Some humble Tips and Advice for beginners

[PhilD]

Very interesting post, even though I don't believe I'm enough of a newbie anymore to make the most of it...

Minor comments, mostly about fortresses.

Originally posted by tinkthank:

2. A Few Words on Fortresses and Fortress Placement

When I first started DomII, I thought the purpose of constructing new fortresses was primarily to defend captured provinces particularly well. Although fortresses may buy you more time in defending a province, their main purposes as I see them lie elsewhere, since defense of a province can only be accomplished with personell.
Remember that fortresses
- increase the effectiveness of taxation

Do they? I thought they only influenced Resources... (yes, I know I don't build enough)

- increase the amount of resources available in the province in which they are placed, and hence allow you to recruit troops there much faster, by taking resources from the immediate vicinity
- allow you to recruit your own troops (if you are an overwater nation)
- allow better supply distribution

This means that you will want to put up fortresses in strategically clever locations, but not everywhere. Don't put up fortresses right next to each other unless there is some pressing reason, since it will greatly decrease the effectiveness of both. Put up fortresses to keep soldiers far away from home from starving. But where?
For obvious reasons, in general, it is a good idea to put up fortresses in provinces with more resources than with less; otherwise, you will hardly have enough resources to recruit more than 1 or 2 units per turn; it is a good idea to put up fortresses in provinces where you think you would like to have a starting point for a further campaign; build fortresses before vast expanses of deserts start if you have normal units which require food.

Another thing to take into consideration if you're going to build walking armies with more than 1 strategic move: if you can have your fortress surrounded by plains, but in "rough" terrain (like an isolated Mountain or Forest), you will benefit from the higher Resources, but your newly recruited armies won't be slowed down by the terrain when they start marching out.

Finally, gems can permanently increase the skill of one your mages. This takes a complete turn to boost the path by 1. If you *really* need, say, an Earth mage (let's say you *really* want to forge a particular item which requires 3 skill points in Earth, but you don't have any mages with any skills in earth at all, and you can't recruit any anywhere), then you can make one of your mages a level-1 earth mage by giving him 50 earth gems. Increasing him to level 2 would cost another 30, but perhaps you can now forge a magic item (say, a Blood Stone) which would give him a temporary +1 bonus (as long as he holds that item) to earth, thus a total Earth level 2. At this level, he could perhaps forge additional items (say, Earth Boots) which would give him yet another +1 to earth, hence a net +3, thus allowing you to forge that item you really wanted.

Note that, if all you want is access to a new path of magic, finding a recuitable independent mage with the path if often much cheaper than the 50 gems it takes to empower a new path. Libraries are plentiful, and Sages have a fully random magic pick, so if you find them early, they typically are a good buy. Build a lab in the province, and try to put a fortress around your newly founded Sage assembly. (Note: when playing basic Ulm, you will almost certainly take a strong Drain dominion, since your Master Smiths are immune to it; then Sages are not that good a buy)

I tend to only empower later in the game, or when I need a particular path combination.