Q: New to game, need advice - getting wrecked

[Taqwus]

jutetrea said:
Been going with a 2 prong approach, group of melee on the left with ranged behind, same on the right, if I have cav i go flank/rear.

Just watch the friendly fire.

It should be noted that some nations have units which are reasonably capable of both missile and melee combat; Late Era Man's Defenders are an example. Modify your deployment respectively.

Against humans, archer placement may take some care due to the possibility of flyers set to 'target archers'. If you can't shut down such fliers, you may wish to hold back forces to protect the archers.



*snip*

This game SERIOUSLY needs a waypoint system (build a unit, tell it where to go...in x turns it arrives, if the province is taken, oh well). Half my time is spent shuttling guys back and forth to the front, cleaning up after partial routs, etc.

Depends on the nation and your recruitment habits. With Late Era Ermor or R'lyeh, this is unavoidable -- hordes of freespawns. If you're in the late game with a nation with strong summons or powerful + expensive + rare troops, you may be relying much less on moving troops around.

So, questions:

Does encumberence/fatigue matter with the undead?

2xENC is still felt for casting purposes, so armor enc matters. They do not gain fatigue when attacking normally, but whatever fatigue they accumulate from other methods (casting, or certain fatigue-causing things like being hit with Magebane) still applies.

Should I have spent more time searching before jumping in with defense/expansion? I only hit like 2 areas, found some sites... but now have a 3path doing searches..slowly.

Expansion tends to be more important; hiring mages to run around searching is expensive in terms of maintenance, and opportunity cost (not researching, for instance, or not helping you take provinces while he's stopping to search).

By the way, all the magic paths except Holy have a remote-search spell requiring no more than level 3 in the relevant path. Astral has a rather expensive one which locates -all- magic sites, including holy, in the province that you pick (provided that you own it at casting time). Once you have a gem income that can sustain casting these spells, it should boost your efficiency as you don't need to have them spend half their time moving.

Is it worth empowering your peons? Should I wait till i have a hefty gem pile or go for it right when i get enough?

Usually not, unless it's the cheapest way to get something that you could really use. Forging booster items tends to be more efficient *if* you can forge them (some are hard; air, for instance, has no boosters available with just A3 if memory serves). Summons and other rituals may be more useful.

For instance, if you have easy access to Earth-1 mages, but not Earth-2 -- taking *one* to Earth 2 might be useful as he can now build Earth Boots which will bring him to Earth 3 (which allows the Dwarven Hammer, which in turn makes forging cheaper) and the other E1 mages to E2.

If you're looking to bootstrap the Death machine and have a done a lot of research, but all you have are D1 mages -- getting a D1 mage to D2 lets you get a Skull Staff for +1D; the resulting D2+1 can then summon a Mound Fiend which is D3 native; D3 + Skull Staff = D4 which lets him forge a +1D skull helmet for D5 total, which if memory serves is enough to forge the +D3 unique Sceptre for D7 net (has to lose the staff, so net +D2) which easily allows summoning D4-native Demiliches, or for that matter Tartarians. Yeah, it's bizarre and quite a bit of forging and research, but if you want Tartarians and you have are D1s... and it's cheaper than empowering all or even most of the way.


It might also be useful if you have a particularly bad-*** monster commander and would like him to be able to cast a useful buffing spell.

Edit: Oh yeah, any insight on Blessing? i.e. triple bless? I'm assuming that a higher path conveys the static bonuses (i.e. +1 MP 4S)? And that having 3 paths with 3 bonuses all stack? I hear it mentioned a lot, is it significantly powerful or just another viable strat with the right races?

Depends on the availability of sacred troops, how large the map is, and so forth. If it's a monster game with several hundred provinces, for instance, and the sacred troops you have in mind are capital-only and have a resource cost, they might give you a decent head start during expansion, but by the late game the lousy scales you've taken to afford your blessings will be hurting your entire empire (unless you're minimizing your own dominion...) and you won't be cranking out that many sacreds.

Blessings do stack. Hence, the F9W9 combo -- the +4 attack and flaming weapons of F9 works well with +50% Quickness and +4 defense of W9.