newbie questions and comments

[Boron]

Originally posted by Thufir:

And while we're on the subject of noob questions: I'm often at a loss as to how best to script combat oriented leaders (e.g. Tsien Chi noble or Pythium Serpent Lord), in the opening game. It seems that these leader types should be getting into the fray, but at least in the opening game I find them getting killed (or at least afflicted) altogether too quickly. This seems to be true even if I hold for 5 turns before attacking.

Is it necessary to wait for mid-game (when I can start equipping them with items), before I let these types of leaders into direct attack? Or is there a method to have them be more useful before I can afford to equip them? One thing I have done is to supply them with a cheap bow or misc item (l bow of accuracy or skull talisman), that gives them *something* to do, but it seems like there should be a better option than that...

almost every national leader like a tien chi noble is not worth it beeing equipped with items for melee as you did a bow of accuracy or something like this is a good solution if you want to strenghten them.
but serving as leaders is almost their single purpose .
a bane lord ( conjuration 5 , only 10 death gems ) does much better when decent equipped as almost all national leaders as meelee sc .
only exeptions that come to my mind are especially : jotun niefel giants , the more expensive vanheim heroes and the 390 gold man tuatha heros .
and ermor sg heros like wraith consul and wraith centurion .
really worth equipping are some of the special national heros like the ettin mandragora or the wraith lord for ermor if you get them early.
your pretender should be equipped and really worth equipping late game are :
vampire lords , wraith lords and tartarians

[Molog]

Originally posted by rylen:
Hey,How do you keep Communion Slaves alive in Pythium? I'll take 4-8 slaves and 1-3 masters. The slaves are pushing 200 fatigue when the enemy routes and the masters keep casting spells. Result: they're gone or wounded after a single combat.

Taking a high earth magic blessing for the extra reinvogeration. Having one of your masters cast summon earthpower to give him and his slaves extra reinvigoration. Equip your slaves with reinvigoration items. Take a death 9 blessing, if the slaves die, they return as undead zombie slaves.

[Lex]

is the general strategy for recruiting tons of blood slaves to pick poor provinces with little income and just ignore the unrest that builds up?

and how useful are blood sacrafices (is it a necessity for those races that have it or just an advantage in spreading dominion faster)

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by alexi:
is the general strategy for recruiting tons of blood slaves to pick poor provinces with little income and just ignore the unrest that builds up?

You can't ignore unrest, as a 1d400 must be less than the current unrest level for the hunt to be successful. The complete rules for blood hunting are found in this thread:
Blood Hunting Mechanics

You'll need to deal with unrest some way. Whether this is through lowering taxes to 0 in a province and only putting 2-4 hunters in it, or patrolling a province and killing the population, then moving on is up to you.

and how useful are blood sacrafices (is it a necessity for those races that have it or just an advantage in spreading dominion faster)

Mictlan must perform blood sacrifices to spread its dominion at all. The other nations have it as an extra option that they can use when needed.

[Lex]

has anyone ever tried, or calculated the benefit of doing 200 tax on your capital for the first 10 turns and patrolling heavily (with your starting troops plus a few extras) to keep unrest at 0... In games where expansion is slow at the start, isn't having double the income worth the loss of population at the start of the game?

i've also tried patroling my capital up till turn 40 and the pop drops to about 13.5k from 30.3k, which halves the income, and neutralizes any benefit of having 200 taxes (since you're making the same as if you had 100 tax at the begin). But at that point to stop the patroling+taxing would create a loss in income. And to continue would just kill off everyone in the capital. So, there must be an optimal time to stop patroling+taxing your capital (if you even believe its a good idea in the first place, but truth is, because of its high population, its the ideal, if not only, place to tax+patrol)

To do the math I would need to graph out where the income with 200tax becomes less beneficial then income with 100tax (and would need to include future tax revenues as well, since after heavy taxing, normal 100tax drops). The real important factor is how long the game will Last. In short games, heavy taxing might work because the real damage is only felt much later.

What I did figure out is that in 40 turns, if i start with a nice 177 income in my capital, i'll make a total 11636 gold from my capital in 40 turns (taking into account the compounded loss of 1.55 income per turn due to population loss of 0.42k per turn. Without population loss (ie, if you have Growth+3, you'd probably make 14160 in total (probably less though). Without 200tax, i would have only made a total 7080 in gold from my capital. So in 40 turns, there was a huge benefit to doing 200 tax the entire time. (although I didn't record the drop in production, although I don't think that gets affected by population drop *as much* as income)

Also, I'm not including the upkeep for the starting units+commander, since I consider them a write-off (in a game with indep lvl 6+ they are pretty much useless, so rather then slaughtering them, might as well put them to good use)

Anyways, I've only been playing SP, and look forward to some MP action, so please do correct me if I'm heading for trouble with all this.

[rylen]

Thanks for the replies. I wasn't joking about Mictlan magic -- I just wasn't thinking in the right terms. I'd been trying them on tight maps like Desert Eye and Reemergence where you've got to carve something out or get eaten. I ran them with more emphasis on the summons (and some luck) on Aran to considerable effect. I have not yet tried all the communion reccomendations. For a while, I gave them nature 9 for regeneration, but that didn't help. Some earth and (eventually) high level nature spells.

Thanks.

Rylen