Are there any existing guides discussing race specific startegies?

[Arryn]

Originally posted by st.patrik:
Since there are 17 races that makes a total of 289 combinations, minus 17 because you can't have 2 of the same nation in the same game = 272.

It's possibly worse than that when you consider that some themes play markedly differently than the base nation. Case in point is Ashen Empire Ermor ...

[GavinWheeler]

(About the title)

I like the word "startegy"!

It could mean the strategies for the first few rounds. e.g.:
- hiking taxes up to 200% and patrolling with your initial army
- the pros and cons of appointing a prophet immediately vs waiting until you can hire a super priest (e.g. the Neifel Jarl or Arch-Thug) or even waiting for a specific hero to turn up
- hiring mercenaries for quick initial expansion vs building up your own national troops
- what spells to research first, or what items to forge in the first few rounds
- try to get a foothold in the sea (or on land for Atlantis/R'lyeh) early or not?

These are a lot less dependent on what other nations are in your game, so could be put into a reasonably small document.

[Spacepain]

Hehe... startegies... Didn't think about that really, but it probably is a slightly more approachable topic.

So, are there any forums or documents discussing startegies out there for different races?

[Wauthan]

Best thing you can do as a "newbie" is to run this forum in a minimized window as you play. When you encounter a situation that leaves you pondering you can just alt-tab here and make a quick search.

During the time I've been visiting this place most topics imaginable have been discussed. Some at greath length and others at greath depth. Run a search on Atlantis, C'Tis, Ulm, etc and you will undoubtely find a lot of solid strategy advice on nation specific strategy.

It's very hard to make a good 'startegy' since starting out well depends on so many things.

[GavinWheeler]

Originally posted by Wauthan:
Best thing you can do as a "newbie" is to run this forum in a minimized window as you play. When you encounter a situation that leaves you pondering you can just alt-tab here and make a quick search.

We don't all have always-on broadband access!

[Arryn]

Originally posted by GavinWheeler:
We don't all have always-on broadband access!

This is the 21st century, you should. Even in the remote boondocks of Wales!

[SelfishGene]

Against the computer AI the most consistant 'startagy' is to hire every mercenary company available, no matter the cost or which company becomes available. Sell gems if short on gold.

Mercs have a twofold benefit. They expand you military much faster than you ever could by simply training them, and most especially they have no upkeep. 100+ normal units can be a heavy load on your monthly payroll, but 100+ mercenaries have no upkeep at all. This more than compensates for the high initial hiring cost.

Mercenaries are always better than the equivalent trainable units because they come with experience and are generally skilled enough not to rout (the barbarian merc company is a notable exception). Also it keeps you away from buying the cheaper, less effective 'crap' troops every nation has at the start of a game; troops which become obsolete rather quickly.

Mercs are also rather cheap to maintain/re-hire as long as your expanding by one or two provinces a turn. In fact i think for most mercenary companies it costs the same or less to hire them a second time than it would to payroll an equivilent number of troops.

During this early phase try to hire few normal troops yourself, except for casters or researchers, to keep expenses down.

Doing this will quickly rack up hundreds of gold in the bank letting you go on a building spree and help strongly consolidate your holdings. By this time many of your merc troops will be depleted by attrition so you can being letting some of their contracts expire and so start to transition to a conventional military.

Against AI. Not vs. other human players. The AI doesn't seem very competitive on bidding for merc contracts on the lower difficulty levels.