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  #1  
Old December 27th, 2005, 07:36 PM
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Default Re: Musings on getting the most out of the early g

Thanks, QM. This is perfect for those stuck in n00bville like me. Does everyone do the tax-heavy thing at the beginning of the game until a stable army is built? I usually wait a couple turns while researching a good spell for my pretender to fire, but that hurts in those very difficult research games.
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  #2  
Old December 27th, 2005, 09:49 PM

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Default Re: Musings on getting the most out of the early g

Quote:
Morkilus said:
Does everyone do the tax-heavy thing at the beginning of the game until a stable army is built?
Well, I can't speak for everyone, but I usually (unless, say, I'm surrounded by heavy cavalry provinces) move out my starting army plus whatever I built on the first turn to start conquering on turn two. With a combat pretender, he often stays behind at first to research buffs, then starts conquering solo.
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  #3  
Old December 27th, 2005, 11:27 PM

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Default Re: Musings on getting the most out of the early g

One point that I just thought of: The dilemma of whether to prophetize one of your starting commanders or to recruit one and prophetize that. What do you folks do?
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Old December 28th, 2005, 12:05 AM
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Default Re: Musings on getting the most out of the early g

Personally, I don't find patrolling for dollars on the early turns to be worthwhile. The loss in population can be significant, and you will eventually lose more than you gain - although there is certainly something to be said for having higher income *now*.

As for prophets, it depends entirely on nation. If I'm playing a nation with level 4 priests, you can be sure I'll recruit one on turn one, and prophetize him on turn 2. I love having a prophet who can Smite - it just feels so *right*. On the other hand, if I'm playing Man, which has no high-level priests, I'll ususally make the starting Castellan my prophet.
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Old December 28th, 2005, 01:17 AM

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Default Patrolling for Dollars

Quote:
Truper said:
Personally, I don't find patrolling for dollars on the early turns to be worthwhile. The loss in population can be significant, and you will eventually lose more than you gain - although there is certainly something to be said for having higher income *now*.

As for prophets, it depends entirely on nation. If I'm playing a nation with level 4 priests, you can be sure I'll recruit one on turn one, and prophetize him on turn 2. I love having a prophet who can Smite - it just feels so *right*. On the other hand, if I'm playing Man, which has no high-level priests, I'll ususally make the starting Castellan my prophet.
The thing about turn one patrolling, by the time the expense catches up with you, it should have easily paid for itself with faster expanding.

I very much agree about prophetizing though, it all depends on the nation. If you are playing Niefelhiem, not many people are going to pass up a Niefel Jarl prophet. And if you are Man or Ulm with nothing particularly eye-catching to prophetize, you might as well do starting scout or commander. That is an interesting choice in itself though, scout prophets can stealth preach and spread dominion where you want it later, but they have a tendency to die when moral supporting early battles.
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  #6  
Old December 28th, 2005, 10:00 AM
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Default Re: Patrolling for Dollars

Very good thread.

Except for patrolling I'm using all the other tactics. By now they are routine for me, I hardly give them much thought by now

I have a couple of things to add.

-> Prophetizing. For nations with level four priests I usually wait a few turns before recruiting a would be prophet. Early on I prefer to use gold for mercs, troops and cheap researchers.

-> Assassins.. For nations with assassins, a possible expansion strat. is assassins with skull talisman (the one that makes skeletons). They are very useful vs. easy to medium level indies.

-> RB pretenders. I usually research evoc 1, alter 2 with pretender. Then script it to quickness, 4X fire arrows. Then I use in following pattern: search province (expansion army attacks another province); join army and attack new province; This way I end up both using the pretender for searching and the turn wasted for him to move to a new province is at least used for support.

-> Decoys. I use different ones depending on indie composition. For archers use high prot. troops. For xbows use fodder.

-> Site searching. w/o RB pretender always use the long range detection spells. They are most cost efficient choice between manual search and accashic records. With RB pretender, combine RB search and long range spells.

-> Patrolling. Like others I find the long term pop. (hence income) loss to outweigh to short term gains. However this is very general. For sure there might be specific cases when it's worth while to patrol.
I wonder what is (avg.) pop. growth rate for a province with 200% tax rate that is heavily patrolled to be kept in unrest level of 0.
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Old December 29th, 2005, 01:51 AM

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Default Re: Patrolling for Dollars

Quote:
izaqyos said:
-> Prophetizing. For nations with level four priests I usually wait a few turns before recruiting a would be prophet. Early on I prefer to use gold for mercs, troops and cheap researchers.
I used to wait but I hardly do, anymore. Having an L4 or L5 priest is nice but I find that it is sort of overkill in the early game. If you build your indy-killer forces right you can do fine with SoCs for a long time. Plus you can spend the money you would on a powerful priest (usually expensive!!) and that turn's time at the fort to build another researcher. Usually I will just prophetize my starting military commander. Then later on, if he has no good heroic ability, I just kill him off and prophetize a powerful priest or an SC.
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Old December 28th, 2005, 10:00 AM

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Default Re: Musings on getting the most out of the early g

Quote:
quantum_mechani said:
Well, I can't speak for everyone, but I usually (unless, say, I'm surrounded by heavy cavalry provinces) move out my starting army plus whatever I built on the first turn to start conquering on turn two.
What strength indies do you usually play with?

I usually play high (8 or 9) and it takes awhile to build up an army tough enough to take even the weaker provinces.

As for prophets, while Smite is nice, I usually find that getting the full army blessing and moral spells at Holy 4 is at least as important. So I won't usually prophetize a starting commander unless the nation only has Holy 2 priests. Getting divine blessing is especially important if you're playing a bless strategy, obviously.
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  #9  
Old December 28th, 2005, 10:59 AM
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Default Re: Musings on getting the most out of the early g

Forgot one thing regarding sitesearching:

Unless you play a <40% site frequency game Pythium should sitesearch via accashic. This way they save valuable magetime.
Arco can also consider using Accashic.
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  #10  
Old December 28th, 2005, 01:02 PM
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Default Re: Musings on getting the most out of the early g

Quote:
Boron said:
Forgot one thing regarding sitesearching:

Unless you play a <40% site frequency game Pythium should sitesearch via accashic. This way they save valuable magetime.
Arco can also consider using Accashic.
I'm not so sure about that. Astral gems can be put to so many good uses, especially by Pythium and Arco. They can be used for teleportation, spying, mind hunting, wishing and so forth. IMO With so many good uses for astral it's better to waste the other gem for remote site searching.
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