.

* Before storming a castle, send in a loan scout or low-quality leader. Put him at the back of the screen set to retreat. Then when you watch the replay see what you are up against. You may need to specially equip a leader to counter what you find.

* Many of the strong battle spells require magic gems. Equip mages with a limited supply and hard-code the spells they are to perform keeping note of the fatigue cost. Let a scout carry the bulk of the gems to replenish the mages between battles.

* I never pick pretenders well so take this 'tip' with a grain of salt. I always pick a pretender very strong in magic and use him/her for research and constructing magic items. They are always dormant and I always pick 1 extra production with dominion of 6. I do this no matter what race I have because I haven't discovered a better use for my pretenders yet.

[Endoperez]

There are magic Paths and there are magic Schools. Fire, Blood and Astal are something a mage can be skilled in, and these are path. Evocation, Thaumaturgy and Blood are something that are researched on a national scale, and allow mages to use more effective spells if they have the paths required for them.
Blood is both a path and a school because all spells of Blood path are in a single school, also called Blood. It's mostly about summoning.


Evocation gives most paths some combat spells. The four elemental paths are very well covered by evocation. As an example, if you can recruit mages with level 3 in one of the four elemental paths, they can use spells such as Blade Wind (fires 52 or more low-damage missiles), Thunderstrike (AN attack at a target and stun damage at enemies close by), Falling Fires and Falling Frost (heavy damage to an area, very deadly with just a couple of casters). These are good research targets for strong elemental mages.

For Death, research Enchantment instead. Several D3 mages scripted to cast Raise Skeletons (a combat spells) five times will create an army, and you get a new one for every battle. Pale Riders is a good Death summon, especially if you get a high-level death caster. The + after it's number of effects (20+) means that more powerful Death mages will create more Longdead Horsemen per casting.

I'm not sure what Nature mages should use in the early game. Perhaps researching Thaumaturgy would be best; you could use Sleep against strong single targets like enemy pretenders and Panic against numerous weak units. You won't get much killing power from Nature, but it has lots of utility uses, and Charm from high Thaumaturgy is very nice.

[MaxWilson]

* Don't expect too much from PD. 10 is a good value (11 is slightly better IIRC at deterring the AI because it's the difference between "an officer and a few henchmen" and moderately well-defended in the spy reports) and will stop Cal of the Winds, Arouse Hunger, etc., most of the time. It won't stop a barbarian attack unless you get very lucky, and it won't stop a real army. PD + a mage is much stronger than PD on its own.

* As with Axis and Allies, much of the game is won or lost during the purchasing phase.

* Thunderstrike does real damage as well as stun to adjacent enemies, by the way.

-Max