NEWB Questions

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by Immaculate

2) How do you do early expansion without a strong bless? I can expand with about 14 jaguar warriors and a priest to bless (fire 9, water 9, blood 4) them as Mictlan but can't seem to do quite as well without the bless or with a weaker bless. I mean, i guess i could take an awake pretender and use that but i want to see what other options there are.

A few small tricks (and I think you can safely expand with 7 jaguars and smaller bless if you use them):
Placement/Shock - indies will always behave the same. So you can set up your force so that it gets the first strike - reduces the number of enemies (and therefore casualties you take) and creates a shock effect. If you can kill enough in the first two or three rounds they run - ranged weapons are good to maximize their casualties before they hit you, works best against unarmored stuff, though.
Defense/Protection - If you can't rout them right away, you will take hits. Since you don't want to loose troops you want them to parry or have a good armor. Compare attack and defense values or prot and strength+weapon damage of your troops and the indies and watch how the battles work out to get an indea. Defense works worse when going against superior numbers, though.
Fatigue - very important for longer battles. With fatigue protection drops, as does defense. Attack drops but slower. So fatigue is an equalizer, and militia will kill your elite armoured knights if you can't kill them before they are weary.