Various Strategy Questions

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by shatner

I have only been playing for a couple of weeks but I can infer from the tone of the strategy guides I've read here that I play very differently from the pros. Now, I am just playing single player at the moment so I am still successful despite my flawed play-style but I'm finding it hard to "break through" to the next level; I wonder if I could get a few of the pro-tips spelled out more plainly. As such, I have a few observations of how I play and/or questions regarding the efficacy of a given strategy and I am asking the good folks of this forum to wade in with their advice. By the way, the vast majority of my experience is from playing MA and mainly playing Tien Chi, Mariginon, Abyssia, Pangaea and Arco.

Ok, the first thing I'll note is you've mainly played human nations, or nations with human-sized troops (Pangaea is the most divergent from this classification, MA Aby is sort of like playing humans that are on fire). This will effect your research priorities, and you should be aware of that.

You also aren't playing many bless nations, which is effecting how you perceive the early game. (Marignon is a bless nation).

1) I tend to like to build my castles two provinces apart (maximize resource draw) and prefer to build the bigger, more expensive fortifications because they pay off better in the long run. I also tend to emphasize capturing the provinces adjacent to my capitol before I move out to conquer provinces two or more moves away from my cap and build my auxiliary fortifications. How do you guys balance maximizing your capitol vs. building additional forts quickly?

Castles collect 100% resources (double-normal) from their province, and admin % from neighboring provinces. They will also collect admin/2 % additional gold. I believe this compounds the effect of scales, but cannot prove that.

Whether you need gold/resources or just forts quickly depends on which nation you're playing and what stage of the game it is. Some nation want as many cheap forts as they can get because they're only interested in the mage buy (for example, Jotunheim). Other nations care more about their national troops, and will at least eventually want to get the bigger forts.

All nations probably want cheap forts early because the extra fort faster and cheaper will dramatically increase your productivity (commanders and/or units) regardless of what its admin rating is.

2) I read about the opening games wherein people are capturing two or three provinces a turn. Unless I'm playing a nation with elephants/hydras OR have an awake SC pretender then it takes me quite a while to muster a second, let alone third, indy-conquest force. How do you all build a conquest force quickly and on a budget when you're playing a nation without huge tramplers like elephants?

To some degree, a lot of playtesting to figure out what you need to expand, possibly focusing expansion parties against particular types of indies. Awake SC pretenders help. Many bless nations can make an expanding party every turn or every other turn trivially.

Of the nations you've listed, with the right scales i can see TC putting out an expansion party every 2-3 turns. I have less experience with the others.

Marignon can easily build an expansion party every 2 turns with the right bless. You only need 4+ E9 Knights of the Chalice to expand against Indies with a blesser.

3) I tend to rush construction 4, evocation/enchantment/alteration to some level to allow my mages to contribute in combat (evocation if fire heavy, enchantment if death heavy, alteration if nature or astral, for example) and then I research Thaum 2 for the site finding spells (or conjuration/evocation for site finding, depending on nation). I rarely focus on one school up to the levels 6 without back-filling the others. How much or little do you all focus your research and are there any branches you feel are crucial early on (construction-2/4/6? thaum-2?, evocation-3?)?

It really depends on the nation you're playing and what your strategy is. For a non-bless human nation with E2+ access, I'd rush Alt 2-4 to survive a rush. But there's no one correct research strategy, it depends on what your plan is.

4) I tend to manually site search briefly and then go full in with remote site searching. It takes a LOT of castings (OR a lot research and astral gems) to fully search one province but remote searching can be automated and allows lowly casters (like a death-1 revenant) to actually find the higher-tier sites. Manual site searching is much cheaper in terms of gems and potentially in mage-turns because one Imperial Alchemist (for example) is searching for 5 types of sites simultaneously. But you have the expense of moving the unit every other turn and having them away from labs in case you suddenly need them to do cast or forge something. Is it worth the mage turns manually site-searching vs. remote site searching? What's a good balance between the two? Is it worth having a priest site searching for the odd holy site?

Holy sites aren't worth searching for.

Searching to 3 for a path is generally sufficient - the X4 sites are so rare as to be nonexistent. Every path (except maybe blood) has a common X3 site, but the rest of the X3 sites tend to be rare or unique or both, so even just searching to 2 can be generally sufficient.

How much priority you give searching manually will depend on what your expected early demand for gems is, what your starting gem income is, and how good your mages are for manual searching. I've done all my searching in death manually before because i needed death income quickly.

5) Virtually all strategy guides emphasize that summoned units will largely supplant your national troops as the game goes on. I have the hardest time making this transition, in part because I can get away with it against the AI but also because spending 10+ gems on a single unit (or small squad... I'm looking at you Vine Men) seems hard to swallow; I could be tricking out my commanders with those gems! Therefore, unless I need to fill an niche (like amphibious troops to take the fight to R'lyeh or casters to diversify my magic) I tend to spend my gems outside of conjuration. What summons are good early and mid-game? How much emphasis should be put on forging vs summoning, especially in the early-to-mid game?

That depends on whether you're playing CBM 1.6 or not. Without CBM 1.6, you fund massive summons with gem generators. Ie, fever fetishes, clams, and bloodstones, produced in large numbers, will eventually net you several hundred gem income *per turn*. This makes armies of summons trivial.

With CBM 1.6 national troops become more important and transitioning to purely summoned armies becomes harder.

Many of the strategy guides were written before CBM 1.6, so they assume gem generators.