Opening Gambit

[JonBrave]

@Zorfwaddle
What triqui says above makes sense to me.

Not meaning to get at you all , just interested, but the bit I don't really get is what you do with these extra scouts early anyway?? You're gonna have 3 scouts in 5 or 6 turns, plus your starter, or thereabouts. You'll have one army or so. A single scout can more or less look around near to you for you, can't it? I can only see you going to scout provinces miles away. And you mostly need to conquer your immediate neighbours in the early days (IMHO), you mostly end up attacking them anyway.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally Posted by JonBrave;789443
Not meaning to get at you all :), just interested, but the bit I don't really get is what you [I

do[/i] with these extra scouts early anyway??

Beats me. From a practical perspective, in SP, it doesn't really matter as the AI is utterly incapable of keeping up with any half-way decent player, so somebody who wants to start finding all opponents early in the game isn't really hurting himself all that much as the opposition doesn't take advantage of his suboptimal playing.

In MP, it is very common to recruit a flood of independent scouts once you find an independent site or, if you fail to find such a site, to recruit a flood of independent scouts out of secondary fortresses once you cannot afford to recruit all mages everywhere every turn, since from the middle game onwards, detailed scouting is often essential to survival, but the capital should never, ever, recruit a scout during anything resembling normal gameplay in MP as there is (practically) always a better affordable capital-only commander mage or priest that should be recruited instead.

[triqui]

Originally Posted by Peter Ebbesen

Beats me. From a practical perspective, in SP, it doesn't really matter as the AI is utterly incapable of keeping up with any half-way decent player, so somebody who wants to start finding all opponents early in the game isn't really hurting himself all that much as the opposition doesn't take advantage of his suboptimal playing.

In MP, it is very common to recruit a flood of independent scouts once you find an independent site or, if you fail to find such a site, to recruit a flood of independent scouts out of secondary fortresses once you cannot afford to recruit all mages everywhere every turn, since from the middle game onwards, detailed scouting is often essential to survival, but the capital should never, ever, recruit a scout during anything resembling normal gameplay in MP as there is (practically) always a better affordable capital-only commander mage or priest that should be recruited instead.

you can beat the AI with no research at all (I have done). So sure, it is not needed to buy a mage in turn 2. However, it is (very) suboptimal, and I think we should make the new players to understand why. Then they can play as they want, as this is a game, and the goal is to have fun :-)

@zorfwaddle sure, in MP is even more important to have scouts. In my game with Marignon I have like 20 :-)

[Jarkko]

This is slightly off-topic, but I'll mention a few cases where I *always* recruit on turn 1 something I want to prophetise.

Nations who can recruit demon or undead commanders. Prophetise him and make him reanimate like there is no tomorrow. For example Oni General from Yomi, reanimate Longdead or preferably soulles (walk with an army, reanimate 25 soulless after the battle, attack next province, reanimate 25 soulles, etc -> you'll have a couple hundred soulless at the end of the year, excellent nice soulless who will be targeted by enemy banishes instead of your precious demons).

Nations who have excellent thugs who become even better thugs if they are prophetised. For example Machakan Hunter Lords (script Holy Avenger, Attack -> you actually *want* the rider to die eventually, because after the puny rider dies the spider remains prophet and in friendly dominion it has about 100 HP; not only that, once it eventually dies, it should be high enough in the Hall of Fame so that you can eventually Ritual of Rebirth him as a Giant Mummy).

Nations who can recruit H3 priests should in my opionion *always* prophetise one. For example Lizard King. Fanaticism is a powerful tool, Word of Power has its uses (it will be a memorable moment when you first time paralyse with Word of Power an enemy SC still buffing up), and a H4 Banishment is a hall-sweeper vs undead and demons.

Other than that I tend to either prophetise the first commander (I don't usually prophetise the first scout, usually I am too eager to find out where my enemies are to waste the first (and only, until I find an indy province from where to recruit scouts) scout into marching with the army), because of the Smites and Sermons of Courage (those both keep the initial army going), or wait a few turns until I have enough money to recruit some other prophet chassis (giants and super-mages cost an arm and leg, and as prophets are free from upkeep it makes IMO much sense to make one of them a prophet). In my opinion, on the first turns it is much too important to get expansion parties out rather than recruit a 500gold commander to be prophetised (and thus lose two turns of expanion, and then that super prophet might just as well die in the first combat to a lucky arrow rolling umpteen sixes in row, and all you would have left would be the sore forehead because of all the banging on the table/wall).