I dunno, guys...

[Suicide Junkie]

I've been trying the demo lately.

Took me a while to get the first game started, and I promptly got myself killed against the first independent province.

Then I got wounded to uselessness on the next attempt.

Still slogging up the learning curve for the interface, I started to toss other people into battle instead of me...
Worked a little, but the easy AIs started swarming over the hill before I got more than a handful of provinces.

Finally, one on one I got my army marching... The territory I had was useless for production, and in short order, I had 1000's of gold that I couldn't spend as fast as it came in. Hiring mercenaries for more than they asked for, and then throwing them across the map was the name of the game.

Having sent myself and my little smithy guys around searching for treasure while my three armies (two mercs) went stomping to the west for fun and profit, I was making piles of gems and even more money that I couldn't spend.

When I encountered the enemy, I stomped through his empty territories and ganged up on big red X's which I'd recently figured out meant enemy concentrations.
I tried out the defenses, and tossed up 30-35 on four or five provinces near the front lines.
Once I saw what it did, I boosted that to 50-60. (did I mention that I couldn't spend the money I was making as fast as it came in?)

I basically stormed the enemy with conventional forces and was just now managing to gather enough cavalry to form an attack force.

I managed to forge a few trivial magic items, but they never got to see combat use, before I broke through and closed the noose around the enemy home province.

Even without magic, the battles were decent.

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Some comments/questions:
This game could use a tutorial, to lead you through a couple turns and a battle on a tiny map, say.

How does production work? Is there anywhere can I see the progress being made on the multi-turn buildtime units?

Is it possible to move units without a leader between friendly provinces? If not, why do these military warriors need a priest or other guy to hold their hands?

[deccan]

If you have too much gold and too little resources for production, then you haven't spent enough gold building fortresses. Provinces don't get access to their full resource allocation unless there is a fortress in it. Plains, farmlands have the least resources but are the best for gold. Mountains have the most resources. Fortresses also suck resources from neigboring provinces, so a fortress in a mountain province surrounded by other mountain provinces has mega-resources.

I guess that you were playing Ulm which has decent xbowmen for Provincial Defense. However, in MP game, massed missile fire can be dealt with relatively easily and any flying enemies will carve up missile troops. Ulm is generally considered the weakest of the nations.

And no, all units need a leader type to lead them and can't move by themselves. They will rout if they are left on the battlefield without a leader. That's just the way the game works I guess.

[Slick]

I haven't made it over the "hump" yet. By that I mean I haven't been able to put together a coherent empire before I got frustrated with things and restarted. Total time spent on the learning curve so far is about 4 hrs. The jury is still out, but so far I'm a little less than impressed enough to buy the full game. I think it will take a little more playing time before I have a clue what is really going on. Thanks Deccan for that info. I have gone thru the "walkthru" and read some of the write-ups but still have yet to put it all together.

Some of my complete unknowns (who, what, when, where, how, why):
- placement of troops for battle,
- "scripting" - I'm guessing this is a term referring to what you want your little warriors to do in battle vis-a-vis SE4 strategies
- what to apply my research to. I'm thinking this is a combination of discovering what my empire is good at, reading the spell lists and applying the research to get the best spells for my empire. I have done neither of these yet.
- and probably about a year's worth of other things that I don't even know about yet.

I guess I should start posting in the D2 forum, but I trust you guys here a little more for now. BTW, who are the gurus in the D2 forum? I'm thinking I could search for Posts by them.

I started lurking here almost a year before I registered in April '02 and I noticed that SJ was most knowledgeable and helpful to newbies so I searched for and read hundreds of his Posts. I never thanked you for that, SJ , but you really turned me on to SE4 unknowingly by answering other people's questions. Those where the same questions I had, of course.

Slick.